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Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 07/06/2017 (1982 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Hanover School Division is backing away from plans to introduce a swipe card program for students riding on division buses.

Under the plan, Hanover students would have been provided with a swipe card to use when getting on a bus, allowing the division to quickly confirm which students were on board. The technology is meant to allow quick access to student ridership information, a useful tool in particular for emergency situations.

Some parents who attended Hanovers budget consultation last October had challenged the division about the costs and necessity of such a program. At the time, board chairman Ron Falk had described the safety measure as something that parents were requesting themselves.

Assistant superintendent Rick Ardies shared with Hanover trustees on Tuesday night that the division will reallocate $38,000 budgeted to swipe cards towards school bus camera installations instead, after learning of challenges experienced in other jurisdictions with similar swipe card programs.

Ardies told The Carillon that the program has been found to be difficult to manage elsewhere, with the problem of missing or forgotten swipe cards a major hindrance to the programs effectiveness.

The division had already budgeted about $120,000 for camera installations this school year and next school year. The additional funds should speed up the full implementation of cameras on all division buses, which was previously expected to take four to five years to complete.

Ardies said the division will continue to review student ridership program options as technology becomes more effective. He noted that some companies are in the early stages of developing facial recognition software for implementation on school buses.
New York is one of the best cities in the world and one of the biggest, so where do you start when you only have 48 hours in New York? Here is my own personal guide on what to do when you only have 48 hours in The Big Apple.

Where to stay

Times Square

New York is made up fo a number of vibrant neighbourhoods , from Queens to The Bronx, Brooklyn to Staten Island, but when you want to be in the centre of everything it's hard to beat Manhattan. With a wealth of restaurants and tourist attractions on your doorstep, you are in the perfect area for packing it all in.





Check into one of the hotels like the Casablanca Hotel around the corner from Times Square or the Library Hotel on Madison Avenue. If you are on a tight budget Pod 51 has petite but perfectly formed rooms.





Day one





Morning





View from The High Line





To have a view over Manhattan you have a number of options, from the top of the Rock at the Rockefeller Centre to feeling like King Kong with a view from the top of the Empire State Building.





For stunning views try the One World Observatory the tallest building in the Western hemisphere. As you ride to the top watch over 500 years of New York evolving in under 60 seconds. After your visit and with your feet firmly on the floor head over to the 9/11 Memorial Museum. The moving memorial is etched with the name of those that died in 9/11 and the museum is a tribute to the victims, in the area where the towers once stood.

Next, walk The High Line on Manhattan's west side, a public park based on a historic freight line, taking in the street art and views.





Lunch





For lunch near the High Line, check out these recommendations on where to eat , such as Bill's Bar and Burger, one of the Meatpacking districts less pretentious places to eat, or Toro, a Tapas bar in an industrial-chic space.





Afternoon





The Whitney Museum Of American Art





If you love modern art, like me then the Whitney Museum Of American Art is a must do. Spend some time browsing over 21,000 works of art with the emphasis on works by living artists.





Evening





Broadway





That evening have an early dinner, check out the recommendations on where to eat like a local in NYC then take in a theatre show on Broadway. To get the hottest tickets such as Book Of Mormon or Hamilton book way in advance. You can get bargains on the day if you don't mind queuing at the TKTS booth in Duffy Square, but if you are only in New York for 48 hours then you may not want to wait in line.





Did you know that in a New York minute over 25 Broadway tickets are sold and over 1000 hot dogs are eaten? No, neither did I! Check out this nifty New York minute page here.





Day two





Morning





Ellis Island





Start your day by heading over to Ellis Island in New Jersey. For over 60 years it was the gateway to the USA and saw

millions of newly arrived immigrants pass through its doors. It's amazing to think that approximately 40 per cent of all US citizens can trace one of their ancestors to arriving at Ellis Island. Don't forget to book tickets in advance on the website or you may not get availability.





The same ferry takes you over to the Statue of Liberty, different options cover a visit to the crown and pedestal.





Lunch

Statue of Liberty





You'll want to spend time exploring Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty so eat in the Ellis or Crown cafe for simple burgers, pizzas and chicken dishes.





Afternoon





Shop for souvenirs





Now you are fed and watered spend some time splashing the cash in the fabulous shops. From Bloomingdales to Macy's, Tiffanys to Saks Fifth Avenue, New York is a mecca for shoppers everywhere. If you have kids take them to the world famous FAO Schwarz for a huge selection of toys and games. My personal favourite stores are Bath and Body Works and Sephora for brilliant beauty products.





Don't forget the quirky souvenirs, I mean who doesn't want an I Heart NY fridge magnet?!





Evening





Chinatown





New York is such a cosmopolitan city so t

op off your 48 hours in New York with something different - Karaoke in Chinatown. The K One Karaoke bar is particularly cool with its funky 3-D artwork and neon lights.





Once you've sung your heart out to Gloria Gaynor then stop by in one of the restaurants such as Mission Chinese Food, one of the city's most talked about Chinese/American influenced restaurants or for something more traditional the Peking Duck House which sells, you guessed it Peking Duck.

pin for later

Finish your 48 hours in New York off with a cocktail at Fig 19, a hidden speakeasy bar with an amazing vibe, accessed from an unmarked door in an art gallery.





So this is my 48 hours in New York. Let me know if you have been to New York. What would you recommend?

*PR collaboration
When the French restaurant La Madeleine first came to the suburbs of Houston, my mom and I often made our way in for a little Saturday morning breakfast before our mother-daughter shopping escapade began. Even in my younger days, I preferred its cozy, yet sophisticated environment to the other nearby breakfast chains. The mix of heavy sturdy wooden tables and a cottage feel, alongside bright and beautiful, intricately made French pastries was the perfect paradox, and I was drawn to it.

I can still recall the first time I had the sandwich that would forever change the time of day we made our way into that quaint, little French spot. It was the Caesar chicken sandwich, and my heart would henceforth be indebted to the genius behind gliding creamy and rich Caesar dressing across two slices of toasty bread. The sandwich also featured shredded chicken and crisp Romaine lettuce, and if you are a Caesar salad fan, this sandwich was pretty much guaranteed to make your heart sing and your mouth water.

Years later, whilst deep into my Barefoot Contessa obsession, Ina Garten pulled out all the stops and whipped up a version of the sandwich I loved so much. Why had I never thought to try a homemade version? I put her recipe to work in my own kitchen, and both the husband and I were over the moon. It was a gourmet sandwich at home, and it was even better than the one I swooned for on our shopping day lunch stops.

Over time, Ina's Caesar dressing recipe evolved into one of my own, swapping out a little of this for a little of that, nixing one ingredient and adding more of another. The dressing is easy to make, and heavenly to eat. In the past, we enjoyed these Caesar sandwiches with shredded chicken, however, every now and again, I just can't help myself from shaking things up, and roasted shrimp made for an incredible and succulent substitution.

Regardless of which protein suits you best, this is a recipe worth getting under your belt. It's quick, it's easy and I have no doubt it will become one of your new dinnertime favorites. And, for those of you with little time on your hands come dinnertime, or even those of you who find the kitchen to be a place of confinement rather than happiness, grab yourself a bottle of creamy Caesar dressing the next time you're at the store and make this meal an even quicker fix than it already is. Enjoy!

To substitute chicken for the shrimp in this recipe, check out "Perfectly Cooked Chicken Breasts" at www.TheAnthonyKitchen.com.

Caesar Shrimp Sandwich

1 1/2 lb jumbo (16/20) wild-caught shrimp, peeled and deveined

1/3 cup + 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, separated

1 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt, separated

1 teaspoon of black pepper, separated

3/4 cup mayonnaise

6 tablespoons Parmesan cheese, freshly grated

4 teaspoons lemon juice, freshly squeezed

2 teaspoons Dijon mustard

1 teaspoon anchovy paste

1/2 teaspoon black pepper, plus extra for finishing salad

2 cups romaine lettuce, chopped, washed and dried

4 ciabatta buns, halved

1/4 cup shaved Parmesan cheese, if desired*

For the shrimp, preheat the oven to 400 and have ready a large rimmed baking sheet (possibly two), lined with nonstick aluminum foil.

Place shrimp on the baking sheet, drizzle with 2 tablespoons of olive oil, 1 teaspoon of salt and 1/2 teaspoon of pepper. Toss until evenly coated with oil and seasoning. Spread apart so that there is at least a small amount of space between each shrimp. If not, transfer half of the shrimp to the second baking sheet.

Bake for 10 minutes, or until the shrimp is pink in color and slightly firm to the touch. Set aside until ready to use. Leave the oven on.

For the Caesar dressing, in a blender or food processor, combine mayonnaise, Parmesan, lemon juice, Dijon, anchovy paste, a 1/4 teaspoon of salt and a 1/2 teaspoon of black pepper. Process until smooth. With the motor running, remove the feed tube and slowly drizzle in a 1/3 cup of olive oil. Set aside until ready to use.

Have ready a sheet pan. Drizzle the cut side of the ciabatta buns with 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Bake for 6-8 minutes, or just until toasted. Set aside to cool slightly. Place romaine lettuce in a small bowl. Add 2 tablespoons of dressing and toss to combine. Smear the bottom bun with desired amount of Caesar dressing. Divide shrimp amongst the buns, and top with the dressed lettuce. Sprinkle with shaved Parmesan and add the top bun. Serve and enjoy.

*To shave Parmesan, run a vegetable peeler firmly along the wedge of cheese and allow the wedges to fall on your work surface.

Serves 4.

Try this sandwich with other Anthony Kitchen recipes!
Amy Brown, a treatment counselor with the Brazos County Drug Court, recently was honored with the Rusty Ladd Scholarship Award by the Texas Association of Specialty Courts.

Brown was presented with the honor, which recognizes an individual on a drug court team committed to the values possessed by late Judge Rusty Ladd of Lubbock, at the group's annual conference in April. Award recipients exhibit the initiative to do charitable work, the courage and heart to reach out to others and impart in people the hope that change is possible for a better life.

Brown has been a licensed chemical dependency counselor since 1998 and works with the Brazos County Community Supervision and Corrections department, completing screenings and assessments, intake and orientation, treatment planning and group and individual counseling.

Brazos County Drug Court Judge Dana Zachary, who nominated Brown for the award, said Brown also helps drug court participants apply for college and financial aid, assists with tutoring and "goes above and beyond" to help individuals not just with immediate substance-abuse issues, but also with helping improve their lives overall.
Those flying into or out of College Station's airport now will see -- just beyond the public terminal's security line -- a photo of Jesse Lawrence Easterwood, the World War I veteran for whom the facility is named.

"Easterwood represents that entire generation of veterans who served in World War I," said John Adams, Texas A&M University class of 1973, who has written multiple books about military strategy, tactics and history.

Nine Aggies penned a letter to Texas A&M Chancellor John Sharp on May 31 proposing the airport's Easterwood display be moved from the Astin Aviation Office on the airport's east side to the main terminal, where it can be seen by the 170,000 travelers who annually fly to, from and through College Station.

Ret. Col. James Woodall, who graduated from A&M in 1950 and served as Corps of Cadets commandant from 1977-1982, said many pass through the airport without understanding its namesake.

"They just come and go and have no idea who Easterwood was," said Woodall, who suggested during a previous airport renovation 10 or 15 years ago that the display be moved to a more prominent location.

Easterwood, born in Wills Point in 1888, graduated from A&M in 1909 and moved to Mexia to become a businessman. After the war began in 1914, Easterwood sold his business and volunteered as a naval aviator in England, joining Britain's Royal Naval Air Service. Easterwood was one of 24 Aggies who joined Allied forces before the U.S. entered the war in 1917.

"He wanted to fly," Adams said. "A fast way to fly is joining the air force in the middle of a war."

As one of the first American pilots who traveled overseas to fight in World War I, Easterwood became a popular figure in the U.S.

"He's writing home to his mother, and his mother's sending letters to the Dallas Morning News," Adams said.

Once the U.S. entered the war in 1917, Adams said, Easterwood joined the U.S. Naval Aviation Service, eventually becoming a lieutenant. He completed 16 missions deep in German-held territory and also served with the French and Italian air forces, helping to ferry bombers.

Of the 2,300 Aggies who fought in World War I, Adams said 200 were in the Air Service in some capacity. Of those, Adams said, about a dozen were on the "cutting edge," meaning they helped push what would eventually become the U.S. Air Force from "zero to seven during World War I."

Adams said the small U.S. Army Air Service only had about "two dozen junk airplanes" at the onset of the war, but by the end, the Allied nations had around 10,000 planes. The technology was primitive during the time Easterwood flew -- pilots used their watches, not fuel gauges, to estimate their fuel levels, bullet holes were patched over and pilots didn't have access to oxygen -- but these pilots pushed the boundaries, teaching future fliers through "trial and error" how to safely and efficiently operate their aircraft.

"They're really pioneers," Adams said of the 12 Aggies who through a "seat-of-your-pants, trial-and error-process" developed the "art of aviation," passing their skills and knowledge along to younger pilots.

When the war ended in late 1918, Easterwood was sent to the Panama Canal Zone, where he died after attempting to emergency-land a plane with severe engine trouble. He was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross, the second-highest decoration awarded by the U.S. military for bravery in combat.

In the early 1940s, Gibb Gilchrist -- Easterwood's childhood friend and then-president of A&M -- dedicated the airport to the pilot.

"He knew the Easterwood family and said, 'We're going to call it Easterwood Airport,' " Adams said.

The Easterwood airport has been a fixture in College Station, helping connect the city with bigger ones across the U.S. The airport, like the city in which it is located, has changed since the '40s, and it's changing further with ongoing renovations to its public terminal.

Adams said Easterwood likely would be "quite overwhelmed" at how College Station and his alma mater have changed. When the veteran left A&M, Adams said, there were only about 600 students at the school, and most of them took the train and didn't have cars. Now, considering the sheer size of the school and the development of College Station, Adams said Easterwood probably would be "blown away by the magnitude of A&M."

Easterwood's picture, dedication plaque and Navy Cross will remain in their current location until around January 2018, after which they will be moved to a permanent location in the public terminal.
New Delhi, June 7 (IBNS): The Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday gave its ex-post facto approval to the Agreement between India and Cyprus on Merchant Shipping, which was signed in April 2017.

The Agreement in Merchant Shipping will pave the way for cooperation in eliminating any hindrances which may hamper the development of sea trade between the two nations, read a government statement.

The MoU will encourage participation in the transport of goods between the countries, and also from third countries.

The MoU further seeks to enhance cooperation for employment, improvement of conditions of work and for the welfare of seafarers employed on each others vessels.




The Bryan-College Station Economic Index posted a year-over-year increase for April with record levels of construction and home sales leading the way.

Amarillo-based economist Karr Ingham, who prepares the Commerce National Bank-sponsored economic index, said while such areas as general spending and auto purchasing have remained relatively flat or decreased, respectively, it should not be cause for concern.

"Every time [the index] goes up and every time it sets a new record, it just confirms to us [Bryan-College Station] remains an expansion economy," Ingham said. "... The rate of growth has clearly slowed down, but there was no expectation we would have sustained growth of, in the extreme case, 8 percent in the long term. Part of this is just a function of where it is now compared to some pretty high numbers that came before."

Tom Maynard, senior vice president of lending at Commerce National Bank, said while there were some numbers he would like to see improve, he and his colleagues were pleased overall with the findings of the index.

"All the signs are good: the home builders are happy because they're building more homes, the retailers are happy because sales are going, and employment is good, so that means more jobs are being added," Maynard said. "It's all encouraging."

One point Maynard said he "always likes to see" is an increase in building permits in the area.

Ingham said $67.4 million in building permit valuations were recorded for the month -- up nearly 150 percent from April 2016 and the highest on record for that month.

Permits for single-family housing saw a 5.2 percent dip to 92 for April when compared to 2016, and the year-to-date number of single-family housing permits dropped 8.5 percent compared to the first four months of 2016. While April home sales for Bryan and College Station tied the 2014 record of 320 sales for the month, Ingham said it topped off a nearly 12 percent increase for the first four months of 2017 when compared to January-April 2016. He said the increase helped mark the first time home sales have surpassed 1,000 through April in the area.

Ingham said the average price of the sales saw a rapid increase as well, with a "whopping" 17 percent increase over April 2016 to $254,761, contributing to a 10 percent overall increase for January-April when compared to the previous year.

The total dollar volume was up as well and continuing "to shatter the previous records," Ingham said. He said the total dollar was up 25 percent for April over the previous year and up by 20 percent for the year-to-date.

Maynard attributed at least some of the growth to the increase in land price in the area.

"There's kind of a shortage of vacant lots, and they're just being snapped up as fast as developers can put them on the market," Maynard said. "A few years ago, you might have been able to find a lot for less than you would now. That just increases the price of the house. What that's going to do to the market, I'm not sure."

Ingham said the two markers he most values in assessing the "general health and condition" of the economy are employment and spending.

April retained the unemployment rate of 3.2 percent from its counterpart in 2016, Ingham said, a positive development when put into the context of the "generally higher [rate] year-over-year for virtually all of 2016 and the first quarter 2017."

Maynard and Ingham both pointed out the presence of Texas A&M University as a particular benefit to employment levels in Bryan-College Station.

Ingham said an estimated 1,400 university and public sector jobs were added to the Bryan-College Station economy over the past 12 months -- nearly half of the 3,000 total added.

As for spending, Ingham said April's general real taxable spending showed less than a percent increase over 2016.

"Personally, I would like to see a better spending number than that," Ingham said. "It's kind of anemic, and that's kind of been the case for a while now."

Where the spending saw a more substantial increase, Ingham said, was in its "solid" 3.5 percent increase for January-April over the first four months of 2016.

"That 2.5 percent doesn't look too bad; it's a pretty respectable number," Ingham said.

Ingham also noted automobile sales were down 8 percent when compared to the previous year to nearly $33 million. He said the decline continues a trend of seven of the past eight months and contributes to a 3 percent drop in January-April 2017 when compared to the first four months of 2016.

He noted, however, that it remains the third highest rate ever after the previous two years and the sales are just slowing down in the wake of a post-recession expansion that took place between 2010 and 2015.

Hotel and motel spending also saw a dropoff of 1.2 percent following April 2016, coming in at $25.7 million.

With a statewide recovery of the oil and gas industry continuing its upward trend, Ingham said he expects the Bryan-College Station area will see a "direct benefit" to its economy as 2017 moves forward.
A Hearne man was arrested late Monday after a jogger in College Station told police he attacked her, dragged her into an apartment and sexually assaulted her.

According to College Station police, Raymond Charles Bailey Jr., 30, was approached by officers around 10:40 p.m. on Highland Street after authorities received a call that a man was banging on the door of a home. As officers were patrolling, Bailey -- who had a pair of women's shorts around his neck -- approached their patrol vehicle and began slapping the car and demanding officers give him a ride. Police say Bailey was shaking and sweaty and had bloodshot eyes. He spoke quickly and made sexual comments to the officers, a police report notes, which led authorities to believe he was intoxicated.

Police arrested Bailey on a public intoxication charge, and he fought against officers and refused to get into the patrol car, officials said. As officers attended to Bailey, an SUV pulled up and the driver told police she had just picked up a woman who had flagged her down. The passenger said the man with whom the police were speaking had kidnapped and assaulted her, the report states.

The woman told police she had been jogging along Luther Street and was turning onto Highland Street when a stranger approached her and asked her to help him knock on doors. The woman declined, and Bailey allegedly punched her in the face, grabbed her by the hair and dragged her into a home on Highland Street.

The woman said he dragged her into a bedroom, where he ripped off her clothing, removed his clothes and used his body weight to restrain her while trying to orally and vaginally penetrate her, according to a police report. Thinking someone was coming, police said he became distracted, which prompted the woman to kick and punch the man until she was able to escape and flag down a passing motorist.

According to police, Bailey was in possession of an engagement ring belonging to the woman, and the shorts around his neck -- as well as a jacket he was carrying -- belonged to the woman who lived in the apartment where the jogger said she had been dragged. The resident was contacted by police, who said Bailey did not have permission to be inside her home. Authorities say they found several other indicators of an assault having taken place inside the apartment, as well as a ring the jogger said had been taken from her.

According to Brazos County court records, Bailey has been arrested in the past on a harassment charge, but most of his past record consists of traffic and driver's license-related misdemeanors.

Bailey is charged with aggravated kidnapping, sexual assault, theft, burglary of a habitation, resisting arrest and public intoxication. He is being held in the Brazos County Jail on $285,445 bond. The woman was taken to an area hospital, treated and evaluated.

Aggravated kidnapping and burglary of a habitation with intent to commit sexual assault are both first-degree felonies, punishable by up to 99 years in prison. Sexual assault is a second-degree felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison. Resisting arrest is a Class A misdemeanor and public intoxication is a Class C misdemeanor. The theft charge will be assessed based on the value of the items taken.

The manager of an apartment complex just a block from where the woman had been jogging said while crime was a big problem in the area at one time, the neighborhood is mostly college students these days. Tammy Binford, who manages the Southgate Village Apartments said the majority of her tenants are either single mothers raising small children or elderly residents.

"We work closely with College Station Police Department," Binford said. "About 13 years ago or so we had a high crime rate, but nowadays I barely hear anything at all."

The most commotion Binford ever notices from the neighborhood is an occasional domestic dispute, she said.

According to College Station police spokesman Assistant Chief Charles Fleeger, it's unusual for a person to be grabbed off the street and assaulted, and said the neighborhood does not have a crime rate that's particularly higher than elsewhere in the city.

"Statistically, of reported sexual assaults, this would be categorized in a smaller portion of attacks," he said. "But any number of assaults is too many."

Fleeger advised those who are out and about to be mindful of their surrounds and consider having a companion when out at night.

"Anybody should be able to jog in our community and feel safe," he said. "[The jogger] did nothing wrong. She exercised a freedom that we all can enjoy... We should be able to do what we want in safety during the night."
Thousands have come to Bryan-College Station this week for the largest 4-H gathering in the nation.

About 4,000 middle-schoolers and high-schoolers from across the state will be at Texas A&M University to compete in what organizers call the "culmination" of the 4-H year. More than 50 contests are scheduled, and $2.4 million in scholarships will be given away before the Texas 4-H Roundup ends Thursday.

From quiz bowls to fashion contests, Tuesday's activities included events Texas A&M Agrilife Extension Organizer Jana Barrett said may not typically be associated with 4-H.

While the organization began more than 100 years ago with an emphasis on agriculture, Barrett said, "4-H has grown into much more than that."

She points to a robotics challenge that started officially last year as one major example of the organization branching out.

Dubbed the "Robo Inferno," this year's robotics challenge tasked 109 students Tuesday with building robots capable of autonomously blowing out a tea candle and other tasks. Derrick Bruton, the Extension program specialist who heads up the competition, said the idea behind having kids build a robot that can "put out a fire" is to get them thinking about real problems that affect society.

"With the recent wildfires that we've had in Texas, we thought this was a good opportunity to bring that to light and look at exploring a serious concern here in Texas that our young people can help address," he said. "Maybe in the future we can use technology to help minimize the exposure or harm to humans and property."

He said it teaches participants about STEM topics such as engineering and computer science, with the added benefit of helping them develop teamwork skills.

"We want to meet kids where they are at," he said. "If kids are more and more into technology, which they are -- through the use of cell phones and other devices like that -- it makes sense to meet them in their world, their technological world, because there is a huge demand for engineers."

What drew senior K'Leigh Harlin to Texas A&M on Tuesday was the fashion contest. She qualified for the fashion storyboard contest, in which participants are judged by their ability to showcase an original design concept on a poster board. She said tweaking her board based on judges' comments after each competition is a labor of love.

Harlin also participated in a photography competition. She said she likes both fashion and photography because there are so many directions you can take your creativity in both.

"I took a picture of a Sprite bottle -- a close-up," she said of her contest entry. "It's actually really weird, but kind of cool. It makes you think about what it is."

Entomology brought Joshua Scribner to Reed Arena on Tuesday. Joshua dropped off a collection of more than a dozen bugs for the entomology collection contest. He collected them in parks and yards in his hometown with his mother, Robin Scribner.

"I liked going out and catching them, because it's fun. They get in the net, then fly away," he said before his mom added -- "even though we all got chiggers."

Robin Scribner said Joshua and his older sister participate in an array of events, but Joshua's main focus this year is entomology She expects when he's older, he'll also compete in the more rigorous entomology identification challenge his older sister is competing in this week.

"All the 4-H stuff becomes family stuff," Robin Scribner said.

Contests today and Thursday will include livestock and horse judging, poetry and public speaking as well as range and pasture grass identification.
July 30, 1936 - June 4, 2017

Robert "Buff" Milton Buffington, Jr., 80, passed away on Sunday, June 4, 2017.

Buff was born July 30, 1936, in Ben Arnold, Texas, to Robert Milton Sr. and Opal Moselet (Brod) Buffington. He was the oldest of two boys, his brother John Lee Buffington was born in 1940. He graduated from Stephen F. Austin High School in 1954 and then went on to graduate from The University of Texas with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1959. After graduation, Buff went on to serve our country in the Army where he was honored with the rank of Sergeant as a member of the 25th Signal Battalion, primarily stationed in Germany. Buff returned to school and got a second Bachelors degree in Science and Sociology from Texas A & M in 1972.

Buff married Phyllis Josephine Nitch on January 31, 1964. Except for Jesus, she and their kids were whom he loved most in life. He loved to work with wood and metal and could build just about anything. Buff raised chickens, ducks, and goats and was also a beekeeper. Even more, he liked spoiling his grandchildren. He loved having fun and spending time with friends and family.

Until he retired in 2006, Buff was a grand vice president of marketing in the Order of the Sons of Hermann in Texas, A Fraternal Life Insurance Company. Buff was an active member of St. Joseph Catholic Church, where he served as lector and communion minister. He also was a member of the Order of the Sons of Hermann, where he served as president for many years. An official member of the "Old Geezer Coffee Club of the Downtown Bryan Dairy Queen," he will be missed.

Buff leaves behind his loving wife, Phyllis, his daughter and son in law Manya Felicia and John Wayne Newell, son and daughter-in-law Avery Demetrius and Christine Chaney Buffington, grandchildren Camron Wayne and Alexander Robert Newell and numerous nieces and nephews. He was preceded in death by his Mother, Father and brother John Lee.

A visitation will be held from 5-8 on Thursday, June 8, 2017 with a Rosary to be recited beginning at 6:30 PM at Hillier Funeral Home of Bryan. A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated at 11 AM on Friday, June 9, 2017 at Christ the Good Shepherd Chapel in Bryan with interment and Final Military Honors to follow at Mr. Calvary Catholic Cemetery.

Please share memories and tributes to Buff at www.hillierfuneralhome.com.
November 10, 1927 - June 5, 2017

A preacher of the Word of God, a servant to his congregation, a minister to various communities, Lee Lamb, 89, of Bryan, has passed away to his eternal reward on Monday, June 5, 2017, in Bryan with his family, embraced by his unconditional love. Pastor Lamb's family will receive guests during visiting hours from 5 to 7 pm, Wednesday, June 7, 2017, at Callaway-Jones Funeral Home. His Home Going Celebration will be at 10 am, Thursday, June 8, 2017, at First United Methodist Church, 508 East 28th Street, Bryan. Officiating will be Rick Sitton, Pastor of First United Methodist Church. Interment service will begin at 2:30 pm on Thursday in Evans Chapel Cemetery in Leona with Jim Crawford officiating.

Lee Lamb was born to C.M. and Nellie Lee Lamb in Evans Chapel on November 10, 1927. He completed high school in Leona and served his country in the United States Army. He worked for several years as an insurance agent prior to attending seminary at Southern Methodist University. Lee married his bride in 1979, Martha Jeanine Pippin. Reverend Lee Lamb was Ordained to Ministry in June of 1983 in Dallas. He was a member of the Texas Conference of Methodist Pastors. His ministry began in Mt. Selman, then to Good Springs, Lexington, Frankston, and Rockdale. Pastor Lamb retired from active ministry in 1999. He took great pride in performing the baptisms and weddings for countless church members in the church communities that he served. He had a deep love for the Lord and his family.

Preceding him in death are his parents and siblings.

He is survived by his wife of 39 years, Martha Lamb; his son David Lee Lamb Sr and wife Beverly, his step-daughter Layna Callaway and her husband Buster; his grandchildren David Lee Lamb Jr, Joseph Blake Lamb and wife Dana, Kelly Perez, and Lauren Callaway; his great-grandchildren Garrett James Lamb and Eddie Perez; as well as numerous nephews and nieces.

Express condolences at CallawayJones.com
A separate DeSmog report says that Exxon corporate documents from the late 1970s unequivocally declare "there is no doubt" that carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels was a growing problem well understood within the company.

Inside Climate News reports that Exxon confirmed the science on global warming by the early 1980s while publicly mocking those models for decades beyond.

Tobacco is good for you and so is a warming planet

Such denialism is alive and well. A leading global warming denialist lobbying outfit, the Heartland Institute, had this to say about the withdrawal from the Paris Accord:

"Angela Merkel and what is left of the E.U. are not happy (itself a victory), but fake science and globalism would take a big hit with this move."

So childish it could have been written by Donald Trump himself! Lavishly funded by Exxon, the Heartland Institute originally was a propaganda outfit for the tobacco industry, going so far as to deny the health effects of second-hand smoke.

Then there is NERA Consulting, which the Trump administration cited in its announcement of the Paris withdrawal. The White House statement claimed that "meeting the Obama Administration's requirements in the Paris Accord would cost the U.S. economy nearly $3 trillion over the next several decades" and has already cost six million industrial jobs.

Among other problems with this phantasmagoria is that none of the commitments of the Paris Accord have actually been implemented. Thus it is difficult to determine how those jobs supposedly disappeared.

What is NERA Consulting? It describes itself as "firm of experts" that provides economic analysis to corporate clients. DeSmog reports that NERA has repeatedly, sometimes anonymously, issued reports on behalf of coal, liquified natural gas and other energy corporations that claim wildly inflated job and/or economic costs.

Media Matters for America reports that a NERA report attacking the US Environmental Protection Agency's carbon pollution standards "has been thoroughly debunked by multiple experts" on multiple grounds, including failure to acknowledge any economic benefits. The NERA report was explicitly prepared for several energy-industry lobbying groups.

Earlier, NERA was involved in lobbying for the tobacco industry; a vice president said the tobacco industry should aim to explain the health "benefits" of smoking.

The Koch brothers, Charles and David, are also active funders of global warming denialism, and the two stand to profit enormously from the Alberta tar sands. The Koch brothers own close to two million acres that, should that land be fully exploited, would throw another 19 billion tonnes of carbon emissions into the atmosphere.

The International Forum on Globalization estimates that the Kochs stand to make more than one million times more than the average Keystone XL pipeline worker over the life of the pipeline, based on potential profits of $100 billion.

Polar warming outpaces warming elsewhere

It is not a long distance from the Alberta tar sands to the Arctic, where global warming is particularly pronounced. Consistent with predictions that the polar regions would experience the sharpest rise in temperatures, the Arctic is 3.5C warmer than it was at the beginning of the 20th century with the region's sea surface temperatures up to 5C higher than the 1982 to 2010 average.

Much worse could be on the way, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration warns in its 2016 Arctic Report Card:

"Warming air temperatures in the Arctic are causing normally frozen ground (permafrost) to thaw. The permafrost is carbon rich and, when it thaws, is a source of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane. Northern permafrost zone soils contain 1330-1580 billion tons [of] organic carbon, about twice as much as currently contained in the atmosphere.

"Tundra ecosystems are taking up increasingly more carbon during the growing season over the past several decades, but this has been offset by increasing carbon loss during the winter. Overall, tundra appears to be releasing net carbon to the atmosphere."

Long before the release of such quantities of carbon throw the climate out of control, permafrost melting has begun to alter the Canadian Arctic's environment in worrisome ways. In an article for Inside Climate News, Bob Berwyn writes:

"Huge slabs of Arctic permafrost in northwest Canada are slumping and disintegrating, sending large amounts of carbon-rich mud and silt into streams and rivers. A new study that analyzed nearly a half-million square miles in northwest Canada found that this permafrost decay is affecting 52,000 square miles of that vast stretch of earth - an expanse the size of Alabama.

"According to researchers with the Northwest Territories Geological Survey, the permafrost collapse is intensifying and causing landslides into rivers and lakes that can choke off life downstream, all the way to where the rivers discharge into the Arctic Ocean."

At the other end of the Earth, Antarctic temperatures are up to 3C higher since the 1950s and they could increase an additional 5C by the end of the century.

So what happens if the increase in greenhouse gases continues indefinitely? Possibly, global warming unprecedented for more than 400 million years.

A study by researchers at Britain's University of Southampton and University of Bristol, and Wesleyan University in the US reports that if all readily available fossil fuel is burned, by the mid-23rd century atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations would be around 2,000 parts per million - levels not seen since 200 million years ago. Lead author Gavin Foster said:

"However, because the Sun was dimmer back then, the net climate forcing 200 million years ago was lower than we would experience in such a high CO2 future. So not only will the resultant climate change be faster than anything Earth has seen for millions of years, the climate that will exist is likely to have no natural counterpart, as far as we can tell, in at least the last 420 million years."

If all the Earth's ices melted (which they would at such levels of warming and carbon dioxide release), sea level would rise more than 60 meters (more than 200 feet).

Paris commitments well short of Paris goals

At the conclusion of the Paris Climate Summit, the world's governments say they agreed to hold the global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius, but in actuality committed to nearly double that.

Nor is there any enforcement mechanism; all goals are voluntary. The summit, officially known as the 21st Session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or COP 21, anticipates peer pressure will encourage signatories "to reach global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible" and then "undertake rapid reductions thereafter."

The Paris goals are based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report issued in 2014, which foresees a rise in greenhouse-gas emissions for years to come, to above 450 parts per million, before falling to 450 ppm by 2100, which the report says is necessary to hold the global temperature rise to 2 degrees.

Unfortunately, the IPCC report relies on several technological breakthroughs, including capture and sequestration of carbon dioxide, which are not yet close to being feasible.

The now discarded US goal had been to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 26% to 28% in 2025, relative to 2005 levels. The European Union, Brazil, Canada, Japan, India and Australia have committed to cutting their greenhouse-gas emissions by anywhere from 26% (Japan) to 40% (EU) by 2030. China didn't commit to a specific cut but said it would reach a peak in its greenhouse-gas emissions by 2030.

The EU goals have an additional barrier, however - the British government under Theresa May has been working hard to significantly weaken draft EU climate and energy rules, including efficiency standards, even though the rules wouldn't take effect until after Brexit.

The doomed paradigm of infinite economic growth

A critical weakness of the assumptions underlying these goals is that the IPCC panel is asserting is that the cost of bringing global warming under control will be negligible, less than 0.1% annually during the course of the 21st century. No more than a blip noticed only by statisticians. There need be no fundamental change to the world's economic structures - we can remain on the path of endless growth.

The Earth, alas, does not possess infinite resources. Certainly there should be a continued push toward the use of renewable energy sources in place of fossil fuels. But the idea that 'green capitalism' will magically solve the problems of capitalism is a chimera. There is no way around the need to consume less and align production to human need rather than private profit.

Capitalism won't offer people displaced from dirty industries new jobs, and if the only option someone has to feed their family is take a job in the oil sands or in a coal mine, it is pointless to blame those workers. Then there is the 'grow or die' dynamic imposed on capitalists through relentless competitive pressures.

As Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster, in their book What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism, write:

" 'Green capitalism', even if products are produced using the utmost environmental care and designed for easy reuse, offers no way out of a system that must expand exponentially and thus continue to ratchet up its use of natural resources, its chemical pollution, its contaminated sewage sludge, its garbage, and its many other toxic substances. Some of these 'fixes' will probably slow down the rate of environmental destruction, but the magnitude of the needed changes dwarfs these approaches." [Page 120.]

There are no free lunches. Doing what is necessary to keep the climate from going out of control, with catastrophic consequences, will require more economic disruption than the IPCC acknowledges. But the price of continuing business as usual will be much higher.

Our descendants are not likely to see short-term corporate profits a fair exchange for a less livable world.

Pete Dolack is an activist, writer, poet and photographer, and writes on Systemic Disorder. His book 'It's Not Over: Lessons from the Socialist Experiment', a study of attempts to create societies on a basis other than capitalism, was recently published by Zero Books.

This article was originally published on Systemic Disorder.
Mumbai, Jun 7 (IBNS): The Indian equity benchmarks closed higher on Wednesday with the BSE Sensex up 80.72 points at 31,271.28 and the NSE Nifty up 26.75 points at 9,663.90, after the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI's) Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) met for its second bi-monthly meeting same day.

The MPC said that it decided to keep the policy rate unchanged with a neutral stance and remain watchful of incoming data.

Five members were in favour of the monetary policy decision, while Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia was not in favour.

The MPC kept the repo rate unchanged at 6.25 percent but cut statutory liquidity ratio by 50 basis points to 20 percent.

The repo rate is the rate at which the RBI lends to its clients generally against government securities. Reduction in repo rate helps the commercial banks to get money at a cheaper rate.

Statutory liquidity ratio (SLR) is the Indian government term for reserve requirement that commercial banks in India are required to maintain in the form of gold, government approved securities before providing credit to the customers.

The bank stocks closed Wednesday on relatively higher note.

Some of the key stocks that gained on Wednesday were Reliance, ICICI Bank, Aurobindo Pharma, M&M, Sun Pharma and HUL while TCS, Tech Mahindra, Wipro, Infosys, BHEL and Tata Motors declined.
Making a return to our two favourite summer locations, Mount Maunganui and Nelson in early January 2023, we've got whiff of the first release lineup and me oh my, yes boy
By Janice Dickson

New Canadian Media

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer introduced a handful of new policy ideas during the nine month long leadership race, but Tory strategists suggest they likely wont be part of the Tories 2019 election platform.

Scheer has vowed to take away federal funding from universities that dont defend free speech. Hes proposed displaying the flags of countries that export oil to Canada on gas pumps. Scheer, who sends his own children to a faith-based school, has proposed a tax break for parents who home-school their children or send them to independent schools. He also suggested in an interview with a community newspaper that he would axe CBCs news division.

Conservative strategist and vice chair of Summa Strategies Tim Powers said he would be surprised if more than 20 per cent of Scheers ideas became a part of the Conservative partys 2019 platform.

Powers said Scheers proposal to de-fund universities that dont protect free speech could be an election promise  because that idea has appealed to more than just Conservatives  but he called the flags on gas pumps idea gimmicky.

Powers said he thinks that Scheers tax credit for home-schooled families and for families who send their children to faith-based schools likely would present problems for him because his opponents will say hes beholden to certain faith groups.

Keith Beardsley, a longtime Conservative strategist and former deputy chief of staff to Stephen Harper, said Scheers policies are easy to implement, but  Stickers on gas pumps? I doubt many motorists will give a damn. Raise the prices and you have a problem.

Beardsley said a tax credit for homeschooling or faith-based schools could be opening up a can of worms. Which faiths? How much will it cost the government when Scheer promises to balance the books?

Beardsley said that while attacking the CBC is popular among Conservatives and makes for good rhetoric, its not practical.

[Scheer] said he wasnt going to present anything in 2017 that he wouldnt run on in 2019, said Nancy Bishay, a spokesperson for Scheer.

There are many interesting proposals he put forward and hell work together with the caucus, and also through the grassroots conservative policy process, to put together a platform to present to Canadians in 2019, said Bishay.

Scheers ideas will have to be taken under consideration at the Conservative partys policy conference in Halifax next year. But since he has championed a few very specific policies, delegates likely will support his wishes, said Susan Elliott, a Conservative strategist and partner at Strategy Portal.

But Elliott, who favoured Michael Chong for the leadership, suggested that the Conservative party is still going to have a hard time appealing to millennials in the 2019 election  by which time, she said, they will have become the largest single voting bloc, surpassing the baby boomers.

I personally dont think millennials will find those issues motivating. I just dont think they are high on their top issues of concern, said Elliott of Scheers ideas, specifically tax credits for home-school or faith-based schooling, and taking funding away from universities that dont protect free speech.

Millennials will want a credible climate change plan. A revenue-neutral carbon tax  also eliminating cumbersome regulations and directives  is the most cost-effective and conservative way to achieve that, but both party members and the new leader rejected that proposal.

Powers said Scheer likely will beg, borrow and steal ideas from other candidates  but that Chongs carbon pricing idea wont be one of them.

Elliott said millennials dont want to reopen debates on social issues like womens reproductive rights and equal rights for LGBTQ citizens. In fact, said Elliott, they dont even understand why those are debates.

She said political hostility towards people of diverse backgrounds and contrary points of view is a foreign concept to most millennials  but it was front and centre during the CPC leadership race in a way that would not attract millennials to our party.

We must trust Andrew Scheer, now that he has been chosen to lead, to understand these truths about the current electorate. I believe he is a smart man, she said.

Elliott said she thinks Scheer will show wisdom in adopting millennial-friendly policies and convincing the party and caucus to come along.

What did Trudeau campaign on in his leadership race in 2013 that became Liberal policy? said Powers. Its hard to recall because its not often policy that determines who wins leadership races.

Five things to know about Andrew Scheer's policy positions

Fiscal policy

Scheer promises to balance the books within two years of a Conservative election win in 2019. Current projections suggest the deficit will be $15.8 billion in 2021-22. Our work will be cut out for us, said Conservative MP Mark Strahl. Scheer has yet to say how hell do it.

Scheer has also vowed to remove HST/GST from home heating bills, lower business taxes and introduce a tax credit for parents who kids go to private school or are home-schooled.

Energy and the Environment

Scheer promises to repeal the Liberal carbon tax plan  he calls it a cash grab  and allow provinces to decide their own carbon-price fate. He believes Canadian carbon-capture or clean-coal technology helping bigger emitters like China will have a larger impact on global emissions.

He wants gas pumps adorned with the flags of the countries that produced the oil, so Canadians can choose Canadian-sourced, ethically produced oil. He also supports the Energy East pipeline, saying Canadas dependence on foreign oil is a result of a lack of west-to-east pipeline capacity.

Freedom of Speech

Scheer has vowed to deny funding and research money to universities that dont allow full freedom of speech, where people like University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson, who refuses to use non-gender specific pronouns demanded by transgender or non-binary people, are shouted down.

Radical Islamic Terrorism

Radical Islamic terrorism is a threat to all Canadians, Scheer said Monday as he promised to recommit Canadian fighters to the battle against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

The former Conservative government sent six CF-18s to join the anti-ISIS effort in 2014; Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pulled the plug on the planes last year.

Social issues

Scheer, who the political left wants to cast as a hard-line social, is a Roman Catholic but has repeatedly said, like Stephen Harper before him, that he was "not going to get involved in divisive debates" on subjects such as abortion and same-sex marriage.
Millennial Moms Review: 2022 Acura MDX is pretty close to the perfect family car

I dont know if perfect is attainable, especially considering weve got the world of options when it comes to modern vehicles. Were spoiled and, as such, we have very specific needs and wants. Driving-wise, the 2022 Acura MDX is one of my favourite ...
Kolkata, June 7 (IBNS):Whirlpool of India, a subsidiary of Whirlpool Corporation and worldas leading home appliance company, on Wednesday said it has unveiled Indiaas first Built-in induction ovens.

Designed and manufactured in Europe, this advanced range of built-in ovens brings the best in European designs and technology to its Indian customers.

The exceptional range of built-in induction ovens is manufactured with Whirlpools 6th Sense + Induction technology which works by creating a magnetic field in induction shelf to heat food.

One can use the induction cooking feature by simply choosing the induction cooking mode and food types. Its built-in intelligent feature will calculate the cooking time itself.

Not only this, another exotic feature of this built-in induction oven is that it can also function as a Traditional oven. Remove the induction shelf and your traditional oven is ready to cook the most scrumptious meal for you and your family.

Adding wings to its innovative technology are its smart features that offer attributes like 25% of faster cooking and widevariety of cooking options like roasting, grilling, steaming and baking when compared to any other traditional oven. Whirlpools current offering of induction cooking is energy-efficient and can cook food in half the time. This new method of cooking can save upto 30% of energy by heating food directly on the induction tray and helps chef in cookingmeals faster.

Speaking about the new innovation in built-in ovens, Natarajan A., Head- New Business Unit, Whirlpool of India said, This astonishing range of built-in induction oven has been introduced in India considering the needs of millennial of the country. Its elegant European design represents a delightful and attractive enhancement for the Indian modern kitchen and its unique 6th Sense + Induction oven technology is at par in saving both time and energy. We have brought in India the best of our European technology to provide foremost solutions for saving energy, time and money for our Indian customers. We are excited in bringing the built-in + induction oven in India and we hope that our Indian buyers will make most of it.

This innovative blend of Induction + built-in oven is priced at Rs.1, 09,000 in India and is available across all the Whirlpool online and offline stores.
YouTube

Toronto, June 7 (IBNS): Canada is observing Environment Week from June 4 to June 10, which celebrates the country's environmental accomplishments and encourages citizens to contribute to preserving and protecting their environment.

Established in 1971, Canadian Environment Week (CEW), this year focuses on a healthy environment and connecting people to nature.

On June 4, Federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Catherine McKenna, launched Canadian Environment Week celebrations highlighting the themes "Healthy Environment" and "Connecting People to Nature."

"As a nation, we are proud of the rich and varied natural landscape that graces Canada from north to south and west to east. Canadiansgovernments, businesses, Indigenous peoples, and youthare working together to ensure that our children and grandchildren will have cleaner air and a healthier environment. This is the spirit of Canadian Environment Week," said McKenna.

On Monday, Canada observed the World Environment Day.

This years theme for the World Environment Day was Connecting People to Nature.

Everywhere citizens are encouraged to discover their natural environment, appreciate the benefits of clean air and water and healthy ecosystems.

Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, on this day, issued the following statement on World Environment Day:

Today, we join the global community to celebrate World Environment Day  an opportunity to connect with nature and to recommit ourselves to build a cleaner, more sustainable world for generations to come. This year, Canada will host the official global celebrations for the first time. We are proud to celebrate our shared environment, and to work with our partners around the world to leave a cleaner, healthier planet for all our children...Canada has taken strong steps to protect the environment and promote clean economic growth. We adopted the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change, launched the Oceans Protection Plan, and continue to support developing countries in mitigating and adapting to climate change. Despite this progress, we have much more work to do. Our Government is committed to work with people around the world and at home, including young people and Indigenous Peoples, to find concrete, effective solutions to environmental issues.

Today, I ask all Canadians and everyone around the world to remember we share one planet. Climate change does not recognize borders, and few challenges have ever been so global in scale. Our children's future depends on our immediate and collective response.

Tuesday, June 6 was observed as Youth Day.

Throughout the week, the PM invited Canadians to take part in multiple events and raise global awareness about the critical role of healthy ecosystems and protected environments.

McKenna invited families, individuals, schools, and businesses to celebrate by sharing their outdoor fun and environmental activities on social media using #EnviroWeek.

(Reporting by Asha Bajaj)
WACO gets a crack at the first state championship game in school history
Lucknow, June 7 (IBNS): A mass Yoga Practice Session was organised at Raj Bhawan Lucknow on Wednesday as a precursor to the mass event of 3rd International Day of Yoga to be held in the city on June 21.

The Yoga Session was attended by the Governor of Uttar Pradesh, Ram Naik, Chief Minister Yogi Aditya Nath, Deputy Chief Ministers Keshav Prasad Maurya and Dinesh Sharma, Yoga Guru Swami Ramdev and Swami Bharat Bhushan.

The event was organised by the Ministry of Ayush, Uttar Pradesh Government.

Around 1500 participants from Patanjali YogPeeth, Gayatri Pariwar, Art of Living, Mokshayatan, Brahmakumaris, NSS, NCC volunteers, Yoga Department, Lucknow University, Isha Foundation and Indian Yoga Institute participated in the Yoga Session.

Speaking at the event, Governor of Uttar Pradesh,Ram Naik stated that yoga is a 5000 years old technique.

He said balancing mental health and physical health is Yog.

He further added that Uttar Pradesh Raj Bhawan is the first Raj Bhawan of our country where a precursor yoga practice session has been organised. He said that the entire world should benefit from yoga and more and more people must pledge to practice yoga in their daily lives.

Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath said that synchronization between healthy mind and healthy body is Yoga.

He further added that a healthy body leads to a healthy mind which further leads to development of a healthy society.

He highlighted that doing yoga is a gratitude to our ancestors.

The event was attended by various Ministers of Uttar Pradesh Government, Judges, Senior bureaucrats and Defence personnel.
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CTNext selected Stamford as one of four Connecticut regions to receive funding under the Innovation Places competition to spur entrepreneurship, with Danbury and Norwalk having been among the finalists.

Also winning grants were groups in New Haven, Hartford and New London.

CTNext has authorized $30 million in total funding under the Innovation Places program, with the winners to receive up to $6.9 million in the 2018 fiscal year with the possibility for follow-on grants. Groups will use the money to attract startups and supporting companies, with grant winners expected to augment the funding with additional money from private and public sources.

Stamfords winning entry was pulled together by a consortium that included the city, the Stamford Partnership, the Business Council of Fairfield County, the Downtown Special Services District, Ferguson Library and several corporations and developers. The city recently evicted the Stamford Innovation Center from its Old Town Hall downtown home over nonpayment of rent, but has drawn multiple new co-working spaces in the past few years to serve as entrepreneurial hubs.

CTNexts executive director is slated to speak in Stamford on Thursday at an entrepreneurial investment conference sponsored by CVG at the Workpoint co-working facility at Shippan Landing, with the event starting at 4:30 p.m. Startups scheduled to showcase their business plans at the event include Amrita Health Foods, Elidah, Game Fee Now, GuestForce, Interventional Systems, MicronView, NOMI Beauty and Operation Able Inclusion.

It is a show of force that Danbury and Norwalk were unable to convince CTNext they could match, with the Stamford coalition including two major Norwalk companies in broadband giant Frontier Communications and Datto, among the fastest-growth companies in the United States offering data backup and security services to smaller businesses. The Stamford Innovation Centers founding team Barry Schwimmer and Peter Propp contributed to Norwalks efforts, with an eye on creating a nonprofit startup accelerator in Norwalk.

CTNext is holding out the possibility of also-ran applicants winning funding in future rounds, according to Elizabeth Stocker, director of economic development for the city of Norwalk.

They have offered to debrief us and to provide us with some feedback on things that made the other four communities stand out above what our projects didnt include, Stocker told Hearst Connecticut Media. We, of course, are disappointed in the decision. However, I did speak with at least one team member from Stamford, so well be talking more perhaps about how Norwalk can collaborate with Stamford just to help expand the reach for entrepreneurs.

Alex.Soule@scni.com; 203-354-1047; www.twitter.com/casoulman
U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos was given bad grades in the U.S. Senate on Tuesday for refusing to endorse protections against profiteering by for-profit education providers, and stonewalling when asked if her agency will protect LGBT students in private schools getting federal dollars.

The controversial Cabinet secretary, a Republican mega-donor from Michigan and school "choice" advocate, took a bipartisan battering in a Senate appropriations subcommittee.

"The Trump-DeVos education budget would cut investments in our students and schools by $9.2 billion -- or 13 percent -- from where we are today," said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.

Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., the panel chairman, indicated the Trump-DeVos budget is dead on arrival in Congress.

"This is a difficult budget request to defend," said Blunt, addressing DeVos. "I think it's likely the kinds of cuts that are proposed in this budget will not occur, so we need to fully understand your priorities and why they are your priorities."

The senators didn't have much luck when they tried.

Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., wanted to know if private and charter schools receiving federal money will be required to follow all federal laws regarding discrimination.

"Are you saying that if you have a private school -- private schools generally set their own admission policies -- that they will not be allowed under your program to discriminate against LGBTQ students?" Merkley asked.

"Schools that receive federal aid must follow federal law," DeVos replied.

Merkley pressed her. Noting that federal law is "foggy" on discrimination, he asked: "So in your understanding of federal law, will such discrimination be allowed?"

DeVos delivered an answer -- essentially, yes -- that will leave gay-rights advocates deeply disturbed. "In areas where the law is unsettled, this department is not going to be issuing decrees. That is a matter for Congress and the courts."

And Merkley had another question. "How about discrimination based on religion? Will such discrimination be allowed with charter or private schools?" he asked.

The Oregon senator didn't get an answer. "Again, for schools that receive federal funds, federal laws must be followed."

The secretary repeated the same answer several more times. but did add: "Discrimination in any form is wrong. I don't support discrimination in any form."

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., sought to tie down DeVos on another front.

He noted a Trump administration plan to spend $1 billion in federal dollars for a school-choice "portability" program. Murphy asked if DeVos would act to make for-profit education firms more transparent and cap high salaries for their owners and officers.

What will be done, Murphy asked, to ensure that the public's dollars do not find their way to "enriching the pockets" of for-profit education providers?

"I think your question more broadly is better framed around, 'What are the students achieving?' and I think the question is not what the tax status is. ... In my view, the question is not the tax status of the school," DeVos replied.

Not what I asked, said Murphy. He returned to the question of profiteering:

"My question is, will there be protections on taxpayer dollars to make sure that the heads of these companies don't end up becoming millionaires or billionaires off the operations of these schools?" Murphy asked.

DeVos, herself a billionaire, replied:

"If parents are making choices regardless of the tax status of the school to which they are sending (children), whether it is a for-profit-managed institution or a not-for-profit, if students are achieving and parents are making the choices on behalf of their children, I think those are the better measures to be oriented around."

Murray was another senator who sought to penetrate DeVos' defenses.

She raised issues ranging from cuts to Special Olympics programs to the proposed gutting of Federal Work-Study, and the proposed axing of before- and after-school programs.

Murray wanted to know why the Trump-DeVos budget would cut 60 positions from the DOE's Office of Civil Rights. DeVos denied that funding for the office was being cut but did not deny that 60 positions were being eliminated.

The Washington Post, covering the hearing, found an exchange that summed up differences between Trump-Devos supporters, and such critics as Murphy, Merkley and Murray.

Choosing a school should be like shopping at a store and being able to choose from six kinds of mayonnaise, argued newly elected Sen. John Neely Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican.

"Education is not mayonnaise," Murphy shot back, "and, frankly, the day we start treating the education of our children like we do the marketing of a condiment is the day we have given up on our kids."
Before I talk about how to succeed, I need to talk a bit about failure. In Silicon Valley, failure is lauded, especially fast failure. The theory is that you learn by your mistakes. Ironically, most of the people who have the created the most successful businesses had no real history in their market and even less so-called experience. Indeed, their very ignorance of the potential pitfalls seems to have been what enabled them to succeed. Walking a high wire, it seems, is much easier when you dont think theres a 100-foot drop on either side. Put another way, success is a function of our belief that we will succeed and our determination not to fail.

So what are my tips for entrepreneurs?

1. People are more important than strategy.

If you focus on finding people you want to be with and who you think are talented, chances are youll come up with great ideas together that will work. If you start with an idea and then try and find the talent, chances are you will be putting a square peg in a round hole. If you are familiar with Jim Collinss books, it is what he describes as the "who" rather than the "what."

Related: Investopedia CEO Says These Are the 3 Things Entrepreneurs Need to Know

2. Know what customers really want.

Business school teaches the importance of listening to customers. Thats great if you know what to listen for. Sometimes customers dont know what they need but can describe what they really want or what they hate. For example, people dont want to buy gasoline, but they do want to be able to drive to the beach. Henry Ford has often been quoted as saying, If Id asked my customers what they wanted theyd have said faster horses. Whether he said it or not, the point is a good one. What business you are in is driven by your ability to know what people really want, not what they say they want.

3. Market size is everything.

When VCs look at any investment, they will try to forecast the potential market. If the market is big enough, even a half decent company could get to be a decent size. Dominating a really small market may take ten times the effort. Work out how big your opportunity is and what piece of that market you think you could own.

We have a highly specialized business called Publitek that helps highly specialized semiconductor and component companies with their marketing. They describe themselves jokingly as "beards for beards." You may think that its a pretty niche market, which it is. Except that niche market is worth over a $1 billion.

Related: Entrepreneurship Is Crossing the Fine Line Between Crazy and Genius

4. Be the customer.

How many times have you seen employees acting against the interest of their company, because the rules of the company made them act that way? Billions of dollars are lost every year because employees do what theyve been told to do, not what they think they should do. If you are constantly putting yourself in the shoes of the customer and listening to your staff, you will eliminate the craziness.

I worked in a British bank as an intern. I witnessed all manner of craziness because nobody was allowed to question the systems even though everyone knew that they were insane and were wasting millions of pounds of the banks money.

5. Dont chase bad revenue.

When starting out, you want customers, but be wary of taking just anyones money. Some customers can be bad for business, especially in the services sector. If you take on customers that pay well but make your employees life hell, theyll rightly quit and then you wont have a business.

One of Next 15s firms, Outcast, lives by this adage. Its unwillingness to work with just anyone means it is highly sought after. To put it another way, it gets over a thousand incoming new business enquiries each month. It turns down the chance to work with customers that could multiply its annual revenues because it knows that as soon as it dilutes the proposition and work with firms that are not a fit, then the good people will leave and the business will suffer.

Related: Why the Best Thing Any Entrepreneur Can Be Is Versatile

6. Understand your culture.

Businesses are like families; they have values and a way of being. These are often a function of the leader or founders values. As you grow, you need to be sure to involve people who share those values. For example, if your company has a laid-back, fun culture where you empower people and dont take yourselves too seriously, then dont hire people who want a corner office and an assistant. Culture can make or break a company. If you dont know what your culture is, youd better find out. Look at Googles culture and then look at say, Hewlett-Packward. Googles culture is the foundation of its business, whereas HPE is still working to create one.

7. Timing is everything.

One of the biggest reasons businesses succeed or fail is a function of timing. Being in the right place at the right time matters. All of which goes to my first point about not fearing failure; in life, you dont always know until you try. Before there was a Google, there were numerous other search engines. Anyone remember Lycos? It was quite big in its time. Then Google came along and the rest is history. Google didnt create a dramatically better engine, but it did create it at the right time.

Related: How to Pick the Right Team for Your Startup

8. Think about growth.

We have all wondered what wed do if we won the lottery. When starting a business, you need to think about what happens if it actually takes off. How will you scale? Who would you hire tomorrow? Would you open up in another city? Would you franchise the business? If you are trying to build the airplane while flying it, dont be surprised if you crash.

Last of all, never stop innovating. If you have the right culture (tip No. 6), hire amazing people (No. 1), and constantly put yourself in your customers shoes (No. 4), then as an entrepreneur youve created a company that should endure. I raise this last point because I believe companies have a choice: you either innovate or you die. Its that simple.

At Next 15 we recently launched a funding program called Project Warhol. If any employee has a great idea for a potentially viable new product, service or business in the marketing technology arena, we will fund the initial development of the idea. The idea could be anything from product development to launching a startup. This desire to innovate strengthens our culture in two ways. It says that we are a company that is truly open to big ideas that can come from anyone. It also reminds everyone that, although Next 15 is a global company, we need to think and work like a startup. However, it could also be what creates the next wave of growth in the company. Markets dont stand still, they evolve, and as they do they leave the dinosaurs behind.

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NORWALK  Residents of Rolling Ridge Condominiums have gone to court over the Norwalk Zoning Commissions recent approval of a big-box store for Main Avenue.

In the complaint, filed in state Superior Court in Bridgeport, Rolling Ridge Condominium Association President Sally Dodd and nearly 70 other residents of the condominium complex at 50 Aiken St. have asked the court to find the commissions actions unlawful and null and void the approval.

The Defendant Commission based its decision on misrepresentations and mischaracterizations of fact made by the Applicant and others, reads the complaint filed by attorney Joel Z. Green on behalf of the residents. The Application was incomplete and did not conform to the standards set forth in the Zoning Regulations and the Connecticut State Statutes nor did the Applicant provide adequate and required notice of the filing and pendency of the Application.

On April 19, Zoning commissioners approved on a 5-2 vote property owner Main Norwalk, LLCs plan for The Village at 272-280 Main Ave. The approved plan calls for 85,000 square feet of high-bay retail at the interior of the 5-acre site, 13,000 square feet of retail fronting Main Avenue, 4,000 square feet of restaurant space and 371 parking spaces.

The commission approved the plan subject to 21 conditions, including a follow-up traffic study be done within six months of the main store opening. In the complaint filed by Rolling Ridge residents, Green describes the commission-imposed conditions as unenforceable, defective and unclear.

Elizabeth B. Suchy, the attorney representing Main Norwalk, LLC, said Wednesday that she could not comment on pending litigation.

Mario F. Coppola, head of the citys law department, said he could not comment until he had reviewed the complaint.

The development site lies at the bottom of a hill, immediately west of Rolling Ridge Condominiums.

We are all homeowners and people dont realize someone has to live next to this monster they want to build, said Ralph C. Bloom, who is among the Rolling Ridge residents included in the complaint. The whole backside of the property borders us.

Bloom cited the proximity and position of The Village  well have a grand view of its roof and all the air-conditioning equipment  and traffic as concerns.

We live with the traffic and we know what its like for traffic to bypass Main Street and shoot up and down Aiken, Bloom said.

Traffic remained the primary concern during a public hearing before the Zoning Commission earlier this year.

The mitigation plan put forward by Main Norwalk, LLC calls for adding a traffic signal to Main Avenue at the entrance to The Village, creating left-hand turns lanes, and upgrading and modifying the timing on signals up and down the roadway.

The plan approval came four years after 272-280 Main Avenue LLC, the former owner of the property, pulled its plans for a 108,209-square-foot BJs store amid neighbors concerns over its scale and potential traffic generation.

Bruce Beinfield, the Norwalk architect engaged in The Village, stressed that the new development would fill in the Main Avenue streetscape with active pedestrian-oriented uses while leaving the larger portion of the retail hidden.

Dodd, speaking during the public hearing, acknowledged the changes but found the development too big for the property.

The facade is very attractive, but behind it will be a discount club, Dodd told zoning commissioners during the hearing. Main Avenue is a narrow, four-lane road and cannot support traffic that stores like The Village would bring.
Washington, June 7 (IBNS): Boosted by natural magnifying lenses in space, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured unique close-up views of the universe's brightest infrared galaxies, which are as much as 10,000 times more luminous than our Milky Way.

The galaxy images, magnified through a phenomenon called gravitational lensing, reveal a tangled web of misshapen objects punctuated by exotic patterns such as rings and arcs. The odd shapes are due largely to the foreground lensing galaxies' powerful gravity distorting the images of the background galaxies. The unusual forms also may have been produced by spectacular collisions between distant, massive galaxies in a sort of cosmic demolition derby, read the NASA website.

"We have hit the jackpot of gravitational lenses," said lead researcher James Lowenthal of Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. "These ultra-luminous, massive, starburst galaxies are very rare. Gravitational lensing magnifies them so that you can see small details that otherwise are unimaginable. We can see features as small as about 100 light-years or less across. We want to understand what's powering these monsters, and gravitational lensing allows us to study them in greater detail."

Got a stellar Hubble image on a T-shirt? Or maybe youve spotted a Hubble tattoo! Share your photos on Instagram, Twitter, Flickr and Facebook with #SpotHubble and maybe youll get a shout-out from @NASAHubble!

Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Jenny Hottle

Learn More about #SpotHubble

The galaxies are ablaze with runaway star formation, pumping out more than 10,000 new stars a year. This unusually rapid star birth is occurring at the peak of the universe's star-making boom more than 8 billion years ago. The star-birth frenzy creates lots of dust, which enshrouds the galaxies, making them too faint to detect in visible light. But they glow fiercely in infrared light, shining with the brilliance of 10 trillion to 100 trillion suns.

Gravitational lenses occur when the intense gravity of a massive galaxy or cluster of galaxies magnifies the light of fainter, more distant background sources. Previous observations of the galaxies, discovered in far-infrared light by ground- and space-based observatories, had hinted of gravitational lensing. But Hubble's keen vision confirmed the researchers' suspicion.

Lowenthal is presenting his results at 3:15 p.m. (EDT), June 6, at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin, Texas.

According to the research team, only a few dozen of these bright infrared galaxies exist in the universe, scattered across the sky. They reside in unusually dense regions of space that somehow triggered rapid star formation in the early universe.

The galaxies may hold clues to how galaxies formed billions of years ago. "There are so many unknowns about star and galaxy formation," Lowenthal explained. "We need to understand the extreme cases, such as these galaxies, as well as the average cases, like our Milky Way, in order to have a complete story about how galaxy and star formation happen."

In studying these strange galaxies, astronomers first must detangle the foreground lensing galaxies from the background ultra-bright galaxies. Seeing this effect is like looking at objects at the bottom of a swimming pool. The water distorts your view, just as the lensing galaxies' gravity stretches the shapes of the distant galaxies. "We need to understand the nature and scale of those lensing effects to interpret properly what we're seeing in the distant, early universe," Lowenthal said. "This applies not only to these brightest infrared galaxies, but probably to most or maybe even all distant galaxies."

Lowenthal's team is halfway through its Hubble survey of 22 galaxies. An international team of astronomers first discovered the galaxies in far-infrared light using survey data from the European Space Agency's (ESA) Planck space observatory, and some clever sleuthing. The team then compared those sources to galaxies found in ESA's Herschel Space Observatory's catalog of far-infrared objects and to ground-based radio data taken by the Very Large Array in New Mexico. The researchers next used the Large Millimeter Telescope (LMT) in Mexico to measure their exact distances from Earth. The LMT's far-infrared images also revealed multiple objects, hinting that the galaxies were being gravitationally lensed.

These bright objects existed between 8 billion and 11.5 billion years ago, when the universe was making stars more vigorously than it is today. The galaxies' star-birth production is 5,000 to 10,000 times higher than that of our Milky Way. However, the ultra-bright galaxies are pumping out stars using only the same amount of gas contained in the Milky Way.

So, the nagging question is, what is powering the prodigious star birth? "We've known for two decades that some of the most luminous galaxies in the universe are very dusty and massive, and they're undergoing bursts of star formation," Lowenthal said. "But they've been very hard to study because the dust makes them practically impossible to observe in visible light. They're also very rare: they don't appear in any of Hubble's deep-field surveys. They are in random parts of the sky that nobody's looked at before in detail. That's why finding that they are gravitationally lensed is so important."

These galaxies may be the brighter, more distant cousins of the ultra-luminous infrared galaxies (ULIRGS), hefty, dust-cocooned, starburst galaxies, seen in the nearby universe. The ULIRGS' star-making output is stoked by the merger of two spiral galaxies, which is one possibility for the stellar baby boom in their more-distant relatives. However, Lowenthal said that computer simulations of the birth and growth of galaxies show that major mergers occur at a later epoch than the one in which these galaxies are seen.

Another idea for the star-making surge is that lots of gas, the material that makes stars, is flooding into the faraway galaxies. "The early universe was denser, so maybe gas is raining down on the galaxies, or they are fed by some sort of channel or conduit, which we have not figured out yet," Lowenthal said. "This is what theoreticians struggle with: How do you get all the gas into a galaxy fast enough to make it happen?"

The research team plans to use Hubble and the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii to try to distinguish between the foreground and background galaxies so they can begin to analyze the details of the brilliant monster galaxies.

Future telescopes, such as NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, an infrared observatory scheduled to launch in 2018, will measure the speed of the galaxies' stars so that astronomers can calculate the mass of these ultra-luminous objects.

"The sky is covered with all kinds of galaxies, including those that shine in far-infrared light," Lowenthal said. "What we're seeing here is the tip of the iceberg: the very brightest of all."

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., in Washington, D.C.

Image Credits: NASA, ESA, and J. Lowenthal (Smith College)
Contributed photo

WILTON  Wilton Library Association holds its 122nd annual Friends of the Library meeting on Sunday, June 11 beginning at 4:30. The business meeting includes the election of new officers and trustees, honors retiring members of the board of trustees, and recognizes Wilton Librarys outstanding volunteer and staff persons of the year.

The proposed slate of officers being voted on for the 2017-18 fiscal year is as follows: Michele Klink, president; Rob Sanders, vice president; Patty Connor, secretary and Kimberley Healy, treasurer. Glenn Hemmerle, the associations president for the past year will be retiring from the board and Bob Kelso, will be stepping down from his treasurers duties but remain on the board. Other retiring members are Claude Amadeo, Ileana Barns-Slavin, and Thom Healy.
In a half-hour you can make zucchini linguine or you can watch a television sitcom episode  or you can grant the wish of a child with a life-threatening medical condition.

Marian McDermott, director of development for Make-A-Wish Nebraska, told the Grand Island Rotary Club Tuesday that nationally, Make-A-Wish grants a wish every 34 minutes.

McDermott started work at Make-A-Wish in February and said in her short time with the organization she has seen the impact it has had in its mission to enrich the human experience with hope, strength and joy.

The mission began in 1980 with a 7-year-old boy named Chris Grecius. Chris was dying of leukemia and wanted badly to catch bad guys with his mothers friend, U.S. Customs Agent Tommy Austin, according to the Make-A-Wish website.

Austin and other officers arranged for Chris to receive an official police uniform in his size, to earn an officers wings by steering a battery-powered motorcycle through a cone course and to become Arizonas first and only honorary DPS officer, the website said.

The officers generosity and compassion grew into an organization, and since 1980 Make-A-Wish has granted 285,000 wishes, with 50 foreign chapters and 33,000 volunteers donating their time.

Within Nebraska, the organization has offices in Omaha, Lincoln and Kearney that granted 92 wishes in 2016 and are on track to grant more than 120 in 2017.

If there is a child out there, we want to grant their wish, McDermott said.

She said wishes usually fall into four categories: I wish to go (to Disneyworld, to Paris, to Hawaii), I wish to be (a police officer, a fireman, a pilot), I wish to meet (a ballerina, LeBron James, a unicorn in the Hawaiian rainforest) and I wish to have (a puppy, a drum kit, a playground fort).

The cost of wish granting averages $7,500, but McDermott said money is never an impossible complication.

A Nebraska boy asked to drive a bulldozer for a day  which she said would likely be donated by a construction company  while a girl from Alliance wished to visit a gorilla refuge in Rwanda.

We will grant their full wishes, no matter the cost, McDermott said.

The money that supports the organization is exclusively raised within the state. Nebraskas Make-A-Wish is financed by Nebraska donations, gifts and fundraisers  84 percent of which goes toward granting wishes, she said.

Through the charity, Nebraskas Make-A-Wish has granted 554 wishes throughout the state and 80 wishes for children in Hall County.

Twenty-eight children have vacationed at Disney World, five have shopped on epic sprees in the Mall of America and one has met Adam Sandler.

McDermott said medical professionals, parents and children report that the wishes increase happiness and strength within a patient and a family.

She said within Grand Island, CHI Health St. Francis helps support positivity with its annual Halloween party for Make-A-Wish kids.

Thats really an important and fun event, McDermott said. Parents have said thats the one time where no ones pointing or asking, Whats wrong with you? And thats what we try to do.
Because many are well past 70, some of the people soaring over Grand Island in a biplane Tuesday probably dont have a lot of flying ahead of them. If it does turn out to be their last flight, it was a good one.

Thanks to an organization called Ageless Aviation Dreams Foundation, eight people took a ride in an open-air Boeing Stearman aircraft built in 1942. The four women who went up live at Riverside Lodge Retirement Community. The four male participants live at the Grand Island Veterans Home.

The Grand Island residents went airborne one at a time, sitting in front of their pilot, Capt. Christopher Culp.

The oldest of the bunch was 95-year-old Lucille Vogel.

Back on the ground, Vogel said she thought shed be nervous. But I wasnt the least bit, said Vogel, who still writes a weekly column for her hometown newspaper back in Afton, Iowa.

Looking down from above, Vogel was surprised by the meandering path of the Platte River. Back in Iowa, she says, the rivers are straight.

Valerie Chmelka of Grand Island was one of Vogels relatives on hand. Shes pretty amazing at 95 to do everything she does, Chmelka said of her grandmother.

Karlene Larson, 82, was invigorated by her flight. Being in the open air, she said, was wonderful. It was a perfect day, she said.

A Ravenna native, Larson has had some experience in the air. Her father took her up in his Piper Cub when she was a girl.

Before she went up Tuesday, her son Larry told her to have fun and enjoy it. I knew she would, he said. His mother has always liked trying new things.

Larry Larson knows a little about great heights. He has jumped out of airplanes 733 times. A member of the U.S. Army from 1977 to 1981, he was in the 101st Airborne Division and a member of the Screaming Eagles parachute team. In 1980, while training cadets, he parachuted into New York Citys Central Park.

Tuesdays experience is the fourth time that Riverside residents have flown with Ageless Aviation. The Veterans Home has taken part for three years.

Ageless Aviation has three biplanes, all of which are based in Texas. Culp flew to Grand Island from Oklahoma City.

Darren Hafner, who is also with Ageless Aviation, said the Boeing Stearman was used as a training aircraft during World War II. People who showed an aptitude for flying moved up to more complex aircraft.

For veterans who flew during the war, getting into the Boeing Stearman is really a thrill for them, Culp said. If they flew during World War II, this is probably the aircraft they started in.

A major sponsor of the event is SportClips Haircuts. Tim Scott of Omaha was very much involved in Tuesdays flights. He owns seven SportClips in Nebraska, including the one in Grand Island.

Jackie Pollock, 76, was excited about going up in the air. But its not as though her normal days are dull. At Riverside, theres always something going on, she said.

The ladies at Riverside get their hair done on Wednesdays. Pollock, who has great-looking hair, knew that wearing a flight cap wouldnt leave her with the best look. So she was glad the flights were the day before her haircut. If theyd been scheduled for a Thursday, she wouldnt have gone.

Larry Dedrickson, a Clay Center native, wasnt worried in the least about going aloft. Im as calm as calm can be, he said.

Dedrickson, 60, was in the Army from 1976 to 1995. During that time, he parachuted more than 100 times. It had been a long time since he had flown.

Itll be good to get back up in the air for a few minutes, he said.

Tom Prasch, 70, wanted to be the last one to go up.

Why did Prasch want to be on the last flight? Because I heard it was the longest one, he said.

A Lexington native, Prasch was really looking forward to the flight. You betcha. I think thisll be great, he said.

He worked in the Army Security Agency from 1965 to 1970. Best job of my life, he said.

Kent Beavers, 69, saw some action in Vietnam. The Elm Creek native, who was in the Army from 1969 to 1971, came home with a Purple Heart and a bronze star. The favorite part of his flight Tuesday was the landing.

A landing is a controlled crash, believe it or not, said Beavers, who knows what hes talking about.

Maryan Billesbach, 88, didnt realize the Platte had so many tributaries.

She enjoyed the entire flight  every bit of it. And Id go again if I had the chance, said Billesbach, whose late brother, Dr. Paul Martin of Ord, owned a plane.

Steve Woods, 69, was also excited about taking to the air. He joined the Navy in 1965 when he was just 17. The Lincoln Northeast graduate served until 1969, working as a radio man third class.

Vogels family has an interesting background. Her oldest son, Henry Jr., was an engineer who worked on the development of the B-2 stealth bomber for Northrop Grumman Corp.

Her late husband, Henry Sr., was busy in World War II. He went overseas Jan. 20, 1943, and came back July 3, 1945. He built railroad tracks from Casablanca to Tunisia, and returned to work in Italy.

Later on, he helped rebuild tracks that had been destroyed during the war.
On May 14, 2017, after an interregnum of 20 years, the first round of local level elections were conducted in 34 Districts of Province Nos. 3, 4 and 6, to elect representatives in 283 local level institutions, including four metropolitan cities, one sub-metropolitan city, 92 municipalities and 186 rural municipalities. 71 per cent voters took part in these elections. The last local elections in Nepal were held in May 1997.

Notwithstanding a few incidents of disruption and violence in some Districts, voting concluded peacefully and in a free and fair manner. One Nepali Congress (NC) cadre died in Police firing during a clash with cadres of the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML), in the Melung Rural Municipality of Dolakha District. Another person was killed in Police firing when cadres of the Netra Bikram Chand-led Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPN-Maoist) tried to capture ballot boxes in the Naraharinath Rural Municipality of Kalikot District; three others were injured in the incident. Separately, a CPN-UML activist was beaten to death with a stick inside an under-construction house in the Pipalbhanjyang area of Dhading District. In the meantime, in the Nilkantha Municipality of Dhading District, four persons were injured in a clash between NC and CPN-UML activists.

The second phase of local level elections for the remaining 41 Districts in Provinces 1, 2, 5 and 7 was supposed to be held on June 14, 2017, after the number of local levels in the Tarai region had been revised. However, discussions between Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal and leaders of the Rastriya Janata Party Nepal (RJPN), at the former's official residence in Kathmandu on May 15, 2017, resulted in a stalemate, as RJPN leaders argued that the party could not participate in the second phase of elections unless their demands were addressed. RJPN was formed on April 20, 2017, by merging six prominent Madhesi parties, including the Tarai Madhes Democratic Party (TMDP), Sadbhavana Party (SP), National Madhes Socialist Party (NMSP), Madhesi People's Rights Forum-Republican (MPRF-R), Tarai Madhes Sadhbhavana Party (TMSP) and Federal Sadhbhavana Party (FSP), The Madhesi parties have been demanding an amendment to the Constitutionadopted on September 20, 2015, changing the demarcation of Districts and constituencies before the holding of local level elections.

Once again, on May 17, 2017, RJPN leaders met Prime Minister Dahal and NC President Sher Bahadur Deuba separately and urged them to create a conducive environment for the second phase of local polls. Accusing the Government of not showing sufficient sincerity in the fulfillment of their demands, RJPN announced a boycott of the second phase of the local polls on May 26, 2017. The party also unveiled a series of protest programs with the aim to disrupt the polls slated forJune 14. Frustrated, the cadres of RJPN staged a baton rally at Gaur of Rautahat District on May 28, 2017, to protest the scheduled second round, claiming that the local bodies had not been formed in proportion to the ethnic division of populations and the Constitution needed to be amended.

Meanwhile, speaking at the anniversary celebration programme of Janakpur, the capital of Dhanusa District on May 21, 2017, Prime Minister Dahal noted "The Constitution has institutionalized many achievements of past political struggles. There are still some issues to be addressed, and successfully conducting the local level election is the current struggle. As the first phase of local polls has gone well, it's now the duty of all forces that support and seek change to ensure that the second phase is also held successfully." On the same day, Prime Minister Dahal talking to media persons in Janakpur, observed that the elections in Madhes would be like a festival, as more votes would be cast in Madhes as compared to the Hill areas, as the Madhesi people were eager to participate in the elections. The Prime Minister also gave an assurance that the elections would address some of the demands of the Madhes people, while other demands would be addressed through constitutional amendments.

Significantly, a Cabinet meeting held at Prime Minister Dahal's residence in Baluwatar, Kathmandu, on May 23, 2017, decided to increase the number of local levels in the Tarai region by 22. The Cabinet decided to increase three local levels each in Sarlahi, Nawalparasi, Rupandehi and Kapilvastu; two each in Sunsari and Rautahat; and one each in Saptari, Parsa, Dhanusha, Bara, Kailali and Banke Districts. With this, the total number of local levels in the country reached 766 (existing 744 + newly created 22). The Cabinet also decided to upgrade Biratnagar and Birgunj sub-metropolitan cities to metropolitan cities, and to designate 24 rural municipalities as municipalities. Among the rural municipalities that were upgraded, 11 were in Rautahat; three in Mahottari; two each in Jhapa, Rupandehi and Banke; and one each in Siraha, Dhanusha, Bara and Kailali Districts.

On May 29, 2017, in an effort to bring the Madhes-based parties on board, the Government re-scheduled the local polls to June 23, 2017. However, on May 30, 2017, the representatives of the Muslim community submitted a memorandum to Prime Minister Dahal demanding to reconsider the rescheduled date of the second round, as the Muslim's festival of Eid ul Fitr was falling on the election date. Consequently, the Government rescheduled the second phase to June 28, 2017.

However, the main opposition party, the CPN-UML, in a Press Release issued after the meeting of the party's standing committee on May 17, 2017, urged the Government and the Election Commission (EC) to promptly hold the second round of polls. The party further stated that the proposed amendments to the Constitution were not acceptable, and that changes in the local bodies would certainly create confusion. Further, CPN-UML obstructed proceedings in Parliament on May 26, 2017, demanding that the Government roll back its decision to add 22 local levels in the Tarai Districts. Once again, on May 31 and June 1, 2017, CPN-UML obstructed parliamentary proceedings, demanding the vote count for Bharatpur Metropolitan City in Chitwan District be resumed at the earliest. On May 29, 2017, the District Election Office, Chitwan had halted the count shortly after cadres of the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist Centre (CPN-Maoist Centre) deputed to assist the count tore up ballot papers. Later, Chief Returning Officer Kabi Prasad Neupane found that, of the 2,897 votes cast in Ward Number 19, as many as 1,809 votes had already been counted. 998 papers had been torn in such a way that they could not be counted. 90 were found to have been completely destroyed.

Separately, arguing that the haphazard creation of more local units could collapse the federal set up and prompt provincial and central Governments to withdraw rights given to local units, Balananda Paudel, Coordinator of the Local Body Restructuring Commission (LBRC) warned, on May 25, 2017, "More local units mean more burden on taxpayers as they have to pay more tax for local governments. Similarly, while local governments are becoming unfeasible as their resources are limited, local governments in small area become less efficient as they cannot gain economy of scale in service delivery." The Commission had recommended that the Government form 719 units, as against the 744 established.

In the meantime, in a crucial development signaling an emerging maturity in Nepalese politics, there was a change of guard at Kathmandu. As per the "gentleman's agreement" between the NC and CPN-Maoist Centre before the formation of the Coalition Government in August 2016, Prime Minister Dahal announced his resignation from the Premiership on May 24, 2017, paving the way for the election of a new NC Prime Minister. On June 3, 2017, proposed by Dahal, NC President Sher Bahadur Deuba filed his nomination at the Parliament Secretariat for the post of Prime Minister. His candidacy was supported by NC senior leader Ram Chandra Paudel, Nepal Democratic Forum Chairman Bijaya Kumar Gachhadar, Prem Bahadur Singh of Samajbadi Janata Party, Kumar Khadka of Akhanda Nepal Party and Jayadev Joshi of CPN-United. The election for the new Prime Minister was supposed to take place in the Parliament at 11:00 am on June 4, 2017, but this did not happen, as Speaker Onsari Gharti Magar adjourned the House till 1:00pm of June 6, 2017, as the main opposition party, CPN-UML, which has been stalling House proceedings over the Bharatpur vote counting, sought two days for a negotiated settlement.

It is to Dahal's credit that he successfully conducted the first phase of local elections on May 14, despite multiple hiccups and hurdles. Though this is just the beginning, the completion of the first phase after two decades without elections, put an end to the uncertainty surrounding the three tier elections that are to be concluded within the stipulated date of January 21, 2018, and the implementation of the new Constitution before the transformed Parliament automatically dissolves after this deadline.

Nevertheless, CPN-UML, which is seeking to consolidate its ultra-nationalist image, is bound to oppose the Constitution Amendment Bill ceding the Madhesi demands, and can be expected to play the spoil sport; blocking Government attempts to reorganize grassroots units in the Tarai region in proportion to the population. While there are some positives in Nepal's politics, the fractious relations of the past are far from settled.

Image: Wikimedia Commons
Nebraska state government has a variety of independent boards and commissions. In many cases they have important duties. These Nebraskans contribute significantly to the state, and their service should be appreciated.

At the same time, the public expects these boards to manage their operations and finances responsibly. And these independent bodies certainly are not a law unto themselves.

In recent years some of these boards have fallen short of the needed standard by failing to provide adequate supervision of state employees carrying out daily duties and handling budgets, leading to a series of questionable actions revealed by audits.

This was the case with the state Brand Commission (which has taken a series of steps to remedy the problems) and the state Tourism Commission (whose membership and duties are being revamped under legislation passed into law this year).

Now a new audit by the staff of State Auditor Charlie Janssen is pointing to stumbles by a third group, the state Board of Parole. The board became independent from the Department of Correctional Services in 2015 after a special legislative committee recommended that change to separate it from outside pressures on the granting of parole.

Its no surprise when an audit picks up minor goofs and miscues, but one of the audit findings for the Board of Parole is particularly concerning and puzzling.

Members of the Board of Parole receive a full-time salary exceeding $77,000, and paid sick and vacation leave is permitted. But, the auditors concluded, the board took a step too far and exceeded its authority when it paid out $57,954 in unused sick and vacation leave to departing board members.

In reaching that conclusion, the Auditors Office pointed to detailed examination of the Nebraska Constitution, state statutes and attorney generals opinions.

The Board of Parole chairwoman has publicly disagreed with the finding, saying the payments reflect long-standing policy for the board, whose members are appointed by the governor to six-year terms with legislative approval.

Its puzzling that the state hadnt settled this question of commission authority long ago. Nebraska needs clarity and uniformity on how the states independent boards and commissions handle such matters.

State senators should draw up legislation next year, hold a hearing to gather information and settle this issue once and for all.
Last Saturday, volunteers from several local organizations mustered west of the State Fair Swine Barn to prepare planters and pots for the State Fair. Among the workers were members of the Leadership Tomorrow students representing area schools under the leadership of Siara Rasmussen.

These no cellphone young ladies, including an athlete on crutches, went about the task of filling planters with soil, positioning plants, spreading preen and mulch and watering the finished planters. These tasks were completed with diligence and swiftness.

These students should be commended for surrendering their Saturday morning to benefit the Nebraska State Fair. Fair visitors will certainly enjoy the floral exhibits that these young ladies assisted in creating. They certainly represent the future leaders of our schools and our communities.

I believe that we older generation volunteers enjoyed seeing these students at work and appreciated their endeavors.
Bucks Democrats expect to have majority in state House

Democrats expect to gain one more seat in state Senate, but still be in minority there.
Chennai, Jun 7 (IBNS): A 15-year-old girl was allegedly raped inside a private bus on Monday night by three men in Salem district, Tamil Nadu.

The victim has been identified as a class 10 student, who hails from the same city, reports said.

It all started with a family feud as the girl left her home following an argument with her parents. She went to Salem Old Bus Stand and boarded a private bus, taking multiple trips and stayed put after the last one was over.

When the conductor approached her, the minor told him about her argument with her parents.

Later the conductor Perumal (22), the bus driver Manivannan (33) and another person Murugan (35) allegedly raped her near Narayanampalayam area of the district.

The victim managed to break free from her attackers at around 1.30 am and ran towards a nearby village and raised an alarm.

Based on her complaints, the villagers caught the bus conductor and the driver, who were later handed over to the police.

A case has been registered against the three men under sections Sections 366 (A) (procreation of minor girl), 342 (wrongful confinement), 376 (D) and 506 (i) (criminal intimidation) of IPC and Section 5 (g) and 6 (aggravated penetrative sexual assault) of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, and Section 3 (1), 3 (2) (v) of SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act, 2015.



Image: fanpop.com
Kohima, June 7 (IBNS) : An army officer and three militants were killed in a fierce encounter in Nagaland's Mon district on Tuesday night, reports said.

Three soldiers were also injured in the encounter that took place between Assam Rifles personnel and a combined force of NSCN (Khaplang) and United Liberation Front of Asom (Independent) at Tijit, about 340 km north of the state capital Kohima.

Unconfirmed reports said a civilian had been killed in cross-fire.

The incident took place when the officer, a Major and his team went to the area following information about the movement of militants and came under attack.

Combing operation is still going on in the area.
The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful bookAnd it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day. -Mark Twain

We live here in Illinois, right next to one of the mightiest rivers on the continent. My kids love to find it on maps and exclaim as we drive across the bridge, There it is! The Sippy River! One day, about a year ago, I planned a trip over to the Columbia Bottom Conservation Area at the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri rivers. I brought pails and shovels and spare clothes and thought that the most we would get out of this trip would be a cool sand castle and the opportunity to see the river up close.

We got to the conservation area and after a brief discussion of how no one should get in the river, we set out for the beach. At the trail head to the beach there was a sign posting the rules for the beach: no fires, no swimming, etc. We had to read it because my kids demanded to hear what was written on it. I expected us to be the only people there. This was, after all, 10:30 on a Tuesday morning, but there were several other people there fishing. We poked around in a tide pool and marveled at how amazing the river was up close. Then, my oldest son walked up to an older man who was fishing and asked what he was doing. This man proceeded to show the boys his fishing equipment and told them what kinds of fish he was catching.

While I was glad my kids were being respectful, I moved them down the beach after a while because this gentleman wasnt there to entertain them and I didnt want to interrupt his morning further. Soon, two men in a canoe pulled up to shore. This couldnt have been more exciting for the three little boys who went over and asked what they were about. The guys in the boat were so friendly and explained about how they were on a journey from the beginning of the river to the end. They talked about how long theyd been on the river and how they camped out at night. My boys were riveted.

J: This is kind of a small boat. Im worried you might get cold in there.

Canoeist: Well, when we camp out at night, we make a fire and that helps us keep warm.

J, remembering the rule on the conservation department sign at the trail head, You might get in trouble for that. Theres a sign that says no fires, you know.

I couldnt believe how much the boys learned on this trip; from what kinds of fish live in the river to how long it is to how to sail down it in a canoe. Its moments like these that make me realize what wonderful resources we have in each other. I am thankful for community and Im also thankful that I get to have these experiences along with my kids. I wouldnt have been out on the river and I wouldnt have approached the other people there if I hadnt had the boys with me. We learn so much together!

This one trip sparked an interest and love of the river in my boys so much so that we got involved with Living Lands and Waters to adopt a river mile. We go out once a month and pick up trash, etc. Now, I hear my kids talk about how important it is to put trash in the trash can. I love to watch the ownership and sense of place they have. The Sippy River is their river.

Dr. Abby Schwent is the Education Director at the Edwardsville Children's Museum.
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When Daniel Lanterman visited Edwardsville on a trip on Dec. 19. 1819, he noticed that the town had only two stores, one run by John T. Lusk and the other by a man named Sulton.

One of the early pioneers of Madison County, Lanterman, who on the day of his visit was five days shy of his 32nd birthday, took note of things around him such as the plenitude of gray wolves and the absence of Paroquats (parakeets) along Indian Creek, though the latter had been abundant a decade before.

His observations were set down in an 1873 Alton Telegraph article titled Daniel Lanterman  His Reminiscences of the Early History of Madison County by O. L. Barber Esq. Lanterman had moved to Madison County in 1818 from Kentucky, and the reminiscences were published about eight years after his death.

Wildcats were abundant. I saw one panther back of Springers, but never saw a bear here . . . I have seen Indians traveling through and camping near Edwardsville  the Kickapoos among others. Their young men were full of fun. I have seen them when the Cahokia was full, wallowing in the mud of the road and then jumping in the creek, he wrote.

Lanterman is buried, with a dozen or so members of his family, in a tiny cemetery plot in Fort Russell Township, seven miles from downtown Edwardsville.

More precisely, its about a mile-and-a-half north of Illinois 143, between Bethalto and Edwardsville, west of Birch Road and south of Buchta Road and north of Rock Hill Road.

At this point, Brett Sanderson isnt sure who owns the property. The grave markers are in disarray in the middle of a field now overrun by weeds and vegetation, he said. Sanderson and his wife Lynne, both genealogists with a passion for preserving history, noticed that the cemeterys condition has worsened considerably in the 18 months since they moved into their home in the nearby Rock Hill Trails subdivision.

Its been neglected, and it needs to be respected and taken care of, because hes a pioneer in the county, Brett Sanderson said in a phone interview.

A wrought iron fence that encircles the cemetery is falling down, and only two of the tombstones are standing upright, he said. But when Sanderson went over to the site a few days ago and began cleaning up, he soon realized the task was too big for one or two people.

By shining a light on the cemeterys condition, Sanderson hopes that a lawn company or fence company will step forward and donate their services. He welcomes advice but does not want monetary donations, he said.

Sanderson says he tried to contact the Madison County Historical Society but has not heard back from them.

We just need some help, he said. Its so overgrown, I dont know what it would take. Its right in the middle of a little cornfield. You name it, and its out there. Its just completely a mess.

Sanderson can be reached at (618) 407-6072 or at bblsanderson@gmail.com.

Sanderson says he and his wife are big time into genealogy and have been saddened by the state of the forgotten cemetery and the legacy they left Madison County.
Submerging ones self into another culture and providing medical and pharmacy care in an environment with few resources is a life changing opportunity for student learners, and the Southern Illinois University Edwardsville School of Pharmacy (SOP) is adding another such opportunity to its international learning experiences. The SOP has established a public health experiential rotation in Haiti that will begin Spring 2018.

Kelly Gable, PharmD, associate professor in the Department of Pharmacy Practice and coordinator of global partnerships, and Misty Gonzalez, PharmD, clinical associate professor in the Department of Pharmacy Practice, traveled to Jacmel, Haiti March 6-13 to explore opportunities for future student learning.

Part of a team of eight volunteer medical professionals, the two participated in a medical mission through Hands Helping Haiti.

The purpose of our trip was to explore pharmacy student learning opportunities while also providing medical care to an underserved patient population in Haiti, said Gable. The SOP aspires to create programs such as this, as we believe that hands-on, culturally submerging experiences promote both personal and professional student growth.

These experiences force students to think critically, practice creative problem solving with limited resources and self-reflect. Participation has the potential to not only dramatically enhance a students clinical skill set, but it also directly builds upon a students expression of compassion and altruism.

According to Gable, through the new rotation, two fourth-year students will spend one week in Haiti, actively participating in the medical mission. They will then spend four weeks working on health education programming at two local shelters in St. Louis. The public health focus of the learning experience includes reduction in infectious disease transmission, substance use and harm reduction, and preventative primary healthcare.

These types of experiences are invaluable for the student learner, added Gonzalez. We are excited to add this international learning experience to the growing number of opportunities offered to SIUE pharmacy students in Guatemala, Jamaica, India and Costa Rica.

While in Haiti, Gable, Gonzalez and team provided preventative and acute medical care to 301 children and adults through a pop-up pharmacy they set up in a local school. Common illnesses encountered and treated included scalp and skin fungus, ear infections, hypertension, diabetes, parasites and scabies.

Hands Helping Haiti travels to Jacmel twice a year, and sets up ambulatory care clinics and a pharmacy at The Modern School and Kindergarten of Savannette, Gable explained. This school is continually sponsored by the Hands Helping Haiti organization and provides education for pre-kindergarten through sixth grade students.

The organizations co-founders, Ruth and Warren Smith, are both healthcare providers practicing in Illinois. Their central Illinois location and well-established medical-focused mission made for a perfect SIUE SOP collaboration.

When not providing direct patient care, the team had the opportunity to enhance their cultural awareness by visiting and learning more about the clean water project, trying authentic Haitian cuisine, and exploring the beautiful, growing art scene in Jacmel. Gonzalez documented the experience with the creation of this video.

For more information, contact Gable at kgable@siue.edu, visit the SIUE SOP global education webpage, or follow the SOP Global Education Facebook page.
Four high school seniors from throughout the Metro East were recently selected to receive college scholarships through TheBANK of Edwardsvilles Community Scholarship Program. Each will receive $2,000 per year for four years of education.

Kelly Bonk from Edwardsville High School, Emma Mattix-Wand from Marquette Catholic High School, Annie Maynard from Alton High School and Jill Ann Buettner from Belleville West High School, were chosen as the 2017 scholarship recipients. The recipients were selected from a large group of applicants based on their positive leadership and character in both academic achievements and community activities.

TheBANK of Edwardsville established this scholarship program 17 years ago as a commitment to the education of our future leaders, said Kevin Powers, President and CEO of TheBANK of Edwardsville. We are very proud of the accomplishments of the students who were selected from this years impressive pool of applicants, and we look forward to watching them progress through college and enter the workforce. Congratulations to the students for all of their achievements thus far.

TheBANK introduced its Community Scholarship Program in August of 2000, pledging $1.3 million toward scholarships to be awarded over 30 years to graduating seniors of local high schools. The Greater Edwardsville Area Community Foundation, which is governed by a board of local residents, administers the program with a selection committee which interviews the finalists and selects the final scholarship recipients.

As in years past, the selection committee evaluated the applicants on academic achievements, leadership and character exhibited both at school and in extracurricular activities. Selection criteria also included leadership in community activities as well as the positive impact the students have had on others.

This years scholarship recipients were:

 Kelly Bonk, Edwardsville High School: Kelly will attend the University of Denver, where she plans to study Biology and Pre-Med. She is the daughter of Laurie and Alan Bonk;

 Emma Mattix-Wand, Marquette Catholic High School: Emma will attend Loyola University of Chicago, where she plans to study Theater and Musical Theater. She is the daughter of Paula and Gerry Mattix-Wand;

 Annie Maynard, Alton High School: Annie will attend Illinois State University, where she plans to study Accounting. She is the daughter of Kim and Jeff Maynard; and

 Jill Ann Buettner, Belleville West High School: Jill will attend Saint Marys College in Notre Dame, Indiana, where she plans to study Elementary Education with a minor in Spanish. She is the daughter of Jo Ann and Michael Buettner.

TheBANKs Community Scholarship Program was created as part of the American Bankers Associations Banks of Promise effort, which is the banking industrys pledge toward Colin Powells Americas Promise  Alliance for Youth. TheBANK has committed to Americas Promise by partnering with not-for-profit organizations, athletes, mayors, governors, teachers, college professors and others to benefit youth through a variety of sponsorships and donations.
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Linkedin EDITORIAL (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Wed, June 7, 2017 08:08 1982 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a41df62 4 Editorial #Editorial,MUI,MUI-edict,netizens,vigilantism,freedom-of-expression,persecution Free

A new fatwa (edict) from the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) should help make cyberspace a nicer place  it is just about basic decency and honesty, which all religions preach. But decency and honesty on the internet is not so simple given temptations to click away ones thoughts and expressions in seconds; whether they are personal or related to, for instance, political campaigns.

Developed by the global online community since 1995, netizens have netiquette, or etiquette on the internet. Guidelines remind us that although conversations can take place in real time, the parties involved do not know the tone of ones voice or body language; joking may be confused for serious accusations.

Yet Indonesians nevertheless faced increased risks of standing trial on charges of defamation under the controversial Electronic Information and Transactions Law.

Heated exchanges occurred particularly around the Jakarta gubernatorial election period. Therefore the fatwa on interaction on social media should have been issued much earlier.

But better late than never, before many more Muslims ruin their fast by gossiping and engaging in overheated debates  including presumed tension between acting Jakarta governor Djarot Saiful Hidayat and the transition team of governor-elect Anies Baswedan, to arguments on valid prayers to break the fast.

As a semi-state body in a non-religious state the MUI rulings are non-binding, but serve as guidance for Indonesian Muslims. A fatwa on internet conduct is fitting following much distress among friends and family facing hateful remarks, and signals of unfriending or leave group.

Most shocking were recent incidents of digital vigilantism. Vigilantes tracked down social account owners who had posted remarks that apparently offended them; even a boy in East Jakarta was intimidated and slapped by alleged supporters of the Islam Defenders Front (FPI). Police arrested two men for child abuse, and National Police chief Gen. Tito Karnavian dismissed the Solok Police chief in West Sumatra for failing to protect a physician who faced intimidation following her Facebook posts on FPI leader, Rizieq Shihab.

The police and the MUI may have been whipped into action following President Joko Jokowi Widodos warning against people taking the law into their own hands.

Among the MUI guidelines are that the information to be spread must be verified for accuracy and context; it further urges efforts to prevent and delete information known to be inaccurate. The fatwa cites Quranic verses that warn against lying and cursing, for instance, which Muslims learned about as children.

But because too many have forgotten their early lessons, the fatwa also urges religious figures to set good examples of social media use in addition to recommending wider public education on the issue.
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Wed, June 7, 2017 15:02 1982 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a4361b3 1 People Bogor-Institute-of-Agriculture,Bogor-mayor-Bima-Arya,#bogor,bogor,Andi-Hakim-Nasoetion,street Free

The Bogor city administration in West Java has named a street after the late scholar Prof. Dr. Andi Hakim Nasoetion, in honor of the services of the former rector of Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB) to education.

Bogor Mayor Bima Arya Sugiarto touted Andi at the naming ceremony on Saturday as an exemplary leader in teaching, research and education in his lifetime.

"The name Andi Hakim Nasoetion is quite familiar; a public figure and researcher who had many ideas that were implemented in the world of higher education," Bima said as quoted by Antara news agency.

Among those in attendance at the ceremony were current IPB rector Herry Suhardiyanto, representatives from the university, as well as deputy mayor Usmar Hariman and regional secretary Ade Sarip Hidayat.

Read also: Bogor Botanical Gardens to celebrate 200th anniversary

Andi is known for having implemented the four-year undergraduate degree program at IPB in 1972, which in 1980 was subsequently applied nationally. The masters degree implemented at the university since 1975 was also applied nationwide in 1981, as well as the systemized doctoral degree that was also adopted by IPB in 1975.

Andi was also known for having replaced arithmetic with mathematics in primary school in 1970, as well as creating the latter subject at junior and senior high school levels in the same year.

The naming of Jl. Prof. Dr. Andi Hakim Nasoetion, formerly Jl. Rumah Sakit, also marked Bogor's 535th anniversary. (liz/kes)
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Linkedin Masajeng Rahmiasri (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Wed, June 7, 2017 19:09 1982 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a4437e4 1 Lifestyle orphanage,charity,ramadhan,Ramadhan-2017,#Ramadhan2017,#Charity Free

For Muslims, Ramadhan is a month to be more religious and charitable, which is why the number of people who give donations during this month usually increases, including those given to children in orphanages.

Below are just three of many orphanages that welcome donations in Jakarta.

Read also: Home and abroad, Ramadhan offers chance to return to middle ground

Yayasan Sayap Ibu

Children of Yayasan Sayap Ibu Jakarta in a recent event with music group RAN and Puteri Indonesia at a shopping mall in Jakarta.(instagram.com/sayapibujkt/File)

This foundation was established in 1955 by Sulistina Sutomo, the wife of the freedom fighter Sutomo, as there were many cases of child neglect and baby abandonment in Jakarta during the period. Up until now, it still serves as a home for abandoned children, including those with special needs.

Currently, the Yayasan Sayap Ibu Jakarta branch on Jl. Barito serves as home to 30 children, with the oldest being 11 years old. The Jakarta branch welcomes donations in the form of money or daily necessities, such as snacks, Pregestimil milk for children with allergies, Nutribaby Royal Soya 1 & 2 milk and Dancow milk.

Address : Jl. Barito II No.55 Kebayoran Baru, South Jakarta

Contact : +62 21 722 1763

Rumah Piatu Muslimin

Semalam Kakak2x dari Teknik Sipil Universitas Trisakti berbagi kebahagiaan bersama adik2x di Panti Asuhan Muslimin #ramadhanbermakna pic.twitter.com/PCwyz5AaCX  Rumah Piatu Muslimin (@PAMuslimin) June 2, 2017

Rumah Piatu Muslimin, an orphanage established in 1932 is now home to 62 Muslim children. It welcomes those who want to make direct donations or donate through bank transfer. It also welcomes those who want to break the fast with the children, either inside the orphanage or at another location.

It is advised to contact the orphanage to organize a breaking-of-the-fast event.

Address : Jl. Kramat Raya No. 11, Senen, Central Jakarta

Phone : +62 21 3106848, 3107901

Read also: Secrets to a rejuvenating Ramadhan experience

Lestari Sayang Anak

Lestari Sayang Anak, a small orphanage for abandoned toddlers and babies on Jl. Terogong Raya in South Jakarta was established by Dutch citizen Ingrid van der Mark in 2009. There are currently 10 children in the orphanage as Mark believes that smaller numbers allow for high-quality care and individual attention for each child.

The public is welcome to make donations through the foundations bank account or can send food, vegetables, cleaning supplies or toiletries like toothbrushes and toothpaste. (kes)

Address : Jl. Terogong No. 10 B, Cilandak Barat, South Jakarta

Phone : +62 21 75 091 15, +62 81 79 189 727 (Ingrid)
Srinagar, June 7 (IBNS) : Authorities suspended mobile Internet services in the Kashmir Valley on Wednesday morning after a youth was killed in firing by security forces in south Kashmir's Shopian district on Tuesday.

According to reports, mobile Internet services were snapped after telecom operators received orders from the authorities. However 2G and BSNL broadband are functioning normally.

On Tuesday evening, security forces surrounded a house n the Ganowpora village following specific intelligence inputs about two militants hiding there.

As soon as the villagers heard the gunshots, they came out pelting stones at the security personnel to breach the cordon.

The police said tear gas was used to disperse the protesters resulting in the death of 20-year-old Adil Farooq.

All schools and colleges were shut down as a preventive measure against any protest by students.



Heavy deployment of police and paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) have been made in the city and in the district headquarters to maintain law and order.



(Reporting by Saleem Iqbal Qadri)
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Linkedin Rita Widiadana and Bambang Muryanto (The Jakarta Post) Yogyakarta  Wed, June 7, 2017 09:13 1982 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a422575 4 Health reproductive-health,human-rights,pregnancy,teenagers,health,healthcare-policy Free

Nindya (not her real name) got pregnant when she was 15 years old and was still in her first year at a high school in Bandung, West Java.

My boyfriend told me to drink grated young pineapple mixed with soda drinks and arak [homemade distilled alcohol] in order to terminate my pregnancy, she recalled, adding that she also drank large amounts of herbal medicines to abort the fetus.

Despite her efforts, her pregnancy became more and more visible, forcing her to finally tell her parents about her condition.

I felt so shocked, ashamed and humiliated to hear my daughters confession. But, then I realized that my husband and I, as parents, should bear a huge responsibility for her mistake, admitted Nindyas mother, a lecturer.

With the support of her parents, Nindya gave birth to a healthy baby boy, who is now 7 years old, and she is currently studying at a university in her hometown.

I had been grappling with feelings of guilt, shame, isolation and desperation for years. If I had been able to get information and access to information on reproductive health and youth-friendly health services earlier, my life would have been different, said Nindya, who is now an active youth advocate and a peer educator.

Unfortunately, not all young girls who find themselves in the same situation are lucky enough to have loving and empowering parents.

Read also: An introduction to the morning-after pill

Anna, 17, from Papua, admitted she had frequent sex with her boyfriend.

My friends told me that I would not get pregnant if we had sex standing up, she said.

Anna got pregnant anyway, and her boyfriend forced her to drink tonics made of bitterroot, which can easily be found in Papuas forests and is locally believed to induce abortions. She even resorted to swallowing hair dyes, which led to severe bleeding.

Behind all these stories is the reality that in both urban and rural settings, most young Indonesians find it difficult to receive accurate information on sexual reproductive health (SRH) or have access to health clinics that cater to their needs.

Most young people quench their curiosity about sex through pornography found on the internet, porn magazines and tall tales told by friends.

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) defines SRH as a state of physical, emotional, mental and social wellbeing related to sexuality and to the reproductive health.

This ranges from learning about puberty and menstruation, and preventing sexually transmitted infections (STI), to understanding the risks of early pregnancy.

Read also: Common problems of the female reproductive system

It happens in many countries that issues related to sexual and reproductive health and rights [SRHR], particularly on contraception for unmarried young people, and incorporation of comprehensive SRH education in the curriculum are sensitive, given social, cultural and religious norms, said Annette Robertson Sachs, a representative of UNFPA Indonesia.

While there was a readiness to listen to youths voices, government officials felt that they could not accommodate the needs of all young people.

Therefore, it is important that government works together with the private sector, including NGOs and youth networks, to fulfill the needs of all young people, particularly on sensitive issues such as sexual and reproductive health, she said.

However, Robert Blum, a professor at the department of Population and Reproductive Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said that in Indonesia and many neighboring Asian countries, SRH remains a taboo topic that is never discussed at home or taught in schools.

[The] youth are often missing out in important information that, in many cases, can save their lives, said Blum, who conducts research and studies on youths around the world.

Very few outlets of information and service provisions exist for Indonesian youths.

Moreover, SRH messages often focus on physical things, such as prevention of sexual transmission infection or family planning  topics that may not resonate with youth. Instead, educators or advocates should link SRH with topics related to boosting youths self-worth, self esteem and feeling good about their bodies, their futures and developing healthy relationships with female and male friends.

Failing to meet the needs of Indonesias younger generation in providing SRH information may lead to increasing numbers of unwanted pregnancies, teen marriages and sexual violence.

A qualitative joint study by the University of Gajah Mada medical schools Center for Reproductive Health and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for Communication Program (JHUCCP) conducted in 18 cities and regencies across nine provinces in early 2017, reveals that adolescents  youths aged 10-19 years old  are increasingly permissive toward sexual behavior.

The study says around 6 percent of adolescents have had sexual intercourse, and about 0.1 to 0.4 percent of boys and girls had sexual intercourse for the first time at the age of 15-17 years old.

The study also shows that approximately 2.4 percent of adolescents are married, and around 9.5 percent of girls aged 15-19 years old have already given birth or were currently pregnant.

It is estimated that 500,000 adolescent girls give birth every year in Indonesia.

The study reveals a harsh reality [] in Indonesia and therefore, it is very crucial to address adolescent issues, and their sexual reproductive health and rights  which will lead to long-terms benefits for Indonesia, said JHUCCP Indonesia representative Fitri Putjuk.

Indonesias adolescent population stands at about 45.8 million, or 13.3 percent of its 259 million population.

By 2030, these adolescents will reach the peak productive years of their 30s. Unless we provide them with the necessary skills and knowledge [about] SHR, Indonesia will lose the opportunity to gain from its demographic dividend, Fitri said.

What youth really need

Young people are often viewed as a problem group rather than a forceful power that can make a difference.

But with Indonesias youth population reaching 65 million, their voices and participation must become an integral part of the policy making process, especially on issues that affect their lives.

Jointly organized by the National Population and Family Planning Board (BKKBN) with support from partners, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for Communication Program, Rutgers, UNFPA and UNICEF, the first National Adolescents Summit, recently held in Yogyakarta, provided a platform for young people to have an important and irreplaceable role in promoting sexual and reproductive health (SRH).

The main objective was producing a well-rounded program involving all stakeholders committed to bringing SRH to the doorstep of those who need it. The most important ingredient of this process was youth participation and engagement.

Young people have the energy to drive changes in their communities. They must be given wide access to information and knowledge on reproductive health and family planning services, said Melinda Gates, co-founder of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, in addressing the summit.

Youth, she said, must be involved from the very beginning as problem solvers and architects of solutions, rather than just as beneficiaries.

With that, Indonesia will have healthy, well-educated and well-informed youth and the economic returns will be huge. Indonesia will be able to reap its demographic dividend in the coming years.

Youth leaders from diverse organizations, including the Indonesian Youth Alliance (ARI), Association of Indonesian Medical Students, Genre, Fathayat, PKBIs youth associations and others gathered for three days to address various challenges and to come forward with drafts of solutions.

Auzan Haq, a member of the Center for Youth Information and Consultation in Makassar, South Sulawesi, said he hoped the summit would open doors to more collaboration among youth groups, the government, private sector, civil society and donors.

The government, civil society groups and the media have the responsibility to educate adolescents on reproductive health. There is nothing taboo about this.

Pre-marital sex among teens is a subject considered taboo in the country. It goes against traditional Indonesian social and cultural norms, yet a lot of young people in big cities as well as those living in remote villages are sexually active.

We cannot ignore this fact by sitting doing nothing, said Marselina Putri Yamina Manimoi, 21, a peer educator from Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara.

Early sexual interactions are common and regarded as something to be proud of. Sex is seen as proof of love, said Manimoi, adding that this has resulted in an increasing number of unwanted pregnancies and teen marriages in Eastern Indonesia.

This happens because we do not understand our own bodies. And both our parents and teachers never teach us about this.

Among participants were numerous young people with physical disabilities. The World Health Organization (WHO) states that persons with disabilities have the same SRH needs as other people. Yet, they often face barriers in accessing information and services.

WHO also adds that persons with disabilities may actually have greater needs for SRH education and cares due to their vulnerability to abuse.

Persons with disabilities are up to three times more likely than non-disabled persons to be victims of physical and sexual abuse, including rape.

Nineteen-year-old Hariyan Tuah Miko, a physically disabled teen and activist of Young Voice Indonesia from Aceh, expressed concerns with the state of SRH awareness.

According to Miko, there are hundreds of disabled youth in Aceh. In Aceh, many parents hide their disabled children, who are regarded as a disgrace to the family. Therefore, it is almost impossible for disabled youth to get any information on SRH, let alone its services. Aceh is the only province in Indonesia where practice of Sharia law is strictly enforced.

Many disabled girls in the province are victims of rape, sexual abuse and violence.

Wulaninka, a Jakarta-based member of Young Voice Indonesia and wheelchair user, said that very few organizations provided services and information for adolescents with physical disabilities. What the youth need, she said, was youth-friendly information and non-discriminatory, non-judgmental reproductive health information centers and services.

We want to make sure that our voices and concerns are included throughout the process of designing programs and formulating policies on SRH for all youth.
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Linkedin News Desk (Agence France-Presse) London, United Kingdom  Wed, June 7, 2017 11:09 1982 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a42b77b 2 Art & Culture Banksy,graffiti,graffiti-art,Britain,vote,art Free

The street artist Banksy has scrapped an offer to give a limited-edition design to people who vote against the Tories in Britain's elections on Thursday, after the authorities intervened.

On his website, the mysterious artist said he had been warned by a national watchdog, the Electoral Commission, that his offer would "invalidate the election result."

"I regret to announce this ill-conceived and legally dubious promotion has now been cancelled," Banksy said.

His post, filed late Monday, said it was a "Product Recall."

The announcement on Banksy website.(banksy.co.uk/File)

Banksy had offered limited-edition prints to voters in six constituencies around Bristol, his home city.

The artwork was a rejig of one of Banksy's best-known pieces of graffitti called "Balloon Girl," in which a sad child looks at a heart-shaped balloon that has escaped from her hand.

The red heart used in the original picture was replaced by a heart-shaped balloon with a British flag -- presumably a symbol of a nation deemed to be lost and adrift.

The artwork was a rejig of one of Banksy's best-known pieces of graffitti called "Balloon Girl," in which a sad child looks at a heart-shaped balloon that has escaped from her hand. The red heart used in the original picture was replaced by a heart-shaped balloon with a British flag -- presumably a symbol of a nation deemed to be lost and adrift.(instagram.com/banksy/File)

Read also: ART|JOG|10 celebrates 10 years, features global artists

Local police, on their Twitter feed, said they were investigating the offer after receiving a "number of complaints."

Under a 1983 law on electoral bribery, it is illegal for any voter to accept a gift in return for voting or refraining from voting, they said.

Banksy had initially said the print would be released on June 9, the day after the election.

"Simply send in a photo of your ballot paper from polling day showing you voted against the Conservative incumbent and this complimentary gift will be mailed to you," the offer had said.

Banksy had offered limited-edition prints to voters in six constituencies around Bristol, his home city.(instagram.com/banksy/File)

In a "lawyer's note" disclaimer, it had added: "This print is a souvenir piece of campaign material, it is in no way meant to influence the choices of the electorate, has no monetary value, is for amusement purposes only and is strictly not for resale. Terms and conditions to follow, postage not included."

Banksy shot to prominence through guerrilla art in Bristol, later extended to London, that took a sardonic view of British life, often hurling a barb at corporate greed and rightwing politics.

He gained a global audience in March by unveiling a symbol of the division of the West Bank -- the "Walled-Off Hotel" in Bethlehem, just a few metres (yards) from Israel's separation wall.
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Linkedin Yannick Pasquet (Agence France-Presse) Kassel, Germany  Wed, June 7, 2017 17:38 1982 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a4416ff 2 Art & Culture books,#books,Censorship,Parthenon-of-Books,artworks,#artworks Free

It looks like the monumental temple standing imposingly at the Acropolis in Athens. But this replica in central Germany is not built with marble, but books that have been or remain banned.

"The Parthenon of Books" is the main showpiece at this year's Documenta -- the cult contemporary art show held once every five years in the university town of Kassel.

The work by Argentine artist Marta Minujin is a plea against all forms of censorship.

Minujin, 74, a pop art icon in South America, has described it as "the most political" of her works.

In fact, the "Parthenon of Books" stands at the same site where, in 1933, Nazis set in flames books by Jewish or Marxist writers.

Fast forward eight decades and there is a team of volunteers wearing hard hats gathering at the foot of a crane, preparing to lift more books onto the installation.

In a few minutes, a copy of "The First Circle" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn would find its place on one of the 46 columns formed by metal grills which are in turn covered with books.

The Russian writer's novel joins bestsellers including "The Bible", "The Satanic Verses", "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" and "The Little Prince".

In all, 100,000 copies of 170 titles will cover the columns, each individually wrapped in a plastic bag to shield it from the capricious German weather.

"The work has exactly the same dimensions as the Parthenon -- 70 metres (230 feet) in length, 31 metres in breadth and 10 metres in height," one of Documenta's curators, Pierre Bal-Blanc, told AFP.

The Frenchman said the art installation at Friedrichsplatz also has a "slightly slanted orientation which gives a more impressive presence, because you get a side view of it rather than a frontal view."

Read also: Societies with poor literacy rate prone to censorship

170 titles, 100,000 books

People pause in front of the "Parthenon of Books" by Argentinian artist Marta Minujin, at the Documenta 14 art exhibition in Kassel on June 2, 2017.(AFP/John MacDougall)

The showpiece's reference to ancient Greece is not pure chance.

This year's edition of Documenta, which attracted 905,000 people in 2012, is taking place simultaneously in another city -- Athens.

Since April 8, the Greek capital with its underground emerging art scene has been busy with the exhibitions, concerts, films and performances linked to Documenta.

And from June 10, the show, known for rejecting commercialism in favour of the quirky and groundbreaking, returns to its birth place, Kassel, where it will feature works from 160 artists until September 17.

Preparations for the "Parthenon of Books" began last year, when Minujin launched an appeal to collect up to 100,000 books.

Nineteen students at Kassel University had also helped to draw up an inventory of banned books, listing some 70,000 that span "the Protestant Reformation 500 years ago to apartheid South Africa," said art historian Florian Gassner.

The process of picking which titles would be featured was at times complicated.

"In communist East Germany, there wasn't a list of banned books drawn up by the authorities," said Gassner.

"What happened was that at the moment when a writer wanted to get his work published, suddenly there was no more paper for the job," he said.

Finally, Minujin and the Documenta team shortlisted 170 titles.

Read also: Censorship humiliates women, says activist

Handed out

Volunteers operate a mobile lift in order to hang books on the "Parthenon of Books".(AFP/John MacDougall)

But what is perhaps Germany's most controversial work, banned in several countries, will not figure on the Parthenon -- Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf".

The book outlines Hitler's ideology that formed the basis for Nazism, but, like pornographic works, has been deliberately left out of the exhibition.

Meanwhile, some art experts have also decried the key showpiece of this year's Documenta as a copy of a work that already exists.

In fact, some 34 years ago, after the fall of the Argentine junta, Minujin had already set up a similar installation of books to condemn censorship imposed by the military dictatorship.

In Kassel, Minujin will keep collecting copies of the banned titles until Documenta closes its doors.

After that, the books will be redistributed to the public.

The "Parthenon of Books" is "a monumental project but an immaterial one," said Bal-Blanc. "It will disappear just as quickly as it has appeared."
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Wed, June 7, 2017 15:34 1982 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a438488 1 Health health,exercise,ramadhan,Ramadhan-2017,#Ramadhan,#health,#exercise Free

Despite having to fast from dawn until dusk, there is still room for Muslims to exercise during the holy month of Ramadhan.

Here are several tips given by Lulwa Alarmali, a nutritionist from Dubai Gym Embody Fitness, as reported by Antara news agency.

The best time to exercise is after sahur

Alarmali stated that the best time to do physical exercise during Ramadhan is after sahur (pre-dawn meals), as quoted by Arabian Business.

Another option is to exercise just before breaking the fast or one to two hours after. Exercising during such periods will let your body use external energy resources instead of destroying the muscle and protein.

Read also: Tips for staying healthy during Ramadhan

Choose the right breaking-of-the-fast menu

Those who have just exercised are advised to break the fast by immediately consuming foods that contain easily digestible protein or carbohydrates before continuing to the meal of the night.

Mind your fluid intake

Alarmali advised fasters to stay hydrated by drinking 250 to 500 ml of water per hour during the non-fasting hours, as the body may excrete the fluid if it takes too much in one go.

She also advised avoiding breaking the fast with overly sweet foods or carbonated drinks as they could spike insulin levels within the body.

Consume dates

It is advised to consume dates when breaking the fast. Bananas, papaya or watermelons could also serve as alternatives. (mas/kes)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Wed, June 7, 2017 06:18 1982 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a41980b 1 National Komnas-HAM,Komnas,persecution,vigilantism,FPI,Rizieq-Shihab,human-rights,human-rights-violations,Fiera-Lovita Free

The National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) is set to investigate the widespread vigilantism allegedly committed by hard-line groups in Indonesia to determine whether it leads to persecution of minorities.

Komnas HAM commissioner Roichatul Aswidah said to decide if the ongoing vigilantism could be categorized as persecution, the commission would use two basic instruments.

First, she said, Komnas would determine whether the acts perpetrated by the hard-line groups occurred systematically and, second, it would examine whether those acts were escalating.

Acts will be categorized as persecution and a violation of human rights if they are carried out systematically and are escalating. Yet, if they do not take place systematically and are not escalating, they can [only] be categorized as general crimes, which can lead to charges under the KUHP [Criminal Code], she said.

Roichatul said perpetrators committing general crimes could be charged under KUHP Article 351 concerning assault and Article 170 concerning violence toward human beings and goods .

Komnas HAM will take a closer look to determine if the acts have been done systematically and are escalating.

Recently, a 15-year-old boy of Chinese descent in East Jakarta was verbally and physically abused by a mob of Islam Defenders Front (FPI) followers because they thought his humorous social media memes insulted their leader, Rizieq Shihab.

Similarly, a female Muslim physician in Solok, West Sumatra, was confronted by FPI members who demanded she delete criticisms concerning Rizieq's questionable morals from her social media account. (yon/ebf)
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Linkedin Suherdjoko (The Jakarta Post) Rembang, Central Java  Wed, June 7, 2017 07:37 1982 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a41cfec 1 National Tito-Karnavian,Maimun-Zubair,Pesantren,#Ramadhan2017,Pancasila Free

National Police chief Gen. Tito Karnavian during his visit to the Raudlatut Thalibin pesantren (Islamic boarding school) met with prominent Islamic clerics as part of his 2017 Safari Ramadhan tour, in Rembang, Central Java, on Tuesday.

Among the clerics was Maimun Zubair, reputed for his charisma, and the headmaster of the pesantren, Mutofa "Gus Mus" Bisri.

I often watched Gus Mus tausiah [sermons], especially when I was still a provincial police chief. Only after I became the National Police chief was I finally able to meet him, Tito said.

Also attending the event was National Police security maintenance director Com. Gen. Putut Eko Bayuseno, Central Java Police chief Insp. Gen. Condro Kirono and Central Java Governor Ganjar Pranowo.

(Read also: Sinta Nuriyah, a tireless champion of peace)

During the meeting, Tito expressed concerns over the rise of extremist ideologies and intolerant and violent actions carried out in the name of religion. Such actions are certainly not in line with the Pancasila [state ideology], Tito asserted.

Maimun echoed Titos statement, saying that the concept of caliphate was not compatible with a plural Indonesia. We have to defend Pancasila and the 1945 Constitution, he said. (bbs)
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Linkedin Fadli (The Jakarta Post) Batam, Riau Islands  Wed, June 7, 2017 22:04 1982 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a4459e7 1 National Vietnamese-citizens,maritime-affairs-and-fisheries-ministry,Natuna,Riau-Islands,illegal-fishing,Batam,#IllegalFishing Free

The Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Ministry and the Tarempa Naval Base in Natuna, Riau Islands, is set to repatriate 55 Vietnamese citizens who had been detained since May over alleged illegal fishing in the area.

The Immigration Office is set to deport the 55 Vietnamese nationals on Friday, after they arrive at the ministrys Fisheries and Maritime Resources Monitoring Directorate (PSDKP) office in Batam.

Tarempa Navy commander Lt. Col. Johan Wahyudi said 34 out of the 55 Vietnamese citizens were apprehended in security operations conducted by the naval base while 21 others were arrested by the PSDKP.

Johan said the deportation processes were conducted using two fishery patrol vesselsKP Paus 01 and KP Hiu Macan 05which departed from Antang Port in Natuna to Batam on Wednesday.

He said KP Paus 01 carried 33 Vietnamese detainees while KP Hiu Macam 05 carried 22 detainees. Officers from the Tarempa Immigration Office in Natuna escorted the detainees throughout the deportation process. Two Indonesian Navy personnel were placed in each vessel, said Johan.

He said some of the 55 Vietnamese citizens were crew members of a fishing vessel caught by war ship KRI Fatahilla 361 over alleged illegal fishing several days ago.

A Vietnamese coast guard closely watched KRI Fatahilla 361 when it raided the Vietnamese fishing vessel but it did not make any attempts to resist arrest, said Johan.

He said beyond the 55 detainees to be repatriated, there were still 44 foreigners detained on allegations of illegal fishing, including 39 Vietnamese citizens, three Malaysians, and two Thai nationals. (yon/ebf)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Wed, June 7, 2017 16:02 1982 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a43b41c 1 City Rizieq-Shihab,security,Airport Free

Police have conducted a simulation to ensure Jakarta's safety in facing an Islam Defenders Front (FPI) plan to paralyze roads to the city's main airport, where its leader and fugitive pornography suspect, Rizieq Shihab, is expected arrive on his return to the country.

Jakarta Police chief Insp. Gen. Mochamad Iriawan confirmed that security at two airports, Halim Perdanakusuma in East Jakarta and Soekarno-Hatta in Banten, had made the necessary preparations.

We have urged them to not mobilize the masses. However, we have taken anticipatory measures, Iriawan said on Tuesday as quoted by tribunnews.com.

FPI head of legal aid cum Rizieqs lawyer, Sugito Atmo Pawiro, confirmed that leaflets had been distributed on social media on the action plan to pick Rizieq up at Soekarno-Hatta in Tangerang, Banten.

The leaflet urged FPI supporters to close all the roads toward all [airports] terminals. Dont let anyone have a chance to disrupt his arrival. Wait for the D-day, which will be announced nationally.

Rizieq was named a suspect in a case pertaining to a WhatsApp chat deemed pornographic with another suspect, Firza Husein.

Rizieq was charged under the 2008 Pornography Law, which carries a punishment of more than five years imprisonment. (dra)
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Linkedin Fedina S. Sundaryani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Wed, June 7, 2017 17:16 1982 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a440425 1 Business Amman-Mineral-Nusa-Tenggara,smelter,construction,study Free

Copper producer PT Amman Mineral Nusa Tenggara is conducting a technical study for a smelter it will construct in exchange for a copper concentrate export permit it received from the government several months ago.

The study will focus more on technology selection, said Amman Mineral president director Rachmat Makkasau, but he declined to disclose the amount of investment needed for the project.

[The investment] will be made clear after the study. It will probably be clearer in August, he said on the sidelines of a meeting at the House of Representatives in Central Jakarta on Wednesday.

(Read also: Amman to start smelter construction in early 2018)

While local media recently reported Amman Mineral was in talks to construct the smelter with fellow copper miner PT Freeport Indonesia, Rachmat said the firm was not focusing on that issue yet.

The government recently issued a regulation allowing exports of copper concentrates as long as the mining firms were seriously preparing smelter construction as part of the requirement for the conversion of a contract of work (CoW) to a special mining permit (IUPK).

Once the firm converts the contract, the government will issue an export permit for one year and will review the permit once every six months in order to evaluate the progress on its smelter construction.

The government has issued a permit that allows Amman Mineral to export 675,000 wet metric tons of copper concentrate until next February. (bbn)
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Linkedin Winny Tang (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Wed, June 7, 2017 17:05 1982 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a43e256 1 Business Bukalapak,tiki,partnership Free

E-commerce platform Bukalapak kicked off on Wednesday the expansion of its partnership with courier service and logistics company TIKI to facilitate small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in selling their products.

The new partnership will enable vendors to accelerate product delivery.

For instance, TIKI provides a booking code feature in which vendors can fill in the data of senders and receivers online before sending the packages. When vendors arrive at a TIKI branch, they do not need to wait for TIKI employees to fill in the information anymore.

(Read also: Courier service TIKI anticipates business jump during Ramadhan)

There will be [system] integration between Bukalapak and TIKI. The new features will be launched soon, Bukalapak co-founder and chief financial officer Muhammad Fajrin Rasyid told reporters at its headquarters in Kemang, South Jakarta.

Another new feature offered to vendors is pick-up service that allows TIKI couriers to pick up goods from the vendors locations. Bukalapak has more than 1.7 million vendors with more than 38 million products offered on its online marketplace. About 500,000 vendors at Bukalapak use TIKIs services. (bbn)

Topics : Bukalapak tiki partnership
Guwahati, June 7 (IBNS): At least four militants, who were belonging to outlawed ULFA (I), and an Army Major were killed and three jawans were injured in a fierce gun fight near the India-Myanmar border in Nagaland's Mon district on Wednesday, officials said.

According to the reports, the encounter took place at Lapa Lempong hilltop in Oting village near Tizit at around 12-30 am on Wednesday.

Following intelligence input, a combined team of 12 Para Commandos of the Army and Naga Territorial Army ambushed a group of ULFA (I) and NSCN (K) militants at the remote jungle area.

During the gun battle, four militants killed on spot and a Major David Manlum of Territorial army also died.

Security personnel had recovered three AK series rifles, magazines, two grenades, three IEDs, 270 rounds AK ammunition, war like stores in possession from the slain militants, who are yet to be identified.

Nagaland's police chief LL Doungel said that, three jawans of 12 Para Commandos also injured in the gun fight.

The injured jawans were immediately rushed to Jorhat based army hospital for treatment.

Unconfirmed report that a civilian also died during the encounter.

On the other hand, some militants had managed to flee from the area and army launched massive operation at the bordering area to nab them.

Meanwhile, the mortal remains of Major David Manlum will be flown to Shillong for last rites.

(Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Wed, June 7, 2017 17:30 1982 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a440a45 1 National Densus-88,National-Police,counterterrorism,TerroristAttacks,TerroristConvict,suicide-bombings,kampung-melayu,#KampungMelayubombings Free

The National Polices Densus 88 counterterrorism squad, supported by the West Java Police, arrested two suspected terrorists, identified as WT and MA, in Bandung, West Java, on Wednesday.

WT was arrested at 8:30 a.m., West Java Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Yusri Yunus said as quoted by Antara in Purwakarta on Wednesday.

He said WT was apprehended in Soreang, Bandung. Meanwhile, MA was arrested separately by a Densus 88 team in Cileunyi, Bandung.

Yusri claimed WT and MA played a role in the recent twin suicide bombings at the Kampung Melayu bus terminal in East Jakarta, saying they gave a religious lecture to Ichwan Nurul Salam and Ahmad Sukri before they launched the attacks on May 24.

WT, MA and MI gave religious lectures to them [Ichwan and Ahmad] five days before the bombings. They met to hold a Quran recitation, Yusri said.

He said WT headed a team from the Asykari As Sunnah Foundation, which was located in Cileunyi, Bandung. MI is the head of the foundation.

What they conveyed in their lecture and whether they encouraged them to become a bride, we are investigating it, said Yusri.

MI was arrested by Densus 88 in Jatinangor, Bandung, on Monday. He had been convicted in a separate case related to a bombing plot in Cibiru in 2010.

MI was sentenced to seven years in prison. Having received remission, he left prison in 2015 after serving five years. (afr/ebf)
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Linkedin Stefani Ribka (The Jakarta Post) Sumenep, Madura, East Java  Wed, June 7, 2017 10:46 1982 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a429c8f 1 Business farmer-cards,fertilizer,subsidy,East-Java,Agriculture-Ministry,Amran-Sulaiman Free

The government has begun distributing farmers cards (Kartu Tani) in East Java as a form of non-cash assistance to buy subsidized fertilizers.

Previously, similar cards were distributed to farmers in Central Java.

As many as 96,098 farmers in Sumenep Regency in Madura Island, East Java, received the cards on Tuesday during the launch.

"Farmers only need to swipe the cards to get the fertilizer. There's no more incorrect data and it's a quick way [to get fertilizer]," said Agriculture Minister Amran Sulaiman, adding that farmers needed to top up the balance on the cards at the fertilizer kiosks.

The government, through farmer group heads, will only give the cards to farmers entitled to subsidized fertilizers to stop the misuse of subsidies that was rampant in the past.

Now, with the card, data of transactions and buyers are recorded to minimize misuse.

State lender BNI aims to disburse the cards to 1.3 million farmers in the province this year. As many as 567,000 farmers have been verified and will receive the cards soon, said BNIs institutional relation and transactions director Adi Susi Sulistyowati.

The government aims to introduce the cards to crops farmers in Java this year before targeting farmers across the country next year.

State banks will manage the fund based on province. BNI is in charge in East Java; BRI in Central Java; Mandiri in West Java and BTN in Banten. (bbn)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Wed, June 7, 2017 17:13 1982 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a43fe09 1 Business tax-examination,tax-amnesty,protest,Sri-Mulyani,comments Free

Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati has defended the plan to examine the financial data of around 2.3 million bank accounts that have a minimum balance of Rp 200 million (US$15,025) despite a major outcry from micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME).

MSME association Akumindo previously voiced its concerns over such a plan, as it said the examination would only handicap the development of the businesses across the country.

According to the United Kingdom-based Oxford Economics, as of 2015, there were 55 million SMEs in Indonesia employing 108 million people, generating revenues of Rp 9.47 quadrillion and contributing to 60 percent of the countrys gross domestic product.

The majority of people with a balance more than Rp 200 million are the ones that usually have shown tax compliance and paid their tax incomes, Sri Mulyani said on Tuesday in Jakarta as reported by kompas.com.

Sri Mulyani said the examination was only aimed to oversee the whole economic structure in the country, not to collect more taxes from such bank accounts. So, people should not worry about this, she said.

According to Deposit Insurance Corporation (LPS) data as of February, 1.29 million customers have account balances between Rp 200 million and Rp 500 million. More than 519,000 customer accounts have between Rp 500 million and Rp 1 billion; while 257,000 accounts have a balance of between Rp 1 billion and Rp 2 billion.

Moreover, the LPS recorded that 238,514 individuals have a balance of more than Rp 2 billion. (vps/bbn)
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Linkedin Marguerite Afra Sapiie (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Wed, June 7, 2017 22:59 1982 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a44689b 1 National Qatar,Qatar-Airways,MigrantCare,Middle-East,Middle-East-conflict Free

Workers rights advocate Migrant CARE is calling on the Indonesian government to open a crisis center to tackle the possible impacts of a political crisis that has erupted following the severing of diplomatic relations between Qatar and several other Middle Eastern countries.

Migrant CARE executive director Wahyu Susilo said the crisis would sooner or later make an impact on the presence and safety of Indonesian migrant workers in the region. In the Middle East, Indonesian migrant workers were mostly employed in the countries that are currently engaged in a diplomatic spat against Qatar, namely Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

He said there had been a transportation crisis after Saudi Arabian authorities banned the operation of Qatar Airways and closed its land and sea borders with Qatar. The crisis might create a complicated problem because in the upcoming weeks hundreds of thousands of Indonesian migrant workers in the region would have plans to return to Indonesia to celebrate Idul Fitri in their home towns.

We urge the government to open crisis centers at Indonesian representative offices in countries that are entangled in this diplomatic crisis and by also involving migrant worker organizations and the Indonesian diaspora in the region, Wahyu said in a press statement on Wednesday

Following the crisis that has been taking place in Syria since 2012, Migrant Care has received many complaints from the families of migrant workers who have had relatives trapped by war. The crisis center should be able to perform quick responses, provide information and undertake other comprehensive measures to ensure the safety of both Indonesian migrant workers and Indonesian nationals, Wahyu said. (afr/ebf)
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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Wed, June 7 2017

In an effort to reduce tobacco consumption in Jakarta, the National Commission on Tobacco Control (Komnas PT) has teamed up with city-owned bus operator PT Transjakarta to educate the public about the dangers of smoking cigarettes.

The bodies of some Transjakarta buses will display a message that reads Smoking cigarettes is burning money to remind the society about the harm it causes.

The campaign is meant to remind society that smoking cigarettes is a waste [of money], Komnas PT chairman Prijo Sidipratomo said at City Hall on Tuesday as reported by Antara news agency.

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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Wed, June 7, 2017 07:05 1982 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a41b7f1 1 Business Qatar-Airways,diplomatic-tension,tourists Free

The Indonesian government is predicting that the recent severing of ties between several Arab countries and Qatar would deal a blow to the archipelagos tourism industry, with 50,000 expected tourists not showing up because of the crisis, a senior official said on Tuesday.

That is the number of visitors Tourism Minister Arief Yahya said Qatar Airways, for the most part, would have brought to Indonesia this year.

Given that seven months are left in the year 2017, we estimate we will lose about 50,000 foreign tourists as a result of the boycott of Qatar, Arief told reporters at the State Palace on Tuesday.

In order to reduce the expected loss, Arief said his ministry would coordinate with the Transportation Ministry to transfer the license given to the Qatari airline to other airlines, such as Emirates and Etihad.

First of all, I will ask the Transportation Ministry to transfer the aircraft license given to Qatar [Airways] to other airlines. We have no option as they [Qatar Airways] could not fly their aircraft anyway, Arief said.

Qatar Airways said on its official website it had suspended all flights to Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia and several of its allies on Monday cut relations with Qatar, accusing it of supporting extremism. (dmr)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Wed, June 7, 2017 10:34 1982 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a425621 1 National hotspots,hotspots2017,Riau-Islands,sumatra,forest-fires Free

At least 52 hotspots indicating forest fires appeared in satellite images of several locations in Sumatra on Tuesday.

We spotted [the hotspots] at 7 a.m., said Pekanbaru Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency head Otto Sukisno as quoted by tempo.co.

Jambi has the most hotspots with 17 locations, followed by Bengkulu 12 locations, South Sumatra (seven locations), Lampung (six locations), North Sumatra (three locations), West Sumatra (three locations) and Bangka Belitung (one location).

In Riau, the hotspots were detected in Indragiri Hulu, Rokan Hulu and Rokan Hilir.

In the past three days, hotspots were also detected in Riaus Kuala Kampar, Pelalawan, Rokan IV Koto, Rokan Hulu and Siak Kecil.

Roesmin Nurjadin Air Force airbase has deployed a Super Puma chopper to monitor the hotspots.

The airbase spokesman Maj. Rizwar said that another chopper carrying four tons of water had also been deployed to conduct water bombing in some burning areas in Riau recently.

[It] conducted 12 water bombings to extinguish fires in Siak Kecil, Rizwar said. (dmr)
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Linkedin Marguerite Afra Sapiie (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Wed, June 7, 2017 17:45 1982 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a441af1 1 National Jokowi,jokowidodo,West-Kalimantan,vlog,vloggers,Basuki-Hadimuljono,public-works-housing-ministry,infrastructure,infrastructure-development,infrastructure-project Free

Tech-savvy President Joko Jokowi Widodo has released a new vlog to provide an update on the progress of his administrations infrastructure development projects in West Kalimantan.

In the video entitled #JKWVLOG Jalan Baru Kalimantan Barat (New Road in West Kalimantan) uploaded on his official Facebook page and YouTube channel on Wednesday, Jokowi shared the latest information on the development of a new road, which would connect Putussibau to Nanga Badau.

In the last two-and-a half years, we have developed 1,900 kilometer-long roads in Kalimantan. We expect these roads, which are located in border areas, to push the creation of new economic growth centers, Jokowi said in his video.

While most parts of the new roadwhich stretches 170-kmhave been covered in asphalt, 27-km remain in the form of hardened soil.

The Public Works and Public Housing Ministry is developing the roads, with assistance from the Army.

The ministry is ready to work day and night to complete [the project]. Here, I am accompanied by the minister, Jokowi said, referring to Public Works and Public Housing Minister Basuki Hadimoeljono.

Jokowi shot the video himself with Basuki by his side, asking the minister to explain the governments targets in relation to the completion of the road. The minister said the project would be completed by the end of 2017 or early 2018, at the latest. (ebf)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Wed, June 7, 2017 17:07 1982 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a43f5d3 1 National KPK,#GraftCase,graft,corruption,BPK,BPK-recommendation,#KPK Free

The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) continues to probe three suspects allegedly involved in a graft case related to the Village, Disadvantaged Regions and Transmigration Ministrys financial report audit conducted by the Supreme Audit Agency (BPK).

The three suspects are BPK auditors Rachmadi Saptogiri and Ali Sadli and Jarot Budi Prabowo, a high-ranking official at the ministry.

We are investigating them as witnesses for another suspect, Sugito. We are gathering information from them about events that have led to the graft allegations," KPK spokesperson Priharsa Nugraha said on Wednesday.

(Read also: Four named suspects in case of alleged graft connected to BPK, ministry)

Sugito, the ministry's inspector general, is accused of having bribed the BPK auditors in an effort to obtain an "unqualified (WTP)" opinion - the best audit level - for the ministry's 2016 budget report.

The KPK named four officials suspects in the case on May 27 following their arrests during a raid on two separate locations a day earlier. (kuk/ebf)
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Linkedin Farida Susanty (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Wed, June 7, 2017 14:52 1982 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a4332ee 1 Business Budi-Karya-Sumadi,Qatar-Airways,license,revocation,denial Free

Transportation Minister Budi Karya Sumadi has stressed that his office has not revoked the license for Qatar Airways, denying rumours that have circulated since Tuesday in the wake of rift between Arab Gulf countries.

Previously, Antara reported that Budi would revoke Qatar Airways license and would give it back when the tension had abated.

There was no revocation. There were only transfers of Indonesian passengers who want to perform umrah (minor haj pilgrimage) flying with Qatar Airways to other airlines, Budi said on Wednesday.

(Read also: Indonesia may lose 50,000 tourists because of Qatar crisis)

He said the passenger transfer to other airlines was the result of the diplomatic crisis between Qatar and several Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain, resulting in a ban on Qatar Airways flying to the aforementioned countries.

Qatar Airways can still serve flights to and from Indonesia to the countries that dont have any diplomatic issue with Qatar, he added. (bbn)
Cabinet approves MoU between India and Mali for standardization and conformity assessment India Blooms News Service | | #Cabinet, #India, #Mali

New Delhi, June 7 (IBNS): The Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday given its ex-post facto approval to the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), India and Direction Nationale De Industries (MLINDI), Republic of Mali on Standardization and Conformity Assessment.
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Linkedin Arif Gunawan Sulistiyono (The Jakarta Post) New York  Wed, June 7, 2017 14:20 1982 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a4313cf 1 Business SusiPudjiastuti,SeaWeb,Ocean-Conference,award,illegal-fishing Free

Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister Susi Pudjiastuti has claimed further international recognition, winning The Seafood Champion Award for Leadership from the ocean conservation group SeaWeb.

SeaWeb, a project of the United States-based non-government organization The Ocean Foundation, chose Susi for the 2017 award following her strong efforts to improve the sustainability of seafood both in local communities and worldwide.

Maritime and Fisheries Ministry secretary-general Rifky Effendi Hardijanto represented Susi  who was attending the United Nations Ocean Conference in New York  to accept the award in Seattle, Washington during the SeaWeb Seafood Summit.

"When she [Susi] accepted the mandate from President Joko Widodo to be Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister, she understood that it was her responsibility to ensure that the sea, as Indonesias biggest asset, would benefit the nation and future generations, he said on Tuesday.

The Ocean Foundation president Mark Spalding said the champions demonstrated that courage and creativity could drive progress in seafood sustainability worldwide. This year, five winners  in the four award categories  were chosen from 115 nominees from 43 countries.

These champions have made smart use of strategies and tools tailored to their unique situations. Some employed teamwork and diplomacy to patiently overcome resistance. Others took bold actions, he said. Pudjiastuti has taken a hard line against illegal, unregulated and unreported [IUU] fishing, fought against the use of forced labor on fishing vessels and banned the use of bottom trawlers in Indonesia,
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Linkedin Margareth S. Aritonang (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Wed, June 7, 2017 16:17 1982 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a43c528 1 National KPK,graft,corruption,#KPK,Gerindra-Party,PAN,corruption-case,house-of-representatives Free

Two political factions at the House of Representatives are set to send representatives to sit on a special committee assigned to launch an inquiry against the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK).

The Gerindra Party and National Mandate Party (PAN) factions, which formerly opposed the inquiry plan, are reportedly preparing a list of lawmakers to appoint to the committee.

Gerindra has prepared four members, three of whom are members of the Houses Commission III, which oversees human rights, security and legal affairs. They are Desmond Junaidi Mahesa, Muhammad Syafii and Wenny Warouw. Another lawmaker is Supratman Andi Agtas.

Meanwhile, PAN is finalizing a list of representatives it has taken from various House commissions. They include Daeng Muhammad of Commission III, Totok Daryanto of the Houses Legislation Body (Baleg) and Yandri Susanto, secretary of the partys faction.

We are still finalizing the list. But of course, we will join the committee, Yandri said on Tuesday.

He explained the latest change in PANs stance toward the KPK inquiry plan.

We wont be able to say anything about the [inquiry] unless we participate in the process.

Five factions have supported the KPK inquiry initiative since the very beginning. They are the ruling Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), the Golkar Party, the United Development Party (PPP), the NasDem Party and the Hanura Party. The inquiry team is scheduled to hold its first meeting on Wednesday to select team leaders. (ebf)
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Linkedin Bambang Muryanto (The Jakarta Post) Yogyakarta  Wed, June 7, 2017 19:30 1982 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a4443eb 1 National terrorists,terrorist-group,National-Police,Densus-88,IS,Islamic-State,#Densus88,counterterrorism,bnpt Free

The National Polices Densus 88 counterterrorism squad has arrested a suspected terrorist identified as RS, 33, in Jeruk village, Wonosari, Gunungkidul regency, Yogyakarta.

RS arrived at the Yogyakarta Polices Mobile Brigade (Brimob) headquarters at 8:15 p.m. local time on Tuesday. He was heavily escorted by Densus 88 personnel traveling in two SUVs and a box truck.

It is suspected that [RS] is a member of a terror network in Indonesia, Yogyakarta Brimob division head Sr.Comr. Dadang Raharja told journalists on Tuesday.

Media reports have revealed that RS allegedly facilitated in sending Indonesian to Marawi in the Philippines and Syria to join the Islamic State (IS) movement.

Dadang did not provide details on RSs exact role and the terror network to which he belonged. He also declined to list the evidence Densus 88 personnel had confiscated during the raid.

Densus 88 is still investigating [the case], Dadang said, adding the suspected terrorist would be brought to Jakarta on Wednesday.

Yogyakarta Police spokesperson Adj.Sr.Comr. Yulianto confirmed the arrest of a terror suspect, adding that Densus 88 has asked for additional personnel from the Yogyakarta Police and the Gunungkidul Police.

RS, who lives in Balapulang Wetan, Tegal regency, Central Java, was arrested while visiting his parents in Jeruk village, Gunungkidul.

RS wife, DNH, and their three children were taken to the Gunungkidul Police following his arrest. DNH and her children were released after questioning. (yon/ebf)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Wed, June 7, 2017 18:48 1982 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a44331b 1 City Idul-Fitri,exodus,security Free

Jakarta Police have prepared 102 Idul Fitri exodus security points in the city, with the peak of the flow expected on June 22 to 24.

Police chief Insp. Gen. Mochamad Iriawan said each of the points would be beefed up with 204 police personnel.

We will check the trajectory and security, Iriawan said as quoted by kompas.com on Tuesday.

Motorbikers usually pass the regular roads toward the eastern part of the city of Kampung Melayu  Cawang  Bekasi, in the direction leading to West Java.

Iriawan said there would be both two and four wheel vehicle patrols along the Idul Fitri exodus trajectory.

He added that vacationers could use the facilities at the check point posts starting from five days before Idul Fitri, which is expected to fall on June 25. (dra)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Wed, June 7, 2017 14:35 1982 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a432923 4 National Tamim-pardede,National-Police,President-Jokowi,hate-speech Free

The National Police cyber crime unit has arrested a 45-year-old man using the YouTube account, Professor Tamim Pardede, in Tangerang, Banten for allegedly posting videos containing hate speech against President Joko Jokowi Widodo.

National Police spokesperson Sr. Com. Martinus Sitompul confirmed the arrest, saying that the man, whose real name is Muhammad Tamim Pardede, had allegedly insulted the government. Tamim also shared videos containing provocative statements on ethnicity, religion and race issues (SARA).

We arrested him in Adiloka Megasari in Tangerang [Banten], Martinus said, as quoted by tempo.co.

(Read also: Hate speech clouds Indonesia's internet in 2016: Police)

Police also confiscated a laptop and a cellular phone on which Tamim saved his Youtube account, as well as a copy of a video he shared, Martinus said.

According to Martinus, the professor title in his account name is fake as the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) has confirmed he is not a research professor from the institute, even though Tamim has claimed he belongs to LIPI.

Tamim will be charged under law No.19/2016 on Information and Electronic Transactions.

The arrest of Tamim Pardede follows the arrest of a 35-year-old man identified as Muhammad Said, the owner of facebook account "Ahmad Fatihul Alif," who was arrested on Sunday in West Jakarta for insulting the president and National police chief Gen. Tito Karnavian on social media. (yon/dmr)
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Linkedin Stefani Ribka (The Jakarta Post) Sumenep, Madura, East Java  Wed, June 7, 2017 10:49 1982 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a42a664 1 Business State-salt-maker-PT-Garam,headquarter,surabaya,Sumenep,Madura,island Free

State salt producer PT Garam plans to move back its headquarters to Kalianget in Sumenep Regency on Madura Island in East Java from the provincial capital of Surabaya in an attempt to boost productivity.

In 1998, PT Garam moved its headquarters from Kalianget in Sumenep to Surabaya.

The firm is currently revitalizing its factory on the island, known as a quality salt producing area, and plans to build another factory.

Sumenep has vast salt producing areas. We need to increase PT Garam's production. God willing, we also plan to build another salt manufacturing plant here aswell in August, 2018, said State Enterprise Minister Rini Soemarno during the launch of the Farmer Card on Tuesday.

Rini said improvements to the salt industry were needed to reduce Indonesias salt imports.

Due to a prolonged wet season last year, the country imported 3 million tons of household and industrial salt, up from roughly 1.7 million tons in 2015, Indonesian Association of Salt Industries (AIPGI) said previously.

Meanwhile, the national demand for salt hovers at around 4 million tons annually. (bbn)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Wed, June 7, 2017 14:13 1982 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a430a0b 1 Business Tesla-Model-X,luxury-car,united-states,Indonesia Free

Indonesians can now purchase US-made Tesla Model X electronic luxury cars with price tags starting from US$200,000.

Prestige Image Motorcars, the sole Tesla motor car distributor in Indonesia, began exhibiting one of the cars at its showroom in Pluit, North Jakarta, on Tuesday.

Prestige president director Rudy Salim said his company started receiving orders for the car in June with deliveries, beginning in September.

Tesla cars have good prospects in the Indonesian market, considering they are not the most expensive among the super cars in the country, Rudy said.

Each Telsa cars is equipped with a battery that supports up to 350 kilometers of travel, much more than Indonesians generally needed, Rudy said.

A director of the Association of Indonesian Automotive Manufacturers (Gaikindo), Jongkie Sugiarto, said that Tesla cars would have their own fans in Indonesia.

However, he said, luxury cars belonged to a specific and limited market, which did not grow significantly.

According to Gaikindo, the domestic sales of diesel and petrol cars in the first four months of the year increased by 5.71 percent to 373,407 from 352,072 in the same period of 2016.

Tesla Inc. of the United States was quoted by Reuters as saying in April 2 that its first-quarter vehicle deliveries jumped by 69 percent to 25,000 vehicles compared to the same period last year. (dis/bbn)
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Linkedin Ni Nyoman Wira (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Wed, June 7, 2017 08:07 1982 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a41d669 1 News Jakarta-fair,jakarta-fair-2017,travel,jakarta,#JakartaFair,festival,#festival Free

The annual Jakarta Fair, which celebrates the capital citys anniversary is set to be held from June 8 to July 16 at Jakarta International Expo (JIE) Kemayoran, Central Jakarta.

Consisting of five large halls and an open space, the event will provide special spots for food enthusiasts as part of the fairs 50th anniversary. Among them is the Kuliner (culinary) Jakarta Fair located right behind Hall D, featuring 50 tenants that sell 50 types of Indonesian traditional dishes like sate Padang (Padang-style satay) ajo laweh, ayam taliwang Summagung (grilled chicken Summagung) and kupat tahu (chopped fried tofu served with rice cakes, blanched bean sprouts and peanut sauce) Magelang. The tenants booths will be designed to resemble saung (huts) made of bamboo.

Read also: An Americans guide to visiting Jakarta

Still behind Hall D, visitors will also find Betawi traditional cuisine at the Kampung Betawi area, featuring various old-time foods that are hard to find nowadays, such as nasi ulam (steamed rice mixed with various herbs), soto mie (clear soup served with egg noodle, spring roll and diced beef) and laksa Betawi (Betawi spicy noodle soup).

Unlike last year, the Jakarta Fair will present the Pasar Malam (night market) behind Hall E. Adopting a modern-style night market, visitors can expect to enjoy their iftar dishes or simply relax while sipping a cup of coffee. The market is set to host at least 36 booths selling Indonesian snacks and main dishes, such as tahu gejrot (fried tofu in sweet spicy sauce), gulali (sugar), martabak (stuffed fried pancake) and satay.

The fair's management team will also provide free takjil (light iftar snacks) for the visitors in the main stage area during the holy month of Ramadhan.

Other events that can be attended during the Jakarta Fair are the Miss Jakarta Fair contest, cosplay contest, fireworks festival and cultural performances at the Gambir Expo. (kes)
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Linkedin News Desk (Agence France-Presse)  Wed, June 7, 2017 09:08 1982 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a4223a5 2 News Sri-Lanka,destination,#destination,travel,awards,#awards Free

Adventure-seekers and intrepid globetrotters looking to blaze new trails in Southeast Asia will want to consider adding Sri Lanka to their travel bucket list, after the country claimed the title of leading destination and leading adventure tourism destination for Asia over the weekend.

At the World Travel Awards Asia & Australasia 2017, held in Shanghai, Sri Lanka took the title of leading destination for the region, an award that reflects a countrys range of tourism products and services. The country was also named the leading adventure tourism destination.

Winners are based on an online voting process cast by industry leaders and travel professionals.

Sri Lanka has been emerging as an interesting travel alternative to Thailand, for its beaches, wildlife safaris and adventure tours. Along with its native land mammals (elephants, leopards and wild buffalos), the islands marine surroundings make the destination one of the best for whale and dolphin watching.

Read also: Bali declared world's top destination for 2017

Sri Lanka is also known among thrill-seekers for offering top-notch surfing and diving experiences, jungle treks, hikes and elephant-riding and rock-climbing adventures.

Other big winners of the night include The Oberoi Udaivilas in India, which took home the title of Asias leading hotel 2017 and The Peninsula Hong Kong, which was named Asias leading luxury hotel 2017.

For Australasia, the Pullman Sydney Hyde Park in Australia was named the leading hotel, and Yasawa Islands in Fiji Australasias leading destination.

Here are some of the big winners from the gala event:

Asia

Leading airline: Hainan Airlines

Leading airline economy class: Cathay Pacific

Leading beach destination: Thailand

Leading boutique hotel: Casa Del Mar Langkawi, Malaysia

Leading city break destination: Hong Kong

Leading cruise line: Star Cruises

Leading fine dining and hotel restaurant: La Maison 1888 InterContinental Danang Sun Peninsula Resort, Vietnam

Leading low-cost airline: AirAsia

Read also: Bali named world's best destination by TripAdvisor

Australasia

Leading airline: Air New Zealand

Leading private island resort: Laucala Island, Fiji

Most romantic resort: The Remort Resort, Fiji Islands
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Linkedin News Desk (Agence France-Presse) Cancun, Mexico  Wed, June 7, 2017 10:34 1982 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a42555f 2 News Qatar,diplomacy,aviation Free

The head of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) on Tuesday urged Gulf countries that have cut ties with Qatar to restore air links with the country, warning of major travel disruptions.

"Of course we accept that countries have the right to close their borders," said IATA director general Alexandre de Juniac.

"But connectivity with Qatar must be restored as quickly as possible," he told AFP, speaking on the sidelines of the group's annual meeting in Cancun, Mexico.

Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Egypt and the Maldives broke off diplomatic and trade relations with Qatar on Monday, accusing it of supporting terrorism.

The measures included closing their land and sea borders to Qatar and banning Qatari planes from their airspace.

Read also: Qatar Airways suspends all flights to Saudi Arabia

Airline executives at the IATA meeting said it was still unclear how the measures would affect air travel.

Qatar Airways chief executive Akbar Al Baker hastily left the meeting Monday.

"We hope the crisis will disappear and aviation is coming back to normal," said Abdul Wahab Teffaha, the head of the Arab Air Carriers Organization which groups 33 airlines.

"We have to monitor the situation in the next couple of days. The Doha-Dubai sector is particularly busy and we are currently analyzing the situation," said Christoph Mueller, chief digital and information officer at Emirates airline.

"We operated our last flight just a couple of hours ago, and we are updating the traveling public in time," he said.

Topics : Qatar diplomacy aviation
Kolkata, June 7 (IBNS): A three-day Exercise on Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) termed as 'Nabhas Rahat', hosted by HQs Eastern Air Command, got underway at Upper Shillong on on Tuesday.

The exercise  in the calamity-prone region of the northeast and adjoining states aims to slynergise the efforts of all stakeholders in executing HADR operations.

Senior officials from Indian Air Force, Army, Navy, CRPF, BSF, NCC, NSS, IDS, State Secretariat and Police, DC Shillong, Meghalaya State Disaster Management, National Disaster Management Authority, National Disaster Relief Force are among the delegates at this exercise.

The delegates were welcomed on behalf of Air Marshal Anil Khosla, Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief, EAC under whose directions the inclusive seminar is being conducted.

A display of capabilities of the stakeholders is planned on 07 Jun 17 at the Upper Shillong ALG.

A simulated scenario is planned to showcase and practice the synergistic capabilities of fire services, hospitals, surveillance, police deptt, Traffic police, DMAs at various levels along with the Indian Air Force.

IAF is also displaying three helicopters namely Mi-17V5, ALH and Chetak in their HADR configurations.
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Linkedin David Harding (Agence France-Presse) Doha  Wed, June 7, 2017 12:02 1982 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a42cc3d 2 News Qatar,Qatar-Airways,Airport,#airport,travel-ban,#travel,#traveling,travel,traveling,United-Arab-Emirates,#UnitedArabEmirates Free

Qatar's state-of-the-art Hamad International bills itself as one of the most luxurious airports in the world -- but on Tuesday, it was also one of the quietest.

As a travel ban announced by Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) came into force, terminals and drop-off areas at Doha's "gateway to the world" were deserted.

"This is the emptiest airport I've ever been in," said Katie, transiting Qatar en route to Thailand.

"It's exceptionally quiet, almost eerie."

Hamad's cavernous three-year-old terminals, constructed at an estimated cost of $16 billion (14 billion euros), can seem relatively empty on normal days because of their massive size.

But the diplomatic crisis between Doha and Riyadh backed by its Arab allies that has isolated Qatar left Hamad International a shadow of its normal activity on Tuesday.

With more than 30 Qatar Airways flights cancelled to and from Doha, there were neither traffic jams at departures where travelers are dropped off nor lines for taxis to pick up arriving passengers.

Inside, a calm air of weary resignation too hold.

Passengers gazed at information screens inside the terminals with amusement and pointed at cancelled flights to and from destinations across the Gulf, including Jeddah, Dammam and Dubai.

For most passengers, the experience was one of bemusement.

"I have never seen it like this," said the civil engineer, who was traveling home to New Delhi.

Read also: Indonesia may lose 50,000 tourists because of Qatar crisis

"It's crazy. I hope the crisis will finish soon."

Downstairs in the arrivals hall, Jaffa, a taxi driver from the Philippines who picks up passengers every day, chuckled at the emptiness.

"I've never seen so few people here," he said.

'It's appalling'

Scenes were more frantic elsewhere in the Gulf as desperate Qatar Airways' passengers scrambled to find alternative travel arrangements.

Scenes of long queues on social media showed travelers at Qatar Airways offices across the Gulf, as Saudi Arabia announced it had revoked the carrier's license and would close all its offices in the country within 48 hours.

Marsudi, an Indonesian trying to travel to Doha from Riyadh, told AFP he was holding a ticket, paid for by his employer, for a flight home to central Java via Saudi Arabia next Saturday.

"They have to do something," he said.

In the United Arab Emirates, the situation was just as bad for both those traveling on business and expats trying to fly home.

"It's appalling, basically," said Farrukh Hafez, trying to find a flight home to Manchester.

"I won't be able to use my ticket, I can't travel," he said outside a Qatar Airways office in Abu Dhabi. "It has just absolutely disturbed all my summer plans and I don't know if I'll find any alternative flight to Manchester."
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Wed, June 7, 2017 10:50 1982 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a42b00e 1 News Tourism-Ministry-Pesona-Indonesia,tourism-ministry-wonderful-Indonesia,Wonderful-Indonesia,South-Korea,Seoul,tourism-promotion,tourism,#tourism Free

In an effort to attract South Korean tourists, the Tourism Ministry will participate in the Hanatour International Travel Show (HITS) 2017 from June 8 to 11 at the Korea International Exhibition Center (KINTEX), Seoul.

Our data shows that 338,671 South Korean tourists visited Indonesia in 2015, while the target for 2016 was 400,000. This year, the ministry is aiming to attract 514,000 tourists from South Korea, the ministry's deputy minister for Overseas Promotion I Gde Pitana said.

Read also: Korea Tour Card growing popular with foreigners

Up to 50 countries are slated to participate in the exhibition.

HITS is the biggest exhibition of its kind in South Korea and brings together buyers and sellers using business-to-business [B2B] and business-to-consumer [B2C] models. In 2016, HITS attracted 95,000 visitors during the four-day exhibition that featured 1,019 booths set up by 760 companies and tourism boards from 50 countries, added the ministry's deputy assistant for Asia-Pacific Tourism Promotion, Vinsensius Jemadu.

Indonesia plans to bring nine tourism players to the exhibition to promote different kinds of Indonesian products and destinations.

Our booth will feature traditional food and world famous Indonesian coffee. The Wonderful Indonesia team will wear carnival outfits designed by a local designer throughout the exhibition, added Vinsensius. (kes)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Wed, June 7, 2017 13:49 1982 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a42ffcc 1 News Tourism-Ministry,Tourism-Ministry-Pesona-Indonesia,tourism-ministry-wonderful-Indonesia,tourism-promotion,intelligence Free

'Practice what you preach' is exactly what the Tourism Ministry does with its go-digital campaign. The ministry not only applies the "go digital" philosophy to its promotional activities, it also brings it to its office.

An area called War Room M-17 was launched last year, located on the 16th floor of Sapta Pesona Building, Jakarta. The area features interactive dashboards showcasing tourism promotions for Indonesia, other countries, tourism destinations, top 10 priority destinations and human resources institutions.

Read also: An Americans guide to visiting Jakarta

This is big data, a combination of small and corporate data as well as social media. The data is very important and can become an early warning system for the tourism ministry to know whats happening out there, said the Tourism Minister, Arief Yahya.

This is also the place where the ministry monitors what other countries such as Thailand and Vietnam are doing in order to attract Chinese tourists, for example.

When Thailand is clicked on the dashboard, destinations such as Phuket, Chiang Mai, Pattaya will show up on the screen along with a list of current events there and information about access, cuisine, security, cleanliness, accommodation and other services.

Read also: Voting for Indonesian tourism awards kicks off in June

The tagline of War Room M-17 is know the world, know yourself, know your enemy and you will win the battle. Know your customer, know yourself and you will win the competition, Yahya added. (asw)
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Linkedin News Desk (Agence France-Presse) New York, United States  Wed, June 7, 2017 13:07 1982 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a42ebde 2 News trump,#DonaldTrump,#Donald-Trump,Trump-International-Hotel,Hotel,#hotel,hotels,#hotels,hospitality-industry,#hospitality,hospitality Free

The Trump Organization, which for years focused on high-end, luxury real estate, on Tuesday announced a new foray into the domestic hotel market with a chain of middle-of-the-range hotels.

The venture was inspired by travels by the Trump children on father Donald Trump's presidential election campaign last year, when they were introduced to lackluster hotels in the US hinterland, The New York Times reported.

The new line will be called American Idea and three agreements have been signed for properties in the Mississippi Delta area, announced Trump Hotels, which is part of The Trump Organization.

"American Idea hotels will be an alternative, for both guests and hotel developers, looking for an answer to the run-of-the-mill offerings currently in the midscale space," Trump Hotels announced.

"Guests will enjoy local flavor and genuine service in an environment that pays respect to the unique culture of each destination," it added.

Read also: In Bali, Trumps planned six-star hotel risks angering the Gods

The New York Times reported that during the campaign, the Trump children would report back about thousands of supporters attending rallies and what they saw as a chance to build a line of hotels standing out from standardized options.

"I said, 'That's brilliant,'" Trump Hotels CEO Eric Danziger told the newspaper. "The reality is we should have something in those kinds of locations."

Mississippi, the southern state where the first hotels are slated to open, voted for Trump over Democrat Hillary Clinton by a margin of nearly 18 percent.

But Danziger rejected the idea that the electoral map would become a blueprint for picking future locations, the Times reported.

"There is no political thought to it," Danziger was quoted as saying by the newspaper, adding that there could be "many hundreds" of American Idea hotels in both Republican and Democratic voting areas.

The Trump Organization is run by the president's adult sons, but the commander-in-chief refused to divest fully from the firm, coming under fire from political opponents and ethics experts.
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Guwahati, June 7 (IBNS): After summoned to 25 Assam Civil Service (ACS), Assam Police Service (APS) and other associate services officials, the Dibrugarh police would likely to summon more officials in connection with the cash-for-job scam of Assam Public Service Commission (APSC).

The sleuths of Dibrugarh police on Wednesday summoned another APS official in connection with the scam.

The investigating team had asked all the officials to appear before the police at the Assam Administration Staff College premises at Khanapara on June 9 next.

A top police official said that, on Wednesday the team summoned to Hemanta Saikia who selected for the APS in 2015.

Earlier, the investigating team had summoned to 25 ASC, APS and other associate services officials.

On the other hand, the sleuths of Dibrugarh police on Wednesday had submitted the 1265 answer scripts before the court, which were seized by the investigating team from the APSC office on Tuesday night.

A team of Dibrugarh police led by ASP Surajit Singh Panesar and Subhashis Baruah had raided the APSC on Tuesday and seized the answer scripts.

We have seized a total of 1175 answer scripts of APSC combined competitive (main) examination held in 2013 and 90 answer scripts of 2015 examination from the commission office. After submitting before the court, it will be sent to forensic laboratory, ASP Surajit Singh Panesar said.

The investigating had earlier seized over 990 answer scripts of the APSC examination held in 2015 from the strong room in the commission office.

Meanwhile, a top Assam cops said that, more officials are under police scanner and few more officials would likely to be summoned soon.

Police had already arrested three ACS officials named Bhaskarjyoti Dev Sharma, Bhaskar Dutta and Amit Sharma in connection with the scam.

Apart from these officials, police had also arrested former chairman of APSC Rakesh Paul, his two associate members Samedur Rahman, Basanta Doley, Pabitra Koiborta, Nabakanta Patir.

(Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath,Image: Google Map)
Following Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE cutting ties with Qatar, Donald Trump has - somewhat unsurprisingly - waded in and taken credit for the move.

During the speech he made in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Trump pointed the finger of blame towards Iran, for supporting radicalisation.

In the same speech, he encouraged Muslim leaders to spearhead the fight against it. He called the battle against extremism one of good and evil.

Now, after the actions of the aforementioned nations, Trump has taken to Twitter. He stated that his visit is already paying off, and that this is potentially the beginning of the end of terrorism.

Trump also said that when he stated there can be no more funding of radical ideology, leaders pointed to Qarar.

The claim is a bold move by the United States President as, in doing so, he showed support for the actions of the Middle Eastern nations - which will undoubtedly strain relations between the United States and Qatar.

Qatar is home to the largest US military airbase in the Middle East, Al Udeid. It houses 11,000 US military personnel, and was a major launch point for B-52 strikes against Isis in Syria and Iraq in 2016.

Since the split, banks have stalled in dealings with Qatar - perhaps a sign of struggles to come for the small Arab nation.
With a relentless touring schedule, a stunning debut album and a message to believe in, Bristols Idles are proving to be the most vital guitar band of 2017.

They connect on a very personal level. In fact I first meet the band after their brutal set in the tiny Vines bar in Derby for 2Q festival, they have something to say and we get talking for hours. Every member of the band talk to people in the bar openly, they are a band that want to connect.

A few weeks later I am on the phone to front-man Joe Talbot in between soundchecks at a gig in France, still performing, days after their tour has finished. For Idles playing live is an on-going event, taking their post-punk, noise-driven manifesto far and wide.

That Vines gig booked when they were no one came in the flurry of excitement surrounding debut album Brutalism and a growing reputation for frantic live shows. They were the festivals buzz band and the 80 capacity venue turned into an explosion of genuine and joyous catharsis  kicking back at the world.

Thats what we are about. Catharsis and grief and all those things that come up, but as long as the perspective you are coming from is a loving one there is still room for you to be pissed off and let it out in a loving way. Thats what happens, says Talbot.

If there is one word to describe the Idles experience it is connection, not just in their aggressive sound but in Talbots personal, political and oblique lyrics. He explains that he is keen to allow peoples own views and interpretations to work with his songs as that is how genuine discourse works.

People take so many different things from songs and that is what I love about it. Expression is so vast a universe. I am political, but I am definitely a lot less linear than I used to be because I am learning that everyone has good and bad views, you know.

No one is wrong, because its experiences. Depending on what mood youre in these songs will mean different things. These songs will mean different things to me in 20 years because Ill be a father, or on my death bed or because of the way the government is then. We could look back and say think how good things used to be or the other way round. I think it is good for me to enjoy them as what they are at that time, he says.

Several tracks on the album appear to be a kick back at Tory Britain and the system we find ourselves in, or at least thats how I read them. Take the brilliant Well Done or the deeply personal Mother, a seemingly feminist anthem with the line the best way to scare a Tory is to read and get rich.

Talbots explanation of this track perfectly explains the abstract way he brings his personal politics to Idles music.

I didnt know what I was writing at the time. It wasnt like I sat down and thought right I am going to write a song about feminism and mum and the roles women play, we would already have the music and I would go away and write around it. What I would usually have is a key word in my head when I listen to song. Id listen to it over and over again and then a word or a sentence would pop into my head and then the song would come from that, he explains.

He continues, With Mother it was that phrase mother fucker  what does that mean? Its a violent phrase, its violent towards women but also it has the word mother in it and my mother was fucked throughout my life. From her disability, her alcoholism, her workaholic nature working 14 hours every day. Its about the roles women played in my life and exploring those ideas and then trying to sum it all up in abstract and short sentences. Not long sentences, I dont like doing that, I am not going to spell it out.

My mum who worked a lot and got rich, ended up dying because of it. Its a phrase I live by Ive always said keep yourself educated and work hard but not to the point that you end up six feet under.

With his mother on her death bed he felt animosity towards Jeremy Hunts NHS policies and that personal grief and anguish is heard clearly in the tune.

Ive got some views and I am more than happy to talk about them, but I think that people get carried away with the idea that my songs are linear. They are abstractions of my own personal experiences.

A socialist who believes in listening to the views of others and the democratic process Joe Talbot is an effortlessly engaging speaker, from the heart but also with a direct anger. As the conversation turns to the forthcoming election he gets animated.

In a complete democracy, we all have the right to vote which means we are in control as much as possible to manifest our opinions and beliefs so I think everyone is obliged be interested and vote, or dont be interested and dont vote  but shut the fuck up!

Just shut the fuck up. Dont pipe up on Facebook, dont come at me in the pub. Your vote and youre interested great. If youre right-wing and you vote, great well have a discussion. If not, dont moan when shit hits the fan, dont moan when I pint is really expensive, or your bills are too high and theres no nurses in the ward your mum is dying in. Shit like that, if you dont vote, you dont count.

The directness of this statement matches the bands sound  direct but empathetic, real but abstract and ever so slightly hilarious.

Idles are a fully formed concept, with Talbot even taking control of their visual identity as well creating a world for Idles, and their fans, to inhabit and understand.

I do all the artwork and videos. Lee [ Kiernan] , our rhythm guitarist, we do them together now. Theres two I didnt do but Ive done all the artwork, the t-shirts because its important for me, that if we want the music to be honest and were capable of making art, to create a language. This is what art is, a way of communicating your ideas to other people.

We are a bit weird, our lyrics arent linear but after a couple of albums after 25 t-shirts youll be able to pick out thats what Idles are doing, thats what they are about. To have the complete monopoly on everything we are doing means we can do that quicker, he says of the staunch DIY ethos of the band, not he adds, they have a lot of choice in the matter at this stage.

The nature of DIY, people are DIY for two reasons  either they are arrogant or they are skint, and were both! We dont want anyone touching our artwork and we cant afford to have other people make our videos anyway.

The whole point of what we do is through necessity.

So much of Idles being feels necessary and all this has turned them into one of 2017s hype bands, turning heads all over the place including a BBC 6Music album of the day and a five star review right here on this site. Live they have not stopped and have caused sonic carnage everywhere they have visited, turning up in some unexpected places.

The next really unexpected place is opening for The Maccabees at their farewell shows at Alexandra Palace. As a long time fan Talbot is excited by the prospect.

Its a dream come true. They were my favourite band when they first came out, for a long time. But we are also aware that no one who is turning out it there to see us in any shape or form. Its not a normal support, its where we have to show some respect, and I will show you some respect for them, I think they are an amazing band and they are amazing people. Its going to be a learning curve whatever happens.

He goes on to explain the respect that needs to be shown to the band and their fans.

With Idles we are not going to change anything about our show, we are going to work really hard on making it the best show we can make it. But I am not going to spit in someones face on the front row because they dont know me, they are not there to see us. Its going to be a pretty emotional time for a lot of these people.

Working really hard on the live circuit is becoming a thing for the band, they are playing everywhere they can with a packed summer of festivals as diverse as Download and Roskilde as well as venues across Europe. The fact is everyone needs to connect with Idles live, its where they excel and their message of loving, righteous anger is best distilled.

Idles means something, musically and morally because they mean it! For Joe Talbot (and the rest of the band) what they are doing means everything.

This is everything I have ever worked for. We always knew we were pissing against the wind, we are not a palatable band. But we for some reason we have found the formula that allows us to tour and release an album  its just happened.

Lets hope it keeps happening  the world right now needs bands like Idles.
Diane Abbot has been replaced as shadow home secretary the day before the general election.

Abbot, MP for Hackney, has suffered through a series of embarrassing interviews in the weeks leading up to tomorrows vote.

She will be replaced by Lyn Brown, currently Labours shadow policing minister.

Abbot is suffering a period of "ill-health, according to the Labour Party.

A statement this morning reaveled that "Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of the Labour Party, has asked Lyn Brown to stand in for Diane Abbott as Shadow Home Secretary for the period of her ill health."

It isnt known whether Abbot will take up the rtole of Home Secretary if Labour are elected tomorrow, or if Brown will take up the role.
Students at Cambridges Magdalene College are claiming that the college has banned them from having Labour posters in their windows.

According to The Tab, A student living in an off-campus accommodation received a notice from Magdalene College requiring that they remove the Labour posters from [his or her] window with immediate effect, as this is against college rules.

This was the second such incident that was made public, as the College had forced a local college bar to remove a Labour poster.

Alicia Pasiecznik, the President of Magdalenes JCR, told The Cambridge Student that she believes the students views are being silenced.

I understand college rules, but I question whether this would be the case in any other instance other than a political poster, Pasiecznik said. Surely college should be encouraging freedom of political speech and expression, not suppressing it.
Bhopal, June 7 (IBNS): A fire broke out in a cracker factory at Bhatan village in the Balaghat district of Madhya Pradesh on Wednesday which killed at least 20 people, reports said.

The incident left several others injured.

The deceased were workers of the factory.

The injured people were taken to hospital for treatment.

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister ShivrajSingh Chouhan has condoled the loss of lives in the mishap.

BJP President Amit Shah has condoled the loss of lives too as he posted on Twitter: "The fire accident in a cracker factory in Balaghat (MP) is tragic. My condolences to the bereaved families. May the injured recover soon."

He said: "I have spoken to Madhya Pradesh CM @ChouhanShivraj ji, who has assured that MP government is doing everything to assist the injured."


Labour will need a strong turnout from the youth vote to pull off a surprise General Election victory if polls are to be believed.

But that might not be a good sign for Jeremy Corbyn and co, with turnout among young people generally much lower than the general population.

But why has such voting lethargy traditionally been seen among the young, and will this weeks election actually be any different? Here are all the key questions addressed.

What are the statistics?

(Andrew Milligan/PA)

survey In 2015, only 43% of people aged 18-24 voted, according to acarried out by Ipsos-MORI after the General Election. That compares with 78% of people over 65, and 66% overall.

Those numbers broadly mirror the figures from the 2010 Ipsos-MORI survey as well.

So why arent young people voting?

(Chris Radburn/PA)

Because young people have not yet formed the habit of voting, theyre more likely to need strong reasons to make the effort to go to the polling station.

Stephen Fisher, professor of political sociology at the University of Oxford, said: If they see little policy difference between the main parties and if they think the election outcome is a foregone conclusion then they are particularly unlikely to bother voting.

For many, voting is a hassle  both the process of registering and turning up to the polling booth itself. Voting cannot be done electronically, which is particularly relevant for young people who live much of their lives online.

Why is there such a difference between age groups?

Young people  REGISTER TO VOTE! Don't rely on the older generations, your vote counts, don't miss out on this opportunity #GeneralElection  Bethan Tolley (@bethantrolley) April 18, 2017

Fisher thinks its partly down to practicalities. Younger people typically have busy more complicated lives and are more likely to find themselves in a situation where they are living in temporary accommodation and not registered to vote, he says.

People are more likely to vote the longer they have been living in the same place.

Many young people are part of the so-called generation rent meaning that it is increasingly unlikely that they will settle down in one place until later in life.

What about the UKs electoral system?

(Rui Vieira/PA)

Fisher believes the countrys first past the post system is also a barrier. He says: Young people seem increasingly to be put off voting if they think their vote doesnt matter.

While older people are more likely to vote for the same party in every election, young people more often want to vote for fringe parties. So Fisher says that the votes of these youths are more likely to affect outcomes in proportional representation systems.

Does this tally with what young people say?

One good thing 2 come out of this election: folks are now more engaged. The ppl who didn't vote last time will exercise their right in 2018!  :) (@KindaFedUp) May 1, 2017

Sarah Wilson, a 19-year-old student at Sunderland University, said: I didnt vote in the last election as I dont believe politicians appeal enough to the younger generation.

I dont think there is enough education around politics for young people to fully understand it.

However, Sarah does plan to vote on Thursday. Only because Ive had more of an insight into the groups and their policies, she says.

21-year-old Daniel Taylor, a fellow Sunderland University student who skipped the polls in 2015, said: I think my main reason for not voting was because I wasnt particularly interested in politics.

There wasnt anyone that I honestly related or that I felt was genuine, and that certainly didnt help with my engagement in the subject.

Like Sarah, Daniel plans to vote this time around, saying: I think this year is really pivotal in British politics  particularly when we consider not only Brexit but the fact we have a real left-wing leader at the head of the Labour party.

Will things be different for the upcoming election?

Young people, whatever your political view, register to vote and use that vote on June 8th. Your voice really matters #Election2017  Julie Bentley (@juliebentley) April 19, 2017

Much media attention has been paid to young people becoming increasingly politically engaged thanks to factors including Brexit and Corbyns leadership of the Labour party.

YouGov survey results Many of Labours policies seem to be geared towards young people. Fisher cites the abolition of tuition fees as particularly appealing to students. Many of Labours policies seem to be geared towards young people. Fisher cites the abolition of tuition fees as particularly appealing to students. Thefor the beginning of June show that 71% of 18 to 24-year-olds intend to vote Labour, compared with 15% who plan to vote Conservative. Compare this to 46% of 25 to 49-year-olds who plan to vote Labour, 33% of 50 to 64-year-olds and 19% of those aged 65 and over.

Even though turnout in the Brexit referendum was slightly less polarised by age than in the 2015 election, still turnout among those aged 18-34 was some 10 points lower than average.

How can the trend be reversed?

strong believer that politics should be a compulsory subject, we must engage young people so they understand what is going on #GE2017  Andre Haylock (@HaylockAndre) April 20, 2017

Fisher cites two key tools to help re-engage young people: greater education and an overhaul of the electoral system.

Research shows that more civics education in schools can increase political knowledge and engagement and so encourage future turnout, Fisher says.

But a key administrative change which would help a lot would be automatic voter registration systems of the kind they have in many other European countries.
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Veterans and their families are invited to a free Veterans Town Hall Meeting from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on June 17. The event will be held at City Hall, 23555 Goddard Road.

The initial portion of the program will involve discussing what benefits are available to veterans and their families. The town hall meeting will begin at 11:30 a.m. and there will be a Vietnam Pinning Ceremony at 12:30, reserved for any veteran who served during that era.

On hand will be representatives from the Detroit VA Medical Center on the topics of medical vesting exams, on the spot registration, vocational rehabilitation, Wayne County veterans affairs, the Great Lakes National Cemetery, veterans benefits, community resources, community colleges and the local VFW.

Refreshments will be available.
In the Northeast Security Review meeting, presided over by Union Home Minister (UHM) Rajnath Singh, held at New Delhi on May 16, 2017, security agencies demanded a greater presence of intelligence and Security Force (SF) personnel in five contiguous Districts of Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland along the Indo-Myanmar border. An unnamed official who participated in the meeting disclosed, "We have apprised the Home Minister of the security situation in the Northeast and informed him that all militant activities are being controlled from Arunachal's Tirap, Changlang and Longding Districts; and Nagaland's Mon and Tuensang Districts,". During the meeting it was emphasized that these five districts had emerged as the hub of the 'last remaining militants' in the Northeast.

According to partial data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), these five Districts have accounted for a total of 310 fatalities (30 civilians, 27 SF personnel, 253 militants) since January 1, 2000, of which at least two (both militants) have been recorded in the current year.

Of these five Districts, Mon accounted for 128 fatalities (six civilians, 13 SF personnel, 109 militants), followed by Tirap with 85 fatalities (one civilian, 11 SF personnel, 73 militants), Tuensung with 61 fatalities (18 civilians, and 43 militants), Changlang with 32 fatalities (five civilians, three SF personnel, 24 militants) and Longding with four fatalities (all militants)

Moreover, nine contiguous Districts - Charaideo (formed on August 15, 2015 by bifurcating Sibsagar), Dibrugarh, Jorhat, Sibsagar, Tinsukia, Kiphere, Longleng, Mokukchang and Zunhebato - around these five districts (Arunachal's Tirap, Changlang and Longding; and Nagaland's Mon and Tuensang) together accounted for at least 635 fatalities (257 civilians, 53 SF personnel, 324 militants) since January 1, 2000. Of these 635 fatalities, at least six (two SF personnel and four militants) have been recorded in the current year.

Among these nine Districts, Tinsukia alone accounted for 302 fatalities (147 civilians, 32 SF personnel, 123 militants), followed by Dibrugarh with 116 fatalities (62 civilians, 8 SF personnel, 46 militants), Zunheboto with 88 fatalities (13 civilians, and 75 militants), Sibsagar with 39 fatalities (13 civilians, four SF personnel, 22 militants),Kiphere accounted for 36 fatalities (seven civilians, five SF personnel, 24 militants), Jorhat with 30 fatalities (12 civilians, four SF personnel, 14 militants), Mokukchang with 22 fatalities (three civilians and 19 militants), and Longleng with two fatalities (both militants).

Overall fatalities in these 14 Districts, since January 1, 2000, thus total 945 (287 civilians, 80 SF personnel, and 578 militants). Total fatalities in the entire northeast during the same period amounted to 12,400 (5,160 civilians, 1,143 SF personnel, 6,097 militants). These fatalities were reported from over 75 Districts in seven States.

This small region around of 14 Districts that constitute the surviving 'hub' of militant activity in the Northeast account for 7.62 per cent of total insurgency-linked fatalities recorded in the seven States of northeast since January 1, 2000.

The five 'hub' Districts - Tirap, Changlang, Longding, Mon and Tuensang Districts - together constitute an area of about 11,601 square kilometres (within a total area of 255,094 square kilometers in the seven insurgency afflicted States of the Northeast) and are sandwiched between the Indian States of Assam and Nagaland and, at the other end, Myanmar. These Districts are strategically important as they facilitate relatively easy infiltration and exfilitration for insurgents operating in the entire northeast from the loosely governed Sagiang Division of neighbouring Myanmar.

These routes have gained enhanced significance for the Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagaland-Khaplang (NSCN-K), United Liberation Front of Asom-Independent (ULFA-I), leading groups behind the militant consortium United National Liberation Front of West East South Asia (UNLFWESA), to mostly to attack the SFs. These routes were traditionally dominated by NSCN-K which has, since its unilateral abrogation of the Cease Fire Agreement on [March 27, 2015] escalated violence against SFs. Further, since coming to power in 2009, the Sheikh Hasina-led Government in Bangladesh has denied safe havens in Bangladesh to Assam-based proscribed groups such as ULFA-I, National Democratic Front of Bodoland-IK Songbijit faction (NDFB-IKS), Kamatapur Liberation Organisation (KLO) and others, making them almost exclusively dependent on Myanmar routes.

According to a February 4, 2017, report, ULFA-I has set up a new 'general headquarters' at Hakiyot, a densely forested area of around 25-30 kilometres inside Myanmar, to replace its existing 'general headquarters' at Vangi. The Hakiyot camp is located opposite Longding [Arunachal Pradesh] and Mon [Nagaland] Districts. The ULFA-I camp was established after the militant Kachin Independence Army (KIA) in Myanmar set a deadline for the outfit to remove its camps from Vangi in the Yunnan province of China, along the Sino-Myanmar frontier. The ULFA-I has now shifted from Arunachal's Changlang and Tirap Districts to Longding, and its cadres now cross over to Longding either directly from Myanmar or through Mon, entering Assam either from Longding into Charaideo and Sivasagar Districts or through other eastern Arunachal Districts. [KIA is the 'military wing' of the Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO), a 'political group' representing ethnic Kachin fighting the Myanmarese Government in northern Myanmar.]

Governments - both at the respective State and central levels - are now planning to concentrate more on these areas for further improvement in the security situation in the northeast.

On March 9, 2017, Arunachal Pradesh Home Minister Kumar Waii disclosed to the State Assembly that the State Government has appointed 1,570 Police personnel, out of 1,949 sanctioned posts, under the Centre's special package for insurgency-hit Tirap, Changlang and Longding Districts. A total of 36 sub-inspectors, 1,530 constables, three head constables (traffic) and one carrier were appointed under the special package. "These posts were sanctioned for opening 11 new Police Stations and upgradation of nine existing Police Stations in the Districts," Waii stated, adding that recruitment for the remaining 379 vacant posts would be carried out 'soon'. Earlier, on February 20, 2017, UHM Rajnath Singh, while announcing a special package for the three Districts, had noted, "The special package for Tirap, Changlang and Longding Districts will also include creation of new posts, purchase of vehicles and equipment for Police,"

There is also a proposal to include the three Arunachal Districts into the fold of the sixth schedule of the Indian Constitution. On March 7, 2017, Chief Minister Prema Khandu, in response to a question asked by former Chief Minister Nabam Tuki, informed the State Assembly that the State Government would write to the Centre to expedite the process of the creation of the Autonomous District Councils of Tirap, Changlang and Longding. It is pertinent to recall that, the Arunachal Pradesh Legislative Assembly had passed a resolution on February 16, 2004, that Arunachal Pradesh should be included in the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution of India to enable creation of Autonomous District Councils. It passed similar resolutions in 2007 and 2012 as well. Subsequently, on December 11, 2013, the State Cabinet approved the taking up of a proposal for the creation of Autonomous District Councils with Government of India as per the State Assembly resolution. Nocte, Wancho, Tangsa, Tutsa and Ollo are the principal tribal groups that inhabit these Districts. Presently, the provisions of the Sixth Schedule of Indian Constitution apply to the administration of the tribal dominated areas of Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram. Since the late 1990's, there has been a demand for the formation of a separate Union Territory comprising Tirap and Changlang.

On March 18, 2016, the Nagaland Assembly passed the Nagaland Backward Tribes Commission Bill 2016, to establish a commission for backward tribes in the State to safeguard their rights. The Commission is intended to focus on the six backward tribes of Eastern Nagaland. The undivided District of Tuensung [now consisting of Mon, Longleng and Kiphere, besides the parent Tuensung District], which is inhabited mainly by the Chang, the Konyak, Sangtam, Khiamniungan, Yimchungru and Phom tribes, remain backward on most socio-economic indices.

The insurgency in the Northeast has witnessed a tremendous decline, with overall fatalities falling to 160 in 2016, the lowest since 1992. The reasons range from divisions within the ranks of militant groups, loss of Bhutan and Bangladesh as militant sanctuaries, and progressive negotiations between the Government and many of the active extremist formations in the region. However, major insurgent groups including ULFA-I, NDFB-IKS, and NSCN-K continue to operate from Myanmar. Further, the 'unification' of these militant groups under the UNLFWESA banner is a cause for concern, particularly in view of the porous Indo-Myanmar border which facilitates their operations. It is, consequently, crucial that these border areas, which lack even basic infrastructure like roads, are strategically developed both for the economic well being of the population, as well as the efficiency of security deployments and systems, so that these frontiers are better protected.
Mumbai, June 7 (IBNS): Bollywood actress Priyanka Chopra, who is a popular face on American television and also in Hollywood, recently spoke about bridging the gap between different kinds of people of society in an ad campaign made by the American company GAP.

The 34 years old actress uploaded a picture wearing a white tee will other actors on Instagram.

Chopra, who is the global goodwill ambassador of UNICEF in a few minutes video made by GAP, said: "I think bridging the gap is exactly what the world needs right now. There are so many gaps in this world that need to be filled. We in this generation and our children going forward would need to have a relatively evolved sense of thinking which goes beyond race. "

"Celebrating one's differences does not necessarily mean to be different. Celebrating our differences is being proud of where you come from and engulfing other people who are different into your world" she added.

In a video uploaded on Instagram, GAP said: "gap Since 1969, weve been about transcending differences  its in our jeans. Were proud to partner with @edward_enninful, appointed @britishvogue editor-in-chief to create this video. It celebrates optimistic American style, the diversity that makes each of us unique, and how Gap white tees (plus one beautiful song) can bring us all together. Thats #BridgingTheGap."

GAP is an American clothing and accessories retailer that was founded way back in 1969.

Chopra, who played the lead role in two seasons of an American television series, Quantico, debuted in Hollywood with Baywatch, this year.

She is currently returning to India after completing her promotional tour of Baywatch.

Image: Official Instagram and Facebook profile of Priyanka Chopra.
New Delhi, June 7 (IBNS): The Indian government has issued advisory for those nationals who will be travelling to Kailash Mansarovar through Nepal in the upcoming days.

The Indian government said travellers should ensure that they have appropriate Chinese visa in hand before commencing their journey.

"They should ensure that they have appropriate Chinese visa in hand before commencing their journey. The Chinese Visa is to be obtained from the Chinese Embassy in New Delhi and not in Kathmandu," the Indian government said in its statement.

"They should note that they would be traversing Simikot and Hilsa in Nepal on their way. Both these places have inadequate tourist/medical infrastructure, and are prone to inclement weather due to which to-and-fro flights get disrupted," it said.

The government urged Indian nationals to get themselves medically examined before embarking on the tour.

"They should get themselves medically examined before embarking on the tour. They should keep at least seven days of medicine, including High Altitude Sickness and other life saving drugs," the government said.

The government said: "They should carry enough cash, mobile connection (with international roaming facility) and emergency contact numbers of their tour operators and Embassy of India, Kathmandu."

"They should avoid booking around full moon dates since there is overbooking during these periods. This leads to pilgrims being stranded for several days due to inadequate infrastructure facilities in Simikot and Hilsa or flight cancellations because of inclement weather," read the statement.

Images: Anindya Mookerjee
New York, June 7(Just Earth News): Citing decades of neglect in mental health care, a United Nations human rights expert on Tuesday denounced abiomedical gatekeepersa who perpetuate stigma and urged States and psychiatrists to act with courage to reform a acrisis-hit system built on outdated attitudes.a

We need little short of a revolution in mental health care to end decades of neglect, abuse and violence, Dainius PAras, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health said after presenting his latest report to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

The UN expert reported that right violations affect often the socially challenged groups including persons with intellectual, cognitive and psychosocial disabilities. He also stressed that people of all ages, when they have mental health needs, too often suffer from either an absence of care and support or from services that are ineffective and harmful.

PAras suggested moving away from traditional practices and thinking, and enabling a long overdue shift to a rights-based approach.

Where mental health systems exist, they are segregated from other healthcare and based on outdated practices that violate human rights, he noted, underscoring that mental health policies and services are in crisis  not a crisis of chemical imbalances, but of power imbalances  and called for bold political commitments, urgent policy responses and immediate remedial action.

Turning to the underlying causes of these imbalances delaying the transition to rights-based care, he said that the dominance of the biomedical model, with its overdependence on medication, and the biased use of evidence, contaminates knowledge about mental health.

There is now unequivocal evidence of the failures of a system that relies too heavily on the biomedical model of mental health services, including the front-line and excessive use of psychotropic medicines, and yet these models persist, PAras explains.

This pattern occurs in countries across the national income spectrum, he added. The UN expert points out that it represents a failure to integrate evidence and the voices of those most affected into policy, and a failure to respect, protect and fulfil the right to health.

In his report, PAras warns that power and decision-making in mental health are concentrated in the hands of biomedical gatekeepers, particularly those representing biological psychiatry.

These gatekeepers, supported by the pharmaceutical industry, maintain this power by adhering to two outdated concepts: that people experiencing mental distress and diagnosed with mental disorders are dangerous, and that biomedical interventions are medically necessary in many cases.

In order to ensure compliance with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, PAras calls for a paradigm shift as these concepts keep alive stigma and discrimination.

Special Rapporteurs and independent experts are appointed by the Geneva-based UN 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.

Credit: UNICEF/Prinsloo

Source: www.justearthnews.com
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New York, June 7(Just Earth News): As part of its effort to combat growing drug resistance, the United Nations health agency on Tuesday announced that it is classifying antibiotics into three categories and providing new advice on which to use for common infections and which to preserve for the most serious circumstances.

According to a news release issued by the agency, a key revision in this year's update was the grouping of antibiotic medicines into three categories  Access, Watch and Reserve to enhance treatment outcomes, reduce the development of drug-resistant bacteria, and preserve the effectiveness of last resort antibiotics that are needed when all others fail.

Also, 10 antibiotics for adults and 12 for children were also added to the list.

The new WHO list should help health system planners and prescribers ensure people who need antibiotics have access to them, and ensure they get the right one, said Suzanne Hill, the Director of Essential Medicines and Health Products at the UN agency, in a news release in which she also underscored the importance of proper use of these drugs given rising antimicrobial resistance in populations around the globe.

The updates to the antibiotics section are also in support of the UN agency's global action plan on antimicrobial resistance, the news release added.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is the ability of a microorganism (like bacteria, viruses, and some parasites) to stop an antimicrobial (such as antibiotics, antivirals and antimalarials) from working against it. As a result, standard treatments become ineffective, infections persist and may spread to others.

In addition to the antibiotics, new drugs included in the WHO Essentials Medicines List (EML) contain new medicines, such as two oral cancer treatments, a new pill for hepatitis C (HepC) that combines two medicines, a more effective treatment for HIV as well as an older drug that can be taken to prevent HIV infection in people at high risk, new paediatric formulations of medicines for tuberculosis (TB), and pain relievers.

Further in the release, Marie-Paule Kieny, WHO Assistant Director-General for Health Systems and Innovation also highlighted that safe and effective medicines form an essential part of any health system.

Making sure all people can access the medicines they need, when and where they need them, is vital to countries' progress towards universal health coverage, she said.

The WHO list of essential medicines was launched in 1977, coinciding with the endorsement by governments at the World Health Assembly of Health for all as the guiding principle for WHO and countries' health policies.

Many countries have adopted the concept of essential medicines and have developed lists of their own, using the EML as a guide. The EML is updated and revised every two years by the WHO Expert Committee on the Selection and Use of Essential Medicines.

Photo: WHO/Jim Holmes

Source: www.justearthnews.com
Book looks into 52 cases unsolved murders with ties to South Dakota

Christine Wevik started researching cold cases in South Dakota thinking there were about 30. She found 155.
New York, June 7(Just Earth News): In a major address in Geneva, the United Nations human rights chief on Tuesday stressed that denying access or not cooperating with UN bodies would not diminish scrutiny of a Governmentas human rights record.

Addressing the 35th session of the Human Rights Council, Zeid Raad Al Hussein, decried some Governments for cutting off or selectively choosing how they cooperation with his office and UN bodies.

It would be intolerable if delegations were to conclude that by maintaining minimal engagement with the human rights mechanisms they can evade or betray those commitments to their own peoples, and to the peoples of the world, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said in an oral update this morning to the Council.

He underscored that every Government is party to at least one of the nine core human rights treaties and has accepted that it is the duty of States, regardless of their political, economic and cultural systems, to promote and protect all human rights and fundamental freedom.

Whether or not individual leaders consider this truth convenient, it is nonetheless a fact that denial of human rights in one county concerns every State in the Organization

Zeid noted that the world sees increasingly the results of discrimination, deprivation and injustice  in the escalation of crises and suffering, and the outbreak of war. Whether or not individual leaders consider this truth convenient, it is nonetheless a fact that denial of human rights in one county concerns every State in the Organization, he stressed.

With a mandate from the international community to promote and protect all human rights, his office (OHCHR) represents the worlds commitment to universal ideals of human dignity. Its thematic priorities include strengthening international human rights mechanisms; enhancing equality and countering discrimination; and early warning and protection of human rights in situations of conflict, violence and insecurity. It also supports the work of UN human rights mechanisms, including the Human Rights Council.

Taking place at the UN Office in Geneva, the Councils session will last three weeks and tackle a range of human rights issues currently before the world.

Refusal to cooperate with UN bodies

The senior UN official also spoke out against some Governments decisions to keep UN rights experts out of their borders, and rallied against absolutely unacceptable incidents of threats and insults directed at UN Special Rapporteurs.

I strongly contest the self-serving argument presented by some, that this Council should avoid addressing country situations  a view which is usually voiced by leaders of States that feature few independent institutions, and which sharply curtail fundamental freedoms, he stated.

He specified, for example, the Government of Burundi, which was elected to the Council in 2015, yet continues to commit some of the most serious human rights violation dealt with by this Council and has suspended all cooperation with the Office of the High Commissioner (OHCHR).

In September the Councils independent mission was declared persona non grata, and the current Commission of Inquiry has not been able to enter the country, Zeid added.

He noted a number of countries which are not members of the Council, which have not permitted any visits by Special Procedures representatives, such as Special Rapporteurs.

Included in this group is Syria, which has cut off access to OHCHR and the Syrian Commission of Inquiry.

This is notwithstanding the continued horrific suffering of the Syrian people, particularly in besieged communities. I repeat my call for the release of all detainees wrongfully imprisoned in Syria, Zeid urged.

As for the already-dire situation in the Kasai provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which continues to deteriorate, spreading to other provinces and across the border with Angola, Zeid said that given the difficulties in accessing the areas where violations and abuses are occurring, he will be dispatching a team to the region next week to meet with people fleeing the attacks.

Unless I receive appropriate responses from the Government regarding a joint investigation by 8 June, I will insist on the creation of an international investigative mechanism for the Kasais, he stated.

Turning to representatives of his office, Zeid expressed very serious concern about intimidation and reprisals brought on by State officials against people who engage with the UN on human rights. He specifically mentioned smear and hate campaigns against the Special Rapportuers on Myanmar, Summary Executions in the context of discussions on the Philippines, and on Iran.

When Government or other officials intimidate, arrest or harm these individuals, they are attacking a fundamental element of the work of this Council and the UN, and it is our responsibility to do all we can to protect them, Zeid said.

He noted also that the Councils next annual report would focus on reprisals, and called for cooperation with Assistant Secretary-General Andrew Gilmour, who is leading UN action on that issue.

Condemning terrorism in all forms

Zeid began his address with a strong condemnation of terrorism throughout the world.

The brutality of Daesh [also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL] and other terrorist groups seemingly knows no bounds, he said.

Yesterday, my staff reported to me that bodies of murdered Iraqi men, women and children are still lying on the streets of the al-Shira neighbourhood of western Mosul, after at least 173 people were shot and killed by Daesh on 1 June to prevent them from fleeing.

After condemning the attacks, he called for Governments to eradicate the threat, but he cautioned against trampling on peoples rights.

Please remember this: for every citizen wrongfully detained under a vague anti-terrorism law, and humiliated, abused, or tortured, it is not simply one individual who then nurses a grievance against the authorities, but most of their family too. Send one innocent person to prison, and you may deliver six or seven family members into the hands of those who oppose the government, with a few who may even go further than that.

The UN Human Rights Council is an inter-governmental body within the UN system responsible for strengthening the promotion and protection of human rights around the globe and for addressing situations of human rights violations and make recommendations on them. It was setup by the UN General Assembly in March 2007, and replaced the Commission on Human Rights.

The Council is made up of 47 UN Member States which are elected by the General Assembly.

UN Photo/Jean-Marc Ferre

Source: www.justearthnews.com
Tehran, June 7 (IBNS): Militant group ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attacks in Iran Parliament building and in the Mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini, media reports said.

The SITE intelligence group website said: "The Islamic State (IS) claimed through its Amaq News Agency its first attack in Iran, striking the Iranian parliament and the Khomeini shrine in the capital, Tehran."

In another report, the group said: "The Islamic States (IS) Amaq News Agency released a video recorded by one of the fighters involved in the raid inside the Iranian parliament in Tehran."

Armed men carried out two attacks in Iran's capital, killing a guard at the parliament building and wounding several people in the Mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini, Aljazeera reported quoting state media.

State broadcaster IRIB and the Fars news agency said one armed man was inside the mausoleum.

Lawmaker Elias Hazrati told state television three attackers, one with a pistol and two with AK-47 assault rifles, raided parliament on Wednesday.

Another lawmaker said one of the assailants was surrounded by security forces and all the doors to the building had been closed, the Aljazeera report quoted ISNA news agency as saying.

Iran's state TV says four attackers were involved in the parliament shooting. At least eight people were wounded.

Some reports indicate one of the attackers in parliament had explosive belt on him. He has been surrounded by security forces.

The identity and the motivation of the assailant are still unclear.
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.
New York, June 7(Just Earth News): Artificial intelligence (AI) is responsible for self-driving cars and voice-recognition smart phones, but the United Nations this week is refocusing AI on sustainable development and assisting global efforts to eliminate poverty and hunger, and to protect the environment.

Starting on Wednesdayin Geneva, the AI for Good Global Summit, which is co-organized by the UN International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and the XPRIZE Foundation, with support for some 20 UN agencies, brings together key innovators in the field with humanitarian actors and academics.

Artificial Intelligence has the potential to accelerate progress towards a dignified life, in peace and prosperity, for all people, said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. The time has arrived for all of us  governments, industry and civil society  to consider how AI will affect our future.

In a video message to the summit, Guterres called AI a new frontier with advances moving at warp speed.

He noted that that while AI is already transforming our world socially, economically and politically, there are also serious challenges and ethical issues which must be taken into account  including cybersecurity, human rights and privacy.

Guterres noted that developing countries can gain from the benefits of artificial intelligence, but are also at the highest risk of being left behind.

This Summit can help ensure that artificial intelligence charts a course that benefits humanity and bolsters our shared values, he underscored.

The opening session of the summit is expected to give voice to the leading minds in AI, with breakout sessions focusing on issues such as sustainable living and poverty reduction.

Today, we've gathered here to discuss how far AI can go, how much it will improve our lives, and how we can all work together to make it a force for good ITU Secretary-General Houlin Zhao

ITU Secretary-General Houlin Zhao, said the event will assist us in determining how the UN, ITU and other UN agencies can work together with industry and the academic community to promote AI innovation and create a good environment for the development of artificial intelligence.

He called the summit a neutral platform for international dialogue which can build a common understanding of emerging technologies and how they can apply to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adding that the divers array of thought leaders gathered for the event will weigh in on such topics as how far AI can go, how much it will improve our lives, and how we can all work together to make it a force for good.

The summit will run through Friday, with a closing session on applying AI for good.

Photo: WIPO/Emmanuel Berrod

Source: www.justearthnews.com
Actress Priyanka Chopra, who has joined the likes of Wiz Khalifa, Adwoa Aboah and Maria Borges for an ad film titled "Bridging the Gap", says there are so many gaps in this world that need to be bridged.

"'Bridging the Gap' is exactly what the world needs right now. There are so many gaps in this world that need to be bridged and filled. The most important one for me is empowering women, women need to be given an opportunity to stand on their feet and do the best they can for themselves," Priyanka said in a statement.

"Bridging the Gap", a film celebrating American optimism with Edward Enninful's directorial debut, also stars Christie Brinkley, Miles Chamley-Watson, Jonathan Groff, Fernanda Ly, Casil Mcarthur, Lineisy Montero, Ellen Rosa, Jasmine Sanders, Yara Shahidi and Alek Wek. It has been made for American clothing brand Gap.

Enninful has also cast and styled the film in which the iconic Gap basic white T-shirt serves as a blank canvas for each of the cast to take and make their own, offering a glimpse at how their differences unite them.

"This project is about authenticity and people living their truths," said Enninful.

The cast sings "Sunny" by Boney M, which conveys a message of optimism, and they dance to their own rhythm displaying their individuality, and then come together as a symbol of unity.

Khalifa said: "To me, Bridging the Gap' means making diversity more acceptable, by making it okay to look or act different. I do that by being myself."

For Brinkley, it's a "statement of mutual humanity and freedom".

"Freedom for me means not being concerned what others think of or expect from me, but living my life with the intention of making the world a better place for others," Brinkley added.
Soon to be 'Haseena' Shraddha Kapoor, who will don many characters in her films to come, posted a sweet message for her father Shakti Kapoor, who has always been a major positive entity in her life.

The young actress took to Instagram to share an old picture of her Father, actor Shakti Kapoor and brother Siddhanth Kapoor.

"HYAH! My 2 rockstars. Baapu, my guiding star & Bhaiya, who has the biggest heart. @siddhanthkapoor#Blessed #Grateful ". Shraddha wrote on Instagram.

The picture serves as yet another family picture shared by Shraddha, who is known to give her fans a peek into her personal life.

The actress is known to be extremely active on social media platforms and keeps updating her followers about her day and life events.

The actress was recently in Pune where she shot for her forthcoming biopic 'Haseena'. Post which she would get into the preparations of her next project, the biopic on Saina Nehwal.
Toronto, June 7 (IBNS): In a letter sent to Members of Provincial Parliament (MPP) in Toronto, Mayor John Tory drew their attention to the social housing crisis in the city of Toronto, according to media reports.

In his letter to the MPPs, Tory described the situation prevailing in the Toronto Community Housing (TCH) units in their respective ridings.

Tory said that at the City Council's meeting last month his colleagues had voted unanimously to inform MPPs about the current and future state of TCH units in their riding.

City Council had said that all MPPs should also be made aware how an unfunded TCH capital repair plan would impact constituents in their riding, including some of the most vulnerable residents.

In his letter, Tory urged each Toronto MPP to contact Chris Ballard, Minister of Housing or raise a question to this effect in the Legislature.

He said that all levels of government should come together and fund the backlog of housing repairs.

Proper investment from all three levels of government is required urgently, said Tory, to prevent the decline of these homes into further states of disrepair, which would ultimately lead to the closure of these units by the City of Toronto in the wake of Torontos rising demand for housing.

Tory said that the City Council had approved a 10-year capital repair plan in 2013, which outlined that all three levels of government would contribute a one-third share to the state of housing repair backlog totalling $2.6 billion, according to media reports.

Since that time, said Tory, the City of Toronto has contributed about $1 billion to the repair plan from City-derived sources.

Media reports quoted Tory as saying that the federal government had promised, in its most recent budget, a considerable amount of funding for housing and repairs but the provincial government had failed to provide any funds for this housing crisis.

The only scanty fund it provided was restricted to energy retrofits.

In addition to writing to individual MPPs, Mayor Tory also sent a separate letter to Minister Ballard to inform him of the need to fund housing repairs, according to media reports.

Tory pointed out that without immediate support, the City of Toronto would see about 400 units to be at risk of closing this year and 600 units will be at risk of closing in 2018.

This will imply that 1,900 of the Citys most vulnerable residents would be at risk of losing their homes in two years, reports said.

The 10-year capital plan will come to an end in 2023, said Tory, which will endanger more than half of Toronto Community Housing's portfolio.

This would imply closing of around 7,200 units while roughly 24,000 units will be at immediate risk of closing and risking more than 45,000 people to lose their homes, he said.

More than a third of the units in critical and poor condition were downloaded by the Province with no money in the bank, leaving the city of Toronto in debt, alleged the Mayor.

The decision of the Wynne government to eliminate Toronto Pooling Compensation  which would have eased the social housing burden borne by Toronto -- further aggravated the grave situation, reports said.

Tory pointed out that Toronto has 110,000 individuals living in social housing, which would, by itself, be the 24th largest city in the Province.



(Reporting by Asha Bajaj)

Image: John Tory Twitter
Nearly two lakh pilgrims have so far secured advance registration for the annual 40-day pilgrimage to the holy cave shrine of Amarnath in Jammu and Kashmir, scheduled to begin simultaneously from Baltal and Chandanwari routes later this month.

"As of now, nearly two lakh pilgrims had secured advance registration through the designated bank branches, group registration facility and booking of helicopter tickets for shri amarnathji yatra 2017," Chief Executive Officer, Shrine Board, Umang Narula, said at a meeting chaired by Jammu and Kashmir Governor N N Vohra here.

Vohra, who is also the chairman of Shri Amarnathji Shrine Board (SASB), had convened the meeting to review the arrangements for the yatra which is scheduled to start on June 29.

Narula said the registration was being provided to the intending pilgrims since March 1 through 437 designated bank branches of the Punjab National Bank, J&K Bank and YES Bank, located in 32 States and UTs across the country.

The ongoing trend of registration shows that about 1200 persons are being registered every day and the maximum numbers are being registered from the states of Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan and West Bengal, he said.

He said it was also noted that the advance registration via the Pahalgam route is slightly more preferred than the Baltal route and this conforms to the traditional pattern of the yatra.

As many as 143 groups have so far utilised the group registration facility which is being especially provided by the Shrine Board, he said.

The CEO said with the reduced helicopter fare for yatra 2017, as compared to previous years, pilgrims in larger numbers have booked tickets in advance.

This year, per passenger one way heli-fare for Neelgrath-Panjtarni is Rs.1,715 and Rs.2,950 for Pahalgam- Panjtarni, he said.

The Shri Amarnathji Shrine Board (SASB), which conducts the annual pilgrimage to the shrine dedicated to Lord Shiva, has issued advisories for the pilgrimage which involves a trek at an altitude of 14,000 feet.

People who wish to trek to the shrine must furnish medical certificates, the authorities said yesterday, adding that those below 13 or above 75 years of age will not be allowed to join the pilgrimage.
At least three terrorists of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN-K) were killed and one Assam Rifles (AR) officer lost his life in an encounter in Mon district in Nagaland on Wednesday, according to media reports.

Three AR jawans were also injured in the encounter that took place at Lappa in Tizit circle on Tuesday night.

Assam Rifles personnel raided Lappa at around 11 pm following inputs that NSCN(K) cadres were moving through that area, a defence spokesperson was quoted as saying by a news agency.

The encounter continued for several hours. Later, bodies of the three militants were found.

The encounter comes days after Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh had termed religious radicalisation as a serious security threat and said if not checked in time, it could lead to terrorism.

The home minister had made the remark while reviewing the security situation in the Northeast with chief secretaries and DGPs of the states of the region.

(With inputs from agencies)
All government departments in Uttar Pradesh have been directed to open Twitter accounts within a week for effective communication with the people, redressal of their complaints and also to highlight their works.

"Through these Twitter accounts, grievances of the people can be resolved timely with coordination between departments," Principal Secretary Information Awanish Kumar Awasthi said here while addressing a two-day workshop of information department on "effective use of social media in government works".

He said it will also help people to connect with the government.

The move has been initiated after Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath asked the information department to ensure that all departments join Twitter like the Central government.

The state police Twitter handle @Uppolice, which has over 1,77,000 followers, is providing help in solving grievances of the people.

Adityanath, whose twitter handle is @myogiadityanath has 5,22,000 followers and through it, he highlights his daily achievements and engagements.

The state police had launched the twitter-based grievance redressal service last year and has addressed lakhs of complaints since then.

UP is the first state in the country, which is using Twitter service at all its police stations to redress grievances of people in order to have a better connect with them, state police officers claimed.

These initiatives were previously taken by the Centre mainly by ministries like the External Affairs, Railways and Commerce.

The whole process is based on Twitter's customer relation management platform in which software complaints are forwarded to the concerned districts with a particular code that is generated for the complaint.

Through this workshop, which will continue for two days the information department aims to train its information officers to effectively work on this social media platform.

State Information Minister Neelkanth Tiwari, Senior officers including Director Information, AK Jha and others were present at the workshop.
BJP's West Bengal unit chief Dilip Ghosh on Wednesday met a Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) delegation here amid massive protest by the hill party against the alleged imposition of Bengali in Darjeeling schools by the Mamata Banerjee government.

The Trinamool Congress government led by Banerjee has denied the charge.

Ghosh met the delegation led by GJM's General Secretary Roshan Giri.

"Meeting the representatives of GJM, discussing about changing political scenario of West Bengal," Ghosh said in a tweet.

On Tuesday, hundreds of GJM supporters led by party chief Bimal Gurung waved black flags and burnt Banerjee's effigies in Darjeeling district.

They demanded the state government should issue a circular that Bengali would not be made compulsory in the hills.

On Monday, Banerjee had accused the GJM-run Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA)  the development authority in the north Bengal hills  of "spreading falsehood" about "imposition" of Bengali language.

She said at a meeting in Mirik that "Bengali would not be compulsory at schools in the Darjeeling hills and in certain areas of the Dooars and the Terai".

Banerjee has also announced a special audit to check how the GTA has utilised the government aids and warned of punitive measures if any discrepancies were found.

In the just concluded civic polls in the hills, the GJM managed to retain its top spot, but the Trinamool also made substantial gains by winning the Mirik Notified area, and picking up seats in Darjeeling, Kalimpong and Kurseong.
West Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh on Wednesday accused the TMC government in the state of "step motherly" attitude towards GJM as it is has an alliance with BJP in the hills.

"A GJM delegation met me today and complained about the step motherly attitude of the state government. How Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA) is not allowed to work properly and they don't receive funds regularly. The GJM delegation told me how they are being hounded and victimized by the state government. The autonomy of GTA is only on paper, the reality is something else," Ghosh said.

The meeting between the GJM and BJP comes at a point when West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has accused GJM of pursuing divisive politics in the hills. Banerjee has also questioned the performance of the GJM-ruled GTA and said the money sent by the state government has been misused by the ruling regime.

The GTA is presently under the control of Gorkha Jana Mukti Morcha (GJM), which has been fighting for the demand of separate state of Gorkhaland.

Ghosh said GJM has requested him to apprise the central government and BJP leadership about the ground reality in the hills.

"We have an alliance with GJM in the hills and that is why they are being victimized. They have requested us to inform the central government and BJP leadership about the ground reality in the hills," Ghosh said.

Asked to comment on the demand of separate state of Gorkhaland by GJM, Ghosh said "How can I comment on it. It is for the central government to decide,".
The Budget Session of the Uttarakhand Assembly beginning on Thursday is likely to be a stormy affair as the opposition Congress is preparing to corner the government over its demand for a CBI probe into the multi-crore NH 74 scam.

Leader of Opposition in the Uttarakhand Assembly Indira Hridayesh said the opposition will stage a dharna in the House if a CBI probe is not ordered into the scam and the state government does not lay the report of the then Kumaon commissioner on it in the assembly.

Accusing the Centre of mounting pressure on the state government for withdrawing its recommendation for a CBI probe, Hridayesh shared with the press contents of a letter by Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari to the Chief Minister in which he says how such an action will affect the morale of NHAI officials besides impeding progress of projects taken up by the authority in the state.

"All this shows that the Centre is unwilling to institute a CBI probe into the scam which is tantamount to depriving an elected government of its rights," Hridayesh told reporters.

The Trivendra Singh Rawat government had recommended a CBI probe into the scam soon after being sworn in in March this year but the Centre is yet to act on its recommendation.

Noting that NHAI officials named in the FIR in connection with the scam have gone to court and the Attorney General is defending them, Hridayesh said instead of bringing to book officials involved in the scam the Centre is out to "shield" them.

Announcing that the opposition will not take such a thing lying down, she said the issue will be raised vehemently in the House.

State BJP president Ajay Bhatt said the hue and cry being raised by the Congress over the issue is unnecessary.

"The 90-day time the CBI has to begin its investigation into the irregularities is still on and there is no need to despair," he told reporters.

The Rawat government is also set to table and pass the Lokayukta bill during the session in keeping with a major commitment made in its vision document for the assembly polls in the state this year.

The Lokayukta bill, which was part of our vision document, will be introduced and passed by the House during the session beginning tomorrow, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Prakash Pant said.

The Lokayukta bill had been referred to a standing committee of the state assembly during its last session which has almost finalised its report, he said.
Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Wednesday said his administration is fulfilling every demand being raised by the farmers.

In a series of tweets in Hindi, Chouhan also appealed to the farmers to maintain peace and harmony and not to give credence to rumours. He also listed the steps taken by his government to provide relief to the farmers. He said the government was buying onion Rs. 8 per kg at 48 centres across the state. He also said he himself was a farmer and understood the problems faced by them.

On Tuesday, five farmers were killed and several injured in firing during protests in Mandsaur. The state government ordered a judicial probe into the matter even as police denied firing on the agitating farmers.

Earlier, he announced a compensation of Rs. 1 crore to the kin of those killed in the firing.

On Wednesday, there were sporadic incidents of violence at some places as farmers set vehicles on fire.
The CPI-M on Wednesday brought out protest rallies in the city and the districts of West Bengal after party chief Sitaram Yechury was roughed up by two youth belonging to Hindu Sena at a press conference in New Delhi.

Senior Communist Party of India-Marxist leaders of Kolkata participated in the rally brought out from the party's district office here.

Carrying posters condemning the attack, the slogan shouting rallyists said the party would not "cow down" to the threats and goondaism of the "RSS and its appendages".

The party came up with a number of smaller rallies in various parts of the city.

Similar rallies were organised in most districts of the state.
An FIR has been lodged against former Congress MP from Aligarh Bijendra Singh and 50 others for allegedly breaching peace during the visit of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath to the city on June 5.

The FIR was lodged on Tuesday, police said on Wednesday.

Bijendra Singh described the filing of the case as a "brutal attempt to crush democracy and the freedom of expression".

He said Congress workers were only trying to hand over a memorandum to the Chief Minister regarding certain public grievances when the police prevented them and resorted to lathi charge to disperse them.

Several persons were injured in the scuffle including some policemen, he alleged.

According to the police, the Congress leaders had tried to rough up policemen, who were preventing them to move in the direction of the CM's convoy.

The police also charged the Congress protesters with trying to obstruct traffic on the path of the Chief Minister s convoy.

Shivraj Jivan, Secretary, All India Congress Committee, who was among the protesters, has also been named in the police report.

Local Congress party leaders said they were ready to fight a legal battle on the matter.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Wednesday said that Lt Governor Anil Baijal agreed to his government's proposal that power companies should pay compensation to the consumers for unscheduled power cuts.

"LG agreed DISCOMS (power distribution companies) should pay compensation for unscheduled power cuts to make them accountable. Fairplay and equity to consumers to be ensured," Kejriwal tweeted.

Kejriwal on Wednesday met Baijal and discussed the issue related to unscheduled power cuts and compensation to the consumers.

After the meeting, Baijal tweeted: "Met Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and discussed issue of power cuts and compensation to consumers. Suggested to devise a rational, fair and enforceable model."

Delhi witnessed a record demand of over 6,500 MW supply on Tuesday.

Kejriwal on Tuesday directed Chief Secretary M.M. Kutty to place the proposal of compensation to the consumers by power distribution companies before Baijal for approval.

Last year, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government had issued an order to penalise power distribution companies for unscheduled power cuts. However, the order was later invalidated by the Delhi High Court citing that the government had not taken LG's prior approval.

Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia had on Tuesday talked of reviving an aborted clause in the Delhi Electricity Act which required discoms to pay compensation to the consumers for power-cuts exceeding two hours.


Emphasising the need for an intensive awareness campaign to sensitise people about vector-borne diseases, Delhi Lt Governor Anil Baijal on Wednesday exhorted all the agencies to ramp up their activities and maintain 247 readiness in order to curb dengue and chikungunya.

Chairing a meeting to review the preparedness of the government and other agencies including all the civic bodies, he also directed the Health Department to submit weekly action taken report in this connection.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, Health Minister Satyendar Jain, Chief Secretary M.M. Kutty along with the officials from all the civic bodies were present in the meeting.

Baijal directed that a massive Information, Education and Communication campaign should be launched through handbills in newspapers/hoardings.

He further instructed that local bodies should assign area wise duty to field workers and fix their accountability for their respective areas.

He said that community should be made aware about all the possible breeding sites around their premises.

In the meeting, Kejriwal also stated that in view of upcoming rainy season with possibility of water logging, all the concerned agencies must ensure necessary corrective action.
Actress Kerry Washington travelled to India to learn traditional Indian martial arts and yoga, and says her experience in the country was extraordinary.

The Scandal actress talked about her stay in the country during her appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, read a statement.

When the host Ellen DeGeneres asked Washington about her being a yoga instructor, she said: "I am certified in yoga teaching I lived in India actually. I went to India after college, and studied. I lived there for about seven months in total, but only three months was studying and then I travelled around."

The Django Unchained actress added: "It was pretty extraordinary. I wanted to travel somewhere and study culture and art and I was choosing between, India and Japan. But, I'm allergic to sesame seeds and sea food, so everybody was like, what are you going to eat in Japan? So, I went to India."

Washington studied "traditional Indian martial arts and cultural movements" along with yoga.

"I thought I will be able to make a living when I go back, this was right after college and I was going to go to New York and be a starving artist, try to be an actor. That didn't work out, but I got certified to teach yoga, that's good. And so, I learnt to teach yoga and when I came home my mother said that she would let me live at home if I taught her yoga for an hour a day.

"That lasted for a week; she said you are the worst. She was like, I hate yoga and you may not be able to live here if you keep doing this," she said.

The episode will air in India on Romedy NOW on Wednesday.
World Oceans Day is an annual observation to honour, help protect, and conserve the worlds oceans.

It provides us with many resources and services including oxygen, climate regulation, food sources, medicine, and more.

This day also provides a unique opportunity to take personal and community action to conserve the ocean and its resources.

World Oceans Day is celebrated on 8 June every year.

This year the theme stands as Our Oceans Our Future. The celebration was first implemented by Canada in 1992 at the Earth Summit in Rio-de-Janeiro, Brazil. In 2002, a group comprising of 2000 thinkers advanced the curriculum.

Later, the United Nation Organisation recognised the agenda in the late 2008. It focused on the initiatives to be taken to free the oceans of all kinds of pollutants.

This includes disposal of waste materials, especially plastics, removing the growth of harmful algal blooms, ban on illegal fishing and taking measures against the menace of pirates or smugglers. As an ill-effect of the excessive global warming, the level of sea water is gradually rising. Marine life is subjected to the serious challenges posed by ocean acidification.

The ecosystems of corals and fisheries are vulnerable to the point of replenishment. One must be aware of the fact that our survival is largely indebted to the sea life as it provides economic security, food, medicines and much more.

A host of events from documentary shows, educational programmes, art contests, promoting sustainable seafood and cleaning the beaches are organised every year across the world. Nearly 25 per cent of the total carbon dioxide released on earth is absorbed by the oceans.

Antarctica absorbs 15 per cent of the total volume. Conducting submarine-nuclear tests, causing oil spills, constructing nuclear power stations by the ocean bodies and disposing the wastes into it are some of the major hazards to the oceans.

According to history, the earth was like a fireball. It took years for the planet to cool down. With the presence of vapours in the atmosphere, cloud formation took place. Heavy rainfall followed and filled the depressions on the face of the earth. It also flowed from the highlands to the lowlands that gave rise to the formation of water bodies like rivers and oceans.

According to Alfred Wegener, many years ago, the earth surfaces were like a continued land, resembling a supercontinent  Pangaea. The total surface was surrounded by a global ocean named Panthalassa.

However, the land surfaces had occasional channels that gave way to water bodies. Eventually frequent earthquakes led to consequent changes on the land under oceans, and by the process of continental drifting converted the water channels into seas and oceans.

At present, extending for about one-third of the total land surface, the Pacific is the largest as well as the deepest ocean in the world. The Atlantic Ocean formed during the Triassic period, after the Pacific, Indian and Arctic oceans, is the youngest and the second largest.

The mysterious Bermuda Triangle is located here, near Washington to Cape Canaveral, at 30 degree north and within the Caribbean Irelands.

Its name was derived from the mountain Atlas, on the fairy kingdom Atlantus. The Indian Ocean is the third largest as well as the warmest and is the source of 40 per cent of the total crude petroleum of the world.

The Antarctic Ocean is the fourth largest of the five oceans, with temperature lower than minus 100 degree. The Arctic Ocean situated in the Arctic Circle is the smallest ocean of all.

Coordinator, Class X, Kalyani University Experimental High School
It was born in an era of protests. As young people took to the streets across Europe and the United States in the 1960s, challenging the norms set for generations, a little-known genre of music was getting ready to make waves, emphatically.

The sound of music that the likes of Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple made popular in 1968 was to stay for generations. Heavy Metal attracted music lovers by its strong, massive sound, underlined amplified distortions and led by extended guitar solos. The emphasis was on strong beats and high decibels.

But this Rock variant may be on its death bed. The days of classic, old-school Metal bands is probably going to get marked by a most anti-climactic ending of all. Listeners are abandoning the genre at an alarming rate.

"People listen to music differently now. They don't have time to sit down and put the record on and give it 30 minutes Who will be the next giant Metal band, I don't know," Rob Halford (Judas Priest), one of the godfathers of Metal, was once quoted as saying.

Concert sales have fallen. The Ozzfest in the US is losing its charm, and the enthusiasm for Germany's Wacken Open Air has declined sharply.

Radio, television and the internet are dominated by generic pop artists. Dee Snider of Twisted Sister says that "MTV helped and hurt Metal. They created this whole new visual scenario for bands, but at the same time looks began to matter more than the music".

Even Ronnie James Dio (Black Sabbath & Dio) said in an interview before his death in 2010: MTV "killed" Heavy Metal.

"Their emphasis on creating music videos led to the rise of hair bands like Poison. It mattered far more what you look like with all that make-up, and how many 14-year-old girls you could pick up, and how much you could party than anything else. I'm sorry but that is just not Metal," he said.

So did glam kill Metal?

What makes pop music so attractive is that you don't have to be musically inclined to create music anymore and that basically anyone with a computer can do it. The so-called "Metal" today is not pretty different with many bands going over to the electronic side whilst abandoning their fat, beefy guitar tunes and overall aggressiveness.

Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine said people these days "can't even play the f***ing guitar" and that it is just about "posing". He told Loudwire that "Heavy Metal music is really popular when the world is under a lot of stress".

To make matters worse, many prominent figures of the Metal world such as Chuck Schuldiner (Death), Dimebag Darrel (Pantera) Jeff Hanneman (Slayer), Lemmy Kilmister and Phil Taylor (Motorhead) are gone now and have not really been replaced by a newer generation to carry the torch.

Bands such as Black Sabbath are no longer playing. Many are likely to follow suit. Brent Hinds, guitarist for old school-style Headbangers Mastodon, told Guitar Player last year that he hates playing Heavy Metal, while KISS bassist Gene Simmons proclaimed that "Rock is dead".

In India, one of the first metal bands, Millennium, was formed in 1988. Two bands which could be looked as the voice of Metal are the Bangalore-based thrash Metal band Kryptos and the Mumbai-based extreme Metal band Demonic Resurrection. Others like Nicotine, Inner Sanctum, Scribe, Pin Drop Violence and Bhayanak Maut carry on the Metal torch. But the Metal scene is still evolving.

Metal and Rock music was marked by improvisation on the musician's part in the past, instead of adhering to some kind of established structure. But now there is no inclination to take risks with the fear of upsetting the established pattern, whether in studio or live.

A lot of Metal bands have begun to follow the pop style of verse-chorus-verse pattern whilst abandoning another very important aspect of what defined Metal  self expression. Take the example of two of the best Heavy Metal guitarists such as Randy Rhoads and Marty Friedman: They displayed a lot of skills in their songs such as "Mr. Crowley" and "Tornado of Souls", respectively, bringing in a level of "feeling" that gave their songs a great deal of depth.

But this act of adding "feelings" to your songs, in Metal and Rock alike, seems now almost like a lost art.

The truth is that when you play simple melodies, and strum a few powerful chords with a degree of experimentation, you can, perhaps, do a lot better than using a thousand exotic scales.

Pristinely polishing your music with constant rehearsals instead of placing value only on what sells, priming it for insertion into the media like a piece of meat is what's contaminating the music industry.

And killing Metal and Rock.
Body builder and model Jodie Marsh, whose marriage with James Placido ended last year after just eight months, has slammed their sex life saying that it made her lose her sexual urges.

Marsh says Placido met her in a car park in 2015 and deceived her in order to win her heart, reports dailymail.co.uk.

The TV personality was celibate for five years before her Barbados wedding.

"I don't count the blip I had when I married that t****r because the sex was so s***, so I'd say it's been seven years now," Marsh told Heat magazine.

Marsh, who regularly posts shots of her home cooking, added: "I don't think about it and I don't miss it. I think I'm dead from the waist down. I don't have any urges or feelings. I honestly get more excited about a cheese souffle."
Launching an attack on West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, the BJP on Wednesday accused her party, the Trinamool Congress (TMC), of not accounting for over Rs.24 crore "it spent on political campaigns" in 2013-14.

Union minister Piyush Goyal asked the TMC chief to "come clean" on the source of the money and took a dig at her saying it was now clear why was she opposed to demonetisation, which was "aimed at curbing black money".

As per the Election Commission's (EC) guidelines, the political parties had to account for their expenses even when they were getting funds from a third party, he said.

Goyal cited a media report which claimed that the Income Tax department had reportedly sent a notice to the TMC.

"While the Union government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi is taking steps to curb black money and corruption and boost transparency, we now know why some parties were so opposed to transparency and demonetisation," the Union Power Minister told a press conference.

He added that all the political parties in the country should follow the BJP's "example" as far as transparency was concerned.

Goyal also asked the opposition parties not to "politicise" every investigation "under the garb of secularism and freedom of press".

He took a jibe at the opposition parties over their attempts to forge unity saying it looked like a "coalition of the corrupt against a government trying to put an end to corruption".
A day after at least five agitating farmers were killed allegedly in police firing in Mandsaur in Madhya Pradesh, the ruling BJP and the principal Opposition Congress here on Wednesday exchanged fireworks over the incident and issues relating to the country's farmers.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a meeting of his Cabinet ministers to take stock of the situation arising out of Mandsaur violence and killings in the wake of farmers' agitation.

Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari were among those who were reportedly present at the meeting.

PM Modi was briefed about the situation prevailing in the trouble-torn towns of the BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh.

The Madhya Pradesh government requested the Centre for additional security personnel to be deployed in the western belt's districts such as Mandsaur, Neemuch, Dewas, and Ujjain in view of the farmers agitation there since 1 June like in in the neighbouring Maharashtra.

The farmers in both states have been presing for their loan waivers and higher minimum support prices (MSP) for their produce among other things.

The Centre reportedly rushed1100 anti-riots police personnel to Mandsaur to help restore peace there. About 600 personnel of the Rapid Action Force have already reached there to assist the local administration.

A fallout of the strife in Madhya Pradesh was that the Union Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh called off a sheduled press conference here on Wednesday, which was supposed to focus on his ministry's recent "accomplishments". A press briefing on the Union Cabinet's decisions was also cancelled.

The Congress and the BJP traded allegations and counter-allegations, with the Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi likely to visit Mandsaur on Thursday.

The Congress national spokesman Abhishek Singhvi alleged that the farmers have been reeling under severe crisis across the country due to the Narendra Modi dispensation and the BJP-ruled state governments' alleged callousness and apathy towards them.

He charged that 35 distressed farmers on an average have been allegedly committing suicide every day in the country.

He also alleged Rahul was not given permission by the Madhya Pardesh administration to visit Mandsaur.

The Congress targeted the Modi government for allegedly failing the farmers by not fulfilling its election manifesto pledge to give them 50 per cent profit above the MSP for their produce.

Hitting back, the BJP reportedly alleged that there was a "conspiracy" behind the ongoing farmers' agitation, asking the Congress to refrain from "politicising the death of farmers" in Mandsaur.

"Farmers of Madhya Pradesh are peace-loving. They do not indulge in violent activities. There is a conspiracy behind this entire incident. Those who do not want peace and prosperity in the state and cannot see the BJP government functioning smoothly are behind this incident," Union Rural Development Minister Narender Singh Tomar said.

Regarding Rahul's visit to Mandsaur, Tomar said he should not politicise the farmers' deaths.

Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu also blamed the Congress for allegedly instigating farmers in Mandsaur and for trying to hijack farmers' protests.

"It is a very sad turn of events in the most peaceful state in India. Congress is trying to politicise farmers' problems after they failed to counter (Chief Minister) Shivraj Singh Chouhan politically in Madhya Pradesh," Naidu charged.
CPI-M General Secretary Sitaram Yechury was roughed up by a young man at a press conference here on Wednesday.

Enraged members of the Communist Party of India-Marxist pounced on him and an accomplice and thrashed them before handing over the pair to police. Both were said to be from the Hindu Sena.

Yechury described the attack as an attempt by the RSS "to silence the voices of dissent".

"We will not be cowed down by Sangh goondagardi to silence us. This is a battle for the soul of India, which we will win," he tweeted.
Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu on Wednesday said the attempts to forge a Grand Alliance by the opposition parties against the BJP will fail as there is no consensus among them over the issue of leadership.

"The casteist and communal are afraid of (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi and that's why they have started a misinformation campaign against him," the Union Information and Broadcasting Minister told reporters here.

He said the attempts of the opposition parties to "mislead" people against the central government will "fail and boomerang".

Taking a dig at the opposition parties for their attempts to forge a Grand Alliance at the national level to counter the Bharatiya Janata Party, Naidu said, "All these attempts of forging Grand Alliance or alliance will fail. Nothing is going to happen."

Citing previous attempts of forming an a national front against the BJP, Naidu said, "We have seen it in past too. There is no principle, no common programme, no consensus on leadership. Rather being a national front, it became a notional front, united front became a divided front, third front became a distant third front."

".so that being the case I don't think this effort of Grand Alliance will succeed," the BJP leader said.

Naidu also wished the opposition parties luck to come together and give BJP the space in Bengal and Kerala.

"I hope the Congress, the Communists and the Trinamool come together so that the BJP can occupy the remaining space in Kolkata and that in Kerala the Communists and the Congress come together so that the space is left for the BJP," he said.

"You cannot have operation in Delhi, operation in Kolkata and separation in Kerala," Naidu added.


Condemning police firing in Mandsaur of Madhya Pradesh, in which five farmers were killed on Tuesday, All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS)  a wing of Communist Party of India (CPI)  and Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union (JNUSU) held a protest near Madhya Pradesh Bhavan here on Wednesday.

The protest by around 30 people was led by former MP and AIKS General Secretary Hannan Mollah and JNUSU President Mohit Pandey.

They criticised the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led governments in the Centre and states for "anti-farmer policies" and suppressing farmers' protest through "unwarranted ways".

"The Modi government has created a very painful and adverse situation for farmers in its three years of governance. At least seven farmers were killed in Chhattisgarh last year. Now, the BJP-led governments in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh are trying to suppress farmers' protest through unethical and unwarranted ways," Mollah said.

"Pro-BJP and pro-RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) organisations are being used to overpower the ongoing protests. Farmers in Mandsaur were protesting against the government peacefully but it resorted to firing and killed farmers."

The farmers allege that the Madhya Pradesh Police and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel deliberately opened fire at them when they were protesting on Tuesday. Five farmers were killed and seven were injured in the firing. The farmers, however, claim that eight persons lost their lives.

Pandey said people in the country will have to fight the brutal ways being adopted by the governments to control farmers' protests.

"In the name of nation-building, the BJP-led governments have been killing farmers and poor. Earlier, they killed Pahlu Khan, and now they brutally killed farmers in Madhya Pradesh," Pandey said.

Delhi University Professor Apoorvanand, who also joined the protest, said the government had no concerns left for farmers.

"The BJP government is saying the protesting farmers in Maharashtra are fake since they wear shirt and pant. These BJP governments have shown no remorse for their brutal action against farmers so far," he said.

The AIKS handed over a memorandum to officials at the Madhya Pradesh Bhavan, in which they demanded judicial inquiry into the police firing in Mandsaur, action against those responsible for the firing, loan waiver to farmers and Rs one crore compensation to the deceased farmers.
Farmers demanding debt relief and better crop prices on Wednesday "heckled" Mandsaur collector when he tried to pacify them, a day after five persons were killed in violence during their agitation here.

Also, former MP from Mandsaur, Meenakshi Natarajan, was detained when she was on her way to meet the family members of the deceased.

Farmers in western Madhya Pradesh are protesting since June 1 demanding higher minimum support prices (MSP) for their produce, among others.

Five persons were yesterday killed as the farmers' agitation turned violent, prompting the authorities to clamp curfew in the trouble-hit area.

According to eyewitnesses, the protesting farmers had torched vehicles and indulged in stone pelting in Parshvanath area under Pipaliya Mandi police station limits.

Curfew remained in force in Pipalya Mandi police station area of the district and Mandsaur town, while prohibitory orders restricting movement under section 144 of CrPC are also imposed in the rest of the district.

Farmers in large numbers blocked a road today in Berkheda Panth area, around 18 kms from here.

When Mandsaur Collector S K Singh and Superintendent of Police Omprakash Tripathi reached the spot to mollify the protesters, the farmers allegedly manhandled the administrative officer.

"When the protesters started misbehaving and pushing the collector, we made way for him to come out safe," Berkheda Panth's sarpanch Dinesh told PTI.

Ujjain Range Inspector General of Police V Madhukumar, who is camping in Mandsaur, told PTI over the phone: "I have also come to know that something happened with the collector.

But I exactly do not know what happened."

When contacted for his reaction, the collector refused to comment on the incident.

Asked if the police will take action against those who misbehaved with him, the district magistrate said, "It was the law-enforcers' job."

The IG, meanwhile, said that the mortal remains of the five persons who died yesterday were cremated this morning.

He said the situation in Mandsaur was under control.

Meanwhile, former MP and Congress leader Meenakshi Natarajan was stopped and detained at Nahargarh when she was on her way to meet the family members of the deceased.

However, other Congress leaders are on their way to Mandsaur to meet the kin of the deceased.

The Madhya Pradesh bandh called by the Congress on Wednesday affected some western parts of the state, but petrol pumps, markets and other establishments remained open in Bhopal.

The district collector had yesterday said the police categorically told him that they did not open fire at the protesters.

After the incident, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, in his tweet, had blamed the opposition party for instigating violence.

According to the collector, a magisterial inquiry has been ordered in yesterday's incident. Mobile and Internet services have been suspended in Mandsaur, Ratlam and Neemuch districts to check the spread of rumours.
Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday has been denied permission to attend the funeral of farmers killed in Mandsaur.

Rahul Gandhi wanted to visit farmers village to take part in the funeral but administration didn't permit, Congress General Secretary Mohan Prakash said to a news agency.

Earlier, there was more violence as farmers set vehicles on fire, prompting the administration to impose curfew in Mandsaur and withdrawing internet services.

Rahul was scheduled to visit Mandsaur where five farmers were killed in firing by security forces.

On Tuesday, Rahul lashed out at the BJP-led government for declaring war on farmers for demanding their rights.

This government is at war with the farmers of our country. In BJP's new India, farmers demanding their rights get bullets in return, Gandhi said.

After Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh farmers took to streets to protest against the Shivraj Singh government, demanding fair price to their produce and loan-waiver. However, the agitation turned violent when five peasants were killed and eight injured in the firing.

As per reports, curfew has been imposed in Mandsaur and internet services withdrawn.
With the ruling BJP yet to initiate efforts for a consensual presidential nominee, the Congress on Wednesday said that non-NDA parties will make every possible attempt to find "the best person" for India in case the NDA alliance does not reach out to them.

Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi said the opposition has made it clear that the BJP-led NDA cannot take the country for granted on the issue and it will put up a concerted fight as it has many "deserving" candidates.

He, however, refused to get into names of possible candidate for the July 17 election. Referring to the convergence in opposition parties over the issue, he noted that a sub-group formed to decide on a consensus presidential candidate will meet soon.

The CPI-M, on its part, said it is in discussion with other parties for a person with impeccable secular credentials who can discharge the responsibility as a custodian of the Indian Constitution.

"The intention is clear that there is a concerted effort and you have seen it in many meetings at Chennai and otherwise of a remarkable convergence of all non-NDA parties to try and make it clear that the BJP-NDA cannot take the nation for granted.
The presidential poll will be held on 17 July, the Election Commission of India announced on Wednesday. Counting of votes if necessary will be taken up on 20 July, it stated.

Announcing the schedule, Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi said the notification for the election would be announced on 14 June, the last date for nominations is 28 June, and candidates can withdraw their nomination on or before 1 July, the CEC said.

On 17 July, voting will begin at 10 am and continue till 5 pm. On 20 July, counting will begin at 11 am and the results will be announced by the Commission on its completion.

The term of the present incumbent President Pranab Mukherjee will end on 24 July.

The voting will be through secret ballot, the CEC said. For marking the vote, the commission will supply particular pens. This pen will be given to the electors in the polling station by the designated official when the ballot paper is handed over.

Electors have to mark the ballot only with this particular pen and not with any other pen. Voting by using any other pen may lead to invalidation of the vote at the time of counting, Zaidi said. "A ballot paper would also be termed invalid if any mark is made by which the elector may afterwards be identified, he said.

The CEC said no political party can issue a whip to its MPs and MLAs in the matter of voting in the Presidential election, but the EC would make sure that no offence of bribery or undue influence takes place during the poll.

It is also clarified that as per Section 18 of the Presidential and Vice-Presidential Elections Act, 1952, the offence of bribery or undue influence as defined in Sections 171B and 171C of IPC, by the returned candidate or any person with the consent of the returned candidate are among the grounds on which the election can be declared void by the Supreme Court in an election petition, the CEC said.

Counting of votes will be held in New Delhi under the supervision of the Returning Officer. On completion of counting, Return of Election will be signed and issued by the Returning Officer declaring the candidate who secures the quota elected. Formal announcement of election of the President will be made by the Commission, the CEC added.
Home Minister Rajnath Singh will review the security situation and development activities along Myanmar border with the chief ministers of four Northeastern states adjoining the neighbouring country.

To be held in Aizawl on June 12, the meeting will be attended by Pema Khandu, Shurhozelie Liezietsu, N Biren Singh and Lal Thanhawla, the chief ministers of Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram, respectively.

Security situation and development activities along the 1,643-km-long India-Myanmar border will be discussed threadbare at the meeting to be chaired by the home minister, an official said.

The international border with Mynamar is considered to be porous while cross-border movement of insurgents and smuggling of arms and ammunition are common there.

This is for the first time such a meeting has been called to discuss issues concerning Mynamar border and how to improve security along the border with active participation of state governments, the official said.

A similar meeting of chief ministers of five Himalayan states  Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh  was held last month in Gangtok to discuss security and developmental activities along the 3,488-km-long Sino-Indian border.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday set aside the Allahabad High Court's May 29 order which had quashed 50 per cent institutional preference in admission to PG medical seats.

A vacation bench comprising Justices Ashok Bhushan and Deepak Gupta said institutes like the Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) and the government-run medical colleges in UP will continue conducting counselling and fill up the seats by June 12.

The high court on May 29 had passed order allowing to fill up the 50 per cent institutional quota seats in PG medical courses in these two central universities and other government-run univerities for students from any medical college based on their ranking in NEET.

The apex court order came on the plea of BHU and AMU contending that the high court verdict was violative of earlier apex court judgement and Medical Council of India (MCI) regulations which allow institutes to take admissions on 50 per cent seats from their own institution.

Both these central universities had got the support from the MCI, which had argued that the high court has erred in interpreting the laid down regulations.

Additional Solicitor General Maninder Singh, appearing for BHU, had sought immediate stay of the high court's order saying the "entire apple cart" cannot be reversed.

Senior advocate Salman Khurshid, appearing for the AMU, had said some students have already been admitted by the varsities under the 50 per cent quota, therefore the high court verdict needs to be stayed.
Amid reports that the Income Tax department has sent it a notice, West Bengal's ruling Trinamool Congress on Wednesday accused the BJP of playing "dirty games" and asked it to desist from giving lessons on "regulatory and financial compliance".

In a strongly-worded statement hours after Union Minister Piyush Goyal cited reports in a section ofmedia about the IT department raising questions about an amount of Rs.24 crore Trinamool spent on campaigning ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, Trinamool spokesman Derek O'Brien said: "Please don't give us lessons on regulatory and financial compliance".

Accusing Goyal of "playing dirty games", he said his party has submitted all its accounts to the Election Commission.

"It has replied to communications from the Income-Tax Department. What gives the Minister the authority to say all this? Instead, why doesn't he check if his own house, his own party, is in order?" asked O'Brien, also the Trinamool leader in the Rajya Sabha.

Claiming that the Trinamool has "fulfilled all criteria and that is why" it has been recognised as a national party recently, he alleged Goyal's "so-called press conference is part of a concerted attempt to browbeat political parties in the opposition, independent sections of the media and critics of the current regime in Delhi".

He iterated that the "wild allegations" would only strengthen the Trinamool's resolve.

"The BJP cannot scare us. In time, the people will show this government what they think of it and its theatrics," the statement said.

Reacting to Goyal's allegation that Trinamool Chief Mamata Banerjee had "opposed demonetisation" as it was "aimed at curbing black money", O'Brien, referring to "Notebandi" (demonetisation) and Nasbandi (forced sterilisation that was attempted during the Emergency in in the 1970s), said: "Nasbandi was punished 40 years ago, Notebandi will be punished soon."
The Supreme Court on Wednesday restored 50 per cent in-house institutional preference reservation of seats in postgraduate medical courses at the Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) and other government medical colleges in Uttar Pradesh.

The apex court, in the process, set aside a May 29 Allahabad High Court order that asked these institutions to go for admissions as per the merit of National Entrance-cum-Eligibility Test 2017 for postgraduate courses.

A vacation bench of Justice Ashok Bhushan and Justice Deepak Gupta said all consequential steps taken by the Uttar Pradesh government in pursuance to the High Court judgment too would go.

Pronouncing the judgment, Justice Gupta extended the time for counselling till June 12, while referring to the peculiar facts and circumstances of the matter. The entire exercise for admissions to the postgraduate courses should be completed by then.

Both the BHU in Varanasi and the AMU in Aligarh had approached the apex court against the High Court order.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday said it will on June 15 hear a petition challenging the Centres notification banning sale and purchase of cattle from animal markets for slaughter.

A vacation bench of Justice Ashok Bhushan and Justice Deepak Gupta directed the listing of the matter on June 15 as counsel Sanobar Ali Qureshi, appearing for petitioner Mohammed Abdul Faheem Qureshi, mentioned the matter for an early hearing.

Challenging May 23 notification, counsel Qureshi told the bench that the official declaration was contrary to the provision of law that permitted the sale of animals for religious sacrifices.

The announcement from the top court comes a day after Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian sounded caution over the cattle slaughter ban, saying such policies could adversely impact the economics of livestock farming in India.

"On dairy and livestock, two points are worth emphasizing. The governments have the right to choose their social policies. But in doing so, they must be fully aware of the economic costs of these policies," he said.

The cattle-trade ban has caused widespread anger, both in BJP and opposition-ruled states, with rivals accusing the Modi government of trying to dictate peoples food habits and pushing a beef ban through the backdoor.

The Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) had last month notified the new rules under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, which bans sale of cattle for slaughter in open markets across the country.

(With inputs from agencies)
Two activists of Hindu Sena, a fringe Hindutva outfit, allegedly tried to disrupt the CPI-M general secretary Sitaram Yechury's press conference at his party headquarters at A K Gopalan Bhavan in the national capital on Wednesday afternoon.

The slogan-shouting accused were soon overpowered by CPM activists and police personnel. They were subsequently detained by the local police station.

Yechury and his party attacked the RSS for the incident which drew condemnation from Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and leaders from various Opposition parties. Yechury reportedly went ahead with his press conference.

"We will not be cowed down by any attempts of Sangh's goondagardi to silence us. This is a battle for the soul of India, which we will win," Yechury tweeted in his reaction on the incident. "These attempts to silence us will not succeed."

The CPM Politburo cndemned the "efforts made by two persons claiming allegiance to an RSS outfit to disrupt a press conference being addressed by General Secretary" at the end of the two-day meeting of the Politburo.

The Marxist party said, "Masquerading as journalists these persons tried to enter the hall where the conference was being held and started shouting anti-CPM slogans. They were immediately apprehended by CPM workers present there and handed over to the police posted there."

The Politburo charged that "This is typical of the RSS methodology of seeking to browbeat and intimidate the opposition. Such tactics will not be allowed to succeed."

Confirming the incident, Deputy Commissioner of Police (New Delhi) Braja Kishore Singh told The Statesman that they have detained two men.

According to police, the accused posing as reporters barged into the CPM headquarters ahead of Yechury's press conference and started shouting slogans against them.

The police denied that Yechury was heckled or manhandled by the two Hindu Sena activists since the latter were far away from him.

Hindu Sena chief Vishnu Gupta told The Statesman that Delhi Police has detained two Hindu Sena activists, Upendra Kumar and Pawan Kaul, at Mandir Marg Police Station for protesting against Prakash Karat and CPM for their article against Indian Army. He said they were assaulted by CPM workers and received injuries.

Karat has drawn flak from the Sangh Parivar and the ruling BJP for his recent article

criticising Army Chief Gen Bipin Rawat for defending the action of Army Major

Leetul Gogoi to tie up a Kashmiri man Farooq Dar to his jeep's bonnet as a "human shield"

against stone-pelters there.
Actress Emilia Clarke says she is optimistic about the future of her Game of Thrones character Daenerys Targaryen.

The actress spoke about her character in an interview to Belfast Telegraph, reports express.co.uk.

She said: "Right now, I'm sort of feeling  with her  optimistic. She'll probably need some help, though. I'll definitely be disappointed if she doesn't make it."

"Game Of Thrones", which is based on novels by George R.R. Martin, and is a dramatic telling of a story entwined with sneaky ploys, nudity and bloodshed in a quest to claim the 'Iron Throne'.

Clarke's character was last seen sailing towards Westeros with an aim to battle for the Iron Throne.

Talking about her determination to become a fair ruler, Clarke said: "I think that there was always that idea that she would know where she was going to, but the reality is frightening."

"I mean, I always believed that Dany had the highest of hopes for what kind of impact she could leave on this world. She is continuously reaching for purest level of rulership  is that a word? I just made it up."

The seventh season of the show will debut on July 16 in the US and will premiere in India on Star World and Star World HD on July 18.
At least 12 persons were killed in twin attacks on Iran's Parliament building and the mausoleum of former supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini here on Wednesday, officials said.The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the twin attack.

Four gunmen forced themselves into the Parliament during a session and started shooting at security guards and visitors, killing at least seven guards and wounding several others, Efe news reported.

Iranian news agency Tasnim reported that four persons had been taken hostage by gunmen in the Parliament building's upper floors.

According to Fars news agency, there were guards and civilians among the wounded.

The Parliament building closed its doors and neither the deputies nor the journalists gathered there were allowed to leave.

Lawmaker Tayebeh Siavoshi told Efe that the situation was very confusing and sensitive, and denied preliminary information that everything was under control.

One of the assailants was arrested, while the other three remained inside the Parliament building.

Shortly after, a similar attack took place at the mausoleum of the Ayatollah Khomeini, leaving several persons injured. The number of those gunmen who opened fire at the mausoleum was still unknown, but the state-owned television said that one of them blew himself up.

The remaining two attackers were arrested, the Iranian Labour News Agency reported.
Australia will be pushing its "Five Eyes" intelligence partners this month to crackdown on encrypted technology in the global fight against terrorism.

Attorney-General George Brandis said Australia would list the issue as a top agenda item at a meeting of the "Five Eyes" alliance which comprises Australia, the US, the UK, Canada and New Zealand, reports Xinhua news agency.

The meeting is due in Canada at the end of June.

Speaking to the Australian media on Tuesday night, Brandis said encrypted internet communication was the biggest challenge facing law enforcement and security agencies around the world.

He called upon telecommunications companies, social media outlets and internet giants to cooperate with authorities on terrorism investigations, saying they had a "corporate social responsibility" to help combat terrorist activity.

"If those encrypted communications contain information which is necessary to a prosecution, an intelligence task like keeping a terrorism suspect under appropriate surveillance, then there does need to be a level of co-operation from the carriage services providers," Brandis said.

Earlier, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said there was too much tolerance of extremist material online.
China is likely to establish additional military bases in Pakistan and other countries with which it has a longstanding friendly ties and similar strategic interests, a new Pentagon report has said.

In its annual report to the Congress on China's military build-up, the US Department of Defence said China's construction of military base in the strategic location of Djibouti is just the first of what will likely be an ongoing expansion in friendly foreign ports around the world.

China is expanding its access to foreign ports to pre- position the necessary logistics support to regularise and sustain deployments in the "far seas", waters as distant as the Indian Ocean, Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean.

"China most likely will seek to establish additional military bases in countries with which it has a longstanding friendly relationship and similar strategic interests, such as Pakistan, and in which there is a precedent for hosting foreign militaries," the Pentagon said.

The report cautioned, however, that China's efforts to build more bases "may be constrained by the willingness of countries to support" the presence of China's People's Liberation Army in one of their ports.

Notably, China is developing the strategically located Gwadar port in Balochistan, which many experts in the US say is aimed towards having a military presence.

"In February 2016, China began construction of a military base in Djibouti and probably will complete it within the next year," it said, adding China claims that this facility is designed to help the navy and army further participate in UN peacekeeping operations, carry out escort missions in the waters near Somalia and the Gulf of Aden, and provide humanitarian assistance.

This initiative, along with regular naval vessel visits to foreign ports, both reflects and amplifies China s growing influence, extending the reach of its armed forces.

China has cited anti-piracy patrolling as one of the reasons for developing what it calls a naval logistics center in Djibouti.

China s expanding international economic interests are increasing demands for the PLA Navy to operate in more distant maritime environments to protect Chinese citizens, investments and critical sea lines of communication (SLOC), it said.

China, the report said, uses PLA engagements with foreign militaries to enhance its presence and influence abroad, bolster its image and assuage other countries concerns about its rise.

"These engagements also assist PLA modernisation by facilitating the acquisition of advanced weapon systems and technologies, increasing its operational experience throughout and beyond Asia, and giving the PLA access to foreign military practices, operational doctrine, and training methods, it added.

In 2016, China conducted counterpiracy operations in the Gulf of Aden by deploying its 24th naval escort task force to the area since 2008, it said.

"China also continued to send submarines to the Indian Ocean, ostensibly in support of its counterpiracy patrols. In May 2016, a nuclear-powered attack submarine conducted a port call in Karachi, Pakistan, during a visit by the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) Commander, marking China s first port call in South Asia by a nuclear submarine, the Pentagon said.

"These submarine patrols demonstrate the PLAN s emerging capability both to protect China's SLOCs and to increase China s power projection into the Indian Ocean, the report said.

According to the Pentagon, Pakistan is also China s largest buyer of arms. From 2011 to 2015, China was the world s fourth largest arms supplier with more than $20 billion in sales.

"Of this, $9 billion was to Asia-Pacific countries, primarily Pakistan, it added.

Sub-Saharan Africa was China's second largest regional arms market.

"China s ability to remain among the world s top five global arms suppliers hinges largely on continued strong sales to Pakistan and demand for its armed UAVs. China is one of only a few global suppliers of such equipment and faces little competition for sales to the Middle East and North Africa.

"This likely will result in the Middle East and North Africa surpassing Sub-Saharan Africa as China s second largest arms export market, it said.

Last year, China signed an agreement with Pakistan for the sale of eight submarines, it said, adding that the first four will be built in China, with the remaining four in Pakistan.

Other major Asia-Pacific customers of Chinese military equipment include Bangladesh and Burma, it said.

China sold armed UAVs to several states in the Middle East and North Africa, including Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates, the Pentagon said.

China faces little competition for sale of such systems, as most countries that produce them are restricted in selling the technology as signatories of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) and/or the Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls for Conventional Arms and Dual-Use Goods and Technologies (WA), as well as subjecting exports of this technology to greater scrutiny than China, it said.
Even as China has welcomed India to join the Belt and Road project, it does not need to "beg New Delhi" or agree to its demands, a Chinese daily said on Wednesday.

A commentary by a Global Times reporter said both Japan and India were welcome to join China's ambitious project and they could be an example for the countries which have not joined the initiative.

"We are willing to see the initiative help build up a cooperation platform for countries along the route, but China does not need to beg any countries, Japan and India included, to join the initiative," the commentary by Hu Weijia said.

Last month, New Delhi boycotted China's Belt and Road summit in Beijing, citing its opposition to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) that passes through a part of Kashmir held by Pakistan and claimed by India.

India's absence at the summit was sort of an embarrassment to China even though it called the forum a success.

It is chiefly because of the CPEC that India has reservations over the Belt and Road project. Besides, the CPEC has put a new strain on Sino-Indian ties.

In an another article, the Global Times said India was "over-concerned," about China's intentions and views "bilateral relationship with China through the lens of geopolitics and regards Beijing as a strategic rival.

"China has put forward the Belt and Road initiative to aid regional connectivity. Beijing sincerely hopes that New Delhi can play a part in and benefit from the infrastructure initiative.

"However, New Delhi is over-concerned about Beijing's intentions, and there are even critical voices in India against Modi's China-friendly remarks.

"It is because New Delhi still views the bilateral relationship with China through the lens of geopolitics and regards Beijing as a strategic rival," the article said.

It said every time China reaches out to strengthen cooperation with countries regarded by India as within its sphere of influence, New Delhi "worries the cooperation is deliberately targeting it.

"If New Delhi can understand China's connectivity initiative from the perspective of regional development, this will help enhance mutual trust between the two countries," it said.

The article by Liu Jainxi also said Indian media need not make a fuss over the alleged Indian airspace violation by Chinese military helicopters last week.
The European Union (EU) announced on Wednesday a 382 million euro ($430,571,300) aid for the consolidation of peace, economic and social development in the Central African Republic (CAR).

Three priority sectors will benefit from the support over the period 2014-2020. These include economic and social governance, security sector reform and democratic governance along with rural resilience and job creation.

The aid was part of the implementation of the commitments made by the EU at the Brussels Conference for Central Africa in November 2016.

Combined with contributions from other partners, a total commitment of 2.6 billion euros was made to support the national plan for the rehabilitation and consolidation of peace in the CAR.

The objective was to support the Central African authorities in their reforms in terms of returning to peace, maintaining security and supporting reconciliation.
The government has floodlit 647 kilometers of the borders with Pakistan and Bangladesh to prevent terrorists and immigrants from infiltrating into Indian territory.

The floodlighting of the 647-km-long stretches of the two international borders was completed in last one year, a Home Ministry official said.

It will help border guarding forces keep strict vigil in the forward areas and check attempts of infiltration by terrorists and illegal immigrants.

Projects worth Rs.5,188 crore were sanctioned by the central government in the last three years of which Rs.2,138 crore has been released for the Indo-Bangladesh and Indo-Pak border projects.

These include erecting a fence in a 200-km area, constructing 430-km-long border roads, 110 composite border outposts and floodlighting the 647-km-long areas.

"A major push has been given by the government to border infrastructure and developmental works," the official said.

The total length of the Indo-Pak border is 3,323 km, including the Line of Control and the Actual Ground Position Line, while the Indo-Bangladesh border is 4,096 km long. The India-China border is 3,488 km long.

As regards to the India-China border, out of 27 border roads sanctioned in 2008, the construction of first eight roads was completed during 2014-16, while another nine roads are due to be completed by the end of the year.

The Home Ministry has also undertaken a new initiative for creation of model villages in border areas. More than Rs 92 crore has been released to seven states for development of 41 model villages, including 24 in Jammu and Kashmir.

To facilitate the border trade and passenger movement at land border crossings, the government has been promoting the setting up Integrated Check Posts (ICPs).

The ICP at Raxaul (Indo-Nepal border) was operationalised in June 2016 and at Jogbani in November. While the cargo terminal at the ICP, Petrapole (Indo-Bangladesh border) was inaugurated by prime ministers of India and Bangladesh in July last year, foundation stone for an ICP at Dawki in Meghalaya (Indo-Bangladesh border) was laid in January 2017.

In 2009, the central government had approved a proposal to construct additional 509 border out posts (BOPs) along the Indo-Pak and the Indo-Bangladesh borders at an estimated cost of Rs.1,832 crore.

In 2016, the scope of the project was revised by the Cabinet Committee on Security from 509 BOPs to 422 BOPs.

At present, there are 609 BOPs along the Indo-Pak border and an additional 126 BOPs are to be constructed to reduce the inter-BOP distance to 3.5 km.

There are 802 BOPs along the Indo-Bangladesh border where the additional 383 BOPs were to be constructed.
Jordan on Tuesday decides to lower diplomatic representation in Qatar, the state-run Petra news agency reported.

Jordan also decided to revoke the license of Al Jazeera channel in the country, Minister of State for Media Affairs and the government spokesman Mohammad Momani said on Tuesday.

The decision, which is part of Jordan's strategy to preserve stability in the region, was taken after looking into the reasons of the crises between several Arab states and Qatar, according to Momani.

Jordan hopes for overcoming this unfortunate stage, he said.

Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Egypt said Monday they cut their diplomatic relations with Doha after a week of tit-for-tat and accusations on "terrorism support".

The announcement by the Saudi-led coalition to severe diplomatic ties with Qatar marks the culmination of a year-long dispute between some Gulf Arab states and Qatar.
Debris of a Myanmar military plane carrying as many as 116 people that went missingon Wednesday have been found in the Andaman sea, according to reports. The plane had lost contact with the air traffic controllers when it was flying between the southern city of Myeik and Yangon.

Now they have found pieces of the damaged plane in the sea 136 miles (218 km) away from Dawei city, Naing Lin Zaw, a tourism official in Myeik, was quoted by a news agency. The navy was still searching the sea.

Among the passengers were mainly soldiers and their family members, reports said.

Earlier in the day, the army commander-in-chief's office had said in a statement: Communication was lost suddenly at about 1:35pm when it reached about 20 miles west of Dawei town.
Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will attend the 17th Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Kazakhstan capital Astana, the Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday.

Pakistan will become a full member of the SCO at the Astana summit starting on Thursday, the Ministry said. Islamabad had been a SCO observer since 2005.

On the sidelines of the SCO summit, Sharif will hold a number of bilateral meetings with other participating leaders, Xinhua news agency reported.

SCO, established in 2001, is a regional political, economic and security organisation that includes China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan as full members.

India and Pakistan's SCO accession procedures started in 2015. The two signed the SCO Memorandum of Obligations in June 2016, kickstarting the formal process of joining SCO as full members.


Sher Bahadur Deuba was sworn in as the 40th Prime Minister of Nepal on Wednesday.

President Bidya Devi Bhandari administered the oaths of office and secrecy to the newly-elected Prime Minister at a ceremony in the capital.

After taking the oaths, Deuba  who is also Nepali Congress President  administered oaths to seven new ministers  three from the Nepali Congress (NC), three from CPN (Maoist Centre) and one from the Nepal Loktantrik Forum.

Deuba returned to power for the fourth time on Tuesday  12 years after he was removed by then King Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev  with 388 votes in his favour out of 593 voters in Parliament.

As many as 558 lawmakers cast votes during the prime ministerial election, with Deuba being the lone candidate.

Gopal Man Shrestha, from the Nepali Congress, was appointed Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Education. Gyanendra Bahadur Karki and Farmullah Mansoor, also from NC, were appointed Minister for Finance and Minister for Labour and Employment, respectively.

Krishna Bahadur Mahara of CPN (Maoist Centre) was appointed Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs.

Similarly, CPN (MC) leader Janardan Sharma was appointed Minister for Home Affairs and Prabhu Sah of the same party was appointed as minister without portfolio.

Likewise, Nepal Loktantrik Forum Chairman Bijay Kumar Gachhadar was appointed as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Federal Affairs and Local Development.

Outgoing Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda's CPN (Maoist Centre), the Rastriya Prajatantra Party, Rastriya Janata Party-Nepal (RJP-N), Sanghiya Samajbadi Forum-Nepal, Nepal Loktantrik Forum and CPN (Samyukta), besides other fringe parties, voted for Deuba.

The RJP-N, with 25 seats in Parliament, voted for Deuba after reaching a three-point deal under which the new NC-Maoist Centre government has to address the agitating party's demand for amending the less-than-two-year-old Constitution.


Dubai International Airport has launched a smart scheme enabling travellers to use their smartphones instead of their passport or express gate cards at the airport to reduce travel clearing procedures to the minimum.

Dubbed "Emirates Smart Wallet", the scheme is meant to further streamline travel movement across the airport and is considered the first of its kind in the world, said a media report on Wednesday.

The scheme was launched at the airport's departure terminal by Lieutenant General Dhahi Khalfan Tamim, Dubai's Deputy Chief of Police and Public Security, and Mohammed Ahmed Al Marri, Head of Dubai's Naturalisation and Residency Department.

Launched in its first phase, the scheme incorporates the traveller's personal data, Emirates ID and passport information as well as the e-gate card data.


The Empowered Committee of Secretaries has reportedly capped House Rent Allowance (HRA) rates at 25-27 per cent. It is, however, for the Union cabinet to take a final call on allowances.

By India Today Web Desk: For nearly 50 lakh Central government employees, the long wait for allowances could end soon as the Narendra Modi-led cabinet is believed to have met on Wednesday to discuss and decide on the revised allowance structure.

After screening the Ashok Lavasa report on allowances, the Empowered Committee of Secretaries (E-CoS) has forwarded the report along with its suggestions to the government.

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According to some reports, the E-CoS has capped House Rent Allowance (HRA) rates at 25-27 per cent. It is, however, for the Union cabinet to take a final call on allowances, including the HRA.

The Seventh Pay Commission recommended a 14.27 per cent hike in basic pay for Central government employees, which is the lowest in 70 years.

It remains to be seen if the Central government can bring some cheer to its employees who have been waiting for over a year to get revised allowances under the Seventh Pay Commission.

HERE IS ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT ALLOWANCES UNDER SEVENTH PAY COMMISSION: The Seventh Pay Commission recommended doing away with 53 of the 196 allowances that Central government employees get besides subsuming 36 allowances into bigger ones. The pay commission also recommended reducing the HRA rates for Central government employees depending on their type of cities. For metros, the Seventh Pay Commission suggested bringing the HRA down from 30 per cent to 24 per cent. Such recommendations by the pay commission were met with strong opposition from Central government employees. The Narendra Modi government constituted a panel under Finance Secretary Ashok Lavasa to review the recommendations. The Committee on Allowances under Ashok Lavasa was initially given a four-month deadline to submit its report which was later extended to February 22 this year. The Ashok Lavasa panel, however, finally submitted its report to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on April 27. After submitting the report to Arun Jaitley, Finance Secretary Ashok Lavasa said the Committee on Allowances has taken into account the representations made by various stakeholders. On April 28, a statement was issued by the Finance Ministry on Lavasa panel's report submission. It said that "modifications have been suggested in some allowances which are applicable universally to all Central government employees as well as certain other allowances which apply to specific employee categories". The specific employee categories identified by the Lavasa committee include railwaymen, doctors, scientists, defence personnel, doctors and nurses, the Finance Ministry statement said. The Ashok Lavasa report was first reviewed by the Department of Expenditure and then placed before the Empowered Committee of Secretaries (E-CoS). Before the E-CoS meeting on June 1, representatives of Central government employees wrote to Cabinet Secretary P K Sinha and expresseed disappointment over the long delay in implementation of allowances. Central government employees also told Cabinet Secretary that they were not informed about the recommendations made by Ashok Lavasa committee in its report. As the Union cabinet met on Wednesday, Central government employees will hope that the Centre considers their demands before taking a final decision. If the pay commission recommendations on allowances are implemented fully, then the estimated cost to the exchequer will be around Rs 29,300 crore.

ALSO READ:

7th Pay Commission: No hike in transport allowance, HRA to remain at 30 per cent

Lavasa panel on allowances submits report to Jaitley

7th pay commission: RBI worried about price rise as employees wait for HRA

ALSO WATCH: 7th Pay Commission: Allowance-revision to benefit over 50 lakh employees

--- ENDS ---
With less than 24 hours to go before voting begins in Britain's general election, leaders of the two main parties on Wednesday hit the streets across the nation for a final day of campaigning.

Conservative Party leader Theresa May, who seeks to retain her job as Prime Minister in Thursday's vote, began her day with a visit to a Smithfield meat market in London before heading to central and eastern England.

Her rival, Jeremy Corbyn of the Labour party travelled north to Glasgow before making his way back south to London, passing through several towns and cities in England and Wales on the way, Efe news reported.

Corbyn said that public services, particularly the National Health Service, would be safer in his hands.

Home security and police numbers have been at the crux of the campaign in the light of last week's terror incident in which seven people were killed when three militants mowed down pedestrians on London Bridge and launched a stabbing rampage at a nearby market.

The current head of government and former Home Secretary on Tuesday said she would alter current human rights laws if it was deemed necessary in order to crack down on terrorism in London.

Meanwhile, Corbyn criticised cuts to police numbers that were made when May was the government minister responsible for Britain's Home Office.

Around 50 million Britons are eligible to vote in the general election on Thursday.

At the onset of campaigning a month ago, May led Corbyn in the public opinion polls with an average of around 20 points. But according to a new polling data, the rivals were neck and neck now.
The White House has defended tweets by US President Donald Trump that have raised concern among opponents and allies alike.

"I think his use of social media  gives him an opportunity to speak straight to the American people, which has proved to be a very, very effective tool," Xinhua news agency quoted White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer as telling the media on Tuesday.

"The President is the most effective messenger on his agenda," he said, adding that tweeting had served Trump well during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Trump said in a tweet earlier on Tuesday: "Sorry folks, but if I would have relied on the Fake News of CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, washpost or nytimes, I would have had ZERO chance winning WH."

Trump has also attacked London Mayor Sadiq Khan, calling him "pathetic" in the wake of the London terror attack, as well as Qatar, hinting the Muslim country may have sponsored radical ideology.

Trump's tweets have become the target of mockery for his opponents.
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Three of the infiltrators were gunned down in an exchange of fire with army near LOC in Machil sector of Kupwara.

By India Today Web Desk: Indian army soldiers killed three militants who were trying to infiltrate across the border from the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir's Kupwara district today.

There was an exchange of fire between infiltrators and army inside the forested area near LOC in Machil sector of Kupwara after which three of the infiltrators were gunned down, sources said.

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Earlier, a police officer here said that the operation ensued after personnel of the counter-insurgency Rashtriya Rifles, searching the Sardari Nad forests near the LoC on information about presence of militants there, came under gunfire.

--- ENDS ---
This iconic picture seen around the world, was taken David Rubinger, called by Shimon Peres, "The photographer of a nation in the making," during the Six Day War as the first Israeli troops reached the Western Wall and liberated the Old City of Jerusalem. From l-r the soldiers were Zion Karasanti, Yitzhak Yifat and Haim Oshri.


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By Mail Today Bureau: Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal's office faces an unprecedented crisis with dwindling bureaucrats as officers excuse themselves from duty to proceed on study leave or are unwilling to take up a posting in the CMO. Now that the AAP leadership is back in full strength to attend to government work after its recent electoral battles, it is faced with a crumbling CMO.

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Kejriwal's predecessor, Sheila Dikshit's office had at least three IAS and two DANICS officers in addition to a personal secretary and officer on special duty. Two IAS officers - Rajendra Kumar and Tarun Sharma - in Kejriwal's office were suspended after being embroiled in graft cases last year.

Kumar served as principal secretary to CM, whereas Sharma was posted as deputy secretary. Both the officers were arrested by the CBI in July on charges of irregularities and abuse of power. IRS officer Sukesh Kumar Jain, posted as officer on special duty to Kejriwal has sought repatriation. Additional secretary Geetika Sharma has been transferred out and Deepak Virmani has applied for study leave. Both are DANICS officers.

'DELHI CM OFFICE FACING UNPRECEDENTED CRISIS'

"If you look at other states, the CMOs are heavily staffed whereas the Delhi CM office is facing an unprecedented crisis. When the CM reached out to some officers, they politely refused worried about being caught in the Center-state crossfire.

We have learnt from officers that they face threats like: 'While Kejriwal will be in power only for another three years, the Modi government is here to stay'. Any officer found aligning with the AAP is sought out and attacked. That is what happened with Rajendra Kumar, who openly admitted that he was asked to frame Kejriwal by the interrogators if he wanted to be freed," said a senior AAP functionary.

DESERTED CMO

"Officers are so worried that they are applying for study leave to get away from this sticky situation. If you compare with any other state, the number of officers applying for study leave from this cadre will perhaps be the highest. At least four officers have applied for study leave in recent months," said a government source.

"The CMO is practically deserted and the severe shortage of officers has taken a toll on the movement of files. Though it is not like work has come to a standstill, with just one officer, who too is likely to leave shortly, only little work can be done. There is immense pressure on the personal secretaries, who have been working overtime. On our part, we are still doing enough to keep the Lieutenant Governor's hands full," said a senior party leader.

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'DISCREPANCIES IN 403 FILES'

"It is absolute rubbish that the Modi government is intimidating officers. The truth is bureaucrats do not want to work under Kejriwal, as he makes them do unconstitutional things. The Shunglu Committee found discrepancies in 403 files, which is not a joke. It is not a political allegation but a duly constituted committee's findings. Which officer would want to get caught in this? The corruption in this government is slowly coming out in the open and no official wants to be part of this," alleged BJP state unit chief and MP Manoj Tiwari.

"As an MP it is worrisome for us to see such inertia in the Delhi government. The CM hardly goes to office and files barely move. Work is at a standstill. Be it the previous BJP or Congress governments in Delhi, none faced such a crisis."

Also Read:

Whistleblower, who claimed Arvind Kejriwal kin's involvement in PWD scam, shot at in Greater Noida

ACB raids in Delhi after Kapil Mishra alleges Rs 300 crore medicine scam under Arvind Kejriwal government

Also Watch:

CCTV images show PWD scam whistleblower Rahul Sharma, who exposed AAP, fired upon

--- ENDS ---

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The plea argues that the Centre's notification indirectly imposes a ban on sale, purchase or resale of animals, and this would put a huge economic burden on the farmers and cattle traders.

A Hyderabad-based organisation has filed the plea in Supreme Court. Photo for representation.

By Anusha Soni: Supreme Court will hear a plea challenging Centre's notification regarding ban on sale and purchase of cattle for slaughter at animal markets on June 15.

A vacation bench of Justice Ashok Bhushan and Justice Deepak Gupta directed the listing of the matter on June 15 as counsel Sanobar Ali Qureshi, appearing for petitioner Mohammed Abdul Faheem Qureshi, mentioned the matter for an early hearing.

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Counsel Qureshi told the bench that the Centre's notification was contrary to the provision of law that permitted the sale of animals for religious sacrifices.

The plea argues that the Centre's notification indirectly imposes a ban on sale, purchase or resale of animals, and this would further cast a huge economic burden on the farmers and cattle traders.

The plea also argues that the rules will lead to further instances of cow vigilantism and more harassment of farmers and cattle traders.

Earlier, the Madras High Court ordered a month-long stay on the Centre's ban on cattle sale for slaughter while the Kerala High Court said there was no need for it to interfere with the new rules as they did not violate the Constitution.

PROTESTS AGAINST BEEF BAN

The Centre's notification regulating cattle trade has met with opposition in several parts of the country.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee called the rule banning sale of cattle for slaughter a "deliberate attempt to encroach on the state's powers and destroy the federal structure", and said her government would challenge it legally.

Kerala Chief Minister Pinayari Vijayan wrote to the Centre calling the notification "against the principles of secularism and federalism enshrined in our Constitution".

WHAT THE NOTIFICATION SAYS

The Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) notified the new rules under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, which bans sale of cattle for slaughter in open markets across the country.

A gazette notification, titled Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (Regulation of Livestock Markets) Rules, 2017 by the Union ministry, states that no one can bring cattle to an animal market unless he or she has furnished a written declaration that the cattle will not be sold for the purpose of slaughter.

Upon sale of cattle, the animal market committee will take an "undertaking" that the animals are for agricultural purposes and not for slaughter.

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WHAT THE BJP SAYS

Recently, two BJP leaders from Meghalaya quit the party to protest against the beef ban.

Bachu Marak, BJP's district president in North Garo Hills, said beef eating is part of the Garo culture and tradition and he cannot compromise with the sentiment of Garos before tendering his resignation on Monday.

BJP's state president in Meghalaya, Shibun Lyngdoh, however said that "the party has no intention to impose any anti-constitutional measures on the people. The objective of the Modi government is to ensure all-round development across India".

BJP national spokesperson Nalin Kohli said, "The BJP is saying this clearly that the question of having a law in a state on cow slaughter is to be decided by the state and not the Centre."

ALSO READ:

BJP shows flexibility over beef ban, says states are free to decide on slaughter of cows

Beef ban: Another Meghalaya BJP leader quits, says non-secular ideology unacceptable

Beef ban: How BJP plans to milk the cow in West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu

Make cow national animal, give life imprisonment for slaughter: Rajasthan High Court tells Centre

Watch Video: Supreme Court to hear plea challenging cattle trade law on June 15

--- ENDS ---

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Its no longer a secret: San Sebastian, European Capital of Culture in 2016, is a gastronomic gem in a land of spectacular food. If youre planning on spending 24 hours in this city youll need to loosen your waistband.

Sure, Spain has a glut of fantastically picturesque cities and some of the best food on the planet, but San Sebastian known as Donostia in the Basque Country, might just be the jewel in the crown.

The city is also very compact so you will be able to walk from one side to the other relatively quickly. If nothing else, bring your swimming gear and comfy walking shoes.

Must Visit

La Playa de la Concha beach, with its golden crescent sweeping from Parte Vieja (old town  the heart of the city) in the east to Monte Igueldo in the west, is a wonderful feature of this city.

It is probably one of the finest city beaches in Europe, probably the world, youll want to spend a while splashing in the sea or people watching. And lets not forget Playa de Gros (also known as Playa de la Zurriola), a favourite with surfers.

But to get the picture postcard view youll need to head to the funicular up to the top of Monte Igueldo. A 3.15 ride takes you to the antiquated but charming funfair on top of the hill which offers views that can accurately be described as breathtaking.

We also went for a ride on the rickety roller coaster and climbed The Tower for even better views. All the attractions are about 3 each for adults.

Must Eat

Food wise, San Sebastian is akin to a culinary sweet shop. The old town (Parte Vieja) is studded with wood-panelled bars sporting unpronounceable Basque names such as txepetxa and etxberria. Passing each one youll spy little gastronomic works of art lined up along the bar.

These are pintxos (pinch-os), the local variety of tapas and it is these that give the Basque region their rep for quality food. Each one costs around 2-3 and it can be tempting to get stuck in and spend a fortune.

Our favourite pintxos bars were Bar Zeruko, where everything on the bar looked picture perfect and Bar Azkena, which is down a flight of stairs hidden in a market near the local Lidl.

Top tip! Order from the specials board. We had slow-cooked veal cheek with foie gras and a lobster morsel served in a shot glass with dry ice (dont drink the dry ice!).

But our advice is treat the pintxos like an appetizer and head to one of the many Michelin starred restaurants in town. There is a splendid selection.

Arzak is the most famous of the three Michelin starred restaurants on offer. But youd be hard pressed to choose between them, Akelarre or Kokotxa.

We sampled the fare at Narru for their exquisite lunch menu. Bookings are recommended at all the restaurants.

Must Drink

The Basques are a proud lot and theyre justifiably proud of their unique booze options. Just ask any barman what he recommends and the answer will be one of these.

Txakoli (cha-ko-lee) is a tangy apple wine which is poured with a flourish  a cascade from a great height into a small glass. Dont try and do it yourself!

The local cider (cidra) is also a must try. If youre not a cider drinker then if you only try once, do it in San Sebastian.

Must Stay

A literal stones throw from La Concha beach, Hotel de Londres y de Inglaterra is a grand and palatial looking building in the heart of the city centre. The rooms are cool and light with a chic modern finish, despite the classical exterior. The location is ideal for the 24 hour visitor, with the old town a 10 minute walk, the beach barely 2 minutes and the main shopping area on the doorstep.

The bar in the hotel also overlooks the beach so you can watch the world go by over breakfast.

Search more hotels in San Sebastian:





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Getting There

San Sebastians airport is small and only flies internally between Madrid and Barcelona. The nearest international airports are Bilbao (around an hour by bus) or Biarritz in France (just under an hour).

Tickets can be bought at both airports directly to the bus station in San Sebastian.
Patnaik's close aides say that to understand him, one has to understand his empathy

By Pratul Sharma/Photos Sanjay Ahlawat
Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Wednesday apprised Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah of the situation in Mandsaur over phone.

The Chief Minister yesterday appealed for peace to the agitating farmers in the state and also announced a compensation of Rs 1 crore to the kin of those killed in the Mandsaur violence.

The chief minister asserted that his government stands with farmers and assured that various demands have been fulfilled in the past.

"In the past 11 years, there have been countless decisions made for the welfare of farmers. The various demands of the farmers have been fulfilled. I offer my condolences to the victims of Mandsaur incident. Rs 1 crore will be given to the kin of the deceased and Rs 5 lakh for those injured," said the chief minister, adding that the state government is ready to come out with a solution through communication," he said.

Chouhan also ordered a judicial enquiry into the matter.

Samajwadi Party chief and former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav earlier announced financial assistance of Rs 2 lakh for the kin of the deceased farmers.

However, Chouhan came down heavily on the Congress Party for giving a political tinge to the violence after party's vice-president Rahul Gandhi accused the Centre of waging war against nation's farmers.

Yesterday, during an agitation, five farmers, who were demanding fair price and loan waiver, were killed and several others were injured in the firing by security forces.

Internet services in Mandsaur, Ratlam and Ujjain remain suspended following the farmers' protests, and a curfew has also reportedly been imposed.

The farmers in the central state are demanding remunerative prices for their produce and a loan waiver. They are also demanding that they should be given Rs 50 per litre of milk bought from them as they spend Rs 37 per litre.
The national capital got its first government human milk bank and lactation counselling centre at the Lady Hardinge Medical College (LHMC) on Wednesday. Milk banks are repositories of breast milk donated by lactating mothers. Experts say they are useful to save pre-term and low birth weight babies who are too weak to suckle and/or their mothers are unable to provide milk because of illness or death, among other reasons.

According to the union health ministry, the 'Vatsalya  Maatri Amrit Kosh', established in collaboration with the Norwegian government, Oslo University and Norway India Partnership Initiative (NIPI), would be the largest public sector human milk bank and lactation counselling centre in north India.

Currently, there are 30 milk banks across the country, most of which are private facilities. Lactating mothers donate their milk here, which is pasteurised, checked for diseases and stored in refrigerators for future use. Commercial milk banks are not allowed in India.

"With this donor human milk bank, all newborns in and around Delhi will have access to life saving human milk regardless of the circumstances of their birth," a statement from the ministry of health and family welfare said.

The need for human milk banks can be gauged by the grim numbers. Out of the twenty seven million babies born in India annually, 13 per cent are born pre-term, and 28 per cent have low birth weight. Breastfeeding rates are also low in India. Early initiation of breastfeeding is only 40 per cent, even as institutional delivery has increased to 78.9 per cent, said C.K. Mishra, health secretary.

Last year, the ministry had launched the Mothers Absolute Affection (MAA) programme to create awareness about breastfeeding as the most cost-effective way of enhancing the childs immunity, he added. The milk bank at LHMC would also provide counselling to women who need support while breastfeeding their babies.

Though 'Vatsalya  Maatri Amrit Kosh' is a small step in the right direction, India will need many such banks to promote breastfeeding, address neo-natal mortality and counter the use of formula feed among new born babies.
Ministers of Shiv Sena, BJP's alliance partner in the Maharashtra government, boycotted the weekly cabinet meeting on Wednesday.

Shiv Sena ministers and a few leaders had sought Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis' appointment prior to the cabinet meeting to discuss farmers' demands and agrarian crisis. Fadnavis, however, did not give them time and came to cabinet meeting as scheduled. Even as the meeting started, Sena ministers walked out of the meeting. As the cabinet meet went on, senior Sena ministers Subhash Desai and Deepak Sawant chose to remain with senior Sena minister Diwakar Raote in the latter's chamber in Mantralaya.

The development is seen as yet another instance of Sena trying to corner BJP over farmers demands. Sena had complained that Fadnavis did not take them in confidence when he announced loan waiver for small farmers who own land upto five acres.

Meanwhile, Finance Minister Sudhir Mungantiwar claimed that Sena ministers did not boycott the meeting but had duly informed the chief minister that they would remain absent as party chief Uddhav Thackeray is out of India. Mungantiwar stressed that all the allies would be consulted and taken into confidence by the chief minister before making any further announcements regarding loan waiver to farmers.

Subhash Desai told THE WEEK that none of the Sena ministers attended the meeting. "Anyone can say whatever they want. We have conveyed the chief minister that we want total loan waiver for farmers. We are with farmers in their struggle. We have also told him that whenever he is taking any decision he must inform us as we have many inputs to give. Shetkaryancha Saat-Bara Kora Zalach Pahije (7-12 extract document of farmers must be cleared of each and every rupee of loan)," Desai said.
The Kerala High Court on Wednesday declined to put a stay on the ban imposed by the Centre on the sale of cattle for slaughter.

The next hearing in this case is scheduled to be heard on June 28.

Earlier, the court had backed the Centre's decision, while the state government had opposed the order issued by the Central Environment Ministry in controlling the sale of cattle.

The High Court observed that there is no ban on cattle slaughter or consuming meat, but the bill only bans large-scale sale of cattle through big markets.

The court gave the statement after considering a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by Youth Congress state secretary T. S. Saji.

The court had asked whether the notification has violated the fundamental rights of the citizen or the notification contains any clause that constrains the labour laws, following which the petitioner withdrew his petition.

Earlier, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had said that he will call for a meeting of all the chief ministers, asserting that the Union government does not have the right to issue such an order.

"The Union government does not have the right to issue this order. This is state's matter and regulations have no legal validity," Vijayan said during a press conference, adding that the legal sanctity of the new amendment lacks constitutional validity.

"There are a number of clauses which are violating the state's basic rights. There are certain norms that the animal marketing committee has to look into. For example, the owner and buyer have to maintain a certificate which is not feasible and thereby we have decided to question the law in the court of law," he added.

He further announced that they will discuss the issue with opposition party leaders and summon a special assembly to discuss the issue.

"Union government's order not only prevents the killing of animals but also prevents the sale of cattle. It has to be examined that whether Centre has the power to issue this order. Will discuss the issue with opposition party leader and summon a special assembly to discuss the issue," he added.

Drawing a huge backlash from various fractions, Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change Harsh Vardhan ordered that the ministry has notified the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (Regulation of Livestock Markets) Rules, 2017 to ensure that the sale of cattle is not meant for slaughter purposes.

He said the seller and buyer both have to ensure that the cattle is not being bought or sold across the country's livestock markets market for slaughter purposes.

The rules also state that the purchaser shall not sacrifice the animal for any religious purpose or sell it to a person outside the state without permission and must keep in with the state's cattle protection laws.
After the death of six farmers in an alleged police firing during a protest in Mandsaur, more than a dozen districts of western Madhya Pradesh plunged into violent protests leading to prohibitory orders at some places and an undeclared curfew. Paramilitary forces have been deployed in Malwa and Nimad region.

High alert has been declared in the other districts of the state as the farmers protest entered the seventh day on Wednesday.

Chartered bus services between Bhopal and Indore were suspended after a bus carrying passengers were consigned to fire in Dewas. All the passengers were allowed to get out of the bus before it was burnt to ashes. The train services, too, were disrupted after the tracks were mobbed by the farmers. Vehicles and shops were burnt and government property damaged in several districts.

Internet services in the four districts of Malwa region continued to remain suspended for the second day in a row. Additional security forces belonging to CRPF and RAF have been rushed to the troubled area, said Ajay Kumar Sharma, additional Director General of Police, posted in Indore.

While Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi planned to visit the families of those who were killed during the protests, the state Congress leaders were stopped from entering the troubled areas. Mandsaur district collector S.K. Singh was manhandled by farmers when he tried to pacify an agitated crowd during the funeral of the killed farmers.

State Congress president Arun Yadav and leader of opposition Ajay Singh, defying the administration orders, reached Jaora to express solidarity with farmers. Congress had called a state bandh in support of farmers and their demands.

Chief Minister Shivraj Singh convened a special cabinet meeting to take stock of law and order situation in the state as hundreds of vehicles were burnt and shops looted by the farmers. He announced an ex gratia payment of Rs one crore each to the farmer killed on Tuesday. A judicial inquiry has been instituted into the police firing which became controversial after the statement of Home Minister Bhupendra Singh who initially denied the firing being done by police force.

District collector and the superintendent of police initially said that they had not given orders of firing. Later in the evening the government accepted that the farmers were killed in firing. Eyewitnesses said that firing was done by the contingent of CRPF who fired on the agitating farmers when they had to face stone pelting by the protesters.

Meanwhile, the state government has asked for additional troops of para-military forces as the situation is getting out of control.

Mahesh Patidar, president of Patidar Samaj, Neemuch said they were protesting peacefully when police fired on them. Patidar community in the Malwa-Nimad region, which comprises 15 districts including Mandsaur, is at the forefront of these protests. Government believes that Patidar movement of Gujarat is reportedly behind the agitation in Madhya Pradesh also.

Though the government has announced that it will buy onions of farmers at Rs 8 per kilograms, farmers feel that the decision is too late. Thousands of farmers have to throw their produce after bumper crop of onion and potatoes this year. They are angry because the government neither made arrangements to procure the crop on time or intervened to ensure a reasonable price. The state saw several pictures of farmers dumping their onion and potatoes on roads when their prices plummeted to as low as Re 1 to Rs 2 per kg in markets.

Meanwhile, the Rashtriya Kisan Mazdoor Sangh, a national union of farmers, which is coordinating these protests among various farmers organisations, said that the protests will continue until the government accepts their demands.
A militant who was seen shouting slogans at the funeral of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Sabzar Ahmed Bhat on May 28 has renounced militancy, police said.

Danish Ahmed, a resident of Kulangam, Handwara in Kupwara was photographed raising slogans at Sabzar's funeral at Rathsuna, Tral in Pulwama.

In the photos, he was seen wearing a pouch and riding gloves.

A police spokesman said that the video clips of the militant were also circulated on social media.

Danish joined militancy in the third year of his college. He was studying at Doon PG College of Agriculture Sciences and Technology and had taken part in the in stone-pelting at Handwara during the 2016 turmoil also.

Police said Danish renounced militancy after police got in touch with his parents and asked them to counsel him to return.

Danish has been allowed to unite with his family in view of his career.

"His parents were convinced that if he surrenders, he would be dealt with fairly under the law," the spokesman said. A case of Arms Act stands registered him. Danishs case will now be dealt under Jammu and Kashmir Surrendered Militants Rehabilitation Policy.

"We don't want to kill the local terrorists," said DIG Nitesh Kumar on Danish's surrender. "He will be dealt according to the law, but he will avail some clemency."

Danish is the 35th militant to return home after counselling since September.

On June 1, Tufail Qadir, 19, who had gone missing from his home on May 24 and then appeared in a video on Facebook with a gun, returned home. His return was announced in a press conference by police in Srinagar.

"He (Tufail) is back and is with his family now," Deputy Inspector General of Police Central Kashmir range, Ghulam Hassan Bhat had said in a press conference.

Tufail, a first-year college student, had gone missing after he was detained by police during the unrest that followed the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani in July last year.

DGP SP Vaid credited Tufail's family for his return. "His family succeeded finally and we are happy," Vaid said. "We have not stopped our efforts and our endeavour is to bring local boys, who have joined militant ranks, back to their families."
By Press Trust of India: Bengaluru, Jun 7 (PTI) With less than a month left for the rollout of the GST, the Karnataka government today tabled in the state assembly a bill required for implementing the new indirect tax regime.

The Karnataka Goods and Services TaxBill, 2017 was tabled by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, who holds the finance portfolio.

A workshop will also be held to apprise the legislators of the salient features of the proposed legislation, as demanded by a few members.

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So far, 24 states and Union Territories have passedthe State Goods and Services Tax (SGST) Act in theirrespective legislative assemblies.

Karnataka is among the seven states that are yet to pass the SGST law.

As per the GST Constitutional amendment, all states have to pass SGST bills by September 15, 2017, failing which they will lose their taxation powers.

The government plans to roll out the Goods and Services Tax (GST), which will subsume 16 different taxes, from July 1.

As the Chief Minister introduced the bill, JD(S) members raised questions about it and demanded that the government "enlighten" the members about the contents and theneed for the bill.

Responding to this, Siddaramaiah said "GST aims tobring one uniform tax across the country. The bill that wehave introduced today is just a formality as the GST bill has already been passed by the Lok Sabha, after having due consultations with all states."

JD(S) members Y S V Datta and Shivalinge Gowda argued that the contents of GST and its impact on the states finances should be made known to the members.

"We dont know GST and how it works. Government should give details to us about it and its impact on the state. We cannot approve the bill as a formality just because it has been passed by Parliament," Gowda said.

Intervening, Leader of the Opposition Jagdish Shettar (BJP) advised the government to conduct a workshop-like session for MLAs by experts on the lines of the one being organised for the Legislative Council members.

Both the Chief Minister and Speaker K B Koliwad agreed toorganise a similar workshop for the MLAs.

Siddaramaiah also took potshots at JD(S) for expressing "reservations" about the bill and questioned whether their party supremo H D Deve Gowda was also opposed to GST.

He said GST had been approved by Parliament and acouncil consisting of representatives from all states wasworking towards its implementation.

"It is true that those states that were collecting more taxes may face some issues, but it has been said that if the collection is less than average, it will be compensated," Siddaramaiah added.

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The Karnataka Sales Tax (Amendment) Bill, 2017 wasalso introduced in the assembly today.

It said tax on petrol, high speed diesel, aviation turbine fuel, crude oil and natural gas shall be levied from adate that the GST Council may decide.

Till then and even after that, the state will be empowered to levy tax on sale of these products, hence it isconsidered to amend the Act, the bill said in its statement ofobjects and reasons. PTI KSU RA VS ABM

--- ENDS ---
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is unlikely to have an 'unofficial' bilateral chat with his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) meet at Astana although the two might interact on the multilateral stage.

Modi will be heading to Astana on June 8 for the two-day meet, at which India will be formally inducted into the regional club.

India had applied for membership in 2014, though it had observer status since 2005. In 2015, at the meet in Ufa, India was told it was welcome to join the club and in 2016, at Tashkent, the process of formalising the membership began. Since then, India signed 38 obligatory documents relating to the membership. India's formal entry will be announced at the Astana meet.

The meet will also see the formal induction of Pakistan into the club. Pakistan applied for membership in 2006, but its application was processed at the same time as India's after the SCO reorganised its rules of inducting new members.

With hostilities between the two nations escalating, there was a hope that some back door diplomacy would help arrange a meeting between Modi and Sharif. Indian businessman and close friend of Sharif, Sajjan Jindal, had gone to Pakistan to work this out, but the Pakistani military, not keen on the meet, blew the cover. With the beheading of Indian soldiers some days later and India winning a stay on former naval commander Kulbhushan Jadhav's execution from the International Court of Justice, the environment for holding talks has worsened.

Unless there is some impromptu move by one of them, the Astana outing isn't likely see a bilateral chat between Modi and Sharif. So far, there has been no request from Pakistan in this direction. Modi, however, is scheduled to have a couple of bilaterals'' which could include one with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The SCO is an Eurasian club that was founded in 2001 by China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. While the main objective of the Shanghai Five (precursor to SCO) was deepening military trust, security and anti-terrorism co-operation, its role has also evolved to encompass regional connectivity trade and commerce. SCO members have held joint military exercises in the past.

Joint Secretary (Eurasia ) G.V Srinivas said how India benefits from this membership will be understood only later. It is important to be part of the group since it was a club in the neighbourhood and addresses issues that were of concern to the region, he added.

It is a relatively new organisation. Its role is evolving,'' he said.

Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Gopal Baglay added that since most SCO member countries were neighbours of Afghanistan, it provided India with a multilateral platform to engage in the rebuilding of Afghanistan, which is one of the important foreign policy objectives of India.

While in Astana, Modi will also attend the World Exposition, along with the leaders of the other countries.
The National Investigation Agency has roped in the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) to analyse the images and documents stored in the pen drives and laptops seized from the separatist leaders and hawala dealers during the raids in Kashmir, Delhi and Haryana over the last few days.

Top sources said the NIA has handed over all the technical evidence to the CERT-In in sealed boxes. While the agency has its own team on technical experts to retrieve the data and images, it decided to rope in another agency keeping in mind the legal scrutiny it has to undergo in the days to come.

The agency wants to strengthen its case against the accused by making its evidence admissible in court. The case relates to JuD chief and Lashkar-e-Taiba patron Hafiz Saeed who has been accused by the NIA of acting in connivance with certain separatist leaders for "raising, receiving and collecting funds domestically and abroad through various illegal channels, including hawala, for funding separatist and terrorist activities in Jammu and Kashmir."

In its FIR, the NIA has said active militants of proscribed terror organisations like the Hizbul Mujahideen, Lashkar and Dukhtarane Millat had also been roped in the conspiracy.

The agency has stressed that its probe is focussing on the "larger criminal conspiracy for causing disruption in the Kashmir valley by way of pelting of stones on security forces, systematically burning of schools, damage to public property and waging war against India."

The NIA confirmed last week that prominent businessmen and separatist leaders, whose houses were raided, included Zahoor Watali, Raja Zahoor Khan, Farooq Ahmad Dar alias Bitta Karate and Naeem Khan. While Watali and Zahoor Khan are prominent businessmen, Naeem Khan was chairman of National Front before he was suspended while Dar belongs to JKLF(R).

Not just cash running into a few crores, but gold jewellery and coins worth about Rs 40 lakh, besides other incriminating documents like phone diaries, katchcha receipts and vouchers have also been seized from the alleged financiers, hawala operators and office bearers of separatist groups during the searches, NIA officials said.

Laptops, pen drives and mobile phones seized are now being investigated by the CERT-In experts for further leads, sources said. The CERT is expected to submit its report to the NIA within next five days.

Meanwhile, the NIA has ordered freezing of the bank accounts and lockers of the accused. The agency has also summoned them for questioning.
Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi may today visit Madhya Pradesh's Mandsaur, where at least five farmers were killed in police firing, said party sources.

Five farmers were killed and several others injured on Tuesday in Mandsaur as police opened fire on peasants, who indulged in violence and stone-pelting.

Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan ordered a judicial probe into the incident even as Mandsaur city and Piplya Mandi area were put under curfew after the violence.

Meanwhile, after Chauhan blamed the Congress party for a "conspiracy to fuel violence" in Mandsaur, the party demanded the state government to give the honour of being a 'martyr' to the deceased farmers and stop blaming it for his own failure.

"The Congress party expresses its condolence on this incident. Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan is blaming the Congress party for his own failure. The Congress demands that the honour of being a 'martyr' should be given to the deceased farmers," said Congress leader K.K. Mishra.

Another Congress leader Pankaj Chaturvedi compared Chief Minister Chauhan with General Dyer, who ordered the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in pre-independent India, and demanded that the case of murder should be registered against all the accused.

"This is very sad that the Chief Minister acted like the General Dyer. I appeal to the Chief Minister to not blame the Congress party for such things. I think giving compensation to the deceased families is just a show off. The Congress demands for a strict action against all the accused and the case of murder should be registered on them," Chaturvedi said.

Earlier in the day, Chouhan ordered a judicial enquiry into the matter.

Meanwhile, the death toll in the violent Mandsaur farmers protest has climbed to five.

Appealing for peace to the agitating farmers in the state, Chief Minister Chouhan announced a compensation of Rs 1 crore to the kin of those killed and Rs 5 lakh for those injured in the Mandsaur violence.

Several others were injured in the firing by security forces yesterday, as farmers intensified their agitation demanding fair price and loan waiver.

Internet services in Mandsaur, Ratlam and Ujjain remain suspended following the farmers' protests, and a curfew has also reportedly been imposed.

The farmers in the central state are demanding remunerative prices for their produce and a loan waiver. They are also demanding that they should be given Rs 50 per litre of milk bought from them as they spend Rs 37 per litre.

The killing of the farmers came hours after Mandsaur collector Swatantra Kumar Singh claimed all was well in the district and that the situation was under control.
The United Arab Emirates tightened the squeeze on fellow Gulf state Qatar on Wednesday threatening anyone publishing expressions of sympathy towards it with up to 15 years in prison, and barring Qatari passport or resident visa holders entry.

Efforts to defuse the regional crisisprompted on Monday when the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and others severed diplomatic ties with Qatar over alleged support for Islamist groups and Iranshowed no immediate signs of success.

UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash threatened more curbs if necessary and said Qatar needed to make "iron-clad" commitments to change policies on funding militants. Qatar vehemently denies giving such support.

US President Donald Trump took sides in the rift on Tuesday, praising the actions against Qatar, but later spoke by phone with Saudi King Salman and stressed the need for Gulf unity.

His defence secretary, James Mattis, also spoke to his Qatari counterpart to express commitment to the Gulf region's security. Qatar hosts 8,000 U.S. military personnel at al Udeid, the largest US air base in the Middle East and a launchpad for US-led strikes on the Islamic State militant group.

Kuwait's emir has also been seeking to mediate, meeting Saudi's king on Tuesday.

Qatar's isolation from powerful fellow Arab states advanced, however.

UAE-based newspaper Gulf News and pan-Arab channel Al-Arabiya reported the crackdown on expressions of sympathy with Qatar.

"Strict and firm action will be taken against anyone who shows sympathy or any form of bias towards Qatar, or against anyone who objects to the position of the United Arab Emirates, whether it be through the means of social media, or any type of written, visual or verbal form," Gulf News quoted UAE Attorney-General Hamad Saif al-Shamsi as saying.

On top of a possible jail term, offenders could also be hit with a fine of at least 500,000 UAE dirhams, the newspaper said, citing a statement to Arabic-language media.

Since the diplomatic row erupted, slogans against and in support of Qatar have dominated Twitter in Arabic, a platform used widely in the Arab world, particularly in Saudi Arabia.

Newspapers and television channels in the region have also been engaged in a war of words over Qatar's role.

The UAE's state-owned Etihad Airways, meanwhile, said all travellers holding Qatari passports were currently prohibited from travelling to or transiting through the emirates on government instructions.

Foreigners residing in Qatar and in possession of a Qatari residence visa would also not be eligible for visa on arrival in the UAE, Etihad spokesman said in an email.

"This ruling applies to all airlines flying into the UAE," the spokesman said in the statement.

Those breaking ties with Qatar are the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, the Maldives, Mauritania and Libya's eastern-based government. Jordan has downgraded its diplomatic representation and revoked the license of Doha-based TV channel Al Jazeera.

Squeeze

Ordinary Qataris were loading up on supplies in supermarkets, fearing shortages. But financial markets were relatively calm after some recent jumps.

Qatar's stock index was roughly unchanged after plummeting 8.7 per cent over the last two days.

"Tensions are still high and mediation efforts by fellow Gulf Cooperation Council state Kuwait have yet to lead to a concrete solution, so investors will likely remain on edge," said one Dubai-based trader.

Qatar has said it will not retaliate against the curbs.

"We are willing to sit and talk," Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani told CNN late on Tuesday. He said his country was "protecting the world from potential terrorists".

A Qatari official, however, said the rift was pushing Doha in the direction of leaving the six-state Gulf Cooperation Council, "with deep regret".

Bans on Doha's fleet using regional ports and anchorages are threatening to halt some of its exports and disrupt those of liquefied natural gas.

Traders on global markets worried that Riyadh's allies would refuse to accept LNG shipments from the Gulf state, the world's largest liquefied natural gas exporter, and that Egypt might even bar tankers carrying Qatari cargoes from using the Suez Canal as they head to Europe and beyond.
By Press Trust of India: Lucknow, Jun 7 (PTI) Jan Sangh stalwart Deen Dayal Upadhyay will be the focus of a mega general knowledge quiz, involving about 20 lakh children in Uttar Pradesh, as the BJP celebrates the birth centenary of its leader.

The quiz aims to make antodaya (reaching the last strata of society) and ekaatma manavaad (integral humanism) -- the terms synonymous with Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyay -- household names across the state.

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The BJP is celebrating 2017 as Gareeb Kalyan Varsh to mark the birth centenary celebrations of Upadhyay.

The quiz will be held on August 20.

"It will be a written quiz in which we are expecting 15- 20 lakh students from classes VIII, IX and X to participate. The quiz will be held throughout the state on August 20. A booklet depicting the life, personality, contribution and achievements of Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyay is being printed for participants," UP BJP spokesperson Rakesh Tripathi told PTI.

The quiz will be conducted by the Deen Dayal Upadhyay Janma Shataabdi Samaroh Samiti, which will have BJP members in the committee, he said.

He said the endeavour of the party workers is to ensure that the teachings and philosophy of Deen Dayal Upadhyay reach the last strata of the society and also among the youngsters.

"Deen Dayal is a well-known personality outside India. But it is ironical that in the annals of Indian history, he is yet to get a fair share of his due," Tripathi said.

UP state secretary of BJP Subhash Yaduvanshi has been made the co-ordinator for this ambitious competition.

"Victorious students will be publicly felicitated. Preparations for the quiz are already going on in full swing," said another BJP spokesperson Manish Shukla.

The contest will see participation of 100 schools from each of the 75 districts of the state, he said.

The Yogi Aditynath government has also decided to rename the Mughalsarai Railway Station in the state after the RSS ideologue, who had mysteriously died at the railway station in 1968.

Earlier in April, the Yogi Adityanath government had decided to name the Agra airport after Upadhyay.

The birth centenary celebrations of the Jan Sangh stalwart will continue till September 25 for which the Information department has been made the nodal department.

The programmes will be held at the district and block levels and a three-day-long Antodaya Mela and exhibition will be organised.

Information about the welfare measures initiated by the Centre and state governments will also be disseminated through fairs and exhibitions.

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The departments of higher education and secondary education will conduct different programmes on this occasion.

This includes discussions, seminars, poster competition, slogan writing competition, creative writing competition, debates, recitation, elocution, quiz competition and essay writing contests.

A prabhat pheri (morning march) will be taken out on the birth anniversary of Upadhyay. The government will also declare a nagar panchyat (the smallest unit of the urban local bodies) as Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyay Adarsh Nagar Panchayat.

Under this, efforts will be made by the state government to make available all basic amenities to people living in the area. There are 438 nagar panchayats in UP.

A number of sporting events too will be held on this occasion. PTI NAV SMI DV

--- ENDS ---
The U.S. air traffic control system, the worlds largest and most complex, is in the midst of an era of unsurpassed safety. There has not been a fatal crash of a domestic passenger airliner in the U.S. in eight years.

Now President Donald Trump is looking to shift responsibility for the system from the government to a private, nonprofit corporation run by airlines and other aviation interests. The handover of about 300 airport towers and other flight tracking centers would be one of the largest transfers of U.S. government assets. About 35,000 workers, including 14,000 controllers and 6,000 technicians, would be affected.

Privatization supporters, including some Republican lawmakers, say it would improve efficiency and modernize the air-traffic system. But congressional approval isnt certain. Some lawmakers in both parties are reluctant to give up oversight. Some politically influential business aircraft operators, private pilots, small aircraft manufacturers and medium- and small-sized airports fear airlines will dominate the corporations board, resulting in higher fees for them and less service.

There are also concerns about whether the air traffic system would suffer during the transition.

Some questions and answers about whats at stake:

WHY MESS WITH A GOOD THING?

The idea is to remove air traffic control from the vagaries of the government budget process, which has limited the Federal Aviation Administrations ability to commit to long-term contracts and raise money for major expenditures.

Thats hampered the agencys NextGen program to modernize the air traffic system by switching from radar and radio communications to GPS surveillance and digital voice and text communications. Recent controller furloughs and government shutdowns have worsened the problem.



WHAT IS THE SITUATION IN OTHER COUNTRIES?

Many countries have created government-owned corporations, independent government agencies or quasi-governmental entities. Canada is the only country to create what is clearly a private nonprofit air-traffic corporation. NavCanada can raise private capital, make long-term financial commitments, and it recently lowered the fees it charges airlines.

But the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service reported last month that there appears to be no conclusive evidence that any of those approaches is better or worse than government-run services, including the FAAs, in terms of productivity, cost-effectiveness, service quality, and safety and security.



WHO WANTS TO DO THIS?

The U.S. airline industry has been campaigning since the 1980s to privatize air traffic control to try to gain greater control over the system, reduce their costs and replace airline passenger ticket taxes with user fees based on takeoffs, landings and other operations. The Clinton administration proposed spinning off air traffic operations into a government corporation but ran into congressional opposition.

House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Bill Shuster, R-Penn., has proposed using NavCanada as a model. But he couldnt win enough support to bring legislation to the House floor last year, and he faced even greater opposition in the Senate. Trump administration officials have cited Shusters bill as a starting point for their efforts.

Shuster received $148,499 in airline industry campaign contributions last year, making him the industrys top recipient in the House, according to the political money tracking site Opensecrets.org.



IS NEXTGEN IN TROUBLE?

The FAA has been working for more than a decade on NextGen. Early on, it predicted the program would be completed by 2025, but officials now describe NextGen as an evolving effort with no end date.

The National Academy of Sciences reported in 2015 that the original vision for NextGen of transforming the air traffic system has devolved into a series of incremental changes that primarily emphasize replacing aging equipment and systems.

But FAA Administrator Michael Huerta said recently the agency has made tremendous progress revamping the system with the latest technology, and is poised to switch from ground-based radar to GPS surveillance. The switch is expected to save time and fuel and lower greenhouse gas emissions. Huerta has predicted $13 billion in benefits to the government and aircraft operators by 2020, with greater gains after that.

Calvin Scovel, the Transportation Departments inspector general and a frequent NextGen critic, recently told the House transportation committee that even though the program hasnt met expectations, its not broken.



WOULD PRIVATIZATION HELP?

Privatization supporters complain that the FAAs procurement process is so cumbersome that new equipment is no longer the latest technology by the time its acquired. Also, delays in updating landing and takeoff procedures to incorporate technological advances make the system less efficient. Airlines say that costs them billions of dollars in flight delays each year.

A corporation would be free of such government regulations and could act faster and with more flexibility, supporters say. The FAA would still provide safety oversight.

Opponents say theres no evidence a corporation run by airlines would do a better job. Major U.S. airlines have suffered massive computer outages in recent years that have roiled air travel.



WHERE DO AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLERS STAND?

Their union, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, endorsed Shusters bill after winning assurances that controller wages, benefits and collective bargaining rights would be protected. Union leaders say controllers are tired of working with outdated equipment and are concerned about government shutdowns and furloughs.

(AP)
Attorney and right-wing activist Itamar Ben-Givir has filed a 120,000 shekel lawsuit against Police Chief Roni Alsheich and other senior department officers including the Jerusalem police chief and others. In the lawsuit, Ben-Givir claims police operate using an apartheid policy as persons have been arrested solely for being right-wing and shomer Torah and Mitzvos, ahead of the toeiva parade.

In his suit, Ben-Givir points out that in July 2016, the annual toeiva parade was held and in contradiction of the law, acting in an atmosphere of panic, the police decided to detain dozens of religious youths as they were in the parade area to express their legitimate right to quietly protest the parade.

The lawsuit details seven cases of co-plaintiffs who were detained and taken to a police station for the duration of the parade last summer. He points out they were detained despite the fact there was no credible intelligence information establishing any of them posed a real threat. He feels police acted in gross violation of their basic rights as guaranteed in a democratic society. The suit adds that the police chief and Jerusalem police chief failed to meet the requirements of paragraphs 5 and 7 of the Basic Law, guarantying every person honor and freedom.

It is also alleged that false arrests were made at the expense of the basic rights of those taken into custody, and the irresponsible conduct of the department must result in compensation to the victims. He uses the murder of Shira Bani in last years parade to highlight his point, that an entire tzibur cannot be held responsible or besmirched due to the actions of Yishai Schlisel. http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/headlines-breaking-stories/434707/schlisel-sentenced-to-life-in-prison-plus-31-years.html The lawsuit maintains that police do not have the right to arbitrarily begin arresting persons without cause, which was the case ahead of the parade last year.

Ben-Givir explains he feels police have crossed red lines and acted in a discriminatory fashion for which we are seeking damages. He rejects the detention and/or arrests of persons for expressing their opinion, be that as it may, and the police department policy of silencing these voices of opposition, arresting persons who have not committed any crime whatsoever.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
IDF and border police forces accompanied by Civil Administration inspectors arrived at the Nvei Erez Outpost in the Binyamin Regional Council region of the Shomron this week and confiscated a caravan home being renovated by a family. The outpost is adjacent to Maale Michmas.

They then traveled to the ruins of Amona, near Ofra, and destroyed a building and confiscated materials.

Yosef Lifan explained to Kol Yehudi the caravan home was being refurbished for a married couple with three children, whose wife is expecting another. We did not receive and orders or notification of their intent to confiscate the familys home. We are on state land and Deputy Defense Minister Eli Ben-Dahan explained efforts are ongoing to legalize the community. We tried to prevent them from taking it [the caravan], albeit without success. They arrived at 5:00AM and confiscated the home, which contained a substantial amount of tools.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
On Friday morning, at the Wolfson buildings on Diskin Street, United Hatzalah inaugurated a new ambulance. The new ambulance will be a dual purpose ambulance, said Miriam Ballin, Director of the organizations Psychotrauma and Crisis Response Unit. The ambulance will be providing EMS services free of charge to the residents of the Shaare Chessed and Rechavia neighborhoods in the city as well as providing the Psychotrauma and Crisis Response Unit with an on-scene command center and clinic during large scale traumatic incidents.

Ballin explained the idea behind the location specific EMS activities of the ambulance. Residents from the neighborhoods of Shaare Chessed and Rechavia were among those who supported the project and donated a large portion of the funds used to purchase the new vehicle. Thus, we are centralizing the ambulance to these neighborhoods to provide heightened coverage for this area she explained

United Hatzalah ambulances are used primarily to train new EMTs and paramedics allowing them to get hands-on experience during an ambulance shift in the city. It will provide EMS care by matching newly trained EMS personnel with veteran drivers and EMTs, working together to treat patients in need of urgent and professional community-based response. The vehicle will only respond to emergency calls that come in through the organizations emergency hotline of 1221, so as not impinge upon the work of any other ambulance service.

The community felt there was a need for a faster response that is why so many people from the area got behind this project, said United Hatzalah founder and President Eli Beer. We are overjoyed at the support and the initiative of the people of these communities and we are happy to provide this service for them in times of need, he added.

When the vehicle is not being used to provide coverage and answer emergency calls, it will serve its second purpose as the organizations primary Psychotrauma and Crisis Response ambulance, Ballin explained. This ambulance is very unique. It can be divided into two separate clinics and has the ability to expand into a localized command center for the unit by opening a tent from its right side. The ambulance will be equipped with specialized gear that is used to support patients who are psychologically or emotionally injured during a traumatic event or suffering from shock.

The ambulance is the first of its kind, said Ballin. It is also the first time that these neighborhoods will have their own devoted ambulance on call, and that is something that we feel we want to give back to the community that so staunchly supported this project.

During the inauguration, Ballin especially thanked Harvey Schwartz from the Captain Leo V. Berger Fund as well as the Karfunkel family who donated large sums to support the purchase of the ambulance. She also thanks the Friedman family and Rabbi Israel Braun who helped spearhead the campaign in the Shaare Chessed community, and her husband Dr. Adam Ballin for his support throughout the campaign.

Following speeches by members of the organizations staff and volunteers, Rabbi Rosenthal, the Rabbi of Shaare Chessed, honored the gathered crowd by offering words of blessing for the project and for its continued success. The ambulance is expected to begin regular shifts in the center of Jerusalem in the coming weeks.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
By Press Trust of India: New Delhi, Jun 7 (PTI) India will soon sign a pact with Somalia for exchange of sentenced prisoners as the Union Cabinet today gave its nod for it.

A meeting of the cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, gave its approval for signing and subsequent ratification of the agreement on transfer of sentenced persons between India and Somalia.

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Signing the agreement with Somalia will facilitate the Indian inmates imprisoned in Somalia or vice-versa to be near to their families, for serving remaining part of their sentence and shall facilitate their social rehabilitation, an official statement said.

India has signed bilateral agreements on transfer of sentenced persons with United Kingdom, Mauritius, Bulgaria, France, Egypt, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Bangladesh, Brazil, Israel, Bosnia and Herzegovina, UAE, Italy, Turkey, Maldives, Thailand, Russian Federation, Kuwait, Vietnam, Australia, Hong Kong, Qatar, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Bahrain and Estonia.

Prior to 2004, there was no domestic legislation under which foreign prisoners could be transferred to the country of their origin to serve the remaining part of their sentence, nor was there a provision for the transfer of prisoners of Indian origin convicted by a foreign court to serve their sentence in India.

The transfer of such prisoners to their own native countries shall facilitate their social rehabilitation.

Hence the Repatriation of Prisoners Act, 2003 was enacted for achieving the above purpose. For achieving the objectives of the Act, a treaty/agreement is required to be signed with countries having mutual interest with India on this matter. PTI ACB IKA

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Police are investigating an apparent arson attack at a Kosher restaurant in Manchester.

Firefighters responded to the blaze at JS Restauraunt in Prestwich shortly before 4AM early Tuesday. Crews battled the flames for more than an hour. The ground floor of the restaurant sustained serious damage. JS Restaurant is the oldest Kosher eatery in Manchester, founded in 1956.

Greater Manchester Police said it has launched an investigation, but no arrests have yet been made.

The Community Security Trust, a local charity which monitors anti-Semitism, said: We are working very closely with GMP but there is no specific information at this time to prove that the attack was or was not anti-Semitic and we dont want to jump to any conclusions about what has occurred. We will be sending out security advice to restaurants and shops in Greater Manchester today but this is purely precautionary.

Sources tell YWN there appeared to be an attempted arson at another Manchester eatery earlier this week. Surveillance footage shows two males launching petrol bombs at Taam Restaurant. Taam, was itself a victim of a suspected arson attack on a Friday night in May 2016.

(Nat Golden  YWN / Photo via Manchester Evening News)
A real estate developer has pleaded guilty in a scheme that involved falsely registering voters in an upstate New York village.

The developer entered the plea Tuesday in White Plains federal court to a charge of conspiracy to corrupt the electoral process. The charge stemmed from a March 2014 election for the office of mayor and other jobs in Bloomingburg.

Acting Manhattan U.S. Attorney Joon Kim said in a statement that the 57-year-old developer conspired to advance his real estate development project by falsely registering voters.

Prosecutors say the developer and others bribed potential voters by offering payments, subsidies and other things of value to people who did not live in Bloomingburg.

Sentencing is scheduled for Sept. 28. A fellow defendant pleaded guilty last week.

(AP / Photo by Shimon Gifter)
Ziad Iad, a PA (Palestinian Authority) resident who threatened MK Yehuda Glick, agreed to a plea bargain agreement in an IDF military court including a two-month jail term, eight months probation and a NIS 10,000 fine. This means if he repeats his crime during the eight months of probation, he is immediately returned to prison.

The threat against Glick on social media included a photo of the terrorist who shot Glick two years ago in an assassination attempt.

Glick stated Incitement and threats on social media is terror, no less. I thank the IDF, Israel Police and the law-enforcement system for its expeditious handling of the matter.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
(PHOTOS IN EXTENDED ARTICLE)

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Wednesday, 13 Sivan, met with US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley.

Prime Minister Netanyahu stated, Thank you for all your help and standing up for Israel, standing up for the truth, which is standing up for America. Actually, I think its standing up for the UN as it was originally conceived. People appreciate truth. We have an ancient Hebrew saying that when somebody tells a truth, you can feel it. So people feel it, they not only understand it, they feel it. And we feel it. Were glad to see the fruits of your efforts, uncommon common sense. And its the way people react across a very wide spectrum. President Trump and you I think have changed the discourse, have drawn new standards, and everybodys taking up, and thats great. I think it makes a world of difference, both for Israel and the US. Again, I felt that the UN would collapse, you know, that whole scaffolding of lies would just collapse. I think youve put in that simple word, truth.

US Ambassador to the UN Haley responded, You know, thats all Ive done, is tell the truth, and its kind of overwhelming at the reaction. It was a habit. It was a habit. It was something that were so used to doing. And if theres anything I have no patience for is bullies, and the UN was being such a bully to Israel, because they could. Were starting to see a turn in New York. I think they know they cant keep responding in the way theyve been responding. They sense that the tone has changed. We were talking with some Ambassadors in Geneva and, that are all on the Human Rights Council, and we talked to them about Agenda Item Seven, some of them, they were embarrassed by it. You know, they acknowledge the fact that it just makes no sense. You cant sit there, and of all countries, Israel?

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem/Photo Credit: Amos Ben-Gershom, GPO)
Minister of Culture & Sport (Likud) Miri Regev on Tuesday 11 Sivan was on an official visit in the Druse community of Jat-Yanuh in northern Israel to take part in a cornerstone ceremony honoring the Druse heritage. At some point, she fell and fractured an arm.

Persons present explain she was moving between community homes in the dark, lost her footing and fell.

On Wednesday morning, she arrived at the Kosel for an official event and began feeling excruciating pain in her left arm. The pain continued for a number of hours and she was taken to a branch of Terem emergency rooms in Jerusalem where it was determined she had sustained a fracture from her fall the previous night.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem/Photo Credit: Terem spokesman)
President Reuven Rivlin on Wednesday, 13 Sivan met at his residence in Jerusalem with United States Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Nikki R. Haley.

President Rivlin welcomed her and said, You are a dear friend of Israel. We appreciate your strong stand on the worlds most important stage, in support of the security of the people and the State of Israel. With your support we see the beginning of a new era. Israel is no longer alone at the UN. Israel is no longer the UNs punching bag.

He continued, When I spoke at the UN on Holocaust Memorial Day, I said that the UN must learn from the lessons of the past, and stand up against hatred and racism. I said it must end its obsession with targeting Israel. Progress has been made. Israels standing at the UN has improved. But sadly, we have a long way to go. Both in holding to account, public statements made by officials, and in supporting regulation to reduce the ridiculous number of discussions and resolutions against Israel. This is also true in the Human Rights Council  which has been hijacked as a weapon against Israel  and in UNESCO, where they seek to rub out the history of the Jewish people.

The President thanked the Ambassador for her great contribution to the State of Israel, and said, Ambassador Haley, as the representative the US  Israels greatest and strongest ally  we appreciate very much your support of Israel, and all you do to stand up for the values of freedom and democracy which we share. Welcome to Israel, welcome to Jerusalem.

Ambassador Haley thanked the President for his warm welcome and said, Thank you Mr. President for taking the time to meet with us, it is an absolute thrill to be here in Israel, I so much appreciate the support we have received from the people of Israel. But I feel somewhat guilty because all I did at the United Nations was tell the truth. I have never taken kindly to bullies, and the UN has bullied Israel for a very long time, and we are not going to let that happen anymore. It is a new day for Israel in the United Nations. We just got back from Geneva, talking about the Human Rights Council and hopefully it will be a new day at the Human Rights Council when it comes to Israel.

She concluded by saying she was greatly looking forward to her visit to Israel and said, I am looking forward to taking in the history, the beauty, the tradition, and all that comes with the magic of Israel. Thank you very much for having me it is a pleasure to be here.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem/Photo Credit: Mark Neiman, GPO)
Britains political leaders crisscrossed the country on the last day of the general election campaign Wednesday, with security dominating the agenda in the wake of the London Bridge attack.

The main contenders are battling over who will keep Britain safer from an ever-morphing terrorist threat.

Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May has promised to crack down on extremism if she wins Thursdays vote  even if that means watering down human rights legislation.

Her main opponent, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, said the real danger comes from Conservative cuts to police budgets.

We wont defeat terrorists by ripping up our basic rights and our democracy, Corbyn said.

May began the day with an early morning visit to Smithfield meat market in London, where she was heckled by some butchers shouting vote Labour.

She called the snap election in a bid to boost the Conservative majority in Parliament, which May says will strengthen Britains hand in divorce talks with the European Union.

Get those negotiations wrong and the consequences will be dire, she said.

Labour has had a better campaign than many expected, with opinion polls showing a narrowing of the gap between the party and the Conservatives. Corbyn, widely written off at the start of the campaign, has drawn thousands of people to upbeat rallies and energized young voters with his plans to boost public spending after years of Conservative austerity.

Corbyn planned to address six rallies in England, Scotland and Wales, ending in his north London constituency on Wednesday night.

He said Thursdays vote offered a clear choice between another five years of a Tory government, underfunding of services all across the UK  or a Labour government that invests for all, all across Britain.

Attacks in Manchester on May 22 and London on Saturday have put the threat from international terrorism at the center of the campaign.

Corbyn has criticized cuts to the police under the Conservatives, which saw the number of officers fall by almost 20,000 between 2010 and 2016.

The Tories, meanwhile, have increased their attacks on Corbyns security record. He opposed British military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, wants to scrap Britains nuclear arsenal and shared platforms with Irish republicans in the years when the IRA was setting off bombs in Britain.

Conservative-supporting newspapers went on the attack against Corbyn on Wednesday. The Daily Mail branded him and senior colleagues apologists for terror, while the Daily Express exhorted: Vote May or we face disaster.

Its unclear whether Britains anxiety about terrorism will benefit May, as the incumbent prime minister, or whether criticism of her record in government will hit home.

I was going to vote Labour and Im still going to vote Labour, said Tom Lewis, an insurance broker walking in Borough, the London neighborhood hit in Saturdays attack.

I think that the idea of the Tories being strong on security is a bit of a red herring because they are unwilling to pay for more police. Fundamentally thats what you need for security. Cutting human rights doesnt necessarily increase security  it can very often decrease security.

The latest opinion polls vary between a solid Conservative lead and a dead heat. The difference depends largely on the predicted size of turnout among young people, traditionally the least likely to vote.

One of Corbyns top allies, Diane Abbott, stepped down temporarily because of illness, the party said Wednesday.

Abbott, Labours spokeswoman on law and order, has been ridiculed by opponents for poor performances in interviews during the campaign. In one she said Labour would hire more police officers at a cost of 30 pounds ($39) each. She amended that with a larger but also incorrect figure.

(AP)
Russian officials on Wednesday angrily rejected allegations that Russian hackers breached Qatars state news agency and planted a fake news story that led to a split between Qatar and the other Arab nations.

Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for President Vladimir Putin, on Wednesday dismissed Tuesdays CNN report containing the claim as yet another fake, another lie.

Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Egypt and Yemen cut diplomatic ties with the tiny Gulf state, accusing Qatar of harboring extremists and backing Saudi Arabias regional rival, Iran. Qatar has denied the allegations.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also dismissed CNNs report on Tuesday, saying it further undermined its reputation as an independent and objective media outlet.

CNN and some other media sit and wait for any kind of scandal  to automatically and without any evidence blame it on Russia or Russian hackers, he said at a news conference following his talks with Spanish Foreign Minister Alfonso Dastis.

Tensions between Qatar and Saudi Arabia  a Middle East heavyweight  bubbled to the surface two weeks ago when Qatar said its state-run news agency and its Twitter account were hacked to publish a fake story claiming the emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, had called Iran a regional and Islamic power that cannot be ignored.

State-linked media in the region ignored Qatars denial and continued to report the comments. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt blocked access to Al Jazeera and launched an aggressive campaign accusing Qatar of supporting terrorist groups like al-Qaida and the Islamic State, destabilizing the region and stabbing its allies in the back.

Putin had a telephone conversation with the emir of Qatar Tuesday, urging dialogue. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said the allegations of Russian hacking werent discussed.

Lavrov emphasized that its important to settle any differences at a negotiating table to ease concerns that emerged and pool efforts in the fight against the main regional threat, terrorism.

Andrei Krutskhikh, the Russian presidents special envoy for cybersecurity, told the Interfax news agency that Tuesdays CNN report contains zero evidence that the Russian government was behind the news story.

Vladimir Dzhabarov, deputy chairman of the foreign affairs committee at the upper chamber of parliament, on Wednesday dismissed the accusations as an attempt to push the U.S. against Russia as key players in the Middle East.

The world has gone crazy, Dzhabarov said. Whatever happens, there is a Russian trace there, the trace of Russian hackers.

(AP)
SEARS didnt hide behind freedom of speech they just did the right thing.

New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D, Brooklyn) had high praise for SEARS Holding Corp. for removing offensive shirts that denied the existence of the State of Israel. A variety of Free Palestine items had been made available at Sears online via third-party merchant Spreadshirt, Inc.

What refreshing news! proclaimed Hikind. Others and myself brought this issue to SEARS attention and they acted responsibly and did the right thing. Retailers should not be involved in selling products that are divisive and hurtful and SEARS recognized that and took action. They didnt hide behind freedom of speechthey just did the right thing. Everyone can learn from their courageous handling of this issue. G-d bless them.

(YWN Headquarters  NYC)
(PHOTOS IN EXTENDED ARTICLE)

Faith leaders and law enforcement gathered for a rare roundtable meeting on June 6th at the New Jersey State Police Headquarters in Totowa, a golden opportunity to discuss shared concerns in light of a recent wave of hate crimes and bias incidents that have raised serious security issues, both in New Jersey and nationwide.

Major Michael Devlin of NJSPs Troop B delivered opening remarks followed by NJSP Superintendent Colonel Rick Fuentes who addressed security matters that reflect community concerns and welcomed over 100 participants, including leaders of all faiths and law enforcement personnel on the federal and state levels. Several speakers, including Bishop Jethro James, senior chaplain Monsignor Philip Lowery, Chaplain Gary Holden and Imam Mohamed El Filali, discussed various aspects of cultural awareness and the importance of continuing collaborations between faith based communities and law enforcement as an effective crime fighting tool, while representatives of the Attorney Generals office and several law enforcement agencies assured community leaders that there will be a zero tolerance policy on all hate crimes. The event also included an informative video on community policing, remarks by Acting Director Jared Maples of the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness on bias crimes and additional presentations by the Transportation Security Administration, Customs and Border Patrol, the U.S. Marshals Office, the Drug Enforcement Agency and the United States Postal Service Inspection Service.

A special presentation honored Colonel Fuentes and Superintendent Michael Fedorko of the Port Authority Police Department for their extraordinary accomplishments, with Reverend Steffie Bartley praising the pair for their many years of diligent and distinguished service. Both Colonel Fuentes and Superintendent Fedorko said that they were humbled by the public demonstration of recognition and the warm congratulations that they received from the faith based community leaders in attendance.

Several dozen members of law enforcement on both the federal and local levels attended the meeting including Timothy Gallagher, Special Agent In Charge of the FBIs Newark offices, Captain Brian Polite of the NJSP Office of Public Affairs, Lieutenant John Paige of the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness, Deputy Chief of Detectives Weldon A. Powell of the New Jersey Attorney Generals Office, Director Thomas Carter of the TSAs Newark offices, Port Director Ed Fox of the Port Authority, U.S. Marshal Juan Matos, Special Agent in Charge Carl Kotluski of the Drug Enforcement Agency, a representative of the United States Postal Inspection Service, Chief Greg Meyer of the Lakewood Police Department, representatives of the Ocean, Passaic, Hudson and Bergen County Prosecutors Offices, Meir Lichtenstein of the Lakewood Township Committee, Sheriffs chaplain Joel Friedman, NJSP chaplain Yossi Hershkowitz and Abe Lichtenstein and NYPD Liaison. Also present were many faith based community leaders representing houses of worships of all denominations throughout northern and central New Jersey.

Multiple speakers stressed the importance of learning about the many subtleties and customs of large faith based communities as a key factor in building effective and harmonious relationships.

Gaining an understanding of faith based customs has given me the ability to do my job and run my office better, said Ocean County prosecutor Joseph Coronato.

On day one of the academy we are taught that the level of crime or negative quality of life issues within a community will only be that which the community will tolerate, said Al Della Fave, public affairs director at the Ocean County Prosecutors Office. The best law enforcement leaders and executives never forget this lesson. This annual meeting provides an outstanding opportunity to foster critical community support, connectivity and cooperation with law enforcement in order to assure safe and secure communities.

As municipalities that are home to thousands of children, both Teaneck and Lakewood are prime examples of large faith based communities whose members often work hand in hand with law enforcement in various ways. Teaneck Mayor Eli Katz and Lakewood Deputy Mayor Menashe Miller both noted that understanding cultural norms is a crucial step in implementing proper security practices and Bergen County Sheriff Mike Saudino touched on the collaboration between his office and the local community.

Captain Brian Polite of the NJSP Office of Public Affairs took advantage of the opportunity to thank the many chaplains in attendance for their continued efforts.

You are there for us, through good times and bad, said Captain Polite. Members of law enforcement should realize that working with community leaders not only enhances local security but also allows troopers and members of law enforcement to have the benefit of getting support from the community leaders and chaplains in times of crisis.

Prominent Jewish community leader and New Jersey State Police chaplain Rabbi Abe Friedman praised representatives of both the government and law enforcement for their continued efforts on behalf of the states many interfaith communities.

Over the years, relationships between community leaders and law enforcement have become stronger and stronger, said Rabbi Friedman. I congratulate Superintendents Fuentes and Federko on these well deserved awards for their outstanding working relationship between their agencies and the community.

(YWN World Headquarters  NYC)
By Press Trust of India: New Delhi, Jun 7 (PTI) The Cabinet today gave ex-post facto approval to a memorandum of understanding (MoU) inked between Bureau of Indian Standards and Malis Direction Nationale De Industries.

The pact was signed on standardisation and conformity assessment of goods.

"The MoU aims to facilitate closer cooperation and provide a mechanism by which India and Mali can work together towards the common aim of strengthening standardisation and conformity assessment activities in order to facilitate sharing of expertise and mutual trade," an official statement said.

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The decision was taken at a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi here.

Mali is a landlocked country in West Africa.

The bilateral trade between the countries stood at USD 207.3 million in 2015-16. PTI RR ABM

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New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D, Brooklyn) was outraged to find Sears selling shirts that deny the existence of the State of Israel with calls to end Israeli occupation. A variety of Free Palestine items are available at Sears online via third-party merchant Spreadshirt, Inc., which pays Sears a commission for each item sold.

This is beyond outrageous, said Hikind. With these messages, SEARS Holding Corp, a publicly traded company, is taking a position against the State of Israel. SEARS has decided to sell themselves and make a quick buck by promoting divisiveness. When a company permits someone to sell divisive material from their business, and they profit from it, then they are endorsing that sentiment.

Their company has been suffering for years and this year became a penny stock due to poor sales. Telling people now that the Jewish State does not exist will not exactly endear them to people in my community, and I dare say in many other communities as well.

I am calling on SEARS to do the right thing and desist from selling these offensive products immediately.

(YWN Headquarters  NYC)
The United States struck pro-government forces in Syria with airstrikes for the second time in less than three weeks Tuesday, declaring them a threat to anti-Islamic State coalition fighters and allied troops training at a camp in the south of the country.

The assault came after complicated and messy discussions that reflected Syrias difficult battlefield and the wide array of forces fighting for a piece of the embattled country.

The day began when forces supporting Syrian President Bashar Assad were attacked by what the U.S.-led coalition believes were Syrian fighters not affiliated with the coalition. It was not immediately clear exactly who the attacking force was, said one U.S. official, but casualties resulted. The U.S. had been urging the pro-Assad forces to leave the area near the camp.

Then, in an unusual step in talks with Russian officials, the U.S. agreed to allow pro-Assad forces to repel the attack and remove their wounded, said the official, who wasnt authorized to speak publicly on the matter and demanded anonymity.

But soon afterward, more pro-Assad forces began entering the area with anti-aircraft weapons and bulldozers that the coalition said were not part of the agreement or needed to treat or remove the wounded. The coalition issued warnings through its de-confliction line with Russia, but the official said those were ignored.

The U.S. doesnt speak directly with Assads government, which it accuses of various atrocities over more than six years of civil war. Instead, it addresses problems with Syria indirectly, usually through Russian officials. Russia is a military ally of Assads government.

According to a coalition statement, at least 60 pro-Assad forces were about 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the coalition training area at Tanf, which is inside a protected zone near Syrias southern border with Jordan. A number of the forces have been in that area since a previous U.S. airstrike on pro-Assad forces on May 18.

A second U.S. official said American airstrikes destroyed two artillery pieces and an anti-aircraft weapon and damaged a tank in Tuesdays attack. It wasnt clear how many forces were killed, said the official, who also was not authorized to discuss details of the operation publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Officials said some pro-Assad forces likely remain in the area. It wasnt clear how many are there or if they might be preparing to leave.

U.S. officials havent identified the forces exactly, but have described them as backed or directed by Iran. Its not clear if theyre Iranian soldiers, Hezbollah members, Syrian troops or part of another militia.

The region around Tanf, where the borders of Jordan, Syria and Iraq meet, has been considered a de-conflicted zone under an agreement between the U.S. and Russia. The coalition uses the base to train Syrian rebels in the fight against IS.

The U.S. dropped 90,000 brightly-colored leaflets more than a week ago, warning pro-Assad forces to leave the area and saying the coalition would take steps to defend itself.

(AP)
With great pride and awe, Missouri Torah Institute will be celebrating its 10th incredible year of excellence in education on Sunday June 11, at the Hilton St. Louis Frontenac. Over the last decade, MTI has enhanced Torah in America by creating a distinctive model for chinuch that appeals to students nationwide. Fostering a love for Torah and yiddishkeit while offering academic excellence in both limudei kodesh and chol, its talmidim are poised for a life of Torah and successwhile truly enjoying their yeshiva experience.

See a virtual tour of our campus by clicking HERE.

This years dinner will focus on the history of MTIs ten remarkable years, and pay tribute to the TICK (Tpheris Israel Chevra Kadisha) Chesterfield Community, under the leadership of Rabbi Aaron Winter. TICK was MTIs founding home for its first eight years, and MTI will forever be indebted to them and the efforts of the Chesterfield Jewish community for their constant outpouring of warmth and support. Members of this community opened their homes and hearts to MTI talmidim and often to out-of- state parents, with the most gracious hospitality. The people of Chesterfield have exemplified mi keamcha yisroel in their selflessness and care. The yeshiva is honored to call Chesterfield their home and to have been fortunate beneficiaries of this monumental kindness.

Rabbi Aaron Kotler, CEO of Beth Medrash Govoha, will be awarded the Hachzakas Hatorah Award, as one of the greatest Torah builders of our time. In addition to taking great care of his own yeshiva, Rabbi Kotler is known for sharing his broad understanding and expertise of yeshiva operations with other mosdos nationwide. His vision combined with his business acumen played a major role in Missouri Torah Institutes legendary campus acquisition in 2015. Rabbi Kotler has given generously of his time to advocate, consult, and advise on the growth and success of MTI. His level of investment and interest in the yeshiva and the St. Louis community at large has been a source of inspiration to the Roshei Yeshiva and its supporters.

The dinner will feature a Memorial Tribute to Mr. & Mrs. Max and Rose Wasser, AH. A legendary couple, their love of Hashem, the Jewish people and of ahavas chessed, led to their unique devotion to tzarchei tzibbur  the needs of our people. Chessed was their life, and ahavas chessed  loving and giving, was their focus and priority. They were particularly proud of their grandchildren- Rabbi Shmuel Wasser and his Rebbetzin, and their accomplishments at MTI. With Rabbi Wasser, one of the founding Roshei Yeshiva of MTI, the legacy of Mr. and Mrs. Wasser AH continues to live on  as the Yeshiva instills a love of chessed and a sense of communal responsibility in its talmidim.

The dinner will be a time to celebrate MTIs decade of accomplishments, and also to prepare for the great responsibilities that lie ahead, in building the futures of its talmidim.

Join MTI in making this event a huge success! Call 636.778.1896 or visit www.missouritorah.org/decade to share your support, and place an ad in their journal.
As the chasunah of a grandchild of the Belzer Rebbe Shlita takes place in Yerushalayim on Wednesday evening, an event that is expected to draw thousands of chassidim and supporters, a group of IDF soldiers will be protesting quietly to deliver a message; that attacks against chareidi soldiers in Meah Shearim must cease. The event is being organized by the Hisorarus party, which is a member of the Jerusalem government.

We cannot ignore this. We cannot permit a situation in which a chareidi soldier in uniform has to be concerned with being attacked in the State of Israel says the Facebook posting.

It is inconceivable that in the capital of the Jewish people soldiers will be hurt, and by their own people, and worse, by their community, in the city square! the post continues.

According to organizers of the protest, A small group of extremists stains the chareidi tzibur and gives it a bad name, as well as the IDF and the character of the entire city. We call on all IDF soldiers; in mandatory service, career service, reserve duty, secular, religious, traditional, and chareidi to send a clear message on the matter, that violence against soldiers in Yerushalayim and Israel will not be tolerated

Meanwhile, explaining they do not wish to insult Belz, organizers decided to change the venue. It was originally going to be held at Kikar Slonim, near Kikar Belz, while the chasunah was taking place. The decision has since been made to relocate to Rashi Street at the corner of Sarei Yisrael, not far from the Jerusalem IDF Induction Center.

Hisorarus officials stress they have absolutely no intention of insulting the Belzer Rebbe Shlita and therefore, they are moving to a new venue. They add We understand violence is not the chareidi way, other than a small element of extremists, and we must condemn them with all our abilities.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
The founder of crisis-torn oil and metals trader Noble Group has seen his 2billion stake in the company collapse as it fights for survival.

British tycoon Richard Elman, 77, set up the firm in Hong Kong in 1986 and turned it into one of the worlds largest commodity traders during 30 years at the helm.

But shares are down 88 per cent since February this year and 98 per cent since their peak in 2011 when Elman held a stake worth nearly 2billion.

The slump in the last 15 weeks has slashed the value of Elmans 18 per cent holding from 368million to just 44million  a loss of 324million, or 3million a day.

British tycoon Richard Elman, 77, set up Noble Group in Hong Kong in 1986 and turned it into one of the world's largest commodity traders during 30 years at the helm

Noble, which has been plagued by questions over its accounting and a slump in commodity prices on global markets, is now locked in talks with its banks as it battles to survive.

The crisis underlines the remarkable rise and fall of a company that at the peak of its powers was worth 11billion and was the biggest commodities trader in Asia, dealing in everything from oil and coal to metals and soybeans.

Elman, a father of four, left school in Brighton at 15 and took up work as a scrap metal trader in London before heading to Asia in the 1960s when he was in his 20s.

He spent a decade with commodities trading firm Phibro, where he was regional director of the Asian operations, and eventually set up Noble in 1986 in Hong Kong.

Noble listed its shares on the stock exchange in Singapore in 1997, helping Elman amass a fortune as commodity prices boomed in the 2000s.

Elman was just one of a handful of tycoons to reap the rewards of rising commodity prices, with his success compared to that of Glencore chief executive Ivan Glasenberg and Vitol Group boss Ian Taylor.

NOBLE HISTORY Tycoon Richard Elman, 77, left school at 15 and started work in a scrap metal yard

He moved from the UK to Asia in his 20s and set up commodities trading firm Noble Group in 1986

Noble is based in Hong Kong and listed on the stock exchange in Singapore

Elman  who is married and has four children  had a stake in Noble worth 1.9billion

But questions over its account practices have sent shares down 98 per cent

Elman's current stake is worth 44million

By 2011, Elmans stake in Noble was worth around 2billion.

But the company has struggled in recent years on the back of a slump in commodity prices and has run up debts of 2.5billion.

Noble last year recorded its first ever annual loss and has been rocked by accusations of accounting irregularities, although it denies any wrongdoing.

In a letter to shareholders last month, announcing that he was stepping away from the day-to-day running of the business, Elman warned that Noble would not be back in profit until 2019.

It will be a long, hard slog with ups and downs along the way, until we regain profitability, he said in the letter.

With Elman taking on the role of chairman emeritus, and handing over the reins to a new executive chairman, Paul Brough, the hunt is now on for a white knight investor to inject cash into the business.

Noble was last night locked in talks with its banks in a desperate bid to secure more time to find the new investment and stave off collapse.

It wants lenders, who include HSBC, Societe Generale, ABN Amro, Citigroup and ING to extend a 1.5billion credit line, which provides vital funds for the company but is due to expire this month.

But if a deal cannot be reached it is feared that Noble could be forced to file for bankruptcy.

Sources close to Noble said it was a positive development that the banks have appointed advisers to look at their options.

But the company declined to comment yesterday.
Playing in the first team of the world's seven largest economies is not easy. Nevertheless, economics and household budgets have played little part in Britain's lacklustre election campaign, broken as it has been by the horrors of terrorism.

But when people do actually cast their votes today one suspects it will be 'the economy stupid' that will decide.

Why vote for the unknown and a throwback to the economic and financial chaos threatened by Labour's policies when you can opt for steady expansion with the incumbent Tories?

But if we were to end up with financial turmoil and fiscal profligacy Britons are not short of options. Among the easiest for the young, the ambitious and the entrepreneurial would be to make the same journey as 1.2m other Brits and go down under.

Fair dinkum: Our Aussie cousins have experienced 103 successive quarters, or just under 26-years of expanding growth

Having spent a few weeks in Sydney this year and seen directly the satisfying career choices of my nieces and nephews it is hard not to envy a more laid-back lifestyle alongside commercial achievement.

Being a second tier economy (in terms of size) is no bad thing when it is able to weather kinks in the economic cycle. The latest quarterly data from Australia shows that output expanded by a miserly 0.3 per cent in the first quarter.

That may seem unimpressive until one realises that our Aussie cousins have experienced 103 successive quarters, or just under 26 years of expanding growth.

There is some dispute as to whether this is a record and Australia may have been pipped to the post by Holland and possibly post-war Japan. It doesn't much matter.

Natural resources are central to Aussie prosperity and it has benefited enormously from the manufacturing boom in China. It has also been good for London-quoted miners including Rio Tinto and BHP.

But it is a mistake to think that it is the only source of prosperity. Mining accounts for 7 per cent of gross domestic product which, as in Britain, is dwarfed by services, which account for 73 per cent. Indeed, construction is larger than natural resources.

Looking ahead, a jump in mining investment, as an end to the commodity bust is sighted, and return to confidence among consumers augur well.

What is certain is that should our election produce an unfortunate result which demonises free markets, the queues outside Australia House on the Strand in central London will stretch around the block.

Pay gaffes

The silence of business in the election campaign has been deafening. One theory is that boardroom chieftains are none too happy about Theresa May's commitment to curb excess in the boardroom.

If we needed fresh evidence that greed is not yet defeated then look no further than 'Drastic' Dave Lewis's decision to happily accept a 142,000 allowance from Tesco for moving a few miles down the road as part of his 4.1million pay package.

Then there is the gift of 10million of shares to Burberry's sidelined chief executive Christopher Bailey.

It said Bailey's award was granted as part of the package of enhancements designed to keep him in post when his design skills were being poached by another luxury fashion marque.

One understood, however, that it was precisely because of that that he was promoted to the position of chief executive, a role that he has had to relinquish because of sub-optimal performance.

If May's reforms were in place Burberry accounts would show Bailey's earnings came to 294 times that of the average employee  a huge embarrassment for him and a gift to critics of free market capitalism.

Boardroom chutzpah has few boundaries. When US business broadcaster CNBC sought a business voice to comment on the UK election it turned to WPP boss Sir Martin Sorrell.

As fine a global commentator as he may be he doesn't do FTSE 100 chiefs any favours with his 48million pay packet, which has raised the ire of many investors.

Own goal or what?

Selling UK plc

Is Anglo American, venerable owner of De Beers, putting up the 'for sale' sign?

The choice of Stuart Chambers as next chairman would suggest the answer is 'Yes'.

He has dispatched three FTSE companies into overseas hands  glassmaker Pilkington, packaging champion Rexam and, controversially, British tech innovator ARM.

Not a comforting record.
Spain's Santander bank is to acquire struggling peer Banco Popular for just 1 euro after European Central Bank regulators determined that the troubled lender was likely to fail and ordered it to be sold.

The banking giant will raise about 7 billion euros through a rights issue to bolster Banco Popular's balance sheet, it said in a regulatory filing on Wednesday.

Shares in Santander dropped by 1.33 per cent to 499.75p on the news in this morning's trading.

Santander is to taking over troubled Spanish bank Banco Popular for 1 euro.

As part of the deal Santander will take on Banco Popular's debt, which is the true cost of the deal rather than the nominal 1 euro selling price.

It had been attempting to raise funds in recent weeks by selling off stakes in joint ventures.

Shares in Banco Popular have collapsed over 50 per cent since last week over apprehension about the lender's capital position, which requires billions of euros in strengthening.

Loss-making Banco Popular has recently been stung by property loans gone wrong, ahead of Spain's property crash, forcing new Chairman Emilio Saracho to say in April that the bank would need to sell new shares or find a buyer.

The European Central Bank said earlier that the bank 'was failing or likely to fail'.

'The significant deterioration of the liquidity situation of the bank in recent days led to a determination that the entity would have, in the near future, been unable to pay its debts or other liabilities as they fell due,' it said.

'Consequently, the ECB determined that the bank was failing or likely to fail and duly informed the Single Resolution Board, which adopted a resolution scheme entailing the sale of Banco Popular to Banco Santander.'

The EU's Single Resolution Board said Banco Popular will carry on functioning under 'normal business conditions as a solvent and liquid member of Santander Group'.
Happy shopper: Tesco's 'Drastic' Dave Lewis

Britain's biggest grocer faces a shareholder backlash over 142,000 it paid to relocate its chief executive just half an hour down the road.

Tesco boss Dave Lewis, 52, was handed the bumper benefits package to cover stamp duty and legal fees to move from London closer to the Hertfordshire head office.

But a report from the Pensions and Investment Research Consultants has advised shareholders to oppose the payout at next week's AGM.

It said the 179 per cent increase in benefits Lewis received to a total of 223,000 was 'not considered appropriate'.

And it said Lewis's long-term incentive awards of 200 per cent of salary was excessive.

Tesco declined to comment directly on the concerns but highlighted comments in its remuneration report which said 96 per cent of shareholders backed the policy in 2015.

It said it was important a significant proportion of rewards for executives were performance related.

Lewis took a 10 per cent pay cut last year but still took home 4.1million.

Since 2014, father-of-two Lewis, dubbed 'Drastic Dave' for his cuts at Unilever, has shut dozens of stores, slashed jobs and boosted Tesco's market share.

Shares in Tesco slipped by 1.8 per cent, or 3.25p, to 178.4p.
Escape: Disgraced ex RBS boss Fred 'the shred' Goodwin was spared his day in court

A courtroom battle between Royal Bank of Scotland and disgruntled investors was abandoned yesterday  allowing disgraced ex-boss Fred 'the shred' Goodwin to avoid giving evidence.

Angry shareholders had accused the NatWest owner of misleading them over a doomed 12billion fundraising drive in 2008.

Months after they handed over the cash, the lender was bailed out with 45billion of taxpayers' money and its stock price nosedived.

A civil trial had been due to start last month, but the case was postponed for talks on a 200million settlement.

Lawyers for the claimants yesterday told High Court judge Mr Justice Hildyard that they were ready to settle, and the trial was cancelled.

In total, 87 per cent of them were ready to settle, the court heard, with 13 per cent keen to see the trial go head, though many are expected to accept the offer.

In a crowing statement, RBS, which spent 1billion on settlements and legal fees to keep the case out of court, said it was 'a positive outcome for the bank and its shareholders'.

Shares rose 1.4 per cent, or 3.4p, to 255.1p.
Punjab government will bring out a white paper on state's fiscal health before the budget session which commences on 15th June.

By Manjeet Sehgal: Punjab government will bring out a white paper on state's fiscal health before the budget session which commences on 15th of June.

Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal said that state's total debt has crossed over Rs 1.80 lakh crore which is indispensable as the previous government indulged in systematic loot of the revenue resources.

"The white paper will be made public before the budget.The government has prepared certain points agenda pertaining to the reforms in governance, economic reforms," Manpreet Singh Badal said.

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Responding to a question Badal said that the issue of waiving off farmer debt is under consideration and may be discussed during the coming budget session. He refused to comment whether the farmers owning large holdings will also be considered for a waiver.

--- ENDS ---
Shares in online fashion upstart Boohoo jumped more than 9 per cent today as investors saw an opportunity for rapid growth in the firm's 50million share placement to fund a new mega-warehouse.

Boohoo, which recently bought US retailer Nasty Gal and Pretty Little Thing, said it needs more warehouse capacity and is seeking 50million from investors to put towards the 150million required to build the new facility.

A company's share price usually falls when there's a placement as it increases the total number of shares, plus it can be an indication that a company is struggling financially. However, if the request for funds is to rapidly grow the business, this can push the share price higher.

Expansion: Boohoo is seeking to raise 50m from investors to fund the development of a blockbuster warehouse

The group said the new facility, scheduled to be completed by 2020, could generate 2billion worth of sales  in addition to the 1billion net sales provided at its Burnley base, which is also to be extended.

As a result, it issued an equity placing to raise 50million and said it expects capital expenditure to be 63million this year compared to previous guidance of 34million.

Shares in Boohoo rose 9 per cent, or 20p, to 241p in morning trading.

It came as the fashion firm, which has been growing heavily in the UK and abroad, boasted soaring sales and profits.

Sales across the group as a whole were up 106 per cent to 120.1million in the three months to May 31, compared to 58.2million in the same period the year before.

Boohoo sales increased 48 per cent to 86.4million while sales in Pretty Little Thing increased by 305 per cent to 30.7million.

Nasty Gal, which Boohoo acquired for 16million earlier this year, made 2.9million.

It now expects revenue growth for the full year to be around 60 per cent, ahead of previous guidance of 50 per cent.

Joint chief executives Mahmud Kamani and Carol Kane said: 'Our performance in the first quarter has been very encouraging across all brands and geographic regions.

'While it is early in the financial year, Boohoo continues to perform well and Pretty Little Thing delivered exceptionally strong revenue growth in the first quarter as it continues to expand its young female customer base.

'Nasty Gal has made a promising start since we acquired the brand, with revenues growing strongly month-on-month, as we increased the product range.'

Last year, pre-tax profits rose 97 per cent to 30.9million, while revenue also soared 51 per cent to 294.6million.
NEW DIRECTOR Uranium miner Berkeley Energia has appointed former Rio Tinto executive Nigel Jones as a non-executive director.

The 51-year-old is replacing retiring Dr Jim Ross in the Spanish-focused business.

Jones left Rio Tinto as global head of business development and is head of private side capital markets at ICBC Standard Bank.

Berkeley's managing director, Paul Atherley, said: 'We believe his considerable experience in corporate development and marketing of uranium products will be of considerable value to the company.'

BUILDING BOOST Engineering giant Amec Foster Wheeler has won a contract to provide up to four years of public sector design and engineering work.

Ann Massey, president of its global environment and infrastructure division, said getting on to the Crown Commercial Service's 2.9billion framework was a 'key priority for our growth strategy'.

Amec is being taken over by rival Wood Group. Shares fell 2 per cent, or 9.9p, to 494.6p.

CHURCHILL DEPARTURE Troubled miner Churchill Mining is leaving the junior AIM stock exchange amid its ongoing row with the Indonesian authorities over revoked coal project licences.

Yesterday, bosses said their latest application to an international tribunal would not be decided in time for suspended shares to be readmitted within AIM's six-month timeframe.

Instead it has applied to the NEX Exchange Growth Market.

GOLDEN DEAL Scotland's emerging gold mining industry has signed its first deal with jewellers.

Australia-based Scotgold Resources said two of Scotland's main jewellers had agreed to buy gold produced at the Cononish mine.

The mine produced gold for the first time in August last year.

RENTERS' BLOCK Investment giant Legal & General has launched its first apartment block built specifically for renters in Salford, Greater Manchester.

Occupiers will start moving into The Slate Yard's 90 flats this week, with tenancy agreements ranging from six months to five years.

L&G is aiming to profit from surging house prices which put home ownership beyond the reach of most young people.

Shares rose 1.2 per cent, or 3p, to 254p.

CROSS JOINS Rural lender Folk2Folk has hired a chief marketing officer to boost its business.

Giles Cross was formerly head of the marketing team at wealth manager Sanlam UK.

CORPORATE CRACKDOWN The leaders of 70 countries have pledged to crack down on corporate tax avoidance amid growing public anger.

The UK and other European Union member states, as well as India, China and Australia, signed a deal in Paris yesterday which makes it harder for firms to shift profits to low-tax nations.

The US did not join the agreement, although it already has tough rules.
The takeover of a stricken Spanish bank by Santander has worrying echoes of doomed deals during the financial crisis, a veteran City boss has warned.

Ailing Banco Popular was yesterday bought by Santander for just one euro as fears grew that it was about to collapse.

Santander will raise 6.1billion from the markets to pump fresh cash into Popular, which is struggling under the weight of 32.2billion of toxic property loans.

Takeover: Ailing Banco Popular was yesterday bought by Santander for just one euro as fears grew that it was about to collapse

The deal will create Spain's largest lender, with 17million customers in the country and another 4million in neighbouring Portugal.

But Martin Gilbert, head of investment giant Aberdeen Asset Management, said there were concerning parallels with Lloyds' 12.2billion acquisition of HBOS at the height of the financial crisis.

That disastrous deal almost destroyed Lloyds and forced taxpayers into a 20.3billion bailout.

'It smacks a bit of the HBOS and Lloyds deal, where you never know how much pressure is put on the biggest bank in Spain by the central bank,' Gilbert told CNBC. 'I'd be surprised if they had agreed to it under duress but that will come out.'

The acquisition will see Popular's shareholders suffer heavy losses. It is also a first test of the so-called CoCo bonds intended to improve banks' financial position after the Great Recession.

These are converted into shares if a lender's value drops below a certain level  relieving its pressure to pay off debts but hitting CoCo owners in the pocket, while other bondholders are protected.

The value of Popular's CoCo bonds plunged to almost zero.

Santander chairman Ana Botin insisted the deal was good for the country and Spanish economy minister Luis de Guindos said it meant taxpayers had avoided stepping in, and added that Popular had never posed a threat to the nation's financial system.

Santander has 14million UK customers, but its British operation is independently run and would be protected if there was any fallout from the deal
The new chairman of a FTSE mining giant was embroiled in a tech company that has collapsed amid a scandal.

Stuart Chambers, one of the City's biggest names, was yesterday appointed to take on the top job at Anglo American.

However, the Mail can also reveal he was made chairman of Ve Interactive, which was touted as one of Britain's fastest-growing tech firms, shortly before it fell into administration.

Ve is at the centre of a scandal over payments to staff and the role of ex-boss and founder David Brown.

Doomed: A few weeks after his appointment at Ve, founder David Brown, left, tweeted a picture of himself and Chambers, right, on what is claimed to be a business trip to Monaco

Chambers remained an adviser to the company even as investors tried to rescue it by pumping in cash and Brown was pushed out.

Administrators are now investigating the firm's financial dealings under Brown and have hired lawyers to help.

It is not clear how much Chambers knew of the company's financial situation. He could not be reached for comment yesterday.

One source close to Ve said: 'Chambers had a very lucky escape he has a very good reputation. He was brought in for a reason that didn't happen.'

Ve, which analyses internet data to help businesses target their adverts, was valued at more than 1billion and was feted as a 'unicorn' of the tech industry.

Boss who sold Britain Stuart Chambers, 61, was chair of ARM Holdings when it was sold for 24billion to Japan's Softbank He was chair of drinks can maker Rexam when it was sold to US Ball Corporation for 4.5billion Chambers was chief executive of glassmaker Pilkington when it was bought by Japan's Nippon Sheet Glass in 2016 He was appointed chairman of tech firm VE Interactive just before it went bust

Chambers was named chairman last November, in a coup for Brown, who described the hire as a 'powerful endorsement of Ve's business'.

Chambers had been chair of tech giant ARM Holdings before it was controversially sold to Japanese giant Softbank last year and his appointment was made just days after ARM was sold for 24.3billion.

He stood to make 670,000 from the deal which he negotiated while sailing in his yacht.

He was at the helm of Pilkington Glass and Rexam when they were sold to overseas investors.

A few weeks after his appointment at Ve, Brown tweeted a picture of the grinning pair on what is claimed to be a business trip to Monaco.

At the time Chambers said: 'I have rarely come across a company which is as rich in entrepreneurial spirit and innovation as Ve and which has managed to combine these so effectively to achieve such broad international and commercial reach.'

But Ve, which employed 256 directly and hundreds more through subsidiaries, had been loss-making from the beginning.

By the end of 2016 it had to pay staff salaries late. HMRC tried to have the company wound up in February 2017, according to documents filed at Companies House, and in April the taxman acted again, publishing a second winding-up petition.

Administrators were called in and investors, including billionaire Douglas Barrowman who had pumped in 3million in March, bought the company for 2million, renaming it Ve Global.

Chambers had been due to take up his role as chairman in January, but it was delayed. Then in March the company said he would not fill the post.

He is now set to replace Sir John Parker as chairman of Anglo American, earning around 700,000 a year. Brown could not be reached for comment.
MBABANE  Misdemeanours continue to haunt the police service as a cop has been charged for freeing a convict in exchange for a refrigerator.



The police officer is based at Ezulwini Police Post and is alleged to have allowed a housebreaking convict to escape from custody in return for the refrigerator. Constable Nkosinathi Emmanuel Ngwenya is the same officer who was recently arrested for allegedly stealing a tyre and rim from a Toyota Quantum belonging to the Royal Swaziland Police (RSP).



He has been charged with contravening item 29 of the schedule of offences of the Police Act.

In that upon or about the month of October 2012 at or near Mbabane, the said defaulter (Ngwenya), who was at all material times a member of the Royal Swaziland Police and as such governed by the police regulations, did wrongfully and deceitfully receive property from one Osvaldo Gondolo, a convicted prisoner with a promise to pay his fine, reads one of the charges.



Gondolo had been convicted of housebreaking by the Mbabane National Court president and was ordered to pay or E500 fine and E800 as compensation verdict.



A warrant of his (Gondolo) committal to Sidwashini Correctional facility was issued but Ngwenya allegedly took him to the Mbabane Police Station where he later released him in return for the refrigerator.



Ngwenya, who is due to appear before the police tribunal, has been slapped with a total of five counts. The prosecution in the tribunal has lined up 11 witnesses to testify against him.



In the first count it, is alleged that in October 2012 at or near Mbabane, he allowed Gondolo, a convicted prisoner, to escape from lawful custody.

. . .
By Press Trust of India: By Lalit K Jha

Washington, Jun 7 (PTI) China is likely to establish additional military bases in Pakistan and other countries with which it has a longstanding friendly ties and similar strategic interests, a new Pentagon report has said.

In its annual report to the Congress on Chinas military build-up, the US Department of Defence said Chinas construction of military base in the strategic location of Djibouti is just the first of what will likely be an ongoing expansion in friendly foreign ports around the world.

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China is expanding its access to foreign ports to pre- position the necessary logistics support to regularise and sustain deployments in the "far seas", waters as distant as the Indian Ocean, Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean.

"China most likely will seek to establish additional military bases in countries with which it has a longstanding friendly relationship and similar strategic interests, such as Pakistan, and in which there is a precedent for hosting foreign militaries," the Pentagon said.

The report cautioned, however, that Chinas efforts to build more bases "may be constrained by the willingness of countries to support" the presence of Chinas Peoples Liberation Army in one of their ports.

Notably, China is developing the strategically located Gwadar port in Balochistan, which many experts in the US say is aimed towards having a military presence.

"In February 2016, China began construction of a military base in Djibouti and probably will complete it within the next year," it said, adding China claims that this facility is designed to help the navy and army further participate in UN peacekeeping operations, carry out escort missions in the waters near Somalia and the Gulf of Aden, and provide humanitarian assistance.

This initiative, along with regular naval vessel visits to foreign ports, both reflects and amplifies China?s growing influence, extending the reach of its armed forces.

China has cited anti-piracy patrolling as one of the reasons for developing what it calls a naval logistics center in Djibouti.

China?s expanding international economic interests are increasing demands for the PLA Navy to operate in more distant maritime environments to protect Chinese citizens, investments and critical sea lines of communication (SLOC), it said.

China, the report said, uses PLA engagements with foreign militaries to enhance its presence and influence abroad, bolster its image and assuage other countries? concerns about its rise.

"These engagements also assist PLA modernisation by facilitating the acquisition of advanced weapon systems and technologies, increasing its operational experience throughout and beyond Asia, and giving the PLA access to foreign military practices, operational doctrine, and training methods,? it added.

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In 2016, China conducted counterpiracy operations in the Gulf of Aden by deploying its 24th naval escort task force to the area since 2008, it said.

"China also continued to send submarines to the Indian Ocean, ostensibly in support of its counterpiracy patrols. In May 2016, a nuclear-powered attack submarine conducted a port call in Karachi, Pakistan, during a visit by the Peoples Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) Commander, marking China?s first port call in South Asia by a nuclear submarine,? the Pentagon said.

"These submarine patrols demonstrate the PLAN?s emerging capability both to protect Chinas SLOCs and to increase China?s power projection into the Indian Ocean,? the report said.

According to the Pentagon, Pakistan is also China?s largest buyer of arms. From 2011 to 2015, China was the world?s fourth largest arms supplier with more than USD 20 billion in sales.

"Of this, USD 9 billion was to Asia-Pacific countries, primarily Pakistan,? it added.

Sub-Saharan Africa was Chinas second largest regional arms market.

"China?s ability to remain among the world?s top five global arms suppliers hinges largely on continued strong sales to Pakistan and demand for its armed UAVs. China is one of only a few global suppliers of such equipment and faces little competition for sales to the Middle East and North Africa.

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"This likely will result in the Middle East and North Africa surpassing Sub-Saharan Africa as China?s second largest arms export market,? it said.

Last year, China signed an agreement with Pakistan for the sale of eight submarines, it said, adding that the first four will be built in China, with the remaining four in Pakistan.

Other major Asia-Pacific customers of Chinese military equipment include Bangladesh and Burma, it said.

China sold armed UAVs to several states in the Middle East and North Africa, including Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates, the Pentagon said.

China faces little competition for sale of such systems, as most countries that produce them are restricted in selling the technology as signatories of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) and/or the Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls for Conventional Arms and Dual-Use Goods and Technologies (WA), as well as subjecting exports of this technology to greater scrutiny than China, it said. PTI LKJ PMS

--- ENDS ---

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LOBAMBA  In the highest form of insurbodination, two high ranking officials allegedly went behind the back of their boss and criticised the South African government for offering Matric in Swaziland.



One of the officers is from the Ministry of Education and the other from the Exams Council of Swaziland.

This startling allegation was made to a shocked House of Assembly yesterday when they learnt that efforts by the Minister of Education and Training Phineas Magagula to enter into a Bi-lateral agreement with his SA counterpart on the issue of continuing to offer matric in Swaziland were allegedly thwarted by the two. The duo is alleged to have privately gone to the neighbouring country and told off those countrys education authorities, for trying to continue offering matric in Swaziland, stating that they were destroying the local examinations.



These allegations were raised yesterday by Zombodze Emuva MP Titus Thwala and were indeed confirmed by the minister who said, yes, there were officials who went to South Africa and they were not sent by me as they went on their own accord and it is very dangerous for them to do that.



Magagula said he had also personally asked the officials if they had travelled to South Africa, to which they responded in the affirmative.

This was during the debate of a motion by MP Thwala, who moved that the minister should forthwith explain to the House why his ministry was blowing hot and cold and he himself dragging his feet on the South African Matriculation Board/U-Tech saga.

The minister learned of the duos trip to South Africa through a faxed letter that was written by the SA Minister of Basic Education Angie Motshekga, dated January 28, 2016 timed 10:37am, who told the minister (Magagula) that she was shocked that after their successful talks, two officers had undone all their hard work.
MANZINI  After finding out that his girlfriend had allegedly engaged in sexual intercourse with an administrator of a company subcontracted to Montigny, a supervisor of the latter has been fired for allegedly making death threats.



The former Montigny supervisor *Albert was fired after he was allegedly found with a live round of ammunition in a company house in Bhunya Village, which he allegedly intended to use to kill the administrator of the company subcontracted to Montigny; Gundane & Sons.



Albert was also charged with victimisation, intimidation, threats and menacing behaviour.

This was after he allegedly threatened to kill his girlfriend, who was employed by the contractor and was working under his supervision.



The first instance allegedly took place on March 9, 2017 while the other happened on April 1, 2017. On April 10, 2017, Albert was subsequently suspended without pay until May 19, 2017 where he appeared before the companys disciplinary committee.

He was later served with a notice of dismissal where the company stated that the chairman of the disciplinary committee found him guilty on all counts and recommended a dismissal.



The supervisor is appealing the ruling and has reported the company to the Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration Commission (CMAC) for alleged unfair dismissal and is demanding a sum of E26 000.

In his submissions at CMAC, Albert alleged that the administrator engaged in sexual intercourse with his ex-girlfriend in order for her to be hired.
By Press Trust of India: (Eds: Updating with fresh inputs and Chinas reax)

By Lalit K Jha

Washington, Jun 7 (PTI) China is likely to establish additional military bases in Pakistan and other countries with which it has longstanding friendly ties and similar strategic interests, a new Pentagon report said today as the worlds largest army increasingly flexed its muscles.

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In its annual report to the Congress on Chinas military build-up, the US Department of Defence said Chinas construction of military base in the strategic location of Djibouti is just the first of what will likely be an ongoing expansion in friendly foreign ports around the world.

China is expanding its access to foreign ports to pre- position the necessary logistics support to regularise and sustain deployments in the "far seas", waters as distant as the Indian Ocean, Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean.

"China most likely will seek to establish additional military bases in countries with which it has a longstanding friendly relationship and similar strategic interests, such as Pakistan, and in which there is a precedent for hosting foreign militaries," the Pentagon said.

The report cautioned, however, that Chinas efforts to build more bases "may be constrained by the willingness of countries to support" the presence of Chinas Peoples Liberation Army in one of their ports.

Notably, China is developing the strategically located Gwadar port in Balochistan, which many experts in the US say is aimed towards having a military presence.

"In February 2016, China began construction of a military base in Djibouti and probably will complete it within the next year," it said, adding China claims that this facility is designed to help the navy and army further participate in UN peacekeeping operations, carry out escort missions in the waters near Somalia and the Gulf of Aden, and provide humanitarian assistance.

This initiative, along with regular naval vessel visits to foreign ports, both reflects and amplifies China?s growing influence, extending the reach of its armed forces.

Reacting sharply to the Pentagon report, China said the US Defence Department has made "irresponsible" remarks about the countrys military.

The annual report made "irresponsible remarks on Chinas national defense development and reasonable actions in defending our territorial sovereignty and security interests in disregard of the facts," foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters in Beijing.

"China is firmly opposed to that," she said, adding that Beijing was a force for safeguarding peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region and the world.

While Hua declined to comment on possible overseas bases of the PLA, she said China and Pakistan were close friends that conduct mutually beneficial cooperation in a number of areas.

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The Pentagon report said that China has cited anti-piracy patrolling as one of the reasons for developing what it calls a naval logistics center in Djibouti.

China?s expanding international economic interests are increasing demands for the PLA Navy to operate in more distant maritime environments to protect Chinese citizens, investments and critical sea lines of communication (SLOC), it said.

China, the report said, uses PLA engagements with foreign militaries to enhance its presence and influence abroad, bolster its image and assuage other countries? concerns about its rise.

"These engagements also assist PLA modernisation by facilitating the acquisition of advanced weapon systems and technologies, increasing its operational experience throughout and beyond Asia, and giving the PLA access to foreign military practices, operational doctrine, and training methods,? it added.

In 2016, China conducted counterpiracy operations in the Gulf of Aden by deploying its 24th naval escort task force to the area since 2008, it said.

"China also continued to send submarines to the Indian Ocean, ostensibly in support of its counterpiracy patrols. In May 2016, a nuclear-powered attack submarine conducted a port call in Karachi, Pakistan, during a visit by the Peoples Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) Commander, marking China?s first port call in South Asia by a nuclear submarine,? the Pentagon said.

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"These submarine patrols demonstrate the PLAN?s emerging capability both to protect Chinas SLOCs and to increase China?s power projection into the Indian Ocean,? the report said.

According to the Pentagon, Pakistan is also China?s largest buyer of arms. From 2011 to 2015, China was the world?s fourth largest arms supplier with more than USD 20 billion in sales.

"Of this, USD 9 billion was to Asia-Pacific countries, primarily Pakistan,? it added.

Sub-Saharan Africa was Chinas second largest regional arms market.

"Chinas ability to remain among the worlds top five global arms suppliers hinges largely on continued strong sales to Pakistan and demand for its armed UAVs. China is one of only a few global suppliers of such equipment and faces little competition for sales to the Middle East and North Africa.

"This likely will result in the Middle East and North Africa surpassing Sub-Saharan Africa as China?s second largest arms export market,? it said.

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Last year, China signed an agreement with Pakistan for the sale of eight submarines, it said, adding that the first four will be built in China, with the remaining four in Pakistan.

Other major Asia-Pacific customers of Chinese military equipment include Bangladesh and Burma, it said.

China sold armed UAVs to several states in the Middle East and North Africa, including Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates, the Pentagon said.

China spent USD 180 billion on the Peoples Liberation Army last year, the report said. But experts said that figure could not account for all spending due to poor accounting transparency. That estimate is significantly higher than Chinas official defence budget of about USD 140 billion. PTI LKJ PMS AKJ AKJ

--- ENDS ---
Violence in Mandsaur and other adjoining areas continued for the second day today as farmers refused to pay heed to peace appeal from Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan.

By Hemender Sharma: Prime Minister Narendra Modi met his senior Cabinet colleagues in New Delhi today to discuss farmers protest in Madhya Pradesh. At least five farmers were killed in firing on agitating protesters in Mandsaur on Tuesday.

PM Modi met Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh, Nitin Gadkari and others after the regular Cabinet meeting to discuss the situation in Madhya Pradesh as situation in the state continues to remain tense.

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More violence was reported from Mandsaur and adjoining areas today as the administration failed to control a rampaging mob which went on burning vehicles and damaging public property in the region. The Congress has called a bandh Mandsaur today.

FROM INDIA TODAY MAGAZINE: No country for farmers: In rush towards development, Indian farmers fall through the cracks

LATEST UPDATES:

Rahul Gandhi and other Congress leaders will visit Mandsaur tomorrow, says Congress general secretary Mohan Prakash

A criminal case should be registered against the Shivraj government for murder of the farmers. He should resign from his post: Congress general secretary Mohan Prakash

PM Modi met Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh, Nitin Gadkari and others to discuss Tuesday's violence in Mandsaur and decide on future strategy.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi discusses Madhya Pradesh farmers protest issue with senior ministers after the regular Cabinet meeting.

Suhatra police station SHO Shyam Babu Sharma attacked by protestors, condition critical, has been rushed to to Mandsaur for better medical treatment.

Farmers protest spreads. Vehicles set on fire in Devas's Hatpipalya area.

I can't remember such kind of a massacre happening before. They are giving death toll as as 5,6 but I believe more people have been killed, says former Janata Dal (United) president Sharad Yadav

Union Minister Venkaiah Naidu slams Congress for politicising the farmers protest in Madhya Pradesh."Madhya Pradesh is an island of peace. I tell Congress don't politicise, don't fuel violence in the name of farmers," Naidu said.

Shivraj ji has done a lot of work for farmers, in the agriculture sector. Mandsaur incident is unfortunate: Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh

has done a lot of work for farmers, in the agriculture sector. Mandsaur incident is unfortunate: Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh Cellular data services to be suspended in Ratlam, Neemuch, Mandsaur and Ujjain till further orders.

Agitators have set on fire 8-10 vehicles in Mandsaur.

Mandsaur collector Swtantra Singh heckled by farmers . Singh denies ordering firing on protesting farmers.

Rahul Gandhi's close aide Meenakshi Natarajan arrested ahead of the Congress vice president's likely visit to Mandsaur.

Rahul Gandhi denied permission to land in Mandsau.

ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW:

Mandsaur collector Swatantra Kumar Singh heckled by an angry mob when he went to console the family of dead farmers. Rahul Gandhi lashed out at the BJP-led Madhya Pradesh government the deaths, saying it is at war with the farmers and 'feeding' them with bullets for demanding their rights. "This government is at war with the farmers of our country. In BJP's new India, farmers demanding their rights get bullets in return," he said in a tweet. Some eyewitnesses alleged that the victims suffered bullet wounds, but Mandsaur district authorities denied that police fired on the protesters, who were on a rampage. Mandsaur collector S K Singh confirmed death of five persons and said a magisterial inquiry has been ordered. As tension prevailed, mobile internet service were suspended in Mandsaur, Ratlam and Neemuch districts since morning to check spread of rumours. Burnt remains of a truck torched by agitating farmers in Mandsaur. (Photo/ANI) Curfew has been imposed in Pipalya Mandi police station area of Mandsaur district where the incident took place, while prohibitory orders restricting movement under section 144 of CrPC have been imposed in rest of the district. Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said the family of the farmers killed in protests in Mandsaur will receive Rs 1 crore each in compensation. Trouble was reported from many parts of western Madhya Pradesh as farmers' protest entered seventh day today. In Indore, police used lathi charge following stone-pelting during a march by farmers. Vehicles burnt during farmers' protest in Mandsaur. (Photo/ANI)) Farmers have been holding protests across Madhya Pradesh demanding higher prices for their produce. Similar protests were witnessed in neighbouring Maharashtra where farmers are demanding the Devendra Fadnavis government for a loan waiver similar to what the Yogi Adityanath government did in Uttar Pradesh. Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis has assured the farmers that his government will waive the debt of marginal farmers who defaulted in the last few years.

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(With inputs from Supriya Bhardwaj)

ALSO READ:

Rattled after Mandsaur farmer deaths, Shivraj Chouhan hikes compensation to Rs 1 crore

We plan to replicate MP model of agricultural growth: Radha Mohan Singh

WATCH: Mandsaur collector heckled and chased by mob of angry farmers

--- ENDS ---
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By Naeisha Rose

Jamaicas 3rd Annual International Restaurant Crawl will take place from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. on June 22.

Foodies can make their first stop at Puerto Plata, a Dominican restaurant, located at 149-17 Jamaica Ave.

Next, at 6 p.m., is Sangria, a Portuguese-themed eatery at 95-41 Sutphin Boulevard.

The final restaurant, OLavrador, is the newbie on the list. At 138-40 101st Ave., its available for the crawl at 7 p.m..

Diners looking to save money you can get advance tickets for the event for $25. General admission for the crawl is $30.

Glenn Greenidge, the executive director of Sutphin Boulevard Business Improvement District, came up with the idea after going to a fund-raiser.

The BID is a nonprofit that represents interests of businesses and properties along Sutphin Boulevard between Hillside Avenue and 94th Avenue.

Well, if I tell the truth, I actually stole it from a Leukemia and Lymphoma fund-raiser where they had a bar crawl, Greenidge said. I said Wow, wouldnt that be great to do that for restaurants to help promote the ones in your area? 

After appropriating the idea for a good cause, he pitched it to the Greater Jamaica Development Corporation, Community Board 12s Economic Development Committee, the 165th Street Mall Improvement Association and Jamaica Center BID.

Everybody thought it was a great idea to promote restaurants in the downtown Jamaica area, Greenidge said. It becomes threefold: You are letting people know what the restaurants are in the area, you are giving them a sampling of each of them, and you are also promoting that local area.

When selecting the restaurants, Greenidge says he looks for size, venue, and walkability.

We are hoping to do it twice a year. The last two years have been very successful and we believe this year will be successful, too.
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By Naeisha Rose

As elected officials like Mayor Bill de Blasio and Queens Borough President Melinda Katz received a designation to run for re-election late last month at the Flushing headquarters for the Democratic Organization of Queens County, a local lawyer who grew up in Harlem was among them.

A designation is when district leaders vote to support candidates running for office, said Michael Reich, executive secretary of the Democratic Organization. They are allowed to say that they are supported by the Queens County Democratic Organization. They still have to go on and get petitions to be on the ballot.

There were three candidates who asked for support as judges, and the three were unanimously supported by the Democratic district leaders present.

One of them was Philip Hom, who will be running as a judge for Municipal Court 6, which covers Flushing, Bayside, Douglaston and Little Neck. The seat was vacated by William Viscovich, a new Queens County Supreme Court judge.

Hom was the chief of staff for former Councilman John Liu (D-Flushing) from 2002-2005, and is currently an attorney at law for Windels, Marx, Lane & Mittendorf.

He started to get a taste for what it might be like to become a judge while working for Liu, a friend from their days at Bronx High School of Science and Binghamton University.

When I was John Lius chief of staff, surprisingly a lot of things that I did was what judges do, said Hom. There were disputes over many different things. It was something that I enjoyed helping people resolve.

Hom had a knack as a mediator, but it was Liu who gave him an extra push in that direction.

He had said to me, You have been doing this for 10 years now. You have experience working with people and you help draft laws. You should think about becoming a judge,  Hom said.

He did. Hom volunteered as a small claims arbitrator at Queens Civil Court, he helped write transportation laws for New York City and recouped public assistance money for the city while working at the Department of Human Services and Infrastructure Divisions. He has drafted laws in other cities across the United States and helped to write hire vehicle laws in Canada. These laws provided protections for passengers in taxis and limousines and protections for drivers.

As a potential judge, Hom hopes that he can be someone whom his constituents find accessible.

I want to be someone that people feel like they can approach. A lot of times when you were in law school and you hear that you are going to go before a judge, its usually not good news and its usually kind of intimidating, Hom said. Im the kind of person, when they come before me, I will talk to people in plain English and explain what is happening as many times as possible.
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By Bill Parry

As the summer travel season begins, the city Health Department is urging women who are pregnant or trying to become pregnant, along with their sexual partners, to avoid traveling to areas where the Zika virus is active.

There is ongoing transmission of the disease in the Caribbean, Mexico, Central and South America.

As of last week, 1,067 New Yorkers have tested positive for the Zika virus disease, including 402 pregnant women. All of the cases were associated with travel. Of these travel-associated cases, 11 were sexually transmitted by a partner who traveled. To date, 32 infants have been born with birth defects consistent with Zika virus.

To renew awareness about the dangers of Zika, the Health Department is launching a citywide campaign, which will be promoted on television, social media and in newspapers. If travel to areas with Zika virus activity cannot be avoided, women should take precautions to prevent pregnancy and minimize potential Zika virus exposure by using condoms and avoiding mosquito exposure.

As the summer season begins, this administration is committed to ensuring that all New Yorkers traveling to Zika-affected areas are taking preventative measures, Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Dr. Herminia Palacio said. While we did not see any locally acquired cases of Zika last summer, we did see several hundred cases transmitted through travel in locations where the virus is still very prevalent. It is critical that New Yorkers who are pregnant or trying to become pregnant, along with their sexual partners, do not travel to Zika-affected areas.

While Zika is not currently circulating in Miami-Dade County in Florida or Brownsville Texas, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a travel warning to these areas because transmission has occurred there before. Last year no mosquitoes tested positive for the Zika virus in New York City throughout the mosquito season, and all human cases of Zika infection were associated with travel to affected areas.

Last year, the city took unprecedented action to raise awareness and reach out to communities about the risks of traveling to areas with Zika transmission, Health Commissioner Dr. Mary T. Bassett said. This season our campaign and awareness efforts are shaped by what we learned over the past year. Although the transmission of the Zika virus remains unlikely, the virus continues to circulate in Latin America and the Caribbean islands. We urge women who are pregnant or trying to become pregnant, along with their sexual partners, to avoid traveling to these areas.
Bridgewater looks to become a regional nightlife hub in western PA

Bridgewater bars offer patrons a nightlife experience that is unique from any other in western Pennsylvania
Yechury was unhurt in the incident which happened during a press conference.

By Parvina Purkayastha: Two slogan-raising men tried to manhandle CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury today in his Delhi office.

According to reports, Yechury fell down but did not got hurt in the attack which happened during a press conference.

"We will not be cowed down by any attempts of Sangh's goondagardi to silence us. This is a battle for the soul of India, which we will win," the CPI(M) general secretary said.

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One of the two protesters who tried to manhandle him was later beaten up and handed over to the police. The men shouted slogans of 'Hindu Sena zindabad' and 'CPI(M) murdabad' and were said to be from the Hindu Sena.

The Delhi Police had also deployed heavy security in view of Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan's presence at the meeting.

Vijayan has been facing flak from some right-wing organisations over his criticism of the Centre's recent notification relating to cattle slaughter.

#WATCH One of the 2 protesters who tried to manhandle Sitaram Yechury during his press conf. in Delhi, later beaten up;handed over to Police pic.twitter.com/NRUcrljB2W; ANI (@ANI_news) June 7, 2017

Strongly condemn the attack on Com: @SitaramYechury. It amounts to an attack on Indian Democracy.

; CMO Kerala (@CMOKerala) June 7, 2017

The Communist leader was to brief the media about a politburo meeting which has been going on for two days at party headquarters in AKG Bhavan.

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Correction: An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of Mary Pulido, the executive director of The New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.

Albany

When public school leaders in New York have reason to believe a student in their care has been sexually abused by a school employee or volunteer, they are required by law to report it to local law enforcement.

Sounds obvious, right?

But the law, enacted in 2000, is conspicuous for who it leaves out. Private schools are under no such obligation to report abuse allegations to authorities  and as numerous investigations have recently revealed, many of them didn't for decades, choosing instead to keep things quiet in hopes of protecting the school's reputation. But that's something advocates and lawmakers are hoping will change as a bill wends its way through the state Legislature this month.

"It's a no-brainer," said Assemblyman Dave McDonough, a Long Island Republican who first introduced the bill in 2016. "There are 492,000 children in New York private schools who aren't afforded this protection. It's a shame they never had it."

Public school children also lacked it for a long time, experts say, because most parents assumed their children were already protected by mandatory reporting laws governing child abuse. These laws require certain professionals who have regular contact with children  including doctors, teachers and child care workers  to report suspected child abuse or neglect to a statewide hotline.

But the law had a major loophole: Reporting was only mandated when the suspect was a parent, guardian or other person legally responsible for a child.

"Once enough parents realized this, they got shocked and they got angry," said Stephen Forrester, director of government relations and administration at the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.

The 2000 law affecting public schools established a separate reporting system: Suspected cases of abuse by school personnel must be reported to local law enforcement, since the state's Child Protective Services unit is only authorized to investigate cases involving parents and guardians.

The bill currently being considered by lawmakers would extend this reporting mandate to private schools. Those who don't report abuse would be subject to civil or criminal liability. It would also forbid school authorities from agreeing to withhold reports of abuse from law enforcement in exchange for the accused person's resignation  a practice that has been widespread among private schools and has led to perpetrators being passed from school to school, according to a 2016 Boston Globe report.

Like the Catholic Church before it, private schools in the U.S.  boarding schools in particular  have come under increased scrutiny after a number of recent investigations revealed sordid histories of widespread abuse by staff, and higher-ups who swept it under the rug.

In April, the elite all-girls Emma Willard School in Troy joined the dubious ranks of Horace Mann in New York City and Choate Rosemary Hall in Connecticut after a 96-page report revealed seven decades of abuse at the hands of faculty members.

The report was prompted by allegations made last year by former student Kat Sullivan, who alleged that she had been raped by a male teacher in 1998 only to be shipped off on a bus by school officials seeking to cover up the situation. She reached a legal settlement with the school last year, and has been advocating for stricter laws to prevent such abuse.

"Whenever you have a closed system  and by 'closed' I mean a system that operates outside the regulations everyone else is held to  you get an insular system that is basically allowed to do whatever it wants," said Mary Pulido, executive director of The New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.

"Look at this U.S. gymnastics scandal," she said. "Look at the Catholic church. Look at the (Jewish) Orthodox system. These are closed systems that no one was looking at. The reporting laws were either not there, or they were disregarded."

McDonough's bill, first introduced by the Republican assemblyman in 2016, didn't make it out of committee last year. A Democratic colleague, Assemblyman Fred Thiele, introduced a bill this session with the exact same wording except for a line about the effective date. Both bills were approved by the Assembly Education Committee on Tuesday, and moved to the Assembly Codes Committee.

"I don't give a damn whose name is on the bill," McDonough said. "We just want to get this done."

The legislative session is slated to end later this month.
ALBANY  Students and residents around the state can begin applying Wednesday for free tuition to New York's public colleges and universities.

The Excelsior Scholarship program will provide free tuition this coming school year to students from families earning less than $100,000. Students must attend a SUNY or CUNY school full-time, and be enrolled in an undergraduate program  though there are exceptions for students with disabilities and students who encounter specific hardships.

(Are you eligible? Find out here)

The much-touted program, pushed through the Legislature this year, makes New York the first state in the nation to offer free tuition for four years' worth of college.

Apply here www.hesc.ny.gov See More Collapse

Applications for the program will be available on the Higher Education Services Corporation website (right here). The deadline to get them in is July 21.

For anyone planning to apply, you'll want to have the following information on hand when you get started:

Income information from your or your guardian's 2015 state tax return

Your college credit history

Any and all financial aid you are expected to receive in the upcoming year, including aid from federal, state, institutional or private sources

The Excelsior Scholarship is a "last dollar" program, meaning it only kicks in once all other forms of financial aid are accounted for, including state Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) awards and federal Pell grants, which benefit low-income families.

The program only covers tuition. Room and board, textbooks, fees and other costs of attending college are not included, and they can make up a big chunk  at the University at Albany, for example, room and board ($12,942) is twice the cost of tuition ($6,470).

Your college credit history is also important, and may affect your eligibility.

The program includes a stringent requirement that students attend school full time, taking at least 12 credits a semester and 30 for the entire year.

Many lawmakers and advocates lamented this requirement, saying it doesn't offer enough flexibility for students with disabilities and for adult students juggling jobs and families. But the Cuomo administration, with the support of SUNY leaders, called the full-time requirement important to ensuring students complete a degree on time and without distraction.

If you don't have any college credits to your name yet  no need to worry.

But for those who've been enrolled and haven't been taking a full 30 credits a year, you won't be eligible for free tuition this coming year. Current students who are six or less credits short of the 30-credit requirement will have the opportunity to "catch up" this coming year, however, and become eligible for the scholarship in 2018-2019.

As with TAP and the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, students must apply for the scholarship on an annual basis.

Educators and advocates are hoping this year's summer application process is an outlier. The free tuition program was proposed by the governor in January and approved by the Legislature in April, making it impossible to include award amounts on financial aid award letters, which are typically mailed in late March or early April.

Officials with the Higher Education Services Corporation said any decisions about future application timelines will be determined at a later date.
Charter Communications has succeeded in boosting the download speeds of its Spectrum internet service in New York state.

But the company still has a long way to go to ensure that more consumers can take advantage of it.

Under the terms of an agreement it has with the state Public Service Commission when it acquired Time Warner Cable last year for $65 billion, Charter is required to offer all New York customers internet download speeds up to 100 megabits per second by Dec. 31, 2018.

That's a significant upgrade from the typical speeds that Time Warner Cable offered in the Capital Region to most customers.

In an annual report filed with the PSC last month, Charter said that on March 14 it completed the necessary upgrades needed to offer 100 Mbps download speeds across the state 21 months ahead of schedule.

The PSC's field investigators will test that claim through random sampling and other testing to ensure that Charter is in compliance.

Charter doesn't always advertise its 100 Mbps internet service, called Spectrum Internet Ultra, instead focusing most of its marketing on it standard 60 Mbps service. Charter spokesman Justin Venech says that Spectrum's 100 Mbps internet service coupled with TV service costs $93.99 a month, which is $40 more than the 60 Mbps internet and TV bundle.

"Our marketing is overwhelmingly focused on our leading, entry 60 Mbps Spectrum Internet offering," Venech said. "We don't widely market our 100 Mbps service but it is available everywhere our Spectrum broadband pricing and packaging is launched, which includes all legacy (Time Warner Cable) areas in New York."

Charter has not fared as well with its network expansion plan that it agreed to with the PSC. Under that agreement, Charter must extend its network to be able to serve an additional 145,000 residential or business locations by May 18, 2020, with 25 percent of that build-out having occurred in the first year.

This goal relates to extending broadband internet service to areas of the state - usually in rural communities. The agreement targets so-called un-served areas where there is no internet service or where speeds are under 25 Mbps, or in so-called under-served areas where speeds are under 100 Mbps.

Over the past 12 months, Charter has been able to complete 15,164 "passings" of its network by homes or businesses that fall into either of those two categories. Such network extensions can be expensive and time consuming.

So far, Charter has extended its service to 3,184 potential customers in Albany and Saratoga counties.

The expansion in Schenectady and Rensselaer counties has been slower, with just 376 "passings," although it is unclear exactly what Charter's plans are for each county. The company has asked to keep much of its network expansion plan that it has shared with the PSC shielded from public view so that it can't be used by its competitors.

Charter had already notified the PSC months ago that the process of completing passings was taking longer than originally expected because the process could only go as fast as the owner of utility poles can accommodate the company's plans.

"As implementation of the plan has progressed, Charter has encountered several significant challenges, most notably that the amount of pole-related work that can be performed by the pole owners is severely limiting charter's deployment schedule," Charter's attorneys wrote the PSC back in April.

"There have been delays outside Charter's control," Venech said.
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Colonie

Jean-Claude Lauzon is a realist.

Lauzon, the New York-based delegate general of Quebec, knows there is a good chance that NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, may be renegotiated by the new U.S. administration.

And Lauzon says that Quebec, one of New York state's most important trading partners, would embrace the process, saying it could only improve trade between the United States and Canada.

"When NAFTA was created, the internet didn't exist, and the world was a different place," Lauzon said Wednesday during a visit to the Times Union's offices in Colonie. "It['s clearly time to modernize NAFTA. We're absolutely in favor of it. Quebec is a very open society, and it's open for business."

Lauzon said Quebec's top priority is maintaining its trading relationship with the U.S. More than 12,000 Quebec companies do business in the United States.

"It's important that we maintain that," Lauzon said. "We have been doing business with each other the last 400 years. Are there issues? Absolutely. Are there things to be discussed? Absolutely."

Among the issues? The ongoing squabble over dairy that's already hurting New York farmers. At the heart of the issue is ultra-filtered milk that's used in cheese and dairy products, which Canadian firms have typically bought from New York and Wisconsin farms.

Earlier this year Canada enacted long-expected limits on access to their markets, a move that was immediately decried by politicians from America's two largest milk-producing states. That prompted the Trump administration to enact similar protectionist policies for American lumber, with the president slapping tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber in what was largely seen as a retaliatory move.

Lauzon said the two countries' milk trade has long tilted in America's favor, citing a stipulation during the initial NAFTA negotiations that put limits on dairy, but not certain milk ingredients. (Other Canadian officials have made similar overtures, citing America's disproportionate exports of milk into the global market).

That, he said, could be at the heart of coming NAFTA talks.

"It's a small rock in the shoe," he said. "It's small, but it's there every step you make."

"It's not an easy one," he said. But "it's going to be a part of the discussions."

Lauzon talked about how the trains that run in New York subways are likely to have been designed and produced in Quebec, with parts made across the border in New York.

And he notes that the Big Three U.S. automakers increasingly depend on aluminum made by Rio Tinto in Quebec.

Not only is the aluminum lighter weight than steel -- allowing for increased gas mileage -- but Rio Tinto is able to sell "clean aluminum" that the car companies can say was made mostly using clean hydro power from Quebec.

"Our economies are fully integrated," Lauzon said. "It's very difficult to say this is an American product or that is a Canadian product. This is how integrated we are. We build things together. We make things together."

Although it would appear that Canada and the United States are likely to be able to agree for the most part on how to reform NAFTA, things are different when it comes to immigration.

Canada's birth rates aren't sufficient enough to sustain the population needed to create enough workers for its economy, although the issue is a problem for nearly all developed countries now.

"We need immigrants," Lauzon said. "We're not producing enough kids for our future. There's an imbalanced workforce. That is a dramatic problem. We need these well educated immigrants from around the world."

Lauzon says that despite the recent terror attacks in London and even the January attack on a mosque in Quebec City, Quebecois and their political leaders remain pro-immigration for both economic and moral reasons. Two years ago, Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard and his family decided to sponsor a Syrian refugee family that was relocating to the Montreal area.

In the United States, Syrian refugee relocation programs have been controversial, and Trump sought to stop all Syrian refugees from entering the United States through his failed travel ban, which has faced several legal defeats in federal courts. Trump has argued that the ban is needed to safeguard U.S. citizens from terrorist attacks.

Quebec, meanwhile, has been welcoming thousands of Syrian refugees and getting them to work.

"We've been very good about integrating and helping immigrants from around the world," Lauzon said. "That's a debate. But given the events in London, Paris and Quebec City, you can imagine, the debate is not an easy one."
CLIFTON PARK - CAPTAIN Youth and Family Services, a nonprofit grassroots human services organization that supports and empowers Saratoga County youth, individuals and families, received a $9,390.04 check from Jersey Mike's Subs through the South Side Drive restaurant's Month of Giving and Day of Giving campaigns.

In March, customers at Jersey Mike's were invited to donate to a local charity through the Month of Giving. The campaign culminated in a nationwide event, Jersey Mike's Day of Giving, on the last Wednesday of March, when 100 percent of the day's sales were to be donated to the local partner charity.
GALWAY - The Galway Library will hold a public information meeting on its proposed new library at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the library, 5264 Sacandaga Road.

The new library on East Street would be built with a $1.15 million bond. A referendum on the proposal will be on Wednesday, June 14, with voting from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. at the Galway Town Hall.
SARATOGA SPRINGS - Undocumented immigrants fearing deportation will find a safe haven at the city's PresbyterianNew England Congregational Church. The parish's Governing Board unanimously voted Monday to offer sanctuary to a handful of people seeking to legalize their status.



"This is not a partisan stand," said Terry Diggory, the coordinator for the church's Welcoming Immigrants Task Force. "We are taking a political stand for the welfare of the community because the rhetoric under the Trump Administration has turned distressing."



The church, the first in the region to take this step, plans to shelter a family or a few individuals, most of whom are now considered felons because they re-entered the U.S. after being deported. They will remain sequestered inside the church where congregants will provide for all of their needs.

Meanwhile, lawyers, found through the New Sanctuary for Immigrant of the Capital Region, will try to untangle their legal issues.

"We will not be hiding anyone," he said. "Rather, we will advocate publicly for a sanctuary resident and work with immigration authorities for a just and humane resolution of the particular case."

Diggory said they will be safe in the church because Immigration and Customs Enforcement policy directs its agents to avoid raiding "sensitive locations" such as churches, hospitals and schools including colleges and universities. However, ICE spokesman Khaalid Walls said that ICE can make arrests inside any of these locations if given prior approval by "appropriate supervisory officials or in the event of exigent circumstances."

ICE has made its presence known in Saratoga Springs. Just last week, the agency arrested 16 men, one from Guatemala, the rest from Mexico, near their city homes. While no one will speak on the record, for fear of sparking more raids, backstretch workers at the track are hesitant to come at the Saratoga Race Course this summer. Diggory said that restaurant owners and hotel managers are expressing concern that they won't have the necessary staffing for the summer rush.

"Saratoga runs on the hospitality industry," Diggory said. "Locally, the arrests can have an impact on our economy too."

Diggory admits the task of caring for the immigrants will be an enormous one. It will rely on help from members of the city's Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Saratoga Springs, which also just voted unanimously to become a sanctuary church. While it will not house immigrants, it currently supports them by informing them of their legal rights and accompanying them to ICE interviews. Members will care for their children during interviews and educational session.

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"The immigrant community is really behind the eight ball," said Eric Lawson, chair of the UUCSS Social Justice Committee. "They don't speak the language, they don't understand the laws, they are afraid to ask for help. They are so often subject to demonization and dehumanization. We are taking a position on this because it's a moral issue."

The Labor-Religion Labor-Religion Coalition of New York State and Saratoga Unites, a committee of concerned citizens who advocate for progressive causes, also promised assistance to those sheltered at the Presbyterian church.

"Immigrants contribute to our community," Diggory said. "But increasingly, they are spoken of as criminals. We wanted to help and offering sanctuary is one of the things we thought we could do. This is a practical solution, something we could do now."
Albany

As President Donald Trump undoes one environmental safeguard after another, it is time for people who disagree to rally and resist, according to a longtime Capital Region resident who has advised two state governors.

"We have had more than 100 days of President Trump, and I cannot point to one positive accomplishment," said Judith Enck, a Poestenkill resident who was a regional administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the Obama administration until this year.

Enck has a long record of environmental activism in New York, and was top advisor on the issue to former governors Eliot Spitzer and David Paterson. In 2009, she was tapped to head an EPA region that includes New York, New Jersey, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and eight tribal nations. She left that post in January after Trump took office.

"We have to rely on science, and we have to rely on the courts ... we have the law on our side," said Enck, speaking before a supportive crowd at an event for the Albany-based lobbying group Environmental Advocates of New York. She once headed the group before joining state government.

Enck ticked off 18 separate decisions made by the Trump administration that she considered dangerous and wrong, including the recent decision to abandon the Paris climate change international treaty.

She urged the crowd to "turn to the courts" to challenge Trump, to support local media and reporting by National Public Radio and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, to "call your member of Congress -- a lot" and finally, to "mobilize."

Enck shared a story of attending a climate change march in Glens Falls in April, and seeing a young girl "who didn't look more than 10 years old. She was holding a sign that said: I am marching for my grandchildren."

Enck painted the President as in thrall to the fossil fuel industry for ignoring the international scientific consensus on man-made climate change that supported the Paris treaty, in which nearly 200 nations agreed to set voluntary greenhouse gas emissions goals.

She praised the Clean Energy Plan announced by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, which would require the state to obtain half of its electric power from renewable sources by 2030. She was encouraged by a growing number of states and cities that are vowing to uphold the greenhouse gas limits of the Paris accord within their jurisdictions.

Enck also called Attorney General Eric Schneiderman a "legal firewall" for spearheading several multi-state legal challenges to Trump, including threats to sue the President over his attempted roll-back of the Obama'administration's Clean Power Plan aimed at controlling power plant emissions in the U.S.

"All this is good, but we cannot have the federal government sitting on the sidelines," she said. "We are not going to be OK ... air pollution does not recognize state boundaries."

Enck also blasted Trump's decision to name former Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt -- who rejects the international scientific consensus on man-made climate change and who has repeatedly sued EPA -- to head that agency.

And she accused Pruitt of breaking the federal Hatch act, which prohibits specific political activity by federal officials, when Pruitt was part of GOP fundraising efforts in his home state. In April, Pruitt withdrew from the fundraising after U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., filed a Hatch Act complaint.

And she decried Trump's proposed 31 percent budget cut for EPA. "These cuts are designed to diminish the agency. They are not to save taxpayers money," Enck said.

Those cuts would eliminate 3,200 jobs at EPA, end all climate science research, and slash funding for the Superfund industrial pollution cleanup program, she said.

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Enck criticized Trump for moving to abandon the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan, and for "using coal miners as media props" when he announced his decision.

"If you really want to help coal miners," she said, "You have to make sure they have health care, and retraining for new jobs."

A growing majority of Americans disapprove of Trump's environmental policies, according to a recent poll by Quinnipiac University.

That poll found that voters disapproved 62 - 32 percent of Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris Accord. Of all voters, only Republicans approved, by a 72 - 20 percent margin.

The poll found that two-thirds of all voters want the U.S. to do more to address climate change. Some 73 percent agreed that the U.S. can address climate change while also protecting jobs.

The university contacted 1,361 voters nationwide between May 31 and June 6. It has a margin of error of 3.2 percentage points.
The following capsule reviews of recent releases, long runs and revivals come from various wire services, as noted:

RATINGS: G - Suitable for all ages. PG - Parental guidance recommended. PG-13 - Parental guidance strongly suggested. R - Restricted; anyone under 18 must be accompanied by adult. NC-17 - No children under 17.

    Excellent    Good   Fair  Poor

Alien: Covenant

Sci-fi horror. Ridley Scott's "Prometheus" sequel/"Alien" prequel. Stars Katherine Waterston, Michael Fassbender, James Franco, Danny McBride, Billy Crudup, Demian Bichir, Carmen Ejogo and Jussie Smollett. In many ways, this new installment in the "Alien" series is a conventional horror movie, starting quietly and building in intensity, from the first hint of trouble to the thunderous, life-and-death struggle at the finish. Though the scale is large and the action takes up a fair chunk of the screen time, "Alien: Covenant" remains grounded in its ideas and in the struggles of its individual characters. (R for sci-fi violence, bloody images, language and some sexuality/nudity)  (Mick LaSalle, Hearst Newspapers)

Baywatch

Comedy. Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Zac Efron star in a racy, comedic remake of the unintentionally funny lifeguard TV drama. (R for language throughout, crude sexual content, and graphic nudity)  1/2 (Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service)

Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie

Animated. Dav Pilkey's series of children's novels makes it to the big screen in this animated feature about George and Harold, two fourth-grade pranksters who hypnotize their principal into thinking he's a ridiculous and overly enthusiastic superhero. Featuring the voices of Kevin Hart, Thomas Middleditch and Ed Helms. "Captain Underpants" is a very popular series that doesn't seamlessly translate to the big screen, and the filmmakers can't solve this problem. (PG for mild rude humor throughout)  (Peter Hartlaub, Hearst Newspapers)

Chuck

Drama. A drama taken from the life of heavyweight boxer Chuck Wepner (Liev Schreiber), widely believed to be the inspiration for "Rocky," though Sylvester Stallone denies it. Also stars Naomi Watts, Elisabeth Moss and Ron Perlman. The expected approach with the Chuck Wepner biopic "Chuck" is to piggyback the "Rocky" story, with a sweeping score, a simplified hero and the big fight versus Muhammad Ali at the finish. But the makers of the movie are more interested in examining the myth behind the real-life inspiration for Rocky Balboa than building more fantasy on top of the story. And they have an excellent centerpiece, as Schreiber submerges himself in a deep and nuanced lead performance as the "Bayonne Bleeder." Schreiber and the superb supporting cast repeatedly rescue it. (R for language throughout, drug use, sexuality/nudity and some bloody images)  1/2 (P.H.)

Churchill

Drama. Brian Cox plays Winston Churchill in this historical ticking-clock thriller tracing the 96 hours before D-Day. Miranda Richardson plays Churchill's wife, Clementine, while John Slattery is Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower. Brian Cox in some ways he is very good casting. He is the right age and he's the right size. Cox does a better than average job  almost everybody bombs when playing Churchill  capturing the leader's seriousness of purpose and the weight of his responsibility. He gives us Churchill's irascibility, but he doesn't convey Churchill's twinkle, his charm or his wit. But then, to be fair, "Churchill" takes place at a not-particularly witty juncture in the prime minister's life. (PG for thematic elements, brief war images, historical smoking throughout, and some language)  (M.L.)

Citizen Jane: Battle for the City

Documentary. A documentary about writer and urban activist Jane Jacobs,who fought to save historic New York City during the ruthless redevelopment era of urban planner Robert Moses in the 1960s. Filmmaker-journalist Matt Tyrnaeur does a capable if not especially dazzling job of communicating the outlines of the struggle. There are lots of archival photos and footage and talking heads, perhaps the most enjoyable of whom is the late Mayor Ed Koch, who recalls his days as an urban activist and discusses the hated plan to extend Fifth Avenue through Washington Square Park. (NR)  (Walter Addiego, Hearst Newspapers)

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul

Comedy. The latest in the "Wimpy Kid" series finds a family road trip to Meemaw's 90th birthday party going off course due to a scheme to get to a video gaming convention. The "Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul" is a notably solid effort. While other family-friendly movie franchises (including "Chipmunks" and "Ice Age") seem to get a double-digit percentage worse each time, this sequel is at least tied for the best in the series. The discussion of kids-and-parents and real-life connections keeps "The Long Haul" grounded in something more than pure escapism. (PG for some rude humor)  1/2 (P.H.)

Everything, Everything

Drama. Based on a YA novel, a teenager who's lived a sheltered life because she's allergic to everything, falls for the boy who moves in next door. "Everything, Everything" benefits enormously from its appealing young couple, especially Amandla Stenberg as young, allergic Maddy, who so looks the picture of health, and who seems so curious, intelligent and vivacious that her predicament is almost as maddening to the audience as it is to her. But "Everything, Everything" tells a fairly slender story. To stretch things, the movie bombards us with musical sequences, eventually getting to the point that every three lines of dialogue gets interrupted by a song. (PG-13 for thematic elements and brief sensuality)  1/2 (M.L.)

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

Adventure. The Marvel superhero team goes on another mix-tape soundtracked space adventure, this time to learn the truth about Peter Quill Starlord's (Chris Pratt) parentage. Back for the fun are Zoe Saldana, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, David Bautista, Michael Rooker and Karen Gillan; new faces include Kurt Russell and Sylvester Stallone. (PG-13 for sequences of sci-fi action and violence, language, and brief suggestive content)  (M.L.)

Jeremiah Tower: The Last Magnificent

Documentary. Both a documentary biopic of a complicated man and an exploration of the gathering forces that converged to shape a new American cuisine and create the cult of "celebrity chef." ''Jeremiah Tower: The Last Magnificent" is an attempt to secure the place of the renowned chef in American culinary history. Tower left Chez Panisse in the late 1970s feeling that Waters took credit for his inventions, and the documentary contains interviews that both support and qualify that contention. (R for language)  (M.L.)

The Lovers

Comedy. In this comedy, Debra Winger and Tracy Letts play a long-married, unhappy couple who are both in the midst of serious affairs, but just as they approach divorce, a spark between them reignites and leads them into an impulsive romance. Azazel Jacobs' "The Lovers" is a complex character study of long-term relationships that takes a clever premise and uses it to explore the nuances and ultimate truths of long-term relationships. The film is anchored by a duo of powerhouse performances from Winger and Letts, who play married couple Mary and Michael, with an arch sophistication mixed with genuine vulnerability. (R for sexuality and language)  (K.W.)

Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer

Comedy-drama. A small-time wheeler-dealer (Richard Gere) falls in with a rising Israeli politician who is later elected prime minister, changing Norman's life in good and bad ways. In "Norman," Richard Gere gives the most maddening, annoying performance of his career  all by design. The movie is arranged in a series of encounters  Norman buttonholing one person after another, in sequences that are intentionally prolonged for (excruciating) effect. Why do any of these people put up with Norman, and why should we? It's the payoff  writer-director Joseph Cedar makes a sudden, straight string of the cat's cradle plot he's quietly created, one that answers the question: What if M. Night Shyamalan was Jewish? (R for some language)  ( Gary Thompson, The Philadelphia Inquirer)

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales

Adventure. The fifth go-round in the Walt Disney theme park ride-inspired action series finds Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) searching for the powerful Trident of Poseidon to protect him from the ghost of his vengeful nemesis (Javier Bardem). Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom return to join veterans Depp and Geoffrey Rush. There are dead people wanting to come back to life in "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales," so maybe what we have in this movie is one big, unconscious metaphor: Screenwriters hoping to flog a dead concept to life. If it were better it might be called a waste of time. (PG-13 for sequences of adventure violence, and some suggestive content)  (M.L.)

A Quiet Passion

Drama. Terence Davies' ("The House of Mirth," "The Deep Blue Sea") biopic of poet Emily Dickinson (Cynthia Nixon) from her early schoolgirl days to her later years as a reclusive, unrecognized artist. With a terrific subject, a good cast and a capable director, "A Quiet Passion" should be better than it is. (PG-13 for thematic elements, disturbing images and brief suggestive material)  (W.A.)

Snatched

Comedy. When Emily (Amy Schumer) is dumped by her boyfriend on the eve of their vacation, she persuades her ultra-cautious mother (Goldie Hawn) to travel with her to a South American paradise ... that quickly turns into a nightmare. A theoretically hilarious nightmare. "Snatched" is the movie where Amy Schumer comes into her own as a big-screen comic actress. It's a funny movie, but it's also one in which Schumer becomes truly legible, as someone who could be headlining comedies for the next decade or more. (R for crude sexual content, brief nudity, and language throughout)  (M.L.)

The Wedding Plan

Comedy. In this Israeli film, Michal refuses to cancel her wedding arrangements when her fiance bows out on the eve of her wedding, because as an Orthodox Jew, she insists that God will supply her a husband. Writer-director Rama Burshtein takes a novel approach to the marriage-minded romantic comedy genre in "The Wedding Plan," in that she strips out the marriage, the romance and the comedy. Her unique film is a dense, complex look at one woman's search for love. The film hinges on the central performance of Noa Koler as Michal, a woman who at 32 has decided it's now or never. (PG for thematic elements)  1/2 (G. Allen Johnson, Hearst Newspapers)

Wonder Woman

Adventure. Finally making it to the big screen in her own film after 76 years, the Amazon princess named Diana (Gal Gadot) rescues a crashed pilot (Chris Pine) and joins him in fighting in World War I, as well as becoming a timeless superhero. Also stars Robin Wright, David Thewlis, Connie Nielsen and Danny Huston. "Wonder Woman" is a different kind of action movie, and it's all the better for it. It has humor, and it's grounded in history. It's the story of a woman's coming of age. It presents presents Diana as the female principle representing the arts of life and, ultimately, love, in collision with a world that men have been collectively trying to destroy for at least the past 100 years. (PG-13 for sequences of violence and action, and some suggestive content) 1/2 (M.L.)
Kerala CPI MLA Geetha Gopi is facing flak over her daughter's extravagant wedding. The CPI party might seek explanation in the next executive committee meeting.

By Press Trust of India: Causing embarrassment to the CPI party in Kerala, luxury wedding pictures of party legislator Geetha Gopi's daughter went viral on social media.

The pictures of the wedding that took place recently at the Poothanam Auditorium in Guruvayour in Thrissur went viral showed the bride decked up in gold ornaments.

Also read: Kerala: No panic call yet from Malayalees in Qatar

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Geetha Gopi is a two-time CPI legislator from Nattika in Thrissur district. The party is the second largest partner in the CPI-M headed LDF government.

Now, the party is seeking explanation regarding the matter as the wedding came up quite closely after her colleague in the state and former minister Mullakkara Ratnakaran raised the issue of extravagant marriages in the state and sought Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan to curb ostentatious weddings.

Also read: Kerala priest says women wearing jeans, T-shirt arouse men, wants them drowned in the sea

CPI State Secretary Kannam Rajendran said that the party district committee has been asked to seek an explanation on the matter from the MLA as she is the member of the party district council.

--- ENDS ---
Colonie

Confidence is the key to success, and confidence takes courage. This was the message of the inaugural Women@Work Summit held at the Hearst Media Center Wednesday. More than 130 women (and a few men) heard from experts in their fields about financial empowerment, diversity, inclusion and how to make a difference.

The daylong event was inspired by the 100th anniversary of women's suffrage in New York state, but it was juxtaposed with dismal findings presented by Eve Waltermauer of SUNY New Paltz who led a first-of-its-kind poll, that asked New Yorkers how they perceive women and their roles in society and the workplace. A sampling: 50.6 percent of all respondents, both women and men, said how a woman dresses contributes to whether she is raped or not. Fifty percent of men believe a mother must put looking after her young child ahead of her career; and 11 percent of women and 18.7 percent of men believe it's a wife's obligation to have sex with her husband even if she does not want to. Nearly one-third of men ages 26 to 35 said men are generally better skilled at science and math than women. Thirty percent of men ages 26 to 35 said women are less interested than men in positions of responsibility.

The day's facilitator, consultant Corey Jamison, asked the women in attendance how the news made them feel  "angry," they said; "frustrated"; "exasperated"; "sad"; "depressed."

Jamison then asked the women to put those feelings aside and use their energy Wednesday to learn and plan for what's next.

The day was organized into three panel discussions: financial empowerment and equity; diversity and inclusion; and helping others succeed as you succeed. Confidence  and the lack of it  was a re-occurring theme. Women don't apply for jobs because they doubt themselves, don't demand the salary they deserve and then save less money toward retirement both because they make less money and because they don't trust their own investment decisions.

Keynote speaker Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul said she used to lack confidence, despite her qualifications and job experience. She asked parents to consider the marketable skills they acquire just from managing children.

"Women are guilty of holding themselves back. Have confidence in yourself or no one will follow you," Hochul said.

Stories of real-life hardships were shared by those in attendance. Zory Pineiro was the third woman hired by the Albany Fire Department, where her male colleagues were openly hostile to her. She described finding peanut butter or jam in her boots when she dressed for a call  which she had to leave in the boot because there was no time to clean it out. One man accused her of taking a "family man's" job. Nancy Martin, the manager of engineering leadership development at GE Global Research, said at the beginning of her 35-year career she endured sexual harassment and incidents of sexism too numerous to count. Many women mentioned the subtle sexism they endure.

But Pineiro told her attacker the "family man" would've been hired if he studied and trained as hard as she did. And Martin made it her life's work to hire women into engineering roles. For two years, 50 percent of the people she's hired have been women.

Incidents shared about sexism did not belong to any one generation. An Ithaca College student who attended the summit, Gabrielle Bakkalapulo, 20, Class of 2019, described the situation at her school's finance club, where the students run a managed investment fund. She is the only woman on the executive board and of the 50 to 60 members, only a handful are women. The men are carelessly sexist in the way they speak and act around her, Bakkalapulo said. They don't mean any harm, but still, it's there.

Janeen Uzzell, the head of women in technology at GE, drawing from the 2014 census, spoke of the pay gap affecting black and Hispanic families. Hispanics earn 70 cents and African-Americans earn 59 cents for every dollar whites earn  the same in 2014 that it was in 1959.

Uzzell was the first in her family to graduate from college. Her earnings as a mechanical engineer quickly outpaced her father's income, and there was no one to teach her how to handle money. She depended on friends and colleagues, Uzzell said. She also tells her story whenever she can.

"It's our responsibility to share our stories, because if someone sees you doing it, they might think they can do it, too," Uzzell said.

lhornbeck@timesunion.com  518-454-5352  @leighhornbeck
Washington

Ahmad Ashkar has a lot he's trying to say with a $3 falafel sandwich.

He recently opened Falafel Inc. in the diminutive former Quick Pita spot in Washington as a way to raise awareness about the refugee crisis in the Middle East.

Ashkar's aim is to raise money as a way to provide concrete assistance. Every Sunday, he uses the Share the Meal app from the World Food Program (an agency of the United Nations) to donate a portion of the shop's gross sales from that week. Every $10 spent translates to one day's meals for a refugee (right now it's about 5 percent of gross sales, with 50 cents feeding one person per day).

"People want to get involved, but there's no bite-size way for them to get involved," said Ashkar, whose motto at Falafel Inc. is "food for good."

At the shop, the bite-size star is the falafel  crisp, light nuggets based on a recipe from Ashkar's mother. His parents are both Palestinian immigrants.

Why philanthropy through falafel? Beyond his personal affinity for the fried chickpea balls, Ashkar saw firsthand how falafel  really good falafel at that  was a staple at the refugee camps he has visited. To further emphasize the message, the shop has a rough, plywood-heavy design, to resemble what you might see in a camp. Pictures of refugees hang on the walls.

Ashkar is the chief executive and founder of the Hult Prize Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that sponsors competitions for students launching social enterprises to solve global problems. This year's challenge (prize: $1 million in seed money), selected by former president Bill Clinton, is "Refugees  Reawakening Human Potential," and Ashkar decided he'd try to do the same thing the organization was asking of others.

He ultimately would like to open 100 stores around the country, with the goal to having franchises owned by refugees who worked their way up through the company. Ashkar would also like to eventually transition the company into an employee-owned operation.

Perhaps it sounds a bit heavy for a falafel shop, but Ashkar said he thinks he has the right balance for being a social-minded food business.

"In terms of being salesy, we don't sell it," he said of the charitable aspect. That's because Falafel Inc. doesn't have to, though plenty of customers to date seem willing to be educated. It's built into the concept, and customers won't feel pressure or guilt. (Similarly, over Memorial Day weekend, Ashkar converted his former franchise of Oklahoma Joe's into a new brand, District BBQ, which will donate 10 percent of its profits to efforts aimed at the economic development of low-income workers, such as through English training.)

Ashkar hopes more businesses will adopt his model, but there are plenty of other ways restaurants and food operations are doing their part to raise money and awareness.

Owner Rose Previte of Compass Rose in Washington has been hosting "khachapuri dialogues" (named after its signature dish, the Georgian "butter pizza") since January to talk about all kinds of issues. May's focused on the Syrian crisis. Also last month, the restaurant's Bedouin tent, where reserved group dinners consist of a trip across the Compass Rose menu, featured Syrian food, with proceeds going toward groups doing humanitarian work there. The restaurant recently hosted a refugee welcome dinner, too.

Previte said the news coming out of the region has made her feel helpless. She said her contribution may be small, but it's something tangible that, without being too preachy, takes advantage of her best resources  space and food.

"We're a restaurant. This still needs to be light," Previte said. "We're not a think tank. We're not a nonprofit."

She counts her customers as another valuable resource, since many of them are service-minded with global experience in government or nonprofit organizations.

Receptive customers are one reason Noobtsaa Philip Vang thinks his Washington-based business, Foodhini, has been successful. The meal delivery service employs immigrant chefs, and two of the three current chefs are Syrian refugees.

In Washington, Vang said, "People are just really socially aware of what's going on around the world." Residents are also well-traveled and open to trying different foods, he said.

When customers order a meal, they're directly supporting the immigrants, who have a chance to tell diners about their food and themselves on personalized cards included in the package. In addition to the three main chefs, Vang employs other immigrants in positions such as line cook and delivery driver. Eventually, through working with churches and resettlement agencies, he hopes to have a total roster of 10 to 12 chefs, each making two or three dishes a day.

Doron Petersan's vegan Sticky Fingers Bakery has devised its own process for vetting candidates for its charity of the month. Organizations apply to be the beneficiaries of a special cupcake, and several bakery employees put their heads together to choose them. A dollar from each cupcake sale goes to the selected group.

May's organization is Comfort Cases, which provides supplies and other items to children in foster care. Previous charities of the month include the Human Rights Campaign and Alley Cat Rescue.

Petersan said food businesses are particularly engaged in their communities, citing the Day Without Immigrants and Women's March on Washington as examples of how they're socially aware and willing to take a stand. Plus, she said, "Most of us did something else beforehand," meaning owners and chefs often already have their own set of causes and issues they're dedicated to.

"There's a really big connection here between serving and service," Compass Rose's Previte said.

Petersan likes doing a featured cupcake each month, because it's an easy way to track donations, but it also fits perfectly with the business model of a bakery. The cupcake might keep people coming back, so the cycle of sales and contributions can continue.

Ashkar said the sheer volume of transactions that food businesses do make them the ideal platform for greater good.

"I can't think of another business that touches as many customers on a daily basis," he said.
Albany

Jeffrey Conrad curled his hand into the shape of a pistol and pressed a finger against his left temple to demonstrate how he fatally shot an Albany college student 19 years ago.

He recalled that the student, Erik Mitchell, who had cash in his pocket and was known to sell weed, collapsed in a sitting position against a wall inside the door of his basement apartment on Clinton Avenue. Conrad, wearing a mask and alone, abandoned his robbery plan and fled.

"He opened the door, he reached for the gun, I shot him," Conrad said, forcefully slapping his hands together. "It was just that quick and simple."

Mitchell, 23, never regained consciousness after being shot on Feb. 18, 1997. He died later that morning at a city hospital.

Conrad, 45, who claims he's killed at least a dozen people during his crime-filled life, also recounted a key detail not made public after Mitchell's murder: Police never found the .25-caliber silver handgun used in the killing.

"I chopped it up and threw it away. Hacksawed it. You'll never get that," he said.

Albany Detective Christopher Cornell sat at a table inside an Ohio jail two years ago as Conrad, seated across from him, confessed to killing Mitchell in a videotaped interview obtained recently by the Times Union. Conrad, who has mental health problems, said he wasn't clearing his conscience. He wanted to know why two other men, Carl H. Dukes and Lavelle R. Jones, were convicted and sentenced to life in prison for a murder he committed.

"You've always known that they didn't do it," Conrad said. "They couldn't tell you what kind of gun it was cause they didn't know. They couldn't tell you how he fell cause they didn't know. They couldn't tell you a (expletive) thing. Nothing. Nothing. ... You guys knew from the beginning, when you sensed it, that they didn't (expletive) do it ... and you went and told his family all that (expletive): 'Yeah, we got the guys.' "

Cornell, 34, an Albany detective-of-the-year in 2014, was in high school when the murder took place. He told Conrad that policing has "evolved" since that time.

"Listen, I wasn't there in the interviews," the detective said, remaining calm as Conrad grew more agitated. "You've got to understand, they confessed. They confessed to a murder."

Conrad's unexpected confession has stirred the ashes of an era when the Albany police regularly built homicide cases in which their key evidence were the signed confessions obtained from suspects after lengthy interrogations. In 1999, the same year Dukes was convicted, a decorated city detective, Kenneth Wilcox, came under scrutiny after he obtained a similar detailed murder confession from a 19-year-old Albany man accused of killing a drug dealer. The suspect, Kevin Cherry, stood trial for murder but a jury deadlocked on his innocence. On the eve of his second trial, Cherry was set free when two other men were identified as the real suspects after an eyewitness came forward.

Wilcox, who died in 2006 in an on-duty car crash, was not the only city detective who gleaned signed confessions from murder suspects, but his knack for getting them was widely known. He also helped the lead detective in the Mitchell homicide, Ronald Matos, obtain the murder confession from Dukes.

Dukes, in jail on an unrelated charge, was brought to the Albany County courthouse on Sept. 8, 1997, seven months after Mitchell's shooting death. He was left alone with Matos and Wilcox while his public defender, Bertrand Gould, left the room, but returned periodically to check on his client and make sure he didn't need legal representation. Court records indicate Gould was unaware the detectives were accusing Dukes of killing Mitchell.

The six-hour interrogation ended with Dukes signing a detailed statement saying he was only a lookout when Jones killed Mitchell. He was charged with first-degree murder and, at the time, faced a potential death penalty.

Jones underwent a similarly grueling interrogation, and signed a similar confession after being in police custody for two days.

For years, Wilcox was regarded as the city's top homicide detective. But at the time of his death, his off-duty business dealings in the city's subprime mortgage industry were under investigation by the FBI. His former business partner, Aaron R. Dare, was later convicted of fraud and conspiracy and sentenced to more than 13 years in prison.

Dukes and Jones were convicted of robbery and murder during separate trials in Albany County Court in 1998 and 1999. They are both serving sentences of more than 30 years to life in prison and claim that city detectives coerced them into giving written statements that included details they didn't know, such as the caliber of the murder weapon. The statements also contained their alleged motive to silence Mitchell, who they admitted targeting in a robbery several months before he was killed.

Jones is from Brooklyn and had alibi witnesses who placed him in New York City on the night of the murder. But his statement admitting to the crime, and implicating Dukes as the triggerman, came after he hadn't slept for 48 hours, according to court records from his trial. Matos, 47, who has since retired as a detective and is an assistant security director for Siena College, declined comment for this story, citing the re-opened investigation of Mitchell's homicide.

Court records indicate that during Jones' interrogation, Matos ripped up two statements Jones began writing in a police interrogation room asserting his innocence. Eventually, after being threatened with the death penalty, Jones signed a statement admitting to the murder that Albany County prosecutors now believe he and Dukes may not have committed.

Attorneys for the Exoneration Initiative in New York City have taken up Jones' case and are seeking to overturn his conviction. They argued in court papers filed recently that there was no physical evidence tying Jones  or Dukes  to the murder, and no eyewitnesses who placed him Albany at the time of the killing. The attorneys cited data from the National Registry of Exonerations indicating 22 percent of the cases in which homicide convictions are overturned, based on new evidence, involve defendants who falsely confessed to the crime.

"The only evidence connecting Jones to the murder was a vague written confession, obtained after more than 30 hours of custody and interrogation throughout which he maintained his innocence," wrote Glenn A. Garber, an attorney for Jones, who is at the maximum-security Elmira Correctional Facility in Chemung County.

Attorneys for Jones said that he is "hopeful" that his conviction will be overturned in the coming months.

"We're optimistic that they're looking at this very closely and we're hopeful that they will concede our motion to the extent that we should be granted at least a new trial, and hopefully they'll ultimately decide to dismiss the case."

Dukes is at the maximum-security Wende Correctional Facility in Erie County. He is in the process of securing a new attorney who is expected to file a motion also seeking to have his conviction vacated, according to Albany County prosecutors.

Conrad, in the jailhouse interview two years ago in Ohio, said that he left New York after Mitchell's murder. He noted that he spent much of his life on the run as a parole absconder, including at the time of the killing, and that he was arrested a year after the homicide when he returned briefly to Albany. He said a "SWAT" team stormed an Arbor Hill residence where he was hiding and recovered a 9 mm handgun, ammunition and drugs. But it wasn't the gun that he used to kill Mitchell, he said, and he was sent back to prison for five years but never questioned about the homicide, even though his name was mentioned in the investigative file.

Looking back, Conrad said he remembered wondering when he was arrested in 1998 if police identified him as a suspect in the murder because the search warrant stated detectives were looking for a "silver-colored automatic handgun," which was the color of the gun he said he used to shoot Mitchell.

As Conrad returned to prison to serve time for parole violations and weapons possession, Dukes and Jones were prosecuted for Mitchell's murder. A third suspect, Pierre Jones, who was charged with Mitchell's killing and admitted taking part in the October 1996 robbery at the apartment, was acquitted of murder but convicted of witness tampering.

"Ultimately everybody wants the truth," Albany police Chief Brendan Cox said. "From what I've seen about this case I think the detectives at that time did their job, but that doesn't mean we're always right. We know historically that you have issues with false confessions."

At the time Dukes and Jones were interrogated, the Albany police did not videotape interviews with suspects. In 2010, under new leadership, the department began videotaping its interviews and now has a policy requiring videotaped interviews in all felony cases.

"I think the videotapes now at least help show the process and show that nobody did anything inappropriately," Cox said. "Unfortunately, even though we have the best justice system in the entire world, it still has flaws in it and nobody wants to see an innocent person get convicted."

At his January 1999 sentencing in Albany County Court, Dukes, then 21, maintained his innocence.

"I'm not the killer and neither is Lavell Jones, and what the police did to me as far as interrogating me, it was wrong," Dukes told Judge Larry Rosen. "I just wanted to go home. I was scared for my life. I didn't know better. ... I put my name on something that I had no business doing and it led to this."

Albany County District Attorney David Soares said his office took immediate action two years ago to help Jones and Dukes obtain new attorneys after Ohio detectives alerted Albany police that Conrad was confessing to Mitchell's murder.

"The moment that this was brought to our attention we brought them into court and it was at our insistence they were appointed lawyers," Soares said. The case is pending before state Supreme Court Justice Thomas A. Breslin, who is reviewing a motion to reopen the case.

If the convictions of Jones and Dukes are overturned, it's unclear whether Conrad will be prosecuted for Mitchell's homicide. He is serving life in prison in Ohio for fatally stabbing an ex-girlfriend. It was following his arrest for that homicide that he confessed to killing Mitchell.

blyons@timesunion.com  518-454-5547  @brendan_lyonstu
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A man accused of using his brother's name to avoid being arrested on warrants in the Capital Region and Florida is among the fugitives State Police said they are trying to find as part of their Warrant Wednesday initiative.

Darren A. Berghela, 33, is wanted by State Police in Schodack for allegedly impersonating his brother during a traffic stop in Rensselaer. The warrant was issued in January after Berghela failed to pay a fine that stemmed from his prosecution for posing as his brother to avoid arrest during a 2015 traffic stop, troopers said. At the time, Berghela was wanted in Orange, Saratoga and Schenectady counties as well as in Monroe County, Fla.

 Maxine Hopkins, 78, is wanted by State Police in Niagara after she allegedly failed to appear in court to answer a driving while intoxicated charge nearly 10 years ago. The bench warrant was issued in the town of Lewiston on May 7, 2008, five months after state troopers said they charged her with DWI.

 Thomas Latham, 34, is wanted by State Police in Albany for failing to appear in court to answer allegations he drove while intoxicated. State Police said they stopped Latham's vehicle on the Thruway on Aug. 18, 2013, and charged him with DWI.

 Earl C. Backell, 53, is wanted by State Police in Marcy for allegedly taking a $14,000 deposit for construction work he never completed. Backell is charged with third-degree grand larceny in a warrant issued May 24. Troopers said he did not begin the work or purchase supplies after taking the money.

 Matthew R. Blizard, 34, is wanted in the town of Wappingers on robbery and weapons possessions charges tied to a robbery investigation conducted last month. Blizard and another suspect attempted to steal merchandise from a store, troopers said. Blizard allegedly fled before police arrived. A warrant was issued on May 16.

 Carl T. Sturner, 33, is wanted by State Police in Catskill on charges of assault, weapons possession and harassment for allegedly attacking another person during a family fight. State Police said he was arrested after the fight but failed to appear in town of Coxsackie Court.

 Douglas L. Corrow, 39, is wanted by State Police on a warrant issued in Clinton County Court that accuses him of failing to appear in court last year to face a burglary charge. Corrow is charged with second-degree burglary.

 Michael Umasky, 38, is wanted by State Police in Rochester on drug possession and licensed driving charges. Troopers said they arrested him after stopping his car in the city of Rochester.

 Mohamed Rahman, 31, is wanted by State Police in Farmingdale on a variety of vehicle and traffic charges. Troopers said Rahman would not pull over when state troopers tried to stop his car on the Wantagh State Parkway in Nassau County. After the February 2017 chase, Rahman was arrested and charged with fleeing a police officer, reckless driving and traffic, troopers said.
ALBANY -- SUNY Empire State College held its 45th annual commencement for students living in the greater Capital Region on June 4 at the Empire State Plaza.

Keynote speakers were students Zekarias "Zeke" Mekonnen and Kristina Kwacz.
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SCHENECTADY - The state Attorney General's Office is investigating the circumstances surrounding the death last month of an unarmed man who died after he ran from Schenectady police.

"The Attorney General's Special Investigation and Prosecution Unit has opened an in investigation into the death of Andrew Kearse, pursuant to the Attorney General's authority under Executive Order No. 147," said Amy Spitalnick, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's office. "We're committed to conducting an independent, comprehensive, and fair investigation."

Spitalnick was referring to an order Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed nearly two years ago to allow the Attorney General's office to investigate and prosecute cases that involve the deaths of unarmed suspects in confrontations with police.

Schenectady police asked State Police to handle the investigation shortly after Kearse died on May 11.

On Wednesday, State Police Capt. Robert Patnaude, acting commander of Troop G, said the AG's probe "doesn't affect" the troopers' investigation into Kearse's death.

"They have been involved since the beginning," Patnaude said. "We had a few meetings with their investigative team, but we have done all the interviews and investigative work."

He said investigators expect to receive a full toxicology report later this week.

Schenectady Police Chief Eric Clifford said Wednesday he anticipated the AG's involvement in the case.

"I asked the New York State Police to investigate the case in order to provide an independent investigation in preparation of the attorney general overseeing the unattended death," Clifford said. He declined further comment, citing the unfinished investigation.

Schenectady County District Attorney Robert Carney said Wednesday he spoke early on with Schneiderman and again on Tuesday.

"It's his call to make under the executive order," said Carney. "There's no question (Kearse) was unarmed, there's a big question as to if (police) caused the death, but I think all the attorney general is saying is 'we're going to take a close look at that rather than just signing off on it immediately."

Kearse's encounter with police began at 4:34 p.m. May 11 when an officer saw him driving erratically on busy State Street in the Central State neighborhood and tried to pull him over.

Kearse, 36, pulled into a Ward Avenue driveway and ran into a backyard, city police said. Officers gave chase.

The pursuit ended behind a Donald Avenue home and Kearse was arrested, city police said. At the time, police said he was not shot or shocked with a Taser but they would not comment on whether police used other types of force.

The man was put in the back seat of a police car and, on his way to the police department, he told Schenectady police officers that he was having trouble breathing and felt dizzy, city police said.

By the time the police car arrived at the station, he was unresponsive, police said.

Paramedics treated Kearse at the scene and then he was taken to Ellis Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, police said.

A city police spokesman has previously said Kearse did not display any visible signs of distress before mentioning his symptoms.
The Naked and Famous was born of a romance that started in music school in New Zealand  really, shouldn't more relationships start that way?  between guitarist/vocalist Thom Powers and Alisa Xayalith, a daughter of Laotian refugees, who sings and plays keyboards. Their romance, and shared affinity for synth-heavy pop/rock, provided a starting place for what became a five-person band, which gained attention beyond their island homeland with the 2010 album ''Passive Me, Aggressive You.'' England's taste-making NME called the album "a glorious melting pot of pop perfection," and U.S. critics offered similar praise. They followed that success with 2013's ''In Rolling Waves,'' which was reviewed positively and rose as high as No. 14 on Billboard's Alternative Rock Album chart. Then Powers and Xayalith ended their romantic relationship, and the band came close to breaking up as well. But the band members, who left New Zealand to set up base in Los Angeles, chose to carry on. They got to work late in 2015 on what became their third album, ''Simple Forms,'' which came out last year. An AllMusic reviewer noted a shift in sound from the group's earlier work, calling the album ''a fittingly dark-hued effort rife with heartbreak, loss, and, ultimately, a sense of forgiveness. Perhaps due to the personal turmoil or to the band's maturation process over three albums, 'Simple Forms' is less overtly bombastic than the group's previous work. There's a tenderness to the arrangements that feels straightforward and uncluttered.'' The curious can start with the single ''Higher,'' and see where that goes.

8 p.m. Sunday. $25/$28. Upstate Concert Hall, 1208 Route 146, Clifton Park. 371-0012. upstateconcerthall.com.
Capital Region colleges and universities are seeing increased interest from students outside the Northeast this application season, as officials crisscross the country in search of new students to recruit.

The pool of high school-age students has been shrinking in the Northeast and Midwest in recent years, prompting college recruiters to head south and west for potential applicants.

In the Capital Region, application trends have largely mirrored those occurring nationwide: highly selective private colleges continue to see record applicant pools, interest in community colleges is flat or shrinking, and interest in four-year public schools and small private schools is mixed.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Skidmore College and Union College  the region's trio of high-ranked, highly selective private schools  once again saw record applicant pools by the time fall 2017 applications were due Jan. 15.

RPI saw 19,475 applications, a 5 percent bump over last year for an all-time high. Skidmore saw more than 10,000 applications, beating last year's record of 9,200 applications and the 2015 record of 8,500 applications. Union College saw 6,652 applications, just five applications more than last year for a new all-time high. This is the 10th straight year the Schenectady college has seen a record applicant pool.

"We know the types of students we look for have many choices for college, and we continue to be humbled and excited that they see Union as a good fit for themselves," said Matt Malatesta, vice president for admissions, financial aid and enrollment.

College officials noted record early decision applications as one reason for the boost. The other is an increase in students applying from high schools outside the Northeast. For RPI, that interest is a direct result of recruitment in states like California, Virginia, Florida, Texas and Washington.

The College of Saint Rose, a small private school in Albany that has struggled with declining enrollment for years now, noted a turnaround last year as a result of recruitment outside the region in places like Denver, Atlanta, Houston and Cleveland.

So far, it's seen more than 7,000 applications this admissions season  about the same as last year, but a 62 percent climb from 2013. Applications from out of state make up 25 percent of that pool compared to 21 percent last year at this time.

"Notable in our pool this year is that our national student search strategy is producing measurable results," said Saint Rose spokesman Ben Marvin.

The region's public colleges continue to see mixed interest.

The University at Albany has processed just under 24,000 applications so far, about 3.5 percent more than this time last year and on track to hit a record number by fall.

Spokesman Karl Luntta credits the college's recent entrance into high-demand program areas like engineering and cybersecurity. In recent years, the college launched two new schools in these areas  the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity.

He also credited the college's "excellence," cost, growing reputation and slate of student-support services.

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Community colleges, in general, have seen enrollment decline in the years since the recession. They also have open and rolling admission cycles  meaning they accept anyone with a high school diploma or equivalency certificate at any time  and expect to see a large surge in applications during the summer months.

So far, however, Columbia-Greene Community College in Hudson has seen a slight drop in applications from 699 last March to 608 this March. Hudson Valley Community College in Troy is up slightly (by seven applications, to be exact) to 5,213 applications compared to this time last year.

SUNY Adirondack in Queensbury is a surprise, with a 17 percent jump in applications to 1,606 compared to this time last year. College officials credit on-campus housing, expanded course offerings, and growth in Saratoga, Warren and Washington counties and across the state.

The rural school has also become a popular option for students entering SUNY's Educational Opportunity Program, which gives admission, tutoring and financial support to low-income students from historically underserved populations who show promise but may not otherwise have the grades or money to get into college.

A number of colleges and universities declined to provide application figures, including the Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, Albany Law School and Siena College. Three others did not respond to requests, including Fulton-Montgomery Community College, Sage Colleges and Schenectady County Community College.

bbump@timesunion.com  518-454-5387  @bethanybump
In a win for security forces in Kashmir, a young militant who was seen at the funeral of Hizbul commander Sabzar Bhat surrendered today. In his interrogation, the youngster revealed a tale how newly inducted militants in Kashmir get disenchanted with the militancy.

By Kamaljit Kaur Sandhu: A Kashmiri youth who joined the militancy and was pictured at the funeral of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Sabzar Bhat surrendered to the Handwara police today.

The youngster - identified as Danish Ahmed, a resident of Handwara - was seen in video clips from Bhat's funeral that were shared on social media. Initially, the youngster was unidentified, with the videos showing a boy in a black outfit, wearing a battle pouch with a grenade in it.

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Notably, Danish's surrender comes as security forces in Kashmir have steadily eliminated or detained a number of top Hizbul militants. In fact, from the 11 Hizbul militants present in a viral photo from last year (among others, Burhan Wani and Sabzar Bhat were in that picture), forces have killed nine and have managed to get one to surrender.

DANISH'S STORY

Danish was recently seen in video clips clicked in Tral, Awantipora by local media during the funeral of Sabzar Bhat, who was killed in an encounter with security forces on May 27. The video clips helped identify him as Danish Ahmed, a third-year Bachelor of Science student at the Doon P.G. College of Agriculture Science and Technology, Dehradun.

Danish was suspected of having been involved in stone-pelting incidents at Handwara during the 2016 unrest. Back then, he was picked up by police but was let off after counselling in order to protect his career.

Once security agencies became convinced that Danish had joined the militancy, Handwara police and the 21 Rashtriya Rifles unit of the Indian Army got in touch with his parents and asked them to counsel their son and get him to surrender.

His parents were convinced that if Danish surrenders, he would be dealt with fairly under the law. Efforts made by security forces yielded results and Danish surrendered today before the Handwara police and the Rashtriya Rifles. SSP (Handwara) Javed Jeelani said, Nitish Kumar, said "We want youth to join the mainstream and (want to) give them opportunity to reform."

THE SABZAR CONNECTION

Security sources tell India Today that Danish picked up arms on the day Sabzar died. The videos, in which he could be seen being carried by the crowd on shoulders, led to his identification.

The sources add that the Hizbul handler who was linked to Sabzar Bhat was the one under whose influence Danish joined militancy.

GETTING DISILLUSIONED

During initial interrogation, Danish revealed that he was in touch with several militants in south Kashmir via social media websites and applications and that it was due to their instigation that he had decided to become a terrorist.

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As his first task, Hizbul Mujahideen commanders asked Danish to 'activate' local youth in north Kashmir in order to make the region as militancy infested as the southern part of Kashmir. However, after spending a few days with the terrorists in south Kashmir, he grew disillusioned with the militancy.

Danish told interrogators that he is not the only one to get disillusioned with the militancy so quickly. According to him, most local boys become disenchanted with the 'gun' after just a few days of joining the militancy.

However, they are too afraid to surrender because they believe their lives are under threat from their commanders. Several newly inducted militants also fear they would be socially ostracised by their relatives and neighbours who 'look down' upon surrendered militants, Danish further said.

TAKING UP THE GUN FOR LOVE

Danish further revealed that most of the militants indulge in acts of extortion in areas of their operations. Several local boys join militancy to become friends with local girls who, Danish said, treat them as 'heroes.'

Many, including Zakir Musa or Reyaz Naikoo of Hizbul Mujahideen and Dujana of Lashkar-e-Taiba have multiple 'girlfriends', Danish told officials.

According to Danish, these militants often enjoy the image of being Robin Hoods - they settle personal disputes between villagers and extract 'protection money' from local bigwigs.

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In his interrogation, Danish also said that while there is no dearth of funding for the militancy, local militants often loot banks in Kashmir for extra cash. The looted money is used to buy new gadgets, fancy clothes and expensive gifts for their girlfriends.

Jammu and Kashmir Police has registered a First Information Report (FIR) against Danish and is considering rehabilitating him under the J&K Surrendered Militants Rehabilitation Policy.

ALSO READ | Why Hizbul Mujahideen is rattled after murder of Army officer Ummer Fayaz

ALSO READ | After killing Hizbul's Sabzar Bhat, Indian Army now has 12 dreaded terrorists to neutralise

ALSO READ | Terrorist vs terrorist in Kashmir: Hizbul Mujahideen suspects Zakir Musa's betrayal

--- ENDS ---
[June 06, 2017] Knowledge Services Corporate Expansion Has Direct Impact on Indiana Tech Industry INDIANAPOLIS, June 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Knowledge Services, a professional services and information technology company, announced today they plan to begin building a new headquarters in Fishers, Indiana, by 2019 creating nearly 400 jobs by 2021. Believing in the strategic direction of Fishers and their work in making the city a home for growing companies and young professionals alike, the 80,000-square-foot-space is to be named Green Acres Technology Park and located at 11001 USA Parkway in Fishers, Indiana. The Vision

"We're excited to be part of an ecosystem of support between the city, the community, other growing companies, and our highly skilled workforce," stated Julie Bielawski, CEO of Knowledge Services. "With the Green Acres Technology Park expansion, our remarkably talented and engaging teams of professionals will have more opportunities to enhance creative thought and drive innovation in the technology space. Additionally, the leadership of Fishers is very progressive and we know this is going to be a great home for us." "This announcement has special meaning for Fishers. Joe and Julie have been residents for years and the fact that they are choosing to invest their business in the community they call home is a point of pride for our city," said Fishers Mayr Scott Fadness. "The Bielawskis' entrepreneurial story coupled with their tech focus affirms the smart, vibrant and entrepreneurial vision we have for Fishers."





Job Growth & Development

Knowledge Services is dedicated to serving people who serve others. The company hopes the community and its employees will benefit from the new space which will be designed to maximize natural light impact, support a modernized professional lifestyle and accommodate both indoor/outdoor collaboration. All interested applicants are encouraged to seek and apply for positions on the company's website. "Our goal for the building is to create an environment that is very welcoming and allows for people to work collaboratively, feel comfortable, and remain excited about coming into work," stated Joe Bielawski, President of Knowledge Services. Industry Impact

Focused on solving workforce challenges for its' clients and providers, Knowledge Services has stayed true to conducting business the right way since inception over 20 years ago. The company continually strives to remain transparent, challenge the status quo, and enable organizations to work smarter in the ever-changing business world of today through a set of diverse workforce solutions that improve efficiency, labor sourcing, management, and tracking and analytics. The Indiana Economic Development Corporation offered GuideSoft Inc. (dba Knowledge Services) up to $2,300,000 in conditional tax credits and $200,000 in training grants based on the company's job creation plans. For more information or to apply for available positions, please visit https://www.knowledgeservices.com. About Knowledge Services

Knowledge Services, a certified Woman Business Enterprise (WBE) founded and established in 1994 by Julie Bielawski, is a technology and professional services organization delivering innovative workforce solutions to clients within the public and private sectors. Currently headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, Knowledge Services is the largest government workforce management provider in the U.S. Their unique methodology combines contract workforce management industry best practices with comprehensive program management and recruiting expertise to deliver proven and measurable results. Media Contact:

Anna Bielawski 317.806.6145 or [email protected]. To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/knowledge-services-corporate-expansion-has-direct-impact-on-indiana-tech-industry-300469840.html SOURCE Knowledge Services

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[June 07, 2017] The Government of Canada Invests in Youth and Family Based Conservation Initiatives

WOODBRIDGE, ON, June 7, 2017 /CNW/ - Since 2014, with support from Environment and Climate Change Canada, Earth Rangers has grown from an organization of 35,000 members to over 150,000 members in ever Province and Territory. These children, with support from their families, take action every day to preserve the environment, protect biodiversity and fight climate change. The contribution also allowed for the expansion of Earth Rangers' School Assembly Program into the far north and the launch of a French program called Eco Heros. Earth Rangers is delighted to announce continued support from Environment and Climate Change Canada, in the amount of $700,000, to educate children and families across Canada about the impacts of climate change on wildlife and the importance of healthy, diverse ecosystems in addressing climate change, and o encourage them to reduce their carbon footprint.



"Support from the Government of Canada has been integral in helping Earth Rangers reach diverse audiences. We're thrilled to continue this impactful partnership, ensuring that any child who wants to engage in conservation in this country, can do so through Earth Rangers." Liz Schad, Chair "Climate change is a defining issue of our time and we are encouraged by the Government of Canada's commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and put a price on carbon. At Earth Rangers we believe children have an important role to play in helping Canada adapt to and mitigate climate change by conserving nature, forming sustainable habits and inspiring behavioral change in others. Ultimately, we aim not to just create the few environmental leaders of tomorrow, but to encourage an entire generation of conservationists." Peter Kendall, Executive Director

About: Earth Rangers is The Kid's Conservation Organization, dedicated to educating children and their families about biodiversity, inspiring them to adopt sustainable behaviors and empowering them to become directly involved in protecting animals and their habitats. To become an official Earth Rangers Member, go to www.earthrangers.com and for more information visit www.earthrangers.org SOURCE Earth Rangers

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[June 06, 2017] Telkom Indonesia Wins Again The Coveted Grand Stevie Award 2017

The Company is Also Awarded "Most Innovative Most Innovative Communication of The Year" JAKARTA, Indonesia, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- PT Telkom Indonesia (Persero) Tbk (Telkom) once again honored with the highest award, Grand Stevie Award as Organization of the Year 2017 in the fourth annual Asia Pacific Stevie Awards. Telkom's Director for Enterprise & Business Service received the award on the company's behalf in Tokyo, Japan on Friday (2/6). This is the third Grand Stevie Award that Telkom has won for the third year in a row since 2015 and it highlights Telkom's outstanding performance. Telkom won the award after swooping 31 awards with 8 Gold, 5 Silver, and 18 Bronze for its business innovations in a variety of aspects namely: New Product Innovation, Technology Innovation, Marketing, Customer Service, Corporate Communication, and many others. The eight Gold Stevie were awarded for the following Telkom's innovations: Smart Airport 3.0 for Innovation in Business Information Apps

for E-Learning Website fo Innovation in Education or Training Websites

fo Cellular Service on Satellite on the Move for Remote Area for Innovation in Technology Development

for Telkomtelstra for Excellence in Innovation in Technology Industries

for GBILL (Finnet) for Innovation in Shopping or E-commerce Apps

for AdMobile (Admedika) for Innovation in General Information and General Utility Apps

(Admedika) for iMOTA: Sea Port Traffic Solution (ILCS) for Innovation in Business Utility Apps and for Innovation in Transportation & Logistics.



In delivering all corporate messages, Telkom Indonesia recognized conducting various innovative and creative events collaborating with other business units. For instance, through an integrated campaign named "Untuk Indonesia" (For Indonesia) to not just create awareness but also invite people to act together and give the best for the nation. Through this campaign, Telkom took a different approach to widespread the message by choosing some ordinary people with extra ordinary achievement as ambassadors. Besides that, Telkom is also exercising other unique approach in media partner selection through community based media which organizes hundreds of thousands of social media enthusiast.

Asia Pacific Stevie Awards is an annual international business awards organized by The Stevie Awards. The competition is open for all companies and organizations in 22 countries in the Asia Pacific region. There were more than 600 business innovation nominees competing in the awards. Stevie Awards Committee judged entries on business innovations by reviewing their concepts, development processes, success value of the innovations, and their impact on the company and the public. Therefore, all innovations declared as winners in this competition have been proven as well implemented and resulted in positive significance to the company's business. "We are proud because Telkom has managed to win Grand Stevie as Organization of the Year, for the third year in a row. This proves Telkom's commitment to continue developing digital innovations in various industry," Telkom's Director for Enterprise & Business Service, Dian Rachmawan, said after receiving the award at the Hilton Tokyo Hotel, in Tokyo, Japan. "This award will benefit all Telkom's stakeholders, notably to motivate the employees to innovate better, improve the company's credibility with innovations on services for Telkom's subscribers and more importantly to refine the company's image in order to gain more level of confidence from the shareholders," Dian Rachmawan said. MEDIA CONTACT :

ARIF PRABOWO

Vice President Corporate Communication

Phone : 62-21-5215252

Fax : 62-21-5202731

[email protected]

www.telkom.co.id Photo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20170605/1868012-1 SOURCE PT Telkom Indonesia (Persero) Tbk

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[June 06, 2017] Canadian Hydrogen Fuel-Cell Electric Vehicle (FCEV) Coalition to Host a FCEV Ride-n-Drive event on Parliament Hill

OTTAWA, June 6, 2017 /CNW/ - The Canadian Hydrogen Fuel-Cell Electric Vehicle (FCEV) Coalition of automakers will be hosting two hydrogen fuel-cell electric vehicle test-drive events. The first event is for Mayor Jim Watson, city councillors, and members of the public on Wednesday, June 7, between 8:30 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. in the Lisgar Loop on the South side of City Hall. The second test-drive event is for Cabinet Ministers, MPs, political staff, public servants, and members of the public on Wednesday, June 7, between 11:00 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. directly in front of the entrance to the House of Commons building. These events present an opportunity to see, touch, drive, and learn about the several models of hydrogen FCEVs that will be present from Honda, Hyundai, and Toyota. The Ride-n-Drive will coincide with Canada's hosting of the United Nations World Environment Day and Canada's Environment week, in the spirit of raising awareness of the substantial environmental benefits of zero-emission FCEVs powered by hydrogen. As Canada aims to meet the federal government's announced greenhouse gas emission reduction targets, conventional energy sources such as fossil fuels are no longer a sustainable option. The innovative technology in Hydrogen-powered vehicles will play an essential role in reducing emissions, maintaining healthy air quality, and reducing greenhouse gas emission rates.



Attendees of the two events will include Mayor Jim Watson, Ottawa city councillors, prominent cabinet ministers, senators, political staff, elected officials, and government decision makers. Among cabinet ministers will be the Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development; the Honourable Jody Wilson-Raybould, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada; and the Honourable Bardish Chagger, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister of Small Business and Tourism.

Minister Navdeep Bains commented on the 2017 federal budget and investing in clean technology in Canada earlier this year in April stating, "Our 2017 budget proposes a number of approaches [to] improve energy efficiency, reduce carbon emissions, create a cleaner environment and healthier communities. Our government will also continue to help companies raise the standard in the field of clean technology in order to improve the quality of life for all Canadians." The coalition is working with government to ensure hydrogen fuel-cell electric vehicles play the integral role they will need to in order for Canada to be successful in its strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. About FCEVs

Hydrogen FCEVs are next-generation electric vehicles that produce their own power through an electrochemical process combining stored Hydrogen and atmospheric Oxygen atoms in a fuel cell stack. There is no combustion involved and the only exhaust emission is pure water vapour rendering FCEVs as zero emission vehicles . About the Coalition

The Canadian Hydrogen Fuel-Cell Electric Vehicle (FCEV) Coalition of automakers is dedicated to raising awareness of the advanced engineering, safety, environmental benefits, and transformative potential of FCEVs. In addition, the coalition aims to foster new FCEV consumer and fleet markets in Canada through the support and creation of new and publically accessible FCEV fuelling infrastructure in Canada. SOURCE Canadian Hydrogen Fuel-Cell Electric Vehicle (FCEV) Coalition

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At least three militants were killed in an ongoing encounter in Mon, Nagaland. One Territorial Army officer and one civilian were also killed.

By India Today Web Desk: At least three terrorists were killed in an encounter in Nagaland's Mon district, the Indian Army said on Wednesday morning.

One soldier from the Territorial Army and one civilian were also killed in the encounter. Three other jawans were injured.

The Indian Army's Eastern Command said in a message on Twitter that the soldier killed was an officer in the Territorial Army. The injured soldiers have been evacuated to a hospital and their condition is stable, the Eastern Command said.

Click here to Enlarge Location of the encounter (Map image tweeted by Eastern Command)

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The encounter broke out at around 11.30 pm on Tuesday after militants ambushed security personnel.

Three militants were killed in the subsequent encounter. Major David Manlum of the Territorial Army died in the gunfight while three other soldiers suffered inujuries.

The anti-terror operation was still underway today morning.

Major David Manlum, who was killed in an encounter with militants in Nagaland Click here to Enlarge Major David Manlum, who was killed in an encounter with militants in Nagaland

ALSO READ | Jammu and Kashmir: CRPF kill 4 militants after they attacked camp in Bandipora

ALSO READ | Top CRPF officer's report alleges fake encounter in Assam in which 2 men were killed

Watch Video: Territorial Army Major, 3 terrorists killed in encounter in Nagaland

--- ENDS ---
Top 5 Vendors in the Global Smart Weapons Market From 2017-2021: Technavio

Technavio has announced the top five leading vendors in their recent global smart weapons market report until 2021. This research report also lists five 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/20170606006002/en/

Technavio has published a new report on the global smart weapons market from 2017-2021. (Graphic: Business Wire)

The research study by Technavio on the global smart weapons market for 2017-2021 provides a detailed industry analysis based on the platform (naval, land-based, and aerial) and geography (the Americas, APAC, and EMEA).

"The global smart weapons market is projected to reach more than USD 16 billion by 2021, growing at a CAGR of nearly 6% over the forecast period. The growing focus on the development of smart drones is a key factor boosting the market growth," says Moutushi Saha, a lead analyst at Technavio for defense research.

Competitive vendor landscape

The global smart weapons market is characterized by the presence of global and regional vendors to gain maximum market shares. In-house manufacturing capacities, global footprint network, product offerings, R&D investments, and a strong client base have become key focus areas that help in providing a competitive edge in the market.

The prospects of the market vendors are largely dependent on the market conditions, regulatory government support, and development of the industry. Vendors who focus on expanding geographically and improving their product offerings are likely to flourish in the market.

This report is available at a USD1,000 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.

Top five vendors in the global smart weapons market

General Dynamics (News - Alert)

General Dynamics and its subsidiaries are engaged in aerospace and defense businesses globally. The company develops several smart weapons, which are used by the army, ground vehicles, naval ships, and military planes. Some of these weapons are ADM, Stinger missiles, Tomahawk missiles, and XM982 Excalibur precision-guided artillery.

Lockheed Martin (News - Alert)

Lockheed Martin is engaged in the production and supply of advanced technology systems and solutions to global defense and aerospace industries. It develops the smart weapons that help in providing enhanced accuracy while firing a missile or munition, including Dual Mode Plus LGB, PDAM, DMLGB, and BRU-57 smart bomb rack.

MBDA

MBDA and its subsidiaries design and manufacture missiles and missile systems for the navy, army, and air force sectors worldwide. It has business operations in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK, and the US.

Orbital ATK (News - Alert)

Orbital ATK is engaged in the development and supply of advanced weapon and space systems. Orbital ATK develops smart weapons such as GMLRS alternative warhead, XM25 CDTE systems, Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missile (AGM-88E), Guided Advanced Tactical Rocket, and 120 mm XM395 Precision Mortar.

Raytheon (News - Alert)

Raytheon provides solutions to the defense and government markets across the world. It offers electronics, mission systems integration, and other capabilities in the areas of sensing, effects and command, control, communications, and intelligence systems, along with a broad range of mission support services.

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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, resellers, 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/20170606006002/en/
[June 06, 2017] Ixia and TE Connectivity to Give Industry's First Demo of 400 GbE over an Octal Small Form Factor Pluggable (OSFP) at Interop Tokyo

Ixia, a leading provider of network testing, visibility, and security solutions, announced today a collaboration with TE Connectivity Ltd. (TE) (NYSE: TEL), a world leader in connectivity and sensors, to deliver a live demonstration of 400 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) traffic with an Octal Small Form Factor Pluggable (OSFP) solution, reflecting that this technology is available for adoption. OSFP is a new pluggable form factor with eight high speed electrical lanes that supports 400 Gbps (8x50G) data rates while allowing up to 32 OSFP ports per 1RU front panel, enabling 12.8 Tbps per 1U. It is expected that 400G optics will require more power than 100G optics, and OSFP addresses this reality by using an integrated heat-sink that significantly improves the thermal performance and enables modules with up to 16W power in a switch chassis with conventional airflow. In addition, the form factor volume (LxHxW) supports packaging of both client side and line side optical solutions (DWDM and/or coherent), as well as supporting 26 AWG direct attach copper cable assemblies for maximum reach. OSFP is the only optimal 400 Gbps form factor solution to demonstrate this combination of features and enhanced performance. The live demonstration, available to all attendees, will take place in the Ixia Booth 4Y17 at Interop (News - Alert) Tokyo, June 7th - 9th at Makuhari Messe in Chiba, Japan. The first of its kind, this demonstration will include Ixia and TE working together to send and receive IEEE802.3bs compliant, line rate 400 GbE traffic via 50 Gbps four-level Pulse (News - Alert) Amplitude Modulation (PAM4) electrical lanes over the OSFP form factor with TE's new OSFP connector, cage, and 1m copper cable assembly. Eric Himelright, vice president of Product Management at TE Connectivity's Data and Devices business unit, stated, "The combination of Ixia's (News - Alert) signaling technology and TE's OSFP interconnect expertise enables this 400 Gbps demonstration, providing solutions for customers who want to push the limits of connectivity and data capability. We are excited to work with Ixia to lead the next generation of Ethernet signaling based on 400 Gbps and preview our OSFP demonstration at the Interop expo in Tokyo." The 400GbE ecosystem has been designed to address the growing bandwidth requirements of expanding hyperscale data centers. In act, the market size for hyperscale data centers, at $86.9 billion in 2016, is anticipated to be $359.7 billion in 2023.1



Ixia continues to extend innovation leadership in Ethernet technology Ixia currently supports and collaborates with the OSFP Multi-Source (News - Alert) Agreement (MSA) to help drive the effectiveness and efficiency of 400 GbE technology. The OSFP MSA is comprised of approximately 80 industry leaders who are tasked with defining the form factor for new 400 GbE transceiver modules and cables that will support the full range of 400 GbE technologies, from datacenter to metro reach.

Based on its own Forward Error Correction (FEC) and Physical Coding Sublayer (PCS) intellectual property, Ixia was the first company to demonstrate line rate 400GbE technology by combining eight electrical lanes of 50 Gbps, defined as 400GAUI-8 by IEEE802.3bs, via four-level Pulse Amplitude Modulation (PAM4). "400 GbE technology is crucial to reducing the cost per bit of data traffic, especially as the global growth in cloud computing and big data is driving a massive increase in machine-to-machine traffic and east-west communication in web-scale data centers," said Matt Bergeron, Chief Technology Officer at Ixia. "However, the development of 400 GbE optics is quite challenging. Ixia is participating in the OSFP MSA to help organizations reduce the obstacles associated with 400 GbE adoption." About TE Connectivity (News - Alert) TE Connectivity (NYSE: TEL) is a $12 billion global technology leader. Our commitment to innovation enables advancements in transportation, industrial applications, medical technology, energy, data communications, and the home. TE's unmatched breadth of connectivity and sensor solutions, proven in the harshest of environments, helps build a safer, greener, smarter and more connected world. With 75,000 people - including more than 7,000 engineers - working alongside customers in nearly 150 countries, we help ensure that EVERY CONNECTION COUNTS - www.TE.com. About Ixia Ixia, now part of Keysight Technologies, provides testing, visibility, and security solutions to strengthen networks and cloud environments for enterprises, service providers, and network equipment manufacturers. Ixia offers companies trusted environments in which to develop, deploy, and operate. Customers worldwide rely on Ixia to verify their designs, optimize their performance, and ensure protection of their networks and cloud environments. Learn more at www.ixiacom.com. About Keysight Technologies Keysight Technologies is a leading technology company that helps its engineering, enterprise and service provider customers optimize networks and bring electronic products to market faster and at a lower cost. Keysight's solutions go where the electronic signal goes, from design simulation, to prototype validation, to manufacturing test, to optimization in networks and cloud environments. Customers span the worldwide communications ecosystem, aerospace and defense, automotive, energy, semiconductor and general electronics end markets. Keysight generated revenues of $2.9B in fiscal year 2016. In April 2017, Keysight acquired Ixia, a leader in network test, visibility, and security. More information is available at www.keysight.com. TE Connectivity, TE connectivity (logo), TE, and EVERY CONNECTION COUNTS are trademarks of TE Connectivity Ltd. family of companies. Ixia and the Ixia logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Ixia in the United States and other jurisdictions. All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners. Connect with Ixia: LinkedIn; Twitter; Ixia Blog; YouTube 1 WinterGreen Research, Inc., Hyperscale Data Centers: Market Shares, Strategy, and Forecasts, Worldwide, 2017 to 2023. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170606006632/en/

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[June 06, 2017] Global Tracheostomy Products Market - Size, Projections, Drivers, Trends, Vendors, and Analysis Through 2021 by Technavio

The global tracheostomy products market is projected to grow at a CAGR of nearly 2% over the forecast period, according to Technavio's latest report. This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170606006029/en/ Technavio has published a new report on the global tracheostomy products market from 2017-2021. (Graphic: Business Wire) In this report, Technavio covers the market outlook and growth prospects of the global tracheostomy products market for 2017-2021. Based on the end-users, the market is divided into hospital, home care, and ambulatory surgical center segments.







A tracheostomy is an opening made into the trachea to permit unrestricted breathing. It is considered as one of the most frequently done surgical procedures in intensive care unit (ICU) patients. The advances in technology have made the procedure extremely safe, with the additional provision of including the new balloon dilation percutaneous dilatational tracheostomy (PDT) technique.

Technavio's research study segments the global tracheostomy products market into the following regions: Americas

EMEA

APAC Tracheostomy products market in the Americas "The Americas occupy the largest segment of the tracheostomy products market, owing to the high adoption rate of disposable equipment and an increase in the number of surgical procedures," says Neha Noopur, a lead analyst at Technavio for orthopedics and medical devices research. The market in North America is dominated by the key vendors such as Medtronic, Teleflex, and Smiths Medical, which are the most important suppliers of tracheostomy products in the US and Canada. These companies sell their products through its sales force directly to hospitals and hospital purchasing networks. 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. Tracheostomy products market in EMEA The tracheostomy products market in EMEA is expected to grow at a steady rate during the forecasted period, driven by the rising adoption of tracheostomy procedures in hospitals. Also, the strong client relationship with vendors and wide distribution channels is expected to play a vital role in the growth of this market. EMEA market is dominated by the major companies like Medtronic and Teleflex, which are employing strategies such as partnering with the physicians and hospitals to modify or customize the design or quality of the products according to the consumer feedback. Tracheostomy products market in APAC "The tracheostomy products market in APAC is expected to grow faster than the other regional segment, due to the swift rise in adoption of the tracheostomy devices in countries such as China, India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan," says Neha. The focus of the vendors in the market is currently towards the development of innovative and technology-driven products. The growing product awareness, coupled with the rising popularity of medical tourism and low labor cost, low component cost, minimal overhead and tooling cost have attracted many companies to invest in the market. The top vendors in the global tracheostomy products market highlighted in the report are: Medtronic

Smiths Medical

Teleflex Browse Related Reports: Global Orthopedic Consumables Market 2017-2021

Global Orthopedic Prosthetics Market 2017-2021

Global Blood and Fluid Warming Devices 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 in-vitro diagnostics, urology devices, and vaccines. This subscription nets you thousands in savings, while staying connected to Technavio's constant transforming research library, helping you make informed business decisions more efficiently. About Technavio Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. The company develops over 2000 pieces of research every year, covering more than 500 technologies across 80 countries. Technavio has about 300 analysts globally who specialize in customized consulting and business research assignments across the latest leading edge technologies. Technavio analysts employ primary as well as secondary research techniques to ascertain the size and vendor landscape in a range of markets. Analysts obtain information using a combination of bottom-up and top-down approaches, besides using in-house market modeling tools and proprietary databases. They corroborate this data with the data obtained from various market participants and stakeholders across the value chain, including vendors, service providers, distributors, resellers, 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/20170606006029/en/

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[June 06, 2017] Fractus Announces a Licensing Renewal with Japanese Client

BARCELONA, Spain, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Fractus announces today that it has signed an agreement with a major international Japanese client to renew the license of the worldwide Fractus patent portfolio. The client is a world leading supplier of mobile phones, electronic components, printers, copiers and semiconductor packages. The terms of the agreement are confidential. Fractus VP Licensing, Mr. Jordi Ilario commented at the signing of the agreement: "The renewal of this license agreement confirms the strength of our patent portfolio." (Logo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/519144/Fractus_Logo.jpg )

(Logo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/519145/Intralink_Logo.jpg ) Intralink, a leading provider of market access and business development services to companies targeting China and other Asian markets, was appointed by Fractus to help them with thebusiness development activities. "Japanese device manufacturers are very sophisticated and helping Fractus to achieve licensing deals it is very satisfying for us because it means also helping to develop technologies across the regions", said Intralink Japan director, Mr. Will Jasprizza.



About Fractus Fractus is an early pioneer in developing internal antennas for smartphones, tablets and other wireless Internet of Things devices and holds an intellectual property rights portfolio of more than 30 inventions protected through over 120 patents and patent applications in the United States, Europe and Asia. Among the numerous awards and honours the company has received for its innovative work, Fractus was named a 2005 Davos World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer and one of Red Herring's top innovative companies for 2006. It also won the 2004 Frost & Sullivan Award for technological innovation and the 2010 National Communication Award of the Catalan Government in the telecommunications category. A team of Fractus inventors was finalist for the EPO European Inventor Award 2014. On November 2015, Fractus was awarded Academiae Dilecta by the Spanish Royal Engineering Academy and on April 2017 received the "European Inspiring Company Award" by the London Stock Exchange and the Elite Group. For further information, visit http://www.fractus.com

For Media Inquiries please contact: [email protected] About Intralink Intralink helps companies build their businesses in Asia. Through a team of over 70 full-time people, Intralink offers a low risk, cost effective and practical means to enter new markets, generate revenues, and establish an in-country presence. For more information visit http://www.intralinkgroup.com . SOURCE Fractus

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[June 07, 2017]

CyberSecurity, Physical Security, IoT Thought Leaders Discuss Solutions "In The Boardroom" On SecuritySolutionsWatch.com - AMAG, Cyberinc, Dell EMC, Extenua, ImageWare, NetWatcher

NEW YORK, June 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --



Dell Technologies, ImageWare Systems.

Thank You For Joining Us "In The Boardroom" On SecuritySolutionsWatch.Com

Kurt Takahashi, President, AMAG Technology - A G4S Company

Samir Shah, CEO, Cyberinc

Ken Mills, General Manager, Dell EMC, Surveillance and Security

Steve Visconti, President & CEO, Extenua

Jim Miller, ImageWare Systems, Chairman and CEO

Scott B. Suhy, CEO, NetWatcher

*****

 AMAG Technology - A G4S Company, Kurt Takahashi, President

www.securitysolutionswatch.com/Interviews/in_Boardroom_AMAG_Takahashi.html

www.AMAG.com

Amag Technology Delivers Powerful Unified Solution For Small Businesses

Symmetry Security Appliance provides access control and video management in one

http://www.amag.com/en/Company/News/2017/03/28/Symmetry-Security-Appliance---Press-Release

Access control leader AMAG Technology, recently announced the release of a new security appliance designed specifically for smaller businesses that need security management. Introducing the Symmetry Security Appliance, a powerful all in one security device that delivers access control and video management together.

Designed for fast and simple deployments, the appliance supports up to 8 cameras and 16 card readers. It comes pre-installed with Symmetry Business Access Control software, Symmetry CompleteView ONE video, and Symmetry CompleteView video integration software.

Measuring only four inches square, the appliance is quick and easy to install, and an affordable choice for organizations that require access control and video. It includes a dedicated Solid State Disk (SSD), which provides extremely fast load times for its Operating System and Applications, along with a high capacity, 2TB Hard Disk Drive (HDD) for reliable video recording. It also provides support for multiple High Definition displays to fully leverage the latest video display technology.

In other recent news:

KeySync Becomes Newest Member of AMAG's Symmetry Preferred Partner Program

http://www.amag.com/en/Company/News/2017/05/24/KeySync



*****

 Cyberinc, CEO, Samir Shah

www.securitysolutionswatch.com/Interviews/in_Boardroom_Shah_Cyberinc.html

www.Cyberinc.com

Samir Shah, CEO, Cyberinc, told us, "Isla represents an entirely new approach to cyber security. Until now security solutions have always been based on detecting bad things and blocking them from running. Anti-Virus tries to detect bad files, Web Filters try to detect bad websites, the list goes on and on. Isla takes a different approach to the problem. Instead of detecting bad things, Isla simply isolates ALL web content in a specialized environment located outside of an organizations sensitive network. Since ALL content is isolated no attacks can ever slip through the cracks and compromise the user. This is a simple, yet powerful approach. Since organizations vary so widely, Isla is offered in a number of ways to suit each potential customer's needs. Isla can be deployed as an appliance directly at a customer's office, it can be deployed in a customer's existing cloud data centers or it can be delivered as a pure Cloud service by a Cyberinc Isla Cloud Service partner."

In recent news:

Cyberinc partners with Sohonet to deliver Isla Cloud Malware Isolation to defeat advanced cyber attacks

https://cyberinc.com/news/cyberinc-partners-with-sohonet-to-deliver-isla-cloud-malware-isolation/

Cyberinc partners with OvationData to launch Isla Cloud Malware Isolation to defeat advanced cyber attacks in UK

https://cyberinc.com/news/cyberinc-partners-with-ovationdata-to-launch-isla-cloud-malware-isolation/

Interchange partners with Cyberinc to shut down cyber threats

https://cyberinc.com/news/interchange-partners-with-cyberinc-to-shut-down-cyber-threats/

*****

 Dell EMC, General Manager, Surveillance and Security, Ken Mills

www.securitysolutionswatch.com/Interviews/in_Boardroom_KenMills_GeneralManager_DeLLEMC.html

www.dellemc.com/surveillance

It is an exciting time to be at Dell EMC right now. Dell Technologies is now #1 In Everything, All in 1 Place and we are bringing this world-class portfolio to the surveillance market. Never before, have our customers and partners been able to modernize their surveillance infrastructure with an end-to-end portfolio like we have a Dell EMC. We are leveraging the same industry-recognized surveillance lab to expand our validated solutions to include the entire Dell EMC portfolio This is a huge step forward for the industry where for the first time, our customers and partners can purchase with confidence all of their surveillance infrastructure needs from one place - Dell EMC.

Public Sector continues to be a key vertical for us. With the demand in public safety at an all time high, the need for cost effective and proven solutions has never been greater. We are seeing strong demand for our Public Safety Data Lake solution built on Isilon. Customers are pushing back on closed single vendor solutions are looking for reliable open platforms for evidence management whether they are deploying on premises or in the cloud. Dell EMC is focused on building solutions that allow our customers choice in how they manage their evidence data. We are also seeing strong demand in airports across the world as airports look to modernize their infrastructure. We are also going to continue to bring the Dell EMC value to our enterprise and commercial customers across the globe.

Learn more here about Dell EMC Surveillance Solutions and the Solutions Portfolio here or here: https://www.emc.com/storage/video-surveillance-storage.htm#!solution_portfolio

And for Dell EMC Partner Validations, please click here or here: https://www.emc.com/storage/video-surveillance-storage.htm#!partner_validations







*****

 Extenua, President and CEO, Steve Visconti

www.securitysolutionswatch.com/Interviews/in_Boardroom_Extenua_Visconti.html

www.Extenua.com

Extenua has just released a most timely white paper

This free white paper discusses the challenges of keeping ransomware (Cryptolocker, WannaCry, and the like) out of the corporate data storage, whether it is local, in the cloud or hybrid.

CLOUD2DRIVE-PROTECTED ONLINE STORAGE IS IMPERVIOUS TO RANSOMWARE BY USING SILVERSHIELD

Ransomware is a type of malware that restricts access to the infected computer system, and demands that the user pay a ransom to the malware operators to remove the restriction. Probably the most famous ransomware, even though not the only one, is Cryptolocker, and its certainly something you dont want to deal with. Regardless of the strenuous efforts put in place by Antivirus developers, the rate of infection is astonishing, and these days its becoming even worse with an unprecedented outbreak of infection. To make things even worse, ransomware can also access all the shared folders on your NAS/SAN, so if you backup to a network drive your backups will be compromised too. The ransomware goals include, in fact, preventing you from being able to restore your old (healthy) data from a backup.

Even in case your systems are infected by a ransomware,

you will simply be able to format your computer,

reinstall your operating system,

and restore all your data from an always-healthy backup.

Download the complete White Paper (in PDF format)

http://dl.extenua.com/no-ransomware.pdf

*****

 ImageWare Systems, Chairman and CEO, Jim Miller

www.securitysolutionswatch.com/Interviews/in_Boardroom_ImageWare.html

www.iwsinc.com

ImageWare Systems Partners with Info X Distribution to Bring Multi-Modal Biometrics to Storage Networking Solutions

https://www.iwsinc.com/2017/06/05/iws-partners-with-info-x-distribution/

CIO Applications Names ImageWare as a Top 25 Cyber Security Company

https://www.iwsinc.com/2017/05/12/top25/

ImageWare Systems Issues Corporate Update

https://www.iwsinc.com/2017/05/10/imageware-systems-issues-corporate-update-2/



During the first quarter, we continued to focus on integrating our patented Biometric Engine into the cloud and mobile markets, principally via our GoVerifyID product for enterprise and consumer use, while also expanding into non-government sectors such as commercial, consumer and healthcare, said Jim Miller, ImageWares chairman and CEO.

Due to our business strategy relying on long-term engagements with large organizations, results from these initiatives continue to take time to materialize from a revenue perspective. We remain encouraged by the continued strong demand we are receiving behind the scenes and we anticipate further positive developments in strategic partnerships during the first half of 2017.

In addition to strong market demand, in March, Frost & Sullivan recognized ImageWare with the 2017 New Product Innovation Award for our GoVerifyID enterprise suite. Each year, Frost & Sullivan identifies companies that have successfully introduced new and innovative products into their markets, with emphasis on product quality and customer value. We believe this award further validates our technology and our strategy to bring our solution to market.

Subsequent to the end of the quarter, ImageWare was selected to provide biometric identity management and credentialing software to five Alaskan airports with delivery expected to commence in the second quarter of this year. This represents the third agreement in which an airport has entrusted our multi-modal biometric authentication software to confirm the identity and background of their employees.

*****

 NetWatcher, CEO, Scott B. Suhy

www.securitysolutionswatch.com/Interviews/in_Boardroom_Netwatcher_Suhy.html

www.NetWatcher.com

Scott Suhy, CEO, NetWatcher, told us,"On May 12th, 2017 the WanaCry (or WCry, WannaCry, WannaCrypt, WanaCrypt0r 2.0, Wanna Decryptor) ransomware was unleashed and caused over 75,000 attacks in 99 countries."

How Does the WanaCry Ransomware Work?

The Ransomware initially entered organizations via a phishing email message and then exploited a vulnerability (MS17-010) in Windows to spread within a network locking down computers and asking victims to pay $300 via Bitcoin. The Windows vulnerability was leaked as part of the NSA Shadow Brokers hack and Microsoft soon after released a patch however many computers were not yet updated at the time of the attack.

What Should I do? What do NetWatcher Customers do?

Customers first need to ensure they are not vulnerable to the attack: NetWatcher Managed Detection & Response customers leverage a built-in vulnerability scanner that periodically scans their environment for vulnerabilities. If the customer was vulnerable to the new ransomware they would have seen the vulnerability titled SMBv1 Unspecified Remote Code Execution (Shadow Brokers) show up in their reports as a high severity issue and warned that they needed to patch the Windows asset.

*****

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SecuritySolutionsWatch.com Is Proud To Be A Sponsor Of These Important Upcoming Events

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About SecuritySolutionsWatch.com

SecuritySolutionsWatch.com features thought leadership interviews about security solutions. Our flagship In The Boardroom program, now in its 15th year, has delivered outstanding content about security solutions from leading global brands such as: Cisco Security, Dell EMC, HP Cybersecurity, Gemalto, HID Global, ImageWare, Siemens Security and SONY Security, just to name a few.

What's YOUR cybersecurity, physical security, mobility, payments, safety or "smart" solution?

We invite you to please join us "In The Boardroom," more details here: http://www.securitysolutionswatch.com/Main/ThoughtLeadershipOpportunity.pdf

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Contact: Deborah Gilbert President [email protected]
[June 07, 2017] New McAfee Study Reveals Consumers Prioritize Convenience Over Security While on Vacation

To help educate consumers as they prepare for summer vacation, McAfee (News - Alert) conducted a study, "Digital Detox: Unwind, Relax and Unplug," to better understand the behavior and attitudes of consumers when on vacation, and how digital habits could be putting their personal information at risk. The survey found that despite the benefits experienced from unplugging, most individuals prefer to stay connected. Fifty-two percent of U.S. respondents indicated that they spend at least an hour a day using their connected devices to check email, text and post to social media while on vacation. This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170606006703/en/ New McAfee Study Reveals Consumers Prioritize Convenience Over Security While on Vacation (Graphic: Business Wire) The summer travel season can be a lot of fun for everyone, including cybercriminals who may try to exploit travelers who are in unfamiliar settings. When individuals put convenience over security, by using unsecured Wi-Fi access points that are easily hackable for example, they leave themselves open to the possibility of having their personal information compromised. "Our devices are extensions of ourselves that we rely on for more tasks every day," said Gary Davis, chief consumer security evangelist at McAfee. "Individuals must exercise caution when using their devices on vacation. By taking basic security precautions and avoiding unnecessary risks, consumers can better protect personal information making their vacation more enjoyable knowing they are connecting with confidence." The wide availability of Wi-Fi networks can make it difficult to unplug and disconnect on vacation, but if consumers take that extra step and unplug they can experience a more secure trip. While many individuals did not intend to unplug while traveling, those that did (43%) reported a much more enjoyable experience (81%). Can't Put the Device Down: Thirty-eight percent could not last a day without checking their work or personal email. More than a quarter (27%) admitted to checking their email consistently throughout the day.

Thirty-seven percent could not resist the urge to post to social media while vacationing.

Laptops were the most common device left behind (72%), but only 27% would be willing to leave their smartphone behind.

The most common reason individuals avoid unplugging was to be reachable by family and friends (62%).



Carefree Wi-Fi Usage Thirty-one percent of participants primarily connected using publicly available Wi-Fi leaving them open to potential security risks.

While 58% of participants claim they know how to determine whether their Wi-Fi is secure, only 49% take the time to check their connection.

Twenty percent don't consider the security of their Wi-Fi connection, and for 32% it depends on how much they need to connect to determine if they will use the unsecured Wi-Fi.

Remarkably, 15% of travelers considered their personal information and data to be more secure while traveling than it is at home. Work, Work, Work:

Only 16% of participants claimed that they stayed connected to be reachable by work, but if work were not a factor 57% would prefer to stay unplugged.

Sixty-nine percent of individuals in their 20s and 30s would prefer to completely unplug on vacation compared with less than half of individuals in their 40s (49%) if work were not a factor.

While individuals in their 20s were the most willing to unplug, they were also the group that experienced the most anxiety (52%) when they did unplug. Mom and Dad Know Best: Most parents think devices should take a backseat on vacation with 51% planning to unplug compared with 35% of individuals without children. Parents were only slightly more successful at abstaining from tech with 82% declaring success compared with 78% of people without children.

Seventy-seven percent of parents allow their children to use connected devices while traveling, and 73% of these parents claim to monitor their child's usage.

Parents tend to be more tech savvy than their non-parental counterparts and are more likely to know if their Wi-Fi connection is safe and secure to use (64% vs. 54%). Tips to Help Secure Your Personal Information and Devices: Browse securely when away from home. Ensure that you are connecting securely while traveling and avoid using public or unsecured Wi-Fi networks. If you absolutely must connect to a public Wi-Fi network, use a Virtual Private Network (VPN) like McAfee Safe Connect. A VPN will keep your information private and ensure that data goes straight from your device to where you are connecting.

Ensure that you are connecting securely while traveling and avoid using public or unsecured Wi-Fi networks. If you absolutely must connect to a public Wi-Fi network, use a Virtual Private Network (VPN) like McAfee Safe Connect. A VPN will keep your information private and ensure that data goes straight from your device to where you are connecting. Update your devices. The first line of defense for your devices is you, so it's important to take a few precautions to stay safe. Make sure your devices' operating system and applications are kept updated. Using old versions of software could leave you open to potential security vulnerabilities.

The first line of defense for your devices is you, so it's important to take a few precautions to stay safe. Make sure your devices' operating system and applications are kept updated. Using old versions of software could leave you open to potential security vulnerabilities. Install cross-device security. After you've updated your devices with the latest software install comprehensive security. A solution like McAfee LiveSafe can help your devices stay clear of viruses and other unwanted malware.

After you've updated your devices with the latest software install comprehensive security. A solution like McAfee LiveSafe can help your devices stay clear of viruses and other unwanted malware. Use a device locating app. If you lose your connected device, especially on vacation, it can be difficult to recover. Location applications can help you find, lock and even erase your device's data in the event of theft or loss. Survey Methodology In March 2017, McAfee commissioned MSI (News - Alert) International to conduct an online study of 9,500 people who use a connected device daily in Australia, France, Germany, U.K. and U.S. The survey included individuals between 18-55 split evenly by gender. About McAfee McAfee is one of the world's leading independent cybersecurity companies. Inspired by the power of working together, McAfee creates business and consumer solutions that make the world a safer place. www.mcafee.com. McAfee and the McAfee logo are trademarks of McAfee LLC in the United States and other countries.

*Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170606006703/en/

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[June 07, 2017] Silvaco to Showcase Advanced Node Solutions at DAC 2017

SANTA CLARA, Calif., June 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Silvaco, Inc. today announced that it plans to showcase the companys full TCAD-to-signoff tools with emphasis on advanced node capabilities at Design Automation Conference (DAC) 2017. WHEN: June 19, 2017 - June 21, 2017

Exhibit Hours: 10:00 AM - 6:00 PM WHERE:

Visit Silvaco in booth #1447 at the Austin Convention Center

500 E Cesar Chavez Street

Austin, TX 78701 WHAT:

The Silvaco booth will host Tech talks including customer success stories from Oracle on how Silvaco SmartSpice enables their flow at 7nm. DAC 2017 will also be venue to the announcement of a collaboration between Silvaco and Aldec to provide the design community with a solution for mixed mode co-simulation with Riviera-Pro and SmartSpice. Silvaco technology experts will be available to discuss and demo our broad portfolio of TCAD-to-signoff solutions with emphasis on new prodcts and capabilities serving advanced process nodes.



Victory Process, Victory Device enabling 2D and 3D TCAD process and device simulation for power devices and automotive applications

SmartSpice for advance node circuit simulation including co-simulation with Riviera-Pro

Expert for schematic driven layout especially for FPD applications

Jivaro & Belledonne for extracted netlist optimization and analysis and SPICE simulation acceleration

New solution for full Memory variation analysis enabling Spice simulation, effective fail detection and accurate yield estimation from Variation Manager

InVar for EM/IR and thermal analysis for complete sign-off

IP  I3C, CAN-FD and cloud based IP management platform Xena Silvaco will also be co-hosting the Stars of IP party, a Premier Semiconductor IP social event, on Tuesday, June 20, 2017 at Speak Easy off of Congress Avenue. About Silvaco

Silvaco, Inc. is a leading provider of IP and EDA software tools used for process and device development and for analog/mixed-signal, power IC and memory design. The portfolio also includes tools for power integrity sign off, reduction of extracted netlist for simulation speed up and variation analysis. Silvaco delivers a full TCAD-to-Signoff flow for displays, power electronics, radiation and advanced CMOS along with a complete production-proven IP portfolio including IP licensing and IP management solutions. Headquartered in Santa Clara, California, Silvaco has a global presence with offices in North America, Europe, and Asia. www.silvaco.com Press/Media Contact: [email protected]

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[June 07, 2017]

SolarWinds to Attend AFCEA Defensive Cyber Operations Symposium 2017

AUSTIN, Texas, June 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- SolarWinds, a leading provider of powerful and affordable IT management software, today announced its upcoming participation in the AFCEA Defensive Cyber Operations Symposium running June 13  15 in Baltimore, Maryland. SolarWinds will demonstrate how its network, systems and applications, help desk, security, and database management solutions can assist military IT professionals in ensuring that the networks within the Department of Defense (DoD) are adaptive, resilient, and effective across a range of uses and against diverse threats. The company will also host a complimentary networking reception for attendees at the Pratt Street Alehouse.

The U.S. Department of Defense and the government community that builds, operates, and defends networks have a challenging mission. Cyberleaders must continually adapt to future innovations and develop and leverage cutting-edge tools and technologies. To support this effort, AFCEAs Defensive Cyber Operations Symposium provides a forum where government and industry will focus on Connect and Protect.

The future of cyberwarfare promises to be complex, but that doesnt mean that managing and monitoring the militarys IT infrastructure must also be, said David Kimball, senior vice president, federal and national government, SolarWinds. At this years AFCEA Symposium, SolarWinds will be demonstrating how our powerful solutions can help our DISA and military partners simplify their network managementwhich will be a key factor in facilitating a more agile and connected military thats more prepared to take on evolving conflicts.



Visit SolarWinds at Booth 617

Join SolarWinds engineers and product experts at booth 617 in the Exhibit Hall to learn more about SolarWinds comprehensive IT management software portfolio, including solutions for government networks, security, systems and applications, databases, and more. Attendees can also pick up free SolarWinds gear and experience hands-on demonstrations of SolarWinds newest IT management and monitoring products, including:







SolarWinds software is available on the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) Schedule, Department of Defense ESI, and other contract vehicles.

U.S. Government certifications and approvals include Army CoN, Air Force APL, Navy DADMS; and Technical Requirements include FIPS compatibility, DISA STIGs, and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) compliance.

SolarWinds also has hundreds of built-in automated compliance reports, which meet requirements of major auditing authorities, including DISA STIG, FISMA, NIST, and more.

SolarWinds THWACK online user community provides a number of out-of-the-box compliance report templates available to download for free, which are designed to help users prepare for an inspection. It also provides information on Smart Card and Common Access Card (CAC) product support.





For more product and GSA pricing information and for a fully functional free trial of all above products, visit the SolarWinds Government Solutions page.

Additional Resources

About SolarWinds

SolarWinds provides powerful and affordable IT management software to customers worldwide, from Fortune 500 enterprises to small businesses, managed service providers (MSPs), government agencies, and educational institutions. We are committed to focusing exclusively on IT, MSP, and DevOps professionals, and strive to eliminate the complexity that our customers have been forced to accept from traditional enterprise software vendors. Regardless of where the IT asset or user sits, SolarWinds delivers products that are easy to find, buy, use, maintain, and scale while providing the power to address key areas of the infrastructure from on-premises to the cloud. This focus and commitment to excellence in end-to-end hybrid IT performance management has established SolarWinds as the worldwide leader in both network management software and MSP solutions, and is driving similar growth across the full spectrum of IT management software. Our solutions are rooted in our deep connection to our user base, which interacts in our THWACK online community to solve problems, share technology and best practices, and directly participate in our product development process. Learn more today at www.solarwinds.com.



The SolarWinds, SolarWinds and Design, Orion, and THWACK trademarks are the exclusive property of SolarWinds Worldwide, LLC or its affiliates, are registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and may be registered or pending registration in other countries. All other SolarWinds trademarks, service marks, and logos may be common law marks or are registered or pending registration. All other trademarks mentioned herein are used for identification purposes only and are trademarks of (and may be registered trademarks) of their respective companies.

 2017 SolarWinds Worldwide, LLC. All rights reserved.

MEDIA CONTACTS: Katie Hanusik Speakerbox PR Phone: 703.287.7824 [email protected] Michael Klein SolarWinds Phone: 512.498.6372 [email protected]
[June 07, 2017] Frost & Sullivan Recognizes Medicomp Systems with 2017 Enabling Technology Leadership Award for Innovation at the Point of Care

WASHINGTON, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Medicomp Systems, a physician-driven provider of clinically contextual patient data solutions, announced today that the company has received Frost & Sullivan's 2017 Enabling Technology Leadership Award. Medicomp's Quippe was chosen because of its ability to optimize EHRs for physicians at the point of care. The solution mirrors the way physicians think and work to help them to make sense of all clinical data and enable quicker, more accurate clinical documentation. Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this prestigious award to a company that has developed a pioneering technology that not only enhances current products, but also the development of new products and applications. The award recognizes the high market acceptance potential of the recipient's technology. Currently, over 100,000 users/day rely on Medicomp's proven domain expertise nd clinician-designed technology to improve the quality and efficiency of care delivery and users of the newest generation of Quippe report productivity increases of up to 30% and much greater satisfaction with their systems.



"Medicomp has created a truly innovative application that proves that technology can empower physicians at the point of care, rather than act as a roadblock," said Frost & Sullivan Principal Industry Analyst Victor Camlek. "Quippe's user-friendly, customizable suite of solutions provides clinicians with the right clinical information at the right time, and simplifies the clinical documentation process. We were excited by Quippe because it can transform the physician experience at the point of care, replacing frustration with satisfaction, and helping them to do what matters most  deliver the highest-quality, most efficient patient care." Quippe leverages Medicomp's powerful MEDCIN Knowledge Engine, which uses millions of mappings between clinical concepts to provide structured data. The purpose-built platform seamlessly integrates into existing clinical workflows and can be added to any EHR or HIS systems to enable elegant, clinical documentation that meets compliance and reporting requirements.

"Our team is proud to be recognized by Frost & Sullivan for designing solutions that support clinicians at the point of care. That's been our focus since our company was founded by Peter Goltra in 1978  and we've remained steadfast and true to that work," said Medicomp CEO David Lareau. "Our goal is to perfect the point-of-care experience for physicians who are tired of sorting through the clinical static in their EHR when they would prefer to focus on patients, and who are burnt out from spending extra hours completing documentation when they'd prefer to go home to their families. This award is yet another confirmation that our solutions are incredibly valuable not only for physicians, but also for the patients that they treat each day." About Medicomp Systems

In 1978, Medicomp Systems pioneered its patented MEDCIN Knowledge Engine, co-designed with physicians, to transform disorganized, complex arrays of medical information into structured, clinically relevant data at the point-of-care. Leveraging its flagship engine, Medicomp's Quippe suite of solutions uniquely delivers longitudinal patient information within a problem-oriented clinical view, mirroring the way physicians think and work to drive optimal patient outcomes. Quippe also includes wizard-based documentation functionality, which integrates into existing clinical workflows and EHRs, enabling health systems to further enhance EHR usability. With Quippe, healthcare organizations of all sizes can satisfy quality measures and regulatory compliance, increasing physician productivity while effectively positioning themselves for future market demands. Today, leading hospitals and health systems such as Phoenix Children's Hospital and over 100,000 users/day rely on Medicomp's proven domain expertise and clinician-designed technology to improve the quality and efficiency of care delivery. For more information, please visit http://www.medicomp.com/. Media Contact: Lisa Chernikoff, Amendola Communications for Medicomp, 734-678-5513, [email protected] To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/frost--sullivan-recognizes-medicomp-systems-with-2017-enabling-technology-leadership-award-for-innovation-at-the-point-of-care-300469967.html SOURCE Medicomp Systems

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[June 07, 2017] Sun BioPharma, Inc. to Present at the 2017 Marcum MicroCap Conference in New York on June 15, 2017

MINNEAPOLIS, June 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Sun BioPharma, Inc., (OTCQB:SNBP), a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company developing disruptive therapeutics for the treatment of pancreatic diseases, today announced that David Kaysen, the Companys Chief Executive Officer, is scheduled to present at the 2017 Marcum MicroCap Conference on Thursday, June 15, 2017 at 2:30 p.m. Eastern Time, in the Julliard room at The Grand Hyatt Hotel located at 109 East 42nd Street, New York, NY.

The presentation will be webcast live at http://wsw.com/webcast/marcum5/snbp and can also be accessed through the Companys website at http://www.sunbiopharma.com. A replay of the presentation will be available and achived for 90 days.



Persons attending the Marcum conference who would like to schedule a 1-on-1 meeting with Sun BioPharma, Inc. management during such conference may do so by contacting David Kaysen at [email protected] or Scott Kellen at [email protected]. About Sun BioPharma

Sun BioPharma Inc. is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing disruptive therapeutics for urgent unmet medical needs. The Companys development programs target diseases of the pancreas, including pancreatic cancer and pancreatitis; the Companys initial product candidate is SBP-101 for the treatment of patients with pancreatic cancer. The Company is currently engaged in a Phase 1 dose-escalation with SBP-101. Sun BioPharma has scientific collaborations with pancreatic disease experts at Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, the University of Miami, the University of Florida, the Mayo Clinic Scottsdale, the Austin Health Cancer Trials Centre in Melbourne, Australia and the Ashford Cancer Centre in Adelaide, Australia. Further information can be found at: www.sunbiopharma.com. Sun BioPharmas common stock is currently quoted on the OTCQB tier of the over-the-counter markets administered by the OTC Markets Group, Inc. under the symbol: SNBP. Contact Information: EVC Group

Investor & Media Contact:

Doug Sherk

415-652-9100

Michael Polyviou

212-850-6020



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Esha Deol looks radiant as she poses with her friend after a sonography appointment.

By India Today Web Desk: Esha Deol seems to be enjoying every minute of her pregnancy, if a picture posted by her friend, Shilarna Vaze, is anything to go by. Shilarna aka Chinu, who is also on the family way, shared a snap of the two of them on Instagram from their "sonography double date." She captioned the photo, "Sonography double date!! Both the babies are kicking around just like their moms hahaha! @esha_takhtani #preggersbff #secondtrimester #goodluckhusbands."

Sonography double date!! Both the babies are kicking around just like their moms hahaha! @esha_takhtani #preggersbff #secondtrimester #goodluckhusbands A post shared by Shilarna Vaze aka Chef Chinu (@chefchinugaiagourmet) on Jun 6, 2017 at 1:58am PDT

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The 35-year-old actor is in her second trimester, according to Shilarna's post. Esha's pregnancy was announced in April by her mother Hema Malini on Twitter, who said that that the Deols and Takhtanis (family of Esha's husband Bharat Takhtani) were "overjoyed" at the good news.

Deols & Takhtanis are overjoyed to announce that @Esha_Deol & Bharat are expecting their 1st baby. We thk u all for all ur good wishes ???- Hema Malini (@dreamgirlhema) April 25, 2017

Esha got hitched to her childhood friend, Bharat, in 2012. This will be the couple's first child, after five years of marriage. Reportedly, Esha is set to fly off to Greece with her husband for a short baby-moon with her husband, before her third trimester begins.

ALSO READ: Esha Deol is expecting her first child with husband Bharat Takhtani

ALSO READ: LOL! Sulking Esha Deol forced to watch as Priyanka Chopra hogs the limelight in this throwback video

ALSO WATCH: Esha Deol gets married to Bharat Takhtani

--- ENDS ---
[June 07, 2017] Phone-n-Fix Signs Two-unit Franchise Deal

SIOUX FALLS, S.D., June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Phone-n-Fix, a premium cell phone retail and repair franchise concept, has expanded its franchise reach after signing a two-unit deal with partners Jill Van Zee and John Kolb. Van Zee and Kolb bring more than 20 collective years of business ownership and knowledge to the Phone-n-Fix franchise operation, in addition to an unwavering dedication to the communities they enter. Just 10-miles outside of Iowa's capital city, Ankeny's rapid growth as a millennial destination makes it the ideal location for Phone-n-Fix. "Ankeny and West Des Moines are home to thriving communities, and Phone-n-Fix is a perfect fit to address their mobile-device needs," said Van Zee. "We're confident in our ability to make an impact here along with the dedicated team who stand behind the Phone-n-Fix brand." The Ankeny and West Des Moines locations  opening in the fall of 2017  will be the first in the Hawkeye State, in addition to existing franchise locations in both North and South Dakota. "As we expand our reach across the Midwest, and eventually nationwide, it's incredibly important to identify talented and dedicate business owners that are committed to the Phone-n-Fix brand," said Steve Michael, Executive Vice President of Enterprise Development of Phone-n-Fix. "With their collective experience and devotion to the communities they serve, we're confident in John and Jill's ability to uphold the premium Phone-n-Fix experience."



Through the comprehensive franchise program, Phone-n-Fix franchisees benefit from a multi-tiered system of exclusive purchasing power and an executive team with a combined 40-years of business development and mobile industry knowledge. For more information about the Phone-n-Fix franchise offering visit www.phonenfixfranchise.com, call (605) 681-6440 or email [email protected].

About Phone-n-Fix

Phone-n-Fix is a premium cell phone retail and repair franchise concept based in Sioux Falls. In combination with a premium customer experience, Phone-n-Fix provides certified pre-owned cell phones and accessories at an affordable price with a full-service repair department. Additionally, Phone-n-Fix offers pre-paid services, extended warranties and leasing options. Phone-n-Fix boasts one corporate-owned location and one franchise in Sioux Falls, and one franchise operation at the West Acres Mall in Fargo, N.D. Phone-n-Fix's franchise program offers a full suite of ongoing support to qualified owner-operators, including purchasing power with exclusive suppliers and vendors in the industry, access to 40-plus years of industry and business experience, and a consultative selling process. For more information about Phone-n-Fix and its franchise offering, visit www.phonenfixfranchise.com, call (605) 681-6440 or email [email protected]. Media Contact: Amy Kent

(708) 249-1042

[email protected] To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/phone-n-fix-signs-two-unit-franchise-deal-300470037.html SOURCE Phone-n-Fix

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[June 07, 2017] Lever Names Rob Tomchick SVP Sales

SAN FRANCISCO, June 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Lever, the recruiting software for more than 1,300 fast-growing companies around the world, has named Rob Tomchick Senior Vice President, Sales. An enterprise sales veteran with more than 17 years experience, Tomchick will head Levers global sales team as the company expands its Talent Acquisition Suite to meet the sourcing and recruiting demands of mid-market and enterprise organizations.

During his time at several top enterprise SaaS companies, Tomchick cultivated his passion for recruiting and developing high-performance enterprise sales talent. Prior to joining Lever, Tomchick served as Vice President, Software and Services Sales at NetSuite where he successfully built a 105-member global sales organization that delivered more than $50M in new business bookings in 2015. Tomchick has also held sales leadership positions at Percolate, SAP and Business Objects. Rob not only shares our obsession with finding the best talent, but also has a unique understanding of the sourcing and hiring challenges facing mid-market and enterprise companies, said Sarah Nahm, CEO of Lever. His experience in scaling hih-growth companies  and building sales organizations to support that scale  will be invaluable as Lever continues its rapid growth trajectory and expansion into new markets.



According to recent research from Lever, larger companies struggle most with making new hires. Companies with fewer than 100 employees hire one in every 94 candidates  showing greater hiring efficiency than companies with more than 1000 employees, which typically evaluate 129 candidates before making a hire. Whether you are building a sales team from the ground up or expanding globally, sourcing and hiring have a tremendous impact on a companys growth, said Tomchick. Lever understands this, and regardless of a customers size, wants to ensure each customer can source, attract and hire the best possible talent as quickly as needed to support their growth objectives. I look forward to applying my experience to help Lever achieve this goal.

About Lever

Built from the conviction that recruiting is the responsibility of everyone at the company, Levers applicant tracking and sourcing technology draws the entire team together to source, nurture, interview, and hire top talent through effortless collaboration. Lever was founded in 2012 in San Francisco. The company has raised more than $32 million in funding from Scale Venture Partners, Matrix Partners, Y Combinator, Redpoint Ventures, and Correlation Ventures among others. Lever supports the hiring needs of over 1,300 companies around the globe including the teams at Netflix, Eventbrite, Lyft, Shopify, and Quora. With an overall gender ratio of 50:50, Lever is also fiercely committed to building a team culture that celebrates diversity and inclusion. For more information, visit https://www.lever.co. MEDIA CONTACT: Ashley Cohen Traeger Communications [email protected] 303-522-0783

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[June 07, 2017] Iowa Virtual Academy to Honor Third Graduating Class with In-Person Commencement

Iowa Virtual Academy (IAVA), an online public school program of the Clayton Ridge Community School District, serving students in grades K through 12, will honor the Class of 2017 at a graduation ceremony on Saturday, June 10th. This is IAVA's third graduating class. Eleven high school seniors will graduate from the school, which is open to all Iowa residents. Iowa Virtual Academy offers a tuition-free alternative to a traditional brick-and-mortar education for families and students. Lessons are accessed online and each student is supported by a highly-qualified, Iowa-certified teacher who monitors student progress while providing professional insight and instruction. Teachers communicate with students via phone, email and online classroom technology to deliver a highly-individualized approach that helps prepare students for post-graduation career or college success. Graduates plan to pursue higher education at colleges and universities including: University of Northern Iowa, Des Moines Area Community College, Kirkwood Community College and Scott Community College. Details of the commencement are as follows: Iowa Virtual Academy Graduation Ceremonybr />Saturday, June 10, 2017







Clarion Highlander Hotel (Pipers East Room)

2525 N Dodge St

Iowa City, IA 52245 About Iowa Virtual Academy

Iowa Virtual Academy is an online public school program of the Clayton Ridge Community School District, which uses curriculum provided by K12 Inc. (NYSE: LRN), the nation's leading provider of K-12 proprietary curriculum and online education programs. Iowa Virtual Academy's individualized approach gives Iowa students the chance to learn in the ways that are right for them. For more about IAVA, visit http://iava.k12.com/. About K12 Inc. K12 Inc. (NYSE: LRN) is driving innovation and advancing the quality of education by delivering state-of-the-art, digital learning platforms and technology to students and school districts across the globe. K12's curriculum serves over 2,000 schools and school districts and has delivered more than four million courses over the past decade. K12 is a company consisting of thousands of online school educators providing instruction, academic services, and learning solutions to public schools and districts, traditional classrooms, blended school programs, and directly to families. The K12 program is offered through K12 partner public schools in 33 states and the District of Columbia and through private schools serving students in all 50 states and more than 100 countries. More information can be found at K12.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170607005811/en/

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[June 07, 2017] LECTRA: The new Lectra Fashion PLM gears fashion companies up for the fourth industrial revolution

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE The new Lectra Fashion PLM gears fashion companies up for the fourth industrial revolution Lectra's Industry 4.0-compatible product lifecycle management solution is smart, connected, configurable and user-friendly Paris, June 7, 2017 - Lectra, the world leader in integrated technology solutions dedicated to industries using soft materials-fabrics, leather, technical textiles and composite materials-is pleased to announce the launch of Lectra Fashion PLM 4.0, the first-ever product lifecycle management solution designed to help fashion and apparel companies navigate the fourth industrial revolution and thrive in the digital era of fashion. With digitalization transforming the way consumers shop, today's fashion companies are playing a never-ending game of catch-up, as they compete for the attention of a generation of connected, fickle-minded millennials who want it all: personalization, sustainability, quality and speed, accessible at all times, across multiple channels, and at the lowest price. Industry 4.0 is not only revolutionizing how manufacturers operate, but also how brands and retailers need to function, if they want to be fast and agile enough to meet the needs of this demanding new consumer. The stakes are high and how effectively companies harness technology to put the consumer at the heart of their process will be the deciding factor in who comes out ahead and who gets left behind. Lectra Fashion PLM 4.0 has undergone a drastic reboot to give fashion and apparel companies the speed and agility they need to tackle the challenges of Industry 4.0 head on. Lectra Fashion PLM 4.0, with the widest functional scope on the market, acts as an intelligent nerve center to the digital supply chain, from planning through design to production. This ensures a consistent flow of error-free data between processes, technologies and people. The system connects CAD, industry-standard software such as Adobe Illustrator, company IT systems (such as ERP) and external suppliers, so that actors across the supply chain can work on, save and shareinformation on the platform, ensuring data integrity.



The solution also draws on best practices, fashion-business intelligence and real-world scenarios to automate administrative and repetitive tasks, with templates, standard libraries and shortcuts that allows more time for value-added activities. The final result is a fast, connected digital supply chain that helps fashion companies jump on trends quickly and deliver products that fulfill their customer's expectations. This new incarnation of Lectra Fashion PLM is designed to work out of the box and can be scaled to accommodate the different needs of small to large businesses, brands, retailers and manufacturers. Companies can start small by implementing the standard offer, then add on as they go, choosing from up to ten different modules, such as design integration, product details, sourcing, sampling and costing.

The solution is available on a monthly subscription or perpetual license basis. Special attention has been paid to make this new product user-friendly, with learning tools that enable fast onboarding. The new Lectra Easy Tool allows IT teams to configure the platform to suit the needs of its users and the new mobile app, Lectra Collection Advanced, provides more ways to share information. The fuss-free implementation process means companies can get the platform up and running quickly with little disruption to business, and quickly start seeing a return on their investment. The only fashion-dedicated PLM solution on the market that covers the entire value chain, Lectra Fashion PLM 4.0 is Lectra's first software product release since it announced its 4.0 strategy, which aims to help fashion companies succeed in this brave new digital world. The culmination of Lectra's 40-plus years of experience in the fashion industry, the platform gives companies a competitive edge by giving them a smart, user-friendly solution that allows them to remain agile and connected, facilitating their transition towards Industry 4.0. "As our customers take their first steps toward the world of Industry 4.0, we want to be right there beside them to help them succeed. Just like today's fashion companies, we are evolving to make our offer more customer-centric than ever before. We are extremely proud of this powerful new PLM platform, and are convinced that it will help our customers flourish in this digital age of fashion," says Celine Choussy Bedouet, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, Lectra. About Lectra Lectra is the world leader in integrated technology solutions (software, automated cutting equipment, and associated services) specifically designed for industries using fabrics, leather, technical textiles, and composite materials to manufacture their products. It serves major world markets: fashion and apparel, automotive, and furniture as well as a broad array of other industries. Lectra's solutions, specific to each market, enable customers to automate and optimize product design, development, and manufacturing. With more than 1,550 employees, Lectra has developed privileged relationships with prestigious customers in more than 100 countries, contributing to their operational excellence. Lectra registered revenues of $288 million in 2016 and is listed on Euronext. For more information, please visit www.lectra.com Contact - Lectra Headquarters / Press Dept.: Nathalie Fournier-Christol

E-mail: [email protected]

Tel.: +33 (0)1 53 64 42 37 - Fax: +33 (0)1 53 64 43 40 Attachments: //www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/0f4c676d-ef3d-4be7-8774-7096d18024bc

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[June 07, 2017] Former Head of Meta Optics Department Sued for Misappropriating Trade Secrets and Confidential Information

Augmented reality pioneer Meta Company has filed suit in federal court in the Northern District of California against former employee Zhangyi Zhong and Dreamworld USA, Inc. (d.b.a. "Dreamworld Vision") for misappropriation of trade secrets and confidential information under the Defend Trade Secrets Act and the California Uniform Trade Secrets Act, and for breach of contract, among other claims. Meta has released the following statement: "Meta Company hopes that all of its employees - past and present - achieve great carer and personal success. Former Meta employees are ambassadors of our brand and culture, and Meta is proud to support them and their current endeavors. At the same time, Meta also takes the confidentiality of its trade secrets and proprietary technical, strategic and business information very seriously. By filing this lawsuit, Meta is seeking to protect years of confidential research and development into innovations that are incorporated into its current and future products from being wrongfully misappropriated by a former employee solely for personal gain."



The company will be providing no further comment on the action.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170607005939/en/

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[June 07, 2017] Online Public Schools in Indiana to Hold In-Person Commencement Ceremony

Hoosier Academies, a tuition-free public charter school authorized by Ball State University, will celebrate the Class of 2017 on Saturday, June 17th at a joint graduation ceremony with the Insight School of Indiana (ISIN). This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170607005942/en/ One hundred fifty-three students will graduate from Hoosier Academies. Eight students are graduating a year early and thirty are graduating a semester early. Nineteen students will graduate from the Insight School of Indiana. Hoosier Academies Class of 2017 co-valedictorians are Isaac Wilson and Ian Bowyer. Hoosier Academies offers core courses in language arts/English, math, science, history, art, and physical education/wellness, as well as electives and Advanced Placement courses for high school students. Dual enrollment is also available, which allows students to earn college credit and high school credit for the same course. ISIN offers an individualized approach to learning and an education option for students of every ability level, including a competency in helping students struggling academically. Each ISIN student receives an individualized learning plan (ILP) that takes each child's unique strengths, weaknesses, learning style and aptitudes into consideration.



Hoosier Academies graduates report receiving multiple scholarships including the following: the Xavier Award and Muskie Grant totaling $58K, a $26K scholarship to Valparaiso University, $16K Academic Achievement Scholarship to Purdue University (News - Alert) Northwest, and the Indiana University - Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) Distinguished Scholarship for $24K. Details of the commencement are as follows:

Hoosier Academies & Insight School of Indiana Graduation Ceremony

Saturday, June 17, 2017

1 p.m.

North Central High School

1801 East 86th Street

Indianapolis, IN 46240 About Hoosier Academies Hoosier Academies, a tuition-free, public charter school authorized by Ball State University, offers a blend of online learning and face-to-face instruction through two statewide options for Indiana families: Hoosier Academies Virtual School, a K-12 online school, and Hoosier Academies Indianapolis, a K-12 "blended learning" school. With Hoosier Academies, families have access to the curriculum and tools provided by K12 Inc. (NYSE: LRN), the nation's leading provider of proprietary technology-powered online solutions for students in pre-kindergarten through high school. For more information about Hoosier Academies, visit http://ha.k12.com/. About Insight School of Indiana Insight School of Indiana (ISIN) is a tuition-free, public charter school authorized by Ball State University that serves students in grades 7-12. As part of the Indiana public school system, ISIN gives parents and families the choice to access the engaging curriculum and tools provided by K12 Inc. (NYSE: LRN), the nation's leading provider of K-12 proprietary curriculum and online education programs. For more information about ISIN, visit: http://in.insightschools.net/. About K12 Inc. K12 Inc. (NYSE: LRN) is driving innovation and advancing the quality of education by delivering state-of-the-art, digital learning platforms and technology to students and school districts across the globe. K12's curriculum serves over 2,000 schools and school districts and has delivered more than four million courses over the past decade. K12 is a company consisting of thousands of online school educators providing instruction, academic services and learning solutions to public schools and districts, traditional classrooms, blended school programs and directly to families. The K12 program is offered through K12 partner public schools in 33 states and the District of Columbia, and through private schools serving students in all 50 states and more than 100 countries. More information can be found at K12.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170607005942/en/

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[June 07, 2017] Remy Martin Announces The Global Launch Of "Rooted In Exception" Mixed Reality Experience Using Microsoft HoloLens Technology

NEW YORK, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Remy Martin is thrilled to announce the global launch the "Rooted In Exception" mixed reality experience using Microsoft HoloLens technology. "Rooted In Exception" mixed reality will be first seen by attendees at a private Remy Martin party in Los Angeles on June 15 before rolling out to luxury retail stores and events worldwide. The Remy Martin mixed reality is also one of the very first HoloLens experiences that is designed for consumers around the world. The experience was created in partnership with Kazendi, Europe's leading HoloLens development studio, to allow consumers an entertaining yet educational opportunity to learn how the luxury consumer brand, Remy Martin, is "Rooted in Exception," most notably through specializing in making Cognac Fine Champagne. "To us, Mixed Reality provides an amazing medium for storytelling. It allows us to reveal our roots, our chalky soil, and our exception by virtually showing it raise from the ground for consumers to see. The breath-taking HoloLens technology further convinces our clients why Remy Martin is "Rooted In Exception," explained Augustin Depardon, Global Executive Director of Remy Martin. "This innovation project recognizes the prominent role of technology in our lives. Remy Martin is committed to bring people together for exceptional moments of sharing and celebration. Microsoft's HoloLens technology came naturally as an immediate innovation answer to sharing these moments in an emerging social space." The user is invited to approach a three-dimensional table on which the HoloLens projects elements of Cognac Grande Champagne and Conac Petite Champagne vineyards. These two regions, of the six, make up the heart of the Cognac region, Fine Champagne. The mixed reality experience is also accompanied by the voice of Baptiste Loiseau, the Cellar Master of the House of Remy Martin, where he explains the importance of the terroir in the Fine Champagne region.



"Ultimately, mixed reality is deeply about engaging people in new social experiences. We are thrilled to launch our first consumer brand experience using HoloLens with Remy Martin, who, although an almost 300-year-old brand, keeps on nourishing its exception and tradition through innovation" stated Maximilian Doelle, Founder and Chief Holographic Officer of Kazendi. ABOUT MICROSOFT HOLOLENS

Microsoft HoloLens is the first self-contained, holographic computer, enabling people to engage with virtual content and interact with holograms in the world around them. Instead of locking up people in a virtual world, mixed reality brings people, places, and objects from physical and digital worlds together. It combines the thrill of virtual reality with the power to engage with and personalize current surroundings.

ABOUT REMY MARTIN

Since 1724, the House of Remy Martin has produced premium spirits that consistently appeal to the world's most discerning connoisseurs. A profound love of the land, a continuity of family ownership and a passionate commitment to excellence has sustained Remy Martin for nearly three centuries. As a result of its masterful production and generations of tradition in Cognac, the House of Remy Martin today produces Fine Champagne Cognacs, including Remy Martin V.S.O.P, Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royal and Remy Martin XO Excellence. ABOUT KAZENDI

Kazendi is Europe's leading HoloLens development studio. As specialists in the field of Mixed Reality, Kazendi provides innovative solutions for businesses looking to better engage with their customers, support their staff and disrupt the marketplace. Kazendi has demonstrated through its efficient and intelligent prototyping that HoloLens has application to sectors from retail and insurance to consultancy and construction. For further information, please contact: Florence Puech

Global Communications Director

Remy Martin

[email protected] Ashley Davidovitch

Associate Brand Manager, Communications

Remy Martin, USA

[email protected] MEDIA CONTACT:

Kahlil Spurlock

5th Column PR

646 585 2171

[email protected] To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/remy-martin-announces-the-global-launch-of-rooted-in-exception-mixed-reality-experience-using-microsoft-hololens-technology-300470446.html SOURCE Remy Martin

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JAGGED PEAK ENERGY INVESTOR ALERT: Faruqi & Faruqi, LLP Encourages Investors Who Suffered Losses Exceeding $100,000 Investing In Jagged Peak Energy, Inc. To Contact The Firm

Faruqi & Faruqi, LLP, a leading national securities law firm, is investigating potential securities fraud at Jagged Peak (News - Alert) Energy, Inc. ("Jagged Peak" or the "Company") (NYSE:JAG).

The investigation focuses on whether the Company and its executives violated federal securities laws. On January 27, 2017, Jagged Peak initiated its initial public offering ("IPO") of common stock and sold 31,599,334 shares at $15.00 per share, raising approximately $474 million of gross proceeds. Since the Company's IPO, shares of Jagged Peak have fallen approximately 20% in connection with the positioning of its acreage in the Delaware Basin.

If you invested in Jagged Peak stock or options and would like to discuss your legal rights, click here: www.faruqilaw.com/JAG. There is no cost or obligation to you.







You can also contact us by calling Richard Gonnello toll free at 877-247-4292 or at 212-983-9330 or by sending an e-mail to [email protected].

CONTACT:

FARUQI & FARUQI, LLP

685 Third Avenue, 26th Floor

New York, NY 10017

Attn: Richard Gonnello, Esq.

[email protected]

Telephone: (877) 247-4292 or (212) 983-9330

Attorney Advertising. The law firm responsible for this advertisement is Faruqi & Faruqi, LLP (www.faruqilaw.com). Prior results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome with respect to any future matter. We welcome the opportunity to discuss your particular case. All communications will be treated in a confidential manner.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170607006144/en/
[June 07, 2017] Karamba Security Unanimously Awarded TU-Automotive's 'Best Auto Cybersecurity Product/Service of 2017'

Karamba Security, a provider of autonomous cybersecurity solutions for connected and autonomous vehicles, was awarded Best Auto Cybersecurity Product/Service by TU-Automotive. Karamba was selected in a unanimous decision by TU-chosen expert judges and announced at a reception in Novi, Michigan yesterday. The TU-Automotive Detroit Conference and Exhibition kicks off today and continues through June 8. This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170607006160/en/ Ami Dotan, CEO of Karamba Security, accepting TU-Automotive's award for Best Auto Cybersecurity Product/Service on June 6. (Photo: Business Wire) The 2017 TU-Automotive Awards winners were judged based on the following criteria: Innovation, Industry Engagement, User Experience and Market Update. "The judges appreciated the Karamba Autonomous Security product because it showed a new and interesting approach. They also highlighted the fact that this product solves a concrete problem at a low cost," said Gareth Ragg, managing director at TU-Automotive. Karamba Security was selected for its innovative approach to prevention software that seamlessly protects the car, based on its factory settings, and blocks hacking attempts as they deviate from the car's factory settings. This deterministic approach ensures consumer safety by preventing the attack before hackers succeed to infiltrate the car and do harm. Until Karamba, there were no preventive solutions with zero false positives, and many questioned whether it was even achievable. Now that the industry is aware that prevention is attainable, it is choosing Karamba, and in doing so, enabling safe outcomes. "We are proud and honored to accept TU-Automotive's Best Auto Cybersecurity Product for 2017," said Ami Dotan, Karamba Security's CEO an co-founder. "Adding to the broad market demand we are experiencing, the award is another indication of the automotive industry's vote of confidence that our solutions best meet the need to prevent cyberattacks before hackers succeed in infiltrating the car. We will continue to keep consumer safety our top priority by providing cyber prevention with zero false positives and negligible performance impact."



Security is definitely top-of-mind among car companies as an enabler for autonomous driving, which is expected to be 15 percent of all shipped cars in 2020 and 70 percent of all shipped cars in 2025, according to Sam Abuelsamid, Navigant senior research analyst. Since coming out of stealth at the end of March 2016, the company has been actively engaged with 16 different projects throughout the industry with car manufacturers and Tier-1 providers. In addition, Karamba was recognized with the 2017 North American Frost & Sullivan (News - Alert) Award for Automotive New Product Innovation.

To learn more about the 2017 TU-Automotive Awards winners, visit the website: http://www.tu-auto.com/detroit/awards-index.php. To find out more about the conference, visit: www.tu-auto.com/detroit. Resources

Autonomous Security

Karamba Security Approach

Karamba Security FAQ Tweet This: [email protected] Awarded TU-Automotive's Best Auto Cybersecurity Product/Service #Cybersecurity #AutonomousVehicles http://bit.ly/2qXi4xd About Karamba Security Karamba Security provides industry-leading autonomous cybersecurity solutions for connected and autonomous vehicles. Karamba's software products automatically harden the ECUs of connected and autonomous cars, preventing hackers from manipulating and compromising those ECUs and hacking into the car. Karamba's Autonomous Security prevents cyberattacks with zero false positives, no connectivity requirements and negligible performance impact. In one year, Karamba has received a total investment of $17 million. The company has been recognized with the 2017 North American Frost & Sullivan Award for Automotive New Product Innovation. It was also chosen to join Michigan Governor Rick Snyder's delegation to Israel earlier this year. More information is available at www.karambasecurity.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170607006160/en/

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INVESTOR ALERT: Levi & Korsinsky, LLP Reminds Shareholders of an Investigation Involving Possible Securities Fraud Violations by Certain Officers and Directors of Petrofac Limited

Levi & Korsinsky, LLP announces it has commenced an investigation of Petrofac Limited ("Petrofac") (OTCMKTS:POFCY) concerning possible violations of federal securities laws.

On May 12, 2017, the Serious Fraud Office ("SFO") confirmed it is investigating the activities of Petrofac PLC, its subsidiaries, and their officers, employees and agents for suspected bribery, corruption and money laundering. Then on May 25, 2017, Petrofac announced the SFO had arrested and questioned the CEO and COO. Both were released without charge. In addition, the Company's board suspended the COO and precluded the CEO from involvement in any matters connected to the SFO investigation. To obtain additional information, g to:







http://www.zlkdocs.com/POFCY-Info-Request-Form-5838

or contact Joseph E. Levi, Esq. either via email at [email protected] or by telephone at (212) 363-7500, toll-free: (877) 363-5972.

Levi & Korsinsky is a national firm with offices in New York, Connecticut, California and Washington D.C. The firm's attorneys have extensive expertise in prosecuting securities litigation involving financial fraud, representing investors throughout the nation in securities and shareholder lawsuits. Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170607006180/en/
A 30-year-old police constable was crushed to death by a dumper in Rasjathan while he tried to take on the sand mafia. His family says they are yet to fully understand what happened to him and have demanded that justice be done.

Lalaram Yadav, who was crushed to death during an operation against the sand mafia in Rajasthan (Photo: India Today)

By Dev Ankur Wadhawan: Family members of Lalaram Yadav have been mourning his death in Chandali village in Rajasthan's Alwar district.

30-year-old Lalaram, a police constable posted in Alwar district, was allegedly crushed to death in Bhiwadi area while he tried to take on the mining mafia on Tuesday.

Lalaram's body was kept at the mortuary in Bhiwadi from where it was handed over to his family after a postmortem.

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India Today reached Lalaram's village, Chandali, located in a remote area in Bansur. A pall of gloom had descended on the family of Lalaram. Just back from performing the cremation of Lalaram, they were left to mourn the death of their son.

Click here to Enlarge Villagers at Constable Lalaram's funeral (Photo: India Today)

Lalaram is survived by his wife and a son who is yet to turn two. He has two brothers, one of whom is also with the Rajasthan Police.

Mahesh, Lalaram's brother, told India Today, "I am yet to fully understand what happened to my brother. We were told that the dumper driver crushed him to death when he tried to stop it from going ahead. He was a courageous man and was proactive by nature."

Lalaram's father could not control his tears while speaking with India Today and said, "We want justice to be done."

At one end at the verandah outside the house, women, with their faces covered, were wailing, mourning the death of Lalaram. His wife sat in the middle, consoled by other women.

Police personnel from Alwar Police also arrived to pay respects to their departted colleague and to express solidarity with his family.

Rahul Prakash, SP, Alwar, told India Today, "We have taken the owner of the dumper in our custody. It is a case of illegal mining. We will ensure ex-gratia amount is provided to the family of Lalaram. Apart from that, a day's salary will be contributed by police personnel in Alwar to his family."

Click here to Enlarge Police officials pay respects to Constable Lalaram (Photo: India Today)

Bhiwadi, in Rajasthan's Alwar district, has become a hub of illegal mining with allegations that the sand mafia there operates with impunity.

Satveer, a friend of Lalaram, told to India Today, "The dumper that crushed Lalaram to death could have been stopped earlier. The fact that it was not shows there was laxity on the part of police. Illegal mining has become rampant in Bhiwadi."

ALSO READ | Sand mafia continues to rule Punjab, says AAP

ALSO WATCH | Karnataka: Top Udupi women officers attacked by sand mafia

--- ENDS ---

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[June 07, 2017] Thoma Bravo Announces Strategic Growth Investment with Acquisition of Riskonnect

KENNESAW, Ga. and SAN FRANCISCO, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Thoma Bravo LLC, a leading technology investment firm, announced today that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Riskonnect, Inc., the leading global provider of Integrated Risk Management technology solutions. The investment recognizes Riskonnect's strong momentum and is expected to help the rapidly growing company expand and broaden its software platform. As part of the agreement, the company's three founders will retain a significant minority stake in the business. Riskonnect's Integrated Risk Management platform gives companies a holistic view of the various risk factors they face, along with mitigants, costs and impact for those risks. Through a unified, highly configurable set of modules, the company provides the tools and business intelligence needed to reduce losses, control risk, manage key stakeholder relationships and increase shareholder value. Riskonnect's solutions allow users from organizations of any size to easily review, analyze and report on data from web-based interfacesall within a single point of access platform. Since its founding in 2007, Riskonnect has seen remarkable growth and now has more than 250 enterprise customers across virtually all industries. Thoma Bravo's investment is expected to better position the company to accelerate investments in its Integrated Risk Management platform and take advantage of the converging use cases across traditional Risk Management, Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC), and Environmental, Health and Safety (EHS) functionalities. "With its strong portfolio of products, Riskonnect is the clear market leader in providing large enterprises the ability to manage risk holistically," said Hudson Smith, a Partner at Thoma Bravo. "We look forward to working with the highly talented team at Riskonnect to invest further into newer opportunities including growing the company's footprint across the GRC and EHS sectors." As part of the transaction, Riskonnect's co-founder and CEO Bob Morrell will transition to an advisory role with the company's Board of Directors, and Jim Foster, the company's President and COO, will become CEO. "I'm honored to be leading a company that has benefited from the remarkable insight, innovation and institutional knowledge of its founding team," said Jim Foster. "Our partnership with Thoma Bravo gives us the capital and expertise needed to continue growing our company, expanding our product suite, and delivering a truly comprehensive integrated risk management solution to global organizations." "We started Riskonnect with the key goal of understanding risk holistically, across the entire enterprise. We have achieved so much and could not be more excited to continue building out a platform which helps our customers manage increasingly complex regulatory and compliance environments," said Bob Morrell. "I look forward to actively supporting Jim, Thoma Bravo and the Riskonnect team to more fully realize our founding vision of helping great companies manage great challenges." "We are highly excited to invest alongside Bob and the founding team to propel the company into its next stage of growth," said AJ Jangalapalli, a Vice President at Thoma Bravo. "For the last decade, Riskonnect has defined how companies measure and reduce their Total Cost of Risk and we look forward to further innovating on this increasingly mission-critical concern." The acquisition of Riskonnect was made through Thoma Bravo's Discover Fund, which debuted in early 2016. The Discover Fund enables Thoma Bravo to expand its investment reach by focusing on growth-oriented technology companies in the lower middle market. Previous Discover Fund investments include Bomgar, a cybersecurity provider; Elemica, a supply chain operating network; Infogix, an analytics company; and T2 Systems, a parking management software firm. The transaction is expected to close by the end of the second quarter of 2017. Financial details were not disclosed. Financial Technology Partners LP and FTP Securities LLC (collectively, "FT Partners"), served as exclusive financial and strategic advisor to Riskonnect, and Dentons acted as Riskonnect's legal advisor. Thoma Bravo was advised by Kirkland & Ellis. About Thoma Bravo, LLC

Thoma Bravo is a leading private equity firm focused on the software and technology-enabled services sectors. With a series of funds representing more than $17 billion in capital commitments, Thoma Bravo partners with a company's management team to implement operating best practices, invest in growth initiatives and make accretive acquisitions intended to accelerate revenue and earnings, with the goal of increasing the value of the business. Representative past and present portfolio companies include industry leaders such as Blue Coat Systems, Deltek, Digital Insight, Global Healthcare Exchange, Hyland Software, PowerPlan, Qlik, Riverbed, SailPoint, SolarWinds, SonicWall, Sparta Systems and TravelClick. The firm has offices in San Francisco and Chicago. For more information, visit www.thomabravo.com. About Riskonnect

Riskonnect is the trusted, preferred source of Integrated Risk Management technology, offering a growing suite of solutions on a world-class cloud computing model that enables organizations to anticipate and manage strategic and operational risks across the enterprise.







Media Contact:





For Thoma Bravo: Matthew Gorton

Hiltzik Strategies

212-776-1161

[email protected]



For Riskonnect: Jackie Parker

Arketi Group

404-929-0091 x220

[email protected]

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/thoma-bravo-announces-strategic-growth-investment-with-acquisition-of-riskonnect-300470499.html SOURCE Thoma Bravo LLC

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[June 07, 2017] Glancy Prongay & Murray LLP Commences Investigation on Behalf of Jagged Peak Energy Inc. Investors

Glancy Prongay & Murray LLP ("GPM") announces an investigation on behalf of Jagged Peak (News - Alert) Energy Inc. ("Jagged Peak" or the "Company") (NYSE: JAG) concerning the Company and its officers' possible violations of federal securities laws. To obtain information or aid in the investigation, please visit the Jagged Peak investigation page on our website at www.glancylaw.com/case/jagged-peak-energy-inc.



On January 27, 2017, Jagged Peak conducted its initial public offering ("IPO"), and the Company's shares began trading on the New York Stock Exchange. The Company raised gross proceeds of approximately $474 million in the IPO. Since the IPO, however, shares of Jagged Peak have fallen more than 15% on news of concerns regarding the Company's acreage positioning in the Delaware Basin. If you purchased Jagged Peak securities, have information or would like to learn more about these claims, or have any questions concerning this announcement or your rights or interests with respect to these matters, please contact Lesley Portnoy, Esquire, of GPM, 1925 Century Park East, Suite 2100, Los Angeles, California 90067 at 310-201-9150, Toll-Free at 888-773-9224, by email to [email protected], or visit our website at www.glancylaw.com. If you inquire by email please include your mailing address, telephone number and number of shares purchased.

This press release may be considered Attorney Advertising in some jurisdictions under the applicable law and ethical rules. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170607006341/en/

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[June 07, 2017] Power meets Mobility with the new Samsung Galaxy Book

The Galaxy Book is a powerful 2-in-1 Windows 10 device built for professionals on-the-go. MISSISSAUGA, ON, June 7, 2017 /CNW/ - Samsung Electronics Canada Inc. today announced the Canadian launch of the Samsung Galaxy Book, a sleek, lightweight Windows 10 2-in-1 built for productivity on-the-go. Available in 12-inch and 10.6-inch, its versatile form factor easily transforms from tablet to notebook and comes with a stylish metal design, fast-charging battery and included in box with an advanced S Pen and keyboard. "At Samsung, we listen to our consumers and design our technology with their needs top of mind. With the increasing shift towards mobile productivity, we are excited to launch this 2-in-1 that combines the power of a PC with the mobility of a tablet, enabling Canadian professionals to work from anywhere," said Paul Brannen, COO and Executive Vice President, Samsung Electronics Canada. About the Samsung Galaxy Book: Powerful Performance: Experience the power of a laptop without worrying about lag thanks to its powerful processor and fast-charging battery for extended usage. As a Windows 10 device with Microsoft Office compiling reports or creating presentations on the enhanced island-style keyboard is quick and easy.





Experience the power of a laptop without worrying about lag thanks to its powerful processor and fast-charging battery for extended usage. As a Windows 10 device with Microsoft Office compiling reports or creating presentations on the enhanced island-style keyboard is quick and easy. Pen with Precision: The precise, pressure responsive S Pen navigates with ease and is great for making notes and sketches. It is included in the box and never requires charging. You can also use Air Command to quickly access useful features and share your creations online with ease.





The precise, pressure responsive S Pen navigates with ease and is great for making notes and sketches. It is included in the box and never requires charging. You can also use Air Command to quickly access useful features and share your creations online with ease. Sync Seamlessly: With Samsung Flow, you can easily switch pause an activity on your smartphone and pick it right up from the same point on your Galaxy Book. You can also unlock your Galaxy Book with your smartphone and change devices as you need to.





With Samsung Flow, you can easily switch pause an activity on your smartphone and pick it right up from the same point on your Galaxy Book. You can also unlock your Galaxy Book with your smartphone and change devices as you need to. Maximum Mobility: Thanks to the detachable keyboard that comes in the box, the Galaxy Book is optimized for a seamless typing experience, enabling on-the-go professional to be productive wherever they work. Retail Availability

The Samsung Galaxy Book is available in silver starting today at all Samsung Experience Stores. The 10.6-inch device will be $899.99 CDN (MSRP) and the 12-inch device will be $1,899.99 CDN (MSRP). For more information, visit:

http://www.samsung.com/ca/tablets/galaxy-book-12-0/

http://www.samsung.com/ca/tablets/galaxy-book-10-w620/ Samsung Galaxy Book Product Specification









Samsung Galaxy Book 10.6-inch Samsung Galaxy Book 12-inch DISPLAY 10.6? TFT FHD (19201280) 12? Super AMOLED FHD (21601440) CHIPSET 7th Gen Intel Core m3 processor, Dual Core 2.6GHz 7th Gen Intel Core i5 processor, Dual Core 3.1GHz MEMORY 4GB + 64GB/128GB eMMC

microSD up to 256GB 8GB+256GB SSDmicroSD up to 256GB CAMERA 5MP FF 13MP AF + 5MP PORT USB 3.1(Type-C), Micro SD USB 3.1(Type-C) x 2ports, Micro SD SENSORS Accelerometer, Hall, Light Accelerometer, Hall, Light WIRELESS CONNECTIVITY 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac 2.4G+5GHz, VHT80 MIMO , Bluetooth 4.1 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac 2.4G+5GHz, VHT80 MIMO, Bluetooth 4.1 GPS GPS + GLONASS GPS + GLONASS DIMENSION, WEIGHT 261.2 x 179.1 x 8.9 mm,

648g 291.3199.87.4mm,

754g BATTERY CAPACITY* 30.4W / up to 9hrs, Fast Charging 39.04W / up to 11hrs, Fast Charging OS/UPGRADE Windows 10 Home Windows 10 Pro SAMSUNG SERVICES & APPLICATIONS Samsung Notes, Air Command, Samsung Flow Samsung Notes, Air Command, Samsung Flow VIDEO Recording: FHD(1920X1080) @30fps

Playback: 4K(3840X2160) @30fps Recording: UHD 4K (3840 x 2160) @30fps

Playback: 4K(3840X2160) @60fps

* Battery life may vary depending on usage and settings. Based on laboratory testing. About Samsung Electronics Canada, Inc.

Samsung Electronics Canada inspires Canadians to reach their full potential through a transformative ecosystem of products and services that deliver innovation and distinct design to every aspect of their connected lives. The company is redefining the worlds of TVs, smartphones, virtual reality and wearable devices, tablets and digital appliances.. Dedicated to helping make a difference in the lives of Canadians, Samsung's award-winning Hope for Children corporate giving initiatives supports public education, sustainability and health-related issues in communities across the country. To discover more, please visit www.samsung.com. Follow Samsung Canada at facebook.com/SamsungCanada, or Instagram @samsungcanada or Twitter @SamsungCanada SOURCE Samsung Electronics Canada

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[June 07, 2017] Jennifer Love Bruce Promoted to Vice President of Corporate Social Responsibility

SAN DIEGO, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Bridgepoint Education, Inc. (NYSE: BPI) today announced the promotion of Jennifer Love Bruce to the position of vice president of corporate social responsibility. Reporting to Bridgepoint CEO Andrew Clark, Love Bruce will continue to oversee the community relations and corporate social responsibility strategy for Bridgepoint, including all initiatives in corporate giving, employee volunteerism, community outreach, and community partnerships. Love Bruce, who joined Bridgepoint in 2009, worked to develop and implement the organization's first corporate social responsibility program. Under her direction, Bridgepoint has produced outstanding results in helping support the company's key focus areas of education, youth, and the military. Love Bruce has spearheaded Bridgepoint programs that have supported youth literacy, provided military counseling sessions and summer camps, and delivered backpacks and school supplies to students in need. In 2016, Bridgepoint employee volunteers donated more tha 20,000 hours of time in events that resulted in more than 12,000 pounds of produce and 800 bags of food sorted with Feeding America. In addition, more than 2,000 meals have been donated toward food drives, and more than 1,000 pounds of trash and debris collected during community clean-up events.



"As an organization, we are fully committed to enriching lives and improving the communities in which we live and serve," said Bridgepoint CEO Andrew Clark. "At Bridgepoint and its academic institutions, Ashford University and University of the Rockies, we strive to foster a culture that is devoted to giving back and community service, and under Jennifer's direction, we have been able to support social good. I congratulate Jennifer on this well-deserved promotion." Love Bruce holds a professional certification in corporate citizenship practice from Boston College and has a bachelor of arts degree in communications from California State University, Fullerton. Her awards include the Helibron Award: Outstanding Service to the Community  First Place Large Company, the 2015 and 2016 President's Volunteer Service Award, Living the Mission Award, and Future Leader Award. Love Bruce is also an active wish granter for Make-A-Wish San Diego.

About Bridgepoint Education

Bridgepoint Education, Inc. (NYSE:BPI) harnesses the latest technology to reimagine the modern student experience. Bridgepoint owns two academic institutions  Ashford University and University of the Rockies. Together, these programs, technologies, and resources represent a unique model for advancing education in the 21st century. Bridgepoint stands for greater access, social learning, and exposure to leading minds. For more information, visit www.bridgepointeducation.com, www.facebook.com/BridgepointEducation, or call Marianne Perez, Media Relations Manager, at 858.668.2586 x11636, or email [email protected]. To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/jennifer-love-bruce-promoted-to-vice-president-of-corporate-social-responsibility-300470628.html SOURCE Bridgepoint Education

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[June 07, 2017] Erin Powell Joins Bolton & Company as Vice President of Property & Casualty

Bolton & Company, one of the nation's largest privately owned insurance brokers, announced today that Erin Powell has joined the firm as Vice President of the organization's Property & Casualty Department. With more than 20 years of industry experience, Erin will lead Bolton's Property & Casualty efforts company-wide through its Pasadena headquarters and satellite offices in Santa Clara and Orange (News - Alert) County. Erin will manage Bolton's Property & Casualty service teams-including small business and claims-while developing new business and expanding the organization's exclusive programs and offerings. Additionally, she looks to further develop carrier relationships and find new ways to collaborate with Bolton's key markets. "As Bolton continues its phenomenal growth and expands its foundation throughout California, the Property & Casualty Department will lead these efforts with a focus on developing new and innovative ways to serve our clients," Powell said. "This also means attracting and retaining the best and brightest talent our industry has to offer." Bolton President and CEO Steve Brockmeyer said this atest organizational development is a strategic step that will lead the firm into the next chapter of its continued growth.



"Erin joins our organization with a great deal of experience in team leadership, mentoring, marketing and claims." Brockmeyer said. "Matched with her solid insurance industry expertise, she is a welcome addition to Bolton & Company, and we are very excited to have her join our management team to help further lead our organization toward even greater success." Prior to joining Bolton, Erin was Senior Vice President with Orion Risk Management. In roles prior, she was Senior Vice President and Property & Casualty Practice Leader with Lemme, a division of Integro (News - Alert) USA, and Vice President, Unit Manager with Lockton Companies and co-led the Law Firm Practice Group. Erin has been involved in various Women in Leadership organizations, including being one of the co-founders of Lockton's Southern California Women in Leadership chapter. Erin also managed and mentored the Associate Account Manager/Future Leaders Program for the firm.

About Bolton & Company: Established in 1931, Bolton & Company is one of the nation's largest privately owned insurance broker agencies providing clients worldwide with insurance and risk management services, employee benefits and financial products. As a partner of Assurex Global, Bolton employs more than 185 insurance professionals and places over $500 million in annual premiums on behalf of its clients. Bolton is headquartered in Pasadena, with additional offices in Orange County and Santa Clara. Learn more by visiting www.boltonco.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170607006433/en/

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In an editorial written in Saamana, Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray asked the BJP if it has any "real farmers" in its ministry.

By Kamlesh Damodar Sutar: Continuing with its onslaught on the Bhartiya Janata Party-led government in Maharashtra, Shiv Sena has yet again slammed the party over the issue of loan waiver for farmers.

In an editorial written in party mouthpiece 'Saamana', Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray even questioned the BJP asking whether it has any "real farmers" in its ministry.

The hard hitting editorial says, "The shutdown during the farmer strike has been a great success. Senior farmer leaders came together putting aside their differences. The trick of "divide and rule' did not work. And the farmers unity made the government sweat."

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WINNING ELECTION EASY: SHIV SENA

Attacking Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis over his stand of talks with a select group of farmers, the editorial says, "Conspiracies do not succeed every time. Some things are to be taken seriously. It is easy to win elections from panchayat to municipal corporation. If you have money and power, you can win elections even on the moon. But that doesn't mean that people are your slaves."

Uddhav Thackeray has also warned the BJP against being vindictive for farmers. "If you can spend millions on winning elections and grabbing power, why do you cry when it comes to farmers' loan waiver?" questioned Uddhav.

"The chief mhas taken a stand that henceforth they will hold talks only with "real farmer leaders', we welcome that. But then we also have a piece of advise. Let the "real farmers" in your Cabinet discuss with the "real farmers". Do you have any "real farmers in your Cabinet"? Then you don't have the right to talk about farmers' welfare." the editorial says.

Also read: Farmers' protests: Shiv Sena ministers boycott Maharashtra Cabinet meet

Also read: Maharashtra farmers strike: Shiv Sena slams Devendra Fadnavis government

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Amid the speculation of boycott by the unhappy Shiv Sena, BJP ministers said that they were granted permission to remain absent from the Cabinet meet.

Farmers block the road during a protest as part of the Maharashtra bandh over various demands in Solapur, Maharashtra. (Photo: PTI)

By Kiran Tare, Kamlesh Damodar Sutar: Two days after the Shiv Sena backed the farmers' strike in Maharashtra the party's ministers today boycotted the Cabinet's meeting expressing their displeasure over handling of the issue.

Shiv Sena has not only been supporting the farmers' strike, but has also been actively participating in the protests. Shiv Sena has also alleged that the party was not taken into confidence by the Chief Minister before announcing the farmers' loan waiver.

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Transport minister Diwakar Raote confirmed that Shiv Sena ministers skipped the meeting. Instead, they held a meeting at the residence of Industries Minister Subhash Desai ahead of the Cabinet meeting.

"We are with the farmers of the state, and we informed the Chief Minister before the meeting that we can't participate in the meeting" said Transport Minister and Senior Shiv Sena Leader Diwakar Raote. "Even before these protests started our party President Uddhav Thackeray has been taking up the issue of farmers' loan waiver.. Even if we are in government we cannot leave our farmers like this," Raote added.

"Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis did not consult us before making the announcement of loan waiver. If we are part of the government, our opinions should also be taken into consideration. The way they consulted us on GST, they should have consulted our party Chief before making any announcement "said Industries Minister Subhash Desai.

Finance minister Sudhir Mungantiwar of the BJP refused to call it as a boycott. "The Sena ministers didn't boycott the Cabinet meet but sought permission not to attend it. The Chief Minister granted them the permission," he said.

"All the Ministers from Shiv Sena met the Chief Minister before the meeting and informed him that since their party President was travelling abroad, it would not be right on their part to attend the meeting at the time of farmer protests" Mungantiwar told India Today.

The finance minister also questioned the double standards of the Shiv Sena of being in power and playing the role of opposition as well. "When they are in the Cabinet they are like "hum saath saath hai", but outside they behave like "Hum aapke hain koun"? This is surprising..." Mungantiwar quipped.

Mungantiwar's colleague in BJP Revenue Minister Chandrakant Patil too claimed that it was not a boycott. "I was the first to arrive at the meeting venue. It is not correct to say that Sena ministers came to the Cabinet and left in a huff. The Sena ministers arrived and told the CM that Uddhav Thackeray is not in Mumbai and they would not attend the Cabinet meeting, till they have a word with him," Patil said.

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The development came hours later the Shiv Sena mouthpiece Saamna ridiculed government's offer to talk only with "real farmers" and not their leaders. "Who are these farmers? Is there a real farmer in your ministry," the editorial stated.

Shiv Sena's sudden aggressive stand has once again fuelled speculations of mid-term polls in Maharashtra. The BJP in its State Core Committee meeting earlier this year had discussed the possibility to get rid of the Shiv Sena. BJP National President Amit Shah will be visiting Mumbai later this year and there are speculations that the possibility of mid-term polls is also likely to be discussed.

Also Read:

Tinderbox Mandsaur: Will loan waivers help plight of angry farmers in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra?

As farmers protest, RBI warns state governments against loan waivers

Madhya Pradesh farmers protest: Violence spreads in Mandsaur, PM Modi consults top ministers

Madhya Pradesh farmers protest: How Mandsaur is a repeat of Multai 19 years later

On World Milk Day, Maharashtra farmers protest by spilling milk, throwing fruits on road

Maharashtra farmers strike: Shiv Sena slams Devendra Fadnavis government

WATCH VIDEO

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7 Trails in Kansas City to Get Your Adventure On - Sarah Scoop It's time to come out of hibernation. With summer arriving, it is the perfect time to move yo body outside. Take a break from the cardio machines and try one of these 7 trails. Whether you like to run, walk, or bike, there is no better way to get a good workout in than ...

We like Sarah Scoop . . . She's a great rising star local blogger who already has some great content deals, promotions and a fun look at local life . . . However, this bit of trail blog post promo includesStill, we encourage the Kansas City blog community to keep posting despite the danger . . . And maybe with a bit more regard to issues that impact all of the metro area.Still, a fun list. Read more:
KMBC: Three people are dead after a shooting overnight in Kansas City. Kansas City Police said officers were called shortly before 1 am to a home in the 7100 block of Monroe. Officers found three men shot and killed inside a vehicle parked in front of the home.









RIGHT NOW KANSAS CITY HOMICIDES HAVE INCREASED BY 34% THIS YEAR OVER LAST AND THERE'S NO NEW PLAN TO STOP THE CARNAGE!!!

A horrific slaughter overnight starts the morning news cycle . . .More links:From the scene . . .In fact, a recent cancellation of the "Violence Free KC" Committee meeting reminds us that we're not even talking about the subject from a perspective of local governance . . .In fact, most of the discussion is dominated by local development schemes and impending tax breaks.You decide . . .
No matter our concerns about the new airport, the leadership of our blog community supports Kansas City efforts to live up torequirements.We'll post this one time for open comment and then again tomorrow as a reminder.Developing . . .
Classic Rock And Kansas City

Joe Walsh Tour 2017 at Sprint Center in Kansas City, MO

Teachable Moment & The Future

Kansas City Police In Transition

Lots of news to get to in the morning but for right now we invite our community of Kansas City night owls to take a look at a few local clips.Checkit:Lots to learn and consider from all these KCMO movies as we move toward the morning . . .Hopefully, more for the morning update . . .
By Press Trust of India: New Delhi, Jun 7 (PTI) The government has floodlit 647 kilometers of the borders with Pakistan and Bangladesh to prevent terrorists and immigrants from infiltrating into Indian territory.

The floodlighting of the 647-km-long stretches of the two international borders was completed in last one year, a Home Ministry official said.

It will help border guarding forces keep strict vigil in the forward areas and check attempts of infiltration by terrorists and illegal immigrants.

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Projects worth Rs 5,188 crore were sanctioned by the central government in the last three years of which Rs 2,138 crore has been released for the Indo-Bangladesh and Indo-Pak border projects.

These include erecting a fence in a 200-km area, constructing 430-km-long border roads, 110 composite border outposts and floodlighting the 647-km-long areas.

"A major push has been given by the government to border infrastructure and developmental works," the official said.

The total length of the Indo-Pak border is 3,323 km, including the Line of Control and the Actual Ground Position Line, while the Indo-Bangladesh border is 4,096 km long. The India-China border is 3,488 km long.

As regards to the India-China border, out of 27 border roads sanctioned in 2008, the construction of first eight roads was completed during 2014-16, while another nine roads are due to be completed by the end of the year.

The Home Ministry has also undertaken a new initiative for creation of model villages in border areas. More than Rs 92 crore has been released to seven states for development of 41 model villages, including 24 in Jammu and Kashmir.

To facilitate the border trade and passenger movement at land border crossings, the government has been promoting the setting up Integrated Check Posts (ICPs).

The ICP at Raxaul (Indo-Nepal border) was operationalised in June 2016 and at Jogbani in November. While the cargo terminal at the ICP, Petrapole (Indo-Bangladesh border) was inaugurated by prime ministers of India and Bangladesh in July last year, foundation stone for an ICP at Dawki in Meghalaya (Indo-Bangladesh border) was laid in January 2017.

In 2009, the central government had approved a proposal to construct additional 509 border out posts (BOPs) along the Indo-Pak and the Indo-Bangladesh borders at an estimated cost of Rs 1,832 crore.

In 2016, the scope of the project was revised by the Cabinet Committee on Security from 509 BOPs to 422 BOPs.

At present, there are 609 BOPs along the Indo-Pak border and an additional 126 BOPs are to be constructed to reduce the inter-BOP distance to 3.5 km.

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There are 802 BOPs along the Indo-Bangladesh border where the additional 383 BOPs were to be constructed. PTI ACB GVS

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Golden Ghetto Dude Under Fire For Charges Relating To Hot Pussy

Man arrested at Johnson County Library after cat found inside hot car OVERLAND PARK, Kan. -- Police cited a man for 'cruelty to animals; failure to provide well-being' on Monday, after a cat was reportedly left inside a hot car for at least two-and-a-half hours. According to police, someone called officers to the 9800 block of W.

Fingered For Crime

KC man is accused of trying to rob 7-Eleven pretending his finger was a gun Prosecutors allege that a Kansas City man passed a note to a 7-Eleven clerk during an robbery attempt that read: "Give me the money or catch a bullet." In reality, the accused hold-up man, Montea L. Theus, 26, didn't have a handgun but used his finger jammed inside of coat pocket, pretending that he was armed, according to court records.

Kansas City Alleged Cycle Of Violence

KC man with prior conviction of assaulting officer charged with attacking police again KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- A Kansas City man is charged in assaulting store clerk, then assaulting two officers, and prosecutors said this isn't his first time attacking police. The Office of Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker said 44-year-old Cecil E.

Meth Town Residents Fight Crime

Police: Would-be shoplifter attempts carjacking before being subdued by bystanders INDEPENDENCE, Mo. -- A man who police say attempted to steal nearly a thousand dollars worth of merchandise from an Independence Lowe's is now facing charges after they say he threatened multiple people with a knife and attempted to a carjack a woman before he was subdued by bystanders. Tony M.

More Deets On Scary Midtown Kansas City Party District Danger Allegation

KCK man accused of kidnapping woman from Westport, raping her A Kansas City, Kansas, man has been charged in the kidnapping and rape of a 23-year-old woman. Derek D. Donnell, 31, was charged with two counts of rape or attempted rape, kidnapping, and sodomy or attempted sodomy. According to court records, the woman flagged down police officers near Eighth and Oak streets just after 4 a.m.

KSHB Catches Up To Our Controversial TKC Conversation Last Month

KC neighborhood listed among most dangerous in country KANSAS CITY, Mo. - At the corner of Independence and Prospect in Kansas City, Missouri police sirens often serve as alarm clocks. For Danny Hill, it's a reminder to stay alert. "From prostitution to drugs, robbing, stealing. I'm even scared to come out here.

KC News Dude Confronts Killer Of Sorts

'Killer' the mossy frog scares Mark Alford KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- FOX 4's monthly "Zoo To You" segment is full of fun and facts. Each month a member of the Kansas City Zoo brings an animal by the studio and shares what makes them so unique. On Tuesday, June 6 Randy Wisthoff brought 'Killer' the mossy frog.

Thankfully, and for now, the homicide count hasn't increased and these local allegations and reports top the list of scary, diverse and slightly funny Kansas City crime scene news . . . Checkit:Developing . . .
Kansas City In Sync???

Company asking Kansas City to expand program to synchronize red lights WEBVTT >> IT DOESN'T TAKE MUCH TO TICKSOMEONE OFF.KANSAS CITY EXPANDED THE SYSTEMOF SYNCHRONIZED TRAFFIC LIGHTS.IT'S ALREADY TIME FOR THESTREETCAR.>> RHYTHM ENGINEERING WILL ASKFOR A SYNCHRONIZED LIGHT PLAN TOBE INCLUDED IN THE CITIES.>> WHAT IS GOING TO REDUCE ROADRAGE IS THE HEART.>> THE PLAN GOES TO CITY HALL ONWEDNESDAY.

No Easy Fix For Frank

A new Jackson County jail? Frank White unsure one is necessary Jackson County's three top law enforcement officials all think Jackson County needs a new and bigger jail to replace the crowded, decaying one that's been beset with security and sanitation issues. But County Executive Frank White is not there yet.

Rock Chalk Slap Fight Cont'd

Brownback Vetoes Tax Increase, Kansas Lawmakers To Attempt Override Kansas lawmakers are gearing up for an attempt to override Gov. Sam Brownback's veto of a tax increase. The House and Senate approved the plan overnight Monday and Brownback vetoed it Tuesday. In a statement, Brownback said Kansas has a "pro-growth" tax policy and the bill would be a step backward on that front.

Golden Ghetto Burns Today

Demolition debris from Overland Park elementary school catches fire OVERLAND PARK, Kan. -- Firefighters put out flames at the construction site near Trailwood Elementary School at 95th and Roe Tuesday afternoon. The fire department says a debris pile went up in flames. They have not yet determined the cause. The old school is currently being demolished.

Show-Me Voter Outreach Promise

Missouri Secretary Of State Jay Ashcroft Pledges Help To Voters Without Photo ID Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft is confident the state's new voter ID law won't disenfranchise anyone. "I've spent over 70,000 miles traveling the state over the last two years, and I've challenged anyone to point to someone that can't vote under this law that would've been able to vote under the prior law," says Ashcroft, who was in Blue Springs Tuesday morning to explain how the law has changed.

Kansas City Tech Push Back

KC startups join Kickstarter, Amazon and hundreds of firms to support net neutrality Amazon, Kickstarter, Etsy, Mozilla and other tech giants are planning a "day of action" on July 12 to oppose efforts to undo net neutrality regulations by Federal Communications Commission chairman Ajit Pai. As national momentum grows, the fight for a free and open Internet already has garnered local support.

History And Local Drama

Lessons Learned From The 'Long, Hot Summer,' And Performing Shakespeare Like A Pro Five decades ago, social unrest gripped cities across the country, at one point even spilling into the streets of Kansas City. Today, we find out what the "long, hot summer" of 1967 can teach us about race relations and cultural diversity in present-day America.

Sneeze-y Kansas City Summer

The heat is on - and pollen counts are high WEBVTT HALEY: I KNOW YOU ARE A BIGALLERGY SUFFERER AND I CAN'TSTOP SEIZING TODAY -- SNEEZINGTODAY.BRYAN BUSBY HAS THE FIRST ALERT.BRYAN: I THINK THE MOLD COUNTWILL COME DOWN BECAUSE WE WILLNOT SEE RAIN ANYTIME SOON.GRASS AND POLLEN STILL HIGH.THE NOSES ARE KIND OF ITCHY.THE CLADOSPORIUM MODERATE.WE ARE DRYING OUT FOR

begin our round-up of today's somewhat notable local links. Take a peek:And this is thefor right now . . .
KANSAS CITY AUTHORITIES AND RESIDENTS CONFRONT WARNING OF MORE OPIOID ADDICTS ON LOCAL STREETS THIS SUMMER!!!

Even worse, those who suffer from opioid addiction are also victimized by rougher criminals and each other as the desperation often puts these folks at risk.









Zombies are real and there are a lot more of them on Kansas City streets.To wit . . .They're not quite homeless and not quite criminals but a little of both and possibly the reason why it's not a good idea to leave valuables or loose change out in the open.Downtown is inundated with this rising contingent of Kansas City resident that benefits from increased foot traffic and busier midtown streets. This epidemic is part of the reason why panhandling is on the rise throughout Downtown & Midtown and might be contributing to the rise in property crime as well.As always, our blog community seeks to inform and warn locals of yet another threat as this Kansas City cruel Summer continues.Check the links:Developing . . .
Greek exports to Qatar totaled 41.7 million euros in 2016, while imports to Greece amounted to 45 million euros, the Panhellenic Federation of Exporters said in a report. Qatar is Greece's 67th export destination and the 61st importer. Greece's top export product are marbles, followed by ropes, books, processed oil, lifts and jewelry, sea cruise ships, aluminum rods and electric bulbs. On the other hand, a 62 pct of imports from Qatar is oil.

Qatar is one of the smallest members of OPEC, with a production capacity of around 600,000 barrels of oil per day, but it is the top supplier of LNG in the world with nine billion cubic feet of natural gas daily. However, Greece's main LNG importer is Algeria, with Qatar offer LNG quantities only in peak seasons, like this year's winter. A total of 180 Greek, large or smaller, enterprises have established activities in Qatar, mainly on large infrastructure projects and energy, while shipping companies have signed large contracts. Additionally, several Greek doctors, engineers and other professionals have established activities in the country.

Read more here.

RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report
For the last two years, Greeces growth has been nearly twice the global industry average of 3.9 percent

The Greek National Tourism Organization (GNTO) said that this year it expects a record-breaking 30 million international visitors to Greece. This means a growth rate of 7%, or an additional 2 million additional visitors over the previous year. 900,000 U.S. travelers are expected to visit Greece this year.

For the last two years, Greeces growth has been nearly twice the global industry average of 3.9 percent, as reported by the UNWTO in January 2017.

The WTTC estimates that tourism in 2017 will help boost the Greek economy by 6.9 percent, and will boost employment by 6.3 percent, supporting nearly 1 million jobs and representing 20% of the countrys GDP. One in five jobs created in Greece is related to the tourism sector. Tourism is essential to Greeces effort for recovery and prosperity.

To quote Greek Tourism Minister Elena Kountoura, We are very optimistic about the upcoming tourist season and our continued momentum, said. Greeces incomparable natural beauty, ancient history, vibrant urban culture and spirit of philotimo make it one of the worlds most unique and desired year-round destinations.

Taleb Rifai, UNWTO Secretary General, rendered his full support of Greece and GNTO while visiting Athens earlier this year. Rifai said, Greece is one of the most popular and attractive global destinations, which enhances its international appeal and continues to record high performance.

Greece has always been known as a classic destination, but recently, its been distinguished as the new, must-go experience destination for 2017. Recognition includes Athens as one of the New York Times 52 Places to Go in 2017, and Santorini was named the #1 Island Overall in Travel + Leisures annual Worlds Best Awards. New flights and connections will make traveling to Greece much easier in 2017, including daily year-round service by Emirates to Athens from Newark Liberty International Airport. Destinations such as Kos, Rhodes, Mykonos, Santorini, Corfu, Kephalonia, Zakynthos, Aktio and Thessaloniki now have direct flights or connections to a larger number of European cities, as well as the U.S., China, India, Russia and Israel.

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

Source: travelandtourworld.com
Greece aims to attract between 500,000-600,000 Chinese tourists each year for the next two years, Tourism Minister Elena Kountoura said on Friday, while addressing an event at the Athens Chamber of Tradesmen. Chinese officials, she noted, put this number even higher at one million.

The minister was speaking at an event entitled Alitrip in Greece: Boosting incoming tourism from China to Greece organised by the Athens Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) and the tradesmens chamber to present the Chinese travel platform to Greece. The aim, according to Kountoura, was to capitalise on the contacts between the Greek and Chinese governments, working in cooperation with all the agencies involved, from local government to private businesses.

Presenting the Alitrip platform  part of the Alibaba group  was Alitrip Vice President for European Markets Kai Cui, while 50 top Greek tourism-sector companies and agencies attended. Given that the Alibaba ecosystem currently has more than 500 million Chinese users and the Alitrip platform is one of the largest in China, the companys executives believe that a target of one million tourists to Greece over three years can be met.

Kountoura noted that the number of Chinese tourists to Greece had risen almost ten-fold in the last two years, from 15,000-20,000 in 2015 to some 150,000 at present. This is a significant increase even if this number does not yet satisfy us, given that the number of Chinese travelling to Europe are 15 million, she added. A key to further growth in tourism would be the start of a direct flight from Athens to Beijing in the autumn, Kountoura said.

The minister also referred to efforts to open new tourism markets, such as South Korea, China, the Middle East, India and Brazil and rekindle existing markets, such as Russia and the United States.

In the last two years, the growth of Greek tourism was at 7 pct  or double the world average. In 2016 we had 28 million arrivals (with cruises) and increased luxury tourism by more than 10 pct. We had a spectacular start to 2017, with prebookings and occupancy in hotels exceeding all expectations from all markets, she said.

Source: ANA-MPA

RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report
A military transport plane with 120 people on board went missing on Wednesday while flying from southern Burma to Yangon, said media reports citing a military spokesperson.



There were fears it may have crashed into the ocean, since its route would have taken it over the Andaman Sea. The plane was on its way to Yangon but lost communication over the Andaman Sea.



General Myat Min Oo said the Chinese-made Y-8 turboprop aircraft was carrying 106 passengers - mostly families of military personnel - and 14 crew members when it went missing today (June 7) afternoon. In an earlier statement, the number of passengers was said to be 90, reported AP.



"The military plane Y-8 vanished about 1:35 p.m. local time in the southern part of the country near Yangon after it took off from Myeik, and now the military has started a sea and air search with naval ships and military aircraft and is preparing for rescue operations," he said.



The plane left the southern coastal town of Myeik in the early afternoon and was bound for Yangon,the largest city in Burma, it stated.



Four naval ships and two military aircraft have been searching for the plane since 2pm, he added.
Siemens said it has won a major contract to supply two steam turbines, air-cooled generators, and turbine control system for Attarat steam power plant in Jordan.



The contract has been awarded by Chinese energy engineering group Guangdong Power Engineering Company which is building the facility as general contractor for the operator of the plant, the Attarat Power Company.



The plant will be built in the desert at Attarat Um Ghudran, 100 km southeast of capital Amman and away from Jordans natural water supplies. The efficient use of scarce resources, especially water, is a critical challenge to provide a reliable power supply for the local population and economy.

The plant will start operation in mid-2020 and will feed up to 470 MW to Jordans power grid.



Siemens said its scope of supply comprises two SST5-5000 steam turbines, two air-cooled SGen5-1200A generators, and the turbine control system.



The condenser is air cooled to address the lack of water at the site. This can be seen as a global trend for dry areas where water is mainly used for households, farming and ecosystem, said the statement from the company.



The Attarat facility will supply enough electricity to cover up to 15 per cent of the countrys annual power demand. Jordan is one of the most water-scarce countries in the world. The air-cooled condensers will save up to 90 per cent of the water needed for the plants operation compared with the use of a wet cooling system.



Siemens will supply low-pressure turbines which are able to withstand the high back pressure caused by the condensers. The SST5-5000 is the most compact steam turbine generator consisting of one combined high- / intermediate pressure and one low pressure module ever built for a steam power plant. This will provide a small footprint and highest possible performance.



The efficient use of water is a decisive challenge for this project, and with our modern technology well provide the right equipment to achieve the highest electricity output and simultaneously save precious resources, remarked Jean Claude Nasr, head of sales for the Middle East and North Africa region at Siemens Power and Gas.



Along with our partner we will support the governments plan to provide a reliable power supply and make Jordan less reliant on imported electricity, stated Nasr.



Jordan is considered one of the driest countries in the world and 14 per cent of the countrys power capacity is used for water treatment and distribution.



Siemens is the reliable partner to face the challenges of this demanding power plant project, remarked Wenfeng Zhang, the deputy general manager from Guangdong Power Engineering.



They provide proven power plant technology and vast experience in project management. Together we will help increase Jordans power generation capacities and lay the foundation for the future development of the country, he added.-TradeArabia News Service


Air Arabia's flights to Armenia are fast filling up as the destination has become popular for GCC families, especially Indian citizens living in the Gulf, thanks to the latest visa-on-arrival policy that the country implemented earlier this year.



Armenia appeals to a wide spectrum of holiday-goers, from thrill seeking adventurers to those looking for more family-orientated trips, Yerevan is an exciting destination for many groups.



Situated at the centre of the natural beauty that is the Caucasus Mountain Region, Armenias natural surroundings make it a highly attractive option for the likes of backpackers and the more adventurous traveller.



Air Arabia commenced operations to Armenia in 2013 and, today, flies to Yerevan four times a week from Sharjah. Flight times are approximately three-hours, with the route being served by an Airbus A320.



In addition to flights, the carrier's tour operating division, Air Arabia Holidays, also offers holiday packages at affordable rates, while maintaining a level of flexibility that allows passengers to tailor their trip to their unique requirements.



A country steeped in history, Armenia features landscapes that are punctuated with breath-taking mountains, forests, lakes and waterfalls. With historic sights and ancient architecture also among its many appeals  as well as having one of the oldest continuously-inhabited cities in the world  Armenia offers countless sightseeing opportunities and cultural experiences, making it a unique holiday destination for GCC residents.



Air Arabia currently operates flights to 125 destinations in 35 countries from five hubs across the Middle East and North Africa. - TradeArabia News Service


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By Press Trust of India: Hyderabad, Jun 7 (PTI) GMR Airports Limited here has been selected to develop, operate and manage the new international airport of Heraklion at Crete in Greece, in partnership with Greek infrastructure major Terna SA.

GMR Airports Limited will be the designated airport operator in the consortium for this project, according to a press release.

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GMR Airports Limited is a subsidiary of GMR Infrastructure Ltd, while Terna SA is a 100 per cent subsidiary of GEK Terna Group.

"The construction cost is estimated by the Greek ministry of infrastructure at around 850 million euros," a GEK Terna official had earlier told PTI.

The existing Heraklion Airport in Crete is the second largest in Greece and has witnessed steady traffic growth in the last 3-4 years. It is currently handling over six million passengers annually and is facing capacity constraint.

GMR Airports Business Chairman Srinivas Bommidala said, "We are excited about the project and the opportunity to partner with GEK Terna in Greece."

"This new airport will definitely boost the tourism industry and aid the growth of international tourists that Greece has been witnessing over the past couple of years.

"The airport is in line with the asset light strategy we have adopted for overseas expansion and will see GMR participate in project and commercial management in addition to airport operations," he said.

The new airport, once completed, will replace the Heraklion airport. The scope of the project involves design, construction, financing, operation, and maintenance and exploitation of the new Heraklion Crete International Airport.

The concession period for the greenfield project will be 35 years, including phase-1 construction of five years, the release said.

GMR Airports Limited president Sidharath Kapur said this selection reinforces their position as a major global airport operator.

This will be GMR Groups second foray into Europe after having developed Istanbuls Sabiha Gokcen airport. PTI GDK GK BAS

--- ENDS ---
By Press Trust of India: Hyderabad, Jun 7 (PTI) GMR Airports Limited here has been selected to develop, operate and manage the new international airport of Heraklion at Crete in Greece, in partnership with Greek infrastructure major Terna SA.

GMR Airports Limited will be the designated airport operator in the consortium for this project, according to a press release.

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GMR Airports Limited is a subsidiary of GMR Infrastructure Ltd, while Terna SA is a 100 per cent subsidiary of GEK Terna Group.

"The construction cost is estimated by the Greek ministry of infrastructure at around 850 million euros," a GEK Terna official had earlier told PTI.

The existing Heraklion Airport in Crete is the second largest in Greece and has witnessed steady traffic growth in the last 3-4 years. It is currently handling over six million passengers annually and is facing capacity constraint.

GMR Airports Business Chairman Srinivas Bommidala said, "We are excited about the project and the opportunity to partner with GEK Terna in Greece."

"This new airport will definitely boost the tourism industry and aid the growth of international tourists that Greece has been witnessing over the past couple of years.

"The airport is in line with the asset light strategy we have adopted for overseas expansion and will see GMR participate in project and commercial management in addition to airport operations," he said.

The new airport, once completed, will replace the Heraklion airport. The scope of the project involves design, construction, financing, operation, and maintenance and exploitation of the new Heraklion Crete International Airport.

The concession period for the greenfield project will be 35 years, including phase-1 construction of five years, the release said.

GMR Airports Limited president Sidharath Kapur said this selection reinforces their position as a major global airport operator.

This will be GMR Groups second foray into Europe after having developed Istanbuls Sabiha Gokcen airport. PTI GDK GK

--- ENDS ---
A division bench of Justice Ranjit More said that the investigations will be carried out by an officer not below the rank of Superintendent of Police

By Mustafa Shaikh: After two girls had made sensational claims about a human trafficking racket involving police in March last year, the Bombay High Court on Tuesday transferred the case investigations to the state CID. The girls had gone missing after registering a case of trafficking and sexual abuse.

The case was transferred to an independent agency as it was alleged that cops accused in the case as perpetrators were investigating the case. In March, the court slammed the state police in the matter and had asked the police to trace the girls, after which one girl was traced in West Bengal but one girl is still missing.

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A division bench of Justice Ranjit More said that the investigations will be carried out by an officer not below the rank of Superintendent of Police (SP). The court also ordered for an expeditious investigation in the case.

Appointed as amicus curiae (friend of the court), senior lawyer Mihir Desai told the court, "We don't know who, but policemen are involved in the trafficking racket. We can't also deny that the victims were influenced while taking their statements. Hence an independent investigation is needed."

Both the girls had given complaints at a south Delhi police station saying they were brought from their hometown for a job and later sold in flesh trade. The girl from Nepal had alleged that she was sexually assaulted by over 100 men, including police officers.

Also read: Maharashtra: Bombay High Court to hear PIL on farmer issues next week

Also read: 26/11 terror attack: Maharashtra government challenges enquiry against Rakesh Maria and others

--- ENDS ---
India said while advocating restraint to others, Pakistan has no hesitation in using air power against its own people in Balochistan.

By India Today Web Desk: India today raised the Balochistan issue at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) saying Pakistan has systematically violated the human rights of its own citizens.

"This is a country, which has systematically abused and violated the human rights of its own citizens, including in Balochistan, as well as the people of Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir," Rajiv K Chander, India's Permanent Representative at the United Nations, Geneva, said.

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India said while advocating restraint to others, Pakistan has no hesitation in using air power against its own people.

"Pakistan has once again sought to mask its territorial ambitions and use of terrorism as a state policy under the garb of concern for human rights," Chander said.

He said Pakistan also continues to provide sanctuary to UN-designated terrorists.

India also raised the issue of Pakistan instigating violence in the Kashmir Valley.

"I would once again draw the attention to the fact that the present situation in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir was aggravated by sustained cross-border terrorism emanating from Pakistan," India said.

At the 35th Session of the Human Rights Council of the United Nations, India contended that the central problem in Jammu and Kashmir is cross-border terrorism, and Pakistan's use of terrorism as an instrument of state policy.

Chander emphasised that the entire Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of India while Pakistan remains in illegal occupation of a part of India. "Hence the neutrality of the Phrase 'Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir' is artificial."

Also read:

Balochistan: 3 Pakistani civilians killed, 17 injured in Afghan firing

Pakistan: Over 400 militants from different banned outfits surrender in Balochistan

Also watch:

Bomb blast in Balochistan's Mastung region kills at least 10

--- ENDS ---
Ramkrishan Upadhyay

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, June 7

Residents of the city will soon see electric buses running on roads as the first such bus arrived here today.

To reduce pollution caused by the increasing number of vehicles in the city, the UT Administration has started the process of introducing electric buses in the city under its Smart City plan.

Before placing the order for the electric buses, the Transport Department had asked companies to ply the bus in the city on a trial basis.

An official of the department said Tata Motors had agreed to ply a bus in the city on a trial basis. During the trial run, officials of the department will see the effectiveness of the bus.

The bus has a seating capacity of 26 while nine passengers can stand inside it. Provision has also been made for two differently abled persons. The official said the electric bus was a zero-emission vehicle and was safer than the usual buses. It had all features for the safety of passengers, besides comfortable seating facilities. Electric buses are already running successfully abroad and trials are going on in some Indian cities, including New Delhi, Bengaluru and Pune. The CTU has made arrangements for charging buses at its depot. Officials of the company said the bus could run from 150 km to 180 km per charging. The operational cost of the bus was much lower than the usual bus. The CTU has invited expression of interest from manufactures of such buses. The companies have been asked to submit their proposal. Sources said work on the project started after approval from UT Administrator VP Singh Badnore, who had asked officials to develop the UT as a green city on the pattern of Bristol.

The Centre is providing subsidy to introduce zero-emission retrofitted electric buses under its flagship FAME India (faster adoption and manufacturing of hybrid and electric vehicles in India) scheme.
Dheeraj Sharma

WE are witnessing an ongoing debate on the balance between apposite governance and institutional autonomy in higher education institutes in India. The government has proposed an IIM Bill and in the discussion related to the IIM Bill, the issue of institutional autonomy is at the forefront but no discussion is taking place on academic freedom per se. Traditionally, the most important type of autonomy in an institution is academic autonomy (related primarily to teaching and research). However, in recent times three more types of autonomy have come to the forefront, namely, financial, organisational, and staffing autonomy. Financial autonomy refers to institutes to ability to raise funds in an autonomous manner. More specifically, financial autonomy implies that the institution can set fee as it deems fit for the various programmes that it offers. Organisational autonomy is the ability of an institution to establish sub-units and specifically set up research centres, satellite campuses, etc. Staffing autonomy refers to the power to recruit its employees as per its own processes.

The IIMs have always had financial autonomy. One can review the construction of IIM campuses and a simple analysis of randomly selected data of at least the new IIMs and some old IIMs clearly indicates that the cost of construction of the campus is higher than CPWD rates that are usually the benchmarks for construction. The cost of construction is higher on account of unique designs that provide an important character to the institution, which cannot then be benchmarked with CPWD rates for standard institutional buildings. However, who decides that character of the institute? It is primarily left to a great extent to the institute administration. Thus, one can infer high level of financial autonomy provided to the IIMs.

IIMs have always had organisational autonomy. A simple review of websites of IIMs elucidates that almost all of the IIMs have centres of research several registered under Section 8 of the Indian Companies Act allowing them even greater level of autonomy with its own staff, funding, budget, management, etc.. Additionally, IIM Lucknow extension campus in Noida, IIM Indore extension in Mumbai, IIM Kashipur extension campus in Dehradun, IIM Trichy extension campus in Chennai, etc. are all together evidence of organisational autonomy.

Finally, IIMs have always had staffing autonomy. Most of the IIMs follow their own recruitment and promotion policies with regards to faculty and staff. For instance, many IIMs have a standard tenure between each promotion and many promote faculty based on their unique evaluation criteria. Even greater autonomy is evident in terms of staff recruitment. Several IIMs recruit staff members well beyond the government sanctioned posts. Many of them employ staff at salaries higher than faculty salaries.

So, one must wonder, why this question of autonomy again and again? Does it imply that the IIMs want unbridled financial, organisational, and staffing autonomy? Is it desirable? I guess not. Specifically, would we want opaqueness in how IIMs deal with their finances? This is already happening. A few IIMs have not made their annual reports available in public domain for multiple years in a row.

Contrary to discussion on institutional autonomy there is no discussion on academic freedom. Most IIMs administrators direct their faculty to publish in narrow lists dominated by North American research journals, where publishing with Indian data is usually an unsurmountable task. While there is definite merit in publishing in these well-established North American journals in the initial stages of the career but most IIMs administrators direct faculty into narrow pigeon holes research even for promotions. Is this academic freedom? Well, I guess not.

The reason for the aforementioned anomalies is that IIMs were founded under the Societies Registration Act, which requires almost no compliance with any standard. The British introduced it after the mutiny for the local groups to do their own things. Later, the society format got picked up by the nationalist and later by Gandhians. Hence, there was no question of the Societies Act being reformed. Foreign donors picked up NGOs (as societies mostly) for funding as they considered them to be far more economical and effective. The primary reason is the nearly non-existent statutory requirement for societies. A good part of the problem with the IIMs is that these are societies and the act makes no statutory requirements. Hence, the need for the IIM Bill that creates these robust structures. In the current shape, the new IIM Bill only promises greater institutional autonomy. There is the peril of replacing the "external powers (government power)" with "new internal powers". This is worrisome because the government represents the people and the institute board does not. The representatives of the government are accountable to people vis-a-vis Parliament, CAG, CBI, CVC, CIC among others The self-appointing board as proposed in the Bill is not.

Consequently, we must rise above this reductionist discourse of institutional autonomy and debate academic freedom. Great institutions are faculty led, administratively supported and technology enabled. Hence, we really need a right IIM Bill. Not one that gives undesirable or unlimited financial, organisational, and staffing autonomy alone but actually allows for faculty governance in the true spirit of academic freedom. Academic autonomy would be seriously simplified and endangered if it were put on a continuum with "full government control and no autonomy" on the one end and "full autonomy and no more state control" on the other.

The writer is Director, IIM-Rohtak. The views expressed are personal
Yogendra Yadav

SOMETHING unusual happened last week. Farmers in Maharashtra organised an amazing strike. Last month farmers in a village of Ahmednagar decided that they would stop sending their produce  food grains, vegetables, etc.  to cities from June 1. Soon, the call was adopted by the farmers of the entire district. Before anyone could realise, this resolve had extended to several districts of Maharashtra. The farmers stuck to their decision and on June 1 and 2, an overwhelming majority of APMC (Agriculture Produce Marketing Cooperative) did not receive any produce. There were stray incidents of coercion and violence, highlighted by the media, but by and large, it was a peaceful and voluntary affair. The state government, which took the protest lightly to begin with, was forced to come to the negotiating table. Chief Minister Fadnavis sat till early morning of June 3 to work out a deal with the leaders of one section of the farmers.

Also read: Fadnavis faces flak over farmers arrest

The matter is far from over. The deal with the CM was rejected by most farmers organisations, saying it was a sellout. Even the BJPs partner organisation, Swabhimani Shetkari Paksha, was forced to reject this deal. The farmers organised a successful statewide bandh on June 5. Media reports tell us that this strike has already spread to many districts of Madhya Pradesh. Farmer organisations in other states also feel charged and energised.

This chain of events is extraordinary. The spontaneous nature of this protests and its rapid spread reminds us of peasant rebellions during colonial times. The Fadnavis government has alleged that the strike is the handiwork of its political opponents, mainly, the Shiv Sena and the NCP. Facts deny this claim. While the opposition parties have certainly extended covert support, the organisations and leaders involved in bringing the farmers together are not affiliate to any of the major parties. In fact, the Congress and the NCP are yet to recover from the shock defeat in the recent municipal elections across the state. The farmers are unlikely to heed to the largely discredited Opposition. It seems that a new generation of farmers leadership is emerging in Maharashtra.

What makes this protest even more unusual is that it is not happening in a year of natural calamity and crop loss. Maharashtra has seen normal rainfall and bumper crop in the last agricultural season following two successive droughts in 2014-15 and 2015-16. Usually farmers protests are triggered by crop loss. This year the farmers of Maharashtra had normal, if not bountiful, harvest.

What, then, explains this sudden burst of farmers movement? Two developments seemed to have triggered the current protest. On the one hand, bumper crops have led to crashing down of crop prices for the farmer. On the other hand, the crop loan waiver announced by the newly elected BJP government in UP has reminded the famers of their long unfulfilled demand.

Crash in prices is most evident in the case of pulses. Following a shortage of pulses in the country, the Central government had enhanced the MSP for tur from Rs 4,500 to a little over Rs 5,000 per quintal. This was presented as a major step to promote higher production of pulses. The farmers obliged, cultivation and production of pulses went up, but the government failed to keep its part of the promise. State agencies failed to procure much of the production at the assured price. Instead of getting Rs 5,000 a quintal, the farmers were forced to sell tur at Rs 3,000. Similar tragedy has befallen the soyabean farmers of Madhya Pradesh and chilli farmers in Telangana. There were reports that tomato and potato growers from different parts of the country preferred to throw their produce than sell it for a ridiculous price in the mandi. Thus the farmers suffer not merely when there is a crop failure, but also when there is a good monsoon and a bumper crop. This angst seems to be driving the current protest.

This is the real significance of the farmers strike in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. It is not a localised, seasonal, crop-specific or calamity-driven distress. This protest is linked directly to the crisis of Indian agriculture. This crisis, in todays India, takes three forms. First, there is an ecological crisis of Indian agriculture. Modern agricultural practices associated with Green Revolution are unsustainable. Resource and water-intensive, fertilisers and pesticide-heavy farming has now reached a dead-end. Second, there is an economic crisis of Indian farming. The agrarian productivity is not in keeping with the countrys requirement and the availability of land and resources. And linked with that, the third is the existential crisis of the farmer. Farming is an unviable proposition, and is mostly a loss-making activity. Price of agricultural commodities has not kept pace with input costs and consumption expenditure of the farmer. The farmers barely manage to survive in a good year and find themselves in a debt-trap in any adversity. The phenomenon of farmers suicide is directly related to this crisis.

What is remarkable about the farmers strike in Maharashtra is that it has sought to address this basic crisis. The farmers demands are not for any immediate, localised relief. Instead, they have raised the fundamental issue of determination of crop prices. They have reminded the ruling party of its electoral promise of fixing the MSP so as to yield 50 per cent over and above the cost of the farmers. They have demanded implementation of many structural reforms suggested by the Swaminathan Commission. And, of course, they have demanded a loan waiver for all farmers. These are some of the long-standing demands of the movement that no party is willing to address.

The Fadnavis government has agreed to a partial and conditional loan waiver. But that is not going to satisfy the farmers. The CM has assured that procurement shall take place as per the MSP. But that does not address the basic issue of how the MSP is fixed in the first place. Fadnavis is much unlikely to get any support from the Centre. The NDA government is arguably the most farmer unfriendly Central government in the history of Independent India. We do not know how long the strike will last, but we do know that its real demands are unlikely to be met.

Farmers in Maharashtra have shown the path. Farmers in the rest of the country shall have to hold the baton now and take this struggle to its logical conclusion.

yogendra.yadav@gmail.com
SN Sahu

IN 1910 when Paris was devastated by a massive flood, Mahatma Gandhi wrote an article Paris Havoc and referred to the obsession of present-day civilisation to use more money for grandiose plans and cautioned by saying that, Understand Nature's purposes and ponder over them; all your ostentatious ways will lead you nowhere. President Trump who described global warming as a "canard" created by and for the Chinese in order to make the USA manufacturing non-competitive decided to withdraw from the Paris Accord. It is a voluntary accord with no legal mandate for any country to follow. Will it cause a havoc to the planet earth in spite of the resolve of the international community to carry forward the Paris Accord? It is apprehended that the withdrawal of the America, rated as one of the worst polluters, would spell danger for humanity with a clear intent to establish American supremacy in the world in sustaining the carbon economy which the West created following the Industrial Revolution and by using resources and energy of almost all parts of the world.

Only when the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America could slowly catch up with the western world in the economic field that the western world raised fingers at them and accused them of generating emissions of carbon dioxide and Green House gases which trap the heat and cause global warming and climate change.

America's withdrawal from the Paris accord means affirmation of a lifestyle based on excessive use of resources and energy. It also means a defence of the military-industrial complexes of the US in private sector which manufacture weapons of mass destruction on a large scale. It is such industrial complexes manufacturing huge cache of weapons that use disproportionate energy and constitute a major source of global warming and climate change. Instead of curbing these military complexes and reducing their numbers, the decision has been taken to withdraw from the Paris accord. The America First principle would mean America First in providing leadership for exacerbating the problems of global warming and climate change. It is a sure fatal step to intensify climate chaos and reduce chances for humanity for surviving even the twenty first century.

Mahatma Gandhi, referring to too many mills producing textiles in Manchester in England, had written in May 1915 that such factories generated tremendous heat causing enormous destruction of life. Hundred years later, factories have been multiplied and particularly the factories manufacturing destructive military weapons and facilitating an energy-intensive lifestyle in large parts of the US and Europe have gone up in geometric proportions. It is much more than what is existing in India and other countries which got Independence after 1947. The heat of factories of America producing such weapons is too intense to spare life forms and the planet earth.

The withdrawal of America from the Paris accord is bound to spell fatal consequences for the planet as a whole and jeopardise the pursuit of sustainable development goals which are supposed to have been achieved by 2030. The New York Times in a thoughtful editorial entitled, "Our Disgraceful Exit From the Paris Accord," on June 1, 2017 wrote, "Mr Trump's ....decision to withdraw from the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change have dismayed America's allies, defied the wishes of much of the American business community he pretends to help, threatened America's competitiveness as well as job growth in crucial industries and squandered what was left of America's claim to leadership on an issue of global importance". Describing the decision to withdraw from the Paris Accord as "terrible," the editorial further added that "..it sends a clear message that this president knows nothing or cares little about the science underlying the stark warnings of environmental disruption" and "That he knows or cares little about the problems that disruption could bring, especially in poor countries".

The mistaken belief that a carbon economy would protect jobs and economy and uphold America first principle stands contrary to the well-researched results establishing a strong correlation between a cutback in carbon emissions and economic growth. Worldwide there is growing consciousness for use of cleaner fuels and energy resources to sustain the present rate of economic growth and increase it. Many measures taken in this regard have produced positive results to maintain the momentum of numerous economic activities. The USA itself has registered impressive progress and it is reported that, "carbon dioxide emissions in that country actually fell nearly 12 per cent in the last decade, even as the overall economy kept growing." In the face of such a positive correlation between reduction of Green House gases and economic growth would encourage the global community to make the Paris accord a success for the cause of the planet earth and for the cause of sustainability.

Mahatma Gandhi's prophetic words of 1930s that multiplication of wants is such an evil that if the Europeans did not remodel their lives they would die of their own comforts would come true if more energy and resources are used to multiply comforts in the false notion of clinging to the energy-intensive lifestyle. The Nicholas Stern Review Report on Economics of Climate Change observed, "Poor countries are suffering and will suffer from climate change generated in the past by consumption and growth in rich countries".

There is imperative necessity to redress this historical error by making the polluters pay. The withdrawal of the US from the Paris Accord is a negation of ethical responsibility of the polluters to address the problems they caused for the poor countries. The Time Magazine in its April 9, 2007 issue pleaded for 51 survival guides to save the planet earth for global warming. The 51st guide prescribed for sharing more, consuming less and simplifying life. In other words, a change of lifestyle and change of methods by which we pursue our activities in the planet in consonance with the values and ethics placed before the humanity by Mahatma Gandhi while fighting for our Independence. In saving the Paris Accord, we will uphold the worldview of Mahatma Gandhi which is indispensable to save planet earth.

The writer is a former OSD and Press Secretary to President K.R. Narayanan & Director in Prime Minister's Office.
Singapore, June 7

Twin brothers from India have been each jailed for five months and ordered to receive three strokes of the cane for attacking a compatriot at a dormitory in Singapore.

Lakshmanan and Raman Pothiyappan, 24, pleaded guilty to one count of causing grievous hurt to their fellow countryman and colleague, Thevvan Velayutham, 41.

The duo were each jailed for five months and ordered to receive three strokes of the cane, The Straits Times reported today.

They committed the offence at a Shaw Road dormitory near Upper Paya Lebar Road on Oct 29 last year.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Soh Weiqi said Thevvan, who is also a construction worker, was sitting in the front porch of the dormitory when the two brothers started punching and kicking him.

Lakshmanan, who had consumed alcohol shortly before the attack, also threw a chair at Thevvan and it struck his head and body.

Soh said: "Raman had informed that the victim and Lakshmanan were not on good terms, and that he had joined in the assault to support his brother."

Thevvan later went to Changi General Hospital, where he was found to have injuries, including a broken nose and a fracture near an eye.

Soh told District Judge Samuel Chua that the victim has since fully recovered from his injuries.

She urged the judge to sentence the brothers, who were unrepresented, to at least five months' jail with caning.

Before handing out the sentence yesterday, Judge Chua told the brothers: "The injuries were severe. Such offences will not be tolerated in Singapore."

For causing grievous hurt, each attacker could have been jailed for up to 10 years and fined or caned. PTI
By Press Trust of India: (EDS: Additional inputs)

New Delhi, Jun 7 (PTI) India will be admitted as a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) during the summit of the regional grouping on June 8-9 in Kazakhstan, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be present.

The prime minister is expected to hold a bilateral meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the summit at Kazakhstans capital city of Astana. However, there is no meeting scheduled between Modi and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif.

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Pakistan will also be admitted as a full member of the SCO along with India during the Astana summit.

"Indications are that the last leg of the entire process, as per the Memorandum of Obligations, which is the confirmation (of membership) by the heads of the states of the existing members of the SCO, is going to happen in Astana," G V Srinivas, joint secretary of the Eurasia division in the MEA, said.

Modi will also attend the World Expo 2017, an international exposition, in Kazakhstan.

Srinivas said that there could be a couple of more bilateral meetings between India and heads of the member states.

Apart from China, there is also the possibility of a meeting between India and Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan is the largest supplier of uranium to India.

When asked whether Modi would meet Xi on the sidelines of the SCO summit, MEA spokesperson Gopal Baglay said, "There is a possibility, but the schedule is being worked out and our missions are coordinating locally."

On Modi and Sharifs meeting, he said, "External Affairs Minister (Sushma Swaraj) has already said that there was neither any request from their side nor any such proposal from our side. There is no change in the status on this."

Srinivas said India had been an observer country at the SCO since 2005 and had applied for a full membership in 2014.

Founded in 2001, the SCO currently has six members--- China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, and is headquartered in Chinese capital of Beijing.

During Modis visit to St Petersburg earlier this month, Russian President Vladimir Putin had conveyed to India about its admission as a full member of the SCO.

Highlighting the advantages of joining the regional grouping, Srinivas said one of the aspects deals with economy, connectivity and trade, while another aspect focuses on terrorism which includes protection of classified information. He said 38 different documents have been signed by India to be a part of the body.

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On being asked that the SCO summit statement of 2015 had a reference to the Belt and Road Forum (BRF), a Chinese initiative opposed by India, the official said the aspect was not part of the 38 documents signed by India to become a member of the grouping.

The One Belt One Road (OBOR) project under the Belt and Road Forum seeks to connect China with Europe, Asia and Africa. The China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is also a part of the project.

India opposes CPEC as it passes through Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK).

India also hopes to benefit from Tashkent-based Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (RATS).

"There is little possibility of India staying out of such an exercise. We hope that as we join the RATS, we will be able to benefit from this collaboration against our fight against terrorism. They (RATS) do a series of activities, including joint exercises in fighting terrorism, maintaining a data bank of terrorists and undesirable elements etc," Srinivas said.

Responding to a query on whether or not India would be invited to participate in any anti-terror exercise alongside Pakistan and China, Baglay said, "We work with many countries, including Pakistan, as well as in UN peacekeeping operations. Terrorism is a fight which is incumbent on the entire humanity, not just countries."

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Srinivas also underlined the importance of "connectivity" after becoming a full member of the SCO.

"Connectivity for example is the prime desire for the country as we want to connect to central Asia," he said.

For better connectivity with Central Asia, the official said India has also applied for a membership of the Ashgabat agreement.

The Ashgabat agreement is a multi modal transport agreement between Oman, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Pakistan for creating an international transport and transit corridor, facilitating transportation of goods between Central Asia and the Persian Gulf.

Baglay said the SCO has member states who are neighbours to Afghanistan and it will be an institutional forum where India can engage with these nations. PTI PR SRY

--- ENDS ---
AN agitation arising from a sustained perception among farmers that the governments in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh have been inconsiderate about their issues for the past three years was met with shocking crudeness in Mandsaur district on Tuesday. At least five protesters were shot dead in two incidents as the police clashed with farmers. This was on the sixth day of the strike, which gradually took on aggressive colours, even as the governments in both states tried to work more on dividing the farmer leadership than conveying a message of genuine concern. The insensitivity and insincere dialogue have only angered and galvanised the farmers, as on Wednesday they made plans for intensifying the agitation.

Farming is a state subject, but the BJPs promise of loan waivers and 50 per cent profit over crop input costs has led to a particular expectation in the BJP-ruled states. The party leadership is now on record having said the Centre will provide no help with loan waivers and that 50 per cent profit is not possible. This has been a rather brazen going back on the word. And full-page newspaper ads, timed with the agitation, proclaiming what the Centre has done for agriculture, only seemed to mock the alarming increase in farmer suicides. This has made it very convenient for the Opposition to stoke the discontent from two years of drought followed by a crash in crop prices. But what should concern the state governments more is that there is also certain spontaneity in many unaffiliated farmers joining the strike to block food supplies to cities.

The time may have come for the Central agriculture policy to finally bite the bullet of higher crop remuneration, which will lead to an inevitable increase in food prices. This is a case of direct clash between rural and middle-class interests, something for which no government thus far has found the formula to strike a balance. The unorganised farm sector  as opposed to the industrial  has always been easier to ignore. But as exposure and communications increase, that may become more and more difficult. And snapping internet connections will not be the answer.
Sumedha Sharma

Tribune News Service

Gurugram, June 7

The police have arrested two of the three accused in the Manesar gang rape case. One of the accused was nabbed from a rented room in Bas Kushla village this morning.

The accused was identified as 20-year-old Yogender, alias Yogi, of Runsi village in Bulandshahr district of Uttar Pradesh.

His accomplice Amit, belonging to the same village, was arrested from Bulandshahr in the evening. The third accused, Jaykesh of the same village, was yet to be nabbed.

The arrests followed the victim giving a major lead to the police, which led them to Ajit Chauhan, sarpanch of her village. The sarpanch knew one of the accused and took the police to his location.

The victim told the police that the accused, while committing the crime, had told his accomplices not to worry as the local sarpanch would not let anything happen to them.

The accused fled after committing the crime on May 30. Believing that they had escaped the law, they came back on June 3 as there was no media coverage or police action.

The three accused used to drive an auto-rickshaw and tempo after taking these on rent for the past two months. They used to stay in rented accommodation on the rear of the office of the sarpanch.

While the police were probing the leads given by the victim, two of the accused contacted the sarpanch at his office and admitted that they had committed the heinous crime.

The sarpanch immediately called up the police. The cops reached the room and arrested one of the accused while the other fled.

I was in my office when two of the accused came to me around 10:30 am today. They said they had committed the crime, said Chauhan, sarpanch of Bas Kushla village.

They sought my help in saving them from the police. I called up ACP Dharmbir Singh and the police arrived within 10 minutes. This is the first time that a rape has been committed here and we are shocked, he said.

Yogender told the police that Amit, Jaykesh and he were consuming liquor on the night of May 29 when they saw the woman and her child.

He confessed that they started following her in their tempo. When she took a lift in the truck, they thought of leaving, but attacked her after she got down, he admitted.

We will nab the third accused soon and ensure speedy justice to the victim. We had already zeroed in on the accused and the sarpanchs call led us there, said Sandeep Khirwar, Commissioner of Police.
Ambika Sharma

Tribune News Service

Solan, June 7

Head Constable Rajinder Kumar had a narrow escape as gangsters fired at him as he tried to stop the Scorpio they were in at Yamuna barrier in Paonta Sahib last night.

The gangsters were entering Himachal from Uttarakhand side and later fled towards Haryana. A bullet they fired brushed past the policeman's ear.

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Sirmaur SP Souyma Sambasivan said the police had received a tip-off from the Punjab Police that seven gangsters wanted in various cases of murder and attempt to murder were travelling from Dehradun to Sirmaur in the Scorpio (PB65M 2808).

Unaware whether the gangsters were armed or not, the policeman signalled the driver of the Scorpio to stop when the vehicle arrived near Yamuna Bridge around 10.40 pm.

He directed the driver, Navjot, to alight from the vehicle and took away the keys. Two armed gangsters then alighted from the vehicle and fired at Rajinder. While two bullets were fired into the air, another narrowly missed his ear, thus injuring him.

The gangsters snatched the keys and fled towards Haryana as Rajinder alerted the SP and nakas were laid at other exit points at Behral and Nahan.

A case under Section 307 of the IPC for attempt to murder has been registered. A team of police officials, including SP Sirmaur Souyma Sambasivan and Additional SP Vinod Kumar, left for Ambala to assist in the joint operation to nab the gangsters.
Tribune News Service

Mandi, June 7

The Himachal Road Transport Corporation has resumed its Delhi-Leh bus service today which will continue till October.

After the Border Roads Organization cleared snow on the Manali-Leh road, the district administration of Lahaul-Spiti gave nod to the HTRC authorities to resume its bus service.

The arduous 1045-km journey from Delhi to Leh in the Ladakh division takes more than 30 hours. The route, which leads through four mountain passes, remains snowbound from October to June.

The bus crosses four mountain passes in Himachal and Jammu and Kashmir  Rohtang Pass (13,050 ft), Baralacha Pass (16,020 ft), Lachungla Pass (16,620 ft) and Tanglangla Pass (17,480 ft).

Sub Divisional Magistrate Sunny Sharma flagged off the bus service from Keylong.

HRTC Regional Manager, Keylong, Mangal Menapa said with the start of the bus service, tourists would be able to enjoy journey via Manali to Leh in Rs 1,380.

The bus will make an overnight halt at Keylong to leave at 5 am the next morning. Last year, the bus service was stopped in September due to early snowfall in the region.

The schedule

The bus will start from Delhi at 2:30pm, reach Chandigarh Sec 43 at 8:30pm, Kullu at 5:30 am and Keylong at 1 pm, where it will stop overnight and then start from Keylong at 5am

From Leh, the bus will start at 5 am, reach Keylong at 7 pm and stop overnight. It will then start from Keylong at 6:30 am and reach Delhi at 3:30 am

Deluxe bus from Manali to Leh from July 1

The HP Tourism Development Corporation (HPTDC) will also launch its 35-seater deluxe bus from Manali to Leh Ladakh from July 1 and tourists can book tickets online. Transport officer, Manali, Roop Lal Thakur said the one way ticket will cost Rs 2,900 between Manali and Leh-Ladakh. There would be a night halt at Keylong and the HPTDC will provide lodging facility to tourists, including dinner, during the night stay.
Kuldeep Chauhan

Tribune News Service

Shimla, June 7

The Shimla Municipal Corporation (SMC) has failed to fulfil the dream of its residents to see the countrys oldest hill town as green and clean as its Rs42 crore waste-to-energy project has failed to meet its June deadline.

Residents complain that the city stinks at many places as the SMC was yet to find a solution to the citys 96 garbage hot spots, where it faces problem to maintain its containers. One can see stray dogs and monkeys rummaging the overflowing waste bins placed on streets and garbage collection points. The hill slopes and storm water drains still present a dirty picture at many places.

It is for the first time that the SMC has started collecting and disposing of 70 to 80 tonnes of garbage that Shimla generates daily to the waste-to-energy Bharyal plant this year, said project coordinator, SMC, DP Singh.

The SMC tried its best to do away with problematic bins and imposing penalty on defaulters and they were nearing to achieve the target of making city green and clean, said outgoing Mayor, Sanjay Chauhan. The coming House would reap harvest of this sustainable model and the waste-to-energy project would consume the citys rubbish without spending a penny and produce 1.7 mw of electricity per hour, he said.

The citys garbage was being processed at a plant that had started producing refuse-derived fuel (RDF) this month. The private company, which is running the plant, has told the NGT that the project will start in the first week of July. The company is awaiting the arrival of German engineers to oversee the trial run. The NGT had directed both SMC and private operator to generate fuel. The solid waste is being segregated, shredded and dried and then it will be burnt to produce electricity.

Waste-to-energy programme
Bhanu P Lohumi

Tribune News Service

Shimla, June 7

Getting stuck in endless traffic jams in the scorching heat is a tormenting experience and the tourists visiting the Queen of Hills are undergoing this ordeal every day.

Traffic jams are a regular feature in the congested capital city but the ongoing road tarring works in the peak tourist season has made things worse. Not only the tourists but even the locals are feeling the heat. These days one can drive from Chandigarh to bypass (outskirts of Shimla) in around two-and-a-half hours but the remaining three kms can take anything from one to three hours.

Circular Road, lifeline of the city, remains blocked throughout the day despite policemen deputed there to man the movement of vehicles. There is no way to ensure smooth flow of traffic as the narrow road cannot take the increasing volume of traffic. It took us six hours to reach Shimla from Chandigarh, said Hem Kumar, who was coming back home.

Worse, the road tarring work can only be carried out during peak summer when the temperature is conducive for use of bitumen. Cold climate, particularly in the higher hills of Shimla region, is not conducive for tarring because of low ambient temperatures.

As per the data of the Tourism Department, nearly 1.84 crore tourists visited Himachal last year. The maximum tourists visit the state from April to mid July which is also the best time for metalling of roads and as such there is little scope of altering the tarring schedule to facilitate smooth running of vehicles, said a senior engineers adding: We have to achieve the targets within a limited period.

The hindrance created by road tarring work apart, the ongoing four-laning of two major National Highways  Shimla-Kalka and Kiratpur- Manali  has added to the woes of motorists who have to virtually drive through bumpy dustbowls with frequent diversions in the absence of inadequate signage. The traffic moves at a snails pace.

The KiratpurManali road was blocked near Sundernagar three days ago for nearly 20 hours and commuters had a harrowing time while traffic jams of two to three hours at several places on the Shimla- Kalka highway has become a routine affair.

No alternate routes have been carved out to ease the traffic congestion. Moreover, unchecked multi-storied buildings are coming up all over the hills, particularly along the highways, regardless of carrying capacity of hills.

The situation has become worse after the enactment of the law to regularise unauthorised constructions on as is, where is basis as even open spaces and garages have been converted into shops or habitable floors in residential areas further compounding the problems, said Lt. Gen (retired) HS Lidder.

Many feel that in spite of strong notice taken by the National Green Tribunal (NGT) and the High Court, the government instead of taking strong action to regulate constructions as per the provisions of the Town and Country Planning Act, is bringing ruinous retention policies and rewarding the willful defaulters.

Harrowing time
Samaan Lateef

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, June 7

A Hizb-ul-Mujahideen militant, Danish Farooq, who was seen at the funeral of the outfits slain commander Sabzar Bhat last month, had surrendered before the security forces, officials said on Wednesday.

Farooq of Kulangam village in north Kashmirs Handwara sub-district had joined Hizb last month after leaving his B Sc Agriculture third year at Doon PG College of Agriculture Science and Technology, Dehradun.

A militant, Danish Farooq, seen at Sabzars funeral, surrenders before the Handwara police. He is being considered under the J&K Surrendered Militants Rehabilitation Policy, a senior police official told The Tribune.

He said that a few days ago the video clips of an unidentified militant, wearing battle pouch with a grenade, were in circulation on social media. These video clips were clicked in Tral, Awantipore, by the local media during the funeral of militant commander Sabzar Bhat of Hizbul Mujahideen, he said.

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He said that during investigation the militant was identified as Danish Farooq. He was found involved in stone-pelting incidents at Handwara in 2016 turmoil. He was then picked up by the police but was let off after counselling in view of his career, police said.

He said once it was learnt that Danish had joined militancy, the Handwara police and 21 RR Army got into touch with his parents and impressed upon them to counsel their son to surrender. His parents were convinced that if he surrendered, he would be dealt with fairly under law. Efforts made by security forces yielded results and Danish surrendered before the Handwara police and 21 RR army, he said.

Police said Farooq revealed that he was in touch with militants of south Kashmir region on social media sites. It was on their instigation that he decided to become a militant. He was also tasked by Hizbul Mujahideen commanders to activate some local youth in north Kashmir and make the region as militancy infested as the south Kashmir, he said. However, after spending a few days with the militants in south Kashmir, he realised the futility of joining militant ranks, police said.

Police have registered a case under the Arms Act at Handwara police station.
Samaan Lateef

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, June 7

A militant of Hizbul Mujahideen, Danish Farooq (21), who was seen at the funeral of the outfits slain commander Sabzar Bhat last month, surrendered before security forces, officials said today.

Danish of Kulangam village in north Kashmirs Handwara sub-district had joined the Hizb last month after leaving BSc (Agriculture) at the Doon PG College of Agriculture Science and Technology, Dehradun.

A militant, Danish Farooq, seen at Sabzars funeral, surrendered before the Handwara Police. He is being considered under the J&K Surrendered Militants Rehabilitation Policy, a senior police spokesperson said.

Earlier, Mir Tufail Qadeer (18) of Srinagar surrendered before the security forces on May 30 after he announced on social media that he had joined militant ranks by posting a picture of himself in Army fatigues and holding a rifle.

DGP SP Vaid said since September last year, 32 boys, who had joined militancy, had been brought back to lead normal lives.

Danish was seen in a video, the police said, wearing a battle pouch and holding a grenade during the funeral of Sabzar in Tral.

Soon after the video was circulated on social media, the police initiated an investigation and identified him. Once it was learnt that Danish Farooq had joined militancy, the Handwara Police and Armys 21 Rashtriya Rifles got in touch with his parents and impressed upon them to counsel their son to surrender, the police said.

The police said his parents were convinced that if he surrendered, he would be dealt with fairly under the law. The security forces efforts yielded results and Danish surrendered, the police said.

The police said Danish revealed that he was in touch with militants of south Kashmir on social media sites. It was on their (militants) instigation that he decided to become a militant. He was also tasked by Hizbul Mujahideen commanders to activate some local youths in north Kashmir and make the region as militancy-infested as south Kashmir, he said.
Shyam Sood

Rajouri, June 7

Thirty-one fire incidents have been reported from the Nowshera forest division in Rajouri district in the last one month, affecting 58 hectares of forest area.

According to officials, the main reason behind the fires was cross-border shelling and firing besides the heat wave.

Though no loss of life or infrastructure has been reported, panic has gripped the people living in the areas falling in forest compartments 108, 109 113, 114, 145, 152 N.

The worst-affected villages are Narian, Djhalian, Chingus and Lamberi situated along the Jammu-Poonch national highway.

Four forest employees had a narrow escape when an unexploded mortar shell fired from across the Line of Control burst in a forest fire in a village on May 3.

In most incidents, no major loss was reported. However, there was a huge loss to mid-canopy of young chir trees due to the fire in Narian and Nonial areas, said the DFO, Nowshera forest division.

According to reports, 250 forest personnel, including fire watchers, had been deployed in 19 fire-fighting camps in the division and they had been provided with 45 special kits to control forest fires.

To spread awareness among the people, the department has been organising camps. The district administration and fire emergency services are also cooperating with forest officials to counter the incidents.

Besides taking these measures, the Range Officers have been directed to lodge FIRs against those elements found to be involved in fire incidents, said the DFO.
Tribune News Service

Jammu, June 7

The state Vigilance Organisation has booked members of the Jammu & Kashmir Medical Supplies Corporation Limited (JKMSCL) for allegedly purchasing spurious drugs and medicines on exorbitant rates without adhering to a proper procedure.

Out of the total 23 lifted samples, three samples were reported to be not of standard quality and failed.

The FIR has been registered against the then Managing Director, JKMSCL, Principal, GMC, Jammu, Senior Consultant, Government Hospital, Gandhi Nagar, Chief Account Officer of JKMSCL, Consultant (Technical Expert), Technical Expert and the supplier Theon Pharmaceutical Ltd.

According to the Vigilance spokesperson, a joint surprise check was conducted by the Vigilance Organisation into the allegations of purchase of spurious drugs or medicines on exorbitant rates during the year 2015-2016 by the government Health Department, Jammu, without following proper procedure.

During the check, records were obtained and inquires were made on the spot besides samples of various drugs or medicines were lifted from the government health stores and hospitals in Jammu district with the assistance of drug inspectors. The samples of drugs lifted from the hospitals and drug stores of the Health Department were sent to a government analyst of the Combined Drug and Food Laboratory, Jammu.

As many as 23 samples of different drugs were lifted from government hospitals and drug stores and sent to the laboratory for tests. Three samples, namely amoxicillin trihydrate IP 500 mg, sterile ceftriaxone inj IP 1000 mg and sterile ceftriaxone inj IP 500 mg, purchased by the JKMSCL, were reported to be not of standard quality and failed.

It came to the fore that these medicines were supplied by Theon Pharmaceutical Ltd  a Panchkula-based company. The supplies were received in the drug stores of different units of the Health Services in Jammu division and later distributed to the government hospitals and institutions where medicines were issued to patients and most of them consumed.

The total value of the medicines declared sub-standard was Rs 36.27 lakh, which amounts to direct loss to the government exchequer as well as hazard to public health. The value of medicines left unconsumed and seized by the drug control organisation was Rs 1.16 lakh.

The JKMSCL also purchased drugs from Denis Chem Lab Ltd, a Gujarat-based firm which was blacklisted by the Rajasthan government in 2012. Moreover, the purchase committee which approved the instant purchases did not have the mandate to approve the purchase due to lack of quorum.

According to the rules, the attendance of two-third members of the purchase committee is mandatory for decision. In the present case only four members, including the chairman, attended the meeting of the purchase committee. Rest of the officials who attended the meeting were not members of the purchase committee as per the government order. The MD, JKMSCL, in this case also misused his official position and imposed his arbitrary decision of approval of purchase to provide illegal benefit to the suppliers.

Samples fail test

As many as 23 samples of different drugs were lifted from government hospitals and drug stores and sent to the laboratory for tests. Three samples, namely amoxicillin trihydrate IP 500 mg, sterile ceftriaxone inj IP 1000 mg and sterile ceftriaxone inj IP 500 mg, purchased by the Jammu & Kashmir Medical Supplies Corporation Limited, were reported to be not of standard quality and failed.
State broadcaster IRIB reported that the shooting incident at the Iranian parliament is over and all four assailants are now dead.

Security personnel take position in front of Iran's parliament building after an assault by several attackers, in Tehran, Iran. (Photo: AP)

By India Today Web Desk: The Islamic State group claimed a pair of attacks today on Iran's parliament and the shrine of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, which have killed at least 12 people and wounded more than 40 people.

State broadcaster IRIB reported that the shooting incident at the Iranian parliament is over and all four assailants are now dead.

"The security forces are checking for bombs and clearing the building," IRIB said.

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It marks the first attack in Iran claimed by the extremist group, which is at war with Iranian-backed forces in Syria and Iraq. In a message posted through its Aamaq News Agency, the IS group claimed its fighters were behind the assaults.

Islamic State has also published a video showing gunmen in Iranian parliament. Gunman in video can be heard saying "thank God... do you think we will go away?"

The attacks began midmorning when assailants armed with Kalashnikov rifles stormed the parliament building. One of the attackers later blew himself up inside, where a session had been in progress, according to a statement carried by Iran's state TV.

Deputy Interior Minister Mohammad Hossein Zolfaghari told Iran's state TV the apparently male attackers wore women's attire.

First statement from the Iran Intelligence Agency:

The Iranian intelligence ministry announced that three terrorist teams attempted to launch attacks in different parts of Tehran on Wednesday, adding that members of a terrorist group were arrested.

The director-general of the intelligence ministry for anti-terrorism operations said that members of a terrorist team were arrested in Tehran on Wednesday before taking any action.

The intelligence ministry also announced that the Wednesday shootings and bombings in the parliament and the holy shrine of Imam Khomeini were targeted by the terrorist attacks.

Several assailants raided the holy shrine of the late founder of the Islamic Republic, Imam Khomeini, South of the capital Tehran on Wednesday morning, killing one and wounding several people in a bomb attack and a shooting spree.

Also, four unknown male assailants fired several rounds at the guards protecting the parliament building in Tehran, killing four and wounding over 10 people on Wednesday morning.

Daesh has claimed responsibility of the attack.

"MINOR ATTACK"

Iran's Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani said, "Wednesday's terrorist shooting inside parliament was a 'minor incident' and security forces are fully capable of handling the 'cowardly attackers'."

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Ali Larijani, who chaired today's open session of parliament despite ongoing attacks behind closed doors, said the attack indicates that terrorists are seeking to create problems for Iran.

"Iran is an active and effective hub for combating terrorism, and terrorists wish to undermine such activities," he said.

An Associated Press reporter saw several police snipers on the rooftops of buildings around the parliament. Shops in the area were shuttered, and gunfire could be heard. Witnesses said the attackers were shooting from the fourth floor of the parliament building down at people in the streets below.

EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT

"I was passing by one of the streets. I thought that children were playing with fireworks, but I realised people are hiding and lying down on the streets," Ebrahim Ghanimi, who was around the parliament building when the assailants stormed in, told The Associated Press. "With the help of a taxi driver, I reached a nearby alley."

Police helicopters circled over the parliament building and all mobile phone lines from inside were disconnected. The semi-official ISNA news agency said all entrance and exit gates at parliament were closed and that lawmakers and reporters were ordered to remain in place inside the chamber.

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Soon after the parliament attack, a suicide bomber and other assailants targeted the shrine located just outside the capital, Tehran, according to Iran's official state broadcaster. It said a security guard was killed and that one of the attackers was killed by security guards. A woman was also arrested.

In addition to being lethal, the attack on the shrine of Khomeini is symbolically stunning. As Iran's first Supreme Leader, Khomeini is a towering figure in the country and was its revolutionary leader in the 1979 ouster of the shah.

An Associated Press reporter saw security forces, some uniformed and others in plain clothes, around the large and ornate shrine.

The IS group often claims attacks around the world, even when links to the group cannot be confirmed and appear dubious. Iranian security officials have not said who they suspect is behind the attacks, though state media has referred to the attackers as "terrorists".

Sunni extremists, including the IS, despise Shiite-majority Iran. Iran has also come under attack in the past by Arab insurgents.

The unusual attacks in Iran prompted the Interior Ministry to call for an urgent security meeting, according to the state-run IRNA news agency. Officials urged people to avoid using public transportation until further notice.

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IS published a rare video in Persian in March, warning that it "will conquer Iran and restore it to the Sunni Muslim nation as it was before."

IS and other extremists consider Shiites to be apostates, and the video accuses Iranians of persecuting Sunnis over the centuries and into modern times.

(With inputs from agencies)

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UK Parliament attack: 5 dead, nearly 40 injured; All you need to know

ISIS claims British parliament attack; 8 arrested in UK raids

--- ENDS ---
Srinagar, June 7

Several policemen were injured in clashes between them and student protesters during protests against death of a youth in Tuesdays anti- militancy operation in Shopian district, police said on Wednesday.

Students of Islamic University of Science and Technology (IUST) at Awantipora and Higher Secondary School Pampore in Pulwama district boycotted classes and took to streets against the killing of Adil Farooq Magray.

Magray, a student, had died during a clash between protestors and security forces in Shopian district last evening.

"The students, both girls and boys, pelted stones on the forces and blocked (Srinagar-Jammu) national highway. To maintain peace security forces deployed in the area dispersed them with maximum restrain," a police spokesman said.

He claimed several policemen were injured in Namblabal in Pampore and University Road in Awantipora.

"The situation was brought under control and the highway was kept open for vehicular movement," the spokesman said.

Shopian and Pulwama districts observed total shutdown to protest Magrays death. Clashes between security forces and students were also reported from Handwara town in Kupwara district of north Kashmir and Pulwama town. No civilian has been injured in the clashes, police said.  PTI
Nonika Singh

Creativity is a lifestyle, a habit and not something that can be forced on ones being. So believes the scholar, academician and author Dr SS Bhatti, former principal of Chandigarh College of Architecture. Only the man doesnt utter this as euphemism or to create an impression. Rather, he practises what he says.

The author writes on a daily basis, has dozens of books to his credit (several are in the pipeline too). He has browsed through many disciplines and post-retirement, he has the unusual distinction of two PhDs to his credit! One is on Golden Temple and the other on Japji Sahib.

Golden route

Piqued by the observations of other architects who felt that Golden Temple architecture is a borrowed one, he decided to delve deep and studied architecture of several religions to establish how Sikh architecture is an independent style. In the process, he discovered so many cardinal principles that are unique to this marvel of Sikh architecture, usually dismissed as a rehash of then prevalent styles. Historians can tell a story but have no idea whatsoever as to what has gone into the making of what they are writing about. Since humility defines Sikh ethos, he reminds how the structure of Golden Temple has been conceived on a low-lying site in consonance with its guiding principle - to identify with the most downtrodden.

Says this author of Golden Temple: Marvel of Architecture: Look at temples, all go upwards, as if reaching out to the heaven. Golden Temple echoes what Guru Nanak said: Neecha Andar Neech Jaat Neechi Hu At Neech Nanak Tin Kai Sang Saath Vadian Sio Kia Rees, which roughly translates into how Guru Nanak Dev identified with the most marginalised and not the highborn. Besides, built around what was once a chappar, it is a testimony to biodiversity and conservation of environment.

Man of many seasons

From fathoming architecture of buildings to mastering architectonics of poetry, Bhatti is a man of many mediums and many disciplines. A painter and a poet, his latest book illustrates his paintings as well is a compilation of poems. His love for poetry too was born in as curious a manner. His wife was away to her parents place and he had nothing better to do. Presto, he picked the pen and poems flowed. He, however, elucidates that his paintings are not an illustration of his poetry. For creativity has the limits of its own medium and visuals cant be translated into words and vice-versa.

For someone who claims to have written on a whole range of subjects, as diverse as religion, spirituality, science and architecture, he is also relooking at Indian heritage. In Recovery of India, he turns the established concepts on the head, yet reinforces pride in many things traditionally Indian. Though new-gen spiritual gurus are his pet peeve, there is much that he upholds, only if we read it all correctly. So he pens Darpan hai kaaynat ka Bharat kahein jisse, Gaflat galeez rukh se bhala kya dikha sakegi (India is the mirror of cosmos, but with ignorance tainted eyes how can we see its beauty.).

Truly inspirational

Lesser mortals might seek agitators in the ambience around them to touch base with creativity, but Bhatti deems, Inspiration is a gift, ingrained within us. And with this God-given ability he continues to explore Rabindranath Tagores writing and Guru Nanak Devs teaching, among others. Guru Nanak, anyway, he hails as the only prophet who demonstrated by his own personal lifestyle and who understood the true meaning of meditation and how spiritual journey can only be undertaken when one is young and restless.

Never mind the age, Bhatti, however, refuses to tire or retire. Talking about turia state which he thinks Guru Arjan Dev achieved when he sat on a hot plate and uttered Tera kiya meetha laage, Bhatti himself is forever inspired. He sees, examines and decodes.

nonikasingh@tribunemail.com
Balaghat (MP), June 7

Twenty workers were charred to death and 10 others were injured, two of them critically, in a fire at a cracker factory in Kheri village in Balaghat district this afternoon, an official said.

The blaze started around 3 pm in the factory located around 10 km from the district headquarters in the Kotwali police station limits, Additional Director-General of Police (Balaghat range) G Janardhan said.

Twenty workers were killed in the fire and 10 others sustained injuries. Of the injured, eight have been rushed to Nagpur (in Maharashtra) for treatment, while two are being treated at a hospital in the district, he added.

The condition of two of the eight injured, referred to Nagpur, is critical, the official said.

Meanwhile, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan announced a compensation of Rs 2 lakh each to the next kin of the deceased. The state government would also bear the medical expenses of the injured.

According to Balaghat district collector Bharat Yadav, the cracker factory was owned by one Waris Ahmed and was being run legally.

He added that the victims were workers of the factory and the incident took place when the production was on.

According to Yadav, the blaze has been completely doused and the rescue operation has also got over.

Exactly what triggered the fire is yet be known. It is possible that someone might have thrown a burning beedi, he said.

Yadav said the factory was located away from the human settlement. PTI
Bhopal, June 7

With farmers in western Madhya Pradesh, especially Mandsaur and Dewas districts, today resorting to arson, the Centre rushed 1,100 anti-riot police personnel to be deployed in Ujjain, Dewas, Mandsaur, Neemuch and Sehore districts even as CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan announced a compensation of Rs 1 crore each for the families of the deceased.

Edit: A shot in the foot

This, however, failed to mollify the protesters who are demanding better prices for their produce and a loan waiver. The BJP government also announced a loan-settlement scheme covering six lakh farmers.

In New Delhi, PM Narendra Modi, who has promised to double farmers income by the end of his first term in 2019, met Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari.

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In Mandsaur, District Magistrate Swatantra Kumar Singh and Indore Superintendent of Police OP Tripathi were roughed up when they reached Barkheda Pant where farmers were squatting with the body of one of the farmers killed on Tuesday. Also, shops in Suasara town in the district were torched.

Inspector Shyambabu Sharma of the Suasara police station received head injuries when the police tried to tackle a mob throwing stones. A warehouse was set ablaze in Badi Choupati area and the Mhow-Neemuch highway was blocked for hours.

In Dewas district, protesters set on fire four passenger buses running between Indore and Bhopal and eight other vehicles. A mob torched vehicles parked outside a police station in the district.

Shops and offices in Neemuch district adjoining Mandsaur also remained shut. A police outpost in Harkiya Khal Phanta area was set ablaze.

In Ujjain district,10 policemen, including an inspector, were injured in stone-pelting.

Protesters threw vegetables and fruit on roads in Sanwer and Simrol areas of Indore and emptied milk containers.

In Khargone district, Bharatiya Kisan Sangh workers burnt an effigy of the state Home Minister. In Sehore district, the car of Additional Collector of Barwani was attacked with stones. Incidents of violence was also reported from Dhar.

Congress legal cell chairman and Rajya Sabha member Vivek Tankha has announced legal aid for the 450-odd farmers booked in false cases.

Farmers in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra have been protesting since June 1, complaining that their incomes have not risen, despite a steady hike in agricultural output. Demands for loan waiver have gained momentum after the Uttar Pradesh Government of Yogi Adityanath waived off Rs 36,400 crore worth of farmers debt.  Agencies
Tribune News Service

New Delhi/mumbai, June 7

Accusing the BJP of abandoning the cause of farmers from Maharashtra to Madhya Pradesh, the Congress today asked the ruling party if it was at war with the sons of the soil.

Trashing BJPs accusation of Congress fuelling the MP agitation, party spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi said, We will not dignify this remark with a comment. The Congress said since the BJP had come to power at the Centre, farmers had been committing suicide with the situation in Maharashtra being the worst.

The Congress questioned the MP Governments denial at first that a fire was even opened.

Six farmers lost their lives, but what was insulting was the ostrich in the sand like denial that there was no firing at all. But, now Home Minister of Madhya Pradesh accepts that the police did fire on the farmers, Singhvi said.

Meanwhile, addressing the media in Nagpur, Congress MP Vijayendra Singla said the government failed to honour the two big promises it made to Maharashtra farmers: Complete waiver of farm debt and minimum support price that is 50 per cent above cost of production.
Ajay Banerjee and Bijay Shankar Bora

Tribune News Service

New Delhi/Guwahati, June 7

A Major of the Indian Army was killed while three jawans were injured in an encounter with members of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN-K) and ULFA at interior Lappa in Nagaland's Mon district, which shares its borders with Myanmar to the south-east, on Tuesday night.

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Three militants were also killed in the encounter.

The encounter occurred at Lappa, close to the Assam-Nagaland as well as the Indo-Myanmar border and about 33 km from Nagalands capital Kohima. The Army team of the 12 Para raided Lappa at around 12.30 am following information that NSCN(K) cadres were moving through that area and an encounter ensued.

Kohima-based Defence spokesman Colonel Chiranjeet Konwer said that the Army officer who was killed was identified as Major David Manlun, an officer of the 164 Brigade of the Territorial Army who was leading the operations. His body was flown to his home in Shillong on Wednesday.

One civilian was killed in the crossfire. He is yet to be identified.

The encounter took place when a team of jawans led by Major David Manlun had gone to Lappa, a remote area in Mon district close to the Assam-Nagaland boundary on the basis of specific information about the presence of a group of NSCN (K) and ULFA (I) militants in the area. Even as the Army team launched the search operation, the militants lobbed a grenade and fired at the Army men that resulted in death of the Major, Colonel Konwer said over the phone from Kohima.

The Army found one AK-56 assault rifle and two Chinese-make AK series rifles, two grenades, three IEDs and 270 live rounds of AK-series ammunition.
Ajay Banerjee

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, June 7

China could set up a military base in Pakistan, warns a report of the US Department of Defence released on Wednesday by the Pentagon in the US.

Titled Annual report to the Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the Peoples Republic of China 2017, it says China, most likely, will seek to establish additional military bases in countries with which it has a long-standing friendly relationship and similar strategic interests, such as Pakistan. The US report said Pakistan had a precedent for hosting foreign militaries.

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The report did not specify what kind of base China could have in Pakistan. The China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has the provision of making a huge port at Gawadarsome 100 miles west of Karachi. Chinese submarines have used the Pakistan Navys facilities at Karachi to dock and refuel.

In another India-related aspect, the report says the focus areas of the Peoples Liberation Army include Chinas borders with India and North Korea, East China Sea, the South China Sea. India has un-demarcated 3,488 km long Line of Actual (LAC) which is deemed to be the boundary with China.

In February 2016, Beijing started construction of first overseas military base at Djibouti on the north-eastern African Coast. China will use a mixture of military logistics models, including preferred access to overseas commercial ports to locate its military logistics.

The report hinted at how China was also supplying submarines to Indias neighbours. Last year, China signed an agreement with Pakistan for the sale of eight submarines. The first four will be built in China, with the remaining four in Pakistan, the 106-page report said. It listed Bangladesh and Burmaboth Indias neighboursas the other customers of China.

The US report talks about Chinas military reforms started in February 2016 saying these seek to enhance the Peoples Liberation Armys (PLA) ability to conduct joint operations; improve its ability to fight short-duration and high-intensity regional conflicts at greater distances from the Chinese mainland.

The PLA, which is the biggest standing Army in the world, established five regionally-based joint theatres, replacing the decades-old ground force-dominated seven military regions (MRs).

China has leveraged its growing power to assert its sovereignty claims over features in the East and South China Seas. China has used coercive tactics, such as the use of law-enforcement vessels and its maritime militia, to enforce maritime claims and advance its interests.

The United States, the report said, would continue to monitor Chinas military modernisation, and it would continue to adapt its forces, posture, investments, and operational concepts to ensure that the United States retained the ability to defend its homeland, deter aggression, and protect its allies and partners.
Ajay Banerjee

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, June 7

China could set up a military base in Pakistan and it has capabilities to launch precision strikes at distances of 10,000 km or more with its road-mobile nuclear missiles, warns a report of the US Department of Defence released today by the Pentagon in the US.

Titled Annual report to the Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the Peoples Republic of China 2017, it says: China, most likely, will seek to establish additional military bases in countries with which it has a longstanding friendly relationship and similar strategic interests, such as Pakistan.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

The US report said Pakistan had a precedent for hosting foreign militaries. It did not specify what kind of base could China have in Pakistan  a seaport or a land-based port. The China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has the provision of making a huge port at Gawadar  some 100 miles west of Karachi. Chinese submarines have used the Pakistan Navys facilities at Karachi to dock and refuel.

In another India-related aspect, the report says the focus areas of the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) include Chinas borders with India and North Korea, East China Sea, the South China Sea. India has un-demarcated 3,488-km-long Line of Actual Control (LAC) which is deemed to be the boundary with China.

In February 2016, Beijing started construction of first overseas military base at Djibouti on the north-eastern African Coast. The report hinted at how China was also supplying submarines to Indias neighbours. Last year, China signed an agreement with Pakistan for the sale of eight submarines. The first four will be built in China, with the remaining four in Pakistan, the 106-page report said. It listed Bangladesh and Burma  both Indias neighbours  as the other customers of China.

The US report talks about Chinas military reforms started in February 2016, saying: These seek to enhance the PLAs ability to conduct joint operations; improve its ability to fight short-duration and high-intensity regional conflicts at greater distances from the Chinese mainland.

The PLA, which is biggest standing Army in the world, established five regionally based joint theaters, replacing the decades-old ground force-dominated seven military regions (MR). PLA reforms appear to have oriented each new theatre command towards a specific set of contingencies, said the report. India faces the PLAs Western theatre and also the Tibet Area command.

The PLA Navy places a high priority on the modernisation of its submarine force. It currently possesses five nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSN), four nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBN), and 54 diesel-powered attack submarines (SS). By 2020, this force is likely to grow to anywhere between 69 and 78 submarines.
Shiv Kumar

Tribune News Service

Mumbai, June 7

The Congress on Wednesday raised the issue of farmers protests in Maharashtra as part of its programme to expose the Narendra Modi government on its third anniversary.

Addressing the media in Nagpur, Congress spokesperson and Punjab MLA Vijay Inder Singla said the government failed to honour the two big promises it made to Maharashtra farmers  complete waiver of farm debt and implementing minimum support price that is 50 per cent above cost of production.

Agrarian distress has gotten worse in Maharashtra where 639 farmers have committed suicide in the last three months alone, Singla said.

He added that the Modi government has worsened the situation for farmers by banning the trade in old and unproductive cattle.

The leather and meat industry account for 2.2 crore jobs. They have banned this industry today but tomorrow they can ban fisheries and poultry industries as well, Singla added.

He pointed out that meat accounted for 20 per cent of Indias exports.

The Congress leader claimed that the central government was also encroaching on the rights of the state by regulating trade in cattle in the name of Prevention of Cruelty against Animals act.

Pointing out other failings of the Modi government, Singla said the BJP government had collected Rs 1,32,649 crore as education cess for higher education but has nothing to show for this.

Instead the government has actually reduced the budget for the University Grants Commission from Rs 9,315 crore in 2015 -16 to to 4,286 crore in 2016-17, he alleged. Singla said, UGC reduced funding of universities from 100 per cent to 70 per cent.

As a result all new courses introduced by universities are to be self-financed and the burden of hiked fees would be shifted to the poor and weaker sections of the society, he said.

Singla pointed out that in premier institutes such as IIT, IIM, NIT  6,000 seats are lying vacant while in the Delhi University alone, 7000 seats are lying vacant.

He added that the autonomy of 530 central and state universities have been compromised by being forced to follow a common syllabus whereas private institutions continue to have this autonomy.

Singla pointed out that the government has cut the number of M.Phil and Phd seats in JNU, Gujarat Central University and other institutes by 84 per cent.

He added that the government failed to implement any education policy in the three years in office.

The Congress further said the Modi government has failed in the law and order front as well.

According to the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB), crimes against women and children have gone up over the past three years of the BJP government. Kidnapping and abduction of women has increased from 51,881 in 2013 to 59,277 in 2015, he said.
Shiv Kumar

Tribune News Service

Mumbai, June 7

Representatives of farmers organisations will hold a mega meet in Nashik tomorrow to plan their next course of action.

According to the Kisan Kranti Morcha, the apex body of farmers in the state, the meeting will be attended by farm leaders from Vidarbha and other districts who so far have not participated in the seven-day strike by agriculturists.

We will meet and decide on our future strategy, Chandrakant Bankar, a farm leader said.

Several farmers organisations led by political leaders have announced that they will participate in the strategy session.

Shetkari Sanghatana, farmers body founded by late Sharad Joshi, and Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatana headed by MP Raju Shetti, apart from several leaders who have joined the Shiv Sena are expected to participate in the meet.

The striking farmers scored a victory when some owners of milk tankers extended support to the strike. According to sources at cooperative societies in Kolhapur, milk supply to Mumbai, Pune and other cities would be hit due to tanker owners strike.

However, the Devendra Fadnavis government has announced that it will supply milk from Gujarat by train to Mumbai, Thane and Navi Mumbai. At many places in Mumbai, milk from local dairies has been replaced by Amul milk from Gujarat on retailers shelves.

The state government has also promulgated prohibitory orders in and around Nashik city under which assembly of five or more persons has been banned. It is still not clear whether the government will allow the core committee of farmers to hold its meeting in Nashik tomorrow.

For the first time, the Maharashtra police have filed charges against Shiv Sena leaders who are participating in the farmers strike further straining the relationship between the two allies.

Meanwhile, Union Minister Venkaiah Naidu said on Tuesday the Centre would not provide any assistance to state governments for loan waivers. In Uttar Pradesh and even Andhra Pradesh, costs of waivers are being borne by the state governments. There is no assistance from the Central government, Naidu said.
The head of the anti-terrorism department in the Iranian Intelligence Ministry said they have foiled another terrorist plot and have arrested 'a terrorist team.'

Moment when a suicide bomber detonates himself in areas near mausoleum of Imam Khomeini in southern Tehran. Pic: Tasnim News Agency

By Hamza Ameer: Islamic State claimed responsibility for attacks on Iran's parliament and Ayatollah Khomeini's shrine today, the group's state news agency AMAQ said.

"Fighters from Islamic state attacked Khomeini's shrine and the Iranian parliament in Tehran," the news agency said.

The head of the anti-terrorism department in the Iranian Intelligence Ministry said they have foiled another terrorist plot and have arrested "a terrorist team", state broadcaster IRIB reported.

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Iran's intelligence ministry has also asked people to avoid public transport, according to IRIB.

Armed men launched two attacks in Iran today morning, killing a guard at the parliament in central Tehran and wounding several people at the Mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini a few kilometres south of the city, state media reported.

Lawmaker Elias Hazrati told state television three assailants, one with a pistol and two with AK-47 assault rifles, raided parliament.

Another lawmaker said one of the assailants was surrounded by security forces and all the doors to the building had been closed, ISNA news agency reported.

"I was inside the parliament when shooting happened. Everyone was shocked and scared. I saw two men shooting randomly," said one journalist at the scene, who asked not to be named.

Around half an hour later, an armed man opened fire at the Mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini and wounded a number of people, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.

State news agency IRNA quoted an official at the mausoleum as saying that the attacker had blown himself up after shooting at people. The identity and the motivation of the assailant was still unclear, Tasnim said.

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini launched the Islamic revolution in 1979.

The photo released by Jamaran News shows the moment of a blast at the western entrance of the Imam Khomeini Mausoleum, southern Tehran, June 7.

WHAT WE KNOW SO FAR

Gunman in video heard saying "thank God... do you think we will go away?"

Islamic State publishes video showing gunmen in Iranian parliament.

Daesh or ISIS has claimed responsibility of the attack in Iran.

Reports suggest another suicide bomber blowing himself up in the Mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini.

One of the attackers blew himself up in the 4th floor of the parliament office.

Two attackers arrested in surrounding areas of Imam Khomeini mausoleum.

Sources in the parliament told reporters that the terrorist attack has killed seven people so far, while 4 others are being held hostage on the top floors of the building. Security sources have not still confirmed the news.

The lawmakers have been locked in the parliament's hall.

Shooting seems to have ended, but the assailants have not been arrested so far.

Four security guards have been shot in the incident, while one of them have lost his life.

The attack has been carried out by three gunmen, who are still inside the parliament building. Two of them are armed with AK-47 assault rifles, and the third one has a handgun.

The four injured at the parliament included two ordinary clients, a service staffer, and the security guard, who is said to have died.

One of the attackers who targeted Khomeini's tomb was a woman. She blew herself at the famous shrine, says reports from local media.

Another attacker at the Khomeini shrine dead. Reports say he killed himself by consuming cyanide.

Rapporteur of the Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Hossein Naqavi Hosseini told Tasnim that gunfire still continues, but the security forces have the situation under control.

Mehdi Kiayee, the head of public relations department of the parliament said that an open session of the parliament is being held in normal conditions.

All roads to the Parliament in downtown Tehran have been closed.

Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli told reporters that an emergency session of the Tehran Province Security Council is going to be held. He declined to provide more details.

One of the gunmen who had gotten out of the parliament building had to go back inside after facing a police blockade. Terrorists are now firing shots to the Parliament's outside periphery.

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There is ongoing unrest around the parliament. pic.twitter.com/jV8hLJELb6 Thomas Erdbrink (@ThomasErdbrink) June 7, 2017

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--- ENDS ---
Bhopal, June 7

Widespread violence, including several incidents of arson, was reported from western Madhya Pradesh, especially Mandsaur and Dewas districts, on the seventh day of farmers agitation on Wednesday.

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The Centre rushed 1,100 anti-riots police personnel to Mandsaur district where five persons were killed on Tuesday allegedly in police firing.

Though the Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan announced a compensation of Rs 1 crore each for the families of five farmers, it didnt seem to have mollified the protesters who are demanding better prices for their produce and a complete farm loan waiver.

Read: MP farmer stir leaves 5 dead



It's a farmers' movement in Maharashtra, not a strike, writes Yogendra Yadav

The BJP government also announced a loan settlement scheme which it said will cover around six lakh farmers with accumulated dues of Rs 6,000 crore.

The government is contemplating a formula wherein it may waive interest on crop loans. Also, an Agricultural Costs and Marketing Commission to ensure better prices for farm produce would be set up, minister Archana Chitnis said after attending a meeting chaired by Chief Minister Chouhan.

The bandh called by the main Opposition Congress received a mixed response.

Curfew remained in force at Pipaliya Mandi area, where five farmers were killed and six others were injured yesterday, and in Mandsaur town. Prohibitory orders under Section 144 of CrPC are still on in place in rest of the district, Inspector General of Police V Madhukumar said.

The six injured persons were out of danger while the slain farmers were cremated, Madhukumar told PTI.

Tension prevailed in Mandsaur town again today, where all business establishments and offices remained closed.

Police detained the former Mandsaur MP Meenakshi Natrajan, who was not allowed to enter the district to meet families of the slain farmers.

Mandsaur collector S K Singh was heckled when he tried to persuade protesters to lift road blockade in Berheda Pant area.

Shops were torched in Suasara town in the district.

Inspector Shyambabu Sharma of Suasara police station received head injuries when the police were trying to bring under control a mob which was throwing stones at Guratiya Pratap square.

A warehouse was set ablaze in Badi Choupati area and Mhow-Neemuch highway was blocked for hours in Mandsaur.

In Dewas district, protesters threw stones and set on fire four passenger buses running between Indore-Bhopal and eight other vehicles in Newari Fata area. Passengers in the buses got down and were safe, but Indore-Bhopal bus services were suspended.

A mob also torched vehicles parked outside the Hat Pipaliya police station in Dewas district.

Protesting Congress workers stopped a train in Dewas.

Shops and offices in Neemuch district adjoining Mandsaur also remained shut. Protesters set on fire a police outpost in Harkiya Khal Phanta area.

In Ujjain district, around 10 policemen, including Mahal Kal police stations inspector Ajeet Tiwari, were injured in stone pelting.

Protesters threw vegetables and fruits on road in Sanwer and Simrol areas of Indore and emptied milk containers.

In Khargone district, Bharatiya Kisan Sangh workers led by Gopal Patidar burnt an effigy of state Home Minister Bhupendra Singh in protest of alleged police firing in Mandsaur.

In Sehore district, car of Additional Collector of Barwani district Jayendra Kumar was pelted with stones.

Protesters blocked the Indore-Bhopal highway at Ashta.

Violence was also reported from Dhar, while other areas of the state remained peaceful.

Congress legal cell chairman and Rajya Sabha member Vivek Tankha announced that the party would extend legal help to 450-odd farmers against whom false cases have been registered during the agitation. PTI
Bijay Sankar Bora

Tribune News Service

Guwahati, June 7

An Army officer and three militants were killed during a gunbattle in interior Lappa of Mon district in Nagaland last night. A civilian was also killed in the fire exchange.

Kohima-based Defence spokesman Col Chiranjeet Konwer identified the slain officer as Major David Manlun of Territorial Armys 164 Brigade. While the officer belongs to Manipur, his body was taken to Shillong where his family lives.

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The bodies of the militants, who belonged to a combined group of the banned ULFA (Independent) and NSCN (Khaplang), were handed over to the police.

Col Konwer said the identity of the civilian was yet to be ascertained.

Lappa is located close to the Assam-Nagaland border, about 330 km from state capital Kohima.

The encounter took place when a team led by Maj Manlun went to Lappa following specific information on the presence of a group of militants in the area.

During a search, the militants lobbed a grenade and fired at the Army men, killing the Major.

The Army later found an AK-56 assault rifle, two Chinese AK series rifles, two grenades, three IEDs and 270 live rounds of AK series at the encounter site.
New Delhi, June 7

There were no raids on NDTV with the CBI not entering any office of the channel, Union Information and Broadcasting Minister M Venkaiah Naidu said on Wednesday while dismissing allegations that the searches were an infringement on press freedom.

The Central Bureau of Investigations raids on the properties of NDTV founder Prannoy Roy on June 5 on allegations of bank fraud had drawn criticism from several political parties as well journalist groups such as the Editors Guild of India, Press Club of India and All India Newspaper Editors Conference.

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There is no raid on NDTV. The CBI has not entered the premises of the newsroom or TV studio or any other related offices of the media channel. The management and promoters have to stand scrutiny and answer to the people instead of blocking it and then making allegations, Naidu said on the sidelines of a function here.

Rubbishing claims of a vendetta against the channel, Naidu said the promoters of NDTV, Prannoy and Radhika Roy, should submit to due process of the law as there were questions on their operations that needed disclosures.

Those disclosures will be inquired into, the minister said, indicating that the troubles for the channel were unlikely to end soon.

Naidu said the media house could not presume itself to be above the law. This is especially true when ownership of most media today is defined by a vertiginous web of cross-holding involving corporate and entities for whom media is not a primary business, he said.

The CBI had in a statement earlier cited a Supreme Court order of 2016 to assert that the agency had jurisdiction to take up investigation of cases of corruption concerning private banks as well.

It also refuted the charge that its move against the news channel was an infringement of freedom of speech, emphasising that searches carried out in the basis of warrants issued by court covered only the premises and offices of promoters.

Lashing out at the Congress for alleging that the government was misusing the CBI, Naidu said, I am surprised that the Congress is talking about the misuse of the CBI. My PM was grilled for eight hours when he was Gujarat CM during the UPA government and our party president was foisted with a false case and spent time in jail. Now these people are talking about misusing the CBI.

The minister was referring to Narendra Modi being grilled in 2010 by a Supreme Court-appointed probe panel over his alleged complicity in not doing enough to stop the 2002 communal riots in Gujarat and Amit Shahs stint in jail in the same year in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case. PTI
Simran Sodhi

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, June 7

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will tomorrow head to Astana to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) meet.

India and Pakistan both will be admitted as full members into the SCO, paving the way for India to strengthen ties with Central Asia.

Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will also be attending the summit to be held on June 8 and 9, but India has said there is no meeting planned between Modi and Sharif on the sidelines of the SCO. However, speculation continues that if not a scheduled meet, a pull aside between the two leaders remains a possibility.

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Chinese President Xi Jinping will also be present at the summit and there are indications of a bilateral meet between Modi and Xi. The meet will also give Modi an opportunity to raise the issue of Indias membership bid to enter the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) and Chinas objections to that.

I look forward to deepening Indias association with the SCO which will help us in economic, connectivity and counter- terrorism cooperation, among other things, Modi said in his pre-departure statement.
Mukesh Ranjan

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, June 7

Presidential elections will be held on July 17, the Election Commission of India announced on Wednesday.

Announcing the schedule for elections, the commission said that it wanted the voting process to be completed before the incumbent President, Pranab Mukherjee, completes his tenure on July 24.

Votes will be counted on July 20.

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The commission also warned parties against issuing whips regarding the elections.

Video: Excerpts from ECI's Presser announcing the schedule of #PresidentialElection pic.twitter.com/jmIzP2WNMw  PIB India (@PIB_India) June 7, 2017

Election will take place through secret ballot.

Important dates

Date of EC notification: June 14.

Last date of nomination: June 28.

Scrutiny: June 29.

Withdrawing nominations: July 1.

Polling: July 17.

Counting July 20. Polling from 10 am to 5 pm.
Jitendra K Shrivastava

Tribune News Service

Ranchi, June 7

Seven armed men looted a branch of Vananchal Gramin Bank and decamped with Rs 10 lakh from there at Chhatarpur in Palamu district of Jharkhand on Wednesday.

The masked men reportedly entered the branch soon after it opened in the morning. After looting the money at gun point they are said to have fled towards Aurangabad district in Bihar.

Palamu Superintendent of Police Inderjeet Mahatha said, Seven criminals with arms reached the bank on three bikes and looted the money around 11 am. They took bank officials hostage before decamping with the cash.

The Chhatarpur branch of Vananchal Gramin Bank was without any security guard, while the CCTV camera was also missing. Police have been conducting raids to nab the culprits, the SP said.
Sitapur, June 7

Three members of a family in Uttar Pradeshs Sitapur were shot dead by unknown men in an apparent robbery attempt late last night.

#WATCH: Trader shot dead in Sitapur, along with his son and wife, last night; assailants fled with cash. (CCTV) pic.twitter.com/Q4pr0DfOyO  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) June 7, 2017

60-year-old Suneel Jaiswal and his wife Kamini had reached home late night in posh civil lines area from his store, when two men shot them at point blank range. Their son, 25-year-old, Hrithik opened the door and was also shot.

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Another resident from their locality tried to intervene. He too was shot but survived and called the police.

The police had reached the house overnight but no arrests have been made so far.

He said the crime branch is investigating the matter and CCTV footage of the incident could help in nabbing the culprits.

Reportedly, the residents of the locality alleged that when the crime was taking place, they sought help from two police constables but they refused, saying the area was not under their jurisdiction.

In wake of the shocking incident, the locals have also threatened to shut the city if the assailants were not arrested in the next 24 hours. ANI
Tribune News Service

Gurdaspur, June 7

The Punjab Police on Wednesday sounded a high alert after the location of gangsters Vicky Gounder, Sukha Bhikhariwal and Gian Kharal was traced near Gurdaspur.

Also read: Police raid dozen places to nab gangster Vicky Gounder in vain

Nabha jailbreak mastermind Gounders gang strikes in Gurdaspur, 2 dead

Nabha jailbreak: KLF chief, 5 others freed

The police have set up several check posts and blocked all entry and exit routes in the area.

The gangsters are said to be moving in a white Creta car.

In April, a four-member gang, led by notorious gangster and Nabha jailbreak mastermind Vicky Gounder, created terror in the city by killing two persons and seriously injuring two others in a broad daylight internecine gangwar, leaving the cops gasping for breath.

More details awaited.
Saurabh Malik

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, June 7

Even as the Justice Mehtab Singh Gill Commission is looking into the implication of innocents during the past decade, eight confirmed cases have surfaced where accused were found to be not guilty by the police after registration of FIRs.

Dragging of innocents in drug cases by the police has been a matter of guesses and surmises since long. But the state DGP, Suresh Arora, has himself brought to the Punjab and Haryana High Courts notice eight instances wherein accused were found to be innocent by the police after registration of case. The data has promoted the High Court to ask the DGP to look into the possibility of setting up a nodal agency to oversee probe after case registration.

Information to this effect was furnished before the Bench of Justice Rajan Gupta during the hearing of a contempt petition. Taking a note of the harassment meted out to an accused after he was fixed in a false case, Justice Gupta asserted: It appears that there have been instances of false implication of certain individuals by the police by invoking the provisions of the NDPS Act.

If an FIR is registered against an innocent, he has to undergo the travails of probe and trial. He is likely to be taken into custody. This would infringe his right under Article 21 of the Constitution...

Thus, it needs to be examined whether a nodal agency can be constituted to supervise investigation pursuant to an FIR to ensure that no innocent citizen is involved in a false case under the NDPS Act. Matter may be examined by the DGP.

The developments took place during the hearing of a contempt of court petition filed by Jasdeep Singh against police officer Parampal Singh Umranangal. Jasdeep Singh had initially moved the court for initiation of action for his alleged implication in a case registered at a Ludhiana police station in January, 2012, under provisions of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act.

The petitioner, running a small cloth business in Ludhiana since 1977, had claimed that he was a whistle blower and had conducted a sting operation in 2003 revealing certain facts about 14 police officials.

He moved the court for taking action against the police officials under the Prevention of Corruption Act. As such, he was falsely implicated in the case registered on January 14, 2012, under the NDPS Act at a Ludhiana police station.

He was ultimately acquitted by the Special Court in August, 2015. Thereafter, he made a representation for taking action against the police officials responsible for implicating him in a false case. It was disposed of by a coordinate Bench in October, 2015.
Salman Khan will host the upcoming season of Bigg Boss. A video of him inviting commoners to audition was shared on Twitter by Colors' CEO Raj Nayak.

By India Today Web Desk: Bollywood actor Salman Khan will soon be back with another season of popular reality show Bigg Boss. CEO of Colors, Raj Nayak, shared the news on social media site Twitter.

His tweet read, "Here we all go @BiggBoss fans. Auditions open for #BiggBoss Season 11 with @beingsalmankhan."

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Earlier there were reports that Salman might not be able to host the show, as he would be busy with his films and other commitments, but looks like those were nothing but rumours as Nayak's tweet confirms that the actor will be hosting the show once again.

The new season will be following the format of the previous season, which means that both celebrities and people from everyday life will be invited to be a part of the show. Bigg Boss 10 was quite popular with the viewers because for the first time the show had a mix of celebrities and commoners, who were called as Indiawale.

In the previous season Manveer Gurjar was chosen as the winner of the show, who was an aam aadmi contestant. Currently, Manveer is in Spain for another reality show Khatron Ke Khiladi Season 8.

The video invites commoners to register for Bigg Boss 11 through Colors' app and upload their videos. Those selected will get a chance to make a name for themselves.

--- ENDS ---
Ruchika M Khanna

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, June 7

Punjab Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh, who rode to power on the promise of good governance and a corruption-free government, claims he has lived up to the expectations of the people. With one of his ministers accused of impropriety during the auction of sand quarries, he refuses to be cowed by criticism, claiming his government has eliminated the mafia.

The liquor mafia has been sent packing and the mining mafia has been wiped out with e-auctions. Next, we will free the transport and cable businesses of cartels, Amarinder Singh told The Tribune today.

Dismissing the controversy regarding his minister as a creation of the media not based on facts, he said cancelling the mining contracts would not be in the interest of the state. Unless there is concrete evidence to prove lack of probity, I see no reason to cancel the exercise and start afresh, causing a huge loss to the exchequer.

In fact, wee intend to further strengthen the system during the next auction on June 11. The bidder will have to bid between Rs 25,000-Rs 10 lakh at a time. Also, the earnest money deposit for the mines has been enhanced as per the reserve price of the mines, he explained. Defending his governments decision to do away with reverse bidding, Amarinder Singh said this was to keep the prices of sand and gravel under check.

To contain illegal mining, he said his government had appointed Additional DCs and SPs in each district as Nodal Officers and set up District Mineral Foundation under DCs and State Mineral Foundation under the Director, Mining. The mines would be manned by retired defence personnel.
Tribune News Service

Dehradun, June 7

The 13-day budget session of the Uttarakhand Assembly will commence here on Thursday.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Prakash Pant, who also holds the Finance portfolio, would present the budget for 2017-2018 on the opening day of the house, which would then come up for discussion on the following days.

Speaker Prem Chand Agarwal convened an all-party meeting today ahead of the session and called upon the representatives of the political parties to cooperate so that the House can work smoothly. I have asked the representatives of both the Opposition and the treasury benches to cooperate for the smooth functioning of the House. All the members of the house will be heard, provided they raise the issues as mandated in the rule book, Agarwal said.

Along with holding the all-party meeting, the Speaker also held a meeting of the business advisory committee for approval of the business for the budget session. Depending on the discussion, the money bill will be passed either on June 14 or June 15, said Agarwal.

Besides the budget, the TS Rawat government will also bring two amendment bills the MLAs disqualification bill and an amendment bill on VAT.

Other legislations that will come up during the House include annual report of Uttarakhand Public Service Commission and of the Minorities Commission.

Further, Secretary of Uttarakhand Assembly Jagdish Chander said around 400 questions had been listed to be taken up during the question hour, along with some other petitions concerning the general public.

Meanwhile, the Opposition has already declared that they would demand explanations from the government on the inquiry into the NH-74 scam and other issues.
Dehradun, June 7

Governor Dr KK Paul released Dr Arya Bhushan Gargs book titled The Shavian Woman at Raj Bhawan here today. Dr Garg, who retired from IIT, Roorkee, as a professor, presented the Governor with the first copy of his book.

In this book, he has given a detail account of the unique literary features of renowned Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw. Dr Garg gave a brief description of his work to the Governor. He said Shaw had, through his plays, showed women in a realistic light than a romantic one. Paul congratulated the author and appreciated his enthusiasm. TNS
Tehran, June 7

Gunmen and suicide bombers attacked Iran's parliament and Ayatollah Khomeini's mausoleum today, killing 12 persons, wounding 42 and igniting an hour-long siege that ended with four attackers dead.

Two of the attackers at the Khomeini shrine, one of them a woman, blew themselves up, while another detonated a suicide vest on the fourth floor of the parliamentary office building.

The Islamic State group claimed the attacks, marking the first time the Sunni extremists have taken responsibility for an assault in Shiite-majority Iran. The militants are at war with Iranian-backed forces in Syria and Iraq, and view Shiites as apostates.

The attacks began midmorning when assailants armed with Kalashnikov rifles stormed the parliament building. One of the attackers later blew himself up inside, where a session had been in progress, according to a statement carried by Iran's state TV.

Deputy Interior Minister Mohammad Hossein Zolfaghari told Iran's state TV the apparently male attackers wore women's attire. The semi-official Tasnim news agency later reported the siege had ended with four of the attackers killed.

Mizan Online, an Iranian state-run news website, said 12 people were killed and 42 wounded in the two attacks. It quoted Pirhossein Kolivand, the head of Iran's emergency department.

The IS group's Aamaq news agency released a 24-second video purportedly shot inside the parliament building during the siege. The video, circulated online, shows a gunman and a bloody, lifeless body of a man lying on the ground next to a desk.

A voice on the video praises God and says in Arabic: "Do you think we will leave? We will remain, God willing." Another voice repeats the same words. The two appeared to be parroting a slogan used by IS spokesman Abu Mohammad al-Adnani, who was killed in Syria last year.

Police helicopters circled over the parliament building and all mobile phone lines from inside were disconnected. The semi-official ISNA news agency said all entrance and exit gates at parliament were closed and that lawmakers and reporters were ordered to remain in place inside the chamber during the siege.

Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani called the attack a cowardly act.

Revolutionary Guards blame Saudi Arabia

Iran's Revolutionary Guards have blamed regional rival Saudi Arabia for the attack. Saudi Arabia has denied any involvement. The assault further fuels boiling tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia as they vie for control of the Gulf and influence in the wider Islamic world. It comes days after Riyadh and other Sunni Muslim powers cut ties with Qatar on Monday, accusing it of backing Tehran and militant groups. Iranian police said they had arrested five suspects over the attacks and the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, struck a defiant tone. "These fireworks have no effect on Iran. They will soon be eliminated ...," state TV quoted him saying.  Agencies

Swaraj speaks to Iranian foreign minister

New Delhi: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj today spoke to Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and condemned the terrorist attacks on institutions of democracy and spirituality in Tehran. External affairs ministry said that in a pre-scheduled telephone conversation, the minister offered sincere condolences on loss of innocent lives and expressed solidarity with the people and the government of Iran. Gunmen and suicide bombers launched twin assaults on parliament and the tomb of the country's revolutionary founder in Tehran, leaving at least 12 people dead and scores of others injured. The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for these attacks. PTI
London, June 7

Suicide bombers and gunmen attacked the Iranian Parliament and the Mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini in Tehran on Wednesday, killing at least 12 people in a twin assault which Iran's Revolutionary Guards blamed on regional rival Saudi Arabia.

Islamic State claimed responsibility and released a video purporting to show gunmen inside the Parliament building.

The attacks took place at a particularly charged time after Saudi Arabia and other Sunni powers cut ties with Qatar on Monday, accusing it of backing Tehran and militant groups.

They were the first claimed by the hardline Sunni Muslim militant group inside in the tightly controlled Shi'ite Muslim country.

Islamic State has regularly threatened Iran, one of the powers leading the fight against the militants forces in neighbouring Iraq and, beyond that, Syria.

The powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps accused Saudi Arabia of being behind the action, a rare such incident in Iran.

"This terrorist attack happened only a week after the meeting between the US President (Donald Trump) and the (Saudi) backward leaders who support terrorists. The fact that Islamic State has claimed responsibility proves that they were involved in the brutal attack," a Guards statement said.

Saudi Foreign Minister del Al-Jubeir, speaking in Berlin, said he did not know was responsible and there was no evidence Saudi extremists were involved.

The attacks could also exacerbate tensions in Iran between newly re-elected President Hassan Rouhani, a pragmatist, and his rivals among hardline clerics and the Revolutionary Guards.

Attackers dressed as women burst through Parliament's main entrance in central Tehran, deputy interior minister Mohammad Hossein Zolfaghari said, according to the Tasnim news agency.

One of them detonated a suicide vest in the Parliament, he said. About five hours after the first reports, Iranian media said four people who had attacked Parliament were dead and the incident was over.

At least 12 people were killed by the attackers, the head of Iran's emergency department, Pir-Hossein Kolivand, was quoted as saying by state broadcaster IRIB. Some 43 people were wounded.

"I was inside the Parliament when shooting happened. Everyone was shocked and scared. I saw two men shooting randomly," said one journalist at the scene.

Soon after the assault on Parliament, another bomber detonated a suicide vest near the shrine of the Islamic Republic's revered founder, Ayatollah Khomeini, a few kilometres south of the city, Zolfaghari said.

A second attacker was shot dead, he said. The shrine is a main destination for tourists and religious pilgrims.  Reuters
Washington, June 7

US President Donald Trump spoke to Saudi Arabia's King Salman and called for a united Gulf Cooperation Council to fight terrorism and promote stability in the region, amid deepening diplomatic crisis in Qatar.

Both the leaders discussed ways to prevent terror financing and eliminate extremism by any country in region, the White House said yesterday.

During the phone call, Trump underscored that a united Gulf Cooperation Council is critical to defeating terrorism and promoting regional stability, the White House said.

The White House statement came a day after Saudi Arabia and three other Arab countries  Egypt, Bahrain and the UAE  cut off diplomatic ties with Qatar.

In a tweet, early morning Trump apparently supported the actions of four Arab countries to cut off diplomatic relationship with Qatar.

The US continues to be in close communication with all the parties to resolve the issues and restore cooperation which is so important to regional security there, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters.

"I think there is note that his message of toughness on terror finance and extremism is being heeded by countries in the region. But the US still wants to see this issue de- escalated and resolved immediately, keeping with the principles that the president laid out in terms of defeating terror financing and extremism," he said.

Spicer said Trump had a very, very constructive conversation with the Emir of Qatar during his visit in Riyadh.

"At that time, he was very heartened by the Emir's commitment to formally join the terrorist financing targeting centre and showing their commitment to this issue," he said.

At a separate briefing, State Department Spokesperson Heather Nauert said the US recognises that Qatar has made some great efforts to try to stop financing of terror groups, including prosecuting suspected financiers, freezing assets, and introducing stringent controls on its banking system there.

"However, let me make this clear: They have made progress, but they still have work to do. More work needs to be done," she said.

"I think our relationship with Qatar is one that's strong. It's one that we continue to cooperate with Qatar and other countries in the region in the fight against terrorism.

Secretary of State Rex W Tillerson talked about this today," she added.

"He said every country in the region has their own obligations and they need to live up to terminate their support for terrorism and extremism however it manifests itself anywhere in the world, she said.

Nauert praised Qatar for its role in fight against terrorism.

"The US and its coalition, we're grateful to the Qataris for their longstanding support of our presence there in that nation. They have helped to provide us with an enduring commitment to regional security. The Department of Defense has talked about this," she said.

"We have no plans to change our posture in Qatar and we would encourage all of our partners to try to work together to reduce tensions. That's something that the Secretary spoke to as well," Nauert said in response to a question. PTI
DUBAI/DOHA, June 7

The United Arab Emirates tightened the squeeze on fellow Gulf state Qatar on Wednesday threatening anyone publishing expressions of sympathy towards it with up to 15 years

in prison, and barring entry to Qataris.

UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash said there would be more curbs if necessary and said Qatar needed to make iron-clad commitments to change what critics say is a policy on funding militants.

Qatar vehemently denies any such backing.

Efforts to defuse the regional crisis -- triggered on Monday when the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and others severed diplomatic ties with Qatar over alleged support for Islamist groups and Iran -- showed no immediate signs of success.

Kuwait's emir has also been seeking to mediate, meeting Saudi's king

on Tuesday.

Qatar's sudden isolation has led to the country holding talks with Turkey, Iran and others to secure food and water supplies, according to a Qatari official.

UAE-based newspaper Gulf News and pan-Arab channel Al-Arabiya reported the crackdown on expressions of sympathy with Qatar.Allegations of Islamist sympathies and support have for years strained Doha's relations with its Gulf Arab neighbours, who consider movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood a security threat.

The UAE's state-owned Etihad Airways, meanwhile, said all travellers holding Qatari passports were currently prohibited from travelling to or transiting through the emirates on government instructions. AFP

Russia denies hacking Qatar news agency

Moscow: Russian officials today angrily rejected allegations that Russian hackers breached Qatars state news agency and planted a fake news story that led to a split between Qatar and the other Arab nations. Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for President Vladimir Putin, today dismissed yesterdays CNN report containing the claim as yet another fake, another lie. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also dismissed CNNs report yesterday, saying it further undermined its reputation as an independent and objective media outlet. AP

UAE seeking change of policy, not regime

Dubai: Measures taken by the United Arab Emirates and other nations against Qatar are aimed at pressuring Doha into changing its policies, not at overthrowing its regime, a senior UAE official said today. We have now reached a cul-de-sac in terms of trying to convince Qatar to change course, UAE state minister for foreign affairs Anwar Gargash said in an interview, accusing Qatar of being the main champion of extremism and terrorism in the region. This is not about regime change  this is about change of policy, change of approach, Gargash said. AFP




By Vidya : An important prosecution witness, retired assistant police inspector Tukaram Deolkar, was today declared hostile by prosecution in the 2011 journalist J Dey murder case.

In 2011, 3 accused - Arun Dake, Dipak Sisodia and Polson Palitra had expressed willingness to give their confessions and on three different dates and Deolkar was ordered by his seniors to take the three accused to three different divisional commissioner of police (DCP) officers from crime branch. The concerned DCPs were to record the statement of each accused under section 18 MCOCA Act.

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However, now after six years when Deolkar was in the witness box he did not recognise the accused correctly. He intermixed the names of the accused persons and did not give the dates of the days when the statements were recorded. All this hurts the prosecution case as he deviated from his statement that he had given to the crime branch as part of the procedure.

"In the cross examination, he has admitted that he got confused by mistake. Therefore, now I will have to examine additional witness on the same point," said special public prosecutor Pradeep Gharat. The lapse on the part of the retired police officer is not going to be taken lightly according to senior police officers.

Earlier, three journalists had turned hostile while two relatives of two accused had also turned hostile in court and two independent witnesses from whom the accused had purchased sim cards to speak to underworld don Chhota Rajan, who is also an accused in the case, had also turned hostile. Just this week, MLA Sunil Raut was declared hostile by the prosecution after he refused to accept that he had received a call from an international number.

104 witnesses have already been examined, while approximately 15 more prosecution witnesses are to be brought to court.

Journalist J Dey was shot dead by some shooters hired by gangster Chhota Rajan as he believed that as a crime journalist Dey was closer to underworld don Dawood Ibrahim.

ALSO READ:

Taped conversation of Chhota Rajan complaining about Jigna Vora played in Mumbai court

J Dey murder case: Journalist witness declared hostile

--- ENDS ---
Finance minister said that extension of the GST does not infringe on Article 370 as Jammu and Kashmir has a separate constitution.

By Shuja-ul-Haq : In a significant move, the Jammu and Kashmir government has decided to have a special Assembly session to discuss and pass the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Bill in the state. Finance Minister Haseeb Drabu announced this during a press meet today in Srinagar.

Earlier today, the GST bill was approved by the Jammu and Kashmir Cabinet.

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"We will hold a broad-based discussion on extension of the GST to Jammu and Kashmir," said Drabu. It was also informed that all the constitutional aspects required for the GST would be followed. "If we won't have GST in the state, then no business can properly be done here," he added.

The minister also said that extension of the GST does not infringe on the Article 370 as Jammu and Kashmir has a separate constitution and tax laws are implemented under Section 5 of the constitution. The finance minister added that the GST is a "consumption" tax and the state will gain Rs 60-70 crore additional revenue with it.

Drabu said that the government will review the experience of GST in the state after five years.

Also read: J-K government to benefit from GST, will seek its passage in a month: State finance minister

Also read: GST FAQ: Answers to all your questions about India's biggest tax reform

WATCH THE VIDEO HERE

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It was a viral fire spreading across social media: Oklahoma Boys State voted to eliminate the 19th Amendment.

Heresy. Crazy. Disrespectful. Backwards. What? Ugh!

Wait. Maybe not.

"That's not true at all," said Executive Director Clay Ballenger. "First, a state cannot pass a law superseding a Constitutional Amendment. And second, it just didn't happen."

Boys State is a non-partisan week of leadership and government sponsored by the American Legion of Oklahoma. Participants compete during their junior year and are selected by their local American Legion post.

Meaning, these are smart boys who are leaders, but they are still teenage boys. They need direction and directness.

The week involves the study of government through classroom work and simulations including a mock legislature, state executive offices and a court system. They meet on the Northeastern Oklahoma A&M College in Miami.

It was in the Legislature where things got wonky - just like in real life.

A bill that would have lessened the punishment for marijuana convictions was proposed. A committee sought to eliminate the proposal so members loaded it with some outlandish amendments to sink the bill.

Again, not so much different than real life. Remember the proposals to castrate convicted rapists (from former Rep. John Monks) and banning the use of baby parts in food (from former Sen. Ralph Shortey)? And those were meant as serious.

"One amendment would have limited political activities by women. But, the boys knew anything like that would kill it," Ballenger said. "They knew a bill wouldn't pass with that with it."

The handwritten amendment never got attached to the bill, so the governor signed.

Somewhere along the way, a boy heard about the amendment and told a girl at Girls State that the governor signed a bill to prevent women from voting.

Or, something like that. No one is really sure where in this chain of the Telephone Game information got twisted.

"It wasn't a bill, it was an amendment. And, it is moot because the offending amendment never made it with the bill," Ballenger said."The only kids who brought up women's rights did so in the positive - that anything opposing rights to women wouldn't pass."

Some lessons for the boys:

Pay attention to what's being said during the legislative session;

Put out correct information about actions taken;

Never use the rights of women - or anyone - as pawns in political gaming;

Please teach those lessons to the real-life lawmakers when you get done.

The fallout included some rightfully upset Girls State participants who used social media and texting to get the word out.

At least one state lawmaker - Rep. Emily Virgin, D- Norman - put the information on Twitter, noting that Girls State passed legislation addressing issues like domestic violence.

After being contacted by Boys State officials, Virgin was asked to take down her original post, which she complied.

.@OKBoysState has asked me to delete my original tweet. I'm conflicted about that but will do so for the time being. 1/  Emily Virgin (@EmilyVirginOK) June 2, 2017

The fact remains though, that the topics of legislation are vastly different at Boys & Girls State, and it's disappointing. 2/  Emily Virgin (@EmilyVirginOK) June 2, 2017

Again, regardless of how it happened, leaders of @OKBoysState should have used it as an opportunity to teach and educate. 3/3  Emily Virgin (@EmilyVirginOK) June 2, 2017

Last one: that Boys State attendees told Girls State attendees they repealed 19A says we need to teach our young men more about respect.  Emily Virgin (@EmilyVirginOK) June 2, 2017

Among the comments to Virgin's posts was a suggestion to merge Boys and Girls State, which some other states have done. It would be the best real-world experience to give the budding leaders.

Since this went viral, Ballenger has fielded inquires from media across the state and a few national outlets.

Ballenger said the boys have learned about how misinformation can turn into a frenzy and how legislative proposals can be interpreted. Also, it shows the power of social media - good and bad.

In reality, mock legislative sessions are a hard sell to teenage boys.

"We will have about 30 percent actively paying attention and the rest are sitting there on their phones," Ballenger said.

"It's a learning experience for everyone. We're not focused on the negative and have a list of successes this past session, which was our 78th. At Boys State, we are focused on working to shape leaders through service, patriotism, appreciation of our veterans and freedoms we have, including freedom of speech."
U.S. Sen. James Lankford said Tuesday he doesnt expect anything startling during former FBI Director James Comeys public testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee Thursday morning.

He has been very frank with us in our past meetings with him, Lankford said by telephone. I dont expect any great bombshells.

As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Lankford will be one of those questioning Comey during the 9 a.m. public hearing and the private session that follows.

Those questions are expected to center on Comeys firing by President Donald Trump last month, and memos he wrote about meetings with Trump while Comey was FBI director. Reportedly, one of the memos says Trump asked Comey to drop the FBIs investigation of then-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

Flynn subsequently resigned when it was revealed he had misled White Officials about his contacts with the Russian government.

Well be trying to figure out the purpose of these memos, Lankford said. Was he doing these memos because he thought it was something important, or was he just trying to keep track?

Lankford noted the committees query is primarily into the extent, if any, the Russian government tried to influence the 2016 election and to establish contacts with the incoming Trump administration.

Well be asking whether any American was made contact with or reached out, said Lankford, who has previously said he believes the Russian government did try to involve itself in the election.

Lankford said the scope of Comeys public testimony will be limited because of security issues, which is one reason he doubts any new information will come out.

This will be a high-profile hearing that the networks will cover intently for about 45 minutes, and then say, Weve already heard this.

Even as he sought to lower expectations about Thursdays hearing, Lankford said he takes it and all of the Intelligence Committees work very seriously.

The hardest part is the number of issues we can never, ever discuss publicly, he said.

The public hearing will be carried by most cable news networks and streamed live on the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee website.
The Oklahoma attorney general filed charges Wednesday alleging fraud against a Tulsa businessman who previously pleaded guilty to similar charges.

Robert Eugene Tucker, 50, is charged in Tulsa County District Court with securities fraud and violating an order issued under the Oklahoma Uniform Securities Act.

Attorney General Mike Hunter alleges that Tucker targeted a Tulsa resident with promises that a $15,000 investment would be returned in six months at about $17,100, according to a news release. The resident invested in Tuckers company, Corporate eXchange International, but Tucker is alleged to have dodged the persons attempts to contact him when the six-month period was up.

Tucker has received suspended sentences on similar charges in the past. He pleaded guilty and received a 10-year suspended sentence in May 2016 on two counts of fraud in the sale of securities, according to court records.

In December 2013, he pleaded guilty to financial exploitation of a vulnerable adult. Tucker claimed to be an attorney in 2012, agreeing to set up a trust fund for an elderly man, but then kept the money intended for the trust fund, the Tulsa World reported previously.

He pleaded guilty in January 2014 to running a con game. In December 2013, he pleaded guilty to writing three bogus checks over $1,000, according to court records.

Tucker was given seven-year suspended sentences.
A complete shutdown was reported in both the districts, with local administration also suspending classes in schools and colleges.

Tension in south Kashmir after local youth killed in firing. Photo for representation: PTI.

By Shuja-ul-Haq , Ashraf Wani: Tension prevailed in Pulwama and Shopian districts of Jammu and Kashmir after a youth was allegedly killed in firing by security forces on Tuesday evening.

A complete shutdown was reported in both the districts in south Kashmir today. Classes for higher secondary schools and colleges in the two districts were suspended by the district administration.

Adil Farooq Magray, a college student, was hit by a bullet on his chest after security forces reportedly opened fire to disperse protesters who were trying to disrupt an anti-militant operation in Ganawpora village of Shopian district.

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The militants managed to flee the cordoned area and the operation had to be called off by security forces.

As the news of the youth's killing spread, incidents of clashes and stone-pelting were reported from the area.

Some reports suggest that youth took to the streets and hurled stones at the police who responded with tear-smoke shells.

ALSO READ:

Danish Ahmed, seen at Sabzar Bhat's funeral, surrenders, reveals tale of disillusionment

Jammu and Kashmir: CRPF kill 4 militants after they attacked camp in Bandipora

Stone pelters on hire in Kashmir: India Today nails Valley's insidious villains

ALSO WATCH: Rahul slams Centre for mishandling situation in Kashmir

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SBS will screen Oliver Stones The Putin Interviews soon, a 4 part series which premieres next week in the US.

It begins with Parts 1 & 2.

Not to be confused with NBCs Megyn Kellys interview with the Russian president, which is also attracting attention.

Russian president Vladimir Putin discusses President Donald Trump, and Russias meddling in the 2016 US presidential election with Oliver Stone. The Oscar-winning writer and director, with the help of his long-time documentary producer Fernando Sulichin, interviewed Putin more than a dozen times over the course of two years, most recently in February, following Donald Trumps successful White House run and inauguration.

8:30pm & 9:30pm Sunday June 18 on SBS.
The Kerala High Court had pulled up the state government for trying to reopen liquor shops along the highway.

By Rohini Swamy: Kerala Excise Minister TP Ramakrishnan today said that the government does not intent to get into a confrontation with the court regarding the re-opening of bars on highways.

Talking to India Today, Ramakrishnan said, "We will abide by the court orders."

The Kerala High Court had pulled up the state government for trying to open liquor shops along the highway.

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The state government allegedly cited an order delivered in a different context and tried to re-open liquor shops on the Kannur-Kuttippuram Highway.

HIGH COURT ORDER MISCONSTRUED

The Kerala High Court had come down heavily on the state government saying that it should not "misconstrue the court order on the sale of liquor". Justice Devan Ramachandran also pointed out that the approach taken by the Kerala Excise Department was not right. The judge observed, "It is strange that my direction has been interpreted by the deputy excise commissioner to mean that it's intended to open bars and liquor shops. I reiterate that the effect of my judgement is that deputy excise commissioners were obligated to consider all the factors and allow such operations, if legally permissible."

In his order, Justice Ramachandran clearly said, "I deem it necessary to clarify that none of my directions on the judgement sought to be reviewed or intended to be construed the bar and liquor shops to be opened."

The excise minister has said that the new liquor policy of the state will be announce on June 30.

Also read: Celibate or not, a peacock single-handledly destroyed alcohol worth $500 in Los Angeles

Also read: Udta Bihar: Huge spike in substance abuse, alcohol bootlegging year after ban

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Published June 7, 2017

By Mark Henderson

Special to ULM Office of Public Information



The untrained eye sees a pebble, about the size of a pea.

The trained eye sees in the pea-sized particle a piece of pottery, a tiny part of an intricate puzzle.

Dr. Diana Greenlee, Poverty Pointstation archaeologist and University of Louisiana Monroe adjunct professor, has been working to put the pieces together since coming to ULM in 2006. Greenlee studied anthropology at the University of Washington and inquired about the ULM position on the advice of her graduate school adviser who retired and moved to Natchez, Mississippi.

The Poverty Point World Heritage Site is an archaeologists dream laboratory. The state park just outside Epps in West Carroll Parish was home to a sophisticated Native American Indian culture about 3,400 years ago. The site is known for enormous earthen mounds and ridges, and a large, flat plaza. The earthworks are unique in design.

Research indicates the Indians who built the mounds did not raise crops but relied on hunting, fishing and gathering wild nuts and fruits.

She believes the Poverty Point builders decided on the spot on the eastern edge of the Macon Ridge, which marks the western terminus of the Mississippi River plain, because this setting is what we call an ecotone, the cusp of two ecosystems. Both spearheads and fish hooks have been discovered on the grounds.

The ridge is the beginning of an upland, providing safety from flooding. Mississippi floodwaters never covered Poverty Point. The uplands also provided deer and wild foods the dwellers could forage.

But below Macon Ridge is the Mississippi River plain. It provided fish and other swamp-based foods.

The Mississippi River provided one more essential thing for Poverty Point. Trade. More than 78 tons of stone and ore were imported to the site from distances up to 1,000 miles away.

Much is known about Poverty Point. Even more is not. The land teases scientists with its mysteries. New research at Poverty Point is looking beyond the traditional boundaries of the World Heritage Site in hopes of revealing clues to the biggest mystery of all.

The one big question, Greenlee said, is what happened at the end. Did they just go away? Maybe they depleted their resources. Or did they disperse into smaller groups? We dont know.

The answers come slowly and through a process of elimination.

Field research is more about eliminating hypotheses than discovering a holy grail.

The state of Louisiana owns and manages Poverty Point. It was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in June 2014. Poverty Point is also a National Historic Landmark and a National Monument. It is the largest, most complex archaeological site of its age in North America.

The original site plan had five mounds, six concentric C-shaped earthen ridges and a large, flat plaza. A sixth mound was added about 1,700 to 2,000 years later.

Historically, research at Poverty Point concentrated within the confines of the park. In February, ULM entered into a cooperative endeavor agreement with the Louisiana Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism providing for $148,300 in funding for an archaeological investigation of the landscape around the Poverty Point World Heritage Site. Greenlee said the impetus for the project rose from the World Heritage process.

Researchers are fanning out to explore 19,422 acres in West Carroll and East Carroll parishes within a radius of about 5 kilometers from Poverty Point. The 5-kilometer radius is regularly used in archaeology as a common boundary for daily foraging among hunter-gatherers in a resource-rich environment.

Greenlee has been able to hire two archaeologists to work on the project, operate field schools and to purchase equipment. On this day, 14 students and a faculty member from Mississippi State University were cleaning samples in water and cataloging their findings.

The property being explored is privately owned. Most of it is prime farmland. The tilling, planting and harvesting have taken their toll over the years. Greenlee says theres no way of knowing what has been lost.

You work with what you find, she said.

With permission of the landowners, the researchers - professionals and students - head out to the fields.

When we walk the fields, we look for artifacts. We flag each artifact and come back with GPS to log the location, Greenlee said.

In areas where surface visibility is limited, shovels are used to scoop shallow samples. Among the content in the recent scoops of samples have been siding from an old home, some rubber but also slivers from tools and pieces of pottery.

The wet spring has slowed the gathering of artifacts, but the work will soon shift into high gear. In June, Greenlee is hosting ULM field schools. Students are also coming from the University of Southern Alabama and Binghamton University in New York. More than 30 students will take residence at the Poverty Point field school dormitory, which can house up to 40.

Greenlee knows better than to expect a huge revelation. Shes eager, though, to see what the land will offer up.

The idea is to enhance the experience of the visitor by being able to tell a fuller story, she said.

After the field work is done, Greenlee will supervise the building of a database of the researchers findings in order to map the distribution of tools and pottery and put them in the context of how the land was used then and now.

We are interested not only in how the people who built the Poverty Point earthworks used the landscape, but also how earlier and later people used the area, Greenlee said. We assume that there is a continuous distribution of artifacts across the landscape and that variation in the density and characteristics of artifacts corresponds to different use histories of the land. By documenting the spatial patterning of artifacts, we hope to understand the full range of landscape use through time.

Dr. Jeffrey Alvey, the Mississippi State University faculty member working with the students on site, said his students are getting valuable experience learning how to do archaeological surveys. In return, he said, the students are helping Greenlee to determine how far the people of Poverty Point roamed, what they did out there and whether there were any outlying contemporary communities outside the core Poverty Point site that supported it, similar to ancient suburbs.

Dean Nones, one of the archaeologist hired for the program and a Pittsburgh native, said working on the project has provided the opportunity to further develop his skills and apply his knowledge. He knew he wanted to do this work since he was 2 and his parents took him to see Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom at a drive-in.

And while Nones hasnt had to run away from rolling boulders, he did have to high-tail it away from a mother black bear whose cub was in a tree near where he was working since working on the project.

The project has depended on the willingness of landowners to have strangers walk through their crops. Some have requested the teams wait until the crops are harvested, but no one has refused.

The response from the landowners has been terrific, Nones said.

The property owners are told that any artifacts found on their land will be returned if they wish after they have been properly entered into the database. They also have a standing invitation to participate in the research occurring on their land. The landowners, mostly farmers, also have the option to donate the artifacts to Poverty Point.

If donated, the artifacts will be boxed and added to the those collected over the years. The collection is stored at Poverty Point and managed by Alisha Wright, collections manager for the past 19 years.

Greenlee said the landowners will be told when artifacts are discovered.

My hope is that they might want to learn how they can protect the area where there was a finding, for instance when building sheds or making other improvements to their property.

Its interesting to learn how invested people are in their landscape, said Alisha Marcum of Nashville, the other archaeologist hired to work on the project.

Marcum is looking at how todays property owners are using the land as compared to the past, but she notes the strong attachment to the land endures.

Its the same today as back then, Marcum said.

Some 3,400 years ago, a people populating northeastern Louisiana along Macon Ridge excavated soil in what research indicates were 50-pound basket loads. About 15.5 million of these loads were moved to construct Mound A at Poverty Point, the second largest Indian mound in the United States. No one knows why.

Today, scientists are digging in the ground around Poverty Point again. This time with small shovels and augers, hoping to find answers to questions the ancient civilization left in its wake.
| By Alex Likowski

In an open letter to the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) community, UMB President Jay A. Perman, MD, spoke of joining the leadership of hundreds of colleges and universities in the U.S. in support of the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change. Here is the text of that letter:

To the UMB Community:



Last week, President Trump announced he would pull the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement, a landmark 2015 pact among nearly 200 nations to adopt green energy sources, cut carbon emissions, and limit the rise of global temperatures. The agreement calls for "the widest possible cooperation by all countries" to address the urgent threat of climate change.



The decision to withdraw the U.S. from the accord was met with broad resistance, here in Maryland and across the country. On behalf of UMB, I have signed We Are Still In, an open letter endorsing the ambitious climate goals spelled out in the Paris Agreement and pledging support for "forceful" action to reduce U.S. emissions.



In signing this letter, I've joined hundreds of U.S. college and university presidents, as well as hundreds more corporate leaders and state and city officials who remain dedicated to America's global cooperation -- and global leadership -- in fighting climate change. Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh has signed the letter, as have my fellow presidents in the University System of Maryland. In a statement, Gov. Larry Hogan said he remains a strong advocate for protecting Maryland's environment and supports efforts to combat climate change.



The signers of this letter understand, as do I, that transitioning to a clean-energy economy improves public health, protects our natural resources, advances our national security, and stimulates greater prosperity. I hope you'll consider making your own voice heard in this debate.



The Paris Agreement afforded us a historic opportunity to work with nations around the globe on urgent issues of climate change. But even without federal leadership on this issue, U.S. businesses, governments, and universities can come together to uphold our American commitment to protect the planet and its people. We cannot let this opportunity slip by.



Sincerely,



Jay A. Perman, MD

President
By India Today Web Desk: Kim Sharma, best known as the Mohabbatein girl, disappeared from public memory after she moved to Kenya post her marriage. She was back in the news after her husband allegedly dumped her for another woman, leaving her penniless. Although the actor refuted the rumours, latest reports claim that Kim is working for free, as she gears up for her acting comeback.

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According to a report in India.com, Kim has joined hands with Javed Jaffrey for the Indian Documentary Foundation's programme Good Pitch India. Apparently, Kim has been a part of the non-profit foundation, founded by Jaffrey himself, since last February. Interestingly, it is being said that the actor was introduced to the organisation by rumoured boyfriend Arjun Khanna.

Ever since her return to the country, Kim has been linked to menswear designer Arjun Khanna and the two have been clicked painting the town red on several occasions. Reportedly, Arjun's growing proximity to Kim drove a wedge between him and his wife Shefalee, and the couple have been living separately ever since he found love outside the marriage.

ALSO READ: Kim Sharma left with no money after husband dumps her for another woman?

ALSO READ: Are Mohabbatein girl Kim Sharma and designer Arjun Khanna having an affair?

ALSO READ: Hazel Keech leaves party due to Yuvraj Singh's ex-girlfriend Kim Sharma?

ALSO WATCH: Kim Kardashian shows off her enviable curves on second honeymoon

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Lisa Haydon shared an adorable photo of her holding her baby boy Zack.

By India Today Web Desk: Lisa Haydon has been killing it with an overdose of cuteness thanks to her newborn son Zack Lalvani's adorable photos on photo-blogging site Instagram.

Lisa Haydon and her husband Dino Lalvani welcomed Zack on May 17 this year.

Ever since Lisa announced her pregnancy, her followers on Instagram got a generous dose of gorgeous photos, from pregnancy photoshoots to her baby Zack.

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The latest photo to hit the web has Lisa holding baby Zack in her arms.

She announced the birth of her son too on her Instagram page.

Lisa Haydon married her boyfriend Dino Lalvani in October last year. She was last seen on the big screen in 2016's Ae Dil Hai Mushkil.

PHOTO: Lisa Haydon's son Zack is the most stylish baby in town

ALSO READ | SEE PIC: Lisa Haydon and Dino Lalvani welcome baby boy, name him Zack

ALSO WATCH: Go behind-the-scenes with Lisa Haydon for her cover shoot with Harper's Bazaar

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Published: June 07, 2017

UT Students Head to Italy to Study the Chemistry of Art

Staring up at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel this summer, a group of UT students had a personal appreciation for the incredible artistry of Michelangelo. Thats because several weeks prior, they had attempted their own imitation mini-frescos and realized the challenge of painting in wet plaster.



The trip gave me a new appreciation for art and the chemistry that goes behind it, said Amanda Leone 18, a marketing major from Chicago.



The course, CHE 165: Chemistry in Art, focuses on the study of materials used in creating art as well as art preservation and restoration, forgery detection and nondestructive testing. It also looks at the effect of environmental pollution on the lifespan of artworks.



We talk about the chemistry of metals as it relates to metal sculptures in terms of degradation, whether planned or not. That patina you see on a bronze sculpture is a desirable thing typically, but thats oxidation of the copper to the copper salts that gives it that green and blue hue. We talk about that in class, said Michelle Leslie, assistant professor of chemistry. They see a lot of glass in terms of mosaic tiles or Murano glass from Venice, so we talk about how the glass blowing works. The coloring agents that are in glass are metal ions, so again thats talking about the oxidation of metals.



Leslie had the class make soap one evening to understand an issue with aging oil paints.



When you make soap you saponify an oil, so thats treating an oil with a base. There are these lead salts that are in a lot of paints as part of the lead paint pigments, explained Leslie. What happens over time in an oil painting is that those pigments, the base portion of it can react with the oils themselves and you get these lead soaps that form within a painting. These bubbles of paint can make pock marks on the surface of the artwork. These are chemical reactions that happen within the artwork  it might not happen fast, but if were talking about something thats been around since 1500 or so, these things happen.



The UT travel course caps a semester of in-class lecture with an abroad experience in Venice, Florence and Rome.



I thought it would be interesting to learn about how artwork is preserved and restored for thousands of years, said Leone. You really don't think about chemistry when you hear the word art, but after this class I can now see that chemistry plays a big role in making artwork last for many years. With the chemistry knowledge that we have today, it helps preserve these wonderful masterpieces and shows the true artistic work of people thousands of years ago.



The course was started in 2008 by Tom Jackman, associate professor of chemistry, who was inspired by his own trip to Venice with his wife and an exhibit in the Murano Glass Museum describing the chemistry of glass making. Nearly a decade of students have had hands-on instruction in the science of art since.



I found through questions I asked before and after each museum or historical site visited that they learned some chemistry without realizing it, Jackman said. The students were always able to answer my questions as we stood near the Colosseum in Rome or St. Marks Basilica in Venice or St. Peters at the Vatican.



Leslie took over in 2011 and assistant professor Christine Theodore will take the helm in 2019 (the course wont be offered in 2018).



I do feel like this course gave me a better appreciation for chemistry. We were able to see chemistry used in real-life scenarios, such as through art preservation, said political science major Marissa Milazzo 18 of Lakewood Ranch, FL.



Its a chemistry course intended for non-science majors though science majors can take the course and do, either to satisfy their required art aesthetic credit or for the travel component.



Kristy Hepfer 18 is a biochemistry major who wanted a study abroad experience.



I think that the international portion was important in order to see in person the frescos, mosaics and oil paintings that were made by artists such as Raphael and Michelangelo, said Hepfer. As a biochemistry major, I have taken my fair share of chemistry classes at UT, but I do believe that this course gave me a better understanding of chemistry with regards to art.



Learn more about UTs travel courses.




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By Shreya Goswami: Should I marry? Which job should I take up? Are my children going to be okay in life? Will I live a long life?

There are so many questions that we humans have, so many decisions to take, and so many prayers as well. Taking those decisions can be more difficult that you know, and we can all do with some guidance. The best guidance, if you're a believer, comes from God.

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And if you're wondering where on earth is it possible to actually communicate with God--you know, ask a question and get an answer back--then Lungshan Temple in Taipei, Taiwan, is just where you need to go.

Also Read: Taiwan makes visa formalities easier for Indian tourists

Established in 1738 by Chinese settlers, Lungshan or Longshan Temple of Manka in Taipei is known for its beautiful architecture, and an age-old ritual that helps devotees connect with God. The temple has broken down due to earthquakes, and has been rebuilt time and again by Taipei residents simply because of the devotion it inspires.

Picture for representation purpose: Picture courtesy: Instagram/yalan1217

Not many would know this, but the Taiwanese have had the influence of many religions over the centuries--Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Christianity and Islam. This influence is visible in the architecture of Lungshan Temple. But the particular ritual it is famous for is a mix of a number of elements from the oldest religions.

First, you take three incense sticks, light them and bow your head at the main altar. Stand in front of the goddess, and introduce yourself, where you come from and where you live--it's important to give your correct address. Now share your deepest wishes and questions with God. The smoke from the incense sticks will take them up to God. Leave the three incense sticks at different altars, and move on to the next step.

Picture for representation purpose: Picture courtesy: Instagram/Instagram/valentinabart

Next, you can take the bwei blocks at the temple. The half-moon shaped stones have to be flicked upwards, and you can get a clear Yes or No based on how they fall. Once you get a Yes (and you'll get three chances to get it), you can go to the basket with answers. These are long, flat bamboo sticks with a number on them.

Also Read: This temple is the largest religious monument of the world

Picture for representation purpose: Picture courtesy: Instagram/jeong_annie

Once you get your number, you'll be taken to a large cabinet with a 100 drawers. The drawer holds all the oracles with all possible answers. You have to collect the oracle for your number, and ask the interpreter if your wish has been granted. If yes, you can go home a happy and relieved person. If not, you can always try the ritual again.

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Every culture has its unique way of communicating with God. The Taiwanese will swear by the ritual at Lungshan Temple, and maybe, on your next trip there, you should give it a try as well.

Watch the full ritual here to get a better idea:

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More Americans are drinking a daily cup of coffee in 2017a reversal of four years of declines, according to an industry report by the National Coffee Association. This is all thanks to the surge in cold brew's popularity along with artisanal methods and single origin beans. But it can be an intimidating world to navigate. Which is why a lot of guys say "screw it" and grab a can of supermarket grounds and toss them into a standard coffeemaker. But if you do that, you'll never enjoy the pleasure of a rich, satisfying cup of coffee at home.

To help us step up our game, we went to Atlas Coffee Club, the Austin-based subscription service with a mission of introducing you to the world's best coffee. "With over 50+ countries that produce coffee, we've designed our monthly subscription to zigzag across the equator and highlight a new country's coffee and culture," says Atlas' creative director Jordan Rosenacker. What we really appreciated about the Atlas package we were sent was that it wasn't just the coffeeit also contained information on the beans and the country of origin along with tasting notes and brewing recommendations. So not only did we have a better cup of coffee, but we actually felt like we knew why it was so good and could actually talk about it with confidence. So we asked Rosenacker to share some knowledge so you too can make pro-level coffee at home.
The death of five farmers in firing in Mandsaur district would compel one to recall the police firing on January 12, 1998 in Multai tehsil killing 18 farmers.

By Kumar Shakti Shekhar: It must be a deja vu moment for Madhya Pradesh (MP). Just that some roles have got reversed. The death of five farmers in firing in Mandsaur district would compel one to recall the police firing on January 12, 1998 in Multai tehsil killing 18 farmers.

Multai falls in Betul district of MP.

Strangely, despite the lapse of about 20 years, there are some uncanny similarities between the mayhems in Multai and Mandsaur.

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FARMERS' PROTEST OVER SAME ISSUES

In both the incidents, the farmers started protests over loan waiver and compensation.

In the Multai incident, the farmers had come under the banner of Kisan Sangharsh Morcha, which was led by former MLA Sunilam. The protests took place to press for 11 demands, the most significant being Rs 5,000 compensation for each hectare of crops damaged in severe rain and hailstorms, and farm loan waiver.

In Mandsaur, the farmers have been agitating to demand loan waiver and higher prices for their produce. Despite a normal rainfall in 2016 leading to record foodgrain production last year, the farmers did not make profits. Hence, they are demanding higher prices to compensate for their production costs. The farmers are also demanding a package claiming that they had suffered huge losses due to severe droughts in 2014 and 2015.

Madhya Pradesh Congress party activists burn effigy of Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan in Bhoapl after the incident of police firing on farmers in Mandsaur. (PTI Photo)

PROTESTS TURNING VIOLENT

Both the Multai and Mandsaur protests were peaceful initially. However, they turned violent in the course of time.

In Multai, the agitating farmers had issued an ultimatum to the then chief minister Digvijaya Singh for meeting their demands by January 11 or face protests. On January 12, the farmers, led by Sunilam, surrounded the tehsil office in Multai. The farmers, allegedly armed with dangerous weapons, turned violent. They locked up the tehsil office and pelted stones at the government employees. The farmers torched two police vehicles and stoned the then Betul superintendent of police GP Singh.

Similar scenes were witnessed in Mandsaur. The farmers went berserk, rioting, damaging railway tracks and railway crossing gates, setting fire to vehicles, attacking policemen, pelting stones at them and set 27 vehicles on fire.

Sunilam was convicted in the incident and sentenced to life imprisonment. He was in jail for four months between October 2012 and February 2013. He is out on bail. Speaking to India Today about Mandsaur, he alleged that the judicial inquiry ordered by Chouhan was an eyewash. He, however, condemned the reported violence by the farmers.

FIRING AND DEATH OF FARMERS

In both Multai and Mandsaur, violence by the farmers spread and the situation became out of control.

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In Multai, when the protesters went on rampage, the police received orders to open fire killing 18 protesting farmers. A driver of the fire brigade also died in the incident.

In Mandsaur too fires were shot after violence broke out during the farmers' protest. It is not yet clear whether the police resorted to firing in which five protesters have died. MP Home Minister Bhupendra Singh has denied that the farmers died in police firing. However, some of those injured in the firing claimed that the shots were fired by the police. A judicial inquiry ordered by Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan perhaps may settle this issue.

A scene after violent clashes between farmers and the police at Pipliya in Mandsaur district on Tuesday. At least five farmers were killed and four others injured in firing by police on farmers, who have been protesting for a week demanding loan waiver and fair price for their produce. (PTI Photo)

THEN BJP, NOW CONGRESS

Politicisation of both Multai and Mandsaur incidents took place.

Soon after the Multai firing, the opposition BJP went swung to action for cornering the ruling Congress. A BJP team visited the shooting site to take stock of the situation. They alleged that the incident was "more barbaric than the Jallianwalla massacre".

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The same conditions are being witnessed now. The only difference is that it is Congress which is on the overdrive now. Party vice president Rahul Gandhi has issued a statement condemning the Mandsaur incident. He also planned to visit Mandsaur to "meet members of the victims". However, he was denied permission by the local administration in view of the volatile situation.

Moreover, in both the cases the ruling party has blamed the Opposition for inciting the farmers. The Congress leaders had blamed their BJP counterparts of inciting the farmers in the Multai incident. In Mandsaur, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has blamed the Congress leaders of provoking the farmers and conspiring to disturb peace in the state.

Besides, the BJP leaders had demanded Digvijaya's resignation in the Multai incident. Now, in the Mandsaur episode, Congress leaders have demanded Chouhan's resignation.

JINXED 'M'

It seems the letter 'M' has got jinxed when it comes to firing and death of farmers in the state. In a strange coincidence, Multai, Mandsaur and Madhya Pradesh (MP) start with 'M'.

Also Read:

Farmers in Rajasthan express solidarity with MP protesters; demand action over Mandsaur deaths

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Rattled after Mandsaur farmer deaths, Shivraj Chouhan hikes compensation to Rs 1 crore

We plan to replicate MP model of agricultural growth: Radha Mohan Singh

WATCH: Mandsaur collector heckled and chased by mob of angry farmers

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The decree will make sure less buyers get their fingers burnt

Among the big projects to be launched is An Khanh New City Developments sale of its first phase this quarter. The mega $2 billion project is developed by South Koreas Posco E&C and Vietnams Vinaconex, located in Hanois Hoai Duc district, along the Thang Long Boulevard.

Scheduled for completion in 2013, the city is expected to supply 6,440 apartments, equivalent to 392,319 square metres of accommodation, enough for 30,000 people.

Even though Hoa Phat Group, the investor in a more than 1,000 apartment Mandarin Garden in Cau Giay districts Tran Duy Hung road, refused to release its launching time, real estate experts predicted the project would be soon launched.

At the beginning of this month the CT7D, located in Le Van Luong street and invested by Nam Cuong Group and the FLC Landmark Tower of FLC Group will also be launched, with a total of 200 units and prices ranging from VND23 million ($1,200) to VND28 million ($1,470) per square metre.

In Gia Lam district, over the Red River, the second lot of Rung Co Residentials belonging to the Eco Park is also being launched, with around 1,500 apartment units.

In addition, Victoria Van Phu, Star City, Diamond Tower and Song Da City View will also add apartments to the mix.

Real estate consultant CBRE Vietnam expected that there would be 3,000 units in Hanoi launched this quarter, compared to 1,950 units in the third quarter. There were more than 4,600 units launched in the second quarter.

This decline, according to CBRE Vietnam, could be due to the Decree 71, effective on August 8, 2010 providing guidance on the Housing Law, which caps the proportion of units sold via capital contribution contracts at 20 per cent with the remaining 80 per cent sold on transaction floors.

This decree, CBRE Vietnam said, had put a pressure on developers with low financial capabilities and enhanced market transparency.

However, CBRE Vietnam executive director Richard Leech said new project launches would continue trending towards more affordable options.

With the opening and improvement of major infrastructure routes, the capitals western and southern districts are attracting new residents with easier access for commuting into the core urban districts, Leech said.

He said that the Decree 71 was expected to benefit the market by enhancing transparency, placing pressures on developers with low financial capabilities, lessening the threat of price bubbles and limiting speculative forces.

Tran Nhu Trung, Savills Vietnam associate director, said the Decree 71 had showed off its advantages to clearly regulate five types of mobilising capital investment. However, Trung said the procedures to implement Decree 71 were still complicated and wasted customers time and energy.

The more simple it [decree] regulates, the more it is practical in the real life, Trung said.
GE Healthcare and partners extended last year's biomedical engineering training programme in North Vietnam to the south, inviting 56 engineers from 26 southern cities and provinces

Following the success of a similar BME training in the north last year, GE Healthcare and its partners expanded their efforts to train healthcare providers in the south.

This training course was attended by 56 biomedical engineers from 56 hospitals across 26 southern cities and provinces. The five-day course brought together leading industry experts from Singapore Biomedical Engineers Association (BES), Ngee Ann Polytechnic institute (Singapore), and the Department of Medical Equipment and Construction.

During the training session, biomedical engineers were updated on a wide range of knowledge on safety management and operation of medical equipment. They also practiced with medical equipment and shared best practices with local colleagues and international lecturers.

GE Healthcare is committed to not only providing innovative technologies and machines for Vietnam, but also the education and training behind them to ensure healthcare providers are able to give the very best care to their patients, said Anh Tuan Tran, Vietnam country manager for GE Healthcare. It is important that we work with local partners, such as the Department of Medical Equipment and Construction, VietMedical and T.D. Medical, to deliver solutions that will benefit the 91 million people in the country.

Leading industry experts from Singapore extended and updtated participants' knowledge on basic and advanced medical equipment management

Director of the Department of Medical Equipment and Construction Nguyen Minh Tuan emphasised, The training course which combines fundamental and up-to-date knowledge on medical equipment management for hospitals plays a particularly important role in the improvement of the quality of healthcare as well as reflects the improving investment efficiency and medical equipment use in the context that biomedical engineering training in hospitals does not enjoy enough attention currently.

Tuan lauded the role of GE Healthcare, VietMedical, and partners in enhancing the knowledge and practical skills training of hospital engineers and urged them to work closely with the Department of Medical Equipment and Construction in developing an annual BME training programme that would help many hospital engineers to facilitate their knowledge.

On the side of the Ministry of Health, the funding would be strengthened to promote medical equipment management training, bringing efficiency to hospitals and benefits to patients.

GE Healthcare was one of the first US companies to arrive in Vietnam and stands committed to improving Vietnamese healthcare

GE Healthcare is a partner in supporting the Vietnamese government and healthcare providers to strengthen the healthcare system and train clinicians in the country. Last year, GE Healthcare, in partnership with the Vietnam Society of Anesthesiologists (VSA), Viet Duc Hospital, and VietMedical opened a new VSA Simulation Training Lab for Anesthesia and Intensive Care, aimed at improving anesthesia education, training, and raising awareness on the importance of safe anesthesia administration in Vietnam. The simulation training lab was the first-of-its-kind in the country.

In March 2015, GE Healthcare provided a $250,000 education grant to Bach Mai Hospital to help develop and increase the skills of clinicians in the Emergency Department and Intensive Care Unit. In April 2015, GE Healthcare and the Vietnam National Heart Institute co-hosted a cardiac medical education seminar for 100 Vietnamese clinicians aimed at improving the diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular diseases in Vietnam.

With its commitment to build a healthier community by improving access to quality products, GE Healthcare is providing transformational medical technologies and services that are shaping a new age of patient care in Vietnam. Today, more than half of all domestic clinics and hospitals have at least one device of GE medical technology.

Renewing healthcare from the inside out The vast majority of the worlds population has limited access to affordable and quality healthcare. GE Healthcares newly launched Sustainable Healthcare Solutions has gone the extra mile to bring advanced technologies and accessible medical solutions to the worlds emerging markets. Tay Lan reports on how this new business model is benefitting patients in Vietnam.

GE Healthcare training for the future There is a global shortage of trained and skilled healthcare workers, a problem that is expected to worsen. In 2013, the world faced a shortage of 7.2 million healthcare workers and by 2035 the number is expected to reach by 12.9 million, according to the World Health Organization.
American conglomerate Honeywell is looking to expand operations across various sectors in Vietnam

Honeywell, which has been present in Vietnam since 2005, operates in four sectors: aerospace, home and building technologies, safety and productivity solutions, and performance materials and technologies. Honeywells solutions have provided the Vietnamese market with technologies and services in multiple sectors, ranging from oil and gas to automotive and aerospace.

In late May, the firms aerospace arm struck a $100-million deal with Vietnamese budget airline Vietjet, as part of Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phucs visit to the US. Honeywell will provide 98 auxiliary power units for Vietjets Airbus A320 fleet, continuing the partnership that started in 2014.

The American firm also looks to boost its market share in home and building technologies. At a recent symposium in Ho Chi Minh City, it has presented a complete portfolio of end-to-end connected technologies for hospitality, residential, and commercial buildings.

Vietnamese house owners are becoming more tech-savvy and smart home applications are now more common. We aim to provide Vietnamese customers with a well-rounded system, which controls thermostats, multiple household items, and security cameras, said Mai Trang Thanh, president of Honeywell Vietnam.

Vietnams recovering real estate market and growing tourism industry will be a boon to Honeywells business, the president added. Together with China and India, Vietnam is one of Honeywells fastest-growing markets.

Thanh admitted that there is still a long road ahead, as Honeywell Vietnam currently accounted for only 10 per cent of the market share in this sector. The firm has recently combined multiple departments to boost market share, as well as provide customers with a comprehensive solution for their buildings.

Notable residential departments with Honeywells smart home solutions include Samrimi Salla by Dai Quang Minh and Times City Park Hill, developed by Vingroup.

Honeywell and VietJet sign again for $100 million On May 31, Honeywell (NYSE: HON) signed an agreement with VietJet for 98 auxiliary power units for the airlines new Airbus A320 fleet.

Honeywell, Cathay Pacific connected aircraft test programme delivers substantial savings Honeywell (NYSE: HON) has completed the airline industrys first-ever trial with Cathay Pacific to demonstrate how advanced data analytics can improve operational availability of its A330 fleet.
Japanese power plants are going up to keep on the lights in Vietnam

Japanese firms are currently negotiating with Vietnamese ministries for the licensing of three significant thermal power plants, Nghi Son II, Vung Ang II, and Van Phong I. The three plants, with respective capacities of 1,200MW, 1,200MW and 1,320MW, are expected to become operational between 2018 and 2021.

During Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abes official visit to Vietnam in January this year, the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) and a developer under Japans Mitsubishi Corp signed the Vung Ang II BOT project investment agreement.

Located in Ha Tinh provinces Vung Ang Economic Zone, the Vung Ang II project, capitalised at about $2.2 billion, will be fuelled by imported coal. Once commissioned, the plant will provide electricity to northern Vietnam, and contribute to the nations energy security.

Mitsubishi is also acting as a contractor  together with Koreas Doosan Heavy Industries and Construction (Doosan) and Vietnams Power Engineering Consulting Joint Stock Company 2 and Pacific Corporation  for a 600MW coal fired thermal power plant in Vinh Tan IV in the central province of Binh Thuan.

Mitsubishi Corp stated on its website that electricity demand in Vietnam is expected to see a remarkable increase of more than 10 per cent per annum in the coming years, in light of the countrys annual GDP growth of 6 to 7 per cent. Particularly southern Vietnam, the countrys largest economic region, faces a critical situation in terms of its ability to adequately supply the increasing demand for electricity.

Other plans for developing power plants have been delayed, making these projects particularly important for the nation as part of its efforts to realise a stable supply of power for sustainable economic growth.

Through these projects, Mitsubishi Corp will seek to contribute not only to a stable supply of power in Vietnam, but also to the countrys overall economic growth, while at the same time promoting the use of eco-friendly infrastructure across Southeast Asia and around the world, Mitsubishi announced.

Meanwhile, Sumitomo  the main backer for the Van Phong I thermal power plant, estimated to be worth $3.8 billion, is seeking to obtain a BOT contract and an investment license after reaching coal supply and land lease agreements with authorities.

According to Noboru Aoki, head of the environment division at New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organisation, Japans coal enterprises are ready to transfer clean coal technology to Vietnam in a bid to reduce emissions and enhance efficiency in the power sector.

Japanese companies hope to tout their efficiency in power generation and green technologies to set themselves apart. Toxic discharge from a steel mill construction site by Taiwans Formosa Plastics in April 2016 raised environmental awareness in Vietnam. And more and more residents oppose coal power, Aoki said at a recent forum in Hanoi organised by the MoIT in collaboration with Japans Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) to enhance trade and co-operation in the coal sector.

He added, Japan helps Vietnam use environmental technologies, for example by sharing experience in the operation and maintenance of thermal power plants and the handling of ash.
A nurse administers vitamin A to a young patient at Hai Ba Trung Districts Thanh Nhan Ward in the capital city.-VNA/VNS Photo Duong Ngoc

The candid concession came during a working session the Deputy PM held with the HCM City Peoples Committee on local healthcare last week.

However, Dam also stressed that privatisation of healthcare facilities in the country was not the answer.

While he was in HCM City, the Deputy PM Dam visited two ward-level healthcare stations in the city and found major disparities between them.

One of them, in Ward 11, District 13 was outfitted with latest equipment and capable staff, but the other, in Ward 16, District 4 had outdated equipment and infrastructure.

Officials attributed the stark difference to the fact that the former was a good example of the public-private partnership (PPP) model, while the latter was almost solely dependent on State Budget allocations.

The clinic in Ward 11 also functioned both as a traditional health station and a general medicine facility.

Vo Khac Thai, Chairman of the District 3 Peoples Committee, said that out of 20 private firms that theyd contacted, VietAnhMed Co. specialising in manufacturing and trading medical equipment  was the only company that had agreed to invest in this difficult market.

The company said it was willing to accept losses for the first few years and begin to earn profits in 10 years, Thai said.

Nguyen Thanh Long, Deputy Minister of Health, said 50 per cent of the 12,000 healthcare stations in the country had to be upgraded or rebuilt.

He said that the lack of public confidence in these healthcare stations had driven most patients to central-level hospitals in major cities, causing constant overload.

This fact also discouraged businesses from investing in such stations, he said. He praised the involvement of private sector in healthcare and said it should be encouraged.

The Deputy PM, however, urged caution, saying international health advisors were against the privatisation of healthcare in Viet Nam.

The goal of the private sector, understandably, is profit. If the public health facilities are privatised, social welfare beneficiaries might not receive due attention, am added.

If we want to push the co-operation between public and private sector, then it must be based on a non-profit spirit, he said.

He explained that the non-profit approach he advocated did not mean doing everything for free, but using profits to reinvest and expand.

Responding to concerns about privatisation, Phan Quoc Viet, VietAnhMeds representative, said his companys profits will go towards upgrading equipment and infrastructure upgrades, capacity building for staff, and expanding into a chain of health stations in other districts in HCM City.

The public must benefit from the PPP model. They should be able to receive better services at an affordable price. The money made from people with more financial means will be used for reinvestment, am said.

Nguyen Tan Binh, Director of the municipal Department of Health, there are 319 health stations at the ward and commune levels in the city.

Despite considerable efforts by city authorities, these health stations have not met expectations in delivering quality primary healthcare.

This prompted the city to implement on a pilot basis the PPP (Public Private Partnership) healthcare model, he added.

The aim is to improve grassroots level healthcare and alleviate pressure for centrally administered hospitals, he said.

Binh said the city would conduct a thorough examination of the effectiveness of the pilot model after a certain period to see if it was a right way forward for the health sector.
A loan waiver can save farmers for one season before they again fall into the trap of moneylenders.

By India Today Web Desk: Five farmers were killed following a violent clash with the police in Mandsaur district of Madhya Pradesh on Tuesday.

Two days later, farmers have refused to call off the strike and the state is now witnessing a shortage of milk and vegetables.

In Maharashtra too, the farmers' strike has entered the eighth day today despite chief minister Devendra Fadnavis announcing a Rs 30,000 crore loan waiver.

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Prompted by the Yogi Adityanath government's Rs 36,359 crore loan waiver package for Uttar Pradesh, farmers in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra have been demanding a complete loan waiver besides a minimum support price (MSP) for their produce.

IT DOESN'T PAY TO BE A SMALL FARMER

Successive governments have failed to check farmer suicides in the country. Debt has been the primary reason behind most farmers taking the extreme step.

That is because it doesn't pay to be a farmer in India. For most small farmers, the expenditure is way more than what they earn from their farm produce.

For farmers with land size of less than 0.01 hectare, the average monthly income is Rs 4,561 as against a monthly expenditure of Rs 5,108.

Farmers who have bigger plot of land, the returns are better--those with 10 hectare of land or more, the average monthly income is Rs 41,388 while the monthly expenditure is Rs 14,447.

This also explains why small farmers get trapped in the vicious cycle of moneylending.

Debt has been one of the primary reason behind most farmer suicides. Photo: PTI.

At least 26 per cent of all farm loans are taken through money lenders who charge high rate of interest. And, it is the small and marginal farmers with less than 0.01 hectare of land who prefer to take loans through moneylenders.

WHY LOAN WAIVERS MAY NOT HELP

After Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra, the Madhya Pradesh government too could be mulling the option of a farm loan waiver. Prime Minister Narendra Modi today met senior Cabinet colleagues to discuss the farmers' strike in Madhya Pradesh.

The Shivraj Singh Chouhan government has already assured farmers of a Rs 1,000 crore stabilisation fund.

In election-bound Karnataka, BJP leader Jagadish Shettar has threatened to launch an agitation if the Siddaramaiah government fails to announce a farm loan waiver package.

However, the problems faced by farmers are more systemic and a loan waiver is just a temporary relief.

For small and marginal farmers, the bigger problem is a gap between what they earn and what they spend on their produce. A loan waiver can save them for one season before they again fall into the trap of moneylenders.

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Further, the trend of loan waivers also affects the fiscal health of the country.

Protesting farmers spilling milk in Maharashtra. Photo: ANI.

CAN MINIMUM SUPPORT PRICE HELP

Besides loan waiver, one of the recurring demands made by farmers in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh is a fair price for their produce in the market.

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan assured farmers that his government would purchase onions at Rs 8/kg and moong dal at an agreed price.

A minimum support price (MSP) is the price that the government decides for a certain commodity at which the farmer can sell his produce in the market for a season.

Given the price fluctuation in markets--prices of farm produce may go up during a year of short supply or fall in a year of bumper crop--the MSP provides a cushion to farmers and assures them of a minimum return on their produce even in adverse climate.

While MSP is a better way to approach the farmer crisis in the country, but for many small and marginal farmers the cost of transporting their produce to the mandi outweighs the MSP the produce would fetch. Therefore, they agree to sell it to buyers at a price lower than MSP.

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The government can work towards educating farmers about better agricultural practices, ensuring they have access to irrigation facilities, and provide them with a regular supply of fertiliser and pesticides.

Relying less on climate and more on modern practices of agriculture can reduce the burden on farmers, and perhaps make farming a profitable business for them.

(Source: Nabard, NSSO, Economic Survey, RBI, Indian Today research)

ALSO READ:

Madhya Pradesh farmers protest: How Mandsaur is a repeat of Multai 19 years later

We plan to replicate MP model of agricultural growth: Radha Mohan Singh

On World Milk Day, Maharashtra farmers protest by spilling milk, throwing fruits on road

Maharashtra farmers strike: Shiv Sena slams Devendra Fadnavis government

ALSO WATCH: Waiving off farmer loans could lead to fiscal slippages, warns RBI chief

--- ENDS ---
By Press Trust of India: Mumbai, Jun 7 (PTI) Politics over the ongoing farmers agitation in Maharashtra intensified today with Shiv Sena ministers skipping the state Cabinet meeting.

Sena president Uddhav Thackeray, meanwhile, ridiculed the governments offer of holding talks only with "true" farmer leaders. "Who are these farmers? Is there a real farmer in your ministry," the Sena said, in an editorial in party mouthpiece Saamana.

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Making light of the Sena ministers absence at the cabinet meeting, Finance Minister Sudhir Mungantiwar of the BJP said, "The Sena ministers did not boycott the Cabinet meet but sought permission not to attend it which the chief minister granted."

Revenue minister Chandrakant Patil, also of the BJP, said, "It is not correct to say that Sena ministers came to the Cabinet (meet) and left in a huff. The Sena ministers arrived (at the meeting) and told the chief minister that Uddhav Thackeray is not here (in Mumbai) and they would not attend the Cabinet meeting, till they have a word with the Sena president."

Transport minister Diwakar Raote of the Shiv Sena said his party ministers did not attend the Cabinet meet.

Sena ministers held a meeting at the official residence of industries minister Subhash Desai, ahead of the Cabinet meet.

Meanwhile, agitating farmers put a lock outside the house of BJP legislator R T Deshmukh from Majalgaon in Beed district.

Security outside homes of ruling party legislators and MPs has been beefed up following the lock up protest.

In Solapurs Barshi, former state minister Dilip Sopal locked his house to express support for the farmers stir.

The developments come a day after Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis announced that Maharashtra government will come out with a loan waiver for farmers before October 31, which will benefit 1.07 crore farmers with less than five acre land holding.

"Before October 31, the distressed farmers who need help will be given a loan waiver. The modalities are being worked out and I can say with conviction that this will be the biggest loan waiver in Maharashtras history," Fadnavis had said.

The Sena today hit out at the Centre for allegedly pushing debt-ridden farmers into greater despair and allowing their farms to fall into ruin by brandishing the knife of demonetisation.

"After years, monsoon last year brought hope to farmers and they had a bumper production but the knife of demonetisation led them to sell their produce at dirt cheap rates. They couldnt even recover their input costs and as a result, debt ridden farmers plunged deeper into losses," the Sena said in an editorial in Saamana.

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The bickering ally also questioned the "apathy" of the government towards the agricultural sector at a time when the industry and services sector kept receiving periodical boost for their development. PTI VT MM DK AAR

--- ENDS ---
Grande performing at One Love Manchester. Photo: Getty Images/Dave Hogan for One Love Manchest

Following Sundays One Love Manchester benefit concert, Ariana Grande has released a live recording of the nights emotional closing song Somewhere Over the Rainbow. The Wizard of Oz cover was belted out through tears, and will likely be considered one of the pop stars greatest performances for years to come. According to Pitchfork, all proceeds from both this single and the rerelease of One Last Time will go to the victims of the Manchester bombing. Grab a tissue box and listen to Grandes rendition of the classic below.


On to the next Aziz-cap! As a special supplement to your regular recaps of Master of None, weve asked New York Magazine cover star Aziz Ansari to give us the behind-the-scenes breakdown of each episode, pieced together from multiple conversations over the past several months.

Related Stories Master of None Recap: Best Food Friends

Episode 7: Door #3

This episode is mostly about Devs professional future, with a nice reprise of the Parents episode from season one, in which Dev and Kelvin Yus Brian bond with their dads. We begin on the set of Clash of the Cupcakes, where Chef Jeff (Bobby Cannavale) offers Dev a seven-season contract to stay on as the shows host, just after hes had to record some very humiliating promos. Devs indecision about an opportunity he doesnt really want provides the narrative framework, as he goes out to lunch with Chef Jeff; visits his dad, Ramesh, whos hard at work at his gastroenterology office pulling strange things out of peoples butts (and is, again, delightfully played by Aziz Ansaris real dad, Shoukath, who is a real gastroenterologist); and finally gets a glimpse of how depressing his life could be via an encounter with COTC guest judge Kenny the Magician (Cedric the Entertainer), who is so nervous onscreen that he accidentally inflicts bodily harm on himself.

The best part, though, is the side story, which marks the first substantial Brian appearance since his brief pop-up as an obsessive fan of the Jabbawockeez dance troupe in The Dinner Party, plus a deep dive into the dating life of Brians dad, Peter (Clem Cheung), whos sowing his oats as a divorced elderly Taiwanese immigrant. Alan Yang, Master of None co-creator and the basis for Brians character, guest stars in this Aziz-cap. Buon appetito!

Clash of the Cupcakes

Aziz Ansari: Oh my God, I love Leonard [Ouzts]. Hes the comedian who plays Lawrence, the producer of Clash of the Cupcakes. We didnt know who we wanted that character to be, so we auditioned a bunch of people and he just made us laugh. Wed never seen him in anything. He improvised a lot, and we would throw him jokes on the day and he would just nail it. Its so fun having a fun character like that. He made us laugh so much.

When Dev gets offered seven seasons, its like, do you go for something safe, or do you take a risk and try to pursue something you really love and are passionate about? Which I think is a conundrum a lot of people have faced in their professional lives. The part where Chef Jeff tells Dev that theres no diversity in the food world  we were just trying to come up with a reason of why Bobbys character would want my character around so much, or why he would get the opportunity to do that show, and that was a reason that made sense to us. And the show that Dev pitches, Best Food Friends, as you see in episode 210, that show looks pretty good! The only thing that becomes a disaster is what happens with Chef Jeff.

We put Kenny the Magician in there as a kind of cautionary tale for Dev. Hes someone who continues to do something because its easy, not because hes passionate about it. We loved this idea of that guy being a magician character and then someone pitched out Cedric the Entertainer playing the part and we instantly took to it. Were huge fans of his and he was so nice. Theres a lot of sadness to Kenny the Magician. Hes kind of the guy that just went down this one path and never stopped to reflect on his life and change it up, and he ends up putting a spike through his hand. [Laughs.]

Its all related to the part at the end where Dev calls Francesca to tell her about BFFs. Maybe in the back of his head, he thinks he could pick this up, and then when she gets engaged, he realizes, Oh fuck. I have a connection with this person and nothings going to come of it. Oh fuck.

Dev's Dad

Ansari: Having my parents on the show has changed my whole relationship with them. I see them more. You get older and you start realizing like, Wow, Ive really got to spend time with these people. And you kind of forget to do that because you get so busy with things. Its hard to make, like, going to visit your parents a big priority sometimes, especially if they live far away. So you realize how special it is that you get to share these kinds of moments with them, and you really learn to not take it for granted.

My dad, or Devs dad, is always a fun character to write for and bring in the mix. We wanted to do an episode that was just me and my dad. It was going to be about me being in the hospital for a whole day, because I remember how he used to take me to rounds when I was a little kid, but we couldnt quite figure it out. The episode is really about Devs career stuff, but we had that scene about the toothbrush and we needed something, so we put it in there.

My dad actually pitched that story about the toothbrush! He said thats a common thing that happens with gastroenterology. People put electric toothbrushes up there to get off. He was like, This is a real thing. And I have to pull it out. I was like, Well, Jesus Christ. And then we Googled it and its like, Yeah, it happens. People put electric toothbrushes up their butts to get off.

It wasnt quite like whats in the show, but as a little kid I remember seeing a collection of things [hed pulled out of people]  things like ball bearings, a nickel. He doesnt have a shrine like that in the office, and he never had a SpongeBob [figurine] or anything like that. But I do remember seeing that little collection of stuff.

My parents live in North Carolina and my dad is still a doctor there. I grew up in South Carolina. Those are both red states; Im from a very red America. But were there. Thats what the show is saying: Were here, man. Were here. Wherever you dont think we are, were there. And were American, and were doing stuff. We have the same stuff going on that everyone else does. None of these people are the caricatures you want to paint them out to be, you know? A Muslim character whos a doctor pulling a toothbrush out of some guys butt is different than showing a Muslim character whos in a sleeper cell. So you can see some Muslim guy and be scared of him and think of the guy from Homeland or whatever, but hopefully, you see the show and then youre like, Maybe that guy is a guy that pulls a toothbrush out of a guys butt.

Brian's Dad

Ansari: Theres a whole story with Clem and his girlfriends, but ask Alan if hes cool talking about it.

Alan Yang: That one Im gonna plead the fifth on! I havent told my dad about this yet, man! [Laughs.] No, so its obviously super heightened. But the thing that is based in reality is that hes a single Asian man in his 70s living in Southern California. And hes legitimately on eHarmony.

You know, I saw him a few months [before we wrote the episode] and he was like, I met a woman on eHarmony and Im gonna go meet up with her. Thats intensely interesting! Whenever I tell Aziz about stuff with my dad, hes like, Weve got to put that in the show, because what other show is doing that? What show is depicting the dating life of a 70-year-old immigrant from Taiwan? Very few shows! [Laughs.] Were not encountering a lot of competition in that department. You see the dating life of a fucking pretty 30-year-old person in the city all the time, right? But my dad goes through the same romantic stuff I do. Its true. He does. So I just thought that was more interesting. Who cares about my life in that respect?

Ansari: Alan told me that story and I thought it was so funny. We just talked about, Oh, I love that were doing this because in most shows you dont even see a young Asian guy whos adept with women enough to have one real, romantic relationship, and were showing an older Asian gentleman who is balancing two relationships. Hes a playboy! I love that segment because its a cool kind of continuation of the Parents chunk, of just showing the relationship between Brian and his dad evolving. And Clem, who plays Peter, just really makes me laugh in that episode. Yeah, the real story that Alan told is basically whats there and its so funny. It always made me laugh. Im glad we got it in.

You know, I saw some video on YouTube of someone asking a group of [American] girls like, Do you think Asian guys are cute? or something, and they all started laughing. Again, its the fucking Homeland theory, because the only time theyve seen Asian guys on TV theyre like, Errrrggghhlah, Ive never seen a bra before! Just fucking completely inept. Now people are going to see older Asian guys and be like, Hes probably fucking like five different ladies.
Babadook eye for the straight guy. Photo: Entertainment One/IFC Films

June is the month of Pride and the LGBTQ community has a new queer icon to celebrate: The Babadook.

You may know this Dada-esque mouthful as the title character of the 2014 horror film by Australian director Jennifer Kent. In the movie, the Babadook is a monster that haunts the house of a widow and her 6-year-old son. The father died in a car accident while the mother was in labor, and his death hangs over the family. The son acts out in school, and the mom is beleaguered. At some point, he asks his mom to read this new pop-up book called Mister Babadook that mysteriously appears out of nowhere. That brings in the monster.

Now, a boring heterosexuals interpretation of The Babadook is that the monster is a devastating manifestation of grief: Even as we learn to survive traumatic loss, it lives on as a part of us. How literal! Meanwhile, gay Twitter and Tumblr advanced a much more elegant theory of the Babadook, which is that hes a gay man. It all started back in October with this discussion on Tumblr. A true critical tete-a-tete:

Photo: Tumblr

Photo: Tumblr

But in the new year, the theory truly began to take root in the community:

good morning the Babadook is openly gay  JuanPa (@jpbrammer) February 16, 2017

And eventually we claimed the Babadook as our own:

openly gay and with an affinity for hats and drama, the Babadook was the first time I saw myself represented in a film  JuanPa (@jpbrammer) April 19, 2017

Now, with the arrival of Pride Month, the Babadook has cemented his status as a bona fide icon.



happy pride month from queer icon the babadook pic.twitter.com/f2JxwQbRDd  jacob (@jacobbullards) June 3, 2017

Breaking News: @HRC to honor The Babadook with the Visibility Award pic.twitter.com/IO0VXYlqEG  andy ;) (@AndyRockCandy) June 7, 2017

At this point you might be shaking your head, unconvinced that the Babadook deserves to stand alongside Yorkie and Kelly and Nomi Malone. Thats okay, a little skepticism is warranted. But lets review the evidence:

1. The Babadook prefers dark spaces like closets and basements and comes out of dark recesses.

2. The Babadook wears a long, androgynous coat that a certain type of fashion gay might lust over at Comme des Garcons. (Isnt it obvious that hes supposed to be Rick Owens?)

3. He loves a hat. (See No. 2.)

4. As those tumblr kids pointed out all those months ago, he literally wrote a book about himself to start some drama.

The case, it is closed. This year: The B in LGBTQ stands for Babadook. Happy Pride!
James Corden is determined to fight fear with laughter with this weeks special episodes of The Late Late Show filmed in London. The British host opened the first installment of his three-show stint across the pond by addressing the recent deadly terrorist attack in the city. Some people might say its a strange time to do a variety show from this city  I couldnt disagree more, the host said. He explained:

Were going to bring you the stupidest, most fun-packed shows weve ever made for you to celebrate London and Britain and everything it has to offer. And you know what: the people who carried out that attack would hate that, too.

Corden shared his pride in his hometown, promising to show off Londons beauty, diversity, and its stoic British determination to let nothing or anybody stand in our way. He added, This is not a country that feels afraid.
The Handmaids file quietly in two red rows toward the Putnam house, where yet another of Gileads creepy-ass ceremonies is taking place. Do they give out handbooks for this shit? What am I saying? Of course they do. Commander Putnam is reading some scripture from Genesis about handmaids and their children coming forth, which Janine and Mrs. Putnam are supposed to act out as part of the big baby hand-off.

Formalized rituals and bad interpretations of millennia-old texts have a way of conferring a certain legitimacy, or worse, holiness, on all manner of fucked-up shit. In this case, the institutionalized rape of women and the theft of their children! Janine is supposed to come forward and give the baby to the Putnams, a gesture that is laughably awful. Its just another version of the Commander asking June if shes excited about Jezebels, another way of demanding that women feign pleasure about their exploitation, and pantomime their consent. But there can be no real consent when you have a gun to your head, and Gilead is a gun at the temple of every woman who lives inside it.

For a moment, it seems like Janine wont let go of the baby, until Commander Putnam nods and smiles at her and she softens. Janine, you may recall, believes that hes in love with her and is going to run away with her, so she hands over the baby thinking its all a ruse, rather than a real good-bye. As she exits the Putnam house between columns of Handmaids showering her in Praise Bes and Blessed Bes, she takes June aside. Dont be sad, she whispers. Hes coming for me. We all have lies that we tell to ourselves.

As Janine speeds away to her next rape house, June catches up with Alma  the handmaid who somehow knew the Mexican delegation was planning to trade for fertile women  and floats a very dangerous word: mayday. Alma says she has simply no idea what June is talking about, but takes her aside at the store later and admits that shes with the resistance. They have an assignment for June, one that requires her to go back to Jezebels and pick up a package from the woman at the bar. Tonight.

Its interesting to see June make a beeline for the rebellion, particularly since she was so quick to decline when Ofglen tried to recruit her. She wasnt that type of person, she said at the time, but so much has changed. Not only has she learned how to break the rules, getting embroiled in separate illicit dealings with the Commander, Serena Joy, and Nick, but shes learned that Luke is alive. This, more than anything else, seems to have changed her, given her hope. When Moira insisted at Jezebels that there was only one way out of Gilead for them  a hearse  June pushed back with almost naive optimism, saying they were both going to get out alive. She doesnt know how, exactly, but as she told Nick in the last episode, there are worse things than ending up on the Wall. Maybe thats what Ofglen meant when she said that no one was this type of person until they had to be.

June is becoming a hero, although this form of heroism has an unfortunate cost. This specific act of espionage requires her to seduce the Commander  to convince him that their last creepy role-play sex trip to a brothel was just so thrilling that she cant wait to go back. She discovers, to both her relief and disgust, that shes good at it: I just cant stop thinking about our little adventure, she says, after coyly flirting her way into his study. It was just so exciting to dress up for you.

Its some spectacular acting from Elisabeth Moss, pretending to be a woman whos doing a solid bit of pretending of her own. The Commander takes the bait, and soon theyre in the car back to Jezebels, June laughing and teasing on his arm while Nick watches through the rearview mirror. He knows something is up when the Commander says hes glad she suggested an encore, but what can he say?

Are you happy? the Commander asks June. Beyond, she gushes. Its all the same self-serving fantasy for him: that she simply could not be happier than when shes pleasing him, and that he is a true humanitarian for letting her. When they arrive, the Commander bypasses the bar and takes her straight to the room. Did you like that? he says later, after he finishes. Mmm, yes, says June. He tells her that she doesnt have to be quiet here. You can be free, he prods, because nothing says freedom to a sex slave like being told to more convincingly fake an orgasm.

He also has a surprise for her: He knows why she wanted to come back to meet someone. What do you mean? she asks, her voice thready and frightened. He brings in Moira  a.k.a. Ruby  adding grossly that he knows her too. Hes clearly angling for a threesome, but eventually gives up and takes a shower after forcing June to say thank you like an unappreciative child who has just been given some candy.

Moira is highly displeased that June is back at Jezebels, and even less happy to hear that shes gotten into the spy life. Since June cant get down to the bar herself, she asks Moira to get the package, but she isnt having that either. Moira tells her to go back home and do what they say, and suddenly their roles from the Red Room are reversed: The woman willing to lose a hand to write mean graffiti about Aunt Lydia on the bathroom stall is telling June to accept her fate, while June, the one who begged her to stop, is ready to risk death in a high-stakes resistance operation.

The change isnt lost on June, and she is furious. What happened to the woman who told Janine to keep her shit together, who promised June that theyd get out of there someday and find Hannah together? What happened to the fearless badass who stole an Aunts clothes at shiv-point and marched them both out of the Red Center while ordering guards around? What is wrong with you? she says in a sotto voce scream. Moira, do not let them grind you down. You keep your shit together. You fight. Moira declines and leaves, and suddenly June has nothing: not the package, not Moira, not even the memory of the friend who was always ready to stick it to the Man. Just another sad, horrible night of prostituting herself for absolutely no reason.

The next morning, Serena Joy shakes June awake because of course someone needs her, someone always wants something from her. She gets driven to the scene of a standoff, where Janine is on the edge of a bridge with her baby. Seems that she escaped from her new posting, made her way back to the old Putnam place, and is now screaming at Commander Putnam about all the secret kinky sex shit he convinced her to do, all the lies he told about how they would be a family. June gets sent in as the hostage negotiator, trying to talk Jeanine out of exiting Gilead through the only door she can find. Instead, she invites June to join her on the swift, vertical journey out of hell: It cant hurt very much. Just for a second. And then well be free. June says she cant because she still has a daughter out there whom she plans to find, and tells Janine that she has to give her daughter a chance too. All of this, its all gonna be over one day. And everything is going to go back to normal. Is this the lie June tells herself now?

Its the same line she told Moira, and Janine doesnt seem to buy it either. But she hands June the baby anyway. Bye, she says, like shes leaving a party, like theyre going to see each other a hundred more times, and throws herself off the bridge. This place has taken Janines freedom, her grasp on sanity, her eye, and now her child. The only thing that she can take from them now is herself.

Later, Commander Putnam gets arrested for his handmaid sex crimes, and when Serena Joy tries to comfort his wife, shes quick to bring up how Commander Waterford is no saint either. We all know what happened with your first handmaid, she sneers. Men dont change. Which is how we end up with Serena Joy storming through the halls of her house on the warpath, opening the door to the Commanders study. What will she find inside: a dress in Junes size? An earring? A long blonde hair that isnt hers?

Im sure well find out how this will fuck up Junes life in the finale next week, but not before we experience one brief moment of joy. When June goes to the butcher store, the man behind the counter says he has a very special cut of meat (wink-wink) set aside for Commander Waterford, which turns out to be the package from Jezebels, passed through the resistance by Moira herself. Praised be, bitch. Heres your damn package. xoxo Moira.

We cut to Moira back at Jezebels, pulling a long, pointed bit of metal out of a toilet and yelling to a john that shell be right back. We close on her grinning wildly, covered in blood, behind the wheel of a stolen black car and speeding away. Nolite te bastardes carborundorum, bitches.
The Profit Swim by Chuck Handy Season 4 Episode 12 Editors Rating 4 stars * * * * Previous Next   Previous Episode Next Episode  The Profit. Photo: Chun, Kathleen

CNBC is not where youd expect to find a deeply compelling reality show. Its the kind of channel you expect to see on a waiting-room TV, if for some reason your dentists cable package doesnt include the Food Network. Nevertheless, I am utterly addicted to The Profit. For uninitiated newcomers, the titular prophet (see what they did there?) is Marcus Lemonis, a mild-mannered entrepreneur who invests his own money in struggling small businesses for an ownership stake, then does his best to steer them back into the black.

Imagine Shark Tank crossed with Kitchen Nightmares, if the host were calm and reasonable and capable of explaining basic economic concepts in an engaging way, or maybe an earnest, genuinely helpful Bizarro World version of Nathan for You. Over the first four seasons, Lemoniss portfolio has expanded to include the likes of an ice-cream company, a florist shop, a premium longboard manufacturer, and a chain of Long Island hair salons. At its heart, though, The Profit isnt about business at all. Like most great reality shows, its about family drama and the toxic dynamics that make us want to set the people we love most adrift on an ice floe  particularly if we share a workplace as well as a home with them. Lets get to it, shall we?

Unlike Marcus Lemonis, I am not a business expert, but I am pretty sure Swim by Chuck Handy is a terrible name for a company. Chuck Handy spent 20 years working in swimwear sales before launching his own line of slenderizing suits with matching coverups, inspired by his wife Mary Lou. They have two children, Charlie and Mary Ellen  you have to appreciate a family that really sticks to a naming theme  both of whom work for the family business. With a net loss of $36,000 in 2015 and $40,000 in 2016, the company and the Handys life savings are in peril.

But all is not lost. Marcus declares plus-size swimwear to be a giant opportunity, which, while Im very happy for everyone involved, is probably not the most sensitive adjective choice.

1) The company is currently headquartered in Miami, where Chuck and Mary Lou originally grew up, despite the fact that everyone but Charlie now lives in New Jersey. Marcus astutely notes this bizarre setup  and more important, they should have an office in a fashion center like New York or Los Angeles.

2) Their trade-show booth  where colorful, slightly dated suits (Im being gentle, Marcus calls the prints hideous) hang amid ill-lit lawn furniture  looks like ghosts are having an imaginary pool party in an abandoned Lowes.

3) Chuck is his own designer, despite being untrained, despite the fact that his daughter, Mary Ellen, is a former designer for Dress Barn, and despite the fact that his design process (if you can even call it that) involves drawing inspiration by roaming the aisles of department stores. This means that all Chucks ideas are, at best, a season behind.

4) The suits wholesale for about half the price they should, and thanks to those way-too-low margins, the company cant afford the inventory it needs. Marcus estimates their warehouse should house 25,000 pieces, but theyve got just 800 on hand.

5) There are a whole bunch of feelings happening in this family, who clearly love each other very much. Chuck is upset that hes letting his wife down. Mary Lou is upset that her husband is upset. Mary Ellen is upset that both her parents are upset.

6) And then theres Charlie. The company vice-president, a.k.a. Chucks son, is of the opinion that he is in charge, a belief shared by no one. This seems to deeply rankle Charlie, whose qualifications beyond the fact that he, too, is technically named Chuck Handy are unclear. This is neither here nor there, but he also bears a resemblance to The Challenges Johnny Bananas. I should not hold this against him, and yet, I do.

Marcus offers the Handy family $650,000 for 55 percent of the business. That will not only make the company debt-free, but itll give them access to the capital they need for inventory and product development  not to mention a new office (not in Miami or their New Jersey home) with a showroom. The Handy family accepts. And to be crystal clear, Ill be the boss, Marcus advises Charlie. Not you. Because I have no problem firing your ass. None. And I may even give your sister permission to fire your ass. This, you see, is extremely inflammatory language for The Profit.

Marcus takes the family on a series of educational field trips. First, theyre off to his L.A. showroom for a focus group and a consultation with the president of his fashion group. (Of course Marcus Lemonis has a fashion group  you mean you dont?) The potential customers polled approve of the fit, fabric, and coverage, but slam the designs and the brands disconcertingly male name.

Then they visit the plus-size denim specialists at NYDJ, who recommend that the Handys make their ads more relatable with group photo shoots. Charlie, who is either rude, not fully listening, or both, responds by saying that they dont do group photo shoots.

After closing down the Miami warehouse, they relocate to New York City, where theyll have three weeks to relaunch the brand in time for the Curve industry trade show. In the meantime, Swim by Chuck Handy needs a new name, a new booth, and new garments.

Marcus brings in Printed Village, another one of his investments, which connects companies with artist-created prints and patterns. Their designers offer up some objectively cool and cute suit designs  in patterns like marble and Moroccan tile  that are well received by most of the family. But Chuck, whose tastes skew older, is largely critical of these suggestions. Marcus does not have time for this nonsense. I dont really think of you as a designer, he tells Chuck, and unilaterally declares that theyre going with Printed Village. Just listen to Marcus. Let go. Let a beautiful slumber of profitability overtake you.

And so it does. When Marcus introduces them to their beautiful, pristine new showroom space, Papa Handy is moved to tears. Then its time to reveal their new name: Siloett (as in silhouette). Personally, I do not love this name, if only because it makes me think of decidedly non-beachy grain silos, but I know better than not to listen to Marcus. Its a sexy word, he tells us. Okay, Marcus. Im letting go.

Leading up to Curve, Marcus gives the family members clear assignments: Chuck is on sales, Charlie is on the trade booth, and Mary Ellen is on design. To use a technical business term, Mary Ellen kills it. She follows Marcuss advice to expand the product line by developing a full collection of getaway must-haves, including a weekender bag, hats, and scarves, which she presents with aplomb. Charlies presentation, meanwhile, apparently consists of a single sheet of paper. When pressed on his lack of preparation by Marcus, Charlie throws a mini-tantrum: Dude, do you know how much shit Ive been doing? I just dont have the time.

This man  who, to be clear, is solidly in his 30s  goes on to explain that he cannot abide sharing a home with his parents. I live in this big circus, he says. Dun-dun-dun, every morning! Everythings going on! Marcus laughs at him, which seems like the only appropriate response. For the record, I would watch an hour-long show that dispenses with business advice and simply involves Marcus Lemonis coolly, satisfyingly reprimanding people who have been unnecessary burdens on their family members.

Though the air at the Jacob Javits Center may still hang thick with sorrow from Hillary Clintons would-have-been victory party, Siloetts debut at Curve is a resounding success. I am happy to report that the prodigal son finally establishes a baseline level of confidence by assembling a stylish, professional trade-show booth. Good job, Charlie! Then again, our old pal has also inexplicably hired two assistants. Consider your praise downgraded: Okay job!

Back in his wheelhouse, Chuck is selling the hell out of Siloett at Curve, racking up $270,000 in orders in 48 hours  thats nearly half of what they did all last year. But Marcus says that this boat needs to have one captain  water-related brands require water-related metaphors, thank you very much  and it should be Mary Ellen. Chuck agrees that its best for the company and for the family. I feel that, sure, thats fine, Charlie says, who is visibly twitching. Meanwhile, a barely perceptible crack appears in the thick ice that has surrounded my soul since November 9.

After a well-deserved business group hug, Marcus Lemonis rides off into the business sunset on his business horse. Which business will he business next?
Chris Pine in Wonder Woman. Photo: Courtesy Warner Bros.

Unlike the DC Extended Universe films that came before it, Wonder Woman is bright, optimistic, and most of all, fun. Part of that fun comes from the visual imagination at play. This is a movie that looks terrific, and part of the credit for that must go to costume designer Lindy Hemmings fantastic ensembles. Much ink has already been spilled about Wonder Womans signature costume; below, a few Vulture staffers make their cases for their favorites of the films other looks.

Photo: Youtube

The Modern-Day Poncho

Wonder Womans signature armor is beyond cool, but we cant always be proving ourselves in battle against the Central Powers  its important to feel empowered by this movies wealth of street-style inspiration, too. Clothing is, after all, our everyday armor against the patriarchy, and despite racks of incredible WWI-era costumes and battle armor straight out of Themyscira, the Diana Prince outfit I coveted most was her present-day attire. When the Amazonian goddess strolls up to the Louvre in a burgundy poncho with a matching turtleneck, long black skirt, and high-heeled black leather boots I wanted to collapse. The simple ponytail, the swish of the poncho that basically becomes a civilian cape  its a picture of looks so good that no one can talk to you elegance. Gadot in those shoes is easily over six feet tall, and when you cant just pull out your Lasso of Truth on the streets of modern-day Paris, looking unfuckwithable in your fashion is a necessary first line of defense. Jordan Crucchiola

Photo: Clay Enos/Clay Enos

The Suffragette Costume

I love Wonder Womans London look for the following reasons:

1) Its the culmination of an honest-to-God makeover montage.

2) The last thing Diana dons is a pair of eyeglasses, which is such a witty inversion of how these makeover sequences usually play out.

3) In general, dressy-casual is an underrated style journey for superheroes.

4) That hat!

5) On almost anyone else, these duds would signify schoolmarm, but when Gal Gadot dons that long coat and buttoned-up shirt, she looks like the living picture of an adventuress. Its a reminder that when it comes to what you wear, the most important thing you can put on is confidence. Kyle Buchanan

Photo: Clay Enos/Clay Enos

The Blue Dress

Wonder Woman represents the arrival of a long-needed filmic element to the DC Extended Universe: bold, vivid colors. Ever since Zack Snyders Man of Steel kicked off that cinematic mythos in 2013, the directors desaturated, nearly black-and-white aesthetic has dominated its look. Not so in the latest installment, and that fact is most intensely represented in a scene where our heroine attends a sinister soiree on a mission of vengeance. She wears a dress of astounding blue, with a broadsword not-so-discreetly hidden in its back. It is, in a way, an encapsulation of the film: bright palette, fabulous femininity that doesnt exploit or sexualize, fierce mythology (after all, the sword was forged on a magical island founded by warrior creations of the gods), a lead who is wholly sure of herself, and something ever-so-slightly unconventional for a superhero film  its hard to imagine Tony Stark or Clark Kent showing up to a party like that with a barely hidden blade jabbing into their posteriors. Abraham Riesman

Photo: Clay Enos/Clay Enos

Dr. Poisons Lewk

Mad scientists need a lot of pockets, and Wonder Woman lets its good doctor wreak havoc in a outfit thats utilitarian chic. Keep those famous Wonder Woman hotpants and the Amazons smashing fur capes  Elena Anaya is a vision in stain-masking hunter green and sensible shoes. The mask is artistic and subtle  more Skin I Live In than Batmans Bane  and the goggles are so pronounced they looked like a Wes Anderson accessory. When Dr. Poison tests out her latest noxious concoction  fumes that reduce a gas mask to dust  she conducts the experiment in a pair of brown-leather gloves I personally fell in love with. Those forearm-high, supple, slender gloves were a wink at luxury. With a few more minutes onscreen, I have no doubt Patty Jenkinss camera wouldve caught Dr. Poison rocking a trendy coverall jumpsuit right out of 2017 Uniqlo. Hunter Harris

Photo: Courtesy Warner Bros.

Steve Trevors Activewear

Steve Trevor, supposedly a brilliant spy, decides the best look for sneaking into the Western Front involves donning a fishermans sweater and hiding his scoundrelly hair in a newsboy cap. It doesnt really make sense, but it gives us a chance to see Chris Pine in a good hat, which is a lovely experience. Furthermore, lets talk about the layering involved in this outfit. Trevor wears a jacket on top of leather on top wool on top of Aphrodite knows what else, and yet it somehow all comes together into sludge-ready chic. This is an outfit that says,I know Im probably going to die in war because Im the supporting character and this is just that kind of movie, but want to curl up with a good BBC period detective mystery beforehand? Jackson McHenry
Why Malwa belt? Madhya Pradesh's nine districts of Malwa region are boiling with unrest after 5 farmers died. Farmers are more united in this belt as Indore's Mandi is the biggest trade market of the state. The nine districts are Mandsaur, Neemach, Dhar, Khargaoun, Dewas, Indore, Ratlam, Ujjain, Badwani.

Yogi's farmer loan waiver was the last nail in the coffin. Shivraj Singh Chouhan started his Narmada Yatra which ran in to almost 4 months. It started from January. Various groups of farmers, majorly Bharatiye Kisan Sangh (RSS outfit), Bharatiye Kisan Union started mobilizing farmers. Yogi govt's decision of waving off farmer loans was the trigger point.Farmers announced agitation from June 1st on 2 issues a) complete loan waiver b) cash payment. Over production of onion crop coincided with the agitation. Their procurement remained a big issue as farmers were forced to sell onions at much lower rate of Rs 1.5 while the input cost was between Rs 4-5.

MSP price for onion: Farmers unrest has been simmering from at least over a year. After Madhya Pradesh's image of doing extremely well in wheat production, state government pursued farmers for crop diversification. Result -many farmers moved on to onion production. Due to bumper production last year, farmers didn't get the right prices comparative to their input cost (contrary to what Modi pre-poll promise). After farmers' lobbying and pressure, Shivraj govt had to come up with MSP price (first time in Shivraj's tenure) of Rs 6 per kg as one time MSP(Minimum Support Price) last year. This has been increased to Rs 8 this year after protest.

Demonetisation resulted in delayed payment: After demonetization, govt moved in to complete digitization of all including farmers trading, which resulted in farmers getting payment of their produce through cheques that caused delay. Farmers were ready for this thunderstorm. This is yet to be settled though. Farmers demanded the change to cash payment from then, which govt agreed to pay, but half cash and rest through RTGS mode.

Immediate trigger: Shivraj Chauhan has reached to only RSS-backed Bharatiye Kisan Sangh in Ujjain on Monday and announced MSP price measures for onion, which actually didn`t go down well with other major union Bharatiye Kisan Union in the state. Protest started on the same day later in the night to an extent than some of the farmers have removed fish plates of railway line at Mandsaur. Internet suspended in Mandsaur and next day, Tuesday, 5 killed in the alleged open firing at Pimpariya, Mandsaur.

Intelligence failure: Though Shivraj's govt announced the short term measures of MSP for onion and tur dal, but state intelligence failed to anticipate the big unrest and farmers mobilization as it's been believed that most of the police departments were busy in the security arrangements for Shivraj's trip across the state.

Rise in farmer suicides: In between, continuous suicides in the states, especially by marginal farmers have irked the community. Shivraj Chauhan statement, on many fronts, on suicides also didn't go down well with the farmers. He categorically said that all suicides were not because of loan problem.

Modi failed on pre-poll promise of ensuring 50% profit over the input cost to the farmers. Radha Mohan Singh, agriculture minister, last year showed inability to fulfill the promise and said, "We are trying to reduce input cost, it's not feasible." Before coming to power, the BJP promised to implement the recommendations of the Swaminathan Commission report, but nothing has been done. Recently when Modi promised to make the income of farmers double by 2022, Shivraj Chauhan was made the head of the committee, who will formulate the guidelines. Both Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh farmers are demanding to fulfillment Swaminathan Commission report.
By Press Trust of India: Chennai, Jun 7 (PTI) Four more ruling AIADMK (Amma) MLAs today called on deputy general secretary TTV Dhinakaran, who is trying to re-assert his position after being released on bail in a bribery case despite facing a revolt by the Chief Minister K Palaniswami camp.

The MLAs meeting with Dhinakaran raised questions about the future stability of the Palaniswami government which has a slender majority after the rebellion by former chief minister O Panneerselvam.

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Dairy Development Minister KT Rajenthra Bhalaji sought to play down the the development, saying the MLAs met with Dhinakaran as he was the partys deputy general secretary.

Some AIADMK (Amma) MLAs, including former ministers V Senthil Balaji and P Palaniappan, had met Dhinakaran yesterday even as some others were spotted with him in Bengaluru on June 5 when he called on jailed party general secretary and his aunt V K Sasikala.

Finance minister D Jayakumar had yesterday said such meetings were personal and would not affect the stability of the Palaniswami government.

Thiruparankundram legislator A K Bose, among the four MLAs who met Dhinakaran today, said the deputy general secretary continued to run the party and none could question him.

A top aide of Dhinakaran claimed that so far 25 MLAs have met him since he came out on bail on June 3 in a case related to alleged attempt to bribe some Election Commission officials to get back the party Two-Leaves symbol.

The AIADMK (Amma) faction has 122 MLAs in the 234-member assembly.

A section of the MLAs has been meeting Dhinakaran during the past few days amid a stand-off between him and the Palaniswami camp.

The ministers had revolted against Dhinakaran and Sasikala in April after he came under the scanner of Delhi police in the alleged bribery case.

With Dhinakaran, who was appointed AIADMK post by Sasikala, going back on his earlier assurance to withdraw from party affairs, the ministers and senior party functionaries on June 5 held a meeting and reiterated their opposition to him.

Dhinakaran, after calling on Sasikala, had mocked at their meeting and questioned their authority to remove office-bearers appointed by the general secretary.

He had also said Sasikala had asked him to wait for two months to see whether the merger of the party, as proposed by the Palaniswami and Panneerselvam camps, materialised.

Bose claimed more MLAs will meet Dhinkaran in the coming days and also extended an invitation to his colleagues in the rival O Panneerselvam-led Puratchi Thalaivi Amma faction to join the Dhinakaran-led camp.

"If the MLAs who are with Panneerselvam return, it will be good for them," he said, adding, "Some of them want to return."

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He, however, refused to name any MLA.

Bose said Dhinakaran stressed for "unity of all 122 MLAs" in the Amma faction and that he wanted them to serve people.

Bose, accompanied by senior party leader and former Melur (Madurai) MLA S Samy, told reporters that Dhinakaran was running the party and that the ministers had no right to question it.

"None of them has the right to ask Dhinakaran to stay away from the party affairs," he said in an apparent reference to some revolting ministers asking the party deputy chief to stay away from AIADMKs functioning.

"We will remain united. I will also attend a meeting of MLAs convened by Chief Minister K Palaniswami, if invited," Bose added.

Usilampatti MLA P Neethipathi, who also met Dhinakaran today, said there were no different factions in the ruling party and that "the only team is Amma (Jayalalithaa)."

Rajenthra Bhalaji suggested there was nothing wrong in party MLAs meeting a senior office-bearer of the party.

"They have only met the partys deputy general secretary, isnt it? (And) not anybody else. If people have some business with him, they will meet him," he told reporters here.

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He also stressed that Sasikala was the partys general secretary, a matter that has been challenged by the Panneerselvam camp before the Election Commission.

Responding to demands from the Puratchi Thalaivi Amma faction that Sasikala and Dhinakaran be removed from the party, Balaji said AIADMK was a "big party where there will be differing views."

"All this will come to an end. AIADMK will rise to the occasion whenever there is a problem," he added. PTI SA VS TVS KIS

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Local officials recognized a 23-year veteran of the McLennan County Sheriff's Office on Tuesday for being named the Texas Jail Association's Detention Officer of the Year for professional service.

McLennan County commissioners recognized Lt. Karen Anderson for the award she received last month during an annual Texas Jail Association conference in Austin. The award is given to one detention officer each year from among more than 200 jails in the state.

"I like to come to work everyday, I like deadlines, I like to work hard, and I like to make the captain look good and make the sheriff look good," Anderson said. "Being in the spotlight is not something I like, but I am very honored to get this award."

Jail administrator and McLennan County Sheriff's Office Capt. Ricky Armstrong nominated Anderson early this year for her attention to detail and dedication to training jail staff, implementing policy updates, and managing inmate commissary and visits.

Armstrong, who also sits on the board of directors for the Texas Jail Association, said Anderson's recognition hits close to home because he was the last McLennan County officer awarded the honor, in 1994 when he was a shift sergeant.

County Commissioner Ben Perry announced a formal proclamation of Anderson's award in front of the commissioners court and several jail administrators. Perry, who also sits on the statewide jail board of directors, said having another jail administrator recognized is an example of high standards in McLennan County.

"It is extremely impressive, and I couldn't be prouder. Captain Armstrong has become an active part of the Texas Jail Association and become active in being a part of the discussion of jail standards," Perry said. "For one of our employees to be honored as someone with the professional service award, I just could not be prouder."
Betty Moore

Aug. 24, 1926 - June 1, 2017

Betty Ruth Burks Moore, 90, passed away in Waco. Texas June 1, 2017. Celebration of Life, Memorial service will take place at 2 p.m., Thursday, June 8, at Central United Methodist Church in Waco, with the Rev. Brad Brittain officiating.

Betty was born to Randall and Velma Burks on August 24, 1926 in Mooreville, TX. She went to High School at Chilton, TX and graduated in 1943. She continued her education at Texas Women's University. She enjoyed her church, her sports, and cooking for her family.

Betty was preceded in death by son, Joe Garrison; and her aunt, Edna.

Betty is survived by her sons, Mike of Fort Worth, Keith of Katy, and Kent of Waco. She is also survived by daughters-in-law Judy (Joe), and Pamela (Keith); and five grandchildren.

The brightness and joy of her recent years was provided by her beloved uncle, Robert "Gene" Byrd.

A special thanks to Burma Frisco of Waco, the Central UMC community and the Baylor Bear Foundation.
President Trumps decision to pick a fight with the mayor of London as that great city struggles to right itself after a terrorist attack only heaps further dishonor and shame on the United States. In a crisis such as this, our president should be leading in expressing solidarity with our greatest ally. Instead, Trump this week attacked the Muslim mayor of London by taking the latters comments out of context. Sad.

Whether he misconstrued the mayors comments (by not checking his facts) or thought to attack the mayor because of his religion or wanted to settle a political score with him over travel bans, Trump tweeted shortly after the attack: At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is no reason to be alarmed!

Not quite. What London Mayor Sadiq Khan actually said was in reference to the heightened law enforcement activity that greeted his constituents following a weekend attack that left seven people dead: Londoners will see an increased police presence today and over the course of the next few days. Theres no reason to be alarmed.

While British Prime Minister Theresa May, the leader of the Brexit movement, defended Khan, Trump doubled down on his remarks. All this took place amid the backdrop of a European community trying to figure out if the United States is for them or against them. Yes, theres a certain merit in keeping your enemies guessing, but when you keep supposed friends guessing, theres a problem. One wonders just how Americans might have felt had some half-cocked British prime minister lambasted New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani right after the 9/11 attacks.

Americans are right to wonder why were so intent on embracing adversaries such as Russia while belittling and spurning our allies in the Western world. If this is part of an isolationist America First movement, this week offers a sobering lesson in how efforts in that direction worked out decades ago.

This week marks the 73rd anniversary of the D-Day invasion, which commenced June 6, 1944, and continued throughout that month. The U.S.-led invasion came after more than two years of hard Allied fighting to dislodge an international menace that took root partially because way too many Americans subscribed to what eventually became the America First movement in 1940. Some remember American patriots who were so disdainful of this campaign that they went to Canada and joined the Royal Canadian Air Force to help Great Britain battle the Nazi menace. Some are educated enough to know of President Roosevelts lend-lease program that allowed the United States to indirectly assist Britain in its lonely fight  quietly enough so as to not infuriate America First zealots.

The bombing of Pearl Harbor snuffed out this movement, but it seems to have revived, given the treatment of our allies. However, signs are many patriots are wising up. A poll of military personnel last month shows more and more of those who might have to do the actual fighting are expressing some reservations about a foreign policy that seems irrational, impulsive and disgracefully ignorant of our very own history.
House of Saud

As Trib contributing columnist David Oualaalou correctly points out in his May 30 column, President failed to tell Saudi leaders, Muslim world what they needed to hear, the Sunni Muslim majority in Saudi Arabia practice a form of Islam known as Wahhabism. Its name comes from an 18th-century preacher, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, who lived in central Arabia and espoused what has been called a fundamental or puritanical form of Islam. He allied himself with an ancestor of the current ruling Saud family and when the modern country of Saudi Arabia was formed in 1932 Wahhabism became its official version of Islam.

Many Muslims today consider Wahhabism to be extreme or outside the mainstream of Islam. For me, the question has always been: Was Wahhabs interpretation of the Quran and the Hadiths (the sayings of the Prophet) an aberration or was it a call to restore Islam to its original meaning and practice? The Saudis certainly believe it was the latter.

Its important to remember that the Prophet Mohammed was not only born in what is now Saudi Arabia but preached there as well. Many modern-day Saudi Arabians are direct descendants of the original Muslims who were converted to Islam by Mohammed himself. So which is more likely  that the original form of Islam survived in the place where it was born or that it became corrupted in Arabia and its true meaning and practice were protected and nurtured in Baghdad, Cairo and Damascus?

The moderate Islam of today seems a far cry from the Islam of eighth century Muslim armies who spread Islam by force from Spain to India. As we go back in time, and as we get closer to Mohammed, does Islam, as it was originally practiced, begin to look more or less like Wahhabism?

David B. Anderson, Waco

Conservative principles?

As a Texan and constituent, I think the withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord is an abomination. It is an abdication of leadership, a total lack of courage and economically unwise in the long run, not to speak about the carelessness with Gods creation. I cannot believe that the USA chooses to put itself into a group with Syria, Nicaragua and now the United States: two countries that have been failed states in the past or present, ruled by dictators, and now, it seems, one that wants to be.

The GOP is going to be symbolically tarred and feathered with this for a long time. People are not going to forget. It mostly feels like it is a decision done out of spite: I am getting criticized by you all. I am taking my marbles and going home. If you want that to be the American message and voice, then I wonder what in the world happened to the conservative conscience and savvy. Conservative: the most important thing in the world to be conservative about is the earth we all live on and depend on.

Bill Gaventa, Woodway
The Chinese-made Y-8-200F transport plane left the coastal town of Myeik at 1:06 p.m (0636 GMT) heading north to Myanmar's largest city of Yangon on a regular weekly flight that visits several coastal towns, officials said.

By India Today Web Desk: A Myanmar army aircraft with 120 people on board, including soldiers, family members and aircraft staff, went missing on Wednesday on a flight from a southern town to the city of Yangon, the military and civil aviation officials said.

According to news reports, pieces of the military transport plane were found in the Andaman Sea late on Wednesday.

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The Chinese-made Y-8-200F transport plane left the coastal town of Myeik at 1:06 p.m (0636 GMT) heading north to Myanmar's largest city of Yangon on a regular weekly flight that visits several coastal towns, officials said.

The plane lost contact 29 minutes after take off while flying at 18,000 feet over the Andaman Sea, about 43 miles (70 km) west of the town of Dawei, the military said.

"We don't know what exactly happened to this plane after the loss of contact," said Kyaw Kyaw Htey, a civil aviation official at Myeik airport.

Civil aviation authorities initially said there were 105 people onboard. The military later said those on board included 106 soldiers and family members and 14 aircraft staff. The maximum capacity of the aircraft is 200 people, said a military officer.

Kyaw Kyaw Htey said the weather had been "normal" with good visibility when the plane took off.

The military launched the search soon after the plane went missing, mobilising six navy ships and three military planes.

The search went on as darkness fell.

The plane was bought in March 2016 and had a total of 809 flying hours. It was carrying 2.4 tons of supplies, the military said.

ALSO READ:

Black box of IAF's missing Sukhoi-30 aircraft found, search operation underway

Paying close attention to incident of missing IAF jet: China

Russian jet crashes in Black Sea, no survivor on Syria-bound plane; President Putin orders probe

ALSO WATCH THE VIDEO: Sukhoi-30 fighter jet and pilots still missing even after 2 days

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PRAGUE  After a weekend of volunteer efforts, the Village of Prague Family Park is beginning to take shape.

Volunteers from the community, North Bend Boy Scouts Troop 110 and Prague Improvement and Maintenance Project came together June 2 and 3 to install the parks new playground equipment.

Were hoping to keep attracting young families to Prague, said Prague Improvement and Maintenance Project Vice President Kragh Johnson of the groups dedication to the project. We hope this will provide something constructive or aerobic for kids to do. Theres no Wi-Fi in the park.

The first day of park installation required a lot of unpackaging parts, sorting, measuring and getting prepared for the equipment to be pieced together June 3.

While the weekend resulted in a tangible product, the equipment is not yet ready for use. Cement and the rubber surface still need to be poured.

Our goal is to have it complete by Beer Barrel Days in August, said Prague Improvement and Maintenance Project President Jamey Hanis.

While still unfished, last weekends progress was exciting for the group that has been organizing the park overhaul.

During the last three years, the group has been fundraising, hosting social events and visiting other playgrounds in order to turn their idea into a reality.

The timeline is not far from what the group identified to begin with.

It might have taken us a little longer than we anticipated, but it costs a little more for a project like this, said Prague Improvement and Maintenance Project Secretary Nancy Stava.

Prague Improvement and Maintenance Project Treasurer Roger Paseka said half of the approximately $130,000 project is being financed by donations and the other half by grants.

Donations were made by many local charitable organizations as well as memorials.

The group was awarded an approximately $8,000 grant from the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality for the rubber surface made of recycled tires. They also received a $60,000 matching grant from the Nebraska Game and Parks.

Paseka said funding is almost finalized, and any remaining funds still needed should be raised during the Aug. 11, 12 and 13 Beer Barrel Days.

The group adopted the park improvement project from the Coyote Club, a group that no longer exists but had begun raising funds for a new playground. The Coyote Club donated the money they had raised to the Prague Improvement and Maintenance Project park fund.

The old equipment, which dated back to about 1975, was seen as a liability and unsafe to todays standards, Hanis said.

It will be auctioned off during Beer Barrel Days.

The new playground will be ADA accessible, Johnson added.

Removing the equipment and not replacing it was never an option for the group.

Its amazing when you drive by how many kids you see here, Johnson said.

Were hoping people from all neighboring communities will come and enjoy, Hanis said.

Not only does the group hope the playground will attract individuals to the community, but they hope to make Prague a destination by hosting community events and celebrations.

The group, which formed six years ago before the villages Q125 celebration, remain dedicated to hosting the annual village celebration, Beer Barrel Days.

In the past, there was only a celebration every 25 years, Johnson said.

The group has made it a point to host the celebration annually for the last five years.

Beer Barrel Days and other community celebrations throughout the year serve two purposes for the group. The events have raised funds while promoting community engagement, the groups primary purpose.

Its about the passion of keeping Prague going, Stava said of why the group exists. The sign may say only 303 people, but we do a lot for a town our size.

Stava said having a group dedicated to promoting Prague became even more imperative after the Prague school merged with East Butler and the attendance center in Prague was closed.

The groups first project was the villages digital marquee along Nebraska Highway 79.

Since then, the group has directed all their attention toward accomplishing park improvements and a future project has not been identified.

But Hanis has one idea.

Im pushing towards a second area for swings, he said. Id like to do it sooner rather than later.
WarbirdsNews is bringing aviation history to more audiences by joining up with UflyTV to broadcast  live  the popular Warbirds In Review sessions at the Experimental Aircraft Associations (EAA) AirVenture Oshkosh 2017.

We have the following description of Warbirds in Review events planned for this years AirVenture Oshkosh from the EAA

History through the legendary wartime aircraft and pride for the heroic veterans who flew them comes alive every year at the popular Warbirds in Review, held Monday through Saturday at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. at Warbird Alley. Connie and the late Ed Bowlins program is hosted by EAA Warbirds of America. These informal sessions not only delve into an aircrafts restoration, operation, and other aspects of owning a valued piece of history, but also spotlight veterans sharing stories about what it was like to fly the aircraft in combat or support the operation as a ground crew member.

July 2017 marks the 15th Anniversary of Warbirds in Review said Connie Bowlin, EAA Warbirds of America president and Warbirds in Review program founder. As I look back on the modest beginning thinking of Tex Hill, Bud Anderson, Robin Olds, Gunther Rall, Shorty Rankin, and so many other World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Gulf War, Afghanistan and current military veterans who have been a part of Warbirds in Review, it is humbling. What began with a simple idea, with a boom box and roll around stairs, to offer a time when people could come to hear an owner talk about their aircraft has become a truly world class program. With David Hartman as the writer and moderator, the award winning production crew of Sleeping Dog Productions, the support of Jim Hagedorn, Scotts Miracle Gro Company, Warbird members Ron and Diane Fagen, numerous other donors and the total support of aircraft owners, pilot and ground crew members, we have grown to a level beyond all expectations. The live streaming of Warbirds in Review in 2016 was viewed in 64 countries. For me personally it is a little overwhelming to know that we have entertained and shared our history with the world. With Jumbotron, bleachers, sound systems, worldwide live streaming and the participation of so many terrific Warbird members the evolution has exceeded all expectations.

The Warbirds in Review Schedule (as of June 1st, 2017):

Monday, July 24:

Monday 10:00  MK IX Spitfire  Collings Foundation  There is no other Spitfire in the world that has such an incredible history as this aircraft recently acquired by the Collings Foundation. Legendary pilots and aces flew this Spitfire MK IX BR601 confronting scores of Luftwaffe fighters while flying escort for B-17 and B-24 bombers. The fact that Rob Collings knows descendants of the pilots who flew this aircraft and the uniqueness of this Spitfire will make this really special.



Monday 1:00  A-20  Lewis Air Legends, Rod Lewis  On 15 July, 2015, test pilot Stewart Stew Dawson gently pulled back on the control yoke and made aviation history as a Douglas A-20 Havoc took to the air for the first time in nearly a quarter-century. Impeccably restored by Aero Trader at Chino Airport, California, the aircraft is A-20G 43-21709. When the A-20 arrived in Oshkosh mid May 2017 we had a good laugh with Stew  it was either the last Warbird to arrive for Airventure 2016 or the first to arrive for 2017. It is a pleasure to, once again, welcome Rod Lewis and thank him for his commitment to the preservation of so many wonderful warbirds.

Tuesday, July 25:

Tuesday 10:00  BT-13  WASP  In 1942, as the country reeled from the attack on Pearl Harbor, trained male pilots were in short supply. Qualified pilots were needed to fight the war. Twenty-eight experienced civilian women pilots volunteered to take the job of ferrying aircraft. They formed the countrys first female squadron in late summer 1942. In 2017 the American Aviation Heritage Foundation donated a beautiful, newly restored BT-13 to the WASP museum. This BT-13, from start to finish, was intended for donation to the WASP to be flown in tribute to their service. That is impressive.



Tuesday 1:00 P-51 Old Crow  It would be difficult to find a veteran who is more respected and admired than Col C.E. Bud Anderson or two aircraft owners who have been more involved in warbird history and preservation than Jack Roush and Jim Hagedorn. Col Anderson is the one veteran who has been a part of Warbirds in Review in all of the 15 years. Welcome back Bud, Jack and Jim  we all love hearing your stories and appreciate you.

Wednesday, July 26:

Wednesday 10:00  B-25  75th Anniversary Doolittle Raid  Col. Dick Cole at the young age of 101 will share his experiences as Jimmy Doolittles co-pilot on one of the most significant missions in our history. As Col Cole speaks in front of the B-25 owned by Larry Kelley there will be a display of B-25s on Warbird Alley that will replicate the deck of the Hornet on that day in April 1942 when they made history. Colonel Cole will be joined by Jimmy Doolittle, III and Jonna Doolittle.



Wednesday 1:00  L-19, Mohawk  Vietnam Tribute  POW Col. William Reeder will be joined by his Army Pilot training classmate, Charlie Finch and Doc Clement who flew together in Vietnam. While Bill Reeder flew combat in the Mohawk and Cobra, Charlie and Doc were flying low level missions in the Bird Dog. The POW experience is described by Col. Reeder in the book Through the Valley and the missions of Charlie and Doc are related in the book A Hundred Feet over Hell. Both books are a must read and will be on sale during autograph session following this presentation.

Thursday, July 27:

Thursday 10:00  B-17 Madras Maiden  It is a pleasure to welcome Jack Erickson to Oshkosh to talk about one of the many aircraft in the Erickson collection. The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress was used primarily in Europe in the Eighth Air Force. This presentation will focus on the 8th Air Force. At press time plans are pending to include another aircraft to tell this story.

Thursday 1:00 F8F Bearcat and Blue Angel F-18  John OConner is the owner of the beautiful F8F Bearcat painted in the Blue Angel scheme. We are confident that the Blue Angels will be a part of this presentation with one of the demo team pilots and the F-18 but that is subject to change. Regardless, this will be a tribute to the Navy featuring the F8F Bearcat.

Friday, July 28:

Friday 10:00  P- 47 Thunderbolt  Deke Holman served during World War II as a C-47 copilot on D-Day, later transitioning to the P-47. He retired from United Airlines flying the B-747 so he says he has always flown 47s. The two P-47s that will be on display are owned by John Shoffner and Neal Melton. Deke Holman was part of the air show red shirt team for many years and is a very special friend to many Oshkosh volunteers. It will be fun to recognize Dekes service while learning about the P-47.

Friday 1:00  F-89  Dick Rutan  The F-89 was deployed over much of the northern hemisphere, including USAF bases in Iceland, Greenland, and the continental US. This unsung hero of the Cold War served as the first line of defense against the Soviet bomber threat for many years, until replaced by aircraft such as the F-102 and F-106 in the 1960s. Given Dicks enthusiasm and charismatic speaking style, this is sure to be one of the highlights of this years schedule.

Saturday, July 29:

Saturday 10:00  T-34, SNJ4  Frank Borman and Jim Lovell These two gentlemen are best known as Apollo Astronauts but they flew real airplanes before they entered Space travel. Following on the heels of a Friday night program at Theatre in the Woods, the Warbirds in Review audience will have the opportunity to be up close and personal. You may even see a couple more Apollo Astronauts in the audience. The SNJ4, representing the aircraft they flew in training is owned by Fagen Fighters World War II museum. The featured T-34 is owned and flown by Frank Borman.

Saturday 1:00  P-63, T-38  Joe Engle  this Bell P-63, owned by the Dixie Wing of the CAF, was operated by the NACA (predecessor of NASA). Having the NASA T-38 as part of this program completes the circle to tell the history of NASA. Retired General Joe Engle was associated with NASA from the X-15 to Apollo through the Shuttle and is the perfect person to share its history. He is the only person to have flown two different types of winged vehicles in space; the X-15 and the Space Shuttle. He is also the only astronaut to have manually flown the Shuttle through re-entry and landing. The Dixie Wing is working to have other P-39s and P-63s join the presentation.

Warbirds in Review sessions take place at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. daily, from July 24th  July 29th on the Warbirds in Review ramp in the Warbird area. The Warbirds in Review Jumbotron will feature programming throughout the day provided by Sleeping Dog Productions.

And dont forget, for those of you who cannot attend EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2017, WarbirdsNews will be streaming the Warbirds in Review sessions live with UflyTV.
Repaired yet again, the RAF reassigned the aircraft to a UK-based maintenance unit where she remained in storage for the following decade. In 1967, the British Aircraft Corporation (successor to English Electric) converted the bomber into TT.18 standard, carrying the Rushton-designed target-towing system. Following the rework, WJ680 went back into storage until 1971 when the RAF reactivated her. In December 1972, the Canberra, now with 7 Squadron at RAF St.Mawgan, was involved in yet another incident. The top hinge for the rudder sheared during an air test. The navigator, Plt Off Geoff Burns, ejected safely, but the pilot  bravely  elected to land the aircraft wheels up. This resulted in more than two years of repair work. She returned to 7 Squadron on target towing duties, flying without incident until 1980. British Aerospace (successor to BAC) then took in WJ680 for major servicing at their plant in Samlesbury, Lancashire, birthplace of the production Canberras.

Following the major servicing, WJ680 joined 100 Squadron at RAF Wyton where she remained on strength until December 18th, 1991; the date of her last flight in RAF service. She then went into a period of open storage at RAF Wyton until 1992 when the Ministry of Defense sold her to Ron Mitchell. In 1994, registered now as G-BURM, the Canberra made her civil air show debut, at Duxford no less.

The Temora Aviation Museum acquired the Canberra in May, 2001. Upon acquisition, the Museum repainted the aircraft to represent those flown by RAAF 2 Squadron during the Vietnam conflict. While the aircraft has not flown in some years now, she is well maintained, and remains, to this day, the only flyable English Electric Canberra in Australia.

The Museums Vampire (Construction No. 4139) rolled off the deHavilland (A) production line in Bankstown, New South Wales in early 1958. The RAAF officially accepted her from the manufacturer on May 22nd, 1958. She first entered service with the Central Flying School at East Sale in Victoria, then later transferred to No. 1 Advance Flying Training School at Pearce in Western Australia. The RAAF put her up for disposal in January, 1970 along with the remaining Vampires in their fleet. Luckier than most of her type, A79-617 found a civilian buyer that June. He shipped the Vampire to the USA, where after many years of storage and several different owners, she returned to flying condition, now registered as N11923. David Lowy acquired 617 in 1998 and shipped her back to Australia, where the Vampire underwent extensive restoration and repainting at her birthplace in Bankstown, before arriving at the Temora Aviation Museum, now registered as VH-VAM. In February, 2001, David Lowy donated the Vampire to the Temora Aviation Museum. She made her first flight since returning to Australia on June 5th, 2001. A79-617 has not flown in some time, much like the Canberra, but when she finally takes to the skies again she will be the only Australian-built Vampire flying in the country of her birth.
The deceased officer was identified as Major David Manlun of the 164 Brigade of the Territorial Army. The identity of the three militants and the civilian are yet to be known.

By Indo-Asian News Service: An Army Major, three militants and a civilian were killed in a gunfight between security forces and terrorists early on Wednesday in Nagaland's Mon district bordering Myanmar.

Three Army Para commandos were injured in the gunbattle at Lapa Lempong hilltop in Oting village. One of them was flown to a military hospital in Jorhat in Assam in critical condition.

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The Army said an AK-56 assault rifle, two Chinese-made AK rifles, two grenades, three improvised explosive devices and 270 cartridges of AK-series firearms were seized from the spot.

The deceased officer was identified as Major David Manlun of the 164 Brigade of the Territorial Army. The identity of the three militants and the civilian are yet to be known.

Lapa Lempong is about 340 km east of Nagaland capital Kohima and about 25 km from the Myanmar border.

Acting on intelligence inputs, a combined team of Para commandos and Territorial Army ambushed the militants of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Khaplang (NSCN-K) and the United Liberation Front of Asom-Independent (ULFA-I) militants.

"The militants hurled a grenade and fired at the operational team that led to heavy exchange of fire and subsequent deaths," Kohima-based Army spokesman Colonel Chiranjeet Konwer told IANS.

The civilian killed was an autorickshaw driver allegedly ferrying the militants.

When Major Manlun's body was flown to Shillong, barring Army officers and family members, no Meghalaya minister or government official was present at the Gorkha Training Centre helipad to receive it.

"We are sad to hear of the tragedy. I am proud of my son. He has done his duty and given his life for our tomorrow," Manlun's father M. Khamzalam, a retired Army officer, told IANS.

The family said Major Manlun will be laid to rest at the Assam Regiment's cemetery on Thursday morning.

--- ENDS ---
By Press Trust of India: By Shirish B Pradhan

Kathmandu, Jun 7 (PTI) Veteran Nepalese politician Sher Bahadur Deuba was today sworn in as the new prime minister of Nepal by President Bidya Devi Bhandari.

The 70-year-old leader, who became Nepals prime minister for the fourth time, succeeded Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda who had resigned after nine months to honour a power-sharing deal and proposed Deubas name.

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Deuba, the president of Nepals oldest party - the Nepali Congress, was elected the 40th prime minister yesterday, following a voting in the parliament. He secured 388 votes out of a total of 558 votes cast in the 601-member legislative parliament. He was the only contender in the election.

Deuba, who was awarded an honorary doctorate degree from New Delhis Jawaharlal Nehru University in 2016, is said to enjoy a good rapport with prominent Indian leaders, which could potentially aid him in arresting the increasing disenchantment between the Madhesis and the hill people.

He played an important role in amending Nepals Constitution promulgated in September 2015 to address the demands of Madhes-based political parties. Deuba also played a key role in bringing the Madhesi parties on board for the second phase of the local-level elections.

Deuba, who has been elected to the parliament from far- western Dadeldhura district, has promised to amend the new Constitution to fulfil the demands of the Madhesi people.

During Deubas previous term as prime minister in 1996, Nepal and India signed the historic Mahakali Treaty for shared utilisation of the waters of the river by the same name.

He served as the prime minister from 1995 to 1997, from 2001 to 2002, and from 2004 to 2005. His political career has gone through several ups and downs through this period.

Nepals then king Gyanendra Shah seized power through a coup detat in October 2002 and removed Deuba from the premiership. But the king had to restore him in 2004 after weeks of street protests.

Deuba was again removed from power by the king in 2005, when he was also imprisoned on charges of corruption.

After a dispute between Girija Prasad Koirala and Deuba, Nepali Congress underwent a vertical split in 2002 and Nepali Congress?Democratic was formed under the leadership of Deuba.

But the new party merged into the parent party after Koirala and Deuba reached an agreement in 2007. PTI ZH AKJ ZH

--- ENDS ---

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After outlaying more than $3.75 billion on three large acquisitions over the past two years, telecoms operator Vocus Group has found itself in the crosshairs of an unwelcome bid from a leveraged buyout company which values the entire company at just $2.2 billion.

Integration problems which led the ouster of a founder and longstanding chief executive James Spenceley less than a year ago, with the group's subsequent underperformance and an earnings downgrade has prompting widespread criticism of the present chief executive, which has left the company exposed to a potential change of control.

Private equity outfit KKR has made an offer to buy Geoff Horth-led Vocus . Credit:Ben Rushton

Vocus disclosed before the start to sharemarket trading Wednesday it has received a takeover approach from a leveraged buy-out company Kohlberg Kravis Roberts which it described as "preliminary, indicative and non-binding". The offer has been pitched at $3.50 a share, which values the company at just $2.18 billion.
Prince Harry, or as he's known to avid royalists, Prince Henry of Wales, has always been a little bit different to his regal relations.

Most notably when he put the press on notice last year to respect his girlfriend, Suits actress Meghan Markle, and in Sydney on Wednesday he continued to break The Firm's traditional creed of "Never complain, never explain".

Back in Australia, his second official visit down under in two years, Harry was in town to officially launch the upcoming 2018 Invictus Games that will take place in Sydney next October.

In front of a crowd of his armed forces comrades and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, the fifth in line to the throne took the opportunity to speak of the guilt he was made to feel after New Idea published a time-sensitive story that forced him to withdraw from the frontline in Afghanistan.
With ever-growing troves of valuable data on its shelves, Google has expanded its Street View range further to Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park in Northern Territory, Australia.

However, rather than eyeing ad revenue, Google seems intent on documenting the cultural heritage of the area in this project, and after two years of collaborative development the Story Sphere of Uluru is now live online.

Since 2007, Street View has captured some of the world's most famous sites across 83 countries, including the Grand Canyon in the US and the Taj Mahal in India.

The service offers 360 degree panoramas from various vantage points around each site, in what are like dynamic brochures for curious parties and potential visitors, who are probably many kilometres away.
Police have seized over 100-thousand dollars worth of cash and arrested two men over a series of alleged burglaries committed across Perth.

Midland Detectives nabbed the suspects as [art of an investigation into robberies of homes in Greenwood, Ellenbrook, Wembley and Claremont during May.

Some of the seized cash. Credit:WA Police

Police allege that the offenders forced entry to homes in those suburbs and stole vehicles, cash and property, and will also allege that during one incident the offenders threatened the occupants of a house while armed with a firearm.

Detectives executed a search warrant in Cockburn on Tuesday and arrested a 22-year-old man, and then arrested a second person after a bag containing $122,900 in cash was found.
An alleged stolen car has lost control and collided with a Transperth bus in a dramatic end to a police chase through Perth suburbs on Tuesday evening.

At around 10pm, South Metropolitan Response officers spotted a stolen Holden Commodore ute travelling west along Hardey Road in Ascot. The ute was identified as the same vehicle that had been stolen from a home in Glendalough a few days before.

ABC reporter Graeme Powell captured the immediate aftermath of the crash. Credit:Graeme Powell

Officers pulled up to a traffic light next to the vehicle, and the driver then quickly performed a U-turn at the lights and attempted to evade police.

Police claim the driver sped east along Hardey Road, but lost control of the vehicle as he attempted to overtake a Transperth bus.
London: The death toll from the London Bridge terrorist attacks has risen to eight, British police say, after officers found the body of a missing French national in the River Thames on Tuesday night.

Police have not publicly identified the eighth victim, but they said the next of kin of missing French citizen Xavier Thomas has been informed about the body found.

Christine Delcros, Thomas' girlfriend, remains in hospital with serious injuries after being hit by a van on London Bridge in the first phase of the attack. Police are investigating the possibility Thomas was knocked into the Thames by the van.

French President Emmanuel Macron said three of his citizens died in the attack and eight were wounded. Two Australian women were also killed.
The body of a terrorist, at background left, lies on the ground while police control the scene at the shrine of late Iranian revolutionary founder Ayatollah Khomeini, just outside Tehran on Wednesday. Credit:AP "I cannot talk, I'm stuck here and the situation is really dangerous, the shooting is continuing, we are surrounded and I cannot talk," an Iranian journalist, Ehsan Bodaghi, said by phone from inside the building during the standoff, before the call was disconnected. Yelling and screaming could be heard in the background. Mohammad Ali Saki, editor of The Tehran Times, said in a phone interview that the four assailants at the Parliament building had "targeted guards, cleaners, employees of the administrative and finance sections," but had "never got near the Parliament chamber itself." Police officers run to take position around Iran's parliament building following an assault by several attackers on Wednesday. Credit:Ali Khara The assailants were armed with AK-47s and hand grenades and wore what appeared to be explosive vests, he said.

The Islamic State released a graphic 24-minute video showing a bloodied man lying on the ground in Parliament while a gunman in the background shouted in Arabic, "Thank God! Do you think that we are going to leave? We will remain here, God willing." Then Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini greets well-wishers before casting his vote in 1988. Credit:AP/File The assault on the mausoleum - about 16 kilometres south of Parliament - began shortly before 11am and lasted for about an hour and a half, state news media reported. The attacks, the first in Tehran in more than a decade, came just over two weeks after Mr Trump, with Saudi Arabia and its allies, vowed to isolate Iran. Iran has dismissed those remarks, made at a summit meeting in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, as a scheme by Mr Trump to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia. In the view of many in Iran, the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, is inextricably linked to Saudi Arabia. "ISIS ideologically, financially and logistically is fully supported and sponsored by Saudi Arabia - they are one and the same," said Hamidreza Taraghi, a hard-line analyst.

Iran and Saudi Arabia are the leading nations on opposing sides of the Middle East split between Shiite and Sunni Islam. Iran has military advisers in Iraq and Syria, and it controls and finances militias in those countries and in Lebanon. Tehran also has some influence over the Houthis fighting the government in Yemen, and it often speaks out in support of Shiites in Bahrain, a majority group that Iran says is repressed by the Sunni monarchy. King Salman of Saudi Arabia has accused Iran of "spearheading global terrorism." Saudi officials say Iran is plotting to control the region. Saudi Arabia, an autocratic kingdom, also opposes Iran's political ideology, which has a clerical supreme leader but also a president, Parliament and city councils, chosen in elections in which both men and women can participate. On Wednesday morning, only hours before the attacks in Iran, the Saudi foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, said that Iran must be punished for its interference in the region and called Tehran the world's leading supporter of terrorism. Iran, in turn, has long accused Saudi Arabia of backing terrorists in the region, saying that the kingdom had facilitated the rise of Sunni extremist groups such as the Islamic State and others in Iraq and Syria. After Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other states cut ties with the gas-rich kingdom of Qatar on Monday, citing its support for Iran, Tehran rushed to fill the void, offering to send food and medicine.

One Iranian security official said the attacks had been a message from Saudi Arabia that was meant to teach Iran a lesson. He also said the assaults were intended to test Iran's reaction. Others questioned Tehran's decision to rise to the defense of Qatar. "We are wrong to suddenly seek close ties with Qatar," said Saeed Laylaz, an economist close to the government. "They have been bankrolling the Sunni terrorist groups, in the same way the Saudis have." Raz Zimmt, a scholar at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University who specialises in Iranian affairs, said the attacks were unprecedented in that they had occurred in the heart of Tehran. "I have no doubt that the Iranian regime is going to blame ISIS and Saudi Arabia, since that serves the official Iranian position," he said in an interview on Israeli radio. "We've heard for the past two years, more or less, that if the Revolutionary Guards stop operating in Syria and Iraq, the terrorists are going to make their way into Iran. As far as they're concerned, it doesn't matter if it was ISIS or wasn't." While terrorist attacks have become relatively commonplace in Europe and in most of the Middle East, Iran had remained comparatively safe. During May's election campaign, President Hassan Rouhani often pointed to that fact, lauding the country's security forces and intelligence agencies for their vigilance.
Several reports from Myanmar said debris had been sighted in the sea, while BBC correspondent Jonah Fisher tweeted there were unconfirmed reports of survivors being found among wreckage.

The Chinese-made plane disappeared while flying over sea from the town of Myeik, a city on an island in the Andaman Sea, to Yangon.

Bangkok: Naval ships and aircraft scoured the ocean on Wednesday night for a Myanmar military plane carrying more than 100 people which is believed to have crashed near southern Myanmar.

In a statement posted to Facebook, commander-in-chief of the country's army Min Aung Hlaing said the flight took off from Myeik at 1.06 pm (local time) and contact with it was lost at 1.35 pm, when it was believed to be about 32 kilometres to the west of Dawei, formerly known as Tavoy.

It said Myanmar had received the plane in March last year, and since then it had logged 809 flying hours.

Authorities reported conflicting numbers of people aboard. The latest military update put the total number of those aboard at 122, including 108 soldiers and their family members and 14 crew. Among the passengers were 15 children, 58 adults and 35 soldiers and officers, according to the statement.

In a second announcement Wednesday night, the commander's office said six navy ships and three military aircraft were searching for the missing plane.

"We don't know what exactly happened to this plane after the loss of contact," said Kyaw Kyaw Htey, a civil aviation official at Myeik airport.
Washington: The day after President Donald Trump asked James Comey, the FBI director, to end an investigation into his former national security adviser, Comey confronted Attorney General Jeff Sessions and said he did not want to be left alone again with the president, according to current and former law enforcement officials.

Comey believed Sessions should protect the FBI from White House influence, the officials said, and pulled him aside after a meeting in February to tell him that private interactions between the FBI director and the president were inappropriate. But Sessions could not guarantee that the president would not try to talk to Comey alone again, the officials said.

Comey did not reveal, however, what had so unnerved him about his Oval Office meeting with the president: Trump's request that the FBI director end the investigation into the former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who had just been fired. By the time Trump fired Comey last month, Comey had disclosed the meeting to a few of his closest advisers but nobody at the Justice Department, according to the officials, who did not want to be identified discussing Comey's interactions with Trump and Sessions.

Comey will be the centre of attention on Thursday during testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, where he is expected to be quizzed intensely about his interactions with Trump and why he decided to keep secret the president's request to end the Flynn investigation.
By Press Trust of India: (Eds: Updating with more details, other ministers)

By Shirish B Pradhan

Kathmandu, Jun 7 (PTI) Veteran Nepalese politician Sher Bahadur Deuba was today sworn in as the new prime minister of Nepal by President Bidya Devi Bhandari.

The 70-year-old leader, who became Nepals prime minister for the fourth time, succeeded Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda who had resigned after nine months to honour a power-sharing deal and proposed Deubas name.

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Deuba, the president of Nepals oldest party - the Nepali Congress, was elected the 40th prime minister yesterday, following a voting in the parliament. He secured 388 votes out of a total of 558 votes cast in the 601-member legislative parliament. He was the only contender in the election.

Prime Minister Deuba formed an eight-member cabinet comprising three deputy prime ministers and four ministers.

Senior Nepali Congress leader Gopal Man Shrestha was appointed as the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Education and Gyanendra Bahadur Karki as Minister for Finance.

Krishna Bahadur Mahara of CPN (Maoist Centre) was appointed as the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs, while Nepali Congress leader Farmullah Mansoor was appointed as Minister for Labour and Employment.

CPN (MC) leader Janardan Sharma has been appointed as Minister for Home Affairs and Prabhu Sah of the same party as minister without portfolio.

Nepal Loktantrik Forum Chairman Bijay Kumar Gachhadar has been appointed as the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Federal Affairs and Local Development.

Deuba, who was awarded an honorary doctorate degree from New Delhis Jawaharlal Nehru University in 2016, is said to enjoy a good rapport with prominent Indian leaders, which could potentially aid him in arresting the increasing disenchantment between the Madhesis and the hill people.

He played an important role in amending Nepals Constitution promulgated in September 2015 to address the demands of Madhes-based political parties. Deuba also played a key role in bringing the Madhesi parties on board for the second phase of the local-level elections.

Deuba, who has been elected to the parliament from far- western Dadeldhura district, has promised to amend the new Constitution to fulfil the demands of the Madhesi people.

During Deubas previous term as prime minister in 1996, Nepal and India signed the historic Mahakali Treaty for shared utilisation of the waters of the river by the same name.

He served as the prime minister from 1995 to 1997, from 2001 to 2002, and from 2004 to 2005. His political career has gone through several ups and downs through this period.

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Nepals then king Gyanendra Shah seized power through a coup detat in October 2002 and removed Deuba from the premiership. But the king had to restore him in 2004 after weeks of street protests.

Deuba was again removed from power by the king in 2005, when he was also imprisoned on charges of corruption.

After a dispute between Girija Prasad Koirala and Deuba, Nepali Congress underwent a vertical split in 2002 and Nepali Congress?Democratic was formed under the leadership of Deuba.

But the new party merged into the parent party after Koirala and Deuba reached an agreement in 2007. PTI ZH/SBP AKJ ZH

--- ENDS ---
"Despite previous warnings, pro-regime forces entered the agreed-upon de-confliction zone with a tank, artillery, anti-aircraft weapons, armed technical vehicles and more than 60 soldiers posing a threat to Coalition and partner forces based at the At Tanf Garrison," the US-led coalition said in a statement.

The strike marks a second time in less than a month that US aircraft have targeted troops aligned with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Washington: US-led aircraft struck a column of pro-Syria forces advancing toward a small US outpost in south-eastern Syria on Tuesday, the Pentagon said in a statement.

Fighters from the Syrian Democratic Forces looking toward the northern town of Tabqa, Syria. US-backed Syrian forces have launched their attack on the Islamic State group's de facto capital of Raqqa, in northern Syria. Credit:AP

It is unclear how many troops were killed or wounded in the bombing run and what legal rationale might cover the US-led forces continued strikes on Syrian government forces operating within their borders.

On May 18, US forces struck a convoy of pro-Syrian government forces that were driving in the direction of the US base at Tanf. After warnings, both through the hotline and overhead passes, US aircraft struck a number of their vehicles. That convoy, roughly 29 kilometres from the US outpost, came to halt. In response, the US-led coalition added additional "combat power" to help defend the Tanf base and dropped more than 90,000 leaflets telling the Syrian forces to leave.

"We are not increasing our role in the Syrian civil war, but we will defend our troops," Defence Secretary Jim Mattis told reporters following the May strike. "And that is a coalition element made up of more than just US troops, and so we will defend ourselves [if] people take aggressive steps against us."

The Tanf outpost, located near the Syrian, Iraq and Jordanian border, has quietly become a flashpoint in the six-year old Syrian conflict in recent weeks. Iranian-backed Shiite militias loyal to Assad, along with Syrian government forces, are making a concerted push to recapture territory from the Islamic State in the area in a likely attempt to secure the border and the desert highway that runs into Iraq.
By Press Trust of India: By Shirish B Pradhan

Kathmandu, Jun 7 (PTI) Veteran politician Sher Bahadur Deuba was today sworn in as the new prime minister of Nepal and pledged to work for the national interest and maintain balanced relations between India and China.

President Bidya Devi Bhandari also administered the oath of office and secrecy to three deputy prime ministers and four cabinet ministers at Sheetal Niwas (the Presidents House).

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After taking the oath of office, 70-year-old Deuba pledged to hold the three tiers of elections by January 21. He said that the Constitution would be amended to create harmony between the Terai and Hilly people.

Deuba said that he would work for the benefit of Nepals interest and maintain a balanced relations between India and China.

The prime minister, who was awarded an honorary doctorate degree from New Delhis Jawaharlal Nehru University in 2016, is said to enjoy a good rapport with prominent Indian leaders, which could potentially aid him in arresting the increasing disenchantment between the Madhesis and the hill people.

Deuba, who became Nepals prime minister for the fourth time, succeeded Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda who had resigned after nine months to honour a power-sharing deal and proposed Deubas name.

He inducted seven ministers in his cabinet.

Senior Nepali Congress leader Gopal Man Shrestha was appointed as the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Education and Gyanendra Bahadur Karki as Minister for Finance.

Krishna Bahadur Mahara of CPN (Maoist Centre) was appointed as the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs, while Nepali Congress leader Farmullah Mansoor was appointed as Minister for Labour and Employment.

CPN (MC) leader Janardan Sharma has been appointed as Minister for Home Affairs and Prabhu Sah of the same party as minister without portfolio.

Nepal Loktantrik Forum Chairman Bijay Kumar Gachhadar has been appointed as the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Federal Affairs and Local Development.

Deuba, the president of Nepals oldest party - the Nepali Congress, was elected the 40th prime minister yesterday, following a voting in the parliament. He secured 388 votes out of a total of 558 votes cast in the 601-member legislative parliament. He was the only contender in the election.

He played an important role in amending Nepals Constitution promulgated in September 2015 to address the demands of Madhes-based political parties. Deuba also played a key role in bringing the Madhesi parties on board for the second phase of the local-level elections.

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Deuba, who has been elected to the parliament from far- western Dadeldhura district, has promised to amend the new Constitution to fulfil the demands of the Madhesi people.

During Deubas previous term as prime minister in 1996, Nepal and India signed the historic Mahakali Treaty for shared utilisation of the waters of the river by the same name.

He served as the prime minister from 1995 to 1997, from 2001 to 2002, and from 2004 to 2005. His political career has gone through several ups and downs through this period.

Nepals then king Gyanendra Shah seized power through a coup detat in October 2002 and removed Deuba from the premiership. But the king had to restore him in 2004 after weeks of street protests.

Deuba was again removed from power by the king in 2005, when he was also imprisoned on charges of corruption.

After a dispute between Girija Prasad Koirala and Deuba, Nepali Congress underwent a vertical split in 2002 and Nepali Congress?Democratic was formed under the leadership of Deuba.

But the new party merged into the parent party after Koirala and Deuba reached an agreement in 2007. PTI ZH/SBP AKJ ZH

--- ENDS ---

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Having benefited from a People Development Diagnostic mission from the WCO in July 2016, the Liberia Revenue Authority (LRA) has since embarked on the implementation of an ambitious yet critical HRM modernization roadmap with the support of WCO-WACAM Project, funded by the government of Sweden.

Since July 2016, LRA was able to develop its Job Catalogue as well as Competency Framework. It is against this backdrop that the WCO delivered a capacity-building mission benefitting the Liberia Revenue Authority from 8 to 12 May 2017. The aim of the mission was to initiate the change management activities related to HRM modernization efforts and to contribute to the institutionalization of the Competency-based HRM approach within LRA. The mission impacted approximately 20% of LRA staff (including Top Management) and enabled LRA to also start with the competency assessment exercise in selected piloted sites comprising the LRA HRM division, LRA Tax Offices as well as LRA Customs Units at Freeport and Monrovia International Airport.

With the support of the WACAM Project, LRA is now the second English-speaking administration in West Africa after the Gambia Revenue Authority (GRA) to develop the necessary HR competencies and critical tools (Job Catalogue, Job Descriptions, Competency Framework and Dictionary) to implement a competency-based HRM approach as promoted by the WCOs Framework of Principles for Customs Professionalism. It is worth noting that in order to foster regional cooperation and promote regional expertise, the WCO-WACAM Project has also involved the Deputy-Director Human Resource Management of the Gambia Revenue Authority in the support missions provided to Liberia Revenue Authority so far.

With the demonstrated commitment of the LRA Top Management and HRM Modernization working group, the WCO can only be very positive that LRA will soon become a regional champion in West and Central Africa in the area of Human Resource Management.

The WCOWACAM Project is financed by the government of Sweden. For further information, please contact Mr. Richard Chopra, WCO-Sweden Programme Director (richard.chopra@wcoomd.org)
Latest pictures of Omran Daqneesh, who was photographed last year in a dazed and bloodied state after surviving an airstrike, show him with his family in their new home in Aleppo, Syria.

By India Today Web Desk: The picture of this little boy's bloodied face had knocked the conscience of many around the world. Today, they will be happy to know that the six-year-old Omran Daqneesh is safe and doing well.

Some latest pictures Omran have emerged on social media that show him with his family in a new home in Aleppo, Syria. Speaking to "pro-government journalists", Omran Daqneesh's father, Mohammed Daqneesh, said that he is doing fine.

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Last year in August, an explosion in Aleppo had taken out at Omran's house. Rescued from the rubble, Omran, then aged five, had been pictured sitting in the ambulance, dazed and lathered in blood and dust.

This picture of Omran became a symbol of the Syrian crisis, often being compared to that of four-year-old Aylan Kurdi, whose body had washed up on the shores of Turkey in 2015.

A post shared by @Khalidalbaih (@khalidalbaih) on Aug 18, 2016 at 6:45am PDT

OMRAN WAS USED FOR PROPAGANDA, SAYS HIS FATHER

In his interview with pro-government journalists", Omran Daqneesh's father claimed that Omran had been used as a "propaganda" by the Syrian opposition and international media to "attack President Bashar al-Assad".

"They wanted to trade in his blood and published his photos," Mohammed Daqneesh is said to have told a reporter from Iran's Al-Alam TV.

Daqneesh said that Omran had suffered "only minor injuries", and that the blood on his face was not his own, but had dripped on him from one of his father's wounds.

A BBC report said that according to Daqneesh, Omran was taken from the rubble and into an ambulance by "gunmen", where they started filming him. Daqneesh also stressed that Omran was taken to the hospital although there was no need.

A footage from the airstrike on the Daqneeshs' residence that night, however, shows an unarmed man carrying Omran out of a damaged building and placing him in an ambulance.

Back then, the doctor of the hospital where Omran was admitted had told the BBC that Omran was "suffering from shock", and had received a head trauma that needed stitches.

Wounded in the same airstrike, Omran's 10-year-old older brother, Ali Daqneesh, had died in an Aleppo hospital.

Reports have it that Daqneesh and his family chose to live in the government-controlled side of Aleppo instead of moving to rebel-held Idlib province last year.

Read more at FYI:

I'm proud of you: Obama meets 6-year-old who offered Syrian boy Omran Daqneesh his home

6-year-old American boy seeks Obama's help to bring Omran Daqneesh from Syria

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Syrian boy Omran's older brother dies of wounds from Aleppo airstrike

CNN anchor in tears as she reads report on Syrian boy found in rubble

--- ENDS ---
India's primary concern about the initiative is the "flagship" China Pakistan Economic Corridor leg that runs through Pakistan occupied Kashmir. Despite this concern, an OBOR white paper in May declared CPEC as a flagship project.

By Ananth Krishnan: China's media said on Wednesday that Beijing would welcome India joining the One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative but "would not beg" Delhi or accede to its requests.

"We are willing to see the initiative help build up a cooperation platform for countries along the route, but China does not need to beg any countries, Japan and India included, to join the initiative," said a commentary published Wednesday in the hawkish Global Times tabloid, written by its reporter Hu Weijia.

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The article was published in the English-language edition which is aimed at a foreign audience and often makes provocative arguments. The paper is published by the official People's Daily and is known to take hard-line positions that represent sections of the party but aren't necessarily official positions.

The commentary said OBOR was "open and inclusive and any countries, Japan and India included, are welcome to join", but added "that does not mean that China needs to agree to any requests they might have".

India's primary concern about the initiative is the "flagship" China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) leg that runs through Pakistan occupied Kashmir. Despite this concern, an OBOR white paper in May declared CPEC as a flagship project.

Wednesday's article, mainly aimed at Japan's decision to attend the Belt and Road Forum which left India as the only major absentee, said that with "more than 60 countries covered in the initiative" the OBOR plan "will develop well, with or without Japan's participation".

"China would be pleased to see Japan's inclusion," it said, "but no concessions will be made by China on matters of principle to ingratiate Tokyo."

Another commentary in the same paper said New Delhi was "over-concerned about Beijing's intentions", referring to concern in India over two Chinese helicopters seen in Indian airspace near the border in Barahoti. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said India would take up the matter, even as the PLA maintained that its military activities were "on its side of the border".

The article said, "New Delhi still views the bilateral relationship with China from the lens of geopolitics and regards Beijing as a strategic rival. Every time China reaches out to strengthen cooperation with countries regarded by India as within its sphere of influence, India worries the cooperation is deliberately targeting it."

"The reality is China's expanding cooperation is driven by China's economic growth," it added. "In fact, more and more Chinese enterprises are interested in investing in India. If New Delhi can understand China's connectivity initiative from the perspective of regional development, this will help enhance mutual trust between the two countries."

The paper said "strengthening mutual trust" was a prerequisite for ties and "more consultations are needed to handle border disputes".

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Also Read:

China's new border trade zone may be less than it seems

China in touch with Russia over India's NSG bid but no change in stance

--- ENDS ---
"SCO is not a place for India and Pakistan to quarrel, but a platform for members to settle their disputes," said an international relations expert at Shanghai's Fudan University.

By Ananth Krishnan: The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), the six-nation Eurasian security grouping, which is set to formalise India's and Pakistan's entry as its newest members at its summit that starts Thursday, won't back any attempts to "internationalise" bilateral disputes, Chinese experts have said.

Pakistan has in the past sought to internationalise issues such as Kashmir in multilateral fora. Ahead of this week's summit, experts in its "all weather ally" China have, however, cautioned against attempts to do so.

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"SCO members will support them and offer help if the two countries need it, rather than internationalise their dispute within the organization," Li Wei, an anti-terrorism expert at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, a think-tank affiliated to the powerful Ministry of State Security, told the Party-run tabloid Global Times, adding that "India and Pakistan are accusing each other of 'supporting terrorism' and this is generally based on their domestic political agenda and dispute."

"In short, the SCO is not a place for India and Pakistan to quarrel, but a platform for members to settle their disputes," added Lin Minwang, an international relations expert at Shanghai's Fudan University.

SCO MAY BACK ONE BELT, ONE ROAD INITIATIVE

In this week's summit, the SCO may back China's pet One Belt, One Road initiative. This isn't a particular concern for India at this summit for at least two reasons. For one, India won't have a say in the final communique this year as its membership will only be formalised at the end of the summit. And going forward, under the SCO's mandate, it takes decisions by consensus and generally doesn't involve itself in territorial issues so is unlikely to specifically back the China Pakistan Economic Corridor, which is India's major concern.

"All SCO members are participating in the Belt and Road initiative, and this organisation is the initiative's security guarantee," claimed Wang Yiwei, a scholar at Renmin University, underlining how Chinese experts have been keen to link even unrelated organisations and groupings to OBOR.

Li, the anti-terror expert, said OBOR "helps Pakistan's economic development and security, and if Pakistan becomes a wealthy and prosperous country, it would be difficult for extremism and terrorism to grow". He said this would "improve conditions along the India-Pakistan border". "So I don't think India and Pakistan should quarrel within the SCO, because they will find more reasons to cooperate," he said.

Also Read:

Will PM Modi meet Nawaz Sharif at SCO summit? Sushma Swaraj says nothing fixed

Kabul blast: China defends ally Pakistan as SCO considers terror treaty

Watch Video: China's media says SOC won't back Pakistan's attempts to internationalise Kashmir

--- ENDS ---
By WestKyStar & Paducah Public Schools Staff Jun. 07, 2017 | 03:28 PM | PADUCAH, KY

At Kentucky Boys State, participants are exposed to the rights, privileges, duties and responsibilities of a voting citizen. Activities include legislative sessions, court proceedings, law enforcement presentations, training in various topics, assemblies, journalism and recreational programs.





Merry and Reed were nominated by Paducah Tilghman. Merry is the son of Robert Merry and the grandson of Jane Merry. Reed is the son of Joni and Stanley Reed.

Paducah Tilghman High School rising seniors Coy Merry and Aaron Reed have been selected to attend Kentucky Boys State to be held at Campbellsville University June 4th through 9th.Kentucky Boys State is among the most respected educational programs of government instruction for high school students, and is considered a highly regarded leadership training program. Each participant becomes a part of the operation of his local, county and state government. Boys State has been a program of The American Legion since 1935, and was established in Kentucky in 1940.
By West Kentucky Star Staff Jun. 06, 2017 | 05:28 PM | PADUCAH, KY

Paducah and McCracken County residents are invited to attend a public meeting on Monday, June 19 discussing the city's Comprehensive Storm Water Master Plan.Engineers and Paducah's recently hired consultant for the planning initiative will be available to talk with residents and property owners regarding storm water flooding issues that have recently affected homes and businesses.Residents can attend the meeting anytime from 5 until 7:30 p.m. at the Robert Cherry Civic Center.The consultant team will make a brief presentation at 5:45 p.m.Residents are asked to share their accounts of flooding on their property and surrounding areas. Residents are encouraged to provide as much information as possible about each event, including photos, dates and the address or location of the property. A questionnaire about past flooding will be available to fill out at the meeting.Photos, the questionnaire, and firsthand accounts may also be submitted electronically through email at stormwateranddrainage@paducahky.gov.In March of this year, the Paducah Board of Commissioners approved an agreement with Strand Associates, Inc. for professional engineering, consulting, and related services for the development of a comprehensive storm water master plan.

On the Net:
The Election Commission is likely to announce date for Presidential election today. President Pranab Mukherjee's term is ending on July 25.

President Pranab Mukherjee is unlikely to get a second term. (File Photo/PTI)

By India Today Web Desk: The Election Commission will today announce the date for next month's Presidential election.

The announcement is expected to be made by Chief Election Commissioner Naseem Zaidi and the two Election Commissioners at a press conference in New Delhi.

President Pranab Mukhereje's term expires on July 25.

NO DECISION ON CANDIDATES

Neither the BJP-led NDA nor the Congress-led Opposition have come out with their candidates for the presidential election. Both the Narendra Modi government and the Opposition appear not in favour of giving a second term to incumbent President Pranab Mukherjee.

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The Congress Working Committee chaired by party president Sonia Gandhi met in New Delhi on Tuesday to discuss the upcoming presidential poll. However, no decision was made on party's candidate for the presidential election.

In May last week, Sonia Gandhi had invited leaders from Opposition for a luncheon to discuss names of probable candidates. However, the group of leaders failed to arrive at any consensus.

ALSO READ:

Presidential election: Nitish chooses to skip Sonia's Opposition meeting to discuss consensus candidate

Why BJP may surprise again with its pick for President of India's post

25 years after Babri demolition: Will Modi choose Advani as President?

--- ENDS ---
Paducah City Commission sees three retain seats and one return
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By West Kentucky Star Staff

Jun. 07, 2017 | PADUCAH, KY

By West Kentucky Star Staff Jun. 07, 2017 | 12:51 PM | PADUCAH, KY

Local residents are being cautioned about a recent phone scam involving someone impersonating a sheriff's deputy.



The McCracken County Sheriffs Department says it received several reports Wednesday morning from area residents who said they had received calls from an individual claiming to be a Sgt. Davis with the Department.



The caller reportedly tells would-be victims there are active arrest warrants for them, and that they need to call a telephone number to get instructions on how to send in money to get it "taken care of". The caller goes on to say that if they do not, they will be arrested.



Sheriff Jon Hayden says law enforcement agencies do not under any circumstances handle arrest warrants this way, ever. He says new technology allows scammers to make any telephone number they wish to appear on someones caller ID, which in some situations may help in trying to convince the caller that the call is legitimate.



Hayden says it is best to ignore these types of calls and hang up.
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By West Kentucky Star Staff Jun. 07, 2017 | 12:15 PM | FULTON, KY

West Kentucky Community and Technical College is partnering with a local manufacturer to provide pre-employment training for potential production workers who attend the automotive company's hiring event on June 13.The free hiring event will be held from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Pontotoc Civic Center at 100 East State in Fulton.Kayser Automotive Systems says it is looking for production workers to become a part of its manufacturing team. Team members must be self-disciplined, have integrity and a strong understanding of responsibility. Ability to follow written and verbal instructions is required.The position pays $9.25 an hour, with scheduled raise increases.Candidates for Production Worker positions must have the ability to work basic complex automotive assembly parts, have three years prior manufacturing experience, be able to multitask and willing to cross train into multiple functions or skills, have the ability to lift 25 lbs., and be capable of repetitive bending, kneeling, standing and sitting as required.WKCTC's pre-employment training will held in July at Fulton County Area Technology Center located at 2720 Moscow Avenue in Hickman, next to Fulton County High School."While this training does not guarantee employment with Kayser as a production worker, it could definitely increase a potential employee's chances," said Kevin O'Neill, WKCTC interim vice president of Regional Workforce and Economic Development.Hiring event partners also include the Kentucky Career Center and West Kentucky Workforce Investment Board.For more information about workforce solutions opportunities visit the link below, or call 270-534-3335.

On the Net:
By West Kentucky Star Staff Jun. 06, 2017 | 09:22 PM | FRANKFORT, KY

Attorney General Andy Beshear on Tuesday announced he joined with attorneys general from Massachusetts and New York to urge the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to crack down on the national onslaught of robocall messages and oppose ringless robocalls.

In the joint comment letter sent last week, Beshear, AG Healey and AG Schneiderman oppose a petition requesting ringless robocalls, which deliver voicemails to consumers without causing their phones to ring, be exempt from consumer protections under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA).

In the petition filed by All About the Message, ringless robocalls would be exempt from the protections arguing that they should not be considered calls.

The attorneys general contend that this exemption further opens the floodgates to more harassing calls and messages.

The purpose of the TCPA is to protect consumers from unwanted and intrusive calls. The FCCs Robocall Strike Force reports that robocalls are the number one source of complaints it receives, with consumers receiving an estimated 2.4 billion robocalls per month in 2016.

The letter points out that these ringless robocalls prevent consumers from blocking unwanted messages with many of the latest call blocking apps for mobile phones. In addition, whether they ring or not, robocalls can impose significant costs on consumers, especially those with prepaid cell phones or limited minutes who are charged for checking their messages. Consumers with limited size voicemail boxes may miss important messages when their voicemail is clogged with unwanted messages.
Polling for the election will take place in the Parliament House and in the premises of the legislative Assemblies.

By Nikhil Agarwal: As President Pranab Mukherjee's term ends on July 24, the Election Commission today announced that voting for choosing India's next president will be held on July 17 while counting will be on July 20 if needed.

Although none of the political parties have come up with names of their candidates yet speculations are on the rife. Some Opposition leaders have been trying to come up with the name of a consensus candidate. The ruling BJP-led NDA is likely to announce their nominee in the next fewdays.

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WHO CAN VOTE

Only members of the electoral college are eligible to vote in the presidential election. The electoral college comprises elected members of both Houses of Parliament and elected members of the legislative Assemblies of all states including Delhi and the union territory of Puducherry. A total of 4896 voters including 4120 MLAs and 776 elected MPs are eligible to cast their ballot.

WHO CANNOT VOTE

All nominated members of Rajya Sabha, Lok Sabha and legislative Assemblies do not have the right to vote. Members of the Legislative Councils also do not have voting rights.

HOW THE VOTING WILL HAPPEN

Unlike Lok Sabha and Assembly elections in India, the presidential elections do not have electronic voting system using EVMs. The Election Commission will supply a special pen to all voters to mark their choice of candidate on ballot papers.

A principle of proportional representation is followed under which the elector has to mark preferences against the names of the candidates. The elector can mark as many preference as the number of candidates.

While the marking of the first preference is compulsory for the ballot paper to be valid, other preferences are optional.

WHERE WILL VOTING BE HELD

Polling for the election will take place in the Parliament House and in the premises of the legislative Assemblies.

SECRET BALLOT

The Constitution has expressly provided that election to the office of President shall be by secret ballot. Voting procedure laid down in the 1974 Rules provides that after marking the vote in the voting compartment, the elector is required to fold the ballot paper and insert it in the ballot box.

NO WHIP

Political parties cannot issue any whip to their MPs and MLAs in the matter of voting in the Presidential election.

NOMINATION OF CANDIDATES

The nomination paper of a candidate has to be subscribed by at least 50 electors as proposers and by at least another 50 electors as seconders. A security deposit of Rs 15,000 is also needed.

ELECTION SCHEDULE

June 14 - Issue of notification

June 28 - Last date to make nomination

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June 29 - Date for scrutiny of nomination

July 1 - Last day to withdraw nomination

July 17 - Date of Election (if needed)

July 20 - Counting of votes will be held in Delhi (if needed)

Also read:

Kaun Banega President? List of probable NDA and Opposition candidates

Presidential election: Pranab Mukherjee drops enough hints to say he is not in running for a second term

Also watch:

Who will make a good president? Top contenders

--- ENDS ---
Liverpool have formally apologised to Southampton after making what was described as an illegal approach to sign Virgil van Dijk.

The Saints lodged a formal complaint with the Premier League earlier in the week after learning that Liverpool had contacted Van Dijk through the back channels  tapping up, as it used to be called in the trade.

The Reds have since issued a statement via their club site apologising to Southampton directly while also confirming that they are hereby nipping their pursuit of the Dutch centre-half in the bud.

The statement reads thus:

Liverpool would like to put on record our regret over recent media speculation regarding Southampton and player transfers between the two clubs. We apologise to the owner, board of directors and fans of Southampton for any misunderstanding regarding Virgil van Dijk. We respect Southamptons position and can confirm we have ended any interest in the player.

Only two months ago, Liverpools academy was placed under a two-year transfer embargo for tapping up a schoolboy player from Stoke City.

So, given their grovelling (and largely unprecedented) public apology over Van Dijk, its perhaps fair to suggest that they wilted at the prospect of the senior team being punished in much the same way.

The real winners of course will be Man City, who are now pretty much free to hoover Van Dijk up at their leisure.
By India Today Web Desk: The Election Commission today announced that polling for choosing India's next President will be held on July 17 while counting will be on July 20.

President Pranab Mukherjee's term ends on July 24.

Announcing the schedule, Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi told reporters here that the last date of filing nominations is June 28, scrutiny of nominations will take place on June 29 and the last date for withdrawal of candidature is July 1.

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"The date on which polling will be held, if required, is July 17. Counting, if required, will be done on July 20," Zaidi said.

Elected members of the Lok Sabha, Rajya Sabha and state assemblies including assemblies of Delhi and Puducherry are eligible to take part in the election.

NO DECISION ON CANDIDATES

Neither the BJP-led NDA nor the Congress-led Opposition have come out with their candidates for the presidential election. Both the Narendra Modi government and the Opposition appear not in favour of giving a second term to incumbent President Pranab Mukherjee.

The Congress Working Committee chaired by party president Sonia Gandhi met in New Delhi on Tuesday to discuss the upcoming presidential poll. However, no decision was made on party's candidate for the presidential election.

In May last week, Sonia Gandhi had invited leaders from Opposition for a luncheon to discuss names of probable candidates. However, the group of leaders failed to arrive at any consensus.

Also read:

Presidential election: Pranab Mukherjee drops enough hints to say he is not in running for a second term

Kaun Banega President? List of probable NDA and Opposition candidates

--- ENDS ---
By Press Trust of India: New Delhi, Jun 7 (PTI) With the ruling BJP yet to initiate efforts for a consensual presidential nominee, the Congress today said that non-NDA parties will make every possible attempt to find "the best person" for India in case the NDA alliance does not reach out to them.

Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi said the opposition has made it clear that the BJP-led NDA cannot take the country for granted on the issue and it will put up a concerted fight as it has many "deserving" candidates.

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He, however, refused to get into names of possible candidate for the July 17 election. Referring to the convergence in opposition parties over the issue, he noted that a sub-group formed to decide on a consensus presidential candidate will meet soon.

The CPI(M), on its part, said it is in discussion with other parties for a person with impeccable secular credentials who can discharge the responsibility as a custodian of the Indian Constitution.

"The intention is clear that there is a concerted effort and you have seen it in many meetings at Chennai and otherwise of a remarkable convergence of all non-NDA parties to try and make it clear that the BJP-NDA cannot take the nation for granted.

"There are many deserving candidates, and if they do not reach out first, these parties will make every possible attempt to find the best person for India," Singhvi said.

The Congress leader said a number of meetings have taken place at the top level to work out the nitty gritty.

The Congress President has been taking up the issue and other parties will also have such interlocutors and people set up soon.

"The idea is to coordinate statements, searches, interactions, meetings, discussions etc. But at the moment it is early stage to comment further. We will say as the days go by how it will work. I am not getting into names now," he said.

CPI(M) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury said the government should have started the process of consultations for a consensual candidate by now, as has been the practice.

He said since this has not happened yet, the opposition parties will take the decision, once the notification comes.

"We ,therefore, decided to field a candidate who can uphold the constitutional principles of our republic.

"We will finalise the candidate based on the timeline for the polls after holding consultations," he said.

Asked about the possible candidates, Yechury said Gopal Gandhi is definitely one of the persons under consideration, but the parties have to come to maximum unity on a name.

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A party statement said that for the post of Vice- President, the CPI(M) will seek to field a joint candidate on behalf of opposition parties who will uphold the constitutional values.

Leaders of various opposition parties have already met Sonia Gandhi earlier last month after she stepped up discussions for forging opposition unity on fielding a joint presidential candidate.

She also hosted a lunch for opposition parties which was attended by leaders of 17 parties recently.

Gandhi has held parleys with West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, DMK leader M K Stalin, JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav, Samajwadi Partys Mulayam Singh Yadav and RJDs Lalu Prasad, among others.

Gandhi has been at the forefront of efforts to evolve a consensus among opposition parties for putting up common candidates who are "acceptable to the country" for the posts of president and vice president .

"We want the entire Opposition to get together and come up with a candidate who will be good for the country," Mamata Banerjee had said after meeting Sonia Gandhi.

Some feel the united face of the opposition for the presidential poll may well turn out to be a precursor to an anti-NDA front ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha election.

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The presidential election will be held on July 17 and the tenure of incumbent Pranab Mukherjee ends on July 24. PTI SKC ENM RT

--- ENDS ---
By Press Trust of India: (Eds: Reprasing intro, adding a para)

New Delhi, Jun 7 (PTI) Polls to elect the next President of India will be held on July 17 for which the nomination process will begin from June 14 with the issuance of a notification, the Election Commission announced today.

The counting of votes will take place on July 20 in New Delhi where all the ballot boxes will be brought.

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Both the ruling NDA and the opposition are yet open their cards on the presidential candidate. While the ruling alliance is likely to announce its nominee in the next few days, the opposition is seeking to unite all non-NDA parties under a common platform to put up a consensus candidate for the presidential election.

As per the schedule, June 28 is the last day for nominations, while a candidate can withdraw from the electoral battle till July 1. If there is no consensus between the NDA and the opposition, the number of serious candidates in the fray will be clear by July 1 evening.

Various opposition parties have already held deliberations and have decided to set up a sub group that is likely to meet within a week to build consensus on a joint candidate.

The electorate, comprising elected Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha members and members of state assemblies, is tilted in favour of the NDA, but the opposition is trying to woo some regional parties to support their candidate.

The tenure of the incumbent, Pranab Mukherjee, comes to an end on July 24. So far 13 persons, including Mukherjee, have held the post, with V V Giri being the president on two occasions.

The electoral college which elects the President through the system of proportional representation, comprises MPs and members of state legislative assemblies. A total of 4896 voters --- 4120 MLAs and 776 elected MPs -- are eligible to cast their ballot. MLCs of states with legislative councils are not part of the electoral college.

While the Lok Sabha Speaker, an elected member, can vote, the two nominated members in the Lower House from the Anglo-Indian community cannot. 12 nominated members in Rajya Sabha are also ineligible.

Since the election is through a secret ballot, the parties cannot issue a whip to their members to vote for a particular candidate, Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi told a press conference here.

Responding to a question, he said the election to 10 Rajya Sabha seats, postponed earlier due to presidential polls and EVM challenge held last week, would now be held after the Presidential election.

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He said the 10 members would be retiring after the presidential elections and are entitled to vote in the July 17 poll.

When asked whether the 20 AAP MLAs, against whom the EC is hearing a petition seeking their disqualification for allegedly holding office of profit, can vote in the polls, he said "as on today" they can vote. Originally, the case was against 21 MLAs, but one had resigned.

A total of 13 vacancies in Lok Sabha and state assemblies will be filled up after the presidential elections, he said.

Incidentally, Zaidi is retiring on July 7 and will not be in office when the results are notified by the Commission.

In 2012, the election to the Presidents office was announced on June 12 and held on July 19. The term of Mukherjee as the President commenced on July 25.

This time, the Lok Sabha secretary general will be the returning officer. Last time, it was the secretary general of Rajya Sabha. PTI NAB RT RT

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By Press Trust of India: Bhopal, Jun 7 (PTI) Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi is expected to visit Madhya Pradeshs violence-hit Mandsaur district tomorrow to meet the kin of the five persons who were killed in violence during the farmers agitation.

Five persons were yesterday killed as the farmers agitation turned violent in Mandsaur, prompting the authorities to clamp curfew in the trouble-hit area.

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"Rahulji is expected to visit Mandsaur tomorrow," Congress MLA Jaivardhan Singh told PTI today.

"Our leader wants to meet the family members of the deceased and comfort them," Jaivardhan, son of senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh, said.

"The entire Congress is with Madhya Pradeshs farmers in distress. The BJP-led state government should wake up from its slumber and help the farmers in need," he said.

Neemuch Superintendent of Police Manoj Kumar Singh said Gandhi was expected to visit Mandsaur today, but it got postponed.

"Rahul was expected to visit Mandsaur today but his plan got postponed. He was supposed to land in Neemuch, the adjoining district of Mandsaur," the SP said.

Mandsaur has been on the boil since the farmers agitation in the district turned violent.

Farmers in western Madhya Pradesh are protesting since June 1 over various demands.

The protesters demanding better crop prices, among other things, "heckled" Mandsaur collector this morning when he tried to pacify them.

Also, former MP from Mandsaur, Meenakshi Natarajan, was detained when she was on her way to meet the family members of the deceased. PTI LAL ADU GK GVS

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Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 07/06/2017 (1982 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Winnipeg Arts Council will celebrate the lifeblood of any community organization  its volunteers  at Thursdays Mayors Luncheon for the Arts.

The arts councils Outstanding Volunteer award is one of five prizes that will be presented at the annual gathering of the citys cultural organizations at the Fort Garry Hotel.

Nominated for the award are:

Dianne Harms, a founding member of ArtsJunktion;

Alice MacKenzie, a volunteer and board member for the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra; and

Gary Styrchak, a board member of the Manitoba Printmakers Association.

Harms versatility and enthusiasm  besides being ArtsJunktions treasurer she also helps out with the organizations many arts workshops and other events  is what makes her such a key person in the group, says ArtsJunktion past chair Melanie Janzen.

Alice MacKenzie

She has a ton of different skills, Janzen says. If we had to pay her for the hours that she puts in, there would be no ArtsJunktion.

The same could be said about Styrchaks contribution to the Manitoba Printmakers Association. In a letter to the arts council, the association says it would have never found its new Exchange District home at the Martha Street Studio without Styrchak.

Not only is he the associations longest-serving board member and managed the renovation of the studio, but he even worked with contractors to remove a nest of pigeons from the facilitys attic so a new roof could be built, the letter says.

Dianne Harms

While the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra is known for its elegant classical music concerts  such as Nanabush and the Drum, a collaboration with Theatre Cercle Moliere that begins a two-night run tonight at Westminster United Church  MacKenzie is behind one of its more visible fundraising events.

Shes the one who arranges the pickup of old records for the orchestras monthly Vinyl Vault sales that draw collectors from all over the city.

She looks after all that as well as being secretary of the board for 15 years, at least, says MCO managing director Vicki Young.

Volunteers serve as ushers at MCO concerts, help out at fundraising events and work in the office, Young says.

They carry a lot of the institutional knowledge (thats important) to the community, she says. Alices spirit is a good example of what can be done by volunteers in our community.

Gary Styrchak

Along with the award, a $1,000 cash donation in the winners name goes to the organization that submitted the nomination.

The other prizes include:

On the Rise, a $2,500 award that goes to a promising professional artist;

Making the Mark, a $2,500 award for professional artists who have received critical recognition;

Making a Difference, a $2,500 prize for an artist or administrators contribution to the arts in Winnipeg; and

the Arts Champion award, which honours a business or individuals sustained support for the arts in the city.

The MC for this years event is Anishinaabe musician Leonard Sumner, who won the arts councils On the Rise award in 2014.

alan.small@freepress.mb.ca

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Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 07/06/2017 (1982 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In the heart of Canadas bread basket, a Richardson International Ltd. processing plant stands as a testament to what may be the countrys most successful agricultural experiment.

Farmers across the Prairie provinces are planting record acres of canola, a crop that didnt exist about four decades ago but now is the nations biggest, sown on more land than spring wheat. Richardson, based in Winnipeg, was the first company to market canola oil. It has since expanded capacity at factories like the one in Lethbridge, Alta., as global demand exploded and Canada became the top exporter of an oilseed used in everything from salad dressing to french fries.

Richardsons facility now spans six square blocks  a warren of crushing machines, conveyor belts, railroad links and grain silos devoted entirely to canola. After a $120-million upgrade to expand capacity by 55 per cent, it will be able to process 700,000 metric tons annually, boosting exports of oil and related products including margarine and buttery popcorn topping.

Daniel Acker / Bloomberg News Corn, canola and vegetable oils on display in a supermarket in Princeton, Ill. Canada is the top exporter of canola oil, which is used for everything from frying french fries to dressing salads.

Its almost a constant turnover of jugs, barrels and bottles of oil shipped to grocers, fast-food restaurants, hospitals and bakers every day of the work week, said Steve Scott, the plants maintenance manager. Pointing to a tanker car capable of hauling 80 tons, he said, a big potato-chip plant will be taking a couple of these a week.

Canadian scientists invented canola in 1974 by breeding out undesirable traits from the rapeseed plant, though it didnt get the name canola until 1978.

The seed has more than twice as much oil as a soybean, and canola oil has become popular in cooking and deep frying. Its rich in heart-healthy fatty acids found in salmon and tuna that lower bad cholesterol and help control blood sugar, with no artery-clogging trans fats. Canola oil has about seven per cent saturated fat, about half as much as olive oil and a fraction of whats in palm oil, according to the Canola Council of Canada.

The healthy oil profile that canola enjoys is going to keep it popular, said David Reimann, a market analyst in Winnipeg for Cargill Ltd., the worlds largest agricultural company. Its a huge, huge market and can certainly tolerate a lot more acreage and production.

Farmers are doing just that. While planting is a little behind schedule because of wet weather, Canadian growers eventually will sow 22 million acres of canola this year  the most ever, government data show. The planting season will end in a few weeks.

Production of canola probably will reach a record 18.75 million tons, more than half of which will be exported to big buyers like the U.S., China and Mexico, the governments Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada said in a May 24 report. Demand also is growing, with global imports of rapeseed set to jump 5.2 per cent to a record 16.18 million tons, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates, with Canada accounting for about 68 per cent of total shipments.

Canola prices have held up better than competing oilseeds as supplies increased. Canola now fetches a premium to soybeans, and it has outperformed palm oil, which is down almost 20 per cent in the past year.

Still, farmers have plenty of incentive to supply more as domestic demand grows, with Canadian processors poised to crush a record nine million tons in the 12-month season through July, and a similar amount in the next year, according to the the nations agriculture ministry.

The global market for rapeseed, which includes canola, reached $6.6 billion last year, a 61 per cent increase from 2011, and is forecast to grow another 51 per cent from 2016 to 2021, the most of any edible oil, including olive oil and sunflower oil, according to data from Euromonitor International. Since canola oil is not just for human consumption, part of that growth may go toward other uses such as animal feed, said Hope Lee, a senior analyst.

Rising demand for healthier cooking oils from North American consumers and a growing middle class in Asia has helped boost exports, said Bruce Jowett, vice-president of market development for the Canola Council of Canada. That, in turn, has prompted farmers to continue to seed more acres and for processors to invest significantly in increasing the amount of oil and meal they can export, he said.

In 2015, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration determined that partially hydrogenated oils, the main source of trans fats that contribute to heart disease, are not generally recognized as safe. Many companies  including McDonalds Corp.  have committed to phasing out trans fats from their food products.

Processing capacity has more than doubled in the past decade. The industry, including Richardson International, Bunge Ltd. and Archer-Daniels-Midland Co., has spent about $1 billion to upgrade and expand. Canada may produce as much as 26 million tons of canola by 2025, a 41 per cent increase from 2016, Jowett said.

Canola is the healthiest oil thats out there, Jowett said. As consumers become more educated about their health, they can see that consuming less saturated fat is a good thing.

 Bloomberg News
By India Today Web Desk: Saif Ali Khan's much-delayed project Chef has finally got a release date. The film, which is an Indian adaptation of a Hollywood film by the same name, will hit the screens this October. Chef was earlier slated to release this July.

It was only recently that the makers shared the first still from the film where the Rangoon actor can be seen cooking up a storm in the kitchen.

#Chef, produced by TSeries and Abundantia and directed by Raja Krishna Menon, to release on 6 Oct 2017... Stars Saif Ali Khan. pic.twitter.com/QGk3KrebjR- taran adarsh (@taran_adarsh) June 6, 2017

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The original film revolved around the life of a professional chef who quits his job at a popular restaurant in Los Angeles to start in own food truck.

For the Indian remake, Saif has stepped into the shoes of Jon Favreau. The film has been extensively in exotic locales of India. It is for the first time that Saif will be seen in this new avatar on screen.

Directed by Raja Krishna Menon, the film which also stars Padmapriya, will hit the screens on October 6.

ALSO READ: Saif-Ranbir turn chefs at the Kapoors, Kareena-Karisma pose

ALSO READ: Did you know Sara Ali Khan made Kareena-Saif break their no-kissing policy?

ALSO WATCH: Saif and Kareena welcome baby boy Taimur

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Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 07/06/2017 (1982 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Flair Airlines of Kelowna has acquired the assets of Winnipeg-based New Leaf Travel Co., formalizing the relationship that has been in existence since New Leaf launched Canadas first ultra low-cost carrier business a year ago.

Chris Lapointe, vice-president of commercial operations for Flair, the company that actually operates the planes New Leaf was selling seats on, said plans were in place from the beginning of the relationship to bring the two companies together.

There will be no changes to New Leafs scheduled flights and no changes to its routes. The airline flies to Abbotsford, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Hamilton and Halifax.

MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS FILES The first New Leaf flight arrived in Winnipeg last July.

Its business as usual, Lapointe said. Were looking forward to a busy summer.

He said the company will start looking at additional routes, including potential southern destinations, in the fall.

Flair currently has a fleet of five Boeing 737-400s configured for 156 seats each.

Julie Rempel, New Leafs director of communications and marketing, said 85 per cent of New Leafs Winnipegs staff have been retained. Although that group does not include New Leaf founder and former CEO, Jim Young, who has left the company.

The relationship between New Leaf and Flair caused regulatory challenges from the beginning, pushing New Leafs original launch back almost a whole year. New Leaf first flight took off in July, 2016.

A ruling from the Canadian Transportation Agency in March 2016 specified that New Leaf can operate as a reseller of air travel and did not require an operating licence. Flair has always been licensed as an air carrier by the CTA.

We are celebrating here because New Leaf was never able to use the word fly, we always had to use the word travel, Rempel said. Todays the day all the staff here can say we are an airline and thats pretty exciting.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 06/06/2017 (1983 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A former convenience store owner has been found guilty of conspiring to kill his business partner as a way out of a toxic work environment.

Court of Queens Bench Justice Vic Toews convicted 42-year-old Amare Gebru of counselling to commit murder and counselling to commit robbery. The judge found Gebru unbelievable when he claimed on the stand he  not his female business partner  was the intended victim of a convoluted murder plot.

Theres nothing in the accuseds evidence that leaves me with a reasonable doubt, Toews said Tuesday.

WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES The convenience store co-owned by Amare Gebru and his female business partner, who's murder he was convicted of plotting.

Gebru, who is married with three children, had a 50/50 business deal with a now-31-year-old woman to buy Teddys convenience store on Balmoral Street. Both had immigrated to Winnipeg from Ethiopia and bought the store together in 2011  but each business partner testified the other had contributed less money to the purchase of the store and each accused the other of stealing money from the business.

Within a few months, their working relationship soured, the store was struggling and both partners wanted out of the business, but they couldnt agree on a buyout plan.

In May 2012, Gebru approached a regular customer in the stores laundromat and hatched a plan for the now-28-year-old man to rob his business partner while she was headed to the bank to make a cash deposit.

After that, he changed his mind. He says, I dont want her to be stealing money again. I just want her to be dead. So if you can be able to kill her do it and Ill give you money, $10,000, and Ill sign your mortgage for you,' the would-be hitman testified during Gebrus trial.

The man balked at the murder plot and told Gebrus business partner about the plan. Together, they went to police and the man agreed to wear a wire during secret meetings with Gebru. In recordings of the meetings played in court, Gebru spoke vaguely about a mission he needed the man to complete.

When he testified in his own defence, Gebru claimed the tables were turned and his business partner was the one who hired a hitman to kill him.

Gebru told the judge the mission was a trap he concocted after he learned about the murder plot against him. He said the would-be hitman pulled a gun on him while he was in his car one night and confessed the plan. Gebru said the hitman told him he couldnt go through with it because he knew Gebru was a good man.

In a plot the judge dismissed as not believable, Gebru said he later met with the alleged hitman to get him to shoot up the convenience store as a trap that would supposedly allow Gebru to gather evidence against him.

Gebru didnt report his interaction with the alleged hitman to police  he said he thought doing so would affect his immigration status  even though he contacted them three times subsequently to complain about his business partner and even met with the local member of Parliament to express concerns about the business venture.

Why he felt that reporting a plan by (his business partner) to murder him would jeopardize his immigration status, but that reporting three other less-serious matters accusing (her) of improper if not criminal activity would not have had a similar impact on his immigration status is unclear and, indeed, makes no sense, the judge said.

Wayne Glowacki / Winnipeg Free Press Files Amare Gebru.

Gebrus former business partner, as well as a friend of hers who co-owned a separate business with her, also testified during the trial. They said Gebru had threatened his business partner and her family as tensions grew at the store.

The woman testified Gebru admitted to stealing from the stores international money-transfer fund to pay off his personal debts while his wife was undergoing cancer treatment.

Gebru has been free on bail since the charges were laid in May 2012, and he remains on bail as he awaits sentencing this fall. The Crown is expected to seek a prison sentence.

After five years waiting for the court case to end, defence lawyer Mike Cook said his client is looking forward to completing the process.

Mr. Gebru is a very well-respected gentleman in the Ethiopian community, Cook said in a statement, saying he expects supporters to write reference letters to attest to his good character prior to the sentencing hearing.

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @thatkatiemay
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 07/06/2017 (1982 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A former business student who laundered nearly a half-a-million dollars as part of an international online fraud scheme has been sentenced to 4 1/2 years in prison.

Michael Odine, 26, faces deportation back to Nigeria as a result of his 24 criminal convictions for playing a key role in a mass-marketing scheme that funnelled stolen money into fraudulent bank accounts, stealing $442,000 from 53 victims across Canada, the United States and Europe.

Odine was involved in the scheme for three years from February 2013 until his arrest in March 2016, while he studied business at the University of Manitoba. He opened at least eight different bank accounts to forward fraudulently obtained money to unknown agents in the U.S., Ukraine, South Africa, Malaysia, Nigeria and Pakistan. The money came from dozens of people who fell victim to online fraud: some were looking for work or rental accommodations online, some were responding to online classified ads and some had been duped by people they met on dating sites. In each case, the victims were sent fraudulent cheques and asked to deposit them and transfer some of the funds to other individuals.

The original cheques would bounce, and the victims would be on the hook for the money they had transferred to other bank accounts, including the ones set up in Winnipeg by Odine.

Odine didnt communicate directly with any of the victims, but he followed instructions from others who mailed him high-quality, forged drivers licences and passports bearing false names and his real photo. He forwarded some of the money he received and kept some for himself  splurging on flights, designer clothes and nightclub tabs, as well as paying for his U of M tuition and textbooks.

While the accused did not communicate directly with the victims of these fraudulent initiatives, his participation in the financial workings of the scheme was integral to its success, Court of Queens Bench Justice Vic Toews said as he imposed the prison sentence Wednesday.

The judge ordered Odine to pay restitution of $98,970  about 25 per cent of the money he laundered. After he was caught, Odine estimated he spent only about 20 per cent of the money he received via the fraudulent bank accounts before forwarding the money, but bank records provided to the police showed his profits were much larger, court heard.

It remains unclear how Odine got involved in the mass-marketing scheme. In a pre-sentence report, he said he did so because his part-time job didnt pay the bills. But with his employment income and financial support from his parents in Nigeria  his father is a pharmacist and his mother a nurse  Odine received more than $39,500 in 2013 without the fraudulently obtained funds, Toews noted in his decision.

It appears to me that the choice he made in getting involved with this fraudulent activity was based on the desire to obtain extra money to enhance his social activities and relationships. It had nothing to do with being able to meet his basic cost of living and educational expenses, the judge said.

Odine previously said he was mailed letters and eventually the forged documents after looking online for a job, court heard.

The Winnipeg Police Services commercial crime unit launched an investigation after a Vancouver police officer asked for help in October 2015 with a case involving a B.C. victim who had been defrauded out of money that ended up in a Winnipeg bank account.

Odine was arrested the following March carrying forged drivers licences and passports he would use to open the bank accounts. Police were not able to find the source of those forged documents or lay charges against others who may have been involved in the scheme.

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @thatkatiemay
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 06/06/2017 (1983 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Heather Purvis was just shy of her 34th birthday when she had a stroke.

Then a nurse at St. Boniface Hospital, Purvis lay in bed early on Jan. 3, 1999, fighting a really odd, icy frontal headache. When she got up, she began to feel weakness on her right side, so she lay down again and hoped it would pass. It didnt.

By the time the ambulance arrived, she could barely control her right leg. It took days for doctors to diagnose her stroke. It took months for her to learn how sit and stand again, how to walk, how to re-test for her drivers licence.

PHIL HOSSACK / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Heather Purvis believes she never would have recovered if not for the support she received.

Your life comes to a complete and utter standstill, she says.

Nearly two decades later and as a patient representative for CancerCare Manitoba, she still feels the effects.

Purvis, who was married with a toddler in 1999, is adamant she couldnt have recovered without the extensive support she received  thats why shes helping draw attention to a report released Wednesday by the Heart & Stroke Foundation. The key? Not enough is being done to support Canadians who experience a stroke.

I was very, very lucky, she said.

Eighty per cent of people survive strokes, according to the report, but are left to grapple with a multitude of effects from struggling to eat and bathe and dress themselves to depression and speech and memory issues. More than 400,000 Canadians are currently living with some form of long-term disability as the result of a stroke  and that number is expected to grow, nearly doubling in the next two decades.

For some, a stroke results in persistent, undeniable exhaustion. According to the report, between 38 per cent and 73 per cent of people whove had a stroke experience post-stroke fatigue lasting for months or even years.

The fatigue was phenomenal, Purvis recalls.

Even now, shell sometimes catch herself on a particularly tiring day and wonder, am I tired because Im getting older or because of the stroke?

Access to care is an ongoing issue, with less than one-fifth of stroke patients able to get inpatient rehabilitation within a month of leaving the hospital. While children are less likely to have strokes, the rate at which they do have them is growing much faster than the adult rate and its still a struggle for health-care professionals to diagnose and treat them in time.

Manitoba is far behind when it comes to pediatric stroke care in particular, Dr. Mubeen Rafay, a Heart & Stroke medical spokesperson and associate professor of pediatric neurology at the University of Manitoba, said.

We still struggle with getting appropriate neuroimaging, we still struggle with getting appropriate rehabilitation, she said.

In rural areas, the challenges  transfers to urban centres, faster evaluations  are much greater.

Time matters, Rafay said.

More than 10,000 children nationwide have had a stroke. Their growing brains struggle most cognitively and behaviourally: they can have poor decision-making skills, suffer from social isolation or attention-deficit disorder.

Time matters from the symptom onset to the time when diagnosis is made because you can intervene, you can improve their quality of life, Rafay said, but geographically, the situation is such that you cant offer them everything (in Manitoba) in a designated time frame.

The issue isnt families, she said, but health-care professionals. Parents will spot something wrong and bring a child in, but health-care workers still struggle to recognize its a stroke.

Strokes dont occur in babies and children, thats the general feeling, Rafay said. And yet, while theyre infrequent, they arent rare. Its likely second (most) common after brain tumour.

The impact on Manitoba families, she said, can be quite profound.

The province has no outpatient rehabilitation units for children, Rafay says, so in order to get the help they need children are forced to stay inpatient for months before they can get home and even then the resources are not in place.

If a child needs ongoing support such as speech language pathology or occupational therapy, they need to find larger centres, so many choose to just stay in bigger cities to have access.

jane.gerster@freepress.mb.ca
The BJP in its complaint has said that four former employees of Rana Gurjeet Singh were also used by the minister for the sand mine auction.

By Manjeet Sehgal: In another embarrassment for Punjab Irrigation and Power Minister Rana Gurjeet Singh, whose former employees including a cook, won four sand mine bids, the Punjab unit of the BJP on Wednesday met Lokpal, Punjab and demanded registration of a case against him under the Punjab Lokpal Act, 1996.

Rejecting the commission of inquiry, the BJP leaders in their formal complaint to the Lokpal said that son of Justice (retd) JS Narang, who is heading the commission, is still working as an advocate for Rana Gurjeet's brother and the same has been accepted by the minister.

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The complaint said that the irrigation department, headed by the minister has been responsible for identifying the river sites which were auctioned by Department of Mining and was in fact a conflict of interest.

"It is a proven case of shadow or proxy bidding by Rana Gurjeet Singh to capture mining business through his men by taking undue advantage, misusing and abusing his government position. It is also a case of corruption, breach of trust and clash of interest. It is also a violation of the oath taken in the name of Constitution of India by him while assuming office," the complaint said.

"Being vigilant members of the national political party, it is our duty to bring into your notice, the misdeeds committed by the minister while acting as public representative and public servant. You are requested to inquire into the misconduct committed by him being a public man, while adopting unethical mode to execute his illegal act to get maximum personal gain," the complaint said.

FORMER EMPLOYEES OF MINISTER INVOLVED

The complaint submitted to the Lokpal office said that the four former employees of Rana Gurjeet Singh had insignificant income and made bids for crores of rupees and then also deposited the money in government accounts.

Amit Bahadur has less than Rs 1 lakh annual income in ITRs. In the income tax return for 2015-16, he has shown an income of Rs 92,679, for 2014-15 Rs 76390 and as on April 1 the balance in his state bank account was Rs 4,840.

Kulvinder Paul draws a salary of Rs 30,000 per month from Gurjeet's firm. Balraj Singh a junior employee in the Rana Gurjeet's company has shown income not more than 4-5 lakh in CA form, also got Rs 9 crore mine.

Gurinder Singh, a junior employee doesn't have sufficient income to bid for crore of rupees. Avtar Singh Gill and his son Ajitpal Singh Gill don't have income to make bids for crores of rupees as they have a small cloth shop in Kot Fathui.

SAME CONTACT DETAILS SUBMITTED

Rana's employees quoted same mobile number and identical emails while submitting papers for the sand mining auctions.

The BJP in its complaint has also stated that Sanjit Singh Randhawa, who was quoted as the investor by the employees of Rana Gurjeet Singh, is in fact his friend and does not have the income to make bids worth crores of rupees.

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Also read: Despite money laundering charges, Punjab government to go ahead with mine auction

Also read: Chandigarh: Punjab to bring white paper before budget session

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Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 07/06/2017 (1982 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Mayor Brian Bowman is refusing to criticize the provincial government even as the impact from the provincial budget is eliminating jobs for police officers and causing financial problems for Winnipeg Transit.

The day after the Winnipeg Police Service admitted the shortfall in funding from the province will mean the elimination of 15 positions, Bowman said city hall still doesnt know how the end of the provincial funding agreement will affect transit services and the citys ability to rebuild its crumbling streets.

Citizens expect we are going to do everything we can to work collaboratively with other levels of government, Bowman told reporters Wednesday morning. We recognize the provincial government did inherit a financial mess. They do have a clear mandate and a desire to clean that up, and I support them in doing so.

BORIS MINKEVICH FREE PRESS FILES 'We recognize the provincial government did inherit a financial mess. They do have a clear mandate and a desire to clean that up, and I support them in doing so,' Brian Bowman said.

The provinces freeze on funding to municipalities will mean the WPS will receive $1.2 million less than what it expected from the province, police chief Danny Smyth told reporters Tuesday. To deal with the shortfall, Smyth said police will cut 15 positions, including the elimination of two specialized units operated jointly with the RCMP: the organized crime task force and the warrant task force. Smyth said the street gang unit will be unaffected.

In addition to the cuts to police, the province is also ending its traditional funding to cover transit operational costs, which had been split on a 50-50 basis with municipalities.

Bowmans reluctance to criticize the provincial Conservative government may be part of his long-term strategy to convince it to contribute a greater share for road upgrades. Bowman said hes hoping to work around a funding shortfall from Broadway by tapping into new infrastructure funding from the federal government.

Ottawa has allocated $500 million to Manitoba, and Bowman said he expects Winnipeg to get the lion share of that money based on its population. He also said municipalities across the province want to alter the former infrastructure funding formula  one third from each level of government  to a new arrangement that favours city hall: 40 per cent each from Ottawa and the province, with 20 per cent from city hall.

Bowman said theres still no guarantee the province will provide infrastructure funding to municipalities with no conditions  traditionally, city hall and the province had to negotiate which projects would get funding. Bowman said Winnipeg and other municipalities have not yet received assurances the Pallister government will allow municipalities to decide how to spend the infrastructure dollars.

aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 06/06/2017 (1983 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

On Canada Day, more than 7,000 low-income Manitobans in the provincial Rent Assist program will have their rent subsidy cut by three per cent, due to a policy change announced by the provincial government.

Many low-income individuals and poverty advocacy organizations have denounced the decision, while the Pallister government says the rates for rent assistance in the province remain some of the lowest in Canada.

The Rent Assist program is available to low-income individuals, as well as those on Employment and Income Assistance (EIA). Those receiving EIA will not be affected by the change.

RYAN THORPE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Eva Beaudoin, 59, is one of more than 7,000 individuals provincewide who will be affected by funding changes to the Rent Assist program.

One individual who will be affected is 59-year-old Eva Beaudoin of Winnipeg, a retired personal support worker currently on Canadian Pension Plan Disability.

Theyre not thinking of the people who depend on this money to survive, to be able to buy a bit of groceries each month, Beaudoin said.

Theyre not thinking somewhere down the line someone is going to lose their apartment and not be able to afford to get a new one with first months rent and a damage deposit.

Beaudoin learned of the change through the mail and was angered those affected will only have one month to prepare for the decrease in assistance.

She characterized the decision as an attack on the provinces poor, many of whom are low-income full-time workers attempting to improve their economic situation.

The changes are being made to ensure the Rent Assist program continues to help Manitobans most in need and is financially sustainable, said a spokesperson for the province.

The spokesperson was unable to speak further on the issue due to communication restrictions for next weeks byelection.

Rent assistance rates will now be calculated on 28 per cent of monthly income  previously 25 per cent  and 75 per cent of median market rent.

Josh Brandon, chair of Make Poverty History Manitoba, disagrees that the decision to reduce funding for the program is fiscally responsible.

Weve seen the beginning of an austerity program, Brandon said. We know from other provinces and jurisdictions that austerity always affects low-income people and doesnt have the effect of growing the economy.

He believes cutting back funding for poverty reduction efforts will cost the province more in the future, specifically in regards to health-care and social programs.

This is going to be a very difficult cut for low-income families and individuals, Brandon continued.

Renters depend on Rent Assist to be able to afford housing costs which are going up very quickly in Winnipeg. Rent Assist has been identified by the government as one of the most important tools they have for getting people out of poverty, so its confusing and disconcerting as to why theyve made this choice.

Beaudoin says she, along with many others affected, feels blindsided and upset with the change in policy.

Theyre playing with peoples lives, Beaudoin said. Peoples lives are on the line and they dont know the effect this will have on them. They depend on this money. They need this money.

ryan.thorpe@freepress.mb.ca
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 07/06/2017 (1982 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Don Plett certainly knows the consequences of spitting into the wind.

The outspoken Conservative senator from Manitoba has never been afraid to run headlong into the current of public opinion or the wishes of his own party. Plett sees a fight worth fighting, and sets about putting himself on the front line, often without hesitation.

And thats more or less how he got where he is today, as the central villain in a Senate controversy over whether to approve as is, or amend, a bill introduced last year by Liberal MP Mauril Belanger.

Sean Kilpatrick / The Canadian Press Conservative Sen. Don Plett at the Senate on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.

Belanger sought to remove a reference in O Canada to thy sons command and replace it with in all of us command to make the national anthem gender neutral. It was the last legislative act by the MP, who suffered from ALS and died shortly after the bill was passed.

A handful of female Conservative MPs supported Belangers bill, but the gross majority of Tories voted against. When the bill was sent to the Senate, more opposition was expressed, and not only by the Tories. Some independent senators, including some appointed by Liberal prime ministers, also questioned Belangers new wording.

After a year of procedural limbo, Plett finally stepped up with an amendment to break the gridlock. Instead of in all of us command, Plett proposed thou dost in us command. The latter was taken from an earlier draft of the song, written by Judge Robert Stanley Weir.

As soon as he proposed that compromise, Plett was suddenly accused of a partisan bid to betray a dying MPs final wishes. Belangers widow, Catherine, labelled the amendment as a really sneaky way to derail her late husbands legacy project.

Its not a position Plett said he wanted to take on. But if no one else is prepared to step up, he said hes all in for the fight.

Quite frankly, this wasnt really that high on my radar, Plett said in an interview from Ottawa. I took one for the team and Im happy to do that. But Im offended that people are trying to make this about Mauril Belanger. To be honest, I dont think this is about him and its not about me. Its bigger than any one person.

One of the factors that has complicated this story and put Plett squarely in the cross-hairs of this dispute, is a parliamentary rule that says if the sponsor of a particular bill is deceased, then the House of Commons must provide unanimous consent to allow another MP to take on sponsorship.

Belanger survived long enough to see the bill pass, but his death ultimately meant no further amendments could be made in the Senate without going back to the House of Commons to appoint a new sponsor. And given the Conservative caucus opposition to the bill, unanimous support is a non-starter.

Plett maintained he had no idea his amendment would require another vote in the House of Commons. And Plett was not alone in his ignorance of the rules. Independent Sen. Frances Lankin, the bills sponsor in the upper chamber, initially supported Pletts amendment as a reasonable compromise until she found out about the need to find a new sponsor.

Once it was clear the House of Commons had to be revisited, Lankin turned on Plett, complaining that it is not our job in the Senate to block votes on things.

For those who support the original intent of Belangers bill, Pletts behaviour is dirty pool. It doesnt help that, when pressed, Plett admits he would rather not change the anthems lyrics at all. And that he has sparred with Belangers widow.

Say what you want about Plett, but he charts his own course and lives with the consequences of his decisions. It has been that way throughout his tenure as a senator.

A self-professed social conservative, Plett has nonetheless been very careful to steer clear of the hallmark issues of so-cons  abortion, same-sex marriage and restrictive immigration policies. That does not mean Plett steers completely clear of controversy.

When the nation was rushing to condemn senators and the Senate over the expense scandal, Plett went on defence, arguing senators should be given the benefit of the doubt over inappropriate expense claims. Plett was also an outspoken opponent of a private members bill that sought to extend Canadian Human Rights Act protections to transgender Canadians. His attempts to introduce amendments to stop the transgender people from using public washrooms consistent with their preferred gender sparked claims he was transphobic.

More recently, Plett has been a vocal critic of a bill that would ban the importation and breeding of cetaceans (aquatic mammals) in captivity. Plett got into a well-publicized exchange with a former Marineland trainer who accused the Manitoba senator of being the lackey of a private aquarium.

Plett acknowledged unapologetic is one of the words that best describes his work as a senator. Throughout his skirmishes, he has never been forced into an apology, largely because he remains very deliberate about the fights he takes on. And it should be noted that although by his own admission he is not big into compromises, he is well respected by senators of all partisan affiliations.

Plett said other senators have come to understand that he can be an ally, or an enemy, depending on the issue and the approach taken.

I do not like to impose my values on anyone else, Plett said. But I also feel that other people shouldnt impose their values on me. If they do, they can expect a fight.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 07/06/2017 (1982 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If a week is a long time in politics, a month is an eternity. When British Prime Minister Theresa May called an election in the middle of April for June 8, the polls had her Conservatives a massive 20 points ahead of Jeremy Corbyns Labour party. The predictions were that the Tories would annihilate their socialist opponents, who might deliver the worst electoral results in living memory. It seemed that even in radical Scotland, the Conservatives would pick up MPs and they were actually ahead of Labour in Wales!

Corbyn, it was said, was so left-wing and militant and his policies so archaic and radical that only the die-hard comrades and the unions would support him. As for the Liberal Democrats and UKIP, the United Kingdom Independence Party, they were doomed.

The latest polls, however, tell a rather different story. Or to put it another way, the political world has been turned upside-down. The Lib Dems and UKIP are still in the doldrums, but Labour is a mere handful of points behind the Tories, is ahead in Wales and dominant in London. Young people are intending to vote as never before and they are certainly not backing May.

BEN BIRCHALL / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn gives a speech while campaigning in Telford, England, Tuesday. The British election will take place on Thursday.

Frankly, its still unlikely, though far from impossible, that Corbyn will win the election, but he may prevent the Conservatives from forming an overall majority; and theres always the chance that the Scottish Nationalists  a party of the left that will be 40 or 50 strong  will suggest some form of coalition with Labour. But the polls and the experts arent always correct and the results we will know on Thursday and early Friday will reveal the only facts that matter.

When we speak of Corbyn being on the left, do not for a moment imagine Tony Blair or Justin Trudeau or, for that matter, the NDP. He has in the past shown support for the IRA, Hamas and Hezbollah, opposes Britains Trident missile defence system, has promised to scrap university tuition fees, raise taxes, bring more industry under government control, invest heavily in socialized medicine and public education and introduce a $20 minimum wage.

He would also change the very political culture of the country, and I cant imagine the Americans  under any president but especially Donald Trump  feeling particularly welcome. If Labour were to form a government it may well be the most socialistic in British history. But, as I say, we have to wait and see.

But how has this remarkably ordinary man with a divided caucus and countless critics managed to achieve such a turnaround? First, May has run a dreadful campaign, issued a horribly flawed manifesto and performs badly in debate. In one major television contest she didnt even appear  being represented instead by one of her senior ministers.

Second, and more importantly, what all of this shows is that contrary to what the allegedly brilliant spin-doctors and consultants would have us believe, left-wing policies are popular when they are outlined without fear or compromise. The British people do want better health care, do want to attend university without accumulating debt, do want to take back ownership of the industries in which they work and sacrifice. And if this goes for the United Kingdom, why not elsewhere?

Most of the Democrats worth listening to in the United States are making the same argument. We must never again, they insist, campaign from the centre.

The way to win is to offer a startlingly different alternative to the right and not a moderated version of what the Republicans are serving. In this country, the NDP is looking for its next leader and its entirely obvious that while some candidates are about radical policies, one is about radical packaging. Be warned, brothers and sisters, be warned.

If the unimaginable does happen and Corbyn enters 10 Downing St., the challenges will only be beginning. There are powerful media, economic, security and foreign interests who will not be at all happy. Coups dont happen in Britain, of course, but manipulation does and the establishment isnt very fond of being contradicted. What an amazing few days its going to be over there  and I wonder how often May asks herself why she called an election so early.

Author and broadcaster Michael Corens latest book is Epiphany: A Christians Change of Heart and Mind over Same-Sex Marriage.
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 07/06/2017 (1982 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For all the talk of the importance of the knowledge economy and Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus trumpeting of the Liberal governments innovation agenda, Canada falls woefully short in investment in research and development (R&D).

Canadian gross domestic expenditure on R&D from all sources relative to GDP has been declining over the last 15 years compared with other G7 and east Asian nations, according to a new blue-ribbon panel led by David Naylor, former president of the University of Toronto.

According to the World Economic Forums Competitiveness Report, investment in R&D by the Canadian business sector fares poorly in comparison to other wealthy countries. In 2016-17, the WEF reported that Canadas largest disparities with OECD countries are in business sophistication and innovation.

Limited private-sector R&D in Canada makes the government role especially important. Despite the claims about the inherent innovation of the private sector, it is the public sector that is often responsible for the largest gains in R&D. Much of this funding was channelled through research departments in universities.

Economist Mariana Mazzucato claims that nearly every major innovation since the Second World War has required a big push from the public sector, for an obvious reason: the public sector can afford to take risks that the private sector cant. Government funding was directly responsible for the exploration of space, atomic energy, the Internet, the Global Positioning System (GPS), lasers, computers, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), communications satellites, jet aircraft, genetic medicine, biotechnology and most of the pharmaceuticals with the greatest therapeutic effect. The same public funding educates the next generation of researchers.

The enormous economic returns from much research, especially basic research, are spread widely throughout society and are not captured solely by the inventor.

The inability of firms to capture all of the returns from research means that they will not invest in enough R&D.

In the past, university-based researchers gave their innovations freely to the public that funded their research. Jonas Salk, who invented the polio vaccine, stated his sole focus had been to develop a safe and effective vaccine as rapidly as possible, with no interest in personal profit. When asked who owned the vaccines patent, Salk said, There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?

However, Canadian federal funding as a per cent of total R&D investment is also below the OECD average. This is also true of federal funding as a per cent of R&D research conducted at universities.

As universities have been forced to develop their own revenue streams, they have turned away from basic research and toward commercializing their technological innovations. It has also meant that research funds are increasingly solicited from the corporate sector.

Both of these trends have important implications for the direction of R&D away from longer term more basic research to that which is narrower and immediately profitable. This shift from public to private financing has led many to conclude that we are witnessing the privatization of the public research university. According to Irwin Feller of Penn State University, this trend shifts academic researchers away from their social role supplying the collective goods of scientific and technological knowledge.

The general funding shortfall has been exacerbated by deliberate government policy. In 2013, the Harper government put in place a new direction for science and technology policy in Canada. This has been characterized by a decline of funding for basic research and a targeting of new priority-driven funding to projects that appear to offer the promise of immediate commercial value. The response of the failure of our for-profit sector to invest at rates necessary to maintain Canadian competitiveness led the Canadian federal government to impose corporate priorities on university research.

The prestigious journal Nature summarized the Conservative governments record in the following way: Governments come and go, but scientific expertise and experience cannot be chopped and changed as the mood suits and still be expected to function. Nor can applied research thrive when basic research is struggling. As a result, not only is government funding for research and development inadequate, it is also channelled away from independent, basic research and towards more commercial projects.

John Polanyi, Canadian Nobel laureate, noted that when governments or industry try to direct scientific inquiry, rather than allowing the scientific community to do so through its rigorous peer-review system that protects the integrity of the work, our scientific horizons shrink and our future is diminished. Canada needs to rapidly implement the Naylor reports single most important recommendation, which is for the federal government to rapidly increase its investment in independent investigator-led research.

Robert Chernomas and Ian Hudson teach economics at the University of Manitoba and are authors of two 2016 books, Economics of the 21st Century: A Critical Perspective and The Profit Doctrine: Economists of the Neoliberal Era.
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 05/06/2017 (1984 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Britain has been through this before. Irish nationalist bomb-planters carried out a long string of terrorist attacks in Britain through the 1970s, 80s and 90s, but did not scare the U.K. into abandoning Northern Ireland. The London Bridge killings on Saturday night, following attacks on Westminster Bridge in March and the Manchester concert bombing two weeks ago, are also unlikely to bring Britain to its knees.

The bad news, however, is that this may continue for a long time and may involve many casualties, harsh measures by the authorities and terrible injustice to innocent people. A few ruthless terrorists can commit spectacular crimes. The police dragnet designed to catch them may sweep up plenty of law-abiding people and falsely accuse some of them. Canadians watching Britains escalating struggle with jihadi terror should brace themselves for a long and brutal campaign.

The Islamic State group uses the Internet to encourage its sympathizers in European countries, Canada and the U.S. to get a truck or a knife and use it to kill defenceless people in the streets. Their aim, apparently, is to scare the European and American armies away from Mosul and other IS enclaves, where they are slowly strangling the self-proclaimed caliphate.

Adrian Wyld / The Canadian Press Files Police stood guard after homegrown terrorist Michael Zehaf-Bibeau attacked Parliament Hill in 2014.

The recruiting tool of the Internet reaches into every home with a computer, all over the world. Suicidal maniacs in Canada may be just as likely as those in London, Paris and Brussels to rent a truck or pick up a butcher knife and strike a blow for the caliphate. Canadas intelligence services and police forces need to pay close attention to events in Britain: Scotland Yard and MI-5 are finding out the hard way how jihadi recruiting works and how cities can defend themselves.

Canadian agencies should not be far behind, because similar crimes have been carried out and attempted here in the past and there may be further incidences in the future.

Free online expression may be an early casualty in the struggle. North Americans usually deplore tight police controls on Internet use in China, where users who complain about the government are quickly shut down.

But free online expression as it is enjoyed in the West leads, in practice, to IS recruiting people to go out and commit mass murder.

Somewhere between the shackled East and the wild West, there may be a system of Internet expression that allows wide freedom but does not instigate slaughter in the streets.

The police will need plenty of informants in the Arabic-speaking communities of western countries to find out who is listening to IS propaganda and what they are up to. This may sometimes seem to cast suspicion on large numbers of innocent people.

At the moment, the police have files on far more people than they can ever hope to watch closely. The science of discerning which IS sympathizers are most likely to take action needs to be developed from careful study of those who have already struck.

A multinational agency such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization may be the best means of pulling together the experience of all terror-afflicted countries and snooping on people who have, up to now, committed no crime.

So much for privacy and freedom of thought! But the alternative is to let murder plots proliferate and let terrorists dictate our foreign policy.

Our free societies may have to become a little less free until this is over.
The Sauk County Sheriffs Department is reporting the return of a phone scam intended get money from victims by tricking them into believing that they are under IRS scrutiny.

In a news release, the sheriffs department reported that it received about 30 complaints Monday related to the scam. Targets received a pre-recorded message that alleged the IRS was investigating them, and asked that they return the call immediately.

Victims are being told that they owe money to the IRS and it must be paid promptly by using a pre-loaded debit card or wire transfer, Sheriff Chip Meister said. If the victim refuses to cooperate, they are often threatened with arrest, deportation or suspension of a business or drivers license.

He said victims also may be told they are owed a refund in order to get them to share private information.

The sheriffs department reports that a similar scam was aimed at Sauk County residents in February 2016. Authorities advise those targeted to simply hang up and not share any private information.

The IRS does not call to demand immediate payment, or to discuss taxes owed without contacting a person by mail first. The federal agency also does not demand that people pay taxes without giving them the opportunity to question or appeal the amount that allegedly is owed.

IRS employees do not ask for credit or debit card numbers over the phone, nor do they threaten to have people arrested for not paying, according to the sheriffs department.

In April, the U.S. Treasury Departments Inspector General for Tax Administration announced the arrest of eight people in Miami for conspiracy to commit wire fraud in relation to the IRS tax scam.

The agency said those arrested were responsible for defrauding more than 7,000 victims out of nearly $8.8 million.

No legitimate employee of the United States Treasury Department or the Internal Revenue Service will demand that anyone make payments via MoneyGram, Western Union, Walmart2Walmart Money Transfer, or any other money wiring method, for any debt to the IRS or the Department of the Treasury, J. Russell George, Treasury inspector general for Tax Administration, said in a news release.

Despite progress on the case, George said the scam continues to sweep the country. The Treasury reports that the scam has resulted in $55 million in losses for taxpayers over the last three years.

The inspector general has a webpage set up that allows those targeted by the IRS scam to file a complaint.
By Press Trust of India: By K J M Varma

Beijing, Jun 7 (PTI) The entry of India and Pakistan into the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) could help them to resolve their bilateral differences though there are apprehensions that their hostility could affect the unity of the China-dominated outfit, a state-run Chinese daily said.

"There is some concern that the hostility between India and Pakistan might affect the organisations unity. However, the SCO will also become an ideal platform for members with disputes to solve their problems bilaterally based on the Shanghai Spirit," the Global Times said yesterday quoting Li Wei, an anti-terror expert at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations.

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India and Pakistan will be formally admitted into the China dominated six-nation grouping tomorrow at the SCO summit in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will attend the summit along with his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The group founded in Shanghai in 1996 is comprised of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan and mostly acts as China-dominated security group especially focussing on Central Asia.

India and Pakistan till now had the status of observers along with Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran and Mongolia in the group.

The admission of India and Pakistan will enlarge the group?s footprints for the first time to South Asia from Central Asia.

"India and Pakistan are accusing each other of supporting terrorism and this is generally based on their domestic political agenda and dispute. The SCO members will support them and offer help if the two countries need it, rather than internationalise their dispute within the organisation," Li said.

"In short, the SCO is not a place for India and Pakistan to quarrel, but a platform for members to settle their disputes," said Lin Minwang, a professor at the Institute of International Studies of Fudan University.

Counter-terrorism cooperation is an important issue of the SCO, and the organisation has staged biennial military exercises code-named "Peace Mission" since 2003 to deal with the threat of "terrorism, separatism and religious extremism," people.cn reported.

The latest, "Peace Mission 2016," was held in Kyrgyzstan in September 2016.

"All SCO members are participating in the Belt and Road initiative, and this organisation is the initiatives security guarantee," Wang Yiwei, senior research fellow at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies of the Renmin University of China, said.

SCO membership and the B&R initiative help Pakistans economic development and security, and if Pakistan becomes a wealthy and prosperous country, it would be difficult for extremism and terrorism to grow, and that would, in turn, improve conditions along the India-Pakistan border, Li said.

"So I dont think India and Pakistan should quarrel within the SCO, because they will find more reasons to cooperate," he said.

India and Pakistan have been at loggerheads over several issues, including on Islamabads support to terrorism, since the terror attack on an Indian army base in Uri in Kashmir in September last year by Pakistan-based militants killed 18 Indian soldiers.

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Ten days later, India launched "surgical strikes" against militant "launchpads" in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

The two sides were also engaged in a war of words last year over Pakistans provocative statements on the turmoil in Kashmir following the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani in July last year. PTI KJV PMS

--- ENDS ---
Rep. Terese Berceau, a Madison Democrat, was quizzing Rep. Jesse Kremer, her Republican colleague from Kewaskum, at a hearing for his proposed Campus Free Speech Act before the state Assemblys Committee on Colleges and Universities recently.

Berceau wondered what would happen under the bill  which requires University of Wisconsin System institutions to be neutral on controversies of the day  if a student in a geology class argued the Biblical theory that the earth is only 6,000 years old.

Is it okay for the professor to tell them theyre wrong? Berceau asked during the lengthy session on May 11.

The earth is 6,000 years old, Kremer offered. Thats a fact.

But, he said, this bill stays out of the classroom.

Yet Kremer immediately speculated that students who felt intimidated from expressing their opinions in class could bring their complaints to the Council on Free Expression, an oversight board created in the bill. So the law could potentially cover things that happen in the classroom, he suggested.

The exchange illuminated critics concerns over a little-debated clause of the Campus Free Speech Act, a bill that has stirred controversy for its provisions compelling the UW to punish students who disrupt campus speeches.

Dave Vanness, an associate professor of population health sciences and past-president of the UW-Madison chapter of American Association of University Professors, testified at the hearing and said later that he was struck by Kremers testimony.

How are we to be taken seriously as an institution of higher learning and research if our professors can be called before a Council on Free Expression to defend their teaching of geology? Vanness wondered.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, is a sponsor of the bill. He spoke at the hearing about the importance of presenting all views on controversial topics on campus.

Probably the biggest debate is global warming, Vos said. A lot of people think its settled science and an awful lot of people think it isnt. I think both sides should be brought to campus and let students decide.

Introduced as conservatives across the country raise the issue of college students shouting down speakers, the Campus Free Speech Act would allow for the free exchange of ideas that is at the core of the UWs mission, its champions say.

Critics of the bill object foremost to the Legislatures incursion into such campus affairs as student discipline and speaker invitations and say it would stifle protest speech.

Some also are concerned over the potential of the bills neutrality clause: That each institution shall strive to remain neutral, as an institution, on the public policy controversies of the day, and may not take action, as an institution, on the public policy controversies of the day in such a way as to require students or faculty to publically express a given view of social policy.

Critics worry the bill would silence the university on public policy issues related to its functioning, as well as the research and scholarly pursuits of its faculty.

Underlying ideological differences and a continuing climate of partisan mistrust have some Democratic legislators and progressive activists convinced that the bill is dangerous overreach. Some of them see it as part of a strategy to capture higher education for a conservative agenda.

We know this is a national movement to get more conservative speakers on campus and into classrooms under the cover of free speech, Berceau said in an interview. Its the next stage of the conservative takeover of our country.

The repercussions if the UW System fails to provide a platform for conservative views would be dire, Vos warned.

If in Wisconsin half the equation of our political spectrum is not allowed to be on campus without being shouted down, I promise you it will be more and more difficult to attract the private support that is necessary to have a fantastic UW System, Vos said.

California, Colorado, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, North Carolina, Texas, Utah and Virginia have all seen bills addressing campus free speech. Several of the bills  like Wisconsins  are based on a model produced by the conservative Goldwater Institute based in Phoenix.

In an introduction to the legislation on its website, the Goldwater Institute paints the recent flurry of protests against conservative speakers on college campuses as a clear and present danger to democracy.

As both a deeply held commitment and a living tradition, freedom of speech is dying on our college campuses, and is increasingly imperiled in society at large, it reads.

The spread of campus free speech legislation across the country will open a national debate that will influence the broader culture, it predicts.

As evidence of the peril in Wisconsin, lawmakers supporting the bill pointed repeatedly to the November 2016 appearance of conservative commentator Ben Shapiro at UW-Madison. Students opposed to Shapiros mocking of a push for safe spaces on campus interrupted his talk, shouting him down for about 20 minutes. Police then escorted protesters out and Shapiro resumed his talk.

Vos, who has complained about the dearth of conservative guest speakers on UW campuses, said that without a law requiring the university to remain neutral, chancellors can block speakers whose views they dont see as legitimate.

Critics of the Wisconsin bill say the UW has done a good job of protecting speech on its campuses. If there are more liberal speakers invited, thats probably because most students are liberal, said Rep. Jill Billings, D-La Crosse.

Its important that students have the right to invite who they want, she said. Who am I as a legislator to say you have to have more conservative speakers?

The author of the model legislation, Stanley Kurtz of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., testified before the Wisconsin committee in May, telling members that neutrality of the university as an institution is in fact the surest guarantee of free inquiry and viewpoint diversity in its members.

Kurtz was referring to the University of Chicagos 1967 Kalven Report, which he called a crucial inspiration for the neutrality provision of the bill.

Kurtz pointed to events that threaten to politicize the university  like the UW-Madison student council pressing for divestment from stock tied to Israel  as reason to erect a guard rail against the university voicing its views.

A neutrality provision is included in many of the campus free speech bills, including Tennessee legislation signed into law last month recommended to the committee by Jessica Tormey, UW System vice president for university relations.

That law articulates that public universities in Tennessee are prohibited from requiring students to adopt or espouse particular beliefs. The law also explicitly regulates classroom discussion, something avoided in the Wisconsin legislation.

Nevertheless, supporters of the Wisconsin bill told stories about student constituents they said had complained that they are intimidated from expressing alternative views because of an overriding liberal bent among their professors.

The Tennessee bill praised by Tormey admonishes faculty to be cautious in expressing personal views in the classroom and avoid controversial matters that have no relationship to the subject being taught or in which they have no special training.

Questioned about regulating classroom speech, Tormey replied that the issue would need further discussion. I dont know that there has been a specific public dialogue on classroom activity, she said.

Tormey added when legislators or others report that a students speech has been suppressed, university officials deal with it on a case-by-case basis.

Neither Tormey nor UW System President Ray Cross responded directly to the statement in the bills text that institutions have abdicated their responsibility to uphold free speech principles.

In written remarks Tormey read into the record, Cross said: The Board of Regents, chancellors and university leadership recognize the need to do a better job at ensuring all voices can be heard on our campuses  liberal and conservatives alike  in the classroom, at public forums, through invited speakers, or at other events.

Tormey told committee members that university officials appreciated that the bill called for the Board of Regents to create a policy on free speech.

We believe the Board of Regents should be the governing body on this issue, she said.

Kremer amended the bill before it was approved by the committee on May 30 to change a range of possible disciplinary penalties into specific sanctions.

The neutrality provision of the Campus Free Speech Act threatens the UWs ability to lobby on issues directly affecting the operation of the university, some critics say. Others fear it will impinge on scholarly and research pursuits that touch on issues of public policy.

The nonpartisan Wisconsin Legislative Council, analyzing Kremers bill at his request, found that the bill does not appear to generally prohibit lobbying by the UW System. The prohibited behavior does not fit the definition of lobbying in the law, the analysis said.

The libertarian Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty dismissed concerns over constraint on faculty in its written testimony submitted to the committee. But its analysis questioned whether the neutrality provision should be included in the bill.

It is a good idea for a public university to remain neutral on most public controversies to avoid chilling opposing views, WILL officials wrote. But the university is a participant in controversies relating to its functioning, they said.

They recommended a rewording of the clause, adding an explicit statement on the rights of individuals: Notwithstanding the foregoing, individual members of the university community are free to take positions on the public controversies of the day.

UW-Madison supported amendment of the language as suggested by WILL, said university spokeswoman Meredith McGlone. So that its clear such activity is permitted and individual members of the university community are free to take positions on issues, she said.

While some portions of the bill were amended in response to public criticism before it was presented for a committee vote  most notably simplification of language on what kind of behavior was subject to discipline  the neutrality clause was not.

Some UW-Madison faculty members also raised concerns about the clause.

Jordan Ellenberg, a math professor, called the clause much too broad. He linked the universitys lobbying role to research and scholarship in a written statement laying out his opposition to the bill.

The university must be allowed to advocate, as an institution, for funding of scientific research and humanistic scholarship, for free speech on campus, and for support for our students, Ellenberg wrote. All of these are controversial matters of public policy in which the university has a direct stake.

Judith Burstyn, a chemistry professor and president of PROFS, a faculty advocacy group, said the provision could stifle academic debate.

There is concern that, depending on how it gets applied, individuals whose research expertise might lie within the realm of public policy or have implications for public policy would be constrained in speaking out in ways that would otherwise be appropriate for scholars, Burstyn said.

Burstyn also challenged the bills finding that the university has abdicated its responsibility to uphold free speech. Both the UW Board of Regents and the UW-Madison Faculty Senate have adopted resolutions in support of free speech that, like Kremers bill, are based on policy at the University of Chicago, she said.

It is well-established legal doctrine that the government cannot require individuals to express an opinion they do not hold, as the bill prohibits, said Howard Schweber, a UW-Madison professor of political science and legal studies.

But governments have been permitted to require that someone refrain from saying something as a condition of employment, he said. So the issue lies in drawing the line between compelling someone to express an opinion and preventing them from expressing a contrary opinion, Schweber said.

Another challenge with the bill is making the distinction between public policy controversies and expression protected by the principle of academic freedom.

Do public policy controversies include the theory of evolution, climate change science or sociological studies? Schweber asked in an email.

Progressive advocacy groups aimed more pointed criticism at the bill.

The bill gags the university, said Matt Rothschild, executive director of the advocacy group Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. In his argument, Rothschild referenced political controversy over stem cell research, something UW-Madison lobbied vigorously to protect from prohibitive legislation in 2015.

So the university stem cell researchers, and the deans of the departments where they work, would not be allowed to take a position on the importance of stem cell research to cure diseases? Rothschild asked. Would the chancellor be prohibited from weighing in on such issues as student debt or whether higher education should be free of charge, he queried in his written testimony.

You are saying that UW institutions should remain neutral on the question of Darwin and natural selection versus creationism, Rothschild said. This is ludicrous and hidebound.

The bill, he said, would turn sifting and winnowing into gagging and suppressing.

Chris Ott, executive director of the ACLU of Wisconsin, also criticized the bill in terms of the popular UW mission statement.

This sounds like a retreat from the Wisconsin Idea, which says that our universities have a right and a responsibility to address important questions, not to stay on the sidelines, Ott said. This idea has served our state and guided the state university system for more than a hundred years, and it would be a mistake to step back from it now.

Ott argued that it is especially important that UW schools be part of the debate, as institutions, about the importance of tolerance and diversity.

School officials should not be prohibited from reassuring students  especially students of color and LGBT students, who are singled out by the protected speech of other students, professors or invited speakers  that the school does not agree with hostile speakers and that it welcomes all students, Ott said.

To the extent that the institutional neutrality requirement prevents UW schools from countering hateful speech, it will impoverish the diversity that is crucial to the life of a university and preparing students for an increasingly diverse world, Ott said.

Some progressives see the bill as an attempt to squelch voices that conservative advocacy groups want to silence.

Rep. Gary Hebl, D-Sun Prairie, complained about the hired guns testifying in support of the bill. He dismissed assurances by the bills authors that it would apply only to speech in public forums, not the classroom. Thats such malarkey, he said.

Its an organized effort, Berceau said.

It goes back to ALEC, it goes back to the Koch Brothers, and probably to funding by the Bradley Foundation, she said. They want to divide faculty and students against each other and create paranoia on college campuses.

The Milwaukee-based Bradley Foundation, a major funder of conservative causes, gave $695,000 between 2011 and 2015 to ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, according to a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel report on the foundations growing influence in selected states across the country. The corporate-funded ALEC provides model legislation on conservative agenda issues to its members.

Bradley also donated $2.9 million to WILL during that period, the Journal Sentinel reported.

The Bradley Foundation donated almost $3 million to the Ethics and Public Policy Center between 2001 and 2010, according the Madison-based Center for Media and Democracy. And the Goldwater Institute has received significant amounts of funding from sources with close ties to David and Charles Koch, leading funders in conservative politics and policy, the center reported.

Just before the committee voted 8-6 along party lines on May 30 to send the bill to the Assembly, Kremer told members that it transcends any particular free speech incident on UW campuses. He suggested it transcends politics as well.

This bill is not because of the Ben Shapiro incident, he said. This bill exists because we should be preserving our democracy. Thats exactly what this bill does, it preserves democracy."
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Citing the unexpected success of Bernie Sanders, Madison's "mayor for life" Paul Soglin says he's contemplating challenging Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker in 2018. Some liberals may love Soglin, but he's not universally liked in Madison (many consider him too conservative) and I doubt he would inspire much support in other parts of the state.
A Reedsburg woman has been arrested on heroin and marijuana charges.

Jessica L. Rogers, 31, was taken to the Sauk County Jail after allegedly selling heroin in Lake Delton on June 6, according to a Reedsburg Police Department report. Reedsburg detectives also searched Rogers residence.

The arrest followed a two-month investigation, according to the report.

Rogers was held on charges of possession of heroin, delivery of heroin, possession of marijuana, possession of drug paraphernalia, maintaining a drug-trafficking place and operating while under the influence of a controlled substance.

Detectives were part of the Sauk County Drug Task Force, which includes investigators from throughout Sauk County such as the Sheriffs Office, Baraboo Police Department, Sauk Prairie Police Department, Lake Delton Police Department, Spring Green/Plain Police Department and Wisconsin State Patrol.
As India and Pakistan are all set to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, here's all you need to know about the six-nation security group.

By Neha Vashishth: Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently left for a two-day SCO summit scheduled to be held in Astana, Kazakhstan on June 8-9, 2017. He shared about his visit to Astana on his official Facebook page and shared the importance of India entering as a full-time member of SCO.

Modi also talked about how it will improve India's economic, connectivity, counter-terrorism cooperation, and other things.

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PM Modi said, "We have long-standing relations with SCO members and look forward to progressing them further through the SCO for mutual betterment and growth of our countries and our people."

"Together, we will harvest new opportunities for beneficial engagement and redouble efforts to address common challenges that may come in the way of realizing our full potential.", added Modi.

All you need to know about the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, also known as the Shanghai Pact, is a Eurasian political, economic, and military organisation which was founded in 2001 in Shanghai by the leaders of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Apart from Uzbekistan, the other five countries have been a part of the Shanghai 5 since 1996.

The cooperation was renamed to Shanghai Cooperation Organisation after Uzbekistan joined the organisation in 2001.

In 2015, India and Pakistan signed the memorandum of obligations in order to start the process of joining SCO.

As the legal processing is done for joining the SCO, India and Pakistan are all set to join the security grouping at the Astana Summit 2017.

India and Pakistan's entry in SCO marks a legendary achievement for the organisation as now it will represent the voice of 3 billion people.

Considering India and Pakistan's internal issues, many were worried that Pakistan might try to internationalise bilateral disputes as Pakistan has in the past sought to internationalise issues such as Kashmir in multilateral fora.

Also read: Shanghai Cooperation Organisation won't back Pakistan on Kashmir, says China's media

But, according to Chinese experts, SCO won't back any attempts to "internationalise" bilateral disputes as India and Pakistan marks their entry to the group.

According to Lin Minwang , an international relations expert at Shanghai's Fudan University, "The SCO is not a place for India and Pakistan to quarrel, but a platform for members to settle their disputes."

In this week's Astana summit, the SCO may back China's pet One Belt, One Road initiative which scheduled to be held on June 8-9, 2017.

Here's all you need to know about Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO)

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What is Shanghai 5?

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) is an international alliance that consists of six member states and five observers from Eurasia. It was established on 26 April 1996 as Shanghai Five.

Is India member of SCO?

India, which has had an observer status for the past 10 years, has finally became a member of SCO in 2017 after completion of all procedures. The Beijing-based SCO currently has China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan as members.

Official working languages of SCO

The official working languages of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation are Chinese and Russian.

SCO activities

Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is mainly focused on its member nations' cooperation on security, military, economic and cultural norms.

SCO is centered on its member nations' security related concerns, like terrorism, separatism and extremism.

The organisation also concentrates on cyber-warfare, according to which, dissemination of information is considered "harmful to the spiritual, moral and cultural spheres of other states" and is considered a national security threat.

The organisation is also focused on increased military cooperation, intelligence sharing, and counter-terrorism in the past few years as well.

SCO framework also focuses on the cultural areas of its members' nations where art festivals and exhibitions are held for cultural cooperation.

In 2003, premier of the people's Republic of China, Wen Jiabao proposed free trade area to improve the goods flow.

The organisation also made pacts to participate in joint energy projects like new hydrocarbon reserves and share water resources.

Apart from the above, the countries can even help the SCO member countries in case they are going through any crisis. In 2009, China loaned 10 billion US dollars to the SCO members who were going through global financial crisis.

The countries also participate in joint military activities and partake in large scale war games which are open for the media to witness.

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Security and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) today submitted its draft charges and put forth their argument for framing of charges against Sahara Group's two companies and it's chief along with several other directors and promoters.

By Vidya : Security and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) today submitted its draft charges and put forth their argument for framing of charges against Sahara Group's two companies and it's chief along with several other directors and promoters.

Senior advocate Poornima Advani representing the regulator told the court that the accused were responsible for the conduct of business of the company and issued Optionally Fully Convertible Debentures (OFCD) to the public in the garb of private placement without stating correct facts in the prospectus, making mis-statements in the prospectus and thereby fraudulently induced large number of persons to invest their money in OFCD issued by the company.

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"Roy and others issued OFCD to the public without approval of red herring prospectus from SEBI and without listing such OFCDs on the stock exchange, " said Advani, adding that the "issued OFCDs to the public without executing debenture trust deed, without appointment of the debenture trustees and without creating security reserve for debenture redemption."

According to the prosecution, the accused also made false statement in the prospectus issued by the company and issued OFCD to public without complying with the SEBI guidelines.

According to SEBI documents, the accused even failed to provide information sought by Sebi through its summons dated 30.08.2010 and 23.09.2010.

The case pertains to 2008 when two real estate subsidiaries of Sahara Group told investors that they would get high returns for investing in land procured by the company. However, the money was never returned and Supreme Court has ordered Sahara group to sell Aamby Valley near Pune to raise the money.

In the meantime, Subrata Roy was present in court along with the doctor who had given him a medical certificate based on which his lawyers had sought exemption from appearance in court last month.

While the court rejected the exemption application, it had also called for police records of his movements. Advani told the court that at the time when doctor was said to have examined him, Sahara chief was travelling from Mahipalpur in Delhi to Gurgaon.

She also pointed out that the medicines given to Roy were only for acidity and paracetamol so "even if he was suffering from an upset stomach, he was not in a critical condition where saline was being given to him. So he could have definitely come to court," said Advani.

However, Roy's lawyer Abad Ponda assured the court that his client would be present during every hearing and thus requested the court to let go of the issue.

Roy and others also filed an application for discharge from the court which will now be heard on 28th June.

ALSO READ:

Gastroentitis not an excuse for missing hearing, special SEBI court tells Subrata Roy

Sahara's Rs 39000-crore Aamby Valley property in Pune to be attached, orders Supreme Court

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Wits HIV vaccine researcher wins Harry Oppenheimer Fellowship Award

Professor Lynn Morris received the prestigious Harry Oppenheimer Fellowship Award, arguably equivalent to the Nobel Prize, on 2 June 2017.

Morris holds a joint appointment as Research Professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Wits University and as Research Associate at the Centre for the Aids Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA).

She is the Head of the HIV Virology Laboratory within the Centre for HIV & STIs based at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) at the National Health Laboratory Services (NHLS).

The Harry Oppenheimer Fellowship Awards encourage excellence in scholarship and acknowledge cutting-edge, internationally significant work applicable to the advancement of knowledge, teaching, research and development in South Africa. It is the premier annual award of the Oppenheimer Memorial Trust, with a monetary value of R1,5m.

Morris is an alumna of Wits University where she earned Bachelors of Science and Honours degrees. She earned her DPhil at the University of Oxford, after which she was awarded a Royal Society Florey Fellowship to undertake postdoctoral study in Australia. On her return to South Africa, she joined the NICD and has devoted the best part of the last twenty years to the search for an HIV vaccine.

Morris is internationally recognised for her work in understanding how the antibody response to HIV develops. The rapid mutability of the virus means that the standard antibody response is quickly obsolete in an infected individual. She has been prominent in studying the rare appearance in some patients of so-called broadly neutralising antibodies which can attack a broad range of mutated viruses. This work is currently one of the most promising leads towards the production of an effective anti-HIV vaccine.

Morris plans on using the Oppenheimer Fellowship to develop a novel antibody-based approach for the prevention of HIV infection in women. This project will make use of an antibody, which shows exceptional antiviral activity against HIV that she and her team and collaborators in the USA, isolated from an HIV-infected woman living in KwaZulu-Natal.

The antibody will be engineered into bacteria that naturally colonize the vagina in order to develop an anti-HIV probiotic that could be used intravaginally to prevent HIV infection, says Morris.

One of the world's most highly cited researchers

The Oppenheimer Fellowship confirms the Morriss research excellence. She is a National Research Foundation A-rated scientist (2015) and was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa that year. She is listed on the Thompsons Reuters 2015 ISIS list of the 3000 most highly cited researchers in the world.

Her awards include Wits Universitys prestigious Vice-Chancellors Research Award (2014), the Department of Science & Technology Distinguished Women in Science Award (2013), and the South African Medical Research Council Gold Merit Award (2015). She has an article devoted to her work and career in the prestigious international journal, Lancet.

Morris is the fifth scientist from Wits to earn the distinguished fellowship since its initiation in 2001. Other Harry Oppenheimer Fellows from Wits include Professor Helen Rees (2014) for Obstetrics & Gynaecology at the Wits Reproductive Health & HIV Institute (WRHI); Professor Duncan Mitchell (2010) for Physiology; Professor Norman Owen-Smith (2005) for Environmental Sciences; and Professor David Glasser (2001) for Chemical Engineering.
Justice Karnan was found guilty of contempt of court and was awarded jail term by the Supreme Court. This directed the Director General of West Bengal Police to constitute teams for the execution of order.

By India Today Web Desk: The Supreme Court today refused to grant any relief to Calcutta High Court judge Justice CS Karnan in the contempt of court case where he was sentenced to six-months imprisonment last month.

On May 9, Justice Karnan was found guilty of contempt of court and awarded the jail term by the apex court, which directed the Director General of West Bengal Police to constitute teams for the execution of its order forthwith.

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Justice Karnan's plea seeking a stay and a review of the Supreme Court was also declined. He later filed a mercy plea before President Pranab Mukherjee seeking the stay.

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.

The Supreme Court initiated contempt proceedings against Justice Karnan on February 8, and restrained him from performing judicial and administrative work. He is set to retire this month.

Also Read:

Justice Karnan goes 'missing' as Kolkata cops reach Chennai to arrest him

Also Watch:

Supreme Court vs Justice Karnan: A personal battle that could have been avoided?

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By India Today Web Desk: Sushant Singh Rajput and Kriti Sanon's upcoming film Raabta is the latest film to come under the radar of sanskaari censor board. A few scenes from Dinesh Vijan's directorial venture did not go down too well with the CBFC (Central Board of Film Certification), and were immediately trimmed.

According to a report in Spotboye.com, CBFC was taken aback by a few expletives used in the film. Moreover, the makers were asked to trim a passionate kissing scene between the lead pair as it was "too hot to handle".

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A source was quoted as telling the website, "The language used in a few scenes was very dirty. The Censors were flabbergasted that such a thing could exist in a simple love story of two young stars who are so loved by the masses and have a following amongst the kids. They even found Kriti-Sushant's kiss too hot to handle."

"The makers were asked to go back home and make the changes if they wanted a U/A certificate. Else, they would have got only an A certificate and the matter was non-negotiable," the source added.

The film, which is set to hit the screens on June 9, also stars Rajkummar Rao and Jim Sarbh.

ALSO READ: Raabta a copy of Magadheera? Sushant Singh Rajput and Kriti Sanon respond

ALSO READ: Jim Sarbh disrupts Sushant Singh Rajput-Kriti Sanon's love story in Raabta trailer

ALSO WATCH: Sushant Singh Rajput felt cheated at engineering college because there were no girls

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Femme fatales, fictional detectives, American men and booze

An American classic Released in 1941, the film was nominated for three Academy Awards. It was John Huston's directorial debut. Huston also wrote the screenplay of the 1929 Dashiell Hammett novel revolving around detective Sam Spade.

Fascinating research David Pratt began studying the relationship of pop culture, gender bias and their impact on drinking and American men in 2006. Photo by Stephen Salpukas Photo - of - Hide Caption

David Pratt called it a case of art imitating life imitating art.The fictional hard-boiled detectives of the mid-20th century were created by men to embody and give weight to ideas about gender that already existed, said Pratt, a Ph.D. candidate in American studies at William & Mary. That genre of fiction gave American men the cultural space to play out fantasies about masculinity and drinking that coded all bad drinking as feminine.The detectives to whom Pratt refers in a dissertation he will defend later this summer are iconic characters like Mike Hammer and Sam Spade. His research on the subject began in 2006, and offers insight into alcohol and American culture most people certainly never considered.One of my research interests is how a lot of our popular ideas about alcohol use and what constitutes healthy and unhealthy drinking comes not just from medicine or social sciences, but popular culture and a shared cultural discourse, Pratt said. I started looking at how that plays out in particular genres. Theres so much to say about detective fiction, and so much people have yet to explore in any meaningful depth, that I had to latch on to that one.The detective fiction he studied enjoyed about 50 years of rampant popularity starting in the 1920s. It grew, he said, out of Prohibition and the corruption, organized crime and American gangs that Prohibition spawned and was exploited by writers like Raymond Chandler and Mickey Spillane in the plots they crafted. Pratt also studied the work of Dashiell Hammett, Chester Himes, Walter Mosley and Lawrence Block.And then theres the connection between women and Prohibition, and how fictional characters reacted to it.I argue that in detective fiction [societal problems of organized crime and corruption] are basically blamed on women, because women were so instrumental in the temperance movement, with Prohibition being the culminating legislative success of that movement, Pratt said. Thats why we get the figure of the femme fatale, as shes come to be known.So theres this woman who is behind the scenes, creating all of the corruption, all of this drama. At the same time shes blamed for that, shes also often portrayed as an excessive drinker, an alcoholic before we had that term.Detectives like The Continental Op, Spade and Phillip Marlowe were given lives filled with machismo, booze and women who couldnt be relied on for anything but trouble, said Pratt.Spillanes first detective, Mike Danger, takes on a case involving a murderous narcotics ring led by a female psychiatrist. In "The Maltese Falcon," Spade is initially duped by a conniving, homicidal character played in the movie adaptation of the novel by Mary Astor. Ultimately, and despite having developed feelings for her, Spade turns her over to the police.But Spillanes Mike Hammer, Pratt said, is a heightened version of all of those masculine attributes, most of all drinking.The central character in 25 Spillane novels, Hammer was immensely popular  the first novel in which he was featured, in 1947, sold 6.5 million copies in the United States alone. In a later novel, Kill Me Darling, Hammer goes on a four-month bender when Velda, the woman he loves, suddenly abandons him and becomes the moll of a gangster and drug runner.Spillane was kind of a phenomenon at mid-century, writing hard-boiled fiction with these truly awful depictions of his female characters and sort of stout-minded, always heroic detective characters who were just as heavy drinkers but for some reason not affected the same way, Pratt said.Things began to change in the mid- to late-70s, not only in the way Americans began looking at alcohol and drinking but in detective fiction itself. Author Lawrence Blocks detective, Matthew Scudder, embodied that change, Pratt said.At the start of the 17-novel series in 1976, Scudder is a deeply troubled alcoholic private investigator haunted by his accidental killing of a young girl while a New York City policeman. He is at his most sodden in the 1981 novel A Stab in the Dark and realizes he needs to get sober in the 1982 novel Eight Million Ways to Die. When that occurs, Pratt said, Scudders cases evolve from public corruption and individual murderers with complex motivations to killers who kill for the thrill of it. At the same time, he said, readers begin thinking of heavy drinkers and the damage they cause the public, particularly as drunk drivers.This change, Pratt said, is reflected in a decline of the femme fatale. Whereas ambitious, greedy women were so often behind the murders and other major crimes in hard-boiled fiction during the genres mid-20th century golden age, in the late 20th century and up through the present villains are more often men.Excessive behavior  like alcoholic drinking  had been coded as a specifically feminine flaw in earlier hard-boiled fiction, Pratt said. By the mid-1970s, reckless, excessively selfish behavior, like drunk driving in everyday life and murder-for-murders-sake in fiction, began to look more like problems created and perpetuated by men.This evolution bled over into other media. Pratt pointed to the television show "M*A*S*H," in which he said Hawkeye Pierce begins the series as a heavy drinker with an antagonist in Margaret Houlihan. By the end, Pierce has developed serious concerns about his drinking and, Pratt said, the shows writers almost apologize to their audience for focusing so much on heavy drinking. At the same time, the Houlihan character is transformed from a femme fatale to a feminist heroine  and Pierces close friend.This is more than an academic exercise for Pratt. Americans relationship to alcohol is something on which they dont yet have a firm grasp  how to make sure it is safe and how to address problem drinking. Understanding the impact of pop culture can, he said, help Americans figure out how to deal with alcohol, maybe even in a policy sense.Pratt has taught a course at W&M on alcohol and American culture. He has talked with students about the subject and said there can be a misconception about the power of pop culture in their lives.A lot of students want to write about pop culture influencing people to drink, he said. I argue that its not that simple. People make pop culture, and people consume pop culture. When they consume it, they make their own meaning of it. Pop culture isnt some entity imposing ideas upon us, and thats important to keep in mind.
A 15-year-old girl was gangraped inside a bus in Salem, Tamil Nadu on Monday. Two bus drivers and one conductor have been detained by the police in the matter.

By India Today Web Desk: Three men were arrested in Tamil Nadu on Tuesday for allegedly gangraping a 15-year-old girl in a bus in Salem district.

The incident, a stark reminder of the 2012 Nirbhaya gangrape in which a 23-year-old woman was brutally raped and assaulted in a moving bus in New Delhi, took place on Monday.

Those arrested for the Salem assault include two drivers and a conductor of the bus. The three allegedly raped the girl on Monday night after halting the bus near a village in Salem.

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Villagers who heard the girls' screams for help alerted police.

WHAT HAPPENED

According to the police, the girl left her home on Monday morning after a fight with her parents. She was seen moving about aimlessly and later in the afternoon, boarded a bus to a local village.

She kept going to and fro in the same bus through the day. Manivannan and Murugan - the two drivers who alternate between driving the bus the girl was in - and Perumal - the conductor - noticed the teenager's distress and pacified and befriended her.

Later at night, the three parked the bus near a village and took turns to rape the girl, police said. The three were arrested on Tuesday. A police officer told news agency PTI that the men have been charged under the Indian Penal Code, the POSCO Act as well as the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, and are being interrogated.

"A total of nine sections including those from the IPC, Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, have been invoked against the accused," the officer told PTI.

The girl was taken to a hospital and produced before the Child Welfare Committee, the officer added. Senior district officials visited the girl and held enquiries, he added.

The police are on the lookout for another person, believed to be involved in the case, though not part of the sexual assault.

(With inputs from PTI)

ALSO READ | Rohtak's Nirbhaya: Girl gangraped, brutalised, murdered and body mutilated

ALSO WATCH | Nirbhaya gangrape case: This is what happened inside the Supreme Court

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By Press Trust of India: Hyderabad, Jun 6 (PTI) An MLC belonging to the ruling Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in Andhra Pradesh was today arrested along with two others by Hyderabad Police for allegedly forging government land documents.

TDP MLC Deepak Reddy and two others- an advocate and a realtor were arrested for "colluding and creating forged documents" of government lands located in different parts of the city in the name of private persons, police said.

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The police are verifying on the actual land grabbed through the forgery.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (Detective Department) Avinash Mohanthy confirmed the arrest of the TDP MLC and two others.

Further probe is on. PTI VVK NP

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German high court rules nuclear fuel tax illegal

07 June 2017

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Germany's tax on nuclear fuel is "unconstitutional and void", the country's highest court has ruled. German utilities may stand to be reimbursed some 6.3 billion ($7.1 billion) they paid between 2011 and 2016 as a result of the Federal Constitutional Court's ruling.

Since January 2011, each gram of fissile nuclear fuel loaded into a German reactor has carried a levy of 145. According to the legislator, the tax was an "excise duty within the meaning of tax regulations". The tax was expected to bring in about 2.3 billion in revenues annually.

That tax was imposed by the state as a consequence of an amendment to the 2002 Atomic Energy Act that allowed longer operating periods for German reactors. However, the government adhered to the new tax even though, in reaction to the 2011 Fukushima accident in Japan, it took away the longer operating periods and forced the early closure of older units. Power companies were quick to take the matter to court.

Kernkraftwerke Lippe-Ems GmbH - an 87.5%/12.5% joint venture between RWE and EOn that operates the Emsland nuclear power plant - lodged a complaint with the Hamburg Tax Court over the fuel levy that it must pay.

In November 2013, the Hamburg court said it was unable to "unequivocally" determine whether the tax was in accordance with European law. It referred the levy to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to determine whether it meets EU regulations. The ECJ ruled in June 2015 that the duty on nuclear fuel was compatible with EU law. The court rejected a claim that nuclear fuel must be exempt from taxation under the European directive on taxation of energy products and electricity. This directive exempts energy products subject to harmonised excise duty and used to produce electricity. The court noted that nuclear fuel is not included in the list of fuels set out in that directive.

The Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe, meanwhile, has been considering whether the Federal Republic has the legal power to impose a tax such as the nuclear fuel tax. It had to decide whether the German concept of excise duty is to be interpreted in accordance with the EU directive issued to harmonise these very taxes.

In a decision published today, the court said: "Outside the competencies of the Basic Law, the Federation and the Lander [states] have no right to seek tax. Since the nuclear fuel tax cannot be allocated to the type of excise duty within the meaning of Article 106 of the Basic Law, the legislator lacked legislative competence for the adoption of the Nuclear Fuel Tax Act." It therefore ruled the fuel tax to be "formally unconstitutional and void".

Utility EOn says over the 2011-2016 period, it paid some 2.8 billion under the nuclear fuel tax. RWE and EnBW claim they paid 1.7 billion and 1.44 billion, respectively.

Following the ruling of the Federal Constitutional Court, EOn SE expects all pending tax payments made between 2011 and 2016 - about 2.85 billion plus interest of around 450 million - will be refunded to EOn.

RWE said it "will analyse the reasons for the decision". Referring to a reimbursement of the taxes it paid, the company said: "No decision has been made on how these funds will be used."

EnBW also said it expected to be refunded the money it had paid, plus interest. It said the court's ruling confirmed its opinion that the fuel tax was "not constitutionally compliant".

Researched and written

by World Nuclear News

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JSC Dalur gets licence for Dobrovolnoye deposit

07 June 2017

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JSC Dalur has received a permit to develop the Dobrovolnoye uranium deposit in the Kurgan region of Russia. JSC Dalur is a subsidiary of ARMZ, the uranium mining division of state nuclear corporation Rosatom. The permit was issued according to government decree dated 3 June, ARMZ said on 5 June.

The Dobrovolnoye deposit has estimated reserves of 7067 tonnes of uranium and its commissioning will enable JSC Dalur to increase the volume of uranium recovery from the current 590 tonnes per year to 700 tonnes by 2025, ARMZ said.

JSC Dalur has been working in the Kurgan region since 2001 and operates in two deposits there - Dalmatovskoye in the district of the same name and Khokhlovskoye, which is in the Shumikhinsky district. A total of 591 tonnes of uranium were produced last year, the same level as in 2015, ARMZ said. JSC Dalur uses in-situ recovery technology, which is also being used by ARMZ subsidiary JSC Khiagda at the Vitimskoe deposit in the Republic of Buryatia, ARMZ said.

Development of a third uranium deposit in the Kurgan region is "first and foremost" based on the state's requirement to meet the needs of the Russian nuclear industry, ARMZ said. In addition, development of Dobrovolnoye will preserve jobs at the company after the currently operational Dalmatovskoye and Khokhlovskoye deposits have been depleted.

The deposit is expected to contribute more than RUB25 billion ($439 million) to state funds.

JSC Dalur has fully complied with the requirements of current legislation in Russia in preparing a deposit as well as building and operating all the required facilities, ARMZ said. Having received the permit, the company will start work on preparing project documentation, including an environmental engineering survey and an environmental impact assessment, in preparation for development of the field, construction and operation of all facilities, ARMZ said. All this preparatory work is expected to be completed before the end of this year, it added. After this, and in accordance with legal requirements, a public hearing and discussion forum will be held with the residents of Zverinogolovsky District.

Alexander Burutin, chairman of JSC Dalur's board of directors, said: "If a positive decision is reached at the public hearing, the project will move on to FSE Glavgosexpertiza for state assessment, expected in early 2018. Only once this entire sequence has been followed and a positive GGE conclusion has been received, will we be able to start geological exploration, and then experimental production."

Residents of Zverinogolovsky District have been supportive of JSC Dalur's activities to date and in late January they wrote to Rosatom director-general Alexey Likhachov, asking him to expedite the Dobrovolnoye project to support the local economy, ARMZ said. JSC Dalur plans to open an information centre in Zverinogolovskoye in a few weeks, it added.

Researched and written

by World Nuclear News

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Adams Falls (also known as Adams Canyon Falls) was an attractive 40ft rectangular waterfall on North Fork Holmes Creek that was a worthy reward for the adventure it took to get to it.

The underlying red cliffs also added more color to the overall scene, and its spray was refreshing after all the pretty hard hiking it took to get up here.

I happened to visit this waterfall twice  once in late May 2017 and again in mid-August 2020.

During my late May 2017 visit, North Fork Holmes Creek had very high flow, and that made for a rather wet hike with quite a bit of trail erosion causing lots of rough unanticipated scrambling.

As a result, I wound up getting quite a bit more adventure than I had anticipated.

On my mid-August 2020 visit, North Fork Holmes Creek was significantly less vigorous, and I even noticed some degree of trail maintenance to rectify some of the eroded parts that I had encountered three years prior.

While it was still not an easy hike overall, it was much easier than that first visit.

Both photos you see above show you the differences in Adams Falls, which illustrates how conditions can change depending on snow pack and time of year.

By the way, Adams Falls was named after Elias Adams who was an early settler of East Layton, which was the town from which this waterfall adventure began.

Nevertheless, despite some of the difficulties I had in hiking to this waterfall, it was quite obvious to me that this was seemingly Laytons most popular hike.

Overall, each time Ive done this hike, my GPS logs had indicated that I had hiked about 4 miles round-trip.

This was despite a trailhead sign suggesting that it was 1.75 miles each way or 3.5 miles round-trip.

It took me 3.5 hours round-trip on my May 2017 visit (2 hours up and 90 minutes back down).

Meanwhile, it took me 3 hours total on my mid-August 2020 visit, which included brief interludes to the Lower Adams Falls.

That kind of indicated how much easier the hike seemed to be the second time around as compared to the first.

Adams Falls Trail Description  from the trailhead to Adams Canyon

The hike began from a pretty spacious unpaved lot though there was also parallel parking available on Eastside Road (see directions below).

The trail initially followed some fencing preventing the public from accessing some kind of rectangular pond.

Then, the trail ascended a series of switchbacks with high wooden fences to prevent people from taking shortcuts.

There were at least 10 of these switchbacks, including a sign talking about Elias Adams in one of the switchbacks.

After the tenth switchback, the trail climbed a little more as it approached a rest bench with a couple of unmarked spur trails heading off to the right.

Those trails happened to lead to the Adams Canyon Lower Falls, which has a separate write-up since it was an optional detour.

Nevertheless, the Adams Canyon Trail had gained some 250ft over mostly sandy surfaces up to this point.

The trail would gain about another 100ft further above the switchbacks beyond the rest bench.

Eventually, after a half-mile from the trailhead, the path joined up with the Bonneville Shoreline Trail.

The Adams Canyon Trail continued to the right as it entered the canyon itself.

As I entered Adams Canyon, I got some nice panoramic views looking back towards Layton and the Great Salt Lake.

Adams Falls Trail Description  hiking and scrambling in Adams Canyon

As the trail entered Adams Canyon, there was a bit more tree cover as the path narrowed, which provided some welcome relief from the sun.

After about another quarter-mile from the junction, I reached another fork with the Bonneville Shoreline Trail, where that trail descended towards a footbridge over North Holmes Creek on the right.

The left fork continued on the Adams Canyon Trail, which was the fork that I followed to continue towards Adams Falls.

The trail now pretty much followed along the North Holmes Creek for the remainder of the hike.

During this stretch, the path continued climbing while passing by some small intermediate cascades.

On my late May 2017 hike, parts of the trail appeared to have eroded quite a bit, which made this part of the hike seemingly more rugged.

I wasnt sure if this was from years of wear and tear from the popularity of the trail or if a large chunk of earth got swept away from the higher water levels of Holmes Creek.

Whatever the case, there were moments where I had to quickly walk along sloped embankments with dropoffs.

I also had to figure out how to walk on the sides of Holmes Creek itself without getting wet in the spots where there was no trail between the embankments and the creek.

Under such conditions, progress on the Adams Canyon Trail was slow, and I sensed that such high water conditions werent really the norm here.

When I came back to do this hike again in mid-August 2020, it seemed like the eroded parts of the trail were bypassed by new bridges, which made this hike significantly easier.

It also helped that North Fork Holmes Creek did not flow into the trail itself, which further made the hike much easier than the first time around.

Regardless, at about 0.8 miles from the Bonneville Shoreline Trail junction, the trail crossed North Holmes Creek over a slanted wooden footbridge.

In my mind, this bridge was kind of the landmark where the Adams Canyon Trail started to degenerate more into a rough semi-scramble as opposed to the more straightforward trail that persisted up to this point.

Indeed, the rougher upper parts of the Adams Canyon Trail started to force me to scramble hand over feet in the steepest sections.

There were also more attractive cascades that the trail meandered alongside, including one small waterfall where a large boulder formed a kind of cave or alcove with water running through it.

Further upstream beyond this spot, the trail then went around a bend in the creek.

After this bend, the steepening trail skirted North Fork Holmes Creek, which made for some tricky scrambling in the high water conditions that I encountered in May 2017.

Under such conditions, I opted to hike into the creek itself on its far right side to avoid doing a pretty daring steep scramble further up the embankment (just to try avoiding getting wet).

Once again, when I got to this part in mid-August, the hiking was pretty straightforward given the lower flow of North Fork Holmes Creek.

At about 0.2 miles from the footbridge over North Holmes Creek, I had to traverse a narrow rocky ledge before winding up in front of the most impressive intermediate cascade seen so far.

Adams Falls Trail Description  from the intermediate waterfall to the main waterfall

Aside from its photogenic quality as a legitimate standalone waterfall, I had to scramble on the trail alongside the cascades right side.

This eventually brought me to the top of the attractive intermediate falls and beyond.

Then, the trail continued to get rougher as it hugged the right side of North Holmes Creek while involving some more steep climbs.

Eventually at about 2 miles from the trailhead, the trail then reached an unbridged crossing of North Holmes Creek.

This was pretty much before the Adams Falls, but it could not be seen without getting into the creek.

During the time that I did this hike in late May 2017, the creek was running pretty high so inevitably, I had to get my feet wet as the water was easily ankle- to shin-deep.

Ive also seen trip reports where at lower water levels, it was possible to easily cross North Holmes Creek without getting water inside Gore-tex hiking boots or even day hiking low-top shoes.

However, when I came back in August 2020, North Fork Holmes Creek was much lower, but it was actually still high enough to get low-top shoes miserably wet.

Nevertheless, once I made it to the other side of the creek, that was when I could finally see Adams Falls in all its glory (just like in the photo at the top of this page).

When I showed up at about 9:30am, there was still enough of a morning shadow to take decent photos.

However, this was a west-facing waterfall so afternoon provided the best lighting.

Of course, waiting until the afternoon to do this hike would mean the initial sandy switchbacked climb from the trailhead to the Adams Canyon Trail junction would be a brutally hot stretch.

And if youre not acclimated to the altitude, it could make an already tough hike even tougher right off the bat.

In fact, when I did do this hike on a hot Summer afternoon, I noticed quite a few people struggle with the trail, especially past the slanted bridge.

So despite the tree cover for most of the remainder of the Adams Falls Trail once it entered Adams Canyon, it was still mostly uphill, which further added to the difficulty of the hike.

Thats something to consider when partaking on this adventure and attempting to time it for the afternoon.

Speaking of the afternoon, when I used my downhill momentum to go quickly back towards the trailhead from Adams Falls, I narrowly missed stepping on a rattlesnake that was crossing the trail!

Indeed, even though I thought I could make good time on the trail, that snake bite could have ruined the remainder of our trip.

But aside from that, I still made pretty good time making my way quickly downhill to the trailhead.

Authorities

Adams Falls resides near the city of Layton in Davis County, Utah. It is administered by the Davis County government. For information or inquiries about the area as well as current conditions, visit their website.
Indian High Commissioner to Bangladesh, Harsavardhana Sringla has expressed hope that the Teesta agreement between Bangladesh and India will be signed during the tenure of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and Narendra Modi government.

By Sahidul Hasan Khokon: Indian High Commissioner to Bangladesh, Harsavardhana Sringla has expressed hope that the Teesta agreement between Bangladesh and India will be signed during the tenure of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and Narendra Modi government.

Sringla's comments came after he concluded a meeting with Bangladesh Road Transport and Bridges Minister Obydul Kader MP in the bridge building on Wednesday morning in the capital.

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Responding to a question from journalists about upcoming national elections in Bangladesh, the Indian High Commissioner said, "It is an internal matter of Bangladesh. I do not agree to comment on this issue."

Sringla said, "We have talked about the cooperation of the government of the two countries in our meeting." Besides, I would like to remind Prime Minister Modi's commitment to the Teesta deal during the tenure of the two Prime Ministers of India and Bangladesh. It is to say that, as soon as possible on our part, it will be done."

"After the terrorist incident in July, we did not tell you like that - you have to do it, you have to do that. We have talked to our Prime Minister, what do you need after the terrorist incident? Commando training, special equipment, surveillance equipment, tell us, India will stand by your side in the same way," said Sringla.

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Mountaineering is one of the most popular outdoor activities one can take part in. It can also be one the most dangerous activities. Some of the common hazards include rock falls, stormy weather, avalanches, falls, and illnesses. Despite the obvious dangers, people continue to climb mountains. In Nepal, October is a peak month for trekkers to gather and find their way up the Himalayan Mountains. The month is characterized by clear skies with the sun shining throughout. However, a heavy snowfall on October 14, 2014, followed by several avalanches caused a nightmare scenario which left at least 40 people dead in what is regarded as Nepals worst trekking disaster. The injuries and fatalities resulted on and around the Annapurna and Dhaulagiri Mountains.

Nepal: A Major Attraction For Mountaineers

Nepal is home to eight of the worlds 14 highest mountains. The mountains are a popular destination with tourists from different parts of the world climbing the mountains, especially in the month of October. The mountains offer spectacular views attracting backpackers as well as experienced climbers every year. Trekkers account for 12% of the tourists who visit Nepal. Annapurna Circuit is the most popular walking route in the Himalayas. It takes about 3 weeks to complete the 240-km circuit and has been dubbed the Apple Pie because of the tea houses lining the route offering the cold beer and home baking.

When The Disaster Struck...

Some 168 tourists of different nationalities registered to hike in the area of Annapurna and Dhaulagiri. On October 14, 2014, a storm and avalanches occurred on and around Manang and Mustang Districts of Nepal within the Himalayan Range. The storm may have arisen from Cyclone Hudhud with snow as high as 5.11 feet falling within 12 hours. The storm resulted out of a combination of the tropical cyclone with the upper trough. The snow storm cut off the electric power, cell phone connections, and internet services in the Manang District. Several trekkers took shelter in the teahouses while others proceeded across the pass and down the steep to the exposed path. Most of the trekkers and the guides were ill-equipped while some had not ventured to the mountain terrain before.

Fatalities And Rescue Efforts

Trekkers in the area at the time of storm were of different nationalities, although a large number (78) came from New Zealand. The poor telecommunication hampered the rescue effort while some of the casualties and their tents were buried by the avalanche. The Nepali Army was largely involved in the rescue effort with helicopter missions to help in the rescue. The first international call for help was made by Israeli Embassy in Kathmandu after one of the trekkers who had been trapped sent down a message with a local Sherpa. By October 15, 22 people including one guide had been rescued. At the end of the rescue operation on October 19, there were 400 climbers who had been rescued from different areas of Manang and Mustang. However, at least 43 trekkers were not as lucky, as they unfortunately perished. This included 21 trekkers of varying nationalities who had set out to explore the Annapurna Circuit. Among those dead also included some of the local personnel who had played an integral part of the mission such as cooks, guides, and herders.
The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) was founded in 1969 and has 57 countries who are members, representing a population of more than 1.6 billion people as of 2008. The OIC identifies itself as "the collective voice of the Muslim world" whose main aim is to protect and conserve the interests of the Muslim world in the spirit of encouraging peace and harmony internationally. The OIC has permanent delegations to the European Union and the United Nations and has three official languages which are English, Arabic, and French.

What is the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation?

History

The idea of a Muslim community dates back to the 19th century when several Muslims yearned to form ummah (community) to serve their common economic, social, and political interests. Following the downfall of the Caliphate and the Ottoman Empire after the WWI, a vacuum was left for a pan-Islamic institution. The establishment of the Organization of the Islamic Conference was prompted by the al-Aqsa fire in 1972 before the name changed to Organization of Islamic Cooperation. On September 25th, 1969, the Leaders of Muslim states gathered together in Rabat, Morocco to form the OIC.

The Organization's Goals

According to the organizations charter, the primary aim of OIC is to preserve the social and the economic values of Islam. The organization also aims at promoting solidarity among its member states, to increase cooperation in cultural, scientific, political, social and economic aspects. The emblem of the OIC comprises of three main elements that mirror the organizations vision as included in the new Charter. The three elements include the Crescent, the Globe, and the Kaaba. On August 5th, 1990, approximately 45 of the organization's foreign ministers ratified the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam which was to serve as a guidebook for the member states on issues of human rights and their relation to the Quranic and Sharia Law. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation conducted a formal revision of the charter in June of 2008. The revised charter promoted fundamental freedoms, good governance, and human rights in all OIC member states. The revised charter did not include any references to the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam. However, OIC opted to endorse the International Law together with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the revised charter.

The Organizations New Name and Refugees

During the 38th meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM), which took place on June 28th, 2011 in Astana, Kazakhstan, OIC changed its name to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation from the Organization of the Islamic Conference. The organization also changed its logo. UNHCR estimates that approximately 18 million refugees were hosted by OIC countries by the end of 2010. The OIC member states have since accommodated refugees from different conflict zones including the current uprising in Syria. The OIC addressed such matters during the "Refugees in the Muslim World" conference which took place in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan in May 2012.

The member states of the organization

The OIC comprises of 57 members. However, 56 of its member states are also members of the United Nations. A good number of the member states, particularly those found in West Africa, are not necessarily among the Muslim majority countries despite having large populations of Muslims. Several countries such as Russia and Thailand which have significant Muslim populations are observer states whereas some nations such as Ethiopia and India are not members. Africa has the highest number of member states in the OIC with approximately 27 nations. Asia comes in second with 25 member states, followed by Europe with three member states, and South America with two member states.
By Press Trust of India: New Delhi, Jun 6 (PTI) Police has arrested three men for allegedly robbing a brand new Honda Jazz car at gunpoint in south Delhis Fatehpur Beri last week.

The robbery took place on June 2 near the Dagar farmhouse in Chandanhaulla area here.

Shakul, employed as a driver with a car dealer in Faridabad, told police that he along with his younger brother Rashid had brought brought six new Honda Jazz cars to Delhi from Rajasthan in a trailer truck, police said.

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The duo unloaded the cars at a distance and were driving the cars into a godown at Dagar farmhouse.

Two motorcycle-borne assailants accosted them and the pillion rider, wearing a mask, got into a tiff with Rashid claiming that the car driven by him had hit their two-wheeler, they said.

As Shakul tried to intervene, the pillion took out a firearm and threatened to shoot. They asked for the car keys and one of them fled with the car while the other rode away on the motorcycle, police said.

"The complainant told that vehicles being transported from factory to warehouse do not contain more than 2 to 3 litres of fuel. We started enquiring from fuel stations in the vicinity," DCP (South) Ishwar Singh said.

During the investigation, police procured CCTV footage of a suspect who was seen purchasing five litres of petrol from one of the petrol stations in the vicinity.

Suspecting him to one of the robber, police examined the CCTV footage identified him as Azam (22). He was then detained for questioning, he said.

Based on the information given by Azam police arrested Sundar Tanwar (23) and their accomplice Veer Singh (27) from different locations in Haryana, the DCP said.

The stolen car was also recovered, Singh said. PTI SLB ASV

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Four Vehicle Collision on Grosvenor Road

This article is old - Published: Wednesday, Jun 7th, 2017

Four vehicles were involved in a collision near Wrexham town centre this afternoon.

Emergency services were called to the road traffic collision near the Grosvenor Road roundabout at 1:22pm.

A spokesperson for North Wales Police told us a white van, an orange Honda Jazz, Red Audi and a grey VW Polo were involved in the collision.

Welsh Ambulance Service were also called to the incident, with two emergency response vehicles seen on Grosvenor Road.

As a result of the collision there were temporary delays for motorists.

We have contacted Welsh Ambulance Service and are awaiting further comment.
Praise For Local Parents and Toddlers Welsh at Home Classes

This article is old - Published: Wednesday, Jun 7th, 2017

Parents and toddlers have been benefiting from Learn Welsh classes run by Coleg Cambria as part of the Learn Welsh North East Consortium.

The weekly Welsh sessions were held in the community room at the Tesco store in Wrexham.

During the Welsh at Home class, those participating had the opportunity to learn Welsh whilst the children enjoyed playing, singing and stories through the medium of Welsh.

The classes have been praised by parents who attended.

Nathan Woods, 37 from Wrexham who attended the class said: Im learning Welsh to be able to help my children who are attending a Welsh medium school with their homework.

Mhairi McLaren, 34 from Wrexham who attended with her son added: I really enjoy learning the language and being able to learn and practice with my son at home. Attending the class has built my confidence as I havent used my Welsh since school days.

Emma Burton, Learn Welsh Tutor at Coleg Cambria said: Its great to see the parents learning the language with their children, weve had such a good time in the class learning through songs and stories whilst the children enjoy playing and joining in.

For more information on Learn Welsh classes in the area please visit learnwelsh.cymru
By Press Trust of India: New Delhi, Jun 7 (PTI) India today said its ties with any country are independent of the equation it enjoys with any other nation, in the backdrop of new Nepalese Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deubas comment that he will maintain a balanced association with New Delhi and Beijing.

"Our relations with any country and any other countrys relations with any other country are independent entities.

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"We do not think that relation of country A with B is contingent upon its relations with us and vice-a-versa," said Gopal Baglay, Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson.

Deuba today pledged to maintain balanced relations between India and China, as he was sworn in as the new prime minister of Nepal. PTI PR KUN

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By Press Trust of India: By Lalit K Jha

Washington, Jun 7 (PTI) US President Donald Trump has asked the Gulf states to stay united to fight terrorism and promote stability in the region as he spoke with Saudi Arabias King Salman amid the Arab worlds biggest diplomatic crisis in years over Qatars alleged support to extremists.

The two leaders spoke by phone after Saudi Arabia and its regional allies severed diplomatic ties with Qatar accusing the tiny Gulf nation of funding Islamist groups.

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"The two leaders discussed the critical goals of preventing the financing of terrorist organisations and eliminating the promotion of extremism by any nation in the region," the White House said in a statement.

During the phone call, Trump underscored that a united Gulf Cooperation Council is critical to defeating terrorism and promoting regional stability, the White House said.

The Gulf Cooperation Council is a regional bloc comprising Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, the UAE and Oman.

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, Yemen and the Maldives have severed ties with Qatar blaming it for "financing, adopting and sheltering extremists" and supporting terrorist groups ranging from the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamic State to the Iran-backed Houthi rebels.

Qatar has denied the allegations, in the biggest diplomatic crisis to have hit the region in years.

Earlier in a tweet, Trump signalled support for the effort to isolate Qatar, despite the country being home to the largest American airbase in the Middle East.

"During my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology. Leaders pointed to Qatar - look!" Trump tweeted.

"So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off. They said they would take a hard line on funding, extremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar," he said.

"Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism!" Trump said.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters that the US continues to be in close communication with all the parties to resolve the issues and restore cooperation which is so important to regional security there.

"I think there is note that his message of toughness on terror finance and extremism is being heeded by countries in the region. But the US still wants to see this issue de- escalated and resolved immediately, keeping with the principles that the president laid out in terms of defeating terror financing and extremism," he said.

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Spicer said Trump had a very, very constructive conversation with the Emir of Qatar during his visit in Riyadh.

"At that time, he was very heartened by the Emirs commitment to formally join the terrorist financing targeting centre and showing their commitment to this issue," he said.

At a separate briefing, State Department Spokesperson Heather Nauert said the US recognises that Qatar has made some great efforts to try to stop financing of terror groups, including prosecuting suspected financiers, freezing assets, and introducing stringent controls on its banking system there.

"However, let me make this clear: They have made progress, but they still have work to do. More work needs to be done," she said.

"I think our relationship with Qatar is one thats strong. Its one that we continue to cooperate with Qatar and other countries in the region in the fight against terrorism. Secretary of State Rex W Tillerson talked about this today," she added.

"He said every country in the region has their own obligations and they need to live up to terminate their support for terrorism and extremism however it manifests itself anywhere in the world,? she said.

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Nauert praised Qatar for its role in fight against terrorism.

"The US and its coalition, were grateful to the Qataris for their longstanding support of our presence there in that nation. They have helped to provide us with an enduring commitment to regional security. The Department of Defense has talked about this," she said.

"We have no plans to change our posture in Qatar and we would encourage all of our partners to try to work together to reduce tensions. Thats something that the Secretary spoke to as well," Nauert said in response to a question. PTI LKJ AJR PMS AKJ PMS

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Workers at the Airgas facility in East Greenwich, Rhode Island, have been on strike since May 30 to defend their health care and pension benefits. The truck drivers and gas cylinder fillers have been working without a contract since April.

Airgas is the largest American distributor of industrial, medical and specialty gases, and one of the largest distributors of welding, safety and related products. In November 2015, Airgas was acquired by Frances Air Liquide in a $13.4 billion deal.

While the pickets first targeted Rhode Island locations, last Thursday and Friday workers traveled to Airgas facilities in Hingham and Billerica, Massachusetts; Salem, New Hampshire; and Bangor, Maine. According to a statement released Friday by Teamsters Local 251, members of Teamsters locals in those locations were not crossing the picket lines.

The company has been conducting a cost-cutting campaign to boost its share value and payout to wealthy investors. In its latest quarterly report, Air Liquide boasted of saving $45 million in synergies from the acquisition, a euphemism for job cuts, including in its back office operations. The companys revenues in the first three months of this year are up 38.5 percent from the same period last year, to 5.17 billion euros (US $5.83 billion). Rather than returning this money to workers in France, the US or anywhere else in the form of benefits, it is paying a stock dividend of 2.60 euros per share this year. According to Air Liquides web site, its dividend has risen by an average of 8.6 percent annually over the last 30 years.

In 2015, Airgas carried out a two-day lockout of workers in Hingham, Massachusetts before the Teamsters accepted a three-year concessions deal. In March 2016, the Teamsters called a one-day strike at an Airgas facility in Cincinnati, Ohio after keeping workers on the job more than three months after the expiration of their contract expired. In that case, Airgas has unilaterally terminated workers 401(k) retirement funds.

While the Teamsters has carried out largely ceremonial picketing, the union has told workers to rely on appeals to shareholders and the National Labor Relations Board, along with a thinly veiled anti-French campaign. In a statement, the Teamsters said company violated federal labor law by attempting to bargain directly with workers.

Aside from two press releases issued by Local 251 last week and a Facebook page, no news about the strike has been made public. A call to Teamsters Local 25 in Boston by a WSWS reporter seeking information was not returned.

There is enormous potential to mobilize broader support for Airgas workers throughout the working class in Rhode Island and, more broadly, New England. The company sells gases and cryogens to large institutions throughout the region, including hospitals, universities, welders, energy companies, and breweries.

Rhode Island Hospital, Newport Hospital, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (where Airgas has a monopoly on cryogen sales by means of a preferred vendor contract), and defense contractor Raytheon are among the hundreds of Airgas customers whose workers face a common enemy: management and Boards of Directors seeking to deny them good health care and a secure retirement. Airgas itself has 17,000 workers in the United States.
Australias political parties are rushing to call for action against Chinese power and influence in the country, in response to a sensationalist investigation by the state-owned Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and Fairfax Media newspapers.

On Monday night, the ABCs Four Corners current affairs program was devoted to airing the serious concerns of the Australian and American intelligence agencies. The program presented donations, made by corporations owned by two Chinese billionaires, to the governing Liberal Party and opposition Labor Party, as a clandestine attempt by the Chinese government to purchase influence within Australias corridors of power.

The activities of organisations and research bodies, established to promote closer Australian-Chinese relations, as well as those of Chinese student associations, were also portrayed in the most sinister light.

Yesterday, Attorney General George Brandis announced that the government of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was drawing up legislation to strengthen Australias espionage and foreign interference laws. In a statement, Brandis asserted: The threat of political interference by foreign intelligence services is a problem of the highest order and it is getting worse.

Turnbull declared: China should always respect the sovereignty of other nations, including, of course, our own.

Labor Party leader Bill Shorten declared that Labor would never again accept donations linked to the two Chinese businessmen, whom Four Corners insinuated, without any substantive evidence, were stalking horses for the Chinese state apparatusHuang Xiangmo and Chau Chak Wing.

The minor parliamentary parties have joined in the hysteria.

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joycehead of the rural-based National Party that governs in coalition with the Liberalstold the ABC that changes should be made to Australias laws allowing foreign-owned corporations to make political donations. If people are buying influence in our nation, well, we cant abide by that in any shape or form from any country, not just China, any country.

Cory Bernardi, who split from the Liberals to form the Australian Conservatives earlier this year, demanded the establishment of a royal commission, with sweeping powers. A commission should investigate evidence of foreign state actors in domestic political activities, Bernardi insisted. Some of that relates to China, but why limit it to China if more evidence is there?

Despite such remarks, there have been no lurid media accounts concerning donations made to Liberal and Labor by American transnationals, or those from countries apart from China. Nor are concerns being raised over the massive injections of cash they receive each year from the major Australian banks and companies, which count among their largest shareholders some of the most powerful American and British investment funds.

The sole concern of the intelligence agencies, such as the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), is the possibility that Australian politics will be influenced by Chinese-linked sources. The ABC and Fairfax Media are serving as the direct conduits of these spy agencies.

The media investigation, or more accurately anti-Chinese propaganda campaign, is unfolding amid rising geo-political tensions. The provocative efforts of the US and its allies, including Australia, to challenge and undermine Beijings strategic and economic ambitions in the Asia-Pacific, is generating the undeniable danger of a major war in the region. Most significantly, the prospect exists that the Trump administration will order the massive US military force, which is currently deployed to the Korean peninsula, to launch a pre-emptive assault on North Korea, a Chinese ally, over its refusal to end its nuclear and missile weapons programs.

Australian imperialism, through its military alliance with the US, provides key basing arrangements for the latters Pacific forces, while hosting crucial communications and spying bases such as Pine Gap. It would be drawn immediately into a second Korean War, or direct conflict with China.

In this context, the military-intelligence apparatus in both countries, along with powerful sections of the ruling elites, have two major concerns.

Firstly, they fear that the emergence of China as Australias largest export market and trading partner, has spawned a constituency in business and politics that opposes the US-led build-up toward war with Beijing, and is calling for a shift in Australian foreign policy away from its alignment with Washington.

Secondly, and the cause of even greater alarm, decades of brutal wars and interventions by American imperialism have generated widespread opposition within the Australian population to US foreign policy. This sentiment has only burgeoned since the election of Donald Trump as president, and his ever-more bellicose and unpredictable America First militarism and nationalism.

A recent survey conducted in Australia, Japan, China, India, Indonesia and South Korea by the US Studies Centre (USSC) at the University of Sydneya body explicitly established to promote support for the US-Australia alliancegenerated politically significant results.

The USSC findings in Australia include:

* 72 percent believe China has the most influence in Asia, while only 11 percent named the US

* 61 percent think the Trump administration will have a negative impact on the Indo-Pacific region

* Just 40 percent believe the US has a positive influence on Australia, one of the lowest rates in all the surveyed countries, while 32 percent rated it as negative

* Only 18 percent believe the US does more good than harm across the region, compared with 31 percent who think it does more harm

* 19 percent nominated the US as the country most likely to cause a conflict in the region, less than the 13 percent who selected China. In the current political climate, North Korea was selected by 51 percent.

Such sentiments lie behind the transparent attempt, orchestrated by the intelligence agencies, university think tanks such as the USSC, and sections of the media, to generate suspicion and hostility toward China. Efforts are underway to brand any opposition to US military provocations, over issues such as North Korea and the territorial disputes in the South China Sea, as support for the Chinese regime.

Yesterdays intervention by recently retired US director of national security, James Clapper, simply underscored the key role of Washington in this campaign. Clapper, speaking at the National Press Club, asserted that China in Australia, and Russia in the US, were seeking ways to influence using many techniques; diplomatic, economic, military that they havent done before. Its focused here, its focused regionally and focused globally.

In both the US and Australia, the campaign over Russian and Chinese interference is laced with anti-communist overtones reminiscent of the Cold War.

The ABC is plumbing the depths in its efforts to promote an Australian nationalist backlash against China. Its website features today an article that insinuates Chinese citizens view Australia with contempt because the country is sometimes described on Chinese-language social media with two characters that, used together, translate as Australia being an unspoiled or tranquil place. Taken separately, the characters translate literally as Earth [] and Australia [].

The article, however, suggests that these characters are used by nationalistic Chinese speakers to convey that they regard Australia as economically backward and socially uncultured.

Such commentary dovetails with a campaign to portray many of the one million Australian citizens of Chinese descent, as well as the 140,000 Chinese students studying in the country, as a potential fifth column, loyal to a foreign power.

The Chinese-speaking community can expect to be subjected to far closer monitoring and scrutiny by the countrys intelligence agencies in the coming period, using the sweeping surveillance powers that have been extended to them on the pretext of combatting terrorism.
Deaths from drug overdoses jumped by the largest margin ever recorded in US history in 2016, according to preliminary data compiled by the New York Times. While the precise number will not be available until December due to the months it takes to certify an overdose death, the Times estimates that in 2016 more than 59,000 people died from drug overdoses, a 19 percent increase from 2015.

The scope of this public health crisis is immense. Drug overdoses now far surpass both the annual death toll from HIV/AIDS at the peak of the US epidemic in the late 80s and early 90s and the number killed in the countrys peak year of gun violence, 1993. It is now the leading cause of death among Americans under the age of 50.

The primary drugs responsible for deaths in recent years, accounting for more than half, are opioids. More Americans have died from opiate overdoses in the last two years than in the entire Vietnam War. Opiates include illegal drugs like heroin and drugs that are often legally prescribed for pain, such as hydrocodone and oxycodone (known by the brand names Vicodin and OxyContin, respectively).

Fentanyl, a synthetic pain killer, is the deadliest opioid and the drug that many blame for the rising death toll. Since 2014, fentanyl and its cousin, carfentanil, have proliferated dramatically. These drugs are extremely lethal. Less than half a teaspoon of pure fentanyl is enough to kill 10 people. Carfentanil, which is used as an elephant tranquilizer, is 5,000 times stronger than heroin. For a human, an amount of carfentanil equal to a few grains of salt can be a lethal dose.

Opioids, like many other highly addictive drugs, often sweep through entire towns and regions. In Ohio, fatal overdoses more than quadrupled in the past decade, according to the data analyzed by the Times. In Dayton, Ohio the number of overdose deaths reported in the first 33 days of this year is already more than half the yearly totals for the past two years. The coroners office for the county, overwhelmed with corpses, was forced to use refrigerated trucks to store bodies for up to a week on three separate occasions.

Kenneth M. Betz, director of the coroners office in Montgomery county, Ohio, told the Times, Our staff is, quite frankly, tired. The doctors are tired. The investigators are tired. Weve never had volumes like this. These workers, along with rehab clinicians, youth counselors and emergency room staff witness the horrors of the epidemic on a daily basis.

Emergency responders on the front lines often see scores of overdoses in a single day when a bad batch of one or another drug arrives in a town. Social service workers in places like West Virginia and Florida have been flooded with cases of children who need homes due to the circumstances of their parents addiction. The overall psychological toll of these experiences on workers is devastating.

Drug abuse is a problem confronting all types of people regardless of skin color, gender, nationality or even income. However, the most devastating consequences of addiction are felt by the working class and poor.

Economically depressed areas with high poverty and unemployment, including regions devastated by deindustrialization, have become breeding grounds for drug abuse. Workers who suffer from job injuries and other physical ailments that come with poor health insurance and bad living conditions often become addicted to prescription drugs first before turning to the less expensive street versions.

Those whose prescriptions no longer suffice, or who have been cut off from their health insurance, are forced to buy drugs on the streets in communities often wracked by crime and violence.

The class character of the drug epidemic is most evident in treatment options. Rehab clinics that accept state insurance are scarce, overcrowded and always have long wait lists. Many have one strike policies in which an addict may not return if he ir she does not complete the program, despite the fact that experts put the relapse rate for opioid users as high as 80 percent.

Efforts to combat the drug epidemic have largely been limited to impotent local- and state-level measures. Many states, including Maryland, Arizona and Florida, have declared states of emergency over the crisis.

Pharmaceutical companies have played a decisive role in fostering the opioid epidemic. Prescriptions for opioids such as Percocet, OxyContin and Vicodin have skyrocketed, from 76 million in 1991 to nearly 259 million in 2012. This is enough to supply each American adult with a bottle of pills and then some, as US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy put it last year. A report issued in 2013 found that hydrocodone, the generic version of Vicodin, had been prescribed to more Medicare patients than any other drug in existence.

Drug companies go to great lengths to incentivize doctors to prescribe dangerous addictive painkillers to patients. Companies like Purdue Pharma have gone as far as creating promotional videos for advertising their drugs in waiting rooms, and doctors are given incentives for reaching a certain number of prescriptions.

The state of Ohio filed a lawsuit last week accusing five drug companies of abetting the opioid epidemic. However, no major drug companies have faced any serious consequences for their actions.

The most significant attempt to prosecute a pharmaceutical company was against Purdue Pharma. In 2007, three of the companys executives were charged with misbranding the drug OxyContin and massively downplaying the possibility of addiction. All three pleaded guilty due to the sheer amount of evidence against them. The company settled with the US government for $635 million, a mere fraction of what was made off the drug, which brought in over $30 billion in sales over the two decades it was on the market.

The prosecution did nothing to curb the profit-hungry pharmaceutical companies or help the millions of people whose lives were destroyed by the drugs. A former sales representative for drug company Insys Therapeutics recently spoke out against almost identical practices. The whistleblower, Patty Nixon, said the company developed a scheme to get the highly addictive drug Subsys to patients who never should have had it. Subsys, which costs anywhere from $3,000 to $30,000 for a 30-day supply, contains fentanyl.

Nixon told NBC news that her job was to make sure Subsys got into the hands of as many patients as possible. The drug was designed to be used on cancer patients, but like many other opioids it has been widely pushed as a painkiller. One victim of the scheme, Sarah Fuller, was prescribed the drug for chronic neck and back pain from two car accidents. Sarahs father told NBC News that when her doctor prescribed Subsys, an Insys sales rep was sitting in the room with them.

After Fullers prescription was tripled within the course of a month, she was found dead in her house. Prosecutors involved in Fullers case say the company paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to doctors in exchange for prescribing Subsys, a standard practice. Insys founder Dr. John Kapoor is a billionaire and among the wealthiest Americans.

The profiteering of giant drug companies mirrors that of every other corporate conglomerate, from the giant energy enterprises to agriculture and technology companies, all of which subordinate human need, and sometimes human life, to private profit.

Beyond the role of drug companies, the opioid epidemic is produced by a coalescence of the ills of capitalism. It is the expression of a profound social illnessthe consequence of inequality, poverty, unemployment and a general feeling of hopelessness that afflicts broad sections of the population, combined with an economic and political system that leaves those most severely impacted by the social crisis to fend for themselves.
Backed by intense US airstrikes and accompanied by beefed-up contingents of US special operations troops, an armed force dominated by the YPG (Peoples Protection Force) Kurdish militia crossed into the eastern sector of the Syrian city of Raqqa Tuesday.

The offensive against the so-called capital of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria represents a major escalation of the US military intervention in Syria. Ostensibly aimed at crushing ISIS and countering terrorism, the American escalation is bound up with the broader strategic aims of US imperialism, principally, confronting Iran, which is seen as an obstacle to US hegemony in the oil-rich Middle East.

While declining to specify the precise number of US troops now on the ground in Syria, the Pentagon has acknowledged that the number of US advisers deployed with the YPG has been increased substantially in the wake of last months decision by the Trump administration to directly arm the Kurdish militia.

Thousands of assault rifles, heavy machine guns and antitank weapons along with armored vehicles have been delivered to the YPG. A Pentagon spokesman told the US military newspaper Stars and Stripes that part of the mission of the special operations troops deployed with the Kurdish militia is to closely monitor the equipment provided to the Syrian Kurds and ensure its not going to be pointed in any different direction other than ISIS.

Turkey, Washingtons NATO ally, has bitterly denounced the arming of the Kurdish militia, which Ankara regards as a terrorist force and a branch of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), with which it has been in armed conflict for decades.

The Turkish government has threatened to intervene in Syria if it perceives the Kurdish offensive in Raqqa posing a threat to its interests. At the same time, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim reported that Washington had assured Ankara that its support for the YPG would end once the Raqqa offensive was completed. A senior State Department official recently described the US relation to the Syrian Kurds as temporary, transactional and tactical, signaling that Washington will betray the Kurds as soon as they have served their purpose.

While the number of American troops deployed in Syria had officially been capped at 500, they are now believed to number well over 1,000. In addition to the special operations troops fighting alongside the YPG, a US Marine artillery unit is pouring howitzer fire into the besieged city and US Apache attack helicopters are providing close air support.

The main factor in the steady advance of the YPG on Raqqa, however, has been an intense US bombing campaign that has exacted a growing toll in terms of civilian lives. The monitoring group Airwars has conservatively estimated over 3,800 killed since the US first launched its airstrikes in Iraq and Syria in 2014. Over 60 percent of these casualties have been inflicted since the beginning of this year.

US and allied warplanes have dropped leaflets over Raqqa telling residents to leave their homes. Those who attempt to do so, however, face the prospect of being killed by US warplanes, being shot by ISIS militants or being blown up by mines planted around the city.

On Tuesday, there were reports from both Syrian government media and opposition sources that a US strike killed at least 12 civilians, including women and children, as they attempted to flee the city by boarding boats to cross the Euphrates River. A total of 21 civilians were killed Monday night in air strikes on Raqqa, according to the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Also on Tuesday, a school housing civilians displaced by the fighting was hit by US bombs in the eastern Mashlab district of Raqqa, causing an unknown number of civilian casualties.

Last Saturday, a US airstrike hit a residential building in Raqqa, killing 43 civilians, most of them women and children. The al-Mawasah hospital in the city was also reportedly hit by warplanes from the US-led coalition, with a number of civilians, including women and children, killed and wounded.

The assault on Raqqa comes barely one week after US Secretary of Defense James Mattis told the media that the Pentagon has adopted annihilation tactics in its anti-ISIS campaign, centered on the parallel sieges against the Syrian city of some 300,000 people and Mosul, the Iraqi city 230 miles to the east, which previously had a population of 1.6 million people. Civilian casualties are a fact of life in this sort of situation, Mattis, a former Marine general, said of the ongoing US-led offensives. The comments, it is now undeniably clear, represented a green light to US commanders to carry out mass slaughter.

Media reports and statements from the Pentagon and the YPG have all indicated that Raqqa is besieged from the north, east and west. Reports from both the Russian and Iranian media, however, have suggested that the US and its proxy forces have deliberately left an escape route for ISIS fighters to the south, allowing them to flee to the city of Deir al-Zour, about 85 miles down the Euphrates, where the Islamist militia has launched an offensive against Syrian army forces. The surrounding province of Deir al-Zour is almost entirely controlled by the Islamist militias that have served as proxy forces in the six-year-old US-backed war to topple the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad. Heavy fighting has also taken place between ISIS and government forces around the ancient city of Palmyra, 100 miles south of Raqqa.

Even as Syrian government forces were fighting ISIS in Deir al-Zour and Palmyra, further south, in the al-Tanf area near Syrias borders with Iraq and Jordan, the US carried out an airstrike against pro-government forces, attacking a column the Pentagon claimed included a tank, artillery, antiaircraft weapons, vehicles and more than 60 soldiers. It was not clear how many were killed and wounded in the US bombing. The US military has illegally established a base on Syrian territory there to train so-called rebels, allegedly to fight ISIS. The US military carried out a similar attack on pro-government militia forces in the same area last month.

In reality, the Pentagon is training these forces as part of the regime-change operation against Damascus that Washington has orchestrated since 2011, with Al Qaeda-linked Islamist militias serving as its proxy forces.

The simultaneous combat in Deir al-Zour, Palmyra and al-Tanf make clear that Washington is in a de facto military alliance with ISIS, so long as it is attacking government forces.

US military aims in Syria are driven not by a determination to crush ISIS, which is itself the product of US interventions in the region and the CIAs support for Islamist militias in both Libya and Syria, but rather to overthrow the Syrian regime and militarily confront its principal regional ally, Iran.

The duplicity of US policy in the region has only been underscored by the ongoing crisis in the Persian Gulf, where Saudi Arabia and its allies have imposed a blockade that falls just short of a state of war against Qatar. US President Donald Trump signaled his support for Riyadh in the conflict Tuesday, using his Twitter account to portray the move against Qatar as driven by concern over the Qatari regimes funding of Radical Ideology.

This is patent nonsense. The Saudi regime is itself the principal ideological font of outfits like Al Qaeda and ISIS. Both Saudi Arabia and Qatar have provided billions of dollars worth of support to the Islamist militias that have laid waste to Syria.

Qatar, meanwhile, hosts the forward operating headquarters of the US Central Command, along with over 8,000 US troops and the main American airbase in the region, from which most of the US airstrikes are being launched.

The show of support from the Trump White House for the anti-Qatar campaign is driven by the centrality of war preparations against Iran, with which the Qatari regime has failed to align itself unequivocally.

The episode has served to expose the threat of the US interventions in Iraq and Syria rapidly exploding into a region-wide war drawing in not only Iran, but potentially nuclear-armed Russia.
Socialist Equality Party (SEP) and International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) members in Sri Lanka won strong support last week from Kelaniya University students and non-academic workers for the international campaign to free the framed-up Maruti Suzuki workers in India.

On March 18, a court in the northern Indian state of Haryana sentenced 13 Maruti Suzuki workers to lifetime prison sentences on trumped-up murder charges. The decision was aimed at intimidating all Indian workers opposed to low wages, inhumane working conditions and attacks on democratic rights. The ruling was the outcome of a conspiracy involving the Indian and Haryana governments, Maruti Suzuki, the police and the judiciary.

At the Kelaniya campus, SEP and IYSSE campaigners distributed over 1,000 copies of statements by the International Committee of Fourth International (ICFI) and SEP. Inter University Student Federation (IUSF) supporters unsuccessfully attempted to disrupt the campaign, falsely claiming that party politics were not allowed on campus.

The IUSF is controlled by the pseudo-left Frontline Socialist Party (FSP), which gave tacit support to the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government when it came to office. Now that Colombo, in line with International Monetary Fund-dictated austerity measures, is stepping up its attacks on free education, the IUSF claims that students can stop the privatisation of public education by pressuring the government.

Despite the IUSFs attempts to disrupt the SEP/IYSSE campaign, more than 60 students and several non-academic workers signed the ICFIs online petition calling for release of the Maruti Suzuki workers.

More than a dozen students also agreed to have further discussions with the SEP on its anti-war perspective and its internationalist program to fight the social austerity attacks in Sri Lanka.

Bandara, an arts graduate, said: This is the first time Ive witnessed an international campaign like this on workers issues. This sort of international program is necessary. It is clear that the reason workers face this type of attack is because of the profit interests of international capital.

Bandara said he was unemployed and it was difficult to find work. Many youth have to work on a contract basis and have no freedom, he said. Its hard to manage your life with this sort of job because of the low wages and rising cost of living. Workers need a political program, as you said, but the established parties fail to provide policies which represent the workers.

Shanika, a third-year humanities student, condemned the jailing of the autoworkers. Workers must have the right to fight for decent working conditions, she said. I signed the online petition because I stand for that right.

Shanika commented: The conditions facing Maruti Suzuki workers are similar to those in Sri Lanka and all over the world. And it is not only the workers. Anyone who fights for their rights is treated in a similar way. Its interesting that workers from other countries have signed this petition and its a good forward step for the unity of the working class in every country.

Madushan, a final-year arts student, expressed his solidarity with the ICFI campaign. Workers in every country face similar harsh attacks on their living and working conditions, he said. Unstable employment and low wages are common issues confronting workers everywhere.

Madushan pointed out that government moves to privatise public education were part of these attacks and added: But the leaderships of workers and students organisations have joined with the capitalist political parties. This is the main problem workers and students face.

As you have explained, it is vital to be independent from the capitalist parties in order to defend the social and democratic rights of workers and students.

Several students criticised the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and the FSP, a breakaway from the JVP. A group of female students said these organisations were the same as other capitalist parties and rejected claims it was possible to pressure the government to drop its plans to privatise public education.

Although we campaigned continuously against the governments assault on public education this has not stopped the privatisation program, one student said. Instead, the government has intensified these attacks.

These students also criticised the lack of basic facilitieslecture halls, hostels, libraries, computer centres and teachers. The hostels are crowded with four beds to a room and in the female hostels there are no facilities for our studies, a student added.

Two students who signed the ICFI petition condemned the effort of IUSF activists to stop the SEP/IYSSE campaign.

Its wrong and unjust that they try and disrupt the SEP campaign, one said. Every political party has an equal right to fight for their ideas of choice. Its a lie that there are no party politics on the universities. There is no democracy in the students unions. The student unions leaders are always supporters of the JVP or FSP. We have reservations about their policies but we have no opportunity to talk about it. Wed like to further study the SEPs program.

A group of non-academic workers said the imprisonment of the Maruti Suzuki workers was unjust and signed the online petition. The workers have the right to fight for decent working conditions and pay, one commented.

The Sri Lankan government also uses the judiciary to suppress workers struggles. We saw this in the port and telecom strikes. We thought the conditions of working people would improve under this government but the situation has become worse. The government is using dictatorial measures to suppress workers.

There is no difference between the previous Mahinda Rajapakse government and this one. In fact, the attacks on the working class have intensified. The international unity of the working class is a must in order to fight against these assaults.
Schools throughout the San Diego Unified School District and in surrounding communities began testing for lead in their drinking water on April 14. A majority of those examined so far have tested positive for elevated levels of lead in their water; at least eight schools have exceeded the minimum threshold for lead in water set by the state of California and will require immediate action.

At present, the US Environmental Protection Agency recommends schools shut off water facilities when results show 20 parts per billion (ppb) or greater of lead. However, as of January of this year the California State Water Resources Control Board mandated new regulations that lead in water cannot exceed 15 ppb and school sites may receive free testing by any request from a school official.

Prior to the state lowering the official limit to 15ppb school administrators recklessly resisted notifying parents and students of significant levels of lead contamination.

At Sunset View Elementary in the Point Loma neighborhood last year a parent requested for testing at the schools site because of nearby construction. The school was found to have lead coming from a device known as a backflow preventer that was found to contain 15 ppb. When the results came back positive, the district only notified the parent who requested it because it did not meet the threshold of the EPAs standard of 20 ppb.

At least 305 schools in the San Diego area have requested to have their water tested under the new state program. The testing is slated to be completed by the middle of this month with no indication, however, of when all necessary repairs will be completed.

The lead testing program was initiated by school officials after receiving grievances from parents who complained that their children were having stomach problems and reported smelly water coming from the water fountains.

The testing also comes in the midst of a national wave of concern after the exposure of criminal violations of standards for lead in the drinking water of Flint, Michigan.

Around the nation schools have recently undertaken testing initiatives with dangerously high traces of lead found in drinking water in cities such as Chicago, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, New York City and Detroit. In New York City there has been no testing of water for the past ten years. In Newark, New Jersey, half of the schools had sampled lead levels that were above 15 ppb.

San Diego is no exception to the outright neglect of basic social infrastructure. Ira Harbison Elementary school contained lead levels in one of its water sources which had lead levels as high as 20 ppb. Other schools in the city have confirmed higher levels, Emerson-Bandini had one water fountain at a level of 29 ppb, while one water fountain at San Diego Co-Operative Charter School 2 tested positive at 38.6 ppb.

While few schools in San Diego exceeded the threshold of 15 ppb, many schools still display high levels of lead:

 Angier Elementary had a result of 10.2 ppb at one kitchen water source.

 Chesterton Elementary has a positive result over 5 ppm at an auditorium area fountain.

 Farb Middle School tested positive at 6.97 ppb at a fountain in the office.

Although these schools and many more like it tested positive, no immediate action will take place because they did not meet the threshold of 15 ppb.

The WSWS recently spoke to the parents of students at Ira Harbison Elementary School in National City, a suburb of San Diego about the lead-in-water crisis.

Melissa, a mother of two, expressed disbelief about school administrators long term neglect of the potential problem of lead poisoning, I am upset, shockedthese are our kids. Some parents were upset that the school never checked before.

This state is terrible, it does not care about the citizens. I would shut down the school immediately and re-do everything, Chelisee, a mother of two remarked.

I want to go get my children to get lead-tested. I know that not all the parents will get their children tested because we are going to be doing it out of our pockets.

According to the California Public Interest Research group and the American Academy of Pediatrics there is no safe level of lead in drinking water provided to children. Lead is a neurotoxin that causes irreversible brain damage and assorted behavioral problems for children. Even the most minute amount of lead can cause significant neurobehavioral damage.

Lead is an environmental toxin that was banned from being used in pipes and plumbing materials with the passing of the federal Safe Drinking Water Act in 1986. There are at least 447 schools across San Diego that were built before 1986, making the potential to have high levels of lead greater.

In 2009, Californias health department, the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, set a public health goal of limiting lead contamination in drinking water to 0.2 ppb. By this standard, most schools in San Diego require immediate action.
A 25-year-old contractor for the National Security Agency, Reality Leigh Winner, was arrested Monday and charged with leaking a top-secret NSA document to the Intercept. The arrest came barely an hour after the on-line publication posted an account of an NSA report sent in anonymously, summarizing NSA findings about alleged Russian hacking during the 2016 US elections.

The circumstances of the document being leaked to the Intercept and the leaker being arrested on the day of publication are extremely murky, even suspicious. Press accounts suggest that efforts by Intercept reporters to confirm the authenticity of the document in effect tipped off the FBI and NSA to the fact of the leak, and they quickly traced it to Winner, who had made little effort at concealment.

Intercept reporters told an intelligence contact that the document had been mailed with an Augusta, Georgia postmark and asked him to verify it was genuine. The publication also submitted a copy of the document to the office of the Director of National Intelligence, announcing the intention to make it public. The DNI asked for redactionsin effect, confirming the document was genuineand the Intercept agreed to make some of the requested cuts.

Subsequently, the FBI had little difficulty tracing Winner, who had worked at Pluribus International, an NSA contractor in Augusta, since leaving the US military in December 2016. She was one of six employees at the Augusta facility who had printed out the document, and the only one who had been in email contact with the Intercept from her own computer. The document posted by the Intercept also apparently had a barely visible marker that indicated the time when and location where it was printed.

The entire investigation lasted only five days: the FBI received the document on June 1, interviewed Winner on June 3, when she admitted leaking the report, and arrested her on June 5. She is now held in the county jail in Lincolnton, Georgia, charged with removing classified material from a government facility and mailing it to a news outlet, in violation of the Espionage Act. She faces a prison term of as much as 10 years.

According to several press accounts, Winner was a linguist in the Air Force for six years, trained in the main languages of Afghanistan and Iran, Pashto, Dari and Farsi, and had held a top-secret security clearance. Her most recent deployment was at Ft. Meade, Maryland, where the NSA headquarters is located. Her exact work is undisclosed, but likely involved monitoring telecommunications and Internet intercepts from Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan.

Winner was reportedly upset over the election of Donald Trump and had vented her outrage on Twitter as recently as mid-March. She had subscribed to a podcast from the Intercept where founder Glenn Greenwald expressed skepticism about US intelligence agency claims that the Russian government carried out the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clintons campaign chairman, John Podesta, in an effort to help Trump win the election.

The document Winner leaked adds nothing probative to the campaign waged by the Democratic Party and a section of the military-intelligence apparatus over alleged Russian hacking.

Like previous public findings by the intelligence agencies, released in October and January, the NSA document only summarizes conclusions reached by NSA analysts, with varying levels of confidence, but does not include any of the raw intelligence that would constitute actual evidence.

Nevertheless, the Intercepts article, co-written by Matthew Cole, Richard Esposito, Sam Biddle and Ryan Grim, begins with the provocative statement, Russian military intelligence executed a cyberattack on at least one U.S. voting software supplier and sent spear-phishing emails to more than 100 local election officials just days before last Novembers presidential election, according to the document.

The Intercept has published a number of articles in recent weeks generally supportive of the Democratic Partys Russia-centered campaign against the Trump administration.

The NSA document claims that Russian military intelligence probed a US vendor of software used by voter registration agencies in eight states, using a hacking method of little sophistication, to gain information needed to send spear-phishing emails to dozens of local election agencies, most of them at the county level.

These emails purported to come from the vendor, identified in press reports as VR Systems of Florida, and sought to trick employees of the election agencies to click on a word document infected with malware. How many such emails were successful was not clear.

The Intercept article, published June 5, acknowledges the absence of actual documentation to support the conclusions of the NSA analysis, adding, A U.S. intelligence officer who declined to be identified cautioned against drawing too big a conclusion from the document because a single analysis is not necessarily definitive.

The bulk of the article rehashes the unsupported assertions by the NSA while noting that none of the alleged hacking targeted facilities where votes were tabulated or had any effect on the outcome of the election. The eight states included California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, New York, North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia, but none of the three industrial states that gave Trump his Electoral College victory, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

In only one of the states using VR Systems software, North Carolina, was there any software malfunction on Election Day. The registration system failed in Durham, forcing local officials to switch to paper ballots and extend voting hours to accommodate long lines. State election officials said the VR Systems software was not responsible for the problems, which they attributed to user errors, adding that there was no evidence of any suspicious activity during the 2016 election.

While the substance of Winners leak seems less than compelling, the Democratic Party and pro-Democratic media outlets immediately seized on this supposed confirmation of the allegations of Russian hacking in the 2016 elections.

The ranking Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri, declared Tuesday that the report in the Intercept meant that we now have verified information of Russian intervention. In any other circumstances this would be an earthquake, she said at the beginning of a committee hearing where Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly was the main witness. McCaskill pressed Kelly to take steps to protect voting systems in the future.

WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange called for public support to Winner, saying that she was accused of courage in trying to help us know. He continued in a tweet Monday, It doesnt matter why she did it or the quality the report. Acts of non-elite sources communicating knowledge should be strongly encouraged.
Central areas of downtown Paris were put on lockdown yesterday after an attacker armed with a hammer lightly wounded a policeman outside Notre Dame cathedral. Policemen shot the attacker, critically wounding him and causing a panic around the cathedral, the second-most visited tourist site in France after Disneyland-Paris, as thousands of tourists scattered and ran.

Shortly before 4p.m. the attacker shouted, This is for Syria, before striking a policeman in the neck with a hammer. Another police officer drew his firearm and repeatedly shot him, wounding him in the chest and in the legs. The attacker, a 40-year-old man from the Kabylie region of Algeria living in the Val dOise region near Paris on a student visa, reportedly claimed to be a soldier of the caliphate. He also was carrying two kitchen knives, according to press reports.

I heard two gunshots then a huge sound from the crowd, said David, a resident of the area whose apartment has a view on the square in front of the cathedral. People began to run. There were about a hundred people on the square at that time. I could see a man on the ground, but the policemen did not look like they were that interested in him, as if there was something else more important going on. All of a sudden, loads of policemen with helmets and bullet-proof vests arrived.

The lightly wounded policeman and the attacker were both hospitalized, and the square was surrounded by police vehicles and cordoned off. Subway and regional rapid transit stations around the cathedral were shut down.

Some 900 tourists were trapped inside the cathedral and told to stay with their hands up. They were then made to answer detailed questions to see whether they were accomplices of the attacker, but all were ultimately released.

Late last night, investigators identified the attacker as Farid I., a doctoral student at the University of Lorraine at Metz, in eastern France. Police searched a studio at university housing in Cergy-Pontoise in the west suburbs of Paris where he had stayed and allegedly found a video with material from the Islamic State (IS) militia. Nevertheless, they concluded that he acted alone.

He was not an Islamist with a long beard, at all. He was more the coat and tie type, in the style of a schoolteacher. Hes the sort of person you could never suspect, a resident of university housing in Cergy-Pontoise told Le Parisien, adding that Farid I. looked totally normal.

Pierre Mutzenhardt, the president of the University of Lorraine, told France Bleu that he was working on a doctoral thesis at the Center for Research on Mediations (CREM) and exhibited no signs of suspect behavior. Mutzenhardt added, His thesis advisor is very surprised and cannot understand what has happened, he was working on journalism, on fairly open subjects, he had never shown signs of radicalization.

Farid I. was working on a thesis on new media, the Arab spring uprisings of 2011, and public opinion. He had also set up a translation firm whose legal address was at university housing in Cergy-Pontoise.

Well before the motives and connections of the attacker had been clearly established, President Emmanuel Macrons government seized on an assault in which one policeman was lightly wounded to again call for extending Frances state of emergency, which suspends basic democratic rights.

In an even more drastic attack on democratic rights, the Macron government is planning to end the state of emergency by passing a bill to permanently inscribe most of the emergency powers granted by the state of emergency into common law. It is also planning to set up an anti-IS task force that answers directly to the president.

Interior Minister Gerard Collomb announced that a previously planned Defense Council meeting of top security officials at the Elysee presidential palace today would discuss the Notre Dame attack: We will study the prolongation of the state of emergency and then the laws that would allow us after the end of the state of emergency to prevent this type of situation.

The Paris prosecutors office has launched an investigation led by the Anti-Terrorist Section (SAT) and the General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI). They are reportedly investigating whether Farid I.s statement that he was a soldier of the caliphate indicated that he was a member of the Algerian group Jund al-Khilafah fi Ard al-Jazair (Soldiers of the Caliphate in Algeria), which has sworn allegiance to IS.

The Macron governments reaction to this attack is a warning of the immense attacks on democratic rights and the clear danger of dictatorship that is emerging in France today.

IS has carried out a series of reactionary terror attacks in France and across Europe targeting innocent individuals. However, the state of emergency and the extraordinary powers it grants to police are not directed primarily at the Islamist terror networks transporting recruits and weapons from Europe to the Middle East, as part of the NATO war for regime change in Syria. These networks, involving thousands of people in France and tens of thousands across Europe, function with state protection, while the state of emergency is aimed at the working class.

Of the over 3,000 arbitrary searches and seizures aimed at Muslim families in working-class suburbs of Paris, only a handful have led to terrorism charges, while the hundreds of people forced into house arrest were largely protesters opposed to the Socialist Party (PS) governments anti-worker labor law.

Nor has Frances state of emergency, imposed after the 13 November 2015 attacks in Paris, stopped a range of Islamist terror attacks since then. The bloodiest was the 14 July 2016 attack in Nice where a truck was driven through a crowd gathered for Bastille Day fireworks, killing 86.

There can be little doubt that Macrons moves to permanently undermine basic democratic rights in France and turn it into a police state will not prevent further attacks by individuals more or less directly connected to IS or other terror groups spawned by NATO wars in the Middle East. Rather, it will be used to target opposition to Macrons planned agenda to slash social legislation and labor protections, while boosting military spending and re-instating the draft.
In a news article on Friday, June 2, the New York Times makes the jarring claim that US Secretary Betsy DeVos appointees are a stark departure from her reputation.

The leading publication of the liberal establishment suggests that the common perception that DeVos is an out-of-touch, evangelical billionaire without the desire or capacity to protect vulnerable poor, black, immigrant, gay or transgender students needs to be re-thought.

The article does not trouble itself to comment, even in a superficial way, on DeVos lifelong commitment to the destruction of public education, her promotion and protection of the charter and cybercharter industry, or her pledge to enact Trumps $20 billion school voucher plan. No mention is made of her support to the Acton Institute, which has advocated child labor, her hostility to the rights of special education children or her oft-stated belief that education is more properly administered by the church than under public education and secular laws.

No, it is not because of policy issues that writer Erica L. Green and the Times suddenly seem to find DeVos in touch. Instead, it has come to their attention that DeVos has hired a sexual assault survivor and gay woman, a progressive Democrat who believes a broken education system is a form of white supremacy and a second-generation Cuban man. Green draws the lesson that DeVos critics should hereafter focus more on her actions than their preconceptions.

The Times cites Michael J. Petrilli, the president of the pro-charter think tank Thomas B. Fordham Institute [funded by school privatization heavyweights the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Walton Foundation] to echo their analysis: Its definitely surprising, and should make people question their assumptions about this administration.

What may in fact be surprising to some readers is how quickly the Times has adapted itself to a more nuanced position on DeVos. This billet-doux to the Trump administration is another example of how the Democratic Party facilitates attacks on the working class under the reactionary cover of identity politics.

Greens article describes the appointment of Candice E. Jackson as acting head of the departments Office for Civil Rights as among the most hotly disputed. As the World Socialist Web Site has detailed, Jackson is an ultra-right-wing libertarian hostile to public education or any use of scarce resources for public programs like Social Security, subsidized housing, expensive health care, or costly colleges. Instead, government money should be entirely focused on addressing the imminent threat of terrorism and protecting us from foreign aggression, Jackson has declared.

There is no daylight, much less a stark departure, between the attitudes of Jackson and DeVos on education policy as the article claims. Jackson recently tweeted, True choice combined with fiscal federalism is the way up for American schools and is on our horizon thanks to POTUS Trump.

But from the Times, we learn about an entirely new side of the controversial appointee: What is less known about Ms. Jackson is that she is a sexual assault survivor, and has been married to her wife for more than a decade. Petrilli helpfully nudges the readers, This appointment should give folks on the left some comfort.

Next, the author sanitizes and flatters the resume of Jason Botel, the newly-appointed deputy assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education. While admitting that Botel is believed to be a major architect of the Trump education program, the Times emphasizes that he is a registered Democrat who supported President Barack Obama and has spent his career as an educator and an advocate for low-income minority children in Baltimore.

He, too, is portrayed as a diverse outlier. Botel was formerly employed by the pro-charter Gates-funded operation Teach For America. He then followed the well-trodden path to become a founder of a charter operation through the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP), the nations largest charter school network. Eventually he was named executive director of MarylandCAN, a division of the national pro-charter school and anti-teacher tenure lobbying group 50CAN. The latter was merged with former DC Chancellor of Education Michelle Rhees StudentsFirst and is supported by DeVos, the Fordham Institute, Charles Koch Foundation and the Cato Institute. Botel is a passionate supporter of the Black Lives Matter organization that is funded by, among others, the Ford Foundation.

Green cites Botels 2014 blog Black Minds Matter in which he claims that advocating for school choice was part of the effort to dismantle the white supremacist system that exists. This piece goes on to state, Of course, the subjugation of Black minds has been the way that our power structure has kept Black bodies under societys control. When Black bodies get out of our societys control, many Americans of all races experience fear. This experience of fear has been the legal justification for the slaughter of thousands of unarmed African American boys and men throughout our problematic history, up to the present day.

Another box ticked for the upper-middle-class identity politics crowd. Did the Times editor then suggest, Dont forget the Latino!?

Green delivers. She highlights the accomplishments of Jose A. Viana, named as an assistant deputy education secretary and director of the Office of English Language Acquisition, who was born in the US to Cuban parents. We learn that he spent eight years helping the children of migrant workersincluding undocumented immigrantsovercome academic barriers that resulted from frequent moves and a lack of access to essential services such as health care.

Not mentioned is the fact that the Viana family is high up in the Catholic hierarchy, his wife a former principal at several Catholic schools and recently named by the Bishop as head of the Secretariat for Lay Formation, Marriage, and Family Life. The Viana appointment dovetails with DeVos interest in utilizing vouchers to promote religious schools.

All in all, Green claims that DeVos appointments show the complexity of the intersection of identity politics and the fault lines of education reform, quoting Ethan Hutt, a professor of education at the University of Maryland. She concludes with Hutt, If nothing else, Betsy DeVos is an enigma.

What drivel! DeVos has been nothing if not consistent and unenigmatic. She has spent her entire life as a heavyweight funder of pro-charter school lobbying groups and as a spokesperson for privatization. Her 2015 SXSWedu speech summarizes it succinctly: We must open up the education industryand lets not kid ourselves that it isnt an industry. We must open it up to entrepreneurs and innovators...

What the Times now describes as complexity are the dirty machinations of the Democratic Party seeking to cover its tracks while it deepens its collaboration with Trumps domestic agenda. While they cite amorphous terms like the fault lines of education reform to try to muddy the issues, it is a fact that the education landscape is fractured by the rationing of schooling along class lines, with a not-insubstantial layer of rich businessmen salivating over the its complete breakup.

These lines intersect with identity politics to the extent that there is a competitive battle between groups of self-interested identities, i.e., minority and women business owners, who are positioning themselves for the division of the spoils.

It becomes clear that the New York Times, representing a significant segment of the financial elite, supports a pro-privatization agenda. Nonetheless, it is grateful when this unpopular narrative can be spun as racial or gender-based. The right-wing trajectory of this thinking was on display the following day, as the Times featured a front-page article celebrating a black graduation ceremony at Harvard University, noting that such self-segregated events along race and gender-identity lines are becoming more popular.

Racialism and all manner of divisions are being promoted at the highest levels of government to undermine the development of a growing class consciousness and divide the working class. It is not for nothing that masses of people have experienced the first black president and his eight years of crimes against humanityexpanding wars and social counterrevolution at home, not the least of which was his school privatization agenda and draconian budget cuts to education. While the Times makes clear that there is no limit to the anti-democratic use of identity politics by the phony left, such reactionary diversions are aimed at a very narrow strata and are already wearing quite thin.

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Ultra-right libertarian to run the US Education Office of Civil Rights

[18 April 2017]



Study shows massive growth of political abstention in 2016 US election

[03 June 2017]

Why did Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party lose the 2016 election?

[03 May 2017]
Britain goes to the polls tomorrow at the end of an election campaign like no other. In the space of a few weeks, a predicted Conservative landslide has given way to speculation about a reduced majority, a hung parliament or even a Labour victory.

Two brutal terror attacks have claimed dozens of lives and maimed many more. Armed police patrol the streets in large numbers. The army was despatched to key strategic locations under secretive emergency measures.

Prime Minister Theresa May called the snap poll because the financial oligarchy and the military-intelligence apparatus she serves decided they could not afford to wait two years until the next scheduled election, as they would be in the midst of major political and social convulsions. It has turned out that they could barely afford to wait two months.

May had hoped to utilise the internal warfare in the Labour Party and a savage media campaign against Jeremy Corbyn to secure a de facto parliamentary dictatorship and impose an agenda of stepped-up austerity and military intervention in Syria and elsewhere. Instead, the election campaign has seen an outpouring of hatred of the Tories and all they stand for from workers and young people, who have rallied in support of Corbyn and his promise to end austerity.

Mays disgusting attempt to capitalise on the terror outrages has blown up in her face. Overwhelming evidence that MI5 and the police knew Manchester bomber Salman Abedi and at least two of the three London killers is proof that numerous Islamists are protected assets to be used as proxy forces in the wars waged by Britain alongside the United States in Libya, Iraq and Syria.

The hard Brexit threats on which she staked her future have instead alienated large sections of big business and the City of London. Estimates that post-Brexit trade with the European Union may fall by 40 percent, and foreign investment by 20 percent, have led to warnings of a financial disaster.

Her plan to rely on the Trump administration to force the hand of Germany, France and other EU states has had the opposite effect. The response of Germanys Angela Merkel to Trumps America First threats was to declare that the US and post-Brexit Britain were no longer to be trusted as allies. In the face of the growing global tensions between the US and Europe, Britains entire foreign policy strategy of resting on US military and economic power to magnify its own influence has collapsed.

However, the brutal truth is that a Corbyn-led Labour government offers no genuine alternative to the austerity, militarism and war policies of May.

Millions of workers want to see the back of the Tories and are ready to excuse Corbyns constant retreats before the Blairites in his party, hoping that he will honour his commitments to defend the National Health Service, raise the minimum wage and build new homes. But his manifestos efforts to marry minimal social reforms to an acceptance of the militarist agenda of British imperialism is a circle that cannot be squared.

Britain is being destabilised economically, politically and socially as world capitalism descends into its deepest crisis since the end of World War IIone that is reproducing all the horrors of fascism and war associated with the first half of the 20th century. The attempt to ensure Britains global competitiveness under conditions of trade war and military conflict demands an escalation of the destruction of jobs, wages and essential services.

This is deepening the gulf between the working class and the super-rich to the point of a social explosion. The clash of interests between the oligarchy and the working class is so acute that it cannot be reconciled through Corbyns appeal for fairness ... for the many not the few. Rather, Labours nationalist policy of creating a form of industrial patriotism through government working in partnership with business and trade unions is a means of subordinating workers to the trade war agenda pursued by May at the cost of their own jobs and living standards.

It is now almost two years since Corbyn was elected party leader thanks to hundreds of thousands flooding into the Labour Party with the aim of pushing it leftwards. Instead, it is Corbyn who has shifted ever further to the right.

His opposition to driving out the right-wing MPs who sought his removal, agreeing to free votes on military action in Syria and the renewal of Trident nuclear weapons, and then incorporating these retreats into his manifesto, all point to the real role a Labour government under his leadership will play.

A stark warning must be taken from how Corbyn has reacted to the terror attacks in Manchester and London.

The Conservatives are seeking to use the attacks to win the election by reinforcing their efforts to portray Corbyn as soft on terrorism and a threat to national security, based on his previous statements criticising NATO and his refusal to state categorically that he will authorise the use of nuclear weapons. They are preparing a sharp turn to state repression after June 8.

Mays four-point strategy for fighting terrorismincluding Internet censorship and policing measures to eliminate safe spaces for extremism in the public sectorwill be used to clamp down on political discontent, alongside existing measures to further limit the right to strike. Its authoritarian core was epitomised by her declaration: And if human rights laws stop us from doing it, we will change those laws so we can do it.

She also used her speech on the London attacks to reaffirm her pledge of stepped-up military intervention in Iraq and Syria.

Corbyn remains silent on all of this. Instead of explaining that the terror attacks are blowback from British imperialisms criminal interventions in the Middle East, he has chosen to denounce May for cutting police numbers, while declaring his own readiness to do whatever it takes in the fight against terrorism.

In this way, he is positioning himself as the candidate not of social change, but of law and order. His promissory note to the ruling elite that they have nothing to fear from his government means that his left rhetoric has barely survived an election campaign, let alone Labour taking office.

Britains pseudo-left groups have all sought to overcome workers deep mistrust of the Labour Party by exploiting popular illusions in Corbyn as an individual. The Socialist Workers Party writes, We dont support those who have repeatedly tried to shift Labour rightwards. But the only way to show support for Corbyn is to vote for all the Labour candidates. The Socialist Party avoids all mention of Labour and simply calls For a Corbyn-led government.

Events have confirmed the insistence of the Socialist Equality Party that the Labour Party cannot be changed by installing a new leader. Labour today is the same party it was under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

Whatever the outcome on June 8, the British working class, like its brothers and sisters throughout the world, faces a life and death struggle against the descent into social and political reaction and the ever-growing danger of war. The only way forward is through the adoption of a new, revolutionary socialist and internationalist perspective. The task placed before the most advanced workers and youth is to join the SEP and build it as the new leadership of the working class.
By Press Trust of India: By Yoshita Singh

United Nations, Jun 6 (PTI) UN chief Antonio Guterres has warned that the state of the oceans will continue to deteriorate unless nations overcome short-term territorial and resource interests.

"Improving the health of our oceans is a test for multilateralism, and we cannot afford to fail," Secretary- General Guterres said, addressing the first UN conference on the health of the oceans and seas.

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"We must jointly address the problems of governance that have held us back," he said, calling for a new strategic vision on how to govern oceans and marine resources.

The Ocean Conference opened at the UN headquarters yesterday. Protecting the oceans is among the main objectives of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and conserving and sustainably using marine resources is the springboard for the Ocean Conference, taking place from June 5 to 9.

Guterres said one of the main challenges is to end "the artificial dichotomy" between jobs and healthy oceans: "The conservation and sustainable use of marine resources are two sides of the same coin".

He called for strong political leadership and new partnerships, based on the existing legal framework, and concrete steps, such as expanding marine protected areas and reducing plastic waste pollution.

"I call on all member states to engage in the dialogue necessary to define a new model for the future governance of our oceans. Unless we overcome the territorial and resource interests that have blocked progress for far too long, the state of our oceans will continue to deteriorate. We must put aside short-term national gain to prevent long-term global catastrophe," he said while addressing his first major UN conference since taking on his post.

Among other specific actions, Guterres urged governments to allocate the promised funding for the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, the Paris Agreement on climate change and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda, as well as improving data collection and sharing their best experiences.

These works are supported by the UN, he added, which among its work, is building partnerships with governments, the private sector, civil society and others, and working with international financial institutions to allocate resources.

Addressing the thousands of participants, including heads of State and Government, civil society representatives, business people, as well as actors, and ocean and marine life advocates, President of the General Assembly Peter Thomson said the "time has come for us to correct our wrongful ways".

Thomson, who hails from the island of Fiji, which is co- hosting the event alongside Sweden, spoke out against "inexcusable" actions, such as dumping the equivalent of one large garbage truck of plastic into the oceans every minute of every day, driving fish stocks to the points of collapse, and destroying marine life through acidification and deoxygenation.

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"We are here on behalf of humanity to restore sustainability, balance and respect to our relationship with our primal mother, the source of life, the Ocean," he noted.

Secretary-General of The Ocean Conference Wu Hongbo pointed out that without oceans and seas, where would be no life on the planet.

Wu, who is also the Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, noted that everyone must work together ? not in silos ? to achieve the goals of the Conference.

The Ocean Conference, which runs through Friday, focuses on the targets outlined in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by Governments in 2015. In particular among the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Goal 14 highlights the need to conserve and sustainably use oceans, seas and marine resources to benefit present and future generations. PTI YAS UZM

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Veronika Mendoza, the former presidential candidate for the coalition of Peruvian pseudo-left movements known as the Broad Front of the Left (Frente Amplio de Izquierda, FA), has officially undertaken, along with her allies, the formation of a new political party. Public speeches on the new partys proposed political agenda, the record of the policies backed by its promoters and the bitter infighting inside FA have exposed its bluntly pro-capitalist and fraudulent left character.

Mendoza, a 36-year-old French-based psychologist, began her career in politics during the last decade as a functionary within the Peruvian Nationalist Party (PNP), a political vehicle for the aspirations of Ollanta Humala, a former military officer who espoused bourgeois nationalist views similar to those of the late Hugo Chavez.

Humala won the presidency in 2011in large part because of his nationalist posturing and phony promises of undoing the worst aspects of the neoliberal system sustained since the 1990sand Mendoza was elected as a congressional representative for the region of Cuzco, where she was born.

In 2012, after Humala exposed the real class character of his government by imposing martial law and killing scores of protesters demonstrating against environmental damage inflicted by giant mining multinationals in the region of Cajamarca and the province of Espinar in Cuzco, Mendoza resigned from the PNP. She made an alliance with a right-wing party to form a congressional caucus with other former PNP members, becoming the most visible face of the opposition to Humala from the left.

FA was established in 2013 through an opportunistic alliance of assorted pseudo-left, Stalinist and ecological parties and movements designed to fill the political void left by the Humala government steady turn to the right. The partys manifesto consisted of a list of bourgeois reformist and state interventionist measures that are wholly impossible to achieve outside of a working class mobilization.

Two years later, Mendoza was picked as the FAs presidential candidate for the 2016 elections through an internal election process marked by accusations of voter fraud by FA officials aimed at blocking a victory by Marco Arana. Leader of the ecological party Land and Liberty (Tierra y Libertad, TyL), and an ecological activist, Arana had gained a national reputation for his role as one of the leaders of the mobilization in Cajamarca against a US-backed mining project.

In an expression of national dissatisfaction with the political establishment, the 2016 vote saw decades-old parties eliminated in the first round. Mendozawith Arana as her running mateended up in third place behind right-wingers Keiko Fujimori (Fuerza Popular) and Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (Peruanos Por el Kambio).

In a signal to Perus ruling class that the FA was a reliable partner and had no intention of providing the working class any alternative to bourgeois politics, Mendoza publicly endorsed Kuczynski (simply known as PPK) for the run-off, declaring that, while both candidates were equally neoliberal, the return of fujimorismo would bring an authoritarian narco-estate. Tens of thousands of workers and young people who despised Fujimori, the daughter of president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) who is now jailed for extrajudicial killings and corruption, were lured to vote for PPK on the basis of the bankrupt claim that he represented the lesser evil. In the end, the FAs support for PPK proved crucial, as the former Wall Street banker surpassed Fujimori by just 41,438 votes.

The FA also managed to win 20 congressional seatsthe second largest legislative bloc after Fuerza Popularwith Arana becoming the spokesman for the FA caucus. They pledged to act as a democratic and non-obstructionist opposition that would support the new governments good policies. Arana also declared that he would abandon his critical and confrontational stand against the transnational mining companies if they respect the rights of the people.

With Mendoza and her closest allies inside FA feeling emboldened after achieving the best electoral results for the Peruvian left in three decades, and Mendoza, in particular, having become a well-known figure, they have resolved to leave the FA coalition behind and launch a new party that would serve better their purposes.

The formation of New Peru (NP) was announced on November 17 at a public conference by Mendoza and her allies from the FA in Cuzco. The main proposals advanced at the conference were a new constitution and the building of their new party as an alternative to traditional politics. They are to begin collecting signatures for their inscription as an official electoral party at the end of the month.

The announcement led dozens of members from small movements inside the FA coalition to leave and join NP, including more than 40 individuals from TyL. This was deemed a betrayal by many TyL members, since Aranas party served as the coalitions backbone as it was the only one that was officially registered.

TyL congressman Jorge Castro sharply criticized Mendoza and her clique for using the FA coalition as a platform for their own personal interests. NP wants to destroy the FA coalition and over its corpse build their own party. We are not going to allow it, he said.

He added that members of the FA caucus who sympathize with NP have started to act and vote in Congress under the name of New Peru, exposing the fact that the FA caucus has broken into two factions: one still aligned to the FA, and specially to Arana, and the other to Mendoza and her new project.

In the sharpening of this factional conflict, Arana summoned a meeting of the FAs ruling committeewithout telling Mendoza alliesin order to create a new leadership and expel those aligned with Mendoza. NP and Mendoza supporters rushed to the meeting and a fistfight reportedly ensued between the rival camps. In a barely disguised response to the launching of the NP, Aranas followers issued a statement declaring that the FA coalition is not collecting signatures to become a new party.

The factional infighting reached congress in May of this year when FA withdrew its congressman Richard Arce from the Congressional Ethics Commission. The move came after Arce abstained on a proposal to subject Arana to an investigation as an alleged terrorism apologist for questioning an act of Congress honoring the military squad that stormed the Japanese Embassy in 1997, summarily executing members of the MRTA guerrilla group that had taken hostages there.

The NP faction denounced Arces expulsion as an act ordered by Arana without a majority vote.

It would be wrong to see the source of the increasingly bitter conflicts within the FA as merely a power struggle over who will either control the coalition or break it apart.

Arana is a longtime ecological activist whose real aim during the periods of conflicts and unrest in the Andean region of Cajamarca (the region hit most severely by the extractive operations of the transnational mining corporations) was to contain and defuse the tide of working class mobilization and divert it through the FA towards the dead end of bourgeois politics.

The continuous lurch to the right by Mendoza and her clique through the formation of the NP cuts across Aranas efforts to posture before the working class and youth as a radical leader to whom they can turn to in times of upheaval. Their deals and alliances with the right threaten to discredit his reputation and jeopardize his effectiveness as a buffer for bourgeois rule in Peru.

In an indication of the extent to which Mendoza and her allies are prepared to move to the rightand a symptom as well of their failure to receive popular support for their venturethey are reportedly in talks with former prime minister Yehude Simon and his Partido Humanista. That Simon served as Alan Garcias PM during his second right- wing and corrupt government (2006-2011) and had a key role in the so-called Baguazo massacre of dozens of indigenous people protesting the granting of their lands without consultation to foreign companies, appears to be no obstacle for Mendoza and her supporters.

Perus ruling establishment has made its attitude toward the shakeup within the FA clear. While not officially endorsing Mendoza, the bourgeois media has weighed in with continuous denunciations of Arana as a dangerous extremist.

Summarizing the whole fraudulent character of the FA coalition, its member Lenin Valencia wrote in a recent article about the coalitions ongoing crisis: I remember how many inside the FA felt relieved after we didnt get elected in the run-off, because we lacked the capacity to mobilize the politicized citizenry (emphasis added) and the right wing would mop the floor with us the moment we took office.

In fact, there is no shortage of workers and youth in Peru willing to fight against the grinding oppression and exploitation of Peruvian and international capital. Rather the supposed incapacity to mobilize this force is rooted in the class orientation of the so-called lefts, which is not to the working class and oppressed, but rather to privileged layers of the middle class. They base themselves not on the class struggle, but on their connections with the parties and institutions of the Peruvian bourgeoisie and various international non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

In the end, the rival factions of the FA are in conflict over the best political means to block the revolutionary mobilization of the working class and provide a left prop to the discredited capitalist setup in Peru.
The Scottish National Party (SNP) is likely to emerge as the largest party in Scotland following the June 8 UK general election.

Its 48-page manifesto, Stronger for Scotland, emphasises the party's role as responsible Westminster parliamentarians, advocates of fiscal prudence, austerity, support for Scottish-based capitalism, increased arms spending and retention of European Union (EU) Single Market access.

To make clear the partys bona-fides to big business, SNP leader and Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon hailed her commitment to balance the UK budget for day to day spending, return the deficit to its pre-crash average and set debt on a downward path.

In conditions of deep economic crisis and unprecedented geo-political instability, Sturgeon and the SNP are signaling that, like Labour and the ruling Conservatives, they are committed to enforcing whatever is required to sustain capitalism in Britain. The party commits at length to defend Scottish sectoral business interests, including the oil and gas industry, food and drink industry, the large banking sector, and demands "fresh support for businesses to grow and to boost productivity.

What few social promises the SNP includes in the manifesto are tied to demands for extended powers for the Scottish parliament. For example, referring to what remains of Britain's social security system, the manifesto states that "SNP MPs will continue to call for the Scottish Parliament to have full control over all social security benefits... "

The SNP posture as opponents of the Tories, but make no mention of the extent to which the SNP has, year after year, enforced all the local government spending cuts required of them by Westminster.

To the extent it has differences with Labour and the Tories, these are over Britains exiting the European Union which is placed at the centre of the demand for a second referendum on Scottish independence.

In the immediate aftermath of the June 23, 2016 Brexit vote, the SNP had anticipated that the 63 percent majority recorded in Scotland to remain in the EU--the reverse and more of the result across the UK--would translate into increased support for an early second referendum on independence. The party seized on the result to threaten another independence vote as a tool to extract Single Market access or some form of continued EU associate membership for Scotland from the government of Prime Minister Theresa May.

But May offered no concessions to the SNP, while last month's local government elections saw the Tories win over 150 seats--primarily by exploiting opposition to independence among sections of workers. Chastened, the SNP have downplayed talk of another independence poll, support for which has not increased since 2014. The SNP manifesto states, "a vote for the SNP is a vote to reinforce the Scottish Parliaments right to decide when an independence referendum should happen." This should be "at the end of the Brexit process, when the final terms of the deal are known..."

In the meantime, events have moved on. During the Brexit referendum campaign, the SNP was central to efforts to create a "progressive alliance" of pro-EU forces. However, SNP overtures were rebuffed by Labour, which opposes Scottish independence and is anxious to stem the hemorrhage of its support in Scotland and to avoid being portrayed as a threat to the survival of the UK.

Due to the revival of Labours electoral prospects under Jeremy Corbyn, however, the possibility of a hung parliament and Labour therefore being able to command a parliamentary majority with the SNP's 50 or so Scottish MPs in tow, has re-emerged. A Survation poll published Sunday found that support for Labour in Scotland was up eight points, to 25 percent, from a similar poll on April 23. The SNP stood at 40 percent, down three points, with the Tories at 27 percent.

Sturgeon told Andrew Neil of the BBC recently, "If there was to be a hung parliament, of course we would look to be part of a progressive alliance that pursued progressive policies." She offered to take another independence referendum off the table, if only Scotland were able to remain part of the Single Market. "I'm very aware there are many people in Scotland who don't want independence, but don't want to leave the EU either, she said.

Corbyn has said he will not form alliances with other parties should Labour form a minority governmentfearful that not to do so would open him to attacks by May of being the head of a coalition of chaos.

Introducing Labour's Scottish manifesto Corbyn wrote, "Labour is opposed to independence because it would inflict turbo-charged austerity on the Scottish people." The manifesto also opposes another referendum as "unwanted and unnecessary."

But he is keeping his options open. Quizzed by the press on whether he would allow a new referendum after Brexit negotiations were complete, Corbyn replied, If the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish people want a referendum, they have the right to do that. He also refused to rule out a "confidence and supply" arrangement with the SNP, under which the SNP would support Labour in power on an issue by issue basis.

The prospect of any form of alliance between Labour and the SNP has caused the Scottish pseudo-left some consternation. All of them, despite their co-thinkers in England and Wales supporting Corbyn's Labour Party, continue to support the SNP while acting as sterner advocates of Scottish independence.

They view the broad support for Corbyn in the working class, and his warning of "turbo-charged austerity," as an indication, however distorted, of workers placing social and class issues above national identity. They all claim that Scottish independence is a means of fighting for social change by liberating Scotland from the austerity dictates of rule from London. But their real concern is for the lucrative positions they have secured and want to extend in the numerous devolved power arrangements in the public sector, the arts, the trade unions and in the Holyrood parliament.

They seek this last goal not as an independent force, but as loyal propagandists for the SNP. However, this is becoming more difficult due to the SNPs exposure in government as a right-wing big business party. To this end, the pseudo-left groups have attacked Corbyn, not for his systematic capitulation before Labour's right wing, but because of his opposition to Scottish independence.

The Socialist Workers Party wrote, "Labours manifesto includes several radical proposals to tax the rich, start renationalisation, and give workers greater rights. Its a refreshing shift from the era of Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband. But Labour also opposes a new independence referendum. If one were held it would continue to argue for the Union, a repeat of the disastrous policy of 2014 which saw it aligning with the Tories to save the British state.

They go on, "We call on our readers to vote Left in every constituencyto choose the candidate who is best able to carry forward the fight against austerity and racism and for independence." Since only the SNP support independence, this is a shame-faced call for an SNP vote.

The Scottish Socialist Party has spent the election campaign advising the SNP on how best to fight for independence and be convincing as an anti-Tory party. It began by calling on the SNP to put Independence at the heart of its General Election manifesto, warning that a failure to do so was misleadership of the Independence movement.

They ended this week by complaining belatedly, By no stretch of the imagination can the SNPs manifesto be said to be to the Left of Labours.
On Monday, a former employee returned to his prior workplace in Orlando, Florida and fatally shot five people before turning the gun on himself.

John Robert Neumann, Jr., 45, an army veteran, entered the Fiamma Inc. building at about 8 a.m. and opened fire, apparently singling out his victims.

Mondays deadly rampage came a week before the city marks one year since the Pulse nightclub massacre, when a lone gunman shot and killed 49 people and wounded 53 others before he was killed by police in a shootout.

Orange County deputies arrived on the scene minutes after a 911 call came in at 8:03 a.m. about an active shooting at Fiamma, a business employing less than a dozen workers that manufactures awnings and accessories for recreational vehicles. Fiamma is located in an industrial area northeast of downtown Orlando, which includes textile companies, body shops, kitchen equipment suppliers and other small businesses.

When police arrived on the scene Monday they found four people dead. A fifth person was rushed to a hospital, where he died. The victims were Kevin Clark, 53; Jeffrey Roberts, 57; Robert Snyder, 69; Brenda Montanez-Crespo, 44; and Kevin Lawson, 46. Most of the victims were shot in the head, Orange County Sheriff Jerry L. Demings reported at a press conference. Some were shot multiple times.

Neumann entered through a rear door of the building, apparently knowing it was likely unlocked. He methodically sought out his victims, according to one witness who said she was told by the shooter to leave the building and escaped unharmed. Neumann was armed with a semiautomatic handgun, a large hunting knife and possibly some smaller knives, according to police. He roamed the building in search of his victims, reloading his gun at least once.

Neumanns body was found at the scene, killed in an apparent suicide. He had been fired from his job at Fiamma in April. The Sheriffs Office had also responded to the business in 2014, when Neumann allegedly battered an employee. There were no charges filed at the time and that employee was not one of those killed Monday.

Clarks wife died in 2008 and he leaves behind two children, 14 and 18, according to the Orlando Sentinel. He lived in a single-wide trailer in the Lake of the Woods mobile home complex in Seminole County, north of Orlando.

By Monday evening, deputies and US Marshals surrounded Neumanns home, armed and wearing tactical gear, peering with flashlights through windows before going inside to search. Shortly before 8 p.m. authorities loaded up evidence from the home, including stacks of paper and other items in large envelopes, according to the Sentinel.

Sheriff Demings described Neumann as a disgruntled employee who had a negative relationship with at least one of the victims. He was honorably discharged from the US Army in 1999. He had criminal history that included driving under the influence and a minor drug possession charge.

As with other such shootings, what specifically led to Neumanns actions on Monday was likely a complex intersection of psychological, economic and other social factors. What is clear is that such horrific shootings have become a common occurrence in 21st century America.

The Orlando incident was the deadliest single act of workplace violence since the San Bernardino, California attack in December 2015 that left 14 dead, according to Kathleen Bonczyk, a researcher who focuses on workplace violence. She told the Orlando Sentinel that there have been 150 employee-on-employee killings since 2010.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 417 homicides at workplaces across the country in 2015. Of these, 354 were shootings, a 15 percent increase over the previous year, and the first time the number of shootings had increased since 2012. Bonczyk told the Sentinel, There used to be a time when an employee shooting someone in the workplace would be a shock. Now its becoming common.

The rash of shootings has spawned an industry in workplace security, advising companies on how to defend their management and workforces and against angry, mentally unbalanced or violent workers and former employees. One such firm is TAL Global, which describes itself as an international security consulting and risk management firm that specializes in providing expert Protection, Prevention and Security services.

TAL offers its clients Threat Assessment Investigations to protect themselves against workplace violence (WPV) events. Unfortunately, WPV incidents are on the rise, the firm writes on its web site. Many times, these incidents are driven by cultural, economic, social and psychological triggers such as mental illness, drug use, economic hardship, domestic conflicts, communication problems, actual or perceived sense of injustice in the workplace, and even traumatic family events (e.g., death, illness and injury).

While citing these very real social ills as triggers for workplace violence, however, these firms offer no solutions to these problems aside from beefing up security. They recommend screening employees for behavioral problems, including such red flags as financial difficulties, family disputes and substance abuse problemsissues that plague the vast majority of working class families in one form or another.

But it is the growing social crisis in the USmarked by massive economic inequality, unemployment, growing poverty and vastly inadequate social servicesthat is driving a small but significant number of workers to lash out violently against their employers and fellow workers.

The role of the military, both in promoting a culture of violence and in destroying the mental and physical state of those sent to fight US imperialisms wars, is also a key factor in workplace shootings.

While there are no statistics to show that veterans are more likely to be responsible for workplace and other shooting incidents, since 2009 there have now been nine times that a veteran of the post-9/11 war era has unleashed a shooting spree. One such case was another incident in Florida, on January 6, when Esteban Santiago gunned down five people at the Fort Lauderdale airport.

Santiago served nearly a decade in the military. After serving in the Puerto Rico National Guard and the Army Reserve, he was deployed to Iraq from April 2010 to February 2011 as a combat engineer. While in Iraq, he witnessed the deaths of two soldiers in his unit killed by a roadside bomb. Santiagos relatives say that the war transformed him, beginning his descent into mental illness.

The following is a timeline of mass shootings carried out by post-9/11 veterans since 2009:

November 5, 2009: Major Nadal Malik Hasan, 39, an army psychiatrist, killed 13 when he went on a rampage at Fort Hood, Texas.

March 11, 2012: US Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales killed 16 Afghan villagers, including nine children, in a pre-dawn attack in southern Kandahar Province.

September 17, 2013: Aaron Alexis, 34, a civilian defense contractor and former Navy reservist, killed 12 in a shooting rampage inside a building at the Washington Navy Yard.

April 2, 2014: Ivan Lopez, 34, army specialist and Iraq war veteran, killed three people and wounded 16 at the Fort Hood military base in Texas.

May 29, 2016: Dionisio Garza III, 25, an army veteran from California, killed one person and injured several others in a shooting rampage at a Houston auto detail shop.

July 7, 2016: Micah Johnson, 25, an army veteran who had served in Afghanistan, ambushed and killed five police officers in Dallas.

July 17, 2016: Gavin Long, 29, a former Marine and Iraq war veteran, killed three police officers in Louisiana.

January 6, 2017: Esteban Santiago, 26, a former combat engineer in Iraq, killed five people at the Fort Lauderdale, Florida, airport.

June 5, 2017: John Robert Neumann, Jr., 45, an army veteran, killed five people at Fiamma Inc., an RV accessory business in Orlando, Florida.
Twice in less than a week, Australians political and media establishment has inflated events involving mentally disturbed young men into major terrorist attacks.

Last Wednesday night saw the extraordinary police handling of an incident involving a mentally ill trainee chef on a Malaysia Airlines flight from Melbourne airport. It generated media headlines and images of para-military police, toting semi-automatic rifles and wearing helmets and body armour, storming the plane. Police later conceded that the mans actions were not terrorist-related at all.

This Monday, the terrorist scare campaign intensified when a deranged and drug-addicted former Somali refugee killed a man and took a hostage in the Melbourne suburb of Brighton. Before any of the facts were known, the media and the federal and state governments declared that his actions were a terrorist attack, even though Yacqub Khayre phoned a TV station to claim to be acting for both Al Qaeda and Islamic State, two rival organisations that are at war with each other. About 20 minutes later, Khayre was shot and killed by police commandos.

Over the past 24 hours, information has emerged further contradicting the depiction of Khayre as a terrorist. Instead, while many questions remain unanswered, the evidence points to a deeply troubled young man with a long history of ice addiction and alcohol abuse, being preyed upon by both Islamic fundamentalists and police-intelligence agencies, which targeted him as a potential undercover informant.

Khayre, who arrived in Australia as a child in 1991, fleeing the conflict in Somalia, had been known to the police since at least 2007. As a 19-year-old, he was convicted of more than 40 offences including burglary, aggravated burglary, theft, unlawful assault and drug possession. Later that year, he was convicted of armed robbery offences while on bail. Altogether, he was sentenced to three years jail, but the prison terms were suspended and he was released on probation in unclear circumstances.

Less than two years later, Khayre was charged with involvement in an alleged conspiracy to make a futile suicide attack on the Holsworthy army base in Sydney. He was held in a super-maximum security prison, often in solitary confinement, between August 2009 and December 2010, only to be acquitted by a jury. According to the evidence at the trial, the plot was concocted by a police undercover agent who entrapped a number of young men. Three of the accused were convicted and sentenced to 18 years imprisonment, but Khayre was found not guilty by the jury. It became clear that he had fled Somalia after supposedly being sent back there to seek an Islamic fatwah for the attack.

Secret US diplomatic cables previously published by WikiLeaks demonstrate that in August 2009, senior Australian Federal Police (AFP) and Victorian state police officers proposed grooming Khayre, while in prison, as a police informant to generate more terrorism cases.

In an assessment provided to Michael Thurston, the US consul-general in Melbourne, two senior officers, AFP counter-terrorism coordinator Damien Appleby and Victoria Police detective inspector Andrew Gutske, characterised Khayre as a weakling who struggled with the harsh day-to-day life in Somalia... The AFP believes that Khayre may be turned while in prison to serve as an informant in related cases.

Throughout the media barrage over the past day about the terrorist threat, no explanation has been provided for this briefing of the US consulate, nor for the proposed grooming. There has been no statement that Khayres recruitment did not proceed.

Reportedly, however, Khayre was placed in a prison deradicalisation program in 2009. These programs, run by the police and Islamic clerics, are another means of enlisting informants, who can be threatened with further prosecution if they fail to cooperate.

It seems that Khayres incarceration worsened his drug and mental health problems. In 2012, he was arrested during an ice-affected violent home invasion. He pleaded guilty to aggravated burglary, theft, intentionally causing injury, recklessly causing injury and giving a false name, and was sentenced to five years in prison, with a non-parole period of three years.

That non-parole period was later extended until last November because Khayre twice, in 2014 and 2015, tried to set prison facilities alight.

Despite the obvious questions raised by the attempted police cultivation of Khayre, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, the police-intelligence authorities and the corporate media have flooded the airways with sensationalist declarations of heightened terrorist dangers and called for yet more expansions of police powers and resources.

Turnbull, who heads a fragile and unstable government, has been particularly aggressive. He demanded to know why Khayre was on parole and outlined draconian proposals that could mean barring parole to anyone vaguely accused of having a terrorist background or violent record.

The prime minister called a media conference yesterday morning, flanked by Acting AFP Commissioner Mike Phelan, to immediately link Khayres actions to the latest attacks in London, where evidence has also emerged that the British security agencies were well aware of the activities of the perpetrators.

Seeking to stampede public opinion, Turnbull declared: The events in Brighton in Melbourne last night, coming so soon after the attack in London, have shocked all Australians. This terrorist attack by a known criminal, a man who was only recently released on parole, is a shocking, cowardly crime and it underlines the need for us to be constantly vigilant, never to be deterred, always defiant, in the face of Islamist terrorism.

As well as insisting on unprecedented parole laws, Turnbull called on state premiers and territory chief ministers, who are due to meet Friday, to further boost police powers. He boasted that he secured their support last year for a post-sentence detention regime, whereby prisoners convicted of serious offences can be kept in prison, potentially for life, even after their sentences have expired.

This legislation, which went through the federal parliament last December with Labors backing, was part of the eighth package of anti-terrorism laws imposed since 2014, mostly since Turnbull ousted Tony Abbott as prime minister in September 2015. That was on top of more than 60 laws introduced under the banner of the war on terrorism by Coalition and Labor governments since 2002. Turnbulls government is about to go further, releasing a report advocating greater powers to call out the military to deal with domestic violence.

At his media conference, Turnbull also sought to drum up public support for expanding Australias protracted military involvement in the US-led wars in the Middle East, which have killed millions of people, devastated entire societies and created the breeding grounds for Islamic fundamentalists to recruit disturbed and disaffected young people around the world.

In the field, the Australian Defence Force is taking the fight up to and destroying ISIL with our allies and partners, Turnbull asserted.

This is a bipartisan offensive. Victorian Labor Premier Daniel Andrews declared yesterday he would give the police chiefs whatever extra resources they requested. Already last December, his government announced it would boost police numbers by 20 percent, or 3,100 police officers, in the next four years. At the same time, it introduced legislation to ban parole for people convicted of serious crimes. Yesterday, Andrews bragged of having the toughest parole laws in the country, but Turnbull still insisted they were too weak.

Like their counterparts in Britain, across Europe and in the US, Liberal-National and Labor governments alike are seizing on alleged terrorist attacks to justify erecting a police state framework in the face of the rising class tensions generated by widening inequality and attacks on welfare, essential social programs and working class living standards.

These measures are accompanied by the intensified witch-hunting of Muslims, to divide the working class along communal and ethnic lines and create the ideological conditions for escalating Australian participation in the catastrophic wars provoked by the US in the Middle East.
By Press Trust of India: By H S Rao

London, Jun 7 (PTI) The uncle of the Pakistani-origin ringleader of the London Bridge terror attack in the United Kingdom that killed seven people has condemned the horrific massacre, saying he was ashamed of his nephew.

Breaking down in tears, Nasir Dar said he felt like the victims were his family, British media reports said.

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Dar blasted his 27-year-old nephew, Khuram Butt, over his involvement in the sickening terror attack and said he could not understand why he slaughtered seven innocent people.

DenouncingButts extremist ideologies, Dar said: "No religion of the world allows to do this shameful, brutal action."

Butt was one of three terrorists who drove a van through pedestrians on London Bridge before getting out of the vehicle and launching a knife attack in Borough Market on Saturday.

He said his extremist nephew had only visited Pakistan twice, but that he had noticed a change in the young man.

He said: "When he came he was wearing shalwar kameez (a traditional outfit), he started offering prayers. (He was) very punctual in prayers and he had a beard also.

"Before that these symptoms were not found in him."

Butt was gunned down by police just minutes into the massacre on Saturday night, withthe bodies of fellow jihadis Rachid Redouane and Youssef Zaghbaalso seen dead on the pavement after being hit with a hail of bullets.

Officers in plain clothes - believed to be from Pakistans Inter Service Intelligence agency (ISI) - have already raided Khuram Butts family restaurant in Pakistan.

Butt is believed to have been born in the Jhelum area. His father, Saif, is believed to have owned a furniture shop in Jhelum before emigrating to the UK in 1988 with his family.

Jhelum lies in a part of Pakistan where many members of the British-Pakistani community originally hail from. The nearby city of Mirpur, in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, is known as "Little England" due to its large British-Pakistani community. PTI HSR ABH AKJ ABH

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BIBB COUNTY, GA (CBS46) - Georgia health officials held a press conference Tuesday regarding the recent overdose deaths and mass hospitalizations throughout Bibb and Houston counties where several people were found unconscious and not breathing.

Four people are dead and at least a dozen people were hospitalized over a 48 hour period after taking counterfeit pills, thinking they were the street drug "percocet".

CBS affiliate WMAZ out of Macon reports that Amirrah Gillens, 36, and Gregory Mitchell, 52, were two of the four people who died from the overdoses.

The overdoses have been reported over a 48-hour period in Centerville, Perry, Macon Warner Robins and Albany, but the drugs may also be sold on the street in other areas of the state.

The substance has not yet been identified but it is extremely potent and has required massive doses of naloxone (Narcan) to counteract its effects. Testing is being done to identify the pills and the ingredients.

First responders say patients are unconscious or unresponsive and have difficulty breathing or have stopped breathing. Many patients need to be placed on ventilators.

DeKalb County clinical supervisor Jacques Khorozian talked with CBS46 News about why people would still take the drug, in spite of the risks.

"When it comes to opiates, the withdrawal is so bad, people would rather get high again than invest money in getting clean," said Khorozian.

The Georgia Department of Health released a statement on the recent case of multiple drug overdoses:
(WTXL) - Paris Police shot and injured a man who attacked officers with a hammer at the Notre Dame Cathedral Tuesday.

This, adding to the list of terrorist attacks in Europe so far this year.

French officials say that attacker was taken to the hospital.

This attack, just days after one in London, killing seven, and less than a month after one at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester that killed 22.

These attacks are leaving people on edge and may be contributing to an increase in "terror fatigue."

According to experts, its when people find it harder and harder to have strong emotions towards an attack of this nature.

Experts also saying that cable news outlets may be causing this, in part, due to wall to wall coverage on these particular events.
BIBB COUNTY, GA (CBS46) - Georgia health officials held a press conference Tuesday regarding the recent overdose deaths and mass hospitalizations throughout Bibb and Houston counties where several people were found unconscious and not breathing.

GBI is investigating, and they believe the hospitalizations were due to a street drug called "Percocet."

CBS affiliate WMAZ out of Macon reports that Amirrah Gillens, 36, and Gregory Mitchell, 52, were the two people who died from the overdoses.

The Georgia Department of Health released a statement on the recent case of multiple drug overdoses:
TAYLOR COUNTY, Fla. (WTXL) - A 25-year-old Safety Harbor, Fla. man is dead after his car hit a tree and caught fire this morning.

They said that a 2007 Ford Expedition was traveling northbound on U.S. Highway 19 north of Burley Brannen Road in Taylor County Tuesday morning when the car traveled off the road and onto a grass shoulder, before hitting a tree.

After the crash, the car caught fire and sustained fire damage.

The driver was pronounced dead on scene by Taylor County Paramedics.

The man has not yet been identified.

The Florida Highway Patrol was assisted by Taylor County Sheriff's Office, the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, the State Fire Marshall's Office, Taylor County Emergency Medical Services, and Taylor County Fire Department.


HAMILTON COUNTY, Fla. (WTXL) - The Hamilton County Sheriff's Office says that SWAT teams are on the ground pursuing a shooter at large.

Deputies say that the shooter's name is Damon S. Crosby. He is a white 39-year-old man.

HCSO says that Crosby was set to be arrested on failure to appear in court for felony theft charge.

They said he fired a gunshot at bail bond personnel and then fled into the woods.

K-9 units and a SWAT team are on scene right now, actively searching.

Hamilton County deputies warn that Crosby is considered a threat to the community and should be considered armed and dangerous.

If you see Crosby, do NOT approach him. Call the Hamilton County Sheriff's Office at (386) 792-1001.

We will be getting an update on the situation in the next few minutes. Stay with us for updates.
By Press Trust of India: govts direction

Allahabad, Jun 6 (PTI) A move is afoot to replace textbooks meant for Uttar Pradesh Secondary Education Board students with the ones published by the NCERT, following a direction to this effect from the Yogi Adityanath government in the state, a senior official said here today.

"We received a communication in May from Deputy Chief Minister Dinesh Sharma, who also holds the secondary education portfolio, with the direction to introduce NCERT books into our curriculum," Additional Secretary (Administration), UP Board, Shiv Lal told PTI.

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He said the changes, which will bring the curriculum of UP Board at par with the CBSE, "are likely to come into force with the academic year 2018-19.

"This implies that those writing their Class X and Class XII exams in 2019 will comprise the first batch of students to be facing their tests under the new system."

Only subjects like Krishi (agriculture) for both High School and Intermediate Vyavsayik (business studies) for Intermediate will not have NCERT books since there is a considerable difference between the UP Board and the CBSE when it comes to syllabuses for these subjects, he said.

"The process will be set in motion soon with meetings of our committees on textbooks and curriculum.

"The proposed changes will thereafter be vetted at a meeting of the Madhyamik Shiksha Parishad (secondary education council), which would be presided over by the Director, Secondary Education. Thereafter, the draft proposal will be sent to the government for approval," Lal said.

Millions of students appear for Class X and Class XII exams conducted by the UP Board every year.

Last year, 32.6 lakh students had appeared for their high school exams while the number for Intermediate was 29.2 lakh.

Results for the current academic year (2016-17) will be declared on June 9. PTI RAJ NAC IKA

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Elese Washines, assistant professor at Heritage University and Higher education program manager for the Yakama Nation, performs a hooding ceremony honoring Russell Jim, longtime manager of the Yakama Nations Environmental Restoration and Environmental Cleanup program, at the university in Toppenish, Wash., Monday, June 5, 2017. (SHAWN GUST/Yakima Herald-Republic file)
The prediction came in a 97-page annual report to Congress that saw advances throughout the Chinese military in 2016, funded by robust defense spending that the Pentagon estimated exceeded $180 billion.

Chinese troops march during the military parade marking the 70th anniversary of the end of World War Two, in Beijing, China, September 3, 2015. Reuters photo

By Reuters: A Pentagon report released today singled outPakistan as a possible location for a future Chinese military base, as it forecast that Beijing would likely build more bases overseas after establishing a facility in the African nation of Djibouti.

The prediction came in a 97-page annual report to Congress that saw advances throughout the Chinese military in 2016, funded by robust defense spending that the Pentagon estimated exceeded $180 billion.

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That is higher than China's official defense budget figure of 954.35 billion yuan ($140.4 billion). Chinese leaders, the US report said, appeared committed to defense spending hikes for the "foreseeable future," even as economic growth slows.

The report repeatedly cited China's construction of its first overseas naval base in Djibouti, which is already home to a key US military base and is strategically located at the southern entrance to the Red Sea on the route to the Suez Canal.

"China most likely will seek to establish additional military bases in countries with which it has a longstanding friendly relationship and similar strategic interests, such as Pakistan," the report said.

Djibouti's position on the northwestern edge of the Indian Ocean has fueled worries in India that it would become another of China's 'string of pearls' of military alliances and assets ringing India, including Bangladesh, Myanmar and Sri Lanka.

The report did not address India's potential reaction to a Chinese base in Pakistan.

But Pakistan, the US report noted, was already the primary market in the Asian-Pacific region for Chinese arms exports. That region accounted for $9 billion of the more than $20 billion in Chinese arms exports from 2011 to 2015.

Last year, China signed an agreement with Pakistan for the sale of eight submarines.

QUANTUM SATELLITE, CYBER HACKS

The Pentagon report flagged Chinese military advances, including in space and at sea.

It cited China's 2016 launch of the first experimental quantum communications satellite, acknowledging that it represented a "notable advance in cryptography research."

As in past years, the Pentagon renewed its concerns about cyber spying, saying US government-owned computers were again targeted by China-based intrusions through 2016.

"These and past intrusions focused on accessing networks and extracting information," the report said.

"China uses its cyber capabilities to support intelligence collection against US diplomatic, economic, and defense industrial base sectors."

In a section discussing China's Navy, the report predicted that China's first domestically designed and produced aircraft carrier would likely reach initial operating capability in 2020.

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Chinese troops take part in Pakistan Day parade

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Donald Trump cast an anti-Islamist speech he made in Saudi Arabia as the inspiration for a decision by Arab powers to sever ties with Qatar.

By Reuters: US President Donald Trump took sides in a deep rift in the Arab world on Tuesday, praising Middle East countries' actions against American ally Qatar over Islamist militants even though the tiny Gulf state hosts the largest US air base in the region.

Trump wrote on Twitter that his recent trip to the Middle East was "already paying off" and cast an anti-Islamist speech he made in Saudi Arabia as the inspiration for a decision by Arab powers to sever ties with Qatar in protest at what they say is the Gulf nation's support for terrorism.

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"So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off. They said they would take a hard line on funding extremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism!" Trump wrote on Twitter.

Qatar vehemently denies the accusations.

Trump later spoke by phone with Saudi King Salman and stressed the need for Gulf unity, a senior White House official said.

"His (Trump's) message was that we need unity in the region to fight extremist ideology and terrorist financing. It's important that the Gulf be united for peace and security in the region," the senior official told Reuters.

SAUDI ARABIA SEVERS TIES WITH QATAR

US officials were blindsided by Saudi Arabia's decision to sever diplomatic ties with Qatar in a coordinated move with Egypt, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), current and former officials in Washington told Reuters. The United States was not informed of the decision until just before it was announced, the State Department said.

Even as Trump applauded the Arab countries' move, the Pentagon on Tuesday renewed praise of Qatar for hosting US forces and its "enduring commitment to regional security."

Some 8,000 US military personnel are stationed at al Udeid in Qatar, the largest US air base in the Middle East and a staging ground for US-led strikes on the Islamic State militant group that has seized parts of Syria and Iraq.

US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis spoke on Tuesday by phone with his Qatari counterpart, a Pentagon spokesman said, without disclosing the details of their discussion.

TRUMP'S TWEET AT ODDS WITH US OFFICIALS

Trump's tweet appeared at odds with comments from US officials who had said on Monday that the United States would quietly try to calm the waters between Saudi Arabia and Qatar because Qatar is too important to US military and diplomatic interests to be isolated.

Qatar has for years parlayed its enormous gas wealth and media strength into broad influence in the region. But Gulf Arab neighbours and Egypt have long been irked by its maverick stances and support for the Muslim Brotherhood, which they regard as a political enemy.

Saudi Arabia's foreign minister said on Tuesday that Qatar needed to take several steps, including ending its support of Palestinian militant group Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, to restore ties with other key Arab states, which also cut transport links.

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QATAR NEEDS TO TAKE STEPS TO RESTORE TIES

"We've decided to take steps to make clear that enough is enough," Adel Al-Jubeir told journalists in Paris. He said the "fairly large cost" on Qatar's economy would convince it to change its policies.

The campaign to isolate Qatar disrupted trade in commodities from crude oil to metals and food, and deepened fears of a possible shock to the global natural gas market, where it is a major player.

Qataris crowded into supermarkets to stock up on goods, fearing shortages.

Maersk, the world's biggest container shipping line, said it was unable to transport goods in or out of Qatar because it could not take them through the UAE port of Jebel Ali.

Jordan joined the pressure on Qatar, downgrading its diplomatic representation and revoking the license of Doha-based TV channel Al Jazeera.

MEDIATION AND CONSEQUENCES

White House spokesman Sean Spicer said the United States is communicating with all the parties in the Middle East "to resolve issues and restore cooperation" over the Qatar dispute.

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"The US still wants to see this issue de-escalated and resolved immediately, in keeping with the principles that the president laid out in terms of defeating terror financing and extremism."

Kuwait's Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber al-Sabah flew to Saudi Arabia for talks with King Salman bin Abdulaziz, Saudi and Kuwaiti state media reported, but gave no details on the discussions.

Russian President Vladimir Putin told Qatar's emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, in a phone call that crisis situations should be solved by political and diplomatic means, "in dialogue", the Kremlin said.

EFFECTS OF THE RIFT

The rift has affected global oil prices, hit travel plans and sown confusion among businesses.

Saudi Arabia's central bank advised banks in the kingdom not to trade with Qatari banks in Qatari riyals, banking sources said.

Oil prices fell on concern that the rift would undermine efforts by OPEC to tighten output.

Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani told Qatar-based Al Jazeera TV that Qatar would not retaliate, hoping Kuwait would help resolve the dispute.

"We are willing to sit and talk," he told CNN later, and said his country was "protecting the world from potential terrorists".

A Qatari official said the rift was pushing Doha in the direction of leaving the six-state Gulf Cooperation Council, "with deep regret".

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SPLIT AMONG SUNNI MUSLIM STATES

The split among the Sunni Muslim states erupted last month after the summit of Muslim leaders in Saudi Arabia, where Trump denounced Shi'ite Muslim Iran's "destabilising interventions" in Arab lands, where Tehran is locked in a tussle with Riyadh for influence.

Bans on Doha's fleet using regional ports and anchorages threatened to halt some of its exports and disrupt those of liquefied natural gas.

Traders on global markets worried that Riyadh's allies would refuse to accept LNG shipments from the Gulf state, and that Egypt might even bar tankers carrying Qatari cargoes from using the Suez Canal as they head to Europe and beyond.

LICENSE OF QATAR AIRWAYS REVOKED

Saudi Arabia's aviation authority revoked the license of Qatar Airways and ordered its offices to be closed within 48 hours. Qatar's stock market slid to its lowest close since January 2016 and the Qatari riyal came under pressure.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said isolating Qatar, including the use of sanctions, would not resolve any problems. The Muslim Brotherhood has close ties with Turkey's ruling AK Party, which Erdogan co-founded.

Late on Tuesday, the West African country of Mauritania, a member of the Arab League, severed ties with Qatar over allegations it "supports terrorists", the state news agency reported.

"The state of Qatar has linked its policies ... in support of terrorist organisations and the propagation of extremist ideas", said the statement from the ministry of foreign affairs published in Arabic by the Mauritanian Information Agency. "This has resulted in heavy losses to human life in these Arab countries, in Europe and throughout the world".

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Panic hoarding in Qatar after Arab nations cut ties, halt food export

Saudi Arabia shuts Al Jazeera channel in Qatar row

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Yemen joins list of nations that have cut ties with Qatar

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US President Donald Trump is expected to pull the United States from a landmark global climate agreement, a White House official said Wednesday, though there could be "caveats in the language" announcing a withdrawal, leaving open the possibility that his decision isn't final.

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Exiting the deal would be certain to anger allies that spent years negotiating the accord to reduce carbon emissions.

Trump and Merkel at the G7 (Photo: Getty Images)

The official insisted on anonymity in order to discuss the decision before the official announcement.

Trump tweeted on Wednesday morning, "I will be announcing my decision on the Paris Accord over the next few days. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!"

Nearly 200 nations, including the United States under former president Barack Obama, agreed in 2015 to voluntarily reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in an effort to combat climate change. Withdrawing would leave the United States aligned only with Russia among the world's industrialized economies in rejecting action to combat climate change.

The United Nations' main Twitter page quoted Secretary-General Antonio Guterres as saying, "Climate change is undeniable. Climate change is unstoppable. Climate solutions provide opportunities that are unmatchable."

Trump pledged during his presidential campaign to withdraw the US from the pact immediately after taking office, but has wavered on the issue since winning the election.

Photo: Reuters

Trump's top aides are divided on the issue, with daughter Ivanka and Sec. of State Rex Tillerson urging him to stay, and son-in-law Jared Kushner and Chief Startegist Steve Bannon advocating for withdrawal. One potential compromise, which both Ivanka and Kushner seem to agree on, would have the US remain part of the global climate deal, but adjust the level of US emissions targets.

During Trump's overseas trip last week, European leaders pressed him to keep the US in the pact.

French President Emmanuel Macron spoke with Trump at length about the issue during a meeting in Brussels, and even at the Vatican, Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin made his own pro-Paris pitch to Trump and his advisers, while Pope Francis gifted him with a book he wrote on the matter.

Trump claimed before taking office that climate change was a "hoax" created by the Chinese to hurt the US economy. Such an assertion stands in defiance of broad scientific consensus.

But Trump's chief White House economic adviser, Gary Cohn, told reporters during the trip abroad that Trump's views on climate change were "evolving" following the president's discussions with European leaders.

Word of Trump's decision comes a day after the president met with Scott Pruitt, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Like his boss, Pruitt has questioned the consensus of climate scientists that the Earth is warming and that man-made climate emissions are to blame.

Photo: Reuters

Once in power, Trump and Pruitt have moved to delay or roll back federal regulations limiting greenhouse gas emissions while pledging to revive the long-struggling US coal mines.

What is not yet clear is whether Trump plans to initiate a formal withdrawal from the Paris accord, which under the terms of the agreement could take three years, or exit the underlying UN climate change treaty on which the accord was based.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and 21 other Republican representatives sent Trump a letter last week urging him to follow through on his campaign pledge to pull out of the climate accord. Most of the senators who signed are from states that depend on the continued burning of coal, oil and gas.

Senate Minority Leader Nanacy Pelosi, D-Ca, responded to reports that Trump intends to break with the Paris deal by saying that to do so would be "a stunning abdication of American leadership and a grave threat to our planet's future."

Other influential voices have also been urging Trump not to ditch the Paris accord. 40 Democratic senators sent Trump a letter urging him to stay in, saying a withdrawal would hurt America's credibility and influence on the world stage.

Hundreds of high-profile companies have spoken out in favor of the deal, including Apple, Google and Walmart. Even fossil fuel companies such as Exxon Mobil, BP and Shell say the United States should abide by the deal.

The US is the world's second largest emitter of carbon, following only China. Beijing, however, has reaffirmed its commitment to meeting its targets under the Paris accord, recently canceling construction of about 100 coal-fired power plants and investing billions in massive wind and solar projects.
The German High Court in Dusseldorf rejected a petition Wednesday filed by US defense contractor General Atomics (GA-ASI) against Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) for the production of drones for the German Air Force. The value of the tenderwhich IAI has now securedis worth an estimated $652 million.

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The saga began when German Minister of Defense Ursula von der Leyen had announced at the beginning of the year that IAI's Heron TP drone had overtaken the GA-ASI Reaper for use by German armed forces.

IAI Heron TP (Photo: IDF Spokesperson's Unit)

The American company refused to acknowledge the defeat and appealed the decision twice. Wednesday's rejection by the court in Dusseldorf was the final appeal the company mounted against IAI.

Von der Leyen justified the decision by saying that Germany needed an armed UAV capable of protecting soldiers in conflict areas around the world. Additionally, she said the Germans were in need of a capable drone immediately, as a European-produced UAV with similar capabilities would only be available in 2025.

Currently, Germany is successfully operating more than ten Heron-1 drones around the world, including in Afghanistan.

The Heron TP, which will be leased to the Germans in cooperation with Airbus, is one of the largest drones in the world. The aircraft has a 26-meter wingspan and can stay in the air for more than 24 hours. Additionally, it has a carrying capacity of several tons.

To date, the drone has been purchased only by the Israel Air Force (IAI), under which it serves as the "Eitan." Germany will become the first foreign operator.

IAI is expected to complete negotiations with the German government soon, where the deal will then be subject to final approval by Germany's parliament.
Jordan has announced it is scaling back its diplomatic ties with Qatar and that it will close the local office of the Gulf nation's Al-Jazeera TV channel.

Tuesday's decision came a day after Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain cut ties with Qatar. The four nations alleged that Qatar harbors extremists and backs Saudi Arabia's regional rival, Iran. Qatar has denied the allegations.

Saudi Arabia is a key financial backer of Jordan. Jordanian government spokesman Mohammed Momani said in a statement that the decision was made to ensure regional stability, coordinate the policies of Arab countries and "end the crises in our region."
Gaza's ruling Hamas said Tuesday it was shocked by Saudi Arabia's call on Qatar to stop supporting the Islamic militant group.

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Saudi Arabia, along with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Egypt and Mauritania have cut ties with Qatar and moved to isolate the Gulf nation, accusing it of harboring extremists. Qatar has denied the allegations.

Ismail Haniyeh (R) and the Emir of Qatar al-Thani (Photo: AFP, Reuters)

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told reporters in Paris on Tuesday that Qatar must sever ties with Hamas and its historic parent, the pan-Arab Muslim Brotherhood.

"We have decided to take steps to make it clear that enough is enough," Jubeier told reporters in Paris. "No one wants to hurt Qatar, but it must decide whether it is going in one direction or the other, and I hope that the cost of the economic damage that will be caused to Qatar will convince it to go in the right direction and stop supporting organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas."

Jubeir added that Qatar was actually undermining the Palestinian Authority and Egypt by supporting these organizations and the "hostile media"apparently referring to the Al-Jazeera network.

Hamas said in a statement early Wednesday that al-Jubeir's remarks "constitute a shock for our Palestinian people and the Arab and Islamic nations."

Hamas official Mushir al-Masri also accused Saudi Arabia on Wednesday of siding with "American and Zionist calls to put Hamas on the terrorism list."

Hamas alleged that Israel "exploits these statements to carry out more violations against the Palestinian people."

Qatar has hosted Hamas leaders and has financed major projects in Gaza.
WASHINGTON - The United States launched an air strike on Tuesday against Iranian-backed fighters who it said posed a threat to US and US-backed forces in southern Syria, in a new escalation of tensions between Washington and troops supporting Damascus.

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The Pentagon, which has sought to stay out of Syria's civil war to instead focus its firepower on Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq, carried out a similar strike on May 18 that was denounced by Damascus.

A Syrian military source said the strike had caused deaths and material damage and showed the coalition was "in support of terrorism." The Syrian military command warned against the dangers of escalation, the source added.

American forces in Syria (File photo: AFP)

In recent days, the US military has repeatedly warned massing forces to stay away from a so-called "de-confliction" zone near a garrison used by American special forces and US-backed fighters around the southern town of At Tanf.

The zone was agreed with Russia, Syrian President Bashar Assad's ally. Assad is also backed by Iran and Shi'ite militias.

"Despite previous warnings, pro-regime forces entered the agreed-upon de-confliction zone with a tank, artillery, anti-aircraft weapons, armed technical vehicles and more than 60 soldiers," the US-led coalition said in a statement.

It said the United States, via a military hotline with Russia, issued several warnings before the strike, which destroyed two artillery pieces, an anti-aircraft weapon and damaged the tank.

A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the strike was carried out by manned, US aircraft.

"The Coalition does not seek to fight Syrian regime or pro-regime forces but remains ready to defend themselves if pro-regime forces refuse to vacate the de-confliction zone," the statement said.

Still, the incident showed that the area around the Tanf garrison in southern Syria was under growing pressure.

Baghdad-Damascus highway

Tanf is part of a region known as the Badia, which consists of vast, sparsely populated desert territory that stretches all the way to the Jordanian and Iraqi borders and was declared a military priority by Syria's foreign minister earlier in May.

US-backed rebel advances against Islamic State militants have allowed them to secure swaths of territory in the Badia, alarming the Syrian government and its allies.

US-backed rebels took Tanf from Islamic State last year, and regional intelligence sources say they mean to use it as a launchpad to capture Bukamal, a town on Syria's border with Iraq and an important jihadist supply route.

German aircraft bombing in Syria as part of the US-led coalition effort to combat ISIS (File photo: EPA)

The coalition's presence in Tanf, on the Damascus-Baghdad highway, was also meant to stop Iran-backed groups from opening an overland route between Iraq and Syria, the sources say.

In interviews with Syrian state-owned TV station al-Ikhbariya broadcast on Saturday, Syrian soldiers vowed they would reopen the Baghdad-Damascus highway.

"Within a few days, you will find us at the Iraqi border, and we will achieve a great and historic victory in the history of this crisis - cleansing the entire Badia, liberating the Tanf road ... and restoring the vital artery between Iraq and Syria," said one of the soldiers interviewed by the state TV channel in the Badia area.

Western-backed rebels resumed on Tuesday a heavy barrage of rocket attacks on Iranian-backed militia outposts along the Baghdad-Damscus Baghdad highway.

The United States sought to keep all sides focused on battling Islamic State, or ISIS.

"The Coalition calls on all parties in southern Syria to focus their efforts on the defeat of ISIS, which is our common enemy and the greatest threat to regional and worldwide peace and security," the statement said.
Armed men launched attacks in Iran's parliament and the Mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini on Wednesday morning, killing at least 12 people in rare twin attacks, the head of Iran's emergency department, Pir-Hossein Kolivand, was quoted as saying by state broadcaster IRIB.

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The Islamic State group (ISIS) claimed responsibility for the two attacks, the group's state news agency AMAQ said.

"Fighters from Islamic state attacked Khomeini's shrine and the Iranian parliament in Tehran," the news agency said.

Outside the Iranian parliament after the shooting

In another statement the news agency said the attacks on Khomeini's shrine were carried out by two suicide bombers.

ISIS often claims attacks around the world, even when links to the group cannot be confirmed and appear dubious. Iranian security officials have not said who is behind the attacks but if confirmed, they would be the first assaults by the hardline Sunni Muslim group inside the Shi'ite Muslim country.





Iranian police rescues hostages from parliament building (Photo: EPA)

Amaq published a video on Wednesday showing a gunman at the Iranian parliament where an attack has been taking place.

Another attacker was heard on the video saying: "Thank God ... Do you think we will go away?"

ISIS releases footage from Iran parliament attack

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Iran's Intelligence Ministry said a third attack had been thwarted. "This morning two terrorist groups attacked the parliament and Imam Khomeini's shrine ... Members of a third group were arrested before being able to carry out any attack," state TV quoted the ministry as saying.

The unusual attacks in Iran's capital, Tehran, prompted the Interior Ministry to call for an urgent security meeting, according to the state-run IRNA news agency.

Four attackers, dressed as women and armed with AK-47 assault rifles, entered parliament's main gate and opened fire. They barricaded themselves in the upper floors of the building and held several people hostage in a standoff that lasted several hours.

Iranian police rescuing hostages from the parliament (Photo: Reuters)

All four of the attackers were shot dead by Iranian security forces.

Iranian media reported that eight people were wounded, including a guard who was hit in the leg.

Hostages being rescued at the parliament building

State TV reported that one attacker at the Iranian parliament exploded a suicide vest in the building, but some other news agencies said the explosion might have been caused by grenades thrown by the assailants

Shooting at the Iranian parliament

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During the standoff, an Associated Press reporter saw several police snipers on the rooftops of buildings around the parliament. Shops in the area were shuttered, and gunfire could be heard. Witnesses said the attackers were shooting from the fourth floor of the parliament building down at people in the streets below. Police helicopters were circling over the parliament building and all mobile phone lines from inside were disconnected. In addition, all entrance and exit gates at parliament were closed, while lawmakers and reporters were ordered to remain in place inside the chamber, where a session had been in progress.

"I was inside the parliament when shooting happened. Everyone was shocked and scared. I saw two men shooting randomly," said one journalist at the scene, who asked not to be named. Iranian TV said parliament had resumed, and broadcast footage of what it said was the opening session proceeding normally. Targeting shrine for leader of Islamic revolution

In a separate incident about half an hour later, four terrorists, including a suicide bomber, attacked the Mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini in southern Tehran, killing a worker and wounding four other people, according to state TV.

Explosion at the mausoleum

Tehran Governor Hossein Hashemi told state broadcaster IRIB that one attacker detonated a suicide vest at the mausoleum, one was killed by the security forces and the rest of the assailants were arrested.

Body of one of the attackers at the mausoleum (Photo: AP)

In addition to being lethal, the attack on the shrine of Khomeini is symbolically shocking. As Iran's first Supreme Leader, Khomeini is a towering figure in the country and was its revolutionary leader in the 1979 ouster of the shah.

Destruction at the mausoleum

Sunni extremists, including ISIS, despise Shiite-majority Iran and are at war with Tehran's proxies in Syria and Iraq.

"The atmosphere is tense. It is a blow to (Iranian President) Rouhani. How can four armed men enter the parliament, where a very tight security has always been in place," said a senior official, who asked not to be named.

Rouhani retained power with a landslide victory over candidates supported by the hardline clergy and the Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the country's most powerful security force in charge of ensuring national security.

The Kremlin said the attacks underlined the need for countries to pool their efforts to fight against terrorism, something it said meant working closely with Muslim nations.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has long been calling for greater international co-operation to combat ISIS, but Russian government officials say they have been dismayed by Washington's reluctance to collaborate with Moscow on the issue.
One of the main reasons why Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah is threatening Israel again, presenting a list of targets and threatening a possible invasion during war has to do with the Trump administrations declarations that the military option against Iran is back on the table.

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How are these two things linked? Nasrallah is the Iranians ally. His organization receives an enormous amount of aid from Iran, with plenty of advanced equipment and money. He is indicating to Israel that if the United States or Israel decide to attack Iran in the future in a bid to prevent its nuclearization, Hezbollah has the abilityin addition to an Iranian counterattack on Israelto inflict extensive damage on the Israeli home front and maybe even invade Israel.

Hezbollah fighters. Trying to create renewed deterrence against Israel (Photo: AP)

Nasrallah has already proved that he is a sophisticated strategist. The Assad regimewhich has the support of Russia, Iran and Hezbollahhas managed to stabilize temporarily. Hezbollah, which sustained heavy losses in Syria, is aware of its vulnerability at this point in time and of its relative weakness following to the bloodshed among its fighters in Syria, and is trying to create renewed deterrence against Israel.

The entire military-security echelon in the USSecretary of Defense James Mattis, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly and National Security Adviser H.R. McMastersee Iran as a provocative and danger country, which encourages terror in the region. They have said that quite often. As senior military officials, they understand what Iran is doing in the region, and they are not trying to beautify the situation or offer explanations or excuses for it.

The visits paid by the Trump administrations senior officials to Americas traditional allies in different places in the world (South Korea, Israel, NATO) were aimed first and foremost at indicating to their enemies that the US stands behind its allieswhat is known in professional literature as extended deterrenceand at strengthening the connection and the mutual commitment between the American administration and its allies, unlike the Obama administration which was considered critical towards US allies and weak towards its enemies.

Both the Islamic State and Iran are seen by the Americans as a major threat in our region. President Donald Trumps visit to Saudi Arabia and Israel, apart from being important in terms of the peace negotiations, was also aimed at enlisting Americas allies in the region against ISIS and at strengthening informal and formal US alliances and demonstrating a renewed commitment towards them through repeated visits by senior American administration officials.

In light of the intensification of the radical axis against IsraelIran, ISIS, Hamas, HezbollahI recently suggested including the adaptation conceptin other words, proper adjustment to the frequent and powerful changes in our regionas another component in Israels security perception, alongside the four traditional components of deterrence, warning, tilting the balance and self-defense.

Israel is too responsive and less initiating. The absence of adaptation creates conceptual fixation and system calcification. Stagnation. Its time to implement adaptation on the diplomatic level through initiation and seek the Trump administrations help in seizing opportunities created vis-a-vis the moderate Sunni countries which hate ISIS and are afraid of Iran.

If, as the Wall Street Journal reported, its true that the Gulf states led by Saudi Arabia are willing to upgrade their economic relations with Israel in exchange for a construction freeze outside the large settlement blocs, this creates a rare opportunity that has been identified by the Trump administration for a regional agreement that will weaken the radical axis.

Stagnation is both bad for Israel and misses the chance for an economic and diplomatic dividend in the form of normalization with the Gulf states and other Muslim states, in tourism, trade relations, economy, investments and finance.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has iterated his support for the settlement enterprise, saying, "I have the right, after decades, to be the first prime minister to build a new community in Judea and Samaria."

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Speaking at a ceremony Tuesday commemorating the Six Day War and settlement in the West Bank, Netanyahu referred to the two most pressing issues for settlersthe building taking place today and the possibility that they could be evacuated from their homes as part of an agreement with the Palestinians.

"No one will be uprooted from their home, I'm doing everything to protect the settlement enterprise," said Netanyahu, adding, "We decided to build in all parts of Judea and Samaria and we are building both inside and outside the settlements."

Prime Minister Netanyahu in his remarks (Photo: Mark Neiman/GPO)

Netanyahu's statements on building inside and outside of settlements echo a plan put forward by Minister of Housing and Construction, Yoav Galant (Kulanu), who proposed 67,000 apartments in the West Bank in order to deal with the real estate crisis in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area.

A call by the settler leadership for massive construction in the West Bank in response to the real estate crisis in the center of the country is nothing new, but the plan presented Tuesday in the Knesset was put together in cooperation with Galant, who was thoroughly involved in planning the details.

West Bank settlement (Photo: EPA)

As part of the plan, the Yesha Council commissioned a panel of experts to map out the total amount of vacant land available for construction in the area between Karnei Shomron in the north, through the city of Ariel and up to Modi'in.

The panel ultimately determined that the western area of the West Bank could immediately accommodate the construction of some 67,000 housing units, in which no less than 340,000 people could live.

The new plan claims that the target price for a four-room apartment in the same area will be NIS 1.2 million.

Proponents of the plan hope the construction in the "eastern Dan region" will lead to a drop in demand and price in the "real" Dan region.
A leaflet calling on yeshiva students to kill female soldiers was distributed last Thursday on the streets of Jerusalems Mea Shearim neighborhood. Dear young man or yeshiva student, read the pashkevil, a kind of leaflet or poster which is very popular in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods. If you are forcibly taken to the destruction army, you are permitted to and you should do the following things: Take the rifle you received, kill every female soldier around you and grant her self-sacrifice. This is where I must emphasize the authors meaning: Killing a female soldier is basically granting her a mitzvah.

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Moderate members of the Neturei Karta faction in Jerusalem argued in their defense that the credibility of the document was unclear. Thats funny. Since when does a pashkevila libelous writing against a certain person or bodyhave any credibility? (Pashkevilim, you should know, are created in subversive printing houses, distributed secretly and attached to bulletin boards or walls by courageous individuals in the darkness of the night).

So they tried out a different argument: The pashkevil wasnt referring to women soldiers in particular, but to military people in general, those who forcibly draft yeshiva students to the destruction army (a lame marketing trick attempting to create a link between the IDF and tsarist Russia, which kidnapped Jewish children to military training in Siberia and made them convert).

Riots in Mea Shearim, last week. The court scolded the police for raiding the Mea Shearim neighborhood on Friday of all days (Photo: Police spokesperson)

And surely, at the end of the pashkevil, there is another explicit order: Kill every commander who keeps you forcibly, kill every recruiter and seducer and assistant, kill yourself rather than transgress. Considering the fact that the recruiters and the seducers are Haredi soldiers themselves, this means that if a cheeky yeshiva student joins the destruction army of his own volition, he can and should be killed, so he wont serve as a bad example for others. And so he wont harm the brilliant arrangement: We will study and you will die, because someone has to protect us, right?

On Friday morning, the day after the pashkevil was published, riots broke out in Mea Shearim after a police force raided the streets in a bid to arrest hooligans who attacked and beat up Haredi soldiers. Once again, in the name of God and the Torah, the thugs went wild and inflamed the neighborhood. Police officers were injured, the violent protestors were detained , and the police were forced to call in massive Yasam (special patrol unit) forces to disperse the rioters and clam everyone down. In the afternoon, however, 14 of the 16 detained were already released, and the court even scolded the police for conducting the operation on Friday of all days, when there is a fear of Shabbat desecration.

The proximity between the two events explains, in a nutshell, the violence Haredim who insist on serving in the army encounter. In the beginning, Israels first prime minister allowed a small number of yeshiva students, prodigies, to be exempted from military service so they could dedicate their lives to Torah studies, which is perfectly okay. Over the years, the arrangement was expanded to apply to the entire Haredi public, which is perfectly not okay. Having no other choice, however, we accepted this situation, and the protests died out in the shadow of political deals that turned an immoral situation into a fictitious democracy.

But harming those who want and are willing to serve is already intolerable. It happens all the time, however, despite the Nahal Haredis success and the Haredim flocking to the labor market, which requires preliminary military service. In Beit Shemesh and Beitar Illit, in Elad and in Jerusalem, Haredim go out to serve in the army, and the crowds attack them with curses and boycotts, with clubs and low blowsexpelling their children from esteemed educational institutions. And when the police try to deal with this, their hands are tied. Is there any wonder the situation has deteriorated to incitement to murder against female soldiers?

There is a clear difference between the desire to do what ones conscience tells him and the demand to force it on others. Breaking the nose and ribs of a Haredi soldier who excludes himself from the rewarding arrangement of Torah in exchange for blood is not just selfishness, arrogance and a fanatic perception of superiority. It is hooliganism in a shtreimel.
The 56th annual Hebrew Book Week will begin on Wednesday evening with book fairs planned in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Rishon Lezion.

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For ten days, thousands of books, both old and new titles, will be offered at discounted prices at the fairs as well as in book stores across the country. In addition, cultural events are for all ages will be held in public libraries and at the fairs.

"This is the 56th year of the Hebrew Book Week, which has accompanied us through good and bad times and is an important part of the Israeli experience. We call on the general public to show their support by coming to the fairs, which will offer literary variety, cultural wealth, enjoyment and tradition," said Amnon Ben-Shmuel, the director of the Book Publishers Association.

Book Week fair (File photo: Ohad Zwigenberg)

For the first time this year, Jerusalem will host both the Hebrew Book Week fair and the International Book Fair at the same time.

The Jerusalem fair will be held at the First Station complex. Activities for children will take place between 5:30pm-8pm with literary heroes "coming to life" in children's plays based on beloved children's stories.

The Tel Aviv fair will be held at Rabin Square, with a children's area open between 6pm-8pm offering arts workshops and rides. Children will also be able to enjoy a variety of plays at 6:40pm every day of the fair.

Preparations for this year's book fair (Photo: Dana Kopel)

The Rishon Lezion fair will be held at the Rothschild Pedestrian Mall. Activities for children will be held between 5:30pm-8pm, with plays for children every day at 6:30pm, story time, arts workshops, musical performances, meetings with writers and more.

Adults can enjoy a Mediterranean musical evening dedicated to author Shmuel Yosef Agnon at the Rishon Lezion Museum on June 10; a meeting with author Dorit Rabinyan and historian and author Gadi Taub on June 11; and an evening of lectures and discussions on Israeli literature on June 15 with a lineup of Israeli writers, creators and musicians who will discuss their sources of inspiration.

Almost a third of Israelis don't read books

Data released ahead of the annual Hebrew Book Week by the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) show about 29 percent of adults in Israel don't read books at all.

The CBS survey was done in the years 2014-2015 as part of an international OECD study in 32 countries and included over 5,000 respondents aged 16-65.

The survey found that women read more than men: while 47% of women read books at least once a week, only about a third (34%) of men do the same. Among women, 22% said they did not read books at all, while 36% of men said the same.

Book Week fair (File photo: Dana Kopel)

A fifth of the general public read books every day, and about a fifth read books at least once a week but not every day.

The situation is worse among Israeli Arabs, with 49% of the Arab population not reading any books at all compared to 24% of the Jewish population. Twenty-three percent of Israeli Arabs said they read books at least once a week, compared to 44% among the Jewish population.

Among the 32 countries included in the OECD study, Israel was rated 15 with 40% of the population reading books at least one a week. Russia (44.9%), Germany (42.8%) and the Czech Republic (42.3%) all ranked higher. The highest rates of reading were found in Britain and New Zealand, where over half of people aged 16-65 read books at least once a week.

The Israel National Library also released data ahead of the Hebrew Book Week on publishing in Israel.

According to the National Library, some 7,300 books were published in 2016, 89% of them in Hebrew and 3% in Arabic. Almost 40% of commercial books were released in Israel by the big publishing houses, with 46% released by some 200 smaller publishers.

Among writers and authors, only 35% are women. In the ultra-Orthodox society, 48% of prose and children's literature writers are women, compared to 40% in the general population.
All the three died on the spot, as firing rent the air, many people in neighbourhood rushed out to see one person tried to raise an alarm he was also shot at by the assailants who fled the crime scene.

By India Today Web Desk: Three people of a family were killed late on Tuesday by some unknown assailants in Sitapur district of Uttar Pradesh.

Police said the deceased Sunil Jaiswal (60) and his wife Kamini (55) had come back home late night and had just rung the door bell when two unidentified bike-borne assailants came and opened indiscriminate fire on them. Hrithik (25) their lone son opened the door and was shot at also.

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All the three died on the spot, as firing rent the air, many people in neighbourhood rushed out to see one person tried to raise an alarm he was also shot at by the assailants who fled the crime scene.

Angry locals alleged that when the crime was taking place they had stopped two police constables and sought help but they refused, saying the area was not under their jurisdiction. The locals also threatened to shut the city if the assailants were not arrested in 24-hours.

An official said the crime appears to have been executed by professionals as they were wearing masks and appeared to have done a reeky of the area before they committed the actual crime. So far, the police has not been able to identify the probable reason behind the murders.

#WATCH: Trader shot dead in Sitapur, along with his son and wife, last night; assailants fled with cash. (CCTV) pic.twitter.com/Q4pr0DfOyO ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) June 7, 2017

ALSO READ: Mathura jewellers' killing: Five, including main accused, arrested

--- ENDS ---
Nurse Ula Ostrowski-Zaks Friday night shift at the Hadassah Ein Kerem Medical Centers Pediatric Emergency Room began like any other shift. When it ended, however, Ostrowski-Zak found herself caring for one of the patients in an unusual manner: The dedicated nurse gave life to a Palestinian baby, who had arrived at the hospital ward several hours earlier, by breastfeeding him.

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Nine-month-old Yaman Abu Ramila had been evacuated from the scene of the fatal road accident his family was involved in. The familys car collided head-on with an armored bus on Highway 60, between the West Bank settlements of Efrat and Neve Daniel. The father was killed on the spot. The baby was injured along with his mother, who was holding him in her arms. She sustained a serious head injury and was rushed to Hadassahs Intensive Care Unit after being anesthetized and put on artificial respiration. Little Yaman arrived at the Pediatric ER.

Luckily, the little baby survived the difficult accident with only light injuries. At the Trauma Center, doctors diagnosed a skull fracture and some damage to his lungs. He received initial care, but then the medical staff encountered a problem: His unconscious mother was, of course, unable to nurse him and Yaman firmly refused to take a bottle. For seven hours, he wouldnt eat a thing and cried endlessly. His aunts were helpless.

Nurse Ula Ostrowski-Zak nursing baby Yaman. He just happened to be Palestinian (Photo: Hadassah Ein Kerem Medical Center)

They asked me if I could help them find someone to breastfeed the baby, says Ostrowski-Zak. Without any hesitations, she immediately found a solution: She would do it. After all, Im here all night. It seemed like the simplest thing to do. I nursed him the entire shift, between caring for other children in the ward, five times throughout the night.

Ostrowski-Zak has three children of her own and is a staunch supporter of breastfeeding. In fact, she arrived at her life-saving profession as a result of her motherhood. She is former professional dancer with a masters degree and a qualified dance teacher. Her childbirth experience was engraved in her memory as significant and empowering event, which she attributes to the midwives at the delivery room and to the nurses at the maternity ward. Following the birth, she decided to make a surprising change in her career and become a midwife. But even in her wildest dreams, she never imagined that her motherhood and her profession would become intertwined in such a powerful way.

Its important for me to advance and normalize the breastfeeding issue, says Ostrowski-Zak, who also serves as a lactation consultant. The World Health Organization recommends continued breastfeeding up to two years of age, and I nurse my children beyond that age, so I had enough milk to nurse him too. It felt very natural.

How did he react to a strange woman breastfeeding him?

I saw him relax and cling to me, and he calmly shut his eyes and fell asleep in my arms. I saw him look into my eyes and then devote himself in the most natural way possible. All he wants is his mother, or someone who will provide him with a direct connection.

What did his family say?

His aunts hugged me and said thank you very much. They were really surprised and told me that they didnt know any Jewish women who would agree to nurse a Palestinian baby. I told them that any mother who breastfeeds would agree.

We treat everyone here

As her shift drew to an end, Ostrowski-Zak was concerned that there would be no one to nurse Yaman while she goes home. She decided to seek help at the La Leche Leagues Facebook page for breastfeeding mothers.

Forgive me for this special request, she wrote in her post. I hope this is the right place. Is there a mother from Jerusalem here, close to Hadassah Ein Kerem, who would be able to come and nurse a one-year-old baby this morning, from 7:30 am? This story has a difficult background: The child was injured in a road accident. His father was killed in the accident this evening. The boy refuses to take a bottle (we tried, unsuccessfully) and, according to the family, he is not a very big eater of solids in general. The absolute majority of his nutrition is based on breastfeeding and he has never agreed to take a bottle, certainly not now when hes injured. He arrived at the trauma center during the evening shift and refused to eat a thing for more than seven hours. I offered to nurse him, and his family was really happy. I nursed him at the beginning of the night shift and he fell asleep. I keep nursing him on demand while caring for other children. At dawn, I will have not slept for 24 hours, and I must get back to my own kids, so I wont be able to stay any longer.

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Within two hours, I received more than 1,000 likes and comments from women who volunteered to help, Ostrowski-Zak says. There were volunteers who were even willing to travel all the way from Haifa to nurse him. In between, I kept trying to expose the child to a bottle, but to no avail. I was amazed by this enlistment of women, even some who dont breastfeed, who offered to come and hug him and help the family, which also has to care for the mother, who is hospitalized at the Intensive Care Unit.

In the meantime, another volunteer paid Yaman a visit at the ward and nursed him. other volunteers were put on standby.

Ostrowski-Zak sees the maternal enlistment to help the Palestinian baby as a perfectly natural thing, but she is surprised by peoples preoccupation with the babys identity. Hadassah was established by a Zionist organization and everyone is treated here, and Im saying this without a hint of cynicism. At the Trauma Center, there are situations in which we attend to a terrorist in one bed, while a person wounded in the terror attack is lying in the other bed. We provide treatment to whoever needs it urgently, and we give it to anyone, regardless of their sector. It was very natural and it felt like the right thing to do, and he just happened to be Palestinian. This baby underwent a serious trauma. It didnt feel any different from nursing my own son.

She is like a sister to us

The childs family is still very moved by the dedicated treatment the nine-month-old baby received at the hospital. Samer, his uncle, told Yedioth Ahronoth that the family members didnt feel like strangers for a minute throughout the entire treatment.

Since he was born, the baby has gotten used to receiving milk from his mother, and he refused to take any milk substitutes that they had at the hospital. He began receiving milk from that Hadassah worker who volunteered to nurse him, and after her shift ended, a friend of hers came to the hospital with her children and nursed him voluntarily.

Samer asked us to relay the following message to Ostrowski-Zak: I would like to tell her that she is like a sister to us. She volunteered at the most difficult moment to help a baby who needed his mother more than anything. A baby of that age needs warmth and love and everything he is used to. We would like to thank her from the bottom of our hearts for seeing a baby without caring about his descent.

Yamans mother is still under anesthesia and on artificial respiration, but he is expected to be discharged from the hospital. He will stay at his grandparents home in Hebron, where he will be nursed by his aunt.

On Sunday morning, Ostrowski-Zak arrived at the hospital, nursed Yaman again and met with his grandmother, who thanked her for the devoted treatment. She told me that, according to Islam, after I have nursed him five times he is considered my son. So I have fulfilled my dream of having a fourth child, she says with a smile. In the connection between a mother and a breastfed baby, there are no differences between human beings and it doesnt matter. My location on the political spectrum is irrelevant inside the hospital.
Police arrested a 49-year-old elementary school teacher in Tel Aviv on suspicion of committing indecent acts on several second grade girls during a class.

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According to complaints from at least six students, the suspect, from Rishon Lezion, had touched several girls during class.

The suspect has denied the charges against him, claiming, "I just hugged the girls."

The suspect at court (Photo: Motti Kimchi)

Only a month ago, he was convicted of indecent acts against another girl he was giving private lessons to. In that instance, the suspect had fondled the girl and attempted to kiss her on several occasions.

So far, four of the girls gave their testimony to police, with investigators believing the release of his identity would lead to more complaints. However, at present, his name and the school he worked at are under gag order.

The suspect's remand was extended by a week Wednesday morning by the Tel Aviv Magistrate's Court.

"This wasn't an innocent physical exchange, (the teacher) touched private parts," Judge Hayuta Kochan said at the remand extension hearing.

Police said the girls were unable to determine exactly when the indecent acts began, and noted there were additional lines of inquiry being explored outside the school. The suspect's computer and cellphone have been seized and are being searched, police said.

The suspect had been working as a substitute teacher in the school after obtaining a teaching certificate in January of this year and was arrested after one girl told her mother he had hurt her.

The girl's mother and the school principal approached Ministry of Education officials and police to investigate the matter.

Responding to criticism concerning how the suspect was able to gain employment in the school, police issued a statement saying, "The Israel Police, as a law enforcement body, works only according to the law. Employment permits are given by the Israel Police in accordance with the provisions of the Prevention of Employment of Sex Offenders in Specific Institutions Law, 5761-2001.

"According to the provisions of this law, a person who does not have a conviction for a sexual offense will receive an employment permit, even if they are being investigated at the time. Despite this provision, police continued investigating suspicions against the suspect and any attempt to frame the situation differently is inappropriate and against the law."

Copy of suspect's employment permit from police

MK Yifat Shasha-Biton (Kulanu), who heads the Knesset's Special Committee for the Rights of the Child, vowed to investigate the matter thoroughly and said, "It is inconceivable that while we are trying to act in every way possible to prosecute someone who hurts our children, there is a way for them to return to a children's environment."
CAIRO -- Islamic State claimed responsibility for attacks on Iran's parliament and Ayatollah Khomeini's shrine on Wednesday, the group's state news agency AMAQ said.

"Fighters from Islamic state attacked Khomeini's shrine and the Iranian parliament in Tehran," the news agency said.
Grim records mark the 10th anniversary of Hamas rule in Gazathe longest-ever period of daily electricity and water cuts, 60 percent youth unemployment, and a rising backlog of thousands waiting for a rare chance to exit the blockaded territory.

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Unable to offer a remedy, the Islamic militant group has been doubling down on oppression. It has jailed the few who dare complain publicly, including the young organizers of a street protest against power cuts and an author who wrote on Facebook that "life is only pleasant for Hamas leaders."

Hamas protests President Trump's visit to the region (Photo: Reuters)

Polls show almost half the people in Gaza would leave altogether if they could, but that support for the group, despite three short, devastating wars with Israel, is steady at around a third of the population. With potential opponents crushed, there is no obvious path to regime change.

A pro-Hamas protest (Photo: Reuters)

Meanwhile, for most of Gaza's 2 million people, life is bound to get worse.

The international isolation of Hamas, which refuses to recognize Israel, will likely continueand with it the border blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt after the group seized Gaza in June 2007.

A new political program that Hamas hoped would mollify the West and Arab nations instead underscored its ideological rigidity; while softer in tone, the manifesto reaffirms a call to armed struggle and the creation of an Islamic state in historic Palestine, including what is now Israel.

Gaza during power outage (Photo: Reuters)

There are also signs that one of Hamas' remaining foreign backers, Qatar, is in trouble. On Monday, four Arab countries cut ties with the Gulf nation, in part over its support of Islamist groups, such as Hamas. Qatar reportedly asked several Hamas leaders-in-exile to leave.

Hamas also faces financial pressure by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose forces it drove from Gaza a decade ago. Fed up with failed reconciliation efforts, the West Bank-based Abbas has warned he would cut more Gaza subsidies, such as electricity payments.

Hamas spokesman Salah Bardaweel dismissed suggestions Hamas should step aside, but acknowledged a deal to improve Gaza's lot is unlikely as long as the 82-year-old Abbas, who runs autonomous enclaves within the Israeli-held West Bank, remains in power.

He said Hamas was never given a chance to govern. "How do you hold someone accountable for a failure he did not create?" he said, referring to the blockade.

Photo: EPA

Bardaweel was recently skewered on social media after asserting Gaza will remain "steadfast."

Local writer Abdullah Abu Sharekh landed in jail after writing on Facebook that "people are not steadfast."

"They cannot do anything because you (Hamas) rule Gaza with iron and fire ... you brought Gaza back to the Middle Ages," he wrote.

After his release Saturday, he wrote that he was deprived of sleep for five days and forced to stand for long periods or sit on small chairs.

Stirrings of unrest are quashed.

A trio of unemployed friends in their 20s from the town of Beit Lahiya said Hamas has harassed them since they mobilized thousands in a rare street protest against chronic power cuts in January. They said they've been detained, beaten and repeatedly summoned to security compounds.

Activist Mohammed al-Taluli, 25, said pressure built again several weeks ago as daily rolling power cuts worsened, with four hours of electricity followed by outages of 14 to 18 hours. Al-Taluli said he and his friends received death threats to deter them from protesting, and that it was effective because no one can protect them from Hamas.

Rare Gaza protests (AP)

"People are asking us every day if we are planning a new demonstration," al-Taluli said, speaking in a room decorated with photos of revolutionary idols like Che Guevara. "But ... we are afraid."

Palestinian rights groups say Hamas practices mirror those of its West Bank rivals. Both governments have carried out arbitrary arrests and mistreated detainees, and both monitor social media and civil society to silence dissent.

Hamas leaders often tolerate criticism by well-known figures, but strike back when they detect a threat to their rule, said Samir Zakout of the Gaza rights group al-Mezan.

Over the past decade, Hamas has also executed 28 people, most of them alleged informers, after trials widely condemned as a sham. This includes three men executed last month, after a field tribunal tried them in less than a week.

The three had been accused of involvement in killing a Hamas leader, Mazen Fuqha, near his apartment building in March. Hamas violently interrogated dozens of people and claimed this netted dozens of informers.

Palestinians sentenced to death over Fuqha's killing (Photo: Reuters)

Relatives of one of the three who were killed, 38-year-old Abdullah al-Nashar, said they believe he had indeed collaborated with Israel, lured by an Israeli exit permit from Gaza. But Al-Nashar's father, Ahmed, said his son had nothing to do with the Faqha killing and didn't deserve to die.

Hamas' rise to power was fueled by frustration with corruption during the rule of Abbas' Fatah movement. Hamas also rejected Fatah's attempt to negotiate Palestinian statehood on lands Israel captured in 1967, including Gaza.

In 2006, months after Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, Hamas defeated Fatah in parliamentary elections. Subsequent failed attempts to negotiate a power-sharing deal and Hamas-Fatah street fighting culminated in the June 2007 Hamas takeover of Gaza.

Ahmed al-Nashar, 63, said he had voted for Hamas hoping "they would do something good in the name of religion," but has concluded "there is no future here with these people."

Hamas said it was sabotaged from the start.

Israel and Egypt, citing security concerns, enforced a crushing border blockade, banning most movement and exports. Three Israel-Hamas wars, in part triggered by a Hamas arms buildup, further devastated the territory and its economy.

Gaza airstrikes (Photo: AP)

Meanwhile, the international community stuck to its initial conditions for dealing with Hamas, including renouncing violence, even as it called for lifting the blockade.

This leaves Gazans in a miserable limbo.

"Our life is just a long series of waiting," said Abed Meqdad, a teacher. "You wait for electricity to come, for the crossing to reopen, for the situation to improve, and nothing gets done."

For weeks, dozens of Palestinians have rallied at the fence separating Israel from Gaza, hurling rocks at the soldiers stationed on the Israeli side in protest of their dire living conditions.

Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Kidra said a Palestinian was killed there on Tuesday. The IDF said soldiers fired warning shots in the air after Palestinians tried to damage the fence.
BERLIN -- Chancellor Angela Merkel's Cabinet has decided to pull German troops and reconnaissance aircraft out of Turkey's Incirlik air base after Turkish officials refused to let members of parliament visit those stationed there.

The decision Wednesday announced by Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen comes after a lengthy impasse over the visits and ongoing friction between Berlin and Ankara. They've involved a multitude of other issues, including the arrest of German journalists in Turkey and Germany's decision to grant asylum to soldiers and others who Turkey alleges were involved in last year's failed coup.
ANKARA -- Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif is to visit Turkey on Wednesday at his own request, Turkish foreign ministry sources said, as a dispute between Gulf powers and Qatar escalates.

The sources said Zarif would discuss bilateral and regional matters. Efforts to defuse the Qatar crisis -- prompted on Monday when the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and others severed diplomatic ties with it over alleged support for Islamist groups and Iran -- have showed no immediate signs of success.
Visiting US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, said Wednesday she is seeing a change in perception of Israel at the UN headquarters in New York, declaring: "It is a new day for Israel at the United Nations."

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"If there's anything I have no patience for is bullies, and the UN was being such a bully to Israel, because they could," Haley, who harshly criticized the UN Human Rights Council's behavior towards Israel on Tuesday, told Netanyahu in Jerusalem.

Nikki Haley meets with Reuven Rivlin and Benjamin Netanyahu (Credit: Gil Yohanan, GPO)

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"I think they know they can't keep responding in the way they've been responding. They sense that the tone has changed," she added.

PM Netanyahu and Amb. Nikki Haley (Photo: Amos Ben Gershom/GPO)

"We were talking with some Ambassadors in Genevawho are all on the Human Rights Councilabout Agenda Item Seven, and some of them were embarrassed by it. They acknowledge the fact that it just makes no sense. You can't sit there, and of all countries, Israel?"

She also argued that all she did was "tell the truth, and it's kind of overwhelming at the reaction. It was a habit. It was something that we're so used to doing."

Netanyahu thanked Haley "for all your help and standing up for Israel, standing up for the truth, which is standing up for America. Actually, I think its standing up for the UN as it was originally conceived. People appreciate truth."

"We have an ancient Hebrew saying that when somebody tells a truth, you can feel it," Netanyahu went on to say. "So people feel it, they not only understand it, they feel it. And we feel it. We're glad to see the fruits of your efforts, uncommon common sense. And it's the way people react across a very wide spectrum."

Haley meeting President Rivlin (Photo: Elisha Ben Kimon)

Haley also met with President Reuven Rivlin, who heaped praise on her as well, saying, "Israel is no longer alone at the UN. Israel is no longer the UNs punching bag.

"When I spoke at the UN on Holocaust Memorial Day, I said that the UN must learn from the lessons of the past, and stand up against hatred and racism. I said it must end its obsession with targeting Israel. Progress has been made. Israels standing at the UN has improved. But sadly, we have a long way to go. Both in holding to account, public statements made by officials, and in supporting regulation to reduce the ridiculous number of discussions and resolutions against Israel. This is also true in the Human Rights Council - which has been hijacked as a weapon against Israel - and in UNESCO, where they seek to rub out the history of the Jewish people."

"Ambassador Haley, as the representative the USIsraels greatest and strongest allywe appreciate very much your support of Israel, and all you do to stand up for the values of freedom and democracy which we share," Rivlin added.

(Translated and edited by Fred Goldberg)
Hezbollah remains one of the IDF's top priorities, Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot said Wednesday at an event in memory of soldiers killed in the 2006 Second Lebanon War.

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"Hezbollah may be in a complex place, because it is fighting in Syria and suffering losses, but we can't ignore the fact the organization is also gaining combat experience," Eisenkot said.

He said Hezbollah has also been involved in the conflicts in Yemen and Iraq and has lost 1,700 of its men over the past three years.

IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot (Photo: Ido Erez)

"Hezbollah has close to 7,000 wounded and is facing quite a few problems in fighting as an organization trying to deploy battalions and bigger formations," Eisenkot explained.

The Lebanese terror group is also dealing with "serious financial issues, low morale, and the fact it lost two of its senior commanders in the last seven or eight years. One of them is Imad Mughniyeh , who was killed in Damascus, and a Hezbollah commander who was assassinated a year ago by his superiorsas far as we know."

The IDF, he said, was not underestimating Hezbollah. "The organization is facing a difficult reality, but we don't let it deceive us. We prioritize the northern front and Hezbollah on the top of the IDF's list. We have both defensive and offensive plans and we're at a high level of preparedness."
IDF soldiers serving in the West Bank will soon have a new app to play with on their smartphones: One that will provide them with basic Arabic language skills.

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Col. Roi Sheetrit, commander of the Efraim Brigade, developed the tool to help soldiers on operational duty in their daily contact with the Palestinian population.

The soldiers operate among the Palestinian civilian population on a daily basis and need to be able to be sensitive to their needs and understand their language and culture, Sheetrit explained.

Photo: EPA

The app, called Bab al Taam, allows soldiers to practice Arabic sentences they might have to use when manning checkpoints or making arrests, alongside popular greetings and blessings, and phrases for providing first aid.

Sheetrit said the aim is that the soldiers be exposed to the app when they commence their operational deployment in the West Bank in order to provide them with basic skills for their mission.
Interior Minister Aryeh Deri announced Tuesday night that he is considering adopting a proposal to unite the cities of Bat Yam and Tel Aviv-Yafo by 2023.

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Deri made the announcement following a petition submitted by the city of Bat Yam against Deri, demanding that he appoint an investigative committee to examine dispersing the combined incomes of Bat Yam, Rishon LeZion, Holon and Tel Aviv among the four cities.

Bat Yam

According to the interior ministry, preparations for the merger will begin in the near future, with the establishment of a government administration to oversee the endeavor.

If adopted, the unification would officially take place in 2023 following the election of one mayor. Until then, however, the city of Bat Yam will be subject to a special development program as a forerunner to the implementation of the plan.

According to Deri, "This is a significant step to strengthen the city of Bat Yam. I am considering adopting the recommendations of the professional committee that investigated the issue of uniting Bat Yam and Tel Aviv-Yafo at the end of an orderly process."

Deri added, "The Interior and Finance ministries will act together throughout the entire process to prepare the necessary infrastructure and mechanisms for the professional implementation of the unification, with an emphasis on services for residents.

"During the unification, full cooperation will be needed between the municipalities. We will ensure that the level of service residents receive will not be harmed, but will even improve. This is the first time a unification of this magnitude has been launched and we must act with great responsibility."

Interior Minister Aryeh Deri (Photo: Avihu Shapira)

In response to Deri's comments, Bat Yam municipality issued a statement saying, "We demand an immediate solution to Bat Yam's budget, which is the result of a delay in the government's decision making.

"We demand from Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon an immediate solution in order to prevent damage to the city and its residents. Any decision will be made only by agreement by the majority of the residents of Bat Yam."

The Tel Aviv-Jaffa municipality said in response that "the position of the Ministry of the Interior, as published, means that the unification of the cities will not take place."

"(We) agreed to carry out a rapid merger to be completed by the end of 2018 and not by the end of 2023," they explained.

The Tel Aviv-Jaffa municipality summerized by saying that "this was a one-time opportunity in which the Tel Aviv-Jaffa municipality mobilized in a precedent-setting manner to quickly implement the union in order to hold elections for a united city in 2018.

"Anyone well-versed in this subject understands that postponing the Union for 2023 means that the Union will not be implemented. We regret this and can not take part in it."
West Bengal Police is nabbing a number of 'doctors' who were operating with fake degrees in the state.

By Indrajit Kundu: The West Bengal Police has arrested at least five "fake doctors" for allegedly practicing in various government and private medical facilities in the state with fake degrees.

"Doctor" Subhendu Bhattacharya was arrested from Howrah following a complaint that he was practicing using a duplicate registration number and fake degrees. Police say Bhattacharya was using the registration number of another doctor named Ayan Ghosh who had later lodged a complaint against him.

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Bhattacharya claimed to have a degree from Membership of the Royal Colleges of Physicians of the United Kingdom and even displayed a picture of him receiving an award from the President of India to attract patients.

Subhendu Bhattacharya's photo showing him receiving an award from the President.

Another such "doctor", Ajay Tewari, was arrested from his clinic in south Kolkata this week. Tewari, claimed to be a "consultant gastroenterologist" with a big private hospital in the city -- the Kothari medical Centre -- and, was allegedly using a fake Medical Council of India registration certificate. According to the hospital management, Tewari had been treating patients at the institute for 20 years. During its initial probe, the CID found that Tewari's claim of having an MBBS degree from Assam was false and that he was actually a commerce graduate.

Similarly, another fake doctor Naren Pandey was arrested for posing as an allergy specialist at Kolkata's top private hospital Belle Vue. CID sleuths who posed as patients discovered that Pandey had been claiming to be a allergy expert, but during interrogation he confessed that his qualification was that of a Unani practitioner.

According to CID, those with an Unani degree were not eligible to use 'Dr' before their names, leave alone prescribing allopathic drugs. To make things worse, as a consultant with Belle Vue hospital, Pandey had been allotted a chamber at the OPD. On his Facebook profile, Pandey claims to have obtained his degree from one Xinjiang Medical University.

Naren Pandey's Facebook page. Naren Pandey's Facebook page.

"Once I took my daughter to Dr Pandey at Belle Vue for some rashes on her skin. He had prescribed certain allopathic drugs but after initial results, the problem resurfaced. When we went to him again, he suggested we meet at a different clinic. We were charged Rs 600 for a single sitting," said Neeta Tankha, mother of one of Pandey's patients.

The search for such fake doctors began last month when the state CID stumbled upon two such medical practitioners in north Bengal. Subsequently, they arrested Khusinath Haldar and Kaiser Alam from two separate government run health centres. While Halder was employed in Madarihat block primary health centre in Alipurduar, Alam belonged to the Chopra block primary health centre in North Dinajpur.

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Infact, Alam had even served as the Resident Medical Officer (RMO) of Kolkata's Ruby General Hospital, one of the city's largest private medical facilities. According to CID, around 500 such dubious medical practitioners are under the scanner from across the state.

In the wake of this development, the state medical council has appealed to citizens to remain alert and raise an alarm if they suspect any foul play. "I appeal to all to register complaints on our portal. If the complaint is found genuine, we will get an FIR lodged," said West Bengal Medical Council president and Trinamool Congress lawmaker Nirmal Maji.

--- ENDS ---
TEHRAN -- Syria has condemned the "terrorist attacks" that targeted the Iranian parliament and the mausoleum of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

The Foreign Ministry says Wednesday's attacks were backed by various governments, without specifying. The attacks were claimed by the Islamic State group, which Syria routinely claims, without evidence, is backed by Western and other powers that want to remove President Bashar Assad from power.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif arrived in Turkey on Wednesday, saying there was a need for close discussions with Turkish officials on "worrying" developments in the region.

Zarif was scheduled to meet with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu for talks on bilateral and regional issues, Turkish officials said.

His visit is taking place on the same day Iran was hit by a pair of attacks  on its parliament and the shrine of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini  which killed at least 12 people and wounded dozens. An hours-long siege at the legislature ended with four attackers dead. The Islamic State group claimed the attacks.

It also comes as Saudi Arabia and other neighbors cut diplomatic ties with Qatar, alleging it funded terror groups and has developed a close relationship with Iran, a nation with which it shares its vast offshore natural gas field.

"There are worrying developments for us that are taking place in the region," Hurriyet newspaper quoted Zarif as telling reporters as he arrived at his hotel in Ankara. "There is a need for a close exchange of views with Turkey concerning these developments."

Asked to comment on Wednesday's attacks in Iran, Zarif said: "These attacks will strengthen the people's stance against terrorism."
Some 70 Ethiopian immigrants arrived in Israel on Tuesday as part of a joint operation between the Jewish Agency and the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem. Their arrival was made possible due to a government decision passed on November 2015, which agreed to bring over 9,000 members of the Falash Mura community from Ethiopia, but activists criticized the slow pace at which the decision has been implemented.

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Dozens of excited family members gathered at Ben-Gurion Airport to meet their relatives, whom they had not seen for many years. Among them was Malaso Bardokai, who waited quietly to greet his daughter, whom he had not seen in a decade. "We have been waiting for this for so long, and now the family is finally reuniting," he said.

Falash Mura olim reunited with family in Israel (  )

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Eliyahu Tadale was waiting for his nephews, whom he has not seen since Operation Solomon. "It's been 25 years. My brother has not seen his children all these years, and only after we fought for it were his children allowed to make Aliyah to Israel. I'm very excited to see them, and years of uncertainty. "

Falash Mura olim arriving in Israel (Photo: International Christian Agency)

After a three-year halt in the Aliyah process, in October 2016, the Aliyah project from Ethiopia was renewed, as an implementation of the government decision from November 2015, to bring over the Falash Mura community within five years.

Photo: International Christian Agency

The plan's renewal was made possible after months of the Prime Minister's Office's foot dragging only after a coalition crisis led by Likud MKs Dudi Amsalem and Avraham Neguise.

Following the pressure exerted by the two MKs, the government decided in August 2016 to ring over 1,300 of the 9,000 who are waiting in transit camps in the Ethiopian cities of Gondar and Addis Ababa, but the 70 immigrants who landed on Tuesday are only the second group to arrive since the government's decision.

"We are happy to be partners in family unification and to help bring people who have been waiting for many years to come to Israel ," said International Christian Embassy President, Dr. Jurgen Buhler. "Some of the families have been splitup for over two decades. We have the honor to bring them to Israel."
Ibrahim Abu Ali, 33, a resident of Yatta, Hebron, was arrested by Negev Police after they found several explosive devices in a business under his name.

He is suspected of possession and manufacture of weapons, ammunition or explosives, possession of weapons and conspiracy to commit a crime.

The explosive charges were seized in the business he held, not far from his house. In his interrogation he denied that the explosive charges were his. The Be'er Sheva Magistrate's Court extended his remand by five days.
Iran's Revolutionary Guards say Saudi Arabia was behind twin attacks in Tehran on Wednesday that killed at least 12 people and injured 43, a statement published by the Guards said.

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"This terrorist attack happened only a week after the meeting between the US President (Donald Trumped) and the (Saudi) backward leaders who support terrorists. The fact that Islamic State (another name for ISIS) has claimed responsibility proves that they were involved in the brutal attack," said the statement, published by Iranian media.

The moment of explosion in Tehran

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The attacks were the first claimed by ISIS, the hardline Sunni Muslim militant group, and released a video purporting to show gunmen inside the parliament building and one body, apparently dead, on the floor. The deputy head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards promised retaliation on ISIS and its allies.

"Let there be no doubt that we will take revenge for today's attacks in Tehran, on terrorists, their affiliates and their supporters," Brigadier General Hossein Salami was quoted as saying by state media.

ISIS releases footage from Iranian Parliament attack

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The Revolutionary Guards also said in a statement published on state media that it "has proved in the past that it will take revenge for all innocent blood shed" in Iran.

Suicide bombers and gunmen attacked Iran's parliament and the Mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini in Tehran on Wednesday morning, killing at least 12 people in a twin assault at the heart of the Islamic Republic, Iranian officials and media said.

Hostage rescue from Parliament building (Photo: EPA)

The raids took place at a particularly charged time after Iran's main regional rival Saudi Arabia and other Sunni powers cut ties with Qatar on Monday, accusing it of backing Tehran and militant groups.

The incident could exacerbate tensions in Iran between newly re-elected President Hassan Rouhani, a pragmatist, and his rivals among hardline clerics and the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Attackers dressed as women burst through parliament's main entrance in central Tehran, deputy interior minister Mohammad Hossein Zolfaghari said, according to the semi-official Tasnim news agency.

One of them detonated a suicide vest in the parliament, he said. About five hours after the first reports, Iranian media said four people who had attacked parliament were dead and the incident was over.

Hostage rescue (Photo: Reuters)

"I was inside the parliament when shooting happened. Everyone was shocked and scared. I saw two men shooting randomly," said one journalist at the scene, who asked not to be named.

Soon after the assault on parliament, another bomber detonated a suicide vest near the shrine of the Republic's revered founder, Ayatollah Khomeini, a few kilometers south of the city, Zolfaghari said, according to Tasnim.

A second attacker was shot dead, he said. The shrine is a main destination for tourists and religious pilgrims.

"The terrorists had explosives strapped to them and suddenly entered the shrine and started to shoot around," said the shrine's overseeer, Mohammadali Ansari.

Photo: EPA

The Intelligence Ministry said security forces had arrested another "terrorist team" planning a third attack, without giving further details.

"I was shopping and suddenly heard shooting," said housewife Maryam Saghari, 36, who lives near parliament. "People started to run away from the area. I was very scared. I don't want to live in fear," she told Reuters by telephone.

Television footage showed police helicopters circling over the parliament building, with snipers on its rooftop. Tasnim praised the elite Revolutionary Guards for confronting the attackers.

Photo: Reuters

The Fars news agency, which is close to the Guards, blamed Iran's arch foes, the United States and Saudi Arabia, for the attacks. It noted that they took place two weeks after Trump visited Riyadh and vowed to isolate Iran.

Iran is locked in a tussle with Saudi Arabia for regional influence which is being played out in the Yemen conflict as well as in Syria and Iraq.

Sunni insurgency

The raids on two of Irans most highly-protected sites will jolt Rouhani, who positions himself as a reformer, and his political rivals among the hardline clerics and the Revolutionary Guards, who are responsible for national security.

In an appeal for unity, Rouhanis chief of staff, Hamid Aboutalebi, took to Twitter to praise the security services.

"If this attacks had happened in any other city in Europe or in the world, it would have left many casualties. Applause to the power and firmness of our revolutionary guards, Basij, police and security forces," he wrote.

Iranian police forces respond to Parliament building attack (Photo: Reuters)

Two senior government officials, who asked not to be named, said the blasts might prompt a blame game and exacerbate political in-fighting.

"They (hardliners) are very angry and will use every opportunity to grow in strength to isolate Rouhani," said one of the officials.

The other said the attacks, and speculation over who backed them, would push Iran toward "a harsher regional policy".

The Intelligence Ministry called on people to be vigilant and report any suspicious movement.

"Some cowardly terrorists infiltrated one of the buildings of parliament. They were confronted. It was not a major issue. Our security forces have taken necessary steps," parliament speaker Ali Larijani said in a session broadcast live by state TV.

Photo: Reuters

Attacks are rare in Tehran and other major cities though two Sunni militant groups, Jaish al-Adl and Jundallah, have been waging a deadly insurgency, mostly in more remote areas, for almost a decade.

The world reacts to twin Tehran attacks

German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel has condemned the attacks in Tehran, saying "once against unscrupulous criminals have dragged many innocent people to their death."

Gabriel said in a statement Wednesday that "where terror knows no borders, sympathy and humanity must have no barriers." He added that Germany "grieves with the people in Iran" and expressed hope that those injured would fully recover soon.

Germany is one of the six world powers that were part of the nuclear deal with Iran.

Police in Tehran responding to attacks (Photo: Reuters)

Pakistan has condemned twin attacks on Iran's parliament and a shrine to its revolutionary leader. The country's Foreign Office said Islamabad stands in solidarity with the people of Iran after Wednesday's attacks, which killed at least 12 people and were claimed by ISIS.

Pakistan shares a porous border with Iran, and the two sides agreed to boost security last month after gunmen killed 10 Iranian border guards.

Syria has condemned the "terrorist attacks" that targeted the Iranian parliament and the mausoleum of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The Syrian Foreign Ministry says Wednesday's attacks were backed by various governments, without specifying.

Rescuing hostages (Photo: Reuters)

Syria routinely claims, without evidence, is backed by Western and other powers that want to remove President Bashar Assad from power.

Iran has been a key backer of Syrian President Bashar Assad throughout Syria's six-year-long civil war. It has shored up the government with arms and energy transfers and sent elite fighters, top military advisers, and thousands of militiamen to bolster Assad's forces.

Iran and Syria both cast the conflict as a struggle against Sunni Islamist terrorism. Their opponents instead blame the two governments for casting the conflict in starkly sectarian terms.

Police attempt to rescue hostages held in Iranian Parliament attack (Photo: Reuters)

Russian President Vladimir Putin has offered his condolences after twin attacks on Iran's parliament and a shrine to its revolutionary leader, vowing aid in the fight against international terrorism.

In a message released by the Kremlin after Wednesday's attacks, Putin said Russia "resolutely condemns" the violence. Putin added that the attacks underscore the need for deeper international cooperation to fight terrorism and confirmed Moscow's willingness to aid Iran.

ISIS breaking ground in Iran

ISIS's taking responsibiltiy marks the first time it has done for an assault in Iran. The Sunni extremists are battling Iranian and Russian-backed forces in Syria and Iraq.

Iran's restive Sistan and Baluchestan province, in the southeast on the borders with Pakistan and Afghanistan, is home to the Balouch minority and has long been a hotbed of Sunni insurgents fighting the Shi'ite-led Islamic Republic.

Last year Iranian authorities said they had foiled a plot by Sunni militants to bomb targets in Tehran and other cities during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who is visiting Turkey to discuss the Qatar crisis, told reporters that the attacks will "strengthen resolve of the Iranian nation against terrorism".

ISIS has lambasted "heretic" Shi'ite Iran for helping the Syrian and Iraqi governments battle ISIS, which considers Shi'ites to be infidels.

The video released by ISIS's news agency Amaq included an audio track of a man saying: "Oh God, thank you," as gunshots are heard. The man then adds, "Do you think we will leave? No! We will remain, God willing."
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that Tuesday, "unidentified" aircraft attacked ISIS forces at the Syrian-Jordanian-Israeli border.

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According to the report, it is not clear whether these planes belong to the international coalition against ISIS.

IS militant (Photo: AFP)

The attacks were directed against the ISIS branch in the Golan, the Khalid ibn al-Walid Army, and at least 12 members of the organization were killed and many were injured. In addition, it was claimed that the focus of the attacks was the village of al-Jamala and areas close to it in the Yarmouk basin.

There has been no confirmation so far for the reports not from the international coalition against ISIS, not from Jordan, and not from the Khalid ibn al-Walid Army.

Israel's name was also raised as someone who might be responsible for the attack. If it turns out that this is an attack by the international coalition, then this is a precedent, since to date, as far as is known, those who attacked the Da'ash branch in the Golan were Israel and Jordan.

If it does turn out that the international coalition was behind this attack, it will be unprecedented, since to dateas far as it is publically knownthose who attacked ISIS branch in the Golan were Israel and Jordan.

(Translated & edited by Lior Mor)
The Kneset and US Congress marked the unification of the city of Jerusalem on Wednesday, with simultaneous ceremonies.

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The joint events are the latest in ceremonies and celebrations commemorating the city's unification, following festivities held in Jerusalem last month.

News - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at the Jerusalem ceremony marking 50 years to the city's unification

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US House Speaker Paul Ryan speaks at the Senate ceremony marking 50 years to the unification of Jerusalem

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Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein noted the unique bond between the US and Israel by describing how the pilgrims who settled in what is now America similarly created "a just society that the Hebrew prophets preached right here, thousands and years ago."

Edelstein (Photo: Knesset Spokesperson's Unit)

Edelstein called upon US President Donald Trump's administration to recognize Jerusalem as the eternal capital of the State of Israel.

US Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, touched upon the men and women who lost their lives in the fight to unite Jerusalem.

Ryan (Photo: AP)

"After thousands of years in exile, the Jewish people are finally back home. Home in the land of their ancestors. Hone in the land that so many have died to defend. And home in their city of Jeursalem, the eternal capital never to be divided again."

The Old City of Jerusalem during an earlier ceremony marking 50 years to the city's unification (Photo: Mizmor Productions)

The 50th anniversary of the unification of Jerusalem was also celebrated simultaneously in the different United States of America.

Netanyahu at the ceremony





Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also spoke at the Jerusalem ceremony. "What a wonderful celebration of American-Israel friendship," he said before the audience gathered live and online. He also updated his listeners of a recent, billion-dollar deal that hi-tech company Intel had signed in Jerusalem, for smart cars. "And so I can truly say that Jerusalem drives the world."

The two parts of Jerusalemeast and westwere joined together 50 years ago, during the Six-Day War, after IDF troops managed to break through to east Jerusalem. Famous photos of the wawr show then-defense minister Moshe Dayan and IDF chief of staff Yitzhak Rabin walking into the city, or Israeli army soldiers standing in awe in front of the Western Wall.

Dayan (L) and Rabin (Photo: David Rubinger)

Paratroopers at the Western Wall upon first readching it (Photo: David Rubinger/GPO)

A paratrooper who took part in unifying Jerusalem is married at the Western Wall (Photo: Aharon Zukerman/GPO)

Earlier in the day, US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley visited the Western Wall herself, as she stated that she will continue to stand up for Israel at the UN, as part of the policy set forth by US President Donald Trump's administration.
The United States is condemning what it calls "terrorist attacks" in the Iranian capital of Tehran.

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert says the US is sending thoughts and prayers to the Iranian people following attacks that struck Iran's parliament and the mausoleum of its modern founder. Nauert says the US is expressing condolences to the victims and their families.

Nauert says that "the depravity of terrorism has no place in a peaceful, civilized world."

The US statement of solidarity with the attack's victims is notable because of the deep distrust between the US and Iran. The two countries don't maintain diplomatic relations and the Trump administration has emphasized the need to counter Iran's influence.

The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley visited the Western Wallexactly 50 years after it was captured by Israeli forces in the Six-Day Warand said a prayer.

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The Western Wall Heritage Foundation said that Haley received an explanation from the Rabbi of the Western Wall, Shmuel Rabinowitz, about the place and its importance to the Jewish people, and expressed great excitement at the visit. When a fence was put up to separate her from the crowd, she insisted on praying together with all the women who were there at the time, saying she wants to be treated like everyone else.

Nikki Haley praying at the Western Wall (Photo: AFP)

Photo: Reuters

Haley added that she is "very moved by the warm welcome that the Israeli public is giving me. I do not deserve it, I'm just telling the truth, it hurts very much that only now, after many years, do we openly say the truth."





Photo: Reuters

Photo: Reuters

Before that, Haley visited the Davidson Center, where she was presented with archeological findings from the Second Temple period and an exhibition depicting the unification of Jerusalem.

In her meetings with President Reuven Rivlin and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Haley said she is seeing a change in perception of Israel at the UN headquarters in New York, declaring: "It is a new day for Israel at the United Nations."

Nikki Haley meets with Reuven Rivlin and Benjamin Netanyahu (Credit: Gil Yohanan, GPO)

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"If there's anything I have no patience for is bullies, and the UN was being such a bully to Israel, because they could," Haley, who harshly criticized the UN Human Rights Council's behavior towards Israel on Tuesday, told Netanyahu in Jerusalem.

(Translated & edited by Lior Mor)
President Donald Trump is offering to mediate the Qatar diplomatic crisis by hosting the feuding countries for a White House meeting.

Trump spoke by phone on Wednesday with the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamin bin Hamad Al Thani. The White House says that Trump told the emir that all countries in the region need to cooperate to prevent terrorist financing and stop the spread of extremist ideology.

Trump also says that unity among Gulf Cooperation Council countries and strong partnerships with the US are crucial for defeating terrorism.

The US is one of several countries offering to help. Kuwait has been mediating among the countries and Turkey has offered to as well.

The call comes the day after Trump spoke by phone about the crisis with Saudi Arabia's King Salman.
Sunil Grover and his gang are coming back on TV, and Kapil Sharma should have every reason to worry.

By India Today Web Desk: Sunil Grover and his gang is coming back on TV, and Kapil Sharma should have every reason to worry.

Sunil Grover, Ali Asgar, Sanket Bhosle and Sugandha Mishra--the former TKSS comedians--are staging a comeback on Sony TV, and none other than the Sultan of Bollywood Salman Khan is supporting them.

The teaser of the 2-hour special episode called Super Night with Tubelight is out and Ali Asgar, Sanket Bhosle and Sugandha Mishra are seen welcoming Laxman Singh Bisht. Though Sunil could not shoot for the promo, he'll be part of the episode.

Get ready to welcome Laxman Singh Bisht in your town! But before that, meet him very soon in @SupernightWithTubelight on Sony TV. pic.twitter.com/qnnM6lZUq8- Sony TV (@SonyTV) June 4, 2017

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It is being said that Ali Asgar is quite close to Salman Khan and when the latter came to know that he's not doing anything for the past 3-4 months, he decided to become a part of this project.

We all know that the enfant terrible of Bollywood is also someone who is there for you at the hour of need. Krushna Abhishek, who's hosting India Banega Manch currently, recently thanked Salman for being there when he needed him the most. "Salman is the only star who supported me. He was the first star to come on Comedy Nights Bachao when it started and also the first star to visit Comedy Nights Live when I took over from Kapil (Sharma)."

Also read: Sunil Grover has this to say about The Kapil Sharma Show's falling TRPs

But the association could be a bad news for The Kapil Sharma Show, because who knows if this format manages to get decent ratings, Sony TV might scrap TKSS to launch something on the lines of Super Night. And if that happens Kapil might have to look for another channel, to launch maybe another show.

--- ENDS ---
Former FBI director James Comey accused US President Donald Trump on Wednesday of trying to get him to water down the bureau's investigation into Russia's alleged interference in the 2016 US presidential election.

Trump asked Comey to drop an investigation of former national security adviser Michael Flynn as part of the Federal Bureau of Investigation probe into whether Moscow meddled in the election, according to testimony from Comey posted on the Senate Intelligence Committee's website.

Comey said Trump told him at a dinner on Jan. 27, a week after the president took office, that: "I need loyalty. I expect loyalty."

Comey, who Trump fired last month, is to deliver his testimony in person at a much-anticipated hearing at the intelligence committee on Thursday.

During the dinner, the president asked him if he wanted to stay on as FBI director, Comey said. The former FBI head said he became concerned that Trump was trying to create "some sort of patronage relationship."
The police chief of Tehran says that five suspects have been detained following the deadly dual attacks in Tehran that killed at least 12 people and wounded more than 40.

Gen. Hossein Sajedinia told the semi-official ISNA news agency Wednesday night that police are interrogating the suspects. He did not elaborate, but said Tehran is safe and police and other security forces are deployed and closely monitoring the capital.

The attacks were claimed by the Islamic State group.
President Donald Trump is suggesting that Iran bears some culpability for attacks in its capital that killed at least 12 people.

Trump says in a statement that "states that sponsor terrorism risk falling victim to the evil they promote."

But Trump also says the US grieves and prays for innocent victims and for the Iranian people. He says the Iranian people are "going through such challenging times."

Trump's comments are much harsher than the initial reaction from his administration. Trump's State Department had issued a statement earlier Wednesday extending condolences and condemning the attack while saying terrorism had no place in the civilized world. That initial statement did not include Trump's allegation that Iran sponsors terrorism.

The US has designated Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism since 1984.
This has been a long time in the making, but in our continuing pursuit to bring only the best of firearms, 2nd Amendment and defence related news to our readers, we are very excited to announce the next step in our evolution as a company.

As of 2020, Minuteman Review is now the proud owner and operator of Your Defence News, a website with a long history of breaking huge news stories and investigative journalism.

We hope you are equally as excited as us.

This means that now the teams of Minuteman can combine with the firepower of Your Defence News to stay at the absolute forefront for our readers.

Keep an eye. Big things are coming soon. We couldn't be more excited.

In the meanwhile, here are some of our most popular posts and categories to keep you busy.

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A 33-year-old has approached a court in New Delhi to claim her right over her deceased father's property. Her brothers say she cannot claim a right to the property as she converted to Islam after her second marriage.

By Sneha Agrawal: A 33-year-old woman has approached a court to claim her right over her deceased father's property. What is proving to be a hurdle is the fact that she converted to Islam while marrying the second time. Her two older brothers have not only disowned her but have also stopped giving her any monetary benefits coming from the ancestral property.

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Sonia lost her father in 2010. A year later, her first husband died due to blood cancer. Her brothers decided to divide their father's Ashok Nagar property equally between the three siblings and told Sonia that they will give her monthly remuneration from the property.

Sonia who had a seven-year-old daughter from her first husband claims she agreed as she did not have any other source of income.

WHEN SONIA MET HASAN

She met her second husband Hasan in 2012 and fell in love with him. Both of them decided to tell their families about each other. While Hasan managed to convince his family to accept a Hindu bride, Sonia's brothers refused to accept the union and even disowned her. From her second marriage, Sonia has a three-year-old son.

Speaking to Mail Today she said, "Even after my second marriage there is no change in my living. My husband has never interfered or forced any norms upon me. We value all religions. I tried convincing my brothers but the last time I went there they threatened me with the dire consequence."

Eventually, Sonia claims, her brothers also stopped sending her the remuneration from the property and filed to cancel her right over the property saying that she does not have any claim to the property as she converted to Islam.

SUIT FILED

She filed a suit before an additional district judge through her counsel Amit Kumar asking the court to declare her one-third owner of the Shahdara, Ashok Nagar property.

The woman, in her suit, says her brothers defrauded her and executed a false deed of her share in the property in their name.

She told the court, "When our father and mother died in 2010 and 2008 respectively, my brothers and i became joint owners of the undivided property, worth Rs. 20 lakh as on date."

She claimed in the suit that, her brothers in 2012 took her to the office of a sub-registrar, under the pretext of getting the property divided into three equal shares, and she blindly signed the documents in good faith. Initially, she was getting her share of the rent collected from the tenants staying on the property.

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THE BROTHERS' RESPONSE TO THE SUIT

In their response to the suit, the two brothers say, their sister was disqualified from inheriting any portion of the property under the provisions of the Hindu Succession Act as she converted to Islam after marrying a Muslim man and has a child from her marriage.

They have sought a dismissal of the suit as she has ceased to be a Hindu now and say that they have committed no fraud. The woman has also filed a criminal complaint against her brothers in the Karkardooma court for alleged offences of cheating, criminal conspiracy and forgery.

Also Read:

Kerala High Court ifies woman's marriage with Muslim man after bride's father raises Islamic State angle

'Arranged marriage': Man pushes aside elder brother, marries his bride at the last moment

--- ENDS ---
According to the party's functionaries in UP, the organisation, has planned to rope in 15 lakh students in this exercise.

Sources said CM Yogi Adityanath is touring the state and kept top babus away from the itinerary to find out the ground situation.

By Siddhartha Rai: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has for long considered the Ram Janmabhoomi movement centred on Ayodhya as a "nationalistic" campaign. It now seemingly wants the young minds in Uttar Pradesh (UP) too to think alike even as a CBI court in Lucknow last month charged right-wing stalwarts LK Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Uma Bharti with criminal conspiracy in the Babri mosque demolition case.

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The indoctrination exercise is part of a massive saffronisation project by the party that is underway in its newly acquired state.

Under the aegis of the Pandit Deendayal Birth Centenary Celebration Committee that is organising celebratory events across the state, the BJP will hold a mega general knowledge quiz on August 20 for school students from across UP, based on a special book that is being prepared and that proposes to rewrite history in the "right light".

THE GRAND QUIZ

"At a meeting recently we have allocated the responsibilities for the upcoming quiz contest among party workers and functionaries. The dates for similar meetings regarding preparations have also been finalised for the different regions. Students of the 9th and 10th standards will be eligible to participate in the grand quiz. We want that students take inspiration from the lives and works of great men such as Deendayal ji and his philosophy of Antyodaya (uplift of the last man on the social ladder) so that they recreate India in its rightful glory," said a party source.

Since the BJP took power at the Centre three years ago, its critics have raised concerns of a push by the party to teach the superiority of its ideology, Hindu values and mythology at the cost of academic rigour, and cutting against the grain of secularism that runs through multi-faith modern India.

In 2014, thousands of schools in BJP-ruled Gujarat were given textbooks by RSS ideologue Dinanath Batra that said birthdays should be celebrated by shunning the western culture of blowing out candles and told children to draw an enlarged nation, Akhand Bharat, to include Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.

15 LAKH STUDENTS TO BE ROPED IN

According to the party's functionaries in UP, the organisation, along with the support of the newly elected Yogi Adityanath government, has planned to rope in 15 lakh students in this exercise. The contest will see participation of 100 schools from each district of the state. UP has 75 districts while the party's internal geographical organisation of the state makes this tally around 83. This makes for the distribution of 15 lakh copies of the special book, the contents of which are telling.

The book will be handed down along with the participation or registration form for the quiz. The questions in the contest would be based on the contents of the book.

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The book and the quiz, said member of the committee and party spokesperson Dr Chandra Mohan, would serve for wide dissemination of the BJP ideology.

THE SUBJECTS THE QUIZ WOULD DEAL WITH

It would broadly deal with such subjects as the history of the Indian Freedom Movement in which the "real heroes", who have so far been neglected by the Left-Congress scholarship, would be highlighted. Pro-independence activist and Hindu Mahasabha member VD Savarkar is most likely, according to party sources, to find a place in the book.

The centrepiece of the book would be the contribution of the right-wing ideologues and BJP's own heroes such as Deendayal Upadhyay and would educate school students in his philosophy of "Integral Humanism" that has been touted as the soul of the party's belief system.

The role of Shyama Prasad Mukherjee- founder of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh that was the political wing of the RSS before the BJP-is also expected to be recalled in the book. The literature would deal with the subject of Jammu and Kashmir too and the party's stand on the subject.

Mohan also told Mail Today that the book would include content on post-1947 nationalistic mass movements, such as the anti-Emergency upsurge in the country that laid the foundation of Opposition to the Congress rule. Most present-day BJP stalwarts have been products of the movement and are most likely to find pride of place in the literature.

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The Ram Temple movement of the party too would be remembered with pride and would be listed under popular nationalistic mass agitations.

Also Read:

Yogi Adityanath's janta darbars: 60 per cent of cases pertain to illegal land grabbing

UP: Yogi Adityanath scraps Akhilesh's 20 per cent minority quota scheme

Also Watch:

Yogi Adityanath era begins in Uttar Pradesh

--- ENDS ---
Washington: US President Donald Trump has spoken with the king of Saudi Arabia on the financing of terror organisations and the Gulf region's unity after seven countries broke diplomatic ties with Qatar, the White House said.

Trump spoke to King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud over the phone, Efe news reported.

The "leaders discussed the critical goals of preventing the financing of terrorist organisations and eliminating the promotion of extremism by any nation in the region", the White House statement said.

However, "the President underscored that a united Gulf Cooperation Council is critical to defeating terrorism and promoting regional stability," the statement added.

The Cooperation Council for the Arab states of the Gulf was formed by Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain on Monday announced the rupture of diplomatic ties with Qatar and ordered the closure of the land borders and suspended sea and air transport to the country.

Soon the Maldives and the governments that Saudi Arabia supports in the conflicts in Yemen and Libya also severed diplomatic ties with Qatar.

They accuse the Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani-led Qatari government of supporting terrorist organizations, including the Islamic State, Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Qatar has denied the charges, describing them as "unjustified" and based on slander, and has assured that it "fights against terrorism and extremism".

Trump on Tuesday hinted that the "hard line" with Qatar was partly a result of his tour of the region in May.

"During my recent trip to the Middle East, I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology. Leaders pointed to Qatar - look!," Trump said on his Twitter account.

The US President also said that it was "so good to see" that his trip to Riyadh is "already paying off."

"Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism!" Trump highlighted.

Despite Trump's comments, the White House later called on the countries involved to reduce tensions and resolve the crisis "immediately," while the State Department said that the relationship with Qatar was "solid" and that Washington "continues to cooperate" with that country.
Hyderabad: G Deepak Reddy, a member of the Andhra Pradesh Legislative Council and one of the state's richest politicians, and two others were on Wednesday sent to jail by a court in a land scam in Hyderabad.

Deepak Reddy, advocate Sailesh Saxena and realtor Srinivas were sent to Chanchalguda Jail after a city court remanded them to judicial custody for two weeks.

Deepak Reddy, belonging to the ruling Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in Andhra Pradesh, was allegedly involved in grabbing prime government and private land in Hyderabad worth hundreds of crore.

A Member of the Legislative Council (MLC) who had declared in his 2012 election affidavit that he owned assets worth Rs 6,781 crore claimed that he was innocent. He alleged that his signature was forged on some documents.

According to police, Deepak Reddy and the others were taken into custody on Tuesday night on charges of cheating and forgery.

They allegedly created fake documents to grab lands including eight acres in the posh Banjara Hills, which originally belonged to a family which had migrated to Pakistan.

Officials said the MLC along with the advocate created forged documents to encroach 178 acres of government land in Hakimpet under Sheikhpet block which was assigned to poor families.

The TDP leader, a close relative of party MP J.C. Diwakar Reddy, also grabbed 78 acres of land worth Rs 163 crore at Asif Nagar by creating fake documents in the name of Iqbal Islam Khan. Police investigations revealed it was a fictitious name.

By creating the fake documents of these lands, the accused allegedly entered into litigation against the government or private owners of the lands.

It was in November last year that a case was booked with respect to Asifnagar land, on a complaint by Mustafa Society. Subsequently, several other societies lodged complaints against the MLC and others.

A police officer said details of the scam would emerge after they investigate all the complaints against the accused.

The MLC's arrest came close on the heels of an illegal land scam coming to light in Cyberabad, the IT district.

Last month, police arrested three men including a government employee for illegal transfer of 607 acres of government land to private individuals. The government reportedly lost Rs 686 crore in these illegal transactions.
New Delhi: With the United States of America under Donald Trump 'abandoning' world leadership, China is taking one step at a time to become the next true superpower.

After bringing into motion the 'One Belt One Road initiative', that aims to make it the pivot of global trade, China is now expanding its military footprint to regions and countries far away from its traditional borders.

As per a new Pentagon report, China is likely to establish additional military bases in Pakistan and other countries with which it has longstanding friendly ties and similar strategic interests.

The development is of concern to India given our long-standing hostility with Pakistan and the ever-fragile peace along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir.

China to regroup its army to build strong and modernised new-type military

India may have red-flagged China's push to operationalise the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)  that passes through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir  but Beijing has been pressing ahead to complete the key link  that will connect China's Kashgar with Pakistan's Gwadar port on the Arabian Sea.

While China has maintained that the Gwadar port - developed with Chinese money - will be used only for economic purposes, the jury is out on whether the strategically located port on the Arabian Sea will also see a military use in future.

What leads credence to the doubts about China's military build-up in the region is the construction of a Chinese military base in Djibouti, at the mouth of the Gulf of Aden  giving the People's Liberation Army direct control of one the biggest marine trade routes in the world.

"In February 2016, China began construction of a military base in Djibouti and probably will complete it within the next year," the Pentagon report said, adding China claims that this facility is designed to help the navy and army further participate in UN peacekeeping operations, carry out escort missions in the waters near Somalia and the Gulf of Aden, and provide humanitarian assistance.

This initiative, along with regular naval vessel visits to foreign ports, both reflects and amplifies China's China's growing influence, extending the reach of its armed forces.

Xi Jinping asks new PLA units to be ready for combat, modern warfare

China has cited anti-piracy patrolling as one of the reasons for developing what it calls a naval logistics center in Djibouti.

The report cautioned, however, that China's efforts to build more bases "may be constrained by the willingness of countries to support" the presence of China's People's Liberation Army in one of their ports.

China, the report said, uses PLA engagements with foreign militaries to enhance its presence and influence abroad, bolster its image and assuage other countries' concerns about its rise.

"These engagements also assist PLA modernisation by facilitating the acquisition of advanced weapon systems and technologies, increasing its operational experience throughout and beyond Asia, and giving the PLA access to foreign military practices, operational doctrine, and training methods," it add

In 2016, China conducted counterpiracy operations in the Gulf of Aden by deploying its 24th naval escort task force to the area since 2008, it said.

"China also continued to send submarines to the Indian Ocean, ostensibly in support of its counterpiracy patrols. In May 2016, a nuclear-powered attack submarine conducted a port call in Karachi, Pakistan, during a visit by the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) Commander, marking China's first port call in South Asia by a nuclear submarine," the Pentagon said.

"These submarine patrols demonstrate the PLAN's emerging capability both to protect China's SLOCs and to increase China's power projection into the Indian Ocean," the report said.

According to the Pentagon, Pakistan is also China's largest buyer of arms. From 2011 to 2015, China was the world's fourth largest arms supplier with more than USD 20 billion in sales.

Of this, USD 9 billion was to Asia-Pacific countries, primarily Pakistan," it added.

Sub-Saharan Africa was China's second largest regional arms market.

"China's ability to remain among the world's top five global arms suppliers hinges largely on continued strong sales to Pakistan and demand for its armed UAVs. China is one of only a few global suppliers of such equipment and faces little competition for sales to the Middle East and North Africa.

This likely will result in the Middle East and North Africa surpassing Sub-Saharan Africa as China's second largest arms export market," it said.

Last year, China signed an agreement with Pakistan for the sale of eight submarines, it said, adding that the first four will be built in China, with the remaining four in Pakistan.

Other major Asia-Pacific customers of Chinese military equipment include Bangladesh and Burma, it said.

China sold armed UAVs to several states in the Middle East and North Africa, including Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates, the Pentagon said.

China faces little competition for sale of such systems, as most countries that produce them are restricted in selling the technology as signatories of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) and/or the Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls for Conventional Arms and Dual-Use Goods and Technologies (WA), as well as as subjecting exports of this technology to greater scrutiny than China, it said.

With PTI inputs
Mumbai: Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) chief Pahlaj Nihalani is happy that Anupam Kher is stepping into the shoes of Manmohan Singh for a film, but says the movie's makers will need to obtain no-objection certificates (NOC) from the former Prime Minister himself as well as Congress President Sonia Gandhi for film certification.

Nihalani has warned that the film's makers would have to abide by the guideline regarding all films based on real-life characters.

"The makers of 'The Accidental Prime Minister', producer Sunil Bohra, would have to get an NOC from Manmohan Singhji, Sonia Gandhiji and all the other real-life politicians who are part of the narrative. This rule applies without fail. There are no exceptions," Nihalani said.

"And although my current tenure as the CBFC chairperson ends in January 2018 and this film will come up for censorship after that, I am sure the guidelines regarding biopics would remain unchanged."

He hopes the film's team is aware of this.

"Anupam Kher was himself the CBFC chairperson not too long so. Ashoke Pandit who considers himself a part of the CBFC, is also a part of the film on Manmohan Singhji. And Hansal Mehta who is writing the film, claims to be a victim of the censorship guidelines every time his film is on release. I can't imagine how these people cannot be awar of the NOC required for censor clearance of films based on real-life figures," Nihalani added.

When IANS contacted producer Sunil Bohra, he said he was travelling.

Nevertheless, Nihalani is confident Anupam Kher will give the role his best shot.

"He's such a versatile actor. At the age of 28, he had played an old man so brilliantly in 'Saaransh'. I am sure he will do full justice to Manmohan Singhji's character, though it would have to be more expressions than words. As we all know, Manmohan Singhji hardly speaks. I am sure the dialogue writer would not have much to contribute to the character," he added.

The project is an adaptation of Sanjay Baru's controversial book "The Accidental Prime Minister: The Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh".
New Delhi: Marvel Tea`s new TVC, starring Kareena Kapoor Khan has been shot in London, across some of the most iconic landmarks, such as Trafalgar Square Fountain, St. James Park, and Tower Bridge.

The TVC begins with the actress sipping a piping hot cup of Marvel Tea, looking refreshed and vibrant. Every spot presented in the TVC holds a special meaning as she walks by herself, smiling and smelling the flowers, enjoying her time alone.

The shots are interspersed with the process of a cup of Marvel Yellow Tea being prepared.Commenting on the new campaign, R.C. Jain, chairman and managing director of Marvel Group, said, "Marvel Tea is known as one of India`s top five brands.

We thought of having a celebrity for our campaign who is as royal as Marvel Tea. I believe that no one can match up to Kareena`s royal and beautiful look and hence we decided to launch our new campaign with the beautiful and talented actor.

"Speaking about the association with Marvel Tea, Kareena, Brand Ambassador, said, "I am privileged to associate with Marvel Tea, as they have always focused on providing a product which exceeds in quality and taste.

The brand association with Marvel Tea is very special, as it offers a taste than is unparalleled, which is why it has made a rightful place in the Indian beverage market.

I am truly excited and look forward to a long association with Marvel Tea."R.C. Jain further added, "This campaign is a true amalgamation of two very important personalities i.e. Marvel Tea and Kareena Kapoor Khan. With "Har Lamha Naya ho jaye" campaign we want to entice the audience with the great taste of Marvel Tea-Yellow.

Apart from a 45 second television commercial, viewers on the digital platform will get to watch a making of the film which will be exclusive to social media and will go live soon.

"The campaign is created by a team of globally acknowledged creative minds, including Mick Coulter, the Director of Photography who is Oscar-nominated and has previously worked on Hollywood movies like Sense and Sensibility, Notting Hill and Love Actually.
New Delhi: Telecom operator Reliance Communications on Tuesday rejected credit rating cuts by Moody's and Fitch as the agencies' views apply only on its USD 300 million bonds, which are being serviced regularly.

The company said that in May 2015, it had issued 6.5 per cent coupon bearing USD bonds, maturing in November 2020, for an aggregate amount of USD 300 million.

"These bonds constitute about 4 per cent of the total debt of the company. The bonds have always been serviced regularly on the due dates and are fully current in servicing, as on date...

The ratings by Moody's and Fitch apply only to these USD bonds. We respectfully disagree with the recent rating actions by both these agencies, and believe that these rating actions do not reflect the servicing track record of the company," RCom said in a statement.

RCom, in its notice to stock exchanges on May 24, 2017, had said that the company will continue to pay interest on the respective due dates, and the bonds will be repaid on the due date of November 6, 2020.

Rating agencies Fitch and Moody's on Tuesday downgraded credit rating of Reliance Communications for the second time in quick succession on account of its fragile liquidity position and limited ability to pay back debt.

Fitch downgraded RCom to the lowest category with some hope for recovery of principal or interest amount, while Moody's Investors Service downgraded the firm to the second lowest category.

Moody's downgraded RCom corporate family rating and senior secured bond rating to Ca from Caa1.

"The outlook is negative," Moody's said in a statement.

Credit rating indicates capability of a company to pay back debt. Moody's rate firms in nine categories ranging from Aaa to C.

Ca rating indicates that obligations in this category are highly speculative and are likely in, or very near, default, with some prospect of recovery of principal and interest.

Fitch Ratings has downgraded Reliance Communications Limited's (RCom) Long-Term Foreign- and Local- Currency Issuer Default Ratings (IDR) to 'RD' from 'CCC'.

It also downgraded the rating on RCom's USD 300 million 6.5 per cent senior secured notes due 2020 to 'C/RR4' from 'CCC/RR4'.

The RD (restricted default) category is too level down from CCC category. The RD indicates that the firm has an uncured payment default on a bond, loan etc but has not entered into bankruptcy liquidation, or other formal winding- up procedure and continues to operate.

The C category of Fitch is the lowest in its credit rating and RR4 symbol indicates that average recovery prospects of current principal and related interest is in the range of 31-50 per cent.

"The rating agencies have not given due credit to the advanced stage of the corporate transactions (Aircel merger and Tower sale) which are expected to deleverage the company?s balance sheet by about USD 4 billion i.E. By about 60 per cent within the next few months," RCom said.

As per Moody's, RCom's consolidated debt levels continued to rise through year-end resulting in reported debt to EBITDA ratio of 8.5x.

RCom said that the recent positive development of the standstill period agreed by our lenders appears to have been viewed negatively by the rating agencies on certain technical grounds, while in actual fact the same directly addresses their key concerns about the short term liquidity situation.

"It may also be noted that the in the year 2012, the company had redeemed its Foreign Currency Convertible Bonds (FCCBs) aggregating USD 1 billion on the specified due date on maturity, at full redemption value, without a day?s delay, despite severe volatility in global markets at that time," RCom said.
New Delhi: CPI-M General Secretary Sitaram Yechury was roughed up by two youth at a press conference here on Wednesday. The two who belong to Hindu Sena were handed over to police.

Enraged members of the Communist Party of India-Marxist pounced on them and thrashed them before handing over the pair to police.

Yechury, who was addressing a press conference on the violence in Madhya Pradesh`s Mandsaur where five protesting farmers were killed in alleged police firing, described the attack on him as an attempt by the RSS "to silence the voices of dissent".

"We will not be cowed down by Sangh goondagardi to silence us. This is a battle for the soul of India, which we will win," he tweeted.

Upendra Kumar and Pawan Kaul were taken at Mandir Marg Police station after the incident.

The Hindu Sena activists entered the CPI-M office premises in Gole Market area of central Delhi while chanting `Bharat Mata ki Jai` and slogans against him, a police official said.

Hindu Sena President Vishnu Gupta told IANS that their two party workers were detained by police "for staging a peaceful protest against CPI-M for their article against the Indian Army" and had done "nothing" but only demanded the party apologise.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court will hear on June 15 a plea challenging the government notification prohibiting the sale of animals at animal markets for slaughter on the grounds that it violated the right to free trade.

A vacation bench of Justice Ashok Bhushan and Justice Deepak Gupta directed the listing of the matter on June 15 as counsel Sanobar Ali Qureshi, appearing for petitioner Mohammed Abdul Faheem Qureshi, on Wednesday mentioned the matter for an early hearing.

Challenging May 23 notification, counsel Qureshi told the bench that the official declaration was contrary to the provision of law that permitted the sale of animals for religious sacrifices.
New Delhi: The government on Wednesday approved higher support price of 14 kharif crops including paddy and pulses in a bid to provide comfort to farmers who begin sowing in full swing from next month.

Although no official announcement was made about the increase in minimum support price (MSP), sources indicated that the Cabinet has gone with the recommendation of the agriculture ministry for the 2017-18 kharif season.

The approval comes amid farmer protests in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh seeking waiver of their crop loans. As many as five persons have been killed in firing during protects in Mandsaur district of Madhya Pradesh.

It was not clear yet if the increase in MSP would help douse some of the fire.

Incidentally, Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh cancelled his press conference on cleanliness drive while Cabinet briefing was also not held.

The agriculture ministry had proposed Rs 80 per quintal hike in the MSP of paddy to Rs 1,550 for common grade variety and Rs 1,590 for 'A' grade variety.

For pulses, MSP was proposed to be hiked by up to Rs 400 per quintal including a bonus of Rs 200 for 2017-18.

About Rs 175 per quintal hike in the MSP of soyabean, a major crop in Madhya Pradesh, has been proposed by the ministry, while Rs 160 per quintal increase been recommended in cotton support price for the new season.

Normally, the Cabinet approves the ministry's proposal, which is based on the recommendation made by the government's statutory advisory body on farm prices CACP (Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices).

The sowing of some of the kharif crops has already begun in the country. The planting will pick up with southwest monsoon reaching central and western parts.

Monsoon is expected to be normal this year and the government is aiming to achieve yet another record foodgrain and horticulture production. Despite bumper crop, farmers in many states are in distress because of sharp fall in prices both domestic and global market.
New Delhi: Wetlands are important features in the landscape and are a critical part of our environment.

Wetlands offer countless benefits or ecosystem services to the mankind, ranging from freshwater supply, food and building materials, and biodiversity, to flood control, groundwater recharge, and climate change mitigation.

Yet, a number of studies have shown that wetlands degradation and destruction is growing in most parts of the world.

Now, an expert has warned that the East Kolkata Wetlands (EKW), a Ramsar site that nurtures the world's largest wastewater-fed aqua culture system and is also the city's natural cleansing system, is under threat.

The sprawling 12,500 hectares (18 lakh cottahs) wetlands also saves the authorities a whopping Rs 5 billion in a year in sewage treatment costs.

But one of the major concerns, is the shift from traditional vocations, including fishery, to modern options such as a salaried job, says urban economist Mahalaya Chatterjee.

"If the EKW fails to provide the natural treatment service, Kolkata will lose nearly Rs 5 billion a year. The wetland treats waste from the city and has saved on the cost of building and maintaining a conventional treatment plant," said Chatterjee, Director, Centre for Urban Economic Studies, Department of Economics, Calcutta University.

She said to retain the low-cost option of sewage treatment the "dominance of sewage-fed fishery is of strategic importance".

"There is an extreme shift from traditional vocations such as fishery, agriculture, animal husbandry to modern businesses, professional work, including salaried jobs. Traditional vocations are becoming less rewarding," Chatterjee said here on Monday at a workshop organised by IIT Kharagpur and Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

The wetlands encompass nearly 254 sewage-fed fisheries distributed across the districts of South and North 24 Parganas. It provides about 150 tonnes of fresh vegetables daily as well as some 10,500 tonnes of table fish per year. The latter provides livelihood to about 50,000 people directly and as many again indirectly.

The key push factors for vocation switch are obstructed wastewater flow due to encroachment and other reasons, siltation in sewage-fed fish ponds, over-dredging of wastewater canals affecting the natural gradient and the changing signature of bio-chemical components in sewage water, said Chatterjee.

She said with increased options of modern vocations, better availability of formal education, increased awareness and formal training (skill), conventional livelihood sources are losing out on the draw.

Besides, there is the pull to have increased connectivity to Kolkata via flyover or roads.

If development of the posh satellite township Salt Lake City in the north-eastern fringes of the city reclaimed a part of the wetlands in 1960s, then almost two decades later, construction of Eastern Metropolitan Bypass, which enhanced the connectivity of the area with the city, made the wetland more accessible and made it an attractive site for real estate speculation.

The West Bengal government now plans to build a Rs 600-crore flyover, connecting the airport to Science City, which requires construction of some pillars over the wetlands, for which 10-12 cottahs will be used.

The state government has promised compensatory digging of a 25-cottah lake in the adjacent area.

While managing and preserving wetlands is a global challenge, they are vital to the health of all other biomes and to wildlife and humans everywhere.

(With IANS inputs)
Turkey: The German government decided Wednesday to withdraw its troops from Turkey's Incirlik base near the Syrian border after last-ditch talks with Ankara failed to resolve an escalating row.

The military personnel, Tornado surveillance jets and other hardware -- deployed as part of the international coalition against the Islamic State group -- will be moved to Jordan's Asraq base instead, said Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen.

Germany has had more than 250 troops stationed in Incirlik, flying surveillance missions over Syria and refuelling flights for partner nations battling the IS jihadists.

But the deployment has become a bone of contention after Ankara repeatedly refused to allow German lawmakers to visit the base.

Ankara had first denied German parliamentarians the right to travel to the site for several months last year, angered by a Bundestag vote to recognise the Ottoman Empire's World War I-era massacre of Armenians as a genocide.

A fresh row over lawmakers' visits to the air base erupted last month.

This time, Ankara was protesting the fact that Berlin has offered political asylum to Turkish nationals accused of complicity in the July 2016 attempted coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel on Monday travelled to Turkey to hold last-ditch talks with his counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu, but failed to sway Ankara.

After the talks, Cavusoglu repeated that "we would not like to see members of FETO take shelter in friendly country Germany", referring to a movement led by US-based Muslim preacher Fethullah Gulen whom Ankara blames for orchestrating the failed coup.

Berlin has argued that it cannot deploy its soldiers in places which lawmakers are unable to visit, given that all military missions are mandated by parliament.

Von der Leyen said the Azraq air base in Jordan would be a new base for Germany's troops.

The transfer would disrupt its air refuelling missions by two or three weeks, while Tornado surveillance flights would cease for two to three months, she said.

The transfer would not require a new mandate from the German parliament, as the current one specifies the deployment site as the airspace over Syria and its neighbouring countries, but does not name the base.

But the government may seek approval from lawmakers for political reasons -- not least to bolster its point to Ankara that the deployment was decided by parliamentarians who should therefore be able to visit the troops.

Ties between the NATO allies have been strained since the failed coup in Turkey, and tensions have worsened over multiple issues including a referendum campaign to expand Erdogan's powers.

Relations plunged further after Turkey imprisoned Deniz Yucel, a German-Turkish journalist with Die Welt daily, on terror charges earlier this year.
Fagnano: Days after her son was shot dead by police while he was waging a deadly attack in London, the mother of the Italian-Moroccan jihadi on Tuesday said she had tried to keep Youssef Zaghba from falling under the sway of Islamic State ideology, but the Internet and his friends changed him.

Zaghba, 22, has been identified as the third of the three attackers shot dead by police after their attack in London on Saturday that killed seven people and left dozens injured.

A Moroccan-Italian dual national, it has emerged, had tried to join the Islamic State group in Syria last year and was notified to Britain as a suspect figure after being intercepted by Italian authorities.

His mother, Valeria Khadija Collina, a convert to Islam who is separated from the attacker`s Morocco-based father, told Italian weekly L`Espresso that she thought her son had been radicalised by a combination of online propaganda and contacts in London.

"When children make mistakes, parents always feel some guilt. But I did my best, and I think he was worn down on the inside," she said. Collina lives near the northern city of Bologna.

"We always kept an eye on who he was friends with and checked that he was not mixed up with the wrong people," she told the magazine in her only interview since her son was identified.

"But he had Internet and that is where everything came from.

"He never let himself be led by anyone, neither in Italy, nor in Morocco, where he was studying computing at the University of Fez."

Collina said she had been concerned by the milieu in the part of east London where her son lived.

"I have been there and I did not like it. He was mixing with the wrong people."

The Italian said that her son had shown her videos about Syria before his March 2016 attempt to board a flight for Turkey, apparently with the intention of reaching its conflict-torn neighbour.

"But he never spoke about going to fight there. For him Syria was a place where you could live according to a pure Islam. The way he told it was a fantasy... transmitted to him over the Internet."

His mother added that she "always told him there were horrible things they did not show. But I wasn`t able to make him change his mind."

Collina added that she had spoken to Italy's anti-terrorism police last year after her son was prevented from traveling to the Middle East, and that they were the ones to told her on Tuesday that her son had been one of the men who carried out the attack.

Zaghba was stopped at the airport in Bologna in 2016 when he was trying to get to Syria via Turkey, city prosecutor Giuseppe Amato told broadcaster Radio24 on Tuesday.

"A person going to Turkey with a backpack aroused some suspicion, also because he told the agent who checked him that he wanted to go and be a terrorist, then he corrected himself," Amato said.

Investigators confiscated Zaghba's computer but did not have proof of a crime. They returned the device but pointed him out to London as a possible suspect, Amato said.

The British Police said Zaghba had not been a subject of interest for them or the domestic intelligence agency MI5 before he and two others launched their attack.

Meanwhile, Collina said she understood why many British imams have said they are not prepared to give her son a Muslim funeral.

"I understand that and I share their choice because it is necessary to send a strong political signal. Also to give a message to the victims` families and non-Muslims.

"Only a mother can feel the pain of another mother. I know that nothing can be enough but I am ready to do whatever I can to bring them peace.

"I understand that asking to be forgiven means nothing, that`s why I promise to dedicate my life to ensuring this does not happen again.

"We must fight the ideology of Islamic State with true knowledge and I will do that with all my force, by teaching the true Islam and by trying to convince families to fill this void that can afflict their sons."

Collina said she had last spoken to her son on Thursday afternoon. Neither she nor her estranged husband had been able to reach him on Friday.

"With hindsight I realise now that he intended it as a goodbye call. Although he did not say anything particular, I felt it in his voice. Also because he usually sent messages, he didn`t always call.

"We joked about how he was going to pick me up at the airport in London. I was due to go and meet him in ten days to celebrate the end of Ramadan together. He had just bought a new second-hand car, I asked if he was going to put little flags on it for me."

Her son and the two other attackers rammed a van into pedestrians on London Bridge on Saturday, then ran into the Borough Market area, and slit throats and stabbed people indiscriminately before they were shot and killed by police.

Italian media said Zaghba was born in the Moroccan city of Fez in 1995 but had broken off relations with his Moroccan father. He lived in Morocco for much of his life but made short visits to his mother.

He spent a total of 10 days in Italy in the past year and a half, the Bologna prosecutor said.

(With Agency inputs)
Jhelum: Khurram Shehzad Butt, one of the three London attackers involved in Saturday's attack in the London Bridge area, had travelled to Pakistan four years ago to visit his relatives.

The Express Tribune has reported that Butt had stayed at the residence of his uncle Shahid Rasul Dar.

The 27-year-old British citizen, who was born in Pakistan, was shot dead by police following the terrorist attack in the London Bridge and Borough Market areas on Saturday.

Butt's family hails from Punjab's Jhelum district and his maternal uncle, Shahid Rasul Dar, is the ruling PML-N president for the district.

Dar is also head of Markazi Anjuman-e-Tajraan, the city's traders association.

Butt's family residence is also located in Mohalla Chodhrian of Jhelum's Mujahidabad area.

His father, Saif Butt, had migrated to United Kingdom along with his family in 1998.

"My family and I have no relations with Khurram Shahzad. He was a British national but he is presented as a Pakistani to defame Pakistan and my family," The Express Tribune quoted another uncle Nasir Dar, as saying.

He added that Butt was himself responsible if he was involved in any terrorist incident. My family and I should not be linked with the attack, said Nasir Dar.

Butt travelled to Pakistan twice in his life years, Nasir Dar told Geo News on Tuesday.

He further told Geo News that his nephew had become religious after marrying the sister of his friend, who was religious and had a beard.

Butt held a MBA degree in business management. He married out of his own will in 2013, his uncle said, adding that he also attended his wedding.

At the time of his elimination within eight minutes of launching his attack, Butt was pictured wearing an Arsenal strip.

The attacker was known to his friends as "Abz" and was "friendly and "polite".

Meanwhile, Frontpage Mag has quoted Butt's neighbour, Erica Gasparri, an Italian mother of three, as saying: He was trying to radicalise the children, he would go down to the park and talk to them about Islam. He also came to the houses and gave the kids money and sweets during Ramadan.

"He told me he would do whatever is required in the name of Allah... I would be prepared to kill my mother."

In the van and knife attack carried out by Butt and two of his accomplices on June 03, at least seven people were killed and 48 sustained injuries.

(With Agency inputs)
London: The uncle of the Pakistani-origin ringleader of the London Bridge terror attack in the United Kingdom that killed seven people has condemned the horrific massacre, saying he was ashamed of his nephew.

Breaking down in tears, Nasir Dar said he felt like the victims were his family, British media reports said.

Dar blasted his 27-year-old nephew, Khuram Butt, over his involvement in the sickening terror attack and said he could not understand why he slaughtered seven innocent people.

Denouncing Butt's extremist ideologies, Dar said: "No religion of the world allows to do this shameful, brutal action."

Butt was one of three terrorists who drove a van through pedestrians on London Bridge before getting out of the vehicle and launching a knife attack in Borough Market on Saturday.

He said his extremist nephew had only visited Pakistan twice, but that he had noticed a change in the young man.

He said: "When he came he was wearing shalwar kameez (a traditional outfit), he started offering prayers. (He was) very punctual in prayers and he had a beard also.

"Before that these symptoms were not found in him."

Butt was gunned down by police just minutes into the massacre on Saturday night, with?the bodies of fellow jihadis Rachid Redouane and Youssef Zaghba?also seen dead on the pavement after being hit with a hail of bullets.

Officers in plain clothes - believed to be from Pakistan's Inter Service Intelligence agency (ISI) - have already raided Khuram Butt's family restaurant in Pakistan.

Butt is believed to have been born in the Jhelum area. His father, Saif, is believed to have owned a furniture shop in Jhelum before emigrating to the UK in 1988 with his family.

Jhelum lies in a part of Pakistan where many members of the British-Pakistani community originally hail from. The nearby city of Mirpur, in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, is known as "Little England" due to its large British-Pakistani community.
Gurugram: The Gurgaon Police on Wednesday released sketches of the three accused involved in the horrifying case of gang-rape of a woman and murder of her nine-month-old daughter. One accused was arrested later.

A 23-year-old woman has alleged that her daughter was killed by three unknown persons and she was gang-raped by them in an auto-rickshaw. The victim is a resident of Bass Kusla village near IMT Manesar. She said in her complaint to police that the incident took place on May 29 midnight.

She alleged that three men in an auto-rickshaw sexually assaulted her on the old Khandsa road in Gurugram, close to the Delhi-Gurugram expressway.

The woman said she left her home on May 29 night after an argument with her husband and was heading towards her parents' home on Khandsa road.

"The men in an auto-rickshaw offered me a lift and after a while, started molesting me. When I objected, one of them threw my daughter on the ground after which she died and I was sexually assaulted," the woman said in her complaint.

After failing to recover any concrete evidence and clues of the accused, the Gurgaon police released the sketches and urged the public for their identification.

Since the crime occurred in a moving auto-rickshaw, the police has questioned over 50 auto drivers plying in the IMT, Manesar area. One accused was arrested today.

The accused left the victim after raping her for four hours. She then went to the spot where they had earlier thrown her nine-month-old daughter and picked her up in the middle of road and went to a hospital.

The doctors declared the infant dead but still she did not believe it and travelled with the dead child to a hospital in Delhi and later returned to MG Road metro station.

Gurgaon police commissioner Sandeep Khirwar admitted that the victim had travelled with her dead child in the metro the day after the incident and police learnt about the crime only after the victim's husband approached them.

"Her husband and Gurgaon police received the victim from MG Road metro station after she returned from hospital in Delhi. Following that, police conducted post-mortem of the infant," Khirwar said.

The woman and her daughter had left home in Bas Khusla village after an altercation with her husband and neighbours on the night of May 29.

She was on her way to her parental house at Khandsa village when she was first given a lift in a truck. The truck driver also molested her but as she put up strong resistance, he dropped her off on NH 8.

As the victim was alone, the three accused in the auto offered her a lift and then gang-raped her.

The accused also threw her infant daughter from the vehicle to avoid attention after she started crying.

(With Agency inputs)
Aligarh: An umbrella organisation of over a dozen Muslim social and religious outfits, including Jamiatul Islami-e-Hind, on Wednesday condemned former Hizbul Mujahideen commander Zakir Musa for allegedly trying to provoke Indian Muslims.

President of All-India Muslim Majlis-e-Mashawarat Naved Hamid said that Indian Muslims will never be misled by such militant leaders.

"Indian Muslims have full confidence in the Constitution and the framework it provides to all sections of the society to secure justice and equity," he said.

"We do not need lectures from terrorists and those who believe in violence to attain their social and political objectives," he added.

In a recent audio message, Zakir Rashid Bhat alias Zakir Musa, who had recently dissociated with Hizbul Mujahideen, had reportedly urged Indian Muslims to "stand up against oppression".

He also slammed them for not joining Islamic jihad for 'Ghazwa-e-Hind' (the final and last battle for the conquest of India).
New Delh: Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu on Wednesday said the attempts to forge a Grand Alliance by the opposition parties against the BJP will fail as there is no consensus among them over the issue of leadership.



"The casteist and communal are afraid of (Prime Minister) Modi and that's why they have started a misinformation campaign against him," the Union Information and Broadcasting Minister told reporters here.



He said the attempts of the opposition parties to "mislead" people against the central government will "fail and boomerang".



Taking a dig at the opposition parties for their attempts to forge a Grand Alliance at the national level to counter the Bharatiya Janata Party, Naidu said, "All these attempts of forging Grand Alliance or alliance will fail. Nothing is going to happen."



Citing previous attempts of forming an a national front against the BJP, Naidu said, "We have seen it in past too. There is no principle, no common programme, no consensus on leadership. Rather being a national front, it became a notional front, united front became a divided front, third front became a distant third front."



"....so that being the case I don't think this effort of Grand Alliance will succeed," the BJP leader said.



Naidu also wished the opposition parties luck to come together and give BJP the space in Bengal and Kerala.



"I hope the Congress, the Communists and the Trinamool come together so that the BJP can occupy the remaining space in Kolkata and that in Kerala the Communists and the Congress come together so that the space is left for the BJP," he said.



"You cannot have operation in Delhi, operation in Kolkata and separation in Kerala," Naidu added.
New Delhi: The Indian government is awaiting details from its embassy in Tehran following Wednesday's terror attacks in the Iranian capital that claimed eight lives, a senior official here said.



"We have the initial reports which have come in from Iran," External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay told a media briefing here.



"It's obviously an unfortunate situation... We are awaiting a full report and full details from our embassy as to what exactly happened," he said.



At least eight people were killed on Wednesday in the first terror attack claimed by the Islamic State in Iran, with the assailants acting in coordination targeting the Parliament House and Ayatollah Khomeini's mausoleum in the heart of Tehran.



Details of the twin attacks remained sketchy even several hours later. Lawmaker Tayebeh Siavoshi told Efe news that the situation was "very confusing and sensitive".



The Islamic State, a Sunni jihadi group, claimed responsibility for both attacks in the Shia majority nation.



"There has obviously been an attack on parliament and another monument in Tehran," Baglay said.



"India, as you know, condemns all forms of terrorism," he said.


The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has condemned the Egyptian authorities for blocking access to at least 21 news websites including Al-Jazeera after accusing them of spreading lies and supporting terrorism.

As reported by the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ): The state-run news agency Mena announced last month that 21 websites including Al-Jazeera, Huffington Posts Arabic-language site HuffPost Arabi and the independent website Mada Masr had been blocked. Reports claim that legal action against the outlets would be taken after they were accused of being affiliated with the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood or being funded by Qatar. This followed moves by Saudi Arabia and UAE authorities to block the websites of Aljazeera and Qatari newspapers.

According to The Guardian, staff at Mada Masr now fear a raid on the publications office, following a raid on 2 May on the offices of Al-Borsa, a financial news site as well as the English-language news website Daily News Egypt. The Egyptian police seized computer equipment and questioned staff about their political coverage, according to reports.

Press freedom campaigners fear the latest raids and bans are part of a broader attempt by the government to tighten its grip on privately owned media.

Egypt last month declared a three-month state of emergency after two suicide bombings at Coptic churches killed more than 45. In speech just after the attacks, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi warned the press to be careful in its reporting.

The growing media blackout in Egypt is an unforgivable attempt to destroy the fundamental pillars of any democratic society, said IFJ General Secretary, Anthony Bellanger. We urge the authorities not to use the state of emergency to muzzle media and to let the journalists work freely and independently to do their job of investigating and reporting the truth.
New Delhi: There were no raids on NDTV with the CBI not entering any office of the channel, Union Information and Broadcasting Minister M Venkaiah Naidu said on Wednesday while dismissing allegations that the searches were an infringement on press freedom.

The Central Bureau of Investigation's raids on the properties of NDTV founder Prannoy Roy on June 5 on allegations of bank fraud had drawn criticism from several political parties as well journalist groups such as the Editors' Guild of India, Press Club of India and All India Newspaper Editors' Conference.

"There is no raid on NDTV. The CBI has not entered the premises of the newsroom or TV studio or any other related offices of the media channel. The management and promoters have to stand scrutiny and answer to the people instead of blocking it and then making allegations," Naidu said on the sidelines of a function here.

Rubbishing claims of a vendetta against the channel, Naidu said the promoters of NDTV, Prannoy and Radhika Roy, should submit to due process of the law as there were questions on their operations that needed disclosures.

"Those disclosures will be enquired into," the minister said, indicating that the troubles for the channel are unlikely to end soon.

Naidu said the media house cannot presume itself to be above the law. "This is especially true when ownership of most media today is defined by a vertiginous web of cross-holding involving corporate and entities for whom media is not a primary business," he said.

CBI had in a statement earlier cited a Supreme Court order of 2016 to assert that the agency has jurisdiction to take up investigation of cases of corruption concerning private banks as well.

It also refuted the charge that its move against the news channel was an infringement of freedom of speech, emphasising that searches, carried out in the basis of warrants issued by court, covered only the premises and offices of promoters.

Lashing out at the Congress for alleging that the government was misusing CBI, Naidu said, "I am surprised that the Congress party is talking about the misuse of CBI. My PM was grilled for eight hours when he was Gujarat CM during UPA regime and our party president was foisted with a false case and spent time in jail. Now these people are talking about misusing CBI."

The minister was referring to Modi being grilled in 2010 by a Supreme Court-appointed probe panel over his alleged complicity in not doing enough to stop the 2002 communal riots in Gujarat and Shah's stint in jail in the same year in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case.
Islamabad: Pakistan on Wednesday condemned the Islamic State-claimed terror attacks on Iran's parliament and the shrine of its revolutionary leader in Tehran and said it stands in solidarity with people of the neighbouring country.

At least 12 people were killed in the twin attacks claimed by the Islamic State group. The attack had led to a siege at the legislature that ended with four attackers dead.

"We stand in solidarity with the people of Iran in their hour of grief," Pakistan's Foreign Office said.

"We offer our deep condolences to the people of Iran, the government, and the bereaved families and pray for the speedy recovery of those injured," it said.

Pakistan and Iran share border in the restive Sistan- Balochistan region. Tehran has previously accused Islamabad of sheltering Sunni terrorist groups who often target its border security forces in the region. It has threatened to hit "terror safe havens" inside Pakistan.

Pakistan Foreign Office today also said that Pakistan condemns terrorism, "which is a global phenomenon and a common challenge, requiring resolute and coordinated approach to deal with the menace."
Delhi: Presidential elections will be held on July 17 and counting will take place on July 20, the Election Commission announced on Wednesday.

"Last date for nomination is June 28," CEC Naseem Zaidi said while addressing the press.

All the ballot boxes will be brought to New Delhi.

Both the ruling NDA and the Opposition are yet open their cards on the Presidential candidate.

While the ruling alliance is likely to announce its nominee in the next few days, the Opposition is seeking to unite all non-NDA parties under a common platform to put up a consensus candidate for the presidential election.

If there is no consensus between the NDA and the Opposition, the number of serious candidates in the fray will be clear by July 1 evening.

Various Opposition parties have already held deliberations and have decided to set up a sub group that is likely to meet within a week to build consensus on a joint candidate.

The electorate, comprising elected Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha members and members of state Assemblies, is tilted in favour of the NDA, but the Opposition is trying to woo some regional parties to support their candidate, as per PTI.

The electoral college which elects the President through the system of proportional representation, comprises MPs and members of state legislative assemblies.

A total of 4896 voters - 4120 MLAs and 776 elected MPs - are eligible to cast their ballot. MLCs of states with legislative councils are not part of the electoral college.

While the Lok Sabha Speaker, an elected member, can vote, the two nominated members in the Lower House from the Anglo-Indian community cannot. 12 nominated members in Rajya Sabha are also ineligible.

Since the election is through a secret ballot, the parties cannot issue a whip to their members to vote for a particular candidate, Zaidi said.

Responding to a question, he said the election to ten Rajya Sabha seats, postponed earlier due to presidential polls and EVM challenge held last week, would now be held after the Presidential election.

He said the 10 members would be retiring after the Presidential elections and are entitled to vote in the July 17 poll.

When asked whether the 20 AAP MLAs, against whom the EC is hearing a petition seeking their disqualification for allegedly holding office of profit, can vote in the polls, he said 'as on today' they can vote.

Originally, the case was against 21 MLAs, but one had resigned.

A total of 13 vacancies in Lok Sabha and state assemblies will be filled up after the Presidential elections, he said.

The tenure of the incumbent, Pranab Mukherjee, comes to an end on July 24. So far 13 persons, including Mukherjee, have held the post, with VV Giri being the president on two occasions.

(With PTI inputs)
New Delhi: The empowered committee of the Ministry of Defence has given its go-ahead to the use of a bullet-proof jacket designed by Bengali scientist and professor Shantanu Bhowmick.

The ultra lightweight, thermoplastic jacket can be manufactured completely through indigenous technology. Notably, this is the first time in 70 years that the Indian Army will have bullet-proof jacket manufactured completely in India.

According to The Times of India, Bhowmick, the departmental head of aerospace engineering in Coimbatore's Amrita University, has dedicated this jacket to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose.

It is made from completely indigenous thermoplastic technology. The report added that its manufacturing will begin once it gets approval from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who launched the `Make in India` initiative on September 25, 2014, with the primary goal of making India a global manufacturing hub.

The product will be included in the 'Make in India' project, reported the daily.

Bhowmick joined hands with the Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) and the Ministry of Defence to design the jacket that will be the first in 70 years to be manufactured in India, said the report.

At present, jackets used by the military and paramilitary forces are being imported from the US and each costs Rs 1.5 lakh. However, Bhowmick's design will cost Rs 50,000 per jacket. This means, it will bring down the defence spending by Rs 20,000 crore annually, reported the daily.

Also, the bullet proof jackets currently being used by Army, Border Security Force, Central Reserve Police Force and police personnel are heavy, weighing between 15 and 18 kilograms. The new version weighs almost eight times less at about just 1.5 kilograms.

It has 20 layers and the carbon fiber in it will enable the jacket to work in 57 degrees Celsius also, reported the TOI.
Panaji: Rajya Sabha member of parliament Shantaram Naik has asked Union External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj to protect the interests of Indians in Qatar.

"Around 6,50,000 Indians, including 10,000 Goans are living and doing business in Qatar, who according to a report, outnumber native Qataris by almost 2:1 ratio, their interest should be protected," Naik said in an email to Swaraj this week.

Naik said the whole nation is concerned on account of recent Gulf crisis due to Saudi led grouping of Bahrain, Egypt and the UAE, Yemen and surprisingly, Maldives, cutting off diplomatic as well as, civil aviation and shipping ties with Qatar.

Naik further said that a local newspaper published from Goa has reported that "with the uncertain situation in Qatar, a large number of Goans and other Indians began rushing to supermarkets and stores in Doha to stock up on essential of food supply."

Naik said "India takes over 90 per cent of its natural gas import from Qatar. In addition, Qatar is in process of building a domestic airline in India."

"That itself puts India in a unique place. Saudi Arabia, on the other hand is among the top suppliers of oil to India," Naik said quoting a media report.

In view of a serious situation developing in Qatar, India has to use diplomatic channels in the interest of Indian population there, the MP said.

"The Government of India should not take things for granted, and that, Prime Minister's visits do not necessarily help in such matters," he said.
Mumbai: Jet Airways domestic pilots' body National Aviator's Guild (NAG) will on Wednesday convene a meeting to lay out an "action plan", after the civil aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) filed a complaint against 34 pilots for allegedly posting "obscene" messages on a WhatsApp group against its officials.

Acting on the complaint, the Delhi Police yesterday questioned 13 pilots, some of whom belonged to airlines like Jet Airways, IndiGo, SpiceJet and GoAir, and were later let off. However, their mobile phones were being examined by a team of IT experts.

The NAG, which claims representation of around 1,000 of the Jet Airways 1,500 pilots, would also coordinate with the two pilot unions of government-run Air India -- ICPA and IPG -- over the issue, a Guild member had said on Tuesday.

The emergency meeting will be held in Chennai today to chalk out its action plan following yesterday's development.

"This is unprecedented as our members (pilots) were called by the DGCA for a meeting for some other issue and they had no idea that this was for some thing," the Guild member said.

In a rare move, aviation watchdog DGCA has filed a police complaint against 34 pilots of Jet Airways, IndiGo, SpiceJet and GoAir for allegedly posting "obscene" messages on a WhatsApp group against its officials.

The member also said the pilots were questioned by the police even without any "preliminary inquiry" into the alleged complaint or a prior information to them about the complaint.

The Guild has taken up the issue with the airline management and it is waiting for its "response" as well, he added.

"The pilots have been called in for questioning on the basis of a complaint by the DGCA. They have been called in for an inquiry," a senior police official said earlier in the day.

Apart from the original complaint, the DGCA is said to have also submitted to the officers at Lodhi Road police station a "screen shot" of the usage of objectionable, obscene language.

"The text used in the message was highly objectionable, unpardonable and obscene language was used against family members of DGCA officials," a senior DGCA official said.

"Unconditional apology has come from respective airline managements."

On their part, the airlines which employ these pilots have said that they are fully cooperating with the police over the examination of charges.

"We are looking into the charges and extending full cooperation to DGCA in this matter. Basis the findings of our internal enquiry, we will take appropriate action," a spokesperson for IndiGo said.

Jet Airways said: "The airline is extending its full cooperation to the authorities.

"Jet Airways will take appropriate measures, where necessary, as per the company policy and in compliance with local law," a spokesperson for the airline said.

(With Agency inputs)
Jammu: An unidentified militant who among hundreds of others had attended the funeral of slain Hizbul Mujahideen Sabzar Ahmed Bhat's funeral in South Kashmir's Tral surrendered before Handwara Police on Wednesday.

According to ANI, Danish Ahmed, whose identity was not known until now, was among many who had shouted pro-freedom, pro-Islam slogans praising Bhat and the ongoing jihad in Kashmir.

A video of Danish Ahmed attending Sabzar Bhat's funeral had also appeared on the social media.

After surrendering, Ahmed admitted that he was in constant touch with terrorists of south Kashmir on social media and that he decided to become a terrorist on their instigation.

The Indian Army had recently released photos and full details of some 12 most wanted terrorists operating in Jammu and Kashmir, and launched a massive manhunt for them after eliminating Burhan Wani and Sabzar Bhatt in separate encounters.

Thousands of people, including a few militants, had offered funeral prayers for slain Hizbul commander Bhat and attended his burial at his ancestral village in south Kashmir's Tral in defiance of the curfew.

Bhat and his associate Faizan were killed in a gunfight with government forces in Saimoh village of Tral last month.

Despite strict restrictions, fasting mourners, braving sun, had arrived in Tral from various places for a last glimpse of the militant commander, a night before his funeral.

A group of five militants, including Hizb commander Zakir Musa, also surfaced during the funeral prayers that were led by senior resistance leader Raja Mehraj-ud-din.

Another Hizb militant, believed to be Azaan from Shopian, also appeared on the graveyard twice.

People hugged him and kissed his face.

Many of the mourners visited Sabzars home to express solidarity with his family.

Burhan Wanis father Muzaffar Wani and father of another local militant Muhammad Younis Ganaie were among the mourners, many of whom were elderly men and women, who defied restrictions to attend the funeral in Rathsuna village, local residents said.

Sabzar was laid to rest in the Martyrs Graveyard at Rathsun.

Last year tens of thousands of peoplemore than two lakh by one estimatehad attended the funeral of Burhan Wani, whose killing sparked months long protests across the Valley.
Srinagar: Four terrorists were gunned down when the Army foiled an infiltration bid in Machil sector of north Kashmir's Kupwara district.

The operation ensued after personnel of the counter-insurgency Rashtriya Rifles started an operation in Sardari Nad forests near the LoC on information about presence of militants there.

The incident took place late night yesterday when troops guarding the Line of Control (LoC) noticed a group of militants trying to infiltrate into the Valley from across the border in Machil sector under the cover of darkness, the Army official said.

"Hiding militants opened fire at the surrounding troops triggering a gunfight in which one militant has been killed," said a police officer, adding that the operation was still on in the densely forested area.

This is the third infiltration bid foiled by the Army in north Kashmir in the past fortnight.

On May 26, two Pakistani Border Action Team (BAT) members who tried to infiltrate into Uri sector to carry out an attack on the soldiers were killed.

Six more militants were killed in the same sector next day when they attempted to sneak into the valley from across the border.
Trivandrum: Unidentified assailants hurled petrol bomb at the Trivandrum district committee office of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Wednesday.

The attack took place around 9.15 p.m. today.

According to reports, a few chairs that were laid on the portico of the office were damaged.

However, no casualty or injury has been reported so far.

Meanwhile, the police have launched a probe into the matter.

The BJP has called for a strike tomorrow in Trivandrum district in view of the incident.

Launching a scathing attack on theCommunist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)) for the alleged attacks on the BJP workers in Kerala, party president Amit Shah had said that the more leftist violence is unleashed upon the saffron party workers in the state, the more the Lotus will blossom here.

Shah said it had been noticed that violence against BJP and Sangh Parivar members goes up whenever the Left parties comt to power. After the Left government came to power in Kerala, 13 BJP, RSS workers have been killed.
Bhopal: At least 18 persons were killed and 10 others injured in an powerful explosion in a firecracker factory in Balaghat district of Madhya Pradesh on Wednesday, police said.



"An explosion in the firecracker factory in Katera village in Kotwali police station jurisdiction around 3.30 pm was so powerful that even factory walls collapsed due to the impact," Additional Director General of Police G Janardan told IANS.



According to Janardan, 18 bodies have been recovered from the blast site and relief and rescue operation is underway.



"More bodies could be lying under the debris," the ADGP added.



The seriously injured have been rushed to hospital.
JBS sells Latin American units to Minerva

Brazil

JBS SA has signed a deal to sell its meat processing plants in Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay to Brazilian meatpacker Minerva.

The processing plants have been sold for US$300 million in order to pay for the fines settled with Brazilian prosecutors relating to JBSs bargain plea. The transaction is expected to close in July 2017 and, according to local media, JBS will keep its leather processing units

JBS already faced difficulties in Argentina and had closed some beef processing plants under pressure of export quotas in the previous Argentinian Government. Minerva says that of the five plants acquired from JBS in Argentina, four are closed and will remain as such until market conditions improve in the country.

All plants bought from JBS are said to have certification to export to the United States, Japan and China. In the stock market, Minervas common shares increased 5.6%, while JBS shares went up +8.4%.

Minerva says it has increased its net revenue estimate to around R$13-14.4 billion (US$3.96-4.39 billion) in the 12 months ending June 2018 to account for a 52% increase in slaughtering capacity.

In other developments, JBS has once again given temporary collective leave to workers, this time at the processing plant located in Ponta Pora, state of Mato Grosso. The 30-day leave is due to an operational adjustment, said JBS in a statement.

Meanwhile, Michel Temer, Brazils President, is to respond to prosecutors regarding JBS bribery accusations today, June 7.

Source: Reuters/Folha/G1
New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Wednesday alleged there was a "conspiracy" behind the ongoing agitation of farmers in Madhya Pradesh, and asked Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi to refrain from "politicising the death of farmers" in the state.

Allegations by BJP leaders, including Venkaiah Naidu and Narender Singh Tomar, came amidst the Central and state governments' efforts to contain the protest by farmers at Mandsaur in Madhya Pradesh. At least five persons have been killed in the violence during the protest.

The farmers have been protesting since June 1 demanding higher minimum support prices (MSP) for their produce and loan waiver among other things.

"Farmers of Madhya Pradesh are peace-loving. They do not indulge in violent activities. There is a conspiracy behind this entire incident. Those who do not want peace and prosperity in the state and can not see the BJP government functioning smoothly are behind this incident," Rural Development Minister Narender Singh Tomar said.

Tomar, who represents Gwalior seat in Lok Sabha, said farmers in Madhya Pradesh are the most prosperous in the country.

Replying to a question on Rahul Gandhi's scheduled visit to the protest site tomorrow, the minister said he should not "politicise" the death of farmers.

He also said that Gandhi and his party, which were in power for so long, were responsible for the poor condition of farmers in the country.

Naidu also hit out at the Congress for "hijacking" the protest in Mandsaur.

"It is a very sad turn of events in a state that is the most peaceful in India. Congress is trying to politicise farmers' problems after they failed to counter Shivraj Singh Chouhan politically in the state," he said earlier.

Later in a press conference, BJP General Secretary Bhupender Yadav said the BJP government in the state was taking appropriate measures to tackle the issue.

Asked about the demand by farmers of various states for a loan waiver as was done by the BJP-ruled Uttar Pradesh government, Union minister Piyush Goyal said the situation varies from state to state and that it was up to the respective state governments to take decision.
Bhopali: Agitating farmers in Mandsaur on Wednesday intensified their ongoing protest a day after five persons were killed in police firing.

According to ANI, at least 8-10 vehicles were set ton fire by the protestors despite several appeals for peace by MP Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and BJP leaders including Venkaiah Naidu.

Union Minister Venkaiah Naidu on Wednesday described Madhya Pradesh as ''an island of peace'' in the wake of violent protests over killing of five farmers in police firing in the Mandsaur district yesterday.

The minister, while appealing to protesters to call off their stir, also asked the main opposition party Congress not to politicise the issue unnecessarily.

Madhya Pradesh is an island of peace. I tell Congress don't politicise, don't fuel violence in the name of farmers, Venkaiah Naidu said, according to ANI.

Meanwhile, Congress today alleged that its vice president Rahul Gandhi was denied permission to visit the Mandsaur village to attend the funeral of the deceased farmers.

Congress General Secretary Mohan Prakash said that Rahul Gandhi wanted to visit deceased farmers' village to take part in funeral but administration didn't allow him.

However, Rahul would be reaching there any moment, he said adding, wrong information is being spread that he would participate in farmers' agitation.

Ahead of Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi's visit to Mandsaur, a minor scuffle broke out between the protesting farmers and the local police, a day after five persons were killed in police firing.

The agitating farmers were protesting against the delayed visit of Mandsaur collector and SP to the area after what several political leaders termed as ''unfortunate'' incident.

They also demanded the presence of state's Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan to Mandsaur.

The scuffle broke out as Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi is most likely to visit Mandsaur today to meet the kin of the deceased farmers during his day-long visit.

Mandsaur collector Swatantra K Singh today informed that there was no order to open fire on protesters. I have assured them (farmers) a strict action, he added.

Five farmers were killed and several others were injured on Tuesday in Mandsaur as police opened fire on peasants, who indulged in violence and stone-pelting.

Meanwhile, Shivraj Singh Chouhan had apprised BJP president Amit Shah of the situation in Mandsaur over the phone.

Condemning the incident, Chouhan had yesterday announced a compensation of Rs one crore for kin of those killed during protest and accused the opposition party for instigating the violence.

The MP Chief Minister also ordered a judicial probe into the incident even as Mandsaur city and Piplya Mandi area were put under curfew after the violence.

Riots broke out in Pipliamandi on Monday night.

Farmers damaged railway tracks and railway crossing gates in Mandsaur, set fire to vehicles and attacked cops.

On Tuesday, protesters at Piplia Toll Naka threw stones at police and torched 27 vehicles.

Around noon, shots were fired, killing at least five. DM Swatantra K Singh ordered internet shutdown in Mandsaur.

Protesters also set fire to a police check post in Nahargarh.

Authorities then imposed curfew in Mandsaur and Pipliamandi and Section 144 is in force in neighbouring Ratlam district.

However, protest is intensifying despite the CM's assurances that the government would buy onions and moong dal from farmers.

Several political parties have condemned the incident and called for a thorough probe.
Bhopal: A day after Madhya Pradesh Home Minister denied reports of firing by local police on agitating farmers in Mandsaur, the IG (Law and Order) Makrand Devaskar admitted that police resorted to firing to gain control of the rioting mob during the protest at the Madhya Pradesh.

IG (Law and Order) while interacting with media said, "After a preliminary investigation, it is now clear that the police opened fire at the protesting mob. However, it still remains unclear that under what situation police opened fire at the people. The investigation is still underway and therefore, I am unable to reveal much on the matter."

Yesterday, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Chouhan had accused the Congress for inciting violence among farmers whereas Home Minister Bhupendra Singh denied that the police had fired at the farmers, which resulted in at least five deaths.

However, organizers of yesterday's protests claimed that the police opened fire after farmers turned violent, throwing rocks at the police and setting vehicles on fire.

Thousands of farmers in the drought-ravaged region are demanding that authorities increase the minimum price for their crops and forgive bank loans. Madhya Pradesh is one of several states that have suffered disappointing rains and crop failures in recent years.

More than 1,600 farmers killed themselves in the state in 2016, according to an official figure.

Farmers in neighbouring Maharashtra state have held similar protests and have stopped supplies to urban areas, leading to a spike in the prices of vegetables and dairy products including in major cities like Delhi and Mumbai.

The protests pose a challenge to the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which has promised to double farm income in the next two years.

Tension prevailed in Mandsaur town again today, where all business establishments and offices remained closed. Police detained the former Mandsaur MP Meenakshi Natrajan who was not allowed to enter the district to meet families of the slain farmers.

Mandsaur collector S K Singh was heckled when he tried to persuade protesters to lift road blockade in Berheda Pant area.

Shops were torched in Suasara town in the district.

Inspector Shyambabu Sharma of Suasara police station received head injuries when the police were trying to bring under control a mob which was throwing stones at Guratiya Pratap square.

A warehouse was set ablaze in Badi Choupati area and Mhow-Neemuch highway was blocked for hours in Mandsaur.

In Dewas district, protesters threw stones and set on fire four passenger buses running between Indore-Bhopal and eight other vehicles in Newari Fata area. Passengers in the buses got down and were safe, but Indore-Bhopal bus services were suspended.

A mob also torched vehicles parked outside the Hat Pipaliya police station in Dewas district.

Protesting Congress workers stopped a train in Dewas.

Shops and offices in Neemuch district adjoining Mandsaur also remained shut. Protesters set on fire a police outpost in Harkiya Khal Phanta area.

In Ujjain district, around 10 policemen, including Mahal Kal police station's inspector Ajeet Tiwari, were injured in stone-pelting.

Protesters threw vegetables and fruits on road in Sanwer and Simrol areas of Indore and emptied milk containers.

In Khargone district, Bharatiya Kisan Sangh workers led by Gopal Patidar burnt an effigy of state home minister Bhupendra Singh in protest of alleged police firing in Mandsaur.

In Sehore district, car of additional collector of Barwani district Jayendra Kumar was pelted with stones. Protesters blocked the Indore-Bhopal highway at Ashta.

Violence was also reported from Dhar, while other areas of the state remained peaceful.

The Centre rushed 1,100 anti-riots police personnel to Mandsaur district where five persons were killed yesterday allegedly in police firing.

Though the Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan announced a compensation of Rs 1 crore each for the families of five farmers, it didn't seem to have mollified the protesters who are demanding better prices for their produce and a complete farm loan waiver.

The BJP government also announced a loan-settlement scheme which it said will cover around six lakh farmers with accumulated dues of Rs 6,000 crore.

The government is contemplating a formula wherein it may waive interest on crop loans. Also, an Agricultural Costs and Marketing Commission to ensure better prices for farm produce would be set up, minister Archana Chitnis said after attending a meeting chaired by chief minister Chouhan.

The bandh called by the main Opposition Congress received a mixed response.

Curfew remained in force at Pipaliya Mandi area -- where five farmers were killed and six others were injured yesterday -- and in Mandsaur town. Prohibitory orders under section 144 of CrPC are still on in place in rest of the district, Inspector General of Police V Madhukumar said.

The six injured persons were out of danger while the slain farmers were cremated, Madhukumar told PTI.

(With Agency inputs)
Bhopal: Prime Minister Narendra Modi was on Wednesday apprised of the situation in Mandsaur after which he chaired a meeting with senior ministers to discuss the situation in the Madhya Pradesh city.

After the prime minister's meet, the central government rushed two of each Additional CRPF and RAF to Mandsaur, a India Today report said. On Tuesday, the Madhya Pradesh Home Ministry had written to the Union Home Ministry seeking extra forces to tackle the situation.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah too was apprised of the situation in Mandsaur on phone by Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan.

CM Chouhan had yesterday appealed for peace to the agitating farmers in the state and also announced a compensation of Rs. one crore to the kin of those killed in the violence.

Mandsaur District Magistrate Swatantra Kumar Singh and Indore Superintendent of Police O.P. Tripathi were roughed up by a mob when they reached Barkheda Pant in Mandsaur where farmers were squatting on a road with the body of one of those killed on Tuesday.

Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi is expected to visit Madhya Pradesh's violence-hit Mandsaur district on June 8 to meet the kin of the five persons who were killed in violence during the farmers' agitation.

Internet services in Mandsaur, Ratlam and Ujjain remain suspended following the farmers' protests, and a curfew has also reportedly been imposed.

Earlier today, hundreds of angry farmers blockaded roads and attacked two top officials at Mandsaur in Madhya Pradesh as their leaders claimed that eight people died in police firing a day earlier.

The farmers in the central state are demanding remunerative prices for their produce and a loan waiver. They are also demanding that they should be given Rs. 50 per litre of milk bought from them as they spend Rs. 37 per litre.

Yesterday, at least five persons were killed as the farmers' agitation turned violent in Mandsaur, prompting the authorities to clamp curfew in the trouble-hit area.

Mandsaur has been on the boil since the farmers' agitation in the district turned violent.

Farmers in western Madhya Pradesh are protesting since June 1 over various demands.

The protesters demanding better crop prices, among other things, "heckled" Mandsaur collector this morning when he tried to pacify them.

Also, former MP from Mandsaur, Meenakshi Natarajan, was detained when she was on her way to meet the family members of the deceased.
New Delhi: Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Wednesday apprised Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah of the situation in Mandsaur over phone.

The Chief Minister yesterday appealed for peace to the agitating farmers in the state and also announced a compensation of Rs. one crore to the kin of those killed in the Mandsaur violence.

Speaking to ANI here, the Chief Minister asserted that his government stands with farmers and assured that various demands have been fulfilled in the past.

"In the past 11 years, there have been countless decisions made for the welfare of farmers. The various demands of the farmers have been fulfilled. I offer my condolences to the victims of Mandsaur incident. Rs. one crore will be given to the kin of the deceased and Rs. five lakh for those injured," the Chief Minister said, adding that the state government is ready to come out with a solution through communication," he said.

Chouhan also ordered a judicial enquiry into the matter.

Samajwadi Party chief and former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav earlier announced financial assistance of Rs. two lakh for the kin of the deceased farmers.

However, Chouhan came down heavily on the Congress Party for giving a political tinge to the violence after party's vice-president Rahul Gandhi accused the Centre of waging war against nation's farmers.

Yesterday, during an agitation, five farmers, who were demanding fair price and loan waiver, were killed and several others were injured in the firing by security forces.

Internet services in Mandsaur, Ratlam and Ujjain remain suspended following the farmers' protests, and a curfew has also reportedly been imposed.

The farmers in the central state are demanding remunerative prices for their produce and a loan waiver. They are also demanding that they should be given Rs. 50 per litre of milk bought from them as they spend Rs. 37 per litre.
Mumbai: Veteran actor Nana Patekar has a piece for advise for Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who is grappling with farmers' protest in the state.

Hundreds of angry farmers on Wednesday blockaded roads and attacked two top officials at Mandsaur in Madhya Pradesh as their leaders said that eight people died in police firing a day earlier.

The National Award winning actor, whose efforts to help farmers in Maharashtra are well known, has urged the MP CM to agree to the just demands raised by farmers.

Suppression will result in aggravated protests, further warned Patekar.

Mandsaur District Magistrate Swatantra Kumar Singh and Indore Superintendent of Police OP Tripathi were roughed up by a mob when they reached Barkheda Pant in Mandsaur where farmers were squatting on a road with the body of one of those killed on Tuesday.

Singh and Tripathi wanted to talk to the farmers in a bid to persuade them to end their protest but the attempt backfired.

Singh was chased by the farmers, with some repeatedly hitting him on the head. Tripathi had a tough time too. Police reinforcements which rushed to the spot rescued both the officials.

"The situation is tense but under control," a senior official said on Wednesday.

The farmers allege that the Madhya Pradesh Police and the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) deliberately opened fire at them when they were protesting on Tuesday. Seven farmers were also wounded in the firing.

Police said that it were the farmers who triggered the violence.

The farmers retaliated by torching more than 30 vehicles. In a desperate bid to bring the situation under control, authorities imposed curfew late on Tuesday in parts of Mandsaur district.

An official said the curfew would remain in force until further orders.

Farmers in Madhya Pradesh have been on strike from June 1 to June 10 to demand that their loans be scrapped and that their produce should be bought at a fair price.

(With Agency inputs)
New Delhi: The mutual fund (MF) industry's asset base declined marginally by 1.15 percent to Rs 19.03 lakh crore at the end of May, mainly due to outflow from money market segments.

In comparison, the assets under management (AUM) of the MF industry, comprising 42 players, were at an all-time high of Rs 19.26 lakh crore at the end of April, as per the data of Association of Mutual Funds in India (Amfi).

The industry's AUM had crossed Rs 10 lakh crore in May 2014, and it is expected to reach Rs 20 lakh crore this year.

Industry experts attributed the monthly drop in asset base to inflows in liquid or money market segments.

"There is a drop in overall asset base of the industry due to net outflows from the liquid funds, which are susceptible to sharp inflows and outflows as corporate parks short term money in these funds.

"Flows in still remain strong," said Kaustubh Belapurkar, Director of Fund Research at Morningstar Investment Adviser.

Overall, outflow in MF schemes stood at Rs 40,711 crore last month as compared to a staggering inflow of Rs 1.51 lakh crore in the preceding month.

Of this, liquid funds or money market category - with investments in cash assets such as Treasury Bills, certificates of deposit and commercial paper for shorter horizon - witnessed an outflow of Rs 64,692 crore.

However, equity and equity-linked saving scheme (ELSS) saw an infusion of Rs 10,790 crore. Besides, balanced and income funds witnessed an inflow of Rs 7,663 crore and Rs 5,124 crore respectively.

Mutual funds are investment vehicles made up of a pool of funds collected from a large number of investors. The funds are invested in stocks, bonds and money market instruments, among others.
Kohima: Three suspected terrorists and one officer was killed while three others were inured in an encounter in Nagaland's Mon.

The suspected terrorists belonged to the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN-K) faction and an Assam Rifles (AR) officer was also killed in an encounter in Mon district of Nagaland, a defence spokesman was quoted as saying by PTI.

Three AR jawans were also injured in the encounter that took place at Lappa in Tizit circle last night.

AR personnel had raided Lappa at around 11 pm following information that NSCN(K) cadres were moving through that area and an encounter ensued, the spokesman said.

The encounter continued for several hours.

Later, bodies of the three militants were found, the spokesman said.
The severance comes after more than a week of tensions stemming from apparent efforts by the Qatari government to encourage closer relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran at a time when the Gulf Arab states as a whole were increasingly orienting their foreign policies toward directly confronting and containing Tehrans regional influence.

In May, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates blocked Qatari media over reports in which the countrys emir supposedly called Iran an Islamic power and suggested that a regional strategy to combat terror and instability would have to include Tehran. Although the Qataris claimed that the reports had been the result of cyberattacks and were not genuine, the emir followed up by communicating directly with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani over the phone, in apparent defiance of Saudi efforts to curtail such outreach.

The remarks and the phone call came shortly after Saudi Arabia hosted an Arab summit that also saw the participation of US President Donald Trump, who has been engaged in his own efforts to contain Irans regional ambitions and reassert the traditionally adversarial relationship between America and the Iranian theocracy, which is regarded as the worlds leading state sponsor of terrorism and is still widely suspected of being in pursuit of a nuclear weapon, even after the agreement brokered by Trumps predecessor in which Iran exchanged cuts to its nuclear enrichment program for tens of billions of dollars in relief from economic sanctions.

The Arab-US summit included several speeches and a final address that all directly called out the Islamic Republic over its contributions to regional instability and sectarian conflict. This built upon months of widely recognized escalations in the tensions between Iran and its longstanding regional adversaries. Drivers of those tensions include Irans sponsorship of the Houthi rebels in Yemen, its support for the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, where the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is establishing an increasingly prominent presence both directly and through proxies, and its refusal to participate in OPEC agreements limiting oil output as a bid to stabilize the market.

With all this in mind Saudi Arabia has abundant motive to enforce an anti-Iran policy among its neighbors and it also has the political cover to do so as a result of strengthened relations and new arms deals and trade agreements with the United States. The isolation of Qatar is aimed at this very sort of enforcement, and the Agence-France Presse report on the topic suggests that Qatar is ultimately going to be pressured into one of two outcomes: a turn back toward its Arab partners along with tacit endorsement of their anti-Iran strategy, or a more complete alignment with Tehran, at the expense of other partnerships. Meanwhile, a Bloomberg article claims that the Saudi-led strategy is not working to elicit the former outcome so far.

In theory, Qatars Arab isolation will have a punishing effect that will force it to seriously reconsider its regional posture. The vast majority of the countrys food supplies come from the routes that were closed off on Monday, and the Qatari people responded by stockpiling items and leaving grocery store shelves virtually bare in anticipation of a food crisis. There were immediate reports that some in-transit food shipments were turned away at the Saudi border. But Iran quickly stepped in to offer replacement food shipments and encourage the country to persist in its defiance.

ABC News reports that Qatar expressed that continued defiance on Tuesday by following the Saudis lead and cancelling all flights heading from Qatar to the Arab states that have participated in the isolation effort. Furthermore, Bloomberg reports that Qatar proceeded to re-route flights through Iran to avoid stopovers in the participating Arab states. It is a gesture that could be indicative of clear intent to replace existing connections to those states with new partnerships among Iran and its allies.

Two of the Gulf Arab states, Kuwait and Oman, have declined to sever ties with Qatar, and ABC News reported that Kuwaiti officials were evidently trying to act as mediators between the two sides. Additionally, Al Jazeera reports that while the other participants in the current Saudi-led partnership are helping in the effort to bring Qatar back into the fold, they still maintain cooperative relations with Iran itself, and are evidently unwilling to immediately change that fact to suit the shared anti-Iran policy.

Presumably that will have to change in time, for the shared policy to remain consistent. But in the meantime, Saudi Arabia and its allies appear to be heading off at least some accusations of double standards by focusing their criticism of Qatar on accusations that it has helped Irans regional proxies by directly supporting and financing the Houthi rebels, located on the Arabian Peninsula just south of Saudi.

This emphasis on issues of terrorism also highlights the close connections between the Saudi-led confrontation of Iran and the similar moves being made by the US, as well as the fact that these two trends are arguably collapsing into one. The Telegraph pointed out on Tuesday that even before the current flare-up between Qatar and its erstwhile Arab partners, the US had already accused the Qatari government of helping Al Qaeda groups in Libya and Syria. In addition, although the US Air Force maintains a base in Qatar, its largest in the region, the military has refused to share intelligence with the Qataris out of fear that it would end up in the hands of terrorist organizations, many of them already backed by Iran.

Eurasia Review further contributed to the discussion of the US role, or potential role, in the emerging diplomatic crisis. It noted that American lawmakers have introduced sanctions legislation aimed at putting pressure on Qatar over its support for Hamas and other extremist groups. Such efforts may have set the stage for Secretary of State Rex Tillersons implicit endorsement of Qatars regional isolation.

The Eurasia Review report quoted him as saying, I think what were witnessing is a growing list of some irritants in the region that have been there for some time. And obviously they have now bubbled up to a level that countries decided they needed to take action in an effort to have those differences addressed.

As well as supporting the Saudi-led effort, such commentary also implicitly suggests that the US and the leading Arab powers recognize the same negative trends in the Middle East, and share at least broadly similar views on how to confront them. This does not, however, mean that the other partners of each of those countries recognize the same trends or are willing to act in concert. As mentioned above, some Arab nations have resisted the isolation of Qatar and others are continuing to straddle both sides of the Saudi-Iran divide. In addition to this, much of Europe is resisting the recent shift in US policy toward more direct confrontation of Iran, in large part because of the hope for investment deals in the Iranian oil industry as well as other fields.

In this sense, the US and Saudi Arabia have the potential to mutually see each other through the implementation of current strategies. And this is especially true in light of the fact that, according to the Eurasia Review report, the current Saudi-led campaign against Iran is different from previous ones because it specifically aims to force non-Arab states to take sides in a four-decades old proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran that has escalated in recent years, and persuade the Trump administration to come down hard on Qatar because of its refusal to join the anti-Iranian Saudi bandwagon and its ties to Islamist and militant groups.

There is good reason to believe that the Trump administration is already willing to take this step, assuming that it serves the broader goal of isolating Iran and denying it the funding for its longstanding sponsorship of global terror. Various recent reports have observed that the trajectory of US policy in the region is trending toward the explicit endorsement of regime change in Iran. And this speculation intensified last week with the appointment of Michael DAndrea as the head of Iran operations for the Central Intelligence Agency.

This goal was already endorsed by Turki al-Faisal, a former head of Saudi intelligence and former ambassador to the US, last year when he attended the annual Paris gathering of the National Council of Resistance of Iran. The event regularly sees the attendance of European dignitaries, highlighting a political undercurrent that could be strengthened by coordinate Arab and American efforts to personally confront Iran and also to turn other countries away from existing or potential partnerships with the Islamic Republic.
New Delhi: An important meeting of the Union Cabinet is likely to be held today to discuss on HRA and higher allowances based on the 7th Pay Commission report.

Media reports say that the Cabinet meeting is sheduled later in the day.

The Empowered Committee of Secretaries (E-CoS) last Friday placed its final report on allowance before the Cabinet,

The E-CoS has supported the view of AK Mathur Panel, keeping the House Rent Allowance (HRA) rate at 24 percent, 16 percent and 8 percent of the Basic Pay for Class X, Y and Z cities respectively.

Accordingly, the rate of HRA will be revised to 27 percent, 18 percent and 9 percent when DA crosses 50 percent, and further revised to 30 percent, 20 percent and 10 percent when DA crosses 100 percent.

However, the employees were demanding retaining of the existing rates of HRA. The existing rates of HRA for Class X, Y and Z cities and towns are 30 percent, 20 percent and 10 percent of Basic pay (pay in the pay band plus grade pay).

In the month of April, the Union Cabinet approved important proposals relating to modifications in the 7th CPC (Central Pay Commission) recommendations on pay and pensionary benefits in the course of their implementation.

There are about 47 lakh central government employees.

While recommendations of the CPC on pay and pension were implemented with the approval of the Cabinet, allowances continued to be paid at old rates.

The CPC had recommended that of a total of 196 allowances, 52 be abolished altogether and 36 be abolished as separate identities by subsuming them in another allowance.
Jaipur: In a big boost to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's highly ambitious 'Clean India' Mission, residents of Jodhpur's Kamala Nagar locality have come up with an innovative idea to collect trash - attaching a dustbin to their cars.

According to ANI, the residents of the Kamala Nagar locality believe that attaching a bucket and using it as a dustbin for collecting litter can be very useful in keeping the locality clean.

The residents are happy that their efforts are yielding good results and encouraging others to participate in the Clean India Campaign or 'Swachh Bharat' Mission.

"PM Modi started a mission to clean this country, and we must support it," Mohammad Yusuf, one of the residents, was quoted by ANI as saying.

Anil another resident who is ardent follower of Modi's Swachh Bharat said he uses his Audi for collecting the garbage of his house. "I also have a hospital of my own, where I encourage my patients to do what we do." he said.

Gopal, another resident of the area said, "I collect the garbage, put it in a bucket and dump it in the dumping yard. I have been carrying out this activity for a week, and I feel happy to be doing this."

If you still don t believe us, here's the picture proof.
Jaipur: The Rajasthan Board of Secondary Education (RBSE) will declare the Rajasthan 10th Board Result 2017, Rajasthan Board (RBSE) Class 10 Result 2017, BSER Class 10 Exam Results 2017 on June 8 (Thursday).

Board of Secondary Education of Rajasthan (BSER), Ajmer will release Rajasthan Board (BSER) Class 10 Year Examination Results 2017, Rajasthan Board (BSER) Class 10 Examination Results, Rajasthan Class 10 Results 2017, Rajasthan Board Secondary (Class 10) Result 2017 at 4 pm tomorrow.

Check rajeduboard.rajasthan.gov.in or rajresults.nic.in to access Rajasthan RBSE 10th Result 2017, RBSE 10th Exam 2017, Rajasthan Board 10th Result 2017.

Around 10,99,000 students are waiting for BSER Class 10 result, RBSE 10th Class Result, BSER 10th Result 2017.

How to check RBSE Result 2017/BSER Class 10 Result 2017:

Open any of the above-mentioned official websites:

Click on Rajasthan Board Results 2017 link

Enter your roll number, date of birth, other details

Your result will be displayed on the screen

Take a print our for future reference

RBSE Class 10 Result 2016 statistics:

Around 9,32,672 students had appeared for the exams.

Over all passing percentage was 92.73 percent.

Passing percentage for boys was 90.52 percent.

Passing percentag for girls was 91.92 percent.

About the Board

The RBSE/ BSER is responsible for promoting and developing Secondary Education in Rajasthan. Some 6000 schools located across 32 districts involving 8.5 lakhs students are connected to the Rajasthan School Board which conducts Secondary and Senior Secondary Examinations every year.

The Board was set up under the Rajasthan Secondary Education Act, 1957. It was set up in Jaipur but was later shifted to Ajmer in 1961.
New Delhi: Piramal Enterprises on Wednesday said it has provided Rs 1,100 crore funds to real estate firm Embassy group for development of housing and commercial projects in Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad.

"Piramal Enterprises through its subsidiary Piramal Finance Ltd has financed the Embassy Group for an amount of Rs 1,100 crore," a company statement said.

The funding has been done to residential and commercial projects in Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad over a span of the last six months, it added.

Piramal Finance first funded Rs 360 crore towards Embassy Residences project in Chennai spread over 25 acres with about 0.3 million sq ft of built up area.

Then it made an investment in Phoenix-Embassy, which is a joint venture between Embassy and Phoenix Group of Hyderabad.

The JV is developing about 1.5 million sq ft of grade-A commercial space in Hyderabad with a potential to develop a further 4 million sq ft.

Later, Piramal Finance has provided Rs 650 crore of growth capital to the Embassy Group.

Bengaluru-based Embassy Group is one of India's largest commercial real estate developers having delivered about 30 million sq ft of commercial office space and around 6 million sq ft of housing.

The Group has a pipeline of about 17 million sq ft of commercial developments across Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai.

Piramal Finance Ltd MD Khushru Jijina said the company has provided Embassy Group with customised financial solutions to scale up presence across both residential and commercial projects.

Embassy group CMD Jitu Virwani said: "We are delighted to be working closely with a large diversified conglomerate like the Piramal Group which is known for its structuring capabilities and quick turnaround time."

He said the company would leverage Piramal Group capabilities as we partner with them on our growth capital requirements going forward.

Piramal Enterprises is one of India's large diversified companies, with a presence in pharma, healthcare insights and analytics and financial services. Its consolidated revenues were over USD 1.3 billion in financial year 2016-17, with 51 percent of revenues generated from outside India.
New Delhi: Scientists have discovered a 3,000-year-old rectangular copper mask in Argentina - one of the oldest human-made metal object from South America.

The mask, that dates back to about 1000 BC, was found at a site where adults and children were buried.

Holes mark the position of the mask's eyes, nose and mouth, with additional small, circular openings near the edges that could have been threaded to secure it to a face or an object.

Scientists from University of Buenos Aires in Argentina also found a source of copper ore within 70 kilometres of the location where the mask was uncovered, suggesting that it was produced locally.

It is probable that metalworking emerged in Argentina at the same time that it was developing in Peru, the researchers wrote in the study published in the journal Antiquity.

The metal mask - along with a collection of human bones ? was found in a tomb near a village in northwestern Argentina.

There were about 14 bodies in the burial area, with the bones all mixed together and the mask placed on top of one corner of the pile.

Another burial area nearby held a single occupant. The bones of a child about 8 to 12 years old, also dating to about 3,000 years ago, were buried with a stone bead and a copper pendant, 'Live Science' reported.

The mask measures about 18 centimetres long and nearly 15 cm wide. To create the mask, someone would have hammered the metal flat while it was cold and then reheated it, researchers said.

The age of these metal objects - particularly the mask, crafted to deliberately resemble a human face - strongly suggests that people in the Argentinian regions of the Andes were shaping copper into artifacts earlier than previously thought, they said.

(With Agency inputs)
Coimbatore: A key accused in the Kodanadu estate murder case was today hospitalised again following complaints of back pain, a day after his arrest on being discharged following treatment for injuries suffered in a road mishap.

Sayan, lodged in the central prison here, was admitted to the government hospital in the early hours after he complained of heavy pain on his back and hand, police said.

He was remanded to judicial custody till June 20 by a Kothagiri court.

Sayan was arrested yesterday on discharge from the hospital where he underwent treatment for more than a month for injuries suffered in the April 29 road accident and produced before the court.

The mishap, in which Sayan's wife and daughter were killed, had occurred five days after the murder of the security guard at the estate bungalow, used to be frequented by late Chief Minister Jayalalithaa.

Sayan, who has been suffering from kidney and intestine problem following the accident, would be in the hospital for some more days, police said.

Police have named 11 persons as accused in the murder and break-in at the estate and arrested 10 of them.

The prime suspect Kanagaraj, a former driver of Jayalalithaa, had died in a road accident in Salem in April.

According to police, Kanakaraj had plotted the crime with 10 others, including Sayan.

The Kodanadu estate figures in the disproportionate assets case involving jailed AIADMK general secretary V K Sasikala and Jayalalithaa, among others.
Salem: In yet another horrific crime against women in Tamil Nadu, a 15-year-old girl was allegedly raped by two drivers and a conductor in a bus at Narayanampalayam in Salem district on Monday night.

The three men, who allegedly committed the crime after halting the private bus at a village, were arrested on Tuesday.

The incident has brought back memories of the December 16, 2012 sensational gang-rape in Delhi in which a 23-year-old woman paramedic was raped in a moving bus in New Delhi.

The matter came to light after some locals in the village heard the cries of the girl and alerted the police.

According to the police, the girl, after a tiff with her parents, was seen moving about aimlessly here on Monday.

She later boarded a local bus to a village in the afternoon and kept travelling to and fro in the same bus till late night, the police said.

S Manivannan, 31, of Sanyasikundu and P Murugan, 35, of Athikaripatty, who usually take turns to drive the bus, and conductor K Perumal, 22, of Sanyasikundu pacified the girl and befriended her, reported PTI.

Later, the three men allegedly raped the girl at night.

According to The Times of India, the girl, who had studied up to Class IX, had developed a relationship with G Vijayan, 20, of Veeranam in the district three years ago. Police said he raped the girl on various occasions and recently introduced her to his friend K Perumal. "After that, she became very close to Perumal too," they said.

When the girl raised an alarm, villagers rescued her and the three were arrested.

The Omalur police arrested Vijayan too on the basis of the girl's statement.

"A total of nine sections including those from the IPC, Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, have been invoked against the accused," a senior police official told PTI.

The girl was taken to a hospital and produced before the Child Welfare Committee, he said.

Senior district officials visited the girl and held enquiries, he added.

(With Agency inputs)
Lucknow: A special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court on Wednesday granted senior BJP leaders LK Advani, MM Joshi and Uma Bharti, facing trial on conspiracy charges in connection with the Babri Masjid demolition case, exemption from personal appearance.

The special CBI court had last week framed criminal conspiracy charges against them for their alleged role in instigating a mob to demolish the Babri Masjid mosque in Ayodhya in 1992.

The fast-track court is hearing two separate cases relating to the demolition of the disputed structure which stood at a place believed to the birthplace of Hindu god Ram, and where a temple once stood.

Building a Ram temple at Ayodhya is one of the core ideological issues of the BJP as well as its parent, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

The three others against whom conspiracy charges were framed included BJPs Vinay Katiyar, Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP)s Vishnu Hari Dalmia, and religious preacher, Sadhvi Rithambara.

Advani along with Uma Bharti were among the leaders who were personally present in court for the hearing.

The direction of the CBI court holds significance since Uma Bharti is a sitting minister in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) while both Advani and Joshi are senior leaders of the BJP.

Defending the BJP leaders, Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu said, 6Our leaders are innocent. They will come out unscathed.

The Lucknow court, while rejecting the discharge petition brought by the accused, directed that the trial be conducted on a day-to-day basis and wrapped up within two years.

This is consistent with the order passed by the Supreme Court in April. The accused, however, will not be required to attend daily hearings.

The court added that there was enough evidence on record against Advani, Joshi, Uma Bharti and others for invoking the charge of criminal conspiracy against them.

The accused in the two cases have been charged with criminal conspiracy under Section 120B (criminal conspiracy) and other provisions of the Indian Penal Code, 1960.

The three senior BJP leaders and others were however, granted bail on furnishing of personal bonds of Rs20,000 each.

The leaders were named in an FIR filed after the demolition of Babri Masjid on 6 December 1992.

The Congress party had demanded that union minister Uma Bharti resign from the cabinet since a chargesheet has been filed against her.
Lucknow: In yet another indication of rising crime in BJP-ruled UP, a trader was shot dead along with his wife and son by some unknown assailants in Sitapur district late on Tuesday.

Police said the deceased Sunil Jaiswal (60) and his wife Kamini (55) had come back home late night and had just rung the door bell when two unidentified bike-borne assailants came and opened indiscriminate fire on them.

Hrithik (25) their lone son opened the door and was shot at also.

#Visuals from UP: Trader shot dead in Sitapur, along with his son and wife, last night; assailants fled with cash. pic.twitter.com/XRIsPNP7zb  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) June 7, 2017

All the three died on the spot, as firing rent the air, many people in neighbourhood rushed out to see one person tried to raise an alarm he was also shot at by the assailants who fled the crime scene.

The entire incisdent was caught on CCTV, which is now being examined by police for leads.

Angry locals alleged that when the crime was taking place they had stopped two police constables and sought help but they refused, saying the area was not under their jurisdiction.

The locals also threatened to shut the city if the assailants were not arrested in 24-hours.

An official said the crime appears to have been executed by professionals as they were wearing masks and appeared to have done a recce of the area before they committed the actual crime.

So far, the police has not been able to arrest anyone and identify the probable reason behind the murders.

Watch the CCTV footage of the triple murder in Sitapur here.

#WATCH: Trader shot dead in Sitapur, along with his son and wife, last night; assailants fled with cash. (CCTV) pic.twitter.com/Q4pr0DfOyO  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) June 7, 2017

With IANS inputs
Khamenei, who was speaking on Sunday June 4th, in death commemoration anniversary of Khomeini, mentioned the crimes of 80s as a great honor and said: Sixties was the decade of great honor, was fight against separatism.

Khamenei, as a vicious deceiving mullah claimed:Incited and paid groups to fight against the Islamic Republic and create separatism.

These statements is being said by Khamenei, while during the presidential election, the massacre of political prisoners in 1988, were more than ever exposed for the public knowledge and judgment of Iranians.

This caused the people and youth of Iran to chant slogans against Ebrahim Raisi to condemn the crime committed by him.

This polarization during the election show caused Rouhani to use opportunistically this position against his ravel to collect votes for himself, which he said in a campaign rally in Hamadan: People wont vote for the ones that during 38 years knew only to put in jail or execute.

It should be noted, that Hossein Ali Montazeri, then acting Khomeinis deputy in a meeting on August 24th, 1988 with the mission called Death Commission.

As the executions of 1988 became known, he called them as a crime, and members of the Board, which were selected by Khomeini including Ebrahim Raisi, Deputy Chairman of prosecutor, said: They will be called criminals in the history.
Lucknow: In a shocking incident, a woman was allegedly gang-raped in a moving vehicle in Uttar Pradesh's Unnao district on Wednesday.

The woman was sexually assaulted by three men and was thrown out of the moving vehicle in an unconscious state.

Police has started probing the matter.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath who recently held a review meeting on law and order with senior officials, asserted that no laxity would be tolerated.

In a bid to improve the law and order situation in the state, UP CM on Tuesday sought explanation from Superintendents of Police in connection with addressal of public grievances.
Haldwani: The food retailers in Uttarakhand's Haldwani district are openly selling plastic rice in markets.

When the Pal family bought rice from a confectionery, they found a variation in the taste.

The matter came to light when a video of children playing with a ball made up of plastic rice went viral.

"A team has been constituted and along with officials of food security department and municipal corporation we will conduct raid. Strict action will be taken," City Magistrate K. K. Mishra said.

This comes months after a case of artificial eggs in Kolkata came into light after a woman filed a police complaint.

Anita Kumar had discovered that the eggs were artificial when she cracked open a few of them.

Kolkata was hit by a mass production of artificial eggs, allegedly made of plastic, which has led to the Kolkata Municipal Corporation to order an investigation into it.
New Delhi: A Delhi Court on Wednesday granted bail to all the four accused who were arrested for allegedly raping a US tourist in a five star Hotel in Delhi last year.

Vivek Srivastava, hotel staffer and three other accused-- Aniruddha Singh, Omprakash and Maqsood got the bail on Rs. 50,000 personal bail bond each by the court.

The police had on December 26 last year arrested all the four persons in connection with the alleged gang rape of the woman in April last year.

The US national arrived here in December last year to join the probe and recorded her statement before a judicial magistrate where she reiterated that she was gang raped by five persons in the five-star city hotel.
Tehran: Gunmen and suicide bombers stormed Iran`s Parliament and the shrine of its revolutionary leader on Wednesday, killing 12 people in the first attacks in the country claimed by the Islamic State group.

Dozens of people were wounded in the attacks, which ended after a standoff lasting several hours as the gunmen holed up in parliamentary office buildings.

IS released a video of the attackers from inside the building via its Amaq propaganda agency -- a rare claim of responsibility while an attack was still going on.

Police said all the attackers had been killed by around 3 pm (1030 GMT), some five hours after it started.

Here are the UPDATES:

- An Interior Ministry official said the attackers were dressed as women and entered into Parliament complex through the visitors` entrance.

- Police said all the attackers had been killed by around 3 pm (1030 GMT), some five hours after it started.

- Iran's Intelligence Ministry said there had been a third "terrorist" team that was neutralised before the attacks started.

- "The two martyrdom operatives blew themselves up inside the Khomeini mausoleum in the centre of Tehran," the "security source" added.

- "Fighters from the Islamic State attacked the Khomeini mausoleum and the Parliament building in Tehran," the the Amaq propaganda agency said citing a "security source"

- Islamic State claims responsibility for the attack at Iranian Parliament and Khomeini's shrine: Amaq agency

- One of the attackers on Iran`s Parliament complex blows himself up on the fourth floor amid an ongoing siege, state broadcaster IRIB reports.

- A second suicide bomber detonates explosives outside the shrine of Iran's revolutionary founder Ruhollah Khomeini in south Tehran, state broadcaster IRIB reported.

- The attackers killed seven people and wounded several others, says Tasmin news agency.

- Tehran is on lockdown, with streets blocked and the metro closed, and journalists kept away from the shrine by police.

- Interior Minister Abdolrahman Fazli tells ISNA he had convened a special meeting of the country's security council.

- It was not clear who could be behind the attacks in Iran. The Islamic State had published a rare video in Persian in March, warning that it "will conquer Iran and restore it to the Sunni Muslim nation as it was before."

- Lawmaker Tayebeh Siavoshi tells Efe that the situation was very confusing and sensitive, and denied preliminary information that everything was under control.

- Meanwhile, Tehran municipality tweets about a hike in public transportation fare while Iran security forces are containing terror attacks.

- The state TV report did not provide further details, or say whether the shooting was linked to another attack on the shrine of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. There, four attackers, including a suicide bomber, killed a security guard and wounded four other people.

- News agency Tasnim reports that four persons had been taken hostage by gunmen in the Parliament building`s upper floors.

- Irans state TV says four attackers were involved in a Parliament shooting that is still underway, and that eight people have been wounded.

- No Indian harmed in attacks: Indian envoy to Iran Saurabh Kumar

- One attacker of Iran Parliament has been arrested, reports state news agency IRNA.

- Two people have been killed in the twin attacks in Iran. A security guard was killed when gunmen burst into Tehran`s Parliament complex, while a gardener was killed when armed assailants entered the grounds of Khomeini`s mausoleum in the south of the city, the ISNA news agency reported.

- Press TV reports that bomber in shrine was reportedly a woman. She blew up herself outside the shrine on western yard.

First photo of suicide explosion's aftermath at Imam Khomeini Mausoleum #TehranShooting pic.twitter.com/8wjUjMZW8t  Press TV (@PressTV) June 7, 2017

- One of the Mausoleum attackers has reportedly killed himself by swallowing cyanide, reports Press TV.

People gather outside Iran Parliament in central Tehran after the shooting incident #tehranshooting pic.twitter.com/OGZ90zchZS  Press TV (@PressTV) June 7, 2017

- Mehr news agency reports that despite the attack, Parliament session is going on normally, broadcast live on national radio.

- Shi'ite Iran has been singled out as a target by Sunni jihadists, including the Islamic State group, but has largely escaped attacks within its urban centres. Iran provides key ground forces against IS and other rebel groups in Syria and Iraq.

- ISNA reported that the shooters had been surrounded but had yet to be arrested.

- There were conflicting reports from inside the Parliament complex, with some reports saying the situation had been brought under control while others said the shooting was continuing, with the buildings under lockdown.

- The mausoleum is in southern Tehran, around 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the Parliament building.

The moment of explosion at Imam Khomeini mausoleum #TehranShooting pic.twitter.com/cVQtgqteYr  Press TV (@PressTV) June 7, 2017

- An armed man had entered at the western entrance of the mausoleum and opened fire before blowing himself up with a suicide vest, the site`s head of public relations Ali Khalili told the IRNA news agency.

- The ILNA news agency said five people had been injured and that security forces were dismantling a bomb inside the mausoleum.

- State TV said one of the attackers was killed by security guards and that a woman was arrested following today's attack.

- Irans state TV news website says four terrorists, including a suicide bomber, have attacked the shrine in Tehran, killing a security guard and wounding four people.

- An apparently coordinated attack took place at the mausoleum of Iranian revolutionary founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, several news agencies said.

- As per news agencies ISNA and Fars, three people had been shot after the gunmen entered via the north entrance, including at least one security guard.

First video emerges of the aftermath of Iran Parliament shooting incident#IranParliament pic.twitter.com/04WTu9PrnV  Press TV (@PressTV) June 7, 2017

- A Member of Parliament told state broadcaster IRIB that there were four gunmen inside the parliamentary complex in central Tehran, armed with rifles and a pistol.
Islamabad: Pakistan's top civilian and military leadership on Wednesday expressed concern over the "deteriorating" security situation in Afghanistan and rejected as "baseless" allegations that it had any hand in last week's bombing in the war-torn country's capital.

The assertion by Pakistan came as Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif chaired a special meeting of the National Security Committee of the Cabinet to review issues of national and regional security.

The forum strongly condemned the recent incident of terrorism in Kabul and resolved to remain steadfast and resolute in support of the Afghan people, according to a statement by the Prime Minister's Office.

"The participants expressed concern on the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan and strongly rejected the baseless allegations on Pakistan in that context," the statement said.

Pakistan had last week also strongly rejected as "baseless" the Afghan allegations that the Taliban-linked militants with the help of Pakistani spy agency ISI carried out the bombing in Kabul that killed at least 150 people.

The Afghan intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security (NDS), had said early findings showed that the Haqqani network with the assistance of the ISI carried out the attack yesterday in Kabul.

The meeting today highlighted that Pakistan was the only country in the Afghan equation which has achieved clear and measurable success against terrorism despite limited capacity and huge human and economic costs.

"Pakistan has not only remained committed to a peaceful and stable Afghanistan but also worked with all regional and global initiatives to that end. At the same time Pakistan has shown exceptional restraint even when Afghan territory was used for terrorist acts in Pakistan which resulted in massive human losses," the statement said.

It said that Pakistan was fully cognizant of institutional collaboration by elements hostile to Pakistan and will defend itself resolutely against manifest and future threats.

The statement said Pakistan remains committed to continue its ongoing efforts for local, regional and global peace.

The meeting was attended by Minister for Defence Khawaja Muhammad Asif, Minister for Finance Muhammad Ishaq Dar, Minister for Interior Chaudhry Nisar, Adviser to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee General Zubair Mahmood Hayat, Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa, Director General ISI Lt Gen Naveed Mukhtar and other top senior civil and military officials.
Dubai: Measures taken by the United Arab Emirates and other nations against Qatar are aimed at pressuring Doha into changing its policies, not at overthrowing its regime, a senior UAE official said on Wednesday.

"We have now reached a cul-de-sac in terms of trying to convince Qatar to change course," UAE state minister for foreign affairs Anwar Gargash said in an interview, accusing Qatar of being "the main champion of extremism and terrorism in the region".

"This is not about regime change -- this is about change of policy, change of approach," Gargash said.

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain are among seven states that have cut diplomatic ties with Qatar, a gas-rich emirate at the Saudi border.

The Arab states accuse Qatar of supporting extremism, a charge Doha firmly denies.

Gargash said the crisis was the result of "an accumulation over many, many years of subversive Qatari politics and support for extremism and terrorist organisations".

Qatar has forged regional alliances independently of its fellow Gulf Cooperation Council states, drawing accusation by Saudi Arabia and its allies of serving Iranian interests.

The country is home to a number of high-profile figures of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood and Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, both listed as terrorist organisations by the United States.
YEREVAN, JUNE 7, ARMENPRESS. OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs Ambassadors Igor Popov (Russia), Stephane Visconti (France) and Richard Hoagland (USA) will meet with President of Armenia, Ministers of Defense and Foreign Affairs during their visit to Armenia on June 10, Russian Co-Chair Igor Popov told Armenpress.

In accordance with the agreement reached with the French and American Co-Chairs, as well as Ambassador Andrzej Kasprzyk, we will visit Armenia on June 10. We want to clarify the current situation in the conflict zone. Contemporary issues are expected to be discussed, also taking into account the results of the meeting of Russian, Armenian and Azerbaijani Foreign Ministers held in late April. The next day visit is expected to Nagorno Karabakh. As usual, the respective statement on meeting results will be released at the OSCE official website, Igor Popov said, adding that the Co-Chairs will visit Baku late next week.

Asked whether such addressed statements, as recently released by the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs, can somehow contribute to easing tension in the Artsakh-Azerbaijan line of contact, the Russian Co-Chair said: Our statement condemns the recent ceasefire violations and calls on the conflicting sides to take all necessary measures to prevent further escalation in the line of contact and the Armenian-Azerbaijani border. As I said, the situation in the conflict zone, the development prospects are going to be the subject of discussion during our upcoming visit to region. As mediators, our task is to do everything possible to settle the conflict exclusively through peaceful, political-diplomatic means. We will continue working on that path.
YEREVAN, JUNE 7, ARMENPRESS. With a vote of 397 to 0, the U.S. House of Representatives on June 6 unanimously condemned Turkey, sharply criticizing the brutal May 16th Erdogan-ordered attack against peaceful protesters in Washington DC, reported the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA).

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce led House Floor discussion of the measure, noting, the violent attacks by officers assigned to Turkish President Erdogan's security detail against peaceful protesters back on May 16 were designed to do one thing: they were designed to silence those protesters' criticism of the Turkish government. And that is why it is so important that we speak out. We must speak loudly and clearly that we will protect our citizens and their fundamental rights to free speech and to assembly.

House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) was adamant in his condemnation of the attacks. It should be clear to Turkey and to all nations that we will oppose any attempt to suppress dissent or the freedom of speech.

New York Congressman Adriano Espaillat (D) noted, Erdogan simply decided to treat Americans the way he treats his own people. His guards even had the nerve to attack law enforcement officials who were protecting him and his delegation. This behavior cannot stand. And the resolution before us sends a clear, decisive message that congress won't tolerate it.

ANCA Executive Director Aram Hamparian welcomed the Houses such decision stating: After far too many years of appeasing Ankara - turning a blind eye to its genocidal horrors, abuses at home, and aggression abroad - the United States, starting with the House of Representatives - today turned an important corner, challenging Turkey's violence and confronting its increasingly anti-American conduct.

H.Res.354 was spearheaded by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-CA), Ranking Democrat Eliot Engel (D-NY), House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD).

The Resolution states after hours of peaceful protest, violence erupted when pro-Erdogan supporters and individuals from the Turkish Embassy grounds pushed past District of Columbia police officers to brutally attack the demonstrators. The Resolution expressed deep concern that Turkish officials blatantly suppressed the First Amendment rights of United States citizens, and multiple armed Turkish security officials beat, kicked, and choked unarmed demonstrators. In addition, the Resolution noted that the Washington Metropolitan Police Department and other reports confirm that the demonstrators did not instigate the violence, and that this is the third instance of violence perpetrated in the U.S. by members of Turkish President Erdogan's security detail. The Resolution calls for any Turkish security officials who directed, oversaw, or participated in efforts by Turkish security forces to illegally suppress peaceful protests on May 16, 2017, should be charged and prosecuted under United States law. Taking a strong stand against the growing trend of repressive authoritarianism in Turkey, H.Res. 354 states that the United States should take steps to strengthen freedoms for the press and civil society in countries such as Turkey, and combat efforts by foreign leaders to suppress free and peaceful protest in their own countries.
YEREVAN, JUNE 7, ARMENPRESS. US President Donald Trump and the king of Saudi Arabia Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud discussed the unity of Gulf countries in fight against terrorism during a phone conversation on June 6, White House official said, reports TASS.

Trumps message was that we need unity in the region to fight against extremist ideology and terrorist financing. It is important for the Persian Gulf to be united for maintenance of peace and security in the region, the official said.

On June 5 Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, Yemen authorities, the Maldives and Mauritius announced cutting diplomatic ties with Qatar, accusing Doha on assisting terrorist groups and destabilizing the situation in Middle East.

Qatari authorities called these actions as unjustified, and the accusations as ungrounded.
In an article for Al Arabiya by Heshmat Alavi, he writes that after the U.S, pulled out of Iraq, Iran usurped the opportunity and opened the gates of hell into Mesopotamia. The destructive policies Tehran dictated to Baghdad under former Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki paved the path for the rise of ISIS in 2014 to storm the countrys north and central lands. It has taken three dreadful years and a volume of human and financial resources to push the terror group out of Iraq, leaving large swathes of the country devastated and more importantly, Iran enjoying unprecedented and highly sensitive influence across the spectrum in Iraq through its conglomerate of militias.

He adds, Regarding Syria, the Levant is important for Iran. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has stressed the imperative of Iran confronting its enemies in Syria  far from its own borders. In a recent statement, he said, Had the ill-wishers and plotters not been prevented from their evil deeds in Syria we would have to prevent them in the Iranian provinces of Tehran, Fars, Khorasan and Isfahan, so it is better we do it there. The door for martyrdom, which was closed by the end of the war with Iraq, is now open in Syria.

Non-military options are always preferable, and so Washingtons sanctions are an effective means for dealing with Iran and stop their meddling in other nations domestic affairs, and their exportation of terrorism. Military confrontation is considered illogical by politicians from both sides of the aisle in Washington, as well as their counterparts across Europe and the Middle East.

Alavi writes, Irans policies in the Middle East have been against the interests of all parties, with the exception of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad and its slate of proxy forces behind the rampage we are witnessing today.The question is how to confront Iran correctly. Those in control are taking advantage and misrepresenting Islam for their interests and their sponsored atrocities are against the teaching of all holy books, including the Torat, Bible and Quran.

The Iranian opposition, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) is a strong coalition that provides an effective platform on how to take on the Iranian regime. NCRI President-elect Maryam Rajavi, a Muslim woman who represents a tolerant vision of Islam, held a gathering on Sunday in Paris marking the holy month of Ramadan.

Mrs. Rajavi spoke about Encouraging Interfaith Solidarity against Extremism, and provided the initial building blocks of how to tackle the dilemma of the Iranian regime. I would like to propose a three-pronged initiative on behalf of the Iranian people and Resistance. And I urge all the states and countries in the region to support it, she said, and outlined the following:

 First, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), which is the main operative advancing all the regimes policies in the region, must be officially recognized and declared a terrorist entity. The presence of this force and its proxy militias in Middle East countries must not be tolerated and they must be evicted all together from countries in the region.

 Second, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) must expel the Iranian regime and grant Irans seat in this organization to the Iranian peoples Resistance.

 Third, they should recognize the Iranian peoples struggle to bring down the clerical regime and establish freedom and democracy.
YEREVAN, JUNE 7, ARMENPRESS. The state committee of water management of the Armenian ministry of energy infrastructures and natural resources and the Spanish GS Inima Environment S.A signed a memorandum of understanding today in the government. Armenian PM Karen Karapetyan was present at the signing ceremony.

The document was signed between Arsen Harutyunyan, chairman of the Armenian water management committee, and CEO of the Spanish company Marta Verde Blazquez .

GS Inima Environment S.A is leading company in the water management sector across the world, which is carrying out state-private sector partnership programs in 18 countries.

Under the memorandum, the sides will cooperate in improving and developing water supply and draining infrastructures in Armenia.

Prior to signing the document, PM Karapetyan and Ms. Blazquez discussed the cooperation and several other issues of mutual interest.

Blazquez mentioned that she appreciates the proactiveness of the Armenian government, and is willing to cooperate in the abovementioned directions and propose innovative solutions for the existing issues.
YEREVAN, JUNE 7, ARMENPRESS. A 63 year old man died as result of the June 6 storm in Yerevan, Armenia.

The Astghik Medical Center of Yerevan told ARMENPRESS the 63 year old man, identified as Baghdasar Charkichyan, was admitted transported to the hospital by first responders, but was already dead upon arrival.

The strong winds caused the metal plates of a rooftop to collapse, hitting the 63 year old. He died while being rushed to the hospital.
YEREVAN, JUNE 7, ARMENPRESS. The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the Tehran attacks, which targeted the Iranian Parliament and the Ayatollah Khomeini mausoleum in the countrys capital, according to Fars news agency.

Gunmen had stormed into the Iranian parliament in the morning of June 7. Armed with AK 47s, the gunmen opened gunfire inside the building.

Preliminary reports said 1 person was shot dead, and 8 others were wounded.

The parliament attack was followed by another attack targeting the Ayatollah Khomeini mausoleum.
YEREVAN, JUNE 7, ARMENPRESS. According to the Iranian Tasnim news agency, the death toll in the countrys parliament shooting has risen to 7, while 4 others are being held hostage.

Tasnim said the death toll isnt officially confirmed yet.

According to local media, one of the attackers is still shooting outside the building, after successfully escaping the parliament.

Earlier it was reported that 4 gunmen had stormed into the Iranian parliament and opened random gunfire. 8 people were wounded and a security officer was shot dead.

A similar attack happened afterwards in the Ayatollah Khomeini mausoleum. According to reports, at least one gunman entered the mausoleum and opened gunfire, and afterwards detonated a bomb.
YEREVAN, JUNE 7, ARMENPRESS. By the instruction of President of Armenia, another batch of humanitarian aid was sent to Syria on June 7 in accordance with the agreement reached between the Defense Ministries of Armenia and Russia, the Ministry told Armenpress.

The aircraft loaded with 18 tons of first necessary items, mainly food, was sent to Syrias people affected by the conflict. There are notes on the packages reading With warm peaceful wishes from Armenia to the fraternal people of Syria.

The representatives of Armenian Ministries of Defense and Emergency Situations departed for Syria to accompany the transfer of humanitarian aid and to organize the distribution process.
YEREVAN, JUNE 7, ARMENPRESS. Foreign Minister of Armenia Edward Nalbandian strictly condemned the terror attacks on Irans Parliament and Imam Khomeinis mausoleum, the MFA said on Facebook, reports Armenpress.

We strictly condemn the attacks carried out on Irans Parliament and Imam Khomeinis mausoleum. We express our solidarity to the people of Iran, the Foreign Minister said.

Islamic State terrorist group members stormed into the Iranian parliament in the morning of June 7. The gunmen opened gunfire inside the building. According to preliminary reports 7 people were killed. Unofficial reports say there are hostages inside the building.
YEREVAN, JUNE 7, ARMENPRESS. Deputy Finance Minister of Armenia Davit Ananyan doesnt agree with the view that by joining the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) Armenia may lose its sovereignty in terms of running customs and tax policy, reports Armenpress.

Drawing parallels between the cooperation with the EU and EAEU, he said, in this sense there is a unification and harmonization policy of customs and tax policies.

In case of unification policy the countries being members of this or that structure try to form a common legislation: the vivid example of this is the VAT system operating in the EU. In terms of the EAEU, the customs code is an example of unification policy which will come into force from January 1, 2018. And the harmonization policy differs from unification one in a sense that the countries, by maintaining their tax and customs independence, try to form such mutual relations so that there is cooperation between the countries tax and customs codes in connection with the behavior of economic entity or tax-payer, Davit Ananyan said.
YEREVAN, JUNE 7, ARMENPRESS. Vice-Speaker of Armenias Parliament Eduard Sharmazanov on June 7 held a meeting with Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Kazakhstan to Armenia Timur Urazayev, press service of the Parliament told Armenpress.

During the meeting the sides discussed the current situation in the region by attaching importance to stability and peace in regional countries.

Sharmazanov highly appreciated the Armenian-Kazakh relations and attached importance to the further development of inter-parliamentary ties and the role of friendship groups in this sense. In this context he said Armenia-Kazakhstan parliamentary friendship group will be formed soon and assured that it will significantly contribute to developing the parliamentary cooperation.

The Vice-Speaker also talked about the Nagorno Karabakh conflict settlement, stating that both Armenia and Artsakh see the conflicts settlement exclusively through peaceful negotiation means.

Without reasonable mutual concessions, it is impossible to reach the conflicts settlement, meanwhile Azerbaijan till now is not ready to that mutual concessions, Sharmazanov said.

He also touched upon the issue of Turkeys closure of the border with Armenia and considered unacceptable having closed borders in the 21st century. According to him, it is a serious threat for the region.

The Parliaments Vice-Speaker also attached importance to cooperation in international structures  CIS Inter-parliamentary Assembly, CSTO PA, calling the works of parliamentary delegations of Armenia and Kazakhstan at these platforms as constructive. He said the membership to the EAEU provides new opportunities to both countries to develop economic ties.

In his turn the Kazakh Ambassador highly appreciated the parliamentarians contribution in developing the inter-state relations.

Timur Urazayev once again reaffirmed that Kazakhstan is in favor of the peaceful settlement of the NK conflict and supports the activity of the OSCE Minsk Group.

Commenting on the April 2 parliamentary election in Armenia, the Ambassador said the Kazakh observers highly appreciated the elections.

At the meeting issues relating to the activity of Armenian community in Kazakhstan were discussed. The Ambassador assured that Armenians are actively engaged in Kazakhstans public and political life.
YEREVAN, JUNE 7, ARMENPRESS. Armenias Ambassador to China H.E. Sergey Manasaryan briefed President Sargsyan on June 7 regarding the Armenian-Chinese relations agenda and especially its economic component, ongoing bilateral program and achievements, as well as targeted directions of further development of partnership.

The consultation was attended by Chief of Staff of the Presidents Office Armen Gevorgyan, minister of economic development and investments Suren Karayan, minister of education and science Levon Mkrtchyan, deputy foreign ministers Armen Papikyan and Robert Harutyunyan and other officials of the Presidents Office.

Speaing about the economic component, the Armenian President emphasized that the priority of Armenian diplomatic representations abroad has always been and continues to be spreading Armenias economic opportunities in those countries  especially among investors, and of course, as well as the ongoing works aimed at protecting Armenias economic interests.

The President inquired from Ambassador Manasaryan on the process of the implementation of the Armenian-Chinese high level agreements, cooperation programs in various sectors, and in what sectors Chinese businessmen are mostly interested in investing in Armenia, what should Armenias participation be like in the One belt One Road program and what works has the Armenian Embassy in China implemented since Manasaryans term in office.

Speaking about the Armenian-Chinese relations and emphasizing that Armenia is highlighting the deeply rooted traditionally warm and friendly relations with China, the President noted what since the establishment of diplomatic relations, the Armenian-Chinese relations have developed positively and upwards.

It is obvious that we greatly value our political and economic relations with China: by only taking into account that in terms of volumes we have the second largest commercial turnover with China, it proves a lot. Of course, we must actively work in this direction. The indicator, although being rather high for our economy, nevertheless I think the potential is greater.

We have comprehensively discussed boosting our economic and political relations with the Chinese President, during my official visit to the country. We comprehensively touched upon the activation of our economic relations with Mr. Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Li Keqiang. We have also discussed these issues with high ranking Chinese delegations in Armenia in 2016.

I am hopeful that all agreements will be realized, and naturally, I know that these agreements are currently in process.

Last year, the inauguration of established an advanced Chinese language school was held in Yerevan.

The construction of this school is planned to be completed until autumn of the next year. I attach great importance to this, because knowledge of language is an important fact not only for keeping political relations warm, but also, of course for enhancing economic relations.

We have always had the assistance of the Chinese government: technical support for our country, which of course is very good, however today, the enhancement of business and economic ties with brotherly China is not less important for us.

For us, of course, Chinese President Xi Jingpins One belt One Road program is of great interest, and we must definitely have involvement in realizing this program.

Chinese companies are already participating in the construction of the North-South Road, but we must also definitely view their participation in terms of state-private sector cooperation also. And I dont rule out that the interest of Chinese companies of building one part of the road on their own resources can be very realistic, and for us, this will be attraction of those investments.

I also value our relations with China in the tourism sector, where this country has great potential. And the fact that we facilitated the visa process for Chinese citizens will significantly contribute to boosting partnership in this sector, President Sargsyan said at the beginning of the meeting.

Upon listening to Ambassador Manasaryans report and the reports of the other officials present, President Sargsyan charged the officials with focusing efforts on expanding both volumes and range of Armenian products with prospects and export potential in the Chinese market, as well undertake works aimed at realizing joint investment programs in Armenias mutually beneficial various sectors.
YEREVAN, JUNE 7, ARMENPRESS. President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan sent a letter of condolences to President Hassan Rouhani of the Islamic Republic of Iran in connection with the terrorist attacks on the Parliament and Imam Khomeini Mausoleum in Tehran, that claimed innocent lives and injured dozens.

I strongly condemn any act of terrorism and extremism. We are convinced of the need to work together in the fight against this international scourge.

Stressing the importance of security and stability in our neighboring and brotherly country, I am confident that the Iranian authorities will take all necessary measures to prevent such actions ahead.

At this time of dismay, I express my deepest condolences and sympathies to Your Excellency, to the friendly people of Iran and the victims families and wish the injured a speedy recovery, the Presidents message reads.
YEREVAN, JUNE 7, ARMENPRESS. Armenian Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan sent a condolence letter to First Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the government's press service told ARMENPRESS.

I was deeply concerned to learn of the shooting and explosion that hit the Imam Khomeini Mausoleum and the Iranian Parliament, killing many people and leaving numerous wounded.

We strongly condemn terrorism, the fight against which is a common interest. Offering my deep sympathy and condolences to the victims families, I wish the wounded a speedy recovery, the Prime Minister said in the telegram.
YEREVAN, JUNE 7, ARMENPRESS. Speaker of the National Assembly of Armenia Ara Babloyan sent a condolence letter to the Speaker of the Majlis of the Islamic Republic of Iran Ali Ardeshir Larijani. As Armenpress was informed from the press service of the parliament of Armenia, the message runs as follows,

Honorable college,

We learned with deep sorrow about the terror attack near the parliament of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the mausoleum of Imam Khomeini, claiming lives and injuring numerous innocent people.

Deeply condemning this barbaric act, on behalf of the National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia and personally me, we offer our deepest condolences and solidarity to you, the relatives and families of the killed, the friendly people of Iran,wishing them fortitude and patience, and quick recovery to the injured.

We strictly condemn the extreme manifestations based on intolerance and hatred. Our consolidated efforts should be directed to the fight against this dreadful phenomenon.

Please accept, Excellency, the assurances of my highest consideration.
YEREVAN, 7 JUNE, ARMENPRESS. The Central Bank of Armenia informs Armenpress that today, 7 june, USD exchange rate is up by 0.07 drams to 482.56 drams. EUR exchange rate is up by 1.15 drams to 543.85 drams. Russian Ruble exchange rate is up by 0.02 drams to 8.52 drams. GBP exchange rate is up by 0.38 drams to 623.42 drams.

The Central Bank has set the following prices for precious metals.

Gold price is up by 213.11 drams to 20068.22 drams. Silver price is up by 0.66 drams to 272.44 drams. Platinum price is up by 157.29 drams to 14894.08 drams.
This article originally ran in the June 2017 issue of AVN magazine. Click here to see the digital magazine.

As the adult industry continues to move forward and rapid expansion replaces the malaise of recent years, one of the brands building momentum most aggressively is PornDoe. A series of new product lines are being featured on PornDoe.com and PornDoePremium in what appears to be a major milestone for high-quality tube platforms partnering with content creators in bold new ways.

One of the newest developments is a one-year licensing deal with VOD services provider HotMovies.com, announced last month. The deal adds a selection of new content from the most popular PornDoe Premium niches. HotMovies will highlight 20 new PornDoe Premium releases every month to its members. Members can view the scenes across multiple connected devices and share their experiences and opinions through social features, such as rating and reviewing.

AVN took a closer look and chatted with the PornDoe team to find out what direction their journey will take next.

Whats the history of PornDoe?

The overall project, PornDoe.com and PornDoePremium.com, is based on three major factors: legality, localization and content value, said PornDoe owner Gian Carlo. Since the final half of 2007, the legal gray zone that tubes operated in has severely affected the value of content. Furthermore, in todays market we all operate beyond our national borders, as traffic has almost become its own international language, making proper localization a necessity.

When we say legality, we mean that the tube industry, despite tons of efforts, still represents an easy access point for pirated content to spread throughout the web, Gian Carlo added. As content producers, we saw this as a blight on the industry and figured that a fully legal platform, with multiple benefits rendered to content partners, could represent a more profitable change for everyone. PornDoe.com was developed with the knowledge that tubes are here to stay, but that they dont need to offer FULL pirated content. They effectively became the norm, and therefore, should be used as a platform to showcase content to users. Most free content has now become almost boring to the high-end client, and therefore content value in a premium membership is once again becoming attractive to consumers. That shift is what gave rise to the PornDoe platform.

How did PornDoe get the ball rolling with traffic?

According to Yannick Ferreri, PornDoes head of production, PornDoePremium.com was developed with the intent to offer an enhanced user experience for almost any user, as well as a method to attract traffic to the PornDoe.com brand, benefiting all of our partners. With old-school tube sites grandfathered into SERPs, we needed to create new keywords by creating brands. So we decided to produce in German, French, Spanish, Italian and English to cast a larger net. Now we are continuing to gain traction in multiple European countries and South American markets as well.

Since localization is now considered the best way to build a free platform, so partners can benefit on a truly global scale, Ferreri explained how PornDoe addresses that issue. All of our navigation, down to the metadata, is translated by real people into German, French, Italian, Spanish and English. This broadens the scope of every partners user base. As people search for their respective slang words, they will find titles they would not have found in the past. Coupled with premium production in those countries and more, in this way we truly have become an international platform that offers almost any John Doe exactly what he or she may be looking for at PornDoe!

Whats with the new niche sites?

Gian Carlo and Ferreri offered their thoughts on PornDoes move into such sites as xChimera and KinkyInLaws on PornDoePremium.com. Gian Carlo noted, This has been asked a few times, and to clear up any confusion, everything that we have in PornDoePremium is exclusive. We have shot more than 2,500 scenes and continue to shoot another 110 each month, all with some serious trial and error. As mentioned earlier, the niche sites are intended to gain more and more traction in several key markets.

Expanding on that enthusiasm, Ferreri said, xChimera, specifically, is one of our proudest gems. It was a project that took almost a whole year to realize, but we finally felt it was ready for release. The idea behind it, along with our other premium content, is to package it all in a unique fashion. xChimera is, at its base, a glamcore niche site, but with nuances that give it a voyeur feel and a girl next door touch. (Pictured here are a few images from the xChimera.com library.)

Ferreri added, We have over 31 brands now and plan to reach 50 as we are starting to move production into the U.S. We have also begun a Netflix-style approach, where we will start and stop content lines to keep users excited, without oversaturating any single concept.

Lets talk traffic. Is PornDoe growing?

The rate at which PornDoe.com is gaining traction is very favorable, Gian Carlo said confidently. Nearly all the well-known producers have approached us and countless eager teams have come to us as well. Our name is now becoming more than just another tube, and is instead being accepted as a flagship brand.

Adding his perspective as PornDoes head of sales and affiliates, Ricky Ganiere said, Our traffic growth in terms of quantity has been acceptable. We are open with all our partners about the fact that we are fighting an uphill battle, by not taking any shortcuts or making use of any full pirated scenes. Thats also why the traffic growth in terms of quality is astounding. Our ratios with our content partners and our premium sales are amazing compared to other tube traffic. Some of what has helped us gain this user baseand continue to do sois what we call New SEO, because we are effectively creating an ecosystem to attract high-end users who sample content in order to better decide what they will purchase on a premium front. And we are going to unveil a game-changing strategy soon that will ultimately put us at the cusp of innovation in regards to the tube industry. I suggest you keep an eye out for it.

With PornDoePremium.com, how do you maximize profits without minimizing retention?

PornDoe.com and PornDoePremium.com are part of one ecosystem. They complement each other and in no way do they compete, Gian Carlo responded adamantly. The point behind the legal tube is to attract quality users. The premium site is designed to gain traction and to create return visits. As premium users will undoubtedly continue to move away from free content, they will eventually purchase a subscription. We saw the opportunity to create this union between the free and premium side, and in our original design the premium content goal was to break even on production. This will in turn pay back in advertising and partner revenue share. As we evolved, we noticed that we need to keep a premium user in the free areas as well, to keep his tastes evolving. Our hope is that, eventually, a user will run a course of several memberships all stemming from his time on PornDoe.coma place with an enhanced user experience and no piracy of any content.

Whats ahead in the next 12 months?

Production head Ferreri promised, We always have four to five new brands in the works. Currently we are working on a very cool foot fetish niche site that will fit into our Dark membership. Its like BadTimeStories.com in that it is very story-based, with costumes and eerie editing. Great stuff! We also have a high-end orgy series that will really hit the ground running, and an educational series, on which weve been working for over a year, but we want to tweak it all perfectly before releasing. Additionally, we are speaking with some of the top U.S. producers about creating a site that we feel can truly bend the web. All very exciting things and all coming very soon.

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I Digress Again...No the enemy in Vietnam did not respect the principles of the Geneva Convention. The Red Crosses on our ships were something to aim at. On any pickup, if the enemy were around, they did their best to kill all of us and all of our patients.

I was a Lunatic in Vietnam in 1965. If you want to know why I admit to having been a Lunatic so many years ago, read this posting.Back in August 2016, one of the other contributors toasked me how did we go about finding the wounded in Vietnam.I responded and he came back at me recommending I turn my response into a posting in. Aware that those who read this posting may draw the conclusion that I am a procrastinator, I am going to proceed with that recommended posting anyway. I've been busy!Before I get into my recollection about 1965 I would like to digress and make a comparison to modern day Medical Evacuation in Iraq and Afghanistan.There is a series called "Inside Combat Rescue" that runs on The National Geographic Channel that lies in stark contrast to our missions in Vietnam in 1965. What caught my eye was the amount of technology that they have available to them. They have Command Centers. They have latest Gee Whiz Technology. There about 8 Computer Monitors in front of the person manning the Command Center. The pilots take iPads along on their missions to do whatever it is that iPads are capable of doing for them on their missions. We had no Command Centers. We had no Gee Whiz Stuff. There were no Computer Monitors but we did have a Telephone, a Radio, a Blackboard, a Note Pad and several Pencils. Our pilots carried Paper Maps.To answer the question about how we found the wounded...That's the short answer. The late Paul Harvey just came up behind me and told me to tell you... Missions started when we would receive radio call or a phone call in our command shack. Once we knew the call was about a mission, there began a scramble to get off the ground as fast as possible. The command pilot would remain in the shack to get the info needed for our mission. The Other Pilot, Crew Chief and the Medic would already be on the way to the ship. By the time the Command Pilot got to the ship, the Other Pilot had the ship lit up and ready to lift off. We flew to the wounded using Map Coordinates that were given to us on the Radio/Phone Call. We flew day or night. Landing in the right place, even after we found the right place, could be problematic. Early on we would request smoke to mark the landing site and more than one smoke would come out. The extra smoke was the enemy trying to get us to land right in front of them so they could make us feel real unwelcome. We got smarter. We still asked for smoke but, when the smoke came out, we would identify the color and the troops on the ground would verified the color before we would go in. If the color identification was wrong or both smokes were the same color, we asked for more smoke and repeated the whole process all over again. We once landed to a Zippo Lighter at night. Probably was not too smart but there was only one Zippo Lighter waving at us (that we could see), so we took a chance. Smart or not, we got the wounded out of there. One way to land at a pickup site was to drop down to treetop level away from the site and come in at high speed. If the enemy were below us as we came by, the hope was we would be by them before they could get a good shot at us. I was never hit on such an approach and it was a very exciting ride because the trees were many times higher than we were. Another type of an approach was to drop the ship like a rock from 3,500 feet and pull it out at the bottom and drop it onto the ground (hopefully right next to the wounded). The reasoning for this was small arms fire could not reach above 3,500 feet. We wanted to get from 3,500 feet to the ground as quickly as possible and, therefore, be vulnerable as short a time as possible. Coming back out we did the opposite. We stayed at treetop level to gain airspeed and then pulled collective pitch (power) hard and rose up like an elevator. The Huey was a very powerful ship. Those rides up were surprising and thrilling the first time you rode one and thrilling every time after that. In heavy jungle we had to hover down through the trees with all 4 crew member looking 360 degrees around the ship so we could hover away from tree branches. Sometimes the troops on the ground had to blow away trees to make a big enough hole for us to hover into. Many times the holes were very small. Some of our guys made these hole pickups at night. I never had the opportunity to do this at night. On the way back up, we were again all looking for branches as we reversed the process. If we knew where the enemy was, we approached from the opposite direction. We did not want to be slowing down for a landing right over them. Again, if we knew where the enemy was, we landed with the back of the ship towards him. This was done for several reasons. We did not want to be loading patients with him looking and shooting right at the pilots. We wanted the back of the ship toward the incoming fire, hoping and praying that some of the fire might be adsorbed or redirected by the ship itself. Finally, we did not want to taking off low and slow right toward or over the enemy. Guys in the back...The pilots were, of course, vital to any Medical Evacuation Mission. We flew it in and out of harm's way (as the say in the movies). The Medic and the Crew Chief were as vital as any pilot. Often they were even more exposed to enemy fire than the pilots. There were times had to leave the ship to get the patients. There were even times when those already on the ground would not stand up to load the patients because of the fire being received. Our Medic and Crew Chief went and got, loaded and then cared for the patients as we flew back. It was amazing how many holes could be put into a Huey and it would still fly. Of course, any single one of those rounds in a vital place could destroy your ship.I am including in this posting an audio recording entitled, Click here to hear the recording.This recording was part of an address given by Joe Galloway at a Military Convocation many years after the mid November 1965 Battle of Ia Drang Valley. Joe was a civilian photographer attached to 1st Battalion of the 7th Cavalry of the 1st Air Calvary Division. He was a main character in the Mel Gibson movie and co-author of the book, We Were Soldiers Once... And Young Click here to read about the Battle of Ia Drang Valley I am very proud to have been a Life Saving Lunatic in 1965.Alex J OrtolanoIn case I gave the wrong impression, God's Own Lunatics was not intended to recognize only Medical Evacuation Crews. It was intended to sing the praises of all who flew Helicopter Missions in Vietnam.
Is the concerted Democrat plan to obfusticate the purpose of government by the unprecedented delaying of President Trump's appointments, while galvanizing with the organized protesters' directive to obstruct the process of governing, at the federal level, working for the Democrat brand? Yes, Democrats will finally create a Socialist Progressive utopia if they remain banded together. No, the nation is in dire straits, on so many levels, and needs immediate repair. I'm busy with my important life, such as it is, and don't care. 68 total vote(s) What's your Opinion?



It was a daring political move for the Democrat party, and the Democrat Media, but, it just might work. Link to Russia, and Vladimir Putin at every possible point. It was a failed exercise in defeating the mercurial Trump, as L. Hillary Clinton was soundly defeated in the 2016 Electoral College, but the groundwork had been laid to delegitimize the new president , which well suited their partisan needs; the time honored 100 day presidential honeymoon be damned.Maybe, it began during the Republican primary with the inarticulate musings of Candidate Trump's muddled discussions that he professed that he could possibly work with Vladimir Putin's Russia upon the complicated stage of foreign policy, to eradicate common foe ISIS, as well as all Islamic Terrorism. After Candidate Trump won the Republican Primary, the Democrats, with their Democrat media in tow, made silly political hay when Candidate Trump joked by imploring that: 'the Russians should find L. Hillary's missing 30,000 emails' , which she had illegally destroyed. It was a joke aimed at the press, mostly the Democrat Media, who had little desire to investigate the Candidate L. Hillary Clinton /Clinton Foundation's collusion for the corrupt administration of its purpose and the destroyed 'paper trail' contained within L. Hillary's illegal servers, soon to be all destroyed. The Trumpian joke that most principled Americans well understood was what Trump meant: Maybe, we should depend on Russian hackers to discover the truth, since the Democrat Media could not be counted on to perform their avocation, other than to tacitly advocate for their preferred Democrat champion.Accordingly, when Trump came from behind to trounce L. Hillary in the Electoral College, the Democrat Media was visibly shaken, some even wept on camera. The Democrat faithful fared no better , expressing bitterness, contempt, hatred for their nation's new path, so what should they do?The Democrats' concocted plan is to Resist, Obstruct, Obfusticate, Conflate to the point of Lying, and in the spirit of grand Hypocrisy, Delegitimize the Trump Administration as well as his family. It is scorched earth policy that knows no bounds, no party that is not committedly "Democratic" survives their unbridled wrath. And while the modern Democrat party has proven to have the core principles of a sloth when dealing with Republicans, President Donald J. Trump has brought out a truly ugly side of Democrat Party; one that they may never recover from.But for Democrats, there truly is an upside: After a lifetime of decades of complete ambivalence on the Soviet Union now Russia issue, Democrats, however short-lived, finally care about Russia . The supreme irony here is that their concern is about Russian hacking, an issue, heretofore, the Democrats had no issue with; not until it became nearly certain that they were behind the hacking of Democrat operatives' emails, which were publicly revealed by WikiLeaks. This Democrats are still howling, in unison, that Russia cost L. Hillary the election due to this unveiled political dirty laundry, and that Donald Trump colluded with the Russians to make it so. After 6 months or more of investigations, with no real proof before or after the near landslide election in the Electoral College, there is no real evidence of his collusion, yet the Democrats, and many within the Democrat Media treat the Trump /Russia Collusion allegations as if they are know fact.It is upon this muddled stage of congressional and FBI Investigation that another, more substantial scandal is being unveiled: The Obama Administration's surveillance of Trump and his political team by the NSA, and to a lesser extent, other Federal agencies; the collection of data; the unmasking of names within that data collected; the unprecedented widespread sharing, by Obama executive order, of that data within the Federal government, and the subsequent leaking by yet unknown participants of this extra-classified information to the Democrat Media. Many felonies have been committed here on behalf of this Democrat cause to discredit Trump, yet nothing new of any real substance has been revealed to link the president to any Russian collusion; much to the anxious chagrin of the Democrat extra-partisans, irrespective of their collective wish otherwise.There is, however, the Democrat unsightly, unwanted by-product of the Russian /Trump Collusion investigation, especially in the U.S. House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence - Americans are being surveilled, and collected information is being used against them, but not for their breaking of the law; but to assess guilt by association against their political enemies.Guilt by association, even by multiple degrees of separation, is a hallmark of how Democrats mark their principled opponents, since Democrats aren't principled driven to the point of claiming the right ground on most issues, which precludes them from winning the overall debate against average to good debaters. Just as Russian hacking may have taken a long look the Democrat operatives to employ to influence public opinion, the government of our States United does reserve the right to surveil American citizens for any purpose other than national security, and even then their names cannot be unmasked and then widely disseminated as is being proved that the Obama Administration did in its final weeks.Stay connected for updates.
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.
The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld a lower court's ruling striking down 28 North Carolina legislative districts as cases of unconstitutional racial gerrymandering. But the high court has rejected the idea of holding special legislative elections this year.The Supreme Court had issued a stay on Jan. 10 blocking a three-judge panel's order of a special election. Today's unsigned Supreme Court order chides the trial-court panel for ordering a special 2017 legislative election without making a convincing argument why that remedy is needed.Justices say their trial-court colleagues should have used an "equitable weighing process" to determine the proper remedy for dealing with the racially gerrymandered election maps. "Rather than undertaking such an analysis in this case, the District Court addressed the balance of equities in only the most cursory fashion," the Supreme Court order states. "As noted above, the court simply announced that '[w]hile special elections have costs,' those unspecified costs 'pale in comparison' to the prospect that citizens will be 'represented by legislators elected pursuant to a racial gerrymander.'the order continues.according to the Supreme Court.Gov. Roy Cooper responded to the ruling with an official statement.the statement reads.The primary legislators handling redistricting issues produced a joint statement supporting the decision.said Sen. Ralph Hise, R-Mitchell, and Rep. David Lewis, R-Harnett.Today's order represents the third action from the U.S. Supreme Court on N.C. redistricting cases in the past three weeks. After striking down two congressional districts used in 2012 and 2014 in Cooper v. Harris, the high court sent the Dickson v. Rucho case back to the N.C. Supreme Court for a third time. That case deals with both congressional and legislative redistricting.The high court could act at least once more in the not-too-distant future on N.C. redistricting. The parties involved in Cooper v. Harris have been asked to submit briefs by Tuesday in Harris v. Cooper, which challenges the 2016 congressional election maps drawn to comply with an earlier court order throwing out the maps last used in 2014.
It's rare to see North Carolina lawmakers vote overwhelmingly against a bill. It's especially noteworthy when that "no" vote helps preserve one of state government's most valuable reforms.That's exactly what happened Thursday when the Senate voted 44-1 to reject House Bill 110. Each of the three senators who spoke against the measure cited provisions in the bill that would have eroded the state's Strategic Transportation Investments program.H.B. 110 and its counterpart legislation, Senate Bill 3, started life as a compilation of recommendations from the Joint Legislative Transportation Oversight Committee. A Senate supporter labeled it an "agency bill," meaning that its content stemmed largely from ideas generated within a state agency.In this case, the N.C. Department of Transportation and its Division of Motor Vehicles would face proposed changes targeting such items as DOT property sales, emissions tests for hybrid cars, and rules regarding temporary vehicle registration tags.With some modifications, S.B. 3 sailed through the Senate, 46-0, on April 20. On the same day, the House approved its version with a much closer vote: 65-50.During committee work, the House had added one major new component to the mix. Called the Megaproject Fund, it was designed to "fund higher-cost and larger-scale transportation projects." Specifically, supporters wanted to address projects totaling at least $200 million. The Megaproject Fund would be created within North Carolina's existing Highway Trust Fund.DOT would oversee a seven-member work group that would select Megaprojects for funding. Work group members would represent existing organizations serving city councils, county commissioners, urban mayors, and local and regional planning organizations.Neither of S.B. 3's primary sponsors, Republican Sens. Kathy Harrington of Gaston County and Bill Rabon of Brunswick County, supported the Megaproject Fund. "This is the single worst piece of legislation I've seen in the years I've been here," Harrington said during a Senate Transportation Committee meeting Wednesday.Harrington added the following day, when the bill hit the Senate floor.Rabon said he would "parrot" many of Harrington's comments. "Just a few years ago, North Carolina was not seen as a good place to do business," he added. "Now it is seen as one of the best places - if not the best place - in the nation to start a new business."Part of the credit for that changing perception goes to recent tax reforms, Rabon said. Part of the credit goes to STI.he said.Republican senators were not alone in praising STI.said Sen. Floyd McKissick, D-Durham.Politicians have good reason to tout STI's benefits. John Locke Foundation Chairman John Hood has labeled the 2013 law the "single-biggest change" in state transportation policy in the past decade.Transportation projects now compete with each other based on "clearly stated goals" linked to traffic congestion, safety, and efficient movement of people and goods.Hood wrote last year.There's still room for improvement.In defending STI on the Senate floor, Rabon cited the case of CSX's Carolina Connector project. The $272 million transit hub had secured STI funding. Rabon recounted a meeting he and Harrington had with CSX executives.Carolina Journal reporting has raised questions about the CSX project's value for N.C. taxpayers. Those questions suggest the STI formula could be refined and updated. (Part of that refinement also could address concerns from Megaproject Fund supporters that STI doesn't account for large-scale projects.)But clearly the process of planning North Carolina's publicly funded transportation projects has moved in the right direction. It's worth highlighting a case in which politicians work to preserve one of their most important achievements.
Contact: Ford Porter

Ford Porter govpress@nc.gov

RALEIGH: Joining other Governors, Mayors, colleges and universities, and businesses, Governor Cooper declared that North Carolina will continue efforts to reduce pollution in support of the global Paris Agreement.In an open letter to the international community, more than 1,000 signatories signaled thatGovernor Cooper said.In signing the letter, Gov. Cooper pointed to North Carolina's long tradition of working for a healthier environment and for improved public health. Bipartisan efforts like the Clean Smokestacks Act and the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Portfolio Standard made North Carolina a national model on reducing air pollution and a national leader in solar energy. Legal battles fought by then-Attorney General Cooper forced polluters including the Tennessee Valley Authority to clean up their emissions when the federal government would not.Gov. Cooper said.The Governors of California, Connecticut, Oregon, New York, Rhode Island, Virginia, Washington, and Hawaii also signed the letter. Click here to read the full letter, which is below:We, the undersigned mayors, governors, college and university leaders, businesses, and investors are joining forces for the first time to declare that we will continue to support climate action to meet the Paris Agreement.In December 2015 in Paris, world leaders signed the first global commitment to fight climate change. The landmark agreement succeeded where past attempts failed because it allowed each country to set its own emission reduction targets and adopt its own strategies for reaching them. In addition, nations - inspired by the actions of local and regional governments, along with businesses - came to recognize that fighting climate change brings significant economic and public health benefits.The Trump administration's announcement undermines a key pillar in the fight against climate change and damages the world's ability to avoid the most dangerous and costly effects of climate change. Importantly, it is also out of step with what is happening in the United States.In the U.S., it is local and state governments, along with businesses, that are primarily responsible for the dramatic decrease in greenhouse gas emissions in recent years. Actions by each group will multiply and accelerate in the years ahead, no matter what policies Washington may adopt.In the absence of leadership from Washington, states, cities, colleges and universities, businesses and investors, representing a sizeable percentage of the U.S. economy will pursue ambitious climate goals, working together to take forceful action and to ensure that the U.S. remains a global leader in reducing emissions.It is imperative that the world know that in the U.S., the actors that will provide the leadership necessary to meet our Paris commitment are found in city halls, state capitals, colleges and universities, investors and businesses. Together, we will remain actively engaged with the international community as part of the global effort to hold warming to well below 2C and to accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy that will benefit our security, prosperity, and health.
United States's force and sheer will was best personified in the American warrior that dropped out of low flying planes over Wehrmacht occupied Normandy. Here a young paratrooper listens intently to the Allied Supreme Commander, General Dwight Eisenhower, on D-Day, minus 1: Above. American paratroopers: 82nd Airborne or the 101st Airborne preparing to drop out of the shrapnel ladened skies over Normandy: Below.

American G.I.'s preparing to land on the Hell that was Omaha Beach: Above.

Every year on June 6, our nation pauses to remember the thousands of brave Americans and American allies who stormed the beaches of Normandy to launch the campaign to liberate Europe from the oppression and extermination by the Nazi regime in World War II. We reflect on D Day for its devastating statistics and the casualties, but we ultimately remember the victory it helped to secure. Normandy was an American victory; it was their duty to trace the twists and turns of fortune by which success was won. But to follow that rule slights the story of Omaha as an epic human tragedy. But we sometimes we overlook the personal stories - the ultimate sacrifices of beloved sons, brothers, uncles, cousins, husbands, classmates, and neighbors..... boys. Most were mere boys, who died with a life yet unlived. Their sacrifice was and continues to be immeasurable. Their sacrifice must continue to be the basis for the ideals we hold dear.At the beginning of World War II, Germany invaded Poland, causing France, Great Britain and Canada to declare war on Germany. By the spring of 1940, the German army was ready to invade France, defended by not only the French military, but also a sizable British force as well. Within six weeks, the Germans defeated the Allies and seized control of France. By 1944, the Germans knew that the Allies, also now including the United States, among others, would attempt an invasion of France to liberate Europe from Germany. The Allied forces, based in Britain, decided to begin the invasion by landing a huge army along a 50-mile stretch of heavily-fortified French coastline - Normandy Beach - to fight Nazi Germany. Code-named "Operation Overlord", and commanded by American General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Allies landed on June 6, 1944 at five beaches in the Normandy area with the code names of: Utah Beach, Omaha Beach, Gold Beach, Juno Beach and Sword Beach. Prior to the actual amphibious invasion, Allied planes pounded the Nazi defenders and dropped thousands of paratroopers behind German lines during night before the seaborne landings. Local French Resistance forces, alerted to the imminent invasion, engaged in behind-the-lines sabotage and combat against the occupying Germans. General Dwight D. Eisenhower called the operation a crusade in which "we will accept nothing less than full victory."General Dwight D. Eisenhower met with the troops just hours before the allied invasion of D Day, and he gave them this message:More than 5,000 Ships and 13,000 aircraft supported the D-Day invasion. 156,000 American, British and Canadian troops met heavy resistance from the German forces defending the area, but were able to punch inland, securing safe landing zones for reinforcements. By day's end on June 6, the Allies gained a foot- hold in Normandy. The D-Day cost was high - more than 9,000 allied soldiers were killed or wounded - but more than 100,000 Soldiers began the march across Europe to defeat Hitler. The German failure to successfully defend the Normandy area from the Allied liberation forces in essence doomed Hitler's dream of a Nazi controlled "Fortress Europe" and marked the beginning of the end for Germany.US forces - US First Army - landed at Omaha and Utah beaches. In total, the First Army contingent totaled approximately 73,000 men, including 15,600 from the airborne divisions. Omaha was particularly devastating. To understand the horror and carnage of that amphibious landing under fire from German guns firmly entrenched further up on the beach, we can look at the fates of Able and Baker companies, 116th Infantry, 29th Division.ABLE Company, riding the tide in seven Higgins boats, was about five thousand yards from the beach when it first took on artillery fire. The shells fell short. At one thousand yards, Boat No. 5 wass hit dead on and foundered. Six men drowned before help was able to arrive. Second Lieutenant Edward Gearing and twenty others paddled around until picked up by naval craft, thereby missing the fight at the shore line. It was to be their lucky day. The other six boats rode unscathed to within one hundred yards of the shore, when a shell fired into Boat No. 3 killed two men. Another dozen drowned when they forced to jump into the water as the boat was sinking. That left five boats.His men were at the sides of the boat, straining for a view of the target. They stared but said nothing. At exactly 6:36 am, the ramps were dropped along the boat line and the men jumped off in water anywhere from waist deep to higher than a man's head. This is the signal awaited by the Germans atop the bluff. Already pounded by mortars, the floundering line is instantly swept by crossing machine-gun fires from both ends of the beach.ABLE Company had planned to wade ashore in three files from each boat, center file going first, then flank files peeling off to right and left. The first men out tried to do it but were ripped apart before they could make five yards. Even the lightly wounded died by drowning, doomed by the waterlogging of their overloaded packs. From Boat No. 1, all hands jumped off in water over their heads. Most of them were carried down. Ten or so survivors got around the boat and clutched at its sides in an attempt to stay afloat. The same thing happened to the section in Boat No. 4. Half of its people were lost to the fire or tide before anyone reached shore. All order had vanished from Able Company before it was even able to fired a single shot.Already the sea ran red. Even among some of the lightly wounded who jumped into shallow water the hits proved fatal. Knocked down by a bullet in the arm or weakened by fear and shock, they were unable to rise again and were drowned by the onrushing tide. Other wounded men dragged themselves ashore and, on finding the sands, lay quiet from total exhaustion, only to be overtaken and killed by the water. A few moved safely through the bullet swarm to the beach, then found that they could not hold there. They returned to the water to use it for body cover. They turned their faces upward, so that their nostrils were out of water and they crept toward the land at the same rate as the tide. That is how most of the survivors made it. The less rugged or less clever sought the cover of enemy obstacles moored along the upper half of the beach and were knocked off one-by-one by machine-gun fire.Within seven minutes after the ramps drop, ABLE Company was inert and leaderless. At Boat No. 2, Lieutenant Tidrick took a bullet through the throat as he jumped from the ramp into the water. He staggered onto the sand and flopped down ten feet from Private First Class Leo J. Nash. Nash saw the blood spurting and heard the strangled words gasped by Tidrick: "Advance with the wire cutters!" But it was futile; Nash had no cutters. To give the order, Tidrick had raised himself up on his hands and made himself a target for an instant. And that was all it took. Nash, burrowing into the sand, saw machine gun bullets rip Tidrick from crown to pelvis. From the cliff above, the German gunners were shooting into the survivors as if from a roof top perch.Captain Taylor N. Fellers and Lieutenant Benjamin R. Kearfoot never made it. Their boat, Boat No. 6 (Landing Craft, Assault, No. 1015), was loaded with thirty men. Exactly what happened to this boat and its human cargo was never to be known. No one saw the craft go down. How each man aboard it met death remains unreported. Half of the drowned bodies were later found along the beach. It is supposed that the others were claimed by the sea.Along the beach, only one Able Company officer was still alive -- Lieutenant Elijah Nance, who was hit in the heel. By the time he made it to the sand, a second bullet hit him in the belly. By the end of ten minutes, every sergeant was either dead or wounded. To the eyes of such men as Private Howard I. Grosser and Private First Class Gilbert G. Murdock, this clean sweep suggested that the Germans on the high ground had spotted all leaders and concentrated fire their way. Among the men who were still moving in with the tide, rifles, packs, and helmets had already been cast away in the interests of survival.To the right of where Tidrick's boat was drifting with the tide, its coxswain lay dead next to the shell-shattered wheel. The ramp dropped and in that instant, two machine guns concentrated their fire on the opening. Not a single man was given time to jump. All aboard were cut down where they stand.By the end of fifteen minutes, Able Company had still not fired a weapon. No orders were being given by anyone. No words were spoken. The few able-bodied survivors moved, or not, as they saw fit.By the end of one half hour, approximately two thirds of the company was forever gone. There is no precise casualty figure for that moment. There is a casualty figure for the Normandy landing as a whole but no accurate figure for the first hour or the first day. The circumstances precluded it. Whether more Able Company riflemen died from water than from fire is known only to heaven. All earthly evidence indicates such, but it cannot be absolutely proven.By the end of one hour and forty-five minutes, six survivors from the boat section on the extreme right were able to shake loose and work their way to a shelf a few rods up the cliff. Four fall exhausted from the short climb and made it no farther. They stayed there through the day, seeing no one else from the company. The other two, Privates Jake Shefer and Thomas Lovejoy, joined a group from the Second Ranger Battalion and fought on with the Rangers through the day. Two men. Two rifles. Except for these, this account summarizes Able Company's contribution to the D Day invasion.BAKER Company was scheduled to land twenty-six minutes after Able and right on top of it. Unfortunately, they were not able to see the disaster which overtook Able until they were almost on top of it. The command boat headed in and as soon as it dropped its ramp, it was immediately hit by a storm of bullet fire.Captain Ettore Zappacosta jumped from the boat first and while he was in elbow-high tide, he shouted back to his men: "I'm hit." He was bleeding from the hip and shoulder and after staggering for a few minutes, he fell face forward into the wave and the weight of his equipment and soaked pack pinned him to the bottom. Thomas Kenser tried to jump off the boat to get to him but was shot dead while in the air. Lieutenant Tom Dallas of Charley Company, the third man, made it to the edge of the sand where a machine-gun burst blew his head apart.Private First Class Robert L. Sales, who was lugging Zappacosta's radio, was the fourth man to leave the boat, having waited long enough to see the others die. His boot heel caught on the edge of the ramp and he fell into the tide, losing the radio but saving his life. Every man who tried to follow him was either killed or wounded before reaching dry land. Sales alone was able to reach the beach unhit.By the end of the day, only forty-seven men made it ashore and to safety. These forty-seven immortals of Omaha, by their dauntless initiative at widely separated points along the beach, saved the landing from total stagnation and disaster. The others were slaughtered wholesale.Thousands of Americans were spilled onto Omaha Beach. The high ground was won by a handful of men who on that day burned with a flame bright beyond common understanding." [S.L.A. Marshall, "First Wave at Omaha Beach"]Donald Ceboll, a WWII veteran from Ohio, watched the amphibious landing on Omaha Beach from the deck of a navy landing ship about 2 miles offshore. At 89, he remembers:Ceboll remembered.After visiting Normandy in 1999, he wrote:It is fitting and proper that we as Americans, as well as people all over the world, honor the ultimate sacrifices of American - and British and Canadian - soldiers who were killed wounded during D Day. We should seek to earn their gifts to us by the way we view ourselves as Americans and especially by the way we conduct ourselves as Americans. As Ronald Reagan once said: "Freedom is never more than one generation from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."Reagan also said:Forty years after the invasion, President Ronald Reagan stood on the very spot on the northern coast of France where Allied soldiers had stormed ashore to liberate Europe and paid tribute to an audience of D-Day veterans and world leaders. He offered the following words:
5 Causes of Nursing Home Resident Anxiety Unfortunately, for many reasons anxiety happens more often by long-term care residents than by those who live in
The federal government isn't doing enough to help a Calgary man who has been held for more than a year in a prison in Algeria on charges of belonging to a terrorism group, says one of his lawyers.

Gary Caroline, a Vancouver-based lawyer, sent a letter to Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland calling on the ministry to "act quickly and decisively to secure" the release of Adberrahmane Ghanem, who will soon go on trial.

- Read the letter at the bottom of this story

"A forceful and public demand from your ministry to its Algerian counterpart is clearly needed," writes Caroline.

Ghanem, a 30-year-old Canadian who also holds Algerian citizenship, is charged with being a member of a terrorist group outside Algeria.

His family acknowledges that Ghanem associated with several men from Calgary who eventually left to fight in Syria  but say he never belonged to a terrorist organization and never committed a crime.

He has been held in the El-Harrach prison in Algeria, notorious for abhorrent conditions.

"He has become sort of  whipping boy for all the ones who got away," Caroline said. "He is being punished for being the guy who didn't go to Syria."

Ghanem's trial begins on June 13. If found guilty, he could face up to 20 years in jail.

"Assuming your ministry has in fact been quietly seeking Abderrahmane's release, it is by now apparent that such minimalist efforts are proving unsuccessful," Caroline said in his letter.

A government spokesperson on Tuesday said, "Consular services are being provided to a Canadian citizen detained in Algeria. Consular officials are monitoring the case and maintain regular contact with local authorities. To protect the privacy of the individual, we are unable to release further details."

But Caroline believes the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) shared critical information with Algeria that resulted in Ghanem's detention. Ghanem's Algerian lawyer is accusing the Canadian government of "subcontracting" his client's prosecution to Algeria because it couldn't get away with prosecuting him in Canada, said Caroline.

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"It is now time for Canada to acknowledge its role in Abderrahmane's harrowing ordeal and to fulfil its moral and legal obligation to do everything in its power to remember the serious harm it has visited upon Abderrahmane and his family," Caroline said.

He also said Ghanem is being held with 75 men in a unit that has only 36 beds and one shower that doubles as a toilet.

Caroline said since December 2016 when he first contacted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as well as the Ministry of Public Safety, there have been no denials or corrections in his allegation of Canada sharing information with Algeria resulting in Ghanem's detention.

CSIS won't deny or confirm details

"It would appear that Canada has deliberately breached a number of moral and legal duties owed to Abderrahmane and indeed to all Canadians," Caroline said.

Asked whether CSIS was involved in the case, Tahera Mufti, the agency's chief of public affairs, told CBC News, "For reasons of security and privacy, CSIS does not divulge details of the information it exchanges or the identity of the foreign agencies with which it partners.

"CSIS's information sharing with foreign partners is conducted in strict accordance with the CSIS Act, ministerial direction and a robust system of internal policies and procedures."

CSIS has "a duty and a responsibility to share threat-related information with its foreign partners in order to mitigate risks to public safety here and abroad," Mufti said.

"If we do so, it is after careful consideration of all legal obligations and associated risks, and includes strict controls on the use and dissemination of information.

"As a general rule, information which CSIS shares with foreign partners may not be used in judicial proceedings without the service's express consent. Foreign governments may of course take legal action on the basis of their own information."

Calgary connection

Mohamed Ghanem said his son, whom he calls Abdu, is prepared to return to Canada.

"If he has to go to trial in Canada, it's fine," Mohamed told CBC News and the Toronto Star at his home in Muscat, Oman.

Mohamed acknowledges that between 2010 and 2012, his son associated with several men from Calgary who eventually left to fight in Syria.

"The ones that he is hanging out with the most are Damian Clairmont, Wassem Alhaj Youcef, and they used to hang out with Badi Hammadieh," said Ghanem's father.

Mohamed said that during one of his first meetings with Canadian authorities in Calgary he was informed that Badi Hammadieh, an associate of his son, was "pushing young Calgarians to go to Syria" and he was told that "this guy was brought out of jail in Syria by the Canadian government."

Secret meetings at a mosque

CBC News has reported that before many of the men began leaving in late 2012 for Syria and Iraq, nearly a dozen of them met secretly in a room above the 8th and 8th mosque in downtown Calgary. Members of the study group also met frequently in one of the apartments they rented in the highrise building connected to the 8th and 8th mosque.

Mohamed said that while he was concerned about his son's association with these men he "hadn't noticed anything abnormal with him."

"I know my son, he wasn't a violent person," said Mohamed. "He is not the type of person that will get involved in violence. He never fought with anyone in his life. Never.

"As a family, we think we are being punished for something we have never done," he said.

- You can read the letter below sent by lawyer Gary Caroline to Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland. On mobile? Click here.
People

Shippensburg University Professor Named National Science Teachers Association President-Elect

The National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), the largest professional organization promoting excellence in science teaching and learning, recently appointed Dr. Christine Anne Royce as the president-elect for the organization.

Image: Business Wire.

Royce was appointed June 1, according to a news release, and will assume her post as president June 1, 2018. A longtime educator, Royce has worked as a professor in the teacher education department at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania since 2002. She also serves as the co-director for the universitys Master of Arts in Teaching STEM Education program. Prior to the position, Royce was an adjunct faculty member at the University of Scranton.

At the K12 level, she has spent approximately 12 years in the classroom (1991-2002)  teaching second grade at St. Hedwigs School in Chester, PA, as well as high school and middle school math and science. Royce was the academic dean for Bishop Hannan High School for seven years.

She is actively involved in a number of state and national STEM initiatives, including the Pennsylvania Science Teachers Association, the National Science Education Leadership Association, the National Science Foundation, and has won many accolades for her work. She received her Ed.D. in science education from Temple University.

The National Science Teachers Association currently has more than 55,000 members involved in science education at the university and K12 levels. Learn more on the organization's site.
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New York, June 7, 2017Authorities in the United Arab Emirates should clearly and immediately repudiate Emirati Attorney General Hamad Saif al-Shamsis threats to imprison and fine anyone who criticizes the United Arab Emirates stance toward Qatar or who expresses any sympathy for Qatar, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

In a statement circulated to Emirati media, Al-Shamsi said those who publicly criticize the Saudi-Emirati stance on Qatar could be imprisoned for as many as 15 years and fined no less than 500,000 Emirati dirhams (US$136,000) under the penal code and the law on Combatting Information Technology Crimes. Strict and firm action will be taken against anyone who shows sympathy or any form of bias towards Qatar, or against anyone who objects to the position of the United Arab Emirates, whether it be through the means of social media, or any type of written, visual or verbal form, the statement said.

The United Arab Emirates threat to jail anyone who objects to the governments policy on Qatar is completely inconsistent with the image of a forward-looking, cosmopolitan, global hub it seeks to cultivate, CPJ Middle East and North Africa Program Coordinator Sherif Mansour said from Washington, D.C. This is censorship of a scope so bizarrely broad it is almost totalitarian.

Kuwaiti efforts to reconcile Qatar with fellow Gulf Cooperation Council members Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain continued today, according to news reports.
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The Committee to Protect Journalists joined 22 international rights organizations in calling on Georgias Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili to ensure that the case of Afgan Mukhtarli, an Azerbaijani journalist living in exile in Tbilisi who is now in custody in the countrys capital, Baku, is fully investigated. CPJ documented last month how Mukhtarli was abducted by unidentified assailants on May 29 and taken across the border to his home country of Azerbaijan.

The letter, citing Elchin Sadygov, a lawyer who has visited the journalist in custody, says Mukhtarlis body bears the signs of a heavy beating and that 10,000 ($11,200) was planted on him. A Baku court ordered Mukhtarli, who is seeking political asylum in Georgia, to be held in pre-trial detention for three months on charges of smuggling cash, crossing the border illegally, and violence against the police.

Mukhtarlis case sets a worrying precedent, threatening the security of dozens of other Azerbaijanis living in exile in Georgia, the joint letter said. It calls on the prime minister to investigate Mukhtarlis case, including whether any Georgian officials played a role in his abduction.

Read the letter to Kvirikashvili here.
Texas' Death Row

It was welcome news this week that the death penalty is continuing to fall out of favor with Texas juries.





In the 15 death penalty cases tried in Texas since 2015, jurors have sentenced only eight men to death. In Dallas County, prosecutors have sought capital punishment in just two cases since 2014; juries declined to sentence defendants to death in both.





They've got good reasons to be reluctant.





This newspaper has been calling for the end of the death penalty in Texas since 2007. This error-prone system has proved to be expensive, arbitrary and unfair  and does little to discourage heinous crimes. It's clear that even in Texas, once the nation's death penalty leader, county prosecutors are seeking it less.





Fellow advocates against capital punishment call that progress. It's promising that district attorneys are showing that they can live without the death penalty. There were seven executions in Texas last year, four so far this year. And national momentum is already swinging against support.





It may have been too much to hope for that Texas lawmakers would finally abolish the death penalty this legislative session. They once again left repeal legislation stuck in committee.





But there were hopeful signs that Austin is moving in the right direction.





A bill to repeal the death penalty at least received public hearings this session. And three bills that would have made more crimes eligible for the death penalty were never heard in committee.





Legislators also sent a bipartisan bill to Gov. Greg Abbott aimed at preventing wrongful convictions, one of the main reasons for waning confidence in the system.





Police would be required to record interrogations, and prosecutors would have to provide jurors more information about testimony from so-called prison snitches. Stricter protocols also would be in place for eyewitness identification.





That's all good news.





Evidence continues to mount that this system is too ripe for mistakes. Arkansas' recent rush to execute eight men before its lethal injection drug could expire highlighted the outside forces that can affect the course of justice.





In Texas, two men were removed from death row in recent weeks based on evidence of their mental disabilities. Pedro Sosa, on death row for 32 years for a 1983 abduction and murder, had his sentence reduced to life. And Attorney General Ken Paxton's office determined that Robert Campbell, in prison for 25 years for rape and murder in 1991, should receive a new sentencing hearing after it was discovered that his disabilities had been concealed by prosecutors.





No one wants hardened criminals roaming our streets. But no one should want a system that unconstitutionally executes the mentally disabled, either  or one that doles out different brands of justice to different types of defendants.





There are other tools  life without parole, for example  to punish the worst of the worst among us. Texas can live without the death penalty  and is better off without it.





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Emilia Carr

Emilia Carr was convicted of first-degree murder in 2009 death





Emilia Carr, once Marion Countys only female death row inmate, will now spend the rest of her life in prison.





After an evidentiary hearing May 19, the State declined to seek a new death penalty phase, according to court records, and 5th Judicial Circuit Court Judge Willard Pope resentenced Carr, 32, to life in prison without parole. She has been fighting her death sentence since 2011. There are now only three women on death row in the state of Florida.





A Marion County jury in 2010 found Carr guilty as charged of kidnapping and first-degree murder in the 2009 death of 26-year-old Heather Strong. Carr and her boyfriend, co-defendant Joshua Fulgham, 35, lured his estranged wife, Strong, to a storage trailer in Boardman in north Marion County.





When Carr arrived, Strong tried to leave and a scuffle ensued. Fulgham held Strong down as Carr taped her to a chair. Fulgham then forced Strong to sign a document that gave him custody of their two children.





Carr placed a garbage bag over Strongs head and Fulgham held it tight and wrapped tape around his wifes neck. Carr tried twice to break Strongs neck. Carr said Fulgham then put his hands over Strongs nose and mouth, and suffocated her.





Strongs body was found near the trailer four days later.





The jury voted 7-5 to recommend death for Carr. Fulgham was sentenced to life in 2012 with a vote of 8-4.





Carr appealed her sentence, raising several issues including possible errors by the trial judge and the proportionality of the death sentence.





In 2015, the Florida Supreme Court affirmed Carrs death sentence.





This case involves a love triangle between the victim, Heather Strong, her estranged husband, Joshua Fulgham, and the defendant, Emilia Carr, that ended when Carr and Fulgham carried out their plan to murder Strong, the high court wrote in its decision.





Carr restarted the appeal process, claiming ineffective assistance from her lawyer. It was during an evidentiary hearing on this appeal that her fate changed.





Neither the State or defense attorneys were available Tuesday for comment.





Carrs resentencing comes at a pivotal time for Floridas death penalty.





After being ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in January 2016, Floridas death sentence scheme became a topic of debate and revision. The Florida Supreme Court released an opinion in October 2016 calling for a unanimous jury.





In March of this year, Gov. Rick Scott signed new rules requiring a unanimous jury decision for the death sentence. The Florida Supreme Court is still hammering out final jury instructions for the new death sentence scheme.





Several appeals for resentencings have entered the state Supreme Courts queue. Of the now seven convicted Marion County murderers on death row, one is arguing for a reduced sentence of life on an intellectual disability claim, two were granted resentencing by the Florida Supreme Court, the other four are still fighting their death sentence with various appeals.





Eight Marion County defendants await sentencing in death penalty-eligible cases. Kelvin Coleman is scheduled to be the first local defendant to put the states new death penalty ruling to the test. Jury selection for the penalty phase of his trial starts Aug. 21. Coleman was convicted in October 2016 of two counts of first-degree murder.





Source: ocala.com , Katie Pohlman, June 6, 2017

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There has been a spike in violence in one of Africas poorest and most war-torn countries, the Central African Republic, known as CAR.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs released a report this month saying that the frequency and brutality of attacks against communities have surged to levels last seen in 2014. Entire towns have been emptied, houses burnt down and women and children brutally killed.

The terrifying violence by armed militias in the CAR started in 2012 and intensified when a mostly Muslim rebel group, the Seleka, overthrew President Francois Bozize in 2013. Atrocities committed by the Seleka gave rise to a predominantly Christian group to counter it, the anti-Balaka, which similarly committed untold human rights abuses. Sectarian attacks by each group against each other and against innocent civilians devastated the country.

An accord agreed to in 2015 by the rival militias requiring them to disarm, as well as a presidential election in 2016, raised hope for a new and more peaceful future for the country.

But many armed rebels did not disarm, and violence has continued; and, as the UN has documented, recently escalated.

The security situation in CAR deteriorated last month, leading to more than 300 people killed and over 100,000 displaced. In southeastern CAR, six peacekeepers from MINUSCA, the UN peacekeeping mission in CAR, were killed near the town of Bangassou. In the central town of Bria, violence between rebel groups resulted in thousands of civilians pouring into makeshift camps.

The United States is deeply concerned by the recent violence.

In a written statement, State Department Spokesperson Heather Nauert said, We strongly condemn these acts of violence and the targeted attacks against humanitarian actors whose sole purpose in the CAR is to provide lifesaving support to the population.

Spokesperson Nauert wrote that the United States mourns the deaths of the UN peacekeepers, as well: The security and support provided by MINUSCA are essential for the CAR to move beyond crisis, she noted.

We commend President [Faustin-Archange] Touadera and his government for their commitment to justice, the rule of law, and accountability for perpetrators of mass atrocities, including through the creation of the Special Criminal court, said Ms. Nauert. The United States fully supports justice and reconciliation, not only as measures for individuals who have suffered  but as essential steps towards building a peaceful and inclusive CAR.
Apple (AAPL) this week unveiled its first smart speaker, HomePod. The device is aimed squarely at rival Amazon (AMZN), which released its Echo three years ago.

The smart home speaker, as a category, appears to be taking off.

Google jumped in with Google Home, released six months ago. Microsoft (MSFT) is getting in with a Harman Kardon speaker called Invoke, which it announced last month. Each of these devices is also a showcase for each companys voice assistant technology: HomePod is powered by Siri; Echo runs on Alexa; Google Home is powered by Google Assistant (its very Google to avoid a cute human name); Invoke will use Microsofts voice tech Cortana.

But for the time being, Amazon is miles ahead in this raceand not just because it was first out of the gate.

The Amazon Echo portfolio of products is definitely the one to beat right now, says Adam Wright, research analyst at IDC. Amazon has leapt ahead of the competition once again with the launch of its latest addition to the portfolio.

He means the Echo Show, coming on June 29, which looks nothing like the rest of the Echos: its a standing rectangle with a video touchscreen. It more closely resembles a portable DVD player, if you remember those relics.

The Echo Show has not gotten a ton of press attention, but insiders are impressed with its 7-inch color screen and its 5-megapixel camera. Adding a visual experience to the speaker, Wright says, affords Amazon a lead over Google for now. Inside Higher Ed predicts the Echo Show will revolutionize higher education.

Amazon currently controls more than 70% of the voice-enabled speaker business, eMarketer estimates.

L-R: Amazon Echo; Google Home; Apple HomePod. (images via Amazon, AP Photo, Apple)

Google Home does offer an impressive conversational experience. And it could further this edge, Wright says, with the expected continued incorporation of Google Assistant with new features (like hands-free phone calls) and with other Google devices, like Lens. But Amazon was first to the space and is iterating so fast with Echo that its daunting to compete.

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And now theres Apple. Its speaker comes along three years after Amazons, six months after Googles, and is almost three times as expensive ($349) than either of those ($179 and $109, respectively). As Mizuho Securities wrote in a new research note after Apples Worldwide Developers Conference keynote on Monday, HomePods pricing is at a premium to competing offerings. Thats an understatement. And HomePod isnt just competing with those, but also with high-end wireless speakers like Sonos and Jawbone Jambox. Its unclear, Wright says, whether Apple can compete well in this space.

Indeed, tech media as well as some analysts have criticized Apple for its late entry, accusing the company, once known for its innovations, as being a copycat now. HomePod even looks a lot like Google Home.

But this race is in its early days. The market for voice-activated home assistant devices is still in its infancy, Wright says. Former Apple analyst Gene Munster, now a partner at Loup Ventures, told Fox Business the same on Monday: Theyre about two years late, but I would also point out that this market hasnt even started.

Amazon and Google dont typically break out sales of their individual devices, but Mizuho estimated that Amazon sold 8.6 million Echos last year, and predicts Echo revenue could balloon to $11 billion by 2020. RBC predicts 60 million units by 2020.

If only 10 million units of smart home speakers have sold, thats small potatoes. Munster pointed out that it takes 500 million units to really consider a category mainstream.

In other words, Apple has ample time.



Daniel Roberts covers tech at Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter at @readDanwrite.

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An "open compute program" server is pictured at Facebook's headquarters in Palo Alto, California on April 7, 2011. REUTERS/Norbert von der Groeben

By Noel Randewich

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Shares of Advanced Micro Devices surged nearly 9 percent on Tuesday boosted by strong demand for its chips from cryptocurrency miners, leaving short sellers at a loss for the year.

A rally in cryptocurrency Ethereum has boosted demand for graphics chips used by people to "mine" it and other digital currencies, with some of AMD's processors sold out on Amazon.com and other retail websites.

Mining for cryptocurrency involves using networks of computers to validate transactions and prevent counterfeit by solving complex mathematical problems. New currency is generated as a reward to the computer operators.

The emergence of Bitcoin in 2009 made cryptocurrency mining popular. Recent rallies in the price of Bitcoin and newer digital currency Ethereum have rekindled interest.

Ethereum miners spending as little as $2,000 to build mining computers using graphics processing units, or GPUs, from AMD or its rival Nvidia could break even within three or four months, estimated RBC analyst Mitch Steves in a note to clients on Tuesday.

"We think economics suggests that GPUs continue to be sold out," Steves wrote. "We think GPU demand will remain robust as long as the return is under (about) one year."

As of Monday, AMD short sellers had been up about $15 million for 2017. But Tuesdays share surge left them at a loss of $125 million on paper for the year, according to S3 Partners, a financial analytics firm.

That follows losses of over $700 million for AMD short sellers last year, when the stock tripled.

The stock last traded up 7.3 percent at $12.06.

"There are going to be a lot of traders saying, 'This is the last straw. I'm out,'" said Ihor Dusaniwsky, S3's managing director of research.

AMD spokesman Drew Prairie acknowledged that interest from cryptocurrency miners was contributing to demand for the company's chips, but he stressed that game enthusiasts are the core market.

JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft Corp, Intel Corp and more than two dozen other companies have teamed up to develop standards to make it easier for enterprises to use technology related to Ethereum.

Adding to support for AMD's stock, Apple on Monday refreshed its lineup of Mac personal computers, including upgraded graphics chips from AMD.
TOKYO (Reuters) - BHP Billiton Chief Executive Andrew Mackenzie said on Monday he has not met with activist hedge fund Elliott Management since their talks in Barcelona last month and declined to comment on whether another meeting was scheduled.

Elliott, a New York-based fund that has built up a 4.1 percent stake in BHP, is pushing a three-point plan to collapse the company's dual-listed structure, spin off its oil and gas assets in the United States, and boost returns to shareholders - all of which BHP has rejected.

Speaking at a media roundtable in Tokyo, Mackenzie said BHP was reviewing some of its natural gas assets where it finds it "very hard to produce investment opportunities" but emphasized the review was a part of regular assessments of its business.

"In some cases we will seek and have sought and are seeking to divest ourselves of these positions and in other cases we will use hedging in order to justify an investment in production," Mackenzie said, without being specific.

BHP announced in April it was putting its Fayetteville shale assets in Arkansas back up for sale and, in May, Mackenzie said the company was also looking to sell much of its Hawkville acreage in the Eagle Ford shale formation.

Mackenzie said he was "always interested in new ideas" on boosting shareholder value.

Elliot said last month after the meeting with Mackenzie in Barcelona that the talks had been "constructive".

BHP's oil business, including its shale drilling, is profitable with oil prices below $50 a barrel, Mackenzie said when asked.

West Texas Intermediate crude oil was trading at $48.21 a barrel at 0407 GMT on Monday. BHP shares on the Australian stock exchange were up about 1.8 percent.

(Reporting by Aaron Sheldrick; Editing by Richard Pullin and Christian Schmollinger)
In this June 5, 2017, photo, President Donald Trump speaks in the East Room at the White House in Washington. Youve probably heard all about whats happening in Washington. This is a story about what isnt. The rapid-fire revelations about the Trump campaign and its Russia connections that are heating up this city are having a chilling effect in plenty of other ways. There are bills that have been pushed to the back burner. Diplomatic initiatives that arent fully initiating. Interest groups that cant stir up much interest. Appointees that havent been appointed. ((AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

WASHINGTON (AP)  You've probably heard all about what's happening in Washington. This is a story about what isn't.

The rapid-fire revelations about the Trump campaign and its Russia connections that are heating up this city are having a chilling effect in plenty of other ways.

There are bills that have been pushed to the back burner. Diplomatic initiatives that aren't fully initiating. Interest groups that can't stir up much interest. Appointees that haven't been appointed.

"It reminds me very much of the Monica Lewinsky days, when things just slowed to a crawl," says Rich Galen, a Republican strategist who worked for then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich when President Bill Clinton was under investigation for his affair with an intern in the late 1990s. "Both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue are consumed by it and there seems to be little appetite for getting into the nitty gritty of other things."

Public relations executive Jamie Horwitz, who leads the team that schedules National Press Club events, emails that "nothing, NOTHING of any importance" is happening at the press club this week. By contrast, the organization's schedule for June 2016, when reporters were out covering campaigns and President Barack Obama was almost out the door, still featured plenty of press conferences, breakfasts, luncheons and newsmaker events.

Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, would like to see the nation more focused on voter suppression laws she says are being adopted around the country, but "attention spans for these critical issues are short" with so much interest focused on the Russia matter.

"It does feel like the Comey controversy is sucking up a lot of the air," Clarke said, referring to James Comey, the fired FBI chief.

Even Marc Short, President Donald Trump's legislative affairs director, this week acknowledged that all of the focus on the Russia investigations "detracts from our legislative agenda. It detracts from what we're trying to deliver."

Story continues

To be sure, the city has not ground to a halt.

Trump himself made a point of agreeing to address religious conservatives at the same time that Comey will be testifying before Congress on Thursday. And the White House is gamely attempting to keep the focus this week on proposed infrastructure improvements.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said Wednesday that Trump was "not letting the distractions get in the way" of his focus on infrastructure and other items on his agenda, even as Washington's focus shifted to Comey's release of written testimony a day in advance of his appearance in the Capitol.

On Capitol Hill, senators are writing their version of legislation to replace the Obama administration's health-care law, which stalled out once before. And the full Senate and House are scheduled to be tackling Iran sanctions and financial regulations when Comey is testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

But the mushrooming Russia investigation throws a long shadow.

Former Oklahoma congressman Mickey Edwards said the drumbeat of revelations about the Trump campaign's connections to Russia makes even Republican legislators less likely to deliver full-throated support to Trump initiatives such as health care.

"Everybody's going to be a little skittish about casting votes to support a Trump agenda when you don't know what's the next shoe that's going to drop," says Edwards, who spent 16 years in the House from 1977 to 1992 and served in the GOP leadership.

And with Trump running far behind on making appointments, Edwards adds, the Russia investigations put even more pressure on the "small group of people" who are running his administration.

"It's like a little family gathering trying to run a country," he says. "They don't have the capacity even without the Russia investigation. And with Russia, they're totally diverted."

On Capitol Hill, a handful of congressional committees are directly involved in the Russia question. And beyond that, "everybody's interested in it from a gossip standpoint," says Galen.

With the Senate and House intelligence committees at the center of the Trump-Russia vortex, legislation to renew and revise a key section of the foreign intelligence surveillance law that allows the U.S. to collect certain communications on the internet has been forced to compete for attention with the Russia matters. At a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Wednesday on the surveillance law, questions to the nation's intelligence chiefs repeatedly pivoted instead toward the Russia investigation.

As for action on health care, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said that after the House passed its version of health legislation, he returned to Washington the following Monday psyched for the Senate to tackle the issue.

"And then Tuesday, Comey got fired," Kaine said. "And since then, aside from Republicans working behind closed doors to find health care solutions without Democratic participation, we haven't had hearings on health care. We haven't had witnesses. ... It does divert attention."

At the State Department, the constant questions about potential collusion between Trump's campaign and Russia have added another layer of difficulty to the administration's efforts to improve relations with the former Cold War foe.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, speaking during a visit to New Zealand, said Tuesday that Trump wants him to keep what's happening "in the political realm" from impeding efforts to rebuild U.S. relations with Russia. But he acknowledged that "our relationships with Russia are at a very low point and they've been deteriorating."

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., recently lamented that the Russia probe is "a challenge to Washington, D.C., the way we do business, a challenge to bipartisanship and a challenge to the effectiveness of this newly elected president." And Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., warned that all the leaks related to Russia were making it hard for people within the executive branch to trust one another "when you are in a room and you don't know where these notes or where these comments are going to wind up in the newspaper in 48 hours."

William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who worked in the Clinton administration, cautions against blaming all of Trump's problems on the Russia probes when there is plenty of "independent dysfunction in the White House."

"It wasn't going to be so easy to get any of this done even without the distraction of the Russia investigation," he says.

"I don't think he's been in a commanding position from Day One," Galston adds. "He's taken a bad hand and played it very badly into an even worse hand."

___

Associated Press writers Josh Lederman, Jill Colvin and Deb Riechmann contributed to this report.

___

Follow Nancy Benac on Twitter at http://twitter.com/nbenac

___

This story has been corrected to reflect that the first name for president of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, is Kristen, rather than Elizabeth, Clarke.
Incyte Corporation INCY along with partner Bristol-Myers Squibb Company BMY announced updated data from phase I/II study, ECHO-204, evaluating Incytes epacadostat in combination with the latters immune-oncology drug Opdivo for the treatment of squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck (SCCHN) and melanoma (MEL). The data was presented at the annual 2017 meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) in Chicago.

We note that epacadostat is an investigational oral selective IDO1 enzyme inhibitor The combination therapy is being evaluated in multiple advanced solid tumors including SCCHN, treatment-naive MEL, ovarian cancer and colorectal cancer.

Incytes share price has increased 23.7% year to date, while the Zacks classified Medical - Biomedical and Genetics industry gained 2.8%.

Per the data, the combination therapy achieved 63% objective response rate (ORR), which includes two complete responses (CRs), in patients with MEL with no prior treatment. The combined disease control rate (DCR) for this indication was 88%. The ORR in previously treated patients with SCCHN achieved was 23%, including one CR. Combined DCR was 61%. However, the responses were recorded irrespective of PD-L1 expression and HPV status.

We remind investors that epacadostat is being studied in combination with other immuno-oncology agents. In fact, Incyte signed clinical trial collaboration agreements with Merck & Co., Inc. MRK, Bristol-Myers Company, AstraZeneca plcs AZN MedImmune and Roches Genentech to evaluate epacadostat with their respective anti-PD-1 and anti-PD-L1 agents in phase I/II studies in 2014. Currently, all four of these studies are in progress. Also, Incyte retains global development and commercialization rights to epacadostat for all indications.

We note that, in April 2017, Incyte and Bristol-Myers announced expansion of the ongoing clinical trial collaboration to include include two pivotal programs in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and head & neck cancer. Phase III trials in these additional tumor types are expected to be initiated in 2017.

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In a separate press release, Incyte provided updated data from another phase I/II ECHO-202 study evaluating epacadostat in combination with Mercks anti-PD-1 therapy, Keytruda, in multiple tumor cohorts including metastatic or recurrent SCCHN, advanced urothelial bladder cancer (UC) and advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC).

Per the study, ORR data for SCCHN, UC and RCC were 34%, 35% and 33%, respectively while DCR was a respective 61%, 53% and 50%. The data also demonstrated that the combination therapy achieved three CRs in SCCHN and UC, and one CR in RCC. The data showed improved responses than data presented earlier.

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During whats a slow(ish) week for the U.S. economy, Wednesday will perhaps see the fewest expected highlights, as oil inventories and consumer credit data should be the big stories.

After stocks lost some ground on Tuesday, expect investors to continue a waiting game ahead of three market-moving events on Thursday  testimony on Capitol Hill from former FBI director James Comey, elections in the UK, and the latest monetary policy announcement from the European Central Bank.

On Tuesday, the retail sector was again in the news, with shares of Macys (M) falling 7% after issuing a cut in its full-year margin outlook, while G-III Apparel (GIII) shares spiked after earnings, and long-time J. Crew CEO Mickey Drexler on Monday afternoon said he would step down from his role at the top of the retailer.

Late Tuesday, Business Insiders Hayley Peterson reported that Sears (SHLD) would close 72 more stores this year in addition to the 180 the company already announced it would close.

And because no batch of retail news is complete without an update on the competition between Walmart (WMT) and Amazon (AMZN), Amazon announced it would offer a discount for its Prime membership for people who receive government assistance.

Jobs everywhere, raises not so much

On Tuesday, we learned that in April there were over 6 million jobs open in the United States, the most on record.

This was according to the job openings and labor turnover survey, or the JOLTS report, which is one of Fed Chair Janet Yellens favorite economic indicators, a data series that runs back to 2001.

But inside this report, we saw the hiring and separations were lower than in the previous month, indicating that while job openings increase dynamism in the labor market is, if anything, decreasing a bit.

On Friday, we learned that in May the U.S. economy added 138,000 jobs while the unemployment rate fell to 4.3%. The unemployment rate  coupled with labor force flows readings like the falling number of unemployed who are new entrants to the labor market  indicates that things are, indeed, tight in the labor market. Economists expect that this leads to slowing headline job gains and faster wage growth.

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Tuesdays report, however, shows that it isnt so much that there is slack in the labor market in the conventional sense of the term, which indicates there are more workers available for jobs than jobs available to fill, but that the kind of churn youd like to see in the market to push up wages and productivity gains may not be there.

On a local level, what matters to individuals is whether they have a job, are getting a raise, or could get another job if they wanted a change or needed to move on. And, overall, economic data support the view that things are good for American workers. But Tuesdays report, while strong on the headline wasnt quite as strong on the margins and more or less reflects a view of the economy that says things are good, but not quite as good as they could be.



Myles Udland is a writer at Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter @MylesUdland

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Anthem on Tuesday announced it would not participate in the individual health-insurance exchanges in Ohio for the 2018 plan year. That could leave 20 counties in the state without any plans on the marketplaces established by the Affordable Care Act, the healthcare law better known as Obamacare.

obama sad frown

In a statement to Business Insider, Anthem cited "continual changes in federal operations, rules, and guidance" as its primary reason for exiting the marketplaces.

The insurer said disruptions in the market because of possible policy changes from the Trump administration and lawmakers on Capitol Hill led to the decision.

From the statement:

"We are pleased that some steps have been taken to address the long-term challenges all health plans serving the individual market are facing, such as improving the eligibility requirements that allow consumers to purchase a plan outside of open enrollment and improved risk adjustment. However, the individual market remains volatile, and the lack of certainty of funding for cost-sharing reduction subsidies, the restoration of taxes on fully insured coverage, and an increasing lack of overall predictability simply does not provide a sustainable path forward to provide affordable plan choices for consumers."

According to the Ohio Insurance department, the move would leave 18 counties without insurance based on preliminary filings for 2018. Based on 2017 plan offerings, this means that at least one new insurer is planning to move into each Mercer and Auglaize counties according to Cynthia Cox, associate director at health policy think tank The Kaiser Family Foundation.

"Anthems exit from Ohio could be the tip of the iceberg," Cox told Business Insider in an email.

"Their reasons for leaving dont appear to be specific to Ohio, rather about political and regulatory uncertainty coming from the White House and Congress. If Anthem leaves the market nationally, there could be hundreds of thousands of people without any exchange insurer."

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Counties with no insurers have long been considered a worst-case scenario for Obamacare, the health law championed by President Barack Obama, as there is no backup provider if another insurer does not step in to fill the void.

Anthem's move follows a cascade of insurer exits in states such as Nebraska, Virginia, and Iowa. In other states, insurers requested dramatic increases in the cost of premiums because of the political uncertainty surrounding the law.

Insurers, including Anthem, have singled out Obamacare's so-called cost-sharing reduction payments as a source of instability. The payments, which the executive branch is currently funding (a move that is the subject of a lawsuit), help offset the cost for insurers of providing cheaper coverage to low-income Americans. Insurers fear that the Trump administration may cut off the funds, though they were recently extended for 90 days.

In its statement, Anthem said that if there were changes to the individual market, the company would consider returning to the exchanges.

"As the individual marketplace continues to evolve, Anthem will continue to advocate solutions that will stabilize the market to allow us to return to a more robust presence in the future," the statement said.

Anthem did not specify its participation in other states where it offers marketplace plans. According to Cox, if Anthem exits marketplaces nationwide, it would leave 275,000 Americans with no insurer offering a plan in their area.

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qatarairways

As Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates sever diplomatic relations with Qatar, the nations have also closed their airspace to their neighbor.

The lack of access to Bahraini, Emirati, and Saudi airspace could have a devastating effect on Qatar Airways' operations.

"Losing Saudi, Bahrain, and UAE airspace would effectively ground Qatar Airways," the CAPA Center for Aviation wrote in a report.

That's because Qatar actually has very little airspace relative to the size of the country.

"It is largely surrounded by Bahrain airspace (the Bahrain FIR), a slither on the south is managed by Saudi Arabia while the UAE is on the eastern border," CAPA said.

While losing access to Saudi airspace would force Qatar Airways into the costly maneuver of rerouting its Africa-bound flights, losing access to Bahraini airspace could be catastrophic because the country almost encircles Qatar.

That means, should the ban hold up, Qatar Airways flights would need to fly through airspace they are now barred from to reach their home base in Doha.

Qatar Airspace Persian gulf air space map

Qatar Airways did not immediately respond to a request for comment on how it plans to overcome this challenge.

While the countries are free to refuse landing rights, it is unclear whether Bahrain and the UAE can legally bar Qatar Airways from their airspace. The International Air Services Transit Agreement, of which Bahrain, the UAE, and Qatar are part of, says the countries can't legally shut off their airspace to fellow signatories. The countries, however, could exit the treaty or try to enforce the ban with the treaty in place.

Saudi Arabia, however, is not an IASTA member country and can legally shut Qatar Airways out of its airspace.

According to Flightradar24, Bahrain notified pilots that it would limit flights to and from Qatar by Qatari aircraft through its airspace to a single air route. This means even if Qatar Airways isn't grounded, it would be subject to heavy air-traffic congestion.

Story continues

Over the past two decades, Qatar Airways has grown to become one of the most influential international airlines in the world. In 2015, the consumer aviation website Skytrax named it the best airline in the world.

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A number of Arab states have severed ties with Qatar accusing it of supporting terrorism but this puts the United States in a tough spot.

The U.S. has located one of its largest air base operations in the desert outside the Qatari capital of Doha which is home to close to 11,000 U.S. military personnel. However, with the recent visit of U.S. President Donald Trump to the Middle East, ties with Saudi Arabia have strengthened.

The Al Udeid U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) military base in Qatar was set up in 2003 after it was moved from the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. The base, which boasts a long runway of 12,500 feet, is an important facility for the U.S. as it can accommodate up to 120 aircrafts . The base in Qatar serves as logistics, command and basing hubs for the U.S. CENTCOM area of operations, including Iraq and Afghanistan.

"There is a danger that if the West were to get involved in this then it will be a great deal of meddling," Simon Mabon, lecturer in international relations of the Middle East at Lancaster University, told CNBC Monday.

"This (GCC) is an autonomous body albeit a body that has increasingly over the past decade or so been increasingly reliant upon security and I think in the past week or so, with President Trump's visit to Saudi Arabia we thought there was this greater unity between the GCC states and between the West, particularly the U.S. and the GCC."

Trump's focus on Saudi Arabia

Mabon further explains that Trump during his visit focused his attention on Saudi Arabia and the UAE perhaps ignoring Qatar suggesting Trump's policies are directed towards the two countries at the expense of Qatar and other weaker states in the region.

But the current standoff between GCC nations and Qatar has put the U.S. in a tough spot for a number of reasons. During a press conference on Monday in Sydney, U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis and U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson offered U.S. support in brokering a solution between the feuding nations.

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"I think what we're witnessing is a growing list of some irritants in the region that have been there for some time, and obviously they have now bubbled up to a level that some countries have decided they needed to take action in an effort to have those interests addressed," Tillerson said according to local Australian media. "We'd certainly encourage those parties to sit down together and address these differences."

A number of analysts have said that the U.S. is trying everything possible to bring peace to the region since it relies heavily on these nations including Qatar, in its fight against the Islamic State.

Will Arab rift hurt U.S. operations?

Earlier this week, the Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson told media that a diplomatic split between Qatar and other Arab nations won't affect the war against the Islamic State and other U.S. operations.

The U.S. military also lauded Qatar for its "enduring commitment to regional security" and said U.S. flights out of Al-Udeid airbase in Qatar were unaffected by the Gulf diplomatic crisis.

"We've seen no impact to our operations and all flights continue as planned," Lieutenant-Colonel Damien Pickart, a spokesman for US Air Forces Central Command, told Reuters.

"The United States and the [anti-Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, US-led] coalition are grateful to the Qataris for their long-standing support of our presence and their enduring commitment to regional security."

The U.S. military's Central Command also said that it has "no plans to change our posture in Qatar".

Rising tensions in the region

On Monday, Saudi Arabia, along with the United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Libya, Bahrain and Maldives (the only non-Arab nation) severed their ties with Qatar. Gulf Arab states and Egypt have long resented Qatar's support for Islamists, especially the Egyptian-based Muslim brotherhood , which they regard as a dangerous political enemy.

The coordinated move, with the Maldives and Libya's eastern-based government joining in later, created a dramatic rift among the Arab nations, many of which are in OPEC.

Announcing the closure of transport ties with Qatar, the three Gulf States gave Qatari visitors and residents two weeks to leave. Qatar was also expelled from the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen.

"There has been a long standing tension between the Qataris and the other GCC members particularly the Saudis and the UAE," Mabon explained.

He further added that this tension stems from two reasons - first, the Qatari support for Islamists across the region with whom many states have had a complicated relationship.

"I have been talking predominantly about the Muslim brotherhood and Hamas, the Palestinian movement based in Gaza. So I think the Saudis and the UAEs are worried that Qatar was providing a platform for these groups."

The second reason, according to Mabon is Qatar's relationship with Iran. "These are longstanding tensions that have been bubbling under the surface but with the reported comment from Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani last week where he was alleged to have said positive things about Iran and negative things about other states was seen as an opportunity for the other powerful Gulf states like Saudi Arabia and the Emirates to actually clamp down on Qatar."

But while the issue has been largely attributed to the rise of Islamist terrorism in the region, Mabon warns that this should not be purely boiled down to religion. Religion is an important factor, he warns but "this is a political struggle between the Saudis and the Iranians and of course the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt all fall in line with this."

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Qatar falconry

A ransom payment of up to $1 billion to Iranian and Al Qaeda-linked forces in Syria may have been the tipping point for Qatari-Gulf Arab relations, Financial Times reported Monday.

Qatar paid out the hefty ransom to secure the release of 26 members of a falconry party, some of whom were members of Qatar's royal family who had been hunting in southern Iraq, "commanders of militant groups and government officials in the region" told Financial Times.

The news of Qatar's ransom comes after Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Yemen, and a powerful military leader in Libya all severed ties with Doha on Monday.

SPA, a Saudi state news agency, said the kingdom cut ties because Qatar "embraces multiple terrorist and sectarian groups aimed at disturbing stability in the region, including the Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS, and Al Qaeda, and promotes the message and schemes of these groups through their media constantly," according to Reuters.

Middle east map saudi arabia qatar bahrain iran

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain represent the most prominent of the Gulf Arab states and premier powers in the Sunni world, which rivals Iran and its Shia influence in the Middle East.

Qatar and the other Gulf Arab states have in the past sparred over Qatar's softer stance on Iran and support for the Muslim Brotherhood, a transnational Islamist organization founded in Egypt, but a source told Financial Times that "the ransom payments are the straw that broke the camel's back."

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Kim Jong Un

Despite President Donald Trump's bold proclamation that a North Korean nuclear missile capable of hitting the US "won't happen," Kim Jong Un appears to be on his way  faster than many had thought  to an intercontinental ballistic missile that could flatten Washington.

But a nuclear-armed North Korea wouldn't be the end of the world, according to some senior military officials.

"We can deter them," retired Adm. Dennis Blair, the former head of US Pacific Command, said of North Korea at a National Committee for US-China Relations event. "They may be developing 10 to 15 nuclear weapons. We have 2,000. They can do a lot of damage to the US, but there won't be any North Korea left in the event of a nuclear exchange. That's not a good regime survival strategy, and even Kim Jong Un would understand that.

The US has to live with the fact that Russia, the world's second-greatest nuclear power, openly opposes the US's foreign policy in nearly every dimension, and that Pakistan, a country rife with corruption and Islamist groups gaining traction within and around its borders, has nuclear weapons.

A senior Defense Department official with expertise in nuclear strategy told Business Insider that while the US has said it cannot and will not accept a North Korea armed with a nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile, that amounted more to an opening position in an ongoing negotiation than an intention to use military force to stop it.

"You never undermine your official position going in," the official told Business Insider. "You're never going to voluntarily back away from that. You're going to actively work to make sure they don't get" an ICBM.

uss carl vinson north korea

"The North Koreans having nukes is a bad thing, and we don't want it," the official said. "But if we lose that one, we survive it."

Story continues

Despite bluster on both sides  whether posturing that the US may attack to cripple North Korea's nuclear program or that North Korea would use its nuclear weapons on the US or allies  the defense official and other experts Business Insider contacted said they found both cases extremely unlikely and undesirable.

North Korea artillery

"It's always in the US's favor to be somewhat ambiguous about what they will or won't do," said Melissa Hanham, a senior research associate in the East Asia Nonproliferation Program. "That's because there's no good thing to do. They have to convince South Korean allies and North Korean adversaries that they'll do anything to protect Seoul, even all-out nuclear war.

"But those experienced military leaders know. They've run the models. They've run the numbers," Hanham said. There's just no way to fight North Korea "without chaos and enormous death and damage to the world."

The trajectory of US nuclear ICBMs would have to fly over China and Russia  which could mistake an incoming missile as being intended for them. And while the US could use submarine-launched or air-dropped nuclear weapons, both options would most likely spread deadly fallout throughout the region that could bring about World War III  a great power war between nuclear states that the world has developed nuclear weapons to avoid.

To an extent, the US already lives with and deters a nuclear North Korea daily. Hanham said that although it hadn't been verified, North Korea most likely had a deliverable nuclear weapon that could hit the 10 million civilians in Seoul or the 25,000 permanent US troops stationed in South Korea.

So North Korea will continue on its path toward a nuclear weapon that could hit anywhere in the US  but like Russia, China, and Pakistan, it probably wouldn't use it.

Editor's note: This post has been edited to better explain how nuclear conflict in North Korea could lead to a broader conflict between great powers.

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Program continues close partnership between Helsinki University Hospital and Nokia

7 June, 2017

Helsinki, Finland - Nokia announced today the world's first 'mixed reality' neurosurgical live streaming conducted at Helsinki University Hospital, Finland. The procedure was livestreamed to approximately 100 neurosurgeons using Nokia's OZO Live to provide a more immersive view of the surgery and operating room coordination.

The live streaming trial is part of a joint project called "Media meets Medicine", and was completed in collaboration with Helsinki University Hospital (HUH) Neurosurgery Department, a world-leading department for its expertise in all subsections of neurosurgery. Nokia sees virtual reality completely transforming how people can experience the world together; the live streaming at HUH showcases how virtual reality can advance the healthcare industry by delivering an immersive experience, regardless of the location of the viewers.

Nokia OZO was used to deliver a completely new, live broadcast mixed reality experience of a neurosurgery operation using the OZO Reality Platform and viewed on OZO Player SDK. The experience consists of the stereoscopic 360 degree OZO camera live stream with spatial audio, complemented by interactive microscope and graphics overlays. The Nokia OZO system delivered a live view from the operating theatre to the participants of a live demonstration course in operative microneurosurgery at the Helsinki University Hospital on 6-7 June as part of the the 17th Helsinki Live Demonstration Course in Operative Microneurosurgery.

"Normally, only up to 10-15 external observers can fit in an operating theatre in addition to the operating team. When using Nokia OZO Live streaming we could have limitless observers from around the world and they can all feel as if they were there," says Professor Mika Niemela, Chief of Department at HUH Neurosurgery.

"HUH wants to be a forerunner in exploring, identifying and demonstrating novel opportunities in the virtual, augmented and mixed reality domains, and drive concept creation for future virtual and augmented reality in medical context. We are really happy that we can cooperate with the Nokia team, who are pioneers in this area," says Miikka Korja, Neurosurgeon at HUH Neurosurgery and Chief Innovation Officer at Helsinki University Hospital.





"We are pleased to work alongside a leading neurosurgical department in the world," says Kiti Muller, Neurologist, Medical Expert and Principal Researcher at the Digital Health Lab at Nokia Technologies. "The cooperation enables medical doctors in different expert areas to get to know the latest technology, including a totally new way of sharing medical expertise."

"This is an excellent example of using Nokia OZO solutions to create and share an immersive experience for educational purposes. We are very proud to work with our esteemed partner HUH to expand our cooperation in the medical field," says Paul Melin, VP of Digital Media at Nokia Technologies.

For more information about the OZO product family, visit https://ozo.nokia.com.

About Helsinki University Hospital (HUH) Neurosurgery

HUH Neurosurgery is world-famous for its expertise in all subsections of neurosurgery. It is considered the leading center in Europe in the microneurosurgical treatment of cerebral blood vessel diseases and complex brain tumors, and is also ranked among the very best units in the world.

About Nokia

We create the technology to connect the world. Powered by the research and innovation of Nokia Bell Labs, we serve communications service providers, governments, large enterprises and consumers, with the industry's most complete, end-to-end portfolio of products, services and licensing.

From the enabling infrastructure for 5G and the Internet of Things, to emerging applications in virtual reality and digital health, we are shaping the future of technology to transform the human experience. www.nokia.com

Media Enquiries:

Camilla Ekholm

Nokia Technologies

+358 40 721 8345

camilla.ekholm@nokia.com
Finnish English

THIS RELEASE MAY NOT BE RELEASED, PUBLISHED OR OTHERWISE DISTRIBUTED, IN WHOLE OR IN PART, IN OR INTO, DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY, CANADA, JAPAN, AUSTRALIA, SOUTH AFRICA OR HONG KONG OR IN ANY OTHER JURISDICTION IN WHICH THE TENDER OFFER WOULD BE PROHIBITED BY APPLICABLE LAW

Sponda Plc Stock Exchange Release June 7, 2017 at 14:30

Statement of the Board of Directors of Sponda Plc regarding the voluntary public tender offer by Polar Bidco S.a r.l.

Polar Bidco S.a r.l. (the "Offeror"), a corporation owned by funds advised by affiliates of The Blackstone Group L.P. (together with its consolidated subsidiaries, "Blackstone"), and Sponda Plc ("Sponda" or the "Company") have announced on June 5, 2017 that the Offeror makes a voluntary public cash tender offer to purchase all issued and outstanding shares in Sponda (the "Tender Offer").

The Board of Directors of Sponda has on June 7, 2017 decided to issue the below statement regarding the Tender Offer as required by the Finnish Securities Markets Act (746/2012, as amended).

TENDER OFFER IN BRIEF

The Offeror and Sponda have on June 5, 2017 entered into a combination agreement (the "Combination Agreement") setting out, among other things, the main terms and conditions pursuant to which the Tender Offer shall be made by the Offeror.

The Tender Offer will be made in accordance with the terms and conditions of the tender offer document expected to be published by the Offeror on or about June 12, 2017 (the "Tender Offer Document").

The offer price is EUR 5.19 in cash for each share in Sponda. The offer price represents a premium of:

28.1 percent to the three-month volume-weighted average price on Nasdaq Helsinki Ltd (" Nasdaq Helsinki ") up to and including June 2, 2017; and

20.7 percent to the closing price of Sponda share on Nasdaq Helsinki on June 2, 2017 (i.e., the last day of trading before the announcement of the Tender Offer).

The offer price provides full value relative to Sponda's IFRS net asset value based on the unaudited interim report as at and for the three months ended March 31, 2017.

The Tender Offer was announced by the Offeror on June 5, 2017 with an offer price of EUR 5.19 per share. Pursuant to such announcement, the amount of any dividend up to a maximum of EUR 0.12 per share paid by Sponda prior to the completion of the Tender Offer, as permitted by the Combination Agreement, will be deducted from the cash consideration offered for the shares in Sponda. On June 5, 2017, the Board of Directors of Sponda resolved on the payment of a dividend of EUR 0.12 per share and set a record date of June 7, 2017 for such dividend payment. Following an adjustment of the offer price for such dividend payment, the price offered for each share in the Tender Offer is EUR 5.07 in cash, provided that the Tender Offer has been approved according to the terms and conditions of the Tender Offer and that the acceptance has not been validly withdrawn.

The largest shareholders of Sponda Mercator Invest Ab, HC Fastigheter Holding Oy Ab and Varma Mutual Pension Insurance Company as well as Sponda's President and CEO Kari Inkinen, together representing approximately 46.9 percent of the shares have, subject to certain customary conditions, irrevocably undertaken to accept the Tender Offer.

The Tender Offer is subject to necessary regulatory approvals, permits and consents, including without limitation competition clearances, and the Offeror gaining control of more than 90 percent of the issued and outstanding shares and voting rights of Sponda.

Certain funds advised by affiliates of Blackstone have executed an equity commitment letter addressed to the Offeror confirming the financing for the payment of the aggregate consideration for all of the shares in Sponda in connection with the Tender Offer and in the subsequent mandatory redemption procedure. According to the Combination Agreement, the Offeror has, and will have on the closing date of the Tender Offer, access to capital in sufficient amount, as evidenced in the equity commitment letter, to finance the payment of the aggregate consideration for all of the shares in connection with the Tender Offer (including any subsequent mandatory redemption procedure). The Offeror's obligation to complete the Tender Offer is not conditional upon receipt of financing (assuming that all the conditions to completion of the Tender Offer are otherwise satisfied or waived by the Offeror) and no third party consent is required by the Offeror for the financing of the Tender Offer.

The offer period for the Tender Offer is expected to commence on or about June 13, 2017 and initially to expire on July 14, 2017. The Offeror reserves the right to extend the offer period from time to time in accordance with the terms and conditions of the Tender Offer.

STATEMENT OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS

1. Background for the statement

Pursuant to the Finnish Securities Market Act, the Board of Directors of Sponda shall prepare a public statement regarding the Tender Offer.

The statement shall include a well-founded assessment of the Tender Offer from the perspective of Sponda and its shareholders as well as of the strategic plans and their likely effects on the operations and employment of Sponda presented by the Offeror in the Tender Offer Document.

For the purposes of issuing this statement, the Offeror has submitted to the Board of Directors of Sponda the draft version of the Finnish language Tender Offer Document in the form in which the Offeror has filed it with the Finnish Financial Supervisory Authority for approval on June 5, 2017.

In preparing its statement, the Board of Directors of Sponda has relied on information provided in the draft Tender Offer Document by the Offeror and has not independently verified this information. Accordingly, the Board of Directors' assessments of the consequences of the Tender Offer on Sponda's business and employees should be treated with caution.

2. Assessment regarding strategic plans presented by the Offeror and their likely effects on the operations and employment of Sponda

Information given by the Offeror in the Tender Offer Document

The Board of Directors of Sponda has assessed the Offeror's strategic plans based on the draft Tender Offer Document.

Blackstone has been a global leader in the real estate sector since 1991, and funds advised by affiliates of Blackstone have approximately USD 102 billion of real estate funds under management. Blackstone has considerable experience of investing in, and managing, real estate portfolios across the United States, Europe, Asia and Latin America and across all asset classes. Major holdings include Hilton Worldwide, Invitation Homes (single family homes), OfficeFirst (German office) and prime office buildings in the world's major cities. Blackstone also has significant experience of investing in, and managing, real estate assets in the Nordic region, including in Finland. Since 2015, Blackstone has acquired control of over EUR 4 billion of properties in the Nordic region of which over EUR 1 billion is located in Finland.

The acquisition of Sponda represents a unique opportunity for Blackstone to increase its investment in the Nordic region and Finland, in line with its strategy to acquire and grow high-quality platforms globally. Given its track record, Blackstone looks forward to partnering with and supporting Sponda's management team in realizing value across Sponda's portfolio, including in its ongoing development and land assets. Blackstone can confirm that it intends to maintain Sponda as a going concern and would look to make further acquisitions over time in Finland managed by Sponda, where feasible.

It has been agreed with Areim AB, acting on behalf of Areim Fund III, that the fund will become a co-investor in the Tender Offer alongside Blackstone prior to, or in connection with, the completion of the Tender Offer.

The completion of the Tender Offer is not expected to have any immediate material effects on Sponda's operations or assets, the position of Sponda's management or employees or the location of offices. Blackstone and the Offeror also confirm that the existing rights of Sponda's employees, including applicable incentive programs, social plans, collective labor agreements and pension rights will be respected.

Board assessment

The Board of Directors of Sponda believes that Blackstone's extensive experience in investing in high-quality real estate portfolios and business both globally and across the Nordic region will benefit the activities of Sponda. With the support and experience of Blackstone, the Board of Directors of Sponda believes that Sponda will further develop its business and properties portfolio. Sponda will continue to offer high-quality business premises and working environments to its customers. According to the Board of Directors' view, the Tender Offer is an acknowledgement of Sponda being the prime real estate investment company in Finland with a clear focus on high-quality commercial properties in growth areas and the Helsinki Central Business District in particular. The Board of Directors of Sponda further believes that Blackstone's potential to contribute further capital to the business of Sponda will benefit the activities of Sponda in the future. In addition, the Board of Directors of Sponda considers the offer price and the credibility of Blackstone as an investor to positively impact the ability of the Offeror to gain control of more than 90 percent of the issued and outstanding shares and voting rights in Sponda and thereby help successfully complete the Tender Offer.

The Board of Directors of Sponda considers that the information on the Offeror's strategic plans concerning Sponda included in the draft Tender Offer Document is of a general nature. However, based on information presented to Sponda and its Board of Directors, the Board of Directors of Sponda believes that the completion of the Tender Offer is not expected to have any immediate material effects on Sponda's operations and business locations or on the number of jobs at Sponda.

On the date of this statement the Board of Directors of Sponda has not received any formal statement as to the effects of the Tender Offer to the employments at Sponda from Sponda's employees.

3. Assessment of the Board of Directors from the perspective of Sponda and its shareholders

Introduction

In evaluating the Tender Offer, analyzing alternative opportunities available to Sponda and concluding on its statement, the Board of Directors has considered several factors, such as Sponda's recent financial performance, current position and future prospects, and the historical trading price of Sponda's share as well as the difference between the trading price and Sponda's IFRS net asset value based on the unaudited interim report as at and for the three months ended March 31, 2017.

The Board of Directors' assessment of continuing the business operations of Sponda as an independent company has been based on reasonable future-oriented estimates which include uncertainties, whereas the offer price and the premium included therein is not subject to any uncertainty other than the fulfillment of the conditions to completion of the Tender Offer.

In order to support its assessment of the Tender Offer, the Board of Directors of Sponda has received a fairness opinion, dated May 24, 2017, regarding the Tender Offer (the "Fairness Opinion") from Sponda's financial advisor, UBS Limited. The Fairness Opinion is attached as Appendix 1 to this statement.

Board assessment

The Board of Directors of Sponda believes that the consideration offered by the Offeror to the shareholders is fair to such holders based on an assessment of the issues and factors, which the Board of Directors has concluded to be material in evaluating the Tender Offer. These include, amongst other factors:

the premium of 20.7 percent being offered compared to the closing price of Sponda share on Nasdaq Helsinki on June 2, 2017 (i.e., the last day of trading before the announcement of the Tender Offer);

the offer price providing full value relative to Sponda's IFRS net asset value based on the unaudited interim report as at and for the three months ended March 31, 2017;

the information and assumptions on the business operations and finances of Sponda at the date of this statement and their expected future development;

the support by significant shareholders in Sponda for the Tender Offer; and

the Fairness Opinion issued by UBS Limited.

The Board of Directors has concluded that the relevant business prospects of Sponda provide opportunities for Sponda to develop its business as an independent company for the benefit of Sponda and its shareholders. However, taking into consideration the risks and uncertainties associated with such stand-alone approach as well as the terms and conditions of the draft Tender Offer Document, the Board of Directors has concluded that the Tender Offer is a favorable alternative for the shareholders.

Sponda has in the Combination Agreement agreed to a standard non-solicitation clause whereby Sponda has undertaken not to solicit competing proposals or offers. Having carefully assessed the terms and conditions of the Tender Offer, the Board of Directors of Sponda has concluded that entering into the Combination Agreement, including said non-solicitation clause, is in the interest of Sponda's shareholders.

4. Recommendation of the Board of Directors

The Board of Directors of Sponda has carefully assessed the Tender Offer and its terms and conditions based on the draft Tender Offer Document, the Fairness Opinion, and other available information.

Based on the foregoing, the Board of Directors of Sponda deems that the Tender Offer and the amount of the offer price offered for the shares are under the prevailing circumstances fair to Sponda shareholders.

Given the above-presented viewpoints, the Board of Directors of Sponda unanimously and unconditionally recommends that the shareholders of Sponda accept the Tender Offer.

This statement is based on an assessment of the issues and factors which the Board of Directors has concluded to be material in evaluating the Tender Offer, including, but not limited to, the information and assumptions on the business operations and finances of Sponda at the date of this statement and their expected future development.

Six out of seven members of the Board of Directors have participated in the decision-making concerning the statement. One member of the Board of Directors is on a long-term leave of absence. The evaluation of independence of the members of the Board of Directors is available on the website of Sponda.

5. Other Issues

The Board of Directors of Sponda notes that the combination may, as is common in such combination processes, involve unforeseeable risks.

The Board of Directors of Sponda notes that the shareholders of Sponda should also take into account the risks related to non-acceptance of the Tender Offer. If the Offeror waives the acceptance condition of 90 percent of the shares and votes, the completion of the Tender Offer would reduce the number of Sponda shareholders and the number of shares, which would otherwise be publicly traded. Depending on the number of shares validly tendered in the Tender Offer, this could have an adverse effect on the liquidity and value of the shares.

Pursuant to Chapter 18 of the Finnish Companies Act (624/2006, as amended), a shareholder with more than 90 per cent of all shares and votes in a company shall have the right to acquire, and subject to a demand by the other shareholders also be obligated to redeem, the shares owned by the other shareholders. The shares held by Sponda's shareholders who have not accepted the Tender Offer may be redeemed through compulsory redemption proceedings under the Finnish Companies Act under the conditions set out therein.

Sponda has undertaken to comply with the Helsinki Takeover Code referred to in chapter 11, section 28 of the Finnish Securities Markets Act.

This statement of the Board of Directors of Sponda does not constitute investment or tax advice, and the Board of Directors of Sponda does not specifically evaluate herein the general price development or the risks relating to the shares in general. Shareholders must independently decide whether to accept the Tender Offer, and they should take into account all relevant information available to them, including information presented in the Tender Offer Document and this statement as well as any other factors affecting the value of the shares.

Sponda is being advised by UBS Limited as financial advisor and Castren & Snellman Attorneys Ltd. as legal advisor.

THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF SPONDA

Further information:

Kari Inkinen, President and CEO, tel. +358 40 040 2653

APPENDIX: UBS's Fairness Opinion

Sponda in brief:

Sponda is a property investment company specializing in commercial properties in the largest cities in Finland. Sponda's business concept is to own, lease and develop retail and office properties and shopping centers into environments that promote the business success of its clients. As at March 31, 2017, the fair value of Sponda's investment properties was approximately EUR 3.8 billion and the leasable area was approximately 1.2 million square meters.

www.sponda.fi/en

THIS RELEASE MAY NOT BE RELEASED, PUBLISHED OR OTHERWISE DISTRIBUTED, IN WHOLE OR IN PART, IN OR INTO, DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY, CANADA, JAPAN, AUSTRALIA, SOUTH AFRICA OR HONG KONG OR IN ANY OTHER JURISDICTION IN WHICH THE TENDER OFFER WOULD BE PROHIBITED BY APPLICABLE LAW.

THIS RELEASE IS NOT A TENDER OFFER DOCUMENT AND AS SUCH DOES NOT CONSTITUTE AN OFFER OR INVITATION TO MAKE A SALES OFFER. IN PARTICULAR, THIS RELEASE IS NOT AN OFFER TO SELL OR THE SOLICITATION OF AN OFFER TO BUY ANY SECURITIES DESCRIBED HEREIN, AND IS NOT AN EXTENSION OF THE TENDER OFFER, IN CANADA, JAPAN, AUSTRALIA, SOUTH AFRICA OR HONG KONG. INVESTORS SHALL ACCEPT THE TENDER OFFER FOR THE SHARES ONLY ON THE BASIS OF THE INFORMATION PROVIDED IN A TENDER OFFER DOCUMENT. OFFERS WILL NOT BE MADE DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY IN ANY JURISDICTION WHERE EITHER AN OFFER OR PARTICIPATION THEREIN IS PROHIBITED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR WHERE ANY TENDER OFFER DOCUMENT OR REGISTRATION OR OTHER REQUIREMENTS WOULD APPLY IN ADDITION TO THOSE UNDERTAKEN IN FINLAND.

'

THE TENDER OFFER IS NOT BEING MADE DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY IN ANY JURISDICTION WHERE PROHIBITED BY APPLICABLE LAW AND, WHEN PUBLISHED, THE TENDER OFFER DOCUMENT AND RELATED ACCEPTANCE FORMS WILL NOT AND MAY NOT BE DISTRIBUTED, FORWARDED OR TRANSMITTED INTO OR FROM ANY JURISDICTION WHERE PROHIBITED BY APPLICABLE LAW. IN PARTICULAR, THE TENDER OFFER IS NOT BEING MADE, DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY, IN OR INTO, OR BY USE OF THE POSTAL SERVICE OF, OR BY ANY MEANS OR INSTRUMENTALITY (INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, FACSIMILE TRANSMISSION, TELEX, TELEPHONE OR ELECTRONIC TRANSMISSION BY WAY OF THE INTERNET OR OTHERWISE) OF INTERSTATE OR FOREIGN COMMERCE OF, OR ANY FACILITIES OF A NATIONAL SECURITIES EXCHANGE OF, CANADA, JAPAN, AUSTRALIA, SOUTH AFRICA OR HONG KONG. THE TENDER OFFER CANNOT BE ACCEPTED, DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY, BY ANY SUCH USE, MEANS OR INSTRUMENTALITY OR FROM WITHIN CANADA, JAPAN, AUSTRALIA, SOUTH AFRICA OR HONG KONG. NO HOLDER AND ANY PERSON ACTING FOR THE ACCOUNT OR BENEFIT OF A HOLDER IN CANADA, JAPAN, AUSTRALIA, SOUTH AFRICA OR HONG KONG SHALL BE PERMITTED TO ACCEPT THE TENDER OFFER.

Notice to Shareholders in the United States

U.S. shareholders are advised that Sponda's shares are not listed on a U.S. securities exchange and that Sponda is not subject to the periodic reporting requirements of the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the "Act"), and is not required to, and does not, file any reports with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") thereunder.

The Tender Offer is made to Sponda's shareholders resident in the United States on the same terms and conditions as those made to all other shareholders of Sponda to whom an offer is made. Any information documents, including the tender offer document, are being disseminated to U.S. shareholders on a basis comparable to the method that such documents are provided to Sponda's other shareholders.

The Tender Offer is made for the shares in Sponda, a Finnish company. Information distributed in connection with the Tender Offer and the combination is subject to disclosure requirements of Finland, which are different from those of the United States. The financial information included in this release has been prepared in accordance with accounting standards in Finland, which may not be comparable to the financial statements or financial information of United States companies.

It may be difficult for Sponda's shareholders to enforce their rights and any claim they may have arising under the federal securities laws, since the Offeror and Sponda are located in non-U.S. jurisdictions, and some or all of their respective officers and directors may be residents of non-U.S. jurisdictions. Sponda's shareholders may not be able to sue the Offeror or Sponda or their respective officers or directors in a non-U.S. court for violations of the U.S. securities laws. It may be difficult to compel the Offeror and Sponda and their respective affiliates to subject themselves to a U.S. court's judgment.

The Tender Offer is expected to be made in the United States pursuant to Section 14(e) and Regulation 14E under the Act as a "Tier II" tender offer, and otherwise in accordance with the requirements of Finnish law. Accordingly, the Tender Offer will be subject to disclosure and other procedural requirements, including with respect to withdrawal rights, offer timetable, settlement procedures and timing of payments that are different from those applicable under U.S. domestic tender offer procedures and law.

To the extent permissible under applicable law or regulations, the Offeror and its affiliates or brokers (acting as agents for the Offeror or its affiliates, as applicable) may from time to time after the date hereof, and other than pursuant to the Tender Offer, directly or indirectly purchase or arrange to purchase, shares of Sponda, that are the subject of the Tender Offer or any securities that are convertible into, exchangeable for or exercisable for such shares. To the extent information about such purchases or arrangements to purchase is made public in Finland, such information will be disclosed by means of a press release or other means reasonably calculated to inform U.S. shareholders of Sponda of such information. In addition, the financial advisors to the Offeror may also engage in ordinary course trading activities in securities of Sponda, which may include purchases or arrangements to purchase such securities.

Neither the SEC nor any U.S. state securities commission has approved or disapproved the Tender Offer, or passed any comment upon the adequacy or completeness of the tender offer document. Any representation to the contrary is a criminal offence in the United States.

Disclaimer

UBS Limited is authorized by the Prudential Regulation Authority and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority in the United Kingdom. UBS Limited is acting as financial adviser to Sponda and no one else for the purpose of the consideration of the Tender Offer and will not be responsible to anyone other than Sponda for providing the protections offered to clients of UBS Limited nor for providing advice in relation to the Tender Offer.
NEW YORK, June 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Sichenzia Ross Ference Kesner LLP (SRFK), a leading corporate securities and full service law firm, is pleased to announce the addition of a Commercial Real Estate group and Trusts & Estates practice to its growing number of practice areas.



The new Commercial Real Estate group at SRFK will be led by Anthony J. Ficara, who has joined SRFK as a Member of the firm. Previously, Mr. Ficara was the founding member and Managing Partner of Ficara & Associates, P.C., a boutique Long Island law firm. Mr. Ficara and his colleagues will join the SRFK team, immediately establishing a prominent Commercial Real Estate group and Trusts & Estates practice area. This teams experience and capabilities span Condominium, Cooperative & Home Owners Association Law, Real Estate Transactions & Finance, Litigation, Corporate & Business Entity Matters and Wills, and Trusts & Estates Counseling, among others. SRFK will maintain a Long Island office while strengthening the New York City practice base.

Other members of Ficaras team joining SRFK include Jodi B. Zimmerman, who focuses her practice on Elder Law and Estate Planning matters including the preparation of Wills, Trusts, Probate and Administration petitions and Guardianships; Michael Wickersham, who represents buyers and sellers in a wide array of commercial transactions and sponsor unit sales; and Todd J. Manister, a seasoned litigation and transactional attorney who focuses his practice on all types of complex business and personal matters.

Anthony Ficara and his team of seasoned professionals bring experience and an established track record of success to SRFK, said Gregory Sichenzia, Founding Partner at Sichenzia Ross Ference Kesner LLP. Their strength in advising on complex commercial real estate and trust & estate matters will provide our clients with the highest standards of counsel in those areas, further diversifying our capabilities as we continue to evolve as a full-serve law firm."

My team and I look forward to joining SRFK, an international firm with a reputation for providing tireless support for its dynamic client roster, said Anthony J. Ficara, Partner at Sichenzia Ross Ference Kesner LLP. We are confident our areas of expertise will complement their well-established securities and corporate law practices, further providing both of our respective clients with the highest caliber of legal counsel.

About Sichenzia Ross Ference Kesner LLP

Sichenzia Ross Ference Kesner LLP (www.srfkllp.com) is a leading securities and corporate law firm providing experienced, professional representation in all matters involving the securities industry, as well as in all general corporate and litigation matters. Headquartered in New York City and with offices in Tel Aviv, the Firm's clients range from start-ups to established, listed companies; they include Institutional investors, public and private corporations, partnerships, broker-dealers, bank-affiliated broker-dealers, investment advisors, registered representatives, public and corporate customers and investors, in the US and internationally. Visit the Firm's social media channels: SRFK's LinkedIn and SRFK's Twitter: @SRFKLLP for more information.
Lithuanian English

Siauliai, Lithuania, 2017-06-07 17:04 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Siauliu Bankas AB, company code 112025254, address of the head office Tilzes str. 149, Siauliai, Lithuania.

On 6 June 2017 the amended Charter of Siauliu Bankas AB with the authorized capital increased up to EUR 131 365 989.88 was registered at the Register of Legal Entities. The authorized capital of the bank was increased from the bank funds following the resolution of the Ordinary General Shareholders Meeting held on 30 March 2017. 75 497 695 ordinary registered shares with nominal value of EUR 0.29 each have been issued from the retained earnings and are to be distributed to the shareholders free of charge in proportion to the total nominal value of shares (20%) owned by them at the end of the day of accounting of rights of the Meeting (13 April 2017).

In the nearest future (planned by 13 June 2017) the records on general issue account of Siauliu Bankas shares (securities ISIN code LT0000102253) with the Central Securities Depository of Lithuania shall be made and the new shares will be recorded to the personal securities accounts of the shareholders, opened with account managers.This moment shall be deemed as the enrollment of the newly issued shares into trading in the regulated market.

Head of the Assets Restructuring Division, acting as Chief Executive Officer Ilona Baranauskiene
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, June 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Oceanus Resources Corporation (TSXV:OCN), (OTCQB:OCNSF) ("Oceanus" or the Company) reports that step-out hole ET-17-144 at its 100% owned El Tigre Property in Sonora, Mexico intersected high-grade gold and silver mineralization in the Protectora vein. Hole ET-17-144 returned 3.15 meters of 36.6 g/t gold equivalent from a depth of 88.25 meters to 91.40 meters consisting of 10.1 g/t gold and 1990.9 g/t silver. This intercept included 0.85 meters of 135.1 g/t gold equivalent consisting of 37.2 g/t gold and 7,338.9 g/t silver. Hole ET-144 also returned 1107.36 g/t silver and 0.024 g/t gold over 1.5 meters from a depth of 188.65 meters to 190.15 meters.



The true width has not been calculated for the intercepts, but true width is generally estimated at 75-90% of drilled width. The gold equivalent ratio is based on a gold-to-silver price ratio of 75:1.

Drill hole ET-17-144 is located approximately 800 meters north of the end of the old El Tigre mine where the Camp is located. The hole was drilled to test the Protectora vein at a shallow depth. The map attached as Appendix A is 6 kilometers of the 35 kilometer long El Tigre Property and shows the location of drill hole ET-17-144. In this drill hole the Protectora vein is hosted by a brecciated, dark grey fragmental tuff of the El Tigre Formation. The mineralized zone consists of several vuggy quartz veins and veinlets carrying galena, sphalerite, chalcopyrite, stromeyerite and pyrite.

APPENDIX A is available for download at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/9da4b20b-3542-4457-87c9-44071c3e49f3

Glenn Jessome, President and CEO of Oceanus reports, The high gold and silver grades intersected in drill hole ET-17-144 are reminiscent of the bonanza silver and gold grades mined underground in the 1920s and 1930s at the old El Tigre mine which is 800 meters to the south. Surface mapping shows that the Protectora vein and alteration zone, that has not been mined, extends along strike to the north from the old El Tigre mine for 1,500 meters. This 1,500 meter long extension presents a new exploration target to find additional near surface mineralization. Our recent step-out drill results to the north and south are very encouraging.

Refer to the Oceanus news releases dated September 14, 2016, October 18, 2016, December 14, 2016, March 6, 2017 and May 25, 2017 for the assay results for the previous drill holes. A drill hole location map is attached as Appendix B.

APPENDIX B is available for download at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/6c7f4825-7799-447b-af75-8ff57b387623

El Tigre Drilling Program and Resource Estimate

Oceanus has completed the 2016-17 infill drilling program at El Tigre with a total of 62 diamond drill holes totalling 11,923.1 meters. The purpose of this drill program was to support a NI 43-101 resource estimation for the El Tigre Property. The results from the Oceanus drilling, prior drilling and other data will be incorporated into the resource estimation to be completed by P&E Mining Consultants Inc. by the end of June, 2017.

Prospecting Work to the North at La Chula

As press released on May 25, 2017 field mapping and prospecting surveys have identified newly discovered mineralization, which has been named La Chula vein system. La Chula is located approximately 2 kilometers north of hole ET-17-144 drilled at Protectora (see map at Appendix A). An extensive mapping and prospecting program is now being carried out at La Chula.

El Tigre Property

The El Tigre Property lies at the northern end of the Sierra Madre gold belt which hosts many of the larger multi-million ounce epithermal gold and silver deposits including Ocampo, Pinos Altos, Dolores and Palmarejo. In 1896, gold was first discovered on the property in the Gold Hill area and mining started with the Brown Shaft in 1903. The focus soon changed to mining high-grade silver veins in the area with the majority of the production coming from the El Tigre vein. Underground mining on the El Tigre vein extended 1,450 meters along strike and mined on 14 levels to a depth of 450 meters. By the time the mine closed in 1938, it is reported to have produced a total of 353,000 ounces of gold and 67.4 million ounces of silver from 1.87 million tons (Craig, 2012).

The El Tigre Property is approximately 35 kilometers long and comprises 21,842.78 hectares. The El Tigre gold and silver deposit is related to a series of high-grade epithermal veins controlled by a north-south trending structure cutting across the andesitic and rhyolitic tuffs of the Sierra Madre Volcanic Complex within a broad gold and silver mineralized propylitic alternation zone. The veins dip steeply to the west and are typically 1 meter wide but locally can be up to 5 meters in width. The veins, structures and mineralized zones outcrop on surface and have been traced for a distance of 5.3 kilometers along strike. Historical mining and exploration activities focused on a 1.5 kilometer portion of the southern end of the deposits, principally on the El Tigre, Seitz Kelly and Sooy veins. Four veins in the north (Aguila, Escondida, Fundadora and Protectora) were explored with only limited amounts of production.

Lab Preparation and Assay

The diamond drill core (HQ size) is geologically logged, photographed and marked for sampling. When the sample lengths are determined, the full core is sawn with a diamond blade core saw with one-third of the core being bagged and tagged for assay. The remaining two-thirds portion is returned to the core trays for storage and/or for metallurgical test work.

The sealed and tagged sample bags are transported to the ActLabs facility in Zacatecas, Mexico. ActLabs crushes the samples and prepares 200-300 gram pulp samples with ninety percent passing Tyler 150 mesh (106m). The pulps are assayed for gold using a 50 gram charge by fire assay (Code 1A2-50) and over limits greater than 10 grams per tonne are re-assayed using a gravimetric finish (Code 1A3-50). Silver and multi-element analysis is completed using total digestion (Code 1F2 Total Digestion ICP). Over limits greater than 100 grams per tonne silver are re-assayed using a gravimetric finish (Code 8-Ag FA-GRAV Ag).

Quality Assurance / Quality Control and Data Verification

Quality assurance and quality control ("QA/QC") procedures monitor the chain-of-custody of the samples and includes the systematic insertion and monitoring of appropriate reference materials (certified standards, blanks and duplicates) into the sample strings. The results of the assaying of the QA/QC material included in each batch are tracked to ensure the integrity of the assay data. All results stated in this announcement have passed Oceanus QA/QC protocols.

Qualified Person

David R. Duncan, P. Geo., V.P. Exploration of the Company, is the Qualified Person for Oceanus as defined under National Instrument 43-101. Mr. Duncan has reviewed and approved the scientific and technical information in this press release and has reviewed the Technical Report.

About Oceanus Resources Corporation

Oceanus Resources Corporation is a gold exploration company operating in Mexico. Oceanus is managed by a team of mine finders with extensive experience in exploring and developing large hydrothermal gold projects in Mexico. Oceanus is currently drilling and exploring the El Tigre Property in the Sierra Madre Occidental.

For further information, please contact:

Glenn Jessome

President and CEO

902 492 0298

jessome@oceanusresources.ca

CAUTIONARY STATEMENT:



Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.



This News Release includes certain forward-looking statements. All statements other than statements of historical fact included in this release, including, without limitation, statements regarding potential mineralization, resources and reserves, the ability to convert inferred resources to indicated resources, the ability to complete future drilling programs and infill sampling, the ability to extend resource blocks, the similarity of mineralization at El Tigre to the Ocampo mine, exploration results, and future plans and objectives of Oceanus, are forward-looking statements that involve various risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking statements are frequently characterized by words such as may, is expected to, anticipates, estimates, intends, plans, projection, could, vision, goals, objective and outlook and other similar words. Although Oceanus believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, there can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from Oceanuss expectations include risks and uncertainties related to exploration, development, operations, commodity prices and global financial volatility, risk and uncertainties of operating in a foreign jurisdiction as well as additional risks described from time to time in the filings made by Oceanus with securities regulators.
Legit.ng gathered that a young lady succumbed to death barely 24 hours after complaining about the state of her health to her friend.

According to reports, the young lady identified as Halima had been sick and was placed on admission in a hospital somewhere in Northern Nigeria.

Prior to her death, Halima had told one of her friends while having a chat with her that she wasn't feeling any better and would die that same day.

Well, she predicted right, as she was said to have eventually died that same day in the hospital.

Halima reportedly died barely few hours after telling her friend that she might die

READ ALSO: Federal University of Agriculture Makurdi students lament over poor water supply

Translating from the Whatsapp conversation she had with her friend in Hausa language, she told her friend that: Shes afraid she might see her death today.. and that she should forgive her.

PAY ATTENTION: Get all the latest gossips on NAIJ Gossip App

See screenshot of the chat below:

The last chat Halima had with one of her friends

RIP to her!

Meanwhile, see what Nigerians said could make them take their own lives:

Source: Legit.ng
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is currently making tours around the world. Not too long ago, he visited Nigeria and everyone was glad to receive him.

In a new development, Mark Zuckerberg was spotted with the founder of a popular group on Facebook, Females In Nigeria (FIN) and they both had a long talk. Speaking with Lola Omolola, she disclosed how she came about the group which has millions of females as its followers.

Making the world aware of this great meeting Zuckerberg took to his Facebook profile to post a picture of him with Omolola and the caption:

Mark Zuckerberg with Lola Omolola

READ ALSO: Nigerian ladies share experiences of harassment in Lagos markets

I'm heading to Chicago later this month for our first ever Facebook Communities Summit with a few hundred of our top Facebook group admins. For the past decade, Facebook has been focused on making the world more open and connected and we're always going to keep doing that. But now it's clear we have to do more. We also need to bring people closer together and build common understanding. One of the best ways to do that is by helping people build community, both in the physical world and online. I've written and talked about these themes throughout this year especially in my community letter in February and at Harvard Commencement last month. This summit will be the next chapter and we'll discuss more of what we're building to empower community leaders to bring the world closer together.

PAY ATTENTION: Get all the latest gossips on NAIJ Gossip App

Over the past few weeks I've been meeting group admins across the country that are building meaningful communities on Facebook and will be at the summit. This photo is with Lola, who lives in Chicago and is originally from Nigeria. Two years ago, she founded a secret Facebook group called Female IN, or FIN. It's a no-judgment space where more than a million women come to talk about everything from marriage and to health issues and work problems and it's helping end the culture of silence that exists for women in some parts of the world. I'm looking forward to meeting more admins like Lola and talking about how we can help them do even more to build community. I'll share more info on the summit as we get closer, and I'll stream the event live from my profile later this month.

See post below:

Lola Omola also took to her Facebook profile to thank Mark Zuckerberg for the mention on Facebook t the comment section.

Were it not for your relentless drive to connect our world and your assembly of the brightest minds in the universe to bring this dream to life, FIN would not have been probable. Certainly not at this scale. I'm an ordinary woman from modest means and your vision; our shared vision to advance meaningful connection, is now helping women across the world to find our voices through FIN; our non-judgmental Facebook support group. Thank you for helping me create the world I wish to live in and have my 8 and 10 year old inherit. Your outstanding team at Facebook, our indefatigable admin team and my irrepressible FINsters make this all possible. Thank you! and see you in Chicago. Salut!"

See post below:

Watch Legit.ng video below:

Nice one!

Source: Legit.ng
[June 06, 2017] The University of Alabama at Birmingham Enhances Research and Discovery with Red Hat Ceph Storage

Red Hat (News - Alert), Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) is using Red Hat Ceph Storage to support the growing needs of its research community. UAB selected Red Hat Ceph Storage because it offers researchers a flexible platform that can accommodate the vast amounts of data necessary to support future innovation and discovery. UAB is a leader in computational research, with more than $500 million in annual research expenditures in areas including engineering, statistical genetics, genomics and next-generation gene sequencing. Researchers and students aggregate, analyze, and store massive amounts of data, which is used to support groundbreaking medical discoveries from new cancer biomarkers to state-of-the-art magnetic resonance imaging techniques. To accelerate vital research, UAB has invested heavily in expanding its digital storage. UAB selected a software-defined storage solution, Red Hat Ceph Storage, because of its scalability and ability to support block, object, and file storage in one open source platform. Additionally, UAB researchers sought a solution based on industry-standard hardware to keep costs low, as well as one that is compatible with cloud computing models such as OpenStack. With their new software-defined storage environment, UAB researchers can store large data sets on server-class hardware to enable big data analytics without requiring hands-on storage management. As requirements increase, capacity can be added gradually, cost-effectively and without disruption. Using a shared-cost model, researchers include the cost of industry-standard server hardware in their grant applications and, if the grant is accepted, UAB's IT organization adds the server to the pool of storage and manages it. This enables researchers to allocate more time and resources to their research, rather than the costs and limitations of their storage solutions. In the three years since UAB implemented Red Hat Ceph Storage, they have reduced data storage costs by 54 percent. Today, UAB operates a high-performance computing cluster that has increased processing power by 11 times and storage capacity by 10 times. The reliability and performance of Red Hat Ceph Storage has also complemented the high-performance computing user base within the university. Supporting Quotes Curtis A. Carver Jr., Ph.D., vice president and chief information officer, The University of Alabama at Birmingham "Our mission is information to change the world. The ability to scale our storage, to unleash the full intellectual capital of our faculty, researchers, students and clinicians without regard to storage, is a dramatic step forward. We have truly changed the conversation about storage, enabling innovation that is not limited by capacity barriers. We are confident that our systems can manage the large amounts of data from UAB researchers, as well as accommodate our future storage needs." Ranga Rangachari, vice president and general manager, Storage, Red Hat "Every day, research institutions like UAB are fueling discoveries that change lives. They need easy access to massive amounts of information, and the ability to scale-out as their storage needs increase. We are proud to offer an affordable storage solution that is not only based on industry-leading technology, but is supported and certified by world-class engineers." Additional Resources Learn more about Red Hat Ceph Storage



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Red Hat is the world's leading provider of open source software solutions, using a community-powered approach to provide reliable and high-performing cloud, Linux, middleware, storage and virtualization technologies. Red Hat also offers award-winning support, training, and consulting services. As a connective hub in a global network of enterprises, partners, and open source communities, Red Hat helps create relevant, innovative technologies that liberate resources for growth and prepare customers for the future of IT. Learn more at http://www.redhat.com. Forward-Looking Statements Certain statements contained in this press release may constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements provide current expectations of future events based on certain assumptions and include any statement that does not directly relate to any historical or current fact. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including: risks related to the ability of the Company to compete effectively; the ability to deliver and stimulate demand for new products and technological innovations on a timely basis; delays or reductions in information technology spending; the integration of acquisitions and the ability to market successfully acquired technologies and products; fluctuations in exchange rates; the effects of industry consolidation; uncertainty and adverse results in litigation and related settlements; the inability to adequately protect Company intellectual property and the potential for infringement or breach of license claims of or relating to third party intellectual property; risks related to data and information security vulnerabilities; changes in and a dependence on key personnel; the ability to meet financial and operational challenges encountered in our international operations; and ineffective management of, and control over, the Company's growth and international operations, as well as other factors contained in our most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K (copies of which may be accessed through the Securities and Exchange Commission's website at http://www.sec.gov), including those found therein under the captions "Risk Factors" and "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations". In addition to these factors, actual future performance, outcomes, and results may differ materially because of more general factors including (without limitation) general industry and market conditions and growth rates, economic and political conditions, governmental and public policy changes and the impact of natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods. The forward-looking statements included in this press release represent the Company's views as of the date of this press release and these views could change. However, while the Company may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing the Company's views as of any date subsequent to the date of this press release. Red Hat, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the Shadowman logo, and Ceph, are trademarks or registered trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the U.S. and other countries. Linux is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the U.S. and other countries. The OpenStack Word Mark is either a registered trademark/service mark or trademark/service mark of the OpenStack Foundation, in the United States and other countries, and is used with the OpenStack Foundation's permission. Red Hat is not affiliated with, endorsed or sponsored by the OpenStack Foundation, or the OpenStack community. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170606005073/en/

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[June 07, 2017] Nokia announces first mixed reality livestream of neurosurgical procedure with Helsinki University Hospital using OZO Live

Program continues close partnership between Helsinki University Hospital and Nokia 7 June, 2017 Helsinki, Finland - Nokia announced today the world's first 'mixed reality' neurosurgical live streaming conducted at Helsinki University Hospital, Finland. The procedure was livestreamed to approximately 100 neurosurgeons using Nokia's OZO Live to provide a more immersive view of the surgery and operating room coordination. The live streaming trial is part of a joint project called "Media meets Medicine", and was completed in collaboration with Helsinki University Hospital (HUH) Neurosurgery Department, a world-leading department for its expertise in all subsections of neurosurgery. Nokia sees virtual reality completely transforming how people can experience the world together; the live streaming at HUH showcases how virtual reality can advance the healthcare industry by delivering an immersive experience, regardless of the location of the viewers. Nokia OZO was used to deliver a completely new, live broadcast mixed reality experience of a neurosurgery operation using the OZO Reality Platform and viewed on OZO Player SDK. The experience consists of the stereoscopic 360 degree OZO camera live stream with spatial audio, complemented by interactive microscope and graphics overlays. The Nokia OZO system delivered a live view from the operating theatre to the participants of a live demonstration course in operative microneurosurgery at the Helsinki University Hospital on 6-7 June as part of the the 17th Helsinki Live Demonstration Course in Operative Microneurosurgery.



"Normally, only up to 10-15 external observers can fit in an operating theatre in addition to the operating team. When using Nokia OZO Live streaming we could have limitless observers from around the world and they can all feel as if they were there," says Professor Mika Niemela, Chief of Department at HUH Neurosurgery. "HUH wants to be a forerunner in exploring, identifying and demonstrating novel opportunities in the virtual, augmented and mixed reality domains, and drive concept creation for future virtual and augmented reality in medical context. We are really happy that we can cooperate with the Nokia team, who are pioneers in this area," says Miikka Korja, Neurosurgeon at HUH Neurosurgery and Chief Innovation Officer at Helsinki University Hospital.





"We are pleased to work alongside a leading neurosurgical department in the world," says Kiti Muller, Neurologist, Medical Expert and Principal Researcher at the Digital Health Lab at Nokia Technologies. "The cooperation enables medical doctors in different expert areas to get to know the latest technology, including a totally new way of sharing medical expertise." "This is an excellent example of using Nokia OZO solutions to create and share an immersive experience for educational purposes. We are very proud to work with our esteemed partner HUH to expand our cooperation in the medical field," says Paul Melin, VP of Digital Media at Nokia Technologies. For more information about the OZO product family, visit https://ozo.nokia.com. About Helsinki University Hospital (HUH) Neurosurgery

HUH Neurosurgery is world-famous for its expertise in all subsections of neurosurgery. It is considered the leading center in Europe in the microneurosurgical treatment of cerebral blood vessel diseases and complex brain tumors, and is also ranked among the very best units in the world. About Nokia

We create the technology to connect the world. Powered by the research and innovation of Nokia Bell Labs, we serve communications service providers, governments, large enterprises and consumers, with the industry's most complete, end-to-end portfolio of products, services and licensing. From the enabling infrastructure for 5G and the Internet of Things, to emerging applications in virtual reality and digital health, we are shaping the future of technology to transform the human experience. www.nokia.com Media Enquiries: Camilla Ekholm

Nokia Technologies

+358 40 721 8345

[email protected]

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Hass Petroleum Group has sold 40% of its shares to Oman Trading International (OTI) in a move that will see the Kenyan oil marketing company embark on its strategic growth and expansion plans across the Eastern, Central and Horn of Africa. The Group will invest the additional funding from the transaction to enhance its market visibility through new distribution assets specifically Service Stations across its key markets in the region.





It will also boost the marketers working capital and increase competitiveness in the Open Tender System. In turn, OTI will provide its supply and trading capabilities to strengthen the Hass service offering, enhance services to consumers and contribute to economic growth across the region.





The Hass founder and management team will continue to operate the business and work closely with OTI to grow and continue long-standing relationships with customers, suppliers and regulators. This acquisition is in line with the respective companies long-term strategies.





OTIs strategic priority of accelerating its growth by entering new emerging markets with high potential will fit well with Hasss aspiration of being Africas leading oil marketing company. As a regular supplier of refined products to the Southern and East African region, this transaction will enable OTI and its new partner Hass to strengthen their businesses across a substantial African footprint.





The completion of the transaction remains subject to approval by the relevant regulatory authorities in the various countries in which Hass operates in. Abdinasir Ali Hassan Chairman and founder of Hass, commented, "I am delighted to conclude this transaction with OTI.





I am convinced that this partnership is a major step in ensuring Hass continued competitiveness across the region and I am confident that with OTI we can achieve our mutual long term growth aspirations. Talal Hamid Al-Awfi, CEO of OTI, has expressed his satisfaction at the conclusion of the deal We are delighted to move onto the next phase of growth for OTI, agreeing our first major investment into Africa with Hass.





Hass is a unique business with substantial scale and growth potential where we have enjoyed a long standing relationship; most importantly we share a common understanding and vision of the African energy market. Standard Advisory London Limited, a member of the Standard Bank Group (Standard Bank)acted as exclusive financial advisors to OTI and KPMG Advisory Services Ltd Kenya acted as exclusive financial advisors to Hass.
For the 8th time in its 9-year history, Vans Shop Riot headed to Israel and the newly opened Ashdod skatepark, in the South of Israel. With Israels warm weather and beach view this was an ideal setting for a riot.

Overall, 6 shop teams competed with the top 3 making it onto the quarterfinals. This round showcased some of Israels most solid skate teams including; Gorila the local skate shop form Ashdod city, Wheelys from up north, Gilis Skateshop, from Jerusalem, the most dominant team in shop riot history, Lightwave the iconic skate shop from Tel Aviv, Boarderline which was joined by the exciting rider Snir Kovshi, and Noiz Skateshop from Tel Aviv.

For the first time ever as a team, the Gorila team showed great consistency, in their local park. However, the main show went down between the 3 big rivals, Lightwave, Boarderline and the most dominant team, Gilis Skateshop, who won 6 out of 7 local riots. Lightwave, headed up by the aggressive transition master Tzachi Einat, threw caution to the wind and grinded every possible spot in the park. Boarderlines super stylish rider, Bitzki, brought his endless flow to take the team to the second place. But it was the Duracell bunnies from Gilis, consisting of Jimmy, Kessler and Doron Arad who complemented each other and were practically flawless throughout the contest leading them to take the top prize. The final straw came when Doron landed a double flip over the big pyramid, ultimately leading him to winning the Nixon best trick comp! The teams variation was undeniable between tech from jimmy, rad and fast tranny tricks from Kessler and big bangers from Doron, and then when you put it all together made it look just too easy, and therefore brought Gilis 7th local shop riot win.

Follow all the action from Vans Shop Series 2017, from qualifiers to finals at vansshopriot.com.

Results:

1. Gilis Skate Shop

2. Borderline

3. Lightwave

Nixon Best Trick Contest Winner:

Doron Arad (Gilis Skate Shop)  Double Flip over the big pyramid
Harvard University says it has canceled offers to admit at least 10 students after it found they exchanged offensive memes on social media.

The universitys student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, reported the move on Monday.

The Crimson reported that the individuals connected through the Harvard College Class of 2021 Facebook group. It said they traded memes and messages with a private Facebook group, which was set up last December.

Those memes included images making fun of sexual abuse, racial minorities and the deaths of children.

For example, one student in the private group called the imagined hanging of a Mexican child pinata time, The Crimson noted. Others made jokes about the Holocaust, Germanys systematic killing of Jews and others during World War II.

A Harvard spokeswoman did not comment, saying the university does not discuss the admission of individual students. The university tells accepted students that an offer of admission can be canceled for a number of reasons. They include behavior that brings into question (student) honesty, maturity or moral character."

What happened?

The Harvard Class of 2021 Facebook group had about 100 members. Later, some of them then created the smaller, private Facebook group. They shared the offensive images and messages in this group.

In April, Harvard officials sent letters to some of the members, asking them to explain their offensive posts. The students were told the school was reconsidering its offer of admission. The admissions office also said the students should not attend Harvards freshmen visiting event in April, the Crimson reported.

About a week later, at least 10 were told their offers were canceled, the newspaper said.

Jessica Zhang was a member of the larger Facebook group, Class of 2021.

A lot of students were excited about forming group chats with people who shared similar interests," she told The Crimson in an email.

She said the group began because someone posted about starting a chat for people who liked memes.

Zhang told The Crimson she did not post in the smaller group.

Cassandra Luca told the student newspaper that some members of the Class of 2021 group had suggested a group that posts more "R-rated" memes. Luca will also start taking classes at Harvard later this year.

Luca said the founders of the smaller group required students to first post shocking memes to the main group if they wanted to join the smaller group.

They were like, Oh, you have to send a meme to the original group to prove that you could get into the new one, Luca said.

Neither Zhang's nor Luca's offers of admission were canceled.

A student whose admission was canceled said the office asked the students to share with them all of the memes they sent to their private group.

This student spoke under the agreement that reporters would not use their name.

Right or wrong?

Some students, such as Luca, were unsure how they felt about the university's decision, she told The Crimson.

She said that if the students had threatened someone with harm, it would be a reason to cancel their admission offer.

But Zhang agrees with the school's decision. She told The Crimson that she respects the school's decision because "those actions really spoke about the students' true characters."

This is the second year that Harvard officials have dealt with students sharing offensive messages on the Internet. Last year, students from the Class of 2020 shared racist and sexist jokes in an unofficial Group Me chat. School officials released a statement saying the messages were unacceptable.

Harvard is one of the nation's top universities. It accepted only 5.2 percent of the nearly 40,000 students who applied for the Class of 2021.

I'm Jill Robbins.

And I'm Alice Bryant.

Alice Bryant reported on this story for VOA Learning English. Her report was based on information from the Associated Press, The Harvard Crimson newspaper and VOAs Student Union. Kelly Jean Kelly was the editor.

________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

meme - n. an amusing or interesting picture or video that is spread widely through the Internet

chat / chat group - n. a group of people who communicate regularly via the Internet, usually in real time but also by email.

pinata - n. a decorated container filled with candies, fruits and gifts that is hung up at parties or celebrations and hit with a stick by children until it is broken and the things inside it fall out

The Holocaust - n. the killing of millions of Jews and other people by the Nazis during World War II

moral - adj. concerning or relating to what is right and wrong in human behavior

R-rated - adj. (informal use) not meant to be seen by children under the age of 17
A 25-year-old American is the first defendant in a criminal case involving leaked government documents since Donald Trump became president.

Reality Leigh Winner has been charged with removing secret documents from a United States government office.

The Justice Department said Winner was arrested last Saturday. It said she was working for a government agency in the state of Georgia.

A document provided by an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said she admitted to printing secret intelligence reporting and sending it to a news website.

The court document said Winner had email contact with a news website, which it did not name. Media organizations reported that officials with knowledge of the case said the secret documents were given to The Intercept.

On the same day charges were announced against Winner, The Intercept published a report it said was based on top-secret documents from the National Security Agency (NSA).

The report said the documents showed Russian military intelligence tried to attack U.S. voter registration systems before the 2016 elections.

The Intercept reported the NSA documents showed that Russian hackers spent months trying to gain access to computers used by local election officials. The effort reportedly involved techniques designed to trick people into unknowingly providing login information that hackers can then use.

The website said the first targets were companies that provide local governments with software programs for organizing voter registration records. Later attacks were reportedly aimed at local election officials themselves in the days leading up to the November 8 vote.

It is unclear how successful the reported attacks were. The Intercept said an NSA investigation "does not draw conclusions about whether the interference had any effect on the election's outcome."

The U.S. intelligence community found in a report in January that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered an influence campaign to target the U.S. elections. The report said Russias goal was to undermine trust in the election process. Russia also wanted to harm candidate Hillary Clinton's chances of winning against now-President Donald Trump, the report said.

Russian officials have repeatedly denied that their country took steps to interfere in the election. But Putin recently said that Russian "patriots" with no ties to the government may have been involved in hacking.

The FBI and several congressional committees are currently investigating the issue. The investigations are exploring whether Trump or any of his team may have worked with Russian intelligence officials during the campaign.

Trump has dismissed the claims as "fake news" and sought to direct attention on leaks about the issue to the media.

Im Ashley Thompson.

Bryan Lynn wrote this story for VOA Learning English, based on reports from VOA News, the Associated Press and Reuters. George Grow was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments section, and visit our Facebook page.

________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

hack  v. secretly get access to the files on a computer or network in order to get information and/or cause damage

print  v. produce written material or pictures using a machine

technique  n. way of doing something using special knowledge or skill

undermine  v. make weaker or less effective

patriot  n. someone who loves their country and is proud of it

collude  v. secretly work with others to do something, especially illegal or dishonest

fake  adj. not real or true

access  n. the right or permission to use
American President Donald Trump says he will nominate a former federal prosecutor as head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or FBI.

The president made the announcement Wednesday morning on the online news and social networking service Twitter.

Trump said his nominee will be Christopher Wray, who once represented the government in court.

Trump dismissed FBI director James Comey last month. The former official is to meet with a committee of the United States Senate Thursday. The committee is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Christopher Wray led the Justice Department's Criminal Division from 2003 to 2005m during the presidency of George W. Bush. Wray led investigations into cheating by businesses at a time when Comey was deputy attorney general.

He also supervised a task force of prosecutors and FBI agents. The group was created to investigate financial wrongdoing at Enron Corporation. The company failed in 2001. Several Enron officials were jailed for their involvement in the case.

Wray is now a criminal defense attorney and a partner at the law offices of King & Spalding. He recently represented New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, an ally of Trump, during an investigation of traffic delays at the George Washington Bridge. Christie and his aides were accused of plotting to close parts of roads leading to the bridge for political purposes.

Two Christie aides were found guilty of the charges. Prosecutors say the aides took the action to hurt a New Jersey official who refused to support the governor.

I'm Phil Dierking.

This story appeared on VOANews.com. George Grow adapted the report for Learning English. Caty Weaver was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section.

________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

prosecutor  n. a lawyer in a criminal case

online  adj. connected to or involving a computer or telecommunications system

task  adj. of or related to giving someone or something a job to do

attorney  n. someone who is legally appointed to represent someone or something
The United States Ambassador to the United Nations has warned that the U.S. might withdraw from the U.N. Human Rights Council.

Nikki Haley spoke Tuesday at the opening of UNHRCs three-week meeting. She said the Council needs to make reforms. If that happens, she said, the U.S. might remain a member.

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in front of this body on an issue that we believe is very important  respect for human rights. As you know, the United States is looking carefully at this council and our participation in it. We see some areas for significant strengthening..

Haley criticized the Council for what she called a double standard on Israel.

She noted that the group had never approved a resolution condemning Venezuela for human rights violations. Yet, she said, in March the Council passed five resolutions against Israel. She described those resolutions as biased.

Haley said the UNHRC actions against some countries, and not others, hurt its credibility. She said the group must deal with what she called its chronic anti-Israel bias.

The U.S. has long argued that the UNHRC treats reports of rights violations differently in the Occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip than in other places.

Even critics of Israeli policies say the country is more closely observed for human rights than other countries. They note that serious and systematic human rights abuses in all other countries, such as North Korea, Syria, Eritrea, Iran, Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi are examined under the same item 4 on the agenda. Israel, however, is dealt with alone as item 7.

But other experts say that the U.S. can only blame itself for UNHRC operations it does not agree with. They say the U.S. lost its influence in the Council after it boycotted the group for three years under President George W. Bush.

The U.S. rejoined the Human Rights Council in 2009 during President Barack Obamas administration.

Are reforms possible?

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra-ad al-Hussein opened the Council meeting.

He called for the end of the occupation of the Palestinian territories. He said the Palestinians deserve freedom, as all peoples do.

And, he added, the Israelis also deserve freedom.

John Fisher, is an official with Human Rights Watch in Geneva. He said reform would help the council.

In a statement, he said any steps to improve membership standards would strengthen the Human Rights Council.

Jamil Dakwar is the director of the American Civil Liberties Unions Human Rights Program. He criticized the U.S. human rights record, noting its efforts to ban travel to the U.S. from six Muslim-majority countries. He also criticized its policies on illegal immigrants.

He said the U.S. should deal with its own human rights issues.

Venezuela the target of rights criticism

Haley, the 29th U.S. ambassador to the U.N., also strongly criticized Venezuela at an event later Tuesday.

She said the government of President Nicolas Maduro was starving and repressing its citizens. Haley noted the more than 60 anti-government protesters killed in the country since April, along with thousands injured and detained. She said more than 300 civilians have been charged in Venezuelan military courts.

Venezuelas ambassador to the U.N. said the U.S. is responsible for such violence.

The Venezuelan opposition, however, welcomed Haleys remarks. It called for Venezuela to protect human rights or lose its place on the council.

A lawmaker in the National Assembly, Juan Requesens, asked the international community for support. He called for restrictions against human rights violators.

Im Mario Ritter.

Lisa Schlein reported this story for VOA News. Mario Ritter adapted it for VOA Learning English. Caty Weaver was the editor.

________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

participation n. taking part in some activity, movement or plan

double standard n. treating on group with one set of rules and another group with a different set of rules

biased adj. showing unfairness to a group

credibility n. the ability to have others believe what you say

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments section, and visit our Facebook page.
[June 07, 2017] NEX Regulatory Reporting to Utilize Duco Cube for MiFID II Reconciliation Solution

NEX Regulatory Reporting, a NEX Group business which provides regulatory reporting services across worldwide regulatory regimes, and Duco, the global provider of self-service data normalization and reconciliation services, today announce that NEX Regulatory Reporting is to use Duco's technology to provide MiFID II reconciliation to their clients. Reconciliation is a mandatory activity under MiFID II. The joint offering will use Duco's reconciliation platform, Duco Cube, as a "black box" through its API. As a result, NEX Regulatory Reporting clients will receive a seamless reporting, validation and reconciliation experience for MiFID II through the new NEX Regulatory Reporting integrated user interface. Clients will also be able to get full access to a dedicated Duco Cube instance for more complex requirements, such as MiFID-related internal controls or clean-up activities. Collin Coleman, CEO of NEX Regulatory Reporting, said: "What sets us apart in the market is our understanding of both regulation and technology and our strong focus on the end-to-end experience. By working with uco, we will be able to scale fast and provide our rapidly growing client base with strong independent verification based on best-of-breed technology - all up and running long before the January 2018 deadline for MiFID II."



Christian Nentwich, CEO of Duco, said, "Duco Cube is particularly suited to the high volume, high complexity requirements imposed by MiFID II. Many of our clients rely on Duco Cube for regulatory reporting reconciliations under EMIR and MiFID today, and we are pleased to bring this technology to a wider audience in partnership with NEX Regulatory Reporting. This collaboration is a good example of the modern API economy and the rapid time to market provided by combinations of Software as a Service offerings." About NEX Regulatory Reporting

NEX Regulatory Reporting, a NEX Group business, operates within NEX Optimisation, which helps clients simplify complexity and optimise resources. Powered by Abide Financial, NEX Regulatory Reporting platform lowers costs, eliminates operational risk and provides regulatory reporting effectiveness. Through the business's multi-regime reporting hub, regulatory obligations are translated into future proof compliant solutions while its specialist advisory teams interpret the impact of evolving markets regulation relating to trade and transaction reporting. In addition to local European regulatory environments (EMIR, MiFID/II, SFTR, REMIT), NEX Regulatory Reporting provides specialised reporting services for entities subject to international regulatory regimes such as Dodd Frank, ASIC (Australia) and MAS (Singapore). About NEX Group NEX Group plc offers customers better ways to execute trades and manage risk. Our products and services underpin the entire trade lifecycle pre-, during and post-execution. Our electronic trading platforms are industry standards. Customers use our lifecycle management and information services to optimise portfolios, control risk and reduce costs. We partner with emerging technology companies to bring greater efficiency, transparency and scale to the world's capital markets. NEX is headquartered in London with offices worldwide. About Duco Duco's mission is to make managing data easy. As the market leader in self-service reconciliation, Duco empowers users to deal with complex data in a fraction of the time required by traditional systems. New clients are live in 24 hours, with reconciliations in production in 7 days and return on investment in 30 days. Customers include international banks, brokers, exchanges, hedge funds, asset managers, fund administrators, payments companies and corporates. Headquartered in London, with offices in New York and Luxembourg, Duco serves clients throughout Europe, the United States, Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Australia. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170606006751/en/

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A montage of three images of single striatal neurons transfected with a disease-associated version of huntingtin, the protein that causes Huntington's disease. Nuclei of untransfected neurons are seen in the background (blue). The neuron in the center (yellow) contains an abnormal intracellular accumulation of huntingtin called an inclusion body (orange). Credit: Wikipedia/ Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

The first blood test that can predict the onset and progression of Huntington's disease has been identified by a UCL-led study.

The researchers say their findings, published in Lancet Neurology, should help test new treatments for the genetic brain disorder, which is fatal and currently incurable.

"This is the first time a potential blood biomarker has been identified to track Huntington's disease so strongly," said the study's senior author, Dr Edward Wild (UCL Institute of Neurology).

The test measures the neurofilament light chain (neurofilament), a protein released from damaged brain cells, which has been linked to other neurodegenerative diseases but hasn't been studied in the blood of Huntington's disease (HD) patients before.

The team, led by scientists at UCL Huntington's Disease Centre working with colleagues in Sweden, the USA, Canada, France and the Netherlands, measured neurofilament levels in blood samples from the TRACK-HD study, an international project that followed 366 volunteers for three years. They found that levels of the brain protein were increased throughout the course of HDeven in carriers of the HD genetic mutation who were many years from showing symptoms of the disease. HD mutation carriers had neurofilament concentrations that were 2.6 times that of the control participants, and the level rose throughout the disease course from premanifest to stage 2 disease.

In the group who had no symptoms at the start of the study, the level of neurofilament predicted subsequent disease onset, as volunteers with high neurofilament levels in the blood at the start were more likely to develop symptoms in the following three years. After taking into account factors already known to predict progressionage and a genetic markerthe blood level of neurofilament was still able to independently predict onset, progression and the rate of brain shrinkage as measured by MRI scans.

Currently, the best biomarkers available are measured with neuroimaging or cerebrospinal fluid, which are more difficult and expensive to obtain than a blood test. The researchers say that predicting progression in mutation carriers who do not yet show symptoms has been particularly challenging.

"We have been trying to identify blood biomarkers to help track the progression of HD for well over a decade, and this is the best candidate that we have seen so far," said Dr Wild. "Neurofilament has the potential to serve as a speedometer in Huntington's disease, since a single blood test reflects how quickly the brain is changing. That could be very helpful right now as we are testing a new generation of so-called 'gene silencing' drugs that we hope will put the brakes on the condition. Measuring neurofilament levels could help us figure out whether those brakes are working."

The researchers caution that the test is not expected to be immediately helpful for individual patients. "This is the first time neurofilament has been measured in blood, so much more work is needed to understand the potential and limitations of this test," said Lauren Byrne (UCL Institute of Neurology), the study's first author. "In the future, if drugs to slow HD become available, it may well be used to guide treatment decisions. For now, this test is most promising as a much-needed tool to help us design and run clinical trials of new drugs."

Dr Robert Pacifici, chief scientific officer of CHDI Foundation, a US non-profit Huntington's disease research foundation, welcomed the development. "I can see neurofilament becoming a valuable tool to assess neuroprotection in clinical trials so that we can more quickly figure out whether new drugs are doing what we need them to. As a drug hunter, this is great news."

The study's funders included the CHDI foundation, GlaxoSmithKline, Swedish Research Council, European Research Council, Wallenberg Foundation and Wolfson Foundation.
Centenarians have a lower incidence of chronic illness than those in their 80s and 90s, according to research from the George Washington University (GW).

The centenarian population is one of the fastest growing in the country, according to the United States Social Security Administration. They are predicted to exceed one million by the close of this century, little is known about why this generation has achieved such longevity. Raya Elfadel Kheirbek, MD, MPH, associate professor of medicine at the GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences, and geriatrician and palliative care physician at the Washington, D.C. Veteran Affairs Medical Center (VA), wanted to understand what factors contributed to their long life.

Kheirbek and her team looked primarily at octogenarians, nonagenarians, and centenarians within the VA. The sample that they studied comprised mostly of white males that had fought in World War II. The results were published in the Journal of the American Geriatric Society.

"Additionally, this generation lived through the Great Depression," said Kheirbek. "It is a wonder, considering the hardships they had faced, that they have achieved such longevity. This never before studied group of centenarians at the VA imparts a very important message of resilience to anyone struggling as they did."

A key factor that Kheirbek and her team observed in these individuals is that, due to their military background, many had a developed sense of discipline and therefore were keen to make healthy decisions; many did not smoke or drink. The team also offered the hypothesis of compression morbidity as a potential explanation for the extended health span in an individual's life span. The hypothesis states that the lifetime burden of illness could be reduced if the onset of chronic illness is postponed until very late in life, or as Kheirbek put it, "the older you get, the healthier you have been." Her work with a 108-year-old woman inspired this study.

More information: Raya Elfadel Kheirbek et al, Characteristics and Incidence of Chronic Illness in Community-Dwelling Predominantly Male U.S. Veteran Centenarians, Journal of the American Geriatrics Society (2017). Journal information: Journal of the American Geriatrics Society Raya Elfadel Kheirbek et al, Characteristics and Incidence of Chronic Illness in Community-Dwelling Predominantly Male U.S. Veteran Centenarians,(2017). DOI: 10.1111/jgs.14900
Credit: Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers

A growing body of data from clinical studies of continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) in type 1 diabetes supports the value of CGM for reducing variability in blood glucose levels and the risks of both hypo- and hyperglycemia, and for improving patient quality of life compared to self-monitoring of blood glucose (SMBG). A review of recent CGM trials and the impact of CGM accuracy on the future of automated insulin delivery systems are the focus of two in a series of articles published as a special supplement to Diabetes Technology & Therapeutics (DTT).

In the article entitled "Continuous Glucose Monitoring: A Review of Recent Studies Demonstrating Improved Glycemic Outcomes," David Rodbard, MD, Biomedical Informatics Consultants, Potomac, MD, concluded that CGM, as well as flash glucose monitoring, has been shown to be safe and effective, with the recent regulatory approval of certain CGM devices for nonadjunctive use to guide insulin dose adjustment representing a major advance.

In the "Future of Automated Insulin Delivery Systems," Jessica Castle, MD, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, J. Hans DeVries, MD, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and Boris Kovatchev, PhD, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, discuss how CGM has enabled the automation of insulin delivery. The authors describe the rapid progress in the development of automated insulin delivery systems, the novel features and advantages they may offer for improving glycemic control, and the critical role that highly accurate CGM will play in the safe and effective use of these systems.

In the Editorial entitled "The Future of Continuous Glucose," DTT Editor-in-Chief Satish Garg, MD, Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics at the University of Colorado Denver (Aurora) states: "Continuous glucose monitors have come a long way with significant improvement in accuracy and MARD of <10%." Just like all patients with new-onset T1D [type 1 diabetes] get an SMBG meter today, we hope in the very near future, all patients with new-onset T1D will receive CGM."

Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institutes of Health under Award Number 1DP3DK101044-01. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

More information: David Rodbard, Continuous Glucose Monitoring: A Review of Recent Studies Demonstrating Improved Glycemic Outcomes, Diabetes Technology & Therapeutics (2017). David Rodbard, Continuous Glucose Monitoring: A Review of Recent Studies Demonstrating Improved Glycemic Outcomes,(2017). DOI: 10.1089/dia.2017.0035
Psychologists have discovered that people's language changes when they lie depending on their cultural background. Credit: Lancaster University

Psychologists have discovered that people's language changes when they lie depending on their cultural background.

Professor Paul Taylor of Lancaster University in the UK said: "Science has long known that people's use of language changes when they lie. Our research shows that prevalent beliefs about what those changes look like are not true for all cultures."

The researchers asked participants of Black African, South Asian, White European and White British ethnicity to complete a Catch-the-Liar task in which they provided genuine and false statements.

They found the statements of Western liars tend to include fewer first-person "I" pronouns than the statements of truth-tellers. This is a common finding and believed to be due to the liar trying to distance themselves from the lie.

However, they did not find this difference when examining the lies of Black African and South Asian participants. Instead, these participants increased their use of first person pronoun and decreased their third person "he/she" pronounsthey sought to distance their social group rather than them self from the lie.

There were also differences in the kinds of contextual details reported. The White European and White British participants followed the known trend of decreasing the perceptual information they provided in their lie. In contrast, the Black African and South Asian participants increased the perceptual information they gave when lying, to compensate for providing less social details.

"The results demonstrate that linguistic cues to deception do not appear consistently across all cultures. The differences are dictated by known cultural differences in cognition and social norms."

This has implications for everything from forensic risk assessments, discrimination proceedings and the evaluation of asylum seekers.

"In the absence of culture-specific training, an individual's judgements about veracity is most likely drawn from either experience or an evidenced-based understanding based on studies of Western liars. In these scenarios, erroneous judgements of veracity may impact on justice

"In today's world, where law enforcement and justice are asked to respond to a greater cultural diversity of suspect it will be important to use findings such as those presented here to adapt existing practices and policies so that they afford justice for all communities within the population."

More information: Culture Moderates Changes in Linguistic Self-Presentation and Detail Provision when Deceiving Others, Royal Society Open Science, rsos.royalsocietypublishing.or  /10.1098/rsos.170128 Journal information: Royal Society Open Science Culture Moderates Changes in Linguistic Self-Presentation and Detail Provision when Deceiving Others,
Credit: Imperial College London

Being depressed may have little impact on flare ups for patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), researchers have found.

Patients with IBD, which causes the lining of the gut to become inflamed, are accepted to have higher rates of depression than the general population, but whether this makes their disease worse has been unclear.

Now, researchers from Imperial College London and St George's, University of London investigating the link say there is limited evidence to support the idea that being depressed leads to a deterioration of patients' bowel conditions. However, they add that the limited available evidence from their review suggests a stronger link with one form of the condition  Crohn's Disease  over another.

The findings could lead to better treatment of IBD and ultimately, say the researchers, to cost savings for the healthcare system.

Crohn's Disease and Ulcerative Colitis, the two main forms of IBD, are long-term conditions in which sections of the gut become inflamed, with common symptoms including diarrhoea, abdominal cramps and extreme tiredness.

While patients can be relatively unaffected by the disease during periods of remission, flare-ups  periods in which the underlying inflammation spikes  can lead to a worsening of their symptoms and disrupt their lives.

There is no cure and patients may be prescribed courses of steroids and immunosuppressant drugs to calm the inflammation, but in the worst cases, the disease can result in surgery to remove sections of the gut.

The idea that depression and inflammation may be linked has gained some traction in the scientific community, with evidence to suggest those with chronic low mood also have high levels of stress hormones and inflammatory markers in their blood. However, the association between depression and IBD is unclear.

Investigating the potential implications for IBD patients, researchers from Imperial and St George's carried out a systematic review to see if depressive state was linked with a worsening of their condition.

Reviewing the evidence

During the review, they extracted relevant information from 11 published studies involving patients with IBD, using whether or not their disease worsened as the primary outcome. Three of the studies looked only at patients with UC, four studies looked only at patients with Crohn's Disease, and the remaining four studies looked at both conditions.

Analysis of this pooled data revealed a lack of evidence to support the idea that depression makes IBD worse. However, the researchers note that there was evidence to suggest depression has more of an effect on symptoms in patients with Crohn's Disease, compared with Ulcerative Colitis.

Dr Sonia Saxena, from the School of Public Health at Imperial, explained: "This study is about investigating whether stress and depression make inflammatory conditions worse."

She added: "IBD is associated with major disability during flare ups and patients may have to take expensive drugs, including immunosuppressants, which can have significant side effects and impact on their quality of life.

"We are still trying to untangle how depression and inflammatory bowel conditions could be linked. If being depressed makes things much worse, it's important we are able to diagnose that. Essentially, if we could make a patient's gut inflammation better by treating their depression, we could potentially avoid these side effects and improve patients' quality of life."

Higher rate of depression

Nearly 300,000 people in the UK have IBD (Crohn's and Ulcerative Colitis), with Ulcerative Colitis being the more common form. Those with IBD have a higher rate of depression than the general population, with some studies reporting prevalence as high as one in five patients.

The researchers highlight that a lack of randomised controlled trials and relatively small numbers of patients in the studies reviewed make it difficult to draw firm conclusions, and stress that further research is needed.

Dr Christopher Alexakis, a gastroenterologist at St George's and first author of the study, said: "Our findings suggest that screening for depression in IBD be part of the formal work up of patients with IBD."

He added: "The question of whether depression worsens outcomes is more difficult to answer. The qualitative data implies that in patients with disease in remission, depression probably doesn't influence outcomes. However, looking at all the studies together, there may be some evidence that depression may worsen outcomes in Crohn's Disease, although this relationship needs to be examined in more detail."

If future research showed that depression worsened the condition in a subset of patients with Crohn's Disease, prescribing antidepressive drugs and psychotherapy could help to improve their health outcomes.

Future studies will look further into the link between depression and IBD as well as the effect of treating depression and outcomes in patients.

Dr Saxena explained: "We're trying to answer basic questions on current practice for patients with IBD, including what proportion are depressed, the proportion prescribed medications for their depression and what happens when they are prescribed these medications."

"If we find that these antidepressive drugs work well on the gut, we want to find out why that's happening and whether that's because of a direct action on the gut, or whether it's that if you 'feel better', you have less inflammation in the gut."

More information: C. Alexakis et al. Systematic review and meta-analysis: the impact of a depressive state on disease course in adult inflammatory bowel disease, Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics (2017). C. Alexakis et al. Systematic review and meta-analysis: the impact of a depressive state on disease course in adult inflammatory bowel disease,(2017). DOI: 10.1111/apt.14171
Maps show the close overlap between drug overdose deaths with and without fentanyl, suggesting that fentanyl is pervasive in the illegal drug supply. Redder zones indicate the highest rates of overdose deaths. Credit: Marshall et. al./Brown University

Fentanyl, a highly potent prescription opioid, has Rhode Island drug users on high alert. But despite widespread aversion, fentanyl now causes the majority of the state's drug overdose deaths.

These bleak findings by teams of Brown University researchers appear in two studies published in the International Journal of Drug Policy. They underscore the urgency of combatting the misuse of fentanyl and undermine a common perception that many users court the drug for its potency.

"Most people are not asking for it," said Jennifer Carroll, lead author of one of the studies and an adjunct assistant professor of medicine at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. "They can't avoid it, and their desire to avoid it is not reducing their risk."

The number of overdose deaths in Rhode Island attributable to fentanyl rose to 138 in the first nine months of 2016, compared to 84 in all of 2014, according to the other study led by Brandon Marshall, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Brown University School of Public Health. In 2014, 35 percent of the state's fatal overdoses occurred because of fentanyl, but it was involved in 56 percent of drug deaths by 2016.

Moreover, mapping all 778 overdose deaths in the state during the study period showed that fentanyl-related deaths occur virtually everywhere that heroin overdoses are occurring. Fentanyl, is is often used to lace heroin but many users can't tell if it is present.

"We were surprised that we saw such similar geographic patterns," Marshall said. "What we're drawing from that is that there is widespread contamination of the drug supply with fentanyl. It's not clustered in one city or town."

The data do show ominous differences with fatal fentanyl overdoses. One is is that they are particularly likely among users who inject drugs. Another is that users are now dying younger. Marshall said his hypothesis is that with fentanyl in the mix, the lifetime risk of a deadly drug overdose accumulates much faster than it used to.

Fear of fentanyl

While Marshall's study documents the broad extent of the deaths, Carroll's study gives voice to those who are trying to survive the onslaught. In surveys of 149 users and face-to-face interviews with 47 of them, Carroll's team found a palpable fear and dislike for fentanyl among drug users. Four in five respondents said they were well aware of fentanyl and its dangers, but many described difficulty in avoiding it.

Traci Green, an associate professor at Brown and Boston University's schools of medicine and public health and a senior author on both papers, noted that fentanyl's appearance in the illegal drug trade occurred early on in Rhode Island. The first appearance of acetyl fentanyl was linked to a clandestine Rhode Island lab in spring 2013, she said, possibly foreshadowing the shift to including fentanyl. Unlike heroin, fentanyl can be created synthetically.

Of the 121 users who told Carroll they were aware and wary of fentanyl, 61 said they had been exposed to it. In the prior year before filling out the survey, 51 percent of those with exposure had experienced a non-fatal overdose, while only 17 percent of those who did not report fentanyl exposure said they had overdosed.

Throughout the study, Carroll and her co-authors included direct quotes from user interviews that illustrated the broader trends in the data. Matt, a man in his 20s from western Rhode Island spoke of his fear of fentanyl.

"I've seen people OD in front of me from shooting the stuff," he is quoted as saying. "People are dropping like flies. I've had three friends I grew up with since I was 10. They're all dead from [heroin cut with fentanyl]."

Another user, Jason, said that if he is struggling enough with the onset of withdrawal symptoms, he'll still use heroin even if he suspects the presence of fentanyl. So he'll try a little first to see if he feels fentanyl's very strong effects.

"[It depends on] the availability of other batches and how sick I am," he said. "If I'm sick, I gotta do it, you know? I won't do half a gram. You know, I'll do a little pinch and I'll figure it out from there, but I won't start big. It's scary. I've watched overdoses. And I've had one in front of my girl."

Carroll found that heroin users employ a wide variety of strategies to attempt to avoid fentanyl. Matt's strategy is to snort rather than inject. Jason's strategy is to try a little bit of the drug first. Sheryl said she tries to inspect the drug visually, while Carl said he can tell by the smell. But users such as Sheryl and Jeff readily acknowledged that their attempts at analysis were not very effective. Marshall's study notes that a quantity of fentanyl equivalent to just two grains of salt can kill, meaning that very little has to be cut into heroin to pose a threat.

While some users said their long-term experience with their dealers allows them to trust that they won't be sold heroin with fentanyl, others such as Maggie, a woman in her 40s, has no such trust. She told Carroll that dealers don't care whether users die because they only care about money.

Given the lack of demand they observed, the researchers suspect that supply side reasons account for the presence of fentanyl in the market.

Possible solutions

In both studies, the researchers identified several measures that can help prevent deadly overdoses.

Marshall's study notes that because fentanyl acts faster than heroin in suppressing breathing, users need readier access to the overdose-reversing drug naloxone. They also need it in higher doses.

"Programs to increase distribution of naloxone to people who use drugs, their acquaintances and their loved ones are urgently required," Marshall and co-authors wrote.

Many of the users in Carroll's study reported frustration in obtaining medication-assisted treatment with methadone or Suboxone to end heroin use because of difficulties with insurance or in finding a doctor. In Marshall's study, researchers said more doctors should receive training and a subsequent waiver that would allow them to prescribe medication-assisted treatment. The proportion of the state's physicians authorized to write the prescriptions has been growing but remains low, he said.

"People are trying to help themselves and find their way, but the system isn't exactly ready to go," Green said.

Marshall's study also suggests increasing peer education efforts among users and investigating whether to establish supervised injection facilities, where users could take their heroin with medical providers standing by. Carroll acknowledged that the idea is controversial, but she said purely from a public health standpoint, research shows that such facilities save lives.

Finally, Marshall praised a relatively new development currently being studied in Rhode Island and Massachusetts: the distribution of fentanyl testing strips that can allow users to detect the drug.
Data demonstrating sustained protein expression five years after a single intramuscular injection of a gene-based therapy for the treatment of alpha-1 antitrypsin (AAT) deficiency also shows improvements in multiple indicators of AAT biological activity. The study appears in the June issue of Molecular Therapy. Applied Genetic Technologies Corporation (AGTC), a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company, developed the gene-based therapy evaluated in the study, which was led by Terence R. Flotte, MD, the Celia and Isaac Haidak Professor of Medical Education, executive deputy chancellor, provost and dean of the School of Medicine, and colleagues at UMass Medical School.

AAT deficiency is an inherited genetic defect that results in severe loss of lung function. The study describes five-year follow-up results of a one-time intramuscular injection of a recombinant adeno-associated virus (AAV)-AAT vector in patients with AAT deficiency who had participated in a Phase 2a trial and had not received subsequent AAT protein therapy.

Key findings from the study include:

Sustained expression of AAT protein over the five-year study period without re-administration of AAV-AAT vector and in the absence of immune suppression or corticosteroid therapy;

Partial correction of disease-associated defects in neutrophils, a type of immune cell that contributes to lung damage in patients with AAT, including neutrophil elastase inhibition, markers of degranulation and membrane-bound anti-neutrophil antibodies;

Evidence of an active regulatory T-cell response that contributed to stable gene expression despite the presence of an immune response directed against the AAV vector; and

Continuous, steady-state levels of AAT protein without the peak and trough effects observed following infusion of AAT protein replacement therapy.

"This is the first publication to demonstrate multi-year persistence of recombinant AAV expression in gene therapy trial participants without immune suppression or corticosteroid therapy," Dr. Flotte said. "We also observed specific regulatory T-cell responses directed against AAV1 capsid proteins, and believe that these responses may help the immune system become tolerant to AAV1. This would be beneficial in enabling the development of AAV-based therapies for AAT deficiency that provide durable responses following a single administration and may also allow for repeat dosing regimens with potential to improve long-term outcomes for patients with AAT deficiency."

The authors conclude that stable levels of serum AAT achieved in this study over five years may have beneficial clinical effects, despite being below the threshold of what is traditionally considered therapeutic. They hypothesize that continuous expression at a lower level may provide greater clinical benefit compared with levels that fluctuate drastically, as is observed with current AAT replacement therapy.

More information: Christian Mueller et al. 5 Year Expression and Neutrophil Defect Repair after Gene Therapy in Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency, Molecular Therapy (2017). Journal information: Molecular Therapy Christian Mueller et al. 5 Year Expression and Neutrophil Defect Repair after Gene Therapy in Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency,(2017). DOI: 10.1016/j.ymthe.2017.03.029
Credit: Dboybaker

Our DNA influences our ability to read a person's thoughts and emotions from looking at their eyes, suggests a new study published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.

Twenty years ago, a team of scientists at the University of Cambridge developed a test of 'cognitive empathy' called the 'Reading the Mind in the Eyes' Test (or the Eyes Test, for short). This revealed that people can rapidly interpret what another person is thinking or feeling from looking at their eyes alone. It also showed that some of us are better at this than others, and that women on average score better on this test than men.

Now, the same team, working with the genetics company 23andMe along with scientists from France, Australia and the Netherlands, report results from a new study of performance on this test in 89,000 people across the world. The majority of these were 23andMe customers who consented to participate in research. The results confirmed that women on average do indeed score better on this test.

More importantly, the team confirmed that our genes influence performance on the Eyes Test, and went further to identify genetic variants on chromosome 3 in women that are associated with their ability to "read the mind in the eyes".

The study was led by Varun Warrier, a Cambridge PhD student, and Professors Simon Baron-Cohen, Director of the Autism Research Centre at the University of Cambridge, and Thomas Bourgeron, of the University Paris Diderot and the Institut Pasteur.

Interestingly, performance on the Eyes Test in males was not associated with genes in this particular region of chromosome 3. The team also found the same pattern of results in an independent cohort of almost 1,500 people who were part of the Brisbane Longitudinal Twin Study, suggesting the genetic association in females is a reliable finding.

The closest genes in this tiny stretch of chromosome 3 include LRRN1 (Leucine Rich Neuronal 1) which is highly active in a part of the human brain called the striatum, and which has been shown using brain scanning to play a role in cognitive empathy. Consistent with this, genetic variants that contribute to higher scores on the Eyes Test also increase the volume of the striatum in humans, a finding that needs to be investigated further.

Previous studies have found that people with autism and anorexia tend to score lower on the Eyes Test. The team found that genetic variants that contribute to higher scores on the Eyes Test also increase the risk for anorexia, but not autism. They speculate that this may be because autism involves both social and non-social traits, and this test only measures a social trait.

Varun Warrier says: "This is the largest ever study of this test of cognitive empathy in the world. This is also the first study to attempt to correlate performance on this test with variation in the human genome. This is an important step forward for the field of social neuroscience and adds one more piece to the puzzle of what may cause variation in cognitive empathy."

Professor Bourgeron adds: "This new study demonstrates that empathy is partly genetic, but we should not lose sight of other important social factors such as early upbringing and postnatal experience."

Professor Baron-Cohen says: "We are excited by this new discovery, and are now testing if the results replicate, and exploring precisely what these genetic variants do in the brain, to give rise to individual differences in cognitive empathy. This new study takes us one step closer in understanding such variation in the population."

More information: V Warrier et al. Genome-wide meta-analysis of cognitive empathy: heritability, and correlates with sex, neuropsychiatric conditions and cognition, Molecular Psychiatry (2017). Journal information: Molecular Psychiatry V Warrier et al. Genome-wide meta-analysis of cognitive empathy: heritability, and correlates with sex, neuropsychiatric conditions and cognition,(2017). DOI: 10.1038/MP.2017.122
A study led by Jennifer Ringrose, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Alberta, examined dozens of home blood pressure monitors and found that most were unacceptable inaccurate. Credit: Melissa Fabrizio

Seventy per cent of readings from home blood pressure monitors are unacceptably inaccurate, which could cause serious implications for people who rely on them to make informed health decisions, new UAlberta research reveals.

"High blood pressure is the number one cause of death and disability in the world," said medical researcher Jennifer Ringrose, who led the research study. "Monitoring for and treating hypertension can decrease the consequences of this disease. We need to make sure that home blood pressure readings are accurate."

Ringrose and her team tested dozens of home monitors and found they weren't accurate within five mmHg about 70 per cent of the time. The devices were off the mark by 10 mmHg about 30 per cent of the time.

The findings are extremely relevant given millions of patients are asked to monitor their blood pressure through a device at home and report the results back to their doctor.

The researchers say steps can be taken to minimize inaccurate readings.

"Compare the blood pressure machine measurement with a blood pressure measurement in clinic before exclusively relying upon home blood pressure readings," advised Ringrose. "What's really important is to do several blood pressure measurements and base treatment decisions on multiple readings. Taking home readings empowers patients and is helpful for clinicians to have a bigger picture rather than just one snapshot in time."

Study co-author Raj Padwal, a UAlberta professor of medicine, added that no one should have drugs started or changed based on one or two measurements taken at a single point in time unless the measurements are clearly elevated.

In 2015 Canadian guidelines were updated to endorse greater use of home blood pressure monitoring. The guidelines recommend 28 measurements over one week for home devices.

The study examined the results of 85 patients. The researchers compared the results of the volunteers' home monitors with the gold standardtwo observers taking several blood pressure measurements simultaneously, blinded to one another, with a third person ensuring agreement between both observers' readings.

While the average difference between the home monitors and the gold standard measurements was acceptable, the majority of individual devices demonstrated clinically-relevant inaccuracy. The team also found that readings were more inaccurate in men than in women. They believe there are many factors that could account for their findings.

"Arm shape, arm size, the stiffness and age of blood vessels, and the type of blood pressure cuff are not always taken into account when a blood pressure machine is designed and validated," said Padwal. "Individual differences, such as the size, age and medical background of the person using the blood pressure monitor are also contributing factors."

The researchers say it's difficult to determine precisely why the inaccuracies are occuring in home monitors because they don't have access to the various formulas the devices use to determine blood pressureinformation which is considered proprietary and kept secret by the manufacturer. They believe a greater effort needs to be made among industry and academia to develop more highly accurate devices in the future.

The study was published in the American Journal of Hypertension.

More information: Jennifer S. Ringrose et al, An Assessment of the Accuracy of Home Blood Pressure Monitors When Used in Device Owners, American Journal of Hypertension (2017). Journal information: American Journal of Hypertension Jennifer S. Ringrose et al, An Assessment of the Accuracy of Home Blood Pressure Monitors When Used in Device Owners,(2017). DOI: 10.1093/ajh/hpx041
Zev Gartner is growing breast organoids with precise ratios of normal and tumor cells (shown at left) to understand how cell-cell interactions contribute to tumor growth. Credit: Photo by Elisabeth Fall, Cell Image by Gartner Lab

Ophir Klein is growing teeth, which is just slightly less odd than what Jeffrey Bush is growing  tissues that make up the face. Jason Pomerantz is growing muscle; Sarah Knox is growing salivary glands; and Edward Hsiao is printing 3-D bone using a machine that looks about as complex as a clock radio.

Together, these members of the UC San Francisco faculty are cultivating organs of the craniofacial complex  the skull and face  which too often go terribly wrong during fetal development. Deformities of these bones or soft tissues, the most common of birth defects, can cut life short by blocking the airway or circulation. Or they can disfigure a face so profoundly that a child struggles to see, hear, or talk. Perhaps most painful of all, such deformities render children physically other, potentially leading to a lifetime of corrective surgeries and social isolation.

As director of the UCSF Program in Craniofacial Biology, Klein orchestrates a multisite research endeavor to translate basic science findings in tissue regeneration into improved treatments for these kids. Using stem cells from patients with craniofacial deformities, Klein, Bush, Pomerantz, Knox, Hsiao, and their colleagues are growing tiny functioning segments of organs, called organoids, to figure out exactly when and how in fetal development such design flaws occur.

They are among scientists across UCSF who are cultivating cellular systems such as miniature brains and breasts from patient cells. They serve as dioramas of disease  models derived from human cells  either displacing or complementing the mouse models that have served science well, though inexactly, for many years. The effort is one of the most obvious and viable payoffs to date from stem cell science. With these organoids, physicians and scientists can not only trace the pathways of normal and abnormal development, but also test drugs and other treatments for their effectiveness in humans. Organoids are also one tiny step toward the ultimate goal of generating complete organs, as a way to circumvent rejection issues and save the lives of those who now die waiting for transplants.

As the reservoirs of human development, stem cells take it upon themselves to tirelessly renew and differentiate into the myriad cell types required to build out a body from an embryo. In creating an organoid, typical construction metaphors do not apply. There are no building blocks to nail, stack, or solder and no job-site supervisor barking orders. "That's not how biology works," says Zev Gartner, PhD, an associate professor of pharmaceutical chemistry.

"It is a self-organizing process," he explains, a process that starts in the womb with embryonic stem cells (ESCs) or, in the case of organoids, induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). iPSCs are mature cells that are stripped back to their earliest stage of development using a process devised by UCSF Professor of Anatomy Shinya Yamanaka, MD, PhD, who won a Nobel Prize for discovering the process. To make organoids, iPSCs are put through a series of solutions, then added to a gel that mimics the squishy 3-D cellular matrix of the embryo. The gel provides the right conditions for them to get to work.

"Take an organ like the lung. Its basic functional units are a tube and a sac, and outside that sac are capillaries that allow gas exchange. Hundreds of millions of tubes and sacs make a lung," explains Gartner. "You can make the little sacs and the tubes in a dish as an organoid model. But we don't know how to drive the self-organization of those units into much more complex, elaborate, highly ramified structures." The fundamental limitation of organoids is that they lack the vasculature that brings nutrient-laden blood to fuel the evolution of the larger structure.

Gartner notes that people who work with stem cells tend to focus on either regenerative medicine or disease modeling. Those interested in disease make models of tissues so that they can understand how diseases work, while those interested in regenerative medicine try to make models of healthy tissue that could be transplanted. Gartner straddles both camps. He grows breast organoids. "The mammary gland is great because we can simultaneously think about these two phenomena as two sides of the same coin," he says. "One is regenerative medicine through self-organization, and the other is understanding the progression of breast cancer through a breakdown in self-organization."

So there's potentially a triple payoff in stem cell science: By deducing how a breast forms itself, Gartner might figure out how to grow the entire organ. By tracing how cancer throws a wrench in the works, he may be able to target ways to stop that process. And by growing a human organ in a dish, he avoids making cross-species assumptions or putting animals or humans at risk in testing potential drugs to cure breast cancer, greatly accelerating the push toward a cure.

Regenerate

On Klein's team, Jeffrey Bush, PhD, an assistant professor of cell and tissue biology, looks at organoids through the lens of disease.

Credit: University of California, San Francisco

The organoids he grows model craniofrontonasal syndrome  a birth defect that is caused by a mutation in a single gene and that dramatically impacts the shape of the face and head. He knows from studies reproducing craniofrontonasal syndrome in mice that the first place something goes wrong is in a cell type called the neuroectoderm. To create an organoid to study this, he obtained skin cells from Pomerantz, an associate professor of surgery, who has patients with the syndrome who were willing to donate tissue samples. Such collaborations between basic scientists and clinicians are key to bringing research out of the lab and into patient care.

"We studied this simple system to see how this mutation affected the organization of these cells," says Bush. His group has filmed cells as they rush about to self-organize when they're mixed together. In those films, he explains, "you can see that the mutated cells, which are dyed red, segregate from the normal cells, which are green  they are like oil and water." In other words, the mutated cells completely disrupt the behavior of all the cells. By contrast, in the films of cells without the mutation, all the cells circulate easily among one another, like fish in an aquarium. This understanding has allowed Bush to begin to think about a drug that blocks this separation. He has several promising candidates that his team will test in pregnant mice. "Right now," he says, "there isn't a single drug that we can use for any kind of structural birth defects. If we could show that a medication blocks the effects of this mutation, it would serve as proof of principle that something besides surgery can be done. But we would have to know that it was safe for mother and child and that we could catch it early enough."

Reconstruct

Jason Pomerantz, MD, a plastic surgeon, falls into the regeneration camp. His clinical work is typified by a recent eight-hour operation on a 17-year-old boy with Crouzon syndrome, a severely disfiguring condition affecting every organ in the craniofacial structure  muscle, bone, and skin. "My patient is excited for the outcome, but not about the process," says Pomerantz, surgical director of the UCSF Craniofacial Center. For three months, the patient will wear a large metal frame on his head with wires that will pull the bones in his face forward. Prior to the surgery, the boy's face was nearly concave, collapsed inward at the nose.

Yet bone is not all Pomerantz needs to work with to restructure a face. The subtle bends, creases, and curves of expression that make a face one's own are the work of tiny muscles. "Right now we can move a big muscle  say, from the thigh to the face  so that people can smile," he says. "But we can't reconstruct the fine ones that enable people to move their eyebrows up or move the eyeballs around. That requires little muscles. This is where we can make headway with stem cell biology.

"We have actually made a humanized organ in an animal," he continues, pointing to a picture of a mouse on his wall. Pomerantz is now considering incubating small human muscles in animals for use in his patients' faces. In a recent project, he inserted stem cells from human muscles into a mouse whose own muscle stem cells had been incapacitated. He then perturbed the muscle to stimulate regeneration. As the muscle healed, the cells created new muscle tissue, which the mouse's nerves innervated to make a functioning muscle. It's exactly the size of the muscles Pomerantz needs for full articulation of expression and function in a human face or hand.

Create

Muscles are part of a vast and intricate system strewn throughout the body. Teeth, on the other hand, are islands unto themselves. "Teeth intrigue me from a regeneration perspective," says Ophir Klein, MD, PhD, chair of the Division of Craniofacial Anomalies, the Hillblom Professor of Craniofacial Anomalies, the Epstein Professor of Human Genetics, and a resident alumnus. "They are discrete organs  all the parts are there." More intriguing still is the fact that many rodents have the ability to grow their front teeth continuously. Elephants and walruses also have ever-growing tusks, and even some primates  lemurs  can regrow their teeth.

A tooth can be regenerated in parts. Stem cells can be used to grow the root, and then a crown can be added to complete the tooth. To generate a whole organ at once, Klein's colleagues are planning to partner with bioengineers who can produce a biocompatible material that could serve as a framing device to jump-start the creation of dentin, one of the hard components of a tooth. If they start with the right cells, then the scaffolding will give the cells the shape information they need to create the right design. But even that isn't Klein's endgame. "In my lab, we're interested in figuring out why humans can't regrow teeth," he says. "In studying species that can, we hope to unlock the regenerative potential in our own cells that might be turned off."

Klein's work to generate teeth is inspired by his patients with ectodermal dysplasia, a congenital disorder characterized by lack of sweat glands, hair, or teeth. Being able to generate the roots of teeth would be remarkable for these patients, since the rest can be done with a crown. Right now, they must be fitted with dentures.

Klein is also taking another tack to help these patients. "We completed a clinical trial of a drug that basically goosed up the development of the organs when they weren't forming properly," he says. The drug  a protein developed by Swiss collaborators of Klein's, based on studies of embryonic mice, who develop these organs in early- to mid-gestation  was given to infants with the disorder right after birth. The trial was unsuccessful. Now, scientists in Germany are running a trial of the same drug, giving it instead to mothers carrying babies with this genetic disorder. The scientists will try to gauge what the best timing is for delivering the drug.

"What's great about this drug is that it doesn't seem to have any effects on any other organs besides teeth, hair, and sweat glands," says Klein. "Drugs for other conditions are far riskier, because they affect pathways that are important in the development of many organs."

Maintain

Sarah Knox, PhD, an assistant professor of cell and tissue biology, is using stem cells to figure out how to regenerate salivary glands compromised by radiation treatments for head and neck cancers or by craniofacial deformities. Her focus is on how the environment contributes to the activation and maintenance of the gland. The salivary gland, like all organs, is continuously replenishing the supply of cells and tissues it needs to function. Knox's research shows that the gland takes directional cues from nearby nerve cells not only to remain functional, but also to continuously replace itself. Her organoids are made of cells from a patient and nerve cells (ganglia) from a fetal mouse. "We are trying to explore the relationship between the stem cells and the nerves," she says. "How do the nerves know the tissue is there? How do the nerves provide instruction and feedback? Individual cells die off and new cells have to replace them. Organoids are giving us insight as to where those new cells are coming from and how we keep repopulating [them] all our lives."

As head of the UCSF Program in Craniofacial Biology  which is based in the School of Dentistry and the Division of Genetics in the School of Medicine  Klein stands at one of science's most compelling crossroads: regenerative medicine and genetics. Far in the future, both fields have potential that seem like science fiction today. We live in a world where people die waiting for organ transplants. What if we could pull these organoids from their petri dish and supply them with the fuel they need to become full-blown organs? Such a feat would necessitate either a host embryo  perhaps from a pig, because pigs have organs the size of human organs  or some other biological foundation. Some scientists are hoping to jump-start organ development with "scaffolding," or cells engineered to speed the developmental process. Others are zeroing in on the genome, particularly in kids with craniofacial anomalies caused by just one mutation, like craniofrontonasal syndrome; for example, a tool called CRISPR could allow scientists to splice that gene out and replace it with a normal gene. But the tool has yet to be used in humans, let alone a human fetus.

Ethical questions pepper either route. At their best, stem cells regenerate tissues; at their worst, they go rogue and grow into a tumor. "Yet with gene editing tools like CRISPR, you literally have the potential to change the species," says Klein. And in both scenarios, the cells can act with unforeseen off-target effects. Klein and his colleagues are in continual discussion about the repercussions of their work with the director of UCSF Bioethics, Barbara Koenig, RN, PhD '88. "Gene therapy is an example of an exciting new treatment that cured one serious pediatric illness  severe combined immunodeficiency syndrome (SCID)  but the genes unwittingly led to the development of leukemia," explains Koenig. "Genetic and stem cell interventions must be painstakingly studied before application. And, once they are ready, who will regulate them? There are many questions yet to be answered. The challenges are most extreme when we talk about modifying an egg or sperm cell, where the changes are passed on to the next generation."

So Klein and his colleagues proceed with caution, curiosity, and awe. "The next decade will be an incredibly exciting time," says Klein. "With continual advances in human genetics and developmental and cell biology, we hope to be able to make drugs and use genetic tools to appreciably change the lives of our patients."

The Bone Printer

Bone grows like a runaway train in Edward Hsiao's patients with fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva (FOP). The slightest bump or injury can set off a spurt of bone growth that can fuse their vertebrae, lock their joints, or even freeze up their rib cages, leaving them unable to breathe.

No one, to date, has successfully engineered bone. Hsiao, MD, PhD, is hoping to spark the process with the help of a 3-D printer from Organovo, a firm that specializes in bioprinting technology. From iPSCs, he can make many of the essential ingredients of bone, including mesenchymal stem cells, endothelial cells, and macrophages. "We are putting cells into the equivalent of an ink. Then we will print the structures with the ink, let the ink dissolve, and leave the cells," explains Hsiao. "The hope is that the cells can then recapitulate the normal developmental process."

If the approach is successful, Hsiao hopes to use the resulting models to test drugs and other treatments to halt or prevent bone deformities. Down the line, his progress also stands to transform bone and joint replacements. Through his work with FOP, he's uncovered one mechanism that drives rapid bone growth. "In these patients, we know that mature bone formation can happen in as quickly as two weeks, so it is possible to grow bone in an adult. We need to understand how to modulate that," says Hsiao. "Someday, my dream would be to be able to identify the cells we need, give someone a drug that induces the right genes and recruits the right cells to the correct site, and have the cells rebuild the joint from scratch."
[June 07, 2017] u blox Delivers New Series of Secure LTE Advanced Automotive Telematics Modules With Powerful Embedded CPU

THALWIL, Switzerland, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- TOBY-L4 LTE advanced modules provide a secure, fully integrated gateway solution for automotive OEMs enabling data, voice, positioning, eCall and advanced telematics. u-blox (SIX: UBXN), a global leader in wireless and positioning modules and chips, today announces the TOBY-L4 series of Automotive Grade telematics modules. The series integrates LTE, UMTS and GSM connectivity with a powerful embedded processor, enabling a wide range of applications on a single device. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150826/261282LOGO )

Connectivity is at the heart of the TOBY-L4 LTE Cat 6 modules, providing full gateway capabilities in a single device capable of delivering up to 300Mbit/s data rates with carrier aggregation capability. Its extremely small 248-pin Land Grid Array (LGA) format measuring just 24.8mm by 35.6mm by 2.6mm meets the size/weight/power limitations of in-car applications. TOBY-L4 supports both voice and data in the form of LTE, UMTS/DC-HSPA+, GSM, SMS and Voice (VoLTE and CSFB). With suport for eCall (operating also at +95C for at least 2 minutes) and ERA Glonass, the module meets all the industry and carrier requirements in place today and is future-proofed for all automotive OEM's key regions.



With 19000 DMIPS and hardware virtualization, the processor in TOBY-L4 is powerful enough to safely and flexibly support Linux/Yocto distribution, enabling customer's software applications to run securely alongside a wide range of pre-integrated communications protocols on the same device, enabling full application scalability without fear of hitting processor performance bottlenecks. "The concept of the connected car is here," commented Stefano Moioli, Director Product Management Cellular at u-blox. "The TOBY-L4 series of LTE Cat 6 modules gives OEMs the ability to add connectivity with fully integrated applications in a secure system, without compromising with safety, performance or functionality."

Security is a critical feature in any connected device and the new series addresses this through the integration of secure boot and update features, supported by a hardware cryptography accelerator and true random number generator. A dedicated trusted execution environment provides further security for system software and OEM applications. Thanks to its embedded processor and comprehensive range of interfaces including R(G)MII and analog audio, TOBY-L4 removes the need for an additional processor and additional components in many applications, saving space, power and cost. Manufactured in ISO/TS 16949 certified sites, the modules are qualified to ISO 16750 covering systems installed in vehicles, making it ideal for automotive OEMs. The series of four modules provide extremely comprehensive band configurations, allowing the module to operate in the all markets of the world, throughout North America, EMEA, APAC/Brazil and China. u-blox TOBY-L4 LTE advanced modules will be featured at the TU-Automotive Detroit Conference and Expo, 7-8 June 2017, booth B77. For more information about u-blox, please visit http://www.u-blox.com Stefano Moioli

Phone: +39-040-2603-703

Email: [email protected]

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Our short-term memory is severely limited in everyday experience, but according to a new study from City, University of London and the Hungarian Academy of Science, it has no intrinsic limits when it comes to remembering information.

Instead, it is often limited by interference from similar items which we have seen earlier, which leads to the appearance of a low fixed and limited capacity.

Offering mathematical proof of this 'interference' effect, the researchers found that short-term memory capacity generally appears limited as soon as there are interfering items encountered earlier.

In their mathematical model, each item has some probability to be remembered if there are no interfering items in memory. This probability is reduced by interference from the items already in memory, and the more items we already have in memory, the stronger this interference becomes. The researcher show that this interplay between an open-ended short-term memory and the presence of interfering items can lead to the appearance of a low fixed and limited capacity. The research is published in Psychological Review.

These mathematical results support earlier research from academics at City, University of London and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, showing that participants have essentially no memory capacity limitations  unless there are interfering items in memory. In these experiments, participants were shown rapid sequences of everyday images.

Participants remembered roughly the same proportion of pictures in each sequence, independently of how many pictures had been presented, even when they were shown dozens of pictures. In other words, there were essentially no memory capacity limits.

Crucially, these results were observed only when each sequence used completely new images. By definition, new images are not (yet) in memory, and thus cannot interfere either. In a sharp contrast, when the sequences were constructed from changing combinations of a small set of images, people remembered less than 5 pictures from each sequence, similar to the usual capacity quoted for our short-term memory.

This suggests that one of the main determinants of the memory limitations we sometimes feel is interference from other items, while memory in itself might have an unbounded capacity. For example, quickly remembering a phone number might not be difficult because our short-term memory capacity is so limited, but rather because we have remembered many other number sequences in the past, and these earlier sequences intrude into the recall of the sequence we are currently trying to memorise.

Speaking about the study, Dr Ansgar Endress, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychology at City, University of London, said:

"In some sense, our short-term memory system has an undeservedly bad reputation: it can remember many more items than we give it credit for. However, when remembering items that we have seen earlier in changing combinations - such as numbers or items from a shopping list - the memory problem becomes much more tricky, and we suffer from relatively stringent memory limitations, because these earlier memories interfere with what we are trying to remember right now."
Credit: Sean Ellis

A mother posting on Facebook about the way her son behaves while playing video games could provide a vital clue for the correct treatment for his epilepsy. This is but one type of social media chatter that is informing data scientists at Penn Medicine's Health Language Processing Lab (HLP). One of the newest entities with the Penn Institute for Biomedical Informatics, HLP combines social media content with other sources of health information in a unique way aimed at understanding how people use language to communicate health needs.

All sorts of groups across Penn Medicine are harnessing data contained in electronic health records (EHRs) and social media to help improve outcomes. The Abramson Cancer Center, for instance, uses lab tests, radiology visits, and patient-reported symptoms to help lung cancer patients avoid the ER visits. Departments across the health system work with data scientists to use finely tuned algorithms to detect complications or underlying health conditions earlier in the continuum of care, and the Center for Digital Health focuses its efforts on how social media intersects with health care, working to determine how posts might help providers detect health problems before urgent care is needed, or even how Twitter might play a role in fighting HIV.

"As other initiatives focus on structured data, the Health Language Processing Lab takes another approach. We're not only about social media or data gained from electronic medical records," said Graciela Gonzalez-Hernandez, PhD, an associate professor of Biostatistics and Epidemiology and director of the HLP. "We also use natural language processing techniques on different sources of informationhealth records, patient reports, consumer reviews, clinical records, and published literature. Then we use data science techniques to integrate them and present them to specialists for context and discovery."

The HLP uses similar tools as other Penn bioinformatics studies. For example, PennSeek (think Google) is mining unstructured data in clinical records, such as handwritten notes, to refine patient care in cardiology and ophthalmology. Gonzalez-Hernandez came to the field of bioinformatics by way of an undergraduate degree in journalism. She brings her love of words to her present endeavors. "Health tweets have a special twist compared to other social media chatter," she said. "We see more metaphors, similes, and even sarcasm. This source is rich with meaningful content that can be used to gain insights into the health not only of the person posting, but of a group of people akin to the poster."

One of HLP's projects, sponsored by AbbVie Pharmaceuticals, is focused on improving knowledge about the use and effects of drugs and vaccines during pregnancy, with the long-term goal of finding associations between medication used and fetal outcomes. Currently, all information gathered on this topic is through pregnancy registries. Since these health system- and industry-sponsored databases are voluntary, they have limitations, such as low enrollment rate (a majority of pregnant women that are taking medications do not register), high cost, and selection bias (most information is entered only after something bad happens). "We are assessing Twitter to see if we can broadly monitor health information for large groups of pregnant women who take different kinds of medication, such as over-the-counter pain relievers," Gonzalez-Hernandez said.

Her group also uses natural language processing to mine the clinical records of pediatric epilepsy patients to detect patterns of symptoms. "Epilepsy is a very complex disease and we're trying to find the right treatment for the right patient," Gonzalez-Hernandez said. "For example, parents might share that their son was playing a video game, describing his behavior as 'he sat there frozen' and another parent might describe their child's behavior as 'zoning out.'" Each of these states represents different types of seizures, and recognizing those differences is crucial to choosing the right treatment.

All of these projects are promising for the future of patient care, but Big Data analysis will need quality control like any other area of patient care. "A new approach called continuous analysis will shake up biomedical data science by reducing many common types of analytical errors," said Casey Greene, PhD, an assistant professor of Pharmacology. He likens continuous analysis to the movie Groundhog Day: "Phil Connors [Bill Murray's character] has to live the same day over and over again. Each time he gets things a little better until he gets it exactly right. This is how reproducible data science should work."

Greene explains that each analysis should be repeated from start to finish with each small change to get things right. For example, data scientists might swap statistical tests when a variable doesn't meet the assumptions of the test they planned to use. Then they would repeat all the steps from start to finish.

"But, this isn't exactly how things are done right now," Greene said. "It's time-consuming for a human data scientist to redo things from start to finish. Remember how frustrated Phil got going through the motions over and over again." Data scientists take shortcuts, he says. They go back to what they think is the right point, and work from there. But this opens up the door to mistakes.

Instead, with continuous analysis, a program watches for any changes to the workflow. When a data scientist makes changes, it automatically runs every step from start to finish. The results are produced and permanently recorded so that anyone can go back and see what the plan was and what the results of that particular "Groundhog Day" day were.

The purpose is to make it easy to build on what other data scientists have done. "Science is incremental," said Greene. "Brick by brick, we're building scientific knowledge."
Histopathology of Helicobacter pylori infection in a gastric foveolar pit demonstrated in endoscopic gastric biopsy. Credit: Wikipedia.

It was long thought that gastric ulcers and other digestive woes were brought about by stress. But in 2005, clinical fellow Barry J. Marshall and pathologist J. Robin Warren were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for recognizing the role of Helicobacter pylori in gastritis and peptic ulcer disease.

Now physicians can point their collective fingers at H. pylori when it comes to a host of gastric maladies in their patients.

With this in mind, researchers from the Mel and Enid Zuckerman School of Public Health at the University of Arizona conducted a study into whether U.S. physicians consistently adhere to American College of Gastroenterology guidelines for caring for and managing patients with H. pylori infections. Guidelines include when and how to test for H. pylori, as well as when and how to treat the pathogen once someone has been infected.

Caring for and managing these patients is important not only because of the serious potential morbidity associated with H. pylori infections, but also because these infections are linked to gastric cancer.

Through an online survey of gastroenterologists in the U.S., the researchers found that physicians' adherence to a number of the current ACG guidelines was low. The results were published online April 27 in the journal Preventive Medicine.

Eyal Oren, UA assistant professor of epidemiology and one of the senior authors of the study, says that most physicians followed the guidelines for testing patients they suspected of having H. pylori infection when the patients came to them with likely risk factors, such as a previously diagnosed peptic ulcer or dyspepsia.

"You shouldn't be testing everybody, but if there are reasons to believe that a test for H. pylori may come back positive, and it does come back positive, you should go on to treat," says Dr. Traci Murakami, previous gastroenterology fellow at the UA and graduate of the clinical and translational research graduate certificate at the Mel and Enid Zuckerman School of Public Health, now an assistant clinical professor of medicine at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, and lead author of the study.

In fact, the researchers found that a higher proportion of physicians than in years past treat patients after a positive H. pylori test, with 84 percent of the respondents indicating they would do so, Oren says.

However, only 58 percent of physicians checked to ensure that the bacterium has been eradicated after treatment, according to the study. This finding is of particular concern, Murakami says, because if the bacterium is not eradicated after the recommended therapy, it could indicate potential resistance to drugs of choice.

"Only half of gastroenterology physicians check for eradication," Murakami says. "I think that's key because knowing if a patient eradicated the H. pylori versus whether they still have the infection may indicate that they may have a more resistant type of H. pylori that didn't respond to the initial antibiotic and would require different antibiotics to eradicate it."

Also of concern, the study found that 6 percent of physicians weren't asking patients about antibiotics that they previously had taken. That information could alert the clinician to the potential for drug resistance. Nor were physicians testing for resistance, according to the study. However, testing for drug resistance is not cheap or simple, so it's not routinely done, Oren says.

Given that H. pylori is a human pathogen and linked to an increase in gastric cancer risk, some have called for its global eradication. However, some people are colonized with H. pylori from birth and experience no ill effects from it until much later in life, if at all.

No matter, the researchers concluded that the "adaptation of a 'test, treat and retest strategy' to confirm eradication after treatment is an area that could be improved."

H. pylori is a risk factor and designated as a carcinogen by the World Health Organization.

"If we could identify it early and identify it in more people, we might be able to reduce the risk of people developing stomach cancer in the future," Murakami says.

More information: Traci T. Murakami et al. Management ofHelicobacter Pyloriin the United States: Results from a national survey of gastroenterology physicians, Preventive Medicine (2017). Journal information: Preventive Medicine Traci T. Murakami et al. Management ofHelicobacter Pyloriin the United States: Results from a national survey of gastroenterology physicians,(2017). DOI: 10.1016/j.ypmed.2017.04.021
Active resistance is often considered to be the "normal" reaction during rape, but a new study found that most victims may experience a state of involuntary paralysis, called tonic immobility, during rape. Tonic immobility was also associated with subsequent posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and severe depression after rape. The findings, which are published in Acta Obstetricia et Gynecologica Scandinavica, indicate that for health care follow-up and legal matters, tonic immobility should be assessed in all sexual assault victims.

Tonic immobility in animals is considered an evolutionary adaptive defensive reaction to a predatory attack when resistance is not possible and other resources are not available. Little is known about tonic immobility in humans, however. To investigate, Anna Moller, MD, PhD, of the Karolinksa Institutet and the Stockholm South General Hospital in Sweden, and her colleagues assessed tonic immobility at the time of assault in 298 women who had visited the Emergency Clinic for Rape Victims in Stockholm within one month of a sexual assault. After 6 months, 189 women were assessed for the development of PTSD and depression.

Of the 298 women, 70% reported significant tonic immobility and 48% reported extreme tonic immobility during the assault. Among the 189 women who completed the 6-month assessment, 38.1% had developed PTSD and 22.2% had developed severe depression. Tonic immobility was associated with a 2.75-times increased risk of developing PTSD and a 3.42-times increased risk of developing severe depression. Prior trauma and a history of psychiatric treatment were also linked with tonic immobility.

"The present study shows that tonic immobility is more common than earlier described," said Dr. Moller. "This information is useful both in legal situations and in the psychoeducation of rape victims. Further, this knowledge can be applied in the education of medical students and law students."

More information: "Tonic immobility during sexual assault - a common reaction predicting posttraumatic stress disorder and severe depression." Anna Moller, Hans Peter Sondergaard, and Lotti Helstrom. Acta Obstetricia et Gynecologica Scandinavica; Published Online: June 7, 2017, Journal information: Acta Obstetricia et Gynecologica Scandinavica "Tonic immobility during sexual assault - a common reaction predicting posttraumatic stress disorder and severe depression." Anna Moller, Hans Peter Sondergaard, and Lotti Helstrom.; Published Online: June 7, 2017, DOI: 10.1111/aogs.13174
Microscopic image showing cells that could be targeted with anti-PD-L1 antibodies for immunotherapy (teal) in a biopsy sample from a triple negative breast cancer tumor. Credit: E. Nolan et al., Science Translational Medicine (2017)

Researchers have found a new way to use immunotherapy, a breakthrough mode of cancer treatment which harnesses the patient's immune system, to treat an aggressive form of breast cancer.

The researchers at Melbourne's Walter and Eliza Hall Institute and Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre have shown, for the first time, that combining two immunotherapy drugs could be effective in treating triple negative breast cancers arising in women with BRCA1 mutations.

The findings suggest that clinical trials of combined immunotherapy should be considered in women with these breast cancers. Immunotherapy works by boosting the body's immune cells to attack tumours and has been a 'game-changer' for treating melanoma and lung cancers.

The study, led by the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute's Dr Emma Nolan, Professor Geoff Lindeman, Dr Daniel Gray and Professor Jane Visvader, and Peter Mac's Associate Professor Sherene Loi and Associate Professor Phillip Darcy, was published today in Science Translational Medicine.

Breast cancer affects one in eight women in Australia. Triple negative breast cancers typically account for around 15 per cent of breast cancers, affecting around 2400 women each year, but are much more common in women with BRCA1 mutations.

Professor Lindeman, also a medical oncologist at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and Peter Mac, said triple negative breast cancers were more aggressive and more likely to recur than other breast cancers.

"Triple negative breast cancers have not seen the same improvement in targeted therapies, or survival, as some other types of breast cancer," Professor Lindeman said. "Our study showed that combining anti-PD1 and anti-CTLA4 immunotherapies with chemotherapy halted the growth of BRCA1-related tumours and significantly improved survival in laboratory models."

Researchers have shown for the first time that combining two immunotherapy drugs could be effective in treating triple negative breast cancers arising in women with BRCA1 mutations. Dr. Daniel Gray, Associate Professor Sherene Loi and Professor Geoff Lindeman (L-R) from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute and Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre led the research. Credit: Walter and Eliza Hall Institute

Some cancer cells survive by hijacking and 'switching off' immune cells that would otherwise destroy the tumours. Anti-PD1 and anti-CTLA4 immunotherapies are so-called 'immune checkpoint inhibitors' that release the brakes on critical immune cells, enabling them to attack the tumour.

Dr Gray said previous research had shown that immunotherapy was particularly effective at treating tumours that had accumulated many mutations. "BRCA1-related triple negative breast cancers have some of the most 'chaotic' genomes, and we see many immune cells accumulate in and around the tumour," Dr Gray said.

"This suggests that the immune cells can readily detect that something is awry, but they aren't able to respond properly, because they have been disabled by tumour cells. We showed that a combination of anti-PD1 and anti-CTLA4 therapies restored their ability to attack and kill triple negative breast tumour cells, and very effectively control tumour growth."

Associate Professor Loi, head of breast cancer clinical trials research at Peter Mac and for the Parkville precinct, said work was already underway to translate these important findings from laboratory models of breast cancer into a clinical trial for women with the disease.

"Our lab-based findings provide compelling evidence to progress to a clinical trial of this combination of immunotherapy drugs, and chemotherapy, in women with BRCA1-related breast cancer," Associate Professor Loi said. "There is also a rationale to consider the same for BRCA2-related cancers and triple negative breast cancer more broadly.

"Importantly, there are already a number of immunotherapy-based clinical trials underway in breast cancer and these two drugs - anti-PD1 and anti-CTLA4 - are in use for other cancers, so we would hope to begin a trial of this specific combination of immunotherapies in suitable breast cancer patients in the near future."

Professor Lindeman said the study was a great example of what the Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre (VCCC) partners could achieve. "Our study brought together researchers with diverse expertise across several institutions, including PhD students from the University of Melbourne. We also benefited from our close collaboration with kConFab, a national consortium focused on familial breast cancer," he said.

More information: E. Nolan el al., "Combined immune checkpoint blockade as a therapeutic strategy for BRCA1-mutated breast cancer," Science Translational Medicine (2017). Journal information: Science Translational Medicine E. Nolan el al., "Combined immune checkpoint blockade as a therapeutic strategy for BRCA1-mutated breast cancer,"(2017). stm.sciencemag.org/lookup/doi/  scitranslmed.aal4922
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

A recent systematic literature review has investigated potential sociodemographic, physical, mental, and social factors that may cause breastfeeding mothers to stop breastfeeding before infants reach 6 months of age.

Mothers who were young, had a low level of education, and returned to work within 12 weeks after giving birth were more likely to stop breastfeeding before 6 months. Those who gave birth by caesarean section and who had an inadequate milk supply also tended to stop breastfeeding early.

The World Health Organization recommends exclusive breastfeeding as the main source of nutrition for infants during their first 6 months of life.

"Sociodemographic factors were seen to have caused cessation of breastfeeding in some of the included articles, and a focus should be placed on how to improve related knowledge of health-care professionals as it is clear that sociodemographic factors have an effect on health behavior," said Dr. Elisabeth Mangrio, lead author of the Scandinavian Journal of Caring Sciences review. "These factors should be considered through targeted interventions focusing on mothers who are at risk of ceasing breastfeeding before the recommended time and on known factors and behavior that can be prevented."

The study is published in Scandinavian Journal of Caring Sciences.

More information: Elisabeth Mangrio et al, Sociodemographic, physical, mental and social factors in the cessation of breastfeeding before 6 months: a systematic review, Scandinavian Journal of Caring Sciences (2017). Elisabeth Mangrio et al, Sociodemographic, physical, mental and social factors in the cessation of breastfeeding before 6 months: a systematic review,(2017). DOI: 10.1111/scs.12489
UberEATS has partnered with KFC to deliver meals to users in Johannesburg.

The company said Cape Town will receive the service in the near future, allowing it to order Finger Lickin meals soon.

KFC will be showcasing their most favourite items on the UberEATS app, from Streetwise 2 to Twisters, including their famous buckets and other signature meals, said the company.

Eaters ordering through the app for the first time can use the promo code KFCEATS, which gives new users 50% off each of their first two orders.

Orders can be placed between 07:00 and 22:00, and UberEats will start with KFC restaurants in the Johannesburg inner ring  Fourways, Randburg, Sandton, and Bryanston.

More stores will be added in the coming weeks.

Now read: Nu Metro 4DX cinema launching at Emperors Palace
Hyperloop One has detailed its plans to connect cities in Europe.

The companys Vision For Europe event showcased the regions nine semi-finalist routes in the Hyperloop One Global Challenge.

These routes include high-speed corridors in Germany, Estonia-Finland, Spain-Morocco, Corsica-Sardinia, The Netherlands, Poland, and three in the UK.

The planned routes show travel times of 15 minutes for a 204km journey between Frankfurt and Stuttgart in Germany, and a 24-minute trip between Edinburgh and Manchester in the UK  which are 330km apart.

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Amazon becomes world's first public company to lose $1 trillion in market value

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[June 07, 2017] Media Impact Partners with Vidazoo to Boost Axel Springer's Digital Video Revenues

BERLIN, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- One of Germany's largest media powerhouses, Media Impact, part of Axel Springer SE, partners with Tel Aviv based video tech platform Vidazoo to manage and optimize its video ad delivery across its digital publishing brands. The partnership is expected to help drive company-wide efforts around video monetization and growth. Many companies are struggling with yield management and latency issues deriving from the inefficiency of multiple video ad formats and the lack of supported technology. Vidazoo's yield management platform will be implemented and responsible for all Media Impact's video demand management and optimization. The product is mainly known for its ability to handle multiple ad requests (which is similar to display header bidding only on the server side), vast targeting capabilities, and complete automation when it comes to programmatic deman optimization. "Based on our existing partnerships, we were able to prove a 50% uplift in revenues and fill rate," says Daniel Slivkin, Vidazoo's CEO and Co-Founder.



Online video has grown very fast in the last three years since the rapid shift of budgets from traditional TV to pre-roll. The technology is still evolving in this space and Vidazoo was one of the first companies to develop high end technology to handle these growing pains for publishers. While Vidazoo mostly focuses on the US market, Europe is coming up after signing the deal with Media Impact.

"Since we are a start-up company, we pick our partnerships very carefully so that we can provide a significant uplift and solve real problems. Growth is important, but keeping our current partners satisfied is our main priority and this is what we are focusing on," comments Daniel Slivkin. About Vidazoo: Vidazoo is a video content and yield management platform. Founded in 2013, the Tel Aviv based company focuses primarily on building smart automation tools to help publishers manage multiple video placements and optimize demand under the same platform. Its rich product portfolio includes an HTML5 video player, adserver, yield management platform, and most recently, a video discovery platform which saves precious time for journalists by auto embedding editorial videos onto related articles in real time. Media Contact:

Reut Granot

Manager, Marketing and Communications

Vidazoo

[email protected]



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YEREVAN.  Turkey will not interfere in the Karabakh conflict solely for the sake of Azerbaijan, said political analyst Styopa Safaryan, at a discussion on Wednesday.

When asked about the likelihood of third parties intervention in the conflict if the Karabakh war were to resume, Safaryan recalled that Azerbaijan had fired no shots toward Armenias border during the four-day war, which Azerbaijan had unleashed against Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) in April of the year past.

This speaks to the fact that Azerbaijan clearly understands the consequences of an aggression against Armenia, he added.

As for the chances of Turkeys intervention in the Karabakh conflict, the analyst noted that Karabakh is not the Middle East, and therefore it does not have the same importance to Turkey as does Syria.

Turkey is Azerbaijans ally, Styopa Safaryan maintained. But I dont think Ankara will jeopardize its strategic interests and get involved in the conflict for its [Azerbaijan] sake, especially against the backdrop of the normalizing of relations with Russia.
YEREVAN. - The reasons behind the developments round Qatar are much deeper, Arabist Sargis Grigoryan said in an interview with Armenian News  NEWS.am on Wednesday.

Referring to the reasons behind the severance by eight states (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Libya, Bahrain, Egypt, Maldives, Mauritius and Mauritania) of diplomatic ties with Qatar and the consequences thereof, the expert said that the aforementioned states claim that Qatari Emir announced that the relations with Shia Iran should be improved, whereas the latter is the adversary of the Arabic monarchies of the Persian Gulf.

This idea of Qatari leader contradicts the united policy of Persian Gulf Arabic monarchies with regard to Iran. The next reason is that Qatar constantly supports extremist Islamic radical institutions, which are looked upon as hostile and terrorist by the aforementioned countries. But I think the reasons are deeper. First, it should be noted that such an escalation of situation occurred in the past as well. The last one was in 2014, when Mohamed Morsi came to power in Egypt and Qatar evidently supported the Muslim Brotherhood institution and its leader Mohamed Morsi, who later became a president. All the other Persian Gulf states, for instance Saudi Arabiawhich thinks that Muslim Brotherhood is a terrorist institution and shouldnt be supportedwere against that policy, he noted.

According to the Arabist, it was exactly then that Saudi Arabia and Bahrain recalled their ambassadors from Doha, the relations normalizing in a few months.

Referring to the accusations made against Qatar, Grigoryan said that they are artificial, since Saudi Arabia also continues supporting the extremist radical Islamic forces. After the regional visit of US President Donald Trump it became apparent that US is returning to the Middle East with more precise steps, and it is no coincidence that Trumps visit started from Saudi Arabia. The US vision on that it is forming an anti-terrorist platform round Saudi Arabia, which should fight ISIS and Al Qaeda, can clearly be seen here.

It was clear that Saudi Arabia was chosen as the axis, and it is apparent that through the recent developments attempt is made to shadow or neutralize the states, which were hesitant about joining that anti-terrorist axis.

In his words, Saudi Arabia is involved in this, trying to weaken and neutralize the state of Qatar, which is one of the key Arabic states.

Asked to which extent Qatar will be able to resist the unprecedented pressure from the aforementioned countries and whether the Qatari Emir will mange to retain his throne, Grigoryan said that there are different wings in the Qatar elite, which are struggling for power.

There are controversies in the royal family, The current Emir came to power in peaceful conditions in 2013, inheriting the power from his father, but, of course, there are controversies here. I think at this stage Qatar is able to resist such challengers although it is noticeable that Doha is sending certain messages not to further exacerbate the situation and improve it, he said.

Responding to the question as to whether the accusations by the eight states on that Qatar has links to and supports extremist institutions and groups are justified, this campaign against the country not being a provocation, the expert said that it is certainly not a provocation, since Qatar once used to apparently support the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization which is considered as terrorist by some states. The Taliban and Hamas have representations in Qatar as well, he added.

During the Syrian conflict in 2013, Al Qaeda or IS were funded as opposition camp representatives, and when the conflict exacerbated and IS became as we see it today, the funding by Qatar, Turkey and Saudi Arabia stopped. I think these states no longer fund IS. But let us not forget that Saudi Arabia continues to fund the Islamic radical institutions in the same Syrian conflicts and doesnt conceal this,the Arabist noted.

Referring to the possibility of the involvement of superpowers in the situation round Qatar, the expert stressed that this can be considered as a common chain.

The reasons can be observed both from global and regional perspectives, he said, adding that the US is returning to make the region more controllable, while Qatarwith its pro-Iranian stanceseems to be left outside these plans, hindering that policy.

Speaking about the relations between Armenia and Qatar, as well as the impact that the campaign against the country can have on the bilateral relations, Grigoryan said: I think if all this is quickly resolved, we will have serious promising potential here, and not only in terms of commodity turnover. We have a community in Qatar. As a powerful Arabic state, Qatar can be used to make the existence of our community in the Middle East as unshakable as possible, also making the region more predictable for us. 
[June 07, 2017] Webroot and ConnectWise Expand Partnership to Help Customers Reduce Web Browsing Risks

BROOMFIELD, Colo., June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Webroot, the market leader in endpoint security, network security, and threat intelligence, announced an expanded partnership with ConnectWise. Now, ConnectWise can sell Webroot SecureAnywhere DNS Protection directly to its global partners. The solution provides granular web-filtering capabilities that protect against malicious websites, provide real-time usage reports, and give managed service providers (MSPs) the power to set global web-access policies to block sites that its client base does not need. SecureAnywhere DNS Protection is easy for partners to manage through the same Global Site Manager console they use for Webroot SecureAnywhere Business Endpoint Protection. Explore Webroot SecureAnywhere DNS Protection:

https://www.webroot.com/us/en/business/dns-protection About the Partnership: Webroot and ConnectWise have been working together since November 2013 .

. ConnectWise is Webroot's first remote management and monitoring (RMM) partner to sell DNS Protection directly to its MSP partners.

Currently, ConnectWise offers its customers SecureAnywhere Business Endpoint Protection and SecureAnywhere Business Mobile Protection.

Webroot solutions enable ConnectWise to offer its MSP partners industry-leading cybersecurity that is easy to administer and increases operating margins. Key Facts: More than 85 percent of malware infections are generated through web browsing. Internet use is a high-risk activity for every business, regardless of size, according to Webroot research.

Unmanaged, uncontrolled web access inevitably leads to both endpoint and network infections from ransomware, malware, keyloggers, and more.

Purpose-built for MSPs, DNS Protection enables administrators to manage both endpoint and DNS products across their entire client install base via a single management console.

Webroot scans the entire IPv4 space and in-use IPv6 addresses to classify over 95 percent of the internet at least three times per day.

All Webroot ecurity products and services are powered by the cloud-based Webroot BrightCloud Threat Intelligence Platform, which continually analyzes and classifies over 4 billion IP addresses, 600 million domains, and 27 billion URLs. Additionally, Webroot uncovers at least 25,000 malicious URLs, 6,000 new phishing sites, and over 100,000 new malicious IP addresses per day.



Key Quotes:

Charlie Tomeo , Vice President of Worldwide Business Sales, Webroot

"A solution that combines endpoint and DNS-based web security helps protect businesses from threats while lowering overall support costs. ConnectWise has created a loyal following within the MSP community, and we are thrilled to expand our partnership to offer customers better protection and performance." Gavin Gamber, Vice President of Channel Sales and Alliances, ConnectWise

"At ConnectWise, we are dedicated to helping technology solution providers grow their businesses, and that's why we partner with Webroot. Together, we can offer MSPs solutions that protect against the increasing amount of cybersecurity threats that plague companies every day. With the combination of DNS and endpoint protection, comprehensively integrated into ConnectWise Automate, formerly LabTech and ConnectWise Manage, this is the type of solution that makes our partners successful."

Additional Resources Product page: Webroot SecureAnywhere DNS Protection

Partner page: MSP Partner Program

Video: Introducing Webroot SecureAnywhere DNS Protection About ConnectWise

ConnectWise transforms how technology solution providers successfully build, manage, and grow their businesses. Our award-winning set of software solutions provide a fully integrated, seamless experience to companies in more than 50 countries, giving them the ability to increase their productivity, efficiency, and profitability. When combined with our relentless commitment to innovation, powerful network of ideas and experts, unparalleled passion for our users, and more than 30 years of experience, ConnectWise software solutions deliver the support companies want at each step of their business journey. For more information, visit www.ConnectWise.com. About Webroot

Webroot delivers next-generation endpoint security and network security and threat intelligence services to protect businesses and individuals around the globe. Our smarter approach harnesses the power of cloud-based collective threat intelligence derived from millions of real-world devices to stop threats in real time and help secure the connected world. Our award-winning SecureAnywhere endpoint solutions, BrightCloud Threat Intelligence Services, and FlowScape solution protect millions of devices across businesses, home users, and the Internet of Things. Webroot is trusted and integrated by market-leading companies, including Cisco, F5 Networks, Aruba, Palo Alto Networks, A10 Networks, and more. Headquartered in Colorado, Webroot operates globally across North America, Europe, and Asia. Discover Smarter Cybersecurity solutions at www.webroot.com.

Social Media: Twitter | LinkedIn | YouTube | Facebook 2017 Webroot Inc. All rights reserved. Webroot, SecureAnywhere, Webroot SecureAnywhere, Webroot BrightCloud, BrightCloud, and Smarter Cybersecurity are trademarks or registered trademarks of Webroot Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks are properties of their respective owners. To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/webroot-and-connectwise-expand-partnership-to-help-customers-reduce-web-browsing-risks-300469956.html SOURCE Webroot

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YEREVAN.  Vice President of the National Assembly (NA) Armenia, Eduard Sharmazanov, on Wednesday received Kazakh Ambassador Timur Urazaev.

Lauding the current Armenian-Kazakh relations, Sharmazanov underscored the further development of bilateral parliamentary ties, the NA informed Armenian News-NEWS.am.

Also, the deputy speaker of Armenias parliament reflected on the Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) conflict, and stressed that both Armenia and Artsakh see a resolution of this conflict solely through peace talks.

In the context of regional security, Sharmazanov pointed to Turkeys closing its border with Armenia, and stated that having closed borders is a major regional threat.

In addition, the NA vice president attached importance to Armenian-Kazakh cooperation within international organizations.

Ambassador Urazaev, in turn, hailed the MPs contributions to the development of interstate relations.

The diplomat reaffirmed that Kazakhstan favors a pacific settlement to the Karabakh conflict and supports the respective activities by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group.

Speaking on the parliamentary election which Armenia conducted in April, the ambassador noted that the observers from Kazakhstan gave a positive assessment to this voting.

Furthermore, Eduard Sharmazanov and Timur Urazaev discussed the Armenian community in Kazakhstan.
The Arabic countries, which have recently made statements on punishing Iran, may be linked to the terrorist attacks that took place in Iran on Wednesday.

Editor of Iran-based Armenian weekly Arax, Movses Keshishian, told the aforementioned to Armenian News  NEWS.am.

In his words, todays terrorist attack could be expected after the different statements made regarding Iran recently.

''It was expected: there have long been talks on that Iran should get under blow. The threats came from different placesstarting from Daesh to other Arabic countries, which threatened Iran. A statement was even made by Saudi Arabia MFA on that Iran should be warned and punished for its stance. Of course, I don't say that they are linked with all this, but one can directly or indirectly think that they might be interconnected,'' he said.

Referring to the reasons behind the terrorist attack in Iran, Keshishian noted: ''With this step attempt is made to put pressure on Iran, especially since there has recently been much talk on that Iran defends the terrorists. Terrorist attack is carried out in Iran like in European countries. But we know that in Europe, Syria and Lebanon, Iran has always resisted terrorists, it being apparent that there is a wish to put pressure on Iran. I can also say that this is a step to reduce the security in the region.''

According to Keshishian, the ISIS terrorist group cannot get established in Iran and have certain influence in the country. In his words, the masterminds behind the terrorist attack were Sunnis, who went to Iran from Morocco, mainly Shias residing in Iran.

''It is a little hard to imagine that Iran will be able to have strong presence in Iran, especially in the central regions of Iran, since Daesh members are mainly sunnis, there being mainly Shias in Iran. The people behind today's terrorist attack in Iran were mainly Arabs from Marrakesh. The specialists claim their talks and accent were close to Moroccan. There is also one detainee, who is also an Arab, that is they have come from abroad,'' the editor noted.

Gunmen and suicide bombers on Wednesday carried out attacks on Irans parliament and the mausoleum of revolutionary founder Ruhollah Khomeini in capital city Tehran, killing 12 people and injuring over 30 others.

The Islamic State militant group has claimed responsibility for these attacks.
Federal Enforcement Still Weak, NPR's Berkes Says

Having investigated the Upper Big Branch mine disaster, grain bin deaths, and the erosion of workers' compensation protections, he says the agencies and prosecutors dont enforce strongly enough, and workers suffer.

SEATTLE  NPR's Howard Berkes delivered the 17th Annual Upton Sinclair Memorial Lecture at the AIHce EXP conference on June 6, focusing on coal miners, grain industry workers, and workers' compensation protections  or the lack of them. Berkes, NPR's correspondent for investigations and its chief reporter on the April 5, 2010, Upper Big Branch mine disaster in West Virginia, said federal enforcement was then and still remains too weak and hamstrung by the fact that even willful actions that result in a worker's death on the job cannot be prosecuted as felony crimes.

Berkes was not present to deliver the lecture in person, appearing via a video link because he'd given a speech elsewhere while accepting an award the prior day. But he spoke to an appreciative audience that filled a meeting room inside the Washington State Convention Center here.

He discussed the months-long investigation of the mine explosion and the role of journalists in uncovering the causes of such calamities and the failures by various parties behind them. NPR reported that MSHA had not collected millions of dollars in fines assessed for violations by some mine companies, and the coverage showed that miners were at greater risk working in mines that racked up unpaid fines, he said. "What point is there to a regulatory system if it's not enforced?" he said. "They [MSHA] were quite defensive when we pointed it out."

He said a U.S. Department of Labor OIG audit of the unpaid fines will be issued soon.

It was the mine disaster that got Berkes interested in investigating workplace safety, he said. He investigated grain bin deaths, including the 26 that occurred in 2010, and found that OSHA fines also weren't deterring violations as intended. "Five hundred people have drowned in grain in the last 40 years," he said. "Our investigation found that in the worst cases . . . the penalties were cut 40 to 90 percent most of the time," and that most OSHA fines for grain bin violations were reduced.

"The [U.S.] Justice Department has an entire division devoted to environmental crimes. There is no division for workplace safety," he said.

He also investigated workers' compensation protections in Oklahoma and Texas when those states allowed employers to opt out of maintaining coverage if they chose to do so. (Texas still allows this, while Oklahoma's law allowing it has been found unconstitutional by the state's highest court, he said.) The investigation found that the disability protections those states provided to workers when their company did opt out were inferior to the comp benefits that had existed before, Berkes said.
The number of populations of Acacia dealbata or mimosas in the northwest of the peninsula has increased in a concerning manner over the last few years and the space occupied by this species is ever greater. Credit: Michele Adami

The legume Acacia dealbata, also known as mimosa, is one of the most aggressive invasive tree species in the world. In the northwest of the peninsula its propagation is an increasingly serious problem since it is penetrating unaltered plant communities, according to a study by the University of Vigo and the University of Coimbra (Portugal). Scientists stress the important role of fires in their dispersal and conclude that natural scrubland could be an effective barrier to slowing down rapid invasion.

The number of populations of Acacia dealbata or mimosas in the northwest of the peninsula has increased in a concerning manner over the last few years and the space occupied by this species is ever greater. This increase is occurring considerably both in disturbed areas and in peri-urban areas, proximities to communication routes -roads and railways- and in forest plantations of eucalyptus and conifers, such as pine.

Scientists from the University of Vigo (UVigo) and the University of Coimbra (Portugal) have studied the behaviour of this species to evaluate whether the growth of mimosas is related to environmental factors in unaltered scrublands and pine forests in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula.

"The A. dealbata invasion process is favoured mainly by environmental disturbances. However, we have detected that this species is invading plant communities that had been unaltered until now and the environmental factors that influence its propagation in these ecosystems continue to be unclear," Jonatan Rodriguez, researcher at UVigo and co-author of the study, told SINC.

The researchers put in place permanent sample plots along the edge of the invasion in each plant community and recorded the increases in the height and diameter of the stem in marked specimens over two years. The number of new acacia trees was recorded at the end of the study.

Some of the environmental factors that were assessed were the physiochemical properties of the soil, the native plant cover and the characteristics of the plot, in order to determine their effect on the growth of invasive trees. "We found a different growth pattern in the mimosas depending on the plant community studied," indicated the researcher.

The pine forests had mimosas with significantly greater height and diameter increases and a greater number of new acacias than the scrublands. Furthermore, it was found that spring favours the growth of the invasive species in pine forests, while growth does not vary throughout the year in scrublands.

"With regard to the environmental parameters that influence the growth of A. dealbata we found a negative effect of light and direction of the plot, but also a positive effect with regard to potassium content in the soil and the elevation of the plot," said the researcher.

Can we put an end to the invasion?

The impacts caused by this species are well-known: reduction of light in the underbrush and of the availability of water in the soil causes soil acidification, increases the soil's nutrient content, alters microbial communities and the enzymatic activities of the soil, and decreases the native plant cover, as well as the diversity of species in the underbrush.

The weather conditions in Galicia, similar to those of its place of origin in Australia, help this species to become established and naturalised. Furthermore, other studies highlight the importance of other factors, such as the releasing of natural enemies and mutualistic relationships with other organisms, which help the mimosa to advance in an invasive manner.

"As an observation outside the study, we also saw that winter frosts can affect it considerably, particularly in the flowering period. However, its ability to acclimatise allows it to live at heights that it does not reach in its place of origin. In fact, in A Serra de O Courel we found it at 1000m," said the scientist.

Until today, various studies have dealt with the control of this species through mechanical control along with the application of herbicide to the stump, which has been very effective. "Another technique being carried out in Portugal, and which we are trying out in Galicia, is the stripping of the tree bark so that the root dries out and the tree subsequently dies," explained Rodriguez.

In addition to these control techniques, it is important to highlight the ecosystem conservation work and avoid exotic forest plantations. The environmental factors that occur in a well-conserved scrubland reduce the speed of growth and the appearance of new acacia individuals in comparison with the pine forest conditions.

The team of scientists concluded that the natural scrubland could be an effective barrier for slowing down the rapid invasion of mimosas and it suggests that their management in pine forests must have preferential treatment in southwestern Europe.

"They are suffering similar problems throughout Portugal with the invasion of various acacia species. As such, we consider that it would be important to join forces to tackle the problem and make it impact the whole peninsula, since plants don't have borders," concluded the expert.

More information: Jonatan Rodriguez et al. Different growth strategies to invade undisturbed plant communities byAcacia dealbataLink, Forest Ecology and Management (2017). DOI: 10.1016/j.foreco.2017.05.007 Journal information: Forest Ecology and Management
[June 07, 2017] EV Pioneer Alta Motors Closes $27M, Takes the Lead in Lightweight Electric Mobility Sector

BRISBANE, Calif., June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Today Alta Motors, the leader in global lightweight electric vehicles, announced it has closed a total of $27 million of preferred stock in its latest rounds of financing led by Grassy Creek Ventures, who is joined in the latest round by Mountain Nazca and motorcycle industry legend, Bob Fox, among others. In addition to supporting the expansion of its existing manufacturing and R&D facility in Brisbane, CA, the funds will enable the company to further refine its lightweight vehicle technology and solidify its leadership in the growing $125B+ global lightweight vehicle market (LWV). New board members include Travis Bradford, Professor of Practice and Director of the Energy and Environment graduate program at Columbia University, and Hector Sepulveda, Managing Partner at Mountain Nazca. As global transportation undergoes a massive shift from combustion engines towards electrification, innovations in energy storage, powertrain design and vehicle architecture are radically transforming the heavy and medium duty fleet markets. Founded in stealth in 2010, Alta has set its sights on tapping into one of the largest and fastest growing global markets: lightweight transportation. Over the last five years, it has developed a holistic mobility platform capable of servicing multiple sectors within the fast-growing transportation economy. It now leads the industry with a complete potfolio of proprietary battery and drivetrain components, an existing fleet of lightweight vehicles manufactured at its world-class Brisbane facility and a full customer backlog.



"Alta has taken a Trojan horse approach to this market since its inception, delivering a robust and exciting motorcycle into the performance off-road segment. But underneath, Alta has quietly achieved amazing success in advanced core vehicle technologies including the highest energy density of any commercialized pack in transportation, even Tesla's," said Bradford. "It now holds a portfolio of patents for its proprietary battery pack, drivetrain, and chassis technologies. The fundamental advantage of this IP is that it gives Alta both performance/cost and performance/weight ratios that put it years ahead of the rest of the industry, and all of this technology is now commercialized and vetted in the most demanding environment a vehicle can face. Pretty impressive stuff." After establishing an early dominance in the electric motorcycle sector, Alta is now continuing to push the industry forward by offering the highest energy density in the lightweight EV mobility market today. Currently, Alta's commercialized battery pack is capable of 185Wh/kg and the company plans to achieve 225Wh/kg in commercial production by 2020. Its technology has transformative implications for the entirety of the $125B high-growth LWV Market, which includes mopeds, scooters, motorcycles, tuk-tuks, side-by-sides, urban autonomous vehicles, and delivery drones.

"Not since Soichiro Honda took on the American and British marques in the 60s and 70s has the industry seen this level of disruption, and Alta is leading that charge," said Bob Fox, Founder of FOX Racing Shox Inc. "In just a few short years, it's accomplished what has taken others decades to execute on, from breaking ground on a high-tech, vertically-integrated manufacturing facility to the launch and serial production of its groundbreaking Redshift electric vehicle platform." "After demonstrating our drivetrain and battery solutions in demanding off-road conditions, we now have an electric mobility platform that offers broad applicability to other product classes, from urban transport to utility vehicles," said Marc Fenigstein, CEO and Co-Founder of Alta Motors. "As traditional automotive loses its transportation crown, this is a pivotal moment for us and for the industry; we are breaking barriers in storage, powertrain and vehicle design. With the support of our incredible set of investors and our world-class team, our sights are set on becoming the de facto platform for the new frontier of lightweight electric transportation." About Alta Motors

Alta Motors is a global leader in lightweight electric vehicles with a proprietary mobility platform that offers new levels of power density and economics. It leads the industry with a complete portfolio of battery and drivetrain components, an existing fleet of lightweight vehicles manufactured at its world-class Brisbane facility and a full customer backlog. Please visit us at: www.altamotors.co Media contact

[email protected] To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ev-pioneer-alta-motors-closes-27m-takes-the-lead-in-lightweight-electric-mobility-sector-300469935.html SOURCE Alta Motors

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Credit: National Research University Higher School of Economics

Altruism based on individual values is changing Western society. People in Western countries have seen a rise in individualism for quite some time, and this in turn helps to create generations of people with altruistic mindsets. Christian Welzel, Chief Research Fellow in the Laboratory for Comparative Social Research (HSE and Leuphana University of Luneburg), teamed up with researchers from the University of Lausanne to conduct a study showing the connection between emancipative values and prosocial behaviour. The results of the study were published in the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology.

According to Ronald Inglehart's theory of modernization, increased wealth and security in Western countries is leading to a shift in values from collectivism to individualism. People start valuing power and authoritarianism less, while freedom and the opportunity for self-expression become more important. In his book Freedom Rising, which was has recently been translated into Russian, Christian Welzel stresses the idea that growing individualism ultimately leads to prosocial behaviour. An emancipative attitude towards freedom, he says, is not egotistical - it stems from a priority for opportunity equality.

That is, tolerance towards various kinds of individuality is growing, while intolerance towards discrimination and human rights violations is also on the rise. New generations of altruists are ready to disinterestedly defend the rights of others, participate in charity work, volunteer, etc. This was confirmed by data from the World Value Survey (WVS).

But researchers go by the information that people give about themselves during interviews. Christian Welzel and his colleagues decided to conduct an additional test on their hypothesis with the help of practical experiments in which respondents from the sixth wave of WVS took part. The focus of attention was the relationship between prosocial behaviour and emancipative and secular values. It is with increased wealth and security that emancipative and secular values gain particular importance

Christian Welzel's concept of emancipative values includes components such as equality, freedom, autonomy, and self-expression (e.g., public expression of opinion). They reflect society's level of liberalisation - some people prefer political, civil, and sexual rights to obedience or patriarchy. Secular values are the opposite of traditional ones. In societies where these values prevail, people generally ascribe less importance to religion, authority, and traditional family values. At the same time, things like divorce, abortion, euthanasia, etc. become relatively acceptable and/or available.

Respondents from the WVS's German sample took part in the experiment. According to the authors, Germany is an ideal research subject, as it houses a large proportion of the European population, has the largest economy, and has successfully made technological progress. At the same time, the socialist past is fresh in the country's memory (Eastern Germany), which impacts systems of values.

During the study, which took place online, economic experiments were carried out in which respondents were given several choices in different situations that required a contribution to be made towards a common cause or that required volunteer work. In one of the experiments, participants also had to show how they would act in relation to different resources at hand. Respondents were given the choice of effectively using and multiplying production at a virtual farm, simply maintaining production, and also taking (stealing) from others.

It was confirmed that those with emancipative values are inclined to make a more serious contribution to charity and social development. One's preparedness to make a donation is a clear indicator of altruism, the researchers noted. And in the current situation, altruism demonstrates a connection to emancipative values.

As for secular values, there is no clear connection here with altruism, though there is a connection with multiplying and preserving resources at a virtual farm, which involves certain risks. Those with secular values, however, rely on the idea that others will not conduct themselves asocially by, for instance, stealing resources.

Overall, Mr Welzel's hypothesis on so-called positive individualism was confirmed. The conclusions refute the idea that individual values foster egoistical behaviour. At a certain stage in the transition from collectivism to individualism, those with individualistic values arise, and these values focus exclusively on personal gains such as material wealth, career advancement, etc. But as for increased economic wealth, individual value systems are changing and moving towards human rights defence, freedom for self-determination, environmental protection, helping others, etc.

More information: Deborah Kistler et al, Survey Response and Observed Behavior: Emancipative and Secular Values Predict Prosocial Behaviors, Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology (2017). DOI: 10.1177/0022022117696799

Provided by National Research University Higher School of Economics
Long-tongued bumble bee queens of Bombus balteatus visit flowers of the alpine skypilot Polemonium viscosum. These large bees have a distinctive flight buzz, the bee version of a cargo-plane flying from flower to flower. Credit: Zoe Moffett, Colorado College

According to recent studies, declines in wild and managed bee populations threaten the pollination of flowers in more than 85 percent of flowering plants and 75 percent of agricultural crops worldwide. Widespread and effective monitoring of bee populations could lead to better management; however, tracking bees is tricky and costly. Now, a research team led by the University of Missouri has developed an inexpensive acoustic listening system using data from small microphones in the field to monitor bees in flight. The study, published today in PLOS ONE, shows how farmers could use the technology to monitor pollination and increase food production.

"Causes of pollinator decline are complex and include diminishing flower resources, habitat loss, climate change, increased disease incidence and exposure to pesticides, so pinpointing the driving forces remains a challenge," said Candace Galen, professor of biological science in the MU College of Arts and Science. "For more than 100 years, scientists have used sonic vibrations to monitor birds, bats, frogs and insects. We wanted to test the potential for remote monitoring programs that use acoustics to track bee flight activities."

First, the team analyzed the characteristic frequencieswhat musicians call the pitchof bee buzzes in the lab. Then, they placed small microphones attached to data storage devices in the field and collected the acoustic survey data from three locations on Pennsylvania Mountain, Colorado, to estimate bumble bee activity.

Using the data, they developed algorithms that identified and quantified the number of bee buzzes in each location and compared that data to visual surveys the team made in the field. In almost every instance, the acoustic surveys were more sensitive, picking up more buzzing bees.

Bombus balteatus queen collecting nectar from the alpine clover, Trifolium parryi. The buzzes of bees flying from flower to flower tell scientists how much pollination the clover population is getting over time and predict seed production in these alpine wildflowers. Credit: Jennifer Geib, Appalachian State University

"Eavesdropping on the acoustic signatures of bee flights tells the story of bee activity and pollination services," Galen said. "Farmers may be able to use the exact methods to monitor pollination of their orchards and vegetable crops and head off pollination deficits. Finally, global 'citizen scientists' could get involved, monitoring bees in their backyards."

Currently, using the algorithms developed in this study, the team is developing a smartphone app that could record buzz activity as well as document the bees photographically. Future studies could determine whether bees detect competitors by sound and whether flowers have chemical responses to bee buzzes, Galen said.

The study, "Flight of the bumble bee: buzzes predict pollination services," was published in PLOS ONE.

More information: Nicole E. Miller-Struttmann et al. Flight of the bumble bee: Buzzes predict pollination services, PLOS ONE (2017). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0179273 Journal information: PLoS ONE
The Gulf Stream

The 2004 disaster movie "The Day After Tomorrow" depicted the cataclysmic effectssuperstorms, tornadoes and deep freezes resulting from the impacts of climate change. In the movie, global warming had accelerated the melting of polar ice, which disrupted circulation in the North Atlantic Ocean, triggering violent changes in the weather. Scientists pooh-poohed the dire scenarios in the movie, but affirmed that climate change could indeed affect ocean circulationcould it shut down the Gulf Stream?

The many ocean currents and wind systems that move heat from the equator northwards towards the poles then transport the cold water back towards the equator make up the thermohaline circulation. (Thermo refers to temperature while haline denotes salt content; both factors determine the density of ocean waters.) It is also called the Great Ocean Conveyor, a term coined in 1987 by Wallace Broecker, Newberry Professor of Geology in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University and a scientist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. Broecker theorized that changes in the thermohaline circulation triggered dramatic changes in the North Atlantic during the last ice age.

In the high latitudes, the cold water on the surface of the ocean gets saltier as some water evaporates and/or salt is ejected in the forming of sea ice. Because saltier colder water is denser and thus heavier, it drops deep into the ocean and moves along the depths until it can rise to the surface near the equator, usually in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Heat from the sun then warms the cold water at the surface, and evaporation leaves the water saltier. The warm salty water is then carried northwards; it joins the Gulf Stream, a large powerful ocean current that is also driven by winds. The warm salty water travels up the U.S. east coast, then crosses into the North Atlantic region where it releases heat and warms Western Europe. Once the water releases its heat and reaches the North Atlantic, it becomes very cold and dense again, and sinks to the deep ocean. The cycle continues. The thermohaline circulation plays a key role in determining the climate of different regions of the earth.

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, part of the thermohaline circulation which includes the Gulf Stream, is the ocean circulation system that carries heat north from the tropics and Southern Hemisphere until it loses it in the northern North Atlantic, Nordic and Labrador Seas, which leads to the deep sinking of the colder waters.

Because the thermohaline circulation is mainly driven by differences in the water's density, it depends upon the cold dense waters that sink into the deep oceans. Global warming can affect this by warming surface waters and melting ice that adds fresh water to the circulation, making the waters less saline; this freshening of the water can prevent the cold waters from sinking and thus alter ocean currents.

As the planet warms, more and more fresh water is entering the system. In 2016, the extent of Greenland's melting sea ice set a new record low. That May, the Arctic lost about 23,600 square miles of ice daily, compared to the long-term average loss of 18,000 square miles per day. A study by Marco Tedesco, a research professor at Lamont-Doherty specializing in Greenland, and colleagues suggested that a reduction in the temperature difference between the polar and temperate regions (the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet) pulled the jet stream air currents northwards. The warm moist air it carried hovered over Greenland, causing the record melting.

So far this year, Tedesco said, "The melting in Greenland is within the mean, but it's still above the average of what was happening 20 years agoThe snow melt from Siberia has also been melting sooner, there's been more fresh water from Greenland, there's more fresh water from sea ice in the Arctic Ocean and more fresh water from North Canada which has been melting at an increasing rate. All these factors are pointing in the direction of increasing the freshwater discharge in the North Atlantic section of the Arctic. It's very likely going to have an impact."

In addition to warming temperatures accelerating Greenland's melting, the snow and ice are being darkened by black carbon, (reducing their reflectivity and warming the snow), and wind-blown algae and bacteria that are growing in holes in the ice. "More biological activity implies darker surfaces which in turn implies more melting," said Tedesco. "But I think there is still not enough knowledge to properly project [what the impacts could be]We know there is an impact and it's important to quantify that impact because we need to know what the processes that we need to consider are to do proper projections."

A 2015 study hypothesized that fresh water, which increased in the northern Atlantic by more than 4,500 cubic miles (19,000 km3) between 1961 and 1995, weakened the deep water formation of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, particularly after 1975. The circulation has slowed between 15 and 20 percent in the 20th century, an anomaly unprecedented over the last millennium, which suggests it is not due to natural variability. The scientists hypothesized that this could explain why, in 2014, a specific patch in the middle of the North Atlantic was the coldest on record since 1880 while global temperatures everywhere else were increasing. The study suggested that the unusual cooling of this region could be due to a weakening of the global conveyor that is already occurring. (It seems to have made a partial recovery since 1990.)

Michael Mann, Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science at Penn State University, one of the study's authors, noted that if the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation were to totally collapse over the next few decades, it would change ocean circulation patterns, influence the food chain, and negatively impact fish populations. We would not return to very cold conditions, however, because the oceans have taken up so much heat.

Greenlands ice cap is darkening. Credit: State of the Planet

Another 2015 study that modeled a hypothetical slowdown or collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation concluded that a collapse could result in widespread cooling throughout the North Atlantic and Europe (though this would be somewhat mitigated by global warming), increased sea ice in the North Atlantic, changes in tropical precipitation patterns, stronger North Atlantic storms, reduced precipitation and river flow as well as reduced crop productivity in Europe. These effects would impact many regions around the globe.

Sea levels would be affected as well. Currently sea levels are lower on the U.S. east coast because waters east of the Gulf Stream, closer to Europe, are warmer and expand, so sea levels there are higher. If the Gulf Stream is weakened, the temperature differential between the two sides is reduced, so sea levels will rise on the west of the Gulf Stream along the U.S. east coast and the North Atlantic. In fact, sea levels along the coast and the Gulf of Mexico are rising faster than in any other part of the U.S, and some data suggests that it is because the Gulf Stream has already begun to slow down. Other research attributed a jump in sea level rise from New York to Newfoundland from 2009 to 2010 to the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation slowing down 30 percent in the same period, as well as unusual wind currents that pushed ocean waters towards the coast.

Not all scientists agree that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation is slowing or that if it is, the phenomenon is caused by human induced global warming. A 2016 study suggested that while a great deal of fresh water has been discharged from Greenland, it's difficult to track what happens to it because of eddies and currents. This research concluded that most of Greenland's meltwater moves southward, and what remains of the fresh water is not enough to affect the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. The scientists did acknowledge, however, that the ongoing rapid melting of Greenland and increases of fresh water could eventually affect it.

The bottom line is that the thermohaline circulation is a very complex system and scientists do not yet understand all the variables involved in how it functions. There is an ongoing debate about why the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation has weakened and how much is due to the effects of human activity on the climate.

In the Earth's past, scientists have seen evidence of large inputs of fresh water into the North Atlantic from melting glaciers and ice caps as well as changes in the thermohaline circulation during transitions in and out of glacial periods. Global warming could potentially cause a thermohaline circulation shutdown and subsequent regional cooling, but because Earth will continue to warm as a result of greenhouse gas emissions, it would not produce another Ice Age. If the thermohaline circulation shut down, cooling would likely occur only in regions that are currently warmed by the ocean conveyor. And even if the thermohaline circulation did shut down, winds would still likely drive the Gulf Stream; however, there would be less warm water from the tropics and the Gulf Stream could become cooler and not reach as far north.

Sea levels are rising fast at Assateague in MD and VA. Credit: State of the Planet

The 5th assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says, "the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation is generally projected to weaken over the next century in response to increase in atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions. Overall, it is likely that there will be some decline in the AMOC by 2050, but decades during which the AMOC increases are also to be expected."

According to Broecker, although reorganizations of ocean circulation are at the core of what happened in the past, we cannot say what the likelihood is that warming due to greenhouse gases will trigger yet another large and abrupt change. But if it were to occur, the consequences would be far less severe since, in the past, large existing expanses of sea ice were significant players in cooling the planet. "A conveyor shutdown is not likely," said Broecker. "But if it happened, it would be ten times less dramatic and important than what happened during the glacial period when it caused a 10C temperature change."

"We are monitoring the strength of deep water going south," he said. "And we are finding large seasonal changes and interannual changesIt's a complicated system and we can't make any predictions."

"The important thing is to understand better what is happening, by when it's happening and what the potential implications will be," said Tedesco. "Our priority is to better estimate the behavior of the Arctic and its connections to the temperate part of the planet in the short and long termThe question is not if things are going to change, the thing is how fast and when are they going to change, and what are the changes we're going to see. There are changes at the local scale that are occurring on a much shorter time frame, and changes in the long-term that could include the shutdown of the ocean circulation. We need to understand the processes to properly build the models [to make projections]."

Provided by Earth Institute, Columbia University

This story is republished courtesy of Earth Institute, Columbia University: blogs.ei.columbia.edu .
Tim Wigbels (left) and Dr. Julio Pastrana (right) with their weed recognition software which is detecting a plant and how the laser system is shooting and damage its foliage. Credit: Volker Lannert/Uni Bonn

A robot automatically identifies weeds in a field and combats them with a short laser pulse. Sustainable agriculture, which avoids the use of herbicides as far as possible, could benefit from this smart idea. Dr. Julio Pastrana and Tim Wigbels from the Institute of Geodesy and Geoinformation at the University of Bonn are convinced of this. With an EXIST Business Start-up Grant from the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, the scientists are now driving forward the development of this practical tool for field work.

Those who want a rich harvest need to drive back weeds so that the crops can grow better. In organic agriculture, herbicides are ruled out as they are considered toxic chemicals, and unwanted plants must be laboriously weeded out. If the expectations of Dr. Julio Pastrana and Tim Wigbels are correct, this time-consuming work can soon be taken care of by robots.

Laser-based weed control can eliminate herbicides

The computer scientists in the Photogrammetry Laboratory at the Institute for Geodesy and Geoinformation at the University of Bonn are currently developing a novel system: using cameras on an all-terrain robot vehicle or even a tractor add-on, unwanted wild weeds should be automatically identified in the various crops and combatted in a targeted way. "The robot shoots the leaves of the unwanted plants with short laser pulses, which causes a weakening in their vitality," reports Dr. Pastrana. "It is thus predicted that we will no longer need to use herbicides on our fields and the environment will be protected," adds Wigbels.

Before forming the start-up, Dr. Pastrana worked in robotics and researched automated image interpretation techniques with Prof. Cyrill Stachniss from the Institute of Geodesy and Geoinformation at the University of Bonn. Dr. Pastrana completed his doctorate on the detection and classification of weeds with the aid of statistical models at Leibniz Universitat Hannover and built an earlier version of the robot there with a colleague. Wigbels studied Computer Engineering at RWTH Aachen University and then worked in software development within a company.

The researchers are now pushing forward their start-up "Escarda Technologies" for one year at the University of Bonn with an EXIST grant from the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. "It is now a case of finding investors and further developing the business plan for the start-up," says Wigbels. The researchers are also using the funding from the Ministry to buy the parts needed to construct a prototype.

Prof. Stachniss is supporting the start-up in various ways: Pastrana and Wigbels can thus use laboratories at the institution and consult with colleagues there. What's more, Rudiger Wolf from Technology Transfer at the University of Bonn helped the start-up to submit the application for the EXIST funding. "The advice was very helpful," says Dr. Pastrana, delighted. Both scientists would also like to participate in the start-up round tables organized by Technology Transfer in order to benefit from the experience of other start-ups. The EXIST grant also enables them to attend training programs to prepare them for the challenges of independence.

"The idea combines innovative robots with a current sustainability topic," says transfer advisor Rudiger Wolf. He says the analyses of the market and competition for such an application are sound. Pastrana is convinced of the benefits of the laser-based technique for new agricultural machinery: "Our aim is to contribute to achieving more sustainable agriculture." At the Bonn Idea Exchange by the Bonn/Rhein-Sieg Chamber of Commerce and Industry, both founders won an award for the best start-up idea.
X-ray photograph of a coral skeleton core, split in half, showing annual growth layers made up of a light and dark band. X-ray shows the top half of the skeleton core. Credit: Kiho Kim, Ph.D.

Coral reefs sustain marine life all over the world and protect its vulnerable coastlines. But the reefs are increasingly endangered, mainly because of pollution and rising ocean temperatures. Scientists, including American University's Kiho Kim are racing the clock to assess the true extent of the damage before it becomes irreversible. Today, new technologies are making it possible to see inside coral, to examine the skeleton cores for devastation caused by humans.

Kim and his team members are among the first to use a novel chemical technique to study coral skeletons to document the impacts from human activity. A new study published in Marine Pollution Bulletin explains how they did it in the U.S. territory of Guam, a small island nation undergoing dramatic ecological change.

"This study gives us a sense of how big the changes have been over the last 60 years and how population growth is leading to the degradation of the reefs," Kim said.

The researchers worked with coral on the eastern side of the island, in the Togcha River watershed, where a community's sewage plant dumps effluent into the river that then flows downstream to coastal coral reefs. The Togcha reef flat gets polluted from sewage-derived nitrogen from the plant and septic tank outflows. Coral disease is prevalent.

In Guam, as in many island nations, the biggest pollutant is sewage-derived nitrogen, due to poor wastewater infrastructure. Guam's sewage plants are old, effluent is not treated to the highest standards, and water samples routinely show sewage at amounts higher than government levels set for safe recreational waters in freshwater and marine environments.

Figuring out how much sewage-derived nitrogen contributes to coral reef degradation is challenging but important. Researchers must account for other stressors affecting coral, both natural and human-made, like the El Nino weather phenomenon and overfishing. The information scientists glean can help predict what's to come for the reefs of the future.

This is especially critical for Guam, where the island's population, currently 160,000, is set to grow by an estimated 40,000. This influx will occur when U.S. marines and their support services relocate from Japan. Though the marines have not yet moved, the U.S. government is working on plans, according to recent news reports. http://www.guampdn.com/story/news/2017/04/27/military-buildup-presses-while-cautious-historic-properties/100965786/

New technique

Coral reefs are among the most diverse ecosystems of the world's oceans. Communities depend on them for food, for the fish that live in them, and for tourism. They are under stress like never before. Many reefs are taking longer to recover from bleaching events, which occur when warm waters or pollution undermine the coral's ability to feed. Coral turns white and becomes more susceptible to disease. Recently, scientists discovered whole sections of Australia's Great Barrier Reef dead due to warm water temperatures.

When coral grow, they put down layers of skeleton the same way that tree rings grow over time. As waters warm due to climate change, scientists examine these layers to understand temperature changes on coral. Now scientists can study the coral layers for nitrogen pollution by using a new chemical technique, developed by researchers at Princeton, which allows more precise stable isotope analysis of coral skeleton. Kim and his colleagues extracted a single skeleton from a colony of massive coral near the mouth of the Togcha River, in water about six meters deep.

The nitrogen pollution the researchers recorded from the skeleton correlates with Guam's population increases over the last 60 years. Between 1960 and 1980 alone, Guam's population increased tenfold.

The coral skeleton core was extracted by using a 5.5-cm wide, hollow, diamond-tipped drill bit. In this instance, Kim and his team members used a high-pressure air drill attached to a scuba tank to remove a core 70 cm in length. Drilling may sound harsh, but it doesn't hurt the coral.

After extracting the core, which will not be put back, researchers capped the hole with a cement plug. They later observed the coral and found coral tissue growing over the plug, which indicated the coral's health hadn't been harmed.

Confronting coral reef decline

While climate change requires action on a global level, pollution is a local issue that can be addressed better infrastructure and policy, Kim said. Mitigation of nitrogen is critical to conserving the ecosystem of mangroves, seagrasses and corals in Guam's coastal waters.

"Coral reefs on Guam face the simultaneous challenges of multipleand sometimes conflictinguser needs and impacts from declining water quality. Yet they remain of critical importance to Guam's economy," Kim said. "This situation is common to tropical islands throughout the world. Lessons learned regarding coping with these challenges may provide guidance for other islands in the region."

"Life and death of a sewage treatment plant recorded in a coral skeleton 15N record," is authored by Nicholas N. Duprey, Xingchen T. Wang, Philip D. Thompson, Jeffrey E. Pleadwell, Laurie J. Raymundo, Kiho Kim, Daniel M. Sigman and David M. Baker.

More information: "Life and death of a sewage treatment plant recorded in a coral skeleton 15N record,"Marine Pollution Bulletin (2017). Journal information: Marine Pollution Bulletin
The perceptual process that creates funny mondegreens has the potential to cause wrongful convictions. Credit: shutterstock

We are all familiar with mondegreens. Even if you don't know the word, you'll have had the experience. Mondegreens are funny mishearingsfamously of song lyrics (think: "there's a bad moon on the rise" misheard as "there's a bathroom on the right").

Similar things occur with everyday speech (it's what turns for all intents and purposes into for all intensive purposes or an all-staff email into an all-star female).

Hearing things that aren't really there even extends to random stimuli. Some of you might recall the scandal of the McDonald's cussing Minion toys. They were speaking Minionese (nonsense prattle), but outraged parents heard swearwords: "well I'll be damned" and "what the fuck". Hundreds of others who clicked on the link heard them too.

And the more they listened, the clearer these obscenities became. Once you're told what to listen for, the brain is primed  and it's pretty much impossible not to hear it.

Mondegreens can be hilarious. But they have a darker side too.

Revealing the darker side of mondegreens

These days, many criminal trials feature evidence in the form of covert recordings (conversations lawfully captured by police without the knowledge of the speakers).

Covert recordings can be of extremely poor qualityand, as with those incomprehensible song lyrics, it's often hard to make out what is being said without the assistance of a transcript. But what if the transcript is misleading? What if it "assists" listeners to "mondegreen" an innocent remark into an admission of guilt?

Sound far-fetched? You might be surprised to learn that it has happened numerous times.

Amazingly enough, it is actually encouraged by everyday practice in our criminal justice system.

How can that be?

A High Court ruling made in 1987, and used since as a precedent in countless trials, allows indistinct covert recordings to be accompanied by a transcript.

That makes perfect sense  until you realise who creates the transcript.

Police provide their own transcripts, in the role of a so-called "ad-hoc expert"  someone with no real expertise but deemed to have "specialised knowledge" arising from familiarity with a particular case.

Transcription of indistinct audio is a highly specialised skill in which police have no training whatsoever. Even with the best of intentions, police transcripts are liable to be inaccurate and misleading.

Nevertheless, current Australian practice allows police transcripts to be given directly to the jury.

There are safeguards. The judge has to instruct jury members that they should listen carefully and form their own opinions of what is said, using the transcript only as an aid. The problem is that is not humanly possible.

Everyday experience, or an encounter with those potty-mouthed Minions, confirms research findings going back at least to the 1920s: listeners are highly susceptible to being primed by suggestions as to what they might hear. It's perfectly possible to listen carefully yet confidently hear words that were never spoken.

It's a special case of the suggestibility well known in legal contextsbut so irresistibly powerful that lawyers themselves get primed by misleading transcripts, even when accurate hearing would benefit their own clients.

The law, with no consultation of phonetic science, has developed a process in which detectives' knowledge of the case "assists" them to create misleading transcripts. Their transcripts then "assist" lawyers, judges and juries to interpret the audio.

Everyone believes they are "listening with their own ears". Mondegreens go unnoticed. The consequences can be catastrophic.

The risks of wrongful conviction

At Forensic Phonetics Australia, you can hear numerous examples of real covert recordings used in trials.

Read the case study of the murder trial where the only "direct" evidence was a single phrase in a police transcript. The phrase has since been shown, first, to be inaccurate and, second, nevertheless to exert a strong priming effect on listeners, who confidently use their hearing to draw conclusions about guilt.

Too late for that prisoner though. He recently died in prison, part-way through a 30-year murder sentence.

Or there's the case of the young mother who spent two years in custody based on a few isolated words detectives claimed to hear in the background of another conversation. And there are plenty more to explore.

These kinds of things sound unthinkable to citizens in a modern democracy, but they go unnoticed by lawyers familiar with the practices developed since the 1987 High Court ruling.

It's time for reform

Clearly, juries need a transcript to help them interpret poor-quality covert recordings. And, clearly, police insights should assist the process of creating the transcript. But just giving police transcripts direct to the jury? That's not fair to jurors, let alone defendants.

We need a proper process for handling covert recordings  one that ensures a reliable transcript accompanies indistinct audio.

That won't happen just from lawyers applying precedents. We need a full consultative process like the one that recently produced the excellent National Standards for Working with Interpreters in Courts and Tribunals.

A 30-year anniversary is an auspicious time to change a system that allows one person's mondegreen to be another person's jail sentence.

This piece was written with the assistance of Dr Helen Fraser, who runs Forensic Phonetics Australia.Dr Fraser is running a new forensic transcription experiment. Feel free to test your own hearing at this link: please participate in the find-the-phrase experiment.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
The skull of the phytosaur Rutiodon, (AMNH 1), on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Credit: David Moscato

The Triassic Period was a time of fantastic reptilian experimentation. Among archosaurs, there were the armored aetosaurs, the predatory rauisuchians, an abundance of early dinosaurs and near-dinosaurs, the ancestors of crocodilians, and more. Amidst all of this diversity, one of the most famous and widespread groups were the phytosaurs.

Phytosaurs are deceptively crocodile-like, with large bodies up to 6 meters or more, long toothy snouts, and sprawling limbs. But a closer examination reveals that they aren't crocodilian at all  their nostrils are near their eyes instead of at the tip of their snouts, for example  but exactly where they fit on the archosaur family tree is uncertain. And exactly how they came to be so croc-like is mysterious as well. Like many Triassic reptile groups, phytosaurs are preserved almost exclusively in Late Triassic rocks, and by that time they had already evolved their iconic features and become widespread across the Pangaean supercontinent. Their earlier years are unknown.

But the fog hanging over the early evolution of phytosaurs has lifted slightly with the discovery of a new species: Diandongosuchus fuyuanensis, the first known Middle Triassic phytosaur.

As its name suggests, Diandongosuchus was discovered in Fuyuan County in the Yunnan Province of China. It's an unusual animal, and was originally described in a 2012 paper as a member of another group of reptiles, the poposaurs. But Dr. Michelle Stocker of Virginia Tech wanted a closer look. "I had seen it in print first," she told me, "and realized from all of the figures that were in the paper that this looks really similar to phytosaurs."

Stocker spoke with me after presenting her research at the Triassic-Jurassic Research Symposium at the Bruce Museum last month.

Skull of Diandongosuchus fuyuanensis (ZMNH M8770), showing relevant cranial features shared with Phytosauria. Credit: Stocker et al (2017).

Sure enough, detailed inspection of the new fossil, published earlier this year, reveals that the limbs, shoulders, skull, and teeth all exhibit classic phytosaur features. But Diandongosuchus has a weird face. For one thing, its snout is noticeably shorter than those of Late Triassic phytosaurs. For another, its nostrils are not positioned up by the eyes as in its later cousins, but they also aren't out at the tip of the snout as in other archosaurs (and presumably the phytosaurs' earliest ancestors). Instead, they're located in between, partway along the snout.

With its unusual combination of traits, Diandongosuchus represents the first known transitional phytosaur.

Dating to the Ladinian stage of the Middle Triassic, it lived about 10 million years earlier than the next-oldest phytosaurs. Its post-cranium (everything behind the skull) and the back of its skull were already very much like what we see in Late Triassic phytosaurs, indicating that those features evolved early. But the familiar features of long snouts and larger body size seem to have been later innovations.

Stocker suspects this pattern of change reflects a change in phytosaurs' lifestyle. "In both crocodilians and phytosaurs there seems to be a trend of going from small-ish species that maybe aren't the top of the food chain to being very large semi-aquatic predators."

Notably, another feature that Diandongosuchus lacks is the zig-zag connection between upper jaw bones (the maxillary and premaxillary) that provides extra strength to the jaw, something seen only in later phytosaurs and crocodilians.

Holotype specimen of Diandongosuchus fuyuanensis (ZMNH M8770) in ventral view with relevant postcranial features shared with Phytosauria (in green) and elements with features not found in other phytosaurs (in orange). Credit: Stocker et al. (2017).

"We suspect that phytosaurs occupied near-shore marine environments," Stocker explained. "kind of like a Nile crocodile or saltwater crocodile does today." Diandongosuchus was discovered in the marine sediments of the Falang Formation  it even had the remains of fish in its stomach!  which suggests that these aquatic habits arose early in the phytosaur lineage. Following coastlines or even open water may have allowed them to reach the far corners of Pangea, from North America to China, early on in their history.

I should mention that there was another fossil, a partial skull from Germany named Mesorhinosuchus, which was at one time thought to be an Early Triassic phytosaur. However, the age of the specimen has been debated, and the fossil itself was unfortunately destroyed during World War II. For now, Diandongosuchus is the only window we have into early phytosaur history.

No doubt further early phytosaurs await discovery. Stocker and colleagues have been searching for many years in Early and Middle Triassic terrestrial sediments in the southwestern United States and Tanzania  indeed, I spoke to her just two days before she headed back out to the field  and are now thinking about adding more oceanic sites to the list.

"Expanding our search to other Early-Middle Triassic marine deposits might be a good idea to look for more of those early members of the group," she said.

This story is republished courtesy of PLOS Blogs: blogs.plos.org.
A wild red wolf. In a Technical Comment, Paul Hohenlohe and colleagues disagree with a July 2016 Science Advances paper that concluded red wolves and eastern wolves are recent hybrids between grey wolves and coyotes. Credit: Joseph Hinton

A team led by University of Idaho researchers is calling into question a widely publicized 2016 study that concluded eastern and red wolves are not distinct species, but rather recent hybrids of gray wolves and coyotes. In a comment paper that will publish Wednesday, June 7, in the journal Science Advances, the team examines the previous study and argues that its genomic data and analyses do not definitively prove recent hybridizationbut rather provide support for the genetic and evolutionary distinctiveness of red and eastern wolves.

"The history of these species is complex and certainly contains evidence for hybridization in the past. The question is timing," said Paul Hohenlohe, an assistant professor of biological sciences in the UI College of Science and the lead author of the comment paper. "The data and analyses aren't actually a good test of recent vs. older hybridization. In fact, the data are consistent with red and eastern wolves having a long evolutionary history as distinct lineages."

Hohenlohe co-authored the paper with an interdisciplinary team that included co-lead author Linda Rutledge, a research associate in the biology department at Trent University in Ontario, Canada; Lisette Waits, a Distinguished Professor in UI's College of Natural Resources Department of Fish and Wildlife Sciences; UI research scientist Jennifer Adams; UI postdoctoral researcher Kimberly Andrews; and other researchers from Trent, the University of Georgia and Northland College.

The team agrees with one conclusion of the previous study: Admixture is a part of the evolutionary history of North American canids, and conservation policy needs to take into account naturally occurring hybridization and population admixture. But they urge policymakers not to close the case on the origins of red and eastern wolves when making conservation decisions.

"Policymakers are making decisions about how much money, effort and energy to put into recovery and management efforts of the red wolf and eastern wolf," said Waits, who has served on U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recovery teams for the red wolf. "It is important for them to understand that the conclusions stated in the vonHoldt et al paper are not universally supported by the scientific community, and there are alternative interpretations and remaining questions about the evolutionary history of canids in North America."

Time-lapse camera trap footage of eastern wolves in Algonquin Park, Ontario. Credit: Linda Rutledge

The UI-led team addresses several concerns with the previous study, which was led by Princeton University's Bridgett vonHoldt and published in Science Advances in July 2016. The team questions the vonHoldt study's use of genomic data from a few individual coyotes and eastern wolves that may not be the best representatives of those groups, as well as the authors' conclusion that genomic data demonstrate a lack of unique ancestry in red and eastern wolves.

The team's review of the vonHoldt study's analyses of genomic data finds the data do not establish definitive evidence for a recent hybrid origin of red and eastern wolves, but rather are consistent with multiple evolutionary possibilities. These possibilities include red wolves originating from a hybridization event tens of thousands of years ago, or diverging as a distinct lineage as long as 100,000 years ago and experiencing some subsequent hybridization.

The UI-led team finds that other data from the previous study, such as the amount of unique genetic variation found only within red or eastern wolves, further support the genetic distinctiveness of these taxa.

Hohenlohe, Waits and their collaborators are conducting further analyses about red and eastern wolf origins, and expect to continue to generate new data and hypotheses about the evolutionary relationships among these species, the gray wolf and the coyote.

"Genomics is an exciting new contribution to wildlife conservation, but it brings with it a responsibility to provide a coherent interpretation of complex data within the context of natural history," Rutledge said. "This is especially important for species at risk of extinction where the consequences involve the permanent loss of evolutionary potential. We get closer to the evolutionary truth when we use a holistic approach that includes multiple sources of information."

More information: P.A. Hohenlohe el al., "Comment on 'Whole genome sequence analysis shows two endemic species of North American wolf are admixtures of the coyote and gray wolf'," Science Advances (2017). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1602250 , advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/6/e1602250 Journal information: Science Advances
Wet-chemically produced nanocrystals are becoming more and more powerful. They are already used in the background lighting of the latest generation of flat panel displays. In the future they will be used increasingly as active elements, which produce higher color brilliance. They are also used in other fields of application, e.g., for medical diagnosis and treatment. Now a research group around Dr. Christian Klinke from the University of Hamburg has succeeded in substantiating electronic spin effects in such nanoplatelets. In this way, more cost-effective and more powerful transistors and computer chips with lower power consumption are conceivable in the future. The two-dimensional materials are also advantageous since they can be produced inexpensively and on a large scale in a chemical laboratory and are nevertheless of the highest quality, as shown now.

The group around Dr. Christian Klinke focuses on the synthesis and characterization of two-dimensional semiconductor nanocrystals. The nanoplatelets are adjustable in their structure, but also in their optical and electrical properties (by quantum mechanical effects). This makes them interesting for application in solar cells and computer circuits.

In contrast to classical devices which work based on the electron motion, spintronic components function based on the spin orientation of electrons. When light passes through special optical elements, it can become circularly polarized, i. e. the light receives a torque. By the illumination with circular-polarized light, it is possible to align electrical charges with respect to their spin (torque) in semiconductor materials and to convert them into an electrical current without applying a voltage. Investigations on the generated current provide information about spin-dependent properties of the crystal.

The researchers have now succeeded in demonstrating this so-called Rashba effect in two-dimensional lead sulfide nanoplatelets. It is particularly interesting since this effect is normally not observed due to the high crystal symmetry of the nanoplatelets. Only by the influence of an effective electric field the symmetry is broken and a current can be measured. By varying the layer thickness of the nanoplatelets, the character of the light used, and the intensity of the electric fields, the effect could be controlled. This allows the conditions to be adapted specifically to the targeted applications, which enables the external manipulation of the electron spin. The experimental observations were supported with simulations of the electronic structure of the materials by the group of Prof. Carmen Herrmann at the University of Hamburg.

"The findings are particularly valuable as it was demonstrated for the first time that basic effects of electric spin transport are also possible in wet-chemically generated nanomaterials," says Christian Klinke. "This raises hope that also other interesting phenomena can be observed in these materials, which will contribute to improving our understanding of their properties." These new insights, which are described in detail in the journal Nature Communications, make a decisive contribution to our knowledge on opto-electronic properties of tailor-made nanostructures. They serve as a foundation for the further investigation of useful two-dimensional systems and their application in the field of regenerative energies, information technology, and catalysis.

Nanotechnology is a key technology of the 21st century. Materials with a size of only a few nanometers (one millionth of a millimeter) have particular optical, magnetic, electrical and photoelectric properties. They can be used in efficient light-emitting diodes, solar cells, novel sensors, photodetectors, flexible transistors, and efficient computer chips as well as in biological and medical fields. The understanding of the opto-electrical properties of nanostructures and their precise control allows the use in semiconductor electronics at the interface to optical and electromagnetic systems, which can lead to novel high-performance and energy-saving processors.

More information: Mohammad Mehdi Ramin Moayed et al, Towards colloidal spintronics through Rashba spin-orbit interaction in lead sulphide nanosheets, Nature Communications (2017). DOI: 10.1038/ncomms15721 Journal information: Nature Communications
This illustration reveals how the gravity of a white dwarf star warps space and bends the light of a distant star behind it. Credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Feild (STScI)

Albert Einstein predicted that whenever light from a distant star passes by a closer object, gravity acts as a kind of magnifying lens, brightening and bending the distant starlight. Yet, in a 1936 article in the journal Science, he added that because stars are so far apart "there is no hope of observing this phenomenon directly."

Now, an international research team directed by Kailash C. Sahu has done just that, as described in their June 9, 2017 article in Science. The study is believed to be the first report of a particular type of Einstein's "gravitational microlensing" by a star other than the sun.

In a related perspective piece in Science, entitled "A centennial gift from Einstein," Terry Oswalt of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University says the discovery opens a new window to understanding "the history and evolution of galaxies such as our own."

More specifically, Oswalt adds, "The research by Sahu and colleagues provides a new tool for determining the masses of objects we can't easily measure by other means. The team determined the mass of a collapsed stellar remnant called a white dwarf star. Such objects have completed their hydrogen-burning life cycle, and thus are the fossils of all prior generations of stars in our Galaxy, the Milky Way."

Oswalt, an astronomer and chair of the Department of Physical Sciences at Embry-Riddle's Daytona Beach, Florida campus, says further, "Einstein would be proud. One of his key predictions has passed a very rigorous observational test."

This time-lapse movie, made from eight Hubble Space Telescope images, shows the apparent motion of the white dwarf star Stein 2051 B as it passes in front of a distant star. The observations were taken between Oct. 1, 2013, and Oct. 14, 2015. The path of Stein 2051 B, due to its proper motion combined with its parallax due to the motion the Earth around the Sun, is shown by the wavy cyan line. Its proper motion in one year is shown by an arrow. Its parallax, enlarged by a factor of 5, is shown by an ellipse. Credit: NASA, ESA, and K. Sahu (STScI)

Understanding 'Einstein Rings'

The gravitational microlensing of stars, predicted by Einstein, has previously been observed. Famously, in 1919, measurements of starlight curving around a total eclipse of the Sun provided one of the first convincing proofs of Einstein's general theory of relativity - a guiding law of physics that describes gravity as a geometric function of both space and time, or spacetime.

"When a star in the foreground passes exactly between us and a background star," Oswalt explains, "gravitational microlensing results in a perfectly circular ring of light - a so-called 'Einstein ring.'"

Astronomers made the Hubble observations of the white dwarf, the burned-out core of a normal star, and the faint background star over a two-year period. Hubble observed the dead star passing in front of the background star, deflecting its light. During the close alignment, the distant starlight appeared offset by about 2 milliarcseconds from its actual position. This deviation is so small that it is equivalent to observing an ant crawl across the surface of a quarter from 1,500 miles away. From this measurement, astronomers calculated that the white dwarfs mass is roughly 68 percent of the suns mass. Credit: NASA, ESA, and K. Sahu (STScI)

Sahu's group observed a much more likely scenario: Two objects were slightly out of alignment, and therefore an asymmetrical version of an Einstein ring formed. "The ring and its brightening were too small to be measured, but its asymmetry caused the distant star to appear off-center from its true position," Oswalt says. "This part of Einstein's prediction is called 'astrometric lensing' and Sahu's team was the first to observe it in a star other than the Sun."

Sahu, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, took advantage of the superior angular resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). Sahu's team measured shifts in the apparent position of a distant star as its light was deflected around a nearby white dwarf star called Stein 2051 B on eight dates between October 2013 and October 2015. They determined that Stein 2051 B - the sixth-closest white dwarf star to the Sun - has a mass that is about two-thirds that of the sun.

"The basic idea is that the apparent deflection of the background star's position is directly related to the mass and gravity of the white dwarf - and how close the two came to exactly lining up," explains Oswalt.

This animation shows the motion of a white dwarf star passing in front of a distant background star. During the passage, the faraway star appears to change its position slightly, because its light path has been altered by the white dwarfs gravity. When the white dwarf Stein 2051 B passed in front of a background star, the distant stars light was offset by only about 2 milliarcseconds from its actual position. This deviation is so small that it is equivalent to observing an ant crawl across the surface of a quarter from 1,500 miles away. From this measurement, astronomers calculated that the white dwarfs mass is roughly 68 percent of the suns mass. Credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI)

Among astronomers, the findings are significant for at least three reasons, according to Oswalt:

First, the research "solves a long-standing mystery about the mass and composition of Stein 2051 B," he says.

Second, he notes, "Sahu's team nicely confirms astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar's 1930 Nobel Prize-winning theory about the relationship between the mass and radius of white dwarf stars. We now know that Stein 2051 B is perfectly normal; it's not a massive white dwarf with an exotic composition, as has been believed for nearly a century."

Third, Oswalt concludes, "This new tool for determining masses will be very valuable as huge new surveys uncover many other chance alignments over the next few years."

Looks can be deceiving. In this Hubble Space Telescope image, the white dwarf star Stein 2051B and the smaller star below it appear to be close neighbors. The stars, however, reside far away from each other. Stein 2051B is 17 light-years from Earth; the other star is about 5,000 light-years away. Stein 2051B is named for its discoverer, Dutch Roman Catholic priest and astronomer Johan Stein. Credit: NASA, ESA, and K. Sahu (STScI)

For the average star-gazer, he says, the findings are meaningful because "at least 97 percent of all the stars that have ever formed in the Galaxy, including the Sun, will become or already are white dwarfs - they tell us about our future, as well as our history."

Dr. Terry Oswalt discusses results from a new study by Sahu et al., reporting the first successful measurement of a stars weight using Einsteins theory of general relativity. Dr. Oswalt gives a physical demonstration using props to show how a stars gravity deflects light. Scientists can then use this deflection of light to calculate the weight of star. Credit: Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University / Robert H. Score

More information: K.C. Sahu el al., "Relativistic deflection of background starlight measures the mass of a nearby white dwarf star," Science (2017). science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi  1126/science.aal2879 "A centennial gift from Einstein," Science (2017). science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi  1126/science.aan2996 Journal information: Science

Provided by Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
[June 07, 2017] TapClicks Delivers More Power to Marketing Reports With Launch of Major Upgrade

SAN JOSE, Calif., June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Shortly after acquiring the popular privately-owned reporting platform Raven Tools and closing another round of funding, TapClicks, Inc. has launched a significant upgrade to its world-class marketing report platform. These new capabilities provide a supercharged report building experience, superior to any other solution on the market, with features found only in TapClicks. Babak Hedayati, CEO of TapClicks, said, "Our customers asked us to give them complete control of how they report their data and to make it easy to use. This new upgrade does just that. So far our customers have been extremely impressed by how well it works, how good it looks, and how intuitive the user interface is." Highlights of the TapClicks upgrade include: More reporting formats : Now, TapClicks offers even more reporting formats and customization options. The PDF Builder provides complete layout control so customers can send clients white-labeled PDF reports with custom images. Connections to Microsoft tools let users build on-brand Microsoft PowerPoint presentations with custom templates or export data to Microsoft Excel.

: Now, TapClicks offers even more reporting formats and customization options. The PDF Builder provides complete layout control so customers can send clients white-labeled PDF reports with custom images. Connections to Microsoft tools let users build on-brand Microsoft PowerPoint presentations with custom templates or export data to Microsoft Excel. New ways to collaborate and annotate with enhanced visualization: Targeted, precise visualization options support grouping, filtering, and drill downs into multiple data analytics levels that reveal fast-breaking trends through dozens of new plot options.

Targeted, precise visualization options support grouping, filtering, and drill downs into multiple data analytics levels that reveal fast-breaking trends through dozens of new plot options. More flexibility : The redesigned Report Builder lets users make live changes to marketing reporting widgets. Customers can resize, filter, and change almost every aspect of data displays in real time, pivoting between visualizations to find and show trends and insights.

: The redesigned Report Builder lets users make live changes to marketing reporting widgets. Customers can resize, filter, and change almost every aspect of data displays in real time, pivoting between visualizations to find and show trends and insights. Superharged interface for performance: Along with many engine enhancements to increase speed, the extended visual editor capability makes resizing and reordering Custom Dashboards faster.

Along with many engine enhancements to increase speed, the extended visual editor capability makes resizing and reordering Custom Dashboards faster. More automation, with alerts : In conjunction with the redesigned report builder and new export options, the latest release offers the ability to create custom Performance Alerts. Performance Alerts allow users to create personalized notifications from over 175 data connectors. These can be used to notify customers about key performance indicator (KPI) changes and other business-critical data.

: In conjunction with the redesigned report builder and new export options, the latest release offers the ability to create custom Performance Alerts. Performance Alerts allow users to create personalized notifications from over 175 data connectors. These can be used to notify customers about key performance indicator (KPI) changes and other business-critical data. More support for a wide variety of winning marketing solutions: TapClicks integrates over 150 popular marketing and advertising platforms.



The TapClicks analytics and reporting platform is preferred by large media companies and agencies worldwide. Discover more by visiting tapclicks.com. Stay tuned for more exciting information by following TapClicks on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

About TapClicks

Founded in 2009, TapClicks, Inc. is the leading marketing technology company for agencies, media companies, brands and enterprises, winning #87 in Inc. magazine's top 500 fastest growing companies. The TapClicks integrated Marketing Operations Platform solves the issues marketers have been facing for decades with workflow and order management, analytics, and automated reporting  all within a single intuitive user interface, and available on demand, in the cloud. TapClicks has delivered over 1,000,000 dashboards to over 10,000 brands and over 3,500 media companies and digital agencies worldwide. The TapClicks platform leverages over 150 native integrations with leading marketing and advertising platforms, giving users Instant-On access to reporting data. It rounds out its solution with the Import Wizard, which enables the platform to digest data from virtually any source. TapClicks operates out of offices in Silicon Valley, Boston, Nashville, Canada, Europe and Latin America. PR Contact

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A school of sardines in Italy. Credit: Wikimedia / Alessandro Duci

Noise from motorboats is making fish become bad parents, and reducing the chance of their young surviving, research led by marine experts at the University of Exeter has shown.

The sound of motorboat engines disturbed coral reef fish so acutely it changed the behaviour of parents, and stopped male fish properly guarding their young, feeding and interacting with their offspring.

The research, which involved playing recordings of natural reef noise or intermittent motorboat noise around 38 fish nests over 12 days, found that the death-rates of baby fish exposed to boat engine noise increased significantly, with six of the 19 boat-noise nests suffering complete mortality.

The Exeter University led team of marine biologists say that noise from boats is a 'global pollutant', distracting fish and making them unable to properly protect their young from predators. They believe motorboat noise should be factored in when trying to protect fish stocks and manage fisheries.

Dr Steve Simpson, an expert of the impact of noise on marine life at the University of Exeter.

"This study raises important implications for managing the noise of the 100,000s of motorboats used around the world in coral reef environments. We are now considering acoustic quiet zones and corridors, and exploring how engine and propeller development can reduce the impact of this globally prevalent pollutant."

The University of Exeter researchers predicted that their field research into the effect of man-made noise on coral fish could have wider implications for the survival of other marine species, and even birds and mammals. They called for more research in these areas.

Dr Sophie Nedelec, of the College of Life and Environmental Sciences at the University of Exeter, said she believed other species could be similarly affected by marine noise pollution.

"Parental care is widespread in the animal kingdom; from blue tits to blue whales, so there could be big implications for populations of animals affected by noise," she said.

Noise from boats and has already been shown to affect the way fish, mammals, birds and invertebrates behave. It can force them to change their habitat to get away from the noise and reduce their success finding a mate. Boat noise can travel for many kilometres underwater.

This new research, carried out by the University of Exeter, University of Bristol, James Cook University, Queensland, Australia, and the Australian Institute of Marine Science, showed motorboat noise can increase death rates among juvenile fish.

Dr Nedelec, lead author on the paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B journal, added:

"Parental care behaviour seems to be impaired in noisy conditions and we believe this makes it easier for predators to strike their offspring. It is likely the parents were either stressed or distracted by the noise, giving an advantage to the predators in this case."

The researchers made observations for 12 days of 38 natural nests with broods of young in the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. It found that exposure to recordings of noise from motorboats, compared to ambient sounds, had a noticeable impact on the survival of baby coral reef fish, and the behaviour of adult male fish.

Motorboat noise is the most common source of man-made noise in shallow reef environments. The University of Exeter scientists warned that because they broadcast the motorboat engine noise through underwater loudspeakers which do not broadcast the full range of sounds produced by motorboats their results could be conservative.

The males and female spiny chromis, a coral reef fish which lives in the tropical Western Pacific, bring up their offspring together, with males contributing more care than females of the species.

Fish exposed to the motorboat noise spent far more time chasing and making aggressive strikes at other fish, compared to males exposed to recordings of ambient sound. The scientists believe this increase in aggressive behaviour may have been be due to 'heightened stress', or distraction by the noise which led to decision-making errors, so the fish attacked or chased fish that were not a predatory threat.

The greater time spent "chasing inappropriate species at inappropriate times" also meant father fish spent less time near the nest, which may have left their offspring vulnerable to attacks from predators.

Adult fish exposed to the motorboat noise also spent less time feeding, which would have been likely to reduce their physical condition.

Another coral reef fish, the longear sunfish, was observed to move away from their nest when a slow-moving motorboat was nearby. Predators that have located a nest they can feed from are likely to return to hunt.

Other studies have shown that spawning could be interrupted by the approach of a fast moving powerboat.

Professor Andy Radford, University of Bristol, said: "Experiments that measure survival in natural conditions - as we have done in this study - are crucial if we are to understand fully the impact of anthropogenic noise."

The research is published on June 7th in Proceedings of the Royal Society B Journal.

More information: Motorboat noise impacts parental behaviour and offspring survival in the spiny chromis (Acanthochromis polyacanthus) , Proceedings of the Royal Society B, rspb.royalsocietypublishing.or  .1098/rspb.2017.0143 Journal information: Proceedings of the Royal Society B
The mouse lemurthe world's smallest primatehas the potential to transform the field of genetics and serve as an ideal model for a wide range of primate biology, behavior and medicine, including cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer's disease, Stanford University School of Medicine researchers say.

For decades, scientists have relied on mice, fruit flies and worms as genetic models, but despite all their success, these organisms routinely fail to mimic many aspects of primate biology, including many human diseases, said Mark Krasnow, MD, PhD, professor of biochemistry.

Frustrated by the lack of a good study model, Krasnow and his colleagues turned to the mouse lemur and began conducting detailed physiologic and genetic studies on hundreds of these petite, docile creatures in the rainforests of Madagascar.

Working in a Stanford-funded lab on the island country, the scientists report that they already have identified more than 20 individual lemurs with unique genetic traits, including obesity, high cholesterol, high blood sugar, cardiac arrhythmias, progressive eye disease and motor and personality disorders. Their hope is that continued study of these abundant primates could lead to a better understanding, and possibly better treatments, of these and other conditions in lemurs and humans.

'Huge potential'

"I think mouse lemurs have great potential for our understanding of primate biology, behavior and conservation, in the same way that fruit flies and mice over the last 30 or 40 years have transformed our understanding of developmental biology and many other areas of biology and medicine," Krasnow said. "Some of the most fascinating and important questions that need to be answered are primate-specific. For those, we really need something besides humans to complement the work that has been done in fruit flies and mice."

A paper describing the researchers' findings will be published online June 9 in Genetics. Krasnow is the senior author. Lead authorship is shared by graduate student Camille Ezran and postdoctoral scholar Caitlin Karanewsky.

The project began in 2009 when Krasnow, frustrated by the lack of a good animal model for lung diseasehis area of expertisecommissioned three high school interns to search the animal world for something better. By the end of the summer, the interns had come up with the mouse lemur, which fits all the necessary criteria: Like mice, these animals are small (about twice the size of a mouse), develop quickly, reproduce rapidly, produce many offspring, and are inexpensive and easy to maintain and manage. In genetic terms, the mouse lemur is about midway between humans and mice, Krasnow said.

"When I talk to scientists, their faces light up when I tell them about mouse lemurs because they are about the size of a mouse but they are primates, so that makes a huge difference," said Ezran, who was one of the high school interns. "I think they really do present such great potential for biological, behavioral and medical research in general."

Early on in the project, Krasnow sought out the perspective of Stanford veterinarians, ultimately recruiting Megan Albertelli, DVM, PhD, assistant professor of comparative medicine. A geneticist and primate specialist, Albertelli said she was initially skeptical of the idea of lemurs as animal models, but soon became enthusiastic after realizing their enormous potential for contributions in understanding neurologic problems, eye disease and other conditions where mouse models have fallen short.

Trip to France

She accompanied the group on a trip to France to visit with scientists who had been studying lemurs in the laboratory for years. A French team had found that some aging lemurs develop a form of dementia and accumulate plaques in the brain that resemble those of Alzheimer's patients.

"I saw that they were promising models for Alzheimer's disease," Albertelli said. "Alzheimer's is a condition that is hard to model in other animal species, so that was very exciting."

Mouse lemurs live exclusively on Madagascar, where they are found in great abundance. Tens of millions of them populate the island. While lemurs generally are endangered due to habitat destruction, mouse lemurs are not under threat and freely roam the island, said Ezran, who calls them the "rodents of Madagascar."

The Stanford researchers began to develop collaborations with other scientists studying lemurs, including those at the Centre ValBio near the Ranomafana National Park in Madagascar, who have been examining lemur ecology, family structure and behavior for decades.

During periodic visits to the island, Krasnow and his colleagues learned how to catch brown mouse lemurs in the rainforest just outside the research station, using a tiny banana slice inside a trap as a lure. The scientists then tagged and photographed each animal, gave them a thorough physical examination, analyzed them for behavioral issues and abnormalities and removed a drop of blood for detailed genetic and serum studies. The animals then were released back into the wild so the researchers could follow them over time to see how their environments may influence their progress and health. In 2013, Stanford built a sophisticated molecular biology and genetics lab within the ValBio complex, where these studies could be carried out.

'Distinctive personalities'

Lemurs have distinctive personalities, Krasnow said, and the researchers gave each one a name, based on his or her looks or behavior. For instance, one was named Feisty for his unusually aggressive nature; most lemurs are docile.

The work has led to a whole new way of doing genetic studies, said Krasnow, who is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. Instead of using the traditional method of introducing genetic mutations into mice to create "knockout" miceor animals with customized genesthey found they were able to find naturally occurring variants among animals in the wild. Moreover, in working with lemurs in their native habitats, the researchers could better understand how the animals interact with their surroundings and the relationship between genes and the environment.

"Instead of introducing mutations in mice or fruit flies, we are doing something much more similar to what is done in humans," he said. "We are looking at all the wonderful genetic variation already existing in nature, since there are so many millions of mouse lemurs out there. We calculate that most 'knockout' mutations are already present in nature, and all we have to do is find them. And because the cost of sequencing a genome is rapidly dropping, it's now possible to sequence the genomes of thousands of mouse lemurs to see what mutations they are carrying."

In doing so, the researchers could accomplish in a few years for a tiny fraction of the cost what the International Knockout Mouse Consortium will accomplish in 10 years, at a cost of nearly $1 billion, he said.

But the project could use some additional staff, as the process of capturing the animals and screening them in the laboratory is labor-intensive, he said. He and his colleagues have come up with a multipurpose solution that will contribute to the local educational system while helping preserve the lemur populations in Madagascar, whose habitats are threatened by farming, mining and logging interests, he said.

Help from students

The group is developing a science curriculum for use in Malagasy high schools in which students learn about biology by exploring the rich environment right outside their school houses. Among the instructors is Manu Prakash, PhD, assistant professor of bioengineering at Stanford and a pioneer in the field of "frugal science," who has brought his powerful $1 paper microscopes to Madagascar and taught students how to explore the microscopic world in which they live, including the lice in their hair, the pathogens in their water and the disease-causing parasites in their environment. The curriculum was first introduced among university students, some of whom now are screening lemurs at the Stanford lab in Madagascar.

"We saw this as an opportunity because we are going over there to study the unique animals and biology and ecology of Madagascar, which is unsurpassed in the world," Krasnow said. "It is the No. 1 hotspot for biodiversity, but most of the students don't realize what they have in their backyards because they are being taught from textbooks and from teachers who have learned from Europeans."

He said the researchers hope to expand scientific curricula at all levels of education, helping train the Malagasy scientists of the future and build scientific capacity in the country, all the while creating an appreciation among the local population of the need to understand and preserve lemurs and other species for the future.

"We are trying to do this in a way that is respectful and will help the lemurs and the people of Madagascar, while enlightening many aspects of primate biology and human disease," he said.

The researchers plan to make the genetic sequencing and phenotyping information they obtain from the lemurs publicly available so that researchers around the world can take advantage of this trove of knowledge, Albertelli said.
Crenothrix bacteria . Credit: Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology

When decaying organic matter sinks to the bottom of a lake or ocean, methane is produced as the biomass is broken down. Some of the methane is released from the surface into the atmosphere, where it acts as a potent greenhouse gas, while some is broken down by microorganisms in the water column. In a study just published in the ISME Journal, an international research group reports that, as well as known methane consumers, filamentous bacteria of the genus Crenothrix  previously little studied in the environment  are also involved in the methane removal process.

Chance discovery

The role played by Crenothrix bacteria was discovered by chance, when the researchers were seeking to quantify methane removal in the Rotsee (Canton Lucerne) and Lake Zug with the aid of stable isotope labelling. In this method, methane molecules are labelled with heavy carbon-13 atoms; when 13C-labelled methane is assimilated by bacteria, the individual cells can be visualized by means of imaging mass spectrometry. "Typically," says co-author Jana Milucka of the Max Planck Institute in Bremen, "these are small round or rod-shaped cells." In this case, however, the bacteria enriched with 13C were not only single round cells but also long, filamentous varieties. This finding was very surprising, because at that point, the researchers didn't know these filamentous bacteria could occur so abundantly in nature. "We then started wondering about their role in the environmental removal of methane," says Milucka.

Eawag geologist Carsten Schubert  an expert on microbial degradation of methane in water  was also surprised by the group's findings in the two Central Swiss lakes. While the large filamentous Crenothrix bacteria have long been known, they are only familiar as a contaminant in drinking water systems, where their proliferation can cause clogging of pipes, sand filters and screens. Crenothrix bacteria have not previously been detected in lake water, because they have not been specifically sought and they are difficult to identify with molecular genetic methods. Schubert concludes: "We seem to have completely underestimated their role in the biogeochemical cycle."

The researchers have now shown that Crenothrix are not only a stable part of the microbial community in freshwater lakes but may also be the most important methane consumers.

More information: Kirsten Oswald et al. Crenothrix are major methane consumers in stratified lakes, The ISME Journal (2017). DOI: 10.1038/ismej.2017.77 Journal information: ISME Journal

Provided by Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology
The newly-described Humboldt's flying squirrel is the third-known species of flying squirrel in North America. Credit: Nick Kerhoulas.

For hundreds of years, a species of flying squirrel was hiding right under (actually, above) our noses.

A new study published May 30 in the Journal of Mammalogy describes a newly discovered third species of flying squirrel in North Americanow known as Humboldt's flying squirrel, or Glaucomys oregonensis. It inhabits the Pacific Coast region of North America, from southern British Columbia to the mountains of southern California. Until now, these coastal populations were simply thought to be the already-known northern flying squirrel.

"For 200 years we thought we had only had one species of flying squirrel in the Northwestuntil we looked at the nuclear genome, in addition to mitochondrial DNA, for the first time," said study co-author Jim Kenagy, professor emeritus of biology at the University of Washington and curator emeritus of mammals at the Burke Museum of Natural History & Culture.

Biologists used to classify the flying squirrels of California and the coastal Pacific Northwest as northern flying squirrels. It wasn't until lead author Brian Arbogast, associate professor of biology at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, and formerly a postdoctoral researcher at UW and the Burke Museum, looked closely at the genetics of flying squirrel specimens from the Burke's collections that it became apparent that they may be a different species. Flying squirrels collected since the early 1900s in the Pacific Coast region often looked smaller and darker than their counterparts from east of the Cascades.

Flying squirrel specimens from the Burke Museum's collection were used to help identify the new species, Humboldt's flying squirrel. Credit: Burke Museum of Natural History & Culture

Ultimately, it was DNA testing that revealed a third species unique to the Pacific Northwest.

The results of the DNA analyses were striking: they indicated that no gene flow was occurring between the Pacific Coastal form and the widespread, inland, continental form of the northern flying squirrel, even when two occurred together.

Because the new study shows that Humboldt's and northern flying squirrels both occur together at the same places within some parts of Western Washington and southern British Columbia, it is possible that future studies might reveal hybridization between these two species, even though this study did not find the two species interbreeding in the areas the research team examined.

Kenagy, Arbogast and other researchers spent years studying small mammals in the Northwest and how they distributed themselves in the western and eastern mountain ranges, as recently as the period following the last Ice Age. In some cases, the eastern and western mammals evolved into different species over the past million years or so.

Flying squirrel specimens from the Burke Museum's collection were used to help identify the new species, Humboldt's flying squirrel. Credit: Burke Museum of Natural History & Culture

"It was a surprising discovery," said Kenagy. "We were interested in the genetic structure of small mammals throughout the Pacific Northwest, and the fact that in other cases we were aware that two different species had evolved in Eastern and Western Washington."

The new genetic study clearly demonstrates that Pacific Coast populations of flying squirrels from southern British Columbia, southward through western Washington and Oregon, and in California, now include members of the newly named species, Humboldt's flying squirrel.

The Humboldt's flying squirrel is known as a "cryptic" speciesa species that was previously thought to be another, known species because the two look similar.

This new discovery of the Humboldt's flying squirrel is the 45th known species of flying squirrel in the world. What are now three species of flying squirrels in North and Central America are all small, nocturnally-active, gliding squirrels that live in woodland habitats. These creatures don't actually fly like bats or birds. Instead, they glide from tree to tree by extending furred membranes of skin that stretch from the wrist of the forearm to the ankle on the hind leg. Their feather-like tail provides extra lift and also aids in steering. The gliding ability of flying squirrels is remarkable; they are capable of gliding for up to 100 meters and can make sharp, midair turns by using their tail as a rudder and moving their limbs to manipulate the shape and tautness of their gliding membranes.

The squirrel specimens in the Burke Museum's collectionsand other natural history museums around the worldare standing by for future researchers to learn more about these remarkable "new" creatures.

More information: Brian S. Arbogast et al, Genetic data reveal a cryptic species of New World flying squirrel: Glaucomys oregonensis, Journal of Mammalogy (2017). DOI: 10.1093/jmammal/gyx055 Journal information: Journal of Mammalogy
University of Florida researchers may have come a step closer to finding a treatment for a disease called Huanglongbing, or citrus greening, that has been decimating citrus trees in the state. In work published this week in mSphere, an open access journal from the American Society for Microbiology, the investigators describe identifying a small protein from one bacterium living in Asian citrus psyllidsthe flying insects that spread the disease as they feed on the treesthat can "cross-talk," moving to another bacterium within the insects to silence so-called "prophage genes" containing viral material in the second bacterium, helping prevent an insect immune reaction that would likely be detrimental to both bacteria.

The protein, from the Wolbachia bacterium, could serve as a potential target to develop spray treatments to protect trees against the psyllids, and could potentially help the trees themselves fight off bacterial invasion, said senior study author Dean W. Gabriel, Ph.D., a professor of Plant Pathology at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Wolbachia is a natural bacterium present in up to 60 percent of all insect species. (image: citrus greening disease on mandarin oranges, wikimedia commons)

"In this case, one bacterium is doing a favor to the whole bacterial community living within the psyllid by shutting down a potential threat to survival of insect host," Gabriel said.

Gabriel and colleagues had been looking for ways to interrupt citrus greening, a disease process caused when psyllids carrying but not affected by a bacteria called Candidatus Liberibacter feed on healthy trees and inject this bacteria into the trees' phloem, a tubular system normally used to transport sugars produced during photosynthesis from the leaves of a plant to the rest. The bacterium suppresses the plants' defenses as it moves, Gabriel said: "It's like a little cunning burglar sneaking in under the radar." It impacts the tree from its roots to its shoots, he said, and has a long incubation period: "By the time disease is detected in one tree, the entire grove is thoroughly infested and much more difficult to treat."

Citrus greening causes a severe decline in the treesleaves turn a blotchy, mottled yellow color, the fruits produced are smaller and have an off-taste, and fruit yield is much reduced. The disease has devastated Florida over the last 10 or so years, Gabriel said. As a result, the state's overall citrus production has declined by about 60 percent over the last six years. Scientists have been desperately seeking a cure.

In a series of laboratory experiments, Gabriel's team discovered that expression of proteins that help drive the spread of the Candidatus bacteria were suppressed when they were treated with extracts from the psyllids. Further studying the process, they identified a fragment of the protein doing part of suppression as encoded by the Wolbachia strain and secreted into the insect. This protein could move within the insect into the Candidatus bacteria causing greening, bind itself to a genetic region that would normally promote prophage activity, and repress these genes.

Gabriel's group has a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to grow the Candidatus Liberibacter bacterium in culture, a process that has been difficult because, once removed from its host, the bacterium historically has destroyed itself. Now that a protein target has been identified, it can be commercially synthesized and added to culture media, where the bacterium may be more likely to grow, Gabriel said.
Dr. Janet Scott, Centre for Sustainable Chemical Technologies, University of Bath. Credit: University of Bath

Scientists and engineers from the University of Bath have developed biodegradable cellulose microbeads from a sustainable source that could potentially replace harmful plastic ones that contribute to ocean pollution.

Microbeads are little spheres of plastic less than 0.5 mm in size that are added to personal care and cleaning products including cosmetics, sunscreens and fillers to give them a smooth texture. However they are too small to be removed by sewage filtration systems and so end up in rivers and oceans, where they are ingested by birds, fish and other marine life.

It is estimated that a single shower can result in 100,000 plastic particles entering the ocean, contributing to the eight million tonnes of plastic that enters the ocean every year. It is feared that the particles could enter the food chain, harming wildlife but also potentially ending up in our food.

As a result of recent campaigning by environmental groups, the UK Government has pledged to ban plastic microbeads in 2017.

Now a research team, from the University's Centre for Sustainable Chemical Technologies (CSCT), has developed a way of producing a biodegradable renewable alternative to plastic microbeads in a scalable, continuous manufacturing process.

The beads are made from cellulose, which is the material that forms the tough fibres found in wood and plants. In this process our scientists dissolve the cellulose to reform it into tiny beads by forming droplets that are then "set". These microbeads are robust enough to remain stable in a bodywash, but can be broken down by organisms at the sewage treatment works, or even in the environment in a short period of time.

The researchers anticipate they could use cellulose from a range of "waste" sources, including from the paper making industry as a renewable source of raw material.

They have published their results in the journal ACS Sustainable Chemistry and Engineering.

Dr Janet Scott, Reader in the Department of Chemistry and part of the CSCT, said: "Microbeads used in the cosmetics industry are often made of polyethylene or polypropylene, which are cheap and easy to make. However these polymers are derived from oil and they take hundreds of years to break down in the environment.

"We've developed a way of making microbeads from cellulose, which is not only from a renewable source, but also biodegrades into harmless sugars.

"We hope in the future these could be used as a direct replacement for plastic microbeads."

Davide Mattia, Professor of Chemical Engineering and part of the CSCT, said: "Our goal was to develop a continuous process that could be scaled for manufacturing. We achieved this by working together from the start, integrating process design and chemistry optimisation, showing the strength of the multi-disciplinary approach we have in the CSCT."

The beads are made using a solution of cellulose which is forced through tiny holes in a tubular membrane, creating spherical droplets of the solution which are washed away from the membrane using vegetable oil. The beads are then collected, set and separated from the oil before use.

The physical properties of the beads can be tweaked by changing the structure of the cellulose, for example making the beads harder. A team, led by Dr Scott and including Professor Davide Mattia (Chemical Engineering) and Professor Karen Edler (Chemistry) has also just been awarded funding of just over 1 million by the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council to develop porous beads, capsules and microsponges.

They will work with industrial partners, to develop materials that could be used in cosmetics and personal care products, or impregnated with agrichemicals for use in, for example, slow release fertilisers.

More information: James Coombs OBrien et al, Continuous Production of Cellulose Microbeads via Membrane Emulsification, ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering (2017). DOI: 10.1021/acssuschemeng.7b00662
Rice University geophysicists conducted a seismic CT scan of the upper mantle beneath the Tibetan Plateau and concluded that that most of the uplift across Southern Tibet occurred within 10 million years due to the breakaway of a thickened segment of lithosphere that today extends at least 660 kilometers below the plateau. Credit: M. Chen/Rice University

Using seismic data and supercomputers, Rice University geophysicists have conducted a massive seismic CT scan of the upper mantle beneath the Tibetan Plateau and concluded that the southern half of the "Roof of the World" formed in less than one-quarter of the time since the beginning of India-Eurasia continental collision.

The research, which appears online this week in the journal Nature Communications, finds that the high-elevation of Southern Tibet was largely achieved within 10 million years. Continental India's tectonic collision with Asia began about 45 million years ago.

"The features that we see in our tomographic image are very different from what has been seen before using traditional seismic inversion techniques," said Min Chen, the Rice research scientist who headed the project. "Because we used full waveform inversion to assimilate a large seismic data set, we were able to see more clearly how the upper-mantle lithosphere beneath Southern Tibet differs from that of the surrounding region. Our seismic image suggests that the Tibetan lithosphere thickened and formed a denser root that broke away and sank deeper into the mantle. We conclude that most of the uplift across Southern Tibet likely occurred when this lithospheric root broke away."

The research could help answer longstanding questions about Tibet's formation. Known as the "Roof of the World," the Tibetan Plateau stands more than three miles above sea level. The basic story behind its creationthe tectonic collision between the Indian and Eurasian continentsis well-known to schoolchildren the world over, but the specific details have remained elusive. For example, what causes the plateau to rise and how does its high elevation impact Earth's climate?

"The leading theory holds that the plateau rose continuously once the India-Eurasia continental collision began, and that the plateau is maintained by the northward motion of the Indian plate, which forces the plateau to shorten horizontally and move upward simultaneously," said study co-author Fenglin Niu, a professor of Earth science at Rice. "Our findings support a different scenario, a more rapid and pulsed uplift of Southern Tibet."

It took three years for Chen and colleagues to complete their tomographic model of the crust and upper-mantle structure beneath Tibet. The model is based on readings from thousands of seismic stations in China, Japan and other countries in East Asia. Seismometers record the arrival time and amplitude of seismic waves, pulses of energy that are released by earthquakes and that travel through Earth. The arrival time of a seismic wave at a particular seismometer depends upon what type of rock it has passed through. Working backward from instrument readings to calculate the factors that produced them is something scientists refer to as an inverse problem, and seismological inverse problems with full waveforms incorporating all kinds of usable seismic waves are some of the most complex inverse problems to solve.

Chen and colleagues used a technique called full waveform inversion, "an iterative full waveform-matching technique that uses a complicated numerical code that requires parallel computing on supercomputers," she said.

The Tibetan Plateau as seen from Space Shuttle Challenger in October 1984. Credit: NASA

"The technique really allows us to use all the wiggles on a large number of seismographs to build up a more realistic 3-D model of Earth's interior, in much the same way that whales or bats use echo-location," she said. "The seismic stations are like the ears of the animal, but the echo that they are hearing is a seismic wave that has either been transmitted through or bounced off of subsurface features inside Earth."

The tomographic model includes features to a depth of about 500 miles below Tibet and the Himalaya Mountains. The model was computed on Rice's DAVinCI computing cluster and on supercomputers at the University of Texas that are part of the National Science Foundation's Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE).

"The mechanism that led to the rise of Southern Tibet is called lithospheric thickening and foundering," Chen said. "This happened because of convergence of two continental plates, which are each buoyant and not easy to subduct underneath the other plate. One of the plates, in this case on the Tibetan side, was more deformable than the other, and it began to deform around 45 million years ago when the collision began. The crust and the rigid lid of upper mantlethe lithospheredeformed and thickened, and the denser lower part of this thickened lithosphere eventually foundered, or broke off from the rest of the lithosphere. Today, in our model, we can see a T-shaped section of this foundered lithosphere that extends from a depth of about 250 kilometers to at least 660 kilometers."

Chen said that after the denser lithospheric root broke away, the remaining lithosphere under Southern Tibet experienced rapid uplift in response.

"The T-shaped piece of foundered lithosphere sank deeper into the mantle and also induced hot upwelling of the asthenosphere, which leads to surface magmatism in Southern Tibet," she said.

Such magmatism is documented in the rock record of the region, beginning around 30 million years ago in an epoch known as the Oligocene.

"The spatial correlation between our tomographic model and Oligocene magmatism suggests that the Southern Tibetan uplift happened in a relatively short geological span that could have been as short as 5 million years," Chen said.

More information: Min Chen et al, Lithospheric foundering and underthrusting imaged beneath Tibet, Nature Communications (2017). DOI: 10.1038/NCOMMS15659 Journal information: Nature Communications
The Wow! signal represented as "6EQUJ5". Credit: Big Ear Radio Observatory and North American AstroPhysical Observatory (NAAPO)

(Phys.org)A team of researchers with the Center of Planetary Science (CPS) has finally solved the mystery of the "Wow!" signal from 1977. It was a comet, they report, one that that was unknown at the time of the signal discovery. Lead researcher Antonio Paris describes their theory and how the team proved it in a paper published in the Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences.

Back in August of 1977, a team of astronomers studying radio transmissions from an observatory at Ohio State called the "Big Ear" recorded an unusual 72-second signalit was so strong that team member Jerry Ehman scrawled "Wow!" next to the readout. Since that time, numerous scientists have searched for an explanation of the signal, but until now, no one could offer a valid argument. Possible sources such as asteroids, exo-planets, stars and even signals from Earth have all been ruled out. Some outside the science community even suggested that it was proof of aliens. It was noted that the frequency was transmitted at 1,420 MHz, though, which happens to be the same frequency as hydrogen.

The explanation started to come into focus last year when a team at the CPS suggested that the signal might have come from a hydrogen cloud accompanying a cometadditionally, the movement of the comet would explain why the signal was not seen again. The team noted that two comets had been in the same part of the sky that the Big Ear was monitoring on the fateful day. Those comets, P/2008 Y2(Gibbs) and 266/P Christensen had not yet been discovered. The team then got a chance to test their idea as the two comets appeared once again in the night sky from November 2016 through February of 2017.

Credit: The Center for Planetary Science

The team reports that radio signals from 266/P Christensen matched those from the Wow! signal 40 years ago. To verify their results, they tested readings from three other comets, as well, and found similar results. The researchers acknowledge that they cannot say with certainty that the Wow! signal was generated by 266/P Christensen, but they can say with relative assurance that it was generated by a comet.

More information: Hydrogen Line Observations of Cometary Spectra at 1420 MHZ , Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences, planetary-science.org/research/the-wow-signal/ (Paper PDF) ABSTRACT

In 2016, the Center for Planetary Science proposed a hypothesis arguing a comet and/or its hydrogen cloud were a strong candidate for the source of the "Wow!" Signal. From 27 November 2016 to 24 February 2017, the Center for Planetary Science conducted 200 observations in the radio spectrum to validate the hypothesis. The investigation discovered that comet 266/P Christensen emitted a radio signal at 1420.25 MHz. All radio emissions detected were within 1 (60 arcminutes) of the known celestial coordinates of the comet as it transited the neighborhood of the "Wow!" Signal. During observations of the comet, a series of experiments determined that known celestial sources at 1420 MHz (i.e., pulsars and/or active galactic nuclei) were not within 15 of comet 266/P Christensen. To dismiss the source of the signal as emission from comet 266/P Christensen, the position of the 10-meter radio telescope was moved 1 (60 arcminutes) away from comet 266/P Christensen. During this experiment, the 1420.25 MHz signal disappeared. When the radio telescope was repositioned back to comet 266/P Christensen, a radio signal at 1420.25 MHz reappeared. Furthermore, to determine if comets other than comet 266/P Christensen emit a radio signal at 1420 MHz, we observed three comets that were selected randomly from the JPL Small Bodies database: P/2013 EW90 (Tenagra), P/2016 J1-A (PANSTARRS), and 237P/LINEAR. During observations of these comets, we detected a radio signal at 1420 MHz. The results of this investigation, therefore, conclude that cometary spectra are detectable at 1420 MHz and, more importantly, that the 1977 "Wow!" Signal was a natural phenomenon from a Solar System body.

 2017 Phys.org
[June 07, 2017] Brandwatch becomes first social intelligence provider to compliantly offer access to Reddit data

NEW YORK, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Brandwatch has become the first social intelligence provider to include data from Reddit, the home of conversation online, that is regulated and compliant with the site's user agreement. Brandwatch will provide users with deeper Reddit insights in both its Analytics and Brandwatch Vizia 2 social intelligence platforms. This includes access to over 130,000 active communities and the ever-growing list of posts and comments on the site, which are an invaluable source of data for brand marketers and agency professionals. "This agreement is an absolute game changer," said Chris Albert, Data, Research, and Analytics Senior Leader at Ketchum. "It provides access to thematic topics across a multitude of communities allowing you to hone in on the heartbeats of a unique consumer target. It allows researchers and marketers to reach a new audience, across verticals that other social channels don't penetrate." With over 270 million users visiting Reddit each month, the site is among the top ten most visited websites in the world. "Reddit doesn't just contain a huge volume of conversation, it contains high-quality conversations about brands, products, services, and more," said David Jones, Chief Technology Officer at Brandwatch. "The detailed content on the site provides invaluable insights about consumer preferences and even the state of the world that brands simply can't live without." This is the latest in a long line of data resource advancements from Brandwatch, coming just weeks after the company announced new, enhanced Asia Pacific data along with an expanded strategic partnership with Twitter to offer the most complete access to Twitter data.



Together, these three announcements underline Brandwatch's commitment to offering the best social data on the market. Reddit joins a long list of online data sources Brandwatch is continuously adding to including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and over 80 million others.

Reddit data is available to all Brandwatch customers at no extra cost as of today. In our most recent customer survey, 95% of respondents disclosed that they think Brandwatch technology is superior to their last social intelligence platform. Discover how you can do more with your business data. About Brandwatch Brandwatch is the world's leading social intelligence company. The company's flagship products, Brandwatch Analytics and the Vizia platform, fuel smarter decision making around the world. The Brandwatch Analytics platform gathers millions of online conversations every day and provides users with the tools to analyze them, empowering the world's most admired brands and agencies to make insightful, data-driven business decisions. The Vizia platform distributes visually-engaging insights to the physical places where the action happens. The Brandwatch platform is used by over 1,300 brands and agencies, including Unilever, American Airlines, Whirlpool, ASOS, Walmart, British Airways, and Dell. Brandwatch continues on its impressive business trajectory, recently named a global leader in enterprise social listening platforms by the latest reports from several independent research firms. Increasing its worldwide presence, the company has offices around the world including Brighton, New York, San Francisco, Berlin, Stuttgart, Paris and Singapore. Brandwatch. Now You Know. www.brandwatch.com |@Brandwatch |press office |contact About Reddit Reddit, dubbed "the front page of the Internet", is the home of conversation online. Communities are built around users submitting, voting and commenting on content, stories and discussions centered around their passions. With over 270 million global users monthly, Reddit is home to the most open and authentic conversations on the Internet. For more information, visit about.reddit.com. Contact: Dinah Alobeid, 1-917-846-2381 [email protected] To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/brandwatch-becomes-first-social-intelligence-provider-to-compliantly-offer-access-to-reddit-data-300470431.html SOURCE Brandwatch

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By Elsa Court

Of novels and dystopia

Many will have felt tempted to return to Franz Kafkas dystopian literary classic The Trial following the election of Donald Trump as US president, but few know that Kafkas first novel was set in New York City. Though left unfinished, Amerika is a fable about the fantasy of Western modernity, written without its author having ever left Prague.

The building in which Kafka was born, of which only the original entrance portal still stands, can be visited in the Old Town. It is necessary to cross the Vltava River to visit the Kafka Museum and its collection of artworks and artefacts celebrating, notably, the writers twisted vision of the citys topography.

World heritage

In 2014, Prague was designated the worlds ninth City of Literature by Unesco. The title marks cities with an exceptional richness of literary organisations and currently supports a collaborative platform for authors, editors and critics, but also unions, at the Municipal Library of Prague.

The Municipal Library of Prague. The book column sculpture, Idiom, was created by Matej Kren

Cafe Slavia

Enjoy a moment of existential reflection at Cafe Slavia, a favourite meeting place for turn-of-the-20th-century intellectuals such as Rainer Maria Rilke, the German-language poet.

This coffee house, one of the oldest in the city, can still be visited today opposite the National Theatre.

The National Theatre

Stroll ten minutes to the east and visit the Museum of Communism, which chronicles the postwar regimes imposition of censorship on Czech writers, deterring novelists such as Milan Kundera, who went into exile in France, where he still lives.

The Museum of Communism

Contemporary literature

International writers of today find inspiration in the citys architectural beauty and literary history. Helen Oyeyemi, the British-Nigerian novelist, is one of them. She now divides her time between London and Prague. What is Not Yours Is Not Yours, her latest short-story collection, was one of the FTs best fiction books of 2016. It takes the reader on fictional ramblings across the continent, from Paris to Prague.

Platnerska 87/7

Next door to Kafkas birthplace, memorial statue and the municipal library, this duplex apartment has two terraces overlooking the Old Town and Prague Castle.

The apartment occupies an area of 2,600 sq ft over the sixth and seventh floors of a late 19th-century building.

Available through Sothebys International Realty, $1.48m

Ronalda Reagana, Bubenec

This penthouse in the leafy residential area of Prague 6 is a 30-minute stroll from the Kafka Museum.

Designed by John Eisler, the renowned Czech-British architect, this 311 sq m apartment includes a patio with water features on the upper level, adjoining the entrance and reception hall.

Available through Homeland Real Estate, 2,3m

Photographs: Hemis/Alamy; Radim Beznoska/Alamy; Agencja Fotograficzna Caro/Alamy; CTK/Alamy; luciopix/Alamy; John Kellerman/Alamy; David Noton Photography/Alamy

Related article: Visual arts  Pavel Brazda: out of dystopia

Related article: A home for literature in St Petersburg

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This article was originally on GET.com at: 3 Expensive Cities That You Should Avoid Unless Youre Filthy Rich

It looks like we Singaporeans have no choice but to accept the fact that Singapore is a magnet for rich people to reside in. As clean and safe as our country may be, it isn't surprising that many of us dream of bidding goodbye to Singapore for good when basic necessities and living essentials (think: HDB flats, healthcare, food, cars, etc.) are increasingly more expensive. It also isn't rocket science why Singapore came up tops in the Economist Intelligence Unit's 2016 Worldwide Cost of Living survey three years consecutively. Here, you can read about how the new Singapore 2017 budget might affect households.

That said, if you are looking to travel around the world, perhaps it would be a better idea that you consider visiting the five cheapest cities in the world and spend your money wisely amidst the sluggish economy. If you aren't wealthy, we at GET.com share with you the 3 most expensive cities that you ought to avoid if you don't want to deplete your bank account into oblivion.

3 Expensive Cities That You Should Avoid Unless You're Filthy Rich

1. Oslo, Norway

How do you feel about paying around USD$6 for a bottle of mineral water? A trip to Oslo certainly sounds fun for you but probably less so for your wallet, especially if you would be in town for days or weeks at a stretch. Upon researching for travellers' experiences in Oslo, I learnt that a Big Mac there costs about USD$20 while a beef burrito at a Tex-Mexican lounge restaurant in downtown Oslo costs about USD$31. The prices of beer and alcoholic beverages in Oslo are comparable to those in Singapore, though.

2. Zurich, Switzerland

This business city's name comprises the word 'rich' and although it has a lot to offer, you really do need to be rather rich to have a whale of a time without needing to scrimp here and there while in Zurich. Simply put, everything from hotels, hostels and proper restaurants cost outrageous amounts all year round - definitely not ideal for travellers on a tight budget.

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Another thing to note is that the Swiss Franc is considerably stronger than the Singapore Dollar. And in case you are still going ahead with your plans to visit Zurich, know that things get even more expensive during summer season. After all, the pretty things in Zurich are meant for those with fat paychecks and bank balances.

3. Copenhagen, Denmark

Like most Scandinavian countries, Denmark's Copenhagen is one of the most expensive cities in Europe, especially when you are talking about hotels and restaurant meals and drinks. For reference, a McDonald's meal in Copenhagen will set you back around SGD$14, not quite as bad as Oslo, though.

For those who are looking to take in Copenhagen's beauty without shelling out too much money on attractions that cost about the same as tourist attractions in Singapore, keep your costs down by cooking your own meals with ingredients bought in supermarkets and strolling leisurely around the charming neighbourhoods.

What do you think? Share your comments with us below!

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Dutch prosecutors have rejected an Austrian request to prosecute MP Geert Wilders over alleged inflammatory remarks about Islam during a visit to Vienna two years ago, officials said Wednesday. The decision comes after Austria requested judicial assistance from the Dutch following a March 2015 speech by Wilders at a gathering of Austria's far-right Freedom Party (FPOe). "Insulting a religion or a religious community in the Netherlands, as opposed to Austria, is not punishable by law," the public prosecutor's office said, adding that incendiary words would have to target a specific group within that religion. "Dutch prosecutors therefore turned down Austria's request," the prosecutors said. The prosecution service conceded that "some individuals may have been insulted by the statements. But that's a separate issue, and not something that can be prosecuted." Wilders is said to have told an audience that "Islam is an ideology of war and hatred" and "Islam calls on people to become terrorists -- the Koran leaves no doubt about it", according to Dutch media reports. The speech spurred an Austrian-based Muslim organisation to file a complaint of incitement against Wilders. Wilders responded Wednesday in a tweet, saying: "Good. The only correct decision. The truth must be able to be told, specifically about the Islam!" A local Dutch court convicted him of discrimination in December, but acquitted him on a charge of hate speech over comments he made about Moroccans living in the Netherlands during a 2014 campaign rally. He has previously compared the Koran to Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf", which he wants banned, and his Freedom Party (PVV) has vowed to close all mosques and Islamic schools in the Netherlands. In March elections this year, the PVV failed to live up to early predictions that it would top the polls, though it still managed to come in second, increasing its number of MPs to 20 from 12 in the outgoing parliament.
Britain's Prince William and Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny led a ceremony in Belgium on Wednesday marking the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Messines in World War I. The iconic June 1917 battle in northeast Belgium cost the lives of thousands of soldiers and was one of the few in which Irishmen fought against a common enemy in British uniforms. Belgium's Princess Astrid, the sister of King Philippe, was also at the ceremony at the Island of Ireland Peace Park, a memorial opened in 1998 that has become a powerful symbol of reconciliation. Moving letters from soldiers to their families were read out as the Duke of Cambridge, who is Queen Elizabeth II's grandson and second in line to the British throne, and other dignitaries listened. The ceremony has particular resonance as Britain prepares to leave the European Union, a move which has sparked fears for the Northern Ireland peace process and the fate of the border between the British province and the Republic of Ireland. The Battle of Messines was one of the turning points of the war against German forces, with Australian and New Zealand troops also heavily involved.
PHOTO: Google Maps screengrab of the Indian Ocean Drive

A head-on collision with another vehicle resulted in the death of a Singaporean man in Perth, Australia, according to local media reports.

The incident took place along Indian Ocean Drive south of Lancelin, where the man was driving with his partner and two children, said The West Australian. His car collided with a red four-wheel-drive towing a caravan travelling in the opposite direction.

It is believed that the mans car drifted to the wrong side of the road before smashing into the other vehicle.

The West Australian added that the man died at the scene and his family was taken to Joondalup Hospital along with the driver of the other vehicle. Their injuries are not believed to be life-threatening.

Singapores Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) has sent a consular officer to provide assistance to the family. An MFA spokesman said, MFA expresses its deepest condolences to the family of the Singaporean who perished in the tragic car accident in Perth, Australia. The Singapore High Commission in Canberra has sent a consular officer to Perth to provide the necessary assistance to the family and their next-of-kin during this difficult time.

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US lawmakers, outraged over an attack on protesters in Washington by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's bodyguards, overwhelmingly approved a scathing measure Tuesday that calls for criminal charges against those responsible for the violence. Democrats and Republicans came together and passed by unanimous voice vote a resolution condemning the "brutal" May 16 attack on peaceful demonstrators that left 11 people injured. "Multiple armed Turkish security officials beat, kicked, and choked unarmed demonstrators" in Washington, the resolution stated, using extraordinarily sharp language against representatives of a NATO ally. "Any Turkish security officials who directed, oversaw, or participated in efforts by Turkish security forces to illegally suppress peaceful protests... should be charged and prosecuted under United States law." The incident, in which US officials and Washington police have blamed Erdogan's bodyguards for attacking a small group of pro-Kurdish protesters gathered outside the Turkish ambassador's residence, ignited a storm of controversy. The US State Department called the violence "deeply disturbing." Several US lawmakers said it only highlighted the autocratic nature of Erdogan's rule and his dismissal of human rights and civil rights protections. Turkey blamed the unrest on supporters of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) who picked on pro-Erdogan US-based Turks. "The blame for this assault lies with the Turkish government alone," House Speaker Paul Ryan said in a statement. "I urge Istanbul to finally accept responsibility for this egregious incident and apologize to those who were harmed." The measure urges the State Department to request that Turkey waive the diplomatic immunity for those involved. "The United States will not tolerate violence against peaceful protesters on our shores, and those responsible must face justice," number two House Democrat Steny Hoyer, one of the resolution's sponsors. "The conduct must change. It is unacceptable." Close-up footage shared on social media immediately after the clash showed Turkish officials dressed in suits beating and punching people in the crowd and, in at least one case, kicking out at a woman splayed on the ground. Eleven people were injured, and two were arrested, according to DC police. The incident was the third episode of violence by Turkish security personnel on US soil, lawmakers noted. "Same head of state, same thugs attacking peaceful protesters," boomed Washington's representative in Congress, Eleanor Holmes Norton. A similar measure condemning Turkey is working its way through the US Senate.
Thousands of Venezuelans have fled their country to escape the hardship and violence of its economic and political crisis. From Brazil to the United States to Europe, here are the stories of five Venezuelans who have started new lives abroad in the past two years. - Jobless in Colombia - The last straw for cook Jairo Suescun, 30, was when thieves stole his kitchen knives. "That broke my heart," he says. He left his home city of San Cristobal five months ago for Colombia, since his mother was a Colombian national. "I thought I would be welcomed, but it hasn't been like that," he says. "When you arrive alone, this city gobbles you up." Unemployed and sleeping in a warehouse, he is hoping for money from a relative to get to Chile, where friends can help him find work. "I don't know which is worse, the situation I'm in or that of Venezuela. But both of them fill me with longing." - Actress in US - At demonstrations in Miami, fellow Venezuelans stop Carolina Perpetuo to ask for photos. She was a soap opera star in Venezuela. She says the television industry suffered as studios were shut down under Venezuela's socialist reforms from the late 1990s. Now 54, she lives like many Venezuelan immigrants in the El Doral neighborhood of Miami. In her garage, she gathers dozens of boxes of donations for the anti-government protesters in Venezuela. "I am a citizen activist. I keep constantly up to date with what is happening in Venezuela," she says, in sunglasses and a black cap with a Venezuelan flag. "I love my country and will die loving it." - Asylum-seeker in Brazil - Carlos Escalona, 33, fled when he received threats after uncovering corruption in the Venezuelan public institution where he worked. He saved as much money as he could and moved last year to Brazil, where he is seeking asylum, staying in a refugee center in Sao Paulo. "In a way I feel much better than before," he told AFP. "I'm no longer afraid to come and go from my home, or afraid when I hear the sound of a motorbike, afraid of the police. Or the uncertainty of wondering what I will be able to buy." - Poet in Uruguay - A published poet, Jairo Rojas, 36, studied literature and art history, but found no steady work in Venezuela's cultural sector under the socialist government. "Professional prospects were getting smaller in Venezuela because of politics," he says. "It is like a filter -- if you do not belong to a certain ideology you cannot get a job." Rojas moved in April 2015 to Uruguay, which has relatively easy immigration procedures for Venezuelans. There he is studying for a master's degree and working in a bookshop. "I don't know when I will go back" to Venezuela, he says. "It is easier to go to any other country than to live in Caracas." - Beer-seller in Spain - Xavier Losada, 38, was fed up with seeing his children "shut up indoors all the time... from home to school, school to home," for fear of violent crime. An engineer by training, he worked for more than a decade at Venezuela's biggest food manufacturer, Polar. In September 2015 he moved with his family to Spain and opened a craft beer and cheese bar with his wife in central Madrid. Life is "better, no question," but "there is an underlying sadness" about Venezuela, he says. "Sometimes you forget about it. But every time I see the news about what is happening, I feel impotent." -- Interviews by Lissy De Abreu in Bogota, Leila Macor in Miami, Paul Ramon in Sao Paulo, Tupac Pointu in Montevideo and Diego Urdaneta in Madrid --
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Sometimes the best way to market your business involves having a really good story behind your product.

There are some great examples out there of entrepreneurs getting really creative in their efforts to solve problems and create new products. Here are some unique product stories to serve as inspiration for your own ventures.

Inspiring Product Story Examples

Goat Mug

This uniquely shaped coffee mug was inspired by  you guessed it: goats. The story that inspired the product happened way back in the 13th century.

According to the tale, a flock of goats discovered a bush full of berries and immediately became full of energy. The shepherd, trying to replicate that energy, took some of the berries and decided to brew them.

In the minds of Goat Mugs founders, the goats never really got enough credit for essentially discovering coffee. And so the Goat Mug, which is an ergonomically shaped vessel that resembles a goats horn, is an homage to them.

But its not a useless product that just relies on an interesting story. The mug also comes with a crossbody strap and wrist attachment so you can easily enjoy your coffee on the go.

Bubble Wrap

Today, you know Bubble Wrap as the protective packing material thats also fun to pop. But that wasnt its original purpose.

Inventors came up with the concept for Bubble Wrap when trying to develop a new type of textured wallpaper. They essentially sealed two shower curtains together.

But once the wallpaper idea didnt work out, one of the inventors had a brainstorm during a flight that the material could be used to protect products during shipping and transport.

TRX Training Bands

These popular pieces of workout equipment came to be thanks to a Navy SEAL with a unique set of skills.

According to founder Randy Hetrick, all SEALs actually learn how to sew so they can repair their own equipment if needed. So when he was out on a deployment, Hetrick used those sewing skills to create a product that would allow him to stay fit when he didnt have access to a gym full of equipment.

He made the first prototype with an old jiu-jitsu belt and some surplus parachute webbing. From there, he discovered the versatility of the product and refined the actual process and materials a bit.

Play-Doh

The iconic Play-Doh substance wasnt originally meant to be a kids toy. In fact, it was originally made by a company called Kutol as a wallpaper cleaning substance.

At the time, coal was the most popular way to heat homes. And so homeowners needed a lot of wallpaper cleaner. But as the need for that product waned, the company needed another way to make money.

The solution came from an unlikely source. The owners sister-in-law ran a nursery school and was looking for a cheap way to make Christmas ornaments with the kids. She found out that the wallpaper cleaner worked for this purpose. And of course, it was fun to play with.

So Kutol took out the detergent from its wallpaper cleaner and added some almond scent and coloring, since the product was initially white. And thus Play-Doh was born.

See Also: Edible Balloons Should Inspire You to Make Your Product Fun

Warby Parker Glasses

Warby Parker set out to disrupt the eyeglass industry for one reason  glasses are too expensive!

One of the companys founders discovered this the hard way. He lost his glasses on a backpacking trip and, being a student, couldnt afford to replace them. So he spent the first semester of grad school squinting through classes.

When the founders figured out the high prices resulted from low competition, they knew they were on to something.

Smile Squared Toothbrush

Smile Squared is a company that donates toothbrushes to children in need whenever one is purchased.

The companys founders adopted their oldest child from Guatemala and then did some volunteer work in a dental clinic in Guatemala City. Thats where they learned about some of the serious dental problems children around the world, including in the U.S., face due to not having access to proper dental tools.

So they set out to solve that problem while also offering quality products.

Innocent Juice and Smoothies

Innocent is a juice and smoothie brand that started in a particularly interesting way. The product itself isnt whats notable though. Instead, its the way the companys founders officially went into business.

Early on, they started by selling their juice at a music festival just to make some extra money. Then they put up a sign asking buyers if they should quit their jobs and just make juice full time.

There was one bin customers could put their empty containers in if they thought it would be a good idea, and another for those who didnt think so. By the end of the festival, the response was pretty overwhelmingly positive. So the founders quit their jobs the next day.

Inspired Photo via Shutterstock



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The public television, RTVS, broke the news that the extremist party LSNS which has also seats in parliament may be investigated in connection with possible financing from Russia, through Belorussian businessman Alexander Usovsky.

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The National Criminal Agency (NAKA) is once again checking on the party, the Sme daily wrote. Usovsky allegedly boasted of his support for the LSNS and its chairman, Marian Kotleba, who is the governor of the Banska Bystrica Region, on German TV. However, the LSNS denied being financed by Usovsky, whom they allegedly do not even know.

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Beginning in February, Ukrainian hackers leaked an email communication of Usovsky's, who allegedly supported demonstrations against NATO with the money of Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeev, the SITA newswire wrote on June 6.

Usovsky is said to have also supported Kotlebas party. As the law on financing bans parties from accepting contributions from abroad, the General Prosecutors Office is investigating. The material filed was given, after a thorough analysis, on June 5 to the head of the National Anti-terrorist Unit for further examination, the GPO spokesperson, Andrea Predajnova, told RTVS.

The Peoples Party Our Slovakia (LSNS) takes no finance from Russia, nor from Belarus, not even from Washington or Brussels and we do not mind investigation by the general prosecutor at all  as we have nothing to hide, vice-chair of the party, Milan Uhrik, said as quoted by RTVS.

Publicist Radovan Branik who follows the Slovak extremist scene is of the opinion that the leaked email of the Belorussian businessman shows the enthusiasm for Kotlebas party. However, if the investigation is based just on the publicly known leaked documents, I do not think it will show any transfer of finances taking place, he told RTVS Slovak Radio. I think the Kotleba party have been very cautious in this.

On the other hand, expert on right-wing extremism, Tomas Nociar, thinks that the connection between Kotleba and the Russians is realistic. Russia is interested in supporting parties which want to de-stabilise NATO or the European union. With Kotleba and his party, a crucial part of their agenda is criticism of the EU and NATO, he explained, Thus, this very feature could be of interest for Kremlin, as the relations between these structures and Kremlin are tense, Nociar told the Radiozurnal programme of the Slovak Radio.
The main trade union organisation is ready to strike, but the smaller one has doubts.

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The main trade unions organisation at Bratislava-based carmaker Volkswagen Slovakia (VW SK) proposes that collective bargaining talks should be ended. The decision follows the disagreement with the employer on an increase in employees salaries.

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If the last meeting scheduled for June 9 does not bring any agreement, the company may be paralysed by a strike, the TASR newswire reported.

After the latest round of talks, the carmakers management has made no moves towards meeting the demands of the Modern Trade Unions (MOV) to raise salaries by 16 percent, said the organisations head Zoroslav Smolinsky.

The company proposes a 4.2-percent increase as of this July, and another 4-percent rise in January along with a one-off bonus of 320. This however is not commensurate with the demands of employees considering the plant s financial success, according to the MOV.

This collective bargaining is particularly difficult, Smolinsky said, as quoted by TASR. People are ready to go on strike, were making all the preparations for it and hope that the employer will realise the risk involved.

Read also:

Read also: Trade unions at Volkswagen Slovakia threaten general strike Read more

The MOV also acknowledged the right of a mediator appointed by the Labour Ministry to call more rounds of talks. That said, the trade union believes that the upcoming meeting on June 9 will be the last one, given their experiences so far.

VW SK has in fact two trade unions, which are at variance over the proposed increase in employee salaries. The smaller, OZ KOVO trade union, wants an increase in the base salary of 120 and an additional 40 in the extra component of workers emoluments.

Meanwhile, the chair of the OZ KOVO association Emil Machyna, doubts whether the preparations for a strike, as presented by Smolinsky, continue as smoothly as he claims. Machyna reminded that back in 2015, the employees of the Bratislava factory, following a collective bargaining failure, were preparing for a strike under the baton of Smolinsky.

Unfortunately, 24 hours before the start of the strike, I asked if they had signatures and if everything was in accordance with the law, Machyna said, as quoted by the SITA newswire. He sent people to count the votes and found that 570 votes were absent and the strike would have been illegal.

Read also:

Read also: Lack of qualified labour drives up wages Read more

Ultimately in that case, the unionists managed to reach an agreement with the management and conclude a collective agreement without a strike.

OZ KOVO is not rejoicing over the situation in the factory but they are prepared to support their members if they decide to join the announced strike, Machyna told the June 6 press briefing.
Dusan Kovacik said he may leave his funtion before the official expiration of his term.

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New evidence has come from the investigation of the Gorilla file, a document describing alleged links between big business and senior politicians. It is possible that a separate prosecution will be initiated, Special Prosecutor Dusan Kovacik told the members of the parliamentary constitutional committee on June 6.

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The new information was found around 48 hours ago.

Our operations have revealed new, very serious facts, Kovacik said, as quoted by the Sme daily, adding that a completely new resolution will be released soon. It is hard to predict at the moment whether additional charges will be laid, but after five years [of investigation] the new facts have emerged.

Kovacik rejected accusations that nothing has been done for the case.

Charges have been brought, he said, as quoted by the TASR newswire, adding that the case is difficult and complicated.

Read also:

Read also: Top scandals vanish in Dusan Kovaciks office Read more

Kovacik said he firmly believes that the Gorilla investigation should be closed.

I want to finally draw this thing to a close, the special prosecutor said, as quoted by TASR.

When asked by opposition MPs why Prime Minister Robert Fico (Smer), whose name is also mentioned in the file, has not yet been heard, Kovacik dismissed the relevance of the claims. He said that information about whether somebody was present in the flat where the meetings between politicians and businessmen took place would be unimportant in the investigation.

Even the former chief investigator Marek Gajdos, who left the police in late 2016 after serving for 17 years, said there is no suspicion that a crime has been committed and that it is more important to focus on cases involving higher-priority actions.

Kovacik may leave sooner

Kovacik also told the committee that he would probably leave his office before his term expires in 2021.

Its impossible to work under such pressure for a long time, he said, as quoted by TASR, in reaction to an anti-corruption march organised by students on June 5. They demanded the dismissal of Kovacik, as well as the dismissals of Interior Minister Robert Kalinak (Smer) and Police Corps President Tibor Gaspar.

Kovacik believes it is naive to think that dismissing one person would fix the entire problem of political corruption.

It doesnt work like that, he said, as quoted by TASR. Corruption isnt about one person.

The special prosecutor said that he thinks about the students demands every day.

Read also:

Read also: Thousands of people rallied against corruption Read more

I dont take it lightly, Kovacik said, as quoted by TASR. I respect all citizens, but Im sorry that it only comes from one side. Im still open to a meeting.

He said, though, that he has not yet heard a relevant reason for why he should resign.

Earlier that day, General Prosecutor Jaromir Ciznar told journalists that he would respect a decision by Kovacik to leave his post. If MPs know about a specific case in which Kovacik has violated the law, Ciznar said, they should report it directly to his office.

Kovacik, meanwhile, denies that he has turned a blind eye to corruption scandals.
Flying cars, cyber security and mobile apps from Slovakia are winning global recognition, according to the financial daily.

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The British daily Financial Times is directing prominent Silicon Valley investor and co-founder of PayPal Peter Thiel and other ambitious technology experts to Bratislava, where they say the industry is being used to tackle real-world problems.

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The Slovak capital, whose medieval churches and cobbled streets bear scarce resemblance to the sprawl of San Francisco, is part of a network of cities in this region that hope to become central Europes answer to Silicon Valley, the daily wrote in a story titled The Danube Valley: central Europes answer to Silicon Valley.

Though the countrys economy is still heavily reliant on the automotive industry, which accounts for almost half its entire industrial output, new technology startups have emerged in the past few years that are shifting the economy away from heavy manufacturing, Financial Times wrote.

The daily gave the example of AeroMobil, which has recently introduced the final model of its flying car, and described the company as an archetype of this transformation.

Other successful examples include cyber security software company Eset, which was described as a supplier of one of the worlds most widely used antivirus systems, and Sygic, the developer of navigation applicants used by about 200 million people across the world. The daily also mentioned game developer Pixel Federation.

Slovak start-ups have benefited from the fact that costs are far lower in the country than they are for rivals in richer economies, Financial Times wrote. Technically-minded graduates are easy to find, and the limited size of the local market nudges ambitious entrepreneurs towards international sales faster.

The daily also mentions the younger generation of founders, giving startups Photoneo (a designer of a 3D camera that can quickly recognise objects, allowing a robot to pick out particular tools or components in a factory), GA Drilling (which is rolling out technology that uses electric plasma to help drill more efficiently for oil and gas underground), and Slido (an audience interaction app) as examples.

On the other hand, the daily reminds that entrepreneurs in Slovakia still face funding challenges.

Slovakia has seen a stream of EU research and innovation funding worth nearly 4bn since it joined the bloc 13 years ago, Financial Times wrote. However, private capital can be tough to find, which can stifle late-stage projects at a crucial stage of growth.

The daily also criticises the legislation which seems to favour larger companies over smaller enterprises and wrote tax breaks appear to benefit foreign investors promising to bring manufacturing jobs to the country more than smaller innovative ventures.

Another problem is a scarcity of workers with skills and business experience, Financial Times wrote. While many Slovak expats could bring valuable business experience from abroad, the countrys political climate, marked by endless corruption scandals, does little to encourage them to return home.

In this respect, however, Financial Times praise the initiatives to fight corruption, digitise public services, set up better schools, and encourage Slovaks abroad to return home. The paper wrote that these initiatives that have popped up around the country are sometimes founded or backed by successful entrepreneurs.

Other Slovak entrepreneurs have joined advisory boards of younger startups or become angel investors themselves, Financial Times wrote.
Ministry says some non-EU citizens enroll in language course to work here.

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The police say they have noticed new practices used by people coming from the non-EU countries to enter the Slovak labour market. Foreigners are enrolling in language courses, which allows them to hold temporary residence permits until they can find jobs, mostly illegally. The Interior Ministry has said that wants to stop these practices, the Hospodarske Noviny daily reported.

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With the changes, it would not be possible for non-EU citizens to receive the temporary residence permit simply for studying languages in Slovakia.

Read also:

Read also: Frequently asked questions: Working in Slovakia Read more

Currently, foreigners who come to Slovakia to study encounter less bureaucracy than if they apply to work here. In the latter case, the process involves a determination from the labour office on whether the foreigner can enter the labour market, spokesperson for the Police Corps Presidium Denisa Baloghova told Hospodarske Noviny.

Foreigners who officially study in Slovakia can work without needing to obtain other permissions. Their schedules are limited to 10 hours a week, or 20 hours a week in case of university students.

The ministry, led by Robert Kalinak (Smer), however says that foreigners who enroll in courses at language schools often work illegally.

Read also:

Read also: FAQ: Non-EU citizens - dealing with immigration authorities Read more

The increase in the number of illegally employed foreigners from non-EU countries has also been confirmed by the National Labour Inspectorate. While in 2015 the comptrollers revealed 50 such cases, last year the number was 220. Most cases involved temporary employment agencies, Hospodarske Noviny wrote.

According to the ministry, the legal loophole is probably abused by companies to fill their workforce. The ministry did not say whether entrepreneurs are also involved in those cases, according to the daily.

Read also:

Read also: 300 people protest easier working conditions for foreigners Read more

The rules for hiring non-EU citizens are very complicated, so the companies are tempted to avoid them with these and similar practices and by abusing the reliefs for students, Peter Kremsky, executive director of the Business Alliance of Slovakia (PAS) told Hospodarske Noviny.

Slovak entrepreneurs have been calling for simpler rules for employing foreigners for several years. The state has recently adopted a change to simplify rules for those recruited for seasonal work. If foreigners spend less than 180 days in Slovakia, they do not need to obtain a temporary residence permit.

The companies do not consider this change to be enough, Hospodarske Noviny wrote.
German shepherd Bady had an immeasurable impact on the community, said the police department in the US state of Georgia.

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Several media outlets in the state of Georgia, in the US, wrote in mid-May about the death of a former K-9. Bady, a German shepherd who had served nearly seven years with the Kennesaw Police Department. He experienced several health challenges in old age.

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He was an impressive canine and had a great career ... and I will miss him, Badys handler, Officer Wallace Morton, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution daily.

Bady was born May 1, 2005, in Slovakia before being imported to the US by a kennel in Sharpsville, Pennsylvania, which sold him to Kennesaw police in October 2006.

He had an immeasurable impact on our community as an ambassador for our department, the police told the daily.

Bady, according to the reports, tracked criminals and sniffed out narcotics, in addition to playing with kids at martial arts studios during demonstrations.

In his retirement, Bady lived with Morton.

Bady was a valued member of the Kennesaw police team. His legacy will remain with us, Chief Bill Westenberger told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

K-9 dogs from Europe are popular in the US. One reason is that the US breeders mostly focus on pets, not service dogs.

They require much more attention and special training, said Morton, as quoted by the Sme daily, adding that his current dog, German shepherd Turbo, was also born in Slovakia.

Josef Mravik of Eurosport K9, which deals with the training and export of service dogs, confirmed that there is a strong interest in police and rescue dogs from Slovakia.

This relates to the tradition from socialism, when the training of service dogs here was of top quality, Mravik said, as quoted by Sme.

Americans still have this opinion of the region and often use dogs from the Czech Republic and Germany as well, he added.
Authorities are starting to care more about the IT projects they commission but much still needs to be done in this field.

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Critics of state IT projects can notch up another success. The Transport Ministry has halted the criticised competition for the so-called Atlas of Passive Infrastructure worth 48 million, which was supposed to collect and show data on the location of the telecommunication, roads and energy infrastructure.

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One of the reasons for this is the possibility that the state would not be able to use EU money.

We welcome the decision as the project has not been sufficiently prepared and explained, Jan Hargas of the non-governmental initiative Slovensko.Digital, which was critical of the competition, told The Slovak Spectator.

The organisation slammed the ministry for not publishing the materials concerning the competition, including the results of the internal audit.

Expert opinions needed

The competition for the Atlas of Passive Infrastructure project was launched in 2015 by then-transport minister Jan Pociatek. It was intended to map and show data on the infrastructure necessary for spreading high-speed internet.

The system, however, was planned in a way that would allow it to collect more technically and financially demanding information on gas and electricity networks and roads.

The competition for the Atlas of Passive Infrastructure was prepared in a way that would not allow it to be financed from EU funds and we also found technical flaws, Transport Minister Arpad Ersek (Most-Hid) said, as quoted in a press release. Thus we decided to not sign the agreement.

The decision followed the earlier recommendation of Deputy PM for Investments and Informatisation Peter Pellegrini (Smer) to halt the competition, the TASR newswire reported.

Hargas however pointed to the fact that Erseks predecessor, Siet-nominated minister Roman Brecely, already promised to scrap the competition nearly a year ago.

The ministry decided to stop the project after thorough evaluation and analysis, its spokesperson Karolina Ducka told The Slovak Spectator.

At the moment, the ministry does not know what the new competition will look like. Hargas, however, says that it should be preceded by a broader discussion with experts.

We need to get the relevant stakeholders (operators, IT companies, civil public) involved with it, Hargas added, explaining that following such talks it will be easier to set the conditions for the competition so that it would attract more bidders.

More attention on IT projects

The Atlas of Passive Infrastructure was one of more than 100 state IT projects Slovensko.Digital has been monitoring. The initiative has warned the authorities about their nine biggest and most disadvantageous projects, pointing to the flaws they have found.

As well as the atlas, another three, together worth more than 250 million including VAT, have been stopped.

The authorities are beginning to realise that purchases worth millions of euros without enough supportive arguments are becoming unacceptable, Pavol Lacko of the ethics watchdog Fair-Play Alliance told The Slovak Spectator.

The state cannot launch big projects without backing their usefulness and advantageousness with numbers, comparisons and facts.

Politicians and office workers dont pay for the purchases from their own pocket, but from the common coffers, Lacko said, adding that this is the reason why they need to explain to the public why they decided on a certain solution.

Hargas adds that their goal is not to have projects scrapped but rather to encourage the responsible approach to state IT so that people will see the real benefits for sensible prices and companies can actually compete with one another.

We are glad that the state accepts our proposals and even more glad when they are put into practice, Hargas said, adding however that there is still much to be done.

Controversial Edunet project

One of the most controversial projects that is still ongoing is Edunet, whose aim is to improve the internet connection of schools. The competition, launched in November 2015 and worth 67 million excluding VAT, was entered into by only four companies, although the number of relevant internet providers in the market amounts to more than three hundred.

The Education Ministry opened the envelopes containing the submitted bids in late March 2017. The lowest bid was submitted by a company called Swan which offered to run the project for 53.7 excluding VAT. The second lowest bid came from Slovanet (54.3 million excluding VAT) and the third lowest bid was submitted by Slovak Telekom (55 million excluding VAT).

The ministry subsequently sent the respective documents to the Public Procurement Office (UVO) for checking. It is now waiting for the results which will confirm the winner, with whom the ministry will sign a frame agreement.

The UVO has not completed its scrutiny yet, spokesperson for the Education Ministry Ivana Skokanova told The Slovak Spectator.

Ministry refuses to communicate

The competition has been criticised not only by Slovensko.Digital and the Fair-Play Alliance but also by some operators. The organisations have sent several requests to provide them with information and calls to organise an expert discussion. They also submitted examples of how similar competitions are carried out abroad.

In our opinion the Edunet project should have been cancelled more than a year ago but since the ministry refuses to discuss it, it only prolongs the agony, Hargas said.

Public institutions should be able to defend their decisions and if they are unable to do so, they should think about change and reassess their actions. This however is not the case with the Edunet project, in Lacko's opinion.

We still dont know the hard facts that would explain the reason why the ministry decided on the central purchase and it obviously cannot even provide them, Lacko said.

Hargas meanwhile pointed to the fact that since the old project Infovek 2 is still in operation, the state pays some 400,000 a month to its supplier.

The approach of the ministry in the current situation is beyond comprehension, said Hargas.
The activities are aimed to improve the environment in which they live and work.

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More than 10,000 volunteers from 131 companies will go on a date with the cities they live in on June 9 and 10.

As part of the biggest central European corporate volunteer event, Nase Mesto (Our City), they will help 233 non-profit organisations, social care houses, schools and kindergartens to improve the environment they work in.

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The barriers in society concerning selfless help have been broken, said Michal Kissa, programme director of the Pontis Foundation, the organiser of the event, as quoted in a press release.

The number of volunteers is increasing every year, helped because companies encourage their employees not to be indifferent to the places they live in, he added. Moreover, many employees can relax during the activities and even consider them as part of teambuilding.

During the past 11 years Nase Mesto has become a traditional part of the calendar for many non-governmental organisations, city boroughs, schools and kindergartens, Kissa said, adding it is an important event for them.

Read also:

Read also: Volunteers helped in the floodplain forests Read more

Various activities across Slovakia

One of the activities which volunteers can sign up for is to give help to the NGO Imobilio, which helps integrate seriously disabled people. With the aid of volunteers and without any subsidies it is building an education and development centre in Bratislava to enable these people to study at university.

The volunteers can take boats to help clean up the Little Danube, revitalise the Bratislava city forests and sort out clothes for people in need. They will also clean up the premises of the Cvernovka building and parking place and create a composting site there. Volunteers will also help save endemic plant species on Devinska Kobyla.

Another type of activity includes the preparation of programmes for children and spending time with seniors.

In Kosice, volunteers will help repair the fence of the free time centre, clean up the premises of the local League against Cancer building, and paint climbing frames at the local kindergarten. One of the activities will also include the construction of a sensory pavement.

The volunteers in Zvolen will, for example, help repair the childrens playground, while in Stranske they will repair the local Church of St Helena. In Hurbanovo, the volunteers will dispose of the illegal landfill and in Zilina they will plant some flowers at a social care house.

A traditional part of the volunteer event is also a special activity for company CEOs. This year, they will help at the primary school and kindergarten for hearing impaired children on Drotarska Street in Bratislava.
Grants, Funding & Awards

12 Colleges and Universities Strengthening K-16 Student Success Through Community Collaborations

The Association of Public Land-grant Universities (APLU) and the Coalition of Urban Serving Universities (USU) have awarded 12 public universities $50,000 each in Collaborative Opportunity Grants to scale up existing partnerships with public and private community stakeholders.

Using the funding, the campuses will expand their work in five priority investment areas: engaging faculty, rethinking financial aid, leveraging community assets, engaging employers and workforce organizations, and integrating and strengthening K16 systems, according to the announcement.

The following universities were awarded Collaborative Opportunity Grants:

Later this summer, representatives from the 12 institutions will convene in the nations capitol to collaborate on initiatives, the announcement states.
Learning Management

D2L Brings Brightspace LMS to All of K-12

Ed tech company D2L has announced plans to release a major upgrade for its learning management system that is intended to span all of K-12. Aside from its adoption within higher ed, Brightspace traditionally has found a home in high schools. "Brightspace for K-12," as it's being called, will stretch into the elementary grades too, with features that allow young learners to capture evidence of their school activities and simplify the process of teachers communicating with families. According to one educator at a school system that has been testing the software, the new functionality is "going to open up lines of communication" with parents.

The interface in the new version is designed like a social media platform, the company reported. The "Activity Feed" acts as a hub on the course home page to enable teachers to communicate with students about reminders, upcoming work, new content and discussions. The interface also provides single-login access to other programs that may be used in class.

Those same class updates will be available to parents in a "Brightspace for Parents" portal expected in the fall. For parents who have multiple children in the same school or district, the interface will show icons for each child, simplifying the process of viewing the work and progress of one student and then moving to another.

"We've made a lot of improvements for teachers to communicate what is happening with children, so parents or guardians can effectively be a 'fly on the wall' in their child's classroom," said Ken Chapman, vice president of market research at D2L. "Parents want to feel they're aware of everything that's happening."

The upgrade will also include "Lessons," which simplifies the job of bringing together digital curriculum from publishers, district-provided content, open educational resources and teacher-developed materials. Users drag and drop content to add, change and arrange it. Then a suggested pacing feature helps them to estimate how the lessons will unfold in their class calendar for fine tuning. D2L said that Lessons will also provide visualizations of how a course's content aligns to learning standards. Teachers will also be able to map their custom content with "a few clicks."

Among the content providers working with D2L on Lessons is LearnZillion and the Florida Virtual School, which both produce course materials.

According to Chapman, most teachers who use Brightspace are already using other tools such as YouTube, Google Classroom, LearnZillion and Microsoft Office 365 for Education, "and we want them to. We say to them, 'If you've got all of your content and great lessons in Google Classroom, use the tools that you love.' We'll post and centralize those things in a common area."

The release will also sport D2L's new "Daylight" interface, which will display content resized appropriately on any type of smart device, whether PC, mobile phone or tablet. The company explained that this feature would allow students who lack large-screen devices or WiFi at home also to be able to access their learning content in a usable manner.

But it's the interface for early grade students that is perhaps most innovative. As Chapman described it, each student will get a "little card with a monster face on it." They can place that card next to the activity they've been working on and use a "basic app" on a classroom iPad or other device to take a picture. The system uses the monster card to identify whose work is being photographed. It uploads the material and sends a notification to the teacher who can approve the image to have it automatically moved into the child's portfolio and add commentary or not. The results can then be viewed by the parent in the family portal. "For the students, they have an app where they can take a quick picture and record an audio reflection. For the teacher, they don't have to go catalog and index those things," Chapman explained.

The District School Board of Niagara in St. Catharines, Ontario has been using D2L for about seven years. Currently, the school system has about 29,200 users  with about 80 percent adoption rate  and it's growing by 5,000 users a year, said Robert Dunlop, a blended learning resource teacher with a focus on the elementary grades.

The Niagara school system has been providing feedback to D2L developers for the new release. What impresses Dunlop most about the software development is that the company is looking at it from a teacher and student perspective. "One of the problems with documentation for teachers is the fact that they have 30 kids  everything is going on at one time. Documenting all those students becomes overwhelming for them. Now they've created a portfolio app that can be used directly by a student in kindergarten." For example, he said, D2L conferred with kindergarten-aged children and gave them iPads, then designed the software around their hand size and hand positioning. "Now the teacher is going to be able to say, 'Hey, go capture that and explain it and put it in your portfolio.' It makes documentation so much more feasible. It's not simply a teacher creating a collection on the student and using it for their report cards. It becomes a little bit more empowering for students to to try to take control of their own learning."

He's seen versions of the interface, he added, that are modified to address different age groups, grades K to 3, 4 to 6 and so on.

On the high school front, the school system has also seen updates to Brightspace's quizzing tool, communication tools and navigation, according to Jim Reschke, a technology-enabled learning and teaching contact at Niagara with a focus on secondary grades. "Having the ability to post things for students that are missing classes or away on trips so that they can catch up  teachers like that. There's some flexibility there too. The efficiency piece is very big. We hear it over and over: 'My teaching practice has changed since I started using this tool.'"

Rosemary Jellinck, the school system's student achievement leader for IT and learning, said she anticipated the district adopting many of the new features when they're released later this year, starting with the portfolio functionality.

However, Jellinck noted, the parent portal "piece" will be a "bit more of a challenge, because it does involve sensitive information. We need to make sure our student databases have everything in place in order to communicate with parents. There's going to be a little more work done on that." But she's also persuaded of its value. The parent portal, she asserted, "is going to open up lines of communication and allow parents to really be working side by side with their children. Right now, if a parent wants to see what's going on, they're basically looking over their child's shoulder. By adding this piece, they're going to have their own environment. It'll be a very different experience for parents, which I think will be powerful."
People

Pennsylvania Educator Named National Science Teachers Association President-Elect

The National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), the largest professional organization promoting excellence in science teaching and learning, recently appointed Dr. Christine Anne Royce as the president-elect for the organization.

Image: Business Wire.

Royce was appointed June 1, according to a news release, and will assume her post as president June 1, 2018. A longtime educator, Royce has worked as a professor in the teacher education department at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania since 2002. She also serves as the co-director for the universitys Master of Arts in Teaching STEM Education program. Prior to the position, Royce was an adjunct faculty member at the University of Scranton.

At the K12 level, she has spent approximately 12 years in the classroom (1991-2002)  teaching second grade at St. Hedwigs School in Chester, PA, as well as high school and middle school math and science. Royce was the academic dean for Bishop Hannan High School for seven years.

She is actively involved in a number of state and national STEM initiatives, including the Pennsylvania Science Teachers Association, the National Science Education Leadership Association, the National Science Foundation, and has won many accolades for her work. She received her Ed.D. in science education from Temple University.

The National Science Teachers Association currently has more than 55,000 members involved in science education at the university and K12 levels. Learn more on the organization's site.
Issues of concern to people who live in the west: property rights, water rights, endangered species, livestock grazing, energy production, wilderness and western agriculture. Plus a few items on western history, western literature and the sport of rodeo... Frank DuBois served as the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003. DuBois is a former legislative assistant to a U.S. Senator, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior, and is the founder of the DuBois Rodeo Scholarship.
LONDON (Reuters) - Forcing banks to shift the clearing of euro denominated derivatives from London to the European Union after Britain leaves the EU could nearly double the amount of cash that must set aside in case of defaults, an industry body said on Tuesday. The EU's executive European Commission is due this month to set out how and where euro denominated derivatives should be cleared after Britain leaves the bloc in 2019. The bulk of clearing is currently done in London. The Futures Industry Association (FIA) said forcing a change in location would fragment markets and bump up costs. The amount of margin, or cash banks post in case a derivatives trade defaults, could nearly double from $83 billion to $160 billion, FIA Chief Executive Walt Lukken told a conference in London. "It's important that we allow market forces to determine the appropriate location for euro clearing," Lukken said. (Reporting by Huw Jones, editing by Louise Heavens)
Diane Abbott has said she is still standing and hopes to return to the political front line soon, after Jeremy Corbyn appointed a Labour colleague to fill in as shadow home secretary while she is off work due to illness.

Ms Abbott pulled out of two high-profile General Election events on Tuesday and Mr Corbyn announced on the eve of polling that shadow home affairs spokeswoman Lyn Brown is to stand in for her.

Shadow cabinet colleague Barry Gardiner said she had been diagnosed with a long-term condition which may have played a part in below-par interview performances during the election campaign.

There was no immediate response from Ms Abbotts office and the Labour Party declined to discuss details of her condition.

West Ham MP Lyn Brown will take over from Diane Abbott

But in a cheery message on Twitter, Ms Abbott broke her silence to say: Touched by all the messages of support. Still standing! Will rejoin the fray soon. Vote Labour!

It is understood that the condition affecting the 63-year-old MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington would not prevent her eventual return to work once she has recovered.

Close Corbyn ally Ms Abbott has come under relentless fire from Conservatives following an interview with LBC radio in which she forgot figures for Labours police funding plans and an appearance on Sky News when she struggled to discuss details of a security report.

GENERAL ELECTION 17: LATEST NEWS AND POLITICAL ANALYSIS FROM YAHOO UK

She was replaced by shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry for a debate on BBC Radio 4s Womans Hour and a hustings organised by the London Evening Standard on Tuesday.

Story continues

Mr Corbyn on Wednesday asked Ms Brown is to stand in for her during her period of ill-health.

West Ham MP Ms Brown was among a number of shadow ministers who quit the front bench last year, saying that Labour needed a new leader for the good of the party and the country. However, she returned to Ms Abbotts home affairs team three months later as shadow minister for policing.

Diane Abbott lays flowers at a vigil for London Bridge terror victims with Sadiq Khan and Amber Rudd on Monday. (Rex)

Mr Gardiner said he had been told by party officials that the shadow home secretary was suffering from a long-term illness.

Diane is clearly not well and I understand that it is a condition which has been diagnosed and is long-term, the shadow international trade secretary told TalkRadio presenter Julia Hartley-Brewer.

I think anybody who has seen her in the past couple of weeks would realise that she was showing that she was not well, in the way in which she had been operating.

Touched by all the messages of support. Still standing! Will rejoin the fray soon. Vote Labour!  Diane Abbott (@HackneyAbbott) June 7, 2017

Everybody is aware that Diane didnt perform well in a couple of programmes, but what we didnt know was why and I think that has now become clear.

He added: I am sorry for her, obviously, that she has got this condition and clearly it is now a matter for her to get properly diagnosed and properly treated and I wish her well in her recovery.

Mr Gardiner later declined to confirm his comments to the Press Association, saying it was a matter for Ms Abbott to decide what details should be made public.

Shortly before announcing Ms Browns temporary appointment, Mr Corbyn told BBC Breakfast that Ms Abbott had not been well for a couple of days and was taking a break from the campaign.

Ms Abbott on the campaign trail with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in Bradford last month. (Rex)

He said: Of course Diane is somebody that works extremely hard and represents her community very well, and I have to say has received totally unfair levels of attack and abuse, not just recently  over many years.

Prime Minister Theresa May said: How Jeremy Corbyn manages his shadow cabinet is for him. I just wish Diane a speedy recovery.

Ms Brown, 57, was appointed to Labours shadow home affairs team when Mr Corbyn named his first frontbench team in 2015.

MP for West Ham since 2005, she is fighting Thursdays election in the ultra-safe east London seat, which she held with a majority of almost 28,000 in 2015.

She was a Labour whip under Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband, before being appointed shadow minister for communities and local government in 2013 and then shadow home office minister two years later.
Cameroons electricity distributing company, ENEO has been accused of causing the death of an 8 year old girl in Alamatu neighborhood in Mankon, North West region.

The girl BIH Nora, 8, died Tuesday June 6, 2017 after stepping on a naked cable abandoned on the ground.

The father of the child in anger vowed that there will be peace for ENEO official in the area.

Family members refused retrieving the corpse asking ENEO, company in charge of distributing electricity to do so.

The State Counsel for Bamenda and the Divisional Officer for Bamenda II Peter Etoe Mbongo were on the scene to negotiate with family.

The body of class three pupil was later taken to the mortuary, negotiations will open Wednesday June 7, 2017

ENEO accuse davoir cause la mort dune adolescente

La scene se deroule a Bamenda au lieu dit Mile 7 Alamatu. Les populations accusent ENEO davoir cause la mort dun adolescente. Selon un certain prince Nfor Hanson Nchanji, la famille a refuse de ramasser le cadavre en demandant a ENEO de le faire.

Lon indique que adolescente est morte apres avoir ete electrocutee par un cable electrique nu qui gisait au sol. Pendant ce temps, la population a impute la responsabilite de cette mort a ENEO qui sillustre le mieux par les coupures intempestives en arguant que cest une coutume que les cables electriques quil gisent sur cet endroit.

Wilson MUSA
WASHINGTON  U.S. employers in April advertised the most open jobs in 16 years, yet hiring fell and fewer people quit work. The figures suggest that businesses are struggling to find qualified employees as the unemployment rate declines.

Job openings rose 4.5 percent in April to more than 6 million, the Labor Department said Tuesday, the most since December 2000, when the government first began tracking the data. Meanwhile, hiring fell 4.8 percent to just over 5 million.

The report is a sign the economy is nearing or already at full employment, when most of those who want a job have one and the unemployment rate mostly reflects the churn of people who are temporarily out of work. Typically, when unemployment falls that low, companies are forced to offer more pay, but that hasnt yet happened.

On Friday, the government reported that average hourly pay rose just 2.5 percent in May from a year earlier. Thats improved a bit from several years ago, but is still below the pre-recession pace of about 4 percent.

The government also said Friday that employers added just 138,000 jobs last month, about one-third below last years average monthly gain. Fridays figures represent a net total of jobs added minus jobs lost, while Tuesdays report includes overall hiring data.

Most economists interpreted last months decline in net job gains as a sign of full employment, which is mostly a good thing, as opposed to evidence of a slowing economy.

Yet that still leaves one question unanswered: Why arent companies paying more, if they are so intent on hiring?

Some economists argue that slower pay raises suggest they may not be so desperate after all. Its easy to post jobs on a website, but employers may not follow through by recruiting more and offering higher pay.

One trend supporting that view is a decline in the number of people quitting, which slipped 3.5 percent to 3.1 million in April. People typically quit when they either find a new job, usually at higher pay, or are confident they can soon find one.

For that number to fall at the same time employers are posting a record number of job openings suggests that not many people are being lured away from their current jobs by other companies dangling attractive pay.

In other cases, companies in specific industries may be offering bigger paychecks, but those raises are being offset by other trends. With the workforce aging, higher-paid employees are retiring and being replaced by younger, lower-paid workers, which could depress overall wage growth.

Job openings posted by hotels and restaurants surged 18 percent in April from the previous month, even as hiring in that sector fell. Many restaurant chains have offered more pay in recent years, and workers have also benefited from higher minimum wages.

But companies in those industries also face stiffer competition for workers when the unemployment rate falls, because people are more likely to gravitate toward higher-paying work when the economy improves.

Construction job openings jumped by about 25 percent, the latest evidence that firms in that sector are desperate for labor. The number of homes for sale has fallen sharply in the past two years, but many homebuilders say they cant find enough workers to accelerate building.
SANTA FE  After weeks of rumors and speculation, State Personnel Director Justin Najaka briefed several hundred New Mexico state government human resources officials today about a plan to consolidate personnel functions  and how it might affect them.

In a meeting held in a state government building, Najaka described layoffs as a last resort in the streamlining, but acknowledged it could be a possibility for an unspecified number of current employees outside the Santa Fe and Albuquerque area.

The state currently has 263 human resources workers, and is planning to have 238 such employees under the reorganization plan, Najaka said.

Most of that reduction is expected to happen through attrition  including retirements  and reassignments of employees that could start happening by as soon as next month.

Meanwhile, current human resources employees will be sent a survey later this week that will allow them to pick their preferences for job duties after the consolidation.

Gov. Susana Martinez in February ordered that all personnel functions within New Mexico executive branch agencies be consolidated within a single agency in an attempt to improve efficiency and save millions of dollars.

However, state officials had been tight-lipped in recent months about exactly how many workers might be transferred or laid off, and how the transition would be carried out.

Najaka apologized today to current employees for the lack of information, saying I know its been very frustrating for you. But he also defended the consolidation as a good thing for the state and disputed media descriptions of the effort as a potential upheaval.

Joseph Cueto, a spokesman for the State Personnel Office, said the ultimate goal of the streamlining is to make state government more effective and efficient.

New Mexicans understand that bigger government isnt the answer, Cueto told the Journal. This consolidation will get New Mexico in line with national HR best practice.
PHOENIX  While Londoners paused besides a flower memorial on London Bridge for a moment of silence to honor the seven people killed in the weekend terror attack, others are mourning about 5,000 miles away next to a bridge of the same name.

Arizona residents have come together at the local historic London Bridge on Lake Havasu to pay respects to the victims in the deadly van and knife attacks.

Lorinda Moore said friends and strangers gathered Monday and tossed flowers off the citys own London Bridge to honor the victims.

We have the London Bridge in our community, and love can build a bridge_and its from our London Bridge to theirs, Moore said. And hopefully they will see something and feel our love and compassion for them. Just know that we are standing in solidarity with them, and they are in our thoughts and prayers.

A memorial of teddy bears, flowers and British and American flags sprung up on the bridge in Lake Havasu City in Mohave County.

Moore said she quickly organized Mondays event with another resident over the weekend, though many people in the community couldnt come because of the short notice.

Rick Powell said who those came brought carnations to throw into the water below. My girlfriends grandkids showed up and brought teddy bears from their beds to leave on the bridge, Powell said.

Lake Havasu City has had the world-famous original London Bridge ever since the citys founder, Robert P. McCulloch, placed a winning bid for it in 1968. The City of London wanted to replace the bridge because it was unfit to withstand automotive traffic and was beginning to sink into the River Thames. The original structure was dismantled and transported to the U.S. where it was sent to Arizona to become reconstructed in Lake Havasu City.

Britain is our friend. London is our friend, Powell said. That happened on the London Bridge, and we have actual London Bridge here so it was important for us to show our support for them.

A candlelight vigil at the bridge planned for Friday evening will allow more people to come show support for the victims, Powell said.

Were trying to keep the politics and the religion out of it and just make it about human beings, about people, Moore said.
WASHINGTON  There was no need for President Trump to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement to achieve his goal of overturning the Obama administrations global warming policy. This had already occurred through court rulings and executive orders, which effectively halted higher vehicle fuel economy standards  up to 54.5 miles per gallon  and ended the Clean Power Plan program, which pushed electric utilities to shift away from coal. Moreover, national commitments to slash emissions made in Paris are voluntary. Countries can modify or ignore them. There is no enforcement or penalty for missing targets.

Under the Paris accord, countries made these commitments based on their own circumstances and political judgment. The United States pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 26 to 28 percent from 2005 levels by 2025. The European Union promised to reduce emissions by 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2030. China said that its carbon dioxide would peak by 2030 and that, by the same year, renewable fuels would represent about 20 percent of its energy use.

But as noted, none of these goals was binding. There was little, if any, loss of national sovereignty. The Trump administration could have accepted what it liked  presumably, cheap natural gas with lower CO2 emissions  and rejected what it didnt, say, the tougher vehicle fuel mileage standards. To make the same point slightly differently: Trumps actions were mostly symbolic and political. They were grandstanding, intended to impress his core supporters.

This distorts the climate debate in a dangerous and deceptive way. Its become all about Trump, when it should be about the inherent difficulty of regulating the global climate. The main practical consequence of Trumps stubborn stance is to offend  needlessly  the nearly 200 other countries that support the Paris accord. Trumps foreign policy seems to be a calculated effort to lose the United States as many friends in the world as possible. Its madness, a new strain of isolationism.

It also sends the wrong message: If only Trump would come to his senses, we could get on with the serious business of solving climate change. Trump is allegedly the big obstacle  his apparent unwillingness to admit human-induced warming  just as greedy oil companies were before him; most big oil firms now seem to have shifted. The truth is more complicated.

We cant predict the exact degree of warming. Still, the direction is clear. Even if the Paris accord were fully implemented and all countries met their commitments  now impossible outcomes  emission levels would remain high, just lower than they would otherwise be, says Kelly Levin of the World Resources Institute, an environmental group. Although warming would slow, temperatures would continue rising.

Heres why.

Growing concentrations of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are the culprits. They increase temperatures by trapping heat close to the surface. The emissions come mostly from the burning of fossil fuels  oil, coal, natural gas. Even if emission amounts decline, theyre still adding to CO2 concentration levels  just at a slower rate. Because concentration levels matter, warming proceeds.

To stop this process requires replacing most fossil fuels  a daunting and perhaps impossible task. People wont surrender their vehicles, air conditioners and computers. Its true that wind and solar have made huge gains, but they started from low bases. With or without Paris, fossil fuels remain the foundation for modern civilization. According to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, fossil fuels accounted for 83 percent of world energy in 2015, down only slightly from 85 percent in 1990.

Based on present technology and knowledge, we dont know how to solve global warming. There is no obvious way to eliminate our pervasive dependence on fossil fuels without plunging the world into a prolonged depression and inviting widespread civil strife.

This is not an excuse for fatalism  doing nothing  nor an exoneration of President Trumps casual dismissal of the Paris accord. Global warming exemplifies what economists call a collective action problem: Unless all major nations cooperate, little can be done. A U.S. carbon tax  as often suggested by this writer  would be a good start. It would favor energy efficiency and renewables, as well as reduce chronic budget deficits.

But what we most need is honesty, which is scarce. The right dismisses global warming as a fake problem; the left cant acknowledge that, as yet, there are no viable solutions. We need to keep searching and hope that something turns up.

Samuelsons columns, including those not published in the Journal, can be read at abqjournal.com/opinion  look for the syndicated columnist link. Copyright, The Washington Post Writers Group.
WASHINGTON  The statements President Trump issued on Twitter in recent days lead to a chilling conclusion: The man is out of control.

I know that is a radical thing to say about the elected leader of the United States, the most powerful individual in the world. And I know his unorthodox use of social media is thought by some, including the president himself, to be brilliant. But I dont see political genius in the invective coming from Trump these days. I see an angry man lashing out at enemies real and imagined  a man dangerously overwhelmed.

On Monday, he started at 6:25 a.m. to comprehensively undermine his own legal team in its quest to win Supreme Court approval for a travel ban targeting Muslims. I can call it that, without legalistic hemming and hawing, because the president did so. Emphatically.

People, the lawyers and the courts can call it whatever they want, but I am calling it what we need and what it is, a TRAVEL BAN, Trump wrote.

Maybe he thinks that tweets, somehow, dont count. But of course they do. These are written statements typed by the president himself, and as such should carry more weight than a processed release from the White House press office, not less. Trumps lawyers  arguing in support of the blocked measure, which would bar visitors from six majority-Muslim countries  contend it is not a travel ban as such. Attorneys on the other side will surely use Trumps own words against him.

And he had plenty more to say:

The Justice Dept. should have stayed with the original Travel Ban, not the watered down, politically correct version they submitted to S.C. (Supreme Court)

In any event we are EXTREME VETTING people coming into the U.S. in order to help keep our country safe. The courts are slow and political!

Let that last one settle in for a moment. Has a president ever publicly dismissed the entire judicial branch of our government as slow and political, even in a moment of pique? Does Trump grasp the concept of separation of powers? Has he even read the Constitution he swore to preserve, protect and defend?

Whether Trumps statements during the campaign  calling for a surely unconstitutional blanket ban on Muslim visitors from anywhere  should be taken into account by courts considering the current watered down version is debatable. His written statements as president, however, are clearly germane. Opponents of the ban might want to send him flowers.

Trump first let the cat out of the bag Saturday night, following the terrorist attack in London, when he wrote, We need to be smart, vigilant and tough. We need the courts to give us back our rights. We need the Travel Ban as an extra level of safety!

By Sunday he was off the rails: At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is no reason to be alarmed! 

What rational head of state attacks the mayor of a city that has just been hit by terrorists? Why would Trump do such a thing, in the process taking Mayor Sadiq Khans words out of context in a way that totally changed their meaning? Because last year Khan, perhaps the highest-profile Muslim public official in a non-Muslim country, criticized then-candidate Trump, saying that his ignorant view of Islam could make both our countries less safe.

What Khan actually said Sunday was that the public had no reason to be alarmed about an increased police presence on the streets  not, as Trump suggests, that they should be nonchalant about terrorism.

We already knew that Trump had a narrow mind and a small heart. Now we must wonder about his emotional stability, his grasp of reality, or both.
Melissa Lucero had lots of questions Tuesday about the vegetables for sale at the Mobile Farmers Market outside a South Valley health clinic.

Whats that? What do you use it for? Lucero said, pointing at the bok choy. Can I put it in spaghetti?

Antonio Lopez, a professional cook with Agri-Cultura Cooperative Network, recommended against using the Asian cabbage for spaghetti, at least at first. He suggested that Lucero saute the bok choy with some garlic to familiarize herself with the flavor.

Start out simple, Lopez said. Start out with the familiar.

Lucero of Isleta Pueblo was among the first customers this year to visit the mobile market outside First Choice Community Healthcare  one of six sites it visits each Monday and Tuesday in the South Valley and Albuquerques International District.

The market, in its third year, began its new season Monday and will continue through Oct. 31.

Other vegetables for sale Tuesday included radishes, beets, chard, dried beans, lettuce, honey and turnips, and some uncommon items such as garlic scapes  the part of garlic that grows above ground  and tatsoi, an Asian green that tastes a bit like cabbage.

Possibly the most exotic feature of the mobile market is that all the food it sells is grown by small farms in the South Valley and harvested just days before it is sold. The variety will increase as new crops come to harvest.

Our food was picked yesterday  it wasnt picked green and ripened on the shelf, said Natalie Donnelly, community food projects coordinator with the Center for Community Health at Presbyterian Healthcare Services, which partly funds the program. Bernalillo County and federal agencies also provide funding.

In 2016, the mobile market sold $15,000 worth of food and served 1,000 unique visitors, said Leigh Caswell, director of the Center for Community Health.

Were trying to increase access to healthy food in communities that dont have it, Caswell said. We want people to eat more healthy food and know what to do with it.

The markets also feature on-site cooking demonstrations to help people learn how to use foods that often are unfamiliar to shoppers.

The market also helps provide income for small farmers in the South Valley who use traditional farming practices, said Helga Garza, coordinator of Agri-Cultura Cooperative Network, which consists of nine small farms in the South Valley.

They key of the mobile market is that it is buying local, Garza said. It is keeping traditional agricultural practices alive in our state.

Mobile farmers market sites

Each Monday: University of New Mexico Southeast Heights Clinic, 8200 Central SE, 9:30-11 a.m.; First Nations Community Healthsource, 5608 Zuni SE, noon-1:30 p.m.; and Van Buren Middle School, 700 Louisiana SE, 2:30-4 p.m.

Each Tuesday: Presbyterian Medical Group, 3436 Isleta SW, 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m.; First Choice Community Healthcare, 2001 El Centro Familiar SW, 2-3:30 p.m.; and Los Padillas Community Center, 2117 Los Padillas SW, 4:30-6 p.m.
Copyright  2017 Albuquerque Journal

A state district judge on Tuesday approved a $24 million settlement reached by the State Investment Council and the Educational Retirement Board with a Chicago investment firm in a historical pay-to-play investment case that rocked the oversight of the state permanent fund and teachers pension fund.

The ruling also dismissed most of the defendants in two Fraud Against Taxpayers Act cases filed by former retirement board Chief Investment Officer Frank Foy that brought some of the pay-to-play allegations to light when they were unsealed in 2009.

There are other cases involving other defendants still pending.

District Judge Louis P. McDonald, appointed by the state Supreme Court to hear the cases, filed two rulings upholding the State Investment Council settlements reached in separate civil lawsuits filed by the council and dismisses Foys lawsuits against the financial firms that received state investments after paying millions of dollars in finders fees to the son of a close associate of then-Gov. Bill Richardson.

McDonald also approved other settlements reached by the SIC and investment firms in other cases.

The judge cited several days of hearings he held last year as the basis for his decision that the settlement with Vanderbilt is fair, adequate and reasonable under the circumstances.

Foy had challenged the State Investment Councils plan to pursue its own lawsuits and settlement plan, calling them sweetheart deals, but McDonald ruled that Foys claims had little chance of success.

For years, (Victor) Marshall and Foy have argued endlessly in their effort to hijack the states recovery litigation, attempting to intercept millions of dollars in settlements to the permanent funds, while alleging conflicts of interest in the states case, SIC spokesman Charles Wollmann said. Judge McDonalds ruling thoroughly rejects those false claims and helps clear the path for putting those millions back to work to benefit all New Mexicans.

Marshall, Foys attorney, was out of town and unavailable for comment.

Vanderbilt Capital Advisors paid Marc Correra, the son of Richardsons unofficial adviser, Anthony Correra, more than $5 million when it received a $50 million investment from the State Investment Council and a $40 million investment from the Educational Retirement Board.

The entire $90 million was written off by both agencies after the economic downturn of 2007-2008.

The State Investment Council made investments in other Vanderbilt-collateralized debt obligations and lost money on some of those investments.

Foy filed a Fraud Against Taxpayers Act lawsuit against Vanderbilt under seal in 2008.

Attorney General Hector Balderass office supported the SIC settlements and sought to dismiss Foys claims.

The $90 million was part of more than $200 million that New Mexico lost in what has been described as a pay-to-play investment scandal.
SANTA FE  The head of the New Mexico Aging and Long-Term Services Department has left the post for a job outside state government, marking the latest Cabinet shuffle in Gov. Susana Martinezs second term.

Myles Copeland, who was appointed to lead the agency in July 2015, submitted his resignation last week, according to the Governors Office. His annual salary was $98,000.

Deputy Secretary KyKy Knowles was appointed by the governor to serve as acting secretary, effective Monday, Martinez spokesman Michael Lonergan said.

Several long-serving Cabinet secretaries have stepped down in the past year, including former Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Secretary David Martin, former Corrections Secretary Gregg Marcantel, former Economic Development Secretary Jon Barela and former Environment Secretary Ryan Flynn.

Cabinet-level turnover is typical as governors enter their final years in office.

Martinez, a Republican, was re-elected to a second four-year term in 2014 and is barred from running again for re-election next year.

Copeland previously worked as an executive for the Alzheimers Association, and during his time as Cabinet secretary he worked on a new state plan for Alzheimers disease and dementia.

He also worked for the Aging and Long-Term Services Department as a deputy secretary before taking the agencys reins.

The Aging and Long-Term Services Department, one of the states smaller Cabinet-level agencies, oversees various programs for elderly New Mexicans, including home-delivered meals, transportation and job-finding assistance.

It had 193 employees and 47 vacant positions as of Tuesday, according to the state sunshine portal.
Copyright  2017 Albuquerque Journal

SANTA FE  In this context, that green chile in a breakfast burrito advertised by a New Mexico McDonalds franchise could refer to something else.

Alongside a giant picture of a green chile breakfast burrito, the sign proclaimed: Usually, when you roll something this good, its illegal!

Pictures of the now-removed McDonalds billboard on Interstate 25 near Raton that made a marijuana reference drew international attention on Twitter and on numerous U.S. news websites over the past few days.

Some marijuana advocacy groups, apparently including a Canadian NORML chapter, also got in on the fun.

The sign had a fitting location: just miles from New Mexicos border with Colorado, where the recreational use of marijuana is legal.

Melissa Grubelnik, tourism coordinator of the Raton Chamber of Commerce, said the chamber sees the humor in the sign, considering the citys proximity to Colorado.

We do not have a problem with it, Grubelnik said. We hope it encourages people to stop at our newly renovated McDonalds.

One Facebook photo, shared by Lamar New Mexico-El Paso, the advertising company that put up the sign, was shared nearly 2,000 times.

At the request of the owner, we put this baby up in Raton, NM.  Its getting a lot of buzz! the post read.

Mike Mons, general manager of the billboard companys state office, didnt want to comment on interpretations of the sign, but he did say he didnt think it was marijuana-friendly.

The roll your own message was up for approximately a week before its removal Tuesday. Mons said the billboard was designed by the Raton McDonalds owner.

A general manager at the restaurant declined to comment, and the Journal was unable to reach the McDonalds franchise owner.

McDonalds corporate office provided a statement saying the sign was taken down because this local franchises billboard does not meet our standards.

The logo of Bueno Foods, provider of chile products and other traditional New Mexico foods, was advertised on the McDonalds billboard. The company did not respond for requests for comment.

Green chile is sometimes used as a slang term for pot.

Colorado legalized the sale and use of recreational marijuana in 2012.

Recreational use remains illegal in New Mexico, where possession of small amounts is a misdemeanor. But doctors are permitted to prescribe marijuana for certain medicinal purposes.
When we lose a child, we lose our footing in all that we think we know. The ground gives way, the sand shifts and we tumble heart first, like falling off a brittle cliff into a dark, lonely valley where nothing is familiar and everything hurts.

Eventually, we begin to learn the contours and the paths through this strange new valley of ours. We feel the sun again over the hilltops. We learn to go on.

But when you lose a child to violence  if he or she dies at the hand of another  the cliff is higher, ribbed with more jagged outcrops, the complications of a slow, ponderous and often cruel criminal justice system.

Its like that for Maria and Jorge Hernandez.

They had a son, a brilliant young man with soulful eyes and bounteous dark hair who at age 26 had accomplished more than many do in a lifetime.

Alex Hernandez, Albuquerque born and raised, was called a Renaissance man, versed in chemistry, computers, philosophy, physics, psychology, filmmaking, activism and ethics, dogs and dubstep, the arts, the heart, the world.

He volunteered at animal shelters, played in drum circles, philosophized with friends into the late hours about politics, peace, the environment, music, life.

He was so curious and caring about the world and his place in it, his father said. He always thought about, and challenged others to think about, why more was not done for the good of humans, animals and nature.

On Jan. 9, 2016, Alex was just months away from graduating from the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro, about 80 miles from his parents home in Albuquerque. He was already being courted by big corporations such as Google when he was struck from behind and killed by an SUV.

Charged with first-degree murder is Elijah Otero, 23, a onetime New Mexico Tech student who, according to a criminal complaint, admitted to deliberately and angrily slamming his green Ford Explorer into Alex on U.S. 60 in Socorro.

After numerous delays, including an eight-month pause to determine Oteros competency, trial was finally set to begin this month. That date was vacated when Socorro County trial Judge Kevin Sweazea was appointed as a U.S. magistrate judge last month. A new trial date is set for Oct. 2.

The delays, the confusion and the sometimes callous treatment the Hernandezes have endured over the past 17 months have made Alexs death all the more agonizing.

It shouldnt have to be this hard, Maria Hernandez said, dabbing tears from her eyes as we talked.

It was harder than it should have been from the start.

Alex lay dead in the state Office of the Medical Investigator morgue for two days before the family was notified of the fatal crash  a slip-up as to who was supposed to notify the family.

More time passed before family members were allowed to view their sons body to confirm his identity  a matter of OMI policy and confusion by an OMI investigator over Alex and another motor vehicle fatality whose face the Hernandezes were told was deformed by the crash.

That was traumatic and inhumane, imagining that, Jorge Hernandez said.

More traumatizing than that, they say, was being initially told their son had committed suicide by purposely darting in front of the vehicle. But the death certificate, which took eight months to obtain despite repeated pleading by the family, and the autopsy report both indicate that Alexs manner of death was homicide.

We knew Alex would never kill himself, Jorge Hernandez said. But we werent sure what had happened.

Neither were Socorro police at first. The story as told by Otero kept changing.

According to the criminal complaint and police reports, Otero initially told police he had gone to a friends house to fetch his roommates dog, which had been hit by a car. He was driving south on U.S. 60 when he saw Alex get hit by a silver car.

Otero later modified his story to say that the dog had been hit on the highway by a silver car and that after he retrieved the dog he saw Alex lying near the roadway.

The story changed again when an officer asked him about the front damage to his SUV and Otero said he had struck Alex, who looked like he got in front of his vehicle on purpose.

Alex, Otero told them, was someone he said he had seen at social events but did not know personally.

It was not until three days later that surveillance video from a nearby auto shop was uncovered.

In the video, Alex is seen emerging from the front passengers side of Oteros car parked on the highways north shoulder. The two appear to exchange words, Otero drives off but makes a U-turn and heads back toward Alex, who walks and then runs to the edge of the highway, where he is struck from behind.

When confronted with the video, Otero told police he struck Alex with his car because he was mad at him for not getting out of the car so that he could tend to the dog (which is never mentioned again in reports) and that Alex wanted to be struck.

A roommate later told police she had tried to get Otero help because he talks to himself and thinks cellphones are spying on him, but Otero refused counseling and said he was fine.

Otero remains in the Socorro County Detention Center.

In May 2016, Alex was posthumously honored with his bachelors degree in computer science from New Mexico Tech. In January, the Hernandezes handed out the first two Alex Award scholarships to two Tech students who, like Alex was, are dedicated to changing the world for the better.

They listen to the stories told by the many people who knew their son, how he loved his life and the possibilities he thought were just ahead of him.

They work toward finding their footing in this strange new valley. They go on.

Remembering Alex

 The annual Alexander Jorge Hernandez Memorial Scholarship, also known as the Alex Award, assists New Mexico Tech students who have a desire to change the world through science and engineering. Donations accepted at Alex Award, Office for Advancement, New Mexico Tech, 801 Leroy Place, Socorro, NM 87801.

 Poet Hakim Bellamy reads a tribute to his friend, Alex Hernandez:  The annual Alexander Jorge Hernandez Memorial Scholarship, also known as the Alex Award, assists New Mexico Tech students who have a desire to change the world through science and engineering. Donations accepted at Alex Award, Office for Advancement, New Mexico Tech, 801 Leroy Place, Socorro, NM 87801. Poet Hakim Bellamy reads a tribute to his friend, Alex Hernandez: hakimbe.com/post/138190831943/i-have-both-the-pleasure-of-being-part-of-the-505

UpFront is a front-page news and opinion column. Comment directly to Joline at 823-3603, jkrueger@abqjournal.com or follow her on Twitter @jolinegkg. Go to www.abqjournal.com/letters/new to submit a letter to the editor.


WASHINGTON  President Donald Trump surprised Washington on Wednesday with his choice to replace James Comey a day ahead of the ousted FBI directors blockbuster congressional testimony, tapping a white-collar defense lawyer with strong law enforcement background. Senate Republicans and some Democrats praised the nomination.

In an early morning two-sentence tweet, Trump said he intended to nominate Christopher Wray, a high-ranking official in George W. Bushs Justice Department who represented New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie in the Bridgegate scandal.

Trump, in a statement later Wednesday, called Wray an impeccably qualified individual.

I know that he will again serve his country as a fierce guardian of the law and model of integrity once the Senate confirms him to lead the FBI, Trump said.

While the choice captured headlines early in the day, it was quickly overwhelmed by the advance release of Comeys riveting testimony, in which he said Trump sought his loyalty at a January dinner. The former FBI chief also said he told the president three times he was not under investigation in the probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible collusion with the Trump campaign.

The White House and its allies have been looking for ways to offset that potentially damaging testimony and have been working on strategies aimed at undermining Comeys credibility.

Trump abruptly fired Comey on May 9, roiling Washington and multiple congressional investigations and prompting the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The nomination of Wray  and the Senate confirmation hearings for the 10-year post  promise days more of public discussion about Trump and Russia.

Wray said he was honored to be selected.

I look forward to serving the American people with integrity as the leader of what I know firsthand to be an extraordinary group of men and women who have dedicated their careers to protecting this country, he said.

Wray rose to head the Justice Departments criminal division in the Bush administration and oversaw investigations into corporate fraud, at a time when Comey was deputy attorney general. Wray took charge of a task force of prosecutors and FBI agents created to investigate the Enron scandal.

Wray is a traditional choice for the job. Trump had considered current and former politicians, including former Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, and some FBI agents worried that Trump would try to politicize the bureau.

Lawmakers had little or no advance notice of Trumps choice. The response in the Republican-controlled Senate, where Wray would only need a simple majority vote, was supportive but cautious.

Christopher Wrays legal credentials and law enforcement background certainly make him a suitable candidate to lead the FBI, said Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

Grassley said it could take a couple weeks to receive all of Wrays nomination paperwork before the committee begins considering his nomination. After this week, Congress is only in session for six weeks before the five-week August recess.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell praised Wray, saying his impressive credentials make him more than ready for the sober task of leading the FBI in fulfilling its law enforcement and national security missions, especially at a time when our country faces so many serious threats both at home and abroad.

Delaware Sen. Chris Coons, a Democrat on the Judiciary panel, said he, too, was encouraged that Trumps pick is a veteran of law enforcement rather than a career in partisan politics, as was rumored over the past several weeks.

Wrays nomination is sure to be caught up by questions from both parties  but especially Democrats  over whether he will be able to be independent of Trump, how he will handle the investigation into Russias election meddling and how he will interact with Mueller.

The FBI is responsible for some of our nations most important investigations and needs a professional who is willing to stand up to the administration when necessary, Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., said.

Wray works in private practice for the King & Spalding law firm. He represented Christie, a Trump ally, in the George Washington Bridge investigation, in which two former aides to the Republican governor were convicted of plotting to close bridge lanes to punish a Democratic mayor who wouldnt endorse Christie. During tense times, Christie said, he would make one call: to Wray.

The two met and bonded when Christie was the top federal prosecutor in New Jersey in the Bush administration. Christie said the president made an outstanding choice for FBI director, calling Wray an independent, nonpolitical pick.

When I was at the absolute lowest point of my professional life, he was who I called. I dont think you can give a better recommendation than that, Christie told reporters after Wray was nominated. And its not like I dont know a lot of lawyers.

Christie, who has informally advised Trump, was not charged in the bridge case.

Christies office disclosed last year that Wray had the missing cellphone that was used by the governor and contained about a dozen text messages that Christie exchanged with a former staffer during a legislative hearing related to the bridge in 2013.

Former colleagues described Wray as serious and professional.

Alice Fisher, who followed Wray as head of the Justice Departments criminal division and also interviewed for the FBI post, called Wray an excellent lawyer who will provide even-keeled leadership and already has strong ties to the FBI.

Early in his career, Wray, a 1992 graduate from Yale Law School, was an assistant U.S. attorney in Georgia.

Thomas OConnor, president of the FBI Agents Association, said that group looked forward to meeting with Wray and learning about his views on the bureau and the challenges agents face.

___

Associated Press writers Catherine Lucey in Washington and Michael Catalini in Livingston, New Jersey, contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON  Lawmakers verbally sparred with top intelligence chiefs on Wednesday after they staunchly refused to answer questions about conversations they had with President Donald Trump regarding probes into Russian activities during the election.

Members of the Senate intelligence committee wanted to know about news reports claiming Trump had asked Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and Adm. Mike Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency, to publicly state that there was no evidence of collusion between Moscow and the Trump campaign.

Trump has consistently pushed back against suggestions that his campaign coordinated with Russia and says the investigations into the matter are a hoax.

In the three-plus years that I have been the director of the National Security Agency, to the best of my recollection, I have never been directed to do anything I believe to be illegal, immoral, unethical or inappropriate, Rogers told the committee. And to the best of my recollection, during that same period of service, I do not recall ever feeling pressured to do so.

Coats, who was confirmed as Trumps national intelligence director in mid-March, said: In interacting with the president of the United States or anybody in his administration, I have never been pressured.

Ive never felt pressure to intervene or interfere in any way and shape  with shaping intelligence in a political way, or in relationship to an ongoing investigation.

Those answers didnt satisfy the senators. Even mild-spoken Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, got testy. He demanded to know what legal basis justified Coats refusal to answer questions.

Im not sure I have a legal basis, but I am more than willing to sit before this committee  in a closed session and answer your questions, Coats said.

With the frustrated lawmakers gearing up for Thursdays long-awaited testimony from ousted FBI Director James Comey, the committee on Wednesday afternoon took the unusual step of releasing the written statement Comey plans to deliver.

In it, Comey details a series of interactions with Trump that made him uneasy and appear to show the president disregarding the FBIs traditional independence from the White House.

Comey said he was taken aback by specific requests, including one during a private Oval Office meeting in February where he said Trump asked him to end a probe into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. Trump complained that the probe had created a cloud over his presidency.

During Wednesdays hearing, which was about the reauthorization of a federal foreign intelligence collection law, Democrats and Republicans pressed Coats, Rogers and also acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

The senators said they were puzzled as to why McCabe would not answer questions about conversations he had with Comey regarding the former FBI directors meetings with the president.

McCabe said it would be inappropriate to discuss issues that might end up being part of the special counsels investigation into Russian activities during the election.

I have to be particularly careful about not stepping into the special counsels lane, McCabe said.

At the close of the hearing, the Republican committee chairman, Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, said that executive branch officials have the option of briefing the committee or congressional leaders in a classified setting.

At no time should you be in a position where you come to Congress with no answer, Burr told the witnesses. The requirements of our oversight responsibilities and your agencies deserve it. After the hearing, Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the committee, lamented that the witnesses could have laid to rest questions about what the president told them about the Russia probe, but they chose not to answer.

To refuse to answer the questions in a public hearing just wont be enough, Warner said. The American public deserves to know what the president of the United States did and what he asked of the leaders of our intelligence community.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said its standard practice for executive branch officials, such as the ones who testified, to decline to discuss conversations with the president.

She said the White House had not yet received any follow-up requests regarding the testimony of Coats or Rogers. If it receives one, it will do its best to work with the committee to accommodate the request to the fullest extent possible consistent with these interests, she said.
In a preview of the Senate Intelligence Committees highly anticipated hearing with former FBI Director James Comey on Thursday, Sen. Martin Heinrich today sparked a tense exchange with two of the nations top intelligence and law enforcement chiefs about conversations theyd had with Comey and President Donald Trump about ongoing Russia investigations.

Meanwhile, Comeys written statement for tomorrows hearing is here.

Today, Heinrich, a New Mexico Democrat who sits on the committee, asked Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe if Comey had told him Trump asked for his loyalty. Heinrich then asked Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats if Trump had asked him to help blunt investigations into his campaigns relationship with Russia.

Both McCabe and Coats refused to answer Heinrichs questions, leading to testy exchanges. Heinrichs questioning generated lots of chatter on social media, with CNN contributor Rebecca Berg tweeting that the typically low-key Heinrich is the Intel Committtes stealth bomber.

Heres video of the exchange. And heres a blow-by-blow transcript of how it went down starting with Heinrich questioning Acting FBI Director McCabe.

Heinrich: Did Director Comey ever share details of his conversations with the president with you, and in particular, did Director Comey say the president had asked for his loyalty?

McCabe: Im not going to comment on those conversations.

Heinrich: Why not?

McCabe: Im not in a position to talk about conversations that Director Comey may or may not have had with the president.

Heinrich: Im not asking that  Im asking about conversations you had with Director Comey.

McCabe: Those matter also begin to fall within the scope of issues being investigated by the special counsel and it wouldnt be appropriate for me to comment on those today.

Heinrich: So, youre not invoking executive privilege, and obviously, its not classified. This is the oversight committee. Why would it not be appropriate for you to share that conversation with us?

McCabe: I think Ill let Director Comey speak for himself tomorrow before this committee.

Heinrich: We certainly look forward to that, but I think your unwillingness to share that conversation is an issue.

Then Heinrich turned his attention to Coats, a former senator from Indiana.

Heinrich: Youve said it would be inappropriate to answer a simple question about whether the president asked for your assistance in blunting the Russia investigation. I dont care how you felt, Im not asking if you felt pressured, Im simply asking did that conversation occur?

Coats: It do believe it is appropriate for me to discuss that in an executive (private not public) session.

Heinrich: You do realize  and obviously this is not releasing any classified information  but you do realize how simple it would simply be to say no that never happened. Why is it inappropriate Director Coats?

Coats: I think conversations between the president and myself are for the most part 

Heinrich: You seem to apply that standard selectively.

Coats: No, Im not applying it selectively. I do not share with the general public conversation I had with the president or many of my colleagues within the administration that I believe should not be shared.

Heinrich: I think your unwillingness to answer a very basic question speaks volumes.

Coats: Its not a matter of unwillingness..

Heinrich: It is a matter of unwillingness.

Coats: Its a matter of how I share it and with whom I share it to. When there are ongoing investigations I think its in appropriate.

Heinrich: You dont think the American people deserve the answer to that question?

Coats: I think the investigations will determine that.
The new chief justice of the New Mexico Supreme Court said Wednesday she is committed to cultivating collegiality in the judiciary and to ensuring the court system is operating efficiently.

Chief Justice Judith Nakamura was sworn in at the annual Judicial Conclave in Albuquerque on Wednesday. Nakamura replaces Justice Charles Daniels, who announced in January that he would step down from the post after the legislative session.

Nakamura was elected chief justice by her colleagues.

As she took the podium to address a room filled with judges from across the state, she said the courts are in a transitional period that will require cooperation. While she said she will continue to advocate for full funding of the courts, she said the future will require the courage to take a hard look at how we operate and an openness to new ways of doing things.

We need to be able to tell the public and our community, she said, that we are doing the best we can with the resources we have.

Before she was sworn in, justices took turns complimenting Daniels work and offering messages of encouragement and support to Nakamura, the courts newest justice.

Justice Barbara Vigil commended Daniels work with the Legislature to fund the judiciary in a time of diminishing resources.

She also praised his dedication to bail reform efforts, which she said resulted in a Constitutional amendment that essentially, in my view, is perhaps the most significant improvement in our justice system in the history of the state of New Mexico.

Nakamura was appointed to the Supreme Court in November 2015 and elected in 2016. She was elected to the Metropolitan Court in 1998 and served as its chief judge for more than a decade before moving to the 2nd Judicial District Court.

According to the Administrative Office of the Courts, the chief justice presides over Supreme Court hearings and serves as administrator over personnel, budget and general operations of the state courts. Daniels said the position in recent decades has rotated every two years among justices.
After Bollywood biggies like Karan Johar, Twinkle Khanna, Priyanka Chopra, this time its Abhishek Bachchan who took to social media to express his eagerness to watch STAR Plus latest offering, Aarambh. He also sent his best wishes to old friends Goldie Behl (director) and Shrishti Arya (producer) for the same.

Abhishek Bachchan shares a great rapport with the makers; Goldie Behl and Shrishti Arya ever since they worked together on Drona. After watching the latest promo of Aarambh, he tweeted about his keenness to watch the show.

Aarambh is a clash of two civilizations, the Aryans and the Dravidians, where the former are looking to settle in the Dravid land and latter is trying to protect their civilization. Known for making larger than life moments on screen, Goldie Behl received best wishes from dear friend, Abhishek Bachchan. After watching such promising promos on screen, our wait ends as Aarambh is slated to go on air every Saturday and Sunday at 9pm from 24th June on STAR Plus.

Watch Aarambh starting on 24th June every Saturday and Sunday at 9pm on STAR Plus
In a major boost for news buffs in the state of Punjab, Indias leading media house, iTV Network, introduced India News Punjab today in Chandigarh and it was launched by Honble Chief Minister, Capt. Amarinder Singh.

India News Punjab is iTV Networks first news channel in the regional language. The news channel will be aired in Punjabi language. India News Punjab will showcase current events, news, happenings, sports, art, culture, heritage of Punjab and special programming for farmers.

Kartikeya Sharma, Founder & Promoter, iTV Network, said at the launch, Its our first foray into the Punjab region, market is highly cluttered, we will bring revolution by streamlining regional news in Punjabi. We are committed to airing relevant and impactful regional content in Punjabi, allowing us to reach out to Punjabi Diaspora settled across the globe. The channel will showcase the true spirit of Punjabiyat in all its myriad moods.

iTV Network is Indias fastest growing news network. With three national news channels, four regional news channels, two newspapers and a number of leading digital assets. India News, the leading national Hindi News Channel of the network, has emerged as a leader in the most competitive genre, winning the trust of the Hindi News viewers. NewsX, the National English News Channel of the network, has been a trendsetter in the English news genre with its crisp format, direct reportage, pointed debates, trending hash tags and engaging mix of stories. NewsX HD is Indias first News Channel in HD. This is a commercial-free news channel and is built for delivering a multiscreen experience on a single screen to the multitasking high profile urban viewers of India.

NewsX HD offers non-stop commercial-free premier news content, including the biggest buzz on the most popular social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest and Instagram while getting additional feeds like weather, stock indices, etc - All in a seamless experience on one screen.

In a short span of time, India News UP & Uttarakhand, India News Rajasthan, India News Madhya Pradesh & Chhattisgarh and India News Haryana have further strengthened the channels dominance in these Hindi speaking regions.

The Sunday Guardian is the finest Sunday Newspaper by the network that is sought after by countrys discerning readers for its engaging content and innovative format.

The group also publishes Aaj Samaj, a popular Hindi newspaper that caters to the informed readers in Delhi National Capital Region, Punjab and Haryana. With its innovative approach, extensive research and unbiased outlook, it has managed to stand out in the cluttered news landscape.
Richfeel, a leading trichology centre, hair and scalp clinic is proud to announce renowned actor Swwapnil Joshi as a brand ambassador. The brand has plans of premiumization and further expansion of portfolio, thus signing up with Swwapnil Joshi facilitates targeting youth to mid-age segment.

The popular television actor Swwapnil Joshi, who shot to fame from Ramanand Sagars mythological show Krishna will be the new face of the brand and will be featured in a new brand campaign that is scheduled to rollout soon across platforms. Swwapnils strong fan and digital following in conjunction with his youth appeal led to his selection as the brands Indian face. Richfeel is confident that Swwapnils star power will add a unique touch to the brand.

We are proud to welcome Swwapnil Joshi to the Richfeel family. Richfeel has always been known to be associated with beauty & wellness as the key behind strong, healthy and beautiful hair and skin. Swwapnil, one of the most promising faces in Hindi & Marathi television, has the right fitment with the brand's ethos of trusted naturalness. Swwapnils vibrant persona, pan-India appeal and humble attitude makes him a great fit for our brand," said Dr. Apoorva Shah, Founder, Richfeel.

Speaking on the association the star of the hit Marathi film Fugay, Swwapnil Joshi said, I am very proud to be associated with Richfeel that has always displayed as the booster for inner-strength & beauty for Indian men and women. I'm fully aware that I might not be the first-person people think of to collaborate with a Trichology brand but to me, having heart and self-confidence of breaking the social stigma is the key that leads you to happiness and success. So, I'm honoured to be associated with Richfeel and encourage the target audience to get out of their stigma and never settle for anything less than their own happiness.

He continued to speak about the association and how Dr. Apoorva Shahs advice along with Richfeel products have helped him stop worrying about his hair which he feels is an important part of his appeal with his audience. In Indian cinema, romance is a very large part of all the plots. And when it comes to romance, Love is in the hair. All the chemicals and dyes used to create different hairstyles for my different looks in various films were taking a toll on the quality of my hair. Apart from this the harsh effects from the lights and tough shooting schedules were also not conducive to great hair. And before this became a problem, I spoke with the hair doctor of Hollywood and Bollywood, Dr. Apoorva Shah, who immediately provided me with a preventive hair maintenance regimen that keeps my hair in A-1 condition.

Providing expertise in hair care, beauty, fitness and personal care for over 30 years now, Richfeel is acclaimed as a pan India company, spread across 28 cities with more than 86 owned and franchised centres.
The Bollywood superstars Riteish Deshmukh and Vivek Oberoi were spotted in the busy streets of South Mumbai distributing water bottles. Both these stars were a part of RED FMs summer initiative Chaar Bottle Roz Ka. With rising temperatures in the city RED FM has been urging its listeners to carry four extra bottles of chilled water and offer them to those who are sweating it out in the sun. While the city doctors are giving out warnings for increasing precaution to beat heat strokes, all we can do is share some water and do a good deed.

Both the actors visited different locations at Worli and distributed water bottles to the people who need it the most. While Riteish Deshmukh was seen at the traffic junction at Worli Naka distributing bottles to the traffic cops and other policemen, Vivek Oberoi was spotted at the crowded Worli Metro construction site distributing bottles to the workers.

Riteish Deshmukh was all excited to be a part of this initiative. Riteish quips Being a Mumbaikar, I have grown up to watch traffic cops stand in the sun all day long. In this constantly bustling city, ensuring smooth traffic movement plays a very essential role. Giving water bottles to them is a very small way to thank them for their hard work.

Vivek Oberoi totally loves this campaign, he mentions I completely stand by Chaar Bottle Roz ka as an initiative and urge every Mumbaikar to be a part of this. Carry 4 water bottles with you every day and pass it on to the people who you think need it the most.

Vivek Oberoi and Riteish Deshmukh are currently gearing up for their upcoming movie Bank Chor, produced by Y films set to release on 16th June, 2017.

Owing to the soaring Mumbai temperatures, 93.5 Red FM has launched this initiative where they urge listeners to carry four extra bottles of chilled water and offer them to those who are most susceptible to heat strokes. In the past few weeks, Red FM RJ Malishka and RJ Rishi Kapoor along with the listeners have stopped at signals, construction sites, railway stations and many other places to offer water to traffic police, labourers, dabbawallas and other people who work outdoors in the sun.
Datsun has launched Vote For Change, a campaign created by TBWAIndia to promote the Datsun Redi-GO.

Vote For Change aims to disrupt the small car segment using the theme and cultural grammar of national elections. It will run in a phased manner, like an election campaign, and calls on voters to reject the status quo of three decades, including lack of choice and dated technology.

An Indian election is the strongest metaphor for the power to change what is not acceptable, and choose something that is new, modern and progressive.The campaign positions Datsun as the most compelling alternative in India, and in election parlance  the most eligible small car candidate in India. It asks voters (consumers) to declare independence from the limitations of small cars.

Says Govind Pandey, CEO, TBWAIndia, We believe that the addictive energy of the Vote for Change Datsun Redi-GO election campaign will resonate with Indians, who aspire for change at a fast pace.

Adds Govind Pandey, Brands in India are politically correct and typically shy away from the theme of elections, whereas news and debates culture feeds off it in a big way. Using TBWAs Disruption Live methodology, we decided to harness the evocative power of elections, which cuts through the all barriers; geographical, cultural, linguistic, ethnic and religious barriers and invites people to participate in the process of change. The brand believes that the moment of change has arrived in the Indian small car segment, and its time for car buyers to exercise their choice.

The #VoteforChange campaign will run on TV, Print, OOH, and Social Media, with communication assets rolled out similar to a typical election campaign.

In Phase 1, the issue is provoked. In Phase 2, the new party and candidate are announced, and the election manifesto is launched. The public will be rallied and encouraged to vote, with the election covered on top news portals. Spoof films with actor Vinay Pathak are used to connect with the audience. Finally, in Phase 3, the victory rally is held and promises are delivered.
With the emergence of smartphones, selfie craze has taken the world by storm. A recent study by FramesDirect.com shows that millennials spend an average of an hour per week on clicking selfies and posting them on social media. There are over 310 million pictures tagged #me and over 250 million pictures tagged #selfie on Instagram. This trend has now got youngsters obsessed with garnering likes on social media and being constantly driven by the need for acknowledgment on social media and even risking life and limb in the quest for that elusive awe-inducing selfie.

Taking this selfie craze head-on, Vodafone rolled out a campaign in May, which is observed in most countries as self-esteem month, to make the Gen Next aware that young women are #WorthMore than the selfies posted on social media. It addresses how selfie obsession has a negative effect on the confidence and self-esteem of youngsters who are highly active on social media.

Executed by Ogilvy & Mather, the #Worthmore campaign seeks to celebrate people and their sense of individuality rather than only worrying about looking good in selfies.

Earlier this year, Vodafone had rolled out a series of campaigns  #BeSuper  which talked about what is happening in the society, what are people talking about and their aspirations in life. While #BeSuper was an idea platform, #WorthMore is one of its expressions, said Siddharth Banerjee, EVP  Marketing, Vodafone India.

Banerjee further said that for the #WorthMore campaign, Ogilvy & Mather was given a one-line brief  What are various refreshing ways in which Vodafone can make their #BeSuper brand essence come alive via larger societal trends to engage consumers?

Vodafone has collaborated with Facebook as its social media partner and has released a few #WorthMore videos on their Facebook page as part of its digital marketing strategy. Badminton player and youth icon Saina Nehwal has also supported the cause and appears in a Facebook post, where she is shown holding a placard that states: I am strong, kind and honest. I am #WorthMore than just my selfie. Banerjee remarked, We are happy to have youth icon Saina Nehwal, while several news handles have also joined us in spreading this message.

The campaign has been well received and appreciated, drawing proactive participation from people across geographies and demographics. Within a week of release, the Vodafone #WorthMore campaign has garnered 7 million views and initiated more than 5,000 conversations.

The digital-only campaign also features a series of videos consisting of different girls busy taking selfies to gain Likes on their social media posts, only to feel dejected when they receive less than expected Likes. However, having realised their self-worth, these teenage girls are shown posting their selfie pics with placards in their hands that read, I am talented, driven and dynamic, I am #WorthMore than just my selfie and I am smart, generous and funny, I am #WorthMore than just my selfie.

Banerjee explained that Vodafone did not use the much loved ZooZoos for this campaign as this is a socially relevant topic and the endeavour has been to engage with women at a personal level. On the use of digital media for this campaign, he added, The medium and channels we used have worked well to deliver the intended message in the appropriate manner.
China CDM Exchange Centre Limited

Final results for the year ended 31 December 2016

The Company operates within the framework of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol, established under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The Protocol commits countries to reducing their emissions of Green House Gasses (GHGs) by pre-determined amounts or compensates for maintained or higher GHGs emissions via emissions trading.

Based upon the on-going CDM contracts and the new attempt in the China Certified Emission Reduction (CCER) Market in 2016, the Company gained the revenue of GBP 898,146.26 in 2016.

In 2016, the Global Climate Change issue aroused extensive focus in the world. In 2016, the carbon market goes with the Paris Agreement on Climate Change which was made in December 2015. And regarding the CCER market, more than 900 enterprises have opened carbon accounts with the Beijing Carbon Trading Exchange since it was established in 2013. And in 2016, National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) determined the national total carbon and carbon allowance and it will be executed in 8 industries in China on March 2017. And we have dedicated ourselves to work at the CCER Projects during the whole 2016.

I would like to extend my sincere thanks to the management and staff of the Company for performing the tasks with zeal, vision and dedication and as well as to our partners for their effective and efficient cooperation.

Outlook for 2017

In 2017, the company will develop the business focusing on the following areas:

1) To maintain the current advantages in the global carbon market and Green Energy Market;

2) To extend the new business in the China Energy Markets and develop the computer system based upon Blockchain ;

3) To strengthen management regulation, improve companys management level through OA system and enroll high-quality talents.



Mr. Kang Zheng

Chairman

Enquiries:

China CDM Exchange Centre Limited

jeanne_zhang@aol.com +86 010 87246056end_of_the_skype_highlighting ISDX Advisor:

Alfred Henry Corporate Finance Ltd

www.alfredhenry.com

Jon Isaacs/Nick Michaels 020 7251 3762

The Directors accept responsibility for this announcement.

CHINA CDM EXCHANGE CENTRE LIMITED

INCOME STATEMENTS

Notes 1/1/2016-12/31/2016 1/1/2015-12/31/2015 RMB GBP RMB GBP Revenue 3 8,032,301.64 898,146.26 9,547,322.00 1,004,199.04 Cost of sales (6,348,484.85) (709,867.26) (7,574,043.80) (796,647.22) Gross profit 1,683,816.79 188,279.00 1,973,278.20 207,551.82 Selling expense Administration expenses (1,713,411.07) (191,588.14) (1,880,418.69) (197,784.75) Profit from operations 4 (29,594.28) (3,309.14) 92,859.51 9,767.07 Foreign exchange gains 50,386.22 5,634.03 (31,647.89) (3,328.76) Profit before income tax 20,791.94 2,324.89 61,211.62 6,438.31

The accompanying notes form an integral part of these financial statements.

Average exchange rate: (2016) RMB/GBP?8.9432; (2015) RMB/GBP?9.5074;

CHINA CDM EXCHANGE CENTRE LIMITED

BALANCE SHEETS

Note 12/31/2016 12/31/2015 RMB GBP RMB GBP Non-current assets Property Plant and Equipment 5 78,760.97 9,255.76 83,734.55 8,707.93 Long term investment 6 372,042,500.00 43,721,355.21 372,042,500.00 38,690,346.20 Intangible assets 7 Total non-current assets 372,121,260.97 43,730,610.97 372,126,234.55 38,699,054.13 Current Assets Trade receivable 8 51,450,483.90 6,046,311.59 55,914,527.82 5,814,799.22 Other receivables Cash and cash equivalents 9 19,632,659.95 2,307,173.24 15,142,850.51 1,574,772.04 Financial assets at fair value through profit or loss Total current assets 71,083,143.85 8,353,484.83 71,057,378.33 7,389,571.26 Total assets 443,204,404.82 52,084,095.80 443,183,612.88 46,088,625.39 Current Liabilities Other payables Total current liabilities Capital and Reserves Share capital 10 221,999,000.00 15,020,515.41 221,999,000.00 15,020,515.41 Capital surplus 1,064,345.56 109,974.13 1,064,345.56 109,974.13 Public product of surplus 49,336,357.17 3,383,675.49 49,336,357.17 3,383,675.49 Undistributed profit 170,804,702.09 15,560,966.16 170,783,910.15 15,565,079.58 Foreign currency translation difference 18,008,964.61 12,009,380.78 Total shareholders equity 443,204,404.82 52,084,095.80 443,183,612.88 46,088,625.39 Total liabilities and shareholders equity 443,204,404.82 52,084,095.80 443,183,612.88 46,088,625.39

The accompanying notes form an integral part of these financial statements.

Exchange rate: (31 Dec., 2016)RMB/GBP?8.5094; (31 Dec., 2015) RMB/GBP?9.6159;

CHINA CDM EXCHANGE CENTRE LIMITED

CASHFLOW STATEMENTS

Note 1/1/2016-12/31/2016 1/1/2015-12/31/2015 RMB GBP RMB GBP Cashflows from operating activities Cashflows from operating operations: 11 4,439,423.22 496,402.10 5,495,916.49 578,067.24 Net cash generated from operating activities Cashflows from investing activities Cash payment for investment Other investment Net cash used in investing activities 12 Cashflows from financing activities Proceeds from issuance of ordinary shares Net cash used in financing activities Gains on foreign transactions 50,386.22 5,634.03 (31,647.89) (3,328.76) Net (decrease)/increase in cash and bank balance 4,489,809.44 502,036.12 5,464,268.60 574,738.48 Cash and bank balance at the beginning of year 15,142,850.51 1,693,225.08 9,678,581.91 1,018,005.12 Cash and bank balance at the end of year 19,632,659.95 2,195,261.20 15,142,850.51 1,592,743.60

The accompanying notes form an integral part of these financial statements.

Average exchange rate: (2016) RMB/GBP?8.9432; (2015) RMB/GBP?9.5074;

Details of the adjusted earnings per share are set out below:
WASHINGTON, June 6, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Addressing the AJC Global Forum, Gilad Erdan, Israel's Minister of Public Security and Strategic Affairs, called for an international alliance of Israel, moderate Arab states, the U.S., Europe, "and all likeminded countries" to create "an international alliance to fight terror."

Noting that Israel is in the forefront of the battle against terrorism because its citizens have been its victims for so long, he pointed out that many other countries around the world, now subject to terror attacks as well, "have come to realize that it is not just Israel's problem," and that they could profit from Israel's experience. "Tragedy and heartbreaking incidents have made people realize that terror is terror is terror," said Erdan.

"We are honored that Minister Erdan, on this all-important date in the history of Israel, the 50th anniversary of Israel's war of self-defense, which has come to be known as the Six-Day War, came to Washington to be with AJC," said AJC CEO David Harris. "His insightful perspectives on Israel's strategic challenges, especially the fight against terror, are instructive, and, as he said, many countries around the world are now recognizing as very valuable."

Erdan said that while his grandparents' generation had to fight for Israel's existence, and his parents' generation had to overcome the hostility of Israel's Arab neighbors, the threat to Israelis today is terror, especially of the "lone wolf" variety.

The minister, whose cabinet portfolio gives him the responsibility for responding to terrorism, outlined three challenges that Israel has made some progress in meeting: online incitementwhat he called the "crowd-sourcing" of terror; the need to outlaw extremist organizations; and uncovering and drying up funding for these groups.

"Social media companies must take responsibility. They can no longer ignore the misuse of their platforms by terrorists," said Erdan. Holding up a cell phone, he said, "terror has gone viral." The technology "has become their number one weapon. They spread content online that both inspires and instructs potential terrorists."

But he cautioned that no one country can deal effectively with these problems because they all have an international dimensionsocial media crosses borders, a movement might be banned in one country and not in another, and international sources of funding are notoriously difficult to trace.

Therefore, "the democracies of the world must take action" together, said Erdan, who also indicated that he planned to discuss the idea for an international anti-terror effort at a meeting scheduled with U.S. Homeland Security Kelly. Erdan called on the international community to "recognize once and for all that the world's number one sponsor of terror is Iran." He also said that "when you delegitimize a country or culture, you legitimize violence against it," and thus the denial of Israel's right to exist aids and abets terrorism aimed at the Jewish state.

"The way to counter the campaign of lies is to spread the truth about Israel," said Erdan, who praised AJC for being "a very important part of this effort."

And he called on the U.S. to cut off funding for the Palestinian Authority until it stops paying salaries to terrorists. "When the Palestinian leadership will choose dialogue over delegitimization and peace over hate," he concluded, "they will find us a willing partner ready to make compromises for peace."

This year's AJC Global Forum, taking place June 4-6, in Washington, D.C., is the advocacy organization's signature annual event, bringing together more than 2,500 participants from across the United States and 70 countries around the world. AJC was the first American Jewish organization to establish a full-time office in Israel, nearly 60 years ago.

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/israels-minister-of-public-security-and-strategic-affairs-addresses-ajc-global-forum-300469916.html

SOURCE American Jewish Committee
ANNVILLE, Pa., June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Governor Tom Wolf welcomed Lithuanian Defense Minister Raimundas Karoblis Monday at the Pennsylvania Capitol in Harrisburg to discuss Pennsylvania's partnership with Lithuania through the National Guard's State Partnership Program and items related to expanded cooperation between Lithuania's military and ministries.

"Next year the Pennsylvania National Guard and Lithuania will be celebrating 25 years of an extremely successful partnership through the National Guard's State Partnership," said Governor Wolf. "While our military partnership continues to set the bar nationally, it is only logical we look for additional ways to use this relationship to further benefit both Pennsylvania and Lithuania in other arenas."



Karoblis and Wolf discussed additional opportunities for cooperation in economic development, education and energy.



The meeting was preceded by a visit to the Pennsylvania National Guard's headquarters at Fort Indiantown Gap to engage with senior leadership on ongoing efforts related to the Pennsylvania National Guard's nearly 25 year partnership with Lithuania.



"Thank you for fostering this exceptional partnership and for the continued cooperation of the Pennsylvania National Guard in contributing to the education and combat readiness of our personnel," said Karoblis. "With your support, we have become more trained and better prepared for challenges."

Karoblis also emphasized how the current security situation in the Baltics remains tense and requires a comprehensive deterrence posture in the region.



"U.S. troops on the ground is the best deterrence. The Pennsylvania National Guard is an important part of that U.S. presence," Karoblis noted. "Training with the Pennsylvania National Guard on a regular basis helps to build the mutual understanding and interoperability to conduct missions together."

The Pennsylvania National Guard established a relationship with Lithuania in 1993. In the 24 years that have followed, Pennsylvania and Lithuania have conducted more than 500 military and training exchanges on top of numerous joint deployments to Afghanistan as part of joint police operational mentor liaison teams and provincial reconstruction teams.

More information on the Pennsylvania-Lithuania partnership is available at: http://www.png.pa.gov/offices_and_programs/Pages/state_partnership_program.aspx

Photos from the visit can be viewed at:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/panationalguard/albums/72157684710451045



MEDIA CONTACT: Pennsylvania National Guard Public Affairs Office, 717-861-8352

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/lithuanian-defense-minister-visits-governor-wolf-and-pa-guard-300470596.html

SOURCE Pennsylvania Department of Military and Veterans Affairs
We can help you make sense of the agribusiness industry, extending from chemicals and fertilizers used as inputs into agriculture, to the commodities, food and by-products that are an output to farming, with policy and regulation applied at every step of the value chain.
A former Samsung employee has been arrested for stealing thousands of smartphones over the course of nearly two years. Between December 2014 and November 2016, the man, identified by Korean reporters only by his surname Lee, stole a total of 8,474 smartphones, many of which were specifically marked as devices that arent for sale due to the fact that they were prototypes. Nonetheless, the employee sold those phones and went on to earn an equivalent of $711,743 from second-hand retailers, latest reports indicate.

As is the norm with most employees at tech companies, whenever a worker leaves or enters a facility containing sensitive products, they are required to go through security where they are then scanned in order for their employer to be sure that no information is leaked out to the public or, in this case, to make sure no devices are being stolen. This wasnt the case for the worker in question; due to Lees disability, he had to use an electric wheelchair on a daily basis and was permitted to skip the security check, thus having an opportunity to steal thousands of smartphones before being caught. The employee, who joined Samsung back in 2010, worked for a maintenance unit of the company that played a part in the creation of software updates for already released devices. Its unclear why exactly the employee started stealing devices from Samsung, though latest reports indicate he had around $800,000 of gambling debt.

Samsung initially caught wind of Lees habit back in December last year and reported the crime to the police, while the latter only confirming the details of the ordeal earlier today. Its likely Samsung will be upping its security measures within its offices after such an incident. After all, many of the smartphones sold by the employee are sure to have been developer units which hint at what could have been in the works and Samsung is sure to be doing everything in its power to reduce the amount of sensitive information that gets leaked about its experimental devices. The company is currently developing another highly anticipated handset thats set to succeed the Galaxy Note 7 and is expected to be released later this year.
An air quality project Google started way back in 2014 is bearing some new fruit, according to an official Google blog post from June 5th. The project builds on top of Googles mapping program and even uses some of the same tools. Its primary aim is to provide people with a street-level readout of pollution and air quality in much the same way somebody might check the weather or traffic for a commute. According to Google, it could not only improve overall health but could also help city planners to build smarter and more sustainable cities. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is yet another area the mapping data could be useful. Amongst things tracked by the program are nitric oxide, nitrogen dioxide, and black carbon  which is carbon that is easily distinguishable as being emitted from cars, trucks, and other sources. Unfortunately, for now, it is only available for select areas of California.

To begin with, the data used to create the maps is drawn in by Googles partnership with the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and by Aclimas sensing system. The data represents over 3 million samples from over 14,000 miles from equipment that is included alongside other equipment mounted to the companys Street View fleet. Aclima scientists are responsible for analyzing that data, turning it into something usable. That puts some limitation on areas where Google can really dig into the project and, as of this writing, Oakland, California is the first data set being shared using this air quality mapping technology, but Google and Aclima will share air quality maps for Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Californias Central Valley communities later this year.

Google chose Oakland, in particular, because of its specific location with regards to the surrounding highways other local pollutant sources. More additions may be difficult, partially due to Googles reliance on its own Street View cars for data. However, with help from the EDF, and particularly if other agencies become involved, it should be easy to spread to larger cities, urban areas, and suburbs at very least  raising the air quality awareness and potentially improving it for millions in a substantial way. Google appears more than ready to take on that challenge.
The Moto X Play is apparently on its way to receiving the highly anticipated Android Nougat update in India. The information comes from Moto Indias Twitter account where a representative confirmed that the Moto X Play will receive Android Nougat soon. Unfortunately, no exact roll-out dates have been revealed, but the good news is that confirmation for the updates eventual arrival can now also be found on the official Motorola Mobility India support page.

Earlier this month Motorola published release notes for the Android 7.1.1 Nougat update destined for the Moto X Play, and if there was any doubt regarding the launch of Android Nougat on the Moto X Play in India, users can now rest more easily knowing that the update is on its way for an eventual release. According to the official Moto X Play support page in India, the smartphone is planned for an upgrade to Android Nougat and is currently pending partner support. It remains to be seen when the update will land on the device, but once Android Nougat will be distributed, it should introduce the usual range of new features and improvements specific to this particular OS version. This includes split-screen multitasking, improved performance and battery life, and a reworked user interface to name a few. The companys previous release notes also mentioned the inclusion of Google Duo for video calling and the Android security patch for May 1st, however, keep in mind that release notes for the Indian market may vary.

The Moto X Play was launched in August 2015 around the time Lenovo was merging its smartphone business with Motorola Mobility following the companys acquisition from Google. The smartphone was released running Android 5.1.1 Lollipop and received its first major update to Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow in less than 12 months of market availability. Spec-wise the Moto X Play features a 5.5-inch IPS LCD display with a resolution of 1920 x 1080, and conceals a Qualcomm MSM8939 Snapdragon 615 system-on-chip under the hood, housing eight CPU cores and an Adreno 405 graphics chip. A 21-megapixel main camera sits on the back panel alongside a dual-LED flash, and a 5-megapixel front-facing sensor caters to selfie enthusiasts. Well keep you posted with further developments regarding Android Nougats availability for the Moto X Play in India.
A Motorola Mobility-made device bearing the model number XT1797 was certified by the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) earlier this month, as evidenced by a number of documents published by the agency on Tuesday. According to the FCCs description of the newly unveiled Moto device, the smartphone in question is powered by Qualcomms MSM8937 system-on-chip (SoC), better known as the Snapdragon 430. This piece of silicon has already been used by the Lenovo-owned consumer electronics manufacturer in the past as it was integrated into the Moto G5 that was introduced at Mobile World Congress (MWC) earlier this year. Given how the Chicago, Illinois-based phone maker is currently rumored to be working on a revision of this particular handset called the Moto G5S, its possible that one of its models is the newly certified XT1797.

The testing documentation published by the FCC also reveals that the XT1797 supports Bluetooth 4.2 and two SIM cards, though its currently unclear whether it only features a Hybrid SIM slot or a dedicated tray for a microSD card, something that all contemporary Moto-branded handsets are equipped with. Additionally, the device was running Android 7.1.1 Nougat at the time of its testing that was likely similar to stock Android, with the Lenovo-owned company traditionally releasing devices with only slightly modified software. Finally, the XT1797 is powered by a 3,000mAh battery with fast charging support and boasts a 5.5-inch screen, the FCCs filing indicates. The Moto G5S was previously reported as having a somewhat smaller screen and only the Moto G5S Plus was said to be shipping with a 5.5-inch panel, so it remains to be seen whether the larger variant of the handset ends up being equipped with the Snapdragon 430 or if the Moto G5S debuts with a larger screen. The latter scenario is much likelier given how most industry insiders agree that the Moto G5S and Moto G5S Plus will be more expensive than their predecessors, indicating that they will ship with improved hardware.

Its currently unclear when Motorola is planning to release the XT1797 but the device should be available in the United States given how it was submitted to the FCC for certification. More details on the upcoming handset will likely be available later this year.
Google had released two Developer Previews for the upcoming Android O, and a new report just surfaced, claiming that the first official Android O update will land on Pixel devices in August. If this report is accurate, Google will release a final, new build of Android sooner than expected, considering they usually do it in fall. This info comes from David Ruddock, and he claims that the update will land in the first or second week of August.

Now, the source also mentions that this will be an OTA (over-the-air) update for Pixel phone, and that all compatible Pixel phones are also going to get the update at the same time. Now, do keep in mind that its quite possible, and even probable, that the new Pixel phones will not arrive until October probably, were talking about an Android O update for existing Pixel and Nexus smartphones. Having said that, the latest Android O Developer Preview arrived during this years Google I/O which was hosted by the company last month. Android O is not a complete overhaul of Googles OS, not even close to it, but its definitely an evolution of the OS. Google is planning to add a ton of new features to Android via this update, including the picture-in-picture option, more options for the notification shade, much better task managing in the background which will keep rogue apps at bay and stop them from draining your battery, and so on.

Its worth noting that Google is expected to release a couple more Developer Previews before the final version of Android O finally lands, and well probably get to see some additional features added, so we dont have all the necessary info at the moment, but Google already talked about the most important additions to its operating system. Now, as far as upcoming Pixel phones are concerned, we did see several rumors in the last couple of weeks, but nothing too specific, so we can only guess what to expect. It is possible that Google, once again, plans to release two Pixel phones, and that both of them will be fueled by the Snapdragon 835 64-bit octa-core SoC, and sport pretty much identical specs, aside from shipping with a different display and battery size, due to the sheer difference in the general size of the two devices.
Diese chinesische Stadt mochte eine Gesellschaft aufbauen, die in Harmonie lebt  auch mit unseren Hundefreunden 8. Juni 2017

Die Stadt Shijiazhuang hat ein Programm in die Wege leitet, das eine respektvolle Behandlung des besten Freunds des Menschen gewahrleisten soll und zugleich die Zahl der Streuner und mogliche Misshandlungen reduziert.

Haustierhaltung hat sich in China in den letzten Jahren explosionsartig verbreitet, denn Millionen von Menschen fuhlten sich von der reizvollen Aussicht auf einen vierbeinigen Freund angezogen.

Doch im dichten Gedrange der chinesischen Stadte fuhrte die Zunahme an Haustieren auch zu einer Zunahme von Konflikten.

Nicht alle Tierhalter kennen sich mit den Bedurfnissen ihres pelzigen Freundes aus oder wissen, wie sie dafur sorgen konnen, dass er ein guter Nachbar ist.

Impfungen, kontinuierliche tierarztliche Versorgung, das Gehen an der Leine und das Aufsammeln von Hinterlassenschaften sind nur Beispiele fur die Themen, die zu Konflikten und moglicherweise zum Aussetzen eines Haustiers fuhren konnen, wenn man ihnen keine Aufmerksamkeit schenkt.

Doch uberall im Land sind Stadte wie Shijiazhuang entschlossen, eine Gesellschaft zu schaffen, in der Menschen und Haustiere glucklich zusammenleben konnen.

Dieses Jahr starteten die stadtischen Behorden eine Informationskampagne fur verantwortliche Tierhaltung, um die Kenntnisse zu verbreiten, die einen guten Hundehalter ausmachen.

Broschuren wurden verteilt, kostenfreie tierarztliche Beratung angeboten und zum Programmstart Beratungsstande fur Hundelizenzen aufgebaut, auerdem wurde Animals Asias Aufklarungsfilm Katzen- und Hundeschutz um uns herum"

(Cat and Dog Welfare Around Us) gezeigt.

Die Grunderin und Vorstandsvorsitzende von Animals Asia, Jill Robinson MBE:

Es ist so wichtig, dass Chinas neue Generation von Tierfreunden wei, wie sie ihren Gefahrten das gluckliche Leben ermoglichen konnen, das sie verdienen. Zu lernen, wie wichtig Sterilisierung und Kastration sind, das Gehen an der Leine, Impfungen und regelmaiger Auslauf, das ist von entscheidender Bedeutung, wenn wir verhindern wollen, dass immer mehr Hunde misshandelt und ausgesetzt werden.

Zusatzlich zur Informationskampagne haben die Behorden der Stadt Shijiazhuang ein Tierheim gegrundet und es von Animals Asia mit allem ausstatten lassen, was zur Pflege von Streunern notig ist.

Katzen- und Hundeschutzdirektorin Irene Feng von Animals Asia:

Dieses Programm ist aus einem Samenkorn hervorgegangen, das vor vielen Jahren gepflanzt wurde. Damals, im Jahr 2010, nahmen Vertreter der stadtischen Behorden zum ersten Mal an dem China Dog Ownership Management Symposium teil, das von Animals Asia veranstaltet wird. Offenbar haben sie das Gelernte auch angewandt und Ideen umgesetzt, die das Leben von Hunden und Menschen in der Stadt verbessern werden.

Animals Asias China Dog Ownership Management Symposium ermutigt lokale Regierungen, mit Tierschutzgruppen zusammenzuarbeiten, um humane, auf wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnissen basierende Verfahren zur Regelung der Hundehaltung und Kontrolle der Streunerpopulationen zu entwickeln.

Seit dem ersten Symposium 2009 haben 463 Regierungsvertreter aus 46 Stadten in ganz China an der Konferenz teilgenommen, und das Buro fur Offentliche Sicherheit der Stadt Shijiazhuang war seit 2010 jedes Jahr dabei.

Nicht nur Shijiazhuang hat die Vorteile einer verantwortlichen Regelung und Kontrolle erkannt. Mindestens 18 andere Stadte im ganzen Land haben ihre eigenen Programme ins Leben gerufen, um das Leben von Hunden zu verbessern.

Jill:

Es ist wunderbar zu sehen, wie begeistert Regionalregierungen Programme wie dieses ins Leben gerufen haben. Wir durfen nicht vergessen: Es ist noch nicht lange her, dass wir regelmaig Horrorgeschichten uber Massenkeulungen zur Losung der Probleme mit Streunern anhoren mussten. Aber diese schlechten alten Vorgehensweisen werden immer seltener.

Die Symposien bieten eine Plattform, auf der die lokalen Regierungen mit lokalen Tierschutz-Gruppen zusammenarbeiten und Veranderungen in Gang setzen konnen, die notig sind, um Chinas Stadte der Zukunft zu gestalten: Orte, an denen Menschen und Tiere in Harmonie zusammenleben konnen.

Irene:

Das Programm von Shijiazhuang ist ein Zeichen fur den Wandel, der uberall im Land stattfindet. Immer mehr lokale Regierungen setzen handfeste Veranderungen durch, die das Leben von Tieren verbessern. Die Behordenvertreter haben gezeigt, dass sie bereit sind zuzuhoren, zusammenzuarbeiten und etwas zu verandern. All dies tragt dazu bei, sicherere Stadte zu schaffen, in denen weniger ehemalige Haustiere ausgesetzt oder misshandelt werden, wahrend diejenigen, die noch aus dem Raster fallen, mit dem Respekt behandelt werden, den sie verdienen.

Ubersetzung ins Deutsche: Inga Bening (Freiwillige Mitarbeiterin)
Ford Motor Company (NYSE: F) said that its sales in China fell 3% in May, to 87,733 vehicles, as gains for its commercial-vehicle and Lincoln-brand lineups weren't enough to offset year-over-year sales declines for every Ford-brand vehicle in its retail lineup.
Investors in Activision Blizzard (NASDAQ: ATVI) have enjoyed market-thumping returns over the last few years. The video game maker's shares have appreciated 236% since the start of 2014 alone, thanks to soaring revenue, earnings, and cash flow stemming from the successes of its Call of Duty, Overwatch, and World of Warcraft franchises.
Large drugmakers may not deliver mind-blowing growth, but they can certainly provide the peace of mind that allows investors to get a good night's sleep. These large drugmakers, more commonly known as "Big Pharma," often pay market-topping dividends and tend to be largely recession-resistant, which makes them particularly attractive to long-term investors.
The rapid rise of artificial intelligence (AI), which allows machines to learn and become an expert in any field, will pose a big challenge for the legal profession.



This is the view of Benjamin Liu, commercial law lecturer from the University of Auckland, who told the NZ Herald it is a near certainty that AI will replace lawyers, at least in some areas.



Rapid advances in technology already mean that software can effectively do the job of in-house lawyers within certain organisations. For instance, IBMs Watson is predicted to pass the bar exam this year.



The issue hasnt escaped the attention of mainstream publications such as Fortune magazine which included lawyers amongst white-collar professions already being taken over by robots.



The Future [Inc] Report by Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand predicts that a total of 885,000 (or 46% of) New Zealand jobs will be at risk of automation over the next 20 years.



While qualities such as the ability to understand the human condition or navigating the subtleties of legal argument may still remain within the realm of human lawyers, AI can step in and replace some of the more data-based responsibilities, Liu said.



I have been practising for a number of years and I know you cant say a lawyer has some magical power. Lawyers make mistakes and often make decisions based on a few simple steps. While machines also make mistakes, their accuracy levels are much higher.



Since the emergence of AI is almost a certainty, the question shifts from whether AI will be utilised in the legal profession to what limits should be set for its use.



In many fields, AI will certainly benefit humanity. Self-driving cars are much safer than cars driven by humans, and a robot surgeon can far outperform a human doctor, Liu said.



He said there should be nothing wrong with letting machines give free legal advice to those who cannot afford a lawyer. It is a completely different story to let AI decide a case however.



Arguably, it is a basic human right to for a person to have their fate decided by fellow human beings, not a machine. We do this already, for instance, with the current jury system, we dont let the judge, a legal expert, make the decision over whether a person is guilty or not in a jury trial, we let common people do that.



Other areas could be left to the robots however, Liu added. For instance, AI can conduct transactional work, due diligence in takeover deals, or the drafting of vanilla documents.



According to Fortune, new legal software is already undertaking such tasks, being used for both discovery work (searching through thousands of documents) and quantitative prediction (looking into legal arguments, precedents and even the idiosyncrasies of judges).


Slotted between the 25,800 Intens and 32,400 GT , the Megane Akaju is exclusive to the French market and will go on sale on June 7. Priced from 27,600 for the Energy TCe 130 with the stick shift box, the five-door hatchback is also available with the Energy dCi 110 turbo diesel (31,000). For people who cant be bothered shifting their gears manually, a seven-speed dual-clutch transmission is on offer too.Based on the Intens and labeled as a limited-edition model, the Akaju will be exhibited across the automakers French sales network from June 15 to June 19. First things first, the compact hatchback is beautified by Grand Tour alloy wheels sporting a diameter of 18 inches, specific badging on the sides, as well as extra-tinted rear glass.Moving on to the inside, the Akaju greets the user with two heated and massaging front seats, Black and Club Brown leather upholstery, and brushed aluminum door panel trim. On the subject of standard features, a head-up display and a Bose premium audio system are the highlights. Of course, the range-topping 8.7-inch R-Link 2 navigation system is on the menu too, packing Android Auto and Apple CarPlay.Optional extras arent that many for the Akaju, the most important being an electrically opening sunroof (800), adaptive cruise control (300), and the Easy Parking Pack (500). The lattermost of the list bundles goodies such as Blind Spot Warning, a reversing camera, front and rear parking sensors, as well as an automatic parking feature On a slight tangent, the Renault Megane lineup will soon be joined by the all-new RS . A turbocharged hot hatch that puts all the power down to the front wheels, the Megane RS will be offered with both a manual and an EDC. Look forward to the 2017 Frankfurt Motor Show for the debut.
The party started with the unveiling of three special edition Can-Am Spyder models which were custom-made for the newly achieved milestone. Were talking about the RT Limited 10th Anniversary, the F3 Limited 10th Anniversary, and the F3-S 10th Anniversary models.Each of the commemorative versions are offered with premium jet black metallic and liquid gold satin color themes, along with an embossed 10th anniversary logo and stitching, luxurious Can-Am satin gold logo, and newly designed Y-pattern rims.The collector models are a celebration of ten years of redefining the open road, said Josee Perreault, Senior Vice President, Can-Am Spyder. Since the beginning, Can-Am Spyder owners  including more than 100,000 today  have been passionate about the Spyders unique combination of wind-in-your-face exhilaration, together with the stability and peace of mind of its Y-shaped stance.Following the new models unveiling, the attendees enjoyed VIP access to BRPs Design & Innovation Center, its R&D facilities, the Can-Am Spyder factory as well as the J. Armand Bombardier Museum.Celebrating this milestone with so many Can-Am Spyder owners was incredible, said Josee Perreault, Senior Vice President, Can-Am Spyder. For the past ten years, weve focused on empowering the masses to ride and explore the open road together. We welcomed people who were new to riding, experienced motorcyclists whove transitioned to the Spyder, women whove moved from being a passenger to the driver and much more. It was a true representation of all those who are passionate about the Can-Am Spyder.The exclusive models will be built to order, and BRP has started taking orders immediately following the announcement. The price for a Limited edition Spyder F3-S starts at $23,599, while the F3 Limited is $29,849. The top end Spyder RT Limited begins at $31,049.
ECU

I guess its about time for a little tease on George! Anyone spot something that has probably never been installed in a Rolls? Lu #LeoVegas #GeorgeTheRolls #LetsDriftTheRolls #LetBreakSomeTuningRules #StayTunedForMoreNOTnormalUpdates Love @absolute.motors for always being up for my ideas! Ju A post shared by Jon Olsson (@jonolsson1) on May 3, 2017 at 12:34pm PDT

The professional skier, who has built his car aficionado reputation around the extreme tuning moves used for his rides (here's a Lamborghini example ), has recently dropped a teaser for his upcoming toy. And that lever sticking out of the Goodwood machine's center console seems to be used for operating the hydraulic handbrake.The project is being handled by Dutch specialist Absolute Motors, who has brought another spicy detail of the Roller to our attention using the piece of footage below. Following an aftermarket massage involving goodies such as a Quicksilver exhaust and an aggressiveremap, the 6,592cc twin-turbo V12 has been given a hefty muscle premium. To be more precise, the BMW motor has jumped from 632 to 810 hp, with the latter figure being announced following dyno testing.Given the ample body roll we experienced while driving the Rolls-Royce Wraith , we're looking forward to learning more about the suspension modification that are being used on the car.Oh, and the lavish Grand Tourer has also received a nickname en route to its sideways goal, with the machine being dubbed George.Keep in mind that this isn't the first time when the Spirit of Ecstasy is put to slip angle work. For one thing, we talked about a Silver Shadow becoming a drift car back in 2016.Raced by Boyzone's Shane Lynch, who might have sold it meanwhile, that project was at the other end of the Rolls-Royce tuning cost scale, having kept its factory 6.75-liter V8 and three-speed automatic tranny. Nevertheless, the retro Roller sideways fighter also employed a hydraulic handbrake.Given the fact the Olsson talks about the great thirst he has developed for hooning the Wraith, we should get to meet George this summer.
KW

The F-Type SVR is the most extreme Jaguar short of the XJ220. But there haven't been that many tuning projects dedicated to it, certainly not ones that do justice to a 200mph car.This one is a bit eclectic in the way it combines bits and bobs, but the big picture is easy to read: black coupe with green accents.Prestige Wheel Center in Birmingham contributed this set of VPS -305 forged alloy wheels painted black, sized 21x9 at the front and 21x11.5 at the rear, with tires from Continental. And to correct some of the odd handling tendencies of the car, all four corners have been fitted withadjustable coilover suspension.The cherry is a carbon-tipped exhaust system from Quicksilver, which you can listen to in the video at the bottom of the story. However, it's the photo gallery where you will see the carbon finish of the tips and surrounding air diffuser. Exterior upgrades are limited to metallic green paint on the grille frame and brake calipers.A full custom interior lifts the F-Type SVR from anonymity. As with the exterior, the theme combines black (the leather) with bright green (the stitching). Lister added quilting on the bucket seats and door cards.Lighter, stiffer, faster, louder and considerably more expensive than the F-Type Coupe everybody else has, the SVR is marketed by Jaguar as "the 200mph all-weather supercar." Under the hood is the familiar 5.0-liter supercharged V8, pushing out 575 PS and 700Nm of torque for a 0-62mph time of just 3.5 seconds. However, those numbers still don't trump a certain Porsche. UPDATE: Sorry President Trump, we made some fake news. This is indeed an F-Type R, not the SVR. If CNN can do it all the time, we can make a mistake here and there.
One of the events is the week-long Americade festival. Celebrating its 35th year, the event offers guided and unguided tours thorough the beautiful Adirondack Park and Green Mountains of Vermont, erecting Americades Expo with nearly 200 industry vendors, and offering more motorcycle shows than any other event in the U.S.Demo rides during the Americade will be available between June 6 - 10, usually from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.Next, comes the Motorcycle Week at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, which has become the demo destination during Laconia Motorcycle Week. Moto Guzzi will host a display and demonstrations onsite.The week will also include AMA and ASRA racing, the Loudon Classic ride, Sick Boy pet run, fashion show, Wall of Death stunt show, and more. The demo rides will be available between June 12 - 17, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.The next Moto Guzzi stop will be at Thunder in the Valley Motorcycle Rally. The annual rally celebrates its 20th anniversary this year and is said to have been planned its best party yet.Just east of Pittsburgh, the rally features live music, a host of vendors, stunt shows, and American Motor Drome Wall of Death. Moto Guzzi will be part of the action too, and will offer demo rides between June 22 - 25 during the aforementioned time interval.Moto Guzzi staff will be on hand at each event to introduce the range, answer questions, and lead rides on the motorcycles, which include the new for 2017 Moto Guzzi MGX-21 bagger, California 1400 Touring, V9 Roamer, V9 Bobber, V7III Stone, as well as the returning Eldorado and Audace models from the 1400 engine family.Thousands of motorcyclists from all over the continent will now be able to ride Europes most storied brand for themselves. Arriving from the shores of Lake Como to the pristine American backdrop of some of Americas most scenic riding, Moto Guzzi encourages all attendees to experience a piece of history and unique character that has made these motorcycles legendary.
CRDi

And at first glance, its safe to say that the Stonic features a much more traditional design than its soon-to-debut Hyundai-branded sibling. Twin-headlight arrangement? No. Black-painted elements meant to create the illusion of a floating roof? Neither. A squared-off rear end? Im afraid thats not the case, though. For all intents and purposes, the Stonic appears to play it nice and straightforward instead of peculiar and outlandish.Confirmed to slot nicely in the B-segment of the crossover variety, the Stonic and its sweeping roofline boasts an interior dominated by geometric design forms. The softer sculpted surfaces of the exterior are complemented by smart packaging, whereas the floating touchscreen infotainment system promises to do both Apple CarPlay and Android Auto . Whats more, the Stonic is the most customizable Kia ever, inside and out.Slated to go on sale in Europe in the second half of 2017, the half-brother of the 2018 Hyundai Kona rides on the platform that debuted with the fourth-generation Rio. Its not clear if Kia will offer all-wheel-drive as an option, but for what its worth, its easy to imagine how the engine list will look like.Starting with a turbo'd 1.0-liter three-cylinder, a more powerful 1.4-liter turbo could also make the cut. And if the Korean automaker can make a case for such a thing in diesel-loving Europe, an oil-chugging 1.4-as well.Word has it Kia will present the Stonic in the flesh for the first time this September, at the 2017 Frankfurt Motor Show. Just about two months later, the 2017 Los Angeles Auto Show should be the venue where the U.S.-spec model will make its public outing.
A 32-year-old man apparently stole a bicycle from a community center, which he then used to ride to a Walmart in Idaho . He threatened a customer of the store, and displayed a holster in his waistband while demanding money.After fleeing the scene with an unspecified amount of money, he started a Facebook Live video of his trip on Interstate 84. Police officers were already investigating a bike theft , and they also had the description of a man with a beard and red hair, who had robbed a Walmart store.Somehow, the officers managed to see the live video of the man, later identified as Jason Granger, who bragged about the new bike that he was riding.He was courteous enough to thank the community center hed just robbed. Granger noted that the institution was pretty cool, and he even considered the possibility of returning to take some more stuff from that place.As Idaho Statesman notes, police officers did not disclose whether the suspect did have a gun on him when he was stopped at gunpoint. There was a possibility that he just had a gun holster on himself, and pretended to have a weapon in an attempt to trick the cashier during the robbery.Since no amount of money in a register is worth a humans life, it was only natural for the suspect to get every bill in the unit before leaving, without anyone counting how much they just lost.Regardless, police officers booked him into the Elmore County Jail on two charges - burglary and attempted armed robbery . Facebook has been used by law enforcement before, and it seems like a useful tool in detecting people who suddenly become wealthy or recently acquired things that belonged to someone else.
EV

And since self-bragging is frown upon, they need independent organizations to do it for them. Market researcher Kantar Millward Brown has made a habit of publishing the BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands every year, and the latest one shows some pretty interesting developments.Nothing has happened at the top where Toyota managed to retain its crown despite a value decrease of three percent (to $28.7 billion). We've already talked about the company's downturn and how its President, Akio Toyoda, is sensing a crisis is looming. However, despite not going through its best moments, Toyota still came out ahead of BMW and Mercedes-Benz, the two brands trailing the Japanese giant.The secret is the company's ability to instill that Japanese sense of honor into the way it does business, so people continue to perceive Toyota vehicles as a constant in an otherwise fluctuating market. "Toyota is seen as a reliable, quality value brand," Peter Walshe, Global BrandZ director at Kantar Millward Brown, told Automotive News Europe. "Even when it was going through its recall problems, the users were saying, Whats all the fuss about, my car is fine. Toyota has delivered great value for years."The most spectacular move in the top ten of car brands, however, couldn't come from any other company than Tesla . The-maker jumped two positions from the very honorable ten it occupied the year before thanks to a 32 percent increase in its brand value.The Tesla story is interesting because it is not just the cars it offers now, it is the promise for the future," Walshe said. There is a perception that it offers a fantastic brand experience, even among non-owners. The only other brands that Ive seen have this kind of appeal before they got into mass market were Apple and Facebook."It's not the first time Tesla is likened to Apple, and it most likely won't be the last either. The two brands that saw Tesla leap over them are Land Rover and Porsche , two names with great tradition in the business and two possible competitors for Musk's company, as they too dwell in the luxury segment.
The aviation community is continuing to respond to the Trump administrations proposal on Monday to privatize the air traffic control system. FAA Administrator Michael P. Huerta released a brief statement, saying he supports looking at new ways to help us provide stable and sufficient funding to more rapidly modernize our system, while maintaining the highest level of safety. He concludes: The proposal to create a separate, non-government air traffic control service provider is a step in a process that needs to involve all users of the airspace system and deliver benefits to the system as a whole. The Professional Aviation Safety Specialists, the union representing FAA employees who install, maintain, support and certify computers and other equipment, also issued a statement, strongly opposing the presidents plan.

Privatizing the largest and most complex aviation system in the world is a risky and unnecessary step at this pivotal point in its modernization, PASS said. True progress is being made through Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) programs. Breaking apart the system to establish a monopoly will take the focus off the substantial progress already being made. This would slow down enhancements and possibly compromise safety to fix a system thats not broken.  It is unfathomable to consider gambling with the future and safety of our air traffic control system by putting it into the hands of an organization that diminishes the voice of the American citizens who will be most affected by it. PASS will continue to work tirelessly with members of Congress on both sides of the aisle to keep this misguided proposal from coming to fruition.

NATCA, the union representing air traffic controllers, said on Monday they would review the specifics of the ATC reform legislation to evaluate whether it satisfies our Unions principles, including protectingtherights and benefits of theATC workforce. On Tuesday, NATCA spokesman Doug Church reiterated that position to AVweb: It is too early to support or oppose. We need to see the legislation first. We look forward to reviewing the specifics of legislation.
Russia planted a fake news report that contributed to the diplomatic crisis between Qatar and several of its neighbors, including Saudi Arabia and Egypt, CNN reports. Per CNN, the goal appeared to be to cause rifts between U.S. and key allies.

What Qatar says: The hack "undermines Qatar's reputation" and "does not support the unity of the region." The Qatari foreign minister said the FBI has confirmed that false comments attributed to its ruler were inserted into a May 23 article from its news agency. The comments were critical of Trump and favorable toward Iran.

Trump's role: He took credit for the diplomatic changes in tweets that also suggested Qatar was funding terrorism. The comments came despite the fact that Qatar hosts one of the largest U.S. military bases in the region.

The Kremlin has issued a denial, and the FBI, which reportedly sent a team to Qatar to investigate, declined to comment.
Three big stories broke Tuesday night, all concerning President Trump and the Russia probe:

President Trump asked his top intelligence official, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, to push the FBI probe away from Michael Flynn, according to the Washington Post, which reports that following a March meeting, "Trump asked everyone to leave the room except for Coats and CIA Director Mike Pompeo... then started complaining about the FBI investigation and Comey's handling of it." Read more.

Comey told Attorney General Jeff Sessions in February he did not want to be alone with President Trump because it was Sessions' role to protect the FBI from White House influence, current and former law enforcement officials told the NY Times. Read more.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions offered to resign as tensions with Trump rose over his decision to recuse himself from the Russia probe, ABC News reports. Read more.
7 June 2017 11:43 (UTC+04:00)

By Sara Israfilbayova

Following the New York court, the London court also made a positive decision regarding the International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA) to prevent lawsuits in the UK from foreign creditors regarding the bank's assets, the IBA reported on June 7.

Foreign creditors will not be able to make claims against the assets or liabilities of the bank without its authorization. This contributes to the process of voluntary restructuring of the IBA commitments to foreign creditors.

The IBA has recently commenced a process of voluntary restructuring within the framework of its financial improvement.

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 Azerbaijan. The total amount of these commitments is $ 3.3 billion.

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.

As for other obligations of the bank, including operations on all deposits of legal entities and individuals, both for nationals and non-residents, their execution will continue in the current regime.

The bank has been operating since 1992 and is one of the country's two state banks.

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 drawbacks 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.

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7 June 2017 17:00 (UTC+04:00)

By Laman Ismayilova

Azerbaijans State Academic Opera and Ballet Theater will premiere R.Leoncavallo`s opera "Pagliacci" on June 14.

Teymuraz Gugushvili, the soloist at the Tbilisi State Opera and Ballet Theatre named after Z. Paliashvili will play the role of Canio, while the role of Tonio will be performed by Aleksander Kuznetsov, Trend Life reported.

The play will also bring together honored artists of Azerbaijan Afag Abbasova and Jahangir Gurbanov, as well as soloists Fahmin Akhmedli and Tural Aghasiyev.

The opera will be conducted by People's artist of Azerbaijan Yalchin Adigozelov.

"Pagliacci" is an Italian opera in a prologue and two acts, with music and libretto by Ruggero Leoncavallo.

The storyline is about small theatrical road company whose manager is Canio, arrived in the village. Canios wife is the main actress of the company, Nedda. She gets sick of her husband, because he is deeply jealous. Nedda has another man, Silvio. Nedda and Silvio promise to elope together. A member of the company, Tonio, overhears this promise, and he informs Canio of it. Canio appears, but Silvio has already run away. Canio is infuriated, he asks his wife, Who was that? But, Nedda refuses to answer.

In the meantime, it was time to perform. In the dressing room, Canio wears his stage costume to play the clown. When he puts powder on his face, he cries alone...

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Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova

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7 June 2017 16:27 (UTC+04:00)

By Laman Ismayilova

"Suns and Neons above Kazakhstan" expo has opened in YARAT Contemporary Art Space.

The exhibition brought together Azerbaijani and Kazakh artists, Trend Life reported.

The event featured press conference where Artistic and Strategic Director at YARAT Contemporary Art Space Bjorn Geldhof informed in detail about the concept of the exhibition. He stressed that the exhibition is supported the Eurasian Cultural Alliance.

The opening ceremony was attended by Founder and Director of YARAT Contemporary Art Space Aida Mahmudova, Founder of Nargis Fund and Nargis Publishing house, Chief Editor of the "Nargis " magazine Ulviya Mahmudova, prominent public figures, representatives of diplomatic missions accredited in the country and famous art figures.

Geldhof, addressing the event, stressed that the exhibition brings together seminal works of the 1990s and the early 2000s, by artists Erbossyn Meldibekov, Bakhyt Bubicanova, Galim Madanov and Zauresh Terekbay, Almagul Menlibayeva, Yelena Vorobyeva and Viktor Vorobyev, Rustam Khalfin, Said Atabekov, Maria Vilkoviskaya and Ruth Jenrbekova as well as new commissions by emerging artists: Asel Kadyrkhanova, Nurakhmet Nurbol, Suinbike Suleimanova, Alexander Ugay and Gaisha Madanova.

The expo "Suns and Neons above Kazakhstan" aims to deconstruct a romanticized image of Kazakhstan as a vast and largely unpopulated geography that for decades played upon the collective imagination.

It addresses various narratives of national history, from a post-colonial to a critical perspective, while discovering, mapping and voicing changing attitudes and concerns across generations. The exhibition explores the shifts and breaks within the construct of Kazakh national and cultural identity during a short timespan of its independence. It is an exhibition of Suns and Neons, of landscape and cityscape. Of artists dealing with history and nation building and an emerging generation concerned with private life and the emancipation of the individual within the isolated reality of city life, the message of the organizers reads.

Visual arts were introduced in Kazakhstan with Soviet art schools, established in the 1930s as a form of nation building. Through the 1940s, many practitioners of the avant-garde (then fallen out of favor) were deported to Kazakhstan, resulting in a surprising and mostly undocumented emergence of a non-conformist art scene. This continued through the 50s till the early 90s with strong connections to the Moscow and Leningrad non-conformist and conceptualist circles.

With the break of the Soviet Union, a radical shift took place in the Kazakh art scene. Some practices continued the conceptualist line looking at their own position as part of a Central Asian narrative, while a younger generation searched for a new language. These artists raised questions on postcolonial Central Asia, which found itself in between the revival of national and ethnic imagery and forced processes of identity construction. Playing with provocation, humor, irony and romanticism artists explored the contradictory moments within the rhetoric of authenticity, addressing national independence, recent history and social identity.

Since 1991, like other CIS countries, Kazakhstan went through various socio-economic shifts radically changing its cultural fabric. An emerging generation of artists, growing up during the booming 2000s, did not experience the nationalistic euphoria of the 1990s and do not romanticize their country's past or heritage. They are the new city kids, aware of global networks and social media, resisting confinement and societal designations around them. Their concerns are much more individual and their works draw both from illusions and disillusionments, hope and disappointments of life entrapped within the city.

This exhibition is curated by Bjorn Geldhof. Assistant curator is Anna Fech, researchers-Anne Veh, Suad Garayeva, Bjorn Geldhof.

The exhibition will run until October 29. Admission is free.

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Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova

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7 June 2017 10:26 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

The Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict can be resolved only through negotiations, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on June 6.

There is no other way except for negotiations, said Lavrov when addressing the students of the Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, TASS agency reported.

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.

He stressed that despite a set of principles has already been worked out during talks, it is necessary to agree on a number of very complex details covering very sensitive issues.

But we do not stop doing our best, he said. As you know, Russia together with the U.S. and France, is a co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group, as part of which we regularly meet with the sides of the conflict.

After the April 2016 escalation in Nagorno-Karabakh, Russian President Vladimir Putin held a meeting with Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents in St. Petersburg.

In April 2017, Russia once again brought the sides together. This time, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met with Azerbaijani and Armenian foreign ministers. They discussed the prospects for the progress of the negotiation process on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement.

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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7 June 2017 10:50 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

The OSCE Minsk Group couldnt resolve the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, the countrys Haber7 TV channel reported on June 7.

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.

Erdogan noted that the OSCE Minsk Groups activity on the resolution of the conflict is ineffective.

He added that the OSCE Minsk Group co-chair countries are members of the UN Security Council.

When one of these countries stands for the settlement of a conflict, the other one puts a veto on this, Erdogan said, stressing that this is the main obstacle to the resolution of conflicts.

The Minsk Group spearheads the OSCE's efforts to find a peaceful solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. It is co-chaired by France, the Russian Federation, and the United States. Although the OSCE Minsk Group deals with the issue for over two decades, its activities have brought no breakthrough results so far.

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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7 June 2017 15:53 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

No meeting between Azerbaijani and Armenian communities of Nagorno-Karabakh is planned at the moment, Chairman of the Azerbaijani community Bayram Safarov told Trend on June 7.

Safarov, who is also the head of the Shusha Region Executive Power, said that a meeting is impossible while the current Armenian authorities are in power, adding that the Armenian side has always avoided meetings.

Armenians are afraid of meeting with us. On the other hand, they are not up to it, said Safarov. There is a tense situation in Armenia, difficult social condition, poverty, more and more other problems and Armenians are leaving the country. Whom can they send to the meeting in such circumstances? he asked.

The Armenian government is strongly against a meeting of the Azerbaijani and Armenian communities of Nagorno-Karabakh. The last such meeting was held eight years ago, in 2009. Since then, the initiative has stalled because of the reluctance of Armenian side.

Armenia broke out a lengthy war against Azerbaijan by laying territorial claims on its South Caucasus neighbor. Since a war in the early 1990s, Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and over 1 million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities.

Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding districts.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

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7 June 2017 14:30 (UTC+04:00)

In accordance with the mandate of the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, the OSCE mission has today conducted a monitoring on the line of contact of troops located in Azerbaijans Alibayli village of Tovuz district.

Azerbaijan`s Defense Ministry reported that the monitoring ended without an incident.

On the Azerbaijani side, the monitoring was held by field assistants of the Personal Representative of the OSCE chairperson-in-office personal representative Mikhail Olaru and Simon Tiller.

On the Azerbaijani territories occupied and controlled by the Armenian armed forces, the monitoring was carried out by field assistants of the OSCE chairperson-in-office personal representative Gennady Petrica and Martin Schuster.

Armenia captured Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions from Azerbaijan in a war that followed the Soviet breakup in 1991. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and nearly 1 million were displaced as a result of the war.

Large-scale hostilities ended with a Russia-brokered ceasefire in 1994 but Armenia continued the occupation in defiance of four UN Security Council resolutions calling for immediate and unconditional withdrawal.

Peace talks mediated by Russia, France and the U.S. within the OSCE Minsk Group have produced no results so far. Despite the fragile ceasefire agreement, Armenia keeps violating armistice with Azerbaijan.

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7 June 2017 12:32 (UTC+04:00)

Azerbaijani Ambassador to Mali Tarik Aliyev has presented his credentials to country`s President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita.

Aliyev provided an insight into Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, saying Azerbaijan now has more than one million refugees and IDPs, Azertac reported.

The two also exchanged views on cooperation prospects, and pointed out great potential for development of relation between the two countries.

President Boubacar Keita asked the Azerbaijani ambassador to extend best wishes to President Ilham Aliyev.

The two counties established diplomatic relations in November 1996.

Mali is keen to develop bilateral ties with Azerbaijan and seeks to study Azerbaijan's experience, technical capabilities as well as management experience in various fields of economy.

There are also good prospects for cooperation with Azerbaijan in military-technical and energy spheres.

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7 June 2017 18:09 (UTC+04:00)

By Amina Nazarli

A joint meeting of the Committee on Economic Policy, Industry and Entrepreneurship and the Committee on Legal Policy and State Building was held at the Parliament of Azerbaijan on June 6.



The meeting considered changes proposed to the Code of Administrative Offenses, the Criminal Code, the laws "On Insurance Activities", "On counteracting the legalization of monetary funds or other property proceeded from crime and the financing of terrorism".

Chairman of the Standing Commission on Economic Policy, Industry and Entrepreneurship of the Parliament, Ziyad Samadzade said that in connection with the ongoing work on deepening the successful economic reforms in the country, it is planned to amend a number of laws.

He noted that the draft laws were submitted to the Parliament by the President of Azerbaijan in accordance with the legislative initiative.

Anar Salmanov, the director of the Financial Monitoring Service under the Board of Directors of Financial Market Supervisory Body, commenting on the amendments proposed to the Law "On Currency Regulation" said that a new version of Article 14-1 has been proposed.

In case the amendment approved, the Article will be as following: the relevant executive authority of the Azerbaijan in case of detection of traces of the legalization of money or other property received by criminal way and terrorism financing during import to and export from Azerbaijan the currency values, should take measures to preserve and confiscate traces of the crime, transfer received documents to the relevant body conducting the criminal proceedings, as well as to provide information about it to the financial monitoring institution, he said.

The meeting participants also stressed the significance of the change, which will be introduced to the law "On the Central Bank", which is made with a view to ensure a more targeted and efficient use of the Central Bank's profits.

In accordance with the current legislation, after the formation of reserve capital and the confirmation of the annual financial report of the Central Bank by the auditor's report, the remaining balance of the realized profit is transferred to the state budget.

It was proposed to add after the word "budget, to targeted budget fund , established in accordance with the Law of Azerbaijan On Budget System, on the basis of a request of the relevant executive authority and in coordination with the relevant executive authority to ensure the fulfillment of debt obligations on the state guarantee.

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Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli



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7 June 2017 15:23 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

The 3rd Meeting of Heads of Anti-Corruption Organizations and Ombudsmen of ECO Member States in Baku continued its work on June 7.

The event brought together representatives of prosecutor offices from Turkey, Iran, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, as well as members of the international organizations.

During todays meeting, Azerbaijans Prosecutor General Zakir Garalov expressed hope that the knowledge and experience gained at the event, which was held with financial and organizational support of the Azerbaijan government, help raise the activities against corruption in ECO states to a new level.

ECO Deputy Secretary General Seyed Jalaledin Alavi Sabzevari said the Baku event made an important contribution to the strengthening of cooperation between ECO countries.

Following the meeting, member countries of the ECO adopted the Baku Declaration for cooperation against corruption.

ECO member states agreed that they will send red alerts in respect of those who committed corruption crimes, and this was also reflected in the Baku Declaration.

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7 June 2017 11:25 (UTC+04:00)

By Sara Israfilbayova

SOCAR Turkey Enerji A.S., a subsidiary of Azerbaijans state oil company SOCAR in Turkey, is working on a project to create a new chemical enterprise in Turkey.

Head of SOCAR Turkey Enerji Zaur Gahramanov said that most likely it will be a joint venture.

"These investments are big enough, so we cant invest it ourselves. Therefore, we are looking for partners who have experience in this industry. We have some experience with Petkim, and today we are carrying out the engineering work," he noted.

A meeting was held on this issue with the Turkish government in Ankara and Turkey fully supports all projects of the company, added Gahramanov.

He noted that SOCAR Turkey Enerji regularly holds negotiations with big partners. Negotiations are underway with Chinese and American companies, said Gahramanov adding that they are talking mainly about technologies.

As part of new technical solution on the new petrochemical complex, SOCAR Turkey Enerji also discussed the rubber production with the Turkish government.

"This material is actively used by manufacturers of automobile tires. Tire manufacturers discussed this issue with the Turkish government and spoke about the necessity to localize the full production cycle in Turkey. The government agreed with this, and we will most likely take this factor into account in the new decision. I think that it will be possible to give some specific figures at the end of this year," Gahramanov stated.

About $11 billion of Turkeys negative trade balance accounts for the petrochemical sector, he noted, adding that therefore, the Turkish government is interested in the construction of the new complex.

Meanwhile, Turkish media outlets quoted Vagif Aliyev, chairman of Board of Directors at SOCAR Turkey Enerji, as saying that the amount of investments for building a new petrochemical complex may total about $3 billion.

It is expected that in 2018, the consolidated turnover of SOCAR Turkey Enerji will reach $15 billion and the company will become the second biggest industrial company in Turkey (the first is Koc Holding) with 5,000 employees and export potential of $3 billion. It sets a goal to become the biggest industrial company of Turkey by 2023.

SOCAR is a wholly state-owned national oil company headquartered in Baku, Azerbaijan. The company produces oil and natural gas from onshore and offshore fields in the Azerbaijani section of the Caspian Sea.

SOCAR participates in joint ventures (including ventures in Georgia and Turkey), consortia, and operating companies established with SOCARs participation.

The company includes such production associations as Azneft (the enterprises producing oil and gas onshore and offshore), Azerkimya (the chemical enterprises) and Azerigas (distributor of gas produced in the country), as well as oil and gas processing plants, service companies, and the facilities involved in geophysical and drilling operations.

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7 June 2017 14:34 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

Deputy Interior Minister for Security Affairs Hossein Zolfaqari says the terrorists walked into the Parliament in women outfit.

He said the security forces killed one terrorist and another one blew himself up, Tasnim reported.

The security forces caught the other shooters. Their number is not reported.

13:58 (UTC +4) Iranian MPs are being evacuated from the Parliament building in groups of 5 to 7 people under protection of the IRGC, Mehr news agency reports.

13:53 (UTC +4) Iran's Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani downplayed the June 7 terror attack on the Parliament, IRNA news agency reported.

The security forces will deliver a severe blow against the terrorists, Larijani said, adding that this is a minor issue, but reveals that the terrorists pursue troublemaking.

13:30 (UTC +4) Iran's Mehr news agency reported that gunfire stopped in Iran's parliament. Police deployed UAVs in its operations against the terrorists in the Parliament.

13:17(UTC +4) Fars news agency says ISIS has claimed responsibility for the todays terror attacks in Tehran.

13:10 (UTC +4) ISNA news agency reports that at least 35 have been transported to nearby hospitals following two terror attacks this morning in Tehran.

13:00 (UTC +4) Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari, commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), has arrived at Irans Parliament. Irans Intelligence Ministry urged people not to use the subway today.

12:37 (UTC +4) Police have deployed snipers to buildings surrounding the parliament building in Tehran. Shooting inside the building has intensified.

12:36 (UTC+4) An explosion occurred on the 5th floor of the Iranian parliament, where the attackers are positioned and exchanging fire with security forces, Tasnim news agency reported.

Reportedly one of the terrorists exploded himself inside the building.

12:25 (UTC +4) Mehr news agency reported that the attackers in the parliament are running low on ammo, but they seem to have suicide vests on, which may explode.

12:01 (UTC +4) Unconfirmed reports say seven people were killed in Iran's parliament shooting, while four people have been taken hostage, Tasnim news agency reported.

11:58 (UTC +4) The death toll at the parliament attack in Iran has risen to two people, local media outlets reported.

11:49 (UTC+4) Currently, the situation in the Iranian parliament is stable. Ardabil representative Hemayat Mirzadeh told Trend he and his colleagues are attending their regular sessions in the parliament.

One of the four men who attacked the Iranian Parliament has been arrested, he told Trend.

11:33 (UTC+4) A well-informed source told Trend on condition of anonymity that a security guard has been killed following attack at Parliament building. Iranian President Hassan Rouhanis office has raised security following the terrorist attack in Tehran.

11:25 (UTC+4) Fire exchanges continue between security forces and armed attackers in Iran's parliament building, Tasmim news agency reported. Iran's counter-terrorism Special Forces(NOPO )have been dispatched to the parliament.

11:15 (UTC+4) According to Fars news agency one of gunmen inside the parliament is a suicide bomber, currently surrounded by security forces.

11:01 (UTC+4) Iran's Mizan news agency quoted Akbar Ranjbarzadeh, a presidium member of the parliament as saying the attackers are 4 people and 8 people were injured in the attack. IRNA reported the arm attackers have targeted pedestrians at streets around parliament building in Tehran, Asr-e Iran portal reported.

Elyas Hazrati, an Iranian MP also said that the attackers were armed with two AK-47and a pistol.

10:40 (UTC+4) Unconfirmed news by Tasnim news agency reporter inside Parliament says one security guard died of injuries.

10:31 (UTC+4) Three people including a security guard reportedly have been injured in a shooting incident in Irans parliament on June 7, Irans Tasnim news agency reported.

Reportedly unknown men fired several rounds at the guards protecting the parliament building in Tehran, wounding one of them.

According to initial reports, the assailants opened their way into the parliament building while shooting at the guards, leading to the injury of three people.

Conflicting reports suggest Iran parliament's attackers arrested, however, some reports have not confirmed his arrest and say fire exchanges continue.

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7 June 2017 14:33 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

Security has been restored at the Imam Khomeini Mausoleum in Tehran, IRIB news agency reports.

According to an informed source, a bomber blew himself up, another one was shot dead by security forces, and eventually the law enforcement forces detained a female assailant who was earlier wounded.

Four pilgrims were wounded. A mausoleum gardener is among the victims.

13:33 (UTC +4) Irans Press TV reported that shooting is still heard at the Imam Khomeini Mausoleum.

13:10 (UTC +4) ISNA news agency reports that at least 35 have been transferred to nearby hospitals following two terror attacks this morning in Tehran.

12:55 (UTC +4) IRIB reports that another suicide bombing was carried out at the Imam Khomeini shrine.

12:28 (UTC +4) IRGC Special Forces have arrested two suspect terrorists at Imam Khomeini shrine.

12:05 (UTC +4) Iranian security forces have killed a second suicide bomber at the Imam Khomeini mausoleum, Mehr News agency reported.

11:49 (UTC +4) Tabnak news website reported that the armed attack on the Imam Khomeini shrine has left at least one killed and four injured.

11:05 (UTC +4) Tasnim news agency reported that an attacker has been arrested at Khomeinis tomb. The arrested attacker is a female.

YJC (Iran's Young Journalists Club) also reported that the bomber of Imam Khomeini shrine was a female.

10:47 (UTC +4) An unknown gunman has injured several people at the tomb of the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, near capital Tehran.

The incident has left several people injured, Fars news agency tweeted.



The officials have not revealed any details regarding the attack, or the casualties thus far.



In a separate incident on the same day, several attackers reportedly tried to storm the building of Iran's parliament, engaging in a shootout with the guards.



According to reports, several people got injured as a result of the attack.

According to ISNA, the attacker of the tomb has committed suicide bombing following the attack.

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7 June 2017 17:12 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

Russian President Vladimir Putin has sent a telegram to his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani and voiced condolences in connection with the terrorist attacks in Tehran.

The president confirmed Russias readiness for joint fight against terrorism, the Kremlins press service said.

The Russian President strongly condemned these crimes, which once again confirm the need to increase international cooperation in the fight against the forces of terror. He reiterated the readiness of the Russian side for further joint actions in this direction together with the Iranian partners, the press service said.

Two separate attacks shook Tehran on June 7. As reports said, several armed people tried to break their way into the Parliament building.

The attackers managed to get inside the building and engaged in a shootout with the security forces. One terrorist committed suicide by blowing himself up. The latest reports indicate that all four terrorists who took part in the siege of the parliament building have been killed.

Another attack took place at the Imam Khomeini Shrine. The reports said Iran's security forces neutralized one terrorist, another one committed suicide. At least 4 pilgrims have also been injured in the attack.

Senior politicians from various countries condemned the terrorist attacks in Tehran claimed by the ISIS terrorist group that killed at least 12 people.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

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7 June 2017 16:41 (UTC+04:00)

By Amina Nazarli

Ganja is among the Top 5 ancient historical cities in the CIS area, popular among tourists.

The analytical agency TurStat revealed the most-visited historical cities of the CIS states. The ranking revealed that the most popular historical cities in the CIS are located in Central Asia and Transcaucasia.

Top 10 historical cities of the CIS popular among tourists are Turkestan (Kazakhstan), Samarkand (Uzbekistan), Bukhara (Uzbekistan), Taraz (Kazakhstan), Ganja (Azerbaijan), Vitebsk (Belarus), Khiva (Uzbekistan), Gyumri (Armenia), Khujand (Tajikistan) and Mary (Turkmenistan).

The rating is based on the analysis of the proposals for tours and data of the regional tourist offices.

Some 375 km away from Baku, tourists will find the ancient city of Ganja, the second largest city of Azerbaijan.

The city of Ganja, founded more than 4,000 years ago and called the Cultural Capital of the CIS in 2017, is visited over 400,000 tourists annually, and most of them are from Russia. Some 50 kilometers from Ganja there is a unique city called Naftalan, which is considered the most popular health resort in the CIS.

Visiting Ganja one cannot skip a visit to the mausoleum of the great poet, a remarkable monument of Nizami.

Ganja was also the capital of Azerbaijan, when the country first declared its independence in 1918, thus playing a leading role in the history of the country.

The region is famous for its nature, namely Goygol Lake and reserve. A large mountain lake surrounded by the mountains of the Lesser Caucasus was formed as a result of a devastating earthquake that destroyed the mountain Kapaz in the 12th century.

The color and clarity of the waters of Goygol Lake, located 1,600 above sea level is striking. The banks of the lake are covered with forests and rich of flora and fauna.

This area is ideal for swimming, walking, travelling and family picnics.

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Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli



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7 June 2017 16:57 (UTC+04:00)

By Amina Nazarli

Flights on the route Trabzon-Baku-Trabzon will start to operate from June 17. The flights will be carried out by Turkish airline Onur Air.

Departure from Trabzon to Baku will be carried out at 01:00 local time, from Baku to Trabzon - at 04:00 local time.

The price of a round-trip ticket will start at 99 euros. The flights will be carried out every Saturday.

Earlier, Onur Air carried out flights from Turkeys Istanbul to Azerbaijans Ganja city.

Sales Director of the Pegasus Airlines Emre Pekesen previously told Trend that the Turkish low cost carrier plans to launch direct flight between Baku and Ankara.

Pekesen said that from June Pegasus Airlines will be operating a second hub in Turkey, Ankara and the company is currently working on obtaining permissions to launch a direct flight between Ankara and Baku.

More than 600,000 Azerbaijani tourists visited Turkey in 2016, according to the Turkish Statistical Institute.

Azerbaijani tourists often travel to Turkey for vacation in July and August. Turkey which provides high-quality and inexpensive vacation for many international tourists has long ago become one of the most favorite destinations for many Azerbaijanis.

--

Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli



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NEW YORK  Scandal-ridden Wells Fargo has been ranked dead last in a survey of "Most Respected American Companies" done by the investing publication Barron's.

San Francisco-based Wells Fargo plunged from 60 on Barron's list to 100. Wells Fargo is ranked below Philip Morris, Altria and Reynolds American  the nation's largest tobacco companies  as well as American International Group, better known as AIG, the insurance giant that required a government rescue during the financial crisis.

Wells Fargo's reputation has been battered after the bank acknowledged in September that its employees opened up to 2 million accounts for customers without permission to meet unrealistic sales goals.
Bank of Hawaii Corporation operates as the bank holding company for Bank of Hawaii that provides various financial products and services in Hawaii, Guam, and other Pacific Islands. It operates in three segments: Consumer Banking, Commercial Banking, and Treasury and Other. The Consumer Banking segment offers checking, savings, and time deposit accounts; residential mortgage loans, home equity lines of credit, automobile loans and leases, personal lines of credit, installment loans, small business loans and leases, and credit cards; private and international client banking, investment, credit, and trust services to individuals and families, and high-net-worth individuals; investment management; institutional investment advisory services to corporations, government entities, and foundations; and brokerage offerings, including equities, mutual funds, life insurance, and annuity products. This segment operates 54 branch locations and 307 ATMs throughout Hawaii and the Pacific Islands, and a customer service center, as well as through online and mobile banking. The Commercial Banking segment provides corporate banking, commercial real estate loans, commercial lease financing, auto dealer financing, and deposit products. It offers commercial lending and deposit products to middle-market and large companies, and government entities; commercial real estate mortgages to investors, developers, and builders; and international banking and merchant services. The Treasury and Other segment offers corporate asset and liability management services, including interest rate risk management and foreign exchange services. Bank of Hawaii Corporation was founded in 1897 and is headquartered in Honolulu, Hawaii.
American Water Works Company, Inc., through its subsidiaries, provides water and wastewater services in the United States. It offers water and wastewater services to approximately 1,700 communities in 14 states serving approximately 3.4 million active customers. The company serves residential customers; commercial customers, including food and beverage providers, commercial property developers and proprietors, and energy suppliers; fire service and private fire customers; industrial customers, such as large-scale manufacturers, mining, and production operations; public authorities comprising government buildings and other public sector facilities, such as schools and universities; and other utilities and community water and wastewater systems. It also provides water and wastewater services on various military installations; and undertakes contracts with municipal customers, primarily to operate and manage water and wastewater facilities, as well as offers other related services. In addition, the company operates approximately 80 surface water treatment plants; 480 groundwater treatment plants; 160 wastewater treatment plants; 52,500 miles of transmission, distribution, and collection mains and pipes; 1,100 groundwater wells; 1,700 water and wastewater pumping stations; 1,300 treated water storage facilities; and 76 dams. It serves approximately 14 million people with drinking water, wastewater, and other related services in 24 states. American Water Works Company, Inc. was founded in 1886 and is headquartered in Camden, New Jersey.
A godly pursuit: 5 scriptural reasons Christians should care about justice

I once listened to a man relate how he and his family were forcibly removed from their home and forced to settle in a ghetto on the opposite side of the city under the apartheid government in South Africa. I have met Kosovar refugees whose family members were rounded up and shot because they were from the wrong ethnic group. I have sat with refugees fleeing from ISIS living out a fragile existence in a makeshift camp in Lebanon. My wife and I have fostered children who have experienced domestic violence and have had to leave their family home and live with strangers.

But the effects of injustice are not far from any of us, if we have eyes to see it and ears to hear people's stories.

We know instinctively that we are called to help those who are suffering injustice. Justice is a godly pursuit. But nevertheless, there are Christians who still hold the view that pursuing justice is not a worthwhile endeavour for Christians or the Church. There are also Christians who talk about the justice of God but do very little demonstrate it. And there are Christians who have spent themselves in the pursuit of justice, and now feel tired out and disillusioned.

I want to give you five reasons to start pursuing justice if you are not doing so and to keep on going if you have become weary. These five biblical snapshots show why pursuing justice matters for the Church.

1. God is a just God

He is the Rock,his works are perfect,

and all his ways are just.

A faithful God who does no wrong,

Upright and just is he (Deuteronomy 32:4).

There are a myriad passages we could look at to demonstrate that the God of the Bible is a God of justice. In Deuteronomy the appropriateness of God's actions is related to his steadfast character as one who behaves and acts justly. For Christians, our conception of right and wrong is not ultimately based on social norms or democratic decisions. It derives from the very character of God himself. God has made known his character to us through his words and actions in scripture. They reveal a God who is fundamentally concerned about justice. He gives laws that reflect his desire for society to be rightly ordered, constituted to ensure peace and equity and to protect the vulnerable. He gives his son, who, before he dies for our salvation, lives out a life of justice and compassion. If we are to be a godly people, imaging God's character to a watching world, we must demonstrate this same concern for justice.

2. God commands us to act justly

The righteous care about justice for the poor,

but the wicked have no such concern (Proverbs 29:7).

There is a clear expectation that God's people will be in contact with the poor and needy and that they will help ensure justice for them. This concern is what separates those that are rightly related to God from those who are far from him. This is expressed not only in Proverbs but also in Matthew 25, in the parable of the sheep and goats. Its practical outworking enables the needy to work and eat (see Ruth and Deuteronomy), to belong to a family or a community (Psalm 68), to be treated fairly in a court of law (Proverbs 24: 24-25) or in a place of worship (James 1). God's people are commanded to do seek justice because this is a demonstration of true worship. Social justice is as important in our worship, if not more important, as sacrifices, gatherings and fasts (Isaiah 1, Micah 6:8).

3. Christ died to satisfy the justice of God

God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit (Romans 8: 3-4).

At the heart of the Christian faith stands the cross of Christ. The cross is the supreme symbol that demonstrates that justice is central to our faith. If God was not concerned about justice, the cross would not be necessary. If God was unconcerned about justice he could simply ignore our sins. But the cross only makes sense if God is a just God. Paul describes the death of Jesus as fulfilling the righteous requirements of the law. In order for God to forgive humanity his justice needed to be satisfied. The cross is also the place where the decisive victory over evil and injustice was won (Colossians 2:15). For Christians to live cruciform lives we would expect to see the same concern for justice, demonstrating Christ's conquering of evil. Fighting for justice in our world cannot add to what the cross has done, but because Jesus has died in our place and the Father has forgiven our sins, the Spirit now sends us out in the world to proclaim and to demonstrate the justice of God and his coming kingdom.

3. Seeking justice gives a foretaste of the coming Kingdom of God

'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven' (Matthew 6:9).

Some argue that working for justice now makes no sense when human souls and the word of God are going to leave this planet, while everything else is going to be destroyed and replaced by a new heavens and earth. But seeking justice is a way we demonstrate in this world the breaking in of the coming kingdom of God. This is what we are called to pray in the Lord's Prayer. We ask that our Heavenly Father's name would be honoured as God's kingly reign is revealed in the world. God is brought honour as God's reign is demonstrated in our fallen and broken world in the same way that God's perfect reign is demonstrated in heaven. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount Christians are sent into the world to shine like lights in the darkness and to fight corruption like salt. As we shine and fight we preach to a watching world the Kingdom of God.

4. One day justice will prevail

'Away with the noise of your songs!

I will not listen to the music of your harps.

But let justice roll on like a river,

righteousness like a never-failing stream!' (Amos 5:23-24).

We long for the day when God's justice is finally revealed. Our longing may prompt us to action but often it feels that our action is in vain. Corruption and inequity persist. Wars and hardships and poverty persist. However disillusioned we may be in the face of overwhelming odds, the Bible insists that one day God's kingly reign will be fully established, God's character will be fully revealed and God's justice will rule over all the earth. The prophet Amos writes about the coming of the day of the Lord, when God's justice will be finally revealed. At that stage it is not singing or music that will be of value to God, but a people that will pursue justice come what may.

5. Seeking justice gives the world a taste of what is to come.

Seek justice,

encourage the oppressed.

Defend the cause of the fatherless,

plead the case of the widow (Isaiah 1:17).

Some are worried that any attempt to pursue justice is an attempt to make the kingdom of God happen without God. But when we apply this logic elsewhere, it falls flat. For example, should a parent not wipe away the tears of their crying children because that may short-circuit the fact that one day God will wipe away every tear? (Revelation 21:4) Of course not. We can take responsibility for ministry without taking responsibility away from God. And so, even though we can only give people a partial glimpse of God this side of the return of Christ (1 Corinthians 13:12), we nevertheless persevere in sharing the gospel. And even though we can only give a partial taste of the justice of God, and only give a glimpse of the coming kingdom, we nevertheless persevere in pursuing justice.

There are many reasons to pursue justice as a Christian. Perhaps these five scripture passages will encourage you to look for more. My prayer is that your love of God and your hunger for his word will motivate you to give attention to the cries of the poor and the oppressed around us all.

Dr Krish Kandiah's latest book, 'God is Stranger' (Hodder) offers a challenging way to understand the role of justice and hospitality in our worship of God.
Brexit: The elephant that's not in the room

How many of us remember the elephant jokes? Why did the elephant paint its toenails red? So it could hide in a cherry tree without being seen. How do you know there's an elephant in the fridge? The footprints in the butter. How does an elephant get down from a tree? Sits on a leaf and waits til autumn.

Theresa May called this election that no one else really wanted because she felt she needed a substantial majority to negotiate a hard Brexit.

Yet Brexit has barely been mentioned in this campaign, which has instead been dominated by terrorism, rows about police cuts and the terrible embarrassment  and now unfortunate ill health  of Diane Abbott.

It seems that Brexit is the elephant that has painted its toenails red and hidden in a tube of Smarties.

Like the war in Fawlty Towers with the German guests, it has become the thing we can't talk about. As in, 'I mentioned Brexit once, but I think I got away with it.'

We see mooted, mainly from the left, that by the time a Brexit deal is proposed it will be different from anything anyone expected. There is quiet hope that it might not be all done and dusted, and that sufficient political pressure might be applied for another referendum which would go the other way. It would be an embarrassing climbdown, and we would look ridiculous to the world  but hey what's so different about that? And we would still be in the Union.

From the right, the assumption  underpinned by determination  is that it will goes through whatever the result of this election and there can be no U-turn.

The elephant that is lurking outside and is nosing at the window, yet to make its way into the room, is the unmentionable and impossible thing  the possibility that a new government might call a new referendum to impose or reject a Brexit deal.

No one wants to think about the consequences of Brexit at the moment. To take just one aspect, as far as financial uncoupling goes, we face being thrown into a degree of chaos. We are going to surrender a lot of data, contacts, information. Will Hutton is among the commentators who are clear in their scathing assessment of what a disaster Brexit will be. Agreements, organisational deals, laws  nothing is clear. People's jobs and futures are at risk. We've lost the goodwill of huge numbers of important people who are also our geographical neighbours. Why did we do this? And whatever happened to the reassurance we kept being given that it was intended as an advisory measure only? Somehow the Referendum has been turned into a mandate, with Parliament undermined not by Europe but by itself. Why didn't it assert itself?

In a country that once prided itself on looking after its minorities, why are Remainers now the people who dare not speak the name of Brexit?

My husband jokes that the Referendum was lost on the playing fields of Eton. This contains more than a nugget of truth. The sad fact is, whatever the result of this election, it seems we've shot ourselves in the foot  with an elephant gun.
Catholics in shock as saint's brain is snatched by relic thief

Devotees of St John Bosco are in shock after it was revealed that a piece of his brain was stolen in Italy by a thief posing as a pilgrim.

St John Bosco, popularly known as Don Bosco, was an Italian Roman Catholic priest who founded the Salesian religious order, founded in the 19th century to help poor children during the Industrial Revolution. He was born in 1815, died in 1888 and was canonised in 1934. Among many Catholics in northwest Italy, the saint is revered as the patron saint of school children, troubled youth, editors and publishers.

According to the church officials, the thief entered the church in Castelnuovo, near Turin, last Friday. He then left with a glass case which contained a small piece of the saint's brain.

Each year more than 600,000 devotees and pilgrims view the reliquary site and often visit the church to pray before the relic kept in glass, behind the altar. On Sunday, pilgrims gathered to pray for the relic's return.

'Shock and outrage surround theft of St John's Bosco's brain,' blared a headline on Crux, a popular Catholic online publication in the United States.

'I invite whoever took it to give it back immediately, without conditions so we can turn this painful page and continue worthily to honour the memory of Don Bosco in his birthplace,' said Archbishop Cesare Nosiglia of Turin in a statement.

St John Bosco is venerated for having dedicated his life to helping deprived, poor children. The religious order which was founded in 1859, has grown to become the second-largest order in the Catholic Church, and according to the Salesian Mission, the order is regarded as the single largest provider of vocational and technical training in the world. It operates more than 70 colleges, 90 clinics and hospitals, more than 330 orphanages and more than 3,200 schools.

Nosiglia is calling for the immediate return of the reliquary and said in a statement that the theft of the relic was something "you never wanted to hear."

'It makes you think of the profound moral misery of someone who would steal a "sign" that's been left and conserved for the devotion and the faith of all,' he said.

Speaking to Crux, Father Ezio Orsini, the rector of the basilica, said the community is 'deeply saddened' over the theft.

'We trust that Don Bosco can touch the heart of whomever committed this act and make them turn around, just as he was able to transform the lives of the young people he met," Orsini said. "We're also sure that while you can steal a reliquary of Don Bosco, as has happened, you can't rob Don Bosco from us and from all the pilgrims who visit this place every day.'
Election night: Christian Today predictions on which Christian candidates will lose their seats

When the first list of marginal seats was drawn up in April, Labour were fearing annihilation and MPs with majorities of 8,000 and more were told they were at risk.

After one of the most extraordinary election campaigns in recent memory the picture is entirely different.

If some polls are correct, the Conservatives could even fail to maintain the slim majority they have at the moment and we could be heading for a hung parliament.

Both Tories and Labour seats are now vulnerable, including a number with Christian candidates.

Here are 20 areas to watch out for on election night:

Ilford North  Wes Streeting, majority of 589

Wes Streeting won one of the UK's most marginal seats in 2015 by just 589 votes.

Given the area's lean towards Brexit (52 per cent) and a significant number of Jewish voters furious at Jeremy Corbyn's perceived softness on antisemitism, Streeting needs a major Labour surge to keep his seat.

Christian Today prediction: Conservative gain from Labour.

Eastbourne  Caroline Ansell, majority of 733

Thanks to the Lib Dem's collapse in 2015, Ansell snatched the seat by a small majority. Despite a determined campaign from Tim Farron's team, their pro-EU message is unlikely to cut through in a constituency where 57 per cent backed Brexit.

Christian Today prediction: Conservative hold.

Barrow and Furness  John Woodcock, majority of 795

After narrowly holding off the Conservatives in 2015, Labour's John Woodcock is struggling to repeat the feat this time. A strong critic of Brexit, Woodcock is fighting against a large UKIP vote, most of whom are expected to turn towards the Conservatives in an area where 57 per cent voted to Leave.

Christian Today prediction: Conservative gain from Labour.

Lewes  Maria Caulfield, majority of 1,083

Caulfield was another Tory who benefited from the Lib Dem's capitulation in 2015 and has fought a tough battle to retain her seat against Tim Farron's anti-Brexit message. Lewes voted Remain by 53 per cent and may look to punish Caulfield, who sided with the Leave campaign.

But she will take comfort in the fact that the much heralded #LibDemFightback has failed to gain momentum.

Christian Today prediction: Conservative hold.

Lancaster and Fleetwood  Cat Smith, majority of 1,265

After winning her seat from the Conservatives in 2015, Cat Smith is likely to lose it again this time round.

A loyal sidekick to Jeremy Corbyn, Smith will hope her leader's late surge in the polls comes off. But the Conservatives remain ahead and will be confident of regaining the Lancaster area.

Christian Today prediction: Conservative gain from Labour.

Westminster North  Karen Buck, majority of 1,977

A tough one to call. A slim majority means Karen Buck is high on the Tory's target list but her longserving record as an MP and her strong anti-Brexit stance in a pro-Remain seat may save her.

Christian Today prediction: Labour hold.

Clwyd South  Susan Elan Jones, majority of 2,402

Susan's Elan Jones' description of Brexit as a 'disaster' will not have won her many friends in a constituency where 60 per cent voted to Leave.

Despite what would normally be considered a comfortable majority, the former shadow Welsh minister is in real trouble with 15 per cent of voters in 2015 backing UKIP. Most of these are expected to switch to the Conservatives.

Christian Today prediction: Conservative gain from Labour.

St Ives  Derek Thomas, majority of 2,469

Another South-West Conservative fighting off a Lib Dem campaign, Derek Thomas will take comfort from polling that suggests most UKIPers are switching back to the Tories after the vote to Leave. The party beat Labour to third place in 2015 in St Ives and their extra support should keep Thomas safe.

Christian Today prediction: Conservative hold.

Stoke on Trent South  Rob Flello, majority of 2,539

Flello is an outspoken Catholic who, like most Catholics, backed Remain in the EU referendum. Unfortunately for him Stoke on Trent is one of the most pro-Leave areas in the country.

His only saving grace may be that Brexit has not defined this election in the way Theresa May wanted and Jeremy Corbyn is showing signs of cutting through to the working class voters he initially alienated.

Christian Today prediction: Conservative gain from Labour.

Wakefield  Mary Creagh, majority of 2,613

A similar picture for Mary Creagh  a strident Remainer in a seat where 62 per cent voted to Leave.

Can she rely on a late Labour surge to protect her?

Christian Today prediction: Conservative gain from Labour.

Warrington South  David Mowat, majority of 2,750

In a constituency split 50/50 by Brexit, Mowat cannot rely on Theresa May's apparent resolve to Leave to cut through. But his relatively healthy majority should protect him, even his Jeremy Corbyn's surge does materialise.

Christian Today prediction: Conservative hold.

Torbay  Kevin Foster, majority of 3,286

Kevin Foster is a Remain-backing Conservative in a seat that backed Brexit by 62 per cent. But his closest rivals are the Lib Dems whose relentless pro-EU message is even less likely to win support.

Christian Today prediction: Conservative hold.

Bishop Auckland  Helen Goodman, majority of 3,508

A pattern for vulnerable Labour MPs is developing  ardent Remainers in strong Leave areas.

'I am just off to do my constituency surgery where I will meet a lot of people I can do nothing for,' she told The Independent the day after the Brexit vote.

Her problem may be the people of Bishop Auckland agree.

Christian Today prediction: Conservative gain from Labour.

Bath  Ben Howlett, majority of 3,833

Bath is one of the key Lib Dem target seats and has been visited by Tim Farron more than once in this election. Ben Howlett has sought to emphasise his support for Remain and a soft-Brexit in an area where an overwhelming 68 per cent voted Remain.

But a shambolic Lib Dem campaign and a general failure of Tim Farron to gain momentum should keep Howlett safe.

Christian Today prediction: Conservative hold.

Bermondsey and Old Southwark  Neil Coyle, majority of 4,489

Neil Coyle is in a different place from many of his Labour colleagues  he is fighting against a Lib Dem candidate, Simon Hughes, who is trying to regain his old seat in east London.

Both men are Christians, both keenly emphasising their anti-Brexit stance. The difference will be how the people of Bermondsey and Old Southwark view Jeremy Corbyn's reign as Labour leader.

Christian Today prediction: Labour hold.

Dagenham and Rainham  Jon Cruddas, majority of 4,980

Dagenham and Rainham would not normally be considered vulnerable but it was one of the few seats in 2015 where UKIP came second with 12,850 votes. With their aim to leave the EU fulfilled, where these voters turn to next will decide Jon Cruddas' fate.

Christian Today prediction: Labour hold.
Happy Birthday Bear Grylls: 7 quotes from the Chief Scout on faith

Today is the birthday of the rugged action-man, seasoned adventurer and death-defying survivalist Bear Grylls. The former SAS Englishman has wandered the wilderness with presidents and cultivated a global brand around his name.

Alongside his celebrity though, Bear is also a committed Christian, and is unafraid to talk about his faith and its deep impact on his life.

As the world wishes Happy Birthday to Bear, here are seven quotes that offer a glimpse of the spirituality behind the survivor.

1. The journey's been that faith has been the wildest ride. And Jesus, the heart of the Christian faith is the wildest, most radical guy you'd ever come across. He was always hanging around with the prostitutes and the tax collectors and having parties and banquets, and I found myself drawn to that character, not the kind of fluff that we like to box as religion.

From an interview with CBN's The 700 club

2. For so many years I always just strived to be strong in myself. It was as if all I needed was me and my buddies and we'd be, like, invincible.

But the truth is none of us are. And I don't want to do this thing called life, I don't want to do it on my own. It kind of feels as if my longing for this light inside is now stronger than my fear of what others might think.

People ask, doesn't that make faith like a crutch? Maybe. What does a crutch do? A crutch helps you stand, makes you stronger. In that case, sure, I need that. But especially when it's so much more than that.

In a video for the 'Alpha Film Series'



3. This faith inside is also like a backbone, helping me stand tall and helping me be strong when I'm really up against it, facing those odds, whether it is on a mountain or stuck in some jungle, or just dealing with the storms of life. Sure I need that. But at heart my Christian faith says I'm known, I'm known to Christ.

In a video for the 'Alpha Film Series'

'Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.' pic.twitter.com/r9Hxd1dKF9  Bear Grylls (@BearGrylls) September 2, 2015

4. I really, desperately have learnt in my life that I need my faith, and I'm just not strong enough on my own. I try to start every day by kneeling down and saying, Lord Jesus, I aint got it all right, and I'm nervous about today. I will give it my all, but will you help me?

It's never more complicated than that. I probably don't go to church enough, but my faith is a quiet, strong backbone in my life, and the glue to our family.

From an interview with the Radio Times

5. A man's pride can be his downfall, and he needs to learn when to turn to others for support and guidance.

6. Christianity is not about religion. It's about faith, about being held, about being forgiven. It's about finding joy and finding home. We all want that, but nobody wants religion. Why do people turn away from faith? They're not, they're turning away from religion most of the time. I've yet to meet anyone who doesn't want to be forgiven or held or find peace or joy in their life. We try loads of other stuff  we think booze or foxy women or whatever will fill it  but it doesn't fill the hole.

From an interview with Relevant magazine

7. Survival can be summed up in three words  never give up. That's the heart of it really. Just keep trying.
Is it true that Islam is inherently violent?

Terrorist attacks are not a new thing in large cities in the UK. Back in the '80s and '90s there were people who didn't want to travel to London for fear of IRA bombs. I don't recall politicians or media from that time saying repeatedly, 'These terrorists are not Catholic.' We knew they were, and we knew that Catholic identity was one part of the toxic mix that fomented terrorism but we also knew that they in no way represented our Catholic neighbour.

Yet after the latest terrorist incidents, time and again we hear politicians and others saying: 'These terrorists are not Muslims' and that this is not Islam.

Is this true? Are these men of violence, claiming to act in the name of Islam, with the name of Allah on their lips, really not Muslim? Does Islam have something to answer for as violence is perpetrated in its name?

Catholicism in Ireland and Northern Ireland has had to do real soul searching in the light of violence and terrorism done in its name. This has included recognition of being the victims of injustice. It also includes the mix of nationalism, politics and religious identity. Another factor is the history of mutual violence and antipathy. Lastly there is the theology that is convinced of its self-righteousness. Christianity is woven through this.

Just as Christianity could not absolve itself from violence in its communities, nor can our Muslim communities. There must be some self-examination that recognises the issues of perception of victimhood, nationalism, politics and religious identity. Theology, and streams of thinking within that theology, must be grappled with and recognised.

Concerning the latest Jihadi terrorism, much has been written about the issues of victimhood, foreign policy and politics. Most of those who espouse violent jihadism in Europe are second-generation Muslims who have lost their connection with their country of origin and have failed to integrate into Western societies. Theirs is an understanding of Islam removed from cultural background and detached from any sense of belonging. This identity vacuum feeds nihilistic feelings with suicidal impulses. Such people gravitate to violence for significance and meaning.

This is part of the mix, but it's not the whole story. There is also the theological, violent jihadism justified through Quranic interpretation and reading of the traditions. This takes the 109 violent verses in the Quran, such as sura 2:191-193 which calls for killing of the unbeliever, and applies them as if they are foundational and without context. This is arguable but it's a stream of interpretation that has an internal logic to it with strong historical support.

Many streams of Islamic interpretation dispute this, and hopefully will move to the fore as time goes on. However, times of conflict, such as the Iran-Iraq war see these verses being drawn on as justification for the violence. The more relationships with the secular West are defined by conflict the more these will continue to resonate.

Behind the violent jihadi understandings of Islam there are also mainstream attitudes that have set a milieu in which violent ideology found a place. These are attitudes that I've met in Muslim communities throughout the UK. Such attitudes include seeing non-Muslims as somehow unclean and inferior; this is sometimes linked with unsubtle racist attitudes. The description of non-Muslims as Kufr (infidel) and seeing pork eating, alcohol drinking, scantily dressed neighbours supports this self-directed sense of moral superiority of cleanliness. In the UK most Muslims are of a South Asian ethnicity, and they are not immune from racism. To be 'pale' is good and 'dark' is looked down upon. Tensions are often fed when (paler) Muslims look down on non-Muslim black people.

All communities sometimes bolster self-belonging and self-identity by labelling the 'other' as dirty, inferior and worthy of disdain. Christians do this. However, within Christianity there also exists a strong theological impulse to not label the other as unclean. Jesus' openness to befriend Samaritans, the parable of the good Samaritan, Peter's vision in Acts, and the openness to Gentile inclusion lead by the Holy Spirit all challenge the labelling of others as 'dirty.'

When I brought this up with Muslim colleagues once and asked if there was a similar theological impulse for openness within Islam, I was answered by a flat: 'No, calling others dirty doesn't happen in Islam.' When I challenged this with experience and cultural examples the reply was 'Oh, but that's not Islam', followed by conversation about how the family home had, and often still has, cutlery reserved solely for outsiders. This attitude is often magnified when looking at male attitudes to women which, at its worst, feeds into the scandals such as that which occurred in Rotherham. The attitude of moral superiority of cleanliness is one that I would like to see my Muslim colleagues tackle head on theologically.

Linked to this notion of superiority is a theology that has been worked out from positions of dominance. Most Islamic theology has been worked out within positions of power and assumes that it will be in power. Where it wasn't in power, such as the British Raj, we often saw purity movements emerge, such as the Deobandi movement which is represented in the majority of mosques in the UK today. The Deobandi movement, like all purity movements, saw that Muslim communities had lost power and called for a return to pure religion so that God could once again bless them. After all, the reason they had lost power must have been because they had strayed from the straight path. To return to purity would be to return to power. Again, I think our Muslim colleagues need to look to establish a theology that accepts living without power, in multi-cultural settings where there is a separation of religion and power.

Christians can be racist, can have a sense of moral superiority and can think of others as dirty and unclean. Christians can seek political power and assume a right to govern. However, there is a significant difference between Islam and Christianity. While both communities can be deeply flawed and sinful, both look to an ideal. Both look to a perfect example. For Christianity, this is Jesus and for Islam this is Muhammad. At the foundation of Jesus' life is the cross, the laying down of power, the accepting of weakness and identification with a broken world unto death (and resurrection!). At the foundation of Muhammad's life is the Hijra, the taking up of political power, of warfare, statesmanship and governance.

Is Islam inherently violent? Muslim communities are as deeply flawed and sinful as Christian communities. I believe a significant difference between Islam and Christianity is the example of their ideal. One will, in the end, seek power and governance, the other will, in the end, embrace the cross and weakness. Both will misuse violence, but does Islam have the wherewithal to embrace living where it is not dominant? I hope so, but I'm not so sure.

Dr Colin Edwards is Vice Principal of Redcliffe College and has worked in Muslim contexts in South Asia since 1990.
Judge dismisses lawsuit against anti-gay pastor Scott Lively despite his 'crackpot bigotry'

A federal lawsuit against the anti-gay pastor Scott Lively, charging him with 'crimes against humanity' for his actions in Uganda in support of a controversial law criminalising homosexuality there, has been dismissed despite heavy criticism of Lively from the judge.

US District Court of Massachusetts Judge Michael Ponsor on Monday issued an order dismissing the case against Lively, ruling that the suit lacked the jurisdiction for it to proceed.

Lively, who is the president of the Abiding Truth Ministries and a one-time candidate for Massachusetts governor, was sued in 2012 by the Centre for Constitutional Rights on behalf of a Ugandan LGBT group called Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG).

Lively has called for the criminalisation of the 'publicy advocacy of homosexuality' and appeared in a Russian TV documentary entitled Sodom. He is the co-author of The Pink Swastika, which says in its preface that 'homosexuals [are] the true inventors of Nazism and the guiding force behind many Nazi atrocities'.

Judge Michael Ponsor, who previously refused to dismiss the case, made it clear that the ruling this week was down to a matter of jurisdiction, not because the court sided with Lively or his words and deeds.

In his ruling, Ponsor issued a strongly worded denunciation of Lively's 'crackpot bigotry', his conspiracy to persecute LGBT people in Uganda, and the 'terrible harm' he has done. Judge Ponsor added that Lively had also violated international law.

Judge Ponsor ruled: 'Defendant Scott Lively is an American citizen who has aided and abetted a vicious and frightening campaign of repression against LGBTI persons in Uganda...'[Lively's] crackpot bigotry could be brushed aside as pathetic, except for the terrible harm it can cause.

'The record in this case demonstrates that Defendant has worked with elements in Uganda who share some of his views to try to repress freedom of expression by LGBTI people in Uganda, deprive them of the protection of the law, and render their very existence illegal.'

Judge Ponsor said that the evidence 'confirmed the nature of Defendant's, on the one hand, vicious and, on the other hand, ludicrously extreme animus against LGBTI people and his determination to assist in persecuting them wherever they are, including Uganda. The evidence of record demonstrates that Defendant aided and abetted efforts (1) to restrict freedom of expression by members of the LBGTI community in Uganda, (2) to suppress their civil rights, and (3) to make the very existence of LGBTI people in Uganda a crime.'

Lively issued a statement on his website yesterday that praised God and the ruling while issuing side-swipes at Judge Ponsor.

'I thank God for His deliverance from this outrageous and malicious litigation, designed solely to silence my voice for Biblical truth on LGBT issues and to cause me pain and suffering for daring to speak against the "gay" agenda,' he said.

'I thank Judge Michael Ponsor, as well, for overcoming his clear ideological bias enough to acknowledge the legal deficiency of SMUG's case and bring it to a close,' he added.

'The enormity of Judge Ponsor's decision to now grant my Motion for Summary Judgment is reflected in the excessive and inflammatory language he used to condemn my beliefs and writings in his ruling. I forgive him for that, especially since he knows it is merely conclusory rhetoric, without any supporting analysis or binding legal authority.'
Mike Pence on 'genocide' against Christians in the Middle East: 'This must end. This will end'

Persecution of Christians in the Middle East amounts to 'genocide', Vice President Mike Pence said, vowing it 'must' and 'will' end.

Donald Trump's number two listed atrocities by 'the barbarians known as ISIS' and said the group 'is guilty of nothing short of genocide'.

Speaking at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast on Tuesday, Pence praised the work of Catholics in America before focusing on persecution in the Middle East.

'In Iraq we see ancient churches demolished, priests and monks beheaded, two millennia old Christian traditions in Mosul virtually extinguished,' he said.

'Christianity faces unprecedented threats in the land where it was given birth and an exodus unlike since the days of Moses.'

He added: 'Whether in Mosul, Iraq or Syria, followers of Christ have fallen 80 per cent in the last decade and a half.'

Insisting religious freedom is a 'foreign policy priority' for Donald Trump's administration, he said: 'This must end. This will end.'

He continued: 'Under President Donald Trump, America will continue to condemn persecution of any faith in any place at any time.

'We will confront it with all of our might,' he said, adding the United States would not relent 'until we drive the cancer of terrorism from the face of the earth'.

Pence, a devout evangelical raised in an Irish Catholic family, received a standing ovation after concluding by saying how proud he is to be alongside a president who 'stands without apology for the sanctity of human life'.

'President Donald Trump stands with the most vulnerable: the aged, the infirm, and unborn,' he said.

He urged Catholics to see Trump as an 'ally' after the White House reinstated a policy that blocked foreign aid to groups that carry out abortions and appointed the conservative Neil Gorsuch, who backed Catholic groups in past trials over religious liberty, to the US Supreme Court.

'Life is winning in America again,' said Pence.
Muslims shield dozens of Christians to help them evade ISIS attack

Dozens of Christian families survived 11 days of being trapped in Marawi City, Southern Philippines thanks to the protection provided by Muslims. Such an act of compassion is condemnable for the Islamic State (ISIS)-linked Maute group, but local Muslims went against this directive and risked their own lives.

Politician and traditional clan leader Norodin Alonto Lucman is the most prominent local Muslim who accepted into his fold the greatest number of Christians. He reportedly took 71 civilians who sought refuge in his home to avoid being caught in the crossfire between soldiers and militants.

The Philippines is predominantly Catholic except in Marawi, which holds the lone distinction as an Islamic city where 90 percent of around 200,000 people, who make up its population, are Muslims. Those who took shelter in Lucman's house include teachers of a Protestant school that was burned down on the first day of the Islamists' rampage.

The insurgents set up a command post 100 meters from Lucman's house which was why the jihadis frequented his home, telling him to surrender Christians in hiding. But he told them they were all Muslims. One woman said the terrorists offered her money and food in exchange for her 11-year-old son to make a fighter out of him. She refused.

Last Saturday, Lucman was advised by his military contacts, through text messages, of a bombing campaign which prompted them to emerge from their hiding. Holding an improvised white flag, the group trooped outside the city. Other trapped civilians joined them until their number rose to 144.

The marchers passed by several rebel snipers and checkpoints. Every time they were asked if there were Christians among them, they shouted "Allahu akbar (God is great)!" Miraculously, they made out of the war zone and into the army territory where they will be interrogated to ensure no ISIS member was mixed in their ranks.
Pregnant teen Maddi Runkles celebrates private graduation after school upholds ban for 'immorality'

Maddi Runkles, a pregnant student who was banned from her Christian private school's graduation for her 'sexual immorality', instead celebrated her own private graduation ceremony on Saturday.

Runkles, pregnant at 18, made international news last month when it was revealed that her school, Heritage Academy, Maryland, had banned her from walking at its graduation ceremony.

An alternative, private ceremony on Saturday saw Runkles celebrated and supported by about 100 family, friends and allies.

When headlines described Heritage as banning Runkles for her pregnancy, it said: 'Maddi is being disciplined, not because she's pregnant, but because she was immoral,' the college's administrator, David R Hobbs, wrote in a letter to the school community.

He added: 'We love Maddi Runkles. The best way to love her right now is to hold her accountable for her immorality that began this situation.'

Runkles learned she was pregnant in January and said she does not plan to marry her baby boy's father. The private, nondenominational school's code of conduct says that 'no intimate sexual activity be engaged in outside of the marriage commitment between a man and a woman'.

It was an honor to speak at @maddi_runkles graduation today. Can't wait to see what else God has in store for you! #maddirunkles pic.twitter.com/spwRmeRzUP  Kristan Hawkins (@KristanHawkins) June 3, 2017

Its Student Pledge, which every student from 5th to 12th grade signs, commits them to abstinence from 'sexual immorality and from the use of alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drugs'.

Although punished by her school, Runkles won the support for pro-life groups for choosing to keep her baby.

'We are so proud of Maddi for not only her courage to make a good decision in difficult circumstances, but to be an example to other students in similar situations and challenge Christian schools on their policies towards pregnant students like herself,' said Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, in a statement on Runkles' graduation, according to The Christian Post.

Hawkins spoke at the ceremony, and presented Maddi with a university scholarship for $16,000. Runkles currently has a place at Bob Jones University, a Christian institution in Greenville, South Carolina.

Hawkins said: 'I have no doubt that hearts and minds will be changed because of Maddi's courage and willingness to share her story. We gave her nearly 7,000 messages of support today that poured in from people around the world who encouraged her and were inspired by her. It was an honour to celebrate Maddi's achievements today and we can't wait to meet her baby boy in the fall.'
Tears, applause and interfaith unity as 200 imams visit scene of London Bridge terror attack

They came from across the country, more than 200 imams showing solidarity with their fellow Britons in the wake of the recent terror attacks, including the one on Saturday here at London Bridge.

And in an impressive display of interfaith cooperation, the senior Muslims stood side by side with Jewish and Christian leaders.

The scene of the lorry attack and stabbings on London Bridge itself has only just been unveiled after being cordoned off by police, but a sea of flowers lay there this afternoon amid a diverse crowd of local office workers, passers by and police officers paying their respects  with seven Christian street pastors on hand to offer spiritual support. People were laying bouquets before the imams arrived, with one young woman, her tears falling to the pavement, bringing a framed photograph of a loved one caught up in the atrocity.

Then, in moving scenes, the imams arrived to spontaneous applause, stopping the busy London traffic and bearing posters adorned with the messages 'ISIS will lose, love will win' and 'ISIS is the enemy of Islam,' each holding single red roses, also held by the Anglican Bishop of Southwark, Christopher Chessun and the Catholic Bishop John Sherrington.

Qari Asim, an Imam at the Makka Mosque in Leeds who helped organise the vigil, told Christian Today: 'It is really important that we stand together  this is the third attack in the last three months. Each attack is an attack on our home, on all of us  these terrorists are trying to undermine our shared values. We want to send out a loud and clear message to wannabe extremists and to terrorists that Britain is our home and there is no distinction between being Muslim and British. Simply, we are tired of hearing the news of our fellow Britons being injured, tired of grieving for our neighbours.

'We are standing up to say this is not acceptable  this is a complete distortion of our faith. The path they may be considering following is not a path to paradise  terrorists are criminals, simple as that. If any ISIS sympathisers ever thought this is a short cut to heaven, we imams are very clear that this is anything but a short cut to heaven; this is not the path to paradise. We want to send a clear message that these criminals are not representative of Islam.'

Also speaking at the vigil was Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner, Senior Rabbi to Reform Judaism. She addressed the imams and the public, saying: 'We all weep for those we've lost. British Jews stand with our Muslim brothers and sisters when wickedness has attacked London. Now's the time for the very leadership that you are modelling as Imams  modelling for Britain today, not just for Muslims, but for all British people. Judaism and Islam are linked by a great prophet, Moses...Moses knew that the most influential leadership was not through grand presentations or speeches, but by meeting individuals face-to-face, in Hebrew, panim-el-panim, in Arabic wajeh le wajeh, building connections in the hearts of others. That is our work, to turn souls away from wickedness, and we are all together in that holy task.'

Bishop Chessun told the crowd: 'We welcome to London our Muslim brothers and sisters from all parts of the UK in your holy month of Ramadan so we can stand together..A strong sense of common purpose has built up within our communities over months and years.' He emphasised that 'The teaching of Jesus is to love God and love thy neighbour'.

Reflecting afterwards, he said that the vigil was 'not spontaneous' but 'a determined act of witness and solidarity which we in Southwark appreciate enormously'. He added: 'This has happened as a result of a decision to bring as many imams as possible together in Southwark...Our common response as fellow citizens of different faiths is to find ways to build on existing friendships, existing goodwill, to build resilience across communities and counter the wicked actions of terrorists.' The Bishop also spoke of 'the circles of suffering' beyond the local ones that are caused by terrorism. Southwark Cathedral remains closed and at what he said was 'the heart of the crime scene'.

Bishop Sherrington told Christian Today: 'I'm deeply moved by being present as we are remembering the victims. This courageous statement against extremism and violence is something that touches my heart. As Jews, Christians and Muslims together, as people of faith, we have the resources to overcome.'

The imams are conscious of tensions in the country, not least with just two days to go before the general election in which security is centre stage. Asked about Theresa May's latest proposal for a fresh security crack-down, Asim said there was a need for a balance between security and 'hard-won' freedoms: 'What we need to do is create a balance between liberties and security. We totally understand that the national security is really important. At the same time these are hard won liberties for which people have laid down their lives. The terrorists want to restrict our freedom, they want to undermine our democracy. It is the job of authorities to strike the right balance.'

May told supporters at a rally in Slough yesterday that she could scrap human rights laws to act against potential terrorism, and that she was considering new measures to restrict the movements of suspects who have not been convicted of any offence as well as making it easier to deport foreign suspects. 'If our human rights laws stop us from doing it, we will change the laws so we can do it. If I am elected as prime minister on Thursday, that work begins on Friday,' she said. In an interview with The Sun, May also indicated she was prepared to extend the time suspects can be held without charge to 28 days after it was reduced to 14 days in 2011. 'When we reduced it to 14 days, we actually allowed for legislation to enable it to be at 28 days,' she said.

Asim, who is also a spokesperson for the British Muslim Forum, stressed that 'religion is not the only factor of people being radicalised'.

Asked whether he is comfortable with the label 'Muslim community' when there is a diverse range of Islamic strands, Asim said: 'There is obviously huge diversity among the Muslim communities, but the principles are clear: you cannot take a life and harm fellow human beings. It is a complete distortion of faith for people to pursue these ends for their own geo-political aims. The criminals are effectively an affront to God and to humanity.'

As Bishop Chessun was rounding off the event, around a hundred officers of the First Response police unit came to lay their own flowers and pay respects. One officer could not hold back the tears and she waited patiently for the religious leaders to finish.

Within an hour and a half, the gathering had dispersed, but its powerful message, of interfaith and neighbourly love, endures.
There are probably more terrorists in England than in Egypt, says Bible Society chief

Christians in Egypt have an 'insatible desire' for the Bible and there is far more to them than their current image as a persecuted minority, according to Egypt Bible Society director Ramez Atallah.

'We can't keep up with the insatiable desire of Copts to have a Bible, he says in an interview with Evangelical Focus. And he says the level of danger in Egypt is not much greater than in Europe, adding that there are 'probably more terrorists' in England than in Egypt.

Speaking while attending the European Leadership Forum conference in Poland, two days before the slaughter of another 29 Copts while travelling to a monastery in Minya, Atallah urges tourists to return to Egypt.

'We are getting very few tourists, and the reason for this is that people think it is a very dangerous place to go. But the only tourists that have been killed in the last three years were two tourists from South Korea that were in Northern Sinai, a place to which people are not really allowed to go, because it is a very dangerous area.

'But Sharm El Sheikh, Luxor, Aswan, Cairo, and other places nobody has been hurt there. So we do not understand the reason of this boycott of Egypt. When a terrorist attack happens in Manchester, which is similar, and just as bad, nobody thinks of not going to England.

'And there are probably more terrorists in England than in Egypt, because there are a lot of disgruntled people in England who could very easily be taken on by ISIS. So, we think it is a bit unfair that our country is boycotted, and considered very dangerous, even though the level of danger is not much greater than in any other European country.'

He admits that Christians in other places see Egypt as a place where Christians are being persecuted.

'A bomb in a church is certainly a bit different than a bomb in a rock concert. But for the Muslim mind, in both cases they are attacking Christians. For them, anybody that is from a Western culture, and is not Muslim or Jew, is a Christian. In the mind of ISIS, there is not a great difference between killing people in a church and kill them in a rock concert.

'In Egypt, if they put a bomb in the streets, they will kill more Muslims than Christians, because Christians are 10 per cent of the population. In general, they do not want to kill Sunni Muslims. They may want to kill Shia Muslims. So, the reasons to put a bomb in a church is to make sure that all the victims are Christians.

'But when they attack a rock concert in Manchester, they assume that all these people are Christians. So, for ISIS, it is very much the same mentality from ISIS' point of view, but these attacks are completely read differently by the Western mind.'

He also says the Copts have 'great freedom' in Egypt.

'It is true that there are things that you can do in the West which you cannot do in a Muslim majority country, but these things, for those living in Egypt, are not a big hindrance. For instance, in Egypt, you cannot go on the streets and distribute Christian literature, but we have 16 bookshops in the main cities of Cairo.

'You can go there anytime and buy a book. We also can rent any book table at any book fair and sell Scriptures. So, we have tremendous freedom. The one thing we cannot do is going out and giving free literature, and because of that, it is seen like "oh, this is a persecuted minority and they do not have our freedoms". The West at times fights blindly for some freedoms that we do not care about very much, because there are more important issues.'

He describes Western societies as 'really very anti-evangelical'.

And while the Bible Society's Christian bookshops have been attacked in Egypt, he says these attacks were political not religious.

They were 'not an attempt to stop the Bible being sold in Egypt' but an attempt to create chaos.

There are 10 million Christians in Egypt and the Coptic Church is very, very committed to the Bible, he adds.

'We can't keep up with the insatiable desire of Copts to have a Bible. As I am talking to you now, there is a big event happening in Egypt with thousands of young people, a Christian festival this week. And we are selling lots of Scriptures, we have a large event in a tent for youth, Scripture competitions, "talent shows" on biblical themes. The activities happening in summer are incredible. The churches are incredibly busy, because school vacations are very long (from May to September). Parents work, and churches do not want their children on the street. So, every day, churches have clubs. Young people go and spend the whole day there. They play games, study Scripture, and attend services. I am talking of thousands, one church in Egypt has 10,000 children in their Sunday school, we are talking about very large numbers.'

He also welcomes a new law which has allowed church building to be freed up and churches to publicly declare the places they had for worship which were undeclared. Many underground churches have now become legal. In addition, the government is offering a place of worship for every Christians confession: Protestants, Orthodoxes and Catholics.

The problem, says Atallah, is that there are seven Catholic denominations, 18 Protestant denominations and three Orthodox. 'The government is not offering one place for every denomination but one for every confession. So, the issue is, who is going to get it? Will the Baptists get it, or the Pentecostals, or the Methodists? This is still a problem to work through, but it is understandable: they do not want 18 Protestant churches in a small place.'
Trump's travel ban in chaos as it is blocked by federal judge and new figures show more Muslims than Christians are entering US

Donald Trump's 'travel ban' was in disarray today after a federal judge in Hawaii blocked the new version and it emerged that more Muslims than Christians have entered the US since Trump took office.

Hours before the latest executive order was due to take effect at midnight tonight, the US District Judge Derrick Watson cited 'questionable evidence' and 'palpable' illogic in the government's argument that the ban was a matter of national security.

Meanwhile, new figures show that including refugees from countries with no travel restrictions, a total of 7,594 refugees have entered the US during Trump's first seven weeks in office (January 21 to March 10). Of these refugees, 3,410 are Muslims (45 per cent) and 3,292 are Christians (43 per cent), with those of other religions or none accounting for the rest.

A total of 2,466 refugees from the remaining six countries on his 'travel ban' have resettled in the US since Trump became president.

The refugees are from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

The number of refugees from the six travel-restricted countries represents 32 per cent of all refugees who have entered the US since Trump took office, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of US State Department data.

Earlier this month, Trump was forced to water down his travel ban, including by removing a clause which appeared to give priority to Christians.

The ban on travel, migration and asylum from what was previously seven Muslim-majority countries now excludes Iraq from the list of countries affected.

A section was removed from the original order stating that some refugee claims could be prioritised 'on the basis of religious-based persecution, provided that the religion of the individual is a minority religion in the individual's country of nationality'. This was interpreted as giving Christians priority when it came to travelling to the US.

The new ban will last for 90 days and, unlike the last one signed on 27 January, does not apply to those with valid visas.

Further, the order does not suspend the resettlement of Syrian refugees indefinitely, but they are subject to the new order's blanket ban of resettling refugees for 120 days.

The Pew research shows that during the first full week of Trump's presidency (January 21-27), 687 refugees from the six restricted countries entered the US, accounting for 34 per cent of all refugee admissions that week.

The following week, after Trump's initial travel ban, refugee admissions from the six restricted countries all but stopped.

Refugee intake then resumed shortly after a federal judge in Washington suspended parts of the order on 3 February and lifted the travel restrictions, a decision that was upheld by a federal appeals court.

Of the six countries identified in the order, Syria (5,585), Somalia (4,703) and Iran (1,893) are the leading nationalities of refugees who have entered the US so far in the fiscal year of 2017, which began on 1 October, 2016.

A total of 595 refugees from Sudan have entered the US during this time, while 18 refugees are from Yemen and three are from Libya.
Why I'm a Christian voting Conservative tomorrow

It has been said that politics is a struggle without end. A constant battle to lead, to seek the influence necessary to make positive change in everyone's lives. Politics is the nature of human interaction. It contains all the flaws, all the inadequacies of any relationship. It also contains the joys and the victories. The camaraderie of shared goals as a team, of intellectual and of electoral battle joined.

And as each cycle passes, as the whiff of electoral cordite subsides, both victor and vanquished must build as a government or rebuild as an opposition. That's why political principles matter. Our Conservative principles underpin our policies. From the place of principle comes the energy to pound the streets to seek to win votes. Policy is where political and philosophical theory meets the reality of life lived. Where the rubber hits the road.

The temptation with politics is to think for the short term, for the immediate. However, I would argue that a truly Conservative viewpoint wants to lay strong foundations for the future. To build not just for the current generation but for those not yet born. The great mercantilist city of Glasgow's famous motto is 'Let Glasgow Flourish'. We need to seek the welfare of the nation in perpetuity. We need to encourage policies and plans that will promote long term flourishing.

Conservatism has at its root encouraging people to reach their full potential. To encourage lives not dependent on the state but building up the nation. The mobilisation of communities, the growth of families, the setting up of charities and businesses. The former Chief Rabbi's book springs to mind, The Home we Build Together. This is where the left and right diverge. The right believes that the state exists to protect and serve society, not to define or create it.

Many Conservatives emphasise the role of personal responsibility both for individual success and the duty of helping society. I want to see citizens achieve their own potential, which requires excellent schools and universities, it requires low taxes, sound finance and support for businesses. It requires a sustainable commitment to housebuilding and development for homes and to encourage families.

I have been a Conservative since my teenage years. I grew up on the edge of the kingdom in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. I didn't consider my journey from rural Ulster to being a Conservative in England a long political journey. Many of the rural Conservative issues are the same. The power of the farm, the family and tradition are key. Many Christian Conservatives emphasise the role of personal responsibility both for individual success and the duty of helping society.

This is what drives me to challenge community leaders to think about mentoring and encouraging future MPs and challenging young people to see politics as a calling and as a duty of service.

After the UK's historic vote to leave the EU, there have been many calls for us to unite. Are we going to make it an international success or make it narrower and think more selfishly? It is up to us to make our future work for the good of all.

Maybe as a fellow child of 'the Manse' I am biased, but the solidity of Theresa May reassures me. There is authority, but there is also compassion, the track record on modern slavery, and the desire to serve the 'just about managing', the JAM's. It vital that our leaders are the people's servants. Revolution doesn't always bring power down to the people.

In Napoleon's court, following the French revolution, the idealistic fire of Rousseau was tempered by the hypocrisy of megalomania and hyperbole. The greatness of Britain is we send our leaders off in a removal van, not their head off in a revolution.

I worked for a previous Conservative Party leader but I know that politics starts at street level not at cabinet level. Not at the heart of the Westminster village but through the letterboxes of every village.

My own foray into elective politics, standing as a local council candidate, was inspired by for residents' concerns on the council estate I live on in south London. For those many, real politics is what they can feel on the pavement, not what is gossiped in the bars of parliament.

After weeks of constant campaigning activists and candidates can see the end in sight. For those who are successful the hard work has only just begun, from helping constituents to debating matters of state in Westminster.

Politics is about passion, purpose and participation. We need to be encouraged to be the change we want to see. If we want to see a better future we must be prepared to get politically engaged and build a positive future together.

I grew up amidst the bombs and the bullets of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. With the tragedy of recent terrorist attacks so close to Thursday's general election vote, never has it been so important to send a clear message about exercising our democratic right to vote, as we choose as a society to resolve our differences through the ballot box.

May we end this election week with a fresh determination to make a difference in our nation. That we would see more clearly the bigger picture. That we would be grounded in a narrative bigger than our own life. May we play our part in the future of politics in my time and may that echo for all time.

Gareth Wallace is executive director of the Conservative Christian Fellowship.

This is the third article in a series from different political parties. A piece from the Liberal Democrat Christian Forum is here and a piece from Christians on the Left is here.
Barnardos Scotland has criticised a Sunday Herald report which claimed the charity had destroyed files to cover up allegations of child sex abuse.

The article followed the opening submissions made at the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry, which is looking in detail at historical abuse of children in residential care. More than 60 institutions, including charities, private schools and church bodies are being investigated.

The Sunday Herald ran with a story at the weekend that says Barnardos Scotland had admitted to systematically destroying files as part of a cover-up.

The newspaper said: Victims of abuse say they have been left distressed by the revelation that the charity had a policy of disposing of files when they shut care homes where abuse happened in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.

In a statement on its website, Martin Crewe, director of Barnardos Scotland, responded to the Sunday Heralds article. He said: Barnardo's Scotland is concerned at the inaccurate reporting in today's Sunday Herald. We believe it is a misleading interpretation of our opening statement to the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry and ignores information that we provided to the newspaper concerned.

He added that due to the high level of factual inaccuracies, Barnardos is requesting that the Sunday Herald makes corrections. A spokeswoman said that the charity is in communication with the Sunday Herald.

Opening statement

In the opening statement Graham Watson, the charitys solicitor, said the charity retained records for every child resident in a Barnardos establishment or foster home. It said that the records for the children then are well maintained and in good order. However that degree of completeness does not cover staff records or administrative or governance records.

He said it was Barnardos practice during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s to destroy those records as closures of homes came about. He said that the result is that the need to retain records was not recognised at that time and that this pre-dated formal document retention policies.

He added that the charity did retain a random sample of material for administrative purposes, including about 10 per cent of material from the 1970s and 1980s.

The Sunday Herald ran with the headline Child abuse 'cover-up' claims after Barnardo's admits systematically destroying files, and said the charity had claimed to victims that files had been lost in a flood.

Crewe said in the charitys statement in response: We made no mention of a flood and are unaware what this refers to.

The transcript of the opening submissions includes no mention of a flood by Barnardos or any other organisation, however a submission from Daughters of Charity does mention that some of its records were damaged in a fire at the property were records were kept, and those that survived were water damaged.

Crewe also said: We have not 'systematically destroyed' staff records. We did note to the Inquiry that our staff records are not as complete as the children's records. Those between 1940 and 1960 are sketchy and incomplete because they were kept on cards. We have better records from the 1960s onwards as they are archived on microfilm.

The paper also criticises the charity for not apologising to victims in the opening statement, despite acknowledging that it was aware of the abuse.

Barnardos responded to this saying: We did not include an apology in our opening statement as it could have sounded insincere before the Inquiry actually began. Barnardo's has a strong legacy of duty to those who were in our care and we continue to support them. We have been working closely with survivors' groups and will continue to show our support for the Inquiry through any means we can.
Breast Cancer Care launched its first charity shop last month, in a pilot project which could lead the charity to open a chain of shops.

The first shop, in Leighton Buzzard in Bedfordshire, will be a trial project for the charity, which is one of the bigger brands in the sector not to run a shops chain already. The charity has said it is prepared to launch at a larger scale if the shop proves a success.

The first shop opened its doors on 22 May. A second shop will open soon in Hemel Hempstead, in Hertfordshire.

The charity is one of several brand name organisations to consider launching a shops chain. Crisis opened its first shops recently, and Habitat for Humanity is considering launching a chain of out-of-town superstores.

The charity shops sector enjoyed spectacular growth over the past decade, until a sudden fall off last year. Profits rose by an average of 4 per cent per year in real terms over the last decade, before falling by 15 per cent last year.

Civil Society Media is now inviting responses to the annual Charity Shops Survey, the most comprehensive survey of charity shops in the UK, sponsored by the Charity Retail Association. To respond, click here . To buy a copy of the survey from 2016, click here
The Times has said it will take the Charity Commission to the European Court of Human Rights over an ongoing freedom of information battle relating to a now defunct charity established by George Galloway.

The Times has reported that the Charity Commission has released some documents in relation to former MP George Galloways now defunct charity following a decade long freedom of information battle.

However, it claims the Charity Commission continues to withhold information relating to three separate investigations of the charity established by Galloway and his then wife. As a result, it said it will be taking the regulator to the European Court of Human Rights.

The Times and the regulator have been locked in a battle over the documents since 2007, when one of its journalists Dominic Kennedy, submitted an FOI request relating to documents from the commissions investigations into The Mariam Appeal, set up by Galloway in 1998.

The FOI request was rejected, and Kennedy ended up appealing it to the Supreme Court, who ruled in favour of the commission in 2014.

However in a column published today Kennedy, now investigations editor at The Times, wrote: The Times will ask the European Court of Human Rights to rule on whether the public should have the right to receive state information with the kind of arbitrary blanket exemption that the commission relied on.

Many pages from its records are still being withheld by the commission because it says it would not be in the public interest to disclose them.

He also published a news story today based on three Arch Lever binders of information released to the newspaper by the commission relating to the investigation under English common law.

The Charity Commission declined to comment on the issue.

The office for George Galloway, who is currently standing as an independent candidate in the seat of Manchester Gorton, has also been contacted for a comment.

Galloways former wife paid 84,000 by charity, says Times

In his story, Kennedy wrote that Doctor Amineh Abu-Zayyad, the then wife of George Galloway, was paid 84,000 worth of money donated to the now defunct Mariam Appeal, a charity of which they were both trustees.

The Mariam Appeal was set up by the then Labour MP George Galloway in 1998. According to The Times, Abu-Zayyad received 20 monthly payments from the fund totalling 42,000, which she claimed were her salary, plus a number of other payments which covered expenses but were not backed by receipts.

According to the Times, Galloway himself was paid 3,192 in a series of ten cheques which he said related to his expenses incurred as chairman of the Mariam Appeal fund.

The Times said that the 84,000 total paid to Abu-Zayyad was larger than the amount paid to the Yorkhill NHS Trust in Glasgow, which received 54,000 of money raised by the appeal for treating Mariam Hamza, a four-year-old Iraqi child suffering from acute leukaemia. Mr Galloway discovered Mariam in Saddam Childrens Hospital in Baghdad in 1998 during a tour with other British MPs.

Galloway, then the Labour MP for Glasgow Kelvin, flew Mariam to the UK for treatment in Glasgow. Mariams life was saved and she was reportedly returned to Iraq.

In Charity Finance Magazine

Galloway has long denied any impropriety on his or his former wifes behalf, and claimed that the Mariam Appeal was a political campaign rather than a charity.

In a statement given to The Times, Galloway said: The Mariam Appeal was a political campaign not a charity. The Charity Commission decreed it should be a charity and long ago accepted its accounts despite your heroic efforts to the contrary. It closed 14 years ago.

Dr Abu-Zayyad did not receive any unauthorised benefits. Neither did I. Nor did anyone else.
When you start reading this story, Maggie Haberman will likely have just tweeted. By the time you finish, shell probably have tweeted again.

The New York Times political reporter is well-known for her Page One stories about the president and his inner circle. Shes also known for being prolific on Twitter. How prolific?

Haberman tweets a lot. Like, a lot a lot, to the tune of about 140 times a day. While Haberman declined to talk to us about her Twitter habits, we used Twitonomy to analyze her social-media activity from May 8 to 30. We chose May 8 as the start date because that was around the time (now former) FBI Director James Comey was fired, and a series of breaking news events occurred many of the afternoons that followed.

Over those 23 days, Haberman tweeted 3,199 times. To showcase just how insane this number is, we looked at how it compared to the same metric for some of her well-known colleagues who also cover politics for the Times: Glenn Thrush, Peter Baker, Jeremy Peters, and Mark Landler.

Clearly, Haberman takes first placetweeting nine times more often than runner-up Thrush, who tweeted 344 times. Baker came in third with 290, Peters with 45, and Landler with a lowly 16 tweets during that time period.

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TRENDING: In defense of The Skimm

A day in the life of Maggie Habermans Twitter feed

How does Haberman do it? We dissected her tweets from a single day to glean some insight. We chose one at random: May 30*.

Most of her tweet activity comes in the form of retweets. On May 30, she pressed retweet 92 times, mostly on breaking news or stories from fellow reporters. She also posted 16 quote-tweets and 18 originals. Altogether, she racked up 126 tweets that day.

Over the course of 16 hours, Haberman retweeted stories on Mike Flynns private consulting firm, Ben Jacobs donating his broken glasses to the Newseum, and the firing of the police officer who shot Tamir Rice. Many of her original tweets followed similar themes, highlighting news from the day and often calling out the good work of other reporters.

ICYMI: One question that turns courageous journalists into cowards

Habermans Twitter day started around 7:30 am, with a retweeted link to a Times story on the end of trans-Atlantic relations between the US and Germany. From that point, she continued to tweet consistently throughout the day.

At 9:13 am:

The Times was not the FBI investigating Clinton and her server. That was the FBI. Same agency investigating Trump's campaign now. Thanks.  Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) May 30, 2017

At 12:01 pm she retweeted @PageSix:

Oh, to be a fly on the wall https://t.co/r1N7kDM6xp  Page Six (@PageSix) May 30, 2017

At 3:12 pm:

POTUS pushed the idea that Cruz's father was somehow linked to the Kennedy assassination based on the National Enquirer.  Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) May 30, 2017

At 6:20 pm she retweeted @politico:

"The most weve seen of Sean [Spicer] was at a rooftop bar in Jerusalem, said one U.S. journalist on the trip https://t.co/sf8CZjyUOs pic.twitter.com/3hU9EwSAf8  POLITICO (@politico) May 31, 2017

At 9:23 pm:

There's a non-zero chance Trump is treating climate accord the way he did NAFTA  go for extreme, then work way back https://t.co/jVYV8uDuNA  Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) May 31, 2017

Finally, a nightcap at 11:50 pm, retweeting @morningmoneyben:

"Kushner seems to operate as a faculty member with tenure in an otherwise insecure work environment." @anniekarni https://t.co/BLImgSQlzY  Ben White (@morningmoneyben) May 31, 2017

ICYMI: Donald and Melania Trumps relationship through a lens

Maggie Haberman wields Twitter power

All that tweeting pays off. As of this writing, Haberman has 485,323 followers, and she follows 3,212 accounts. Her potential reachor the follower count of the users who mentioned her on a particular day (we looked at June 1)was 47,655,643. Since joining Twitter in 2009, she has tweeted more than 143,000 times and has been added to over 8,000 lists.

A few more points of interest:

Haberman follows Donald Trump and a number of his advisors and family members, but she does not follow Jared Kushner or Melania Trump.

While we cannot definitively say how many or what percentage of accounts she follows are from conservative outlets and their reporters, we did analyze numbers from four outlets. Haberman follows 41 accounts affiliated with FOX, four affiliated with Breitbart, 20 affiliated with The New York Post , and 11 affiliated with National Review .

Haberman obviously engages with other reporters on Twitter. Below are lists of the users she retweeted, replied to, and mentioned most from May 8-30:

Habermans most-retweeted tweet from May 8-30 was a quote-tweet in response to a mocking comment by YourVoice host Bill Mitchell, who suggested people should flood The Times and The Post with fake tips. This jab was retweeted more than 15,000 times:

The Trump administration has tried this a few times, sir. We actually vet these things. https://t.co/CNdET1sRbY  Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) May 21, 2017

*Timeline of tweets based on EST timezone

ICYMI: The Washington Posts secret weapon

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Carlett Spike is a freelance writer and former CJR Delacorte Fellow. Follow her on Twitter @CarlettSpike.
IN THE WEEKS SINCE PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP fired FBI Director James Comey, local newsrooms have tried to guideor be responsive totheir readers interests in the ongoing inquiry into ties between the Trump Administration and Russia. With very rare exception, however, local coverage of the story varies as dramatically as the audience it hopes to reach.

On June 3, March for Truth events were held in scores of American cities across the country, nearly all of them spurred by the ongoing inquiry into President Donald Trumps decision to fire FBI director James Comey and his administrations ties with Russia. A website launched to facilitate the marches counted rallies in more than 135 cities. Many of those ralliesin San Diego, Seattle, Jackson, Austin, Sarasota, Rapid City, Chicago, Nashville, and Colorado Springsreceived some form of local news coverage.

Many, too, were coordinated by local chapters of Indivisible, which had published a toolkit encouraging the electorate to put pressure on their congressional representatives to create an independent commission to look into Russia. In order to achieve that end, the toolkit urges its readers to make use of local news.

All politics is local, reads the toolkit. Members of Congress can ignore one of you, or maybe even ten of you, but MoCs cant ignore something that makes it in the local paper or the nightly news. We have to keep this issue in the news so that MoCs will really feel the heat and start doing their jobs.

Here, the Indivisible Guide confronts a bit of Orwellian irony. All politics is local, surebut some politics are more local than others. And nothing drives the point home like studying coverage of the Russia inquiry through the pages of local newspapers.

While the political and media world has been riveted by the Comey affair and his scheduled public testimony on Thursday, press interest at the local level, by comparison, has been scattershot. The surge of stories around the recent March for Truth may typify the local approach to Comey and Russia, and anchor a national event to a local communitys response. But such a surgedozens of stories tied to dozens of communities, published on the same dayis rare.

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Theres a whole Internet full of opinion out there that people can access to find commentary on national topics.

CORRESPONDENTS FOR CJRS UNITED STATES PROJECT recently spoke with editors at two-dozen newspapers across the country about their coverage of Comeys firing and the Russia investigation, as well as reader responses.

Most editors say their relative dearth of Comey coverage can be attributed to a few basic and unsurprising factors. First, their newsrooms need to focus their limited resources on policy issues of greater local relevance. Coverage of Comey and the Russia inquiry has been more pronounced in the editorial pages, where numerous local editorial boards have eagerly provided commentary. But with little exception, local reporting on the Russia inquiry has been nearly nonexistentsave for those opportunities to localize wire copy or to grill a congressman on his response to the latest update, usually reported from another newsroom hundreds of miles away.

Several of the editors also described an ambivalence to the subject among their readers. That theme was not universal; a few newsrooms responded to a steady (if not overwhelming) supply of reader letters with steady commentary and occasional localized responses. But far more told us that they heard little from their readers about Comeys firing or the ongoing Russia inquirywhether they published on the topic or not.

Theres a whole Internet full of opinion out there that people can access to find commentary on national topics, said Dwayne Yancey, the editorial page editor for The Roanoke Times. Yancey published just one editorial about the Russia inquiry, in which he pressed for his districts congressman, Bob Goodlattechair of the House Judiciary Committee, and up for reelection next yearto request an independent investigation.

Since the inauguration, Yancey says, Ive been SWAMPED with letters about Trumpan unprecedented amount of letters. But only a small number deal with Russia. The most popular topic of letters to the Roanoke Times has been health care, but Yancey named a number of local subjects that attracted a stronger response from readers, including a local zoning story, and a controversy regarding feral cats.

As soon as I come up with a column idea pertaining to Russia or Comey, somebody elseusually lots of somebodiesuses the same arguments in the national media.

LOCAL COVERAGE OF THE RUSSIA INVESTIGATION has been most pronounced in the editorial pages. Many local newsrooms lack the editorial resources to provide subject expertise and analysis, but wield their editorial boards to surface questions for their readers, or as civics refreshers.

Elizabeth Sullivan, the Cleveland Plain Dealers editorial page editor, said her paper has published at least 15 letters with the words FBI, Comey, or Russia in the headline since January 1. Letter and op-ed submissions on this topic have been steady since last fall, says Sullivan, who characterized reader interest as very intense.

Since the election, the Plain Dealer has convened several editorial board roundtables, in which multiple editorial writers express their thoughts on an issue and then invite readers to weigh in. Two recent roundtableson Jeff Sessions meeting with a Russian ambassador and Comeys firingeach drew more than 1,000 comments and were shared more than 400 times; a third, on Mike Flynns firing, was shared more than 1,000 times.

Generally, larger newspapers devoted more editorial attention to Comey and Russia. The Raleigh News & Observerone of the largest papers in North Carolinahas published nine staff editorials about the Russia investigation. Managing editor Dan Barkin tells CJR in an email that the paper has also published more than 40 syndicated columns (George Will, Krugman, Krauthamer, Ruth Marcus etc.) with Russia themes.

The Denver Post, Colorados largest newspaper, has frequently editorialized on the investigation and Comeys firing. Those pieces join a steadily growing archive of editorial responses to decisions and events that have contoured the Trump Administration so far.

We called Trump a liar in a headline five days after the inauguration, says Chuck Plunkett, the Posts editorial page editor. That one went completely batshit crazy.

If local editorials have catalyzed the electorates interest, they havent necessarily generated huge audiences. Plunkett analyzed the online response to the Posts op-ed coverage since the day after Trumps election. Of the Posts top 20 most-viewed editorials, 13 were Trump-related, but did not focus on Russia or Comey. Im not saying the Russia editorials dont do well, says Plunkett. Theyre just not in the top 20.

Several smaller papersthose with circulations under six figureshad yet to discuss Comey or Russia on their editorial pages. The Athens News, a twice-weekly paper in Athens, Ohio, has not published anything about Comey since March. Editor and publisher Terry Smith searched the papers archives, but found only submissions from readers, some to the papers Athens Voices section, which features short, anonymous opinion pieces.

I normally would have talked about it in a column, says Smith, but this is such a fast-developing story that as soon as I come up with a column idea pertaining to Russia or Comey, somebody elseusually lots of somebodiesuses the same arguments in the national media. So its worn out by the time our print edition would come out.

Zach Hacker, the news and online editor for Kansas The Emporia Gazette, says the paper has not written anything concerning the Russia investigation.We have run columns and content from wire services regarding the investigation, but nothing produced by our own staff, says Hacker.

Rich Desrosiers, executive editor of GateHouse Ohio Media and The Canton Repository, has a similar take. Our editorials, almost without exception, address topics originating locally (or at the state level that will produce local ramifications), writes Desrosiers. This topic does not meet those criteria.

Colorados Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, which serves the largest city between Denver and Salt Lake City, Utah, editorialized about Comey just once. The papers op-ed page typically sticks to local issues. If we write about inside-the-beltway stuff, its usually about policies that hit homehealth care or public lands management, for example, says editorial page editor Andy Smith.

When the Sentinel decided to weigh in on Comey, says Smith, it did so after an influx of letters, the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel to the investigation (the dominant issue of that news cycle), and the opportunity to speak directly to its audience about government systems.

It was a chance to weigh in on something of national significance and remind readers of the importance of our institutions, checks and balances, separation of powers, etc., and letting the process work instead of rushing to judgment, Smith says.

Asked whether the newsroom should devote its own resources to covering Comey and Russia, one editor replied, No. Thats absurd.

THE LOCALLY FOCUSED NEWSROOMS contacted by CJR were unanimous on one point: None saw much merit in diverting editorial resources for more coverage of Comey or Russia. The Grand Junction Daily Sentinels editorial pages may offer good opportunities for civics refreshers, but the paper has not strained itself to localize the Russia investigation or Comeys firing.

I dont see incredible news value for our readers there, says Sentinel Managing Editor Mike Wiggins. Perhaps if there were a local tie-ina local resident with expertise in those areas concerning the investigationI could potentially see value in that perspective. Otherwise, our coverage might consist of the dreaded what-do-you-think, man-on-the-street interviews, and those types of stories tend to have very little substance or news value. Instead, says Wiggins, We try to be hyperlocal in our news coverage and direct our attention to issues that more directly impact our readers lives on a daily basis.

News coverage of Comey and Russia in local papers is dominated by wire copy. Multiple papers named stories from the Associated Press or The Washington Post as their only news coverage of Russia or Comey, which they anchor with comments from elected officials. Others, like Gannetts USA Today papers, carry national and international stories reported and written by reporters in other USA Today newsrooms.

Certainly we arent trying to cover the day-to-day story, aside from monitoring our own delegation when appropriate, says Lee Ann Colacioppo, editor of The Denver Post. The paper published many wire stories about Russia and Comeys firing, as well as a handful of local stories focused on how the issue played out with the congressional delegation.

The Gannett-owned Coloradoan, in Fort Collins, has access to stories from the USA Today Network, written by a team of reporters from outside its newsroom. Another USA Today paper, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, uses the wire to deal with breaking news on the Russia investigation, and reserves its newsroom to delve deeper into the investigations impact on Wisconsin political figures.

I think its a model that small news orgs across the country could benefit from, says Coloradoan editor Lauren Gustus in an email. It enables us to offer coverage without having to develop expertise in Russia, Turkey, North Korea and Syria. News outlets the size of the Coloradoanwhose daily circulation, according to a 2016 Gannett report, is roughly 20,000should focus on local-local, says Gustus.

In Pueblo, Coloradoa county that in 2016 went Republican for the first time since Richard Nixon carried it in 1972The Pueblo Chieftain has published numerous AP stories about Comey and the Russia investigation. Asked whether the newsroom should devote its own resources to the topic, managing editor Steve Henson replies, No. Thats absurd.

In the Denver suburbs, The Aurora Sentinel has published columns, guest columns, contributing columns and house editorials about Trump, Comey, and Russia. In its news pages, the paper ran AP stories on the issue and localized them by rounding up local reactions from politicians.

The Russia investigation issues affects the region and community directly and indirectly, Sentinel editor Dave Perry says. Choices made by members of Congress regarding the investigation have fast become campaign fodder for the 2018 election, says Perry. Chief among those representatives is Republican Mike Coffman, the first GOP Congressman to air an anti-Trump ad in 2016.

Perry makes a strong case for connecting the themes of the Russia investigation and Comeys firing to local concerns. Indirectly, the underlying issues of the investigationcredibility, criminal acts and malfeasance  dictate a Trump Administration agenda that focuses on the Aurora area almost daily, he says. This diverse community is critically [affected] by administration progress on the travel ban, legal immigration, refugees, illegal immigration, military spending and deployment, health care, a border wall, climate change and more.

Still, if a local newspaper broke pressing news on the Trump Administrations ties to Russia, would enough people notice?

On April 5, Boulder Weekly published a story headlined The Russian connections to Michael Flynns Turkish benefactors. The story scrutinizes a web of previously unreported connections between Alptekin, Russia and others with interesting ties to the Trump administration and even Trump himself.

A few weeks later, Politico published a story that touched on several of the same subjects, though it also focused on other, different connections. The Politico story initially published with a line that said a link first raised by the Boulder Weekly story had not been reported. A Politico editor told a CJR correspondent that the line was removed once the Boulder Weekly piece was called to their attention.

Even when our congress people had town hall meetings, it hasnt been a major issue. Most of it has been about health care. Thats what people are mostly interested in.

THE RUSSIA INVESTIGATION IS NOT A MAJOR TOPIC of conversation in the border city of Las Cruces, New Mexico, says Lucas Peerman, news director of the Las Cruces Sun-News. Rather, immigration has dominated headlines in recent weeks. Readers attention has been captured by a series of protests organized by immigrants rights groups.

When I go out into the community I dont hear people talking about Russia, Peerman says. When theres a big development on the Russia investigation the Sun-News will pick up a wire story but otherwise the newsroom isnt investing resources in it.

Several editors remark that readers dont seem bothered by a dearth of Russia coverage in their local papers. None of the stories did well in terms of traffic, says The Denver Posts Colacioppo. The No. 1 story on this issue was actually a compilation of political cartoons. The No. 2 story appeared on our Cannabist site, where readers are generally opposed to Jeff Sessions. At the Coloradoan, Gustus says the newsroom hears far less about how our readers think we cover national politics, likely because its not often that it appears on 1-A.

Todd Franko, editor of the Youngstown Vindicator, says his paper has published roughly one editorial each month about the Russia investigation, and a single constitutional crisis story after the Comey firing. The Vindicator hears more from Trump supporters than opponents, he says. Trump foes have not called with complaints or encouragement as much as Trump fans have called with anger and cancellations.

At the Aurora Sentinel, editor Perry says readers appear keenly interested in Russia investigation news, but they also appear to be developing Trump fatigue in commentary on the subject. The most vocal response comes from partisans who use the issue and comment as a wedge against one candidate or another.

Dennis Anderson, executive editor of the Peoria Journal Star, hasnt received a single call about the Russia investigation. When we get calls its usually about the state budget and even when our congress people had town hall meetings, it hasnt been a major issue. Most of it has been about health care. Thats what people are mostly interested in.

In response to CJRs inquiry, the Albuquerque Journal Managing Editor Dan Herrera did a keyword search for Russia in the papers database of letters to the editor. Over the past few weeks the paper received a couple of letters a day on the subject of Russia, but readers have been more general in their responses, which have been split between support for President Trump, disdain for Trump, andno surprises here, eitherdisdain for the media.

Reporting by Gwyneth Doland, Corey Hutchins, Jonathan Peters, and Jackie Spinner. Additional writing by Brendan Fitzgerald.

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United States Project covers state and local journalism issues for CJR. Follow our work on Twitter @USProjectCJR.
IN JULY 2016, A FLAXEN-HAIRED BOY lay in a field of clover, sighting down the barrel of a handgun near the town of Borodino, Russia. He was one of a dozen teenagers, boys and girls, attending a youth patriotic camp built by the Russian government as part of an effort to increase military recruitment numbers. It was not the kind of place one would expect to find an American documentary photographer.

I had to call maybe 50 camps before one of them let me in, says Sarah Blesener, a New York-based photographer who is nearly fluent in Russian. At a lot of these places, sometimes I was the first photographer allowed to come, and usually the first American at all.

Last spring and summer, Blesener traveled the Russian countryside making photographs that document the rise of patriotism among Russian youth. Photographs from the resulting series, Toy Soldiers, were widely published, and established Blesener as a rising talent in documentary photography.

Now, backed by two of photographys most lucrative fellowships, Blesener is once more photographing youth patriotism. This time, however, she has focused her efforts on the United States.

If I only profiled people who had Swastikas, it would make everything seem so extreme Extremism is not a good way to narrate this story.

Bleseners recent success is like winning the lottery twice, says Glenn Ruga, director of the Social Documentary Network, which published Toy Soldiers in its magazine ZEKE. Sarah has struck a chord with photo editors for the timeliness of the issue and just how rock solid her work is.

In the wake of last years election, its become something of a trope for coastal journalists to descend on flyover country in an attempt to, as Rachel Schallom wrote in a blog for NiemanLab, stop thinking of these people as subjects we cover and relate to them as neighbors, friends, and readers Ruga suggests that Blesenera young American photographer just back from documenting the forces of nationalism unleashed by President Vladimir Putinis uniquely suited to set off across the United States and explore the same forces taking hold in communities that helped to elect President Donald Trump.

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For her part, Blesener strives to resist pigeonholing herself, the project or her subjects.

If I only profiled people who had Swastikas, it would make everything seem so extreme, Blesener says. It would miss the point of whats happening in this cultural movement thats so much more in the middle. Extremism is not a good way to narrate this story.

DURING A RECENT VISIT TO AN ROTC CAMP in Kentucky, the camp director asked Blesener point-blank, Youre not going to call us the alt right, are you?

There is a popular awareness, says Blesener, of the medias tendency to objectify Republican voters who own guns and aspire to join the military. She told the camp director not to worry. Afterwards, I thought about how messed up it is thats actually a fear people have. These groups have been around for so long, but all of a sudden weve coined a magical phrase to describe them.

To avoid such objectification, Blesener is highly selective in the images she presents to editors a lesson she learned while putting together Toy Soldiers in Russia.

After a few months, I thought to myself, I cant keep photographing kids with guns. Its only going to freak the public out. I had to take a poetic approach and find the nuanced moments that I thought spoke more to identity and youth; aspects that are more important than guns and guns and guns. She adds: Our aim as photographers should be to fight fear. Fear doesnt produce anything but more fear and propaganda.

To get beyond the guns, Blesener has a unique methodology for gaining access in a community: couch surfing.

It opens up conversations with people who are different and similar to me, Blesener says. People give me the keys to their city. It also makes it so I cant just disconnect and drive home or go to a hotel. When youre immersed and cant leave, youre committed to a different level.

So far, Blesener has traveled to Pennsylvania, Virginia, New York and Kentucky. She finds her subjects with the help of organizations like the National Rifle Association, the American Legion and high school ROTC programs.

These groups are old American traditions, she says. They dont get a lot of media inquiries, so theyre easy to contact and theyre excited to have a photographer come visit.

BLESENERS PROJECT IS PART OF A growing trend towards long-term documentary photography projects that prize visuals over writing. Through innovative, full screen photo-centric web designs and effective digital dissemination, wrote Phil Bicker, then a Senior Photo Editor at Time, these photo essays are drawing our attentionin different and often more meaningful waysto important issues that we otherwise would ignore or at best feel we had seen too many times before.

Another good example is Daniel Berehulaks photo essay They Are Slaughtering Us Like Animals, about Philippine President Roberto Dutertes antidrug war, which won a Pulitzer Prize and a World Press Photo award. Berehulak, a well-established photographer, shot the project over 37 daysa long-term assignment, by newspaper standards. The investment of time yielded a depth of photojournalist reporting that verges on documentary art.

I think photographs that only convey information dont have a lot of value, says Mike Davis, Alexia Tsairis Chair of Documentary Photojournalism at Syracuse University, a role supported by the Alexia Foundation. In a words versus pictures realmsadly, thats where things have been, and I think its starting to be a different environment nowwords are the starting point and pictures have to follow. That cripples a photographer the same way it would a writer if you told them which verbs they had to use.

With more and more newsrooms closing their photography departments, local newspapers are putting even less priority on visual reporting. The rise of photography fellowships like Alexia and Catchlight are a response to that. Guy Martin, a British photographer based in Turkey, told the BBC, Grants, awards and scholarships are a lifeline for me. Without them, no work would be possible. They add to what you can do and how ambitious you want to be with your personal work.

The formula works like this: a fellowship provides funding for a photographer to complete a personal project like Toy Soldiers, which the photographer is encouraged to publish widely, often in publications that couldnt fund such an in-depth project. When Sebastian Liste, winner of the 2014 Alexia Foundation Professional Grant, submitted a report showing everywhere photos from his project had been published, the document totaled 30 pages.

Blesener acquired $50,000 in support for her project, from two fellowships: the Alexia Foundation Professional Grant ($20,000) and the Catchlight Fellowship ($30,000). She will have similar latitude to publish, though Catchlight requires her to publish a final project with Reveal, a website run by The Center for Investigative Reporting and a partner of the fellowship.

Investigative work can be tough to portray in images because a lot of it is based on documents and data, says Amy Pyle, Reveals Editor in Chief. So itll be interesting to see how it works going the other direction, when we know there are visuals, and see what the story is behind them.

Thats not to say Blesener doesnt appreciate good writing.

I get way more inspiration from literature than I do from photographers, Blesener says. It helps me to start seeing things in a narrative sense. In Russia, I was influenced by The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The way he formed the narrative and profiled the characters, it got me to see things in different light. Now Im reading a lot of Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden. These books relate to whats happening in our time. If I can create a photo essay that profound, I will be happy.

Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today

Ryan Bell is a writer and photographer based in Mazama, Washington. In 2015-2016, he was a Fulbright-National Geographic Storytelling Fellow in Russia and Kazakhstan. His work has appeared in National Geographic, Bloomberg, Outside, and many other publications. Follow him on Instagram @ryantbell.
I am making a custom Sitemap from my database and stuck with following Issue



SQL Query: SQL SELECT term_id FROM wp_term_taxonomy WHERE taxonomy= " product-cat" || taxonomy= " product-brand"

Query Output



term_id

365

369

370



It returns all term_id from my database through which I gather category slugs from another table to make sitemap URLs. Below is the code and it works fine as you can see in (sitemap output), but unfortunately I am unable to extract next row term_id & it shows always same term_id to me as a result 'Same URL'



My Sitemap Output

PHP < urlset xmlns:xsi =" http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:image =" http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-image/1.1" xmlns =" http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9" xsi:schemaLocation =" http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9 http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9/sitemap.xsd" > < url > < loc > http://domain.com/search-page/?product-cat=mobiles-tablets 365 < /loc > < changefreq > always < /changefreq > < priority > 1.0 < /priority > < /url > < url > < loc > http://domain.com/search-page/?product-cat=mobiles-tablets 365 < /loc > < changefreq > always < /changefreq > < priority > 1.0 < /priority > < /url > < /urlset >



CODE

PHP <?php header( " Content-type: text/xml" ); $i=0; $xml = ' <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>' ; $xml.= "

" . ' <urlset xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:image="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-image/1.1" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9 http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9/sitemap.xsd" xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">' ; $db = new PDO( ' mysql:host=xxx;dbname=xxx' , ' xx' , ' xxx' ); $stmt[$i] = $db->query( ' SELECT count(*) FROM wp_term_taxonomy WHERE taxonomy="product-cat" || taxonomy="product-brand"' ); $rowcount = $stmt[$i]->fetchColumn(); for ($i=0; $i<2; $i++) { $sth[$i] = $db->query( ' SELECT term_id FROM wp_term_taxonomy WHERE taxonomy="product-cat" || taxonomy="product-brand"' ); $t_id[$i] = $sth[$i]->fetchColumn(); $stmt[$i] = $db->query( ' SELECT taxonomy FROM wp_term_taxonomy WHERE term_id = ' .$t_id[$i]. ' ' ); $t_taxonomy[$i] = $stmt[$i]->fetchColumn(); $stmt[$i] = $db->query( ' SELECT slug FROM wp_terms WHERE term_id = ' .$t_id[$i]. ' ' ); $t_slug[$i] = $stmt[$i]->fetchColumn(); } echo $xml ; for ($i=0; $i<2; $i++) { $xml.= "

\t\t" . ' <url>' . "

" ; $xml.= " \t\t\t" . ' <loc>' . " http://domain.com/search-page/?$t_taxonomy[$i]=$t_slug[$i]" . " \t$t_id[$i]\t$i\t$rowcount" . ' </loc>' ; $xml.= "

\t\t\t" . ' <changefreq>always</changefreq>' ; $xml.= "

\t\t\t" . ' <priority>1.0</priority>' ; $xml.= "

\t\t" . ' </url>' . "

" ; } ?> <? php $xml.= "

" . ' </urlset>' ; $handle = fopen( ' sitemap_custom.xml' , ' w+' ); fwrite($handle,$xml); fclose($handle); ?>



What I Need?



I want to extract next row term_id (ideal if it based on loop[0,1,2]) right now it shows me only result of term_id=365



It is possible to have a single DataSet having multiple DataTables from multiple databases. If so can you just tell me how ?





C# var ds = new DataSet(); using ( var connection = new SqlConnection( " ..." )) { var da = new SqlDataAdapter( " SELECT ..." , connection); da.SelectCommand.Parameters.AddWithValue(...); da.Fill(ds, " FirstTable" ); } using ( var connection = new OleDbConnection( " ..." )) { var da = new OleDbDataAdapter( " SELECT ..." , connection); da.SelectCommand.Parameters.AddWithValue(...); da.Fill(ds, " SecondTable" ); }

If one of your queries returns multiple result-sets, you might need to use TableMappings to specify the table names:

DataAdapter DataTable and DataColumn Mappings | Microsoft Docs[^]





"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."

- Homer













"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."

- Homer











Performance may have changed in recent versions.

Never underestimate the power of human stupidity

RAH







If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^] Bastard Programmer from Hell



Hi all,



I have an SSIS Package, I am using the Oracle Database table as Datasource in my package, when I am trying to Edit and Test the Connection by putting the credentials its giving me the following error. Test connection failed because of an error in initializing provider. ORA-12541: TNS:no listener

I did set the Oracle_Home to the right directory, still I am getting the problem.



Now I set the TNS_ADMIN also with the network folder still getting the error.



Can anybody help me in resolving this issue, any help is going to be greatly helpful, thanks in advance.



Thanks,



Abdul Aleem



"There is already enough hatred in the world lets spread love, compassion and affection."



-- modified 13-Jun-17 19:34pm.





I would first check if the connection to the server is ok by using tnsping:

https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E11882_01/network.112/e41945/connect.htm#NETAG357



or try to connect with orcale sql developper



I just want to ask, what is your solution on storing encrypted data on database? And also how you do searching on it? For now the subject database server is mysql.



Disk level encryption is not an option. I also research about database level encryption but, MySql TDE is not for me, and also if you migrate to other database server in my understanding you need to re-encrypt all the data.



So my last bet is application level encryption. And I tried to implement it using AES-GCM, but on this I will lose database searching, because encrypting the same data with the same key and id will produce different results. Now I got an idea but, i don't know what would be the risk implementing it. I was thinking blind indexing.



What I am planning to do is to store 2 version of the encrypted data. first the data will be encrypted with aes-gcm, then store another version of it using one-way encryption on this same data will produce the same hash. So the first encryption is reversible but not searchable, while the second one is not reversible but I can do whole word searching.



The obvious drawback of this is speed. But I want also to ask if in security perspective is it feasible? And also how do you do a search query on encrypted database using the partial text of the data?



Thank you





As for the HASH based search - it will work only if you search for exact data, for instance 'Gilbert Consellado' will produce a constant HASH but the HASH for 'Gilbert' will not be part of it, so you will find that piece of data only if you are looking for 'Gilbert Consellado' exactly as is (include case and space and order)...



If there is a way to index the data, prior encryption, than you can use it (the HASH of the indexes) to search quickly at the DB level...

Skipper: We'll fix it.

Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?

Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.



Hi expert,



Database : MySQL



I am trying to create 2 tables with a one-to-many relationship.

Table 1 - tutor

Table 2 - subject



In my table tutor, I have id as the Primary key and it is auto-incremental.



In my subject, I have id as the Primary key and it is auto-incremental, tutorNRIC as the foreign key and tutorNRIC in my tutor table as the reference key.



For my subject, there will be more than one entry in the column tutor_subject.



For example, a tutor will sign up and then all the subjects that she can teach will be entered into that column tutor_subjet.



I'd like to check if my insert sql is correct :



SQL private final String INSERT_QRY1 = " INSERT INTO hi5project.subject tutor_subject, tutorNRIC VALUES ('?', '?') SET tutorNRIC = hi5project.tutor.tutorNRIC" ;



Thanks.







LinkID

TutorID

StudentID

Never underestimate the power of human stupidity

RAH







I am not creating a table to store the students.



So, do I still need a many-to-many relationship between the table : tutor and the table : subject ?





Never underestimate the power of human stupidity

RAH







Can I know if the ammended database schema is correct ?



SQL Create table tutor( id integer, auto_increment; tutorName varchar ( 50 ), not null , tutorNRIC varchar ( 50 ), not null , ( Primary Key ) tutorEmail varchar ( 50 ), not null , );



SQL Create table subject( id integer, auto_increment; subject varchar950), not null ; subject_id, integer, not null , ( Primary Key ) _;



SQL Create table tutor_subject( tutorNRIC integer, subject_id integer, Primary Key (tutorNRIC, subject_id), Foreign Key (tutorNRIC) references tutor(tutorNRIC), Foreign Key (subject_id) references subject(subject_id));





Never underestimate the power of human stupidity

RAH







Is it possible to use tutorNRIC as my primary key instead of tutorID ? my tutorID is just an index for me to keep track how many people have signed up.



Another question is that how should I do my insert statement based on many to many relationship ?



karengsh wrote: Is it possible to use tutorNRIC as my primary key Yes it is possible just wrong. A user should NEVER be able to edit a primary key.

karengsh wrote: my tutorID is just an index for me to keep track how many people have signed up. That statement means you need to do some reading/learning on database design. A primary key should be stupid and used for just one purpose, to identify the record, NOTHING else.



Normally you would create the primary records and when you link them (via the UI) you create the link record with the 2 primary keys.

Never underestimate the power of human stupidity

RAH







The thing is that in my country NRIC is unique. Nobody holds the same NRIC.



In this case, can I make it my Primary key ? And I'd like tutorID as my index with incremental value?







karengsh wrote: And I'd like tutorID as my index with incremental value That is fine but it will not be a count of the records in the table.

Never underestimate the power of human stupidity

RAH







However, how do I insert into the third table?



Should I use select subj_Id from subject and select tutor_id and then insert into the 3rd table ?



hi everyone





Are you asking why we use datareader.



The following link might be a good read for you



DataSet vs. DataReader[^]


Twitter, Inc. operates as a platform for public self-expression and conversation in real-time. The company's primary product is Twitter, a platform that allows users to consume, create, distribute, and discover content. It also provides promoted products that enable advertisers to promote brands, products, and services, as well as enable advertisers to target an audience based on various factors, including who an account follows and actions taken on its platform, such as Tweets created and engagement with Tweets. Its promoted products consist of promoted ads and Twitter Amplify, Follower Ads, and Twitter takeover. In addition, the company offers monetization products for creators, including Tips to directly send small one-time payments on Twitter using various payment methods, including bitcoin; Super Follows, a paid monthly subscription, which includes bonus content, exclusive previews, and perks as a way to support and connect with creators on Twitter; and Ticketed Spaces to support creators on Twitter for their time and effort in hosting, speaking, and moderating the public conversation on Twitter Spaces. Further, it offers products for developers and data partners comprising Twitter Developer Platform, a platform that enables developers to build tools for people and businesses using its public application programming interface; and paid access to Twitter data for partners with commercial use cases. Twitter, Inc. was founded in 2006 and is based in San Francisco, California.
06/07/2017

Consumers who have eaten frozen tuna recently may be at risk of contracting hepatitis A, although no illnesses have been reported so far.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says that frozen tuna distributed by Hilo Fish Company and sourced from Sustainable Seafood Company of Vietnam and Santa Cruz Seafood, Inc., of the Philippines, may have been contaminted.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that those who have eaten any of the contaminated tuna in raw or undercooked form in the last two weeks should talk to their doctor and consider being vaccinated against the disease, which affects the liver and can be both severe and long-lasting.

Those who have already been vaccinated do not need to take any further action. If you're not sure whether you've been vaccinated, getting an additional dose of vaccine will not be harmful, CDC said.

Symptoms

Symptoms of hepatitis A in adults include fatigue, abdominal pain, jaundice, abnormal liver tests, dark urine, and pale stool. People with hepatitis A may not have symptoms until 15 to 50 days after consuming a contaminated food or drink.

CDC reports that while the hepatitis A vaccine is recommended for all children, vaccination rates are lower than for other recommended childhood vaccines. Unvaccinated children can become ill and not have symptoms.

Background

The problem came to light on May 1, when the Hawaii Department of Health notified the FDA that a sample of frozen tuna cubes from Indonesia tested positive for the hepatitis A virus. On May 2, the FDA contacted the Tropic Fish Hawaii LLC, a subsidiary distributor of Hilo Fish Company, to get more information.

Tropic Fish Hawaii LLC initiated a recall because the affected product had been distributed to its customers in Oahu, Hawaii. The state of Hawaii embargoed the lot that tested positive and the FDA confirmed the sample was positive.

On May 16, Hilo Fish Company notified the FDA that it had submitted samples of additional shipments held in its cold storage facility in Hawaii to a private laboratory for testing and received additional positive results for the hepatitis A virus.

Imported tuna from that facility were sourced from Sustainable Seafood Company and Santa Cruz Seafood and were distributed to restaurants and other retail locations in California, New York, Oklahoma, and Texas. The New York State Department of Health and the FDA verified that product shipped to New York was not sold to the public. The FDAs investigation in connection with these firms is ongoing.

Products recalled

The first recall, which took place in Hawaii, consisted of imported raw frozen ahi tuna cubes sourced from PT Deho Canning Co. of Indonesia. None of that product is thought to remain on the market, meaning it has either been eaten or disposed of.

The current recall, which began May 18, consists of frozen yellowfin tuna steaks from Sustainable Seafood Company and yellowfin tuna cubes from Santa Cruz Seafood. This recall by Hilo Fish Company includes Tuna Steaks, 8 oz. individually vacuum packed bags, production date code: 627152, Lot number: 166623; Expiration date: 2018-10-01 and Frozen Yellowfin tuna cubes, random; Individually vacuum packed; 15 lb. case, date code: 705342, Lot number: 173448; Expiration dates: 2019-04-01).

A list of restaurants known to have served the contaminated tuna is available on the FDA website.
06/06/2017

Photo (c) Martin33 - Fotolia Building a new terminal to export fracked gas might seem like an unlikely proposal for Portland, Oregon, where residents and lawmakers pride themselves on the citys environmentally-conscious policies. But Portlands then-Mayor Charles Hales supported that very project when Pembina Pipeline Corporation approached city leaders with the idea in 2015.

Echoing a common refrain made by national Democratic Party leaders and the former president, Hales claimed that natural gas is a cleaner, greener "bridge fuel." Natural or shale gas will help wean consumers from their addiction to coal and other dirty fossil fuels, lawmakers like Hales who express concerns about climate change have said.

But environmental activists don't support the argument that natural gas is a cleaner "bridge fuel." And neither does the science. Numerous studies, including a paper published that same year out of Cornell University, state that methane emissions from fracked wells are so high that they undercut the environmental benefits of burning natural gas.

While carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel use in the USA declined to some extent between 2009 and 2013 due to the widespread replacement of carbon-based coal with natural gas, the Cornell researchers said, the greenhouse gas footprint of shale gas is significantly larger than that of conventional natural gas, coal, and oil," thanks to methane leaks from shale gas production. (Methane is a greenhouse gas that researchers say is much more potent at trapping heat than carbon dioxide).

Local activists pushed back

After local activists in Portland pushed back against the project with similar arguments, Portlands mayor eventually changed course, and responded by cancelling plans to allow the propane storage and exporting facility in his city. Then the Portland City Council unanimously passed a ban on allowing any new fossil fuel storage facilities in city limits, the first local ordinance of its kind in the nation. "The leadership on climate and sustainability rests with the cities," Hales said in a press conference afterward.

The recent news that President Trump is pulling the United States out of the Paris climate accord is a reminder once again that much of the burden of halting climate change falls on local communities and individual consumers.

"Cities and state governments have been amazing in stepping up," Travis Nichols, a spokesman with Greenpeace USA, tells ConsumerAffairs.

A supposed flip-flop from green groups on the Paris accord

Environmental organizations and Democrats were deeply critical of Trumps decision to leave the Paris accord, the voluntary, international agreement calling for world leaders to limit the global temperature increase to 2C.

Yet two years ago, when world leaders were negotiating the agreement, those same environmental groups described the goals netted out in Paris as inadequate at addressing climate change. Missing from the text in the actual agreement, as critics pointed out, were the words shale, oil or even fossil fuel.

After the deal was brokered, GreenPeace International director Kumi Naidoo said in a statement that he found parts of it to be frustrating, claiming that the emissions targets that the participating countries had set made it impossible for the world to meet its stated temperature goals. Theres a yawning gap in this deal, but it can be bridged by clean technology, Naidoo said at the time.

Dr. James Hansen a leading climate scientist, was especially critical after the deal passed.Its just bullshit for them to say: Well have a 2C warming target and then try to do a little better every five years, Hansen told the Guardian newspaper. Its just worthless words. There is no action, just promises. 

Environmentalists hesitancy to hail the Paris agreement as a cure-all to climate change has become fodder for right-wing sites like the Daily Caller, which wrote a post suggesting that environmentalists were flip-flopping in their support of the climate deal after Trump took office.

Nichols, the GreenPeace spokesman, dismisses this argument as cynical hypocrisy. "They dont have another plan. Its not like theyre saying, Paris isnt good enough, let's be more ambitious. He points out that even major oil companies say they want the United States to stay in the deal.

When it comes to policy, the goal should be to reduce emissions at the lowest cost to society, ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods reportedly told investors last week.

Why climate-deniers support Paris accord

Of course, the energy industrys reasons for wanting to participate in international climate talks is probably not entirely altruistic. Exxon has spent millions to cast doubt on the causes and effects of climate change and continues to push the idea that renewable energy reliance is unrealistic. The oil corporation also wants to drill in the Arctic and calls for an increased reliance on natural gas, despite warnings from environmental scientists that natural gas worsens climate change.

But energy companies also face pressure from investors who want oil companies to better account for the effect that climate change will have on their pocketbooks. The world we live in acknowledges that climate change is real, that humans contribute to it and are the cause of it, Nichols tells ConsumerAffairs."These companies live in the real world.

Switching the grid from coal to renewables

Also living in the real world are local lawmakers, who are able to see the direct effect that fossil fuel consumption and climate change have on their way of life. In response to Trumps decision, 246 mayors across the United States signed an open letter stating that they would continue to follow the Paris accord regardless of what the president wants.

Some cities are going further than others. The mayor of Georgetown, Texas, an Austin suburb with a population of about 50,000 people, is not one of the local leaders whose name is included in the open letter. Yet his city is one of the few in the United States that is powered completely by renewable energy. In an interview with NPR, Georgetown Mayor Dale Ross says it was a business decision that drove the citys renewable policy.

The Sierra Club in a recent report identified six other municipalities that are poised to follow Georgetowns lead by 2035 or sooner, as well three other cities -- Burlington, VT, Aspen, CO and Greenburg, KS -- that already are powered completely by renewables.

Environmentalists stop short of saying that local lawmakers are the only hope at combating climate change. But local lawmakers have taken practical steps that even climate-concerned Democrats have been hesitant to embrace.

"You dont have to be a scientist. You just have to be a city planner and youd recognize this is a huge problem, Nichols says. "Trump's administration is intent on making it as painful as possible for everyone...luckily it is not a hopeless situation, they're just making it harder."
Partnering with Parks Canada on deployment, the Ocean Endeavor will offer a 17-day Out of the Northwest Passage sailing later this year, with a notable stop to visit the HMS Erebus, which was in the area between 1839 to 1843, and abandoned after she became icebound.

Running a full northern hemisphere season in Northern Canada, Adventure Canada offers a pure expedition product, according to Matthew James Swan, business development director.

We are leaning toward some comfort features, Swan told Cruise Industry News for the 2017 Expedition Cruise Market Report.. We made the move from an older vessel to the Ocean Endeavor in 2015. Its still very much an expedition ship, but it has some nice comfort features. That is putting us at a higher caliber as an expedition company.

The company offers a 10-day circumnavigation of Newfoundland in June, and is expected to head back to Scotland in 2018, where it last ran a partial program in 2013.

Later this year the company is offering a cruise on the Hebridean Sky to Antarctica, essentially taking a group on another vessel, but it is most likely a nod to a hint of a bigger plan.

Excerpt from the 2017 Expedition Cruise Market Report.

---

About the Expedition Market Report

The 2017 Expedition Cruise Market Report is a comprehensive PDF report detailing the quickly expanding expedition cruise market.

It includes capacity projections through 2027, and profiles of 17 major players with exclusive reporting, research and interviews.

There is also a trends report, original research and a look at the new ships, plus much more.

Learn More.
On March 4, the Caledonian Sky made contact with a coral reef in Indonesia, requiring a tugboat to tow the ship off and leaving significant damage to the reef.

The ship was understood to have run aground during low-tide while on a bird-watching theme cruise.

Now, the Indonesia government is clamping down and has levied an Rp6 trillion fine, the equivalent of $450 million. The Indonesian environmental ministry said the ship destroyed some 13,270 square meters of the coral reef.

A local news report said that the cruise line has passed on payment responsibility to its insurance firm, SPICA, which is negotiating with the government.
Jamaica will host the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) conference this November at its Montego Bay Convention Center.

It is the first such event held in the Americas. Jamaica has also recently announced major cruise initiatives.

Tourism is indeed the number one industry in the world today, said Jamaicas Minister of Tourism, the Honorable Edmund Bartlett, at a press conference held in New York on Tuesday June 6.

Among key agenda points will be cutting down on what the Minister called tourism leakage.

Many countries still lag behind in benefitting from tourism, he said. We must capture the tourism dollar. A report done in 2014 suggested that as much as 80 percent of tourism expenditure leaks out of host countries annually.

Key world leaders, tourism stakeholders, cruise line executives, and hotel and air executives are expected to attend, along with the World Bank, which has partnered with Jamaica to broaden the event to include new topics such as economic development, financial management, job creation and human capital development.

Tourism is really our livelihood in the Caribbean, said Hugh Riley secretary general of the Caribbean Tourism Organization which has thrown its support behind the event. We need to care more about the quality of the experience and the quality of the training we have. We have to care more about the product development in the Caribbean and the sustainability of the industry for our children and grandchildren.

Bartlett wants the event to discuss threats to sustainable development and identify opportunities for government to work on policy.

Second, we want to prepare small and medium tourism entrepreneurs to develop sustainable business models that will attract traditional and non-traditional funding, he continued. Third, we want to expand tourism templates to generate economic growth and decrease tourism leakage. And fourth, to establish a dynamic framework for public-private partnership.

Among upcoming challenges: building out airports to accommodate bigger planes shuttling in tourists from Africa, the Middle East and Asia, as well as putting budget into port infrastructure to accommodate a record orderbook of large cruise ships.

Bartlett also stated that tourism as a sector receiving the most foreign direct investment (FDI), adding that the Caribbean has a higher proportion of total employment and percentage of GDP derived from tourism than any other region in the world.

The conference will conclude with the Draft Montego Bay Declaration, which will be an action plan of sorts for tourism destinations to follow.

Another feature of the conference will be the presentation of the Caribbean Legends Awards in the categories of Land, Sea and Air. They will be given to individuals that have made an indelible mark on the tourism industry, not just regionally, but globally, enhancing the Caribbean brand.

The event is scheduled for November 27-29, 2017
Arizona Governor Doug Ducey and Sonora Governor Claudia Pavlovich have reached an agreement to promote Puerto Penasco as land-locked Arizonas cruise port, according to state news sources. Both governors are counting on provisioning and supplying the cruise ships they hope will soon dock in Penasco.

Hector Platt Mazon, Sonoras director of tourism, is cited as saying that Arizona produces 1.2 million cruise passengers a year, which would give the state an astonishing market penetration of more than 17 percent, by which count it should be the hottest cruise market not only in the United States but worldwide.

Puerto Penasco is said to be a three-hour drive from Phoenix, plus the time it takes to cross the border.

According to reports, Platt Mazon said that talks are underway with Carnival Cruise Line, and the Sonora government has optimistically been cited to say that cruise ships will likely begin docking in 2019. (Carnival has posted itineraries through April of 2019 with no mention of Penasco and has also invested in the expansion of its cruise terminal in Long Beach.)

While homeporting and calls would clearly benefit Sonora, it is not clear how Arizona would benefit with its citizens spending their money across the border and on the ship. But according to the governor cruise ships are expected to provision from Arizona. However, Sonora Governor Pavlovich is also quoted as saying that she expects her state to be a source of supplies. Both governors seem unaware of the cruise companies mostly global and regional sourcing strategies.

The port is described as a $60 million project, which started four years ago, with the Mexican government having committed to fund half of the project cost. The governors are hoping the federal government will also fund the rest.

Sources familiar with Sonora tourism said that state tourism has no funds to support a cruise port and that it would depend entirely on federal funding.

Neither the respective governors offices nor state tourism officials on both sides of the border responded to inquiries for comments and verification.
An Atlanta man was sentenced to two years in prison for setting up a fake business to steal car loans that cost more than $167,000 in losses for three Virginia credit unions.

U.S. District Judge Arenda L. Wright Allen also ordered Sheldon Franklin last month to pay $167,529 in restitution and serve five years of supervised release following his prison sentence.

For nearly two years, the 31-year-old Franklin fraudulently obtained car loans from the $81 billion Navy Federal Credit Union in Vienna, the $2.3 billion Langley Federal Credit Union in Newport News, and the $365 million NSWC Federal Credit Union in Dahlgren.

To carry out his scheme, Franklin opened a business bank account at the $1.5 billion Bayport Credit Union in Newport News. In the account application, he listed himself as the sole owner of a car dealership and provided the credit union with a false document from the IRS that purportedly assigned his employer identification number, according to federal prosecutors.
Installed Building Products, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, engages in the installation of insulation, waterproofing, fire-stopping, fireproofing, garage doors, rain gutters, window blinds, shower doors, closet shelving and mirrors, and other products in the continental United States. The company offers a range of insulation materials, such as fiberglass and cellulose, and spray foam insulation materials. It is also involved in the installation of insulation and sealant materials in various areas of a structure, which includes basement and crawl space, building envelope, attic, and acoustical applications. In addition, the company installs a range of caulk and sealant products that control air infiltration in residential and commercial buildings; and waterproofing options, including sheet and hot applied waterproofing membranes, as well as deck coating, bentonite, and air and vapor systems. It serves homebuilders, multi-family and commercial construction firms, individual homeowners, and repair and remodeling contractors through a network of approximately 210 branch locations. The company was formerly known as CCIB Holdco, Inc. Installed Building Products, Inc. was founded in 1977 and is based in Columbus, Ohio.
OMAHA  Omaha authorities released the name of a man whose body was found floating in the Missouri River.

Boaters spotted the body around 2:15 p.m. Sunday, June 4. An Omaha Fire Department river rescue team recovered it near Eppley Airfield on the northeast corner of the city.

Omaha police said Wednesday that the man was identified as 32-year-old Tyler Owen.

Police say no foul play is suspected in Owen's death, but their investigation is continuing. It's unclear whether an accident was involved.
The following companies are subsidiares of Dover: APM Grundstucksverwaltungsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG, Accelerated Production Systems, Acme Cryo Intermediate Inc., Acme Cryogenics, Acme Cryogenics Inc., Acme Elevator, Advansor A/S, Advansor Dover International (Poland) sp. z o.o., Advansor Germany GmbH, Alfred Fueling Systems Holdco Ltd., Alfred Fueling Systems Inc., Alfred Fueling Systems Intermediate Holdco Ltd., All-Flo Pump Company, Anman LLC, Anthony Equity Holdings Inc., Anthony Holdings Inc., Anthony Inc., Anthony International, Anthony International Foreign Sales Corp., Anthony International Holding Company, Anthony Mexico Holdings LLC, Anthony North Holdco Inc., Anthony Specialty Glass LLC, Anthony TemperBent GP LLC, Audax ECII Blocker Inc., Auto Glanz Solutions LLC, AvaLAN Wireless Systems Incorporated, BELVAC CR spol s r.o., BSC Filters Limited, Belanger, Belanger Inc., Belvac Middle East FZE, Belvac Production Machinery Inc., Blackmer, BlitzRotary GmbH, Blue Bite LLC, Blue Bite LLC, Butler Engineering and Marketing S.P.A., CDS Visual, CDS Visual Inc., CEP Liquidation LLC, CP Formation LLC, CPC Europe Inc., CPI Products Inc., Caldera, Canada Organization & Development LLC, Chief Automotive Technologies (Shanghai) Trading Company Ltd., Chippewa Square Captive Insurance Company, Colder Products Company, Colder Products Company GmbH, Colder Products Company LTD, Cook Compression LLC, Cook Compression Limited, Cook-MFS Inc., Cryogenic Experts LLC, DD1 Inc., DDI Properties Inc., DE-STA-CO Benelux B.V., DE-STA-CO FRANCE, DE-STA-CO Shanghai Co. Ltd., DESTACO UK Limited, DFH Corporation, DFS Netherlands B.V., Datamax International Corp, De Sta Co (Asia) Company Limited, De-Sta-Co Cylinders Inc., DeStaCo Europe GmbH, Delaware Capital Formation Inc., Delaware Capital Holdings Inc., Dositec Sistemas SL, Dosmatic U.S.A. Inc., Dover (China) Investment Co. Ltd., Dover (Schweiz) Holding GmbH, Dover (Shanghai) Industrial Co. Ltd., Dover (Shenzhen) Industrial Equipment Manufacturing Co. Ltd., Dover (Suzhou) Industrial Equipment Manufacturing Co. Ltd., Dover Asia Trading Private Ltd., Dover Australia Holdings Pty Limited, Dover Business Services EMEA Limited, Dover Business Services Europe S.R.L., Dover Business Services LLC, Dover Business Services Philippines Corporation, Dover CLP Formation Limited Partnership, Dover Canada Holdings ULC, Dover Canada Operations ULC, Dover Corporation Regional Headquarters, Dover DEI Services Inc., Dover Denmark Holdings ApS, Dover EMEA FZCO, Dover Energy UK Ltd, Dover Engineered Products Segment Inc., Dover Europe Inc., Dover Europe Sarl, Dover Fluids UK Ltd, Dover France Holdings, Dover France Participations, Dover France Technologies, Dover Fueling Solutions Segment Inc., Dover Fueling Solutions UK Limited, Dover Germany GmbH, Dover Global Holdings LLC, Dover Holdings de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Dover Imaging & Identification Segment Inc., Dover India Pvt. Ltd., Dover Intercompany Services UK Limited, Dover International B.V., Dover International Operations Inc., Dover International Ventures Inc., Dover International ithalat ihracat ve Pazarlama Limited Sirketi, Dover Italy Holdings S.r.l., Dover Luxembourg Finance Sarl, Dover Luxembourg Participations Sarl, Dover Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Dover Luxembourg Services Sarl, Dover Operations South Africa (Pty) Ltd, Dover Overseas Ventures Inc., Dover Pumps & Process Solutions Segment Inc., Dover Refrigeration & Food Equipment Segment Inc., Dover Refrigeration & Food Equipment UK Ltd, Dover Resources International de Mexico S. de R.L. C.V., Dover Solutions Colombia SAS, Dover Southeast Asia (Thailand) Ltd., Dover Spain Holdings S.L., Dover Switzerland Participations GmbH, Dover UK Pensions Limited, Dover WSCR Holding LLC, Dover WSCR LLC, Dover do Brasil Ltda., Dow-Key Microwave Corporation, Dresser Wayne Data Technology (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Dresser Wayne Fuel Equipment (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., ECI - IGT Holdings LLC, ECI Holding Company LLC, ECI RegO S. de R.L. de C.V, ECI RegO Servicios S. de R.L. de C.V., ECII (Mexico) LLC, EOA Systems Inc., Ebs-Ray Holdings Pty Ltd, Ebs-Ray Industries Pty Ltd, Ebs-Ray Pumps Pty Ltd, Em-Tec, Engineered Controls International LLC, Espy, Ettlinger, Ettlinger Kunststoffmaschinen GmbH, Fairbanks Environmental Limited, Fibrelite Composites Limited, Fibresec Holdings Limited, Fibresec Limited, Finder, GAL LLC, GIIER LLC, Gala Industries, Guangdong Tokheim LIYUAN Oil Industry Technology Limited Company, Highland Park Insurance Company, Hill PHOENIX Inc., Hill PHOENIX WIC LLC, Hill Phoenix Costa Rica Sociedad De Responsabilidad Limitada, Hill Phoenix El Salvador Limitada de Capital Variable, Hill Phoenix Guatemala Sociedad Anonima, Hill Phoenix Honduras Sociedad Anonima, Hill Phoenix Nicaragua Sociedad Anonima, Hill Phoenix de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Hiltap Fittings Ltd., Hydro Systems Company, Hydro Systems Europe Ltd., Industrial Motion Control LLC, Innovative Control Systems, Innovative Control Systems Inc., Inpro/Seal LLC, JK Group, JK Group S.P.A., JK Group USA Inc., K S Boca Inc., K&L Microwave DR Inc., K&L Microwave Inc., KPS (Beijing) Petroleum Equipment Trading Co Ltd., KPS Fueling Solutions Sdn. Bhd., KPS Hong Kong Holding Limited, KPS UK Limited, KS Formation Inc., KS Liquidation Inc., KSLP Liquidation L.P., Kiian Digital (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Knappco LLC, Knowles Electronics, LIQAL, LIQAL B.V., Liquip, Liquip, Liquip International Pty Limited, MAAG, MARKEM FZ SA, MARKEM-IMAJE Corporation, MIP Holdings Inc., MS Printing Solutions, MS Printing Solutions S.R.L., Maag, Maag Automatik Plastics Machinery (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Maag Gala Inc., Maag Germany GmbH, Maag Italy S.R.L., Maag Pump Systems, Maag Pump Systems (US) Inc., Maag Pump Systems AG, Maag Reduction Inc., Maag Service (Malaysia) Sdn. Bdn., Maag Service (Taiwan) Ltd., Maag Systems (Thailand) Limited, Macro Technologies LLC, Malema, Marathon Equipment Company (Delaware), Markem Imaje Center of Competencies Spain S.L.U., Markem-Imaje, Markem-Imaje (China) Co. Limited, Markem-Imaje - Unipessoal Lda, Markem-Imaje A/S, Markem-Imaje AB, Markem-Imaje AG, Markem-Imaje AS, Markem-Imaje B.V., Markem-Imaje CSAT GmbH, Markem-Imaje Co. Ltd., Markem-Imaje GmbH, Markem-Imaje Holding, Markem-Imaje Identificacao de Produtos Ltda., Markem-Imaje Inc., Markem-Imaje India Private Limited, Markem-Imaje Industries, Markem-Imaje Industries Limited, Markem-Imaje KK, Markem-Imaje LLC, Markem-Imaje Limited, Markem-Imaje Ltd., Markem-Imaje N.V., Markem-Imaje Oy, Markem-Imaje Philippines Corporation, Markem-Imaje Pty. Ltd., Markem-Imaje S.A., Markem-Imaje S.A. de C.V., Markem-Imaje S.r.l., Markem-Imaje SAS, Markem-Imaje Sdn. Bhd., Markem-Imaje Singapore Pte. Ltd., Markem-Imaje Spain S.A., Markpoint Holding AB, Midland Manufacturing LLC, Midwest Cryogenics Inc., Mouvex, Northeast Services Inc., Northern Lights (Nevada) Inc., Northern Lights Funding LP, Northern Lights Investments LLC, Nova Controls Inc., OK International, OK International Holdings Inc., OK International Inc., OK International Ltd., OPW Engineered Systems LLC, OPW Fluid Transfer Group Europe B.V., OPW Fluid Transfer Solutions (Jiang Su) Co. Ltd., OPW Fluids Group Inc., OPW Fuel Management Systems Inc., OPW Fueling Components (SuZhou) Co. Ltd., OPW Fueling Components LLC, OPW Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., OPW Slovakia s.r.o., OPW Sweden AB, Officine Meccaniche Sirio S.R.L., PDQ Manufacturing, PDQ Manufacturing Inc., PISCES by OPW Inc., PSD Codax Holdings Limited, PSD Codax Limited, PSG (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., PSG (Tianjin) Co. Ltd., PSG California LLC, PSG Germany GmbH, Petro Vend Sp. z o.o., Pike Machine Products Inc., Pole/Zero Acquisition Inc., Precision Brasil Equipamentos E Servicos Para Postos De Combustiveis Ltda., Precision Service - Servicos De Manutencao E Instalacao De Postos De Abastecimento De Combustivel Ltda., Production Control Services, Pump Management Services Co. LLC, Quantex Arc Limited, Quantex Patents Limited, RAV France, Ravaglioli S.P.A., Reduction Engineering GmbH, RegO (Shanghai) Trading Co. Ltd., RegO Holding GmbH, RegO Products, RegO Valve (Shanghai) Company Ltd., Rego GmbH, Revod Corporation, Revod Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Revod Sweden AB, Robohand Inc., Rosario, Rosario Handel B.V., Rotary Lift Consolidated (Haimen) Co. Ltd., SE Liquidation LLC, SWEP France, SWEP Germany GmbH, SWEP Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., SWEP North America Inc., SWEP Slovakia s.r.o., SWEP Technology (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., Seabiscuit Motorsports Inc., Shanghai RegO Flow Technology Company Ltd., Shine Bloom - ECI A Blocker Corp., Shine Bloom - ECI Blocker Corp., Shine Bloom - ECI S Blocker Corp., Simmons Sirvey Corporation, So. Cal. Soft-Pak, So. Cal. Soft-Pak Incorporated, Soft-Pak, Solaris Laser, Solaris Laser S.A., Somero Enterprises, Sound Solutions, Sound Solutions, Space S.R.L., Spirit, Start Italiana S.R.L., Superior Holding LLC, Superior Products LLC, Swep Energy Oy, Swep International A.B., Swep Japan K.K., Sys-Tech Solutions, Sys-Tech Solutions Inc., Systech, TQC Quantium Quality S.A. de C.V., TTSI III Inc., TWG Canada Consolidated Inc., TXHI LLC, Tartan Textile Services Inc., The Espy Corporation, The Heil Co., Tokheim, Tokheim Belgium, Tokheim China Company Limited, Tokheim GmbH, Tokheim Group, Tokheim Hengshan Technologies (Guangzhou) Co. Ltd., Tokheim Holding B.V., Tokheim India Private Limited, Tokheim Sofitam Applications, Triton Systems, Tulsa Winch Inc., UPCO Inc., US Synthetic, Unattended Payment Solutions LLC, Unified Brands, Val TemperBent Glass L.P., Vectron Frequency Devices (Shanghai) Co. Ltd, Vehicle Service Group LLC, Vehicle Service Group UK Limited, Vos Food Store Equipment Ltd., WSCR Corp., Warn Automotive LLC, Warn Industries, Waukesha Bearings, Waukesha Bearings Corporation, Waukesha Bearings Limited, Waukesha Bearings Russia LLC, Wayne Fueling Systems, Wayne Fueling Systems (Rus) Limited Liability Company, Wayne Fueling Systems Australia Pty Ltd, Wayne Fueling Systems Canada ULC, Wayne Fueling Systems Italia S.R.L., Wayne Fueling Systems LLC, Wayne Fueling Systems Ltd., Wayne Fueling Systems Sweden AB, Wayne Fueling Systems UK Holdco Ltd., Wayne Industria e Comercio Ltda., WellMark, WellMark, and em-tec GmbH.

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Jeff Sessions the United States Attorney General suggested in the last few weeks he may resign amidst growing tension with President Donald Trump, said one person close to the ongoing situation.

Sessions came under fire from Trump due to his recusal from the Russia meddling investigation related to last years U.S. election, which is an inquiry now exploring if associates of Trump colluded with the Moscow government.

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The suggestion by the AG that he may consider stepping down was confirmed by one person discussing the situation on the condition of remaining anonymous.

Trump has also assailed the Department of Justice for how it handled the White Houses travel ban, and accused the DOJ in a number of tweets Monday of weakening the plans he has to limit entry for citizens of several Muslim nations.

Both of the two travel bans imposed by Trump were blocked in federal courts.

Trump in one of his tweets from Monday said the DOJ should have remained with his original travel ban and not the one that was watered down and politically correct that they submitted. However, both of the bans were signed by the president.

Sean Spicer the spokesman at the White House declined on Tuesday to say if Trump continues to have confidence in his AG following the tweets made by Trump on his travel ban.

Spicer would only say he has not discussed that at all with the president.

Spicer back on May 9 gave an answer that was quite similar when he was asked what Trumps confidence level was for James Comey who at that time was the FBI Director. Later the same day Comey was fired by Trump.

On Thursday, Comey will testify before the Senates Intelligence Committee regarding his interactions with the president. The ousted director of the FBI is expected to talk about if the president had asked him to slow down the probe of Russia and an inquiry into Michael Flynn the former National Security Adviser.

Sessions, who is 70, holds a unique role on the White House. He was the first U.S. senator that endorsed Trump as a presidential candidate and who defended Trump without reservations through his darkest moments of his campaign.

After the unexpected victory by Trump, the senator from Alabama was given a cabinet position of his choice.

Yet not even a month after becoming the attorney general, Sessions was at the center of heavy controversy after not disclosing at his confirmation hearing two talks he had with a Russian ambassador.
Juniper Networks, Inc. designs, develops, and sells network products and services worldwide. The company offers routing products, such as ACX series universal access routers to deploy high-bandwidth services; MX series Ethernet routers that function as a universal edge platform; PTX series packet transport routers; wide-area network SDN controllers; and session smart routers. It also provides switching products, including EX series Ethernet switches to address the access, aggregation, and core layer switching requirements of micro branch, branch office, and campus environments; QFX series of core, spine, and top-of-rack data center switches; and juniper access points, which provide Wi-Fi access and performance. In addition, the company offers security products comprising SRX series services gateways for the data center; Branch SRX family provides an integrated and next-generation firewall; virtual firewall that delivers various features of physical firewalls; and advanced malware protection, a cloud-based service and Juniper ATP. Further, it offers Junos OS, a network operating system; Contrail networking, which provides an open-source and standards-based platform for SDN; Mist AI-driven Wired, Wireless, and WAN assurance solutions to set and measure key metrics; Mist AI-driven Marvis Virtual Network Assistant, which identifies the root cause of issues; Juniper Paragon Automation, a modular portfolio of cloud-native software applications; and Juniper Apstra to automate the network lifecycle in a single system. Additionally, the company provides software-as-a-service, technical support, maintenance, and professional services, as well as education and training programs. It sells its products through direct sales, distributors, value-added resellers, and original equipment manufacturers to end-users in the cloud, service provider, and enterprise markets. The company was incorporated in 1996 and is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California.
A Johannesburg high court will investigate a damages claim for $4.2 billion raised in 2013 by Turkcell against South African operator MTN.

Turkcell is alleging that MTN committed unlawful acts when the firms were competing for a licence tender in Iran. The Turkish operator claims that it was awarded Irans first private mobile licence in 2004, but that MTNs illegal acts, including bribery and corruption meant that it was unlawfully denied the licence.

The sum that Turkcell has specified constitutes the profits that it would have made (plus interest) had it retained the licence. The case has in limbo until a judge in South Africas high court ruled that it could go to trial, with Turkcell stating that South African high court rejected [the] defendants procedural objections. Thereby, after a long period of time, merits of the case will now be examined.

Serhat Demir, Turkcells EVP for legal and regulatory affairs, said: We believe we have a very strong claim Turkcell will be seeking the earliest possible trial date, and looks forward to vindicating its claims before the South African courts.

MTN reiterated its statement from 2013 that it continues to believe that there is no legal merit to Turkcells claim and will accordingly oppose it.

Although MTN registered its first ever annual loss in March, it is doing well in Iran, which is its second largest market. MTN Group has begun repatriating funds from MTN Irancell, in which it holds a 49% stake, after the easing of sanctions against Iran. This will allow the group to receive around $1 billion in loan repayments and accumulated dividends from the Iranian operator.
The Internet Society and the African Union Commission have unveiled a new set of Internet Infrastructure Security Guidelines for Africa.

The guidelines will help Africa create a more secure Internet infrastructure and are set to change the way African Union States approach cyber security preparedness.

The first of their kind in Africa, the guidelines were developed by a multi-stakeholder group of African and global internet infrastructure security experts, and are the first step towards building a more secure Internet in Africa. They will help AU member states strengthen the security of their local Internet infrastructure through actions at a regional, national, ISP/operator and organisational level.



Africas cyber security environment faces a unique combination of challenges, including a lack of awareness of the risks involved in using technology. Kenya was ranked the 69th most vulnerable country (out of 127) in the 2015 Deloitte Global Threat Index. Some of the main reasons are: low awareness, underinvestment, talent shortage and overload of data. Deloitte further estimates that Kenya lost $171 million to cybercrime in 2016.



Africa has achieved major strides in developing its Internet Infrastructure in the past decade. However, the Internet wont provide the aspired benefits unless we can trust it. We have seen from recent experiences that Africa is not immune from cyber-attacks and other security threats. These guidelines, developed in collaboration with the African Union Commission, will help African countries put in place the necessary measures to increase the security of their Internet infrastructure, said Dawit Bekele, Africa Regional Bureau Director for the Internet Society.



This document is launched at a time when the world feels the real and urgent need to build and reinforce structures aimed at tackling the growing cyber threat to the global digital economy. Governments, companies, network operators, universities and organizations across African Union member states are encouraged to take action to implement the Internet Infrastructure Security Guidelines.



This is another timely milestone achievement given the new security challenges in cyberspace, said Moctar Yeday, Head, Information Society Division, African Union. The Commission of the African Union will continue its partnership with the Internet Society on a second set of guidelines addressing personal data protection in Africa.



According to ITU ICT Facts and Figures 2016, it is estimated that 25.1% of Africans are now online and despite lower Internet access rates vs. other regions in the world, there has been a sustained double-digit growth in Internet penetration over the past 10 years. This is due in large part to an increase of mobile Internet and in more affordable smart phones in the market and Africas young, technology-savvy population. However, to continue to improve access and connect the unconnected, people need to trust the Internet.



Symantec, a global leader in cyber security, observed 24 million malware incidents targeting Africa in 2016. As some malware incidents probably go unobserved, the real number of incidents may be much higher. In a 2013 report from Symantec, cybercrime was increasing at a faster rate in Africa than any other region.



As Internet penetration grows in Africa and more business takes place online, implementing security measures against malware incidents to protect Internet users becomes increasingly important.



Offering actions that are tailored to the African cyber security environment and solutions for an ever changing online landscape, the recommendations in the document launched today can play a key role in helping Africa respond to the kind of Internet attacks that recently paralysed critical public and government services.
The Philippine Competition Commission (PCC) has hit out at the countrys two leading operators for closing their acquisition of San Miguel Corps telecom assets despite facing an open legal challenge from the PCC.

PLDT and Globe made the final payment of PHP13 billion ($261 million) last week, after the pair agreed to purchase SMCs operations as a 50:50 joint acquisition in May 2016. Between them, the two operators host 99% of the countrys mobile connections.

However, the PCC had previously asked that the operators avoid performing any action for the consummation or implementation of the terms of the acquisition until the Supreme Court had reached a decision on whether to repeal an injunction that is preventing the agency from reviewing the deal.

Before reaching an agreement with PLDT and Globe, SMC had been in talks with Australias Telstra over whether to form a joint venture that would bring some fresh  and highly desirable  competition into the Philippines mobile market. However, after talks proved fruitless, Globe and PLDT announced the surprise acquisition.

The fact that the two incumbents are essentially strengthening their footprints via the acquisition seems to have aroused the suspicions of the PCC, which has been attempting to review the deal under the Philippines fair competition law. Globe claimed that this scrutiny was unfair and amounted to the PCC changing the rules suddenly in the middle of a game.

Both Globe and PLDTs Smart then filed for temporary restraining orders against the PCC in July 2016, effectively stymieing its review of the deal. A month later, the PCC stated that it believed the deal would likely have an adverse impact on competition in the Philippines.

In a statement, the PCC confirmed that it stands by its position that Globe and PLDT should not have proceeded with the payment of their final instalment on the telco deal, considering pending cases filed before the Supreme Court and Court of Appeals. Completing the payment for the telco assets is a move that unduly pre-empts the forthcoming rulings.

With the demand for greater competition rising, President Rodrigo Duterte has hit out at both Globe and Smart. In October 2016 he stated that unless both firms significantly improved their unsatisfactory service, he would open up the market to competition from Chinese firms. Since obtaining 700MHz spectrum, both operators have been rapidly rolling out coverage and increasing speeds.
Ingenu and Upland Global Wireless Technology have deployed an Internet of Things (IoT) network in Nigeria.

Dubbed the Machine Network, it is powered by Ingenus RPMA (Random Phase Multiple Access) technology and will serve Nigerias population of approximately 184 million, providing reliable connectivity for IoT/M2M applications including, oil and gas, smart city, smart grid, agriculture and asset tracking.

The Nigerian Machine Network rollout has begun in Lagos, and will continue through the Niger Delta, initially monitoring key oil and gas assets in the petroleum-rich region of the country. The remainder of the network rollout is due for completion by late 2017, which will enable ubiquitous IoT connectivity across Nigerias more than 356,000 square miles of area.

The rugged terrain of Nigeria means that building a reliable network is challenging. Upland Global evaluated an array of low-power, wide-area (LPWA) and cellular solutions, ultimately opting for Ingenus RPMA network based on its long-range coverage, secure two-way transmission, network capacity and cost savings.

Bola Awobamise, president and CEO of Upland Global Wireless Technology, said: We have a successful history of collaboration in bringing innovative solutions to market, and we believe the IoT network will provide the country with distinct advantages in delivering useful applications to its citizens.

Upland Global has vast experience implementing private networks with Ingenus RPMA technology, and has deployed a host of IoT devices within the RPMA ecosystem, said John Horn, chief executive officer, Ingenu. Working with this innovative company, we look forward to expanding the global network to West Africa and bringing the benefits of IoT connectivity to Nigerias ever-expanding economy.
Mauritius-based IOX Cable and Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN), part of Nokia, have signed a turnkey agreement for the deployment of the IOX Cable System.

A new submarine cable system, spanning more than 8850 kilometres, the IOX Cable System will enhance communications capabilities along the India to South Africa route, providing the first open cable in Mauritius and connecting for the first time the island of Rodrigues. This will increase the availability of ultra-high speed broadband services, and reinforce Mauritius as a communication hub in sub-Saharan Africa.

The IOX Cable System will stretch from Mauritius to Rodrigues, to the east coast of South Africa and then on to the east coast of India. Providing an ultimate design capacity of over 13 terabits-per second per fibre pair, the system will allow easy connectivity to current and future undersea cables on the east and west coast of Africa, delivering a gateway to the continent and a new alternate route between Asia and Africa.

The systems deployment will support ultra-fast data transmission to address the growth of digital communications and cloud computing requirements, enabling IOX to offer differentiated services, while strengthening service, reliability and redundancy to existing cables.

Arunachalam Kandasamy, Founder and CEO of IOX Cable Ltd said: IOX is committed to delivering its end-users with advanced infrastructures that incorporate technology innovations. Leveraging ASNs state-of-the-art technologies we will be able to continue to support and drive broadband infrastructure development based on new socio-economic models centred around the new digital economy.

Philippe Piron, President of Alcatel Submarine Networks said: This project will be a step-change in capacity for Maurititus and Rodrigues. ASN is confident that the bandwidth, resilience and traffic routing of the IOX Cable System, combined with our technology capabilities, will enable us to address the fast-evolving expectations and demands of end-users.

The IOX Cable System will integrate ASNs latest innovations in subsea communications, including the 1620 SOFTNODE and ROADM branching unit offering dynamic features for enhanced system resilience as well as utilizing ASNs highly reliable submarine repeaters, all managed by its end-to-end submarine network management system. As part of the contract, ASN will also be in charge of project management, system design, marine operations and system commissioning supported by IOXs own team of industry experienced personnel.
IronRidge Resources updated the market on its gold exploration programmes underway in Ivory Coast, West Africa on Tuesday, confirming soil-sampling programmes had been completed at 400m line spacing over the Bianouan and Bodite projects.

The AIM-traded company said assay results had been received for more than 3,900 soil samples submitted for fire assay.

Eight coherent soil anomalies were defined at Bianouan at +10ppb gold in soil, with one anomaly up to 4.5km long and up to 1km wide.

Three coherent +75ppb and up to 7000ppb (7 g/t) gold in soil anomaly 'cores' were also reported at Bianouan with one anomaly 2km long and up to 800m wide, and seven +30ppb and up to 3,900ppb (3.9g/t) gold in soil anomalies defined at Bodite with one anomaly up to 3.5km long and 800m wide.

Follow-up hand auger drilling program at 400m and 200m x 20m sample spacing for a total of 2,500 samples was also underway at Bianouan, the board said, with an infill soil sampling program at 200m line spacing for a total of 1,700 soil samples underway at Bodite.

The scale and continuity of the multiple soil anomalies defined adjacent to major gold hosting structures is compelling, said IronRidge CEO Vincent Mascolo.

A consistent and extensive 'core' soil anomaly of >75ppb over 2km strike and 800m width and up to 7g/t gold at Bianouan is significant and represents a high-priority target for further infill.

Mascolo said the board was very pleased with the work programmes completed to date and its field teams had aggressively advanced the projects within a short time frame towards defining drill targets.

We look forward to expediting the next phase of exploration programs and keeping shareholders and investors updated as more news becomes available.
The compound will be developed by Midatech for the treatment of childhood brain cancer, diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma tumour (DIPG) - for which there are currently no approved or effective therapies - as a continuation of its MTX110 programme.

In pre-clinical test models, panobinostat demonstrated very high potency against DIPG tumour cell lines. In one such study, it was the most effective of more than 80 anti-cancer agents tested.

Using a technique called convection enhanced delivery, MTX110 is infused directly into the brain tumour and diffuses through and around it. This technique allows for elevated drug concentrations to be delivered to the tumour, while at the same time minimising systemic toxicity and peripheral side-effects. It has been used to treat five patients to date in the USA and UK under its compassionate use programme and so far has been well tolerated. Cl inical studies in patients are planned to begin this year.

Chief executive officer Jim Phillips said: "In line with our strategy to focus on oncology and expand our product mix, we are pleased that Novartis recognises our unique capability to use their product panobinostat alongside our technology to treat orphan cancers. We look forward to driving it through development for treatment of DIPG, and make a real difference to the children suffering from this devastating and terminal disease."

At 1050 BST, Midatech shares were up 4.4% to 107.50p.
Scotgold Resources announced on Wednesday that a sales agreement had been signed with two of Scotland's pre eminent manufacturing jewellers.

The AIM-traded company said the agreement covered the first refining batch - approximately 16 ounces - of Scottish Gold made available for jewellery from Scotgold's bulk processing trial at the Cononish Gold and Silver Mine.

It said the agreement involved significant input from both Baird & Co as the appointed refiner and the Edinburgh Assay Office who will verify the Scottish gold's provenance through a closely monitored chain of custody.

Overall management of the negotiations was undertaken by The Dragonfly Initiative as Scotgold's appointed consultant to manage the marketing and commercialisation of the company's Scottish gold, the board said.

While all the parties had agreed to keep the precise terms of the sale confidential, the premium received was in excess of the 30% reserve stipulated for the Scottish Gold Rounds, auctioned in November 2016.

In addition to setting out the commercial terms for this first sale to the Scottish jewellery industry, the sales agreement included detailed conditions for the use and marketing of the Scottish gold, which the company said were designed to protect the branding of the rare and precious commodity and would form the basis of all such future sales.

Upon delivery of the Scottish gold and the production of the first unique pieces, the two authorised jewellers would make further announcements as to where and how the pieces could be obtained.

In addition to the production of Scottish Gold, the BPT reportedly continued to produce gold in the form of Pyrite concentrate, of which approximately 53 WMT had been shipped and sold under the previously-announced agreement with Ocean Partners.

This is yet another pleasing milestone and validates our belief in the strength and value of combining Scottish gold of proven provenance with the skill and prestige of the Scottish jewellery industry, said CEO Richard Gray.
Barclays reinstated its 'overweight' rating on Tullow Oil on Wednesday as the company nears completion of its two-year restructuring of its debt, costs and portfolio.

Barclays, which has a 220p price target on the shares, said a debt refinancing is the last item outstanding on the corproate re-set, following the recent $750m rights issue.

"This journey has required many difficult decisions, but we believe the end result is a balanced E&P business with a portfolio that can grow and remain self-sufficient in a $50/bbl oil environment."

Analysts see Tullow as offering investors "exposure to rising low-cost oil production" from the Jubilee and TEN fields offshore Ghana that are generating free cash flow, while a further phase of medium-term growth comes from Uganda and Kenya.

Barclays estimates the rights issue, farm down in Uganda and planned debt refinancing combine to allow Tullow with the financial platform to fund infill drilling in Ghana, complete appraisal and pre-development work in Kenya and maintain an active exploration capability through 2019 at Brent crude prices as low as $40 per barrel.

"The possibility of asset sales in 2018 can accelerate the companys deleveraging plans and fund a return to the companys traditional strengths as a frontier explorer."
Iranian capital Tehran has been rocked by gun and suicide bomb attacks on the country's parliament and a shrine to former leader Ayatollah Khomeini.

State media in Iran reported on Wednesday that at least twelve people were killed in the double assault, with a further 48 others injured.

According to the reports, Tehran's parliament buildings were stormed by four gunmen who fired a number of shots, as well as detonating a bomb.

The so-called Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack, but it has not been confirmed by authorities.

The so-called Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack

Less than half an hour after the attack on the parliament, another group of attackers entered the Khomeini shrine complex, which is dedicated to the founder of the Islamic Republic. Iranian media are reporting that further gunshots and a bomb were heard at the scene.

Irans intelligence ministry has said that it has prevented a third attack in the city, and advised citizens not to use public transport systems.

Iran does not have a major history of such attacks, with the last known incident such as this taking place in 2010 when an attack at a mosque caused the deaths of 39 people.
US President Donald Trump has said he will nominate former Department of Justice official Christopher Wray as the new director of the FBI.

James Comey was sacked as the head of the US agency earlier this year by Trump's administration, and is due to testify publicly in front of the Senate on Thursday in a crucial part of an investigation into links between the Presidents team and the Kremlin.

Wray has previously served as an assistant attorney general during the George W Bush presidency.

Trumps appointment of Wray must be confirmed by the Senate.

The lawyer also recently represented New Jersey governor Chris Christie in a recent dispute involving the George Washington bridge in the state.

Announcing the decision via his favoured social media site Twitter, Trump said Wray was a man of impeccable credentials.

Thursdays testimony from Comey is likely to see the former director being asked about private conversations between himself and Trump, which he was reported to have recorded in a series of memos.

Comey will also be subject to a private hearing from the Senate intelligence committee.
Spanish banking giant Santander has rescued teetering rival Banco Popular by scooping up the Madrid-based bank for just 1 after its shares lost more than half their value in the past week on fears it might be forced into a deeply discounted rights issue.

The European Union's Single Resolution Board has approved the transferal of all the shares and capital instruments of its struggling rival, meaning it will operate under normal conditions as a member of the Santander Group with immediate effect.

Last Friday Popular had postponed the deadline for bidders to submit their offers, with reports in Spanish newspapers that this was due to a lack of interest from potential suitors.

Piling the pressure, Reuters reported that the SRB had warned of the risk that Popular might require an orderly wind-down.

The European Central Bank said on Wednesday morning: The significant deterioration of the liquidity situation of the bank in recent days led to a determination that the entity would have, in the near future, been unable to pay its debts or other liabilities as they fell due.

Consequently, the ECB determined that the bank was failing or likely to fail and duly informed the Single Resolution Board (SRB), which adopted a resolution scheme entailing the sale of Banco Popular Espanol S.A. to Banco Santander.

The news provided a fillip to UK bank stocks, with RBS, Lloyds Banking Group and Barclays all trading higher on Wednesday.
The tightening of polls in the lead-up to the election has made a consideration of what would happen under each potential scenario more important. A Conservative victory is the most likely outcome but a hung parliament and even a win for the Labour party are both entirely feasible. Uncertainty about the result has seen gains in GBPUSD capped near 1.30 and the FTSE 100 break to new highs above 7,500 and its best monthly return this year.

A Conservative majority

A landslide Conservative Party victory seems less likely now, so it would be a positive surprise. The reaction in currency markets to election polls during the campaign suggest a landslide Tory win would be a clear Sterling-positive result. A small conservative majority is probably the base-case scenario for the market. Keeping the status quo is a good thing for certainty but if Theresa May doesnt achieve her goal of a bigger mandate for Brexit, thats creates uncertainty.

The Tories winning the general election in 2015 caused a positive reaction in the FTSE 100 but Brexit could mean a different reaction this time. The devaluation of the pound since Brexit has boosted the FTSE so any rise in the pound after the election will be a negative influence. In addition, a hung parliament was expected in 2015 so a win was a surprise.

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The traditional assumption of market-friendly Conservative Party policies would be a positive factor for the FTSE. The Conservative Party is based on the principles of lower taxes, less government spending and controlling the national debt. Theresa May appears more interventionist than previous PM David Cameron but Jeremy Corbyn is also perceived as more anti-business than previous opposition leader Ed Miliband.

The going assumption is that a bigger majority could allow Theresa May to soften her approach to Brexit because she would rely less on the support of hard-line EU-sceptics. However there would be less chance of a parliamentary vote at the end of the Brexit negotiations overturning a Hard Brexit deal.

If a Conservative victory brings about a stronger pound, perhaps GBPUSD moving toward 1.4, then that would be on-balance positive for domestically-focused retailer and homebuilder shares but negative for multinationals reliant on foreign earnings like Burberry as well as miners and banks.

A hung parliament

In many ways a hung parliament is the least market-friendly result because it creates uncertainty and could be the biggest delay to the start of Brexit negotiations. Brexit negotiations are due to start in June, right after the election.

The Conservatives would most likely have the first stab at creating a coalition but it would fall to Labour if they couldnt. The Liberal Democrats leader Tim Farron has ruled out a coalition with Mays Conservatives or Corbyns Labour. We suspect Farrons Lib Dems could be tempted into a coalition with Labour if a second Brexit referendum is promised. The mostly likely coalition would be between Labour and the Scottish National Party, the so-called coalition of chaos. The Scottish National Party has been very pro-EU but still want A second Scottish referendum (Indyref 2). Its not clear whether Scots will vote according to their desire for Scottish independence or UK independence from the EU.

The hung parliament could be the only scenario in which a clouded outlook for Brexit and the economy means both the pound and the FTSE fall together. Theres an argument to be had that a softer Brexit under a left-of-centre coalition would be positive for the British pound over the medium term. We dont buy that. Aggressive posturing from Europe would suggest a Soft Brexit whereby concessions on immigration can be met with concessions on the single market is basically impossible whichever UK political party is involved.

Utility firms are in a difficult spot because both major parties have made proposals to intervene to reduce energy bills, so potential for inaction under a coalition might be the best hope.

A Labour majority

As unreliable as polls have been, a Labour Party landslide seems very unlikely. Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn has brought some of his critics on-board with a manifesto that gives voters a clear choice between the main political parties. We think Jeremy Corbyn would stay on as Labour leader no matter the result.

We assume a Labour victory would be Sterling-negative  perhaps GBPUSD back towards 1.25. However we dont see any huge fallout. Labour tend to favour higher taxes on the wealthy and higher spending on public services, attaching less importance to the national debt. Higher spending under Labour would be positive for economic growth in the near term, though could bring about a sovereign debt downgrade from ratings agencies.

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The Conservatives and Labour both have a pretty similar policy with respect to Brexit  both voted in favour of triggering article 50. If anything, there is a marginally higher chance that predominantly Remain-supporting Labour MPs try for a second referendum. That said, Labour should recognise that a lot of its base supports Brexit and realistically wouldnt be able to handle negotiations any differently than the Conservatives.

What are the other driving forces?

The British pound trades against foreign policies and the FTSE 100 lists multinational companies so the UK election cannot be viewed in a vacuum. There are other global factors that the UK election will either diminish of exacerbate. Political uncertainty is no restricted to the UK; There are new Presidents in the US and France and parliamentary elections later this year for Germany and potentially Italy.

Voting takes place on June 8th. Polling stations close at 10pm in the UK. The result usually becomes clear by 3am but exit polls could give an indication as early as midnight  especially if its a landslide.

The information and comments provided herein under no circumstances are to be considered an offer or solicitation to invest and nothing herein should be construed as investment advice. The information provided is believed to be accurate at the date the information is produced. Losses can exceed deposits.
In order to resolve its dispute over gold-copper concentrate exports, Acacia Mining may have to pay a "potentially large" cash sum to the Tanzanian government, said broker Numis, but this makes shares a 'buy'.

After a conference call with management, Numis said it appeared likely that the report of the second committee set up by President John Magufuli, which is looking at historic economic and legal issues of concentrate exports, "will draw a similarly negative conclusion to the first report on the content of the concentrate".

The broker believes Tanzania is likely to demand for a "potentially large cash sum" and this could result in further short term share price volatility for the FTSE 250 company, which is 63.9%-owned by Toronto-based Barrick Gold.

With Acacia's and Barrick's management have chosen to remain in dialogue with the local government rather than to place pressure on the administration through placing the Bulyanhulu mine on care and maintenance, "the viability of this strategy is time limited even given the strength of the balance sheet" and the decision has "placed the burden of pain solely on the company's shareholders".

CEO Brad Gordon said it would cost $30m to shut down Bulyanhulu and $2-3m a month for care and maintenance charges.

Management have retained full year production guidance of 850koz-900koz and Numis expects a resolution so has retained its recommendation and target price of 500p, which is approximately equal to net asset value.
A hardcore minority of Royal Bank of Scotland shareholders refused to accept the state-owned bank's settlement offer, although a High Court judge stopped the case on Wednesday.

While 87% of claimants in the nine-year case have accepted the deal, lawyers representing a reluctant 13% said they have yet to make up their minds whether to accept an 82p-a-share settlement that is double the initial offer but a fraction of the 200p-230p they paid for the shares in RBS's 2008 rights issue.

Almost all of the 'action group' said they were unlikely to pursue further court action due to the high legal costs, though one investor with 2,000 shares said he was "dissatisfied".

With 87% of the claimants by value having accepted the settlement offer, the trial has now been vacated.

An RBS spokesperson said the offer remains open for acceptance "for a short period" to the further 13%.

"It was made clear today in court that this delay is the result of procedural issues. None of the outstanding claimants have indicated any intention to continue the claim.

"We have been very clear that putting our legacy issues behind us is a priority so that we can focus on building the best bank for our customers, shareholders and employees. Reaching settlement, with no admission of liability, is a positive outcome for the bank and its shareholders, in what could have been a lengthy trial process lasting several years.

It was reported earlier in the week that a die-hard group of investors were trying to raise 7m in litigation funding to pursue the case further and force former chief executive Fred Goodwin and other senior executives to appear in court.
Profit at RPC more than doubled in the year to the end of March as it benefited from recent acquisitions and a weaker pound.

Pre-tax profit surged 105% to 154.7m on revenue of 2.75bn, up 67% on the previous year. Revenue reflected a 3% like-for-like growth in sales and the contribution from acquisitions, with the return on sales improving to 11.2% from 10.6% in 2016.

The company's 2016/17 acquisitions in total contributed 415m to sales, 36.1m to adjusted operating profit and 1.6p to adjusted earnings per share and RPC said transaction fees for all the deals have been charged to the income statement as exceptional costs.

The FTSE 250 plastic products design and engineering group also said the full-year results were supported by the weaker pound, as 73% of its turnover is reported in non-sterling currencies.

Adjusted operating profit came in at 308.2m, up from 174.3m the year before. Statutory operating profit, meanwhile, was 192m compared to 95m in 2016. Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell, pointed out that the difference between the adjusted figure and the statutory figure is the result of items deemed as "exceptional", i.e. 116m in costs related to bringing new businesses into the group. Mould made the point that these "allegedly exceptional" costs keep recurring.

The company recommended a final dividend of 17.9p per share, taking the total dividend for the year to 24.0p per share, up from 16.0p the year before.

Chief executive Pim Vervaat said: "The implementation of the Vision 2020 growth strategy is progressing well, reflected in a good trading performance in 2016/17 with continued organic growth and achieving record profitability levels with robust cash generation. Acquisitions made since the launch of the strategy in 2013 continue to add value including the recent GCS and BPI acquisitions, whose performance in the year was better than expected.

"The recently completed Letica acquisition will provide an enhanced platform for growth in North America and has made a good start under RPC's ownership. Going forward, the group continues to explore opportunities for growth in line with its strategy. The new financial year has started in line with management's expectations."

At 1148 BST, the shares were down 2.2% to 831.50p.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that Australia is a place of stunning natural beauty. From vast arid outback, to dramatic coastline cliffs, to lush rainforests, to soaring mountains and pristine beaches, the country is a photographers dream.

In March, popular aerial photography community SkyPixel launched a contest to capture Australia from its best angle. The Australia From Above contest, sponsored by DJI and Tourism Australia, aimed to inspire aerial photographers from around the world to share, enjoy, and experience new creative perspectives of Australia.

Drone photography is gaining huge popularity in Australia, with the country home to a rising number of very talented aerial photographers, said Lisa Ronson, Chief Marketing Officer of Tourism Australia. Advances in technology are enabling us to tell Australias story in ways previously not possible. Its really exciting to be part of a competition which provides such a great platform for this new generation of content creators to capture the rich colours, patterns and textures of Australias diverse landscape and share this with the rest of the world.

Professionals and enthusiasts alike were invited to share their visions of the country from March 3 to May 2. The judging panel was comprised of a select jury of renowned photographers and influencers including Kirk Hille, an Australian photographer and the winner of SkyPixels 2015 global photography contest.

Im looking forward to seeing what fellow SkyPixel community members will share over the coming months, said Hille, who won the grand prize in SkyPixels first annual worldwide contest with an image of a lone swimmer off the coast of Lucky Bay in western Australia. As an Australian, I treasure the beauty of my home country and I was happy to learn its the country of choice for SkyPixels first national contest.

The winners of the Australia From Above contest were announced on May 19. The grand prize went to Kyle Bowman for an image of the Margaret River region. Judges praised its playful nature and vivid colours. Second prize went to Al Edgar for a shot of a surfer at Secret Harbour. Peter Yan claimed third prize for a sky-high snap of Victorias Rigby Island.

Refreshing Places to Float 1/13 Grand Prize Sea of Green 2/13 Second Prize Rigby Island 3/13 Third Prize The Great Barrier Reef 4/13 Popular Prize The Road in Tasmania 5/13 Popular Prize Macquarie University 6/13 Popular Prize Melbourne Southeast 7/13 Popular Prize Electric 8/13 Popular Prize Surf Vs Umbrella 9/13 Popular Prize Southern Right Whales Frolicking 10/13 Popular Prize Bombo Lines 11/13 Popular Prize Standard Burleigh Morning 12/13 Popular Prize Dawn Breaks 13/13 Popular Prize

Check out all the winning images above.
California Gov. Jerry Brown signed a nonbinding agreement with China Tuesday to cooperate on renewable energy technology, including zero-emissions vehicles and lower greenhouse gas emissions. In an unusual formal meeting between a Chinese president and an American governor, Brown and President Xi Jinping discussed the importance of expanding cooperation of green technology, innovation and trade, according to the governors office.

Nobody can stay on the sidelines. We cant afford any dropouts in the tremendous human challenge to make the transition to a sustainable future, Brown told reporters in Beijing. Disaster still looms and weve got to make the turn.

Brown signed similar agreements with the leaders of Sichuan and Jiangsu provinces earlier this week, and headlined the Under2 Clean Energy Forum Wednesday in Beijing.

Brown told the Associated Press that Trumps decision to pull the U.S. out of the Paris agreement will eventually prove to be a temporary setback, and China, European countries and individual U.S. states will fill the leadership void left by the federal government.

According to the Associated Press:

Without mentioning Trump by name, Brown told attendees at a forum on electric vehicles that there are still people in powerful places who are resisting reality.

Later, when asked by the AP what could prompt the U.S. to return to the forefront of climate change efforts, Brown replied, Science, facts, the world, the marketplace.'

For a deeper dive:

New York Times, The Guardian, AP, Bloomberg, LA Times, Reuters, Mother Jones, The Hill, Mashable, UPI, Quartz

For more climate change and clean energy news, you can follow Climate Nexus on Twitter and Facebook, and sign up for daily Hot News.
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.
Hawaii is making our planet great again in the wake of President Donald Trumps controversial announcement last week that hes pulling the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement.

On Tuesday, Gov. David Ige signed two bills that formally enacted portions of the landmark climate pledge into law, making the Aloha State the first in the nation to legally support the global pact.

SB 559 expands strategies and mechanisms to reduce greenhouse gas emissions statewide in alignment with the principles and goals adopted in the Paris agreement, and HB 1578 establishes the Carbon Farming Task Force within the Office of Planning to identify agricultural and aquacultural practices to improve soil health and promote carbon sequestrationthe capture and long-term storage of atmospheric carbon dioxide to mitigate climate change.

Hawaii is committed to environmental stewardship, and we look forward to working with other states to fight global climate change. Together, we can directly contribute to the global agenda of achieving a more resilient and sustainable island Earth, Ige said in a statement. The Hawaii State Legislature understands the importance of taking action, and I applaud its work this session to ensure that we continue to deliver the island Earth that we want to leave to our children.

Ige noted at the signing ceremony Tuesday at the state capitol that Hawaii is seeing the impacts of climate change first-hand.

As an island state, we are especially aware of the limits of our natural environment. We see the impacts of our actions, he said. In this day and age, it is time for states and governors to lead.

Ashley Lukens, the director of the Hawaii Center for Food Safety, one of the groups that helped champion HB 1578, praised the governors actions.

We are thrilled to see the state of Hawaii investing in practices and people that promote a resilient and healthy climate, food and water future, Lukens said. President Trump may have pulled out of the Paris climate agreement, but Hawaii is on the frontlines of climate impacts and we remain committed to action. Establishing a Carbon Farming Task Force is a major step forward on the path to a stable climate and secure food future, and we hope to see other states moving ahead regardless of Washington.

An increasing number of states across the country are rebelling against President Trumps withdrawal from the Paris accord, which was agreed upon by nearly 200 countries in 2015. California Gov. Jerry Brown, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee are assembling a coalition of states to challenge Trump.
President Donald Trump announced Tuesday his intention to nominate Jeffrey Bossert Clarkwho defended BP in lawsuits surrounding the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill and challenged the Obama administration over greenhouse gas rules on behalf of the U.S. Chamber of Commerceto head the Justice Departments Environment and Natural Resources Division.

Clark is a partner in the Washington, DC office of Kirkland & Ellis LLP and once served in George W. Bushs administration from 2001 to 2005 as a deputy assistant attorney general for the Justice Departments Environment and Natural Resources Division.

He is a complex trial and appellate litigator with especially deep experience in administrative law, cutting across dozens of statutes and numerous agencies, the White House announced.

However, as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. commented, Clarks appointment is a doubling down on the administrations strategy of retreating from the future and branding America as a petrostate while China steals our global energy, economic and moral leadership, and the rest of the world moves forward.

InsideClimate News described Clark as a climate policy foe who has repeatedly argued that it is inappropriate to base government policymaking on the scientific consensus presented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC].

According to the publication, One of the legal briefs he signed is such a comprehensive compendium of thoroughly debunked denial of the scientific consensus that it stands as a classic of the genre, replete with condemnations not just of the EPA but of the IPCC, whose work the petitioners tried to persuade the court to rule out of bounds. A series of podcasts and papers he has written on The Federalist Society website continue his arguments against the endangerment finding and climate science more broadly.

Clark has also criticized the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for concluding in late 2009 that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases threatens the public health and the environment and should be regulated under the Clean Air Act. As Clark wrote in a 2010 blog post over the EPAs endangerment finding, When did America risk coming to be ruled by foreign scientists and apparatchiks at the United Nations?

He has a long history of opposing climate action for corporate and ideological clients, David Doniger, who heads the climate and clean air program at the Natural Resources Defense Counsel, told InsideClimate News about Clark. I would expect that history would require him to recuse himself from such cases as over the Clean Power Plan, where he filed an amicus brief against the rule.
By Joe McCarthy

A shred of silver lining from Donald Trumps abandonment of the Paris agreement is that now the world has a John Oliver rant on climate change.

Like his segments on medical debt, Brexit and health care, this latest episode is bracing, hilarious and informative.

Oliver explains the agreement, skewers the rationale for leaving it and gives a good description of the threat of climate change.

Here are eight essential takeaways from the episode:

1. The Paris Agreement Was Voluntary

Trump said that he left the agreement because it was too demanding. In reality, it was entirely voluntarythere was no enforcement mechanism. Each country determined its own goals and was expectedbut not requiredto hit those goals.

[This is] Trumps most ludicrous misunderstanding of the agreement  for a man who cites the agreements strict, onerous and draconian terms, Oliver said. What he does not seem to comprehend, is each nation sets its own goals, remember, and more importantly, the whole thing is fucking voluntary.

2. The Agreement Wasnt Overly Burdensome on the U.S.

When Trump announced that he was withdrawing from the Paris agreement, he said it was because it required the U.S. to close down job-creating industries like coal, while other countries were allowed to expand those industries.

India will be allowed to double its coal production by 2020, Trump said during his announcement. Were supposed to get rid of ours.

Oliver noted that the agreement doesnt even mention coal and places no mandate on the U.S. to close any factoriesor do anything for that matter. Trump may have been thinking about the Obama-era U.S. regulation known as the Clean Power Plan, which would have retired many coal plants because of high emissions. This regulation was never even implemented and is now being dismantled by the EPAs new director Scott Pruitt.

Trumps description is so flamboyantly deceptive, Oliver said. It would have been equally accurate for him to say compliance with the Paris agreement would likely require all ducks to wear jean shorts and it would cost each American five fish and a dumptruck full of hamsters.

3. The U.S. Economy Would Thrive Under Paris Agreement

If the agreement was a scheme to hurt American businesses, you know who that might be news to? Oliver asked. The American businesses.

More than 650 companies have committed to the Paris Agreement, more than half of the fortune 500 companies have plans to reduce their emissionsincluding Walmart, Bank of America and Phillip Morrisand 25 massive companies such as Microsoft and Intel even made a last-ditch effort to change the presidents mind by taking out advertisements supporting the agreement.

The Paris agreement aims to get countries to switch to renewable energy. Far from crippling the U.S. economy, renewable energy can be an engine of prosperity. Already, the renewable industry is hiring people at 12 times the rate of the rest of the economy. As advances in technology are made and prices go down, even more economic growth will follow.

China gets this. The country that Trump often casts as a nemesis, is investing $360 billion into renewables by 2020, which will create 13 million jobs.

4. Leaving the Agreement Hurts U.S. Reputation

The Paris agreement was a monumental global achievement that took years of work and marked a pinnacle of science and diplomacy.

Trump spurned all of that by leaving.

Pulling out of Paris would be the worst thing for brand America since Abu Ghraib, Nigel Purvis, an environmental negotiator in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations told The New York Times.

The Vatican said: If he really does [pull out], it would be a huge slap in the face for us, a Vatican spokesman said before Trumps announcement, according to Reuters. It will be a disaster for everyone.

5. The Green Climate Fund Doesnt Burden the U.S.

The Green Climate Fund is a fund set up to help poor countries adapt to climate change and transition to renewable economies, leapfrogging fossil fuel-intensive industries.

Trump portrayed the fund as a burden that would cost the U.S. tens of billions of dollars. In fact, the U.S. committed $3 billion to the fund, and has so far committed $1 billion.

If you rank contributions as a percentage of GDP, we are 32nd, Oliver pointed out.

6. The U.S. has a Unique Responsibility to Help

The U.S. is the bigger emitter in history and the average U.S. citizens is responsible for far more emissions than the average citizen anywhere else in the world.

Because the U.S. is largely responsible for the current climate crisis, it has a responsibility to find a solution.

7. Time Is Running Out

The Paris agreement declared that global temperatures should not rise more than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. For that to happen, emissions have to be dramatically curbed right away. But if business as usual continues, then the world will blow past that threshold point in as little as 20 years.

And if that happens, Things get very bad and potentially irreversible, Oliver said.

By leaving the agreement, Trump makes it much harder to stay under the two-degree ceiling.

8. The Silver Lining: Political Action

In the aftermath of Trumps withdrawal, an unnamed group led by former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg of at least 30 mayors, three governors, 80 university presidents, and more than 100 businesses are going to spearhead a movement to uphold the Paris agreement.

For Oliver, thats where the path forward liespolitical action.

The problem with climate change is its always felt abstract impersonal, and far off into the future, and the usual [examples] that we use dont do much to fix or help, Oliver said. Its either a graph thats difficult to understand, or a sad polar bear on a piece of ice, and its hard to get get emotionally fired up over that.

But finally, this week, the climate change movement may have gotten a symbol to rally around, he said.

To that end, Oliver called on his viewers to find out where their local, state, and federal representatives stand on climate change. If those legislators doubt the science and oppose action, then Oliver called on his fans to organize, rally and unseat them in the election.

Theres no time to waste.
By Austin Wilson

Rising use of glyphosate, the worlds most heavily applied herbicide, is putting people at risk of significant health problems, according to a report released Tuesday by As You Sow.

Glyphosate is applied frequently to the most popular crops in the U.S., including corn, soybeans and wheat, and has been found in many common food products including all-natural Quaker Oats. The report, Roundup Revealed: Glyphosate in Our Food System, raises concerns about the health and environmental impacts of current glyphosate use, gaps in the regulation of pesticides and how large chemical companies are promoting the use of glyphosate.

The report consolidates years of research, cutting through to the heart of the controversy over glyphosate. One key finding showed that glyphosate is increasingly being sprayed on crops just before harvest to dry out (desiccate) the plants to speed up harvest operations. This practice results in greater residues of glyphosate in foods. The reports analysis finds that in 2015, nearly a third of U.S. wheat was treated with glyphosate, likely through pre-harvest use in most cases. A recent biomonitoring study revealed that 93 percent of Americans tested had glyphosate in their bodies.

In 2015, glyphosate was was classified as a probable carcinogen by the worlds leading cancer authority, the World Health Organizations International Agency for Research on Cancer. Recent research suggests that glyphosate is likely to cause other chronic health impacts, including disruption of the bodys endocrine system.

American regulators are dismissing key scientific data and continuing to raise the allowable limits for glyphosate residue in food, leaving the population at risk of health harms. The widespread use of glyphosate is also creating environmental problems, including herbicide-resistant weeds and reduced biodiversity. For too long, pesticides have been the foundation of agriculture, with glyphosate as the cornerstone; the cracks in this system run deep.

As You Sow has brought this issue to the attention of major companies, including Kellogg, a leader in sustainable agriculture who responded by agreeing to survey its supply chain about pre-harvest use of glyphosate.

Experts, including the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, agree that pesticides are not necessary or helpful to feed the world, said Danielle Fugere, president of As You Sow. Investors would be prudent to analyze their exposure to pesticide-intensive agriculture and prioritize sustainable solutions.

While the legal and political battles over glyphosate continue to emerge and develop, pesticide companies are staking their future on increased use of toxic pesticides. Monsanto and Dow Chemical are betting that farmers will adopt a new generation of genetically engineered crops that can be treated with both glyphosate and the more toxic herbicides dicamba and 2,4-D, increasing sales of these pesticides 10-fold while keeping use of glyphosate at current high levels.

Monsanto, which sells half of the worlds glyphosate, has proposed to merge with Bayer, a major seed and pesticide company. This consolidation in the already-uncompetitive seed and agrochemical industry concerns farmers who fear that prices will continue to increase.

The pesticide industry mergers, including Monsanto-Bayer, are likely to exacerbate the food systems greatest challenges. Investors, communities and downstream companies should be opposing these mergers and advocating for more sustainable agriculture methods.

Austin Wilson is the environmental health program manager for As You Sow.
The New York Times has done some stellar reporting on climate change, and its poised to do more thanks to its recent creation of a dedicated climate team. See, for instance, its impressive ongoing series on how climate change is affecting major cities, and another recent multimedia series on the melting of Antarctica.

But the paper has made serious missteps in recent days and weeks, some of which have bolstered the White Houses case for climate denial and for dropping out of the Paris climate agreement.

Here are four problems that deserve to be called out:

1. Letting Bret Stephens spread climate denial, which was seized on by Scott Pruitt

The New York Times hired conservative climate denier Bret Stephens as an op-ed columnist in April, and his first column was a factually compromised and misleading attack on climate science. Its publication provoked widespread condemnation of the Times and Stephens in late April.

Then the column got a new round of attention late last week, in the wake of President Donald Trumps controversial decision to pull the U.S. out of the Paris agreement. On June 2, the day after Trumps announcement, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt defended the move from the podium in the White House briefing room, and cited Stephens column to make the case that climate science is unsettled:

I dont know if you saw this article or not, but the Climate of Complete Certainty by Bret Stephens that was in The New York Times talked aboutand Ill just read a quote, because I thought it was a very important quote from this article. Anyone who has read the 2014 report of the IPCC knows that, while the modest 0.85 degrees Celsius warming of the earth that has occurred since 1880, much else that passes as accepted fact is really a matter of probabilities. Thats especially true of the sophisticated but fallible models and simulations by which scientists attempt to peer into the climate future. To say this isnt to deny science. Isnt (sic) to acknowledge it honestly.

Pruitt actually misquoted the column, omitting Stephens acknowledgement that there has been indisputable  human influence on the warming of the earth since 1880. But nonetheless, Pruitt left the impression that The New York Times supported his fringe views.

As Media Matters senior fellow Matt Gertz put it, Its a disaster for a paper that sold itself to readers as a bulwark against the new president, then turned around and hired a prominent climate change skeptic.

2. Ignoring the fact that Pruitt seized on Stephens climate denial

In an article about Trumps views on climate change, New York Times reporter Peter Baker noted that Pruitt had questioned climate science during his remarks at the White House, but Baker neglected to mention that the EPA chief had used a New York Times column as a main piece of supporting evidence for his claims.

3. Publishing a misleading story on small-business owners views on Paris, which was seized on by Pruitt

On June 2, The New York Times published an article by Landon Thomas Jr. titled Small Businesses Cheer New Sheriff in Town After Climate Pact Exit. Thomas claimed, While multinational corporations such as Disney, Goldman Sachs and IBM have opposed the presidents decision to walk away from the international climate agreement, many small companies around the country were cheering him on, embracing the choice as a tough-minded business move that made good on Mr. Trumps commitment to put Americas commercial interests first.

The article ignored the fact that hundreds of small businesses had publicly called for remaining in the Paris agreement, and it quoted no small-business owners who supported the deal. Small-business supporters werent that hard to find, even in red states. NPRs Morning Edition featured one, Fhebe Lane, who runs a store in a conservative Texas coal town. A Trump voter, Lane said she was concerned about the climate getting hotter and thought limiting emissions was a good idea.

Thomas article also drew criticism for quoting some of the same pro-Trump voices he had cited in a previous piece, as Media Matters has noted. Boston Globe writer Michael Cohen pointed out that the article was remarkably similar to a piece Thomas wrote three months earlier; Cohen and others noted that the same two people are quoted in both articles extolling Mr. Trumps virtues and their positive words about Trump are used as evidence that small business owners are behind the president.

But Pruitt, for one, liked the article. He quoted it during an appearance on ABCs This Week on June 4:

Even The New York Times had an article, I think, within the last couple of days that talked about small business celebrating, euphoria, with respect to the presidents decision.

4. Blaming the Democrats alongside the Koch brothers for GOP climate denial

New York Times reporters Coral Davenport and Eric Lipton published a mostly well-reported article on widespread Republican refusal to accept climate science. But the story contained a ridiculous claim that Democratic hubris was partly to blame:

The Republican Partys fast journey from debating how to combat human-caused climate change to arguing that it does not exist is a story of big political money, Democratic hubris in the Obama years and a partisan chasm that grew over nine years like a crack in the Antarctic shelf, favoring extreme positions and uncompromising rhetoric over cooperation and conciliation.

While the article laid out plenty of evidence that the Koch brothers had affected elected Republicans views, it did not make any kind of convincing case that Democrats had.

it's a measure of asymmetric polarization in US politics that acting on climate change becomes "Democratic hubris" https://t.co/qKBCXIKnHt  John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) June 4, 2017

Talking Points Memo Editor Josh Marshall characterized the Democratic hubris line as half of what is imbecilic in contemporary political journalism:

Half of what is imbecilic in contemporary political journalism captured right here. Great job, NYT  https://t.co/qjRT6glPtZ pic.twitter.com/h2O24JD94N  Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) June 4, 2017

As New Yorker reporter Jane Mayer, who wrote a book on the Koch brothers, noted in a post on June 5, Republican climate denial and the rejection of the Paris agreement are clear and direct consequences of the Kochs and other rich fossil fuel barons pouring money into the political scene. It is, perhaps, the most astounding example of influence-buying in modern American political history, she wrote.

Democrats, hubristic or not, cant claim credit for that.

Whither the Times?

The paper has lost its way, Think Progress Joe Romm wrote in a post criticizing the Davenport/Lipton article and other pieces published by the Times. A shocking number of recent articles reveal a paper thats begun to embrace false balance, giving equal time to both climate misinformers and actual climate experts, despite the overwhelming scientific consensus.

Still, many journalists at The New York Times are pulling in the right direction. Columnist David Leonhardt gently disputed the Democratic hubris argument in a piece on June 5. A number of Times journalists expressed their displeasure with Stephens first column. And the climate team keeps doing great work. Lets hope their side wins the tug-of-war.

Reposted with permission from our media associate Media Matters for America.
As the Trump administration pushes for more polluting fossil fuels, clean energy has grown in leaps and bounds around the world.

Newly installed renewable power capacity set new records in 2016, with 161 gigawatts added, according to the annual Renewables Global Status Report by the Paris-based Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century (REN21) released Tuesday.

Total capacity increased by almost 9 percent from 2015, reaching a cumulative capacity of 2,017 gigawatts, with solar photovoltaic accounting for around 47 percent of the capacity added, followed by wind power at 34 percent and hydropower at 15.5 percent.

The Independent puts it more simply: The world added enough renewable energy capacity to power every house in the UK, Germany, France and Italy combined last year.

Notably, the 161 gigawatts added last year cost $241.6 billionbut this was a staggering 23 percent cheaper than it would have cost in the previous year, as the Independent explained from the REN21 report.

According to REN21, the world now adds more renewable power capacity annually than it adds in net new capacity from all fossil fuels combined thanks to a dramatic drop in costs.

Recent deals in Denmark, Egypt, India, Mexico, Peru and the United Arab Emirates saw renewable electricity being delivered at USD 0.05 per kilowatt-hour or less, the United Nations Climate Change Newsroom observed from the REN21 report. This is well below equivalent costs for fossil fuel and nuclear generating capacity in each of these countries.

2016 was another record year for renewable energy https://t.co/hXJg7z6XgS 161 GW power capacity added, despite 23% less investment #GSR2017 pic.twitter.com/Ju3YrzcNjY  UN Climate Change (@UNFCCC) June 7, 2017

However, REN21 points out that the worlds clean energy transition is not happening fast enough to achieve the goals of the Paris climate agreement.

For instance, new renewable energy investments are down; transport, heating and cooling sectors continue to lag behind the power sector; and decarbonizing the transport sector is not being seen as a priority.

Furthermore, subsidies for fossil fuels and nuclear power dramatically exceed those for renewables.

In 2014 the ratio of fossil fuel subsidies to renewable energy subsidies was 4:1. In other words, for every USD 1 spent on renewables, governments spent USD 4 perpetuating our dependence on fossil fuels. This is distorting the market in very unproductive ways, the report states.

As Christine Lins, the executive secretary of REN21, said, The world is in a race against time. The single most important thing we could do to reduce CO2 emissions quickly and cost-effectively, is phase-out coal and speed up investments in energy efficiency and renewables.

When China announced in January that it was cancelling more than 100 coal plants currently in development, they set an example for governments everywhere: change happens quickly when governments actby establishing clear, long-term policy and financial signals and incentives, Lins concluded.

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As controversy swirls around a string of spills and air and water violations caused by Energy Transfer Partners construction of the Rover gas pipeline, a study released Wednesday underlines another reason federal regulators should halt the project: It will fuel a massive increase in climate pollution.

A new analysis by Oil Change International finds that, if the Rover Pipeline is built, it will cause as much greenhouse gas pollution as 42 coal-fired power plantssome 145 million metric tons per year. The study slams the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for using chronically outdated assumptions to sweep this significant climate impact under the rug in its environmental review of the project.

FERC Announces Investigation into Energy Transfer's Rover Pipeline https://t.co/UXMT7urDua @KXLBlockade @TarSandsAction  EcoWatch (@EcoWatch) June 3, 2017

As the biggest new pipeline being built to carry fracked gas out of the Appalachian Basin, the Rover Pipeline is the biggest climate disaster of them all, said Lorne Stockman, senior research analyst at Oil Change International and the lead author of the study.

After Trumps malicious pullout from the Paris climate accord, challenging each new pipeline is all the more important, he added. While FERC remains in a state of denial, its increasingly clear that gas pipelines are a bridge to climate destruction. They increase access to gas that we cant afford to burn and stall the transition to clean energy and efficiency solutions we need.

The climate findings bolster mounting calls for federal regulators to shut down all construction of the Rover Pipeline and revisit its permit decision by conducting a supplemental environmental review. The project would carry 3.25 billion cubic feet of gas per day from Pennsylvania and West Virginia through Ohio and Michigan, and link up to hubs that service export markets.

In early May, FERC ordered a partial stop of horizontal directional drilling activities in Ohio after Energy Transfer Partnersthe same company behind the Dakota Access Pipelinespilled millions of gallons of drilling waste into fragile wetlands. Ohio regulators have already fined the company for violations, which now exceed two dozen. Last week, FERC confirmed it is investigating the presence of toxic diesel fuel in the spilled waste. Michigan and Ohio groups have filed a formal motion urging FERC to reopen the permit case, and more than 100 organizations sent a letter urging the agency to do the same.

The Rover pipeline is another disaster brought to you by Energy Transfer Partners, said Cheryl Johncox, fossil fuels organizer with the Sierra Club. ETP has shown that they will use the most loathsome tactics to bully agencies and citizens to get what they want, destroying drinking water in the process. It is past time for regulatory agencies to shut the project down.

Wednesdays study calls on FERC to conduct a supplemental environmental impact statement for the Rover Pipeline that includes a credible analysis of the projects lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions and climate change impact, along with a thorough examination of the safety hazards of horizontal drilling techniques being used to construct the pipeline.

Energy Transfer Partners threatens the very air we breathe and the waters we drink, said Elaine Tanner, organizer with the Ohio River Citizens Alliance. Day after day, the company gets away with dumping their slop and their slurry onto our wetlands, flowing into our rivers and streams. These construction techniques are obviously not working, yet the pipeline continues to grow across four states. We are fighting for survival here and the gas has not yet begun to flow.

Laura Burns, Ohio organizer with Moms Clean Air Force, agrees. It is important that we understand the actions we take now will impact our children for years to come, she said. What kind of a legacy do we leave for them when we ignore the march of climate-destroying infrastructure across our state?

The Rover study is the fourth in a series of briefings by Oil Change International calculating the full climate impact of gas pipelines proposed in the Appalachian Basin. In total, the briefings show FERC has dismissed the pollution equivalent of more than 100 coal-fired power plants in reviewing the Atlantic Coast, Mountain Valley, PennEast and Rover projects alone.

The analyses show that FERC habitually ignores the impact of methane leakage, which makes reliance on gas for electricity as dirty as coal, and ignores the economic reality that gas increasingly displaces clean energy, not coal. In contrast to FERC, Oil Change Internationals methodology reflects the evolving analysis of methane leakage and fully adds up the lifecycle greenhouse gas pollution from gas fracking and processing, pipeline operation, gas combustion at power plants and methane leaked across the gas supply chain.
Santa Barbara, California became the 30th city in the country to commit to transitioning to 100 percent renewable energy. The Santa Barbara City Council approved a measure Tuesday that establishes a community-wide goal of transitioning to 100 percent renewable energy by 2030.

The resolution also commits the city to transition all municipal buildings and operations to 50 percent clean energy by 2020. Santa Barbara represents the first city on Californias Central Coast to make this commitment.

President Trump may be withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris climate accord, but cities are stepping up and re-committing to adopt, honor and uphold the Paris climate goals, Santa Barbara Mayor Helene Schneider said. Im proud that Santa Barbara just adopted a 100% renewable energy goal and is joining other cities across the nation leading the way on clean energy at the local level.

In April, Mayor Schneider became one of the first mayors in the U.S. to join the new Mayors for 100% Clean Energy initiative and endorse a vision of powering her community with 100 percent renewable energy. The passage of the measure reinforces how mayoral leadership in cities across the U.S. is accelerating the transition away from fossil fuels to 100 percent clean energy. Mayor Schneider is joined in Mayors for 100% Clean Energy by Central Coast mayors Fred Shaw of Carpinteria, John F. Johnston of Ojai and Heidi Harmon of San Luis Obispo.

We salute Santa Barbara for their leadership on 100 percent clean energy, Katie Davis, chair of the Sierra Clubs Santa Barbara group, said. To meet our international climate goals, we must transition away from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy. Moving to 100 percent renewable energy isnt just the right thing to do for our climate, its the smart thing to do for our local economy. Renewable energy costs have decreased dramatically and are now cost competitive with fossil fuels, and Santa Barbara County already has eight times more jobs in clean energy and energy efficiency than in the oil industry. The transition to 100 percent clean energy is represents a better and more prosperous path forward for our community.

Coming on the heels of Trumps decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, Santa Barbaras commitment to 100 percent clean, renewable energy showcases how cities can lead the transition away from fossil fuels. On Thursday, just hours after Trumps decision to pull the U.S. from the Paris agreement, the Portland, Oregon and Multnomah County councils committed to transition all of Portland and Multnomah County to 100 percent clean, renewable energy by 2050.

Today marked a significant victoryone that was over a decade in the making, Sigrid Wright, executive director of Community Environmental Council, said. I take incredible inspiration from the thousands of individuals and business leaders who stepped up to supportto demanda rapid shift to cleaner, healthier renewable energy. Were proud of our City Council for emphasizing Californias commitment and leadership.

Other California cities to commit to 100 percent renewable energy include San Diego, San Francisco, South Lake Tahoe, Del Mar, and Palo Alto.

How much money can a solar roof save you? Find local deals on solar in your area, eliminate your power bill and join the solar revolution. UnderstandSolar is a great free service to link you to top-rated solar installers in your region that will provide you personalized solar estimates for free. Learn more here.
Solar energy has been among the fastest-growing sources of power generation in the U.S. in recent years, catapulting from 1.2 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of generation in 2010 to over 90.1 billion kWh in 2020. While thats still just a small slice of the overall energy mix (2% of all U.S. electricity in 2020, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration), the rate of growth is accelerating. The EIA forecasts that by 2022, solar capacity installations will outpace wind capacity installations for the first time on record after wind turbines had a huge head start.

The COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing economic downturn of 2020 led to equipment shortages and other hardships for the solar industry. However, forecasts show the industry is primed for a resurgence in 2021 and beyond. In the first quarter of 2021 alone, many of the nations highest rated solar installers are ramping up at a record pace and experienced a 46% year-over-year increase compared with the first quarter of 2020.

As 2021 continues to look like a prime year for solar power in the United States, which states are leading the charge? We can look to the recently released

U.S. Solar Market Insight Report from the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) for some answers.

Top 10 States for Solar Energy

The Solar Market Insight Report included a ranking of the top states across the country based on the total amount of solar electric capacity installed and in operation as of the end of the first quarter of 2021. To put it into context, SEIA figures also include the equivalent number of homes that can be powered by that solar capacity in the individual state.

Here are the current leaders for solar power in the U.S.:

State Cumulative Solar Capacity (Megawatts) Equivalent Number of Homes Supplied by Solar Energy California 31,873 8,548,370 Texas 9,311 1,082,407 North Carolina 7,132 859,707 Florida 7,074 842,897 Arizona 5,247 810,751 Nevada 3,904 672,707 New Jersey 3,653 586,709 Massachusetts 3,263 545,258 Georgia 3,069 359,160 New York 2,840 474,848

On this leaderboard, some states show up that would be expected 

California has long been the solar king, and they dont call Florida the Sunshine State for nothing  while other states represent surprising emerging solar hotbeds. For example, you may be surprised to see some smaller, northeastern states like Massachusetts and New Jersey beating out the field. But these results go to show its not just about land space and the natural sunshine; the policies and economics driving these installations are just as impactful.

2021 Top States for New Solar Installation

With the solar market really exploding in recent years, traditional

solar stalwarts like Arizona and Nevada are being actively challenged by some emerging contenders.

Specifically looking at where solar installations were most active during the first quarter of 2021, the SEIA report finds the following were the top states for solar installations from January through March:

Texas California Florida Indiana Virginia

On top, Texas added 1,525 megawatts (MW) of electicity capacity, which is equivalent to 45% of the capacity installed in the state during all of 2020 and represents 16% of the states cumulative capacity to date. California added 563 MW of capacity, equivalent to 14% of the capacity installed in 2020 and 2% of the states cumulative capacity. Florida added 525 MW of capacity, which is 19% of the capacity installed during 2020 and 7% of the states total capacity.

Compare the above list with the top 5 states for solar installations for all of 2020:

California Texas Florida Virginia North Carolina

A few compelling trends become evident when looking at the above numbers. First, its never too late to become a solar leader. While Florida is in the top five of cumulative capacity today, and given its sunny reputation that result may not seem surprising, the truth is that 47% of that capacity has been added since the beginning of 2020. In just over a years time, Florida nearly doubled its total solar capacity.

Another important trend to recognize is that geography alone doesnt decide whether a state will be a solar leader. Mid-Atlantic states like Virginia and

North Carolina or Midwestern states like Indiana wouldnt necessarily be the first most would guess as being solar powerhouses, but thanks to policies like North Carolinas generous Solar Property Tax Exemption, Virginias allowance for net metering and Indianas solar easement laws, residents of these states are enjoying solar power on their homes in record numbers.

Related Article: Compare Texas Electricity Rates [2022 Best Prices]

Where Does Your State Rank for New Solar Installation?

So, are you living in a state thats leading the way on solar or one that has some ground to make up? Factors to consider when looking at why some states are making more progress than others will include the types of policies in place, the availability of rooftops on which solar can be installed, the appetite for new energy generation across the U.S. and even the states seasonal

solar irradiance.

Taking all of those factors into account, heres where each state stands in SEIAs recently published rankings:

Heres how each states Q1 2021 ranking compares to how it ranked for total solar installations in 2020:

State Ranking



for Q1 2021



Solar Installations Ranking



for Total 2020



Solar Installations Texas

1 2 California 2 1 Florida 3 3 Indiana 4 32 Virginia 5 4 Michigan 6 27 Oregon 7 20 Iowa 8 22 Utah 9 10 New York 10 8 South Carolina 11 6 Massachusetts 12 12 North Carolina 13 5 Illinois 14 14 Maine 15 29 Arizona 16 9 New Jersey 17 11 Colorado 18 13 Maryland 19 26 Nevada 20 15 Minnesota 21 21 Connecticut 22 24 Ohio 23 18 Pennsylvania 24 17 Puerto Rico and other U.S. territories 25 33 New Mexico 26 16 Hawaii 27 28 Missouri 28 37 Rhode Island 29 25 Washington DC 30 42 Wisconsin 31 19 Washington 32 34 New Hampshire 33 39 Arkansas 34 23 Idaho 35 38 Oklahoma 36 40 Delaware 37 44 Georgia 38 7 Vermont 39 41 Kansas 40 35 Louisiana 41 30 Kentucky 42 46 Montana 43 45 Wyoming 44 36 West Virginia 45 48 Alaska 46 47 Mississippi 47 31 Nebraska 48 43 South Dakota 49 50 Tennessee 50 49 North Dakota 51 52 Alabama 52 51

Seeing some states jump up or down the list from one year to the next may seem drastic, but keep in mind that certain tax incentives expire, new policies come into play and other market forces affect local solar industries. That reality underscores the point that being a solar-leading state takes continued commitment, and doing so can happen at any point state leaders decide to truly embrace the solar industry.

The Future of Residential Solar

As the Solar Market Insight Report indicates, solar energy is a hot and growing market. To date, though, solar still only provides a fraction of the total energy generated in the U.S. While some customers, buildings and regions see much higher penetration of solar into their power mix on a micro level, theres much improvement still on the way, especially as dirtier energy sources like coal continue to retire.

The recent SEIA report shows that its a constant push and pull as well, as residential solar installations in the second quarter of 2021 were down 8% from the fourth quarter of 2020 but up 11% from the first quarter of 2020. The fact remains, though, that residential solar had its largest first quarter on record and its second-largest quarter of all at the beginning of 2021. These results signal a growing solar market, especially in states like Florida, Arizona and

Texas.

Additionally, customer appetite for residential solar is as strong as ever: 19% year-over-year growth is expected to get the residential market to a total of 3.8 gigawatts (GW) of solar capacity by the end of 2021, a sum that would have been unthinkable just 10 years ago. Indeed, the future remains bright for residential solar.

If youre interested in becoming one of the millions of Americans who have made the switch to solar panels, fill out the form below to get a free installation quote from a top solar company near you.
Five science reporters and students from China, Cambodia, and Mongolia will attend the 10th World Conference for Science Journalists (WCSJ) in San Francisco, California this October with travel fellowships sponsored by EurekAlert!.

EurekAlert!, the science-news service operated by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), designated its WCSJ sponsorship in support of travel fellowship applicants from China and the Asia-Pacific region to mark the 10th anniversary of EurekAlert! Chinese and the re-launch of the Chinese news portal.

"EurekAlert! Chinese was established in 2007 to encourage broader communication of science in and from China," said Brian Lin, director of editorial content strategy at EurekAlert!. "Since 2004, the EurekAlert! Fellowships for International Science Reporters have enabled 64 early-career reporters to attend the AAAS Annual Meeting."

"By helping outstanding science reporters from Asia participate in WCSJ2017, we hope their unique perspectives will contribute to the diversity and breadth of discussions at this important international gathering of science journalists and communicators."

The five EurekAlert!-WCSJ Fellows were among the 72 professional and 22 student fellowship recipients selected independently by the WCSJ fellowship committees out of more than 700 applications from more than 100 nations. The WCSJ travel fellowships enable those who otherwise could not attend the biennial meeting, to be held 26-30 October 2017. Special consideration is given to applicants from developing countries or those historically underrepresented at World Conferences. Fellowships cover travel to San Francisco, accommodations, and complimentary registration.

Recipients of the 2017 EurekAlert!-WCSJ Fellowships are:

Peng Qian, a Beijing-based science editor and reporter for Xinhua News Agency, has written about the China Brain Project and Chinese scientists' contribution to the LIGO gravitational waves discovery. He has previously covered the 2014 MERS outbreak and the ancient kingdom of Guge from Xinhua's Seoul and Tibet bureaus, respectively.

Jane Qiu, a freelance science and environment writer who has contributed to Science, Nature, Reuters, Scientific American, and The Economist, has covered topics including climate change, glaciers, and endangered animals on the Tibetan Plateau.

Ling Xin has been a staff reporter at the Bulletin of the Chinese Academy of Sciences since 2006, covering physics, astronomy, and the environment. As a freelancer, her work has appeared in Physics World, Science, and on Chinese social media platforms, including Mr. Science and The Intellectuals.

Odom Rithy, a student in media and communication and international studies at the Royal University of Phnom Penh, has interned at Voice of America Khmer Service and written about energy security and climate change.

Setsen Altan-Ochir has worked as a field assistant for Al Jazeera English, reporting on the impact of climate change to endangered wildlife and air pollution in Mongolia. She founded Scientific Mongolian, an initiative aiming to make science part of discussions among Mongolians.

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Established in 1996, EurekAlert! is a non-profit science-news service serving more than 13,000 reporter-registrants and nearly 5,000 public information officers from 2,600 research institutions and academic journal publishers worldwide. It also supports science journalism through the EurekAlert! Fellowships for International Science Reporters. Now in its 13th year, the program funds early-career science reporters from emerging regions to attend the AAAS Annual Meeting. Past Fellows have come from the Middle East, Africa, Central and South America, China, and India. For more information, visit: http://www.eurekalert.org/fellows.
WASHINGTON, DC - June 7, 2017 - University of Florida researchers may have come a step closer to finding a treatment for a disease called Huanglongbing, or citrus greening, that has been decimating citrus trees in the state. In work published this week in mSphere, an open access journal from the American Society for Microbiology, the investigators describe identifying a small protein from one bacterium living in Asian citrus psyllids -- the flying insects that spread the disease as they feed on the trees -- that can "cross-talk," moving to another bacterium within the insects to silence so-called "prophage genes" containing viral material in the second bacterium, helping prevent an insect immune reaction that would likely be detrimental to both bacteria.

The protein, from the Wolbachia bacterium, could serve as a potential target to develop spray treatments to protect trees against the psyllids, and could potentially help the trees themselves fight off bacterial invasion, said senior study author Dean W. Gabriel, Ph.D., a professor of Plant Pathology at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Wolbachia is a natural bacterium present in up to 60 percent of all insect species. (image: citrus greening disease on mandarin oranges, wikimedia commons)

"In this case, one bacterium is doing a favor to the whole bacterial community living within the psyllid by shutting down a potential threat to survival of insect host," Gabriel said.

Gabriel and colleagues had been looking for ways to interrupt citrus greening, a disease process caused when psyllids carrying but not affected by a bacteria called Candidatus Liberibacter feed on healthy trees and inject this bacteria into the trees' phloem, a tubular system normally used to transport sugars produced during photosynthesis from the leaves of a plant to the rest. The bacterium suppresses the plants' defenses as it moves, Gabriel said: "It's like a little cunning burglar sneaking in under the radar." It impacts the tree from its roots to its shoots, he said, and has a long incubation period: "By the time disease is detected in one tree, the entire grove is thoroughly infested and much more difficult to treat."

Citrus greening causes a severe decline in the trees -- leaves turn a blotchy, mottled yellow color, the fruits produced are smaller and have an off-taste, and fruit yield is much reduced. The disease has devastated Florida over the last 10 or so years, Gabriel said. As a result, the state's overall citrus production has declined by about 60 percent over the last six years. Scientists have been desperately seeking a cure.

In a series of laboratory experiments, Gabriel's team discovered that expression of proteins that help drive the spread of the Candidatus bacteria were suppressed when they were treated with extracts from the psyllids. Further studying the process, they identified a fragment of the protein doing part of suppression as encoded by the Wolbachia strain and secreted into the insect. This protein could move within the insect into the Candidatus bacteria causing greening, bind itself to a genetic region that would normally promote prophage activity, and repress these genes.

Gabriel's group has a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to grow the Candidatus Liberibacter bacterium in culture, a process that has been difficult because, once removed from its host, the bacterium historically has destroyed itself. Now that a protein target has been identified, it can be commercially synthesized and added to culture media, where the bacterium may be more likely to grow, Gabriel said.

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The current study was supported by the Florida Citrus Research and Development Foundation and by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture. A commentary by the authors of the study will also be published June 7 in mSphere.

This paper was accepted through mSphere's new publishing pathway, mSphereDirect. mSphereDirect is a new, innovative pathway to publishing where authors can choose their own reviewers, and receive a fast-tracked publication decision from mSphere.

The American Society for Microbiology is the largest single life science society, composed of over 50,000 scientists and health professionals. ASM's mission is to promote and advance the microbial sciences.

ASM advances the microbial sciences through conferences, publications, certifications and educational opportunities. It enhances laboratory capacity around the globe through training and resources. It provides a network for scientists in academia, industry and clinical settings. Additionally, ASM promotes a deeper understanding of the microbial sciences to diverse audiences.
The probability of continuing your life following bypass surgery is close to being the same as for the population in general - once a patient has completed the procedure. But a study from Aarhus, Denmark, shows that mortality increases after 8-10 years.

The probability of continuing your life following bypass surgery is close to being the same as for the population in general - once the patient has completed the procedure itself. But a register study from the Department of Clinical Epidemiology at Aarhus University, Denmark, shows that mortality increases after 8-10 years.

The prognosis following heart bypass surgery is both good and has improved over the past three decades. In fact, the survival rate for bypass patients who make it through the first month after the operation is close to that of the population in general. But 8-10 years after a heart bypass operation, mortality increases by 60-80 per cent. This is new and important knowledge for the doctors who monitor these patients.

This is the main conclusion of a comprehensive national register-based study that sheds light on the thirty-year prognosis following a heart bypass operation, which has just been published by the Department of Clinical Epidemiology under the Department of Clinical Medicine at Aarhus University. The basis for the study is all of the approx. 51,000 Danish patients who have undergone surgery in the period 1980 - 2009. They have subsequently been correlated with a control group of 500,000 people of the same age and gender drawn at random from the general population.

"The study shows that the rate of survival has improved over the last three decades, so that the probability of continuing your life following bypass surgery is close to being the same as in the general population. This holds true providing that the patient has successful surgery and for the eight-ten years after the surgery. However, after this point the prognosis changes," says medical doctor and PhD student Kasper Adelborg from the Department of Clinical Epidemiology.

Kasper Adelborg is the primary author of the publication 'Thirty-Year Mortality After Coronary Artery Bypass Graft Surgery. A Danish Nationwide Population-Based Cohort Study', which has recently been published in the American journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.

The study shows that ten-year-survivors have an increased mortality of between 60 and 80 per cent when compared with the general population. This may be due to the fact that the disease is progressive and that the atherosclerosis or hardening of the arteries increases, or that the implanted material begins to fail.

"Our register study covers all patients who underwent bypass surgery throughout the last decades throughout Denmark, and there will naturally be differences in the prognosis from patient to patient. So the clinicians who are in contact with the patients should therefore assess their prognosis individually - and there are special reasons to do this after the initial eight -ten years, as we now know that 'something' happens," says Kasper Adelborg about the perspectives of the study, which is currently being tweeted all over the world - and which has triggered a personal email to Kasper Adelborg from the journal's chief editor, who is impressed by the possibilities for studying long-term prognosis following heart bypass surgery using high quality data.

"Of course, this has to do with the fact that we in Denmark have unique opportunities to link register information from the registries. When we work with a control group of half a million Danes, we have the possibility of directly comparing the prognosis for a 55-year-old man who has undergone bypass surgery with a 55-year-old man who has not had surgery from the control group," explains Kasper Adelborg.

"It may be that we see this as an obvious correlation to make in Denmark, but the fact is that we in Denmark keep such good track of our citizens that many other countries envy us. In other places such as the US, it is not possible to simply extract information about when people have undergone surgery or died. This is information which is not centrally registered and which can therefore be lost if, for example, someone moves to a different region or state," says Kasper Adelborg.

In addition to the new knowledge about a special 'period of attention' 8-10 years after the bypass surgery, the first month is particularly critical.

Within the first 30 days after bypass surgery, patients have an increased risk of dying in connection with the operation, which is not in itself new.

"It is well-known that there are risks associated with a complicated operation in the heart, but fortunately mortality in connection with the surgery itself is quite low. What is new is that we have precise figures for the prognosis, including the long-term prognosis for patients who have undergone bypass surgery, compared with the rest of the population," says Kasper Adelborg.

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The research results - more information:

- Type of study: National register-based cohort study

- Authors: Kasper Adelborg and Henrik Toft Srensen

- Financing: The study is supported by the PROgram for Clinical Research INfrastructure (PROCRIN)
Coral reefs sustain marine life all over the world and protect its vulnerable coastlines. But the reefs are increasingly endangered, mainly because of pollution and rising ocean temperatures. Scientists, including American University's Kiho Kim are racing the clock to assess the true extent of the damage before it becomes irreversible. Today, new technologies are making it possible to see inside coral, to examine the skeleton cores for devastation caused by humans.

Kim and his team members are among the first to use a novel chemical technique to study coral skeletons to document the impacts from human activity. A new study published in Marine Pollution Bulletin explains how they did it in the U.S. territory of Guam, a small island nation undergoing dramatic ecological change.

"This study gives us a sense of how big the changes have been over the last 60 years and how population growth is leading to the degradation of the reefs," Kim said.

The researchers worked with coral on the eastern side of the island, in the Togcha River watershed, where a community's sewage plant dumps effluent into the river that then flows downstream to coastal coral reefs. The Togcha reef flat gets polluted from sewage-derived nitrogen from the plant and septic tank outflows. Coral disease is prevalent.

In Guam, as in many island nations, the biggest pollutant is sewage-derived nitrogen, due to poor wastewater infrastructure. Guam's sewage plants are old, effluent is not treated to the highest standards, and water samples routinely show sewage at amounts higher than government levels set for safe recreational waters in freshwater and marine environments.

Figuring out how much sewage-derived nitrogen contributes to coral reef degradation is challenging but important. Researchers must account for other stressors affecting coral, both natural and human-made, like the El Nino weather phenomenon and overfishing. The information scientists glean can help predict what's to come for the reefs of the future.

This is especially critical for Guam, where the island's population, currently 160,000, is set to grow by an estimated 40,000. This influx will occur when U.S. marines and their support services relocate from Japan. Though the marines have not yet moved, the U.S. government is working on plans, according to recent news reports. http://www.guampdn.com/story/news/2017/04/27/military-buildup-presses-while-cautious-historic-properties/100965786/

New technique

Coral reefs are among the most diverse ecosystems of the world's oceans. Communities depend on them for food, for the fish that live in them, and for tourism. They are under stress like never before. Many reefs are taking longer to recover from bleaching events, which occur when warm waters or pollution undermine the coral's ability to feed. Coral turns white and becomes more susceptible to disease. Recently, scientists discovered whole sections of Australia's Great Barrier Reef dead due to warm water temperatures.

When coral grow, they put down layers of skeleton the same way that tree rings grow over time. As waters warm due to climate change, scientists examine these layers to understand temperature changes on coral. Now scientists can study the coral layers for nitrogen pollution by using a new chemical technique, developed by researchers at Princeton, which allows more precise stable isotope analysis of coral skeleton. Kim and his colleagues extracted a single skeleton from a colony of massive coral near the mouth of the Togcha River, in water about six meters deep.

The nitrogen pollution the researchers recorded from the skeleton correlates with Guam's population increases over the last 60 years. Between 1960 and 1980 alone, Guam's population increased tenfold.

The coral skeleton core was extracted by using a 5.5-cm wide, hollow, diamond-tipped drill bit. In this instance, Kim and his team members used a high-pressure air drill attached to a scuba tank to remove a core 70 cm in length. Drilling may sound harsh, but it doesn't hurt the coral.

After extracting the core, which will not be put back, researchers capped the hole with a cement plug. They later observed the coral and found coral tissue growing over the plug, which indicated the coral's health hadn't been harmed.

Confronting coral reef decline

While climate change requires action on a global level, pollution is a local issue that can be addressed better infrastructure and policy, Kim said. Mitigation of nitrogen is critical to conserving the ecosystem of mangroves, seagrasses and corals in Guam's coastal waters.

"Coral reefs on Guam face the simultaneous challenges of multiple--and sometimes conflicting--user needs and impacts from declining water quality. Yet they remain of critical importance to Guam's economy," Kim said. "This situation is common to tropical islands throughout the world. Lessons learned regarding coping with these challenges may provide guidance for other islands in the region."

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"Life and death of a sewage treatment plant recorded in a coral skeleton 15N record," is authored by Nicholas N. Duprey, Xingchen T. Wang, Philip D. Thompson, Jeffrey E. Pleadwell, Laurie J. Raymundo, Kiho Kim, Daniel M. Sigman and David M. Baker.

American University is a leader in global education, enrolling a diverse student body from throughout the United States and nearly 130 countries. Located in Washington, D.C., the university provides opportunities for academic excellence, public service, and internships in the nation's capital and around the world.
A clinical trial has found that HIRREM closed-loop neurotechnology is more effective than placebo at reducing symptoms of insomnia, and has additional benefits for heart rate and blood pressure regulation. Findings are being presented in Boston at the annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies, June 3-7, 2017.

Developed by Brain State Technologies (BST, Scottsdale, Arizona), HIRREM is a noninvasive acoustic stimulation neurotechnology that applies software algorithms for real time analysis of critical brain frequencies. The algorithms guide production of changing sequences of audible tones, which support brain oscillations to re-organize toward more optimal patterns of symmetry and frequency ratios.

The three-year study enrolled 107 adults with insomnia and randomly assigned them to receive ten sessions of either HIRREM or a placebo intervention, which consisted of tones produced by a random generator. Subjects were blinded to their group assignment, and they received equal levels of social interaction during the two-week treatment period. The trial was conducted at Wake Forest School of Medicine, Department of Neurology (Winston-Salem, North Carolina), by Prof. Charles Tegeler, M.D.

At the predetermined endpoint two months after their sessions, those who received HIRREM reported significantly greater reduction in insomnia symptoms than those who received placebo. Moreover, the HIRREM group showed marked improvements in heart rate variability and baroreflex sensitivity, whereas the placebo group showed no physiological changes. Ninety-four percent of the enrolled subjects completed all sessions and follow-up visits as scheduled, and there were no adverse events in either group.

Lee Gerdes, Founder and CEO of BST, states that "We are thrilled that our noninvasive strategy showed highly practical benefits, in an easily tolerable way without side effects, for a problem that affects up to half the U.S. population." He further noted that Brain State Technologies is continuing innovations on HIRREM and other products for well-being, above and beyond the methodology evaluated in this study.

According to Dr. Sung Lee, Director of Research at BST, "The brain is the organ of central command. This study shows that HIRREM benefits sleep, and also helps the brain to fine tune its regulation of heart rate and blood pressure in response to changing stress levels." He further explained that closed-loop neural interventions such as HIRREM have the advantage of precision-guidance based on real-time physiological dynamics, in contrast to reliance on symptom changes or clinical assessments.

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The study was supported by a grant from a not-for-profit organization, The Susanne Marcus Collins Foundation, Inc., to the Department of Neurology at Wake Forest School of Medicine. Since 2011, a Wake Forest Baptist-BST research team has evaluated HIRREM for insomnia, symptoms of military-related traumatic stress, persisting symptoms following sports-related concussion, and other conditions, with funding from The Susanne Marcus Collins Foundation, Inc., and other independent sources including the Joint Capability Technology Demonstration Program within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics) via a contract with the U.S. Special Operations Command, and the U.S. Army Research Office.

For more information about HIRREM and other innovations in closed-loop neurotechnology, contact Brain State Technologies at (480) 588-6840 or info@brainstatetech.com or visit: http://www.brainstatetech.com

For more information about HIRREM clinical research studies, visit: http://www.wakehealth.edu/hirrem
Think of the way that a long flat highway seems to widen out around you from a single point on the horizon, while in the rear-view mirror everything narrows back to a single point behind you. Or think of the way that when a spaceship in a movie accelerates to its "warp" or "hyper" speed, the illusion is conveyed by the stars turning into streaks that zip radially outward off the screen. That's how a new study in Nature says specialized cells in the retina sense their owner's motion through the world -- by sensing that same radiating flow.

The finding is part of a broader discovery, made in the retinas of mice, that may help explain how mammals keep their vision stable and keep their balance as they move, said senior author David Berson, a professor of neuroscience at Brown University.

The brain needs a way to sense how it is moving in space. Two key systems at the brain's disposal are the motion-sensing vestibular system in the ears, and vision -- specifically, how the image of the world is moving across the retina. The brain integrates information from these two systems, or uses one if the other isn't available (e.g., in darkness or when motion is seen but not felt, as in an airplane at constant cruising speed).

"Good cameras have gizmos that stabilize images," Berson said. "That's just what the retinal motion and vestibular systems do for our own eyes.

"Once things are smearing across your retina, your whole visual system just doesn't work as well," Berson continued. "You can't resolve detail, because the image of the whole world is moving on your retina. You need to stabilize images to make those judgments accurately and, of course, sometimes your life depends on it."

So how is this done? From observations of thousands of retinal neurons led by lead author Shai Sabbah, a postdoctoral scholar at Brown, and Berson, here's what the research team learned: Direction-selective ganglion cells (DSGCs) become activated when they sense their particular component of the radial optical flow through the mouse's vision. Arranged in ensembles on the retina, they collectively recognize the radiating optical flow resulting from four distinct motions: the mouse advancing, retreating, rising or falling. The reports from each ensemble, as well as from those in the other eye, provide enough visual information to represent any sort of motion through space, even when they are combinations of directions like forward and up.

The information from the cells is ultimately even enough to help the brain sense rotation in space, not just moving forward, backward, up or down -- motion known as translation. Sensing rotation is crucial for image stabilization, Berson said, because that's how the eyes can stay locked on something even while the head is turning.

"One of the biggest mysteries that is revealed by our findings is that a motor system that will generate a rotation of the eye in service of image stabilization is ultimately driven by a class of retinal cells organized around the patterns of motion produced on the retina when the animal translates through space," Berson said. "We don't fully understand that yet, but that's what the data are telling us."

The radial retina

To even understand that the key organizing principle was radial flow, the researchers had to engage in the most thorough examination of DSCGs so far: They monitored 2,400 cells all over the retina via two methods. Most cells were engineered to glow whenever their level of calcium rose in response to visual input (e.g., upon "seeing" their preferred direction of optical flow). The researchers supplemented those observations by making direct electrical recordings of neural activity in places where the fluorescence didn't take hold. The key was to cover as much retinal real estate as possible.

"The problem here is that nobody has looked everywhere in the retina," Berson said. "They mostly always look only in the center."

But as the researchers moved stimuli around for the retina to behold, they saw that different types of DSGCs all over the retina worked in ensembles to preferentially detect radial optical flows consistent with moving up or down or forward or back.

But if all the cells are tuned to measure the animal's translation forward, backward, up or down, how could the system also understand rotation? The team turned to computer modeling based on their insights in the mouse, which gave them a prediction and a hypothesis: the brain could use a simple trick to notice the specific mismatch between the optical flow during rotation and the optical flow of translation, Berson said.

Think if it this way: When we swivel our head or our eyes to the right, the optical flow in the right eye appears to move forward. But the optical flow in the left eye would appear to move backward. When the brain integrates such input from the DSGCs in both eyes, it would not assume we were somehow moving simultaneously forward and backward, but instead realize the rotation to the right.

Looking forward

Notably, mice are different than people in this context because their eyes are on the sides of their head, rather than the front. Also, Berson acknowledges, no one has yet confirmed that DSGCs are in the eyes of humans and other primates. But Berson strongly suspects they are.

"There is very good reason to believe they are in primates because the function of image stabilization works in us very much the same way that it works not only in mice, but also in frogs and turtles and birds and flies," he said. "This is a highly adaptive function that must have evolved early and has been retained. Despite all the ways animals move -- swimming, flying, walking -- image stabilization turns out to be very valuable."

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In addition to Sabbah and Berson, the paper's other authors -- all undergraduates -- are Ananya Bhatia-Lin, Gabrielle Manoff, Gabriel Castro and Jesse Siegel of Brown; John Gemmer of Wake Forest University; and Nathan Jeffrey of the University of Liverpool.

The National Eye Institute (R01EY12793), the National Science Foundation (Grant: DMS-1148284), the Alcon Research Institute, the Sidney A. Fox and Dorothea Doctors Fox Postdoctoral Fellowship in Ophthalmology, and the Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship of Canada funded the research.
LOS ALAMOS, N.M., June 7, 2017 -- At Los Alamos National Laboratory, home to more than 100 supercomputers since the dawn of the computing era, elegance and simplicity of programming are highly valued but not always achieved. In the case of a new product, dubbed "Charliecloud," a crisp 800-line code helps supercomputer users operate in the high-performance world of Big Data without burdening computer center staff with the peculiarities of their particular software needs.

"Charliecloud lets users easily run crazy new things on our supercomputers," said lead developer Reid Priedhorsky of the High Performance Computing Division at Los Alamos. "Los Alamos has lots of supercomputing power, and we do lots of simulations that are well supported here. But we've found that Big Data analysis projects need to use different frameworks, which often have dependencies that differ from what we have already on the supercomputer. So, we've developed a lightweight 'container' approach that lets users package their own user defined software stack in isolation from the host operating system."

To build container images, Charliecloud sits atop the open-source Docker product that users install on their own system to customize the software choices as they wish. Users then import the image to the designated supercomputer and execute their application with the Charliecloud runtime, which is independent of Docker. This maintains a "convenience bubble" of administrative freedom while protecting the security of the larger system. "This is the easiest container solution for both system administrators and users to deal with," said Tim Randles, co-developer of Charliecloud, also of the High Performance Computing Division. "It's not rocket science; it's a matter of putting the pieces together in the right way. Once we did that, a simple and

The open-source product is currently being used on two supercomputers at Los Alamos, Woodchuck and Darwin, and at-scale evaluation on dozens of nodes shows the same operational performance as programs running natively on the machines without a container. "Not only is Charliecloud efficient in compute time, it's efficient in human time," said Priedhorsky. "What costs the most money is people thinking and doing. So we developed simple yet functional software that's easy to understand and costs less to maintain."

Charliecloud is very small, only 800 lines of code, and built following two bedrock principles of computing, that of least privilege and the Unix philosophy to "make each program do one thing well." Competing products range from 4,000 to over 100,000 lines of code. Charliecloud is described in detail in a technical report online.

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Los Alamos National Laboratory and supercomputing have a long, entwined history. Los Alamos holds many "firsts," from bringing the first problem to the nation's first computer to building the first machine to break the petaflop barrier. Supercomputers are integral to stockpile stewardship and the national security science mission at Los Alamos.

About Los Alamos National Laboratory

Los Alamos National Laboratory, a multidisciplinary research institution engaged in strategic science on behalf of national security, is operated by Los Alamos National Security, LLC, a team composed of Bechtel National, the University of California, BWX Technologies, Inc. and URS Corporation for the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration.

Los Alamos enhances national security by ensuring the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile, developing technologies to reduce threats from weapons of mass destruction, and solving problems related to energy, environment, infrastructure, health and global security concerns.
With high-pressure experiments at DESY's X-ray light source PETRA III and other facilities, a research team around Leonid Dubrovinsky from the University of Bayreuth has solved a long standing riddle in the analysis of meteorites from Moon and Mars. The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, can explain why different versions of silica can coexist in meteorites, although they normally require vastly different conditions to form. The results also mean that previous assessments of conditions at which meteorites have been formed have to be carefully re-considered.

The scientists investigated a silicon dioxide (SiO2) mineral that is called cristobalite. This mineral is of particular interest when studying planetary samples, such as meteorites, because this is the predominant silica mineral in extra-terrestrial materials," explains first author Ana Cernok from Bayerisches Geoinstitut (BGI) at University Bayreuth, who is now based at the Open University in the UK. Cristobalite has the same chemical composition as quartz, but the structure is significantly different," adds co-author Razvan Caracas from CNRS, ENS de Lyon.

Different from ubiquitous quartz, cristobalite is relatively rare on Earth's surface, as it only forms at very high temperatures under special conditions. But it is quite common in meteorites from Moon and Mars. Ejected by asteroid impacts from the surface of Moon or Mars, these rocks finally fell to Earth.

Surprisingly, researchers have also found the silica mineral seifertite together with cristobalite in Martian and lunar meteorites. Seifertite was first synthesised by Dubrovinsky and colleagues 20 years ago and needs extremely high pressures to form. "Finding cristobalite and seifertite in the same grain of meteorite material is enigmatic, as they form under vastly different pressures and temperatures," underlines Dubrovinsky. "Triggered by this curious observation, the behaviour of cristobalite at high-pressures has been examined by numerous experimental and theoretical studies for more than two decades, but the puzzle could not be solved."

Using the intense X-rays from PETRA III at DESY and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility ESRF in Grenoble (France), the scientists could now get unprecedented views at the structure of cristobalite under high pressures of up to 83 giga-pascals (GPa), which corresponds to roughly 820,000 times the atmospheric pressure. "The experiments showed that when cristobalite is compressed uniformly or almost uniformly - or as we say, under hydrostatic or quasi-hydrostatic conditions - it assumes a high-pressure phase labelled cristobalite X-I," explains DESY co-author Elena Bykova who works at the Extreme Conditions Beamline P02.2 at PETRA III, where the experiments took place. "This high-pressure phase reverts back to normal cristobalite when the pressure is released."

But if cristobalite is compressed unevenly under what scientists call non-hydrostatic conditions, it unexpectedly converts into a seifertite-like structure, as the experiments have now shown. This structure forms under significantly less pressure than necessary to form seifertite from ordinary silica. "The ab initio calculations confirm the dynamical stability of the new phase up to high pressures," says Caracas. Moreover it also remains stable when the pressure is released.

"This came as a surprise," says Cernok. "Our study clarifies how squeezed cristobalite can transform into seifertite at much lower pressure than expected. Therefore, meteorites that contain seifertite associated with cristobalite have not necessarily experienced massive impacts." During an impact, the propagation of the shock wave through the rock can create very complex stress patterns even with intersecting areas of hydrostatically and non-hydrostatically compressed materials, so that different versions of silica can form in the same meteorite.

"These results have immediate implications for studying impact processes in the solar system," underlines Dubrovinsky. "They provide clear evidence that neither cristobalite nor seifertite should be considered as reliable tracers of the peak shock conditions experienced by meteorites." But the observations also show more generally that the same material can react very differently to hydrostatic and non-hydrostatic compression, as Dubrovinsky explains. "For materials sciences our results suggest an additional mechanism for the manipulation of the properties of materials: Apart from pressure and temperature, different forms of stress may lead to completely different behaviour of solid matter."

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Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY is the leading German accelerator centre and one of the leading in the world. DESY is a member of the Helmholtz Association and receives its funding from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) (90 per cent) and the German federal states of Hamburg and Brandenburg (10 per cent). At its locations in Hamburg and Zeuthen near Berlin, DESY develops, builds and operates large particle accelerators, and uses them to investigate the structure of matter. DESY's combination of photon science and particle physics is unique in Europe.

Reference

Compressional pathways of -cristobalite, structure of cristobalite X-I, and towards the understanding of seifertite formation; Ana Cernok, Katharina Marquardt, Razvan Caracas, Elena Bykova, Gerlinde Habler, Hanns-Peter Liermann, Michael Hanfland, Mohamed Mezouar, Ema Bobocioiu, and Leonid Dubrovinsky;

Nature Communications", 2017; DOI: 10.1038/ncomms15647
Albert Einstein predicted that whenever light from a distant star passes by a closer object, gravity acts as a kind of magnifying lens, brightening and bending the distant starlight. Yet, in a 1936 article in the journal Science, he added that because stars are so far apart "there is no hope of observing this phenomenon directly."

Now, an international research team directed by Kailash C. Sahu has done just that, as described in their June 9, 2017 article in Science. The study is believed to be the first report of a particular type of Einstein's "gravitational microlensing" by a star other than the sun.

In a related perspective piece in Science, entitled "A centennial gift from Einstein," Terry Oswalt of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University says the discovery opens a new window to understanding "the history and evolution of galaxies such as our own."

More specifically, Oswalt adds, "The research by Sahu and colleagues provides a new tool for determining the masses of objects we can't easily measure by other means. The team determined the mass of a collapsed stellar remnant called a white dwarf star. Such objects have completed their hydrogen-burning life cycle, and thus are the fossils of all prior generations of stars in our Galaxy, the Milky Way."

Oswalt, an astronomer and chair of the Department of Physical Sciences at Embry-Riddle's Daytona Beach, Florida campus, says further, "Einstein would be proud. One of his key predictions has passed a very rigorous observational test."

Understanding 'Einstein Rings'

The gravitational microlensing of stars, predicted by Einstein, has previously been observed. Famously, in 1919, measurements of starlight curving around a total eclipse of the Sun provided one of the first convincing proofs of Einstein's general theory of relativity - a guiding law of physics that describes gravity as a geometric function of both space and time, or spacetime.

"When a star in the foreground passes exactly between us and a background star," Oswalt explains, "gravitational microlensing results in a perfectly circular ring of light - a so-called 'Einstein ring.'"

Sahu's group observed a much more likely scenario: Two objects were slightly out of alignment, and therefore an asymmetrical version of an Einstein ring formed. "The ring and its brightening were too small to be measured, but its asymmetry caused the distant star to appear off-center from its true position," Oswalt says. "This part of Einstein's prediction is called 'astrometric lensing' and Sahu's team was the first to observe it in a star other than the Sun."

Sahu, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, took advantage of the superior angular resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). Sahu's team measured shifts in the apparent position of a distant star as its light was deflected around a nearby white dwarf star called Stein 2051 B on eight dates between October 2013 and October 2015. They determined that Stein 2051 B - the sixth-closest white dwarf star to the Sun - has a mass that is about two-thirds that of the sun.

"The basic idea is that the apparent deflection of the background star's position is directly related to the mass and gravity of the white dwarf - and how close the two came to exactly lining up," explains Oswalt.

Among astronomers, the findings are significant for at least three reasons, according to Oswalt:

First, the research "solves a long-standing mystery about the mass and composition of Stein 2051 B," he says.

Second, he notes, "Sahu's team nicely confirms astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar's 1930 Nobel Prize-winning theory about the relationship between the mass and radius of white dwarf stars. We now know that Stein 2051 B is perfectly normal; it's not a massive white dwarf with an exotic composition, as has been believed for nearly a century."

Third, Oswalt concludes, "This new tool for determining masses will be very valuable as huge new surveys uncover many other chance alignments over the next few years."

For the average star-gazer, he says, the findings are meaningful because "at least 97 percent of all the stars that have ever formed in the Galaxy, including the Sun, will become or already are white dwarfs - they tell us about our future, as well as our history."

Editors of the journal Science, published by the nonprofit American Association for the Advancement of Science - the world's largest general scientific society - invited Oswalt to write a perspective essay on the Sahu paper because of his expertise on white dwarf stars. Oswalt received his bachelor's degree in astronomy from Indiana University in Bloomington and his Ph.D. degree in astronomy from The Ohio State University in Columbus. Before joining Embry-Riddle in 2013, he served as head of Physics & Space Sciences and held other faculty positions at the Florida Institute of Technology (1982-2013). During a sabbatical (1998-2000), he served as National Science Foundation program director for Stellar Astronomy & Astrophysics. He serves as chair of the Southeastern Association for Research in Astronomy (SARA).

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"A centennial gift from Einstein: Deflection of light by another star provides a solution to the mass of a white dwarf star," by Terry D. Oswalt, appears in the June 9, 2017 issue of Science, vol. 356, issue 6342, page 7. (DOI 10.1126/science.aan2996)

The research article, "Relativistic deflection of background starlight measures the mass of a nearby white dwarf star," by Kailash C. Sahu et al., appears in the same edition of Science. Additional authors on the paper were Sahu's colleagues at the Space Telescope Science Institute: Jay Anderson, Stefano Casertano, Edmund P. Nelan, Laurent Pueyo, Thomas M. Brown, Andrea Bellini, Zoltan G. Levay, Joshua Sokol, Annalisa Calamida and Noe Kains; along with Howard E. Bond of Pennsylvania State University; Pierre Bergeron of the Universite de Montreal in Canada; Martin Dominik of the University of St. Andrews in the United Kingdom; and Mario Livio of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. (DOI 10.1126/science.aal2879)

Dr. Oswalt will be pleased to offer third-party commentary on this breaking research news. Please contact Ginger Pinholster, (386) 226-4811 (office), or (571) 382-0537 (mobile), pinholsv@erau.edu.

Original video is available from Embry-Riddle. Additional multimedia and copies of the papers are available upon request from the Science Press Package team at scipak@aaas.org or (202) 326-6440.

About Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, the world's largest, fully accredited university specializing in aviation and aerospace, is a nonprofit, independent institution offering more than 80 baccalaureate, master's and Ph.D. degree programs in its colleges of Arts & Sciences, Aviation, Business, Engineering and Security & Intelligence. Embry-Riddle educates students at residential campuses in Daytona Beach, Fla., and Prescott, Ariz., the Worldwide Campus with more than 125 locations in the United States, Europe, Asia and the Middle East, and through online programs. The university is a major research center, seeking solutions to real-world problems in partnership with the aerospace industry, other universities and government agencies. For more information, visit http://www.embryriddle.edu, follow us on Twitter (@EmbryRiddle) and facebook.com/EmbryRiddleUniversity, and find expert videos at YouTube.com/EmbryRiddleUniv
The legume Acacia dealbata, also known as mimosa, is one of the most aggressive invasive tree species in the world. In the northwest of the peninsula its propagation is an increasingly serious problem since it is penetrating unaltered plant communities, according to a study by the University of Vigo and the University of Coimbra (Portugal). Scientists stress the important role of fires in their dispersal and conclude that natural scrubland could be an effective barrier to slowing down rapid invasion.

The number of populations of Acacia dealbata or mimosas in the northwest of the peninsula has increased in a concerning manner over the last few years and the space occupied by this species is ever greater. This increase is occurring considerably both in disturbed areas and in peri-urban areas, proximities to communication routes -roads and railways- and in forest plantations of eucalyptus and conifers, such as pine.

Scientists from the University of Vigo (UVigo) and the University of Coimbra (Portugal) have studied the behaviour of this species to evaluate whether the growth of mimosas is related to environmental factors in unaltered scrublands and pine forests in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula.

"The A. dealbata invasion process is favoured mainly by environmental disturbances. However, we have detected that this species is invading plant communities that had been unaltered until now and the environmental factors that influence its propagation in these ecosystems continue to be unclear," Jonatan Rodriguez, researcher at UVigo and co-author of the study, told SINC.

The researchers put in place permanent sample plots along the edge of the invasion in each plant community and recorded the increases in the height and diameter of the stem in marked specimens over two years. The number of new acacia trees was recorded at the end of the study.

Some of the environmental factors that were assessed were the physiochemical properties of the soil, the native plant cover and the characteristics of the plot, in order to determine their effect on the growth of invasive trees. "We found a different growth pattern in the mimosas depending on the plant community studied," indicated the researcher.

The pine forests had mimosas with significantly greater height and diameter increases and a greater number of new acacias than the scrublands. Furthermore, it was found that spring favours the growth of the invasive species in pine forests, while growth does not vary throughout the year in scrublands.

"With regard to the environmental parameters that influence the growth of A. dealbata we found a negative effect of light and direction of the plot, but also a positive effect with regard to potassium content in the soil and the elevation of the plot," said the researcher.

Can we put an end to the invasion?

The impacts caused by this species are well-known: reduction of light in the underbrush and of the availability of water in the soil causes soil acidification, increases the soil's nutrient content, alters microbial communities and the enzymatic activities of the soil, and decreases the native plant cover, as well as the diversity of species in the underbrush.

The weather conditions in Galicia, similar to those of its place of origin in Australia, help this species to become established and naturalised. Furthermore, other studies highlight the importance of other factors, such as the releasing of natural enemies and mutualistic relationships with other organisms, which help the mimosa to advance in an invasive manner.

"As an observation outside the study, we also saw that winter frosts can affect it considerably, particularly in the flowering period. However, its ability to acclimatise allows it to live at heights that it does not reach in its place of origin. In fact, in A Serra de O Courel we found it at 1000m," said the scientist.

Until today, various studies have dealt with the control of this species through mechanical control along with the application of herbicide to the stump, which has been very effective. "Another technique being carried out in Portugal, and which we are trying out in Galicia, is the stripping of the tree bark so that the root dries out and the tree subsequently dies," explained Rodriguez.

In addition to these control techniques, it is important to highlight the ecosystem conservation work and avoid exotic forest plantations. The environmental factors that occur in a well-conserved scrubland reduce the speed of growth and the appearance of new acacia individuals in comparison with the pine forest conditions.

The team of scientists concluded that the natural scrubland could be an effective barrier for slowing down the rapid invasion of mimosas and it suggests that their management in pine forests must have preferential treatment in southwestern Europe.

"They are suffering similar problems throughout Portugal with the invasion of various acacia species. As such, we consider that it would be important to join forces to tackle the problem and make it impact the whole peninsula, since plants don't have borders," concluded the expert.

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References:

Jonatan Rodriguez, Paula Lorenzo y Luis Gonzalez. "Different growth strategies to invade undisturbed plant communities by Acacia dealbata Link". Forest Ecology and Management 399: 47-53, 1 de septiembre de 2017. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2017.05.007
The first public sharing of government data marks a victory for transparency in an opaque industry where research and sustainable management have suffered from a lack of information on where fishing happens and how fishers interact with ocean resources

NEW YORK: This week, at the United Nation's Ocean Conference, the Republic of Indonesia becomes the first nation ever to publish Vessel Monitoring System (VMS) data revealing the location and activity of its commercial fishing fleet. The new data being made public on the Global Fishing Watch public mapping platform reveals commercial fishing in Indonesian waters and areas of the Indian Ocean where it had previously been invisible to the public and other nations.

Susi Pudjiastuti, the Minister of Fisheries and Marine Affairs for the Republic of Indonesia, is taking a bold step toward increasing transparency in her country's fishing industry. Today she urges other nations to do the same.

"Illegal fishing is an international problem, and countering it requires cross border cooperation between countries," says Minister Susi. "I urge all nations to join me in sharing their vessel monitoring data with Global Fishing Watch. Together, we can begin a new era in transparency to end illegal and unreported fishing."

Also at the UN Ocean's Conference, Global Fishing Watch has committed to host any country's VMS data, calling on other governments to follow Indonesia's lead. "We believe publicly shared VMS will become a powerful new standard for transparent operation in commercial fishing," says Paul Woods, Global Fishing Watch CEO and Chief Technology Officer for SkyTruth, a founding partner of Global Fishing Watch along with Oceana and Google. "SkyTruth has been collaborating with the Indonesian government for the past two years to really understand their VMS data and find new ways for VMS to enhance their fisheries management."

Working closely with Oceana toward a united goal of transparency at sea, Peru becomes the first nation to follow Indonesia's lead. Vice Minister for Fisheries and Aquaculture, Hector Soldi, announced Peru's intent to publicly share their VMS data in Global Fishing Watch.

"We applaud the commitments made by Peru and Indonesia to publish their previously private vessel tracking data and encourage other countries to follow their lead," said Jacqueline Savitz, Senior Vice President for the United States and Global Fishing Watch at Oceana. "Together, with forward-thinking governments like these, we can bring even greater transparency to the oceans. By publishing fishing data and using Global Fishing Watch, governments and citizens can unite to help combat illegal fishing worldwide. With more eyes on the ocean, there are fewer places for illegal fishers to hide."

Global Fishing Watch uses publicly broadcast Automatic Identification System (AIS) signals from ships at sea to reveal the activity of the majority of all industrial-sized commercial fishing vessels (those exceeding a capacity of 100 Gross Tons which average around 24 meters). The inclusion of government-owned VMS data adds detailed information on smaller commercial fishing vessels that are not required to carry AIS, and are therefore not reliably trackable by any other means. Indonesian regulations require VMS on fishing vessels with a capacity equal to or exceeding 30 Gross Tons (averaging about 16 meters or more). Indonesia is the second-largest producer of wild-caught seafood in the world, and Indonesian VMS alone adds nearly 5,000 fishing vessels to Global Fishing Watch's existing database of 60,000 vessels. "It's remarkable to see how adding in all these medium sized vessels with VMS really fills in the picture for large chunks of the ocean where we knew there was fishing, but just couldn't see it with AIS alone," says Woods. "It is also revealing new areas where we weren't aware fishing occurs."

Google's lead on Global Fishing Watch, Brian Sullivan, says that the platform is built using the latest cloud and machine learning technologies and can easily incorporate additional data sources or methodologies. "The ability to scale rapidly as new countries and providers join means we can move from raw data to quickly producing dynamic visualizations and reporting that promote scientific discovery and support policies for better fishery management," he said. "With Indonesia and Peru, two of the world's top five fishing nations, committed to a new age of transparency in the fishing industry, Google is committed to fostering international cooperation."

Because fishing occurs over the horizon and out of sight, the industry remains one of the most opaque in the world. The lack of knowledge about how much fish is being taken from the ocean, and who is fishing where severely hinders effective management. It also facilitates rampant Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing that threatens fish stocks, food security and the economies of coastal nations that depend on seafood for food, jobs and foreign export dollars.

Gains in transparency through the sharing of government VMS data will not only curb IUU, but will benefit the fishing industry as public demand for information about the source of their seafood increases and open data sharing through Global Fishing Watch provides validation of product source. These partnerships with Indonesia and Peru set a new bar for transparency at sea. Making this data publicly available will support regional cooperation in monitoring, surveillance and enforcement, reduce opportunities for corruption, and enable more informed management decisions.

In addition to committing to support any nation willing to share its VMS data publicly, Global Fishing Watch joined 50 members of the tuna industry and 17 other civil society organization to endorse the World Economic Forum Tuna Traceability 2020 Declaration made at the UN Oceans Conference.

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*SkyTruth's work with the Indonesian Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Affairs has been made possible through support from the Packard Foundation and the Walton Family Fund.

Global Fishing Watch is an independent 501c3 that was founded and supported by Oceana, SkyTruth and Google. GlobalFishingWatch.org

Oceana

Oceana is the largest international advocacy organization dedicated solely to ocean conservation. Oceana is rebuilding abundant and biodiverse oceans by winning science-based policies in countries that control one third of the world's wild fish catch. With over 100 victories that stop overfishing, habitat destruction, pollution and killing of threatened species like turtles and sharks, Oceana's campaigns are delivering results. A restored ocean means that one billion people can enjoy a healthy seafood meal, every day, forever. Together, we can save the oceans and help feed the world. Oceana.org

SkyTruth

SkyTruth is a nonprofit organization using remote sensing and digital mapping to create stunning images that expose the environmental impact of natural resource extraction and other human activities. We use satellite imagery and geospatial data to create compelling and scientifically credible visuals and resources to inform environmental advocates, policy-makers, the media, and the public. SkyTruth.org

Google

Google Earth Outreach is a team dedicated to leveraging and developing Google's infrastructure to address environmental and humanitarian issues through partnerships with non-profits, educational institutions, and research groups. earth.google.com/outreach
Boston, MA - Stress, increased risk for disease, babies born too early, and premature death are among the negative health impacts that could occur in the wake of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, according to a new article from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Massachusetts General Hospital/McLean Hospital.

Marginalized groups are likely to be most affected, the authors said. That's because hostile attitudes toward racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants, and Muslims--which appear to have been brought more to the surface with the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump--have been linked in previous studies with both mental and physical adverse health effects.

The article appears in the June 8, 2017 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

"Elections can matter for the health of children and adults in profound ways that are often unrecognized and unaddressed," said David R. Williams, Florence Sprague Norman and Laura Smart Norman Professor of Public Health at Harvard Chan School and Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University, and lead author of the article.

Williams and co-author Morgan Medlock, a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital/McLean Hospital, explored a small but growing body of evidence on how election campaigns can influence health, and considered the implications for health care providers. They looked at existing studies that examined health impacts in the wake of the elections of former U.S. presidents, including President Donald Trump.

Studies conducted after President Obama was elected found an uptick in racial animosity among white Americans and a proliferation of hate websites and anti-Obama sentiment on social media. Donald Trump's election appeared to heighten already hostile attitudes toward racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants, and Muslims, according to some early research.

Williams and Medlock cited a number of studies suggesting that such societal hostility can have serious health effects. For example:

A January 2017 national survey by the American Psychological Association found that a large proportion of U.S. adults--more Democrats than Republicans, and more minorities than non-Hispanic whites--are stressed by the current political environment.

An August 2016 University of California, Berkeley study of 1,836 U.S. counties found an elevated risk of death from heart disease among both black and white residents of high-prejudice counties, with a stronger effect among blacks than whites.

A February 2006 University of Chicago study of birth outcomes among women of multiple racial and ethnic groups in California revealed that, in the six months after 9/11, when hostility against Arab Americans was intense, only among Arab American women was there a pattern of increased risk of low-birthweight babies or preterm births, as compared with the preceding six-month period.

The authors also warned that cuts to health and social services, such as the threatened repeal of the Affordable Care Act, are likely to further exacerbate the health challenges of poor and marginalized populations in the U.S. They reviewed studies that documented increases in infant mortality, preventable childhood diseases, and chronic disease among adults when such cuts were made early in the Reagan administration.

The authors suggested several ways that health care providers can respond if they find postelection "side effects" among their patients. For example, clinicians could directly address their patients' emotional distress, suggesting psychotherapy or medication; clinicians and health care organizations could take a strong stance against hate crimes, discriminatory political rhetoric, and incivility; and the health care community can advocate for further research, or conduct their own, on potential negative health effects related to elections and the societal climate, as well as on identifying effective interventions to reduce their adverse effects on health.

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Preparation of the article was supported by funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

"Health Effects of Dramatic Social Events - Ramifications of the Recent Presidential Election," David R. Williams and Morgan Medlock, New England Journal of Medicine, June 8, 2017, doi: 10.1056/NEJMms1702111

Visit the Harvard Chan School website for the latest news, press releases, and multimedia offerings.

Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health brings together dedicated experts from many disciplines to educate new generations of global health leaders and produce powerful ideas that improve the lives and health of people everywhere. As a community of leading scientists, educators, and students, we work together to take innovative ideas from the laboratory to people's lives--not only making scientific breakthroughs, but also working to change individual behaviors, public policies, and health care practices. Each year, more than 400 faculty members at Harvard Chan School teach 1,000-plus full-time students from around the world and train thousands more through online and executive education courses. Founded in 1913 as the Harvard-MIT School of Health Officers, the School is recognized as America's oldest professional training program in public health.
New Rochelle, NY, June 7, 2017--A growing body of data from clinical studies of continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) in type 1 diabetes supports the value of CGM for reducing variability in blood glucose levels and the risks of both hypo- and hyperglycemia, and for improving patient quality of life compared to self-monitoring of blood glucose (SMBG). A review of recent CGM trials and the impact of CGM accuracy on the future of automated insulin delivery systems are the focus of two in a series of articles published as a special supplement to Diabetes Technology & Therapeutics (DTT), a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The supplement is available open access on the DTT website.

In the article entitled "Continuous Glucose Monitoring: A Review of Recent Studies Demonstrating Improved Glycemic Outcomes," David Rodbard, MD, Biomedical Informatics Consultants, Potomac, MD, concluded that CGM, as well as flash glucose monitoring, has been shown to be safe and effective, with the recent regulatory approval of certain CGM devices for nonadjunctive use to guide insulin dose adjustment representing a major advance.

In the "Future of Automated Insulin Delivery Systems," Jessica Castle, MD, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, J. Hans DeVries, MD, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and Boris Kovatchev, PhD, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, discuss how CGM has enabled the automation of insulin delivery. The authors describe the rapid progress in the development of automated insulin delivery systems, the novel features and advantages they may offer for improving glycemic control, and the critical role that highly accurate CGM will play in the safe and effective use of these systems.

In the Editorial entitled "The Future of Continuous Glucose," DTT Editor-in-Chief Satish Garg, MD, Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics at the University of Colorado Denver (Aurora) states: "Continuous glucose monitors have come a long way with significant improvement in accuracy and MARD of <10%." Just like all patients with new-onset T1D [type 1 diabetes] get an SMBG meter today, we hope in the very near future, all patients with new-onset T1D will receive CGM."

Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institutes of Health under Award Number 1DP3DK101044-01. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

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This supplement was supported by an educational grant from Dexcom. Dexcom G5 is the first and currently only CGM approved for nonadjunctive use in the US.

About the Journal

Diabetes Technology & Therapeutics (DTT) is a monthly peer-reviewed journal that covers new technology and new products for the treatment, monitoring, diagnosis, and prevention of diabetes and its complications. Led by Editor-in-Chief Satish Garg, MD, the Journal covers topics that include noninvasive glucose monitoring, implantable continuous glucose sensors, novel routes of insulin administration, genetic engineering, the artificial pancreas, measures of long-term control, computer applications for case management, telemedicine, the Internet, and new medications. Tables of contents and a free sample issue may be viewed on the Diabetes Technology & Therapeutics (DTT) website. DTT is the official journal of the Advanced Technologies & Treatments for Diabetes (ATTD) Conference.

About ATTD

The International Conference on Advanced Technologies & Treatments for Diabetes (ATTD) presents top caliber scientific programs that have provided participants with cutting-edge research and analysis into the latest developments in diabetes-related technology. A unique and innovative conference, ATTD brings the world's leading researchers and clinicians together for a lively exchange of ideas and information related to the technology, treatment, and prevention of diabetes and related illnesses.

About the Publisher

Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers is a privately held, fully integrated media company known for establishing authoritative peer-reviewed journals in many promising areas of science and biomedical research, including Thyroid, Metabolic Syndrome and Related Disorders, Journal of Aerosol Medicine and Pulmonary Drug Delivery, Childhood Obesity, and Population Health Management. Its biotechnology trade magazine, GEN (Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News), was the first in its field and is today the industry's most widely read publication worldwide. A complete list of the firm's 80 journals, books, and newsmagazines is available on the Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers website.
Altruism based on individual values is changing Western society. People in Western countries have seen a rise in individualism for quite some time, and this in turn helps to create generations of people with altruistic mindsets. Christian Welzel, Chief Research Fellow in the Laboratory for Comparative Social Research (HSE and Leuphana University of Luneburg), teamed up with researchers from the University of Lausanne to conduct a study showing the connection between emancipative values and prosocial behaviour. The results of the study were published in the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology.

According to Ronald Inglehart's theory of modernization, increased wealth and security in Western countries is leading to a shift in values from collectivism to individualism. People start valuing power and authoritarianism less, while freedom and the opportunity for self-expression become more important. In his book Freedom Rising, which was has recently been translated into Russian, Christian Welzel stresses the idea that growing individualism ultimately leads to prosocial behaviour. An emancipative attitude towards freedom, he says, is not egotistical - it stems from a priority for opportunity equality.

That is, tolerance towards various kinds of individuality is growing, while intolerance towards discrimination and human rights violations is also on the rise. New generations of altruists are ready to disinterestedly defend the rights of others, participate in charity work, volunteer, etc. This was confirmed by data from the World Value Survey (WVS).

But researchers go by the information that people give about themselves during interviews. Christian Welzel and his colleagues decided to conduct an additional test on their hypothesis with the help of practical experiments in which respondents from the sixth wave of WVS took part. The focus of attention was the relationship between prosocial behaviour and emancipative and secular values. It is with increased wealth and security that emancipative and secular values gain particular importance

Christian Welzel's concept of emancipative values includes components such as equality, freedom, autonomy, and self-expression (e.g., public expression of opinion). They reflect society's level of liberalisation - some people prefer political, civil, and sexual rights to obedience or patriarchy. Secular values are the opposite of traditional ones. In societies where these values prevail, people generally ascribe less importance to religion, authority, and traditional family values. At the same time, things like divorce, abortion, euthanasia, etc. become relatively acceptable and/or available.

Respondents from the WVS's German sample took part in the experiment. According to the authors, Germany is an ideal research subject, as it houses a large proportion of the European population, has the largest economy, and has successfully made technological progress. At the same time, the socialist past is fresh in the country's memory (Eastern Germany), which impacts systems of values.

During the study, which took place online, economic experiments were carried out in which respondents were given several choices in different situations that required a contribution to be made towards a common cause or that required volunteer work. In one of the experiments, participants also had to show how they would act in relation to different resources at hand. Respondents were given the choice of effectively using and multiplying production at a virtual farm, simply maintaining production, and also taking (stealing) from others.

It was confirmed that those with emancipative values are inclined to make a more serious contribution to charity and social development. One's preparedness to make a donation is a clear indicator of altruism, the researchers noted. And in the current situation, altruism demonstrates a connection to emancipative values.

As for secular values, there is no clear connection here with altruism, though there is a connection with multiplying and preserving resources at a virtual farm, which involves certain risks. Those with secular values, however, rely on the idea that others will not conduct themselves asocially by, for instance, stealing resources.

Overall, Mr Welzel's hypothesis on so-called positive individualism was confirmed. The conclusions refute the idea that individual values foster egoistical behaviour. At a certain stage in the transition from collectivism to individualism, those with individualistic values arise, and these values focus exclusively on personal gains such as material wealth, career advancement, etc. But as for increased economic wealth, individual value systems are changing and moving towards human rights defence, freedom for self-determination, environmental protection, helping others, etc.

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Researchers from NYU Dentistry are investigating a protein found inside the spicules of a sea urchin embryo to understand what makes these proteins such efficient 'brick organizers'

Calcium carbonate, or CaCO3, comprises more than 4% of the earth's crust. Its most common natural forms are chalk, limestone, and marble, produced by the sedimentation of the shells of small fossilized snails, shellfish, and coral over millions of years.

New York University College of Dentistry (NYU Dentistry) researchers are studying how nature creates three-dimensional CaCO3 inorganic/organic based materials to form seashells, invertebrate exoskeletons, and vertebrate bone, dentine, and enamel.

John Evans, DMD, PhD, a professor in NYU Dentistry's Department of Basic Science and Craniofacial Biology, oversees a research group focusing on the study of proteins that modulate the formation of biominerals, which in turn create new composite materials with unique properties, such as increased fracture and puncture resistances.

In a paper recently published in Biochemistry, Gaurav Jain, PhD, a postdoc in Dr. Evans's lab and coauthor of "A model sea urchin spicule matrix protein, rSpSM50, is a hydrogelator that modifies and organizes the mineralization process," looked at how the CaCO3 matrix is organized inside a sea urchin spicule (See figure 1). At first, these spicules are nothing more than chalk, but when combined with sea urchin proteins, they form tiny stacks of "bricks," creating a structure that provides some of the toughest defense against predators and harsh ocean conditions.

"Primary mesenchyme cells (PMCs) inside a sea urchin embryo deposits amorphous CaCO3 within the matrix of spicule proteins where these bricks are shaped into layers of calcium carbonate crystals," notes Dr. Jain. "However, the functional and assembly capabilities of individual spicule matrix proteins aren't clear. We are currently investigating one such protein found inside the spicules of a sea urchin embryo to understand what makes these proteins such efficient 'brick organizers.'"

The researchers looked at SM50, one of the most abundant and well-studied proteins found inside these spicules. They found that a recombinant version of the SM50 protein, rSpSM50, is a highly aggregation-prone protein that forms tiny jelly-like structures called hydrogels in solution. These 'jellies' capture tiny mineral nanoparticles and organize them into crystalline 'bricks.' Moreover, rSpSM50 causes surface texturing and forms randomly interconnected porous channels within these crystals.

"What is unique about rSpSM50 is that it fosters the formation and organization of two different forms of calcium carbonate -- calcite and vaterite within the 'jellies' themselves, inducing fracture resistance to the overall structure," said Dr. Jain.

Researchers used a specific type of titration method that revealed the details about very early events in the spicule formation.

"rSpSM50 turns out to be a really important piece of the puzzle, as it slows the formation kinetics but neither stabilizes nor destabilizes the extremely tiny mineral particles that ultimately form these bricks," says coauthor Martin Pendola, PhD.

CaCo3 has always been a man's favorite construction material to make primitive tools, musical instruments, and craftware since the beginning of civilization. In modern times, CaCO3 is the most widely used mineral in the paper, plastics, paints and coatings industries both as a filler -- and due to its special white color -- as a coating pigment.

"Our current research, funded by U.S. Department of Energy, will enable scientists to better understand the mineralization and assembly process crucial to spicule formation in sea urchin," said Dr. Evans. "Our ultimate goal is to determine the molecular properties of these proteins that allow matrices to assemble, mineralize, and participate in the formation of naturally occurring organic/inorganic skeletal structures. The hope is that the comprehensive understanding of spicule proteins will enable the development of tunable fracture resistant materials that one day will find its use in developing lightweight 'armor' and 'sturdier' dental composites."

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Contributors:

**Gaurav Jain1; **Martin Pendola1; Yu-Chieh Huang2; Denis Gebauer2; and John Spencer Evans1

1. Laboratory for Chemical Physics, Center for Skeletal and Craniofacial Biology, New York University College of Dentistry, NY, NY, USA. 2. Department of Chemistry, Physical Chemistry, Universitat Konstanz, Universitatstrasse 10, Konstanz D- 78457, Germany.

**Both authors contributed equally to this work

Acknowledgments: AFM imaging was conducted at the Molecular Cytology Core Facility, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York. Flow cytometry studies were conducted at the Department of Microbiology, Columbia University, New York. This report represents contribution number 83 from the Laboratory for Chemical Physics, New York University.

Funding sources: Portions of this research (recombinant protein synthesis, LM, flow cytometry, AFM, SEM, FIB, TEM) were supported by the Life Sciences Division, U.S. Army Research Office, under award W911NF-16-1-0262 (JSE). The potentiometric experiments were supported by the Zukunftskoleg of the University of Konstanz (DG).

About NYU College of Dentistry

Founded in 1865, New York University College of Dentistry is the third oldest and the largest dental school in the US, educating more than 8 percent of all dentists. NYU College of Dentistry has a significant global reach with a highly diverse student body. Visit http://dental.nyu.edu for more.
On June 6, Forum on Russian-Chinese Biomedical Cooperation was launched at the Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park in Shanghai (Pudong new district). The event was held within the framework the 'One Belt - One Road' initiative'.

On June 6, Forum on Russian-Chinese Biomedical Cooperation was launched at the Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park in Shanghai (Pudong new district). The event was held within the framework the 'One Belt - One Road' initiative'.

The main goal of the forum is to promote scientific and technical cooperation between Russia and China, implementing innovative technologies, providing a platform for Russian-speaking scholars on the territory of China, and assisting to the Chinese side in creation of joint research centers. Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University (SPbPU) is a strategic partner of the Forum, so the delegation headed by rector of the university, an academician of the Russian Academy of Science, Dr. Andrey Rudskoy participates in this significant event.

Speaking at the opening ceremony of the event, rector of SPbPU Dr. Andrey Rudskoy underlined the need to deepen Russian-Chinese cooperation in the most important scientific and educational fields, adding that currently Polytechnic University cooperates with 40 universities in China, among which are Tsinghua University and Zhejiang University, as well as Shanghai Fudan University, Shanghai Transport University, East China Normal University, Harbin Polytechnic University, Xian Transportation University and others.

Polytechnic University is strongly focused on development of biomedical technologies and sciences. In 2015, the university together with the Federal Almazov North-West Medical Research Centre and other universities (St. Petersburg) created a medical scientific and educational cluster 'Translational Medicine', and in 2016 an agreement on cooperation with Shanghai Biomedical Industry Association was signed.

During the Forum on Russian-Chinese Biomedical Cooperation another important step towards the development of international cooperation was undertaken. The university became a member of the Center of Russian-Chinese Biomedical Cooperation initiated by the business incubator "PuE"(Shanghai).

A range of agreements and contracts were signed in cooperation with the business incubator "PuE" on technology transfer: such as 'Development of ultrasensitive thin-film sensors based on multilayer nanostructures' with the company 'Shanghai MiaoSheng Intelligent Technology' Co., Ltd, and the contract on 'Implementation of SmartFoil technology in manufacturing of electronics using ceramic, piezoceramic and metallic SMD elements' with 'HengE (Shanghai) Medical Technology' Co, Ltd.

In addition, contracts on establishing the laboratories 'Machine education and intellectual systems' and 'Mathematical modeling, Big data and Control' in collaboration with Special committee on industrialization of scientific achievements in China, LLC "Sinotrans Logistics" and 'Bei Shen' Co. , Ltd were signed by the parties.

At the Forum the scientist of SPbPU gave reports about R&D projects of the university and results of scientific and educational collaboration with both Russian and foreign partners.

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Using seismic data and supercomputers, Rice University geophysicists have conducted a massive seismic CT scan of the upper mantle beneath the Tibetan Plateau and concluded that the southern half of the "Roof of the World" formed in less than one-quarter of the time since the beginning of India-Eurasia continental collision.

The research, which appears online this week in the journal Nature Communications, finds that the high-elevation of Southern Tibet was largely achieved within 10 million years. Continental India's tectonic collision with Asia began about 45 million years ago.

"The features that we see in our tomographic image are very different from what has been seen before using traditional seismic inversion techniques," said Min Chen, the Rice research scientist who headed the project. "Because we used full waveform inversion to assimilate a large seismic data set, we were able to see more clearly how the upper-mantle lithosphere beneath Southern Tibet differs from that of the surrounding region. Our seismic image suggests that the Tibetan lithosphere thickened and formed a denser root that broke away and sank deeper into the mantle. We conclude that most of the uplift across Southern Tibet likely occurred when this lithospheric root broke away."

The research could help answer longstanding questions about Tibet's formation. Known as the "Roof of the World," the Tibetan Plateau stands more than three miles above sea level. The basic story behind its creation -- the tectonic collision between the Indian and Eurasian continents -- is well-known to schoolchildren the world over, but the specific details have remained elusive. For example, what causes the plateau to rise and how does its high elevation impact Earth's climate?

"The leading theory holds that the plateau rose continuously once the India-Eurasia continental collision began, and that the plateau is maintained by the northward motion of the Indian plate, which forces the plateau to shorten horizontally and move upward simultaneously," said study co-author Fenglin Niu, a professor of Earth science at Rice. "Our findings support a different scenario, a more rapid and pulsed uplift of Southern Tibet."

It took three years for Chen and colleagues to complete their tomographic model of the crust and upper-mantle structure beneath Tibet. The model is based on readings from thousands of seismic stations in China, Japan and other countries in East Asia. Seismometers record the arrival time and amplitude of seismic waves, pulses of energy that are released by earthquakes and that travel through Earth. The arrival time of a seismic wave at a particular seismometer depends upon what type of rock it has passed through. Working backward from instrument readings to calculate the factors that produced them is something scientists refer to as an inverse problem, and seismological inverse problems with full waveforms incorporating all kinds of usable seismic waves are some of the most complex inverse problems to solve.

Chen and colleagues used a technique called full waveform inversion, "an iterative full waveform-matching technique that uses a complicated numerical code that requires parallel computing on supercomputers," she said.

"The technique really allows us to use all the wiggles on a large number of seismographs to build up a more realistic 3-D model of Earth's interior, in much the same way that whales or bats use echo-location," she said. "The seismic stations are like the ears of the animal, but the echo that they are hearing is a seismic wave that has either been transmitted through or bounced off of subsurface features inside Earth."

The tomographic model includes features to a depth of about 500 miles below Tibet and the Himalaya Mountains. The model was computed on Rice's DAVinCI computing cluster and on supercomputers at the University of Texas that are part of the National Science Foundation's Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE).

"The mechanism that led to the rise of Southern Tibet is called lithospheric thickening and foundering," Chen said. "This happened because of convergence of two continental plates, which are each buoyant and not easy to subduct underneath the other plate. One of the plates, in this case on the Tibetan side, was more deformable than the other, and it began to deform around 45 million years ago when the collision began. The crust and the rigid lid of upper mantle -- the lithosphere -- deformed and thickened, and the denser lower part of this thickened lithosphere eventually foundered, or broke off from the rest of the lithosphere. Today, in our model, we can see a T-shaped section of this foundered lithosphere that extends from a depth of about 250 kilometers to at least 660 kilometers."

Chen said that after the denser lithospheric root broke away, the remaining lithosphere under Southern Tibet experienced rapid uplift in response.

"The T-shaped piece of foundered lithosphere sank deeper into the mantle and also induced hot upwelling of the asthenosphere, which leads to surface magmatism in Southern Tibet," she said.

Such magmatism is documented in the rock record of the region, beginning around 30 million years ago in an epoch known as the Oligocene.

"The spatial correlation between our tomographic model and Oligocene magmatism suggests that the Southern Tibetan uplift happened in a relatively short geological span that could have been as short as 5 million years," Chen said.

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Additional co-authors include Adrian Lenardic, Cin-Ty Lee, Wenrong Cao and Julia Ribeiro, all of Rice, and Jeroen Tromp of Princeton University.

The research was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), by the NSF's Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) program, and by the China Earthquake Administration's China Seismic Array Data Management Center. Rice's DAVinCI supercomputer is administered by Rice's Center for Research Computing and procured in partnership with the Ken Kennedy Institute for Information Technology.

The DOI of the Nature Communications paper is: 10.1038/NCOMMS15659

A copy of the paper, "Lithospheric Foundering and Underthrusting Imaged Beneath Tibet," is available at: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15659

More information is available at:

Rice Earth Science: https://earthscience.rice.edu/

Rice Research Computing: https://oit.rice.edu/research-computing

Min Chen home page: https://sites.google.com/site/minchenresearch/

XSEDE: https://www.xsede.org/

TACC: https://www.tacc.utexas.edu/

This release can be found online at news.rice.edu.

Follow Rice News and Media Relations on 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.
Yi Xie, professor of chemistry at the University of Science and Technology of China, has received the fourth Tsinghua University Press-Springer Nano Research Award. The award ceremony took place at the 2017 Sino-US Nano Forum, held from 26-28 May 2017 in Beijing, China. Representatives from Tsinghua University Press and Springer Nature presented the award certificate and medal to the scientist. The annual award includes a cash prize of US$10,000.

Yi Xie's research on inorganic functional solids with modulated electron and phonon structures has contributed significantly to the field of inorganic solid state chemistry at the nanoscale. In particular, Yi Xie has made groundbreaking advances in fundamental problems of unconventional semiconductors a few atoms thick, which find promising applications in energy conversion. Xie is a member of the Chinese Academy of Science (CAS) and has received numerous awards.

Nano Research is an international academic journal sponsored by Tsinghua University and the Chinese Chemical Society, and is jointly published by Tsinghua University Press (TUP) and Springer Nature. Its 2015 impact factor calculated by Thomson Reuters (now Clarivate Analytics) is 8.893.

The Nano Research Award, which was established by the journal Nano Research together with TUP and Springer, is given to individual scientists who have contributed significantly to nano research. The winner is selected by an award committee made up of the editors-in-chief, associate editors, representatives from TUP and Springer Nature. Past awardees include Charles M. Lieber of Harvard University, and Paul Alivisatos and Peidong Yang both of University of California, Berkeley.

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Springer is a leading global scientific, technical and medical portfolio, providing researchers in academia, scientific institutions and corporate R&D departments with quality content through innovative information, products and services. Springer has one of the strongest STM and HSS eBook collections and archives, as well as a comprehensive range of hybrid and open access journals. Springer is part of Springer Nature, a global publisher that serves and supports the research community. Springer Nature aims to advance discovery by publishing robust and insightful science, supporting the development of new areas of research and making ideas and knowledge accessible around the world.

As part of Springer Nature, Springer sits alongside other trusted brands like Nature Research, BioMed Central and Palgrave Macmillan. Visit http://www.springer.com and follow @SpringerNature
LA JOLLA--The Salk Institute's Waitt Advanced Biophotonics Center and ZEISS announced today a global partnership to accelerate the frontiers of microscopy and imaging technologies.

The Waitt Center, launched in 2011 with a landmark $20 million gift from Salk Board Chair Ted Waitt's Waitt Foundation and supported by federal grants, serves as a state-of-the-art research hub, offering next-generation imaging, visualization and data analysis tools to researchers from across many biological disciplines including cancer, neuroscience, plant biology and immunology.

Now, the Waitt Center's partnership with ZEISS, a global, Germany-based company that develops cutting-edge optical and optoelectronic technologies, will enable access to ZEISS' state-of-the-art technology before it's commercially available. ZEISS will collaborate with Salk scientists to receive critical feedback on challenging imaging needs to further push the boundaries of imaging technologies to new frontiers.

"Overall, this is a unique opportunity that gives Salk scientists a chance to not only benefit from ZEISS technology as it is being developed, but also to influence how the next generation of microscopes are designed," says Uri Manor, director of the Waitt Advanced Biophotonics Center core and Salk staff scientist.

Imaging and the accompanying data needed to capture higher resolution visuals are becoming more essential to biomedical research. "We are delighted to have this opportunity to help advance critical technology so essential to many areas of cutting-edge biological fields," adds Elizabeth Blackburn, president of the Salk Institute. "This partnership enables us to have access to the latest imaging technology, and will have tremendous impact on our ability to visualize and better understand the workings of biology and disease."

ZEISS recently assisted the Waitt Center with an expansion microscopy workshop, which is expected to be the first of many hands-on workshops and courses supported by ZEISS personnel and equipment. In the future, the partnership will reach full force as the Waitt Center collaborates with ZEISS to develop, test, optimize and perform next-generation biological imaging experiments with alpha and beta versions of hardware and software for everything from high-speed 4D fluorescence imaging to cryo-correlative fluorescence and electron microscopy.

"The ZEISS labs@location Partnership Program is a community of key customers and partners providing in-depth knowledge and dedicated services to support our microscopy business," says Jim Sharp, president of Carl Zeiss Microscopy, LLC. "We are very excited to work more closely with the Salk Institute to not only improve our West Coast presence, but also better understand and respond to the ever-changing needs of our user base."

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About the Salk Institute for Biological Studies:

Every cure has a starting point. The Salk Institute embodies Jonas Salk's mission to dare to make dreams into reality. Its internationally renowned and award-winning scientists explore the very foundations of life, seeking new understandings in neuroscience, genetics, immunology and more. The Institute is an independent nonprofit organization and architectural landmark: small by choice, intimate by nature and fearless in the face of any challenge. Be it cancer or Alzheimer's, aging or diabetes, Salk is where cures begin. Learn more at: salk.edu.

About ZEISS

ZEISS is an internationally leading technology enterprise operating in the fields of optics and optoelectronics. The ZEISS Group develops, produces and distributes measuring technology, microscopes, medical technology, eyeglass lenses, camera and cinema lenses, binoculars and semiconductor manufacturing equipment. With its solutions, the company constantly advances the world of optics and helps shape technological progress. ZEISS is divided up into the four segments Research & Quality Technology, Medical Technology, Vision Care/Consumer Products and Semiconductor Manufacturing Technology. The ZEISS Group is represented in more than 40 countries and has over 50 sales and service locations, more than 30 manufacturing sites and about 25 research and development centers around the globe. In fiscal year 2015/16 the company generated revenue approximating 4.9 billion with over 25,000 employees. Founded in 1846 in Jena, the company is headquartered in Oberkochen, Germany. Carl Zeiss AG is the strategic management holding company that manages the ZEISS Group. The company is wholly owned by the Carl Zeiss Stiftung (Carl Zeiss Foundation).
Humans have been drawing lines and circles to grasp geometrical concepts and describe the laws of nature for about 5,000 years. But most scholars have approached the history of ancient mathematical sciences through close examinations of texts and writings, an area of study called philology.

Eunsoo Lee, a PhD student in classics, hopes to expand that scholarship by tracing the changes and variations in diagrams over the course of human history.

"Diagrams can tell us a lot about visual norms of the day," Lee said. "Languages we speak affect how we think, but the visual images we draw also shape our thought."

Over the past six years, Lee has examined changes in diagrams used in Elements, a collection of 13 books on mathematical and geometric concepts attributed to Euclid, the ancient Greek mathematician who lived in Alexandria, Egypt, around 300 BCE. He is attempting to build a database of diagrams as part of his dissertation project.

From mathematics to classics

According to historians and scholars, Elements was deemed to be the most popular pre-20th-century textbook. The work, written about 2,300 years ago, was the second-most printed book after the Bible at one time.

Lee first read Elements during his undergraduate years at Seoul National University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics.

"I was fascinated by its simple logic and structure," said Lee, a 2016-17 Geballe Dissertation Prize Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center. The work inspired Lee to pursue the study of classics and examine the work of other ancient scientists.

Historians and classists have studied in detail the language of Elements -- which was first written on papyrus in Greek - and how its text changed over time. But the work's diagrams, essential to its geometrical concepts, were left out of those studies.

"Until recently, no one has really examined the visual side of ancient science," said Reviel Netz, professor of classics and Lee's adviser. "You would try to recover the words that people said but you didn't try to recover the visual impact, the images."

Lee was puzzled by what he calls "a blind spot" in the study of Elements and similar ancient works, some of which changed drastically over the centuries after numerous copies and translations. Lee said this puzzlement was the seed for his dissertation project at Stanford.

Netz called Lee's attempt to reconstruct and study the visual history of Elements unique and groundbreaking for the field of classics.

Recent scholarship has shown that diagrams are an essential part of demonstrating the scientific meaning of an argument, Netz said.

"We've come to realize just how central images are to scientific thinking," Netz said. "You do one kind of science when you assume that diagrams are precise pictures, and you do a different kind of science when diagrams are assumed to be just rough sketches."

"The changes in the diagrams reflect the culture and custom of that particular age and time," Lee said. "By examining them, we also get a better understanding of how visual knowledge has been created and transmitted."

Comparing diagrams

In the course of his project, Lee has traveled numerous times to Europe to study more than 175 copies of Elements - from the earliest known Greek manuscript from the 9th century to the early printed editions in the 15th and 16th centuries.

As Elements was reproduced over hundreds of centuries, the work was adapted for new audiences. Examining the transmission and translation of diagrams over such a long time became a vast, challenging game for Lee.

In some cases, manuscript makers introduced errors into the diagrams that carried over to future copies. In other cases, the diagrams were meticulously transmitted and enhanced to better explain geometrical concepts to a different audience. For example, as the work's distribution increased and parchment codex replaced papyrus rolls, what was earlier presented as one complex diagram was divided into two or more simpler drawings.

"The diagrams were not merely copied and reproduced, but transmitted and transformed, reflecting the fashion and norms of each age," Lee said.

When the work was translated into Latin and Arabic from Greek, more changes were introduced. In the Arabic copies, the diagrams' orientations and letters were switched to accommodate a right-to-left reading audience.

But Lee also found that some Greek manuscripts carried the same switched diagrams. Lee said this finding is one of the most interesting discoveries he has made, because classics scholars overwhelmingly believe that Greek manuscripts precede the Arabic ones.

"I believe this suggests we have to open the possibility that some Arabic diagrams might have influenced the early Greek diagrams," Lee said.

The printing revolution in the 15th century marked a significant footprint in the history of diagrams, Lee said. The makers of the diagrams, who were previously largely unknown, became recognized as authors. The diagrams themselves became exposed to competition, he said.

"The competition naturally resulted in diagrammatic criticism and led to the invention of more practical drawing of diagrams to attract more readers," Lee said.

A 'lifelong' project

Aside from tracing the changes in diagrams themselves, Lee is also trying to develop a framework for how to distinguish them and record their differences.

"The methodology for examining diagrams remains in its infancy," Lee said. "And there is no consensus regarding how it might address the reconstruction, comparison and tracing of diagrams, which therefore are neither acknowledged nor investigated in any significant depth."

Lee hopes to continue to trace the history of visual knowledge and expand his analysis beyond Elements. But he recognizes that the task is of enormous proportions, particularly because of the need to examine a large number of ancient texts, most of which remain scattered across libraries in different countries and are available for limited viewing.

"It's a huge project," Lee said. "It's a lifelong plan."

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The mouse lemur -- the world's smallest primate -- has the potential to transform the field of genetics and serve as an ideal model for a wide range of primate biology, behavior and medicine, including cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer's disease, Stanford University School of Medicine researchers say.

For decades, scientists have relied on mice, fruit flies and worms as genetic models, but despite all their success, these organisms routinely fail to mimic many aspects of primate biology, including many human diseases, said Mark Krasnow, MD, PhD, professor of biochemistry.

Frustrated by the lack of a good study model, Krasnow and his colleagues turned to the mouse lemur and began conducting detailed physiologic and genetic studies on hundreds of these petite, docile creatures in the rainforests of Madagascar.

Working in a Stanford-funded lab on the island country, the scientists report that they already have identified more than 20 individual lemurs with unique genetic traits, including obesity, high cholesterol, high blood sugar, cardiac arrhythmias, progressive eye disease and motor and personality disorders. Their hope is that continued study of these abundant primates could lead to a better understanding, and possibly better treatments, of these and other conditions in lemurs and humans.

'Huge potential'

"I think mouse lemurs have great potential for our understanding of primate biology, behavior and conservation, in the same way that fruit flies and mice over the last 30 or 40 years have transformed our understanding of developmental biology and many other areas of biology and medicine," Krasnow said. "Some of the most fascinating and important questions that need to be answered are primate-specific. For those, we really need something besides humans to complement the work that has been done in fruit flies and mice."

A paper describing the researchers' findings will be published online June 9 in Genetics. Krasnow is the senior author. Lead authorship is shared by graduate student Camille Ezran and postdoctoral scholar Caitlin Karanewsky.

The project began in 2009 when Krasnow, frustrated by the lack of a good animal model for lung disease -- his area of expertise -- commissioned three high school interns to search the animal world for something better. By the end of the summer, the interns had come up with the mouse lemur, which fits all the necessary criteria: Like mice, these animals are small (about twice the size of a mouse), develop quickly, reproduce rapidly, produce many offspring, and are inexpensive and easy to maintain and manage. In genetic terms, the mouse lemur is about midway between humans and mice, Krasnow said.

"When I talk to scientists, their faces light up when I tell them about mouse lemurs because they are about the size of a mouse but they are primates, so that makes a huge difference," said Ezran, who was one of the high school interns. "I think they really do present such great potential for biological, behavioral and medical research in general."

Early on in the project, Krasnow sought out the perspective of Stanford veterinarians, ultimately recruiting Megan Albertelli, DVM, PhD, assistant professor of comparative medicine. A geneticist and primate specialist, Albertelli said she was initially skeptical of the idea of lemurs as animal models, but soon became enthusiastic after realizing their enormous potential for contributions in understanding neurologic problems, eye disease and other conditions where mouse models have fallen short.

Trip to France

She accompanied the group on a trip to France to visit with scientists who had been studying lemurs in the laboratory for years. A French team had found that some aging lemurs develop a form of dementia and accumulate plaques in the brain that resemble those of Alzheimer's patients.

"I saw that they were promising models for Alzheimer's disease," Albertelli said. "Alzheimer's is a condition that is hard to model in other animal species, so that was very exciting."

Mouse lemurs live exclusively on Madagascar, where they are found in great abundance. Tens of millions of them populate the island. While lemurs generally are endangered due to habitat destruction, mouse lemurs are not under threat and freely roam the island, said Ezran, who calls them the "rodents of Madagascar."

The Stanford researchers began to develop collaborations with other scientists studying lemurs, including those at the Centre ValBio near the Ranomafana National Park in Madagascar, who have been examining lemur ecology, family structure and behavior for decades.

During periodic visits to the island, Krasnow and his colleagues learned how to catch brown mouse lemurs in the rainforest just outside the research station, using a tiny banana slice inside a trap as a lure. The scientists then tagged and photographed each animal, gave them a thorough physical examination, analyzed them for behavioral issues and abnormalities and removed a drop of blood for detailed genetic and serum studies. The animals then were released back into the wild so the researchers could follow them over time to see how their environments may influence their progress and health. In 2013, Stanford built a sophisticated molecular biology and genetics lab within the ValBio complex, where these studies could be carried out.

'Distinctive personalities'

Lemurs have distinctive personalities, Krasnow said, and the researchers gave each one a name, based on his or her looks or behavior. For instance, one was named Feisty for his unusually aggressive nature; most lemurs are docile.

The work has led to a whole new way of doing genetic studies, said Krasnow, who is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. Instead of using the traditional method of introducing genetic mutations into mice to create "knockout" mice -- or animals with customized genes -- they found they were able to find naturally occurring variants among animals in the wild. Moreover, in working with lemurs in their native habitats, the researchers could better understand how the animals interact with their surroundings and the relationship between genes and the environment.

"Instead of introducing mutations in mice or fruit flies, we are doing something much more similar to what is done in humans," he said. "We are looking at all the wonderful genetic variation already existing in nature, since there are so many millions of mouse lemurs out there. We calculate that most 'knockout' mutations are already present in nature, and all we have to do is find them. And because the cost of sequencing a genome is rapidly dropping, it's now possible to sequence the genomes of thousands of mouse lemurs to see what mutations they are carrying."

In doing so, the researchers could accomplish in a few years for a tiny fraction of the cost what the International Knockout Mouse Consortium will accomplish in 10 years, at a cost of nearly $1 billion, he said.

But the project could use some additional staff, as the process of capturing the animals and screening them in the laboratory is labor-intensive, he said. He and his colleagues have come up with a multipurpose solution that will contribute to the local educational system while helping preserve the lemur populations in Madagascar, whose habitats are threatened by farming, mining and logging interests, he said.

Help from students

The group is developing a science curriculum for use in Malagasy high schools in which students learn about biology by exploring the rich environment right outside their school houses. Among the instructors is Manu Prakash, PhD, assistant professor of bioengineering at Stanford and a pioneer in the field of "frugal science," who has brought his powerful $1 paper microscopes to Madagascar and taught students how to explore the microscopic world in which they live, including the lice in their hair, the pathogens in their water and the disease-causing parasites in their environment. The curriculum was first introduced among university students, some of whom now are screening lemurs at the Stanford lab in Madagascar.

"We saw this as an opportunity because we are going over there to study the unique animals and biology and ecology of Madagascar, which is unsurpassed in the world," Krasnow said. "It is the No. 1 hotspot for biodiversity, but most of the students don't realize what they have in their backyards because they are being taught from textbooks and from teachers who have learned from Europeans."

He said the researchers hope to expand scientific curricula at all levels of education, helping train the Malagasy scientists of the future and build scientific capacity in the country, all the while creating an appreciation among the local population of the need to understand and preserve lemurs and other species for the future.

"We are trying to do this in a way that is respectful and will help the lemurs and the people of Madagascar, while enlightening many aspects of primate biology and human disease," he said.

The researchers plan to make the genetic sequencing and phenotyping information they obtain from the lemurs publicly available so that researchers around the world can take advantage of this trove of knowledge, Albertelli said.

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Other Stanford co-authors are graduate students Maya Krasnow and Stephan Chang, former undergraduate student Jason Willick, former research assistant Alexander Sholtz and lab technician Jozeph Pendleton. (Maya Krasnow and Willick are two of the former high school interns who began work on the project in 2009.)

Researchers at the University of Antananarivo and Auburn University also co-authored the study.

The research was supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Vera Moulton Wall Center of Stanford University.

Stanford's Department of Biochemistry also supported the work.

The Stanford University School of Medicine consistently ranks among the nation's top medical schools, integrating research, medical education, patient care and community service. For more news about the school, please visit http://med.stanford.edu/school.html. The medical school is part of Stanford Medicine, which includes Stanford Health Care and Stanford Children's Health. For information about all three, please visit http://med.stanford.edu.
MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, Mass. (June 7, 2017) -- A group of faculty at Tufts University's School of Arts and Sciences has received a $1 million grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) to broaden participation and cultivate the talents of undergraduate students of diverse backgrounds in the natural sciences.

The five-year initiative will provide science faculty and teaching assistants in introductory science courses with support to enhance their ability to elicit, recognize, interpret, and respond meaningfully to all students' thinking and reasoning regardless of their cultural background or prior preparation. It will be led by Roger Tobin, professor of physics; David Hammer, professor of education and physics; Juliet Fuhrman, professor of immunology and infectious disease; Susan Koegel, senior lecturer of cell biology and immunology; and Donna Qualters, director of the university's Center for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching.

Known as the Listening Project, the program aims to increase instructors' awareness of implicit and unconscious bias and support their efforts to elicit and cultivate the productive beginnings of scientific thought in all students.

HHMI is the largest private, nonprofit supporter of science education in the United States. The grant is part of HHMI's Inclusive Excellence initiative, an effort that seeks to increase the capacity of colleges and universities to effectively engage students - particularly under-represented ethnic minorities, first-generation college students and working adults with families - so they can be successful in science. Tufts is one of 24 universities selected in the first round of grant awards.

"Achieving inclusive excellence in the science community is a crucial goal for expanding innovation and discovery within our fields," said Tobin. "Our program will involve instructors at all levels - faculty, graduate student teaching assistants, and undergraduate peer tutors and study group leaders - with the goal that students in our courses will experience a unified approach and set of expectations about what it means to be a student of science."

Tobin said that by shifting the emphasis from retaining and repeating memorized information to explaining ideas and supporting them with evidence, the program aims to build students' analytical skills and make science majors and science careers more accessible to students from diverse educational and cultural backgrounds.

David Asai, senior director for science education at HHMI, said the organization is working to improve the structure of the natural science curriculum nationally and the way it is delivered by, for example, adjusting policies and procedures, training faculty, and improving climate and culture in schools nationwide.

"Too many times we approach diversity with a deficit mindset in which interventions are aimed at fixing the students," said Asai. Instead, the new initiative focuses on the important work of making the culture of the institution more inclusive, he said. "We want to change the way schools do business."

According to HHMI, a person's success in science in the United States too often reflects their origin rather than their desired career path. Students who arrive in four-year degree programs directly from high school and students whose parents went to college are far more likely to persist in earning STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) degrees than students who enter college from less traditional pathways. Also, students from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups leave STEM at significantly greater rates than whites and Asians even when they come to college with similar preparation.

Finding a way to include all students, from all backgrounds, in STEM is critical for building future generations of American scientists, Asai said. "Science excellence depends on having a community of scientists that is rich in diversity of people and perspectives," he said.

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About Tufts University

Tufts University, located on campuses in Boston, Medford/Somerville and Grafton, Massachusetts, and in Talloires, France, is recognized among the premier research universities in the United States. Tufts enjoys a global reputation for academic excellence and for the preparation of students as leaders in a wide range of professions. A growing number of innovative teaching and research initiatives span all Tufts campuses, and collaboration among the faculty and students in the undergraduate, graduate and professional programs across the university's schools is widely encouraged.
To assess the cause and effect relationship between clinical and basic research and efficiency in public health centers, the researchers used a database from the Ministry of Health.With this database, which consists of results from 189 public Spanish hospitals over more than a decade (1996 to 2009), researchers measured the impact that R&D&i has on the length of patients hospital stays.

The results of the study, published in the journal Research Policy, show that both basic and clinical research have a positive effect on hospital efficiency. "Hospitals that can produce more knowledge in terms of scientific publications are also going to be better hospitals, in both diagnosis and treatment and surgery. As such, they contribute to reducing the patient's average stay in hospitals," said one the study's authors, Josep A. Tribo, full professor in the UC3M Department of Business Administration.

"Taking into account that approximately 9% of the population is hospitalized over the course of the year, each day of a hospital stay entails an annual cost of some 660 euros per patient in Spain," explained another of the researchers, Alvaro Escribano, full professor in the UC3M Department of Economics. "Therefore, adopting measures that reduce the duration of hospital stays will greatly reduce health costs." Tribo added, "If you reduce or penalize doctors' research activity, they will be less prepared, which will ultimately lead to an increase in health care costs." In other words, hurting research can have a great impact on global health care costs.

The study also analyzes the impact of R&D on the sustainability of the National Health System (initialed SNS in Spanish) through the cost reduction entailed by the reduction in the length of hospital stays. "If scientific production increased significantly, health costs would be reduced by around 1%," stated another of the researchers, Antonio Garcia-Romero, professor at the IE Business School.

In the study, they also point out the most important factors that affect the efficiency of hospitals, such as their characteristics, human resources, diagnostic activity, investment and capacity to absorb knowledge. Their recommendation, however, is that "it is necessary to promote research, and in particular, basic research, because this would have very clear effects in the medium to long term on efficiency and a reduction in health care costs."In addition, there are other indirect benefits that are even more important. For example, if patients recover sooner, they will also return to work sooner, which in turn will increase labor production.

Furthermore, research carried out in hospitals affects other aspects such as reduction in mortality and patient safety patient. The methodology used in this article could be employed to analyze these effects.

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Video: https://youtu.be/ElWpx2crySo

Further information:

The impact of health research on length of stay in Spanish public hospitals. Antonio Garcia-Romero, Alvaro Escribano, Josep A. Tribo. Research Policy, Volume 46, Issue 3, April 2017, Pages 591-604. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2017.01.006
Noise from motorboats is making fish become bad parents, and reducing the chance of their young surviving, research led by marine experts at the University of Exeter has shown

Noise from motorboats is making fish become bad parents, and reducing the chance of their young surviving, research led by marine experts at the University of Exeter has shown.

The sound of motorboat engines disturbed coral reef fish so acutely it changed the behaviour of parents, and stopped male fish properly guarding their young, feeding and interacting with their offspring.

The research, which involved playing recordings of natural reef noise or intermittent motorboat noise around 38 fish nests over 12 days, found that the death-rates of baby fish exposed to boat engine noise increased significantly, with six of the 19 boat-noise nests suffering complete mortality.

The Exeter University led team of marine biologists say that noise from boats is a 'global pollutant', distracting fish and making them unable to properly protect their young from predators. They believe motorboat noise should be factored in when trying to protect fish stocks and manage fisheries.

Dr Steve Simpson, an expert of the impact of noise on marine life at the University of Exeter.

"This study raises important implications for managing the noise of the 100,000s of motorboats used around the world in coral reef environments. We are now considering acoustic quiet zones and corridors, and exploring how engine and propeller development can reduce the impact of this globally prevalent pollutant."

The University of Exeter researchers predicted that their field research into the effect of man-made noise on coral fish could have wider implications for the survival of other marine species, and even birds and mammals. They called for more research in these areas.

Dr Sophie Nedelec, of the College of Life and Environmental Sciences at the University of Exeter, said she believed other species could be similarly affected by marine noise pollution.

"Parental care is widespread in the animal kingdom; from blue tits to blue whales, so there could be big implications for populations of animals affected by noise," she said.

Noise from boats and has already been shown to affect the way fish, mammals, birds and invertebrates behave. It can force them to change their habitat to get away from the noise and reduce their success finding a mate. Boat noise can travel for many kilometres underwater.

This new research, carried out by the University of Exeter, University of Bristol, James Cook University, Queensland, Australia, and the Australian Institute of Marine Science, showed motorboat noise can increase death rates among juvenile fish.

Dr Nedelec, lead author on the paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B journal, added:

"Parental care behaviour seems to be impaired in noisy conditions and we believe this makes it easier for predators to strike their offspring. It is likely the parents were either stressed or distracted by the noise, giving an advantage to the predators in this case."

The researchers made observations for 12 days of 38 natural nests with broods of young in the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. It found that exposure to recordings of noise from motorboats, compared to ambient sounds, had a noticeable impact on the survival of baby coral reef fish, and the behaviour of adult male fish.

Motorboat noise is the most common source of man-made noise in shallow reef environments. The University of Exeter scientists warned that because they broadcast the motorboat engine noise through underwater loudspeakers which do not broadcast the full range of sounds produced by motorboats their results could be conservative.

The males and female spiny chromis, a coral reef fish which lives in the tropical Western Pacific, bring up their offspring together, with males contributing more care than females of the species.

Fish exposed to the motorboat noise spent far more time chasing and making aggressive strikes at other fish, compared to males exposed to recordings of ambient sound. The scientists believe this increase in aggressive behaviour may have been be due to 'heightened stress', or distraction by the noise which led to decision-making errors, so the fish attacked or chased fish that were not a predatory threat.

The greater time spent "chasing inappropriate species at inappropriate times" also meant father fish spent less time near the nest, which may have left their offspring vulnerable to attacks from predators.

Adult fish exposed to the motorboat noise also spent less time feeding, which would have been likely to reduce their physical condition.

Another coral reef fish, the longear sunfish, was observed to move away from their nest when a slow-moving motorboat was nearby. Predators that have located a nest they can feed from are likely to return to hunt.

Other studies have shown that spawning could be interrupted by the approach of a fast moving powerboat.

Professor Andy Radford, University of Bristol, said: "Experiments that measure survival in natural conditions - as we have done in this study - are crucial if we are to understand fully the impact of anthropogenic noise."

The research is published on June 7th in Proceedings of the Royal Society B Journal.

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It was supported by a NERC Knowledge Exchange Fellowship, the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, an EPSRC studentship and Subacoustech.
MOSCOW, Idaho -- June 4, 2017 -- A team led by University of Idaho researchers is calling into question a widely publicized 2016 study that concluded eastern and red wolves are not distinct species, but rather recent hybrids of gray wolves and coyotes. In a comment paper that will publish Wednesday, June 7, in the journal Science Advances, the team examines the previous study and argues that its genomic data and analyses do not definitively prove recent hybridization -- but rather provide support for the genetic and evolutionary distinctiveness of red and eastern wolves.

"The history of these species is complex and certainly contains evidence for hybridization in the past. The question is timing," said Paul Hohenlohe, an assistant professor of biological sciences in the UI College of Science and the lead author of the comment paper. "The data and analyses aren't actually a good test of recent vs. older hybridization. In fact, the data are consistent with red and eastern wolves having a long evolutionary history as distinct lineages."

Hohenlohe co-authored the paper with an interdisciplinary team that included co-lead author Linda Rutledge, a research associate in the biology department at Trent University in Ontario, Canada; Lisette Waits, a Distinguished Professor in UI's College of Natural Resources Department of Fish and Wildlife Sciences; UI research scientist Jennifer Adams; UI postdoctoral researcher Kimberly Andrews; and other researchers from Trent, the University of Georgia and Northland College.

The team agrees with one conclusion of the previous study: Admixture is a part of the evolutionary history of North American canids, and conservation policy needs to take into account naturally occurring hybridization and population admixture. But they urge policymakers not to close the case on the origins of red and eastern wolves when making conservation decisions.

"Policymakers are making decisions about how much money, effort and energy to put into recovery and management efforts of the red wolf and eastern wolf," said Waits, who has served on U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recovery teams for the red wolf. "It is important for them to understand that the conclusions stated in the vonHoldt et al paper are not universally supported by the scientific community, and there are alternative interpretations and remaining questions about the evolutionary history of canids in North America."

The UI-led team addresses several concerns with the previous study, which was led by Princeton University's Bridgett vonHoldt and published in Science Advances in July 2016. The team questions the vonHoldt study's use of genomic data from a few individual coyotes and eastern wolves that may not be the best representatives of those groups, as well as the authors' conclusion that genomic data demonstrate a lack of unique ancestry in red and eastern wolves.

The team's review of the vonHoldt study's analyses of genomic data finds the data do not establish definitive evidence for a recent hybrid origin of red and eastern wolves, but rather are consistent with multiple evolutionary possibilities. These possibilities include red wolves originating from a hybridization event tens of thousands of years ago, or diverging as a distinct lineage as long as 100,000 years ago and experiencing some subsequent hybridization.

The UI-led team finds that other data from the previous study, such as the amount of unique genetic variation found only within red or eastern wolves, further support the genetic distinctiveness of these taxa.

Hohenlohe, Waits and their collaborators are conducting further analyses about red and eastern wolf origins, and expect to continue to generate new data and hypotheses about the evolutionary relationships among these species, the gray wolf and the coyote.

"Genomics is an exciting new contribution to wildlife conservation, but it brings with it a responsibility to provide a coherent interpretation of complex data within the context of natural history," Rutledge said. "This is especially important for species at risk of extinction where the consequences involve the permanent loss of evolutionary potential. We get closer to the evolutionary truth when we use a holistic approach that includes multiple sources of information."

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Special Note to Reporters: More information, including a copy of the paper, can be found online at the Science Advances press package at http://www.eurekalert.org/jrnls/sciadvances/.

About UI

The University of Idaho, home of the Vandals, is one of only 72 land-grant research universities in the United States. From its residential campus in Moscow, UI serves the state of Idaho through educational centers in Coeur d'Alene, Boise, Idaho Falls and Twin Falls, and Extension offices in 42 counties. Home to more than 11,000 students statewide, UI is a leader in student-centered learning and excels at interdisciplinary research, service to businesses and communities, and in advancing diversity, citizenship and global outreach. UI competes in the Big Sky Conference and Sun Belt Conference. Learn more: http://www.uidaho.edu.

Media Contacts:

Tara Roberts

University Communications and Marketing

208-885-7097

troberts@uidaho.edu

Kate Weersink

Trent University

705-748-1011 x6180

kateweersink@trentu.ca
In two previous studies, University of North Carolina researchers and colleagues linked infant brain anatomy differences to autism diagnoses at age two. Now they show differences in functional connections between brain regions at 6 months to predict autis

CHAPEL HILL, NC - For the first time, autism researchers used MRIs of six-month olds to show how brain regions are connected and synchronized, and then predict which babies at high risk of developing autism would be diagnosed with the condition at age two. A previous UNC-lead study, published in Nature in February, used MRIs to determine differences in brain anatomy that predict which babies would develop autism as toddlers.

Published in Science Translational Medicine, this paper describes a second type of brain biomarker that researchers and potentially clinicians could use as part of a diagnostic toolkit to help identify children as early as possible, before autism symptoms even appear.

"The Nature paper focused on measuring anatomy at two time points (six and 12 months), but this new paper focused on how brain regions are synchronized with each other at one time point (six months) to predict at an even younger age which babies would develop autism as toddlers." said senior author Joseph Piven, MD, the Thomas E. Castelloe Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry at the UNC School of Medicine, and director of the Carolina Institute for Developmental Disabilities. "The more we understand about the brain before symptoms appear, the better prepared we will be to help children and their families."

Co-senior author John R. Pruett Jr., MD, PhD, associate professor of psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, said, "There are no behavioral features to help us identify autism prior to the development of symptoms, which emerge during the second year of life. But early intervention improves outcomes, so if in the future we could use MRI to identify children at ultra-high risk before they develop symptoms, we could begin treatments sooner."

During the study, sleeping infants were placed in an MRI machine and scanned for about 15 minutes to view neural activity across 230 different brain regions. The researchers analyzed how various brain regions were synchronized with each other. This synchrony reflects the coordinated activity of brain regions, which is crucial for cognition, memory, and behavior, and may be observed during sleep.

The researchers then focused on brain region connections related to the core features of autism: language skills, repetitive behaviors, and social behavior. For instance, the researchers determined which brain regions - synchronized at six months - were related to behaviors at age two. This helped Piven's co-investigators create a machine learning classifier - a computer program - to sort through the differences in synchronization among those key brain regions. Once the computer learned these different patterns, the researchers applied the machine learning classifier to a separate set of infants.

This part of the study included 59 babies enrolled at four sites, including the Carolina Institute for Developmental Disabilities (CIDD) at UNC-Chapel Hill, Washington University in St. Louis, the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and the University of Washington in Seattle. Each baby had an older sibling with autism, which means each baby had about a one-in-five chance of developing autism, as opposed to one in 68, which is the approximate risk among the general population. Eleven of the 59 babies went on to develop autism.

The machine learning classifier was able to separate findings into two main groups: MRI data from children who developed autism and MRI data from those who did not. Using only this information, the computer program correctly predicted 81 percent of babies who would later meet the criteria for autism at two years of age.

Robert Emerson, PhD, a former UNC postdoctoral fellow and first author of the study, said, "When the classifier determined a child had autism, it was always right. But it missed two children. They developed autism but the computer program did not predict it correctly, according to the data we obtained at six months of age."

Emerson added, "No one has done this kind of study in six-month olds before, and so it needs to be replicated. We hope to conduct a larger study soon with different study participants."

This marks the fourth autism imaging study UNC researchers led or co-led this year. Along with the Nature paper, UNC researchers and collaborators published a study in Biological Psychiatry in March linking increased cerebrospinal fluid surrounding to autism diagnoses. In February, they published a paper in Cerebral Cortex about the brain network functional connections involved in social behavior deficits in children with autism.

"I think the most exciting work is yet to come, when instead of using one piece of information to make these predictions, we use all the information together," Emerson said. "I think that will be the future of using biological diagnostics for autism during infancy."

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The National Institute of Mental Health and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development funded this study.

Along with the four clinical research sites mentioned above, which compose the Infant Brain Imagine Study (IBIS) Network, other research institutions had authors who were part of this study: The University of Minnesota, McGill University, New York University, the University of Alberta, and the University of Pennsylvania.
University of Sydney researchers have found that smartphone apps for treating back pain have questionable value as they are generally of poor quality, and have not been rigorously evaluated.

Published in Best Practice & Research: Clinical Rheumatology, the study found there has not been thorough evaluation of apps for the self-management of back pain and there is no guidance for consumers on how to select high-quality, evidence-based apps.

Low back pain is a major global public health issue and the leading cause of disability in most countries. Back pain affects 4 million people in Australia, costing the healthcare system $4.8 billion each year.

The study reviewed 61 current apps specifically designed to help consumers self-manage their back pain and evaluated their content, functionality, quality, and whether they recommend evidence-based interventions. The researchers found more than 700 apps in the Australian iTunes and Google Play stores that use the keyword "back pain".

"Treatment guidelines often recommend self-management for the symptoms of back pain, and mobile apps can represent a useful and convenient way to help people manage their own condition, however, consumers need to be aware that there is minimal regulatory control over their content," said lead researcher Gustavo Machado from the University's School of Public Health.

"Millions of people worldwide use these apps, however here is no independent guidance to help consumers identify which ones are safe and of high quality.

"In this study, apps generally offered questionable and poor quality information, lacked engaging and customisable features, and had poor visual appeal and questionable credibility."

Although the recommendations in most apps were broadly aligned with the 2016 National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) treatment guidelines such as strengthening exercises and yoga, the quality of the information provided was generally low.

"Developers usually claim that consumers could rapidly improve their back pain symptoms by following their exercise programs. However, none of the apps have been directly tested for their effectiveness, and only very few provide the educational content and information that is key to guideline recommendations," Gustavo Machado said.

"Considering none of the apps included in this study had been evaluated rigorously, it is not clear whether any of them are really effective in improving symptoms in people with back pain.

"Consumers often rely on in-app or online user ratings and reviews to select an app, but our study found that this information was not associated with app quality. In general, the apps that required some payment were also the ones with the highest quality scores."

Senior author Associate Professor Steven Kamper from Sydney Medical School said: "App developers need to work closely with healthcare professionals, researchers, and patients to ensure app content is accurate, evidence based, and engaging to improve the quality of existing apps for low back pain."

"They also need to devise ways to appropriately evaluate these emerging technologies to ensure that they are beneficial to patients," he said.

The study:

All smartphone apps available in the Australian Google Play and iTunes stores relevant to self-management of back pain were collected and assessed.

The 2016 National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines were used to identify whether interventions recommended by apps were evidence-based.

Apps that recommended evidence-based interventions were rated for quality by using the Mobile Application Rating Scale (MARS).

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The University of Strathclyde has signed a strategic framework agreement with multinational defence, security and aerospace company BAE Systems, to strengthen a long-term relationship in research, education and consultancy.

Strathclyde is one of only five selected universities in the UK to have so far signed such an agreement, after BAE Systems announced that in the future it will focus on building partnerships with a smaller number of universities that share expertise in particular areas of future capability.

Paul Feely, Engineering Director at BAE Systems Naval Ships, said: "I am delighted to agree this strategic partnership with the University of Strathclyde which boasts world-class expertise in technology.

This partnership builds on our existing working relationships to extend our collaboration, boosting the UK's defence industrial skills base and supporting the next generation of engineers and scientists. The technologies and approaches that we will work on together will give our customers an essential edge in protecting their nations."

Professor Alex Duffy, Head of Strathclyde's Department of Design, Manufacture and Engineering Management, said: "As a leading international technological university, Strathclyde thrives on productive industrial partnerships. BAE Systems is one of the companies we have worked closely with to produce impactful results and we have great pleasure in enhancing this partnership - to the benefit of the business, the University and wider society.

"Our academic expertise complements the industrial knowledge of BAE systems. This is in keeping with our collaborative approach to research and education and will accelerate our delivery of solutions to global challenges."

For a number of years, Strathclyde and BAE Systems have worked closely together on the development of advanced maritime research and technology and a stream of the best engineering talent into BAE Systems Naval Ships, helping to safeguard their position at the forefront of engineering excellence.

Collaboration in the coming years is likely to include intelligent automation, rapid integration and manufacturing, design simulation, energy and power management, environmental challenges and lasers.

The collaboration formed part of the BAE Systems' overarching Skills 2020 strategy, which aims to nurture the skills required for the Company to remain competitive and operate successfully over the current decade and beyond.

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A group of researchers at the Basque Excellence Research Center into Polymers (POLYMAT), the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), the University of Barcelona, the Institute of Bioengineering of Barcelona (IBEC), and the University of Aveiro, and led by Aurelio Mateo-Alonso, the Ikerbasque research professor at POLYMAT, have developed a new suite of molecular wires or nanowires that are opening up new horizons in molecular electronics. The research is being published today in the prestigious journal Nature Communications.

The growing demand for increasingly smaller electronic devices is prompting the need to produce circuits whose components are also as small as possible, and this is calling for fresh approaches in their design.

Molecular electronics has sparked great interest because the manufacture of electronic circuits using molecules would entail a reduction in their size. Nanowires are conducting wires on a molecular scale that carry the current inside these circuits. That is why the efficiency of these wires is crucially important.

In fact, one of the main novelties in this new suite of nanowires developed by the group led by Aurelio Mateo lies in their high efficiency, which constitutes a step forward in miniaturizing electronic circuits.

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About the lead researcher

Aurelio Mateo-Alonso (Madrid, 1976) is an Ikerbasque research professor seconded to the UPV/EHU-University of the Basque Country; he is the leader of POLYMAT's Molecular and Supramolecular Materials group and has an extensive research career behind him. His research work has received national and international recognition through various awards that include the following: the Young Researchers' Award from the University of Trieste (2007); the Eugen-Graetz Award from the University of Freiburg (2009); the Young Researchers' Award from the Royal Spanish Society of Chemistry (2011), and the Young Researchers' Award from the Nanocarbons Division of the American Electrochemical Society (2012). In 2016 he was awarded the prestigious "Consolidator Grant" by the European Research Council (ERC).

Bibliographic reference

Marco Carini, Marta P. Ruiz, Imanol Usabiaga, Jose A. Fernandez, Emilio Cocinero, Manuel Melle-Franco, Ismael Diez-Perez, and Aurelio Mateo-Alonso. High Conductance Values in -Folded Molecular Junctions. Nature Communications 8, Article number: 15195 (2017). DOI: 10.1038/NCOMMS15195.
Why has the neoclassical Gustavian style become so prominent in the Swedish self-image? A new dissertation from Uppsala University shows how researchers in art history, along with museums, commercial enterprises and the monarchy, have contributed to preserving and conveying the Gustavian style.

"An important reason for the extreme strength of the Gustavian style ideal," says Hedvig Mardh, doctoral student at the Department of Art History at Uppsala University, "is that it managed to unite a series of seemingly contradictory movements during the 1900s, such as tradition and modernity, and nationalism and internationalism, and that it has become part of various utopian visions."

The Gustavian style, connected to the 18th century and Gustav III and Gustav IV Adolf, has been intimately associated with what has been designated as specific Swedish cultural heritage, linked to Swedish tastes and interior design. The style has generally been highly esteemed by both museums and art historians, who have produced national and international exhibitions and publications and have also contributed to successful furniture production from the late 19th century through today, including both IKEA's line of 18th-century furniture as well as more small-scale production.

It's about recurring re-use, in the form of copies, reconstructions and staging of the period. In her dissertation A Century of Swedish Gustavian Style: Art History, Cultural Heritage and Neoclassical Revivals from the 1890s to the 1990s, Hedvig Mardh studied three periods that all illustrate the re-use of the Gustavian period in different ways: the 1890s, which saw the emergence of art history as a discipline, and of museums and cultural heritagethe period 1930-1940, when the production of period furniture existed concurrently with functionalismthe 1990s, a decade characterised by a cultural heritage boom, economic crisis and the search for a national identity in a European context.

There are a number of reasons behind the survival of the style as both cultural heritage and commercial product. Besides the fact that it has managed to incorporate contradictory social movements and forces through continuous recreation, art historians and museum curators have also played an important role by writing the style into the Swedish canon. But it's not only academia, but also the monarchy, museums and commercial enterprises, as well as various state-financed initiatives such as international exhibitions, that have contributed to the strong position of the style and its importance for a Swedish self-image.

In her dissertation, Hedvig Mardh examines the importance of the style concept for the discipline of art history and for cultural heritage processes.

"The concept of style can be problematic and is often ideologically charged, in that it conveys perceptions about things like changes over time and national identity," says Hedvig Mardh.

Style cannot be seen as a static concept, but rather as active, changeable and with agency, she says. Different uses of the Gustavian, such as artists' interpretations or the activities of various historical societies, can enhance the understanding and interpretations of the Gustavian style. How we speak about, describe and stage cultural heritage is important because it affects how we act and how we identify and manage cultural heritage.

"There are limited resources and space for what can be displayed and preserved," says Hedvig Mardh. "Designating something as the best, the most Swedish or the most tasteful also means that something else is excluded. It is important to raise awareness of how cultural heritage is created, what processes lie behind it, what role the academic disciplines play in these processes and how research interacts with practice and thus stages cultural heritage."

The dissertation is based on the research field of critical heritage studies, and researches the art historian's role in the creation of cultural heritage and the connection to a national cultural heritage. This is a perspective that has only been partially examined previously.

The materials that are the focus of the dissertation have also not previously been put in relation to each other- how do textbooks, exhibitions, historical societies and furniture production affect one another and what role does art history research play in these contexts?

###

Mardh Hedvig (2017): A Century of Swedish Gustavian Style: Art History, Cultural Heritage and Neoclassical Revivals from the 1890s to the 1990s, http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-317856

Contact:

Hedvig Mardh, assistant undergoing research training at Department of Art History, hedvig.mardh@konstvet.uu.se, +46-18-471 28 96, +46-733-40 28 54
Researchers have long sought ways to harness the body's immune system to treat disease, especially cancer. Now, scientists have found that the immune system may be triggered to treat atherosclerosis and possibly other metabolic conditions, including fatty liver disease and type 2 diabetes.

Studying mice, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have shown that a natural sugar called trehalose revs up the immune system's cellular housekeeping abilities. These souped-up housecleaners then are able to reduce atherosclerotic plaque that has built up inside arteries. Such plaques are a hallmark of cardiovascular disease and lead to an increased risk of heart attack.

The study is published June 7 in Nature Communications.

"We are interested in enhancing the ability of these immune cells, called macrophages, to degrade cellular garbage -- making them super-macrophages," said senior author Babak Razani, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of medicine.

Macrophages are immune cells responsible for cleaning up many types of cellular waste, including misshapen proteins, excess fat droplets and dysfunctional organelles -- specialized structures within cells.

"In atherosclerosis, macrophages try to fix damage to the artery by cleaning up the area, but they get overwhelmed by the inflammatory nature of the plaques," Razani explained. "Their housekeeping process gets gummed up. So their friends rush in to try to clean up the bigger mess and also become part of the problem. A soup starts building up -- dying cells, more lipids. The plaque grows and grows."

In the study, Razani and his colleagues showed that mice prone to atherosclerosis had reduced plaque in their arteries after being injected with trehalose. The sizes of the plaques measured in the aortic root were variable, but on average, the plaques measured 0.35 square millimeters in control mice compared with 0.25 square millimeters in the mice receiving trehalose, which translated into a roughly 30 percent decrease in plaque size. The difference was statistically significant, according to the study.

The effect disappeared when the mice were given trehalose orally or when they were injected with other types of sugar, even those with similar structures.

Found in plants and insects, trehalose is a natural sugar that consists of two glucose molecules bound together. It is approved by the Food and Drug Administration for human consumption and often is used as an ingredient in pharmaceuticals. Past work by many research groups has shown trehalose triggers an important cellular process called autophagy, or self-eating. But just how it boosts autophagy has been unknown.

In this study, Razani and his colleagues show that trehalose operates by activating a molecule called TFEB. Activated TFEB goes into the nucleus of macrophages and binds to DNA. That binding turns on specific genes, setting off a chain of events that results in the assembly of additional housekeeping machinery -- more of the organelles that function as garbage collectors and incinerators.

"Trehalose is not just enhancing the housekeeping machinery that's already there," Razani said. "It's triggering the cell to make new machinery. This results in more autophagy -- the cell starts a degradation fest. Is this the only way that trehalose works to enhance autophagy by macrophages? We can't say that for sure -- we're still testing that. But is it a predominant process? Yes."

The researchers are continuing to study trehalose as a potential therapy for atherosclerosis, especially since it is not only safe for human consumption but is also a mild sweetener. One obstacle the scientists would like to overcome, however, is the need for injections. Trehalose likely loses its effectiveness when taken orally because of an enzyme in the digestive tract that breaks trehalose into its constituent glucose molecules. Razani said the research team is looking for ways to block that enzyme so that trehalose retains its structure, and presumably its function, when taken by mouth.

###

This work was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), grant numbers K08 HL098559 and R01 HL125838; the Washington University Diabetic Cardiovascular Disease Center and Diabetes Research Center, grant number P30 DK020579; The Foundation for Barnes-Jewish Hospital; and the Wylie Scholar Award from the Vascular Cures Foundation.

Sergin I, Evans TD, Zhang X, Bhattacharya S, Stokes CJ, Song E, Ali S, Dehestani B, Holloway KB, Micevych PS, Javaheri A, Crowley JR, Ballabio A, Schilling JD, Epelman S, Weihl CC, Diwan A, Fan D, Zayed MA, Razani B. Exploiting macrophage autophagy-lysosomal biogenesis as a therapy for atherosclerosis. Nature Communications. June 7, 2017.

Washington University School of Medicine's 2,100 employed and volunteer faculty physicians also are the medical staff of Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children's hospitals. The School of Medicine is one of the leading medical research, teaching and patient-care institutions in the nation, currently ranked seventh in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. Through its affiliations with Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children's hospitals, the School of Medicine is linked to BJC HealthCare.
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Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron warned Prime Minister Theresa May's 'dementia tax' could threaten the future of the family farm.

After a visit to a farm in Welshpool, Mr Farron said farmers would be forced to sell their farm to pay for their care.

He said: This heartless and cruel dementia tax is threatening the family farm as we know it. It will end the idea that the family farm is passed from one generation to the next.

Theresa May is threatening to rob families of their homes, and Britain of a vital part of our rural history.

Britain has a proud farming heritage and those who are pushing to leave will be putting that at risk.

At a time where we have to fight for farmers to get a fair deal for things like the price of milk, and when many farmers are struggling, we should be doing all we can to protect the Great British Farm, not putting it under more pressure.

The UK's first ever research to address dementia in farming and rural communities has identified areas of significant concern.

Research carried out by Plymouth University into the experience of dementia in farming and farming families, and its impact on their businesses and home lives, has identified four areas of concern which need to be addressed if dementia in the countryside is to be better managed.

Backlash

The 'dementia tax' pledge has seen the Conservatives progress in the opinion polls halve since announcing the controversial plans a week ago.

Mrs May now says a government green paper will consult on the option of a limit on individuals care costs  which the party had previously ruled out  as well as the 100,000 floor.

The Tory leader said the plans would still give people peace of mind.

She said: This manifesto says that we will come forward with a consultation paper, a government green paper.

And that consultation will include an absolute limit on the amount people have to pay for their care costs.

So let me reiterate. We are proposing the right funding model for social care. We will make sure nobody has to sell their family home to pay for care.

We will make sure theres an absolute limit on what people need to pay. And you will never have to go below 100,000 of your savings, so you will always have something to pass on to your family.
Highly respected dairy farmer Derek Mead, who died on Sunday, was a 'farming hero' and was 'hugely passionate about tourism and the leisure economy, standing up for many businesses in North Somerset.'

72-year-old Mr Mead from Somerset died on Sunday after a 'tragic accident' involving his tractor.

It is understood that Mr Mead was crushed by a JCB farm loader after a dog is thought to have entered the cab and accidentally started the vehicle.

He leaves behind his family, who run the award-winning Puxton Park countryside attraction near Weston-super-Mare.

'Hugely passionate'

John Turner, CEO of Visit Somerset, paid tribute to Derek Mead. He said the whole board at Visit Somerset is saddened by the news.

He said: "I know that I can speak on behalf of the whole board at Visit Somerset in saying that we are all shocked and saddened by the news of Derek's untimely death and out deepest condolences and thoughts are with Derek's family at this awful time."

"Derek was hugely passionate about tourism and the leisure economy, standing up for many businesses in North Somerset and the county, ensuring that all those in power understood the importance of our visitor economy.

"Derek was also a successful farmer championing local food and drink and an astute businessmen who created Puxton Park, which now has become one of the great jewels in Somersets tourism crown, to which the Visit Somerset team have had the pleasure of working alongside for many years.

"This is a very sad day for the tourism industry and for the farming community in Somerset, we all owe a huge debt of gratitude to Derek for all his efforts over the years, which I know will go down in history, as one of the reasons we now have a thriving and growing visitor and food and drink economy."

'Legend'

In a statement the Mead family, who have been farming in Somerset since the 1400s, described the death as a 'terrible loss'.

They said: "It is with heavy hearts that we have to let you know that our father and grandfather, Derek Mead, was killed in a tragic accident on his farm.

"He was doing what he loved and has been doing since he was a young boy.

"The family thank you for all your kind messages during this time."

Conservative councillor Martin Williams said: "We may have been on opposite sides of the council chamber but we always had a good laugh afterwards.

"Every time you saw me you would shake my hand and tell me, 'I'll have you lot one day!'

"Legend, I'll miss you loads mate. Sleep well."

'Larger than life'

North Somerset Council said: "The tragic death of Councillor Derek Mead has come as a terrible shock to us all.

"Councillor Mead had a range of business interests and was passionate about the area where he lived and worked.

"He had great energy and enthusiasm, always striving to make a difference in bringing growth to the local economy and never shrinking from challenging members and officers on behalf of his constituents.

"He was a larger than life character who will be greatly missed."

Rupert Cox, chief executive of the Bath and West Show has said he was deeply saddened to learn of the death of Mr Mead, who had sponsored the show.

"He was at the show for two days last week we had a great chat," he said.

"He'll be a great loss to the farming community, he had an extremely active and busy life, its very sad."
Traditional Welsh Perry and Traditional Welsh Cider are the latest UK products to be awarded protected status by the European Commission.

They join other iconic Welsh products, such as Welsh Laverbread, Welsh Lamb and Halen Mon/Anglesey Sea Salt, in being recognised for their distinct quality and awarded protection against imitation and misuse.

The European Protected Geographical Indication status (PGI) will guarantee consumers the confidence they are drinking the genuine Welsh product when they buy Welsh Perry and Welsh Cider.

At present, the UK has 67 registered Geographical Indication products, with the majority of these registrations relating to the meat and cheese sectors.

Among those are West Country beef and lamb, where stock is born, raised, finished and slaughtered in Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, Gloucestershire, Dorset or Wiltshire.

The beef and lamb must be at least 70% forage fed and must spend a minimum of six months grazing.

Farm-produced drinks

In total, 14 Welsh products have now been awarded protected status.

Cabinet Secretary for Environment and Rural Affairs, Lesley Griffiths said: This is further evidence of the success of the Welsh food and drink sector and the effectiveness of our strategy to support it.

We are forging a reputation for developing unique, high quality products and the industry is already more than half way towards reaching our target of 30% growth from 2014 to 2020.

The recognition from the European Commission is important as it demonstrates the quality of Wales produce as we strive to reach new markets to grow the industry and prepare for a future outside of the EU."

Traditional Welsh Perry and Traditional Welsh Cider are re-emerging products that were largely farm-produced drinks using perry pears and cider apples grown in nearby orchards and made for local consumption.

The revival of these drinks has been based on artisan producers rediscovering and restoring ancient orchards and planting new orchards.

In terms of what will happen to PGI products when the UK leaves the EU, a report says the UK may still receive EU protection from imitations  provided the UK does the same for European products.

Thats according to an AHDB Horizon publication, which examines the impact Brexit may have on the industry in terms of products of Geographical Indication.
Brexit and general election uncertainty are both factors that could have a huge impact on Britain's economic state in the medium term future.

In manufacturing and engineering, Britain would, of course, like to return to its days as a world leader in both engineering innovation and manufacturing.

What moves are made towards doing this will depend on the policies implemented by the government decided upon this week, as well as negotiations in the run up to Brexit.

In terms of agricultural machinery, Britain may well suffer from price increases for imported equipment should the pound remain weak and the country fail to make moves to increase their own manufacturing yield in this sector.

The current European farming machinery industry

At present, the farming machinery industry in Europe is dominated by Germany and Italy.

Germany has the largest portion of the industry at 27%, with Italy at around 17% and France in third at 14%.

These three countries alone then make up for well over half of all machine production in the EU.

At present, the farming machinery industry in Europe is dominated by Germany and Italy

Of the products manufactured within the EU, about two thirds are sold within the union (including the UK), with the rest going to Eastern Europe, and to a lesser extent Asia.

The balance in which machines are focused on varies between the main producers, with Germany having a wider focus on harvesting and seeding technology, and Italy and France more on soil working machinery and transportation.

The industry was shown as being worth 28 billion euros in 2014, which was during an industry downturn. The peak for turnover was 2003, where the sector had a turnover of 29 billion euros.

Britain's current position

At present, Britain as part of the EU, can freely trade with the main agricultural machinery producers and import equipment without tariffs.

This may well change after Brexit, unless the UK is able to arrange a free trade agreement with the EU, which is looking highly unlikely and may not even be sought.

Even while Britain is part of the EU, the weakened pound as a result of Brexit has made buying products sold in euros more expensive.

Britain is likely to experience a weakened pound for the foreseeable future, though it should remain above the kind of lows we saw when Brexit was first announced.

How things might change for Britain

However, a weakened currency can actually have some positive economic effects.

The FTSE 100 usually rallies high when the pound is low, and this is because businesses who earn money in other currencies can become more profitable.

This means that should Britain look to exporting more, and by necessity therefore manufacture more, it could potentially attract more sales by being able to offer prices in pounds that are low for those spending in other currencies.

For Britain's future, manufacturing and export levels could well be key, and leaving the EU may allow the country to pursue better deals with countries they may wish to form strong export markets in.

In the agricultural machinery sector, then, upping production could not only help protect the UK agricultural industry from price hikes, but could also help create some export driven growth that harnesses the hidden benefits of a weak pound.

By Andre Jackson
A lamb has lost its ear due to a dog attack in the Pentland hills in Edinburgh, police are now appealing for information.

Police in Edinburgh are appealing for information following a sheep-worrying incident in the Pentland Hills.

The incident took place around 3.25pm on Saturday (June 3) at a farm near the Kirkgate area of Currie.

A tan-coloured dog, possibly a spaniel, was seen chasing livestock in a field and a lamb was later discovered to be missing an ear.

PC Alistair Murdoch of Oxgangs Police Station said: "Sheep worrying is completely avoidable and I can't emphasise strongly enough the need for dog walkers to ensure their animals are kept on leads around livestock.

"All dogs, whatever their usual temperament, are capable of chasing livestock. This behaviour can have severe or even fatal consequences for these animals as well as both an emotional and financial impact on the farmer.

"We're urging anyone who may have information about this incident, or who saw a dog matching this description and being walked by a woman in the area, to contact us."

Recently, 16 sheep were attacked by out of control dog in Suffolk.

Anyone with information is asked to contact Police Scotland on 101, quoting incident number 2820 of 3 June 2017, or report this anonymously to Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.
Identifying marginal gains and shaping the future will be the main themes of the day when 2016 RABDF/NMR Gold Cup winners Roland and Simon Bugler open the gates at Pilsdon Dairy Farm on Wednesday 28 June.

The father/son partnership will be revealing the story behind the successes that won them the Gold Cup accolade last year, especially looking at their detailed approach to cost management and the way they have restructured the business to allow investment and a viable succession plan that works for the wider family.

As well as covering these areas in various talks and a farm walk, sessions on optimising milking management, succession and long term business planning will be delivered by The Dairy Group and Evolution ABS, with further slots being filled by World Wide Sires and Kite Consulting.

These will cover the use of multi-cut grass silage systems and the innovative processes and thinking required for future breeding.

Foot trimming demonstrations will be carried out by Steve Paul throughout the day and visitors will also have the opportunity to see the new calf unit that has been developed, utilising old buildings, to focus management of calves at Waterhouse Farm.

Here calves are reared in hutches then housed in small groups on straw yards before being moved to cubicles at seven to eight months of age.

The Bugler children are looking forward to the RABDF/NMR Gold Cup Open Day

'Great programme'

Host farmer Simon Bugler says hes delighted to be able to showcase the farm, dairy herd and calf unit at the open day, and hopes to learn as much off visitors as they learn from the visit.

He says: We hope the event will attract people from far and wide who are looking to find out more about some key topics currently relevant within the industry.

We have a great programme lined up, with some very interesting speakers, focusing on areas that have been vital to our success. I hope visitors will be able to take home some key points and apply them to their own businesses  we look forward to the discussion giving us ideas too!

Were also proud to preview 80 of our Bettiscombe milking cows and heifers to visitors, all of which are being auctioned at Sedgemoor Sale Centre next month.

Victoria Chomiak, RABDF communications and farm event manager, says the amount of trade support for the event has been overwhelming.

She says: Its unprecedented to have over 50 trade stands in attendance; the support for the Gold Cup Open Day just seems to grow year on year. KW Alternative Feeds are principal sponsor for the day and Kite Consulting will be providing free bacon rolls on arrival for all pre-registered visitors.

Further information on the day, including the full programme of events is available here. Pre-registration is essential and can be done online using the previous link. If you have any queries please call the office on 02476 639317
A farming union has said the recent strong global dairy commodity prices are a sign that an increase in milk prices is 'imminent'.

The comments were made as the Ulster Farmers' Union milk price index (MPI) approaches 30 pence per litre.

Throughout May, prices for butter and cream rose rapidly. This has continued, with Dutch butter prices now at record levels.

Rising milk powder prices being recorded globally. This has triggered significant rises in all the main market indicators, including AMPE, MCVE and the UFU MPI.

'Long overdue'

Ulster Farmers Union dairy chairman, William Irvine said it is 'undeniable that prices are strong and markets buoyant.'

He said: We are long overdue a rise in the base price here in Northern Ireland. Processors have justified the stalling of price gains for farmers with claims that recovery in commodity prices is supply-led.

But the past six weeks have in fact shown that the recovery is very much demand-led, making it longer term and sustainable, said Mr Irvine.

'Significant recovery'

Some processors have also countered farmer calls for a base price rise by claiming a gap between fat and protein prices.

However, the UFU says there has been a 'significant recovery' in powder prices.

Dutch whole milk powder (WMP) prices increased from 2680 to 2950 in the last four weeks and skim prices are well clear of Intervention levels.

Mr Irvine continued: Processors now have no excuses for failing to share market gains with producers. I would urge them to think about the long-game.

Looking after farmers when markets are strong helps ensure dairy farm businesses remain viable and ensures their future milk supply.

Should a milk price boost not come with May payments processors will have a lot to answer for, and farmers will demand an explanation for unfair treatment.
Farmers are cautious about signing up to new schemes, survey shows
General Motors (GM 4.41%) said its sales of Cadillacs in China jumped 65% in May from a year ago. It was the 15th month in a row of year-over-year sales increases for GM's luxury brand in the world's largest new-car market.

The results helped the Cadillac brand to a 34% global increase in sales last month. GM's overall sales in China were roughly flat in May from from a year ago.

Cadillac is becoming a nice story for GM in China

Though May, Cadillac sales in China are up 85% from the same period in 2016. That gain is being driven by the success of three models:

The midsize XT5 crossover SUV has been a big hit since its introduction last year. GM sold over 5,000 XT5s in China in May, nearly as many as it sold in the U.S. last month (5,752).

Sales of the big XTS sedan have been consistently strong and growing as more Chinese consumers become familiar with the Cadillac brand. XTS sales rose 45% in May from a year ago.

The ATS-L is a China-only version of the compact ATS sedan. It has a longer wheelbase than the U.S. version, which gives it more room in the back seat. That's crucial in China, where luxury-car owners often hire drivers to deal with the heavy traffic in and around cities like Beijing and Shanghai. ATS-L sales nearly doubled in May from a year ago, the model's 11th consecutive month of double-digit percentage sales growth.

GM sold a total of 14,154 Cadillacs in China in May. That's more than the 13,211 it sold in the United States last month.

The rest of GM's China lineup had mixed results in May

Overall, GM sold 294,425 vehicles in China in May. That was down slightly (0.3%) from a record result in May of 2016. GM's Chevrolet and Buick brands have both seen sales slip in China this year, a result of lower demand for small cars in the wake of a reduction to a government incentive program.

(The Chinese government has long offered a tax incentive on vehicles with smaller engines, but the amount of that tax break was cut in half as of January 1. A lot of buyers rushed to buy before the change, so small-vehicle sales boomed late last year, but have slumped since.)

How GM's brands fared

Here's how GM's China brands (aside from Cadillac) fared last month.

Buick is still GM's best-selling brand in China, but its sales fell 6.8% from a year ago to 94,023 vehicles last month. The compact Excelle family of vehicles is suffering, but Buick is seeing strong sales of its Envision SUV and of the GL8, a China-only premium minivan. The big Buick LaCrosse sedan is also doing well, with over 7,800 sold in China last month (versus 3,183 in the U.S.).

Chevrolet sales fell slightly (about 1%) to 37,751 sold in China in May. Again, sales of its smallest models have suffered, but Chevy is making up most of the lost ground with strong sales of larger (and more profitable) sedans: Malibu sales rose 36% from a year ago. GM has just begun rolling out the all-new Chevy Equinox crossover in China, and said it sold "nearly 4,000" in May, its first full month on the market.

Baojun is an affordable China-only brand intended to compete on price with domestic Chinese automakers while offering GM quality. It has been a big success for GM: Sales rose 47% to 64,075 Baojuns sold in May. The small Baojun 510 SUV has quickly become a big seller: over 23,000 were sold in May.

The Wuling brand is in the process of shifting its focus from small vans for commercial buyers to a similar-but-different market: small minivans for young families. It delivered 84,602 vehicles in May, down 19% from a year ago.

Through May, GM's sales in China are down 3.7% this year from the same period in 2016.

How this market is likely to affect GM's profits

China is very important to GM's bottom line. GM's Chinese joint ventures generated $504 million in equity income in the first quarter, down less than 3% from the first quarter of 2016 despite a 5% year-over-year drop in sales.

The story of the first quarter was that GM's overall sales totals were down, but it sold a richer "mix" of vehicles -- more SUVs and larger sedans, fewer small cars. Two months into the second quarter, the pattern is holding: GM's sales in China were down about 1.1% in April and May combined from the same period in 2016, but it appears to be selling a significantly larger percentage of SUVs, crossovers, larger sedans -- and high-profit Cadillacs -- versus its mix a year go.

Long story short: GM's sales in China may be down, but it's once again on track for a strong profit in the second quarter, thanks in part to its old luxury brand.
Ford Motor Company (F 6.54%) said that its sales in China fell 3% in May, to 87,733 vehicles, as gains for its commercial-vehicle and Lincoln-brand lineups weren't enough to offset year-over-year sales declines for every Ford-brand vehicle in its retail lineup.

Year to date, Ford's sales in China are down 11% from a year ago.

Why are Ford's sales slipping in China?

There appear to be two factors putting pressure on Ford's China sales.

First, aggressively priced vehicles from fast-improving domestic Chinese automakers have been putting heavy pressure on most of the global auto brands, particularly at the lower ends of the market. That pressure has forced Ford, General Motors (GM 4.41%), and other global automakers to make a difficult choice: cut prices (and profit margins) to compete, or lose sales.

Second, key models in Ford's lineup are starting to show their age in China's fast-moving market. Small vehicles are particularly important in China, and Ford's Focus, EcoSport SUV, and Kuga (twin to the U.S.-market Escape) are no longer among the freshest offerings in their segments. Sales of all three are down by double-digit percentages in 2017, while the newer Edge and Taurus (a China-only model that was new last year) have fared better.

Ford has focused on protecting its margins (in China and elsewhere), but the cost of that has been lost sales. Now, Ford may be changing course: In a statement, Ford's Asia Pacific marketing and sales chief, Peter Fleet, said that Ford is now offering "new and exciting promotions for Ford-branded vehicles" in China, including a "realigned Kuga customer offer."

That will probably help somewhat in the near term, but Ford's lineup in China has deeper issues. The EcoSport is a particular problem, a weak offering in a super-important market segment. It's Ford's smallest SUV in a market where small, affordable SUVs are huge sellers, but the EcoSport -- originally designed several years ago as an inexpensive product for emerging markets -- isn't really competitive with rivals.

In particular, GM is eating the EcoSport's (and Ford's) lunch, dinner, and late-night snack right now: GM's small Baojun 510 SUV, from its affordable tailored-to-China Baojun brand, sold over 23,000 units last month. The EcoSport? Just 2,074, down 38% from a year ago. Ford plans to launch a facelifted version of the EcoSport in China later this year, but it may take a full redesign (and perhaps a new name) to make the smallest Ford SUV fully competitive.

Year to date, sales of Ford-brand passenger vehicles in China are down 22% from 2016.

Lincoln, commercial vehicles having more success

Ford's upscale Lincoln brand, on the other hand, has a good story unfolding in China. Lincoln sales were up 73% last month from a year ago to 4,112 vehicles, with good results for all five of the models in its China lineup.

Ford's retail network for Lincoln in China is still small: It had 65 Lincoln dealers in China as of the end of 2016. But the brand is highly regarded, and sales have grown rapidly. Year to date, Lincoln sales have doubled its result in the same period in 2016.

As it does in the U.S. and Europe, Ford also has a strong presence in the commercial-vehicle market in China. Its joint venture with Chinese automaker Jiangling Motors Corporation, or JMC, produces Ford's Transit and Tourneo vans, along with Ford's Everest SUV and other vehicles under the JMC brand. (Ford's Tourneo models are the passenger-vehicle siblings of the Transit commercial vans.)

JMC's sales were up 15% last month, on strong results for the Tourneo line and JMC Yusheng, a midsize SUV that is mechanically related to Ford's Ranger pickup.

What's next for Ford in China

Ford's profit in China has already taken a hit. Ford's joint ventures in China generated $274 million in equity income in the first quarter, down 38% from the first quarter of 2016. With two-thirds of the second quarter now in the books, it looks like Ford is beginning to address its problems. But its profits may lag for a while longer as it works to freshen its model lineup.
Defra is looking to swell its numbers to meet the challenges of Brexit and in readiness for the UK government taking back control of agricultural policy.

It is advertising for more than 30 new recruits to join the policy and communication departments in Westminster, Bristol and York.

Defra said in the adverts: This is a tremendously exciting time to join Defra. We are one of the lead departments in delivering a successful exit from the EU.

See also: Defra ill-prepared for Brexit, suggests report

Leaving the EU will fundamentally change the work we do and how we deliver it.

Backing British

Among the job opportunities are 25 policy adviser roles that will involve designing a new system for supporting farmers, with the aim to increase productivity while also improving the environment.

They will also prepare for negotiations for EU and global market access for the UKs food and drink sector.

Defra said knowledge of food, farming or animal and plant health issues would be helpful for applicants, but [is] not essential.

It is also recruiting for two communication experts to promote UK food and drink in international markets.

Successful applicants will also play a key role in developing communications relationships with key international delivery partners, including the Department for International Trade and VisitBritain, to ensure there is a strategic and collaborative approach to food and drink campaigns.

A further eight senior research officer roles will work to support Defra policy on international trade and our future relationship with the European Union.

Patron of agriculture

NFU vice-president Guy Smith said it was good to see Defra bolstering itself with new staff and new resource.

Almost from the day after last years referendum, the NFU have been warning that Defra would now have to transform themselves from a regulatory department that delivers policy made in Brussels to one that fully understands agriculture and acts as its patron.

Understandably, some felt the Brexit challenge would need a revival of the old [Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food].

We would be keen to invite them out on farm to talk to farmers with mud on their boots about the day-to-day challenge of food production, he added.




Haiti - Security : CDB will once again pay insurance premiums for Haiti





The Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) has approved a grant to Haiti to cover the countrys 2017-2018 insurance premiums with CCRIF SPC, the company that provides parametric insurance coverage to the Caribbean and Latin America. The Bank is making available the sum of USD3.5 million (for the 5th consecutive year) to meet the cost of the premiums for tropical cyclone, earthquake and excess rainfall coverage.



Parametric insurance contracts pay out quickly and reliably for disasters. They play a unique role in tackling humanitarian emergencies by providing quick liquidity at a time when there is a dramatic reduction in Government revenue and, at the same time, a need for large government services expenditures.



CDB has committed to continue paying the premiums to support efforts related to emergency disaster response and recovery, and to provide assistance to Haiti through other mechanisms, which aim to build resilience to the impact of natural hazards.



CDBs Director of Projects, Daniel Best said the commitment is consistent with the Banks focus on promoting environmental sustainability and climate change resilience.



"For the 2017 hurricane season, Haiti will still be in recovery mode from the Hurricane Matthew impact, and thus it is of critical importance that the coverage continues under the CCRIF policies. The Government of Haiti has shown its commitment to building resilience, and continuing catastrophic risk insurance coverage will allow them to reduce their budget volatility," Best said.



Recall that following Hurricane Matthew, Haiti had received more than $20 million in compensation from the CCRIF SPC through this insurance policy https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-18910-haiti-politic-the-ccrif-will-pay-more-than-$20-to-haiti.html



The Government of Haiti has also taken steps, with the support of its development partners, to design and implement development projects that incorporate natural hazard risk reduction and adaptation to climate change as core elements of these initiatives.



See also :

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-18910-haiti-politic-the-ccrif-will-pay-more-than-$20-to-haiti.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-17545-haiti-security-grant-to-pay-haiti-s-insurance-premium.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-14569-haiti-security-$2-37m-grant-to-pay-haiti-s-insurance-premium.html



HL/ SL/ HaitLibre






















Haiti - Tourism : 61st UNWTO meeting, positive advances for Haiti





Monday, Emilie Jessy Menos, Minister of Tourism, presented at a press conference the positive results of her participation in the 61st Statutory Meeting of the Commission of the Americas of the World Tourism Organization (WTO) which ended Sunday in El Salvador in Honduras.



"The participation of Haiti has allowed us to strengthen our links with other destinations in the Caribbean and to focus on the need to work on multi-destination between the different Caribbean countries," declared Minister Menos.



At the end of the conference, Minister Menos undertook to create a Tourism Satellite Account (CST) to collect periodic statistical data, monitor progress, assess impact, promote results-based management and to highlight issues of strategic importance, a project to be financed by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).



In addition, the Minister held several meetings with other countries to reassure investors that Haiti is still open to investment. In this regard, a meeting was also held with the outgoing Secretary General of the UNWTO, Mr. Taleb Rifai, who reaffirmed his support for strengthening the tourism sector in Haiti.



On the sidelines of the mission, the Haitian delegation participated in technical visits to major innovative tourism projects. Especially in El Salvador, a beach hotel renovation project, and an eco-tourist surf project that could be applied according to the Minister in our coastal cities of the South.



At the same time, the Minister met with her Argentinian counterpart, Gustavo Santos, who will support the city twinning project of Saint-Marc with the city of La Plata, Argentina.



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - Politics : How to take the time of development ?





On Tuesday in Paris, as part of the Latin America and the Caribbean Week, the French Development Agency (AFD), celebrating its 40th anniversary in Haiti, organized in partnership with RFI, France24 and France Medias Monde, a high-level conference-debate on international cooperation in fragile contexts.



Development aid historically has limits on its temporality. The classic management of a development project, often standardized, sometimes combines poorly with the time necessary for its appropriation. And this especially in Haiti, where aid actors themselves are skeptical about the benefits of their actions and where civil society is increasingly stirring up of a presence from abroad.



Hosted by Philome Robert, a Haitian journalist, speaking on France 24, journalist on RFI and co-author of "Haiti, reinventing the future", this conference brought together a panel of high-level speakers from the political, cultural, or institutional field. Jean-Max Bellerive, Prime Minister of Haiti 2009-2011, Joel Boutroue, General Coordinator of the United Nations in Haiti from 2006 to 2009, Herve Conan, Director of the AFD Latin America and Caribbean Department, and Anne Lescot, Anthropologist and documentary filmmaker, project manager Haiti at the Fondation de France which debated, among other things questions such as : How, in countries where repeated emergencies and more structural issues coexist, accept the complexity, praise slowness and adapt ways of doing things ? Is a project with a beginning and an end is relevant in a context of great fragility ?



HL/ HaitiLibre


















German manufacturer praises city water

Mills River Councilman Shanon Gonce (right) welcomes Norafin executive Andrew Lang as U.S. sales director Stuart Smith and County Commission Chairman Michael Edney look on.

MILLS RIVER  The quality of Mills River water was a big factor when a German company chose a 15-acre field on School House Road for its first American manufacturing plant, the companys president said.

Related Stories



We have been up and down the East Coast and looked in different places at water quality and thats the best we found, Andre Lang, managing partner of Norafin Industries, said before officials shoveled a ceremonial chunk of dirt to mark the construction start.

It is a big step for us to come to another country, said Lang. We think this is a great opportunity. We have good education here, which is important to us.

He praised the cooperation with Blue Ridge Community College, known for its agility and responsiveness in tailoring training to new factories needs.

Norafin makes the fabric for the inner lining of firefighter turnout gear and other specialized woven material. Part of the manufacturing process uses high-pressure water and its important to have clean water, Lang said. Water from Hendersonvilles treatment plant met Norafins high standards.

Andre LangIf the water contains certain minerals or has too high a chlorine content youve got really trouble in your machinery, he said. And the other side of it, you are making medical products and things like that. If you use clean water you have clean products. The technology needs clean water and the product needs clean water. We can really deliver a very clean product.

Norafin is on a fast track to build the plant.

We need to be operational before this time next year, said Stuart Smith, who runs Norafins U.S. sales operation from an office at Biltmore Town Square. The 75,000-square-foot plant will employ between 45 and 55 people. Theyll be mostly local, the company says, and trained through BRCC.

The company does $10 million worth of sales in the U.S. now but expects to increase that number when its making the specialized fabric here. The company typically ships order by sea, which takes eight weeks, Smith said. That will be shortened to a week or less when the Mills River plant opens next spring.

The Partnership for Economic Development and Henderson County are applying for a state Commerce Department infrastructure grant to cover the cost of extending wastewater from Banner Farm Road to the site on School House Road.

Will Buie, chairman of the Partnership for Economic Development, noted that the shuttering of textile mills has been the trend in North Carolina.

Thats pretty special when we can say were at a groundbreaking for a textile facility, he said.
Public input meetings set on forest revision plans

The U.S. Forest Service will hold open houses across the Nantahala and Pisgah National Forests from late June to early August to provide the public with opportunities to talk with Forest Service staff about local issues, district projects, and the Nantahala and Pisgah Forest Plan revision.

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There are six open houses, including one on July 13 at the Pisgah Ranger District Office in Brevard.

"Public attendance at meetings like these helps us to understand your needs, concerns, and values and helps you understand Forest Service programs and activities," said Allen Nicholas, Forest Supervisor for National Forests in North Carolina.

The open houses allow the public to talk directly with Forest Service staff one-on-one. Each District Open House will highlight the areas within that district. District rangers and members of the Forest Plan revision team will be available to discuss the materials each of the following days and locations:

June 29, 6-8 p.m.: Grandfather Ranger District at Foothills Conference Center, 2128 S. Sterling St., Morganton.

July 11, 6-8 p.m.: Nantahala Ranger District at Tartan Hall, 26 Church St., Franklin

July 13, 6-8 p.m.: Pisgah Ranger District Office, 1600 Pisgah Hwy, Brevard

July 25, 3-6 p.m.: Appalachian Ranger District at Appalachian District Office, 632 Manor Road, Mars Hill

July 25, 3-6 p.m.: Cheoah Ranger District at Cheoah District Office, 1070 Massey Branch Road, Robbinsville

August 8, 3-6 p.m., Tusquitee Ranger District, Brasstown Community Center, 255 Settawig Rd, Brasstown

The Nantahala and Pisgah National Forests have been revising their Forest Plan, a required document that provides a general framework to guide management of the Forests. As part of the process, 30 public meetings have been held in communities throughout western North Carolina.

Over the past year, the Forest Service has been releasing pre-draft plan materials on the National Forests in North Carolina website - www.fs.usda.gov/goto/nfsnc/ncprevision. Additional materials are posted to the site's Plan Revision Under Construction page as they become available.

"This material is not a preferred alternative or even a draft plan. It represents our latest thinking which has been shaped by public input," said Michelle Aldridge, planning team lead. "In particular, we heard a lot from the public about how places matter to them, so we created a new chapter on Geographic Areas to reflect that."

By separating the Forests into 12 distinct landscapes, Geographic Areas highlight opportunities for restoration and sustainable recreation; connections to nearby communities; and partnerships with the public, other organizations, and governments in different parts of the Forests. Each geographic area also has goals identified that will serve as emphases for management during plan implementation.

Management Area plan components outline how the general forest areas of Interface, Matrix, and Backcountry will be managed. A set of pre-draft maps shows these places on the forest landscape, and adjacent lands not managed by the U.S. Forest Service are included for context. Results from the required Wild and Scenic River Evaluation and information on possible Special Interest Areas are also currently posted on the website.

By fall 2017, the public will have had an opportunity for early review and input on nearly all aspects of the developing plan. When the Forest Plan draft is finalized, the public will again have an opportunity to review the plan during the formal comment period after the complete draft plan and alternative analysis are released in spring 2018.

While there is no formal NEPA or legal comment period at this time, the Forest Service is accepting input at NCplanrevision@fs.fed.us with the subject line "Spring 2017 material Plan Building Blocks" or by mail at this address: Attn: Plan Revision, National Forests in North Carolina, 160A Zillicoa St, Asheville, NC 28801. Comments will be most useful when received by Aug. 31.
Things will get really hot in Texas beginning in July when a very cool Renaissance Dallas at Plano Legacy West Hotel welcomes its first guests. Guests who defy conventional travel and prefer to blur the lines between business and pleasure will be well rewarded with the newly built luxurious hotel. Located in Plano, Texas on Legacy Drive at the intersection of Dallas North Tollway and State Highway 121, the premier 304-room, 15-story hotel within the walkable epicenter of the $3 billion Legacy West urban mixed-use project is poised to bring a unique brand of hospitality sizzle and Zen to the progressive, recently opened development that boasts the North American headquarters of Toyota, United States headquarters of JC Penney and Frito-Lay and the regional headquarters of FedEx Office. Legacy West is the largest mixed-use development being built in North Texas.

Owner and developer Sam Moon Group of the eponymous handbag and accessories retail empire, fulfills founder David Moon"s dream of expanding into the hospitality arena with the opening of their first hotel venture, operated by Renaissance Hotels. Among the Marriott portfolio, the Renaissance brand is known for well-curated business hotels that act as a catalyst for unexpected guest experiences. Think: business hotel interrupted  and so much better than expected. The Renaissance brand specializes in pushing beyond business travel, and the Renaissance Dallas at Plano Legacy West attests to this with a clear "Business Unusual" sensibility.

Hotel website
Vietnam"s first hotel to use tubular slides to carry guests between floors, Fusion Suite Vung Tau, has started construction on June 1, 2017. Designed for the modern traveller, Fusion Suites Vung Tau will provide a range of 171 unique and well-appointed suites and apartments, perfect for young families, couples, or groups of friends. Featuring expansive windows, this 20-storey hotel will make full use of the breathtaking ocean view and natural light this dynamic coastal city is famous for. Aside from the unique slide system, the property will also include functional areas and guest facilities, including an on-site spa, a rooftop infinity pool and cocktail bar, a refined yet informal restaurant serving healthy, balanced, and creative Fusion menus, plus a coffee lounge, meeting rooms, and conference facilities. The project will also feature high-quality services to Vietnam"s rapidly developing tourism sector, aimed at attracting domestic and foreign tourists alike. The hotel is located in the heart of Vung Tau city, within easy reach of all major tourist attractions and key sites, such as Bai Truoc Park, the cultural centre, Vung Tau Lighthouse, and the Ho Chi Minh City-Vung Tau express ferry port.

Vung Tau welcomes over 15 million international and domestic travellers each year, making hospitality one of the fastest-growing sectors in the province.

According to Fusion"s founder and CEO Marco Van Aggele, fuelled by original ideas, the company"s team of in-house designers and wellness-inspired hoteliers worked hard to present a feeling of true openness in a sensible and logical structure.

"At Fusion Suites Vung Tau, we will bring the calm and revitalising nature of Vietnam"s coastline into our interior design concept. We also offer daily spa journeys at all of our suites, where guests can get a massage, manicure, reflexology or beauty treatment at no extra cost,"Aggele added.

Fusion Suites Vung Tau is scheduled for completion in the third quarter of 2019.

Hotel website
Marriott International announced today that the SpringHill Suites by Marriott in South Jordan, Utah opened today. The 111-suite hotel, located at 11280 South River Heights Drive, will operate as a Marriott franchise, owned by District Hotel Partners, LLC and managed by Sequoia Hospitality, LLC of Sandy, Utah.

SpringHill Suites Salt Lake City-South Jordan is located just 17 miles from Salt Lake City International Airport, and 30 minutes from downtown Salt Lake City. The hotel offers guests convenient access to the Kennecott Copper Mine, the South Jordan Health Center and Jordan Valley Hospital. The hotel is also conveniently located near "The District" a 120-acre mixed use development which is home to the MegaPlex 20 theatre, JC Penny, Office Max, Sports Authority, Ross, Harmons, Petco, Hobby Lobby, a variety of restaurants and specialty shops.

Ideal for business and leisure travelers alike, the new hotel offers a little extra space with suites larger than a typical hotel room. Separate living, working and sleeping spaces provide guests with flexibility and functionality. The hotel offers comfortable beds, soft linens and plush pillows to allow for an optimum night"s sleep. Each suite also features the SpringHill Suites" custom, three-in-one, West Elm sofa which converts from a sofa to a daybed with an additional trundle bed  without sacrificing its stylish good looks. The saddle office chair from West Elm Swivel offers comfort within an effective work space. The designated work space is well-lit to ensure maximum productivity for those who need to get down to business.

Hotel website
A quintessential Florida vacation destination for generations of memories, Sheraton Bay Point Resort  the only AAA Four Diamond Rated resort in Panama City Beach  and nationally recognized operator Crescent Hotels & Resorts announce the appointment of Jean Capps as the new general manager. From the early days of her hospitality career as a director of sales and marketing to the past decade of general manager experience and successes within impressive Florida resorts, Capps brings incredible expertise and vibrancy to the iconic Sheraton Bay Point Resort.After gaining valuable experience in sales, food and beverage, and operations, Capps served as general manager for more than eight years at Florida-based resorts  B Ocean (Ft. Lauderdale), Sheraton Fort Lauderdale Beach Hotel, Sheraton Suites Cypress Creek and Sheraton Suites Plantation. Notably, Capps led the transition from the former Sheraton Fort Lauderdale Beach to the new B Ocean Fort Lauderdale, touting great success in the elevation of guest experience while decreasing overall operational expenses. A vast industry and brand award recipient, Capps was most recently recognized by Performance Hospitality with the 2016 Peoples Choice Award for Most Inspiring. An active tourism industry volunteer, Capps volunteered her professional time on boards including the Beach Improvement District, the Beach Council, the GFLCVB Marketing Advisory Committee and the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association.
Markham, Ontario  Maestro PMS will arrive at HITEC 2017 in Toronto June 26-29 with a suite of new property software features and solutions to increase online and offline profitability and productivity for independent operators. Maestro continues to be the preferred technology solution provider of leading independent hotels, resorts, condos and multi-property groups offering 20+ integrated modules on a single image database.

"HITEC 2017 is the perfect event for independent operators who want to evaluate the latest technologies to help meet their goals in increasing efficiency, boosting profitability, and engaging guests," said Warren Dehan, Maestro PMS President. "Understanding your options to replace legacy property software solutions to compete effectively in this market is more important than ever. With a constantly changing environment, ensuring you are investing in technology that can sustain you for the long term and provide the service team to support it is key. At HITEC Maestro will launch multiple new features that leverage the cloud, mobile phones, and tablets for overall improved operations and guest experience."

Maestro will demonstrate new solutions for independent operators that include:

Flexible Cloud-based Plus Premise-based PMS platform : This platform flexibility enables single and multi-property operators to combine web browser and Windows user access on one system whether hosted in the cloud or on-premise locally. Maestro lets operators choose the system they want without the obligation to go cloud in order to benefit from true web browser access to their PMS from tablets or mobile devices. Users have the choice of both versions on one system in tandem across any number of properties. Gone are the days of VPN to work remote!

: This platform flexibility enables single and multi-property operators to combine web browser and Windows user access on one system whether hosted in the cloud or on-premise locally. Maestro lets operators choose the system they want without the obligation to go cloud in order to benefit from true web browser access to their PMS from tablets or mobile devices. Users have the choice of both versions on one system in tandem across any number of properties. Gone are the days of VPN to work remote! Maestro Web adds Stronger Tablet Access : New tablet feature lets operators access nearly all of Maestro PMS' robust functionality on a tablet. This personalizes check in and lobby service to strengthen guest engagement. This is full-function Maestro PMS on a tablet with interactive digital registration card signature capture, and opt-in for guest email & text messaging.

: New tablet feature lets operators access nearly all of Maestro PMS' robust functionality on a tablet. This personalizes check in and lobby service to strengthen guest engagement. This is full-function Maestro PMS on a tablet with interactive digital registration card signature capture, and opt-in for guest email & text messaging. Mobile Spa Provider Schedule : Maestro's Spa & Activities module now allows spa service providers to check their schedules and view updates on their mobile device real-time and live. This improves guest service and spa performance as providers no longer have to rely on paper schedules or calling the spa reception for schedule updates.

: Maestro's Spa & Activities module now allows spa service providers to check their schedules and view updates on their mobile device real-time and live. This improves guest service and spa performance as providers no longer have to rely on paper schedules or calling the spa reception for schedule updates. Maestro Post Check-in Survey : In addition to its widely used post check out survey, Maestro will present its post check-in survey. This allows guests to inform the property at check-in, via email or text, if they require service. This streamlines service delivery and improves the guest experience.

: In addition to its widely used post check out survey, Maestro will present its post check-in survey. This allows guests to inform the property at check-in, via email or text, if they require service. This streamlines service delivery and improves the guest experience. Maestro Web Check-Out: Maestro improves the guest journey and their current mobile pre-check-in feature with mobile check out. This eliminates front desk congestion at check-out and improves the guest experience. Maestro's mobile housekeeping app immediately informs staff when a guest checks out so they can clean the room without delay.

Maestro improves the guest journey and their current mobile pre-check-in feature with mobile check out. This eliminates front desk congestion at check-out and improves the guest experience. Maestro's mobile housekeeping app immediately informs staff when a guest checks out so they can clean the room without delay. E-signature for Contract Execution: Sales and catering contracts can now be submitted to meeting planners and signed digitally with Maestro E-Signature. The property is automatically notified when a contract is signed for greater contract control and processing conversions.

Maestro PMS delivers revenue-generating tools and services that increase profitability, drive direct bookings, centralize operations, and provide personalized guest service to keep guests coming back. Click here for more information on how to reserve, engage and socialize with Maestro PMS.

Visit Maestro PMS in Booth #1219 at HITEC in Toronto

JUNE 26-29 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre

About Maestro PMS

Maestro is the preferred cloud and on-premise PMS solution for independent hotels, resorts, conference centers, and multi-property groups. This PCI certified and EMV ready enterprise system offers 20+ integrated modules on a single database including web and mobile tools to increase profitability and enable operators to engage guests with a personalized experience. For over 35 years Maestro's Diamond Plus Service has provided unparalleled 24/7 North American based support and education services to keep hospitality groups operational and productive. Click here for more information on Maestro PMS.

Macarena Lorenzini

+ 1 888 667 8488
This June we shall be holding the 23rd Annual Las Vegas International Tourism Safety and Security conference and in honor of our conference, this month's Tourism Tidbits focuses on issues of security and safety.



Although the public, media, and politicians expect continuous 100% safety and security, reality is that total security does not exist. What is true of the non-tourism and travel world is even more so in the world of travel and tourism. Not only are tourism and traveling security problems often more challenging, but the traveling public can also easily be frightened, and in the case of leisure travel decide simply not to visit a specific locale. Furthermore, many tourism professionals are frighten by the topic and provide more lip service to the subject than real substance.



To help you think through some of the issues and finds methods to confront these ever changing challenges, Tourism Tidbits presents you with the following ideas for your consideration:



- Never forget that all travel security and safety begins with a sense of hospitality and caring. Customer service is the foundation of any security program. Employees need to remember that they should not treat others in a way that they would not want others to treat them. Customers are not the enemy; they are the industry's raison d'etre. From the moment a traveler leaves his/her home until the moment that s/he returns the industry needs to project an image of we care, of creating an environment in which customers know that they are not prisoners or cattle but respected guests.

- Understand that in most cases (drugs being a major exception) acts of crime and acts of terrorism are different. It is rare that poverty is a root cause of either crime or terrorism, and the two social illnesses have a very different interaction with tourism. Crime has a parasitic relationship with tourism that is to say if there is no tourism then there is no tourism crime. Although, terrorists may use crime as a means to fund their projects, their ultimate goal is the destruction of tourism and the economic prosperity that it produces around the world.

- The most effective security is proactive rather than reactive. This means find ways to layer your security and be aware of where the security weaknesses may be. Know your property layout and remember that there are no 100% safe places in any building Use combinations of a physical security presence plus technology, such as surveillance, makes sure all your bases are covered.

- Know local laws! Hoteliers must know their responsibilities for security within local laws and regulations. Knowing whether issues would result in criminal or civil liabilities can influence security protocols. Be aware of terror trends: Not every attack is the same. Over the past several years, many terror events have "evolved to be locally inspired or involve locally trained citizens". The newest "trends" in attacks against hotels are small-scale, high-body-count attacks that draw global media attention. Nevertheless, do not forget that terrorism is ever changing and what is true this year may be different next year.



- Partner Simple partnerships with local law enforcement are an easy, low-cost way to keep security top of mind. Invite your local police to spend a night in the hotel or have dinner there. The better the police understand the property's security and emergency protocols and see the capabilities, the faster they can react in case of an emergency or advise you on simple solutions as to ways to stop and attack before it occurs. Ask your police department to educate hotel staff on what their own capabilities are and what emergencies they can and cannot handle. Then develop a formal plan with the local police department and be sure that they have a copy of the plan



- Tourism security does not exist in a vacuum. That means that tourism security is part of the overall local environment. If a particular city is not safe, then eventually that insecurity will impact the local hotels, attractions and transportation systems. What that means is that the tourism industry needs not only to ask for protection but also that it needs to work with local community leaders to bring down the overall crime rates. For example, communicate with local organizations that seek to lower crime rates. The bottom line is that what takes place outside of the hotel impacts what occurs inside of the hotel. Regular meetings between government officials, tourism officials, and local managers can save time and lives, and it can reduce from what might have been a major incident into a minor one. In today's world security not only adds to the bottom line, it can be a major marketing tool.

- Have multiple plans in place prior to an event and not after the event. In cases of crises, crisis management is essential, but tourism and travel officials need to ask themselves if the crisis might have been lessened in its severity or even avoided if they had had good proactive risk management plans. Crises come in all sorts of sizes. A terrorism attack is a crisis on a large scale, but there are a million small inconveniences that government regulators have imposed on tourism that have created a sense of continual mini-crises. When tourists need to factor terrorism hassles into their travel plans, many people may choose other methods of communication, leaving the industry in a business crisis. The bottom line is that many small personal crises may produce large industry crises.



- In an age of insecurity tourism officials must make sure that their security agents are not only well trained in every aspect of security including the customs and cultural habits of their customers, but also well paid. For example, some cultures tend to be more trusting than others and different cultures may have distinct patterns for what is acceptable or not for female guests. It is essential that tourism management develop security patterns that meet not only the local environment but also meet the cultural needs of their guests. In a business climate as unstable as the current one, it is essential that security personnel be the best, that they receive regular news updates, and be able to act not only quickly, but in a caring and professional manner with travelers. It does no good to have people well trained and then leave the field because of low pay.

Peter Tarlow

President Tourism and More

+1 979 764 8402

Tourism and More
Digital Detox: Unwind, Relax and Unplug

New McAfee Study Reveals Consumers Prioritize Convenience Over Security While on Vacation

More than half (54%) of respondents could not last at least a full day without using their device for texting

Fifty-two percent report spending at least one hour a day with internet-connected devices while on vacation

Fifty-seven percent of respondents went on vacation with the intent to stay connected and not unplug from their devices

To help educate consumers as they prepare for summer vacation, McAfee conducted a study, Digital Detox: Unwind, Relax and Unplug, to better understand the behavior and attitudes of consumers when on vacation, and how digital habits could be putting their personal information at risk. The survey found that despite the benefits experienced from unplugging, most individuals prefer to stay connected. Fifty-two percent of U.S. respondents indicated that they spend at least an hour a day using their connected devices to check email, text and post to social media while on vacation.

The summer travel season can be a lot of fun for everyone, including cybercriminals who may try to exploit travelers who are in unfamiliar settings. When individuals put convenience over security, by using unsecured Wi-Fi access points that are easily hackable for example, they leave themselves open to the possibility of having their personal information compromised.

Our devices are extensions of ourselves that we rely on for more tasks every day, said Gary Davis, chief consumer security evangelist at McAfee. Individuals must exercise caution when using their devices on vacation. By taking basic security precautions and avoiding unnecessary risks, consumers can better protect personal information making their vacation more enjoyable knowing they are connecting with confidence.

The wide availability of Wi-Fi networks can make it difficult to unplug and disconnect on vacation, but if consumers take that extra step and unplug they can experience a more secure trip. While many individuals did not intend to unplug while traveling, those that did (43%) reported a much more enjoyable experience (81%).

Cant Put the Device Down:

Thirty-eight percent could not last a day without checking their work or personal email. More than a quarter (27%) admitted to checking their email consistently throughout the day.

Thirty-seven percent could not resist the urge to post to social media while vacationing.

Laptops were the most common device left behind (72%), but only 27% would be willing to leave their smartphone behind.

The most common reason individuals avoid unplugging was to be reachable by family and friends (62%).

Carefree Wi-Fi Usage

Thirty-one percent of participants primarily connected using publicly available Wi-Fi leaving them open to potential security risks.

While 58% of participants claim they know how to determine whether their Wi-Fi is secure, only 49% take the time to check their connection.

Twenty percent dont consider the security of their Wi-Fi connection, and for 32% it depends on how much they need to connect to determine if they will use the unsecured Wi-Fi.

Remarkably, 15% of travelers considered their personal information and data to be more secure while traveling than it is at home.

Work, Work, Work:

Only 16% of participants claimed that they stayed connected to be reachable by work, but if work were not a factor 57% would prefer to stay unplugged.

Sixty-nine percent of individuals in their 20s and 30s would prefer to completely unplug on vacation compared with less than half of individuals in their 40s (49%) if work were not a factor.

While individuals in their 20s were the most willing to unplug, they were also the group that experienced the most anxiety (52%) when they did unplug.

Mom and Dad Know Best:

Most parents think devices should take a backseat on vacation with 51% planning to unplug compared with 35% of individuals without children. Parents were only slightly more successful at abstaining from tech with 82% declaring success compared with 78% of people without children.

Seventy-seven percent of parents allow their children to use connected devices while traveling, and 73% of these parents claim to monitor their childs usage.

Parents tend to be more tech savvy than their non-parental counterparts and are more likely to know if their Wi-Fi connection is safe and secure to use (64% vs. 54%).

Tips to Help Secure Your Personal Information and Devices:

Browse securely when away from home. Ensure that you are connecting securely while traveling and avoid using public or unsecured Wi-Fi networks. If you absolutely must connect to a public Wi-Fi network, use a Virtual Private Network (VPN) like McAfee Safe Connect. A VPN will keep your information private and ensure that data goes straight from your device to where you are connecting.

Ensure that you are connecting securely while traveling and avoid using public or unsecured Wi-Fi networks. If you absolutely must connect to a public Wi-Fi network, use a Virtual Private Network (VPN) like McAfee Safe Connect. A VPN will keep your information private and ensure that data goes straight from your device to where you are connecting. Update your devices. The first line of defense for your devices is you, so its important to take a few precautions to stay safe. Make sure your devices operating system and applications are kept updated. Using old versions of software could leave you open to potential security vulnerabilities.

The first line of defense for your devices is you, so its important to take a few precautions to stay safe. Make sure your devices operating system and applications are kept updated. Using old versions of software could leave you open to potential security vulnerabilities. Install cross-device security. After youve updated your devices with the latest software install comprehensive security. A solution like McAfee LiveSafe can help your devices stay clear of viruses and other unwanted malware.

After youve updated your devices with the latest software install comprehensive security. A solution like McAfee LiveSafe can help your devices stay clear of viruses and other unwanted malware. Use a device locating app. If you lose your connected device, especially on vacation, it can be difficult to recover. Location applications can help you find, lock and even erase your devices data in the event of theft or loss.

Survey Methodology

In March 2017, McAfee commissioned MSI International to conduct an online study of 9,500 people who use a connected device daily in Australia, France, Germany, U.K. and U.S. The survey included individuals between 18-55 split evenly by gender.
Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills Hotel Opens

Adjacent to The Beverly Hilton, the 12-story hotel is the Waldorf Astoria Hotels & Resorts' first new build on the West Coast and second California property, joining the Waldorf Astoria portfolio of now 26 hotels and resorts.

Waldorf Astoria Hotels & Resorts announced the opening of Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills, adding a much-anticipated, soon-to-be-iconic hotel to the intersection of Wilshire and Santa Monica boulevards - the gateway to Beverly Hills.

Adjacent to The Beverly Hilton, the 12-story hotel is the Waldorf Astoria Hotels & Resorts' first new build on the West Coast and second California property, joining the Waldorf Astoria portfolio of now 26 hotels and resorts. Owned by Alagem Capital Group and clients of Guggenheim Partners, the hotel's 119 deluxe rooms and 51 suites are part of a world-class, Art Deco-influenced design created by renowned interior design firm Pierre-Yves Rochon, Inc (PYR).

"Waldorf Astoria's west coast expansion is celebrated today with the opening of a new, modern icon, Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills, which will offer global travelers a new standard of luxury in Los Angeles," said John T.A. Vanderslice, global head, Waldorf Astoria Hotels & Resorts. "Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills matches our brand's commitment to offering unforgettable experiences, first-class accommodations, and True Waldorf Service in the world's most sought after destinations."

"Bringing the renowned Waldorf Astoria brand to Beverly Hills has been a dream for many years," says owner Beny Alagem, "and as we open our doors to this stunningly beautiful hotel today, I think every visitor stepping across our threshold will agree that our dream has been fulfilled far and beyond even our wildest imagination."

As part of the Waldorf Astoria's dedication to the ultimate in luxury and True Waldorf Service, a Personal Concierge is assigned to every guest, from pre-arrival until departure, including an individual bespoke in-room check-in service that ensures authentic interactions sure to inspire within each guest a strong yearning to return.

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Gensler and PYR are the co-design architects of the Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills. To create a cohesive architectural design inside and out, Gensler designed the master plan for the property and co-designed the exterior of the hotel with PYR. Each of the 170 guestrooms, inspired by the contemporary interpretation of Hollywood glamour and the Streamline Moderne style of the 1930s and 40s, offers unrivaled vistas ranging from a bird's eye view of the Hollywood Hills to the nearby expansive urban canyon of Century City and well beyond. Every room features floor-to-ceiling windows that open onto oversized private balconies, perfect for drinking in the sunset or simply checking out Rodeo Drive, the Beverly Hills shopping mecca just to the east, within easy walking distance of the Waldorf Astoria.

"As the prime architect and master planner for the site and the hotel, Gensler has worked together with Oasis West Realty, Hilton, and PYR to create a world-class urban resort and gateway to Beverly Hills, unlike any other luxury property in Southern California," said Andy Cohen, Co-CEO at Gensler. "It's been a privilege to deliver this iconic property that sets a new standard for luxury and hospitality in the heart of Beverly Hills."

In the public spaces of the Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills, guests will discover chic touches throughout the hotel, from the triple-height lobby with a contemporary Art Deco design to hand-painted murals, custom crystal chandeliers and elegant Lalique installations. Richly upholstered furniture in soothing tones of celadon, taupe and white is accented by spectacular pieces of art, creating an environment that is both sophisticated and relaxing.

The rooftop pool deck, available only to hotel guests, will be the loftiest and largest rooftop destination of its kind in Beverly Hills. Impeccably landscaped, the rooftop gathering area will include, VIP cabanas, a lounge area with panoramic views as well as a swimming pool.

World-class dining comes to the hotel with three highly anticipated venues created by the legendary French chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten. With the elegant Jean-Georges Beverly Hills, the chef's signature restaurant, as well as The Rooftop by JG and Jean-Georges Beverly Hills Bar, a new standard in fine food comes to Beverly Hills. Helmed by a top-notch team of culinary experts hand picked by Vongerichten and including Executive Chef Steve Benjamin of L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon fame, the chefs are committed to sourcing foods locally whenever possible and a cornerstone of the menus in all the food and beverage offerings at the Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills.

Guests can enjoy a private Rolls Royce house car offering complimentary drop-off service within a two-mile radius, or simply stay home in the hotel and lounge in a private cabana at the rooftop pool, enjoy a deluxe treatment at the only La Prairie Spa in Los Angeles, or stop in for a makeover at the Tracey Cunningham Salon, with services by celebrity hair colorist Tracey Cunningham.

The hotel also features 6,300 square feet of meeting spaces, including two ballrooms, perfect for weddings, corporate meetings or gala celebrations.

Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills will participate in Hilton Honors, the award-winning guest-loyalty program for Hilton's 14 distinct brands. Hilton Honors members who book directly through preferred Hilton channels have access to instant benefits, including a flexible payment slider that allows members to choose nearly any combination of Points and money to book a stay, an exclusive member discount that can't be found anywhere else and free standard Wi-Fi. Members also enjoy popular digital tools available exclusively through the industry-leading Hilton Honors mobile app.

The Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills is located at 9850 Wilshire Boulevard, Beverly Hills, CA 90210. Jerone Werdmolder serves as the general manager and Luc Delafosse is the managing director.
3 Tips To Reduce Booking Abandonment On Your Hotel Website

Debbie Stephenson From Leonardo Offers The Hotel Industry Three Tips For Reducing Booking Abandonment. First Step? Take A Hard Look At Your Hotel Website.

Hotels can invest hundreds, if not thousands of dollars, each month driving traffic to their website. But if your website isnt optimized to drive direct bookings, then all that time and money is wasted.

Booking abandonment is a real issue for the travel industry. As many as 81.6% of online travel bookings are abandoned, worth an estimated $1.78 trillion! If we drill down further, as many as 78% of hotel & lodging bookings, and 86% of OTA bookings, are abandoned (see below).

In this article, Ill outline 3 things you can do right now on your hotel website to improve purchase intent and drive more direct bookings. By purchase intent, I mean getting more people to your booking engine, because once youve got them there, the higher your chances of conversion.

Common Reasons For Booking Abandonment

Lets start by looking at some of the common reasons why travel shoppers abandon their bookings online. According to SalesCycle, 39% of travel shoppers are often just researching and comparing prices on your website, which comes as no surprise. However, other reasons for booking abandonment include finding the price too high (37%), the reservation process too long (13%) or technical issues (9%). The good news is, these things can be fixed.

Tip #1: Tell Your Unique Story

Price is too high can mean one of two things:

The price exceeds their budget The price doesnt match perceived value of hotel

While theres not much you can do about point 1, there is for point 2. This is where storytelling comes into play. Use your website to demonstrate what makes your hotel unique from all the others in your area.

It may be Billy, your friendly concierge whos been there for years, a signature cocktail in your bar, guest movie night every Monday, or something else. Dont discount your uniqueness, and play up to it on your website. As humans, we love stories; we connect with stories and we remember stories. And thats the goal  to remain memorable as someone moves through their travel shopping journey.

My Brighton Hotel showcases its award-winning cocktail bar on the homepage

Tip #2: Give Them A Reason To Book Direct

My next tip is to give travel shoppers a reason book direct. Youd be surprised how many websites fail to mention this or actively promote it. How do travel shoppers know you want them to book directly unless you spell it out (and make it worth their while)?

Consider creating a special offer for direct bookings. This doesnt have to be a price discount. It could be something as simple as a complimentary drink on arrival, faster WiFi, early check-in/late check-out, first pick of the best rooms. A special offer doesnt have to be big or expensive for someone to feel motivated to book direct. They just have to feel like theyre getting the best value by booking on your website.

Whatever youre special offer is, make sure you call it out explicitly on your website  on the homepage, under special offers, in your room type descriptions  everywhere! The more travel shoppers can see it, the more likely they are to retain that information as they move through the shopping journey. And the more likely they are to return to your website once ready to book.

The Kleber Hotel in Paris does an excellent job of this on their website. As soon as you hit their homepage, you see 5 reasons to book direct, including a guaranteed best rate, a secret discount coupon to apply for bigger savings, complimentary tea & coffee in your room, priority service at check-in, and a better cancellation policy. This information is repeated throughout their website, under Guest Rooms, Offers, Gallery, and even in the description of some photos.

Tip #3: Ensure your booking process is optimized for mobile

You should also check whether your booking engine is compatible with mobile. According to Criteo, mobile bookings for airlines and hotels made up 27 percent of all online travel bookings worldwide during Q2 2016. This trend is only going to continue. Your website needs to be equipped to handle mobile bookings. If its not, contact your Internet Booking Engine (IBE) provider and ask why, or consider a new IBE that can support your mobile needs.

In Summary

Online booking abandonment is a real problem for the travel industry, but there are small things you can do on your website to improve conversions.

Start with your content. Call out explicitly what makes your hotel unique, and why someone should book directly with you. Then review your online booking process. Is it simple and easy to book with you? By implementing these 3 tips, youll be able to drive more bookings through your most profitable sales channel  your hotel website.

For more tips on how to improve your websites performance, check out our eBook, A Hotel Marketers Playbook for Creating, Managing and Measuring a High-Performing Hotel Website.

About Debbie Stephenson

Debbie Stephenson is the Content Marketing Manager for Leonardo, a hospitality technology solutions provider servicing individual hotels, hotel chains, and hotel channels. One of Leonardoscore products is Vizlly, a digital marketing system for hotels designed to drive more bookings at a lower cost. Vizlly includes SEO marketing services, a high-converting hotel website, Facebook Apps and Digital Brochures third-party channels  all in one place. Learn more at www.vizlly.com.
sbe announced today that John Chan has joined the company as Senior Vice President, Development. In his new role, John is responsible for growing sbe's hotel development pipeline and real estate investments globally. He will work with owners and developers to execute new hotel management and license deals to further grow sbe. John is based in New York.

"sbe has grown phenomenally in the past year and we are delighted to add another prominent industry executive to our leadership team," stated Sam Nazarian, founder and CEO of sbe. "John's extensive experience in strategic development and deal making will be an asset as we continue to expand the reach of our preeminent 360-degree lifestyle experience."

"I am thrilled to be joining sbe," stated John. "Sam Nazarian has transformed the hospitality landscape and I look forward to helping sbe increase its real estate footprint worldwide."

John has 13 years of corporate deal making and development experience. Prior to his current position, he worked at Starwood Hotels & Resorts for 12 years. Most recently, he focused on global development, working on all three facets of Starwood's portfolio  owned, managed and franchise properties. He also previously led strategic development, operations, finance and contracting for its supply chain group. Additionally, John worked in corporate development, evaluating a broad range of brand and portfolio growth, and related business acquisition opportunities.

John also previously worked at Cendant Corp, the predecessor of Wyndham Worldwide, Realogy, Avis Budget and Travelport/Orbitz, in corporate development, focusing on timeshare and travel distribution opportunities. He began his career in investment banking at ING Barings. John holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Engineering from Columbia University.
Choice Hotels International, Inc. (NYSE: CHH) has signed an agreement with Rondell Oasis, LLC, which is managed by the Malibu based Weintraub Real Estate Group, to develop a new Cambria Hotel in Calabasas, Calif. The three-story, 121-room Cambria property will be located at 26300 Rondell Road.

Expected to open in 2019, the Cambria Hotel Calabasas is adjacent to the Santa Monica mountain range with limitless trails for hiking and mountain biking, and is only a short scenic drive through Malibu Canyon to some of California's most beautiful beaches. Calabasasis near a number of major corporations and tourist attractions, including DIRECTV, Inc., Mattel Inc., Universal Studios & Hollywood, Hollywood Walk of Fame, Disneyland, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Camarillo Premiere Outlet Malls and Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza.

"The Calabasas-Malibu Canyon region is one of the most picturesque places on the west coast, and the location continues to see a strong increase in demand for both business and leisure travelers. The Cambria Hotel will fill an unmet need in the market, particularly with its close proximity to Pepperdine University and the numerous companies in the area," said Mark Shalala, vice president, development, upscale brands at Choice Hotels. "Cambria Hotels continues to expand into key markets on the West Coast. In addition to the opening of our first property in California at Los Angeles-LAX, there are extensive growth plans in the Los Angeles area, including LA Live in the downtown area, LA Spring Street, Anaheim and Glendale."

The Cambria Calabasas hotel will have ample meeting space, a fitness center, outdoor pool, and an open air dining patio on a hillside site that backs up to the Santa Monica mountain range. Like all Cambria Hotels, the Calabasas property features contemporary onsite dining, serving a menu comprised of local specialties, liquor, wine, and local craft beers, as well as freshly prepared grab-and-go gourmet salads and sandwiches, and a barista bar.

Cambria's development partner, Weintraub Real Estate Group (WREG), is a distinguished local real-estate firm specializing in unique, community-oriented developments. WREG has successfully acquired, developed and entitled properties through its real estate ventures.

"We couldn't be more excited to partner with Choice Hotels to develop the Cambria Calabasas," said Richard Weintraub, president and founder of Weintraub Real Estate Group. "Calabasas and the Malibu area have seen continued growth over the last few years, and with its location just a short drive to Los Angeles, travelers will find an upscale home for both business and pleasure in Choice's newest property."
Leading Executive Search Firm Uniquely Positioned to Supply New Generation of Global Hospitality and Wellness Leaders

Hutchinson Consulting, the leading executive search firm for hospitality, spa and wellness, hosted their annual corporate retreat April 28 to May 1, at the home office in Sonoma, California. Executive recruiters from across the country convened to celebrate the companys recent success, and plan for future growth.

Hutchinson Consulting is experiencing sustainable growth as a result of our stellar team. Demand for qualified hospitality and wellness professionals is at an all-time high, and we are delivering qualified, thoroughly vetted executives, says Bill Hutchinson, owner and co-founder of Hutchinson. For the first-time ever, Hutchinson has added wellness titles to its database portfolio, due to an increase in demand for placement of Wellness positions. Our largest areas of growth have been in placing wellness positions, international hospitality candidates and those in the medi-spa space.

The Hutchinson Consulting team enjoyed the spoils of the Sonoma Valley, while reviewing past successes and brainstorming future opportunities. Recent accomplishments include:

- Successful Job Placements: Hutchinson placed a record 21 candidates in the first quarter of 2017 in the Hospitality, Spa, Food & Beverage and Wellness industries.

Robin Stewart Jennifer Copeland

- New Staff Additions: Executive Recruiter Robin Stewart and Associate Jennifer Copeland joined the Hutchinson team in April. Stewart was formerly COO and Director of Recruitment at two large insurance offices in New York and Los Angeles. Copeland worked previously with Korn Ferry International, the world's largest provider of executive search.

- Growth in the Southeast U.S.: Hutchinson expanded its foothold in the Southeast, as Executive Recruiter Sheri Claflin recently relocated to Lexington, Kentucky.

- Global Expansion: New to Hutchinson is expansion outside of the U.S.including placements in Mexico, Europe, India and other parts of Asia.

- Development of New Market Opportunities: Hutchinson has seen significant growth in emerging wellness markets and private estate management sector.

Hutchinsons future plans include further expansion of new market opportunities, such as private estate management and senior care living, as well as working with their hospitality partners to explore new wellness models in hotels and resorts.

Wellness is here to stay. The explosion in wellness-oriented experience represents a fundamental shift in consumer demand. Real estate developments, hotels and resorts are incorporating spa and wellness not only in the spa department, but into other aspects of the hotel, such as programming, rooms, meetings, and food and beverage, says Michael Tompkins, Executive Recruiter at Hutchinson and Immediate Past Chair of the International Spa Association.

About Hutchinson Consulting

Hutchinson Consulting is the leading firm in Hospitality, Spa and Wellness recruiting. With a team of executive recruiters totaling more than a century of experience, Hutchinson Consulting maintains a data base of thousands of top-level executives, hotel managers, resort managers, and spa managers. Our Private Estate Management sector conducts discreet, confidential searches for families of wealth seeking an estate manager or chief of staff. We source, screen, and rigorously reference-check the finest managers in the hospitality and wellness business. www.hutchinsonconsulting.com.

General Contact:

Michael Tompkins, Executive Recruiter, Hutchinson Consulting

michael@hutchinsonconsulting.com 520.425.6387

Media Contact:

Nancy Griffin, Principal, Contento Marketing

nancy@contentomarketing.com 415.987.0012
Are U.S. Workers Finally Taking More Vacation Time? Maybe, Maybe Not

Posted by Lenny Sanicola on Tuesday, 06-06-2017 8:14 pm

Currently 2.0/5 Stars.

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Taking time off from work is still a challenge in America's work culture. As it is Employee Well-Being Month and the beginning of summer vacation for many people, it is appropriate to revisit the fact that many individuals, primarily in the United States, either dont take all of their earned vacation time and/or leave much of it on the table and lose it. Some even continue working while on vacation, a so-calledworkcation. However, there may be some optimism that the tide is changing, at least according to one comprehensive survey. According to Project: Time Off., U.S. workers took an average of 16.8 days of vacation in 2016. Their report, the "State of American Vacation 2017," shows the trend line in a positive direction after losing almost a week of vacation time since 2000. The jump, up from 16.2 days in 2015, provides reason to be cautiously optimistic about the vacation habits of employees. While this change reflects positive movement, 54% of employees ended 2016 w...

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Ensuring training without compromising on productivity Corporate training is no longer synonymous with face-to-face training. Almost 40% of the global workforce is mobile. Companies can no longer afford to get employees attend physical trainings, at a fixed venue, during a fixed time. But that does not mean that training can be eliminated. Employees will continually need to improve their skills for companies to be competitive with high productivity. How can organizations ensure that its employees are trained without compromising on productivity? The solution is eLearning corporate training. Below are five best practices to consider while creating eLearning for corporate training: Best Practice #1: Whats in it for Me? The first thing the learner will ask, even before taking the course, is what is in it for him? An employee will only benefit from taking a course when he is convinced about the benefits of the course. It is imperative to outline the learning goals clearly. The goals will be based on the competency that the employees need to gain after the course. These competencies will be derived from the needs assessment conducted prior to designing training. Once the learner is convinced about the benefits of the eLearning corporate training, only then will the employee spend time and effort on it. Best Practice #2: Simplicity Works Best Less is usually more when i...
We work towards an equitable,

gender-just, self-reliant and

sustainable fisheries,

particularly in the small-scale,

artisanal sector

We work towards an equitable,

gender-just, self-reliant and

sustainable fisheries,

particularly in the small-scale,

artisanal sector

We work towards an equitable,

gender-just, self-reliant and

sustainable fisheries,

particularly in the small-scale,

artisanal sector

We work towards an equitable,

gender-just, self-reliant and

sustainable fisheries,

particularly in the small-scale,

artisanal sector
Update 7.50pm: A man arrested in Wexford in connection with the London terror attack has been released from custody.

He was detained yesterday afternoon after documents found during the course of the investigations linked him to one of the attackers Rachid Redouane.

Update 6.09pm: The Garda Commissioner Noirin OSullivan says members of the force will be engaging in more exercises with the Defence Forces in preparation for a terror attack.

She has been responding to criticism that the gardai are not prepared for a major incident here.

She has also confirmed that there will be 20 more officers in the Armed Response Unit by the end of the month.

Commissioner OSullivan has been outlining the steps they are taking in the wake of the recent attacks in the UK.

"We also have Operation Bilberry, which brings together a number of our own members from right around the country, to make sure that theres an understanding of what a response would be.

"Thats going to increase even more - and what you are going to see is by the end of this month we will have more live exercises.

"That isnt because we have any specific intelligence, but I think thats the reality - that we have to have an agile response to be able to deal with instance as they occur, not matter what quarter they come from".

It comes as a security analyst warns Ireland would struggle to cope with any such terrorist attack.

Declan Power says any approach needs to be centralised in a new Government body.

"In the event of such an attack happening - which is a real possibility - we have a few distinct, natural elements in our favour being an island (and) having a small population.

"But if there was a mass casualty event we would struggle because of the number of first responders we would need, getting them into a location if it was in a city centre, like Dublin.

"We dont have any dedicated air frames for Air Ambulance; we do have Air Corps services (which) can provide that.

"They may have war games for this on paper or table-top exercises, but weve never seen a mass casualty exercise scenario in the city centre of Dublin or Cork like they have done in the UK."

He says: "We can only conclude that that would be a more difficult experience than some of our European neighbours - but I dont think theres any country in Europe that would be 100% well equipped to deal with a mass casualty scenario".

"The bottom line is we do have a lot of individual high quality expertise, operationally speaking, within the emergency services - within An Garda Siochana, the Defence Forces - but its knitting that together, and thats where we dont see the efforts being put it".

Update 3.30pm: London Bridge killer Rachid Redouane was not involved in any terror cell during his time here, Garda Commissioner Noirin OSullivan has said.

Noirin OSullivan has accepted, however, that he went through a "normal process of immigration" in Dublin.

Redouane, who claimed to be Moroccan-Libyan, had previously been refused asylum in the UK in 2009.

His marriage to a UK citizen in Dublin in 2012, giving him an EU travel permit, has prompted claims this country is being used by Islamic militants as a back door into Britain.

"The indications at this time are that this individual lived in this country for a short period of time, going through a normal process of immigration," Ms OSullivan said during an international policing conference in Dublin.

"Thereafter, he left and went with his wife, who is a UK citizen, to the UK and we are satisfied with the inquiries we have made at this time, that there is no link to terrorism in this country.

"We are also satisfied from the indications from our partners (in the UK) that that is also the case."

Garda inquiries into Redouanes time in Ireland currently centre around suspected immigration offences.

Two people believed to have documents linked to the killer have been arrested.

One Garda source said there is no knowledge of Redouane being involved with other international terror suspects who have been under surveillance in Ireland, and that he lived an apparently normal life during his time in Dublin.

But the source added that investigators were "still shaking the tree".

Ms OSullivan defended Irelands security response to the international terror threat, saying there had been a number of arrests and deportations in recent times.

A number of individuals are also being "monitored very, very closely" and some of them are before the courts.

The Garda chief said her force was working with UK counterparts within an hour of the London Bridge attacks at the weekend.

She also pointed to a beefing-up of armed police in Ireland, with numbers in the armed support unit to increase by a third by the end of this month.

"There will be more visible, overt armed patrols," she said.

"People shouldnt be afraid of that. That is actually to make sure the public are safe."

Ms OSullivan said counter-terrorism investigations around the country "make sure we know exactly what is happening in communities".

Irish detectives are attempting to trace whether another of the London Bridge attackers, Khuram Shazad Butt, had spent any time in Dublin.

It is understood some members of the Muslim community in Dublin have been contacted.

Shaykh Dr Umar Al-Qadri, imam of the Islamic Centre of Ireland, said he thought he recognised the killers face after seeing police pictures but later said he had no idea why he thinks the face is familiar.

Reporting by Press Association

Update 3pm: The Garda Commissioner has indicated the armed support unit will be given an addition 20 officers in the next 10 days.

Noirin OSullivan said the moves were part of a two pronged approach to ensure response times were up to speed around the country.

Responding to recent concerns expressed by the ASGI, the Commissioner reassured people that Gardai would be equipped to deal with any attack.

"We will have an additional 20 people in place by June 22.

"On top of that ... we have an competition underway to increase our armed support units across the regions to ensure there is a 24-7 response capability."

The Commissioner made her comments as Gardai are continuing to question a man in connection with the London Bridge terror attack.

The man in his 30s is being held under armed guard in Wexford after documentation linked him to one of the attackers Rachid Redouane.

Meanwhile, senior Gardai say theyre confident that theyd be able to respond to a terrorist attack in Dublin city centre within 8 minutes.

Theyve been meeting with police chiefs from around the world to discuss policing tactics and co-operation.

John Twomey, Assistant Commissioner of Operations says Gardai met within 2 hours of the London attack.

"We are happy that our response (to an incident) whould be of a similar time to that seen in the UK"

Update 12.49pm: Front line policing staff require specialised counter terrorism training acording to the President of the Association of Gardai Sergeants and Inspectors (AGSI).

Antoinette Cunningham said the current lack of training was a major failing and she isnt sure what the capabilities of the force would be, to deal with a major attack.

She told Today with Sean ORourke there needed to be an integrated approach to training.

She added that she was concerned at the current low number of Gardai and said the numbers in community policing have been decimated which is very concerning.

However she said there has been huge success with the Garda inter-cultural office and Gardai are reaching out to many different nationalities and communities.
Burma Burma Army Searches for Missing Military Plane Carrying 104 Passengers

A file photo of the missing plane. / Photo: Commander-in-Chiefs Office / Facebook

RANGOON  The Burma Army searched for a missing military aircraft carrying 14 crew and 90 military staff members and their families flying between Tanintharyi Divisions Myeik and Rangoon on Wednesday afternoon, according to a Burma Army Commander-in-Chiefs office Facebook post.

Four military boats and two aircraft began searching for the Y-8 military transport plane after contact was lost 32 kilometers west of Tanintharyi Divisions Dawei at 1:35 p.m.

The Chinese-made plane was acquired in March 2016 and had a total of 809 flying hours. It was also carrying 2.4 tons of supplies, according to the military statement.
Burma China and Burma: Not Only Pauk-Phaw

A stand off between protesters and soldiers in Burmas 1988 pro-democracy uprising. / Courtesy of the Silver Jubilee 88 Uprising Exhibition

Part 3 of a 5-part series

1978 to 1988: Rapprochement and Stalemate

This decade was a period of gradual rapprochement between Burma and Chinaand a virtual standstill in the previously extremely heavy fighting between Burmese government forces and the CPB. Following Ne Wins trips to China and Cambodia in 1977, Deng Xiaoping paid a politically important visit to Rangoon on January 26-31, 1978. Diplomatic relations on the ambassadorial level between China and Rangoon had been restored in 1970, but it was not until Dengs visit that the hitherto strained relationship between the two countries could be described as reasonably normal. Aid to the CPB was downgraded, but not completely cut off. The official Chinese policy from 1979-88 was also characterized by the rather contradictory Chinese concept of differentiating between party-to- party relations and government-to government tiesa meaningless distinction in the Chinese context since the party in any case formed the government in Beijing.

Relations between Rangoon and Beijing were nevertheless improving noticeably. On July 9-13, 1979, Burmese Prime Minister Maung Maung Kha visited China and signed an agreement on economic and technical cooperation. Ne Win returned to China in October 1980 and again in May 1985. Chinas President Li Xiannian visited Rangoon in March 1985. Meanwhile, the CPB forces in Burmas northeast were becoming increasingly irrelevant and anachronistic. They neither advanced, nor were they defeated by the Burmese army.

A new facet of the CPB was also becoming important for the group. In their base area, a lucrative, cross-border contraband trade was beginning to become economically significant. When the Chinese in 1978-79 decided that the CPB had to become self-sufficient, illicit cross-border trade became its main source of income and the orthodox Burmese Maoists suddenly became freewheeling capitalists. Chinese consumer goodstextiles, plastic products, cigarettes, beer, bicycles, petrol and household utensilswere exchanged for Burmese timber, minerals, precious stones, and jade. The CPB survived by taxing this increasingly lucrative, but still illegal, cross-border trade. This became the foundation for an entirely new kind of relationship between China and Burma, both at the central level and along the border.

1988 to 2011: Pauk-Phaw or Patron-Client?

A seemingly insignificant event in the midst of the political turmoil that engulfed Burma during the summer of 1988 turned out to be an extremely important watershed in Sino-Burmese relations. On August 6, 1988, as mass demonstrations shook Rangoon almost daily and only two days before a general strike crippled the entire country, most observers were probably amused to read in the official media in Rangoon that China and Burma had signed an agreement, allowing official cross-border trade to take place between the two countries. While the rest of the world was watching what they thought were the last days of the old regime, Beijing was betting on its continued ability to play a double game that leveraged both its historic and cultural ties to cross-border ethnic rebels and its neutral approach to engagement with whatever government was in power in Rangoon.

The Chinese had expressed their intentions, almost unnoticed, in an article in the Beijing Review as early as September 2, 1985. Titled Opening to the Southwest: An Expert Opinion, this article by the former Vice Minister of Communications Pan Qi outlined the possibilities of finding an outlet for trade from China, through Burma, to the Indian Ocean. Pan mentioned the Burmese railheads of Myitkyina and Lashio in northeastern Burma as possible conduits for the export of Chinese goods but refrained from mentioning that all relevant border areas were not under central Burmese government control.

At that time, nearly the entire, 1,357-mile Sino-Burmese frontier was actually controlled by the CPB and other non-state armed groups who had tiespolitical, ethnic or bothto China. Following the 1960 border agreement, a joint Sino-Burmese team had marked the frontier with border stones that literally covered the full length of the common border. When these had crumbled more than two decades later, new stones were erected in 1985 in accordance with a new agreement. But this time, the Burmese border stones, the location of which the Chinese had decided, were conveniently located in open paddy fields and glades in the jungle, far from major rebel bases along the frontier.

By early 1987, the Burmese government had managed to recapture a few CPB strongholds along the frontier, including the booming border town of Panghsai, where the fabled Burma Road crosses into China. At the same time, the Chinese, whose policies had changed dramatically since the Cultural Revolution, began to penetrate the Burmese market through an extensive economic intelligence reporting system within Burma. This network monitored the availability of domestically manufactured Burmese products, as well as the nature and volume of illegal trade from other neighboring countries such as Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and India. China could then respond to the market conditions by producing goods in its state sector factories. More than 2,000 carefully selected items were reported to be flooding the Burmese market. Chinese-made consumer goods were not only made deliberately cheaper than those from other neighboring countries, but were also less expensive than local Burmese products.

In March-April 1989, to the surprise of many, the hill tribe rank and file of the CPBs army mutinied and drove the partys Maoist leadership into exile in China.

The mutiny came after years of simmering discontent between the hill tribe cannon fodder, who had been forcibly recruited into the CPBs army, and the ageing Burman intellectuals who were still clinging to their old ideals. The government in Rangoon quickly and shrewdly exploited the mutiny: the leaders of the new forces who emerged from the ashes of the old CPB were promised that they could engage in any kind of business, if they agreed to a ceasefire with the government and refrained from sharing their vast quantity of weaponry (acquired from the Chinese from 1968 to 1978) with other rebel groups. The most potent military threat to Rangoon was neutralized, at a time when the military government was facing a serious threat within the Burman heartlands. As a result the cross-border trade flourished.

However, diminution of the importance of the CPB would not irrevocably damage Chinas influence in Burma. In the wake of the Rangoon massacre of 1988, and the Tiananmen Square massacre the following year, it was hardly surprising that the two isolated, internationally condemned neighbors would move closer to each other in the following years. This new, very special relationship between Burma and China was first articulated by Burmas powerful intelligence chief, Lt-Gen Khin Nyunt, a leading member of the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), in an address to a group of Chinese engineers working on a project in Rangoon: We sympathize with the Peoples Republic of China as disturbances similar to those in Burma last year [i.e. 1988] broke out in the Peoples Republic of China [in May-June 1989].

The importance of relations between these two bloodstained authoritarian regimes increased following a twelve-day visit to China in October 1989 by a twenty-four member military team from Burma. Gen. Than Shwe led the team, which also included Lt-Gen. Khin Nyunt, the director of procurement Brigadier Gen. David Abel, and the chiefs of the air force and navy. The visit resulted in a massive arms deal: China pledged to deliver US$1.4 billion worth of military hardware to Burma, including a squadron of F-7 jet fighters (the Chinese version of the Soviet MiG-21), at least four Hainan-class naval patrol boats, about 100 light tanks and armored personnel carriers, antiaircraft guns, rockets, a substantial quantity of small arms and ammunition, and radio equipment for military use.

By 1990, Burma had become Chinas principal political and military ally in Southeast Asia. Chinese arms pouring across the border into Burma were crucial to the survival of the extremely unpopular military regime in Rangoon. After the signing of the border-trade agreement in August 1988, Burma became Chinas chief foreign market for cheap consumer goods, and China became the major importer of Burmese timber, forestry products, minerals, seafood and agricultural produce. At the time, World Bank analysts estimated that nearly $1.5 billion worth of goods were exchanged along the Burma-China frontier, not including a flourishing trade in narcotics from the Burmese sector of the Golden Triangle.

In addition to trade, China soon became involved with upgrading Burmas badly maintained roads and railways. By late 1991, Chinese experts were working on a series of infrastructure projects in Burma. That same year, Chinese military advisers arrived and were the first foreign military personnel to be stationed in Burma since the fifties. Burma, in effect, became a Chinese client state. What the CPB failed to achieve for the Chinese on the battlefield was accomplished by shrewd diplomacy and flourishing bilateral trade amidst a politically weak government.

Though there was Chinese interest and acquisition of Burmese resources, the real resource play came later, and in spades. In April 2007, Chinas National Development and Resource Commission approved a plan to build oil and gas pipelines connecting Chinas interior to Burmas vast untapped on- and offshore petroleum resources. In November 2008, China and Burma agreed to build a $1.5 billion oil pipeline and $1.04 billion natural gas pipeline. In March 2009, China and Burma finally signed an agreement to build that natural gas pipeline, and in June 2009 an agreement to build the crude oil pipeline. The inauguration ceremony marking the start of construction was held on October 31, 2009, on Maday Island on Burmas western coast. The gas pipeline from the Bay of Bengal to Kunming, in Chinas Yunnan province, would be supplemented by an oil pipeline with a terminus in Kyaukphyu in Arakan State, designed to allow Chinese ships carrying fuel imports from the Middle East to skirt the congested Malacca Strait. And in September 2010, China agreed to provide Burma with $4.2 billion worth of interest-free loans over a 30-year period to help fund hydropower projects, road and railway construction, and information technology development.

This growing cooperation masked a deeper sense of unease within Burmas nationalistic senior officer corps, many of who had fresh memories of fighting CPB troops armed by Beijing. These tensions often came to the surface in ways that looked like internal power struggles but in reality were often spurred by disputes over Chinas influence. The first blow against China came in October 2004, when the then-prime minister and former intelligence chief Lt-Gen Khin Nyunt was ousted in an internal putsch. The Chinese at first refused to believe that their man in Burma had been pushed outhow dare Than Shwe and the other generals move against a figure so key to the relationship?

Nevertheless, both sides managed to smooth over the incident, and bilateral relations appeared to return to normal. Then, in 2009 without advanced warning to Beijing, Burmese troops moved against a non-state armed group in the Kokang area in the northeast, dislocating more than 30,000 people on both sides of the border, all of whom ended up seeking temporary shelter in China. Beijing expressed its unhappiness with the Burmese militarys tactics, but ultimately took no steps beyond demarches. Chinas leaders were again unpleasantly surprised when the new Thein Sein government announced on September 30, 2011, that a China-sponsored, hydroelectric power mega-project at Myitsone, in the far north of the country, had been suspended. By this time, there were other signals that Beijing could no longer ignore regarding its loss of influence, including a budding relationship between Burma and the United States.

Read Part 2 of the series here. Tomorrow: Part 4. Burma-US Relations, Its Complicated

This article was originally published here by The Project 2049 Institute, a policy group based in the US.
Burma Demand for Elephant Skin Driving up Poaching in Burma

A wild elephant is seen in Irrawaddy Division. / Reuters

A new elephant poaching crisis is emerging in Burma, WWF announced yesterday.

In addition to targeting wild elephants for their tusks, poachers are now killing elephants for their skin. The hide is reportedly being used for traditional medicine or is being turned into jewelry.

Since 2013, more than 100 elephants have been killed for their skin, WWF said. In the first few months of this year alone poachers have killed at least 20 elephants, surpassing the yearly average elephant poaching rate for Burma. Each animal, killed with poisoned darts, was skinned or close to being skinned, Rohit Singh, Global Wildlife Law Enforcement Specialist at WWF, told Mongabay.

Elephant skins have been in the market for the past few years, but we recently noticed a sudden increase in demand, Singh said. While reasons behind this surge in demand remain unknown, we are seeing this reflected in the numbers of wild elephants found killed and skinned.

Fewer than 2,000 wild elephants are estimated to survive in the country now. And this recent elephant skin fad could cause their populations to collapse, conservationists warn.

Ivory poaching in Asian countries typically targets tusked male elephants since females usually lack tusks. In Burma, this has resulted in a skewed sex ratio of the wild elephant populations. But now, with an increase in demand for elephant skin and teeth, mothers and calves are also being killed.

This additional pressure on young ones and breeding females will have serious amplifications on the future survival of this species in Burma, Singh said. This is why it is so important to put a stop to this crisis now, before Burmas wild elephant populations become biologically unviable.

The recent surge in poaching for elephant skin is being exacerbated by weak law enforcement. For example, when AFP reporters visited Golden Rock, a popular Buddhist pilgrimage site in Burma, they found several shops openly selling slices of elephant skin for just a few dollars per square inch of skin.

Shutting down these markets, and increasing protection for the elephants is key to combatting the illegal wildlife trade, WWF said.

We urgently need to deploy ranger squads into key priority areas where the elephants are being poached fromBago Yoma and Irrawaddy Delta, Singh said. These ranger squads will be well-trained and equipped to defend the remaining elephants. In the mid- to long-term, more can be done to put a stop to illegal trade of wildlife in Burma and the region. In Burma, we want to work with the government to close down the key markets where illegal wildlife products are sold.

To help put a stop to elephant poaching, WWF has launched a #SaveTheirSkins campaign.

We are witnessing the perfect storm for wild elephants in Burma, Christy Williams, Country Director of WWF-Burma, said in a statement. We urge people and governments across this region to come together to support increased protection for the last remaining wild Asian elephants in Burma and beyond.

Shreya Dasgupta is a science and environmental writer based in India. A former wildlife researcher, she writes about animals, conservation, biology, people and places. This article was originally published in Mongabay.
Burma Rights-Themed Film Festival Gets Bumper Line-Up, With One Movie Banned

A man walks in front of the Human Rights Human Dignity International Film Festival at Naypyidaw cinema in Rangoon on June 15, 2016. / Soe Zayar Tun / The Irrawaddy

RANGOON  The line-up for an upcoming festival showcasing more than 60 local and international films related to human rights was completed today, with one film failing to gain screening approval from the governments film classification board.

Sittwe, an 18-minute documentary about young people affected by the conflicts in troubled Arakan State was culturally and religiously inappropriate and should not be shown, according to the Films and Video Censorship Board in a letter to the events organizers.

The Human Rights Human Dignity International Film Festival is due to start on Wednesday June 14 and to run for six days at Rangoons Waziya Cinema and Junction City.

Expressing disappointment over the boards decision, Sittwe director Jeanne Hallacy said, Documentary films open public discourse on human rights issues, particularly on highly sensitive subjects that may not be addressed in depth in traditional media.

Hallacys previous films include a documentary on human rights activist U Aung Myo Min, which was shown at the 2015 edition of the festival.

The US filmmaker added, Banning films on human rights subjects prevents dialogue which perpetuates conflict, while sharing human rights stories contributes to considering solutions.

The human rights film festival was started in 2013 by founder U Min Htin Ko Ko Gyi and others with the goal to present a wide range of films dealing with broad themes that had previously been suppressed in Burma for decades.

No films were banned during the first three years of the annual event. In 2016, soon after the inauguration of the new National League for Democracy-led government, the planned festival opener for that year was controversially pulled at the last minute.

Twilight Over Burma: My Life as a Shan Princess is a love story set against a backdrop of political events in Shan State and Burma in the 1950s and early 1960s.

The Films and Video Censorship Board, then under a different name, said the film could pose a threat to ethnic unity. It was also held by the board to potentially harm the image of the military.

The board is made up of some 15 representatives, mainly from the Ministry of Informations Myanmar Motion Picture Development Department, along with members of other groups such as the Myanmar Motion Picture Organization, the Myanmar Music Association and the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Culture. The home affairs ministry is also represented.

This years festival is set to open with Burma Storybook, a film about the ideas of former political prisoner and poet U Maung Aung Pwint by Dutch directors Peter Lom and Carinne Van Egeraat.

A total of 66 films are due to be shown, U Min Htin Ko Ko Gyi said.

The line-up includes 52 films on a wide variety of subjects by local directors, including notable names such Shin Daewe, M. Noe, Moore Thit Sett Htoon, Bo Thet Htun Soe, San Htike and Yamin Oo.

An 85-minute omnibus movie by 14 different local directors, and an hour-long film in the Chin language are also in the line-up. The festival program includes 14 international productions, some relating to Burmese themes.
News Muslim Asia Caught in the Middle as Diplomatic Row Rocks Middle East

Saudi Arabias King Salman shakes hands with Malaysian King Muhammad V in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on February 26, 2017. / Bandar Algaloud/Courtesy of Saudi Royal Court/Handout via Reuters

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia  Non-Arab nations in Asia, such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Pakistan, are getting caught in the middle after Saudi Arabia led a clampdown on Qatar, accusing the tiny emirate of supporting pro-Iranian Islamist militants.

Malaysia had rolled out the red carpet for Saudi Arabias King Salman at the end of February, the first by a Saudi king to Malaysia in more than a decade. Then, the following month, Kuala Lumpur signed a defense cooperation agreement with Qatar.

A source close to the Malaysian government said that the recent efforts to strengthen ties with Qatar, including a visit by the foreign minister last month, will probably now be put on the backburner.

We have more to lose by siding with Qatar, said the source, who requested anonymity.

On Monday, a half-dozen countries, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Bahrain, cut diplomatic ties with the energy-rich emirate, accusing it of backing Tehran and Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood.

Qatar has said it does not support terrorism and the rupture was founded on baseless fabricated claims.

Doha now faces an acute economic plight as it relies on Gulf neighbors for 80 percent of its food imports.

The diplomatic clamp down on Qatar is seen as an indirect jab at Iran, and leaves non-Arab Muslims countries in an uncomfortable position, according to James Dorsey, a senior fellow at Singapores S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS).

The Saudis view Iran as the foremost terrorist threat rather than the Islamic State and a lot of non-Arab Muslims countries  would probably not agree with that, Dorsey told Reuters.

Pakistans Official Silence

Indonesia, Malaysia and Pakistan are predominantly Sunni-Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia. Jakarta has sometimes tried to play a mediating role when inter-Arab tensions have flared, particularly between Saudi Arabia and predominantly Shiite Muslim Iran.

Jakartas Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi received a phone call from Irans Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Monday who wanted to discuss the rift, Foreign Ministry spokesman Arrmanatha Nasir said.

Indonesia has called for reconciliation and dialogue in the latest diplomatic clash.

The dilemmas are particularly acute for nuclear-armed Pakistan, which has the worlds sixth-largest army and the largest military in the Muslim world.

Sunni-majority Pakistan maintains deep links with the establishment in Riyadh, which provided Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif with political asylum after he was ousted in a 1999 military coup.

But with a large Shiite minority and a shared western border with Iran, Pakistan has a lot to lose from rising sectarian tensions. In 2015, Pakistan declined a Saudi call to join a Riyadh-led military intervention in Yemen to fight Iranian-allied insurgents.

Pakistan has maintained official silence about the latest rift in the Arab world, loathe to be seen taking sides between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Pakistan also has close ties with Qatar itself, including a 15-year agreement signed last year to import up to 3.75 million tons of liquefied natural gas a year from the emirate, a major step in filling Pakistans energy shortfall.

Pakistan has to act very carefully. In my opinion, there is only one option for Pakistan: to stay neutral, said retired army Brigadier Shaukat Qadir, now an independent risk and security analyst.

Islamic Military Alliance

Pakistans recently retired army chief, General Raheel Sharif, traveled to Riyadh in April to lead the Saudi-led Islamic Military Alliance. The stated mission of the multinational alliance is to fight terrorism but it is increasingly seen as anti-Iran.

There are rumors flying around that Raheel Sharif is pulling out of the Saudi-led military alliance. I hope they are true and he comes back soon, said Qadir.

Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in January 2016 visited both Riyadh and Tehran along with Shariff, who was then the army chief, in an attempt to bridge the deepening chasm.

Relations between Malaysia and Saudi Arabia have been in the spotlight over the last two years after Saudi Arabia was dragged into a multi-billion dollar corruption scandal at Malaysian state fund lMDB, founded by Najib.

Najib has denied any wrongdoing in the money-laundering case which is now being investigated by several countries including the US, Switzerland and Singapore.

During King Salmans visit to Malaysia, Saudi oil giant Aramco agreed to buy a US$7 billion equity stake in Malaysian state energy firm Petronas major refining and petrochemical project.

But Qatar has also invested between $12 billion and $15 billion in Malaysia, according to media reports.

RSIS Dorsey said non-Arab Muslim countries like Malaysia would be put on the spot if the Saudis demand that its trade partners pick a side.

They (Malaysia) can say either I do business with you, or say Im not going to make that choice. Then the question would be how would the Saudis or the UAE respond to that, Dorsey said. But were not there yet, and theres no certainty that it will get there.
Guest Column One year Under Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Press Freedom Lags Behind Democratic Progress

An anti-Article 66(d) demonstrator in Rangoon in January 2017. / Pyay Kyaw / The Irrawaddy

BANGKOK, Thailand  When Nobel Peace Prize laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and her long-persecuted National League for Democracy party won elected office in November 2015, bringing an end to nearly five decades of authoritarian military rule, many local journalists saw the democratic result as a de facto win for press freedom.

Burmas previous military regimes imposed strict restrictions on the media, including a pre-publication censorship system that left any news or commentary even remotely critical of the junta or its commanding officers on news publications cutting room floors.

For decades, Burma was home to one of Asias most repressive media environments, where scores of journalists who dared to shirk the regimes censorship orderseither under pseudonyms or by filing secretly to exile-run independent mediawere sentenced to jail terms in abysmal and often brutal prison conditions.

While those restrictions started to lift under previous President Thein Sein, including an end in August 2012 to pre-publication censorship and the release in November 2012 of political prisoners, including many journalists, in a mass presidential amnesty, self-censorship endured because laws used to stifle free expression and punish dissent remained on the books. In 2013, Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)s report Burma falters, backtracks on press freedom, found Thein Seins military-backed, quasi-civilian government lacked a genuine commitment to a more open press environment.

Now, one year into State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyis de facto leadership, and despite hopes that the former political prisoner and pro-democracy icon would leverage her resounding mandate to roll back military power and strike down draconian laws, the situation for journalists has not materially improved, according to Burma-based journalists who spoke with the CPJ.

Press freedom in our country is not really improving, said Kyaw Zwa Moe, editor of the The Irrawaddy, a news group established by exiles that began operating from inside the country during Thein Seins term. There is still limited space for independent media due to restrictive laws, [media] market monopoly, no clear policy for access to information, and media-unfriendly establishments and authorities.

Presidential spokesperson Zaw Htay, who served the same role under Thein Sein, did not immediately respond to CPJs request for comment.

Kyaw Zwa says while Daw Aung San Suu Kyis NLD-led government has not imposed new restrictions on reporters, it has also not done enough to amend or abolish laws from the military era, including bans on reporting that could be deemed as threatening to national harmony and security. The government has still failed to create an environment where independent media can practice their professions freely and ethically, said Kyaw Zwa.

Chief among those laws is section 66(d) of the Telecommunications Law, a broad provision that carries potential three-year prison terms for cases of defamation over communications networks. While the law was used only occasionally against journalists under military rule, politicians, military officials, and even Buddhist monks are increasingly using it now to stifle online and social media criticism.

Journalists who endured the military regimes pre-publication censorship say there is still a wide range of topics, including cases of high-level corruption, religious criticism, communal violence, and the militarys operations, activities and business dealings that are still largely taboo under Daw Aung San Suu Kyis democratic government.

They say the rising use of 66(d) has hamstrung them from reporting into alleged past corruption and abuses committed under the former junta. Burma PEN, a free expression group, estimates 55 Article 66(d)-related cases have been filed since the NLD took power, including charges filed against social media users who posted material critical of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

Ko Swe Win, chief reporter at the local Myanmar Now newspaper, was charged under 66(d) on March 7 for his critical reporting on a prominent radical Buddhist monk, U Wirathu, who in a Facebook post thanked the assassins who shot and killed a Muslim NLD legal adviser at Rangoons international airport in January. A week later, the reporter was stopped in the street by three men who had photos of him on their mobile phones and who acted in a threatening manner, according to reports.

The monks defamation case against Swe Win, filed by supporters of one of the radical Ma Ba Tha groups that he leads, has since been dropped. However, the Buddhist fundamentalist group the Patriotic Monks Union of Burma pressured the Ministry of Religious Affairs to pursue legal action against the reporter for allegedly defaming Buddhism, according to reports. It is an incendiary charge in the Buddhist-majority nation. Human rights activists have accused Ma Ba Tha of inciting communal violence against groups or individuals it views as a threat to Buddhism, according to media reports and rights groups. Wirathu has denied any role in the violence.

Politicians have also used the act to stifle media criticism. Eleven Media Group chief executive Than Htut Aung and chief editor Wai Phyo were detained on Nov. 11 under 66(d) over an editorial that alleged Rangoons chief minister might have been involved in corruption, according to reports. The journalists were held in pre-trial detention for nearly two months before they were released on bail. The results of the pending case will set an important precedent on the laws use against the press.

Section 66(d) is hugely problematic, said Thomas Kean, editor-in-chief of Frontier, a local weekly English-language news magazine that he says has faced threats of legal action but no cases under the law. It is so broad that anything we report could result in a complaint to police. We dont actually spend too much time thinking about it because if you tried to avoid potential cases by self-censoring you would have little left over that you actually wanted to publish, he said.

Other reporters and editors told CPJ that critical reporting on the military, completely banned under the junta, is still fraught under Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. Thats in large part because Burmas transition to democracy remains incomplete, with the military maintaining autonomous control over the defense, home, and border affairs ministries and having a 25 percent appointed bloc in parliament.

The military has leveraged those residual powers to block reporters access to conflict zones, including a news blackout of a military operation in western Arakan Stateimposed since Octoberthat rights groups claim gave cover for rights abuses of ethnic Rohingya civilians. The government denies abuses were committed during the lock-down operation, which is now the subject of a United Nations human rights inquiry.

Authorities have blocked access to the region to enforce the blackout and threatened legal action against reporters who violate the ban. Reporters have been allowed access to certain areas in recent weeks, but only via two tightly controlled tours run by the government, Kean said.

Reporters are not wholly free to report on military and security matters deemed as sensitive, said Aye Aye Win, a recently retired Associated Press bureau chief who reported for decades under Burmas military rule. The fact that the NLD government has no control over the military and [lacks] political will to promote press freedom are the reasons [the] situation in Burma has not significantly improved.

Reporters who question the official narrative also come under pressure. Presidential spokesman Zaw Htay singled out Myanmar Times investigations editor Fiona MacGregor on social media, including on the President Offices official Facebook page, as biased against the government for a story she reported citing information provided by a local rights group that alleged around 30 Rohingya women had been raped by soldiers in a Arakan State village on Oct. 19, 2016.

MacGregor said she was fired by the privately owned English-language newspapers management days later for breaking company policy against damaging national reconciliation and the papers reputation. MacGregor told CPJ at the time that she felt Zaw Htays comments aimed to stifle local and foreign reporting on the alleged sexual violence and carried a tacit threat of possible criminal defamation charges.

Zaw Htay did not immediately respond to CPJs request for comment about her claims. Kavi Chongkittavorn, a senior editor at Myanmar Times, acknowledged CPJs emailed request for comment but the papers managers did not immediately respond.

The rape accusations have since been widely reported, including in a Reuters investigation published April 25 that interviewed several Rohingya women in refugee camps in Bangladesh who claimed they were sexually abused and raped by Burma security forces. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi told the United Nations in February she would investigate the allegations, according to news reports.

Still, local groups are pushing for positive change. On May 3, Burma PEN and 13 local media and rights groups released a one-year scorecard report assessing free expression conditions that found a significant shortfall in relevant reforms under Daw Aung San Suu Kyis watch. The government has the power to promote media freedom and freedom of expression, but it hasnt made it a priority, the report concluded.

The report noted that the NLD-dominated parliament amended 19 and enacted 23 laws during its first year in power, including a new personal privacy and security law that aims to curb physical, though not online, state surveillance. Lawmakers also abolished the 1950 Emergency Provisions Act, the ex-military regimes security law of choice for targeting dissidents and journalists, which had allowances for life in prison or even death for violations.

But with other repressive laws still on the books, including the 2013 Telecommunications Law, 2004 Electronics Transactions Law, and the 1923 Official Secrets Act, among others, that carry prison terms, Burmas media is still susceptible to vague and arbitrary threats. The NLD government is trying to reform laws, but based primarily on its own perceptions, not on international human rights standards, the PEN report said.

This article was originally published by CPJ.

Shawn W. Crispin is Senior Southeast Asia Representative of CPJ based in Bangkok, Thailand, where he has worked as a journalist for more than 15 years. He has led CPJ missions throughout the region and is the author of several CPJ special reports.
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - June 7, 2017) - Otis Gold Corp. (TSX VENTURE:OOO)(OTC PINK:OGLDF) (the "Company" or "Otis") is pleased to announce the commencement of field work at its Oakley Project ("Oakley"), Cassia County, Idaho. The phase one program consists of geologic mapping and surface sampling at Matrix Creek, an emerging exploration target at Oakley. Prior Otis field work (see Otis news release dated September 18, 2014) at Matrix Creek identified a detachment-related silver-gold system on the west flank of the Albion metamorphic core complex believed to be several miles long. In 2015, 14 rock-chip samples collected and assayed from a large, prominent outcrop, produced an average of 70.4 g/t Ag and 0.55 g/t Au contained within a black matrix breccia believed to be part of a large mineralized detachment system. Preliminary 48-hour bottle-roll results performed by ALS Chemex Labs in Vancouver, B.C., suggest that the gold is up to 82% recoverable and that the silver is up to 93% recoverable.

The current program consists of 1,350 soil and rock-chip samples which are being collected on a 200 metre by 25 metre grid in addition to approximately 40 stream sediment samples. The Company plans to use this information to develop a first phase drill program at Matrix Creek. Additionally, the Company is developing a plan to conduct a broader geophysical program to help better define exploration targets at Blue Hill Creek, Matrix Creek and Cold Creek, and potentially new targets that may require the expansion of the Company's land position. Results of the mapping and sampling program will be released shortly after the program has been completed.

About the Oakley Project

The Oakley Project targets a classic epithermal hot spring-type gold exploration setting with three primary geologic targets: Blue Hill Creek, Matrix Creek and Cold Creek. The Oakley Project contains a NI 43-101 Technical Report (dated August 8, 2016) on the Blue Hill Creek and Matrix Creek targets, which includes an Inferred Resource of 163,000 oz Au in 9.97 million tonnes at a grade of 0.51 g/t Au (see Otis news release dated September 23, 2016). Blue Hill Creek occurs within a north-trending, five-mile-long by one-mile-wide zone of low-sulfidation, hot spring-type gold occurrences along the western margin of the Albion Range metamorphic core complex. Matrix Creek is distinctive from Blue Hill Creek in terms of mineralization, host lithology and structure. Matrix Creek is located southeast and south of Blue Hill Creek and is named because it is characterized by a distinctive carapace of breccia up to 12 metres thick which consists of quartzite fragments separated by black to dark grey matrix of extremely fine-grained quartz and pyrite.

Oakley has district-sized potential for gold and silver mineralization but has received only limited historic drilling. Numerous drill targets have been identified at both Blue Hill Creek and Cold Creek from a CSAMT survey completed in 2008. Historic drilling at both targets confirm the presence of significant thicknesses of bulk-tonnage, epithermal hot-spring-type gold mineralization along strike and at depth of the deposits.

The Qualified Person under National Instrument (NI 43-101) Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects for this News Release is Paul D. Gray, P. Geo, who has reviewed and approved its technical content.

About the Company

Otis is a resource company focused on the acquisition, exploration, and development of precious metal deposits in Idaho, USA. Otis is currently developing its flagship property, the Kilgore Gold Project, located in Clark County, Idaho.
Nassau, Bahamas--(Newsfile Corp. - June 7, 2017) - Xtra-Gold Resources Corp. (TSX: XTG) (OTCQB: XTGRF) ("Xtra-Gold" or the "Company"), is pleased to announce that its new custom designed diamond drill rig has arrived at the Kwabeng Mine Camp, in Ghana. The Exploration Team has assembled the rig, and is doing the final preparation for the commencement of test drilling.

The drill rig was designed and contracted by Odyssey Drill Rigs from North Bay, Ontario. The rig is a modular design that is lightweight and versatile. The rig also offers a low environmental impact ("footprint"), which can reach remote and difficult locations within the Company's Kibi Gold Belt.

James Longshore, CEO remarked on site at the Kwabeng Mine Camp: "Xtra-Gold has already discovered its maiden mineral resource, and with this drill rig the Company will test multiple gold targets defined over the last several years, through extensive grassroots exploration. These gold prospects have the potential to add multiple new gold shoots to our current mineral resource."

About Xtra-Gold Resources Corp.

Xtra-Gold is a gold exploration company with a substantial land position in the Kibi Gold Belt. The Kibi Gold Belt, which exhibits many similar geological features to Ghana's main gold belt, the Ashanti Belt, has been the subject of very limited modern exploration activity targeting lode gold deposits as virtually all past gold mining activity and exploration efforts focused on the extensive alluvial gold occurrences in many river valleys throughout the Kibi area.

Xtra-Gold holds 5 Mining Leases totaling approximately 226 sq km (22,600 ha) at the northern extremity of the Kibi Gold Belt. The Company's exploration efforts to date have focused on the Kibi Gold Project located on the Apapam Concession (33.65 sq km), along the eastern flank of the Kibi Gold Belt. The Kibi Gold Project (Zone 2  Zone 3) maiden mineral resource estimate produced by Xtra-Gold in October 2012 represents first ever NI 43-101 compliant resource estimate generated on a lode gold project within the Kibi Gold Belt. The NI 43-101 Technical Report entitled "Independent Technical Report, Apapam Concession, Kibi Project, Eastern Region, Ghana", prepared by SEMS Explorations and dated October 31, 2012, is filed under the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.
LIMA, PERU--(Marketwired - June 7, 2017) - Minera IRL Limited (BVLAC:MIRL) ("Minera IRL" or the "Company") wishes to advise that it has obtained an order from the Superior Court of Justice of Lima as a precautionary measure to preserve the value of the Company's assets and investment in favour of its shareholders, communities and employees. The order temporarily suspends any enforcement proceedings against the Company due to the expiry of the repayment period for the US$70 million Bridge Loan granted by the Corporacion Financiera de Desarrollo ("COFIDE"). In order to keep the court order in place, the Company must request arbitration with COFIDE within 10 days.

The Company has requested a meeting with the members of COFIDE Board, to reach an agreement regarding the extension of the Bridge Loan payment term, within which the Company expects to finalize a new financial structuring plan with banks and/or investment funds. The Bridge Loan was part of the Exclusive Structuring Mandate of a senior debt facility for up to US$240 million maximum, which was unilaterally revoked by COFIDE with an announcement made in early March 2017 that became effective on April 01, 2017.

"Within 60 days after COFIDE's announcement of its decision not to continue with the loan structuring, the company has identified new financing options and is in active dialogue with a number of parties interested in considering an investment. We also maintain the local community's support for construction of a mine. We are confident we will resolve this matter and unlock the value of our flagship Ollachea Gold Project." stated Gerardo Perez, Chairman of Minera IRL.

The Ollachea Project, located in Puno Region, Peru is a robust, shovel ready development project that hosts probable reserves of 9.3 million tonnes grading 3.3 g/t for 1.0 million ounces of gold based on the 2014 post-feasibility optimization study. In Q1, 2017 the Company engaged Mining Plus from Australia to review the life of mine plan and further optimize the project. Final results of the project optimization and profitability studies will be soon announced.

Mr. Francis O'Kelly FIMM, CEng. a Fellow of the UK Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, is the Qualified Person ("QP") responsible for the technical disclosure in this news release.
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - June 7, 2017) - Mundoro Capital Inc. (TSX VENTURE:MUN) (www.mundoro.com) ("Mundoro" or the "Company") is pleased to announce the results from drilling at the Borsko Jezero license ("Borsko"). Borsko is one of the four licenses part of the JOGMEC-Mundoro option to earn-in agreement announced in August 2016. Borsko is located directly west of the Serbian state-operated producing mines, RTB Group's Bor copper porphyry mine and the Veliki Krivelj copper-gold porphyry mine, all located in the central portion of the Timok Magmatic Complex ("Timok").

Figure 1 - Location Map of Borsko Drill Targets



Teo Dechev, CEO & President of Mundoro commented, "We are strongly encouraged by the alteration and mineralization we have intercepted in the drill core thus far at the Borsko license and that the results to date from the initial drill holes provide support for the project's potential to host a copper-gold epithermal and porphyry system. We are planning, along with our partner JOGMEC, for further drilling at Borsko in the second half of 2017."

Borsko Drill Program

Overview

The Borsko drill program tested the first two of six targets generated by the 2016 field program (Figure 1 - Location of Borsko Drill Targets). For the 2016 field program, Mundoro carried out a soil sampling program over the central portion of the license to follow up on high copper-gold stream sediment anomalies which could not be explained by previous prospecting and rock sampling. The soil sampling results returned significant copper-gold anomalies which remain open to the north and south. Follow-up field work revealed association of some of the soil anomalies with altered dike contacts, discrete quartz stockwork veinlets and fine grained sulphides related to fault-fracture zones. Mundoro conducted ground magnetic and CSAMT surveys, structural analysis and limited trenching over certain soil anomalies.

Geology Interpretation of Borsko License Area

The Borsko license is located in the Timok Magmatic Complex which is one of the most prolific metallogenic domains in the Tethyan Belt. The geologic units in this licence area consist of Upper Cretaceous volcano-sedimentary successions, predominantly andesite and pyroclastics. Generally considered the most prospective geological units, the Phase 1 hornblende porphyry andesite occupies the easternmost boundaries of the Borsko license and dips moderately to southwest under the andesitic flows and interflow breccias and pyroclastic rocks of the second phase.

The H1-2017 drillholes are located approximately 2.5 kilometers west of the Bor group of copper-gold deposits which include high sulphidation epithermal mineralization such as the historical Tilva Rosh deposit which has been mined out and reported to have been intersected in the uppermost 30m meters of the lithocap.

The interpretation of Borsko geology summarized above along with models of known deposits in the district highlights the uppermost part of the lithocap, immediately below the less-altered volcanic sequence, as the prime target for any high-sulphidation copper-gold orebodies of Bor and Cukaru Peki type. Any such massive and/or stockwork sulphide bodies are likely to lie within the footprint of the underlying porphyry copper-gold centre.

The H1-2017 drilling at Borsko shows that an advanced argillic lithocap underlies 550 m of little-altered andesitic volcanic rocks, which were in existence at the time the advanced argillic alteration took place. The lithocap is weakly mineralized but, importantly, the highest copper and gold assay values lie immediately beneath its top, which is the equivalent stratigraphic position of the Bor and Cukaru Peki high-sulphidation copper-gold orebodies with respect to their associated lithocaps.

Hole BJ-07 exits the lithocap at depth and intersects pyrite-bearing propylitic alteration, which is interpreted to be the outer halo of a porphyry copper-gold centre. Additional holes are planned in order to search for high-sulphidation orebodies at the top of the Borsko lithocap.

Target 1

Drillhole BJ_06, which tested one of the newly generated drill targets at Borsko successfully demonstrated that a potentially mineralised system exists under overlying andesitic flows. This drill hole targeted an interpreted blind system at Target 1. Targeting was based on geophysical data and geological interpretation. The hole was completed at a depth of 821.6 m.

BJ_07: Based on the visual inspection of BJ_06, Mundoro and JOGMEC determined to extend the drill program to further test Target 1 with a follow up drill hole, BJ_07, up to 1300 m length.

Figure 2 - Cross Section of Target 1



Target 2

BJ_08: This diamond drill hole was designed to test Target 2 with a planned depth of 700 m. Based on visual inspection of the core, Mundoro and JOGMEC determined to extend the drilling to 1,000 m. Target 2 was based on geophysical data and structural interpretation in relation to surface geochemistry and hydrothermal alteration.

Figure 3 - Cross Section of Target 2



Table 1: Borsko Drill Holes Observations

Drill Hole

ID Total

Depth Dip/

Azimuth Geological description BJ_06 821.6m EOH -65/246  From surface to 585 m, cut through a package of weak but pervasively altered to chlorite-smectite, lacking pyrite andesitic flow and interflow breccias;  At 585 m the drill hole abruptly entered advanced argillic mainly kaolinite lithocap containing disseminated pyrite increasing at depth.  From 625 m to 767 m (142 m) the drill hole entered pervasively silicified andesite volcanics containing semi-massive pyrite, vuggy silica and breccia zones. The breccias are polymictic and relatively late stage.  From 762.6 m to 767 m such breccia contains 4.4m @0.27 g/t Au, 5.46 g/t Ag; including 0.6m @ 0.8 g/t Au, 24.3 g/t Ag and 0.18% Cu.  From 765 m to end of the hole at 821 m, the drill hole transitioned to advanced argillic altered partly brecciated andesitic volcanics containing more dickite with occasional sericite-pyrite and semi-massive pyrite implying increased temperature. BJ_07 1301.9 m EOH -85/66  From surface to 580 m, intersected a package of weak but pervasively altered to chlorite-smectite, lacking pyrite andesitic flow and interflow breccias;  From 580 m to 1132 m (552 m) the drill hole entered advanced argillic quartz-kaolinite lithocap as in drill hole BJ-06.  In the lithocap, quartz-kaolinite-pyrite transitions downwards at around 1100 m to quartz-kaolinite-dickite-pyrophyllite-pyrite implying increased temperature. Pyrite is fine-grained locally sooty (melnikovite) and occurs in disseminated and semi-massive pods rather than veinlet form.  The lithocap is locally overprinted by 1-5 m intervals of cream-colored silicification cut by irregular veinlets and patches of massive pyrite. Vuggy residual quartz and subsidiary alunite are also observed locally.  From 1032 m enargite-pyrite mineralisation is observed in an interval 6.2m containing 0.26 g/t Au, 2.6 g/t Ag, 0.2% Cu including 1.4m with 0.6 g/t Au, 0.23% Cu and 0.7 m with 0.14 g/t Au, 0.6% Cu.  From 1132.5 m to the end of the drill hole at 1302 m, the lithocap is transitional to propylitic alteration in which magnetite is preserved and pyrite contents are much less. The transition zone contains remnant chlorite but lacks epidote that defines the underlying propylitic zone. BJ_08 1002 m EOH -75/351  From surface to 509 m, drilled through alternating andesitic agglomerate and andesite tuff weakly chlorite-smectite altered.  From 509 m to 615 m drill hole continued through sedimentary package of marl and conglomerates layered with andesite tuff.  From 615 m to 682 m, the drill hole intersected unaltered coarse-grained hornblende andesite ('Phase 1 andesite').  From 682 m to the end of the drill hole 1002 m, the drill hole continued in weakly chlorite-smectite altered hornblende andesite and andesitic breccia with trace of chalcopyrite-pyrite mineralised clasts at 695.5 m and 749.6 m.  At 942.4m the drill hole cut through interval with covellite mineralisation which returned 0.9m @ 0.83 g/t Au and 2.63% Cu.

Table 2: Assay Results of Borsko Drilling

Drill Hole

ID Total

Depth Dip/

Azimuth From

(m) To

(m) Interval

(m) Cu

(%)1 Au

(g/t)2 CuEq

(%)3 BJ_06 821.6 m EOH -65/246 758.4 767.0 8.6 0.023 0.2 0.17 Including 764.6 765.2 0.6 0.18 0.78 0.75 BJ_07 1301.9 m EOH -85/66 607.6 609.0 1.4 0.004 1.03 0.76 734.0 738.4 4.4 0.01 0.16 0.13 768.3 769.7 1.4 0.008 0.45 0.34 771.9 775.0 3.1 0.006 0.24 0.18 873.0 875.5 2.5 0.27 0.33 0.51 including 875.1 875.5 0.4 0.71 0.65 1.18 989.5 992.5 3.0 0.03 0.15 0.14 1006.0 1013.8 7.8 0.02 0.14 0.12 1032.0 1050.0 18.0 0.07 0.17 0.19 including 1032.0 1035.4 3.4 0.27 0.33 0.51 1130.0 1132.5 2.5 0.03 0.28 0.23 including 1131.8 1132.5 0.7 0.05 0.77 0.61 BJ_08 1002 m EOH -75/351 625.0 627.0 2.0 0.1 0.007 0.11 942.4 943.3 0.9 2.63 0.83 3.24 1. Analysis by ICP-AES using 0.5 g aliquot for samples containing less than 1% copper, by AAS for samples containing 1 - 11% copper, and by ICP-AES using 0.1 g aliquot for samples containing >11% copper. 2. Analysis by fire assay with gravimetric finish for samples containing greater than 3 g/t gold, and by fire assay with AAS finish for samples containing less than 3 g/t gold. 3.The copper equivalent (CuEq%) is calculated from the formula CuEq = (%Cu) + [(g/t/AuEq) x (1/31.1035) x ($/ozAu)]  [(22.0462) x ($/lbCu)] 4. The gold equivalent is calculated from the formula AuEq = (g/t/Au)+[(%Cu) x (22.0462) x ($/lbCu)]  [(1/31.1035) x ($/ozAu)]. 5. All thicknesses from intersections from drill holes are down-hole drilled thicknesses. At this early stage of exploration for a high-sulphidation epithermal and porphyry system at depths typical of the Timok, it is not possible at this time to determine the orientation of the mineralized zones, or to estimate their true thickness.

Next Steps

The Company is preparing a follow up drilling program for the second half of 2017. Based on the data collected in this most recent drill program and the associated analysis and interpretation, the Company and its partner JOGMEC, believe that Borsko has strong potential to host high sulphidation and porphyry style copper-gold mineralisation. Mostly notably, the prospective lithocap horizon discovered through this program is directly analogous with the host horizons at the Bor underground high sulphidation deposits and Cukaru Peki discovery.

JOGMEC-Mundoro Option to Earn-in Agreement

In July 2016, the Company amended its binding interim agreement (the "Interim Agreement") with Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation ("JOGMEC") and granted to JOGMEC an earn-in option on four of Mundoro's exploration licenses: Dubrava, Padina, Zeleznik and Borsko Jezero (the "Timok North Projects") located within the Timok Magmatic Complex in northeastern Serbia. JOGMEC has the option to earn a 51% interest in the Timok North Projects by making US$4 million in expenditures within three years (March 2019) ("Stage One Earn-in"). JOGMEC has completed its commitment to expend US$1 million of this amount by March 2017. Following the Stage One Earn-in, JOGMEC has a right to acquire an additional 24% interest in the Timok North Projects, for a total of 75% interest, by funding the completion of a Feasibility Study (up to US$32 million) by the eighth anniversary of the Interim Agreement (March 2024) ("Stage Two Earn-in"). On completing the Stage Two Earn-In, JOGMEC will have a right, exercisable for a period of 60 days, to purchase an additional 5% interest in the Timok North Projects from Mundoro, for a total of 80% interest.

Qualified Person

Technical information contained in this Press Release has been reviewed and approved by Mr. G. Magaranov, P. Geo., Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101.

QA/QC, Sampling and Analysis

Drillhole orientations were surveyed at approximately 30 m intervals. Company personnel monitored the drilling, with cores delivered daily to the Company's core storage facility in the town of Bor, where it was logged, cut and sampled. Core recovery is recorded as 95-100% in most intervals, with the exception of the more intensely tectonized sections. The samples were collected in accordance with the Company's protocols that are compatible with accepted industry procedures and best practice standards. Most samples through the mineralized intervals were 1 metre in length, up to a maximum 2 metres. In sections of poorly mineralized or unaltered and unmineralised rocks one 2m sample was collected at every 15 meters core. The samples were submitted to ALS Laboratory in Bor, Serbia, for sample preparation and analysis. In addition to the laboratory's internal QA/QC procedures, the Company conducted its own QA/QC with the systematic inclusion of certified reference materials every 20 samples, blank samples every 20 samples and field duplicates at every 25 samples.

About Mundoro Capital Inc.

Mundoro is a Canadian mineral exploration and development public company focused on building value for its shareholders through directly investing in mineral projects that have the ability to generate future returns for shareholders. The Company currently holds a diverse portfolio of projects in two European countries as well as an investment in a producing gold mine in Bulgaria and a feasibility stage gold project in China. The Company holds eight 100% owned projects in Serbia, the four Timok North Projects are in option to JOGMEC, and the four Timok South Projects are being advanced by Mundoro. Mundoro's common shares trade on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol "MUN".
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - June 7, 2017) - Liberty Gold Inc. (TSX:LGD) ("Liberty Gold" or the "Company") is pleased to announce additional drill results from the Warrior and Aggie targets, as well as the Peg Leg target, all located within the larger Main Zone of the 100% controlled Goldstrike Project in southwestern Utah. The primary target is shallow Carlin-style, oxide gold mineralization within the 14 km2 "Historic Mine Trend", between and down-dip of historic open pits.

Highlights from the Warrior and Aggie Targets include:

1.53 grams per tonne gold (g/t Au) over 25.9 metres (m) including 3.48 g/t Au over 9.1 m in PGS242

0.85 g/t Au over 50.3 m including 1.81 g/t Au over 15.2 m in PGS235

0.62 g/t Au over 50.3 m including 1.61 g/t Au over 7.6 m in PGS243

The new holes further define an area of mineralization that extends from the Warrior Zone to the western portion of the Aggie Zone and effectively connects these two target areas.

Highlights from the Peg Leg Target include:

1.80 g/t Au over 22.9 m including 2.98 g/t over 12.2 m in PGS245

0.51 g/t Au over 22.9 m including 0.84 g/t over 9.1 m in PGS244

1.31 g/t Au over 6.1 m in PGS231

The intercept in PGS245 is located in Paleozoic strata, where a number of shallow historic holes are located. Additional drilling is planned to determine the extent of this shallow and relatively high-grade mineralization.

In addition, four infill holes were completed in the Main Zone, including 1.43 g/t Au over 13.7 m including 2.33 g/t Au over 7.6 m in PGS237, and two holes were completed in the Dip Slope area to the north of the Main Zone, including 0.66 m g/t over 36.6 m including 1.16 g/t over 15.2 m in PGS220.

Complete table of drill results for the current holes



Complete table of results for all drilling by Liberty Gold at Goldstrike in 2015, 2016 and to date in 2017



Map of drill collars and traces for the current release



A third reverse circulation drill was mobilized to the property on May 31. Currently one drill is testing the historic Mineral Mountain target in the northwestern part of the property, and two drills are testing targets in the central and western portion of the Historic Mine Trend.

Goldstrike is located in the eastern Great Basin, immediately adjacent to the Utah/Nevada border, and is a Carlin-style gold system, similar in many ways to the prolific deposits located along Nevada's Carlin trend. Like Kinsley Mountain and Newmont's Long Canyon deposit, Goldstrike represents part of a growing number of Carlin-style gold systems located off the main Carlin and Cortez trends in underexplored parts of the Great Basin. The historic Goldstrike Mine operated from 1988 to 1994, with 209,000 ounces of gold produced from 12 shallow pits, at an average grade of 1.2 g/t Au.

Moira Smith, Ph.D., P.Geo., Vice-President Exploration and Geoscience, Liberty Gold, is the Company's designated Qualified Person for this news release within the meaning of National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ("NI 43-101") and has reviewed and validated that the information contained in the release is accurate. Drill composites were calculated using a cut-off of 0.20 g/t. Drill intersections are reported as drilled thicknesses. True widths of the mineralized intervals vary between 30 and 100% of the reported lengths due to varying drill hole orientations, but are typically in the range of 60 to 80% of true width. Drill samples were assayed by ALS Limited in Reno, Nevada for gold by Fire Assay of a 30 gram (1 assay ton) charge with an AA finish, or if over 5.0 g/t were re-assayed and completed with a gravimetric finish. For these samples, the gravimetric data were utilized in calculating gold intersections. For any samples assaying over 0.200 ppm an additional cyanide leach analysis is done where the sample is treated with a 0.25% NaCN solution and rolled for an hour. An aliquot of the final leach solution is then centrifuged and analyzed by AAS. Metallic screen techniques may be employed where the presence of coarse free gold is suspected. Approximately 1000 grams of coarse reject material are pulverized and screened. Two splits of the fine fraction are assayed, as well as all material that does not pass through the screen (the coarse fraction). The final gold assay reported is a weighted average of the coarse and fine fractions. QA/QC for all drill samples consists of the insertion and continual monitoring of numerous standards and blanks into the sample stream, and the collection of duplicate samples at random intervals within each batch. Selected holes are also analyzed for a 51 multi-element geochemical suite by ICP-MS. ALS Geochemistry-Reno is ISO 17025:2005 Accredited, with the Elko prep lab listed on the scope of accreditation.

Goldstrike is an early-stage exploration project and does not contain any mineral resource estimates as defined by NI 43-101. The potential quantities and grades disclosed herein are conceptual in nature and there has been insufficient exploration to define a mineral resource for the targets disclosed herein. It is uncertain if further exploration will result in these targets being delineated as a mineral resource. Further information on Goldstrike is available in the technical report entitled "Technical Report on the Goldstrike Project, Washington County, Utah, U.S.A.", effective April 1, 2016 and dated October 7, 2016, prepared by Michael M. Gustin, C.P.G. and Moira Smith, Ph.D., P.Geo. found at the top of this page or under Liberty Gold's issuer profile in SEDAR (www.sedar.com).

ABOUT LIBERTY GOLD

Liberty Gold is led by a proven technical and capital markets team that continues to discover and define high-quality assets. Our core projects are Goldstrike in Utah, Black Pine in Idaho and Kinsley Mountain in Nevada. The management group at Liberty Gold is responsible for discovering, developing and/or building two of the latest seven heap leach gold deposits in the world that are now operating mines, including Long Canyon in Nevada and Karma in Burkina Faso.
TORONTO, June 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Seabridge Gold Inc (TSX:SEA) (NYSE:SA) announced today that it has completed the acquisition of a 100% interest in the Snowstorm Project from PFR Gold Holdings, LP (PFR) (formerly known as Paulson Gold Holdings, LP). The Snowstorm Project consists of 31 square miles of land holdings strategically located at the projected intersection of three of the most important gold trends in Northern Nevada: the Carlin Trend, the Getchell Trend and the Northern Nevada Rift Zone (see attached map).

Seabridge completed the acquisition by purchasing all of the outstanding shares of the private company that owns a 100% interest in the Snowstorm Project in exchange for issuing PFR 700,000 Seabridge common shares plus 500,000 common share purchase warrants exercisable for four years at $15.65 per share. In addition, Seabridge has agreed to pay PFR (i) a conditional cash payment of US$2.5 million if exploration activities at Snowstorm result in defining a minimum of five million ounces of gold resources compliant with National Instrument 43-101; and (ii) a further cash payment of US$5.0 million on the delineation of an additional five million ounces of gold resources. Canaccord Genuity Corp. acted as financial advisor to PFR on this transaction.

The Snowstorm property consists of 700 mining claims and 5,800 acres of fee lands carefully assembled in a private company over a 15 year period and explored over the past 10 years. Seabridge has staked an additional 260 claims totaling 5,200 acres that are contiguous to the claims purchased from PFR. The Snowstorm acquisition also includes an extensive package of data generated by previous operators. Although potential targets are hidden under Tertiary cover, the existing data supports the projects outstanding exploration potential. Geological and geochemical evaluations of Snowstorm have documented hydrothermal alteration zones consistent with large Northern Nevada deposit types. Geophysical surveys have confirmed the structural settings which host large Northern Nevada deposit types. Limited drilling has demonstrated that some of the target areas are at a depth amenable to surface exploration and resource delineation.

Snowstorm is contiguous and on strike with several large, successful gold producers including the Getchell/Turquoise Ridge Joint Venture operated by Barrick Gold, Newmont Minings Twin Creeks and Klondex Mines Midas operations.

Commenting on the deal, Paulson & Co.s President John Paulson stated: We chose Seabridge as the best home for the Snowstorm project because they share our vision of the projects geologic potential and their exploration team has done an outstanding job of growing the resources and reserves on their existing projects. Moreover, Seabridges projects, particularly KSM, provide us with significant leverage to a higher gold price.

Seabridge Chairman and CEO Rudi Fronk said: We are very pleased to gain Paulson & Co. as a shareholder. The Paulson team has a deep understanding of our business and the opportunities that lie ahead. We look forward to their advice and assistance as we grow the value of our Company. Seabridge has been an industry leader in finding additional gold resources over the past decade. For some time now, we have been looking for a large-scale asset in Nevada which remains one of the worlds best environments for finding large gold deposits. The Snowstorm acquisition accomplishes this objective. This project has all the earmarks of an outstanding exploration play and we appreciate the opportunity to capitalize on its exceptional potential.

The common shares and warrants issued to acquire the Snowstorm Project, and any shares issued upon exercise of the warrants, are subject to a hold period in Canada which expires on October 7, 2017.

Seabridge Gold holds a 100% interest in several North American gold resource projects. The Companys principal assets are the KSM and Snip Gold properties located near Stewart, British Columbia, Canada and the Courageous Lake gold project located in Canadas Northwest Territories. For a breakdown of Seabridges mineral reserves and resources by project and category please visit the Companys website at http://www.seabridgegold.net/resources.php.

All reserve and resource estimates reported by the Corporation were calculated in accordance with the Canadian National Instrument 43-101 and the Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy Classification system. These standards differ significantly from the requirements of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Mineral resources which are not mineral reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability.
by Gord Hotchkiss , Featured Contributor, June 6, 2017

Theres an interesting new study that was just published about how our brain mathematically handles online reviews that I wanted to talk about today.



But before I get to that, I wanted to talk about foraging a bit.

The story of how science discovered our foraging behaviors serves as a mini-lesson in how humans tick. The economists of the 1940s and '50s discovered the world of micro-economics, based on the foundation that humans were perfectly rational: we were homo economicus. When making personal economic choices in a world of limited resources, we maximized utility. The economists of the time assumed this was a uniquely human property, bequeathed on us by virtue of the reasoning power of our superior brains.

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In the '60s, behavior ecologists knocked our egos down a peg or two. It wasnt just humans that could do this. Pretty much any species had the same ability to seemingly make optimal choices when faced with scarcity. It was how animals kept from starving to death.

This was the birth of foraging theory. This wasnt some homo-sapien-exclusive behavior that was directed from the heights of rationality downwards. It was an evolved behavior that was built from the ground up. Its just that we humans had learned how to apply it to our abstract notion of economic utility.

Three decades later, two researchers at Xeroxs Palo Alto Research Center found another twist. Not only had our ability to forage been evolved all the way through our extensive family tree, but we seemed to borrow this strategy and apply it to entirely new situations.

Peter Pirolli and Stuart Card found that when humans navigate content in online environments, the exact same patterns could be found. We foraged for information. Those same calculations determined whether we would stay in an information patch or move on to more promising territory.

This seemed to indicate three surprising discoveries about our behavior:

-- Much of what we think is rational behavior is actually driven by instincts that have evolved over millions of years.

-- We borrow strategies from one context and apply them in another. We use the same basic instincts to find the FAQ section of a Web site that we use to find sustenance on the savannah.

-- Our brains seem to use Bayesian logic to continually calculate and update a model of the world. We rely on this model to survive in our environment, whatever and wherever that environment might be.

So that brings us to the study I mentioned at the beginning of this column. If we take the above into consideration, it should come as no surprise that our brain uses similar evolutionary strategies to process things like online reviews. But the way it does this is fascinating.

The amazing thing about the brain is how it seamlessly integrates and subconsciously synthesizes information and activity from different regions. For example, in foraging, the brain integrates information from the regions responsible for way-finding - knowing our place in the world-- with signals from the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, an area responsible for reward monitoring and executive control.

Essentially, the brain is constantly updating an algorithm about whether the effort required to travel to a new patch will be balanced by the reward well find when we get there.

We dont consciously marshal the cognitive resources required to do this. The brain does it automatically. Whats more, the brain uses many of the same resources and algorithm whether were considering going to McDonalds for a large order of fries or deciding what online destination would be the best bet for researching our upcoming trip to Portugal.

In evaluating online reviews, we have a different challenge: How reliable are the reviews?

The context may be new  our ancestors didnt have TripAdvisor or AirBNB ratings for choosing the right cave to sleep in tonight -- but the problem isnt. What criteria should we use when we decide to integrate social information into our decision-making process?

If Thorlak the bear hunter tells me theres a great cave a half-days march to the south, should I trust him? Experience has taught us a few handy rules of thumb when evaluating sources of social information: reliability of the source and the consensus of crowds.

Has Thorlak ever lied to us before? Do others in the tribe agree with him? These are hardwired social heuristics. We apply them instantly and instinctively to new sources of information that come from our social network.

Weve been doing it for thousands of years. So it should come as no surprise that we borrow these strategies when dealing with online reviews.

In a neuro-scanning study from the University College of London, researchers found that reliability plays a significant role in how our brains treat social information. Once again, a well-evolved capability of the brain is recruited to help us in a new situation. The dorsomedial prefrontal cortex is the area of the brain that keeps track of our social connections. This social monitoring ability of the brain worked in concert with ventromedial prefrontal cortex, an area that processes value estimates.

The researchers found that this part of our brain works like a Bayesian computer when considering incoming information. First we establish a prior that represents a model of what we believe to be true. Then we subject this prior to possible statistical updating based on new information -- in this case, online reviews. If our confidence is high in this prior and the incoming information is weak, we tend to stick with our initial belief. But if our confidence is low and the incoming information is strong -- that is, a lot of positive reviews -- then the brain overrides the prior and establishes a new belief, based primarily on the new information.

While this seems like common sense, the mechanisms at play are interesting. The brain effortlessly pattern-matches new types of information and recruits the region most likely to have evolved to successfully interpret that information.

In this case, the brain had decided that online reviews are most like information that comes from social sources. It combines the interpretation of this data with an algorithmic function that assigns value to the new information and calculates a new model: a new understanding of what we believe to be true. And it does all this under the hood," sitting just below the level of conscious thought.
by Steve McClellan @mp_mcclellan, June 6, 2017

MARC USA has appointed media agency veteran Dave Buklarewicz to the newly created position of EVP/Executive Media Director.

The hire comes as the Pittsburgh-based ad agency has been adding resources to its media and data/analytics offering as it redoubles efforts to attract media customers to its stable of clients, most of which take a mix of creative and media services.

Buklarewicz, a 20-plus year industry veteran who joined the agency from Havas Media, is tasked with overseeing the shops growing media practicenow with a staff of over 60--across its four offices.

Those include Boston, where he is based, Chicago, Pittsburgh and Miami, where its multicultural practice is based. In addition to coordinating efforts between the four offices, Buklarewicz will be driving the marketing and business development for the media practice.

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We believe theres a real gap in the marketplace and a tremendous growth opportunity for us in the media services arena, said MARC USA President and CEO Michele Fabrizi.

Thats particularly true of mid-tier clients  MARCs sweet spot  that tend to get lost in the shuffle at big holding company agencies, added Buklarewicz. Such clients, he said, are sitting on a ton of data and wondering what to do with it.

He adds that MARC is a flat organization where seasoned people are assigned to all clients.

In addition to building out a decision and behavioral science capability, the firm has upped its game in digital, most notably with the acquisition of Boston-based Results Digital three years ago. Fabrizi says that acquisition took our digital offering to a whole new level.

The agency currently provides media services for AOR clients, such as Rite Aid, Payless ShoeSource, the Pennsylvania Lottery, Belle Tire and others. Media-only clients include pharmaceutical firm Kaleo and Five Star Senior Living.

Buklarewicz spent the last six years at Havas Media, most recently as EVP Group account director. Earlier, he worked at Interpublics FCB, Mindshare and Y&R New York. Hes worked with marketers and brands such as Blue Cross Blue Shield, Goodyear, Unilever, Remy Cointreau, BP and Nestle.
by Larissa Faw , June 6, 2017

Visit Seattle is raising awareness for Seattle PrideFest, the U.S.'s largest free Pride Festival with a new campaign that celebrates diversity.

Visit Seattle's AOR PB& served as both the creative and media agency; Curator Pictures handled production.

The campaign features interviews with members of the Seattle community, who describe the inclusive DNA of the city and the importance of standing proud not only this month (Gay Pride Month), but all year long. The clip ends with the line: 'We take pride in all people.'

"Diversity, equality and human rights have taken center stage in many conversations around the country and world this year," says Tom Norwalk, CEO, Visit Seattle. "As such, Pride is about more than just a party or a parade this year. Its a time to stand loud and proud behind all people."

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The clip will appear on cable via Revolt, as well as across paid efforts on YouTube, Facebook/Instagram and Q Digital properties, which includes LGBTQ sites Queerty, LGBTQ Nation and GayCities. Users are invited to spread the campaign's message using the hashtag #Seattleproud.

Offline, Visit Seattle is distributing hats and buttons in a rainbow of colors at Greater Seattle Business Associations (GSBA) events as well as other prominent LGBTQ gatherings in select U.S. cities.

These activities will culminate with the 43rd annual Seattle Pride Parade held at 11:00 am on June 25 in downtown Seattle to celebrate this year's theme as #Indivisible.
by Laurie Sullivan @lauriesullivan, June 7, 2017

Google spent nearly $350 million to advertising its products and services in 2016 -- up from $232 million in 2015 and $227 million in 2014, Kantar Media reports. Investments went to display, search, mobile, online video, TV, print, and OOH.

Rival Microsoft spent $746 million in 2016, up from nearly $700 million in 2015 and $617 million in 2014.

Bing, Microsoft's search engine, spent nearly $7.8 million in Google search during 2016 -- up from $5.6 million in 2015, and nearly $3.9 million in 2014. Google buys advertising on Bing, but the numbers remain unknown.

Television also attracted both Google and Microsoft. Google spent $260 million in 2016 -- up from a mere nearly $180 million in the prior year -- whereas Microsoft spent $506 million, up from $472 million, respectively.

LinkedIn, now owned by Microsoft, invested 80% of its $2.2 million TV ad expenditure -- about $1.7 million -- to feature one ad during the Oscars, according to Kantar Media.

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Despite the ability of Google and Microsoft to dig deep into their coffers last year, Facebook had the highest uptick in the amount spent. In fact, Facebook's advertising investment rose 260% to $80.7 million. About 64%, or $51 million was spent to promote Facebook Live, the company's live streaming feature.

Facebook also invested $47.5 million in television in 2016.

Among other social networks, Twitter is the only one that lowered advertising investments in 2016 -- it invested 70% less in marketing in 2016 compared with the previous year, at $9.2 million. Snapchat nearly doubled its ad spend to $3.2 million. Pinterest's ad spend rose slightly to $2.1 million.
by Joe Mandese @mp_joemandese, June 7, 2017

In a restructuring of its senior management team, the New York Times Co. has promoted Meredith Kopit Levien COO and said Kinsey Wilson is leaving as executive vice president, product and technology and that his role is being eliminated.

Kinseys technology and data responsibilities will be overseen by NYTC President and CEO Mark Thompson, while the product and design responsibilities will be overseen by Kopit Levien, in addition to her responsibility for audience, brand, consumer revenue, advertising and NYT Beta.

Kopit Levien has been a rising start inside the NYTC, ever since joining as executive vice president-advertising in 2013 from Chief Revenue Officer of Forbes Media.

She was promoted to executive vice president and Chief Revenue Officer of the NYTC in 2015.

The company said Wilson will continue to advise Thompson, Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet and other senior members of the companys management team on a range of strategic matters, including its relationships with other major digital platforms, as well as the creation of an expanded audio strategy.

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Kinsey was a key player in the development of The Daily, a popular audio report published by the NYTC.
by Sarah Mahoney @mahoney_sarah, June 7, 2017

As Pride Month swings into full gear, experts say we can expect fewer of the sweet-and-tender messages of years past, and a little more resistance-fueled edge. But an even bigger trend, they say, is that as activist groups keep broadening messages to invite people everywhere to Pride events, brands will follow.

We are having more crossover activism, with communities seeing more common causesincluding immigration and people of color, says Bob Witeck, CEO of Witeck Communications and an LGBTQ business strategist based in Washington, D.C. In the same way Januarys Womens March included everybody, youll see this months marches including more kinds of people, too.

That inclusion (or intersectionality, in activist-speak) is so important to media-watchdog GLAAD that it even introduced the ampersand symbol as a way to signify the shift earlier this year, says Rich Ferraro, chief communications officer. At the marches this month, youll see more of these ampersands, with organizers reaching out to all people who are somehow marginalized.

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So yes, the month will still bring plenty of rainbow-colored products and flourishes, from brands as diverse as Target, Marriott, Levi Strauss, Macys, Wells Fargo, Campbell Soup, and Nike, whose Be True-branded bicycles will be part of parades. But Ferraro also predicts a feistier tone. In previous years, theres been a lot of celebration, he tells Marketing Daily. This year, were living in a new political climate, and as a result, we are seeing a much greater focus on visibility and sharing our own stories.

And while previous years have seen the White House awash in rainbow lights, President Donald Trump has issued nary a tweet in support. For the last eight years, LGBT people have been welcomed into the White House. Now theyre being made to feel invisible.

That has led the community to rethink its messages, he says. This Sunday, for example, instead of throwing its annual Pride parade in Los Angeles, organizers instead are opting to turn it into a protest called the Resist March.

As a result, brands wanting to deepen their connection with the LGBTQ world, a market Witeck says amounted to $971 billion last year, wont be using oppositional messages, but marketing will be pro-values. Theres a sense of momentum being lost in the community, and people need to know that brands have their back.

He also points to a growing awareness in the LGBTQ community that marketers are some of their most important allies. CEOs have the toughest spine when it comes to defending LGBT rights, he says. Members of the community want to know that companies support them in many ways, not just with a few tweets or one inclusive ad. And that means it is more important for brands to be vocal about their support: It drives marketers to drill down even deeper into authenticity, even more into looking into issues, and increasingly, giving back.

Ferraro agrees. It has to be about telling stories, he says. GLAAD is partnering with AT&T for a We are bold campaign, for example, emphasizing the need to speak out. And Kenneth Cole is featuring real couples sharing bits of their stories, including a young transgender man and his girlfriend. Levi Strauss, with its fourth annual pride selection, is also taking a more serious tone, with black-and-white t-shirts bearing a Fight stigma message.

Witeck also expects an increased amplification in the cause components of campaigns this year, as companies aim to show just how deep their commitment is. Macys, which is calling this years campaign Pride + Joy, for example, says it is stepping up its support of the Trevor Project, which works with LGBTQ youth, and Marriott, a company Witeck works with, is extending its #LoveTravels campaign outreach to homeless LGBT youth, working with Casa Ruby and True Colors. Target, which has extended its rainbow-based Pride line to include a giant unicorn pool float, as well as kids clothes, with logos like I heart my two moms, works with the Family Equality Council.

Witeck recently worked with Logo TV on a ranking of the most supportive companies, based on everything from hiring and promotional policies to social media messages to advertising inclusivity. Hilton, Anheuser-Busch, Marriott, Google, Apple, Unilever, Target, American Express, Macys and Campbell Soup are named as the 10 most trailblazing companies.
by Wendy Davis @wendyndavis, June 7, 2017

On June 3, President Donald Trump used his personal Twitter account to post a video clip from his weekly address, in which he discussed his recent trip abroad.

Twitter user Joseph Papp tweeted the following responses: Greetings from Pittsburgh, Sir and Why didnt you attend your #PittsburghNotParis rally in DC, Sir? #fakeleader.

The next day, Papp learned he had been blocked from following the president, who tweets under the name @realdonaldtrump."

Theoretically, the move means that Papp can no longer see Trump's tweets, followers, likes or lists -- at least when logged in to the service. People who have been blocked are also restricted from commenting in some threads -- although there are workarounds.

Now, the Knight First Amendment Institute says the block is unconstitutional. The organization, which represents Papp and Holly O'Reilly -- another Trump critic who was recently blocked -- is demanding that the White House unblock the accounts.

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"When the government makes a space available to the public at large for the purpose of expressive activity, it creates a public forum from which it may not constitutionally exclude individuals on the basis of viewpoint," the Knight institute writes in a letter to the White House.

"It is plain that our clients were blocked from your account on the basis of their viewpoints," Knight adds. "Each of them was blocked soon after having disagreed with or ridiculed you. Other users appear to have been blocked for similar reasons."

The organization points to several court decisions, including one from earlier this year involving Facebook. In that matter, a federal judge in Virginia ruled that the Loudoun County, Virginia Board of Supervisors may have violated the First Amendment by allegedly deleting critical Facebook comments from a page created by the board.

U.S. District Court Judge James Cacheris in Alexandria ruled last September that Loudoun County's Facebook page may have served as a "limited public forum" -- meaning that people have First Amendment rights to post comments on the page. That lawsuit is still pending.

Internet law expert Venkat Balasubramani, who has written about the Loudoun County lawsuit, says the battle over Trump's blocking of Twitter users could turn on whether the microblogging site is viewed as a public forum -- comparable to city streets or public parks.

In the Loudoun County matter, the county expressly said the purpose of its social media sites was to present matters of interest to the public, and the county encouraged people to weigh in on social media with questions and comments.

"A Facebook page is more easily slottable into 'public forum' than somebody's Twitter feed," Balasubramani says.
by Wendy Davis @wendyndavis, June 7, 2017

Family members of people killed in an attack in Jordan shouldn't be able to proceed with a lawsuit accusing Twitter of encouraging terrorism, the microblogging service argues in papers filed with a federal appellate court.

Twitter is urging the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to reject arguments by the widows of Lloyd Carl Fields, Jr. and James Damon Creach, who are seeking to revive a lawsuit against the company. They alleged in a 2016 lawsuit that Twitter supported ISIS by allowing members of the terrorist group to create accounts on the service.

Fields and Creach were killed in a November 2015, after they were shot by Jordanian police captain Anwar Abu Zaid.

U.S. District Court Judge William Orrick in the Northern District of California dismissed the lawsuit last year, ruling that the Communications Decency Act protects Twitter from liability based on users' activity. The family members are now appealing that ruling to the 9th Circuit.

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Twitter is asking the 9th Circuit to uphold Orrick's dismissal order.

"Twitter deeply sympathizes with plaintiffs for their losses and is committed to combatting the spread of terrorist content online. But Twitter is not liable for Abu Zaids appalling attack," the company says in papers filed last week.

Twitter argues that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act broadly immunizes Web platforms from liability for users' crimes. The company adds that Congress's decision to provide that kind of broad immunity served to encourage companies to offer interactive platforms.

"Because imposing civil liability on service providers for disseminating harmful third-party content would dramatically chill online expression, Congress enacted Section 230 'to encourage the unfettered and unregulated development of free speech on the Internet,'" the company writes, quoting from an earlier ruling about the law.

The company also points out that numerous other Web services providers have prevailed in lawsuits by crime victims. Most recently, last month a judge in New York dismissed a lawsuit against Facebook brought by family members of terrorist attack victims.

Twitter also says the victims' families can't show that its alleged failure to block ISIS members caused the terrorist attack. "Countless intervening acts and actors separate Twitters supposedly unlawful conduct -- allegedly failing to block members and sympathizers of ISIS from using Twitters platform -- from Abu Zaids heinous crimes," the company writes.

Family members of Fields and Creach aren't the only ones suing Twitter over allegations that it assists ISIS. Twitter -- along with Google and Facebook -- also faces a separate lawsuit brought by family members of three people killed in terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels. That matter is pending in front of U.S. Magistrate Judge Donna Ryu in Oakland, California.

The three companies also were sued last month by family members of three people killed by a terrorist in San Bernardino, California.

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Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. provides investor communications and technology-driven solutions for the financial services industry. The company's Investor Communication Solutions segment processes and distributes proxy materials to investors in equity securities and mutual funds, as well as facilitates related vote processing services; and distributes regulatory reports, class action, and corporate action/reorganization event information, as well as tax reporting solutions. It also offers ProxyEdge, an electronic proxy delivery and voting solution; data-driven solutions and an end-to-end platform for content management, composition, and omni-channel distribution of regulatory, marketing, and transactional information, as well as mutual fund trade processing services; data and analytics solutions; solutions for public corporations and mutual funds; SEC filing and capital markets transaction services; registrar, stock transfer, and record-keeping services; and omni-channel customer communications solutions, as well as operates Broadridge Communications Cloud platform that creates, delivers, and manages communications and customer engagement activities. The company's Global Technology and Operations segment provides solutions that automate the front-to-back transaction lifecycle of equity, mutual fund, fixed income, foreign exchange and exchange-traded derivatives, order capture and execution, trade confirmation, margin, cash management, clearance and settlement, reference data management, reconciliations, securities financing and collateral management, asset servicing, compliance and regulatory reporting, portfolio accounting, and custody-related services. This segment also offers business process outsourcing services; technology solutions, such portfolio management, compliance, fee billing, and operational support solutions; and capital market and wealth management solutions. The company was founded in 1962 and is headquartered in Lake Success, New York.
Corning Incorporated engages in display technologies, optical communications, environmental technologies, specialty materials, and life sciences businesses worldwide. The company's Display Technologies segment offers glass substrates for liquid crystal displays and organic light-emitting diodes used in televisions, notebook computers, desktop monitors, tablets, and handheld devices. Its Optical Communications segment provides optical fibers and cables; and hardware and equipment products, including cable assemblies, fiber optic hardware and connectors, optical components and couplers, closures, network interface devices, and other accessories. This segment also offers its products to businesses, governments, and individuals. Its Specialty Materials segment manufactures products that provide material formulations for glass, glass ceramics, crystals, precision metrology instruments, software; as well as ultra-thin and ultra-flat glass wafers, substrates, tinted sunglasses, and radiation shielding products. This segment serves various industries, including mobile consumer electronics, semiconductor equipment optics and consumables; aerospace and defense optics; radiation shielding products, sunglasses, and telecommunications components. The company's Environmental Technologies segment offers ceramic substrates and filter products for emissions control in mobile, gasoline, and diesel applications. The company's Life Sciences segment offers laboratory products comprising consumables, such as plastic vessels, liquid handling plastics, specialty surfaces, cell culture media, and serum, as well as general labware and equipment under the Corning, Falcon, Pyrex, and Axygen brands. The company was formerly known as Corning Glass Works and changed its name to Corning Incorporated in April 1989. Corning Incorporated was founded in 1851 and is headquartered in Corning, New York.
Everest Re Group, Ltd., through its subsidiaries, provides reinsurance and insurance products in the United States, Bermuda, and internationally. The company operates through Reinsurance Operations and Insurance Operations segments. The Reinsurance Operations segment writes property and casualty reinsurance; and specialty lines of business through reinsurance brokers, as well as directly with ceding companies in the United States, Bermuda, Ireland, Canada, Singapore, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. The Insurance Operations segment writes property and casualty insurance directly, as well as through brokers, surplus lines brokers, and general agents in Bermuda, Canada, Europe, South America, Canada, Chile, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and the Netherlands. The company also provides treaty and facultative reinsurance products; admitted and non-admitted insurance products; and property and casualty reinsurance and insurance coverages, including marine, aviation, surety, errors and omissions liability, directors' and officers' liability, medical malpractice, mortgage reinsurance, other specialty lines, accident and health, and workers' compensation products. In addition, it offers commercial property and casualty insurance products through wholesale and retail brokers, surplus lines brokers, and program administrators. Everest Re Group, Ltd. was founded in 1973 and is headquartered in Hamilton, Bermuda.
General Mills, Inc. manufactures and markets branded consumer foods worldwide. The company operates in five segments: North America Retail; Convenience Stores & Foodservice; Europe & Australia; Asia & Latin America; and Pet. It offers ready-to-eat cereals, refrigerated yogurt, soup, meal kits, refrigerated and frozen dough products, dessert and baking mixes, bakery flour, frozen pizza and pizza snacks, snack bars, fruit and salty snacks, ice cream, nutrition bars, wellness beverages, and savory and grain snacks, as well as various organic products, including frozen and shelf-stable vegetables. It also supplies branded and unbranded food products to the North American foodservice and commercial baking industries; and manufactures and markets pet food products, including dog and cat food. The company markets its products under the Annie's, Betty Crocker, Bisquick, Blue Buffalo, Blue Basics, Blue Freedom, Bugles, Cascadian Farm, Cheerios, Chex, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Cocoa Puffs, Cookie Crisp, EPIC, Fiber One, Food Should Taste Good, Fruit by the Foot, Fruit Gushers, Fruit Roll-Ups, Gardetto's, Go-Gurt, Gold Medal, Golden Grahams, Haagen-Dazs, Helpers, Jus-Rol, Kitano, Kix, Larabar, Latina, Liberte, Lucky Charms, Muir Glen, Nature Valley, Oatmeal Crisp, Old El Paso, Oui, Pillsbury, Progresso, Raisin Nut Bran, Total, Totino's, Trix, Wanchai Ferry, Wheaties, Wilderness, Yoki, and Yoplait trademarks. It sells its products directly, as well as through broker and distribution arrangements to grocery stores, mass merchandisers, membership stores, natural food chains, e-commerce retailers, commercial and noncommercial foodservice distributors and operators, restaurants, convenience stores, and pet specialty stores, as well as drug, dollar, and discount chains. The company operates 466 leased and 392 franchise ice cream parlors. General Mills, Inc. was founded in 1866 and is headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
GEA Group Aktiengesellschaft engages in the development and production of systems and components for the food processing industry worldwide. The company operates through five divisions: Separation & Flow Technologies, Liquid & Power Technologies, Food & Health Technologies, Farm Technologies, and Heating & Refrigeration Technologies. It provides separators, decanters, homogenizers, valves, and pumps; and process solutions for the dairy, food, beverage, chemical, and other industries. The company also offers solutions for food processing and pharmaceutical industries, which includes preparation, marinating, and processing of meat, poultry, seafood, vegan products, pasta production, baking, slicing, packaging, and confectionary, as well as frozen food processing; and granulation systems and tablet presses. In addition, it provides integrated customer solutions for milk production and livestock farming, such as automatic milking, feeding systems, conventional milking solutions, manure handling, and digital herd management tools; and sustainable energy solutions for an array of industries including food, beverage, dairy, and oil and gas in the field of industrial refrigeration and temperature control. The company was formerly known as mg technologies ag and changed its name to GEA Group Aktiengesellschaft in 2005. GEA Group Aktiengesellschaft was founded in 1881 and is headquartered in Dusseldorf, Germany.
Binod Ghimire covers parliamentary affairs and human rights for The Kathmandu Post. Since joining the Post in 2010, he has reported primarily on social issues, focusing on education and transitional justice.
Graham Holdings Company, through its subsidiaries, operates as a diversified education and media company worldwide. It provides test preparation services and materials; data science and training services; professional training and exam preparation for professional certifications and licensures; and non-academic operations support services to the Purdue University Global. The company also offers training, test preparation, and degrees for accounting and financial services professionals; English-language training, academic preparation programs, and test preparation for English proficiency exams; and A-level examination preparation services, as well as operates three colleges, a business school, a higher education institution, and an online learning institution. In addition, it owns and operates seven television stations; and provides social media management tools to connect newsrooms with their users, as well as produces Foreign Policy magazine and ForeignPolicy.com website. Further, the company publishes Slate, an online magazine; and two French-language news magazine websites at slate.fr and slateafrique.com. Additionally, it provides social media marketing solutions; home health and hospice services; burners, igniters, dampers, and controls; screw jacks, linear actuators and related linear motion products, and lifting systems; pressure impregnated kiln-dried lumber and plywood products; cybersecurity training solutions; digital advertising services; and power charging and data systems, industrial and commercial indoor lighting solutions, and electrical components and assemblies. The company also owns and operates 11 restaurants and entertainment venues; and engages in automobile dealerships business. The company was formerly known as The Washington Post Company and changed its name to Graham Holdings Company in November 2013. Graham Holdings Company was founded in 1877 and is based in Arlington, Virginia.
07.06.2017 LISTEN

Accra, Ghana: Vlisco Capsule Collection is back at the flagship store at Accra Mall. The leading African print manufacturer, Vlisco and the sensational indigenous fashion designer, Royal Dennis, today unveiled a new dynamic season collection at the Vlisco store at Accra Mall.

This collaboration follows similar partnerships with Stylista, Poqua Poqu & Melanie Crane in 2016.

This collection, dubbed Royal Dennis for Vlisco Capsule Collection by Royal Dennis is a good expression of the latest Vlisco season 2 Collection.

Royal Dennis is one designer we at Vlisco are always excited to work with. He is very creative and pays attention to details. He is simply good, said Stephen Badu, Marketing Director for Vlisco Ghana.

Customers can choose from ten exclusive styles featuring Royal Dennis`s signature and works. These styles will surely add some distinctiveness to the wardrobe of any Connoisseur of Style.

I call this collection GOLDEN by ROYAL DENNIS. I wanted to show Royal Dennis in a new way. I wanted to center my collection around a major concept which then is translated into different styles.

The collection is created for a woman not afraid of real beauty, a woman in charge of her own feminity, a woman who is golden said Dennis Dodoo, owner and Creative Director of Royal Dennis.

This will be on display at the Vlisco store from now till end of August 2017

About Vlisco:

Welcome to the colourful design world of Vlisco. Since 1846, Vlisco has been creating unique textiles in Holland that have influenced the fashion landscape in West and Central Africa. These textiles reflect true Dutch craftsmanship and were originally known as Hollandais, from the French word for Dutch.

Today, Vlisco is still the only brand creating authentic Dutch wax fabrics and is recognizable for its unique design, colours and wax craquele, all of which combine to create this inspiring fashion statement. It can only be Vlisco!
The Minority in Parliament is threatening to slap contempt charges on Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta should he fail to furnish the House with adequate information on the $2.25 billion local bond issued in April.

The Minister will appear before Parliament come Wednesday to discuss circumstances surrounding the issuance of the bond which has dominated discussions for months.

Former Deputy Finance Minister and Minority Spokesperson on Finance, Cassiel Ato Forson says the resolution of the House which led to the summon of the Minister must strictly be adhered to when he appears before them.

Questions have been asked about the transparency of the domestic bond government issued in April, with some claiming it was carried out in an atmosphere of secrecy. There was also the claim the bond issued amounted to a conflict of interest situation against the Finance Minister.

Minority Spokesperson on Finance, Cassiel Ato Forson

According to the Minority, the involvement of Trevor G. Trefgarne, a non-executive director on the Board of Investment Firm who purchased 95 percent of the $2.25 billion bond raises questions. Mr Trefgarne also doubles as the Chairman of the Enterprise Group and he is said to have a link to Attorney-General Gloria Akuffo and the Finance Minister.

Parliament last week passed a half hour motion to compel the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta to provide detailed information on the bond issued by government within seven days.

The motion was filed by the Minority Leader, Haruna Iddrisu, with a request for the full complement of documentation related to the issuance, the participants, the utilisation of proceeds and the currency in which the bond was settled.

Speaking to Joy News parliamentary correspondent Tuesday, Mr Forson said the documentation of the bond would help settle the controversy surrounding the issuance of the bond.

He said they want Mr Ofori-Attah to present to the House the full complement of the details of the bond as agreed and "not in the form of a statement as we did not ask for a statement but documentation."

It will be contempt of parliament for him to come and present a statement as the resolution is clear, straightforward with no ambiguity, he said.

The Member of Parliament for Ejumako-Enyan-Essiam said presentation of the details of the bond issued will put the matter to rest 'once and for all.'

He also said the Minority are not going to pre-empt what the Minister is likely to say when he appeared but added they will react after the encounter.

Deputy Majority Whip, Matthew Nyindam

However, Deputy Majority Whip, Matthew Nyindam said the support for the half-hour motion by the Majority Leader shows the commitment of the Majority to working in the interest of mother Ghana and not the New Patriotic Party (NPP).

He said President Akufo-Addo's government is an open one so when the Finance Minister faces the House Wednesday [tomorrow], he will speak to all the details including how the money realised would be spent.

We promised good governance and we will deliver that as we have nothing to hide. We want to play our oversight responsibility and deliver proper accountability, he said.

The Kpandai MP said the Majority will not play dodgy tactics as the NDC Minority did when they were in power and had to answer questions on the Fortis deal and Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) loan which they failed to do.

We will not shoot it down as we want to do things differently and that is what the people of this country voted for," said.

He is hopefully the issue is settled if the Minority does not come up with any mischief after the presentation by the Finance Minister.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | Abubakar Ibrahim |[email protected]
06.06.2017 LISTEN

By Belinda Ayamgha/Priscilla S. Djentuh

Accra, June 6, GNA - The government of Ghana has reiterated its commitment to achieving an information society; a goal which will be given added impetus with the country's hosting of the second Africa Open Data Conference in July 2017.

Ghana, one of the first countries in Africa to start an open data initiative in 2012 after signing on to the Open Government Partnership, has undertaken several interventions towards building an information society.

According to Mrs Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, Minister of Communications, Ghana will not only be part of the digital revolution and open data but will take the lead in showing the sub-region the benefits, including promoting business development, furthering research and innovation and accountability in government.

She made the statements at the launch of the Africa Open Data Conference scheduled to the held in Accra from 17th to 21st July, 2017 on the theme: 'Open Data for Sustainable Development in Africa'.

'That is why we want to move to an open data society where information generated is freely available in a usable format for anybody to use,' she stated.

Mrs Owusu-Ekuful said there was the need to have in place some building blocks that would ensure generation of usable data and the use of open data in a safe and secure environment.

These included ensuring that open-data was a whole government initiative and not done in isolation.

'We need databases which can talk to each other, as well as platform to link the various databases and make them accessible to the public,' she said, adding that there was also a need for infrastructure to be put in place to secure the data that will be generated.

She noted that in line with this, government would ensure the passage of the Freedom of Information Bill by the end of 2017.

She added that by end of 2019, Ghana would have a vibrant open data community with impact to show, following the Ministry's initiation of the 'Data for Development' programme under the e-transform project in 2014.

Mr Vincent Sowah Odotei, Deputy Minister of Communications and Chair of the Advisory committee for the conference, said open data was a critical infrastructure in modern economies and a means to growth, efficiency and effective development in governance.

He said transparency by making information open and available to citizens would keep them abreast with affairs of the country and engender a sense of ownership and involvement in the development of the nation.

He noted that open data helped to open up economies, with research showing that countries with open data were able to develop exponentially and create value and jobs.

Mr Odotei said open data would make it possible for everyone to access information that concerns them without any hindrance.

Ms Katherine Townsend, Co-Founder of Open Data Collaborative, conveners of the conference, stressed the importance of journalists in the conversation as they played a unique and vital role in the open data space.

'You're in the space where you're able to translate for the data owners and people mired in spreadsheetsyou're the vital point between the people and the data owners,' and urged them to be partners in the development of the agenda and discussions during the conference.

The first day of the conference, she explained, would focus on Ghana, with participants visiting innovation hubs and speaking to people in various sectors, and would include plenaries and training sessions, among other activities.

Dr Grace Bediako, National Development Planning Committee, speaking at the launch, said government was committed to implementing the open data initiative in ensuring achievements of the Sustainable Development Goals.

She explained that a lot of the SDGs had already been reflected in the country's development framework; Ghana Shared Growth and Development Agenda (GSGDA II), and as one of the main development goals, open data would further expand the growth of the nation so that no one would be left behind.

GNA
United Nations (United States) (AFP) - France on Tuesday asked the UN Security Council to authorize the deployment of a five-nation African military force to fight jihadists in the Sahel region.

A draft resolution circulated to the 15-member council would give the Sahel force a UN mandate to "use all necessary means" to "combat terrorism, drug trafficking and trafficking in persons," according to the text obtained by AFP.

The Security Council could vote on the draft resolution as early as next week, diplomats said.

Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger -- which make up the G5 -- agreed in March to set up the special counter-terrorism operation of 5,000 troops for the Sahel region.

The force will have its headquarters in Mali, but will be under a separate command from the UN peacekeeping force MINUSMA, which has been deployed in the country since 2013.

French Ambassador Francois Delattre said he expected the council to back the measure, drafted under chapter 7 of the UN charter, which provides for the use of force.

"We cannot afford to let the Sahel region become a new safe haven for terrorists from across the region," he told reporters.

The draft resolution would authorize the deployment of the force of up to 5,000 military, police and civilian personnel for an initial period of 12 months.

The force will operate in border areas and work to "create a secure environment by eradicating the actions of the terrorist armed groups and other organized criminal groups," the draft said.

UN logistical, financial support

France carried out a military intervention in Mali in 2013 to drive out jihadist groups, some of which were linked to Al-Qaeda, which had seized key cities in the country's north.

Although the Islamists have been largely ousted from the north, jihadist groups continue to mount attacks on civilians and UN forces in violence that has engulfed parts of central Mali.

The proposed measure includes a request to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to report to the council within 60 days on ways to support the Sahel force through logistical and financial means.

UN support for the Sahel force would come at a time when the 12,000-strong MINUSMA peacekeeping force has come under a series of attacks in what has become the UN's deadliest mission.

Two peacekeepers from Chad were killed in an ambush in the north on May 23.

The attack, like many others in the last weeks, was claimed by a powerful jihadist alliance, the Group to Support Islam and Muslims (GSIM), a fusion of three Malian jihadist groups with previous Al-Qaeda links.

The French-drafted text stressed that the G5 force's efforts to counter jihadist groups will help MINUSMA fulfil its mandate to stabilize Mali.

Speaking at a meeting in the Malian capital Bamako, Niger's Foreign Minister Ibrahim Yacouba said the G5 hoped to have a UN mandate "by the end of June," paving the way to deployment of the force.

French President Emmanuel Macron will attend a summit in Bamako in July to consider how the Sahel force will work alongside France's own 4,000-strong military presence in the region.

"France is an important partner," said Chad's Foreign Minister Hissein Brahim Taha.
Clients of Francis Xavier Sosu have pitched camp at his law chambers as they fear they will suffer the brunt of a decision to suspend the famed human rights lawyer.

The lawyer was barred on Thursday, June 1 from practicing for three years by the General Legal Council.

He was convicted on four counts of professional misconduct.

The Council explains that the ban has been slapped on the Lawyer for overcharging a client and also for advertising his service on Facebook.

Francis Xavier Sosus clients have since been pouring in to enquire about the status of their cases.

One of his clients told Joy News Favour Nunoo that the renowned Lawyer was working to secure a compensation for him and hence the suspension would greatly affect the progress he has made.

I had an accident so it has affected my spinal cord. I cannot work. I have two kids and a wife...but because of how the case is dragging all my friends and family say I should give up, but Lawyer Sosu keeps telling that I shouldnt give up, he told Favour.

However, a former Director of Operations at the law firm, F-X Law and Associates has dismissed fears activities of the firm will grind to a halt with the three-year suspension of Mr Sosu, who is a Managing Partner.

Ken Kadrah-Huletey told Joy News other partners of the firm will take up the cases.

There are five Partners and three Associates so if the Managing Partner is not available [the others can take up the cases], he said.

Too harsh

Meanwhile, many have criticised the suspension as too severe.

Abraham Amaliba

A Lawyer and a member of the legal team of the National Democratic Congress, Araham Amaliba, has said the 3-year-ban imposed is excessive and so severe.

The Founding President of IMANI Africa, Franklin Cudjoe, has also described as "senseless" the 3-year-ban imposed on renowned human rights lawyer.

According to him, the Councils regulation barring lawyers from advertising their services is rather causing many lawyers to force themselves into landmark political cases to subtly advertise their services.

However, a member of the Disciplinary Committee of the General Legal Council has justified the three-year ban.

Sam Okudzeto, who is a former President of the Ghana Bar Association, said the disciplinary committee includes no less a person than the incoming Chief Justice, Sophia Akuffo.

Sam Okudzeto

He suggested the composition of the 9-member panel should inform the public about the quality of deliberations that went into the decision.

If we are not harsh and tough in disciplining them, then what we are doing is opening the floodgate so everybody can do what they like, he justified.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | GN
A Praise and Thanksgiving Service has been held in honour of Chief Justice, Georgina Wood, on Tuesday evening as she leaves office Thursday.

She retires from office after 47 years of public service , part of which includes nine years as Chief Justice.

Judicial Service Secretary, Justice Alex Poku-Acheampong, at the Thanksgiving Service expressed gratitude to all Judges for their support to outgoing Chief Justice.

Delivering a message on behalf of the outgoing Chief Justice at the Service held at the Most Holy Trinity Anglican Cathedral in Accra, Justice Poku-Acheampoing was full of gratitude for the staff of the judicial service for their support.

She has gone through turbulent times. I remember the several ways of killing a cat...I remember the Ya Na case, when so-called pressure groups raided the courts to deliver a petition; the Lord was with us because we prayed.

I remember Anas Aremeyaw Anas petition, the Lord was with us because we prayed. So the message is that whatever leadership position you find yourself, rely on the Lord, said Justice Poku-Acheampong.

When she clears her desk on June 8, her birthday, she will be replaced by Justice Sophia Akuffo .

Next Chief Justice Sophia Akuffo

Georgina Theodora Wood, Ghanas first female Chief Justice was born in 1947 and started public service as a police prosecution officer.

She attended Bishops Girls and Methodist Schools and obtained her LLB (Hons) from the University of Ghana, Legon in 1970 after graduating from Wesley Girls High School, Cape Coast in 1966.

She attended the Ghana Law School after which she was called to the bar.

She subsequently went for a six-month Post-Graduate Officers Training Course at the Ghana Police College after which she worked as a deputy superintendent and public prosecutor for three years. She joined the Judicial Service as a District Magistrate Grade II in 1974 and was later promoted to Grade I.

She continued her service and rose through the Circuit and High Courts to become the presiding judge of the Appeal Court in 1991.

Justice Wood was first appointed to the Supreme Court by President John Kufuor on November 12, 2003, a nomination she turned down, according to the Statesman newspaper.

She went on to become the Chairperson of the Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR).

Justice Wood was again nominated for the position of Chief Justice in May 2007, and following the recommendation of the Council of State, the Parliament of Ghana approved her nomination as the new Chief Justice of Ghana by consensus on June 1, 2007.

Thereupon she became the 24th Chief Justice of the country and the first woman in the history of Ghana to head the Judiciary.

She assumed office on 15 June 2007 and is lauded as a human rights champion, playing a key role Justice for All programme.

In 2007, she received Ghana's highest National Award, the Order of the Star of Ghana for meritorious public service and most recently was given an LLD (Honoris Causa) from the University of Ghana.

She has also received an award from the Faculty of Law, University of Ghana for her outstanding Judicial Career.

Georgina Wood is married to Edwin Wood, a retired banker.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | George Nyavor | [email protected]
Doha bound

Nepal govt should be ready to help our migrant workers if Gulf crisis worsens
Some of the weapons used by the people of Denkyira-Obuasi in killing Major Maxwell Mahama. INSET: The late Major Maxwell Mahama

Investigators working on the death of Major Maxwell Adam Mahama, who was lynched by a mob at Denkyira-Obuasi in the Upper Denkyira West District of the Central Region, have retrieved lethal objects used to kill the soldier.

The death of the army captain (who was on Monday posthumously promoted to the rank of Major by President Akufo-Addo), has sparked national outrage and over 40 suspects have been arrested so far, awaiting trial.

Some of the objects retrieved were cement blocks, stones, pieces of stick, wood, some of which appear to be drenched in blood.

According to the police, the items, and many others which have not been recovered, were used to beat Major Mahama to death.

The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service has already recounted how a snail seller allegedly raised false alarm, suggesting that Major Mahama was an armed robber after spotting a sidearm on the soldier.

The snail seller had reportedly telephoned the Assembly Member for the area, William Baah, who in turn purportedly organized people in the town to attack the soldier, resulting in his untimely demise.

The police later confirmed that the pistol which the soldier was carrying had been retrieved after it had gone missing during the attack.

Major Mahama will be given a state burial on Friday as ordered by President Akufo-Addo, and a monument is expected to be erected in his honour.

The president also announced packages for the family of the deceased, including a GH500,000 Education Trust Fund for his children; and made a personal donation of GH50,000 when he visited the family at Burma Camp in Accra.

In the morning of May 29, the soldier was said to have gone on what sources say was his 'usual' jogging and on the way, it is claimed, he came across some women, who assumed he was an armed robber because he had a gun tucked at the back of his trousers.

According to some accounts, the women called the assemblyman and informed him that they had seen a man with a gun and were convinced that he was one of the many armed robbers who had been terrorizing residents of the area.

The assemblyman allegedly then called two of his associates and quickly moved straight to the area where the major was seen jogging and he (assemblyman) claimed the soldier then opened fire on them.

He claimed he ran away leaving the two associates who had accompanied him and proceeded to the police station to report the incident, further claiming that by the time the police arrived at the scene, the Major had been lynched.

The deceased family has said that all they want is for justice to prevail for the departed soldier while the military hierarchy has promised never to retaliate but rather would ensure that the investigations were thoroughly done.

Initially, about 120 residents were picked up following the lynching of the soldier and the number has been pruned to over 40, although more arrests are being made.



By William Yaw Owusu
President Akufo-Addo left Ghana on Monday to attend meetings of the United Nations Advocacy Group of Eminent Personalities on the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals in his capacity as co-chairperson of the Group.

The events are taking place in Belgium and the United States of America, as the G-20 Partnership for Africa Summit holds in Germany.

President Akufo-Addo will meet with Norwegian Prime Minister, Erna Solberg, his co-chair of the UN SDGs Advocates Group of Eminent Personalities in Brussels, Belgium, a statement issued and signed by Eugene Arhin, Director of Communications at the Flagstaff House, has stated.

The president will also hold separate meetings with the Belgian Prime Minister, Charles Michel, and President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker.

At the opening of the 2017 European Development Days (EDD)  Europes leading forum on international co-operation and development  President Akufo-Addo will deliver an address on the theme, Making Gender and the Youth the Private Sector's Business.

In the United States of America, he will address the UN Oceans Conference  high-level UN Conference being held in New York to support the Implementation of SDG 14.

The president will also have his first formal meeting with UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres.

In Germany, President Akufo-Addo will pay a courtesy call on the Chancellor, Angela Merkel, and participate in the G-20 Africa Partnership Summit, being held in Berlin, to deliberate on Germany's Marshall Plan for Africa, at the invitation of the German Chancellor.

He will also deliver a speech on the theme, Ghana, Africa's Rising Star, at an event to be organised by the Konrad Adenaeur Stiftung.

The Ghanaian leader will then pay a two-day visit to the United Kingdom, and return to Ghana on Saturday, 17th June, 2017.

He will be accompanied by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Shirley Ayorkor Botchway, officials of the Presidency and Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Solomon Sackey

07.06.2017 LISTEN

One of the men suspected to have taken part in the lynching of Major Maxwell Mahama at Denkyira-Obuasi in the Central Region about a week ago has been arrested at Bogoso in the Western Region.

The suspect, identified as Solomon Sackey, was nabbed on Sunday, June 4, 2017 at about 9:00 am.

This brings to eight, the total number of suspects who have been rounded up in the Western Region in connection with the killing of the army officer, and on the whole 44 arrests have been made.

It would be recalled that six residents of Denkyira-Obuasi, who were allegedly found in the Tarkwa-Nsuaem Municipality after the gruesome murder of Major Mahama, were apprehended.

One more person, believed to be involved in the murder, was also detained by the police at Sefwi Dwinase in the Sefwi Wiawso Municipality of the Western Region.

Major Mahama was lynched by some residents of Denkyira-Obuasi when he was allegedly mistaken for a armed robber.

Solomon Sackey, 29, allegedly reported himself to the Bogoso Police at about 9:00 am yesterday.

Chief Inspector Foster Berko, officer in-charge of Bogoso Police Station, who confirmed the arrest to journalists, asserted that the suspect had been detained.

He said Solomon Sackey indicated that he was a carpenter at Denkyira-Obuasi and that he had to run to lodge with a friend at Bogoso since he took part in the lynching of the Major (then Captain).

The station officer indicated that his outfit had gathered that four other suspects from Denkyira-Obuasi were still hiding in the Prestea-Bogoso-Huni Valley District.

2 Arrested In Ashanti

The two suspects arrested in the Ashanti Region were allegedly picked up at Nyinahin on Monday afternoon.

Forty-one suspects, including six women, arrested earlier, are currently on remand having been provisionally charged with murder.

The arrested persons were spotted in a recorded video playing various roles in the lynching of the soldier, who was posted to command the military detachment based at Diaso, the district capital.

Deputy Head of Public Affairs of the Ghana Police Service, DSP Shiela Buckman, told DAILY GUIDE that the police had heard of the arrest from the Ashanti Region but they were yet to receive their details.

We have asked that they bring the suspects to Accra to be remanded but we cannot confirm for now if they are linked to the crime, the spokeswoman said.

She said if evidence showed that they were among the soldier's killers, then they would also be taken to court to be remanded while investigations still continue.

Major Maxwell Adam Mahama was the commander of a military detachment stationed at Diaso in the Upper Denkyira West District of the Central Region to check the activities of galamseyers (illegal miners).

On Monday, May 29, 2017, at about 8:00 am, the army officer left the detachment base for a 20-kilometer jogging.

At about 9:25 am, he reportedly got to the outskirts of Denkyira-Obuasi where a number of women were selling food items by the roadside.

He stopped to interact with the women and even bought some snails which he left with the women so that he could pick them on his return from the jogging.

While he was taking the money from his pocket to pay for the snails, the woman from whom he bought the snails and a few others saw his sidearm tucked on his waist and soon after he had left, one of the women reportedly telephoned the assemblyman of the area, William Baah, to report what she had seen.

Without verifying the information, William Baah, who is also in police custody, allegedly mobilized the town folks to prepare to attack a suspected armed robber who had been sighted by the traders on the outskirt of the town.

The suspects met the military man near the Denkyira-Obuasi cemetery and without giving him the opportunity to identify himself, attacked him with weapons such as clubs, concrete blocks and machetes, and burnt part of his body.

By Linda Tenyah-Ayettey & Emmanuel Opoku, Takoradi
Robert Anane/Cecelia Diesob

Accra, June 06, GNA - Madam Sun Baohong, the Chinese Ambassador, on Tuesday donated items, including desktop computers, printers, UPS and a cheque for 10,000 Ghana cedis, to the office of the Attorney General.

The donation is to support the Attorney General's Office, towards organising a stake-holders' consultative workshop, on the Office of the Special Prosecutor Bill, 2017.

The Chinese Ambassador said China-Ghana relations were flourishing with effective cooperation in various fields.

She said it was essential to manage and guide the exchange and cooperation between China and Ghana, by legal means, in order to protect the legitimate rights and interests of citizens of both sides, maintain a healthy market order, as well as combat trans-national crime and ensure social justice.

Ambassador Sun said the Chinese government had always educated Chinese citizens and enterprises abroad, to abide by the laws and regulations of their host countries, and to contribute to the economic and social development of these countries.

'We support the new government of Ghana to carry out anti-corruption campaigns, and expect to strengthen our cooperation and exchanges on both domestic and international combat against corruption,' she said.

The Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Madam Gloria Akuffo, received the donation said a Bill on the establishment of the Office of the Special Prosecutor had already been put together.

She said a stakeholders' conference on the Bill would be held soon, adding that the aim was to establish the Office by an Act of Parliament, with the sole purpose of strengthening the existing anti-corruption mechanisms in the country.

GNA
Many African political pessimists had retreats of thought, when Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) assisted in ending the iron fisted rule of Yahya Abdul-Aziz Jemus Junkung Jammeh of the Gambian Republic in January 2017. Many Africans especially the Gambians were plunged into cornucopia of euphoria. African political pundits sighed and retorted: West Africa is on the verge of democratic rampage, thanks to ECOWAS. However, my anxiety knew no bounds when I read that Faure Gnassingbe of Togo is the new ECOWAS head, albeit his porous political susurrus and maneuvering. ECOWAS leaders, your humble son is curious to know what went wrong. Will Faure Gnassingbe have moral rights to condemn defiant Africa leaders who refuse to give up political powers?

Without further ado, I will provide my discerning readers with the circumstance under which the new ECOWAS head became president of Togo. Banjo Adewale is a Professor of political Science at the University of Zululand in the Republic of South Africa. He presents a solid argument against constitutional and succession crisis in West Africa published in the African journal of legal studies in 2007. Upon the above scholarly piece that I will posit; the current president of Togo is bereft of trustworthiness and integrity to lead ECOWAS.

Republic of Togo gained political emancipation from France in 1960. Togolese immediate leader after independence was Sylvanus Olympio who governed the country until 1967 when Gnassingbe Eyadema staged a bloodless coup. It is equally worthy of recognizing that Togo was the first country in West Africa to stage coup d'etat in January 13, 1963. Under the auspices of Huntingtonian third wave of democratization, the ban on political parties was lifted in 1991. As every sentient creature would anticipate, pursuance of free, fair and transparent election in corruption-ridden and poverty stricken frightened Togo was like a bootless errand. As a corollary, Eyadema was declared winners of all the three elections after 1991. These so-called resounding victories were not devoid of fraud, repression, primitive bigotry and intimidation.

Human rights abuse became very rife. This partly explains why in 1993, European Union (EU) jettisoned its operations with the Eyadema regime. In an attempt to ameliorate the sickening human rights records and hostile antagonism to the opposition, EU sanctioned Togo. In Febraury 5, 2005, Gnassingbe Eyadema, the then longest serving African leader died on his way to France for medical evaluation. It appeared Eyadema buckled the trajectories of the political desires of the two generations of Togolese. He fashioned out an easy path of condemning Togolese under his stealthy political hegemony even after his death.

No sooner had the news of his death which was destined to throw many southern Togolese into spontaneous cheering and jubilation broken than military high command making his son Faure Gnassingbe his successor. The military elites led by General Zachari Nandja, accomplished this task by suspending the constitution and pledging loyalty to Faure. This was a quick move to reduce diplomatic pressure and to offer their dubious political maneuvering a semblance of fair political game, Adewale, intimated.

The international communities condemned the constitutional torpedo in Togo. The same ECOWAS which has ushered many pundits into state of puzzlements by making Faure its head, issued various statements of discontent and demanded a re-birth of constitutional rule in Togo. The West African regional leaders threatened to apply sanctions including travel bans and freezing of assets of Faure. Togo remained unperturbed as Faure refused to grant and ECOWAS delegation leader and President of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo a plane landing rights.

Yahya Jammeh equally hatched a plan to lead ECOWAS. Thank God it did not materialize. What would have happened if Jammeh was ECOWAS leader when he refused to relinquish power? West African leaders must set a good example by allowing leaders with deep-rooted democratic attitudes to lead them. Faure Gnassingbes tenure of office was expected to end in 2015, but he manipulated the constitution again for the third term. West Africans love Togolese, even so we need a leader who could clamp down dictatorship and Faure is not one of them. This is a big goof, ECOWAS! Come again!

By Nana Yaw Osei

[email protected]
Police in Mozambique have warned that bald men could be the targets of ritual attacks, after the killing of two of them last month.

The two bald men, one of whom was found with his head cut off and organs removed, were killed in the central Zambezia province, AFP new agency reports.

"Last month, the murders of two bald people led to the arrest of two suspects," national police spokesman Inacio Dina said at a news conference in the capital, Maputo.

"Their motivations come from superstition and culture - the local community thinks bald individuals are rich," he said.

The BBC's Jose Tembe reports from Maputo that some people hold the false belief that bald people have gold in their heads.

The phenomenon of targeting bald people in ritual killings had not been reported before, he adds.

The suspects were two young Mozambicans who told police that the organs were to be used by healers in rituals to promote the fortunes of clients in Tanzania and Malawi, Miguel Caetano, a spokesman for the security forces in Zambezia, was quoted by AFP as saying.
Man is the most insane of the species. He worships an invisible God and destroys a visible Nature. Unaware that this Nature he is destroying is this same God he is worshiping  Herbert Reeves (Astrophysicist)

I knew it will come to this one day but I did not know it will reach this level where a whole young military officer who was out there to protect our environment will be lynched by galamseyers. The President, Nana Akufo Addo has already declared war on galamsey but I, your irrepressible Earth Angel Gabriel hereby declare total war on galamsey. There will be no retreat and surely there will be no surrender.

If a great river like Pra which flows into the sea at Winneba could pollute the sea because of galamsey operations up stream, then there is no option but to go to war. And if fisher folks along the coast are complaining of lean harvest due to a polluted sea, then all necessary tools of war should be applied to execute this war against galamsey. Such necessary tools of war include the media. That is why I have gone to buy a new fountain pen and a bottle of ink to go to war. I am aware there will be fallen heroes along the way like what happened to Captain Mahama, a martyr who was out there protecting the environment and river bodies.

Today, the battle cry that Ghanaians have been waiting for before going to war has already been delivered by the people of Denkyira Obuasi. When I heard of the unfortunate lynching of the young, handsome and promising military officer, my initial grief turned to anger and anger to resolution. My resolution was that, come what may those who murdered this young man must be brought to justice or justice must be brought to them, wherever they are hiding.

What happened at Denkyira Obuasi was an act of war declared by these galamseyers. Our war against galamsayers begins with the people of Denkyira Obuasi, but it does not end there. It will not end until every galamsey site is attacked, destroyed, stopped and defeated. It will not stop until some recast rant galamseyers pay the supreme price for daring us. This war is not going to be like the war against corruption where lives will not be lost. Our response should involve far more than the military drilling which took place at Denkyira Obuasi following the murder of the military officer. I learnt one of the attackers of Captain Mahama was killed and that is good. It is the beginning of greater things to come.

This is not going to be just one battle. This is going to be a lengthy campaign. The military should strike and make their strike both visible on TV for people to see and conduct covert operations, secret even in success. Every Ghanaian, irrespective of one's political leaning now has a choice to make. Either you are with us or with the galamseyers. From this day onwards chiefs who will allow galamseyers to operate on their land will be regarded as a criminals and enemies of the state. The security agencies, led by the Military should arrest such chiefs, drill them in public and drive them from town.

Our nation has been put on notice. We are not immune from attack by galamseyers. In fact, we are not safe. And if you are not safe what do you do? You arm and defend yourself. This is not the government's fight, this is people's fight. This is a fight for all those who want to see a clean environment and drink unpolluted water. And remember water is life. This is a new national challenge we are facing. We must come together to surmount the challenge. We must not rest nor should we tire. Great harm has been done to our environment and we have already suffered a great loss. Now that we have found our mission and our moment, the time has come for us to rise up together and take the bull by the horns. It is we who should take the fight to the galamseyers. We will drive them from place to place until there is nowhere to hide.

Let me seize this opportunity to console the wife and children of this fine officer. Justice and cruelty have always been at war and we know that God is not neutral between them. Those who took part in the lynching of the officer can hide for now but nemesis will catch up with them sooner than later. When I watched the video recordings of the unfortunate incidence, I came to the conclusion that if our security agencies, particularly the Police CID and BNI fail to apprehend the culprits then we should think of re-making these two outfits. Faces were seen in the video recordings and as such, inhabitants of Denkyira Obuasi know all of them. If even it should take coercion, undue influence and the use of brute force to extract information from the people of Denkyira Obuasi , it should be done. After all, in time of war, everything is fair.

Did I hear Johnson Asiedu Nketia, the NDC General Secretary well? That the President, Nana Akufo Addo should be blamed for the lynching of Captain Mahama? Hear the empty headed General Secretary of the defeated NDC: The death of Captain Mahama was under the direct supervision of President Akufo Addo. If we are to go by what the skinny General Secretary said, then the murder of the Seikwa Omanhene, was under the direct supervision of ex-president Mahama. There is madness in the stomach of this village politician! The culture of instant justice started when the founder of the NDC held the country to ransom. In fact, the late Professor PAV Ansah had cause to write series of articles on the issue. I remember one of his articles titled: 'Instant Justice, Rough And Ready' which was published by the Chronicle newspaper some thirty years ago. In that article the late Professor admonished Ghanaians to come together to speak against the menace since society will live to regret one day if the menace was not nipped in the bud. Ghanaians did not pay heed to the admonishment of Professor Ansah and today, here we are.

In those days, Professor Ansah also wrote extensively against the bizarre exhibition of what he called soldier power, the drilling and shaving of suspects with broken bottles and act of terrorism often explained in those days as revolutionary justice. Ghanaians did not heed the clarion call and lynching of suspects and instant justice lived with us till today. As for people like Asiedu Nketia who were living in their villages, they did not experience what happened during the revolutionary era in the big towns and so they cannot be blamed. When you lived in your village then and all what you did was to pick up your cutlass and hoe and go out there into the bush to till the land and cut the bush, you will talk like Asiedu Nketia. When family members of Captain Mahama are in a mourning mood and in fact, the whole nation is weeping for the poor guy, this opportunist, has the guts to rake our hearts with such absurd and heartless statement. Asiedu Nketia has no shame. There he is, ashamed and standing alone.

Captain Mahama's untimely and unfortunate death has nothing to do with politics. It is a wake-up call for Ghanaians to stand up to be counted when the issue of lynching comes up for discussion but not the way and angle Asiedu Nketia wants us to go. Since the NDC lost the last election, their communicators have gone haywire and acting like a snake whose head has been hit with a stick. They are desperate as if desperation will bring them back to power in 2020. Ghanaians can read between the lines and they can differentiate between a buffoonery and a statesman. Asiedu Nketia falls in the bracket of the former. But you know what? Asiedu Nketia will not be allowed to fool around like he used to do when the NDC was in power. Wealth, yes he has acquired enough to make him comfortable but wisdom, no, he is yet to acquire one.

THE DCE WHO SUFFERED FROM VERBAL DIARRHEA

The 23 Assembly members of the Upper Denkyira West District Assembly who confirmed Mr. Daniel Appianin as the president's nominee for the DCE position may be cursing the day they were born. This overzealous scatterbrain decided to let his voice be heard in the fight against galamsey by using the sad lynching of Captain Mahama but sadly he did not know that he stepped on the raw nerves of the good people of this country of thirty million souls. How can a man be so callous to such an extent?

The truth is that the guy is not on top of the job and must be removed as soon as possible. Mr. Appianin cannot tell Ghanaians that for the three weeks that the officer was the commander of the detachment posted to protect the environment against the activities of galamseyers, he never encountered him in anyway. And he cannot also tell us that he is not aware that the soldiers are stationed in his district. Thankfully, the President Nana Akufo Addo has shoved him aside for investigation into his infantile utterances to begin. If he is found culpable, he should be dismissed to serve as a deterrent to the rest. If even indeed, the military officer was protecting galamseyers, I don't think the same galamseyers will be so ungrateful to lynch their protector. You see the absurdity in the DCE's pronouncement? A fool will always be a fool if even you train him on the moon.

Eric Bawah
Confidentiality is key to police intelligence gathering, especially in our part of the world. The police are unable to gather critical intelligence tidbits sufficiently enough to prosecute their operations because many people do not have confidence that their identities would be kept secret.

Informants have come under fatal attacks because the police have not handled their confidentialities well.

Many Ghanaians would rather shut up when they have clearly seen a crime committed, the reason being that they would not want to be seen as sources of leakages.

The need therefore for us as a people to be supportive of the police cannot be overemphasized. Most criminals would find it difficult to operate if the people in the neighbourhoods in which they reside would be supportive of the police by reporting such suspected miscreants to them. Unfortunately, the 'mind your own business' mantra appears to have taken sway in our communities much to the detriment of efficient law enforcement in the country.

In the aftermath of the gruesome murder of Major Maxwell Mahama Adam, we have observed a major breach of confidentiality by a police officer which we must expose and condemn so such anomalies would be curtailed.

Following the fleeing of Denkyira-Oboase in the Upper Denkyira segment of the Central Region by the residents, one of the suspected murderers of the army officer reportedly pitched camp in his girlfriend's abode at Dominase near Kasoa, in the same region.

The girlfriend whose effort led to the arrest of her boyfriend must have regretted her action. A police officer at the village perhaps out of excitement, has mentioned loudly how the suspect was arrested thereby exposing the woman.

The life of this lady is definitely in danger because the relations of the suspect would target her for causing his arrest; in fact, she could be killed.

The ripple effect of this is that many more would out of fear for their lives, withhold information necessary for investigations and law enforcement because they do not trust the police.

Under such circumstances therefore all of us, not the police only, are the losers. It is our take therefore that the police officer who caused the identity of the informant to hit the public domain should be sanctioned.

It would not be out of place to remind police officers, especially the fresh ones from the training schools, to appreciate the importance of keeping the identities of informants secret. Anything short of this would affect dismally the work of the police and we members of the public would be at the mercy of criminals. This we must guard against by all means possible.

The importance of informants cannot be overlooked in any given society, including ours.

It is the duty of all Ghanaians to cooperate with the police to fight crime but when such cooperation can lead to fatal consequences, then many would remain indifferent; and that should not be the case.
DAILY GUIDE has gathered that the residents of Sefwi Asiam in the Sefwi Wiawso municipality of the Western Region were dumbfounded when news broke that a 17-year-old junior high school (JHS) girl in the area had allegedly stabbed her uncle to death over her amorous relationship with a guy in the farming community.

According to sources, the girl, Elizabeth Opare popularly called Awura Akua, allegedly carried out the barbaric act when she was purportedly provoked by the uncle, Opanyin Nana Yaw.

Elizabeth Opare was said to be angry with her uncle for trying to prevent her from dating her boyfriend who resides at Wassa Dwabo, also in the municipality.

Some of the residents alleged that the uncle fruitlessly tried stopping Awura Akua from continuing the secret sexual relationship with the boyfriend and so he decided to use a cane on the niece.

Reports gathered indicated that when the uncle tried caning the girl, she held his hand and overpowered him.

In the process, some of the residents around heard a loud shout for help from the uncle's room, attracting other neighbours who went to meet Nana Yaw in a pool of blood while the internal organs had gushed out.

The neighbours immediately suspected that Awura Akua had stabbed the uncle.

The girl was reported to have indicated that she stabbed her uncle because he had been a stumbling block to her love life.

She was immediately arrested and handed over to the Sefwi Bekwai District police for investigations while the body of the uncle had been deposited at the Bekwai hospital.

From Emmanuel Opoku, Takoradi
Otubuur Gyan Kwasi (seated) chatting with Isaac Kwadjo Buabeng (left) and the Constituency Chairman

Acting President of the Akuapem Traditional Council, Otubuor Gyan Kwasi II, who is the chief of Aburi, has urged Ghanaians in general and e members of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in particular to exercise patience and pray for President Nana Addo Dankwah Akufo-Addo to deliver on his promises.

According to Otubuor Gyan Kwasi II, who is also the Adontenhene of Akuapem, God knows why he chose President Akufo-Addo to lead the country, adding that looking at his policies and structures put in place over the past five months, the president will not fail Ghanaians therefore they should ask for God's blessings and long life for him.

The Adontenhene, who made these remarks when the new municipal chief executive (MCE) for Nsawam/Adoagyiri, Isaac Kwadjo Buabeng, paid a courtesy call on him at his palace as part of his (MCE's) familiarization tour of the municipality, further entreated all NPP members to support the president to achieve his goals and create jobs for them, especially the youth.

The Aburi chief hailed the president for making what he described as good appointments, regarding the appointments of municipal and district chief executives in the Eastern Region, who were overwhelmingly approved by the various assemblies.

The chief recalled, Ghanaians from every part of the country were suffering and were crying for a saviour who would bring them prosperity. Thats why God chose Nana Addo to lead us. It's too early to judge his performance, thats why he has a four-year mandate. All we need is to give him support and prayers to deliver.

Otubuor Gyan Kwasi II noted that President Akufo-Addo cannot appoint everybody into his government, neither can he satisfy everybody and so the party executives should speak to their members to exercise patience and stop the blame games.

He prayed that God should bless, guard and protect President Akufo-Addo and the MCE to fulfill the mandate given to them by Ghanaians.

In his response, Mr Isaac Buabeng thanked the chief for his warm words, stating that with your blessing and wise counsel, we shall delivery by God's grace. Nana will fulfill his promises; we only need advice and support to deliver.

The Nsawam/Adoagyiri MCE assured the Aburihene, We have come to work for Ghana and not for any particular group of people, so we are poised to create jobs and create business opportunities for the people of Ghana, especially the youth.

The Nsawam/Adoagyiri Constituency Chairman of the NPP, Nana Akowuah Dampare, on behalf of the party, thanked the chief for his wise counsel and promised to work together with members of the party to support the president.

FROM Daniel Bampoe, Aburi


Election offices stage mock polls, run voter education programme

The Sunsari District Election Office conducted a mock election in Itahari on Tuesday, which saw a participation from 101 people.
Barbara Mahama, the wife of the late Major Maxwell Mahama, is yet to recover from the shock of the gruesome murder of her husband, the father of the slayed army officer, retired Captain Denis Mahama has disclosed.

According to him, Mrs. Mahama and her deceased husband were very close until his unfortunate demise and that since the grisly incident she barely utters a word.

Barbara is yet to recover. Barbara is yet to recover. They were very, very close. So she is yet to recover. But thanks to God she is still holding herself, picking herself up together, he said Wednesday on Morning Starr.

She doesnt talk. She cannot talk, he added.

When the host Francis Abban probed: You mean since this incident happened she has not uttered a word? He replied very little.

Late Major Mahama was brutally lynched and charred to death a week ago after he was allegedly mistaken for an armed robber.

He was with the 5 Infantry Battalion of the Ghana Armed Forces, Burma Camp Accra but on detachment duties at Denkyira Obuasi in the Central region where he was gruesomely murdered by residents there.

As at June 5, the Ghana Police Service announced the arrest of 42 persons in connection with the horrendous murder. They have been arraigned in court and currently on remand.

Mahama who will be buried on Friday was posthumously promoted from Captain to Major by President Akufo-Addo on the recommendation of the Chief of Defence Staff, Lt. Gen. O.B Akwa.
A former Presidential staffer and a former Member of Parliament (MP) for Adenta constituency in the Greater Accra region, Kojo Adu Asare has expressed shock on government stance that it did not asked the former Mahama administration to order 44 cars on their behalf.

Although the former legislature could not be emphatic on the date a meeting was scheduled for the then outgoing and incoming administration, he but added that there was a meeting where the President Nana Akufo-Addo asked the previous administration to order the cars.

Meanwhile, government has denied vehemently the accusation and asked the National Democratic Congress (NDC) officials who are making this wild allegation to prove beyond reasonable doubt.

Speaking on this matter on Kasapa FMs Si Mi So hosted by Akwasi Nsiah, Adu Asare wondered why government officials who were at the said meeting are mum but rather those who were nowhere near the flagstaff house are ranting.

Background:

The Minority in Parliament claims the Akufo-Addos government authorised the erstwhile Mahama administration to purchase 43 armoured cars at $9 million on its behalf during the Transition period.

But the Deputy Information Minister, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah has said the allegation is not true.

The National Security Minister, Kan Dapaah has also denied the claim.

But the minority has expressed shock over the denial.


Accra Brewery Limited (ABL) has commemorated World Environment Day, with a call on Ghanaians to desist from practices that degrade and pollute the environment.

The high point of the commemoration was a donation of GH10,000.00 worth of sanitation equipment to the Adabraka community.

Prior to the donation, some residents cleaned up portions of the Graphic Road in Accra.

For three consecutive years, Accra Brewery Limited has been donating sanitation equipment to communities surrounding its brewery in the South Industrial Area of Accra.

This year, the Adabraka community received refuse bins, wheelbarrows, rakes, brooms and hand gloves.

Country Director of Accra Brewery Limited, Phillip Redman, who donated the items, reaffirmed ABL's commitment to upholding and improving positive environmental practices within its operational enclave.

While acknowledging that sustainable environmental practice is at the heart of the company's operations, he commended the media for picking on the issue of environmental preservation and making same top on their agenda.

Speaking on the sidelines of the event, Mr. Redman said the occasion of the World Environment Day was consistent with one of their core social interventions under the Bringing People together for a Better World agenda hinged on three main themes: 'A Cleaner World, A Healthier World and A Growing World'.

The Adabraka Atukpai Mantse, Nii Tetteh Adjabeng II, commended ABL, adding that we are looking forward to the upcoming free health screening exercise.

The World Environment Day is marked annually on June 5.

It is aimed at harnessing and transforming individual actions into a collective power that has a legacy of real and lasting impact on the planet.

Over the years, it has grown to be one of the largest global platforms for public outreach celebrated by over a million people over 100 countries.


Guaranty Trust Bank Ghana (GTBank) and FirstBanc Financial Services have entered into a major partnership to provide a large number of outlets to enable clients of both banks transact business in a convenient manner.

The Managing Director of GTBank, Lekan Sanusi, disclosed this at the launch of the partnership between the two banks at the Osu Branch on Monday.

The MD indicated that under the partnership, clients of both banks can conveniently purchase, top up or redeem their investments (Heritage Fund and First Fund) in any of the partnering bank branches (GT Bank and FirstBanc) throughout the country.

We are very excited about this partnership with First Bank, holder the Investment Bank of the year 2015 award, as it means many other people will now have a feel of the ease and convenience that GT Bank can provide for their financial services, he noted.

He further stated that GT Bank, which also won the Best Digital Banking-Ghana 2017 Award, would make available to clients of both banks its digital platform to purchase or top-up their investments through physical or online collection channels.

In practical terms, GT Bank has listed FirstBanc on its digital platform dubbed, myghpay to take care of all online payments and collections so that both low and high income earners would do business very conveniently, and even in the comfort of their homes.

The Managing Director of FirstBanc Financial Services Amenyo Setordzie, stated that his outfit intends to use this platform and technology in general to generate wealth for both formal and informal sector workers through its planned strategy to mobilize untapped huge funds for safe and high yielding financial instruments .

He stated that FirstBanc has an enviable track-record in the areas of Asset Management, Brokerage, Corporate and Finance Advisory and Pension Management services since 2009.

By Solomon Ofori


Minister For Business Development, Ibrahim Awal Mohammed, has said that 75 percent of businesses in Ghana fail within the first three years.

He noted that those businesses that are able to exceed three years do not go beyond 10 years of operation, adding that Small businesses constitute over 90 percent of all businesses in the country and the rate of failure is not acceptable.

He disclosed this while speaking at the launch of the 2017 edition of the Citi Fm Business Festival that seeks to assemble the best resource persons to address pertinent business issues in different fields.

This year's edition will present a series of outdoor and on-air business-education programmes, as well as create opportunities for Ghana's business players to interact with each other through networking sessions and active engagement with business leaders, entrepreneurs, among others.

Alhaji Awal said, Government wants to build the most business friendly environment in Africa, and we cannot do that if we are not ready to take risks.

He therefore challenged business owners to dare to dream, adding that it is the drive for successful businesses.

Mr. Awal urged business owners to raise social capital by building relationships in the supply chain system that will give them access to vital information and to encourage young people know that as much as there are a lot of challenges, there are equally a lot of opportunities.

Yoofi Grant, CEO of Ghana Investment Promotion Centre, commended Citi Fm for their innovation and contribution to the business environment in Ghana.

He said that Ghana must highlight the importance of investment because of the vital role it plays in the development of the world, and Ghana cannot afford to be left out.

There is a niche we have to unravel and take hold of and we must make business the priority of people, he said.

Events lined up for Citi Business month include business forums, sales revolution summit, investment opportunity forum, real estate forum and many others.

As part of measures targeted at making this year's festival a memorable one, innovative programmes have been added to satisfy the needs of different business levels.

These include the Management Boot Camp, Sales Revolution, Exceed and the Innovation Summit.

By Abigail Owiredu-Boateng & Patricia Ashiagbor
The 2017 Session of the Governing Council of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has outlined the important role of ICTs in the realization of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The council meeting held in Geneva from 15-25 May, this year assessed results of last year's work to shape future actions.

ITU Secretary-General, Houlin Zhao, noted the tremendous progress in the area of information and communication technologies, with more people getting connected and technologies, such as broadband and 4G services, being deployed for e-commerce, e-health, e-money, and many more electronic services reaching more and more people around the world.

Council members engaged in rich debates throughout the meeting, and agreed on several important decisions that serve to strengthen ITU.

Addressing the plenary of the Council, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, Minister for Communications, said President Nana Addo Dankwa Adufo-Addo believes in the use of ICTs to promote inclusive and sustainable development, as the ITU played a strategic role to facilitate global development and world peace.

She informed the gathering that as the world community grapples with the challenge to meet the SDGs within the time schedule set by the United Nations, the President sees the ease of access and safe use of ICT, as the promise for the empowerment of our youth to unleash their entrepreneurial energies to create jobs and build a resilient economy.

The Minister also raised the issue of the recent global ransomware cyber attack in the world and called for ITU support for Ghana's Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) to protect critical ICT infrastructure at this critical time when the government is employing technology to improve governance and deepen citizen-to-government engagement that will check the abuse of power and corruption.
Islamist terrorism in recent years has emerged as a stumbling block to the fortunes chalked at globalising the world. In the passed few weeks we have witnessed an unfortunate upsurge of extremism in Manchester and London which claimed the precious lives of twenty-eight and hundred others affected.

The muslim world is gradually becoming a scarecrow to the rest of the world and people of islamic suasion have been bundled and put under a general fearsome suspicion the world over. The sound of the bells of this reality intensified when President Donald Trump, a week into his administration, restricted the entry of citizens from seven major islamic countries into the United States.

Judaism, Christianity and other major faiths have also had their fair shares of strayed believers and terrorist in their inner circles in the distant past. The Christian Klu Klux Klan uprising in 1960's in America and the Bosnia Herzegovia muslim massacre are cases in point. But what makes this distinct is that they were able to whip in line those strayers. Islam has struggled in vain to distinct, disown and excoriate them as well as outlaw their dastard acts as acts which has nothing to do with islam.

Islam in principle requires the acceptance of the islamic doctrines without validation of evidence. Call it Faith! This explains why these islamic monsters would act on a scriptural provision without absolute, whole understanding of the beliefs of the islamic faith. It is not Islam; it is these people who misinterpret extracts of the holy books to an extreme, practising the beliefs of this confusion from the text.

Indeed the Quran( 5:32) states explicitly that 'If anyone slew a person...it would be as if he slew the whole humankind: and if any one saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of the whole humankind." Religious cumpulsion is dismissed outrightly by the Quran and islamic clerics across the globe. Jihad is therefore not a war to force islamic faith on others, as many people think of it.

It should never be interpreted as a way of compulsion of the belief on others. It is a struggle for ones well-being. Prophet Muhammad (S.A.W) after migrating to Madinah in 622 AD framed a constitution to govern Madinah and inherit in this constitution was the rights and freedoms of infedels or non-believers. In the face of all this, isn't these maimings, bombings and murders unislamic? Your guess is as good as mine.

It is also instructive to note that the pioneers (Sayyid Qutb and his Muslim brotherhood) of these terrorist acts did not spark it on the wings of islamic provisions but nationalism, poverty, intolerance, political oppression, cultural domination, economic exploitation, ethnic discrimination and religious persecution are active factors that fuelled the insurgences.

It was when the world including muslims began to breath heavily on them that they ran behind the cloaks of the Quranic provisions. In the terrorist attacks all over the world we can boldly say Islam is not responsible for the mass slaughters and the destruction; but Al-Shabab, Al-Qaeda, Boko HARAM ISIS, and Taliban are.

Bottom-line, Islam does not sanction those attacks. Islam is a religion of peace and virtues and must be seen as such.
The Afosu Area Cocoa Farmers Association in the Birim North District of the Eastern Region has appealed to the government to institute a pension scheme for cocoa farmers to free them from poverty in old age. This, according to a GNA report, could be done by deducting tokens from their sales proceeds to sustain the scheme.

This is not the first time the issue about the setting up of pension for cocoa farmers has been raised. Indeed, it was one of the major campaign promises of the then candidate Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo in the 2008 presidential and parliamentary elections. Nana Addo promised that if Ghanaians voted for him, he would make sure cocoa farmers also have a pension scheme, as was being done for those in the formal sector. The now President Akufo-Addo repeated this promise in the 2012 electioneering campaign, but, unfortunately, he did not win the two elections.

Nana Addo and his party (NPP) did not, however, repeat this promise during the campaign for the 2016 elections. The Chronicle is, therefore, unable to tell whether the issue has gone off the radar of the President, or he still has it in mind to establish the pension scheme for the cocoa farmers. Whatever be the situation, The Chronicle is reminding the President to revisit the issue, since it would be a cherished legacy that he and his administration would leave for cocoa farmers in the country, if he is able to establish the pension scheme for them.

The majority of our youth are not willing to go into farming, especially cocoa plantations, as a means of employment, because they see the abject poverty their fathers and grandfathers have found themselves in at their old age. Cocoa is the backbone of the economy, and the day the majority of our farmers decide to pull out from the sector, that will be the end of this country. Gold, manganese, diamond, bauxite and other mineral wealth of the country would one day deplete, but the cocoa sector, if well managed, would be there forever.

Regrettably, it is an area the youth are now shying away from, because they are not seeing much improvement in the lives of those who are currently cultivating the cash crop. In fact, it is pathetic to see some of the cocoa farmers in their old age. What to eat becomes a problem, because they are no more having the strength to do farm work. In that situation, they become a burden on their dependants, who have to struggle to feed and also foot their medical bills.

All these can be abated, if the farmer has a pension he or she could rely on after becoming incapable of going to the farm to work. The Afosu Area Cocoa Farmers Association has already come out with the modality for the implementation of the pension scheme. According to them, the government could deduct tokens from their sales proceeds to sustain the scheme. Their suggestions may not be the best among the options available, but if the government appoints the experts, they would come out with the good advice to ensure the smooth implementation of the scheme.

Definitely, COCOBOD would have the database of all cocoa farmers who sell their produce to the government. Registering the farmers with the view of deducting a token from the cocoa they would sell to the government each year should not be a cumbersome process. The Chronicle is a hundred per cent sure that if this scheme is properly implemented, it would not only lead to an increase in our cocoa production and rake in more foreign exchange for the country, but would also be the bait to entice the youth to go into cocoa cultivation.

The idea of coming out with a pension scheme for cocoa farmers should have been conceived and implemented a long time ago, and not after 60 solid years of our independence, but as the adage goes, better late than never. The World Bank and other Breton Woods Institutions have, over the decades, pumped billions of dollars into poverty eradication in Ghana, but the majority of our people are still below the poverty line. The reason is simple: because of the scanty resources at the disposal of the individual Ghanaian, the issue of investment becomes a remote option.

But it is our contention that if the pension scheme for the cocoa farmer is well implemented, it would help solve the problem the World Bank has taken years to deal with, because the cocoa farmer would be compelled to save a portion of his or her income into a special fund that would take care of him at his old age. Some of the problems confronting Ghana are surmountable, but because we are not thinking outside the box, it becomes a Gordian knot for us to untie.

We insist that a pension scheme for cocoa farmers is a laudable idea that must be implemented without fail. Our gallant farmers whose sweat has kept the wheels of our economy running, deserve better care in their old age, and the time to attend to their plight is now.

President Akufo-Addo, the Ghanaian cocoa farmers are looking up to you for the implementation of this good idea, and you must not fail them.
There has been very positive response by Ghanaians to the appeal for funds to build a new mother and baby unit at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH), following two fundraising events in Accra and Kumasi, by the First Lady, Mrs. Rebecca Naa Okaikor Akufo- Addo.

Accounts verified by Deloitte and Touche as at 31st May 2017, indicate that organizations and individuals have donated an amount of GHs 6,170,686.23, with an outstanding amount of cash pledges of GHs1, 489,500.00 yet to be redeemed.

Additionally, in- kind pledges and donations including cement, electrical cables, windows, pipes, baby cots, hospital beds and incubators have been made.

The new mother and baby unit is in direct response to severe congestion in the current maternity unit, which has inadequate space and medical equipment to cope with the volume of births, surgeries and neonatal care at KATH, leading to high volumes of avoidable death of babies and mothers.

According to authorities at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital, most of the deaths are attributed to higher-than-normal infections and cross-contamination due to lack of space and equipment. Lack of hygiene is also a factor as the space is so little that there is no practical way to clean the wards due to overcrowding.

The new baby unit, a 1,500 square metre one storey building with the capacity to take five times the current number, will solve the current capacity of KATH and give it additional capacity to grow over the next 5 years while they wait for the completion of a 43-year-old uncompleted building by the government.

The urgency of the situation demanded that we build a new unit as an immediate solution while we wait for the government to complete the old building, which would take about two years, by conservative estimates. The longer we wait the more babies and mothers we lose.

The current situation of averaging the loss of 4 babies a day is simply unacceptable, the First Lady Mrs Akufo- Addo explained.

Whilst expressing her gratitude for the positive response, the First Lady is encouraging Ghanaians to continue to donate, noting that the minimum amount needed is GHs 10,000,000 for the KATH project, while additional funds will be needed for similar projects her office intends to execute in the health sector across the country.

The KATH mother and baby unit fundraising drive is a collaboration between The Rebecca Foundation and Multimedia Group.
Editor-in-chief of the New Crusading Guide Newspaper has said former president Jerry Rawlings is unfit to give sermons on corruption.

According to Kweku Baako, the ex-president presided over stinking corruption scandals including the famous British construction firm Mabey and Johnson scandal which cited key officials of the Rawlings administration for taking bribes.

He also mocked at the ex-president for suggesting that he took only $2 million from for Nigerian leader Sani Abacha when he Baako had incontrovertible evidence to show the amount involved was $5 million.

Speaking on Peace FMs morning show Kokroko, the veteran journalist who has said many times that he has nothing against the former president said He has one of the best social personality. He has a fantastic sense of humour and mixes up very well, but when it comes to politics, he is detestable and hypocritical.

He is the last person to listen [to]. It is like going to a brothel for lessons on morality, he added.

Former President Rawlings during the 34th Anniversary celebrations of the June 4 uprising in Wa, chastised former president John Maham for doing nothing about corruption during his term in office.

Related: Did Rawlings hold back attack on NPP in fiery June 4 speech?

He said under the past NDC government, some officials amassed wealth and "used money as a political weapon to become kingmakers."

"If I was doing it this way, if my colleagues were doing it this way, would any of them be where they are today?" he said in a speech that required an occasional pause to catch his breath.

He used the occasion to also demand a change in the leadership of the party, adding that without new leaders, the NDC can never come back to power.

On accusations that he received some $2 million from former Nigerian President Sani Abacha, Mr Rawlings clarified after denying receipt of the money on several occasions, that it was used for nationalistic purposes.

Related: NDC didn't lose election because of 'lame horse' - Rawlings replies Mahama on June 4

But Mr Baako found this clarification fictitious. He said he had evidence from the man who was sent to the Airport to take the money from the Nigerian officials.

For him, Mr Rawlings himself has gone against the values of probity and accountability, he claims inspired him to topple a military regime on June 4, 1979.

Mr Baako said corruption has become an albatross around Ghanas neck because of people like the former president.

Related: Abacha $2m was used for 'nationalistic purposes' - Rawlings

He is equally part of the mess, he stressed.

He believes that the June 4 celebration is progressively losing its significance and fading out into archives.

The former president in his view is the only person who is trying to hold on but gradually and surely history is judging him.

He said the former president should put a stop to his hollier than thou attitude because he is just as guilty as the people he is accusing.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | Naa Sakwaba Akwa | [email protected]
India, China extend congratulations

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday congratulated Sher Bahadur Deuba on his election to the post of the prime minister. Similarly, Chinese Ambassador Yu Hong reached Deubas residence on Tuesday evening and congratulated him on behalf of the Chinese government.
07.06.2017 LISTEN

Albert Kwabena Dwumfuor, an aspiring Organising Secretary in this year's Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) executive elections, has expressed concern over the increasing matters arising, in view of the impending elections.

He reiterated that the GJA is experiencing trying times that threaten to impede the association's progress, and, in the long run, tarnish its credible image.

The prospective Organising Secretary stated emphatically that his call for peace and resolve of the disputes emanating from within the GJA was devoid of politics.

He said: I cannot sit down unconcerned for the issues to get out of control, and sink our association into oblivion. I have the duty to safeguard the hard-earned integrity of the association, which represents the Fourth Estate of the Realm.

My position should, however, not be misconstrued to mean that I am treading on this path because I am a contestant. It should rather be seen in the context of a stakeholder, who sees the interest of the association as paramount to all journalists  both registered and unregistered members in the country, he said.

Mr Dwumfuor believes that the only panacea to the problem at hand is a stakeholders' meeting, which would comprise all affected parties  aspirants, seasoned and senior journalists, Council of Elders and the two main committees (Adjudication and Election committees)-which have a direct influence on this year's G.J.A elections.

Contained in a press release issued in Accra, June 6, Mr. Dwumfuor further explained that the stakeholders' meeting would address grievances of the affected parties, and afford them the opportunity to present possible lasting solutions to the election impasse.

He, therefore, urged all stakeholders and members, as well as all the other aspirants, to hold hands in unity and the spirit of progress, and help the association settle all misunderstandings and block potential impediments.

A successful stakeholders' meeting could address issues bothering some key members and stakeholders of the association, and to neutralise emotions and sentiments, calm tensions and broker peace, he concluded.

By Suad Yakubu
07.06.2017 LISTEN

By Maxwell Ofori, Parliament House

Three telecommunication companies, namely Airtel, Glo and Kasapa, have been given six months ultimatum to extend their telecommunication services to deprived communities such as Adaklu in the Volta Region.

The timeline followed concerns for better and proper telecommunication services across the country, a policy the Akufo-Addo government intends to champion.

Speaking to The Chronicle in Parliament yesterday, on what punitive actions could be taken against defaulters, the Communications Minister, who is the Member of Parliament (MP) for Ablekuma West, Mrs. Ursula Owusu Ekufful, said she was not the one to determine.

However, she swiftly added that action would be taken against them if they do not extend service to Adaklu and its environs within the six months' period.

During proceedings in the chamber earlier, Mr Kwame Governs Agbodza, MP for Adaklu, sought to know from the Minister steps her Ministry had taken to improve telecommunication connectivity in less-privileged communities, including Adaklu.

In her response, the Minister indicated that it was the government's policy and desire to expand access to telecommunication services to all parts of the country, and that it was making efforts, in collaboration with the telecom companies, to provide coverage.

This government intends to promote digital inclusion, and will work assiduously to achieve that objective within the shortest possible time.

Mr. Speaker, a number of measures have been put in place to facilitate wider coverage to improve telecommunication connectivity in underserved and un-served communities such as Adaklu, she stated.

According to her, existing regulations enjoined all the mobile network operators to achieve nationwide coverage, with respect to their license obligations (2G), and also cover all district capitals as part of their 3G license obligations.

Mr. Speaker, three out of six mobile network service providers operating in Ghana have full 2G and 3G services in Adaklu. The other three service providers, namely Airtel, Glo and Kasapa, have been directed by the National Communications Authority to provide coverage at Adaklu and its surrounding environs within six months, or be sanctioned.

She said the directive would enable the entire country to be connected, so as to help people gain easy access to telecommunication services, especially, internet access. The Ministry is working closely with the NCA to ensure that their oversight responsibility of the mobile network operators, in terms of quality and service and coverage obligations, is intensified.

Adaklu District is one of the young districts created in 2012 with severe developmental challenges. The deployment of modern communications infrastructure is necessary to mitigate the handicaps of development, and to also unleash the enabling capabilities of ICT, the Minister remarked.
07.06.2017 LISTEN

The Education Minister, Mathew Opoku Prempeh, has disclosed the government's intention to make French and Arabic common languages to be studied at schools and spoken in the country.

Though French language is part of courses that are studied in schools, the Minister believes that more emphasis needs to be place on the study and speaking of the language.

According to the Minister, it was imperative for the citizens to adopt French as part of their official language, since Ghana is surrounded by Francophone countries, saying, Our neighbour countries speak French, so should we. As part of the thought, we want to introduce Arabic as a common language, examinable course at our secondary level education.

To bridge the gap between academia and the industries, Mr. Prempeh indicated that the government had initiated a plan to make technical and vocational training an integral part of the country's educational system.

He said though the Ghana hosts three African Centres of Excellence, the President has given consent to tertiary institutions to participant fully in partnership for skills in applied technology, engineering and science.

The Education Minister was speaking at the opening of the 14th General Conference and Golden Jubilee celebrations of the Association of Africa Universities (AAU), hosted at the La Palm Royal Beach Hotel, Accra.

The four-day event is dubbed AAU @ 50: Achievements, challenges and prospects for sustainable development in Africa, and had in attendance about 500 professionals, chancellors and lecturers of universities in Africa, and development partners.

The participants would deliberate on achievements, challenges & prospects of higher education, higher education for innovation, employability and entrepreneurship and elements of higher education sustainability.

The President of the AAU, Prof. Orlando Quilambo, also announced that a scholarship and innovation fund had been designed to support students to acquire Doctor of Philosophy (PhD).

He said the continent can only boast of 10,000 PhDs that had been produced over the past decade, and that more efforts need to be put in to have more individuals graduating with doctorates.

Prof. Quilambo added that the conference would further reflect on how academia can design programmes to support agriculture, health and entrepreneurship.

Giving a brief history of the AAU, he said the union was established at Morocco in 1967, with a few universities as registered members, before the headquarters was later re-located to Accra, Ghana, in 1971.

Currently, the AAU has 386 universities from 46 countries from Africa, and one outside as registered members.

He was grateful to the Ghana government for the construction of a two-storey ultra-modern building, which was officially opened on January 5th this year.

By Bernice Bessey
07.06.2017 LISTEN

. Says They Are More Of Business Organisations Than Religious Bodies

The Synod Clerk of South Volta Presbytery of the Evangelical Presbyterian (EP) Church has appealed to the government to rope churches into the tax net.

Reverend Frank Anyidoho explained that churches are more of business organisations than religious institutions.

In the light of this, the EP Synod Clerk said the incomes of churches should be taxable in expanding the tax net.

To him, many churches, as well as Christians, have deviated from their core functions of propagating the Gospel and following the teachings of Christ, which include showing love and care for the oppressed and needy in society.

Therefore, the increasing cycles of crime in Ghana, in his view, should be blamed on the churches for their deviation.

Addressing the media after the opening of the 4th South Volta Presbytery Synod of the church at Sogakope, South Tongu District, Reverend Frank Anyidoho said: Most people have identified [the] formation of churches as the most common way to make money, which has become the order of the day.

Those who allegedly wish to get rich quick have no other alternative than to establish mushroom churches. Therefore, the only way for government to control the formation of more churches, with the aim of making money, is to impose taxes on the church.

Reverend Anyidoho noted that the material wealth that most of the founders of the mushroom churches love to amass is misleading the congregation, hence the societal rot Ghana is witnessing today.

Some of the churches have caused the failure of our society, because their intention is not to genuinely win people to Christ, but to manipulate them and collect their money.

The EP Synod Clerk observed that many churches have been sharply divided, due to financial misunderstandings among the leaders, a development, he said, is contributing to the desire of many youth to get rich quick.

In order to check the influx of more mushroom churches, Reverend Frank Anyidoho said imposing taxes on the incomes churches make would lead to the folding up of small, small churches, whose main objective is to enrich themselves.

The 'small, small' churches will fold up, because they will default in paying their taxes, and so the government will be forced to close them down. They are doing business, and every business entity needs to pay tax to the government.

Failing to pay tax, and the eventual closing down of the church, will sanitise our society, as the rot will be minimised, he underscored.

The Paramount Chief of Tefle Traditional Area, Togbe Nakakpo Dugbaza VIII, who was the Special Guest for the occasion, commended the EP Church for its numerous contributions to national development, which include agriculture, education and the promotion of quality health delivery.

In order to ensure the rapid development in the country, Togbe Dugbaza VIII called for effective collaboration between the church and traditional rulers.

He underscored how unfortunate it had become for some Christians to regard chiefs as idol worshippers, thus tagging the latter as evil.

He said: The time has come for Christians to see the chieftaincy institution as one of the recognised institutions of God, and so they, Christians, should accord the needed respect to their leaders, including chiefs.

The Tefle Paramount Chief noted that society can only thrive on trust, truth and love for one another.

In the light of this, he said it behooves the leaders to demonstrate high levels of accountability to the people they lead, to enable them have trust and confidence in them as leaders, saying: The same way that people should accord the needed respect for leaders, in order to promote mutual respect and trust.

From Samuel Agbewode, Sogakope
07.06.2017 LISTEN

The Northern Regional Minister, Salifu Saeed has charged the 2017 Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) Candidates to excel in the ongoing examination to enable them benefit from the government's Free Senior High School education policy.

The Minister, who expressed disappointment at the abysmal performance of schools in the region in the BECE and West Africa Senior Secondary Certificate Examination (WASSCE) examinations, advised the candidates to make their families and Northern Region proud with excellent performance this time round.

The Northern Region has performed abysmally over the years, competing with the Upper East and Upper West for the bottom positions on the BECE ladder.

About 40,606 candidates are writing the BECE in the Northern Region with 22,170 boys and 18,236 girls from 810 Junior High Schools.

It is believed that for the past 10 years, most of the BECE graduates in the Northern Region are not getting the required grades to enter into Senior High Schools. As a result, many of them are entering into 'Kayaye', prostitution and 'Sakawa' among others.

The poor performance of students at the basic education level has become a major source of concern to many stakeholders in Northern Region, who are calling for immediate solution to the phenomenon.

The Northern Regional Director of Education, Alhaji Mohammed Haroon Cambodia, at a recent Education Forum organized by the Northern Regional League of Youth Association, in collaboration with Youth Empowerment for Live (YEfL), held in Tamale attributed the abysmal performance of the students to several inhibiting factors.

According to him, majority of the final year students in the region refuse to attend classes after registration but rather engage in hooliganism, watching of pornographic films, internet fraud (Sakawa), sexual immorality and all manner of indisciplines.

Alhaji Haroon Cambodia also blamed teachers in the region for contributing greatly to the abysmal performance of the students through teacher absenteeism and what he termed as teacher presenteeism, where teachers report to school but fail to teach students.

He also blamed the issue on poor monitoring and supervision as well as poor parental control and lack of community support.

The Regional Director of Education therefore appealed to Chiefs, opinion leaders and other stakeholders to support the Ghana Education Service in ensuring proper monitoring and supervision to prevent teachers from toying with the future of the students.

He also appealed to parents in particular to closely monitor their adolescent children and prevent them from peer pressure, sexual immoralities, drug usage and other negative acts.

The Northern Regional Minister, who visited the various examination centres yesterday, with other officials, encouraged the candidates to pass their exams without resorting to any examination malpractices.

Meanwhile, report reaching The Chronicle indicates that over two hundred eligible candidates from two communities in the Bunkpurugu District could not take part in the examination on Monday.

According to the Assemblyman for Kambatiak, Duut James Yoogrin, this is due to a change in the exams centre.

He said the new centre was too far from the communities that the candidates hail from. Mr. Yoogarin said he is in talks with the District Coordinating Director of Bunkprugu to resolve the matter.

From Edmond Gyebi, Tamale
07.06.2017 LISTEN

THE Shama District Police Command of the Ghana Police Service (GPS) has intervened in the Shama-Yabiw chieftaincy brouhaha and ordered one of the factions, the Royal Nkronu Ahemfomba family to use the appropriate channel to address its grievances.

The Chronicle can report that the intervention of the Police in the dispute comes after the Royal Nkronu Ahemfomba Family (RNAF), which is claiming to be the kingmakers of the Shama Yabiw Stool wrote to the sitting chief, Nana Kwamina Wienu II to vacate his stool for the family to undertake customary and traditional cleansing (pacification) exercise.

The customary exercise, according to the Royal Nkonu Ahemfomba Family, had become necessary because the stool had been desecrated by the sitting chief.

It would be recalled that the Royal family, at a press conference organised recently, accused Nana Kwamina Wienu of desecrating the Yabiw stool by allowing a sub chief to use the stool sword to swear.

The Spokesperson of the Royal Nkronu-Ahemfomba, Rev Prince Kweigya had told the media that for Nana Kwamina Wienu to allow a sub chief to use the stool sword to pay allegiance to him meant that he (chief) had handed over the authority of the people of Shama Yabiw to the sub chief.

This action of Nana Kwamina Wienu II contravenes the traditions and customs of Yabiw because the Shama Yabiw sword represents a symbol of authority, they said at the said press conference.

Following what the Royal Nkonu Ahemfomba Family described as traditional blunder on the part of Nana Kwamina Wienu, the Family asked the chief to save himself from embarrassment by abdicating the stool peacefully.

But Nana Kwamina Wienu, who is now the Acting President of the Shama Traditional Council (STC), denied the charges leveled against him.

The Royal Nkonu Ahemfomba, after the press conference, followed up with an official letter to Nana Kwamina Wienu to vacate his stool for the purification exercise to be carried out.

The letter got to the attention of the police, who described the wording as threatening. Information available to this reporter indicates that the District Police Command consequently invited the Royal Ahemfomba faction to advice them about using the appropriate channel to address their grievances.

The District Police Commander, DSP Innocent Amemo, who confirmed the story in a telephone interview, added that he had asked the family to rather petition the Shama Traditional Council (STC) in order to seek permission to carry out their traditional cleansing exercise, instead of writing to the chief.

To the Police Commander, the performance of traditional rites fell in the domain of the Traditional Council and it behooves on the STC to determine whether or not the Royal Ahemfomba family has authority to undertake the customary exercise.

Rev Prince Kweigya, spokesman for the Royal Nkronu Ahemfomba family confirmed the story when contacted on phone, but denied that the letter was meant to forcibly eject the chief from the stool.

According to Rev. Kweigya, the intent of the letter was not to forcibly destool the chief, but rather to pacify the stool that he (chief) had through his traditional blunder desecrated.

We served him the letter to excuse himself optionally for us to carry out the traditional pacification exercise, he said. The exercise, according to the Spokesperson, was going to last for a day after, which the chief would come back to occupy his stool.

Prince Kweigya contended that the Royal Ahemfomba family knows the process by which to destool a chief and would not deliberately hide behind traditional cleansing exercise to destool a chief.

On his part, Nana Kwamina Wienu also confirmed the receipt of the letter in a telephone interview with this reporter. He said the Royal Nkronu family did not have the traditional right to undertake the said customary rites.

From Alfred Adams, Takoradi
07.06.2017 LISTEN

The National Petroleum Authority (NPA) has donated One Hundred and Fifty Thousand Ghana Cedis (GHS150, 000) to the Western Regional Coordinating Council to aid in the treatment of victims of the May 9 gas explosion in Takoradi.

Presenting the cheque to the Western Regional Minister, Dr. Kwaku Afriyie, Chief Executive of the National Petroleum Authority (NPA), Alhassan Tampuli noted that: As a regulator of the downstream industry, we are concerned about the safety of industry players and consumers. We are working to improve the situation.

We must all join hands to see our industry become safer. It is also our social responsibility to assist the victims in times like this he added.

We were devastated when we heard the news. We will ensure that safety standards are adhered to by both service providers and consumers'', Mr Alhassan Tampuli said.

Also present at this brief ceremony was the Deputy Western Regional Minister, Mrs. Gifty Eugenia Kusi, who doubles as the chairperson of the eleven (11) member committee tasked to investigate the Takoradi Gas explosion.

The Chief Executive of NPA, Alhassan Tampuli, used the occasion to commend the Western Regional Coordinating Council for their support and regular visits to various hospitals to ensure that the victims are treated well.

Receiving the donation, Dr. Kwaku Afriyie expressed his gratitude to NPA for the gesture and said the donation would go a long way in paying for the bills of the victims.

He assured that all donations will go to support the victims. We will make sure it goes to the hospitals for their intended use the Minister said. He also appealed to other organisations to support the victims.

It will be recalled that on Tuesday, May 9, a stationary gas tank and a gas discharging tanker both exploded at the Ghana Household Utilities Manufacturing Company Limited which left over a 100 people injured along the Sekondi-Takoradi highway, including some fire fighters who attempted to fight the inferno.

Most of the victims were admitted to hospitals; including the Effia Nkwanta Regional Hospital, the GPHA Hospital, the Takoradi Government Hospital, the Cape Coast Teaching Hospital and the 37 Military Hospital in Accra.
I have already condemned the lynching of Captain Maxwell Mahama. It hurts. My former school mate, Joseph Arhinsah, a fully fledged Winneba boy, has been in the army in the last several years. I am sure I would have thrown tantrums if he was the one killed in the manner that we have seen in the case of Captain Mahama. So I do understand the grieving rage of the bereaved family.

However, I am making a prediction here; nearly none of those 34 arrested and charged suspects in connection with the lynching of Captain Maxwell Mahama may be convicted of the offence. If we do not coerce them to implicate themselves in the case, many are likely to be acquitted and discharged, while others may come back to sue the state for wrongful arrests and detention.

I know I might be attacked for these predictions, but if you care to go back to some of my past publications, you would have noted that I had made a lot of implied predictions that have come through, including the death of Captain Mahama!

I have read a lot of social media comments from some very respectable individuals, some of whom have asked the army to descend heavily on the village, and wipe them completely off the surface of the earth. For such people, it is not their turn yet, it will soon be their turn, and they will know how difficult it is to be implied in a crime you have not committed.

While we have all ended condemning the lynching of Captain Mahama, let us also condemn the brutal manner the army treated the citizens of Denkyira-Boase. It is unlawful for the army to have gone back into the infamous village, to brutalize those there. We are not in a war situation. I saw some of the brutalities in pictures. We should condemn it, in the same manner that we have condemned the unlawful treatment meted out to the Captain.

I saw pictures of several individuals of the village whose faces and bodies have been brutally bruised, with blood stains spattered all over, with some visible pains demonstrating on their faces. Report has it that one of the suspects was found dead a distance away, suggesting that he might have died as a result of the reactionary brutalities.

We are condemning the death of Captain Mahama, but we are applauding the brutalities that the army is visiting on those we suspect to have been involved in the killing. So the army is engaging itself in the same act of lawlessness that we are all condemning, the same things that resulted in the death of Captain Mahama, the same lawless behavior that inspired the village people to kill the Captain, this is incongruence, not so?

I dare say that the Captains life is not more important than the citizens in Denkyira-Boase whose lives we are piercing. A couple of years ago the Ghana Police Service mistakenly shot and killed their fellow police officers who were being attacked by armed robbers in Pomadze. It was recently reported that a Police Officer mistakenly shot his colleague in Kintampo. There have been a number of occasions when the Police have mistakenly shot and killed innocent civilians.

Did we go after the Police, to kill them in return, when they mistakenly killed those fellow policemen? Have there been such retaliatory reprisals in those instances? Why did we not terrorize those in Bolgatanga when NPPs Adams Mahama was acidized?

I have not forgotten about what happened recently in Kumasi where a civilian was mistakenly shocked by the police, when the victim was reported to have kept pleading that he was not an armed robber, yet the Police reportedly did what they did, in a manner that suggested that the young man was an armed robber. Did we expect a retaliatory gesture from the people of Kumasi, or that gentlemans life was not that important?

Ya Na was an overlord of the entire Dagbon State. He was killed in such a bizarre manner. Did we send soldiers to Dagbon to torture all the inhabitants? Or is the late Mahamas life more important than the late Ya Nas? Do you think if Captain Mahamas killing had happened in East Legon, do you think the army would have behaved the same way they have done? Or do you think we would have applauded the brutalities that followed?

This is exactly the point I tried to make last week. We are always so quick to descend on the poor, we are always quick to demonize those from underprivileged societies, the same under privileged we all profess to be working for. Captain Mahamas grandfather was in the army. His father too was in the army, and he was in the army as well, he was former President John Mahamas nephew, so he is more equal than the others, is that not the kinds of animal farm situations we are practicing?

After the brutalities, we have began to arrest nearly everyone we have seen in the pictures and the video, and charging everyone with murder. Unfortunately the brutalities are likely to put fears into those arrested suspects, and they are likely to be forced to plead guilty for the offenses they have been charged with, or they are likely to, by themselves, plead guilty out of fears resulting from the brutalities they have endured.

Let us remember, that, the consequences of a guilty plea for the offenses these suspects have been charged with could be the ultimate, the death penalty.

It is likely that if any or all of those arrested suspects plead guilty, they may be sentenced to the full definition of the consequences of the law. It will therefore be an act of evil for anyone to, either directly or indirectly, force any of those citizens to plead guilty for an offense he did not commit.

I have heard many people saying any lawyer who will go and defend those arrested suspects is an evil lawyer. I wish I was a lawyer. I would have put all together as one and defended them. Defending anyone in this case does not necessarily mean they shall be freed. We must find a way of delivering justice that is fair, transparent, and deserving. Those who killed Captain Mahama must be punished. Those who did not kill Captain Mahama, but who have been arrested and charged, must be freed; nothing more, nothing less, that is justice.

I cannot see how all those arrested suspects could have been charged with murdering one person, all at the same time. How could we say that all those 34 or so individuals arrested, all of them killed Captain Mahama at the same time? If the autopsy report shows that the man died of stone pelting, then what becomes of those who did not pelt stones?

What about the bystanders who were either taking pictures or taking videos, the same pictures and videos that you are using for your evidence, to prosecuting your suspects? Are we not suppressing the voices of those who genuinely witnessed the events in order to secure evidence for the justice we are all seeking? Do we expect that next time ordinary civilians will assist in providing evidence for our justice delivery, when we are demonizing those who have done same?

We need to act responsibly. The state must intervene, to ensure that justice is served. If Captain Mahama was truly a soldier, I dont think he will wish that any innocent soul suffers for his death. We must act in a manner that only those who are truly guilty will be found guilty. We must act in a manner that those who are truly innocent will walk free, and enjoy their lives. We must not force anyone to go to jail, if that person did not kill Mahama.

We should be seen to be serving justice to everyone, as a direct first step solution to the craze for instance justice. When the poor could predict that when it is done to him, he will receive equal attention, then he would have confidence in the justice delivery system, and will refrain from planting his own justice on suspected thieves.

But if we handle Captain Mahamas case in the manner we are going about, but ignore that of Kwesi Atta whose death was merely attributed to him being an armed robber, when in fact he might not have been an armed robber, then Kwesi Attas family would not believe in your concept of justice, they will believe in their own concept of justice, the instant one, and the story will keep repeating itself until we are all wiped off.

James Kofi Annan
The Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII) has described as worrying the Attorney Generals office acceptance of donations from the Chinese Mission in Ghana in the midst of the prosecution of its nationals for illegally mining in the West African country.

Ms Baohong, the Chinese Ambassador to Ghana Tuesday June 6 donated items including desktop computers, printers, UPS and a cheque for GHS10,000 to Gloria Akuffos office. It comes at a time when China had been severely condemned over its nationals involvement in illegal mining popularly called galamsey.

There are several Chinese nationals being prosecuted for illegally mining in Ghana following a clampdown on the menace by government.

A similar donation was made to the Ghana Police Service and according to GIIs Executive Director Linda Ofori Kwafo the latest in the midst of the current trials is worrying.

The point is that we are currently at the moment dealing with matters that concern Chinese engaging in illegal mining, she said, adding so if the very institution that are mandated under our laws to deal with such matters are accepting gifts at this time then it raises concern.

Meanwhile, Ms Baohong said during the donation that it was to support the AGs Office, towards organising a stakeholders consultative workshop, on the Office of the Special Prosecutor Bill, 2017.

But Mrs. Ofori warned we should be careful in how we take gifts.
The Minister for Inner City and Zongo Development, Mr. Boniface Abubakar Saddique has urged the private sector to support his ministry on its mandate to achieve its objective of changing the face of Zongo communities and other slums around the country.

Mr. Saddique highlighted the important role the private sector has to play in providing basic economic empowerment to these areas which will contribute to reducing some social vices and stigma attached to these communities.

He made this call when a team from Access Bank Ghana, paid a courtesy call on him in his office to show their support for Muslims during this Ramadan, the period of fasting for all Muslims around the world.

The Minister addressing the team mentioned that persons living in the Zongo communities are hardworking individuals who when given the opportunity are able to turn their situation around to impact their families and other community members.

These are areas within our cities who have been excluded for a very a long time by nature of their settlement. To ensure we change this situation, we need to include them in the total integration of the nations development so that we can transform their living standards and let the Ghanaian economy benefit. This is why we are giving a special focus to them. he said.

Speaking on the Banks support to the Ministry, the Executive Director for Business Development, Mr. Ifeanyi Njoku cited the Banks continuous contribution to addressing socio-economic needs of the communities in which the Bank operates. He added that the Bank is committed to its objective of being an avenue to support Ghanaians achieve the nations economic development agenda.

In line with its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), the team presented 100 bags of rice to the Ministry which will be distributed to deprived Muslim communities during this Ramadan.

Over the years, Access Bank Ghana has demonstrated its continued commitment to social investments and is focused on the areas of education, health, arts and culture, environment and sports.

The Bank complements its CSR activities through Employee Volunteering Programmes (EVP). The Bank has a strong belief that the inclusion of employees in its CSR activities elicits a deep sense of fulfilment as well as building a strong advocacy for employee empowerment as a meaningful tool for national development.
Integrated financial info system mulled

The government is planning to implement an ambitious central accounting system which will provide information about financial management of all government agencies on a single platform.
The Minority in Parliament is asking for the whereabouts of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, ranting his absence from Ghana without prior notification to Parliament is disrespectful.

President Akufo-Addo is currently in Belgium attending the United Nations Advocacy Group of Eminent Personalities on the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, in his capacity as co-Chairperson of the Group. He will leave for Germany to attend the G-20 Partnership for Africa Summit in Germany .

He will return June 17, 2017.

The Minority National Democratic Congress (NDC) is furious over the Presidencys failure to officially inform Parliament ahead of the presidents foreign trip which is a Constitutional requirement. Articles 59 and 60 of the 1992 Constitution of Ghana says: The President shall not leave Ghana without prior notification in writing, signed by him and addressed to the Speaker of Parliament. 60. (1) There shall be a Vice-President of Ghana who shall perform such functions as may be assigned to him by this Constitution or by the President.

Mr. Speaker the people of Ghana deserve to know the whereabouts of the No. 1 person of the country, Minority Leader Haruna Iddrisu said on the floor of Parliament Wednesday. We do not know his whereabouts.

The constitution says prior notification and not an after-thought Majority Leader where is your President and where is the official communication? Mr. Speaker the President has sworn an oath and an oath is to uphold the Constitution of the Republic of Ghana and he is showing disrespect to the provisions and Article 59 and 60 of the Constitution. We must know who will act in his stead, the MP for Tamale South opined.

The official communication was presented to the Speaker after the Minority leaders rant.

Akufo-Addo will also be in the US. In America, President Akufo-Addo will participate and address the UN Oceans Conference, the high-level UN Conference being held in New York to support the Implementation of SDG 14: Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development (Life under Water). The President will also have his first formal meeting with UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres.

In Germany, President Akufo-Addo will pay a courtesy call on the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, and participate in the G-20 Africa Partnership Summit, being held in Berlin to deliberate on Germanys Marshall Plan for Africa, at the invitation of the German Chancellor.

He will also deliver a speech on the theme Ghana, Africas Rising Star, at an event organised by the Konrad Adenaeur Stiftung.

President Akufo-Addo will then pay a two-day private visit to the United Kingdom, and return to Ghana on Saturday, 17th June, 2017.
The Editor-in-Chief of the New Crusading Guide Newspaper, Kweku Baako Jnr has said he would prefer going to a brothel to take lessons on morality that listen to former President Jerry John Rawlings preach a sermon on corruption.

Flt Lt Jerry John Rawlings addressing the 38th Anniversary of the June 4 Coup d'etat in Upper West Regional capital of Wa said the level of corruption in Ghana currently is a thousand times more than what prevailed during the time of the coup d'etat.

Let me remind people that we could not have possibly forgotten that generals were executed in 1979 in the rage and anger because of corruption. The greed, corruption and injustice of today believe it or not are a thousand times more than what these generals were executed for.

And if we are unable to restore a fair measure of integrity into our dealings, then the blood of many would have been shared in vain. If we cannot get our cloths off and allow for fresh leadership to emerge then we shall sink even further, former President Rawlings said.

Reacting to this claim of the former President on Peace FM's Kokrokoo programme, Kweku Baako Jnr said he believes the former leader should be the last person to preach about corruption.

The belief, he said stems from the fact that he gets easily infuriated when he listens to the former President 'preaching' that there is too much corruption in Ghana than existed before his much acclaimed June 4, 1979 Coup d'etat.

He is very hypocritical politically and he is the last person that Ghanaians should listen to preaching sermons of corruptiontaking corruption lectures from Rawlings is equal to going to a brothel to take lessons on morality, he said.

The avouched critic of the former President Rawlings, his family and the National Democratic Congress (NDC), also described him as one who is very hypocritical politically and should be the last person that Ghanaians should listen to preaching sermons of corruption.

The former President, he said when asked to account for his stewardship during his era rather replied that anyone seeking to know about what he did in office with the monies from the state coffers must consult the Akonadi shrine since that is where there is 'genuine accountability'.

Ask him about accountability, has he made an attempt to render accounts of his stewardship during the AFRC erawhen Limann asked him, he called on all to go to Akonadi shrine and ask for accounts because that is where we would see the disbursement and expenditure, Kweku Baako said.

-Adomonline
The writer

07.06.2017 LISTEN

Good day fellow Ghanaians.

Education we can say is the passport to the future,this is because tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.

The journey of Basic Education we all know lasts for 11 years(Age 4-15) Kindergarten(2 years), Primary School(2 modules of 3 years) and Junior High school(3 years) which climax it all.It is not an easy journey because we are all aware of what it entails.

This is the very reason why we must not allow this smooth journey that began some years back to be disrupted just like that.

Parents are made to understand that,an investment in knowledge pays the best interest.

It is against this background,l found it very sad and highly unfortunate to have heard that,over two hundred eligible candidates for this years Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE),from two communities in the Bunkpurugu District of the Northern Region,could not take part in the BECE paper written in the early hours of Monday.

So Ghana at the age of 60 is it not therefore worrying such reports will be emanating from some parts of our country?l think it is highly disgraceful and worrisome.

This ugly happening based on the account of the Assemblyman for Kambatiak,Hon Duut James Yoogrin pointed to the fact that,it was due to the change in exams centre.

Stating that the new centre was too far from the communities that the candidates hailed from.

The questions a lot of Ghanaians are asking now concerning the issue are;when was the notice concerning the change of centre made known to the candidates?Were the Headmasters and Circuit Supervisors, PTA, Opinions Leaders,Parents,Chiefs all aware of this earlier?If yes what roles did they played in order to make transport arrangement to take the candidates to the new centre?Because per the account of the Assemblyman the previous examination centre was closer to them than where they have now been assigned.

It is also a fact that,this may not be the only community that might have been faced with such a challenge but perhaps the others had their ways out amicably.

But then listening to other stakeholders it became clearer that,this ugly incident happened due to misunderstanding between the Chief and the Regional Education authorities over location of examination centres.So one will ask why should these important stakeholders act in this manner that had brought discomfort to the innocent candidates?

This issue when not addressed will amount to human right violation of the candidates per the laws of our state because they must not be punished for no wrong done.

The 11years journey of school life of 70 from Kanbatiak Junior High School,Guanging 51, Gbingbamong 79 and 18 Yenupinii who could not travelled to Gbankoni primary school center to write the exams must not be disrupted at all.lt is in light of this they must be highly considered by WAEC.

The chief of Kanbatiak, largest community in the area,complained about troubles candidates in the area go through every year to write the exams and pleaded for a closer centre.This the chief did well by playing his role as a citizen and not a spectator by showing concern for his people.

The regional education directorate did not to heed to the plea of the chief perhaps due to some challenges but then communication is key in everything.So communication gap perhaps created this challenge.

As a country we must all learn a lesson from this unfortunate happening to avoid further happenings in future.

I am therefore calling on other civil society organizations in the country to join in pleading with WEAC to consider the candidates to enable them also have the opportunity to write the paper they couldn't not write not the same paper though and l believe WAEC is highly capable to handle this issue amicably.

We need peace in this country in order to see it at its expected end one day and in this recent times issue of the country's security has not been the best so we wouldn't want parents to go and attack the regional education directorate out of anger because the human mind is very complex.

So it is our sacred duty as a country to make sure this issue is amicably resolved to so that those affected parents will be at peace.

The chief and the regional directorate must iron out their differences and forge ahead because they are key stakeholders that must not be seen having misunderstanding.

It is my fervent prayer that,the good Lord guides the candidates to complete their exams on Friday peaceful.

God bless our homeland Ghana!
Introduction

The 2017 Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) of the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) started on Monday, June 5 and shall continue till Friday, June 9.

Figures reveal that 468,053 candidates, including 241,148 males, 226,905 females and 57 visually impaired candidates from 15,185 junior high schools, are expected to write the examination in 1,702 centres nationwide. Some 199,059 pupils will write the French Language as 453,654 of them take the test on Information and Communication Technology (ICT).

The Ghana Education Service (GES) does not exclude itself from the task of supporting pupils and students to acquire good-quality education, including having to institute structures and procedures for accessing free, fair and transparent environment during any pre-tertiary examination.

GES does not only see itself as an agency for managing pre-tertiary education system but also as an active stakeholder and a participant in the measurement and evaluation of all educational outcomes of pupils and students. And it is against this background that teachers, school heads, officers and directors of education across the board are usually seen moving helter-skelter into some centres whenever external examinations, such as the BECE, are being conducted.

As some GES staff, including teachers and heads of schools, invigilate and supervise examination papers, schedule officers and directors at the various education directorates and management take part in the monitoring of activities at selected examination centres.

The national office of the GES has a unit for coordinating examinations, including BECE, with its head being Mr. Richard Ayitey, and whose activities fall within the control of the Basic Education Division with Mrs. Cynthia Bosumtwi-Sam as its director.

Aside of the examination-monitoring schedules, which the district and regional directorates usually formulate and follow at their levels, the management of the GES does a schedule to have officers and directors sent to some centres in the districts to strengthen the monitoring exercise and to make it more effective. The monitoring schedule also involves the director general and his two deputies, the divisional directors and some of the unit heads.

A memo, which was issued by the Basic Education Director Cynthia Bosuntwi-Sam on 22nd May, 2017 to all concerned officers and directors in the monitoring of the ongoing BECE, said, You are kindly invited to participate in the monitoring of the examination as per attached the suggested monitoring schedule for the first day of the examination.

The Basic Education Division will deploy a number of officers to monitor the conduct of the entire examination at some selected centres across the country that are prone to examination malpractices, Mrs. Bosumtwi-Sam added.

As per the schedule, the writer happened to belong to the Team led by the Director of Human Resource and Management Division Judith Esther Offeibea Donkor and which had two other directors, including Mrs. Felicia Boakye-Yiadom of the Curriculum Research and Development Division and Madam Beatrice Zalia Ali of the Supplies and Logistics Division of GES.

On the first day of the examination, the Team visited some ten centres at Nungua and Tema, including Nungua Senior High School (SHS) centres A, B and C, Nungua M/A Cluster of Schools centres 1 and 2, Sakumono Corpus Christi School Complex centres 1 and 2, and Tema SHS centres A, B and C.

Between 9 a.m. and 10:45 a.m. when the candidates were writing the English paper and joined by the Hoourable Member of Parliament for Krowor and Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture Development Elizabeth Afoley Quaye, the Team was at the Nungua SHS and Nungua M/A Cluster of Schools centres to monitor and to appreciate how things were happening.

The Team could not have the chance to interact with the candidates as it reached the centres at a time that the examination had already started. The officials just passed by the precincts of the examination halls as they would not want to distract the attention of the candidates.

At the Nungua SHS Centre A, where Mr. Emmanuel Afotey-Otu spoke to the Team as the supervising officer, there are 187 candidates (comprising 96 males and 91 females with two absentees). The Nungua SHS Centre B has Francis Adika as the supervisor with a total of 262 candidates, comprising 127 males and 137 females, and three absentees. The Nungua SHS C hosts 228 candidates (with 117 males and 111 females, and 1 absentee) with Stella Aggor as the supervisor.

The Nungua Cluster of Schools centres 1 and 2 has a total of 757 candidates, comprising 339 males and 418 girls with five absentees, and Ebenezer Otu and Daniel Mensah were at post as the supervisors as their invigilators supported them at the respective centres.

The Team moved to the Sakumono Corpus Christi School Complex and Tema SHS centres in the Tema Metropolis, which have some 1,500 candidates with ten recorded absentees on the first day of the examination. All invigilators and supervisors, including Philip Gablah, Bismark Aidoo, Prosper Ashiagbor and E.B. Allotey-Addo were present and doing their work as expected.

One interesting thing that the Team observed is the fact that all the ten centres visited had active-looking police officers and nurses to keep security and to attend to any psycho-emotional and health challenge that any candidate would face. And it should be the prayer of all of us that this years examination ends well.

The writer is an educationist and a public relations officer of Ghana Education Service.

E-mail: [email protected]
Finance Minister Ken Ofori Atta has chastised the minority in parliament of scaring away investors following their insistence that the $2.25billion bond issued by government was done in secrecy.

The Minority at a press briefing on April 18 accused government of wrongdoing in the issuance of the bond accusing Mr. Ofori-Atta of conflict of interest and insider trading.

According to the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) legislators, Franklin Templeton Investment Limited which acquired about 95percent of the domestic bond has a direct relationship with Entreprise Groupa company Mr. Ofori-Atta has an interest in.

Mr. Ofori-Atta, however, repudiated the accusations as baseless and appearing before parliament Wednesday to answer questions on circumstances leading to the issuance of the controversial bond, chastised the opposition lawmakers warning that their actions will scare prospective investors.

Hitherto to Mr. Ofori-Attas warning, some financial analysts including the President of the Ghana Bankers Association, Alhassan Andani warned the minoritys crusade will dampen investor confidence and that will result in lower returns in future bond issuance.

They are huge companies with wide international reputations and therefore we have to be extremely careful if we are making any comment thats going to impugn wrongdoing to especially the people we will go to, to raise capital at any point in time he cautioned in an interview with Starr News Ibrahim Alhassan in April.

But the NDC legislator for Bawku Central, Mahama Ayariga disagreed arguing that their crusade will do exactly opposite what the analysts including Mr. Ofori-Atta are positing.

According to him, the quest for more transparency in the deal will rather engender confidence in the investor community.

I dont think so. I think that it will rather strengthen the credentials of the country and make people who deal with us more confident that no wrongdoing will be tolerated by the people of this country that full accountability will be required of the leaders that act on our behalf when they as private investors engage with them.
Bamako (AFP) - France has asked the UN Security Council to authorise the deployment of a five-nation African military force to fight jihadists and criminality in the Sahel region, with a vote expected as early as next week.

What are the origins of the force composed of troops from Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger, and why is it needed?

Why now?

Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger -- the so-called "G5 Sahel" countries just south of the Sahara -- first raised the idea of a regional force in November 2015 in Chad's capital, N'Djamena.

The idea then went quiet but was resurrected in the light of the deteriorating security situation in Mali, and following mounting incidents of jihadist violence in neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger.

In January, those three countries decided to create a joint security force on their mutual border, followed by Sahel heads of state announcing the "immediate" creation of a troop corps from all five countries in February.

The UN resolution tabled by France quickly followed after new President Emmanuel Macron reconfirmed his nation's commitment to fighting terrorism in the Sahel on a visit to Mali last month.

France carried out a military intervention in Mali in 2013 to drive out jihadist groups, some of which were linked to Al-Qaeda, who had seized key cities in the country's north.

Although the Islamists have been largely ousted from the north, jihadist groups continue to mount attacks on domestic and foreign forces in violence that has also engulfed parts of central Mali.

New French President Emmanuel Macron reconfirmed his nation's commitment to fighting terrorism in the Sahel on a visit to Mali last month

Spillover attacks in Burkina Faso and Niger are causing increasing alarm.

What is the force's mandate?

The draft resolution would authorise the deployment of the force of up to 5,000 military, police and civilian personnel for an initial period of 12 months, though Sahel leaders have expressed ambitions for a 10,000-strong force.

The force will operate in border areas and work to "create a secure environment by eradicating the actions of the terrorist armed groups and other organised criminal groups," the UN draft said.

UN Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Jean-Pierre Lacroix said on a visit to Mali in May that a phased rollout was envisaged for border regions of the country's centre, an area that has seen an uptick in attacks once concentrated in the restive north.

What about the existing foreign forces in Mali?

The force will have its headquarters in Mali, but will be under a separate command from the UN peacekeeping force MINUSMA, which has been deployed in the country since 2013.

It is also separate to but a complement for the work of France's own 4,000-strong military presence in the region, known as Barkhane.

Lacroix has insisted on clearly defined roles for the three different deployments which will now be operating in Mali.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for "close cooperation" between any G5 force and Barkhane. It could offer "improved operational environment for MINUSMA," which has suffered funding shortfalls and the deaths of dozens of peacekeepers, he said.

However he urged nations to "maintain their contributions to the (UN) mission", a possible reference to Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad whose troops already make up a third of the manpower of the MINUSMA force.

How will the Sahel force be funded?

France will include a request to Guterres to propose ways the UN can support the Sahel force through logistical and financial means.

The European Union has already promised 50 million euros of support, with diplomatic chief Federica Mogherini citing stability of the Sahel region as "crucial not only for Africa but also for Europe."

"We have the men and the will, what we need now is the financial resources to back us up," Niger's foreign minister Ibrahim Yacouba said on Tuesday.
The late Major Maxwell Adam Mahama who was slain in the line of duty, will be given a state burial with full military honours on Friday, State Protocol Office has said.

The burial service is to come off at the Forecourt of State House in Accra, after which he will be buried at the Osu Military Cemetery.

According to the State Protocol Office, a vigil will be held at the Arakam Officers' Mess at Burma Camp on Thursday, June 8, at 7p.m.

On Friday, June 9, the body of the deceased will be moved from the 37 Military Hospital to the Forecourt of State House at 6a.m for filing past.

The Burial Service will commence at 9.10 am after which there will be a procession to the Osu Military Cemetary for interment.

Immediately after the burial, the final funeral rites will come off at the Forecourt of the State House.

On Sunday, June 10, there will be a Thanksgiving Service at Light House Chapel International, Qodesh, North Kaneshie.

The final funeral rites will be held at Bole (from June 13 -15) and Tumu ( from 16-18) in the Northern region.

The conscience of Ghanaians was stirred with the brute murder of a senior military officer, then Captain Mahama at Denkyira-Obuasi in the Central Region.

The Captain who was posthumously promoted to a Major on Monday was killed on May 29, after some of the Denkyira Obuasi residents claimed they mistook him for an armed robber.

He had a weapon on him, which incensed the residents to lynch him, it has been reported.

He left behind a wife and two children.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com
Oil Marketing Company, Kabore Oil Limited has presented a 49 inch tevelevsion set and a citation to police General Sergeant Ndago Osman, of the Nsawam District Police Command. The cost of the 49 inch Samsung television set was GHc3, 000.

The General Manager of Kabore Oil Ltd, Mr. Tamim- Daari Froko who made the presentation extoled General Sergeant Osman as a professional police officer who is loyal and hardworking towards his duties.

The citation said: Kabore Oil extends its sincere appreciation and acknowledgement of your timeless efforts and contributions to the growth of our business.

Kabore oil is extremely happy and thankful for your hard work, professionalism and outstanding performance in ensuring security for the employers, customer, as well as properties.

Mr. Daari Froko told the Daily Express that management of Kabore awarded him so as to serve as a morale booster in order for him to keep up with his professionalism policing and further encouraged police personnel to work diligently.

The Nsawam District Police Commander, Superintendent Felix Apedo who received the citation and the television set on behalf of Sergeant Ndago Osman expressed his appreciation to the management of Kabore Oil Ltd for recognising the professionalism and hardwork of General Sergeant Osman.

He urged police personnel of the service to emulate the dedication General Sergeant Ndago Osman used in discharging his duties.

General Sergeant Ndago Osman, who was overwhelmed by the award, expressed his appreciation to Kabore Oil Ltd for distinguishing his hardwork.

He encouraged his colleagues to work professionally by dedicating their time and energy to protecting lives and properties.

The Chief Executive Officer of Kabore Oil Ltd, Chief Bukari Kabore thanked General Sergeant Ndago Osman for sacrificing his lives to protecting lives and properties within the Nsawam District and beyond.

He also called on the Inspector General of Police, Commissioner of Police (COP) David Asante Apeatu to promote him so as to encourage police personnel to work professionally.
07.06.2017 LISTEN

Three Fulani herdsmen have been fined GHC 20,400.00 for illegally entering a forest reserve with their cattle to graze.

Umar Gariba, Umar Sumana and Umar Barikia would spend six months in prison, should they fail to pay the money.

They were were also ordered by the court to vacate the reserve within two days.

The convicts were charged with illegal entry and destruction of forest reserve and they all pleaded guilty.

Police Detective Princeton Peasah Darkwah told the court, presided over by Mr. Frederick Tetteh, that they were arrested on May 24.

The District Manager of the Forest Services Division (FSD) of the Forestry Commission (FC), Mrs. Rebecca Baning Oppan, received information that the herdsmen had settled in the Dome Forest Reserve with their animals numbering about 500 and causing extensive damage to the reserve.

She proceeded to the place with officers of the FSD and the information proved correct.

A formal report was made to the police and they were arrested.

The court directed that GHC 15,000.0 of the fine when paid should go to the FC as compensation.
Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta has corrected National Democratic Congress (NDC) Parliamentarians who are under the impression that global investment firm Franklin Templeton, is a person.

The correction came on the floor of parliament Wednesday, where he explained the raising of $2.5bn on the international market last April.

The Finance Minister said, contrary to accusations by some NDC MPs that "government is selling all our bonds to one person", Franklin Templeton is one of the world's largest asset management firms with over $850m in assets.

Some NDC MPs led by the Minority Leader Haruna Iddrisu, claimed Franklin Templeton was a person.

Photo: Haruna Iddrisu reacting on the floor of parliament

But "for the avoidance of doubt, Franklin Templeton is not a person" the investment banker-turned politician said in parliament.

He also explained that the 95% of the bonds bought by Franklin Templeton is not odd as claimed by the Minority.

This is because, in 2016 under the NDC government now a Minority in Parliament, Franklin Templeton bought heavily into Ghana's bonds.

The Minority had also claimed there could be conflict of interest in the deal because Templeton Group has a position on the Board of Enterprise Group Limited, a company co-founded by the Finance Minister.

The Finance Minister was at pains to stress, the rules surrounding bond issuance make it highly unlikely for government officials to have any direct relationship with investors.

He said this is because the bonds are bought by individuals only through licensed financial institutions.

Rejecting claims after claims, the Finance minister said there was "no inherent insider dealing" in issuing the bond because it is only through transparency that foreign investors can express interest in the long-term financial instrument.

Ken Ofori-Atta also spent time to eventually dismiss claims raised by the Minority that the bond was denominated in dollars which weakens the cedi.

The Minister said, the Minority may have had that impression because "the high participation of foreign investors created false impression that it was a US dollar denominated bond".

He stated "categorically that the bonds were denominated and issued in Ghana cedis...they were not dollar bonds" and expressed delight that using melting dollars to buy cedis will strengthen the local currency.

He explained the bond had low domestic investor participation because historically, they shun long-term investments such as this bond which matures in 15-years.

Ken Ofori-Atta said the world hailed the government for pulling off the "single biggest daily transaction in sub-Saharan Africa".

But he came home to find the Minority making "big issues out of a non-issue".

He indicated that the query from the Minority is much ado about nothing because, the process used by the previous administration to raise money on the international market is the same process adopted by the new government.

The only difference is that the results are better and investor confidence in Ghana is greater.

He tried to give the NDC MPs the benefit of the doubt saying it could be that their concerns were "genuinely borne out of a lack understanding of the actual process".

Nonetheless this view "may be deemed too charitable because the CVs of some of the persons involved are very, very strong".

Why government raised the bond

Laying down his facts, the Finance Minister said government is saddled with the payment of 10 billion cedis as its annual interest payment on past loans.

Breaking it down, government needs to cough up 1bn cedis on a weekly basis to service domestic debts. This amount is a 100% increase from what used to be the case in 2014. One billion cedis chews off one-third of the monthly tax revenue collected by the Ghana Revenue Authority.

Ghana once with a total debt of 36bn cedis in 2012, had a debt burden of 122bn cedis in 2016.

He said for the past NDC government, the plan to deal with this debt is to "borrow more, tax more" which had " the obvious consequence of worsening the debt burden".

The depressing economic situation affected the purchasing power of Ghanaians, triggered job losses in an atmosphere of austerity and weakened the currency, he said.

This burden also leaves government with "very little cash" for essential social services.

The new NPP government, he said, "had no choice" but to "think outside the box" by designing a financial instruments which he said, do not raise the debt burden in any way.

Story by Ghana|myjoyonline.com
Kantipur honours distributors

The Kantipur Publications organised an interaction programme with its distributors on Tuesday.
A professor has called for an end to the killing of mosquitoes, stating that they are friends and allies to humans and we could learn a lot from them.

Adeolu Ande, a Professor of Entomology at the University of Ilorin, made this known on Monday in a paper he presented at a public seminar organised by University of Ilorin.

He said that, rather than kill mosquitoes, man should discover ways to manage them because they would exist whether we like them or not and will continue to source blood from humans.

He called on zoologists to fulfill their role of being foster parents of animals in the Zoo because that's what's expected of them, adding that they should be familiar with the needs and health status of animals, insects included.

In his paper titled, 'Consider the ways of Ants and be Wise', the entomologist described insects as the most successful and influential group of organisms in the biosphere.

He said that humans have a lot to learn from insects in order to be wise. He said that insects make positive influence such as; pollination of flowers, sustenance of the ecosystem, serve as a source of silk, act as biological control agents and food source, but lamented that these impacts made by the insects are underplayed and not appreciated, instead we focus on their negative influences which he said are minimal.

He said:

Human life is beset with inevitable associations with insects that have over the years influenced human destiny positively and negatively. Negative influences, such a disease transmission, crop losses, food spoilage, economic losses and nuisance value caused by less than 5 per cent of insect species have been exaggerated by man."

Ande said that man deliberately misunderstood the role of mosquitoes and frequently described them as causing the diseases they transmit.

He said:

In the actual sense, mosquitoes are equally sick but inadvertently and unwillingly convey pathogens that are the real causal agents of these diseases. The female mosquito could be described as an example of a true mother who is forced to undertake suicide mission in its bid to provide for its unborn children. The adult female mosquitoes have exceptional value for child raising hence the level of commitment and risk they take on the mission that entails decision between life and death. The after effect of this commitment is a well thought out plan that forestalls most of the factors that may stand in the way of raising good children.

"I am sure most human females will not take comparable decision in the face of similar attendant risks. It is however certain that children born after well thought-out and risky conditions are better posited for quality living than those produced carelessly."

The professor called for improvement in Zoology curriculum in the country to ensure better focus on organisms that feature prominently around man.
Paris (AFP) - An "obsession" with the lower jaw of a long-dead human, unearthed in the 1960s at a prehistoric Moroccan campsite, led palaeoanthropologist Jean-Jacques Hublin to the discovery of a lifetime.

After decades of work to identify the jawbone's owner, Hublin was able to announce Wednesday that it belonged to the earliest known member of our species.

His efforts revealed that Homo sapiens is 100,000 years older than previously assumed -- ageing our species by a whole third and dislodging East Africa as the cradle of humankind.

It was in 1961 that mining activity at the site called Jebel Irhoud, not far from Marrakesh, first brought an ancient human skull to the surface, followed by more fragments over subsequent years of excavation.

Initially, the pieces were dated to about 40,000 years ago, later pushed back to 160,000 years ago.

At the time, the notion that humans originated in Africa did not exist, so the remains were not in the running for Homo sapiens status.

Some hypothesised the remains belonged to a type of African Neanderthal -- the species then considered to have been the forerunner of modern humans.

Others proposed it was a kind of Neanderthal-human hybrid, yet others an archaic group of far-flung human relatives.

"I was never convinced by these ideas," said Hublin.

As a young researcher, he recalled, a colleague confided him with the study of a mandible, or lower jaw, from the fossil trove.

The "mystery of Jebel Irhoud" became the subject of his first-ever scientific publication on human fossils, in 1981, and a career "obsession," Hublin told journalists ahead of Wednesday's unveiling.

Great reward

"The reason why we were so interested in the site... (is that) we had a mozaic of morphological features that did not make much sense," he said.

The specimens displayed a combination of physical traits, particularly the face, that closely resembled those of modern, living human beings, and other "more primitive" aspects such as a flatter, elongated skull.

Hublin said he visited the site several times in the 1980s and 1990s seeking to resume research, "but that was a difficult project to undertake mostly because the place became a sort of quarry."

Finally, in 2004, Hublin and a team could start cleaning the site and preparing it for archaeological excavation.

Soon they started adding to the fossil fragment collection -- now known to have belonged to five early Homo sapiens.

They also collected stone tool artefacts which had been burnt in the humans' cooking pit.

These could be dated with a special technique called thermoluminescence, which measures exposure to radiation generated by heat.

"Very early in the process we realised that the site was much older than anything anyone could imagine," said Hublin.

"We were rewarded beyond our expectations!"
The Minority in Parliament has expressed dissatisfaction with Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta's response to issues surrounding the $2.25 billion domestic bond.

The NDC MPs said the Minister cherry-picked the information that helped to put him in good light.

Deputy Minority leader, James Klutsey Avedzi told Evans Mensah on Joy FMs Top Story Wednesday, the Finance Minister did not address the major concerns of MPs.

We wanted full documentation on the participants and currencybut the Minister chose to provide his own questions, he said.

The Finance Minister appeared before Parliament to present a statement over the contentious $2.25 billion local bond issue following a half-hour motion filed by the Minority last week. The motion was supported by the Majority Leader, Osei Kyei Mensah-Bonsu.

The Minority has said the manner in which the bond was issued on April 3, 2017 smacked of an attempt to manipulate it for cronies of the Finance Minister.

The NDC MPs said they are convinced there is a 'relational interest' between the Finance Minister and one of the investment companies that bought the bond  Franklyn Templeton Investment.

They said one Trevor G. Trefgarne who was on the Board of the US investment firm may have influenced the direction of the bond issuance because of his connection with Mr Ofori-Atta. Mr Trefgarne also doubles as the Board Chairman of the Enterprise Group where Mr Ofori-Atta was also a director.

The Minority went ahead to petition the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to investigate the matter.

Clad in blue suit with a red tie Wednesday before Parliament, the Finance Minister maintained nothing untoward was done in the issuance of the bond.

"The bond in question complied in every material detail to the tenets of the rules and regulations governing securities," he said, adding the April domestic bond was issued in cedis as directed by the law.

Mr Ofori-Atta also said the joint book runners - Barclays, Stanbic and SAS - government chose to issue the bond were the same people used by the previous administration. The book runners are financial institutions that announce and publish every impending bond issue to the market by providing details about the week of issue and price guidance.

Deputy Minority leader, James Avedzi

But the Minority said the Finance Minister's response to the many outstanding issues regarding the bond was unsatisfactory. "The Minister set his own questions," Mr Avedzi said.

He said the Minister mentioned the banks that were chosen to run the book but failed to name the participants of the bond. Mr Ofori-Atta had explained the ethics of the international financial market do not permit him to list the participants, but Mr Avedzi disagreed, saying Ghana is a sovereign country.

"These are not bonds bought by individuals but rather bought by investment companies," he said, adding the Minority is interested in knowing the companies that participated in the bond.

Asked by Evans Mensah whether the previous government published the names of institutions that participated in similar bonds, Mr Avedzi said, the then Finance Minister was not asked to.

Deputy Information Minister, Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah

Deputy Information Minister, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah said the concerns of the Minority were motivated by "mischief" and not from a genuine desire to know how the bond was issued.

He said when the half hour motion as captured in Standing Order 49 was filed by the Minority, the NPP MPs supported it but they have realised the NDC MPs are only interested in throwing allegations around. "It is now becoming clear that the Minority has the desire to create a new set of issues."

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | Austin Brakopowers | [email protected] | Instagram: @realbrakopowers
Accra, June 7, GNA - I was happy to meet again Mr Kobby Asmah, the political editor of the Daily Graphic, last Friday, May 26 at the palace of the National Chief Imam at Fadama, in Accra.

The last time we met was at Akosombo, almost nine years ago, and he gave me a lift in his car from that scenery river-town to Accra.

I noticed that Mr Asmah, walking together with ace cameraman Ebo Hansen, with whom I was covering the same beat some time ago, could not make me out. So I re-introduced myself to Mr Asmah, and we reminiscence on our journey to Accra, recalling that we talked about the beautiful lush on the way back to the capital city, Accra.

We covered an inter-party seminar by the political parties then contesting the 2008 general election, and coming back to Accra, Mr Asmah 'soaked' me in country music played on the machine in his car.

It was a soothing experience. That ride etched on my mind.

I can recall also the visit of the Parliamentary Press Corps to the Akaa Falls, at Huhunya in May 2007, .and a revisit to the same place with my cousin Ernest Pinto last two years, in 2015.

Pinto and myself trekked from Huhunya to the Akaa Falls, through the cottage hosting the twin palm trees, the umbrella rock area, through the rocky mountainous areas to the Boti Falls, where I bathed in the waters of the fall.

Also on December 2012, I left Accra early in the morning to Kukurantumi, in the Eastern Region to stay for at least a day to study the town and the community which the novel writer Kaakyire Akosomo Nyatakyi used to plot his book Ancestral Sacrifice.

On December 13, 2014, I was part of a group of journalists who went on a canopy walk at the Bunso Arboretum.

A few weeks later, there was news that the walkway had broken down and it was very disastrous.

So the question is how safe are our tourist sites? The nation can earn a lot from tourism. In fact, looking at the Eastern African countries, Ghana stands to benefit a lot from developing her tourism potentials.

However, events like the recent Kintampo Waterfalls disaster and the one that occurred at Bunso Arboretum put fear in potential tourists.

It is therefore welcoming that Parliament is throwing the searchlight on the promotion of tourism, safety and protection at the nation's tourism sites.

It is noteworthy that a chunk of the travelling in Ghana is done by roads, but unfortunately accidents have assumed alarming proportions that Dr Okoe Boye, MP for Ledzokuku, in a contribution to a statement in Parliament on the activities of the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) described the situation as a national disaster.

What do we do to protect our road travellers?

What about the encroachment on the environment? The nation is waging a war on illegal mining called 'galamsey,' and a soldier, passionate about the environment, has lost his life though the dirty and stained hands of 'village people' at Denkyira Obuasi in the Central Region.

Whatever he did that made the people kill him does not in any way justify their barbaric and dastardly act. What protection are we giving to security persons at tourism sites?

On the occasion to mark 2017 World Environment Day, Madam Patricia Appiagyei, Deputy Minister of Environment, Science and Technology, noted that despite recent and past efforts aimed at ensuring environmental sustainability, the world and Ghana for that matter still continue to face new and emerging environmental challenges that need to be addressed with a sense of urgency.

She noted that land degradation, water pollution, deforestation and the destruction of biodiversity in on the ascendency partly because of illegal mining activities in some parts of the country.

'The hard truth is that the impacts of these negative human activities on the environment is felt nation-wide in the lives of our citizens and the economy, including high water treatment costs, the spread of water-related diseases and infections, loss of arable lands, destruction of farms, pollution and reduction of fishery resources among others,' she said.

One other area of concern is sanitation and waste management. How clean are our beaches?

I was at Akplabanya, a coastal town in the Greater Accra Region, with a delegation of former Vice President Kwesi Amissah-Arthur in 2012. We were greeted with a very ugly site at entry, which could be verified, pictured when one googles the name of that town. If the situation has now changed for the better, then kudos!

Akplabanya is not isolated. What about the beaches at Teshie, Nungua, La, Osu James Town, Korle Gonno and Chorkor all in the Region? When will the open defecation at some coastal towns in Ghana stop?

And, what about the beaches in Ekumfi Narkwa, Cape Coast and Elmina in the Central Region?

Sanitation is really a problem also at the Umbrella Rock site in the Eastern Region.

The last time I visited the place, it was strewn with a lot of refuse.

And the perennial floods in some parts of the country, when will they end?

Still on the 2017 World Environment Day, Mr Emmanuel Agyarko, the Chairman of the Parliamentary Select Committee on the Environment, romanticised the uniqueness of the Atiwa Range Forest Reserve, which is a home to the head of waters of three major rivers as well as a source of drinking water for cities in the Greater Accra, Central and Western Regions.

However there is severe land degradation at the fringes of the forest as a result of illegal mining activities.

Mr Agyarko assured the nation that members of the Select Committee would take it upon themselves to champion the cause to protect the nation's water resources for present and future generations as they regularly visit their constituencies.

Dr Mark Kurt Nawane, MP for Nabdam and a member of the Environment Select Committee added to the call to make more visits to the nation's tourist sites, but wondered the kind of safety measures are there.

'There is an urgent need to educate the citizenry to have clean healthy environment,' Dr Nawane advised. GNA

By Benjamin Mensah, GNA
Accra, June 07, GNA - Thinkwomen Africa, a Non-Governmental Organisation dedicated to promoting the socio-economic and political development of African women would be launched at Sandema in the Builsa North District.

The launch scheduled to take place at the weekend would be on the theme: 'The African woman, an asset for Africa's development.'

Speaking with the Ghana News Agency on Wednesday, Ms Sheila Awonlie Bawa, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) for the organisation, said Thinkwomen Africa would serve as the hub for women emancipation in the African sub-region and help to bridge 'the huge gap between men and women in terms of socio-economic and political opportunities.'

Ms Bawa expressed regret that women continued to suffer series of discrimination in the distribution of resources and economic opportunities, describing it as 'rather unfortunate'.

She expressed commitment towards making the organisation viable in the fight against such discriminations and promote the rights and freedoms of women for the development of Africa.

'I believe African women have brilliant potentials, which would contribute immensely to the achievement of our development goals as a society if well harnessed,' the CEO stated.

Ms Awonlie announced that as part of the event, a women rights promotion campaign would be rolled out to sensitise the people of Sandema on the rights and freedoms of women.

'Some of our Ghanaian women have no solid information about the place of women in the development of our society. It would be very prudent to educate them on that. Africa must rise for the rights and freedoms of women.'

Thinkwomen Africa is the hub of women emancipation dedicated to liberating African women from inferiority complex and empowering them to take advantage of available opportunities to develop their socio-economic and political potentials.

Its vision is to ensure that women participate fully in decision making at both local and national levels, as well as creating more avenues for young people to contribute to governance in Africa.

GNA

By Gideon Ahenkorah, GNA
Winneba (C/R), June 7, GNA - Dr Toni Aubynn, Chief Executive Officer of Ghana Minerals Commission, has called on all to join the crusade at preserving and safeguarding water bodies.

He said if we cannot safeguard or improve it we should leave it in the way we met it for the unborn generation, rather than endanger them as water is an important resource that supports humanity.

Illegal miners now operate close to our communities and on the water bodies and we all need to say no to this challenge in our society, he said.

Dr Aubynn said this in a speech delivered on his behalf at a durbar organized by the Centre for School and Community Science and Technology Studies (SACOST) of the University of Education, Winneba, organised jointly with Shape Attitude Ghana a non-governmental organization.

The durbar held under the theme: 'Connecting People to Nature', was to commemorate this year's UN-World Environment Day and raise awareness on environmental challenges.

The assemblies which are the local policy makers, when it comes to issuing of permit to operate, sometimes allow such miners to operate unchecked, he said.

Dr Aubynn said many of the water bodies in the country have been polluted and this has created insecurity in certain areas hence the need to join in the fight against the menace.

Professor Jophus Anamuah-Mensah, Director of Institute of Educational Resource Institute of Studies (IERIS) of UEW, said the commemoration of the Day is also a call for all to go outdoors to admire and appreciate nature.

He said the country's education has been designed to develop a well-balanced personality, but emphasis has been placed on knowledge and information to the neglect of the need to appreciate the natural environment.

Natural environment is real and an important part of our daily lives, its covers the water we drink, the air we breathe and the food we eat, these sources should be protected from being abused, he said.

Earlier in the day, school pupils who participated in the event went on a float through the principal streets of the town carrying placards with inscriptions like: 'trees support life protect them', 'don't litter keep the beaches clean and attractive' and 'enforce laws on sanitation'.

GNA
Wesfarmers Ltd [ASX:WES] fell as much as 3.66% this afternoon, to $39.99 per share. The retailer is now down 6.39% year-to-date.

What happened?

This morning, Wesfarmers presented their 2017 Strategy for the group. What caught investors attention was the Coles business. As reported by The Australian Financial Review:

Coles managing director John Durkan said the food and liquor retailer had tripled its investment into prices and service in the June-half to drive sales and regain market share.

The investment in prices and service had been made ahead of cost-savings, Mr Durkan said, suggesting that Coles margins were likely to come under pressure again in the June-half.

But its not just Coles that investors were sour about. Wesfarmers chief executive Richard Goyder said that the 18-month-old hardware business in the UK and Ireland could continue to lose money. In the first half of FY17, the new hardware business lost $48 million. Profitability isnt expected until the second half of FY18.

What now?

To me, it seems like investors are being a bit nearsighted. The market tends to overreact on short-term changes and disregards what could happen in five to 10 years time.

Thats not to say Wesfarmers shares wont decline from here. They could possibly fall even lower. The retail industry is in trouble, as margins are falling. Investors might look to put their money elsewhere.

However, Wesfarmers is trading at levels not seen in years. Based on expected earnings per share of 2.85-times for FY17, Wesfarmers has a price-to-earnings ratio of around 14-times earnings.

The last time Wesfarmers traded lower than 14-times earnings on a quarterly basis was in June 2009. So Wesfarmers is not down and out just yet. Sure, they are having some short-term troubles. But think of what will happen in the next five to 10 years.

Thats why I believe its worth looking into Wesfarmers to see if its a right fit for your portfolio.

Regards,

Harje Ronngard,

Junior Analyst, Money Morning

PS: A big reason to invest in blue chips is for income. They offer big dividends, and usually pay out large portions of profits to shareholders.

However, its not always the blue chips that have the best dividend yield. Income specialist Matt Hibbard has written a new report, Top 5 Dividend Stocks in Australia for 2017, all about the best Aussie dividend stocks.

Some of the stocks Matt mentions pay reliable yields of 6%, 7%, 8% and more. Thats more than 5% what youd get on an Aussie 10-year bond for just slightly more risk.

To get your free copy of Matts report, click here.
Jackson, CA  Congressman Tom McClintock will host a town hall meeting in Amador County later this month.

The District Four Republican, whose jurisdiction covers much of the Sierra Nevada region, will meet with constituents in the Argonaut High School gymnasium in Jackson starting at 6pm on Monday, June 19. It is located at 501 Argonaut Lane.

Hundreds attended town hall events in February held in the Mother Lode, both at Sonora High School and the Mariposa County Fairgrounds. The town hall meetings are open to the public. Congressman McClintock typically starts the events by giving a brief overview of issues and legislation in Washington, DC and then takes questions from the audience.
Marriage is one of the most celebrated institutions in the world. Regardless of the society in which you live in or the place where you come from, one gets to see a likelihood of what marriage entails.

To many people, this institution is sacred and must be revered. Therefore, in a bid to show how much this institution is held in great esteem, there are various ceremonies that are held.

Most times, these ceremonies are of a religious look, others times they are from the cultural and traditional background; while in other cases they are just as the law of the land demands.

Whether it is religious, traditional/cultural or otherwise, we bring to you, 9 of the strangest wedding ceremonies ever.

These weddings show how divergent in view the human race is.

9. Marrying the tree

In India, ladies are married to trees, just to ward off evil spirits

In India women born as Mangliks (an astrological combination when Mars and Saturn are both under the 7th house) are thought to be cursed and likely to cause their husband an early death.

In order to ward of this curse they must be married firstto a tree.

The tree is then destroyed and the curse is broken. Poor tree.

8. Stealing the shoes

In some parts of India the groom is required to take off his shoes before approaching the wedding altar.

In some parts of India, it is a special thing for a relative to steal the shoes of the groom to be

READ ALSO: Scientific discoveries: 10 major mysteries man is yet to solve (Photos)

As soon as he does this mayhem ensues. Everyone from the brides side of the family tries to steal them while everyone from the grooms side of the family tries to protect them.

If the brides family succeeds in their endeavor, then they are allowed to hold the shoes hostage until they get paid a ransom.

7. Breaking the china

In some countries the guests bring the bride and groom new dishes as gifts.

In some parts of Europe, it is believe that evil spirits are wadded off when chinaware is deliberately broken

In Germany the guests do the sameand then they smash them. Supposedly the noise scares away evil spirits.

6. Animal love

Top 10 most weird wedding traditions of the world

Although no country in the world officially recognizes human/animal marriages it is practiced in many countries like India to ward off bad spirits.

5. Motherly experience

Some villages in Africa require an older woman to accompany the newlyweds into their bedroom on the first night of their marriage in order to show the bride the ropes.

Although this is usually a village elder, sometimes it can be the brides own mother.

And you thought your parents were nosy.

4. No comedy

In congo, wedding is a serious business, no time for smiles

In the Congo, if you want to ruin someones wedding just hire a comedian. In order for the marriage to be taken seriously the bride and groom are not allowed to smile throughout the entire ceremony.

3. Kidnap the bride

Top 10 most weird wedding traditions of the world

Practiced in many countries throughout Africa and Asia it can often lead into woman being defiled and/or forced into marriage, especially in nations like Rwanda.

2. Charivari

Charivari is mostly practiced in France

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In France the friends and family of the newlyweds congregate outside the newlyweds home on the first night of their marriage while proceeding to bang on pot and pans, yell, and just in general be as annoying as possible.

Not only would this complicate the whole lets be romantic thing, the newlyweds are also required to go outside and appease them with snacks and drinks

1. Balaka

Balaka is often practiced in Korea

When a wedding is over in Korea, friends of the groom remove his socks, tie a rope around his ankles and start beating his feet with fish in order to prepare him for his first night as a married man.

Maybe were missing something?

Below is a Legit.ng video in which Banky W and Adesua's love story is x-rayed.

Source: Legit.ng
Little Angels student drowns, family claims foul play

A student of the Hattiban-based Little Angels School drowned in the school swimming pool on Tuesday evening.
We now live in a reality where people of God acquire expensive cars and even private jets. This issue is still under discussion. Have you seen Sam Adeyemi private jet? Whose jet is this? Find out who actually owns the jet in these photos.

Day Star Christian Center leader - pastor Sam Adeyemi is experiencing has been a source of controversy lately. This has occurred as a result of recent rumors connected with pastor Sam Adeyemi's private jet.

On the eve of his birthday party, he expressed a desire to get a jet as a birthday present.

It was revealed that two international companies showed him some models of jets so he can purchase them.

There were two options which he considered as possible choices - Jet Hawker 900 XP, which costs about N3.2 billion and the other one is the Gulfstream G450, which is worth about N2.4 billion.

These models of jets have actually been owned by Nigerian popular billionaires - Dr. Kashim, Sir Aremu Johnson and Bishop Oyedepo.

It is believed that he was waiting for an agreement between the board members to purchase one of these fleets.

READ ALSO: Pastor Sam Adeyemis daughter called to the Nigerian Bar

However, according to rumors, the church expenses in 2013 were too high and this way they couldn't allocate money for him to buy a jet.

Despite all these statements, he publicly stated that he has never owned any private jet and all these claims are just lies.

For right now, it only makes sense to believe the words from the pastor as there are no proof of the rumours. So, let's try to answer another very popular questions. Are there any pastors with private jets in Nigeria? How many of them are there in Nigeria?

A list of Nigerian pastors, who are happy owners of jets include:

- BISHOP DAVID OYEDEPO

He is believed to be one of the most influential and at the same time affluent pastors in Nigeria. The bishop can is quite proud of his 4 jets and one private hanger.

- AYO ORITSEJAFOR

Occupying an important place in the Nigerian church, he is also a happy owner of Bombardier Challenger 601 Aircraft. Though, it is claimed that he could only afford this jet as a result of money laundering.

- ENOCH ADEJARE ADEBOYE

He once worked as a professor in the field of Mathematics, then years later, he became a very wealthy pastor. He was recognized to be one of 50 most powerful people in the whole world. He can boast having Gulfstream IV aircraft.

- TEMITOPE BALOGUN JOSHUA

Prophet T. B. Joshua is a famous man among Nigerian church heads and a well-known person in TV broadcasting industry. His Gulfstream G550 aircraft is his pride.

It is very likely that we will soon see Sam Adeyemi on this list of the men of God who own private jets. Follow our site to learn only interesting and fresh news.

READ ALSO: Private jet owners in Nigeria

Source: Legit.ng
M&S NEXT selects 6 cos for accelerator

M&S NEXT Venture Corp has finally selected six companies that will go through a rigorous four-month long acceleration process. The programme initially received 230 applicants, where after multiple rounds of screening, six of the most promising businesses were chosen.
- Lauretta Onochie accused state governors of withholding salary without any tangible reason

- She said President Buhari has granted states access to bail out funds to pay salaries and pensions

- Onochie advised Nigerians to called out their governors and demand their salaries

President Muhammadu Buhari's personal assistant on social media, Lauretta Onochie, has challenged state governors to pay outstanding workers salaries.

Onochie said Buhari has already granted access to bail out funds to pay salaries and pensions and she has no idea why some people have refused to pay up.

Onochie advised Nigerians to challenge their governors and demand why salaries are yet to be paid when the federal government has already made provision for it.

READ ALSO: Return to Biafra land - MASSOB tells Igbos

Recall that Legit.ng reported in December 2016 that President Buhari ordered governors in the country to pay workers in their states all outstanding salaries and entitlements.

The governors are to make the payments with parts of the at least 25 percent of the refunds made to them from excess deductions for external debt service.

Most governors have however flouted this direct orders by the president.

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Meanwhile, the 36 governors of Nigeria have arrived at a decision to offset backlog of salaries and arrears of their workers as soon as a second tranche of funds from the Paris Club loan refund is released.

The decision came amidst rumour that the governors have squandered the first batch of Paris Club loan given to them to pay workers arrears by the federal government.

In a statement issued by Abulrazque Barkindo, spokesman of the forum, on Friday, the governors said they had resolved to offset all backlog of salaries and allowances owed their workers as soon as the second tranche of the fund was released.

Watch video of Nigerians listing President Buhari's achievements in 2 years:

Source: Legit.ng
- Nigerian Air Force has officially kicked off a 6-week training for selected officers

- The training is aimed at developing the capacity of the personnel to train others for Force Protection in a complex environment

- Officers of the British Military Assistance Training Team (BMATT) have arrived Nigeria to help with the training

The Nigerian Air Force has started a six (6) week-training for selected officers to help develop the capacity of their personnel to train others for force protection.

Officers of the British Military Assistance Training Team (BMATT) are in Nigeria to help train the pioneer officers who will in turn train other officers.

The training will span for 6 weeks

The six-week BMATT training programme for selected NAF personnel is aimed at developing the capacity of the personnel to train others for Force Protection in a complex environment.

British Military Assistance Training Team (BMATT)

The training is a continuation of the NAFs efforts at strengthening its Base Defence system to be able to respond to a wide range of situations that might threaten NAF Bases across the country.

READ ALSO: 2 female bombers die in their own explosion

It would be recalled that the NAF only recently held a Base Defence Retreat and commissioned an electronic shooting range as well as the newly built Regiment Training Centre in Kaduna, in preparation for the commencement of the BMATT organized training.

British Military Assistance Training Team (BMATT) and officers of the Nigerian Air Force.

The Chief of the Air Staff (CAS), Air Marshal Sadique Abubakar, who was represented by the Air Officer Commanding, Training Command, Air Vice Marshal Christopher Okoye, urged the selected personnel to take full advantage of the programme.

He added that they were the pioneering students, who would in turn be involved in the training of other NAF personnel from the Regiment Specialty.

Air Vice Marshal Christopher Okoye

He equally restated the commitment of the Service to capacity building, as indicated in the training facilities, which the NAF had just upgraded to enhance effective learning.

The CAS then commended the BMATT Team for their partnership towards the training of NAF Regiment personnel and accordingly reiterated that the NAF would continue to support the BMATT organized training programme.

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The NAF collaboration with BMATT, which commenced in 2016, is for 5 years and had so far resulted in the training of 656 personnel.

The BMATT programme was designed as a six-week exercise that would run concurrently with the Basic Regiment Airmens Course.

A total of 66 instructors from BMATT would be involved in the training programme.

Meanwhile, the Nigerian army has warned ex-servicemen to avoid getting duped by fraudsters asking them to pay N80,000 to get reabsorbed back into military service.

The army director of public relations, Brigadier General Sani Kukasheka Usman while warning the society against the fraudster said the army is working tirelessly to apprehend the fraudsters.

Usman said the Nigerian army is not planning to reabsorbed ex-servicemen and advised citizens to follow the rules and regulation of proper enlistment into the army.

Watch Legit.ng video of the Nigerian Air force giving details of the battle against Boko Haram:

Source: Legit.ng
Myanmar military plane with 104 on board goes missing

A Myanmar military transport plane with more than 100 people on board went missing on Wednesday, Associated Press reported.
- Yinka Odumakin, Afenifere's spokesman, has chastised the north for thinking they can declare war against Igbos, saying it would not work

- He however warned of an ethnic massacre if the northern youths coalition carries out its threat

- According to Odumakin, in 1967, the Igbos were not fighting anyone but simply protesting against their marginalization

Yinka Odumakin, the spokesman of pan-Yoruba political organization Afenifere, has raised the alarm over the recent notice given by the Coalition of Northern Youths to Igbos in their region, asking them to vacate the region.

In a chat with The Sun, Odumakin urged northern leaders to caution their youths, warning that the 3-month eviction notice issued may be the beginning of the end for Nigeria.

READ ALSO: 2 female bombers die in their own explosion

He stated: Carrying out their threats would be a prelude to another pogrom. These elements have over the years showed their propensity to attack people, but like the Chinua Achebe said, they are holding a knife to the tiny rope that still holds the country together.

I hope that if they still have elders, their elders should call them to order, otherwise, it may be the beginning of the end of Nigeria, as we know it.

They should know that in 1967, they had a coalition to fight the Igbo but that coalition is no more there today. We know the people that fought the last war and won it.

I can boldly speak for the Yoruba nation, that if the north thinks they can declare another war against the Igbo, it would not work. If they see any Yoruba man joining them to fight the Igbo, then that person must be a mercenary.

The Igbo were not fighting, neither were they causing any crisis, but were just trying to make their grievances known in a peaceful manner. Why should they be threatened? For northerners to tell them to leave the north is sad for the polity.

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Legit.ng previously reported that Igbo people in the north had been given three months to leave the region as the clamour for Biafra continues to gain momentum.

The Coalition of Northern Youths also urged northern people in the south-eastern part of the country to immediately start moving back to their various states.

Following the quit notice, the Movement for the Actualization of Sovereign States of Biafra (MASSOB) urged Igbos living in the northern part of the country to start returning home.

MASSOB leader, Comrade Uche Madu, in a statement, said the quit notice did not come as a surprise.

Watch this Legit.ng TV video asking Nigerians if Biafra is achievable

Source: Legit.ng
- Justice Adeniyi Ademola presides over court cases at the Federal High Court Abuja

- A lawyer, Mr Femi Morohundiya, justifies the recall of the suspended judges after a trial court acquitted them of alleged corruption

- The presidency warns that the recalled judges would soon be arraigned

Justice Adeniyi Ademola the Federal High Court Abuja, who was recently recalled from suspension by the National Judicial Council (NJC), has resumed sitting.

Legit.ng recalls that Ademola was suspended alongside other judges following allegations of corruption brought against them by the federal government.

The NJC in a statement on Saturday June 3, had stated that Justice Ademola could resume his judicial duties on the basis that the court had exonerated him of the charges preferred against him by the federal government.

The judicial body also asked five other judges under suspension to resume duties on the basis that the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mr. Abubakar Malami, had failed to institute charges against them since October 2016, when the minister requested the NJC to suspend them pending the outcome of the cases against them.

The Punch reports that Justice Adeniyi Ademola resumed sitting on Wednesday, June 7 in Abuja.

According to the newspaper, seven cases were listed for the Wednesdays court session.

Among those who had a case before Justice Ademola was Joe Agi, a senior lawyer with whom Justice Ademola was tried on corruption allegations but later discharged.

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Though Agi's case was listed as number 6, being the only Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), his case heard first.

One of the lawyers who was in court, Mr. Femi Morohundiya, justified the recall of the judges after a trial court acquitted them of charges against them.

He said: It is a welcome development. The Senate President is being tried by the executive, yet he is still sitting as the Senate President. This judge has been cleared.

So it is a welcome development that he is back to the judiciary to continue his work.

Ademola resumption comes on the heels of a warning by the presidency that the recalled judges should not resume duties because they would soon be arraigned.

Okoi Obono-Obla, the special adviser to the president on prosecutions, stated this on Monday, June 5, when he faulted the NJC for reinstating the judges.

He said the NJC was aware of the plan of the EFCC to arraign the judges but surreptitiously reinstated them.

Obono-Obla said the reinstatement of Justice Ademola, whose case is still under appeal, was particularly disappointing.

In the Legit.ng video below, the EFCC organised a march tagged walk against corruption in the Federal Capital Territory. Watch:

Source: Legit.ng
- The Middle Belt Youth Council (MBYC) has offered the Igbos accommodation

- The group said 'Middle Belters' are not northerners and we can never be

- The Coalition of Northern Youths (CNY) had issued a quit notice to Igbo people in the region

The Middle Belt Youth Council (MBYC) has offered the Igbos accommodation if the northern youths send them away from their states.

It was earlier reported that the Coalition of Northern Youths (CNY) in a statement on Tuesday, June 6, in Kaduna, issued a three month ultimatum to Igbos to vacate the northern region or be evicted.

Legit.ng gathered that MBYC in a statement signed by the president, Emma Zopmal on Wednesday, June 7, said they were ready to offer Igbos safe haven in their land for them to continue with their life.

READ ALSO: Kaduna government orders arrest of Northern Youths for issuing quit notice to Igbos

Read the statement below:

"We wish to express our profound gratitude to God for keeping us alive today. Middle Belt Youth Council is extremely concerned about the ongoing regional tension in Nigeria today and we want to make our position clear to the world.

In the light of incessant threats to one Nigeria posed by killer-herdsmen, we want to call on good people of Middle Belt to first of all, support the Anti-grazing Bill.

Grazing by Fulani herdsmen on our land has become the major cause of conflicts in our region therefore, we're calling for total ban on open grazing so as to save the lives of our people and their farmlands.

Secondly, it's no longer news that our country Nigeria is facing a daunting challenge of peace and unity but we want to assure the good citizens of Nigeria that we have been a peace-loving people and we'll continue to be.

But, in an event one part of the country decides to go away as a separate entity, Middle Belt is also ready to make an independent statement.

We want to clarify those who think that the Middle Belt is part of the North: God created everywhere and everyone and He gave it to whom he chooses and Middle Belt is a creation of God and not man (Usman bn Fodio).

Therefore, we choose what to use our land for, how to run it and where we want to be. Middle Belt has been a home for the Ohanaeze Ndigbo, South-South and the South-West without any form of discrimination against anyone.

We've accommodated every Nigerian for centuries now. We deserve respect and commendations.

If the Arewa youths are sending away Igbos from their states, we in the Middle Belt are ready to offer them accommodation in our land (which is an inheritance from God and nobody will take it away from us) for them to continue with their life and businesses.

Southern Nigeria people should also know that 'Middle Belters' are not northerners and we can never be because we're not affiliated in terms of culture, language, education, economy, and general lifestyle.

The Biafran struggle did not come as an accident but as a result of injustice and unfair treatment to regions, people or religion. Over the years, our federalism has been a fat lie that deprives political rights and freedom of some sections of the country while others benefit immensely from it.

Middle Belt has been at the receiving end of this inequitable arrangement in which our people in Southern Kaduna, Southern Bauchi, Southern Borno, Southern Kebbi, Adamawa are under constant alienation and annihilation.

Therefore, Middle Belt strongly stands for reconstruction of Nigeria not only restructuring.

We'll join hands with Southern Nigerian people to actualize it. In view of this press statement, we want to urge Middle Belters to remain resolute in making sure we protect our future against the claims by the Hausa/Fulani.

More so, for want of peace and unity of dear country Nigeria, we call on Igbo nation to feel at home in the Middle Belt in an event they are sent away from the Arewa land.

God bless Nigeria! God bless the Middle Belt."

In a previous report by Legit.ng, the Movement for the Actualization of Sovereign States of Biafra (MASSOB) urged Igbos living in the northern part of the country to start returning home following the quit notice issued to all the Igbos in the region is by the Coalition of Northern Youths (CNY).

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The group threatened that from October 1, it will begin to prove to the whole world the north was no longer part of any federal union that should do with the Igbos.

In reaction to the notice given by the northern group, MASSOB leader, Comrade Uche Madu, in a statement, said the quit notice did not come as a surprise.

Following the celebration of the Biafra day, Legit.ng TV decided to ask some Nigerians if they think the Biafra Republic will be achieved in the nearest future. Check out responses.

Source: Legit.ng
OBOR signing cements ties with China: Mahara

Outgoing Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Krishna Bahadur Mahara said on Tuesday that the signing of the One Belt One Road agreement between Nepal and China has helped strengthen bilateral relations.
- The Kaduna state government orders the police to investigate and prosecute persons who endorsed the threat to Igbos in the northern region

- The government urges all residents to ignore the threats from the group, northern youths, noting that it is in contact with the Igbo community in Kaduna

- MASSOB urges Igbos living in the northern part of the country to start returning home

The Kaduna state government has ordered the immediate arrest of persons who signed a statement ordering Igbos out of northern Nigeria.

The state government in a statement issued by Samuel Aruwan, the spokesman to the governor of Kaduna state on Wednesday, June 7, condemned what it described as inciting, hate speech targeted at citizens of Igbo extraction.

READ ALSO: We are not part of your Biafra - Ijaw youths blast Biafra group

It said: The Kaduna state government takes exception to the fact that the northern youths did their irresponsible press conference in Kaduna. This government has been consistent in taking action to punish hate speech and incitement. People who may feel unhappy about irresponsible comments or actions that have taken place in other states must know that two wrongs cannot make a right, and they cannot use our state to do or say things that threaten the peace."

The government therefore ordered the arrest, investigation and prosecution of the signatories to the statement issuing the quit notice to the Igbos in the north.

The Kaduna state government condemns in the strongest terms the press statement by some self-appointed northern youths that threatened the safety and property of our citizens of Igbo extraction. Government assures every resident of our state that their constitutional and human rights to live peacefully and own property wherever they choose is sacrosanct. Even people who may feel unhappy about irresponsible comments or actions that have taken place in other states must know that two wrongs cannot make a right.

"Reckless disregard for the rights of other citizens drips through the press statement by these northern youths who have chosen to use the discourse around restructuring to promote their own agenda of hate, division and incitement. This sort of opportunists cannot be allowed to distort debate, or turn it into a pretext for a barely-disguised agenda of displacement and dispossession of some citizens.

We will not tolerate such irresponsible statements and conduct in our state. The statement issued by the northern youths violates the laws of Kaduna State. Therefore, the Kaduna State Government has directed that its Ministry of Justice should prepare charges and prosecute the signatories and anyone complicit in arranging this egregious assault on the rights of fellow citizens," the Kaduna state government noted.

The authorities also directed the police to immediately arrest, interrogate the signatories to the statement and investigate all the circumstances and persons that may be implicated in the matter.

It urged all residents to ignore the threats from the group, noting that it was in contact with the Igbo community in Kaduna.

It said: We delighted to say that this community, like all our other communities, believes in the strength of the constitutional order to protect all citizens.

KDSG wishes to encourage all our people to celebrate the diversity with which the Almighty has blessed us, to continue to shun agents of division, and to stand firm in upholding a common humanity. Everyone has a right to live in peace and harmony.

Legit.ng recalls that a group named, the Coalition of Northern Youths (CNY) on Tuesday, June 6, issued a statement ordering Igbo people in the north to vacate Northern Nigeria within 3 months.

It was learnt that learnt that the group also urged northern people in the south-eastern part of the country to immediately start moving back to their various states.

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The group threatened that from the 1st October, 2017, it will begin to prove to the whole world the north was no longer part of any federal union that should do with the Igbos.

Meanwhile, the Movement for the Actualization of Sovereign States of Biafra (MASSOB) has urged Igbos living in the northern part of the country to start returning home following the quit notice issued to all the Igbos in the region is by the Coalition of Northern Youths (CNY).

In reaction to the notice given by the northern group, MASSOB leader, Comrade Uche Madu, in a statement, said the quit notice did not come as a surprise, the Sun reports.

MASSOB congratulates the Arewa political, religious, traditional and opinion leaders who sponsored their youths wing by using Arewa House in Kaduna for this greatest meeting of a coalition of Islamic fundamentalist, the group said.

MASSOB pleaded with Igbos not to wait for the three months quit notice to expire before they vacate the region.

Following the celebration of the Biafra day, Legit.ng TV decided to ask some Nigerians if they think the Biafra Republic will be achieved in the nearest future. Check out responses.

Source: Legit.ng
Philip Alabi is a Nigerian who graduated from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE) and is filling shelves in African universities with much-needed textbooks donated by faculty and students around the world.

The initiative he set up is called Efiwe, which is the Yoruba word for bookworm." Philip Alabis fervor for equipping West African post-secondary students with badly-needed textbooks and related resources led to the formation of this wonderful organization.

The story goes that when Alabi first arrived in the US to begin his Master of Science in chemistry at SIUE, he saw that university-level textbooks were more affordable compared to Nigeria.

He also saw stacks of still-relevant textbooks in good condition that were being discarded.

Philip Alabi has received a lot of commendation

He said: Even for university instructors, textbooks and relevant resource materials are extremely expensive and difficult to come by in West Africa.

In the US, theres the university bookstore, online academic resources and online vendors such as Amazon.com through which students can access the latest versions of textbooks required for their university courses.

READ ALSO: Exclusive: 19-year-old girl honoured in school for returning missing purse filled with money (photos)

"Sadly, this is not the situation in Nigeria, even at the university level. Hard-copy books for courses are typically outdated and there are not enough to go around. If they are attainable, it is generally only the instructors who have a copy of the text, not the students.

Our aim through Efiwe is to collect relevant textbooks across U.S. colleges and universities and send the books to university and community college libraries in Western Africa.

"Our organizational mission is to send more than one million textbooks to African universities by the year 2030.

Efiwe is a remarkable initiative for students

Alabi who will pursue a doctorate degree in chemistry from Brown University in August, said:

We thought maybe wed receive a couple hundred donated textbooks at our initial book drop-off sites on campus at SIUE.

That initial donation topped 1,000 textbooks in only la few months. We also raised funds to pay for the cost of transporting the books by ship to my home university, Tai Solarin University of Education in Nigeria.

"We are absolutely confident that we can continue the momentum and tap into the generosity of teachers and learners in the U.S.

Jasiliu Kadiri the Tai Solarin Deputy University Librarian said the donated textbooks would add value to teaching, learning and research work at the university.

READ ALSO: 2 Chibok girls who escaped Sambisa forest in 2014 graduate from American school

We acknowledge with profound thanks the receipt of these volumes of books covering various fields including general and pure sciences, education, social sciences and childrens books.

"We encourage individuals and student associations at community colleges, technical colleges and universities across the Midwestern states to designate a location on their campus as an Efiwe textbook drop-off site.

We are also widely seeking book drive volunteers who will be responsible for the collection of books in their respective campuses and communities.

Legit.ng earlier reported that students of the Federal University of Agriculture Makurdi have been going through hard times.

The school is said to be experiencing shortage of water supply causing the students to take to social media to voice out their concerns.

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The ladies even have to go as far as fetching water from the boy's hostel just to take care of their needs.

Watch this Legit.ng video about students in Nigeria:

Source: Legit.ng
- Youths of the Niger Delta region have fired the Northern youths for making what they described as unguarded statements

- The youth groups comprising the Ijaws and the Urhobos warn the Northern youths not to throw Nigeria into unimaginable crisis

- They call on security agencies to be proactive and nip the situation in the bud

Youths in the Niger Delta region comprising the Urhobos and Ijaws have reacted strongly against the three months ultimatum given by a section of Northern youths to Igbos resident in the region to quit or face mass eviction.

In separate statements made available to Legit.ng by President of Ijaw Youth Council (IYC), Eric Omare and national press secretary of youth wing of Urhobo Progress Union (UPU), Kelly Efemena Umukoro, the youth groups warned the northern youths to be mindful of their actions so as not to throw Nigeria into unimaginable crisis.

Eric Omare, the IYC president, said the demand by the northern youths is baseless and senseless, noting that there is nothing wrong for the Igbo people to demand or agitate for self-determination.

According to him; The right to self-determination is a universal right recognized even under the UN charter. Therefore, the Igbo agitation for Biafra cannot justify the demand to move Igbos out of northern Nigeria.

READ ALSO: Igbos in the north get 3 months to quit the region as Biafra agitation heats up

We believe it is criminally minded people who want to hide under the umbrella of speaking for the north to loot properties belonging to Igbos in the north that are making this demand.

We call on security agencies to as a matter of urgency move against the brains behind the ultimatum to Igbos in the north.

The security agencies must be proactive and not allow the deed to be done before acting. Furthermore we wish to remind those retrogressive elements that no amount of such empty threats would break the will of the people to have Nigeria renegotiated.

It is the forces who do not want the factors mitigating against the development of Nigeria that are sponsoring those threats.

Press secretary of the Urhobo Progress Union (youth wing), Efemena Umukoro, frowned against what he called the rascality taken too far by the northern youths.

He said: It should be noted that despite the fact that some of them never experienced the civil war, they should learn from the history of the civil war of 1967 to 1970 in Nigeria, how the war devastated Nigeria and the economy of the nation.

Asking the Igbos to leave is indirectly asking all the Niger Delta people to leave the north, including the Urhobo nation. The action could lead to disintegration of Nigeria.

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It is also important to note that the Urhobos are not part of Biafra. We want a united Nigeria, where fairness, equality and justice are given pre-eminence.

The Northern elders forum, northern governors should quickly intervene in this matter and arrest every signatory to the statement made. This is to save Nigeria for the future generation.

He said he had lived in the north, noting that the northerners classify all Niger Delta people, including the Urhobos, as Igbos, hence it is necessary to make Urhobo decision known in this regard.

Watch this Legit.ng video and ascertain the possibility of achieving Biafra after 50 years of agitation

Source: Legit.ng
PAF concerned as World Bank funding nears end

The Poverty Alleviation Fund (PAF) has asked the government to clarify what is going to happen to its ongoing poverty alleviation programmes as World Bank (WB) funding for them is about to dry up. According to the PAF, the WB will stop providing soft loans for its programmes from the next fiscal year.
- The Arewa Youth Consultative Forum expressed disappointment over El-Rufai's statement

- The group converged for another meeting following its quit notice to Igbos

- They said the south did not react when its youths gave a similar order

The Arewa Youth Consultative Forum has expressed disappointment over Governor Nasiru El-Rufais statement condemning them and ordering for their arrest.

Legit.ng had reported that a group named, the Coalition of Northern Youths (CNY) on Tuesday, June 6, issued a statement ordering Igbo people in the north to vacate Northern Nigeria within 3 months.

READ ALSO: IYM declares readiness for 'war' against northern youths

It was learnt that the group also urged northern people in the south-eastern part of the country to immediately start moving back to their various states.

The group threatened that from the 1st October, 2017, it will begin to prove to the whole world the north was no longer part of any federal union that should do with the Igbos.

In response, Governor El-Rufai on Wednesday, June 7 ordered the arrest and prosecution of the signatories of the quit notice.

The Kaduna state government takes exception to the fact that the northern youths did their irresponsible press conference in Kaduna. This government has been consistent in taking action to punish hate speech and incitement. People who may feel unhappy about irresponsible comments or actions that have taken place in other states must know that two wrongs cannot make a right, and they cannot use our state to do or say things that threaten the peace."

Premium Times however reports that in spite of the state governments order, the group called for another meeting to discuss the way forward.

Abdulaziz Suleiman who is the coordinator of the group described the reaction of El-Rufai as disappointing.

He said: We are currently meeting to decide on how best to react.

Personally, I am disappointed with some of our leaders. These types of threats were issued against the Fulani recently and no governor from the South came out to condemn it.

After the meeting, Suleiman insisted that they were not deterred by the arrest order insisting Igbos must leave their land since they did not believe in one Nigeria.

Our declaration did not mention violence at all. The Igbo have consistently insisted that they dont want to be in Nigeria, let them therefore, go back to their places.

They dont believe in Nigeria, so, we also dont believe in them."

He also lashed out at Governor El-Rufai, accusing him of playing politics with the issue.

Where was El Rufai when the Igbos gave the Fulani ultimatum to leave their areas?

Where was he when over 500 northerners were killed in Ile Ife? These people just politicise everything.

Because he wants to run for President, he chose to ignore his people and appease the Igbo? Goodluck to him.

Watch a Legit.ng TV video below of Femi Fani-Kayode revealing what President Muhammadu Buhari told him when he was still a member of the APC

Source: Legit.ng
Suspected Boko Haram sect members have launched new attacks in Maiduguri, the Borno state capital.

Legit.ng gathered that gunshots were being fired in all directions around Jiddari Polo in Maiduguri, as residents scamper for safety.

Security sources said the terrorists are attempting to occupy Maiduguri.

READ ALSO: BREAKING: Arewa youths make next move after issuing 90 day quit notice to Igbos in north

Fierce battle is ongoing to repel them as of the time of filling this report.

A report from a SaharaReporters claimed that gun shots erupted in the lately peaceful Borno state capital around 7 pm on Wednesday after the terrorists allegedly attacked the Giwa military barracks located on the outskirts of Maiduguri.

It said residents in the Jidari and Polo areas of Maiduguri began to flee the city after hearing gunfire, a situation which caused confusion and a mass exodus of residents throughout the city. The reports also claimed the situation was still unstable as at the time of this report.

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Legit.ng had previously reported that Cameroonian troops fighting Boko Haram arrested for demanding leave, payment of bonuses

Watch this Legit.ng TV video on survivors of Boko Haram:

Source: Legit.ng
- The federal government has reacted to the threat issued to the Igbos in the north

- The minister of interior in a statement said all Nigerians are free to live anywhere they want

- He assured Igbos that no one will harass them

The federal government has formally reacted to the quit notice issued by northern youths to Igbos living in the north saying the Igbos are free to live anywhere in the country.

The youths had stirred nationwide uproar when they issued a statement giving a 90-day ultimatum to Igbos in the north to leave.

READ ALSO: Boko Haram attacks Maiduguri ahead of Osinbajos visit (photos)

Vanguard reports that the minister of interior, Abdulrahman Dambazau, in a statement issued on Wednesday, June 7, urged Igbos and other Nigerians to go about their business without fear.

He advised: the various ethnic groups to desist from flaming the embers of hate, animosity, discord and disharmony and adhere strictly to the teachings of our good values of religions and cultures that encourage good neighbourliness, national unity and Integration, and love for one another.

He also advised youth to avoid being instrument of violence, animosity and disharmony among our citizens. And that they should rather focus their attention and energies on actions, that would engender national unity, integration and cohesion.

Meanwhile, the Igbo Youth Movement (IYM) warned that it is prepared for to fight against any provocation coming from the north.

Reacting to the three-month notice handed Igbos in the north by some groups to leave the region, the IYM said the people of the south-east were not scared of war.

Evang Elliot Ugochukwu-Uko, the founder of the IYM, described the notice from the northern groups as childish in a statement sent to newsmen.

According to Ugochukwu, instead of issuing such a threat, the northern coalition should have written to the National Assembly and other world bodies for a referendum to be held.

Watch Legit.ng TV video below about the 50th anniversary of the declaration of Biafra.

Source: Legit.ng
- South east governors held an emergency meeting over threat to Igbos by Arewa youths

- The president-general of Ohaneze Ndigbo confirmed this meeting

- He applauded Governor Nasir El-Rufai for calling for the arrest of the youths

The governors of the south east held an emergency session following the issuance of a quit notice by northern youths to Igbos in the north.

The youths had called on Igbos in the north to vacate their land in 90 days on Tuesday, June 6 which stirred nationwide condemnation.

READ ALSO: Boko Haram attacks Maiduguri ahead of Osinbajos visit (photos)

Vanguard reports that south east governors held an emergency meeting on Wednesday, June 7 to address the issue.

Chief Nnia Nwodo who is the president-general of the Ohaneze Ndigbo made this revelation during a night of tributes in honour of the late Ohanaeze chieftain and veteran Biafra soldier, Prof. Ben Obumselu.

Nwodo said it was the intervention of Governor Nasir El-Rufai that stopped the south east governors from sending luxurious buses and trucks to the north to evacuate the Igbos there.

He applauded El-Rufai for ordering the arrest of the youths whom he said were fanning the ember of war.

Meanwhile, the Arewa Youth Consultative Forum expressed disappointment over Governor Nasiru El-Rufais statement condemning them and ordering for their arrest.

Legit.ng had reported that a group named, the Coalition of Northern Youths (CNY) on Tuesday, June 6, issued a statement ordering Igbo people in the north to vacate Northern Nigeria within 3 months.

In response, Governor El-Rufai on Wednesday, June 7 ordered the arrest and prosecution of the signatories of the quit notice.

The Kaduna state government takes exception to the fact that the northern youths did their irresponsible press conference in Kaduna. This government has been consistent in taking action to punish hate speech and incitement. People who may feel unhappy about irresponsible comments or actions that have taken place in other states must know that two wrongs cannot make a right, and they cannot use our state to do or say things that threaten the peace."

Watch a Legit.ng TV video below of acting president, Professor Yemi Osinbajo speaking about the importance of the unity of Nigeria.

Source: Legit.ng
Press Release

Renaissance BioScience Corp. (RBSC), a leading global yeast technology company, is pleased to announce that it will receive a multi-year, non-repayable contribution of up to Cdn$500,000 from the National Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC-IRAP). The funding will support the companys ongoing research and development efforts through the advancement of its proprietary, non-GMO yeast strain development platform.

As part of the companys ongoing focus to develop innovative non-GMO yeast technology, RBSC is engaged in not only the research and development of novel yeast strains for commercialization, but also the discovery and utilization of advanced technology capable of improving the companys proprietary strain development platform.

We are pleased to receive funding from IRAP in support of furthering our next-generation non-GMO yeast development platform, said Dr. Matthew Dahabieh, Chief Science Officer. The assistance offered by IRAP is an important catalyst for us to enhance our strain development capabilities and will enable us to take the next step in offering innovative next-generation yeast technology to our customers. We thank the Government of Canada and IRAP and for their support.

To learn more, visit Renaissance BioScience
In an effort to promote transparency, FDA improved access to adverse events reports (AERs) via an online database that provides a variety of information in a search-friendly format. Though the database is intended to be a tool, the type and breadth of information, along with how the information is presented, could lead to more questions than answers. At the International Conference on the Science of Botanicals in Oxford, Mississippi, April 3-6, Rick Kingston, Pharm.D., president, regulatory and scientific affairs and senior clinical toxicologist at SafetyCall International, discussed the logistics of the new database, along with potential implications.

In this episode, Rachel Adams, managing editor, and Kingston discuss:

The breadth of information provided by the new database;

Whether the information can be used to develop safety signals; and

Potential unintended consequences of the database based on the breadth of information and how the information is presented.

Links and Resources:

Got feedback? Email Adams at [email protected], or tweet to @NatProdINSIDER using the hashtag #INSIDERpodcast
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
The US Army is testing new guns and ammunition to replace the M4/M16 assault rifles. The 5.56 mm ammunition is not as lethal the in the over 300 meter range where many modern firefights are taking place.

SOCOM is also developing polymer ammunition in 6.5 mm to reduce the weight load.

Current research is showing polymer 6.5 mm reducing weight by one-third from 7.62 mm, reaching nearly the same weight as conventional brass 5.56 mm.

Textron Systems, a private defense industry company, conducted a caliber study using a specially designed .264 (6.5 mm) caliber cartridge which they said resulted in terminal effects greater than 7.62 mm NATO out to 1,200 meters in both their carbine and machine gun.

Data provided by the company showed the machine gun is 7 pounds lighter than the 7.62 mm M240L with 800 rounds of their lightweight ammunition, lowering the combat load by 27 pounds.
In 2016, former Energy Secretary Steven Chu criticized the Clean Power Plan. He did not think energy storage can solve the reliability problems of wind and solar quickly enough, he said Friday, which led him to criticize the Environmental Protection Agency for neglecting nuclear power in its Clean Power Plan.

Even though the Clean Power Plan says we need nuclear and maintains the same ratio, they give no credit for it, Chu said during a debate at the Silicon Valley Energy Summit hosted by Stanford University. We should make a Clean Power Plan thats based on clean energy, not renewable energy.

The Clean Power Plan allows states to count new nuclear plants and uprates at existing plants toward their clean energy mandates, but it does not give extra credit to existing plants, as the nuclear industry wanted, to help them compete with cheaper energy.

Exelon Corporation announced in 2016 it would move forward to shut down the Clinton and Quad Cities nuclear plants, given the lack of progress on Illinois energy legislation.

The Clinton Power Station were to close on June 1, 2017, and the Quad Cities Generating Station in Cordova was close on June 1, 2018. Quad Cities and Clinton have lost a combined $800 million in the past seven years, despite being two of Exelons best-performing plants.

In December, 2016, Illinois approved $235 million a year for Exelon to prop up nuclear plants in Clinton and the Quad Cities, six months after the company threatened to shut them down. The nuclear plants were saved.

FirstEnergy has said it could decide next year to sell or close its three nuclear plants  Davis-Besse and Perry in Ohio and Beaver Valley in Pennsylvania. PSEG of New Jersey, which owns all or parts of four nuclear plants, has said it wont operate ones that are long-term money losers.

* Extra regulation post-Fukushima added extra costs to nuclear plant operations

* Fracking has kept natural gas energy costs low

* there was no offsetting economic relief in the Clean Power Plan bill

Nuclear energy facilities avoided 554 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2016 across the U.S. This is nearly as much carbon dioxide as is released from nearly 118 million cars, which is more than all U.S. passenger cars. The U.S. produces more than five billion metric tons of carbon dioxide each year.

The US under current policies is losing 13 GW of clean energy power from nuclear plant closures. The Clean Power bill would allow this.

The CPP which was justified based upon the Paris Agreement combined with some other new policy in the Guardians policy set A was to produce about 300 million tons of CO2 savings by 2025. Most of the CO2 savings were not occur until later in the CPP plan. Losing 20-50% of existing nuclear power would cost 52 to 165 million tons of CO2 by 2025. Shutdowns early are magnified because each gigawatt of nuclear power lost a year early is 3 million tons of CO2 each year. If the GW plant is lost in 2017 then it would be a cumulative 24 million tons of CO2 by 2025.

If the USA loses all 55,000 megawatts of nuclear power plants threatened by todays economic and policy landscape and those plants are replaced by new natural gas power plants, CO2 emissions could increase by roughly 156 million metric tons annually.

Losing existing nuclear plants has immediate negative environmental effects that accumulate.

Based upon the Exelon  Illinois agreement about $2.5 billion per year seems sufficient to save 10% of the nuclear power. $7.5 billion per year would save the remainder.

The CO2 emissions avoided by the nations nuclear plants alone delivers an estimated public value of $6 to $54 per MWh.

Trump has set policy in motion to completely remove or cripple the Clean Power Plan by removing enforcement or enactment. He did this with executive orders.

It is unclear whether Trump will enact or how he will be able to enact his new energy policies.

The conventional wisdom is that the Trump administrations moves will bring subsidy cuts for renewables and will be a boon for the coal and nuclear power industries. On their face, the two documents do seem designed to unleash a major reversal and perhaps even a revolution in U.S. energy policy. The first is an executive order signed by the president March 28, titled Order on Promoting Energy Independence and Economic Growth. The second, issued on April 14, is a memorandum from U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry ordering a Study Examining Electricity Markets and Reliability.

To appreciate how important these two documents are, you have to remember that coal and nuclear producers have been hounded by environmentalists and hammered by competition from turbines burning cheap natural gas. The Trump administration, however, is now promoting the notion that energy reliability, grid resilience and fuel diversity are valuable.

Perrys memo mandates a study to ask whether renewable energy subsidies contribute to the closing of coal-fired and nuclear power plants and threaten the reliability of the electric power grid.
Anup Ojha is a reporter for The Kathmandu Post primarily covering social issues and human interest stories. Before moving to the social beat, Ojha covered arts and culture for the Post for four years.
Telia served 15-day notice to assess Ncell tax

Nepals tax office has once again called on Sweden-based Telia to clear its tax liability emanating from profit generated from the sale of Ncell to Malaysia-based Axiata.
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One Trump campaign adviser pleaded guilty to lying about his Russian contacts and several others are under scrutiny.

One Trump campaign adviser pleaded guilty for lying about Russian contacts. George Papadopoulos Campaign adviser Several other Trump associates are under scrutiny. Three have been accused of misleading officials about their contacts with Russians. One of them had to resign. Jared Kushner Jeff Sessions Michael T. Flynn Son-in-law and senior adviser Attorney general Former national security adviser They also include Trumps eldest son and his longtime personal lawyer. Donald Trump Jr. Michael D. Cohen Eldest son Trumps personal lawyer Others advised Mr. Trump during his campaign. Paul Manafort Carter Page Roger J. Stone Jr. Former campaign chairman Campaign adviser Campaign adviser Pleaded guilty Current administration Resigned Personal connections Campaign adviser George Papadopoulos Jared Kushner Jeff Sessions Michael T. Flynn Donald Trump Jr. Michael D. Cohen Paul Manafort Campaign adviser Son-in-law and senior adviser Attorney general Former national security adviser Eldest son Trumps personal lawyer Former campaign chairman How they are linked Met with professor with ties to the Russian government who said Moscow had dirt on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of emails. Discussed secret back channel with Russian ambassador. Met with head of state-owned bank. Present at Donald Trump Jr.s meeting with Russian lawyer. Spoke twice with ambassador and discussed Ukraine. Discussed sanctions with ambassador; paid $45,000 by state-owned media for speech. Met with a Russian lawyer he believed would offer him damaging information about Hillary Clinton. Has personal and business ties to Ukraine; proposed a peace plan between the country and Russia. Worked for pro-Russian Ukrainians and with a Russian billionaire. Was present at Donald Trump Jr.s meeting with Russian lawyer. How they misled officials Pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. Did not immediately report contacts when getting security clearance. Did not report conversations during his confirmation hearing. Misled the F.B.I. and the vice president; omitted payments in financial disclosure. Charged with tax fraud and money laundering related to his businesses.

Papadopoulos met with Russian to discuss dirt on Hillary Clinton.

George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser to the Trump presidential campaign, pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. about contact with a professor with ties to Kremlin officials, prosecutors said. Mr. Papadopoulos said he knew the professor had substantial connections to Russian government officials, according to court documents.

Mr. Papadopoulos told the authorities that his contacts with the professor occurred before he became an adviser to Donald J. Trumps campaign. In fact, he met the professor days after joining the campaign.

The professor introduced Mr. Papadopoulos to a woman identified as a relative of Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian president, and to someone in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Mr. Papadopoulos repeatedly tried to arrange a meeting between the Trump campaign and Russian government officials, court records show.

Trump Jr. met with a Russian lawyer he believed would offer him damaging information about Hillary Clinton.

Donald Trump Jr., President Trumps eldest son, who currently runs the Trump Organization with his brother, met with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer, in June 2016.

The younger Mr. Trump took the meeting to hear about possibly damaging information about Mrs. Clinton, which he was told over email was part of a Russian government effort to aid his fathers campaign.

Kushner discussed a secret back channel with the Russian ambassador.

Jared Kushner met with didnt immediately disclose meetings on Kislyak Gorkov F.B.I. questionnaire Jared Kushner met with didnt immediately disclose meetings on Kislyak Gorkov F.B.I. questionnaire

Jared Kushner, President Trumps son-in-law and a senior adviser, participated in a meeting at Trump Tower in December with the Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak, during which they discussed opening a secret communications channel, according to three people with knowledge of the discussion.

Other connections

At the request of Mr. Kislyak, Mr. Kushner also met with Sergey N. Gorkov, a graduate of Russias spy school and now the head of Vnesheconombank, a Russian state-owned bank that was under sanctions by President Barack Obama. Mr. Kushner was also present at a meeting arranged by Donald Trump Jr. with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer.

Senate investigation

Investigators on the Senate Intelligence Committee said in March that they planned to question Mr. Kushner about the meetings, which he did not immediately disclose on an F.B.I. questionnaire when getting a security clearance. His lawyer said the form was submitted in error prematurely.

Sessions didnt disclose conversations and recused himself.

Jeff Sessions met with didnt disclose meetings at Kislyak Senate hearing Jeff Sessions met with didnt disclose meetings at Kislyak Senate hearing

Jeff Sessions, now the attorney general, spoke twice with Mr. Kislyak while advising the Trump campaign on national security.

In March, he recused himself from any Russia investigations led by the Justice Department after he failed to disclose his contact with Mr. Kislyak during his attorney general confirmation hearing in the Senate. Mr. Sessions later said that he did not view the contact as tied to his campaign role.

In a separate hearing in June, Mr. Sessions said that he recused himself not because of wrongdoing, but in accordance with Justice Department regulations regarding his involvement with Mr. Trumps presidential campaign.

Flynn misled officials about contacts and was forced to resign.

Michael Flynn paid by lobbied for met with misled State media Turkey Kislyak F.B.I. Mike Pence Michael Flynn paid by lobbied for met with misled State media Turkey Kislyak F.B.I. Pence

Connection to the Russian ambassador

American officials say Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trumps former national security adviser, was in contact with Mr. Kislyak during the campaign and the transition.

Right before Mr. Obama imposed new sanctions on Russia in December, Mr. Flynn spoke with Mr. Kislyak and urged Russia not to retaliate. He was later interviewed by the F.B.I. about the conversation, and officials said investigators believed he was not entirely forthcoming.

Mr. Flynn misled the Vice President Mike Pence and other officials about the conversations and was forced to resign after it became public.

Other foreign links

Mr. Flynn was paid $45,000 in 2015 by the Russian state media company RT to give a speech at a gala in Moscow. He was also paid $22,500 by two other Russian businesses that same year.

He did not include payments from Russian-linked entities on a financial disclosure form.

He filed papers in March 2017 acknowledging that he worked as a foreign agent, receiving $500,000 to represent the interests of Turkey in the fall of 2016.

Developments as of June 8

A Senate committee subpoenaed him for personal documents related to the Russian investigation, but he refused to comply. On Wednesday, Mr. Flynn handed over some documents in response to additional subpoenas issued by the committee aimed at his business records. Last week, a House committee also issued him a subpoena.

The F.B.I. investigation into Mr. Flynn is expected to be at the center of high-profile testimony by Mr. Comey before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday. Before abruptly firing Mr. Comey last month, Mr. Trump personally pressured him to back away from the investigation, according to memos written by Mr. Comey, resulting in accusations that Mr. Trump may have obstructed justice.

Trumps lawyer was also subpoenaed.

Michael D. Cohen has also been under scrutiny in the F.B.I. investigation. The lawyer, who began working for the Trump Organization in 2007, has ties to Ukraine and helped propose a peace plan between Ukraine and Russia to Mr. Trump.

An unverified intelligence dossier, funded by opponents of Mr. Trump, claims Mr. Cohen discussed Russias hacking of Democratic targets with a Russian representative in Prague. He says the assertions are not true.

He was subpoenaed for documents and testimony by the House Intelligence Committee after refusing to comply with initial requests.

Others have also been under scrutiny.

At least three associates who advised Mr. Trump during his campaign are under F.B.I. scrutiny and were asked in the spring by a Senate committee to hand over documents related to the investigations:

Paul D. Manafort, Mr. Trumps former campaign chairman, has significant business ties to Ukraine and Russia. On Oct. 30, Mr. Manafort and his longtime associate Rick Gates were indicted on charges that they funneled millions of dollars through overseas shell companies. Both men, who pleaded not guilty, are the first to be charged in a special counsel investigation into whether anyone close to Mr. Trump participated in a Russian government effort to influence the election. The indictment makes no mention of Mr. Trump or election meddling. Mr. Manafort was also present at a June 9 meeting arranged by Donald Trump Jr. with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer.

The Justice Department obtained a secret court-ordered wiretap in the summer of 2016 of Carter Page, an early foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, on suspicion that he was acting as a Russian agent. Russian spies attempted to recruit him in 2013, but the F.B.I. concluded that Mr. Page did not know he was in contact with a spy. Mr. Page has said that a House committee has prevented him from testifying, but the panels top Democrat dismissed the accusations.
Parody website Facebook Russian TV The Sun FoxNews.com Made up Russian attack on U.S. ship Invented a quote from a U.S. Air Force general Reprinted article with only hints of skepticism Parody website Made up Russian attack on U.S. ship Facebook Russian TV Invented a quote from a U.S. Air Force general The Sun FoxNews.com Reprinted article with only hints of skepticism

Born in the shadowy reaches of the internet, most fake news stories prove impossible to trace to their origin. But researchers at the Atlantic Council, a think tank, excavated the root of one such fake story, involving an incident in the Black Sea in which a Russian warplane repeatedly buzzed a United States Navy destroyer, the Donald Cook.

Like much fake news, the story was based on a kernel of truth. The brief, tense confrontation happened on April 12, 2014, and the Pentagon issued a statement. Then in April, three years later, the story resurfaced, completely twisted, on one of Russias main state-run TV news programs.

The new version gloated that the warplane had deployed an electronic weapon to disable all operating systems aboard the Cook. That was false, but it soon spread, showing that even with all the global attention on combating fake news, it could still circulate with alarming speed and ease.

The Original Parody

Parody website Facebook Russian TV The Sun FoxNews.com Made up Russian attack on U.S. ship Parody website Made up Russian attack on U.S. ship Facebook Russian TV The Sun FoxNews.com

In the days after the incident in the Black Sea, a Russian writer named Dmitri Sedov wrote an opinion piece, apparently meant to be satirical, that imagined the incident as an electronic warfare attack and described the panicked reaction of one crew member.

The piece was framed as a letter from an American sailor onboard named Johnny to his beloved Mary. It betrays its dubious origins through strangely stilted language and the rather Soviet-style sentiments it contains.

We thrice cried hip-hip hurrah and prepared to show the Russians what awaits them if they raise their hand for the second half of Ukraine, he wrote.

He also described a drunk officer crying aloud, Those  Russian Khibiny! Khibiny being the name of the Russian electronic warfare weapon that can disable radar.

Facebook

Parody website Facebook Russian TV The Sun FoxNews.com Parody article shared Parody website Facebook Parody article shared Russian TV The Sun FoxNews.com

In an apparent attempt to drive traffic to the satirical piece, a series of posts meant to look like a letter from the crew member went up on Facebook in English and Russian, with a link to the original. The researchers found them by using a string of uncommon words that crop up in the article, including Aegis, mysticism and shame.

Given its vast global reach, Facebook can be a useful tool to spread news forgeries. A Facebook spokesperson pointed to the companys recent efforts to stop the spread of misinformation.

Russian TV

Parody website Facebook Russian TV The Sun FoxNews.com Invented a quote from a U.S. Air Force general Parody website Facebook Russian TV Invented a quote from a U.S. Air Force general The Sun FoxNews.com

On April 15, 2017, the state-controlled Rossiya-1 broadcast a news report on the program Vesti about the 2014 incident, saying that as the plane approached the Cook, it switched on the equipment, and powerful radio-electronic waves deactivated the whole ships systems.

The main source? The Facebook post from the crew member, which quoted almost verbatim from the original satirical article in Russian. The date was no coincidence. April 15 is Electronic Warfare Specialists Day in Russia, one of many such dates set aside to laud specific military services, a leftover from Soviet times.

When a similar description of an electronic warfare attack emerged in the Russian media soon after the original incident, however, the manufacturer of the electronic warfare weapons itself announced that the report was false.

The company, known by its acronym, KRET, published an article in February 2015 saying that the Khibiny system was not installed on the particular plane and that while it can neutralize enemy radar, the article that said it completely shut down the American destroyer is nothing but a newspaper hoax.

But the denial didnt stop Vesti from running the story. Instead, Vesti tried to add other sourcing to it by quoting a supposed statement by Frank Gorenc, the former commander of the United States Air Force in Europe, saying that the Russian weapon used against the Cook could paralyze American electronic equipment on missiles, aircraft and ships.

The Pentagon later told a tabloid that picked up the story that the general had never issued such a statement. The Russian state television and radio company that broadcasts Vesti did not respond to questions about the story.

The Sun, The Daily Star and others

Parody website Facebook Russian TV The Sun FoxNews.com Reported on the Russian TV story Parody website Facebook Russian TV The Sun Reported on the Russian TV story FoxNews.com

Once the story had been on such a prominent Russian news program, news organizations and websites around the world quoted it. Some voiced more skepticism than others.

On April 19, two British tabloids, The Sun and The Daily Star, used sensational headlines to suggest that Russia possessed an electronic bomb capable of paralyzing the entire American Navy.

The Sun at least hinted at problems with the story, calling it a bizarre propaganda report and quoting the Pentagon denying that General Gorenc had commented. Another tabloid, The Daily Express, later posted an article suggesting World War III might be at hand.

FoxNews.com

Parody website Facebook Russian TV The Sun FoxNews.com Reprinted article with only hints of skepticism Parody website Facebook Russian TV The Sun FoxNews.com Reprinted article with only hints of skepticism

FoxNews.com soon picked up The Suns version of the story. Refet Kaplan, the managing editor of FoxNews.com, said the story was considered not as a serious report on Russias military capability, but as another example of Russian media hyperbole. That was not set out in the headline or the article, other than an oblique reference to the original as propaganda.

After The New York Times asked about the article, it was deleted from the FoxNews.com website.
Drug overdose is now the leading cause of death among Americans under 50, the New York Times's Josh Katz reports. In 2016, overdoses claimed somewhere between 59,000 and 65,000 lives.

That's more American lives than were lost in the Vietnam war. It's 20 times the casualty count of 9/11. It's half again as many deaths as attributed to the "gun violence" we hear so much about in its peak year, 1994.

Katz pins the blame for these deaths on use, abuse, and sometimes accidental overdose of heroin, fentanyl, and prescription opioid painkillers. He goes along with the current fad of calling the phenomenon an "opioid epidemic." That's soothingly simple. The word "epidemic" implies an infectious agent to which we need attribute neither consciousness nor responsibility.

But those 60,000 or so dead Americans aren't victims of a faceless "epidemic." They're casualties of a decades-long war waged on the American public by the federal and state governments. It's called the war on drugs, and the Times piece, curiously, doesn't refer to it even in passing.

Here's what life would look like in an America at peace: If you wanted an opium product for either medical or recreational purposes, you'd walk into your nearest pharmacy and buy it.

You'd get a product of known quality, quantity and purity. As long as you followed the instructions on the box correctly, your chance of overdosing would be infinitesimal.

You'd probably stop on your way home from work for your daily fix, perhaps with the milk you forgot to get while grocery shopping. It would be cheap enough that you could support your habit with a regular job like the millions of smokers, alcoholics and Starbucks customers who don't have to burglarize homes and steal car stereos to support their habits.

Yes, that simple. Really. In fact, that's exactly how it was before the war.

Here's what America at war looks like:

Tens of thousands of deaths, hundreds of thousands of POWs in local, state and federal prisons, and tens of billions of your tax dollars to keep up the pace of killings and cagings, year after year, decade after decade.

Rule by people simultaneously more lethal to Americans than, and morally inferior to, Osama bin Laden (he never tried to tell us he was murdering us for our own good, did he?).

Oh, and the people who want the drugs are going to get them anyway.

Which America sounds better to you?


Money in Politics

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23 State and National Good Government and Progressive Organizations Start Massive Online Campaign for AB 14 to Stop Dark Money in Political Ads



CULVER CITY, CA -- One of the largest state and national coalition petitions ever for state-level legislation was launched today to help pass AB 14, the California DISCLOSE Act, a far-reaching bill to stop secret money in political ads.



Millions of emails will be sent to good government and progressive members of coalition partners across California and the nation telling them about AB 14 and asking them to sign the petition and follow up with calls and social media urging California legislators to pass it.





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Remember the Liberty: Almost Sunk by Treason on the High Seas

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-- Give us Liberty, or Give us Death --

With the anniversary of the enormously consequential 1967 Six-Day War (SDW) between Israel and the Arab states (Egypt, Syria, Jordan) upon us, Phil Nelson's book, Remember the Liberty!: Almost Sunk by Treason on the High Seas, is a timely and welcome addition to the literature of that event and the key people involved, and for that matter, the era. Although on its face about the deliberate attack by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) during that conflict on the U.S. naval 'sig-int' ship the USS Liberty, with the loss of 34 lives and over 170 casualties, it's much, much more than that.

Along with showcasing one of the most disgraceful episodes in U.S. military history -- to say little of the self-serving, hypocritical and callous manner in which the political and military establishment treats its service personnel -- "Remember the Liberty!" presents us an opportunity to place into broader, more urgent relief, the history of America's increasingly dangerous -- some might say existentially so -- relationship with Israel, in addition to probing the role of both nations in past events and those unfolding as we speak in and across the Greater Middle East.

His new book moreover, crucially invites us to reexamine the virtually unexplored, indeed, wilfully neglected rol e played in these events by arguably America's most psychologically unhinged and criminally 'sectionable' of Oval Officeholders, one whose political ascendancy and White House tenure may have been the most consequential of all.

We're talking here the then president of the U.S., Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ), he of the Gulf of Tonkin fame. As the author reveals, had things gone the way as LBJ had planned, it almost certainly would've triggered the most cataclysmic consequences of all for humanity. Suffice to say that to the extent there might've been anyone around to write about it, by way of comparison, the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis would've ended up a mere footnote in history.

On all counts then, Nelson's book provides us ample context and perspective within which to contemplate all of this and more. The truly astonishing story in this new book then is about one of the most explosive and hidden secrets in U.S. history -- one that has never been previously told in such a transformative way. It is made all the more explosive because it involves Israel, the 'no-fly-zone' of critical political commentary.

Based on all available evidence, this is the most authentic, complete, up to date -- and it has to be said, disturbing -- account of the Liberty tragedy and its subsequent cover-up; the war in which it took place and that war's own hidden backstory; and the real perpetrators behind both of these, along with revelations about their motivations and intrigues. No matter what you read elsewhere, I can pretty much guarantee you're not getting the 'full monty'. For those looking to write about the Liberty going forward, they'd be well advised not to put pen to paper without it. Regardless of whether such folks are in the mainstream or alternative media camps, they'll just look like they've not done their homework! (Either by omission or commission, from what I've seen thus far, the "full monty" even now is not being exposed, with many leading 'by-lines' in both camps putting their names to incomplete if not even misleading narratives.)

"Remember the Liberty!" explores how a sitting U.S. president collaborated with Israeli leaders in the fomentation of what became known as the Six-Day War between them and their Arab neighbors. The so-called "spontaneous war" had been planned for months -- possibly even as early as two years before -- to be a war that would ensure a victory for Israel; the weakening of her enemies in neighboring Arab nations; and the acquisition of additional territories for Israel. These were all incentives to create 'buy-in' from Israeli leaders to this diabolical quid pro quo between them and LBJ, which might not otherwise have been forthcoming.

But the man known as "Landslide Lyndon" had his own ulterior motives in facilitating the Six-Day War: For the estimable LBJ, his highest priority was always about the ruthless accumulation of power, and in this case, it was about holding onto said power by ensuring his re-election the following year. Upset by his loss of popularity generally and with Jewish voters in particular, he wanted to give Israel as much covert -- and ultimately, had the plan succeeded, overt -- support as possible in the plan to engage their neighbors in that war, including the creation of a pretext to join them in attacking Egypt.

After the botched plan was implemented, the ship refused to sink even after being hit by a torpedo (more on this shortly), leading the attack to be abandoned and a massive cover-up set in motion, which included serious threats to the crewmembers to "keep their lips sealed." As ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern put it in the book's Foreword, those orders "put steroids to the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) suffered by many of the survivors." That cover-up is still in place (barely), but now completely exposed. Indeed, we can now say with some certainty it's the worst best-kept secret in the history of the U.S.-Israeli relationship.

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From Robert Reich Blog

The arrest of Reality Leigh Winner, a 25-year-old federal contractor from Atlanta, Georgia, for leaking a National Security Agency report describing in far more detail than previously known Russian efforts to intrude in the 2016 election on behalf of Trump, comes in the midst of a deluge of Trump tweets and leaks.

Among the most sensitive leaks about national security since the start of the Trump administration was Trump's own Oval Office conversation with top Russian officials last month, in which he revealed allied intelligence information apparently coming from Israel. At that same meeting, Trump discussed his firing of former FBI Director James Comey the previous day, thereby relieving "great pressure" on him, he said. (Comey will be testifying before Congress Thursday).

How do we even know about these discussions between Trump and Russian officials? They were leaked! So we had a leak about a leak, coupled with a leak about a potential coverup by the president of his attempt to obstruct justice.

The essential message of the Justice Department's decision to go after Reality Winner is that those who leak will be targeted for prosecution if the information they give journalists is about Russia helping Trump win the election.

But let's be clear. This particular leak of an NSA report is not the central problem.

The problem is Russia has directly and brazenly interfered in our democratic system. Yet we don't know exactly how -- and we don't have a means of stopping Russia from doing it again.

The other part of the problem is that instead of resolutely focusing on this brazen attack on American democracy, we have a president who's been actively trying to obstruct public knowledge of what happened.
Congress Switchboard: 202-224-3121

"Just as The Tipping Point provides an explanation for big changes, Rob Kall offers a unified explanation for the magic behind the success of the biggest tech companies, the Arab Spring, Occupy and the social media revolution An important, big picture, visionary approach weaving together technology, economics, evolution, science and personal relationships -- even happiness -- to describe a wave of change as significant as the invention of the printing press that is well under way -- a wave that could rescue the planet from the top-down system that afflicts the planet."



Thom Hartmann, host of nationally syndicated radio show, The Thom Hartmann Program, since 2003 and a nightly television show, The Big Picture, since 2008
From Reader Supported News



James Comey

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The first time I ever heard former FBI director James Comey described as a "whistleblower," I chuckled to myself. After thinking about it, though, I concluded that, in a way, Comey actually is a whistleblower. The legal definition of a whistleblower is "any person who brings to light evidence of waste, fraud, abuse, illegality, or threats to the public health or public safety." So I guess, technically, Comey fits the bill.

But be that as it may, the truth is that Comey is the enemy of whistleblowers, or at least of national security whistleblowers. He proved that throughout his short tenure at the FBI, where he made life for whistleblowers miserable, despite being warned repeatedly by the Senate Judiciary Committee that the FBI was not in compliance with current whistleblower protection laws.

Indeed, a Senate Judiciary Committee report published last year found that the FBI routinely takes action against employees who expose wrongdoing in the Bureau. The report found that "whistleblowers play a critical role in keeping our government efficient and honest, yet they also risk retaliation from their employer, sometimes being demoted, reassigned, or fired as a result of their actions."

Congress last year passed a new whistleblower protection law, which, while exempting other national security whistleblowers from its protections, covered FBI employees. The legislation sought to "expand reporting opportunities for whistleblowers, improve the lengthy and opaque adjudication process, and strengthen protection for employees who expose bureau waste, fraud, and abuse." But it didn't turn out that way.

A normal whistleblower "chain of command" is to report wrongdoing to one's supervisor. If the whistleblower gets no satisfaction there, he or she is then supposed to go to the Inspector General, the General Counsel, and, ultimately, the Congressional oversight committees. It's something that government employees are taught during their first day on the job.

A Government Accountability Office report found, however, that the FBI did not include supervisors in the "list of approved officers" to whom a whistleblower could report. The result, according to Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), was that "FBI employees have long faced vague and confusing rules for how to properly disclose problems because of the FBI's unusual exemption from the normal whistleblower protections for other federal employees. The confusion and lack of an independent process has landed too many people in hot water for simply telling the truth."

That's exactly what happened to FBI supervisory agent Darin Jones. Jones reported evidence of procurement improprieties to his supervisor and was promptly fired. He appealed, of course, but he was not reinstated because he had made his complaint to his supervisor and not to one of the nine people on the FBI leadership-approved list of who could hear a whistleblower complaint. Jones's appeal has entered its fourth year. There's no end in sight. This is a violation of the law and is exactly what the GAO and the Judiciary Committee complained about.

The FBI's illegal behavior hasn't been lost on Grassley. He wrote to Comey on April 14, saying that "the FBI's official whistleblower policy directive still does not reflect changes to the law. It was apparently last reviewed on February 19, 2017 and still posted on the FBI's internal system as of yesterday -- nearly four months after the FBI WPEA (Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act) became effective. Yet, it erroneously tells FBI employees that they are only protected for disclosures to the certain, specific officials that could receive protected disclosures before the new law." Grassley demanded that the Comey correct the record and issue a new policy statement immediately. There is no indication that he did so before being fired by President Trump.

I have mixed feelings about Comey (and about special counsel and former FBI director Mueller, for that matter. It was Mueller who was FBI director when I was investigated and charged with five felonies after blowing the whistle on the CIA's torture program). Comey is getting ready to provide a public service in the coming days. He's going to talk about Trump, Trump's people, and the Russians. With any luck, he'll bring this president down.

But when Comey finally testifies on Capitol Hill about his investigation into Trump's involvement with the Russians, let's remember that he is not the American hero the press is making him out to be. He's the enemy of transparency. We can still hope, though, that whistleblower or not, he does the right thing.


Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, Israel

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Philosophy-of-living.com blog and its editor condemn the act of terror recently happened in London; taking the stance that there is no reason whatsoever justifies the use of violence against peaceful people regardless their nationality, religion, or opinions. The principle behind that stance is not something unique to our blog as it's compliant with the teaching of all religions, including El-Eslam, and the true principles of humanity.

We take the same occassion to remind good people to remain representing the good model and not to be unawaringly taken by the heat of emotion and mistakenly practice collective hatred as this would assimilate the good people with terrorists themselves, since terrorist acts are fueled by collective hatred as well. As terrorists have no justification to hate specific race and kill them, everyone has no justification to hate specific race and emotionally kill them by hatred and discrimination.

And down to facts, remember that El-Eslam is a 1400 year old religion which in its prosperity had utmost authority and control over all Middle East countries up to South Europe and stretching to China for entire 8 centries (800 years from the 6th to the 13th), building the largest and most sophisticated empire in the world. If violence and ethnic cleansing were part of its principles, no one of those nations would have been into existence at the moment. The fact that the diversity of civilizations, cultures, Christianity, and Judaism continue to exist everywhere in these areas is a vivid testmonial that El-Eslam is a peaceful living religion that promoted Muslims living side by side to Christians and Jews. And we recommend those who doubt that to get back to history and to understand the dynamics of the current situation. Otherwise, all statements would be considered racist and hatred-fueled; holding its beholder in no distinguishable stance from those of terrorists, whose acts are fueled by hatred as well.

On the other side, we take the same opportunity to call for the Muslim community to stop being apologetic and theoretical regarding the true principles of El-Eslam in response to the world's reactive public opinion to every terrorist act and to instead focus more on being exemplary to their religion in their daily lives and on translating its principles into action: to develop and build themselves into successful nations and communities who contribute to the positive development of the world; in trade, in business, in manufacturing, and the sciences. Institutions and governments should deploy projects for ambitious people aimed at delivering tangible results in all fields. Individuals must become living examples to true principles and to make something for these principles by choosing even one action to accomplish. Communities in the Western world should unit and deploy real life projects in all areas of life.

Hatred is the main characteristic of Terrorists. Don't be one of them...


George W. Bush in lego

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Part I - Reality

There is an ongoing reality that is destroying hundreds of thousands of lives in the Middle East. And though most Americans are ignorant of the fact, and many of those who should be in the know would deny it, the suffering flows directly from decisions taken by Washington over the last 27 years. Some of the facts of the matter have just been presented by the first Global Conflict Medicine Congress held at the American University of Beirut (AUB) earlier this month (11-14 May 2017). It has drawn attention to two dire consequences of the war policies Americans have carried on in the region: cancer-causing munition material and drug-resistant bacteria.

-- Cancer-causing munition material: Materials such as tungsten and mercury are found in the casing of penetrating bombs used in the first and second Gulf wars. These have had long-term effects on survivors, especially those who have been wounded by these munitions. Iraqi-trained and Harvard-educated Dr. Omar Dewachi, a medical anthropologist at AUB fears that "the base line of cancers [appearing in those exposed to these materials] has become very aggressive. " When a young woman of 30, with no family history of cancer, has two different primary cancers - in the breast and in the oesophagus - you have to ask what is happening." To this can be added that doctors are now "overwhelmed by the sheer number of [war] wounded patients in the Middle East."

-- Drug-resistant bacteria: According to Glasgow-trained Professor Ghassan Abu-Sittah, head of plastic and reconstructive surgery at AUB Medical Center, drug resistance was not a problem during the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988. However, after the fiasco of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, things began to change. In the period after 1990, Iraq suffered under a vicious sanctions regime imposed by the United Nations at U.S. insistence. During the next 12 years "Iraqis were allowed to use only three antibiotics" and bacterial resistance quickly evolved. Those resistant bacteria spread throughout the region, particularly after the American invasion of the country in 2003. Today, according to a Medecins Sans Frontieres analysis, "multidrug resistant [MDR] bacteria now accounts for most war wound infections across the Middle East, yet most medical facilities in the region do not even have the laboratory capacity to diagnose MDR, leading to significant delays and clinical mismanagement of festering wounds."

Insofar as these developments go, it is not that there aren't contributing factors stemming from local causes such as factual fighting. However, the major triggers for these horrors were set in motion in Washington. As far as I know, no American holding a senior official post has ever accepted any responsibility for this ongoing suffering.

Part II - Hiding Reality

As the cancers and untreatable infections grow in number in the Middle East, there is here in the United States a distressing effort to rehabilitate George W. Bush - the American president whose decisions and policies contributed mightily to this ongoing disaster. It is this Bush who launched the unjustified 2003 invasion of Iraq and thereby - to use the words of the Arab League - "opened the gates of hell." His rehabilitation effort began in ernest in April 2013, and coincided with the opening of his presidential library. In an interview given at that time, Bush set the stage for his second coming with an act of self-exoneration. He said he remained "comfortable with the decision making process" that led to the invasion of Iraq - the one that saw him fudging the intelligence when it did not tell him what he wanted to hear - and so also "comfortable" with the ultimate determination to launch the invasion. "There's no need to defend myself. I did what I did and ultimately history will judge."

The frivolous assertion that "history will judge" is often used by people of suspect character. "History" stands for a vague future time. Its alleged inevitable coming allows the protagonist to fantasize about achieving personal glory unchallenged by present, usually significant, ethical concerns.

Those seeking George W. Bush's rehabilitation now like to contrast him to Donald Trump. One imagines they thereby hope to present him as a "moderate" Republican. They claim that Bush was and is really a very smart and analytical fellow rather than the simpleton most of us suspect him to be. In other words, despite launching an unnecessary and subsequently catastrophic war, he was never as ignorant and dangerous as Trump. He and his supporters also depict him as a great defender of a free press, again in contrast to Donald Trump. However, when he was president, Bush described the media as an aider and abettor of the nation's enemies. This certainly can be read as a position that parallels Trump's description of the media as the "enemy of the American people."

But all of this is part of a public relations campaign and speaks to the power of reputation remodeling - the creation of a facade that hides reality. In order to do this you have to "control the evidence" - in this case by ignoring it. In this endeavor George W. Bush and his boosters have the cooperation of much of the mainstream media. No sweat here: the press has done this before. Except for the odd editoria l the mainstream media also contributed to Richard Nixon's rehabilitation back in the mid 1980s. These sorts of sleights-of-hand are only possible against the background of pervasive public ignorance.

Part III - Closed Information Environments

Local happenings are open to relatively close investigation. We usually have a more or less accurate understanding of the local context in which events play out, and this allows for the possibility of making a critical judgment. As we move further away, both in space and time, information becomes less reliable, if for no other reason than it comes to us through the auspices of others who may or may not know what they are talking about. As a society, we have little or no knowledge of the context for foreign events, and thus it is easy for those reporting on them to apply filters according to any number of criteria. What we are left with is news that is customized - stories designed to fit preexisting political or ideological biases. In this way millions upon millions of minds are restricted to closed information environments on subjects which often touch on, among other important topics, war and its consequences.

So what is likely to be more influential with the locally oriented American public: George W. Bush's rehabilitated image reported on repeatedly in the nation's mainstream media, or the foreign-based, horror-strewn consequences of his deeds reported upon infrequently?

This dilemma is not uniquely American, nor is it original to our time. However, its dangerous consequences are a very good argument against the ubiquitous ignorance that allows political criminals to be rehabilitated even as their crimes condemn others to continuing suffering. If reputation remodelers can do this for George W. Bush, then there is little doubt that someday it will be done for Donald Trump. Life, so full of suffering, is also full of such absurdities.
Congress Switchboard: 202-224-3121

"We are in the midst of a profound change of paradigms: from seeing the world as a machine to understanding it as a network. Rob Kall has interviewed many of the leaders, both thinkers and activists, of this global cultural transformation. In this eminently readable book, he weaves their statements, values, and ideas into a coherent and inspiring whole. Bottom-Up is a joy to read!"



Fritjof Capra, author of The Web of Life and The Hidden Connections, coauthor of The Systems View of Life
How many times across the past 15 years have we heard this song!

Of course it's a loser. What indeed does it win, and for whom? The "need" for bigger military budgets, including the logistics of our "heroes" funerals, but the biggest, ripest plum is grosser cash outlays for the weapons makers, including their give-back political contributions.

Mothers and fathers across America: Beware! They're after our kids again to ship them across two seas and into another hemisphere in the timeless struggle to prevail over another people's homeland, another people's kids, another people's god.

It hasn't worked for 15 years and it will not work now. It's time to raise our voice to stop the slaughter of our kids and theirs in the Eastern Hemisphere.
Cuenca is full of history and famous for his architecture.

The infamous "cangahua" soil, slippery when dry and extra slippery when wet.

The jumps and turns before the ridge line were lined with some slimy grass. Better to hover above it.

Practice train along the technical ridge line.

Good fitness was advisable in the traverse, or an enduro bike. Amaru Pazos proved to have both and ended up second in the Enduro class. It was steep. Marshal at the bottom for scale.

Elite rider, "El Guambra" Jurado was flying through the woods during practice.

The bobsled section, tight and twisty.

Santiago Verdezoto railing the last berm. Sunday morning it was lined with spectators and full of noise.

Sunday morning.

Kalev Montesdeoca, winner in the 15-16 class, was not afraid of this exposed line in the ridge.

Colombian riders were flying down the track, no matter their age or category. Alejandro Quintero got 2nd in Master B... ...and Johan Rodriguez finished 3rd in Amateur.

Spectators manage to get everywhere, no matter how steep or far. Santiago Vasquez getting ready for the last section with the help of the crowd.

The juniors made easy work of the jumps.

Ecuadorian DH and 4X legend, Diana Marggraff, enjoying the woods during her winning run.

Sebastian Alfaro was one of the favorites, but the young man from Peru crashed twice in the steepest part of the course. Alejo Ortiz was also a podium threat but in the end, he couldn't match his qualy run.

Luciano de Neufville keeping it low to grab the last spot on the podium.

Lots of style from Santiago Coello, who had a great weekend with a fourth place.

Juan Ordonez, fully committed and into third place.

Alejandro Paz from Peru, last man down the hill, improved his time but it wasn't enough to beat Mario Jarrin.

After a tight qualy, Mario managed to get a clean run and the win by 2.43 seconds.

Women's podium: Maria Gabriela Acosta (2nd), and Diana Marggraff (1st) Men's podium: Juan Ordonez (4th), Alejandro Paz (2nd), Mario Jarrin (1st), Santiago Coello (3rd), and Luciano De Neufville (5th).

In its first visit to northern South America, the Open Shimano Latam gets to Cuenca, Ecuador. The city lies at 2550 meters above sea level, right at the heart of the northern Andes, a perfect place for a gravity fed mountain bike race. It began with course walk and practice on Friday, followed by qualifying on Saturday afternoon. Sunday, riders get a final training lap in the morning and then the big final.The track is placed in Turi, really close to the city. It begins with a ridgeline full of rocks, then traverses the mountain's slopes to a really steep chute and into the woods. After some fast and tight singletrack, it dropped into a jumps section and the finish line. Most of the soil in the track is of volcanic nature, hardpack with some loose spots and it gets really slippery when wet.There were categories for every kind of rider: Hardtails, Enduro, Kids. And most of them included international competition as Colombian, Peruvian and Argentinian riders came for glory. In the Elite class, they were welcomed by a stacked field of the best Ecuadorian elites.Qualifying saw the first shots fired, with Peru's Alejandro Paz beating the time of local favorite, Mario Jarrin. In the end, everyone was hoping to improve his times in finals. The track was nice and solid, with only minor damage caused by the riders. Overnight rain came to worry the racers but after a sunny morning, it was all good and even improved traction in some spots.It was a great race, full of action, surprises, and incredible performances like Martin Jijon's run, good enough to win the Enduro class and get a 7th place overall. Huge props to everyone involved in the organization, especially Andres Sotomayor. It was mint.
Conan Brothers Battle Heads-up for WPT DeepStacks High Roller Title in Cannes

June 06, 2017 Matthieu Sustrac

It was Monday morning in Cannes, France, and the WPT DeepStacks High Roller was down to heads-up play the Barriere Croisette Casino. Arthur Conan (20 years old) and younger brother Marius (18 years old) were battling for a $20,282 first prize and bragging rights. Who is the best player in the family?

Arthur, a young internet wizard, took the French live scene by storm in the summer of 2015 when he went deep in a PokerStars event in Lille for almost $50,000. He has since confirmed his talent by reaching $300,000 in live tournament earnings and taking down his first trophy in June 2016 at the High Roller of the WPT National Cannes for $56,072 (87 entries).

He had a chance to claim another title Cannes on Monday, but one very familiar player stood in his way. Younger brother Marius knew his heads-up opponent very well because he plays with him on daily basis. At the ripe age of 18, Marius has plenty of experience online but is a newcomer live. However, the young student did win a side event at an EPT last July during France Poker Series Lille and was eager to continue building his poker resume.

Arthur held a commanding chip lead when Monday's final table began, and then possessed almost all of the chips when amateur player Benjamin Leher left the tournament in third place for $8,252. But Marius Conan knew that jokes and trash talking were coming from his older brother if he didn't put up a fight, and very soon, and after some all-ins preflop, he was back in contention for the win.

After a little less than one hour of heads up, Marius earned rights to tease his older brother after winning the tournament and picking up his second live win along with with $20,282 and trophy.

Among the others competing in this tournament were Giuseppe Zarbo, Ekrem Sanioglu, and Arnaud Enselme, but none were able to find any success. Johan Guilbert, a member of the PMU Poker Team Pro, reached the money, always a good thing before flying to Las Vegas for a month of high-stakes cash games and the World Series of Poker.

Here's a look at the final results of the PMU.fr WPT DeepStacks Cannes High Roller:

Place Player Prize 1 Marius Conan $20,282 2 Arthur Conan $12,221 3 Benjamin Leher $8,252 4 Johan Guilbert $4,551

Photos provided by Matthieu Sustrac

Sharelines Marius Conan defeated his older brother heads-up to win the PMU.fr WPT DeepStacks Cannes High Roller.
The Spongebob Broadway Musical is set to open this fall, joining several other major stage adaptations to debut.

Early yesterday it was officially announced that a certain iconic resident of an undersea pineapple would be moving to Broadway next fall.That's right The Spongebob Musical has officially secured a theater and will be starting performances on November 6th. Being one of the most beloved cartoons in recent memory you'd assume this show is destined to face massive attention in this upcoming Broadway theater season. But Spongebob is far from the only familiar property aiming for Broadway supremacy this next year. Among the shows expected to arrive this year along with Spongebob are stage versions of Mean Girls and Frozen, a jukebox musical based on the songs of Jimmy Buffett, and the American premiere of the Harry Potter continuation play The Cursed Child. Staring down this murderer's row of familiar properties, it's hard not to wonder whether Broadway has finally become too safe?

Spongebob Squarepants Facebook page

Now of course these types of blockbuster adaptations are certainly nothing uncommon to the theater world as Broadway has had a long infatuation with movie adaptations and jukebox musicals. Everything from Aladdin to American Psycho has been reinterpreted for the stage, with talented theater artists managing to (in the best cases) reinvent the stories for its new medium. Yet, while these adaptations are designed to convert their built in audiences into ticket purchases, it's important to remember that often Broadway's most successful shows are the ones that emerge out of nowhere. As recent years have seen mega-hits like Book of Mormon, Dear Evan Hansen, and of course Hamilton arrive on Broadway without recognizable source material, its hard not to worry that Broadway producers will continue to play it safe as more and more Hollywood blockbusters to transition to New York.

Spongebob Squarepants Facebook Page

But at the same time, as concerning as it is to see a season so dominated by adaptations, it's important to remember the often-cyclical nature of theater. While next year may be dominated by family-targeting properties, this comes after a season that featured innovative new works including Hansen, Come From Away, and Natasha, Pierre, & The Great Comet of 1812, all three of which spent several years developing at regional and off-Broadway theaters. Because a play or musical often requires several years of work, just because there aren't many original musicals currently set to debut next season, doesn't mean they aren't on their way.

And despite how easy it is to become cynical, it's important to remember that each of these shows features a stacked creative team with zero intention of making a bad show. Spongebob in particular has chosen to invest heavily in established pop artists, with accomplished artists like The Flaming Lips, John Legend, Steven Tyler & Joe Perry, and even David Bowie contributing either music to the show. Beyond just the music, whether it's the original writers like Mean Girl's Tina Fey returning to their material to help shepherd it towards its new form or accomplished and respected theatrical veterans like Spongebob director Tina Landau whose made a career of turning people's expectations on their heads, there is reason for optimism in these familiar productions. Still, hopefully it won't be too long before a new show arrives on Broadway capable of taking audiences somewhere they've never been before.



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"It's a real privilege," says Vongai Shava, "to feel like a representative of your race. Particularly with a background like mine." She says this in reference to her upcoming work at the National Black Theatre Festival in North Carolina. "I certainly don't want skin color to be the only thing that defines me," she goes on, "but it's as much a part of my identity as everything else. It'd be foolish not to acknowledge it."

"Think the movie '300', except it's an African Tribe of all female warriors..."

The play she is acting in is called Black Sparta. It will run in Winston-Salem, NC, in August after a Manhattan run in July. "It's pretty badass. Think the movie 300, except it's an African Tribe of all female warriors, and they're fighting off the colonial French army in 1894," she adds, "I didn't know about them before auditioning, now I'm proud to bring these hidden figures to light." Penned by Layon Gray (NAACP/Broadway League Fellowship/NY AUDELCO Award Winner), Black Sparta is about the Dahomey Warriors, an all-female military regiment of the Fon people of the Kingdom of Dahomey (Present day Republic of Benin). They are the only documented all-female official front-line combat arms military unit in modern history. "It's hard to believe that this story isn't better known," Vongai continues, "but we're changing that." The Dahomey will also be the subject of an upcoming TV series produced by NCIS's Charles F. Johnson.

Vongai's journey to this point has been a roundabout one. Her background is profoundly international. "I was born in Zimbabwe, and raised in the United Kingdom and China," she details, "I grew up in international schools that taught me to be a citizen of the world. It's part of what made me want to be an actor, the opportunity to share people's stories. I got my bachelors at Brunel University in London, then came to New York to train at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts." An impressive resume, AADA is oldest English-speaking acting school in the world, and has produced stars such as Robert Redford, Jessica Chastain, and Adrien Brody. "It was an honor to walk through those doors everyday," she says of her time at the Academy, "I loved it. But at some point you do have to starting working."

Photo by: Mark Wyville

And work she does. Her projects have included ongoing work with Torrent Theatre Company, developing a play called Soraya's Eyes. "The play brings to light the issue of genital mutilation and female abuse in Eastern Africa," she explains, "we're all about networking and development at Torrent, and I would love to work on the play in its next stages." In addition, she worked on the viral video Time Well Spent which saw renowned poet Max Stossel lamenting the impersonality of technology.

Further credits include her work in The Real Page Turner a series screened at the Tribeca Screening Room, (currently in post production awaiting shopping to networks), and The Refugee Plays (as part of the FRIGID NYC Festival). "Refugee Plays was quite the project," she says, "it was a collection of shorts based on real-life refugees. They started writing it during the election last year, and well it feels even more relevant now." Hyena, the play Shava was in, explored rape as the oldest weapon of war. "I played Asja, a young Congolese refugee who had been brutally raped, in a processing center, awaiting transfer to a refugee camp," she goes on, "It was the most non-naturalistic of the plays. All the plays explored themes of identity, statelessness, basic needs and, desperation. These are such important issues, and I feel blessed to help shed some light on them." One review described Vongai as "engrossing in [her] ability to portray both fragility and strength on stage." She also recently completed work on short film An American Assault, in which she co-starred with Ariana DeBose (Hamilton, A Bronx Tale) and Tad Wilson (Les Miserables).

Photo by: Jody Christopherson

But back to the festival at hand, what can we expect to see? "An ensemble of powerful warrior women. It's the first time I've been cast in such a physically strong and demanding role. It's great to be challenged in so many new ways," she nods, then laughs, "I don't want to give too much away, otherwise you won't come and see it! I mean, all the spoilers are there in the history books, but it's the experience you come for, right? And the actors too hopefully." She laughs again.

NBTF.org

Held biennially, the National Black Theatre Festival is now in its fifteenth season. Hosted every year by the North Carolina Black Repertory Company (NCBRC), the festival was founded by Larry Leon Hamlin in 1989. Their declared goal is to unite black theatre companies from around the world, and bring them together to ensure their visibility. "It's a magical opportunity to honor the past of black theatre and welcome in its future. It's amazing to have the platform to share and celebrate black stories. I get to follow in the footsteps of those before me like Phylicia Rashad and Denzel Washington. I can't wait to go and be a part of that community for a few days." The festival runs July 31st to August 5th, and it's extensive programming list can be found on its website.

"We are living in such an amazing time for representation in storytelling"

"I think our duties, if that's the right word, as artists, have evolved lately," Vongai ponders aloud, "We are living in such an amazing time for representation in storytelling. The world of streaming has also gifted us with more ways to showcase ourselves the way we want to be seen. I respect Scandal, Black-Ish and Master of None for giving voices to minorities, the ignored, and people with disabilities. Now is the time for us to assert our truths. That is the direction we need to go in." She thinks a little more, then adds, "As Viola Davis said in her Oscar speech: 'I became an artist, and thank God I did because we are the only profession that celebrates what it means to live a life.' She's right and that's why I'm grateful to be an artist and creator."

Vongai is certainly not short of work. As soon as she's done playing a warrior in North Carolina, she will be returning to New York to work on a film about blended families and immigration. "More than anything, it's about the concept of home. Which is complicated for me, given my childhood." She is also planning on developing projects of her own, using her own life, faith and spirituality as inspiration. "It's still in the pipeline," she admits, "You probably won't see anything staged until 2018. But I love that long gestatory process. It's my first time producing which is both exciting and terrifying. I'm collaborating with some of the badass goddesses in my life, and we're drawing inspiration from the Women's March, Eve Ensler's work with the V-Day Movement and, one of my favorite books, Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic." Exciting stuff indeed. Be sure to catch Vongai Shava in Black Sparta this Summer.
PR-Inside.com: 2017-06-07 11:38:04

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Future Market Insights recently published report on global market for aircraft refurbishing projects that during a forecast period from 2016 to 2026, the market shall exhibit a steady revenue growth at 5.8% CAGR. The report estimates that in the years to come, the luxury quotient of airline interiors will surge as the number of wealthy air travellers is slated to increase. Frequent air travel by well-heeled people is also prompting aircraft companies to opt for refurbishing of VIP cabins. Setting aside the impact of wealthy travellers on refurbishment of VIP aircraft cabins, the demand for aircraft refurbishing is also expected to gain traction due to its benefits for the aircrafts operational efficiency.According to the report, airline companies aiming to improve performance of their aircrafts are refurbishing the interiors & lowering gross weight of the aircraft. This results in lesser fuel consumption and maximum power retention, thereby upgrading the aircrafts operational performance. Owing to such factors, the global aircraft refurbishing market, which is presently valued at a little over US$ 4 Bn, will bring in more than US$ 7.13 Bn revenues by the end of 2026.Request For Sample@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1617 Middle East & Africa to Record Rapid Sales of Aircraft RefurbishmentsDuring this ten-year forecast period, around 890,000 units of aircraft refurbishments will be consumed across the globe. The demand for aircraft refurbishing is projected to remain relatively high across the US and Canada. Through 2026, North America is likely to dominate with more than 30% share on global revenues. However, in terms of volume, the aircraft refurbishing market in Asia-Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) region will register a relatively rapid growth at nearly 6% CAGR.The report also projects that by the end of 2026, the demand for aircraft refurbishing will rise across Western Europe, Latin America and Japan. But, during this period, the Middle East & Africa (MEA) aircraft refurbishing market is expected to incur fastest revenue growth. Registering a value CAGR of 6.9%, the MEA aircraft refurbishing market will gain traction during the latter half of the forecast period. Higher concentration of wealthy individuals across Middle Eastern countries such as the UAE or Saudi Arabia is likely to fuel the refurbishment of VIP cabins among aircrafts commuting through this region.Send An Enquiry@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/askus/rep-gb-1617 Retrofit Refurbishments Likely to Garner Surplus DemandThe report, titled Aircraft Refurbishing Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment, 2016-2026, further reveals that more than half of the markets global revenues will arise from refurbishment of narrow body aircrafts. While large body and wide body aircrafts will collectively account for more than 40% share, refurbishing revenues emanating from narrow body aircrafts will register highest value CAGR  6.1%. Based on the type of refurbishment, commercial cabin refurbishing will hold the majority of global revenues with 83% share, while VIP cabin refurbishing will witness a marginal decline in terms of its contribution to global aircraft refurbishing revenues.More than two-third of aircraft refurbishing revenues collected from across the globe are presently accounted by retrofit fittings. While this share is likely to incur a slight downtrend towards the end of 2026, the global aircraft refurbishing market will witness an uptick from fitting segments such as passenger seats and IFEC. The report has also profiled prominent manufacturers of aircraft refurbishments, which include B/E Aerospace, Inc., Diehl Stiftung & Co. KG, Gulfstream Aerospace, Ltd., Hong Kong Aircraft Engineering Company Limited, JAMCO America, Jet Aviation AG, Lufthansa Technik AGm Sabreliner Aviation LLC, SCI Cabin Interiors, United Technology Corporation, SIA Engineering Co. Ltd, and Zodiac Aerospace SA.
PR-Inside.com: 2017-06-07 23:00:29

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FSCwire / Press ReleaseThe following press release was disseminated by FSCwire for EQ Inc.--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---Toronto, Ontario (FSCWire) - EQ Inc. (TSX Venture:EQ). has issued a press release with the following headline:EQ Inc. Completes $1,069,000 Non-Brokered Private PlacementTo view this press release on the FSCwire website, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser:If you would prefer, you can also view this press release as a PDF file, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser:For more information on EQ 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/EQ Inc.Source: EQ Inc. (TSX Venture: EQ, WKN: A1W06F, ISIN: CA26884V1076)Date: June 07, 2017Time: 5:00 PM EDT--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---The story mentioned above was issued on behalf of EQ 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: 2017-06-07 12:18:03

Global Cloud Xchange Wins Excellence in Cloud Services & Excellence in Connectivity for Data Centers Awards at Datacloud Europe 2017

Global Cloud Xchange

Lorain Wong, +852 2848 0075

lwong@globalcloudxchange.com

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Rajeev Narayan, +91 93 1041 4119

rajeev.narayan@relianceada.com

Global Cloud Xchange (GCX), a subsidiary of Reliance Communications (RCOM), today won two prestigious awardsExcellence in Connectivity for Data Centers and Excellence in Cloud Servicesat the Datacloud Awards during Datacloud Europe 2017 conference in Monaco.

The Datacloud Awards, now in their tenth year, have become a defining accolade for the industry, providing recognition to genuine innovation and service excellence, which reflects the continuing evolution of IT transformation. The Datacloud Europe award winners were chosen by an independent expert panel of Judges from across Europe, with the objective of recognizing excellence in data center and cloud services.

Once again, Global Cloud Xchange has demonstrated that they are an extremely innovative and progressive company in developing cloud services to support enterprise growth. We congratulate them on winning two awards against strong competitors, which goes to reflect the very high benchmark they have achieved in both categories," said Philip Low, Chairman of BroadGroup.

We are thrilled to receive these two prestigious awards. It is indeed a great honor to be again recognized for our efforts and commitment to service excellence and technological innovation in network infrastructure and cloud solutions, supporting global enterprise requirements across the industry, said Bill Barney, Co-CEO, Reliance Communications & Chairman/CEO Global Cloud Xchange.

Gerd J. Simon, chairman of the Judges Panel, commented: The Datacloud Awards celebrate some of the best companies, individuals and technologies in this increasingly challenging and competitive industry. Simon added: All categories were hotly contested, with entries of outstanding quality reflecting the amount of change and innovation that is happening in the industry right now. We congratulate the winners on their achievement.

Earlier this year, Global Cloud Xchange won the Excellence in Connectivity for Data Centers award and the Data Center Industry Achievement award was presented to CEO Bill Barney at the Datacloud Asia 2017 conference in Singapore.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/201706070055
Global Sodium Reduction Ingredient Market

PR-Inside.com: 2017-06-07 07:46:46

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Future Market Insights (FMI) delivers key insights on the global sodium reduction ingredient market in its latest report titled, Sodium Reduction Ingredient Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment, 2015  2025. In terms of value, the global sodium reduction ingredient market is projected to register a robust CAGR of 11.7% during the forecast period due to various factors, regarding which FMI offers vital insights in detail.On the basis of application, the market has been segmented into sauce/dips/dressings, snacks, bakery products, cheese/butter, frozen food and others (beverages, baby food, and breakfast cereal). The snacks segment is estimated to account for 26.9% share of the global sodium reduction ingredient market by 2015 end, and is expected to register a healthy CAGR of 11.0% in terms of value over the forecast period. Snacks and frozen food segments are expected to contribute maximum revenue shares over the forecast period. Furthermore, continuous product launches by various key players is expected to fuel market growth during the forecast period. The bakery product segment is expected to register the highest CAGR of 12.8% in the sodium reduction ingredient market over the forecast period.Ask For Report Sample@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-470 On the basis of ingredient type, the sodium reduction ingredient market is segmented into amino acid, mineral blends, yeast extract and others (hydrolyzed vegetable protein, trehalose, and nucleotides). Mineral blends is further sub-segmented into magnesium sulphate, calcium chloride, potassium sulphate, potassium chloride and potassium lactate. Among ingredient types, the mineral blends segment estimated to account for highest market share of 53.9% by the end of 2015 and is expected to be remain dominant during the forecast period.Growth of the global sodium reduction ingredient market is mainly driven by increasing consumer awareness and rising government promotion of intake of low sodium products across the globe. Moreover, increasing regulatory norms for food product manufacturers for reducing sodium level in their product is another factor boosting market growth. Furthermore, rising disposable income coupled with increasing number of health conscious people across the globe is also expected to fuel growth of the global sodium reduction ingredient market over the forecast period.The report provides global trends and offers detailed analysis and insights about the potential of the sodium reduction ingredient market across various key regions. North America is estimated to dominate the sodium reduction ingredient market with 32.0% value share by the end of 2015, and is projected to remain dominant through 2025. North America and Western Europe are collectively estimated to account for over 59.9% share of the total sodium reduction ingredient market in terms of value by end of 2015. The market in Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) is projected to register the highest CAGR of 13.2% in terms of value between 2015 and 2025. Key players in the sodium reduction ingredient market are constantly developing and launching sodium reduction solutions for various applications. Moreover, companies are undertaking technological upgradation, while integrating all processes in order to meet the changing manufacturing needs.Ask For More Information@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/askus/rep-gb-470 Key players in the global sodium reduction ingredient market are Cambrian Solutions Inc., Kerry Group PLC, Associated British Foods plc., Givaudan SA, E. I. Du Pont De Nemours and Company, Innophos Holdings, Inc, Jungbunzlauer Suisse A.G., Sensient Technologies Corporation and Tate & Lyle PLC.Major players operating in the sodium reduction ingredient market focus on making significant investments in research and development to broaden their product portfolio and gain competitive advantage in the market.
PR-Inside.com: 2017-06-07 17:53:01

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The new Lectra Fashion PLM gears fashion companies up for the fourth industrial revolution

Lectra's Industry 4.0-compatible product lifecycle management solution is smart, connected, configurable and user-friendly

Paris, June 7, 2017 - Lectra, the world leader in integrated technology solutions dedicated to industries using soft materials-fabrics, leather, technical textiles and composite materials-is pleased to announce the launch of Lectra Fashion PLM 4.0, the first-ever product lifecycle management solution designed to help fashion and apparel companies navigate the fourth industrial revolution and thrive in the digital era of fashion.

With digitalization transforming the way consumers shop, today's fashion companies are playing a never-ending game of catch-up, as they compete for the attention of a generation of connected, fickle-minded millennials who want it all: personalization, sustainability, quality and speed, accessible at all times, across multiple channels, and at the lowest price. Industry 4.0 is not only revolutionizing how manufacturers operate, but also how brands and retailers need to function, if they want to be fast and agile enough to meet the needs of this demanding new consumer. The stakes are high and how effectively companies harness technology to put the consumer at the heart of their process will be the deciding factor in who comes out ahead and who gets left behind.

Lectra Fashion PLM 4.0 has undergone a drastic reboot to give fashion and apparel companies the speed and agility they need to tackle the challenges of Industry 4.0 head on. Lectra Fashion PLM 4.0, with the widest functional scope on the market, acts as an intelligent nerve center to the digital supply chain, from planning through design to production. This ensures a consistent flow of error-free data between processes, technologies and people. The system connects CAD, industry-standard software such as Adobe Illustrator, company IT systems (such as ERP) and external suppliers, so that actors across the supply chain can work on, save and share information on the platform, ensuring data integrity.

The solution also draws on best practices, fashion-business intelligence and real-world scenarios to automate administrative and repetitive tasks, with templates, standard libraries and shortcuts that allows more time for value-added activities. The final result is a fast, connected digital supply chain that helps fashion companies jump on trends quickly and deliver products that fulfill their customer's expectations.

This new incarnation of Lectra Fashion PLM is designed to work out of the box and can be scaled to accommodate the different needs of small to large businesses, brands, retailers and manufacturers. Companies can start small by implementing the standard offer, then add on as they go, choosing from up to ten different modules, such as design integration, product details, sourcing, sampling and costing.

The solution is available on a monthly subscription or perpetual license basis. Special attention has been paid to make this new product user-friendly, with learning tools that enable fast onboarding. The new Lectra Easy Tool allows IT teams to configure the platform to suit the needs of its users and the new mobile app, Lectra Collection Advanced, provides more ways to share information. The fuss-free implementation process means companies can get the platform up and running quickly with little disruption to business, and quickly start seeing a return on their investment.

The only fashion-dedicated PLM solution on the market that covers the entire value chain, Lectra Fashion PLM 4.0 is Lectra's first software product release since it announced its 4.0 strategy, which aims to help fashion companies succeed in this brave new digital world. The culmination of Lectra's 40-plus years of experience in the fashion industry, the platform gives companies a competitive edge by giving them a smart, user-friendly solution that allows them to remain agile and connected, facilitating their transition towards Industry 4.0.

"As our customers take their first steps toward the world of Industry 4.0, we want to be right there beside them to help them succeed. Just like today's fashion companies, we are evolving to make our offer more customer-centric than ever before. We are extremely proud of this powerful new PLM platform, and are convinced that it will help our customers flourish in this digital age of fashion," says Celine Choussy Bedouet, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, Lectra.

About Lectra

Lectra is the world leader in integrated technology solutions (software, automated cutting equipment, and associated services) specifically designed for industries using fabrics, leather, technical textiles, and composite materials to manufacture their products. It serves major world markets: fashion and apparel, automotive, and furniture as well as a broad array of other industries. Lectra's solutions, specific to each market, enable customers to automate and optimize product design, development, and manufacturing. With more than 1,550 employees, Lectra has developed privileged relationships with prestigious customers in more than 100 countries, contributing to their operational excellence. Lectra registered revenues of $288 million in 2016 and is listed on Euronext.

For more information, please visit www.lectra.com

Contact - Lectra Headquarters / Press Dept.: Nathalie Fournier-Christol

E-mail: n.fournier-christol@lectra.com

Tel.: +33 (0)1 53 64 42 37 - Fax: +33 (0)1 53 64 43 40





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: LECTRA via Globenewswire


Halal Pharmaceuticals Market Trends

PR-Inside.com: 2017-06-07 13:09:56

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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.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.Request Report Sample@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1251 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.Request For TOC@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1251 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.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.
PR-Inside.com: 2017-06-07 23:00:33

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FSCwire / Press ReleaseThe following press release was disseminated by FSCwire for Morro Bay Resources Ltd.--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---Calgary, Alberta (FSCWire) - Morro Bay Resources Ltd. (TSX Venture:MRB). has issued a press release with the following headline:Morro Bay Resources Ltd. Provides Further Details on the Proposed Reverse Takeover TransactionTo 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 Morro Bay Resources Ltd., or to see additional press releases issued by this company, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser: http://www.fscwire.com/public-company/Morro Bay Resources Ltd.Source: Morro Bay Resources Ltd. (TSX Venture: MRB, OTC Pink: MRRBF)Date: June 07, 2017Time: 5:00 PM EDT--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---The story mentioned above was issued on behalf of Morro Bay Resources Ltd. and disseminated through FSCwire.About FSCwireFSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.), is a global newswire dissemination, SEDAR, SEDI, and EDGAR / XBRL service provider.FSCwire is a full service global newswire dissemination company and is fully approved by all exchanges in Canada and the U.S. Press releases can be distributed for all sizes of public, private or not for profit companies and any other organization requiring news distribution. In addition to individual companies; public relations, communications and investor relations firms trust FSCwire to distribute press releases for their respective clients.In addition to newswire dissemination FSCwire also offers EDGAR, XBRL, SEDAR, SEDI, and additional services for publicly traded companies. For more information, please go to our website: http://www.fscwire.com Maximum News Dissemination by FSCwire. http://www.fscwire.com Copyright 2017 - FSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.)
Black Pepper Market Growth

PR-Inside.com: 2017-06-07 13:11:12

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Black Pepper is a pungent hot-tasting powder spice prepared from dried and ground peppercorns, used to flavor food. It is also known as king of spices because it contains rich anti-oxidants and other nutrients. The high demand for pepper presents an attractive market opportunity for new vendors to enter the market. In the present market scenario, it is estimated that the new crop of black pepper accounts for nearly 30% to 35% of the market. The high demand is expected to increase the price of black pepper, thereby increasing the profit margin of the vendors in this market.Apart from this, black pepper powder is also used to make medicines. It often used to cure stomach upset, bronchitis, and cancer. It is sometimes applied directly to the skin for treating nerve pain(neuralgia) and a skin disease called scabies. Black peppers are also used typically as a counterirritant for pain.Black Pepper Market: Drivers & RestraintsThe black pepper market is directly influenced by the growing processed food industry. The rise in consumption of bakery products, confectionery products, and ready-to-eat and ried food in the developed economies is driving the market for the spice. The recent trend of using natural flavor enhancer has also catalyzed the growth of the global market. In the year 2013-15, the global pepper consumption is estimated at around 400,000 tons and has been increasing steadily. Increasing demand from Far East countries, which have started using more pepper in cooking, has been quite significant in driving the global black pepper market. Growth in the cosmetics industry is also directly influencing the pepper market. Due to the antioxidant and antibacterial properties of black pepper, it is often included in skin care products.Request Report Sample@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1274 As stated earlier, that the market is experiencing a major year on year increase in demand for black pepper. But unfortunately, this demand is not backed by adequate supply, which has proved to be a major restraint in this market. This is majorly due to the intensive crop losses in various parts of the world, especially in India & Brazil. Sudden climatic changes and untimely rainfall has significantly led to the fall in the yield of black pepper.Black PepperMarket: SegmentationThe global black pepper market can be broadly segmented on the basis of; type, end use and application. On the basis of type, the market can be further segmented into  organic and inorganic. Based on end use, the market can be segmented into bakery and confectionery products, frozen products, soups, sauces & dressing, beverages, meat & poultry products, snacks and convenience food, and others. Based of application, the black pepper market can be segmented into food & beverages, health care and personal care & cosmetics.Black PepperMarket: Region Wise OutlookGeographically, the global black peppermarket 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.Request For TOC@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1274 Vietnam, followed by Brazil, India & Indonesia are the leading producer of black pepper in the year 2014 globally.India saw a fall in its average production in the same year. The leverage of large scale production and productivity helps Vietnam growers to offer world's lowest price tags.In terms of export, Vietnam leads the market globally. U.S. market continues to be the largest importer of black pepper from Vietnam. While most markets like India, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Netherlands, Spain have seen an increase in their imports, except Germany. German market recorded a drop in imports from Vietnam. Thus, with a market share of approximately 50% per cent in the global market, Vietnam has been able dominate the market.Black PepperMarket: Key PlayersSome of the major companies operating in global black peppermarket are Baria Pepper, British Pepper and Spice, Catch, Everest Spices, McCormick, MDH, Agri food Pacific, Akar Indo, Brazil Trade Business, DM AGRO, Gupta Trading, Pacific Production, PT AF, Silk Road Spices, The Spice House, Vietnam Spice Company, Visimex, and Webb James, Olam International 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.




MAMF Outreach Initiative

Contact

Airrion Andrews

Mindshare Capture

***@mindsharecapture.com Airrion AndrewsMindshare Capture

End

-- In a new article, Biz Tech Reports examines Solar Technology and its potential to transform Africa's energy landscape. MAMF Outreach Initiative, an agricultural cooperative in Cameroon, is already looking towards solar technology to meet its operational and infrastructure needs.Biz Tech Reports references several studies that analyze how Solar technology can address the electricity needs of African nations'. In its 2016 annual report, the African Development Bank Group (AfDB) identified power and lighting as one of the top five priority areas for growth and development in African nations. The AfDB's report explains, "Africa's energy poverty persists despite the continent's enormous potential in renewable energy: 325 days of strong sunlight, 15 percent of the world's hydropower potential, and good potential in wind and geothermal energy."Bridget Mbu Mbeng, founder of MAMF Outreach Initiative, echoed the AfDB report findings, "Many of the communities don't have electricity, and solar panels will provide the means for MAMF's partners, these women entrepreneurs, to cultivate their crops year-round."The AfDB's recent report findings show that in African nations, "more than 645 million people, the majority of them in rural areas, have no access to electricity."The MAMF Outreach Initiative is an agribusiness venture focused on empowering African women to become entrepreneurs through cultivating mushrooms. Currently, MAMF operates three mushroom farms in Cameroon and has 40 women working as partners in the co-op .As demand for mushrooms grow in Cameroon and new interest develops in Nigeria, MAMF expects to incorporate solar panels at a central farming facility to institute year-round cultivation. While solar technology will be a boon for the crop yields of MAMF partners, the surrounding community will also reap the benefit of the introduction to solar technology.Ms. Mbeng is currently in Cameroon to begin construction on MAMF's first solar powered central farming facility. As Mbeng talks of the impact of solar panels and a central farm, she looks to the future."MAMF wants to produce mushrooms beyond the market in Cameroon and serve all of Africa," says Mbeng. "Eventually we want to export to large markets such as China, but we need investment and to leverage these solar technologies to grow and keep up with demand."MAMF has instituted a crowdfunding campaign ( http://mamfglobal.dinn.fund/ ) to support the development of this first central farming facility incorporating solar technology.You can visit the MAMF Outreach Initiative's website at www.mamfglobal.com to learn more about their mission and investment opportunities.Listen to the MAMF podcast interview with Bridget Mbu Mbeng:https://soundcloud.com/mamf_outreach/podcast-with-bridget... ( https://soundcloud.com/ mamf_outreach/ podcast-with- bridget...
The threats on supporters of female politicians, adolescent nicotine exposure, and amphibian skin bacteria are some of the summer projects Thiel College faculty and students will explore at the Greenville Neuromodulation Center Research Institute.

Greenville's Neuromodulation Center will host Thiel College research projects.

Contact

Thiel College

***@thiel.edu Thiel College

End

-- Thiel College (https://www.thiel.edu/), a leading liberal arts college in northwest Pennsylvania, has begun the third summer of the Greenville Neuromodulation Center Faculty/Student Research Institute with projects from several faculty and student research teams studying such varied topics as the impact of threat on supporters of female politicians, adolescent nicotine exposure and amphibian skin bacteria.Research projects from Assistant Professor of Biology and Director of the GNC Faculty/Student Research Institute Delbert Abi Abdallah, Ph.D.; Assistant Professor of Psychology and Department Chair Laura Pickens, Ph.D. '06; Assistant Professor of Biology Christopher Fonner, Ph.D.; Associate Professor of Neuroscience and Department Chair Greg Butcher, Ph.D.; Assistant Professor of Political Science and Department Chair Marie Courtemanche, Ph.D., and Assistant Professor of Sociology Jared Hanneman, Ph.D., have been selected for the institute this year."Our outcomes thus far, in terms of both faculty and student impact, have been fantastic," Abi Abdallah said. "All of the graduated students who have participated in the institute have gone on either to gainful employment or have gotten accepted into graduate or professional schools."Abi Abdallah said participating faculty have presented findings from their research at numerous conferences and meetings, such as The American Chemical Society, Western PA Undergraduate Biology Research Symposium, Science and Non-duality Conference, The American Society for Engineering Education, The American College Health Association, The International Society of Political Psychology, and The Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting."In addition to high student impacts, our goals for the third year will focus on stronger faculty outcomes. With the seed money provided by the institute, participating faculty will be able to use preliminary data generated to date in order to seek external sources of funding. That should allow our undergraduate programs to become more competitive, would allow our undergraduate research to become stronger, and would give our graduating students a stronger edge in an increasingly competitive post-undergraduate market."Much of the work some of the faculty members will do is built upon research funded by the institute last summer. As a result of last summer's work, Fonner was published in Diseases of Aquatic Organisms, and he will continue to explore other aspects of his amphibian research.Butcher and Pickens are also capitalizing on research they conducted last summer in a collaboration between the Thiel neuroscience and psychology programs. Their research into adolescent nicotine exposure earned them the use of a new research maze from the Faculty for Undergraduate Neuroscience equipment loan program. The maze was built by San Diego Instruments for a loan period of two years. The loan of the equipment was granted after Thiel College demonstrated institutional support for the project through the funding of the research institute as well as the construction of the new science connector facility that will add 7,850 square feet of research and lab space. Butcher and Pickens will continue their research with the help of Thiel students Theresa Kretzmer '20, Gage Gladysz '20 and Maggie Nee '20, as well as two area high school students. Kretzmer, of Hermitage, Pa., is a 2016 homeschool graduate and psychology major. Gladysz, of Greenville, Pa., is a 2016 Greenville High School graduate and neuroscience major. Nee, of Erie, Pa., is a 2016 McDowell High School graduate and neuroscience major.About the GNC Faculty/Student Research InstituteIn 2015, Thiel College alumni Fred Haer '65 and his wife, Jill (Shackett) '66, pledged more than $400,000 to fund the GNC Faculty/Student Research Institute. The Haers have given $135,000 per year for three years to pay for multi-year research projects and the summer research institute that focus on connecting science and liberal arts at Thiel College. In 1970, the Haers founded FHC, Inc. The company's microelectrode recording and stimulation technology serves neuroscientific research and neurosurgical operating rooms with more than 7,000 unique metal microelectrodes and a broad range of state-of-the-art research and clinical instruments. Greenville Neuromodulation Services, a wholly owned subsidiary of FHC, Inc., supports the neuroscience industry with a full range of services for medical professionals involved in the treatment of movement disorders is located in Greenville, along with the nonprofit GNC.Thiel College Assistant Professor of Biology Delbert Abi Abdallah, Ph.D., was named the director of the GNC Faculty/Student Research Institute in February 2016. The institute is open to all Thiel College faculty members, but maintains an emphasis on interdisciplinary science activities.Thiel College ( https://www.thiel.edu/ ) is a private liberal arts institution founded in the Lutheran tradition. Located in Greenville, Pa., the College offers 60 majors and minors, 25 varsity sports, and an 11:1 student-faculty ratio to more than 900 students. A dedicated faculty paired with dynamic research and internship opportunities produce numerous graduate school and job placements. Coeducational from its beginnings, the College celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2016 and remains committed to combining tradition with innovation.
Doral Chamber of Commerce Welcomes King Courier Express as a Gold Member

King Courier Express DCC Member

Contact

Doral Chamber of Commerce

***@nmx2.com Doral Chamber of Commerce

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-- The Doral Chamber of Commerce proudly welcomes King Courier Express as a gold Member. The Doral Chamber of Commerce in partnership with businesses such as King Courier Express will continue to work together towards a common goal building a healthy economy and continuing to improve the quality of life in the City of Doral.King Courier Express is a company specialized in international transport and logistics, they offer fast, reliable and safe deliveries; Along with e-commerce services to facilitate their international purchases. They make sure each package is delivered.They are proud to be the first Fulfillment center in Paraguay for South America and in Miami for the world, they offer their commercial customers comprehensive logistics solutions for the entire supply chain: from purchases to warehousing, parcels and distribution of products to the final customer .With King Courier Express you have your own address in the United States, you will have your locker in Miami to receive your purchases, and then they will deliver it anywhere in the world.The Doral Chamber of Commerce is a 501 (c)(6) non-profit, community professional service organization, founded in January 2008 by Manny Sarmiento and Carmen Lopez. The Chamber's focus since its founding has always been to educate its members with seminars, workshops, networking and other educational events becoming "Your Marketing Right Hand".The Doral Chamber of Commerce was created to meet the needs of a thriving business community of small to medium sized companies in Doral and surrounding areas that needed assistance and support in growing their business. After examining their member's needs and the current economic environment, we have found that the new "e-World", Internet communities, online social relationships and education via the web are the "new" and best ways to market your business. We provide our members and the business community in general, with networking and educational opportunities in traditional learning and online environments that together enhance the operational, marketing, and business development skills needed for success in today's business world.angela@kingcourierexpress.com
Sunbury Press has released "The Lost Island of Columbus," Keith A. Pickering's well-researched history of the place of Columbus's landfall in 1492.

The Lost Island of Columbus

Media Contact

Terry Kennedy

publicity@sunburypress.com

18553388359 Terry Kennedy18553388359

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-- Sunbury Press has released, Keith A. Pickering's well-researched history of the place of Columbus's landfall in 1492.On October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus set foot on the shore of a new island in a New World, the first part of America seen by any European since the time of the Vikings. Columbus named that island San Salvador, but the gentle Lucayan people who lived there called it Guanahani. Less than three days later, Columbus sailed away from Guanahani, never to return. The events of those days, on that island, forever altered the course of human history in ways that we are still feeling today. But as Columbus's three ships disappeared over the horizon, the island of Guanahani itself faded into the mists of time.For five hundred years, the location and identity of Guanahani remained a mystery. For the last two hundred years, the actual site of Guanahani, Columbus's first landfall, has been the subject of controversy. Dozens of historians, geographers, and mariners have claimed to know the answer  or claimed that the answer was unknowable. And though all agree that it was somewhere in the Bahamas, ten different islands have been proposed as Guanahani at various times by various theorists.The range of subjects bearing on this mystery is extraordinarily broad: anthropology, astronomy, botany, cartography, metrology, geomagnetism, oceanography, and seamanship are just some of the topics that a serious student of the problem must be prepared to grapple with. Most of the historical evidence rests on a foundation of documents in handwritten sixteenth century Spanish, plus a few place names in the lost language of the Lucayans.This book is the story of that mystery and of those who tried to solve it. It is the story of how the scientific method can be successfully applied to historical problems. And in a small way it is also the author's story, because he was one of the detectives who cracked the case.KEITH A. PICKERING is a retired systems analyst and software engineer living in Watertown, Minnesota. He has published academic works in astrophysics, the history of astronomy, navigation, and exploration, and is co-author of First to the Pole, the story of the Plaisted North Pole expedition of 1968. He is also a former editor of DIO: The International Journal of Scientific History.Between 1992 and its demise in 1996, Pickering was a member of the Columbus Landfall Round Robin, a committee of correspondence that tasked itself with discovering the true first landfall of Christopher Columbus in the New World. Pickering was a featured interviewee on the History Channel's 2007 documentary Columbus: The Lost Voyage. He lives in Watertown, Minnesota.Written by Keith A. PickeringList Price: $19.956" x 9" (15.24 x 22.86 cm)Black & White on Cream paper204 pagesSunbury Press, Inc.ISBN-10: 1620067126ISBN-13: 978-1-62006-712-3BISAC:HISTORY : Caribbean & West Indies - GeneralHISTORY : Americas (North Central South West Indies)HISTORY : CivilizationFor more information, please see:
Media Contact

Jason McNew

j.mcnew@strongholdcybersecurity.com Jason McNew

End

-- Stronghold Cyber Security, a self-funded startup created by a husband-and-wife team, has just established itself in the apple orchards of Adams County, only miles from the historic battlefields of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The company, created to help tackle the growing cyber security threats to small and mid-sized businesses, offers a variety of managed security and consulting services, in addition to cyber risk management, compliance, customized security solutions and penetration testing.Jason McNew, founder and CEO, is a United States Air Force veteran with over 20 years of experience in the field of Information Technology, including 12 years at the White House Communications Agency and Camp David. "American businesses are under direct attack by very dangerous cyber criminals who deliberately operate in areas where American law enforcement cannot touch them. I formed Stronghold Cyber Security to help small and mid-sized businesses tackle this very difficult problem head on."Jason's wife and partner, Genevieve, is the company's webmaster and in charge of marketing and sales.Stronghold Cyber Security provides businesses with not only the tools they need to mitigate risk and proactively protect themselves from cyber attacks and data breaches, but also implements a "culture of safety" for companies to adopt as a policy. Jason McNew says, "Every business  all of them, today  have a culture of safety. You see safety signs in the halls and in the break room. Just adding technical controls such as firewalls and antivirus is not enough to keep businesses secure. Stronghold Cyber Security aims to help small and mid-sized businesses also create a culture of security, like one would find at the Pentagon or Lockheed Martin."To learn more about Stronghold Cyber Security or request an interview, contact Jason McNew directly at 717-778-1474, email j.mcnew@strongholdcybersecurity.com , or visit the website at www.strongholdcybersecurity.com
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-- Florida is a wonderful destination to travel to thanks to its beautiful beaches, exciting theme parks, nightlife, culture and more. There are also many different options for locations to stay like Miami, Orlando, Fort Lauderdale and St. Augustine. No matter where you go in Florida you will find tons of things to do, restaurants to eat at, and sights to see. Best of all, you'll find sunny, warm weather all year round! Here are some top tips for your Florida vacation.1. Bring sunscreen!You might not be used to sunny weather, especially if you are traveling in the winter, so make sure to purchase sunscreen before your trip and put it on every single day. A serious sunburn is no joke and you don't want to be in pain for your whole trip. Always reapply it throughout the day and wear a hat and loose clothing for sun protection.2. Stay at a vacation rental homeInstead of spending money on a cramped hotel room with zero privacy, consider booking a vacation rental home. You will get a lot of space for a great deal and have all the comforts of home. Plus, you can make home cooked meals to save money instead of eating out every day.3. Rent a carWhile there are some public transportation options out there, it will be much more convenient for your family to just rent a car for your trip. This way you don't have to worry about purchasing tickets, checking bus schedules, and figuring out what to do if the bus or train doesn't take you all the way to that theme park you already bought tickets for.4. Create an itinerary.If you want to go to multiple parks or just fit in several activities in one day, the best thing to do is create an itinerary. It's hard to pack in everything you want to see in just a few days so space things out and figure out which attractions are nearby each other so you can see and do it all.5. Take time to relax.It's easy to get overwhelmed when you have so many activities planned  if you do too much, you might end up being too tired to actually enjoy the activities. Try to plan some downtime in the evenings after you come back from the parks and just relax as a family after dinner. Head to bed early if you had a long day so you can wake up feeling refreshed and ready for another fun day of activities.6. Drink tons of waterWhen you're walking around all day in the heat, you're bound to get dehydrated which can really make you ill. Bring reusable water bottles for every person and remind your children to drink up  they probably will not realize that they are thirsty so you will need to keep encouraging them.
If you are new to iQ you can schedule a demo and learn more about this opportunity.

PSFK iQ - Where Innovators Turn for Research. Our professional-grade research platform is designed specifically for Retail and CX leaders who want to know whats next. Whether youre staying current on trends or need a real-time research partner to help you get ahead, count on PSFK iQ to deliver the info you need to make your next move.
Frances Aviwest has been selected by Spains Star Planning to deliver live streaming of Destino Santiago, a reality TV programme broadcast by Galicias regional public broadcaster TVG.





The Spanish production company has selected Aviwest's PRO180-RA video uplink system, QUAD wideband external cellular antenna arrays and StreamHub transceivers to deliver live broadcast transmissions of the show, which follows the pilgrimage of two artists on the Camino de Santiago (Road to Santiago).Over 40 days, the show delivered 300 hours of live broadcasting for TVG . Besides watching the reality show, viewers also had the opportunity to chat live with both artists through a dedicated website and social media channels.By providing the production team with portable and easy-to-use technologies, Aviwest streamlined operations while enabling the broadcaster to transmit live HD video over 3G/4G cellular wireless networks throughout the entire trek.The main technical challenge was maintaining a high quality, reliable, real-time video transmission during hundreds of hours of live broadcasting, said Emilio Fernandez, production manager of Star Planning Offering 300 hours of real-time programming, Star Production and TV Galicia are setting a new benchmark for live streaming, said David Jaouen, sales director at Aviwest . This project wouldn't have been successful without our Spanish partner, NRDmultimedia, which provided local customer support and services.
China is poised to start creating a network of overseas military bases after establishing a first facility in Africa, the Pentagon has said in a report that predicts that Beijing will seek to locate a base in Pakistan.

With yearly defense spending now surpassing $180 billion a year, the report issued on June 6 says China will build on the construction of its first overseas naval base in Djibouti by "seeking to establish additional military bases in countries with which it has a long-standing friendly relationship and similar strategic interests, such as Pakistan."

Pakistan, the report notes, is already the primary market in the Asian-Pacific region for Chinese arms. That region accounted for nearly half of China's more than $20 billion in arms exports from 2011 to 2015.

Last year, China signed an agreement with Pakistan for the sale of eight submarines.

China's military expansion ties into a broader initiative to build a "new Silk Road" of ports, railways, and roads to expand trade across an arc of countries through Asia, Africa, and Europe.

Pakistan, Afghanistan, and several countries in Central Asia have welcomed the Chinese program as a path out of poverty.

Based on reporting by AP and Reuters
WASHINGTON -- Former FBI Director James Comey has begun to testify in a public hearing before U.S. lawmakers who are investigating allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and any signs of collusion by allies of President Donald Trump.

Comey's June 8 appearance before the Senate Intelligence Committee comes a day after he said in written testimony that Trump, who fired him on May 9, had pressured him to drop the FBI investigation of Trumps first national security adviser and his interactions with Russian officials. Comey began his testimony by reading the written testimony.

In the written testimony, Comey also said that Trump demanded loyalty from him during a private dinner at the White House on January 27, a week after the Republican's inauguration following his victory in an election colored by what U.S. intelligence officials say was a concerted campaign of interference ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin in hopes of helping him defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Comey's written remarks, based on what he said were detailed notes he took after encounters with Trump, corroborate in part news reports of recent weeks that suggest Trump sought to influence the FBIs investigation of national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Flynn was fired less than a month into the job, on February 13, after he misled Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations with the Russian ambassador to Washington, Sergei Kislyak.

In comments on June 7, Trump's lawyer focused on Comey's written statement that he told Trump he was not personally under investigation by the FBI."The President feels completely and totally vindicated," attorney Marc Kasowitz said.

But the highest ranking U.S. lawmaker, Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan, said it was "obviously" inappropriate for Trump to demand loyalty from the nation's top law-enforcement officer.

Some legal experts who spoke to the Reuters news agency said that Comey's testimony that Trump expected loyalty and hoped Comey would drop the investigation into Flynn could bolster obstruction of justice allegations that might be used as a basis for impeachment proceedings against Trump. But some said that it would be difficult to show that Trump intended to impede the investigation into Flynn.

In his written testimony, Comey said he and Trump had a private dinner together on January 27 and that during the meal Trump asked him if he wanted to remain on as FBI director. Comey was named to the post by Trumps predecessor, Barack Obama.

Comey said he replied that he wanted to serve out his 10-year term and "was not on anybody's side politically."

Comey said Trump told him at the dinner in January that "I need loyalty. I expect loyalty," and Comey replied that he could offer his honesty.

Trump then said he wanted "honest loyalty," and Comey said he told him: "You will get that from me."

During a February 14 White House meeting, Trump pressed Comey on the bureaus probe of Flynn.

"I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy," Comey quoted Trump as telling him.

"I had understood the president to be requesting that we drop any investigation of Flynn in connection with his false statements about his conversations with the Russian ambassador in December," Comey said in his written remarks.

Trump fired Comey on May 9, a move that roiled Washington and cast a further shadow over Trumps presidency, which had been dogged by suspicions about the interactions Trump associates had with Russian and other foreign officials.

In addition to the FBI probe, the Senate Intelligence Committee and at least one House committee are looking both at the nature of those interactions, as well as the U.S. intelligence communitys conclusions that Russia interfered in the 2016 election campaign and sought to tilt it in favor of Trump.

In the written remarks, Comey said that Trump also pressured him to publicly announce that he was not personally under federal investigation. In a March 30 phone call, Trump asked Comey what could be done to "lift the cloud" over him, according to the testimony.

"I responded that we were investigating the [Russia] matter as quickly as we could, and that there would be great benefit, if we didnt find anything, to our having done the work well," Comey wrote. "He agreed, but then reemphasized the problems this was causing him."

With reporting by AP and Reuters
TBILISI -- Dozens of protesters rallied in front of the Georgian government's chancellery in Tbilisi on June 7 to voice support for a Turkish professor who faces extradition to Turkey.

Activists, NGO officers, and Black Sea University students and teachers handcuffed themselves in support of Mustafa Emre Cabuk, a teacher and manager at Demirel College in the Georgian capital.

He is wanted by Ankara for alleged links with the movement of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom the Turkish government considers a terrorist and claims was behind a failed coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in July 2016. Gulen denies invovement.

The Tbilisi City Court placed Cabuk under three-month preextradition detention on May 25.

The activists held European Union and Georgian flags and posters saying "The Teacher Is Innocent," "Do Not Extradite," and "Freedom For Mustafa Cabuk."

Cabuk has lived in Georgia for 15 years. His lawyer, Soso Baratashvili, has said the Turkish extradition request contains no solid evidence proving his client is associated with Gulen.

Georgian Ombudsman Ucha Nanuashvili has called on Georgia's government to rely on international regulations and standards when making a decision on Cabuk's extradition and to take into account "numerous violations of rights" of people arrested in Turkey following the coup attempt.

More than 120,000 people have been suspended or dismissed from their jobs in the state and private sectors and more than 40,000 arrested in the wake of the mutiny.
Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet has decided to pull German troops and reconnaissance planes out of Turkey's Incirlik air base after Ankara refused to let lawmakers visit them.

The German troops and aircraft taking part in the international coalition against the Islamic State extremist group will redeploy to Jordan.

Germany has some 270 troops stationed at Incirlik, near Turkey's border with Syria, with six Tornado reconnaissance aircraft and a refueling plane.

The Defense Ministry said that the relocation would take the refueling plane out of service for two to three weeks and the reconnaissance planes for two to three months.

Merkel said that Berlin will consult with its allies on "replacement capabilities" during that time and the move "will be conducted as quickly as possible under the provision that the anti-IS coalition is able to work."

German leaders say it's essential that lawmakers be able to visit troops when they want, as deployments of German forces abroad require parliamentary approval.

Turkey blocked the latest Incirlik visit request in protest over a decision by German authorities to grant asylum to soldiers and other individuals that Turkey accuses of participating in last year's failed coup.

Ties have also been tense over the jailing in Turkey of two German journalists and the decision by German local authorities to ban planned campaign rallies by Turkish ministers earlier this year.

Based on reporting by AP and Bloomberg
The speaker of the Iranian parliament, Ali Larijani, said the armed attack on the building was a "minor issue." His speech was followed by chants of "Death to America." The extremist group Islamic State has claimed responsibility for twin assaults on parliament and the Ayatollah Khomeini mausoleum, which claimed 12 lives, according to Iranian officials. (Reuters/IRINN)
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Police and ambulances rushed to the Iranian parliament in Teheran, after reports that gunmen had opened fire inside the building. Another armed attack took place at the Ayatollah Khomeini mausoleum in the south of the city. (Reuters)
Over the past five years, Iranian officials and state media have touted the "indigenous" ingenuity in the Islamic republic's mass-produced Mohajer-6 combat drone, which Russia has deployed in its war against Ukraine.

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



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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chinese Cameras, California Chips

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'No Authorization'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shahriar Siami of RFE/RL's Radio Farda contributed to this report.
-- An Iranian official says 12 people have been killed in twin attacks on the Iranian parliament and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's shrine. The head of Iran's emergency department, Pir Hossein Kolivand, said 39 people were also wounded in the attacks in Tehran, and rescue operations were continuing.

-- The extremist Sunni group Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility for the June 7 attacks in the capital of predominantly Shi'ite Iran, the IS-affiliated Amaq news agency said.

*NOTE: Times are stated according to local time in Tehran (GMT +4 1/2)
The autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq has scheduled an independence referendum for September 25, officials said.

Hemin Hawrami, an aide to regional leader Massud Barzani, posted the announcement on Twitter on June 7, describing it as "big news."

Senior Kurdish official Hoshiyar Zebari, a former Iraqi deputy prime minister, told the Reuters news agency in April that a referendum would be scheduled after the defeat of the Islamic State (IS) extremist organization in Iraq.

Iraqi government forces, supported by a U.S.-led international coalition, are fighting to drive the Islamic State group out of a small area of the city of Mosul, the group's last stronghold in the country.

The autonomous Kurdish region was created in 1992, and the region gained additional stature after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 to oust Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein.

Kurdish leaders have been discussing the idea of an independence referendum for years, but the idea has been stymied in part by infighting among local political parties.

Based on reporting by Reuters and dpa
It finally happened.

The Islamic State (IS) extremist group struck Iran -- and did so with sadistic aplomb. If terrorism is theater, then IS on June 7 directed an award-winning performance of the most grotesque kind in the countrys capital, Tehran.

The attack was striking both in terms of location and method. Attackers struck both the national parliament and the mausoleum of the Islamic republics founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini -- two of the states most symbolic sites.

Even more strikingly, IS, the most media-savvy terror organization in modern history, appears to have live-streamed the attacks. Video uploaded by the attackers as they went shooting from room to room in the parliament appeared on the groups media outlet, the Aamaq news agency. The video lasts for just under 30 seconds and shows one of the gunman near the body of a presumed victim while a voice on the video praises God and says in Arabic: "Do you think we will leave? We will remain, God willing."

It is estimated that 12 people died (11 in parliament and one at the mausoleum), while six attackers were killed. At the parliament, Iranian security forces engaged in an hourslong shoot-out with the militants inside -- killing all five there. One was killed at the mausoleum. But it is important to remember that killing and wounding is only ever a secondary aim of terrorism. Its primary concern is, as its name implies, to terrorize. Terror attacks are designed to puff up the organization responsible, making it look bigger and more important than it actually is. This is a goal for terror groups at the best of times, but for IS -- which will soon lose Iraqs second-largest city, Mosul, and is now facing a major assault on its major urban stronghold in Syria, Raqqa -- the need to remain in the public consciousness is greater than ever.

By gaining access to the Iranian parliament (though nowhere near the actual debating chamber), it has done exactly that. It is a crime of the utmost brazenness and brutality.

And while this is the first time that IS has struck Iran, the group has been trying to do just that for some time now  most recently in a March video in which an IS fighter speaking Persian urged Iranian Sunnis to target Iran.

In reality, the only surprise is that the attacks did not happen sooner. Iran, a Shi'a power, has been waging war in both Iraq and Syria against Sunni Arab forces. In Iraq, the Iranian-backed Shia militias have fought against IS, as well as committing atrocities against Sunni civilians in towns they have "liberated" from the group. In Syria, meanwhile, Tehran is devoted to propping up its ally, the Alawite (a branch of Shia Islam) President Bashar al-Assad, and has contributed to the widespread massacre of Sunnis in the process.

As Rashad Ali, senior fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, observes, "Iran has been engaging in both propping up the Syrian and Iraqi regimes and also vying for control of post-IS territory through both their own military activities and their proxies in the Iraqi regime and Tehrans various militia groups. The resultant anger among a large population of Sunnis has had many manifestations in Iraq, and it was inevitable that it would have the same impact on many aggrieved Sunnis who perceive Iran to be at the center of a conspiracy against Sunnis in the region, especially given the growing power of the Shia crescent (the line of contiguous Shia or strong Shia-minority states across the Middle East) and the repeated massacres of Sunnis at Shia or Assadist hands."

He continues: "This is at the root of this attack. Despite the pragmatic and cynical cooperation between the Assad regime, [Islamic State], Al-Qaeda, and Iran, I dont believe, as many in the region are suggesting, that this was a false-flag operation cooked up between them. But Sunni grievances have allowed such theories to gain traction."

As ever, it is impossible to escape sectarianism in the Middle East. Just hours after the attack, Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) released a statement accusing Saudi Arabia and the United States of being behind the attacks: "This terrorist action, coming one week after the meeting of the president of the United States with the leader of one of the region's reactionary governments (Saudi Arabia) ... shows they are involved in this savage action," it said in a statement.

IS vowed that there would be more attacks on Iran and has, at any rate, achieved a major goal: It has once more pushed itself to the forefront of global consciousness. Even State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert weighed in on the attacks, saying that the United States was sending thoughts and prayers to the Iranian people and that "the depravity of terrorism has no place in a peaceful, civilized world."

As yet another IS atrocity hits the news, as yet more people are killed and maimed, the group continues to exist on a media supply of oxygen, even as it is slowly asphyxiated on the ground in the Middle East. IS has made a clear choice: It will not give up. It will not, as the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas so aptly put it, "go gentle into that good night." Instead, inverting his paean to life, IS, which worships only death, will -- until its last breath -- "rage, rage against the dying of the light."

And the world -- from London to Tehran -- will continue to suffer.

The views expressed in this blog post do not necessarily reflect the views of RFE/RL.
ALMATY, Kazakhstan -- A court in Kazakhstan has sentenced fugitive tycoon and opposition figure Mukhtar Ablyazov to 20 years in prison, after an in-absentia trial Ablyazov called "a farce."

The court in Almaty convicted Ablyazov on June 7 of organizing and leading a criminal group, abuse of office, embezzlement, and financial mismanagement. It issued the sentence the same day.

One of Ablyazov's three lesser-known co-defendants, who were present at the trial, was sentenced to 15 years in prison. The other two were given suspended sentences.

Ablyazov, who has been living in self-imposed exile in Europe since 2009, dismissed the result of what he said was a "false" trial and a farce.

Speaking to RFE/RL hours after his verdict and sentence were pronounced, he said that he would advise his lawyer "not to waste time challenging the ruling."

"Nobody will trust that court's ruling. The ruling has no power in the West," Ablyazov said. "I do not care what sort of decision they are making there about me. Because this trial is false."

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

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

He was released from jail on December 9 after France's highest administrative court canceled an order for his extradition to Russia, saying Moscow had made the request for political reasons.

Several politicians and activists have fled Kazakhstan in recent years, fearing for their safety or anticipating politically motivated prosecution.

President Nursultan Nazarbaev, who has held power in the Central Asian state since before the 1991 Soviet breakup, tolerates little dissent.
U.K. police have confirmed that the death toll from last week's attack on London Bridge had risen to eight.

The police, who were searching for Frenchman Xavier Thomas, missing since the June 3 attack, said that they had found a body in the River Thames.

Thomas's next of kin have been told, police said, but formal identification has not yet taken place.

Police said earlier that witness accounts suggested Xavier might have been thrown into the river. Thomas's girlfriend was struck and seriously injured by the van.

Earlier on June 7, French President Emmanuel Macron announced that a third French citizen had died in last week's attack in London.

"We received confirmation of the new toll this morning. There are three deaths and eight injuries on the French side," Macron said, deploring the "heavy toll these attacks have taken on us."

Macron did not confirm the identity of the third French victim.

Early on June 7, police arrested a 30-year-old man in east London in connection with the attack and are searching his home.

Two men are now in custody on suspicion of violating the Terrorism Act. They have not been identified or charged.

All others who had been arrested have been released without facing charges.

Police killed all three attackers some eight minutes after the assault was launched.

Based on reporting by BBC, AFP, dpa, and AP
An anticorruption march and rally organized by opposition politician Aleksei Navalny will go ahead on June 12 at a site offered by Moscow city authorities.

Navalny aide Leonid Volkov, who is managing Navalny's nascent campaign for the 2018 presidential election, wrote on Twitter on June 7 that the protest will be held on Prospekt Sakharov, which is outside the city center.

Navalny had previously criticized the government's suggested locations as "boorishness" and had been considering whether to cancel the event altogether or hold it illegally.

The head of Navalny's Anticorruption Foundation, Roman Rubanov, added on June 7 that the Moscow authorities told him that demonstrators would not be allowed to use loudspeakers and video screens during the demonstration.

Navalny's team had asked to hold the rally at a central location close to the Kremlin and the offices of the Russian government.

However, the city government rejected that idea, saying the protest might disrupt scheduled events to mark the Russia Day holiday on that day. Instead, officials proposed other sites, including Prospekt Sakharov, outside the central area.

Similar demonstrations are being organized in dozens of cities across Russia.

Navalny is seeking to build on momentum picked up during nationwide anticorruption protests on March 26 that drew unexpectedly large crowds, including large numbers of young people.

Navalny is trying to get on the ballot for the March 2018 presidential election, in which President Vladimir Putin is widely expected to seek and secure a fourth term as president.

With reporting by Interfax
MOSCOW -- A Dutch-registered foundation is reportedly poised to acquire the English-language Moscow Times in a shake-up that is expected to include major staff cuts and a discontinuation of the print version after a quarter-century in the Russian capital.

Owner Demyan Kudryavtsev told The Moscow Times' roughly two dozen employees on June 7 that the transition is a result of chronic losses, adding that the last print run of the free, weekly paper would be issued in early July.

In his announcement, a recording of which was obtained by RFE/RL, Kudryavtsev said no final decision had been made on whether there would be a print version under the new arrangement.

Dutch media the same day quoted Dutch businessman and Moscow Times founder Derk Sauer -- who sold the paper 12 years ago -- as saying the operations would be taken over by a Dutch-registered foundation.

Sauer's role in the process was not specified, and it was unclear if a sale had taken place.

Foreigner-Ownership Law

Sauer, who could not be reached for comment, insisted via Twitter that he was not buying back the outlet, writing: "To secure [Moscow Times'] future, ownership is moved to Foundation. Will invest in to further develop [TMT]."

Kudryavtsev bought The Moscow Times and the Vedomosti business daily after a law passed in 2014 prohibited foreigners from owning more than 20 percent of Russian media outlets.

A Moscow Times employee told RFE/RL on condition of anonymity it was his understanding that the new version of the paper would have a small staff of just 10, including administrative employees and one staff reporter. The reporter said there are currently between 20 and 30 employees.

Founded by Sauer in October 1992, the Moscow Times has served as a launch pad for young journalists cutting their teeth as correspondents in Russia.

Kudryavtsev told Vedomosti on July 7 that he would stay on as a board member, and that Sauer would run the foundation's activities.
1. Yes. Taxpayers are funding its operation; they should have a voice in the naming process.

2. Yes. The city should operate with a spirit of inclusivity. Residents will be responsive.

3. No. Public input can be problematic; rejection of suggestions can be divisive for residents.

4. No. Residents elect council members to make decisions on their behalf. No input is needed.

5. Unsure. Its hard to say whether public input would be more of a benefit or a hindrance.

Vote

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BRUSSELS -- NATO welcomed Montenegro as its newest member with a flag-raising ceremony at the Western alliance's headquarters in Brussels.

"NATO is an alliance of democracies, united by a single purpose: to stand with each other and defend each other," NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on June 7, calling it a "historic day."

"Montenegro joins NATO as an equal, with a seat at our table, and an equal voice in shaping the future of the alliance," said Stoltenberg, who congratulated Montenegrin President Filip Vujanovic and the people of the Balkan country "for everything you have achieved."

"Montenegro's accession sends a message to other states that seek membership: that if a country travels the path of reform, embraces democracy, and the rule of law and proves itself willing to and able to contribute to our collective defense, sharing the responsibilities as well as the rewards, then it, too, can join the alliance," Stoltenberg said.

Vujanovic described the event as "a great day for Montenegro."

"With NATO membership, our future will be stable, secure, and prosperous," he said. "And we will make decisions about the most important issues within the strongest, most organized, and most efficient alliance in the history of mankind."

Russia has criticized accession for the Adriatic coastal state, with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov asserting on June 6 that Montenegro was "dragged into NATO" and his ministry saying Moscow reserves the right to take "retaliatory measures" on what it called "anti-Russian hysteria" there.

Montenegrin officials have charged 14 people in connection with an alleged Russia-backed plot to take over parliament in October and assassinate then-Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic in a bid to keep the country out of NATO.

Montenegro became NATO's 29th member at a ceremony in Washington on June 5.
CNN has reported that U.S. investigators believe Russian hackers planted a false news story that was a factor in the decisions by several Arab countries to sever ties with Qatar.

The Kremlin contended that the CNN report was "a lie."

The CNN report late on June 6 cited unidentified U.S. officials it said had been briefed on a probe by investigators sent to Qatar to help its government look into a hacking incident that produced the fake story.

Saudi Arabia and a handful of other Sunni-ruled states have cut ties with Qatar since June 5, saying its policies have supported the funding of terrorism as well as "extremist" organizations and Iranian-backed Shi'ite rebel groups.

According to CNN, Qatar's government says the May 23 report issued by the state news agency attributed false remarks to Qatar's ruler that appeared friendly to Iran and Israel.

CNN quoted U.S. officials as saying that intelligence gathered by U.S. security agencies indicated that Russian hackers were behind the intrusion.

The CNN report said it was not clear whether the hackers suspected in the Qatar incident were linked to Russian organizations such as the GRU military intelligence agency, which has been accused of being behind cyberattacks aimed at influencing the U.S. presidential election last year.

But the network quoted U.S. officials as saying the hackers' goal appeared to be to cause rifts among the United States and its allies.

Russia dismissed the CNN report, saying there was "no evidence" of Russian involvement.

"I will say immediately that this is the latest fake, the latest lie," President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said.

"We're getting tired of reacting to unsubstantiated banalities," the Interfax news agency quoted Andrei Krutskikh, a Kremlin adviser on cybersecurity, as saying. "Whatever happens it is hackers. It's a stale claim and as ever there is zero evidence, and conclusions are drawn before the incident is even investigated."

U.S. President Donald Trump sent mixed messages on the issue on June 6. He initially appeared to hail the move by Saudi Arabia and other Arab states, saying that the moves targeting Qatar showed his advice on a visit to Riyadh last month was "already paying off" as the Arab states were taking a "hard line" against the financing of terrorism.

The White House seemed to take a different tone after Trump spoke by telephone with Saudi Arabia's ruler, King Salman. A White House statement said that Trump underscored that "a united Gulf Cooperation Council" -- a regional group that includes Qatar -- is "critical to defeating terrorism and promoting regional stability."

With reporting by CNN and AFP
Russian lawmakers are asking authorities to consider broadening the country's controversial "foreign agent" law to include nongovernmental organizations that receive funding from Russian citizens with foreign income sources.

The proposal was floated in Russia's upper chamber of parliament, which is dominated by the ruling United Russia party, during a June 7 hearing on alleged foreign "interference" that featured heated denunciations of the West by top officials.

It comes amid escalating warnings by officials in Moscow that Western governments are seeking to sow discord in Russia ahead of the March 2018 presidential election, which is expected to hand President Vladimir Putin a fourth term.

If enacted, the proposal would broaden the criteria under which NGOs could be deemed a "foreign agent" under a 2013 law impacting organizations that receive funding from abroad and are deemed to be engaged in political activity.

Under the current law, such funding is applicable only if it is from foreign governments, organizations, or citizens.

The new proposal would broaden those financing sources to include Russian citizens who receive money or assets from foreign governments, organizations, or citizens.

Lawmakers on June 7 recommended that Russian state financial regulators and law-enforcement authorities examine the proposal.

Russian and international human rights organizations say the 2013 law was introduced to silence independent voices.

Kremlin opponents say authorities are trying to further tighten control over dissenting voices and the political landscape ahead of the March 2018 presidential election.

Based on reporting by rbc.ru, Interfax, RIA Novosti, and TASS


In 2013, former world chess champion and Russian opposition political activist Garry Kasparov emigrated from Russia to the United States. Since then, he has continued to be a vocal critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin and has consistently warned the West that Putinism presents a global danger.

His 2015 book was titled Winter Is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin And The Enemies Of The Free World Must Be Stopped.

Kasparov spoke recently with RFE/RL Russian Service correspondent Mikhail Sokolov about the West's relations with Russia since the 2016 election of U.S. President Donald Trump.

RFE/RL: There is so much going on in the world these days that it is hard to know where to begin. Perhaps, with Russia?

Garry Kasparov: I think that these days it doesn't make sense to speak separately about Russia, about the United States, about Ukraine, or about Europe. Everything is interconnected.

This is particularly true when you take into account Putin's strategy -- if you can use that word to describe his survival tactics in a rapidly changing world. Anyway, his survival strategy is completely based on an aggressive foreign policy course.

I think we can count Trump's win among a set of Pyrrhic victories for the Putin regime.

So events inside Russia, without doubt, are very tightly connected with what is happening in the rest of the world, especially since Putin is actively trying to influence those processes.

For example, it is pretty clear that all the elections that are happening in Western countries have in one way or another ended up in the orbit of Putin's interests. We can say with confidence that in several cases his influence has had a serious effect and has even influenced the results of elections.

But in recent weeks, it has also become clear that Western democracies have understood that such actions present a serious threat to the functioning of democratic institutions in the free world. Putin has begun to encounter organized resistance and failure for the first time.

RFE/RL: Would you say the victory of Donald Trump in the U.S. presidential election and all that has happened since represents a win for Putin? Or will the new U.S. leadership decide that Putinism presents a danger to the world?

Kasparov: I think we can count Trump's win among a set of Pyrrhic victories for the Putin regime. It seems clear that Trump's victory was in many regards the result of active operations by the Russian secret services, hacking operations, which in the final days of the race between Trump and [former U.S. Secretary of State] Hillary Clinton influenced a significant quantity of American voters, who, in the end, tilted toward the Republicans because they were pushed away from Clinton.

Their choice was not ideological but, it seems to me, was a matter of taste formed under the influence of information attacks and information dumps that were rather successfully stage-managed by those who controlled the Russian hacking attacks.

It seems to me that the Trump effect has played a decisive role in stopping the onslaught of rightist populism in Europe.

I say it was a Pyrrhic victory because the result has been that Putin and Putin's Russia have, for the first time that I can recall, become factors within American domestic politics, which is quite unusual.

But now Putin has become a domestic political problem for the United States. News programs and talk shows are dominated by the contacts between Trump and his surrogates with Russia, including with the Russian spy agencies.

People are trying to figure out how reliable are reports that Trump has been financed since 2008-09 by Russian oligarchs. Donald Trump Jr. has said that [Russian financing] was crucial to saving the Trump empire during the [global financial] crisis.

There are also various stories -- so far, unconfirmed -- about Trump's visit to Moscow, and so on. This has all become a key part of American political life now. And for Putin, this is a big problem. He now finds himself in the crosshairs.

Moreover, it seems to me that the Trump effect has played a decisive role in stopping the onslaught of rightist populism in Europe. For the first time in several years, those forces -- who were expected to win soundly in the Netherlands -- were nonetheless rather seriously defeated.

And, of course, they were defeated in France. I think that this was a particularly painful loss for Putin, and I think it is a result of the Trump effect. European voters, seeing what is going on in the United States and watching Trump, decided it would be better not to conduct such experiments themselves.

This is a new situation for Putin. His hopes of changing the course of Europe through influencing election processes have, apparently, been dashed.

Now we are facing elections in Germany. According to the latest regional elections and opinion polls, [Chancellor] Angela Merkel is gaining strength, and the hopes of the red-green coalition headed by the Social Democrats, which are still under the influence of [former Chancellor and Putin friend Gerhard] Schroeder, are fading with each day.

This means that Europe will be pretty united on the issue of maintaining sanctions [against Russia], and there shouldn't be any sharp policy changes.

RFE/RL: Have there been any lessons for Russia in the experience of Trump as president so far?

Kasparov: We have seen over the past few months that U.S. democracy is capable of withstanding even Trump's escapades. For example, his attempt to curb immigration through an executive order fell apart in the courts. Four times, as a matter of fact.

Most likely, the matter will end up in the Supreme Court. But it seems, judging from the mood in the United States, that Trump's expectation that he could just issue an order and bring about restrictions on immigration by citizens of certain Muslim countries is entirely unfounded.

I think that this is an important lesson for the citizens of nondemocratic countries -- in this case, for Russia.

We have seen how effectively the Russian secret services are using social networks to advance their own agenda.

The myth of Putinist propaganda is based on the idea that democracy is a form of government that simply provides camouflage for the real interests of those who have power. That, in fact, it is a fiction. But now it turns out that the concept of separation of powers is real and this idea really works.

We have seen how four times in a row the American president has been the loser. And if you look at it from the Russian perspective, he even lost at the level of regional courts. And these weren't even judges in New York or Illinois or California. We are talking about judges in Washington state and Hawaii.

What I mean is that this instance shows that the American president is limited in his capabilities. And I think this is also true in foreign policy, although there the president has much more leeway. But no matter how much Trump wants to lift the sanctions against Putin

RFE/RL: Let's switch gears now and speak about Ukraine. Kyiv has come under a lot of criticism in the West recently for blocking Russian social-media sites and access to some Russian media. What is your opinion of this?

Kasparov: I think that any action that the Ukrainian authorities take to maintain their sovereignty and repel Russian aggression -- in this case, information aggression -- is a step in the right direction.

Moreover, I really hope that these same actions will be taken by European countries and that they will shut down the avenues of information warfare that are actively being used by the Russian secret services in order to stir up tensions in countries with Russian minorities.

I think that the European Union should stop with the crocodile tears about limitations on rights and freedoms in Ukraine and think about how Ukraine's experience can be used effectively.

I repeat: This is information aggression and part of Putin's plan to destabilize the situation both in Ukraine and in Europe itself. There is a war going on. It is an undeclared war, a hybrid war, but that doesn't change the basic fact. There is a war going on.

RFE/RL: A war by whom against whom?

Kasparov: A war by Putin against the free world. For Putin, this war is a means of holding on to his own power. All arguments along the lines that the defending countries are restricting rights and freedoms do not hold water because, in a war situation, it is necessary to take extraordinary measure to preserve sovereignty.

There is a lot at stake. We have seen how effectively the Russian secret services are using social networks to advance their own agenda, for the creation of an atmosphere of mistrust and even hatred.

In my opinion, the Ukrainian experience is a harbinger. They are on the front line. I think that Europe, sooner or later, will begin to move in the same direction.

RFE/RL senior correspondent Robert Coalson contributed to this report


Russian President Vladimir Putin says in a documentary set to air on U.S. television that "nobody would survive" a war between the nuclear-armed countries.

Putin made the comments to Hollywood director Oliver Stone during a series of interviews for the film, in which the Russian leader appears to be given ample room to vent long-held grievances against the United States.

The four-part series, slated to begin airing on June 12 on the Showtime network, comes on the heels of a series of public appearances by Putin in which he has sharpened his criticism of Washington, which he accuses of meddling in Moscow's affairs and exploiting NATO for its own foreign-policy interests.

These themes emerge in his interviews with Stone as well, according to excerpts that have been released online in advance. Asked by the director if the United States would be "dominant" in a "hot war" with Russia, Putin replies, "Nobody would survive."

U.S.-Russian ties cratered in the wake of Moscow's 2014 seizure of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula and backing of separatists in eastern Ukraine. The United States and the European Union slapped sanctions on Moscow over the land grab, and NATO has bolstered its defenses in its easternmost member states in what it calls a defensive move in response to Russian aggression.

Putin's comments to Stone echo comments he has made over 17 years in power, including a speech at an international economic forum in St. Petersburg last week in which he portrayed NATO a foreign-policy tool exploited by Washington.

"NATO is a mere instrument of U.S. foreign policy. It has no allies, it has only vassals. Once a country becomes a NATO member, it is hard to resist the pressures of the United States," he tells Stone in the documentary titled The Putin Interviews.

He says in the interview that Russia would be forced to bolster its military preparedness in response to what he called NATO "threats." The alliance has repeatedly said it poses no threat to Russia and that it is merely protecting its member states in line with the NATO charter.

In parts of the documentary released in advance, Stone appears to offer a comfortable forum to Putin, whose critics accused him of steadily curtailing civic freedoms, prosecuting political opponents, and cronyism that has enriched his friends, family, and associates.

Bloomberg, which was given the first two hourlong episodes by Showtime, noted that "the documentary avoids fact-checking Putin's remarks or interviewing opposition figures."

It also features some of Putin's trademark off-color comments, including the statement, "I am not a woman, so I don't have bad days."

"I am not trying to insult anyone. That's just the nature of things. There are certain natural cycles," Bloomberg quotes Putin as telling Stone.

Stone told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation late last month that he "liked" and "respected" Putin, whom he says has been misrepresented in the West with a "politically, ideologically driven image."

He added of Putin: "I challenged him and I teased him and I angered him, I hit every note I could."

In a trailer released by Showtime, Stone can be heard asking Putin about U.S. allegations that a Kremlin-directed hacking-and-influence campaign aimed to help President Donald Trump, who says he seeks better ties with Moscow, defeat Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in last year's election.

"Why did you hack the election?" Stone is heard asking.

It was not immediately clear how Putin answered, though he has repeatedly denied the accusation. Last week Putin suggested Russian involvement for the first time publicly, saying "patriotic-minded" hackers might target Kremlin critics. But he insisted the government was not involved in such efforts.

With reporting by Bloomberg, TASS, and ABC.net.au
SIMFEROPOL -- A Crimean Tatar leader who has criticized Russia's seizure of the Black Sea peninsula from Ukraine has gone on trial on June 7.

Russian authorities who control Crimea have charged Ilmi Umerov -- deputy chairman of the Crimean Tatars' self-governing body, the Mejlis, which was banned by Moscow -- with separatism.

Umerov was charged in May 2016, after he made public statements opposing Russia's armed takeover of Crimea in March 2014. He denies the charges, saying he has the right to express his opinions freely.

The 59-year-old is one of several critics of the takeover who have faced what rights activists say are politically motivated criminal charges at the hands of the Russian state.

Dozens of relatives and supporters came to the courthouse in the Crimean capital, Simferopol, in hopes of attending the trial.

Authorities allowed only about 15 spectators into the courtroom, citing space concerns.

Aleksandr Podrabinek, a well-known Soviet-era dissident and journalist, came from Moscow to help defend Umerov.

Umerov's lawyer, Mark Feigin, told RFE/RL on June 7 that it was likely to be a lengthy trial. He said that, despite health problems, his client wanted an open trial so that he can speak publicly about the problems faced by Crimean Tatars under Moscow's rule.

In August 2016, Umerov was forcibly sent to a psychiatric clinic for a month of assessment tests.

The Moscow-based Memorial Human Rights Center has called the case against Umerov "illegal and politically motivated."

Mejlis Chairman Refat Chubarov has called the case against Umerov part of a campaign of persecution by the Russia-installed authorities against Crimean Tatars.

Russia took control of Crimea after sending in troops and staging a referendum considered by most countries worldwide as illegitimate.

After the takeover, Russia adopted a law making it a criminal offense to question Russia's territorial integrity within what the government considers its borders.

The majority of Crimean Tatars opposed the annexation, and human rights organizations say members of the Muslim minority group have faced a campaign of abuse and oppression under Russian rule.
Russia's security service has told Russian news agencies that it raided the Church of Scientology's branch in St. Petersburg as part of a probe into illegal entrepreneurship, extremism, and incitement of hatred.

The June 6 raid on the U.S.-based church comes after Russia's Supreme Court in April issued a ruling banning Jehovah's Witnesses and seizing their property, with the Justice Ministry calling the Christian evangelical movement an "extremist organization."

An Federal Security Service (FSB) spokeswoman said it raided the church's buildings and also the homes of church members.

The FSB said the probe was initially launched into the church's earnings from selling educational materials to new recruits.

The Church of Scientology was first registered officially in Russia in 1994 but the authorities have pursued it through the courts in recent years.

In 2016 the Russian Supreme Court ordered the closure of the Moscow branch of the Church of Scientology.

The Justice Ministry has ruled that a number of the church's publications are extremist and calls the organization a sect.

The Church of Scientology was founded in the United States in 1954 by science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard and was accorded the status of a religion there in 1993.

The European Court of Human Rights has twice ruled in favor of the church, saying that Russia violated its rights by refusing to register its churches in various regions.

Prominent Scientologists include Hollywood stars Tom Cruise and John Travolta.

With reporting by Rossia-24 television, AFP, Interfax, and TASS
Several people have been killed after gunmen and suicide bombers targeted the Iranian parliament and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's shrine in twin attacks on June 7. The Islamic State extremist group has claimed responsibility for both incidents.
The Power Vertical is a blog written especially for Russia wonks and obsessive Kremlin watchers by Brian Whitmore. It offers Brian's personal take on emerging and developing trends in Russian politics, shining a spotlight on the high-stakes power struggles, machinations, and clashing interests that shape Kremlin policy today. Check out The Power Vertical Facebook page or Follow @PowerVertical
U.S. President Donald Trump has appeared to change course, urging Saudi King Salman to work for Arab unity after having appeared to side with the Saudis and other Arab states in a dispute with Qatar.

Trump started out the day hailing the kingdom's move with several other Arab states to isolate Qatar on June 5 by cutting off diplomatic and trade relations, saying the boycott showed his advice to Riyadh on a visit last month was "already paying off" as the Arab states were taking a "hard line" against the financing of terrorism.

Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and other states which cut off Qatar say Doha's policies have supported the funding of terrorism as well as "extremist" groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Shi'ite rebel groups fomenting unrest in the region that are backed by Iran.

But Trump in his evening conversation with Salman on June 6 argued against isolating Doha, saying that reestablishing unity on the Gulf Cooperation Council, where Qatar is a member, will be "critical to defeating terrorism and promoting regional stability."

Besides Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the Gulf Council includes the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, which have sided with the Saudis in the dispute, as well as Oman and Kuwait, which did not join the boycott of Qatar.

The White House said Trump and Salman also discussed how to prevent the financing of terrorist organizations and eliminate "the promotion of extremism by any nation in the region."

A State Department official told AP earlier in the day that despite the presence of 8,000 U.S. troops in Qatar, Washington wouldn't try to mediate the dispute because it is better for countries in the region to resolve the conflict among themselves. The official noted that both Kuwait and Turkey have offered to mediate.

The U.S. State Department said Qatar had already made progress in closing avenues for financing for terrorist groups within its borders, but has more work to do.

Saudi Arabia's foreign minister said on June 6 that Qatar needed to take several steps, including ending its support of the Palestinian militant group Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, to restore ties with the Arab states.

"We've decided to take steps to make clear that enough is enough," Adel al-Jubeir told journalists in Paris. He said the "fairly large cost" on Qatar's economy from the cutoff of food supplies, air traffic and other trade would convince it to change its policies.

With reporting by AP, AFP, dpa, and Reuters
WASHINGTON -- Top U.S. intelligence officials have refused to answer key questions from senators about whether President Donald Trump sought to influence the FBI investigation into his associates ties to Russia.

The tense June 7 hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee came one day before former FBI Director James Comey is to testify for the first time since his firing by Trump last month.

Comey was overseeing the criminal probe into Trump associates interactions with Russian officials, including Trumps first choice for national security adviser, Michael Flynn. News reports have said Trump sought to pressure Comey to back off his investigation of Flynn, who was fired in February after he misled White House officials about his communications with Russian officials, including Moscow's ambassador in Washington.

The question of whether Trumps current and former associates had inappropriate interactions with Russian or other foreign officials has shadowed the Trump White House since his inauguration in January, hobbling his push on several major legislative priorities.

During the Senate hearing, both Democratic and some Republican lawmakers pressed Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and National Security Agency chief Mike Rogers about whether Trump had pressured them about the FBI investigation.

The Washington Post said in an article published June 6 that said Trump pressed Coats to intervene with the FBI on the investigation of Flynn.

"I have never been pressured. I have never felt pressure to interfere or intervene in shaping intelligence in a political way," Coats told the panel.

But both Coats and Rogers also said they wouldn't publicly reveal more specifics of private conversations they had with Trump.

"What I'm not willing to do is to share confidential information that I think ought to be protected in an open hearing," Coats later told senators.

The Justice Department on May 17 appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel to oversee the FBI investigation.

In addition to the FBI probe, at least two different congressional panels, including the Senate Intelligence Committee, are looking into that issue, as well as U.S. intelligence reports that Russia actively meddled in the 2016 election campaign.

Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate committee, said any interference by Trump in the FBI investigation would be deeply troubling.

"Any attempt by the White House or even the president himself to exploit this community as a tool for political purposes is deeply, deeply troubling," he said.

The Kremlin has repeatedly denied U.S. intelligence conclusions that Moscow tried to tilt the election campaign in Trump's favor.
YEREVAN -- Armenia has proposed creating a demilitarized zone with international guarantees around Azerbaijan's mostly Armenian-populated breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Speaking at a weekly session of his government on November 10, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said he voiced this proposal, originally put forth by Nagorno-Karabakhs de facto authorities, at a meeting on October 31 with the presidents of Russia and Azerbaijan in Sochi, Russia.

"It is proposed to create a demilitarized zone around Nagorno-Karabakh with international guarantees, as a result of which Nagorno-Karabakh may not need a defense army of that scale. This proposal is still valid, I think," Pashinian said.

Pashinian also said an updated proposal on the demilitarization of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border zone was proposed to Azerbaijan, suggesting it withdraw its troops from the border line confirmed in 1991 when both nations gained independence, creating a three-kilometer demilitarized zone on either side.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have accused each other of cease-fire violations along the border in recent days.

A spokesman for Armenia's Defense Ministry said one of its soldiers had been shot and wounded on November 10 along the border in what Yerevan says was a fresh cease-fire violation by Baku.

Aram Torosian said the Armenian soldier was wounded by "an enemy shot" and was in severe condition.

The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry issued a statement denying the report.

"Azerbaijani units did not open fire in the mentioned direction," the statement said, calling the report a "lie."

Baku on November 9 accused ethnic Armenian forces in Nagorno-Karabakh of firing at Azerbaijani military positions in the east of the region the previous night. De facto Armenian authorities in Stepanakert denied the accusation.

Reports of shootings along the Armenian-Azerbaijani border and in Karabakh come days after the latest round of talks focused on a peace deal between the foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan, Ararat Mirzoyan and Jeyhun Bayramov, that was hosted by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington on November 7.

In a statement issued on the results of the talks the Armenian and Azerbaijani ministers said they agreed to expedite negotiations and organize another meeting in the coming weeks.

During the October 31 meeting hosted by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Pashinian and Aliyev pledged not to use force to resolve the conflict.

Armenia accuses Azerbaijan of invading and occupying parts of its territory in the border zone during several incursions since May 2021. Azerbaijan denies any occupation, referring to the fact of the absence of delimitation and demarcation of the nearly 500-kilometer border between the two South Caucasus nations.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked in a conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh for years. Some 30,000 people were killed in a war in the early 1990s that left ethnic Armenians in control of the breakaway region and seven adjacent districts of Azerbaijan proper.

The two sides fought another war in 2020 that lasted six weeks and killed thousands of people on both sides before a Russia-brokered cease-fire, resulting in Armenians' losing control over parts of the region and the adjacent districts.

Under the cease-fire agreement Moscow deployed about 2,000 troops in the region to serve as peacekeepers.

Nagorno-Karabakh is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan.

With reporting by AFP and RFE/RL's Armenian Service
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The U.S. House of Representatives has unanimously called for U.S. criminal charges against members of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's security detail who attacked protesters in Washington last month.

The 397 to 0 vote for the House resolution late on June 6 came after lawmakers expressed outrage over what many called a "brutal" attack on peaceful demonstrators on May 16 outside the Turkish ambassador's residence that left 11 people injured.

"Multiple armed Turkish security officials beat, kicked, and choked unarmed demonstrators," the resolution states in unusually sharp language against a NATO ally.

"Any Turkish security officials who directed, oversaw, or participated in efforts by Turkish security forces to illegally suppress peaceful protests...should be charged and prosecuted under United States law."

A similar measure responding to the violent incident is working its way through the U.S. Senate, but it is unclear whether the legislation will result in any arrests. The Turkish bodyguards who were blamed for the attacks have returned to Turkey.

Washington police and other U.S. officials have blamed Erdogan's security detail for attacking a small group of pro-Kurdish protesters during Erdogan's visit to the capital.

The U.S. State Department called the violence "deeply disturbing" and numerous U.S. lawmakers said it highlighted the autocratic nature of Erdogan's rule and his dismissal of human rights and civil rights protections.

Turkey blamed the unrest on supporters of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), who Ankara maintains picked a fight with pro-Erdogan Turks who were also present at the demonstration.

The PKK is viewed as a terrorist group both in Washington and Ankara, but Turkey has not provided any evidence that PKK militants were at the scene of the clash.

Turkey also has protested against what it called "aggressive and unprofessional actions" by Washington police, who are seen in videos struggling to protect protesters during the incident.

Lawmakers widely dismissed Ankara's portrayal of the clash.

"The blame for this assault lies with the Turkish government alone," House Speaker Paul Ryan said. "I urge Istanbul to finally accept responsibility for this egregious incident and apologize to those who were harmed."

The House resolution urges the State Department to request that Turkey waive diplomatic immunity for those involved.

"The United States will not tolerate violence against peaceful protesters on our shores, and those responsible must face justice," said Steny Hoyer, the House's second-ranking Democrat and co-sponsor of the resolution.

"The conduct must change. It is unacceptable."

Video posted on social media immediately after the clash showed Turkish officials dressed in suits beating and punching people in the crowd and, in at least one case, kicking a woman splayed on the ground.

One video on social media even showed Erdogan watching the melee from his car and later exiting the vehicle and glancing toward the fight.

Washington, D.C., police arrested two members of Erdogan's detail after the clash but released them soon afterward and they returned to Turkey with Erdogan.

The House resolution does not have the force of law, so it would only prompt further action against the Turkish security officials if the Trump administration chose to honor the resolution. The State Department has said it is still investigating the matter.

It was not the first episode of violence by Turkish security personnel on U.S. soil, lawmakers said. Last year, a similar scuffle erupted outside a nuclear security summit that Erdogan attended in Washington.

"Same head of state, same thugs attacking peaceful protesters," said Washington's representative in Congress, Eleanor Holmes Norton.

With reporting by AP and AFP
Boosted by natural magnifying lenses in space, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured unique close-up views of the universe's brightest infrared galaxies, which are as much as 10,000 times more luminous than our Milky Way.

The galaxy images, magnified through a phenomenon called gravitational lensing, reveal a tangled web of misshapen objects punctuated by exotic patterns such as rings and arcs. The odd shapes are due largely to the foreground lensing galaxies' powerful gravity distorting the images of the background galaxies. The unusual forms also may have been produced by spectacular collisions between distant, massive galaxies in a sort of cosmic demolition derby.

"We have hit the jackpot of gravitational lenses," said lead researcher James Lowenthal of Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. "These ultra-luminous, massive, starburst galaxies are very rare. Gravitational lensing magnifies them so that you can see small details that otherwise are unimaginable. We can see features as small as about 100 light-years or less across. We want to understand what's powering these monsters, and gravitational lensing allows us to study them in greater detail."

The galaxies are ablaze with runaway star formation, pumping out more than 10,000 new stars a year. This unusually rapid star birth is occurring at the peak of the universe's star-making boom more than 8 billion years ago. The star-birth frenzy creates lots of dust, which enshrouds the galaxies, making them too faint to detect in visible light. But they glow fiercely in infrared light, shining with the brilliance of 10 trillion to 100 trillion suns.

Gravitational lenses occur when the intense gravity of a massive galaxy or cluster of galaxies magnifies the light of fainter, more distant background sources. Previous observations of the galaxies, discovered in far-infrared light by ground- and space-based observatories, had hinted of gravitational lensing. But Hubble's keen vision confirmed the researchers' suspicion.

Lowenthal is presenting his results June 6, at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin, Texas.

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According to the research team, only a few dozen of these bright infrared galaxies exist in the universe, scattered across the sky. They reside in unusually dense regions of space that somehow triggered rapid star formation in the early universe.

The galaxies may hold clues to how galaxies formed billions of years ago. "There are so many unknowns about star and galaxy formation," Lowenthal explained. "We need to understand the extreme cases, such as these galaxies, as well as the average cases, like our Milky Way, in order to have a complete story about how galaxy and star formation happen."

In studying these strange galaxies, astronomers first must detangle the foreground lensing galaxies from the background ultra-bright galaxies. Seeing this effect is like looking at objects at the bottom of a swimming pool. The water distorts your view, just as the lensing galaxies' gravity stretches the shapes of the distant galaxies. "We need to understand the nature and scale of those lensing effects to interpret properly what we're seeing in the distant, early universe," Lowenthal said. "This applies not only to these brightest infrared galaxies, but probably to most or maybe even all distant galaxies."

Lowenthal's team is halfway through its Hubble survey of 22 galaxies. An international team of astronomers first discovered the galaxies in far-infrared light using survey data from the European Space Agency's (ESA) Planck space observatory, and some clever sleuthing. The team then compared those sources to galaxies found in ESA's Herschel Space Observatory's catalog of far-infrared objects and to ground-based radio data taken by the Very Large Array in New Mexico. The researchers next used the Large Millimeter Telescope (LMT) in Mexico to measure their exact distances from Earth. The LMT's far-infrared images also revealed multiple objects, hinting that the galaxies were being gravitationally lensed.

These bright objects existed between 8 billion and 11.5 billion years ago, when the universe was making stars more vigorously than it is today. The galaxies' star-birth production is 5,000 to 10,000 times higher than that of our Milky Way. However, the ultra-bright galaxies are pumping out stars using only the same amount of gas contained in the Milky Way.

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So, the nagging question is, what is powering the prodigious star birth? "We've known for two decades that some of the most luminous galaxies in the universe are very dusty and massive, and they're undergoing bursts of star formation," Lowenthal said. "But they've been very hard to study because the dust makes them practically impossible to observe in visible light. They're also very rare: they don't appear in any of Hubble's deep-field surveys. They are in random parts of the sky that nobody's looked at before in detail. That's why finding that they are gravitationally lensed is so important."

These galaxies may be the brighter, more distant cousins of the ultra-luminous infrared galaxies (ULIRGS), hefty, dust-cocooned, starburst galaxies, seen in the nearby universe. The ULIRGS' star-making output is stoked by the merger of two spiral galaxies, which is one possibility for the stellar baby boom in their more-distant relatives. However, Lowenthal said that computer simulations of the birth and growth of galaxies show that major mergers occur at a later epoch than the one in which these galaxies are seen.

Another idea for the star-making surge is that lots of gas, the material that makes stars, is flooding into the faraway galaxies. "The early universe was denser, so maybe gas is raining down on the galaxies, or they are fed by some sort of channel or conduit, which we have not figured out yet," Lowenthal said. "This is what theoreticians struggle with: How do you get all the gas into a galaxy fast enough to make it happen?"

The research team plans to use Hubble and the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii to try to distinguish between the foreground and background galaxies so they can begin to analyze the details of the brilliant monster galaxies.

Future telescopes, such as NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, an infrared observatory scheduled to launch in 2018, will measure the speed of the galaxies' stars so that astronomers can calculate the mass of these ultra-luminous objects.

"The sky is covered with all kinds of galaxies, including those that shine in far-infrared light," Lowenthal said. "What we're seeing here is the tip of the iceberg: the very brightest of all."
Exactly when does old age begin? Which health markers best predict who will live a long and healthy life versus a life spent in poor health?

Developing metrics to help answer these questions and to understand the tradeoffs between lifespan and health span is the subject of a recent paper by MDI Biological Laboratory scientists in Journals of Gerontology: Biological Sciences, a publication of the Gerontological Society of America.

The authors studied various parameters of health in short-lived strains of the roundworm, C. elegans, with the goal of developing an empirical definition of the onset of old age, and of teasing out which health markers are most predictive of a long and healthy life.

With the development of new genetics tools, scientists are getting closer to developing therapies to extend human lifespan, but the effect of such therapies on health span (the proportion of life spent in good health) is unclear. While it used to be thought that therapies to extend lifespan would also extend health span, new research is showing that may not always be true.

The growing number of anti-aging therapies on the horizon creates a need for the development of new parameters to assess healthy aging. Instead of striving to only to prolong longevity, as has been the case in the past, the use of such tools will allow scientists to focus their efforts on lifespan-enhancing therapies with the greatest positive effects on health.

"All anti-aging interventions aren't created equal," said post-doctoral researcher Jarod Rollins, Ph.D., one of the study's lead investigators. "A recent study in C. elegans found, for instance, that the proportion of life spent in a frail state is longer in long-lived mutants than in wild-type animals. Our research is aimed at developing tools to help scientists assess the effect of lifespan-enhancing interventions on health span."

The molecular mechanisms of aging are a focus of research at the MDI Biological Laboratory, located in Bar Harbor, Maine, which is pioneering new approaches to regenerative medicine focused on the development of drugs to increase healthy lifespan by enhancing the body's innate ability to repair and regenerate lost or damaged tissues and organs.

Rollins works in the laboratory of Aric Rogers, Ph.D., the lead author of the study, in the institution's Kathryn W. Davis Center for Regenerative Biology and Medicine.

C. elegans is a popular model in aging research because its short lifespan of only two to three weeks allows scientists to quickly assess the effects of anti-aging interventions, including genetic manipulation and drug therapies. The tiny, soil-dwelling roundworm also has other advantages for research: it shares many of its genes with humans and its health markers roughly correspond to those in humans.

One marker that the MDI Biological Laboratory scientists found to be predictive of a healthy lifespan in C. elegans was movement speed. Movement speed corresponds to walking speed in humans, which studies have found to be an accurate predictor of longevity. One of the scientists' next steps will be to further develop movement speed as a marker for assessing the effect of anti-aging interventions in C. elegans.

"As science closes in on the mechanisms underlying aging, the tradeoffs between lifespan and health span become a greater cause for concern," said Kevin Strange, Ph.D., president of the MDI Biological Laboratory. "The scientists in the Rogers laboratory are at the forefront of developing metrics to assess the impact of anti-aging interventions on quality of life."
Using seismic data and supercomputers, Rice University geophysicists have conducted a massive seismic CT scan of the upper mantle beneath the Tibetan Plateau and concluded that the southern half of the "Roof of the World" formed in less than one-quarter of the time since the beginning of India-Eurasia continental collision.

The research, which appears online this week in the journal Nature Communications, finds that the high-elevation of Southern Tibet was largely achieved within 10 million years. Continental India's tectonic collision with Asia began about 45 million years ago.

"The features that we see in our tomographic image are very different from what has been seen before using traditional seismic inversion techniques," said Min Chen, the Rice research scientist who headed the project. "Because we used full waveform inversion to assimilate a large seismic data set, we were able to see more clearly how the upper-mantle lithosphere beneath Southern Tibet differs from that of the surrounding region. Our seismic image suggests that the Tibetan lithosphere thickened and formed a denser root that broke away and sank deeper into the mantle. We conclude that most of the uplift across Southern Tibet likely occurred when this lithospheric root broke away."

The research could help answer longstanding questions about Tibet's formation. Known as the "Roof of the World," the Tibetan Plateau stands more than three miles above sea level. The basic story behind its creation -- the tectonic collision between the Indian and Eurasian continents -- is well-known to schoolchildren the world over, but the specific details have remained elusive. For example, what causes the plateau to rise and how does its high elevation impact Earth's climate?

"The leading theory holds that the plateau rose continuously once the India-Eurasia continental collision began, and that the plateau is maintained by the northward motion of the Indian plate, which forces the plateau to shorten horizontally and move upward simultaneously," said study co-author Fenglin Niu, a professor of Earth science at Rice. "Our findings support a different scenario, a more rapid and pulsed uplift of Southern Tibet."

It took three years for Chen and colleagues to complete their tomographic model of the crust and upper-mantle structure beneath Tibet. The model is based on readings from thousands of seismic stations in China, Japan and other countries in East Asia. Seismometers record the arrival time and amplitude of seismic waves, pulses of energy that are released by earthquakes and that travel through Earth. The arrival time of a seismic wave at a particular seismometer depends upon what type of rock it has passed through. Working backward from instrument readings to calculate the factors that produced them is something scientists refer to as an inverse problem, and seismological inverse problems with full waveforms incorporating all kinds of usable seismic waves are some of the most complex inverse problems to solve.

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Chen and colleagues used a technique called full waveform inversion, "an iterative full waveform-matching technique that uses a complicated numerical code that requires parallel computing on supercomputers," she said.

"The technique really allows us to use all the wiggles on a large number of seismographs to build up a more realistic 3-D model of Earth's interior, in much the same way that whales or bats use echo-location," she said. "The seismic stations are like the ears of the animal, but the echo that they are hearing is a seismic wave that has either been transmitted through or bounced off of subsurface features inside Earth."

The tomographic model includes features to a depth of about 500 miles below Tibet and the Himalaya Mountains. The model was computed on Rice's DAVinCI computing cluster and on supercomputers at the University of Texas that are part of the National Science Foundation's Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE).

"The mechanism that led to the rise of Southern Tibet is called lithospheric thickening and foundering," Chen said. "This happened because of convergence of two continental plates, which are each buoyant and not easy to subduct underneath the other plate. One of the plates, in this case on the Tibetan side, was more deformable than the other, and it began to deform around 45 million years ago when the collision began. The crust and the rigid lid of upper mantle -- the lithosphere -- deformed and thickened, and the denser lower part of this thickened lithosphere eventually foundered, or broke off from the rest of the lithosphere. Today, in our model, we can see a T-shaped section of this foundered lithosphere that extends from a depth of about 250 kilometers to at least 660 kilometers."

Chen said that after the denser lithospheric root broke away, the remaining lithosphere under Southern Tibet experienced rapid uplift in response.

"The T-shaped piece of foundered lithosphere sank deeper into the mantle and also induced hot upwelling of the asthenosphere, which leads to surface magmatism in Southern Tibet," she said.

Such magmatism is documented in the rock record of the region, beginning around 30 million years ago in an epoch known as the Oligocene.

"The spatial correlation between our tomographic model and Oligocene magmatism suggests that the Southern Tibetan uplift happened in a relatively short geological span that could have been as short as 5 million years," Chen said.
Astronomers have used the sharp vision of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to repeat a century-old test of Einstein's general theory of relativity. The Hubble team measured the mass of a white dwarf, the burned-out remnant of a normal star, by seeing how much it deflects the light from a background star.

This observation represents the first time Hubble has witnessed this type of effect created by a star. The data provide a solid estimate of the white dwarf's mass and yield insights into theories of the structure and composition of the burned-out star.

First proposed in 1915, Einstein's general relativity theory describes how massive objects warp space, which we feel as gravity. The theory was experimentally verified four years later when a team led by British astronomer Sir Arthur Eddington measured how much the sun's gravity deflected the image of a background star as its light grazed the sun during a solar eclipse, an effect called gravitational microlensing.

Astronomers can use this effect to see magnified images of distant galaxies or, at closer range, to measure tiny shifts in a star's apparent position on the sky. Researchers had to wait a century, however, to build telescopes powerful enough to detect this gravitational warping phenomenon caused by a star outside our solar system. The amount of deflection is so small only the sharpness of Hubble could measure it.

Hubble observed the nearby white dwarf star Stein 2051 B as it passed in front of a background star. During the close alignment, the white dwarf's gravity bent the light from the distant star, making it appear offset by about 2 milliarcseconds from its actual position. This deviation is so small that it is equivalent to observing an ant crawl across the surface of a quarter from 1,500 miles away.

Using the deflection measurement, the Hubble astronomers calculated that the white dwarf's mass is roughly 68 percent of the sun's mass. This result matches theoretical predictions.

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The technique opens a window on a new method to determine a star's mass. Normally, if a star has a companion, astronomers can determine its mass by measuring the double-star system's orbital motion. Although Stein 2051 B has a companion, a bright red dwarf, astronomers cannot accurately measure its mass because the stars are too far apart. The stars are at least 5 billion miles apart -- almost twice Pluto's present distance from the sun.

"This microlensing method is a very independent and direct way to determine the mass of a star," explained lead researcher Kailash Sahu of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland. "It's like placing the star on a scale: the deflection is analogous to the movement of the needle on the scale."

Sahu will present his team's findings on June 7, at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin, Texas.

The Hubble analysis also helped the astronomers to independently verify the theory of how a white dwarf's radius is determined by its mass, an idea first proposed in 1935 by Indian American astronomer Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. "Our measurement is a nice confirmation of white dwarf theory, and it even tells us the internal composition of a white dwarf," said team member Howard Bond of Pennsylvania State University in University Park.

Sahu's team identified Stein 2051 B and its background star after combing through data of more than 5,000 stars in a catalog of nearby stars that appear to move quickly across the sky. Stars with a higher apparent motion across the sky have a greater chance of passing in front of a distant background star, where the deflection of light can be measured.

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After identifying Stein 2051 B and mapping the background star field, the researchers used Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 to observe the white dwarf seven different times over a two-year period as it moved past the selected background star.

The Hubble observations were challenging and time-consuming. The research team had to analyze the white dwarf's velocity and the direction it was moving in order to predict when it would arrive at a position to bend the starlight so the astronomers could observe the phenomenon with Hubble.

The astronomers also had to measure the tiny amount of deflected starlight. "Stein 2051 B appears 400 times brighter than the distant background star," said team member Jay Anderson of STScI, who led the analysis to precisely measure the positions of stars in the Hubble images. "So measuring the extremely small deflection is like trying to see a firefly move next to a light bulb. The movement of the insect is very small, and the glow of the light bulb makes it difficult to see the insect moving." In fact, the slight movement is about 1,000 times smaller than the measurement made by Eddington in his 1919 experiment.

Stein 2051 B is named for its discoverer, Dutch Roman Catholic priest and astronomer Johan Stein. It resides 17 light-years from Earth and is estimated to be about 2.7 billion years old. The background star is about 5,000 light-years away.

The researchers plan to use Hubble to conduct a similar microlensing study with Proxima Centauri, our solar system's closest stellar neighbor.
Wilaya of Awserd (Refugee Camps), May 21, 2017 (SPS) -Sahrawi president and Secretary General of the Polisario Front Brahim Ghali hailed Saturday the support of the international community to the Sahrawi cause and the efforts made by all defenders of the Sahrawi people's struggle, notably Algeria, and called on the United Nations to fully assume its responsibility vis-a-vis the completion of the decolonization of Western Sahara.

"We hail Algeria, a brotherly country, which has supported, in accordance with its principle and international resolutions and charter with neither reserve nor hesitation, the struggle of the Sahrawi people to put an end to colonialism in its country," said President Ghali in a message to the international community on the occasion of the 44th anniversary of the outbreak of the struggle against the Moroccan occupation, highlighting "Algeria's deserved position at the regional, continental and international levels as it wisely addresses the challenges and dangers facing the region including those resulting from Morocco's hostile policy."

"We also hail the support of the Republic of Mauritania and our brothers in the African continent, which make the Sahrawi cause an African cause despite Morocco's refusal," he stated.

The Sahrawi president also welcomed "the solidarity movement in Europe and in the whole world," highlighting "the solidarity shown by the Spanish people and the Spanish state's historical and legal responsibilities vis-a-vis the Saharawi people.

Ghali reiterated its call to the UN "to fully assume its responsibility in the completion of the decolonization of Western Sahara," stressing that "the Polisario Front affirms its full readiness to cooperate with the UN Secretary General and its special envoy to speed up the Minurso mission and implement the provisions of the last resolution of the Security Council, particularly the one relating to the continuation of the negotiation process and the handling of all suspended issues arising from Morocco's violation of the ceasefire and the N1 military agreement in Guerguerat." (SPS)

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In May 2017 the JF-17B, a two-seat version of the Sino-Pakistani JF-17, made its first flight. The B version is built to be either an advanced trainer or, when equipped with a few million dollars worth of additional sensors and upgraded fire control electronics, an advanced fighter-bomber. The B version is also an effort to generate more export sales, the lack of which threatens the entire program. Since the JF-17A entered service in 2007 Pakistan has been aggressively seeking customers for its new jet fighter. By 2017 there were only 90 JF-17s built, all of them for Pakistan. There are orders from Burma for 16 and Nigeria for three but these two sales are more about diplomacy (and bribes) than military necessity.

Pakistan is offering the basic JF-17A for a low price ($25 million in the cheapest configuration) and touts the fact that this is a third the price of an F-16. But this is comparing apples and oranges. The low end JF-17 is little more than a day time interceptor. The most capable F-16 model in service is the F-16I, used exclusively by Israel. It's basically a modified version of the F-16C/D Block 50/52 optimized to deliver smart bombs anywhere, at any time, in any weather and despite dense air defenses. The F-16I costs about $70 million each. At the moment there are no plans to upgrade the JF-17 to match that but the JF-17B will be less than half the price of the F-16I and have some of the capabilities. What Pakistan is really touting here is the availability of a jet fighter that is cheap and performs somewhat like an F-16. For many countries, this is an attractive option. The only problem is that there are hundreds of second-hand (and very well maintained) F-16s on the market, selling for less than the bare-bones JF-17.

Because the JF-17 was a joint effort with China the first JF-17s were manufactured in China. But the goal was always to shift production to Pakistan, with the original goal of 25 a year being produced by 2011. This goal was not achieved, but production has been established in Pakistan and it is growing. The Chinese designed JF-17 (also known as FC-1) is also manufactured in China, which is trying to export it to Algeria, Egypt, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Burma, Iran and Sri Lanka as an inexpensive alternative to American and Russian fighters. So far, no takers. The JF-17s to be built in Pakistan are mainly composed of Chinese parts, and the Chinese Air Force has not shown any interest in obtaining the aircraft for its own use. Officially, the Chinese Air Force is still evaluating the JF-17, but unofficially, Chinese air force commanders consider the JF-17 a failed design.

In 2010 Pakistan signed a deal to buy the next 42, of 300, of these jets from China. These 42 cost $14.3 million per aircraft. The final 250 will cost $12 million each. The aircraft is assembled in both Pakistan and China, with the engines coming from Russia, and most of the other components from China.

The first JF-17 fighter arrived in Pakistan by 2007. That marked the completion of over twenty years of development for what was first called the Super 7 fighter. The JF-17 was developed by China in cooperation with Pakistan, which originally only wanted to buy 150 of them. All this came about because Pakistan could not get modern fighters from anyone else, and turned to China. At the time, China had nothing comparable to the early model F-16s Pakistan already had.

The JF-17 design is also based on a cancelled Russian project, the MiG-33. Originally, Pakistan wanted Western electronics in the JF-17, but because of the risk of Chinese technology theft, and pressure from the United States (who did not want China to steal more Western aviation electronics), the JF-17 uses Chinese and Pakistani electronics.

The 13 ton JF-17 can carry 3.6 tons of weapons and uses radar guided and heat seeking missiles. It has max speed of nearly 2,000 kilometers an hour, an operating range of 1,300 kilometers and a max altitude of nearly 18,000 meters (55,000 feet). China says it does not want to use the JF-17 itself because its own J-10 (another local design) and J-11 (a license built Russian Su-27) are adequate for their needs. The J-10, like the JF-17, did not work out as well as was hoped, but that's another matter. Meanwhile, Pakistan has one squadron in service, and another being formed.
An F/A-18E Super Hornet launches from the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower in the Atlantic Ocean, June 2, 2017. The aircraft is assigned to Strike Fighter Squadron 106. Navy photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Anderson W. Branch

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The Shia rebels are stalling efforts to negotiate a peace deal. This is seen as an example of Iranian influence because its the sort of tactic Iran has often used for a long time. In this case Iranian advisers have convinced Yemeni Shia rebel leaders is that their best chance of coming out of all this intact is to hang on for a bit longer. Waiting for exactly what is a mystery, at least to the public.

Some secrets have been revealed. For example Iran has quietly put several hundred Iranian and Lebanese (Hezbollah) advisers and technical experts into Shia controlled northwestern Yemen since early 2015. In that time about fifty of these Iranian personnel have been killed or captured. But the rest have been very effective. But this has not stopped the government forces from advancing although it has slowed them down.

In the north government forces are now within 20 kilometers of the rebel held national capital Saana. Living conditions in Saana continue to decline and in April there was an outbreak of cholera (that is spread by infected water and food). This is because the rebels have not put a priority on maintaining the quality of the water supply and now there have been nearly 10,000 cases of cholera with over a hundred deaths so far. Iran blames the people fighting the rebels, especially Saudi Arabia.

Another public health problem is the heavy use of landmines by the Shia rebels. At first these were mainly used to slow down the advance of government troops and keep unfriendly populations from misbehaving. The rebels used some anti-vehicle but mainly anti-personnel mines. The Shia rebels also use roadside bombs, as do the Islamic terrorists. Since 2014 the rebels appear to have planted about half a million landmines, most of them to in areas where there is no fighting at the moment but lots of civilians wandering around. Nearly 700 people, mostly civilians, have died from these mines so far with about as many wounded, many losing a limb. The only mine casualties that get much media attention are the Saudi soldiers killed by mines planted on the border by rebels who sneak over at night just to do that on some dirt trail or road.

Yemen signed the international treaty banning landmines and destroyed its own stocks in 2002. The Shia are using black market mines from smugglers. These mines are Cold War surplus from East European stocks. Many East European nations had their many Cold War arms warehouses looted when communist rule collapsed in 1989 and most of those weapons ended up on the black market.

The government offensive along the west coast has driven the rebels away from nearly all of the 450 kilometer Yemeni Red Sea coastline. In January the rebels had access to nearly all of it and now they dont. At this point the Shia rebels are largely confined to using the Red Sea port of Hodeida. This has been the main port for the delivery of foreign aid for civilians in rebel held areas and, in theory, government controlled areas. Government forces are closing in on Hodeida and that will make it more difficult for the rebels to smuggle in military supplies. The UN is trying to persuade the Shia rebels to peacefully give up control of Hodeida but the rebels are not interested. Even proposals that Hodeida be turned over to a neutral third party are turned down. This is not a matter of trust, its a matter of keeping control of the key port for handling foreign aid for most people in rebel controlled territory. Then there is the smuggling. The rebels have prevented UN personnel from inspecting aid shipments (for weapons and other contraband) and the government claims the rebels have been seizing aid shipments and preventing UN personnel from verifying that the aid is going to civilians. The rebels are putting up a strong defense around Hodeida and that slows down the advance but cannot stop it. As long as the rebels hold onto Hodeida and Iran still has powerful allies in the UN (mainly Russia and China, who can veto some measures) the smuggling can continue as can the use of food to control civilian populations that are hostile to the rebels.

Since late 2015 much of the violence has been in southwestern Taiz province, which has always been heavily fought over mainly because it has a lengthy Red Sea coastline which enabled smugglers to bring in weapons and other aid for the Shia rebels. The most heavily fought over area continues to be Taiz city, near the Red Sea. Government forces have been slowly driving rebels out of the city. For over a month government forces have been pushing inland from the Red Sea town of Mocha to open a land route to Taiz. The major obstacle is the Khalid bin al Waleed military base, which was surrendered to the rebels two years ago by soldiers loyal to the former dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh. The base is 30 kilometers east of Mocha and continues to hold out. Government forces are also advancing from east of Taiz as well in order to surround the Khalid base and force it to surrender. In the north government forces have taken high ground east of the capital (Saana) within sight of the city and established positions to observe and call in accurate artillery and rocket fire when large groups of rebels assemble or move. The fulltime observations posts also make it easier to keep track of the pro-government Sunni militias also operating in the area but not willing to operate like a military unit (and do what the senior army commander wants).

For A Few RPGs More

The Shia rebels are again threatening commercial shipping entering or leaving the Red Sea. The latest tactic appears to involve putting several heavily armed rebel fighters on one of the many local cargo or fishing boats that operate along the coast and then have the Shia fighters fire RPGs at seagoing tankers or cargo ships. In late 2015 government forces regained control the Bab Al Mandab strait, in the Gulf of Aden, between Yemen and Djibouti and astride the shipping lanes leading to the Red Sea. This included the peninsula that extends into the Bab Al Mandab strait. This made it easier to monitor ships coming through, especially those that might be carrying Iran arms shipments. More important to the Arabs (and Egypt) was the fact that rebel control of the Bab Al Mandab strait was a potential threat to Suez Canal traffic. The canal fees are a major source of income for the Egyptian government. Saudi Arabia also exports oil and imports many other goods via that narrow (40 kilometers max) strait. Government forces also seized control of Perim Island, which is in middle of the straits and normally contains a coast guard base. The small Shia garrison fought to the death in a battle that lasted a few hours.

June 5, 2017: The Shia rebels now refuse to deal with the UN negotiator (Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed) because they accused him of bias. No proof was given but it appears that Cheikh Ahmed (a career Mauritanian diplomat with a reputation for honesty and fairness) resisted pressure from the rebels and Iranian agents to be more cooperative to the rebel demands. Cheikh Ahmed has been the chief negotiator and mediator in Yemen for a year now and has managed to get both sides to at least agree on what they will haggle over and what they will not. Further peace negotiations will be delayed weeks or months as the UN seeks another negotiator or convinces the rebels that the current negotiator must stay.

Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE (United Arab Emirates) and Bahrain cut diplomatic, economic and military relations with Qatar. Ambassadors were expelled, borders were closed and Qatar was made to feel very unwelcome. Yemen and several other Moslem nations followed the suit. In addition Qatar was expelled from the coalition that sent forces into Yemen in early 2015. Qatar contributed about a thousand troops, apparently with the understanding that they would not be required to do any heavy fighting. Thus the Qatari troops have been stationed in the north, to guard a usually quiet portion of the border with Saudi Arabia and only reported six of their troops wounded (or injured) during their time in Yemen.

The expulsion comes after years of disagreements over support for Islamic terrorism and the perception among Arab states that Qatar could not be trusted. Cutting ties with Qatar is partly retaliation against the Qatar based and subsidized al Jazeera satellite news network which often reports on real or imagined (depending on who you ask) bad behavior by Sunni Arab security forces, including the Arab coalition bombing campaign murder of civilians and trying to pass that off as a clash with Islamic terrorists. While that happens, al Jazeera also gives sympathetic treatment to Islamic radical and terrorist groups, especially in Egypt and Syria, that hardly anyone else (Moslem or otherwise) has much sympathy for . Qatar also openly supports Palestinian terror group Hamas, although they recently ordered some senior Hamas leaders to leave Qatar for another sanctuary. Al Jazeera reporters have a hard time avoiding arrest ( or worse) in Egypt and other Moslem states but they are often abused by Islamic terror groups as well. Qatar is also seen as siding with Iran in the current struggle between Shia Iran and the Sunni Arab nations led by Saudi Arabia. This sort of behavior is not uncommon in the region and the small Arab Gulf states like Qatar, Kuwait and the member states of the UAE have survived for centuries using these methods. One could say Qatar has been too successful and the current unpleasantness is the price of that success. As is the local custom secret meetings will be held, demands discussed and agreements made. How long this takes will depend on how long Qatar can last without its imports, which supply all the food and just about everything else. The expulsion cut off half of that immediately and a naval blockade would be disastrous.

May 31, 2017: In the south (Aden) pro-GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council, the Arab oil states in the Persian Gulf) militia gained control of the airport outside the port of Aden. This came after a night of fighting that left one gunman dead and over a dozen wounded. The airport had been controlled by a militia loyal to GCC backed president Hadi. Since late April southern separatists have been threatening violence in Aden to protest the removal of Aden governor Aidarous al Zoubeidi. Local Sunnis saw this as another case of the GCC interfering with Yemeni politics. Hadi removed his fellow southerner as governor of Aden because the two did not agree on how to handle the demands of the southern tribes for more autonomy and a larger share of the oil income. To further complicate matters the GCC members are not in agreement on how to handle this problem. In February this led to an embarrassing feud between Hadi and UAE military leaders, who had ordered GCC forces to refuse permission for an aircraft carrying Hadi to land at the Aden airport. Hadi then had Yemeni forces loyal to him besiege the airport. The Saudis tried to calm things down but failed and that led to Hadi dismissing the governor of Aden and other officials seen as unwilling to obey Hadi.

Elsewhere in the south (west of Aden) in the Bab Al Mandab strait two motor boats came close to a tanker and RPG rockets were fired. Three rockets hit the tanker, doing minor damage. The tanker crew reported that the two speedboats did not appear to have any boarding equipment and were probably not pirates. In any event Somali pirates rarely operated this far north but Shia rebels have fired on warships in this area in late 2016 using an Iranian anti-anti-ship missile fired from shore. That was easier to deal with than a few heavily armed rebels on a small local ship. Getting an anti-ship missile on one of these small boats is very difficult but RPGs and even small ATGMs (Anti-tank guided missiles) are much easier to use. All this is right out of the Iranian playbook.

May 23, 2017: In central Yemen (Marib province) an American Special Forces raid on an AQAP (Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula) base left seven AQAP men dead. Local tribal leaders, who either tolerate or openly support AQAP, claimed that several tribal members in the area were killed or wounded. Some of the raiders were lightly wounded because they encountered a lot of armed opposition, some of it from local tribesmen. The raid was mainly to obtain information. The U.S. has increased its use of UAVs in Yemen for surveillance and missile attacks on key AQAP personnel. All this has caused AQAP and ISIL to spend more effort just surviving.

May 22, 2017: In the north a large crowd in Saana (the rebel controlled capital) surrounded and threatened the vehicle carrying the UN negotiator (Cheikh Ahmed) as he was driven from the airport to the UN compound. He was not injured but noted that the rebels were not happy to see him.

May 19, 2017: Saudi Patriot anti-missile missiles intercepted another rebel ballistic missile fired deep into Saudi territory. This one was intercepted about 200 kilometers from the Saudi capital. That means it had a range of over 670 kilometers. Several days later the Saudis confirmed that the interception occurred and an examination of the debris indicated it was Scud with Iranian designed modifications to improve range. This type of Scud was used extensively during the 1980s Iran-Iraq war. The Saudis were particularly annoyed at the Shia continuing to fire ballistic missiles into Saudi Arabia. None of these missiles have hit anything of value mainly because Saudi anti-missile systems (U.S. Patriot PAC-3 missiles) were able to shoot down missiles that were headed for a populated area. The Shia rebels captured a number of SCUD and SS-21 ballistic missiles when they moved south in early 2015. Many army units joined the rebels, including troops who knew how to operate these missiles. In 2016 Iran apparently brought in some technical personnel and smuggled in some needed components so that Yemeni Scuds could be modified to increase their range (with a smaller warhead) to about 800 kilometers. This would make it theoretically possible to his the Saudi capital or one of the larger Saudi bases. These modified SCUDs (called Burkan by the rebels) are not very accurate but they can hit somewhere in a large city or military base, providing the rebels with some positive propaganda. The first Burkan was fired in late 2016 and this one was launched just before the visit of the American president.

A growing number of Iranian weapons are being found in Yemen, including large rockets as well as ballistic missiles that apparently come in via the UN administered port of Hodeida. Weapons and missile components are hidden in aid shipments. The Arabs point to these Iranian missiles, UAVs and other items as pretty clear evidence that Iran was still smuggling weapons in. Iran denies everything and when confronted with physical evidence insists that the Yemeni Shia made they stuff locally, obtaining technical help via the Internet. That works with some things but not with ballistic missile mods.
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The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is one of the largest, and most recognizable, stock exchanges in the world. The NYSE is in New York City, New York at 11 Wall Street. The NYSE has been in existence since the earliest days of the United States becoming a nation, in 1792 and is primarily made up of blue-chip companies with large market capitalizations. In fact, many of the stocks that make up the Dow Jones Composite Index (i.e. The Dow) are listed on the NYSE.

This article gives a brief history of the New York Stock Exchange. In addition, it covers topics such as what kind of stocks trade on the exchange, what are the listing requirements, how trading is performed, and what the daily price movement of the NYSE tells investors about investor sentiment.

What Were the Origins of the NYSE?

Today, the New York Stock Exchange is known as the center of the financial universe. However, the exchanges origin is far more humble. On May 17, 1792, 24 stockbrokers signed the Buttonwood Agreement creating a centralized exchange to help provide order to the securities market in what was still a young nation. The "Buttonwood Agreement comes from the tree of the same name under which the founders signed the agreement.

An initial benefit of the exchange was how it removed the need for auctioneers when trading commodities like wheat and tobacco and to set a commission rate. The exchange initially focused on government bonds.

However, the exchange had no formal home. Business was usually conducted informally in the local coffeehouses. In 1817, the exchange changed its name to the New York Stock & Exchange Board which later became the New York Stock Exchange. At this time, the exchange adopted a constitution that set the rules for trading. A group of stockbrokers met twice a day at 40 Wall Street to trade 30 stocks and bonds.

Over time, the exchange moved became the financial hub of the country and moved to its current location in 1865.

What Kind of Stocks Trade on the NYSE?

As of June 2022, the NYSE includes approximately 2,400 companies with a market capitalization of over $28.2 trillion. Although the NYSE trades stocks of all market capitalizations, its best known for trading the stocks of large cap companies. These have the benefit of being mature companies in mature industries. And many of these companies reward shareholders with dividends.

However, that also means that many of these companies are better suited for value investors as opposed to growth investors. In bear markets this stability can be a benefit for investors as these stocks tend to perform less bad than more volatile stocks. But in a bull market, these stocks are not likely to provide investors with the growth that they look for.

An interesting fact about how the NYSE and NASDAQ operate is that the companies with the five largest market caps on the NYSE are also listed on the NASDAQ exchange.

What Are the Listing Requirements For the NYSE?

The NYSE has strict guidelines that govern the types of companies that can list on the exchange. Here are the major requirements that all companies must meet:

The company must have at least 2,200 shareholders

The company must trade over 100,000 shares per month

The company must have a market valuation of over $100 million

The company must generate more than $75 million in annual revenue

However, there is at least one advantage of having such stringent requirements. That is the companies that meet the requirements generally find it easier to get more investors funds when they hold their initial public offering (IPO).

Once a company begins trading on the NYSE, it must continue to meet these requirements. If it doesnt it can be delisted. In addition to these requirements, the stock must continue to trade above $1. If the price of a stock drops below $1 for more than 29 consecutive trading days, the stock receives an Initial Price Violation Notice.

At that point, the company has 10 days to provide the exchange with a plan for bringing their shares above $1.

How are Trades Executed on the NYSE?

For over a century, the floor of the NYSE was the place for investors to be. This meant trades were conducted by traders who ran buy and sell orders across the trading floor looking to broker a deal for their clients. But with the birth of the NASDAQ exchange in 1971, the New York Stock Exchange began conducting electronic trading.

However, the NYSE continues to conduct trades in an auction style. Brokers purchase stocks on behalf of their clients or firms. Every order features a broker who will enter the order electronically and a specialist who serves as the market maker for that stock. The specialist posts bid and ask prices and manages the actual execution of the trades. And there are still a handful of stockbrokers who still traffic buy and sell orders physically on the floor of the exchange.

How Does the NYSE Signal Investor Sentiment?

Like its counterpart, the NASDAQ, the NYSE measures the risk appetite of investors. When the NYSE is moving higher over a length of time, it signals that a risk on environment. Conversely when the NYSE moves lower over a significant period, it signals that investors are moving to a risk off position.

Some Final Thoughts on the NYSE

Financial news networks plan their programming schedule around the opening and closing bell of the New York Stock Exchange. Its still considered a distinguished honor when individuals or groups are invited to ring the opening bell. In fact, Warren Buffett is attributed with saying that in the short term, the stock market acts like a voting machine. A fact that many U.S. presidents will attest to.

The NYSE is the oldest and most recognizable of all the stock exchanges. It also has the most stringent requirements for inclusion. And those requirements must be maintained even after a stock begins publicly trading on the exchange.

Although the NYSE still has a small in-person Trading Floor, much of the trading is done electronically to provide traders with the speed to execute trades.
CRH plc, through its subsidiaries, manufactures and distributes building materials. It operates in three segments: Americas Materials, Europe Materials, and Building Products. The company manufactures and supplies cement, lime, aggregates, precast, ready mixed concrete, and asphalt products; concrete masonry and hardscape products comprising pavers, blocks and kerbs, retaining walls, and related patio products; and glass and glazing products, including architectural glass, custom-engineered curtain and window walls, architectural windows, storefront systems, doors, skylights, and architectural hardware. It also offers precast concrete and polymer-based products, such as underground vaults, drainage pipes and structures, utility enclosures, and modular precast structures to the water, energy, communication, transportation, and building structures markets; and construction accessories, such as anchoring, fixing, and connection solutions, as well as lifting systems, formwork accessories, and other accessories used in construction applications. In addition, the company offers network access products, which include composite access chambers, covers, passive safety systems, retention sockets, sealants, and meter boxes; and paving and construction services. Further, it provides building and civil engineering contracting, contract surfacing, operates logistics and owned railway infrastructure; sells and distributes cement; and supplies access chambers and ducting products. It serves governments, contractors, homebuilders, homeowners, and sub-contractors. The company operates primarily in the Republic of Ireland, the United Kingdom, the rest of Europe, the United States, and internationally. CRH plc was founded in 1936 and is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland.
At first glance, the University of Denver students could have been touring a run-of-the-mill bakery with a massive walk-in oven for baking cookies and cupcakes.

Except that after emerging from the oven, these sweet treats were laser etched with the telltale letters THC and an accompanying exclamation mark in compliance with Colorado regulations governing cannabis-infused edibles.

Other than the ingredients it looks like any other bakery, right? says Paul Seaborn, the transplanted Canadian assistant professor of management who had the bright idea to launch a course in the business of marijuana. He notes that the operation he toured with the students, the fast-growing Sweet Grass Kitchen, is a butter-focused bakery, meaning all baked goods, from the snickerdoodle to the single serving pecan pie, are made with triple-strained, full-flower cannabutter. We were shown a big tub of this marijuana butter which would be worth tens of thousands of dollars.

Recreational marijuana has been legal in Colorado since 2014, but the regulations, says Seaborn, have come in fits and starts. Potency. Quantity. Serving size. Packaging. Marketing. Purchase limits. The pace of regulatory change and the amount of regulation has been the biggest challenge, he says, which makes the industry the perfect business case study.

Its still early days. This product is really way back in a day-after-prohibition environment, he says, adding that his teaching at the universitys Daniels College of Business is often focused on business government issues.

With marijuana, he sees three areas of study that make the industry unique. The first would be its history, laden with decades-long stigma and the misunderstanding about the products, the risks or its benefits.

The second is the regulatory environment, and just how complicated and unique it is, both within our state and comparing us to anyone else.

(Colorado initially allowed only those companies that were already active medical marijuana licence holders to enter the recreational side of the business. In Washington, the decision was to not allow anyone who was in the medical marijuana industry to have any role in the new recreational industry.)

The final piece is the variety of product thats come out of the Colorado model. I almost picture this industry like a specialty grocery industry, he says. If you walk into one of the dispensaries in Colorado you see whole departments organized around drinks, around the plant itself, around edible products and all sorts of concentrates. Each of those has its own production process and go-to-market strategy.

Seaborn says the rapid expansion in the number of companies making edibles in Colorado has surpassed 200 from a dozen a few short years ago. The general popularity of those products was a big surprise, he says.

Those companies are now pumping out gummies and fruit tarts and gum in colourful brand packaging that could look like something from Cadbury or Hershey. State regulations dictate that no single serving may contain more than 10 mg of THC and that no package of consumables contain more than 100 mg. So 10 gummies in a package, with each gummy containing 10 mg. The package itself must bear that THC warning, which on packaged goods is red within a red diamond shape and accompanied by an exclamation mark. Packaging must be child resistant, opaque and resealable.

Start with a single serving. Wait two hours to gauge the effect. Do not mix with alcohol. Keep out of the reach of children.

It took a number of rounds of discussion and regulation to find a method that people found was both clear and informative, but also safer for youth in particular but also for anyone whos a learning consumer, Seaborn says.

In Colorado, purchase limits were set at 28 grams, which, just last fall, was translated into an equivalency guideline of 800 mg of edibles.

Initially it was wide open. You could buy whatever you wanted, says Seaborn.

Buying is one thing. Consuming is another. It is illegal to consume marijuana in public in Colorado. You might come to our state and go to a dispensary and purchase product, which you can do, but youre not supposed to consume that product while youre walking down the street, you cant take it to a restaurant, most of the hotels dont want you to consume it in your room. Its an ongoing issue.

Denver, Seaborn adds, is grappling with how to allow for some public social consumption.

Back in class, Seaborn has had a number of industry experts and entrepreneurs come and speak to his students. By this week, he was marking final term assignments. The course has been such a hit, it will be brought back for the spring 2018 term.

The emergence of the Canadian market will be added to the course outline. Makes sense. Canada will go live, as Seaborn puts it, with legalized pot next July 1. That could make a business case study all on its own.

jenwells@thestar.ca

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LONDONWith about a quarter of all adults now having a tattoo in the U.S. and the U.K., one Swedish startup intends to become the Expedia for getting inked.

Fredrik Glimskar, a heavily tattooed Swede with a financial education and a career in digital advertising, launched online comparison and booking service Inkbay in 2016, after receiving 1.5 million Swedish kronor ($230,000) from Swedish venture capital firm Zenith. After linking to tattoo studios in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmo, he now has an additional 4 million kronor in financing to expand to London this summer, with the U.S. and Berlin to follow.

In the U.S., tattoos are estimated to be a $1-billion industry (U.S.), according to research house IBIS World. In 2016, there were about 38,879 tattoo businesses registered in the U.S., where the market grew 13 per cent between 2011 and 2016. A Harris poll published in 2016 concluded that three in every 10 U.S. adults have at least one tattoo  as have nearly half of all American millennials. A separate study conducted by YouGov concluded that 19 per cent of all British adults have at least one tattoo.

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Although the tattoo industry is lucrative, it remains fragmented, with customers seeking out tattoo parlours via personal recommendations, and increasingly, social media. Inkbays platform invites studios to centralize their designs, where customers can then book via a flat fee, rather than the more typical hourly rate studios charge in person. The average price paid for a tattoo on the site is about $322. Inkbay takes a 15 per cent cut of this, payable with credit cards  something uncommon to the predominantly cash-only ethos of most studios.

The tattoo industry has always been a word of mouth sort of thing, Glimskar said. Theres a bunch of customers making good things for the industry, huge blogs, tattoo directories. But no-one is tapping into the actual transaction.

Matt Lodder, a lecturer in contemporary art and visual culture at the University of Essex who studies the tattoo industry, believes the market may be too conservative to adopt a disruptive business model.

Tattoo studios havent changed a huge amount since the late-1980s in this country, Lodder said Most tattooists dont take credit cards; its still very much a cash-in-hand business. So Id be really surprised if anyone seized on this.

The Internet has had a major effect on the tattoo industry though, he says. As brick and mortar stores increasingly vacate premises to sell online, opportunities for a physical presence have increased for businesses who simply cannot conduct business online, such as tattooists.

Its the same reason weve got this influx of barber shops and hairdressers, Lodder says. Its one of those things you cant buy on the Internet. Youll find a lot of old shop spaces being taken up by tattoo artists because thats the sort of business that still needs premises. You cant send a tattoo over the Internet.

In the U.K. in 2017, there are about 2,524 registered tattoo and piercing studios according to data compiled by the Local Data Company, up from about 1,800 in 2012, representing a 40 per cent increase.

Inkbay, which currently has 60 Swedish studios on its platform, anticipates receiving 500,000 monthly visitors to its website from U.K. users by September 2017, following a launch before the summer, according to Glimskar. It currently has 40,000 monthly visitors for its Swedish studio listings. The company plans a Series A round of funding later this year.

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OTTAWATorstar Chair John Honderich squared off against Postmedia columnist Andrew Coyne at a sold-out and spirited debate Tuesday over whether the government should act to save journalism in Canada.

Honderich made the case that newspapers are vital for a democratic society, arguing that because of the industrys badly broken business model, government action is necessary to prevent their disappearance.

You could not have a more fundamental public good than making sure the Canadian population is well-informed, Honderich said.

That is an absolutely fundamental tenet of how a democracy works.

Coyne said the struggles of the industry are largely self-inflicted  mainly by posting content online for free  and that the government has no place choosing which media players deserve to be bailed out.

People do not value the thing we are selling at a price sufficient to cover its cost, Coyne said.

If the government cant subsidize everyone, it shouldnt subsidize anyone.

Tuesdays event was part of the Macdonald-Laurier Institutes Great Canadian Debates series and took place at the Canadian War Museum. The question of the discussion  Should government act to save journalism?  comes as the federal Liberals study ways to support the beleaguered news business, which could include tax changes or the creation of an independent, publicly funded organization to support local media and startups.

In February, the Public Policy Forum released a report that outlined the precipitous decline in advertising revenue among Canadian media organizations, and recommended a series of tax changes and the creation of a $400-million journalism fund to support the industry.

In the debate, Honderich contended that, despite the ascendancy of social media and bloggers practicing so-called citizen journalism, traditional media remains best positioned to hold governments to account, pursue deep investigations in the public interest, and give voice to the less powerful.

The functioning of a healthy democracy is predicated on a well-informed populace, he said, citing examples of persistent Star journalism on police racial profiling and former mayors Rob Ford, of Toronto, and Bramptons Susan Fennell.

Newspapers provide, when well run, the means for a populace to examine itself, a channel to ferret out lies, abuse and corruption, and a vehicle to give voice to those whose voices are not often heard.

He also argued that the idea of government subsidies for newspapers and other media is not radical or a brand new idea in Canada. Its been around in various forms since before Confederation, he said, pointing to a periodical fund for print magazines and non-daily papers that provides Macleans magazine with almost $2 million annually, as well as the $1.1 billion the CBC receives every year.

Put it all together, you look at all these examples, and it is difficult to argue the concept of aid to newspapers is far-fetched or even novel, Honderich said.

Coyne, meanwhile, warned that an infusion of public cash to struggling media could promote mediocre reporting, whereas maintaining a tough profit motive in a competitive industry might well be its saving grace.

Nothing focuses the mind on the reader (more) than the necessity of separating him or her from their hard-earned money, he said. He also quipped that, If we must go, let us go with a little dignity, and not as mewling supplicants for government grants.

Honderich concluded by stating journalism is essential for a well-informed public  making it different from simple products or services on offer in the economy.

Its a value, its a judgment, its the essence I think of what were about, he said.

In a straw poll of the audience at the end of the debate, it appeared that most were opposed to the idea of federal support for the industry.

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The Ontario Provincial Polices top cop says his force reviewed the case of the death of Stacy DeBungee at the request of the Thunder Bay police, contrary to what has been reported.

However, Rainy River First Nation Chief Jim Leonard said this was news to him, pointing to the six times his requests for help were ignored when he contacted the OPP.

The OPP was criticized last week during a press conference by three Indigenous leaders  Leonard, Nishnawbe Aski Nation Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler, and Ogichidaa of Grand Council Treaty #3 Francis Kavanaugh  who say the province-wide force did not answer requests to step in after the chiefs repeatedly asked them to reinvestigate DeBungees death. DeBungee was a 41-year-old Rainy River First Nation man whose body was found in the McIntyre River on Oct. 19, 2015.

OPP Commissioner Vince Hawkes released a statement to clarify his forces role in the Thunder Bay case, his first statement since the chiefs May 31 Queens Park press conference. The chiefs, who represent 77 northern First Nations, had demanded the RCMP take over the probes into the recent deaths of three Indigenous people because the Indigenous community had lost confidence in the OPP and the Thunder Bay Police Service.

Regarding the DeBungee case, Hawkes said the Thunder Bay Police Service did request the OPPs help and the OPP complied.

I can confirm the OPP, in fact, recently completed a review of the investigation relating to the death of Stacy DeBungee referred to OPP by the chief of the Thunder Bay Police Service, Hawkes said in a statement released Monday. That report is now in the hands of the Thunder Bay Police.

Leonard, in a four-page open letter to Hawkes, listed the correspondence between him and the DeBungee family after they asked then-Thunder Bay Police chief J.P. Levesque, to request that another force complete an investigation.

In fact, as set out below, you remained silent in the face of no less than six separate letters sent to you from me and the family raising a potential OPP investigation. In each case, you would have had an opportunity to engage in respectful dialogue or at least simply acknowledge the correspondence and concerns of the DeBungee family and Rainy River First Nations. But you repeatedly and resoundingly opted for silence, Leonard said.

Levesque, who has been replaced by acting chief Sylvie Hauth, is facing breach of trust and obstruction of justice charges regarding an alleged incident involving Mayor Keith Hobbs. Levesque is to appear in court June 13.

Hawkes defended the OPPs record and reputation in the Monday statement, saying the force takes all information and cases seriously regardless of gender, heritage or ethnicity. The OPP is highly regarded across the country for providing investigative services to assist municipal, federal and First Nation police services at the request of that police service leader, the statement said.

If the OPP takes on an investigation at the request of another police leader or a third-party agency such as the Office of the Independent Police Review Directorate (OIPRD), the final report is presented to the requesting agency, he added. It is then up to that agencys leadership whether to make public the results of the report. If the outcome of the investigation warrants charges, the OPP lays charges, his statement said. Hawkes was not available for further comment Tuesday.

The Thunder Bay police said they would answer all questions during a media conference Wednesday.

Julian Falconer, the lawyer for NAN and Rainy River First Nation, called the OPPs recent review an exercise in absurdity.

They were never asked to review the Thunder Bay Police Services work, that is the work of the OIPRD. The OPP were supposed to do a re-investigation of DeBungees death  which they still havent done, Falconer said.

The OIPRD has been investigating the Thunder Bay Police Service since November on allegations of systemic racism regarding how the force handles Indigenous death and disappearance cases, and the probe is examining if the TBPS over polices and under polices the community.

The OIPRD began its investigation after Rainy River First Nation and Stacy DeBungees family complained that the TBPS irreparably damaged its credibility when it announced DeBungees death was not suspicious just three hours after the body was recovered.

Thunder Bay police also recently announced there was nothing to indicate criminality in the death of Tammy Keeash, 17, from North Caribou Lake First Nation. Her body was found in the Neebing-McIntyre floodway May 7. And First Nations leaders also criticize the forces handling of the search for Josiah Begg, 14, of Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug First Nation. He was in Thunder Bay with his father for medical appointments and went missing May 6, the same night as Keeash. His body was also found in the river, nearly two weeks later.

Between 2000 and 2011, seven First Nations students died while attending high school in Thunder Bay  five of the students were found dead in the river.

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A wall of people gathered around the Liverpool House seafood restaurant in Montreals hip Little Burgundy neighbourhood Tuesday night, with onlookers hoping for a glimpse of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau or his dining partner, former U.S. president Barack Obama.

For restaurant owner David McMillan  a.k.a. Joe Beef,  it was business as usual.

Weve served many important people, he said. The PM has been eating at the restaurant since before he was PM.

Trudeau had a reservation, McMillan said, but there was no advance warning about the plus-one hed be bringing along. The staff put two and two together when they saw the heightened security and realized the ex-president was in town.

McMillan, a celebrated Montreal-based chef, may be best known for declaring in Foodism magazine that Torontos food scene had superseded his home citys.

Having such high-powered guests was a huge honour, he said, especially because his daughter Dylan got to take a photo with the PM and the president.

As a father that was a pretty big deal, for her to get a picture with those dudes, he said.

Its pretty cool. I havent really processed it yet, he continued. Were busy and we have to get back to work.

The two politicians feasted on oysters, asparagus, halibut with morel mushrooms and lobster spaghetti, while surrounded by other diners who happened to have reservations.

They ate everything. I was surprised, McMillian said. Theyre fit guys. They can eat!

In a tweet Wednesday, The Obama Foundation stated that the two leaders were discussing their shared commitment to developing the next generation of leaders.

The image of the two leaders, with their sleeves rolled up, engaged in a relaxed discussion, made people swoon on social media.

This is like looking at a pic of 2 of my exes and wondering why I had to end up with the jerk, stated another tweet, in reference to U.S. President Donald Trump.

A sell-out crowd of about 6,000 people gathered in Montreal in June 2017 to hear former U.S. president Barack Obama speak at the city's convention centre. One audience member says she could listen to Obama speak ?forever.? (The Canadian Press)

Obama and Trudeaus meeting in Montreal followed Obamas first post-presidency address on Canadian soil.

His 70-minute keynote speech to the Montreal Board of Trade covered various topics, including climate change, after Trump pulled out of the Paris climate accord last week.

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Tuesdays Liberal foreign policy statement and Wednesdays national defence reset are interlocking pieces of the same political puzzle. To examine one in isolation from the other is to risk distorting the picture.

In different but related ways both reflect a Trump-imposed shift in Canadas foreign policy priorities.

To measure the magnitude of that shift, compare the equivalent address delivered a little more than a year ago by Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freelands predecessor, Stephane Dion.

If one were to put the two speeches side by side, one would be hard-pressed to find evidence that they were delivered in the name of the same government over the short span of 14 months.

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In a lecture at the University of Ottawa in March of last year, Dion sketched out what was then the governments foreign policy approach. Only in passing did the text of his speech mention the United States. Ditto for Canadas military obligations. And his remarks did not include a single reference to trade.

Dion did introduce a concept called responsible conviction as a new Liberal guiding foreign policy principle. In short, he argued that to be responsible, Canada had to be flexible in its pursuit on the international scene of its principles.

Based on Freelands homily, the words responsible conviction disappeared from Canadas foreign policy lexicon along with the minister who coined them. It was not the only striking difference between the two speeches.

Although Freeland never mentioned Trump by name on Tuesday he was in the subtext of her entire speech. There were 19 references to America and/or the United States. Trade came up a dozen times  as did the military.

Freeland delivered her speech in the Commons, an occurrence so rare that veteran Parliament Hill watchers could not remember the last time that had happened. A government that picks a centre stage venue like the House is not one that is trying to fly under the radar.

Highlighting, as it did, a long list of fundamental differences between the foreign policy approach of the Trump White House and Canada, Freelands speech was rightly described as Canadas most assertive foreign policy declaration since the advent of the new administration.

But whether that was a product of inevitability rather than a deliberate drawing of a line in the sand is an open question.

The Canadian Armed Forces will get 5,000 new troops and an extra $13.9 billion in annual funding within 10 years under a federal plan released Wednesday. Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan says the plan sets a ?new course? for the military.

After all, at this time last year the foreign policy tenets Freeland enunciated on Tuesday were largely taken for granted on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border. From trade to climate change to the war against Daesh, those tenets were common to the two countries and, quite literally, went without saying.

It should, moreover, be noted that this is hardly the first time Canada has stuck to a multilateral course on a top-of-mind policy issue in the face of a go-it-alone White House. The most recent example would be Jean Chretiens 2003 refusal to join the U.S.-led offensive on Iraq. Under the Liberals, Canada also signed the Kyoto Protocol on climate change even if the U.S. declined to do so.

If Freeland articulated a new concept this week, it would be her contention that Canada needs to step up its military spending to help fill a Trump-induced vacuum in international leadership.

The governments contention is that by pivoting to a military spending policy thats in line with one of the most vocal demands of the current White House it is doing only what it must to mitigate the administrations potential damage to a multilateral world order.

That same theme was omnipresent on the occasion on Wednesday of the belated unveiling of a revamped defence policy. Over the next two decades, the government is committing to pour billions of dollars it did not budget for into the defence department.

National Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan could not say where the money for all the new spending would be coming from. His policy paper is longer on spending choices then on strategic ones. But he was at pains to stress that the policy was based on made-in-Canada choices and not a response to external pressures.

You decide whether this weeks one-two Liberal foreign and defence policy punch showed the Trudeau government has an iron hand inside the velvet glove it has been sporting in its dealings with the Trump administration. Or whether the government is simply recasting its efforts to stay in the White Houses good books in a manner that minimizes the risks of raising hackles in Canadian public opinion.

Chantal Hebert is a national affairs writer. Her column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

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Toronto Mayor John Tory and his Chicago counterpart are vowing to keep the Great Lakes healthy and fight climate change, despite U.S. President Donald Trump.

Tory said in an interview from Chicago that his Wednesday meeting with Rahm Emanuel cemented their intention to fight the Trump administrations proposed slashing of federal cash to the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. The initiative funds efforts against invasive species, algae blooms and pollution hot spots.

When I was a young boy you would be enthusiastically dissuaded from swimming in Lake Ontario, but today you can often swim off Torontos shore, Tory said, noting Emanuel reminisced of his boyhood swims past dead fish in a then-polluted Lake Michigan.

We dont want to go backwards on that and (cutting $300 million) would take us backwards in terms of a big contribution, to cross-border efforts.

Tory said he, Emanuel and Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre plan to do some more work on their joint position and sign a resolution when the trio gather in Montreal at an international economic conference later this month.

Torontos mayor is in the Windy City until Thursday for the Chicago Forum on Global Cities.

The pair also talked about Trumps vow to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement  Tory said he noted Illinois has $42 billion worth of trade with Canada and 300,000 jobs at stake  as well as the presidents decision to pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate-change agreement.

Emanuel, a Democrat and ex-chief of staff to then-president Barack Obama, announced at the start of the global cities forum that Chicago will adopt the Paris guidelines no matter Trumps position. The agreement commits members to cut greenhouse gas emissions, and limit global temperature rise, to 2C above pre-industrial levels.

Tory said Chicagos environmental efforts mirror those prescribed by TransformTO, the ambitious city-staff-proposed blueprint to dramatically reduce Torontos greenhouse gas emissions.

The mayor reaffirmed he will vote in favour of TransformTO at Julys council meeting but added he doesnt know the rules for federal and provincial funds the city will be able to tap, and he wants to prioritize which initiatives council adopts first that will reduce the most greenhouse gases in the shortest timeframe.

The plan calls for spending  $6.7 million next year alone  but promises big payback in terms of new jobs, better housing, flood-protection and more.

I cant think of one (TransformTO initiative) that Id say You shouldnt do that, Tory said, but you do sometimes have to make choices about what you do at what time...

To me its just a businesslike, by which I mean a sensible, rational approach to make sure you do this well, and you do it in some kind of way to make it successful.

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Laurie Phan, who once competed in ATV Miss Asia Toronto in 2013, has turned herself in to police in connection with the February death of Noel Williams.

York Regional Police found Williams, 27, suffering from gunshot wounds at a residence in the area of McCowan Rd. and Bur Oak Ave. on Feb. 10 of this year. He was rushed to hospital, where he was later pronounced dead. Police said at the time that the suspect or suspects fled in a vehicle.

Phan, 22, has been charged with first-degree murder.

An old profile on a model networking site stated that Phan, then 19 and fresh out of the Miss Asia Toronto competition, was studying nursing and wanted to get into modelling.

In the profile, she called herself a very motivated and determined person and said she was interested in fashion, glamour, hair/makeup, promotional modelling, runway, fit modelling and swimwear shoots!

The most recent photo on the site was from 2015, a rosy, tri-colour close-up of her face.

She is the second suspect to be charged. Jasper Atienza, 28, was also charged with first-degree murder on April 19.

The investigation is still on-going.

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The Toronto branch of the Ontario Medical Association has come under fire for surveying 12,000 local doctors about allowing patients to pay out of pocket for health care.

Progressive physicians, including the advocacy groups Canadian Doctors for Medicare and Doctors for Responsible Healthcare, have denounced the poll, which asked physicians to choose and rank five of 16 proposed priorities they would like to see addressed in contract negotiations between the province and OMA.

Eleven of the 16 suggested priorities deal with physician pay. Two in particular have hit a nerve:

Allow patients to pay for the second issue if presenting with 2 problems. (Some primary care doctors now post signs in their offices, saying one issue only per visit, a practice frowned upon by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario.)

Patient accountability: co-payments; no show fee code. (Co-payments are when patients pick up part of the tab for treatment. A no show fee code would allow physicians to be reimbursed if patients fail to show up for appointments.)

Canadian Doctors for Medicare issued a news release condemning the survey:

Proposals that require patients to pay out-of-pocket for medically necessary care, already publicly insured, are highly problematic. Not only does the evidence show that co-payments and user fees decrease medically necessary care, especially for low income patients, but the priorities under consideration are in violation of the Canada Health Act, and contravene the principles of equity and universality that uphold Medicare.

Ontario doctors vote June 17 on a tentative negotiations framework, which, if ratified, would pave the way for contract talks between the OMA and province. The OMA has been without a fee agreement for more than three years.

In preparation for negotiations, the OMA is canvassing its 11 geographical districts and medical specialty sections for ideas to take to the table. The leadership of those districts and sections are, in turn, canvassing their members.

Dr. Mark DSouza, chair of District 11, which encompasses Toronto, emailed the survey to the citys 12,000 doctors  half of them specialists  on May 23.

He did not respond to numerous requests for an interview for this article. (Neither did he respond to a request for comment for a Medical Post article about the same issue).

But in a statement emailed to physicians who took issue with the survey, DSouza said District 11 has yet to take a position on the matters in question.

He explained that elected District 11 representatives came up with the 16 priorities through a brainstorming exercise carried out on a group Google document. There are 38 elected delegates in District 11.

I know that we are not the only one that are asking controversial questions. As your chair, I encourage the asking of difficult questions that result in the giving of strong answers, he wrote.

DSouza said District 11 will provide the OMAs negotiations committee with three to five priorities, based on the survey results.

The online survey was deactivated soon after being posted with critics alleging the move was in response to a backlash.

In the 48 hours since the survey was released, there has been an outcry from physicians who value public healthcare, and it has been taken down without explanation, states an email sent to the listserv of the Toronto group, Doctors for Responsible Healthcare, from the groups steering committee.

The survey was subsequently reactivated with critics alleging doctors had sought an opportunity to give their views on privatization.

The survey concluded on May 29 and there is no indication if or when Toronto doctors will be told the results.

Doctors for Responsible Healthcare argue that the leadership of District 11 stepped out of line by using the voice of the OMA to advance personal views.

There is no physician member mandate to discuss privatization in this round of bargaining. To bring up health care privatization, instead of focusing on negotiations that will ensure stable physician funding, is simply inappropriate, the groups email states.

The group urged its members to let the OMA leadership know they are wholly and unequivocally opposed to measures that advocate for an erosion of our universal health system, including what are deviously called patient accountability and allowing patients to pay for part of care.

Dr. Danyaal Raza, chair of Canadian Doctors for Medicare, sent an open letter to newly elected OMA president Dr. Shawn Whatley, asking him to discuss concerns about the survey with the leadership of District 11.

While we recognize that private financing for medically necessary care may not be an OMA position, the fact that it is being given legitimate consideration through an OMA platform gives members and the public the indication they are being seriously considered, Raza wrote.

Evidence shows co-payments and user fees decrease medically necessary care, especially for low-income patients, his letter says.

Noting that he works in an inner-city practice in Toronto, Raza wrote that few of his patients could afford user fees. They would be forced to forego appointments for cancer screening, diabetes and cardiovascular disease prevention, he said.

For those with higher levels of chronic illness and for my patients with low income, these proposals would no doubt hit much harder, he continued.

In a written statement, Whatley said the survey was sent out by District 11 and is not the OMAs to comment upon.

These surveys are not OMA surveys and are created by individual Section Chairs, he said.

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Warning: This article contains graphic details.

A voice inside keeps saying: Oh no.

When the sexual assault complainant itemizes the drinks she had, a rum and Coke, four tequila shots, three cranberry-vodkas: Oh no.

When she mentions the kiss she shared with one of the men who later allegedly raped her. Oh no.

When the woman describes how she bent over that person, crashed out from his evenings intake of libations: I was calling his name. I remember being on all four fours . . . trying to wake him up. We were dragging him back out to go drinking. Oh no.

Because none of that should matter, except it does. Again and again at sex assault trials, its mattered.

A mistaken but honest belief in consent, the one-size-fits-all defence. And an alleged victim who never saw the day coming when shed have to recount every detail, every action, every word that came out of her mouth, have to wear it on the witness stand.

Read more: Parking officer tells court she felt powerless as 3 Toronto cops allegedly assaulted her

Consts. Sameer Kara, Leslie Nyznik and Joshua Cabero have all pleaded not guilty to sexual assault in the judge-alone trial. The identity of the complainant, a parking enforcement officer, is protected by a publication ban.

On Wednesday, the 36-year-old woman testified under direct examination by Crown prosecutor Ted Ofiara. Thats the gentle part, where witnesses arent challenged on their accounts, unspooling the narrative with few interruptions.

The story begins in the early evening hours of Jan 16, 2015, when the complainant joined Rookie Buy Night with officers from 51 Division. Shed skipped out on the dinner, didnt want the rookies to pay for her meal. But joined the party of about a dozen around 8:45 p.m. at the CC Lounge & Whiskey Bar downtown.

Her primary friendship had been with one of the three accused, and she accepted his invitation to the rite of passage for newbies.

Nyznik, as court has already been told, had earlier in the day booked a room at the Westin Harbour Castle Hotel, where the festivities had begun, though not with the complainant present.

Kara was outside smoking when she arrived at the CC Lounge, told her the rest of the platoon was at the back of the bar and to go on in.

Half an hour later, the group moved on to the nearby Pravda Vodka Bar. No security video could subsequently be retrieved by investigators from that establishment. At some point, Kara, the complainant testified, asked for a kiss on the cheek. But he turned his head when she complied so that the kiss ended up on his mouth. He apologized immediately.

Standing around the bar later, there was a kiss between us, between Kara and the complainant. They went out for a smoke. Kara, highly intoxicated, vomited.

Back inside, another officer said he would take Kara to the hotel. Which is when the complainant turned to Nyznik and said: Youre responsible for me now. Meaning, he would protect her from any potential harassment by the other men. A buddy system, she told court.

From there, it was on to the Brass Rail, a strip bar on Yonge St. There were five left in the group by then. Nyznik, the complainant said, told their waitress they were an adult film crew up from Miami. I was shocked at the stupidity of the whole thing. I was flabbergasted . . . and also that the waitress seemed to be buying it.

One of the cops, from the plain-clothes division, said he was going back to Pravda. The complainant said it was still early, not midnight yet. I wanted to continue the night.

At that point, she wasnt crazy about returning to the hotel with Nyznik and Cabero, although ultimately agreeing to do so, but only to roust Kara and continue their night on the town.

I felt OK-ish. I was certainly a little bit tipsy.

Shed consumed similar amounts of alcohol on previous occasions without getting falling down drunk. But in the cab on the way to the hotel, she experienced a sudden intense headache and her vision blurred.

I remember thinking that it was really weird how I felt. Telling herself: Im definitely not drinking anything else for the rest of the night.

When they got to the hotel room, Kara was flaked out on one of the two beds. Nyznik told her not to wake Kara yet, she testified, but she tried anyway.

The complainant herself was lying on the bed, next to Kara, when she saw Nyznik standing by the night table. His jeans were around his ankles, his penis exposed and he was pushing my head toward him. Les was holding my head and he said, Suck my c---. And he penetrated my mouth with his penis. I was completely unable to move, at least not in any meaningful way.

Her memory from that point is somewhat sketchy. I was trying to talk but I wasnt really able to form words, nothing that made sense. I was essentially just moaning.

She felt someone else touching her crotch area. I had the sensation of my jeans being removed. I recall being vaginally penetrated by something . . . fingers? It did not feel like a penis.

I remember hearing a voice over me, asking if he should f--- me up the a--, she testified.

I know that I saw Les standing there but . . . I couldnt see who was between my legs.

As she was being vaginally penetrated, another penis was inserted into her mouth, she said.

Thats when, she said, Kara woke up. She heard him say: Guys, stop: Josh, stop. Come on, stop.

Referred by Ofiara to a statement shed given to police on January 27, the complainant agreed shed quoted Kara, in that interview, as having said: Josh, stop. Shes out.

And they did stop, for a bit, placing a blanket over her, she said.

But then Kara, she testified, came up close to her face, repeating her name over and over.

He asked me to kiss him but I dont remember that happening. The next thing I remember is being in a position on top of Sameer, being held up by him. And then I was placed on my back. Someone wiped her chest with a towel. I said thanks and they were all laughing. Immediately after that I was being penetrated vaginally again.

She told them to stop. Kara, she said, asked if he could ejaculate inside her.

Absolutely not, she said from the witness stand Wednesday.

But at the time, the complainant said: I was powerless. I couldnt move. I couldnt talk. I couldnt stop what was happening.

The complainant says she passed out. When she came to, she was naked from the waist down. Got dressed  couldnt find her underwear  and left. Hotel cameras captured her leaving the lobby at 3:28 a.m. and getting into a cab. The taxi stopped so she could vomit. I was fighting to stay conscious.

What the complainant remembers next is waking up in her home in a puddle of vomit. There was dried ejaculate in her hair.

It just hit me all at once, what had happened.

Mostly, apart from feeling sick with an excruciating headache  not at all like a routine hangover  what she felt was terror that people would find learn of the incident.

If it got out, I could be in a lot of danger.

Why danger? asked the Crown.

In my mind, the fact that they were police officers would make it a lot easier to cover up. The fact that their would be three of them, their word would be stronger than mine . . . There was no way to report it. I would essentially have to go and tell their colleagues, their friends. At that point, I felt it would kill me if it got out.

She went to North York General the next day, complaining of pelvic pain and admitting thered been sexual intercourse with several partners. But that hospital had no rape kits available. Not until Monday, at Scarborough Grace, was she examined by a sex assault nurse (who crabbed about being called in off-shift).

The complainant wasnt due back at work until Thursday. Then she called in sick four days straight.

Her first morning back, while in the change room at 51 Division, she became nauseous. It was then she told a female supervisor shed been raped by cops and a sex assault officer was summoned.

On Wednesday, when cross-examination was to begin around 12:45 p.m., all three defence lawyers asked for it to be put over until Thursday.

The account this witness is giving is so different is so many respects than anything she has ever said before, said Harry Black, who represents Nyznik, noting a dozen interviews the complainant had with investigators and seven meetings with the Crown  all of which has been disclosed to the defence.

Each defence lawyer argued he needed more time to scrutinize the testimony. The prosecution agreed and Justice Anne Molloy granted the request.

Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.

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The federal government is admitting border officials made a mistake when a retired anti-insurgency officer from India was deemed inadmissible to Canada and denied entry.

Days later, after an outcry from Indian officials, the officer was suddenly reissued a visa and flown back to Toronto.

In a statement in May, Canadas High Commissioner to India, Nadir Patel, expressed regret about the incident but would not reveal the rejected visitors identity citing privacy protection. Immigration officials subsequently confirmed the person as Tejinder Singh Dhillon.

Dhillon, a retired senior officer with the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), Indias largest paramilitary force under the home affairs ministry, was refused admission in May at the Vancouver airport on the way to his nieces wedding in Toronto.

Canada border officials explained the refusal by indicating on a form letter that the 67-year-old had served a government that engages or has engaged in terrorism, human rights violations, crime against humanity or genocide.

The incident immediately caused diplomatic ripples between New Delhi and Ottawa, prompting Canadian officials to issue not just a new multiple-entry visa to Dhillon but a plane ticket for his return.

Such a characterization of a reputed force like the CRPF is completely unacceptable. We have taken up the matter with the Government of Canada, a foreign ministry official told Indian media.

Patel said the refusal was a mistake on Ottawas part.

Over the past year, over 300,000 Indian nationals have applied to visit Canada. From time to time, with such a large number of applications, oversights on visa applications can happen which is regrettable, Patel wrote in a statement.

Form letters in use by the Government of Canada include generic language taken from Canadas legislation. In this case, the language does not reflect the Government of Canadas policy toward India or any particular organization. . . The Central Reserve Police Force plays an important role in upholding law and order in India.

Anirudh Bhattacharyya, who interviewed Dhillon and reported the story from Toronto for the Hindustan Times, said Dhillon complained Canadian officials treated him in an unreasonable and indecent manner, accusing him of having either participated or having knowledge of CRPFs human rights violations.

It is very upsetting. I have seen many crises, but this is very difficult to bear, Dhillon told Bhattacharyya in an interview.

Dhillon, who has returned to India, couldnt be reached for comment by the Star.

While Dhillon was in Canada, a New York-based human rights group, Sikhs for Justice, brought a motion to an Ontario court seeking an arrest warrant on charges of commanding and counselling torture.

The case was based on a complaint by Inderjit Singh, who claimed he was tortured by police officers under Dhillons command, said Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, the groups legal adviser. The court dismissed the request this week.

The High Commission of India in Ottawa would not comment on Ottawas treatment of Dhillon, but told the Star that the court petition brought by the Sikhs for Justice was frivolous, malicious and baseless.

For its part, Canada said it continues to welcome record numbers of Indian nationals for study, tourism, business, and visiting friends and family.

Canada values our relationship with India, based on shared values of democracy, pluralism, human rights and rule of law, said Patel, Canadas highest command in India.

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WASHINGTONFormer National Security Adviser Michael Flynn turned over about 600 pages of documents Tuesday to the Senate intelligence committee as part of its investigation into Russias meddling in the 2016 presidential election, according to a congressional aide.

The aide said the committees investigators immediately began reviewing the information to determine the extent of what Flynn provided. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the committees sensitive work.

Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, confirmed the panel had received documents from Flynn, but declined to characterize the material or say how many pages had been received.

We cant make any judgment on whether hes fully complied because weve got to review the documents, Warner said.

Read the latest news on U.S. President Donald Trump

The documents came as Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly indicated that U.S. President Donald Trumps son-in-law and top adviser Jared Kushner and his communications with Russia are part of a wide-ranging probe by the Justice Departments special counsel. Meanwhile, a Democratic lawmaker called on a top Justice Department official to clarify the scope of Special Counsel Robert Muellers investigation.

Flynn had previously invoked his Fifth Amendment protection from self-incrimination in rebuffing an earlier subpoena from the committee. After the panel narrowed the scope of that subpoena and issued additional ones for records from two of his businesses, Flynn agreed to turn over some documents.

Read more: Ex-Trump adviser Michael Flynn agrees to provide documents in Russia election probe

On Tuesday, committee chairman Sen. Richard Burr said the panel sought Flynns business records  including travel, expense and phone records  to determine whether those records would give us insight as to where he was when he was, what reimbursements he received, what expenses he might have had.

Burr said it was still possible Flynn may turn over more records. He noted the committee is still working with Flynn to see if he will agree to be interviewed as part of the panels probe.

In addition to the Senate panel, Flynn is under investigation by other congressional committees as well the special counsel over his contacts with Russia. Among those contacts under scrutiny is a December meeting between Flynn, Kushner and Sergey Kislyak, Russias ambassador to the U.S.

On Tuesday, Kelly defended Kushner at a Senate hearing amid reports that he attempted to establish back-channel communication between Russia and Trumps presidential transition team.

Kelly said back-channel talks have been common in U.S. diplomacy.

We have to make the assumption  and I will  that Jared Kushner is a great American, he said.

Pressed by Montana Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat, on whether he believes lawmakers should ensure that assumption is correct, Kelly described the questions as part of Muellers scope of inquiry.

I think there are numerous investigations that are looking into this, Kelly said. I think its part of the Bob Mueller investigation, and I think theres a number of congressional committees looking into it.

The White House is disputing a report that U.S. President Donald Trump asked former FBI Director James Comey to shut down an investigation into ousted national security adviser Michael Flynn. The New York Times says he made the request in February.

The full scope of Muellers investigation into possible ties between Trumps campaign and Russia remains unclear. But it has incorporated a separate criminal investigation  which predated the election  of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, The Associated Press reported last week.

Also Tuesday, a senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee wrote Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to clarify the scope and authority of Muellers role and asked Rosenstein to ensure the probe is free of political interference.

It is of paramount importance that Mr. Muellers investigation proceed, unimpeded by any officials who may have a conflict of interest or other ethical bar, or by political interference of any kind, wrote Rep. Jerrold Nadler.

Read more: As Trump crisis escalates, special counsel appointed to take over Russia probe: Analysis

Rosenstein acknowledged Friday theres a chance his role in the firing of FBI Director James Comey could become part of the special counsels investigation. If that happens, he said, he will recuse himself from being Muellers point of contact on the probe.

If theres a need from me to recuse, I will, Rosenstein told the AP.

He also said the scope of Muellers probe is broad and could encompass any number of actions.

Late Tuesday, after meeting in closed session, the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, said the committee intends to reach out to former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to ask him to testify in open and closed session. Schiff said the committee is interested in interactions the Obama administration had with secretaries of state and local election officials about the dangers the Russian hacking posed to election systems.

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The nations top intelligence official told associates in March that U.S. President Donald Trump asked him if he could intervene with then-FBI Director James Comey to get the bureau to back off its focus on former national security adviser Michael Flynn in its Russia probe, according to officials.

On March 22, less than a week after being confirmed by the Senate, Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats attended a briefing at the White House together with officials from several government agencies. As the briefing was wrapping up, Trump asked everyone to leave the room except for Coats and CIA Director Mike Pompeo.

The president then started complaining about the FBI investigation and Comeys handling of it, said officials familiar with the account Coats gave to associates. Two days earlier, Comey had confirmed in a congressional hearing that the bureau was probing whether Trumps campaign co-ordinated with Russia during the 2016 race.

Read the latest on U.S. President Donald Trump

After the encounter, Coats discussed the conversation with other officials and decided that intervening with Comey as Trump had suggested would be inappropriate, according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal matters.

The events involving Coats show the president went further than just asking intelligence officials to deny publicly the existence of any evidence showing collusion during the 2016 election, as The Washington Post reported in May. The interaction with Coats indicates that Trump aimed to enlist top officials to have Comey curtail the bureaus probe.

Coats will testify on Wednesday before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Lawmakers on the panel said they would press him for information about his interactions with the president regarding the FBI investigation.

The question of whether the president obstructed the Russia investigation is expected to take centre stage this week with Comeys highly anticipated testimony on the Hill on Thursday. Comey associates say that before the director was fired in May, the president had asked him to drop the investigation into Flynn, and Comey refused.

Read more: Trump admits Russia probe was factor in firing of James Comey

The White House says President Donald Trump will not assert executive privilege to try to block testimony by fired FBI Director James Comey. Comey is scheduled to testify on Capitol Hill Thursday.

Brian Hale, a DNI spokesman, declined to comment on whether Trump asked Coats to intervene with Comey regarding the Flynn investigation. Hale said in a statement: Director Coats does not discuss his private conversations with the President. However, he has never felt pressured by the President or anyone else in the Administration to influence any intelligence matters or ongoing investigations.

A spokesman for Pompeo declined to comment on the closed-door discussions. The White House referred questions to outside lawyers, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump has repeatedly denied any coordination took place between his campaign and the Russian government, which, according to U.S. intelligence agencies, stole emails embarrassing to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and leaked them to undermine her campaign.

Flynn had served as an enthusiastic surrogate for Trump during the campaign and then was fired after just 24 days as national security adviser over revelations he misrepresented his discussions with the Russian ambassador to the United States.

The incidents suggest that Trump may not have appreciated the traditional barriers meant to insulate the intelligence agencies from politics.

Though the office of the DNI oversees other intelligence agencies, the FBI director operates independently of the DNI on many matters. For example, Comey kept James Clapper, Coatss predecessor in the DNI job during the Obama administration, in the dark about the bureaus investigation into possible coordination.

A day or two after the March 22 meeting, the president followed up with a phone call to Coats, according to officials familiar with the discussions. In the call, Trump asked the DNI to issue a public statement denying the existence of any evidence of coordination between the Russian government and the Trump campaign. Again, Coats decided not to act on the request.

Trump similarly approached Adm. Mike Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency, to ask him to publicly deny the existence of any evidence of coordination between the Russians and the Trump campaign, as the Post previously reported, according to current and former officials. Like Coats, Rogers refused to comply with the presidents request.

The White House is disputing a report that U.S. President Donald Trump asked former FBI Director James Comey to shut down an investigation into ousted national security adviser Michael Flynn. The New York Times says he made the request in February.

Trump announced in January that he was nominating Coats to serve as DNI, an office which is responsible for overseeing U.S. intelligence agencies and for briefing the president on global developments.

Read more: The White House tries to gain control of its message, but Donald Trump isnt helping

In February, as tensions flared between intelligence agencies and the White House over Russia and other issues, some of Trumps advisers floated the idea of appointing a New York billionaire, Stephen Feinberg, to undertake a review of the DNI. Coats, who was preparing for his confirmation hearing, felt blindsided, officials said.

The White House backed away from the idea of naming Feinberg after Coats and members of the intelligence community and Congress raised objections.

Officials say Trumps advisers have since revived their proposal to appoint Feinberg to a senior position, possibly to review the roles of the DNI and other intelligence agencies.

Some officials said they viewed the prospective appointment of Feinberg as an effort by the White House to put pressure on intelligence agencies to close ranks with the White House.

In an appearance last month before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Coats refused to provide details about his interactions with Trump.

But Coats indicated that he would co-operate with the Russia probe now being led by special counsel Robert Mueller. Under questioning by Sen. Martin Heinrich, Coats said that if asked, he would provide details of his conversations with Trump to Mueller.

Coats also said that if he is called before an investigative committee, such as the Senate Intelligence Committee, I certainly will provide them with what I know and what I dont know. He said the Trump administration has not directed the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to withhold information from members of Congress conducting oversight.

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WASHINGTONU.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions offered to resign in recent weeks as he told U.S. President Donald Trump he needed the freedom to do his job, according to two people who were briefed on the discussion. On Tuesday, the White House declined to say whether Trump still had confidence in his attorney general.

I have not had that discussion with him, Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, told reporters in the White House briefing room, responding to questions about whether the president had soured on Sessions.

Spicers remarks came after The New York Times reported that Trump had vented intermittently about Sessions since the attorney general recused himself from any Russia-related investigations conducted by the Department of Justice. Trump has fumed to allies and advisers ever since, suggesting that Sessions made a needless decision.

Read more:

With the White House trying to ignore him, Trumps tweets once again sabotage U.S. foreign policy

Top intelligence official says Trump asked if he could intervene with Comey on FBI Russia probe

Michael Flynn turns over documents to panel investigating Russia, Trump

He has also blamed Sessions for the fallout from an executive order that the president signed putting in place a travel ban on seven primarily Muslim countries, which courts have blocked.

The situation between Sessions and Trump has grown so tense that the attorney general told Trump in recent weeks that he needed the freedom to do his job and that he could resign if that was what was wanted, according to the two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal White House matters. Trump did not take him up on the offer.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions says he will recuse himself from a federal investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 White House election.

A spokesman for Sessions declined to comment. A White House spokeswoman did not respond to an email seeking comment.

The frustration at times goes both ways. Sessions was upset when the president appointed a task force to tackle the opioids crisis in March and tapped Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey to lead it without consulting the attorney general, according to an administration official who asked not to be named discussing internal matters.

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WASHINGTONThis was going to be Donald Trumps infrastructure week. Trumps administration was going to be a mediator between Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The administration was going to stand in solidarity with the people of London.

No, no and no.

In another flurry of morning tweets, a president who struggles with impulse control once again undercut his teams best-laid plans for normalcy  complicating rather than calming the Gulf clash, creating a quarrel with the United Kingdom out of thin air and doing more harm to the international credibility of his top lieutenants.

Read the latest news on U.S. President Donald Trump

One more time, Trump had followed the public statements of his senior officials by doing the opposite of what they had pledged to the world.

Trump is a big baby who thinks the White House is like a candy store and he can do whatever he wants, said Henri Barkey, director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson Center think tank. The guy does so many of these things in unsupervised moments. I think the American taxpayers should get together and spend money to hire a bunch of nurses or whatever to have 24-7 round-the-clock care for him so he doesnt do stupid stuff.

Trump, whose aides have long tried to curtail his tweeting, angered much of the U.K. on Sunday and Monday by insulting Londons mayor in the wake of a terror attack. On Tuesday, he created a new diplomatic mess.

Over three tweets before 10 a.m. on Tuesday, Trump took the Saudi side in a regional dispute between two U.S. allies. He did so less than 24 hours after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had called for a mending of ties and said the U.S. would be happy to broker a solution.

I certainly never had to face anything remotely like this from George W. Bush, said Chase Untermeyer, Bushs ambassador to Qatar from 2004 to 2007.

Untermeyer called Trumps intervention disappointing.

Its clearly a neighbourhood spat, and our interests need to be protected by encouraging them to work it out rather than to take sides, he said.

Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen cut off diplomatic ties with Qatar on Monday. Saudi Arabia closed its border with its tiny but wealthy neighbour of 2.5 million.

Their move, which they said was prompted by Qatari support for terrorism, put the U.S. between two partners. Saudi Arabia is more powerful, but Qatar hosts a U.S. airbase that is home to more than 10,000 military personnel.

Trump was given the royal treatment by the Saudis during his visit in May. As Tillerson and Defense Secretary James Mattis attempted Tuesday to end the standoff, Trump not only hailed the Saudi decision but suggested he was responsible for it.

During my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology. Leaders pointed to Qatar - look! he wrote.

So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off. They said they would take a hard line on funding extremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism.

Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, who studies the Gulf as a fellow at Rice Universitys Baker Institute, said the Saudis might take Trumps tweets as a green light for further escalation. Trumps remarks, he said, suggest he was unable to see beyond Saudi flattery to identify all the agendas that were trying to co-opt him.

They read him like a book. They gave him exactly what they wanted, with all the pomp and circumstance, treated him like a king, and its worked, he said.

The Pentagon, State Department and even Sean Spicer, Trumps own press secretary, tried to ignore the tweets and carry on as if they were serving a conventional president. The Pentagon praised Qatar for its enduring commitment to regional security.

But Spicer acknowledged that Trumps tweets are official statements, and the damage was done. Trump killed any chance U.S. diplomats had to try to mitigate the situation, said Ilan Goldenberg, director of the Middle East security program at the Center for a New American Security.

Youre going to call up your colleague in Saudi or the UAE or Egypt, he said, and say, Hey guys, you know, we really need to find a way to get you guys together and talk to try to de-escalate. Theyre going to look at him and say: Why? The president just said we dont have to do that.

Trump has repeatedly exposed his cabinet secretaries promises as hollow. Two weeks ago, he refused to make good on their assurances to NATO allies that he would publicly commit to the alliances policy of defending any member under attack  deleting a sentence from his speech at the last minute, Politico reported.

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RIO DE JANEIROJudges on Brazils top electoral court argued on Wednesday whether to accept new evidence of alleged illegal campaign contributions that stem from a sweeping probe of graft in Latin Americas largest nation as they consider a case that could force President Michel Temer from office.

The ruling on revelations from recent plea bargains would be a strong indication of how the court is leaning, and Wednesdays testy debate showed sharp divisions between the judges who appear to favour accepting the damaging revelations and those who oppose. The latter camp includes Superior Electoral Tribunal President Gilmar Mendes, who has called the president whose political fate he is deciding a friend of decades.

At issue is whether the 2014 campaign of Temer, then vice-president, and former president Dilma Rousseff received illegal financing. If the court finds it did, Temer could be removed from office, adding further to the countrys corruption-fueled political turmoil.

Read more:

Brazilian President Michel Temer mounts defence to save his presidency

Brazilian President Michel Temer faces potential ousting as new scandal is revealed

Brazils attorney general accuses President Temer of obstructing justice

Defence attorneys argue that evidence in the case was submitted long ago, and say the court shouldnt be able to consider new revelations that emerged from plea bargains by 77 executives at the huge construction company Odebrecht, one of the businesses at the centre of a sprawling investigation into kickbacks and bribes at the state-run oil company Petrobras.

The testimony describes myriad details of alleged bribes to many politicians as well as millions of dollars of illegal money that allegedly went into the coffers of the Rousseff-Temer ticket.

Judge Herman Benjamin, who was named by the court to examine the case, argued that the plea bargains were a crucial part of the investigation. Meanwhile Mendes, who in the past has sided with politicians facing legal troubles, called Benjamins arguments fallacious.

Both Rousseff, 69, and Temer, 76, have denied wrongdoing. The current president has vowed to continue in office despite many calls for him to resign and approval ratings around 8 per cent.

If at least four of the seven judges vote to allow the testimonies, Temer would be one step closer to being pushed out of office, following the path of Rousseff, who was impeached and removed last year for illegally managing the governments budget.

If the court rules against them, Rousseff could lose her right to hold office for eight years.

The trial was expected to take at least three days, and there is no deadline for a final ruling. It is the first time in Brazils history that a sitting president has risked having the job taken away by the electoral court.

The suit was brought after the 2014 election by the right-leaning Brazilian Social Democracy Party, whose presidential candidate, Aecio Neves, lost to the Rousseff-Temer ticket.

Ironically, the party has been a key ally of Temer since he replaced Rousseff.

If the court decides against the Rousseff-Temer ticket, Temers mandate would be annulled and Congress would have to pick someone to serve out his term through December 2018. The embattled president has said he would appeal.

If Temer should be forced from the presidency by the court, or decided to resign, Chamber of Deputies Speaker Rodrigo Maia would take over for 30 days while Congress votes in a new leader.

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WASHINGTONYouve probably heard all about whats happening in Washington. This is a story about what isnt.

The rapid-fire revelations about the Trump campaign and its Russia connections that are heating up this city are having a chilling effect in plenty of other ways.

There are bills that have been pushed to the back burner. Diplomatic initiatives that arent fully initiating. Interest groups that cant stir up much interest. Appointees that havent been appointed.

Read the latest news on U.S. President Donald Trump

It reminds me very much of the Monica Lewinsky days, when things just slowed to a crawl, says Rich Galen, a Republican strategist who worked for then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich when former president Bill Clinton was under investigation for his affair with an intern in the late 1990s. Both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue are consumed by it and there seems to be little appetite for getting into the nitty gritty of other things.

Public relations executive Jamie Horwitz, who leads the team that schedules National Press Club events, emails that nothing, NOTHING of any importance is happening at the press club this week. By contrast, the organizations schedule for June 2016, when reporters were out covering campaigns and former president Barack Obama was almost out the door, still featured plenty of press conferences, breakfasts, luncheons and newsmaker events.

Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, would like to see the nation more focused on voter suppression laws she says are being adopted around the country, but attention spans for these critical issues are short with so much interest focused on the Russia matter.

It does feel like the Comey controversy is sucking up a lot of the air, Clarke said, referring to James Comey, the fired FBI chief.

Even Marc Short, U.S. President Donald Trumps legislative affairs director, this week acknowledged that all of the focus on the Russia investigations detracts from our legislative agenda. It detracts from what were trying to deliver.

To be sure, the city has not ground to a halt.

Trump himself made a point of agreeing to address religious conservatives at the same time that Comey will be testifying before Congress on Thursday. And the White House is gamely attempting to keep the focus this week on proposed infrastructure improvements.

On Capitol Hill, senators are writing their version of legislation to replace the Obama administrations health-care law, which stalled out once before. And the full Senate and House are scheduled to be tackling Iran sanctions and financial regulations when Comey is testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

But the mushrooming Russia investigation throws a long shadow.

Former Oklahoma congressman Mickey Edwards said the drumbeat of revelations about the Trump campaigns connections to Russia makes even Republican legislators less likely to deliver full-throated support to Trump initiatives such as health care.

Everybodys going to be a little skittish about casting votes to support a Trump agenda when you dont know whats the next shoe thats going to drop, says Edwards, who spent 16 years in the House from 1977 to 1992 and served in the GOP leadership.

And with Trump running far behind on making appointments, Edwards adds, the Russia investigations put even more pressure on the small group of people who are running his administration.

Its like a little family gathering trying to run a country, he says. They dont have the capacity even without the Russia investigation. And with Russia, theyre totally diverted.

Read more:

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On Capitol Hill, a handful of congressional committees are directly involved in the Russia question. And beyond that, everybodys interested in it from a gossip standpoint, says Galen.

With the Senate and House intelligence committees at the centre of the Trump-Russia vortex, legislation to renew and revise a key section of the foreign intelligence surveillance law that allows the U.S. to collect certain communications on the internet has been forced to compete for attention with the Russia matters. At a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Wednesday on the surveillance law, questions to the nations intelligence chiefs repeatedly pivoted instead toward the Russia investigation.

As for action on health care, Sen. Tim Kaine said that after the House passed its version of health legislation, he returned to Washington the following Monday psyched for the Senate to tackle the issue.

And then Tuesday, Comey got fired, Kaine said. And since then, aside from Republicans working behind closed doors to find health care solutions without Democratic participation, we havent had hearings on health care. We havent had witnesses. ... It does divert attention.

At the State Department, the constant questions about potential collusion between Trumps campaign and Russia have added another layer of difficulty to the administrations efforts to improve relations with the former Cold War foe.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, speaking during a visit to New Zealand, said Tuesday that Trump wants him to keep whats happening in the political realm from impeding efforts to rebuild U.S. relations with Russia. But he acknowledged that our relationships with Russia are at a very low point and theyve been deteriorating.

Sen. John McCain recently lamented that the Russia probe is a challenge to Washington, D.C., the way we do business, a challenge to bipartisanship and a challenge to the effectiveness of this newly elected president. And Sen. Marco Rubio warned that all the leaks related to Russia were making it hard for people within the executive branch to trust one another when you are in a room and you dont know where these notes or where these comments are going to wind up in the newspaper in 48 hours.

William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who worked in the Clinton administration, cautions against blaming all of Trumps problems on the Russia probes when there is plenty of independent dysfunction in the White House.

It wasnt going to be so easy to get any of this done even without the distraction of the Russia investigation, he says.

I dont think hes been in a commanding position from Day One, Galston adds. Hes taken a bad hand and played it very badly into an even worse hand.

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WASHINGTONChristopher Wray, a lawyer with a strong law enforcement background who represented New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie in the Bridgegate scandal, was announced Wednesday as U.S. President Donald Trumps pick to head the FBI.

In an early morning two-sentence tweet, Trump said he intended to nominate Wray, a high-ranking official in George W. Bushs Justice Department. That word came one day before the FBI director that Trump fired last month, James Comey, was to testify in public on Capitol Hill for the first time since that dismissal.

Trump called Wray a man of impeccable credentials, but offered no more information about the selection, except to end the tweet with Details to follow.

House Speaker Paul Ryan said Wray seemed like the perfect kind of person for the important job. Ryan said he favoured a career person and that Wray certainly seems to fit that bill.

Read the latest news on U.S. President Donald Trump

Wray rose to head the departments criminal division in the Bush administration and oversaw investigations into corporate fraud, at a time when Comey was deputy attorney general. Wray took charge of a task force of prosecutors and FBI agents created to investigate the Enron scandal.

He also played an important role after Sept. 11, providing oversight as the FBI and Justice Department shifted their focus to counterterrorism and performing superbly during the incredibly intense period, according to the current attorney general, Jeff Sessions.

Sessions said in a statement that Wray combines a brilliant legal mind, outstanding accomplishments, and a proven record of public service.

Read more:

Sessions offered to resign over tensions with Trump, sources say

Top intelligence official says Trump asked if he could intervene with Comey on FBI Russia probe

With the White House trying to ignore him, Trumps tweets once again sabotage U.S. foreign policy

Wray is a traditional choice for the job, given his background. Trump had considered current and former politicians, including former Sen. Joe Lieberman and some FBI agents worried that that Trump would try to politicize the bureau.

Thomas OConnor, president of the FBI Agents Association, said that group looked forward to meeting with Wray and learning about his views on bureau and the challenges agents face.

Reaction to Wray was slow on Capitol Hill as lawmakers werent given advance notice and few in Congress know him. Presidents traditionally give members of the same party a heads up about such an announcement, allowing lawmakers time to prepare positive statements about the nominee.

A top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, said Wray had impeccable credentials, vast experience, and strong support across the board.

A GOP colleague was more cautious.

With the many threats that the U.S. faces domestically and internationally, we need a strong FBI director, said Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford, a member of the Senate Intelligence committee. In the coming weeks, we will evaluate Christopher Wrays qualifications to lead the FBI and his plans for our security and law enforcement.

The timing of Trumps announcement appeared to be an effort to redirect attention on the eve Comeys testimony before the Senate intelligence committee. Comey, during his upcoming appearance before the Senate Intelligence committee, is expected to describe his encounters with Trump in the weeks before his May 9 firing. Comey could offer new details regarding discussions with Trump about the federal investigation into Russias election meddling and possible co-ordination with the Trump campaign.

The White House and its allies have been looking for ways to offset that potentially damaging testimony and have been working on strategies aimed at undermining Comeys credibility.

Wray works in private practice for the King & Spalding law firm. He represented Republican Christie in the lane-closing investigation, in which two former Christie aides were convicted of plotting to close bridge lanes to punish a Democratic mayor who wouldnt endorse Christie. During tense times, Christie said he would make one call: to Wray.

The two met and bonded when Christie was the top federal prosecutor in New Jersey in the Bush administration. Christie said the president made an outstanding choice for FBI director, calling Wray an independent, non-political pick. Law enforcement ought to be thrilled, Christie said.

Christie, who has informally advised Trump, was not charged in the bridge case.

Christies office disclosed last year that Wray had the missing cellphone that was used by the governor and contained about a dozen text messages that Christie exchanged with a former staffer during a legislative hearing related to the bridge in 2013.

Former colleagues described Wray as serious and professional.

Alice Fisher, who followed Wray as head of the Justice Departments criminal division and also interviewed for the FBI post, called Wray an excellent lawyer who will provide even keeled leadership and already has strong ties to the FBI.

Early in his career, Wray, a 1992 graduate from Yale Law School, was an assistant U.S. attorney in Georgia.

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LONDONThe youngest of the London Bridge attackers pleaded with his mother to settle with him in Syria but instead moved to Britain where his extremist views hardened and he fell into the company of a bloodthirsty gang that launched the latest attack on British streets, his mother said Wednesday.

Valeria Khadija Collina last spoke with her 22-year-old son, Youssef Zaghba, by telephone just two days before he and two other men plowed a van into a crowd near London Bridge and went on a stabbing rampage. Eight people were killed and dozens wounded. All three of the assailants were shot dead.

Zaghba, an Italian national of Moroccan descent, initially told his mother that he wanted to go to Syria to start a family in a religious Islamic climate  not to fight. But he changed, she said, when he went to Britain about a year ago and was seduced by radical views propagated on the internet.

Last year ... when I went to England, he was ... more rigid, Collina, an Italian convert to Islam, told reporters in a series of interviews at her home in Bologna, Italy. From his face, from his look, I could see there was a radicalization, as you say. And this happened in England, absolutely.

The other two attackers were identified as Khurum Butt, a 27-year-old whose extremist views had been reported to police, and 30-year-old Rachid Redouane, also known as Rachid Elkhdar, a pastry chef who claimed to have dual Moroccan-Libyan citizenship.

It was not immediately clear how the three knew each other, but Collina said one of her sons friends recognized one of the other attackers, though it wasnt clear which one that was.

Butt, who was born in Pakistan and moved to Britain as a child, had worked in 2015 in the office at Auriga Holdings Ltd, which manages some Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises in Britain. Company officials said they had no evidence that either of the other attackers worked at any of the franchises.

Both Butt and Zaghba were known to British law enforcement, raising questions about whether anything could have been done to prevent the assault.

Italian authorities said Zaghba was stopped at the Bologna airport in March 2016 and questioned, but never charged with a crime. Italian officials said suspicions about him were shared with British authorities and his name was listed in the Europe-wide intelligence-sharing system. He was also stopped at Londons Stansted airport in January, but let go.

Read more:

U.K. police identify third London Bridge attacker, who told authorities he wanted to be a terrorist

The dangerous theatre of the London Bridge terror attacks: Walkom

After London attack, Theresa Mays record on terrorism scrutinized

Collina said police called her after her son was stopped at Bologna airport and asked if she knew he was going to Turkey. Collina said she urged them to detain her son and prevent him from going.

When they asked him what he was going to do in Istanbul, rather than saying tourist he said terrorist, Collina told The Associated Press and other media, calling that a mental lapse and not a sign of intent. However, she said she and the police assumed he wanted to eventually go to Syria, given he only had a one-way ticket to Istanbul and a small backpack.

His passport and cellphone were seized, but he got them back after a court determined there wasnt enough evidence to arrest him.

Collina said Zaghba was monitored by Italian intelligence agents each time he came to Italy to visit her after that initial run-in with authorities. She said she told her son to be careful about anything he did after that, including surfing the internet, adding that she didnt approve of his London friends and never felt comfortable in his London neighbourhood.

Although news of her sons death came as a shock, she said she could only share the pain of the victims families. Its something that has no sense, for any religion, or any ideology, she said, choking back tears and calling her sons actions a deviation of terror.

Seated cross-legged on cushions on the floor of her modest Bologna home, her head veiled, Collina said her last phone conversation with her son was sweet.

He had gone to live in an outside building in the garden and was happy because he said it was bigger and when he opened the door there were trees, she said. And after I thought that these images of a garden were similar to the images of paradise.

British security and law enforcement officials are investigating Butt as the potential ringleader of the cell, according to a security official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the ongoing details.

Several people had alerted police to Butts extremist views and he also appeared last year in a documentary, The Jihadis Next Door, in which he is shown unfurling a black-and-white flag associated with Daesh, also known as ISIS.

Butts family said Wednesday they were shocked and appalled by his actions. Now, more than ever, we need to work together to stop the actions of the mindless few who claim to be acting in the name of Islam, they said.

Both British authorities and Irelands Police Commissioner Noirin OSullivan have said they had no evidence Redouane was involved in any terror cell during his time in both countries. Two people believed to have documents linked to Redouane were arrested in Ireland, though only one remained in custody Wednesday.

Redouane had previously been refused asylum in the UK in 2009. However, his 2012 marriage to Charisse OLeary, a British citizen, allowed him a European Union identity card that granted him easy travel between Britain and Ireland. British officials declined to comment on why his asylum request was denied.

OLeary said Wednesday she broke up with Redouane six months ago. They had a young daughter.

I am deeply shocked, saddened and numbed by the actions of my ex-partner who has killed and injured so many innocent people, OLeary said in a statement. My thoughts and efforts now are with trying to bring up my daughter with the knowledge that someday I will have to try and explain to her why her father did what he did.

Although Redouane was born in Fez, Morocco, his father was Libyan. In 2011, the younger man allegedly went to fight Moammar Gadhafi and joined a militia that sent fighters on to Syria, according to British media reports that could not be immediately confirmed with Libyan or British authorities.

Salman Abedi, the man behind the Manchester bombing last month, also had Libyan connections. His family had sought asylum in Britain but later returned to Libya, where authorities say his father belonged to a militant group backed by Al Qaeda. Abedis younger brother was being held for questioning in Libya.

Saturdays attack  the third in three months in which suspects had been on the radar of security officials  has prompted Prime Minister Theresa May to call for tougher counterterrorism laws even if it means changing human rights protections.

Reaction to the attack has dominated the final days of campaigning before Thursdays general election in Britain. Opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and others have criticized May for cutting police numbers by roughly 20,000 during her tenure as home secretary.

Since the attack, the number of racist incidents has spiked, according to Londons Mayor Sadiq Khan. Police have made 25 arrests for hate crime offences since the attack.

Im calling on all Londoners to pull together, and send a clear message around the world that our city will never be divided by these hideous individuals who seek to harm us and destroy our way of life, Khan said.

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CAPE CANAVERAL, FLA.NASA chose 12 new astronauts Wednesday from its biggest pool of applicants ever, hand-picking seven men and five women who could one day fly aboard the nations next generation of spacecraft.

The astronaut class of 2017 includes doctors, scientists, engineers, pilots and military officers from Anchorage to Miami and points in between. Theyve worked in submarines, emergency rooms, university lecture halls, jet cockpits and battleships. They range in age from 29 to 42, and they typically have led the pack.

It makes me personally feel very inadequate when you read what these folks have done, said NASAs acting administrator, Robert Lightfoot.

Vice-President Mike Pence welcomed the group during a televised ceremony at NASAs Johnson Space Center in Houston. He offered U.S. President Donald Trumps congratulations and noted that the president is firmly committed to NASAs noble mission, leading America in space.

Pence assured the crowd that NASA will have the resources and support necessary to continue to make history. He said he would lead a resurrected National Space Council to help set the direction of the program.

Under Trump, America will lead in space once again, and the world will marvel, Pence said.

More than 18,300 people threw their hats into the space ring during a brief application period 1  years ago. Thats more than double the previous record of 8,000 set in 1978, when the space shuttles were close to launching.

The 12 selected Wednesday will join 44 astronauts already in the NASA corps. U.S. astronauts have not launched from home soil since 2011, when the space shuttles were retired, thus the low head count. Americans have been hitching rides aboard Russian spacecraft in the meantime, but that could change next year.

After two years of training, the newbies may end up riding commercial rockets to the International Space Station or flying beyond the moon in NASAs Orion spacecraft. Their ultimate destination could be Mars.

SpaceX and Boeing are building capsules capable of carrying astronauts to the space station and back as soon as next year. A launch engineer and senior manager for SpaceX, Robb Kulin, is among the new astronauts. Hes also worked as an ice driller in Antarctica and a commercial fisherman in Alaska.

Hopefully, one day, I actually fly on a vehicle that ... I got to design, Kulin said.

Kulin and his classmates may be in for a long wait. Some members of the class of 2009 have yet to launch.

Read more: European Space Agency to help NASA in around-the-moon mission

Dr. Jonny Kim, a former Navy SEAL and specialist in emergency medicine, told reporters it may be a little unclear what the future holds, at least regarding what spacecraft he and his fellow astronauts might fly.

Were just happy to be here, he added.

Jack Fischer, who was in the 2009 group, just got to the space station in April, but he said he couldnt be happier as he showed the latest hires their new office in a video.

Its a little bit cramped. The desk is kind of small. But the view. Oh, the view.

Geologist Jessica Watkins already has experienced space  vicariously  as part of the team working with NASAs Curiosity rover on Mars.

We intend to send her to Mars one day, folks, NASA Flight Operations Director Brian Kelly said in introducing Watkins. She gave a thumbs-up.

This is NASAs 22nd group of astronauts. The first group, the original Mercury 7 astronauts, was chosen in 1959.

Altogether, 350 Americans have now been selected to become astronauts. Requirements include U.S. citizenship; degrees in science, technology, engineering or math; and at least three years of experience or 1,000 hours of piloting jets.

A brief look at the elite 12:

Navy Lt. Kayla Barron of Richland, Washington, a submarine-warfare officer and nuclear engineer who was among the first class of women commissioned into the submarine service and now works at the U.S. Naval Academy.

Zena Cardman of Williamsburg, Virginia, a graduate research fellow at the National Science Foundation with a specialty in microorganisms in subsurface environments such as caves.

Air Force Lt. Col. Raja Chari of Cedar Falls, Iowa, director of the F-35 Integrated Test Force at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

Navy Lt. Cmdr. Matthew Dominick of Wheat Ridge, Colorado, department head for Strike Fighter Squadron 115.

Bob Hines of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a NASA research pilot at Johnson Space Center.

Warren Woody Hoburg of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Dr. Jonny Kim of Los Angeles, a Navy lieutenant who trained as a SEAL and is completing his residency in emergency medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

Robb Kulin of Anchorage, Alaska, who leads the launch chief engineering group for SpaceX at Hawthorne, California.

Marine Maj. Jasmin Moghbeli of Baldwin, New York, who tests H-1 helicopters and serves as a quality assurance and avionics officer for Marine Operational Test Evaluation Squadron 1 in Yuma, Arizona.

Loral OHara of Sugar Land, Texas, a research engineer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.

Dr. Francisco Frank Rubio of Miami, an Army major who is serving as a surgeon in Fort Carson, Colorado.

Jessica Watkins of Lafayette, Colorado, a post-doctoral fellow at California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California.

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WASHINGTONU.S. President Donald Trump demanded loyalty from the director of the FBI, James Comey, and tried to get him to end the investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn, Comey plans to say in testimony on Thursday.

Comeys remarks conflict with Trumps claim that he never made such a request to close the Flynn probe. They corroborate a New York Times report in May that Trump had dismissed as entirely false. And they may produce more questions about whether the president tried to obstruct justice.

Comey, whom Trump fired in May, is scheduled to make a hotly anticipated appearance before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday. His opening statement, released by the committee Wednesday at Comeys request, suggests he will confirm the reporting Trump described as fake news and the product of invented anonymous sources.

Comey will do so on wall-to-wall television. All of the major U.S. networks planned to cancel regular programming to broadcast the testimony live.

Trumps defenders seized on the two parts of the seven-page statement that were helpful to him. Comey, they noted, confirmed Trumps claim that he had told Trump he was not personally under investigation. And Comey said he did not believe Trump was asking him to abandon the entire investigation related to his campaigns dealings with Russia, just the Flynn component.

The president feels completely and totally vindicated, Trumps lawyer on the Russia matter, Marc Kasowitz, said in a statement.

On the whole, though, the testimony is likely to be damaging to Trump. Comey paints a portrait of a president who, at very least, behaved inappropriately on numerous occasions  trampling boundaries between the White House and law enforcement and attempting to ensnare his FBI director in a relationship of improper dependence.

An hour after Kasowitz issued his statement, Trumps longtime personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, issued a statement that suggested Trump was not entirely thrilled.

Comeys testimony needs to be carefully scrutinized, Cohen said, since it makes reference to former British spy Christopher Steeles dossier of allegations about Trump and Russia. Cohen claimed Steele had debunked the dossier, though that is not true.

Comey said he had nine one-on-one conversations with Trump in four months, though he had only two with Trumps predecessor, Barack Obama, in three years. He outlined five of them in his testimony, omitting anything about the other four.

The most notable of the five exchanges came on Feb. 14, when he said Trump insisted on speaking to him alone in the Oval Office.

Trump made Attorney General Jeff Sessions and adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner leave the room, Comey said, then began, I want to talk about Mike Flynn.

Flynn had been forced out of his job the previous day amid a controversy over his failure to disclose contacts with Russian officials. Trump, according to Comey, said, I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.

In perhaps Comeys most important sentence, he said he understood the president to be requesting that we drop any investigation of Flynn in connection with false statements about his conversations with the Russian ambassador in December.

He did not think Trump was asking him to drop the broader probe. But it was very concerning, he said, given the FBIs role as an independent investigative agency.

Comeys testimony vividly describes other difficult moments with the president, which Comey said he documented in writing right after they happened. He did not feel compelled to document his interactions with Obama, he said.

Read more: Key excerpts from former FBI director James Comeys upcoming testimony

His accounts are rife with colourful specifics. In his recap of a Trump phone call of March 30, he said the president told him he said he had nothing to do with Russia, had not been involved with hookers in Russia. If Comey utters that sentence on Thursday, he will indirectly put on the public record a salacious unconfirmed Steele report that many news outlets had been unwilling to mention.

Comey described a meeting on Jan. 27 as particularly uncomfortable. In a private dinner at the White House, Comey said, Trump told him, I need loyalty, I expect loyalty.

Comey said: I didnt move, speak, or change my facial expression in any way during the awkward silence that followed. We simply looked at each other in silence. The conversation then moved on, but he returned to the subject near the end of our dinner.

Eventually, he said, he told Trump, You will always get honesty from me. Trump, he said, said he wanted honest loyalty. Seeking to end the very awkward conversation, Comey said he paused, then said, You will get that from me.

The whole encounter made him uneasy, Comey said: at one point, Trump bizarrely asked him if he wanted to remain in the job for which he had seven years remaining in his term. He said he believed the dinner was, at least in part, an effort to have me ask for my job and create some sort of patronage relationship.

In their last conversation, on Apr. 11, Comey said the president asked him to get out the message that he was not personally a subject of the counter-intelligence investigation, as Comey had told him directly. Comey said he advised Trump to make the request through the Department of Justice.

He said he would do that, Comey said, and added, Because I have been very loyal to you, very loyal; we had that thing you know. I did not reply or ask him what he meant by that thing. I said only that the way to handle it was to have the White House Counsel call the Acting Deputy Attorney General. He said that was what he would do and the call ended. That was the last time I spoke with President Trump.

He did not tell Trump, he said, that both Justice and the FBI were both reluctant to issue a public declaration  most importantly because they would have then had to publicly declare that he was being investigated if the situation changed.

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An email asking what I, as a Muslim, thought of the Manchester massacre is how I learned of the attack.

The suspicion that I may sympathize reveals the insidious nature of Islamophobia. The inferences that Islam (and not a deviation) endorses such heinous acts is dangerous.

One may argue that this belief is reasonable given the many terrorist acts carried out in the name of Islam. Indeed, since the beginning of Ramadan there have been more than 25 Muslim-linked terrorist attacks. The London terrorists, for instance, allegedly shouted this is for Allah, as if God needed another dead body.

This raises the question: Why is their self-labeling of their murderous rampage as Islamic accepted, while the rejection of such acts by a clear majority of Muslims is not given the same deference?

Muslim children are taught that in Ramadan one doesnt even talk back in anger, let alone harm others. These kids will refer you to the Quran, which equates the killing of one innocent to killing all of humanity, and some may even recite the prophets strict rules of engagement for war, which some legal scholars laude for its relative progressiveness at the time. Yet the terrorist view is legitimated.

Numerous scholars have documented thousands of fatwas (Islamic opinions) against terrorism. Recently, a student even compiled and archived more than 800 pages of condemnations for her class. Yet, it is never enough.

Here is some food for thought.

First, no community or group is asked to apologize for its fringe. Christianity has been used by Crusaders, the KKK and other white supremacists, and even anti-abortion activists. In recent times, Anders Breivik and Timothy McVeigh both killed dozens partly in the name of Christianity.

Ergo for some Buddhist terrorists in Myanmar and Sri Lanka, Hindu fanatics in India, or Jewish extremists in the Occupied Territories. Atheists, animal rights and even environmental activists also have their share. Yet, there is no guilt by association, and rightly so.

As recently as last year U.S. law enforcement agencies confirmed that right-wing extremists posed a bigger threat than radicalized Muslims. While in Canada, Barbara Perry released findings of her 30-year study, which showed 120 attacks from right-wing groups in contrast with 7 by Muslim extremists.

The double standard is not lost on many, but given the Islamophobic climate it is wise for Muslims to continue with their condemnation mantra.

Second, Muslims oppose terrorism because it is antithetical to their beliefs, but also because they are victimized thrice: by terrorists, by Islamophobes and by those fighting terrorists (security profiling, drone strikes, ETC.). I dont often quote President Trump approvingly, but as he said during his Saudi speech, [m]ore than 95 per cent of the victims of terrorism are themselves Muslim.

And its not just talk. In fact, the Manchester bomber and at least one of the London attackers were reported to authorities by Muslims, and they were even thrown out of mosques. More than 130 Imams have also refused to lead their funeral prayers.

Third, extremist recruits have poor knowledge of Islam, according to leaked Daesh documents. This is confirmed by western intelligence, including MI5, and even the United States Institute for Peace. Indeed, leading terrorism experts, including Olivier Roy and Robert Pape, have demonstrated that it is not Islam but politics that drive terrorism.

Fourth, it appears that many are rationalizing hate against Islam because of terrorist attacks. If you can understand how terrorist attacks in the West can radicalize some westerners, but cant quite grasp why bombing runs and attacks on the Muslim world can radicalize some Muslims then we will never get to the root.

Finally, the fear felt by many is also real. Muslims must be more proactive in undermining some of the classical texts glorifying violence. The peaceful vision of the Quran must be harnessed to challenge some of the existing violent narratives. It exists at the scholarly level, but it must also trickle down to the masses in a more concerted way. Imams must deconstruct and contextualize the violent rhetoric found in juristic works, some of which is attributed to the Prophet and adopted uncritically by far too many.

Given the growing marginalization, victimization and alienation felt by many Muslim youth and the lack of proper Islamic education, we can no longer assume that these extremist teachings will fade away on their own.

Until we tackle this problem holistically, condemnations will get us nowhere.

Faisal Kutty is counsel to KSM Law, an associate professor at Valparaiso University Law School in Indiana and an adjunct professor at Osgoode Hall Law School. @faisalkutty.

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Terrorism is theatre. The point is not to overwhelm by sheer force of arms. It is to frighten and unnerve.

If the terrorists are lucky, they will provoke their enemy into overreacting. Al Qaedas great victory in 2001 came not from the deaths and damage of its 9/11 attacks. Rather it came from the fact that these attacks sucked the Americans into two debilitating wars, one in Afghanistan, the other in Iraq.

In the same way, the real danger posed by the latest terror outrages in Britain goes far beyond the immediate casualties.

The real danger is that the fear caused by these outrages will push Western governments into doing something rash.

Logically, such governments should regard terrorism as a real but relatively minor problem.

In the U.S., many more people are killed by run-of-the-mill gun violence.

The online publication Business Insider calculates that, based on history, the odds of being killed in a terror attack on the U.S. homeland are one in 45,000.

The average American is far more likely to die by choking on a chicken bone.

Statistically, those at serious risk of terrorist attacks live in countries like Iraq or Afghanistan.

By comparison, Manchester and London are safe havens.

But politically, none of this matters. A marketplace bombing in Iraq is back page news in the West. An attack in London that kills far fewer tops the newscasts.

This is understandable. It is also what the terrorists want.

In its bid to construct a so-called caliphate in the Middle East, Daesh (also known as ISIS) is following a two-track strategy. The first is to capture land in Iraq and Syria. The second is to take the fight to the West through terror.

An eyewitness to the London Bridge attack filmed the scenes from inside Borough Market on Saturday night immediately after suspected attackers were caught by the police.

Thanks in large part to the Wests U.S.-led bombing campaign, the first track is not working for Daesh. It is losing ground. Hence its push to encourage supporters in the West to mount savage and unpredictable terror attacks.

The aim is, in part, to demonstrate to the West that there is a price to be paid for its bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria. The more important motive is to drive a wedge between Muslims and non-Muslims in Europe and North America.

Daeshs hope is that if Muslims can be made to feel alienated from mainstream Western society, they will be more likely to support the insurgency.

As the London Bridge outrage demonstrates, the death toll need not be massive to gain Daesh the attention it wants. Only seven people were killed in this attack. But it has made headlines around the world.

How will the authorities react? So far, the signs arent good. American President Donald Trump is using the London attack to justify his proposal to ban citizens of six Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S.

British Prime Minister Theresa May has promised that if her Conservatives win Thursdays general election, she will move to give the police and security services greater but unspecified powers.

Canadas Liberal government is more circumspect. But the attacks in Britain are sure to strengthen the hand of those in the security services who want to keep the entire set of enhanced powers granted them by Stephen Harpers government  powers which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has promised to scale back.

The British are familiar with terrorism. They have lived through the long battle with the Irish Republican Army (a battle that, ultimately, was resolved politically). Thanks to its network of police-monitored closed-circuit television cameras, Britain is a country under constant surveillance. Compared to Canada, its anti-terror laws are already draconian.

Still, there will be pressure to do more.

With luck, whoever wins government in Britain Thursday will move cautiously. Terrorism is a difficult strategy to counter. Do nothing and you leave yourself open. Fight it the wrong way and you end up playing into the terrorists hands.

Thomas Walkom appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

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The York school board has publicly admitted that it failed a parent and the wider black community by not properly dealing with incidents of racism, including one where a trustee uttered a racial slur.

New Interim Director Kathi Wallace said the apology, which she formally delivered at a meeting of the York Region District School Board on Tuesday night, is a step forward  and parent Charline Grant appreciated the move.

It was sincere. We knew she was reading, but it didnt feel like it, said Grant, who expected the apology as part of a human rights settlement over the incident in which former trustee Nancy Elgie referred to her using the N-word, as well as two other complaints that involved alleged incidents of racism her children faced.

Even though I know it was going to happen, I still felt emotional.

Afterwards, Wallace offered a personal apology, hugging Grant and saying: Im so sorry for what you have been through.

The atmosphere was so different, it was unbelievable, Grant said, adding that a number of staff and trustees also apologized and thanked her family for their persistence. Everything felt so good, so positive. It doesnt feel like the same board.

A hard-hitting provincial report in April slammed the York board for its hostile, dismissive, arrogant and inappropriate response to parent complaints of racism and other serious concerns  including a growing culture of mistrust among staff and trustees  and even led the board to dismiss its director.

Education Minister Mitzie Hunter immediately issued 22 directives, such as improving relations with parents and community groups as well as establishing a human rights office  things the board continues to work on as deadlines loom.

I appreciate the efforts of the board of trustees and (board) staff in responding to the 22 directives I have outlined to support the boards return to accountable and transparent governance, ensuring equity for all students, Hunter said in a statement to the Star.

The boards swift action in appointing Kathi Wallace, as the interim director of education, was an important step toward moving the YRDSB forward  and is critical to ensure healing within the community, and the rebuilding of public trust, which I continue to expect the board to work toward achieving together.

Wallace told the Star on Wednesday she is truly sorry the Grant family has gone through this experience. Its important to note that in addition to the formal apology read at the board meeting, I also personally apologized to Ms. Grant and her family directly I was pleased that Ms. Grant accepted my apology and indicated this provides her with some closure.

Were committed to continuing to dialogue with Ms. Grant and other community partners, she said. The boards apology is now posted on its website.

The board, however, still faces other human rights complaints, including one from a group of parents on behalf of the Vaughan African Canadian Association and the National Council of Canadian Muslims.

Addressing our challenges wont happen overnight, board chair Loralea Carruthers said. But we are proud of the successes we have had so far. We are delivering on our collective commitment to students, parents, our staff and the government. And we will not rest until the job is done.

Chris Dsouza, an equity and human rights expert, called Wallaces apology a gracious step toward repairing the damaged relationship between the school board and the broader parent and guardian community.

However, he added it is key that all the (provincial) recommendations be implemented in order to restore Yorks reputation as a truly inclusive organization.

Last November, Grant was speaking to a reporter after a public meeting about controversies at the York board when Elgie referred to her as a n-----. Elgie has since resigned.

For unknown reasons, the board opted for an internal human resources investigation into Elgies actions, instead of the proper procedure, a trustee code-of-conduct probe.

As part of the minutes of settlement in Grants human rights case, the board has agreed to take a dozen concrete steps including ongoing anti-racism training for staff as well as better support for black male students.

At Tuesdays meeting, the York board also approved its $1.5 billion budget, saying $850,000 will be spent on Hunters directives, including a student census survey that will ask about racism, as well as establish the human rights office and an independent integrity commissioner.

Grant now says shell watch closely to make sure the human rights office, and better equity training, are effective.

But for now, she has the closure she needed.

This morning was an amen morning, and happiness that the chapter is closed, she said Wednesday. Now we can move on.

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His 1897 launch into the world was modest  a home birth in a church manse near Yonge St. and Finch Ave. But Lester Bowles Mike Pearson would grow up to become one of Torontos most renowned sons  the only Canadian to win a Nobel Peace Prize and the prime minister who would usher in the countrys most momentous social programs.

Universal health care, the Canada Pension Plan, the Maple Leaf flag, Canada Student Loans  these are some of the milestone programs for which Canadians can thank our 14th prime minister.

How did the son of a humble Methodist minister scale such lofty heights?

Pearson credited a happy, tight-knit family for giving him a good start. He was close to his parents, Edwin and Annie (nee Bowles), and brothers Marmaduke and Vaughan. His parents advised him to be kind and understanding to people I passed on the way up since I would no doubt meet them on the way down again, he wrote in his memoir, Mike, The Memoirs of the Rt. Hon. Lester B. Pearson (published in 1972).

The parsonage where Pearson was born was located in the then-village of Newtonbrook (a plaque on a commercial building on Yonge, just north of Finch, marks the site.) The family didnt stay there long, as his father ministered at different parsonages in southern Ontario.

A good student, 16-year-old Pearson got into U of Ts Victoria College in 1913, the year before the First World War began. He enlisted in 1915, eventually training in England as a pilot. Thats when young Pearson got the nickname Mike, which he used throughout his life.

My squadron commander felt that Lester was no name for an aspiring fighter pilot and decided to call me Mike, Pearson wrote in his memoirs. It stuck and I was glad to lose Lester.

While in London for pilot training, Pearson was struck by a bus during a blackout and sent back to Canada to recuperate.

He later resumed his education at U of T, and in 1923 became a history lecturer at the University of Toronto. One day, Maryon Moody  four years younger and the daughter of a Winnipeg doctor  enrolled in his class. They were soon dating, and married in 1925.

Pearson once joked that witty, intelligent and outspoken Maryon married him to get through her final year  she did get through that year, but how she got through the last 40, Ill never know.

She may have got through political campaigns, but Maryon never liked them. Proof of that was written in Maryons obituary in the Toronto Star in 1989. During a 1962 campaign stop, Pearson asked an audience if there was anything they wanted to bring up and Maryon muttered, the last 10 cups of coffee.

Pearson appreciated his wife and lauded her in his memoirs. Without her love and help  I would never have reached a position where I would be writing this story.

After they married and had two children, Geoffrey and Patricia, Pearson explored other career prospects. He wrote the Department of External Affairs foreign service exam, finished first and was hired in 1928. He later joined the office staff of then Prime Minister R.B. Bennett.

Pearsons star was rising. In 1935, then-Prime Minister Mackenzie King sent him to London, England, as second-in-command to the Canadian High Commissioner Vincent Massey.

King would later make a peculiar request of Pearson. After a night of German bombing in 1941, Londons historic Westminster Hall was badly damaged. The next day, Pearson got a secret telegram requesting Pearson ask the British for some of the stones from the damaged Westminister for his own ruins at Kingsmere. King had a country estate in Quebec, where he had a collection of ruins. Pearson wrote in his memoir that the request was granted and the stones were shipped back to Canada by submarine.

In 1945, the same year the United Nations was created, Pearson was appointed Canadas ambassador to the United States. He was one of the leading diplomats of the time.

Pearson returned to Canada in 1946 and worked under Louis St. Laurent, who was secretary of state for external affairs. He entered politics, winning a byelection in Algoma East for the Liberals in 1948 and became secretary of state for external affairs in Prime Minister Laurents government.

Pearson signed Canadas first peacetime military alliance  the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949.

His highest honour lay ahead. In 1956, Israel, Britain and France had launched a military operation in Egypt, aimed at removing Egyptian president Gamal Nasser and controlling the nationalized Suez Canal. The U.S. was furious. After months of failing to find a diplomatic solution, the UN General Assembly approved Pearsons idea of sending the worlds first peacekeeping force to Egypt. The invaders withdrew. Pearson was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1957 for helping to resolve the Suez Crisis.

Pearson became leader of the Liberals in 1958 and formed a minority government in 1963. Over the next five years, Pearson shepherded through Parliament a notable legacy of legislation, including the Medical Care Act of 1966, creating universal health care.

Pearson emphasized Canadian independence in foreign policy, resisting U.S. pressure to join the Vietnam War. After proposing the U.S. pause its bombing of North Vietnam to allow for a diplomatic solution during a visit to Philadelphia University on April 2, 1965, a livid President Lyndon Johnson summoned Pearson to Camp David where he reportedly grabbed him by the lapels and said: Dont you come into my living room and piss on my rug.

Pearson also had a run-in with French president Charles de Gaulle, but in his own living room. On July 24, 1967, de Gaulle ended a speech in Montreal shouting the separatist slogan, Vive le Quebec libre.

Pearsons anger reached boiling point, the Star reported. He went on TV the next day, blasting the remark as unacceptable. De Gaulle quickly departed.

Pearson oversaw the celebrations for Canadas centenary in 1967. The year also marked his exit from politics.

He died in 1972. In 1979, the United Nations inaugurated an annual award, the Pearson Medal of Peace, which recognizes an individual Canadians contribution to international service.

Correction - May 9, 2019: This article was edited from a previous version that mistakenly said the Suez crisis took place in 1947.

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Wisconsins environmental protection agency has authorized a Georgia timber company to fill more than 16 acres of Monroe County wetlands in order to build a $65 million frac sand facility.

Meteor Timber, one of the largest private landowners in Wisconsin, has proposed building a processing and loading facility along Interstate 94 near the town of Millston to dry and ship frac sand the company will mine from a nearby site it acquired in a 2014 purchase of nearly 50,000 acres.

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources on Friday granted the company a permit allowing it to fill the wetlands, including about 13 acres of pristine and increasingly rare hardwood swamp.

We are pleased that the DNR has approved our wetland permit, and we look forward to continuing to work with the agency as the regulatory process progresses, project manager Chris Mathis said in a written statement to the Tribune. Our project will protect more than 40 acres of wetland for every one impacted, making it one of the largest wetland preservation and restoration efforts in Wisconsin history.

Meteor must still receive permission from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers before filling any wetlands. The company must also apply for permits allowing incidental loss of threatened and endangered species during construction.

The proposal drew criticism at an April public hearing on the permit and was officially opposed by the Ho-Chunk Nation.

Midwest Environmental Advocates called the scope of the wetland destruction massive in comparison to the total of 26 acres the DNR has allowed frac sand mining companies to fill since 2008.

The permit reflects a very careful review and investigation by DNR staff, said MEA staff attorney Sarah Geers. It also reflects the extraordinary damage that this wetland fill will do to a sensitive and imperiled resource.

After the proposal first received media attention, Meteor proposed to restore and preserve more than 640 acres of other land  including more than 296 acres of existing wetlands.

Our company knows that sustainability is an important part of operating responsibly, Mathis said. We have worked hard to go above and beyond other projects by developing a historic plan to permanently preserve and restore high-quality wetlands on more than 600 acres. This effort merits support from those who want to see growth, economic development and preserve the environment  because our project accomplishes all three.

However, the DNR determined those mitigation efforts are not likely to fully compensate for what it calls permanent and irreversible secondary impacts from activity on the site and may not compensate for the direct loss of 13.4 acres of exceptional quality white pine and red maple swamp, which is considered an imperiled habitat.

The agency also said the permit approval may lead to increased applications to fill rare, sensitive and valuable wetland plant communities.

Geers said those and other findings bring into question whether the project can be legally approved under state and federal law.

Timber company sweetens deal for Monroe County frac project A Georgia timber investment company seeking to build an industrial sand operation in Monroe 

Both regulators and opponents have questioned the projects economic viability, given the precipitous drop in demand for sand since domestic fracking peaked in 2014.

But an economic analysis prepared by a Pennsylvania consultant says because the group could efficiently send entire trains of its sand reserves directly to oil fields in Texas that have become some of the nations most productive. The company expects to ship about 1.5 million tons of processed sand each year using the adjacent Union Pacific rail line.

Meteor has said it cannot find another location to accommodate such a large plant along the UP rail line.

The company also said permitting its project is the only way to prevent much of the 752-acre site from being clearcut.

About three quarters of the land is owned by the A&K Alexander Cranberry Co., which was cited in 2013 by the Environmental Protection Agency for illegally filling 5.6 acres of wetlands. As part of the penalty, the EPA required A&K to restore 2.2 acres of the filled wetlands and to get an after-the-fact permit for another 3.63 acres.

According to documents filed in support of the application, A&K managing partner Marty Alexander took out a one-year loan in August for $321,470 to settle the case. In a letter to Meteor, Alexander said if the sale does not go through logging would be his only way to avoid foreclosure.

Sand industry back in business in western Wisconsin Like the ghost towns left behind after the California gold rush fizzled, many of the frac sa
There's one number regarding the United States labor force that worries Jamie Dimon.

The JPMorgan Chase (JPM) - Get Free Report CEO noted the "staggering" decline in the workforce participation rate among working-age men in a call with reporters on Tuesday. The aside came in a briefing on the Business Roundtable's latest CEO survey. Dimon is the chairman of the corporate lobbying group.

"I want to point you to one segment, okay, which is not a collective demographic, one segment and only one segment, and you should all write about it, and it's a staggering number," he said when asked by a reporter about unemployment. "Labor force participation by men between 25 and 55 has gone down from 96% to something like 86 to 87%. That is not demographics folks, that's 10 million people who left the workforce. And maybe some have gone back, my numbers are a little bit old. Write about that segment, okay? That is a huge number."

Dimon's numbers were not quite exact, but the sentiment hones in on a multi-decade trend of men dropping out of the workforce.

While the unemployment rate dropped 4.3% in May, labor force participation by men age 25 to 54 (commonly called "prime-age men") fell to 88.4%, its lowest figure so far this year. Labor force participation for the group hasn't been above 90% since 2009, and the last time it was at or above the 96% figure Dimon referenced was in 1970.

"There's something wrong," Dimon said.

"It's a big deal," said Economic Policy Institute economist Elise Gould. "If you look back from mid-century...you see that men have been declining for a very long period of time, and the trends since 2000 are really a continuation of what's been happening."

It's not just men who are dropping out of the labor force but women as well. After decades of increases in labor force participation among prime-age women, it has slowly been dropping off since the turn of the century.

"The fact that that has been declining over the last 16 years is a conundrum," Gould said.

The problem of nonworking prime-age men has been thoroughly examined by lawmakers and economists seeking a solution. The White House Council of Economic Advisers under President Obama last year released a report offering up a number of possible explanations for the trend, including increasing rates of women in the workforce, rising disability insurance claims, falling demand for less-skilled workers and barriers to employment for men with criminal records.

Brookings Institution researchers Eleanor Krause and Isabel Sawhill in a paper suggested those and other factors could be in play.

"There is no one smoking gun in this story, although if we had to point to the three most prominent, they would be a general lack of the right education and skills, too many years of slack labor markets, and high rates of incarceration," they wrote.

"Growing inequality certainly can be seen as having a cost," Gould said.

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Editor's Pick: Originally published June 6.
Italy's Banco BPM (BPSAF) is another European lender that could face pressure from regulators over a high non-performing loan burden in the wake of Spain's Banco Popular (BPESF) rescue, analysts have said.

Created through the January merger of Banco Popolare and Banco Popolare di Milano, BPM has a nonperforming loan ratio nearly three times the European average and with the ECB having said it will come down hard on lenders whose NPL numbers are "considerably above the average", BPM could find itself in the firing line if it cannot clear its balance sheet.

Italy's third largest lender has gross nonperforming loans of 29 billion ($32 billion) which, when compared with a loan book of 110 billion, amounts to a nonperforming loan ratio of 23.3%.

The average nonperforming loan ratio sat at 6.4% in the eurozone at the end of September, according to an ECB report titled; Resolving Europe's NPL Burden. It's already been targeted by the central bank to sell 8 billion of bad debt before 2019, reducing them by a quarter. So far the bank has sold 1.7 billion of loans.

"Selling the remaining 6.3bn would still leave it with a gross NPL ratio of c19.2%, more than three times the EU average. We think this is still too high," said Eoin Mullany, an analyst Berenberg, in a recent note to clients.

Banco BPM stock rose by just more than 1% Wednesday to change hands at 2.77 each, making it a slight laggard of the sector. The Stoxx Europe 600 Banks index was up 1.23% by mid-day in London.

Spain's Banco Popular was sold to Santander (SAN) - Get Free Report Wednesday as part of a Single Supervisory Mechanism resolution plan, after authorities judged it to be failing.

It had a non-performing loan ratio of nearly 40% while weak profitability had made it difficult to reduce its bad debt pile as sales will likely have meant write downs, which reduce regulatory capital, which is then difficult to replace because of a flimsy bottom line.

In recent weeks, a sudden increase in depositor withdrawals had left the bank with diminishing capacity for new loan issuance, which will have been the only other route through which Popular could have chipped away at its bad loan ratio.

Santander has bought Popular for a nominal sum of 1 and will issue 7 billion of new shares in order to strengthen the combined balance sheet and facilitate the write down of the remaining NPLs.
The U.S. government in early June denied an appeal by firearms maker Glock to reconsider choosing its rival Sig Sauer's P-320 pistol worth up to about $580 million.

The Army originally chose the gun in January, but Glock appealed the decision, leading to the ruling by the Government Accountability Office.

Wall Street's 'Fear Gauge' has Exploded to 9-Month High and Stocks Freak

Sig Sauer is a privately held German firm. It will manufacture the guns in its U.S. subsidiary's New Hampshire plant.

The Army M9 Beretta pistols have been standard issue since 1985 when the U.S. Army selected it. It eventually became the standard sidearm for all branches of the U.S. military.

Before that, the standard issue sidearm was the Colt 1911 45 caliber pistol.

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Editors' pick: Originally published June 7.
It's easy to understand why General Electric (GE) - Get Free Report CEO Jeff Immelt was aghast at President Trump's decision to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accord.

While it's too early to tell if the decision will result in sanctions or tariffs on GE's renewable energy product line, negative reaction from clients would hurt the company, which revealed on Wednesday that its sales of solar and wind systems outside North America doubled in 2016.

"Our performance globally in 2016 was pretty strong in the 19% growth, 7 gigawatts of installs or orders," This business historically is very U.S., but this year we're going to double our sales outside of North American and we look for those kind of trends to continue out there. And we continue to penetrate new countries, Greece and Saudi is quite interested in getting into the renewals business in diversifying both in wind and in solar," Pete McCabe, GE Renewable Energy CEO for Onshore Wind business, told attendees at The Deutsche Bank Global Industrials and Materials Summit in New York on Wednesday.

He said globally there is a lot of opportunity for GE to add market share wit a new 3-megawatt system that fits some overseas markets well. "We've been able to double the orders from last year with that new platform out there, and I'm pretty encouraged out there, and Spain we just won a 1.5-gigawatt win with the new platform in Australia, that market is booming. It will be almost a $1 billion market for us, this year out there," McCabe said.

He said Latin American business is weaker, especially in Brazil because of political and economic challenges there.

"Look," he said, "we feel good about the renewables business, I see no change in guidance, we look at double-digit performance on the revenue and the op profit side. PTC extension, it looks pretty firm, we don't see any vulnerability there, and it's going to fuel some pretty significant growth in 2019 kind of 2020 frame. That repowers a massive business for us, we're in the beginning phase of it, we look $2 to $4 billion, and that's just North America and I'd say it's the early stages when you get outside of North America. We have our headwinds and auctions will become the rule. It's just a matter of when it's not a matter if."

GE shares closed 0.9% to $27.68 in afternoon trade.
NCI Building Systems, Inc. designs, engineers, manufactures, and markets metal products for the nonresidential construction industry in North America. It operates in four segments: Engineered Building Systems, Metal Components, Insulated Metal Panels, and Metal Coil Coating. The Engineered Building Systems segment offers engineered structural members and panels; and self-storage building systems under the Metallic, Mid-West Steel, A & S, All American, Mesco, Star, Ceco, Robertson, Garco, Heritage, and SteelBuilding.com brands to builders, general contractors, developers, and end users directly, as well as through private label companies. The Metal Components segment provides metal roof and wall systems, metal partitions, metal trims, doors, and other related accessories for use in new construction, and repair and retrofit applications; roll-up doors; and interior and exterior walk doors under the MBCI, American Building Components, Eco-ficient, Metal Depots, and Doors and Buildings Components brands to manufacturers, contractors, subcontractors, distributors, lumberyards, cooperative buying groups, and other customers. The Insulated Metal Panels segment offers insulated metal panels for architectural, commercial, industrial, and cold storage end-market applications under the Metl-Span and CENTRIA brands. The Metal Coil Coating segment engages in cleaning, treating, and painting flat-rolled metals in coil form, as well as in slitting and/or embossing the metal, before the metal is fabricated for use by industrial users. It also cleans, treats, and coats heavy and light gauge metal coils for use in construction products, heating and air conditioning systems, water heaters, lighting fixtures, ceiling grids, office furniture, appliances, and other products; and provides toll coating and painted metal package services under the Metal Coaters and Metal Prep brands. NCI Building Systems, Inc. was founded in 1984 and is headquartered in Houston, Texas.
The following companies are subsidiares of Quanta Services: (De) Lazy Q Ranch LLC, 1 Diamond LLC, 1Diamond AS, 618232 Alberta Ltd., 8246408 Canada Inc., Advanced Electric Systems, Advanced Electric Systems LLC, Advanced Utility Testing & Maintenance LLC, Alexander Publications LLC, Allteck GP Ltd., Allteck Limited Partnership, Apprenticeship Programs Inc., Arby Construction, Arcanum Chemicals LLC, Arnett & Burgess Oil Field Construction Limited, Arnett & Burgess Pipeliners (Rockies) LLC, Arnett & Burgess Pipeliners Ltd., B&N Clearing and Environmental LLC, Banister Pipelines Constructors Corp., Banister Pipelines Constructors GP Ltd., Banister Pipelines Limited Partnership, Brent Woodward Inc., Brink Constructors Inc., Brink Constructors Inc. A Corporation Of South Dakota, Brown Engineering and Testing, CAT SPEC Ltd., CAT-SPEC Limited Partnership, CAT-SPEC Limited Partnership (Regd Name) CAT SPEC Ltd., CAT-Spec Limited Partnership, Canadian Utility Construction Corp., Cat Spec Limited LP, Cat Spec Ltd, Cat Spec Ltd. L.P., Cat Spec Ltd. LP, Cat Spec. Ltd. LP, Cat-Spec Ltd (A Domestic limited Partnership), Cat-Spec Ltd LP, Cat-Spec Ltd., Cat-Spec Ltd. L.P., Cat-Spec Ltd. LP, Cat-Spec Ltd. Limited Partnership, Catalyst Changers Inc., Chatham Electric, Citadel Industrial Services L.P., Citadel Industrial Services Ltd., Citadel Industrial Services Ltd. L.P., Citadel Industrial Services Ltd. Limited Partnership, Coe Drilling Pty Ltd., Computapole, Conam Construction Co., Consolidated Power Projects Australia Pty Ltd, Conti Communications Inc., Crux Subsurface Canada Ltd., Crux Subsurface Inc., Cutting Technology - 1 Diamond LLC, DB Utilities Inc., DE Lazy Q Ranch LLC, DNR Pressure Welding Ltd., Dacon Corporation, Dashiell (DE) Corporation (Dashiell Corporation), Dashiell Corporation, Dashiell Corporation DBA Dashiell (DE) Corporation, De Mears Group, De Mears Group Inc., Delaware Quanta Technology LLC, Delaware Underground Construction Co., Didado Utility Company Inc., Digco Utility Construction L.P. Digco Utility Construction Limited Partnership, Dorado Specialty Services L.P., Dorado Specialty Services Ltd., Dorado Specialty Services Ltd. L.P., Dorado Specialty Services Ltd. Limited Partnership, Dorado Specialty Services. Ltd. L.P., Driftwood Electrical Contractors, EHV Power ULC, ELITE PIPING & CIVIL L.P., ELITE TURNAROUND SPECIALISTS LTD, Elite Fabrication Ltd. Elite Fabrication LP, Elite Piping & Civil Limited Partnership, Elite Piping & Civil Limited Partnership, Elite Piping & Civil Lp, Elite Piping & Civil Ltd L.P., Elite Piping & Civil Ltd., Elite Piping & Civil Ltd. L.P., Elite Piping & Civil Ltd. Limited Partnership, Elite Piping and Civil L.P., Elite Turnaround Specialists L.p., Elite Turnaround Specialists Limited Lp, Elite Turnaround Specialists Limited Partnership, Elite Turnaround Specialists Limited Partnership, Elite Turnaround Specialists Ltd Lp, Elite Turnaround Specialists Ltd., Elite Turnaround Specialists Ltd. L.P., Elite Turnaround Specialists Ltd. LP, Elite Turnaround Specialists Ltd. Limited Partnership, Energy Consulting Group LLC, Enscope, Enscope Pty Ltd, FIC GP LLC, Field Personnel Services LLC, First Infrastructure Capital Advisors LLC, First Infrastructure Capital GP L.P., Five Points Construction Co., G-Tek, G-Vac, GEM Engineering Co., Grand Electric Inc., Great Lakes Line Builders, Grid Creative Inc., Grid Manufacturing Corporation, Grid Training Corporation, H.L. Chapman Pipeline Construction Inc., Haverfield Aviation, Haverfield Aviation Inc., Haverfield International Incorporated, Heritage Midstream LLC, IM Electric Inc., IUC ILLINOIS LLC, IUC Nebraska LLC, InfraSource Construction LLC, InfraSource Field Services LLC, InfraSource Services LLC, InfraSources Construction LLC, Infraestructura ETP de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V, Infrasource Engineering Company PC, Infrasource Iowa Underground LLC, Infrasource Of Pa LLC, Integracion Tecnologica del Peru SAC, Intermountain Electric Inc., Intermountain Electric Inc. A Corporation of Colorado, IonEarth LLC, Irby Construction Company, Irby Construction Company Inc., Iron Mountain M.J. Electric LLC, Island Mechanical Corporation, J.C.R. Construction Co. Inc., J.C.R. Utility Construction Co., J.W. Didado Electric Inc., J.W. Didado Electric LLC, J.w. Didado Electric, JBT Electric LLC, Kingston Contracting Inc., Lazy Q Ranch LLC, Lazy Q Training Center LLC The Lazy Q Lineman School, Legend Foundation Services, Lex Engineering Ltd., Lindsey Electric L.P., Logical Link, Longfellow Drilling, M. G. Dyess Inc., M. J. ELECTRIC LLC IRON MOUNTAIN, M. J. Electric LLC, M. J. Electric LLC - Iron Mountain, M. J. Electric LLC DBA M. J. Electric Iron Mountain LLC, M.J. Electric LLC DBA M.J. Electric Iron Mountain, M.J. Electric LLC Iron Mountain, MTS Field Services, MTS Field Services (Richmond Co), MTS Quanta LLC, Manuel Bros. Inc., Marathon Construction Services, Mears Canada Corp., Mears Equipment Services LLC, Mears Group Inc., Mears Group Pty Ltd, Mears Installation LLC, Mearsmex S. de R.L. de C.V., Mejia Personnel Services LLC, Mercer Technical Services, Microline Technology Corporation, Mid America Energy Services Inc., NACAP Niugini Ltd., NC Northstar Energy Services Inc, NGI Construction, NGI Construction Inc., NGI Construction Inc. (FN), NLC CA. Inc., NLC FL. Inc. Northwest Lineman Center, NLC ID. Inc. Northwest Lineman College, NLC TX. Inc., NPC Energy Services LLC, Nacap Australia, Nacap PNG Limited, Network Communication Services, North Houston Pole Line L.P., North Houston Pole Line Limited Partnership, North Sky Communications, NorthStar Energy Services Inc., Northern Powerline Constructors Inc., Northstar Energy Solutions LLC, Northwest Lineman Center, Northwest Lineman College, Northwest Lineman Training Center, Northwest Lineman Training Center Inc., Nova Constructors LLC, Nova Constructors LTD, Nova Equipment Leasing LLC, Nova Group Inc, Nova Group Inc (CA), Nova Group Inc., Nova Group Inc. DBA NGI Construction, Nova NextGen Solutions LLC, O. J. Pipelines Canada Corporation, O. J. Pipelines Canada Limited Partnership, O.J. Industrial Maintenance, O.J. Pipelines Canada, One Call Locators Canada Ltd., P.D.G. Electric, PAR Electrical Contractors Inc., PDG Electric Co., Par Internacional S. de R.L. de C.V., Performance Energy Services Guyana Ltd., Performance Energy Services L.L.C., Phasor Engineering Inc., Phoenix North Constructors Inc., Phoenix Power Group Inc., Potelco Inc., Potelco Incorporated, Power Delivery Program Inc., Price Gregory International Inc., Price Gregory Services LLC, Probst Construction Inc., Probst Electric Inc., QEPC, QEPC Power Solutions LLC, QES GP LLC, QP Energy Services LLC, QPS Engineering LLC, QPS Engineering LTD., QPS Engineering PLLC, QPS Environmental, QPS Flint Construction, QPS Flint Tank Services, QPS Global, QPS Global Services, QPS Global Services (Richmond Ci), QPS Professional Services, QPSE, QS Mats, QSI Engineering Inc., QSI Finance (Australia) Pty Ltd., QSI Finance (Cayman) Pvt. Ltd., QSI Finance Canada ULC, QSI Finance GP (US) LLC, QSI Finance I (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., QSI Finance I (US) LP, QSI Finance II (Australia) Pty Ltd., QSI Finance II (Lux) S.a r.l, QSI Finance II (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., QSI Finance III (Canada) ULC, QSI Finance III (Lux) SARL, QSI Finance IV (Canada) ULC, QSI Finance IX (Canada) Limited Partnership, QSI Finance V (US) L.P., QSI Finance VI (Canada) ULC, QSI Finance VII (Canada) Limited Partnership, QSI Finance VIII (Canada) ULC, QSI Finance X (Canada) ULC, QSI Inc., QSN Lux Holdings I SCSp, QSN Lux Holdings II SCSp, QSN Lux Holdings III SCSp, QSN Lux Holdings IV SCSp, QTSL LLC, QUANTA FOUNDATION SERVICES, Quanta APL GP II Ltd., Quanta Asset Management LLC, Quanta Associates L.P., Quanta Aviation Services LLC, Quanta Canada GP ULC, Quanta Canada Holdings III Limited Partnership, Quanta Canada Holdings LP, Quanta Canada III GP Ltd., Quanta Capital GP LLC, Quanta Capital LP L.P., Quanta Capital Solutions Inc., Quanta Cares, Quanta EPC Services, Quanta Electric Power Construction LLC, Quanta Electric Power Construction Management Inc., Quanta Electric Power Services LLC, Quanta Electric Power Services West LLC, Quanta Energized Innovations Ltd., Quanta Energized Services U.S. LLC, Quanta Energized Services of Canada Ltd., Quanta Energy Services LLC, Quanta Environmental Solutions, Quanta Equipment Company LLC, Quanta Government Solutions Inc., Quanta Holdings I (Netherlands) B.V., Quanta Holdings II (Netherlands) B.V., Quanta Infraestructura de Chile SpA, Quanta Infrastructure Services LLC, Quanta Infrastructure Services S. de R.L. de C.V., Quanta Inline Devices LLC, Quanta Inspection Services, Quanta Insurance Company Inc., Quanta International Holdings (US) LLC, Quanta International Holdings II Ltd., Quanta International Holdings Ltd., Quanta International Limited, Quanta Kingsvale LP Ltd., Quanta Lines Pty Ltd., Quanta Maine Services LLC, Quanta Middle East LLC, Quanta Pipeline Services Inc., Quanta Power Australia Pty Ltd, Quanta Power Generation Inc., Quanta Power Inc., Quanta Power Solutions India Private Limited, Quanta Resource Development, Quanta Services Africa (PTY) Ltd., Quanta Services Australia Pty Ltd., Quanta Services Chile SpA, Quanta Services Colombia S.A.S., Quanta Services Costa Rica Ltda., Quanta Services Guatemala Ltda., Quanta Services International Holdings II LP, Quanta Services International Holdings LP, Quanta Services Management Partnership L.P., Quanta Services Netherlands B.V., Quanta Services Panama S. de R.L., Quanta Services Peru S.A.C., Quanta Services Puerto Rico LLC, Quanta Services of Canada Ltd., Quanta Subsurface Canada Ltd., Quanta Subsurface LLC, Quanta Tank Services, Quanta Technology Canada ULC, Quanta Technology LLC, Quanta Technology UK Ltd., Quanta Tecnologia do Brasil Ltda., Quanta Telecom, Quanta Telecom Services, Quanta Telecommunication Services, Quanta Telecommunication Services LLC, Quanta Telecommunications Services LLC, Quanta Underground Services, Quanta Underground Services (Culpeper Co), Quanta Underground Services (Spotsylvania Co), Quanta Underground Services Inc., Quanta Utility Engineering Services Inc., Quanta Utility Installation Company Inc., Quanta Utility Operation LLC, Quanta West LLC, Quantecua Cia. Ltda., R. R. Cassidy Inc., RMS Holdings LLC, RMS Holdings LLC (Delaware), RMS Welding Systems, RMS Welding Systems LLC, Ranger Directional, Realtime Engineers Inc., Realtime Utility Engineers Inc., Redes Andinas de Comunicaciones S.R.L., Riggin & Diggin Line Construction, Rms Welding LLC, Rms Welding Systems LLC, Road Bore Corporation, Ryan Company Inc. The, Ryan Company Inc. of Massachusetts, Ryan Company Inc.(The), Seaward, Seaward Corp, Seaward Corporation, Service EC (DE) Inc., Service Electric Company (DE), Service Electric Company Inc., Service Electric Company of Delaware, Servicios Par Electric S. de R.L. de C.V., Servicios de Infraestructura del Peru S.A.C., Southwest Trenching Company Inc., Specialty Tank Services L.P., Specialty Tank Services LP, Specialty Tank Services Limited Partnership, Specialty Tank Services Limited Partnership, Specialty Tank Services Ltd., Specialty Tank Services Ltd. (LP), Specialty Tank Services Ltd. L.P., Specialty Tank Services Ltd. LP, Specialty Tank Services Ltd. LP, Specialty Tank Services Ltd. Limited Partnership, Stronghold General LLC, Stronghold Holdings (BVI) Limited, Stronghold Inspection L.P., Stronghold Inspection Limited Partnership, Stronghold Inspection Limited Partnership, Stronghold Inspection Lp, Stronghold Inspection Ltd L.P., Stronghold Inspection Ltd., Stronghold Inspection Ltd. L.P., Stronghold Inspection Ltd. Limited Partnership, Stronghold Limited Partnership, Stronghold Ltd., Stronghold Ltd. Limited Partnership, Stronghold Management Holdings LP, Stronghold Specialty General LLC, Stronghold Specialty Ltd., Stronghold Specialty Ltd., Stronghold Specialty Ltd. Limited Partnership, Stronghold Tower Group LP, Stronghold Tower Group Ltd LP, Stronghold Tower Group Ltd., Stronghold Tower Group Ltd. LP, Stronghold VI LLC, Subterra Damage Prevention Specialists Ltd., Summit Line Construction, Sumter Utilities Inc., T. G. Mercer Consulting Services Inc., TA Construction, TC Infrastructure Services Ltd., Taylor Built, Texas Specialty Tank Services Ltd. LP, The Aspen Utility Company LLC, The ComTran Group Inc., The Hallen Construction Co. Inc., The Massachusetts Ryan Company Inc., The Ryan Company Inc Of Massachusetts, The Ryan Company Inc., The Ryan Company Inc. (Massachusetts), The Ryan Company Inc. of Massachusetts, The Ryan Company Incorporated of Massachusetts, The Ryan Company Of Massachusetts Inc., The Ryan Company of Massachusetts, The Ryan Company of Massachusetts (FN), Tom Allen Construction Company Inc., Tom Allen Construction Company of Delaware, Trans Tech Electric, TurnKey Automation Limited Partnership, TurnKey Automation Limited Partnership, TurnKey Automation Ltd., TurnKey Automation Ltd. Limited Partnership, TurnKey Automation Ltd. Limited Partnership, TurnKey I&E Ltd., Turnkey Automation Ltd. L.P., Turnkey Automation Ltd. LP., UCC Underground Construction Co. Inc., Ucc - Underground Construction Co., Underground Construction Co. Inc., Underground Construction Co. Inc. (Delaware), Underground Electric Construction Company LLC, Utilco Inc., Utility Fleet Services, Utility Line Management Services Inc., Utility Testing & Maintenance LLC, Utility Training Services Corporation, VALARD Polska sp. Z o.o., Valard, Valard, Valard Construction (Ontario) Ltd., Valard Construction (Quebec) Inc., Valard Construction 2008 Ltd., Valard Construction Australia Pty Ltd, Valard Construction LLC, Valard Equipment (AB) Ltd., Valard Equipment GP Ltd., Valard Equipment Limited Partnership, Valard Geomatics (Ontario) Ltd., Valard Geomatics BC Ltd., Valard Geomatics Ltd., Valard Mechanical Ltd., Valard Norway AS, Valard Sweden AB, Valard Zagreb d. o. o., Wade D. Taylor Inc., West Coast Communications, Winco Helicopters, Winco Inc., Winco Inc. an Oregon Based Corporation, Winco Powerline Services, Winco Powerline Services Inc., Winco Powerline Services Inc., Winco Services Inc., World Fiber Inc., and mmit Line Construction Inc..

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The following companies are subsidiares of Pfizer: AH Robins LLC, AHP Holdings B.V., AHP Manufacturing B.V., Agouron Pharmaceuticals LLC, Alacer, Alpharma Holdings LLC, Alpharma Pharmaceuticals LLC, Alpharma Specialty Pharma LLC, Alpharma USHP LLC, American Food Industries LLC, Anacor Pharmaceuticals, Anacor Pharmaceuticals Inc., Angiosyn, Array BioPharma, Ayerst-Wyeth Pharmaceuticals LLC, BIND Therapeutics Inc., BINESA 2002 S.L., Bamboo Therapeutics, Bamboo Therapeutics Inc., Baxter International - Marketed Vaccines, BioRexis, Bioren, Bioren LLC, Blue Whale Re Ltd., C.E. Commercial Holdings C.V., C.E. Commercial Investments C.V., C.P. Pharmaceuticals International C.V., CICL Corporation, COC I Corporation, Catapult Genetics, Coley Pharmaceutical GmbH, Coley Pharmaceutical Group, Coley Pharmaceutical Group Inc., Continental Pharma Inc., Covx, Covx Technologies Ireland Limited, Cyanamid Inter-American Corporation, Cyanamid de Argentina S.A., Cyanamid de Colombia S.A., Distribuidora Mercantil Centro Americana S.A., Encysive Pharmaceuticals, Encysive Pharmaceuticals Inc., Esperion LUV Development Inc., Esperion Therapeutics, Excaliard Pharmaceuticals, Excaliard Pharmaceuticals Inc., Farminova Produtos Farmaceuticos de Inovacao Lda., Farmogene Productos Farmaceuticos Lda, Ferrosan A/S, Ferrosan International A/S, Ferrosan S.R.L., FoldRx Pharmaceuticals Inc., Foldrx Pharmaceuticals, Fort Dodge Manufatura Ltda., G. D. Searle & Co. Limited, G. D. Searle International Capital LLC, G. D. Searle LLC, GI Europe Inc., GI Japan Inc., GenTrac Inc., Genetics Institute LLC, Greenstone LLC, Haptogen Limited, Hospira, Hospira (China) Enterprise Management Co. Ltd., Hospira Adelaide Pty Ltd, Hospira Aseptic Services Limited, Hospira Australia Pty Ltd, Hospira Benelux BVBA, Hospira Chile Limitada, Hospira Deutschland GmbH, Hospira Enterprises B.V., Hospira France SAS, Hospira Healthcare B.V., Hospira Healthcare Corporation, Hospira Healthcare India Private Limited, Hospira Holdings (S.A.) Pty Ltd, Hospira Inc., Hospira Invicta S.A., Hospira Ireland Holdings Unlimited Company, Hospira Ireland Sales Limited, Hospira Japan G.K., Hospira Limited, Hospira Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Hospira NZ Limited, Hospira Nordic AB, Hospira Philippines Inc., Hospira Portugal LDA, Hospira Produtos Hospitalares Ltda., Hospira Pte. Ltd., Hospira Pty Limited, Hospira Puerto Rico LLC, Hospira Singapore Pte Ltd, Hospira UK Limited, Hospira Worldwide LLC, Hospira Zagreb d.o.o., ICAgen, Idun Pharmaceuticals, Industrial Santa Agape S.A., InnoPharma, InnoPharma Inc., International Affiliated Corporation LLC, JMI-Daniels Pharmaceuticals Inc., John Wyeth & Brother Limited, Kiinteisto oy Espoon Pellavaniementie 14, King Pharmaceuticals Holdings LLC, King Pharmaceuticals LLC, King Pharmaceuticals Research and Development LLC, Korea Pharma Holding Company Limited, Laboratoires Pfizer S.A., Laboratorios Parke Davis S.L., Laboratorios Pfizer Ltda., Laboratorios Wyeth LLC, Laboratorios Wyeth S.A., Laboratorios Pfizer Lda., MTG Divestitures LLC, Mayne Pharma IP Holdings (Euro) Pty Ltd, Medivation, Medivation Field Solutions LLC, Medivation LLC, Medivation Neurology LLC, Medivation Prostate Therapeutics LLC, Medivation Services LLC, Medivation Technologies LLC, Meridian Medical Technologies Inc., Meridian Medical Technologies Limited, Monarch Pharmaceuticals LLC, Neusentis Limited, NextWave Pharmaceuticals, NextWave Pharmaceuticals Incorporated, P-D Co. LLC, PAH USA IN8 LLC, PF Americas Holding C.V., PF Asia Manufacturing B.V., PF PR Holdings C.V., PF PRISM C.V., PF PRISM Holdings S.a.r.l., PF Prism S.a.r.l., PFE Holdings G.K., PFE PHAC Holdings 1 LLC, PFE Pfizer Holdings 1 LLC, PFE Wyeth Holdings LLC, PFE Wyeth-Ayerst (Asia) LLC, PHILCO Holdings S.a r.l., PHIVCO Corp., PHIVCO Holdco S.a r.l., PHIVCO Luxembourg S.a r.l., PN Mexico LLC, PT. Pfizer Parke Davis, Parke Davis & Company LLC, Parke Davis Limited, Parke Davis Productos Farmaceuticos Lda, Parke-Davis Manufacturing Corp., Parkedale Pharmaceuticals Inc., Peak Enterprises LLC, Pfizer, Pfizer (China) Research and Development Co. Ltd., Pfizer (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Pfizer (Perth) Pty Limited, Pfizer (Thailand) Limited, Pfizer (Wuhan) Research and Development Co. Ltd., Pfizer AB, Pfizer AG, Pfizer AS, Pfizer Africa & Middle East for Pharmaceuticals Veterinarian Products & Chemicals S.A.E., Pfizer Anti-Infectives AB, Pfizer ApS, Pfizer Asia Manufacturing Pte. Ltd., Pfizer Asia Pacific Pte Ltd., Pfizer Atlantic Holdings S.a.r.l., Pfizer Australia Holdings B.V., Pfizer Australia Holdings Pty Limited, Pfizer Australia Investments Pty. Ltd., Pfizer Australia Pty Limited, Pfizer B.V., Pfizer BH D.o.o., Pfizer Baltic Holdings B.V., Pfizer Biofarmaceutica Sociedade Unipessoal Lda, Pfizer Biologics (Hangzhou) Co. Ltd, Pfizer Biologics Ireland Holdings Limited, Pfizer Biotech Corporation, Pfizer Bolivia S.A., Pfizer Canada Inc., Pfizer CentreSource Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., Pfizer Chile S.A., Pfizer Cia. Ltda., Pfizer Colombia Spinco I LLC, Pfizer Commercial Holdings Cooperatief U.A., Pfizer Commercial Holdings TRAE Kft., Pfizer Commercial TRAE Trading Kft., Pfizer Consumer Healthcare AB, Pfizer Consumer Healthcare GmbH, Pfizer Consumer Healthcare Ltd., Pfizer Consumer Manufacturing Italy S.r.l., Pfizer Corporation, Pfizer Corporation Austria Gesellschaft m.b.H., Pfizer Corporation Hong Kong Limited, Pfizer Croatia d.o.o., Pfizer Deutschland GmbH, Pfizer Development LP, Pfizer Development Services (UK) Limited, Pfizer Domestic Ventures Limited, Pfizer Dominicana S.R.L, Pfizer ESP Pty Ltd, Pfizer East India B.V., Pfizer Eastern Investments B.V., Pfizer Egypt S.A.E., Pfizer Enterprise Holdings B.V., Pfizer Enterprises LLC, Pfizer Enterprises SARL, Pfizer Europe Finance B.V., Pfizer Export B.V., Pfizer Export Company, Pfizer Export Holding Company B.V, Pfizer Finance Share Service (Dalian) Co. Ltd., Pfizer Financial Services N.V./S.A., Pfizer France International Investments, Pfizer Free Zone Panama S. de R.L., Pfizer GEP S.L., Pfizer Global Holdings B.V., Pfizer Global Supply Japan Inc., Pfizer Global Trading, Pfizer Group Luxembourg Sarl, Pfizer Gulf FZ-LLC, Pfizer H.C.P. Corporation, Pfizer HK Service Company Limited, Pfizer Health AB, Pfizer Health Solutions Inc., Pfizer Healthcare Ireland, Pfizer Hellas A.E., Pfizer Himalaya Holdings Cooperatief U.A., Pfizer Holding France, Pfizer Holding Ventures, Pfizer Holdings Corporation, Pfizer Holdings Europe Unlimited Company, Pfizer Holdings G.K., Pfizer Holdings International Corporation, Pfizer Holdings International Luxembourg (PHIL) Sarl, Pfizer Holdings North America SARL, Pfizer Hungary Holdings TRAE Kft., Pfizer Inc., Pfizer Innovations AB, Pfizer Innovations LLC, Pfizer Innovative Supply Point International BVBA, Pfizer International LLC, Pfizer International Markets Cooperatief U.A., Pfizer International Operations, Pfizer International S. de R.L., Pfizer International Trading (Shanghai) Limited, Pfizer Investment Capital Unlimited Company, Pfizer Investment Co. Ltd., Pfizer Investment Holdings S.a.r.l., Pfizer Ireland Investments Limited, Pfizer Ireland PFE Holding 1 LLC, Pfizer Ireland PFE Holding 2 LLC, Pfizer Ireland Pharmaceuticals, Pfizer Ireland Ventures Unlimited Company, Pfizer Italia S.r.l., Pfizer Italy Group Holding S.r.l., Pfizer Japan Inc., Pfizer LLC, Pfizer Laboratories (Pty) Limited, Pfizer Laboratories Limited, Pfizer Laboratories PFE (Pty) Ltd, Pfizer Leasing Ireland Limited, Pfizer Leasing UK Limited, Pfizer Limitada, Pfizer Limited, Pfizer Luxco Holdings SARL, Pfizer Luxembourg Global Holdings S.a r.l., Pfizer Luxembourg SARL, Pfizer MAP Holding Inc., Pfizer Manufacturing Austria G.m.b.H., Pfizer Manufacturing Belgium N.V., Pfizer Manufacturing Deutschland GmbH, Pfizer Manufacturing Deutschland Grundbesitz GmbH & Co. KG, Pfizer Manufacturing Holdings LLC, Pfizer Manufacturing Ireland Unlimited Company, Pfizer Manufacturing LLC, Pfizer Manufacturing Services, Pfizer Medical Technology Group (Belgium) N.V., Pfizer Medicamentos Genericos e Participacoes Ltda., Pfizer Mexico Luxco SARL, Pfizer Mexico S.A. de C.V., Pfizer Middle East for Pharmaceuticals Animal Health and Chemicals S.A.E., Pfizer New Zealand Limited, Pfizer Norge AS, Pfizer North American Holdings Inc., Pfizer OTC B.V., Pfizer Overseas LLC, Pfizer Oy, Pfizer PFE ApS, Pfizer PFE AsiaPac Holding B.V., Pfizer PFE Australia Holding B.V., Pfizer PFE Australia Pty Ltd, Pfizer PFE B.V., Pfizer PFE Baltic Holdings B.V., Pfizer PFE Belgium SPRL, Pfizer PFE Brazil Holding S.a r.l., Pfizer PFE CIA. Ltda., Pfizer PFE Chile Holding LLC, Pfizer PFE Colombia Holding Corp., Pfizer PFE Colombia S.A.S, Pfizer PFE Commercial Holdings LLC, Pfizer PFE Croatia Holding B.V., Pfizer PFE Eastern Investments B.V., Pfizer PFE Finland Oy, Pfizer PFE France, Pfizer PFE Global Holdings B.V., Pfizer PFE Ireland Pharmaceuticals Holding 1 B.V., Pfizer PFE Italy Holdco 2 S.a r.l., Pfizer PFE Italy Holdco S.a r.l., Pfizer PFE Korlatolt Felelossegu Tarsasag, Pfizer PFE Limited, Pfizer PFE Luxembourg S.a r.l., Pfizer PFE Mexico Holding 3 LLC, Pfizer PFE Netherlands Holding 1 C.V., Pfizer PFE New Zealand, Pfizer PFE New Zealand Holding B.V., Pfizer PFE Norway Holding S.a r.l., Pfizer PFE PILSA Holdco S.a r.l., Pfizer PFE Peru Holding LLC, Pfizer PFE Peru S.R.L., Pfizer PFE Pharmaceuticals Israel Holding LLC, Pfizer PFE Pharmaceuticals Israel Ltd., Pfizer PFE Private Limited, Pfizer PFE S.R.L, Pfizer PFE Service Company Holding Cooperatief U.A., Pfizer PFE Singapore Holding B.V., Pfizer PFE Singapore Pte. Ltd., Pfizer PFE Spain B.V., Pfizer PFE Spain Holding S.L., Pfizer PFE Sweden Holding 2 S.a.r.l., Pfizer PFE Sweden Holding S.a.r.l., Pfizer PFE Switzerland GmbH, Pfizer PFE Turkey Holding 1 B.V., Pfizer PFE Turkey Holding 2 B.V., Pfizer PFE UK Holding 4 LP, Pfizer PFE US Holdings 1 LLC, Pfizer PFE US Holdings 2 LLC, Pfizer PFE US Holdings 3 LLC, Pfizer PFE US Holdings 4 LLC, Pfizer PFE US Holdings 5 LLC, Pfizer PFE spol. s r.o., Pfizer PFE Ilaclar Anonim Sirketi, Pfizer Pakistan Limited, Pfizer Parke Davis (Thailand) Ltd., Pfizer Parke Davis Inc., Pfizer Parke Davis Sdn. Bhd., Pfizer Pharm Algerie, Pfizer Pharma GmbH, Pfizer Pharma PFE GmbH, Pfizer Pharmaceutical (Wuxi) Co. Ltd., Pfizer Pharmaceutical Trading Limited Liability Company (a/k/a Pfizer Kft. or Pfizer LLC), Pfizer Pharmaceuticals B.V., Pfizer Pharmaceuticals Global B.V., Pfizer Pharmaceuticals Israel Ltd., Pfizer Pharmaceuticals Korea Limited, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals LLC, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals Ltd., Pfizer Pigments Inc., Pfizer Polska Sp. z.o.o., Pfizer Private Limited, Pfizer Production LLC, Pfizer Products Inc., Pfizer Products India Private Limited, Pfizer Research (NC) Inc., Pfizer Romania SRL, Pfizer S.A., Pfizer S.A., Pfizer S.A. (Belgium), Pfizer S.A. de C.V., Pfizer S.A.S., Pfizer S.G.P.S. Lda., Pfizer S.L., Pfizer S.R.L., Pfizer SRB d.o.o., Pfizer Saidal Manufacturing, Pfizer Sante Familiale, Pfizer Saudi Limited, Pfizer Seiyaku K.K., Pfizer Service Company BVBA, Pfizer Service Company Ireland Unlimited Company, Pfizer Services 1, Pfizer Services LLC, Pfizer Shared Services Unlimited Company, Pfizer Shareholdings Intermediate SARL, Pfizer Singapore Holding Pte. Ltd., Pfizer Singapore Trading Pte. Ltd., Pfizer Spain Holdings Cooperatief U.A., Pfizer Specialties Limited, Pfizer Strategic Investment Holdings LLC, Pfizer Sweden Partnership KB, Pfizer TRAE Holdings Kft., Pfizer Trading Polska sp.z.o.o., Pfizer Transactions Ireland Unlimited Company, Pfizer Transactions LLC, Pfizer Transactions Luxembourg SARL, Pfizer Transport LLC, Pfizer Ukraine LLC, Pfizer Vaccines LLC, Pfizer Venezuela S.A., Pfizer Venture Investments LLC, Pfizer Ventures LLC, Pfizer Worldwide Services Unlimited Company, Pfizer Zona Franca S.A., Pfizer spol. s r.o., Pharmacia, Pharmacia & Upjohn Company Inc., Pharmacia & Upjohn Company LLC, Pharmacia & Upjohn LLC, Pharmacia & Upjohn S.A. de C.V., Pharmacia Brasil Ltda., Pharmacia Hepar LLC, Pharmacia Holding AB, Pharmacia Inter-American LLC, Pharmacia International B.V., Pharmacia LLC, Pharmacia Limited, Pharmacia Nostrum S.A., Pharmacia South Africa (Pty) Ltd, PowderJect Research Limited, PowderMed, Purepac Pharmaceutical Holdings LLC, Redvax, Renrall LLC, Rinat Neuroscience, Rinat Neuroscience Corp., Roerig Produtos Farmaceuticos Lda., Roerig S.A., Sao Cristovao Participacoes Ltda., Searle Laboratorios Lda., Serenex, Servicios P&U S. de R.L. de C.V., Shiley LLC, Sinergis Farma-Produtos Farmaceuticos Lda., Site Realty Inc., Solinor LLC, Sugen LLC, Tabor LLC, The Pfizer Incubator LLC, Therachon, Thiakis Limited, Treerly Health Co. Ltd, US Oral Pharmaceuticals Pty Ltd, Upjohn Laboratorios Lda., Vesteralens Naturprodukter A/S, Vesteralens Naturprodukter AB, Vesteralens Naturprodukter AS, Vesteralens Naturprodukter OY, Vicuron Holdings LLC, Vinci Farma S.A., W-L LLC, Warner Lambert, Warner Lambert Ilac Sanayi ve Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Warner Lambert del Uruguay S.A., Warner-Lambert (Thailand) Limited, Warner-Lambert Company AG, Warner-Lambert Company LLC, Warner-Lambert Guatemala Sociedad Anonima, Warner-Lambert S.A., Whitehall International Inc., Whitehall Laboratories Inc., Wyeth (Thailand) Ltd., Wyeth AB, Wyeth Australia Pty. Limited, Wyeth Ayerst Inc., Wyeth Ayerst S.a r.l., Wyeth Biopharma, Wyeth Canada ULC, Wyeth Consumer Healthcare LLC, Wyeth Europa Limited, Wyeth Farma S.A., Wyeth Holdings LLC, Wyeth Industria Farmaceutica Ltda., Wyeth KFT., Wyeth LLC, Wyeth Lederle S.r.l., Wyeth Lederle Vaccines S.A., Wyeth Pakistan Limited, Wyeth Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd., Wyeth Pharmaceuticals Company, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals FZ-LLC, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals LLC, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals Limited, Wyeth Puerto Rico Inc., Wyeth S.A.S, Wyeth Subsidiary Illinois Corporation, Wyeth Whitehall Export GmbH, Wyeth Whitehall SARL, Wyeth-Ayerst (Asia) Limited, Wyeth-Ayerst International LLC, and Wyeth-Ayerst Promotions Limited.

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Russ Gremel spent $1,000 on Walgreens stock 70 years ago, now hes giving $2 million dollars to Mother Nature.

In a culture dedicated to the acquisition, display, and both coveting and squandering of money, it's always wildly refreshing to come across people who defy the norm. And even better when they defy the norm in ways bursting with beautiful, altruistic generosity. Case in point: A 98-year-old Chicago man by the name of Russ Gremel.

Seventy years ago Russ Gremel plunked down $1,000 to buy stock in a Chicago-based pharmacy chain, inspired by his brother's observation that people would always need medicine and women would always buy makeup.

The pharmacy chain was Walgreen's, and Gremel's $1,000 turned into $2 million. He never cashed out, he never moved out of the humble brick bungalow where he has lived since he was 4 years old. He was, quite simply, never seduced by the lure of things money could buy.

As the Chicago Tribune reports, Gremel opts for oats and stew over "fancy foods." His last car was an ancient Dodge Omni. "I'm a very simple man," Gremel told the Tribune. "I never let anybody know I had that kind of money."

But now the cat's out of the bag: The now-not-so-secret millionaire is making headlines with his extraordinary donation of the stock to the Illinois Audubon Society, which is using it to help establish a 395-acre wildlife refuge in Lee County. The society had been yearning to purchase the property, and were able to buy it last year for $2.1 million using money from Gremel's shares along with a grant from the Illinois Clean Energy Community Foundation, as well as cash from its own land acquisition fund.

Which means the society hasn't liquidated all of the Walgreens shares, says Jim Herkert, its executive director, potentially signalling the opportunity for further growth of the funds.

"It's incredibly generous," Herkert says of the donation. "It's allowing us to protect a really valuable and important piece of property and fulfill one of Russ' wishes that we could find a place where people could come out and experience and enjoy nature the way he did as a kid."

And how lovely that Gremel is able to enjoy the fruits of his generosity by giving the gift while he is still alive.

"Why not give it to them now," he says, "when I have the pleasure and enjoyment of seeing it."

The sanctuary was dedicated last week, the refuge is called the Gremel Wildlife Sanctuary, a Legacy Project of the Illinois Clean Energy Community Foundation. It will remain a safe haven for over 170 species of birds as well as relatively rare turtles, and many other creatures. It's a chance for people to see what parts of Illinois looked like before most of the people arrived, Herkert says. Which is a good thing, and Gremel agrees.

"You have to do some good in this world," Gremel said. "That's what money is for."

The Chicago Tribune was a wonderful video of Gremel discussing his life and the sanctuary, which you can see here.
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- Most public hospitals in the country have been rendered helpless after nurses officially downed their tools in a nationwide strike

- The nurses, just like doctors, are citing a failed CBA agreement with the government as the reason for their protest

- As the strike intensifies, hospitals have resorted to some surprising means to dispose off patients

Nurses have resorted to fending off patients from public hospitals as their strike enters day 3, with no end in sight.

In Mombasa county, at least 30 patients with different forms of mental disorders were evicted from the Port Reitz hospital, as the nurses in the hospital joined in the strike.

The Port Reitz hospital, which has the second largest Mental and Substance Abuse Department in the country, serves patients from neighboring Kilifi and Kwale counties.

The Port Reitz Hospital on Wednesday, June 7/COURTESY

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Patients will however be forced to seek alternative medical services, as the few nurses who grace the area also downed their tools in solidarity with their counterparts countrywide.

READ ALSO: DP Ruto brutally blasts Raila Odinga in NASA stronghold

Reports reaching TUKO.co.ke indicate that the mental department has been the most affected, due to the fact that there was a genuine shortage of staff to attend to mental patients, prior to the strike.

READ ALSO: CRUEL fate for shopkeepers who were HARRASING Kenyans with hefty Unga prices

County health executive Binti Omar previously assured of an upsurge in personnel, but the nurses strike could prove a setback in the overall recruitment.

Elsewhere, the Meru teaching and referral hospital has discharged more than 300 patients as the hospital lacks nurses to attend to their needs.

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Nurses have remained firm in their strike, despite the fact that Kenya National Union of Nurses chairman John Bill distanced himself from the mass action, terming the strike as illegal.

Have anything to add to this article or suggestions? Share with us on news@tuko.co.ke

Watch former Hapa Kule actress speak on the rot that is the Kenyan SHOWBIZ industry below:

Source: TUKO.co.ke
Minnesotans working in Wisconsin will get both short- and long-term tax relief from work done by the 2017 Legislature.

For tax year 2017, Minnesota residents working in Wisconsin will be eligible for an income tax reciprocity tax credit, furthermore, provisions in the 2017 tax bill direct the commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Revenue to resume negotiations with the Wisconsin Department of Revenue for a new tax reciprocity agreement.

The predicted cost of the tax credit would be about $8 million for the 2017 tax year. It will be paid from the states general fund and be distributed by the Department of Revenue much like a tax refund.

Around 80,000 workers travel between the states  about 56,000 are Wisconsin residents working in Minnesota and 24,000 Minnesotans who work in Wisconsin.

Sen. Jeremy Miller, R-Winona, introduced the Senate bill to return to negotiations with Wisconsin.

Miller said that a reciprocity agreement between the states would resolve issues created by filing multiple tax returns, as well as the states differing tax rates.

Thats one of the biggest frustrations I hear, Miller said.

Miller also said he thinks they have removed the main stumbling block in the negotiations.

The process has been a long and frustrating one, beginning when former Gov. Tim Pawlenty ended reciprocity with Wisconsin in 2009, following years of haggling over payments and timing.

Wisconsin had been late with payments for taxes prior to Pawlenty canceling the arrangement, and since that time they have been unable to come to an agreement to reinstate the reciprocity arrangement.

Wisconsin eased the tension in 2011 when it paid Minnesota $59.7 million.

Wisconsin had made concessions, agreeing to pay Minnesota quarterly estimates instead of a settlement after tax season, and cooperated in studies  released in 2013  of the numbers of residents crossing state lines for work and the revenue impact on both states.

In 2015, the last year they tried to negotiate a new deal, a Minnesota demand for a $6 million payment to recoup what it projected as lost revenue in a new deal was a deal-breaker.

According to the Wisconsin Department of Revenue study in 2013, that $6 million was created when some Minnesota residents ended up paying higher taxes to the Minnesota. Minnesota has a limitation on the credit for taxes paid to other states, which Wisconsin doesnt have.

Wisconsin, for its part, said at that time it should only be required to pay the amount of income taxes from Minnesota residents, which they estimated to be $69 million.

Miller said now the Legislature has said it would fund the difference and there wouldnt be a requirement for it in a reciprocity agreement.

Thats why Im more optimistic now than I have been in the past that the states can work out a new agreement, Miller said.

The negotiations for a new reciprocity agreement havent started yet, Miller said, but they will have to move swiftly through the summer to complete it in time.

In order for the proposed start time in for tax year 2018, they would have to come to some agreement by September or October of this year.

Rep. Greg Davids, R-Preston, introduced the original House version of the tax credit in last years tax bill  which did not become law.

Davids said wasnt overly optimistic about the chances for a new arrangement with Wisconsin, and said if the two states arent able to come too an agreement Minnesota could make the tax credits permanent law.

If we can do it, great, Davids said. If not (taxpayers) still get the relief they need.

Wisconsin Department of Revenue deputy secretary Eileen ONeill said in a statement Thursday that they were encouraged by the Minnesotan Legislatures recent actions.

ONeill said they looked forward to talking between the two states departments to see if there is a potential for a new agreement.

Wisconsin supports reinstating reciprocity so people who live in one state and work in the other only need to file a return in their home state, ONeill wrote.
Eight employees of the Ministry of Social Development and Family Services have been referred
Ukrainian Defense Minister, General of the Army of Ukraine Stepan Poltorak has stated that Ukraine and Georgia are united in their aspirations to achieve NATO standards.

The Ukrainian Defense Minister said this at a meeting with Defense Minister of Georgia Levan Izoria, the ministrys press service reports.

Id like to thank the people of Georgia for their support of Ukraine when it comes to the issues of saving statehood. Georgia is always close to Ukraine, and Ukraine is close to Georgia, we are interested in your experience of reforms and we are united in our aspirations to achieve NATO standards," Poltorak said.

He thanked Levan Izoria for the opportunity to visit Georgia and learn about the reforms that had been carried out in the country in recent years.

In turn, Georgias Defense Minister Levan Izoria stressed that Georgia is interested in strategic partnership with Ukrainian servicepersons, especially in the military sphere.

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The Government of Ukraine considers useful the German experience of development of local self-government and is ready to foster cooperation between the municipalities of both countries.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman said this during the meeting with Mayor of Berlin Michael Muller, the Government portal reports.

In particular, the Prime Minister recalled that the process of decentralization had been going on in Ukraine for the third year in a row. In this context, according to Groysman, strengthening of contacts and ties between Ukrainian regions and the regions of other countries is very useful.

"Deepening cooperation at the level of cities and municipalities is extremely important for Ukraine. We are now undergoing a serious process of establishment of local self-government, so cooperation at the regional level will bring new opportunities. The Government will always promote such cooperation," the Head of Government said.

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Agro 2017, the largest agroindustrial exhibition in Ukraine and the entire Eastern Europe kicks off in Kyiv today.

Prime Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Groysman will attend the official opening of the exhibition at the National Exhibition Complex "ExpoCenter of Ukraine".

More than 50,000 visitors are expected to attend the Agro 2017, including the senior management of the Ukrainian agribusiness, top managers and experts of agroindustrial enterprises, participants from 15 world countries, the press service of the Agrarian Policy Ministry reports.

"This event opens opportunities for cooperation with the leaders of the world agrarian sector, and is also a unique case to establish a dialogue between private business and the state, associations and foreign representatives," the Ministry notes.

Special attention will be paid to innovations in agricultural machinery and equipment, high-performance breeds of domestic animals, modern agrotechnologies for all branches of agriculture.

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Ukraine and Switzerland have signed agreements on simplification of visa regime and readmission within the framework of the visit of Swiss Foreign Minister Didier Burkhalter to Kyiv.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin stated this at a briefing on Wednesday, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"We have just signed two agreements. I signed the agreement on simplification of the visa regime, and Interior Minister Arsen Avakov signed the agreement on readmission," Klimkin said.

He noted that the visa issues with Switzerland had so far been settled in such a way that it worked "at the same level as that with the European Union". The Minister added that the parties discussed the bilateral agenda and cooperation within the framework of international organizations.

In turn, Burkhalter recalled that Switzerland remained to be one of the few large investors in Ukraine. He also noted that one of the priorities for his country now was the return of illegally acquired assets to Ukraine. The Swiss Foreign Minister stressed the asset recovery was a very long process despite the good relations between the countries.

"We are doing everything possible to help the judiciary achieve a positive result. Ukraine needs to decide from a judicial point of view who is the depositor of those assets in Switzerland, and the process will advance much faster then," Burkhalter said.

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Switzerland will introduce visa-free regime for Ukrainian citizens on June 11.

Head of the Department of Foreign Affairs of Switzerland Didier Burkhalter stated this during a meeting with President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko in Kyiv, the presidents press service reports.

The Head of the Department of Foreign Affairs confirmed that his country will introduce visa-free regime for Ukrainian citizens on June 11, reads the report.

President Poroshenko, in turn, informed on the impact of the ongoing aggression of Russia in Donbas targeted mainly against residential areas and civilian areas objects.

The Head of State noted the efforts of Switzerland aimed to settle the situation in Donbas, particularly its significant contribution to the OSCE SMM activities. He thanked Didier Burkhalter for visiting Mariupol in the course of which another humanitarian cargo of medicines and water-filtering reagents was delivered, reads the report.

In addition, the parties discussed mutual willingness to intensify bilateral cooperation.

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Austria has allocated EUR 1 million for the mine clearance project in Donbas

Foreign Minister of Austria Sebastian Kurtz posted this on Twitter, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"I am pleased with today's decision of the Council of Ministers to provide a total of EUR 1 million for ICRC mine clearance projects in eastern Ukraine," Kurtz wrote.

The Austrian Minister noted that half of the sum would come from the Foreign Disaster Fund of the Austrian Development Agency.

Kurtz, who is also the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, said that he had met today in Kyiv with President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin. The parties discussed the issues of improving the living conditions of people in eastern Ukraine and maintaining the ceasefire.

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The following editorial appeared in the June 4 La Crosse Tribune:

For 41 years, Wisconsin and Minnesota were downright neighborly when it came to tax reciprocity.

If you lived in Minnesota and worked in Wisconsin, you could pay your income taxes to Minnesota. If you lived in Wisconsin and worked in Minnesota, you could pay your income taxes to Wisconsin.

For a border area like ours, it was a big deal.

You didnt have to file tax returns in both states. Life was good.

That changed in 2009, when Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty understandably grew tired of waiting on the Badgers to settle up with about $60 million they owed to the Gophers.

While Wisconsin finally paid up, reciprocity has been hung up because the two sides have been arguing over a difference of $6 million.

That means about 80,000 workers  about 56,000 who live in Wisconsin and work in Minnesota, and about 24,000 Minnesotans who work in Wisconsin  have been stuck with the needless inconvenience and cost of filing in two states.

During that time, weve emphasized the need to fix the problem and move on. Weve emphasized it in several editorials and during discussions with governors, legislators and revenue secretaries in both states.

Now, two Minnesota state legislators from our region has taken some positive steps to get the ball rolling, and its time for the two states to come to agreement before the frost returns.

Thanks to legislation successfully pushed in St. Paul by Rep. Greg Davids, R-Preston, and Sen. Jeremy Miller, R-Winona, Minnesotans who work in Wisconsin will be eligible for a reciprocity tax credit on their income tax for 2017 (total cost estimate is $8 million).

The measure also directs the commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Revenue to resume negotiations on a renewed agreement with the folks in Wisconsin.

For goodness sake, sit down and figure this out.

Its the right thing to do and the best thing for 80,000 people who are tired of being jerked around for no good reason.

If you the revenue directors of the two states cant settle on a place to meet, youre welcome to use the conference rooms in our newspapers in La Crosse and Winona. No charge for the rooms  and the coffee is free.

Its time to put pride aside and think of whats best for the taxpayers.

We have a regional economy. We have a mobile workforce. We have regional tourism attractions. We have contributors and volunteers who do good work on both sides of the river.

In other words, the people of our region have figured this out. Its time for our elected officials to follow.
Chicago, IL (UroToday.com) Dr. Alberto Briganti gave an interesting discussion on the presentation and biologic characteristics of prostate cancer (PC) in older patients. The presentation objectives were to assess candidates for early diagnosis and local treatment, assess determinants of pathological and long term outcomes, and evaluate outcomes of men treated with curative intent.Life expectancy is rising worldwide with significant clinical and treatment implications. It is most important to ascertain who the treated patient is, in regards to his comorbidity profile, and biological age in addition to his chronological age. It has been shown that comorbidity profile is more important than age in predicting overall mortality in localized PC. Men over the age of 70 should be managed according to their health status and not according to their age. Health status can be defined as fit, frail or disabled/with severe comorbidities. Fit patients are expected to tolerate any form of standard treatment and should receive the same treatment as younger men. Frail men are those that if their problems are corrected, they can be considered fit for standard PC therapies.PC is more common as men get older with an incidence of 1.5% in men under the age of 50 and 55% in men over 70. PC is also more prevalently diagnosed in developed countries, when compared to developing countries. With increasing age, aggressive PC disease is more prevalent with T3 disease, Gleason score >7, multifocal disease, and tumor volume rising significantly in men older than 70 compared to men younger than 70  21.8% vs. 4%, 42.4% vs. 15.4%, 63.9% vs. 45.4%, and 0.4 ml vs. 0.1 ml, respectively. Additionally, in men older than 75, although representing approximately a quarter of all PC cases, they contribute almost half of all M1 cases, resulting in substantially increased mortality as well.Dr. Briganti continued to talk about age related mechanisms favoring both age associated diseases and cancer. These include senescence, genomic and epigenomic instability manifested through mutation accumulation with DNA damage, free radicals, and oxidative stress. Senescence is a persistent hypo-replicative state with a non-linear rate of senescent cell accumulation throughout the lifespan, but is significantly accelerated with aging. Major regulators of apoptosis and senescence, such as p53 or p16, are tumor suppressors. Their inactivation may result in cancer. Various events causing inflammation and accumulation of aging processes lead eventually to aggressive PC progression.Dr. Briganti brought the question of screening for PC in the elderly population. This is a controversial topic, especially since the recent US preventative service task force recommendations again PC screening, despite its recent change of the recommendation to screen middle aged men (55-69) from grade D to grade C. However, for men above the age of 70, the recommendation has remained grade D. In contrast, when looking at other major relevant organizations, such as the American Cancer Society (ACS), they clearly state that asymptomatic men with at least a 10-year life expectancy, can have an opportunity to make an informed decision with their health care provider about screening. The American Urological Association (AUA) goes even further and states that men aged 70 or more in excellent health may actually benefit from PC screening.Finally Dr. Briganti addressed the question of local treatment in the elderly PC patients. 3 major trials demonstrated relevant data. Starting with the SPCG-4 trial (comparing radical prostatectomy [RP] to watchful waiting in early prostate cancer. This trial showed that in men over the age of 65 no significant differences were found between both arms of treatment with regards to PC death, overall mortality (OM) and distant metastasis. The PIVOT trial (comparing RP vs. observation for localized PC) also showed no difference in PC death (p=0.63). The 3final and most recent trial was the PROTECT trial (comparing outcomes 10 years after monitoring, RP or radiotherapy for localized) again, showing no difference.It is also important to take into account the lead time bias and length time bias when diagnosing PC in elderly patients, significantly impacting results, when comparing to the younger patients.Dr. Briganti concluded his presentation by reiterating that older patients are more likely to present with more advanced and aggressive PC disease compared to younger men, likely due to a combination of diagnostic biases and biological mechanisms. Biological and not chronological age represents the most important factor for clinical decision making. Therefore, life expectancy and comorbidity profile assessments are mandatory before treating elderly patients. The optimal management strategy for these patients requires a delicate balance between risk of under treatment and over treatment.Presented By: Alberto Briganti, MD, Urological Research Institute, Milan, ItalyWritten By: Hanan Goldberg, MD, Urologic Oncology Fellow (SUO), University of Toronto, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, Toronto, Ontario, CanadaTwitter: @GoldbergHananat the 2017 ASCO Annual Meeting - June 2 - 6, 2017 - Chicago, Illinois, USA
Cambodia's main opposition party made significant gains in local elections Sunday which could threaten Prime Minister Hun Sen's grip on power.

Announcing preliminary results, opposition party spokesman Yim Sovann said his party won about 46 percent of the popular vote - up from 30 percent in the last local elections five years ago.

"This is a huge victory for the Cambodia National Rescue Party," Sovann told a news conference.

A pro-government news site said preliminary results suggested the opposition had won a little more than one third of the communes.

Official results will be announced June 25.

The vote is also seen as a showdown between the two major parties amid threats of civil war and a crackdown on political dissent in the lead-up to national elections slated for the middle of next year.

Prime Minister Hun Sen and his Cambodian People's Party (CPP) see the communal poll as an important test of their popularity, which has been under stiff pressure from a burgeoning youth vote and changing attitudes.

Supporters of the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) have been buoyed by their party's standing at national elections in 2013 when the ruling CPP was returned to power, but with its majority reduced to 68 seats, from 90, in the 123-seat National Assembly.

The CNRP scored 55 seats, annihilating all the smaller parties in its path, after Cambodia's youth sided with the opposition and demanded change. More than 70 percent of this country's population is under the age of 30, a legacy of a post-war baby boom.

Bo Pao, Executive of Youth Education for Development and Peace (YEDP), said differences between young and old are taking its toll. Older voters are attracted to the security provided by the CPP, which ended the wars in 1998 and ensured a peace that has enabled economic growth.

The local nature of these elections has not stopped Hun Sen from weighing in at the national level, warning Cambodia could return to war if the CPP was to lose. Politics has also been marred by the beating of opposition parliamentarians, criminalization of defamation laws and banning of anyone with a criminal conviction from contesting elections.

Defamation suits and the constant threat of prison prompted opposition leader Sam Rainsy to resign and return to self-imposed exile in France with his deputy, Kem Sokha, taking up the leadership role of the CNRP.

Hun Sen has also curtailed political street rallies.

The U.S. State Department has called on the government to avoid threats and political intimidation.

But hopes are high that there will be no repeat of the violence that followed the 2013 general election, when at least five people were killed.

Son Chun Chuon, program director at Khmer Kampuchea Krom for the Human Rights and Development Association, said this year's commune elections were better organized than previous efforts following reforms to the National Election Committee (NEC).

About 12,000 local positions, including commune chiefs and district counselors, are being contested by 12 political parties.
Cambodians who were unable to cast their votes in Sundays commune elections have blamed the government of Prime Minister Hun Sen for not doing enough to ensure they could get to a polling booth.



Prospective voters who felt disenfranchised told VOA Khmer on Monday that they had been unable to vote because of transportation issues and not being able to get time off work to travel to the constituencies where they were registered.



Others, such as Phnom Penh resident Sun Tola, said they were concerned for their safety as the roads were too busy and had decided to stay in Phnom Penh.



Voters called on the government to do more to ensure they would be able to vote in next years general election.



Hong Makara, who works in Phnom Penh but is registered to vote in Pursat province, about 10 hours away, said he could not vote because a family member had fallen ill and he had to go to seek medical care in Thailand.



Its very far from [Phnom Penh] to Pursat, so I missed my chance to vote, he said. In 2018, no matter what happens, I will definitely go to vote to elect my chosen leader to develop the nation. I dont want things to be this way. It will be good if theres a change.



More than 7 million Cambodians are thought to have voted in Sundays poll, about 90 percent of the almost 8 million who registered.

Updated number of voter turnout by National Election Committee:

Most of those who had registered but did not vote were migrant workers who were unable to travel back home, according to election observers.



Yoeung Sotheara, a legal observer with election monitor Comfrel, said about 800,000 workers had been unable to travel, the majority of whom were migrants.



The CPP announced it had won some 1,158 seats compared with more than 400 for the opposition.
Despite threats of war made by the prime minister ahead of Sundays vote, Cambodians turned out in their droves to elect new local representatives.



More than 80 percent of those registered to vote cast a ballot in the commune elections, according to early estimates and election observers.



Moeun Tola, executive director of the Center for Alliance of Labor and Human Rights (Central), congratulated voters for exercising their rights.



In general, civil society groups ... would congratulate as more than 80 percent of voters registered turned out to vote, he said.

Sam Kuntheamy, executive director of local election watchdog Nicfec, said preliminary estimates suggested that apart from a few reports of minor irregularities, the vote had been largely free and fair.



Although there were some people trying to win voters hearts with cash or goods, voters still understood about their ballot papers clearly and they were satisfied by the election process, he said.



Voters turned out in large numbers.



The reports will be well received by the ruling Cambodian Peoples Party of Prime Minister Hun Sen, which has come under fire in past elections for allegedly rigging elections. The real test, however, will come next year when the country is set to hold the next general election.



Koul Panha, executive director of Comfrel, a monitoring group, said 12 election observers had been banned by the authorities from attending polling stations.



Observers also noted that they were unable to sit in on vote counting as it was prohibited under the National Election Committees rules.



In the last commune elections in 2012, the CPP won almost all of the 1,646 seats nationwide, while the opposition parties won only 40 seats. This time around early estimates suggest a sea change in politics at the local level, with the countrys main opposition party, the Cambodia National Rescue Party, winning close to half of the votes and about 500 seats.



Tensions between the two major parties continued to simmer in the run up to the vote.



The government criticized the opposition after one of its advisers told a campaign rally that Sar Kheng, the interior minister, could be given the post of deputy prime minister under a Cambodia National Rescue Party government if it wins the general election next year.



The Interior Ministry on June 2 wrote a letter of complaint against Kong Kom, a senior adviser to the CNRP, who it said had told supporters in Kratie province that there would be room for Kheng in a CNRP government.



The ministry said the comments were a serious insult to the honor of [Kheng].
Recent changes in the cost to dispose livestock mortalities has led to an increased interest in composting of mortalities as a management strategy.

This program will provide information for best practices for successful composting of animal mortalities (cattle and swine) and economic and legal considerations for mortality composting on-farm in Wisconsin.

Area livestock farmers and ag professionals are welcome to attend Wednesday, June 28 from 1-3 p.m. at the farm site of N9235 North Branch Road, Hixton Wis.

The program location includes an on-site composting facility and demonstration.

Successful livestock mortality composting can save farmers money in rendering fees if done correctly.

Steve Okonek, Trempealeau County UW-Extension agent, will discuss best practices, including the composting process, materials and methods, common problems and solutions.

In addition to basic legal considerations for CAFO and non-CAFO sized farms interested in composting mortalities, Gretchen Wheat of the Wisconsin DNR will discuss recommended options for composting facilities, the advantages of a hard work surface, push walls and roof versus composting on bare ground with something such as hay bales stacked around the perimeter.

Additional resources will be made available for those interested in further consultation on the subject. There is not fee to attend. For more information, contact your area county UW-Extension office, Jackson County UW-Extension at 715-284-4257 or Trempealeau County UW-Extension at 715-538-2311 ext. 376
Although the official results will not be released until June 25, the closely watched vote for Cambodia's commune council elections showed the opposition's growing strength and suggest that the national elections in 2018 will be a race between two parties.

Political analyst Ou Virak, president of the Future Forum, a think tank in Phnom Penh, on Monday told Hello VOA, a radio call-in show, that the 2018 general election will be highly competitive. He anticipates a two-party contest.

In 2018 election, the smaller parties will have no chance, he said. This is because the competition between the two main parties is running so close. Therefore, voters will see the third party is merely a spoiler. They won't vote for the third party to spoil their ballots.

Unofficial results posted late Sunday by Fresh News, a pro-government website, reported the ruling CPP had won 1,163 commune chief seats compared to 482 for the opposition CNRP. The Khmer National Unity Party, one of the 10 smaller parties that participated in Sunday's vote, won one seat.

If the tally is verified, it signifies large gains for the opposition, which won only 40 seats in the 2012 commune elections.

60 complaints of irregularities

On Monday, the ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP) acknowledged the opposition's strong showing the day before but remained unfazed.

We consider support going up and down in each place is simply a loss in a few battlefields, not the whole war, Sok Isan told VOA Khmer. Overall, we've won the whole war.

Kem Sokha, president of the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), said he hoped the local election results were an indication of support going into the general election scheduled for next year.

The National Election Commission received more than 60 complaints of irregularities during the campaign and voting. Despite political intimidation and harassment, the CNRP leadership said the party made a strong showing.

Before the vote, Prime Minister Hun Sen warned Cambodia could return to war if the CPP were to lose. During the months before the elections, opposition parliamentarians were beaten, defamation laws were criminalized, and the government banned anyone with a criminal conviction from elections. Hun Sen has also curtailed political street rallies.

The CNRP was successful and took a big stride in the commune elections, he said in a statement. The result will be the foundation that we build on to win in 2018.

As expected, most of those gains came in Cambodia's three largest cities  Phnom Penh, Battambang and Siem Reap. An estimated 89.52 percent of eligible voters participated in the current commune contest. A commune is a group of villages, which form a political entity akin to a ward in U.S. cities.

US embassy: 'An important milestone'

The U.S. embassy in Phnom Penh issued a statement on its Facebook page calling Sunday's election as an important milestone in Cambodia's continued democratic development.

On Sunday, Chan Samnang, a female opposition candidate standing in Russey Keo commune in the capital, told VOA she had won by some 3,400 votes over her CPP rival.

Samnang held the commune from 2007 to 2012 when she lost the seat amid claims of election fraud.

The current voting system is not 100 percent good, but it is better than last time, she said.

She claimed that she won this time around because locals recognized the work she had done for them in the past.

Wanted change

Peung Chansreyroth, 34, said she voted for the CNRP because she wanted change.

I voted for the CNRP because I wanted a fair commune chief, she said.

Oeun Kimheng, 21, a university student, claimed the previous commune chief was inefficient.

Services for providing documents were always late, she said. Any party is fine with me, but my decision to vote depends on my confidence and belief in a party that is capable of performing its duties.

The former commune chief, Moul Virak, declined to comment.

This report originated on VOA Khmer. Sun Narin contributed from Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
This week Straight Talk Africa examines where things stand in terms good governance, rule of law and social and economic justice for all in Africa. Host Shaka Ssali is joined by Mmeli Dube, a Zimbabwean Human Rights Activist, Nii Akuetteh, African policy analyst and Morrison Rwakakamba, Chief Executive Officer of Agency for Transformation, a Ugandan think tank.
With large murals of black cats and colorful grotesque faces, a group of traveling international artists are bringing a splash of colorful street art to towns in Israel and Jordan.

The eye-catching works, including large portraits and spying eyes, are produced under the banner of the international POW! WOW! event, a week-long culture festival which aims to "contribute, share culture and beautify communities with art."

Having produced pieces at the Dead Sea and Petra in Jordan, the small group of artists, from Hawaii, Tel Aviv and Los Angeles, traveled to the southern Israeli city of Arad, a town in the Negev desert not often touched by street art.

"I came to the artist quarter in Arad to paint some walls, to give some colors and beauty to the place and to the people," Tel Aviv street artist Dioz said on Wednesday as he finished his piece of the large faces.

The artists will next head to Tel Aviv to continue their art pilgrimage on Thursday for the final stages of the two-week festival.
U.S.-backed Kurdish YPG militia forces chanted as they advanced toward the northern outskirts of the Islamic State-held town of Raqqa in northern Syria, attempting to set foot inside the city and dislodge the militant group from its so-called capital.

The U.S. envoy to the anti-IS coalition, Brett McGurk, said Wednesday in Baghdad that the battle for Raqqa would "only escalate," as the group loses control of its northern Iraqi stronghold of Mosul. He added that the fight for Raqqa would be a "difficult and very long-term battle."

McGurk made the comment one day after Kurdish YPG spokesman Talal Selo announced the start of the campaign to liberate Raqqa, while surrounded by militia fighters in a northern suburb of the city. He also thanked the U.S.-led coalition and President Donald Trump for helping his forces. Arab media showed video of what it said were skirmishes against Islamic State forces Tuesday.

Kurdish YPG media also showed video of its forces lowering an IS flag from a telephone pole in an area somewhere close to the city. Additionally, it broadcast video of Kurdish fighters welcoming refugee women and children who appeared to be fleeing the city.

The U.S.-led coalition thinks there are about 3,000 to 4,000 IS fighters holed up inside Raqqa. The Saudi-owned Al Hayat newspaper warned Wednesday that some sources thought the group was holding many residents inside the city as hostages.

Control on three sides

Kurdish commander Mohammed Hijazi told Arab media that YPG forces and their allies controlled the north, east and west of Raqqa, but not the south. Syrian government media have warned that its forces will not allow IS fighters to escape Raqqa toward the south, where it controls the nearby historic oasis town of Palmyra, recaptured from IS in March. Russian and Syrian government planes have bombed the outskirts of Palmyra repeatedly in recent weeks to prevent IS forces from approaching the city.

Arab media also reported that Shi'ite militia allies of the Syrian government were trying to advance in the direction of Raqqa from areas surrounding the government-held town of Hasaka to the east of Raqqa. Some reports also said that Iraqi Shi'ite volunteer militiamen were trying to enter Syria from areas of northern Iraq.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi said in a news conference late Tuesday, however, that Iraqi government military forces were trying to secure the border with Syria but had no plans to enter its western neighbor. He maintained that "no Iraqi security force, whatsoever, will cross the border into Syria."

It was not clear how many militia and military forces the Syrian government controlled in the northeastern Kurdish region of Syria. Syrian government forces have also reportedly made territorial gains further south, in and around the desert town of Deir ez-Zor. The Islamic State group holds chunks of territory in and around Deir ez-Zor as well.

Jockeying for position

The region of northern and eastern Syria remains complicated, as Syrian government forces, Kurdish YPG forces and IS jockey for position. Each appears to have territorial aims, while the ethnic and sectarian populations of many northern and eastern Syrian towns do not always correspond with the forces that control them.

Iran, which backs many of the Shi'ite militias supporting the government of Assad, also is hoping to capture and maintain a land link between Tehran and the Mediterranean Sea, going through parts of Syria. The U.S. and its coalition allies say that they are trying to prevent that from happening.

Neighboring Turkey, which controls several chunks of Syrian territory north of Aleppo, has its own regional ambitions, along with a long-standing animosity to the Kurdish YPG militia. Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yilderim expressed irritation with the U.S. for supporting the YPG in a recent speech. He said the operation to capture Raqqa was going on with the U.S. supporting terrorist groups, despite a warning from Ankara about them.

Syrian government media have reported heavy fighting around the southern city of Daraa and in the region around Deir ez-Zor since Monday. Kurdish YPG forces do not appear to have made any significant advances around Raqqa, though.
Chuck Berry did things his own way, right up to his final album, a 10-song set nearly four decades in the making.



The St. Louis native widely hailed as the father of rock 'n' roll announced plans for the album "CHUCK'' in October on his 90th birthday. The music took on added poignancy when Berry died in March. The album will be released Friday.



It's a fitting finale from the guitar master who melded blues, R&B and Country music into a sound that took over the 1950s, forever changing the cultural landscape. Some of the new songs, like "Wonderful Woman'' and "Big Boys,'' feature the same driving rhythm of his earliest hits like "Maybellene'' and "Roll Over Beethoven.'' In fact, one of the new songs, "Lady B. Goode,'' offers the perspective of the woman left behind by his legendary "Johnny B. Goode.''



But Berry's son, Charles Berry Jr., said his father did not set out to make a legacy album.



"I think this was just his next body of work, and it just took a lot longer than the other albums to get released,'' Charles Berry Jr., 55, said in an interview with The Associated Press.

That's an understatement. Jim Marsala, who played bass guitar in Berry's band for 41 years, said Berry began working on new material soon after the release of his previous album, "Rock It,'' in 1979.



Always marching to his own beat, Berry was in no particular hurry. For 10 years, he recorded songs, or riffs for songs, or whatever came to mind. All of the tracks were destroyed in a 1989 fire at a studio near his home in Wentzville, Missouri, a St. Louis suburb.



At that point, "he has nothing,'' Charles Berry Jr. said. "So, he builds another studio and goes back to work, re-creating and creating new music.''



In the meantime, Berry continued to perform, including monthly shows for nearly two decades at Blueberry Hill, a venue in another St. Louis suburb, University City, until age 88. Marsala directed the band, Charles Berry Jr. played guitar, and the always unpredictable frontman commanded the stage, taking his bandmates on a nightly trip they could never anticipate.



"The show was completely ad-libbed,'' Marsala said. "You never knew what was coming next. We usually started out with 'Roll Over Beethoven,' 'School Days,' and then 'Sweet Little Sixteen,' and then from there it was whatever he felt like playing.''



Marsala made sure he stood to Berry's left, better to see where Berry's hands were on the neck of his guitar "so I knew what key he was in. So when he would do his four-bar intro I had hand signals. I would flash to the keyboard player so he would know what key we were in. And we'd come in on the fifth bar. It worked great.''



Charles Berry Jr. smiled as he recalled those shows.



"He'd be up onstage and just start doing stuff,'' he said. "And it'd be, 'OK, let's just follow him wherever he's going.'''



"CHUCK'' was a family affair. Charles Berry Jr. plays guitar, as does his own son, Charles Edward Berry III, who turns 23 this week. Ingrid Berry-Clay, one of Chuck's three daughters, sings and plays harmonica.



She sings along with her dad on "Darlin','' a Country-tinged ballad that resonates as a final message to his children.



"Darlin', your father's growing older each year,'' Berry sings. "Strands of gray are showing bolder/Come here and lay your head upon my shoulder/My dear, the time is passing fast away.''



Typical of Berry, the lyrics of "CHUCK'' are at times poetic, at other times playful. "Big Boys'' harkens to his earlier odes to teenage cravings. "The girls wanna stay and the boys wanna play/So let's rock 'n' roll `til the break of day,'' he sings.



But in the closing song, "Eyes of Man,'' Berry warns philosophically of worshipping false idols.



"So be the temples men have cherished/Crumble in ruins to rot and rust/Low lies each pillar and arch to perish/Doomed to decay and rot to dust.''



Berry's impact on music was evident, said Joe Edwards, the owner of Blueberry Hill and a close friend of Berry's.



"But the fact that he changed culture around the world by bringing black kids and white kids together through music was an even greater accomplishment, perhaps,'' Edwards said. "It was just unbelievable the influence he had.''
Former FBI Director James Comey, who was fired nearly a month ago by President Donald Trump, will testify Thursday before the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is investigating Russian meddling in last years U.S. election, as well as any ties between Moscow and Trumps inner circle.

It will be Comey's first public appearance since Trump abruptly dismissed him on May 9.

When Trump fired him, Comey was leading the Federal Bureau of Investigation's probe of Russian interference into last year's presidential campaign and possible collusion between Trump campaign aides and Russian interests aimed at helping Trump defeat his Democratic challenger, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The president later called Comey a showboat and a grandstander.

Within days of Comey's firing, his associates said the former FBI chief kept detailed notes of his White House meetings with Trump.

Comey's hearing before the Senate committee is scheduled for 10 a.m. EDT (1400 UTC) Thursday.

Asked about Comey's upcoming testimony, Trump said Tuesday, "I wish him luck."

The president has "a full day on Thursday," White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Tuesday, adding Trump has meetings and a speech on his schedule.

Here are some questions that will likely be asked of the former FBI head:

1. Did President Trump seek a pledge of loyalty from Comey?

According to media reports, sources close to Comey said Trump asked the FBI chief to pledge his loyalty to the president during a dinner at the White House.

In an interview 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.



2. Did Trump urge Comey to drop an investigation into former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn?

According to news reports, Comey informed members of his inner circle that Trump said he hoped Comey would drop the probe into Flynn and his contacts with Russian operatives.

"I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go," the Times reported Trump told the director after privately taking him in the Oval Office. "He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go."

3. Does Comey think Trump's actions were an attempt to obstruct the ongoing Russia investigations?

Comey is unlikely to give a definitive answer. He is expected to stick to describing events and let others analyze their legal implications.

4. Did Comey tell Trump several times that the president was not under investigation?

In a letter informing Comey of his dismissal from the FBI, Trump wrote, "I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation" regarding Russia.

5. Can Comey provide any evidence of collusion between Trump's inner circle and Russian officials?

Whether or not anyone in Trump's inner circle secretly cooperated with Russia in its plot to damage Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign is a focus of Congressional and federal probes. Comey is unlikely to provide any definitive answers.
Fired FBI Director Jim Comey will tell a Senate Intelligence Committee Thursday that President Donald Trump asked him for loyalty during White House conversations concerning the agencys handling of investigations into current and former administration officials, including the president himself.

The committee released an advance copy of Comey's seven-page opening statement a day before his scheduled appearance. This came shortly after the Director of National Intelligence and other top intelligence officials refused to answer the committee's questions about Comey and the Russia investigation.

WATCH: Capitol Hill correspondent Mike Bowman's video report

In his statement, he offers explosive details and accounts of five separate conversations he had with Trump, including strong suggestions the president tried to influence FBI investigations.

The president said, 'I need loyalty, I expect loyalty,'  Comey recounted about one White House meeting. I didnt move, speak or change my facial expression in any way during the awkward silence that followed. We simply looked at each other in silence.

Statement to committee

In his prepared remarks, Comey said he told Trump three times that he was not a subject of the FBI investigation into whether his associates had improper contacts with Russian government officials.

In another passage, Comey will testify that Trump asked him on February 14 to "let go" of the investigation into Michael Flynn, who had been fired as national security adviser the previous day. "I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go." Comey quotes Trump as saying. "He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go."

Trump last month flatly denied pressuring Comey to close or back down from the Flynn investigation. "No. No. Next question," he replied to a reporter's question.The president also rejected allegations that his associates colluded with Russia to influence last November's presidential election, calling it a "witch hunt."

Trump supporters see vindication

After Comey's statement was made public Wednesday, Trump's supporters suggested there was nothing to indicate presidential wrongdoing.

Trump's private counsel for the Russia investigation said the president "feels completely and totally vindicated."

"The president is pleased that Mr. Comey has finally publicly confirmed his private reports that the president was not under investigations in any Russian probe," attorney Marc E. Kasowitz said in a statement. "He is eager to continue to move forward with his agenda."

Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel made the same point in a statement on the RNC website: "President Trump was right. Director Comey's statement reconfirmed what the president has been saying all along - he was never under investigation."

Democrats see it differently

Democrats in Congress had a different take on the significance of the testimony.

Congressman Adam Schiff, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, called Comey's allegations "troubling." In a statement, Schiff said the president's interaction with Comey "represents yet another improper effort to coerce the intelligence agencies to do public relations for the White House and to undermine the independence and integrity of the intelligence community."

Several other Trump critics said the accounts of his attempted intervention were inappropriate and could amount to obstruction of justice.

I don't think there's any real smoking gun," a former veteran FBI official told VOA, asking for anonymity because of the sensitivity surrounding the investigation.

"I think Director Comey did everything correctly," he added. "It just shows a president who's not aware of how the government works or that the government's a bureaucracy, and [he] was approaching it more like a business deal."

FBI head fired in May

Trump fired Comey last month. The White House at first issued a statement saying the dismissal had been made on the recommendation of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who had sent a memo criticizing Comey's handling of an investigation into former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's emails.

Trump later contradicted that account, telling a reporter he was "thinking of the Russia thing" at the time he fired Comey.

Presidential scholars say that, if confirmed, Comey's version of events would represent a significant challenge to the traditional barriers meant to preserve the independence of U.S. law enforcement institutions.

"There is a level of concerning interaction between the president and the FBI that I don't think we've seen since the Watergate era," said Dan Mahaffee, executive director of the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress.

Earlier Wednesday, two top U.S. intelligence officials told the Senate Intelligence Committee they did not feel inappropriately pressured by the president to publicly disavow possible Russian collusion with Trump aides in last year's election.

Both Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers told committee members they would not discuss details of their White House meetings with Trump in recent months. They refused to answer questions about whether Trump asked them to intervene to curb the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 campaign.
Standing on the bluffs of Roma, Texas on a May afternoon two border patrol agents look out over the meandering Rio Grande River that separates Mexico from the United States and recall a time when the scene was far less tranquil.

Last fall, during the waning months of the Obama administration, hundreds of immigrants crossed the river on rafts at this point each day, many willingly handing themselves over to immigration authorities in hopes of being released into the United States to await court proceedings that would decide their fate.

Now, the agents look out on an empty landscape. Foot paths up from the water have started to disappear under growing brush, with only the stray baby shoe or toothbrush serving as reminders of that migrant flood.

The reason for the change, the agents say, is a perception in Mexico and Central America that President Donald Trump has ended the practice known as catch-and-release, in which immigrants caught in the United States without proper documents were released to live free, often for years, as their cases ran through the court system.

Now, would-be border violators know they'll be detained and then turned right back around, said one of the two agents, Marlene Castro. It's not worth it anymore, she said.

'Dangerous' policy ended

Castro was simply echoing her boss, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, who said on a visit to El Paso, Texas in April, We have ended dangerous catch-and-release enforcement policies.

But immigration attorneys, government statistics and even some officials from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which falls under Kelly, suggest that despite the DHS chief's statement, there has been no clear change to the catch-and-release policy.

That's in large part because there are legal constraints on who can be detained and for how long, due to a shortage of beds and a court ruling limiting the stay of women and children in custody to 21 days.

A separate court ruling limits detention time for immigrants whose countries refuse to repatriate them. And Kelly noted in a February memorandum that asylum seekers that have proven they have a credible fear of returning home could be candidates for release if they present neither a security risk nor a risk of absconding.

Low security risks

Daniel Bible, ICE field office director for Southern Texas, told Reuters he and his colleagues have not been issued new directions, and so continue to release illegal immigrants deemed to be low security risks, usually with notices to appear in court.

"We look at each case the same way we always have," Bible said.

DHS spokeswoman Jenny Burke confirmed to Reuters that the agency has not issued new guidance for releasing migrants caught at the border.

Asked to explain why there had been no new guidance, given Kelly's statement in April, Burke said, ICE officers make custody determinations on a case-by-case basis, prioritizing detention resources.

Shortage of beds



In a memo made public in February, Kelly defined catch and release as any policy that allows immigrants to be released from detention while they await their court hearings, making it easy to abscond. Ending catch and release was one of Trump's central promises during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Some advocates who work with migrants say they have seen little change since Trump came into office.

Sure, people are still being released, said Kevin Appleby, senior director of international migration policy at the Center for Migration Studies. Not because they believe in releasing them, but because there are not enough beds at the moment.

Numbers game

ICE declined to provide data on the number of migrants being released into the United States. But other ICE data not previously published and reviewed by Reuters shows the pool of people not in custody and awaiting court appearances is growing.

Since Trump took office in late January, the number of immigrants awaiting court proceedings while living freely in the United States has grown by nearly 30,000, rising by an average of about 7,500 per month, according to the ICE data.

During the last seven months of President Barack Obama's presidency, the rolls of those awaiting legal proceedings outside of custody grew more rapidly, at an average of about 20,600 people per month.

Part of the slower rate under Trump can be traced to a 58 percent drop in apprehensions of people crossing the border. Still, the numbers suggest the Trump administration is a long way from ending catch-and-release.

Tough talk praised

NumbersUSA, a Washington-based organization that supports limited immigration, praised the Trump administration's tough talk and its chilling effect on illegal immigration.

That impact will be temporary, though, unless the administration follows through by ending catch and release' for good, it said.

The Trump administration though has come up against the reality that there simply is not enough space in detention centers.

Congress has funded about 34,000 beds to detain immigration violators, and the average daily population of detainees has been near or above capacity since before Trump took office.

125 immigration judges requested

One way the administration hopes to free up detention space is to decrease the time it takes to resolve cases.

The Justice Department has requested funding to hire an additional 125 immigration judges over the next two years, an increase of 50 percent.

In the meantime, some border officials hope would-be migrants remain nervous. When told that ICE detention centers are still releasing many immigrants to live in the United States, Castro and her border agent colleague, who declined to be named, exchanged a look and then shrugged.

Don't tell them that, her colleague said.
President Donald Trump called for a bipartisan effort Wednesday to overhaul the country's crumbling infrastructure.

"Im calling on all Republicans and Democrats to join in the great rebuilding of America," Trump told supporters in the Midwestern city of Cincinnati, Ohio.

Rebuilding the nation's infrastructure initially was believed to have been supported by Republican and Democratic lawmakers. But many Democrats are opposed to Trump's plans for financing the overhaul, arguing they would result in taxpayer-funded corporate profits, with the costs absorbed by consumers.

The White House hopes to execute the infrastructure plan primarily through public-private partnerships. It has proposed funding the overhaul with $200 billion in tax breaks over nine years that would theoretically result in $1 trillion worth of construction.

The president said capital improvements to the infrastructure have been "massively underfunded," resulting in "an $8.7 billion maintenance backlog that is only getting worse."

"The theft of American prosperity has come to a screeching halt," Trump told a crowd at a marina on the Ohio River.

The White House is promoting this week as "infrastructure week" with a series of events that began Monday when the president announced plans to privatize the federal government's air traffic control system.

Trumps visit to Ohio came on the eve of former FBI director James Comey's testimony Thursday before Congress as the White House faces new allegations about possible efforts by Trump to influence a probe into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Before addressing the gathering at the marina, Trump discussed plans to repeal and replace the country's health insurance law at Cincinnati's municipal airport. The president was joined by two families he described as "victims" of the law, commonly known as Obamacare.

"Obamacare is in a total death spiral," he said, and added "health care is more about so much more than dollars and cents. Its about real people."

Trump applauded the House of Representatives for narrowly approving a Republican replacement health care bill early last month after an earlier effort failed. The Senate is crafting its own version of the bill, which he said likely would have to be approved without Democratic support.

"We will not get no votes, no matter what we do," the president said. "If we gave you the greatest plan in the history of the world, you would have no Democratic votes."

Senate Republican leaders are urging a vote on the bill before the July Fourth holiday recess, even though intraparty disagreements have delayed progress on the measure.
Facebook is working with three global relief organizations to provide disaster maps  close to real-time data about where people are, where they are moving, and whether they are in danger in the hours and days after a flood, fire or earthquake.

The social networking giant  with nearly 2 billion users, or about 25 percent of the world's population  said it has agreed to provide maps to UNICEF, the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, and the World Food Program, the food-assistance branch of the United Nations.

"We are excited about this," said Toby Wicks, a data strategist at UNICEF. "Facebook has vast amounts of data."

The company will provide maps of data in the aggregate. No Facebook user will be identified, the firm said.

After a disaster, "the first thing you need is data, which is extremely scarce and perishable," said Molly Jackman, a public policy manager at Facebook. But Facebook, particularly in areas with a high concentration of users, can "present a more complete picture of where people are," she said.

Types of maps

Facebook will offer the organizations three types of disaster maps that will be updated as frequently as possible.

Facebook's location density maps show where people are located before, during and after a disaster. In addition to using satellite images and population estimates, these maps also draw from Facebook users who have their location data setting turned on.

Facebook's movement maps show how people move during and after a disaster, and can help organizations with directing resources. For example, Facebook created maps after the 7.8-magnitude earthquake in Kaikoura, New Zealand, last year to show where people were going in the days after the quake struck.

Facebook's Safety Check maps are based on where Facebook users are when they use the firm's Safety Check service to tell friends and family they are safe. Facebook will create maps showing areas where people are declaring themselves safe and where help may be needed.

For example, after a disaster, "we might know where the house is, but we don't know where the people are," said Dale Kunce, global lead for information communication technology and analytics for the American Red Cross.

"Our first reaction may be to go to where the devastation happened," Kunce said. "But maybe most people are 10 miles away, staying with families when they reported they were safe. So the place to go may be where they are. We're excited to see what the possibilities and potential are."

Snapshots

Wicks, of UNICEF, said the partnership is at the beginning stages, but daily snapshots of where populations are have the potential to help his organization with disaster planning. For example, knowing how close people are to a health facility and how long it takes for them to travel to a medical clinic can help with decisions such as where to deploy medical services in case of a disaster.

The data maps will be most helpful in places where internet connectivity is high and in regions with a lot of Facebook users, Wicks said.

"Are these data representative of the populations we are trying to serve?" Wicks asked. "That's the key question."

Facebook said that it intends to make it possible for other organizations and governments, including local organizations, to be part of the program.
French President Emmanuel Macron is holding a special meeting Wednesday aimed at creating a new counterterrorism unit, in the presence of government members and top security officials.

The French presidency said the defense council will outline details of a task force that will be in charge of coordinating counterterrorism efforts and intelligence services in the country.



The unit will be based at the Elysee palace, operational 24 hours a day and will act directly under the president's authority  an unprecedented situation in the country, where some observers have denounced a lack of coordination between foreign and domestic intelligence services.



The creation of the task force was a campaign promise of Macron in a country marked by a series of attacks by Islamic extremists.
France on Tuesday proposed that the United Nations Security Council back a West African force to combat terrorism, drug and human trafficking by "eradicating the actions" of Islamist militants and organized crime groups in the Sahel region.

The vast, arid zone has in recent years become a breeding ground for jihadist groups - some linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State - that European nations, particularly France, fear could threaten Europe if left unchecked.

"We cannot afford to let the Sahel region become a new safe haven for terrorists across the world," French U.N. Ambassador Francois Delattre told reporters.

France circulated a draft Security Council resolution on Tuesday to the 15-member body to authorize the West African force to use "all necessary means" to restore peace and security in accordance with international law and work in coordination with a U.N. peacekeeping mission and French forces in Mali.

The West African force would also "contribute as necessary to the restoration of state authority and the return of displaced persons and refugees" and facilitate humanitarian operations and the delivery of aid.

Diplomats said the resolution could be voted on next week.

"It would be irresponsible for the council not to come together behind this regional initiative to combat terrorism across borders at the moment when the threat has never been so high," Delattre said.

The draft also requests U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres report to the council within 60 days on options for United Nations support for the West Africa force, known as the FC-G5S. He would also report every three months on the force.

The European Union has committed $56 million to the Sahel force.

Last year, the Sahel nations - Niger, Mali, Chad, Burkina Faso and Mauritania - proposed establishing special units, each of around 100 well-trained soldiers, which would be deployed in areas where jihadist groups are known to operate.

They would complement the efforts of regular armed forces, the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Mali and France's Operation Barkhane, which has around 4,000 troops deployed across the five Sahel countries.

France intervened in 2013 to drive back militants who had seized northern Mali a year earlier. However, militants continue to attack security forces and civilian in Mali and its neighbors.
A civil rights group is asking German authorities to issue an arrest warrant for the recently appointed deputy director of the CIA over claims she oversaw the torture of terrorism suspects 15 years ago.

The non-profit European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights submitted a legal brief to German federal prosecutors Tuesday, alleging that Gina Haspel allowed the waterboarding of prisoners at a secret U.S. detention center in Thailand. The prosecutor's office confirmed Wednesday the complaint had been received and was being reviewed.



Advocates describe waterboarding as a form of "enhanced interrogation." Critics say it amounts to torture, because prisoners are made to feel they are drowning.



Haspel was the first female career CIA officer selected to be deputy director in February .



The submission by the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights  seen by The Associated Press  centers mainly on the case of Abu Zubaydah, a Saudi citizen and senior al-Qaeda member who was among scores of Islamic extremists detained worldwide in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.



Drawing on media report and congressional testimony, attorneys for the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights allege that Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in August 2002, while Haspel was in charge of a detention facility in Thailand known as Cat's Eye base or Detention Site Green.



The submission identifies two CIA contractors, psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, as the only people authorized to have contact with Zubaydah during that time and claims they were answerable to Haspel.



The American Civil Liberties Union is currently suing Mitchell and Jessen on behalf of three men who say they were tortured using techniques the psychologists designed. A U.S. Senate investigation in 2014 found their interrogation techniques produced no useful intelligence in the so-called war on terror, but some former intelligence officials say the techniques have produced valuable intelligence.



"For the purposes of determining criminal liability, what is most relevant is the fact that as head of the secret prison in Thailand, Gina Haspel followed each day of Abu Zubaydah's torture from Aug. 4 to 23, 2002, and she alone had the responsibility to end this torture but failed to do so," the submission to German prosecutors states. It also cites the case of Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri, the alleged mastermind of the USS Cole bombing in 2000, who was waterboarded at Cat's Eye base in November 2002.



Both men are now held at the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In a separate legal proceeding, Europe's top human rights court ruled in 2014 that Poland had violated the rights of Zubaydah and al-Nashiri by allowing the CIA to secretly imprison them on Polish soil from 2002-2003 and facilitate conditions under which they were tortured.



The ruling by the European Court of Human Rights marked the first time any court has passed judgment on the rendition program launched by U.S. President George W. Bush after 9/11.



Civil rights groups have tried to prosecute several senior U.S. officials implicated in the torture program, including former CIA director George Tenet, former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, top CIA legal counsel John Rizzo and Geoffrey Miller, the former commander of the Guantanamo Bay detention center.



Tuesday's submission naming Haspel is the first in Germany against a high-ranking official still in service with the CIA. The agency declined to comment on the German group's legal efforts to have Haspel arrested.



A spokeswoman for Germany's federal prosecutors office said a preliminary investigation into the torture allegations was opened in late 2014, following the partial release of the U.S. Senate report.



"We are grateful for all information that sheds light on the allegations," Frauke Koehler told The Associated Press, adding that the latest evidence would be reviewed as a matter of course.



While German prosecutors can investigate serious crimes committed outside the country, there has to be a link of some kind to Germany  such as the victim or the suspect being in the country  for them to open a formal criminal probe.



The only case with a clear link to Germany that's been prosecuted so far is that of Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent, who said he was tortured at a CIA-run prison in Afghanistan.



The group argues in the current suit that the renditions in question are part of the broader U.S. program with multiple links to Germany.



Munich prosecutors issued arrest warrants in 2007 for 13 CIA agents involved in the operation , but the German government has refused to seek their extradition.
"They took my brother."

The visibly frightened woman speaks from inside the doorway of a multi-family house as she describes how U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents came at night, knocking on apartment doors, demanding to be let in.

"He's now at a detention center in York (nearby city)," she says in Spanish, giving her name only as Maria. After living in tiny York Springs, PA, for the past three years, the 38-year old woman is planning to return to Mexico with her three children.



Shes not alone. Lately, the streets of the York Springs have been emptier and for rent signs have popped up in front of some buildings. A new layer of fear hangs over the rural Pennsylvania town and its large Hispanic population in the wake of recent sweeps by ICE agents.

York Springs has developed differently from most other rural Pennsylvania towns. Located in farm country near the site of one of the most decisive battles in the American Civil War, York Springs began as a spa, attracting patrons from Washington and Philadelphia who came for the sulphur springs. Among them, records show, was America's first president, George Washington.

In the mid-20th century, the population of York Springs began to change as successive waves of migrant workers came to pick fruits and vegetables in the orchards and farms surrounding the town. The demand for migrant workers grew as farmers could no longer count on hiring enough locals at harvest time, according to Cathay Snyder, president of Ye Olde Sulphur Spa Historical Society. Snyder says the first wave of migrants was African American. They came in the 1960s, but did not settle in the town. Two decades later, they were followed by Hispanics, mainly from Mexico. They, too, left after the harvest.

That began to change, Snyder says, when migrants found year-around work in the orchards.

"More and more stay and make this their home," Snyder told VOA. "The husbands, the fathers, might be working out in the orchards, which were starting now to need more pruning and other year-around work, but you're also having wives finding jobs in some of the factories that are in the area."

Now, York Springs, with a population of 800, is almost half Hispanic. The town is something of an anomaly in Adams County which is 95 percent white. The county voted overwhelmingly for President Donald Trump and his tough immigration policies in last falls election, 66 percent to Hillary Clintons 30 percent.

Conservative Republican Congressman Scott Perry was reelected by a similar margin. On his website, he says he favors immigration reform that ensures with enforcement measures that both ensure U.S. security and provide "agricultural industries with the workers they need."

Perry writes, "Dozens of businesses and families in the 4th District have described to me an immigration system thats outdated, incredibly inefficient and stifles economic growth by drowning businesses with regulations."

Mexican music

When the immigrants first came, Snyder says, there was what she called some "misunderstanding" between the native-born whites and the Hispanics. But that has eased somewhat.

"I would say that we see more of a type of accommodation," Snyder said. "I wouldn't say that we have a blended family, but I think there's respect on either side."

The new residents have changed the face of the town. Children born to immigrant families attend the local school, and a Mexican store has opened up on a corner building on Main Street that was once a Five & Dime.

"There were more people out on the streets, more kids," said Ben Leese, pastor of the Holy Trinity Lutheran Church who has lived in York Springs for 10 years. "You'd hear Mexican music from a lot of the houses, from a lot of the cars."

New population shift?

An ICE statement provided to VOA says 15 people were arrested in York Springs from January through March of this year. And ICE has been back since. The arrests have sent a wave of fear through the community.

"They're scared," said pastor Leese. "And the really scary thing to me and lots of folks here is kids go to school and come home and Mom or Dad, or both, may have been picked up."

Teachers at the nearby Bermudian Springs school have sensed the fear among their Hispanic students. The school, with its elementary, middle school and high school all in one complex, has a 15 percent Hispanic student body. Bermudian school administrators and teachers are proud of this diversity, and say they have worked successfully to integrate their minority students.

Yet elementary schoolteacher Brooke Shambach, who was born in York Springs, worries that the fear and uncertainty created by the ICE arrests are affecting students.

"Even the young kindergartners are coming in and theyre sad because they hear these things are taking place," Shambach tells VOA. "Its heartbreaking that thats what a kindergartner is thinking about, you know. And it's not just in the elementary school, it's in all the buildings.

ICE says that convicted criminals remain the target of arrests, although the agency will also pick up immigrants whose only offense is being undocumented if agents encounter them during a raid. Nine of the 15 arrested between January and March had committed deportable offenses.

Trump supporter David Reinecker, a 62-year-old farmer who lives on the town's outskirts, supports deporting immigrants who have committed crimes.

"But if they're law abiding and are willing to become citizens and get the documentation even after they're here, I think they should be incorporated into our society," he said.

"The Hispanics coming into our country have filled a real need," he added.
U.S. officials still can't confirm how many refugees will arrive this fiscal year, with less than four months left and an imminent increase in the works.

The ambitious ceiling of 110,000, set by then-President Barack Obama shortly before the 2016 election has little chance of being met. It would require a massive surge of personnel to pull off in the 16 weeks remaining in this fiscal year, which is an unlikely prospect under an administration calling for significant cuts to the refugee program.

And it likely won't be as low as 50,000, the number demanded by President Donald Trump in two executive orders embroiled in legal friction. That number is less than a month away from being reached at the current arrival pace of 866 refugee arrivals a week. Moreover, State Department has indicated that number will grow in the near future  though how much remains unclear.

So where does that leave things?

No one seems to know. It will be more than 46,835  that's the number of confirmed arrivals as of the afternoon of June 7.

The White House did not respond to VOA's request for comment or clarification on whether Trump will issue an overriding presidential determination to lower the ceiling from 110,000. The State Department, which oversees the refugee admissions process in conjunction with other agencies, would not hazard a guess.

Predicting the final arrival numbers can be a challenge. The admittance process requires multiple offices within the U.S. government and several UN agencies to identify candidates for resettlement, interview them, vet their security and medical status, and organize their transportation to the U.S.

If the current pace stays the same, the U.S. is on track to resettle about 60,700 refugees this fiscal year, down from almost 85,000 last year.

Travel order

For months, as the administration issued a first travel order in January, rescinded it and reissued a second in March, the arrivals numbers bounced up and down, settling ultimately in the 800-900 a week range. Refugee agencies that help resettle new arrivals laid off hundreds of staff members in anticipation of Trump's ordered cuts to the program.

While we expect the number of refugees admitted weekly to rise, we are not in a position to speculate as to the new weekly total or the final number of refugees that will be admitted by the end of Fiscal Year 2017, a State Department spokesperson said in an emailed statement Wednesday.



Trump's executive order, also referred to as the travel ban, called for a temporary stop to refugee arrivals, and the cap of 50,000 for the fiscal year, but judges halted the full rollout of the order and parts of it are headed to the U.S. Supreme Court.



On the advice of the Department of Justice, which represents the government in the lawsuits over the executive order, the State Department is processing refugee applications without regard to the section of the order that imposed the cap, according to a spokesperson.
The Islamic State group claimed a pair of attacks Wednesday on Iran's parliament and the shrine of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, which have killed two security guards and wounded more than 30 people, with the siege at the legislature still underway.

It marks the first attack in Iran claimed by the extremist group, which is at war with Iranian-backed forces in Syria and Iraq. In a message posted through its Aamaq News Agency, the IS group claimed its fighters were behind the assaults.

The group often claims attacks around the world, even when links to the group cannot be confirmed and appear dubious. Iranian security officials have not said who is behind the attacks.

Sunni extremists, including the IS, despise Shiite-majority Iran. Iran has also come under attack in the past by Arab insurgents.

The unusual attacks in Iran prompted the Interior Ministry to call for an urgent security meeting, according to the state-run IRNA news agency.

Assailants stormed the parliament building and one of the attackers blew himself up inside, where a session had been in progress, according to a statement carried by Iran's state TV. It quoted lawmaker Elias Hazrati as saying the attackers were armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles.

An Associated Press reporter saw several police snipers on the rooftops of buildings around the parliament. Shops in the area were shuttered, and gunfire could be heard. Witnesses said the attackers were shooting from the fourth floor of the parliament building down at people in the streets below.

"I was passing by one of the streets. I thought that children were playing with fireworks, but I realized people are hiding and lying down on the streets," Ebrahim Ghanimi, who was around the parliament building when the assailants stormed in, told The Associated Press. "With the help of a taxi driver, I reached a nearby alley."

Police helicopters circled over the parliament building and all mobile phone lines from inside were disconnected. The semi-official ISNA news agency said all entrance and exit gates at parliament were closed and that lawmakers and reporters were ordered to remain in place inside the chamber.

State TV reported four attackers are involved in the parliament attack, and said eight people were wounded.

Iran's official state broadcaster said a security guard was killed in the shrine attack. It said one of the attackers at the shrine was killed by security guards and that a woman was arrested. It described the shrine attackers as "terrorists" and said one carried out a suicide bombing, without providing further details.

In addition to being lethal, the attack on the shrine of Khomeini is symbolically stunning. As Iran's first Supreme Leader, Khomeini is a towering figure in the country and was its revolutionary leader in the 1979 ouster of the shah.

An Associated Press reporter saw security forces, some uniformed and others in plainclothes, around the large and ornate shrine located just outside the capital.
Iran's Revolutionary Guards are blaming Saudi Arabia for a pair of terror attacks Wednesday at symbolic locations in Tehran.

"This terrorist attack happened only a week after the meeting between the U.S. president and the [Saudi] backward leaders who support terrorists. The fact that Islamic State has claimed responsibility proves that they were involved in the brutal attack, the statement read.

Tehran police chief Hossein Sajedinia was quoted in Iranian media as saying five suspects had been arrested in connection with the attacks that left at least 12 people dead and 42 others wounded at Iran's parliament and a shrine to late leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

IS militants immediately claimed responsibility. It marks the first time the Sunni Muslim group admitted it attacked the majority Shi'ite Muslim country.

U.S. President Donald Trump released a statement reacting to the attacks on Wednesday. He said the U.S. grieves and prays for "the innocent victims" of the attacks, and "the Iranian people, who are going through such challenging times."

He also warned that "states that sponsor terrorism risk falling victim to the evil they promote."

The State Department said the "depravity of terrorism" has no place in the world. Spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the U.S. sends its thoughts and prayers to the Iranian people following the attacks.

The United Nations Security Council said the attacks were "barbaric and cowardly," and stressed that it condemned the attacks "in the strongest terms."

The Security Council reaffirmed that terrorism "in all its forms and manifestations" constitutes one of the most serious threats to international peace and security. It said any acts of terrorism are "criminal and unjustifiable," and called for the perpetrators, organizers, financiers and sponsors of those acts to be brought to justice.

Six of the attackers were killed by Iranian security forces.

The attacks began before noon when several men, dressed as women, stormed the parliament building and killed a security guard. One attacker blew himself up inside the building, and three gunmen were reported killed by police after they took several hostages.

Ali Larijani, the speaker of parliament, called the attack a "minor incident" perpetrated by "some cowardly terrorists." He said "serious measures" would be taken against those responsible.

The shrine attack began about 30 minutes after the parliament attack, and involved three gunmen and a suicide bomber who stormed the site, killing at least one person and wounding several others, according to Iranian media. The reports said police arrested at least one of the attackers and killed another.

The United States condemned the terrorist attacks, with State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert issuing a statement that said, "We express our condolences to the victims and their families, and send our thoughts and prayers to the people of Iran. The depravity of terrorism has no place in a peaceful, civilized world."

The Islamic State extremist group is at war with Iranian-backed groups in Syria and Iran and views Iran's Shi'ite majority as apostates deserving of death.
Tehran has bragged for years that Islamic State could not deeply penetrate inside Iran, saying it kept a chokehold on any IS roots by arresting possible suspects and monitoring movements along its borders.

But Wednesday's attacks, claimed by IS, on Iran's parliament and the shrine of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini that left at least 12 people dead, exposed Iran's vulnerability, analysts say. It shows, too, that IS will follow through on its threats to terrorize Iran, which it sees as a battlefield enemy and religious persecutor.

IS has long accused Shiite-led Iran of executing thousands of the Sunni minority in the country.

Iraq's Iran-backed Shiite paramilitary force has inflicted hundreds of casualties on IS and driven IS from land outside Mosul. In Syria, Iran has been a major military backer of the Syrian regime, first in its war with rebel groups across the country and later against IS.

Combat troops in Syria

About 10,000 Iranian combat troops are in Syria fighting alongside thousands of fighters from Hezbollah, Lebanon's Tehran-affiliated Shiite militia, and assorted Shiite militias made up of renegade Pakistanis, central Asians and other nationalities.

"With its direct involvement in fighting IS in Iraq and Syria, a retaliation from IS shouldn't be a surprise to authorities in Iran," said Alex Vatanka, a senior analyst at the Washington-based Middle East Institute.

Iran intelligence has boasted about layers of security applied by agents protecting the country from IS infiltrations. Several times in recent months, Iranian officials have spoken about breaking up IS-related terror cells and arresting IS-affiliated militants planning attacks inside Iran.

"We have built a complicated network of security nets from Karbala all the way to Tehran that allows us to trace every single move of Daesh [IS]," Hojatoleslam Toyserkani, representative of Iran's supreme leader to the Basij paramilitary forces, said last week.

Until Wednesday, the alleged security veneer seemed intact even though officials' claims of the public's protection from IS lacked many details, including when alleged incidents took place, the identity of most suspects, and concrete links to IS.

"Iranian authorities were good in preventing IS from conducting operations inside Iran, but this attack put a crack on the bubble of invincibility Tehran tried hard to project," analyst Vatanka said.

Wednesday's twin synchronized attacks on two of the most visible and secure sites in the capital were intended by IS to put Tehran on notice, analysts said.

Video of attack

IS-affiliated Amaq social media released a video allegedly showing the attacker storming a parliament office, shooting at staff and shouting IS slogans in Arabic.

"IS wants to send a message that despite all security measures, they can conduct attacks and tarnish Iran's intelligence reputation," Karim Pourhamzavi, an extremism analyst at Macquarie University in Sydney, told VOA.

In March, IS issued a video threatening Iran and promising to conquer the country soon. The 36-minute Persian-language clip was narrated and hosted by several Persian speakers with heavy Baloch accents.

The speakers allege that more than 18,000 Iranian Sunnis have been executed since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. One of the speakers urges Sunnis to join the group "to defend their dignity and regain the pride taken away by Iranian Shia authorities."

But several opinion polls have shown little Sunni interest in joining IS.

Still, Wednesday's attack had people in Tehran wondering if IS has more support than Iran leaders let on. It marks the first time the Sunni Muslim group admitted it staged an attack in the majority Shiite Muslim country.

"The timing of the attack and good knowledge about the entrances of parliament are hints that may make us think that they had insiders or having access to some precise information before conducting the attack," said Mohammad Ghorbani, a Tehran-based reporter who covers terrorism issues.

Presence likely to grow

Still, in the long run, some analysts think it's doubtful IS will forge a deeper presence in Iran.

"IS have always conducted attacks inside countries using local agents and supporters," Emad Abshenasan, a Tehran-based extremism analyst, told VOA. "IS has no base in Iran, and even its minority Sunni population do not favor or support IS or its ideology."

But by getting more involved in conflicts in Yemen, Syria and Iraq, Tehran is exposing itself more to possible terror at home, analysts said.

"As Tehran deepens its engrossment in regional conflicts and into affairs of the Arab world, it makes itself more susceptible to these kinds of attacks partially, directly, or indirectly supported or directed by its contenders in the region," analyst Vatanka said.
Developments in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday include President Donald Trump sending out more tweets regarding a spat between Gulf Arab nations, saying Twitter is his way to get his "unfiltered message" to Americans, as well as Washington preparing for fired FBI Director James Comey's upcoming testimony, and U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley warning the U.S. may pull out of the U.N.'s main human rights body.

Trump Wades Into Diplomatic Spat Among Gulf Arab Nations -- The White House says President Donald Trump and Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud spoke by telephone, and the two stressed the need for Gulf unity following a decision by Arab states in the region to cut ties with Qatar. A statement issued late Tuesday said the two discussed the "critical goals of preventing the financing of terrorist organizations and eliminating the promotion of extremism by any nation in the region."

Trump Defends His Twitter Musings, But Aides Worry -- Trump is defending his frequent 140-character messages on Twitter, saying it's his way of reaching the public without his words being filtered through traditional news outlets. Trump claimed Tuesday on Twitter, his favorite social media link to the world, that the mainstream media was trying to keep him from using the medium. He said Twitter is his way to get an "unfiltered message out" to the public.

Washington Braces for Comey Testimony -- Lawmakers' expectations varied as Capitol Hill braced for what promises to be a blockbuster event: Thursday's testimony by former FBI director James Comey on the Russia probe and his interactions with Trump before he was fired last month. "This is an investigation into potential treason, potential espionage, potential obstruction of justice. It's very, very serious that we get it right," Democratic Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia said Tuesday.

NATO Chief: 'Have to be Strong' in Response to Russia But Dialogue Important -- The head of NATO says members of the alliance are united in their stance toward Russia in a way they have not been for many years. Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Monday in an interview with VOA's Serbian Service that NATO is committed to stepping up its defense while at the same time continuing dialogue with Russia.

Does the UN Have an Anti-Israel Bias? -- The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations put the organization's Human Rights Council on notice Tuesday, saying it needs to reform or the U.S. will withdraw from it. Nikki Haley, who also is a member of President Trump's cabinet, has been very vocal about what she says is the 47-member, Geneva-based council's bias against Israel.

US Might Quit UN Rights Body if No Reforms -- Haley has warned that the Trump administration might pull out of the Human Rights Council if the U.N. body does not undertake necessary reforms. In a tough take no prisoners speech at the opening of the council's three-week session, Haley put the group on notice that it should mend its ways.

US Urged to Act Upon its Own Human Rights -- A top civil liberties defender is urging the United States to "practice what it preaches" on human rights after Haley addressed the U.N.'s main human rights body.

Trump Urges Quick Supreme Court Ruling to Reinstate Travel Ban -- Trump used Twitter late Monday to again call for a travel ban from what he called "dangerous countries" while criticizing what he sees as "politically correct" efforts to soften his original executive order to block entry to people from a group of majority-Muslim countries.

Tillerson: Trump Says Look Past Turmoil and Re-Engage Russia -- Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Tuesday that Trump has asked him to rebuild the U.S. relationship with Russia and not allow the political turmoil over possible Russian ties to the Trump campaign to impede him.

US Homeland Chief Suggests Kushner Part of Russia Probe -- Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly indicated on Tuesday that Trump's son-in-law and top adviser Jared Kushner and his communications with Russia are part of a wide-ranging probe by the Justice Department's special counsel.

Thai Junta Chief to Visit White House in July -- The leader of Thailand's military junta, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, will visit the White House in July following an invitation from Trump, a spokesman for the Thai government said on Monday.

China Won't Free Men Who Investigated Ivanka Trump Supplier -- China's government on Tuesday rejected a U.S. State Department call to release three activists detained while investigating a Chinese company that produced shoes for Ivanka Trump and other brands. It sought instead to enforce a cone of silence around the men, according to a lawyer and a family member who was interrogated and told not to speak to the foreign press.

California Governor Brown Says US Will Stay in Climate Fight -- With Trump pulling the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord, China and California signed an agreement Tuesday to work together on reducing emissions, as the state's governor warned that "disaster still looms" without urgent action. Gov. Jerry Brown told The Associated Press at an international clean energy conference in Beijing that Trump's decision to pull the U.S. out of the Paris agreement will ultimately prove only a temporary setback.

US Army Base Goes Green With Renewable Energy Project -- The U.S. military's biggest base on American soil has begun drawing nearly half of its power from renewable energy, days after Trump's decision to pull out of a global agreement to fight climate change. Fort Hood, Texas, has shifted away from fossil fuels to wind- and solar-generated energy in order to shield the base from its dependence on outside sources, a spokesman said.

Poll: Most Americans Want 'Aggressive' Action on Climate Change -- Most Americans believe the United States should take "aggressive action" to fight climate change, but few see it as a priority issue when compared with the economy or security, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Tuesday. The June 2-4 opinion poll found 68 percent of Americans want the United States to lead global efforts to slow climate change, and 72 percent agree "that given the amount of greenhouse gases that it produces, the United States should take aggressive action to slow global warming."

Foreign Minister: Canada Seeks Larger World Role as US Retreats -- Canada will seek to play a larger role on the world stage as the United States retreats, Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland said on Tuesday, in remarks underscoring strains between Washington and its closest allies.

Cities Push Back as Trump Aims to Cut Anti-Terrorism Funding -- Cities are pushing back on the possibility of losing millions of dollars in U.S. anti-terrorism grants under Trump's spending plan  the third straight White House that has moved to cut the funding. The proposed budget would cut cash for the program from $605 million to nearly $449 million for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 and require cities such as New York, Los Angeles and Las Vegas to pay 25 percent of the grants.

US Vice President's Wife Installs Beehive at Official Residence -- Karen Pence, wife of U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, has opened their government residence to more than a few new inhabitants: honeybees  at least 15,000 of them. She showed off the beehive Tuesday, partly to draw attention to a decline in managed bee colonies that she and other officials say could negatively affect U.S. agricultural production.

Report: International Tourism to US Stronger Than Expected -- More international visitors came to the U.S. than expected in April 2017, according to a new report released Tuesday in Washington. The U.S. Travel Association's Travel Trends Index shows that international travel to the U.S. grew by about 4 percent in April, compared with data for April 2016. The strong showing contradicted fears that tourism from abroad would slow in reaction to President Trump's proposed travel bans, which have been blocked by court challenges.

Despite Vow to End Catch and Release, Trump Is Still Freeing Thousands of Migrants -- Last fall, during the waning months of the Obama administration, hundreds of immigrants crossed the river on rafts near Roma, Texas, each day, many willingly handing themselves over to immigration authorities in hopes of being released into the United States to await court proceedings that would decide their fate. Now, would-be border violators know they'll be detained and then turned right back around, said an agent.

US, Mexico Reach Sugar Pact Without Backing from US Producers -- The U.S. and Mexican governments reached a new agreement to significantly shift their sugar trade mix, but U.S. sugar producers have failed to endorse the deal, leaving question marks over whether it could still sour broader trade relations. U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the "agreement in principle" with Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo calls for Mexico to reduce the share of refined sugar in its exports to the United States, while increasing the share of raw sugar.
Two top U.S. intelligence officials told lawmakers they did not feel inappropriately pressured by President Donald Trump to publicly disavow possible Russian collusion with Trump aides in last year's election.

But Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers told the Senate Intelligence Committee they would not discuss details of their White House meetings with Trump in recent months. They refused to answer questions about whether Trump asked them to intervene to curb the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 campaign.

"Ive never felt pressure, to intervene or interfere in any way shape, with shaping intelligence, in a political way," Coats said. "Or, in relationship to an ongoing investigation.

A Washington Post report Wednesday said in March, less than a week after the Senate confirmed Coats to oversee the 17 U.S. intelligence agencies, Trump asked him to intervene with then-FBI Director James Comey to back off an investigation of Trump's first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, whom Trump fired after just 24 days on the job for lying to Vice President Mike Pence about his contacts with Russia's ambassador to Washington.

But Coats said it would be inappropriate to publicly discuss his White House talks with Trump, even though he said the White House had not sought to block discussion of his private conversations with the president

When pressed by one lawmaker to explain why he was refusing to answer questions about his conversations with the president, Coats replied, "Im not sure I have a legal basis."



WATCH: Coats on whether he was asked to intervene in Russia probe

Rogers took the same stance against talking about his conversations with Trump, but denied feeling any pressure from the president to publicly downplay any Trump campaign connection to Russian officials.

"In the three plus years I have been director of the National Security Agency to the best of my recollection, I have never been directed to do anything I believe to be illegal, immoral, unethical or inappropriate," Rogers said. "And to the best of my recollection, during that same period of service, I do not recall ever feeling pressured to do so.

WATCH: Rogers on whether Trump pressured him on Russia probe



Coats and Rogers testified on the first of two days of hearings focused on Trump's efforts to curb the investigation of what he says is a "witch hunt" aimed at undermining the legitimacy of his upset victory in the November election, an excuse he says opposition Democrats are using to account for his defeat of former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.



Did Trump interfere?



On Thursday, Comey, whom Trump fired last month while he was heading the agency's Russia investigation, is set to testify before the same Senate panel. In an early release of his planned testimony, Comey said Trump in January asked the former FBI chief for personal loyalty and then, on the day after Trump fired Flynn in February, urged him to back off the FBI investigation of Flynn's Russia connections.

Trump, according to the Post's account, complained to Coats and Central Intelligence Agency chief Mike Pompeo about Comey's handling of the Russia probe. Coats discussed Trump's request with aides, but decided that intervening with Comey was inappropriate. As he decided to fire Comey, Trump said he was thinking of "this Russia thing."

Coats' and Rogers' testimony comes as a new Post-ABC News poll said a 56-percent majority of U.S. adults think Trump is interfering with several Russia investigations, while 61 percent think Trump fired Comey to protect himself rather than for the good of the country.

But the news organizations' survey also said Americans are skeptical about what Comey says about Russian meddling in the election. The FBI and other U.S. agencies said earlier this year Moscow interfered to help Trump win, but the poll said only 36 percent of those surveyed say they trust what Comey says about Russia "a great deal" or "a good amount."

But the survey also said only slightly more than one in five people trust what Trump says about Russia's role in the campaign.
Dozens of people joined La Crosse Mayor Tim Kabat Tuesday to pedal through what some advocates consider the second-most-bicycle-friendly city in the state.

The event, co-sponsored by the Wisconsin Bike Fed, is a chance for the city to highlight some of its accomplishments  as well as the remaining barriers to getting around without a car.

Bike Fed executive director Dave Cieslewicz said La Crosse, designated a silver-level bicycle friendly community by the League of American Cyclists, is second only to Madison, which holds the groups platinum designation.

Youve got nothing to be ashamed of, said the former Madison mayor.

James Longhurst, author of Bike Battles: A History of Sharing the American Road and an associate professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, served as a tour guide, highlighting the strengths of the existing system and the missing pieces needed to complete the network and allow people to get someplace useful.

Longhurst also made a case for funding things like bike lanes even as cities and states struggle to find money to fix crumbling roads and bridges: Bike and pedestrian accommodations  which add very little to the cost of rebuilding streets  help reduce peak congestion, decrease the demand for parking, and create less wear and tear, while also generating less pollution.

Investing in bike, pedestrian and transit infrastructure helps all users  including those who have to use their cars, he said. Even if you stay in your car, you probably want to encourage other people to have other options.

About 50 people showed up for the morning ride, including four city council members (not enough to constitute a rolling quorum), one of more than a dozen city bike patrol officers, and 7-year-old Gracie Meyers, who said she does kind of like biking.

They meandered through the South Side, rolling along a half-mile stretch of fresh pavement and brightly marked bike lanes on East Avenue and down Farnam Street, one of four side streets designated for conversion to neighborhood greenways, where speed tables, traffic circles, curb bump outs and other features slow cars to make for a more bicycle friendly environment.

Work is set to begin later this summer on 17th Street, the citys first such bike boulevard.

But it wasnt all smooth pedaling.

A driver in a gold Buick blasted his horn as part of the group attempted to get across West Avenue, one of the most dangerous corridors for cyclists and pedestrians, according to a recent study by the La Crosse Area Planning Committee.

After a stop at Trane Park  which is to be rebuilt next year as the regions first playground designed to accommodate autistic children  the ride took a 1.5-mile detour to cross Mormon Coulee Road at Victory Street, one of the only right-angle intersections with a traffic signal  before snaking through the neighborhood west of South Avenue in an effort to reach the Gundersen Health System campus.

The riders made it as far as 11th Place before running out of safe options.

Were trapped between South Avenue on one side and the river on the other, Longhurst explained before leading the group onto the sidewalk. Its our only way to get there.

The city has commissioned a design firm to study options for improving accessibility for the neighborhood, as the Department of Transportation has indicated it is unlikely to include bike accommodations when it rebuilds the thoroughfare in 2022.

Without bike facilities, Longhurst said, it is going to be quite difficult for people who live in this entire quadrant of the city to bike to Gundersen or downtown.

According to data from the Wisconsin Traffic Operations and Safety Laboratory, most of the 102 cyclists injured in collisions with vehicles over the past five years were hit in the downtown area or along major arteries with no bike accommodations.

While outdoor recreation opportunities are a key asset for the city, Kabat said its important to remember that 15 percent of the workforce walks, bikes or takes buses to work each day.

Thats how a lot of people get around, he said. We have to build these facilities and we have to keep up these efforts.

In 2011, La Crosse was awarded silver status by the League of American Cyclists, which highlighted the citys high bike commuter rate and planning and advocacy efforts.

But when it comes to infrastructure and spending, theres a big gap between the La Crosse and citys with gold status. Only 12 percent of La Crosses main roads have bike accommodations  compared to the 65 percent standard  and the city devotes just 4 cents out of every transportation dollar to support bikes.

And in the six years since achieving that recognition, the city has added just over 3 miles of bike lanes, even as many of the existing pavement markings have been worn away.

Kabat said while all cities struggle with the ongoing maintenance costs, hes told city staff to address that fading paint this summer.

There shouldnt be questions about how long it takes to repaint or repair, he said. It has to become part of the operation.

The city has become more focused on so-called transportation alternatives as the Department of Transportation is studying what has become a $143 million road project through the La Crosse River marsh that was shelved after a 1998 city referendum but has lingered on the states list of approved projects.

The agency has identified six potential strategies designed to improve safety and alleviate congestion on the areas three north-south corridors. All include significant new pavement, which has drawn opposition from neighborhood organizations, environmental groups, and the city.

While the DOT said non-pavement alternatives alone will not take enough vehicles off the road to prevent future congestion, officials encouraged local communities to move ahead.

Kabat said its important for La Crosse to lead by example, though he noted, the next step is more regional solutions.

Longhurst said La Crosse has natural advantages  the city is flat, compact and has a relatively intact grid of streets  that make it bike friendly and would allow for some inexpensive improvements.

Yet he notes that five years after approving it, the city has completed few of the projects outlined in the master plan, something he blames on both funding and inertia.

We get used to the city the way it is, he said. But just because our streets are poured in concrete doesnt mean theyre carved in stone.
For months, soldiers, civilians and aid workers in Iraq have been reporting Islamic State attacks using homemade chemical weapons. On June 4 in Mosul, militants fired a poisoned mortar at Iraqi forces in a failed attempted to rescue other IS fighters trapped in battle.

Thirty-year-old Private Hussien Hamza of the Iraqi Army's 73rd Brigade told VOA about his experience in the battle. He spoke in Arabic.



The operation began at 3:30 a.m. We moved quickly on foot, keeping low and running through the neighborhood. The roads in this part of Mosul are too narrow for humvees so we stayed as close to the walls of the houses as possible for cover.



Islamic State militants mostly retreated, but they fired at us as they fled. They were mainly using grenades and mortars, but also plenty of machine guns and sniper rifles. We saw militants prepare to detonate a car bomb and fired at them as we ran. We defused the bomb.

By early afternoon, we had moved nearly a kilometer in, and seven militants were trapped in a house just behind our new frontline. About 10 of us went in, and we fought for hours using hand grenades in close quarters.



The militants wore all black. It looked like traditional Afghan or Pakistani clothes, but they didnt appear to be Afghan or Pakistani. They cursed us when they saw us. We cursed them back. That really pissed them off.



By 5 p.m. we killed all seven of them. One of them looked Chinese.

We hadnt stopped for food or water since the operation began, but we werent tired.



Other militants were still firing at the house, trying to rescue their team. A missile hit a car outside the house and it was on fire. Three mortars dropped and poison gas blew in our faces.

Within seconds I was blinded by the tears streaming down my face and liquid poured out of my nose. White bubbles came from my mouth. I could hear other soldiers coughing.



Some of the men grabbed me and two other soldiers and brought us to a field clinic. Medics said our cases were too advanced to be treated there and they transferred us to a hospital, where they told us we were hit with a chemical attack. I passed out.



After two days of oxygen and injections we were released back to the frontlines but my eyes still hurt and my body is shaking. They say I need to see an eye specialist.



The militants are cowards in the way they fight. They know its their last days. They know we will end them.
A German-led NATO battle group of tanks, armored vehicles, and troops, including Lithuanians, engaged enemy attackers mid-March on a field outside a military base in Rukla, Lithuania.

The NATO group fired flares, smoke canisters, and blanks for what a press officer said was the first demonstration of maneuvers since they arrived in Lithuania earlier this year.

A group of visiting German military and other European dignitaries watched from nearby stands.

We are from Norway, we are from Belgium and from the Netherlands. We all accomplished a very high intensity training, said Lieutenant-Colonel Christoph Huber, commander of the NATO enhanced Forward Presence Battle Group, and the German contingent in Lithuania. And, we are prepared to deter and to defend Lithuania.

NATO is sending additional troops to the Baltics to reassure the former Soviet states against a resurgent Russia, which described the deployment as threatening its security.

NATO troops

After Russias 2014 annexation of Ukraines Crimea, NATO agreed to send troops to Lithuania and to Estonia, Latvia, and Poland in a move to deter potential Russian aggression.

Russias military drills and increased buzzing of NATO airspace have raised concerns among Baltic states, which rely on NATO policing for defense.

NATO jet scrambles to intercept Russian warplanes approaching NATO member airspace jumped from an estimated 400 times in 2014 and 2015 to 800 times in 2016.

We are protecting NATO airspace, NATO borders, said Major Martin, commander of the Netherlands Air Force Detachment for NATOs Baltic air policing in Siaulai. And, it is not necessarily just the Russians - its any aircraft that does not comply with the rules that we ... that apply in the air.

U.S. President Donald Trumps demand that NATO members pay more for their defense is welcomed by the Baltic states but there is concern that his push for better U.S.-Russia relations not sacrifice their interests.

We do hope that such kind of relations will not create new spheres of influence; no more Yaltas Two; and of course they should not be contrary to the international law as we know it, said Latvia Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics.

Building a fence

Lithuania is taking measures that include building a fence this year along its open border with Russias Kaliningrad. The main purpose of the fence is to prevent smuggling, but there are also concerns about Russia.

Well, as I say, we have to be prepared for the worst, said the Lithuanian Ministry of Defenses Political Director Vaidotas Urbelis. Provocations could happen. And, we saw an incident on the Estonian border where one officer was just kidnapped.

The September 2014 incident on the Estonian border raised concern that Russia planned to use the same hybrid warfare techniques on the Baltics that it used to seize Crimea and still employs in eastern Ukraine.

Sandwiched between NATO members Lithuania and Poland, Russias Kaliningrad enclave is a strategic, military outpost housing its Baltic Fleet. Russia recently moved a S-400 missile defense system and nuclear capable Iskandar ballistic missiles to Kaliningrad, citing military posturing from NATO.

Some residents are worried about the potential for conflict.

"Because the Kaliningrad region is quite small and many people are quite concerned about that, including us, said resident Ekaterina who only gave her first name.

Won't take a risk

Others are less concerned.

"I do not think that someone would take such a risk. I do not think that both NATO and the European Union are in a hostile mood, said a resident who identified himself only as Ilya. The issue is with our president (Vladimir Putin), he added.

Just in case, Baltic states urged NATO to take additional security measures in the region ahead of a Russian September military exercise in neighboring Belarus, which some fear is much larger in scale than reported.

Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite in February described Russias Zapad 2017 drills as a very large and aggressive force that will very demonstrably be preparing for a war with the West.

Russian state media on Tuesday reported the joint Russia-Belarus exercises involve around 3,000 Russian troops, 280 pieces of hardware and up to 25 Russian aircraft.

Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko on Monday invited NATO observers to the drills in an effort to increase transparency. "We are not hiding and should not hide anything. If NATO representatives want to be present at our drills, you are welcome. Moreover, Im already receiving such information and such signals from them, he said.
More girls are completing secondary school across sub-Saharan Africa as attitudes change and state spending rises, but some of the most marginalized girls  like those married young or forced to work  are still missing out, education experts say.

The percentage of girls completing secondary school has risen in all regions of Africa since 2005, said a recent report by the African Development Bank, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and the U.N. Development Program.

Almost twice as many girls in East Africa and three times as many in Central Africa completed secondary education in 2014 as in 2005, according to the annual African Economic Outlook report, which was published at the end of last month.

Yet more must be done to support girls across the continent who are not in school if the world is to meet a U.N. global goal to ensure all children receive secondary schooling by 2030, experts say.

The deadline on universal education was agreed as part of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)  a global plan to end poverty and hunger, advance equality and protect the environment.

"Many of the most marginalized girls from the poorest households do not make the transition from primary to secondary, or ever set foot in a school at all," Paola Babos of the U.N. children's agency (UNICEF) told Reuters.

Attitudes toward education for girls are changing across Africa  as more and more parents see sending their daughters to school not only as a chance to improve their futures, but also to boost the family's fortunes, according to Plan International.

Yet issues such as child marriage and teenage pregnancy threaten progress in closing the education gender gap in sub-Saharan Africa, said Vernor Munoz, an education expert at Plan.

"We need to look beyond education to society  and tackle prejudices, stereotypes and harmful practices that prevent girls being in school," Munoz told Reuters.

While the gender education gap is closing on the continent, of 19 countries worldwide with fewer than 90 girls for every 100 boys in secondary school, two-thirds of them are in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the U.N. educational body UNESCO.

The world is set to miss by more than half a century the SDG on education due to under-funding, UNESCO said last September.

Yet African governments have scaled up spending on education in recent years, found the African Economic Outlook report.

The average percentage of state expenditure on education in sub-Saharan Africa between 2010 and 2014 was 16 percent, higher than the global average of 14 percent, the report showed.
NASA chose 12 new astronauts Wednesday from its biggest pool of applicants ever, selecting seven men and five women who could one day fly aboard the nation's next generation of spacecraft.

The astronaut class of 2017 includes doctors, scientists, engineers, pilots and military officers from Anchorage to Miami and points in between. They've worked in submarines, emergency rooms, university lecture halls, jet cockpits and battleships. They range in age from 29 to 42, and they typically led the pack.

"It makes me personally feel very inadequate when you read what these folks have done," said NASA's acting administrator, Robert Lightfoot.

Vice President Mike Pence welcomed the group during a televised ceremony at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. He offered President Donald Trump's congratulations and noted that the president was "firmly committed to NASA's noble mission, leading America in space."

Pence assured the crowd that NASA would have the resources and support necessary to continue to make history.

"Under President Donald Trump, America will lead in space once again, and the world will marvel," he said.

More than 18,300 people threw their hats into the space ring during a brief application period 1 years ago. That's more than double the previous record of 8,000, set in 1978 when the space shuttles were close to launching.

The 12 selected Wednesday will join 44 astronauts already in the NASA corps. U.S. astronauts have not launched from home soil since 2011, thus the low head count. But that could change next year.

After two years of training, the newbies may end up riding commercial rockets to the International Space Station or flying beyond the moon in NASA's Orion spacecraft. Their ultimate destination could be Mars.

SpaceX and Boeing are building capsules capable of carrying astronauts to the space station and back, as soon as next year. A launch engineer and senior manager for SpaceX, Robb Kulin, is among the new astronauts. He's also worked as an ice driller in Antarctica and a commercial fisherman in Alaska.

"Hopefully, one day, I actually fly on a vehicle that ... I got to design," Kulin said.

Kulin and his classmates may be in for a long wait for space.



Some members of the class of 2009 have yet to launch. Jack Fischer, who was in that group, just got to the space station in April, but he said he couldn't be happier as he showed the latest hires their "new office" in a video.

"It's a little bit cramped," he said. "The desk is kind of small. But the view. Oh, the view."

This is NASA's 22nd group of astronauts. The first group, the original Mercury 7 astronauts, was chosen in 1959.

Altogether, 350 Americans have now been selected to become astronauts. Requirements include U.S. citizenship; degrees in science, technology, engineering or math; and at least three years of experience or 1,000 hours of piloting jets.
Suspected Boko Haram fighters attacked the city of Maiduguri in northeast Nigeria on Wednesday, the Islamist militant group's most serious assault on the regional capital in a year and a half.

The raid comes six months President Muhammadu Buhari said Boko Haram had "technically" been defeated by a military campaign that had pushed many jihadists deep into the remote Sambisa forest, near the border with Cameroon.

Aid workers and Reuters witnesses reported explosions and heavy gunfire for at least 45 minutes in the southeastern and southwestern outskirts of the city. Thousands of civilians fled the fighting, according to Reuters witnesses.

Nigeria's military said it had contained the attack.

"The situation in Maiduguri is under control," it said in a statement, urging the city's inhabitants not to panic.

Maiduguri in Borno state has been the epicentre of the eight-year fight against Boko Haram but has been relatively free of violence since the beginning of 2016, barring sporadic suicide bombs on its outskirts.

Fighter jets roared overhead as soldiers and police sped towards the scene, the Reuters witnesses said. Three children were hit by bullets, one witness said.

More than 20,000 people have been killed in Boko Haram's campaign to establish a mediaeval caliphate in the Lake Chad basin. A further 2.7 million have been displaced, creating one of the world's largest humanitarian emergencies.

Despite the military's success in liberating cities and towns, much of Borno remains off-limits, hampering efforts to deliver food aid to nearly 1.5 million people believed to be on the brink of famine.
2 Abdou Rakhmane Sidibe is a lag-lagal, the term used for the men and women who buy fish directly from the boat and then turn around and sell those fish to market vendors, individuals who just want to cook dinner, or other fishermen, who then use them as bait. Joal, Senegal, May 30, 2017. (R. Shryock/VOA)
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is tweeting his thanks to former U.S. President Barack Obama after the two shared a private dinner at a Montreal restaurant.

Trudeau posted a picture of the pair talking in the eatery, with the caption "How do we get young leaders to take action in their communities? Thanks BarackObama for your visit & insights tonight in my hometown."

A crowd cheered the two leaders as they left.



Last year, Obama hosted Trudeau for a state dinner at the White House, the first for Canada since 1997.



Obama spoke to the Montreal Board of Trade Tuesday and decried what he called the lack of American leadership on climate change, a swipe at new President Donald Trump's administration.
China likely will try to expand its military presence across the world with military bases in Pakistan, Djibouti and elsewhere, as it sees its role in global affairs growing, according to a report released Tuesday by the Pentagon.

The annual Pentagon report on Chinese military developments says China already is expanding its presence in foreign ports as a way to "pre-position the necessary logistics support" to sustain far away from the Chinese homeland.

China's expanding international economic interests are increasing demands for the [Chinese Navy] to operate in more distant maritime environments to protect Chinese citizens, investments, and critical sea lines of communication, the report reads.

The Pentagon believes China most likely will try to set up additional military bases in countries where it has longstanding friendly relationships and similar strategic interests.

Pakistan singled out

The report singles out Pakistan as one of those allies potentially willing to host Chinese troops and says China already has begun construction on a military base in the small east African country Djibouti, which lies along the Gulf of Aden. The Pentagon believes construction will be completed within the next year.

This initiative, along with regular naval vessel visits to foreign ports, both reflects and amplifies China's growing influence, extending the reach of its armed forces, the report reads.

Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying blasted the report Wednesday, saying it disregarded facts and made irresponsible remarks.

Speaking with reporters, Hua refused to comment on the potential future overseas bases, but said China is a force for safeguarding peace in Asia and "friendly cooperation [between China and Pakistan] does not target any third party.

We hope the U.S. side will put aside the Cold War mentality, view China's military development in an objective and rational manner, and take concrete actions to maintain steady growth of the military relationship between the two countries, she said.

$180 billion spent

China spent $180 billion on its People's Liberation Army last year, according to the Pentagon report, though the report concedes it is difficult to estimate actual military expenses, largely due to China's poor accounting transparency.

China's official defense budget puts its expenditures at about $140 billion, but that budget fails to include major defense expenditures related to research and procurement of foreign equipment.

The official Chinese defense budget has nearly doubled since 2007, from roughly $75 billion to $140 billion in 2016.
A letter drafted by a senior Islamic State militant and obtained by The Associated Press points to a growing power struggle within the group's Afghan affiliate, pitting notoriously fierce Uzbek fighters against Pakistanis seen as too close to that country's powerful intelligence service.

The rumblings of discontent come as the IS affiliate, which refers to itself as the Khorasan Province, is at war with both the U.S.-backed government and the more well-established Taliban, with which it differs on tactics, leadership and ideology.

The IS affiliate emerged in 2014 and refers to itself as the Khorasan Province, an ancient term for an area that includes parts of Afghanistan, Iran and Central Asian states. It has pledged allegiance to the IS group in Iraq and Syria but consists mainly of disgruntled former Taliban and other insurgents from South and Central Asia.

The letter, obtained by a jihadi fighter with ties to the IS affiliate and then provided to AP, was signed by Moawiya Uzbekistani, the apparent nom de guerre of an Uzbek militant, who claims to have become the leader of the IS affiliate after the death of Abdul Hasib, who was killed in a joint U.S.-Afghan operation in April.

Uzbekistani rejects reports that another fighter, who he identifies as Sheikh Aslam Farouqi, has been chosen to lead the group and suggests Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence is behind the rumors.

"Even if this information is true, then it's the ISI of Pakistan behind this function and we don't accept it, because we all fight for Allah and his religion," the letter says, warning against "infidels, intelligence services and the deceitful" acting from "behind the scenes."

Militants belonging to allied groups said Central Asian fighters as well as Afghans want the leadership of the group taken out of Pakistani hands, even though the founder of IS in Afghanistan, Hafiz Saeed Khan, was a Pakistani tribesman. Khan was killed in a U.S. drone strike in July 2016.

The rift seemed to widen with a recent IS meeting in Pakistan's Orakzai tribal belt, from where Khan originates, according to two people familiar with the meeting, which was said to have been attended by 40 senior IS commanders.

The council appointed Saif-ul Islam, a close Pakistani ally of Saeed, as the new leader. With the many names used by insurgents it wasn't immediately clear if Aslam Farouqi and Saif-ul Islam were the same person. Sheikh Abdul Qadir Khorasani, an Afghan from the eastern Kunar province, was appointed deputy, they said. The militants all spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to brief reporters.

There has been no official IS confirmation of a new leader and in Washington intelligence officials refused to comment.

More than 16 years after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan to end Taliban rule and flush out al-Qaida, the mountainous regions along the Afghan-Pakistani border are still home to an array of extremist groups. Pakistan's spy service is said to have connections to some, including the Afghan Taliban, even as it battles other groups that threaten its own citizens.

On Wednesday, Russia warned of the threat IS posed to Afghanistan's neighbors.

Speaking at a security meeting in Kazakhstan, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Moscow will send its newest weapons to its military bases in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan to boost "combat readiness," fearing a "spill-over of terrorist activities from Afghanistan to Central Asia."

"The rise of IS fighters in Afghanistan is of a particular concern," Shoigu was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies. "The group's strategy to establish an Islamic caliphate poses a threat not only to Afghanistan but also to the neighboring countries."

The growing assertiveness of the Uzbek militants within the IS affiliate is particularly worrying.

Uzbek fighters were so vicious in Pakistan's South Waziristan province that they drove the area's fractious tribesmen to unite to push them out in 2015. They then based themselves in North Waziristan before being driven across the border by a Pakistani military offensive. They have since clashed with the Taliban in different parts of Afghanistan and claimed responsibility for brazen and deadly attacks in Kabul, including a daytime assault and siege of an Afghan military hospital that killed 50 people earlier this year.

Arkady Dubnov, a Moscow-based expert on Central Asian militants, says the Uzbeks' reputation for brutality is likely rooted in the fact that they are "aliens" in much of Afghanistan and Pakistan, which are dominated by other ethnic groups.

That may also explain their tensions with the Afghan Taliban. While both IS and the Taliban are determined to overthrow the Afghan government and impose a harsh version of Islamic law, the former views itself as part of a global movement, while the latter confines its operations to Afghanistan.

Dubnov also noted that the son of Tahir Yuldashev, the powerful Uzbek leader of the outlawed Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, who was killed in a U.S. missile strike in Pakistan in 2009, is leading efforts to help expand IS influence in Afghanistan.

Central Asian fighters are now a key pillar of support for the IS affiliate, according to Anatol Lieven, a regional expert at Georgetown University's Qatar campus.

"They have been encouraged to move to IS because of the longstanding Taliban declaration that they are not an international jihadi force," he said.

"The estimates of the number of Uzbeks, Tajiks, Turkmen and other fighters from the former U.S.S.R. living in Afghanistan that I heard ranged from 6,000 to 25,000," said Lieven adding many have intermarried with Afghans of a similar ethnic background.
As Britain confronts a wave of terrorist attacks, pressure is mounting on its Muslim community to do a better job of identifying potential extremists and policing itself.

At the forefront of such efforts is Nazir Afzal, a Muslim and former top prosecutor. Afzal gained national attention for pioneering difficult prosecutions to tackle honor-based violence and forced marriage, as well as child sexual exploitation and grooming in the northwest of England, including Manchester, the site of last month's suicide bombing that killed 22 people at a pop concert.

In an exclusive interview, Afzal said the community has, in general, done a good job of making sure mosques are no longer a forum for radicalization of young Muslims; but, he adds, more needs to be done, both by Muslims and British authorities, to curb the country's dangerous Islamist minority and counter the jihadists' narrative.

"Very few people get radicalized in mosques and places of worship," said Afzal, the first Muslim to be appointed as a chief prosecutor in Britain. "It takes place elsewhere, in the backstreets and other places. The communities have gotten very good now at policing what happens in mosques, although there are exceptions."

Community reports as the 'bedrock' of intelligence

In the interview, conducted after last month's Manchester bombing but before last Saturday's van-and-knife attack in London, Afzal was critical of both the government and Muslims for not doing enough, and of being too tolerant of Islamic extremism. However, he was ready to identify efforts that have made a difference.

He credits grass-roots Muslim groups, many of them led by women, for challenging extremists and warning authorities when they see something especially alarming. "Time and time again, I come across really good work. The vast majority of work happens within the communities and is under the radar," he said.

Afzal cites the foiled attack on Downing Street in April, just two days after the Westminster Bridge attack, when a suspected jihadist armed with several knives was arrested by police 200 meters from the prime minister's residence. Police had shadowed the suspect from his home following a tip.

"Information came from within the community," Afzal said. "The head of UK's security and counterintelligence agency] MI5 has made it very clear that information from the communities is the bedrock of their intelligence."

Media coverage gives a different impression. "The people with the loudest voices are the ones the media tend to hear," he said. "The vast majority of Muslims don't want this type of behavior. They don't want to be associated with this violence and ideology."

Grooming for terrorism

Afzal, who until recently was chief executive of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, says much more needs to be done when it comes to early intervention, emphasizing that it is crucial and it works.

"The grooming of people for ideology is the same as grooming for sex or for organized crime," he said. "They manipulate the most vulnerable in our society and distance them from their families and friends. In relation to grooming for sex and crime we do have responses that work through early intervention, through education, through diversion. Why is it that we don't make more use of those techniques when it comes to radicalization?"

Afzal faults what he says is a laziness by successive British governments in identifying who to engage with in the Muslim communities, and warns that grass-roots groups making headway are often being neglected and starved of funding. "The best work I see is by women-led groups," he said.

Those groups are already engaged with families and have been tackling forced marriage, domestic abuse and honor killings, and have built up trust in the communities. "Therefore, when they identify someone at risk of radicalization, they are in the position of being able to do something about it," he said, adding that the groups deserve to be better funded.

It is a mistake to perceive all Muslim communities as the same, he says, pointing out that in London alone, Muslims are from 50 countries. "They are extremely diverse, and it needs a diverse response and not a one-size-fits-all approach."

One of the biggest challenges faced in combating radicals and their narrative is a generation gap, Afzal warns. More than half of all British Muslims are under the age of 25 and from low-income backgrounds, while community leaders tend to be much older, male and middle-class.

Community leaders, too often, want to avoid the issue, he says. They are badly equipped to understand the recruitment process and how radicals tailor their appeal to an array of youthful urges  from a need for redemption to thrill-seeking and status-seeking. Many who are recruited are "struggling with their masculinity" and are lost, Afzal says.

What's needed is a much stronger counter-narrative, he says, and one delivered by charismatic people able to connect with disoriented youngsters and who are not afraid to shake things up.
Researchers are discovering clues at the cellular level that indicate human regeneration of lost body parts could be possible someday.

Imagine 3-D-printing a kidney or using bioelectricity to trigger cells to build entirely new tissue and organs. These prospects and others were discussed in "Forever Young: The Promise of Human Regeneration," a presentation during the recent World Science Festival in New York City.

Participating scientists talked about the future of regenerative medicine, which combines the human body's capacity for renewal with advances in biomedical engineering.

Dany Spencer Adams, a research professor at Tufts University, explained how introducing bioelectrical signals of varying strengths can kick-start cellular processes in tadpoles that begin the formation of nerves, muscles and ultimately limbs.

"This is the cells themselves using electricity to communicate," Adams told VOA backstage. "Hydrogen ions are positively charged, and hydrogen ions moving generates a current, and that carries information. We have created the situation where the cells will move hydrogen ions from inside the cell to outside the cell, and that signal then made an entire limb regenerate."

In one example, a frog regrew one of its legs in six months after scientists manipulated the electrical characteristics of the animal's cells.

The road ahead

Researchers still have much work to do before the findings can be directly linked to humans. A large part of the effort involves identifying which bioelectric signals correlate to the formation of any given organ. It's hoped that by studying the fundamental mechanisms of cell renewal and regeneration, the information acquired eventually will translate to medical procedures, experts said.

"It's better to regenerate that organ so that you don't have issues of the immune system attacking, the way we do now with transplants," said Adams. "The hope is that we'll be able to help the body create a better replacement  really, a perfect replacement  for the person of exactly what they've lost."

Combining mechanical engineering with developmental biology, Jonathan Butcher, a professor and biomedical engineer at Cornell University, and his team have created living, fully functioning heart valves from 3-D-printed tissue.

Child patients stand to benefit the most from such engineered organs or organ components, because they have the capacity to grow as the patient grows, Butcher said.

"You can't really use a prosthetic for that, so there's really nothing other than this kind of an opportunity. ... That's why we're pushing this envelope," he said.
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson says President Donald Trump has asked him to push ahead with efforts to rebuild the U.S. relationship with Russia, and not let the political turmoil surrounding ongoing investigations impede him.

Questions about the congressional and FBI investigations into possible cooperation between the Trump campaign and Russia to interfere with the 2016 presidential election have followed Tillerson to the South Pacific, where he and Defense Secretary James Mattis are meeting with Oceania allies this week.

Tillerson said he had "no direct knowledge" and couldn't comment on the Russia investigations or their effect on the Trump administration.

He said the president has asked him to remain focused on rebuilding trust with Moscow, which he said is at a low point.

"The president has been clear to me: Do not let what's happening over here in the political realm prevent you from the work you need to do on this relationship. And he's been quite clear with me to proceed at whatever pace and in the areas that I think we might make progress," Tillerson said.

VOA asked new State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert about Tillerson's comments at her first on-camera briefing Tuesday. She said one area where the U.S. and Russia can work together is in fighting the Islamic State group.

"We are going to identify areas of mutual interest where we can work together, but it's important to know, in areas where we don't see eye to eye with Russia, we will continue to stand up for our interests, our values and the values of our partners," Nauert said.

Difficult to make inroads

Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Steven Pifer of the Brookings Institution told VOA the potentially explosive ongoing probes may make it difficult for Tillerson to make inroads with Russia.

"I think he can try, but my guess is politically that's not going to be realistic," Pifer said. "And to some extent, there is this cloud hanging over the administration on the question of relations with Russia.

"I would make the point that much of this is self-inflicted, because the president, unfortunately, and the White House have handled these concerns in a way that suggests they're trying to hide something," he added.

Pifer told VOA he is very disappointed that Trump did not publicly reaffirm the U.S. commitment to Article 5, the collective defense guarantee, at last month's NATO summit in Brussels, although virtually every senior member of his Cabinet who deals with these issues has.

"I think it was a mistake in that it raises, perhaps not a lot but a little bit, it raises that risk that in a crisis, the Russians might make a miscalculation, that the Russians might think maybe the Americans won't be there. And that's something we don't want the Russians to think," Pifer said.
The importance of adhering to the Philippines-China arbitration ruling on the South China Sea by the Hague, and upholding international law was emphasized by attendees during a separate ministerial meeting between the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the United States.

"We're very proud to be ASEAN's partner because you are speaking up for a rules-based international system that protects the rights of all nations, whether big or small," said U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

Kerry and his ASEAN counterparts also agreed on the importance of full implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2270 to curb North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

During one of many bilateral meetings with his counterparts from the region, Kerry and Laos Foreign Minister Saleumxay Kommasith noted the increasing strength of U.S.-Laos relations, including engagement on health, the environment, energy, education, trade and investment.

The U.S. remains committed to continued assistance and cooperation to remove unexploded ordnance (UXO) and expressed appreciation for Laos support over many years to account for our missing personnel, said State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner in a statement.

Laos is ASEAN's chair this year. This landlocked country also is a close ally of neighboring China.

'Rules-based international system'

The meetings in Laos follow a recent ruling by the international court of arbitration that largely invalidated most of China's claims in the South China Sea, leading to worries the decision could intensify tensions and lead to more Chinese military maneuvers.

In Beijing, White House National Security Adviser Susan Rice told Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi on Monday that Washington will work with Beijing on issues and challenges "in candor and openness."

A senior State Department (unnamed) official told reporters the U.S. will certainly be "an active editor" in the process of "helping the chair to develop a joint statement" coming out of the East Asia Summit ministerial and the ASEAN Regional Forum meeting scheduled for Tuesday.

He advocated to "put a little more value on the conversation that happens among the ministers themselves" than "in the often lengthy and torturous prose" pulled together afterward.

In 2012, ASEAN leaders failed to produce a joint statement due to the objections of Cambodia, a close ally of China and the host nation that year. Cambodia was blocking any joint statement this year that referred to the Hague ruling.

Diplomatic battleground

The United States signed the ASEAN-U.S. Strategic Partnership last November. Earlier this year, U.S. President Barack Obama hosted a summit with the leaders from the ASEAN countries.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the dialogue relationship between China and ASEAN.

Earlier this month, leaders from both sides exchanged congratulatory messages.

China, ASEAN's biggest trading partner, became ASEAN's dialogue partner in 1991. Both established a strategic partnership in 2003, and built the ASEAN-China Free Trade Area in 2010.
South Africas ruling African National Congress has been hurt by a new wave of corruption allegations targeting President Jacob Zuma, with the top party brass saying Wednesday that the end may be nearing for the increasingly unpopular leader.

Weve got a brand to protect as a current leadership as the next leadership will have the same responsibility," party spokesman Zizi Kodwa told journalists. "The more the allegation of corruption is repeated, about any member of the ANC, it damages the ANC ... Were dealing with difficulties, its not like people who gave them a mandate, that go and do corruption. Theres not such a policy in the ANC. Its people who are independent in their own area of work. They do things that at the end, they come back to hit the organization.



New corruption allegations were spelled out in thousands of recently leaked emails that purport to show that a rich Indian family in South Africa, the Guptas, unduly influenced the president and government. Kodwa says the party does not tolerate corruption, and has called for a judicial commission of inquiry.

Zuma, whose term as party leader expires at the end of this year, is at the center of these recent allegations. Party secretary-general Gwede Mantashe hinted that the partys leadership will make a decision then that could see Zuma sidelined before his presidential term ends in 2019. Zuma originally rose to power in 2008, after the party chose him to replace then-party leader Thabo Mbeki. Mbeki then stepped down as president.



Mantashe refused to say what might afterward become of Zuma  who is mired in a court battle after old corruption charges were reinstated against him last year.

All Im saying is that beyond December, his term ends in 2019," he said. "But Im saying on the 20th December, the debate becomes less complex. But I dont want to handle that now.

He also refused to say who the new party leader  and therefore the ANCs next presidential candidate  might be. Possibilities include the current deputy president, Cyril Ramaphosa, and Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, former head of the African Union and ex-wife of President Zuma.

Well elect a new leadership of the ANC," he said. "Dont ask us who will be the president, we do not know.

Mantashe and other party stalwarts who spoke to journalists Wednesday also did not give a clear timeline for how long the commission of inquiry into the allegations could take.


Newly elected South Korean President Moon Jae-in is finding that increased diplomacy and legal maneuvers alone will not resolve the dilemma he faces over the U.S. THAAD missile defense system.



Moon advocates a more engagement oriented and less confrontational approach to reduce tensions with nuclear North Korea than his conservative predecessor ex-President Park Geun-hye, who was impeached for her alleged ties to a multi-million dollar corruption scandal.



THAAD is presenting an early test for the presidents strategy to reduce regional tensions by balancing strong support for the U.S. alliance with increasing cooperation and outreach to China and North Korea.



Washington considers the advanced anti-missile battery critical for defense against North Koreas growing nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities. Rejecting THAAD could strain the alliance and undermine the agreed upon extended deterrence and containment strategy.



It could lead to complete review and questioning about the posture and the deployment of U.S. forces in Korea, if they are vulnerable to a North Korean missile attack, said Daniel Pinkston, a North Korea analyst and lecturer in international relations with Troy University in Seoul.



But supporting it will further alienate Beijing and Pyongyang that adamantly oppose the THAAD deployment as an attempt to increase U.S. military power in the region.



Many residents living near the THAAD site in a rural area of the country have also voiced concerns over the possible negative health effects of the systems powerful radar, and are worried the battery deployment in their region puts them in danger from a potential North Korea attack.





Slow walking



During the presidential campaign Moon called for a review of the agreement to deploy the U.S. anti-missile battery.



This week the president suspended a deputy defense minster for not reporting the delivery of four additional THAAD launchers in an apparent attempt to bypass any oversight from the new administration in Seoul.He also ordered an environmental study of the site that could further delay the deployment schedule.



On Wednesday Kang Kyung-hwa, the presidential nominee for foreign minister called for the National Assembly to debate this national security matter.



The key point of the THAAD issue is that public engagement was insufficient domestically, so it failed to reach a national consensus, said Kang during her confirmation hearing.



Stalled engagement



In the meantime Seouls efforts to increase inter-Korean exchanges and humanitarian aid to rebuild trust has been met by resistance from Pyongyang.



Since Moon took office in early May, South Korea has approved 15 requests for contact with North Korea by aid and religious groups, according to the Yonhap News Agency. The National Assembly this week also called for the renewal of reunions of families that were separated by the Korean War and the partition of the Korean Peninsula at the end of World War II.



Pyongyang has not approved these exchanges, and on Wednesday the North Korean affiliated website Uriminzokkiri cited the Souths support for sanctions against the Kim Jong Un government as an impediment to cooperation. The pro-North Korean website called on the Moon government to drop sanctions and restore severed economic ties, including the Kaesong Industrial complex that employed thousands of North Koreans and the Mount Kumgang tourism project.



North Korea has also not indicated any willingness to even discuss a pause in its continued testing of ballistic missiles and nuclear technology.



As we say in English, whats the expression, it takes two to tango. In Korean they have a term called jak sarang or one-sided love. If the other party doesnt return the love, then you are stuck in this situation, said Pinkston.



The Moon administration has so far been undeterred by early resistance to their efforts. The foreign minster nominee said Wednesday they would continue to pursue both sanctions and humanitarian aid to bring about peaceful change on the Korean peninsula.

Youmi Kim contributed to this report.
A U.S. congressional delegation returned from central Africa last week with one overriding question: what can be done to stop South Sudan's war and help the refugees streaming into Uganda, suffering from a lack of food?



Representative Chris Smith, a Republican from New Jersey, says the answer lies with the parties in South Sudan's conflict, especially the government and military, which have been accused of blocking food aid to needy populations, using rape as a weapon of war and engaging in ethnic cleansing.

The root causes need to be attacked far more aggressively and that was our message, that was my message strongly to [South Sudan President] Salva Kiir, Smith told VOA. This can end where there's a political will, where there's a will within the military to be a professional fighting force, not a rogue fighting force made up of people that fleece, rape and murder at will.

Smith, along with Representative Karen Bass, a California Democrat, just returned from a seven-day trip to South Sudan and Uganda to see refugee camps, meet with the presidents of both countries and talk with military and religious leaders.



The delegation visited Ugandas Bidi-Bidi refugee camp, which hosts some 300,000 people and is now the largest such camp in the world.

A lack of funding has forced aid agencies to cut food allowances there from 2,100 calories per day to about half that amount, Smith said.



The poorest of the poor suffer greatly because of that lack of resourcing, Smith told VOA. So, I think we need to do even more in terms of food security, medicines, shelter -- but especially the food side.

More help needed

The situation could easily worsen, as Uganda is struggling to meet the needs of the refugees streaming across its border at a rate as high as 2,800 per day. The country now hosts an estimated 900,000 South Sudanese refugees who have fled their war-torn country in one of the largest exoduses in recent history.



It is an arduous move for them once they get there to find relative safety, and we were at the receiving camps before they were taken to the larger camp by bus, Smith said. They get stabilized, get some food, some medicines, an assessment medically to ensure infectious diseases are discoveredSo there's a very methodical effort but there's no doubt and even the head of refugees for Uganda has stated publicly that they are reaching a capacity.



The United States continues to lead the world in funding and allocated $911 million for South Sudan in 2016-2017. Smith was heartened to see a warehouse in the camp of Bentiu in South Sudan piled high with enough food aid from the U.S. to feed 400,000 people.

Less heartening was the sight of World Food Program flights taking off to drop food from the skies, because aid workers are unable to reach remote, war-ravaged areas.

More help is needed, Smith said. The U.S. is stepping up to the plate but...given the needs, more needs to be done, he said.



No solution will be possible until the warring parties prioritize peace. The delegation met with South Sudans president, Salva Kiir, for about two hours and his newly appointed head of the armed forces, General James Ajongo Mawut.

Change will take political will above all else and Smith said he has some confidence that the change of leadership in the armed forces will lead to reform.



"This entire famine is not nature-made," Smith said. "There's always going to be shortages of rainfall which can be alleviated by short-term gaps, but this has been driven by war."
President Donald Trump has chosen a regional banker as his nominee for a key government position in bank regulation.



Trump announced late Monday he is naming Joseph Otting as comptroller of the currency, heading a Treasury Department agency that is the chief overseer for federally chartered banks. If confirmed by the Senate, Otting will play a role in the Trump administration's efforts to ease rules written under the Dodd-Frank law that stiffened financial regulation after the 2008-09 crisis.



The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency charters and supervises national banks and savings and loans. The agency has hundreds of bank examiners, many of them working inside the nation's largest financial institutions, who focus closely on lending practices.



Otting was CEO from 2010 to 2015 of OneWest Bank, where he worked with then-chairman Steven Mnuchin, who is now Treasury secretary. Democrats who objected to Mnuchin's appointment as Treasury chief accused him of running a "foreclosure machine'' when he headed the big California-based bank. The bank foreclosed on thousands of homeowners in the aftermath of the housing crisis caused by high-risk mortgages.



Mnuchin, who led an investor group that bought the failed IndyMac bank in 2009 and turned it into a profitable OneWest, has defended his actions as the bank's chairman. He has said he worked hard during the financial crisis to help homeowners with refinancing mortgages so they could remain in their homes.



OneWest was among a number of big banks that signed consent orders with the OCC over alleged mortgage servicing abuses. The bank didn't admit or deny wrongdoing under the 2011 order but agreed to undertake a plan to correct problems.



"If Mr. Otting didn't deal fairly with the customers at his own bank, it's difficult to see why he's the best choice to look out for the interests of customers at more than 1,400 banks and thrifts across the country,'' Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, senior Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, said in a statement.



Before he worked at OneWest, Otting was vice chairman of U.S. Bancorp, parent of Minneapolis-based U.S. Bank, one of the largest banks in the country.



With Otting's appointment, Trump continues to fill out his key team of financial regulators, as his administration looks to easing rules and meet his campaign promises. Republicans have long complained that regulations were made too restrictive following the financial meltdown and have hampered economic growth by making it harder for banks to lend.



Jay Clayton, a Wall Street lawyer with ties to Goldman Sachs, is now chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Trump has three vacancies to fill on the Federal Reserve's board of governors, including the key slot that holds the portfolio of bank supervision.



Otting would replace Keith Noreika, a financial services lawyer who was installed last month as acting comptroller in an unusual move apparently aimed at avoiding Senate confirmation and normal ethics requirements.



Noreika succeeded Thomas Curry, an Obama appointee, who had been comptroller since 2012 and leaned toward strict bank oversight.
The name of the new hotel chain is American Idea. It was inspired by stories heard in small towns on the campaign trail. The owner is now president of the United States.

That said, the Trump Organization wants to make something perfectly clear: It is not exploiting the presidency for profit.

The suggestion is "pure, unadulterated nonsense," said Eric Danziger, CEO of the company's hotel division, Trump Hotels. "I'm sure you've heard of American Express. I'm sure you've heard of American Airlines. ... We didn't invent the word `American."'

President Donald Trump has been criticized for raising membership fees at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, boasting of his new Washington hotel that has become a favorite spot for foreign diplomats, and benefiting from trademark approvals from China for possible future business there.

Now comes his company's latest venture: a hotel chain.

The American Idea chain was unveiled Monday night in New York at a Trump Tower party hosted by the president's two adult sons, Eric and Don Jr., and featuring a video showing the Washington Mall.

The first family plans to franchise the mid-market hotels, taking a cut of revenue, and leaving the management and ownership of the buildings to other developers. The first three are planned for Mississippi.

"They're cashing in on the red states," said Kathleen Clark, a government ethics expert and law professor at Washington University in St. Louis. "I'm not surprised that the Trump family would look to opportunities to commercially exploit his political success."

Ethics expert Edwin Williamson, a former State Department legal adviser, isn't so bothered by the new chain. He noted that the president is not bound by the federal ethics laws that limit other public officials from pursuing business interests while in office, and said he thinks Trump critics and the media are too fast to see conflicts of interest where there are none.

"There may be people who want do business with them because they are the president's sons. But I don't know what you do about that," Williamson said. Anyway, he added, the deals struck will probably be "normal business transactions that meet the standard of the marketplace."

The first outside partners for American Idea were introduced Monday and quickly established their appeal as embodiments of the American dream. Sons of a refugee from India, Suresh and Dinesh Chawla spoke of an America full of promise and profit, if you work hard enough  and maybe get advice from a real estate mogul along the way.

Suresh told the story of how his late father, founder of Chawla Hotels of Cleveland, Mississippi, was brazen enough to call Donald Trump looking for money for his new hotel chain more than quarter of a century ago.

Trump turned the immigrant down, calling his venture "small fry." But he did spend time on the phone, said Suresh, giving advice on ways to secure a loan elsewhere. Chawla Hotels now owns 17 hotels.

As a franchising fee, Trump Hotels CEO Danziger said he expects to earn less than the typical 9 to 12 percent cut of revenue charged by others, at least initially while the chain is rolled out.

The Chawla brothers plan to convert three Mississippi hotels now under other franchisee names to the American Idea brand, one each in Cleveland, Clarksdale and Greenville. Danziger wouldn't say how many American Idea hotels he hopes to build, but he talked big in an interview.

"It can go anywhere in the United States, anywhere there is an extended stay or mid-scale (hotel), that can be an American Idea," he said.

The Trump Organization is also opening a fourth property with Chawla Hotels under its Scion brand, a more upscale, boutique chain launched last year. That one will open in Cleveland, Mississippi. Danziger said in March that he hoped to open as many as 100 Scion hotels in three years.

Washington University's Clark said the new chains raise many conflicts of issues questions: Do the developers have other motives in striking a deal with the president's company, perhaps to influence public policy? Will local governments help the developers in securing zoning changes or permits to curry favor with the president?

The new chains are "problematic for the same reason all his other businesses are problematic: It provides opportunity for people to influence him by sending business his way," Clark said.

The rollout of the Scion chain hit a snag earlier this year because of just such conflicts issues. A Dallas developer who had signed a letter of intent with the Trump Organization revealed that he planned to raise money for a Scion hotel in the city from unnamed investors from Turkey, Qatar and Kazakhstan.

The Trump Organization canceled talks with the developer after several news articles raised questions about whether the foreign investors might try to use their investments to influence the new administration.

Danziger said the Dallas developer would never have gotten past his company's vetting, which had only begun as the media got hold of the story.

Before Trump took the oath of office, he announced a series of steps to help address concerns that his sprawling business holdings could lead to conflicts. He handed management control of his company to his two adult sons, vowed to make "no new foreign deals" while president and hired an outside council to vet any new deals his sons would strike in the U.S.

Danziger has expressed confidence that these steps can help avoid any ethical trouble.

As far as the Chawlas are concerned, Danziger said, they've been vetted fully. Their company, he said, is 100 percent owned by the two brothers. And he suggested they were perfect partners for a company under scrutiny.

"I wish I had their clean background," he quipped. "It was easy to approve."
In a call with Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, U.S. President Donald Trump offered to mediate the country's diplomatic crisis with its neighbors.

"The president reiterated that a united Gulf Cooperation Council and a strong United States-Gulf Cooperation Council partnership are critical to defeating terrorism and promoting regional stability," a readout of the call said. "The president offered to help the parties resolve their differences, including through a meeting at the White House, if necessary."

Trump's offer echoed comments by U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson earlier this week that the U.S. is committed to helping the Gulf Cooperation Council "remain unified."

On Monday, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Yemen and the Maldives cut diplomatic ties Monday with Qatar, accusing it of supporting terrorism.

Trump also encouraged unity in the Gulf region with Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud during a telephone call on Tuesday, the White House said.

Earlier in the day, the president entered the diplomatic spat involving Qatar and major Arab nations over Dohas alleged support of Iran and Islamist militant groups sponsoring terrorism in the region.

In a series of three Twitter posts Tuesday, Trump seemed to take credit for the Saudi-led move to isolate Qatar, which hosts the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East.
Turkish authorities on Tuesday detained the local chair of Amnesty International for suspected links to the network of the Muslim cleric Ankara blames for last year's failed coup, the rights group said.

Police detained Taner Kilic and 22 other lawyers in the Aegean coastal province of Izmir on suspicion of ties to the movement of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, it said, citing a detention order.

Since the July coup attempt, authorities have arrested 50,000 people and sacked or suspended 150,000, including soldiers, police, teachers and public servants, over alleged links with terrorist groups.

"Taner Kilic has a long and distinguished record of defending exactly the kind of freedoms that the Turkish authorities are now intent on trampling," said Salil Shetty, Amnesty's secretary general.

Turkish authorities were not immediately available for comment. Officials say the crackdown is necessary due to the gravity of the coup attempt, in which more than 240 people were killed.

Kilic was detained by police at his home in Izmir early on Tuesday before being taken to his office, Amnesty said. Both properties were searched and he remains in police custody.

His detention did not appear to be connected to his work with the rights group, nor did it appear to specifically target the organization, Amnesty said. It was unclear why he was suspected of having links to Gulen's network, it said.

Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania since 1999, has denied involvement in the coup and condemned it.

Critics in Turkey and abroad say President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is using the coup as a pretext to muzzle dissent and purge opponents.

Turkey's interior ministry said on Monday it would strip citizenship from 130 people suspected of militant links, including Gulen, unless they return to Turkey within three months.
A U.N. report issued Wednesday expects foreign direct investment to rise 5 percent this year to nearly $1.8 trillion, and it sees modest increases in such investment continuing into 2018.

Foreign direct investment, or FDI  investment made by a company or person in one country in business interests of another country  fell 2 percent in 2016 to $1.7 trillion. Economists at the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development, in the organization's World Investment Report 2017, projected a modest recovery this year due to expected higher economic growth across major regions, a resumption of growth in trade and a recovery in corporate profits.

James Zhan, director of the Investment and Enterprise Division at UNCTAD, cautioned that the prospect of modest recovery in FDI flows carried with it significant uncertainty.

"Global FDI flows remain at a low level, and the road to recovery remains bumpy. ... We see that the growth in developed countries is expected to improve, including in the United States through fiscal stimulus. And, the emerging and developing countries are also forecast to rebound significantly in 2017," Zhan said.

The report said the U.S., China and India were the top prospective destinations for FDI. It said developing countries as a group would gain about 10 percent. It noted FDI to Africa fell by 3 percent in 2016 to $59 billion, but it said investment was expected to rise modestly to about $65 billion in 2017.

The report said digital multinational enterprises were expanding faster than traditional forms of multinational corporations. It said two-thirds of the digital and internet content firms were in the U.S., United Kingdom and Germany, with few based in developing and transitional economies.

UNCTAD projected that digital FDIs would be the wave of the future. It urged developing countries to jump on the e-commerce bandwagon or be left behind. It said achieving adequate digital connectivity for most developing countries could be done for less than $100 billion, which it considered a modest sum.
The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations put the organization's Human Rights Council on notice Tuesday, saying it needs to reform or the U.S. will withdraw from it.

Nikki Haley, who also is a member of President Donald Trump's cabinet, has been very vocal about what she says is the 47-member, Geneva-based council's bias against Israel.

"Since its creation, the council has passed more than 70 resolutions targeting Israel," Haley told the Graduate Institute of Geneva. "It has passed just seven on Iran."

"This relentless, pathological campaign against a country that actually has a strong human rights record makes a mockery not of Israel, but of the council itself," Haley said to cynical laughter from the audience when she spoke of Israel's human rights record.

Haley also has criticized the U.N., generally, for having an anti-Israel bias.

"Nowhere has the U.N.'s failure been more consistent and more outrageous than in its bias against our close ally Israel," Haley told her U.S. Senate confirmation hearing in January.

The U.S. and Israel frequently criticize the U.N. for singling out the Jewish state, when they say the focus should be on states that are systemic human rights violators or that sponsor terrorism.

Israel is criticized internationally primarily for its treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories, including the demolition of their homes, the expansion of Israeli settlements and the treatment of Palestinian prisoners. But despite the criticism, it has never faced U.N.-imposed sanctions for its actions.

While Israel regularly decries its treatment at the United Nations, that has not deterred it from campaigning for a seat on the powerful 15-nation Security Council for 2019-2020.

Anti-Israel bias?

In December, the U.N. Security Council adopted a resolution by a vote of 14-0 that said Israeli settlements violate international law and are a major obstacle to achieving a two-state solution. The United States, under the Obama administration, chose to abstain instead of blocking the measure.

"This puts Israel in a very poor negotiating position and is extremely unfair to all Israelis," then President-elect Trump said in a statement criticizing the resolution.

Israel said it would ignore the resolution and has continued to announce new settlements.

"Israel faces a lot of prejudice across the U.N. system," said Richard Gowan, U.N. expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations. "But it is actually in a very strong position where it matters most  the Security Council."

"The U.S. virtually always stands up for Israel in Security Council debates, which matter far more than most of the huffing and puffing that goes on in the General Assembly or Human Rights Council," Gowan added.

J Street, a U.S. advocacy and lobbying group that refers to itself as pro-Israel and pro-peace, says there is a long record of bias against Israel at the U.N.

"It undermines people's confidence in the U.N.'s fairness and in its ability to do its job, and it undermines the U.N.'s ability to actually play a productive role related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the real issues around it," said Logan Bayroff, J Street's associate director of communications.

He said his organization wants to see the U.N. and its bodies play a constructive role in calling attention to problems on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and in advocating for a two-state solution. "As long as there is this sense of bias and this obsessive focus, it does inhibit the U.N.'s capacity to do that," he added.

From Geneva, Ambassador Haley will travel to Israel for a three-day visit. She is expected to meet with both Israeli and Palestinian leaders. J Street's Bayroff said Haley needs to deliver a very clear and unequivocal statement of support for a two-state solution, which the Trump administration has yet to declare.
U.S.-backed Syrian forces stormed into Islamic State's de-facto capital of Raqqa on Tuesday, triggering intense combat and signaling the start of what the U.S.-led coalition says will ultimately be the end of IS control in the besieged city.

"We declare today the beginning of the great battle to liberate the city of Raqqa, the alleged capital of terrorism and terrorists," Talal Silo, a spokesman for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, told reporters at a press conference in northern Syria.

"Morale is high and military readiness to implement the military plan is complete, in coordination with the U.S.-led coalition," Silo said.

Captured in 2014

Raqqa was captured by IS in January 2014 and has since become the base for the group's hierarchy. The SDF has advanced for months steadily southward toward Raqqa, clearing out IS along the way with the help of U.S. bombing efforts.

For its part, IS has vowed a last stand in Raqqa.

Tuesday's battle inside the city limits  a first in the monthslong battle  indicate the fight may be long and costly, SDF commanders say.

By nightfall, SDF commanders told VOA that forces had approached eastern neighborhoods of Raqqa while fierce skirmishes continued with IS fighters in the western and northern outskirts of the city.

"Our forces will continue pushing from these front lines in a process that is step-by-step," Jihan Sekh Ahmed, a spokeswoman for the SDF operation, told VOA. "This is based on a military plan that we have prepared after a long period of discussions."

There was no count of casualties, but Kurdish commanders said they have heard that IS is holding thousands of civilians as human shields. IS reportedly cut off electrical service and shuttered internet cafes in the city. Unconfirmed estimates put the city's current population at about 200,000.

"Those who try to escape once SDF forces advance further into the city risk being killed from mines and IS snipers as well as airstrikes," Thomas Garofalo, International Rescue Committee's Middle East director of public affairs, said in a statement.

The U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the SDF moved into al-Mashlab neighborhood of Raqqa in the evening and took control of some buildings as IS fighters began to withdraw.

Former Syrian military base

In the northern outskirts of the city, SDF is targeting an IS-held former Syrian military base known as Division 17.

Kurdish commanders told VOA that SDF forces seized several farms and silos nearby and were advancing toward the military base with aerial support from the coalition.

The anti-IS monitoring group Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, which has observers in the city, said airstrikes hit IS targets in the south and center of the city to prevent fighters from sending reinforcements to the eastern front line. The group on its Twitter account accused the coalition of targeting two bridges and killing 17 civilians.

SDF commanders said they are closely monitoring the fate of residents.

"We will open several safety corridors for the people in the coming days," SDF spokeswoman Ahmed told VOA. "We expect many civilians to come to our territories as fighting continues. We will take them to safety before we return stability to Raqqa."

Lt. Gen. Steve Townsend, who commands the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, said the battle for Raqqa will be long and difficult, but the coalition will "deliver a decisive blow" in Raqqa, according to a coalition statement.

"It's hard to convince new recruits that IS is a winning cause when they just lost their twin capitals in both Iraq and Syria," Townsend said, referring to Raqqa and Mosul, Iraq, where battles against IS continue.

Coalition support

The coalition will continue providing equipment, training, intelligence and logistical support to the SDF during the Raqqa offensive, Townsend said.

SDF commanders said the level of coalition support and arms supply would depend on the durability of the forces and difficulty of the battle.

"Some of the coalition weapons arrived before the start of the operation and more are on the way," Nasser Haj Mansour, an adviser to the SDF, told VOA. "SDF and the coalition have been working together against IS for two years now and there is a high degree of confidence in each other at this vital point."

The fate of Raqqa post-IS has been the subject of intense speculation and tension among the various entities fighting in Syria.

Turkey opposes the role of the SDF and its large contingent of Kurdish fighters that Turkish officials consider terrorists. The Syrian regime and its allied Russian and Iranian forces have also set their sights on Raqqa but have yet to move on the city.

The U.S.-led coalition said that when Raqqa is retaken, the city will be turned over to local civilians and not held by the group.

Syria analyst David Lesch, a history professor and Mideast analyst at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, said the issue of who is in charge will be key going forward.

"Many, many questions still remain to be answered, and still will probably be the subject of a diplomatic battle in terms of who controls Raqqa once it is liberated," Lesch told VOA. "Will it be the Syrian Democratic Forces? Will Turkey have a role? Will the Syrian regime have a role? What will [regime ally] Russia do in this case?"
U.S. Representative Adam Schiff of California was one of many American lawmakers to condemn an attack on protesters outside the Turkish embassy last month.

"The message from Turkey is clear as day: We can do as we please, whether at home to our citizens or on your own American soil," he told the House floor Wednesday.

"Mr. Speaker, I stand here today to affirm that we will not allow Turkey to beat innocent protesters on the streets of our nation's capital. We will continue to pursue justice, and to make clear that America will always stand up for the right of peaceful and free expression," Schiff said.

The previous evening, the U.S. House of Representatives moved to condemn the violence that unfolded following peaceful protests outside the Turkish embassy last month.

The two sides of supporters swapped allegations of what set off the melee.

VOA's Turkish Service said the protesters were Kurdish supporters of pro-Kurdish lawmaker Selahattin Demirtas who were calling for his release from prison. Police barricaded the perimeter to separate the groups.

The protesters said they were suddenly charged by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's guards and supporters. Similar clashes happened last year when Erdogan visited Washington for a nuclear security summit.

A day after the brawl, VOA posted additional footage of moments leading up to the fight during which Erdogan  arriving at the embassy after White House meetings  is seen talking with members of his armed security detail just before they break through a police line and violently charge the protesters. Moments later, Erdogan is seen looking on as the attack unfolds.
The U.S. and Mexican governments reached a new agreement to significantly shift their sugar trade mix, but U.S. sugar producers have failed to endorse the deal, leaving question marks over whether it could still sour broader trade relations.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the "agreement in principle" with Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo calls for Mexico to reduce the share of refined sugar in its exports to the United States, while increasing the share of raw sugar.

He said Mexico met nearly every request by the U.S. sugar industry to fix problems with a 2014 sugar trade agreement.

"Unfortunately, despite all of these gains, the U.S. sugar industry has said it is unable to support the agreement in its present form," Ross said without elaborating on their objections.

He added that the agreement would go through a final drafting stage in which he hoped that the U.S. producers could come on board with it.

Asked how long this would take, Ross said, "It should be days, not weeks or months."

The deal cut by Ross and Guajardo leaves Mexico's overall access to the U.S. sugar market unchanged but refined sugar must fall to 30 percent of overall imports from Mexico from a previous limit 53 percent.

It also lifts the U.S. price paid for Mexican raw sugar to 23 cents per pound from 22.25 cents, while, the price for refined sugar will rise to 28 cents per pound from 26 cents.

These prices exclude shipping and packaging costs, the Commerce Department said in a summary.

An agreement was expected to help avoid potential retaliation from Mexico on imports of U.S. high-fructose corn syrup, a trade battle that would heighten U.S.-Mexico tensions as both countries along with Canada prepare to begin renegotiating the 23-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement in August.

Ross on Monday extended the deadline for the negotiations by 24 hours to complete what he called "final technical consultations" for a deal.

Sources on both sides of the border said on Monday that the U.S. sugar industry had added new demands outside of the terms agreed on earlier in the day by the two governments.

U.S. refiners have complained that high-quality Mexican raw sugar was going straight to sugar consumers, rather than passing through U.S. refineries.

The deal would mark the culmination of a years-long dispute between the countries over sugar, after U.S. groups three years ago asked the government for protection from dumping of subsidized imports from Mexico.

In 2014, the U.S. government slapped large duties on Mexican sugar but hammered out a deal with Mexico that suspended those levies. Factions of the U.S. industry have said that the deal has failed to eliminate harm from Mexican imports.

The U.S. industry involved in the dispute include a coalition of cane and beet farming groups as well as ASR Group, the maker of Domino Sugar that is owned by the politically connected Fanjul family.

ASR and fellow cane refiner Imperial Sugar, owned by commodities firm Louis Dreyfus Company BV, have said they are being starved of raw supplies under the current deal.

They have asked the U.S. government to terminate the pact.

The latest talks began in March, two months after U.S. President Donald Trump took office vowing a tougher line on trade to protect U.S. industry and jobs.
A replica of an Assyrian statue destroyed by Islamic State militants in Iraq in 2014 will soar over tourists in London's Trafalgar Square beginning in March, courtesy of a vision from American artist Michael Rakowitz.



The 15-foot high statue of an lamassu  a human-headed winged bull  reflects the "mass migration that's happened out of Iraq and Syria in the past few years,'' and is a "kind of placeholder for those lives that can't be reconstructed and for those people who have not yet found refuge,'' Rakowitz said in an interview at his Evanston, Illinois, studio.



His sculpture is a continuation of "The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist'' series, a decade-long recreation of nearly 700 of the over 7,000 archaeological artifacts still missing after being looted, stolen or declared missing from the National Museum of Iraq. It's a project Rakowitz predicts will outlive him and his studio, as thousands of artifacts are still missing and more are being lost every day in archaeological sites throughout Iraq and Syria.



Using databases from the University of Chicago and Interpol to get exact dimensions of missing works, he and his team work with recycled Middle Eastern food packaging and Arabic newspapers to create versions of the original pieces.



Rakowitz, one of two winners of the Fourth Plinth competition that grants winning artists the right to exhibit a contemporary art work in Trafalgar Square for about 18 months, says he hopes his lamassu sculpture will draw attention to some of the staggering human and cultural costs of ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Syria.



London's Fourth Plinth was erected in Trafalgar Square 1841 in for a never-completed equestrian statue. Since 1999, it has been occupied by a series of modern artworks.



Rakowitz felt fate intervened as he was putting together his submission.



"When the City of London sent out its prompt inviting me to propose something, it said that the plinth itself measured 14 feet in length and I was simultaneously doing research on the lamassu that had been destroyed by ISIS in Nineveh and that was exactly 14 feet. So, it seemed as though that is what had to go there,'' said Rakowitz, a professor of art at Northwestern University.



His latter-day lamassu will be created out of between 3,000 and 4,000 pressed empty Iraqi date syrup cans, highlighting the once-thriving Iraqi date industry that's been decimated by decades of war.



Lost art works, along with the cultures they represent, are a life-long obsession for the 43-year-old grandson of Iraqi Jewish emigres. Generations of Rakowitz's family embraced their cultural identity even after being forced to flee Baghdad in the 1940s. Being an Iraqi Jew was presented to Rakowitz as "something normal, but [also] something that had tragically disappeared.''



Rakowitz felt as if his "entire art history had collapsed,'' after hearing that the Taliban destroyed Afghanistan's Buddhas of Bamiyan in 2001. That sense of loss was further compounded two years later when watching video of the looting of Baghdad's Museum of Iraq.



"It didn't matter if you were for the war or against the war,'' he said. "This was something that everyone could agree upon was unacceptable and tragic and it was a problem for all humanity, not just for Iraq.''



Claire Davies, the Metropolitan Museum's assistant curator for modern and contemporary art from the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey, said Rakowitz's work connects the destruction "to what is happening outside of that space and to the people around that work of art.''



Rakowitz's replica pieces have been acquired by major museums from around the world, including the British Museum, Davies said. The Metropolitan Museum currently has nine pieces from "The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist.'' His work has also been widely exhibited in the Middle East.
The U.S. Senate has moved forward on a bill that would impose new sanctions on Iran.

The bill advanced on a procedural vote Wednesday. It now will be available for amendments before a final Senate vote.

The bill would impose mandatory sanctions on people involved in Iran's ballistic missile program and those who do business with them. It also would apply terrorism sanctions to Iran's Revolutionary Guards and enforce an arms embargo.

Bernie Sanders was one of the few senators opposed to holding the vote Wednesday because of twin attacks on Iran's parliament and a major historical site earlier in the day.

"Let us tell the people of Iran that while we have serious disagreements with them on a number of issues, that today when they are mourning, when they are dealing with the shock of a terrorist attack, today is not the day to go forward with this piece of legislation," he said.

Other critics of the legislation, including former Secretary of State John Kerry, have said reimposing sanctions could lead to the dismantling of the Obama administration's long-sought nuclear accord with Iran. President Donald Trump has strongly criticized the Iran deal.

In addition to the sanctions on Iran, lawmakers are likely to add language that would impose sanctions on Russia over its alleged meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, its involvement in the Syrian civil war, and its annexation of Ukraine's Crimean peninsula.

For the legislation to become law, the House of Representatives also will have to approve it. It must then be signed by Trump.
The U.S. government is challenging China over its dominant position in Asias major maritime sovereignty dispute, but those moves, after months of silence, are seen as aimed at reassuring nervous Southeast Asian countries rather than as a major anti-Beijing pivot.

President Donald Trump has shelved the South China Sea issue for most of his nearly half-year term as he tries to get along with Beijing, especially seeking Chinese help in throttling missile and nuclear weapons development in North Korea.

But on May 24, the U.S. Navy passed a destroyer near a Chinese-held artificial islet in the contested seas Spratly chain. Then on Saturday, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told an annual Asian security event, the Shangri-la Dialogue, that Chinas construction of artificial islands for military deployments hurts regional stability.

U.S. partners have been looking forward to (Shangri-la) for months as a chance for Mattis to assure everyone that Asia policy isnt as adrift as it seems, including on the South China Sea, said Gregory Poling, director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative of American think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The most optimistic reading now is that the speech and things like the (destroyers passage) show that Mattis and the Pentagon get it, and therefore the security side of U.S. engagement in Asia, including in the South China Sea, will be relatively stable, he said.

China has led landfill and militarization work in the 3.5-million-square-kilometer tropical sea over the past decade to enforce a widely disputed claim over about 95 percent of it. The Chinese claim overlaps those of less militarily equipped Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines.

Under former President Barack Obama, the U.S. military passed vessels through the sea more often, Beijing's anger notwithstanding. Obama also helped Vietnam and the Philippines boost military capabilities.

Washington does not have a claim but wants the sea  rich in fisheries, shipping lanes and fossil fuel deposits -- to stay open for non-Chinese use and navigation.

The Southeast Asian claimants had wondered whether Trump would risk a break in Chinas help on North Korea to challenge its maritime expansion, said Oh Ei Sun, international studies instructor at Singapore Nanyang University. He called the Trump governments approach to the South China Sea to date case-by-case and spontaneous.

A lot of countries in the region, we are eagerly awaiting such a pronouncement of a more prominent U.S. policy here, but so far I dont think we have seen it yet, Oh said. I think both the frequency as well as the intensity of so-called freedom of navigation operations on the South China Sea nowadays they are perhaps in no way as frequent or as intense as during the Obama Administration."

Without a U.S. show of force against China, the worlds third most militarily powerful nation, countries in Southeast Asia are expected to tilt their foreign policies toward Beijing rather than Washington. China is keen to talk and offer aid in exchange for avoiding harsh protests against Chinas maritime military expansion, analysts say.

China offered the Philippines $24 billion in aid and investment last year. It has also pumped Vietnams economy with tourists while discussing maritime cooperation.

Also upping the pressure on China, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations last month that militarization and island building in the sea must stop while sovereignty disputes are being hashed out, according to news reports from Washington.

Still, the U.S. government must be walking and chewing gum at the same time to sustain cooperation with Beijing on North Korea, said Carl Thayer, Southeast Asia-specialized emeritus professor of politics at The University of New South Wales in Australia.

At some point this year hopefully, a national security strategy will reemerge, from which will flow a maritime national security strategy that will then fill in the details, Thayer said. Maybe these comments by Mattis and Tillerson are an indication of the kinds of elements that would be in a national security strategy.

What has to be judged is how strongly China is going to react, he added.

As North Koreas chief ally, China said via Communist Party-run media it would increase sanctions that could cut the amount of petroleum exported to North Korea, which relies on China for about 90 percent of its petroleum imports. Beijing has also indicated it would restrict imports of North Korean coal.

China protested the U.S. destroyers navigation in the Spratly Islands by seeking an explanation for the move, which it said trespassed into its waters. Its reaction overall to the Trump Administrations South China Sea position is milder than the same under Obama, analysts say.

Trump knows he can raise the pressure as needed to get other concessions from China, said Kwei-bo, associate diplomacy professor at National Chengchi University in Taipei.

The South China Sea is definitely one of Trumps bargaining chips, Huang said. It will be bound up with Sino-U.S. trade and economic relations.
Former Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey was leading the agency's investigation of Russian interference in last year's U.S. presidential election when President Donald Trump, frustrated by the ongoing probe, fired him last month.

On Thursday, Comey is testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee, one of several congressional panels probing possible collusion between Trump campaign aides and Russian officials, about his conversations with Trump over the past several months.

Here are several excerpts about Comey's recollections, from his expected opening statement to the Senate panel.

From a one-on-one Jan. 27 dinner with Trump at the White House.

"My instincts told me that the one-on-one setting, and the pretense that this was our first discussion about my position, meant the dinner was, at least in part, an effort to have me ask for my job and create some sort of patronage relationship. That concerned me greatly, given the FBI's traditionally independent status in the executive branch.

"I replied that I loved my work and intended to stay and serve out my 10-year term as director. And then, because the set-up made me uneasy, I added that I was not "reliable" in the way politicians use that word, but he could always count on me to tell him the truth. I added that I was not on anybody's side politically and could not be counted on in the traditional political sense, a stance I said was in his best interest as the president.

"A few moments later, the president said, "I need loyalty, I expect loyalty." I didn't move, speak or change my facial expression in any way during the awkward silence that followed. We simply looked at each other in silence. The conversation then moved on, but he returned to the subject near the end of our dinner."

From a Feb. 14 meeting with Trump in the Oval Office at the White House. Trump had fired National Security Advisor Michael Flynn the day before.

"The president then returned to the topic of Mike Flynn, saying, 'He is a good guy and has been through a lot.' He repeated that Flynn hadn't done anything wrong on his calls with the Russians but had misled the vice president. He then said, 'I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.' I replied only that 'he is a good guy.'

"I had understood the president to be requesting that we drop any investigation of Flynn in connection with false statements about his conversations with the Russian ambassador in December. I did not understand the president to be talking about the broader investigation into Russia or possible links to his campaign. I could be wrong, but I took him to be focusing on what had just happened with Flynn's departure and the controversy around his account of his phone calls. Regardless, it was very concerning given the FBI's role as an independent investigative agency."

From a March 30 phone call to Comey.

"On the morning of March 30, the president called me at the FBI. He described the Russia investigation as 'a cloud' that was impairing his ability to act on behalf of the country. He said he had nothing to do with Russia, had not been involved with hookers in Russia, and had always assumed he was being recorded when in Russia. He asked what we could do to 'lift the cloud.' I responded that we were investigating the matter as quickly as we could, and that there would be great benefit, if we didn't find anything, to our having done the work well. He agreed, but then re-emphasized the problems this was causing him."
Nearly two weeks after President Donald Trump reportedly blindsided National Security advisers in Brussels by failing to stick to a White House speech reaffirming U.S. commitments to NATO's Article 5, Vice President Mike Pence on Monday took the stage alongside Montenegro's head of state to do exactly that.

Addressing an Atlantic Council awards ceremony at Washington's Ritz Carlton hotel Monday evening  held just hours after Montenegro's formal NATO accession ceremony at the State Department  Pence, fresh from private White House meetings with Montenegrin Prime Minister Dusko Markovic, vowed unwavering commitment to Article 5.

Make no mistake ... we will meet our obligations to our people to provide for the collective defense of all of our allies, Pence was quoted as saying in Politico coverage of the event. An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us.

Article 5 defined

NATO's Article 5 defines an attack on any NATO member as an attack on all NATO members. The clause has only been triggered once, following the attacks on 9/11.

As we look to the future, we cannot only look inward, Pence said. NATO's open door must always remain so  NATO is as important today as it was at its founding nearly 70 years ago.

Montenegro became NATO's 29th member of NATO and been praised by the United States for joining the Western military alliance, despite Russian obstruction that included a failed attempt to overthrow the pro-Western government in October 2016.

Russia even warned of retaliation against Montenegro's hostile course and condemned the small Balkan country's anti-Russian hysteria during the State Department ceremony marking the accession.

Allow me to rephrase on this historic day the words of [NASA astronaut] Neil Armstrong, Markovic announced to the awards ceremony, vowing national readiness to assume membership responsibilities. This is a small day for the United States and its allies, but a great day for Montenegro.

'NATO has never been more important'

Senator John McCain, (R-Ariz.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, called NATO's first enlargement in eight years a significant step toward greater trans-Atlantic integration at a pivotal time.

Given the increasingly complex challenges we face on both sides of the Atlantic, NATO has never been more important, McCain said in a prepared statement issued on his website. In the face of renewed Russian aggression, increasingly frequent terror attacks, and looming cybersecurity threats, the trans-Atlantic alliance must stand together. We welcome the assistance of Montenegro as the 29th NATO member state in combating these threats.

In an interview with VOA's Serbian Service, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that NATO will stand together with Montenegro against any kind of pressure and outside interference.

We have seen many reports about more Russian interference in the Western Balkans; we saw the failed coup attempt in Montenegro last year, he said. For me, this just highlights the importance of building strong security and defense institutions and strengthening resilience.

Regional stability

Montenegro's NATO membership, he added, will guarantee the Balkan country's independence and contribute to regional stability.

Montenegro is important not least because of its location in the Western Balkans," Stoltenberg said. NATO has a history there; we helped to end two ethnic wars. We see many challenges in the Western Balkans and we would like to work with Montenegro to address those challenges.

Stoltenberg said that Montenegro, together with other allies, can help other neighboring countries in the region, such as aspiring NATO members Bosnia and Macedonia.

NATO has only a partnership with Serbia, with whose new president, Aleksandar Vucic, Stoltenberg claims regular contact.
A large team of international researchers has found 30 percent of HIV positive individuals in nearly a dozen countries delay starting life-saving drugs.

A study spearheaded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention looked at the prevalence of HIV in Haiti, Vietnam, Nigeria, Namibia, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.

Investigators reviewed more than 694,000 treatment records from 2004 to 2015, from nearly 800 clinical facilities, focusing on patients age 15 and older.

HIV expert Andrew Auld, Malawi Country Director at the CDC, is lead author of the study. He said in eight of the countries, the percentage of people receiving early treatment increased, in Haiti, Mozambique and Namibia by 40 percent or more during the time period.

But Auld said treatment is still not reaching a significant portion of HIV positive people.

So some of the key things that still need to be done in these countries to further reduce the prevalence of advanced disease and HIV treatment initiation are to scale up testing strategies and facilitate HIV diagnosis at earlier disease stages, and also treatment policies that mean that patients once they are diagnosed are eligible to start HIV treatment the same day, he said.

HIV infects and destroys the immune systems CD-4 T-cells, so the body gradually loses its ability to fight off infections, eventually with lethal consequences in untreated individuals.

Ambitious target

UNAIDS has set a 90-90-90 target in dealing with the HIV epidemic.

By 2020, its hoped that 90 percent of all people with HIV will know their status, 90 percent will receive antiretroviral therapy and 90 percent of those receiving treatment will have viral suppression.

Not only does immediate antiretroviral treatment mean avoiding life-threatening complications, Auld said it reduces the risk of transmission.

Another study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2016, found treatment reduces the risk of spreading HIV to a sexual partner by up to 96 percent. The risk of vertical transmission, from pregnant women to their newborn babies, is also reduced if the mother is treated with antiretroviral drugs.

Despite advances in treatment and care of people infected with the AIDS virus, the NEJM article noted that there were more than two million HIV infections reported worldwide in 2014.

Auld said the main reason people wait until they are very sick to go for treatment is they are unaware that quick action increases their chances of survival.

Men with more advanced cases, according to Auld, point to work demands that keep them from seeking treatment earlier in the course of the disease. For women, childcare and family obligations are often cited. Among infected children, Auld said the problem is access to testing and treatment.

HIV diagnosis is not a death sentence, he stressed. Excellent HIV treatment is available and people can live long, healthy, productive lives if they adhere to the HIV treatment. And it will increase demand for both testing and treatment services.

The study by Auld and colleagues is published in the journal Morbidity and Mortality Weekly.
British police have confirmed another victim in last week's London Bridge terror attack, after they pulled a body out of the Thames River.

Police identified the victim Wednesday as Xavier Thomas, a Frenchman.

Tuesday, London Metropolitan Police identified the third attacker killed by officers during the attack as 22-year-old Youssef Zaghba. They say he was an Italian national of Moroccan descent who lived in East London. He had not been a subject of interest for security officials.

Authorities identified the other two attackers Monday as British citizen Khuram Shazad Butt and Rachid Redouane, who also lived in East London.

Police said Butt was previously known to authorities, but had not been viewed as a serious threat because they had no intelligence to suggest the attack was being planned.

Counterterrorism police arrested a 27-year-old man Tuesday in East london, but did not say how he might be connected to the attack.

Police have said Saturday's attack involved three men who were inside a van that struck pedestrians on London Bridge, and then got out and stabbed numerous people at a nearby market area before being shot dead by police.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack through its Amaq news agency.
BANK REGULATION

Trump taps Ottingto oversee banks

President Trump announced late Monday that he had named Joseph Otting as comptroller of the currency, heading a Treasury Department agency that is the chief overseer for federally chartered banks.

If confirmed by the Senate, Otting will play a role in the Trump administrations efforts to ease rules, written under the Dodd-Frank law, that stiffened financial regulation after the 2008-09 crisis.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency charters and supervises national banks and savings and loans.

The agency has hundreds of bank examiners, many working inside the nations largest financial institutions, who focus on lending practices.

From 2010 to 2015, Otting was chief executive of OneWest Bank, where he worked with then-chairman Steven Mnuchin, now the U.S. treasury secretary. Democrats have accused Mnuchin of running a foreclosure machine when he headed the big, California-based bank.

The bank foreclosed on thousands of homeowners in the aftermath of the housing crisis caused by high-risk mortgages.

 Associated Press

EMPLOYMENT

Job openings increased in April, but hiring fell

U.S. employers in April advertised the most job openings in 16 years, yet hiring fell and fewer people quit work. The figures suggest that businesses are struggling to find qualified workers as the jobless rate drops.

Job openings rose 4.5 percent in April to more than 6 million, the Labor Department said Tuesday. It was the most since December 2000, when the government began tracking the data. Meanwhile, hiring fell 4.8 percent to just over 5 million.

The report reflects an economy nearing or at full employment, when most of those who want a job have one and the unemployment rate mostly reflects the churn of people temporarily out of work.

When unemployment falls that low, companies are often forced to offer more pay, but that hasnt yet happened.

Job openings posted by hotels and restaurants surged 18 percent in April from March, even as hiring in that sector fell.

Construction job openings jumped by about 25 percent, suggesting that firms in that sector are desperate for labor.

 Associated Press

Also in Business

U.S. carbon dioxide emissions from energy sources are expected to hit a 25-year low in 2017 as the power sector burns less carbon-intensive coal and more low-cost natural gas, according to government data released Tuesday. In 2018, however, carbon dioxide emissions from transportation, power plants, homes and businesses should climb about 2.2 percent, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said, due to forecasts for a colder winter, higher economic growth and rising gas prices. Coals share of power generation would rise to 30.9 percent in 2017 and 31 percent in 2018 from 30.4 percent in 2016, the EIA said. Natural gas will take a 31.4 percent share in 2017, compared with 33.8 percent in 2016, before rising to 31.9 percent in 2018.

Kaspersky Lab has sent a formal complaint to European Union and German antitrust regulators, saying hurdles created by Microsoft limit consumer choice and drive up the cost of security software. Kaspersky asked the authorities to look into whether Microsoft hinders the ability to download third-party software, reducing users level of protection and giving vendors too little time to adapt to updates to Windows. Microsoft said it will answer regulators questions about the complaint.

General Motors shareholders on Tuesday overwhelmingly rejected an activist shareholders plan to split the companys stock into two classes. About 9 percent voted for the plan from David Einhorns Greenlight Capital hedge fund in a preliminary vote count. Shareholders also reelected all 11 GM board members, rejecting the three candidates backed by Greenlight. GM determined that Greenlights proposal was risky because it would pit one class of shareholders against the other and could put GMs investment-grade credit rating at risk.

Lyft, the ride-hailing company, said Tuesday its forming a research partnership with the self-driving vehicle startup nuTonomy. The companies will study how passengers book and route a self-driving car and how they interact with it. Boston-based nuTonomy has been testing self-driving taxis in Singapore and is testing self-driving cars in Boston. It plans to launch a self-driving ride-hailing service in Singapore next year.

 From news reports

Coming today

3 p.m.: Federal Reserve releases consumer credit data for April.
(Ron Charles/The Washington Post)

Standing at the shoreline on a calm, moonless night, you can hear a low-pitched roar. Some say its just the waves; others claim its a winged monster swimming through the watery depths. But its actually the sound of thousands of fans cheering for The Essex Serpent, an irresistible new novel by Sarah Perry.

Last month, The Essex Serpent won the British Book Award, and its already sold more than 250,000 copies, which should convince any skeptic that this slippery beast is real.

There have been sightings for months in America: tantalizing tweets, shots of its gorgeous cover on Instagram, breathless reports from tourists vacationing in London. But now the novel has finally washed up on our shores.

Admittedly, the Loch Ness Monster has better PR, but the Flying Serpent of Essex has been terrifying residents since it was first reported in 1669. Perry sets her story near that spot in a fictional village called Aldwinter more than 200 years later. In the enlightened 1890s, the creatures of mythology have been banished by the discoveries of paleontology, but  as were still hearing today  the science remains unsettled.

That tension between science and belief persists throughout The Essex Serpent, which is both charmingly Victorian and subtly modern. As the story opens, the good people of Aldwinter are wondering whether an earthquake has unloosed their old monster from the estuary depths. How else to explain the body of a man found on the saltings with his neck broken? Yes, its possible he was drunk and tripped, but maybe he was attacked by the old scaly beast. Whos to say? Real or imagined, the serpent slithers through the public imagination, coiling around each residents private guilt.

Into this conflicted village, Perry brings Cora Seaborne, the most delightful heroine Ive encountered since Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. Newly widowed, Cora is finally released from her abusive husband in London and free to spend his fortune however she pleases. She worries only that she might betray her shameful happiness.

I laugh when I shouldnt, she admits. I know I dont give whats expected of me . . . these last few weeks Ive thought over and over that there was never a greater difference between what I ought to be, and what I am. Hearing of the recent fossil discoveries in Essex, she decides to follow in the footsteps of the paleontologist Mary Anning and see whether she cant find some petrified bones of her own. Or perhaps theres something even more vital swimming around Aldwinter. After all, as Cora tells a friend, Charles Lyell was firmly of the opinion that an ichthyosaur might turn up.

Author Sarah Perry (Jamie Drew)

What definitely turns up is an absorbing story told in a style thats antique without being dated, rich but never pretentious. The narrative sometimes shifts into an interchange of intimate letters, a bittersweet reminder of what we gave up to send each other emoji and self-destructing snapshots. Raised on the classics and the Bible, Perry creates that delicate illusion of the best historical fiction: an authentic sense of the past  its manners, ideals and speech  that feels simultaneously distant and relevant to us.

If The Essex Serpent never unearths an actual dinosaur, it more than compensates by excavating the character of its extraordinary heroine, a woman determined not to let anyone repress her again. Arriving in Aldwinter, Cora meets the towns handsome minister, the Rev. William Ransome, and the two of them immediately begin sparring over the evidence of things not seen. In Perrys hands, flirting is raised to elegant perfection, a clash of intellects electrified by desire. Each considers the other to have a fatal flaw in their philosophy which ought by rights to exclude a friendship, she writes, and are a little baffled to discover it does nothing of the kind. The Rev. Ransome decries the widows faith in materiality; Cora mocks the minsters blindness to anything new. Hes happily married with three children, but its clear he adores this provocative, witty woman.

Indeed, everybody in the novel adores Cora  I adore her  and who can blame us? Her presence, the reverend confesses to himself, is impossible to ignore, however hard one tried. Cultured but dismissive of all pretense, beautiful but entirely unconcerned about her appearance, Cora tromps around the shore looking for bones while a parade of admirers pine for her.

Those characters caught in Coras gravitational field allow Perry to explore a variety of political and social issues were still wrestling with today. Coras only child is autistic, though no such diagnosis exists to keep Cora from feeling she simply isnt a sufficiently loving mother. Her most persistent suitor is a surgeon pushing aggressively against the limits and inhibitions of medical science. His best friend hopes to alleviate the housing crisis in London, where the government, like our new administration, is determined to make sure that any assistance comes with a bitter dollop of humiliation. And Coras female companion is a socialist trying to move uncompromised between the worlds of the rich and poor. They all circulate through the stratified society that Perry re-creates  from elegant drawing rooms to dark back alleys, from a London hospital to a country church.

By the end, The Essex Serpent identifies a mystery far greater than some creature from the illuminated margins of a manuscript: friendship. Thats a phenomenon we discount in romantic comedies and too often take for granted in real life. But in the fertile environment of this novel, Cora is determined to identify a species of devotion between men and women that doesnt involve subjugation. She may be digging in the past, but shes clearly looking to the future.

Ron Charles is the editor of Book World.


Howard Shalwitz, founding artistic director of Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, is leaving his position after thirty-eight years. (Keith Lane/For The Washington Post)

In another seismic change for Washington theater, Howard Shalwitz, who in nearly 40 years at the helm has made Woolly Mammoth Theatre a national champion of the new  and frequently provocative  American play, will leave his post as artistic director in June 2018.

Its a pretty good run, 40 years, Shalwitz said in a wide-ranging interview in his office above the playhouse on D Street NW. Woolly is a theater that is always reinventing itself, thats always taking leaps forward. But at a certain point, even that process is something youve done before.

The 65-year-old Shalwitz, who has spent almost two-thirds of his life as Woollys artistic director, choked up several times during the interview, as he recalled the actors, directors, designers and playwrights who joined him on a career-long quest to expand the boundaries of what we think of as contemporary theater. That exploration gave Woolly license to go out on some wild limbs  leading to glorious triumphs as well as some jaw-dropping duds. But as in any dynamic art form, it is out there on the fragile, precarious leading edge that the most exciting new growth often occurs.

Like the mascot that is its namesake, Woolly just insisted on being a very unique creature, observed Mosaic Theater Artistic Director Ari Roth, who as head of Theater J staged four co-productions over the years with Shalwitz. I admire Howards leadership in the most profound way. Because he stayed true to the mission, and he allowed the mission to change him.

The mission took Woolly from ragtag roots  lacking its own space, it held its very first auditions outdoors, in Glover Park  to a $9 million, 250-seat theater in Penn Quarter that has won awards both for its design and the plays it has produced. Dramatists as varied as Nicky Silver, Danai Gurira, Sarah Ruhl and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins have been nurtured in Woollys rehearsal halls. The relationship Woolly forged with playwright Bruce Norris paid off in 2010, when his Raisin in the Sun spinoff Clybourne Park, got its start at Woolly and Playwrights Horizons in New York, and went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama.

Through its company-member model, the theater has been as responsible as any in the region for sustaining and fortifying a strong Washington acting community. And Shalwitzs penchant for shattering expectations has guaranteed a Woolly show as a ticket to challenging the status quo.



Jefferson A. Russell, Dawn Ursula, Kimberly Gilbert, and Cody Mitchell in Woollys 2010 production of Clybourne Park. (Stan Barouh/Courtesy of Woolly Mammoth Theatre Co. )

Rick Foucheux and Kimberly Gilbert in Cooking with Elvis from 2003. (Stan Barouh/Courtesy Woolly Mammoth Theatre Co.)

He looks long and hard at how can we not do what weve already done, said John Vreeke, one of Shalwitzs favorite directors. Thats just part of his mental makeup. He refuses to repeat himself.

A search for a new artistic director will begin shortly, organized by management arts consultant Greg Kandel and supervised by a committee that includes current and former trustees on the companys 30-member board and other interested constituencies. Shalwitz will not participate directly in the process, he said, though its hard to imagine his voice not being heard, and loudly. He says he will meet with each candidate as the search narrows.

The announcement of his departure opens a second massive crack this year in the bedrock of Washingtons theater leadership. In February, another founding artistic director, Michael Kahn of Shakespeare Theatre Company, revealed the end date for his term of office, saying he would leave the classical organization at the conclusion of the 2018-19 season. With the retirement of Joy Zinoman at Studio Theatre several years ago, the stepping down of these other leaders will leave only Eric Schaeffer at Signature Theatre in place as a founding head of one of the regions front-line theater companies.

As Shalwitz began in recent days to inform the actors, directors and board members who make up the Woolly family of his plans, those close to him tried to get their heads around the almost inconceivable notion of a Howard-less Woolly. I dont mean to get sappy or hyperbolic, but he is a father figure to me, said Kimberly Gilbert, an in-demand actress whose career has been shaped by Woolly: since Cooking With Elvis in 2003, she has appeared in 17 company shows. He is part of my art, she added. He is entrenched in it.

Theres a real loss at his leaving, said Sarah Ruhl, a major dramatist embraced over the years by Shalwitz, who produced several of her plays, including the world premiere of Dead Mans Cell Phone. He has broad empathy, a very wide interest in human stories. And he has an aesthetic, a very particular one, but its also broad and inclusive.

Shalwitz says that hes been contemplating his exit for a few years: a committee was empaneled some time ago to deal with the possibility of his departure. It was the combination of the companys sound fiscal health and round achievement numbers  the 2017-18 season will be his 40th  that persuaded him that it was a good time to move on. And he doesnt think of himself as indispensable.

Woollys much bigger than me, he said. It has been for a long time.



Its a pretty good run, says Shalwitz, who spent two-thirds of his life as Woolly Mammoths artistic director. (Keith Lane/For The Washington Post)

If it truly is, Shalwitz is the main reason. With his good friend Roger Brady, a fellow actor, Shalwitz dreamed up the company in 1978. We will resist the ossification which often accompanies institutionalization, they wrote with youthful brio in their founding manifesto, A Statement of Artistic Intent. When yesterdays visions become todays dogmas, art is dead.

From a list of titles that ran several pages, they chose Woolly Mammoth as the company name during a long night of drinking in their apartment in Upper Manhattan.

The only good answer was we were drunk, Shalwitz said, about the name they settled on.

Theyd soon move to Washington, where Brady only remained for a couple of years. But the name would stick memorably  as an indicator of something the opposite of extinct. It would connote a certain offbeat, renegade sensibility for a theater that didnt intend to run with the pack. Woolly chose plays even if theyd been flops in other cities, and looked for playwrights with voices both fresh and outrageous: thats what led Shalwitz to Silver, and his uproarious Fat Men in Skirts in 1991.

The companys success with that play would underline its commitment to new work, and the kind of plays that sought to break the mold. Such was the case with the 2012 world premiere of Anne Washburns Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play, a stunning apocalyptic vaudeville inspired by The Simpsons that baffled as many theatergoers as it enchanted. He would also over the decade provide fairly steady employment to generations of fine actors who would be taken into the Woolly fold: actors such as Nancy Robinette, Michael Willis, Rob Roy, Grainne Cassidy and Grover Gardner in the early years. Later on, Sarah Marshall, Jennifer Mendenhall, Mitchell Hebert, Naomi Jacobson and Michael Russotto would come aboard, and on and on it went.



A scene from Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play, one of the more groundbreaking productions of Shalwitzs tenure at Woolly Mammoth. (Scott Suchman/Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company)

Howard opened up not only the audiences mind to what was available in the literary department. He also opened up the actors mind and what they were capable of doing, said Rick Foucheux, whos appeared in numerous Woolly shows, among them, the hit Stupid F---ing Bird that Shalwitz first directed in 2013.

Shalwitz still has a lot to say, and he hopes to get it all down in a book about the theater hes planning to write. He also wants to direct some more and act a bit: hell appear, as a matter of fact, in the opening play of his final season, The Arsonists. In the meantime, hes reflecting a lot on the blessings that have come his way. One of many that had him on the verge of tears was the recollection of a dinner not very long ago at the home of Arlene and Robert Kogod, who are major benefactors of many Washington arts institutions, Woolly among them.

Arlene and Bob invited me to their home for dinner. I didnt even know why! Shalwitz recalled. They said, We want to give you a check for $2 million! 

Just like that. It filled Shalwitz with wonderment, the notion that you could be a young buck, inventing a theater company over a bottle of wine and then over another bottle of wine decades later, be given a generous, tangible endorsement of what your labors have meant.

As he carried on a conversation with himself about that amazing gift, he choked up yet again.

You mean, you said you were going to be with me, you said you believed in me, and now youre going to back it up? With a check for $2 million? Shalwitzs voice rose as he reflected on his good fortune. Who am I? he asked.
The following review appears in The Washington Posts 2018 Fall Dining Guide.



Grilled Iberian pork shoulder and mashed potatos at Joselito. (Dixie D. Vereen/For The Washington Post)

Joselito Casa de Comidas

(Good/Excellent)

On my last trip to Spain, I sat down for lunch one day in Barcelona at 1 p.m. and didnt leave until almost 5. Not every meal was like that, but if theres one thing I admire about the Spaniards, its the seriousness with which they approach leisure, matters of the table included. Whenever I want to relive that Iberian intensity here at home, I head to this dignified yet easygoing oasis on the Hill. The black-and-white dining room feels timeless, and I appreciate how the mirrors at the bar are tilted so that even customers at the counter can appreciate the collection of family photos on the walls. The hours take into account that some people can eat lunch at 3 p.m., and the menu is mindful that appetites vary, hence the three portion sizes of most dishes. Point just about anywhere on the list and youll find something to like: smoked fish, orange and onion tied with a mustard seed dressing, scarlet peppers swollen with creamed spinach, winy lamb sweetbreads hit with orange zest and scattered on a fluffy hedge of couscous. Every neighborhood should be so lucky.

2.5 stars

Joselito Casa de Comidas: 660 Pennsylvania Ave. SE. 202-930-6955. joselitodc.com.

Open: Lunch Monday-Friday, dinner daily, weekend brunch.

Prices: Mains $15-$33.

Sound check: 71 decibels / Must speak with raised voice.

--

The following review appeared in The Washington Posts 2017 Fall Dining Guide.



Bavette de Wagyu a la plancha  Wagyu bavette topped with chimichurri and roasted potatos at Joselito. (Dixie D. Vereen/For The Washington Post)

Joselito takes a refreshingly old-school approach to Spanish food

(Good)

Jaleo has the corner on color and range, but when its old school I want from my Spanish restaurant, this is the place I scroll to on Open Table. The name pays tribute to the owners late father, whose long life and progeny play out in the black-and-white photographs on the walls. The cooking, from chef David Sierra, proves just as personal. Cuttlefish sharing a bowl with potatoes, lima beans and a dusky wine sauce was my fathers favorite dish, says owner Javier Candon, a dapper presence in the dining room, where tilted mirrors at the bar exaggerate the scene. Most of the menu can be ordered in three portion sizes, but here are two to supersize: Iberian pork shoulder on a bed of mashed potatoes, and salted cod bundled into a gratineed crepe. Joselito sweats the small stuff. The cube of ice in your (fantastic) sangria is more fruit than frozen water.

---

The following review was originally published June 7, 2017.

A soulful taste of Spain, including the citys best sangria, comes to Capitol Hill



Owner Javier Candon named Joselito for his late father. (Dixie D. Vereen/For The Washington Post)

The sangria is Washingtons best. (Dixie D. Vereen/For The Washington Post)

(Good/Excellent)

Some restaurants are content to pour plonk and diced fruit in a carafe and call it sangria. Joselito Casa de Comidas shows patrons what an upgrade feels like, as anyone who has ordered the drink at the youthful Capitol Hill restaurant can attest. The divide between average and awesome starts with the bottle, a handsome flask, into which go a respectable tempranillo, along with brandy, triple sec, peach schnapps and grapefruit juice. At the table, the deluxe punch, also available in white, is poured into glasses holding a cube of fruit-packed ice.

One sip, and Im sold. Joselitos sangria is the best in town.

Let me suggest you enjoy it with some smoked salt cod on a puree of garlic, parsley and olive oil in a moat of stinging gazpacho, a coolant finished with what could pass for snow but is in reality powder made with tapioca and olive oil. Or maybe baby cuttlefish (a squid relative) sharing a bowl with lima beans, soft potato and a sauce coaxed from wine, cumin, bay leaf and onion. It was my fathers favorite dish, says Javier Candon, the dapper ringleader behind the Spanish restaurant he named for his dad, who passed away last year at 90. Like most of the dishes at Joselito, the cuttlefish can be ordered in one of three portions: as a tapa; as a media racion, the size of a main course; and racion, in an amount apportioned for two or more. Also like much of the food here, the seafood dish calls attention to a cuisine that makes an art of subtlety.

If youve been to SER in Arlington, Candons maiden restaurant, the devotion to details will register. Joselito is no mere replica, however. Whereas SER, which stands for simple, easy, real, has the flavor of a block party, the new establishment, decorated with closely set marble tables and floor tiles from Spain, aspires to more sophistication.

Chef David Sierra, 37, lists Fiola Mare on his resume, a bullet point that shows in the Madrid natives careful, often beautiful, arrangements. The straightforward-sounding five seasonal vegetables, for instance, brings together precise cuts in a mound, sauced at the table with warm vegetable juice (from asparagus in May). But even plainer combinations are dressed for success. Thick strips of well-marbled Iberian pork shoulder, delicately nutty in flavor, are arranged like spokes of a wheel on a bed of mashed potatoes, a singular sensation that is best ordered in a plus size if youre more than two  and one carnivore is fleet of fork. The combination of melt-on-the-tongue meat, from pigs that feast on acorns, and olive oil-enriched potatoes, a meal draped with a vinegar-sharpened wine sauce, is as irresistible to some of us as Twitter is to Trump.

The ocean is Sierras larder. More than a dozen dishes involve seafood. Simple pleasures run from lightly pickled mussels tossed with glossy bell peppers and the creamy white beans called pochas to a Friday lunch special teaming tuna and potatoes in a light stew, teasing with sweet paprika. Joselitos lone pasta is a turban of thin egg noodles scattered with crab and sea urchin  the latter as common a menu fixture as pork belly  and blended with shrimp butter. The choicest port of call is also one of the simplest: crawfish briefly sauteed with garlic and cayenne and served with eggs fried in olive oil. Like that Iberian pork, the pasta and the crawfish stay with me. A kitchen that uses good ingredients doesnt have to do much to get them to sing.

Early on, every visit found me returning to cumin-seasoned fried anchovies served with yuzu aioli. My last rendezvous was a bust of stiff, dull fish food, however. (While Im carping, let me bust on the bread. Sierras sauces deserve better sponges.)



Crawfish and olive-oil-fried eggs. (Dixie D. Vereen/For The Washington Post)

One of the chefs recent additions, braised oxtail in a red wine reduction, sounds better suited to fall or winter. But the tender, cinnamon-spiced meat is terrific eating, balanced on the plate with crisp Brussels sprouts and marble-size, husk-wrapped gooseberries, golden orbs with an acidity similar to tomatoes.

Early grazers who sit at the bar can take advantage of Hemingway Hour, 4 to 7 p.m. weeknights. Thats when the entire menu is discounted 20 percent. Knocking back Sierras pleasing food and the bars good drinks feels like youre getting away with something, and you are: a good deal.

It took some time for diners and even staff to grasp the menus portion and price structure. By way of example, tuna carpaccio with avocado mousse is trailed on the menu by the numbers 9/17/33. Thats not the year the dish was invented, I overheard a server say, explaining the three prices to a group of diners. The service at Joselito is chief among its charms. Return customers are often treated as friends, which means a meal isnt over until someone shows up with a house-made liquor, maybe brandy steeped with raisins.

What looks like a square of flan  the dense, egg yolk-yellow custard called tocino de cielo  makes my teeth itch, and warm white chocolate soup is a misuse of the diced fruit it covers. If you want something sweet, ask for what the servers call Spanish French toast: bread soaked in milk and sherry, dipped in egg, fried and dunked again in sherry. Youll never look at the American brunch staple the same way.



The room  plastered with family photos  was designed by owner Javier Candons wife, Christiana Campos. (Dixie D. Vereen/For The Washington Post)

Open only since January, the dining room looks as if its been around for decades. Indeed, the establishments full name, Joselito Casa de Comidas, signals an old-fashioned venue. With no budget for an interior designer, Candon recruited his wife, Christiana Campos, a senior communications strategist with the National Education Association, to re-create the feel of the classic cafes the couple admire in Madrid and Seville.

She has another career if she wants it. The long tilted mirrors over the bar are an especially nice touch, affording everyone at the counter a view of the room. Covering the walls are vintage travel posters from the region where the owner grew up  the state of Huelva, southwest of Seville  and black-and-white photographs of Candons clan, some dating to the early 1900s. There are lots of pictures; El Papa sired eight children.

Family, says Campos, is very much a part of our lives.

She was referencing the framed memories that fill the dining room, but she could just as well have been speaking to the spirit of the beguiling Joselito.
The 32nd annual St. Marys County Crab Festival takes place this weekend at the St. Mary's County Fairgrounds. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)

THURSDAY

DRINKING THE PAST: Archaeologist Patrick E. McGovern and Dogfish Head Brewery founder Sam Calagione discuss ancient brews. Program includes a tasting. 6:45 p.m. $40-$55. S. Dillon Ripley Center, 1100 Jefferson Dr. SW. smithsonianassociates.org.

GREEK FOLK FESTIVAL: Four-day event featuring food, music, childrens activities and more. Free admission, food and drinks available to purchase. Thursday-Sunday. GreekTown Square and Events Center, 701 Ponca St., Baltimore. greekfolkfestival.org.

WINE CLASS: Taste and compare highly rated wines with similar unrated wines. 7:15 p.m. $25. Chain Bridge Cellars, 1351 Chain Bridge Rd., McLean. chainbridgecellars.com.

FRIDAY

THE ORIGINS OF WINE CIVILIZATION: Two-day event featuring experts in the culture, history, science and production of wine. Fridays opening reception begins at 6:30 p.m. at the Embassy of Georgia (1824 R St. NW). Saturdays events, beginning at 10 a.m., take place at the S. Dillon Ripley Center (1100 Jefferson Dr. SW). $275-$325. Saturday evening grand tasting only, $50-$60. smithsonianassociates.org.

SATURDAY

BELTWAY BBQ SHOWDOWN: The 11th annual competition features food, live music, childrens activities and more. 12 p.m. $5 admission. Show Place Arena, 14900 Pennsylvania Ave., Upper Marlboro. pgparks.com/Beltway_BBQ.htm.

BREWS & BARBECUE: Farm-to-table menu paired with beer from Old Bust Head Brewing Company. 6 p.m. $85. Airlie Center, 6809 Airlie Rd., Warrenton, Va. airlie.com.

ST. MARYS COUNTY CRAB FESTIVAL: The 32nd annual event featuring crab-filled foods, live music, craft vendors and more. 11 a.m. $5 admission. St. Mary's County Fairgrounds, 42455 Fairgrounds Rd., Leonardtown, Md. e-clubhouse.org/sites/leonardtownmd/page-8.php.

SUNDAY

COOKING CLASS: Mimi Clark teaches how to make a plant-based breakfast and brunch. 10 a.m. $55 ($100 for two people). Veggie Gourmet, 9302 Hallston Ct. Fairfax Station. veggourmet.wordpress.com.

HOME-BREWING CLASS: Michael Stein and Peter Jones, beer historians at Lost Lagers, lead a discussion on Colonial era brewing and more. $85 ticket includes class, tasting and ingredients for home-brewing. $40 tickets includes class and tasting. 11 a.m. $40-$85. Hill Center at the Old Naval Hospital, 921 Pennsylvania Ave. SE. hillcenterdc.org/event/historical-homebrewing-class-colonial-era.

MONDAY

COOKING CLASS: Erica Skolnik of Frenchies teaches how to make a berry tart and strawberry pavlova. 7 p.m. $49. Hill Center at the Old Naval Hospital, 921 Pennsylvania Ave. SE. 202-549-4172. hillcenterdc.org/event/on-the-cooling-rack-with-frenchies-summer-berries.

MASON DIXON MASTER CHEF TOURNAMENT: Chefs compete in a single-elimination culinary tournament. Benefiting Meals on Wheels of Central Maryland. 6 p.m. Monday and Tuesday. $45. Points South Latin Kitchen, 1640 Thames St., Baltimore. 443-563-2018. mdmasterchef.com.

RESERVE NOW

JUNE 14

WINE CLASS: Taste seven wines from the Terre Nere and Vigne di Eli estates in Italy. 7 p.m. $30. Chain Bridge Cellars, 1351 Chain Bridge Rd., McLean. chainbridgecellars.com.

JUNE 15

WINE DINNER: Five courses paired with Rombauer Vineyard wines. 6:30 p.m. $110. Russia House Restaurant, 724 Pine St., Herndon. russiahouserestaurant.com.
Heres one way to find the best bath towel: Buy a hand towel from every towelmaker you can think of and blind test them by feel. Thats what Chicago-based interior designer Alessandra Branca did years ago to find her favorite, the Bello by Sferra. I think thats something everyone should do, she says  because bath towels are a matter of personal taste. Nevertheless, bath towels specific purpose is to dry you off. It needs to be absorbent, Branca says. Sometimes the softest and prettiest towels actually dont do that job.

Jane Feller, senior buyer at online retailer Bellacor, explains that what consumers should look for is the grams per square meter, or GSM. The higher the number, the heavier and denser the towel will feel, she says. When you find what you like, get four washcloths for every two hand towels for every single bath towel.

Whether you buy for you, a newly married couple or new homeowners, its true what Branca says: Theres no one that wouldnt want a wonderful new set of towels.



Linen Chambray Towels ($52, shop-foglinen.com). (Fog Linen)

Moroccan Gate Bath Towels ($44, williams-sonoma.com). (Williams-Sonoma)

Erin Boyle, author of the book Simple Matters, lives in a 500-square-foot apartment with her husband and two kids, so she lives only with the material possessions she treasures. Thankfully, she was given a set of Linen Chambray Towels for her wedding five years ago that she and her husband still love, from Massachusetts shop Fog Linen ($52, shop-foglinen.com). Theyre very absorbent, and they hold up super well, she says, noting that they dry well, which is key for small city bathrooms without ventilation.

The Moroccan Gate Bath Towels from Williams Sonoma are a favorite of Lizzy Ellingson  and as co-founder of universal website registry Blueprint Registry, shes seen a lot ($44, williams-sonoma.com). She says these towels are super plush and likes that the sculpted Moroccan pattern is eye-catching and keeps the towel from looking too bulky hanging on a bar.



Finest Elegance towels ($67, macys.com). (Macy's )

Sferras Bello towel ($66, sferra.com). (Sferra)

My favorite towels are the Macys Hotel Collection brand, Finest Elegance, says Feller ($67, macys.com). They are the thickest and fluffiest towels  very luxurious! They are made of Turkish cotton, with some modal for sheen. The texture and feel are quite elegant, she adds. Two tips for towel care: Never use fabric softener, which reduces absorbency. Instead, add a splash of vinegar in the wash, which works wonders in brightening and removing stains.

Sferras Bello towel, at 700 GSM, won Brancas blind touch test years ago, and its now what she recommends to her clients ($66, sferra.com). She prefers white bath towels, unless you have an older, white bathroom that needs some new life. Its a quick and easy way to redecorate an old-school bathroom, she says. For added personality, Branca likes to design custom monograms for her clients and embroider them on their towels.



Boll & Branchs Bath Towel ($45, bollandbranch.com) (Boll & Branch)

The Lodge & Spa at Brush Creek Ranch in Saratoga, Wyo., is recognized by Conde Nast Traveler readers as the best in the biz, so you know that the spa director knows her towels. Beth Thomas recommends 100 percent Pima cotton in white for body and bath towels and favors Boll & Branchs Bath Towel ($45, bollandbranch.com). When choosing a luxury bath towel, it should pamper the skin and comfort the soul, she says.
Bouquets of flowers are left in memory of people who were killed in an attack Sunday in London. (Stefan Wermuth/Reuters)

Britains 50-day campaign season has come to an end, with the country voting Thursday to decide whether Prime Minister Theresa May will remain in office as the political leader of Americas closest ally.

May and her chief opponent, Jeremy Corbyn, have battled over who would keep Britain safer from terrorism. Security dominated the campaign after attacks in Manchester, where two weeks ago a bomb exploded after an Ariana Grande concert, and in the countrys capital, where eight people were killed Sunday near London Bridge.

May, who heads the Conservative Party and held a slight lead in the race as it came to an end, swept into office after Britains vote last summer to leave the European Union. She promised to crack down on extremism if she were to win Thursday, even if that meant watering down human rights laws.

Corbyn, the Labour Party leader, said the real danger comes from Conservative Party budget cuts to police departments. We wont defeat terrorists by ripping up our basic rights and our democracy, he said Wednesday.
(Taylor Turner/The Washington Post)

The American journalist population is dwindling, but youd never know it by wandering around the Capitol.

There are some 33,000 daily newspaper journalists left in the country (down from 57,000 in 1996), and it seems that most of them have migrated to this suddenly fertile new habitat. They stake out basement conference rooms, graze outside of Senate lunches, and pounce on politicians as they exit elevators.

Once thought to be going the way of the dodo bird or zeppelin repairman, journalists of the Trump era are crowding legislative hallways at such a startling density that the endangered species is starting to seem like  an invasive one.

We want to make you aware the Capitol has reached its capacity for reporters, the officials who oversee the Senate press gallery wrote in a letter to news organizations last month, as Republican infighting and the drama of the Trump presidency were suddenly ramping up the urgent need for scribes to just get a quote from some lawmaker, any lawmaker, on whatever crisis of whichever day.

The warning was dire: Collectively, the press following Senators have become large and aggressive. We are concerned someone may get hurt.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) rushes through a media mob on the way to a vote May 17. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

Its a legitimate fear, one reporter noted while observing 80-year-old Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) attempting to navigate a heaving throng in the Senate basement.

We are one tripped senator away from losing our access, the reporter said.

Hill reporters remain wary of measures to restrict their movement, an instinct that is especially strong amid mounting examples of physical aggression toward journalists.

In the past month, a reporter was arrested at the West Virginia state capitol while trying to ask questions of visiting Health Secretary Tom Price. A reporter for Roll Call said he was pinned against the wall in a public hallway of the Federal Communications Commission while posing questions to Commissioner Michael P. ORielly. And Rep.-elect Greg Gianforte (R-Mont.) was charged with assaulting a reporter on the night before his election.

[Press advocates see Trumps words behind physical attacks on journalists]

No physical clashes have been reported at the U.S. Capitol. But even by historical standards, the increase of reporters on the Hill has been dramatic: Veteran staffers say more reporters now assemble to cover the Capitol every day than during either Watergate or the Clinton impeachment.

We would love a drama-free week, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said recently as a gaggle of reporters  dozens deep  descended upon him after he disembarked from a Senate subway. We really would.



Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) is swamped by another coffee-breath sauna of reporters outside of Senate chambers Tuesday. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)

This will not be that week. Not with former FBI director James B. Comey coming to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Theres so much interest in this hearing that local bars have decided to open early for viewing parties (bars, of course, being another natural habitat for journalists).

Comeys testimony will almost certainly reinvigorate the controversy that began with his firing  and produce ever more hallway traffic jams. While entire state houses across the country go virtually ignored by the media, dozens of reporters will congregate to check Twitter, gossip, and wait to ask whomever walks by essentially the same question: What the heck is going on?

I was kind of in the middle of a conversation, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) said in response to a version of this question.

Im not doing this, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said in response to another journalist, who had scampered in front of her on an ascending escalator and was attempting to perch backward to ask her a question.

While events like the Comey hearing naturally limit the number of reporters present  only so many people can actually fit into the room  the Capitol itself does not. Anyone with an active press credential can roam the grounds and the building. To a visiting White House reporter, the recent typical day on Capitol Hill might seem like anarchy.

Visitors to the Capitol, including lawmakers family members, have complained about the crush of people. On the House side, the sergeant at arms office has erected stanchions in certain hallways to keep paths clear for members walking to votes.

In a statement, House Sergeant at Arms Paul D. Irving said balancing press access with safety and accessibility is a daily matter.



Im not doing this, said Sen. Dianne Feinstein as a reporter tried to conduct an interview on an escalator. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) fields questions. The density of reporters these days rivals Watergate, veteran staffers say. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)

We work with the press gallery to maintain this balance, Irving stated. However, the Capitol is a functioning office building as well as a tourist destination. The enforcement of the rules by my office is done for safety and security; our number one job.

On Monday evening, as a small crowd of reporters waited for senators to arrive and vote on a nonbinding pro-Israel resolution, a press gallery staffer walked up to the pillar along the subway tracks and taped up a map outlining the newly designated red zone where reporters could not gather.

Make sure to maintain an egress to allow movement of other senators and staff at all times, it read.

That its gotten to this point is kind of crazy considering the tumbleweeds that were blowing through here just three years ago. Congress had become so boring and impotent with gridlock that even protesters had stopped showing up. But now the Capitols normal rhythms have given way to frenzied eruptions  the House health-care debate, the Comey firing, the Russia investigations  with fewer and shorter periods of lull between them.

Its like every day is State of the Union night.

Stepping off the Senate subway last week, Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) was immediately swarmed. At 5-foot-7, he seemed to shrink inside the media mob, seemingly at risk of suffocating in a coffee-breath sauna.

The last time it was this crazy was  oh wait, it was last week for Comey, said a reporter standing on the crowds outer perimeter.

He couldnt make out what Corker had to say, but had faithfully stuck his voice recorder into the heart of the scrum.

David Weigel contributed to this report.


Steve Bannon, left, and Milo Yiannapoulos are among the now-departed Breitbart stars who once defined the far-right website. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post; Lucas Jackson/Reuters)

The clarion of the far right seems to be having second thoughts about how far right it wants to go.

Faced with an advertiser boycott and plummeting readership, Breitbart News has lately been trimming back some of its more extreme elements in what may be a bid for more mainstream respectability.

Gone: Prominently displayed stories appealing to overt racial prejudice, such as reports and essays about crimes committed by African Americans. Articles such as Five Devastating Facts About Black-on-Black Crime and Black-on-Black Crime: Blame it on the System and Ignore the Evidence have all but disappeared from the site.

Gone: Reporter Katie McHugh, who was fired by Breitbart on Monday for tweeting after the latest terrorist attack in London, There would be no terror attacks in the U.K. if Muslims didnt live there. McHugh doubled down on the vitriol when an Iranian American, actor Pej Vahdat, called her a real moron. In reply, she tweeted, Youre an Indian, then deleted it.

Long gone: Milo Yiannopoulos, once Breitbarts biggest star and a magnet for accusations that the site promoted misogyny, white ethno-nationalism and demonization of immigrants. Yiannopoulos was forced out in February amid exposure of videos in which he spoke favorably about pedophilia.

(Erin Patrick O'Connor/The Washington Post)

Delayed: Breitbarts long-touted plans to expand to France and Germany. The company disclosed Euro-expansion plans last year, but has little to show for it so far.

Breitbart hitched itself to Donald Trumps presidential campaign last year and reaped an enormous spike in reader traffic and media attention. Its former chairman, Stephen K. Bannon  who once declared Breitbart the platform of the alt-right  became Trumps campaign chairman and later his chief White House strategist.

But the postelection period hasnt been very kind to Breitbart.

[Bannon molded Breitbart into a far-right sledgehammer. How will it be wielded in the Trump era?]

The sites visitor traffic has fallen 53 percent since November, from 22.96 million unique individuals to 10.76 million last month, according to ComScore, which tracks Web trends. Other news sites have seen a falloff since the election, too  The Washington Post and the New York Times are off 24 and 26 percent during this period, respectively  but Breitbarts losses are at roughly twice the mainstream rate.

At the same time, an advertiser blacklist of Breitbart organized by an anonymous online group called Sleeping Giants appears to be biting hard. Only 26 companies had ads on Breitbart last month, down from 242 in March, according to the marketing-news site Digiday. It said the remaining advertisers were primarily smaller direct-response companies, although Amazon.com remains one of its sponsors, despite pressure from its employees to cut ties to the site (Amazons chief executive is Jeffrey P. Bezos, who owns The Post).

The traffic and advertiser losses may be compelling a move toward a kinder, gentler Breitbart, says Will Sommer, who tracks conservative media in his newsletter Right Richter.

Breitbart has never been under more pressure than it is now, trying to establish itself as the premiere right-wing outlet even as liberal boycott threats have cost it hundreds of advertisers, Sommer wrote, adding, So now, any staffer who hurts Breitbarts request for respectability (and advertisers) can expect to be fired.

Sommer said it would be difficult to imagine Breitbart firing McHugh for the same tweets a few years ago.

Breitbart declined to address specifics of McHughs firing and would not comment on its editorial direction. But the media organization said in a statement: The assault on Breitbart is part of a larger effort by the Left to attack conservative media by unjustifiably affixing derogatory labels to any voice that threatens its ideological agenda. Breitbart is the leading conservative, pro-family website in America.

It said its traffic has increased 59 percent on a year-to-year basis and that it ranks No. 60 among U.S.-based websites, according to the Alexa web-tracking firm. Hence the liberal hysteria, it said. Last year, Breitbart started millions of conversations about populist values and now many of those values are becoming policy for the United States.

On the other hand, McHughs firing showed some of the downside risk for a site that has attracted some of the more extreme elements of the alt-right. (Alt-right is an ill-defined term that can refer to antiglobalist, anti-establishment views, but also refers to a far-right movement whose followers hold racist, anti-Semitic and sexist beliefs and who desire a whites-only state.)

[Lets party like its 1933: Inside the alt-right world of Richard Spencer]

The firing prompted alt-right media figures such as Mike Cernovich to attack Breitbart. He tweeted in support of McHughs effort to raise funds online for medical bills and said, Breitbart fired a journalist to appease fake news media. Others, enraged by the firing, called Breitbart a cuck, or cuckold, an alt-right slur for those who betray the faith. Fiery conservative Ann Coulter, a Breitbart columnist, declined to bite a friendly hand: Whatever the reason for the firing, Katie McHugh is a great journalist, she tweeted.

Breitbart revealed in February that it is part owned by a billionaire investor, conservative political donor Robert Mercer, so the economic impact of a prolonged advertiser boycott is unlikely to be debilitating. It also is cushioned by its sales of Breitbart-branded merchandise, such as T-shirts and a coffee mug emblazoned with its logo and the word covfefe, a reference to President Trumps recent Twitter gaffe.

On another front, Breitbart has fought a so-far losing battle to secure a bit of Washington prestige: press credentials to cover Congress.

The sites application for permanent credentials has been rejected repeatedly by the committee of journalists that has long been in charge of determining official accreditation.

The committees official rejection has nothing to do with Breitbarts editorial thrust; rather, it wants to ensure that the site is free of conflicts of interest, particularly its relationship with Bannon and its overlapping ownership and editorial leadership with a Florida foundation Bannon co-founded, the Government Accountability Institute.

It has also expressed concern that an Egyptian businessman and political figure, Moustafa el-Gindy, rented his Capitol Hill townhouse to Breitbart for its Washington headquarters at below-market rates in exchange for favorable coverage.

On Monday, lawyer Laurence Levy of the Greenberg Traurig firm put the credentials committee on notice that Breitbart had hired him to press its case. Breitbart is entitled to permanent Credentials, and will continue to pursue permanent Credentials, Levy wrote.

The White House ethics office last week issued a waiver to Bannon entitling him to communicate with editors and reporters at Breitbart, dismissing a complaint by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a liberal group. However, the waiver was undated, the New York Times reported, raising questions about whether it had been improperly backdated to cover prohibited contacts.
A composite image, clockwise from top left, of Democrats Danica Roem, Andrew A. Adams, Mansimran Kahlon and Steven Jansen. The four candidates are competing in the June 13 Democratic primary for the chance to challenge Republican Del. Robert G. Marshall in the November general election. (J. Lawler Duggan/For The Washington Post)

Outspoken and often far-right enough to bewilder even some of his fellow Virginia Republicans, Del. Robert G. Marshall has been a constant target of aggressive Democratic challenges since he first won his Prince William County district in 1992.

This year, amid a massive push by Democrats to ride anti-Donald Trump sentiments to victory in Richmond, the 73-year-old legislator known for such pronouncements as calling disabled children Gods punishment on women who have had abortions may be heading for his toughest fight yet.

Vying for a chance to take him out during next weeks Democratic primary election are a transgender ex-journalist, a religious Sikh businessman and two moderate white professionals  four candidates who reflect how much Northern Virginia has changed during Marshalls 13 terms in office.

This year looks very different than previous election cycles, said Stephen J. Farnsworth, a political-science professor at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg.

What you see in Prince William County generally, and in this district in particular, is a growing diversity, and that growing diversity is not an ally of a Republican candidate, Farnsworth said. The unpopularity of Trump may be creating an environment where a lot of Democrats are more motivated this fall than they were two or four years ago.

Del. Robert G. Marshall (R-Prince William) gestures during a committee hearing at the Capitol in Richmond on Jan. 19. The committee voted down his transgender bathroom bill. (Steve Helber/AP)

A fixture in Richmond with avuncular charm, Marshall has held on to his once solidly conservative district  which includes a portion of Manassas  with a bread-and-butter approach to constituent services and a candid demeanor admired by many voters.

But those victories are often overshadowed by Marshalls fights against his own party leaders and public pronouncements that place him squarely on the conservative fringe.

Besides calling disabled children a punishment for abortions, Marshall has suggested that incest is sometimes voluntary and, most recently, argued that allowing transgender women to use a ladies restroom is an opening for sexual predators.

The four candidates hoping to be the Democrat to take him on in November have been casting the Republican incumbent as an out-of-touch ideologue while canvassing for votes in communities lined with brick rambler houses or towering McMansions.

In recent years, the 13th District has turned purple and become a battleground between the parties. In his 2013 bid for governor, Terry McAuliffe (D) squeaked to victory in the district by one percentage point. The following year, Republican Ed Gillespie  now the front-runner in his partys gubernatorial primary race  took 51 percent of the district in his failed campaign for the U.S. Senate against Mark R. Warner (D-Va.). Democrats running in presidential contests have an easier time  Hillary Clinton won 54 percent of the vote in the district last fall, and Barack Obama carried it in 2008 and in 2012.

In the delegate primary, the four candidates have highlighted the areas increasingly pressing problems with traffic congestion, overcrowded schools and stagnant retail strips  calling Marshall ineffective in dealing with them.

Danica Roem, a former Gainesville and Prince William Times reporter, has used her stature as a transgender candidate to criticize Marshalls conservative stances  including a now-tabled bathroom bill he sponsored earlier this year that would have required people to use restrooms assigned to their original sex.

Bob Marshall is more concerned about where I use the bathroom than how to get people to work, Roem, 32, told one voter in Manassas before launching into a discourse on how to relieve traffic congestion along Route 28.

For me, this is personal, said Roem, who would be the first transgender member of the House of Delegates.

Steven Jansen, a former Detroit-area county prosecutor who now directs a national nonprofit group based in Alexandria that advocates for better gun-

control laws, is campaigning as a law-and-order candidate who appeals to the districts more moderate Republican voters.

Im going to actually take votes away from Bob; thats how were going to win, Jansen, 43, declared during a recent candidates forum. Im going to take moderate Republican votes.

Andrew Adams, 29, a former Army commander who now works as an operations manager for a global pest-control company, argues that Marshall has been able to stay in office for so long because the district is drawn to include conservative precincts where voters are more active.

He wants the General Assembly to create an independent commission that would redraw state districts and guard against gerrymandering that benefits one party over another.

I think a lot of the solutions to a lot of the problems we have come from people who are somewhere in the middle, not tied to these really deep ideological fights and really just want to get things done, Adams said.

Mansimran Kahlon, a Sikh businessman in Gainesville, said he was inspired to run for office after a lifetime of living as the other in the district he has known since his family arrived in the Prince William area from India when he was age 3  alienation that he says Marshall has fueled.

His campaign has tapped into the areas growing South Asian community, so far raising $94,125. Jansen has raised the most with $107,534, Roem has collected $65,854 and Adams has $6,150.

We have to expand the electorate, Kahlon, 24, said. Bob Marshall wont be beat by going after his own constituents who vote for him time and again. We need to go after those voters who never show up, or who show up in a presidential election but never come out in the state elections.

Marshall said he is unfazed by the competition.

He won his last election in 2015 by 1,555 votes  against businessman Don Shaw  and other Democrats have tried to take him out in the past.

Im not about to change the public policy views Ive had, Marshall said, proving so by doubling down on his argument against allowing transgender people to use the bathroom of their choice.

A boy cant say: Hey, school administrator, I think I identify as a female today,  Marshall said. And thats it; he gets to go into the girls shower. That is not going to fly.

Marshall said the criticisms that he has failed to reduce traffic and resolve other problems are unfounded, and the characterization of him as too conservative is an old tactic that has won no traction with District 13 voters.

They keep trying this, and I can only hope theyll keep it up because it hasnt worked, he said.

Quentin Kidd, director of Christopher Newport Universitys Wason Center for Public Policy in Newport News, Va., said whether that strategy will work this time depends on the voter turnout for the gubernatorial election in November.

Kidd noted that during the 2013 gubernatorial election  when McAuliffe beat former attorney general Ken Cuccinelli in the district by one percentage point  Marshall still prevailed in his election with 498 votes more than Atif Qarni, a Muslim American teacher.

How big of a victory does the Democrat this year have to have in order to risk Bob Marshalls reelection? Kidd said. One point is not enough.

Some voters say they are motivated by the national political climate to weigh in locally.

Matt Hale, 33, who lives in Gainesville, said he usually votes Republican but rarely pays attention to what his delegate does.

But he will probably go against Marshall this year, he said.

I feel like my party kind of just fell apart, and Im looking for real actual changes, Hale said. From what weve seen in the general state of affairs, I dont see myself voting Republican.
Anne Arundel County

The following were among incidents reported by the Anne Arundel County police. For information, call 410-222-8050.

HANOVER AREA

THEFTS/BREAK-INS

New Ridge Rd., May 30. Multiple units at a storage facility were broken into overnight.

SEVERNA PARK AREA

INDECENT EXPOSURE

Evergreen Rd., May 22. Two females saw a man who was naked from the waist down and masturbating in a vehicle. He was identified to be a person involved in three incidents in March and April. A Glen Burnie man, 35, was charged with four counts of indecent exposure.

SHADYSIDE AREA

HOMICIDES

Scott Town Rd., 12:36 a.m. June 1. A Deale man and woman, 48 and 44, were found dead of gunshot wounds. The investigation was continuing.

Annapolis

These were among incidents reported by the Annapolis Police Department. For information, call 410-268-9000.

ROBBERIES

Bay Ridge Rd., 900 block, 4:40 a.m. May 27. A masked male pushed a store employee, who was standing outside, inside the store, and then stole cigarettes and cash.

Sixth St., 400 block, 1:45 a.m. June 1. Two armed males stole cash from three adults and fled on foot.

ASSAULTS

Tyler Ave., 1300 block, 11:10 p.m. May 31. During an argument, a male cut another man with a knife in the leg, hand and face.

THEFTS/BREAK-INS

Boxwood Rd., 200 block, May 1 to June 1. A parking pass was stolen from a vehicle.

Captains Cir., 400 block, 11:45 a.m. May 27. During an investigation of a dirt bike striking a parked vehicle, it was discovered the bike had been stolen. A male youth, 16, was charged with theft.

Colony Dr., 1300 block, 11 p.m. May 26 to 6 a.m. May 27. A purse was stolen from an unlocked vehicle.

Edgewood Rd., 7300 block, 1 p.m. May 23 to 10 a.m. May 25. A window at a business was forced open; nothing was reported stolen.

Gorman St., 100 block, 8:12 p.m. June 1. A male stole a bicycle from the rear of a business. An Annapolis man, 17, was charged with theft.

Holeclaw Ct., 100 block, 1:15 a.m. May 23 to 11:30 a.m. May 24. A motorcycle battery was stolen from an unlocked vehicle.

Lockwood Ct., 200 block, 7 p.m. May 25 to 6 p.m. May 27. Two duffel bags were stolen from a vehicle.

Porter Dr., 100 block, 5:15 to 7 p.m. June 1. A bicycle and helmet were stolen.

Shiley St., 4:30 p.m. May 28 to 9 a.m. May 29. A wallet and q purse were stolen from two vehicles.

Van Buren St., 1200 block, 5 p.m. May 25. A man and a woman were found inside a home without permission. An Annapolis man and woman, 24, and 30, were charged with fourth-degree burglary.

Van Buren St., 1300 block, 7 p.m. May 31 to 7:30 a.m. June 1. Cash and sunglasses were stolen from a vehicle.

MOTOR VEHICLE THEFTS

Short St., 1100 block, 1 to 7:15 a.m. May 29. A red 2011 Kia Sorento was stolen. An Annapolis man, 26, was charged with unlawful taking of a motor vehicle, unauthorized removal of property and traffic charges.

Tripp Creek Ct., 600 block, 7:30 p.m. May 23 to 7 a.m. May 24. A black 1999 Honda Civic was stolen.

Howard County

These were among incidents reported by the Howard County Police Department. For information, call 410-313-2236.

CLARKSVILLE AREA

THEFTS/BREAK-INS

Clarksville Pike, 2100 block, 7:28 a.m. May 30. Brake pads and rotors were stolen from a business.

COLUMBIA AREA

ROBBERIES

Quiet Times, 6200 block, 10:30 p.m. May 28. Four people stole food from a delivery vehicle.

Robert Oliver Pl., 5800 block, 5:35 p.m. May 25. Three males assaulted a male youth and stole his phone.

Talisman Lane, 7100 block, 1:45 a.m. May 26. Three males, whose faces were partially covered, kicked in a front door at a home, stole cellphones and keys, and fled.

THEFTS/BREAK-INS

Guilford Rd., 8600 block, 9:27 a.m. May 28. A business was entered; nothing was reported stolen.

Murray Hill Rd., 7600 block, 5:06 a.m. May 26. A front door was broken at a business; nothing was reported stolen.

MOTOR VEHICLE THEFTS

Windstream Dr., 10100 block, 6:37 p.m. May 27. A 2014 Honda Accord was stolen.

WEAPONS

Keepsake Way, 9400 block, 12:05 a.m. May 28. A window at a home was shattered by a bullet.

ELKRIDGE AREA

ROBBERIES

Quidditch Lane, 7800 block, 9:15 p.m. May 31. During a meeting to sell a cellphone, three males assaulted a male youth, stole his cellphone, wallet and belt, and fled.

THEFTS/BREAK-INS

Furnace Ave., 5700 block, 9 a.m. May 29. A business was entered; nothing was reported stolen.

MOTOR VEHICLE THEFTS

Dorsey Run Rd., 7100 block, 12:11 p.m. May 26. A 2005 Honda Accord was stolen.

ELLICOTT CITY AREA

THEFTS/BREAK-INS

Baltimore National Pike, 8500 block and 10100 block, May 26 to 30. Cash was stolen from three businesses.

Chevrolet Dr., 9000 block, May 26-30. Cash was stolen from two businesses, and an unsuccessful attempt to enter four other business was made.

Norberts Way, 3300 block, May 29 to 31. Cash was stolen from an office at a park.

MOTOR VEHICLE THEFTS

Four Quarter Rd., 8000 block, 11:17 a.m. May 27. A 2013 Infiniti SUV was stolen.

JESSUP AREA

THEFTS/BREAK-INS

Guilford Rd., 9900 block, 9:48 p.m. May 30. A Honda CRF150F motorcycle was stolen.

LAUREL AREA

ROBBERIES

Washington Blvd., 9900 block, 11:45 a.m. May 25. An armed male in a motorcycle helmet stole prescription medication from a pharmacy.

THEFTS/BREAK-INS

Covered Wagon Dr., 9600 block, 9 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. May 18. A door was kicked in at a home; entry was not gained.

Mary Lee Lane, 8300 block, 7:50 a.m. to 6 p.m. May 31. A laptop and video game system were stolen from a home.

MARRIOTTSVILLE AREA

THEFTS/BREAK-INS

Dovedale Ct., 11200 block, 11 a.m. May 29. A business was entered; nothing was reported stolen.

SAVAGE AREA

THEFTS/BREAK-INS

Washington Blvd., 10000 block, 6:21 p.m. May 29. A monitor was stolen from a business.

WEST FRIENDSHIP AREA

THEFTS/BREAK-INS

Danmark Dr., 3100 block, 8:29 a.m. May 29. Cash was stolen from two vehicles.
D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowsers campaign committee has been fined for taking campaign donations in excess of legal limits. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowsers campaign committee has been ordered to pay $13,000 in fines for taking campaign donations in excess of legal limits during her successful run for office three years ago.

Bowsers campaign kept over $11,000 in illegal contributions from 13 developers, contractors and Sanford Capital, a landlord that her administration has since been slow to fine for more than 1,000 housing-code violations.

The illegal contributions were first discovered in March by the nonprofit organization Public Citizen, which aims to limit the influence of money in politics. The D.C. Office of Campaign Finance had not said if it would investigate the allegations. However, late Tuesday it released documents saying several of the violations had been substantiated and that Bowsers team had already returned the excess money.

The fines come at an inopportune time for Bowser, highlighting her close ties to some of the citys largest developers and property managers as she has begun gearing up for a reelection fight in which displacement from gentrification will probably be a major theme in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods across the city.

[Watchdog calls for review of D.C. mayors campaign]

Some of the developers who contributed more than the legal limit to Bowser in 2014 were the same ones who went on to contribute to a political action committee that Bowsers allies set up but later abandoned during her first year in office amid criticism from council members that it was creating a perception of pay-to-play politics.

Public Citizen seized on the fines assessed to Bowser, who ran on a pledge of cleaning up city government, to press for campaign finance reform.

D.C. Attorney General Karl A. Racine, a possible challenger to Bowser, has introduced a bill that would preclude any company that makes a campaign donation from seeking a contract with the District government for at least a year afterward. Bowser has been lukewarm to the proposal.

The councils judiciary committee is scheduled to begin debating that and other campaign-finance reforms in July  probably too late to affect how campaigns raise or report money in next years mayoral election.

Bill Lightfoot, Bowsers former campaign chairman, called the excess campaign contributions mistakes and said the mayor was accepting responsibility and would not appeal the fines. We admit it, Lightfoot said, and were moving on.

But Public Citizen called on the mayor to apologize to voters personally and said the violations raise questions about her fundraising apparatus, led by the mayors longtime campaign treasurer, Ben Soto.

The fines marked the second time in as many months that Soto was in charge of a campaign fined by the Office of Campaign Finance. Soto was also the treasurer for the 2015 special-election campaign to elect Brandon T. Todd, Bowsers hand-picked successor to take her seat on the D.C. Council.

The Districts election regulator said last month that Todd has been unable to produce canceled checks or other evidence to prove the origin of over $85,000 in campaign contributions deposited in his account. It fined Todd $5,100, a fraction of what watchdog groups said was appropriate.

The Office of Campaign Finance also charged Bowser half of the fine that it could have under city statutes. The director of the agency cited Bowsers cooperation and quick work to return excess money for lowering the fines. But at $13,000, Bowser has the unwelcomed distinction of having been fined a larger amount than the $10,000 levied for unreported contributions and expenditures by her predecessor, former mayor Vincent C. Gray, who may also seek a rematch with Bowser.

Bowser has yet to apologize to the public for taking illegal money  thats the minimum we should expect, said Aquene Freechild, a co-director of Public Citizens Democracy Is For People campaign. Our elected officials should be the first to obey the laws they enact and sign.

Because of the way OCF chose to levy fines against Bowsers campaign, she has been allowed to fundraise to cover the expense of returning the excess donations, as well as to cover the fine amount. Lightfoot said fundraising is more than halfway done, with about $9,000 in donations still needed for Bowser to cover the fine.
A Maryland state senator who plans to seek the Democratic gubernatorial nomination has accused Gov. Larry Hogan (R) of demagoguing Marylands immigrant residents in a recent fundraising letter.

Sen. Richard S. Madaleno Jr. (D-Montgomery County) said he was deeply disappointed that Hogans campaign would use Trump tactics of dividing our communities and scapegoating immigrants to solicit contributions for his reelection.

Hogan sent a letter late last month that largely touts his work on the budget, reducing fees and doing away with regulations. Toward the end, Hogan, who is seeking to become the first GOP governor elected to a second term in Maryland since the 1950s, writes that he is reaching out to committed commonsense conservatives to help him achieve that goal.

You have the states most loyal activists and I could really use your help, the letter reads. Will you please do me the honor of joining my team to . . . help me push back against a far left agenda and the worst instincts of an increasingly liberal and out of touch state legislature?

[Read Hogans fundraising letter]

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R). (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post)

The governor accuses Democrats, who control the state legislature, of trying to make our state a safe haven for criminals here illegally. He then takes aim at the Trust Act, a bill that died this year in the Senate but would have limited police cooperation with federal immigration-enforcement efforts.

The rule of law must come first and we will do whatever we can to stop any so-called sanctuary bill that would limit how jails and police could assist federal authorities, the letter reads.

A Washington Post-University of Maryland poll in March found that a majority of state residents do not believe increased local involvement in deportations would improve compliance with federal immigration laws.

In an interview, Madaleno said Hogan is using the same page and language that Donald Trump did in opposing sanctuary jurisdictions. This is the real Larry Hogan, he said.

Andrew Brightwell, a spokesman for Hogans campaign, declined to respond directly to Madalenos criticism, saying in a email that the governors position opposing sanctuary cities and supporting the rule of law is well-established.
County Council member George L. Leventhal (D-At Large) is running for county executive and seeking public matching funds under the countys new campaign-finance system. (Neal Schlosburg)

The 2018 primary is still a year away, but 17 candidates have declared their interest in qualifying for matching public funds in Montgomery County, an early sign that a new campaign finance law may be changing politics in the states largest jurisdiction.

The rigorous requirements of the fledgling program force candidates to practice a different kind of retail politics and seek individual donations of no more than $150 rather than higher-dollar contributions from corporate political action committees, unions or wealthy individuals.

Some lesser-known candidates say they could never have competed under the old system, where giving was dominated by developers and others connected to the real estate industry. At the same time, predictions that the new law would prompt more Republicans to run in the heavily Democratic county have not come to pass.

This is an experiment in democracy, said longtime County Council member George L. Leventhal (D-At Large), who is running for county executive and has turned to social media and house parties to collect the 500 donations he needs to qualify for matching funds.

I dont mind saying that when you are looking for campaign support in chunks of $1,000 or more, you spend a lot of time with millionaires, Leventhal said. What Im finding now is that to get to 500, Ive spent most of my time with ordinary working people.

Danielle Meitiv is running for Montgomery County Council and seeking matching funds from the countys new campaign-finance program. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)

The Montgomery names on file with the Maryland Board of Elections are a mix of incumbents, first-time candidates and longtime aspirants to public office. Many are seeking four council seats being vacated because of the countys new term-limits law.

In addition to Leventhal, the county executive candidates who say they will seek matching funds include Council member Marc Elrich (D-At Large) and Republican attorney Robin Ficker. Ficker, who is unopposed so far, cannot collect matching funds for the primary unless he has competition. The filing deadline is Feb. 27.

Another county executive candidate, Council President Roger Berliner (D-Potomac-Bethesda), who scheduled his formal announcement for Wednesday evening, has not yet said whether he will pursue matching funds.

Thirteen states  including Maryland  and a handful of localities have some form of public financing for elections. Howard County on Monday approved its own system, which is similar to Montgomerys and will take effect for the 2022 election cycle.

Montgomerys law caps individual contributions at $150 and bars money from corporate PACs and unions. Instead, eligible candidates for County Council and county executive can get taxpayer dollars added to their small individual donations.

The first $50 from each donor is matched at the highest ratio: 6-to-1 for an executive candidate and 4-to-1 for a council contender. A candidate for county executive could collect up to $750,000 in public funds for a primary campaign, while a council hopeful could be awarded up to $450,000.

It is not likely that all of those seeking matching funds will qualify. To become eligible, executive candidates must collect at least 500 individual contributions totaling $40,000. At-large council contenders need at least 250 donations for $20,000, and those chasing district council seats need to raise $10,000 with a minimum of 125 donations.

Its really hard. Its a lot more asking, said Elrich, who has scheduled a round of fundraisers and mailings. He said he was nearing the 500-donor threshold and is hoping to collect up to $150,000 from the county treasury sometime next month.

Leventhal, who like Elrich is term-limited, said the paperwork can be cumbersome. Each individual contribution must come with a signed affidavit from the donor affirming that he or she lives in Montgomery. But Leventhal said the labor-intensive process is a welcome change from the old status quo.

The county set aside $11 million for matching funds in the budget that takes effect July 1  an amount intended to cover both the primary and general elections. If all 17 candidates who so far have said they will seek matching funds qualified for their maximum public dollars, the total would come to a little over $4.8 million for the primary alone. Other contenders will almost certainly emerge, and the council could add more money to the system during next years budget cycle.

Some candidates seeking to qualify said they would be running regardless of the new system. But Wheaton activist Brandy Brooks said it has opened a new opportunity.

Its really made me feel like fundraising for this race is possible, said Brooks, 40, a first-time candidate who is seeking one of the three open at-large council seats. It didnt have to be a barrier to taking on this new role.

Other at-large council candidates hoping for matching funds include Danielle Meitiv, the Silver Spring free-range mom whose decision to let her two children, ages 10 and 6, walk home from a park sparked an investigation by authorities that in turn triggered a national uproar; incumbent Hans Riemer (D-At Large); Bill Conway, a retired Potomac attorney who has been active in county politics for years; and Rockville accountant Richard Gottfried.

District candidates include Bethesda attorney Reggie Oldak, a former Berliner aide who is running for his District 1 seat, and Nancy Navarro (D-Mid-County).

Although some proponents of matching funds said it would encourage more GOP candidates, only two have expressed interest in qualifying: Ficker and District 2 candidate Edward Amatetti.

Republican candidates dont feel they will be able to get across the bar, said county party chairman Dick Jurgena. Its early. Were trying to get candidates to come out.
Andrea Bray, seen at her shop in Silver Spring, Md., in 2002, said that a hat gives you a feeling that you are heads above the rest. (Lois Raimondo/The Washington Post)

Andrea Bray, a broadcast journalist and milliner who as the proprietor of Andreas Fine Hats in Silver Spring, Md., specialized in elaborate headwear for churchgoing black women, died May 3 at a hospice center in Rockville, Md. She was 74.

The cause was cancer, said her daughter, Bethany Smith.

For the last 25 years of her life, Mrs. Bray combined her avocation and vocation into an operation that she described as being all about looking fabulous.

A hat designates status, position in the community and lifestyle, she told The Washington Post in 2002. It bespeaks who you are. A hat gives you a feeling that you are heads above the rest. You dont even have to say a word.

At her shop, Mrs. Bray and her designers created and sold hats for women and men for a variety of occasions, including horse races such as the Preakness. But her hats were especially for African American women in church, and even more especially for Easter Sunday.

Andrea Jean Griffin was born in Pittsburgh on July 14, 1942. Her father was a steelworker and her mother a homemaker. She attended the University of Pittsburgh and what then was the Hampton Institute (now Hampton University) in Virginia.

In 1964, she married a childhood friend, Anderson Bray. Besides her husband, of Silver Spring, survivors include her daughter, of Palm Springs, Calif.; a son, A. Thomas Bray Jr. of Silver Spring; and five grandchildren.

As a young woman, Mrs. Bray was a broadcast journalist in Pittsburgh before moving to the Washington area in 1977. She worked for several outlets, including WRC, WTOP, WDJY and WPFW-FM.

She also was a self-described fashionista with a special love for hats.

These hats are not for amateurs, who buy a bonnet but one time a year, a Washington Post reporter observed in 2002, noting that they were towering creations of tulle and straw and rhinestones, topped with outrageous fountains of ostrich feathers or explosions of silk posies.

These hats are for professionals, The Post added, the women who had the handyman build a special closet to hold the hatboxes.

With such hats there came an etiquette that allowed for no deviations. Once on the head, the hat should never be touched. And even if the spirit overcomes you, Mrs. Bray said, the hat never leaves the head.

For two hatted women to kiss, heads had to be cocked at opposing angles to allow the exchange beneath the wide brims of the hats.

Not surprisingly, the competition among the more elaborately hatted women can be intense, and not altogether loving, Mrs. Bray said. Some of her customers, she said, would not pass her business cards around at their churches, not wanting to disclose the source of their headwear.

It may not be a very Christian thing to do, she told The Post, but its a very lady thing to do.
Fire boat response crews battle the blazing remnants of the off shore oil rig Deepwater Horizon, off Louisiana, in 2010. (U.S. Coast Guard/Reuters)

Donald J. Vidrine, who faced federal prosecution as one of two BP supervisors on the Deepwater Horizon when the drilling rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, killing 11 rig workers and causing the nations worst offshore oil spill, died June 3 at his home in Baton Rouge. He was 69.

Robert Habans, an attorney who defended Mr. Vidrine against federal manslaughter charges in the deaths of the rig workers, confirmed the death. An obituary posted online by Martin & Castille Funeral Home in Louisiana said the cause was cancer.

The deadly rig explosion off Louisianas coast unleashed an estimated 134 million gallons of crude spewing into the gulf over the course of nearly three months.

Mr. Vidrine and fellow rig supervisor Robert Kaluza were indicted in 2012 on manslaughter charges, but the case eventually fizzled after a judge threw out some of the manslaughter charges and prosecutors elected to drop the rest.

Mr. Vidrine pleaded guilty in December 2015 to a misdemeanor pollution charge and was sentenced to 10 months of probation. A jury acquitted Kaluza after a trial in which Mr. Vidrine testified as a government witness.

Donald Vidrine in 2016. (Max Becherer/AP)

Federal prosecutors accused the two BP well site leaders of botching a key safety test and disregarding abnormally high pressure readings indicating signs of trouble ahead of BPs well blowout in April 2010.

Defense attorneys cast the supervisors as scapegoats. Investigations by industry experts and regulators blamed the deadly disaster on a complex web of mistakes by multiple companies and individuals.

A prosecutor who questioned Mr. Vidrine during Kaluzas trial asked him whether he did something wrong on the night of the explosion.

I probably didnt press hard enough, Mr. Vidrine testified, according to a transcript. I mean, I thought I had, but I probably didnt press hard enough to get more information or questioned some of the information I got.

The Justice Department launched a sweeping and costly criminal investigation after the rig explosion. The government secured a landmark criminal settlement with BP and record civil penalties against the London-based oil giant.

But none of BPs onshore engineers or top executives faced criminal charges. And the charges against four BP employees unraveled before skeptical jurors and judges, resulting in acquittals or plea bargains involving lesser crimes and no prison time.

Donald Joseph Vidrine was born in Ville Platte, La., on Oct. 17, 1947. He graduated in 1970 from McNeese State University in Lake Charles, La., and began his career as an offshore oil field supervisor.

Survivors include his wife of 48 years, Jacqueline Lafleur Vidrine; a son, Kevin Vidrine; two sisters; and three granddaughters.

In Deepwater Horizon, a 2016 action movie about the disaster, John Malkovich portrayed Mr. Vidrine.
Jack ONeill in 1982, suiting up in one of the wet suits that he helped popularize through the company ONeill. (Dan Coyro/Santa Cruz Sentinel via AP)

When Jack ONeill began surfing in San Francisco in the early 1950s, taking off during his lunch hour to plunge into the frigid, fog-covered waters of Ocean Beach with a balsa-wood board, he wore little more than a pair of bun-hugger swim trunks. On days when the sea dropped below 50 degrees, he donned a womans bathing cap and a pair of custom trunks lined with foam vinyl for insulation.

Mr. ONeill, who died June 2 at 94, reveled in the thick-skinned culture of surfings postwar years, when he and his fellow watermen paddled until their skin turned blue and burned tires on the beach to warm up before heading back to work. But perhaps more than anyone else, he also helped to usher in a new era for the sport, one in which surfers from Malibu to Madeira can paddle for hours with little regard for the weather.

With the wet suit, a snug-fitting neoprene outfit that Mr. ONeill popularized through a company that bears his name, he made surfing accessible to the many beachgoers who resist dipping a toe in chilly waters, let alone riding a board through strong winds.

The wet suit itself got many more people in the water than any surfboard design in history, said surfing historian Matt Warshaw. You cant surf if youre purple and shivering.

Mr. ONeill, who for many years cultivated a piratical image by wearing an eye patch and sporting a well-salted, Hemingwayesque beard, was not the principal inventor of the wet suit. According to most accounts, including Warshaws Encyclopedia of Surfing, credit goes to Hugh Bradner, a physicist who worked on nuclear weapons as part of the Manhattan Project. In 1951, Bradner devised a rubber garment that promised to help Navy frogmen stay warm during their dives.

Mr. O'Neill lost vision in his left eye after a surfing accident in 1971. (Dan Coyro/AP)

One year later, a surfer named Bev Morgan began applying Bradners design for recreational use, making neoprene wet suits for scuba divers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif.

Yet it is Mr. ONeill who retains a singular identification with the outfit, in large part because of a marketing savvy that has helped his ONeill wet-suit company become the largest wet-suit manufacturer in the world. Run by Mr. ONeills son Pat since 1985, the business now claims to manufacture about 60 percent of the worlds wet suits.

In a statement, the company said Mr. ONeill died at his seaside home in Santa Cruz, Calif., where he had installed an indoor trampoline and porthole windows in the basement. No cause of death was disclosed.

He had sold windows, skylights and parking meters before turning to surf gear in 1952, founding a store called the Surf Shop inside a San Francisco garage. Wet suits were at first an afterthought: All my friends said, ONeill, you will sell to five friends on the beach and then you will be out of business,  he once recalled.

Yet the neoprene vests and suits, which he said he was inspired to make after spotting the material on the floor of a DC-3 passenger plane, started to catch on after Mr. ONeill began laminating a layer of nylon to the inside of the rubber. The adjustment made them more durable and more comfortable, prompting a now-ubiquitous company slogan: Its always summer on the inside.

Mr. ONeills marketing flair extended to trade shows, in which his children demonstrated the effectiveness of the wet suit by frolicking in tanks of ice water, and to everyday outings near the companys headquarters in Santa Cruz. He raced across beaches in a land yacht, a type of wind-powered vehicle that he piloted himself and whose sail advertised his companys shops. And he purchased a 65-foot catamaran to use as an aircraft carrier, allowing him to pilot and land hot-air balloons at sea.

When he lost vision in his left eye following a surfing accident in 1971, Mr. ONeill embraced the resulting eye patch, using a likeness of his bearded, one-eyed face as a company logo. The injury was in part a result of another family invention, the surf leash, which Pat ONeill had helped create one year earlier; when Mr. ONeill lost his balance and fell off his board, which was attached to an ankle by his surf leash, the board bounced back and struck him in the eye.

Although the sale of wet suits made Mr. ONeill a multimillionaire, he at times seemed to resent his businesss success, which caused many of his favorite beaches to become crowded and sometimes kept him away from the water for extended intervals.

The business just takes too much time, he told Surfer magazine in 1972. Theres too much paperwork and talking to bankers. If I had it to do over again, I think I might stay with commercial fishing.

Mr. ONeill was born in Denver on March 27, 1923, and grew up in Long Beach, Calif., where he learned to body surf at the citys horseshoe-shaped Rainbow Pier.

He served in the Navy during World War II, and in 1949 he received a bachelors degree in business administration from the University of Portland in Oregon.

With his wife, the former Marjorie Bennett, he moved to San Francisco in the early 1950s. She died in 1972, and a son, Mike, died in 2012. Survivors include his wife Noriko; six children from his first marriage, Cathi, Bridget, Shawne, Pat, Tim and Jack Jr.; and six grandchildren.

Mr. ONeill relocated to Santa Cruz in 1959, drawn by the promise of better waves and warmer waters. He remained in the city for the rest of his life and in 1996 created ONeill Sea Odyssey, an environmental organization that has introduced nearly 100,000 grade-school students to marine science and ecology. The programs highlight is a trip aboard Mr. ONeills old aircraft carrier, now without balloons, to explore the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary.

The ocean is alive and weve got to take care of it, Mr. ONeill once said. Theres no doubt in my mind that the ONeill Sea Odyssey is the best thing Ive ever done.

Correction: An earlier version of this obituary incorrectly said that Jack ONeills seaside home was in Santa Barbara, Calif.
A Fairfax County firefighter suffered minor injuries Wednesday while battling in a blaze at a townhouse in Reston.

The fire broke out Wednesday morning in the 1600 block of Greenbriar Court. It reached two alarms. It took crews about 20 minutes to extinguish the fire.

The firefighter fell through the first floor of the home into the basement, according to Battalion Chief Willie F. Bailey, a spokesman with the department. He said the firefighter was taken to a hospital but later released.

An initial investigation found that the fire was electrical in nature and was likely started by a light above the basement ceiling, according to Bailey.

There was no immediate estimate of how much monetary damage the fire had caused.
Mohamad Khweis, 27, of Alexandria, Va., was found guilty of supporting terrorism. His sentencing is scheduled for Oct. 13. (Associated Press)

An Alexandria, Va., man who in 2015 quit his job as a Metro Access bus driver and traveled to Islamic State territory has been found guilty of supporting terrorism.

Mohamad Khweis, 27, was captured in northwestern Iraq last March by Kurdish forces, surprising American counterterrorism officials. He had no known record of extremism and was on no law enforcement radar; he made his way from Fairfax County to Syria undetected.

Khweis voluntarily chose to join the ranks of a designated foreign terrorist organization, and that is a federal crime, even if you get scared and decide to leave, Dana Boente, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said in a statement.

Khweis insisted he was not in league with the terrorist group. He went to trial in federal court in Alexandria and testified in his own defense, saying he wanted only to see the situation in Syria with his own eyes. He was convicted Wednesday of providing and conspiring to provide material support to the terrorist group, along with firearm possession in connection with those crimes.

It was very stupid, defense attorney John Zwerling said in closing arguments. His client, he argued, was a little off and childlike . . . the kind of person who could and did think that Islamic State supporters would smuggle him into Syria and then let him explore on his own.

Instead, Khweis testified that he was essentially forced from safe house to safe house, where he saw and heard about Islamic State fighters but did little himself.

He had to play along, Zwerling argued.

Khweis made that point fairly clearly in his testimony, but even on uncontested details he was inconsistent and self-serving. When being questioned by his own attorney Khweis appeared easily confused, struggling to follow questions and saying at one point that he had zoned out.

Though defense attorneys never disputed that a Twitter account he created with the name IAgreenbirdIA referenced jihadism, Khweis testified first that he was inspired by Twitters blue bird and then that martyrdom could be nonviolent. He also claimed he had downloaded multiple encryption apps to his phone, not to hide his movements and conversations abroad, but out of fear of getting hacked.

Likewise, he said he made a new email account only because he had forgotten his old password. He suggested he burned his laptop and two of his five cellphones before escaping an Islamic State safe house because he did not want his personal information, such as his credit score, falling into terrorist hands.

He said he spent much of his 10 weeks with the Islamic State suffering from a stomach illness, but there was no record that he told that to the FBI agents who questioned him in Erbil, Iraq.

Khweis blamed his own past lies, including his initial claim that he was in Iraq because he was dating a local woman, on his fear of Kurdish authorities.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Dennis Fitzpatrick, in his closing arguments, called the testimony a word salad and nonsense. He suggested that Khweis was distorting the facts just as the Islamic State distorts the Muslim religion.

The jihadist mind has a tortured relationship with the truth, Fitzpatrick said. Human beings have a breathtaking ability to rationalize their own bad conduct.

Zwerling countered that, because much of the case rested on Khweiss own admissions to the FBI, the young mans own unreliability should exonerate him.

You cannot find Mohamad Khweis guilty because you cannot believe Mohamad Khweis, he argued. It was in his interest to exaggerate in Erbil and to mitigate here.

There were records that confirmed Khweiss involvement with terrorists, including an Islamic State intake form found by Iraqi Army forces in Mosul earlier this year. Prosecutors also pointed to flight purchases showing his irregular path from Baltimore to Turkey via one-way plane tickets, Twitter records of his conversations with Islamic State supporters, and data from his phone proving that he had looked at violent pro-jihad content.

On the stand, Khweis said he was drunk in Istanbul when looking at those photos and could not recall many.

Clearly, Khweis had researched the Islamic State and wanted to get into Syria undetected, Zwerling said. But he argued that if Khweis was truly in cahoots with the terrorist group, they could have snuck him back into the United States.

Nobody, knew he was there, Zwerling pointed out. Instead, Khweis fled and offered authorities information about the radicals he had met.

But jurors sided with prosecutors, who found Khweiss motivations incredible. His sentencing is set for Oct. 13.

No one joins an organization like the Islamic State, that is renowned for its terror, its lethality, its brutality, just to check it out, Raj Parekh, a Justice Department trial attorney, said in closing arguments. This is not a tourist destination; this is not an amusement park . . . He knew exactly what he was getting himself into.
Sonya Spoon, 26, had suffered from mental health problems before killing her son, 1, and daughter, 3. (Prince Georges County Police/AP)

About four days after police took Sonya Spoon for an emergency mental health evaluation because she had threatened to kill herself and her daughter, doctors said she had been treated and prescribed antidepressants and was ready for release from the hospital.

But Spoons mother pleaded with medical professionals to keep her daughter.

There is no change, Pavi Spoon recalled telling hospital staff as she raised objections. Shes in a state of mind that had me commit her in the first place.

Thirty-six hours later, Spoon wrapped her young childrens heads with plastic bags and duct tape and suffocated them before attempting suicide.

On Wednesday, she was sentenced to 45 years in prison on two counts of second-degree murder in the 2014 deaths of her daughter and son  Kayla Thompson, 3, and Ayden Spoon, 1.

I dont know exactly whats wrong with me, Spoon said in an apology during her sentencing hearing. What I did was horribly wrong. I wasnt well and couldnt see clearly what was going on.

The case culminated in the unthinkable, said Prince Georges County States Attorney Angela Alsobrooks. The children were in the hands of their mother, who had mental health problems. A man who had been convicted of child abuse was seeking custody of one of the pair. And a gaping loophole in state law left child welfare unaware of Spoons threats.

The saddest aspect of this case is that these two babies . . . they never had a chance, Alsobrooks said.

[Mother charged with murder in deaths of 2 children in Cheverly, Maryland]

Susan Fiester, a Maryland psychiatrist, said in court that Spoon had several problems that prevented her from thinking clearly the day she killed her children. Spoon suffered from attachment disorder after being abandoned as a 4-month-old by her Russian parents who went to a New Years party and left her in the familys apartment.

After three years in an orphanage and an adoption by American parents, Spoon sustained a traumatic brain injury in a car crash at the age of 18. And after the birth of her children, she was drawn into a custody battle with the father of her daughter while dealing with postpartum depression.

It was the prospect of losing custody of her daughter to a man that was abusive that caused Spoon to panic, Fiester testified.

She was so distraught, and the depression became so severe that she actually became suicidal, Fiester said.

Spoon crumbled emotionally, prompting her mother to call police to take Spoon in for an emergency mental evaluation. After her short commitment, medical professionals released her, saying her antidepressants soon would make her feel better.

Less than two days later, Spoon killed her children.

The significant thing here is Sonya has been abandoned twice in her life, Pavi Spoon said. At 4 months by her biological parents and at 25 by medical health caregivers.

[Authorities release 911 tapes in childrens suffocation case in Cheverly, Md.]

Prince George's County Circuit Court Judge Lawrence V. Hill said while he believed Spoon is remorseful and endured unfortunate circumstances, she still was responsible for her actions.

I had a pang of nausea when I heard what happened, Hill said about the way in which the children died.

Hill also questioned why Spoon did not frantically try to remove the bags from her childrens heads after coming to her senses and abandoning her suicide attempt. Spoon had taped a plastic bag around her own head and duct-taped her hands, but went running to her mother to free her before rushing to get help for her two children.

Her reaction was selfish, said Hill, who gave Spoon the option of serving her sentence at the Patuxent Institution, a prison that offers inmates mental health services.

At the time of her hospital release in 2014, Spoon was discharged without child welfare officials knowing of the threats she had aimed at her children. Maryland law does not require law enforcement or medical professionals to report threats against children  only suspected neglect or abuse.

Prince Georges County officials have tried to change state law for the past three years to require social workers, medical professionals and police to report verbal threats of imminent severe bodily harm or death to a child, but the legislation has never received enough backing from politicians to make a change.

Spoons case represents a failing of the mental health and criminal justice systems, said her lawyer, Mirriam Seddiq. We have a crisis of not being able to handle mental health issues in this country.

Spoon was not ill enough to be declared incompetent at trial, Seddiq said, but was not a hardened criminal who would deserve to serve life without parole.

Its all or nothing, Seddiq said.
A U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officer stands on a bridge at a port of entry between Mexico and United States in McAllen, Tex., on May 10, 2017. (Carlos Barria/Reuters)

The House voted 282 to 137 Wednesday in favor of a bill that would allow U.S. Customs and Border Protection to waive a mandatory lie-detector test for applicants from law enforcement or the military, raising alarms that the move will weaken standards at the agency.

Supporters argued that the bill would relieve chronic staffing shortages at CBP, which guards the nations ports and borders, and it follows calls from President Trump to beef up border security. But immigrant advocates expressed fear that the measure will lead to corruption and abuse.

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said on the House floor that the agency is stretched thin, with 1,800 vacancies in the Border Patrol and 1,000 in customs, and needs to hire more quickly.

We must make sure we have an adequate force to protect our borders, McCaul said. This should not be a partisan issue.

The bill would allow the CBP commissioner to waive a polygraph in the case of a full-time state or local law enforcement officer who has passed the test during the prior 10 years, among other requirements. Federal law enforcement and military members or veterans may also skip the test if they have undergone certain background checks or security clearances.

Critics worried that waiving polygraph tests  even for experienced military and law enforcement officers  risks having problem candidates slip through. CBP is still recovering from allegations of corruption and excessive use of force that led Congress to require polygraphs at the agency in 2010.

According to the Government Accountability Office, CBP reported that hundreds of employees were arrested for misconduct from fiscal 2005 to 2012, although the agency said it was a tiny share of its overall workforce.But more than 140 current or former workers were arrested on corruption charges, including immigrant and drug smuggling, and 125 were convicted as of 2012.

Others fear that the bill aims to subvert the agencys high polygraph failure rate. More than 60 percent of CBPs applicants fail the test, according to CBP.

Acting CBP commissioner Kevin K. McAleenan has vowed to maintain hiring standards and said the agency will continue to use the polygraph for other applicants.

Some Democrats were divided over the bill Wednesday, including in the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, which has been an outspoken critic of Trumps immigration policies.

Reps. Filemon Vela, Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez, all Democrats from border regions in Texas, spoke in favor of the bill.

Vela said it is unfair to taint all of CBP because of a few rogue agents  just as, he said, it was unfair of Trump to suggest that all Mexican immigrants are criminals.

This bill simply grants CBP limited authority to waive a single step, Vela said.

But Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (D-Ill.) said his colleagues were aiding Trumps fantasy of a mass deportation force.

You cannot spin it any other way, he said.

Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-N.M.), caucus chairwoman, proposed an amendment that would have delayed implementing the bill until CBP completed a pilot program using an alternative polygraph test and the Homeland Security Inspector General determined that the bill would not endanger national security. Her amendment failed.

We shouldnt blindly experiment with our nations security, she said.

A similar bill is pending in the Senate and is generating debate. Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) has urged colleagues to take a measured approach.

Now is not the time to in any way to loosen hiring standards, she said.
Calvert County

These were among reports received by the Calvert County Sheriffs Office and the Maryland State Police. Anyone with information about these crimes is asked to call the Criminal Investigation Division at 410-535-2800 or 301-855-1194, the Crime Solvers line at 410-535-2880 or the state police Prince Frederick Barrack at 410-535-1400.

LUSBY AREA

MOTOR VEHICLE THEFTS

Route 4, 1:25 p.m. May 28. A 2013 gray Dodge Dart was stolen from the side of the road after it had become disabled.

PRINCE FREDERICK AREA

THEFTS/BREAK-INS

Cassell Blvd., 9:56 a.m. May 17. A license plate was removed from a vehicle.

Charles County

These were among reports received by the Charles County Sheriffs Office and the Maryland State Police. For information, call 301-932-2222 or 301-870-3232. The website ccso.us has crime statistics and information on crime prevention programs.

REWARDS FOR INFORMATION

Crime Solvers will pay a reward for information leading to an arrest and indictment. The 24-hour hotline is 866-411-8477. Callers may remain anonymous.

BRYANS ROAD AREA

ROBBERIES

Marshall Hall Rd., 3100 block, 1:53 p.m. May 29. An armed male stole coats and a cellphone from four male youths.

LA PLATA AREA

THEFTS/BREAK-INS

Crain Hwy., 7500 block, 3:09 a.m. June. Cash and food were stolen from a restaurant.

Penns Hill Rd., 9000 block, 8:27 p.m. May 27. Two men were found in a van that was stuck in mud at a house under construction. The men had been seen in the houses detached garage. Two La Plata men, 22 and 24, were charged with burglary and trespassing.

WALDORF AREA

THEFTS/BREAK-INS

Crain Hwy., 2000 block, 1:20 a.m. June 1. A drive-through window at a doughnut shop was pried open. Two people entered the business and left through the doors.

Gleneagles, 8 p.m. May 29 to 9 a.m. May 30. Property was stolen from several unlocked vehicles.

St. Marys County

These w ere among reports received by the St. Marys County Sheriffs Office and the Maryland State Police. For information, call 301-475-8008. To submit a tip, call Crime Solvers at 301-475-3333. The Leonardtown Barrack of the state police has an anonymous tip line at 301-475-2936.

BUSHWOOD AREA

ASSAULTS

Mill Creek Dr., May 24. During an argument, a woman slammed a barstool into a door. When the stool broke, a piece hit an acquaintance in the forehead. A Bushwood woman, 22, was charged with second-degree assault and malicious destruction of property.

GREAT MILLS AREA

VANDALISM

Jay Dee Ct., May 24. Someone shot a moving vehicles window with a BB pellet.

LEONARDTOWN AREA

ASSAULTS

Leonardtown, May 22. During an argument, two inmates assaulted each other at a detention center. A Lebanon, Pa., man, 38, and a Waldorf man, 37, were charged with second-degree assault and assault on a corrections department employee.

Leonardtown, May 24. An inmate at a detention center hit another inmate in the back of the head with his food tray. A California man, 25, was charged with second-degree assault on a corrections department inmate.

Leonardtown, May 11. During an argument, a man used a folding knife to stab an acquaintance. A Mechanicsville man, 26, was charged with first- and second-degree assault and carrying a dangerous and concealed weapon.

LEXINGTON PARK AREA

ASSAULTS

Yorktown Rd., May 22. During an argument, a man stabbed an acquaintance in the hand. A Lexington Park man, 25, was charged with first- and second-degree assault.

THEFTS/BREAK-INS

Carter Lane, May 25. A dirt bike was stolen.

Suburban Dr., 7 p.m. May 19. A lawn mower was stolen from a shed.

Windsor Dr., May 24. Property was stolen from a home.

MECHANICSVILLE AREA

DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY

Asher Rd., 4:30 p.m. May 22. A lawn was damaged by a vehicle driving across it repeatedly.

OAKVILLE AREA

THEFTS/BREAK-INS

Glenwood Pl., May 25. An attempt was made to break into a home.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haleys call for reform of the U.N. Human Rights Council was justified on the merits, but her attack on the council risked being counterproductive [A corrupt U.N. human rights council, op-ed, June 4]. She acknowledged that when the council focuses on human rights, it advances important causes. But her belligerent tone may alienate those who should be her allies in achieving reform.

As a U.N. body, the council will almost inevitably have some rights abusers. Strengthening the criteria for membership, reducing the importance of regional blocs and holding competitive elections to the council are highly desirable. Suspensions of rights-abusing members, as was once done with Libya, should be increased. The councils disproportionate criticism of Israel should cease, as Ms. Haley pointed out. The American Jewish Committees Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights has demonstrated that these and other game-changing reforms can be achieved only by active U.S. engagement. This is needed at the council, in the General Assembly, through U.S. embassies in the capitals of council member countries and through cooperation with civil society organizations at the council and around the world.

Human rights may not be a priority for the Trump administration in its bilateral relations, but the U.N. council offers significant opportunities to apply our values.

A. Edward Elmendorf, Washington

In her description of human rights violations by Venezuela, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley wrote that mothers are forced to dig through trash cans to feed their children. It is terrific that a member of the Trump administration recognizes that there is a human right to adequate food. Unfortunately, this right is apparently not recognized by the president, other members of his Cabinet and Republican senators who are intent on making serious cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly known as the Food Stamp Program) and other federal nutrition programs.

Ted Hochstadt, Falls Church
At a cafe a few blocks from the old KGB headquarters at Lubyanka Square, investigative journalist Andrei Soldatov tries to explain the murky world of Russian intelligence thats now the focus of a U.S. criminal investigation into the hacking of the 2016 campaign.

Big events in todays Russia often arent the product of broad strategy, argues Soldatov, but rather are tactical moves that reflect the personal interests of Vladimir Putin and his all-powerful presidential administration.

Soldatov thinks the Putin factor is crucial in understanding issues in the hacking investigation. Putin has a personal dislike of Hillary Clinton, and Russian intelligence had been gathering information about her since late summer 2015. But what may have pushed the Russian operation into a higher gear was the April 2016 publication of the so-called Panama Papers, which revealed secret bank accounts of some of Putins close friends and associates.

It was a personal attack, says Soldatov. You cannot write about Putins family or personal friends. He speculates that the Russian leader wanted to do something about it, to teach a lesson.

Putin denounced the Panama Papers as a deliberate effort by America to embarrass him. Officials and state agencies in the United States are behind all this, he charged in April 2016. They are used to holding a monopoly on the international stage and do not want to have to make way for anyone else. . . . Attempts are made to weaken us from within, make us more acquiescent and make us toe their line.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner denied at the time that the United States was in any way involved in the actual leak of these documents. But he confirmed that the U.S. Agency for International Development had supported the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, one of the media organizations involved in researching the Panama files. To the Russians, that was proof enough.

For Putin, the ex-KGB officer, nothing in the information arena is accidental. In a combative session last Friday at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, he rebuffed NBCs Megyn Kelly: As for independent sources, there is nothing independent in this world. When she pressed about Russian digital fingerprints in the hacking of the Democratic National Committee, he exploded: What fingerprints? Hoof prints? Horn prints?

The day before, Putin had said that patriotically minded Russian private hackers might have been involved in the operation. But by Friday, he was in full denial mode, suggesting that the CIA could have manufactured the whole thing: IP addresses can be simply made up. . . . There are such IT specialists in the world today, and they can arrange anything and then blame it on whoever.

Soldatov argues that Russian intelligence taps a network of private hackers, much as the CIA and National Security Agency use private contractors to develop offensive cyberweapons and zero-day exploits for malware. Although the [Russian] security and intelligence services have cyberwar capabilities, most of the actual strikes come through other channels, he wrote in a post last year on his website, Agentura.ru. He cited the example of a Russian technology company that allegedly was asked to help organize sensitive denial-of-service attacks.

The truth of what happened in the 2016 campaign will take many months to unravel, and theres a cloud of misinformation, fueled by Putin, President Trump and insatiable media coverage. Soldatov notes, for instance, that the famous dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele included unverifiable details and some confusion about facts. But Soldatov wrote in January for the Guardian that its also a good reflection of how things are run in the Kremlin  the mess at the level of decision-making and increasingly the outsourcing of operations.

To Russian eyes, all information is potential disinformation, and secrets are hidden from the public. As Putin scolded Kelly last Friday: A non-classified version means no version. The Russians regard American media claims of independence as bogus, and they see their own propaganda outlets competing on equal terms with global media companies.

Sputnik, for example, had its own booth at the St. Petersburg forum. The director of national intelligence described Sputnik in a Jan. 6 report as part of Russias state-run propaganda machine, but its brochures describe a media group publishing 2,000 news items a day in Russian, Arabic, Chinese, Spanish and English.

As the investigation of Russian hacking rolls forward, we shouldnt lose perspective: Russia isnt a demonic, all-powerful presence. Its a sophisticated, increasingly modern country. But its also the rare nation run by a former intelligence officer, who sees the world through a very particular lens.

Read more from David Ignatiuss archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.
SAUDIA ARABIA and other autocratic Sunni states have been at odds for years with the energy-rich emirate of Qatar, which hosts the largest U.S. air base in the Middle East. The explosion of those tensions into a diplomatic crisis this week threatens vital U.S. interests in the region, including the military campaign against the Islamic State. So its stunning, though perhaps not surprising, that President Trump is claiming credit for the blow-up.

Once again pulling the rug out from under his national security team, Mr. Trump on Tuesday tweeted that the diplomatic and economic boycott imposed on Qatar Monday by Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt was the result of his visit with the [Saudi] King . . . already paying off. When he spoke there against funding of Radical Ideology, the president wrote, Leaders pointed to Qatar. Apparently Mr. Trump swallowed their cynical accusations without question: Perhaps, he tweeted, the Qatar boycott will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism.

Where to start? Mr. Trumps intervention aligned the United States against a country that is currently hosting at least 10,000 U.S. military personnel at a base where operations against the Islamic State are being directed  a facility that was needed after Saudi Arabia ordered U.S. forces to leave its territory. In backing the Saudis, the president offered unconditional support for a country that has fostered the spread of Islamist extremism across the world and that has supplied many of the foot soldiers for the Islamic State and al-Qaeda  not to mention most of the 9/11 hijackers. He mixed the United States into a Middle Eastern feud that it should be trying to defuse  which is what the professionals at the State Department and Pentagon were trying to do before their boss jumped in.

In reality, neither side in this battle among dictatorships deserves full U.S. support. Qatar stands accused of cutting dirty deals with Iran and aiding al-Qaeda-linked rebel groups in Syria. But what really incenses its Sunni neighbors is its support for popular Islamist political movements such as Egypts Muslim Brotherhood, which pursued and won power by democratic means before being ousted in a bloody military coup. Qatars policy of keeping open relations with Iran while opposing Iranian aggression in Yemen and Syria was also U.S. policy until five months ago. It recognizes that the uncompromising sectarian conflict promoted by Saudi Arabia will never bring stability to the region.

The demands advanced by the Saudi coalition against their neighbor hardly seem to match U.S. priorities. They reportedly include the shutdown of media outlets such as Al Jazeera that have provided channels for dissident political views in the region , including supporters of democracy and human rights. Qatar is being told it must expel not just political representatives of Palestinian Hamas, who used Doha as a base for negotiations with the rival Fatah movement, but also Muslim Brotherhood figures fleeing Egypts bloody repression.

If successful in this showdown, the Middle Easts most reactionary rulers will have taken another step toward shutting down domestic political alternatives, whether moderate Islamists or liberal democrats, and blocking the rapprochement with Iran that ultimately will be needed to end the regions wars. Worst, they will have succeeded with the help of a U.S. president who seems not to comprehend American interests, nor how he is damaging them.
If only he would stop tweeting.

Those words came from a friend of mine named Jack, quite possibly President Trumps biggest fan. A former Secret Service agent, Jack is your typical die-hard Trump supporter.

That is to say, hes a white, Christian male, married with two kids. Hes honest, hard-working  a true-blue patriot, brave and loyal to the core. He and I are at political odds these days and argue frequently about Trump.

Yes, but is about all I can get out before Jack is off on a rollicking defense of the president, whom he finds utterly unobjectionable  except, that is, for those dadgum tweets.

What?! Yes, even Jack was appalled by Trumps tweets about London Mayor Sadiq Khan following the London terrorist attack. Hearing about them propelled Jack into a 40-minute tirade, he told me.

(Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

Maybe theres hope after all. The only hitch is that Jack thinks Trump would be fine if only hed stop blurting unfiltered thoughts on social media. (We probably differ on our definition of fine.)

The first of the tweets in question came the morning after the London incident. Trump cited the casualty numbers, then added: Mayor of London says there is no reason to be alarmed! 

Utterly wrong and false. Fake news, if you will.

What Khan had said was that Londoners shouldnt be alarmed by the increased police presence. Therein lie several magnitudes of difference. Thus, we infer, Trump either opted to be repugnantly antagonistic or was balefully misinformed. The latter might have been forgivable had Trump admitted as much. But no, instead, this childish man (or mannish child?) doubled down.

In a subsequent tweet, he wrote: Pathetic excuse by London Mayor Sadiq Khan who had to think fast on his no reason to be alarmed statement. MSM [mainstream media] is working hard to sell it.

One doesnt know whether to scream or scream louder.

Surely, even Trump cant believe that people are so gullible as to accept that the media, in reporting Khans complete quote rather than the abridged presidential version, are trying to put something over. But then, Trump doesnt have to believe it. He knows his fans will consume whatever he serves because they elected him, didnt they?

The bilious billionaire conned the nation  and people like Jack arent bothered.

The truth is, I dont care about anybody anymore, Jack says, referring to umbrage over Trumps more troubling policies, from the travel ban to the wall. I only care about our country.

About this, I have no doubt. An Iraq veteran and a physically imposing man who knows how to handle artillery, Jacks the guy you want in your bunker. Unlike most denizens of the Washington swamp, hes refreshingly without guile or artifice. And when he talks about love of country, I know hes not talking about raising a flag on the Fourth of July. Hes talking about putting his life on the line.

Thus, I take Jacks comments seriously and respectfully. I try to understand where hes coming from as I consider the disconnect between my view of this disastrous president and that of a bit more than one-third of the American people. How can we see things so differently?

In a word, he told me, Obama.

Whatever Trump is, former president Barack Obama is viewed by Jack and cohorts as having been far worse, enough so that nothing Trump does stylistically matters as much as what Obama did substantively. The deeds-over-words trope dovetails with Trump adviser Kellyanne Conways scolding of NBCs Today show anchors Monday. The media focus too much on what Trump tweets, she said, and not enough on what he does.

But words do matter, as Conway well knows. When youre the president, they matter profoundly. Trump cant pretend anymore that hes just ol Donald being himself. That this must be explained to him is concerning enough. More to the urgency of his Twitter obsession: If hes impulsive enough to toss off a gratuitous insult to a mayor grappling with catastrophe, what else might he be willing to say  and to whom?

So, yes, on one hand, Trump must stop tweeting. On the other, how else would we know how truly demented the man is? Luckily, its not too late to save the country, yet. But if Jack is worried about the presidents tweeting, it may be time for congressional Republicans to acknowledge what has long been obvious, declare the man incompetent and deliberate accordingly.

If not, you aint (even) got Jack.

Read more from Kathleen Parkers archive, follow her on Twitter or find her on Facebook.
PRESIDENT TRUMP sounded a bit like other newly arrived presidents on Monday when he complained on Twitter that Congress is holding up his appointments. Dems are taking forever to approve my people, including Ambassadors. They are nothing but OBSTRUCTIONISTS! Want approvals, he wrote. But if Mr. Trump really wants to understand the problem, he does not need to look all the way down Pennsylvania Avenue.

The fact is that while the Republican-controlled Senate is lagging, the main problem is that Mr. Trump is not nominating candidates for positions and has fallen seriously behind in staffing the governments top ranks. According to the nonpartisan White House Transition Project, which has studied historical trends and uses several different metrics, Mr. Trumps performance is the slowest in four decades on nominations, confirmations and standing up the critical leadership needed to run the country. At this point, the project reported, most administrations would have filled about 38 percent of the most critical positions in the government, but Mr. Trump has completed only about 14 percent. To see where the problem lies, look at the tracker maintained by The Post and the Partnership for Public Service, which shows that of 559 key positions requiring Senate confirmation, Mr. Trump has provided no nominee for 441, while 15 are awaiting nomination, 63 are formally nominated and 40 are confirmed. The biggest obstructionist is Mr. Trump.

For the relative few he has nominated, if Mr. Trump is so impatient with the Senate confirmation process, he should take it up with the members of his party who control the chamber. The White House Transition Project says the Senate has confirmed slightly less than half of Mr. Trumps nominees . If there is dysfunction or delay, it is disingenuous to always point the finger at Dems.

Politics aside, the U.S. government today is hollowed out in the executive service, and this could prove a serious disadvantage in a crisis. Mr. Trump fired the director of the FBI but hasnt come up with a replacement for James B. Comey. There is currently no presidentially appointed director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a bulwark against pandemic, nor a nominee for the assistant secretary of health and human services for preparedness and response, a key position to manage something such as another influenza outbreak. There are no U.S. attorneys to replace those forced out by Mr. Trump. Also alarming, Mr. Trump has yet to nominate a single assistant secretary of state for any region around the world, leaving in place acting officials who dont have the sway of presidential appointees.

By placing a premium on loyalty, Mr. Trump from the start excluded many skilled and talented people from serving. He clearly has not made it a priority to catch up.
President Trump, on his recent European trip, literally shoved aside Prime Minister Dusko Markovic of Montenegro in order to get to the front of a group of leaders. On Monday, Vice President Pence hosted the shoving victim at the White House, then praised Markovic publicly.

I had the privilege of welcoming the prime minister to the White House today, Pence said at an Atlantic Council dinner. I was very humbled to be able to share a few moments with him on the very day that Montenegro became a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

On that same European trip, Trump surprised his own aides and unsettled allies when he refused to affirm NATOs collective-defense obligations. On Monday night, Pence expressed his unwavering support: The United States is resolved, as we were at NATOs founding and in every hour since, to live by that principle that an attack on one of us is an attack on us all.

John Nance Garner, one of Franklin D. Roosevelts vice presidents, famously compared the office to a bucket of warm piss. For Pence, the vice presidency is a bucket of Clorox and a mop.

Tuesday morning found the vice president doing what he does frequently these days: cleaning up Trumps messes. Pence, speaking at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast, offered a soothing contrast to Trumps recent outbursts.

(The Washington Post)

Where Trump alienated allies and opened a dispute with the mayor of London, Pence vowed to continue to stand with our allies and praised our cherished ally, Britain. Where Trump has largely removed human rights from the agenda, Pence called for an America standing tall in the world again for our values and our ideals. Where Trump has stoked anti-Muslim sentiment, Pence asserted that under Trump, America will continue to condemn persecution of any faith at any place at any time.

Trump, at the National Prayer Breakfast earlier this year, told attendees to pray for Arnold Schwarzenegger and his Apprentice ratings. Pence aimed higher. Dont so much pray for a cause as for country, he said, paraphrasing Abraham Lincoln. Just pray for America.

Amen.

The contrast between the reckless president and his responsible understudy has me thinking, not for the first time, how much better things would be if Pence were president. Trump shows no ability to correct course, to pull himself out of a self-destructive spiral. It may be premature to talk of impeachment or resignation, but Trumps path is unsustainable. Republicans in Congress would be sensible to start thinking about an endgame, and the former Indiana governor may be the their best hope  and all of ours.

Many liberals correctly call Pence a doctrinaire conservative, particularly on gay rights and other social issues. Hell be forever tarnished because of his role in legitimizing Trump for mainstream conservatives, a calculation based on the vain hope that he could influence Trump. He has embarrassed himself in office by parroting Trumps untruths and cheerleading for the boss.

But Pence is, at core, a small-d democrat, not a demagogue. The world would be safer with him in charge. We would still have fierce divisions about the nations direction. But Pence, in the nearly two decades Ive known him, has been an honorable man. Opponents can disagree with him yet sleep well knowing hes unlikely to be irrational.

This was supposed to have been infrastructure week for Trump, but he has been using his Twitter account to impair further the infrastructure of his presidency: burning bridges, building bunkers and going off the rails. He has vented unfiltered rage at the courts, the media, the mayor of London, Qatar and his own administration.

1 of 58 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  A look at President Trumps first year in office, so far View Photos The presidents term has featured controversial executive orders and frequent conflicts with the news media. Caption Scenes from the Republicans beginning months in the White House. 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 Wait 1 second to continue.

Meanwhile, Pence governs. He visited Capitol Hill on Tuesday to have a luncheon talk with GOP senators about health-care reform. He hosted female entrepreneurs at the White House on Monday and said seven words to them that likely never passed his bosss lips: Im here to listen, not to talk.

At the Atlantic Council dinner, he gave a statesmanlike response to the London attacks that contrasted dramatically with Trumps. Pence lavishly praised the late Carter administration national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. He repeatedly hailed NATO and European allies. He criticized Russian expansionism. He was diplomatic about areas of disagreement with Europe.

Trump could not have given that speech, nor the one Pence gave at the Catholic Prayer Breakfast, asking for prayers to heal a divided country  at almost the exact moment Trump was railing on Twitter about fake news and political correctness. Pence urged the Catholics to continue to be the hands and feet of our Savior, reaching in with love and compassion, embracing the dignity of all people of every background and every experience.

A noble  even presidential  aspiration. Under Trump we dont have a prayer.

Twitter: @Milbank

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Planes sit on the runway at John F. Kennedy International Airport on June 5 in New York City. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

The June 4 front-page article Trump turns focus to infrastructure reported that advocates of privatization of air traffic control say it would allow NextGen (GPS airplane navigation) to be fully implemented. NextGen was sold to the airlines for fuel savings. A Federal Aviation Administration evaluation has shown very marginal fuel savings overall in the D.C. Metroplex (Baltimore-Washington International Marshall Airport, Dulles International Airport and Reagan National Airport) after implementation. For BWI departures, airplanes are using more fuel.

An environmental assessment was fast-tracked, and a finding of no significant impact was made for NextGen with a 30-day comment period. Now, there are lawsuits because of airplane noise in Georgetown, Phoenix and other areas. The FAA blindsided residents near airports throughout the country. Now the FAA is attempting to have residents solve the airplane noise that it created.

The DC Metroplex BWI Community Roundtable was formed on March 21 to deal with NextGen- produced noise issues. The Roundtable passed unanimously on March 21 a Resolution to Revert to Pre-DC Metroplex/NextGen Procedures. To date, we have not received any implementation plan or schedule to do this from the FAA.

Privatization is potentially a better course provided that environmental laws are followed.

Paul Verchinski, Columbia

The writer is a member of the DC Metroplex BWI Community Roundtable.
When President Trump declared the media the enemy of the American people, I called it an outrage. Well, the New York Times seems to be working overtime to prove me wrong and Trump right.

In a front-page story, the Times recently exposed the identity of the covert operative running the CIAs Iran operations as Michael DAndrea  noting that he was known as the Dark Prince or Ayatollah Mike, nicknames he earned as the Central Intelligence Agency officer who oversaw the hunt for Osama bin Laden and the American drone strike campaign that killed thousands of Islamist militants and hundreds of civilians.

Even more troubling, the Times not only identified DAndrea by name, it also reported his alleged role in the killing of a senior Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorist leader. Operatives under his direction played a pivotal role in 2008 in the killing of Imad Mugniyah, the international operations chief for Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite militant group based in Lebanon, the Times reported.

Publication of this information, one former senior agency official told me, puts DAndreas life at risk. Anytime you expose the name of an officer working undercover in sensitive covert-action programs like counterterrorism and Iranian operations, it exposes him to being targeted for assassination, this official said, adding, The fact that the Times article tied him to the assassination of Mugniyah puts him potentially in the crosshairs.

Iran has a long history of going after Americans it perceives as enemies. Iran was linked to the kidnapping and execution of the CIAs Beirut station chief, William Buckley, who underwent months of torture before being killed in 1985. Iran was also behind the 1983 attack on the U.S. Marine Barracks in Beirut and the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia.

(Erin Patrick O'Connor/The Washington Post)

Even if DAndrea does not travel to the region, that does not put him out of Irans reach. After all, in 2011 the United States broke up an Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington by bombing him while he dined at Cafe Milano in the heart of Georgetown. DAndrea is leading CIA operations against a regime that was willing to set off a bomb in our nations capital. If his appointment does signal a more muscular approach to covert operations against Tehran by the Trump administration, Iran now knows against whom to retaliate  all thanks to the Times.

The Timess reckless actions endanger not only DAndrea, but his family as well. The Times story also discussed details about DAndreas wife, noting that she is Muslim, that they had met while on a C.I.A. posting overseas and that he had converted to Islam to marry her. The day after the Timess story ran, a Tehran-based blog published a post titled CIA Agent Ayatollah Mikes Face Revealed, which included photographs of both DAndrea and a woman the blog described as his wife and identified by her full name.

The Times justified its shameful exposure of DAndreas new role by pointing out that his identity was previously published in news reports. So, you may ask, which major news organization published his identity in the first place?

Answer: the New York Times.

In 2015, the paper publicly named him as the head of the C.I.A. Counterterrorism Center and architect of the targeted killing program. The Times noted in that story that the CIA had asked that DAndreas name and the names of other top agency officials not be published, but the Times refused because they have leadership roles in one of the governments most significant paramilitary programs and their roles are known to foreign governments and many others. So the Times justified exposing DAndreas role in Iran operations by pointing out that his identity had already been exposed  without revealing that it was the Times that had initially exposed it!

To its credit, when The Post first wrote about DAndrea in 2012, the paper withheld not only his real name but also his age and even his full cover identity  referring to him only as Roger (the first name of his cover identity)  in order to protect him. Even in 2015, the year the Times first exposed his identity, The Post continued to withhold his name from news stories, noting that because he remains undercover, The Washington Post has agreed to withhold his full name. He has been publicly identified in the past by both his actual first name, Mike, as well as that of his CIA-created identity, Roger.

There is always a tension between the publics right to know about the activities of its government and the need for secrecy in the national security realm. Americans can disagree about whether publishing classified information, particularly that which could endanger sources and methods, is ever warranted.

But there is simply no excuse for exposing the names of covert operatives. These individuals are risking their lives for our country, and their anonymity is as critical to their safety as body armor is to an infantry soldier. To take away that cloak of secrecy, especially in the absence of any suggestion of wrongdoing, exposes them to grave danger  and endangers the security of all Americans.

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VIRGINIAS GUBERNATORIAL primaries have attracted national attention as one of just two such statewide contests this year (the other being New Jerseys). The more interesting of the Old Dominions two contests next Tuesday is on the Democratic side, which looks like a neck-and-neck race between Tom Perriello, a former one-term congressman, and Ralph Northam, the sitting lieutenant governor. Both are competent, accomplished and astute; Mr. Northam would make the better governor.

In the Republican race, the most sensible and, by a country mile, the most principled of the three candidates is state Sen. Frank Wagner, who also happens to be an underdog lagging in money and, outside his Virginia Beach district, name recognition.

First, the Democrats. The Northam-Perriello matchup, seen through a national prism, is often cast as a proxy contest for the partys soul between the establishment Forces of Hillary and the populist Forces of Bernie. Thats a nice talking point for politicos; for most Virginians, its facile and irrelevant. So is the fact that the rhetorical fusillades regularly directed at President Trump by Mr. Perriello are more lethal than those of Mr. Northam  although the latter lately called the president a narcissistic maniac.

The fact is, the policy differences between the two, though real, are not enormous, and their contempt for the president is beside the point. Our preference for Mr. Northam, a pediatric neurologist, is based more on his experience, temperament and, especially, his chances of success in the face of likely Republican control of one or both houses of the state legislature for the foreseeable future.

His aw-shucks country-doctor affect notwithstanding, Mr. Northam is a shrewd politician whose decade in office  six years as a state senator, and now as lieutenant governor  has made him highly regarded in Richmond, including among Republican lawmakers, who tried to recruit him to switch parties in 2009. If any Democratic governor can nudge GOP majorities in his direction, its Mr. Northam. That matters in a state where governors, barred from running for consecutive terms, have one brief shot at getting things done.

(Dalton Bennett/The Washington Post)

Mr. Perriello, while accomplished and intellectually agile  he has done admirable work in the nonprofit sector and as an international envoy in the Obama administration in addition to his stint in Congress  is less likely to make a dent. Notwithstanding his cogent take on corporate consolidation and industrial automation, his soak-the-rich tax plan, which would finance two years of debt-free community college and other programs, is a non-starter in a centrist state.

As for the Republicans, the choice for us is simpler. Mr. Wagner is in some ways a GOP version of Mr. Northam  down-to-earth, substantive, principled and well-versed in policy and the ways of Richmond. By contrast, the putative front-runner, Ed Gillespie, a former Republican national chair and George W. Bush White House veteran who has dodged debates, is more opportunistic, proposing a pie-in-the-sky tax cut that disintegrates upon contact with reality. As for the third candidate, Prince William Board of County Supervisors Chairman Corey A. Stewart, his candidacy has been a romp through the fetid fields of intolerance and Confederacy nostalgia.
Regarding the June 5 front-page article Presidential response? Stoking fear and a feud :

Even those most pessimistic about Donald Trumps presidency could not have imagined the speed with which he ceded the United States position as leader of the free world, destroyed our reputation as a people of compassion and decency and set us on the path toward being a pariah nation.

Mr. Trumps cruel and dishonest attack on the mayor of London for his efforts to calm and reassure his city following yet another terrorist attack  particularly on the heels of Mr. Trumps withdrawal from the Paris climate accord  shows why most of the free world is right to revile and fear him, along with the nation that was misguided enough to elect him as its leader. America alone would be a far more apt policy for the Trump administration than America first. Far from putting America first, Mr. Trump has already put us behind other nations, which  unlike the United States  have not lost their desire and ability to lead the world forward in these increasingly dark and perilous times.

Going it alone will make us weaker, not stronger. But we apparently have no choice as long as Mr. Trump holds the presidency.

Alex de Gramont, Chevy Chase

We want our allies to feel that we have their backs, that we give them our unwavering support. Sadly, President Trump has not provided this assurance. Britain has suffered three terrorist attacks since March. Given Mr. Trumps failure to affirm Article 5 of the NATO treaty and given the cloud that his presidency is under, he appears to be the wrong person to handle the complexities of international terrorism. I have little confidence in his administrations ability to extend meaningful support in the London Bridge/Borough Market investigation.

Herb Guggenheim, Rockville

We have an American president who used tragedy and death as an excuse to promote himself politically and point fingers at those with whom he does not agree. He targeted a Muslim leader, shined a light on his Muslim-ban attempt and acknowledged terrorist attacks  all by tapping his thumbs on a screen to spread his ideology through Twitter. He did this all before recognizing a white supremacist terrorist attack that happened recently in Portland, Ore.

As he continues to desperately seek new ways to make enemies out of all things Muslim, we must remember who uses violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims. Next time fingers are pointed at Islamic peoples and places, we must ask ourselves who is really forcing us into this constant state of fear.

Michelle Kuhfahl, Ashburn
WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 7: President Donald Trump walks back to the Oval Office after disembarking Marine One and returning from Cincinnati on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC on Wednesday, June 07, 2017. (Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post) (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Donald Trump is president of the United States, duly elected last November and sworn into office in January. But he appears oddly and remarkably disconnected from the executive branch over which he exercises power. There is the president, and then there is the rest of the government.

A table of organization of Trumps executive branch would, as always, start with a box at the top representing the president. Beneath it would be a series of boxes  White House staffers, Cabinet officers, subcabinet officials and the like. Many of those boxes would be connected by intersecting lines, save for one. No solid line would connect the president to the rest of the government, only a dotted line or no line at all.

Thats an overstatement, obviously. The president intersects continually with the rest of the executive branch, on routine and other business. Last month, the White House successfully managed the logistics of a complex foreign trip. There was a process of deliberation and debate involving many advisers that led to the recent decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. This week, Trump is pushing out proposals on infrastructure to provide a sense of forward motion at a time when his legislative initiatives are moving slowly in Congress.

But so much else about this moment paints a different picture of the most unusual administration in modern times. It is the portrait of a president alone, feeling embattled and taking matters into his own hands as much as possible, often apparently against the advice of many of those around him.

Events and reporting in recent days have brought this portrait into high relief, just as Trumps White House braces for testimony from fired former FBI director James B. Comey that could further erode trust in the president and his administration.

(Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)

[Frustrated and furious, Trump prepares for Comey testimony]

Much about what Comey is planning to say Thursday has been reported over a period of weeks through leaks by his friends and associates. All that began shortly after Comeys firing with the revelation that he has a memo about a conversation in which the president offered the hope that the FBI could find a way to back off the investigation of former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who was forced out of office early in the administration but to whom Trump retains some loyalty.

On Wednesday afternoon, the text of Comeys prepared testimony was released by the Senate Intelligence Committee. It confirms what was previously reported but with some new facts, including a provocative quote he attributes to the president, who said to him, I need loyalty, I expect loyalty.

Comey is smart and shrewd. He knows that the investigation he once oversaw is now in the hands of another former FBI director, Robert S. Mueller III, who will have the ultimate say on what all the evidence proves or doesnt about Russian hacking during the election, possible collusion between the Russians and Trump campaign associates, and possible interference into the investigation since then.

Trump is a survivor above all, particularly in a he-said-he-said situation. Whether tweeting in real time to contest what Comey says or offering his side of the story in the aftermath, the president is a fighter and a counterpuncher of extraordinary skill and determination. He will not shrink from the moment or slink away.

But even if Comey goes no further Thursday, the power of his words will resonate with more force than the leaked reports or even the prepared testimony. Thats the nature of moments like this, when public testimony rises to the level of both great political theater and potentially great legal and political risk. Trumps advisers should be prepared for one of their most difficult days, even if it is far from dispositive in the ongoing investigation.

(Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

Still, its what else that has been learned this week that adds to the picture of a president operating on his own. At one turn after another, there are reports about a president who is at odds with those who serve him, freelancing his views and grievances through tweets and other means of expression and disrupting the ongoing operations of government and diplomacy.

Early in the week, Trump complained on Twitter about his Justice Departments rewriting of his original travel ban just as the administration has asked the Supreme Court to overturn an appellate court ruling striking down the policy. Those tweets potentially damage the governments legal case, but beyond that, they ignore the fact that the president signed the original and the revised order that he now derides.

[Trump undercuts his own advisers]

The New York Times then reported Trumps ongoing dissatisfaction with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whom the president has not forgiven for recusing himself from all things related to Russia, a decision that has led in one step after another to Comeys departure and the appointment of Mueller as special counsel. Sessions, of course, was one of Trumps earliest and most important endorsers and a staunch loyalist throughout the campaign. If one as loyal as Sessions receives no loyalty in return, what will others in the administration think?

In another example of the president being disconnected from his top advisers, Politicos Susan Glasser reported that language reaffirming this nations commitment to Article 5 of the NATO treaty, a standard of presidential speeches to U.S. allies in Europe, was removed at the last minute from Trumps speech at NATO headquarters last month. The presidents senior national security advisers had signed off on the wording, and apparently it was removed without their advance knowledge, according to the report.

In the wake of a decision Monday by Persian Gulf nations to cut off relations with Qatar, an action that has further roiled the Middle East, Trump used Twitter to take credit by tweeting about what he had said and done while in Saudi Arabia on his recent trip. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis offered more careful and reassuring reactions, hoping to contain rather than enlarge the rift.

Also in the past five days, Trump got into a Twitter spat with London Mayor Sadiq Khan in the aftermath of Saturdays terrorist attack. His criticism of the mayor came shortly after he expressed solidarity with the people of Britain over the attack. The feud between Trump and Khan began more than a year ago, but the presidents decision to use this moment to revive it brought a shocked reaction and criticism from Britain.

Administration officials dispute suggestions from outsiders that no one around Trump is trying to rein him in from these impulses. He hears plenty of such advice, according to officials. But the president also sees himself badly outnumbered in the national conversation, hearing few public defenders as he monitors cable television and print media.

His tweet storms are his way of responding. But they and other events have led to the image of a president isolated and trusting in few people other than himself  and willing to disrupt anything, from long-standing relationships to the orderly operations of government, regardless of the consequences to the country or potentially his presidency.
An executive order signed by President Trump in January eliminated the ban on former lobbyists joining the agencies they had recently lobbied. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Federal agencies issued just a handful of waivers exempting political appointees from conflict of interest rules in the first three months of the administration, a reflection in part of how President Trump has made it easier for lobbyists to work in agencies they once sought to influence.

Documents released by the Office of Government Ethics on Wednesday show that through April 30, just 10 Trump appointees who work outside the White House received exemptions from aspects of federal ethics rules.

Although dozens of lobbyists have joined the Trump administration, only one received an ethics waiver addressing his previous lobbying work: Lance Leggitt, the chief of staff for the Department of Health and Human Services.

Thats because an executive order that Trump signed in January did away with a rule laid down by former president Barack Obama banning lobbyists from joining agencies they had lobbied in the previous two years.

Instead, Trumps order allows former lobbyists to enter the administration, but prohibits them for two years from working on a specific issue that they lobbied on during the previous two years.

It was a fundamental change in the ethics executive order, said Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist for the watchdog group Public Citizen. It cast some serious questions about whether the Trump administration is serious about draining the swamp.

White House spokeswoman Lindsay E. Walters said that the administration recognized the need for certain expertise while at the same time requiring that appointees abide by a tougher anti-revolving door policy extending the two-year post employment ban on lobbying to five years.

At least 88 former lobbyists have been appointed or nominated to join the administration, including 56 who previously lobbied the agencies that hired them, according to a tally by the liberal group American Bridge.

Among the former lobbyists are four high-level appointees at the White House who received ethics waivers to work on policy issues on which they recently lobbied. They include former Fidelity Investments lobbyist Shahira Knight, now a tax and retirement policy adviser, and Michael Catanzaro, a one-time energy lobbyist now developing domestic energy policy for the administration.

[White House grants ethics waivers to 17 appointees, including four former lobbyists]

At the Department of Health and Human Services, at least five former lobbyists other than Leggitt have been tapped to serve. They include Keagan Lenihan, a senior adviser to Secretary Tom Price who last year lobbied on Medicare and Medicaid issues for McKesson Corporation, a pharmaceutical distributor.

A department spokeswoman declined to comment.

In the case of Leggitt, he previously headed the federal health policy group for the law firm Baker Donelson, where he lobbied for hospitals and other medical clients, disclosures show.

Leggitts waiver allows him to work on issues on which he lobbied, though he still is barred from participating in matters involving former clients.

Another waiver went to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Director Seema Verma, who worked as a health-care consultant on Medicaid reform before joining the administration.

Her firm, Indianapolis-based SVC Inc., had contracts worth nearly $8 million with the state of Indiana, and also consulted for Arkansas, Iowa, Kentucky, Ohio, South Carolina and Virginia.

As a consultant, Verma designed Indianas Medicaid experiment under the Affordable Care Act, under which beneficiaries must chip in toward insurance premiums and are penalized in different ways if they do not.

She also advised several other states on how they could ask CMS for permission to alter their Medicaid programs. One of those requests, from Kentucky, would make that state the first to require people on Medicaid to work  a policy Verma favors  and is currently pending before her agency.

In an ethics waiver dated March 20, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price determined that Verma should be allowed to weigh in on decisions affecting her former state clients, saying that excluding her expertise would unduly disadvantage the citizens of your former state clients. However, the waiver does not apply to specific matters that she personally worked on for Kentucky, Indiana and Iowa. Verma has recused herself from those issues.

Loosening federal restrictions on Medicaid under the ACA is a top priority for Price and his deputies. He and Verma have encouraged states to apply for waivers that were denied by the previous administration, providing them with a checklist for how to do it.

The new batch of ethics waivers released Wednesday shows that two members of the Cabinet received exemptions. Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly was granted permission to deal with matters involving Australia, despite the honorarium he received from the Australian government for his participation in a training program for military officers. And Price obtained permission to participate in certain matters involving the state of Georgia, where his wife is a state representative.

The disclosures also included exemptions granted to 13 Obama appointees last year. Among them were National Security Adviser Susan Rice, who received a waiver regarding Canadian financial investments, and Secretary of State John Kerry, who was granted one to contribute to a book of speeches commemorating former president John F. Kennedy.

Oversight activities like this help us assess the consistency of compliance with ethics programs requirements, said Walter M. Shaub Jr., director of the Office of Government Ethics.

Amy Goldstein and Steven Rich contributed to this report.
President Trump traveled to the banks of the Ohio River here on Wednesday to rally blue-collar workers behind his emerging infrastructure plan, using the event to bash Democrats as obstructionists over his stalled legislative agenda.

Trumps trip, part of a week of events aimed at promoting the White House initiative, was heavy on symbolism as he spoke at the Rivertowne Marina to a crowd of 400 steelworkers, coal miners and construction workers. Barges the president said were carrying West Virginia-produced coal were visible on the river behind him.

Yet if part of the aim was to build crucial bipartisan support for a plan he has claimed will boost jobs, Trump was unable to mask his disdain for his political rivals.

Im calling on all Democrats, who honestly have really been obstructionists  boy, have they tried on every single thing, Trump said, citing his administrations effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act as an example. The House passed a repeal bill without Democratic support, but the Republican-led Senate has yet to act.

Every single thing is obstruction, the president continued, adding that if I was in that party, I would not do it that way. Id be doing positive things. Thats why they lost the House, its why they lost the Senate, its why they lost the White House.

(The Washington Post)

Trumps campaign promise to invest $1 trillion in rebuilding the nations airports, roads, bridges and tunnels had produced early hopes among some in Congress that infrastructure would be a rare area where the two major parties could find compromise.

But Democrats have uniformly balked at the White Houses proposal, which would provide $200 billion in funding over a decade with the aim of attracting an additional $800 billion in private money, as well as state and local funds.

White House aides had hoped that what they called infrastructure week would provide new momentum for Trumps legislative agenda and focus the presidents attention on a positive message during a week in which senior U.S. intelligence officials and former FBI director James B. Comey are testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee over the federal probe into the Trump campaigns contacts with Russian officials.

As Trump flew to Ohio aboard Air Force One, cable networks aired live coverage of the testimony of Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats and National Security Agency Director Michael S. Rogers. Later in the day, Comeys opening statement for his Thursday appearance before the committee was released, dominating news coverage.

Trump did not mention the events in Washington during his visit to Cincinnati, where he also made separate remarks shortly after landing about the effort to repeal Obamacare. At the Rivertowne Marina, Trump was joined by several Cabinet secretaries as well as two New York real estate moguls, Richard LeFrak and Steven Roth, whom Trump had previously named to lead an infrastructure council to monitor progress.

The president has said a key part of the initiative will be jettisoning and streamlining regulations to speed up projects. Critics have countered that Trumps approach would rely on privatizing many roads, bridges and airports, selling off these projects in a way that will let investors raise fees, tolls and other charges.

During his remarks, which lasted about half an hour, Trump framed his plan as a way to make good on his pledge to put America first, saying expensive U.S. entanglements abroad have distracted the country from its goals of spurring job growth.

Every other country looks out for their interests, Trump said. Its time we start looking out for our interests in the United States.

He alluded to his decision last week to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord, boasting that we will never let outside forces tell us what to do and how to do it. That would have been a huge anchor on our country.

Trump also touted his recent foreign trip, including a stop in Saudi Arabia, which he said would bring new foreign investment in U.S.-produced military equipment. And he thanked Saudi Arabias King Salman for efforts to cut off funding for terrorist groups.

Hopefully, that will be the beginning to the end of this horrible, horrible situation the world is suffering through right now, Trump said. We have to put an end to it. We have to be very tough.

Yet Trump referred to the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as an example of misguided priorities.

As of a few months ago, we spent $6 trillion in the Middle East, along with the deaths of so many incredible people, he said. And yet if we want to fix a road or fix a school or make sure bridges do not collapse, we dont ever seem to have the money. Gotta change, folks.

Nakamura reported from Washington.
Alone in the White House in recent days, President Trump  frustrated and defiant  has been spoiling for a fight, according to his confidants and associates.

Glued even more than usual to the cable news shows that blare from the televisions in his private living quarters, or from the 60-inch flat screen he had installed in his cramped study off the Oval Office, he has fumed about fake news. Trump has seethed as his agenda has stalled in Congress and the courts. He has chafed against the pleas for caution from his lawyers and political advisers, tweeting whatever he wants, whenever he wants.

And on Thursday, the president will come screen-to-screen with the FBI director he fired, James B. Comey, thoughts of whom have consumed, haunted and antagonized Trump since Comey launched an expanding Russia investigation that the president slammed as a witch hunt.

Comeys testimony is a political Super Bowl  with television networks interrupting regular programming to air it, and some Washington offices and bars making plans for special viewings.

Trump is keen to be a participant rather than just another viewer, two senior White House officials said, including the possibility of taking to Twitter to offer acerbic commentary during the hearing.

1 of 58 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  A look at President Trumps first year in office, so far View Photos The presidents term has featured controversial executive orders and frequent conflicts with the news media. Caption Scenes from the Republicans beginning months in the White House. 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 Wait 1 second to continue.

I wish him luck, the president told reporters on Tuesday.

Hes infuriated at a deep-gut, personal level that the elite media has tolerated [the Russia story] and praised Comey, former House speaker Newt Gingrich said. Hes not going to let some guy like that smear him without punching him as hard as he can.

[All eyes will be on James Comey this Thursday  again]

This account of Trumps mind-set and the preparations of his team in the run-up to Comeys testimony is based on interviews with 20 White House officials, Trump friends and other well-connected Republicans, many of whom spoke only on the condition of anonymity to offer candid perspectives.

The presidents lawyers and aides have been urging him to resist engaging, and they hope to keep him busy Thursday with other events meant to compete for his  and the news medias  attention.

The presidents going to have a very, very busy day, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said. I think his focus is going to be on pursuing the agenda and the priorities that he was elected to do.

As of now, Trumps Thursday morning  when Comey is scheduled to start testifying  is open. He plans to deliver a 12:30 p.m. speech at the Faith and Freedom Coalitions conference in Washington, followed by a 3:30 p.m. meeting with governors and mayors on infrastructure projects.

(Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)

Jay Sekulow, a high-profile conservative lawyer in Washington, has met several times recently with Trump and said he found the president to have his attention squarely on his proposals.

Hes been very much in control and in command, Sekulow said. I dont sense any siege or panic at all. . . . Ive been there a lot, and I dont see the president in any context distracted or flustered by any of this. I just dont see it.

But privately, Trumps advisers said they are bracing for a worst-case scenario: that he ignores their advice and tweets his mind.

Hes not going to take an attack by James Comey laying down, said Roger Stone, a longtime Trump friend and former political adviser. Trump is a fighter, hes a brawler and hes the best counterpuncher in American politics.

The president increasingly has come to see Twitter as his preferred method of communicating with his supporters, no matter the pitfalls.

The FAKE MSM is working so hard trying to get me not to use Social Media. They hate that I can get the honest and unfiltered message out, Trump tweeted on Tuesday morning, making a reference to the mainstream media.

[The broadcast networks will air Comeys hearing live. Thats a big deal.]

The West Wing, meanwhile, has taken on an atmosphere of legal uncertainty. White House counsel Donald F. McGahn has told staff to hold onto emails, documents and phone records, officials said, a move of caution designed to prepare the staff for future legal requests, should they come. McGahn has specifically advised staffers to avoid what are known as the burn bags in the executive branch that are often used to discard papers.

While people familiar with the White House counsels office described McGahns moves as appropriate steps because of the ongoing probes, they said many junior staffers are increasingly skittish and fearful of their communications eventually finding their way into the hands of investigators.

Some staffers nervous about their own personal liability are contemplating hiring lawyers and have become more rigorous about not putting things in text messages or emails that they would not want to be subpoenaed, one person familiar with the situation said.

Attempting to invoke executive privilege to restrict Comeys testimony was never seriously considered by Trump or his legal team, said one senior White House official. But, this official added, the White House liked floating the possibility as a distraction.

In the weeks leading up to Comeys testimony, the White House had privately tried to erect a war room that would handle the communications and legal strategies for responding to the Russia matter. Former Trump campaign aides Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie were in discussions to lead it.

But the plan was scuttled, as with so much else in Trumps administration, because of internal disagreements, according to multiple officials. Arguments included whether the war room would be run from inside or outside the gates of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.; who would staff it; whether they could be trusted by the presidents high-ranking advisers, or even trust one another; and whether Marc Kasowitz, Trumps outside counsel, would ultimately control the message.

Kasowitz, who has a long-standing relationship with Trump, has been operating as an island of sorts in Trump world. He has been meeting regularly with the president and has a nascent relationship with McGahn, but he has not widely shared his legal strategy within the West Wing, according to two officials involved.

Kasowitz, whose combative personality mirrors Trumps, has not found it easy to entice other big-name lawyers with Washington experience to join the cause because many prominent attorneys are reluctant to have him giving them direction and wonder whether he will be able to keep Trump from stumbling, one official said.

In the absence of a war room  and with the departure of communications director Michael Dubke  planning for the White Houses response to the Comey hearing has fallen largely to Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and his lieutenants.

Trumps team is preparing a campaign-style line of attack aimed at undercutting Comeys reputation. They plan to portray him as a showboat and to bring up past controversies from his career, including his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation in 2016, according to people involved in the planning.

The Republican National Committee has lined up a roster of surrogates to appear on conservative news stations nationwide to defend Trump. But a list the RNC distributed on Tuesday could hardly be described as star-studded: The names include Bob Paduchik, an RNC co-chair who worked on Trumps Ohio campaign; Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi (R); and Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge (R).

Trump so far has been unable to recruit reinforcements for his beleaguered senior staff. Conversations about former Trump campaign official David Urban possibly joining the White House have stalled, although he remains in contact with several Trump advisers, officials said.

[Trumps legal team falters as D.C. heavyweights take a pass]

The White House has long struggled with its communications team, with Trump both privately and publicly voicing displeasure with his current staff. Press secretary Sean Spicer has started appearing less frequently on camera, and Trump and several top advisers, including son-in-law Jared Kushner, are considering a range of options to revamp the structure.

The White House recently approached Geoff Morrell  who served as the Pentagon press secretary for more than four years under former defense secretary Robert Gates  about coming inside the administration and overhauling the communications operation, according to three people with knowledge of the overture.

Morrell declined to comment, but BP announced last month that Morrell would be moving to London this summer to run government relations and communications for the company globally.

Scott Reed, senior political strategist at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, was also approached about taking a communications role within the White House, according to two people familiar with the outreach. Reed declined to comment.

In addition, Laura Ingraham, a conservative talk-radio host and Trump friend, discussed joining the White House but made clear to officials that she is more comfortable remaining outside as a vocal Trump ally because of her many broadcasting and media commitments, officials said.

Some Trump loyalists outside the White House who are preparing to go on television news shows Thursday to defend the president and undermine Comeys testimony said they have been given no talking points, nor seen any evidence of a strategy taking shape. One such loyalist said external supporters are afraid to coordinate too closely with the White House because they fear they could be accused of obstructing justice.

Trump is personally reaching out to some allies on the Senate Intelligence Committee ahead of their questioning of Comey. He was scheduled to have dinner Tuesday night at the White House with Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), both committee members, along with a few other lawmakers. The dinner had been long scheduled for the president to offer a debrief on his foreign trip, a senior White House official said.

In the West Wing, people close to the president and junior aides fear that the presidents erratic behavior could have sweeping legal and political consequences, and they are beleaguered by how he has not proved able to concentrate fully on his agenda  this was supposed to be infrastructure week, for instance. Many are also resigned to the idea that there is little they can do to moderate or thwart Trumps moves, so instead they are focused on managing the fallout.

One Republican close to the White House summed up the staffs mantra as: Please, dont, youre not helping things.

But Trump and several political intimates see a political advantage to the president personally engaging, however unseemly it may appear to traditionalists.

He believes in the long run there is an enormous premium on being the person who stands there fighting, said Gingrich, author of Understanding Trump, an upcoming book. People respond to that and wonder if hes fighting this hard, maybe hes right and the other guys are wrong. Its the core of how he operates.

Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard Law School professor and criminal law expert whose television commentary on the Russia probe has caught the White Houses attention, said he understands why the president would be motivated to speak out to counter Comeys testimony.

Every lawyer would tell the president not to tweet, not to react, Dershowitz said. But hes not listening. This is typical. I tell my clients all the time not to talk and they simply disregard it. Itd be very hard to tell a very wealthy, very powerful man not to tweet. He thinks, I tweeted my way to the presidency, and hes determined to tweet.

Mary Jordan and Amber Phillips contributed to this report.
Members of President Trumps Cabinet and top White House aides tried to soften his travel ban by calling it a temporary pause. They said his firing of former FBI director James B. Comey was not about the Russia investigation. And this week they used their public comments to attempt to keep the United States out of a messy regional conflict in the Middle East.

But every time, Trump weighed in with a different message that effectively undercut what his aides and Cabinet secretaries appeared to be trying to achieve.

Trumps aides are quickly learning they speak for the president at their own peril.

The president seems to shrug off these incidents, several of which have occurred since he took office, and he has made clear that ultimately only he speaks for his administration, all while rejecting efforts to curtail his use of Twitter.

The president has always said that Twitter is like owning his own newspaper, except he cant lose money, said former Trump adviser Sam Nunberg. Hell listen to your advice. Hell listen to suggestions. But the president is not going to be handled.

The challenge for Trumps aides reached an international scale this week. After Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf nations cut off diplomatic ties with Qatar, over its alleged support for terrorists in the region, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and principal deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders all said on Monday that the United States hoped to help mediate and de-escalate the crisis.

But on Tuesday, in early morning tweets, Trump leaned into the dispute. He lambasted Qatar and voiced support for the Saudi-led coalition of nations, all the while seemingly ignoring that the United States has long had strategic military ties to Qatar.

During my recent trip to the Middle East, I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology, Trump wrote. Leaders pointed to Qatar  look!

He later tweeted: So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off. They said they would take a hard line on funding extremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism!

The tweets sent the administration into a familiar cycle. Officials de-emphasized their significance, arguing they do not signify a shift in policy and claiming that they simply reinforce the statements made by other officials in the government.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Defense Department voiced support and appreciation to Qatar for allowing U.S. troops to remain on a base in their country.

Its not just undercutting Secretary Tillerson, its putting at potential risk the relationship between the Defense Department and Qatar, something that is extremely important to the Department of Defense, said John B. Bellinger, a former legal adviser to the State Department under President George W. Bush. He has repeatedly necessitated having both secretaries Mattis and Tillerson to quietly reassure allies that the president doesnt really mean these things.

The White House insists that Trumps social-media reach  which tallies more than 31 million on his personal Twitter account alone  is one of the reasons he was elected president.

The president is the most effective messenger on his agenda, White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters on Tuesday when asked if the presidents tweets were obstructing his own agenda. The same people who are critiquing his use of it now critiqued it during the election, and it turned out pretty well for him then.

Moments later, faced with a question about Trumps comments on Qatar, Spicer read carefully from a piece of paper to clarify the presidents remarks.

The U.S. still wants to see this issue de-escalated and resolved immediately, he said.

While the White House seeks to play down the contradictory statements from Trump and his aides, the presidents critics charge they can have dangerous consequences, particularly in foreign affairs.

He has said himself he values unpredictability, but what he is is impetuous, said P.J. Crowley, who was assistant secretary of state for public affairs during President Barack Obamas first term. He gets something in his mind and immediately communicates it without thinking through the broader implications. Its that lack of discipline which has had an enormous and negative impact on perceptions of American leadership.

All of this has put Trumps Cabinet officials on the defense. Mattis has tried to limit his engagement with the media in recent days, declining customary interviews during a trip where he finds himself responding separately to concerns raised by allies about Trumps perspectives and apparent lack of regard for long-standing relationships.

Trumps aides tried to reverse some of the damage done by his tweets this week by accusing the media of obsessing over them. But even that message was overshadowed by a Trump tweet Tuesday.

The FAKE MSM is working so hard trying to get me not to use Social Media, he said, using an acronym for the mainstream media. They hate that I can get the honest and unfiltered message out.

The administrations split personality on talking points has not gone unnoticed on Capitol Hill, where there is growing frustration with the lack of coherence from the White House and Trumps penchant for upending the news cycle with his tweets.

I dont believe Trump colluded with the Russians, because I dont believe he colludes with his own staff, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) quipped, referring to the ongoing investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible collusion with Trump campaign associates.

In some cases, Trumps tweets have only heightened the legal risk facing his administration.

When it comes to the travel ban directed at six Muslim-majority countries that is being held up by federal courts, the president has repeatedly undermined his staff  and his own legal case.

Spicer and Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly repeatedly corrected reporters, chiding them for calling it a ban  a word that is causing legal headaches for the administration in the courts. But the president continues to use the term.

People, the lawyers and the courts can call it whatever they want, but I am calling it what we need and what it is, a TRAVEL BAN! Trump tweeted early Monday morning after the terrorist attack in London over the weekend.

As the Russia investigation continues to expand, Trump has not moved with caution there, either.

After he made the decision to fire Comey last month, the White House attempted to present an agreed-upon narrative for how the president reached his decision, with aides leaning heavily on a memo written by Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, which criticized Comeys handling of the investigation into Hillary Clintons use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.

But then two days later, Trump said in an interview with NBCs Lester Holt that he had long been planning to fire Comey and was frustrated that the FBI director was so focused on the Russia investigation.

He acknowledged on Twitter that his aides were left in the dark.

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.

There are signs, however, that some aides are learning to avoid falling into a trap when they can.

On Tuesday, when Spicer was asked whether the president still has confidence in Attorney General Jeff Sessions after a report about tensions between the two, he declined to say.

I have not had a discussion with him on that question, Spicer said. If I havent had a discussion with him on the subject, I tend not to speak about it.

Karen DeYoung, Dan Lamothe and Ed OKeefe contributed to this report.
President Trump, flanked by Vice President Pence, left, and Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, signs an executive order targeting the Affordable Care Act as one of his first official acts in office on Jan. 20. (Evan Vucci/Associated Press)

The event Wednesday on an airport tarmac in Cincinnati was just the latest opportunity for the White House to disparage and undercut a law it officially must carry out.

Standing in front of Air Force One along with two small-business owners, President Trump recounted how they have had their lives completely upended by the disaster known as Obamacare.

One saw her choice of doctors shrink while her premiums and out-of-pocket costs rose, he said. The other has curtailed new investments in his company to maintain employees health benefits.

The coverage is horrendous, the president declared, ticking off insurers recent decisions to pull out of federal marketplaces in Ohio, Kentucky and elsewhere. Obamacare is in a total death spiral. The problems will only get worse if Congress fails to act.

Both the gathering and Trumps remarks represent officials strategy to convince Americans that the collapse of the Affordable Care Act is inevitable and to bolster public and congressional support for a GOP overhaul. Since the day he was inaugurated, Trump has taken steps to erode the law, including instructing his deputies to ease up on ACA regulations and curtailing consumer outreach during the final days of health plan enrollment for 2017.

The best thing politically is to let Obamacare explode, he told The Washington Post in March. On Wednesday, he declared it dead.

But behind the scenes, the increasing fragility of the laws insurance marketplaces has created an increasingly difficult predicament for the presidents top advisers.

The issue is whether to take steps to allay the concerns of skittish insurers, some of which are either increasing rates or pulling out altogether, or let things deteriorate further  even at the risk of being blamed. The advisers are split, according to several people briefed on the deliberations: Vice President Pence and Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney have argued against intervention, while Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price backs providing federal support if a conservative health-care bill fails to pass this summer.

For the moment, the administration has defaulted to a position of doing little to try to soothe the health insurance industry, even as many insurers warn that federal action  or inaction  could aggravate the situation. Some suggest that the White Houses relentless naysaying is not reflecting marketplace problems as much as driving them.

Were in this very strange situation where the agency in charge of stewarding the law is very openly working to undermine that law, said Caitlin Morris, director of affordability initiatives at Families USA, a pro-ACA consumer group.

Sabotage is the operative word, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said last month.

The biggest source of industry anxiety right now is whether the administration and Congress will continue to fund cost-sharing subsidies that help 7 million Americans with ACA plans afford deductibles and copays. House Republicans challenged the legality of the $7 billion in subsidies when Barack Obama was president, and the case is still on appeal.

Absent that funding, I dont know if were going to have much participation in the exchange market in 2018, said Tennessee insurance commissioner Julie Mix McPeak, a Republican who also serves as president-elect of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

[At Trumps urging, states move Medicaid in a conservative direction]

The uncertainty is one of the top reasons insurers have cited when explaining why they are posting higher rates for the next year or withdrawing from markets outright. Two weeks ago, Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina filed a rate increase of 22.9 percent that it said would have been 8.8 percent if the administration had committed to paying cost-sharing subsidies. Last week, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Nebraska announced that it would not offer ACA-compliant bronze and catastrophic plans next year, leaving the state with just one insurer on the exchange there.

And on Tuesday, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield announced that it was pulling out of the federal exchange in Ohio, meaning that at least 20 of the states 88 counties will lack an insurer.

We have to take a snapshot in time, which is right now, Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina chief executive Brad Wilson said in an interview. A lack of action by the administration, he added, yields a result we are currently seeing  higher premiums rather than lower premiums.

State insurance commissioners, Democrats and Republicans alike, are searching for ways to help companies cope with the unpredictability so that they stay put for 2018. Their anxiety is especially acute this spring, since the administrations drumbeat coincides with the time frame in which insurers must make their decisions.

While the White House tries to prod the Senate into speedy passage of health-care legislation, it simultaneously is using each new revelation about the laws marketplaces  through which more than 12 million Americans signed up for health coverage this year  to amplify its negative message.

Late last month, HHS issued a study finding that average individual market premiums have more than doubled since 2013. On Friday, a department news release declared, Todays front page of the Omaha World Herald spells out the latest bad news for Obamacare.

Anthems withdrawal announcement was immediately highlighted, with White House press secretary Sean Spicer saying it would leave 19,000 Ohioans without any options  though the state said the move would affect 10,500 consumers.

A short time later, HHS spokeswoman Alleigh Marre called the insurers decision a stark reminder that Obamacare is collapsing. Less than an hour later, HHS sent a news release touting the request by Minuteman Health in New Hampshire to raise premiums 30 percent next year for its ACA customers.

The vice president has held at least three events since the weekend to spotlight the laws flaws. On Wednesday, he met on Air Force Two with cancer survivor Traci Lewis, a Houston resident who said that her out-of-pocket costs had become unaffordable under Obamacare.

Administrative actions have been weakening the law for months. Trump signed an executive order within hours of taking office that directed federal agencies to ease regulatory burdens created by the ACA; later, the Internal Revenue Service said it was going to send taxpayers their refunds even if they failed to send proof that they were insured.

Such diminished enforcement, predicted CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield as it filed its rates in Maryland last month, will have the same impact as repeal and lead to fewer healthier people enrolling in coverage. Based on industry and government estimates as well as actuarial judgment, we have projected that this will cause morbidity to increase by an additional 20 percent, the insurer said.

Washington states insurance commissioner, Mike Kreidler, a Democrat and former state legislator, called the move the shot across the bow.

[Trump moves to weaken ACAs birth control coverage requirement]

Experts note that many consumers on the independent insurance market had struggled to find affordable plans long before Trump took office.

Robert Laszewski, president and chief executive of the consulting firm Health Policy and Strategy Associates, said that even the cheapest unsubsidized plan on North Carolinas exchange costs a family of four in Charlotte $1,414 a month, plus a $14,300 annual deductible.

The question is, was Obamacare unstable in the first place and is Trump in the process of wrecking it? Laszewski asked. And the answer is yes.

White House legislative affairs director Marc Short said in an interview that while no final decision has been made on the cost-sharing subsidies, the president has been clear that in many cases, he views this as a bailout to insurers.

Some Republicans are urging caution. Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), who chairs the House Appropriations Committees subcommittee on labor, health and human services, education and related agencies, said Monday that the administration should continue to provide the subsidies until a new law is in place and there has been sufficient time for a transition.

I dont see how you justify making things worse for people in the system, based on some philosophical argument, said Cole, who has talked with officials on both sides of the debate. Cutting off the cost-sharing subsidies would totally destroy the market.

A recent Washington Post-ABC News poll found that more than three-quarters of Americans say Trump should try to make the existing law work as well as possible. Just 13 percent, by contrast, say the president should try to make it fail as soon as possible.

Though Trump has been vocal in his support for the House GOPs American Health Care Act, which would rewrite key parts of the ACA, his recent tweets have been more difficult to decipher.

In one, he claimed to have suggested that we add more dollars to Healthcare to make it the best anywhere, a statement at odds with his administrations budget proposal for big spending cuts.

A health policy expert close to the administration, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said the president and his aides were still working out how to proceed.

There isnt even a strategy that theyre failing to follow up on, the expert said. There just isnt a strategy.

Amy Goldstein contributed to this report.
A group of leading senators, including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), is negotiating a way to pass more stringent sanctions against Russia in the coming week by piggybacking on an upcoming a measure cracking down on ballistic missile tests in Iran.

The talks, which involve the heads of at least the Senate Banking and Foreign Relations committees, plus Senate leaders and a handful of Congress most outspoken Russia critics, are geared toward attaching Russia sanctions by amendment to an Iran sanctions bill the Senate took up Wednesday  just as intelligence and Justice Department officials head to Capitol Hill to testify about alleged Russian meddling in the presidential election.

Daniel Coats, the director of national intelligence, and Adm. Mike Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency, appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday, and former FBI director James B. Comey is expected to testify Thursday.

[Coats told associates Trump asked him if he could intervene with Comey on Russia probe]

We anticipate that amendments addressing Russia sanctions are likely to be offered, McConnell said on the Senate floor Wednesday morning, noting that I support that effort from the Foreign Relations and Banking Committee chairmen and ranking members to work toward bipartisan agreement.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) was even more insistent, all but leveraging his partys support for the otherwise popular Iran sanctions bill on whether punitive measures against Russia could be incorporated.

It will be very difficult to gather Democratic support for final passage of this bill until we deal with Russia sanctions, Schumer said Wednesday.

The exact substance of the Russia sanctions senators hope to attach to the Iran bill is not yet clear, but according to senior Senate aides, talks have focused on the substance offered by a set of bills already on offer, addressing everything from Russias aggressive activities in Ukraine and Syria to allegations that Russian hackers tried to swing an American election.

One of those bills is a recent measure, from Senate Banking Committee Chairman Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) and ranking Democrat Sherrod Brown (Ohio), to codify into law existing sanctions against Russia that the Obama administration imposed in response to Russian aggression in Ukraine in 2014. Their bill adds to those existing sanctions new sectoral measures against Russias mining, metals and railways; individual sanctions against Russian hackers and corruption; and tools to better track illicit Russian financing, as well as oligarchs holdings in the United States.

Another bill, proposed this year by Sens. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.), John McCain (R-Ariz.) and a bipartisan group of senators, would codify existing sanctions while stiffening restrictions on the Russian defense, intelligence and energy sectors, as well as anyone providing material support to people posing a cyberthreat. A third bill from Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), Cardin and others, also from this year, would give Congress the chance to veto any presidential decision to ease up on sanctions against Russia.

All chief authors of those bills have been involved in the various discussions with Senate leaders McConnell and Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) to insert Russia sanctions into the Iran bill, according to various aides.

Which elements of those Russia sanctions bills make the cut to be included as a potential amendment to the Iran sanctions legislation has yet to be determined. But the coalescing of forces around some sort of action on Russia sanctions  and soon  is a marked shift for Congress, which has to date refrained from taking legislation action to force the presidents hand in dealing with a country many in the national security community consider Americas No. 1 antagonist and adversary.

Some Republican leaders have sought to create some space for the Trump administration to operate, pointing to that fact despite initial fears Trumps administration would take early steps to roll back Russia sanctions, the restrictive measures the Obama administration introduced have stayed in place. Early last month, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) insisted the Senate Foreign Relations Committee would wait until the Senate Intelligence Committee completed its probe of alleged Russian election meddling and possible collusion with campaigns before attempting to pass any sanctions.

President Trump has pushed back against the consensus of the intelligence community that Russia engaged in hacking and the politicized dissemination of information, including false information, during the campaign to sway the election, potentially in Trumps favor. According to recent reports, Trump also pressured Comey and other senior intelligence community officials to use their influence to shut down the FBIs investigation into potential ties between Trump associates and campaign officials and the Kremlin.

But as allegations mount of more and worse Russian interference in the 2016 election, the pressure to respond with punitive action has been increasing on both sides of the Senate, with even the Republican leader indicating a willingness to take up the issue on the floor. Late last month, Corker indicated that if Secretary of State Rex Tillerson could not show in early June that progress was being made with Russia with respect to the war in Syria, he would green-light new Russia sanctions in the Senate, and one that included measures to censure Russia over its alleged election meddling.

On Tuesday, after a check-in call with Tillerson Monday night, Corker hinted that a Russia sanctions measure would likely be coming soon  but he cautioned against making any assumptions about its contents, or presuming that any already-filed bill would be the model for it.

If senators are to use the Iran sanctions bill as a vehicle for Russia sanctions, they will have to make those determinations soon, as the Senate takes an opening procedural vote on the legislation Wednesday, setting it up for passage likely as soon as early next week. The Iran sanctions bill coming before the Senate seeks to punish Tehran for a spate of recent ballistic missile tests, as well as the activities of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a group the Trump administration is considering labeling a terrorist organization.

Corker, who chairs one of the two Senate committees with chief jurisdiction over sanctions, has not attached his name to any pending Russia sanctions bill. Crapo, who chairs Banking, the other committee of jurisdiction, is the lead co-author on that committees legislation, filed last week.

Read more at PowerPost


The townhouses at Travilah Station, a new townhouse development by Brookfield Residential in North Potomac, Md., are priced from $649,990 to $779,990. (Benjamin C Tankersley/For The Washington Post)

Travilah Station is a new townhouse development in North Potomac, Md., about 12 miles northwest of the District and Montgomery County line.

When the community is complete in approximately December 2019, there will be 131 townhouses across a 14-acre lot. Right now a dozen in two groupings of six are built or in construction, and two families have moved in.

Four models  Morgan, Camden, Bryant and Palmer  are offered. Three-level residences are standard, and a fourth with a rooftop terrace is an option. One view from the Camden model rooftop is the nearby elementary school, and on a weekday the sounds of children playing wafts through the air. Across the way, theres a distant view of the Blue Ridge Mountains from the Bryant roof terrace.

Townhouses with rear-loading garages have a grass front yard; residences with a front-loading garage have a two-car garage and two-car driveway, a walkway to the front door and a grass back yard with options for a patio and deck. All garages are sized for two cars.

[ArtView condos are green designed, spacious and part of a mixed-use development in Shaw]

Elevator: Brookfield Residential is the developer and builder. Lessard Design is the architect that designed the interiors and exteriors.

The second floor, or main living level, has a kitchen, dining room and great room. The kitchen is spacious. The island is 10 feet long with plenty roomy for three people to sit comfortably eating and drinking. A narrow deck runs across the house rear either off the kitchen or great room and can accommodate a grill. In some of the models the powder room has a window. All rooms are bright with natural light because the windows are large.

1 of 15 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  Buying New | Travilah Station in North Potomac, Md. View Photos The townhouses are priced from $649,990 to $779,990. Caption The townhouses are priced from $649,990 to $779,990. Travilah Station is a new townhouse development in North Potomac, Md., about 12 miles northwest of the District and Montgomery County line. Benjamin C. Tankersley/For The Washington Post Wait 1 second to continue.

Bedrooms are upstairs on the third level. Two bedrooms are standard, but the space can be reconfigured with three or even just one. Depending on the floor plan, several layouts and extensions are available to meet individual tastes. Closets are plentiful, and bathrooms are spacious. A double-door room in the hallway hides washer and dryer.

If a fourth level is added, residents gain a sprawling loft-like space or a bedroom and a smaller loft, which leads to a roof terrace through sliding glass doors.

[Saratoga Towns in Springfield, Va., offers a small community of townhouses, each with two-car garages]

When development is complete, families will be able to congregate in a communal gathering plaza, illustrated on a colored picture board in the sales center. There will be a paver patio and brick ground, picnic tables and grill, bocce ball court and playground, covered pergola and fire pit. It will open in the fall, and prospective buyers will be able to see the space firsthand and imagine hanging out there.

Several interior construction options are available and would incur a charge if selected:

All units are designed with space for an elevator, which can hold six people and would be backed up by a battery. If a purchaser elects not to install it, the space can be used as a closet or it can be left open without walls or door and incorporated into the existing room.

One alteration is a grand two-story great room extending from the main living level to the ceiling of the second living level. The resulting 20-foot cathedral ceiling is gained by the space of second bedrooms. This option is for families who dont need extra bedrooms.

The main living level ceiling can be designed to offer an industrial vibe. Instead of the typical flat white ceiling, pipes would be exposed and the rooms would have a warehouse kind of look.



The kitchen in the Camden model is spacious. The island is 10 feet long with plenty roomy for three people to sit comfortably eating and drinking. (Benjamin C Tankersley/For The Washington Post)

Whats nearby: Travilah Square Shopping Center on Darnestown Road is just around the corner from the community and will soon host a new Trader Joes. Not too far away are Shady Grove Shopping Center at 15930 Shady Grove Rd. in Gaithersburg and Fallsgrove Village Center at 14955 Shady Grove Rd. in Rockville. Together they easily cover a multitude of daily living needs. Dozens of shops offer services for health and beauty, drugs, banking, pet care, grocery shopping and dining.

Weekend getaways to outdoor recreation sites are plentiful and easy driving distance. Seneca Creek State Park is a beautiful 6,300-acre park of forests, fields and a 90-acre lake. There are hiking, biking and riding trails; fishing and boating opportunities; and an old cabin and a self-guided history trail. Blockhouse Point Conservation Park, 630 acres, is considered one of the countys standout natural areas. From high points you get scenic views of the Potomac River and C&O Canal. At eye level there are multiple ecosystems including forests, wetlands and floodplain; striking river outcrops; and nine species of endangered or threatened plants.

Schools: Stone Mill Elementary, Cabin John Middle, Thomas S. Wootton High.

Transit: Driving from the District, Travilah Station is reached via Interstate 270 North to exit 6B. Drivers should take Maryland Route 28 West, make a left on Darnestown Road and then a left on Travilah Road.

The 67 Ride On bus operated by Montgomery County Transit stops on Travilah Road and goes to Shady Grove Metro station on the Red Line. There are 76 metered parking spaces. Daily parking is $5.10, reserved parking is $45. There are 32 bike racks and 60 bike lockers.



If a fourth level is added, owners gain a sprawling loft-like space or a bedroom and a smaller loft, which leads to a roof terrace through sliding glass doors. (Benjamin C Tankersley/For The Washington Post)
After three years of attacks in Europe in which security services frequently struggled to explain how the perpetrators were able to avoid detection, Britain is wrestling with a different question in the wake of Saturdays attack: How could three extremists strike in the heart of London when at least two of them had been known to authorities?

One of the attackers, Khuram Shazad Butt, was certainly not hiding his radical views.

In fact, he had revealed them to millions of TV viewers in the 2016 documentary The Jihadis Next Door.

What should have raised even more alarm, according to experts, was the connection between Butt and possibly another of the attackers to a well-known radical British group called al-Muhajiroun. Counterterrorism analysts had called for a crackdown on the group and its offshoots for years. Now they wonder whether a tougher approach could have saved lives and whether there are lessons for other countries with locally entrenched extremist groups.

It remains unclear under what circumstances the three attackers met, but researchers have linked al-Muhajiroun to a number of successful and foiled British terrorist plots over the past two decades. The group is officially banned, but it has operated relatively freely.

Anjem Choudary speaks to demonstrators outside the U.S. Embassy in London in 2012 . (Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images)

A longtime al-Muhajiroun leader, Anjem Choudary, tested the boundaries of Britains freedom-of-speech laws with his fiery exhortations and encountered little resistance from authorities until 2015, when the cleric was charged with inviting support for the Islamic State. He was later sentenced to 5 years in jail.

[Notorious hate preacher Anjem Choudary found guilty of supporting ISIS]

These men have stayed just within the law for many years, Dean Haydon, head of the London police counterterrorism command, said in a statement last year, referring to Choudary and co-defendant Mohammed Rahman. There is no one within the counterterrorism world that has any doubts of the influence that they have had, the hate they have spread and the people that they have encouraged to join terrorist organisations.

Choudarys arrest followed a strategy change by London counterterrorism authorities and was seen as an acknowledgment that the wait-and-see approach had failed. But it might have come too late to reverse the damage in Britain and across Europe. Being allowed to travel across the continent, the hate preacher had provided assistance and support to extremist groups elsewhere and extended his network in Britain.

There had always been a debate between the police, who wanted to arrest key figures, and intelligence services, who wanted to keep extremist groups like al-Muhajiroun intact, in order to monitor their members, said Peter Neumann, director of the London-based International Center for the Study of Radicalization. Its a balancing act which can go wrong. Allowing Choudary to continue his operations, Neumann said, let the cleric radicalize people who perhaps would not have been attracted to extremism.

Some of them ended up joining the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. Others plotted attacks closer to home.

The criticism also extends to Prime Minister Theresa May, who was Britains home secretary until last year and for whom the latest bloodshed in London  the attack killed eight people  has become a major factor in Thursdays election. Polls indicate that Mays Conservative Party continues to lose support, although it remains ahead of the Labour Party.

(The Washington Post)

With less than 24 hours before polls opened, May attempted to seize back the initiative Wednesday by suggesting that she would change laws to fight the terrorist threat.

If human rights laws get in the way of doing these things, we will change those laws to make sure we can do them, May told the Sun, which endorsed the Conservative Party on Wednesday.

Her opponents said she was trying to divert attention from mounting criticism over police funding cuts undertaken during her six-year stint as home secretary. May oversaw the controversial cuts, which resulted in the elimination of about 20,000 officer staff positions and prompting concerns about Britains ability to prevent attacks.

[How terrorism came to dominate the British election]

At least 3,000 people in Britain pose a potential terrorism threat, said one official who until recently worked in a counterterrorism position. Thousands more sympathize with or support militant groups, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

To monitor one suspect day and night requires 20 officers on average, amounting to about half of the nations officers if the government wanted to put all high-risk suspects under surveillance.

The inability to monitor all suspects has resulted in several high-casualty attacks. In the case of the July 7, 2005, London bombings, authorities had been initially monitoring some of the suspects before they struck but had failed to notice early warning signs, a parliamentary committee concluded. More recently, the suicide bomber who struck in Manchester two weeks ago had been reported to authorities by concerned residents but was not put under surveillance.

To make such a decision, authorities likely consider factors like associates of the suspects, foreign connections as well as connections with militant groups to determine whether to invest time and resources on an individual, said Otso Iho, a senior analyst with IHS Janes Terrorism and Insurgency Center. But because more terrorists refrain from using illicit materials to prepare their attacks, their prevention has become much harder. Hence, authorities also need to look at possible networks and social circles in which those people are embedded and may be radicalized in.

It is a logic that puts authorities in an uncomfortable position, given that the easiest way to monitor the social circles of suspects is to keep their networks intact. But as Saturdays attack has shown, it is a strategy that poses serious risks if people slip through.

One of the attackers, 22-year-old Moroccan Italian Youssef Zaghba, was stopped by Italian authorities in March 2016 while on his way to Turkey to presumably join the Islamic State. Speaking to the BBC, his mother said she told Zaghba after the incident: You have to be perfect now. You cant look at strange things on the Internet or meet strange people.

Instead, he traveled to London and disappeared from authorities radar  until Saturday.

Read more

Trump was terrorized by the London attack while Britain stood firm

I saw blinding white headlights. . . . It hit directly to the right of me.

Brits gather to see Ariana Grande again  this time in defiance

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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London Mayor Sadiq Khan and Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick visit the scene of the attack on London Bridge and the Borough Market. (Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters)

Its not an easy job, being mayor of London  and Sadiq Khan is not only mayor but also probably the most prominent Muslim politician in the West, in a city attacked not once but twice by Islamist extremists during his first year in office.

And then, of course, theres President Trump, who in his tweets, just hours after the London Bridge attack, criticized Khan, alleging he was playing down the terrorist threat.

[A brief history of Donald Trumps feud with Sadiq Khan]

But on the streets of multicultural London, Khan is getting good marks for how he has handled the aftermath of the attacks.

The son of a Pakistani immigrant who worked as a bus driver, from the Tooting borough of London, Khan has been a steady fixture on television screens and social media since the attack, channeling the citys anger, sorrow and defiance.

(The Washington Post)

Under dark clouds at a vigil at Potters Fields Park on Monday, Khan directly addressed who he is and where he comes from.

As a proud and patriotic British Muslim, I say this  you cannot commit these disgusting acts in my name. Your perverse ideology has nothing to do with true values of Islam, and you will never succeed in dividing our city.

The line got the loudest applause.

In interviews, tweets and remarks, Khan called the Saturday night vehicular and knife attacks at London Bridge and the nearby Borough Market by turns evil, sick, hideous and barbaric. Eight people were killed and dozens wounded. The three attackers, all Muslims who lived in east London at least recently, were shot dead by police during their assault.

[British police identify 3rd London attacker as Italian of Moroccan descent]

At the vigil beside City Hall, Khan warned terrorists, We will defeat you. You will not win.

Tony Travers, an expert on local government at the London School of Economics, said of Khan, He was popular before the attacks, and hes probably more popular now.

(Sarah Parnass,Griff Witte/The Washington Post)

Khan prays often and does not drink alcohol.

He is devout in a religious sense. He doesnt wear it on his sleeve. Rather, he uses it to understand other people and to respect their religions or those who have no religion. Plus, hes a social liberal. So hes a perfect fit for London, with its large numbers of Polish Catholics, its Jewish population and Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims, Anglicans and on and on, Travers said.

During his election campaign last year, Khan described himself to the New Statesman this way: Im a Londoner, Im British, Im English, Im of Asian origin, of Pakistani heritage, Im a dad, Im a husband, Im a long-suffering Liverpool fan, Im Labour, Im Fabian, and Im Muslim.

But he was criticized during the campaign by his Conservative Party opponent, Zac Goldsmith, who said Khan had given platforms and oxygen and cover and excuses to extremists.

Khan accused his rival of Donald Trump-style antics.

[Man featured in a documentary called The Jihadis Next Door was one of London attackers ]

Travers said Khan performed in recent days as Londoners expected  repeating a steady reprise of keep calm and carry on, the line used in 1939 motivational posters distributed by the British government on the eve of World War II.

Hes shown good, inclusive leadership. He is the mayor for all who happen to be Muslim, and I think he has, more than some Western leaders, shown that he is, in fact, for all the people, said Ashfaq Siddique, secretary of the al-Madina Mosque in Barking, near where at least one of the London attackers lived.

Siddique said Khan has impressed him as someone who is reassuring, a leader with balance and common sense.

Kenny Norcross, a vendor in Barking, agreed. No complaints. Hes done us proud.

Khans statements after the attack mirrored those by Prime Minister Theresa May, the Conservative Party leader in the midst of a suddenly competitive election campaign.

After Trumps tweets, May came out in support of Khan, saying she believed the London mayor was doing an excellent job. May said politics should be put to the side to deal with the terrorist threat.

Still, Khan is a star in the Labour Party  and though he is not a big booster of Mays main challenger, Jeremy Corbyn, Khan has played off the London Bridge attack to warn that if the Conservative Party wins the election Thursday, they would probably slash budgets for front-line police officers.

Cuts on this scale would make it harder to foil future terrorist attacks on our city  and as the mayor of London, Im simply not willing to stand by and let that happen, Khan said.

[London attack spawns political controversy as May and Corbyn trade barbs ahead of vote]

In the hours after the rampage, Trump wrote in a tweet, At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is no reason to be alarmed! 

After news reports stressed that Khans comments were an advisory to citizens not to be alarmed by the heightened presence of police on London streets, Trump followed with another tweet: Pathetic excuse by London Mayor Sadiq Khan who had to think fast on his no reason to be alarmed statement. MSM is working hard to sell it!

I think Donald Trump was wrong in the things he has said about Sadiq Khan, May said.

Trump and Khan have a history. When Trump was running for president, Khan predicted that Trumps populist rhetoric would fail.

Since Trumps win, Khan has argued against inviting the American president for a state visit to Britain, calling it inappropriate because of Trumps proposed travel ban for visitors from several Muslim-majority nations.

Khan told the Associated Press this week that there are literally millions and millions of Muslims around the world who love America.

They love Britain, they want to come here to study, to be a tourist, to start up a business, to work, to learn. Why would you want to stop them coming? Khan said.

Khan has mostly declined to reply to Trump. I dont know how to tell you this, but I really dont care, the mayor told the AP.

william.booth@washpost.com

Read more:

Trumps fight with London mayor baffles his critics

A British election campaign that few expected ends in a way that no one could have predicted

The U.K. election, explained

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, made up of an alliance of Arab and Kurdish fighters, advance in the village of Sabah al-Khayr on the northern outskirts of Deir al-Zour as they encircle the Islamic State bastion of Raqqa in February. (Delil Souleiman/AFP/Getty Images)

U.S.- and Iran-backed forces are locked in a race to take Islamic State strongholds in southeastern Syria and seize a stretch of land that will either cement Tehrans regional ambitions or stifle them.

The scramble for pole position in Deir al-Zour province is likely to be one of the most consequential fights against the extremist group in Syria, posing a regional test for President Trump as his administration turns up the rhetoric against Iran.

On Wednesday, the Islamic State asserted responsibility for twin attacks in Tehran that left at least a dozen people dead, a clear reminder of the groups reach as it faces off against Iranian and U.S. forces and the proxies they support in Syria and Iraq. If confirmed, they would be the groups first major strikes in Iran.

U.S.-backed forces launched an offensive this week to push the Islamic State out of its self-proclaimed capital of Raqqa. But there are signs that the battle that follows, in the eastern province of Deir al-Zour, will be tougher still, and have greater consequences for the groups long-term survival as a force holding significant territory.

Experts say the Islamic State has moved senior leaders into Deir al-Zour, along with a growing number of foot soldiers as it loses control of Mosul, the groups capital in Iraq, and internationally backed forces move in on Raqqa.





[U.S. coalition begins long and difficult battle for Islamic State stronghold]

Located between Raqqa and the Iraqi border, the city of Deir al-Zour is the largest urban center in eastern Syria. To the south, Syrian and Iran-backed forces are moving in on several fronts, as the United States supports its own coalition of rebel groups to get to the province first.

Victory for the Iran-backed force would give Tehran control of a large swath of the Syrian-Iraqi border, securing a land route through Iraq and across southern Syria to its proxy, Hezbollah, in Lebanon.

For the United States, control of Deir al-Zour brings a bargaining chip for the future and demonstrates to regional allies its willingness to challenge Iran, after Trump promised to roll back the countrys rising ambition.

The weakening of ISIS was always going to open a race for territory, dominance and influence. The aggressive tone coming from Washington incentivizes Iran to speed up its operations, said Emile Hokayem, a Middle East analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. The problem is that even what the U.S. sees as limited goals clash with more-ambitious Iranian ones.

Proximity has sharpened tensions between the two sides. On Tuesday, the United States clashed directly with Iranian proxies for the second time in a month, bombing pro-government militia members advancing on an outpost used by U.S. Special Forces near Syrias southeastern border with Iraq.

[On the front lines of the fight for the Islamic States capital of Raqqa]

To reach the province, both sides are moving through Syrias vast southern desert as they head for the Islamic State-held town of Bukamal, the first in a series of towns they must take in the push north to Deir al-Zour.

The race began last month after Russia, Turkey and Iran agreed to a cease-fire across parts of western Syria. Rebel commanders and Western diplomats say the deal was intended to help the Syrian government and its allies concentrate resources in the east as they struggled to hold ground on multiple fronts.

We see the link clearly now. Accepting those de-escalation zones meant the regime and its allies were able to relax and move resources, said Abu Waleed, a commander with the U.S.-backed rebel group Usoud al-Sharqiya.

The retaking of the oil-rich Deir al-Zour region would diminish the governments economic dependence on Iran and Russia, which have bankrolled its fight against the armed rebellion that began in 2011.

The U.S. military said last week that it had bolstered its combat power in southern Syria, warning that it viewed Iranian-backed fighters in the area as a threat to nearby coalition troops fighting the Islamic State.

U.S. Army Col. Ryan Dillon, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq and Syria, told reporters last Thursday that Iranian-backed forces were 20 miles within a perimeter declared a week earlier in an attempt to de-escalate tensions and holding firm near the U.S. base at al-Tanf, a key border crossing.

Coalition aircraft, he said, dropped leaflets asking militia members to leave.

As Iraqi security forces fought pitched battles against Islamic State militants in Mosul in recent months, an array of Iran-backed and largely Shiite paramilitary groups have steadily pushed through the desert west of the city, reaching the Syrian border last week.

Militia leaders said they aimed to move south along the border and retake the main crossing points into Syria.

Photographs recently circulated showed Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, commander of Irans elite Quds Force, in the border area with Iraqi forces. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has also visited the popular mobilization forces there and praised their achievement in reaching the frontier.

At this stage, it depends less on what Assad and Iran does and more on what the United States does, said Aron Lund, a fellow at the New York-based Century Foundation.

If the U.S. and its allies have built up a strong enough force to move on al-Bukamal, then of course they can get there first. But can they get there in a way that is sustainable? They dont seem to be sure of what they want to do.

Zakaria Zakaria in Istanbul, Mustafa Salim in Baghdad, Dan Lamothe in Hawaii and Thomas Gibbons-Neff in Washington contributed to this report.

Read more:

Four Arab nations sever diplomatic ties with Qatar, exposing rift in region

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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Fired FBI director James B. Comey said President Trump told him at the White House I need loyalty, I expect loyalty during their private dinner conversation in January, according to written remarks from Comey offering a vivid preview of his testimony Thursday before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

In seven remarkable pages of prepared testimony, Comey describes a president obsessed with loyalty and publicly clearing his name amid an FBI investigation of his associates, and the FBI directors growing unease with the nature of the demands being made of him in their private conversations.

Since firing Comey last month, the president has denied reports that he sought a pledge of loyalty from the FBI director amid a Justice Department probe into possible coordination between Trump associates and Russian operatives. Comeys written remarks do support another Trump claim  that the FBI director repeatedly assured the president that he was not personally under investigation.

But overall, Comeys testimony portrays Trump as a domineering chief executive who made his FBI director deeply uncomfortable over the course of nine separate private conversations, beginning with their first meeting in early January before Trump was sworn into office. In that conversation, Comey warned the president-elect of a dossier that was circulating with unsubstantiated allegations against him and his advisers.

The details of the conversations as described by Comey are likely to further fuel the debate over whether the president may have attempted to obstruct justice by pressuring the FBI director about a sensitive investigation.

(Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.), who is leading the Senate probe of possible Russian coordination with Trump associates, said he was not alarmed by Comeys account.

I dont think its wrong to ask for loyalty of anyone inside an administration, Burr said. I dont think of what Ive read theres anything of wrongdoing.

Comey writes with almost novelistic detail about his interactions with the president, describing a call on Jan. 27 around lunchtime inviting him to dinner.

It was unclear from the conversation who else was going to be at the dinner, although I assumed there would be others, Comey wrote. It turned out to be just the two of us, seated at a small oval table in the center of the Green Room. Two Navy stewards waited on us, only entering the room to serve food and drinks.

The president began the conversation, Comey wrote, by asking him whether he wanted to stay on as FBI director, which I found strange because he had already told me twice in earlier conversations that he hoped I would stay, and I had assured him that I intended to.

The president replied, according to Comey, that lots of people wanted his job and he would understand if I wanted to walk away.

Comeys instincts, he wrote, were that both the setting and the conversation meant the dinner was, at least in part, an effort to have me ask for my job and create some sort of patronage relationship. That concerned me greatly, given the FBIs traditionally independent status in the executive branch.

(Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)

The president then made his demand for loyalty.

I didnt move, speak, or change my facial expression in any way during the awkward silence that followed, Comey wrote. We simply looked at each other in silence. The conversation then moved on, but he returned to the subject near the end of our dinner.

[Read Comeys prepared remarks for his upcoming testimony]

When prompted again on the subject of loyalty, Comey said he replied, You will always get honesty from me.

Comey said that once before Trumps inauguration, and again at the January dinner, he assured the president that he was not personally under investigation. He also told the president later on that he had shared that information with congressional leaders.

In his letter firing Comey, Trump wrote that three times Comey had assured him he was not under investigation. After the firing, Comeys defenders publicly challenged the accuracy of that statement.

Trumps lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, said Wednesday that the president is pleased that Mr. Comey has finally publicly confirmed his private reports that the President was not under investigation in any Russian probe. The President feels completely and totally vindicated.

Overall, Comeys written testimony describes a strained, awkward relationship between the two powerful men, punctuated by exchanges in which the president expressed his displeasure about the Russia probe in ways that alarmed the FBI director. Even the number of contacts between the two were alarming to Comey, who noted that he only spoke twice privately with President Barack Obama.

The written testimony also recounts a face-to-face conversation the two men had on Feb. 14 in the Oval Office, where many senior officials had gathered for a counterterrorism briefing.

After the meeting, the president asked everyone to leave. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and senior adviser Jared Kushner lingered in the room, but the president told them to leave, too, according to Comey.

When the door by the grandfather clock closed, Comey wrote, the president said, I want to talk about Mike Flynn  the former national security adviser who was forced out after disclosures about his conversations with the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak. Flynn had resigned a day earlier.

I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go, the president said, according to Comey. The FBI director replied only that he is a good guy.

In that conversation, the president repeatedly complained to the FBI director about leaks, and Comey said he agreed with him about the harm caused by leaks of classified information.

Comey said he understood the president to be asking for him to drop any investigation of Flynn in connection with false statements about his conversations with the Russian ambassador in December. I did not understand the president to be talking about the broader investigation into Russia or possible links to his campaign.

The former FBI director wrote that he found the conversation very concerning, given the FBIs role as an independent investigative agency.

Later, Comey complained to Sessions that he should not have been left alone with the president, and Sessions did not reply, according to the written testimony. Sessions declined to comment.

Then, in late March, Trump called Comey at the FBI. In that conversation, the president called the Russia probe a cloud hanging over his ability to lead the country.

He also expressed continued frustration that unsubstantiated allegations in a private dossier about him had become public, including lurid claims of sexual activity while in Russia.

He said he had nothing to do with Russia, had not been involved with hookers in Russia, and had always assumed he had been recorded when in Russia, Comey wrote.

He asked what we could do to lift the cloud. I responded that we were investigating the matter as quickly as we could, and that there would be great benefit, if we didnt find anything, to our having done the work well. He agreed, but then re-emphasized the problems this was causing him, Comey wrote.

After that phone call with the president, Comey said he called acting deputy attorney general Dana Boente to tell him what was discussed and to await his guidance. Comey said he never heard back from Boente. A spokesman for Boente did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Then, on April 11, Comey wrote, the president called him and asked him what he had done about getting out word that he was not personally under investigation. The president told him the cloud of the probe was interfering with his ability to do his job.

I have been very loyal to you, very loyal; we had that thing you know, Trump told Comey, according to the written testimony. I did not reply or ask him what he meant by that thing. 

He added: That was the last time I spoke with President Trump.

Sari Horwitz and Karoun Demirjian contributed to this report.
Two of the nations top intelligence officials declined in a testy hearing Wednesday to discuss the specifics of private conversations with President Trump, refusing to say whether they had been asked to push back against an FBI probe into possible coordination between Trumps campaign and the Russian government.

Testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats demurred when asked whether it was true, as The Washington Post reported Tuesday, that Trump asked Coats if he could intervene with then-FBI Director James B. Comey to get him to back off the bureaus focus on Michael Flynn, Trumps former national security adviser.

I dont believe its appropriate for me to address that in a public session, Coats said. I dont think this is the appropriate venue to do this in.

Similarly, National Security Agency Director Michael S. Rogers declined to answer a question from Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) about whether Trump asked Rogers to deny the existence of any evidence showing coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia, as The Post reported last month.

Im not going to discuss the specifics of any conversations with the president of the United States, Rogers said.

Instead, both men said they never felt pressure to do anything inappropriate or, in Coatss case, to intervene in an ongoing probe.

Both men struggled to provide a consistent rationale for why they could not discuss the conversations with Trump in public. Rogers offered that the conversations were classified. But when pressed by Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), he could not specify what was classified about the conversation.

The intelligence officials refusal to publicly address whether Trump asked them to play down or somehow impede the probe disturbed the committees Democrats, who were visibly frustrated.

Warner told Rogers the committee had facts that there were other individuals who were aware of his conversation with Trump and that a memo had been prepared because of concerns about the call.

In one particularly heated exchange, King lambasted the two intelligence officials for not offering a legal basis for refusing to talk about their discussions with the president regarding the Russia investigation. The probe is now being led by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III, following Trumps May 9 firing of Comey.

It is my belief that you are inappropriately refusing to answer these questions today, King said angrily.

I think your unwillingness to answer a very basic question speaks volumes, said Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.).

Coats said he didnt have a specific legal justification for declining to answer such questions, but suggested he might be able to do so during a closed briefing. Asked if he would be forthcoming in such a setting, Coats said he intended to be but did not know yet whether the White House would block such discussion by asserting that executive privilege covers his conversations with the president.

The exchange suggested the president could use executive privilege to prevent certain information from being shared with a congressional investigation into any possible coordination between Russia and Trump associates.

Although the hearing was supposed to focus on a critical surveillance authority that is set to expire in December, much of the discussion was dominated by Democrats efforts to elicit testimony about potential efforts by the president to interfere in the criminal investigation.

They also asked acting FBI director Andrew McCabe whether he ever discussed with Comey any conversations Trump had with the then-FBI director. Hours later, the Intelligence Committee released a remarkably detailed statement written by Comey in advance of his testimony on Thursday. In it, Comey recounted how Trump pressed him for a pledge of loyalty and for assurances that he was not under investigation, and also urged him to drop the probe into Flynn.

McCabe said he did not want to address conversations between Comey and Trump because those matters also begin to fall within the scope of issues being investigated by the special counsel  a strong hint that the investigation may expand to cover potential criminal attempts by the president to impede its course.

The acting director of the FBI also clarified a key point from an earlier congressional appearance, in which he had said there had been no effort to slow or interfere with the Russia probe. What he meant, McCabe said, was that the firing of Comey had not stalled the investigation.

Also frustrating the Democrats was Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosensteins refusal to state outright what he had told senators in a closed session last month  that he knew a memo he had written critical of Comeys handling of the investigation into Hillary Clintons use of a private email server would be used as justification for Comeys firing. When asked if he knew that was the case, he responded with answers that did not directly address the question.

Youve filibustered better than most of my colleagues, an exasperated Heinrich said. So well move on.

The surveillance authority that expires this year is known as Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, a 2008 law that enables the NSA to collect intelligence on foreign targets such as suspected terrorists and nuclear weapons proliferators through U.S. telecom and tech companies.

Coats told the panel he tried but failed to get an estimate of the number of times U.S. individuals communications were incidentally collected. That would cover cases when a U.S. person was mentioned in communications between two foreign targets or when a foreign target was in communication with a U.S. person.

To get that figure, NSA would be required to conduct significant additional research trying to determine whether individuals who may be of no foreign intelligence interest are U.S. persons, he said. That would entail intense identity verification research, which is invasive of peoples privacy, he said.

Also, he said, to do that work would shift analysts from focus areas such as counterterrorism, counterintelligence, North Korea and Iran. I cant justify that at a time when we face such a diversity of serious threats, he said.

Coatss answer upset Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who noted that Coats had pledged at his confirmation hearing to produce a number. Wyden accused Coats of saying that producing an estimate would jeopardize national security.

That is a very, very damaging position to stake out, he said. There are a lot of Americans who share our view that security and liberty are not mutually exclusive.

Section 702 is crucial to preventing terrorist attacks, Coats said. He disclosed a previously classified incident involving a person named Haji Iman who rose at one point to become the second-in-command of the Islamic State. NSA and other spy agencies spent two years looking for Haji Iman, whose real name is Abd al-Rahman Muhammad Mustafa al-Qaduli.

Using Section 702 intelligence, NSA and other agencies were able to track down Haji Iman and two associates. The terrorist was killed by a U.S. air raid in Syria last year.

Devlin Barrett and Julie Tate contributed to this report.
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaks at the opening session of the National Law Enforcement Conference on Human Exploitation at the Sheraton Atlanta Hotel in Atlanta. (Bob Andres/AP)

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is reversing an Obama administration practice that encouraged and sometimes required banks and other companies to donate large amounts of money to outside groups as part of settlement agreements with the federal government.

In the Obama administration, the Justice Department negotiated settlements, especially with large banks in connection with the residential mortgage-backed securities crisis, that required the settling parties to pay funds to third-party community organizations, such as the National Council of La Raza, Habitat for Humanity and the National Urban League.

These third-party organizations were neither victims nor parties to the lawsuits, Sessions said in a memo sent Wednesday to senior Justice Department officials and U.S. attorneys offices. Sessions said that, effective immediately, settlement payments to nongovernmental third parties, such as advocacy or housing groups, are prohibited.

When the federal government settles a case against a corporate wrongdoer, any settlement funds should go first to the victims and then to the American people  not to bankroll third-party special interest groups or the political friends of whoever is in power, Sessions said in a statement.

Unfortunately, in recent years, the Department of Justice has sometimes required or encouraged defendants to make these payments to third parties as a condition of settlement, Sessions said. With this directive, we are ending this practice and ensuring that settlement funds are only used to compensate victims, redress harm and punish and deter unlawful conduct.

The Obama administrations third-party settlement practice had been criticized by Republican commentators and lawmakers, who have referred to it as a slush fund. In January, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) introduced legislation to prohibit the Justice Department and other federal agencies from requiring defendants to donate money to third-party groups as part of a settlement.

[The Justice Departments bank settlement slush fund]

In 2013, the Department of Justice reached settlements with several banks, ranging from $7 billion (Citigroup) to $16.65 billion (Bank of America) related to the selling of residential mortgage-backed securities. As part of those settlements, the department required banks to pay approximately $3 billion to third-party groups, such as NeighborWorks and state legal aid organizations, according to Justice officials.

In 2015, the Justice Department settled claims with JPMorgan Chase related to robo-signing practices and required JPMorgan to pay $7.5 million to the American Bankruptcy Institutes endowment for financial education, Justice officials said.

And in 2016, as part of a civil settlement, the Justice Department required Volkswagen to invest $2 billion to fund zero-emission technology and infrastructure and to promote zero-emission vehicles  funding that would not be allowed under the new policy.

Under Sessionss policy, settlement funds will go to the U.S. Treasury. An exception to the policy are payments that directly remedy the harm addressed in the settlement, including harm to the environment or from official corruption, according to the memo. The policy also does not apply to payments for legal or other professional services in connection with the case and to payments that provide restitution to a victim.
The nations top intelligence official told associates in March that President Trump asked him if he could intervene with then-FBI Director James B. Comey to get the bureau to back off its focus on former national security adviser Michael Flynn in its Russia probe, according to officials.

On March 22, less than a week after being confirmed by the Senate, Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats attended a briefing at the White House together with officials from several government agencies. As the briefing was wrapping up, Trump asked everyone to leave the room except for Coats and CIA Director Mike Pompeo.

The president then started complaining about the FBI investigation and Comeys handling of it, said officials familiar with the account Coats gave to associates. Two days earlier, Comey had confirmed in a congressional hearing that the bureau was probing whether Trumps campaign coordinated with Russia during the 2016 race.

[Inside Trumps anger and impatience  and his sudden decision to fire Comey]

After the encounter, Coats discussed the conversation with other officials and decided that intervening with Comey as Trump had suggested would be inappropriate, according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal matters.

The events involving Coats show the president went further than just asking intelligence officials to deny publicly the existence of any evidence showing collusion during the 2016 election, as The Washington Post reported in May. The interaction with Coats indicates that Trump aimed to enlist top officials to have Comey curtail the bureaus probe.

[Trump asked intelligence chiefs to push back against FBI collusion probe after Comey revealed its existence]

Coats will testify on Wednesday before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Lawmakers on the panel said they would press him for information about his interactions with the president regarding the FBI investigation.

The question of whether the president obstructed the Russia investigation is expected to take center stage this week with Comeys highly anticipated testimony on the Hill on Thursday. Comey associates say that before the director was fired in May, the president had asked him to drop the investigation into Flynn, and Comey refused.

Brian P. Hale, a spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), declined to comment on whether Trump asked Coats to intervene with Comey regarding the Flynn investigation. Hale said in a statement: Director Coats does not discuss his private conversations with the President. However, he has never felt pressured by the President or anyone else in the Administration to influence any intelligence matters or ongoing investigations.

A spokesman for Pompeo declined to comment on the closed-door discussions. The White House referred questions to outside lawyers, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump has repeatedly denied any coordination took place between his campaign and the Russian government, which, according to U.S. intelligence agencies, stole emails embarrassing to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and leaked them to undermine her campaign.

Flynn had served as an enthusiastic surrogate for Trump during the campaign and then was fired after just 24 days as national security adviser over revelations he misrepresented his discussions with the Russian ambassador to the United States.

[Flynns swift downfall: From a phone call to a forced resignation]

The incidents suggest that Trump may not have appreciated the traditional barriers meant to insulate the intelligence agencies from politics.

Though the ODNI oversees other intelligence agencies, the FBI director operates independently on many matters. For example, Comey kept James R. Clapper Jr., Coatss predecessor in the Obama administration, in the dark about the bureaus investigation into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia.

A day or two after the March 22 meeting, the president followed up with a phone call to Coats, according to officials familiar with the discussions. In the call, Trump asked Coats to issue a public statement denying the existence of any evidence of coordination between his campaign and the Russian government. Again, Coats decided not to act on the request.

Trump similarly approached Adm. Mike Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency, to ask him to publicly deny the existence of any evidence of coordination, as The Post previously reported, according to current and former officials. Like Coats, Rogers refused to comply with the presidents request.

Trump announced in January that he was nominating Coats to serve as director of national intelligence, responsible for overseeing U.S. intelligence agencies and for briefing the president on global developments.

In February, as tensions flared between intelligence agencies and the White House over Russia and other issues, some of Trumps advisers floated the idea of appointing a New York billionaire, Stephen A. Feinberg, to undertake a review of the ODNI. Coats, who was preparing for his confirmation hearing, felt blindsided, officials said.

The White House backed away from the idea of naming Feinberg after Coats, members of the intelligence community and Congress raised objections.

Officials say Trumps advisers have since revived their proposal to appoint Feinberg to a senior position, possibly to review the roles of the ODNI and other intelligence agencies.

Some officials said they viewed the prospective appointment of Feinberg as an effort by White House officials to put pressure on intelligence agencies to close ranks with the White House.

In an appearance last month before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Coats refused to provide details about his interactions with Trump.

But he indicated that he would cooperate with the Russia probe now being led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. Under questioning by Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Coats said that if asked, he would provide details of his conversations with Trump to Mueller.

Coats also said that if he is called before an investigative committee, such as the Senate Intelligence Committee, I certainly will provide them with what I know and what I dont know. He said the Trump administration had not directed the ODNI to withhold information from members of Congress conducting oversight.

Read more:

All eyes are on Comey this Thursday  again

Legal analysts: Trump might have obstructed justice, if Comeys allegation is true

Putin ridicules allegations of collusion between Trump aides and Russian officials
In the front, from right to left: Jordans King Abdullah II, Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, U.S. President Trump, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan and Qatars Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani pose for a photo during Arab-Islamic-American Summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on May 21, 2017. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

President Trump has for weeks pressed disparate forces throughout the Middle East to band together with Saudi Arabia to fight terrorism and punish Iran, long viewed by hawks inside his administration as the main source of instability and terrorism in the region.

But in his push to empower the Saudis, Trump may have unleashed problems, including increased sectarianism and regional strife, that are as bad as the one he was trying to fix, inflaming tensions that could imperil the battle against the Islamic State and other critical U.S. priorities.

Thats the fundamental problem in the Middle East, said Phil Gordon, a former official in the Obama White House who focused on the region. Solving one problem in the region inevitably exacerbates others and can easily lead to escalation.

Trump administration officials, meanwhile, attributed rising regional tensions to the failed policies of the Obama administration, which in recent years had unnerved traditional U.S. allies in the region with policies that appeared to empower Iran.

The signs of that escalation were apparent Wednesday when Irans leaders blamed Saudi Arabia for an attack by the Islamic State in Tehran that left 12 people dead and wounded 42 others. The stunning assault capped several days of spiraling tensions that kicked off when Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates led a group of Arab allies to move against Qatar  a U.S. partner and host of the main American air base in the region  which had sought accommodation with Iran.

Trump immediately celebrated the Saudis move and even took some credit for it on Twitter.

During my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology, Trump said on Tuesday. Leaders pointed to Qatar - look!

[As ISIS loses ground in Syria, a scramble between U.S. and Iran for control]

The danger for the United States and the Trump administration is that the spiraling tensions and saber-rattling throughout the region could imperil some of its key initiatives.

Sunni-led monarchies Saudi Arabia and Qatar are both part of the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State, a Sunni extremist movement that both have been accused over the years of at least indirectly financing.

Qatar is also part of a fragile, Saudi-led coalition fighting against Houthi rebels, in Yemen, backed by Irans Shiite government.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has made rolling back Irans ambitions in Yemen and reaching a negotiated settlement with the rebels a top priority as a step toward containing it across the region. A split among the Arab partners fighting there would be a significant boon for Iran, said analysts.

Yet Trump appeared to take Saudi Arabias side this week in a dispute with Qatar that his own senior national security advisers tried to quell with evenhandedness.

Qatar is an artificial crisis, said Michele Dunne, a Middle East expert at the State Department from 1986 to 2003 and director of the Middle East program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

All of the issues being cited  support for Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and the Qatar-based media organization Al Jazeera, which has been critical of both the Saudis and the U.A.E.  have been going on for years now, Dunne said. Why, all of a sudden, is there a crisis over it now? It does seem as though the Trump administrations approach to the region has sent a message to Saudi Arabia and the Emirates that they can call the shots in the region, and the U.S. will stick with them.

Dunne and Christopher Davidson, associate professor in Middle East politics at Durham University in England, suggested that Saudi Arabias long-range plan, in addition to forcing Qatar to mitigate its more open attitude toward both Iran and political Islam, may include inviting the United States to move its air operations in the region from Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar back to Saudi Arabia.

So far, Davidson said: Qatar is sticking to its guns. Turkey has pledged to support them, and there is provocative news that Iran might support them, too.

Senior Trump administration officials criticized the idea that Trumps backing for the Saudis on his recent trip or his latest tweets condemning Qatar for terrorism financing had contributed to instability or sectarian tension in the region. Instead, one White House official said that it was the previous administrations chilly relationship with Saudi Arabia and its deal with Iran to halt its nuclear weapons program that had unleashed sectarianism.

From the opening moments of his trip to the Middle East, Trump made clear that he was determined to take the opposite approach of his predecessor. President Barack Obama assiduously avoided taking sides in the regions sectarian conflicts and infuriated the Saudis by suggesting that they would have to share the region with Iran.

The Saudis interpreted that as the president telling them that the Iranians are a predator, and they should acquiesce to their ambitions and surrender to them, said Dennis A. Ross, who served as a senior Middle East adviser to Republican and Democratic presidents. That is not my interpretation. That is literally what I was told in the region.

Since taking office, Trump has flipped the script, prioritizing the battle against all forms of terrorism over sectarian and regional tensions. The result for now is a stepped-up battle against the Islamic State that has led to deeper U.S. military involvement, some impressive battlefield gains and greater civilian casualties.

Both Trump and the Saudis described the presidents meetings in the kingdom last month as the beginning of a new era in U.S.-Arab relations, the fight against terrorism and a much harder line on Iran.

People have said there has really never been anything even close in history, Trump said.

His national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, amplified that message and spoke hopefully of a new alliance involving Israel and Americas Arab partners  all friends of America but too often adversaries of each other  to roll back Iranian influence.

In a meeting with reporters, McMaster described Iran as the greatest state sponsor of terrorism in the world and a malign influence that has perpetuated civil wars throughout the region.

These are really, really good reasons to focus on a concerted effort to counter Irans destructive activities, McMaster said.

The long-term bet is that the United States allies will be willing to take a harder line against Sunni Arab terrorist groups, such as the Islamic State, if the United States is also taking a harder line against Iran, which the Saudis and the Emiratis see as an existential threat.

In recent days, though, it has been hard to divine the exact policy that the administration is pursuing, especially regarding the dispute between the Qataris and the powerful Saudi-led bloc opposing them, and whether it is promoting more or less stability.

What they are doing vis-a-vis Qatar is really unprecedented, Ross said.  This is not symbolic. You break diplomatic relations, deny Qatari planes the ability to operate in your airspace, call back nationals. This is a very tough response.

The policy looks very much like a work in progress, Ross said.
The Islamic State has struck at Iran and its allies for years  but always from afar, in places such as Iraq against Tehran-backed militias and in Syria battling government troops aided by Iranian forces.

That appeared to change Wednesday when bloodshed came to Tehran. In a few chaotic hours, Iran endured the kind of deadly rampages so often claimed by the Islamic State elsewhere.

The twin attacks, the first major assaults in Iran claimed by the Islamic State, targeted the heart of Irans political identity and the notion that militants were no match for the security forces zealously guarding Tehran.

At least 12 people were reported killed and 42 wounded in the assaults in the parliament building and outside the tomb of the leader of the nations Islamic revolution. Security forces eventually killed all four assailants, state media reported. Hours later, Tehrans police chief said five suspects had been detained and were being interrogated.

While the attacks showed that the United States and Iran have a shared enemy, they appeared unlikely to reset U.S.-led efforts against the Islamic State or bring Iran more directly into the fight  especially since the Trump administration has embraced Irans main regional foe, Saudi Arabia, as a bulwark in fighting Islamist militants and constraining Irans regional influence.





In a White House statement, President Trump said Wednesday: We grieve and pray for the innocent victims of the terrorist attacks in Iran, and for the Iranian people, who are going through such challenging times. We underscore that states that sponsor terrorism risk falling victim to the evil they promote.

The Washington-based National Iranian American Council promptly rebuked what it called Trumps heartless message, saying that presidents who cannot genuinely recognize victims of terrorism are incapable of leading the fight against terror.

Irans powerful Revolutionary Guard Corps took a thinly veiled jab at Saudi Arabia as a source of militant ideology, saying it was meaningful that the attacks occurred less than three weeks after Trump visited Riyadh and asserted strong U.S. support for the Saudis and their allies.

The Revolutionary Guard statement added that the spilled blood of the innocent will not remain unavenged.

[As ISIS loses ground in Syria, a scramble between U.S. and Iran for control]

Iran is predominantly Shiite Muslim and is at odds with Sunni extremist groups such as al-

Qaeda and the Islamic State, which view Shiites as heretics and have attacked Shiite targets across the region.

While it is unclear what direct measures Iran could take against the Islamic State, the fallout is certain to deepen regional tensions at a difficult time. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and others have pledged to try to heal an unprecedented diplomatic break in which Saudi Arabia and its allies have severed ties with Qatar, a key U.S. military partner in the Persian Gulf.

1 of 13 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  The scene in Tehran View Photos Gunmen stormed two major sites in the Iranian capital, opening fire and detonating suicide blasts in the parliament and at the revered tomb of the nations Islamic revolutionary leader. Caption Gunmen attacked two major sites in the Iranian capital, opening fire and detonating suicide blasts at the parliament and the revered tomb of the nations Islamic revolution leader. June 7, 2017 Security personnel guard Irans parliament building after an attack in Tehran. Suicide bombers and gunmen stormed into Irans parliament and targeted the shrine of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Omid Vahabzadeh/AP Wait 1 second to continue.

The Saudis and their allies accuse Qatar of supporting Islamist militants and oppose its outreach to Iran.

For the Islamic State, striking directly at Iran appears to be part of a wider attempt to stir regional discord.

An attack inside Iran was absolutely the realization of a long-term ideological goal for the Islamic State, said Charlie Winter, a senior research fellow at the International Center for the Study of Radicalization at Kings College in London.

Ideologically, the implications are huge, he said. Attacking Iran is kind of like attacking the U.S. or Israel.

The near-simultaneous attacks  coming in the middle of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan  also appeared calculated to elicit maximum shock among Iranians.

The parliament is widely respected as a voice on domestic policies even though Irans supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has the final word on most international and security issues. The shrine of Khameneis predecessor, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, is a centerpiece of homage to the 1979 Islamic revolution, which overthrew Irans Western-allied monarchy.

[Trump turned his Saudi trip into a rally against Iranian influence]

The timing, meanwhile, could have been intended to boost the Islamic States stature among backers as it faces a two-pronged assault against its key urban strongholds: Mosul in northern Iraq and Raqqa in Syria. An expanded offensive by U.S.-backed forces against Raqqa, the Islamic States de facto capital, began Tuesday.

It is indeed a boost to ISIS morale, especially given that its the first successful attack in Iran, said Dina Esfandiary, who studies global security issues at the Center for Science and Security Studies at Kings College. The Islamic State is also known as ISIS.

Iranian state TV quoted Khamenei as dismissing the attacks as mere fireworks that would not weaken Irans fight against groups such as the Islamic State.

The Islamic States Amaq News Agency claimed that the group carried out the attacks. The Islamic State, however, is often quick to take ownership of spectacular assaults without providing evidence.

But the news agency also circulated a 24-second video that purported to show a fighter walking near a body during the attack on the parliament.

Oh, Sunni people in Iran, dont you feel the pain from those shackles that are tied around your wrists and ankles? one militant said in the video, calling on Sunnis to wage battle against Shiites in their dens and gatherings in Tehran and other Iranian cities.

The Islamic State also began distributing its online magazine Rumiyah in Persian late last month.

Iran views its parliament, or Majlis, as a symbol of participatory government in contrast with its main regional rivals, including Saudi Arabia and allied sheikhdoms in the Persian Gulf. Last month, Irans president, Hassan Rouhani, won reelection in a race against hard-line challengers.

[Irans election is over, but bigger issues of leadership loom]

The parliament has very specific meaning for Iran after the recent election. Its democracy was attacked, said Marc Martinez, a senior analyst and Iran expert at the Delma Institute, a political consultancy in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.

The expansive complex around Khomeinis tomb is a spiritual and political testament to the Islamic revolution. The huge courtyard and buildings, including blue-tiled domes that tower over the mausoleum, are particularly filled with visitors during Ramadan, which began two weeks ago.

Attacks of this kind are rare in Irans capital, where security forces are deployed at prominent sites. The Revolutionary Guard Corps also maintains a vast network of informants and allies through a volunteer paramilitary force called the Basij.

The parliament building is in the center of the city, and Khomeinis tomb complex is about 12 miles to the south.

Iran has suffered terrorist attacks in the past but rarely in cities or the capital. Separatist groups and Sunni extremists have carried out bombings in the border region near Pakistan, including a suicide attack in 2010 that killed 39.

Paul Schemm in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; Loveday Morris in Irbil, Iraq; and William Branigin and Carol Morello in Washington contributed to this report.

Read more:

U.S. and Iran aligned against the Islamic State  for now

Iran president blames U.S. for Mideast violence

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, said in Jerusalem on Wednesday that Israel faces bullying at the United Nations  and that she has no patience for it.

Haley arrived in Israel to a heros welcome one day after warning that the United States might pull out of the U.N. Human Rights Council unless it changes its ways in general and its negative stance on Israel in particular.

Haley, a former governor of South Carolina who often is touted as a future Republican presidential candidate, has focused heavily on what she calls the mistreatment of Israel during her six months at the United Nations.

Her efforts have made her a darling of Israeli leaders, and have endeared her to conservative pro-Israel organizations in the United States.

Thank you for all your help and standing up for Israel, standing up for the truth, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Haley after the two met in Jerusalem.

He said that with backing from President Trump, Haley had begun to change the discourse on Israel within the international forum based in New York.

You know, all Ive done is to tell the truth, and its kind of overwhelming at the reaction, she said. It was a habit. And if theres anything I have no patience for its bullies, and the U.N. was being such a bully to Israel, because they could.

[U.S. says it may pull out of U.N. human rights body, citing member abuses, treatment of Israel]

Haley said she has started to see a change in attitude at the United Nations, a body that Israel has complained is overwhelming against it, mostly in regard to its 50-year occupation of the West Bank and day-to-day treatment of the Palestinians.

Israeli leaders are hopeful that with support from the Trump administration, the United Nations will change the way it treats Israel.

At a meeting of the Human Rights Council in Geneva on Tuesday, Haley said the United States was looking carefully at its participation in the council, which she lambasted for allowing countries involved in human rights abuses to remain members while maintaining what she called chronic anti-Israel bias.

Its hard to accept that this council has never considered a resolution on Venezuela, and yet it adopted five biased resolutions in March against a single country, Israel, she said.

Haley will spend three days in Israel, where she is scheduled to visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, spend time in Tel Aviv and take a helicopter ride to Israels border with the Gaza Strip. She also will meet with Palestinian leaders, Israeli media reported.

We are honored to welcome you to our country and thank you for standing resolutely by our side, Israeli U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon said at a welcoming ceremony for the American diplomat.

Danon will accompany Haley throughout most of the trip, except during her meetings with the Palestinians and while she takes a private tour of Jerusalems holy sites.

He said that with help from Haley and the U.S. administration, now is the time to enact real reforms at the U.N. so that it will reflect Israels true stature in the international community.

Read more:

U.S. envoy to visit Human Rights Council in Geneva and Israel

All 100 senators sign letter asking for equal treatment of Israel at the U.N.

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world

Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news
A man rides a motorbike past the entrance gate of a Huajian Group shoe factory in Ganzhou, in southeastern China's Jiangxi province, on Tuesday. (Mark Schiefelbein/AP)

Two days after the State Department called for the release of three activists detained while investigating working conditions at factories that make shoes for Ivanka Trump, Chinese authorities appear not to be backing off the case.

Reports published Wednesday morning by the Communist Party-controlled press claimed the three men, Su Heng, Li Zhao and Hua Haifeng, are being investigated for selling commercial secrets to unnamed foreign organizations.

[Activists investigating Ivanka Trump brands in China arrested, missing]

A detailed report in the Paper, a website controlled by the Shanghai city government, claimed the men took jobs at factories and then used hidden camera watches and other devices to gather information and send it abroad.

The account included a picture of evidence reportedly seized by police: two watches, some thumb drives, a battery and a cellphone. It also said the men had confessed. The men are in detention and have yet to be formally charged.

The use of the party-controlled press to build a public case against activists will renew concern about how China treats human rights campaigners and uses its courts. The back and forth between Beijing and Washington could also complicate U.S.-China ties under President Trump.

The current standoff started when three activists were detained while preparing a report about working conditions at Huajian Group shoe factories for China Labor Watch, a New York-based nonprofit organization that aims to defend workers rights.

China Labor Watchs founder, Li Qiang, told The Washington Post last month that CLW investigators have been questioned and stopped from traveling over the years, but never detained.

This never happened before in my 17 years experience, he said then. The only reason we think this case is different is that this is Ivanka Trumps factory.



On Wednesday, he said he now worries the men could face serious charges.

If the Chinese government indeed pursues the case, it could stop others from conducting investigations that have helped hold multinational companies accountable, said William Nee, a researcher with Amnesty International in Hong Kong.

It could be that the Chinese government is now signaling that they are no longer tolerating this sort of workers rights research, he said.

Since China doesnt have an independent trade union, and domestic workers rights NGOs have been squeezed, it will be very hard for workers to fight for their rights and may leave corporations to violate them with impunity.



While Chinese police routinely target rights campaigners, the Trump connection quickly turned the China Labor Watch case into international news, calling attention to working conditions in Chinese factories  and the Trump familys business ties abroad.

[Despite promise, Trumps business offers little information about foreign profits]

On Monday, the State Department urged Chinese authorities to either let the activists go or afford them the right to fair trial. A spokesman stressed that labor activists have been instrumental in helping U.S. companies understand conditions in their supply chains.

A spokesman for Chinas foreign ministry on Tuesday dismissed U.S. concerns, saying it was an internal matter. On Wednesday, Hua Chunying, a spokeswoman for the Chinas Foreign Ministry, said she had no new information on the case.

Calls to local police and the shoe manufacturers public-relations department went unanswered.

Behind the scenes, Chinese authorities seem to be stepping up pressure by isolating the activists and threatening their families.

Deng Guilian, wife of Hua Haifeng, said her husband was being held in a cell with about 20 inmates who had all been told not to talk to him. Its very crowded inside, she said, He sleeps near the toilet, which is very painful and uncomfortable.

Local authorities are now trying to turn her against her husband, she said: They said that I have to make a clean break, or I too could be charged.

Deng called on Ivanka Trump to issue a statement calling for her husbands release. For her, its just a matter of a few words, but those few words would save the entire family, she said.

I beg her, on behalf of my family too, to be kind and let my husband to come home as soon as possible.

Carol Morello reported from Washington; Luna Lin and Liu Yang and Congcong Zhang reported from Beijing.

Read more:

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It was March 2020, and the world was closing down as the COVID-19 pandemic spread. At first, the news of...
Validus Holdings, Ltd. provides reinsurance coverage, insurance coverage, and insurance linked securities management services worldwide. It operates through three segments: Reinsurance, Insurance, and Asset Management. The Reinsurance segment underwrites property reinsurance products on a catastrophe excess of loss, per risk excess of loss and proportional basis; and aerospace and aviation, agriculture, composite, marine, technical lines, terrorism, trade credit, workers' compensation, and other specialty lines, as well as casualty and financial lines. The Insurance segment underwrites property, accident and health, agriculture, aviation, contingency, marine, and political lines insurance products; bankers blanket bond, commercial crime, computer crime, cyber- crime, professional indemnity, and directors' and officers' insurance products for various financial institutions and other companies; and commercial and institutional risks comprising general, professional, and product liability, as well as miscellaneous malpractice insurance products. This segment also underwrites marine and energy liability, and political risk insurance products, as well as insurance products for repair, maintenance, and upkeep of aircrafts and premises for small companies. The Asset Management segment manages capital for third parties through insurance-linked securities, and other property catastrophe and specialty reinsurance investments. Validus Holdings, Ltd. was founded in 2005 and is based in Pembroke, Bermuda.
This is a current list of the top 250 companies by market capitalization on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX). Learn more .

Many investors understand the reasons for having a diversified portfolio. One way to accomplish this is to diversify within an asset class. For equity investors in the United States this can mean investing in both growth and value stocks.

It can also mean investing in international stocks. And when investors want to do this, they need look no further than our neighbor to the north. Canada has a range of stocks for investors to consider. This article will focus on strategies that investors can use when looking to invest in Canadian stocks.

Why Buy Canadian Stocks?

There are a few reasons for investors to consider Canadian stocks as part of their diversification strategy:

A Large Natural Resources Sector  The sheer size of the country and its location lets investors know that it is an area rich in natural resources. This also means that the country has a source of current and future wealth.

An Advanced Skills-Based Economy  In this regard, Canada is similar to other western nations. The difference is that it is not as common to find these skill-based professions in a country with so many natural resources.

Stability  Canada is not exempt from any problems that impact the global economy. However, the country is known for stable financial and business policies that have kept the economy relatively stable. This Goldilocks economy has meant that many Canadian stocks havent enjoyed the outsized growth of some U.S. equities. However, it also comes with a bit of protection against downside risk.

How Have Canadian Stocks Performed?

According to S&P Global Market Intelligence, there was a time when U.S. stocks and Canadian stocks performed nearly identically. Heres a graph that shows the performance of the S&P 500 Index vs. the TSX Index



Source: S&P Global Market Intelligence

You can see that with a couple of exceptions, the two indexes performed remarkably similar. That all changed around 2012 and Canadian stocks became less attractive.

Source: S&P Global Market Intelligence

This disparity is widely due to one sector, technology. However, Canadian technology stocks have been on the rise. And in 2022, the country is benefiting from renewed interest in materials stocks as well as a spike in commodity prices.

What Are the Best Sectors of Canadian Stocks?

For different reasons finance, materials, and energy stocks are among the best performing stocks as of September 2022. Heres a brief overview of each sector and some of the top names for investors to consider.

Financial  Similar to the United States, Canada has a strong banking industry. Many Canadian banks have a track record of solid performance that can provide long-term value to a portfolio. And several of these stocks pay dividends with attractive yields for investors.

This sector makes up the largest percentage of the TSX at roughly 30%. And the Royal Bank of Canada (NYSE:RY)is the top-weighted constituent in the TSX. Beyond the Royal Bank of Canada some of the other top-performing Canadian financial stocks include:

Materials and Mining  Canadian stocks can be an ideal choice for investors looking to diversify into gold and precious metals without owning the physical metal. Canada has a large natural resources sector. So, its not surprising that there are a number of gold mining companies with Canadian origins. This sector also gives investors exposure to other components in the mining and agriculture sectors. This sector makes up approximately 11.5% of the TSX. Some of the top Canadian materials and mining stocks include:

Energy  Canadian stocks offer both traditional fossil fuel-based energy stocks as well as some renewable energy stocks. This sector makes up approximately 18.5% of the TSX. Some of the top Canadian energy stocks include:

Technology  As mentioned earlier, technology stocks have largely been the domain of the United States. As evidence of this, information technology stocks make up only about 5.5% of the TSX. However, there are a few Canadian companies that have become stars in the new economy being created. Some of the more popular names include:

What Are the Risks of Investing in Canadian Stocks?

One concern about investing in Canadian stocks is that they can be heavily weighted towards cyclical industries. For example, as of February 2022 financials (33.5%), energy (14.8%) and industrials (11.7%) made up nearly 60% of the index. That may be too much for some investors particularly because those sectors all tend to correlate roughly the same way as the economic cycle. But as a long-term play, Canadian stocks are worth considering with a small part of your portfolio.

How to Buy Canadian Stocks

Buy Individual Stocks on a Stock Exchange

Hundreds of Canadian stocks have dual listings on either the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) or the NASDAQ. This is the most convenient way to get exposure to Canadian stocks because there are no barriers to stock ownership. These shares can be purchased in U.S. dollars directly from the exchange just like purchasing a U.S. stock.

However, for a full list of the best Canadian stocks, investors should look at the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX). The TSX is one of the oldest stock exchanges having been founded in 1852. Its also the third largest stock exchange in North America in terms of market capitalization.

The Toronto Stock Exchange includes approximately 1,500 companies. It allows investors to trade stocks, investment trusts, exchange-traded products, bonds, commodities, futures, options, and other derivative products. All transactions on the TSX are executed in Canadian dollars.

Invest in a Mutual Fund or ETF

There are many mutual funds and exchange-traded funds that supply exposure to Canadian stocks. Some funds supply exposure to both U.S. and Canadian stocks. Other funds hold just Canadian stocks. Some examples of those include:

BMO S&P/TSX Capped Composite Index ETF

Horizons S&P/TSX 60 Index ETF

Vanguard FTSE Canada All Cap ETF

As with investing in any asset class, investors need to consider their investment objective, time horizon and risk tolerance before choosing a fund that fits their needs. Investors will also want to pay attention to the funds fee structure to ensure youre making the most efficient use of your capital.

The Final Word on Investing in Canadian Stocks

Investing in Canadian stocks is one way for investors to add diversification to their portfolio. MarketBeat provides a list of the top Canadian stocks that trade on the TSX. This is Canadas version of the NYSE or NASDAQ in the United States and includes many of the same stocks.

Thats one advantage of investing in Canadian stocks is that many have a dual listing which removes many of the obstacles that can come with investing in international stocks.

However, investors should be aware that many of the best Canadian stocks are in highly cyclical industries which can lead to underperformance when those sectors are out of favor. Still, due to their relative stability and in some cases an impressive dividend, Canadian stocks may have a place in an investors portfolio.
Best Buy Co., Inc. retails technology products in the United States and Canada. The company operates in two segments, Domestic and International. Its stores provide computing products, such as desktops, notebooks, and peripherals; mobile phones comprising related mobile network carrier commissions; networking products; tablets covering e-readers; smartwatches; and consumer electronics consisting of digital imaging, health and fitness, home theater, portable audio comprising headphones and portable speakers, and smart home products. The company's stores also offer appliances, such as dishwashers, laundry, ovens, refrigerators, blenders, coffee makers, and vacuums; entertainment products consisting of drones, peripherals, movies, music, and toys, as well as gaming hardware and software, and virtual reality and other software products; and other products, such as baby, food and beverage, luggage, outdoor living, and sporting goods. In addition, it provides consultation, delivery, design, health-related, installation, memberships, repair, set-up, technical support, and warranty-related services. The company offers its products through stores and websites under the Best Buy, Best Buy Ads, Best Buy Business, Best Buy Health, CST, Current Health, Geek Squad, Lively, Magnolia, Best Buy Mobile, Pacific Kitchen, Home, and Yardbird, as well as domain names bestbuy.com, currenthealth.com, lively.com, yardbird.com, and bestbuy.ca. As of January 30, 2022, it had 1,144 stores. The company was formerly known as Sound of Music, Inc. The company was incorporated in 1966 and is headquartered in Richfield, Minnesota.
Genpact Limited provides business process outsourcing and information technology (IT) services in India, rest of Asia, North and Latin America, and Europe. It operates through three segments: Banking, Capital Markets and Insurance; Consumer Goods, Retail, Life Sciences and Healthcare; and High Tech, Manufacturing and Services. The company offers CFO advisory services; and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) services, such as data management, carbon accounting, human rights assessment, sustainability diligence, and ESG reporting. It also provides finance and accounting services, which include accounts payable, such as document management, invoice processing, approval and resolution management, and travel and expense processing; invoice-to-cash services, including customer master data management, credit and contract management, fulfillment, billing, collections, and dispute management services; record to report services comprising accounting, treasury, tax, product cost accounting, and closing and reporting services; financial planning and analysis consisting of budgeting, forecasting, and business performance reporting; and enterprise risk and compliance services, including operational risks and controls. In addition, the company provides supply chain advisory services, and after-sales services; sourcing and procurement services comprising direct and indirect strategic sourcing, category management, spend analytics, procurement operation, and master data management; and sales and commercial services, including campaign, order, and dispute management, lead generation, pricing, and promotion optimization. Further, it offers IT services, which comprise end-user computing support, infrastructure management, application production support, and database management services; and transformation services that include digital solutions, consulting services, and analytics services and solutions. The company was founded in 1997 and is based in Hamilton, Bermuda.
Assisted by the media, the Australian political establishment has rushed to declare a hostage incident and fatal shooting in Melbourne yesterday afternoon, the details of which remain murky, an act of terrorism.

None of the claims by the government and media about the incident can be accepted at face value. What is known is that 31-year-old Yacqub Khayre, a Somalian-born Australian citizen, fatally shot an unidentified male employee in the foyer of an apartment complex in the suburb of Brighton. Khayre had reportedly checked into the apartment and taken an unidentified woman hostage inside his room.

Khayre reportedly called Channel 7 news at approximately 5.40pm, and declared: This is for IS [Islamic State] and this is for Al Qaeda. He was shot and killed approximately 20 minutes later by special operations police forces after an exchange of gunfire outside the building, during which three police received minor injuries.

No evidence has been produced of any contact with terrorist groups, despite Islamic State claiming responsibility for Khayres action. His statement supporting both Al Qaeda and Islamic State, two rival organisations, is contradictory.

The Victorian state police declared that Khayre was operating as a lone wolfin other words, that the event was not part of a coordinated plan by any terrorist organisation.

Despite what police called a long record of criminality, Khayre was released from jail on parole last September after serving three years of a five-year sentence. In 2012 he had been convicted of a violent home invasion and armed robbery while high on the methamphetamine ice.

No plausible explanation has been provided for his release. Victorian police commissioner Graham Ashton said: Most recently hes done some prison time in relation to reckless intent to cause injury and whilst in prison was processed as well for arson whilst in the corrections system.

Once again, it seems, the actions of a mentally unstable individual who was well known to the intelligence agencies are being seized upon to justify the strengthening of the police and intelligence forces and attacks on basic democratic rights.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull called a press conference this morning to declare that the terrorist attack  underlines the need for us to be constantly vigilant, never to be deterred, always defiant, in the face of Islamist terrorism. Turnbull used the incident to defend the ongoing war by Australia, US and allied forces in Iraq and Syria, saying Australian forces were in the field fighting IS.

Victorian state Labor Premier Daniel Andrews foreshadowed further increases in police powers and resources. The [police] chief commissioner has more powers and more resources than has even been the case  but anything else the chief commissioner needs, he will get it. The Andrews government previously announced a massive boost to police numbers and recently introduced US-style shooting training tactics for police.

Before any of the facts were known, newspapers featured front-page stories on the incident as part of the effort to whip up an atmosphere of national crisis. The Murdoch-owned Herald Sun published a special 1.00 a.m. edition on the Brighton Siege with a cover photo of the gunman and the banner, Face of Terror.

Khayre was one of five men tried as part of an alleged 2009 terrorist plot against the Holsworthy army base in Sydney. During their 2010 trial, it emerged that an undercover police officer, working under the alias Hamza, played a major role in entrapping them. Hamza had proposed that the group target the Holsworthy base, and convinced Wissam Fattal to travel to Sydney to observe the base. Fattals trip to Sydney was then filmed and used as evidence of a terrorist plot. The agent later admitted that no plot to carry out an attack existed, other than his proposal. (See: Australia: Jury delivers split verdict in long-running terror trial)

Khayre was acquitted in the case, while Fattal and two other men were convicted and jailed for 18 years. All five, who came from trouble backgrounds of petty crime and involvement with drugs, were kept in solitary confinement for 18 months leading up to the trial.

When he was finally released, Khayre appears to have been a thoroughly damaged young man. The security agencies claim that he was a low-risk person of interest who was not being closely monitored. In fact, his background made him a prime candidate to be manipulated and used by the intelligence agencies.

A 2009 cable from US intelligence services released by WikiLeaks stated that Australian Federal Police counter-terrorism coordinator Damien Appleby and Victoria Police detective inspector Andrew Gutske characterised Khayre as a weakling who struggled with the harsh day to day life in Somalia  The AFP believes that Khayre may be turned while in prison to serve as an informant in related cases.

In December 2014, another hostage incident involving a mentally unstable man with prior connections to the intelligence agencies, Man Haron Monis, at the Lindt cafe in Sydney, was deliberately elevated to the level of a national terror emergency by government and police agencies. (See: Australian inquest into Sydney siege whitewashes unanswered questions)

Similar incidents throughout the bogus war on terror, have been used by governments in Australia, the United States, Britain and across Europe to introduce draconian police powers and provide the pretext for predatory wars across the resource-rich Middle East.

The Brighton siege followed statements by the Turnbull government calling for an expansion of powers to monitor the Internet and for greater domestic use of the military in the wake of last weekends terror attacks in London.
Backed by Egypt and its closest Gulf State allies, Saudi Arabia has launched a diplomatic and economic offensive against Qatar, a tiny, energy-rich neighbor. This offensive is aimed at forcing the emirate to fall fully in line with the Saudis belligerent stand against Iran and other of its predatory policies, including unstinting support for Egypts military regime.

US President Donald Trump gave the Saudi autocracy and its plan to forge a Sunni-Arab military coalition against Iran Washingtons full-throated support when he visited Riyadh last month.

This support, as even many Western news reports on the Saudi-Qatari confrontation acknowledge, has emboldened Saudi Arabia. Yesterday, it, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Yemen announced a series of measures against Qatar that stop just short of war.

They include: severing all diplomatic relations, travel, and economic ties with Qatar; denying Qatari aircraft, including all Qatar Airway flights, the right to use their airspace; closing their ports to all Qatari vessels; and shutting down all broadcasts by Qatar-based al-Jazeera.

Saudi Arabia and its closest Gulf State allies are also closing their borders to Qataris and ordering all Qatari citizens currently in their countries to leave within two weeks.

These measures threaten to roil the emirates economy. A peninsula state whose only land border is with Saudi Arabia, Qatar is heavily reliant on food shipments from Saudi Arabia. News agencies report that long lines have formed at supermarkets in Doha as residentsfully 80 percent of the 2.3 million people living in Qatar are non-citizen foreign workersscramble to stock their shelves and refrigerators.

In 2014, the Saudis and several of their allies suspended diplomatic relations with Qatar because Riyadh was rankled by the emirates opposition to the military coup that overthrew Egypts elected president, Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi.

The current dispute is of a qualitatively different character, as exemplified by the Saudis imposition of an economic blockade that threatens to strangle Qatars economy.

Qatar, not without reason, has charged that Saudi Arabia is seeking to subject it to guardianship, i.e., to reduce it to the status of a vassal state.

The Saudis are accusing Qataras they have long accused Iranof supporting terrorism. They claim it is backing the opposition to the royal family in Bahrain, the anti-Saudi Houthi rebels in Yemen, and the opposition to Saudi rule in the countrys largely Shia Al-Qatif region. Qatar has vehemently denied these claims.

Riyadh is also charging that the emirate is in league with ISIS in Syria. In fact, the ruling families of both sheikdoms have played a major role in the US regime-change war in Syria, helping finance, organize and arm various reactionary Islamist forces, including many of those that came together in ISIS.

The Saudis overriding objective is to force Qatar to distance itself from Iran, which it considers its principal rival for regional influence.

Qatar has developed extensive economic ties with Iran, including in the co-development of the massive South Pars Persian Gulf natural gas field. Until its ejection yesterday, Qatar was a reluctant member of the Islamic Military Alliance, the international coalition Riyadh formed ostensibly to fight terrorism, but which more and more openly has assumed the shape of a Sunni Arab alliance for waging war on predominantly Shia Iran.

Last weekend, in an attempt to placate the Saudis, Qatar reportedly ordered several leaders of Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that has ties to Iran, to leave the country. But the Saudis are treating this as too little, too late.

It cannot be excluded that the Saudis will threaten Qatar with military action in the coming days or weeks. They are already waging war, with US logistical support, in Yemen, causing an ever-widening humanitarian disaster, and in 2011 they led a military intervention in Bahrain so as to stave off the popular overthrow of its autocratic regime.

Israel has welcomed the Saudi offensive against Qatar, calculating that it will weaken Tehran. Like the Saudis, the Zionist establishment views Iran as its principal strategic rival.

Trump and the cabal of generals who head his administration have repeatedly made clear that Washington has Iran in its cross-hairs. And whilst serious differences persist within the US political establishment over the Iran nuclear accord, the Democrats, no less than the Republicans, support America continuing to enforce sweeping economic sanctions against Tehran and threatening it with military action.

That said, nothing suggests Washington wanted, let alone encouraged, Riyadh to move against Qatar.

Qatar is the forward headquarters of the US Central Command and thus a pivotal staging area for the US wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, and the cockpit for war-planning against Iran. Bahrain, which is part of the Saudis anti-Qatar coalition, is the home base of the US Fifth Fleet.

The escalating conflict between Washingtons Gulf allies, complained the New York Times, presents a fresh and unwelcome complication for the United States military.

That the Saudis, with the support of Egypts US-backed military regime, acted independently of Washington in no way takes away from Americas primary responsibility for the growing aggressiveness of the Saudi regime, let alone the wars and sabre-rattling that threaten the people of the Middle East.

On the contrary, the Saudi offensive against Qatar should serve as a salutary warning as to the reckless and incendiary role of US imperialism. In its drive to offset the decline in its economic power through aggression and war, the US is arming and emboldening all sorts of right-wing, crisis-ridden regimes. Any one of these, in the pursuit of its own reactionary interests, including mere survival, could lash out at its rivals, provoking a crisis that quickly develops into a military conflict, drawing in the US and other world powers, daggers-drawn.

No less significantly, the sudden clash between Qatar and Saudi Arabia points to the explosive geopolitical tensions that run through the region and are ever more enmeshed in the conflicts between the major imperialist and great powers.

The series of predatory wars Washington has waged in the Middle East since 1991 has shattered whole societies, killing millions, rendering millions more refugees, and engulfing ever greater areas in war and destruction. Their cumulative impact has been the effective collapse of the state system French and British imperialism imposed on the region at the end of World War One and the fueling of a new struggle for the redivision of the Middle East.

The developments in Syria reveal most clearly that the repartition of the Middle East has already begun. While nominally a joint struggle against ISIS, the war in Syria has drawn in a host of great and regional powersincluding the US, Russia, France, Germany, Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Israeleach pursuing its own strategic interests. For US imperialism, Syria is a key front in its military-strategic offensive against Russia and Iran.

And it is not just Syria, but the entire region that is in flames. Given the Middle Easts economic significance as the worlds most important oil-producing region, and its pivotal geographic position as the hinge between Europe, Asia and Africa, all of the imperialist and great powers are increasingly compelled to intervene to assert their respective interests.

The US views its drive against Iran through the prism of its world strategy. This includes the need to prevent China from leveraging its plans to develop Eurasian economic corridors to forge a strategic partnership with Iran, and the need to prevent European capital from beating out corporate America in capturing Irans markets and oil concessions.

As Trotsky explained in the run-up to the second imperialist world war of the last century, the only alternative to the war maps of the great powers is the map of the class struggle. The only answer to the incendiary struggle of the rival capitalist ruling elites for natural resources, markets and strategic advantage is the mobilization of the international working class against war and the outmoded capitalist social order.
Geneva (AFP) - US envoy Nikki Haley on Tuesday urged the United Nations Human Rights Council to throw out abusive regimes and end what she called its "anti-Israel bias", warning that its credibility was at stake.

Haley did not explicitly threaten to quit the body if Washington's concerns were not addressed, a prospect that first emerged in February in a leaked letter by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

But Haley used her speech, the first by an American UN ambassador to the Geneva-based council since its creation in 2006, to put the body on notice.

"The United States is looking carefully at this council, and our participation in it. We see some areas for significant strengthening", she said.

"Being a member of this council is a privilege, and no country who is a human rights violator should be allowed a seat at the table", Haley added.

US concerns about the UN rights body predate President Donald Trump's election, and Washington has long denounced an agenda item dedicated exclusively to criticising Israel.

It has also raised concerns about a nomination process that has seen authoritarian governments elected to one of the 47 rotating seats.

After a relatively mild council speech, Haley escalated her criticism later Tuesday in remarks at the Graduate Institute of Geneva.

"The world's foremost human rights body has tarnished the cause of human rights" by giving seats to brutal regimes, Haley charged.

Governments "who cannot defend themselves turn to this council for hope", she added.

- Venezuela targeted -

Haley directed her heaviest fire at Venezuela, where two months of anti-government protests have left dozens dead.

She urged Caracas to "voluntarily step down from its seat... until it can get its own house in order."

In a side-event hosted by the United States, Haley claimed that the council "has no excuse" for allowing Venezuela to hold a seat.

Venezuela's UN-Geneva ambassador Jorge Valero countered that the United States had "no moral authority" to lecture on human rights.

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The United States should quit its own seat, Valero told the council, and "apologise for the atrocities it committed throughout history."

- Israel, reforms -

Turning to Israel, Haley reiterated US concerns about what it considers the country's unfair treatment.

It "is essential that this council address its chronic anti-Israel bias, if it is to have any credibility", she said.

Israel is the only country with a dedicated rights council agenda item, known as Item 7.

Israel and its allies have denounced the council for allowing majority-Muslim states to spearhead resolutions at every session denouncing abuses against the Palestinians.

"Agenda Item 7 must be removed", Haley said the Graduate Institute, laying out her rights council reform plan.

She also called for open campaigning and voting in the General Assembly for council seats, based on a nation's record, to replace the regional nomination system.

"The United States does not seek to leave the Human Rights Council, we seek to re-establish the council's legitimacy" through targeted reforms, Haley said.

The Geneva director for Human Rights Watch, John Fisher, agreed that a reformed membership process would make the rights council stronger.

"All states from all regions should work together to end back-room deals on closed voting slates," he said in a statement. "It's the best way to keep serial rights abusers off the council."

In addition to Venezuela -- where protesters have accused President Nicolas Maduro's government of systemic repression -- Burundi also sits on the council, despite several recent reports detailing gruesome abuses perpetrated by state security agents.

In his speech opening the session, UN rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein also upbraided some council members -- including Indonesia, Egypt and the Philippines -- for restricting international investigations into alleged abuses.
Donald Trump met with Chinese President Xi Jinping during a bilateral meeting in April 2017: JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images

Donald Trump's decision to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement on climate change has reportedly prompted the Acting US Ambassador to China to resign from his post because.

David Rank, who has served in the foreign service since 1990, assumed his position in January 2016 and was set to stay until Terry Branstad arrived later this month.

But it was said he "could not deliver" the news that Mr Trump had decided to withdraw the US from the accord, which has been signed by 195 countries and ratified by 147.

The US leader removed the US from the agreement which nearly 200 countries signed in an attempt to limit global warming and reduce greenhouse gas emissions late last week.

Anna Richey-Allen, a spokeswoman for the State Department's East Asia Bureau, said that Mr Rank "made a personal decision" and did not confirm that it was due to the Paris Agreement withdrawal.

He worked in the Beijing embassy when China signed a bliateral deal with the US under the Obama administration just ahead of the Paris signing.

It was considered a historic deal between two of the world's largest polluters.

China estimated they would need until 2030 to reach a "peak" of carbon emissions  mostly through inexpensive coal burning  in order to build up their economy to a point where they can afford to start transitioning to more renewable sources of energy.

After that time, the country will begin to reduce carbon emissions and increase the proportion of renewable sources of energy. They are already a leader in solar panel production and renewable energy investments throughout the world.

Chinese President Xi Jinping had urged Mr Trump to keep the US in the Paris accord, but said that his country and France must "protect" the deal.

Jon Pomfret a California-based journalist who has written extensively on China took to Twitter to say that Mr Rank held a meeting with his staff because Mr Rank "could not deliver" the statement that the US had withdrawn from the Paris accord.

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Rank called a town hall meeting @USEmbassyBJ to say he could not deliver a demarche to the PRC govt over US withdrawal from @ParisAgreement https://t.co/mgkzns0YGm  John Pomfret  (@JEPomfret) June 5, 2017

Jonathan Fritz, the embassy's economics councillor, would serve as charge in his place, Ms Richey-Allen said.

Mr Branstad, the former governor of Iowa, was confirmed by the Senate for the Ambassadorship in late May 2017. He is expected to take up the role later this year.

On the day Mr Trump decided to withdraw the US, Richard Gowan, a UN expert with the European Council on Foreign Relations, told The Independent the he may not care, but he has just created an astonishing opportunity for the Chinese to assert themselves in the UN system.
Hong Kong (AFP) - A frontline park ranger from the Democratic Republic of Congo on Tuesday delivered an emotive testimony to legislators against the ivory trade in Hong Kong, as the city faces criticism over how it plans to phase out the trade.

The southern Chinese city, a major hub for ivory sales, announced last year that it would ban the import and export of the goods, but later clarified that it would only completely abolish the trade by 2021.

Critics say city authorities are dragging its feet and lagging behind China, where officials in December pledged to halt the enterprise by the end of 2017.

Garamba National Park manager Erik Mararv described the violent nature of the trade to the city's legislature, including an incident last year where he and his team were ambushed by poachers near an elephant carcass.

"The poachers were hidden in the bushes closeby, it was a brutal contact and where three brave rangers... died," said Mararv at the hearing attended by lawmakers and ivory traders.

"They died by the side of an elephant which had its face hacked off," said Mararv, who was also wounded in the violent exchange.

He went on to argue that Hong Kong should not compensate ivory traders as it could further encourage the violent industry.

"The message to the poachers would be that the government of Hong Kong is buying up ivory and we'll see more animals and more people dying," added Mararv.

Traders, however, have called for compensation, saying they have been forced to sell small portions of their remaining stock for the past 27 years, following an international ban in 1989.

"Why must the current situation of illegal ivory poaching kill our inventory, our own hard-earned money?" said trader Mung Wai-hung following the speech to the legislature.

The international trade in elephant ivory, with rare exceptions, has been outlawed since 1989 after populations of the African giants dropped from millions in the mid-20th century to some 600,000 by the end of the 1980s.

African ivory is highly sought after in China, where it is seen as a status symbol, and where elephant tusks are used in traditional medicine and used to make ornaments.
President Donald Trump: AP

Donald Trumps tweets in response to the London Bridge terror attack could foreshadow a dictatorial reaction by the US leader to attacks on American soil, a former speechwriter for Barack Obama has suggested.

Following the truck and knife attack in the UK that left at least seven people dead and 48 people injured, Mr Trump tweeted we must stop being politically correct and get down to the business of security for our people. If we don't get smart it will only get worse.

The President also criticised the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, for saying there is no reason to be alarmed, apparently after hearing the comment taken out of context on Fox News.

Mr Trump was responding to remarks made by Mr Khan on Sky News, in which the mayor advised the public not to be concerned if they saw more police on the streets of London over the next few days.

No reason to be alarmed  one of the things the police and all of us need to do is make sure were as safe as we possibly can be, the mayor said.

In another tweet, Mr Trump wrote: Do you notice we are not having a gun debate right now? That's because they used knives and a truck!

It's hard to read Trump's tweets this morning and not think that we're one domestic attack away from the most dangerous version of this guy  Jon Favreau (@jonfavs) June 4, 2017

Jon Favreau, who served as the White House Director of Speechwriting under President Obama, tweeted in response: It's hard to read Trump's tweets this morning and not think that we're one domestic attack away from the most dangerous version of this guy.

In another series of tweets on Monday morning, Mr Trump called for a tougher executive order on immigration intended to temporarily bar citizens of six predominantly Muslim countries from entering the US.

The President declared that the Justice Department should have fought for his original order, instead of the watered down, politically correct version that has been submitted to the Supreme Court.

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We must stop being politically correct and get down to the business of security for our people. If we don't get smart it will only get worse  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 4, 2017

The Trump administration dropped its appeal of the Presidents first travel ban issued in January, after the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in California deemed the order unconstitutional.

Mr Trump then issued a heavily revised ban in March aimed at defeating court challenges, but has still not been successful.

Last month, the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Virginia upheld the block on the order, a decision that the administration is now appealing against to the Supreme Court.

The Presidents suggestion that the Justice Department  which is part of his administration  should have presented a tougher order to the highest court in the land, despite his original order failing, seems to indicate a lack of understanding of US law and checks and balances of government.
The Department of Defense has begun drafting the Trump administrations Nuclear Posture Review (NPR). Conducted by each American president since 1994, the NPR is an official document that guides American nuclear policy and management of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Past presidents have used NPRs to determine and explain publicly how many and what kinds of nuclear weapons the United States needs, and when they might be used. It is the script officials throughout the government can use to deter adversaries and reassure allies. As President Donald Trump continues to sow doubt among U.S. allies about his administraions dedication to their defense, advocates for new, smaller, more usable nuclear weapons will offer their ideas as a way to counteract this growing confidence gap. Yet not all problems have a nuclear solution, and there is no combination of nuclear policy, weapons, and statements that can undo the damage Trump is doing to both our allies and the global nonproliferation system.

Trumps tweets and his recent visit to Europe have unsettled Americas closest allies, calling its reliability into question. Notoriously cautious German Chancellor Angela Merkel conveyed this sentiment, telling supporters at a rally on May 28 that [t]he times in which we could completely depend on others are, to a certain extent, over. This feeling throughout Europe also comes on the heels of Trump questioning whether the United States would live up to its commitments to defend South Korea. In April, the president rattled North Koreas neighbor by suggesting that South Korea should pay for the missile defense system currently deployed by the United States.

In the four long months of his presidency thus far, Trump has reduced the perceived ability of American allies to rely on Washington for their defense. Nuclear deterrence and reassurance are as much about perception as reality, and Americas alliances have been the backbone of its security and the basis for the global system that has helped prevent the spread of nuclear weapons for decades. Recent news that the president personally removed references to NATOs Article 5 for common defenses will only add to these concerns. Under this article, the United States projects a willingness to defend other countries, even with its own nuclear weapons, so they dont go nuclear themselves. This has helped make Germany, Japan, South Korea, and others safer, and reduced the risks that would come with more countries owning nuclear weapons and the materials needed to make them. Generations of allies have asked whether America would risk Boston to save Berlin, or Seattle to protect Seoul. Until now, the majority of people in the United States and abroad have believed that the answer was yes.

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Now, the Trump administration  what there is of it  is conducting its own review. However, Pentagon officials must produce the NPR in an environment where the commander-in-chief is actively undermining decades of effort to reassure U.S. allies. Hence, the first issue the NPR might be expected to address is how to counteract this growing credibility gap. The officials responsible for drafting the report  many of whom are lifelong and dedicated nuclear experts  may think that nuclear weapons are part of the answer. When you have a hammer, every problem can look like a nail. Yes, our allies are nervous about both Russia and China, and about global trends.

But our allies are not nervous because Americas nuclear arsenal is too small, or big, or old. They are increasingly nervous because the person who has the sole power to authorize the use of American nuclear weapons is behaving unpredictably and in a way that divides the interest of the United States from that of the rest of the free world. True, allies were growing nervous in the face of a destabilizing Russia and a rising China before Trump was elected, but the United States was able to effectively manage those concerns through a combination of leadership and sound alliance management. That is what alliances traditionally do. Todays challenges overshadow those efforts and are mostly of Trumps own making.

Yet given that we are unlikely to see a return to normalcy until we have a new occupant in the Oval Office, those officials tasked with managing our alliance relationships will be looking for anything that can help undo the damage enacted from the top. Within this process, advocates for newer, smaller, and more usable nuclear weapons will likely find a receptive audience. The argument that the United States needs to build new, less devastating nuclear weapons has been around for decades, and has grown louder over the past few years. Our enemies may believe, the argument goes, that the United States is deterred from using its very large, destructive nuclear weapons because of the collateral damage they can do. Todays nuclear weapons are much larger and more destructive than the ones that were dropped on Japan in 1945. Therefore, if the United States develops and fields smaller weapons, such stated willingness to use nuclear weapons would deter American enemies and, therefore, reassure American allies. Forget the fact that these weapons would still be bigger than those that fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and tens, if not hundreds, of thousands could be killed in a single nuclear strike.

There is, however, little, if any, real-world evidence that the size of the warheads in our nuclear arsenal deters our enemies. And it is clear that any confidence gap our allies have stems from the president, not the size of the nuclear arsenal he commands. The idea that we need new, smaller, more usable nuclear weapons is a theoretical argument that more belongs in an academic seminar than in a real-world policy review. Efforts in the past to develop ladders of nuclear escalation with more rungs or more usable nuclear options that would fill the deterrence and reassurance gap resulted in the United States possessing tens of thousands of nuclear weapons with no real security to show for it. Many of these weapons still await dismantlement, after reviews deemed them excessive long ago. Plans and concepts regarding limited nuclear exchanges were unsound and dangerous in the 1950s and 1960s. They are even less relevant to current challenges and should be rejected today. Any effort from the Pentagon to break with recent policy and seek funds to design a new generation of nuclear weapons would spark an ugly battle in Congress. The debate will inevitably turn into a referendum on reassurance and deterrence itself, making the very goal advocates for such weapons seek harder to achieve.

Instead of getting bogged down in theoretical arguments, the NPR has real, pressing issues to address. The ongoing nuclear program is growing out of control, and may explode beyond the initial $1 trillion cost estimate over the next 30 years. This in turn threatens its sustainability and other defense and budget priorities. The review also urgently needs to consider how to manage stability with Russia, a country now violating several arms control agreements and acting in a way that increases the risk of conflict and escalation. Lastly, the NPR must address the burgeoning nuclear competition with China in the face of our growing reliance on missile defenses and precise conventional capabilities.

None of these problems have magic nuclear solutions, and America cant fix any of them with hardware. The main nuclear risks to the United States today include the possibility of a county actually using a nuclear weapon, given Russia is apparently convinced it can use a nuclear weapon in a conflict and not face a devastating response. Likewise, tensions on the Korean Peninsula could spiral out of control at any minute, with nuclear consequences unlike anything seen before. And the background risk of India and Pakistan ending up in a nuclear conflict, intentionally or by accident, is a constant challenge that the United States has a massive interest in preventing. How the NPR addresses these real risks matters. However, if the last few months are any guide, the United States is likely to get bogged down in policy disasters of its own making, and once again miss an opportunity to stabilize global affairs and secure itself and allies.

Photo credit: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images
London (AFP) - British authorities faced mounting anger on Tuesday after police named the third attacker in the weekend terror assault in London, who Italy had previously flagged as a possible jihadist.

Police identified the third attacker as Youssef Zaghba, a 22-year-old Italian national of Moroccan descent, a day after naming his accomplices as Khuram Shazad Butt, 27, a Pakistan-born Briton, and Rachid Redouane, 30, a self-described Moroccan-Libyan dual national.

Butt "was known to the police and MI5", the domestic security service, but there was no intelligence to suggest the attack was being planned, the Metropolitan Police said.

He had notably featured in a Channel 4 television documentary entitled "The Jihadis Next Door" and, according to the British media, numerous people alarmed by his views had gone to the authorities.

Zaghba was "not a police or MI5 subject of interest," it added.

But an Italian prosecutor said Zaghba was flagged to Britain as a "possible suspect" back in March 2016.

Bologna prosecutor Giuseppe Amato said the warning had been transmitted after Zaghba was intercepted at the city's airport trying to board a plane for Turkey, en route for Syria.

Zaghba's Italian mother, Valeria Collina, said her son had been radicalised online and fell into the wrong crowd in London.

"I have been there and I did not like it. He was mixing with the wrong people," she told Italian weekly L'Espresso.

Collina said she understood many British imams want to send a strong signal and have said they are not prepared to give her son a Muslim funeral.

"I understand that asking to be forgiven means nothing, that's why I promise to dedicate my life to ensuring this does not happen again," she said.

Redouane married a British citizen in Ireland in 2012 and was not under surveillance, Irish prime minister Enda Kenny said.

Two men were arrested by Irish police over documentation related to Redouane, one of whom has been released without charge.

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In Britain a 27-year-old man remains in custody, while 12 people held following the attack have since been released.

The London attack follows the May 22 suicide bombing at the Manchester Arena by Salman Abedi -- killing 22 people, including children -- who was also known to British intelligence services.

- May under pressure -

Prime Minister Theresa May vowed a hardline approach to terrorism, promising longer prison sentences and restricting the freedom and movements of terrorist suspects.

"And if our human rights laws stop us from doing it, we will change the laws so we can do it," she told supporters on Tuesday.

May's comments came ahead of Thursday's general election, with the campaign dominated by security issues.

She has faced criticism for her record on security in the six years she served as Britain's interior minister before becoming prime minister last year.

Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn took aim at May's response: "We will always keep the law under review, but don't believe would-be terrorists and suicide bombers will be deterred by longer sentences or restricting our rights at home."

He also pledged to hire more police officers, following a drop in 20,000 officers between 2009 and 2016, or around 14 percent, according to the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies think-tank.

Security has dominated the campaign ahead of Thursday's general election, which was called by May on April 18 when her Conservative Party held a commanding lead over rivals Labour.

According to a poll published Tuesday by the group Survation, May's one-time 20-point lead over Labour has shrivelled to just over a single point -- 41.6 percent to 40.4 percent.

- International victims -

On Tuesday a nationwide minute's silence was held for the victims of the London attack, which started when the three assailants mowed down pedestrians on London Bridge in a van.

Wearing fake suicide vests, they went on to knife revellers in the nearby Borough Market before being shot dead by police.

Amaq, an outlet affiliated with the Islamic State group, said the attack was carried out by "a detachment of fighters from Islamic State".

A Canadian charity worker, a Frenchman working at a bistro in the market, and two Australians -- including a nurse -- were among the dead.

Citizens of several nations were among the 48 injured, including Australia, Bulgaria, France, Greece and New Zealand.

Some 32 are still in hospital, 15 of whom are in a critical condition.
Texas is in desperate need of accessible birth control. The Washington Post reported one out of every four Texas family planning clinics closed or stopped providing those services since 2011. Most of them were not Planned Parenthood clinics, which Texas lawmakers famously oppose, although the closures did also include 31 of the Lone Star states 74 Planned Parenthood clinics.

Thats why the birth control delivery app Nurx launched its service in Texas on Monday. The app was already operating in around a dozen other states, including California and New Jersey. Now, even if the Texan user doesnt have insurance, she can get prescription birth control delivered to her door for as little as $15 a month. The mobile application process takes about three minutes. Nurx CEO and co-founder Hans Gangeskar told International Business Times a huge amount of its online traffic came from Texas long before the startup operated there.

Read: As Nurx, Providing On-Demand Birth Control And HIV Prevention Meds, Expands, Who Will Benefit?

Its a sign of the need for a service like this, Gangeskar said. The government in Texas has systematically worked to reduce the number of clinics offering womens health services, combatting Planned Parenthood, not just when it comes to their abortion offerings but all their other offerings as well. So we thought it was not only good for business, but also really important for the millions of women in Texas that need it.

Birth-Rate_Infographic_Texas

Photo: Nurx

Nurx, which Gangeskar said has raised $5 million so far, isnt the first app with a network of doctors prescribing birth control and counseling patients via text message. But TechCrunch reports women have a hard time getting competing apps like Maven and Lemonaid to deliver in the Lone Star state. Much of Texas is often referred to as a contraceptive desert, counties where there arent enough reproductive health services to accommodate the local population. Young people and marginalized communities are often hit the hardest by this scarcity.

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A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine concluded Texas clinic closures hurt low-income women by making it harder for them to get affordable access to birth control and reproductive health services. Both my cofounder and I are from Norway, Gangeskar said. So in the U.S., it was always a shock to me how many people are working against reproductive rights. According to NPR, every year 35,000 teens in Texas get pregnant before they turn 20, a rate far above the national average.

Read: Male Birth Control Pills? Contraceptive Gel Injection Might Be Effective After Successful Trials, Research Shows

Despite the consequences, Texas lawmakers continue to pass new restrictions like the anti-abortion Senate Bill 8, which arrived at the governors desk in May and is expected to soon be signed into law. Thanks to the work of the Texas Freedom Network, other pending bills could also include new amendments that allow nurses to tell a male head of household about a womans medical condition and pharmacists to refuse to fill birth control prescriptions.

Many women on Reddit already swap horror stories about medical professionals that shame patients for seeking birth control. So a mobile app can be convenient in more ways than one. Accessible birth control also has widespread economic benefits beyond women's personal experiences. Allowing women to choose when to have children, and whether to have children, allows them to participate in the workforce in a way they wouldnt be able to otherwise, Gangeskar said. Or continue their education, rather than being forced into motherhood.

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Former President Barack Obama was spotted having dinner with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Tuesday after Obamas speech at the Palais des congres (Montreal Chamber of Commerce) in Montreal, which was organized by the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal.

This was the former presidents first visit to Canada since he left office in January.

Canadians spotted the pair dining at the St-Henris gourmet restaurant strip and several people lined up outside the eatery to catch a glimpse of the former president. The pair was expected to eat at Joe Beef, but they ended up dining at Liverpool House restaurant.

"Even Obama couldnt get a table at Joe Beef," someone in the crowd said jokingly.

Another woman in the crowd stood beside the stop light and said: "If he gets a red light, well be here to see him!"

Police and Obamas security kept a close watch on the two as they left the restaurant and waved to the onlookers on Notre-Dame Street. Obama then left the scene in his black SUV.

The two world leaders discussed how to get young people active in their communities, according to Trudeaus tweet following their dinner.

Trudeau was not present during Obamas speech, Tuesday at the Montreal Chamber of Commerce. Almost 6,000 people, including Premier Philippe Couillard, former premier Jean Charest and various other high-profile business executives, attended the former presidents speech in Montreal.

During the speech, the former president criticized President Donald Trumps decision to withdraw the country from the Paris climate agreement.

"Obviously I'm disappointed with the current American administration decision to put out of Paris," Obama said during his speech, according to the Associated Press.

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However, Obama did not mention Trumps name, rather he praised states and cities that are still carrying on with the Paris accord regulations despite the "temporary absence of American leadership."

"In Paris, we came together around the most ambitious agreement in history to fight climate change," Obama said. "An agreement that even with the temporary absence of American leadership will still give our children a fighting chance."

The former president also appeared to hint towards Trump while he spoke about the current age of instant information and its advantages and disadvantages.

"Where TV and Twitter can feed us a steady stream of bad news and sometimes fake news, it can seem like the international order we have created is constantly being tested and the center may not hold," he said.

"And in some cases, that leads people to search for certainty and control and they can call for isolationism or nationalism or they can suggest rolling back the rights of others," Obama explained.

"Or simply they can try to retreat and suggest we have no obligations beyond our borders, or beyond our communities, or beyond our tribe  that whats good for me and my immediate people is all that matters, that everyone else is on their own," he added during his speech.

Read: What Obama Thinks About Trump: Hes Nothing But A Bullshitter, Sources Say

Obama also said that the forces of nationalistic nature and economic uncertainty, which was created by advancements in technology have now made people to seek the leadership of "strong men."

"And in some cases, that leads people to search for certainty and control and they can call for isolationism or nationalism or they can suggest rolling back the rights of others,'' he said.

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Bill Cosby's chief accuser remained calm on the witness stand Wednesday as his lawyer challenged her assertions that the comic drugged and sexually assaulted her.

Andrea Constand, entering her second day of testimony in the highly publicized Pennsylvania trial, was grilled about inconsistencies in her account of what happened at the comedian's home outside the city in 2004.

Read: Bill Cosby Arrives for First Day of Sexual Assault Trial With Actress Who Played Rudy on His Hit Show

Defense attorney Angela Agrusa asked why Constand had first told police the attack happened in March, but later said it was January.

Agrusa also questioned why Constand had not told Canadian police, to whom she originally complained, that she previously had one-on-one meetings with Cosby.

I was never asked, the witness responded. Appearing unrattled, Constand attributed her recollection mistakes to human error.

Constand, a Temple University staff member at the time, was portrayed by Cosbys attorney as a willing participant in a relationship with the comedian, even though she knew he was married.

Read: Bill Cosby's Wife MIA in Second Day of His Sexual Assault Trial; Star Witness Takes Stand

The witness said she did not know at first that Cosby wanted a romantic relationship. When she later began to think that he did, she testified that she didnt feel threatened because he was a respected Temple trustee and an older man.

That changed on the night she had dinner at his house, where he gave her three herbal pills to help her relax, she said.

After she began seeing double, she testified Tuesday, Cosby helped her to a couch and she lost consciousness. When she came to, Cosby was fondling her genitals, she said.

Watch: Bill Cosby Accuser Andrea Constand Takes the Stand in Sexual Assault Trial

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Bill Cosby was missing a key supporter during Day 2 of his sexual assault trial Tuesday as the disgraced comedian arrived at court without his wife of 53 years  again.

Will Camille be here today? a reporter asked as the 79-year-old comic walked to the Montgomery County Courthouse in Pennsylvania.

Read: Defense Objects to Mostly White Jurors in Cosby Case as Selection Process Begins

Cosby did not answer as he gripped the elbow of publicist Andrew Wyatt and entered the building. His four daughters were also absent.

The absence of Camille Cosby is noted, usually a person charged with a crime, their spouse comes to show support for them, said attorney Gloria Allred, who represents 33 Cosby accusers.

Why Camille is not here is something only Camille can comment on and she has chosen not to do so, Allred said.

Andrea Constand, whom Cosby is accused of assaulting, took the stand Tuesday as the prosecution's star witness. The former Temple University employee told jurors about a night in 2004 when she said Cosby drugged her at his home outside Philadelphia.

She spent more than three hours on the stand, recounting a relationship in which she looked to the Temple trustee as a mentor and friend, she testified.

Tearfully, she told of the evening at his home when he offered her three blue pills that he said were herbal.

He said these will help you relax, she told jurors. He said put them down. They are your friends. They will take the edge off.

He gave her wine as well, she said. Later, her vision began to blur and she was seeing double, she said.

Cosby led her to a couch, where she passed out, she said. She woke to him fondly her breasts and penetrating her with his fingers, she testified.

She kept in contact with him in the following years because he was a powerful trustee of the university and she feared angering him, she said.

Cosbys attorney questioned her motives and said she had given conflicting statements to authorities, including describing the incident as having occurred after a Chinese dinner with him.

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I was mistaken, Constand said, referring to the type of meal they had.

Tuesday marked the first time Constand had faced each other in court since 2005, when she was given a financial settlement after she filed a civil suit against Cosby. Her suit came after prosecutors declined to press charges.

The mother of accuser Kelly Johnson also took the stand Tuesday to describe a 1996 phone call from her daughter, who was sobbing and saying Cosby was trying to get her fired.

Patricia Sewell said her daughter told her that Cosby had given her a pill and assaulted her in his Los Angeles hotel room. She also said she received another call in which her daughter claimed Cosby was pressuring her boss, the comedians agent, to get rid of her.

Read: Bill Cosby Breaks His Silence as Final Juror Picked in His Sexual Assault Trial

"She called me at work," the mother testified. "She was nearly hysterical. She was crying. She was telling me, 'Mommy, I dont know what is going on, but theyre telling lies about me.'"

Johnson later wept as she recounted waking up half-naked in his bed. I remember him being behind me, making those grunting sounds, she testified. I remember wanting to pull up my dress and wanting to cover myself, but not being able to," Johnson said.

She was called to testify by prosecutors hoping to establish a pattern of behavior by Cosby, who is on trial for allegedly drugging and raping Constand in 2004.

Cosby has pleaded not guilty and has denied all accusations against him.

Watch: Bill Cosby's TV Daughter Enters With Him on First Day of Trial

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It is rare for Breitbart, a publication which has been accused of writing racist and misogynist articles, to dismiss its employees for their inflammatory, controversial views

Breitbart has sacked an editor who made a number of inflammatory anti-Muslim remarks in the wake of the London Bridge terror attack which left seven dead and dozens injured.

Katie McHugh, who has written hundreds of articles for the far-right news site, sparked fierce criticism after she argued terrorist attacks would not take place in Britain if there were no Muslim residents.

Ms McHugh said: There would be no deadly terror attacks in the UK if Muslims didn't live there."

Pej Vahdat, an Iranian-American actor who is best known for playing Arastoo Vaziri in crime drama Bones, responded to her tweet by saying: Youre a real moron.

Ms McHugh then hit back by wrongly identifying his ethnicity and claiming: Youre an Indian.

Other critics pointed to the fact Ms Hughs initial tweet overlooked the long history of deadly terror attacks in the UK carried out by the IRA, a predominantly Catholic group, between the late 1960s and the late 1990s.

A number of Breitbart colleagues, who chose to remain anonymous, also attacked Ms McHugh for her Islamophobic comments. Speaking to CNN anonymously on Sunday, one said they found them appalling while another branded them terrible.

Ms McHugh, a former writer for conservative site The Daily Caller, announced the news of her sacking via Twitter on Monday, saying: Breitbart News fired me for telling the truth about Islam and Muslim immigration.

The journalist also shared a link to a crowdfunding page titled Support Katie McHugh: Fired from Breitbart for telling the truth. The fundraising page claimed it would use the funds amassed to pay for her medical bills and living costs while unemployed.

The writer refused to apologise for her comments about the London Bridge attacks, insisting she deserved a pay raise rather than to be fired.

She said: I said nothing wrong. As President Donald Trump says, if we dont get smart, it will only get worse".

Donate here so I can pay my medical bills and get employed again. And keep telling the truth. https://t.co/IRAUOj6pIL #LondonBridge  Katie McHugh (@k_mcq) June 5, 2017

This is by no means the first time she has made inflammatory remarks about race. She once told her 19,000 Twitter followers: "Mexicans wrecked Mexico and think invading the USA will magically cure them of their retarded dysfunction. Lol."

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It is rare for Breitbart, a publication which has been accused of writing racist and misogynist articles, to dismiss its employees for their controversial views. Although one exception is the case of Milo Yiannopoulos. In February, the alt-right figurehead, who was one of the sites most high-profile writers, was forced to resign from the publication after his apparently pro-paedophilia remarks resurfaced in an old podcast.

Breitbart, the most widely-read Conservative site in the US, was founded by conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart in 2007 and was later expanded by senior Trump aide Steve Bannon.

The chief strategist, who is a former executive chairman of the site, declared the publication "the platform for the alt-right after taking the reins around four years ago and transforming the agenda from ultra-conservatism to anti-establishment, anti-immigrant, nationalist and overtly pro-Trump during the presidential election.

Breitbart, which has published comment pieces titled Political Correctness Protects Muslim Rape Culture and Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy, has gained growing access to the White House since Mr Trump entered office.

The publication was dubbed Trumpbart before Mr Trump took office, with the President giving a number of interviews to the site in the build-up to the election, boosting its traffic to a 124 per cent spike in 2016.
Cat Deeley, center, is the host of the new show Big Little Star, where celebrities like Phaedra Parks and her son, Ayden, compete for charity. (Photo: Getty Images)

Cat Deeley has hosted plenty of television contests in the years since she first entered show business, and is perhaps most well known in the states for her time on So You Think You Can Dance?

But for Deeley, a new mom, her latest gig as host of Big Little Star is likely the most reflective of where she is in her personal life.

Deeley says the show, in which celebrities and their children compete against other teams to win money for charity, is like a mashup between Mr. and Mrs. and Kids Say the Darnedest Things. Deeley dishes on her experience as a new mom, the embarrassing dirt her 16-month-old son, Milo, would have on her if he could spill, and the causes she cares about most.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Yahoo Style: Do you ever look to the contestants on the show today and wonder how you and your son, Milo, would do on it?

I just know hes going to have so much embarrassing material on me. Even now, if he could speak and tell people that I do a grind the beans dance, which is essentially, when I make my coffee in the morning, I do this whole dance and sing this song, grind the beans, grind, grind the beans!

And there are plenty of fish faces I do all the time for him, particularly if hes crying in the backseat of the car. That tends to stop that. If he could talk right now, there would be heaps already.

How was your pregnancy for you? Would you be open to having more children?

It was a very, very easy pregnancy but I was just nervous, that was all. I just worried because I am a bit of a worrier anyway, but I had a great pregnancy. It was brilliant, and I would like to have some more kids if it works out that way.

One of the reasons why I worried so much is that I feel so lucky in my life, and you just dont know whats going to happen or how youre going to be or how the baby is going to be.

Ive got the most perfect baby. He sleeps from seven at night till 7:30 in the morning, hes amazing. Even if he wakes up in the night, he just wakes up and sings or laughs or chats to himself, he doesnt cry. But I lie awake listening up for him. I think i may never sleep again. Ive got a feeling that even when hes 18, im going to be still worrying. Ill be sleeping with one ear and one eye open.

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Birthday Boy!  A post shared by catdeeley (@catdeeley) on Jan 11, 2017 at 5:32am PST

It sounds like you only worry more after you become a parent, huh?

I worry about everything. Some big things, some small things. Some are to do with the world, some are to do with him.

With what worries me in the world, its always to do with children. Theres the refugee crisis, where there are children traveling on their own to try to find a safer place, and the chemical attacks that happened as well. Anything like that worries me an awful lot.

And I think now were more aware because of social media and you just feel a little bit like, what am I going to do? How am I going to help? Its down to each individual to find some way of doing something of making a difference making sure people are being heard and being seen and not just brushed under the carpet and being ignored.

If you were on Big Little Star and won the prize for charity, to which charity would you donate?

Mine would be UNICEF. Im an ambassador for UNICEF and I have been for a long time now. Ive gone and done lots of trips with them  theyre the most amazing organization. They can get into places that other charities just cant. They really do make a difference.

This Christmas, no one got Christmas presents. I made a donation to the White Helmets in Syria. Theyre the heroes going in there and getting people out.

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Beijing (AFP) - Beijing on Wednesday dismissed as "irresponsible" an annual US Defense Department report that predicted China would expand its global military presence, building overseas bases in countries like Pakistan.

Published Tuesday, the Pentagon report estimated that China spent $180 billion last year on its military -- the world's largest -- a figure well over the country's official $140 billion defence budget.

"China most likely will seek to establish additional military bases in countries with which it has a longstanding friendly relationship and similar strategic interests, such as Pakistan, and in which there is a precedent for hosting foreign militaries," the report said.

China's defence ministry refuted this assessment on Wednesday. "China is not doing any military expansion and does not seek a sphere of influence," it said in a statement.

Foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying likewise said during a regular briefing that China "is firmly opposed" to aspects of the publication.

"We have noted the report released by the US which made irresponsible remarks about China's national defence development in disregard of the facts," Hua said, declining to comment on "speculation" and noting that the "friendly cooperation (between China and Pakistan) does not target any third party".

As part of China's expansive Belt and Road regional infrastructure project, China and Pakistan are building an economic corridor aimed at linking northwest China to the Arabian Sea.

India has voiced displeasure at the planned route, which cuts through Gilgit and Baltistan in Pakistan-administered Kashmir -- disputed territory which India claims is illegally occupied.

China started building its first overseas military base in February 2016 in the small nation of Djibouti, where it will be stationed just a few miles from a US camp.

The outpost will support the country's UN peacekeepers in Africa, allow it to evacuate its nationals in a crisis and support anti-piracy activities off Somalia, according to China.

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The Pentagon report noted that the strategically-sited camp, "along with regular naval vessel visits to foreign ports, both reflects and amplifies China's growing influence, extending the reach of its armed forces".

James Char, a China analyst at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University, told AFP that "it would not be surprising if the People's Liberation Army is working with its overseas counterparts on reaching formal agreements on basing arrangements".

Such bases would probably be intended to send forces quickly to help Chinese nationals during humanitarian crises rather than wage war, Char said.

- South China Sea -

The Pentagon report said Beijing's actions in the South China Sea have caused regional concern over its long-term intentions.

China has built reefs into artificial islands capable of supporting military facilities, some with airstrips.

"As of late 2016, China was constructing 24 fighter-sized hangars, fixed-weapons positions, barracks, administration buildings and communication facilities" at three outposts in the Spratly Islands, the report said.

China claims nearly all of the South China Sea, despite partial counter-claims from Taiwan, the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam.

Beijing and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations took a step in May towards easing friction, agreeing to a framework for a "code of conduct" to prevent incidents in the disputed waters.

China has balked at US involvement in the dispute.

"The US's intensification of deployment in the region -- frequently sending navy vessels on reconnaissance operations -- has created the tense situation," China's defence ministry said.

Though China is engaged in a decades-long build-up and modernisation of its once-backward armed forces, its military clout remains far behind that of the United States, whose annual defence budget totals around $600 billion.
When a member of the Cincinnati Reds becomes the first player in team history to do something, the achievement is probably pretty rare. The Reds have been around in some form since 1866. On Tuesday night, Scooter Gennett became the first Cincinnati player to hit four homers in a single game, finishing 5-for-5 with 10 RBIs in a rout of the Cardinals. Gennett is one of only 17 batters in MLB history to join the four-homer club. Its a rarer feat than pitching a perfect game.

Gennett, you might recall, was actually waived by the Milwaukee Brewers just two months ago, and the move wasnt a complete surprise at the time. He was a veteran who wasnt going to start for Milwaukee, nor was he the teams primary utility man. Hed hit a modest 35 home runs over four major league seasons.

Today, it can be reasonably argued that Gennett is the guy who produced the greatest single-day hitting performance in the very long history of his sport

Only five other players have had games with at least 17 total bases. None of them had double-digit RBIs. Nor any as cool a name as Scooter.  Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) June 7, 2017

Crazy game. In the fantasy era, Gennetts ridiculous day at the plate is rivaled only by these four individual performances:

Anthony Rendon, April 30, 2017  6-for-6, double, 3 HRs, 10 RBIs

Josh Hamilton, May 8, 2012  5-for-5, double, 4 HRs, 8 RBIs

Shawn Green, May 23, 2002  6-for-6, double, 4 HRs, 7 RBIs

Mark Whiten, September 7, 1993  4-for-5, 4 HRs, 12 RBIs

Take your pick; theres no wrong answer.

Gennett entered Tuesday with a career slugging percentage of .422 and exited at .431. He raised his season slash from .270/.308/.450 to .302/.336/.578. Almost nobody owned Gennett in fantasy prior to his Tuesday binge, except a few randoms in deep N.L.-only leagues. Honestly, he might never again produce another multi-homer game. He isnt guaranteed to start for Cincinnati on any given day. Gennett is a quality pro, a useful enough player in reality, but hes not a guy you need to immediately add in fantasy. Lets just try to appreciate one of the all-time individual games without feeling the need to spin it as an actionable event.

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Baseball, man. The fun is in the randomness.

Its worth mentioning that if Gennett had merely hit, say, three homers on Tuesday, theres a decent chance wed all be talking about the replay challenge won by Cards manager Mike Matheny, just ahead of Scooters third-inning grand slam. Matheny challenged a catch by one of his own fielders, Stephen Piscotty, on a play that would have resulted in a sac fly. The run was erased, but so was the innings second out. A walk followed, and soon Gennett began homering.

As always, you are encouraged to share Matheny #takes in comments.

 Save chasers, please note that Pat Neshek closed the door for the Phillies on Tuesday, after Hector Neris allowed a pair of ninth-inning singles. Might be nothing, could be something. Neshek has been Philadelphias most effective reliever this season, delivering a WHIP of 0.77 and ERA of 0.82 over 22.0 innings. Hes worth owning, even in a non-closing role.

 In other closing news, Tony Watson blew a save for the fourth time this season, coughing up a two-run lead in the ninth at Baltimore. Watson has given up multiple runs in four of his last nine appearances. Stay ready, Felipe Rivero. It sounds as if the Bucs are contemplating a change.

 This thing right here off the bat of Yolmer Sanchez has to be one of the softest, saddest home runs in big league history

Apparently that ball, which had zero chance to leave the park, hit some invisible something that dangles from a catwalk at Tropicana Field. Chris Archer and his fantasy owners were not amused.

 Felix Hernandez was roughed up in his minor league rehab start for Tacoma on Tuesday, but he claimed to be pain-free after his abbreviated outing. Hes coming back from shoulder issues. Felixs velocity reportedly reached 90-92, which is basically where hes been over the past three seasons.

 Carlos Rodon (biceps) was hit hard in a Single-A rehab start, but he too claimed to feel just fine. Rodon reached 96 on the gun and struck out six batters over 3.1 innings. Consider adding him if youre desperate for Ks in a deep league.

 The Rays have called up right-handed pitching prospect Jacob Faria from Triple-A Durham, and fantasy owners need to pay attention to his Wednesday start. Faria leads all International League pitchers in strikeouts (by a mile), having Kd 84 hitters over 58.2 innings. Hes 6-1 with a 1.13 WHIP. These are good numbers, people. Faria has been a walk machine in the past, but not so much this season (3.38 BB/9). Hes worth a look in any format, because that K-rate is obscene.

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Assaults on potent symbols of Iranian ideology, claimed by Isis, will stoke tensions with Saudi Arabia, Gulf states and Trump

In targeting the Iranian parliament and the tomb of the Islamic Republics founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the terrorists who went on a lethal rampage in Tehran on Wednesday chose the two most potent symbols of the 1979 revolution.

For ordinary Tehranis, comparatively safe in recent years from such outrages, the attacks are deeply shocking.

The apparently coordinated assaults have been blamed by Irans hardline Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on Saudi Arabia and, whatever the truth of the allegation, they are likely to have a big political impact far beyond Iran, stoking tensions with the US, Saudi Arabia and the Sunni Muslim monarchies of the Gulf.

Islamic State quickly claimed responsibility  if true, it would mean the militant group has finally succeeded in importing its divisive brand of random terror into the home of its principal Shia Muslim adversary.

The mausoleum where Khomeini was laid to rest almost exactly 28 years ago, on 6 June 1989, is an enormous complex dominating the skyline south of Tehran. Its cavernous halls are visited by tens of thousands of Iranians each year, who treat it as a shrine. Unlike the fortress-like Majlis (parliament) building in the centre of the city, security is light. That will change now.

For Iranians, the attack on Khomeinis tomb is the equivalent of somebody trying to blow up the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. If the Isis claim of responsibility proves truthful, this will be the first time the group has successfully struck in the heart of Iran, although it has reportedly tried several times in the recent past.

Isis is at war, ideologically and militarily, with Iranian forces and allies in Syria and Iraq. In a video released in March, it vowed to conquer Iran and restore it to the Sunni Muslim nation as it was before. The jihadis claim that Irans clerical leaders, and their royal Persian predecessors, have persecuted Sunnis for centuries.

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Isis has natural allies among militant groups in Irans restive south-eastern Sistan-Baluchistan province, which has a large Sunni population. In 2010, Sunni extremists linked to the Jundallah network killed 39 people at a mosque in the province. Minority Kurdish groups and ethnic Arabs also have a history of small-scale attacks in the north-west and south-west respectively.

Wednesdays atrocities will be set against the backdrop of the anticipated collapse of Isiss self-declared caliphate, as Iranian-backed Iraqi and Syrian army forces, plus US and British-backed Kurdish militias, close in on its Mosul and Raqqa strongholds.

In response to this pressure, Isis has called on its followers to take the fight to its enemies wherever they live. Recent terror attacks in Manchester, Kabul, Baghdad, Marawi in the southern Philippines and London may fit this emerging pattern of displaced activity by Isis followers.

Conservative Iranian leaders and commentators will certainly follow the IRGCs lead and discern the hand of Saudi Arabia  and, by association, that of the US president, Donald Trump  in Wednesdays attacks.

Well-documented covert efforts by George W Bushs administration in the 2000s to destabilise Iran by funding militant internal opposition groups are not forgotten in Tehran. Nor is unofficial, on-off American support for the Mujahedin e-Khalq, or Peoples Mujahadin of Iran, a group formerly backed by Saddam Hussein that was responsible for numerous armed attacks inside Iran.

The question now is whether Trumps overt hostility is encouraging a repeat of past destabilisation efforts, directly or indirectly. Overturning the previous US president Barack Obamas policy of limited engagement, Trump launched a blistering attack on Iran last month. Speaking during a visit to Riyadh, he demanded Irans international isolation, claiming Tehran was the worlds main exporter of the fires of sectarian conflict and terror.

His host, King Salman, accuses Iran of spearheading global terrorism. Egged on by Israel, Trump has threatened to tear up Obamas landmark 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.

He trumpeted a big arms deal with the Saudis. And this week he threw his support behind Riyadhs diplomatic and commercial ostracism of Qatar, which almost alone among Gulf Arab states has tried to keep on good terms with Iran. This has led regional politicians to warn of imminent war.

Irans leaders reject Trumps accusations out of hand. They say Riyadh is Isiss biggest inspiration and supporter, and point out that Iran and the US are on the same side fighting the jihadis in Iraq.

Unlike the autocratic Gulf regimes, Iran also has a quasi-democratic political system, with an elected parliament and president, that confounds the sponsor of terrorism image. This awkward fact seems to enrage Trump, the Saudis and Isis in equal measure.
Talking head and political provocateur Ann Coulter praised the way Paris police responded to a terrorist assaulting victims with a hammer Tuesday and then criticized the response from Londons Mayor Saddiq Khan about the terrorist attack Saturday night.

"We're hectored to be like the French on adultery & global warming," she said on Twitter, commenting on the appearance of the French cops. "Why can't we be like the French on hiring large, strong men as cops?"

We're hectored to be like the French on adultery & global warming. Why can't we be like the French on hiring large, strong men as cops?  Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) June 6, 2017

"Paris police very macho, unlike the little girls on NYPD: Only 2 shots fired, one hit the Muslim in the thorax," she also wrote.

Paris police very macho, unlike the little girls on NYPD: Only 2 shots fired, one hit the Muslim in the thorax. https://t.co/29QpaRBijJ  Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) June 6, 2017

The tweets come in response to an attack on a policeman in Paris with a hammer Tuesday. The assailant shouted "this is for Syria" before another policeman shot the man in the chest, BBC reported.

The policeman suffered minor injuries, whereas the yet-unnamed attacker sustained was being treated in a hospital.

READ: Ann Coulter UC Berkeley Visit Controversy: 5 Shocking Statements From The Conservative Author

Prosecutors have opened up a terrorism investigation on the incident, and it was reported that the attacker carried kitchen knives and the identity card of an Algerian student, French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said Tuesday, according to the BBC.

Immediately following the tweet about the response from the French police, Coulter sent out another tweet attacking Khan, who had praised the London polices "swift response" to the terrorist attack at the London Bridge Saturday night.

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"London Mayor then blathered about how excellent the police's response was to TERRORISM. 'You saw last night a...the swift response '" she continued.

London Mayor then blathered about how excellent the police's response was to TERRORISM. "You saw last night a...the swift response ..." https://t.co/9Oso8OXsyH  Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) June 6, 2017

Khan, Londons first Muslim mayor, has been at the center of an ongoing Twitter feud with President Donald Trump. Trump, a few hours after the attack in London which left seven dead and 48 wounded, began attacking Khan on Twitter.

"Pathetic excuse by London Mayor Sadiq Khan who had to think fast on his 'no reason to be alarmed' statement. MSM is working hard to sell it!" tweeted Trump, who, like Coulter, took Khans words out of context.

READ: Ann Coulter Defiant After University of California, Berkeley, Cancels Speech Over Safety Concerns

Heres the full statements from Khan:

"My message to Londoners and visitors to our great city is to be calm and vigilant today," Khan said. "You will see an increased police presence today, including armed officers and uniformed officers."

"There is no reason to be alarmed by this," he continued. "We are the safest global city in the world. You saw last night as a consequence of our planning, our preparation, the rehearsals that take place, the swift response from the emergency services tackling the terrorists and also helping the injured."

Prompted by Trumps attacks on him, the London mayor has called for Prime Minister Theresa May to rescind any future invitations to the American president.

"I don't think we should roll out the red carpet to the president of the USA in the circumstances where his policies go against everything we stand for," Khan said.

May has refused to criticize the president but said that Khan has her full backing.

No date for such a meeting has been scheduled and British ally of Trump, Boris Johnson said Tuesday that theres no reason for the president to cancel any meeting coming up.

Ann Coulter

Photo: Getty Images/Alberto E. Rodriguez

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Wendell Scott is the only black driver to win a race in NASCARs Cup Series.

Sunday, Darrell Wallace Jr. will become the first black driver to compete in a Cup race since Bill Lester drove in two races in 2006. While Wallace, who has four wins in the Camping World Truck Series, has a chance to be the first black driver to win a Cup race since Scott did in 1964, hes not entering the Cup Series with a need to win immediately.

Wallace will make his Cup Series debut on Sunday while substituting for Aric Almirola in the No. 43 car.

Theres no need for me to go out there and try to set the world on fire, try to win races and put myself in a tough spot, not be able to capitalize on it, Wallace said. If the opportunity presents itself, yeah, well jump on it. Theres no need for me to force a hole, end up tearing up a racecar. Im getting this opportunity because people believe in me and seen my talents coming up. I have to go out there, just back that up, show them I can manage and perform, and I belong in the series.

Wallace will serve as the substitute driver in the No. 43 car until Almirola returns. Almirola suffered a fractured vertebra in a crash at Kansas in May and is expected to miss approximately two more months.

His absence should give Wallace, 23, at least six races to show people hes worthy of a full-time ride at NASCARs top level.

If we show up and were a 15thplace car, make sure we run 15th all day, hopefully capitalize on 13th and 14th in the closing laps, Wallace said. If were a 25thplace car, make sure I do everything I can to capitalize on 25th. It is all about how the weekend sets itself up. Stay on that path, no need to venture out, put ourselves in a bad spot.

The audition, however, comes with a caveat. 2017 is Wallaces third full season in the Xfinity Series with Roush Fenway Racing. Well, it was supposed to be anyway. As Richard Petty Motorsports announced that Wallace would fill in for Almirola, Roush said that it was suspending operations of Wallaces Xfinity Series team after Saturdays race at Pocono because of a lack of sponsorship.

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The lack of sponsorship is nothing new for Wallace. In 2013 and 2014 with Toyota and Kyle Busch Motorsports in the Truck Series he was sponsored by the manufacturer in over half of his starts. Since moving to Roush before the 2015 season, hes been sponsored by Ford (his car make) or car owner Jack Roushs performance products 32 times.

Hes currently fourth in the Xfinity Series standings and was seventh in 2015 and 11th in 2016. But he hasnt won a race at NASCARs No. 2 level yet.

Theres not a day that goes by where I dont think about that, Wallace said of not having a win in the Xfinity Series yet. Thats probably the biggest battle. Yeah, you can look at Trucks, say that was three, four years ago, two, three years ago, whenever that was. Now its the new year. Times have changed. Were winless. I guess Im beating myself up over it right now, that may have something to do with it. The other part of it. I try to represent myself and my team the best that I can. Times get tough sometimes, you lose cool  So the sponsorship stuff, everybodys battling that. I just happen to be one of those guys that is.

At Martinsville in 2014, Wallace drove a truck that paid tribute to Scotts 2015 NASCAR Hall of Fame induction. He started the race on the pole and led 97 laps on the way to what was his third career win at the time. He still stays in touch with the Scott family and said he talked to Wendell Scott Jr. on Monday after the deal with RPM was announced.

He was pumped up about this past weekend, obviously this opportunity, Wallace said. He kept it short and sweet. So thats huge when you still have that connection with the family, continue to carry on a legacy that their father laid.

      

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!
President Donald Trumps approval rating continues to plummet amid ongoing investigations into his administration's alleged ties to Russia and his controversial decision to pull the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement. As of Tuesday, a daily Gallup poll saw the presidents approval rating hovering at 38 percent  up two points from the weekend but still close to Trumps all-time low of 35 percent in March. Impeachment betting odds, meanwhile, are at a record high.

The betting website Predictit, which bills itself as a stock market for politics, saw record bets on the president's impeachment in May. A single contract named Will Donald Trump be Impeached In 2017? saw more than 100,000 bets in the 24 hours following reports that Trump had fired former FBI Director James Comey.

Read: Trump Approval Ratings: Russia Scandal And Paris Agreement Hurting Public Opinion Of President

The latest poll findings  based on telephone interviews with roughly 1,500 American adults  follow a Monday report that the presidents approval rating had dipped below the percentage of voters who want Congress to impeach him. According to a Politico/Morning Consult poll conducted at the end of May and published last week, 43 percent of American voters want Congress to begin the impeachment process even if, as Politico reported, they dont believe hes responsible for high crimes and misdemeanors.

If President Trump was hoping his foreign trip would shift the conversation away from scandals, he may be out of luck, said Morning Consult Co-Founder and Chief Research Officer Kyle Dropp, according to Politico. Over the last week, support for beginning impeachment proceedings among voters rose from 38 percent to 43 percent.

Of that 43 percent who wished to see Trump impeached, slightly more than half of the respondents (54 percent) believe the president has proven he is unfit to serve and should be removed from office, regardless of whether he committed an impeachable offense or not.

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Read: New Twitter Bot Translates Donald Trump's Tweets Into Official White House Statements

Overall, Trumps plunging approval rating seemed to be nonpartisan. As Newsweek pointed out Monday, right-leaning polls of voter sentiment have also seen a dip. Rasmussen Reports said Tuesday that its Presidential Tracking Poll found that 46 percent of likely U.S. voters approved of the president's performance, while 54 percent disapproved.

Fox News reported at the end of May that 40 percent of registered voters polled by telephone approved of the president's performance, while 53 percent disapproved. The poll results dipped significantly from its own February report, which saw Trump's favorability at 48 percent, compared with 47 percent who disapproved.

As International Business Times reported Thursday, Trumps favorability among Americans is at a historic low. Rasmussen, Gallup and Survey Monkey all reported similar poll figures that found Trumps disapproval rating among American voters outweighed his favorability by double digits.

Donald Trump Paris Annuoncement

Photo: Reuters

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Donald Trump will be live-tweeting former FBI Director James Comey's testimony in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee: Win McNamee/Getty Images

Donald Trump is reportedly planning to live-tweet former FBI Director James Comey's Congressional testimony.

Mr Comey is scheduled to appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee on 8 June - in public and closed door sessions - to speak about the ongoing FBI investigation into alleged ties between the Trump campaign team and Russia as well as possible Russian interference with the US election.

Mr Trump fired Mr Comey on 9 May and faced backlash for the unexpected decision from Democrats and Republicans alike.

Normally federal employees at such a high level with decades of experience like Mr Comey has are given the opportunity to resign rather than being sacked. However the White House leaked his termination letter which stated that Mr Trump thought Mr Comey eroded "public trust and confidence" in the FBI.

Mr Comey is also expected to testify about memos he wrote while Director which allegedly detailed conversations he had with the President.

The New York Times reported that in at least one conversation Mr Trump asked Mr Comey to "let it go" with regards to the FBI investigation into former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn's allegedly receiving illegal payments from the Turkish government.

The National Archives and Records Administration asked the White House to save all of the President's tweets, even those deleted, to be part of their records. Former President Obama's official Twitter account has entered the archive as well.

The President appears to favour the micro-blogging social media site as a way to communicate with the public, often sparking controversy with his remarks on a range of issues. The Washington Post reported that Mr Trump wants to be the one "driving the process" during Mr Comey's testimony.

Senior aide Kellyanne Conway recently criticised the media for having this obsession with covering everything he says on Twitter and very little of what of he does as President."

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Mr Trump recently taunted the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan in the wake of the London Bridge attack and praised Saudi Arabia for cutting ties with Qatar over funding terror groups.

During his term in office, he has not yet live-tweeted any events.
Mr Wray, pictured in 2005, has been a partner at the King & Spalding law firm since he left the Justice Department that same year: AP

A month after he fired James Comey as the FBI Director, Donald Trump has announced he is nominating lawyer and former assistant Attorney General Christopher Wray to replace him.

Mr Trump ousted Mr Comey as he was overseeing a federal probe into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russias alleged meddling in the 2016 election. At the time, he said to an interviewer: 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.

With the post having been empty since Mr Comeys firing on 9 May, Mr Trump and his team had considered a number of people for the position. Among them was former Democratic senator Joe Lieberman.

I will be nominating Christopher A. Wray, a man of impeccable credentials, to be the new Director of the FBI. Details to follow.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 7, 2017

Mr Trump, who has shown no small ability to create headlines, especially to replace negative ones about him, used Twitter to make his announcement. He did so just hours before four intelligence officials were due to give testimony on Capitol Hill about the Russia investigation, and a day before Mr Comey is himself scheduled to appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

While Mr Comey is not expected to divulge details of the ongoing probe, now being headed by former FBI Director Robert Mueller, reports suggest he will provide details of conversations he had with Mr Trump, and which he kept notes of.

Among the conversations he will reportedly provide details of, is one where Mr Trump allegedly asked him to display his loyalty to the President. During another reported conversation, Mr Trump allegedly asked Mr Comey to drop his investigation into his former national security advisor, Michael Flynn, a former general who was forced to resign after it emerged he had lied about his contacts with Russian officials.

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Some were quick to point out the timing of Mr Trump's announcement. It appears, obviously, that the President is trying to change the topic because weve got two days of hearings here that could be explosive, Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told MSNBC.

Last month, it was announced that Mr Wray, 50, who served as assistant Attorney General from 2003 to 2005, would join the list of applicants being interviewed for the vacant position.

The White House finally released a statement on Mr Trumps nomination hours after Mr Trumps tweets saying that Mr Wray has been recognised throughout his career as a leader in the field of white-collar criminal defence and government investigations.

It also expanded on Mr Trumps earlier remarks: I am proud to announce Christopher as my choice as the Director of the FBI. During his previous service at the Department of Justice, Christopher was the leader of major fraud investigations, and was a key part of the team overseeing the Justice Departments actions in the war on terrorism following the 9/11 attacks, said President Trump. He is an impeccably qualified individual, and I know that he will again serve his country as a fierce guardian of the law and model of integrity once the Senate confirms him to lead the FBI.

Mr Trump also told reporters on a trip to Cincinnati that Mr Wray was gonna be great.

The website of the Mr Wrays law firm says: Mr Wray chairs the King & Spalding Special Matters and Government Investigations Practice Group, which represents companies, audit and special committees, and individuals in a variety of white-collar criminal and regulatory enforcement matters, parallel civil litigation, and internal corporate investigations.

Good choice. Oversaw Enron case, which I also spent years of my life on. He was very fair. I endorse. #christopherwray #fbi #Russiagate https://t.co/elBtDQr3xb  Norm Eisen (@NormEisen) June 7, 2017

It is a great honour to be selected by the President to return to the Department of Justice as Director of the FBI, Mr Wray said. I look forward to serving the American people with integrity as the leader of what I know firsthand to be an extraordinary group of men and women who have dedicated their careers to protecting this country.

Among his high profile clients was Chris Christie, the New Jersey Governor, who retained Mr Wray during the so-called Bridgegate controversy, an investigation into the 2013 closure of lanes on the George Washington Bridge as political payback against a local politician.

Three senior officials working for the governor were found guilty, but Mr Christie was not charged in the case.

Mr Christie said last week that Mr Wray was an outstanding lawyer.

Other Republicans lined up to praise the decision to nominate Mr Wray, although some were caught out by Mr Trumps announcement. Legislators attending a closed-door caucus said they had no early word of the Presidents selection of Mr Wray.

Representative Mike Conaway of Texas said, At first blush, he seems like a great choice to lead the FBI. But Mr Conaway added he wasnt given a heads up and told reporters that they had surprised me on the way in.

House Speaker Paul Ryan said Mr Wray seemed like the perfect kind of person for the important job. Mr Ryan added that he favoured a career person and that Mr Wray certainly seems to fit that bill.

Mr Wray is a traditional choice for the job. President Trump had considered current and former politicians, including Mr Lieberman, and some FBI agents worried that Mr Trump would try to politicise the bureau.

Thomas O'Connor, president of the FBI Agents Association, said that group looked forward to meeting with Mr Wray and learning about his views on the bureau and the challenges agents face.

A top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, said Mr Wray had impeccable credentials, vast experience and strong support across the board.

But others were more cautious.

With the many threats that the US faces domestically and internationally, we need a strong FBI director, said Oklahoma Senator James Lankford, a Republican and member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. In the coming weeks, we will evaluate Christopher Wrays qualifications to lead the FBI and his plans for our security and law enforcement.
The London Mayor has now said the UK should not 'roll out the red carpet' for President Trump: PA

Sadiq Khan has felt the wrath of Donald Trump more frequently than any other British politician. While Prime Minister, Theresa May, and Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, have managed to avoid the receiving end of the American Presidents frequent and vociferous Twitter tirades, Mr Khan has been rather less fortunate.

The most recent example of President Trump rebuking the London Mayor after the London Bridge terror attacks was by no means an isolated incident. The politicians feud with each other arguably stems back to a year and a half ago when Mr Trump announced he would ban all Muslims from entering the US.

Back in December 2015, the Republican frontrunner called for all Muslims to be banned from entering the US in the wake of a deadly mass shooting in San Bernardino in California

At the time, a campaign press release said: "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.

Just a few months later, in May 2017, Mr Khan was of course elected as the first Muslim mayor of London. At the time, Mr Trump said he was happy London had elected Mr Khan and suggested the Labour politician was likely to be part of the exception to his plans for a barring Muslims.

When pressed about how his proposed ban would affect Mr Khan, he said: There will always be exceptions.

I was happy to see that, the billionaire property developer said of Mr Khans election. I think its a very good thing, and I hope he does a very good job because frankly, that would be very, very good.

Probed about what he meant, Mr Trump said: Because I think if he does a great job, it will really - you lead by example, always lead by example. If he does a good job and frankly if he does a great job, that would be a terrific thing.

But Mr Khan, who is from Tooting in south London, rejected Mr Trumps proposal for himself to be exempted from the Muslim ban.

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"I don't want to be the exception to be allowed to go to America," Mr Khan told the BBC at the time. "It's not about me. It's about my friends, family and others from all around the world."

He also said he was supporting his Democrat rival, Hillary Clinton, saying: I hope she trounces him.

In another interview at the time, he also said: If Donald Trump becomes the President, Ill be stopped from going there by virtue of my faith, which means I cant engage with American mayors and swap ideas.

It was not until the Westminster attack in March of this year that Mr Khan again had friction with the Trump family. After the attack, President Trumps eldest son, Donald Jnr, launched into a scathing attack on Mr Khan, sharing a six-month-old story by The Independent on Twitter which quoted the Mayor of London saying terror attacks were part and parcel of living in a global city.

Trump Jnr, an executive of the Trump Organisation, said: You have to be kidding me?!

It was not clear whether Trump Jnr read Mr Khans actual article before misconstruing the London Mayors comments. It also was unclear whether he was aware the six-month-old piece bore no relation to the attack outside the Houses of Parliament and instead centred on Mr Khans reaction to a bombing in the Chelsea neighbourhood of New York.

Mr Khan responded by refusing to talk about Trump Jnrs scornful tweet in two separate interviews, saying: "I've been doing far more important things over the last 24 hours."

But the most recent source of friction between the pair has come in the wake of the recent London Bridge attacks and after Mr Trump wrongly claimed the mayor had said there was no reason to be alarmed about the risk of terror attacks in London.

At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is no reason to be alarmed! the former reality TV star said on Twitter. However, the mayor had been referring to the increased police presence in the capital and in no way telling people they should not be alarmed by the atrocities themselves.

After Mr Khan said that the US President had deliberately taken his remarks out of context, Mr Trump doubled down, tweeting: Pathetic excuse by London Mayor Sadiq Khan who had to think fast on his no reason to be alarmed statement. MSM [Mainstream media] is working hard to sell it!

The London Mayor has now said the UK should not roll out the red carpet for President Trump.

Speaking to Channel 4 News from the vigil held on Monday night for the victims of the attack, Mr Khan said he did not think Mr Trump should be welcomed to the UK for a state visit, arguing he goes against everything we stand for.

When asked why he thinks Mr Trump has something against him, Mr Khan replied: Well look, since Saturday Ive been working with the police, the emergency and the Government with others to deal with the horrific attack.

I just havent got the time to respond to tweets from Donald Trump.
Former FBI Director James Comey is set to appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday to speak about the ongoing investigation into alleged connections of Donald Trumps campaign team and Russia. In the much anticipated testimony, Comey is expected to face questions about whether the president pressured him to let go of a probe into National Security Adviser Michael Flynns ties to Moscow.

Trump dismissed Comey from the FBIs director post May 9 over his handling of investigation into Democrat Hillary Clintons email scandal. However, several Democrats linked the firing to Comeys probe into the links between the presidents associates and Russia during the 2016 election.

Read: Robert Mueller Could Object To James Comey's Public Testimony Before Intelligence Committee

Trump claimed on several occasions that Comey assured he was not under investigation. However, a Tuesday report from CNN , citing sources, said Comey will dispute Trumps claim and would say his conversations were much nuanced because of which the president assumed he was not investigated. One source indicated to the news outlet that Trump may have misunderstood Comeys statements regarding the investigation.

After the dismissal, the New York Times reported, citing a memo written by Comey in February, the president asked the ex-FBI director to let go of the investigation into Flynn.

I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go, Trump told Comey, according to the memo. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.

After the Times report, speculation arose if Trump obstructed justice. However, according ABC News reported Tuesday that Comey will stop short of saying the 70-year-old president meddled with the bureaus investigation into Flynn.

He is not going to Congress to make accusations about the presidents intent, instead hes there to share his concerns, a source told ABC News, adding Comey would tell the committee what made him uneasy and why thought of writing the memo.

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Comey is also likely face questions about a loyalty pledge, which was reportedly asked by Trump. On May 11, the Times reported, citing sources, the president asked then-FBI director to pledge loyalty to his administration. Comey declined, but told him he would be honest with him, the report added.

Apart from this, Comey could be asked if there was evidence of collusion between Trump's associates and Russia. It remains to be seen what his answer would be. When former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper faced similar question in March, he maintained he did not see such evidence. This response was cited by the White House and the president who called the Russia investigation a "witch hunt."

On Monday, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the principal deputy White House press secretary, said Trump will not invoke executive privilege to block Comey from testifying.

The president's power to assert executive privilege is well-established. However, in order to facilitate a swift and thorough examination of the facts sought by the Senate intelligence committee, Trump will not assert executive privilege regarding James Comey's scheduled testimony, Sanders said.

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Barefoot walks in the grass may not be so harmless, due to ticks. (Photo: Getty Images)

A 2-year-old girl died on Saturday from what is believed to have been a tick-borne disease.

Kenley Ratliff, of Indiana, was surrounded by friends and family during a several-day stay at Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis, where her condition worsened from a 104-degree fever to a brain infection. While doctors struggled to diagnose the childs illness, more physical symptoms began to appear, including swollen hands and rashes.

A family friend of the Ratliffs, Nichol Kirby, told WISH-TV that the girl developed an irregular pattern of purple splotches and that the confusion over what caused the girls condition made her deterioration even more harrowing.

Kirby explained to the local news outlet that the Ratliff family tended to spend a lot of time outdoors, where they now assume that Kenley might have been bitten by a tick. And sure enough, though a tick bite could not be confirmed (and an autopsy report is pending), doctors eventually identified the illness as Rocky Mountain spotted fever  a tick-borne disease that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says is potentially fatal.

Doctors at the hospital prescribed antibiotics for the girl and placed her on a feeding tube during her final days. And now her parents want others to know that similar tragedies can be avoided.

[The family wants] everyone to be very diligent about checking their children for ticks, checking their animals for ticks, making sure that those pets are treated, Kirby said.

On a GoFundMe page set up in Kenleys honor, the family writes, Now our goal is to spread awareness of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever in hopes of saving other childrens lives.

To that goal, be sure to take the following tick-search precautions as recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:

Bathe within two hours of outdoor exposure.

Use a mirror to do thorough checks on high-risk areas (under arms, around ears, inside the belly button, behind the knees, between the legs, around the waist, and in hair).

Remember to examine gear and pets, as well.

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Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper eviscerated the Trump administrations handling of the Russia investigation Wednesday, suggesting that it is one of the greatest presidential scandals in U.S. history.

Watergate palescompared to what were confronting now, Clapper said, referring to the 1974 scandal that forced forced former President Richard Nixon to resign.

The investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin to win the 2016 presidential election is often likened to the bombshell revelations that Nixon spied on Democratic operatives to win his own reelection and obstructed justice to cover it up.

Addressing the National Press Club of Australia, Clapper  who oversaw U.S. intelligence agencies for seven years under the Obama administration and has been working in intelligence for 50 years  said President Donald Trumps decision to fire FBI Director James Comey was egregious and inexcusable.

Comey is scheduled to testify to the Senate Intelligence Committee Thursday in what media outlets are portraying as a much-anticipated showdown. CNN reported the former FBI director plans to debunk the presidents claim that Comey told him he was not under investigation, but otherwise aims to be a source of facts, rather than judgment.

Speaking in Australias capital, Canberra, Clapper also warned against Trumps apparent sidling up to Russia. The Russians are not our friends, Clapper said, adding that Trump had also expressed to him that he wanted he wanted good relations with the Russian government.

Clapper noted that Russian meddling in the U.S. election had achieved results beyond their wildest expectations.

Given [the Russians] success they have only been emboldened to be even more aggressive in the future. This is not, let me stress, fake news, he added.

The former spy chief also warned that Chinas intervention in Australia was similar to Russian intervention in American politics. It is no secret thatChina is increasingly aggressive in attempting to gain influence in your political processes as Russia is in ours, Clapper said.

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The intelligence community veteran has taken aim at Trump before. In March Clapper denied Trumps accusation that the Obama administration spied on him throughout the campaign.

There was no such wiretap activity mounted against the president-elect at the time, as a candidate, or against his campaign, Clapper said.

In Australia, he urged journalists to continue digging into the Russia investigation. Is there a smoking gun with all the smoke? I dont know the answer to that. I think its vital, though, we find that out.

Photo credit: EVY MAGES/Getty Images
Chrissy Teigen and John Legends daughter, Luna, is only 1, but shes already in the big leagues.

The chubby cheeked tot threw out the first pitch at the Seattle Mariners game yesterday against the Minnesota Twins. Wearing a custom jersey and jeans, the tot looked adorable  and serious  doing it. And while she was a lot closer than the typical ceremonial first pitch, its safe to say the baby did better than notoriously bad first throwers 50 Cent, Carly Rae Jepsen, and Mariah Carey. (Her cuteness gave her a lot of leeway.)

The Mariners gave the heads up that Luna and Chrissy would at Safeco Field on Tuesday, sharing a photo of the mother-daughter custom jerseys. (The model, who lived in Snohomish, Wash., for a period while growing up, opted for just a hat when she was out on the field.)

John and Chrissy shared their own pix of the exciting day, including of the pitch. John captioned this proud papa:

Proud papa #LunasFirstTour A post shared by John Legend (@johnlegend) on Jun 6, 2017 at 9:22pm PDT

Chrissy showed off another shot of her daughters arm:

A post shared by chrissy teigen (@chrissyteigen) on Jun 6, 2017 at 9:23pm PDT

The Mariners generously quipped that Lunas throw was a heater right down the pipe.

Many thanks to @chrissyteigen and @johnlegend for letting Luna throw out our first pitch. It was a heater right down the pipe. pic.twitter.com/82rN226snK  Mariners (@Mariners) June 7, 2017

The whole experience was a thrill for Teigen, who described being there as being home:

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Home A post shared by chrissy teigen (@chrissyteigen) on Jun 6, 2017 at 9:22pm PDT

The trio also took five right on the field for a bit, something you can only do if you are famous:

A post shared by chrissy teigen (@chrissyteigen) on Jun 6, 2017 at 9:51pm PDT

And they were given an all-access pass to the dugout

Mommy and daddy posing. Luna stealing the Mariners bubble gum #LunasFirstTour #Seattle A post shared by John Legend (@johnlegend) on Jun 6, 2017 at 7:29pm PDT

where Luna helped herself to some Dubble Bubble:

A post shared by chrissy teigen (@chrissyteigen) on Jun 6, 2017 at 9:50pm PDT

Gotta wait a few years for the gum, kid. You need a few more teeth. In a few years shell also have to pick her team as shes already showed some allegiance to her hometown Los Angeles Dodgers  though that was before she could walk. You know how quickly things change with kids.

 GO DODGERS!  A post shared by chrissy teigen (@chrissyteigen) on Jul 3, 2016 at 2:12pm PDT

The family has been traveling around the U.S. this year for Legends Darkness and Light tour. Theyve made it a family affair  dubbing it #LunasFirstTour  and have been enjoying lots of family time in between shows.





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Donald Trump, James Comey. (Photos: Evan Vucci/APJoshua Roberts/Reuters)

Thursday, when former FBI Director James Comey testifies in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee about his dealings with Donald Trump, will mark nearly a year since the two mens paths began crossing. Their relationship had highs (effusive praise from Trump the candidate) and some very low lows (a termination following what Comey reportedly described as improper conversations). Few people have had more of a direct effect on the current state of American politics than Trump and Comey, and what follows is a timeline of the actions of and interactions between the two men that led to the much-anticipated Senate hearing.

July 5, 2016

Comey holds a press to announce that the FBI would not be pursuing charges against Hillary Clinton for her handling of classified information as secretary of state. The FBI director added that she was extremely careless but that our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.

In response, Trump tweeted that the system was rigged:

FBI director said Crooked Hillary compromised our national security. No charges. Wow! #RiggedSystem  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 5, 2016

October 17, 2016

Trump tweets out a story at the Daily Caller, a conservative publication founded by Fox News host Tucker Carlson. The story, headlined EXCLUSIVE: FBI Agents Say Comey Stood in the Way of Clinton Email Investigation, includes quotes from anonymous agents who called the lack of a grand jury in the Clinton investigation appalling and ridiculous.

October 28, 2016

Comey writes in a letter to Congress that new emails had been discovered related to the Clinton case and that investigators were looking into them. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, the chair of the House Oversight Committee and enthusiastic investigator of all things Clinton, tweets that the case was reopened.

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The emails were found during an investigation into former Rep. Anthony Weiner, whose wife, Huma Abedin, was a top aide to Clinton. CNN reported that Justice Department officials had hesitations about Comey going to Congress that close to an election with no solid evidence. Although the story covered front pages in the wake of the directors letter, the Abedin emails yielded no new information in the Clinton investigation.

We must not let her take her criminal scheme into the Oval Office, said Trump at a rally regarding Comeys letter. I have great respect for the fact that the FBI and the Department of Justice are now willing to have the courage to right the horrible mistake that they made.

Very proud that the FBI was willing to do this actually, really, very proud, added Trump.

October 31, 2016

And I have to give the FBI credit, Trump said at a campaign rally in Michigan. That was so bad what happened originally, and it took guts for Director Comey to make the move that he made in light of the kind of opposition he had where theyre trying to protect her from criminal prosecution. You know that. It took a lot of guts.

I was not his fan, he added, but Ill tell you what: What he did, he brought back his reputation. He brought it back.

November 5, 2016

Trump praises Comey again at a Nevada rally: Theres virtually no doubt that FBI Director Comey and the great, great special agents of the FBI will be able to collect more than enough evidence to garner indictments against Hillary Clinton and her inner circle despite her efforts to disparage them and to discredit them.

November 6, 2016

After Comey informs Congress in another letter that the new emails didnt affect the conclusion of the FBIs investigation, Trump pivots back to his claims that it was a rigged system and exaggerates the number of new emails investigators had to consider.

The investigations into her crimes will go on for a long, long time, said Trump at a Michigan rally. The rank-and-file special agents at the FBI wont let her get away with her terrible crimes.

November 22, 2016

Trump tells the New York Times he has no interest in pursuing the investigation against Clinton, saying, I dont want to hurt the Clintons, I really dont.

President Trump with FBI Director James Comey during an Inaugural Law Enforcement Officers and First Responders Reception in the Blue Room of the White House on Jan. 22, 2017. (Photo: Andrew Harrer-Pool/Getty Images)

January 22

Comey attends an event at the White House to honor law enforcement officials involved with the inauguration. Near the end of the event, Trump calls Comey out by name, saying, Oh, theres Jim. Hes become more famous than me. Comey then approached for a handshake before being pulled into an awkward half-hug by the president. Ben Wittes, a friend of Comeys, told the New York Times in May that Comey felt awkward at the event and was attempting to blend in with the curtains before he was spotted.

February 14

The date of an alleged dinner meeting between Trump and Comey in which the president asked his FBI director to drop an investigation of his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn. Flynn had resigned the day before, and according to reports from the New York Times and the Washington Post, a memo Comey wrote after the meeting said he felt the conversation was improper. These events were reported on May 16.

March 20

In testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, Comey says the FBI is investigating whether or not members of the Trump campaign colluded with Russian officials to influence the 2016 election.

April 11

In an interview with Fox Business News Maria Bartiromo, Trump says he has confidence in Comey but that things will be interesting. He also discussed Comeys statements on Clinton from nine months earlier. From the transcript:

BARTIROMO: For example, was it a mistake not to ask Jim Comey to step down from the FBI at the outset of your presidency?

Is it too late now to ask him to step down?

TRUMP: No, its not too late, but, you know, I have confidence in him. Well see what happens. You know, its going to be interesting.

But, you know, we have to just  look, I have so many people that want to come into this administration. Theyre so excited about this administration and whats happening  bankers, law enforcement. Everybody wants to come into this administration. Dont forget, when Jim Comey came out, he saved Hillary Clinton. People dont realize that. He saved her life, because  I call it Comey won. And I joke about it a little bit.

When he was reading those charges, she was guilty on every charge. And then he said, she was essentially OK. But he  she wasnt OK, because she was guilty on every charge.

May 3

Comey testifies in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee and says he feels mildly nauseous about the fact his October letter may have influenced the election. He also states that Abedin forwarded hundreds and thousands of emails, some of which contain classified information.

May 8

ProPublica reports that Comey exaggerated the number of emails shared by Abedin during his May 3 hearing, as Abedin had forwarded just a handful of emails to Weiner and not the hundreds and thousands Comey had initially stated. The FBI sent a letter correcting the directors testimony.

May 9

Comey is fired. Initially the White House said it was at the recommendation of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, but Trump soon contradicted those statements by saying he was going to fire Comey regardless of what Rosenstein suggested.

Rosensteins memo on Comey was extremely harsh regarding the FBI directors handling of the Clinton case, actions that had been largely cheered by Trump at the time. I cannot defend the Directors handling of the conclusion of the investigation of Secretary Clintons emails, wrote Rosenstein, and I do not understand his refusal to accept the nearly universal judgment that he was mistaken.

May 10

In a meeting with Russian officials at the White House, Trump says, I just fired the head of the FBI. He was crazy, a real nut job. I faced great pressure because of Russia. Thats taken off. Originally reported by the New York Times on May 19, the White House did not dispute the account, in which Trump also reportedly added, Im not under investigation.

May 12

As stories about Comeys meetings with the president start to proliferate across the media, Trump tweets out a threat to Comey. In a Friday morning message, the president wrote, James Comey better hope that there are no tapes of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press! Trump and his spokespeople are repeatedly asked about the existence of a recording, but they decline to elaborate.

June 1

The Senate Intelligence Committee announces that Comey will testify about his interactions with Trump that led to his firing.

June 5

The White House says that Trump would not attempt to block Comeys testimony via executive privilege, in order to facilitate a swift and thorough examination of the facts sought by the Senates Intelligence Committee.

June 6

When asked by reporters if he had a message for Comey before his testimony, Trump simply replies, I wish him luck.

_____

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Tehran (AFP) - Viewed from Tehran, the extraordinary spat between Qatar and its Gulf neighbours has many advantages, experts say, but it is also worried about yet more volatility in the troubled neighbourhood.

"This is a new low for the Saudis. They don't know how to do foreign policy. They are fighting with most of their neighbours," said Foad Izadi, international affairs professor at the University of Tehran.

"At least this incident gives the Iranian government an opportunity to show it is the mature and responsible actor in the region," he added.

"It also gives us an opportunity to increase relations with Qatar since now it needs Iran for aviation and food supplies."

After Saudi Arabia and several of their allies severed ties with Qatar on Monday -- cutting off its sea, land and air access -- Iran was quick to jump in with offers of food imports and access to its airspace.

The Saudis accused Qatar of supporting extremist groups seeking to "destabilise the region", which it denied.

But analysts say the real target was Iran.

"The Saudis seek to create a united front against Iran, and they need to eliminate any opposition within the (Gulf) coalition," said Farhad Rezaei, research fellow with the Center for Iranian Studies in Turkey.

He said the Qataris are being punished for not sharing Saudi Arabia's "obsession with Iran".

"There are others in the Gulf coalition that do not share this obsession, but none have Qatar's ability to resist Saudi pressure," said Rezaei, highlighting Doha's immense gas reserves and close military ties with Washington.

- 'No satisfaction in Tehran' -

The spat comes less than a month after US President Donald Trump visited Saudi Arabia and called for a united front to isolate Iran, so the sudden collapse in the Gulf alliance should be welcome in Tehran.

Not just Qatar, but also other Muslim nations including Oman, Kuwait and Malaysia -- have expressed their doubts or even outright opposition to the Saudis' relentless campaign against Iran.

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But that doesn't mean Iran welcomes the latest tumult among its rivals, said Adnan Tabatabai, head of German think-tank CARPO.

"I don't think there's a sense of satisfaction in Tehran over this spat," he said.

"Of course Iran is happy to show that the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) is fragile, but ultimately it just makes the neighbouring region even more volatile and that doesn't serve anyone's interests."

He said the dispute was a particular tragedy because Qatar and Iran have shown it's possible to have a constructive economic partnership despite sharp differences in other areas.

They back opposing sides in the Syrian conflict, where Iran has provided vital ground forces to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad while Qatar has funded the rebel groups trying to bring him down.

But Qatar and Iran also share an offshore gas field, called North Dome and South Pars, working closely together on its management and naval security.

"That should not have been seen as a problem but as a blueprint for other countries on how economic cooperation can build into a common security relationship," said Tabatabai.

- Regional competition -

Spurred on by a fiercely anti-Iran administration in Washington, the Saudis are determined to push back against Tehran's powerful position across the region.

As well as its successful campaigns in Syria, Iranian-backed militias are crucial to the fight against the Islamic State group in Iraq.

Tehran's close ally Hezbollah is dominant in Lebanon, while the loosely affiliated Huthi rebels in Yemen have dragged the Saudis and their allies into a devastating and draining conflict in that country.

"Unfortunately for the Saudis, Qatar has viewed Iran as part of the solution to regional conflicts... and know that military conflict could threaten its economic ties with Iran," said Rezaei.

It remains to be seen whether the aggressive move against Qatar will force it to change its mind, or do the opposite and push it more firmly into the arms of Iran.

But for now, Iranian analysts are basking in the opportunity to depict the Saudis as the bad guys.

"The Saudi government is not content with having a dictatorship internally, they want a regional dictatorship," said Izadi.

"They don't accept any dissent, even from their fellow Sunni governments."
Doha (AFP) - President Donald Trump called Qatar's emir Wednesday and offered US help as efforts grew to resolve a damaging feud between the emirate and its Gulf neighbours.

Trump's call to Qatari ruler Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, a key US ally, came as a senior Emirati official told AFP that Gulf Arab states were not seeking regime change in Doha.

"The president offered to help the parties resolve their differences, including through a meeting at the White House if necessary," Trump's office said after the call.

A Qatari official said Trump in the call had "expressed readiness to find a solution to the diplomatic crisis in the Gulf, and stressed his keenness that the Gulf remains stable."

Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE and Bahrain announced on Monday they were cutting diplomatic ties and closing air, sea and land links with Qatar, giving Qataris within their borders two weeks to leave.

The four countries have suspended all flights to and from Qatar, pulled their ambassadors from Doha and ordered Qatari diplomats to leave.

Riyadh and its allies accuse Qatar of supporting extremist groups and of serving the interests of regional arch-rival Iran, claims Doha has strongly rejected.

The dispute has sparked the worst diplomatic crisis in the Arab world in years and raised fears it will cause further instability in an already-volatile region.

The United Arab Emirates' state minister for foreign affairs Anwar Gargash on Wednesday accused Qatar of being "the main champion of extremism and terrorism in the region".

- 'Not about regime change' -

But he also said measures taken against Qatar this week by Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other Arab nations were not aimed at seeking new leadership in Doha.

"This is not about regime change -- this is about change of policy, change of approach," Gargash told AFP in Dubai.

Kuwait is leading efforts to find a mediated solution.

Its emir, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, on Wednesday arrived in Doha, where he was received by his Qatari counterpart, Kuwait's official KUNA news agency said.

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Earlier on Wednesday, he met Dubai's ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum and other senior UAE officials in Dubai, after talks the day before with King Salman in Saudi Arabia.

The Kuwaiti ruler played a pivotal role in mediating a compromise in a 2014 diplomatic dispute between Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Gulf states.

The United States, France and Russia have called for dialogue while Turkey has defended Qatar and said it would further "develop" ties with Doha.

Turkey's parliament on Wednesday approved deploying troops to a Turkish base in Qatar under a previously agreed plan, in a move seen as a sign of support for Doha.

Trump waded into the dispute on Tuesday, but seemed to only muddy the waters. After first appearing to back the Saudi-led measures against Qatar on Twitter, he shifted gears and called for unity among Gulf Arab states.

Trump's Tuesday tweet -- in which he said "all reference was pointing to Qatar" as a financer of extremism -- was especially surprising given Qatar's role as host of the largest US airbase in the Middle East.

Al-Udeid, located in the Qatari desert, is home to some 10,000 US troops and is a crucial hub in the fight against Islamic State group extremists in Syria and Iraq.

German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel accused the US president of fanning conflict in the Middle East and risking a "new spiral in arms sales" with his remarks.

"Such a 'Trumpification' of relations in a region already susceptible to crises is particularly dangerous," Gabriel said.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said Gulf countries still saw Qatar as a "brother state".

"But you have to be able to tell your friend or your brother when they are doing the right thing and when they are doing the wrong thing," Jubeir said in a joint press conference with Gabriel.

- Ratings downgrade -

Qatar has said it is open to talks to end the crisis but has also accused its neighbours of impinging on its sovereignty.

In a sign of the potential risks to Qatar's economy, S&P Global Ratings cut Qatar's credit rating by one notch to AA- and put it on watch for further downgrades.

"There are numerous uncertainties regarding Qatar's response, the extent to which these measures will be imposed, and their longevity," said the ratings agency.

Qatar has an independent streak that has often angered its neighbours, attracting criticism for hosting the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, and supporting Islamist rebels in Syria.

Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies may have felt emboldened to move against Qatar by Trump's visit last month to Riyadh, which saw the president clearly align US interests with the kingdom and lash out at Iran.

Riyadh has itself faced accusations of tolerating or even supporting extremists, in particular after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.

Of the 19 hijackers of planes used in the attacks, 15 came from Saudi Arabia, also the birthplace of Al-Qaeda founder and attack mastermind Osama bin Laden.
Twin assaults on the Iranian parliament and a nearby shrine rocked Tehran Wednesday morning in the countrys deadliest terror attack in over a decade. At least 12 people were killed and over 40 injured. A third attack was reportedly prevented, according to Irans Intelligence Ministry.

The Islamic State has claimed responsibility, publishing what it claims is a video taken from inside Irans parliament. This would be the first terrorist attack the Sunni extremist group has purported to carry out in the Shiite-majority country, which (alongside Russia) is currently fighting the Islamic State in Syria.

However, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard  a branch of Irans army  said Saudi Arabia was behind the Wednesday morning attacks.

According to reports, gunmen, some wearing suicide vests, stormed Irans parliament building in Tehran at around 10:30am, taking hostages and shooting blindly.

Video of Iran's security services rushing to the scene of #TehranAttacks at #IranParliament pic.twitter.com/MLvGxsffpF  IranWire (@IranWireEnglish) June 7, 2017

Almost simultaneously, an assault took place at the tomb of Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who died in 1989. Reports say at least one explosive was detonated, as gunmen attacked worshipers and tourists.

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Video: the moment a terrorist blows himself up in Imam Khomeini shrine.#TehranAttacks pic.twitter.com/wlcIyYWkND  Sadegh Ghorbani (@GhorbaniSadegh) June 7, 2017

The attacks come just weeks after Irans presidential elections, and just as the regional rivalry between Iran and Persian Gulf states is heating up. On Monday, five Arab nations, and some of their allies, announced they were severing diplomatic ties with Qatar, accusing the Gulf state of funding Islamist extremism and deploring its relations with Iran. Saudi Arabia presented Qatar with certain impossible demands it says must be met before relations can be restored.

President Donald Trump also railed against Iran during his trip to Saudi Arabia, Tehrans major regional rival. Iran, Trump said while feting the rulers of the country that provided 15 of the 19 hijackers on Sept. 11, 2001, has fueled the fires of sectarian conflict and terror.

On Tuesday, Trump took credit for the countries isolation of Qatar, suggesting that they had paid heed to his advice and suddenly taken a hard line on funding extremism.

Photo credit: OMID VAHABZADEH/Getty Images
cameronabadi

After years of waiting and wanting to strike Iran, the Islamic State claims to have finally done so. According to recent news reports, four militants went on a shooting spree in Irans parliament, while other operatives detonated a bomb inside the mausoleum of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, killing 12 people. If the Islamic State indeed ordered the attacks, it has struck at the temporal and spiritual heart of the Iranian revolutionary government.

The Islamic State has aimed to strike Iran since at least 2007, when it openly threatened to attack the country for supporting the Shiite-dominated government in Iraq. It regards Persian Shiites as apostate traitors who have sold out the Sunni Arabs to Israel and the United States. This determination to strike Iran marked a key difference with al Qaeda, which long held off attacking the Islamic Republic in order to use it as a rear base and financial hub.

In 2007, Osama bin Laden wrote a private letter to the leaders of the Islamic State urging them to cease and desist. You did not consult with us on that serious issue that affects the general welfare of all of us, the al Qaeda chief wrote. Iran is our main artery for funds, personnel, and communication, as well as the matter of hostages, bin Laden went on to explain. There is no need to fight with Iran, unless you are forced to.

Bin Ladens concerns were well placed. After 9/11, a contingent of al Qaeda operatives and members of bin Ladens family fled to Iran, where they were kept under house arrest or close surveillance. Among them was Bin Ladens son Hamza, now promoted by al Qaeda as its heir apparent. The Iranian government loosened or tightened its leash on the operatives and family for strategic reasons, and al Qaeda refrained from attacking the government to protect its people and to preserve its corridor to Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Islamic State did not like the directive but bent the knee to its emir, bin Laden. But when al Qaeda and the Islamic State split in 2014, an Islamic State spokesman used this disagreement to paint his organization as the more committed jihadi group. He revealed that its rank and file had long pressed for an attack, but al Qaeda forbade it because the organization wanted to protect its interests and its supply lines.

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Presuming the Islamic States claim of responsibility for todays attack is authentic, why did it wait three years to carry out a strike if it had been free to do so since 2014? Absent internal testimony from the organization, there are several ways to think about the timing. The Islamic State may not have had operatives capable of carrying out the attacks until now. During the past few years, it steadily assembled and trained a cadre of Iranian commandos. It wouldnt surprise me to learn that some of them were able to return home and carry out a sophisticated attack, as French and Belgian jihadis have done over the past two years.

There may also be strategic reasons, as found in one of the groups favorite insurgent manuals, The Management of Savagery. Reasons for attacking Iran might include punishing an adversary for attacking its territory, provoking an all-out sectarian war to force Iraqi Sunnis to side with the Islamic State, or provoking the Iranian government to launch a domestic crackdown on Sunnis that would lead them to turn to the Islamic State for protection.

Finally, the Islamic State wants to win its struggle with al Qaeda for the hearts and minds of global jihadis. The group badly needs recruits in order to replenish its decimated ranks in Syria and Iraq. A daring attack on Irans capital makes al Qaeda look foolish for refusing to carry out a siege of its own. The timing of the assault is also significant. To prove that it is still relevant in order to attract new recruits, the Islamic State seeks to inspire or direct global attacks during Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting. Last Ramadan was incredibly bloody, and this Ramadan is on pace to match or surpass it.

Whatever the case may be, if the claim proves true, the Islamic State will have succeeded where so many other Sunni jihadi groups have failed. It has struck at the heart of the hated theocracy of Safavids, as the group describes Iran. At a time when the Islamic States caliphate is crumbling and its morale flagging, the strike wont reverse its ill-fortunes  Iran may decide to hasten the demise of the Islamic State in response. But it is a vital shot in the arm for the group as it transitions from a proto-state to an insurgency.

Photo credit: OMID VAHABZADEH/AFP/Getty Images
Photo credit: ISRO

From Popular Mechanics

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) successfully launched a new rocket to orbit this morning at 7:58 a.m. EDT, 5:28 p.m. local time at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre on the barrier island of Sriharikota off India's east coast. The Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark III (GSLV Mk III) launched for the first time in its full configuration, lofting the 6,914-pound GSAT-19 to a geostationary transfer orbit (GTO). The GSAT-19 is the heaviest satellite ISRO has ever launched, demonstrating new capability to launch heavier payloads.

GSLV MkIII-D1/GSAT-19 Mission lifts off. Here's to the real heavy weight! #ISRO pic.twitter.com/DaYhIvZz2F - TeamIndus (@TeamIndus) June 5, 2017

The GSLV Mk III had flown previously on test flights, but without the upper stage of the launch vehicle. Today's launch marks the first full flight of all three stages of the larger rocket. The launch had clean stage separations and deposited GSAT-19 in (GTO) where it will fire boosters itself to climb higher to a stationary orbit.

When ISRO first tested the GSLV Mk III back in December 2014, the space agency only flew the lower stages of the rocket on a suborbital flight. That first test, however, included a prototype crew capsule. India is hoping to eventually use the GSLV Mk III to carry astronauts to space, which would make the country only the fourth nation in the world to launch their own astronauts.

The Indian space agency has become a world leader in rocket launches, operating the highly reliable Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV). That rocket successfully carried a record 104 satellites to orbit earlier this year, most of them small cubesats. The introduction of a new heavier rocket greatly expands the capability of ISRO to launch a wide range of payloads to various orbits around the globe. In the coming years, it could also help the nation develop a manned spaceflight program, a major achievement for any country.

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James Gunn, Stan Lee, and Zoe Saldana (Photo: James Gunn/Facebook)

You may think the glue holding together the Marvel Cinematic Universe is Robert Downey Jr.s Tony Stark/Iron Man, or Samuel L. Jacksons S.H.I.E.L.D. bigwig Nick Fury, or even Josh Brolins big bad purple Thanos, whose ongoing quest for the Infinity Stones will reach its apex beginning with next years Avengers: Infinity War. But youd be wrong. Because what really tethers the ongoing Marvel big-screen franchise together is, of course, Stan Lee, comic-book giant and constant presence in the companys cinematic efforts. Even at 94 years old, the moguls not slowing down  and, according to Guardians of the Galaxy writer/director James Gunn, he even shot multiple versions of his cameo for last years Doctor Strange.

In a Facebook post (via Collider), Gunn revealed that, while he was hard at work on Vol. 2, he carved out some time to help Strange director Scott Derrickson by shooting a series of potential Stan Lee cameos for the rookie Marvel film starring Benedict Cumberbatch. Gunn posted this image and caption:

Doing my pal Scott Derrickson a solid and shooting Stan Lee's cameo for Doctor Strange at the same time I was shooting Posted by James Gunn on Tuesday, June 6, 2017

Doing my pal Scott Derrickson a solid and shooting Stan Lees cameo for Doctor Strange at the same time I was shooting some stunt work with Zoe Saldana  I run between sets on one soundstage. Stan laughing at The Doors of Perception was what ended up in the film, but we shot other options, such as 

 Stan reading a book and leaning into the guy next to him, saying, Do you know what excelsior means?

 Stan throwing his head back and laughing as hard as he can, yelling, Im laughing for no reason! Im totally crazy!

 And, my favorite, Stan laughing hysterically at a Garfield book, hooting, He HATES Mondays but he LOVES lasagna! Supposedly that one was in the film for a while, but it ended up being too long for the scene.

Happy Tuesday!

As if that werent enough work for a man Lees age, the superhero legend has also (per Collider) reportedly already filmed some cameos for future use in the studios upcoming blockbusters  likely for Spider-Man: Homecoming and Thor: Ragnarok. Whether he pops up in Infinity War is presently unknown, though well bet we havent heard the last Excelsior! from the Marvel icon.

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Stan Lee Sends a Sweet Message to Suicide Squad Director:

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Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau showed off his kayaking skills to go around a lake and talk to citizens about climate change: Nathan Denette, AP

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau rowed his kayak up to a family's home on a lake to speak about climate change. Even better, he did it on World Environment Day.

Carrie Robinson posted a video on Twitter and said Mr Trudeau "just kayaked up to my house and talked to my parents", adding: "Classic."

Mr Trudeau, in an apparent jab at Donald Trump withdrawing the US from the historic Paris Agreement, told the Robinsons: "We cannot walk away from the reality of climate change."

"The future is still bright for those who have the courage to confront hard truths, and the confidence to stay the course," he told the family.

Justin Trudeau just kayaked up to my house and talked to my parents? classic pic.twitter.com/gktVekiTMZ  carrie robinson (@carrierobinson_) June 5, 2017

Mr Trudeau had earlier expressed his disappointment with Mr Trump's decision about the Paris accord, which nearly 200 countries signed in an effort to reduced greenhouse gas emissions and limit global warming.

We are deeply disappointed that the United States federal government has decided to withdraw from the Paris Agreement.  Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) June 1, 2017

"Around the world, nearly every country is on our side. Inaction is not an option," Mr Trudeau added in his conversation while still in his kayak.

This was Canada's first year hosting World Environment Day. Canadian MP Catherine McKenna joined Mr Trudeau to kayak around the lake.

In a strange way, [Mr Trump's decision has] actually made people step up and say, Climate change is real. We need to be working. We need to be working together, Ms McKenna said to the Toronto Star newspaper.
By Ayesha Rascoe and Karen Freifeld WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The husband of White House adviser Kellyanne Conway criticized President Donald Trump's tweets about the administration's temporary travel ban on Monday, saying they were undercutting the Justice Department's ability to defend his policies. The president's messages "may make some people feel better," but they will not help the administration achieve its goal of getting the Supreme Court to rule in its favor, George Conway said in a Twitter message. George Conway is a lawyer who last week withdrew from contention for a senior Justice Department post; his wife was Trump's 2016 campaign manager before joining him in the White House as a senior adviser who is one of Trump's most vigorous defenders. In later Twitter messages, George Conway emphasized he still "very, very strongly" supports Trump and his executive order, but he said tweets on legal matters "seriously undermine" the administration's agenda. He also said that "sensible" lawyers in the White House and Justice Department agree with him. In his early morning Twitter messages on Monday, Trump potentially hurt his administration's legal case as it seeks to have the Supreme Court overturn lower courts' rulings and allow the travel ban to go into effect. He assailed the Justice Department for a revised version of the measure that he called "watered down" and "politically correct." The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about George Conway's tweets. The travel ban, which Trump says is aimed at preventing attacks in the United States, seeks to halt entry to the United States for 90 days for people from several predominantly Muslim countries and bar refugees for four months. Critics say it is discriminatory. Conway was in contention to head the civil division of the Justice Department, which would have given him responsibility for defending the travel ban in court. He said last week that it was "not the right time" for him to leave the private sector. (Reporting by Ayesha Rascoe; Editing by Caren Bohan and Frances Kerry)
Dubai (AFP) - Here are the main developments that led to the unprecedented crisis between Qatar and its Gulf neighbours:

- Smear campaign -

On May 20, 2017, Qatar says it is the victim of a smear campaign and rejects accusations of it supporting "terrorism" ahead of a landmark visit by US President Donald Trump to Saudi Arabia.

Trump and Saudi King Salman sign a "strategic vision" agreement to intensify ties in defence, economics and other areas.

In a speech in Riyadh on May 21, Trump urges the international community to isolate Iran and calls on Arab and Muslim states to freeze channels of funding for groups including the Sunni Muslim Islamic State jihadists and Lebanon's Shiite movement Hezbollah.

The emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, meets Trump on the sidelines of a summit in Riyadh.

- Suspected hacking -

On May 24, Qatar says its national news agency has been hacked by unknown parties who have posted "false" statements attributed to the emir, in which he speaks favourably of Iran, Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and Hezbollah.

Qatar denies all the comments and says it is investigating the alleged hacking, but Gulf media continue to run the statements.

Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani says Doha is the victim of a "hostile media campaign", particularly in the United States.

On May 28, United Arab Emirates state minister for foreign affairs Anwar Gargash says Gulf countries are going through a new "deep crisis", urging Qatar without naming it to "change its attitude and re-establish confidence and transparency".

On June 2, a Qatari official says FBI agents are helping Doha in investigating the source of the alleged hacking.

- Qatar boycotted -

On June 5, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, the UAE, Yemen and the Maldives cut ties with Qatar, accusing it of backing terrorism.

It is accused of backing radical Islamist groups and of not taking a sufficient distance from Iran, Saudi Arabia's regional rival.

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The break-off in relations goes hand in hand with economic measures, such as closure of land and maritime borders, suspension of air links and restrictions on movements by Qataris.

Doha residents flock to stock up at supermarkets.

A Saudi-led Arab coalition fighting pro-Iranian Yemeni rebels announces it is ending Qatar's membership.

- Mediation -

Turkey calls for dialogue and says it is ready to help defuse the row.

Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman says the latest developments involving Qatar could herald a broad anti-terror alliance including Israel.

On June 6, Kuwait's Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad Al-Sabah travels to Saudi Arabia for talks aimed at resolving the crisis.

- Disruptions -

Air traffic is disrupted in the Gulf after several large Arab airlines stop flying to and from Qatar.

More than 30 Qatar Airways flights are cancelled to and from Doha.

- Trump accuses Qatar -

Trump says isolating Qatar could mark the "beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism" and backs Saudi Arabia and its allies. He suggests Qatar is funding extremism.
David Kilmnick, CEO of the LGBT Network, slammed President Donald Trump Sunday for failing to acknowledge June as LGBT Pride month. While the White House remained silent about the Pride month, Trump endorsed a number of other celebrations associated with June, including National Ocean Month and African-American Music Appreciation Month.

Its shameful that the President of the United States has failed to recognize such a historically significant time for the LGBT community, Kilmnick said.

The criticism for Trump over not recognizing June as LGBT Pride month further ignited after Ivanka Trump wished the LGBT community a joyful #pride2017.

Read: Instagram Update Adds Stickers Designed By LGBTQ Artists, Rainbow Paint Brush

"Logging back on after Shavuot, wishing everyone a joyful #Pride2017. This month we celebrate and honor the #LGBTQ community," Ivanka wrote in one tweet. While another read: "I am proud to support my LGBTQ friends and the LGBTQ Americans who have made immense contributions to our society and economy."

The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation organization however condemned Ivanka's tweet, and said it will detail the "Trump administrations pattern of erasing LGBT people and families from the fabric of the White House."

During his presidential campaign, Trump claimed to be a supporter of LGBTQ individuals and their rights. However, his selection of Mike Pence as his running mate was criticized by the community as the VPOTUS had once referred to gay marriage as a "societal collapse."

"Ask yourself, who is really the friend of women and the LGBT community? Donald Trump with actions or Hillary Clinton with her words?" Trump said at a New Hampshire campaign stop in 2016. "I will tell you who the better friend is. And some day I believe that will be proven out big league."

Shin Inouye, a one-time member of former President Barack Obamas communications staff, tweeted Trump couldnt be bothered to issue a proclamation to recognize #LGBTPrideMonth. Given his record, maybe its for the best.Obama was very vocal about his support for the LGBTQ community. Since 2011, Obama made an official declaration annually to recognize Pride Month. Bill Clinton was the first president to recognize Pride Month.

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Pride month commemorates the June 1969 Stonewall Inn riots in Greenwich Village against police harassment that many credit for sparking the gay rights movement.

Just after Trump took office in January, all mentions of LGBTQ issues were wiped off the White House website. The U.S. Department of Labor's report on advancing LGBTQ workplace rights had been removed too.

"When Donald Trump took the oath of office today, he vowed to be a servant for all Americans. We will hold him to that oath, " Human Rights Campaign's president Chad Griffin said in a statement at the time. "It's more important now than ever before for us to organize, mobilize and fight in solidarity against hate and any attempts to roll back the rights of LGBTQ people. No matter who sits in the Oval Office, HRC won't back down an inch in the fight for full equality and the equal dignity of each and every American."

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By Alexandra Zaslow

Cleveland is reinventing public education.

When Yahoo Global News Anchor Katie Couric visited the city as part of her series Cities Rising: Rebuilding America, she saw the transformations firsthand.

In 2012, nearly 75 percent of Cleveland schools were failing.

Five years ago when I became the superintendent, we were in academic emergency in our states ratings system, Eric Gordon, CEO of Cleveland Metropolitan School District, said.

So, they created The Cleveland Plan, which essentially allows families to chose which school theyd like to attend.

Since the plan has been in place, Cleveland public schools graduation rate has increased 17 percent and enrollment is growing for the first time in decades.

Matthew McConaughey is also working to improve the citys school system while filming his new movie White Boy Rick.

You can sense that the place, theyre trying, McConaughey told Couric. People are finding a purpose, which seems to be the key to any community making it is having a purpose.

He and his wife Camila started the Just Keep Living Foundation to empower high school students to lead active lives and make healthy choices. They are implementing their curriculum at John Adams High School.

Here at high school is my last opportunity to touch kids, to shape kids before they step out into the real world, Dr. Terence Menefee, principal of John Adams High School, told Couric.

Menefee said last month, the school lost three kids due to gun violence and 13 or 14 students are currently walking around with gun wounds.

The violence definitely has to stop, but I think that if there are more opportunities for our kids to do, more curriculum set for things they have interest in, things will definitely change, Menefee said.
Frances Frei, Harvard Business School Professor

This week, Uber fired more than 20 employees following an investigation into sexual harassment allegations at the ride-hailing company. This mass firing signaled Uber is aggressively making efforts to correct what The New York Times calls deep-seated management and culture issues.

Harvard Business School professor Frances Frei, whom Uber hired this week, is expected to help facilitate these changes as the companys first senior vice president of leadership and strategy.

At Harvard, she leads the executive education program and teaches management. In 2011, she pushed an experiment to change its curriculum, rules and social rituals to foster female success. At the end of two years, HBS had become a much better place for female students, according to dozens of professors, administrators, and students interviewed by The New York Times.

Frei strongly believes in womens leadership

Frei is known as an advocate for female empowerment.

The first question she asked to the classroom was, When [do] you feel you are at your best? My answer is When I do something for someone else. And she told me You are a woman, Giovanna Della Posta, who attended the General Management Program at HBS in 2016, told Yahoo Finance. Frei strongly believes in womens leadership. The school even changed the rules to give more opportunities to females.

As a leader who made one environment better for women, Frei may be particularly qualified to help transform a workplace at Uber thats been described as sexist.

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon

In a statement on Monday, Uber said Freis expertise will be invaluable to the company as we take on the next chapter. Meanwhile, Uber Board member Arianna Huffington tweeted to welcome the appointment and call Frei a real force for transformation.

I know she is excited to engage with, contribute to, and learn from the company as it continues the job of managing its growth and resources, Harvard Business School Dean Nitin Nohria told Yahoo Finance in a statement. Its a wonderful opportunity for both her and the company, and one that extends the legacy of HBS faculty members keeping close to practice throughout the Schools history.

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Its not Freis first time taking a leadership role outside of academia. She served on the Board of Directors at Advance Auto Parts (APP) from 2009 to 2013, a time when the automotive parts retailers stock price soared more than 300%. Now, she serves as a board member at Blue Buffalo Pet Products and Viewpost, a New York-based fintech providing electronic invoicing. Shes taking a leave of absence from Harvard and plans to commute to the West Coast from her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Frei joins the Uber team at a tough time for the company. She will report to CEO Travis Kalanick, who admitted in February, I need leadership help and I intend to get it, in an apology posted hours after a leaked video showing him in a heated argument with an Uber driver.

Could this be the comeback for Uber? Frei has her work cut out for her, but her positive track record at HBS may bode well for Uber.

If youre an Uber customer, you may notice Freis influence on the company. She continuously emphasizes the need to identify customer behavior and what the customer values. Within a Forbes article, that she co-authored with Anne Morriss, she said, Excellence is being great at the things your customers value most.

This story originally attributed the comment from Harvard Business School to its communications coordinator. The story has been updated to reflect that the comment came from the dean.

More on Uber:

Heres whos on the Uber board, which is backing Travis Kalanick

How Uber can fix its reputation

Uber has lost 8 top execs in under 2 months
Mexico City (AFP) - The United States will continue allowing Mexico to sell it sugar duty-free, the Mexican economy minister said Tuesday as the countries prepared to announce a deal on a long-running trade dispute.

"Mexican sugar will retain its access to the US market, without paying compensatory tariffs," Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo told TV network Televisa.

In return, Mexico has agreed to reduce the amount of refined sugar it sends to the United States, he said.

Last year Mexico exported 1.1 million tonnes of sugar to the United States, some 40 percent of which was refined.

US sugar producers have protested the amount of cheap sugar pouring across the border, accusing Mexico of subsidizing its sugar industry then dumping the excess product.

Washington had threatened to slap tariffs of up to 80 percent on Mexican sugar unless a deal was reached.

The original deadline was Monday, but the two sides extended it to Tuesday to iron out what US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross called "a few technical details."

Ross and Guajardo are expected to announce a deal in Washington later Tuesday.

"We are quite optimistic that our two nations are on the precipice of an agreement we can all support," Ross said Monday.

The dispute comes as the two neighbors, along with Canada, are set to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Mexican sugar has entered the US market tariff-free since 2008. In exchange, the Mexican market was opened to US corn-based fructose, used mainly to sweeten soft drinks.

After protests from US sugar companies and farmers, both governments agreed to Mexican sugar export quotas in 2014.

But complaints from US sugar concerns continued, and Washington and Mexico City reopened talks last year.
Paris (AFP) - Even moderate drinking is linked to brain damage and a slight decline in mental skills, according to a study released Wednesday that calls into question many national alcohol guidelines.

Men and women who consume 14-to-21 drinks a week over decades are two to three times more likely than non-drinkers to show atrophy in the hippocampus, a part of the brain that governs memory and the ability to keep one's bearings, said the study, published in the medical journal BMJ.

They also performed more poorly on a specific verbal test, though other language functions appeared to remain unchanged.

A single drink was defined as containing 10 millilitres (eight grammes) of pure alcohol -- the equivalent of a large glass of wine, a pint of five-percent beer, or a shot of spirits such as whisky or vodka.

Last year, the British government revised its guidelines for alcohol consumption, lowering the recommended maximum for men and women to 14 "units," or drinks, spread out over a week.

In other countries, that threshold is set higher for men: 35 units in Spain, 24.5 in the United States, 21 in Denmark and Ireland, and 19 in New Zealand.

For women, however, guidelines for maximum weekly consumption in all of these nations, except for Spain, is 14 drinks or less.

The negative impact of heavy drinking on the brain is well documented, but research on potential damage from "moderate" consumption -- up to now defined as two or three drinks a day, on average -- has been scant and inconclusive.

To probe further, researchers at the University of Oxford and University College London combed through data on 550 men and women monitored during 30 years as part of the so-called Whitehall II study.

Volunteers reported periodically on their drinking habits, and scientists carried out brain tests at regular intervals. None were alcoholics at the outset.

The effect of 14-to-21 units of alcohol on the hippocampus was clearly shown by imaging technology.

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- 'Hidden damage' -

Mental performance tests were less conclusive: only one measuring language fluency showed a clear impact, while others showed no decline in brain function.

"Alcohol consumption -- even at moderate levels -- is associated with adverse brain outcomes," the researchers concluded.

The findings "support the recent reduction in alcohol guidance in the United Kingdom, and question the current limits recommended in the United States," they wrote.

Nor did the scientists uncover any "evidence of a protective effect of light drinking over abstinence on brain structure or function," a tentative conclusion of earlier research.

Because the new study was observational and not experimental, no firm conclusions could be drawn about cause and effect. The authors also acknowledged that the sample size was small.

Outside experts gave the study mixed reviews.

"It shows evidence for 'hidden' damage to the brain," commented Paul Matthews of Imperial College London, who highlighted the value of the advanced imaging techniques used.

Jennifer Wild, a senior researcher in clinical psychology at the University of Oxford, said the results showed a "robust link" between what most people would consider casual drinking and brain degeneration later in life.

Other scientists expressed scepticism about some of the methodology, and the self-reporting of alcohol consumption.

"Over the 30-year period, weekly intake did not increase in the study participants," noted Carl Heneghan, director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of Oxford.

This flies in the face of a known pattern of increasing consumption through early adulthood, and a gradual tapering off into older age, he pointed out.
Before Woodstock  both the concert and the film  there was Monterey Pop, D.A. Pennebakers documentary film of the eponymous 1967 music festival. From June 16-18, rock legends such as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and The Who (all of whom would make the pilgrimage to the Woodstock stage in Bethel, N.Y., two years later) played to cheering crowds at the Monterey County Fairgrounds in California. Pennebakers camera crew captured the whole event for posterity in one of the earliest concert documentaries to be released in theaters. I thought at the time, I have no idea how to direct this kind of film,  the now almost 92-year-old filmmaker confesses in a new introduction to the restored version of Monterey Pop opening in limited release this month, timed to the concerts 50th anniversary. So this will play out, he recalls thinking, and Ill either be discovered or well get by with it somehow. (Watch the Yahoo Movies exclusive online debut of Pennebakers full Monterey Pop introduction above.)

Pennebaker wasnt exactly a musical neophyte, of course. After all, he had spent a good chunk of 1965 following Bob Dylan around England, shooting concert footage, as well as behind the scenes material, that eventually became the groundbreaking rock doc, Dont Look Back. Still, filming an entire three-day music festival, rather than just one artist, posed a unique challenge. The reason nobody had ever really made a film about a music festival before was because there were no synced cameras that you could carry around, Pennebaker explains. You shot people singing, [but] it wouldnt match the music they were singing to.

So the director and his crew built five of their own portable cameras that could sync sound and image. I kept thinking, One of them will break down, he says, laughing. Fortunately, technical snafus were rare, allowing Pennebaker to capture some indelible moments such as Joplin wowing the crowd. You never witnessed that kind of exultant moment when a person of extraordinary musical talent runs into an audience that thats what theyre looking for all their lives, he says in the intro. And when that happens, its like an explosion.

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The Monterey Pop 50th anniversary 4K restoration opens in New York on June 14 (with Pennebaker scheduled to attend), and in select theaters across the country starting the weekend of June 16. Pennebaker is also scheduled to attend a screening in Los Angeles on June 19.

D.A. Pennebaker flashback: Watch a trailer for 1992 Clinton campaign documentary The War Room:

Read more from Yahoo Movies:
Former President Barack Obama delivers his keynote speech to the Montreal Chamber of Commerce at the Palais des congres de Montreal, June 6, 2017. (Photo: Dario Ayala/Reuters)

In one of his first international speaking engagements since leaving office, former President Barack Obama laid out his defense of his administrations goals, including reforming immigration policy, ending extreme poverty and curbing carbon emissions through the Paris climate agreement.

When it comes to the threat of climate change, we have shown that environmental sustainability and economic progress are not contradictory, but rather are complementary, Obama said in a speech to the Montreal Chamber of Commerce, disputing President Trumps claim that the Paris Agreement would disadvantage the American economy. In the United States, under my administration we doubled production of renewable energy at the same time as we saw a record duration of job creation.

Obama also referred to the United States lack of involvement in the climate change accord as temporary.

In addition to criticizing the current administrations policy decisions, Obama warned against the populist distrust of the federal government.

Thats a recipe for more cynicism and more polarization, less trust in our institutions and less trust in each other, Obama said. And its part of what leads people to turn to populist alternatives that may not actually deliver.

Obama cautioned the audience against adopting an us vs. them mentality as a result of economic uncertainty, saying that such attitudes helped cause World Wars I and II.

It is important to remember that the world has gone through similar moments, in the shift from, for example, agriculture to industry, Obama told his sold-out audience in Montreal. And then too there was a temptation to respond to great uncertainty and economic upheaval by falling into the comforts of tribe and extreme nationalism and xenophobia and the politics of us vs them.

The First and Second World Wars showed us all too terribly what happens when we fail to adapt to changes. But our history also shows that there is a better way, Obama said.

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Posted by the Obama Foundation on June 6, 2017: Tonight in Montreal, @BarackObama and @JustinTrudeau discussed their shared commitment to developing the next generation of leaders. (Photo: ObamaFoundation via Twitter)

The former president was addressing the Montreal Chamber of Commerce as part of a series of events celebrating the citys 375th anniversary. Obama is said to charge a speaking fee of $400,000 for such appearances, according to the Toronto Star.

Read more from Yahoo News:
More people now support Donald Trump's impeachment than approve of his job performance: Mark Wilson/Getty Images

New polls find that more Americans support impeaching Donald Trump than approve of his job performance in the White House.

Just 36 per cent of voters polled approve of the job Mr Trump is doing compared to 43 per cent who support beginning the impeachment process.

A Gallup poll daily tracking poll conducted on a nationwide random sample of 1,500 registered voters showed the President's job approval rating had dropped from 42 per cent since he withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement on climate change and increased scrutiny of his campaign team's alleged ties to Russia.

A separate poll carried out by Politico/Morning Consult of nearly 2,000 registered voters across the country showed that the percentage who supported Mr Trump's impeachment had gone up from the previous poll in which the question was asked.

The poll was taken from 25 to 30 May during the Congressional Budget Office's assessment of the Republican replacement to Obamacare - the federal government would save $119bn over ten years with the new bill but 23 million more Americans would be left without insurance.

"If President Trump was hoping his foreign trip would shift the conversation away from scandals, he may be out of luck," Morning Consult Co-Founder and Chief Research Officer Kyle Dropp told Politico.

Mr Trump experienced a bit of a bump in ratings just following his trip which included visits to Saudi Arabia, Israel, Belgium, Italy, and the Vatican.

These and other polls conducted in similar time periods show various job approval ratings but the decrease since the Paris accord withdrawal is universal.

Even generally "right-leaning polls" like Rasmussen Reports show a decline in approval rating, Newsweek reported.

Al Green, the Congressman from Texas, made an official call for impeachment on the House floor 17 May. Congresswoman Maxine Waters of California has repeatedly, publicly urged her colleagues to take the investigation into alleged ties between the Trump campaign team and Russia, the firing of former FBI Director James Comey, and the President's business interests seriously in considering impeachment.

Ms Waters told MSNBC: "Were not going to stop talking about it, because this is extremely important to the future of this country."
The first astronauts who visit and explore Mars could be traversing the rugged landscape in a vehicle that rivals the Batmobile. NASA has officially debuted a prototype Mars rover that looks ready to chase after the Joker.

In a post on Facebook, NASAs Kennedy Space Center called it a fierce new Mars rover concept vehicle as a video showed the rover rolling along the pavement, clad in black with the exception of its front windows.

The rover was designed for navigating the demanding landscape of Mars, NASA explained. Based on NASA science, it functions as both a working vehicle and laboratory. The next generation of space explorers could be traveling and working in a high-tech mobile lab similar to it. The rover features life support systems, navigation and communication systems, and design and materials that relate to conditions and resources on Mars.

And it doesnt hurt that it resembles the Tumbler that Christian Bales Batman drives in the movie, "Batman Begins."

Read: NASA Launches Student-Designed Mars Rovers

Parker Brothers Concepts and SeaDek designed the four-seater model rover out of aluminum and carbon-fiber. It measures 28 feet long, 14 feet wide and 11 feet tall, and has massive wheels designed to travel over dunes, rocks and craters, NASA said.

CBS News reports that inside, it has the feel of an SUV. Well, an SUV with a lab in its rear half.

The Parker brothers behind the eponymous company previously have designed and built vehicles for movies, such as the motorcycles in Tron.

batmobile-rover

Photo: NASA/Kennedy

Some of this was just for design. You know, just for it to look cool, Shanon Parker told CBS News. Other things that I thought, you know, this is kind of important to have.

Nerdist reported the rover could go 60 to 70 mph.

NASA previously gave a sneak peek of the rover concept at Kennedy. It was revealed that the 5,000-pound vehicle could split in two to separate the lab in the back from the scouting vehicle at the front.

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Read: Humans on Mars Might Evolve into a New Species

Although it might be a hint of future manned rovers to come, this particular concept is not currently slated to roam on Mars. Instead, the rover concept will be on display at the space center in Florida until July 4 before going on tour as part of NASAs Summer of Mars program, which is geared toward educating people about Earths neighboring planet.

Whether it goes into space or not, its just one of many Mars-themed technologies NASA is involved in developing. Earlier this year the space agency revealed its Puffer robot  full name Pop-Up Flat Folding Explorer Robot  which is small, agile and can fold up into itself to squeeze into tight spaces that need to be explored on Mars. NASA had explained a fleet of Puffers could accompany a larger rover to the Red Planet to share the workload, including tag-teaming in locations the more cumbersome main vehicle cannot reach.

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US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley warns the Trump administration may pull out from the UN Human Rights Council: Getty

US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said the US is "reviewing its participation" in the Human Rights Council over what said is the group's "chronic anti-Israel bias".

The Geneva-based Council made up of 47 member countries is beginning a three-week session and Ms Haley said the US sees some areas for significant strengthening in the group.

The council's critical stance of Israel has long been a contentious issue for the US, Israel's main ally. Ms Haley has said in the past that Israel is the only country permanently on the bodys calendar.

The council's members have taken a strong position against Israel's continued occupation of territory seized in the 1967 Six-Day War, its treatment of Palestinians, and its building of Jewish settlements.

Most countries in the UN system and international bodies consider the settlements illegal since they are built in areas Palestinians consider part of an eventual independent state.

Ms Haley used Venezuela's alleged human rights violations as an example of anti-Israel bias. She noted the council pursued five resolutions against Israel in its March session but none against the government of President Nicolas Maduro.

If Venezuela cannot [address human rights issues], it should voluntarily step down from its seat on the Human Rights Council until it can get its own house in order. Being a member of this council is a privilege, and no country who is a human rights violator should be allowed a seat at the table," she said.

Ms Haley is set to host a side event in Geneva specifically regarding the South American nation, where at least 65 people have died and hundreds have been injured in continued anti-government protests since the end of March.

Venezuela responded to Ms Haley's comment, saying the forum needs to be free of politicisation and double standards.

The US ambassador also called on the council to vote on resolutions against Syria, Eritrea, Belarus, Ukraine and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

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Some activists urged Washington to focus on abuses at home. It's hard to take Ambassador Haley seriously on US support for human rights in light of Trump administration actions like the Muslim ban and immigration crackdowns," Jamil Dakwar, director of the human rights program at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), told Reuters.

The US must get its own house in order and make human rights at home a priority  then, it can begin to credibly demand the same of other countries abroad.

Despite remaining allies, former President Obama had an icy relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In fact, in late December 2016 during the waning moments of the Obama administration, the UN Security Council passed a resolution condemning Israel's settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Then-UN ambassador Samantha Power chose not to veto the resolution as was normal procedure for the US.

Comparatively, Donald Trump and Mr Netanyahu seem to have a far friendlier relationship according to foreign policy experts. The Israeli leader recently hosted the US President during Mr Trump's first foreign trip.
Here's a squirrelly surprise: The two species of flying squirrel that live in North America turn out to be three.

A new species of flying squirrel, the Humboldt's flying squirrel (Glaucomys oregonensis) has been hiding in plain sight along the Pacific Coast. Well, not quite plain sight  flying squirrels are nocturnal, so even though they live across North America, many people never see them. But the new species, named after the naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, lives in a well-studied habitat and still evaded notice.

"I was very surprised," said study leader Brian Arbogast, a biologist at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. In previous research, Arbogast had found genetic differences among the northern flying squirrels (G. sabrinus) that live in Canada and the northern United States. But he never expected to find that some of those squirrels were their own species, he said. [The 12 Weirdest Animal Discoveries]

"Sadly, we don't know our planet all that well yet," said Joseph Cook, a biologist and curator of mammals at The University of New Mexico's Museum of Southwestern Biology, who co-authored the new research on the squirrel published May 30 in the Journal of Mammalogy.

Cryptic squirrel

The new squirrel is what is known as a "cryptic species." It looks just like another related species, but genetic testing reveals that the two aren't the same species, and that they aren't interbreeding.

Before this research, scientists thought that only two of the almost 50 species of flying squirrels found worldwide lived in North America: G. sabrinus, the northern flying squirrel, and G. volans, the southern flying squirrel, which is found in the eastern part of the United States and in parts of Central America. In 1999, Arbogast and other researchers published a study on flying-squirrel genetics. They found that squirrels from western Washington, western Oregon and Southern California's San Bernardino mountains all seemed similar, genetically, to each other but different from other northern flying squirrels. However, the sample size was small, and the researchers still considered these Pacific squirrels to simply be a subspecies of northern flying squirrel.

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Now, Arbogast and his colleagues have sampled from much larger populations of squirrels. They trapped many of the squirrels themselves, baiting wire-cage traps with a mix of peanut butter, rolled oats, bacon fat and molasses. Other samples came from tissues preserved in museum collections. Two study co-authors, Cook and Allison Bidlack of the University of Alaska Southeast, coordinated with marten trappers in Alaska and British Columbia to have them send samples from any flying squirrels caught accidentally, Arbogast said. Biologist Jim Kenagy of the University of Washington in Seattle helped secure samples as well.

In all, the researchers collected samples from 185 individuals and analyzed their mitochondrial DNA, genetic material from the cell's energy-converting organelle that is passed down through the maternal line. The researchers again found the strange genetic schism among northern flying squirrels, so Arbogast asked his graduate student, Katelyn Schumacher, now a doctoral student at Bowling Green University, to test the genetic sequences to see if the two kinds of northern flying squirrels were breeding with one another. They weren't. [4 Baby Squirrels Get Tails Entangled in Bizarre Video (Here's How)]

"It was at that point that we realized we were not just dealing with two types of northern flying squirrel, but with two distinct species that apparently were reproductively isolated," Arbogast wrote in an email to Live Science. "Huge surprise!"

A secretive glider

So far, there's nothing physical or behavioral that differentiates the Humboldt's flying squirrel from northern flying squirrels, Arbogast said. The squirrels grow to about 15 inches (37 centimeters) long and glide from tree to tree using large flaps of skin that connect their front and back legs.

The Humboldt's flying squirrel probably diverged from the northern flying squirrel 1.3 million years ago, during the Pleistocene epoch, when glaciers regularly pushed their way well into what is now the United States. There were more than 20 cycles of glacial advance and retreat during the Pleistocene, Arbogast said, and these icy intrusions probably isolated flying squirrel populations from one another until they eventually became genetically different enough not to interbreed.

"We're discovering that dynamic biogeographic histories due to the ebb and flow of large glaciers and associated changes to habitat have had a large role in species and genome evolution," Cook told Live Science.

Arbogast and study co-author Nick Kerhoulas of Humboldt State University created maps showing the new species range, including an interactive one viewable with Google Earth. That map shows every squirrel in the study, color-coded by species.

The Humboldt's flying squirrel should be in relatively good shape from a conservation standpoint, Arbogast said, though populations in the San Bernardino and San Gabriel mountains of California are fairly isolated and could be at risk. G. sabrinus fuscus, a subspecies of northern flying squirrel found in the southern Appalachians, was listed as federally endangered between 1985 to 2013, when its population numbers recovered. Another subspecies of northern flying squirrel, G. sabrinus coloratus, remains on the endangered species list.

Original article on Live Science.

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There is a documentary to be made about Russia under President Vladimir Putin that shares the Russian perspective, dispels American myths about the historic U.S. foe, and offers Putins perspective on some of the thorniest questions on Russia today.

Oliver Stones The Putin Interviews is not that documentary.

The Putin Interviews, a four-part series created from two years of conversations between Oliver Stone and Putin, somehow manages to both spout the Kremlin line and fall back on the laziest American cliches about Russia. In the opening credits, a map of the Soviet Union is transformed into a matryoshka doll. In at least the first two of the four parts, Stone aids and abets Putin, who lies by omission and pushes conspiracy theories, all while adding in such helpful information as Russians are strong and Russians are macho.

Showtime is touting the series as offering Unparalleled access to the most controversial man in the worldin his own words. And there is indeed some information that viewers will get from this access. They will learn that Putin feels he does not have bad days because he is not a woman (women, he explains, have natural cycles). They will learn that Putin has a flexible mentality because of judo. They will learn that Putins daughters are not interested in politics and corporate business, but in education and science (Youre a very lucky man, Stone says, not mentioning that one of Putins daughters is indeed allegedly tied to big business).

But when Stone recounts Putins rise to presidential power, they will learn that he at first rejected Boris Yeltsins attempts to make him prime minister, and that he won the office of president the first time with 53 percent of the vote based the successes of his first term. Nowhere is it mentioned that all of this was orchestrated by very wealthy, very powerful anti-communist forces of the day. They will hear Putin say that he did not put an end to privatization, but rather halted unfair schemes that only oligarchs who disrespected rule of law wanted to see continued. And privatization schemes did make oligarchs fabulously wealthy in ways that were not lawful in the 1990s, which were something of a Wild West. But the viewer will then see photos of Boris Berezovsky and Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Viewers will not learn that Berezovsky is one of the men who orchestrated Putins rise to power. Nor will they learn he fled to London after he began criticizing Putin, falling out with his his former protege, or that his death in the United Kingdom is still shrouded in mystery. The viewer will not learn that Khodorkovksys public accusation of government corruption got him a decade in a Siberian prison cell.

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Viewers will learn that Putin worked as prime minister before returning to the presidency with 63 percent of the vote. If Putin has thoughts about the protests that surrounded his return to the Kremlin, viewers do not learn them; if Stone asked, both question and answer were left on the cutting room floor, at least in the first two hours.

Stone and Putin discuss Putins hesitancy to delegate, and Putin agrees with Stones assessment that he is the CEO of the company that is Russia. This could have been an opportunity to hear what Putin thinks of the idea that Russia is a mafia state, or of the connection between business and politics in Russia. Instead, we learn that Putin has to have this sense of completion when he begins a task.

Perhaps most insulting to the viewers, Putin says that he has evidence that the United States provided technical support to the Chechens, against whom Russia waged the first and  and Putin the second Chechen war early in his presidency. Putin says he cannot show Stone that evidence, however. Stone accepts that he cannot see this evidence and says it is contradictory that the United States would fight terror in Afghanistan while supporting it in Russia, which is perhaps the most simplistic rendering of the Chechen wars possible. Stones documentary doesnt discuss how the Second Chechen War boosted Putins approval ratings, or that the Moscow bombings that the Kremlin blamed on Chechens were carried out by Russian agents. We see graphics showing the death tolls in the 2002 terror attack on a theater in Moscow and that of a 2004 attack on a school in Beslan. That many of the casualties in both cases were caused by a bungled Russian security response is not brought up.

It would be one thing if Stone just let Putin speak and reveal himself, allowing the audience some unique insight into a famous politician, similar to what Eroll Moris did with former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara in Fog of War. But Stone is not content to hear Putins side. He wants to encourage Putins side. He says he fears American neo-conservatives and their hunger for war (Putin fears them, too). He presents Foreign Affairs as an official government outlet. Foreign Affairs is many things  a journal, a leading publication, an outlet often confused with Foreign Policy  but it is not an official government publication.

In fact, the essays Stone presents to Putin come from the May/June 2016 issue, Putins Russia: Down But Not Out. Maria Lipman, Sergei Guriev, Gleb Pavlovsky (who used to advise the Kremlin), Daniel Treisman, and Stephen Kotkin all contributed writing for that issue. The authors are academics and think tank analysts and Russians.

Nevertheless, Stone tells Putin that hes up against the official line. He points out the irony of Edward Snowden defecting to Russia  Soviet citizens, after all, used to defect to the United States. Its not ironic, Putin says, because Russia is a democracy. That protesters from the Bolotnaya Square case  twelve of the 400 activists who were detained protesting Putins regime  were on trial as Snowden stayed in the Sheremetyevo Moscow airport is not a point Stone felt compelled to raise.

To be fair, there is one moment at the end of the second hour in which Putin gets a chance to respond to claims that Russia is not democratic. He says the issue is that the Russian people dont want to vote for any of his opponents. And this may be true. We are then treated to a series of clips of opposition figures who are backed by the Kremlin. They are candidates from parties other than Putins United Russia who run with the Kremlins blessing to show some semblance of opposition. Vladimir Zhirinovsky, one of the men shown, is one such longstanding figure. Alexei Navalny, the actual opposition candidate of Russia currently running for president, is nowhere to be seen.

At the very end of the second hour, Stone, who filmed the interviews prior to the 2016 presidential election, asks Putin what he thinks of the candidates. Putin declines to comment on the candidates. This is not his place; he will work with whoever is elected. Stone marvels at this restraint. If you say you didnt like Trump, hed win, Stone tells Putin. You have that amount of power in the U.S.

This isnt true, of course. Though hardly effusive, Putins statements about Trump during the election were generally positive. And Trump won. But the exchange is telling as emblematic of the entire series: at best, misguided, and at worst, just wrong.

Photo credit: OLGA MALTSEVA/AFP/Getty Images
An immigration attorney holds a sign at OHare Airport in Chicago, Jan. 30, 2017. (Photo: Kamil Krzaczynski/Reuters)

Across from a McDonalds in the international terminal of Chicagos OHare airport, a rectangular folding table covered in donated snacks and coffee sits roped off beneath handmade signs advertising free legal services for detained travelers and their families.

The table was first set up in January, as a makeshift headquarters for hundreds of lawyers whod flocked to the airport after President Trump signed an executive order to halt immigration for citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries and temporarily block all refugees from entering the U.S.

For more than four months, attorneys from throughout Chicagoland have taken shifts at the table, maintaining a nearly round-the-clock presence at the airport, even after federal judges moved to freeze both the initial order and a revised version, signed by the president in March.

In part, thats because President Trump shows no signs of backing down on his desire to impose harsh travel restrictions.

People, the lawyers and the courts can call it whatever they want, but I am calling it what we need and what it is, a TRAVEL BAN!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 5, 2017

While weve seen a huge decline [in] reported cases of detention and deportation from the airport, its still happening, said Sufyan Sohel, deputy director and counsel for the Chicago chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR.

Sohel explained that in mid-February, sometime between the two travel bans, CAIR Chicago stepped in to offer administrative assistance to the grassroots legal team operating out of OHare.

They realized they couldnt do this alone, he said, adding that CAIR quickly realized it wasnt only individuals from those seven, later six countries, whove been affected by those policies.

In addition to providing volunteer attorneys with malpractice insurance, CAIR Chicago created an online registry where concerned travelers or their relatives can enter their flight information to ensure that an attorney will be ready and waiting to assist them upon arrival.

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More than 652 people have submitted their travel concerns through CAIRS website, the Travel Assistance Project, or TAP.

While TAP caters specifically to those flying into Chicago, a similar service called Airport Lawyer, created by two attorneys in Seattle offers to connect travelers and their families with attorneys at a variety of airports throughout the U.S.

Immigration attorneys at OHare Airport listen through their laptops to the court hearing on President Trumps travel ban, Feb. 7, 2017. (Photo: Kamil Krzaczynski/Reuters)

The lawyers themselves continue to coordinate with the remaining core volunteers to ensure that someone is still on the ground at OHare every day to provide guidance to those who need it. Meanwhile, Sohel said, CAIR Chicago is focused on longer-term strategies to sustain the broader legal communitys engagement on immigration and asylum issues, as Trump seeks to revive his original travel ban in the Supreme Court.

What started as a listserve of more than 1,000 Chicago-based volunteers has since dwindled to about 200 attorneys who are actively engaged, said Sohel. We dont want to waste that energy and interest.

He said CAIR Chicago is currently working to set up a hotline for travelers and their families so they can get relief if theres no attorney there.

God forbid a new travel ban comes, or the Supreme Court reverses the lower courts decision  we have the infrastructure in place to provide that relief, he said.

_____

Read more from Yahoo News:
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Tuesday ordered the military to "crush" Islamist militants still occupying parts of a southern city, as photos emerged of bombed buildings and mangled corpses.

Duterte described the rampage in Marawi City by the militants, fighting under the Islamic State group flag, as a "rebellion" demanding a forceful response.

"I am not ordering you to take an ordinary police action. I am ordering you to crush our enemy," he told soldiers while visiting the country's south.

"When I say crush them, you have to destroy everything including lives. Rebellion is no joking matter," said Duterte, who has declared martial law in Marawi and the Mindanao region.

The clashes in Marawi erupted May 23 when security forces raided a house to arrest Isnilon Hapilon, a veteran Filipino militant reputed to be the jihadi group's leader in Southeast Asia and who is on the US government's list of most-wanted terrorists.

Authorities said they were taken by surprise when gunmen went to protect Hapilon and then rampaged through the largely Muslim city of 200,000.

"I cannot stop my soldiers now. Let's finish this war that you (IS) have started," Duterte said.

"The objective of ISIS (another name for IS) is to kill and destroy, period. So I will destroy also and kill, period."

The militants however have withstood two weeks of sustained ground assault by government forces, backed by aerial and artillery bombardment.

The first photos of Marawi's downtown area -- which is off-limits to the media -- have revealed grisly scenes.

The devastation was photographed by rescuers who entered the area last weekend under a fleeting humanitarian truce to help terrified residents trapped in the fighting.

The photos showed rescuers holding megaphones and white flags as they escorted an old woman through empty streets.

Husks of buildings pockmarked with holes -- apparently inflicted by bullets, rockets or bombs -- framed the scenes.

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Another photo showed a human corpse in the middle of a street with its head, one arm, both feet and half its torso missing.

Marawi native Zia Alonto Adiong said he was "devastated" by the images.

"It's deeply disheartening to see a familiar place razed to the ground. Marawi city is unrecognisable at first glance. I thought I was looking at Aleppo," he said, referring to the Syrian city battered by war.

"This is not the Marawi I grew up in," he added.

The fighting has left 178 dead -- 120 militants, 38 soldiers and police and 20 civilians-- though officials warn the toll was likely to rise.

About 250 gunmen remain entrenched in downtown buildings, the military said.

They are using tunnels to dodge the bombs as well as to hide their high-powered firearms, military officials added.

Analysts have said that the IS group is planning to declare a province in Mindanao as part of its objective to establish a caliphate in Southeast Asia.
Supermarket shelves are empty in the Qatar capital Doha. People are storing up large quantities of food water after several Arab nations recently cut ties with Qatar, including Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen. These nations accuse Qatar of supporting terrorism. Qatar relies on its Gulf neighbors for 80% of its food imports. Iran has called for dialogues to resolve the conflict and has sent food supplies to Qatar. The rift also led to the suspension of all flights between Qatar and its Gulf neighbors. Angry customers lined up outside of the Qatar Airways office to demand refunds. Meanwhile, Donald Trump has taken the credit for the split.
Years after Edward Snowdens NSA revelations, leaks continue as about 35% of those with top secret clearances  428,000 people  are contractors

Reality Winner is accused of sharing classified information about Russias attempts to influence the 2016 US election. Photograph: Handout/Reuters

The vulnerability of the US intelligence community to leaks from private contractors has been exposed once again by the arrest of Reality Winner, the woman charged with sharing classified information about Russian attempts to hack the US election.

It is more than four years since Edward Snowdens revelations opened up the surveillance secrets of the NSA and triggered what was intended to be an overhaul of the way sensitive material was shared.

Yet official figures suggest that more than 400,000 contractors still have top security clearances and access to information.

Precise statistics on how many private contractors are employed by intelligence agencies, and what percentage of Americas $70bn a year intelligence budget they represent, are hard to come by.

But according to a 2016 report from the office of the director of national intelligence, 428,000 contractors had top secret security clearances in 2015, representing about 35% of the total individuals with top-secret clearances and access to information.

Two years after the Snowden leaks, an executive at Booz Allen Hamilton, the massive firm where he had been a contractor, told an intelligence industry conference that the firm had undergone a metamorphosis of security and that employees were now monitored by the companys own counterintelligence program that provided continuous evaluation.

A year later, another Booz Allen Hamilton contractor was arrested and charged with stealing classified information.

The new charges against Reality Winner, a government contractor accused of printing a secret NSA document about Russian hacking and sharing it with journalists at the Intercept news organization, have reignited the debate over how much the US government relies on private contractors to carry out top-secret work  and how accountable these contractors are to the public.

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Those debates have flared up periodically over the past decade  but then they have subsided, again, without substantive reforms, critics of intelligence contracting say.

When its out of the media eye, things tend to fall back to the way that they were being run, without a lot of oversight, said Mike German, a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justices Liberty and National Security Program.

Intelligence agencies and contractors keep a lot of information about what they do secret, German said. That is often necessary to protect sensitive techniques or sources  but just as often used to hide error and abuse.

In 2013, after the Snowden leaks, Senator Dianne Feinstein reportedly discussed legislation that would limit or prevent contractors from handling highly classified technical data. But industry executives quickly pushed back against the idea.

I think Americans really dont realize how dependent we are on for-profit companies doing very serious and high-level intelligence work, said Tim Shorrock, the author of Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing. I am shocked that there has been so little congressional action.





Pluribus International, where Winner worked, according to the complaint against her, is not one of the intelligence industrys major players, which include Booz Allen Hamilton, CSRA, SAIC, CACI International and Leidos. Instead, it appears to be one of at least hundreds of smaller contracting firms that work with federal agencies, Shorrock said.

Theres hundreds of these kinds of smaller companies that you often dont hear of unless something like this happens, Shorrock said.

On its website, Pluribus lists 22 locations, including in Korea, and a list of clients that includes the Defense Threat Reduction Agencys Security and Counterintelligence office and the US Army Intelligence and Security Command.

Executives from Pluribus International, including its owner, Nathan McCarry, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. No one answered the phone at the companys main line in Alexandria, Virginia.

Revenue data for Pluribus posted on Washington Technology, an industry outlet for small business contractors in the government market, show the company growing rapidly over the past 12 years. Its total revenue was under $1m in 2005, and grew to more than $9m in 2009 and more than $16m in 2012.

The companys website currently lists 107 job openings.

In October 2016, after employee Harold Martin III was arrested and charged with stealing classified information, Booz Allen Hamilton announced an external review of the firms security, personnel, and management processes and practices led by the former FBI director Robert Mueller.

We are determined to learn from this incident and look more broadly at our processes and practices, the company said in a press release.

The Mueller review is substantially complete and we expect delivery of the report soon, spokesman James Fisher wrote. Mueller has since moved on to serving as the special counsel overseeing the justice departments investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Asked for comment on security reforms within intelligence work since the Snowden leak, a spokesman for the office of the director of national intelligence referenced the National Insider Threat Task Force, and efforts to decrease the overall number of people with security clearances.

But Shorrock said this focus on helping companies develop ways to scan for insider threats was less crucial than imposing more rigorous public oversight of private intelligence contractors.

The government could make it very difficult for corporations and contractors when these kinds of breaches happen, that the companies get penalized in some way, Shorrock said.



Lobbying and the revolving door between government agencies and private companies stand in the way of reform, Shorrock said.

The closeness of these companies to the government is very troubling, he said. People go back and forth and, you know, its this buddy-buddy system. Theyre all buddies and they all see themselves as part of the same family, and theyre not.
DoJ says in criminal complaint Reality Winner admitted to leaking document that revealed Russian hacking of US voting systems manufacturer before election

Reality Winner, the woman alleged to have leaked classified information about Russian interference in the US election, could face up to 10 years in prison if the Trump administration pursues its complaint that she violated the Espionage Act.

The 25-year-old allegedly shared documents that reveal Russian intelligence agents hacked a US voting systems manufacturer in the weeks immediately before the 2016 presidential election.

The government said in its criminal complaint that Winner admitted to the charge in a conversation with the FBI on 3 June, but lawyers have cautioned that cannot be seen as a definitive admission of guilt, because the information is being relayed by the government.

In the criminal complaint against Winner, the justice department said it was charging her under the Espionage Act, following the model used aggressively by Barack Obama in his administrations attempts to shut down whistleblowers.

The complaint says she improperly removed classified intelligence reporting, which contained classified national defense information. A single charge under the Espionage Act could attract a 10-year sentence. The governments formal indictment will show the final charges against her.

Under the Obama administration, the US government expanded its use of the Espionage Act, prosecuting more government sources for leaks than all the previous administrations combined.

Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLUs national security project, told the Guardian that leaks were a vital source for information in our democracy and that prosecuting leakers resulted in a less informed public and less accountable government.

It would be deeply problematic if this prosecution marks the beginning of a Trump administration crackdown on leaks to the press, Shamsi said.

Free-speech advocates, including the ACLU, said the use of the Espionage Act to prosecute Winner could be a chilling opening salvo in the new administrations potential war on whistleblowers.

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Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower who leaked a trove of files on US surveillance programs to the Guardian in 2013, condemned the government for prosecuting Winner under the act, which prevents Winner from offering a defense based on a reason for why she acted, such as a desire to serve the public interest.



Reality Winner. Photograph: HANDOUT/Reuters

Winner is accused of serving as a journalistic source for a leading American news outlet about a matter of critical public importance, Snowden said in a statement.

Asked about the case, Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, said he did not know if Trump was aware of the arrest and declined to comment on a continuing investigation. That being said, I think that youve heard the president very clearly talk about the concern that he has about unauthorised disclosures of classified and sensitive information and the threat that they can pose to national security, he told reporters. So while I dont want to comment on any specific case or allegation, I think it is important to note that any disclosure of classified or sensitive information can clearly threaten our national security.



Kathleen McClellan, who serves as national security and human rights deputy director for the Whistleblower and Source Protection Program, said it was wildly inappropriate to use the Espionage Act for cases like this.



There are plenty of regulations and other laws that you could use to punish someone for leaking, said McClellan, who has represented the whistleblowers Thomas Drake and John Kiriakou. Its clear that the Trump administration wants to punish leakers as severely, if not more severely, than Obama did.

One of the best known people to have been charged with violating the Espionage Act under Obama is Chelsea Manning, who was found guilty on six counts of violating the act after leaking diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks.



She was sentenced to 35 years in military prison, though Obama commuted her sentence just before leaving office and she is now free.

Though Winners leak was small  apparently confined to one document  compared to the trove of more than 250,000 diplomatic cables leaked by Manning or the documents Snowden shared with the Guardian and other news organizations, prosecution is about the quality, not quantity, of the documents shared.

Nancy Hollander, Mannings attorney, emphasized that the Espionage Act prevented Winner from arguing the disclosures were in the public interest. When people know something they seriously and genuinely believe the public has a right to know, and the government is keeping from the public, they have no recourse, she said.

Its very difficult for her to defend herself since she cant ever explain, until such time that shes sentenced, why she did what she did, what her motive was, Hollander said.

I dont know what her motive was, but assuming it was she believed that the public needed to know this and that it was being kept from them, she wont have a chance to say that.

Winner has a string of anti-Trump sentiments on her Facebook page  she called him a piece of shit in February  but that information does not prove her intent for leaking the information.

Winner is the first person to be accused of violating the Espionage Act for a leak under the Trump administration. Trumps White House has been plagued by frequent internal leaks, but the president has also expressed support for leaks.



Trump said I love WikiLeaks at a campaign rally in October 2016 after the organization leaked Hillary Clintons emails.

Theres leaking every day, said Hollander. Winners one that theyve charged because they dont like what she leaked.
The lawyer for Reality Leigh Winner, the National Security Agency contractor accused of leaking classified information, doesnt believe her tweets railing against President Trump will be allowed in court.

We can talk about them all day long on television, Titus Nichols, Winners attorney, said in a CNN interview on Tuesday morning. When it comes to the actual trial or court proceeding, thats going to be a different matter.

Winner, a 25-year-old former Air Force linguist from Augusta, Ga., was arrested Saturday and charged with removing classified material from a government facility and mailing it to a news outlet. In early May, she allegedly printed out a top-secret NSA report detailing Russian hacking efforts days before the 2016 election, and reportedly sent it to an online publication, the Intercept, which published it Monday.

According to the FBI, Winner confessed to the crime when she was confronted by federal investigators. She admitted to intentionally identifying and printing the classified intelligence reporting at issue despite not having a need to know, and with knowledge that the intelligence reporting was classified, according to the complaint.

She also confessed to removing the classified intelligence reporting from her office space, retaining it, and mailing it, the Justice Department said.

Counsel for accused NSA leaker Reality Winner declines to say if client admitted alleged crime as government claims https://t.co/uh3doVLojm  New Day (@NewDay) June 7, 2017

But Nichols refused to say whether his client copped to the crime.

We dont have the facts yet, he said on CNN. All we have is a press release that the Department of Justice issued.

In that release, federal officials celebrated the arrest of Winner as fulfilling Trumps promise to crack down on leakers.

Releasing classified material without authorization threatens our nations security and undermines public faith in government, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said in a statement announcing the charges. People who are trusted with classified information and pledge to protect it must be held accountable when they violate that obligation.

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Related: Who is alleged NSA leaker Reality Winner?

Winner is being held in a Lincoln County, Ga., jail. Her next court appearance is Thursday, where Nichols says he will argue for her release, especially considering her passport has already been confiscated by U.S. officials.

Shes not a risk for flight, he said. Plus with all the worldwide media attention shes received, theres little to no chance she can go anywhere without anybody recognizing her.

In interviews this week, family members have painted a different picture of Winner than the Trump hating tweeter seen in recent media reports.

Shes just a good kid. Shes got a great big heart, her stepfather, Gary Davis, told the New York Times. She looked at the Air Force and wanted to serve her country, and she did that with honors and did an exemplary job.

Her mother, Billie Winner-Davis, said her daughter told them she was scared after her arrest, but did not tell them she did what the U.S. government alleges.

She hasnt admitted it to us at all, Winner-Davis stated. What she told me was that she was terrified. She was terrified of the situation and she did tell me also that she was afraid she was going to disappear.

I think her parents have done a phenomenal job of explaining to the world who she is as a person, Nichols said, not just this figure thats been created in the span of a week.

Read more from Yahoo News:
Russia possibly wanted to divide the U.S. and its Gulf allies when it allegedly planted a fake news story in Qatars state news agency triggering a major crisis in the Middle East, CNN reported Thursday, citing U.S. officials.

Intelligence gathered by American authorities investigating the alleged hack told the news outlet Russian hackers were to be blamed for posting the fake news attributing false statements to Qatars Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. On May 23, the Qatar News Agency ran a news piece stating the emir questioned Donald Trump's presidency and the U.S. enmity toward Iran, which is Qatar's ally and other Gulf nations particularly Saudi Arabias  opponent.

Read: Qatar Airways Grounds Flights After Diplomatic Concerns Over Fake News, Terrorism

"There is no wisdom in harboring hostility towards Iran," the emir was quoted as saying in the story. He also allegedly said Qatars relationship with the Trump administration was tense even though the emir and Trump met on a positive note in Saudi Arabia last month.

The story was picked up by several news organizations in the Middle East, and the emirs comments were severely criticized by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. However, Qatar said the news was false and also termed it as a "shameful cybercrime" incident.

This news created diplomatic tensions between Qatar and other Middle Eastern countries such as Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. These countries accused Doha of promoting terrorism and announced they would pull out their diplomatic staff from Qatar and even suspend flights to the country. As the nations began severing ties with Doha, the U.S. was left in the lurch.

Qatar, however, maintained it was a victim of hacking.

"Whatever has been thrown as an accusation is all based on misinformation and we think that the entire crisis being based on misinformation," Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman Al Thani told CNN. "Because it was started based on fabricated news, being wedged and being inserted in our national news agency which was hacked and proved by the FBI," he added.

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The CNN report also stated it remained unclear whether the alleged hacks were linked to crime groups or Russian intelligence services. The report also came amid growing scrutiny over Russias foreign cyber activities, which included its alleged involvement in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Trump on Tuesday took credit for the Middle Eastern countries breaking diplomatic relations with Qatar. "So good to see Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off. They said they would take a hard line on funding . extremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism! Trump tweeted.

Trumps comments put the Pentagon in a tough spot and it praised Qatar for a hosting an important U.S. air base, and for its "enduring commitment to regional security.

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The Saudis understood from the start that Trump craved flattery and respect. The kingdoms investment in wooing Trump is paying off

Saudi King Salman presents President Donald Trump with the highest civilian honor. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP

On Monday, Saudi Arabia and three of its allies cut off diplomatic and economic relations with Qatar, a tiny, energy-rich emirate in the Persian gulf. The Saudis moved to punish and isolate Qatar for its support of Islamist groups and its refusal to go along with a Saudi-led campaign against Iran. By Tuesday, Donald Trump took to Twitter  and he made the crisis between two US allies a lot worse.

In a series of morning tweets, Trump took credit for instigating Saudi Arabia and its allies to sever relations with Qatar and to impose a blockade, sealing the emirates only border and cutting off air and sea travel.

He mentioned his visit to Saudi Arabia last month, where he called on a gathering of Arab and Muslim leaders to isolate Iran and to cut off funding for extremist groups. During my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology, Trump wrote. Leaders pointed to Qatar  look!

Instead of offering to play peacemaker, as two of his top national security aides had done hours after the crisis erupted, Trump unequivocally sided with Saudi Arabia and its main ally, the United Arab Emirates.

Clearly, Saudi leaders are playing Trump, exploiting the grandiose reception they gave him last month after he decided to make the kingdom the first stop on his maiden foreign trip as president. By the end of his two-day visit, Trump had become Saudi Arabias cheerleader and he aligned US foreign policy with the kingdoms vision of the Middle East.

In a 21 May speech to nearly 50 Arab and Muslim leaders gathered in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, Trump framed the regions problems as solely due to Iranian aggression and terrorism by Islamist extremist groups. From Lebanon to Iraq to Yemen, Iran funds, arms, and trains terrorists, militias, and other extremist groups that spread destruction and chaos across the region, Trump said, echoing the harsh comments of Saudi leaders. For decades, Iran has fueled the fires of sectarian conflict and terror.

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The Saudis read Trump accurately from the time he took office  they understood that he craved flattery and respect. Arab leaders, especially the oil-rich monarchs, are used to flattery since they live with it every day. So the Saudis decided to give Trump an extravagant welcome, the kind of deference he would never get at home.

The streets of Riyadh were filled with billboards of Trump and Saudi King Salman. The Ritz-Carlton hotel, where the president and his entourage stayed, projected a portrait of Trump onto its exterior, stretching for five floors. Most of all, Saudi leaders convinced Trump that they value and respect him far more than his predecessor, Barack Obama.

And the kingdoms investment in wooing Trump is paying off. Its not surprising that Trump would offer unqualified support to Saudi Arabia in its conflict with Iran, since the president and many of his advisers consider Iran the greatest threat to US interests in the Middle East.

But with his criticism of Qatar, which is a longtime American ally and home to the largest US military base in the region, Trump is telling the Saudis that he will side with them in virtually every regional conflict. In Trumps eyes, the Saudis can do no wrong.

Trump is also undermining members of his own administration, who have tried to stick to the traditional US policy of avoiding publicly taking sides in the regional feuds among Arab allies in the Gulf.

On Monday, hours after the Saudis announced their campaign to isolate Qatar, the US secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, and the defense secretary Jim Mattis hinted that they would try to mediate between the two US allies. We certainly would encourage the parties to sit down together and address these differences, Tillerson said.



But Trump, with his usual bravado, torpedoed any attempt at the US serving as an honest broker. So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off. They said they would take a hard line on funding, Trump tweeted on Tuesday. He added: Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism!

For years, Qatar has provided funds and support to the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and extremist groups in Syria, Libya and elsewhere. But other Arab monarchies, including Saudi Arabia, also have a record of supporting extremists.

Beyond the current crisis with Qatar, Trumps unequivocal support has emboldened a newly assertive Saudi Arabia. For decades, the kingdom pursued a largely behind-the-scenes foreign policy that benefited from booming oil prices. Saudi leaders exerted their power by funding proxies and friendly governments, while the kingdom avoided direct military intervention. But today, King Salman and his advisers are becoming more aggressive militarily, most notably by launching a war in Yemen in March 2015.

On Tuesday, when the Saudi foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, was asked if the kingdom and its allies would take military measures if Qatar doesnt relent, he replied: I hope not.

Thanks to Trumps carte blanche, Saudi Arabia has little incentive to change course before it can force its smaller neighbor into submission.
Senate Committee on Intelligence ranking member Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., talks to reporters before a closed-door committee meeting in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill June 6, 2017, in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Within minutes of President Trumps announcement of his choice for FBI director on Wednesday, Sen. Mark Warner  the ranking member on the Senate Intelligence Committee  questioned the timing, saying, Clearly, this is an effort by the president to try to distract attention from our hearings today and our hearings tomorrow.

Warner made the comments on CBS This Morning after Trump tweeted that he would be nominating former Assistant Attorney General Christopher Wray to replace James Comey as head of the bureau. The Virginia Democrat is the top Democrat on the committee that is hearing testimony from National Intelligence Director Dan Coats and National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers Wednesday, and ousted FBI Director James Comey Thursday. Democrats are particularly interested in asking them whether Trump pressured them to ease or drop investigations into his campaigns ties with Russia. Coats told the committee he wouldnt discuss his conversations with the president in a public session.

Though Warner stopped short of saying in his interview that such pressure by Trump would constitute obstruction of justice, he said it would show a really disturbing pattern, and invoked Watergate as a precedent for the danger of presidents intervening in investigations involving them or their associates. Warner also offered a preview of his strategy for the two days of consequential public testimony.

Some of the questions Im going to ask are going to be a bit uncomfortable, Warner said, but I think in this case, the American publics need to know  with this cloud that hangs over everything that this administration is doing  if they can help clarify, I hope theyll step up.

On CNNs New Day, where he also was interviewed, Warner hinted that the hearings Wednesday and Thursday may reveal a pattern of constant intervention, and signaled the line of questioning he and colleagues may pursue with Comey.

If we have  Director Comey tomorrow describing the series of conversations he had with the president and the fact that he felt uncomfortable, why did he feel uncomfortable? Warner said.

Story continues

Referencing the written accounts of the meetings that Comey associates have described to reporters, Warner asked, Why did he have to produce memos? It raises, to me, a huge amount of questions.

Read more from Yahoo News:
cameronabadi

With Adam Rawnsley and Robbie Gramer

BREAKING: The Islamic State has claimed credit for two brazen attacks in Tehran on Wednesday. The latest comes from CNN, which reports at least a dozen people have been killed and dozens more wounded. The violence unfolded at about 10 a.m. local time (2 a.m. ET) when gunmen apparently dressed as women stormed the main gate of the parliament building in central Tehran and opened fireThe attackers took a number of hostages and at least one detonated a suicide bomb. At the same time, shots were fired and a suicide bomber targeted civilians at the Ayatollah Khomeini mausoleum about 15 miles away.

Qatar fallout. Operations at the massive Al Udeid air base in Qatar, which houses over 10,000 U.S. military personnel, appear to be running as normal despite the harsh  and unexpected  economic blockade put in place this week by five other Gulf countries, and president Trumps Tweeted approval of the move, in which he took credit for the action.

Whodunnit. A news story allegedly planted by hackers helped widen the rift between Qatar and its Gulf neighbors, and now the FBI is trying to figure out who may have broken into the Qatar News Agencys website and posted it. Published last month, the story featured purported quotes from Qatars Emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, offering warm words for Iran and Israel. Faced with a backlash from its neighbors, Qatar invited the FBI to investigate the apparent breach. CNN reports that the American investigators believe Russian hackers may have planted the story but the New York Timess Sheera Frenkel tweets that CNNs report doesnt get the details of this quite right according to her reporting.

That was thenTrump met with al Thani during his visit to Saudi Arabia last month, saying one of the things we will discuss is the purchase of lots of beautiful military equipmentand for us, that means jobs and it also means, frankly, great security back here, which we want.

Story continues

Lots of money on the table. There are billions of dollars of military deals on the table, and Trump made no public comments at the time of the meeting over terrorism worries. Still in the pipeline are 32 F-15 fighter planes approved under the Obama administration, a number that could swell to 72 by the time the deal is completed. (FPs Dan De Luce has the story on the Obama administrations deliberations over selling the planes to the kingdom, citing its support for terrorist organizations.)

Theres still no formal contract with Boeing for the planes, however. Raytheon also announced a $1.1 billion contract for an early warning radar last year, and Qatar has purchased several Patriot air defense units and missiles. A $6.5 billion sale of two Raytheon-built THAAD missile defense system has also been approved, but theres no firm contract in place there, either.

U.S. vs. Iran in Syria. American warplanes bombed an Iranian-backed militia that entered a supposed no-go zone near a U.S garrison in southern Syria on Tuesday. It was the second such U.S. strike in less than a month and signals a growing risk of direct conflict between American and Iranian forces and their partners in Syria. The air raid came after the militia aligned with the Syrian regime and Iran failed to heed a warning to leave the area.

The strike came on the same day U.S. and coalition aircraft were busy supporting thousands of Syrian Arab and Kurdish forces assaulting the de-facto Islamic State capital of Raqqa. FPs Paul McLeary reports:

The Raqqa assault comes even as U.S. officials acknowledge that most of the Islamic States leadership has already fled the city for the more isolated Euphrates River Valley running from the city east to the Iraqi border. But military planners have stuck with plans drawn up under the Obama administration and continued under President Donald Trump, predicated on the fall of Mosul and Raqqa before launching an effort to push the terror group out of the valley and Deir Ezzor province.

Colin Kahl, who served as national security adviser to former Vice President Joe Biden, told FPs Dan De Luce the Iranians appear to covet the border area. He called the episode a harbinger of dangers to come as U.S. and Iranian-backed forces converge in the lower Euphrates and along the border in the weeks and months ahead.

Ottawa walks away from Trumpism. Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland announced Tuesday that in response to the Trump administrations policies on trade and climate change, Ottawa was going its own way, an unprecedented splintering in the relationship between the two stalwart NATO allies. To rely solely on the U.S. security umbrella would make us a client state, she said. Such a dependence would not be in Canadas interest.The fact that our friend and ally has come to question the very worth of its mantle of global leadership puts into sharper focus the need for the rest of us to set our own clear and sovereign course, Freeland added.

Yes, there is a State Department. Heather Nauert, the State Departments new spokesperson (formerly a Fox News host), gave her first on-camera press briefing Tuesday, the first for the building since April. At times, she paused for 20 to 30 seconds to shuffle through a thick binder of notes before responding to questions, drawing derision from some veteran journalists on social media. But its a tough gig. Heres what she said:

On Qatar: Washington only learned of Saudi Arabias decision to cut ties with its neighbor immediately prior to the move, and then learned of it through the United Arab Emirates  not Riyadh. She also rapped Qatar for not doing enough to stop the bankrolling of terror groups, saying Qatar has made great efforts to try to stop financing of terror groupsbut they still have work to do.

On empty desks: There are still 120 politically-appointed positions unfilled at State, five months into Trumps term. Nauert said there are plenty of people moving through the pipeline but the rigorous security clearance process is holding things up. Its going to take these things longer. Longer than what, were not sure.

Welcome to SitRep. Send any tips, thoughts or national security events to paul.mcleary@foreignpolicy.com or via Twitter: @paulmcleary or @arawnsley.

China Power. The Defense Department has released its annual public report on Chinas military, known by its much longer name, Military and Security Developments Involving the Peoples Republic of China 2017. This years report forecasts that Chinas second international base after its facility in Djibouti will likely be in Pakistan. The report also concludes that Chinese government hackers are still breaking into the networks of U.S. diplomatic, economic, and defense industrial base targets.

Running interference. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told friends that President Trump asked him to get since-fired FBI Director James Comey to drop the Bureaus investigation into possible Russian collusion with the Trump campaign, according to the Washington Post. Trump reportedly pulled Coats aside in March after Comey had testified that the FBI was looking at the Trump campaign, making his pitch to Coats for intervention against the probe. Coats later told colleagues he decided against agreeing to Trumps request. He testifies before the Senate Intelligence Committee today on Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act legislation, but lawmakers will likely have other issues on their mind, as well.

Investigations. Congress got a tip from an unlikely source hinting that Justice Department special counsel Bob Mueller may be looking into presidential son-in-law and White House advisor Jared Kushner. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, telling lawmakers, I think there are numerous investigations that are looking into Kushner and that he thinks its part of the Bob Mueller investigation. Kushner has come under press scrutiny for his post-election meeting with former Russian Federal Security Service spy turned banker Sergey Gorkov.

Hazards. Suspected Houthi militants fired rocket propelled grenades at an oil tanker off the coast of Yemen last year, USNI News reports. Pentagon officials tell the news outlet that militants fired the weapons from skiffs, aiming at a tanker sailing under a Marshall Islands flag. The incident took place in the vicinity of an incident late last year when Houthi militants fired anti-ship cruise missiles at guided missile destroyer USS Mason.

Fallout. Nearly a month after Turkish security personnel assaulted a crowd of demonstrators protesting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the House of Representatives passed a resolution on Tuesday to condemn the attacks. The resolution, passed by a 397-0 margin, calls out the Turkish security detail and pro-Erdogan protesters for their efforts to brutally attack the demonstrators and calls on the State Department to ask Turkey to waive diplomatic immunity for those involved so they can be prosecuted.

Photo Credit: MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images
Beirut (AFP) - Syria's army advanced into Raqa province Tuesday, a monitor and a military source said, on the same day US-backed forces pushed into its provincial capital held by the Islamic State group.

"Regime forces entered Raqa province for the first time in a year, coming from Aleppo province" to the west, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said.

Backed by Russian air strikes, troops seized the villages of Khirbet Mohsen and Khirbet al-Sabaa from IS fighters, Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said.

A Syrian military source confirmed the army had advanced into the province and taken the two villages, west of the jihadists' de facto Syrian capital of Raqa city.

The troops aim to "ensure the security of Aleppo province against the attacks of Daesh jihadists", the source said, using an Arabic acronym for IS.

President Bashar al-Assad's army has since January been carrying out a massive operation to fight IS in the eastern part of Aleppo province.

His soldiers on Tuesday were around 70 kilometres (40 miles) from Raqa city, into which the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces thrusted earlier in the day.

The SDF, who are made up of Kurdish and Arab rebels, on Tuesday announced they were launching a final assault to drive the jihadists from the city.

Abdel Rahman said it was not immediately clear if there was any coordination between the SDF and Assad's forces.

More than 320,000 people have been killed since Syria's war started in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests.
Paris (AFP) - Tyrannosaurus rex had scales, not feathers, said a study Wednesday which rescues the giant lizard's reputation as a fearsome killer with a rough-and-tough hide.

Recent research has claimed to provide evidence for feathers in ancestors of T. rex, and suggested the iconic carnivore may itself have sported bird-like plumage rather than reptilian scales.

Those findings challenged a long-held contention that large-bodied dinos had no feathers, requiring them for neither warmth nor flight.

For the new study, an international team of scientists tracked down museum samples of skin from T. rex and several of its cousins in the tyrannosaurid family, and compiled a database of fossilised hide impressions.

These included skin patches of the neck, pelvis and tail of a T. rex from the Houston Museum of Natural Science, as well as samples from four other members of the extended tyrannosaurid family.

That group roamed the planet during the Late Cretaceous, which extended from 99 million to 65.5 million years ago, when an asteroid slammed into Earth and wiped out all land-dwelling dinos.

The team concluded that "extensive feather coverings" in tyrannosaurids -- which lived much earlier -- were already lost in the common forefather of T. rex and its cousins about the time the Late Cretaceous began.

The data provides "compelling evidence" of an entirely scaly covering for T. rex, the team wrote in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.

"Our discovery of fossilised scaly skin similar to that of modern reptiles on the bodies of a wide variety of tyrannosaur species (including T. rex)... paints a more traditional scaly-skinned picture of these huge predators," they wrote in a press summary.

This suggested, in turn, "that most (if not all) large-bodied tyrannosaurids were scaly and, if partly feathered, these were limited to the dorsum (back)," they wrote.

The study begged the question of why -- after T. Rex's ancestors evolved feathers from an even more ancient scaly forebear -- the giant tyrannosaurs reverted back to scales.

Paleontologists believe the first birds appeared 150 million years ago and were descendants of small feathered dinosaurs.

The first dino feathers were simple hollow shafts, which evolved over time into something resembling their modern shape, engineered for flight.
Passengers stand at Hamad International Airport Passengers stand at Hamad International Airport in Doha, Qatar, June 7, 2017. (Photo: Naseem Zeitoon/Reuters)

A senior Emirati official insisted on Wednesday that Gulf Arab states were not seeking regime change in Doha, as tensions built in a bitter feud between Qatar and its neighbors.

Speaking to AFP in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates state minister for foreign affairs Anwar Gargash accused Qatar of being the main champion of extremism and terrorism in the region.

But he also said measures taken against Qatar this week by Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other Arab nations were not aimed at seeking new leadership in Doha.

This is not about regime change  this is about change of policy, change of approach, Gargash said.

Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE and Bahrain announced on Monday they were cutting diplomatic ties and closing air, sea and land links with Qatar, giving Qataris within their borders two weeks to leave.

The four countries have suspended all flights to and from Qatar, pulled their ambassadors from Doha and ordered Qatari diplomats to leave.

Riyadh and its allies accuse Qatar of supporting extremist groups and of serving the interests of regional arch-rival Iran, claims Doha has strongly rejected.

The dispute has sparked the worst diplomatic crisis in the Arab world in years and raised fears it will cause further instability in an already-volatile region. (AFP)

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The trial of a young woman accused of encouraging a friend to commit suicide via text began Tuesday in Massachusetts.

Michelle Carter is charged with involuntary manslaughter for the death of Conrad Roy III, who at the time was eighteen. Roy died in the summer of 2014 from carbon monoxide poison from a trucks exhaust system, according to the Boston Globe.

Read: Why Do More Men Than Women Die By Suicide In The United States?

Roy and Carter spoke to each other via text leading up to the suicide and spoke on the phone as Roy sat in the truck dying. The texts back and forth were released in court and paint a dark tale of youth.

Everyone will be sad for a while but they will get over it and move on. They won't be in depression. I won't let that happen, said Carter via text. They know how sad you are, and they know that you are doing this to be happy and I think they will understand and accept it. They will always carry you in their hearts.

Another gripping text comes from the day Roy died.

You're hesitant because you keeping over thinking it and keep pushing it off. You just need to do it, Conrad, texted Carter.

The final text Carter sent read, Okay. You can do this.

Okay. Im almost there, Roy replied, his final text back.

Carter is twenty now and is facing a sentence that could last up to twenty years. Carters lawyers sought to have the case dismissed, but Massachusettss highest court  the Supreme Judicial Court  allowed the case to proceed. According to the New York Times, her lawyers argued that the speech was protected, and she wasnt at the scene where he died so she couldnt have caused it. Carter was thirty miles away at the time.

In court, Roys mother testified that he had attempted suicide before and that he had a tough relationship with his father. Carter too had her own mental health issues according to her lawyers.

Read: Facebook Live Suicide: Alabama Man Shoots Himself In Live Video

The case is being tried in a jury-waived juvenile court. The outcome of the case will be decided by the lone judge, Lawrence Moniz. Massachusetts doesnt technically have a law against encouraging someone elses suicide, hence the manslaughter charge.

Story continues

The Boston Globe reported that Bristol County Assistant District Attorney Maryclare Flynn, who is trying the case, used her opening statement to establish that Carter was a needy girl using Roy and was playing a sick game of life and death.

Related Articles
Police have identified the third terrorist involved in the London Bridge attack Saturday night as an Italy native who was living in London and working at a restaurant.

Read: After Trump Tweets About Terror Attack, London Mayor Wants President's Visit Canceled

Youssef Zaghba, 22, the son of an Italian mother and Moroccan father, was reportedly stopped at Italy's Bologna Guglielmo Marconi Airport last year as he was headed to Syria via Turkey.

Zaghba, who was by himself and appeared agitated, was carrying only a backpack and no additional luggage, according to reports.

I am going to be a terrorist, he told officials after he was stopped.

His passport and phone were confiscated and according to Italys Corriere Della Sera, police found propaganda videos and sermons that confirmed he wished to join the Islamic state.

He was also on Italys list of persons at risk, but police in the U.K. said he was not on the radar of counter-terrorism investigators.

Italian authorities alerted British and Moroccan officials about his movements after he was questioned and released by police, Corriere Della Sera reported.

Police said Tuesday that his family has been notified.

His mother, who lived outside Bologna, told investigators last year: I dont recognize him anymore. He frightens me. He spends all day in front of the computer watching incredibly strange things.

Read: Trump Slams London Mayor After Terror Attack and Shuns 'Political Correctness'

The other two attackers were identified Monday as Khuram Shazad Butt, 27, and Rachid Redouane, 30. All three were killed by British authorities Saturday night.

Seven people died and at least 48 were injured after a van drove into pedestrians on London Bridge before the suspects hopped out and went on a stabbing rampage in nearby Borough Market on Saturday night.

Watch: London Terrorist Had Been Seen Unfurling ISIS Flag on British Documentary in 2016

Related Articles:
Yahoo Finance is tracking Banco Santander, Tesla, Chevron, Exxon, ConocoPhillips and AMC Networks in intraday trading on Wednesday.

Banco Santander (SAN)  The Spanish bank is rescuing rival Banco Popular after the smaller lender lost more than half of its value over the past week. The European Commission sanctioned the acquisition after the European Central Bank said Banco Popular was failing or likely to fail. Shares of Banco Santander were up about 2% as of 11:45 a.m. ET on Wednesday.

Tesla (TSLA)  The electric carmaker is posting gains following comments by CEO Elon Musk at its shareholder meeting Tuesday evening. Musk revealed more details about the electric semi truck and its upcoming Model Y, a smaller crossover vehicle which is expected to go on sale in late 2019. Musk did not give specific plans for the Model Y but did say it could require a new factory. He also said he expects demand for the Model Y to surpass the Model 3.

Chevron (CVX), Exxon (XOM), ConocoPhillips (COP)  Oil giants are under pressure as crude prices drop after weekly government data showed a larger-than-expected increase in US inventories. The EIA reported domestic crude supplies climbed by 3.3 million barrels last week, compared with expectations for a 3.5 million-barrel decline.

AMC Networks (AMCX)  The companys board authorized adding $500 million to its share repurchase program, bringing the total to $1 billion. Shares of AMC Networks are up about 4% since the start of the year.

For more on Wednesdays big stock movers, check out the Final Round, live at 4 p.m. ET, right here on Yahoo Finance.
Tom Holland literally wraps himself up in his work. I have loads of Spider-Man blankets, theyre so soft, says the 21-year-old actor. Its a ringing endorsement from the star of Julys Spider-Man: Homecoming, who assumed the mantel of Peter Parker in 2016s Captain America: Civil War and thus has a very personal connection with the latest merchandise, as he revealed in a recent Facebook Live interview (watch it above) with Yahoo Movies. I cuddle myself when I sleep, he joked (we think). Im a method actor.

The London native conceded hes overwhelmed by the sheer amount of Spidey swag. The craziest thing is actually walking through Target, he said when asked if its still surreal to think hes playing one of the most iconic superheroes in comic book/movie history. Target [stores] have aisles and aisles and aisles dedicated to Spider-Man. I dont look at Spider-Man and go, Oh look, theres me. Because thats crazy to think. But now that I start to see these Spider-Man [collectibles] in my costume, its now starting to really sink in that I am Spider-Man.

Holland also admitted he buys Spider-Man merch all the time, which might explain why his bedroom in the flat he recently purchased has become overrun by webcrawlers. We have loads of figures. My family now, when it comes to my birthday, theyre like, Oh, well just get him something Spider-Man.

And Im so sick of Spider-Man toys. Literally [in] my room, I must have about 15 different Spider-Man toys just dotted around my room. Its weird, I wake up and I feel like Im being watched by myself.

Spider-Man: Homecoming opens July 7.

Watch Holland talk about how Chris Hemsworth helped land him the role:





Read more from Yahoo Movies:
By David Brunnstrom and John Walcott

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - David Rank, the charge d'affaires of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, has left the State Department over the Trump administration's decision to quit the 2015 Paris agreement to fight climate change, a senior U.S. official said on Monday.

A State Department spokeswoman confirmed Rank's departure, but said she was unable to verify Twitter posts that said he resigned as he felt unable to deliver a formal notification to China of the U.S. decision last week to quit the agreement.

"He has retired from the foreign service," said Anna Richey-Allen, a spokeswoman for the department's East Asia Bureau. "Mr Rank has made a personal decision. We appreciate his years of dedicated service to the State Department."

Iowa Governor Terry Branstad, President Donald Trump's pick as the next U.S. ambassador to Beijing, is expected to take up the post later this month.

A tweet from China expert John Pomfret quoted unnamed sources as saying that Rank had resigned as he could not support Trump's decision last week to withdraw from the Paris agreement.

Another tweet from Pomfret said Rank called a town hall meeting to announce his decision to embassy staff and explained that he could not deliver a diplomatic note informing the Chinese government of the U.S. decision.

A senior U.S. official confirmed the account given in the tweets, but added that after Rank announced his intention to retire on Monday in Beijing, he was told by the State Department to leave his post immediately. The official spoke on condition of anonymity.

Rank, a career foreign service officer who took over the post of deputy chief of mission in Beijing in January 2016, could not immediately be reached for comment.

Jonathan Fritz, the embassy's economics councillor, would serve as charge in his place, Richey-Allen said.

Rank had been with the department for 27 years and served as the political councillor at the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan from 2011-12.

Story continues

Trump's announcement last Thursday that he would withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord, saying the agreement would undermine the U.S. economy and cost jobs, drew anger and condemnation from world leaders and heads of industry.

Watch news, TV and more Yahoo View, available on iOS and Android.

(Reporting by David Brunnstrom and John Walcott, additional reporting by Jonathan Landay, editing by G Crosse)
Trump Hotels is launching a new budget-friendly hotel brand called American Idea, a not-so-subtle nod to US President Donald Trump's campaign mottos which included "America First" and "Make America Great Again."

At a reception held at Trump Tower in New York Monday, sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump revealed details of the midscale, three-star brand.

The first three properties anchoring the new chain will be built in Mississippi, a red state which voted 58 percent for Trump in the election.

The group describes the chain as a concept rooted in local history, and one that provides an alternative to standard run-of-the-mill hotels in the midscale space.

American Idea marks a big departure for Trump Hotels, which specializes in luxury properties.

Along with locations throughout the US, the brand also has outposts in Canada, Panama, Ireland and Scotland.

Last fall, the group announced plans to launch another lifestyle brand called Scion which conspicuously takes the family name out of the brand.

A press releases describes the new four-star hotel concept as being "locally relevant" and one that will reflect its community.

At the reception on Monday, the group also announced that the first Scion hotel will open in Cleveland, Mississippi, with 100 rooms, suites and extended stay accommodations.
President Donald Trump assigned Secretary of State Rex Tillerson a daunting task: Rebuild U.S.-Russia relations.

During a visit to New Zealand Tuesday, Tillerson told reporters Trump asked him to repair relations with Moscow, even as the White House roils from multiple scandals and investigations into his presidential campaigns Russia ties. Trump wont get any respite this week, either: Ousted FBI director James Comey will testify before Congress Thursday, including possibly discussing reported attempts by Trump to get him to quash the probe.

The President asked me to begin a re-engagement process with Russia to see if we can first stabilize that relationship so it does not deteriorate further, Tillerson said, and then begin to rebuild some level of trust with Moscow. Tillerson spoke in Wellington, New Zealand during a joint press conference with New Zealand Prime Minister Bill English.

Tillerson said Trump told him not to let the public firestorm or the FBI and Congressional investigations into his ties to Russia impede the job in any way.

The President has been clear to me do not let whats happening over here in the political realm prevent you from the work you need to do on this relationship, Tillerson said, apparently referring to the ongoing counterintelligence investigation. Hes been quite clear with me to proceed at whatever pace and in the areas that I think we might make progress.

U.S. allies are quietly bristling over Trumps visit to Brussels last week to meet with all NATO leaders for the first time. Trump only mentioned Russia once before leaders of the 29-nation alliance in a public speech in which he rapped allies for not spending enough on defense and refused to explicitly endorse NATOs bedrock collective defense clause. It left Trumps team, including Vice President Mike Pence, scrambling to reassure allies of Washingtons commitment to NATO in Trumps stead.

Tillersons stopover in New Zealand came after a visit to Australia with Secretary of Defense James Mattis in which both tried to rebut growing fears the the administrations America First approach is turning the country away from its international commitments. In a matter of months, Trump has pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, the centerpiece of the Obama administrations pivot to Asia, and global Paris climate change pact, a landmark international accord signed by all but two countries. (New Zealanders didnt exactly greet Tillerson with a lot of warmth after that decision).

I dont think anyone should interpret that the U.S. has somehow stepped away from these issues or is seeking to isolate itself, said Tillerson Tuesday. I think you can expect, in fact, to see an elevated level of engagement to that that you saw in the past eight years, he added.

Photo credit: MARTY MELVILLE/AFP/Getty Images
Wisconsin might be Wisconsin, but Minnesota is beautiful.

No, Im not taking a side in our friendly neighborhood rivalry here. As editor of papers in both great states, Im strictly neutral on that border battle. Both sides of the river are equally lovely.

Rather, those are the two most misspelled words by people in each state, according to Google Trends. The tech giant released the data on which words people in each state search for how to spell Tuesday in advance of the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

According to the analysis of data gathered between Jan. 1 and April 30, people in Wisconsin search How to spell Wisconsin more than any other word, while Minnesotans need a hand spelling beautiful.

It seems ridiculous to me that Wisconsinites cant spell the name of their home state, but the New York Times is more forgiving in its article Is Wisconsin really that hard to spell? published Wednesday. As Times writer Christopher Mele said, In fairness to the people of the Badger State, if you stare at the name long enough, youll convince yourself its not spelled right.

Wisconsin Secretary of Tourism Stephanie Klett told Mele the confusion comes from the states rich Native American History. According to Klett, the large number of American Indian tribes in the area each had their own spellings, which led to some confusion.

Proving Wisconsin can have no better advocate, Klett found the positive side of the common spelling error.

Much like our incredible state, there is no word out there like Wisconsin. Were unique, she said.

Minnesota is less unique. Beautiful leads the country as the most commonly searched word, as well as being the most misspelled in five states. California, Kentucky, New York and Ohio all struggle with what order all those vowels are supposed to be in. (I might show my bias here a bit, but I think Minnesota is the most beautiful of those states that cant spell beautiful.)

While it isnt unique, at least beautiful is better than pneumonia, which residents of Alabama, Maine, Michigan and Washington all double-checked before writing.

Some of the words are tricky even for the whizzes at Google. The first version of the map listed the most misspelled word in Washington, D.C., ninety as nintey (Full disclosure: I just misspelled it as ninty. Thanks, AutoCorrect, for saving me from that particularly embarrassing error).

Oddly enough, people in Connecticut and West Virginia really needed to learn how to spell supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, a word made famous by a movie that turned 53 this year, Mary Poppins. I cant imagine why youd need to know that, but I can certainly understand not spelling it right on the first try. And Im a little shocked AutoCorrect reads it as a word, since I still cant get it to learn my name.

I try not to be a snob, but some words on this map of misspellings are just baffling to me. How can so many people in Mississippi not know how to spell nanny? Its a five-letter word and three of them are the same! Im also a bit bewildered by Louisianas most misspelled word, giraffe. Whats going on there down in Cajun country?

Banana and tomorrow, the most misspelled words in New Mexico and Arizona, respectively, make sense to me. If it hadnt been for a Gwen Stefani song, I might still be adding too many ns to banana.

Personally, Ive never kept track exactly, but if I had to guess, my most often misspelled word is likely camaraderie, which I have to fight not to add letters to every time I type it. It does not help that Merriam-Webster says we can also spell it comradery, a word Ive never seen used, even though I constantly combine the two into comaradery, which looks right to no one.

Luckily, misspellings wont be a problem much longer. Were well on our way back to the times of Geoffrey Chaucer, when spelling was largely optional, to borrow a joke from my favorite author, Terry Pratchett.

With the days of typing on our phones  or rather, mistyping as we fat-finger those tiny non-buttons on the touch screens  and leaving letters out to meet character limits for social media, spelling is going the way of cursive writing.

Id complain, but then Id have to learn how to spell comaradery correctly.
Washington (AFP) - In a series of morning tweets, President Donald Trump threw Washington's relations with Doha into deep crisis on Tuesday and raised doubts about the future of the largest US air base in the Middle East.

Trump publicly accused key regional ally Qatar of funding extremism, while tacitly backing a blockade of the emirate, home to the Al-Udeid Air Base near Doha where around 10,000 US military personnel are stationed.

The base is also the regional headquarters of US special forces and air force commands -- two vital components of American military operations in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq and beyond.

Trump's comments came after Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf states broke diplomatic relations with their smaller neighbor.

The US leader appeared to claim credit for Gulf states isolating Doha, a move he said could "be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism!"

"So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off," Trump said in a morning tweet.

"They said they would take a hard line on funding... extremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar," he said.

Trump's tweets mark a major departure in US foreign policy that could upend the balance of power in the Middle East, and left his administration scrambling to contain the damage.

Just weeks ago Trump smiled and shook hands with Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, saying "we are friends, we have been friends for a long time now."

Pentagon spokesman Jeff Davis tried to quell concerns about the future of Al-Udeid, stressing there had been "no impact" on US military operations in Qatar "and we don't anticipate there will be."

Apparently contradicting Trump, spokesman Sean Spicer said the White House "wants to see this issue deescalated and resolved immediately."

"The president had a very, very constructive conversation with the emir during his visit in Riyadh," Spicer added.

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"At that time, he was very heartened by the emir's commitment to formally joining the terrorist financing targeting center."

- 'Real talk' -

Among diplomats and former US officials there was shock that Trump would so openly pick sides in what is effectively a dispute between allies.

Previous US administrations have expressed deep concern about the hundreds of millions of dollars that flow from Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to the likes of the Islamic State group, Al-Qaeda, Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.

But the White House has preferred to quietly coax those capitals into adopting tighter financial rules and cracking down on individual donations, while building invaluable intelligence and military cooperation.

That approach was epitomized by President George W. Bush's approach to Saudi Arabia after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens.

Just hours before Trump's tweets, the US ambassador in Qatar Dana Shell Smith took to Twitter herself to stress the "great partnership" with Qatar and "real progress to counter terrorist financing."

Aside from providing a vital base for US troops, Qatar has garnered significant regional influence, from becoming a major player in Libya to dramatically influencing the stance of the Syrian opposition.

Bob Corker, the Republican head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, appeared stunned when informed by journalists about Trump's tweets on Qatar.

"Some of our Arab friends have different sensibilities relative to groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and others, and it's created some dissension, and it's been our policy that we work with everybody in the region in a way that's constructive," he responded.

But Trump's tweets may not come as much of a shock inside the White House.

Officials say that the president and his top aide and son-in-law Jared Kushner have been impressed by Saudi Arabia's dynamic young deputy crown prince Mohammad bin Salman, who is vying to become the country's next king.

In Washington there are growing fears that tacit support could now embolden Saudi Arabia and the UAE to pursue regime change in Qatar or make other demands that are so punitive they will stoke a crisis.

- 'Saudi-Emirati ambitions' -

Saudi Arabia and the UAE have long been infuriated by Qatar's support for the Muslim Brotherhood, for the Arab Spring which overthrew several autocratic regimes and for its tolerance of arch-rival Iran.

Al-Jazeera -- the Doha-based channel which has been highly critical of the Saudi royal family -- has also been a thorn in their side.

"Given the vehemence in the Saudi and Emirati public statements and this history between these three countries, it may be that the Saudis and Emiratis are seeking to push out senior Qatari leaders," said a former senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

"I worry that the United States has joined this endeavor without knowing the full extent of the Saudi-Emirati ambitions or endgame."

The official said that given the turmoil, Qatar's leaders may try to reassure US central command that Al-Udeid operations are secure to keep Trump from backing dramatic Saudi action.

"Fundamentally, Qatar should want to keep CENTCOM fat and happy."
LONDON (Reuters) - British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said on Tuesday he saw no reason to cancel Donald Trump's state visit to Britain after the U.S. president criticized Mayor Sadiq Khan's response to the London Bridge killings. Trump has lambasted Khan on Twitter, accusing him of making a "pathetic excuse", for saying that Londoners should not be alarmed by the sight of additional police on the streets of the capital following the attack that killed seven people. "He (Khan) is entirely right to say what he said to reassure the people of his city about the presence of armed officers on the streets," Johnson said in a BBC radio interview in response to a question on whether Trump's state visit should be canceled. "The invitation has been issued and accepted and I see no reason to change that but as far as what Sadiq Khan has said about the reassurances he's offered the people of London, I think he was entirely right to speak in the way he did." "I don't wish to enter into a row between those two individuals who are I think are probably perfectly able to stick up for themselves," he said of Trump and Khan. (Reporting by Estelle Shirbon and Kate Holton, editing by Elizabeth Piper)
Former FBI Director James Comeys opening statement, prepared for the hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee Thursday, was released to the public Wednesday afternoon. Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., told NBC News that the testimony was released a day early because thats what he and Comey had decided. In the testimony, Comey confirms a number of awkward, potentially improper conversations with Trump, who asked him for a loyalty pledge, to end the investigation of Michael Flynn and to announce publicly that the president wasnt under investigation. Below are 10 takeaways from the seven pages of testimony, which is embedded in its entirety at the bottom of this page.

(Yahoo News photo Illustration; photos: AP, Getty)

Comey told Trump he wasnt under investigation 

In the letter Trump sent Comey informing him he was fired, he thanked him for informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under FBI investigation. Comey confirms that he assured Trump at least once that he personally was not the subject of any investigation.

In that context, prior to the January 6 meeting, I discussed with the FBIs leadership team whether I should be prepared to assure President-Elect Trump that we were not investigating him personally. That was true; we did not have an open counter-intelligence case on him. We agreed I should do so if circumstances warranted. During our one-on-one meeting at Trump Tower, based on President-Elect Trumps reaction to the briefing and without him directly asking the question, I offered that assurance.

 but didnt want to do so publicly in case things changed.

In a March 30 phone conversation Comey explained to Trump why there had been a hearing and how he had briefed congressional leadership on the specifics of the investigation. He did not explain to the president that he didnt want to make a public statement saying he (Trump) was not under investigation, because he would have to publicly correct that statement if the situation changedprecisely the circumstance that had arisen when Comey felt obliged to inform Congressional leaders, just before the election, that he had reopened the investigation into Hillary Clintons emails.

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I explained that we had briefed the leadership of Congress on exactly which individuals we were investigating and that we had told those Congressional leaders that we were not personally investigating President Trump. I reminded him I had previously told him that. He repeatedly told me, We need to get that fact out. (I did not tell the President that the FBI and the Department of Justice had been reluctant to make public statements that we did not have an open case on President Trump for a number of reasons, most importantly because it would create a duty to correct, should that change.)

Trump asked Comey for loyalty pledge.

In a private dinner in the White House Green Room on January 27, Comey said that Trump repeatedly asked him for loyalty, leading to an awkward silence:

A few moments later, the President said, I need loyalty, I expect loyalty. I didnt move, speak, or change my facial expression in any way during the awkward silence that followed. We simply looked at each other in silence. The conversation then moved on, but he returned to the subject near the end of our dinner.

When Trump brought up loyalty again, Comey finessed the issue by promising honesty, and honest loyalty, a phrase he left deliberately ambiguous:

I replied, You will always get honesty from me. He paused and then said, Thats what I want, honest loyalty. I paused, and then said, You will get that from me. As I wrote in the memo I created immediately after the dinner, it is possible we understood the phrase honest loyalty differently, but I decided it wouldnt be productive to push it further. The term  honest loyalty  had helped end a very awkward conversation and my explanations had made clear what he should expect.

Comey confirmed reporting that Trump asked him to let Flynn go.

On May 16, the week after Comeys firing, the New York Times, the Washington Post and other outlets reported that Trump had asked Comey to forego the investigation of former national security adviser Michael Flynn go, as Flynn was a good guy. In his prepared remarks, Comey confirms that account, stating that on February 14, Trump brought up Flynn in the Oval Office in a private, one-on-one conversation. After waving off a group of people led by chief of staff Reince Priebus, Trump returned to the topic of the Flynn investigation:

The President then returned to the topic of Mike Flynn, saying, He is a good guy and has been through a lot. He repeated that Flynn hadnt done anything wrong on his calls with the Russians, but had misled the Vice President. He then said, I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go. I replied only that he is a good guy. (In fact, I had a positive experience dealing with Mike Flynn when he was a colleague as Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency at the beginning of my term at FBI.) I did not say I would let this go.

But Trump had other, unspecified concerns about Flynn.

Also from the February 14 Oval Office meeting:

The President began by saying Flynn hadnt done anything wrong in speaking with the Russians, but he had to let him go because he had misled the Vice President. He added that he had other concerns about Flynn, which he did not then specify.

Comey said he asked Attorney General Jeff Sessions to not leave him alone with Trump.

On Tuesday, the New York Times reported that several current and former law enforcement officials told them that Comey had asked Sessions not to leave him alone with Trump because he was concerned the private interactions between FBI director and president were inappropriate. In his remarks, Comey corroborated this reporting, stating that he made the request to Sessions after the February 14 meeting:

Shortly afterwards, I spoke with Attorney General Sessions in person to pass along the Presidents concerns about leaks. I took the opportunity to implore the Attorney General to prevent any future direct communication between the President and me. I told the AG that what had just happened  him being asked to leave while the FBI Director, who reports to the AG, remained behind  was inappropriate and should never happen. He did not reply. For the reasons discussed above, I did not mention that the President broached the FBIs potential investigation of General Flynn.

After meeting with Trump for the first time, Comey made it his policy to document their conversations.

The ousted FBI director is known to be a fastidious notetaker, but he hadnt previously felt the need to keep contemporaneous records of every private conversation.

I felt compelled to document my first conversation with the President-Elect in a memo. To ensure accuracy, I began to type it on a laptop in an FBI vehicle outside Trump Tower the moment I walked out of the meeting. Creating written records immediately after one-on-one conversations with Mr. Trump was my practice from that point forward. This had not been my practice in the past.

Comey spoke more often to Trump in four months than he did Obama in three-and-a-half years.

Comey, who took office in September 2013, drew into sharp relief the contrast between the one-on-one interactions he had with the two presidents he served.

I spoke alone with President Obama twice in person (and never on the phone)  once in 2015 to discuss law enforcement policy issues and a second time, briefly, for him to say goodbye in late 2016. In neither of those circumstances did I memorialize the discussions. I can recall nine one-on-one conversations with President Trump in four months  three in person and six on the phone.

Trump specifically rebutted a leaked report rumoring that he was compromised by Russian hookers.

In early January, an unsubstantiated manifesto of material gathered by a former British intelligence official was published by BuzzFeed. Other outlets confirmed they were aware of the documents but had been unable to verify their contents. One of the items in the reports stated that Russia had compromising footage of Trump and Russian prostitutes and were using that to gain leverage over him. Per Comey, Trump cited that allegation in a March 30 phone call:

On the morning of March 30, the President called me at the FBI. He described the Russia investigation as a cloud that was impairing his ability to act on behalf of the country. He said he had nothing to do with Russia, had not been involved with hookers in Russia, and had always assumed he was being recorded when in Russia. He asked what we could do to lift the cloud. I responded that we were investigating the matter as quickly as we could, and that there would be great benefit, if we didnt find anything, to our having done the work well. He agreed, but then re-emphasized the problems this was causing him.

Comey did not speak to Trump between April 11 and his May 9 termination.

The pairs final conversation was a phone call from Trump to Comey on the morning of April 11. In it, Trump asked what Comey was doing to get out the fact that the president wasnt personally under investigation. Comey said that Trump should have the White House counsel contact leadership at the Justice Department to make the request. Trump took that advice, but also referenced a thing that the two had:

He said he would do that and added, Because I have been very loyal to you, very loyal; we had that thing you know. I did not reply or ask him what he meant by that thing. I said only that the way to handle it was to have the White House Counsel call the Acting Deputy Attorney General. He said that was what he would do and the call ended.

Read Comeys testimony in full below.

James B. Comey Statement by Yahoo News on Scribd

Read more from Yahoo News:
By Ana Nicolaci da Costa and Charlotte Greenfield WELLINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump told his top diplomat that the dispute over probes into links between his inner circle and Russia should not undermine U.S. efforts to rebuild relations with Moscow, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Tuesday. Speaking in New Zealand after a trip to Australia, Tillerson reiterated the U.S. commitment to the Asia-Pacific region as global leaders have expressed growing mistrust over the Trump administration, which has withdrawn from key international agreements since taking office. At home, Trump's administration has been plagued by questions over links to the Russian government. Tillerson said Trump told him to try to improve ties with Russia regardless of the U.S. political backdrop. "I can't really comment on any of that because I don't have any direct knowledge," Tillerson told a news conference in Wellington, when asked how worried he was that the U.S. political crisis could take down the Trump administration. "The president's been clear to me: do not let what's happened over here in the political realm prevent you from the work that you need to do on this relationship and he's been quite clear with me... that we might make progress. I'm really not involved in any of these other issues," he said after a meeting with New Zealand Prime Minister Bill English. U.S. intelligence agencies concluded in January that Moscow tried to tilt the election campaign in Trump's favor, including by hacking into the emails of senior Democrats, a charge the Kremlin denies. Trump has denied any collusion but the FBI and congressional probes into the Russia matter have dogged the early months of his presidency. Tillerson said the Asia-Pacific region remained "extremely important" for the United States both in terms of national security and economic interests. The Trump administration has come under fire for withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal and more recently the Paris Climate accord - both key to the region and to the small island nation of New Zealand. His visit was met by protesters, who threw condoms filled with water at a figure of Trump in front of parliament, protesting against the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris agreement and urging English to take a tougher stance, according to media. "We do believe that engaging globally remains important and we will be seeking ways to remain engaged and there are many ways we can do that, through the U.N. intergovernmental panel on climate change as well as economic and trade forums that we will obviously be very active in as well," he said. The visit also comes at a time when China, one of New Zealand's top trading and diplomatic partners, is projecting itself as the leader of free trade particularly in the Asia-Pacific region. (Editing by Nick Macfie)
Christopher Wray, President Trumps pick to replace James Comey as director of the FBI, is little known outside Washington but widely respected in the law enforcement and criminal justice communities.

Wray is a man of impeccable credentials, the president wrote on Twitter, promising, Details to follow.

Trump has submitted Wrays nomination to the Senate, the White House said Monday night. The official nomination comes three weeks after Trumps initial announcement of his pick for FBI director.

I am honored and humbled to be nominated, Wray said in a statement released by the Department of Justice. From my earliest days working with agents as a line prosecutor to my time working with them at the Department of Justice in the aftermath of 9/11, I have been inspired by the men and women of the FBI  inspired by their professionalism, integrity, courage, and sacrifice for the public. If confirmed, it will be a privilege and honor to once again work with them.

Trumps new pick, who has been in private practice for the past 12 years, is currently a litigation partner at firm King and Spalding, where he represented New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie in the 2015 George Washington Bridge lane closure, or Bridgegate, case as well as several Fortune 100 companies under investigation by the Department of Justice.

Wray joined the Justice Department under former President George W. Bush in 2001 and played a critical role in the departments counterterrorism efforts after the 9/11 attacks. According to an ACLU database, Wrays name appears in several redacted documents regarding decisions about torture. He ran the criminal division as assistant attorney general from 2003 to 2005. There he oversaw major corporate fraud investigations, including the governments inquiry into energy giant Enron Corp.

Wray was very fair in the DOJs investigation into Enron, Norm Eisen, ethics counsel in the Obama administration, said June 7, calling Wray a good choice.

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Wray was tapped by Trump following a weeks-long search for the next FBI director after the president fired former Director James Comey early last month. The early names floated, in addition to acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, were mostly politicians, including Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, former Sen. Joseph Lieberman and former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers (not the Mike Rogers who runs the National Security Agency), a former FBI agent and the FBI Agents Associations pick for director. But a law enforcement professional was viewed as a safer choice for getting through the Senate, where Democrats and at least some Republicans were considered likely to oppose a nominee with a partisan background. Trump interviewed Wray on May 31, press secretary Sean Spicer said in a briefing last week.

Assistant Attorney General Christopher Wray speaks at a press conference at the Justice Department in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 12, 2005. (Photo: Lawrence Jackson/AP)

Trumps announcement comes a day before Comeys anticipated June 8 testimony in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee about his firing and conversations with the president about the Russia probe.

The announcement is clearly  an effort to distract from our Senate hearings today and tomorrow, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said.

Harvard Law professor Jack Goldsmith, who worked with Wray at the DOJ, called Wray smart, serious and professional in a statement, though he pointed out that Wray lacks the experience of his two predecessors.

Wray is a good choice, a much better choice than any name I previously saw floated, and a much better choice than I expected Trump to make, Goldsmith wrote. I think Wray is qualified to be Director of the FBI.

A former DOJ official who worked with Wray told Yahoo News that hes a safe choice.

The official said that Wray is well-respected, smart and has integrity, but expressed concerns about Wrays lack of management experience as he faces the task of helming an agency that is extremely difficult to run.

I suspect he will not dominate the institution. If people think hes going to control the FBI, I suspect theyre going to be disappointed, the official said.

As assistant attorney general, Wray had been prepared to resign alongside top Bush administration officials in protest of the Bush administrations attempts to reinstate an illegal surveillance program, according to a Washingtonian report.

Those officials included Comey, who was acting attorney general, and then-FBI Director Robert Mueller (who will head the FBI inquiry into ties between the Trump campaign and Russian officials as a special counsel).

Look, I dont know whats going on, but before you guys all pull the ripcords, please give me a heads-up so I can jump with you, Wray said to Comey in 2004.

Deputy U.S. Attorney General James B. Comey, left, with Assistant Attorney General Christopher Wray during a news conference at the Justice Department, Dec. 15, 2004, in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

At the beginning of Wrays career, he worked as an assistant U.S. attorney in Georgia in 1997, and then rose to become an associate deputy attorney general after he joined the DOJ in 2001.

The nominee has donated to Republican presidential candidates, including Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012, though he did not contribute to the 2016 GOP campaign, according to the New York Times. Wray signed a March 2015 letter endorsing the nomination of Sally Yates as deputy attorney general. Yates was fired by Trump after she fought the presidents executive order on immigration.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who recently told Trump hes willing to resign, wrote in a statement June 7 that the president wanted an FBI director who has integrity, who understands and is committed to the rule of law.

Wray  possess[es] all gifts necessary to be a great Director of the FBI, Sessions wrote.

The FBI Agents Association said June 7 that its executive board looks forward to meeting Wray to gain insight into his views on the agency, agents and national security.

The presidents choice is a safe, mainstream pick from a president who at one point was considering politicians for a job that has historically been kept outside of politics, the New York Times wrote.

Wray earned a bachelors degree from Yale University in 1989 and a law degree from Yale in 1992.

Once officially nominated, Wray would face a Senate hearing to be confirmed as FBI director.

Updated, June 27 at 11 a.m.: The piece has been updated to reflect news of Trumps official nomination of Wray and Wrays statement on his nomination.

Read more from Yahoo News:
Ankara (AFP) - Turkey's parliament on Wednesday approved deploying troops to a Turkish base in Qatar amid a widening crisis between Doha and its rivals in the Gulf.

The move is seen as a sign of Turkish support to Qatar after Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain, among other states, cut diplomatic ties and major transport links with the gas-rich emirate.

The agreement does not contain any specific number of troops to be stationed in the base, or when.

Turkish ambassador to Qatar Ahmet Demirok told AFP last year the base would eventually be home to up to 3,000 troops or possibly more "depending on the needs".

Turkey has close ties with Qatar including in the energy sector, but also maintains good relations with other Gulf countries.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was careful not to criticise Riyadh, stood on Tuesday in defence of Qatar and said he intends to "develop" ties with the embattled Gulf state hit by sanctions from Saudi Arabia and its allies.
While President Donald Trump is known for keeping Twitterati on their feet (or rather fingertips), late Tuesday saw his son, Eric Trump, becoming the talk of social media after he gave a couple of interviews.

In an interview on "The Sean Hannity Show," Eric made some disparaging comments about Democrats such as the lack of direction that the Democratic Party has taken, why the Republican Party won the election and much more.

I've never seen hatred like this. To me, they're not even people. It's so, so sad, I mean, morality is just gone," Erics said during the interview, Business Insider reported. Needless to say, Twitterati reacted to the presidents son insulting the people of an entire political faith.

A Twitter user even likened his comments to the discourse often used by former German leader Adolf Hitler. Another called his statement an advocacy for genocide.

However, there were few people who stood by Eric and supported his statements.

Others were quick to call him out on a report by Forbes, released Tuesday, stating Eric had transferred $1.2 million from the Eric Trump Foundation to the Trump Organization between 2007 and 2015, money which was supposed to help treat children suffering from cancer.

Read: Ivanka Trump Behind Syria Airstrikes? Trump's Daughter Has Influence Over President, Eric Trump Says

Although Eric denied any allegations made against him, stating that almost all the contributions made to his foundation go toward St. Jude childrens hospital, Twitter was already abuzz with users condemning the presidents son for using charity money to fund his fathers business.

Social media users stated that someone who has been involved in such a questionable act has no business commenting on the kind of morals that people should follow.

Trump has often been criticized by the public for his inability to keep his business dealings and administration activities separate. Eric, however, defended his father, saying that the latter has never tried to interfere in the family business ever since he became the POTUS and handed over all business-related responsibilities to his two sons.

We don't talk about the activities. We don't talk about what we're doing in the business. We don't  we just don't mix, Eric said, Politico reported. It doesn't blur the lines. You're allowed to show that and remember, the president of the United States has zero conflicts of interest. Zero, he added.

Eric's claim that the president had zero conflicts of interest was slammed by the Twitter users:

Eric also added during the ABC interview that Trump-Russia collusion allegations were the greatest hoax of all time. A Twitter user mocked his stance on FBIs Russia probe by saying everything Eric stated during the interview was nothing new, as it all had been discussed publicly.

One of the Twitter users also proved that he has a long memory by posting a throwback picture of Eric posing with a dead leopard in front of him, pointing out that the presidents son killed wild animals for fun.

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BEIRUT (Reuters) - U.S.-backed Syrian rebels fighting Islamic State will announce the start date for the final assault on Raqqa city on Tuesday, aiming to oust the militants from their de facto capital in Syria, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said on Monday. The SDF is an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias backed by the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State. On Saturday the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, part of the SDF, told Reuters the fifth and final stage of the attack would start in the coming few days. "The SDF will announce tomorrow the date of the start of the fifth stage of the campaign to liberate Raqqa which will include an assault on the city of Raqqa," the SDF said in a statement. In the past week the SDF has advanced to within a few kilometers of the city's edge, after gradually encircling Raqqa since November in a multi-phased campaign to drive Islamic State from the city where it has planned attacks on the West. On Monday it took some of the final few villages to the west of the city which is located on the River Euphrates some 90 km (56 miles) from the Turkish border, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said. "The (SDF) will enter the city and begin attacking Raqqa directly," Ibrahim Ibrahim, head of the Syrian Kurdish PYD party's media center in Europe, told Reuters. The PYD is the political arm of the YPG. The assault on Raqqa will pile more pressure on Islamic State's self-declared caliphate with the group facing defeat in the Iraqi city of Mosul and being forced into retreat across much of Syria, where Deir al-Zor is its last major foothold. (Reporting by Lisa Barrington; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
American warplanes bombed an Iranian-backed militia that entered a supposed no-go zone near a U.S garrison in southern Syria on Tuesday, U.S. officials said.

The strike marked the second by a U.S. aircraft in less than a month and signals a growing risk of direct conflict between American and Iranian forces and their partners in Syria. The air raid came after the militia aligned with the Syrian regime and Iran failed to heed a warning to leave the area.

U.S. officials said that the force of about 60 fighters armed with tanks and anti-aircraft weapons entered an exclusion zone around the base at al Tanf, where American Special Operations Forces train Syrian rebels. Before unleashing their bombs, American military officials first contacted their Russian counterparts who are allied with the Iranian-backed force. But when the new column refused to leave, the Americans struck. It is unclear how many casualties resulted.

In a statement, U.S. Central Command said the coalition does not seek to fight Syrian regime or pro-regime forces but remains ready to defend themselves if pro-regime forces refuse to vacate the de-confliction zone.

Even after the second strike, Syrian government forces and their Iranian backers remained in place within the so-called exclusionzone, U.S. officials said. American forces declared a 55-mile area around the base to be off-limits to pro-regime forces, and informed the Russians late last year.

Pentagon officials would not say what their plans are if the remaining forces refuse to move out of the area. After last months airstrike, U.S. planes dropped leaflets demanding the fighters leave.

President Donald Trump has traded hostile rhetoric with Iran but his administration has yet to articulate how it plans to address an increasingly volatile situation in Syria with Iranian advisors and proxies in close proximity to U.S. forces and their local allies.

I dont know that theres a detailed policy carved in stone about what we will or will not allow the Iranians to do, an administration official told FP before Tuesdays air raid. But its something we would watch very closely.

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The strike came on the same day U.S. and coalition aircraft were busy supporting thousands of Syrian Arab and Kurdish forces assaulting the de-facto Islamic State capital of Raqqa, the terrorist groups last urban stronghold in what is left of its caliphate in Iraq and Syria.

The Raqqa assault comes even as U.S. officials acknowledge that most of the Islamic States leadership has already fled the city for the more isolated Euphrates River valley running from the city east to the Iraqi border. But military planners have stuck with plans drawn up under the Obama administration and continued under President Donald Trump, predicated on the fall of Mosul and Raqqa before launching an effort to push the terror group out of the valley and Deir Ezzor province.

U.S. officials viewthe Iranian movement near al Tanf, in the extreme south of Syria, as a probing action to test the U.S.-trained forces there, and possibly act as a blocking force to prevent them from moving north to Deir Ezzor.

The Syrian regime wants to eventually retake the province, and Iran views the province and the river valley as a vital conduit to maintain influence from Iraq, through Syria and into Lebanon.

Speaking at an event in Washington last week, Lt. Gen. Thomas Trask, vice commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command, expressed concern that loosening economic sanctions on Iran could give the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a freer hand in training and equipping proxy forces in nearby countries.

If anything, increased defense dollars in Iran are likely to go toward increasing that network, looking for ways to expand it, Trask said. Weve already seen evidence of them taking units and officers out of the conventional side that are working with the IRGC in Syria, the general added, declaring that despite the effort, theyre not winning in Syria, and without Russian air support they would be unable to operate.

The 55,000-strong U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces moving on Raqqa are a mix of Arab and Kurdish fighters bolstered by American advisors who can call in artillery and aircraft to support their movements. It remains unclear how close to the fight the Americans will get, but they wont be with the lead elements that are kicking down doors and going on raids, spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition in Baghdad Col. Ryan Dillon, told FP on Tuesday. The advisors will be able to get close to the fight, however, as long as they stop at what U.S. Army doctrine calls the last line of concealment close to the front line.

The U.S. has supplied the SDF with small arms, machine guns, armored vehicles, and heavy weapons to face the threat of armored suicide vehicles that the Islamic State has used in Mosul and elsewhere.

The Syrian Kurds received their first shipment of American equipment on May 30, after U.S. officials told Turkey that it would supply them as well as the Syrian Arabs, a move that has angered Ankara. Turkey considers the Kurdish YPG to be the armed wing as the PKK, or Kurdistan Workers Party, a designated terrorist group inside Turkey that has waged a multi-decade campaign to carve out an independent Kurdish state. The United States has identified the PKK as a terrorist organization, but insists the YPG is a separate group.

The invasion of the city comes as no surprise, as the SDF has been encircling the city for months, and U.S. airstrikes have been bombing Islamic State positions for much of the past year.

Pentagon officials say it is unclear how many Islamic State leaders remain in Raqqa as the noose has slowly tightened and many leaders have fled to Deir Ezzor and elsewhere. Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis told reporters Tuesday that that plan will continue to prioritize Raqqa however, and theres a sequencing to the war that American military leaders want to stick with, even as ISIS leaders will surely try and build their external plotting headquarters elsewhere.

They want very much to be able to strike us, outside of Iraq and Syria, he said.

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Foreign Policys Dan De Luce contributed to this report.

Photo Credit: DELIL SOULEIMAN/AFP/Getty Images
Hamburg Hills Farm hosted the 2017 Vernon County Dairy Breakfast on Saturday, June 3. The 37th event was sponsored by the Vernon County Dairy Promotion Committee and served a record 2,750 people from throughout the Coulee Region and beyond on what turned out to be a picture perfect day on the farm.

Hamburg Hills Farm, located at E2556 Hamburg Ridge Road, is owned and operated by Tim and Lisa Servais, they purchased the farm from Tims parents Jim and Gloria Servais in 2004.The farm holds a Stoddard address, but is located 4 miles northwest of Chaseburg, next to St. Peter's Hamburg Church on Hwy. K. The parcel of land dates back to 1855 and was owned by the Streigel family until 1971, when Jim and Gloria Servais purchased the property.

Glen Hoff was the Master of Ceremonies and provided words of wisdom to everyone throughout the morning on how the general population can help keep the dairy industry moving forward. Area military personnel from Chaseburg, Coon Valley and Stoddard presented the colors, while the National Anthem was sung beautifully by members of the La Crosse Central High School Choir. Viterbo University's Master of Arts in Servant Leadership Director, Thomas Thibodeau gave the invocation along with a few interesting facts about the importance of the dairy industry in feeding the growing world population.

The Servais Family was introduced. Tim and Lisa are only the second generation of the family to live and work on the property. They have three children, Zach, 19, Sabrina, 17 and Jackson, 14. Tim and Lisa said they were honored to have hosted the dairy breakfast. They introduced several of the 17 employees who keep the farm operating like a well-oiled machine and thanked all of them for what they do every day.

Jim and Gloria joined their family on stage. Jim, who is also the Vernon County Dairy Promotion Committee president, thanked everyone for attending the event and Mother nature for cooperating. Both Servais families were presented with handcrafted cedar benches from the Vernon County Dairy Promotion Committee for hosting the event.

Vernon County Dairy breakfast Chairman Brad Robson thanked the Servais families for hosting the event and said he was humbled by all the amazing volunteers who dedicate themselves every year to make sure the only thing scrambled at the dairy breakfast is eggs.

I cannot say enough good things about all the volunteers who make these events happen and the families who step up every year to host. It is a lot of work putting on an event like this, but also a lot of fun, especially when I watched the storm clouds move north at 4 a.m., Robson said.

Robson also thanked all the people attending the event for their continued support of the dairy industry, which is without a doubt everyones bread and butter.

The outgoing 2016 Vernon County Dairy Princess, Mikayla Lepke and attendants, Bekka Bast, the daughter of Kristine Bekkadal and Tracy Bast of Viroqua; Lexi Wagemester, the daughter of Steve and Sara Wagemester of Viroqua; and Karly Anderson, the daughter of Rob and Kari Anderson of Westby crowned the 2017 Princess, Sabrina Servais, the daughter of the Tim and Lisa Servais. Sabrina said it has been a wish of hers since she was a little girl to become the Vernon County Dairy Princess, a role she can use to promote the dairy industry, which is near and dear to her heart.

Buses rolled in and out of the farm from La Crosse, Chaseburg and Coon Valley filled with people ready to enjoy a hearty breakfast with all the fixings as old-time music by Gary Brueggen and the Ridgeland Dutchman echoed in the background. After breakfast families strolled the farm grounds checking out numerous events including: health and information booths; kids' activities; petting zoo; butter making demonstrations; a quilt display; farm building tours; antique and modern farm machinery displays; and a grain extraction rescue demonstration by Coon Creek Fire & Rescue.

Peter and Susan Kroner of Onalaska brought their son, Karl and grandchildren Russell and Addisyn Kroner to the Vernon County Dairy Breakfast. They were in awe of just how wonderful an event Vernon County puts on. Peter said no other dairy breakfast he has attended holds a candle to Vernon County. Susan said it was absolutely wonderful from start to finish. Karl, who was in the Army for 10 years, said the military could learn something from Vernon County about serving good food in mass amounts, while Russell and Addisyn simply loved the animals, face painting and sitting on the tractors. But the icing on the cake for this family was simply how nice everyone was to complete strangers.

A huge thank you to the Servais family for hosting the 2017 Vernon County Dairy Breakfast along with all the volunteers who donated their time to make the event successful.

The location of the 2018 Vernon County Dairy Breakfast was not announced.
The struggle for United Airlines to get good press continues, this time, a violinist accused the airline security of wrestling her instrument away from her.

Orchestral violinist Yennifer Correia was on her way to perform with the Missouri Symphony Orchestra when she was stopped at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Texas Sunday. Her Houston lawyer Philip A. MacNaughton posted a letter on her Facebook page on the same day describing the events.

"Yennifer Correiawas in the process of boarding her flight from Houston to St Louis when a United supervisor refused to permit her to carry her violin onto the plane," MacNaughton wrote.

"Ms Correia explained that it was necessary for the instrument to remain with her and asked what her options would be. The United supervisor told Ms. Correia there were 'no options'and became belligerent when Ms. Correia asked for her name."

"Without provocation, the supervisor for the Chicago-based carrier then lunged for Ms. Correias case and, incredibly, tried to wrestle it away from the musician. Ms. Correia screamed for help. The United supervisor threatened to 'call security' and Ms. Correia responded, 'Please do!' at which point the United supervisor ran away."

READ MORE: United Airlines Flew A Plane In Unsafe Condition 23 Times, FAA Says

This year has been rough for United. The scandals seemed to come one after another during April, and the negative press has taken a toll on the companys stock market.

The first major scandal of the year came when David Dao refused to give up his seat on a flight in Chicago he'd already boarded, so the crew could make room for airline staff earlier in the year in April. He was dragged out by security officers, which was caught on tape which went viral on the internet.

The fallout from that event was swift with heavy criticism placed on the CEO of United and the practices of Uniteds policy for removing passengers when planes are overbooked.

Story continues

"I continue to be disturbed by what happened on this flight," said CEO Oscar Munoz in a statement at the time, "and I deeply apologize to the customer forcibly removed and to all the customers aboard. No one should ever be mistreated this way."

READ MORE: United Airlines Scorpion Scare: Flight Delayed After Stinging Insect Found Inside Plane

Only a few days later, United found itself in another scandal, when, a few days after the forced removal of Dao, another passenger on his way from Houston to Calgary was allegedly stung by a scorpion.

For more news videos visit Yahoo View, available on iOS and Android.

The poisonous creature fell from an overhead bin and landed on Richard Bell's hair as he was eating lunch Sunday in his business class seat, according to his wife Linda.

"My husband felt something in his hair. He grabbed it out of his hair and it fell onto his dinner table. As he was grabbing it by the tail it stung him," she told CNN at the time.

The repercussions were initially damning to the airline, with stocks falling low in mid April at the height of the scandal. However, by May, the airline had recovered, and was at an all-time high. Its unclear yet how much the latest scandal will affect the company.

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Photo: Getty Images/Justin Sullivan

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Raqa (Syria) (AFP) - US-backed fighters gained ground against the Islamic State group in the streets of Raqa on Wednesday, a day after their months-long offensive finally broke into the jihadists' Syrian bastion.

The Syrian Democratic Forces militia has spent seven months advancing on the city, with backing from the US-led coalition bombing IS in Syria and neighbouring Iraq.

Captured by the jihadists in 2014, Raqa became synonymous with IS atrocities including beheadings and public displays of bodies, and also emerged as a hub for planning attacks abroad.

The SDF's Arab and Kurdish fighters captured the eastern Al-Meshleb district of the city early on Wednesday, after finally entering the neighbourhood the previous day.

On Wednesday, heavy IS fire onto SDF positions inside Al-Meshleb sent smoke rising into the air, an AFP correspondent who entered the city said.

The SDF tried to conceal their vehicles from the jihadists' armed drones, and had placed tyres on the road going into Raqa in a bid to stop IS sending car bombs towards their fighters.

"Fierce clashes are ongoing in Raqa between our forces and Daesh," an SDF official said, using an Arabic acronym for IS.

"They have put a lot of mines in the neighbourhoods but we are advancing" backed by air strikes, the official said.

Outside the city limits, SDF commanders worked with tablet devices to pinpoint targets.

Armoured vehicles, loaded with heavy weapons and covered with camouflage fabric, were parked between olive trees.

The command of "Operation Wrath of the Euphrates" said earlier the SDF captured both Al-Meshleb and the Harqal citadel to the west of the city.

The citadel sits on a hilltop roughly two kilometres (just over a mile) from the city limits.

- 160,000 inside Raqa -

Fighting was also raging in a military complex around two kilometres north of the city, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.

An activist with the Raqa is Being Slaughtered Silently group said people in the city described non-stop bombardment.

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"The bombing has been going for two days and hasn't stopped for more than an hour, it's air strikes, artillery fire and sometimes rockets," Abu Mohamed told AFP.

He said shops were barely open and there were power and water cuts.

The Britain-based Observatory said the US-led coalition had carried out heavy bombing raids in support of the advance.

One of Tuesday's air strikes inside the city killed eight civilians, including three children, Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.

Reported civilian casualties in coalition air strikes have swelled as the SDF has ramped up its offensive.

Late on Monday, at least 21 civilians were killed in a coalition strike as they tried to escape Raqa by dinghy on the Euphrates River, the Observatory said.

An estimated 300,000 civilians were believed to have been living under IS rule in Raqa, including 80,000 displaced from other parts of Syria.

But thousands have fled in recent months, and the UN humanitarian office on Tuesday estimated about 160,000 people remained in the city.

The International Rescue Committee said it was "deeply concerned for the safety of civilians in Raqa" after a drop in numbers fleeing the city in the past week.

That decrease could indicate IS intends to use remaining civilians "as human shields," the aid group said.

The SDF has scored a series of victories since launching its operation to take Raqa in November and on Tuesday announced the battle for Raqa itself had begun.

- Overthrowing 'caliphate' -

Along with Mosul in Iraq, Raqa was one of the twin pivots of the self-styled Islamic "caliphate" that IS declared nearly three years ago.

US-backed forces are battling IS in Mosul too and have now confined the jihadists to a few neighbourhoods around the Old City.

Coalition commander Lieutenant General Steve Townsend said defeating IS in Raqa would "deliver a decisive blow to the idea of ISIS as a physical caliphate".

The coalition began striking IS jihadists in Iraq in August 2014 and expanded its operations to Syria the following month.

In recent weeks, it has also targeted pro-government forces near Syria's border with Jordan.

The coalition said Tuesday it had hit a regime convoy that was nearing the Al-Tanaf garrison, used by US and British troops to train Syrian rebels to fight IS.

The coalition said the contingent was "well advanced" into the 34-mile (55-kilometre) de-confliction zone, where any intrusion is considered hostile.

The Observatory said at least 17 pro-regime troops were killed in the strike.

It was the second time in less than a month that the coalition had attacked pro-regime forces near to the garrison, and government ally Russia slammed the strike as a "act of aggression."

Syria's foreign ministry Wednesday accused Washington of "leading a coalition that practices terrorism," and warned of "the dangers of escalation".

The Syrian army is eager to push east towards the Jordanian and Iraqi borders where some of the country's main oilfields lie before the area can be seized from IS by the SDF or Western-backed rebels.
Washington (AFP) - The United States condemned "terrorist" attacks in Tehran that killed 12 people and wounded dozens on Wednesday in the first attacks in Iran by the so-called Islamic State group.

"The depravity of terrorism has no place in a peaceful, civilized world," State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said.

Gunmen and suicide bombers, acting almost simultaneously, attacked Iran's parliament and a shrine to revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini.

"We express our condolences to the victims and their families, and send our thoughts and prayers to the people of Iran," the brief statement read.

The Islamic State group said it was responsible for the twin attacks in Tehran.

The group said five IS fighters were involved in the attacks. It did not specify how many fighters were involved in each attack, but said they had used firearms, hand grenades and explosives.

IS, a Sunni extremist group, also threatened further attacks in Shia Iran "until God's law is established," raising the prospect of sectarian warfare.

The IS statement claim was circulated on social media accounts sympathetic to the jihadist group.

The group is currently under attack in its two major strongholds, Raqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq.

During a recent visit to Saudi Arabia, President Donald Trump embraced Sunni Arab regimes and blasted Shia Iran as the "spearhead of terrorism."

Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards have vowed revenge for the attacks, claiming that Washington and Riyadh were "involved."

"This terrorist action, coming one week after the meeting of the president of the United States with the leader of the one of the region's reactionary governments (Saudi Arabia)... shows they are involved in this savage action," a Guard statement read.
New York (AFP) - The US tourism industry faces the possibility of another "lost decade" of foreign visitors due to President Donald Trump's travel ban, a leading hotel executive said Monday.

Jonathan Tisch, chief executive of Loews Hotel & Co., warned that policies viewed as hostile to foreign visitors could damage the US industry, much as a visa crackdown and other policies after 9/11 led to the loss of billions of dollars in revenues from overseas travelers.

"When it comes to a business as competitive as travel, we need to remember that words matter. Perceptions matter," Tisch said at a hospitality conference hosted by New York University.

"In other words, it's important to balance security measures designed to keep out people who mean us harm...with words and actions assuring legitimate travelers that we welcome them and their business."

The remarks came as Trump doubled down on his controversial campaign to revive a ban on travelers from seven predominately Muslim countries, saying the measure was needed in the wake of the London attacks. The measure has been blocked in US courts.

Tisch's remarks have been echoed by other leading hoteliers in recent months.

Hilton chief executive Christopher Nassetta, in an interview with CNBC on Monday, called for a "balanced" approach to foreign tourism that recognizes that the vast majority of visitors to the US want to come for the right reasons.

Tisch said it was still too soon to have hard data on the exact impact of Trump's proposed ban, but one of Loews' hotels in Miami has had groups cancel because they had attendees from a travel ban country.

He also cited cases of Emirates airline cutting flights to some US cities and projections of steep cutbacks in foreign travel to New York City.

"This is mostly anecdotal evidence," he said. "We all hope the data on travel to the US remains positive. But no one can deny the tremendous uncertainty people feel about traveling to the US right now."

Tisch endorsed Trump's call for a $1 trillion infrastructure investment program, agreeing with the president's assessment that US airports lag those in other countries and should have runways, gates and terminals upgraded.
Caracas (AFP) - The head of Venezuela's military warned his troops not to commit "atrocities" against protesters demonstrating in the country's deadly political crisis -- ahead of fresh clashes on Wednesday.

The warning by General Vladimir Padrino Lopez, who is also President Nicolas Maduro's defense minister, came after more than two months of violent clashes between protesters and security forces.

The opposition and a press rights group say security forces have attacked, robbed and run over protesters and journalists.

Fresh clashes erupted Wednesday as thousands of protesters tried to march to the offices of the electoral authority from various points of the capital.

A 17-year-old boy was killed during a march in the Chacao district in eastern Caracas, taking the overall death toll since the beginning of April to 66, according to prosecutors.

The circumstances of the boy's death was being investigated, the public ministry said. Opposition leaders said security forces were to blame.

On Monday, videos published on social media had appeared to show security forces attacking and robbing people of their belongings.

"I do not want to see any more guards committing atrocities in the street," Padrino said in a public address on Tuesday.

"Whoever departs from state policy, which gives pre-eminence to respect for human rights, and who acts unprofessionally, will have to answer for it."

Opposition congressional speaker Julio Borges said ahead of Wednesday's protest: "We call on Padrino Lopez to make good on his word and let the march go ahead peacefully."

But as previously, riot police dispersed the demos with tear gas, water cannons and plastic bullets. Some demonstrators hurled petrol bombs and rocks.

The opposition-controlled legislature has accused Interior Minister Nestor Reverol of being responsible for the "repression" of protesters.

Reverol has been hit by US sanctions for alleged involvement in drug-trafficking.

Story continues

Maduro's opponents are protesting to demand early elections to remove him from power. They blame him for a desperate economic crisis.

"We have to stay in the street until Maduro negotiates his departure or the military withdraws its support for him," senior opposition lawmaker Freddy Guevara said on Wednesday.

Maduro says the crisis is a US-backed conspiracy and brands the protesters insurgents and terrorists.

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Then-FBI Director James Comey exits the stage after speaking at a conference in Boston on March 8. (Photo: Scott Eisen/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Americans love a good political drama, and former FBI Director James Comey, who will give his highly anticipated testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday, has shown he can pull one off. In 2007, Comey delivered a gripping performance when he told the Senate Judiciary Committee that as deputy attorney general he had led a revolt of senior Justice Department and FBI officials against President Bushs warrantless wiretapping program, significantly limiting its scope. Comey described rushing to Attorney General John Ashcrofts hospital bedside in 2004 to block two senior administration aides who sought to persuade Ashcroft to reauthorize the wiretapping program, which Comey thought violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. (Comey was accompanied on that urgent mission by Robert Mueller, then the director of the FBI, now the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election.) Comeys testimony cemented his image as a nonpartisan ex-prosecutor who refused to be cowed by the White Houses power and instead stood up for what he thought was right and lawful. Comey came to embody the fearless truth-teller, beholden to his conscience above all else.

But a more apt precedent for Comeys upcoming congressional appearance may be Nixon White House counsel John Deans explosive testimony during Watergate, even though Watergate and the FBIs Russia probe are more dissimilar than alike. While impeachment still seems a liberal dream given Republican control of Congress, Deans appearance was the last time a high-ranking official offered direct testimony about his conversations with a president. And like Dean, Comey is expected to give evidence suggesting that a president sought to impede an FBI investigation  and perhaps implicating the president in a series of lies that seemed aimed at covering up incriminating actions.

We know at least some of what Comey will say, based on the release of his prepared testimony Wednesday afternoon. Much of it confirms what was already reported  that President Trump asked Comey for a pledge of loyalty, and to go easy on his fired aide Michael Flynn. But much more may come out in his answers to questions from the committee members. Here are four areas to watch for:

Obstruction of justice: ABC News is reporting that Comey wont actually say Trump obstructed justice. But how does Comey characterize Trumps efforts to impede Russia-related probes into his administration? What spin does Comey put on what Trump was trying to tell him in their conversations, as reported in articles sourced to Comeys close associates  especially Trumps pressing Comey to give the president his loyalty? How does Comey interpret Trumps urging him to drop the Flynn probe? Will Comey, a former prosecutor who has investigated countless criminal matters over the years, suggest that Trumps words and actions during their meetings crossed a line? Was it ethical? Was it legal?

Dont forget that Comeys reputation has taken a real hit over the past year. He was, after all, the man who in dramatic fashion held a surprise press conference in which he announced that the FBI was not recommending criminal charges against Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server as secretary of state. But even while exonerating Clinton, Comey blasted her handling of classified information as extremely careless. Will he be as acidic in his assessments of Trumps handling of the FBIs Russia-related investigations?

FBI Director James Comey testifies before the House Oversight Committee about Hillary Clintons email investigation in July 2016. (Photo: J. Scott Applewhite/AP)

Memos and tapes: Firing a shot in Comeys direction, Trump, soon after firing him, tweeted that Comey should hope no tapes of their conversations surface. Comey has confirmed reports that he kept detailed notes of his conversations with Trump  something he didnt do, for example, after speaking with President Obama. One possible line of questioning: Why did he feel the need for these records? Was he thinking that he had to write them down because he may have witnessed a crime? Furthermore, does Comey think its possible that Trump was taping their conversations?

Dialing things down: Comeys opening statement released Wednesday had some intriguing hints but may fall short of a smoking gun. What if Comey does not live up to the hype and fails to deliver the kind of bombshell testimony that some observers are anticipating? Relatedly, its well worth watching what Republicans do. Will they flay Comey as, in Trumps words, a showboat? Senators will press him on why he did not resign after Trump pressured him to pledge his loyalty and drop the Flynn matter. How does Comey respond?

Burnishing his own image: How does Comey defend himself from charges that have been leveled at him over the past year? Why does he think that he was fired? Was it true, as Trump has stated, that Comey three times assured Trump that the president was in no way a target of the FBIs Russia investigation? How does Comey rebut the White Houses character assassination (Trump, for example, called him a nut job in front of Russian officials)?

John Dean pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice and did prison time, but his cooperation with Congress and prosecutors ultimately enabled him to emerge from the Watergate scandal with his reputation enhanced. He came to be seen as somebody who in the end put truth, country and the Constitution above his loyalty to the president. Its not hard to imagine that in the wake of Thursdays testimony Comey will emerge as a Dean-like iconoclast  a law-minded public servant who made mistakes but is also willing to hold a lawless White House accountable. Yet its equally plausible that Comeys testimony will be less explosive and less illuminating than has been anticipated. We will know more by midday Thursday.

_____

Matthew Dallek, associate professor at George Washingtons Graduate School of Political Management, is author of Defenseless Under the Night: The Roosevelt Years and the Origins of Homeland Security.

Read more from Yahoo News:
The crisis over Donald Trumps alleged links to Russia is significantly worse than the Watergate scandal, according to a former US director of national intelligence.

James Clapper said Watergate, which led to the resignation of Richard Nixon, pales in comparison to the current scandal engulfing Mr Trump.

Mr Clapper served as Barack Obamas director of national intelligence from 2010 to 2017.

"I lived through Watergate, I was on active duty then in the Air Force, I was a young officer, it was a scary time, Mr Clapper said.

"I have to say though, I think if you compare the two, Watergate pales really in my view compared to what we're confronting now."

It is absolutely crucial for the United States, and for that matter for the world, for this presidency, for the Republicans, for the Democrats and for our nation at large, that we get to the bottom of this, he added.

Is there a smoking gun with all the smoke? I dont know the answer to that. I think its vital, though, we find that out.

Speaking at Australias National Press Club, Mr Clapper attacked Mr Trump for launching an assault on the institutions of US democracy.

"I am very concerned about the assault on our institutions coming from both an external source, read Russia, and an internal source, the President himself, he said.

He said Mr Trumps closeness to Vladimir Putin was very problematic and said the Republicans firing of FBI director James Comey was egregious and inexcusable.

Mr Clapper also revealed that, during a private phone call in January, Mr Trump had asked him to refute an intelligence report suggesting Russia had interfered in the presidential election.

"Ever transactional, he simply asked me to publicly refute the infamous dossier, which I couldn't and wouldn't do, the former intelligence chief.

It comes days before Mr Comey is due to give his highly anticipated verbal testimony to the Senate intelligence committee, which is examining whether Mr Trumps team colluded with Russia in an attempt to influence the election outcome.

"I'm very interested to see what happens with Jim Comey's hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee," Mr Clapper said. "What I think will be very significant to see, both what he says, and what he is asked about and doesn't respond to."
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Update: [10:47 p.m.] Robert Lee Ahn has conceded, making Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez California's next Congressional representative, according to the L.A. Times.

Robert Lee Ahn has conceded. He is somewhere behind that curtain. Hasn't addressed crowd yet. "Shout" by Tears for Fears is playing. #CA34 pic.twitter.com/nn7DgHxjoV  Javier Panzar (@jpanzar) June 7, 2017

Angelenos once again headed to the polls on Tuesday, this time to fill the Congressional seat vacated earlier this year by the now state attorney general Xavier Becerra. Quick refresher: former California attorney general Kamala Harris's ascendance to the Senate set off a game of political musical chairs: Governor Brown appointed Becerra to replace Harris as state AG, meaning Becerra's Congressional seat representing L.A.'s 34 District was suddenly open for business.

There were plenty of contenders hoping to represent the district, which includes downtown Los Angeles, Koreatown, and parts of northeast L.A., and 23 candidates vied for the seat in a special election in April. State Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez and public interest lawyer Robert Lee Ahn advanced to today's runoff after emerging as the top two candidates in the April primary.

The polls closed at 8 p.m., and Gomez holds a slight lead over Ahn in the early returns.

Here's a live update of the vote tally, thanks to our friends at Decision Desk HQ:


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Given his past statements regarding Islam, his administrations mishandled rollout of the travel moratorium on certain Muslim-majority countries, and his general penchant for undiplomatic statements, President Donald Trumps first trip to the Middle East last month was a surprising success. Saudi Arabia rolled out the red carpet for him as it never had for his predecessor, he inked a $110 billion arms agreement with Saudi Arabia, and his speech in Riyadh to more than 50 leaders and representatives from across the Muslim world, calling for them to unite to resist Iranian aggression and fight the sources of extremism that have metastasized in the threat posed by the Islamic State, was generally well-received.

Yet if Trump benefited from low expectations prior to last months Arab Islamic American Summit, his administration may soon fall victim to the unrealistically high expectations created by the presidents successful sales pitch as the anti-Obama to the regions leaders. Specifically, prior to the presidents trip, his administration dropped significant hints about establishing an Arab NATO to contain Iran and fight the Islamic State. Although Trump never mentioned this project during his Riyadh address, Saudi King Salman subsequently claimed the leaders of the 55 nations who took part had pledged a force of 34,000 reserve troops to the alliance. (Whether any of the other leaders actually agreed to this declaration is another matter). While perhaps a good idea in theory, the history of similar past projects  from Gamal Abdel Nassers failed pan-Arab movement to the Saudi-proposed Islamic Military Alliance  is one of repeated failure.

As if to illustrate the difficulty Sunni Arab states have overcoming their internecine rivalries and cooperating with one another, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) has already fallen into another bitter feud since Trumps visit to the region. The proximate cause this time was a report by Qatars state media that the countrys emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, had cautioned against confrontations with Iran as well as defending Hamas and Hezbollah  in other words, directly contradicting the Riyadh summits message. Although Qatar quickly claimed the news agency had been hacked by an unknown entity, on Monday Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and non-GCC member Egypt announced they were cutting diplomatic and even transportation ties to Qatar. This break makes the already remote prospect of an Arab NATO appear risible for the foreseeable future. By directing U.S. policy towards an objective every U.S. president since Dwight Eisenhower has failed to achieve, Trump risks engendering a sense of disappointment in the region that will further erode U.S. credibility and drive Middle East actors towards accommodation with one or the other of the twin threats emanating from the region.

Rather than attempting to resolve the dynastic rivalries and ingrained cultural obstacles that inhibit Arab military cooperation in a single bold stroke, the Trump administration should attempt something counterintuitive for its famously grandiose leader: play small ball. Instead of a comprehensive solution to the regions security threats, the Trump administration should narrow its focus and first establish institutions to counter Irans asymmetric threats. Specifically, it should work with Americas GCC partners to address the threat posed by Tehrans malicious cyber activity.

There are there are several reasons why strengthening the GCCs common cybersecurity efforts is both necessary and more feasible than replicating NATOs security architecture in the Middle East. First, in the near- to mid-term, the most immediate threat posed by Iran is not a conventional military attack. Although Iranian aggression throughout the region is dangerous and must be contained, the United States and its Arab allies still maintain a decisive qualitative advantage in conventional military capability over Iran. Moreover, the approximately 35,000 U.S. troops in the region serve as a tripwire to deter any overt military aggression by Tehran against the GCC. The more immediate threat, therefore, stems from Iranian soft power.

One area in which Irans propensity for asymmetric warfare has increasingly been deployed is in the cyber realm. Last year Iranian hackers attacked Saudi Arabias aviation agency, damaging thousands of computers and erasing critical data and bringing operations there to a halt for several days, according to a report by Bloomberg. This was merely the latest example of Iranian cyberattacks against Americas GCC allies. In the wake of Saudi Arabias 2016 execution of a prominent Shia cleric, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, after his conviction on terrorism charges, Iran severed diplomatic ties and hackers attacked key websites belonging to the Saudi Defense Ministry. In 2012, Iranian hackers used the Shamoon virus to attack oil and gas companies in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, destroying 30,000 computers at Saudi Aramco, the national petroleum and natural gas company. From 2012 to 2014, Irans Operation Cleaver targeted companies in Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and 12 other countries. And from 2008 to 2010, hacker groups linked to the Iranian military claimed credit for hacking thousands of websites in Europe, the Gulf countries, and the United States in response to perceived slights against Iran. (This does not even take into account Iranian cyberattacks on the U.S. banking system, on U.S. military networks, and on U.S. critical infrastructure).

Irans deployment of offensive cyber capabilities is part of a strategic culture that emphasizes deniability through the use of surrogates and focuses on attacking soft targets to allow Iran to pursue strategic objectives beyond the capabilities of its conventional forces. In 2015, then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told a Senate hearing that although Iran had lesser technical capabilities in comparison to Russia and China, its pattern of destructive attacks demonstrates it is a motivated and unpredictable cyber actor. The Pentagon subsequently warned in its 2016 annual report to Congress on Iranian military power that Tehran has continued to improve its offensive cyber capabilities since the 2015 nuclear agreement. With the influx of $100 billion in sanctions relief thanks to the Iran nuclear agreement, and the apparent hiring of Russian cyber mercenaries in recent attacks, Irans threat in the cyber realm will only continue to grow.

Beyond strategic incentives to cooperation, Irans malicious cyber activity threatens other GCC interests. In 2016, PricewaterhouseCoopers found that in the previous year 85 percent of Middle East companies had suffered cyberattacks, with 18 percent suffering more than 5,000 attacks. More than fifty percent of the companies surveyed had suffered more than half-a-million dollars in losses as a result of these attacks. Iranian digital assaults against corporate targets in the region were so numerous that in 2015 the State Department issued an unprecedented security report warning American businesses operating abroad of Irans rapidly improving cyber capabilities. Internet penetration rates in the Middle East have increased from 29.8 to 57 percent since 2010, and Kaspersky Labs recently wrote, We have witnessed the Middle East becoming one of the major cyber battlefields. Although the head of Saudi Arabias National Cyber Security Center recently said, We have a close relationship between the GCC countries and cyber security, in the wake of the WannaCry ransomware attacks. [I]t isnt enough. We should be doing more.

Amidst the broader disasters that marked the Obama administrations policymaking in the Middle East (such as the Iran nuclear deal, the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, the Syrian red line, the constant undermining of Israel), its cyber initiatives in the region stand out as a rare bright spot. During the 2015 Camp David summit, President Barack Obama pledged support to the Gulf States to defend against cyberattacks from Iran, and during his trip to Saudi Arabia to sell the Iran nuclear deal, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter discussed cyber security with King Salman. Gen. Lloyd Austin, then head of U.S. Central Command, reportedly tried to persuade Americas Gulf Cooperation Council allies into working together to protect against cyber-attacks.

The Trump administration should build upon these initiatives and work towards establishing a Gulf Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center comparable to the one run by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Such an operations center would serve as a clearinghouse for information sharing on cyberattacks in the region and thereby improve the capacity of each state to respond to future incursions. Whereas an Arab NATO would require interoperability at the outset, a cybercecurity center could build upon the present bicycle-spoke structure of U.S.-Gulf partnerships by placing America at the center of this initiative, with each member states computer emergency response teams using the intelligence generated by the center to respond to attacks against their government networks. In the near term, this would also allow Qatar to participate without either it or its GCC rivals having to lose face by breaking the diplomatic impasse. Increased interactions could generate sufficient trust to allow GCC members to manage the operations center on their own, possibly even establishing a common emergecy response team to counter cyberattacks emanating from Iran. And if successful, the interoperability and institution-building generated in the cyber realm could be expanded to other military dimensions. (Additionally, by addressing cybersecurity first, the Trump administration could advance its stated goal of integrating Israel into the regions security structures, as Israels unique expertise in cyber defense and shared interest in countering the Iranian cyber threat provide a potential under-the-radar avenue for cooperation with the GCC).

By focusing on containing Iran and defeating the Islamic State, Trump has set the right goals for U.S. policy in the Middle East. But eventually the hosannas the president has received in the region for merely not being Obama will fade, and his administration will have to find a way to operationalize the rhetoric the president articulated in Riyadh. Instead of committing diplomatic capital to grand gestures with little probability of success and significant risks accompanying failure to address an Iranian conventional threat that is deterrable in the near- to mid-term, the Trump administration should focus on improving institution building and interoperability to counter the more immediate threats posed by Iranian asymmetric efforts in cyberwarfare. Just as Mario Cuomo famously observed  You campaign in poetry; you govern in prose  successful alliance management is built upon smaller initiatives that incrementally improve joint capabilities.

Photo credit: MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images
By Lawrence Hurley WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Police officers for the first time could be required to obtain warrants to get data on the past locations of criminal suspects based on cellphone use under a major case on privacy rights in the digital age taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday. The justices agreed to hear an appeal by a man convicted in a series of armed robberies in Ohio and Michigan with the help of past cellphone location data who contends that without a warrant from a court such data amounts to an unreasonable search and seizure under the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment. Cellphone location records are becoming increasingly important to police in criminal investigations, with authorities routinely requesting and receiving this information from wireless providers. Police helped establish that the man at the center of the case, Timothy Carpenter, was near the scene of the robberies at Radio Shack and T-Mobile stores by securing past "cell site location information" from his cellphone carrier that tracked which local cellphone towers relayed his calls. The case reaches the high court amid growing scrutiny of the surveillance practices of U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies amid concern among lawmakers across the political spectrum about civil liberties and police evading warrant requirements. The legal fight has raised questions about how much companies protect the privacy rights of their customers. The big four wireless carriers, Verizon Communications Inc , AT&T Inc , T-Mobile US Inc and Sprint Corp , receive tens of thousands of requests a year from law enforcement for what is known as "cell site location information," or CSLI. The requests are routinely granted. The Supreme Court has twice in recent years ruled on major cases concerning how criminal law applies to new technology, on each occasion ruling against law enforcement. In 2012, the court held that a warrant is required to place a GPS tracking device on a vehicle. Two years later, the court said police need a warrant to search a cellphone that is seized during an arrest. The information that law enforcement agencies can obtain from wireless carriers shows which local cellphone towers users connect to at the time they make calls. Police can use historical data to determine if a suspect was in the vicinity of a crime scene or real-time data to track a suspect. Carpenter's bid to suppress the evidence failed and he was convicted of six robbery counts. On appeal, the Cincinnati, Ohio-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld his convictions, finding that no warrant was required for the cellphone information. Civil liberties lawyers have said that police need "probable cause," and therefore a warrant, in order to avoid constitutionally unreasonable searches. 'LONGSTANDING PROTECTIONS' "Because cellphone location records can reveal countless private details of our lives, police should only be able to access them by getting a warrant based on probable cause," said Nathan Freed Wessler, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberty Union's Speech, Privacy and Technology Project who represents Carpenter. "The time has come for the Supreme Court to make clear that the longstanding protections of the Fourth Amendment apply with undiminished force to these kinds of sensitive digital records," Wessler added. But, based on a provision of a 1986 federal law called the Stored Communications Act, the government said it does not need probable cause to obtain customer records. Instead, the government said, prosecutors must show only that there are "reasonable grounds" for the records and that they are "relevant and material" to an investigation. The case will be heard and decided in the court's next term, which starts in October and ends in June 2018. The Trump administration said in court papers the government has a "compelling interest" for acquiring the records without a warrant because the information is particularly useful at the early stage of a criminal investigation. "Society has a strong interest in both promptly apprehending criminals and exonerating innocent suspects as early as possible during an investigation," the administration said in a brief. David LaBahn, president of the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, said warrants can be obtained quickly from judges but police may have problems getting the evidence needed to show probable cause. "They may not be able to get over that legal hurdle, so the court couldn't issue the warrant," LaBahn said. Civil liberties groups assert that the 1986 law did not anticipate the way mobile devices now contain a wealth of data on each user. Steve Vladeck, a national security and constitutional law professor at the University of Texas, said the case will have "enormous implications" over how much data the government can obtain from phone companies and other technology firms about their customers without a warrant. "Courts and commentators have tried to figure out exactly when individuals will have a continuing expectation of privacy even in data they've voluntarily shared with a third party," Vladeck said. "This case squarely raises that question." (Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Additional reporting by Dustin Volz; Editing by Will Dunham)
- China has donated 10,000 cedis to the attorney generals department

- The donation is part of efforts to strengthen ties between both countries

- Click here for the latest stories in Ghana

The republic of China may have been cited in the menace of illegal mining in Ghana but the embassy here in Ghana is looking beyond these claims as it donates to 10,000 cedis in funding to the attorney generals department.

China and Ghana recently engaged in talks over the seeming menace of illegal mining

READ ALSO: Ghanaians travelling illegally to Libya die on Sahara desert

Presenting the items to the attorney general, Gloria Akufo, the Chinese ambassador, Sun Baohong pledged Chinas support to the fight against corruption in Ghana.

We support the new government of Ghana to carry out anti-corruption campaigns, and expect to strengthen our cooperation and exchanges on both domestic and international combat against corruption, she said.

Meanwhile, YEN is gathering some concerns over the possible cyber security threats this gesture by the Chinese embassy could have on the adjudication process of the attorney generals department. With some Chinese nationals currently facing trial over their indulgence in illegal mining, some Ghanaians argue that the kind gesture by the Chinese embassy in Ghana.

China has warned the government of Ghana of damage to relations between both countries if what it called negative publicity about China and its leaders on illegal small-scale mining, aka galamsey, does not cease.

In the letter written by the China Mission in Ghana and sent to the ministry of lands and natural resources, China said reports that the country and its leaders support the activities of their citizens who engage in galamsey were defamatory. It called on the government to take action to guide the media and other stakeholders from trumpeting such claims

Also, president Akufo-Addo has vowed that his administration would enforce the laws against galamsey in the interest of the nation.

We all know the laws of Ghana have no sympathy for nationality whatsoever. The law affects everybody including the Chinese. It does not give permits to visitors or anybody to engage in illegal mining. Whosoever is caught will be made to full rigor of the law. he argued.

Source: YEN.com.gh
According to a press release, DawsonCounty residents who own real estate received letters in the mail this week from county assessor John Moore, reminding them that the annual valuation protest period began June 1. Filing ends on June 30.

The Dawson County Clerks Office coordinates this function. Property owners will be given an opportunity to choose a date and time for their hearing in front of the CountyBoard of Equalization, CBOE, in July. Moore emphasized these are valuation, not tax, protests.

Taxes cannot be calculated until later this year when rates are set according to property tax asking numbers from the various political subdivisions.

The assessor said that there are two areas that saw increases in value for 2017. Updates of values according to market sales were completed in Lexington and at JohnsonLake.

Perhaps the most significant occurrence is that no increase took place for agricultural ground for the first time in several years.

The market, fortunately, has been trending down, said Moore, While we have been trying to catch up, and the result has been a happy meeting of the two, keeping us at the same unit values for each of the types of farm ground.

Attempts to control property taxes on the agricultural sector by political groups have been in the forefront of the Nebraska Legislature during the recently completed session. Farm values are calculated at 69 percent to 75 percent of market value under current Nebraska law.

Numerous attempts have been made to change that range of effective value as well as the methods for arriving at a base value before applying the factor. The income approach has been touted as a better method, but difficulties have arisen in devising a formula.

Nebraska assessors are faced annually with establishing values that reflect market values. Those figures are 92 percent to 100 percent for all other real estate. Properties in Lexington and JohnsonLake show updated values because of the increase in sale amounts.

Moore said that all classes of property are to be examined once every six years, or sooner, depending on whether they meet the standards. Most real estate markets increase enough about every three years to force an undated figure.

Valuation notices are sent annually despite the changes to inform property owners of their valuation status. Even if the value remains the same, the owners have the opportunity to protest.

The CBEO depends on property owners to bring forward information, other than their own opinion alone, to help determine if a change is needed. Hearings last about 10-15 minutes, and results are mailed toward the end of July at the latest.

Property owners are encouraged to work with the county assessor and his staff to discover information that will help their situation, or at least show the reason for the changes.
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African park rangers urged Hong Kong lawmakers to approve a ban on ivory sales but warned that giving in to traders demands for compensation would fuel more elephant poaching.

Lawmakers and officials heard public submissions from the rangers and other groups yesterday on the governments long-awaited proposal to prohibit all local ivory trading by 2021.

The proposal is expected to pass later this year but faces resistance from the citys licensed dealers and traders, who are permitted to sell only ivory acquired before a 1990 ban on international trading.

They want millions of dollars in return for giving up their stockpile, but the rangers say poachers will see the compensation as an incentive to keep on slaughtering elephants for their tusks.

If we compensate for ivory as the trade goes down, there will be an upsurge of poaching in Africa because the poachers will see it as if the Hong Kong government is actually buying up ivory, said Erik Mararv, manager of Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo, told reporters ahead of the consultation.

Josias Mungabwa, a former investigator with the Zambian Wildlife Authority, said ivory trading fuels insurgencies fighting legitimate governments in Africa because syndicates use proceeds from ivory sales to buy weapons.

The closure of markets in Asia will bring sanity to a lot of areas where poaching is taking place and imposing much higher sentences on the would-be offenders will also help us in Africa, Mungabwa told the panel.

Other experts and wildlife activists giving testimony said compensation should be ruled out because ivory traders and carvers, whove already had 27 years to sell off their legal stockpile estimated at 70 tons, are getting another five years grace period.

Ivory workers weighed in with their objections to the ban.

What does this illegal ivory poaching situation have to do with our stockpile, our hard-earned money? said carver Mong Wai-

hung, who said he wants to be able to pass on his ivory to his children so they can sell it and keep the business going.

Authorities in mainland China  a major source of ivory demand  are moving much more swiftly than Hong Kong, and Beijing plans to ban local sales by the end of this year. But wildlife activists worry that the four-year gap will encourage more smugglers to use Hong Kongs legal stockpile to launder their illegal ivory. Kelvin Chan, Hong Kong, AP
The Gongbei customs authority arrested a Nigerian man, who is suspected of being a drug dealer responsible for mailing 30 kilograms of marijuana to Zhongshan in Guangdong province.

Another Nigerian suspect is on the run. According to the Gongbei customs authority, the two suspects shipped the drugs to a Wechat contact of theirs, a woman on the mainland. However, the woman was reportedly not informed on the contents of the packages, and she assisted the customs authority in arresting one of the suspects.

The Gongbei customs authority noted that recently, drug dealers have been altering their way of dispersing drugs by resorting to shipping.

Marijuana is still the most smuggled drug. Most drugs are from Canada, the U.S. and Kenya.

Drug dealers frequently date or offer high payouts to mainland residents in order to cover up their crimes.
The multi-billion Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge is still facing controversies after lab service contractor Jacobs China allegedly submitted 210 falsified reports of concrete cube tests.

In a Hong Kong Legislative Council transport panel special on Monday, it was revealed that a total of 210 samples could have been falsified, where 203 locations have been confirmed.

Among the 159 critical locations, 114 are above water and land, as cited in a report issued by The Standard. These included 10 on buildings, 29 in tunnels, 28 on the bridge and 47 on other structures. The other 45 are on piles that are underwater or on land.

The neighboring regions Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) has arrested the 21 employees of the contractor  which monitors the bridge project  last month.

Hong Kongs Secretary for Transport and Housing, Anthony Cheung Bing-leung, admitted that he knew nothing of the scandal until May 19 when the ICAC arrested the employees. The employees were accused of faking concrete test results for the bridge project by altering time stamps and switching samples in order to meet compressive strength standards.

The secretary defended the Highways Department, arguing that the bureau is only a victim of the fake reports scandal.

The secretary also admitted that he was the last to know about the falsified documents that may compromise the bridges structural safety.

According to media reports both the Civil Engineering and Development Department, which outsourced the lab service, and the Highways Department failed to inform Cheung about the irregularities they discovered in July last year.

Meanwhile, Cheung said that the government would conduct core tests of some structures of the bridge, and that the Highways Department have already hired an adviser firm.

But it is too early to decide whether core tests will be done on all 159 stress-critical locations with falsified reports, director of Highways Daniel Chung Kum-wah said.

A core test means to take a concrete cube from the structure, and thats certain destruction to the structure. At stress-critical locations there are many steel bars, and core tests might hit these bars, causing these bars to be broken, he continued.

As of June 1, over 170,000 concrete samples of the bridge project have been analyzed by the government, with 210 of these found to be falsified.

The Macau Chief Executive, Chui Sai On, said last week that citizens should rest assured about the construction quality of the Macau section of the bridge.
An Irishman, Australian and New Zealander walk into a bar on an early Sunday evening where they sample, savor and socialize over craft beers with names like The Barefoot Bohemian, Howling Gale and The Full Irish.

The location is Taipa village-based Prem1er Bar, whose owner Niall Murray is joined by business partners Aussie Cameron Wallace and Kiwi Scott Baigent, who reside in Ireland as masterbrewers of the alcoholic beverage.

It would seem that businesses from Portuguese-speaking countries (PSC) are not alone in viewing the MSAR as a gateway to mainland China. Wallace and Baigent, through enlisting the local expertise of Murray, are strategizing over how to bring their beer from Ireland to the East Asia region, through Macau.

Their company, Eight Degrees, is exporting around a dozen unique craft beers, each fashioned with a strict adherence to German brewing methodology, the use of naturally soft water and their rejection of chemicals. The companys tagline, Naturally Adventurous, could hardly be more Australasian.

The duo were in Macau to showcase their products to the region, in person, for the first time. They say that they want to use their Macau connection to expand their distribution network in East Asia.

A few years ago, we saw an opportunity with many Irish breweries looking west  to the United States, Wallace told the Times on Sunday evening. For us, we dont see any reason why you would want to try to compete with 5,000 other craft beer breweries, when there is such an incredible opportunity in looking in the other direction.

We think that we have something to offer the Far East through Macau, added Baigent, and we have Niall [Murray] here to help us ensure the quality; that the beer is served right and in the proper way.

Murray, who is also the chairman of the Irish Chamber of Commerce, is actively seeking out retailers and distributors in the territory and further afield.

Originally being from Ireland, I am madly in love with Irish products and all things Irish, he professed on Sunday evening, patriotically accompanied by the bars background music of U2s greatest hits.

When I was back in Ireland [] I found Eight Degrees and called them up [to ask] if theyre exporting and if not, would they like to?

Now, with the beer having made its way to Macau, his outstanding challenge is to ensure quality from the beginning of production to the glass.

We are being quite [selective] about who we distribute to because I dont want the beer sitting in warm warehouses, put on dirty tabs and served in the wrong glasses at the wrong temperature, explained Murray. Its Eight Degrees for a reason.

What I fear  and what we all fear  is that when a bottle enters the country [mainland China], what are the chances that it will be refilled with something else and sold at the same price? This happens on a huge scale, so we want to make sure that we are very [selective].

The Special Administrative Regions of Macau and Hong Kong have a comparative advantage in the region as distribution hubs for certain alcoholic beverages. Beer and wine in the two territories are subject to zero percent import tax, according to Murray, while it is significantly more economic to import spirits through Macau.

I only have to pay 10 percent plus MOP25 per liter to bring whiskey into Macau, but I would have to pay 100 percent of the cost price [in tax] to bring it into Hong Kong, he said as an example. In China, the taxation on alcoholic beverages is invariably higher and covers customs duty, value-

added tax and consumption tax.

These favorable conditions are partly the reason that Portuguese wine, intended for distribution further abroad, has established such a stronghold in the MSAR, with distributors in consensus and appreciation over its price-quality value.

However, Murray told the Times that importing beer into the territory remains a logistical nightmare, with it costing just as much to transport it [the beer] from Hong Kong to Macau as it does from Ireland to Hong Kong.

He said that his hopes now lie with the soon-to-open Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge, which may have an impact in reducing transportation costs.

Once the beer arrives, the next challenge for the trio is convincing customers to part ways with their long-attached, favorite brands.

Murray provided examples of this kind of attachment from his own experience at Prem1er Bar, where the Portuguese still love their Superbock and the long-time gwai lo [slang term for westerner] still go for their Carlsberg and theyll drink it all night.

Trying to convert those people is very difficult; theyre real creatures of habit, he said.

We want to challenge peoples perceptions of what beer can taste like. I also think that beer should be treated with a similar reverence to wine, in terms of matching with food and the way that its stored and served, remarked Baigent. Theres a big, wide world out there and you dont always have to be consuming the same, sub-standard product that youve always had.

Saturday tasting attracts F&B opinion-leaders

On Saturday night, an intimate tasting event was held at Prem1er Bar, marking Eight Degrees first foray into Macau and Hong Kong. The tasting event invited 18 food and beverage opinion-leaders including representatives from casino operators, according to bar proprietor Niall Murray, who said attendees were delighted with the selection showcased.

We had a lot of very important food and beverage opinion-leaders at the event and we wanted them to experience everything and ask any questions they had, he told the Times.

Oftentimes [for big corporations], when you want to bring in a new product, you have to justify why youre going with one product over another. These tastings give us the chance to address everything and explain why this product is different, added Murray. The attendees were very delighted to hear about the German purity, no chemicals [present], and great water. [] They absolutely loved it.

Meanwhile, Scott Baigent said that Saturday nights tasting reminded him of when he and Cameron Wallace were just starting out in Ireland and craft beer wasnt particularly popular at all.

We only had two or three beers to offer [at that time] but we went through the tastings and youd get this sort of amazement or wonder in their eyes, he reminisced. DB
A lawyer for one of three activists detained while investigating a Chinese company that produced shoes for Ivanka Trump and other brands in China said yesterday that all three men were being held at the Ganzhou City Detention Center in southeastern China, where conditions were crowded but tolerable.

The activists were working with China Labor Watch, a New York-based nonprofit organization, and were investigating Huajian Group factories in the southeastern Chinese cities of Ganzhou and Dongguan.

The U.S. State Department called for their immediate release.

The company has denied allegations of excessive overtime and low wages. It says it stopped producing Ivanka Trump shoes months ago.

The lawyer, Wen Yu, said that after a day and a half of waiting he was finally able to meet his client, Hua Haifeng.

His condition inside is OK. Nobody beat him, Yu said. Its just that he has to sleep next to the toilet. People go to pee all night. He said the cell was crowded with 21 people who have been ordered not to speak with Hua.

Yu said he had applied for bail for Hua. He added that authorities had told him there was an accident in the cell on Monday which had prevented him from seeing his client, though Hua later told him no such accident had happened. AP
The Book of the Libolo Project was presented at International Day of the Portuguese Language and Culture, a ceremony celebrated by the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP). This years celebration was held in Beijing.

The Libolo Project covers the study of the linguistic, historical, and anthropological aspects of the Libolo Municipality in Angolas South Kwanza Province.

The book was presented at the invitation of the Embassy of the Republic of Angola in China by the coordinator of the Libolo Project, Carlos Figueiredo, who is a senior instructor from the University of Macaus (UM) Department of Portuguese.

According to a statement issued by UM, the project allows for a better understanding of the connections within the MSAR, the whole Angola, other African-

Atlantic Portuguese-

speaking countries, Brazil, and Caribbean American countries.

Between the 16th century and the late 19th century, thousands of slaves were taken from Libolo to these places by Portuguese, Dutch, English, and French slave ships.

Composed of 18 scholars from nine universities in Macau, Brazil, and Angola, the projects team has been collecting and analyzing oral data and rare manuscripts on the historical, anthropological, and linguistic aspects of the Libolo region.

The studies that focus on the language contact in Libolo between the Portuguese language and the African Bantu language spoken in the region provide an opportunity to analyze the grammatical features exchanged between these two languages.

Notable participants in the ceremony, among the 400 guests, included diplomats from the CPLP in China and the Portuguese Finance Minister, Mario Centeno.
Two miles southeast of Londons Cheesegrater tower, which sold last month for a record price, theres proof that all is not calm in the citys property market.

At Canada Water, developer British Land Co., which also owned half of the skyscraper, has seen the value of land slashed by almost 11 percent as investors lose their appetite for riskier assets. That contrasts with the best properties, which continue to draw buyers.

Prime London assets such as the Cheesegrater with long dated-income have traded at record prices whereas assets facing short-term expiries have suffered, said Sue Munden, a real estate analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence. Developments were marked down after Brexit as valuers expected investors to require a higher return given the economic uncertainty.

Londons commercial property market is in flux with the value of office buildings in the main financial district rising even as rents fall. A wave of Asian buyers have been pouring into the U.K. capital on the back of the weaker pound following the Brexit vote, snapping up buildings with long leases that offer better returns than government bonds. That pushed yields for the best offices in the City of London down to 4 percent in the first quarter, according to broker Savills Plc, despite doubts about Londons economic prospects causing the value of older buildings to decline.

London faces possible job losses to rival European capitals as businesses seek to maintain access to the worlds largest market in the wake of the U.K.s decision to leave the European Union. That increases the risk of a drop in rents and values as the uncertainty created by the two years it will take to negotiate the terms of the countrys exit causes companies including GAM Holding AG to delay decisions about leasing new headquarters.

British Land has taken advantage of an increasingly polarized market where demand has remained strong for prime assets and secure rental streams, British Land Chief Executive Officer Chris Grigg said in a May 17 call with analysts. Theres been less appetite for shorter-leased assets and greater risk is being priced into developments. This is particularly reflected in the fall at Canada Water. The landlord is planning to build offices, homes and stores on the 18.6 hectare site.

The citys property market is facing other headwinds. The cost of leasing a home has fallen 3 percent in the 12 months through May after landlords rushed to buy rentals ahead of a rise in the stamp-duty tax, and sales volumes are declining as the residential market loses steam. Office values may fall 25 percent over the next 10 years as more people work remotely, reducing the demand for space, according to Fitch Ratings.

Incentives for tenants to lease office properties are increasing because of the rising vacancy rate, Rob Noel, the chief executive officer at Land Securities Group Plc, said in a telephone interview. He predicts the underlying rent tenants pay will fall further in the coming six months, declining to be more specific.

The market has paused for breath, the CEO said. No one really knows how the negotiations around Brexit are going to unfold. The value of the London office portfolio of Land Securities, Britains largest real estate investment trust, fell 4.4 percent in the year through March.

For now, the impact of falling rents on office properties is mostly limited to empty buildings and those with leases that dont have long to run. Great Portland Estates Plc, which expects rents in its office portfolio to fall as much as 7.5 percent next year, last month reported a 4.9 percent drop in the value of its portfolio. Thats because the company owns more shorter-leased buildings because it plans to develop them in future, CEO Toby Courtauld said in an interview.

The uncertain outlook has yet to affect the value of the citys modern towers. Hong Kong real estate investor C C Land Holdings paid 1.15 billion pounds (USD1.5 billion) to buy the Leadenhall Building, as the Cheesegrater is formally known. The price was unprecedented for a skyscraper there on a square-foot basis, Morgan Stanley analyst Bart Gysens said in a March 1 note to clients. That has encouraged other owners to weigh sales of stakes in trophy buildings, with some owners including Morgan Stanleys real estate investing unit seeking a buyer for stakes in the tower known as The Walkie Talkie.

Many of the investors seeking the best properties are from China via Hong Kong, Courtauld said. Theres about 39.5 billion pounds of capital targeting London commercial real estate, an increase of about 1 billion pounds in the last six months, according to a Great Portland Estates presentation.

Asian investors are not so bothered about prospective growth as we are, he said. If you have got billions tied up in risky assets in your home territory and political risk is elevated, then the prospect of a nice little building in London could be quite attractive whatever the rental growth in the next two years throws up. Jack Sidders, Bloomberg
The PMT Foundation is seeking applications from organizations in the Magic Valley to receive financial funds that help support, sustain and improve our community. Favorable consideration will be given to:

Projects that reach a broader segment of the community.

Requests for seed money to realize unusual opportunities that meet urgent to special needs in the community.

Stimulate and encourage additional funding for community projects.

Promote cooperation and partnerships within the community.

The deadline to submit grant applications is Aug. 18, 2017.

Application forms are available at www.pmt.org or PMT offices in Burley, Rupert and Twin Falls.

Information: Rick Harder at 208-434-7124.

The PMT Foundation was created in 2006 by the PMT Board of Directors as a charitable foundation. The Foundation furthers education in communities served by Project Mutual Telephone through its scholarship program, and supports projects and programs that sustain and improve those communities.

To date, the Foundation has helped over 36 area students with funding to further their education beyond high school by continuing the scholarship tradition that PMT established in 1990. The Foundation has contributed over $160,000 in grant awards to community organizations that help sustain and improve our local community through various projects.
HAILEY  Its official: Haileys Head Start center will close its doors July 1.

A Seattle-based regional Head Start operations office gave its approval last week.

CSIs board of trustees decided unanimously in March to back a proposal to close the center. Its a way to cope with a projected $228,000 Head Start budget shortfall for next fiscal year.

It means 20 Wood River Valley children  most of whom are from low-income families  wont have access to services such as free preschool classes. Plus, three employees will lose their jobs.

CSI has offered Head Start in Blaine County for 26 years. If the colleges program someday receives more federal funding, the center could reopen.

But thats a big if.

If money is ever made available, that would be a likely place for us to place resources to come back to that community and provide Head Start services, CSI Head Start/Early Head Start director Mancole Fedder said Tuesday.

The Hailey center will vacate its leased space at the Community Campus by the end of this month. Children are already done with the school year.

Why was the Hailey center picked for closure?

It has been a struggle to find qualified employees, attendance rates are low, some of the children arent low-income and about half also receive preschool services already through the Blaine County School District.

Employees are packing up the center and putting furniture and supplies into a storage pod, which will be kept in Twin Falls, Hailey center director Jennifer Liebrum Peterson said Tuesday.

Last week, Hailey center preschoolers spent their last day of school filling sandbags using sand from their sandbox. They donated the sandbags to Blaine County flooding relief efforts.

I thought we were really making a difference

As for the employees, theyre weighing new job options.

One of the teachers is accepting a transfer within south-central Idahos Head Start program to mentor other teachers, Peterson said.

The other teacher, Tracey Kamber, is the lead teacher and a home visitor. It was her first year working for a Head Start program.

Shes new to the Wood River Valley. She wanted to try out living in the mountainous community and see if it was a good fit.

Kamber taught special education years ago and worked part-time at a community college in Washington teaching parent education classes.

She wanted to get back into work after being a stay-at-home mother.

I was super impressed with the teachers and the people I worked with, she said about Haileys Head Start center. I thought we were really making a difference with the children and the families in the valley. Theres such a big discrepancy between the haves and have nots in Blaine County.

Kamber said the Head Start families were great to work with and super responsive.

She said she feels badly for local families who have younger children. They will not be able to afford preschool. I think theres going to be a big gap.

Head Start helps prepare children for kindergarten, she said, and she saw children make large gains academically and behaviorally this school year.

Im totally bummed that its gone because I really do see a need in that community, she said.

Kamber is continuing to work at her other job  at a gift store at the Sun Valley Resort  and is weighing future employment options.

Since 1999, CSI has received grants to operate Head Start/Early Head Start programs. It oversees 11 centers, including Hailey.

Head Start offers preschool classes, while Early Head Start is for pregnant women, infants and toddlers up to age 3 in low-income families.

Theyre federally-funded programs and parents must meet federal poverty guidelines.

Peterson referred the Times-News to three parents for insights on the center closure. None returned phone calls by deadline Tuesday.

The majority of the 20 children currently served are heading to kindergarten in the fall.

But its too early to tell what the impact will be on low-income Wood River Valley families with younger children.

The Blaine County School District offers preschool on a sliding fee scale  meaning parents pay a rate dependent on their income  but there are only 80 total slots.

And Idaho is among only a handful of U.S. states that doesnt fund preschool.

Punched on two sides

Fedder told trustees in March there are three main factors behind the Head Start/Early Head Start budget shortfall: a statewide reallocation of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families money, increases in employee health insurance costs and federal cuts.

CSI had 27 slots for children paid for using TANF. Under the change, it will lose 15 seats and $82,455.

I cant stress enough that while Im deeply disappointed that this program lost some of that funding to provide services in Blaine County, I was assured that money was going to other underserved communities, Fedder said.

CSIs program could also see $12,000 in federal cuts for its next fiscal year. And health insurance costs are expected to climb by nearly $135,000.

Health insurance increases played a major role in why we had to make this particular decision, Fedder said about the Hailey center closure.

The Head Start/Early Head Start program was punched on two sides, he said: losing funding and increased insurance costs.

If insurance costs continue to rise as they do, we will be faced with decisions like this year after year, Fedder said.

On a semi-bright note, he said, Congress appropriated a 1 percent cost-of-living increase for Head Start programs. Nobody could have saw that coming.

CSI expects to receive $47,000.

Its a small amount of money, Fedder said. But Im not going to complain about any money we get.
TWIN FALLS  Twin Falls is looking for three volunteers for a committee that will study possibly developing a community recreation center.

The committee will meet monthly, likely for two years, at the City Council chambers downtown and a time to be set that is convenient for the most members and ensures the most participation, according to a statement from the city.

The committee will help to conduct a feasibility study for a recreation center, search for architects, establish priorities for a center and look at concept options, potential locations, partners and funding options.

Meetings will be public, with agendas, minutes and videos available online.

The three will be picked by the City Council.

City residents or people who live in the citys area of impact who are interested are encouraged to submit a letter of interest by June 23 to Wendy Davis, Twin Falls Parks and Recreation director, at wdavis@tfid.org or by mail, Attn: Recreation Center Committee, to P.O. Box 1907, Twin Falls, Idaho 83303.
TWIN FALLS  The Veterans Administration is backing away from a plan to bring additional services to Twin Falls and will instead devote its resources to sprucing up its existing outpatient clinic.

The VA had considered expanding in Twin Falls and held preliminary talks with county commissioners about leasing county-owned space for veterans services. However, there are clinics elsewhere in the state more in need of expansion or replacement, said VA spokesman Josh Callihan. The one in Caldwell, in particular, is bursting at the seams.

Resources are somewhat limited, Callihan said. Were trying to make the most of our resources. We just have a bigger need in Caldwell than we do in Twin.

The idea of leasing space from the county is on hold for now, Callihan said.

That has potential to it, if theres a medical center (or) were interested in expanding our scope in the Twin Falls area, but at this time were just not, he said.

Instead, the VA plans to focus on the clinic on Second Avenue East. Improvements will include new flooring, a new Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant reception counter, sidewalk repairs, a drinking fountain in the waiting area, new paint on the inside and some modifications to the walls and the exterior of the building. Work is expected to start soon and finish by the end of the year.

The clinic mainly focuses on primary care, although it offers limited specialty services such as a laboratory and dermatology clinic. Veterans can also access more specialized services at the clinic by using whats commonly called tele-health, communicating online with a health care provider in another location. The renovation wont change any of this, Callihan said.

We wont be adding any services or taking any services away, he said.
HELENA, Mont. (AP)  Montana officials say two boats carrying invasive mussels were stopped at watercraft inspection stations over the Memorial Day weekend.

Fish, Wildlife and Parks officials say one crossed into eastern Montana from the Great Lakes Region on May 26 bound for West Yellowstone. Staffers hot-washed the boat, which was then taken to Bozeman for a complete decontamination.

The second boat passed by an inspection station at Hardin on May 27 and a trooper made the driver return to the station. The boat was washed and Canadian authorities were alerted because it was being hauled to British Columbia.

Montana requires watercraft coming into the state to be inspected after the discovery of aquatic invasive mussel larvae at Tiber Reservoir. Tests raised suspicion that larvae were also in Canyon Ferry Reservoir.

Aquatic mussels can spread quickly, clogging water pipes, displacing native species and causing other economic and environmental problems.
The man who attacked an officer Tuesday at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris said, "This is for Syria," French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said.

The man, believed to be an Algerian student, attacked the officer with a hammer but was also armed with knives, Collomb said.

Collomb said the officer's condition is not serious.

Another officer shot the assailant in the chest, police union spokesman Yves Lefebvre told BFMTV. The attacker was taken to the hospital, and the situation brought under control, police told CNN.

Video posted on social media showed what appears to be the attacker lying motionless on the ground next to a police officer.

The attack caused panic among visitors in the area. France is still in a state of emergency after the November 2015 Paris attacks that killed 130 people. There has been strong police presence on the streets of the capital since then.

Paris is also reeling from an April attack at the Champs-Elysees that left a police officer dead.

Notre-Dame, one of the most popular tourist attractions in Paris, typically attracts long lines of visitors.

Hundreds were holed up inside the cathedral, and photos on social media showed people with their hands in the air.

The Paris prosecutor's office said it had opened an anti-terror probe, and police on Twitter warned the public to stay away from the cathedral.

Kyle Riches, a tourist from San Francisco, was with his wife walking through the plaza outside Notre-Dame when they heard gunshots and dropped to the ground.

"My wife and I ran. We were trying to figure out what was going on," he said.

"We saw SWAT teams coming in to clear the area and started running."

He said he and his wife saw police holding their guns up as they ran toward someone.

A woman in the area at the time said she heard two shots.

"Everyone started fleeing from the cathedral, and police surrounded almost immediately. It looked as though they had surrounded someone at the stairs down to the Seine (River)," said the woman, who gave her name as Abigail M.

"There was a large crowd in line to go into the cathedral, and when the shots fired, they all started running."

She said police had sectioned off an area around the cathedral and down the street.

"We took cover in a nearby store, and they left us there for about 15 minutes before fully clearing the area," she said. "I saw emergency services, military personnel and what appeared to be police dressed in bomb squad gear."

CNN's Jim Bittermann reported from Paris. CNN's Angela Dewan, Paul Murphy, Justin Lear, Richard Allen Greene, Holly Yan and Joseph Netto contributed to this report.
Incumbent Hassan Rouhani leads in early vote counting in Iran's presidential race, with a big lead over his conservative rival, Ebrahim Raisi.

Preliminary results put Rouhani ahead with 14 million votes. Raisi is second with 10 million votes.

More than 40 million Iranian voters flocked to polling stations Friday, and by Saturday morning more than 25 million votes had been counted, according to the head of Iran's Interior Ministry State Elections Committee.

Rouhani, considered a moderate, was a key architect of the 2015 nuclear deal with the US, the EU and other partners. The election is seen, at least in part, as a referendum on that agreement, which has so far yielded mixed economic results for Iranians.

His closest opponent is conservative cleric Raisi, who has cast doubt on the benefits of the nuclear deal.

Some polling stations remained open as late as midnight local time (3:30 p.m. ET) because of high voter turnout, Iran's Ministry of Interior said. CNN journalists in Tehran reported seeing long lines as voters apparently heeded calls for a big turnout.

Iran's Supreme Leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was among the first to cast his ballot and urged others to do the same. "I believe that the presidential election is very important. The fate of the country is in the hands of people," he said.

Raisi is widely seen as Khamenei's preferred candidate -- indeed, he is often mentioned as his possible successor.

Rouhani, meanwhile, is essentially running for re-election as an outsider, and is backed by Iran's reformist camp.

For many in Iran, especially in affluent areas of the capital, Tehran, Rouhani has provided a glimpse of what many have long desired -- engagement with the outside world, without the types of banking and visa restrictions, as well as economic sanctions -- that left them feeling so isolated.

Reform-minded supporters recognize that Rouhani isn't perfect -- he too, after all, is also a cleric. But he's widely seen by reformers as their best hope for change.

A CNN crew in north Tehran, where there are a lot of moderate Rouhani supporters, saw long lines all day at one polling station, with some people waiting up to three hours to vote despite the scorching heat.

Voter Mahya Kamalvan, 26, told CNN: "We cannot complain if someone else is chosen. We have to prove that we are here, we support what we want. And then if anything happens the other way, maybe we can say something."

Another voter, 22-year-old medical student Yasaman Allahgholy, said it was her duty to vote to "make my country more free, and be more popular in the world," and that it was important to protect the real improvements she has seen recently in Iran's medical system.

"I am young, and I want to live in a more free country. To show what I think without fearing from being in jail or something like that," she said.

"When we fight with other countries, when we show an angry face to other countries, our economy will decrease little by little. So it's really important for me to participate in this election, for my future."

"It's the reason why I have [waited] about one hour in this line, in this hot weather."

Conservative frontrunner

Should Raisi win, Iran is expected to retreat from the kind of nascent international engagement seen during Rouhani's first term, with a focus on growing its economy internally rather than looking for direct foreign investment.

Raisi's history may deter some voters -- the 56-year-old cleric was a member of the so-called "Death Commission," which presided over the summary executions of thousands of political prisoners in the summer of 1988.

But Rouhani won't necessarily benefit.

Ahmad Majidyar, who leads the IranObserved Project at the Middle East Institute, believes that "many reformists are dismayed by the President's unwillingness to stand up to the country's judiciary and security establishment," meaning many may simply not bother to vote at all.

In a tight contest, a traditionally high turnout among conservatives could be enough to give Raisi victory.

However, Rouhani has history on his side: no sitting president has failed to win a second term since 1981.

Official results, which will be announced by Iran's Ministry of Interior, are not expected until later this weekend. If no one candidate achieves an absolute majority -- over 50% of the vote -- a runoff will take place on May 26.

The key issues

The President has had a tough time defending the 2015 nuclear deal and his opponents have accused him of not making good on his promises. Debates have largely centered on this issue.

Rouhani billed the deal as one that would thrust open the gates of economic opportunity, bring the country out of its isolation and create millions of jobs for Iranians.

The agreement has brought a string of billion dollar deals with Western firms for airplanes and oil exploration in Iran.

But the benefits have been largely limited by a fall in global oil prices and US President Donald Trump's election, which introduced uncertainty for investors -- Trump has repeatedly threatened to rip up the deal. For the average Iranian, the results have been lackluster, and Raisi has jumped upon this accusing Rouhani of sacrificing Iran's sovereignty for a fool's bargain.

Unemployment remains high -- although it fell during Rouhani's first term -- and growth is middling.

The official unemployment rate is 12.5%, and much higher for the university-educated. But since the Iranian government counts anyone who works just one hour a week as employed, according to Hamed Mousavi of Tehran University, the true overall number is likely well over 20%.

Rouhani stated the choice facing Iranians simply: "Our nation will announce if it continues on the path of peacefulness, or if it wants to choose tension."

For voter Hassan Rahmani, 34, in northern Tehran, maintaining good relations is key to Iran's future.

"All the growth in this country is dependent on relations with the other countries -- European countries, United States, all the countries," he told CNN.

Ershan Nasroudi, 35, voiced a similar view. "We see that if you want to have a safe economy, if you want to have a better life for the people, you have to have relations with other countries," he said.

Vibrant scenes

In Iran, where political speech is severely curtailed, newspapers and even social media channels are government regulated and protest comes with great personal risk, the quadrennial presidential election is an opportunity to blow off emotional steam, to act politically in the most public, and loud, of ways.

At a campaign rally last week at the Azadi stadium in Tehran, Rouhani took to the stage and delivered a speech more worthy of an outsider than the incumbent.

Standing behind a lectern and surveying the sea of purple -- his campaign color -- before him, Rouhani promised much.

"We want freedom of the press," he declared. "Freedom of association, and freedom of thought!"

However, his supporters will be aware that even if re-elected, what Rouhani can achieve may be limited by the authority wielded by Iran's Supreme Leader Khamenei, and by institutions such as the Revolutionary Guards.

CNN's Frederik Pleitgen and Mick Krever reported from Tehran, while Euan McKirdy wrote from Hong Kong and Laura Smith-Spark from London. CNN's Artemis Moshtaghian, Tim Lister and Tamara Qiblawi also contributed to this report.
Gunmen and suicide bombers attacked Wednesday in what appeared in coordinated attacks the Iranian parliament in central Teheran and the shrine of founder of the Islamic Republic Ruhollah Khomeini, reports say.

An unconfirmed number of assailants attacked Wednesday morning the parliament complex at the time a session was taking place. The gunmen according to local reports took some lawmakers hostages and killed seven people including a guard.

Four attackers including a suicide bomber were involved in the attack on parliament, the Guardian reports citing Iranian State TV broadcaster Irib.

A lawmaker told the media that the gunmen were carrying Kalashnikovs and one Colt pistol,

Another local news channel backed by the state, IRNA, notes that one attacker had been arrested.

ISNA news agency contacted a lawmaker identified as MP Seyyed Hossein Naqavi-Hosseini who said three gunmen were still in the building, in MPs offices, BBC reports.

Iranian security forces arrived to the scene and sealed off the area. Helicopters were seen circling over the parliament.

Reports from another attack at Ruhollah Khomeinis mausoleum, located several kilometres south of the parliament left five people injured.

Ali Khalili from the mausoleums public relations office told IRNA news agency that one of the armed men had blown himself up in front of a bank outside the mausoleum, BBC reports.

The suicide bomber was reportedly a woman. Images from the scene showed the remains of the bomber, apparently clad in black clothes.

Five people were injured in the attack at the shrine.

Ayatollah Khomeini is Irans Islamic Republic founder. He led the revolution 1979 against the Shah. He led the country for 10 years.

Iran largely Shia, has been largely spared by terror attacks. Islamic Republic has sent troops to back embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad against rebels and terrorists.

The Islamic State group vowed to cause havoc in Iran which it accuses of suppressing minority Sunnites.
US officials have expressed Russias potential involvement in the hacking of Qatars state national news agency QNA late last month after Doha blamed hackers for planting fake news attributed to Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, which sparked diplomatic dispute between Qatar and majority of Middle East Arab countries, CNN reports.

Qatar on May 23 claimed its national news agency QNA was hacked after friendly statements to Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah made by the Qatari Emir circulated on the QNA and its other platforms.

The incident quickly and simultaneously sparked anger in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain and Egypt which blocked all Qatari media including Doha-based al-Jazeera.

Qatar in its attempts to prove the hacking called for the FBI to investigate the incident.

US officials told CNN that intelligence gathered by US security agencies indicate that Russian hackers were behind the intrusion first reported by the Qatari government.

The US officials believe that the hackers may have received blessing from Moscow.

US officials say the Russian goal aims to cause rifts among the US and its allies.

Qatari officials confirmed to reports that the FBI is running an investigation, adding that the findings will be released soon.

A spokeswoman for the Qatari embassy in Washington said the investigation is ongoing and its results would be released publicly soon, CNN reports.

Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman al-Thani the Qatari foreign minister confirmed US officials announcement.

Whatever has been thrown as an accusation is all based on misinformation and we think that the entire crisis being based on misinformation, he told the CNN.

Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Maldives, and now Jordan and Mauritania have severed ties with Qatar accusing gas-rich country of sponsoring terrorism and threatening their national security.

Saudi Arabia, UAE Bahrain and Egypt have closed their air spaces, and maritime territories to Qatar. The countries moved further by shutting down Doha-based tv network al-Jazeera and revoking Qatar airways licence.

The allegation of the hack comes as President Trump Tuesday in a series of tweet posts praised Saudi Arabia and UAE for counter-terrorism leadership in the region following his speech for unity to face terrorism he made during his two day visit to Riyadh.

So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off, Trump said.

They said they would take a hard line on funding extremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism!

Qatar is currently house to the US largest military base in the Gulf; used by the US-led international coalition in Syria, and Iraq. Thousands of US military forces are deployed to al Udeid Air Base.
After the bankruptcy of Senegal Air Lines, a new company, Air Senegal SA, will start operations later this year, officials said on Monday.

Air Senegal SA will launch its activities on December 7 at the opening of Blaise Diagne international airport.

Our national airline is going to be the first that will roll on the runway of our new airport, the minister of transport and tourism, Maimouna Ndoye Seck told local media RFM.

The company, which already has three planes, will acquire two other ones. This means that Air Senegal SA will start with a fleet of five planes. The new company has an initial capital of 40 billion CFA francs (60 million dollars).

The Senegalese government expects an increase of this capital with the arrival of new investors. These will enable the company to meet its expansion ambitions, it said.

Initially planned to open in December 2015, the launch of Senegals Blaise Diagne International Airport (AIBD) is now scheduled for Q4 2017.

With the launch of Air Senegal S.A, the Senegalese government aims to make of Dakar a regional air hub with economic spin-offs that promote the creation of jobs and wealth.
The government of Cameroon on Monday arrested over thirty anti-terrorism soldiers engaged in the fight against Boko Haram in the northern-regions of the West-African nation.

The demobilized soldiers were protesting to demand for payment of bonuses and relief from the forefront.

The Ministry of Defense indicated that those arrested will face a judicial enquiry for obstructing free flow of vehicles in the Far North region where they were stationed.

The soldiers are part of the Joint Multinational Taskforce combating Boko Haram activities in the Lake Chad region.

President Paul Biya earlier on Sunday said his government will listen to the demands of the people and negotiate if the requests are legitimate.

Provided dissent and demands are expressed within the framework of the law, we shall listen, and through the path of negotiation, we shall accede, to the fullest extent possible, to those requests that are legitimate, the President said.

I believe social dialogue is a necessity. And so, we shall not silence those who do not share our points of view on how the country should be run. And we reject the use of force as a means of political action, as is sometimes the case elsewhere, as we have recently seen, he added.

Boko Haram, despite starting in Nigerias northeastern Borno State continues to threaten the entire Lake Chad region.
France has asked the UN Security Council to authorize the deployment of a five-nation African military force to fight jihadists in the Sahel region and struggle against trafficking of all kinds.

Frances bid came in a draft resolution circulated to the 15 members of the Security Council on Tuesday.

According to AFP, which said it obtained the text of the draft, the resolution would give the Sahel force a UN mandate to use all necessary means to combat terrorism, drug trafficking and trafficking in persons by eradicating the actions of Islamist militants and organized crime groups in the Sahel region.

The Security Council could vote on the draft resolution as early as next week, AFP said quoting diplomats.

The vast, arid zone has become a breeding ground for jihadist groups, including groups linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State, which endanger the security of the region, of Europe and beyond.

We cannot afford to let the Sahel region become a new safe haven for terrorists across the world, French UN Ambassador Francois Delattre was quoted by Reuters as saying.

The French diplomat said he expected the council to back the measure, drafted under chapter 7 of the UN charter, which provides for the use of force.

Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger  which make up the G5  agreed in March to set up the special counter-terrorism operation of 5,000 military, police and civilian personnel for the Sahel region.

The French-drafted text stressed that the G5 forces efforts to counter jihadist groups will help MINUSMA fulfil its mandate to stabilize Mali.
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International university to launch hospitality management studies in Tbilisi

Vatel International Business School Hotel & Tourism Management University will prepare the next generation to build their own future in the international tourism and hospitality industry in Georgia.Vatel International Business School Hotel & Tourism Management University held an official presentation today in Georgias capital of Tbilisi where Georgian National University (SEU), Block Invest and Vatel Group signed a Memorandum on Cooperation (MoC).The MoC guarantees that in September, a Vatel University will be opened in Tbilisi.Vatel, first Worldwide Business School Group in Hospitality and Tourism Management, has 35 Schools throughout the world, 7,000 students and 30,000 alumni.Georgias Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili attended the presentation of the university today where he hoped Georgia to have high qualified professionals in the field of hotel management very soon.In Tbilisi alone, about 15 international branded hotels are being built. Can you imagine how demanded the high professionals will be in Georgia? Tourism is developing in every part of Georgia and we need to make this country more attractive not only in terms of developing its landscape but also to improve the service standards, said Kvirikashvili.This day is very important because very soon we will have international-level qualified professionals in Georgia. I am sure this university will attract students from our neighbouring countries as well, he added.Kvirikashvili also noted that the Vatel Georgia University was in accordance with the Governments initiative  Study in Georgia  a recently launched program which encourages cementing Georgias reputation as a regional educational hub.Vatel Georgia - International Business School Hotel & Tourism Management University in Georgia will issue French international diplomas. The education process will be at SEU campus.The hotels and tourism management courses will be taught in English. The academic program has bachelor and master degrees. Students also can graduate professional courses starting from three months till one year in one year.
The News in Brief

Survival of the Prison Archive



A unique archive was kept in the former 1 Penitentiary Facility (Ortachala Prison). The archive contained documents and files about prisoners and those who worked in the prison system; it also stored important records pertaining to XX century history of Georgia. After the demolition of the prison in 2008, the fate of the archive was unclear.



The IDFI expressed interested in the Ortachala Prison archive as early as in 2013. The organization requested clarification from the National Archives of Georgia, the Ministry of Justice, and the Ministry of Corrections. The Ministry of Justice responded by forwarding the request to the Ministry of Corrections, and the National Archives stated that the documentation was not kept in their system.



As was found out, after the destruction of the Ortachala Prison in 2008, without following any procedures, the archive was transported to the basement of the administrative building of the Gldani 8 Penitentiary Facility.



Afterwards, the IDFI asked the Department of Corrections for permission to be allowed access to the archive. IDFI staff were the first to be authorized to evaluate the condition of the Ortachala Prison archive.



The IDFI discovered that the archive was in a precarious state. During the transportation of the archive, no classification and cataloging was done. The documents were placed in the basement, some in bags, some without. Most of the files simply sat on the floor under grave danger of destruction in the damp basement. Many of these files were already unrecoverable.



To save the archive, the IDFI offered to cooperate with the Ministry of Corrections. The organization facilitated communication between the Archive of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, National Archives of Georgia, and the Ministry of Corrections to share experiences about modernizing archives. Several work meetings were convened to plan rehabilitation of the archive, transporting documents to a safe area, and cataloging them properly.



On September 8 2016, the Minister of Corrections and Probation, Kakha Kakhishvili, presented an annual report about reforms in the system. On the same day, after several years of restoration, a new archive of the Ministry of Corrections was opened.



Today, through the efforts of the Ministry, the documents are kept in a facility that meets modern standards. The study and cataloging of documentation continues. There are also plans to digitalize the archive.



For the time being, the prison archive is under subordination of the administrative department of the Ministry of Corrections of Georgia. (IDFI)







Clinics to be obliged to provide emergency medical aid if a citizens life is at risk



A new law making medical institutions provide citizens with emergency medical aid if their health or life is under threat will soon come into effect. In addition, they will be held criminally responsible if rejecting a patient being in need of immediate aid.



Georgias human rights parliamentary committee has discussed the issue at its first hearing today. Sophio Kiladze, Rati Ionatamishvili, Anri Okhanashvili and Vano Zardiashvili are the initiators of the said project.



As a reminder, those civilians who are clients of private insurance agencies are no longer allowed to be provided with medical services envisaged in the General State Healthcare program. According to Kiladze, all of this has caused certain problems.



According to the incumbent law, doctors are committed to providing patients with constant medical assistance if a situation is critical, posing a threat to life, including if this was a result of a suicide attempt a patient, being a client of a private agencys insurance service may happen to be unprotected when facing a health problem but his guilt is still unclear, Kiladze has said. There is a risk that a medical institution may reject a patient with no financial resources, she concluded. (IPN)




EU launches projects to develop Georgias rural areas

The European Union (EU) continues to contribute to the reduction of poverty in rural Georgia by supporting the improvement of community members employment and income opportunities.New EU-funded rural development projects were launched today in Keda and Khulo municipalities in Georgias Adjara region.Over 50 representatives of rural communities, municipal authorities, government and civil society attended the event, where the EU supported projects Promotion of Rural Development and Diversification in Khulo Municipality and Optimising the Potential of Local Assets for Rural Development of Keda Municipality were launched.The projects aim at promoting a bottom-up, inclusive rural development approach that fully engages all communities in Keda and Khulo municipalities.The projects follow the earlier EU-supported rural development actions under ENPARD in Borjomi, Lagodekhi and Kazbegi municipalities.This year, EU launched rural development projects in five new municipalities including Keda and Khulo, also Dedoplistskaro, Akhalkalaki and Tetritskaro.The EU is supporting rural development in Georgia through its ENPARD Programme. Implemented since 2013 with a total budget of 102 million, the main goal of ENPARD is to reduce rural poverty.
Azeri journalist kidnapped in Georgia for Azerbaijan

By Messenger Staff

The Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia has released a statement over the case of Azerbaijani journalist Afghan Mukhtarli, who disappeared in central Tbilisi on May 29. He was later found in Baku, the country in which he was persecuted.Mukhtarlis lawyer stated that the man was beaten up and allegedly, Georgian law enforcers helped the neighbouring country to detain him, which, according to him, was a violation of international norms.The lawyer also stated that the activist and journalist was now detained for illegally crossing border and on charges of contraband, as police found 10,000 USD in his pocket after his detention.Georgias Ministry of Internal Affairs has stated they have launched an investigation over the issue for the illegal depravation of liberty.Communication is under way with Azerbaijan. As soon as the factual circumstances are established, the public will be provided with detailed information," the Ministry stated.The head of Georgias State Security Service, Vakhtang Gomelauri, said the man was detained on the Green Border, an area where passports are not needed."We should not hurry to make statements. I will refrain from doing so. According to the Azerbaijani side, they detained the journalist while crossing the Green Border and not at the checkpoint. We will study this fact," said Gomelauri.The Prosecutors Office of Azerbaijan said Mukhtarli was detained while illegally crossing the border and he was found with a large amount of money.Georgian NGOs held a rally in front of the government administration building in Tbilisi on May 31, condemning their complicity and stating that from all points of view, the current Georgian authorities are guilty.They stressed that even if the activist had not been handed over by Georgia, the fact that he later appeared in Baku meant that the border was not appropriately protected.Unfortunately, I cannot rule out that Aliyev's regime in Azerbaijan may force Afghan Mukhtarli to commit suicide or he may be killed some other way, Azeri human rights defender and politician Vidadi Isdanov told the Georgia media.He stated Mukhtarli was investigating "Aliyev's mafia Investments in Georgia".The investigation showed a lot of interesting things, which is why Mukhtarli had been systematically followed. It turned out that Ilham Aliyev and his family have banks, hotels and restaurants in Georgia, he said.He [Mukhtarli] had recently given an interview to the Voice of America, where he said that there was a risk of his imminent detention, said Isdanov.The United National Movement and the European Georgia opposition parties directly accused Georgian special forces of handing over the man to the Azerbaijani authorities.They stressed Georgia would be grilled because of this by the international community.Georgias Public Defender Ucha Nanuashvili stated the relevant state structures should be held responsible with regards to the case.He stressed this fact makes him feel that nobody is protected in this country and this could happen again."It is a very sad and alarming fact that a person can disappear in the center of the city, and then we learn that he is a victim of torture and ill-treatment in another neighboring state. The relevant state structures should be held responsible with regards to the case, politically and otherwise, Nanuashvili said.Georgias Prime Minister and Interior Minister refrained from commenting on the issue.This incident raises serious question marks over the governments competency and morality.The key question is that why a man who was persecuted in his homeland and was seeking political asylum in Georgia, would illegally cross the border of the country where his life could be at risk.The charges he is facing in Azerbaijan are also a cause for concern.Georgia must answer all the questions posed by the public and the international community, as the incident could have a very negative influence on the countrys image.
The News in Brief

Abkhaz Opposition Criticizes Raul Khajimba



A coalition of opposition parties in Abkhazia addressed the regions leader Raul Khajimba on May 30 with a letter, demanding that he fulfill the socio-political stability agreement signed between the Abkhaz authorities and the opposition coalition on December 19, 2016.



The agreement was signed amid a political crisis in the region, when the opposition was demanding Khajimbas resignation, which the latter refused to accept. The document recognized the existence of a political crisis, denounced the possibility of a violent political confrontation, and stipulated that Khajimba would offer official posts to members of the opposition, including two posts in the Constitutional Court and four posts in the Central Election Commission.



Khajimba himself and then parliamentary speaker Valery Bganba signed the agreement on behalf of the Abkhaz authorities, while the head of the Apra foundation, Aslan Bzhania, deputy chairman of Amtsakhara party Ramaz Jopua, and the head of the Abzankhara organization Nugzar Ashuba signed on behalf of the opposition.



The May 30 address is also signed by Bzhania, Jopua and Ashuba. Its authors claim that the opposition treated the document responsibly, and fulfilled all of its provisions. At the same time, they say that Khajimba is not fulfilling the part of the agreement concerning the oppositions candidacies for the Constitutional Court and the Election Commission. One of the two candidates for the constitutional court membership from the opposition has not been presented to the parliament by Khajimba, despite the fact that the process of staffing of the court is to end on June 1.



The opposition representatives requested fulfillment of the agreement by Khajimba, granting the opposition its promised seats in the constitutional court and election commission. They added that failure to do so would be seen by them as a wish to have an open confrontation, provoking new mass protest rallies, and would nullify even a small possibility of dialogue, causing more serious consequences. (civil.ge)







Georgia marks 22nd anniversary of Air Defence formation



Georgia is marking a significant milestone in its military history; today is the 22nd anniversary of the formation of the Georgian Air Defence forcs.



Defence Minister Levan Izoria and other defence officials of Georgia gathered at the Alekseeva defence base to celebrate the occasion.



Izoria said that air defence is one of the priorities of the current reform process at the Ministry, and one of the aims of the NATO-Georgia Substantial Package is to increase Georgias air defence capabilities.



"In this regard, we have a strategic cooperation with France. We will have brand new equipment by the end of this year. Our military servicemen are undergoing training to learn how best to use the new armaments, Izoria said.



He added that Georgian defence officials are planning to pay a visit to France in two weeks and this will be the third such visit of the past eight months.



The celebration continued with an award ceremony where several servicemen were honoured for their service and their family members had an opportunity to view military equipment on display. (Agenda.ge)







Tickets for Elton Johns concert in Georgia to be sold from June 25



The world-famous British musician, pianist and composer Sir Elton John, will take to the stage in Georgia for the first time on September 16, 2017.



The concert will take place at the Black Sea Arena concert hall in the village of Shekvetili. Western Georgia. The place is the same spot where Christina Aguilera, Scorpions and Aerosmith have performed recently.



Elton John will reportedly perform his old hits as well as several songs from his new album, entitled Wonderful Crazy Night. The concert is organized jointly by Solo, the Bank of Georgias Personal Service Group and Eastern Promotion. The negotiations with the musician have been going on for the last year and a half and the amount of Elton Johns earned income is not disclosed. Tickets for Solo clients will be available from June 25 and the minimum price is GEL 90. For others, tickets will be available from June 29 and the minimum price will be GEL 150. (IPN)







Prosecutors Office of Georgia Celebrates Administrative Professionals Day



The Prosecutors Office of Georgia celebrated the Prosecutors Office Professionals Day. Chief Prosecutor of Georgia Irakli Shotadze attended the event, along with his deputies. At the event dedicated to the Prosecutors Office Professionals Day activities performed by the Prosecutors Office of Georgia were evaluated and future plans were discussed. As was mentioned at the event, last year was one of the busiest and most important for the Prosecutors Office of Georgia. Priorities and challenges of the Prosecutors office of Georgia were underlined and it was noted that delivering highly qualified prosecutorial activities still remains the top priority.



Chief Prosecutor of Georgia Irakli Shotadze congratulated the personnel of the Prosecutors Office and thanked them for their service, and awarded successful employees of the Prosecutors Office appreciation certificates and granted some early promotions. For attending to his official duties in a particularly conscientious and highly professional manner, and for his loyal and prolonged work in the prosecution system, the highest and the most honorable title of Honorary Worker of the Prosecution Service, was awarded to the Deputy Regional Prosecutor of Kakheti, Vazha Maghradze.



Prosecutors Office Professionals Day has been celebrated since 1999. (Pog.gov.ge)




After a bitter and contentious debate, the powerful Constitution Revision Commission that will place amendments on the November 2018 ballot ended the impasse that has hampered its work for months and adopted a new set of rules on Tuesday.

The panel voted 20 to 11, with six members absent, to approve a set of guidelines for how they will decide on what amendments will go directly on the November 2018 ballot. Drafted by Brecht Heuchan, a Tallahassee political consultant and appointee of Gov. Rick Scott, the proposal uses as its framework the rules adopted by the CRC when it last met 20 years ago.

But the seemingly simple task of writing rules in the absence of rules created rifts in the Republican-controlled panel, exposed power struggles between the governor's appointees and everybody else, and quickly became a show of personalities.

Carlos Beruff, the Bradenton businessman appointed to the panel by Scott -- who hopes to also be on the November ballot as a candidate for U.S. Senate -- flexed his muscle.

During the two-hour meeting, several commissioners raised a point of order, asked a question or offered a alternative approach to letting Heuchans proposal be the only one before the commission.

But, Beruff declared: there are no rules. When he was challenged, he then made up and applied his own set of rules as he went along.

"It seems like we have rules when some people like them, but we don't have rules when some people don't like them," said an exasperated Bob Solari, an Indian River County commissioner appointed to the CRC by Senate President Joe Negron. "If I was watching this from the public, I would be incredibly depressed and dismayed."

The commission is convened every 20 years and has the power to put proposals directly on the November 2018 ballot. It met for the first time in March but the original rules, drafted on behalf of Beruff, were rejected by commissioners because they gave the chair extraordinary power to control what amendments will actually make it to the ballot and allowed commissioners to dial in for meetings.

Bob Martinez, a Miami lawyer appointed by the chief justice of the Florida Supreme Court, presented the first amendment to the rules -- a proposal that would require the commission to adhere to the open government and public records laws of the state constitution.

"It's something that I feel very strongly about,'' Martinez said. "Since we're doing the work of the public, the public should see what we're doing." Story here.
@martindvassolo

Steve Smith signed an oath when he qualified as a candidate for the state Senate last week saying hes been a registered Democrat for a year.

Not quite.

Florida law requires anyone qualifying as a party candidate to state in writing that they have not been a member of another party for a full year before qualifying.

Smith, a long-time Republican and the CEO of a Miami tech consulting firm, registered as a Democrat on June 10, 2016, less than a year before he and six other candidates qualified on May 30  12 days short of a year  for the District 40 seat left vacant by former Sen. Frank Artiles.

Hours after a Miami Herald story went online Tuesday about the apparent violation, Smith he withdrew his candidacy, saying he did not want to jeopardize the Democratic Partys chances to turn the seat blue and his own political aspirations down the road.

It is what it is, he said.

Had he remained in the race, Smith would have been vulnerable to a challenge, if one of his opponents had taken him to court. The state Division of Elections, through which candidates file their paperwork, does not police the accuracy of the information provided, simply that it has been completed in full, a spokeswoman said.

Mark Herron, a Tallahassee elections attorney who has worked with Democrats in the past, said if Smith were to win the Democratic primary on July 25 and a Republican opponent successfully sued him, Democratic candidates might not be able to fill that spot because of a provision in the vacancy and nominations statutes, which states that a primary victor who is found to have improperly qualified for a partys nomination cannot be replaced by another candidate.

Alex Diaz de la Portilla, a Republican front-runner in the special election, said Tuesday he would have challenged Smiths candidacy if he had gone on and won the Democratic primary.

I would have sued him, Diaz de la Portilla said, calling the situation unfortunate because Smith appeared to have just missed the deadline to switch parties. Poor guy.

Smith told the Herald he wasnt aware of the violation, saying he thought he was within the window.

He said he consulted with an attorney and with the general counsel of the Florida Board of Elections before reaching his decision to withdraw. Asked if he would support one of his opponents, he said he would be backing Annette Taddeo, a Democrat. Smith said his sights were now set on a possible run for the 26th Congressional District seat  now held by Republican U.S. Rep. Carlos Curbelo.

I want to continue to fight for the people of my district, Smith said.

Photo: Steve Smith
@martindvassolo

On campaign filings for the District 40 state Senate race, Republican Alex Diaz de la Portilla lists two addresses: a mattress company that belongs to his father and a five-bedroom West Miami home facing foreclosure.

Both lie outside the district he is running to represent, a large swath of Southwest Miami-Dade County.

The mattress company, De Mattress Inc., is located in District 38. The home, which has a homestead exemption reserved for primary residences, is located in District 37 in West Miami.

Florida law requires candidates for state office to live in their district by Election Day, which will be Sept. 26.

In an interview with the Miami Herald, Diaz de la Portilla acknowledged he doesnt currently live in the district but said that he plans to rent a home or apartment unit before the deadline approaches. He said it is to be expected, with the surprise resignation of former state Sen. Frank Artiles in April and the announcement of a special election by Gov. Rick Scott, but he is looking at several options for his move.

As for the mattress company, he said he runs his political consulting firm, First Stone Management LLC, from inside the space.

He said despite not living in the district, he has served more voters of District 40 over his decades of public service in the state Legislature than all of his competitors combined.

I have very deep ties with this district, he said.

Diaz de la Portilla is running against two other Republicans, three Democrats and an independent candidate in the special election to replace Artiles,who vacated his seat in April after making offensive remarks to colleagues. The primary will be July 25.

According to the Miami-Dade County Property Appraiser, Diaz de la Portilla and his ex-wife jointly own the West Miami home. In April, Wells Fargo filed a notice in county court seeking to foreclose on the home, according to a copy of the notice obtained by the Herald and first reported by Politico. Diaz de la Portilla listed the home as being worth $603,357 in a financial disclosure form. Diaz de la Portilla said the foreclosure was a necessary step toward modifying the loan on his home following a divorce.

It should be resolved shortly, he said.

Diaz de la Portilla blamed the sleazy campaign tactics of fellow Republican candidate and former Rep. Jose Felix Diaz for bringing the foreclosure notice to light, an accusation Diaz denied Wednesday.

[His] financial mismanagement is a matter of public record, Diaz wrote in a text message.
@alextdaugherty

Florida Sens. Marco Rubio and Bill Nelson led an effort to pass a bill making it easier for the Department of Veterans Affairs to fire bad employees and protect whistleblowers who report abuse and waste.

Rubio and Nelson were among the sponsors of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act, which passed the Senate by a voice vote on Tuesday. The bill now heads to the House for approval.

The legislation, according to Rubio and Nelson's offices, would authorize VA secretary David Shulkin to fire or demote senior and non-senior employees and lowers the burden of proof needed to dismiss an employee. The bill also protects whistleblowers by not allowing Shulkin to fire employees who have filed a formal complaint regarding conduct at the VA.

In 2014, the VA was rocked with scandal after a some veterans died while waiting months for appointments at the Phoenix VA hospital and employees created secret lists to cover up the delays.

"You can imagine Im incredibly pleased that my Senate colleagues today passed the VA Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act," Rubio said. "Its bipartisan and what it basically does is its now going to give the VA secretary the power to fire and dismiss bad employees and also to protect whistleblowers who come forward."

Nelson also praised the act's passage.

The brave men and women who have served our country deserve the very best care our nation can give them, Nelson said on the Senate floor prior to the vote. This bipartisan bill will help improve the quality of care our veterans receive by reforming the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The House passed a similar bill earlier this year by a mostly party-line vote after the largest union of federal employees opposed the measure. But the Senate version gives rank-and-file employees a longer appeals process and holds VA executives to a tougher standard.

President Donald Trump tweeted his support for the bill on Tuesday.

"Senate passed the VA Accountability Act," Trump tweeted. "The House should get this bill to my desk ASAP! We cant tolerate substandard care for our vets."
@NewsbySmiley

UPDATE: The board of the Bayfront Park Management Trust voted 5 to 4 to install the $2 million Berliner playground and seek repayment from the Omni Community Redevelopment Agency. Carollo cast the deciding vote.

Miami Commissioner Frank Carollo wants to buy a $2 million playground for Museum Park and send the bill to an anti-blight agency.

Carollo has called for a special meeting Wednesday of the Bayfront Park Management Trust in order to push for the purchase of an elaborate, futuristic jungle gym. He wants the trust to pay for the structure -- to be provided by a vendor he brought to the table -- and pay for it out of an improvements fund that has yet to receive a dollar.

"We're trying to be a signature park," Carollo, the trust's board chairman, said late last month after unveiling the idea. "It's something worthy of Museum Park. Something worthy of being next to the science museum. And I think we should move forward."

Carollo says the playground would be an important amenity for a park that has never lived up to the hype of the $68 million facility initially envisioned back when Miami was first planning to build an art and science museum south of I-395. He says the playground is similar to a dramatic play area in Seattle built next to the Space Needle.

The money Carollo wants to tap into to pay for the playground would come from the Omni Community Redevelopment Agency, which agreed to pay $2 million a year into a Museum Park improvements fund under the massive Global Agreement that also paid for Marlins Park and the PortMiami Tunnel.

A bare bones version of the park opened in 2014, but money has never changed hands. And as of now, the entire payment due this year is sitting in the redevelopment agency's reserves, with no agreement over how it should be spent or whether it should even be due the city.

"Monies are owed to the city with regard to capital improvements here at Museum Park and right now we're in the process of figuring out how to transfer that over," City Attorney Victoria Mendez told trust board members last month.

If Carollo is going to convince the Bayfront Park Trust to buy the playground, he'll need more support from the board. They rejected his proposal on May 24 with a tied vote.

Dissenters on the board complained about the lack of detail regarding the playground's costs, and the lack of competitive bids in bringing in playground manufacturer Berliner and their sales representative, ARC Florida. The Miami Foundation, which has taken an active interest in upgrading Museum Park, has also weighed in, cautioning Carollo from moving forward on the playground without first getting public input and considering the larger picture of the park's future.

The board meets at noon at the Bayfront Park Management Trust offices at 301 Biscayne Blvd
Montana Attorney General Tim Fox joined 15 other states on Tuesday in a legal brief that argues in support of President Donald Trumps ban on travelers from some majority-Muslim countries in a case that has reached the Supreme Court of the United States.

"The legal argument is pretty clear on this," Fox spokesman Eric Sell said. "The president has the authority. The attorney general is supporting the rule of law and the process."

At issue is whether the policy violates the countrys protections for religious freedom and the limits of the presidents authority on issues of immigration.

The executive order issued by the Republican president in early March would have barred people from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen from entering the country for 90 days while the United States tightened screening processes, and also would have ended all refugee admissions for 120 days.

The order was blocked by a Maryland judge and that ruling was upheld last month by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals based in Virginia. Because some of the timelines in the order are soon to pass, the nations highest court has agreed to take up an emergency order to reverse the lower court rulings, several months before the regular season when it might rule on the larger issues at hand.

An earlier version of the president's travel ban proposal was struck down by a Washington state judge and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Briefs from supporters, such as the coalition of 16 states, and those from opponents, led by the American Civil Liberties Union, are due to the nation's highest court by Monday.

Fox was one of 12 attorneys general and one governor to support the presidents policy with a unified legal brief in March. North Dakota, Ohio and Tennessee have now signed onto the latest brief from the states arguing that the ban should be allowed to go into effect until the Supreme Court can take up the debate of the core constitutional concerns later this summer.

Texas Solicitor General Scott Keller wrote the most recent brief from the states.

Fox has not said whether he supports the travel ban as good immigration or national security policy.

"I don't think that's for any attorney general of a particular state to say. They can opine if they want to," Sell said, noting Fox has not talked about the merits of such a policy. "It's the attorney general's job to talk about the legal arguments, and the public policy discussion is for the federal legislative branch, U.S. Congress."
As Willard High School students worked on the Bitterroot Spur Trail mural Tuesday, a biker whizzing past called out a compliment.

"We get that all the time," said Stephanie Frostad, a Missoula artist. "Sometimes we get people calling out the Latin names of some of the plants in the scene."

Frostad has worked with the Willard students on the mural since 2014 when she was recruited by Willard art teacher Gwen Hoppe. Hoppe was approached by Elite One Nutritional Services because the company's building had been vandalized more than once with graffiti. The company thought the mural would be a good deterrent, Frostad said.

It appears to have worked. The wall is now covered with paintings of native Montana plants, flora and animals, all sketched out by students. Missoula Parks and Recreation wanted the images to be of native species, Frostad said.

Since the first mural began, each year Hoppe's students have made additions. But there is no more space for another mural section, so Hoppe's students will have to find a new project next year. She already is working to find a new art project where the students can make something that beautifies the community.

"It's good for students to contribute," Hoppe said. "They can do wonderful things."

Each student was asked to sketch a native species from Montana, and Frostad took those sketches and incorporated them into the larger mural sketch.

Dylan Conat, 16-year-old sophomore, sketched a pine cone, which hangs up high in a tree.

Frostad then projected the mural onto the wall and she and students sketched it with graphite. She assigned colors to sections of the mural, making it like a giant paint-by-numbers.

Sophomore Francie Barber, 16, was in charge of everything green on the newest mural, in keeping with her green hair.

"I'm much happier when everything is green," Barber said.

Most students enjoyed the project. Octavia Alexander, a 14-year-old freshman, skipped her last periods to keep painting. The collaboration of the project was something she enjoyed.

Cathy Tabish, who works for nutritional services in the building the students had painted, enjoyed seeing the progress the students made each day. Tabish was a Willard student when she was younger, though the school had a different name then. Her kids also went to the school.

"It's amazing what they are doing," Tabish said. "To do something on that scale, it is pretty incredible."

The mural brightens up the otherwise bleak building, Tabish said. More murals around Missoula would be good for the town, she said. Things like the painted power boxes in the downtown are good for the community, she said.

The project will be concluded in the next few weeks as the students, Frostad and Hoppe put the finishing touches on the mural, including a graffiti-repellent layer.

"The students played a huge part in every element," Frostad said. "It gives them a strong sense of ownership."
A 32-year-old Missoula man who repeatedly kicked a police dog after a car chase through the Rattlesnake neighborhood in January received a fully suspended sentence Tuesday.

Saying he was somewhat reluctant in doing so, District Court Judge Robert Dusty Deschamps agreed to follow a plea agreement and imposed the five-year suspended Department of Corrections sentence on David William Wozniak.

And if you come back bring your toothbrush because youre going away for five years, the judge said.

According to court documents, officer Tim Harrington was patrolling Greenough Drive shortly after midnight on Jan. 8 when he saw Wozniak, who was driving a Jeep Cherokee, lose control while rounding a corner and nearly hit four pedestrians.

Wozniak didnt stop when Harrington tried to pull him over, instead leading the officer on a chase through the Rattlesnake neighborhood that reached speeds of 60 miles per hour. Eventually, Wozniak went off the road and crashed into the backyard of a house.

According to court documents, Wozniak refused repeated requests for him to show both of his hands and surrender, and Harrington released his K-9 officer Sunka, which jumped through the drivers side window. Wozniak kicked the dog repeatedly in the face during the ensuing struggle, which ended when officers were able to pull out Wozniak.

In March, Wozniak pleaded guilty to felony criminal endangerment, as well as misdemeanors for driving under the influence, fleeing from officers, resisting arrest and harming a police dog.

I made the wrong choice to drive when I was under the influence of drugs, Wozniak told Deschamps in March, adding he got scared when he saw the patrol cars lights behind him. To be honest with you I dont remember much of the incident, I was pretty gone.

As part of a plea agreement, additional misdemeanors for possession of drug paraphernalia, driving without insurance, driving with a suspended license and displaying fictitious plates were dismissed.

On Tuesday, Deschamps said Wozniak already owed Missoula courts more than $11,000 in fines and restitution from prior convictions, and declined to stack any more fees on top of that.

Youve never paid a fine in your life, he said, asking how the defendant intended to pay off his debts. Your history suggests were wasting our time asking you to pay.

Wozniak replied that he would just have to work at it.
Recently, United States Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III issued a memo directing all federal prosecutors to seek the harshest penalties possible in all criminal cases. Sessions has taken aggressive steps to dismantle criminal justice reforms outlined in the Department of Justice 2013 Smart on Crime policy, which instructed prosecutors to appropriately charge eligible individuals who qualified for lesser charges and therefore lesser prison time. Under Sessions proposal, judges could impose mandatory minimum sentences of 20 years to life for certain categories of drug possession offenses.

This is a return to a policy of mass incarceration that utterly failed in the past to stem the flow of drugs. This revived policy will encourage mass incarceration and sharply increase the federal prison population. Worse, it will exact a very high cost to public safety because the appropriated funds will be diverted to the incarceration of low level non-violent drug offenders who would be otherwise eligible for alternative approaches such as treatment courts, and away from important national safety priorities.

By no means is it being suggested here that criminals should go free. To protect our communities, drug dealers  and in particular those who are violent, working with cartels, or using guns  should receive the strictest of penalties. But not every defendant merits the highest penalty available, and imposition of such penalties makes little fiscal sense.

We spend $34,000 annually to imprison one federal inmate. In Montana, the cost to annually incarcerate a state prisoner is approximately $42,000. Nationwide, taxpayers shell out $7.5 billion per year on the federal prison population alone. In 1980, the cost to incarcerate the federal prison population was $330 million. Since then, the cost has mushroomed by 2000 percent. Nonetheless, Sessions seeks to reinstate an expansive and expensive policy that will unnecessarily result in long and draconian sentences for nonviolent drug users, many of whom are veterans and minorities, and pack the United States prison system. Respectfully, this makes no sense.

Sessions should familiarize himself with the innovative and highly successful federal and state court treatment programs currently in existence across the country. These courts have been funded in part by DOJ grants which will likely disappear under Sessions new policy. By way of example, in Montana, state Judges Greg Pinski and Mary Jane Knisely, federal Chief Judge Dana Christensen, and the United States Attorneys Office entered into an agreement in 2015 establishing a joint state and federal veterans court  one of the very first in the United States. Underpinning this and other drug treatment programs program is the belief that justice can be obtained through a robust and intensive treatment court as an alternative to incarceration.

The success of such programs stems from wrap-around services from mental health and addiction professionals, employers and community leaders, faith-based groups, probation officers and veteran mentors. And yes, these courts are successful. Since its inception, Judge Pinskis court has had over 50 participants and 23 graduates, and none of the graduates have returned to criminal activity. The cost of such a treatment court is roughly $4,500 per attendee, less than 15 percent of the annual cost of a prison bed. And the return on investment is the individuals return to family and a productive life. Drug treatment court programs across the nation have enjoyed similar successes.

We tried the Sessions model in the '80s and '90s  it did not work then and it will not work now.

I therefore encourage todays DOJ to reassess its incarceration policies and priorities and adapt to the realities and possibilities available in the 2017 criminal justice system.
Last week Donald Trump withdrew the United States support and leadership in the Paris climate accords, demonstrating that he prefers buggy whips to automobiles.

There is overwhelming agreement by scientists and most of the worlds leaders that climate change is real and is occurring. It is not a hoax, as Trump asserts. The consequence of doing nothing is catastrophic for the planet and for all people.

Rising sea levels will drown cities, which will cost billions of dollars to move or protect. A warming climate will allow tropical diseases to spread northward, resulting in growing health costs. Unpredictable weather will create more famines and spur more mass migrations. This, in turn, will spur more wars and other global tensions.

Trumps decision to oppose climate agreements to protect the coal industry is like trying to protect buggy whip makers in the age of the automobile. Coal as a fuel source is declining.

California, alone, has more than 10 times the jobs in the solar industry as entire employment in the coal industry across the nation. Solar is the future. Coal is the past.

That is why the chief executive officers of many of Americas largest corporations support the Paris accords; even Exxon Mobile recognizes that the future is not with fossil fuels and the United States economic future is increasingly dependent on renewable energy.

And its not just in the U.S. that a shift in energy sources is occurring. China announced it is canceling more than 100 coal-fired generation plants because they just don't make economic sense anymore and increasingly they are becoming the global leader in renewable energy.

India has set a target of meeting 40 percent of its energy needs by 2030 from solar.

These countries are turning away from coal for practical reasons  solar is increasingly less expensive than coal  even without calculating the environmental costs of coal mining and burning.

Declining cost of renewable energy such as wind and solar, as well as lower natural gas price, is driving the coal industrys decline, not international agreements like the Paris climate accords. The market is speaking loudly, but Trump is not listening.

By withdrawing from the Paris agreement which was supported by almost 200 other countries, he has alienated our allies in the developing world, which will only make future negotiations on other critical issues, like trade and military alliances, more difficult.

But there are consequences beyond the economic, ecological and political. There are ethical reasons for remaining in the Paris agreement.

The U.S. is the second-largest polluter on the planet. Our per capita use of energy exceeds all other countries. While our country is home to 5 percent of the global population, we use 25 percent of all energy. We Americans release on a per capita basis twice as much CO2 as China and eight times more than India. And we, more than any other country, have contributed to the current crisis because we have been the number one polluter for decades.

From a moral and ethical perspective, we have a responsibility and moral obligation to assist the rest of the world in their efforts to reduce our fossil fuel burning and, we owe it to poorer countries to assist them in developing alternatives to fossil fuels so they can reduce global poverty.

Lest we forget, we owe to the people and communities in this country whose jobs and livelihood are dependence on fossil fuels to help them develop alternatives to digging up coal or drilling for oil. Telling them delusional fake facts that the world is going to continue to rely on fossil fuels will not help them make this transition.
FBI Director James Comey will testify in Congress Thursday, double-talking and fast-dancing in an attempt to conceal evidence about his investigation of the Clinton Foundation.

As a subordinate of the Department of Justice, he was an employee of Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who met on an airport tarmac with suspect Bill Clinton. Lynch says they talked about "family." In the age of cellphones, it was an expensive way to converse.

Many international players and payers, including Saudi Arabia, escaped scrutiny for buying favors while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state. Obviously, Comey was told to bury his investigation. He is now walking a tightrope, since he knows of criminal activity and is obliged to report it as a citizen, but not as an employee of the Justice Department.

When fired, Comey was obligated to leave his office immediately. He had no right to touch any of his computers. When he walked out of his office that day, it shut the door on tampering with evidence. Unfortunately, we will now be punished with months of excruciating, boring, obfuscating interviews by Congress. But all we will hear is why Comey is "not at liberty" to divulge any information, including the right time of day.

Mike Donohue,

Kalispell
If seasons have a theme, this summer for Butte might be labeled the summer of international relations for the Mining City.

A few weeks ago three Zulus arrived to spend the summer in Butte and this week three Israelis, including Israels Consul General Andy David, visited Buttes water infrastructure Tuesday. Democratic Lt. Gov. Mike Cooney also came along for the ride, as did several local officials and local water treatment experts.

The other two Israelis who made the international trip were Raanan Adin, who is head of an Israeli water consulting firm, and his father, professor Avner Adin, who is a distinguished water technology specialist.

David called the Adins the A team, on water and said the trip came about because the U.S. and Israel are close allies.

Whatever we can do to help. A successful, strong, prosperous U.S. is in our interest. We want to share what we know if we can be constructive and helpful, David said.

What the Israelis are experts on is water-saving drip irrigation and desalinization, Raanan told The Montana Standard during a tour of Montana Resources Horseshoe Bend Water Treatment Plant Tuesday afternoon. The desert country, located in the Middle East on the Mediterranean Sea, nationalized its water system about a decade ago, Raanan said. The country also came up with a new word, fertigation, which is fertilizer combined with drip irrigation. Such a practice increases yield with less water, according to Raanan.

The Israelis appeared impressed by Horseshoe Bend Water Treatment Plant. It is controversial in Butte as some believe it is inadequate and unprepared to handle the pits mine waste water when the day comes, in 2023, to pump and treat the pits water in perpetuity. Butte-Silver Bow Chief Executive Dave Palmer said he is keeping his fingers crossed that the Israeli experts could come up with a different plan for the Berkeley Pit.

The current plan, designed by the Environmental Protection Agency, is that Horseshoe Bend Water Treatment Plant will use lime precipitate, a common method of treating mine waste water, on the pits water.

A former open-pit copper mine, the Berkeley Pit has been slowly filling with metal and sulfuric-acid laden water since Atlantic Richfield turned off the underground pumps in 1982. When still in operation, the mine went below the groundwater table. EPA declared the Berkeley Pit, Silver Bow Creek, much of the town of Butte and Anaconda Superfund sites shortly after the pits pumps were turned off.

Built in 2003, Horseshoe Bend has been treating about five million gallons of contaminated water a day with lime precipitate ever since. That water runs through the mine property naturally. It would flow into the pit if it was not captured.

Once captured and treated, the water is recycled into MRs mine workings.

It seems to be doing what it was planned to do, Raanan said.

Because of the Horseshoe Bend plant, the pits water rises at a much slower rate than it would otherwise.

Its a very good thing theyre doing, slowing down the filling of the pit, Raanan said. This mine is a good example of how the mine and the environment can coexist.

But Raanan said he would like to learn more, such as how the 10,000 miles of Buttes underground tunnels send water to the pit.

There are no metal mines in Israel, and almost no mining of any kind there, so mine waste water is an unfamiliar problem to the Israelis.

The Israelis got a full tour of Buttes water infrastructure. In addition to Horseshoe Bend, they also visited Buttes new state-of-the-art $30 million dollar Waste Water Treatment Plant and the countys brand new, high-tech $30 million Basin Creek Water Treatment Plant, south of Butte.

Such an advanced plant in such a remote location is not typical, Raanan said of Basin Creek Water Treatment Plant.

Raanan pointed out that the filters in the Basin Creek Water Treatment plant are manufactured by an Israeli firm called Amiad.

Department of Environmental Quality Director Tom Livers said he was impressed by the father-son Adins.

Everything is a problem to be solved, Livers said of the water experts.

Cooney, who is from Butte, said that before the Israelis leave, he plans to give them a different view of Butte, including a trip to Buttes B'Nai Israel Synagogue. He said he wants to show them what makes Butte Butte.
Flooding of the Big Hole River near Melrose will continue through the weekend but likely wont cause residential flooding, a National Weather Service meteorologist said Tuesday.

While homes and businesses arent in danger, recreation during flood conditions can be perilous, officials warned.

James Brusda, Great Falls, said river levels reached approximately 6.46 feet on Monday night, remaining within the minor flooding stage as categorized by NWS.

Beaverhead County Sheriff Frank Kluesner said his office hadnt been notified of any homes or businesses affected, but the water is very, very high. The rivers flooding the banks and pushing out into hay fields.

Agricultural land and irrigation pumps may be affected, but Brusda said that NWS data indicates eight feet as the point at which homes and businesses in Melrose would be in danger. A flooded road near one local home was limiting access, Brusda said, but the home itself was clear of the water level.

The big thing is the snowpack in southwest Montana is generally above normal in that region, and springtime conditions this year didnt allow for significant melt in May, Brusda said. More snow fell in mid-May, and snow levels in the mountains are still above four feet in some places.

Warm days and cool nights during the last two weeks have been supportive of snowmelt, Brusda said, leading to the elevated water levels in the Big Hole River. NWS projects that levels will stay high a few more days due to warmer nights.

The runoff in the next two days will not slow down over overnight hours, and that's why Saturday we have the river going back up, Brusda said. By Monday, snowmelt will likely slow enough to accommodate predicted rainfall without much additional flooding, he said. The water level is expected to peak at 6.8 feet on Saturday morning.

The Big Hole River last flooded in June 2011, when the water rose to 7.4 feet. The NWS classifies 7.5 feet as moderate flooding.

Kluesner and Brusda both cautioned users against venturing into the river in these conditions.

The primary concern right now is for people rafting and boating and recreating on the Big Hole River, Kluesner said.

A raft overturned on Sunday afternoon, but the boater made it out of the river safely, Kluesner said. The raft continued downstream.

There might be people that are used to recreating on the Big Hole in later months, in July and August, who are used to the river being three or four feet. Well, the river now is over 6 feet, and it's still very cold. Most of this water is mountain snowmelt, Brusda said.

Kluesner warned, You can't see the trees, the brush, the willows  all the hazards that are normally not underwater are now underwater. The water's cold and moving very swiftly. Its a pretty dangerous place right now, even if you're very experienced.
Wednesday, June 7

BROWN BAG SPEAKER

The Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives at 17 W. Quartz will host a bonus Brown Bag Lunch at noon with a presentation by Howard Morris commemorating the Granite Mountain/Speculator Fire. Morris has been in love with Butte ever since spending three hours at the Greyhound Bus Depot on a winter's night in 1980. Details: 406-782-3280.

LETTERS OUT OF DARKNESS

Letters Out of Darkness begin at 5:15 p.m. at the World Museum of Mining, and is $12/person. Reservations are recommended by calling 406-723-7211.

DISASTER TALK

Author Doug Ammons will talk about the Heroes Out of the Darkness at 7 p.m. in the Montana Tech Library Auditorium.

CLUBS AND MEETINGS

BUTTE

Butte High School class of 1961 will have a luncheon at 11:30 a.m. at Christinas Cocina.

Butte Sunrise Kiwanis Club meets at 7 a.m. at Perkins Restaurant. The guest speaker will be a representative from the malt plant with an update on its progress.

Butte Kiwanis meet at noon at Perkins. Guest speaker will be Bob Murray of Butte Walking Tours.

Al-Anon meetings: 7:30 p.m. Mondays, Congregational Church; 7 p.m. first Tuesday, business meeting, Comfort Inn; 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays, Gold Hill Lutheran Church; 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, Sharing and Caring, 2100 Farragut (rear entrance).
Senate Democrats grew increasingly incredulous and visibly frustrated Wednesday with intelligence chiefs testifying at a hearing after Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and NSA Director Adm. Mike Rogers repeatedly said they would not discuss their private conversations with President Donald Trump.

Coats and Rogers said they did not feel the public setting of the Senate intelligence committee's hearing was an appropriate venue to discuss their conversations with Trump, which have reportedly included talk of the FBI investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

But that did not satisfy Democrats, who said there was no reason for them not to divulge the details.

"Director Coats, you've said as well that it would be inappropriate to answer a simple question about whether the President asked for your assistance in blunting the Russian investigation," said Sen. Martin Heinrich, a New Mexico Democrat. "I don't care how you felt. I'm not asking whether you felt pressured. I'm simply asking did that conversation occur?

"And once again, senator, I will say that I do believe it's inappropriate for me to discuss that in an open session," Coats responded.

"You can clear an awful lot up by simply saying it never happened," Heinrich later said.

"I do not share with the general public conversations that I have with the President or many of my colleagues within the administration that I believe should not be shared," Coats repeated.

"Well, I think your unwillingness to answer a very basic question speaks volumes," Heinrich said.

Sen. Angus King of Maine, an Independent who caucuses with Democrats, picked up on Heinrich's questions, demanding a "legal justification" for why Rogers and Coats were not answering questions.

"Why are you not answering the questions? Is there an invocation of executive privilege?" King asked.

"Not that I'm aware of  because I feel it's inappropriate," Rogers said.

"What you feel isn't relevant, admiral," King shot back. "The question is why are you not answering the question?"

King also went after acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe for invoking the probe of special counsel Robert Mueller, when McCabe said he wouldn't comment on issues in the special counsel's lane.

"I don't understand why the special counsel's lane takes precedence over the land of the United States Congress" King responded.

Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, tried to push back on that argument, asking whether Mueller has told the witnesses they should not testify.

"If you've not had questions waived off with Mr. Mueller, I think frankly  and I understand your commitment to the administration  but Sen. King, Sen. Heinrich and my questions deserve answers, and at some point the American public deserve full answers," Warner said.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein responded that when there's a Justice Department investigation, their default position is not to discuss that publicly.

"Is that the rule for the President of the United States as well?" Warner responded. "Because that is what the questions are being asked about, reports that nobody has laid to rest here that the President intervened directly in an ongoing FBI investigation. And we've gotten no answer from any of you."

During California Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris' questioning of Rosenstein, Sens. John McCain and Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr both spoke up to tell her to give the witnesses a chance to answer her questions.

"The chair is going to exercise the right to allow the witnesses to answer the question," Burr said after cutting off Harris' questions. "And the committee is on notice to provide the witnesses the courtesy  which has not been extended all the way across  extend the courtesy for questions to get answers."

Wednesday's hearing was not scheduled to discuss the Russia investigation, and both Coats and Warner indicated they might be more forthcoming in a classified setting with an intelligence panel.

There was a classified session for Wednesday's hearing scheduled for the afternoon, but the witnesses were not among those supposed to appear.

Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia asked if they could show up in the SCIF, the secure facility for classified hearings, but Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr said that was not an option.

"I think we need you in the SCIF sooner than later," Manchin said.
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Climate change isnt a hoax  the Trump administrations declaration of war on the environment, notwithstanding. Sacrificing our ecosystems on the altar of the economy is a fools errand grounded in denial and myopia. Homo sapiens are threatening the continued existence of their only nest. That is not fake news. It is scientific fact.

Not Montanas problem?

Wrong. Montanans have a dog in this fight. Our States blue-ribbon fisheries, clean air, water, hunting, mountains, parks and plains support Montanas second largest industry, recreation, travel and tourism. We live here, and others come here, because of our environment.

Indeed, We the People begin our Constitution thanking God for the quiet beauty of our state, the grandeur of our mountains and the vastness of our rolling plains. These natural wonders are so important that every Montanan is guaranteed an inalienable right to clean and healthful environment in our Constitution, Article II, Section 3. No one can deprive us of this right.

So, we need not  and must not  support the Administrations withdrawal from the Paris climate accord. Montana and our cities and towns need to join the growing nationwide United States Climate Alliance to keep the Paris agreement intact. California, Washington and New York are leading the alliance; at least 180 cities, large and small, representing more than 51 million Americans in both red and blue States, have vowed to ignore the Presidents action. We should too.

Unlike, Montanas Constitution, the federal Constitution does not contain a textual right to a clean and healthful environment. Yet, the highest courts of 20-some other nations that, likewise, do not have an explicit environmental right, have ruled that the right to life implicitly includes the guarantee of a clean and healthful environment  because a clean and healthful environment is essential for our species survival.

To expect a similar ruling from our state and federal courts is probably a stretch. But, there is nothing preventing We the People from acknowledging the obvious. We must demand that our State and our cities and towns join the alliance to honor the Paris climate accord. We Montanans have a constitutional right to expect no less from our Governor and mayors.

We live in a planetary ecosystem. No politician has the right to proclaim that America is the peeing section in the global swimming pool. Our country is not, and, certainly, Montana, is not that place. We must protect and improve our environment. In the end, its the only one we have.

And, that, Mr. President, is no hoax.
MISSOULA  Montana Attorney General Tim Fox joined 15 other states on Tuesday in a legal brief that argues in support of President Donald Trumps ban on travelers from some majority-Muslim countries in a case that has reached the Supreme Court of the United States.

"The legal argument is pretty clear on this," Fox spokesman Eric Sell said. "The president has the authority. The attorney general is supporting the rule of law and the process."

At issue is whether the policy violates the countrys protections for religious freedom and the limits of the presidents authority on issues of immigration.

The executive order issued by the Republican president in early March would have barred people from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen from entering the country for 90 days while the United States tightened screening processes, and also would have ended all refugee admissions for 120 days.

The order was blocked by a Maryland judge and that ruling was upheld last month by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals based in Virginia. Because some of the timelines in the order are soon to pass, the nations highest court has agreed to take up an emergency order to reverse the lower court rulings, several months before the regular season when it might rule on the larger issues at hand.

An earlier version of the president's travel ban proposal was struck down by a Washington state judge ant the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Briefs from supporters, such as the coalition of 16 states, and those from opponents, led by the American Civil Liberties Union, are due to the nation's highest court by Monday.

Fox was one of 12 attorneys general and one governor to support the presidents policy with a unified legal brief in March. North Dakota, Ohio and Tennessee have now signed onto the latest brief from the states arguing that the ban should be allowed to go into effect until the Supreme Court can take up the debate of the core constitutional concerns later this summer.

Texas Solicitor General Scott Keller wrote the most recent brief from the states.

Fox has not said whether he supports the travel ban as good immigration or national security policy.

"I don't think that's for any attorney general of a particular state to say. They can opine if they want to," Sell said, noting Fox has not talked about the merits of such a policy. "It's the attorney general's job to talk about the legal arguments, and the public policy discussion is for the federal legislative branch, U.S. Congress."
Bill Schultz, 91, is a World War II veteran and was a member of the U.S. Navy's Seabees. He served in the South Pacific as a mosquito abatement officer, trying to stop malaria outbreaks. He was born and raised in Glen Ullin, N.D., but has lived in Billings for decades. His brother was a prisoner of war for three years in Japan. Schultz was one of three brothers who served in the military.
At least seven civilians were killed and another 16 were injured Tuesday in an explosion in western Afghanistan.

The blast took place at about 3 p.m. near the northern gate of the Great Mosque of Herat, said Jilani Farhad, a spokesman for Herat's governor.

It was not immediately clear who carried out the attack. But Afghanistan is grappling with a wave of terrorism that has killed more than 150 in just the past week.

An enormous suicide blast ripped through Kabul's diplomatic quarter on May 31-- right in the middle of rush hour. At least 150 people were killed, President Ashraf Ghani said.

It was one of the deadliest attacks in the country since the start of the war in Afghanistan in 2001, which was triggered by the US invasion is search of al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden after 9/11.

The Taliban denied involvement in the Kabul attack, but Afghan intelligence said in a statement they believe the Haqqani Network, a Pakistani group aligned with the Taliban, was behind it.

CNN's Ben Westcott contributed to this report.
Butte-Silver Bow is seeking formal proposals to buy and redevelop the sprawling, vacant NorthWestern Energy building it inherited in Uptown Butte, and its open to a wide range of possible buyers, uses and even prices.

We want the highest and best use, Community Development Director Karen Byrnes said Tuesday. There is no set price. This is not looking for the most money necessarily.

Butte-Silver Bow and NAI Business Properties, a Billings-based real estate firm the county hired to market the building, were to start publicizing a so-called request for proposals on Wednesday to local, state and national audiences. The firm has a great record in selling commercial properties, Byrnes says.

Interested parties have 90 days to submit proposals for utilizing the property in a way that promotes economic and social vitality within Uptown Butte and the greater Butte area and includes a professional and thoughtful vision, strategy and plan for using the building.

We dont have a preference on it being for retail, office space or multi-family or mixed-uses of all those, Byrnes said. That is not what we are worried about. We are worried about someone being able to get it done and make it a viable part of our community.

Prospective buyers could be individuals or groups who show strength in numbers, Byrnes said.

NAI has a 15-page packet about the request for proposals and what types of uses could be contemplated for the building. It also includes detailed information on the building, its history and numerous pictures of its rooms and amenities.

The county inherited the 110,000-square foot office complex last September as part of a 2014 agreement with NorthWestern to keep its Montana headquarters in Butte. The company built a $25 million building at Park and Main streets, keeping more than 200 employees here.

In return, the county gave up land for the new building, is constructing a parking garage where some NorthWestern employees can park, and agreed to take ownership of the old building at 40 E. Broadway if the company couldnt find new owners within 18 months.

NorthWestern hung onto it longer than 18 months, but early and repeated claims of optimism by the company and county officials that it would sell have not panned out. The complex is actually five buildings joined together over many years.

Byrnes told commissioners in April that several people have shown interest in the complex, including some from Helena and Bozeman. She got the councils permission that month to hire NAI, saying it had experience in marketing business properties nationally.

The county will list the proposal request through local media and NAI will utilize its website and other internet avenues, Byrnes said.

The request says the seller prefers, but does not require, that a prospective buyer hire and utilize local labor and local professional services.

Butte-Silver Bow Chief Executive Dave Palmer said this spring that the county has been paying to keep the lights and heat on in the complex so it can be shown on short notice. Those bills were $6,000 to $7,000 per month this past winter, he said, suggesting the county would not continue down that path for another full year.

The proposals will be evaluated by a seven-member committee led by Byrnes. Others on the committee might include members of the Urban and Revitalization Agency Board and commissioners.

Byrnes said the county would look favorably on proposals that could succeed at 40 E. Broadway over the long-term.

We would definitely be working with whoever we decide has the best proposal, she said. It might take them a few years to realize their goals, but as long as they are working toward those goals, that is what is most important.

Prospective buyers can access the request-for-proposal and associated reports via the countys website at www.bsb.mt.gov or the following two websites:

http://naibusinessproperties.com/properties and search for Butte, MT properties
Branson, MO - An 18-year-old Missouri man has been arrested after allegedly abusing a kitten to death and posting video of the brutal incident on Facebook, police announced Sunday.

Kyle Williams was taken into custody Saturday evening, the Branson, Missouri, Police Department said in a post on its Facebook page.

Police credited the video Williams uploaded to social media with helping lead police to the location where he was arrested a short time later.

According to court documents obtained by the Branson Tri-Lakes News, Williams allegedly tied a rope around the cats neck and attached the small animal to the bumper of a vehicle.

The feline was forced to run behind the car until it couldnt run anymore, the court documents stated. The kitten was ultimately dragged to his death.

The suspects friend filmed the horrific incident, and some individuals in the background could even be heard laughing as the cat tossed and turned, the Associated Press reported.

The beginning of the video showed the cat appearing healthy but scared, according to Branson Tri-Lakes News, which reviewed the footage.

The kitten was dragged for nearly five minutes. The vehicle stopped twice, but continued on after it was determined the cat was still alive.

Keep going. Dont stop. Hes almost dead, one person in the car can be heard saying at one point in the video, according to the newspaper.

A disturbing image purporting to show Williams kneeling down next to the kittens mangled remains, which were in the street, was also circulated on social media.

Some commenters under the Police Departments post noted that they had seen the video after it was posted to an online group and subsequently reported it to authorities.

He posted it in the wrong group. About a hundred of us immediately started reporting him to whoever we could get hold of. Animal cruelty is not okay, wrote one user.

Another commenter added, This guy posted this horrible thing in a group im in. Many of us in the group reported him for this and luckily he was arrested.

Williams was charged with felony abuse of an animal, as well as armed criminal action, according to police.

He was booked at the Taney County Jail and is being held on $15,000 bond, inmate records showed.

A second man, 18-year-old Jordan Hall, was also charged with the same offenses as Williams after being identified as the driver of the vehicle, AP reported.

He was also booked at the jail, according to inmate records.
MUSCATINE  A Muscatine man was found guilty of criminal mischief in the second degree Tuesday in Muscatine County District Court.

Marco Martinez, 18, is accused of firing a .22 caliber handgun at a residence in rural Muscatine County on February 13. Several bullets hit the residence, and one narrowly missed one of the homeowners, according to Muscatine County Attorney Alan Ostergren.

The class D felony charge is punishable by up to five years in prison.

"I would like to (compliment) the efforts of law enforcement in investigating this case," Ostergren said. "Both the Muscatine County Sheriff's Office and the Muscatine Police Department worked together closely to make arrests and protect the community."

Martinez will be held in Muscatine County Jail while he awaits sentencing on July 14.

Sarah Ritter
The sale and use of fireworks in Wapello will not be restricted this year, the Wapello City Council agreed Thursday.

Iowa now allows the sale of fireworks from permanent buildings from June 1 through July 8 and again from Dec. 10 through Jan. 3; and from temporary buildings from June 13 through July 8.

Some Iowa municipalities have passed restrictions based on zoning and safety issues, but Wapello council members decided to let the state law govern activities during its initial year.

(Lets) keep it and see how the summer goes, council member Kenny Marlette suggested.

Council member Eric Small agreed.

Im with you. See how it plays out, he said.

Mayor Shawn Maine said two residents who had approached him earlier would be pleased by the decision.

They did not want us (to do anything), he said.

Council member Gene Arnold did not suggest the city take any action, but he was curious how other communities were handling the issue.

Can we have (Wapello Police Chief) Wayne (Crump) look into it? he asked.

There was no formal decision on that suggestion.

Meanwhile, council member Larry Wagg, who had requested the discussion on the issue, indicated he was pleased by the dialogue.

This is something to keep in your mind, he said.

For the second time in two weeks, Wapello resident Anthony Twig Knight met with the council to pursue his claim that he had been warned about maintaining a nuisance property while his neighbors were not.

He said two other nearby properties had not been warned and he challenged city officials about the disparity.

I want to know why there is a double standard? he asked.

Wapello Police Officer Joey McNeil said he sent letters to between 18 and 20 property owners about their yards, warning them they had until May 30 to clean them up.

McNeil said Knight had complied with his yard, but he was unsure on many of the others. He also indicated at least one of the neighbor properties mentioned by Knight had apparently not received a warning.

Well follow up on the two, Maine told Knight, adding he agreed with Knight that everyone should be treated the same.

Maine, who operates a commercial vehicle restoration and repair business, used that same point when he suggested Knight needed to investigate getting legally registered to operate his commercial vehicle repair business.

In other action, the council:

 Approved street closures for Chief Wapello Days on July 14 and 15; and a June 24 fundraiser;

 Approved a purchase policy to comply with a federal grant restriction;

 Approved the submittal of grant applications to the Farm Credit Services and Wellmark Foundations for community projects;

 Agreed to purchase a new control panel and alarm agent for the Patrick Lift Station at a total cost of $8,676;

 Approved the purchase of a new telephone system from J&S Electronic Business Systems, Inc., Burlington, for $3,400;

 Agreed to hire MidAmerica Basement Systems, Davenport, to mudjack and seal several sections of uneven sidewalk on Van Buren Street at a cost of $10,387;

 Was directed by Maine to present him with the names of possible candidates for the 2017 Citizen of the Year Award.
Shortly after Mississippi Drive closed for construction last month, I recall driving down a busy two-way 2nd Street and thinking how great it was to see the area full of traffic. I always enjoy my drive down 2nd Street. I like to see the decorated store windows, building facades and blooming flowers. It's my hometown. It's charming. I like seeing it full of activity.

But then the first Letter to the Editor came in. Reporters hit the streets and social media came alive with the reality of what this hustle and bustle in our downtown brought with it. It seems some of the businesses are experiencing a dip in business from those wanting to avoid the congestion or those who maybe can't find a place to park.

I wanted to go on record to say that I work, eat and shop in the downtown daily and I have successfully navigated and parked since the construction started. There are city lots across from the Journal office, behind the block that houses Salon Incognito, Hubbles and Guadalajara and at the corner of Pine and 2nd Street. Even if you must park one or two blocks away from your destination, it's still often fewer steps than your total visit to Walmart or the grocery store. So my advice is to look at it with a positive attitude and brave the adventure.

Putting on my marketing hat, there are ebbs and flow to business ownership, and at times, more dollars must be put into marketing efforts. This may be one of those occasions. We pledge to work with any business affected and to do so in the most effective and economical way possible. We also are calling on you, our readers, to be of assistance during this time. A good marketing plan includes frequency and repetition. A kind note about your favorite store in social media, mentioned over coffee or shared with a family member can go a long way to helping make sure they are here to serve you tomorrow. You can make a difference with a positive approach to the many changes going on in our community.
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 []
There was drama in Nyamira County after a school sent home 12 students for allegedly refusing to shave their hair.

The students of Rangenyo Girls High School were seen at Nyamira bus terminus stranded with their boxes, mattresses and other belongings, attracting the attention of the curious public.

The concerned members of the public, led by the towns boda-boda riders escorted the girls back to school, which is about two kilometers from the town, demanding an explanation from the school principal on why the girls were out on a school day.

They, however, did not get an audience with the schools principal, Lydiah Onyoni, who locked the schools main gate.

For the better part of Monday, there was tension around the school as the riders demanded the immediate transfer of the principal over what they termed high-handedness on the girls.

According to a student who spoke to journalists, the girls had rebelled against the school authorities after being forced to shave their hair.

The school had hired a private barber to shave all students but others refused after they raised concerns over allegedly unhygienic conditions they were being subjected to, the student said.

She said the students were being served with only one shaver.

The students were readmitted after Nyamira South sub-county education officer Isaac Ombati intervened.
The blessings keep coming for Mr and Mrs Mutura, the endearing couple who warmed their way into Kenyans hearts with a simplistic wedding that cost them Sh100.

Wilson Wanjohi Mutura, 27, and Ann Muhonja, 23, wed on Sunday, January 22 at Community Christian Worship Centre in Kasarani, Nairobi in a ceremony that set them back Sh100 for their wedding rings.

Their story captured the minds and hearts of many and soon after, they were on an all expense paid honeymoon in Diani, courtesy of Bonfire Adventures  a local tour and travel company.

Then came the Sh 1 Million investment project from Diamond Properties which includes an eighth-acre plot valued at half a million shillings with a Sh320,000 greenhouse and capsicum crop in Isinya, Kajiado County.

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To top it all off, a sponsored grand wedding ceremony on the most romantic day of the year, February 14, that is estimated to have cost Sh 3.5 Million.

Most recently, the couple set up a shop in Mwiki Kasarani and we have been informed that it is picking up well.

With news that they are expecting their first child, more wellwishers have joined couples journey to parenthood.

Komarock Modern Hospital, through the Managing Director Harriet Njiru Nyamu, has offered the couple a free maternity package.

According to Ndungu Nyoro, the package will include:

1. Free gynecology consultation normally 2500 per visit.

2. Free ANC profile tests worth 4K.

3. Free delivery, Normal is usually charged 40k and Ceaserean is charged 120k( either)

4. Free immunization as per Kepi for the baby on delivery.

5. They will pay for medications, without complications it is only supplements.
A woman last Sunday attacked and slashed her friend on the head with a broken beer bottle after a quarrel over a debt.

Loice Muthoni, 30, was having drinks at a pub in Embakasis Pipeline Estate, Nairobi when Wambui Muhia aka Mama Shiro, a colleague at her womens group(chama), demanded that she clears the Sh6,000 debt she owed her.

A heated dispute ensued with Muthoni said to have been embarrassed by Wambui in the presence of her drinking buddies,

Wambui then left the table for the washrooms and returned with a broken beer bottle, which she rammed into her friends head repeatedly before taking off.

According to an eyewitness identified as Fred Mbuvi, Wambui had been involved in numerous bar brawls at the same pub the previous night.

It was a beastly attack. She caught her unawares and started stabbing her all over with the bottle. She left her in a pool of blood and took off, he said.

The public got hold of Wambui and beat her up before she was admitted to the same hospital as Muthoni.

Muthoni told The Nairobian that the incident left her with horrific injuries, a heavy hospital bill, and low self-esteem.

She suffered deep cuts to her face, chest, head and back.

Embakasi police who visited Mission Nursing Home where the two were admitted confirmed that the attacker will be arrested after treatment.
The four days of the 37th annual Auction Napa Valley ended Sunday with the Napa Valley Vintners raising $15.7 million, proceeds from the live auction, barrel auction and E-Auction.

Saturdays live auction, held as always at Meadowood Napa Valley, included 38 lots that ranged from $40,000 to $720,000. One lot, from Colgin Cellars, was sold to three bidders, each for $700,000 and raised $2.1 million.

Ann Colgin and Joe Wender had put together a package of five rare 3-liter bottles of their 2007 wines, along with a private dinner and tour at their estate. The auction lot also included a trip to Paris and Reims, France with accommodations, winery tours, lunches and dinners for four.

Auctioneer Fritz Hatton started the bidding and quickly it went past $500,000, then to $625,000 and $650,000. It was clear three people were interested in the trip and after Colgin said she would triple the lot, that is, offer three separate trips, all three were awarded the lot.

One of those winners was John Thompson, who earlier in the auction had bid and lost on a week-long trip to Japan with Japanese native Naoko Dalla Valle, owner of Dalla Valle Vineyards and her daughter, Maya. The lot included a 6-liter bottle of the winerys red wine blend, Maya named for her daughter.

For that lot, Hatton started the bidding at $50,000 and the bids went to $140,000 and $160,000 and then quickly to $400,000 and $480,000. Bidding went past $500,000 and it was clear that two people really wanted the trip, Thompson and Steven Fink. As Thompson bid $700,000, the crowd cheered and applauded. Then Fink put his paddle up for $720,000 and won the trip. After that, auctioneer Ursula Hermacinski, who was sharing duties with Hatton, told the crowd the good news, that at least one bidder had some money left.

Naoko Dalla Valle said, Auction Napa Valley brings Napa Valleys vintners together to raise funds for worthy causes. Our winery has been a supporter for close to 30 years and I am proud that my daughter Maya has joined me in carrying on this tradition that is so meaningful to our community. Giving back is very important and close to our hearts.

A joint auction lot from Antica Napa Valley  Antinori Family Wine Estate/Staglin Family Vineyard also was tripled and sold to three bidders, bringing in $1.5 million. It included 10 large-format bottles of wine from the two vintners, along with a luxurious, guided trip to Tuscany.

Raymond Vineyards owner Jean-Charles Boisset offered a lot that included Napa Valley and French Polynesian experiences with stays in two of the South Seas most alluring resorts, according to the auction catalog. Hermacinski started the lot at $45,000 and it quickly went past $300,000. At one point, she said, Whos in for $340,000? I want you to enjoy Jean-Charles hospitality. It sold to Napa Valley vintner Mary Miner for $400,000.

The lot also included 26 bottles of wine from Raymond Vineyards, including reserve cabernets and Generations wines from 1974, 1984, 1994, magnums from 2004 and 2014.

Grgich Hills Estate is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year and when the winerys lot came up for bid, Hatton recognized founders Mike Grgich, who lives in Calistoga, and Austin Hills, along with Mikes daughter, Violet, who he said was blowing kisses to the crowd.

The lot included 40 bottles of cabernet sauvignon, chardonnay and zinfandel, from 2003 to 2017, and a two-day hosted trip to the Napa Valley, along with tours, breakfasts, lunches, dinners. As bidding went from $80,000 to $120,000, Hatton added that Mikes going to throw in his beret. After the lot sold for $140,000, Violet doubled the lot, raising $280,000. Hatton then told Mike that hed have to get another beret.

At the end of the auction, a group of nine children came up on stage for the Fund-A-Lot, which provides funds for childrens education and healthcare. These were clients of the Napa Valley Vintners nonprofit partners, who receive ANV proceeds. Hatton said he was going to ask for a really big amount and sought a donation of $500,000. After a short time, when no one responded, he asked a small girl if she would announce the next level of giving. She did, tentatively saying, Two hundred and fifty dollars. Before anyone could raise their paddle, Hatton corrected her and said Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. He got some takers and took it from there.

Before the auction, Hills was walking through the tent where the lots were displayed and reflected on his anniversary, Its nice to be around 40 years and doing well. There are lots of new wines out there and old ones that are getting better every year. When asked what the Napa Valley was like in 1977, he said, Well, there werent as many wineries, adding, It hasnt changed that much really. Then, after a little bit of reflection, he said, Its gotten more crowded and more people but the vineyards are still there, the wineries are still there, although there are a lot more of them.

Also before the live auction, Janet Trefethen was hawking a joint lot, the Leading Ladies of Wine that included 33 bottles of wines from 10 Napa Valley wineries and a private dinner with the 12 leading ladies, including Trefethen. Isnt this fabulous, she said, Weve got orchids suspended from the ceiling in this wonderful tent, all sorts of beautiful people that are drinking wonderful wines and here youve got the Leading Ladies of Wine. Including Daphne Araujo, Boots Brounstein, Molly Chappellet, Naoko Dalla Valle, Robin Lail and Beth Nickel.

Trefethen added the winners of the auction lot, which sold for $300,000, will get a special magnum from each of the ladies and, then, you come and have dinner, cooked by one of the great all-time female chefs, Cindy Pawlcyn.

Trefethen was involved in planning for the first auction sponsored by the Napa Valley Vintners and remembers being on the lawn with Bob Mondavi and others getting ready to start a wine auction. But, she said, the one I remember better was a few years later after that, because you could still bring your kids and so we brought our kids and it was a family affair as well.

Honorary chairs for the 2017 Auction Napa Valley were Eleanor and Francis Coppola, their grown children, Roman and Sofia and their niece Gia.

After the event, Roman Coppola said, Napa Valley is our familys home and were grateful for the generosity of our bidders, fellow vintners, partners and donors, local chefs, volunteers and every member of the community that comes together to make Auction Napa Valley a success year after year. The funds we raised this weekend will help strengthen families and make the seemingly impossible possible for tens of thousands of our neighbors.
Wine mavens bidding against one another during Auction Napa Valley raised more than $1 million more than they did a year ago, the Napa Valley Vintners announced Sunday afternoon.

The 37th annual four-day fundraiser produced $15.7 million, compared to about $14.3 million for the 2016 auction, the Vintners trade association said in a news release. That total includes proceeds from Fridays barrel auction as well as Saturdays showcase live auction at the Meadowood Resort in St. Helena, which was hosted by members of the Coppola filmmaking family.

The live auctions leading fundraiser among 38 lots came from Colgin Cellars, which garnered $2.1 million for a collection of large-format bottles of its 2007 wines combined with trips to the Napa Valley and the Champagne region of France. A joint lot teaming Antica Napa Valley  Antinori Family Wine Estate and Staglin Family Vineyard placed second at $1.5 million, including a guided Italian vacation in Tuscany.

Vintners spokeswoman Patsy McGaughy declined to list a separate total from the live auction, citing agency policy.

At the barrel auction Friday, the top-selling lot came from The Mascot winery, raising $73,550. TOR Wines led electronic auction lots at $20,000.

Proceeds from Auction Napa Valley, which began in 1981, benefit community health and childrens education programs and aided 27 separate nonprofit groups in Napa County last year, according to the Vintners.
Napa County supervisors are putting the brakes on several recent, rural speed limit hikes, though some rural residents say they need to do still more.

Supervisors had misgivings from the start about raising speed limits in February. But county officials said the limits must be set in a certain way under state law to be enforceable by the California Highway Patrol using radar.

Among the more controversial February changes was hiking the limit on First Avenue in the Coombsville area east of Napa from 40 mph to 50 mph. This two-lane road runs through rolling hills with vineyards and rural homes.

Concerned residents responded by putting up facsimile speed limit signs labeled alternative fact recommending drivers stick to 35 mph to keep the community safe.

On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors lowered that new, 50 mph First Avenue speed limit. The new limit between Hagen Road and Lupine Hill Road will be 45 mph. The new limit between Lupine Hill Road and Coombsville Road will be 40 mph. They also lowered limits at three other rural locations.

The challenge was finding the legal justification. Otherwise, public officials said, the county would simply be putting up speed limit signs that the CHP couldnt enforce using radar, given the state would consider the areas as speed traps.

As of February, supervisors werent satisfied with the legal restraints. Supervisor Alfredo Pedroza said hes concerned about speeds on narrow, rural roads that have pedestrians, people dropping children and driveways.

Im going into this with the goal of safety, Pedroza said.

For Tuesday at least, the Board of Supervisors found itself accepting the formula dictated by the state, while also directing staff to take a second look at still more rural road speed limits.

Its counter-intuitive, the way the process works, Supervisor Diane Dillon said.

California communities set limits after doing traffic studies to learn how people actually drive on a road. Limits are based on what the state calls the prevailing speed  the speed 85 percent of drivers drive at or slower than.

Communities can reduce the speed limit below the prevailing speed, if justified by collision records or road conditions not readily apparent to drivers. But the reduction is to be only 5 mph.

In February, county officials saw no justification for setting a First Avenue limit lower than 50 mph. That changed after Supervisor Belia Ramos held a March 29 town hall meeting with concerned First Avenue residents. Residents said they must frequently cross the road because trash pickup and mail service is provided on only one side.

That newly revealed condition not readily apparent to drivers became a key factor in the countys latest recommendation, along with new speed studies. Public works officials told supervisors Tuesday that the 50 mph limit on First Avenue can fall to 45 mph in one section and 40 mph in another.

We do believe thats the farthest we can legally go, Public Works Director Steven Lederer said.

First Avenue resident Franz Wartenweiler noted there are hills and a curve on First Avenue near Hagen Road, where the 45 mph limit is now to prevail. He wanted the limit in that area to also be 40 mph.

I think it would just be more sensible that you just have one speed limit instead of two all the way along First Avenue, he said.

In February, the Board of Supervisors changed speed limits at 25 locations, mostly increases and some decreases. On Tuesday, in addition to the First Avenue changes, it made the following revisions:

- East Third Avenue from Third Avenue to the end from 40 mph to 35 mph.

- Hardman Avenue from Silverado Trail to Atlas Peak Road from 50 mph to 45 mph.

- McKinley road from Atlas Peak Road to end from 45 mph to 35 mph.

Resident Kathy Felch told the Board of Supervisors it should revisit other rural speed limits. In doing so, the county should consult with residents about what unapparent safety conditions might exist.

Atlas Peak Road resident Michael Setty wrote that hes surprised the county in February raised a limit on a section of that road from 45 mph to 55 mph. The road has a large number of runners and pedestrians, tourists in vehicles who are confused sometimes trying to find their accommodations, blind driveways and slow curves.

Supervisor Ryan Gregory asked how the CHP would enforce the speed limit if it couldnt use radar. Napa CHP Capt. Chris Childs said officers would have to follow a car for a certain distance to gauge the speed.

The minute youre behind someone, what do they do? Gregory asked.

Slow down, Childs said.
Napa County District Attorney Allison Haley announced Wednesday that the First District Court of Appeal, Division Four, affirmed a $6.8 million judgment against Internet retailer Overstock.com for engaging in false advertising and unlawful business practices.

The trial that was the subject of the appeal was held in Alameda County Superior Court in 2013. The prosecution of the case was jointly handled by the Alameda, Marin, Monterey, Napa, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Shasta, and Sonoma County district attorneys offices.

The major issue at trial was Overstocks use of advertised reference prices, which it labelled list price, compare at, or compare. Overstock frequently displayed such reference prices in close proximity to its sales price, often with a purported discount.

The trial court found that Overstock had consistently used advertised reference prices created by various methods that were designed to overstate the amount of savings to be enjoyed by shopping on the Overstock site. The trial court ordered Overstock to show accurate and transparent pricing, and pay a $6,828,000 penalty. Overstock appealed the decision.

Napa County Deputy District Attorney Patrick Collins, who handles consumer protection cases, said in a news release, The Court of Appeals thorough and well-reasoned decision is a victory for consumer protection. Businesses that advertise savings must do so truthfully and without misleading consumers.

The Court of Appeals decision will become final in 30 days. Overstock has not indicated whether it will seek to file a petition with the California Supreme Court to review the decision.

A copy of the full opinion is available at: http://www.courts.ca.gov/opinions/documents/A141613.PDF.
The Napa Valley Unified School District is planning to eliminate more than 100 jobs to erase a $12 million budget deficit brought on by declining enrollment and other factors, according to officials.

Most of the jobs being cut (68) are held by teachers and other staff who are retiring this year. However, district leaders acknowledged 42 people are being let go to avoid an imbalance in next years budget.

Some people did have to get laid off, said Assistant Superintendent Wade Roach.

The district avoided laying off many employees thanks to an early retirement incentive offered at the beginning of the year. The one-time payments, which averaged $60,000, coaxed 66 staff  including 52 teachers  to retire effective June 30.

Altogether, NVUSD wants to trim 110 full-time positions as part of its $167 million budget for the 2017-2018 school year. The school board is scheduled to vote on the proposed budget at its June 15 meeting.

The staff cuts are expected to save the district $9.2 million, according to Roach, and wipe out about three-quarters of a projected $12.3 million deficit.

The remainder of the budget shortfall will be addressed through a 9 percent cut in programs for next year, he said. The district previously trimmed 9 percent from school and program budgets in October that impacted the 2016-2017 school year.

Roach attributed the deficit in large part to a growing decline in student enrollment, which is causing the district to lose millions of dollars in funding.

Were dependent on butts in the seats, Roach told the NVUSD Board of Education on Thursday.

Unlike other school districts that receive most of their funding from property taxes, such as those in Calistoga and St. Helena, NVUSD is largely dependent on state funding based on student enrollment.

It was huge shock to our system when the district started losing students, said Roach.

Superintendent Patrick Sweeney and school board members cited the rising cost of housing throughout the Napa Valley as reason for the enrollment drop.

Sweeney noted that American Canyon this year experienced its first dip in student population in at least 15 years. The south county city, which long has been a source for affordable single-family homes, is now too expensive for some families with children, joining other communities, like the city of Napa, that have priced people out of the local housing market.

Homes in American Canyon are now selling for an average of $500,000, according to local Realtors. Some newer homes in Napa, Sweeney said, are going for as much as $800,000 to $900,000.

We did not know there was going to be this housing crunch, not to this extreme, said Trustee Thomas Kensok.

The district began experiencing enrollment declines two years ago. Initially, the drop was modest, but then grew steeper more recently. From March 2016 to March 2017, NVUSD lost 255 students, statistics show.

In addition to shrinking enrollment, rising contributions to public employee retirement systems, and reductions in the state education budget helped create the $12.3 million deficit, according to Roach.

Union leaders accepted the districts explanations for the budget imbalance, but also said NVUSD spending decisions in previous years contributed to the need for the current cuts.

If our [school] population had held steady, and if the money that had been promised showed up [from the state], I dont think we would have this problem, Gayle Young, president of the Napa Valley Educators Association, said in an interview.

We have some wonderful programs, she said. But we grew faster than the means we had to support those programs.

Of the 110 jobs being cut, about 50 will be non-tenured teaching positions, Roach said. Young confirmed her union wont lose any members as a result of the cuts.

She expressed some disappointment with the deficit reduction plan, while overall saying, We did OK.

Is it sad? Yes, she said. But [were] hopeful that the future is going to be better, and hopeful if were making better decisions around our funding as it comes in and where we put it, [then] we wont run into any problems that will be damaging to our community and our kids. Its all about the kids.

In response to Youngs claim the district grew too fast, Roach said, In the three years preceding 2014/2015, the district was experiencing annual enrollment growth between 130 and 240 of students per year.

Expansion of programs was based on monetary projections premised on enrollment flat-lining or a very modest decline [in students], per our demographers, he said.

Roach added that NVUSD will develop future budgets based on the new standard of declining enrollment.

Trustee Stacy Bratlien asked Roach last week if the enrollment decline could mean school closures for the district.

Roach said such talk was premature for now. But, he added, if the district continues to lose 200 to 300 kids a year, school closures could be a conversation the board will have to have.

NVUSDs most current enrollment projections show such a decline is possible.

Next year, the district is expecting to lose 315 students, compared to the current total of 17,975. The year after that (2018-2019), the loss is estimated to be 292 students.

In total, NVUSD may lose nearly 1,400 students by 2024-2025, when the decline is projected to stop and enrollment begins increasing again.
The Washington Post will host Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, for an interview with Post columnist David Ignatius about the status of that committees investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and potential ties to the Trump campaign and White House.
The current crisis djour is the specter of Russia colluding with Donald Trump and his associates in the recent election. The danger in that alleged collusion is loosely described as causing the public to lose faith in the democratic process.

The hysteria surrounding the contacts with the Russians is a smoke screen. We have our home grown destroyers of democracy living among us. H.A. Goodman, a contributor to Huffington Post on Aug. 17, 2016, describes how the primaries for that election were rigged by the Democratic Party (DNC) to ensure that Hillary Clinton, rather than Senator Bernie Sanders, won the nomination.

The DNC is theoretically neutral during the primaries as the public chooses a candidate who shares their values. That did not happen. Wikileaks exposed a series of emails showing the machinations by the DNC against Sen. Sanders. This forced Debbie Wasserman Schultz, head of the DNC, to resign.

Clinton however, kept her on her payroll as an adviser. Goodman states, Theres no question the Democratic Primary was rigged in favor of Hillary Clinton.

Had Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the DNC spread fake news about Clinton and rigged the debates in Sanders favor, establishment Democrats would have been outraged. Not only is there no outrage, the sleaze of our recent primaries is disappearing down a memory hole. The hysteria about Russian collusion expresses political priorities precisely.

Nothing the Russians did or could do comes remotely close to the damage the DNC did to the democratic process. It is said we have a fragile democracy. Based on the recent election, its fair to say we have no democracy. We have an expensive charade, drawn out in time and driven by corporate interests.

While Clinton was making speeches to Goldman Sachs or attending fundraisers in Hollywood, Sen. Sanders was attracting huge crowds to hear him speak. He ran a commendable campaign on small donations from his supporters. Those supporters have shown no outrage but they are still out there. They recognize cheating when it occurs. They can see now how much their vote matters and with good reason, have lost faith in the democratic process.

Bernhold Rankenburg

Napa
SAN FRANCISCO -- An attack by a man with a hammer left a woman with life-threatening injuries in San Francisco's Hayes Valley neighborhood early Wednesday morning.

The attack was reported at 3:42 a.m. in the 1700 block of Market Street, where the 23-year-old woman was trying to help a man suffering from a medical problem, according to police.

A separate man, a 21-year-old whose identity has not been released, then got into an argument with the woman and then allegedly attacked her with a hammer, police said.

The woman and the man she was trying to help were both taken to a hospital.

The suspect was arrested by police.
Raqqa is the last city of any consequence still held by Islamic State in either Syria or Iraq. But after being pummeled by airstrikes for months, ISIS' de-facto capital is now surrounded by US-backed rebels on three sides.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a coalition of mainly Kurdish and Arab fighters, launched the final phase of their offensive to expel ISIS from the city Tuesday.

SDF spokesman Talal Silo said the "great battle to liberate the city" would be fierce because ISIS fighters "will die to defend their so-called capital."

Why is Raqqa so important?

Raqqa is crucial to ISIS, both symbolically and strategically.

When it was seized in early 2014, the northern Syrian city was anointed as the nerve center of the group's sprawling bureaucracy. It also became the hub for planning overseas terror attacks -- especially in France and Belgium -- because so many foreign fighters called it home.

Who is taking part in the operation?

The ground forces comprise a mixture of Syrian Kurdish and Arab factions, as well as Assyrian Christians. The Kurds belong to the YPG militia and its women's wing, the YPJ, and are seen by the US military as its most effective partner in northern Syria.

They have joined with Arab militia under the umbrella of the Syrian Democratic Forces. Altogether there are some 60,000 YPG fighters in northern Syria, of whom some 30,000 are likely to be devoted to the Raqqa offensive. The Arab militia are probably 20,000-strong.

In recent months, the US ground presence has been bolstered by an influx of special forces and advisers; there are now an estimated 500 US personnel in northern Syria.

The US-led coalition has also begun supplying the SDF with heavier equipment, such as mortars and anti-tank weapons, to counter suicide car bombs. Other aid includes intelligence, battlefield advice and targeting assistance.

How big is ISIS' presence in the city?

It's hard to tell.

Estimating ISIS' strength in Raqqa has been made more difficult by reports that some of the group's factions have already left the city -- heading out across the desert towards Palmyra or east along the Euphrates river towards Deir Ezzor.

And while the US-led coalition's intense aerial bombardment of the city over the last few months has taken a toll, it's difficult to quantify.

The coalition recently estimated ISIS numbers in Raqqa at 3,000 to 4,000 fighters, but it may be at the lower end of that range by now.

What is life like inside Raqqa?

It's precarious.

With much of the city destroyed, the bridges over the Euphrates wrecked, and shortages of basic goods, life for civilians stuck in Raqqa is hell.

Over the past few weeks, civilians have streamed out of the city. Those that make it to safety tell SDF forces and humanitarian organizations of constant bombardment, a lack of power and water.

Before the civil war broke out, the city had more than 200,000 inhabitants; latest estimates suggest 100,000 are still there.

Groups such as the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights have reported civilian casualties in airstrikes, including the death of 21 people who were trying to flee the city by boat on Monday.

The only upside to life there now? Residents, who have since left, say ISIS police and fighters are less pervasive. According to some reports, ISIS has stopped enforcing a ban on smoking, for example.

How long will the operation take?

It's impossible to predict, but not even the SDF expects a quick victory in Raqqa. The group insists that it wants to avoid civilian casualties, which will prolong the campaign.

ISIS has had nearly three years to prepare for this moment, and (as in Mosul) is thought to have constructed an extensive network of tunnels and defensive blast walls. But the city is surrounded on three sides, and that's a lot of real estate to defend.

Much depends on whether ISIS fighters opt to leave Raqqa and regroup elsewhere, or stay and fight to the death.

What happens to Raqqa when ISIS is overthrown?

The SDF has said that as a largely Arab city, Raqqa will be administered by its Arab components. Historically, the city has had little Kurdish presence. Before the outbreak of the civil war an estimated 10% of its population was Christian.

To many military observers, it's unlikely that the Syrian regime will tolerate the SDF running a provincial capital. Its army has already begun to move toward Raqqa, though it's still some distance away.

Last year, Russia talked about coordinating the city's liberation with the US, but there is no sign of that now.

Where does that leave ISIS?

ISIS is running out of places to go. When the group is evicted from Raqqa it will lose the last vestige of any "governance" of its so-called caliphate. But it's not just losing control of territory, it's also losing the facility to move freely between Syria and Iraq -- especially since Iraqi militia seized the key town of Baaj last week.

The coalition hopes that the loss of Raqqa and Mosul will dull ISIS' appeal to potential recruits.

"It's hard to convince new recruits that ISIS is a winning cause when they just lost their twin 'capitals' in both Iraq and Syria," General Steve Townsend, the coalition's commanding general, said.

CNN's Euan Mckirdy, Jamie Crawford, Muhammad Hassan and Karen Smith contributed to this report.
Caltrans plans 6-month closure of Silverado Trail south of Trancas Street

Caltrans will close Silverado Trail between Trancas Street and Hagen Road for six months so crews can demolish and rebuild a bridge over Sarco Creek.

The bridge will be closed starting Wednesday, June 14, at 10 a.m.

A new bridge will replace the existing span, which has been scoured and is in need of replacement, Caltrans said.

During construction, motorists traveling on northbound Highway 29 towards Lake Berryessa will be detoured up 29 to eastbound Trancas.

Motorists traveling on southbound Silverado Trail/Highway 121 towards Vallejo and San Francisco will be detoured at Trancas to Highway 29. Northbound Silverado Trail between Hagen Road and Sarco Creek Bridge will remain open to local traffic only. Southbound Silverado between Rose Drive and Trancas will remain open to local traffic only.

All work depends on the weather. Motorists should expect delays and watch for detour signs and flaggers. The California Highway Patrol will assist with traffic control.
Plans to build a $10 million, 9.4-mile Vine Trail link between Calistoga and St. Helena face right-of-way challenges with potential to balloon costs or possibly even delay or sink the project.

The 1.5-mile long problem segment fronts Highway 29 south of Bothe-Napa Valley State Park. Much of the state right-of-way there is narrow, so the Vine Trail can fit only by using easements from adjacent property owners.

Two owners with a total of about a half-mile of Highway 29 frontage have declined to grant easements. That means the Vine Trail might have to resort to a far more complicated method there to create room east of the highway for the asphalt bike-and-walking path.

Whats needed is to slide Highway 29 about 10 feet to the west, which involves building a retaining wall along a hillside. Vine Trail officials said the estimated cost is $2.9 million to $3.4 million and the move would require cooperation from the state Department of Transportation.

The Napa Valley Vine Trail is to ultimately be a 47-mile-long biking-and-walking path from Vallejo to Calistoga. One existing segment runs almost continuously for 12 miles from Kennedy Park in Napa to through Yountville.

The Calistoga-to-St. Helena segment is being funded in part by a $6.1 million grant awarded to the NVTA by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and $2.3 million from the Napa Valley Vine Trail Coalition.
St. Helenas Ad Hoc Utility Rate Committee has recommended changes to the citys new water and sewer rate structures, but its still unclear how those adjustments would affect customers rates.

Some recommendations, such as adding 5 percent contingencies into the cost estimates for the citys capital projects, could drive rates up. So could the committees suggestion that the city replace 4 percent of its water and sewer mains annually, up from the 1 percent proposed in the current rate structure.

However, other changes could provide substantial relief to some of the customers whove seen the steepest rate hikes, including local restaurants and residents of Vineyard Valley Mobile Home Park.

Consultants will have to crunch more numbers to determine how the committees recommendations would affect the rates for each type of customer.

Interim City Manager Larry Pennell said the City Council will receive the committees report on June 13. Hes recommending that the council schedule a subsequent study session to review the suggestions in more detail.

At its final meeting on May 31, the committee recommended that the city scrap the new sewer rate structure and instead enact a modified rate structure that rate consultant Catherine Hansford proposed as an alternative last year.

Presented with the two options last summer, the council-appointed Revenue Source Task Force endorsed the one that was ultimately enacted, but the Ad Hoc Utility Rate Committee is endorsing the modified rate structure, which would result in less dramatic increases, including for restaurants that have seen their sewer bills skyrocket.

The committee also wants the council to reconsider the rates for properties where multiple users share the same water meter. That could result in lower rates at Vineyard Valley Mobile Home Park.

Park residents, whove undergone some of the biggest rate increases, say they shouldnt be charged as much as single-family homeowners, since the city is not responsible for maintaining the pipes within the park.

A few more recommendations could also result in lower rates by reducing the amount of necessary revenue and reserves in the water and wastewater funds.

The committee is recommending that those funds maintain a debt ratio of 1.3-1.5, which exceeds the 1.2 required by the citys bond covenants but represents less revenue than the current rates would generate.

The committee wants the city to set aside reserves of 10-14 months worth of operating costs on the water side and 6-8 months on the wastewater side, which is also less than the current rate structure.

The committee also wants the city to investigate funding sources other than rates, such as state loans, grants and bonds.

The committee did not weigh in on whether the General Fund should contribute to the removal of the Upper York Creek Dam. Three out of five city councilmembers have already said they would support doing so in the 2017-2018 budget.
(Natural News) When a partial meltdown struck the Three Mile Island nuclear generating station near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in March 1979, the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission tried to downplay the incident. Much like the officials involved in the Fukushima meltdown, they said at the time that the radiation released into the environment was only in small amounts and had no detectable health effects. However, researchers have finally shown a correlation between the Three Mile Island meltdown and cases of thyroid cancer in the surrounding counties.

In a study led by surgery professor Dr. David Goldenberg of Penn State College of Medicine, researchers examined tumor samples from people who lived near Three Mile Island when the incident took place and continued to live there afterward and eventually went on to develop thyroid cancer. The areas in question were in York, eastern Cumberland, western Lebanon, Lancaster, and Dauphin counties. In total, they looked at 44 patients treated at Penn State Healths Milton S. Hershey Medical Center for papillary thyroid cancer, the most common type, in the years from 1974 to 2014.

Researchers divided the participants into groups depending on their risk level, with those who developed the cancer between 1984 and 1996 considered to be at risk because this corresponds to the latency period for radiation-induced thyroid cancer. Those who developed cancer outside of that period were used as controls.

In their study, they noted a clear shift from cancer mutations from random causes to those consistent with exposure to radiation. Thyroid cancer caused by radiation exposure has changes in its molecular makeup that distinguish it from sporadic thyroid cancer.

The BRAF mutation, which is not typically present in radiation-induced thyroid cancer, was found in 83 percent of patients in the control group and just 53 percent of those in the at-risk group. Those in the at-risk group also had an increase in other molecular markers that are normally seen in thyroid cancer induced by radiation.

According to the study, these observations are consistent with those in other populations that were exposed to radiation. An extensive vetting process was used to ensure the patients lived in the at-risk counties at the time of the incident and in the years afterward.

Anecdotal evidence prompted study

Dr. Goldenberg told USA Today that he was inspired to carry out the study after hearing anecdotal evidence of a connection, saying: Im always wary when people say, Theres nothing to see here.

He added, however, that even though Pennsylvania leads the nation in thyroid cancer cases, most cases are not related to Three Mile Island. While he said his results definitely show a correlation, it isnt quite conclusive given the number of patients involved. Next, the researchers are hoping to examine tumor samples from patients from other regional hospitals to see if the pattern holds up.

These findings and any follow-up research could prompt a slew of lawsuits. In 1996, a U.S. District Judge ruled there was insufficient evidence linking radiation from the plant to the health problems experienced by a group of around 2,000 people in a class action lawsuit.

Nuclear plant set to close

These days, the Three Mile Island nuclear plant is no longer profitable. It has lost $300 million over the last five years, and it recently failed to get a contract to sell the electricity produced there on the power grid for the third year in a row. Reuters reports that the company that owns the plant, Exelon Corp, recently announced it will close the plant down in 2019, but thats far too late for the people whose health has been ruined by exposure to its radiation.

Sources:

ScienceDaily.com

Reuters.com

USAToday.com

YDR.com
(Natural News) On 30 June 2015, Governor Jerry Brown of California signed the most restrictive vaccine mandate in the country. That law  Senate Bill 277  went into effect on 1 July 2016, forcing every child in California to receive 40 doses of 10 different vaccines. Those who did not comply would forfeit their right to a free education in both public and private schools, and would have to be home schooled. As punishment for not toeing the government line, they would also be refused admittance to daycare facilities, preschools and after school programs. The bill is open-ended, meaning the state can add additional vaccinations to the schedule as and when they see fit.

The absolute ridiculousness of this law has been made evident by a recent outbreak of mumps in Los Angeles County, California. Over 40 people in the area  mostly gay men, or women who have social links to gay men  have been diagnosed with the disease, forcing public health officials to declare an outbreak on the first day of June. They have also issued an alert warning physicians and healthcare providers to be on the lookout for other possible cases. Seven men were diagnosed with mumps in a separate outbreak back in March.

Mumps most often spreads among those living in the same environment, or where many people gather, like in bars, gyms and theaters.

A major factor contributing to outbreaks of mumps is being in a crowded environment, notes the alert. Also, certain behaviors that result in exchanging saliva, such as kissing or sharing utensils, cups, lipstick or cigarettes, may increase the spread of the virus.

It is not clear from news reports why the outbreak seems to be focused in the gay community; certainly, there is no reason to suppose that gay men are the most likely demographic to visit nightclubs, theaters, gyms or bars. It would seem that some other common behavior is the likely trigger.

Now here comes the interesting part. According to the alert, The majority of cases have had no documentation of complete vaccination; however, some cases were fully vaccinated [emphasis edded].

This is by no means an isolated occurrence. In recent years there have been outbreaks of another infectious disease, measles, all over the country, and yet in every incident, many if not all those affected had dutifully received their MMR vaccine  the vaccine which supposedly protects against measles, mumps and rubella. In a 2014 outbreak in New York, for example, only two of the 20 victims had not been vaccinated. In other words, the vaccine failed in 90 percent of those who were supposed to have been protected by it. [RELATED: Discover the truth at Vaccines.news]

What is conveniently omitted from many media reports about outbreaks, including the most recent mumps outbreak in California, is the fact that it is not the unvaccinated who spread these diseases, but instead it is often those who have just been vaccinated by a process known as shedding.

In the days immediately following vaccination, children and others who have been vaccinated are carriers of the live virus and expose those around them to the very disease theyre supposedly now protected against. This is borne out by the fact that women are advised to wait three months after receiving the MMR vaccine before falling pregnant, as the virus can be spread to a fetus during that time period.

Heres a theory: What if shedding from all those children dutifully receiving their vaccines since July last year have been responsible for the spikes in mumps and measles cases in California? Of course, neither the media nor the medical community would ever admit to that. But its an interesting possibility, isnt it?

Sources:

DailyNews.com

SB277.org

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) The U.S. and China has recently reached a trade agreement on beef, poultry and natural gas. The recent agreement, deemed by federal officials as a herculean accomplishment for the Trump administration, was a bid to narrow the countrys trade deficit with China. Under the trade agreement deal, China will allow U.S. imports of beef no later than July 16. This, after imposing a ban on U.S.beef products in 2003 over safety concerns about mad cow disease. In turn, the U.S. is slated to release a proposed rule to allow Chinese cooked poultry to enter U.S. markets. The U.S. has also expressed interest in exporting more liquefied natural gas to China. According to federal officials, the Asian superpower may negotiate any type of export contract with the U.S. suppliers, including long-term ventures.

The key in these negotiations is specifics that are enforceable  literally, the devil is in the details. 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 theyll look to ensure reality matches the rhetoric of these promises, Scott Mulhauser, a former Chief of Staff at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, told FoxBusiness.com.

U.S., China trade agreement by the numbers

Data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture showed that China was the second leading consumer of beef products in 2016, consuming nearly eight million tonnes last year. The country was also among the largest importer of beef products, letting in 812,000 tonnes in 2016. China trails behind the U.S. in importing and consuming these products. According to recent statistics, Asia remains to be the leading market segment for U.S. beef shipments. In fact, the country sold as much as $3.77 billion worth of beef cuts to Asia in 2016.

Recent statistics also showed that China was the third leading importer of liquefied natural gas, purchasing as much as 26.06 million tonnes in 2016. The country trails behind Japan and South Korea is LNG importation. On the other hand, the U.S. is already fast becoming a major player in natural gas importation. Shipping data from Reuters.com revealed that the China purchased its very first U.S. LNG tanker in August last year. This was followed by eight more cargoes delivered between December and March. According to the report, the U.S. has shipped just over 0.6 million tonnes or 1.4 billion cubic meters of LNG to China during the period. In comparison, the Chinese government imports 1.5-2 billion cubic meters of LNG from Australia.

Chinese chicken debacle might just be around the corner

In 2014, the U.S. was able to export about $315 million worth of poultry products, such as chicken feet, to China where the products were greatly popular. However, this was greatly reduced when China decided to ban poultry imports from the U.S. after the latter was hit with its worst avian outbreak in 2015. China remained to be a less enthusiastic importer of U.S. poultry products, purchasing only $33 million worth of products last year.

However, the recent trade agreement will open opportunities for China to export cooked poultry products to the U.S. On a completely different note, South China Morning Post reported in February that the Guangzhou Centre for Disease Control and Prevention found that more than 30 percent of local live poultry markets in Chinas third-largest city were contaminated with the H7N9 avian flu virus.

Federal health officials have urged the general public to stay alert for the avian flu virus. More than 100 cases of human infections have already been noted over the past two months.

Sources include:

FoxBusiness.com

Reuters.com

SCMP.com
(Natural News) The World Health Organizations (WHO) cancer agency, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), classified glyphosate as probably carcinogenic to humans, which is the second-highest classification for substances that can cause cancer. Glyphosate is the main ingredient of Monsantos best-selling herbicide Roundup.

Instead of protecting public health and removing it from their products, Monsanto hired an army of fraudulent scientists and industry lobbyists to push their agenda. Backed up by the government and mainstream media, fake stories flooded the internet to cast doubts on the cancer-causing properties associated with glyphosate, allowing Monsanto to continue selling their toxic products.

Last July, the European Union (EU) granted an 18-month extension of glyphosates approval after a proposal for a full license renewal met opposition from member states and campaign groups. Despite the strong opposition from environmental groups, a new study by the European Chemical Agency (ECHA) has reopened the negotiations with EU nations over renewing the license for glyphosate, Reuters reported.

After Europe forced a delay in the decision to renew the license of glyphosate for commercial use, the European Commission is now proposing to extend its use by 10 years. According to the EU body, which regulates chemicals and biocides, glyphosate should not be classified as a cancer-causing substance.

After taking the latest state of scientific research into account, a spokeswoman for the Commission said that they will start to work with the Member States to find a solution that enjoys the largest possible support.

Doubts over glyphosates safety remain

In 2015, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) concluded that glyphosate is unlikely to pose carcinogenic or mutagenic properties and has no toxic effect on fertility, reproduction, or embryonic development.

As reported by Reuters, the ECHA study has been welcomed by the EFSA and lobby groups for farmers who use glyphosate-containing products on their fields. No date has been set for the start of the discussions between member states, so there is still hope Europe will maintain its strict safety standards and ban this health damaging chemical from its lawns and fields.

Bart Staes, a Green Party group member of the European Parliament, said that it makes no sense at all to ignore the wide range of risks associated to glyphosate. Despite the clear link between glyphosate and cancer, the decision to seek a 10-year rather than a long-term approval was criticized by glyphosate opponents such as the European Crop Protection group. They called the decision short-sighted, claiming it pandered to activists.

Will Europe fall for the bad science practices of the agricultural industry and fake media reports? Or will it make the right decision, putting people before profit? Only time will tell. Since glyphosate was registered in over 130 countries as one of the worlds most heavily used weed killers in 2010, Monsanto will not give up its biggest money-generating product without putting up a big fight. According to analysts, Monsanto is looking at a loss of up to $100 million if Europe bans the use of glyphosate.

Stay informed about the real science behind glyphosate and learn the undeniable truth about the risks associated with this widely used herbicide at Glyphosate.news.

Sources:

SLToday.com

FarmersJournal.ie
(Natural News) It just got a lot harder for the extreme Left-wing, Trump-hating mainstream media to get away with distortions of the truth, false innuendo and outright lies when it comes to reporting on favored issues or disfavored political figures.

The Media Equalizer Project was launched not only to serve as a bulwark against establishment hackery, but also as a tool aimed at protecting and defending conservative, libertarian and alternative media from the onslaught of the Left which, sadly, is dominated by multi-billionaires like the Washington Posts owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, as well as huge corporations such as Google, Facebook, and others.

For the Media Equality Project, Rachel Maddow is only the beginning of our effort to expose the medias double-standard. Coming up next: Morning Joe, Brian Stelter, Stephen Colbert, Michael Smerconish, Don Lemon, Lawrence ODonnell, Anderson Cooper, George Stephanopolous, and more, the group says on its website.

One of the projects first initiatives was to defend Fox News Sean Hannity from an assault by Left-wing media organizations in their attempt to get him off the story involving murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich who, according to published reports, was the one who allegedly supplied WikiLeaks with thousands of emails and other documents taken from the Democratic National Committee which, if confirmed, puts the lie to the mainstream media narrative that the Russians hacked the DNC (and Hillary Clintons campaign). [Update: Hannity says he is making progress on the truth behind Richs murder and will release it soon; famous hacker Kim Dotcom confirmed that Rich was the one who did the leaking.]

Left-wing organizations like Media Matters, founded by David Brock, began targeting Hannitys advertisers, which led him to describe the effort as liberal fascism. (Related: Read STORM: Complete panic at DNC after Kim Dotcom says he was in on Seth Richs effort to get stolen docs to WikiLeaks.)

But defending Hannity is not the only function of the organization. It regularly points out the hypocrisy of the far-Left media in defending its preferred political leaders, celebrities and other public figures  even when the things theyve done or said are indefensible and disgusting.

Take comedienne Kathy Griffins latest outrage, in which she made a short video where she slowly hoisted a mock severed, bloody head of President Donald J. Trump. The stunt provoked widespread condemnation (from the Right and the Left), leading to her loss of comedy gigs, her New Years Eve contract at CNN, and advertising spokesperson jobs  for which she, incredibly, blamed the president and his family.

But Media Matters has been silent in its treatment of Griffin, which the Media Equality Project was sure to note:

As a nonprofit organization that routinely opposes what it considers hate speech coming from conservatives, you might expect Media Matters to be equally upset when a progressive personality steps out of line.

But youd be wrong, as this weeks horrific publicity-stunt-gone-wrong reveals. After the widely reviled move by alleged comedian Kathy Griffin to pose with a severed presidential head, the George Soros-funded political hit squad has been curiously silent.

Instead, Media Matters continues to call for the removal of virtually anyone that dares to disagree with its own viewpoints. In addition to its well-funded push to remove Sean Hannity from the Fox News Channel, it is attacking anyone who dares to question climate change, which it of course considers settled science.

Even former first daughter Chelsea Clinton and Rosie ODonnell have denounced Griffins stunt.

But not Media Matters. And they want to be taken as credible? (Related: Read Trump White House Assembling War Room To Strike Back Against Fake News Media.)

The far-Left has infested and occupied the bulk of our institutions  politics, pop culture, Hollywood, science, medicine, education, academia and the media. At least as far as the latter industry is concerned, Americans concerned about the truth and defending alternative media have a new ally: The Media Equalizer Project.

Meanwhile, you can also find honest reporting on todays most pressing issues by searching GoodGopher.com and bookmarking Censored.news.

J.D. Heyes is a senior writer for NaturalNews.com and NewsTarget.com, as well as editor of The National Sentinel.

Sources include:

MediaEqualizer.com

NaturalNews.com

DeepState.news

NewsTarget.com
(Natural News) The telecommunications industry cant wait to release the next generation of mobile phone technology, a controversial network standard known as 5G, which could be unveiled as soon as 2019. But many citizens who will be directly affected by the technologys high-intensity radio frequencies (RFs) arent being kept in the loop about whats going on, including in the state of North Carolina where legislators are right now pushing to have 5G towers located in neighborhoods without the consent of local residents.

House Bill (H.B.) 310 would allow for 5G transmitters to be installed on existing towers in public rights-of-way, greenways, conservation lands, and other types of property outside of rights-of-way (with the exception of single-family residences), without any input whatsoever from those who live near these future transmitter facilities. It would also go a step further in actually barring local governments from passing their own laws to prevent this technological invasion from occurring against the will of the people  all, of course, for the benefit of mobile phone providers.

Dubbed the Wireless Communications Infrastructure Siting bill, H.B. 310 was put together in secret by a panel of industry stakeholders and local government representatives, with no input from members of the public who will be affected by it. The bills primary sponsor, Representative Jason Saine (R-Lincolnton), is also on record as having received over $20,000 in campaign contributions from the telecom industry, according to VoteSmart.org, which says a lot about whos calling the shots in trying to get it passed.

If you live in a single-family home near a light post, a water tower, or other public facility, 5G will be broadcast around you, warns Laura Combs, a citizen activist from Raleigh whos been actively following the legislations progress and attending General Assembly (NCGA) meetings to voice her objections. If you live in a multi-family residence such as a condominium or an apartment building or duplex, you could be forced to broadcast 5G and live with it  and you wont have any recourse in stopping it. Perhaps even more concerning is that these facilities could be attached to schools, daycares, recreation centers and other facilities used by kids.

Tell your legislators to say NO to 5G

The general public is already being bombarded day in and day out with RFs from 2G, 3G, 4G, and LTE technologies that a $25 million study conducted by the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP) found are linked to causing serious health problems in mammals, including cancers of the brain and heart. Now with 5G on the horizon, the threat has increased substantially as 5G is much more powerful than these other types of RFs, and involves the use of a much greater number of transmission towers due to the limited distance that it can travel.

[T]he launch of super-fast 5G technology over the next several years will dramatically increase the number of transmitters sending signals to cellphones and a host of new Internet-enabled devices, including smart appliances and autonomous vehicles, writes Jim Puzzanghera for The Los Angeles Times.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has already ramrodded approval for 5G across the U.S. with a unanimous vote, despite a lack of evidence showing its safety. The next step is for individual states to deliberate its implementation, which means the time is now for local citizens to speak up and demand accountability from their legislators who may attempt to sidestep their constituents in rushing 5G into existence, just like whats currently happening in North Carolina.

After rejecting an effort to amend the bill to allow further study of the 5G issue, the North Carolina House of Representatives has reportedly passed H.B. 310. It will now go on to the Senate, however, where it can still be stopped. Whether youre a resident of the state or not, you are free to express your concerns about 5G and urge the NC Senate to include the public in these important deliberations about its implementation by visiting the NCGA website and using the contact tool to reach the states Senate members.

Sources:

CNET.com

NCLEG.net

PBS.org

LATimes.com
(Natural News) Olga Khazan is a columnist for The Atlantic, but if you read her article, The Shadow Network of Anti-Vax Doctors, you might think shes employed by big pharma, not a well-respected magazine. In her story she writes, vaccines are some of the safest and most important preventative-health measures around. What about hygiene and sanitation? Khazan also pens the ultimate whitewash in her claim that there is no evidence that [vaccines] cause autism or any other health problem.

This statement alone also makes the editors at The Atlantic complicit in covering up the lies that have harmed millions of innocent children via the Vaccine Holocaust. Even a cursory fact check would have revealed story after story of families devastated by their childs vaccine injuries. Did Khazan and her editors not know that the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program has given over $3 billion to vaccine injured families?

Independent writer Jeremy Hammond points out a long list of lies and distortions in Ms. Khazans article at JeremyHammond.com. He calls her article a shameless hit piece and reminds readers of a myriad of other well-established facts that were totally ignored by Khazan and The Atlantic editorial staff. For example, her article falsely implies that vaccine-induced immunity is the same as natural immunity. She claims the 1998 findings of Andrew Wakefield were fraudulent, but didnt read his report. Wakefield did not declare an absolute causality between the Mumps, Measles, Rubella (MMR) vaccine and developing symptoms of autism spectrum disorder, he merely acknowledged the hypothetical possibility because the parents of the children who came to him for help saw their children digress after receiving that vaccination.

Khazan also wrote that Trumps talks with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. sparked worries among some doctors that Trump might make changes to the CDC and give vaccine responsibility to a pseudo-scientific panel. Who could be more pseudo-scientific than Dr. Paul Offit, who has made millions from vaccine patents? In 2002, Offit proclaimed that the infant immune system is theoretically capable of responding to 10,000 vaccines at once. This man is the director of the Vaccine Information Center at The Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia. Hes also one of the folks who decides which vaccines get added to the CDC schedule.

Where did Khazan get her facts? One source was a series of emails from Dr. Alez Vasquez, DC ND DO FACN and Chief Director of the International College of Human Nutrition and Functional Medicine (ICHNFM). According to Dr. Vasquez, he provided Khazan with sixteen scientific research papers, personal documents and presentations. Vasquez says that she was perfectly aware of the science showing harm from vaccines, but she chose to lie to her readership

Columnist Olga Khazan is just a small player serving as protector of vaccine orthodoxy. Others, like Dr. Julie Gerberding, are much more deadly. Gerberding served as Director of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) for seven years until she was hired by Merck to be their global vaccine advocate in 2009. FiercePharma.com says Dr. Gerberding wants to eliminate cervical cancer on a global basis. Gee. Guess who will be forcing Mercks deadly HPV Gardasil vaccine down international throats?

Conversely, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is a brave and passionate truth-seeker who has taken on the vaccine cartel. His entire focus is centered on exposing the real science, while stopping the lies, greed and murderous behavior of the CDC and its minions. Its time for President Trump to allow Kennedy to be the chairman of a Vaccine Commission. The world must wake up to the fraud, corruption and lies that have maimed millions of children. And it must stop.

Get involved. Visit Worldmercuryproject.org.

Sources:

TheAtlantic.com

VaccineHolocaust.org

JeremyHammond.com

Science.NaturalNews.com

VaccineHolocaust.Offit.org

ICHNFM.org

ICHNFM.org

FierceBiotech.com

YouTube.com
(Natural News) Like their students, one in five university professors are seemingly hooked on using medications for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) to keep up with the demands of their jobs, Cambridge University academic and neuroscientist Dr. Hannah Critchlow discussed at The Hay Festival. According to Dr. Critchlow, an increasing number of university professors were found to use these drugs, known as nootropics, to bolster memory, concentration and mental stamina.

However, the neuroscientist cautioned that these drugs  which include Ritalin, Adderall, Noopept, and Modafinil  were previously associated with long-term side effects such as heart problems and psychosis. The academic also noted that an increasing number of students have also been found to to use these drugs in order to improve academic performance.

One in five academic professors also admit to taking them in order to help them with their grant writing and their committee meeting concentration. (These are) drugs that are usually prescribed for patients who have attention hyperactivity disorder or Alzheimers to help with their memory or focus. Students are buying these drugs off the internet so its not particularly legal, they are taking these drugs in the hope that it will help with their revision for exams. Theres not a huge amount of data on how these drugs might help them in their revision and exams but they do seem to increase working memory. What exactly the drugs will be doing for a healthy, young brain where there is lots of changes going on in a younger brain  the long term effects of these drugs are not known yet, Dr. Critchlow said in DailyMail.co.uk.

Different institutions in the U.K. have been urged to address the issue through measures such as drug testing

More students use smart drugs for better academic performance

The already worsening drug problem among students have been well documented by previous research. For instance, a survey by the online community forum The Student Room revealed that one in 10 students across all age groups have tried using smart drugs. The poll also revealed that about 25 percent of students said they plan to use the drug at some point in the future. The survey, which polled 2,000 students, also found that most students hide their drug use from their parent, while only a third admitted to their parents about using the medications.

If you are a student sitting exams now, our advice would be: please do not take study drugs. They often have the reverse effect to what you are expecting and, in some cases, have worse side effects, like sleeplessness, loss of focus, and increased anxiety. Instead, speak to your lecturers, teachers, or parents to explain you feel things may be getting on top of you, Jack Wallington, community director at The Student Room, said in Independent.co.uk.

Another study published in Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review showed that 17 percent of college students misuse the ADHD medication Ritalin. According to the research team, the students either use the drug without a prescription, or take the drug in higher doses. The researchers also noted that the primary reason for drug misuse was to boost academic performance. The study also revealed that the students used the drug for recreational purposes. The scientists warned that while the drug was used less frequently for this purpose, taking the drug along with alcohol would be detrimental to the overall health.

In addition, a study conducted by researchers at the Staffordshire University in the U.K. found that a majority of university students think that it was only normal to use smart drugs such as Noopept in order to boost school performance.

Sources include:

DailyMail.co.uk

Independent.co.uk

MedicalNewsToday.com
The Poseidons predecessor, the AP-3C Orion, has operated from RMAF Butterworth for a number of decades as part of the bilateral Malaysian and Australian Operation GATEWAY.



Operation GATEWAY is Australia's enduring contribution to the preservation of regional security and stability in South East Asia. The operation provides maritime surveillance patrols in the North Indian Ocean and South China Sea.



Operation GATEWAY is a key element in the bilateral Defence relationship between Australia and Malaysia. The state of the art Poseidon is refining its ability to take over this surveillance role in 2018.



Commander of Surveillance and Response Group, Air Commodore Craig Heap said the successful first overseas deployment of the Poseidon was a significant step towards realising the full capability of the P-8A in an Australian context.



"Maritime surveillance in this part of the world has been a core mission of Number 92 Wing for decades with the Poseidons capabilities well suited to continue this role, Air Commodore Heap said.



The aircraft, the aircrew who operate it, and the maintenance and support teams that keep the jet flying, have all performed extremely well during the deployment.



Following testing of the Poseidons ability to deploy and operate from forward bases on the north and north-west Australian mainland in April, this deployment to RMAF Butterworth marks the first time a RAAF P-8A Poseidon has operated from an overseas environment since the first aircraft arrived in November 2016.



Missions flown by the aircraft included patrols in the Northern Indian Ocean and South China Sea aimed at testing and refining how the P-8A will be operated in those environments. Each mission utilised the Poseidons advanced sensor suite and data connectivity.



During each mission the aircraft conducted routine maritime surveillance on merchant and naval shipping along some of the worlds busiest shipping routes.



With this overseas deployment complete, the next step from June through to July will be the completion of the operational evaluation of the Poseidonss Search and Rescue capability. This will be another important step as we move toward declaring Initial Operational Capability of the P-8A system, Air Commodore Heap said.
Our video coverage on RSS Independence

LMV Overview: Smarter, Faster, Sharper

The new LMVs are highly capable warships designed and equipped with advanced combat capabilities and technologies to further strengthen the RSN's ability in the seaward defence of Singapore and protecting our sea lines of communication.



The LMVs are designed with an Integrated Command Centre

Smarter Ship

Innovative Operating Concepts. The LMVs are designed with an Integrated Command Centre where the ships' Bridge, Combat Information Centre and Machinery Control Room are co-located. The Integrated Command Centre integrates and synergises the management of navigation, engineering, and combat functions to achieve greater operational effectiveness and efficiency, especially during maritime security operations.

The LMV's Integrated Mast was designed in collaboration with Saab Kockums

Innovative Logistics and Engineering Design. Key design elements for the LMV were incorporated to improve efficiency in logistics and engineering support. In "designing the support", the LMVs' operational readiness will be enhanced as less time will be required for maintenance of the ships. One example is the stacked mast, where 90 percent of the parts that require regular maintenance are housed in an enclosed environment and easily accessible within the mast, instead of outside in most ships' designs. The ship's platform and combat systems' health status can also be transmitted back to shore for centralised monitoring and prognosis of the systems to detect anomalies and plan for pre-emptive maintenance.

View of the bridge aboard RSS Independence, with the very large, collaborative tablets for the Commanding Officer and his XO.

Advanced Sense-Making and Decision Support Systems. Numerous sense-making and decision support systems, complemented by a high level of automation in the ship, are incorporated into the LMV's combat and platform suite. This will enhance situational awareness and accelerate decision making. The LMVs' Combat Management System features a fusion and identification engine to better identify, track and manage contacts, and a threat evaluation weapon assignment engine to prioritise and assign the relevant weapons to counter threats. The LMVs are also designed with an advanced Integrated Platform Management System, which enhances operational effectiveness and is able to better manage consequences such as engineering defects, or fire and flooding situations.

The briefing and command room aboard RSS Independence

Network-Centric Design. The LMVs are equipped with an advanced integrated communication and network system to enable the crew to communicate and share information on board. This includes tracking of the ship's equipment and logistics status as well as crew movement. In addition, the LMVs will be connected to the larger Integrated Knowledge Command and Control network in the Singapore Armed Forces to share information with deployed forces and tap on the expertise from shore headquarters in areas such as operations and engineering support.

Sovereignty (LMV 16) during the RSN International Maritime Review

Faster Speed

In terms of displacement, the LMVs are 2.5 times larger than the PVs and possess better sea-keeping capabilities to operate in higher sea state conditions. The LMVs also have greater endurance and are able to stay at sea for longer periods of time. In addition, the LMV's ability to respond rapidly to maritime security incidents is further enhanced with its faster speed in excess of 27 knots and the ability to support a medium-lift helicopter. The LMVs are also highly manoeuvrable and can operate in confined and congested littoral waters effectively.

The stern ramps to launch and recover RHIBs

Sharper Capabilities

More Versatile. The LMVs are versatile and can be quickly configured with mission modules to take on a wide spectrum of operations. For example, the LMVs can be configured to embark rigid hull inflatable boats, boarding teams and a helicopter to conduct maritime security operations. They could also be configured with medical modules to support Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief and search-and-rescue operations. In addition, the LMVs may be deployed with unmanned systems for surveillance or mine countermeasure operations.



Calibrated Responses. The LMVs are equipped with both lethal and non-lethal options to deliver calibrated responses to deter or defend a wide range of threats. This ranges from long range acoustics devices, water cannon system, small and large calibre guns, to anti-missile missiles.



Superior Surveillance Capabilities. Equipped with a three-dimensional surveillance radar system and two high resolution navigation radars, the LMVs will be able to detect surface targets better in the congested environment. For target identification, the LMVs are equipped with a 360 panoramic day and night camera suite, comprising an all-round surveillance system and four electro-optics directors, and a 360 bridge that offers an unobstructed view to achieve all-round visual awareness of its immediate surroundings. This is essential in our congested waters where there is a high concentration of shipping and fishing activities amidst island groups.

Close Up view of RSS Independence's main gun, pilothouse and integrated mast

Programme Status

The LMV programme is progressing well. The first LMV, RSS Independence, was launched on 3 July 2015 and was commissioned on May 5th 2017. The second vessel, Sovereignty, was launched in April 2016 and should be commissioned soon. The third LMV was launched in October 2016 and the fourth one, Justive, in March 2017.

RSS Independence's helicopter deck
10:43

Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi who reached Udaipur airport is now on his way to Mandsaur by road to meet the kin of those killed during the farmers agitation. However, Neemuch SP, Manoj Kumar Singh, said the Congress leader will not be allowed to visit violence-hit Mandsaur.



To bring you up to speed, the Madhya Pradesh government has transferred Mandsaur Collector Swatantra Kumar Singh, who has now been replaced by OP Srivastava. Mandsaur SP OP Tripathi has also been transferred.



Union minister Venkaiah Naidu and the BJP has hit out at the Congress for "hijacking" the protest in Mandsaur. "It is a very sad turn of events in a state that is the most peaceful in India. The Congress is trying to politicise farmers' problems after they failed to counter Shivraj Singh Chouhan politically in the state," he said. BJP's Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said photo-op tourism will not benefit Rahul Gandhi at all.



Farmers in western Madhya Pradesh have been protesting since June 1 over various demands. The protesters have been demanding higher minimum support prices for their produce and loan waivers among other things.



"Rahul Gandhi is going to that area where the situation is very much tense. He should understand his responsibility. He should have talked about this first, but he is so fond of his publicity. That's why he is going there," Union Minister of Steel, Mines and Employment Narendra Singh Tomar said.



Meanwhile, the Congress has rebuffed reports of Gandhi participating in the ongoing farmers protest in Mandsaur, saying such a plan was never on the card for the party.



"People who wanted to go and express solidarity with the bereaved farmers, including Rahul Gandhi, were denied permission. Instead canards and rumours were spread that he wanted to go earlier to participate in the protest. There were never any plans, never any attempt," Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi said in a press briefing here.



Appealing for peace to the agitating farmers in the state, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan announced a compensation of Rs. 1 crore to the kin of those killed in the violence.





Image: Rahul Gandhi at Udaipur airport this morning. He will be heading to Mandsaur by road.


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McIntyre to lead Association of Teacher Educators in 2019-2020

by Christi Mathis

CARBONDALE, Ill.  Christie McIntyre, a Southern Illinois University Carbondale faculty member, has been elected to the executive committee of a national organization devoted to the improvement of teacher education.

McIntyre, associate professor and chair of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, will serve as second vice president of the Association of Teacher Educators for 2017-2018. She will then move up to the first vice president position before becoming president for the organizations centennial year, 2019-2020.

ATEs membership includes representatives from more than 650 colleges and universities, 500 major school systems and the majority of the countrys state education departments. The organization collaborates with other national educational organizations to enhance teaching, teacher education and higher education and also weighs in on legislation and initiatives that affect teachers at the state and national levels.

SIU originated in 1869 as a teachers college and McIntyres election lends the universitys voice to the concerns that affect teachers and education, she said.

We have an opportunity at the national level to be a part of the conversation that impacts the preparation of teachers for the classroom and also to work together to form policy that supports teachers and the valuable work they do, McIntyre said. I will have input into things in Washington, D.C., that relate to teacher education and higher education. This allows SIU to be involved in teacher advocacy at the highest levels.

McIntyre has a longstanding connection to ATE. She earned her doctoral, masters and bachelors degrees at Georgia State University and as a graduate student there worked with Edi Guyton, who served as president of the group in 2000. McIntyre even travelled to the nations capital with Guyton for ATE business.

McIntyre is in her second year as a member of the organizations board of directors. She has also served on the ATE Research Committee, as co-coordinator of the Distinguished Research in Teacher Education Selection Committee, chaired the Task Force on Student Leaders, and has been a member of the groups Leadership Academy and Commission on Constructivism as well as serving on other committees. She will chair the 2019 ATE annual conference in Atlanta.

McIntyre has been at SIU since 2001, originally serving as the center coordinator of field experiences for the College of Education and Human Services and subsequently earning a number of promotions to attain her current position. Her research interests include assessing student learning, literacy in the primary classroom, teacher development and applications of the constructivist learning theory in classrooms. Shes earned recognition for her teaching, served on a variety of committees and councils within her field and at the university. She has also been the faculty adviser for Educ8kdz, an SIU student organization for future teachers, for five years.

She said shes excited to assume her new role with ATE and learn more about the diverse issues that affect teachers and education and engage with stakeholders, constituents and legislators to advocate for positive change.

We look forward to the expanded voice we will have as we work together on the issues that affect our work in public education, McIntyre said.
University of Florida MBA offering full scholarships

The University of Florida MBA Full-Time program at the Hough Graduate School of Business is privileged to begin offering 100% tuition scholarships starting with the 2018 application cycle.

We are honored to begin offering these full-tuition scholarships, UF MBA Assistant Dean and Director John Gresley said. Receiving your MBA can be a financial burden for students, and our goal is to relieve that stress as much as possible. We hope to give interested students who might not have been able to receive their MBA a chance to do so with these scholarships.

Scholarships will be awarded to cover tuition and fees for in-state and out-of-state qualified students admitted to the full-time program. Only the number of Warrington credits required to complete the degree will be covered by the scholarship.

The UF MBA full-time program was ranked No. 19 among U.S. publics in the U.S. News & World Reports Best Graduate Schools 2018 rankings.
University of Florida Multicultural and Diversity Affairs selects new Black Affairs director

After a thorough national search, the University of Floridas department of Multicultural and Diversity Affairs (MCDA) is pleased to announce that Carl Simien has been selected as Director of Black Affairs. He will start Monday, July 24.

Carl joins UF from Western Illinois University where he served as Director of Gwendolyn Brooks Cultural Center. He is the former College and Career Director of Umoja Student Development Corporation in Chicago, Illinois. He has also previously served as the program coordinator of Roberts Family Development Center in Sacramento, California and youth development trainer for WestEd in California.

He is a graduate of Valparaiso University, where he received a Bachelor of Arts in communication and a Master of Arts in liberal studies with a focus on theology. He will be completing a second Masters degree in college student personnel and higher education leadership this summer from Western Illinois University.

Carl's student development background and experience working with TRIO programs have shaped his ambition for empowering students and advocating for their success. He believes mentoring and having a strong network of support are vital.

We are excited to welcome Carl to the MCDA team and the Gator Nation, said Will Atkins, executive director of Multicultural and Diversity Affairs. His enthusiasm and experience are a great addition to our department, and we look forward to supporting his vision for Black Affairs. Carl has a passion for mentorship and is focused on building partnerships across the university to promote student success.

Through the search process, the Multicultural and Diversity Affairs brought three candidates to Gainesville for on-campus interviews. The finalists were strongly vetted through a review of stakeholder feedback, strengths/weaknesses provided by the search committee, and extensive reference checks with the candidates current and former employers and faculty members.

As part Multicultural and Diversity Affairs, Black Affairs creates, sustains, promotes and affirms Black scholarship, culture, history, and leadership. The area coordinates an array of educational, cultural, and social programs focused on the Black experience at the University of Florida and across the African diaspora. Black Affairs actively supports sustainable efforts involving the recruitment and retention of Black students at UF.

For the role of Director of Black Affairs, Multicultural and Diversity Affairs sought an individual with strategic vision and leadership, strong communication skills, experience with advocacy, and a history of meaningful collaborations, among other attributes.
Kazakhstan's national carrier Air Astana will start operating direct flights between Astana and Delhi thrice a week from July 2, to complement the already existing daily flights between Delhi and Almaty. A statement issued by the Embassy of Kazakhstan in New Delhi said, "Establishing these direct flights was carried out in accordance with the "Plan of the Nation - 100 Concrete Steps", to implement the "Five Institutional Reforms" proposed by the Head of State, Nursultan Nazarbayev." The embassy statement further said, "Over the past two years, the flow of Indian citizens to the Republic of Kazakhstan has more than doubled, from 5,000 to almost 11,000 people. Over the same period, the number of visitors from Kazakhstan to India increased almost threefold, to 18,000 in 2016. These direct flights between our capitals, coupled with the existing success of the flights between Almaty and Delhi, will significantly contribute ... to the increase the number of foreign visitors to EXPO 2017. It shall also make proper use of the economic and investment potential of business representatives and tourists from India." "The opening of these new international flights was preceded by a large joint project by Air Astana, the Civil Aviation Committee of the Ministry for Investments and Development of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Indian aviation authorities, as well as the Kazakh Embassy in India," the statement added. "The Astana-Delhi flight will serve the further development of Astana as a transit hub in the center of Eurasia, alongside the opening of a new terminal and the increased capacity of the airport," the statement concluded. (ANI)
The government is aiming at a $1 trillion digital economy by 2020 and Samsung India will spearhead this movement, Information and Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said on Wednesday as the South Korean giant announced Rs 4,915 crore investment in expanding its Noida manufacturing plant. The expansion of the plant on a 35-acre land adjacent to the current facility will double Samsung's production capacity of both mobile phones and consumer electronics, further consolidating the firm's leadership in these segments. "Samsung was earlier finding it difficult to get approval for the expansion. With Yogi Adityanath becoming Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, the investment proposal was fast-tracked and approved by the state government under its 'Mega Policy'," Prasad told reporters here. A groundbreaking ceremony and traditional puja was held at the new site in the presence of the IT Minister, State Minister for Infrastructure and Industrial Development Satish Mahana, NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant, and other senior officials. J.K. Shin, Samsung Electronics CEO, and H.C. Hong, President and CEO of Samsung Southwest Asia, were present at the event. "The new investment of Rs 4,915 crore is a testament to our continuing commitment to 'Make in India' and to Uttar Pradesh which has been our partner right from the day Samsung's journey began in the country," Hong said. "On the back of the 'Digital India' movement led by millions of young Indians, we are witnessing a rise in adoption of electronic devices, smart appliances and mobile phones. A bigger manufacturing plant will help us cater to the growing demand for Samsung products across the country," he added. Samsung's Noida plant was one of the first electronics manufacturing facilities set up in the country in the early 1990s. The plant started with the manufacture of televisions in 1997. The current mobile phone manufacturing unit was added in 2005. "We wish to make India a global production hub with support from the government," Hong noted. According to Prasad, when the BJP came to power, the earlier government had invested Rs 11,000 crore towards electronics industry. "Now, the investment stands at Rs 1.53 lakh crore with 40 mobile manufacturers and 33 mobile component manufacturers investing in the country in the last three years," Prasad told reporters. Samsung has two manufacturing plants -- in Noida and in Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu -- five R&D centres, and one design centre in Noida, employing over 70,000 people and expanding its network to over 1.5 lakh retail outlets. Hong said that every product, including the recently launched Galaxy S8 and S8+ premium smartphones, being sold in the country are 'Made in India'. According to Prasad, the South Korean giant will manufacture 12 crore mobile phones this year. Samsung currently has 10 per cent of its overall production in India and aims to take it to 50 per cent over the next three years. The mega Samsung investment came after its arch rival Apple recently announced the commencement of initial production of its popular iPhone SE model at its Bengaluru facility. Apple has begun assembling iPhone SE models with Wistron Corporation, its Taiwanese manufacturing partner. --IANS sku/na/vt ( 524 Words) 2017-06-07-17:58:15 (IANS)
The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, at a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Wednesday gave its nod to four-laning of a 19-km stretch of National Highway-21 in Himachal Pradesh. The construction, from end of Pandoh bypass to Takoli section, will be done at an estimated cost of Rs 2,775.93 crore, a statement said. This is a sub-project of the National Highways Authority of India's larger project for four-laning of NH-21 from Kiratpur in Punjab to Manali in Himachal Pradesh. Once complete, the larger project would provide all weather connectivity to important tourist destinations like Kullu and Manali and further upto Leh. The other four sub-projects of this project include Kiratpur-Nerchowk, Nerchowk-Pandoh, Takoli-Kullu and Kullu-Manali sections. "The cost (for the sub-project) is estimated to be Rs 2,775.93 crore including cost of land acquisition, resettlement and rehabilitation and other pre-construction activities. The total length of the road to be developed is approximately 19 km," a Road Transport and Highways Ministry statement said. It added that the four-laning of NH 21 from Kiratpur to Manali would reduce the distance between the two by 38 km, resulting in a time saving of approximately three hours. "This will result in huge saving in terms of fuel consumption and wear and tear cost of vehicles," it said. The project will help in expediting the improvement of infrastructure in Himachal Pradesh and in reducing the time and cost of travel for traffic, particularly heavy traffic, plying between end of Pandoh bypass to Takoli section, the ministry said. "The development of this stretch will also help in uplifting the socio-economic condition of this region in the state. "It would also increase employment potential for local labourers for project activities. It has been estimated that a total number of 4,076 mandays are required for construction of one kilometre of highway. As such, employment potential of 77,000 mandays will be generated locally during the construction period of this stretch," it added. NHAI is also executing the four-laning of NH-22 from Parwanoo to Shimla (including Shimla bypass). The length of this project is 89.71 km and the cost is Rs 2,739 crore. The work has already started in the stretch from Parwanoo to Solan. The project construction from Solan to Shimla is likely to commence shortly, the ministry said. --IANS vv/vd/dg ( 397 Words) 2017-06-07-22:22:18 (IANS)
The film, based on Miguel De Cervantes's novel "Don Quixote", got stuck in near-mythical "development hell" and witnessed so many ups and downs that there was even a documentary "Lost in La Mancha" (2002) made on its journey, reports nytimes.com.

"Sorry for the long silence. I've been busy packing the truck and am now heading home. After 17 years, we have completed the shoot of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote'. Muchas gracias (Thank you very much) to all the team and believers," Gilliam wrote on Facebook on June 4.

Starring Adam Driver, Jonathan Pryce, Stellan Skarsgard and Olga Kurylenko, the film was being shot across various locations in Spain and Portugal.

It tells the story of a deluded old man, who is convinced he is the famed horse-riding hero and mistakes an advertising executive for his trusty squire, Sancho Panza.

Previously, names like Johnny Depp, Ewan McGregor, Robert Duvall, Jack O'Connell and John Hurt were attached to the project.

"Don Quixote is a dreamer, an idealist and a romantic, determined not to accept the limitations of reality, marching on regardless of setbacks, as we have done," Gilliam said.

The film, a passion project for Gilliam since the late 1980s, went on floors in 2000 but endured a number of setbacks -- lead actors roped in and out, flash floods stopped production and financing was a problem.

--IANS sas/rb/vt

( 264 Words)

2017-06-07-13:12:20 (IANS)
"I learnt a lot from my last few films. When I understood what went wrong with them, I could see the mistakes. Things went wrong in the filmmaking process and I can't have control over them if I'm not the producer," Vikram told IANS.

Hence, he decided to produce his next film "Neruppuda".

"As a producer, I didn't want to commit the same mistakes that I found in my last few films. I would have full control over my project and handle things the way I want. I play a fireman in the film and it will be a very different role," he said.

Vikram has Tamil action-thriller "Sathriyan" lined up for release this week.

He plays a gangster in the S.R. Prabhakaran directorial.

"It's a very realistic film. It's based on the lives of real gangsters in Trichy, and Prabhakaran has treated everything with realism. I was amazed by his research," he said.

The film also stars Soori and Manjima Mohan.

--IANS hp/rb/vt

( 209 Words)

2017-06-07-13:24:25 (IANS)
Lashing out at the Centre over the killing of farmers in Madhya Pradesh's Mandsaur yesterday, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM) claimed that the farmers were most affected by the Centre's demonetisation drive. "The small farmers are protesting in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. The farmers are affected most by the demonetisation drive. This is the reason day by day, the farmers are committing suicide or protesting in both the states," CPM leader Fuad Halim told ANI. Yesterday, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan ordered a judicial inquiry into the matter. Meanwhile, the death toll in the violent Mandsaur farmers protest has climbed to five. Appealing for peace to the agitating farmers in the state, Chief Minister Chouhan announced a compensation of Rs. 1 crore to the kin of those killed and Rs. 5 lakh for those injured in the Mandsaur violence. Several others were injured in the firing by security forces yesterday, as farmers intensified their agitation demanding fair price and loan waiver. Internet services in Mandsaur, Ratlam and Ujjain remain suspended following the farmers' protests, and a curfew has also reportedly been imposed. The farmers in the central state are demanding remunerative prices for their produce and a loan waiver. They are also demanding that they should be given Rs. 50 per litre of milk bought from them as they spend Rs. 37 per litre. The killing of the farmers came hours after Mandsaur collector Swatantra Kumar Singh claimed all was well in the district and that the situation was under control. (ANI)
After Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPIM) former general secretary Prakash Karat criticised Army chief General Bipin Rawat as "using force to suppress the people of Kashmir who are voicing their political protest", defence expert Praful Bakshi advised the former to kindly review his statement. "People in opposition are trying to create political advantage out of it and that is what Karat has done. He must understand and pay attention to this that what he says will adverse the effect of the morale of the forces and the youth. It's an advice to Karat to kindly review his statement and pay more attention to what he says," Bakshi told ANI. The CPM in its mouthpiece 'People Democracy' said General Rawat was reflecting the views of the Modi Government which seeks to suppress the people of Kashmir, who are voicing their political protest, through the sole reliance on the use of force. The mouthpiece said that the remarks made in an interview by the Army Chief of Staff General Bipin Rawat about dealing with civilian protestors in Kashmir exemplifies all that is wrong with the way the Modi Government is dealing with the situation there. Gen. Rawat stated in the interview that: "In fact, I wish these people instead of throwing stones at us, were firing weapons at us, then I would have been happy. Then I could do what I (want to do)," the article added. The party in its mouthpiece alleged that General Rawat also defended the wrongful action of Major Nitin Gogoi who had tied a civilian in front of a jeep to act as a human shield and drove his convoy through a number of villages. "The army chief had given a commendation to the officer even while an enquiry into the action was being held. Gen. Rawat justified the serious violation committed by Major Gogoi in the following words: "This is a proxy war ....It is played in a dirty way....That is where innovation comes. You fight a dirty war with innovation"," it added. The mouthpiece said the way Farooq Ahmad Dar, who had gone to vote in the Srinagar by-poll, was caught and tied to a jeep as a deterrent to stone pelters was a shocking incident. "The army chief of staff, by commending this act, has let down the high professional standards of the army. Some former serving generals of the army have decried the use of the civilian as a human shield. They have correctly pointed out that the army cannot treat its own people in such a manner," it further said. It alleged that General Rawat makes no distinction between young protestors throwing stones and armed militants. "He had, on an earlier occasion, warned that the army would treat all those who do not support army operations or obstruct them during encounters as "overground workers of terrorists". To taunt protestors to take up arms, so that the army could deal with them appropriately is a needless provocation and displays an attitude which is unbecoming of a senior army officer," the mouthpiece added. "Not only the people of Kashmir, but the army itself will suffer irreparable damage due to the government's blind adherence to the use of coercive force against the civilian population," it further said. (ANI)
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and Governor Ram Naik on Wednesday joined yoga guru Baba Ramdev in a yoga practice session for the upcoming 'Yoga Diwas' or International Yoga Day which is to be held on June 21. Naik, Adityanath and Baba Ramdev performed various yogic postures or asanas together. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Adityanath are expected to participate in the International Yoga Day event to be held in Lucknow on June 21 along with 50,000 other yoga practitioners. State Chief Secretary Rahul Bhatnagar, a joint secretary of Ministry of AYUSH and other officials recently took part in a preparatory meeting for the event that is to be held under the auspices of the Centre and the state government. Senior citizens, aanganwadi workers and around 500 divyangs are expected to participate in the International Day of Yoga celebrations. The participants will be given bottles of mineral water and monogramed T-shirts to highlight the event and its significance. Urging the nation to make Yoga an essential part of their lives to remain stress free, Prime Minister Modi in his radio address 'Mann ki Baat' had said last month that Yoga is the only thing that has the potential of uniting the world. "June 21 has become one of the known dates across the world. The entire world celebrates International Day of Yoga. In a very short span of time, the message of yoga has spread to every corner of the world. Yoga is integrating the world today. Through yoga, India as a whole has successfully started connecting the world," the Prime Minister said in his 32nd ' Mann Ki Baat' address on May 28. The world will celebrate the third International Day of Yoga on June 21. It has been celebrated annually since its inception in 2015. An International Day for Yoga was declared unanimously by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on December 11, 2014 (ANI)
One Territorial Army officer in the rank of Major was martyred and four United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) cadres were killed in a gun battle between the TA battalion and a joint militant group of ULFA and NSCN (Khaplang) outfits. According to Defence sources here said the personnel of 164 TA Battalion led by Major David Manlum and the combined group of militant came in confrontation at Lappa Lempong village on Tizit- Oting road near Tizit under Mon district of Nagaland at around 0030 hours today. After hearing the army command the militants started firing and the Army also retaliated. In the ensuing gun battle Major David, who was leading the operation in front and four ULFA militant were killed. But the other militants were fled away under the cover of darkness, however a search operation was still on if some other militant killed and the four bodies were recovered along with their weapons. UNI AS AKM -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0213-924782.Xml
Vivek Srivastava, hotel staffer and three other accused-- Aniruddha Singh, Omprakash and Maqsood got the bail on Rs. 50,000 personal bail bond each by the court.

The police had on December 26 last year arrested all the four persons in connection with the alleged gang rape of the woman in April last year.

The U.S. national arrived here in December last year to join the probe and recorded her statement before a judicial magistrate where she reiterated that she was gang raped by five persons in the five-star city hotel. (ANI)
Hizbul Mujahideen (HM) militant Danish Ahmad surrendered before the Jammu and Kashmir police today in the frontier district of Kupwara, a Police Spokesman said.He said few days back, video clips of an unidentified militant wearing battle pouch with a grenade were in circulation on the social media. The video clips were clicked at Tral, Awantipora in Pulwama district by the local mediapersons during the funeral of Sabzar Bhat, successor of Burhan Wani HM commander, who was killed last year. The Spokesman said during the investigation, the insurgent was identified as Danish Ahmed, resident of Kulangam, Handwara. It further surfaced that Danish was studying in B Sc (third year) at Doon P G College of Agriculture Science and Technology, Dehradun. He was found involved in stone-pelting incidents at Handwara in 2016 turmoil also. He was picked up by the police, but was let off after counselling, in view of his career.Once it was learnt that Danish has joined militancy, Handwara police and 21 Rashtriya Rifles (RR) got into touch with his parents and impressed upon them to counsel their son for surrender. He said his parents were convinced that if he surrenders, he would be dealt with fairly under law. Efforts made by security forces yielded results and Danish surrendered before at Handwara, the Spokesman added.On being questioned, he revealed that he was in touch with the militants of south Kashmir region on social media sites and it was on their instigation that he had decided to join militancy. He was tasked by HM commanders to 'activate' some local youth in North Kashmir and make the region as militancy infested as the southern part of Kashmir. However, after spending a few days with the militants in South Kashmir, he realised the futility of joining the militant ranks.The Spokesman said a case was registered under Section 7/25 Arms Act in Police Station Handwara. Investigation is on. Danish is being considered under the J&K Surrendered Militants Rehabilitation Policy.UNI BAS RJ 1325 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0098-924865.Xml
The MoS for Human Resource Development Dr Mahendra Nath Pandey, visited Tezpur University yesterday and interacted with faculty and students of the varsity. He also visited the major facilities of the University and took stock of academic and other activities carried out by the students, research scholars and faculty members of the University, a press statement from the University said here today. The Minister expressed satisfaction over the holistic approach of the University in the development of students, particularly in inculcating a sense of responsibility in them towards the society at large. He also appreciated the University's initiatives in keeping the campus green and clean. The Minister particularly mentioned the national and international recognitions such as the "Best University" Award 2016 of the Visitor (President of India) and the 34 th Rank in the Times Higher Education World Young University Ranking 2017. Expressing optimism that it would be one of the top universities of the world in the near future, he assured all support from the Ministry. "The outreach programmes of the University would go a long way as examples of meaningful contributions of educational institutions towards the development of the country," the Minister said. The Registrar of the University apprised the Minister of the shortage of fund received by the University and placed a request before him for an additional grant of at least Rs 55 crore for creating initially two hostels one each for boys and girls to which the Minister assured that he would direct the UGC for consideration. UNI SG AKM -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0213-924906.Xml
G. Deepak Reddy, a member of the Andhra Pradesh Legislative Council and one of the state's richest politicians, and two others were on Wednesday sent to jail by a court in a land scam in Hyderabad. Deepak Reddy, advocate Sailesh Saxena and realtor Srinivas were sent to Chanchalguda Jail after a city court remanded them to judicial custody for two weeks. Deepak Reddy, belonging to the ruling Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in Andhra Pradesh, was allegedly involved in grabbing prime government and private land in Hyderabad worth hundreds of crore. A Member of the Legislative Council (MLC) who had declared in his 2012 election affidavit that he owned assets worth Rs 6,781 crore claimed that he was innocent. He alleged that his signature was forged on some documents. According to police, Deepak Reddy and the others were taken into custody on Tuesday night on charges of cheating and forgery. They allegedly created fake documents to grab lands including eight acres in the posh Banjara Hills, which originally belonged to a family which had migrated to Pakistan. Officials said the MLC along with the advocate created forged documents to encroach 178 acres of government land in Hakimpet under Sheikhpet block which was assigned to poor families. The TDP leader, a close relative of party MP J.C. Diwakar Reddy, also grabbed 78 acres of land worth Rs 163 crore at Asif Nagar by creating fake documents in the name of Iqbal Islam Khan. Police investigations revealed it was a fictitious name. By creating the fake documents of these lands, the accused allegedly entered into litigation against the government or private owners of the lands. It was in November last year that a case was booked with respect to Asifnagar land, on a complaint by Mustafa Society. Subsequently, several other societies lodged complaints against the MLC and others. A police officer said details of the scam would emerge after they investigate all the complaints against the accused. The MLC's arrest came close on the heels of an illegal land scam coming to light in Cyberabad, the IT district. Last month, police arrested three men including a government employee for illegal transfer of 607 acres of government land to private individuals. The government reportedly lost Rs 686 crore in these illegal transactions. --IANS ms/mr ( 392 Words) 2017-06-07-15:10:15 (IANS)
Union Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, today gave its ex-post facto approval to the agreement between India and Cyprus on merchant shipping, which was signed in April 2017. The agreement in merchant shipping will pave the way for cooperation in eliminating any hindrances which may hamper the development of sea trade between the two nations, an official release said here. The MoU will encourage participation in the transport of goods between the countries, and also from third countries. The MoU further seeks to enhance cooperation for employment, improvement of conditions of work and for the welfare of seafarers employed on each other's vessels.UNI NY SHK 1515 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0099-924911.Xml
Union Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, today gave its ex-post facto approval to the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), India and Direction Nationale De Industries (MLINDI), Republic of Mali on Standardisation and Conformity Assessment. The MoU aims to facilitate closer cooperation and provide a mechanism by which India and Mali can work together towards the common aim of strengthening standardisation and conformity assessment activities in order to facilitate sharing of expertise and mutual trade, an official release said here. UNI NY SHK 1520 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0099-924955.Xml
Terming Mehbooba Mufti as inexperienced and having no expertise in politics, Jammu and Kashmir Pradesh Congress Committee president G A Mir today said that the state has so many chief ministers ruling and dictating terms. "Ms Mufti is 'immature' in politics and she cannot handle state the state affairs," Mr Mir told reporters here this afternoon. AICC Coordinator Pawan Khera was also present on the occasion. "Ms Mufti is not the only chief minister in Jammu and Kashmir but there are so others ruling too," said the former minister. He, however, alleged that supreme bosses from Nagpur, MoS PMO, Dr Jitendra Singh, BJP national secretary general Ram Madhav, BJP national president Amit Shah, J&K DyCM Nirmal Singh and close relatives of Ms Mufti, all are acting as Chief Ministers of Jammu and Kashmir. "There is total mess in the state because too many cooks spoil the broth and Kashmir situation is outcome of this," said Mr Mir. He further said that there is total failure of PDP-BJP government in the state, adding, "The coalition partners have failed to meet the aspirations of the people because they have deviated from their agenda of alliance." Mr Mir said why do not they work as per Vajpayee's doctrine of which they used to beat the drums. The Congress president also lashed out at the government for not obeying the protocol and maintaining the sanctity of the Cabinet. "Major decisions like appointment of top posts in police and administrative levels are done without holding cabinet meetings, which is unfortunate," he added. Mr Mir also said that former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh led committee comprising national and state level leadership is also reviewing situation on Kashmir. JKPCC Senior vice president and former minister Sham Lal Sharma criticised the government for failing in providing basic amenities like power, water to a common man. AICC Coordinator Pawan Khare presented a report card of Prime Minister Narendra Modi led government in the Centre and termed it a failure.UNI VBH AD ADG 1533 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0108-924982.Xml
Police seized huge consignments of liquor in Bihar`s Supaul and West Champaran districts during the last 12 hours. While 600 bottles of foreign liquor were seized in Supaul district, police seized 290 bottles of Nepalese liquor in West Champaran district. A Supual reports said that police seized 600 bottles of foreign liquor from an auto rickshaw near Manjhari roundabout under Nirmali police station area in the district last night. Two peddlers were nabbed from the spot, police added. The peddlers identified as Bechan Yadav and Sonu Yadav, who worked as liners, were following the auto rickshaw on a motorcycle. According to a report from Bettiah, police arrested eight peddlers including two from Nepal and seized 290 bottles of Nepalese liquor from the dikkie of a motorcycle near Bheriharwa village under Mainatarh police station area in West Champaran district. The nabbed peddlers from Nepal have been identified as Manilal Yadav and Hiralal Yadav. The rest four are natives of West Champaran district, police added. UNI DH AKM -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0213-924947.Xml
Hearing a petition filed by 18 students, the high court asked them to apply for re-evaluation at the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) regional centre here on Thursday by 2 p.m.

It also directed CBSE to conduct the re-evaluation and publish results by June 10, said Asim Amitabh Das, petitioners' counsel.

Notably, results of many students in Bhubaneswar zone of the board were withheld. Similarly, many students have complained of "faulty evaluation" leading to their poor showing.

Meanwhile, agitation over discrepancies in the CBSE Class 12 results intensified with a number of parents and students resorting to hunger strike in front of the board's regional office here on Wednesday.

A girl student fell unconscious during the hunger strike and had to be hospitalised, said the police.

A delegation of National Students Union of India (NSUI) met Odisha Governor S.C. Jamir on Wednesday and sought his intervention in resolving the results fiasco.

"The Governor expressed his concern over the incident. He has assured us that he would take up the matter with the Chief Minister (Naveen Patnaik)and Union HRD Minister (Prakash Javadekar)," said Itish Pradhan, state NSUI president.

Earlier, Patnaik had sought Javadekar's intervention to resolve the matter as it involves the future of the students.

--IANS cd/in/dg

( 247 Words)

2017-06-07-17:18:17 (IANS)
"We have the initial reports which have come in from Iran," External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay told a media briefing here.

"It's obviously an unfortunate situation... We are awaiting a full report and full details from our embassy as to what exactly happened," he said.

At least eight people were killed on Wednesday in the first terror attack claimed by the Islamic State in Iran, with the assailants acting in coordination targeting the Parliament House and Ayatollah Khomeini's mausoleum in the heart of Tehran.

Details of the twin attacks remained sketchy even several hours later. Lawmaker Tayebeh Siavoshi told Efe news that the situation was "very confusing and sensitive".

The Islamic State, a Sunni jihadi group, claimed responsibility for both attacks in the Shia majority nation.

"There has obviously been an attack on parliament and another monument in Tehran," Baglay said.

"India, as you know, condemns all forms of terrorism," he said.

--IANS ab/dg

( 194 Words)

2017-06-07-18:12:19 (IANS)
Delhi Lt Governor Anil Baijal today held a review meeting to discuss the preparedness for dengue and chikungunya cases in Delhi here at Raj Niwas. The meeting was attended by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, Health Minister Satyendar Jain, State Chief Secretary, Health Secretary, Chairman of NDMC, Commissioners of North and South MCD and other officials. In the meeting, Health Secretary apprised the LG about the various actions taken by the Health department as well as the municipal bodies on the preparedness measures as outlined in the previous meetings. At the outset, Mr Baijal directed that a massive Information, Education and Communication (IEC) campaign be launched through handbills (english, hindi, vernacular languages) in newspapers, hoardings, billboards, streetplays. He further stressed that IEC material should be developed for school children and RWAs, and they must be actively involved in spreading awareness about preventive mechanisms. Mr Baijal also emphasised on developing an effective mechanism by the Health Department for monitoring of work of all concerned agencies in this regard. The LG further instructed that local bodies should assign area wise duty to field workers and fix their accountability for their respective areas. He instructed that community should be made aware about all the possible breeding sites around their premises. The LG also desired that weekly action taken report with statistics related to IEC material, number ofhouses visited, number of anti-mosquito breeding activities undertaken, number of punitive actions taken to be submitted to him, Chief Minister and the Chief Secretary. Mr Baijal emphasised on the need for an intensive awareness campaign so that there can be maximum sensitisation of the people about the preventive measures and the preparedness required. He also exhorted all the agencies to ramp up their activities and maintain 24x7 readiness, withtheir success indicator being the minimisation of incidence of these vector-borne diseases in Delhi. Speaking in the meeting, Mr Kejriwal stated that in view of upcoming rainy season with possibility ofwater logging, all the concerned agencies must ensure necessary corrective action. UNI DS SHK 1959 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0177-925501.Xml
The six-member delegation, which lefty for the island nation on Tuesday, will meet several dignitaries including President Ameenah Gurib-Fakim and Prime Minister Pravind Kumar Jugnauth, who had visited India late last month.

The delegation, which will be in Mauritious till June 10, is also slated to meet the Speaker of the National Assembly, and others.

--IANS vn/vd

( 89 Words)

2017-06-07-20:14:26 (IANS)
The attack took place around 9.15 p.m. today.

According to reports, a few chairs that were laid on the portico of the office were damaged.

However, no casualty or injury has been reported so far.

Meanwhile, the police have launched a probe into the matter.

The BJP has called for a strike tomorrow in Trivandrum district in view of the incident.

Launching a scathing attack on theCommunist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)) for the alleged attacks on the BJP workers in Kerala, party president Amit Shah had said that the more leftist violence is unleashed upon the saffron party workers in the state, the more the Lotus will blossom here.

Shah said it had been noticed that violence against BJP and Sangh Parivar members goes up whenever the Left parties comt to power. After the Left government came to power in Kerala, 13 BJP, RSS workers have been killed. (ANI)
The attack occurred in the evening when a suicide bomber detonated his explosive vest at a popular market in the central town of Heet, some 160 km west of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, the source said on condition of anonymity.

The death toll could rise as ambulances, police and civilian vehicles evacuated the victims to the town's main hospital and medical centres, the source said.

No group has so far claimed responsibility for the attacks, but the Islamic State militant group, in most cases, is responsible for such suicide attacks targeting crowded areas, including markets, cafes and mosques across Iraq.

Terrorist acts, violence and armed conflicts killed 345 Iraqis and wounded 446 others in May across Iraq, the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq said.

The attack came as Iraqi security forces, backed by the anti-IS international coalition, were simultaneously conducting a major offensive to dislodge IS militants from their remaining redoubt in the western side of Mosul.

--IANS ahm/

( 204 Words)

2017-06-07-03:10:10 (IANS)
In a statement released late on Tuesday, the Syrian army said the warplanes of the US-led anti-terror coalition struck a Syrian military position near Tanf border crossing with Iraq, leaving a number of "martyrs" and other losses, Xinhua reported.

The airstrike struck the military position in the Shaimeh area near Tanf in the eastern countryside of Homs province in central Syria.

"This aggression comes once again to stress the supportive role of terrorism by the forces which claim otherwise, and at the time when the Syrian army is making progress against the terrorist group of the Islamic State organisation," the military statement said.

The statement warned of the risks of such escalation and its reverberations, urging the US-led coalition to curb such acts.

It stressed the Syrian army's resolve and determination to carry on with fighting the terrorist groups on all Syrian territory.

The strike is the second to hit a Syrian military unit near Tanf, where the US and Britain have military bases.

On May 18, the US air force struck a convoy of pro-government fighters advancing in the desert near the Tanf border crossing with Iraq.

At the time, US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis said America's role in Syria's conflict was unchanged, after the strikes.

"No. We are not increasing our role in the Syrian civil war. But we will defend our troops," Mattis said, when asked about the first strikes.

This comes as the Syrian army unleashed a wide-scale offensive in the Syrian desert dubbed the Great Dawn to secure a triangle of border areas between Iraq, Syria and Jordan.

In the process, the army must advance to Tanf, where the Western allies have bases and local rebels they are backing.

--IANS ahm/

( 314 Words)

2017-06-07-06:22:10 (IANS)
Attorney-General George Brandis said Australia would list the issue as a top agenda item at a meeting of the "Five Eyes" alliance which comprises Australia, the US, the UK, Canada and New Zealand, reports Xinhua news agency.

The meeting is due in Canada at the end of June.

Speaking to the Australian media on Tuesday night, Brandis said encrypted internet communication was the biggest challenge facing law enforcement and security agencies around the world.

He called upon telecommunications companies, social media outlets and internet giants to cooperate with authorities on terrorism investigations, saying they had a "corporate social responsibility" to help combat terrorist activity.

"If those encrypted communications contain information which is necessary to a prosecution, an intelligence task like keeping a terrorism suspect under appropriate surveillance, then there does need to be a level of co-operation from the carriage services providers," Brandis said.

Earlier, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said there was too much tolerance of extremist material online.

--IANS mr/

( 193 Words)

2017-06-07-11:06:09 (IANS)
Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly has said that the current blocking of President Donald Trump's "travel ban" has been limiting the US' ability to keep "potential wrong-doers" out of the country. In a testimony before the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Kelly on Tuesday insisted that he was "not fully confident" that the government was doing everything possible to keep "dangerous" people out of the country, Efe news reported. Trump had signed an executive order earlier in 2017 banning citizens from six Muslim-majority nations -- Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Yemen and Libya -- from entering the US. However, a Federal court had stopped the ban from being implemented. "Bottom line, I've been enjoined from doing these things that I know would make Americans safe, and I anxiously await the court to complete its action one way or the other so I can get to work," Kelly told lawmakers. Kelly said that the court injunction on the executive order has prevented his department from temporarily forbidding US entry to citizens of these nations that were either involved in civil war or were state sponsors of terrorism. He also noted that these countries were the same ones that the Congress had singled out in 2015 as nations of concern. "It has nothing to do with religion, or skin colour or the way they live their lives, but all about security for the US, nothing else," Kelly said. "These are countries that (are) either unable or unwilling to help us validate the identities or backgrounds of persons within their borders." In Syria and Iraq, he warned, there were thousands of jihadists who have come from more than 120 countries, and -- as the US-led coalition advanced in battle against them -- many of them were returning to Europe, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia and the Western Hemisphere. The US authorities felt that some were trying to enter the US to carry out terrorist attacks and Trump had this in mind when he issued the executive order banning their citizens, Kelly said. After the London terror attack on Saturday, Trump once more insisted that his travel ban must be implemented. The first version of the ban was blocked by the courts, whereupon the administration issued a revised version of it on March 6 that is now under review by the Supreme Court. The Department of Justice has argued that Trump, as President, has full authority to decide how to protect US national security and to prohibit -- as the second version of the ban sets forth -- US entry to refugees for 120 days and to citizens of the six nations for 90 days. The second version of the ban, in contrast to the first one, did not include citizens of Iraq and modified the provision on Syrian refugees. --IANS in/vt ( 472 Words) 2017-06-07-14:10:11 (IANS)
Seven people have reportedly been killed in attack on the Iranian parliament, the Tasnim news agency has reported, quoting sources on the ground.

As per initial local media reports, the gunmen opened their way into the parliament building by shooting at the guards.

According to Tasnim, the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) hostage rescue teams have killed one of the four attackers inside the parliament.

IRNA news agency quoted the Head of Imam Khomeini Mausoleum Public Relations Office Ali Khalili, as saying that one of the armed men detonated himself in front of a bank outside the mausoleum.

An official said the meeting is being held to examine both incidents. (ANI)
Staff members of the Noah Webster Library in West Hartford told The Associated Press that they did not know who returned the copy of W.O. Mitchell's "Who Has Seen The Wind".

The book was returned on Monday with a yellow sticky note reading, "Sorry it has taken so long."

It originally was due back on September 29, 1965. Library director Martha Church said she doesn't know how much the fine would be for keeping the book so long.

Currently, library fines 15 cents each day a book is delayed. The library, however, doesn't plan to fine the person who returned this book.

The plot of W.O. Mitchell's "Who Has Seen The Wind" centres on a coming-of-age tale of a young man in Saskatchewan, Canada.

--IANS ss/mr

( 166 Words)

2017-06-07-17:22:10 (IANS)
The only way to resolve the ongoing dispute between the Persian Gulf's southern littoral states is to admit that the era of hegemonic aspirations is over and that dialogue is the only way to resolve exisitng problems and differences, a Iranian Middle East and nuclear policy specialist has said. Former member of Iran's nuclear negotiating team and current researcher at Princeton University Seyed Hossein Mousavian has been quoted by Iran's official news agency IRNA, as saying in a recent article titled "Hate Industry Inflaming Middle East Insecurity", that all states in the Persian Gulf region need to accept that there exists an alternative path to current security-related dilemmas. In the article written jointly with an Egyptian scholar Yassin El-Ayouty, Mousavian is quoted by IRNA, as saying, "An alternative path exists for the region, for all states to acknowledge that the era of hegemonic aspirations is over and work towards resolving their security dilemmas through the formation of regional dialogue and cooperation forums." "To achieve this, the zero-sum mentalities exemplified by Trump's visit to Saudi Arabia and Riyadh's subsequent actions, must be abandoned," Mousavian adds. Mousavian said,"Of the six PGCC states, only the UAE and Bahrain joined Saudi Arabia in severing relations with Qatar. All three have for years denounced Qatar's relatively more tolerant attitudes towards Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran. Notably, Oman and Kuwait, which share Qatar's more balanced approach towards Iran, have not joined the Saudi effort to isolate Qatar. Egypt and Israel, however, have enthusiastically supported the action, with the Israeli Defense Minister stating that it creates an opening for a "unified" effort between Israel and Arab nations against "Qatar-financed terror." Egyptian media have been raging against Qatar as "a financial feeder of terrorism in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Syria, and Yemen. An indication of the collapse of Trump's fancied edifice of an Arab grand alliance." He also describes U.S.President Donald Trump's recent address in Riyadh as destalising, and warned nations in the Persion Gulf region that he has given license to Saudi leaders to carry out their most aggressive ambitions. He says Riyadh's claim that Iran has expansionist plans in the Persian Gulf region are also imagined at best, and that attention needs to be paid to demographic facts with regard to Iraq and Lebanon, and governance facts in Syria, to come to the right conclusion. Mousavian blames Saudi Arabia for taking two steps that will increase hatred and instability in the region -- its anti-Iran sword dance with Trump and now its seeming attempt to overthrow a neighboring Arab government. "For Saudi Arabia to be at the center of American hopes for peace in the region, through an attempted isolation of Iran, Qatar, Iraq and Syria is akin to the US anchoring Middle East security on a doomed-to-failure hate industry," he adds. (ANI)
No country on earth would survive should the world's most powerful nuclear states, Russia and the United States, unleash their atomic weapons, Russian President Vladimir Putin has told the American film director Oliver Stone in a series of interviews.Stone's film is scheduled to be aired on the Showtime cable channel on June 12-15. "In a hot war is the US dominant?" Stone asked the Russian President to which Putin replied, "I don't think anyone would survive such a conflict," Putin replied.Putin then proves he has the pulse on Russia's military strategy and tactics. As part of the preview, the clip shows Stone and Putin in the situation room where the Russian leader demonstrated that he is on top of developments playing out in the Syrian military theater."Pilot says he is going to make another attempt," Putin tells Stone while showing him a live feed from a military jet on a smart phone.Stone then asks if there's "any hope of change" in US-Russian relations, which both countries have acknowledged are at the lowest point since the Cold War."There is always hope. Until they are ready to bring us to the cemetery and bury us," Putin replied.UNI XC AD ADG 1726 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0108-925245.Xml
At least 12 persons were killed on Wednesday in the first terror attack claimed by the Islamic State in Iran, with two bands of killers targeting the Parliament House and Ayatollah Khomeini's mausoleum in the heart of Tehran. The Islamic State, a Sunni jihadist group, claimed responsibility for both the attacks in the Shia majority nation, media reports said. The IS posted a video showing what it claimed was footage from inside the high-rise Parliament building. Iranian officials said they foiled a third attack. It was not clear whether the death toll of 12 included the attackers or whether the victims were killed in both incidents or only at the Parliament, BBC reported. At least 40 people were injured, according to Emergency Services chief Pir Hossein Kolivand. In the first incident, four gunmen armed with assault rifles forced their way into Parliament when it was in session and opened fire at security guards and visitors. Some reports said the terrorists entered through a public entrance, apparently dressed as women. Iranian media reported that all four attackers were killed by the security forces. But by then damage had been done. Iranian authorities denied there had been a hostage situation inside Parliament even as hundreds of security personnel, some in civilian clothes and armed with revolvers, ringed the building. Speaker Ali Larijani downplayed the events, describing them as a "minor issue". But a lawmaker admitted that it was a major attack. Minutes after the Parliament attack began, terrorists opened fire at the mausoleum of Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic state. The Governor of Tehran said one attacker detonated a suicide vest and another had been killed by security forces, state broadcaster IRIB reported. Images from the scene showed grenades and magazines for automatic weapons, recovered from the body of an attacker. The suicide attacker was a woman. Several visitors at the mausoleum were injured. This was the most serious terrorist incident in Tehran since the early years of the Islamic revolution of 1979 led by Khomeini, the BBC reported. The Islamic State has no following in Iran but has stepped up its Farsi language propaganda in a bid to woo the country's Sunni minority. --IANS soni/mr/vd ( 379 Words) 2017-06-07-19:24:16 (IANS)
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Wednesday threatened to jail up to 15 years and also fine people who express sympathy towards Qatar. UAE Attorney General Hamad Saif al-Shamsi said sympathising with Qatar was a cybercrime punishable by law, Gulf News reported. "Strict and firm action would be taken against anyone who shows sympathy or any form of bias towards Qatar or against anyone who objects to the position of the UAE whether it be through social media or any type of written, visual or verbal form," Al-Shamsi said. Anyone who threatens the interests, national unity and stability of the UAE will face a jail term from three to 15 years and a fine not less than $136,000. Al-Shamsi said these new measures were in response to Qatar's "hostile and irresponsible" policies against the UAE and against the "other Gulf and Arab brotherly states". According to the UAE, the aim was to "preserve the country's national security, its national priorities and those of its people". Saudi Arabia is also contemplating applying its own cybercrime legislation against anyone questioning its government or supporting Qatar, according to a statement by lawyer Mushrif al-Khashrami published by Saudi daily Okaz. In Saudi Arabia, the crime will lead to a five-year sentence and may include a fine of three million riyals ($800,000), Efe news reported. On Monday, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain announced they were severing diplomatic relations with Qatar and ordered the closure of their land, sea and air borders to all Qatari transport systems. This was followed by the withdrawal of ambassadors from the Maldives, Mauritania and Saudi-supported factions in the ongoing civil conflicts in Yemen and Libya. Jordan downgraded its diplomatic mission in Doha. --IANS soni/mr ( 295 Words) 2017-06-07-19:52:11 (IANS)
Iranian official media reported that two attacks, claimed by the Islamic State, took place at the Parliament House and Imam Khomeini's mausoleum in Tehran.

"The government of Pakistan has strongly condemned today's terrorist attacks on Iranian Parliament and mausoleum of Imam Khomeini in which, reportedly, precious lives of innocent people were lost," Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

"We stand in solidarity with the people of Iran in their hour of grief," the statement, cited by Xinhua, said.

--IANS soni/dg

( 105 Words)

2017-06-07-19:58:10 (IANS)
Russian President Vladimir Putin today conveyed his condolences to the families of the victims after twin attacks on Iran's parliament and a shrine to its revolutionary leader and Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani, vowing Russia's readiness in the fight against international terrorism.In a message released by the Kremlin after Wednesday's attacks, Putin said Russia "strongly condemns" the terrorist attacks."The Russian leader strongly condemned this attack which once again emphasized the need to boost international cooperation in the fight against terrorism," the message said. Putin also "confirmed Russia's readiness for further joint efforts with Iran in this field."He conveyed sympathy and support to the families of the victims, and wished a speedy recovery to the wounded.Putin said the attacks underscore the need for deeper international cooperation to fight terrorism and confirmed Moscow's willingness to aid Iran.The Islamic State (IS) group claimed the attacks, marking the first time it has taken responsibility for an assault in Iran. The Sunni extremists are battling Iranian and Russian-backed forces in Syria and Iraq.UNI XC AD ADG 1835 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0108-925451.Xml
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-06 18:56:03|Editor: xuxin

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PYONGYANG, June 6 (Xinhua) -- The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) said Tuesday the United States is using talk of diplomatic settlement of Pyongyang's nuclear issue as smoke-screen tactics to disguise its plan for military attack.

"Now the United States is additionally dispatching the Nimitz nuclear carrier taskforce together with Carl Vinson and Ronald Reagan to the waters off the Korean peninsula and thus seeking to deploy three nuclear carrier taskforces in the waters (off the Korean peninsula)," said the official daily newspaper Minju Joson (Democratic Korea).

The paper quoted unnamed "military experts" as saying that "all signs show the U.S. military attack on the DPRK is at hand."

"And they (the experts) analyzed that the U.S. talk about the diplomatic settlement of the Korean issue is little short of the smoke-screen tactics for launching military strike at the DPRK," it said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-06 23:08:55|Editor: yan

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BEIJING, June 6 (Xinhua) -- China's Ministry of Finance on Tuesday released a guideline on public-private partnerships (PPP) in agriculture to diversify funding for the industry.

Private capital will be asked to participate in areas including green agriculture, high-standard farmland development, modern industrial parks and logistics and trading platforms for farm produce, according to the guideline.

PPPs are collaborative projects between governments and private companies that are mainly funded and operated by the latter.

China has explored funding infrastructure and public works through the PPP model since 2013 as concerns grow over local government debt.

The ministry asked local authorities to cautiously select projects, ensure fair competition and transparent information disclosure and to strengthen regulation in PPP projects.

While local governments may hold shares in project companies, they should not interfere in operations and are forbidden from undertaking all the risk in any project, according to the guideline.

The ministry also called for policy support such as expanding financing channels and ensuring land supply for PPPs.

Data from last year showed the number of signed PPP projects and total investment more than quadrupling from 2015, with private enterprises participating in more regions and sectors than ever before.

The strong momentum continued into the first quarter of 2017, which saw 28 percent more PPP projects inked year on year.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 00:44:57|Editor: Hou Qiang

Police block off the streets near Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, France, June 6, 2017. A man armed with a hammer attacked a policeman on Tuesday outside Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris before being shot and wounded, local news channel BFMTV reported. (Xinhua/Li Genxing)

PARIS, June 6 (Xinhua) -- A policeman was wounded in an attack by a man with a hammer outside Notre-Dame Cathedral here on Tuesday afternoon, Paris police said Tuesday.

"Situation controlled, a policeman wounded, the author of the attack has been neutralized and referred to a hospital," Paris police said on Twitter.

The aggressor was an Algerian student of about forty years and lived in the French department of Val d'Oise, according to French television channel BFMTV.

French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb told reporters that the aggressor had a hammer and a kitchen knife, and he cried "for Syria" in the attack.

Christophe Girard, mayor of the 4th arrondissement of Paris, where Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral is located, said that "the police reacted with great rapidity" in an interview by the channel.

"Between Operation Sentinel and the reinforced Vigipirate plan, Notre-Dame is under constant surveillance," he added.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 01:00:06|Editor: Hou Qiang

Soldiers stand guard in front of Notre Dame in Paris, France, Dec. 30, 2015, as France tightened the security ahead of the New Year celebrations. (Xinhua/Li Genxing)

PARIS, June 6 (Xinhua) -- The suspect who attacked a police officer outside Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris on Tuesday was identified as an Algerian student who was believed to commit his act to revenge the war in Syria, French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said.

"What we know at this stage that he is an Algerian student," Collomb told reporters, adding that authentication of an identity card found with the suspect was underway.

"A person armed with a hammer began to hit a policeman. His colleague opened fired, allowing the attacked policeman not to be the victim of serious violence than that he has undergone," he said.

The suspect who was also armed with knives, shouted "This is for Syria" when he attacked the policeman and slightly injured him, according to the minister.

The man, wounded in the attack, was believed to act alone. His motives remain unknown, according to the minister.

Paris prosecutor's anti-terrorism unit launched an investigation into the incident.

"In the coming days, Paris prosecutor will give precise circumstances of this aggression," he said.

"We have gone from a sophisticated terrorism to terrorism where any tool can be used for aggressions," he added.

France remains in a state of emergency and on high alert over possible terrorist attacks due to its military intervention in Syria, Iraq and the Sahel region.

France imposed emergency security rules in the wake of the 2015 attacks which killed 130 people. It also deployed 10,000 of gendarmes and police units to protect public places and sensitive sites.

However, several more attacks have occurred since, with the bloodiest on Bastille Day last year in Nice where a man drove his truck into a crowd, killing 86 people.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and Chief of Staff General Hulusi Akar attend the funeral of Major General Aydogan Aydin who was killed in a helicopter crash in Sirnak, on Wednesday, at Ahmet Hamdi Akseki Mosque in Ankara, Turkey, June 1, 2017. (Xinhua/Reuters Photo)

ANKARA, June 6 (Xinhua) -- Turkey will "respond adequately" against any threats to its security springing from the operation to recapture Raqqa, said Prime Minister Binali Yildirim on Tuesday.

"We will never allow any situation to threaten Turkey. If we face any threat to our security from Raqqa or any other place in the region, we will respond immediately and adequately," Yildirim said when addressing the ruling Justice and Development Party deputies at the party's parliamentary group meeting, reported local private channel NTV.

"Turkey's awareness and red lines are clear and they will never change," Yildirim stressed.

The prime minister stated that Turkey will be closely monitoring any situation which could develop from the operation as well as take all necessary precautions.

The operation to recapture Raqqa, the Islamic State's de-facto capital in Syria, began on June 2 with an assault by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the U.S., the EU and the Syrian affiliate of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey.

The U.S. provided the People's Protection Units (YPG) with weapons following a presidential order signed by President Donald Trump mid-May, ignoring the warning from its Turkish NATO ally.

The U.S. has allayed Turkey's concerns however, stating that the weapons will not be used against Turkey by terrorist groups operating within the country.

The majority of SDF forces are comprised of the YPG, the armed wing of the PKK's Syrian offshoot.

"Supporting terrorist groups is incompatible with being an ally to Turkey," Yildirim said, adding "we must work on a common understanding when combating regional terrorist groups, without exception."
The file photo taken on Dec. 29, 2016 shows that vehicles wait for security check when entering the Russian Embassy to the United States in Washington D.C., the United States. The White House on Thursday announced sanctions against Russian entities and individuals over alleged hacking during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. (Xinhua/Yin Bogu)

WASHINGTON, June 5 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. Department of Justice on monday brought a charge against a National Security Agency (NSA) contractor for allegedly leaking a top secret document to the media.

The contractor, 25-year-old Reality Winner, was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Saturday for allegedly printing out and mailing the document, which contained findings regarding Russian involvement in last year's election, to the press.

The classified document was published by media on Monday afternoon, one hour before the Department of Justice announced the single charge against Winner for "gathering, transmitting or losing defense information."

If convicted, Winner may be imprisoned for up to 10 years.

The document, dated May 5, 2017, showed that intelligence collected by the NSA suggested a months-long Russian intelligence cyber effort against the U.S. election and voting infrastructure.

"The report indicates that Russian hacking may have penetrated further into U.S. voting systems than was previously understood," according to The Intercept, the news outlet that published the story.

According to the classified report, Russian government hackers posed as e-voting vendors and tricked government employees into opening Microsoft Word documents invisibly tainted with potent malware that could give hackers full control over the infected computers.

The report stopped short of specifying the amount of damage Russia inflicted on the U.S. voting system, only demonstrating that it obtained and maintained access to elements of multiple U.S. state or local electoral boards.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 05:07:17|Editor: yan

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HAVANA, June 6 (Xinhua) -- A roadmap to implement an ambitious set of economic, social and political reforms has been drawn in Cuba, after the National Assembly recently approved three documents that chart the course towards Cuba's future development.

The Cuban parliament analyzed last week in two extraordinary sessions the progress of reforms started in 2010 by President Raul Castro in a document called "Guidelines of the Economic and Social policies of the Revolution," which is the platform to implement changes in the island.

The parliament also approved the nation's development plan until 2030 as well as the "conceptualization" of the model, a document which establishes the theoretical base for the country in the coming years.

One of the topics approved by the parliament is the legal framework of the first official recognition of private enterprises and small- and medium-sized businesses.

Although it could take months or years before any actual changes are felt on the ground, it's the first time since 1959 the private sector will be treated in the same way as state-owned companies.

"We're not rushing towards a free market economy, nor is our government taking us there. This is a gradual process of transformations, economic diversification and development of a nationalist private sector," Rafael Hernandez, a Cuban political analyst told Xinhua.

According to Hernandez, the approval of these documents by the National Assembly is a sign that deep economic and social reforms are coming to this nation.

"Updating our political, social and economic model is among the hardest tasks the country has faced in the last 20 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. These documents represent the guide, the roadmap to follow," he added.

The Cuban parliament reaffirmed the one-party political system and state prominence of the socialist economy and important sectors despite opening up to small private businesses and foreign investment.

Among the most discussed topics in the parliament were the concentration of private property and wealth, issues that sparked a deep debate within lawmakers.

Also approved in the economic and social guidelines are issues related to the role of direct foreign investment, the introduction of advanced technology and know-how and the improvement of local government bodies.

Hernandez said the nation's leadership is aware of the importance of implementing key reforms such as putting an end to the country's double currency system, increasing productivity, efficiency and salaries in the state sector.

"The Cuban people have very high expectations after the approval of the documents last week and there's already an experience with the reforms underway," he stated.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 05:37:33|Editor: yan

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CHICAGO, June 6 (Xinhua) -- At least 60 adults and children were sickened after attending a disabled children's event in the U.S. state of Wisconsin, local media reported on Tuesday.

"Laboratory testing identified Norovirus as the cause of the infection," the Leader-Telegram quoted Wisconsin public health official Jennifer Miller as saying.

However, the source of the outbreak remained under investigation, she added.

Nine local health departments were working now to determine the specific source which led to the outbreak of gastroenteritis following the two-day event.

According to the organizers of Special Kids Day, 738 disabled students were among the 1,000 people attending the annual festival at the Northern Wisconsin State Fairgrounds in Chippewa Falls.

Norovirus can cause viral gastroenteritis in humans. It is transmitted by contaminated food or water, by person-to-person contact. People infected by Norovirus usually suffer nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea.
The file photo shows that U.S. President Donald Trump applauds after delivering a speech at the White House in Washington D.C., capital of the United States, on June 1, 2017. (Xinhua/Mike Theiler)

by Matthew Rusling

WASHINGTON, June 6 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump is ramping up calls for a controversial travel ban from a handful of countries where terrorism runs rampant after the terrorist attack in London, but he faces a tough legal battle in U.S. courts.

Over the weekend, Islamist terrorists carried out an attack on a crowded shopping area in London, by using a van to plow through throngs of tourists and locals on London Bridge. Several men then jumped out of the van and went on a rampage, stabbing people with knives.

The incident, which left seven dead and four dozen injured, came just two weeks after a terrorist bomb killed nearly two dozen people at a concert in Manchester.

The attacks come at a time when radical Islam is spreading through the West, Southeast Asia and elsewhere.

In a series of posts on social media on Monday, which went on into the evening hours, Trump said "I am calling it what we need and what it is, a TRAVEL BAN."

The ban would slap a temporary ban on travel to the United States on citizens from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. In a barrage of social media posts, Trump called for a much tougher version of the proposed law.

But Trump's travel ban is controversial, and the courts are trying to block it on grounds, they say, that it is unconstitutional.

A battle between the White House and the courts has ensued, and remains unclear who will win. The case is likely to end up in the Supreme Court, although it remains unclear when that will be.

The file photo shows that three Muslim girls hold placards to demonstrate against U.S. President Donald Trump at downtown in Chicago, the United States, on Feb. 19, 2017. Hundreds of protesters rallied at downtown Chicago on Sunday to express their displeasure with the Trump administration's court-paused travel ban. (Xinhua/Wang Ping)

LEGAL EXPERTS AND PUBLIC OPINION

Many Americans do not favor the ban, despite the support from Trump's base.

"Most Americans are not keen on the travel ban, so Trump's push on this front helps him with his base, but almost no one else," Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Darrell West told Xinhua.

"Legal experts think his executive order is unconstitutional," West said.

Indeed, some experts said there is a disconnect between Trump's anti-terrorism policies and the actual threat.

"Trump will use every terrorist attack to argue the United States needs to get tougher on border enforcement. But many of these attacks were not by foreign, but domestic terrorists. So stronger border enforcement will not help with residents who have become radicalized," West said.

Critics of the courts' decision to block the law on legal grounds contend that U.S. national security is not meant to be decided by courts, but rather is the jurisdiction of Congress and the White House.

Many critics of the courts in the last couple of decades have accused judges of using their powerful positions for social and political activism, instead of carrying out their sacred duty to uphold the law.

Some supporters of the travel ban noted that the terrorists who carried out the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in the U.S. were carried out by radicals from countries not on Trump's ban list.

That includes Saudi Arabia, a U.S. regional ally and the home country of now deceased terror mastermind Osama bin Laden, as well as most of the 9/11 hijackers.

"Virtually all U.S. Muslim allies in the Mideast are exempt from Trump's travel ban, and have their own problems with Islamic extremists," Wayne White, former deputy director of the State Department's Middle East Intelligence Office, told Xinhua.

"The lavish Saudi welcome for Trump showed their keen desire to preserve solid U.S. ties," White said of Trump's recent trip to visit its ally.

RADICAL IDEOLOGY

Critics also note that Trump did not address, during his visit to Saudi Arabia, what they say is the Saudis spreading radical Islamist ideology worldwide.

But others note that the Saudis are a major source of intelligence for the United States, and as such are an important ally.

"Regardless of the dim view many Americans have of the Saudis, the kingdom's security forces crack down severely on domestic extremism and cooperate closely with the U.S. in sharing intelligence," White said.

Experts say the real problem is the radical Islamist ideology pervading the world through the Internet is the main problem. Getting rid of the ideology is key to defeating terrorists, experts contend. But that is easier said than done.

No truly effective way has been found by the West to fight the extremist ideology, White noted.

"Yet, the Saudis themselves have been involved for over 15 years in some of the most successful efforts in schools and prisons to separate their strict brand of faith from extremist violence," White said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 07:23:18|Editor: MJ

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URUAPAN, Mexico, June 6 (Xinhua) -- When talks turn to China, the destination of avocados, Elena Roman lights up, carefully packing the fruits at a plant in the west-central Mexican state of Michoacan.

"It's nice to think they are going to travel as far as there, it's exciting to know that," Roman, 40, said in the small verdant town of Uruapan.

The mother of four works at Avo Hass, one of eight avocado packing plants in Uruapan that export to China, a market that producers are increasingly striving to conquer.

Avo Hass alone aims to ship as many as 300 tons of avocado to China in 2017, double the 150 tons it exported in each of the past two years, when it began to trade with the Asian giant.

The United States buys the majority of the 12,000 tons of avocado Avo Hass packs, the company's director, Nadia Flores, said. But the company is now looking to increase its share of the Chinese market.

"We are turning our gaze towards China, because we see that it is an excellent opportunity," said Flores, whose company started out as a small family farm.

To win market share in China, Uruapan's producers are betting on the superior taste and quality of avocados grown in Michoacan, a state that underpins Mexico's goal of becoming the world's top avocado supplier, providing seven out of 10 avocados consumed globally.

Michoacan produced nearly 1.5 million tons of avocado in 2016, or 78 percent of the 1.8 million tons produced nationally, according to the federal government's annual agricultural records.

Uruapan, known as the avocado capital of the world, accounted for 10.5 percent of the state's total production of the so-called "green gold," as the vegetable-like fruit is called in Mexico.

At least 13,800 hectares of land in this city of 315,000 residents are home to avocado orchards, both large and small, that line both sides of the roads throughout Uruapan.

Each avocado tree can grow up to 25 meters in height, and produce as many as 3 tons of the fruit in a single season, which normally runs from July to January.

"The soil in Michoacan makes the avocados creamy and buttery," said Avo Hass' orchards manager, Fernando Alonso, who estimates some 60 percent of residents here make their living from the fruit.

The commercial director of exporter San Marcos Avocado, Angelica Villalpando, agrees, saying the "unparalleled" flavor of the region's avocados is what opens the doors to the Mexican product.

Based in the U.S. state of California, San Marcos is working to increase the 20 tons of Mexican avocado that is shipped to China each month, noting a growing appetite in Asia for the green fruit.

Avocado exports to China last year reached 10,294 tons, a huge increase over the 16.7 tons shipped in 2009, according to Mexico's Ministry of Economy.

Sales to China are still far from reaching U.S. levels. Mexico's northern neighbor bought almost 77 percent of the more than one million tons of avocado the country exported in 2016. However, China is now among the top 10 markets for avocado.

"It is a special market, a demanding market. It is a market that demands you meet infinite quality, sanitary, safety, aesthetic and packing norms," said Villalpando.

According to Avo Hass' operations manager, Miguel Patlan, China is interested in avocados with specific characteristics: small in size, lemony green color, a peel with no imperfections, and a shelf life of 15 days in stores.

"In matters of fruit quality, they tell us it must be a totally clean fruit," said Patlan.

At the 1,100-square-meter Avo Hass plant, a giant machine selects the ideal avocados for China, using sensors to detect weight and size. The chosen fruits are then inspected by workers like Roman, who packs the ones that pass muster.

The shipments take up to 26 days to travel between Mexico's Pacific coast ports and the Chinese ports of Shanghai or Shenzhen, which is why they are generally refrigerated at 3.3 degrees Centigrade to keep them fresh.

In one final but crucial step before shipments sail overseas, an inspector from the Ministry of Agriculture closely inspects each box of avocados.

Mexico's producers and exporters say they are confident they will increase sales to China, as they meet the Chinese government's rigorous standards throughout the chain of production.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 07:43:24|Editor: MJ

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GABORONE, June 6 (Xinhua) -- Botswana's Health and Wellness Minister, Dorcas Magkato, Tuesday hailed the partnership between China and Botswana in the sector of health, saying it bridged the human resource gap in the country's health sector.

Magkato was speaking at a farewell dinner for the 14th Chinese medical team that was organized by Botswana's Health and Wellness ministry.

Magkato appreciated the Chinese government for its continuous support to Botswana.

She also commended the medics for the sacrifices they have made by being separated from their families and their country for the past two years.

Speaking at the farewell dinner, the Chinese ambassador to Botswana Zhao Yanbo, said medicine and health-care has been one of the top priority areas in China's assistance to Botswana.

He said cooperation in medical care and public health has brought huge benefits to African countries, making it a big plus to strengthen ties between China and Africa.

China began to dispatch medical teams to Botswana since 1981. So far, a total of 415 medical personnel of 14 Chinese medical teams have been sent to Botswana.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 09:55:46|Editor: Hou Qiang

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NAY PYI TAW, June 7 (Xinhua) -- An investment forum is underway in Myanmar's Nay Pyi taw to seek ways to attract increased foreign investment into the country for the development of its economy and trade.

The two-day Myanmar Investment Forum-2017, which began on Tuesday, is hosted by the Myanmar Investors Development Association (MIDA).

The forum is aimed at providing investors with the ease of doing business in Myanmar, Vice President U Myint Swe told the opening session, stressing that foreign direct investment has become the main driver to promote the inflow of much-needed foreign capital in the country as it relies on foreign capital and trade for socio-economic development.

U Khin Maung Aye, chairman of the MIDA, said the forum aims to smoothen the path towards increased investment in Myanmar by both domestic and foreign entrepreneurs, emphasizing the need for creating best investment environment for them to do business in the country energetically.

He said the government has created a fair competitive environment for investors and a reliable legal framework to work with, significantly reducing the risk and danger for businesses in Myanmar, which he described as one of the best places for investors.

Noting that there is a lot to develop in the agricultural sector, U Kyaw Win, Minister of Planning and Finance, pledged that the government would try its best to bring about economic enterprises with full responsibility and accountability so as to create more job opportunities while implementing open, environmentally-friendly policies.

U Aung Naing Oo, director-general of Myanmar Investment Commission, called for amendment to laws on economy to encourage foreign investment and make efforts to develop small and medium enterprises (SME), while making reform in many other sectors.

Topping the agenda at the forum are investment opportunities in special economic zones in Dawei, Thilawa and Kyaukphyu as well as industrial zones in various regions across Myanmar. In addition, there will also be discussions on possible changes in the financial sector to boost financial stability for investors.

The forum is being attended by over 100 economic organizations, over 90 foreign enterprises and nearly 200 Myanmar businessmen.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 10:16:24|Editor: Hou Qiang

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YANGON, June 7 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar's parliament has approved the country taking part in the signing of an international agreement between the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and Russia on disaster relief, Myanmar News Agency reported Wednesday.

The Agreement on Cooperation in Natural Disaster Early Warning and Mitigation represents an extension of the previous pact addressing political, security, education, economic and development between ASEAN and Russia.

Minister of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement Win Myat Aye told the parliament that the agreement would enable Myanmar to respond more effectively to natural disaster in the future, adding it will further boost natural disaster emergency response and relief, and exchange of information on mitigation against natural disaster between ASEAN and Russia.

Myanmar, lying in the middle of Himalaya region, Indochina and Malay Peninsula, is one of the world's most bio-diverse nations, but its environment is under threat from global warming and human development.
Residents take shelter under an evacuation center near a military camp in Lanao Del Sur Province, the Philippines, June 2, 2017. (Xinhua/Rouelle Umali)

MANILA, June 6 (Xinhua) -- The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has appealed to the Philippine military and the militants clashing in the southern Philippine Marawi city to spare the civilians, the agency said on Tuesday.

The ICRC said civilian lives were at stake as the number of casualties continued to grow.

"We are extremely concerned about the residents who could not leave their homes because of the fighting, and also those who are being reportedly held against their will," Pascal Porchet, head of the delegation of the ICRC in the Philippines said, adding the agency was "deeply worried about reports of civilians being killed."

"We urge all those involved in the fighting to protect civilian lives, and are hopeful that those held against their will are being treated humanely and will be released," Porchet said.

He said the aid agency "stands ready to serve as a neutral intermediary to evacuate civilians caught between the fighting,"

The ICRC said around 200,000 people have fled the hostilities in Marawi City, seeking safety in evacuation centers or with relatives. "The need for food, clean water, health care and sanitation is going as authorities try to cope with the sudden influx of evacuees," the ICRC said.

The ICRC, with the Philippine Red Cross, has been on the ground since the fighting broke out May 23, providing relief items to thousands of displaced families, and enhanced their access to clean water and health care.

"Together with the Philippine Red Cross, the ICRC has distributed 10,000 displaced people, provided an equal number of people with access to clean water, and enhanced the capacity of the six local health facilities to provide basic health care to thousands of people though the donation of medical supplies," the ICRC said.

Residents take shelter under an evacuation center near a military camp in Lanao Del Sur Province, the Philippines, June 2, 2017. (Xinhua/Rouelle Umali)

Porchet said the agency has started conducting full assessment of the conditions of displaced people in hard-to-reach evacuations centers to give the agency a better picture of the humanitarian needs.

"We hope to also assess the western and eastern parts of Lanao Lake once the security situation allows us to do so," referring to the villages around the besiege city of more than 200,000 people.

The ICRC said limited food and clean water supply, as well as access to sanitation facilities, remain to be the most urgent humanitarian needs in evacuation centers.

The agency also expressed concern that some of the evacuation centers in nearby Iligan City are underserved due to the surge in the number of displaced people and limited personnel. In fact, it said some areas on the west and east side of Lake Lanao are not served at all.

The ICRC has been actively supporting authorities in the management of dead bodies. It has donated 160 body bags, as well as gloves and masks, to help the authorities with the proper retrieval of the bodies.

The ICRC has also been negotiating for safe access to trapped civilians in Marawi by engaging in a constant dialogue with all parties to the conflict.

However, it said the current security situation does not yet allow the ICRC to bring them all to safety. It has, however, transported nearly 600 people from Marawi City to the Saguiaran evacuation center or even as far as Iligan.

The military has been battling the IS-lnked militants since May 23 in Marawi City in Lanao del Sur province, forcing thousands of the residents to flee.

The military said on Tuesday there are still an estimated 500 civilians trapped in the city.

Much of the city's center has been destroyed as airstrikes continue to flush out about 100 militants, including foreign IS cadres.

The military said the militants want to establish a "wilayat" or caliphate of IS in Lanao del Sur.

The ongoing clashes in the city forced Duterte to place the entire Mindanao region under martial law.
CANBERRA, June 7 (Xinhua) -- Australia's Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull will use an upcoming meeting of state and territory leaders to push for stricter parole measures, after a man with terror links who was out on bail killed one person and injured three police officers in a terror event in Melbourne earlier this week.

On Monday evening, 29-year-old Yacqub Khayre killed an apartment building receptionist and took a sex worker hostage, in an IS-claimed terror siege designed to draw counter-terror police into danger.

Khayre was released on bail late last year after he committed a violent burglary in 2012, but he was also charged with, and then acquitted of, involvement in a terror plot against an army barracks in Sydney in 2009.

Speaking on local radio on Wednesday, the prime minister said he would use Friday's Coalition of Australian Governments (COAG) meetings to urge the states to reconsider their parole laws in the wake of the terror siege.

"We want to make sure that people like Khayre are not released on parole. We're going to have a very serious discussion about this at COAG on Friday," Turnbull told Macquarie Radio.
UNITED NATIONS, June 6 (Xinhua) -- China has stepped up efforts to adopt comprehensive measures to prevent and control marine pollution, said a Chinese envoy on Tuesday.

Lin Shanqing, deputy director of China's State Oceanic Administration, made the remarks at an event on the sidelines of the UN Ocean Conference.

As for practices on marine ecosystem protection, China is taking actions to promote management of coastal zone and watershed sea areas, Lin noted.

China also has passed law amendments on island protection, use of sea, and resource exploration in deep seabed areas to protect marine ecosystem.

Through these laws and measures, the government, more capable to monitor the land and sea areas situation, could respond to possible incidents in time.

Marine and coastal ecosystems include marine living resources and important habitats such as coral reefs, sea-grass beds, which are crucial for sustainable oceans and seas.

The United Nations, along with other environment agencies and experts, has recognized that marine and coastal ecosystems are increasingly threatened, degraded and destroyed by marine- and land-based human activities.

Open until Friday, the UN Ocean Conference will give special attention to the sustainable use of oceans, seas, and marine resources.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 12:02:08|Editor: An

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YANGON, June 7 (Xinhua) -- The Dubai-based Emirates Airline will launch a new route between Myanmar and Cambodia directly linking Yangon and Phnom Penh starting July 1, official media reported on Wednesday.

It will be the first direct flight between the two major cities of the two countries since 2014.

Emirates airlines has been operating direct flight services to Yangon from Dubai since August 2016, using Boeing 777-300ER aircraft.

A total of 24 international airlines are flying flights to Myanmar with seven airlines operating domestically. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 12:07:11|Editor: An

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by William M. Reilly

UNITED NATIONS, June 6 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations was inundated on Tuesday by water issues: The Ocean Conference focused on rising, polluted seas while the Security Council examined the threat to international peace and security by conflicts involving fresh water that crosses borders.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, sitting alongside President Evo Morales of Bolivia, this month's president of the Security Council, issued a warning to panel members.

ACUTE WATER ISSUES

"With demand for freshwater projected to grow by more than 40 percent by the middle of the century, and with climate change having a growing impact, water scarcity is a growing concern," he said, adding: "By 2050, at least one in four people will live in a country where the lack of fresh water is chronic or recurrent."

"Without effective management of our water resources, we risk intensified disputes between communities and sectors and even increased tensions among nations," said Guterres.

"Three quarters of UN member states share rivers or lake basins with their neighbors and there are more than 270 internationally shared river basins, which serve as the primary source of fresh water for approximately 40 percent of the world's population," he said.

Luhut Binsar Pandjaita, coordinating minister for Maritime Affairs of Indonesia, the largest archipelago nation with 17,000 islands, only 4,000 of them inhabited, expressed Jakarta's concerns over the ocean.

"How do we deal with debris on land ... and minimize (debris) at sea? How do we deal with illegal fishing?" he asked. "We experienced years of over-fishing (and) also destroyed a lot of reef."

He then said answers to how those problems could be mitigated were being sought during the Ocean Conference that ends Friday.

Where Indonesia is located, there are 99,000 km of coastline and 1 million fishermen. "We are in a very strategic position," he said, adding that "we can be victims of debris from anywhere."

WIDE PARTICIPATION

The Ocean Conference drew a total of 1,738 delegates to the week-long convention at the UN Headquarters in New York, said the meeting's spokesman Damian Cardona Onses.

Among the delegates were eight heads of state from Bolivia, Gabon, Ghana, Micronesia, Monaco, Nauru, Palau and Zimbabwe, a vice president from the Seychelles, and seven prime ministers from the Cook islands, Fiji, Grenada, St. Lucia, Samoa, Sri Lanka and Tuvalu, he said.

Sweden's Crown Prince Carl Philip and Prince Albert II of Monaco, two deputy prime ministers and 85 ministers, including 15 foreign ministers, also attended.

The lists of states represented at the highest levels demonstrated concerns of coastal or island nations on ocean problems.

COUNTRIES' COMMITMENTS AND PLANS

The spokesman said voluntary commitments were made from 835 organizations, including 45 from governments, with the North Atlantic region providing the highest number of 201, followed by 183 in the South Pacific and 152 in the North Pacific.

"Iceland will map its ocean areas, establish harvest control rules for important fishing stocks and reduce marine litter and ocean acidification through its climate change mitigation plan," he said.

"Costa Rica underlined its intention to protect 100 percent of marine and coastal areas, integrate marine and coastal management, regulate fisheries and protect turtles," said Cardona.

"Indonesia has called for the creation of a UN office for coordination and coherence of the marine environment," Cardona said, adding: "Prince Albert II of Monaco outlined his country's measures including a ban on single use plastics."

Later, the prince announced the establishment of a three-year campaign of around-the-world scientific explorations at sea. An exploration vessel, Yersin, will depart from Port Hercules in Monaco in July and return in the summer of 2020 after visiting some nine areas to conduct scientific research in remote sea locations.

SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH BADLY NEEDED

Such scientific research is sorely needed, said Irina Bokova, director-general of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

"The ocean is transboundary by itself and we need international cooperation in order to make more research and mobilize the government and partners," she told a panel.

"Not a single scientist or institution or a university scientific center can invest so much in order to bring the right solutions and also the study of the ocean is interdisciplinary," she said.

"We have to mobilize all the necessary sciences in order to study the ocean," she added.

"A very small percentage of the ocean has been studied," Bokova said. "The sea floor hasn't been studied, only 5 percent, and we know that there might be 1 million species that haven't been discovered as yet."

"I think it is quite obvious that we need more and better scientifically-based action," she said, adding that "that is why we want to mobilize governments. We want to have a United Nations international decade about ocean science."

Sitting alongside her on the same panel was Erik Solheim, executive director of the UN Environment Program, who put an emphasis on action.

"There are two main issues," he said. "It is a health problem, through micro-plastics, and also a huge economic issue, plastic."

"It is a huge economic issue for Asia," Solheim said. "How many people would really want to go to Bali or the Caribbean or to Fiji if all the beaches are full of plastic? In national parks it is also a problem."

"You can also go down to your beaches and start taking up the plastics," he said, advocating for more action.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 12:37:22|Editor: An

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by Will Koulouris

SYDNEY, June 7 (Xinhua) -- The city of Sydney in Australia is home to the largest Chinese New Year Festival outside of Asia, and the event is pivotal to the development of stronger cultural ties between China and Australia.

From its humble beginnings 21 years ago, the festival has culminated in a city-wide event celebrated by millions of Sydney-siders, and according to Andrea Myles, CEO of the China Australia Millennial Project, the Spring Festival celebrations in Sydney have "evolved" drastically.

"Sydney has a really vibrant Chinese community, and always has, so now we are seeing that the Chinese New Year Festival in Sydney is actually the largest outside of Asia," Myles told Xinhua.

As a member of the advisory panel for the festival, Myles knows first hand the passion that Australians have for festivals. She said that this event stands out due to the love that Australians have for the Chinese community.

"The Chinese community is as much a part of Australia's history as anybody is a part of Australia's history," Myles said. "So we really own that, we really feel a bond there."

Although the floats and lights, might take center stage during the festivities, Myles believed that more importantly, the event has the special ability to bring families together during the course of the Lunar New Year celebrations.

"We know that it is a really important time for Chinese people here in Australia," Myles said.

"So we love to celebrate that and really show that, yes, you are absolutely welcome here and we want to be a part of it as much as we can."

The ability of this event, and others like it, in breaking down all cross-cultural barriers is one of the most crucial parts of the festivals operation, and Myles said that these festivals are "fundamental" in building strong and lasting ties between China and Australia.

"These events allow everybody, from the youngest child to the oldest grandmother to engage, and to be a part of the things which interest them," she said.

"So whether you are interested in food, whether you're interested in art, or you're interested in getting to know your neighbors better if they are Chinese, or if they are Australian. It's a really great opportunity to just come together."

This year saw the Chinese New Year celebrations draw in over a million visitors throughout the course of the two-week event at locations throughout the Sydney CBD, and comprised of over 80 events scattered around the city to the delight of the revellers.

With over 1,000 performers participating, along with a number of high-level Australian and Chinese sponsors and supporters of the festival, Myles hoped that in future years even more focus can be placed on the smaller contributions people can make to the festivities.

Asides from just the events, Myles said that she hoped these emerging connections can lead to more engagement and success between China and Australia at a micro level, with person-to-person relationships being the key to these positive outcomes.

"The business relationship between China and Australia in the past has been characterised by really large businesses. Huge state-owned enterprises, and huge Australian companies coming together," Myles said.

"However, for your average mom and dad, or young entrepreneur, that's a little bit difficult to see yourself in the picture of that. So now we are seeing a very big shift towards innovation between Australians and Chinese," she added.

"And I think this is really the opportunity: innovation, entrepreneurship, I would love to see the next huge company to be co-founded by a young Australian and a young Chinese person to really reshape the world."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 13:07:29|Editor: MJ

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BEIJING, June 7 (Xinhua) -- China's Chang'e 5 lunar probe is expected to land in the Mons Rumker region, and to take moon samples back to earth at the end of the year, according to a Chinese space official.

Liu Jizhong, director of China Lunar Exploration and Space Engineering Center of China National Space Administration (CNSA), for the first time disclosed the probe landing site, an isolated volcanic formation located in the northwest part of the Moon's near side.

Liu also mentioned China's Chang'e 4 lunar probe. Delivering a report at the Global Space Exploration Conference, which opened in Beijing Tuesday, he said China's Chang'e 4 lunar probe, which is expected to be the first human carrying probe landing on the far side of the moon, would be launched in 2018, carrying 11 scientific payloads, including four developed by other countries.

He said lunar exploration had many international cooperation opportunities and that constructing the international moon village or international research station, proposed by European Space Agency (ESA), was also a long-term goal for China.

"China is planning and designing its future lunar exploration program. We will focus on the south pole region of the moon. The research on water and the permanent shadow area of the lunar south pole region will bring greater scientific discoveries," Liu said.

He said that China would push forward international cooperation in exploring the south pole of the moon, constructing lunar scientific research station and establishing long-term energy supply and autonomous infrastructures.

Liu proposed jointly exploring the lunar polar region and constructing the scientific research station as a guide for the international moon village or station, following international law.

He also proposed creating an open platform for cooperation in accordance with the principle of "sharing the risks and achievements," and to set up the International Union of Planetary Scientists and the International Union of Planetary Science College Students.

He said scientists from different countries might jointly formulate scientific objectives, develop scientific payloads and carry out scientific data research.

"Partners may develop probes and facilities independently, which will complement each other. Enterprises are also encouraged to actively participate in lunar exploration," Liu said. "Intergovernmental cooperation should be strengthened, and governments should co-ordinate existing deep space exploration infrastructures to share the resources and enhance investment efficiency."

At the conference, Wu Yanhua, vice administrator of CNSA, honored the international partners of China's Chang'e 4 mission, which will carry payloads from the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden and Saudi Arabia.

Since China proposed international cooperation on the Chang'e 4 mission last year, China has received more than 20 schemes from other countries.

"We support more international cooperation in China's future lunar and Mars missions, as well as exploration to the Jupiter system and asteroids that are still under discussion," Wu said.

"It is exactly what I was looking forward to," said Jan Woerner, director general of the ESA. "It will fit perfectly to the moon village, ESA's vision for international cooperation on the moon."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 13:27:33|Editor: Hou Qiang

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TOKYO, June 7 (Xinhua) -- A U.S. military Osprey aircraft made an emergency landing Tuesday night on an island in Japan's southernmost prefecture of Okinawa, Japan's Defense Ministry said Wednesday.

The ministry said the tilt-rotor aircraft made the emergency landing at the Ie Jima Auxiliary Airfield, which is located near Okinawa's main island, after an emergency warning light was flashing in the cockpit.

According to the defense ministry, there were no reports of injury to the airplane's personnel and the plane itself was not damaged in what the U.S. military described was a preventative landing.

The Osprey, which has a checkered safety history around the globe, belongs to a squadron at the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, also in Okinawa, and central to a protracted spat between the central and local governments about its relocation to a coastal area on the island.

Osprey aircraft are abhorred in Okinawa particularly, where the bulk of U.S. military bases are located, due to their poor safety record and unbearable amount of noise caused by their huge turboprop engines that swivel to allow the plane to take off and land like a helicopter, but fly like a regular fixed-winged plane.

Local fears about the Osprey's safety were heightened in Okinawa in December last year following the crash landing of one of the planes in waters off Nago in Okinawa, near the U.S. Marine Corps' Camp Schwab.

The incident, which saw five crew members airlifted to safety and then subsequently treated for injuries, involved an MV-22 Osprey making a "shallow landing" according to U.S. military accounts.

The crash marked the first major accident involving an Osprey since its deployment in Japan in 2012 and had Okinawan officials vehemently call for the planes to be withdrawn from Japan.

The planes' safety was called into question prior to that incident by local officials and citizens here in May 2014 when an MV-22B Osprey crashed in Hawaii, leaving two dead and 20 more injured and in August a year earlier, concerns about the plane were stoked when four crew members narrowly escaped injury when a Marine Corps' Osprey made a "hard landing" near the Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, in the United States.

In April 2012, an Osprey crashed in Morocco and killed two Marines and another crash in Florida in June 2012 injured all five crew members.

Thirty Marines lost their lives in three crashes, including 19 in a single accident in Arizona, in 2000, during the Osprey's developmental phase, launching the plane's checkered safety record.

In 2010, an Air Force CV-22 Osprey, each of which costs around 100 million U.S. dollars, touched down short of its landing zone in Afghanistan, hit a ditch, and flipped over, killing four Marines.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 13:37:41|Editor: Hou Qiang

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MELBOURNE, June 7 (Xinhua) -- A clinical trial of injecting radiotherapy to combat aggressive breast cancer by Australian scientists began on Wednesday.

Women suffering from the most aggressive types of breast cancer will undergo treatment combining radiation with immunotherapy in an attempt to "reawaken" the immune system to fight the disease.

Sherene Loi, head of translational breast cancer research at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne, said the trial was approved after promising studies on animals where radiation was used to prepare the immune system to fight cancer.

Loi said using radiation and immunotherapy in conjunction was an "emerging idea."

"If you've got primary cancer in the breast, that's usually very curable," Associate Loi told Australian media on Wednesday.

"If it comes back, it's usually incurable and we think that's because it outwits the immune system.

"Once you develop cancer, your immune system has failed. It can't see the cancer any more, and it also actively suppresses the immune system."

She said the research was made possible by her work being awarded a 10-year research grant by the National Breast Cancer Foundation in March.

The foundation said Loi was decided on as one of two recipients because of her potentially revolutionary work.

Loi's study was the first in the world to trial both immunotherapy and gene therapy together.

Breast cancer is the biggest killer of young and middle-aged Australian women.

Cancer Australia estimated that 17,586 women would be diagnosed with breast cancer in Australia in 2017, accounting for 13 percent of all new cancers in the country.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 13:37:43|Editor: MJ

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MELBOURNE, June 7 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese-born Australian citizen was on Wednesday identified as the man killed by terrorist Yacqub Khayre in Melbourne on Monday.

Kai Hao, 36, was shot dead by Khayre in the foyer of the apartment complex where Khayre took a woman hostage on Monday night.

Australian security officials have confirmed that the incident was an act of terror and are investigating whether Khayre, who was killed by police after he fired a shotgun at officers, acted on behalf of Islamic State (IS).

Malcolm Turnbull, Australia's Prime Minister, confirmed on Wednesday that the body discovered in the foyer of the apartment in Brighton, 11 kilometers southeast of Melbourne, belonged to Kai Hao.

"Kai Hao - a dad, has been killed by a terrorist in Melbourne, Australia," Turnbull said on Melbourne radio on Wednesday.

"A heartbreaking crime."

Police had not yet confirmed the identity of the man, but did say he had recently married and had a child.

"Our sympathies go out to his family and we will be providing support," Shane Patton, deputy commissioner of Victoria Police, told reporters.

It is believed that Kai Hao was working in the complex as a caretaker.

Aside from Khayre, he was the only person killed during the incident which prompted a two-hour police siege.

Three police officers were hurt when Khayre emerged from the building at 6 p.m. local time on Monday and started shooting officers.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 13:57:51|Editor: Hou Qiang

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SEOUL, June 7 (Xinhua) -- South Korean Foreign Minister nominee Kang Kyung-wha said Wednesday that she will consider sending senior-level delegates to China over the installation of the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) missile defense system.

Kang told a parliamentary confirmation hearing that communications between South Korea and China should be maintained through a variety of channels to narrow differences in how to recognize the THAAD issue.

Since President Moon Jae-in took office on May 10, Kang said, special envoys of South Korea were dispatched to China, while leaders of the two countries held a telephone conversation.

If confirmed, Kang would become the country's first-ever female foreign minister. The top diplomat post does not require the parliamentary approval, though the nominee is required to go through the confirmation hearing.

The FM nominee said the THAAD deployment lacked public discussions and failed to win the public consensus, reiterating the new government's stance that the THAAD installation requires parliamentary discussions.

In her earlier opening remarks, Kang pledged to develop the bilateral strategic cooperative partnership with China by restoring trust and strengthening sincere communications between the two countries.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 13:57:55|Editor: Hou Qiang

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SYDNEY, June 7 (Xinhua) -- Prince Harry has arrived in Sydney as throngs of people flocked to the popular tourist hub Circular Quay Wednesday to catch a glimpse of the British Royal despite stormy weather.

The dashing young prince arrived in Australia late Tuesday to begin the countdown to the Invictus Games, a sporting tournament for wounded soldiers from across the globe, to be held in Sydney in October next year.

Speaking at a launch event at Admiralty House in Kirribilli, the youngest son of Princess Diana and Prince Charles, spoke about how his own experience of war led him to create an event especially catered to those who had been injured in the line of duty.

"In February 2008, I was forced to leave Afghanistan. I had been serving as an army officer in the British army until my presence on the front line leaked out into the press," the prince said.

Prince Harry told those attending about an experience he had when flying back home from deployment, where the plane was loaded with the coffin containing a dead Danish soldier, along with the ravaged bodies of three soldiers who were placed into induced comas.

"The sacrifices we ask our men and women to make came home to me in those moments," he said. "Sport is what would make the difference. Sport would make these guys and girls rebuild their lives."

Prince Harry later attended an event at Campbell's Cove with the Premier of New South Wales Gladys Berejiklian, while also finding time to go for a sail in the rough weather on Sydney Harbor.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 14:08:00|Editor: Hou Qiang

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NEW DELHI, June 7 (Xinhua) -- An Indian Army officer and three militants have been killed in an encounter in the northeastern state of Nagaland, an Army spokesperson said Wednesday.

Reports said that a civilian was also killed in the exchange of fire in the state's Mon district, nearly 340 km from state capital Kohima, late Tuesday night, but the Army has not yet confirmed it.

Indian Army spokesperson Lt Col Chiranjeet Konwer said the encounter took place when troopers raided a place called Lappa in Mon late Tuesday night, following a tip-off that some militants of the Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagaland were moving through that area.

"The incident took place around 10 p.m. (local time) at Lappa. Based on information about the movement of the militants, the Army officer and his team went to the area when they were ambushed and an encounter ensued," he told the media.

He added: "The encounter continued for several hours. Later, the bodies of the three terrorists were found. The encounter is over, but combing operations are underway in the area. Three soldiers also sustained injures in the encounter."

The militant group has carried out several attacks on Indian security forces in the past. Suspected rebels from the group killed eight Indian Army soldiers close to the Myanmar border in Mon district two years ago.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 14:13:06|Editor: An

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A girl watches performance of Sam Ruk dance group from Eurasian University in Astana, Kazakhstan, June 5, 2017. (Xinhua/Wu Xiaoling)

MOSCOW, June 7 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping will on Wednesday start a four-day state visit to Kazakhstan, his third visit to the central Asian country, at the invitation of his Kazakh counterpart Nursultan Nazarbayev.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the establishment of the diplomatic ties between China and Kazakhstan. Against this backdrop, Xi's visit is widely expected to further advance the bilateral relations and enhance the comprehensive strategic partnership between the two countries.

BROAD PROSPECTS FOR DEVELOPMENT OF BILATERAL TIES

The relations between China and Kazakhstan have been developing steadily and substantially over the past 25 years. With a solid foundation for joint development and a goal to combine mutual interests, the two are expected to chart the course for the further development of bilateral ties during Xi's upcoming visit.

"China-Kazakhstan relations are built on the basis of reciprocity and mutual understanding. There are no pending issues between the two countries, and the future development of their bilateral ties enjoys broad prospects," Ruslam Izimov, head of the Eurasian Studies Program at the Institute of World Economy and Politics, told Xinhua.

From previous fruitful achievements of bilateral cooperation, experts are convinced that Xi's upcoming visit will once again greatly promote the China-Kazakhstan partnership.

Top leaders of China and Kazakhstan have been in close contact over recent years, broadening and deepening bilateral relations and cooperation to a great extent.

In September 2013, Xi paid his first state visit to Kazakhstan, during which the two countries signed a joint declaration on a new stage of comprehensive strategic partnership. It was also during this visit that Xi put forward the initiative of building the Silk Road Economic Belt for the first time.

The visit by Xi also set the tone for the development of bilateral ties in the past years.

"The general direction of the two countries' national development was determined during President Xi's visit to Kazakhstan in 2013, namely, the joint building of the Silk Road Economic Belt," Chinese Ambassador to Kazakhstan Zhang Hanhui said.

The initiative proposed by Xi was warmly supported by Kazakhstan. A year later, Nazarbayev, the Kazakh president, introduced his new economic plan known as "Bright Path," which also lays emphasis on investment in infrastructure and priority sectors.

In Xi's second visit in May 2015, the two countries pledged to further align their development strategies in the pursuit of common prosperity.

"The relationship between China and Kazakhstan concerns common development of the two countries as well as regional peace and stability. Therefore, the two sides should implement the consensus reached by the two heads of state, and promote bilateral cooperation in line with predetermined paths for the benefit of the peoples," Zhang said.

During the upcoming visit, Xi will also attend the 17th meeting of Heads of State Council of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the opening ceremony of the World Expo in Astana.

In May 2014, Nazarbayev paid a state visit to China, during which he and Xi agreed to promote bilateral cooperation in a wide range of fields as well as strengthen cultural and people-to-people exchanges.

ENORMOUS POTENTIAL OF COOPERATION

Promoting bilateral cooperation is the focus of Xi's upcoming visit. According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, the two presidents will sign and issue a joint statement, participate in a video link event on cross-border transportation and witness the signing of a series of deals in the areas of economy and trade, finance and water conservation.

Cooperation between the two countries has been blossoming over the past three years and reached an unprecedentedly high level, covering multiple areas such as trade, energy, infrastructure and environmental protection, amid efforts to integrate China's Belt and Road Initiative with Kazakhstan's Bright Path Economic Plan.

Kazakhstan is among the earliest to join China in implementing the Belt and Road Initiative. In late 2014, China and Kazakhstan reached a preliminary consensus on industrial capacity cooperation worth more than 14 billion U.S. dollars. In march 2015, the two countries signed 33 deals in this field totaling 23.6 billion dollars, covering steel, non-ferrous metals, sheet glass, oil refining, hydro-power and automobiles.

"China and Kazakhstan have set a successful example with regard to cooperation in the areas of industrial capacity, energy and connectivity," said Sun Zhuangzhi, secretary general of the SCO Research Center affiliated to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

He added that further enhancing cooperation on the Belt and Road Initiative by the two countries will serve as a convincing role model to other interested countries.

Agricultural cooperation has become another key area for bilateral cooperation between China and Kazakhstan, experts said. According to Izimov, China and Kazakhstan are currently carrying out more than 20 joint agricultural projects in a bid to expand cooperation in this field.

"Kazakhstan has vast arable land and well-conditioned prairies. It is feasible to stimulate productivity in its farming and animal husbandry via cooperation between the two countries, while China is also ready to open its market to high-quality agricultural exports from Kazakhstan," Zhang said.

In addition, people-to-people exchanges could also be a highlight of bilateral cooperation in the future. With deepening understanding of the significance of China-Kazakhstan relations, an increasing number of Kazakh citizens from all walks of life start to show greater interest in learning about China, which provides huge potential for cooperation in this area.

While Kazakhstan is hosting the Year of China Tourism event, Zhang suggested the two countries take this opportunity to strengthen their cultural and people-to-people cooperation, including opening more air routes to promote tourism.

"Connections between Chinese people and Kazakh people lay the foundation for the development of bilateral ties and the implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative," Zhang said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 14:18:08|Editor: xuxin

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U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin (L) speaks during an event in Washington D.C., the United States, on June 6, 2017. U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Tuesday that he was very pleased with the direction of U.S.-China economic relations as the two countries achieved initial results of a 100-day plan to boost economic cooperation. (Xinhua/Yin Bogu)

WASHINGTON, June 6 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Tuesday that he was very pleased with the direction of U.S.-China economic relations as the two countries achieved initial results of a 100-day plan to boost economic cooperation.

At a U.S.-China Business Council annual meeting, Mnuchin hailed in particular China's willingness to expand beef imports from the United States, which is part of a 100-day plan designed to enhance economic cooperation between the two countries. He also highlighted progress in financial sector cooperation.

During a meeting at the Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida in April, Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump agreed to establish a comprehensive economic dialogue and initiate a 100-day plan to boost bilateral economic cooperation.

"I couldn't be more pleased with the direction of where we're heading," he said, noting good economic relations with China is "very important" for the United States.

Last month, the two sides announced the initial results of the 100-day plan, covering agriculture, financial services, investment and energy. Most of the agreements are expected to be implemented by July 16.

Mnuchin said the two countries are now planning the inauguration of the comprehensive economic dialogue, which will most likely be slated for this summer, and which could kick off discussion of a one-year plan on bilateral economic cooperation.

Acknowledging that negotiation on certain issues may take time, Mnuchin said the U.S. side wants to make sure both sides are "on the same page" and can figure out ways to execute shared objectives.

Negotiation of a bilateral trade agreement with China remains on the Trump administration's agenda, progress on specific issues such as market fairness should be made first, he said.

Though China's economic growth is slowing down, it's still growing "quite high" compared to developed countries, Mnuchin said, adding that he didn't see "any concern in the near term" about the world's second-largest economy.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 14:23:10|Editor: An

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Yang Liwei, China's first astronaut and deputy director of China's manned space program office, makes a speech during the 2017 Global Space Exploration Conference in Beijing, capital of China, June 6, 2017. The conference opened Tuesday in Beijing. (Xinhua/Chen Yehua)

BEIJING, June 7 (Xinhua) -- China is looking towards increased cooperation with international space leaders, it stressed Tuesday at the Global Space Exploration Conference (GLEX 2017) currently being held in Beijing.

In a letter of congratulations sent to the conference by Chinese President Xi Jinping, he said that China wants to enhance cooperation with the international community in peaceful space exploration and development.

Xi noted that progress in space science and technology will benefit people around the world and China wants to use space exploration achievements to create a better future for mankind.

"China is expanding cooperation with the United Nations (UN) in space exploration, and will disclose projects later this year," said Yang Liwei, China's first astronaut and current deputy director of the China Manned Space Engineering Office.

The country has previously undertaken bilateral cooperation with various countries and institutions and is now looking towards multilateral projects. China will carry out joint projects with the UN Office of Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) including astronaut training, space station scientific experiments and multilateral application of such experiments, said Yang.

"Rather than a space race, I think cooperation is always good and worldwide cooperation is even better. I hope we can breach Earth's crises by having worldwide cooperation in space," said Jan Woerner, director general of the European Space Agency (ESA).

"We should not try to duplicate everything, and if we join forces we can do even more with the same amount of money," he added.

The conference, which ends Thursday, was jointly held by the International Astronautical Federation (IAF) and the Chinese Society of Astronautics and follows the GLEX 2012 conference held in Washington D.C.

International space engineers and delegates from leading aerospace companies including Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Airbus attended the conference.

SPACE ODYSSEY

Although China has completed many successful space exploration projects, the country's space expeditions are far from over.

At the conference, Yang said that China plans to use a Long March-5 carrier rocket to launch the core module of the country's manned space station in 2019 and build a space station around 2022.

With the International Space Station set to retire in 2024, the Chinese space station will offer a promising alternative, and China will be the only country with a permanent space station.

China National Space Administration (CNSA) held a ceremony to recognize and thank the ESA and four countries, namely the Netherlands, Germany, Saudi Arabia and Sweden, for their participation in the Chang'e-4 lunar exploration to the far side of the moon which will be launched in 2018.

Liu Jizhong, director of the CNSA's China Lunar Exploration and Space Engineering Center said that later this year China plans to send the Chang'e-5 lunar probe to the moon to collect samples, marking the third step in its lunar program.

He said that China is looking to offer cooperation opportunities in investigating the lunar south pole region, setting up an international moon village and carrying out experiments including energy supply.

Liu added that in accordance with the principle of "openness and cooperation, sharing both risks and achievements," China will create an open platform for cooperation enabling other countries to participate.

COOPERATION UNDERWAY

China has always advocated win-win cooperation between nations and it introduced the notion of building a community of shared destiny in late 2012.

To create peaceful cooperation in outer space, China has signed agreements with over 30 countries and organizations, including Russia, Kazakhstan, Germany, France, the ESA and UNOOSA.

China's contribution to the international space industry has included helping over 20 countries and regions with 50 launches, and exporting satellites to nine countries.

Scientific innovation was a central topic at the recent Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, with China proposing a Belt and Road Science, Technology and Innovation Cooperation Action Plan.

China also voiced its willingness to carry out more projects with Belt and Road countries in various fields, including satellite launches, maritime navigation and archaeological studies to enable more countries to benefit.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 14:23:10|Editor: An

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TAIPEI, June 7 (Xinhua) - Twelve people were injured in a gas explosion at a food processing factory in Taiwan's New Taipei City Wednesday morning, according to the local fire department.

The explosion ripped through the factory at around 11:27 a.m., with five men and seven women hospitalized.

More than 140 firefighters and 53 emergency vehicles arrived at the scene.

Preliminary investigation showed the explosion was caused by a gas leak.

Further investigation is underway.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 14:23:11|Editor: Hou Qiang

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MOSCOW, June 7 (Xinhua) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has been constantly looking for an external enemy to justify its existence, the RIA Novosti news agency reported Wednesday.

The Eastern Bloc does not exist any more, the Soviet Union neither, so why NATO is still there, Putin said in a recent interview with American director Oliver Stone.

"I have an impression that in order to justify its existence, NATO needs an external enemy. Thus, there is a constant search for an enemy or some provocations," he said.

The Russian president said that he has not lost hope for changes in Russian-U.S. relations.

Earlier, at the plenary session of the "Business Dialogue between Russia and the United States" at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Putin said Russia is going to continue to engage in dialogue with the new U.S. administration, but political will and mutual effort are needed for any talks to succeed.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 14:23:12|Editor: Hou Qiang

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NEW DELHI, June 7 (Xinhua) -- The death toll of farmers during violent agitation in central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh has risen to six, India's official broadcaster - All India Radio (AIR) said Wednesday.

Two farmers wounded during the incident have been hospitalized.

The killings took place on Tuesday at Pipaliamandi area in Mandsaur district, about 325 km west of Bhopal, the capital city of Madhya Pradesh.

"Farmers agitation took violent turn in Mandsour district yesterday as six farmers died and two others were wounded in firing in Pipaliamandia of Mandsaur," the broadcaster said.

The farmers demanding better prices for their produce had assembled to intensify their agitation, which according to officials, turned violent. The protesting farmers set ablaze several vehicles and resorted to stone throwing, officials said.

While farmers blamed police for the firing, local authorities claimed "miscreants" opened fire on farmers.

Authorities have made elaborate security arrangements fearing escalation of situation in the wake of the killings and shutdown called by farmers' organisations and opposition parties.

A curfew has been put in place to prevent further protests.

Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh Shivraj Singh Chouhan announced an increased compensation of 155,138 U.S. dollars and a government job for the families who lost their kin in Tuesday's firing incident. The wounded would also get a compensation of 7,750 U.S. dollars, besides free treatment at government hospital.

"Those who lost life are our own and belong to our families," Chouhan said. "I am deeply pained by the turn of events today and stand by families in this hour of grief. I appeal to my fellow brothers and farmers to maintain peace."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 15:08:25|Editor: xuxin

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SRINAGAR, Indian-controlled Kashmir, June 7 (Xinhua) -- A teenager was killed after a bullet hit him during a search operation launched by government forces in restive Indian-controlled Kashmir, officials said Wednesday.

The 18-year-old boy Adil Farooq was killed late Tuesday evening at Ganawpora village of Shopian district, about 56 km south of Srinagar city, the summer capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir.

Police said a joint contingent of paramilitary and army had gone to the village to nab militants present there.

"Security forces cordoned off some houses on a specific input regarding the presence of militants at Ganawpora in Shopian district this evening. During the search operation an unruly mob started heavy stone pelting on the forces and also a brief exchange of fire took place," a police spokesman said.

"One person from Ganawpora was brought to district hospital Shopian with bullet wound and he subsequently succumbed."

According to villagers, Farooq was a Class 12 student.

Locals said Farooq was wounded when government forces opened fire on them.

Reports said no sooner the forces were cordoning the village, people took to streets and obstruct their operation against militants.

Farooq's killing triggered protests in the area, which continued until late in night.

Authorities fearing clashes in the region blocked internet services on the mobile phones in a bid to prevent youth from organising protests.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 15:23:31|Editor: xuxin

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SEOUL, June 7 (Xinhua) -- South Korean Foreign Minister nominee Kang Kyung-wha said Wednesday that she will take a dual approach of sanctions and dialogue towards the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) if she takes office.

Kang made the remarks in the parliamentary confirmation hearing for her nomination as the country's first female foreign minister. The top diplomat post does not require a parliamentary approval, though the nominee is needed to go through the hearing.

She said in her opening remarks that the DPRK's nuclear program is an issue directly relevant to survival of South Korean people, upon which top priority should be placed for the peaceful Korean Peninsula.

While sternly dealing with the DPRK's further provocations, South Korea would actively participate in international cooperation through UN Security Council resolutions to block Pyongyang from advancing its nuclear and missile capability and deterring further provocations, Kang said.

The top South Korean diplomat nominee, however, said sanctions and pressure toward Pyongyang should not be the ends themselves but the means to denuclearize the DPRK, vowing to make concerted efforts to resume talks with the DPRK for the denuclearization.

Asked about the resumption of the closed-down inter-Korean factory park, Kang said discussions will be required with UN Security Council member countries when actively considering the resumption.

She proposed two conditions for the active consideration, including the progress in denuclearization and changes in the atmosphere of the international community toward the DPRK.

The Kaesong Industrial Complex in the DPRK's border town of Kaesong, just north of the inter-Korean land border, was shut down by the previous South Korean government following Pyongyang's fourth nuclear test in January last year. At the time, it was the last remaining inter-Korean economic cooperation project.

Kang said the resumed operation of the Kaesong factory park could become the first step toward an inter-Korean economic cooperation by easing tensions and building trust between the two sides, though she noted that the situations have got different from the time when it was first launched.

Touching on the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system, Kang said she would consider sending senior-level delegates to China.

Kang told the confirmation hearing that communications between South Korea and China should be maintained through a variety of channels to narrow differences in how to recognize the THAAD issue.

Since President Moon Jae-in took office on May 10, Kang said, the special envoys of South Korea were dispatched to China, while leaders of the two countries held a telephone conversation.

The FM nominee said the THAAD deployment lacked public discussions and failed to win the public consensus, reiterating the new government's stance that the THAAD installation requires parliamentary discussions.

In her earlier opening remarks, Kang pledged to develop the bilateral strategic cooperative partnership with China by restoring trust and strengthening sincere communications between the two countries.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 15:28:37|Editor: Zhang Dongmiao

Cai Mingzhao (2nd R, front), president of Xinhua News Agency, and other delegates visit the BRICS Media Joint Photography Exhibition at the National Museum of China in Beijing, capital of China, June 7, 2017. The exhibition, hosted by Xinhua News Agency and kicking off here on Wednesday, displays more than 170 photos. (Xinhua/Wang Ye)

BEIJING, June 7 (Xinhua) -- The BRICS Media Joint Photo Exhibition opened Wednesday at the National Museum of China in Beijing to show the development and cooperation of BRICS.

As part of the two-day BRICS Media Forum starting Wednesday, the exhibition themed "Golden BRICS shining into the future" consists of four parts: BRICS leader meetings, landscapes, cultures and lives, as well as cooperation and exchanges.

The exhibition, hosted by Xinhua News Agency, displays more than 170 photos spanning over half a century, selected by media exhibitors and from Xinhua's China Photo Archive.

"As the BRICS cooperation enters a second decade, the launch of today's photo exhibition ... is our tribute to the decade-long BRICS cooperation, and symbolizes our best wishes for its future," said Cai Mingzhao, executive president of the BRICS Media Forum and president of Xinhua News Agency.

"As information providers and cultural-exchange envoys, BRICS media organizations have stepped up cooperation to expand bilateral and multilateral exchanges, disseminate information, and strengthen friendship, and served as bridges in BRICS cooperation," Cai said. "As we review history and look forward to the future of BRICS cooperation, we will understand better the convergence and integration of BRICS civilizations, and gain more confidence in our future cooperation and common development."

It is a good opportunity to attend the event as it will contribute to strengthening the partnership between news agencies, said Motshwari Mofokeng, a photographer of Independent Media in South Africa. One of his displayed photos features a heavy traffic jam in Durban, South Africa.

The BRICS Media Forum has attracted leaders of 27 media groups from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, including Correio Braziliense, Russia Today TV, the Hindu, China Daily and Independent Media.

The attendees will discuss topics including multimedia innovation for media development, as well as media outlet duties and social responsibility.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 15:33:39|Editor: xuxin

Photo taken on May 31, 2017 shows Iranian lawmakers attend Iranian Majlis (parliament) in Tehran, Iran. Shooting inside the Majlis (parliament) of Iran on Wednesday morning has led to death of at least one security guard and the injury of eight others. In a separate shooting incident, at least two people were injured at the mausoleum of late founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in the south of the capital Tehran. (Xinhua/Ahmad Halabisaz)

TEHRAN, June 7 (Xinhua) -- Shooting inside the Majlis (parliament) of Iran on Wednesday morning has led to death of at least one security guard and the injury of eight others, local media reported.

Four armed people entered the Majlis on Wednesday morning and started shooting, Akbar Ranjbarzadeh, the lawmaker, told state IRIB TV.

The assailants are still inside the Majlis and have entered the offices of some lawmakers, Ranjbarzadeh was quoted as saying.

The entrance and the exit doors of the Majlis have been closed and the security guards have the situation under control, the report said.

Several ambulances have been dispatched to the area to help the wounded people.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 15:38:50|Editor: xuxin

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TEHRAN, June 7 (Xinhua) -- At least two people were injured in a shooting attack at the mausoleum of late founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in the south of the Iranian capital Tehran on Wednesday, official IRNA news agency reported.

The assailant has blasted his explosive belt after shooting, the report said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers a speech during a ceremony marking the 50th anniversary of the Six Day War at the Latrun Armoured Corps Memorial Site and Museum, between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, on June 5 2017. (Xinhua/AFP Photo)

JERUSALEM, June 7 (Xinhua) -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Tuesday to "forever" maintain control of the Golan Heights, which was captured during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, or the Six Day War.

"I came to tell you that the Golan Heights will always remain under Israeli sovereignty. We will never leave the Golan Heights. It is ours," the right-wing leader stated at a youth conference of the Ministry for the Development of the Negev and the Galilee to mark the 50th anniversary of the war.

Despite the pledge, the international community, including its closest ally the United States, has never recognized Israeli sovereignty in the Golan Heights.

Israel has tried all means, though in vain, to legitimize its control over Syria's territory.

Last year, on the 49th anniversary of the war, Netanyahu made identical declarations about how Israel views the Golan Heights.

"The Golan Heights will forever remain in Israel's hands. Israel will never come down from the Golan Heights," Netanyahu told a special cabinet meeting last year.

Soon after the war, the first batch of Israelis who moved to the Golan Heights gradually established the first kibbutz there called Merom Golan (the height of the Golan).

Currently, the Golan Heights is home to 50,000 people, among which more than half are Israelis, who have made quite a life there, taking care of apple and cherry orchards and producing award-winning Israeli wines.

However, neighboring countries, especially Palestinians, sniff at Israel, arguing prosperity on occupied land is not worthy of boasting.

Internationally, Israel has long argued that it must maintain the territory for security reasons and hoped the Trump administration could take a clear stance alongside Israel.

During Netanyahu's three-day visit to Washington in February, Israel asked the United States to recognize its sovereignty over the Golan Heights.

While Israel is rejoiced to mark the 50th anniversary of the Six Day War, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement on Monday that Israel still occupies the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Syria's Golan Heights and the occupation "has imposed a heavy humanitarian and development burden" on Palestinians.

Guterres, while saying the 1967 Arab-Israeli war has resulted in generations of Palestinians living in refugee camps with little hope, urged Israelis and Palestinians to resume direct talks on a two-state solution that would end Israel's occupation
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 16:39:25|Editor: xuxin

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COLOMBO, June 7 (Xinhua) -- The Sri Lankan government said on Wednesday that the police were continuing search operations to hunt for a controversial Buddhist monk wanted for making alleged hate speeches and attacks against the minorities in the island country.

Cabinet spokesperson Rajitha Senaratne said according to information, the General Secretary of the Bodu Bala Sena, Galagodaatte Gnanasara Thero, was in the country but was still in hiding.

"I do not know why there is a delay but police are continuing to search for him," Senaratne said.

He added that there was an arrest warrant against the monk.

Gnanasara Thero's party is accused of instigating a recent wave of hate attacks against the country's Muslim minority.

"He is wanted in connection with obstruction of justice, hate speech and several other crimes," the police said in a statement recently.

His party, the BBS, said Gnanasara had gone into hiding fearing he could be assassinated.

"The monk is at a secret location," BBS spokesman Dilantha Vithanage told reporters in Colombo last week.

"We have told him not to venture out as he could be assassinated after he is arrested."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 16:44:35|Editor: Zhang Dongmiao

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BEIJING, June 7 (Xinhua) -- China has congratulated Sher Bahadur Deuba on his election as prime minister of Nepal and is looking forward to work with the new government to enhance China-Nepal ties, a spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry said Wednesday.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has sent a congratulatory message to Deuba, spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a routine press briefing.

"As a friendly neighbor of Nepal, China sincerely hopes Nepal will make new achievements on national unity, social stability and economic development," Hua said. "China is willing to make joint efforts with the new government of Nepal to push forward bilateral friendship and mutual beneficial cooperation."

Deuba, 70, president of the Nepali Congress, was elected as the 40th prime minister of Nepal Tuesday.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 16:44:37|Editor: Zhang Dongmiao

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Another important item on my agenda in Kazakhstan is to attend the SCO annual summit in Astana. This year marks the 15th anniversary of the SCO Charter and the 10th anniversary of the Treaty on Long-Term Good-Neighborliness, Friendship and Cooperation of the SCO Member States. Over the years, the SCO member states have been firmly committed to the purposes and principles enshrined in the two important documents. We have never failed to honor and promote the "Shanghai Spirit" featuring mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality, consultation, respect for diverse civilizations and pursuit of common development. As a result, the mutual trust among the SCO member states is stronger and solid progress has been made in SCO cooperation in all areas. All this has contributed significantly to regional stability and prosperity.

The SCO finds security cooperation extremely important and has put in place cooperation mechanisms on combating terrorism, separatism, extremism, drugs and transnational crimes. The member states have held joint counter-terrorism drills on a regular basis, and worked actively to address hotspot issues. All these efforts have helped to maintain regional security and stability.

The SCO member states have implemented in earnest the Programme of Multilateral Trade and Economic Cooperation of the SCO Member States and the Development Strategy of the SCO Until 2025, and steadily moved forward cooperation in such areas as trade, investment, connectivity, energy, finance and agriculture. The SCO has also worked actively to deepen member states' exchanges in culture, education, youth, health, science and technology, environmental protection, tourism and sports. Such endeavors have helped to boost economic and social development in the member states and enhance friendship and cooperation.

As the rotating chair of the SCO, Kazakhstan has contributed significantly to the organization and its development. At the upcoming Astana summit, heads of the member states will make a number of important decisions on deepening cooperation in all fields and completing the organization's first membership expansion. These decisions will reinforce the organization's position for future development. China will succeed Kazakhstan as the rotating chair upon conclusion of this summit. China stands ready to work with Kazakhstan and other member states and build on the Astana summit to further strengthen the organization so that it will deliver more tangible benefits to people in this region.

The Expo 2017 Astana, the first of its kind in a Central Asian country, will be opening soon. Its theme "Future Energy" is very much in line with global trend toward a green, healthy and sustainable economic growth and highly compatible with China's initiative on a green Silk Road.

China supports Kazakhstan in hosting a successful and distinctive Expo. The China Pavilion will showcase state-of-the-art technologies such as an "artificial minisun" using nuclear fusion and a high-speed rail cockpit simulator. Our pavilion aims to promote a green, low-carbon, circular and sustainable way of life and production, and demonstrate China's vision on green development. I wish the Astana Expo a complete success!

Under President Nazarbayev's outstanding leadership, Kazakhstan has maintained social harmony and stability and achieved rapid economic growth since its independence. The Kazakh people are living better and happier lives. Thanks to the steady growth of its aggregate national strength, Kazakhstan now ranks among the world's 50 most competitive countries, creating the "Kazakhstan miracle."

Going all out in its third modernization drive, Kazakhstan is pressing ahead with its new economic policy of the "Nurly Zhol," the "Strategy-2050" and its social modernization. The Kazakh people are making great strides towards the "Kazakh dream" of national renewal and prosperity. The Chinese people are also making unremitting efforts to achieve the country's "two centenary goals" (i.e., to complete the building of a moderately prosperous society in all respects when the Communist Party of China celebrates its centenary and turn China into a modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced and harmonious when the People's Republic of China marks its centennial) and realize the Chinese dream of great national rejuvenation. The Kazakh and Chinese people, closely bound by our shared aspirations, are joining hands to make their dreams a reality.

I do believe that as long as we stay true to our goals and work closely together, the China-Kazakhstan relations will fly high toward our shared aspirations and usher in an even better future!
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 16:49:40|Editor: Zhang Dongmiao

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BEIJING, June 7 (Xinhua) -- California is looking to expand cooperation with China in clean energy, especially in the fields of battery technology and zero-emission vehicles, said California Governor Jerry Brown Tuesday.

"China has many battery plants, and that brings down the costs of batteries. That would help California achieve the penetration of zero-emission vehicles," Brown told reporters on the sidelines of the ongoing eighth Clean Energy Ministerial and the Second Mission Innovation Ministerial in Beijing.

California will work with Chinese government officials and businesses to reach its goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 40 percent below 1990 levels, Brown said.

It also has goals that are consistent with, or even more aggressive than the Paris agreement on climate change, and achievement of such goals require collaboration with China, he said.

"We can only meet those [goals] if the technology continues improving, and to a significant degree, various businesses and entities in China will be part of that technological innovation. And for that I'm very grateful," Brown said.

On Tuesday, Brown signed an agreement on behalf of California with China's Ministry of Science and Technology, expanding cooperation on the advancement of low-carbon, renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies such as zero-emission vehicles, energy storage, grid modernization and low-carbon urban development, according to a statement released on the governor's office website.

In the past few days, Brown also signed clean energy agreements with China's Sichuan and Jiangsu provinces, respectively, hoping to bolster regional climate partnerships with China.

Under the agreements, California and Jiangsu will expand collaboration on greenhouse gas emission and air pollution reduction programs, including emissions trading systems. The pact with Sichuan will provide incubator space and market access for California clean energy and technology companies in the province, according to the statement.

Brown's visit to China came shortly after U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris agreement, a landmark global pact to fight climate change.

Brown said that while the decision will slow down the economic transition of the United States, he expected the country to rejoin the global effort to combat climate change.

While the United States stepped back from its commitment, China has stayed firm.

In response to Trump's decision, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said China would remain committed to upholding and promoting global governance on climate change and take an active part in the multilateral process.

Besides cooperation with China in clean technology, Brown also expressed his interest in China's Belt and Road Initiative, and said California was open to cooperation opportunities in fields including water, electricity, and railways.

While recognizing China's progress in combating climate change, Brown called for more global concerted efforts on the issue.

"We have a long way to go, but we are a lot further than we would have thought five years ago, and we'll accelerate. We'll accelerate in large part because China and United States, and California in particular, are collaborating," he said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 16:49:43|Editor: xuxin

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TEHRAN, June 7 (Xinhua) -- One of the attackers blew himself up inside Iran's parliament complex after he was caught up, state-run IRIB TV reported on Wednesday.

Three militants broke into the Majlis (parliament) in the capital of Tehran in the morning and four security guards were injured during the exchange of fire, IRIB said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 16:54:48|Editor: xuxin

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ISLAMABAD, June 7 (Xinhua) -- Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will participate in the forthcoming 17th Meeting of Heads of State Council of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Astana, Kazakhstan, the Foreign Ministry said Wednesday.

Pakistan will become a full member of SCO at the Astana summit, a Foreign Ministry statement said.

Pakistan has been a SCO observer since 2005.

On the sidelines of the SCO summit, Sharif will hold a number of bilateral meetings with other participating leaders, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

"Pakistan fully subscribes to the charter of SCO and the 'Shanghai Spirit'. As an Observer, we have been actively participating in the activities of the organization."

It said Pakistan shares with SCO and its member states deep-rooted historical and cultural links, as well as strong economic and strategic complementarities.

"Our interests converge across a wide range of areas. SCO will help us underscore our interest in regional peace, stability and development and our support for regional cooperation against terrorism and extremism." the statement said.

SCO, established in 2001, is a regional political, economic and security organization that groups China, kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan as full members.

India and Pakistan's SCO accession procedures started in 2015. The two signed the SCO Memorandum of Obligations in June 2016, thereby kick-starting the formal process of joining SCO as full members. SCO has a number of observers and dialogue partners.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 16:54:50|Editor: xuxin

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TEHRAN, June 7 (Xinhua) -- At least one was killed and four pilgrims were injured in a shooting attack at the mausoleum of late founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in the south of the Iranian capital Tehran on Wednesday. State IRIB TV reported.

Three assailants were involved in the attack. One of the attackers blasted his explosive belt after shooting, the report said.

The other was killed by the security guards and the third one, a girl, was arrested after sustaining injuries, IRIB TV said.

The security guards have the situation under control and are busy nullifying an explosive belt, it added.

In another attack on Iran's Majlis (parliament) on Wednesday morning, at least one security was killed and eight others were injured.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 16:54:52|Editor: xuxin

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TOKYO, June 7 (Xinhua) -- A committee of the upper house of Japan's parliament on Wednesday passed a bill to allow Japan's Emperor Akihito to step down and pass his duties over to Crown Prince Naruhito.

The law designed specifically for Emperor Akihito is due to be enacted at an upper house plenary session this Friday, bringing Japan one step closer to its first imperial abdication in around 200 years.

A special resolution was adopted by the committee and attached to the bill on Friday, and while non binding, the resolution says the government will "consider various issues to secure stable imperial succession, including creating female branches."

The bill was written with only the current emperor in mind, as the government apparently did not want to set a precedent for future emperors.

The current Imperial House Law only allows posthumous succession to the Chrysanthemum Throne and has no clauses for emperors abdicating.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, the government's top spokesperson, however, who has been chairing parliamentary deliberations over the bill, said previously that the bill could indeed set a precedent for abdications by future emperors.

He also said on Wednesday that the government will now study the declining numbers of imperial family members and how their duties should be carried out keeping in mind the public's expectations.

Debate is now expected to ensue in parliament regarding the recognition of the branches of female members of the imperial family who marry commoners.

The abdication bill which cleared the lower house last week states that the public understand and sympathize with the wishes of the Emperor and says that his abdication should come within 3 years of the announcement of the law.

In terms of timing for Emperor Akihito's abdication, the government has been considering December 2018 as the possible timing for the move, as this is when the emperor will turn 85 years old.

The nation's era name (gengo) which lasts for as long as the emperor is on the throne, will change at the beginning of 2019.

Last August, Emperor Akihito made a rare public televised address, during which he suggested he wanted to step down because his advancing age and weakening health were making it difficult for him to carry out his official duties to the best of his ability.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 17:09:59|Editor: Zhang Dongmiao

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KUALA LUMPUR, June 7 (Xinhua) -- China Galaxy Securities' recent tie-up with CIMB in the latter's stockbroking business is a win-win move for both parties, Malaysia's MIDF Research said on Wednesday.

CIMB is Malaysia's second largest banking group and the fifth largest in Southeast Asia.

It will give an opportunity for CIMB to have a toehold in the Chinese market, while China Galaxy Securities will benefit from CIMB's presence in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), according to the MIDF Research.

The opportunity includes facilitating clients doing business in China, especially with the acceleration of the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative, capitalizing on China-outbound merger and acquisitions, China-ASEAN cross-border investments and infrastructure funding.

China Galaxy Securities and CIMB announced on Tuesday that they had signed a share purchase agreement to formalize their strategic partnership across CIMB's stockbroking business -- CIMB Securities International (CSI).

CSI is comprised of institutional and retail brokerage, equities research and associated securities businesses across Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong, India, United Kingdom and the United States.

CIMB's chairman Nazir Razak also told Xinhua earlier that he sees it as a win-win deal because stockbroking has become a low-margin, large-scale business and one cannot get real scale without the Chinese market. Enditem
This file photo taken on May 21, 2017 shows US President Donald Trump (R) speaks with Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani, during a bilateral meeting at a hotel in the Saudi capital Riyadh. (Xinhua/AFP Photo)

RIYADH, June 7 (Xinhua) -- Freezing Qatar membership in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and Arab League is under discussion, Al Sharq Al Awsat local newspaper reported on Wednesday.

The negotiations are taking place as response of the severing of political ties with Qatar by a number of countries, led by Saudi Arabia to pressure the rich Gulf state to stop interfering in the internal affairs of countries and supporting armed and terrorist groups.

Gulf sources confirmed to the newspaper that the freezing of membership will take place if Qatar continues with its terrorism supporting approach, in addition to the suspension of its membership in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

Meanwhile, the sources also highlighted that the Saudi foreign ministry held a meeting on Tuesday with a number of Asian Ambassadors in Riyadh to explain the reason of the recent conflicts with Qatar and the Qatari practices that are risking the national security of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf and Arab states.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 17:35:18|Editor: Zhang Dongmiao

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SYDNEY, June 7 (Xinhua) -- Selling Australia as a tourist destination is not exactly difficult, the stunning golden beaches, pristine coral reefs and world renowned architecture of Sydney's iconic landmarks (not to mention the koalas!), make the land down under a place any traveller would want to visit.

But a new international visitor survey, released by Tourism Australia on Wednesday, has revealed that rural Australia, far from Sydney Harbour, the Great Barrier Reef or Melbourne's famous cafes, is also enjoying record numbers of travellers thanks to a surge in Chinese sightseers.

Overall visitors from China to Australia increased by 12 percent to 1.1 million, from the year to March, spending 9 percent more and bringing 9.7 billion Australian dollars (7.3 billion U.S. dollars) to the economy.

New South Wales State (NSW) Minister for Tourism, Adam Marshall, said that "China continues to lead NSW's tourism growth."

"For the first time, the number of visitors from China exceeded 700,000 for the year and they spent almost three billion Australian dollars (2.3 billion U.S. dollars) while here."

"These remarkable results are underpinned by our strategic marketing and industry partnerships, combined with our hosting of major world-class events, such as Vivid Sydney, which are delivering record results for NSW."

In the State of Queensland, "the latest data shows Chinese visitors increased 6.7 per cent to 472,000 over the past 12 months, and they injected $1 billion into our economy," Queensland State Tourism Minister Kate Jones said.

"China remains our largest international market in terms of overnight visitor expenditure."

"We know Chinese visitors love Queensland and the good news is they're continuing to spend up big while they're here."

The increase of travellers has been no accident; earlier in the year, leaders of both countries launched the the China-Australia Year of Tourism, in order to "bring our countries closer together and provide more opportunities for further engagement at every level - economic, commercial, social, and academic," Australian Trade Minister Steven Ciobo said at the launch.

Of course as a result of this, Australia's curiosity about the mysterious land of China has also risen dramatically and is tipped to increase even further following a campaign by the Chinese National Tourist Office.

In April, a fleet of "panda vans," were launched, aimed at engaging Australians, in hundreds of towns across the country, to visit China.

The joint campaign seems to prove that panda bears and koala bears, have a great deal of fascination and respect for one and other.

So much so, the animals are set to meet for the first time when the panda van tour reaches Adelaide Zoo, next month.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 17:40:28|Editor: xuxin

Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang (R) shakes hand with his Czech counterpart Milos Zeman in Hanoi, Vietnam, on June 7, 2017. Vietnam and the Czech Republic agreed here Wednesday to bolster bilateral cooperative relations in the sectors of politics, trade, investment, transport, and crime prevention and fight. (Xinhua/VNA)

HANOI, June 7 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam and the Czech Republish agreed here Wednesday to bolster bilateral cooperative relations in the sectors of politics, trade, investment, transport, and crime prevention and fight.

In their talks, Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang and his Czech counterpart Milos Zeman also reached consensus on exchanging delegations, especially high-ranking ones, consulting each other about issues of mutual concerns, and closely coordinating both at international and regional forums, Vietnam News Agency reported.

Vietnam will create more favorable conditions for Czech firms to invest in such fields as energy, environment, supporting industry, infrastructure, machine production, medical equipment and foodstuff processing, Quang said.

Zeman said Czech and Vietnam will launch a direct air route between Prague and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam will waive visas for Czech visitors, and Czech will open a general consulate in Ho Chi Minh City.

After their talks, the two presidents witnessed the signing of two agreements on transferring convicts and cooperation to prevent and combat criminals.


Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 17:55:40|Editor: xuxin

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ADDIS ABABA, June 7 (Xinhua) -- 7.8 million people in Ethiopia need food assistance due to a prolonged drought worsened by the El-Nino weather condition, said a government minister on Wednesday.

Ethiopian communications minister Negeri Lencho said in a statement that the government has set aside 50 million U.S. dollars for drought relief.

In the beginning of the year, the Ethiopian government had put the number of people in need of food aid in the country at 5.6 million but later revised it to 7.2 million.

"The Ethiopian government had anticipated the drought, and as such is providing water and food to people, school feeding program to school students and animal feed to livestock," says Lencho.

While praising the response from international donors, he admitted that other international crises are having some impact on the amount of aid the Ethiopian government is receiving for drought relief.

"Ethiopian economic growth has meant that we have better internal resources to cope with the drought, though if the crisis aggravates we will increase the amount of food supplies and monetary assistance," said Lencho.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 17:55:41|Editor: xuxin

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XI'AN, June 7 (Xinhua) -- A man has been confirmed infected with the H7N9 bird flu virus, following the infection of his wife in northwest China's Shaanxi Province, local health authorities said Wednesday.` The man surnamed Guo, 67, is a farmer in neighboring Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. He tested positive for the virus Tuesday in Yulin city, after days of high fever and coughing at his hometown nearby, the city's disease control center said in a statement.

It is the second H7N9 human infection case in the city, the first being his 62-year-old wife, surnamed Yang, who was confirmed with the virus on May 31.

Both had been exposed themselves to dead poultry before showing symptoms, the statement said.

The couple are being treated in a local hospital in Yulin.

H7N9 is a bird flu strain first reported to have infected humans in China in March 2013.

The World Health Organization has said there is no evidence H7N9 is passed from person to person.
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (2nd L), Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani (2nd R) and Iran's President Hassan Rouhani attend a meeting with Iranian officials and ambassadors of Islamic countries, in Tehran, Iran, April 25, 2017. (Xinhua/Reuters Photo)

TEHRAN, June 7 (Xinhua) -- Shooting inside the Majlis (parliament) of Iran on Wednesday morning has led to death of at least eight people, state IRIB TV reported.

In the attack, at least 10 others were injured who have been taken to the hospitals.

Four armed people entered the Majlis on Wednesday morning and started shooting, Akbar Ranjbarzadeh, the lawmaker, told state IRIB TV.

The assailants are still inside the Majlis and have entered the offices of some lawmakers, Ranjbarzadeh was quoted as saying.

The assailants have taken some hostages inside the Majlis, official IRNA news agency said.

One of the attackers blasted his explosive belt on the fourth floor of the Majlis, IRIB TV said but did not elaborate.

Several ambulances and firefighting equipment have been dispatched to the area to help the wounded people.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 18:20:58|Editor: xuxin

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BEIJING, June 7 (Xinhua) -- China will allocate 553 million yuan (about 81.5 million U.S. dollars) in 2017 to support the scrapping of entrance fees for selected science museums, the Ministry of Finance said Wednesday.

The money will ensure entry into 138 selected science museums is free of charge.

China started to support science museums opening their doors for free in 2015.

From 2015 to 2016, China allocated a total of 897 million yuan to 123 selected science museums to scrap entrance fees.

The China Association for Science and Technology has said it hopes that one day all science museums will be free.

However, popular destinations such as China Science and Technology Museum will not be free, as there is concern that already crowded museums could not accommodate drastic surges in visitor numbers.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 18:41:16|Editor: Mengjie

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Liu Yunshan (C, front), a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, meets with representatives of media from BRICS countries who are here for the BRICS Media Forum in Beijing, capital of China, June 7, 2017. (Xinhua/Xie Huanchi)

BEIJING, June 7 (Xinhua) -- Senior Communist Party of China (CPC) official Liu Yunshan Wednesday met with representatives of media from BRICS countries who are in Beijing for the BRICS Media Forum.

Liu, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, praised the cooperation among BRICS countries over the past decade, saying that it had significantly boosted global economic growth, improved global governance and promoted the practice of democracy in international relations.

As China hosts the Ninth BRICS Summit in September, Liu said he hoped the member states of BRICS would further gather consensus and promote BRICS cooperation to a new level.

He hoped BRICS media would carry forward the spirit of BRICS, deepen mutually beneficial cooperation, tell good stories of BRICS countries and inject more positive energy into BRICS partnership.

This year's forum, with the theme "Deepening BRICS Media Cooperation, Promoting Fair and Just International Public Opinion," was proposed by Xinhua and jointly organized with mainstream media from Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 18:46:19|Editor: xuxin

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PARIS, June 7 (Xinhua) -- The attacker who wounded a policeman with a hammer outside Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris was put into custody on Wednesday, local media reported.

The suspect, identified as an Algerian doctoral student, was put into custody in a hospital where he received treatment for a gunshot wound, BFMTV news channel reported.

Investigators decided to question him after his health condition improved, it added.

On Tuesday afternoon, the assailant, armed with a hammer and kitchen knives, targeted police officers outside Notre Dame Cathedral and slightly wounded a 22-year-old policeman while shouting "This is for Syria."

The attack was "an isolated act," government spokesman Christophe Castaner told RTL radio on Wednesday.

"It is someone who ... at no time has shown any signs of his radicalization," he said.

According to local reports, the 40-year-old attacker told police he was a "solider of the caliphate," referring to the Islamic State.

Police found a video in which he pledged allegiance to the IS after they raided his studio in Cergy, in the suburbs of Paris.

The anti-terrorism section of Paris prosecutor office has launched an investigation into the incident.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 18:51:22|Editor: xuxin

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TOKYO, June 7 (Xinhua) -- A worker has been found to have been exposed to as much as 22,000 becquerels of radioactivity following an accident at a research facility in Ibaraki Prefecture, northeast of Tokyo, local media said Wednesday.

According to officials from the Japan Atomic Energy Agency, up to 22,000 becquerels of plutonium 239 were found from the lung of a male worker and up to 14,000 becquerels of radioactive materials from the lung of another worker.

The men were conducting an inspection of fuel storage containers when a bag containing a powdered radioactive substance tore open and contaminated the men's gloves and protective clothing on Tuesday at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency's Oarai Research and Development Center.

Five workers at the facility were reportedly exposed to contaminants as a result of the accident, the facility said.

The worker who inhaled at least 22,000 becquerels of plutonium has had his condition described as "grave" by a member of Japan's nuclear watchdog, the Nuclear Regulation Authority. The man is in his 50s.

The workers have yet to complain of health issues, but an official at the facility said that future health-related problems were a high possibility and those most affected were likely suffering from internal exposure to radiation.

While the workers were wearing protective clothing including gloves and masks, it is believed that the highly toxic material could have been inhaled through holes in the masks and through gaps between the masks and the workers' faces.

Along with the others who were contaminated, the male worker who inhaled 22,000 becquerels of plutonium 239 was transported to the National Institute of Radiological Sciences in Chiba Prefecture near Tokyo for further investigations.

They were all reportedly given medicine to help their bodies discharge the radioactive materials.

The Japan Atomic Energy Agency had initially misreported the severity of the accident by saying that at the time just 24 becquerels had been found in the nasal passages of three of the workers.

When checked by a different machine, the science ministry confirmed that the maximum level of 22,000 becquerels had been detected in one of the workers.

According to Japan's public broadcaster NHK, Executive Officer of the National Institutes for Quantum and Radiological Science and Technology Makoto Akashi said that he has never heard of 22,000 becquerels being detected in a human body in Japan.

He said the figure is high and the impact on the worker's health will be dependent on the exact type of nuclide that was inhaled in the accident.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 19:01:29|Editor: MJ

Prime Minister of Nepal Sher Bahadur Deuba (2nd L) attends the oath ceremony at the President's office in Kathmandu, Nepal, June 7, 2017. Veteran Nepali politician Sher Bahadur Deuba was sworn-in as Nepal's 40th prime minister on Wednesday, a day after he was elected in the Parliament with the support of nearly two-thirds of the members of the 593-strong Parliament. (Xinhua/Sunil Sharma)

KATHMANDU, June 7 (Xinhua)-- Veteran Nepali politician Sher Bahadur Deuba was sworn-in as Nepal's 40th prime minister on Wednesday, a day after he was elected in the Parliament with the support of nearly two-thirds of the members of the 593-strong Parliament.

This is the the fourth time Deuba became the head of the government in the Himalayan nation. Deuba is also the president of Nepali Congress Party, the largest party in the Parliament.

Deuba, 70, was administered oath of office and secrecy by Nepali President Bidya Devi Bhandari here on Wednesday. He assumed office at the Singhdurbar Secretariat later in the day.

The new development has come following the resignation of Pushpa Kamal Dahal on May 24, who served as the premier of Nepal since August 4 last year.

Newly elected Prime Minister Deuba has formed a small cabinet incorporating three deputy prime ministers and four ministers on Wednesday.

According to the President's Office, Bijaya Kumar Gachhchadar, Krishna Bahadur Mahara and Gopal Man Shrestha were appointed the deputy prime ministers.

Gachhchadar is the minister for federal affairs and local development, Mahara became the minister for foreign affairs while Shrestha will be in-charge of education in the Deuba-led Cabinet.

Janardan Sharma was appointed as the home minister and Gyanendra Bahadur Karki as the finance minister of Nepal respectively.

Farmullaha Mansoor became the labor minister while Prabhu Shah was appointed as the minister without portfolio.

Deuba was the sole candidate in the election for the post of prime minister as the main opposition Communist Party of Nepal (UML) and other parties did not contest the election held on Tuesday.

Dahal garned 388 votes while 170 votes were cast against his candidacy. A total of 558 were cast and Deuba needed 297 votes to prove his majority.

Deuba told local media that his top priorities would be holding second round of local body elections on June 28 at any cost and implement the new constitution promulgated in September 2015.

In terms of foreign affairs conduct, the newly elected prime minister said his government would focus on maintaining good relations with neighboring countries India and China.

Deuba served as the prime minister from 1995-1997, 2001-2002 and 2004-2005. Deuba was ousted by then King Gyanendra Shah in 2005 for failing to hold elections and to bring the then Maoist rebels to the negotiating table.

Deuba was born into a middle class family in 1946 from Dadheldhura District of Nepal, some 500 kilometers west of Capital City Kathmandu.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 19:11:38|Editor: Yurou Liang

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BEIJING, June 7 (Xinhua) -- Apple on Wednesday announced the biggest clean energy commitment it has received from its suppliers, which comes from U.S. manufacturer Jabil Circuit Inc with facilities in China.

Seven of Apple's suppliers had previously committed to 100 percent renewable energy use, most of them Chinese manufacturers. "We see real momentum here. Jabil has already achieved 67 percent renewable energy for its Apple production, so the work they are doing now is really advancing the green transition in China," Lisa Jackson, vice president of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives at Apple, told Xinhua.

Jabil makes a number of components for Apple, primarily the aluminum housing for iPhone, along with plastic, silicone and stainless steel parts, across seven facilities on the Chinese mainland and Taiwan.

According to Jackson, Jabil has installed solar power generation facilities onsite, and it has also entered into power purchase agreements with wind projects. Jabil's commitment represents the single largest commitment by a supplier to date, nearly 1 billion kilowatt-hours per year, and will bring it to 100 percent renewable energy by 2018, according to Apple.

Apple launched its supplier clean energy program in 2015 to help address the emissions in its manufacturing supply chain, which represents 77 percent of its overall carbon footprint. Apple is already powering 96 percent of its global operations with renewable energy, and is at 100 percent in the United States, China and 22 other countries.

However, U.S. President Donald Trump's recent decision to withdraw from the Paris Accord has cast a shadow over the achievements already made by Apple and other businesses in the United States. Jackson told Xinhua that Apple will maintain its clean energy program.

"Businesses have a huge role to play in global problems like climate change. We know climate change is real and it is part of our business responsibility to fight it. The program is good for our planet and it's something our customers expect," said Jackson, who is also the former administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Jackson applauded China's leading role in climate change negotiations and said it is no easy job for China to both honor its commitment of reaching its maximum carbon output by 2030 and maintain robust economic growth.

"China has taken several steps since the Paris Accord was signed in 2015, which makes it clear it is trying to surpass the goals it has set. Clean energy transition in a country that is as large, with as much heavy manufacturing and diversity as China, is a challenge," said Jackson.

It requires thinking of not just generation but also transmission, making sure clean energy can get to the businesses and people who need it, as well as continuing growth, Jackson added.

In many ways, companies like Apple which have suppliers and customers around the globe cannot afford to see national boundaries. They have to work worldwide to effect change. Jackson said support from the Chinese government has helped speed up change.

"Apple has already installed nearly 500 megawatts of wind and solar projects across six Chinese provinces. I don't think you can make that kind of progress in just over a year, without Chinese government support at all levels," said Jackson.

The tech giant will partner with suppliers in China to install more than 2 gigawatts of new clean energy facilities in the coming years, which will prevent over 20 million tonnes of greenhouse gas pollution between now and 2020.

Apple wants all suppliers to be part of its clean energy movement. In April, three Chinese suppliers, Sunwoda, Compal and Biel, joined the clean energy program, doing their part to pave the way for the growth of the renewable energy sector in China.

"They are now environmental green energy leaders, they are committing to a bluer sky and healthier workers and communities in China and also helping to deal with global problem of climate change. We hope our suppliers will work with their own suppliers to achieve the exponential environmental effect in the future," said Jackson.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 19:16:41|Editor: xuxin

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ANKARA, June 7 (Xinhua) -- Turkish police seized over a ton of heroin aboard a ship during an anti-drug operation last week, reported the state-run Anadolu Agency on Wednesday.

The coast guard launched the operation on June 2 after they received information of a large-scale drug trafficking deal in the Mediterranean heading to Turkey.

The navy officers arrested nine Turkish nationals aboard a vessel, carrying a Congolese flag, off the Marmaris district of Mugla's western province, according to police officials.

The police captured 1,071 kgs of heroin hidden in dozens of sacks in the vessel's compartments.

This operation in international waters is the largest single heroin haul so far, stated the report.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 19:36:59|Editor: xuxin

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SOFIA, June 7 (Xinhua) -- Bulgarian authorities here on Wednesday said there had been a steady downward trend in the number of child drownings in recent years thanks to education and prevention programs.

Director of the Water Life Saving Service, Anton Nalbantov, said at a press conference marking water life saving week, that in the four years from 2013 to 2016, the total number of child drownings was 59 while in the 2009 to 2012 period the figure was 81.

In 2016, 14 children drowned, while in 2003, the number was 52, Nalbantov said.

"The decline is encouraging and I am confident that the number will further decrease," he said, citing the number of children in training programs on preventing water accidents.

Meanwhile, Nalbantov said the general statistics showed that 133 people drowned in the Black Sea country last year, and the figures for 2015 and 2014 stood at 125 victims and 129 respectively.

The number of people who were rescued from drowning was 3,974 last year, 3,383 in 2015, and 4,806 in 2014, he added.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 19:52:08|Editor: xuxin

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DHAKA, June 7 (Xinhua) -- Dozens of people have so far fallen ill with suspected anthrax contracted from consuming meat of ill domestic animals while a boy died in Bangladesh's Pabna district, 216 km west of the capital Dhaka, a health official said Wednesday.

"Some 25 residents in Pabna are suspected to be affected with anthrax after they consumed beef from sick cows recently," Doctor Mostafizur Rahman told journalists Wednesday in Pabna.

He said at least three patients with anthrax symptom got admitted to a hospital in Pabna Tuesday, pushing the total number of infected people to 25 in the district since May 27.

He said a 12-year old boy, suspected to be affected with anthrax, died Friday.

The boy reportedly fell sick after a diseased cow was slaughtered in his area on May 27.

The boy had been seriously ill before being transferred to the country's northwestern Rajshahi Medical College and Hospital last week.

Officials say the boy's immediate family members were being monitored by medical workers.

People who slaughtered the cows and processed their meats were also reportedly infected with anthrax.

Officials said they had already collected samples of meat of the diseased animals for tests.

The health official said blood samples of the patients were sent to the country's Institute of Epidemiology Disease Control and Research (IEDCR) in capital Dhaka for testing.

"We've to wait few days to get result of blood samples testing to confirm whether those people are really infected with anthrax or not."

He however said eight of the patients are now undergoing treatment at a hospital while others are taking medicine at homes.

All of them are responding to treatments and now recovering, he added.

The Bangladeshi government on Sept. 5, 2010 announced red-alert across the country, following the spread of cutaneous human anthrax to different districts. The government in October 2010 lifted the red-alert but instructed officials to remain on high alert.

Anthrax is a highly contagious disease, which is usually transmitted on people through contact with meat, blood or skin of an animal that has been infected.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 20:07:33|Editor: Mengjie

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TAIPEI, June 7 (Xinhua) -- Taiwan's exports in May rose 8.4 percent year on year, marking the eighth consecutive monthly increase, according to the island's finance authority Wednesday.

May's exports reached 25.5 billion U.S. dollars, driven by solid demand for machinery, integrated circuits, base metals and related products, among others, the authority said.

Imports in May rose 10.2 percent from a year earlier to 22.07 billion U.S. dollars, the ninth consecutive month of expansion.

Among all major commodities, exports of base metal and related products rose 22.9 percent, machinery rose 19 percent while plastic and rubber products rose 16.2 percent on a yearly basis in May.

Imports of agricultural and industrial materials rose 15.3 percent in May. Consumer goods rose 6.3 percent, while imports of capital equipment dropped 3.9 percent.

The Chinese mainland and Hong Kong remained Taiwan's top trade partner, with exports to both markets reaching 9.94 billion U.S. dollars, or 38.9 percent of the total.

Taiwan's imports from the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong were 4.46 billion U.S. dollars, or 20.2 percent of the total in May.

For the first five months, Taiwan's exports and imports registered a yearly increase of 12.5 percent and 19.4 percent, the highest in almost six years.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 20:12:36|Editor: xuxin

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PHNOM PENH, June 7 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations Human Rights Office for South-East Asia welcomed the orderly conduct of voting in the commune elections in Cambodia on June 4, according its statement on Wednesday.

It expressed hope that the smooth and peaceful poll bodes well for the democratic process ahead of next year's general election, the statement said.

"We are pleased to have witnessed that the violence, military intervention, and arrests that were threatened prior to the elections did not take place and that the people of Cambodia expressed general satisfaction with the process," Katia Chirizzi, the deputy regional representative of the South-East Asia Office in Bangkok, said in the statement.

The statement applauded the fact that in contrast with previous ballots, no voters this time claimed that they had been kept from voting.

"The Regional Office congratulated Cambodians who turned out in exceptionally high numbers, civil society organizations that also mobilized in large numbers to scrutinize the election, all the participating political parties, and the National Election Committee on its preparations," it said.

Held once every five years, the commune elections were to elect 11,572 commune chiefs and councilors for the kingdom's 1,646 communes. Twelve political parties contested in the elections, with the ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP) and the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) being the major contestants.

CPP's President and Cambodian Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen wrote on his Facebook page on Monday that the CPP won the majority, gaining 51.39 percent of the votes in the elections.

While CNRP's spokesman Yim Sovann accepted that the party lost the elections, gaining only 46 percent of the votes.

The National Election Committee has said that the official results will be announced on June 25.

The commune elections are seen as a test for the popularity of political parties ahead of the general election in July 2018.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 20:33:05|Editor: An

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Liu Yunshan (C, front), a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, meets with representatives of media from BRICS countries who are here for the BRICS Media Forum in Beijing, capital of China, June 7, 2017. (Xinhua/Xie Huanchi)

BEIJING, June 7 (Xinhua) -- Media leaders from BRICS countries discussed ways to carry out practical cooperation at a presidium meeting of the BRICS Media Forum in Beijing Wednesday.

Cai Mingzhao, president of Xinhua News Agency and executive president of the BRICS Media Forum, announced at the meeting that Xinhua will invest 1 million U.S. dollars to set up a fund to boost media cooperation among BRICS countries.

The fund will be used to facilitate the implementation of the Action Plan to Strengthen Cooperation Among BRICS Media, which was deliberated at the meeting.

"The action plan will demonstrate our consensus in the following four aspects: to promote strategic partnership among BRICS countries, to build a fairer international communication order, to fulfill media social responsibilities and to expand exchange and cooperation among BRICS media," said Cai, while briefing the meeting.

"The action plan also shows our strong desire to carry on a six-point mission through joint efforts: to strike a balance in international communication, to strengthen media's sense of social responsibility, to promote people-to-people exchanges, to expand scopes of cooperation, to jointly develop BRICS digital media and to provide financial information services," Cai told the meeting.

In a separate development, Liu Yunshan, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, praised the cooperation among BRICS countries over the past decade while meeting with representatives of media from BRICS countries.

Liu said that cooperation under the framework had significantly boosted global economic growth, improved global governance and promoted the practice of democracy in international relations.

He hoped BRICS media would carry forward the spirit of BRICS, deepen mutually beneficial cooperation, tell good stories of BRICS countries and inject more positive energy into BRICS partnership.

In addition, Xinhua proposes carrying out practical cooperation in five aspects to maintain the BRICS cooperation mechanism.

Cai said BRICS media will further strengthen the role of the BRICS Media Forum's liaison office. This will lead to better coordination among BRICS media outlets, especially members of the presidium, to strengthen the leading role of the presidium in developing cooperation mechanisms.

BRICS media need to set up BRICS journalism awards and begin the award selection process. "This will encourage journalists and media employees of the BRICS countries to improve professionalism, seek excellence, innovate for change, and fulfill social responsibilities," Cai said.

BRICS media need to continue hosting BRICS media joint photo exhibitions and carry out training and exchange among BRICS journalists.

Also on Wednesday, the BRICS Media Joint Photo Exhibition opened at the National Museum of China in Beijing to show the development and cooperation of BRICS.

The exhibition, hosted by Xinhua News Agency, displays more than 170 photos spanning over half a century, selected by media exhibitors and from Xinhua's China Photo Archive.

"We will primarily draft journalist training and visit programs, which allow journalists to visit and work in media organizations of another BRICS country for a short period of time. This will help them gain reporting experience and learn the pulse of the public in the host country," Cai said.

Cai noted that BRICS media need to conduct joint interviews, media symposiums, and reporting training. These activities can be held in China or other BRICS countries.

The BRICS Media Forum attracted leaders of media groups from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

The presidium is the highest decision making body of the BRICS Media Forum and is represented by the mainstream media organizations of BRICS countries.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 20:48:24|Editor: xuxin

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MANILA, June 7 (Xinhua) -- The death toll in the ongoing clashes between government troops and Islamist militants in the southern Philippines has climbed to 193, a spokesman for the Armed Forces of the Philippines said on Wednesday.

Brig. Gen. Restituto Padilla said that as of June 6 or 15 days after the fighting broke out, the military has recorded a total of 134 Maute militants, 39 troops, and 20 civilians.

The military said the remaining 100 or so militants are holed up in the city's financial district.

"They've established vintage points in the high ground areas. They've established sniper positions, that's why we cannot move easily with the fire shots. We're moving slowly," Padilla said.

Nevertheless, Padilla said the troops "are making headway" in their efforts to crush the remaining militants. "Their (the militants) world is getting smaller and smaller, and their ammunition is not in perpetuity, that's for sure," he said.

Lt. Gen. Carlito Galvez, commander of Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Western Mindanao Command, said the troops are very cautious in carrying out their operations to avoid casualties.

He told reporters the operation to flush out the remaining militants in the financial district is very critical for the troops, adding that the Maute militants are "well positioned" and fortified the area.

"That's a built-up area. If you enter the area unprepared, you are going to be ganged up. It's difficult," Galvez told reporters.

Asked if the military can retake the remaining Maute-controlled area this week, Galvez could not say for certain.

"Let's see. We cannot guarantee this because situations sometimes change. But at the rate we are going, we are okay," he said.

Gen. Eduardo Ano, AFP chief of staff, told a news conference in Iligan City that the militants have initially planned to control Marawi City by killing its people and then occupy nearby Iligan City.

"They want to establish an Islamic caliphate or Islamic State in Marawi City just like what the IS did when they captured Mosul in Iraq. They thought that the people of Marawi will join them, cheer them and accept them and these population will be part of Islamic State. But they underestimated that," Ano said.

"They (plan) to use a combination of force, intimidation, firepower in order to make the people follow them. That's why we are saying that this is a clear rebellion case, separating a part of our Philippine territory," he added.

Right now, he said the Maute militants are confined in a small area within the besieged city. "We have constricted them in one area, and that is exactly our strategy: to have one decisive battle against the Maute," Ano said.

Indeed, he said retaking the city from the militants is "very hard" because the military follow the rule of law. "We would like to destroy and defeat these Maute terrorists with minimum loss of innocent lives," Ano said.

Duterte placed Mindanao on May 23 in the southern Philippines under martial rule when Maute terrorists linked with the Islamic State occupied and torched a number of buildings in the city including a hospital and Catholic church.

Almost all of the more than 200,000 residents have fled the city to avoid getting caught in the crossfire. Most of the city is now in ruins as the conflict enters its third week.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 20:53:27|Editor: xuxin

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MOGADISHU, June 7 (Xinhua) -- The African Union mission in Somalia (AMISOM) said Wednesday it has trained security officers as parts efforts to enhance vigilance in the wake of increased terror attacks in the Horn of Africa nation.

AMISOM said its police component concluded the two-week training on close protection for South West state police officers to help enhance capacity of security officers to offer adequate protection to government officials and other VIPs (very important persons).

AMISOM Police Deputy Training Coordinator, Christopher Mumo, said the training will enable Somali police improve VIP security in the federal states.

"We have been doing training on VIP close protection. We are intending to do another one in Mogadishu after doing one in Kismayo, Jubbaland state of Somalia. This was the second training and the third will be in Mogadishu," Mumo said in a statement issued in Mogadishu.

The training comes in the wake of increased cases of assassinations targeting leaders and government officials by Al-Shabaab militants.

AMISOM police has been training and mentoring Somali Police officers with an aim of transforming the security institution into a professional outfit capable of maintaining law and order.

Mumo said it was important for Somalia to be able to provide adequate protection to elected leaders, following the conclusion of the electoral process early this year.

"Our aim is that since Somalia has gone through elections and have several leaders, the police should be able to maintain their security especially in the wake of the many assassinations taking place," he said.

"We are building the capacity of police officers to be able to protect their principals and leaders against attack of any kind including assassinations," he added.

AMISOM police recently concluded a similar course for 25 Jubbaland police officers in Kismayo in southern Somalia.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 20:58:31|Editor: xuxin

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JERUSALEM, June 7 (Xinhua) -- U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley met Wednesday with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in Jerusalem amid a tour to the region and accused the UN of "bullying" Israel.

The pro-Israeli ambassador arrived in Israel for a day after she threatened that the U.S. will leave the UN Human Rights Council over what she said was the agency's "bias" against Israel.

In the meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday in the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem, she said "If there's anything I have no patience for is bullies, and the UN was being such a bully to Israel, because they could."

Haley, who has been acting to cancel the Council's permanent Agenda Item Seven, a regular slot calling for the examination of the human rights situation in "Palestine and other occupied Arab territories," said the U.S. is "starting to see a turn" in the UN's attitude toward Israel.

"I think they know they can't keep responding in the way they've been responding," she said.

"They sense that the tone has changed. We were talking with some ambassadors in Geneva and, that are all on the Human Rights Council, and we talked to them about Agenda Item Seven, some of them, they were embarrassed by it and they acknowledge the fact that it just makes no sense."

Netanyahu thanked her for her "help and standing up for Israel." Netanyahu, who frequently slams the UN over its calls to end the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, said that President Donald Trump and Haley "have changed the discourse, have drawn new standards, and everybody's taking up."

Haley's three-day trip includes meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders. She met with President Reuven Rivlin in Jerusalem.

She is expected to visit the West Bank cities of Ramallah and Bethlehem, but it was unclear which leaders she will meet there. It is her first official visit to the region.

The former governor of South Carolina, have spoken out forcefully against attempts by UN's bodies, mainly the Human Rights Council, to hold Israel accountable for human rights violations in the West Bank and Gaza and to force the Jewish state to stop its 50-year-long control of these territories.

On Tuesday, she said the U.S. is "reviewing its participation" in the 47-member Council over its alleged "chronic anti-Israel bias."

Her visit to region follows a visit by Trump last month. Trump met with Netanyahu and Abbas as part of the White House efforts to revive the peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. The last round of talks, brokered by former Secretary of States John Kerry, collapsed on April 2014.

Israel seized the West Bank and Gaza during the 1967 Middle East war and has been controlling them despite international criticism.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 21:03:33|Editor: xuxin

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ISLAMABAD, June 7 (Xinhua) -- Pakistan's top civil and military leaders on Wednesday "expressed concern on the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan" following a series of recent attacks that killed nearly 200 people.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani told diplomats in Kabul on Tuesday that death toll from a deadly truck bombing in Kabul on May 31 reached 150.

Pakistan's National Security Committee of the Cabinet, which met with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in the chair, strongly condemned the recent terrorism attack in Kabul and resolved to remain steadfast and resolute in support of Afghan people, the prime minister office said in a statement.

"The participants strongly rejected the baseless allegations on Pakistan" in the context of the huge bombing in the well-guarded diplomatic area in Kabul, the statement said in a reference to Afghan intelligence agency's allegations that Pakistan's security authorities had helped the Haqqani network in the attack.

"It was highlighted that Pakistan was the only country in the Afghan equation which has achieved clear and measurable success against terrorism despite limited capacity and huge human and economic costs," the statement said.

Pakistan has not only remained committed to a peaceful and stable Afghanistan but also worked with all regional and global initiatives to that end, it further said.

The statement noted that Pakistan has shown exceptional restraint even when Afghan "territory was used for terrorist acts in Pakistan which resulted in massive human losses."

"Pakistan was fully cognizant of institutional collaboration by elements hostile to Pakistan and will defend itself resolutely against manifest and future threats. At the same time Pakistan remains committed to continue its ongoing efforts for local, regional and global peace," the statement further said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 21:18:47|Editor: xuxin

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BERLIN, June 7 (Xinhua) -- German Cabinet on Wednesday decided to withdraw garrisons at a Turkish airbase following a renewed spat with Ankara.

Over 250 military personnel stationed in Incirlik, southeastern Turkey, along with their jets and equipment will be redeployed to Jordan's al-Asraq base, according to German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen.

Von der Leyen earlier in the day confirmed that Jordan had approved hosting the troops.

German parliament will vote on the decision later this month. Most of the parties agreed on the motion, according to German local media.

The decision was triggered following the recent diplomatic row between Berlin and Ankara.

Turkey flatly refused to let German lawmakers visit the German air force in Incirlik, in response to Germany's refusal to turn in Turkish army officers involved in the 2016 coup against the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Despite talks held on Monday, foreign ministers from both the countries failed to reach a consensus.

The German air force base in Incirlik is tasked with reconnaissance and refuelling for allies as part of the international campaign against the terror group Islamic State.

Von der Leyen said there would be a temporary suspension of surveillance flights for a few weeks.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 21:18:49|Editor: xuxin

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ADDIS ABABA, June 7 (Xinhua) -- The African Union (AU) and the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) mourned the passing away of Babatunde Osotimehin, the Executive Director of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA).

The Executive Director, who was also former health minister of Nigeria, died last Sunday in his home in New York.

Mourning his death, the AU Commission will remember his leadership in championing access to health for all, including the critical issue of reproductive health and rights for all, especially women, youth and adolescents, said a statement from AU on Wednesday.

"The AU Commission would also like to acknowledge Prof. Babatunde and the UNFPA's support in the development and implementation of the Campaign on Accelerated Reduction of Maternal, Newborn and Child Mortality in Africa (CARMMA), the Ending Child Marriage campaign, and the African Youth Charter, among other continental initiatives," said the statement.

Meanwhile a statement from ECA says that the ECA has joined the greater UN family in mourning the sudden death of Osotimehin who passed away in his New York home Sunday evening.

"Under his leadership, the ECA and UNFPA worked closely on major policy initiatives that were aimed at improving the lives of populations across Africa, in particular in the context of the Addis Ababa Declaration on Population and Development beyond 2014," said Abdalla Hamdok, ECA Acting Executive Secretary.

At the UNFPA, Osotimehin vigorously championed three major transformative goals of zero preventable maternal deaths, zero unmet demand for family planning and the elimination of harmful practices against women and girls, according to ECA.

He led the organization's efforts on HIV prevention, especially among adolescents and young adults, promoting condoms and ensuring that women and adolescent girls receive HIV prevention and sexual and reproductive health services.

Osotimehin also led Nigeria's AIDS response as Minister of Health and as the Director General of Nigeria's National Agency for the Control of HIV and AIDS before joining the UNFPA in 2011.

"Staff and management of the ECA convey their deepest condolences to Dr. Osotimehin's family, to UNFPA's staff and to the people of Nigeria," said Hamdok.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 21:23:53|Editor: xuxin

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ADDIS ABABA, June 7 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) has launched a new five-year program that envisages capacity building of democratic institutions in Ethiopia.

The multi-stakeholder program, with a total estimated cost of 40 million U.S. dollars, will invest 5 million U.S. dollars in its first phase of program implementation period.

The program is designed to support efforts made by the Ethiopian government in promoting inclusive and sustainable development agendas through strengthening mechanisms that facilitate and promote transparency, accountability and rule of law in the east African country, according to Ahunna Eziakonwa, UNDP Resident Representative to Ethiopia.

Eziakonwa further noted that the program, by enabling public institutions to exercise independence and professionalism, would play a big role in helping the Ethiopian government to attain its targets.

Ethiopian government officials have also lauded the five-year program as an impetus to advance Ethiopia's major governance structures and targets.

Admasu Nebebe, Ethiopian State Minister of Finance and Economic Cooperation, said the program is aligned to the global agenda of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the second five-year Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP-II) of Ethiopia.

The program is highly related with the Ethiopian government's priorities and it would help the country's endeavors in strengthening good governance and deepening democratic participation in line with its constitution and international conventions.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 21:23:55|Editor: xuxin

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GENEVA, June 7 (Xinhua) -- The World Health Organization (WHO) has outlined the biggest revision in 40 years on the use of antibiotics to fight the development of drug-resistant bacteria, according to the body's press release on Wednesday.

The WHO Model Lists of Essential Medicines, which includes selected medicines to satisfy the priority health care needs of the population, has been updated every two years since 1977.

In the biggest revision of the antibiotics section in the lists, experts have grouped antibiotics into three categories -- access, watch and reserve.

Antibiotics in the access group should be available at all times as treatments for a wide range of common infections, like amoxicillin which is used to treat infections such as pneumonia.

The watch group, the use of which should be dramatically reduced to avoid further development of resistance, includes antibiotics that are recommended as first or second choice when treating a small number of infections, like ciprofloxacin in treating cystitis and upper respiratory tract infections.

The third group, reserve, including antibiotics such as colistin and some cephalosporins, should be considered last-resort options and used only in the most severe circumstances when all other alternatives have failed, such as for life-threatening infections due to multidrug-resistant bacteria.

"The rise in antibiotic resistance stems from how we are using -- and misusing -- these medicines," said Dr Suzanne Hill, Director of Essential Medicines and Health Products. "The new WHO list should help health system planners and prescribers ensure people who need antibiotics have access to them, and ensure they get the right one, so that the problem of resistance doesn't get worse."

Antimicrobial resistance is threatening the effective prevention and treatment of an ever-increasing range of infections, according to the WHO, as lack of effective antibiotics would compromise the success of major surgery and cancer chemotherapy. Globally, 480 000 people develop multi-drug resistant tuberculosis each year, and drug resistance is starting to complicate the fight against HIV and malaria as well.

Early in February, the WHO published its first ever list of antibiotic-resistant "priority pathogens" -- a catalogue of 12 families of bacteria that pose the greatest threat to human health, in a bid to guide and promote research and development of new antibiotics.

The list highlighted in particular the threat of gram-negative bacteria that are resistant to multiple antibiotics. These bacteria have built-in abilities to find new ways to resist treatment and can pass along genetic material that allows other bacteria to become drug-resistant as well.

Also in the latest revision on Wednesday, the WHO added 10 antibiotics to the list for adults, and 12 for children.

The organization said the change aims to ensure antibiotics are available when needed and that the right antibiotics are prescribed for the right infections, during the ongoing fight against the development of drug resistance.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 21:49:10|Editor: xuxin

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BAGHDAD, June 7 (Xinhua) -- Iraq on Wednesday strongly condemned the terrorist attacks that took place in the Iranian capital Tehran, which killed 12 people and injured dozens of others.

"The Iraqi Foreign Ministry condemns the terrorist attacks that occurred in Tehran, asserting Iraq's solidarity with the people and the government of Iran," the ministry said in a statement.

The ministry also confirmed that Iraq "stands in the same trench against all threats to Iran's internal security and the safety of its citizens."

The ministry reiterated Iraq's call for further coordination of international efforts aimed at eliminating terrorist organizations, foremost of which the Islamic State (IS) militant group, the statement said.

Two attacks by militants against Iran's parliament and Imam Khomeini Shrine earlier in the day left at least 12 people killed and wounded some 42 others.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 21:59:16|Editor: Mengjie

Examinees are greeted by their teachers as walking out of the exam venue after taking the first test of the national college entrance examination at Yuyuantan Middle School in Beijing, capital of China, June 7, 2017. A total of 9.4 million Chinese students sit the annual national college entrance examination from Wednesday. (Xinhua/Wang Huajuan)

BEIJING, June 7 (Xinhua) -- On Wednesday, 9.4 million Chinese students began the annual national college entrance examination known as the gaokao.

According to the 2017 enrollment plan issued by the Ministry of Education, some 3.72 million of these students are expected to enroll in undergraduate programs following the examination, nearly 10,000 more than in 2016. However, competition is fierce to gain admission to top institutions.

Local authorities have taken extra measures to eliminate cheating, which, since last year, can be treated as a criminal offence. Increasingly sophisticated cheating methods have impaired the integrity of the examination, which is intended to be a level playing field.

In east China's Shandong Province, the local education department has ordered college students not to ask for leave during the examination period, except in special circumstances, to prevent them from acting as substitute exam takers.

"The whereabouts of absent students who do not have sufficient reasons must be investigated. Stricter procedures must be followed in the approval of leave requests," according to a directive issued by the department.

Zhang Zhiyong, deputy director of the department, said the move "aims to eliminate problems that may enable cheating."

Police in central China's Henan Province, which has the most exam takers at more than 860,000, have arrested 16 people suspected of operating businesses related to exam cheating. They have confiscated equipment including signal emitters, cell phones and laptops.

In Beijing, which has more than 60,000 exam takers, local authorities have stepped up supervision over the exam forms. The papers were delivered to the city's 92 test sites under police escort. The deliveries were monitored by GPS positioning and video surveillance systems.

"My family was poor and couldn't afford to send me to the college, so I started working as a teenager," said Du Wanjun, father of a Beijing exam taker. "But now, all children can compete for university places and many can succeed. I'm really happy for them."

He said he does not hold expectations for high exam results.

"I hope my daughter can relax and try her best. The gaokao is just an experience," said Du, who unlike many parents left the exam site without looking back.

Some parents were not as calm as Du. In the city of Changchun in northeast China's Jilin Province, a mother told Xinhua that she got up at 4 a.m. to cook carp for her child's breakfast.

An ancient Chinese legend tells of a carp that jumped over a high gate and became a dragon. The story is often used as a metaphor for academic and career success.

"I chose carp to wish my child a 'leap' on the exam," said the woman as she waited anxiously outside the exam site.

In south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, several mothers were seen wearing qipao, a traditional Chinese dress not commonly worn anymore, in front of Peihong High School in the regional capital of Nanning.

"Qipao sounds like the Chinese phrase 'qikaidesheng,' meaning victory," said Wu Yan, one of the mothers, who hoped the outfit would bring her child luck in the exam.

In Tibet, more than 28,000 students registered to take the gaokao, 80 percent of whom came from families of farmers and herders. Nearly 20,000 will take a Tibetan language test specially designed for Tibetan students on Friday.

"I hope my daughter will expand her horizons by entering an 'inland' university and finding a decent job after graduation," said one Tibetan father, referring to other provincial areas in China with better economic conditions.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the resumption of the gaokao after it was disrupted by the Cultural Revolution (1966-76).

In recent years, many high school graduates have chosen to attend overseas universities. However, the overwhelming majority of Chinese students and parents regard the gaokao as a fair way for Chinese universities to select students for enrollment -- and a competition they cannot afford to lose.

A report released by China Education Online showed that the number of students taking the exam has declined from its peak of 10.5 million in 2008, and has remained stable at around 9.4 million since 2014.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 22:08:23|Editor: Zhou Xin

Actors perform a traditional Chinese dance during the 2017 Silk Road International Exposition in Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province, June 3, 2017. More than 1,200 Chinese domestic companies and over 300 foreign exhibiting companies from 42 countries and regions took part in the expo. (Xinhua/Shao Rui)
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 22:04:24|Editor: An

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Lao Deputy Minister of Labor and Social Welfare Baikham Khattiya speaks during a completion ceremony of the repair project at the Chinese martyrs cemetery in Xieng Khuang province, Laos, on June 7, 2017. A completion ceremony of the repair project was held at the Chinese martyrs cemetery in northern Laos' Xieng Khuang province on Wednesday. (Xinhua/Liu Ailun)

XIENG KHUANG, Laos, June 7 (Xinhua) -- After six-month construction, a completion ceremony of the repair project was held at the Chinese martyrs cemetery in northern Laos' Xieng Khuang province on Wednesday.

Wang Jianjun, standing deputy director of the National Working Committee on Aging and a party committee member of China's Civil Affairs Ministry, said that the Chinese martyrs cemetery in Laos is an important carrier witnessing and inheriting the friendship between the two countries. The Chinese and Lao builders have striven to reach effective cooperation, successfully completed the Chinese martyrs cemetery renovation project in Xieng Khuang.

Wang hoped that both sides endeavor to promote the protection and management of the commemorative facilities in the Chinese martyrs cemetery, effectively build an immortal monument to cherish heroes and maintain peace in the hearts of hundreds of millions of Lao and Chinese people.

Lao Deputy Minister of Labor and Social Welfare Baikham Khattiya said that the ceremony of the repair project has been completed and "we have a great responsibility to make the martyrs cemetery into a historical education base, and a historical tourist destination to deepen the friendship between the two countries in the future."

In the struggle to support the Laos people in the 1960s and 1970s, hundreds of Chinese martyrs heroically sacrificed their lives to fulfill the noble, sacred internationalist mission. At present, 215 Chinese martyrs who assisted Laos were buried in three Chinese martyrs' cemeteries in Laos, mainly in Oudomxai province and Xieng Khuang province.

Xieng Khuang Chinese martyrs cemetery was built in 1996. In September 2016, with an agreement signed, the Lao Chinese martyrs cemetery repair protection project was fully launched. Before being repaired, Xieng Khuang Chinese martyrs cemetery covered an area of 914 square meters. After the expansion it became an area of 3,475 square meters with facilities complete and functional.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 22:24:40|Editor: xuxin

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NEW DELHI, June 7 (Xinhua) -- At least 18 workers were charred to death and eight others suffered severe burn injuries Wednesday in a devastating fire inside a fireworks factory in central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, local officials said.

The fire triggered series of blasts inside the factory at village Khairi in Balaghat district, about 437 km southeast of Bhopal, the capital city of Madhya Pradesh.

"Today at around 3:00 p.m. (local time) fire broke out inside a fireworks factory at village Khairi, triggering series of blasts," Bharat Yadav, Balaghat district collector told Xinhua. "Eighteen workers were killed and eight people have been admitted to hospital."

According to Yadav, rescuers have retrieved 18 bodies from the debris of factory.

Officials feared death toll is likely to go up as according to locals more than 40 workers mostly women were inside the factory at the time of fire.

Following the fire inside factory, local administration rushed firefighters and police to the spot to douse the flame and carry out rescue work.

The cause of blast and subsequent fire inside the factory was being ascertained.

Accidental explosions are common at Indian fireworks factories and shops.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 22:39:46|Editor: yan

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BERLIN, June 7 (Xinhua) -- The German cabinet on Wednesday decided to withdraw garrisons at a Turkish airbase following a renewed spat with Ankara, Turkey.

Over 250 military personnel stationed in Incirlik, southeastern Turkey, along with their jets and equipment will be redeployed to Jordan's al-Asraq base, according to German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen.

The minister earlier in the day confirmed that Jordan had approved hosting the troops.

The German parliament will vote on the decision later this month. Most of the parties agreed on the motion, according to German local media.

The decision was triggered following the recent diplomatic row between Berlin and Ankara.

Turkey flatly refused to let German lawmakers visit the German air force in Incirlik, which houses 260 German parliamentary soldiers and Tornado surveillance aircrafts, in response to Berlin's refusal to turn in Turkish army officers allegedly involved in the 2016 coup against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel attempted on Monday to negotiate access for German officials as a last attempt at diplomacy, which was subsequently denied. Consequently, he announced that the soldiers will be moved to a location in Jordan.

The German air force base in Incirlik is tasked with reconnaissance and refuelling for allies as part of the international campaign against the terror group Islamic State.

Von der Leyen said there would be a temporary suspension of surveillance flights for a few weeks.

According to German government officials, a new parliamentary mandate will not be required and the government is keen to not set a precedent for future political situations.

German lawmakers spent several weeks debating the move after tensions between the German and Turkish governments reached a crossroads.

Germany firstly decided to accept the refugee claims of two high-ranking Turkish officers who defected and were accused by Turkey of having had a major hand in the attempted coup of 2016. The Turkish government subsequently refused parliamentary officials access to the airbase in May.

Turkey also told Germany that a separate official German delegation would be denied access to the Turkish parliament and would not allow German officials to speak to any Turkish parliamentary representatives.

After receiving the last-minute statement from Turkey, Germany abruptly cancelled the visit a day before the delegation was due to travel to the country.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 22:44:52|Editor: yan

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NAIROBI, June 7 (Xinhua) -- A regional flower show opened in Nairobi on Wednesday with a main focus of boosting Kenya's flower sector.

The organizers, HPP International Exhibitions, said that the sixth edition of the International Flower Trade Expo (IFTEX) has attracted over 200 exhibitors from 20 countries as well as over 2000 visitors.

"The key priority of the flower show is to put Kenyan flowers on the global map so that they become a premium brand," HPP CEO Dick van Raamsdonk said.

Van Raamsdonk said that the exhibition will make Kenyan flowers more visible in the international market.

The three-day event will provide a platform for buyers and flower producers to increase business contacts. African exhibitors include flower growers in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia Rwanda and South Africa.

Flower buyers from key export markets of the EU, Middle East and Asia are also represented.

Van Raamsdonk said that Kenyan flowers should not become a commodity but a world recognized brand so that it can attract high prices in the global flower market.

He noted that after more than 20 years of existence Kenya's flower sector has achieved global standards.

"It is now able to complete internationally with other key flower producers," he added.

Kenya's floriculture sector is a major contributor to the Gross Domestic Product.

Van Raamsdonk said that the industry contributes ten percent of all exports and 50 percent of agricultural exports.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 23:00:03|Editor: An

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Chinese President Xi Jinping (L front) is welcomed by Kazakhstan First Deputy Prime Minister Askar Mamin upon his arrival in Astana, Kazakhstan, June 7, 2017. Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived here Wednesday for a state visit to Kazakhstan and the 17th meeting of the Council of Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). During his stay in the Central Asian country, Xi will also attend the opening ceremony of the Expo 2017 in Astana. (Xinhua/Pang Xinglei)

ASTANA, June 7 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived here Wednesday for a state visit to Kazakhstan and the 17th meeting of the Council of Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

During his stay in the Central Asian country, Xi will also attend the opening ceremony of the Expo 2017 in Astana.

"I am glad to come to the beautiful country of Kazakhstan. I have been deeply impressed by the magnificent Kazakh steppe, vibrant rivers, the racing horses and most of all, the warm-hearted and sincere Kazakh people," Xi said in a written statement released upon his arrival at the airport.

"China and Kazakhstan, friendly neighbors bound by mountains and rivers, have been committed to consolidating our political mutual trust, strengthening cooperation in all areas, and promoting our coordination in international and regional issues since they established diplomatic relations 25 years ago," he noted.

"The booming China-Kazakhstan relationship has brought concrete benefits to the two countries and their peoples," he said. "I look forward to engaging in deep-going exchanges with my old friend, President Nursultan Nazarbayev, and chart the course of our bilateral relations together."

The Chinese president also expressed his readiness to exchange ideas with other top leaders of the SCO members, and wished the Expo 2017 in Astana a full success.

The trip marks Xi's first visit to Central Asia this year. The Chinese leader had visited Kazakhstan twice since taking office, respectively in 2013 and 2015.

"Over the past quarter of a century, our bilateral relations have withstood the test of time and the ever-changing international situation," Xi said in a signed article published earlier Wednesday in the Kazakh newspaper Aikyn Gazeti. "Our two countries are not only good neighbors, but also comprehensive strategic partners."

Xi proposed the Silk Road Economic Belt, part of his Belt and Road Initiative, at the Nazarbayev University on Sept. 7, 2013. The country has since then been committed to aligning its development strategy of "Nurly Zhol," or "Bright Path" in the Kazakh language, with the China-proposed initiative.

"Over the past four years, the Belt and Road Initiative has gradually developed from a proposal to actions, and from a concept to practice," said Xi in the article. "We need to synergize our development strategies in a faster pace."

Xi's presence at the Expo 2017, with the theme "future energy," not only shows China's full support to Kazakhstan, but also the importance China attaches to new energy, said Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Li Huilai on Monday.

The highlight of this year's SCO summit will be the formal accession of India and Pakistan to the SCO and China's assumption of the bloc's presidency upon conclusion of the meeting, according to Sun Zhuangzhi, secretary-general of the SCO Research Center at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

The joining of New Delhi and Islamabad, the first ever expansion of the SCO, will make it an eight-member regional organization that covers three-fifths of the Eurasian continent with nearly half of the world's population.

SCO Secretary-General Rashid Alimov said earlier that the membership of India and Pakistan, both regional heavyweights, will enhance the SCO's role in combating cross-border terrorism and promoting free trade.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 23:05:10|Editor: An

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BEIJING, June 7 (Xinhua) -- The World Expo in Astana, featuring the theme "future energy," will open in a few days and China, which hosted the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai, is set to demonstrate its experience in both energy and expos.

The Chinese pavilion, with the theme "Future energy, green Silk Road," covers around 1,000 square meters and is among the largest at the expo, according to the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade.

The Chinese pavilion will display the country's achievements in developing and using energy through multimedia, virtual reality technology and other means.

A simulated high-speed train cab and a nuclear fusion reactor described as an "artificial sun" are among the exhibits showing China's pursuits in exploring future energy.

During the three-month expo, the Chinese pavilion will hold more than 200 activities involving over 2,000 enterprises. They include 30 international activities, such as the China-Kazakhstan Energy Cooperation Forum.

China has also built a World Expo Museum (WEM) on the former site of the 2010 Shanghai World Expo.

The museum is the only official museum and documentation center in the world entirely dedicated to Expos and authorized by the Paris-based Bureau International des Expositions (BIE). It is also the first museum in the world to showcase the history of the development of World Expos.

"After the formal opening ceremony in July, WEM will embark on an ambitious programme of partnerships and exchanges with cultural, diplomatic and educational institutions. This path exemplifies the values of cooperation and engagement with civil society, values that lie at the heart of Expos," said Dimitri Kerkentzes, deputy secretary general of the BIE.

The museum will also hold a 630-square-meter exhibition at the Astana Expo.

"The purpose of the museum's exhibition is to communicate with other countries and various international organizations, said Liu Xiuhua, curator of the WEM.

Since the Shanghai Expo, China has taken part in the 2012 World Expo in Yeosu in the Republic of Korea and in the 2015 World Expo in Milan, Italy.

Chinese experience is enriching the history and future of the World Expo, said Vincente G. Loscertales, secretary general of the BIE.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 23:15:16|Editor: yan

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BELGRADE, June 7 (Xinhua) -- Bosnia and Herzegovina's long-standing efforts to become a member of the European Union (EU) might result in the opening of its first accession chapters in mid-2018, if it manages to implement key reforms, participants said at a conference Wednesday in Sarajevo.

The conference, held at BiH Parliament, marked two years since the Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA) BiH signed with the EU was put into effect.

State broadcaster BHRT reported that the discussion was about the progress of BiH on the EU path since the agreement was put to force, the role of BiH's parliaments in the implementation of obligations deriving from the agreement, as well as its current European perspective.

Chairman of the joint committee for European integration of BiH's Parliament, Nikola Lovrinovic, reminded that the agreement had been signed nine years ago, but the country waited until 2015 for it to be put to force. He expressed hope that the country would receive candidate status by the end of 2017, or the beginning 2018.

Jonathan Moore, head of mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), said the country must fulfil conditions by implementing reforms and that "everyone, especially citizens of BiH, know that the path is very long," but that it was the only way ahead.

President of the BiH House of Representatives, Sefik Dzaferovic, said that membership in the EU as well as the Northern Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) were the two most important foreign political goals of BiH, and explained that by joining EU, the country would develop politically and economically.

Lars-Gunnar Wigemark, chief of EU delegation to BiH, concluded that the SAA agreement brought liberalization of trade which made the EU biggest trading partner of BiH.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 23:20:18|Editor: yan

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MADRID, June 7 (Xinhua) -- Ignacio Echeverria, a 39-year-old Spaniard who has been missing since Saturday night's terrorist attack in London has been confirmed as one of the victims by his family and also the Spanish government.

The news came just hours after Spanish Interior Minister, Juan Ignacio Zoido had criticized the British government for their slow reaction in giving information about the banker who had not been seen since trying to defend a woman from the terrorists on London Bridge.

"Ignacio didn't survive the attack. Thank you for all of you who helped and looked after him. We know we are not the only ones who are sad," posted his sister Ana on Facebook.

Meanwhile the Spanish government also confirmed Echeverria's death.

"It is with great sadness and dismay, the government has received confirmation from the British authorities that Ignacio Echeverria is among the victims of the cruel terrorist attacks that took place in London last Saturday."

"The government wishes to tell his family and friends that they are not alone in their pain and that Spain is with them, sharing their sense of desolation and standing by them at this terrible time," reads the communique, which also praises Echeverria for his courage.

"His bravery in defending a defenceless person reminds us of the need to remain united against the scourge of terrorism, against those whose only language is violence and terror. The government firmly believes that democratic unity can overcome many challenges, including the senselessness of terrorism," concludes the note.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy also tweeted his dismay posting "I am upset at the death of Ignacio Echeverria and send my condolences to his family. We will remember him for his heroic and exemplary actions."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 23:30:22|Editor: Liu

People buy food at a supermarket in Doha, capital of Qatar, on June 6, 2017. Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen joined Saudi Arabia and Egypt in severing relations with gas-rich Qatar, with Riyadh accusing Doha of supporting groups, including some backed by Iran. (Xinhua/Nikku)

by Zuo Chang, Yang Yuanyong

CAIRO, June 7 (Xinhua) -- The international community has been striving to mediate the crisis among the countries concerned since the escalating tensions between Qatar and its fellow Arab nations culminated when Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt, Libya and Yemen abruptly announced to sever diplomatic ties with the Gulf gas-rich state, accusing it of supporting terrorism and interfering with internal affairs.

According to presidential sources, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has held phone calls with leaders including Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Emmanuel Macron, Jordan's King Abdullah II and Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri to ease the unprecedented diplomatic dispute in the Middle East.

"I want to clearly say we disapprove the sanctions on Qatar," Erdogan was quoted by state-run Anadolu Agency as saying on Tuesday.

"Turkey will discharge every responsibility for our part," Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said on Monday, quoted by local TV channel CNNTurk.

As an important trade partner of Turkey, Qatar has so far invested 2.2 billion U.S. dollars in the transcontinental country, with investments on the rise in the past four years.

Also on Tuesday, Kuwaiti Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah paid an urgent visit to Saudi Arabia to seek a political solution to the crisis around Doha with Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz al Saud, Kuwait News Agency reported.

On Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson encouraged all sides to "sit down together to resolve irritants," despite Washington's long-time criticism of Qatar's role in promoting radical ideology, which Doha has repeatedly denied.

Meanwhile, Sudan, Algeria and Iraq all expressed concerns about the diplomatic crisis around Qatar, urging all Arab countries concerned to avoid escalation and solve the problem through dialogue.

In Iran, the Foreign Ministry said on Monday that increasing tension in the relations among Arab states is a threat to the interests of regional states, official IRNA news agency reported.

"Amid the threat of terrorism, extremism to the region and the world and with the continuation of occupation of the Palestinian territories by Israel, the rising tension among regional states benefits neither the regional nations nor governments and is a threat to the interests of all," Iran's Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qasemi said in a statement.

The diplomatic crisis, however, came less than two weeks after state Qatar News Agency (QNA) released a statement by Emir Al-Thani who called Iran an "Islamic power," which Qatar later said was "fake" as QNA's website had been "hacked."

Late Tuesday, Qatari Foreign Minister Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani said on Qatar-based Al Jazeera television that his country was ready for international mediation, adding that the emir had postponed a national speech on the crisis to leave Kuwait more room to "proceed and communicate with the parties to the crisis and to try to contain the issue."

Doha also decided not to respond in kind, he added.

As a member of the Saudi-led Arab coalition, Qatar has been involved in the military campaign against Houthi rebels in Yemen since March 2015.

It is not the first time that the small Island state has been in the spotlight of a diplomatic crisis in the Middle East. On March 3, 2014, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE recalled their ambassadors to Qatar and severed diplomatic ties with the country until eight months later when Qatar agreed to deport seven senior figures of Egypt's outlawed Muslim Brotherhood group.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 23:30:25|Editor: yan

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KIEV, June 7 (Xinhua) -- Ukraine will get 1 million euros (about 1.12 million U.S. dollars) from Austria for clearing landmines in the eastern regions, Ukrainian Ambassador to Austria Olexander Scherba said Wednesday.

"Austria's Minister of Foreign Affairs Sebastian Kurz has announced the allocation of 1 million euros for demining projects in eastern Ukraine," Scherba tweeted.

Later in the day, Kurz confirmed allocation of the aid, saying that the projects will be financed by the Austrian Development Agency and the Foreign Disaster Fund.

Kurz, who holds the chair of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe for 2017, arrived in Kiev on Wednesday for a two-day working visit.

The three-year-long conflict between the Ukrainian government troops and pro-independence rebels has left about 700,000 hectares of land in eastern Ukraine contaminated with landmines.

According to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, it will take 10-15 years to clear the unexploded ordnance in the area.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 23:55:36|Editor: yan

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SKOPJE, June 7 (Xinhua) -- The European Commission welcomed the Macedonian finance ministry's commitment to swiftly draft a strategy for public funds management, the ministry said in a press statement on Wednesday.

This strategy will give high priority to fiscal consolidation and transparency in budget data, ministry explained.

Macedonia's finance ministry representatives received a European Commission delegation led by Ambassador Samuel Zbogar on Wednesday.

Their talks focused on economy issues, future priorities and reforms for Macedonia's European Union (EU) integration and improvements towards the increased use of Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA) funds in the country, the Macedonian ministry informed.

According to the press release, the EC officials voiced support for the government's reform priorities aimed at integrating the country into the EU.

"The European Commission continues its support in launching a fresh cycle of the economic reform program, which is one of the leading documents in Macedonia's pre-accession process," said the finance ministry said in its press release.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-07 23:55:38|Editor: yan

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GENEVA, June 7 (Xinhua) -- The Human Rights Council on Tuesday held a general debate on the oral update of United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights during Monday's opening of the Council's 35th session.

Pakistan, speaking on behalf of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, said that technical assistance and capacity building should be made available to countries to enable them to deliver human rights, and a balanced approach to various categories of rights should be adopted.

It added that politicization and selectivity in the application of human rights should not be allowed, and sincere and mutual cooperation, and due consideration of religious and cultural values need to be respected.

Egypt, speaking on behalf of a group of countries, stated that it was necessary to avoid naming and shaming in any process designed to protect and promote human rights.

It also highlighted that ensuring non selectivity and objectivity, respect for cultural particularities and diversity in the development of countries was essential in order to implement effectively human rights around the world.

"The high commissioner should engage in a cooperative dialogue with every country and launch consultations that would enhance confidence building between member states and the different human rights instruments and mechanisms," it noted.

China stated that human rights continued to face challenges and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights should continue to observe strictly the United Nations Charter.

China added that it valued the role of special mechanisms and that its government had implemented in earnest its treaty obligations and had submitted its reports on time.

The American Civil Liberties Union, a non-government organization, also took the floor and said that it was encouraged by the engagement of the United States with the Council but it was "hard to take this commitment to human rights seriously" while its own administration had stripped millions of U.S. citizens of health coverage, imposed a travel ban on Muslims, encouraged voter suppression, and denied land and water to indigenous peoples.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-08 00:10:44|Editor: yan

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DAR ES SALAAM, June 7 (Xinhua) -- Tanzania said Wednesday it was disappointed by the decision of President Donald Trump to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord.

"We are disappointed by the decision because the U.S. is one of the biggest emitters of pollution in the world," said January Makamba, the East African nation's Minister of State in the Vice-President's Office responsible for environment.

Trump ran into a lot of flak after he last week announced the withdrawal of the United States from the landmark global agreement to fight climate change.

Trump said the Paris accord would undermine the U.S. economy, cost jobs and put the country at a permanent disadvantage to the other countries.

Makamba said the U.S. decision to withdraw from the Paris accord was ill-advised and would neither save the world nor the United States.

"The core industries that President Trump is trying to protect are on the decline anyway and green economy is now much larger and is employing more people," said Makamba.

He said Tanzania will continue to work with other countries across the world that have signed the Paris accord towards implementation of the deal.

Benson Bana, a senior lecturer on public administration and human resource at the University of Dar es Salaam, said Trump's withdraw from the Paris Agreement was a blow to Africa.

"Africa will suffer significantly. Africa can not single-handedly fund climate change mitigation initiatives," said Bana.

Bana said the consequences of U.S. withdrawal from the Paris deal were critical as the country was a major financier of climate change mitigation initiatives.

Deodatus Mfugale, an environmental journalist, said the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris accord meant that the pledge to cut its emissions by 26 to 28 percent will also not be met.

"This leaves developing countries like Tanzania with the opportunity to step up its emission cuts, however small, using its own resources," said Mfugale.

"Tanzania must step up enforcement rules and laws and regulations," said Mfugale, adding that the country should also make national budget allocations for climate change adaptation and mitigation in a bid to rely less on developed countries.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-08 00:40:58|Editor: yan

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ABU USHAR, Sudan, June 7 (Xinhua) -- At Abu Ushar hospital in Sudan, also known as Sudan-China Friendship Hospital, Sudanese and Chinese doctors are reflecting the human face of the medical profession as they provide services for poor patients in the area.

With the increase of health symptoms in Ramadan Month due to change in food habits and meal times, Abu Ushar hospital represents a refuge for thousands of patients in the area of Abu Ushar city.

Abu Ushar hospital lies in Gezira State in central Sudan, some 110 km southeast of Sudanese capital Khartoum.

Abu Ushar, one of the oldest rural hospitals in Sudan, was established in 1929 and then gained great momentum after it was chosen to be the headquarters for the Chinese medical mission that first came to Sudan in 1974.

"This hospital gained its reputation from presence of the Chinese medical mission which provides excellent medical services for the citizens of the area," Mohamdain Hussein, Chairman of Board of Directors of Abu Usher hospital, told Xinhua.

Abu Ushar hospital is regarded as one of the best health utilities that developed its infrastructures and improved the quality of the services.

"This hospital serves a great number of citizens, and the Chinese mission is working with high efficiency. The hospital receives around 5,000 cases monthly," Al-Sadiq Ahmed Mohamed Babikir, Financial and Administrative Director of Abu usher hospital, told Xinhua.

Since the arrival of the Chinese medical mission in Abu Ushar, it has remained under warm welcome and gained respect of people of the entire Gezira state. The relationship was not only a relationship between doctors and patients, but extended to the broader context of human relations.

"Last year I came to work here at Abu Ushar hospital. I now work in this hospital continuously to provide treatment for thousands of simple patients," Xie Yanhua, a female Chinese Dentist at Abu Ushar Hospital, told Xinhua.

Meanwhile, Cao Wei, a Chinese internal medicine physician, for her part, told Xinhua that "I love Sudan. I love Abu Ushar city and I love all the people in this city. I have many friends here. I think the friendship between the Chinese and Sudanese people is deeply-rooted."

Seham Abdalla Hashim, a Sudanese doctor at Abu Ushar Hospital, meanwhile, said that "we work together as one medical team. There are no differences. We are one family. We perform our human duty with simple and poor patients. Thanks for China."

Great number of citizens from Gezira State and neighboring states rush to Abu Ushar hospital due to its good reputation and its success in conducting complicated surgeries, such as cartilage, besides that the fist open heart surgery in Sudan was conducted for a Sudanese female student at Abu Ushar hospital in 1978.

Rashid Ahmed Mustafa, a patient at Abu Ushar hospital, said that "this hospital has become a center of attraction for thousands of patients who come from far cities, even from eastern Sudan, to receive free treatment and even conduct complicated surgeries at nominal cost."

As preparations are underway to inaugurate an additional building for Abu Ushar hospital in June, the hospital administration hope to overcome some issues including a paved road linking between the hospital and Abu Ushar city.

The capacity of Abu Ushar hospital is 180 beds with nine medical sections, namely general surgery, internal medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, orthopedics, ophthalmology, dental, ear, nose and throat, anesthesia and acupuncture.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) meets with Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who is here for the Belt and Road Forum (BRF) for International Cooperation, at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, May 14, 2017. (Xinhua/Yao Dawei)

by Xinhua Writer Liao Bingqing

MOSCOW, June 7 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday started a four-day state visit to Kazakhstan, his third visit to the central Asian country, at the invitation of his Kazakh counterpart Nursultan Nazarbayev.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the establishment of the diplomatic ties between China and Kazakhstan. Against this backdrop, Xi's visit is widely expected to further advance the bilateral relations and enhance the comprehensive strategic partnership between the two countries.

BROAD PROSPECTS FOR DEVELOPMENT OF BILATERAL TIES

The relations between China and Kazakhstan have been developing steadily and substantially over the past 25 years. With a solid foundation for joint development and a goal to combine mutual interests, the two are expected to chart the course for the further development of bilateral ties during Xi's upcoming visit.

"China-Kazakhstan relations are built on the basis of reciprocity and mutual understanding. There are no pending issues between the two countries, and the future development of their bilateral ties enjoys broad prospects," Ruslam Izimov, head of the Eurasian Studies Program at the Institute of World Economy and Politics, told Xinhua.

From previous fruitful achievements of bilateral cooperation, experts are convinced that Xi's upcoming visit will once again greatly promote the China-Kazakhstan partnership.

Top leaders of China and Kazakhstan have been in close contact over recent years, broadening and deepening bilateral relations and cooperation to a great extent.

In September 2013, Xi paid his first state visit to Kazakhstan, during which the two countries signed a joint declaration on a new stage of comprehensive strategic partnership. It was also during this visit that Xi put forward the initiative of building the Silk Road Economic Belt for the first time.

The visit by Xi also set the tone for the development of bilateral ties in the past years.

"The general direction of the two countries' national development was determined during President Xi's visit to Kazakhstan in 2013, namely, the joint building of the Silk Road Economic Belt," Chinese Ambassador to Kazakhstan Zhang Hanhui said.

The initiative proposed by Xi was warmly supported by Kazakhstan. A year later, Nazarbayev, the Kazakh president, introduced his new economic plan known as "Bright Path," which also lays emphasis on investment in infrastructure and priority sectors.

In Xi's second visit in May 2015, the two countries pledged to further align their development strategies in the pursuit of common prosperity.

"The relationship between China and Kazakhstan concerns common development of the two countries as well as regional peace and stability. Therefore, the two sides should implement the consensus reached by the two heads of state, and promote bilateral cooperation in line with predetermined paths for the benefit of the peoples," Zhang said.

During the upcoming visit, Xi will also attend the 17th meeting of Heads of State Council of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the opening ceremony of the World Expo in Astana.

In May 2014, Nazarbayev paid a state visit to China, during which he and Xi agreed to promote bilateral cooperation in a wide range of fields as well as strengthen cultural and people-to-people exchanges.

ENORMOUS POTENTIAL OF COOPERATION

Promoting bilateral cooperation is the focus of Xi's upcoming visit. According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, the two presidents will sign and issue a joint statement, participate in a video link event on cross-border transportation and witness the signing of a series of deals in the areas of economy and trade, finance and water conservation.

Cooperation between the two countries has been blossoming over the past three years and reached an unprecedentedly high level, covering multiple areas such as trade, energy, infrastructure and environmental protection, amid efforts to integrate China's Belt and Road Initiative with Kazakhstan's Bright Path Economic Plan.

Kazakhstan is among the earliest to join China in implementing the Belt and Road Initiative. In late 2014, China and Kazakhstan reached a preliminary consensus on industrial capacity cooperation worth more than 14 billion U.S. dollars. In march 2015, the two countries signed 33 deals in this field totaling 23.6 billion dollars, covering steel, non-ferrous metals, sheet glass, oil refining, hydro-power and automobiles.

"China and Kazakhstan have set a successful example with regard to cooperation in the areas of industrial capacity, energy and connectivity," said Sun Zhuangzhi, secretary general of the SCO Research Center affiliated to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

He added that further enhancing cooperation on the Belt and Road Initiative by the two countries will serve as a convincing role model to other interested countries.

Agricultural cooperation has become another key area for bilateral cooperation between China and Kazakhstan, experts said. According to Izimov, China and Kazakhstan are currently carrying out more than 20 joint agricultural projects in a bid to expand cooperation in this field.

"Kazakhstan has vast arable land and well-conditioned prairies. It is feasible to stimulate productivity in its farming and animal husbandry via cooperation between the two countries, while China is also ready to open its market to high-quality agricultural exports from Kazakhstan," Zhang said.

In addition, people-to-people exchanges could also be a highlight of bilateral cooperation in the future. With deepening understanding of the significance of China-Kazakhstan relations, an increasing number of Kazakh citizens from all walks of life start to show greater interest in learning about China, which provides huge potential for cooperation in this area.

While Kazakhstan is hosting the Year of China Tourism event, Zhang suggested the two countries take this opportunity to strengthen their cultural and people-to-people cooperation, including opening more air routes to promote tourism.

"Connections between Chinese people and Kazakh people lay the foundation for the development of bilateral ties and the implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative," Zhang said.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (7th L) poses for a group photo with other leaders at the 15th Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) prime ministers' meeting in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, Nov. 3, 2016. (Xinhua/Rao Aimin)

MOSCOW, June 7 (Xinhua) -- The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) has become an effective tool of ensuring security, stability and sustainable development in the modern system of interstate relations, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov said.

"The key factor in the advance of the SCO is the readiness of the member states to build its activities on the principles of mutual trust, equality, dialogue, respect for interests of each other and for the diversity of civilizations and cultures, or, in short, on what we call the 'Shanghai Spirit' in the organization," he said in a recent interview with Xinhua.

The relevance of this model of cooperation is evidenced by a growing number of countries and international organizations that are striving to participate in the SCO activities, including in the status of an observer or a dialogue partner, he added.

The SCO is a Eurasian political, economic and security organization founded in 2001 with headquarters in Beijing. It currently includes China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan as full members, six observers and six dialogue partners.

India and Pakistan are expected to become full members of the SCO at its forthcoming summit, which is to take place in Astana, Kazakhstan, on Thursday and Friday.

"The importance of this event has yet to be assessed, but it is already clear that the accession of these countries will open additional opportunities for giving a powerful impetus to the development of the SCO format, which will raise it to a qualitatively new position in regional and world affairs," Morgulov said.

According to the diplomat, the summit is expected to adopt a declaration reflecting joint approaches of the member states to further consolidation of the association and to the deepening of the multifaceted cooperation, as well as to various regional and international problems.

Currently, new risks are added to traditional security challenges and threats. Serious concern is caused by the ongoing attempts by some individual states to shake the system of international relations and to impose their own vision of the world agenda, as well as to interfere in the internal affairs of other sovereign states, Morgulov said.

As a result, the tension is increasing and crisis phenomena are accumulating in many regions of the world.

All these represent a breeding ground for the unprecedented intensification of international terrorism that is currently being observed, he said.

In the context of building up anti-terrorist efforts, it is planned that the leaders of the organization will make a special statement on joint combat against international terrorism at the Astana summit, Morgulov said.

The participants are also expected to sign the Convention on Countering Extremism, which aims to make a weighty contribution to the legal framework for international cooperation in this area, and to promote practical cooperation in combating this global threat through competent bodies involving civil society institutions, he said.

"I am convinced that the results of the summit in Astana will make an important contribution to the further development of the SCO and the strengthening of peace and stability in the region," Morgulov said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-08 02:16:57|Editor: yan

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ANKARA, June 7 (Xinhua) -- Turkey's Grand National Assembly on Wednesday approved draft bill allowing the deployment of troop to a Turkish military base in Qatar.

According to local media, the bill includes two pieces of legislation: allowing Turkish troops to be deployed in Qatar and approving an accord between the two countries on military officer training cooperation.

The parliamentary approval comes after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan Tuesday expressed disapproval of the sanctions imposed on Qatar by several Arab countries.

"I hope that all sanctions against Qatar will be lifted as soon as possible," Erdogan said.

The bill, drafted before the rift, passed with 240 votes in favor, largely with support from the ruling AKP Party and nationalist opposition MHP.

The new move appears to support Qatar as it faces diplomatic and trade isolation from some of the biggest Middle Eastern powers.

On Monday, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Egypt, Yemen, Libya and the Maldives cut diplomatic ties with Qatar, claiming it of "terrorism support."
Chinese President Xi Jinping (L front) is welcomed by Kazakhstan First Deputy Prime Minister Askar Mamin upon his arrival in Astana, Kazakhstan, June 7, 2017. (Xinhua/Pang Xinglei)

by Xinhua Writer Liao Bingqing

MOSCOW, June 7 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday started a four-day state visit to Kazakhstan, his third visit to the central Asian country, at the invitation of his Kazakh counterpart Nursultan Nazarbayev.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the establishment of the diplomatic ties between China and Kazakhstan. Against this backdrop, Xi's visit is widely expected to further advance the bilateral relations and enhance the comprehensive strategic partnership between the two countries.

BROAD PROSPECTS FOR DEVELOPMENT OF BILATERAL TIES

The relations between China and Kazakhstan have been developing steadily and substantially over the past 25 years. With a solid foundation for joint development and a goal to combine mutual interests, the two are expected to chart the course for the further development of bilateral ties during Xi's upcoming visit.

"China-Kazakhstan relations are built on the basis of reciprocity and mutual understanding. There are no pending issues between the two countries, and the future development of their bilateral ties enjoys broad prospects," Ruslam Izimov, head of the Eurasian Studies Program at the Institute of World Economy and Politics, told Xinhua.

From previous fruitful achievements of bilateral cooperation, experts are convinced that Xi's upcoming visit will once again greatly promote the China-Kazakhstan partnership.

Top leaders of China and Kazakhstan have been in close contact over recent years, broadening and deepening bilateral relations and cooperation to a great extent.

In September 2013, Xi paid his first state visit to Kazakhstan, during which the two countries signed a joint declaration on a new stage of comprehensive strategic partnership. It was also during this visit that Xi put forward the initiative of building the Silk Road Economic Belt for the first time.

The visit by Xi also set the tone for the development of bilateral ties in the past years.

"The general direction of the two countries' national development was determined during President Xi's visit to Kazakhstan in 2013, namely, the joint building of the Silk Road Economic Belt," Chinese Ambassador to Kazakhstan Zhang Hanhui said.

The initiative proposed by Xi was warmly supported by Kazakhstan. A year later, Nazarbayev, the Kazakh president, introduced his new economic plan known as "Bright Path," which also lays emphasis on investment in infrastructure and priority sectors.

In Xi's second visit in May 2015, the two countries pledged to further align their development strategies in the pursuit of common prosperity.

"The relationship between China and Kazakhstan concerns common development of the two countries as well as regional peace and stability. Therefore, the two sides should implement the consensus reached by the two heads of state, and promote bilateral cooperation in line with predetermined paths for the benefit of the peoples," Zhang said.

During the upcoming visit, Xi will also attend the 17th meeting of Heads of State Council of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the opening ceremony of the World Expo in Astana.

In May 2014, Nazarbayev paid a state visit to China, during which he and Xi agreed to promote bilateral cooperation in a wide range of fields as well as strengthen cultural and people-to-people exchanges.

ENORMOUS POTENTIAL OF COOPERATION

Promoting bilateral cooperation is the focus of Xi's upcoming visit. According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, the two presidents will sign and issue a joint statement, participate in a video link event on cross-border transportation and witness the signing of a series of deals in the areas of economy and trade, finance and water conservation.

Cooperation between the two countries has been blossoming over the past three years and reached an unprecedentedly high level, covering multiple areas such as trade, energy, infrastructure and environmental protection, amid efforts to integrate China's Belt and Road Initiative with Kazakhstan's Bright Path Economic Plan.

Kazakhstan is among the earliest to join China in implementing the Belt and Road Initiative. In late 2014, China and Kazakhstan reached a preliminary consensus on industrial capacity cooperation worth more than 14 billion U.S. dollars. In march 2015, the two countries signed 33 deals in this field totaling 23.6 billion dollars, covering steel, non-ferrous metals, sheet glass, oil refining, hydro-power and automobiles.

"China and Kazakhstan have set a successful example with regard to cooperation in the areas of industrial capacity, energy and connectivity," said Sun Zhuangzhi, secretary general of the SCO Research Center affiliated to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

He added that further enhancing cooperation on the Belt and Road Initiative by the two countries will serve as a convincing role model to other interested countries.

Agricultural cooperation has become another key area for bilateral cooperation between China and Kazakhstan, experts said. According to Izimov, China and Kazakhstan are currently carrying out more than 20 joint agricultural projects in a bid to expand cooperation in this field.

"Kazakhstan has vast arable land and well-conditioned prairies. It is feasible to stimulate productivity in its farming and animal husbandry via cooperation between the two countries, while China is also ready to open its market to high-quality agricultural exports from Kazakhstan," Zhang said.

In addition, people-to-people exchanges could also be a highlight of bilateral cooperation in the future. With deepening understanding of the significance of China-Kazakhstan relations, an increasing number of Kazakh citizens from all walks of life start to show greater interest in learning about China, which provides huge potential for cooperation in this area.

While Kazakhstan is hosting the Year of China Tourism event, Zhang suggested the two countries take this opportunity to strengthen their cultural and people-to-people cooperation, including opening more air routes to promote tourism.

"Connections between Chinese people and Kazakh people lay the foundation for the development of bilateral ties and the implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative," Zhang said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-08 03:07:22|Editor: yan

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BEIRUT, June 7 (Xinhua) -- Lebanon's Foreign Ministry strongly condemned Wednesday the dual terror attacks which targeted the headquarters of the Iranian Shura Council and the shrine of late Imam Khomeini, in the Iranian capital, Tehran, that left behind a number of dead and wounded.

A statement by the foreign ministry said that "these two criminal attacks demonstrate the dreadfulness of the Takfiri terrorist ideology, through de-sanctifying a religious shrine and the headquarters of a legislative authority... aimed at destabilizing Iran and its civil peace, and attempting to provoke sectarian strife within the Iranian society and between Iran and the region."

The statement urged the international community to unite, without any delay, around one utmost priority: to defeat terrorism and uproot its roots.

The ministry underlined Lebanon's full solidarity with Iran in face of terrorist attacks, and expressed heartfelt condolences to the Iranian people, leadership and government on victims of the attacks.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-08 03:52:47|Editor: An

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Cypriot Education Minister Costas Kadis addresses the opening ceremony of the "Heaven on Earth, Sichuan in your eyes" photo exhibition of China's Sichuan province in Nicosia, Cyprus, on June 7, 2017. An exhibition of China's Sichuan province was inaugurated here on Wednesday as a means of promoting contacts between China and Cyprus. (Xinhua/Zhang Zhang)

NICOSIA, June 7 (Xinhua) -- An exhibition of China's Sichuan province was inaugurated here on Wednesday as a means of promoting contacts between China and Cyprus.

The event is part of a series of activities planned by the Chinese embassy with the aim of cultivating contacts and better understanding of the two peoples in the context of promoting the Belt and Road Initiative.

Cypriot Education Minister Costas Kadis said the Sichuan exhibition was timely, and in line with the goals of the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation which he attended in Beijing in May.

He added that a wide variety of activities in the field of culture, including exchange of experts, training, information and the organization of cultural events is provided for by the 2014-2018 executive program of cultural cooperation between Cyprus and China.

China's Ambassador to Cyprus Huang Xingyuan said the exhibition deepens the friendly relations between China and Cyprus and strengthens the cooperation between China and Europe under the Belt and Road framework.

The Sichuan picture exhibition presented the province in three thematic sections: scenic beauties, cultural heritage, and its open and inclusive nature.
The photo shows the White Dwarf Star Stein 2051 B (Credits: NASA, ESA, and K. Sahu (STSci)

WASHINGTON, June 7 (Xinhua) -- A little more than 100 years after Albert Einstein developed his theory of general relativity, astronomers have successfully used its laws to determine the mass of a distant star, a feat the iconic scientist had thought "impossible."

In a study published Wednesday by the U.S. journal Science, researchers scanning the skies with the Hubble Space Telescope revealed how the gravity of a white dwarf, the burned-out remnant of a normal star, warps space and bends the light of a distant star behind it, allowing them to measure a star's mass with gravity for the first time.

"Einstein would be proud," Terry Oswalt of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, wrote in a related perspective piece in Science. "One of his key predictions has passed a very rigorous observational test."

One of the key predictions of general relativity set forth by Einstein in 1915 was that whenever light from a distant star passes by a closer object, gravity acts as a kind of magnifying lens, brightening and bending the distant starlight.

When a star in the foreground passes exactly between us and a background star, Einstein predicted, such a phenomenon, called gravitational microlensing, results in a perfectly circular ring of light -- a so-called "Einstein ring."

The first evidence of the bending of light came in the form of an eclipse in 1919, providing one of the first convincing proofs of Einstein's general theory of relativity.

But Einstein also predicted that if the two stars are just out of alignment, it would cause the background star to appear off-center in a way that could be used to directly determine the mass of the foreground star.

Yet, in a 1936 article in Science, he added that because stars are so far apart "there is no hope of observing this phenomenon directly."

In the current study, an international research team directed by Kailash Sahu of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore took advantage of the superior angular resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope and proactively searched more than 5,000 stars for such an asymmetric alignment.

They realized that the white dwarf Stein 2051 B was set to be in such a position in March 2014 and then directed the Hubble Space Telescope to observe the phenomenon, measuring tiny shifts in the apparent position of a background star behind it.Based on the data, the researchers estimated the white dwarf star's mass to be roughly 68 percent of that of our sun.

"The research by Sahu and colleagues provides a new tool for determining the masses of objects we can't easily measure by other means," Oswalt said.

For the average star-gazer, Oswalt added, the findings are meaningful because "at least 97 percent of all the stars that have ever formed in the Galaxy, including the Sun, will become or already are white dwarfs -- they tell us about our future, as well as our history."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-08 05:53:58|Editor: yan

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DUBAI, June 7 (Xinhua) -- United Arab Emirates (UAE) Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Dr. Anwar bin Mohammed Gargash on Wednesday called on Qatar to abide by the security and stability of the Gulf region and stressed that there must be a clear roadmap for implementing steps agreed during a similar crisis in 2014 that also saw severing ties with Doha, the official WAM news agency reported.

"Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, the emir of Qatar, promised that his country would carry out these steps but did not fulfill its commitments," Gargash said in a statement.

He pointed out that "mediation at the present time will not lead to a result, and comes with the mediation with the start of the implementation of conditions."

Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, Emir of the State of Kuwait, described him as "one of the most prominent leaders of the region and we respect him."

The Emir of Kuwait on Tuesday made a quick visit to the UAE as part of a mediation effort to contain the crisis of severing relations with Qatar.

Gargash said that "severing relations with Doha is the result of accumulations of many years of destructive national policies and support of extremist and terrorist organizations."

"Qatar is a neighbor and it must abide by the rules of security and stability of the Gulf and must stop playing the main promoter of extremism and terrorism in the region."

"The crisis has grown, and we have reached a dead end in efforts to persuade Qatar to change course," he said.

The minister referred to a series of steps Doha is undertaking to restore relations with them, including "stopping support for extremism and terrorism and the need for clear political engagement that reflects a change in the course of national policies."

"Doha is trying to suggest that the Gulf and Arab boycotting countries are trying to hijack their foreign policy, but this is not true," he added.

"Qatar should stop using the media to promote an extremist agenda," Gargash said, referring to Al-Jazeera satellite television. He also called on Doha to "act against many individuals who have been sanctioned and currently residing in Qatar, who contributes to the financing of Al Qaeda."

He referred to elements in the Muslim Brotherhood group which spreads "fanaticism" in the region and "should not have refuge in Qatar."

"Iran, which is benefiting from the crisis, is benefiting from any crisis between its neighbors. Qatar's relations with Iran are good and they share a gas field, and Qatar wants to keep all its options open," said Gargash.

"The current crisis has nothing to do with the American Air Force base in Qatar, it is not a matter of concern to us," he said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-08 05:59:00|Editor: yan

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By Eric J. Lyman

ROME, June 7 (Xinhua) -- The European Union (EU) and the Italian government this month sealed a deal that probably represents the last best chance for Italy's beleaguered Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena bank to survive.

The once third-largest lender in Italy has spent the last six years in a tailspin, with mounting losses, a growing list of non-performing loans, corruption, and eroding market share.

European and Italian officials have come to terms that will pump 8.8 billion euros (9.9 billion U.S. dollars) into the troubled institution.

But the help will come at a cost: Monte dei Paschi di Siena will be forced to slash expenses, cut staff, close branch offices, and cap compensation for top executives. The Italian state will take a major stake in the bank, which was the worst performing large bank in Europe-wide financial sector stress tests last year.

The salary cap for executives will be particularly painful: it limits management to salaries no more than ten times larger than the salary of the average bank employee.

According to the Italian media, that would reduce the 1.8-million-euro (2 million U.S. dollars) annual salary of chief executive Marco Morelli by two-thirds.

Founded in 1472, Monte dei Paschi di Siena is the world's oldest continually operating bank, and for most of its history it was a robust institution.

In recent decades, it had become one of the most important employers in the Tuscan city of Siena, its home base, and was known as a generous sponsor of cultural events, including the city's iconic "Palio di Siena" horse race.

But an ill-advised purchase of rival bank Banca Antonveneta in 2008, when the worldwide economic crisis that hit the small- and medium-sized businesses Monte dei Paschi di Siena worked with, and falling prices in the Italian housing market were among the factors that sent Monte dei Paschi di Siena into a downward spiral.

"The last time Monte dei Paschi di Siena had strong financial results was way back in 2011," Tommaso di Tanno, a former chair of the Board of Statutory Auditors for Monte dei Paschi di Siena, now a tax law expert at Milan's Bocconi University, told Xinhua.

The 8.8-billion-euro capital increase should help pull the troubled bank from the brink, di Tanno said. "If they can't survive with a capital increase of this size then they will never make it," he said.

But that does not mean the bank is out of the woods, according to Ruggero Bertelli, a banking professor at the University of Siena.

"The bank still has to be declared healthy by Euroepan regulators," Bertelli said in an interview. "That means improving its portfolio, balancing its accounts and doing it over time. It's more likely to be a process of years than it is to be one of months."

But Monte dei Paschi di Siena also has some factors in its favor, according to di Tanno. "The biggest factor is that the issues that caused Monte dei Paschi's problems at the start are no longer relevant," he said.

Monte dei Paschi di Siena has slipped from its perch as Italy's third largest bank to number four or five, depending on how that is calculated. For his part, di Tanno said he thinks Monte dei Paschi di Siena will eventually settle in as Italy's "fifth or sixth" largest bank.

But Bertelli was less optimistic. "Of course, nobody can know the future but I can imagine that once it is healthy, Monte dei Paschi di Siena will end up being a takeover target for a larger rival," he said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-08 06:04:15|Editor: Liu

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RABAT, June 7 (Xinhua) -- A team of international scientists has found the world's oldest human species' fossil near the southern Moroccan city of Youssoufia, the Moroccan national Institute of Sciences of Archaeology and Heritage announced in a statement on Wednesday.

The institute said the remains of the Homo sapiens, which were found in a remote village called Jbel Irhoud, date back to over 300,000 years ago.

The remains push back human species' origins by 100,000 years, and suggest humans didn't evolve only in East Africa, it added.

According to Nature magazine, the finds do not mean that Homo sapiens originated in North Africa. Instead, they suggest that the species' earliest members evolved all across the continent, scientists say.

In the 1960s, fossils dating back to the Middle Stone Age were discovered.
BP recommits to TT

Looney, BP Chief Operating Officer, Strategy and Regions Andy Hopwood and Regional President BPTT Norman Christie met with Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley, Minister in the Office of the Prime Minister Stuart Young, Finance Minister Colm Imbert, Minister of Energy Franklin Khan and other Government officials during their visit.

At the meetings with the government, BP representatives shared the significant progress that the company has been making to improve production capacity and gas supply for the short, medium and longer term. They also recognized the important role that government played in facilitating these projects and successes.

At an event held on June 1 to mark several milestones achieved by the company, BPTT announced exploration success in its Savannah and Macadamia wells and the sanction of its latest project, Angelin.

The 2017 start ups of TROC, Sercan II and the imminent start up of Juniper provide near term relief to the gas supply issues, the sanction and anticipated start up of Angelin in 2019 ensures that gas volumes can be maintained into the medium term and the exploration success gives confidence to maintaining gas supply levels into the longer term, post 2020.

Looney said that the milestones announced represent BPs confidence in Trinidad and Tobago and commitment to deliver over the short to long-term.

He said: We remain committed to being the best stewards of our acreage and to ensuring that Trinidad and Tobago benefits from our investments here. We will continue to invest in our people, in our technology and in our operations to sustain production and to actively participate in the broader development of the country. BPTT operates in 904,000 acres off Trinidads east coast. BPTT has 14 offshore platforms and two onshore processing facilities.
Chase Village man shot dead

According to police, Francis was at a bar on the Southern Main Road, when a man driving a silver- coloured Nissan Tiida car pulled into the driveway, got out with gun in his hand and shot Fancis in the chest.

When Francis fell to the ground, the gunman rummaged through his pockets, then got back into the car and sped off.

Speaking to relatives yesterday at the Forensic Science Centre in St James, reporters were told Francis who was last employed as a plant processor at Carib, had just dropped his daughter off at home, and stopped at the bar to buy cigarettes.

Relatives added that a day before he was killed, Francis narrowly escaped from a robbery. However, relatives do not believe the robbery was linked to the shooting. This was a hit plain and simple, said a relative who asked not to be identified.

This wasnt about jewellery. It was a hit. The day before he came and told his brother that apparently people had come to rob him, but he managed to get into his car and drive away.

I dont know what happened, but I feel they killed him out of jealousy. Plenty people out there suffering and cannot get anything and they are envious of people who have. Relatives described Francis as an ambitious person who liked to dress well and wear flashy jewellery.

Investigations are continuing.
Men charged for using insulting language

Later on Monday, in the Princes Town district, 30-year-old private hire taxi driver Irwin Cozier was arrested and formally charged with using insulting language, disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and assaulting an officer. Cozier was expected to appear before a San Fernando Magistrate yesterday.

In the Eastern Division, officers of the Arima Police station conducted an anti- crime exercise under the supervision of Inspector Birch and Sergeant Thomas arresting 30-year-old Allan Ford for possession of 45 grammes of marijuana.

The exercise took place between 10 pm on Monday night and ended at 2 am yesterday.
Port Authority loses case

Yesterday, High Court judge Joan Charles found the Port Authority liable and ordered that damages be assessed for Elliot. The judge also ordered that compensation be paid by the Port to ORCA Transport Limited, owners of the truck.

The incident happened on April 15, 2009 when Elliot went to offload a cargo container.

He parked the truck and trailer at Block F-3 Bay 6 on the port. The crane operator lowered the spreader onto the container on the trailer and engaged the locking pins and began to hoist the container off the truck. But Justice Charles stated in her judgment that Elliot alighted from the truck and unlocked the four pins which held the container in place before he signalled to the crane operator that the container was ready to be lifted.

Since the crane was supposed to lift only the container, Elliot re-entered the truck and signalled to the crane operator that the container was ready to be hoisted.

However, the hoist cable to which the spreader bar was attached began swaying. The judge stated that in an attempt to stabilise the spreader bar, the crane operator slammed it against the container.

When he did so, the locking pin hooked onto the container. The crane began to lift the container, but so to was truck and trailer with Elliot in the drivers seat in the cabin. The judgment stated that Elliot sounded his horn to signal to the crane operator that the truck, trailer and container were being lifted into the air, but too no avail.

The crane lifted Elliot into the air and when it reached 20 feet in the air, the truck with its trailer and container, fell. Elliot no longer works as a result of his spinal injuries, he stated in a lawsuit filed by attorney Stephen Boodram who instructed attorney Lennox Sanguinette, for negligence.

ORCA also sued the PATT.

Justice Charles held that in her view, it was reasonably foreseeable that injury and loss may occur if clear guidelines for the loading and off loading of containers were not established by the PATT. In order to discharge the duty of care imposed on the PATT by the OSHA Act and common law, she stated, the defendant (PATT) had to show on evidence, that it had not breached the duty of care as occupier.

The PATT pleaded that it had issued a Notice about procedures to be adopted for truck drivers when loading and unloading containers at the port before the date of the accident. However, Justice Charles stated, the PATT at the trial, disclosed a bulletin one year after the incident.

Judge Charles held that the PATT was in breach of its statutory duty to take steps to protect the safety and health of the public.

The act of unloading containers from trailers required care on the part of both Elliot and the PATT. The judge ordered that for ORCA, the PATT was 100 percent liable. For Elliot, she held that he is to be paid 80 percent of damages to be assessed, for by her findings, he contributed to the negligence to the extent of 20 percent.
Bajan trapped in Trinidad for 4 years

The mans offence? Possession of ten grammes of marijuana. This is the story of Shawn Worrell, 41.

Worrell, a painter, visited this country on January 10, 2013. On February 14, 2013, police raided a Valsayn house in which he was staying and arrested him, a Guyanese national and the now deceased Selwyn Robocop Alexis.

Worrell and Alexis were charged with possession of ten grammes of marijuana and appeared before Tunapuna Magistrate Brambhanan Dubay. Worrell, who maintained that he did not know who Alexis was and just happened to be there when arrested, was nevertheless found guilty and sentenced to 18 months in prison with hard labour.

But he was successful in securing bail, pending appeal, on April 26, 2013 in the sum of $22,000 and was able to have it reduced to $15,000 on September 11, 2013.

The court granted bail with three conditions. Worrell was to report to the Chaguanas Magistrates Court three times per week; not leave the country; and not apply for any new travel documents.

But between September 11, 2013 and press time yesterday, Worrell has not yet had his day in the Court of Appeal.

His attorney Tempu Nefertari- Moheni produced a letter from an official informing her that no appeal has been received by the Court of Appeal registry.

Nefertari-Moheni said Worrells appeal cannot be listed unless the notes of evidence from his hearing in 2013 was sent from the magistrates court to the Court of Appeal, but this has not been done and Worrell, she fears, is withering away due to his inability to find steady work.

He spoke with the Newsday but did not wish to have his picture published.

I have no form of ID so I couldnt get a job. I tried really hard to get a job but it just never worked out. I cant buy medication for my asthma either without an ID. After he was granted bail in 2013, the police handed over his travel documents to the Immigration Department. He was placed under a supervision order and made to report to Immigration every two weeks. For years, he sought a special inquiry hearing to get a deportation order with the hope of being returned to his family. Finally, on September 14, 2016, he was ordered to be deported.

But they cannot enforce the deportation order because he is still out on bail pending appeal, said Nefertari-Moheni.

She wrote to Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi in November, 2016, detailing the last four years of Worrells tribulations in the hopes of him intervening.

He wrote back saying his hands were tied and it is a matter for the judiciary. He forwarded it to the Chief Justice and the Chief Justice wrote to me saying he requested the notes of evidence from the magistrate.
D-day today for Property Tax case

Justice Frank Seepersad, on May 19 and May 31, granted a temporary stay and injunction preventing the Commissioner of Valuations from receiving the forms from members of the public. The order will remain in effect until June 27, when the judge will decide whether to continue it or if it will be varied.

The Commissioner as well as the Attorney General have filed separate appeals against Justice Seepersads two orders and Justices of Appeal Peter Jamadar, Gregory Smith and Judith Jones are expected to give their ruling today. At yesterdays hearing, attorneys for the Commissioner and the AG held that the commissioner had independent legislative powers and had a duty to uphold the law by collecting VRFs to facilitate the collection of Property Taxes.

Senior Counsel Russell Martineau, who represents the Commissioner and Fyard Hosein, who appear for the AG, said the court had to be guided by the law as the related to the actions of the Commissioner and not the Minister of Finance or his agents. Both attorneys submitted that there may be a need for the minister to clarify what he said in press statements. Martineau further contended that the submission of VRFs were voluntary and the initial deadline of April 1 was irrelevant as it had nothing to do with the obligation to the obligation to submit the forms. He contended the Commissioner had the power under the law to ask for the forms, as he further contended that Justice Seepersads orders were unclear.

Martineau went further to complain about the breadth of the order, saying it protected much wider rights than was argued by former UNC senator Devant Maharaj in his judicial review claim. He further contended that the injunction granted by the judge on May 31, stymied the entire valuation process.

And why? Because one man says he doesnt want to be forced to put in a form, he submitted. This is virtually killing the tax. You have to preserve the taxation process, he argued. Martineau urged the court to ensure that the tax collection process was not frustrated as the government needed the revenue.

If there is no money and no taxation, then government cannot provide citizens with education and with health care etcetera, he said.

Martineau also rubbished the claim to an invasion of the right to privacy by having the public submit their telephone numbers and emails.

You are not talking about DNA, he contended.

Martineau further held that the injunction imposed by the judge was a waste of public resources as public officers were sitting down doing nothing. They were hired to do a job, and now they are being paid to do nothing, he said. In his 28-page judgement, Seepersad said, The balance of convenience and the interest of justice is not weighted in favour of the Respondents (AG and Commissioner) and a greater risk of prejudice lies in the continuation of a process which on the face of the existing law, may have been undertaken without measured consideration and without proper regard to the provisions of the act. The judge had set the matter, in which Maharaj is challenging the legality of the Property Tax, for trial on September 19 at the Port-of-Spain Supreme Court and September 21 at the San Fernando Supreme Court.
Mahabir-Wyatt backs call for removal of red tape for pain drugs

Carmona made the appeal while delivering an address at a Sub-Regional Consultation on the Global Strategy for Womens, Childrens and Adolescents Health 2016- 2030 in Barbados on June 1.

She argued that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has some of the best resources, infrastructure and finance in the world and is better equipped than many of the democratic countries of the Caribbean. She said it would be cost effective for countries in the region to adopt for use, drugs approved by the FDA rather than submitting them to their own time-consuming procedures.

In a letter to the editor, Mahabir-Wyatt said the laboratory of the local ministry of health has been closed for the past two years and, even if it were in operation, it would not have the staff to match those of the FDA or similar facilities in Canada or the UK.

So, people that could be cured simply die, and die in terrible pain. It is a form of cruel and unusual punishment equivalent to agonising torture, Mahabir-Wyatt said.

She said attorneys recently got together to protest issues in their profession which they considered unprofessional and wondered when doctors and nurses would do the same and protest laws which prevent the importation and use of drugs which could ease the pain and suffering of patients.

Mahabir-Wyatt said the failure of doctors and nurses to take such action is negligence at best and indifference to pain at worst. She said aligning local policies with those of the international pharmacy industry would save this country and local patients considerable expense and give local medical technicians the chance to take part in US-supervised clinical trials of newly emerging drugs.
Maxi taxi crashes on PBR

As he reached near the Beetham Overpass, George complained about suddenly feeling dizzy. The vehicle veered off the roadway, rode the culvert and crashed into one of the concrete pillars which hold up the overpass.

Police and emergency services were contacted and officers from the Port of Spain Division responded.

All passengers, along with George, were taken to the Port of Spain General Hospital. George was treated for injuries to his right leg. All of the injuries were non life threatening and the passengers were later discharged. George was kept overnight in hospital as doctors monitored his condition.
Homes demolished in South Oropouche

The commotion yesterday began at about 6 am when a group of men, accompanied by police, went to Ralph Narine Trace and informed the occupants about the demolition. Occupant Leena Patram, 43, said her husband Kumar Deonath, 36, had been living on the property for the last 36 years.

In destroying the two-bedroom ply house, Patram said damage was done to several religious items including murtis (Hindu statues).

He is also alleging that $8,000 and grocery items were stolen. We are not going anywhere, Patram said.

She could have given us first preference if the land is hers. These people came here and showed us no documents. But, they claimed to have a court order. They told him come outside then started breaking down everything. They broke up my murtis. My flour and grocery gone, said Patram.

Up to last evening, the couple was rebuilding the structure and efforts to contact the accused land owner proved futile.
STEM programme for Morvant/Laventille

He made this known while speaking at a ribbon cutting ceremony for a lab at Queens Royal College (QRC), Port of Spain.

Whether it is our work in STEM education, our steelpan construction programme in schools or strengthening education in socalled hotspot areas, we aim to provide hope and opportunity, Hudson said.

He said refurbishing the biology lab at QRC, in its own way, symbolises what Shell stands for because a laboratory represents a place of enquiry, research, knowledge and development.

Hudson said that since 2013, Shell TTs STEM programme has partnered with tertiary education institutions, industry and businesses to expose students to a broad range of careers in Science Engineering and technology and the critical role of the language of mathematics, in these subject areas.

He said as the industry increasingly demands critical thinking and problem solving skills and the capacity to deal with complexity, their investment in the programme and partnership with the ministry seeks to address the challenge.

The programme seeks to enthuse, empower and equip students and teachers to build interest and competence in STEM subjects. The refurbishment and upgrade of labs and creation of STEM centres are therefore critical components of the programme. He said Shell TT was happy to have partnered with the Ministry of Education to reactivate the lab and provide students and staff with a pleasant and modern facility. Hudson encouraged students to use the knowledge and technology available to them and not only pass exam, but develop their creativity and critical thinking skills.

Also addressing the students, Education Minister Anthony Garcia congratulated and thanked Shell TT for their encouragement and their assistance they have provided for the school. He said if all objectives in education are to be achieved, all stakeholders must be engaged.

Shell TT has always shown an interest in education.

We are here this morning to celebrate the accomplishments not only of Shell TT but also the principal and staff of QRC. He said some of the areas the Ministry of Education will be encouraging students to form part of their learning would be areas in critical thinking.

It has become extremely important that we assist our students in developing that capacity to think critically. One of the short comings we had in so many of our students are in the area of critical thinking. He continued, When we interview a number of people for jobs in the public service or in the private sector, generally there is a deficiency in critical thinking. The school has been outfitted with a refurbished Biology Laboratory, after the lab was deemed unsuitable for students to perform daily activities.

The upgrade of the lab included replacement of the wooden flooring, installation of all units for storage, replacements of doors, upgrade to the teachers work station, the installations of four students work counters, demonstration counters around the room, air condition units, repairing and painting of the walls and replacing broken glass windows. Gas lines were also repaired, and new lines were installed.
Kamla: Release Faris report

She vowed to oppose such as she addressed a UNC Monday Night forum at Don Miguel Hindu School in San Juan.

She said Opposition efforts to obtain a report of the probe were instead met by a letter from Defence Force head Rodney Smart which alleged that his predecessor Kenrick Maharaj approved the handling of firearms by the AGs children. Maharaj has stoutly denied this. Dubbing the imbroglio Armygate, Persad-Bissessar accused Government of infiltrating and compromising the Defence Force, to protect Al-Rawi.

Noting neither Al-Rawi nor Maharaj had been called to testify in the inquiry, she vowed, The Opposition will fight Armygate. Persad-Bissessar called on Acting Police Commissioner Stephen Williams to launch a criminal investigation into the affair. She urged Minister of National Security Edmund Dillon to release the full report of the inquiry.

Well not let Government destroy the Army. We will close the army gate on those responsible. Persad-Bissessar then repeated her call for Chief Justice Ivor Archie to step down, in light of the Law Associations recent no-confidence motion in him and the Judicial and Legal Services Commission (JLSC) over the Marcia Ayers-Caesar affair. While suspects in 53 court cases were harmed by Ayers-Caesars promotion from magistrate to judge, Persad-Bissessar said no-one had taken responsibility or uttered a word of contrition. She said there is now a crisis of leadership in TT that extends even into the army and the judiciary.

Saying the judiciary is the guardian of the Constitution, Persad- Bissessar said citizens cannot afford to lose confidence in that institution. We mustnt let good judges be tarnished by what has transpired. She urged Archie to listen to the voice of the people or suffer at the hands of the people. As easily as it is given to you, it will be taken away from you! While sympathising with Archie on a human level, Persad-Bissessar said the greater good outweighs any disadvantages that will accrue to Archie personally, if he resigns.

On crime, she lamented the more than 220 murders this year despite Dillon having two colleagues to help him manage the ministry.

Stop being concerned and resign, she urged. Pick up your bag and go! Earlier she went through a mock ceremony of holding out an imitation Academy Award to the greatest actor ever, who had acted 36 times as prime minister in the past 20 months, Finance Minister Colm Imbert, whom she teasingly re-christened, Mr Taxbert.
Couva North MP knocks crime plan

It seems as though there is an ignorance of the realities of increasing crime and its impact on the population.

In the latest shoot-out between gangs in Maloney, two children aged nine and 11 were shot in the melee. Last week in Enterprise there was another shooting of a businessman and his four-year-old daughter by a bicycle-riding shooter. Luckily the daughter escaped unhurt. Speaking with Newsday, MP Ramdial said the worsening crime situation demands that government take greater action and play a more proactive role in order to ensure the safety of its citizens.

Citing the absence of a permanent police post in Enterprise, Ramdial said the National Security Minister must reaffirm his commitment to the safety of citizens.

The Minister during his last walkabout in Enterprise assured persons that there would be 24-hour joint foot patrols by police and soldiers, to date there has been no patrols.

Also he said that he was unable to say for certain when exactly the police post in Enterprise would be constructed, this is something that we need to know. Ramdial added that community policing initiatives were in desperate need of a revamping and called on the Ministry to lend the necessary support to the police service in order to maximise effectiveness.
East Japan Railway has decided to install security cameras on all cars on the Yamanote Line, which circles central Tokyo.

The company plans to replace its 50 Yamanote Line trains with new models in time for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics.

Each of the 550 cars will be equipped with 4 security cameras to deter crimes. They will be installed above the doors. The project will cost about 18 million dollars.

Video images will be overwritten once a week.

Employee access to the videos will be restricted to protect the privacy of passengers.

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It's well-known by now that the next generation communications technology known as 5G is rapidly in development, and may actually start hitting commercially before the 2020 projected date of not so long ago. Though admittedly, it may not be exactly the same wherever you go, at least for a while, based on some early reports. Still, with a good while to go between here and there, testing is already underway, and China recently completed one such test backed up by an array of 5G vendors.





The vendor roster in on the testing included Ericsson (News - Alert), Huawei, Nokia, and Samsung, among others, which made it clear that this was a major technological undertaking in the 5G market. Reports noted that other vendorsmostly focusing on chipsets and test instrumentswere also invited to join in the next generation communications effort.

Led by the IMT-2020 (5G) Promotion Group, the initial phase of testing was completed back in 2016. Several different next generation communications technologies were tested in that time, including massive multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) technology along with new waveforms and multiple access systems. Also included were new network implementations specifically geared toward the densest of user applications, advance coding systems, network slicing, edge computing, and more.

China has been working on this development for some time, having established the IMT-2020 (5G) group back in 2013 as part of a larger plan to coordinate mobile service provider efforts. China hopes to have 5G mobile networks in place, operating, and commercialized by 2020.

Some here might suggest that this is a pointless pursuit for China considering how heavily censored its Web access is; it's not called the Great Firewall for nothing. Why offer blisteringly high-speed access to a Web that's so phenomenally censored that YouTube (News - Alert) all but shatters its psyche? Yet this oversimplifies things somewhat as there's a lot going on internally when it comes to Web access in China. Several mobile payments systems, for example, operate therein and it's a safe bet China is working on various smart city initiatives of its own. Throw in the sheer size of the population, and the percentage of it that's rural, and having 5G in place is a great way to not only get more access into the cities, but also open up the countryside, which could be a pretty substantial and untapped market in its own right.

China's push into 5G access may seem a little unnecessary, even contradictory, but more bandwidth is a vital part of just about anyone's life these days, even someone living in a country with a Web so censored that he or she will probably never even see this article.

Edited by Alicia Young
If a home or other building seems to have been invaded by hundreds of flies this fall, these are likely cluster flies. While a nuisance, they do not cause any damage or harm to people or pets and they do not reproduce indoors.
The US President Tuesday shocked his own administration after he took the Saudi side in the crisis involving Qatar and several of its neighbors.

Donald Trump boasted via several tweets that the speech he delivered two weeks ago in Riyadh was already paying off adding that Qatar has been singled out as terrorism supporter.

So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off. They said they would take a hard line on funding extremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism! Trump said in a series of Twitter posts.

Saudi Arabia is leading a regional blockade against tiny gas-rich Qatar. Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Yemen and Egypt Saturday severed ties with Qatar accusing it of supporting internal dissident groups. They were joined in their move by Libya, the Maldives and Mauritania.

The group also imposed territorial and aerial ban on Qatar-bound ships and planes causing shuffle in international air and maritime traffic.

Donald Trumps tweets contradict Washingtons position on the crisis, as White House spokesperson Sean Spicer said the United States is communicating with all the parties in the Middle East to resolve issues and restore cooperation over the Qatar dispute.

The US still wants to see this issue de-escalated and resolved immediately, in keeping with the principles that the president laid out in terms of defeating terror financing and extremism.

The State Department Monday pointed out that it hoped a quick resolution of the row through dialogue.

The Pentagon also contradicted Trumps position as it praised Qatar for the cooperation in the fight against terrorism.

Pentagon spokesman Navy Captain Jeff Davis indicated that Qatar has an enduring commitment to regional security.

Qatar is currently house to the US largest military base in the Gulf, used by the US-led international coalition in Syria, and Iraq. Thousands of US military forces are deployed to al Udeid Air Base.
Morocco has been awarded a UNESCO prize in recognition of its efforts in promoting the gender approach in fisheries sciences.

The award was handed by UNESCO Director Irina Bokova to Moroccan Minister of Agriculture, Maritime Fisheries, Rural Development and Water and Forests, Aziz Akhannouch, at A ceremony organized by the UNESCO Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, on the sidelines of the UN Conference on Oceans held in New York (June 5-9).

Speaking on this occasion, Akhannouch said he was honored to receive, on behalf of Morocco, this award, which recognizes the North African countrys efforts in strengthening fisheries and ocean sciences.

A distinction in the gender approach category particularly delights us because gender equality in research is not sufficiently valued, he said, insisting that the situation needs to change.

In Morocco, women constitute 33% of the people active in oceanographic and fisheries research, he said, adding that this percentage increases year on year.

The woman component in scientific research is fundamental, Aziz Akhannouch said in a statement to the press, expressing optimism that womens contribution to fisheries research and their presence in the world of oceans will steadily grow.
The European Union and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) signed on Wednesday a Joint Declaration on EU support to UNRWA for the period 2017-2020.

They also announced the signature of the financial agreement for the EU contribution to the UNRWA Program Budget for 2017, which covers the Agencys essential services in terms of education, health care, and relief and social services.

The 2017-2020 Joint Declaration strengthens the political nature of the EU-UNRWA partnership and reaffirms the European Unions commitment to promoting the rights of Palestine refugees and supporting the long-term financial stability of the Agency in a context of intensified budgetary constraints and operational challenges, the EU said in a press release.

According to the Joint Declaration, the EU will essentially contribute to the funding of quality education for 500,000 children, primary health care for more than 3.5 million patients and assistance to over 250,000 acutely vulnerable Palestine refugees.

On the margins of the signing ceremony, the EU and UNRWA announced the disbursement of a 82 million commitment to the UNRWA Program Budget for 2017. Among others, this will help pay the salaries of 32,000 local UNRWA staff, most of whom are Palestine refugees themselves, and contribute to the running costs of close to 700 UNRWA schools and 140 UNRWA health-care centers.

The High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini, one of the signatories of the Joint Declaration, recognized the essential role of the Agency in the Middle East. With its tireless work, UNRWA keeps supporting Palestine refugees, providing education, promoting socio-economic development and stability in the Middle East, she said. The international support is key to UNRWA: the European Union will keep investing in one of the pillars of its Middle East peace policy.

Another signatory of the Declaration, Commissioner for European Neighbourhood Policy, Johannes Hahn renewed the EUs commitment to support UNRWA in its further reform efforts, building on the important work underway, to ensure the provision of quality core services to vulnerable Palestine refugees.
Mauritania has joined its voice to the Arab nations that cut off diplomatic ties with Qatar, which they accuse of supporting terrorism and sidelining with Iran.

The state of Qatar has linked its policies  in support of terrorist organizations and the propagation of extremist ideas, the Mauritanian news agency said relaying a statement of Mauritanias foreign ministry.

This has resulted in heavy losses to human life in these Arab countries, in Europe and throughout the world, the statement said.

In a similar move, Jordan announced that it is scaling back its diplomatic ties with Qatar and that it will close the Amman office of Doha-based Al Jazeera TV channel.

Spokesperson for the Jordanian government Mohammed Momani said the move aims at safeguarding regional stability and ending the crises in our region.

Gabon, for its part, joined the voices condemning Qatar. The foreign Ministry of the central African country blamed Doha for failing to respect international commitments and agreements on counter-terrorism, expressing concern over Qatars continuing support for terrorist groups.

The snowballing severance of diplomatic ties with Qatar came after six Arab countries -Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Libya, and Yemen- cut off diplomatic and commercial relations with Doha, leaving the tiny Gulf emirate physically and politically isolated from the rest of the region.

Saudi Arabia has closed its borders with Qatar, a decision that will have severe impacts on Dohas economy.

The six Arab nations also suspended Qatar from the military coalition that is fighting in Yemens civil war against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels.

The countries said they would halt all land, air and sea traffic with Qatar, eject its diplomats and order Qatari citizens to leave the Gulf states within 14 days.
The automotive industry in Morocco has become the leading export sector, thanks notably to the investments of French automaker Renault Group that celebrated the export of 1 million vehicle made in its Moroccan plants of Tangier and Casablanca.

Renault is a success story that we would like to duplicate in other sectors, said Industry and Investment Minister, Moulay Hafid Elalamy, in a statement to the press.

Renaults investments put Morocco on the global car industry map, Equipment and Transport Minister said on the same occasion, adding that the automotive sector is a driver of growth conducive to the development of local expertise through technology transfer.

Today, 10% of total cars sold by Renault in the globe are made in Morocco, where 73% of production is exported to 73 countries, notably in Europe and the MENA region.

The Tangier plant, worth 1.6 billion, started operating in 2012 and hit a production level of 345,000 cars in 2016 up from 229,000 cars in 2015

Benefiting from Moroccos tax incentives and cheap skilled labor, the plant is the largest car factory in Africa and served as a catalyst for the development of Moroccos automotive sector by attracting investments by car parts makers, widening the supply chain in the Kingdom.

The expanding car industry sector in Morocco has attracted significant PSA Peugeot Citroen investment to build a production plant worth $632 million near Kenitra. Works have already started to build the plant, which is expected to be ready in 2019. The factory will have an initial annual production capacity of 90,000 vehicles expected to rise to 200,000 as sales pick up. Most of the output will be exported to African markets.

The PSA Peugeot Citroen plant is further drawing car parts makers, such as Canadas Linamar, which announced its plan to build a factory destined to supply engine parts. Following suit, U.S. auto parts maker Delphi Corp. will also set up a new factory making electrical distribution systems and a research and development center in the North African kingdom.

The development of the automotive industry in the country will help the government create 90,000 jobs by 2020 in addition to the 100,000 that already exist. The government also aspires to increase the proportion of locally produced components in exported cars from 40% to 65% by the end of the decade.
Comey dont play. Photo: Yuri Gripas/AFP/Getty Images

James Comey just broke tomorrows biggest story, today. The opening statement he plans to deliver at Thursdays blockbuster Senate Intelligence Committee hearing is now online. Here are seven quick takeaways from the former FBI directors tell-all:



1) Comey corroborates virtually everything thats been reported about his relationship with Trump.

Comey confirms that Trump asked for his personal loyalty, encouraged him to drop the investigation into Michael Flynn, and demanded that the FBI publicly announce that he was not under investigation.



The FBI director also validates reports that he asked Jeff Sessions not to leave him alone with Trump.

In many places, Comeys account aligns nearly verbatim with previous reporting. To take one example: Comey confirms that Trump told him, I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. (Perhaps, a defense attorney could make some hay out of Trump phrasing his request as an expression of hope, rather than as a flat-out command).

2) The president was very clear that he did not want an FBI director who was loyal to the country, but rather, to him, personally.

At a dinner that sounds twice as awkward as your worst Tinder experience, Comey promised the president his unwavering honesty  but stipulated that he would not be Trumps reliable political ally.

Unfortunately, the president wasnt looking for honesty and integrity in the head of federal law enforcement, so much as unconditional, personal loyalty. Comeys account of the meal is worth reading in full:

He had called me at lunchtime that day and invited me to dinner that night, saying he was going to invite my whole family, but decided to have just me this time, with the whole family coming the next time. It was unclear from the conversation who else would be at the dinner, although I assumed there would be others.



It turned out to be just the two of us, seated at a small oval table in the center of the Green Room. Two Navy stewards waited on us, only entering the room to serve food and drinks.



The President began by asking me whether I wanted to stay on as FBI Director, which I found strange because he had already told me twice in earlier conversations that he hoped I would stay, and I had assured him that I intended to. He said that lots of people wanted my job and, given the abuse I had taken during the previous year, he would understand if I wanted to walk away.



My instincts told me that the one-on-one setting, and the pretense that this was our first discussion about my position, meant the dinner was, at least in part, an effort to have me ask for my job and create some sort of patronage relationship.



It did not take Trump long to validate those instincts.

I replied that I loved my work and intended to stay and serve out my ten year term as Director. And then, because the set-up made me uneasy, I added that I was not reliable in the way politicians use that word, but he could always count on me to tell him the truth. I added that I was not on anybodys side politically and could not be counted on in the traditional political sense, a stance I said was in his best interest as the President.A few moments later, the President said, I need loyalty, I expect loyalty. I didnt move, speak, or change my facial expression in any way during the awkward silence that followed. We simply looked at each other in silence.

Nevertheless, Trump persisted.

Near the end of our dinner, the President returned to the subject of my job, saying he was very glad I wanted to stay, adding that he had heard great things 4 about me from Jim Mattis, Jeff Sessions, and many others. He then said, I need loyalty. I replied, You will always get honesty from me. He paused and then said, Thats what I want, honest loyalty. I paused, and then said, You will get that from me. As I wrote in the memo I created immediately after the dinner, it is possible we understood the phrase honest loyalty differently, but I decided it wouldnt be productive to push it further. The term  honest loyalty  had helped end a very awkward conversation and my explanations had made clear what he should expect.

This is big. The White House has denied that Trump ever asked Comey for his personal loyalty, insisting that the president wants loyalty to this country and to the rule of law.

3) The FBI director does not believe that Trump directly asked him to drop the investigation into links between Russia and his campaign.

Heres Comeys account of Trumps infamous interference in the investigation of Michael Flynn:

When the door by the grandfather clock closed, and we were alone, the President began by saying, I want to talk about Mike Flynn. Flynn had resigned the previous day. The President began by saying Flynn hadnt done anything wrong in speaking with the Russians, but he had to let him go because he had misled the Vice President. He added that he had other concerns about Flynn, which he did not then specify.



 He then said, I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go. I replied only that he is a good guy. (In fact, I had a positive experience dealing with Mike Flynn when he was a colleague as Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency at the beginning of my term at FBI.) I did not say I would let this go.



I did not understand the President to be talking about the broader investigation into Russia or possible links to his campaign. I could be wrong, but I took him to be focusing on what had just happened with Flynns departure and the controversy around his account of his phone calls. Regardless, it was very concerning, given the FBIs role as an independent investigative agency.

Comeys testimony suggests that Trump has contempt for the concept of the FBIs independence from the White House  which is to say, for the rule of law. It also suggests that he may well be guilty of obstruction of justice, in trying to derail the investigation into his former national security adviser. But Comey takes care to note that Trump never formally asked him to drop all inquiries into the behavior of his campaigns associates.

In fact, in a call on March 30, Comey records Trump expressing some comfort with the idea of the feds cracking down on the Carter Pages of the world.

The President went on to say that if there were some satellite associates of his who did something wrong, it would be good to find that out, but that he hadnt done anything wrong and hoped I would find a way to get it out that we werent investigating him.

4) Trump was telling the truth  Comey really did assure him, three times, that he was not personally under FBI investigation.

Many federal law-enforcement experts treated Trumps claim with incredulity. But Comey vouches for the truth of the presidents statement.

Comey, by his own account, apparently did tell Trump three times that he was not under personal investigation. https://t.co/gK8jOiG0C4 pic.twitter.com/8F8igvTD2j  Prewyoko (@Prewyoko) June 7, 2017

Trump and the GOP are celebrating this as vindication.



"The president feels completely and totally vindicated" by Comey's testimony, says Trump's lawyer, Marc E. Kasowitz  David S. Joachim (@davidjoachim) June 7, 2017

This may be the best spin theyve got. But its still quite poor. For one thing, it treats the former FBI directors account as credible  a concession that Trumps defenders will presumably want to resist, given the portrait Comey paints of the president. For another, Comeys testimony suggests that the FBI never ruled out the possibility that the alleged crimes it was investigating went all the way to the top:



(I did not tell the President that the FBI and the Department of Justice had been reluctant to make public statements that we did not have an open case on President Trump for a number of reasons, most importantly because it would create a duty to correct, should that change.)

5) Other members of the FBIs leadership can verify Comeys account.



Comey was always going to have more credibility in any he said, he said dispute with Donald J. Trump. Still, those who wished to cast doubt on early reports of Comeys memos could point to the FBI directors long silence: If Trump really asked him to pledge  and then demonstrate  loyalty to him instead of the law, then why didnt Comey sound the alarm.



But in his testimony, Comey claims that he immediately reported Trumps behavior to FBI leadership, and then offers his rational for not disseminating word of the presidents actions more widely.



I immediately prepared an unclassified memo of the conversation about Flynn and discussed the matter with FBI senior leadershipThe FBI leadership team agreed with me that it was important not to infect the investigative team with the Presidents request, which we did not intend to abide. We also concluded that, given that it was a one-on-one conversation, there was nothing available to corroborate my account. We concluded it made little sense to report it to Attorney General Sessions, who we expected would likely recuse himself from involvement in Russia-related investigations. (He did so two weeks later.)The Deputy Attorney Generals role was then filled in an acting capacity by a United States Attorney, who would also not be long in the role.



After discussing the matter, we decided to keep it very closely held, resolving to figure out what to do with it down the road as our investigation progressed. The investigation moved ahead at full speed, with none of the investigative team members  or the Department of Justice lawyers supporting them  aware of the Presidents request

6) Comey does not sound impressed with the Justice Departments handling of this whole thing.



On a phone call in March, Trump complained that the Russia investigation was casting a cloud over his administration, and asked what the FBI could do to lift it. This is the closest Trump comes to asking for the investigation to be dropped. But in the context of the broader conversation, the president appears to primarily want someone in the Justice Department to publicly clear his name. Afterwards, Comey turns to the DOJ for guidance and gets none.



Immediately after that conversation, I called Acting Deputy Attorney General Dana Boente (AG Sessions had bythen recused himself on all Russia-related matters), to report the substance of the call from the President, and said I would await his guidance. I did not hear back from him before the President called me again two weeks later.

In a separate moment, Comey communicated his concerns about being left alone with Trump to Jeff Sessions. The former FBI director once again notes a DOJ officials unresponsiveness.



I spoke with Attorney General Sessions in person to pass along the Presidents concerns about leaks. I took the opportunity to implore the Attorney General to prevent any future direct communication between the President and me. I told the AG that what had just happened  him being asked to leave while the FBI Director, who reports to the AG, remained behind  was inappropriate and should never happen. He did not reply.

7) Trump really wanted James Comey to know that there is no pee tape.

Trump laser-focused on denying existence of the pee tape, long after it fell out of popular discourse. pic.twitter.com/oiIVebyIia  Eric Levitz (@EricLevitz) June 7, 2017

8) Comey knew, early on, that his relationship with Trump would be fundamentally different than the one he had with Barack Obama.

Comey first met Trump in early January, to brief the then-president-elect on the infamous Christopher Steele dossier. The FBI director does not impute any specific, off-putting words or deeds to Trump in his account of their first meeting. Nonetheless, he immediately knew that this was a different kind of president:

I felt compelled to document my first conversation with the President-Elect in a memo. To ensure accuracy, I began to type it on a laptop in an FBI vehicle outside Trump Tower the moment I walked out of the meeting. Creating written records immediately after one-on-one conversations with Mr. Trump was my practice from that point forward. This had not been my practice in the past. I spoke alone with President Obama twice in person (and never on the phone)  once in 2015 to discuss law enforcement policy issues and a second time, briefly, for him to say goodbye in late 2016. In neither of those circumstances did I memorialize the discussions. I can recall nine one-on-one conversations with President Trump in four months  three in person and six on the phone.

9) The president has either seen too many mafia movies  or worked with too many mobsters.

Comey ends his tale with this ominous exchange from April 11:



On the morning of April 11, the President called me and asked what I had done about his request that I get out that he is not personally under investigation. I replied that I had passed his request to the Acting Deputy Attorney General, but I had not heard back. He replied that the cloud was getting in the way of his ability to do his job. He said that perhaps he would have his people reach out to the Acting Deputy Attorney General. I said that was the way his request should be handled. I said the White House Counsel should contact the leadership of DOJ to make the request, which was the traditional channel.



He said he would do that and added, Because I have been very loyal to you, very loyal; we had that thing you know. I did not reply or ask him what he meant by that thing. I said only that the way to handle it was to have the White House Counsel call the Acting Deputy Attorney General. He said that was what he would do and the call ended.



That was the last time I spoke with President Trump.
Just a couple of normal New York City dudes. Photo: Sean Rayford/Getty Images

In the few short hours since the release of James Comeys prepared testimony for tomorrows highly anticipated Senate hearing, a few predictable reactions have taken hold. On the left, theyre crowing about obstruction of justice, and on the right, theyre shrugging their shoulders.

Then theres the reaction from Chris Christie. The governor of New Jersey and one-time Trump errand boy went on MSNBC Wednesday and offered an interpretation of Trumps conversations with Comey that called to mind the locker-room talk defense of last years infamous Access Hollywood tape.

Comeys testimony doesnt show Trump trying to obstruct justice, the former United States Attorney said. Instead, it shows a Washington neophyte failing to adhere to the customs of the presidency and engaging in normal New York City conversation.

Chris Christie: Trump's comments to Comey were 'normal' NYC conversation https://t.co/E26llMLpXz https://t.co/3ZCmJ2tnfe  MSNBC (@MSNBC) June 7, 2017

Christie, who was born in Newark, grew up in Livingston and now works in Trenton, did not explain what makes him an authority on New York City conversation.

Well trust a real New Yorker on this one.
Endorsed by a whos who of California Democrats, Jimmy Gomez struggled a bit to put away newcomer Robert Lee Ahn, but prevailed in the end. Photo: Mary Hodge/Jimmy Gomez For Congress Campaign

Because there was no doubt the Democratic Party was going to hold onto the 34th congressional district of California, the contest to replace California attorney general Xavier Becerra has not received even a small fraction of the national attention garnered by special elections in Kansas, Montana, and Georgia. But a small number of Los Angeles voters dutifully mailed in ballots or went to the polls yesterday, and awarded state legislator Jimmy Gomez with a seat in Congress after an impressively strong challenge from political newcomer Robert Lee Ahn.

In the second stage of Californias top-two system, Gomez defeated Ahn by a comfortable 6040 margin. But there was some uncertainty early in the vote tallying, which showed a dead heat that reflected Ahns strategy of banking mail ballots from his fellow Korean-Americans, who represent only 6 percent of CA-34s population (compared to the 66 percent represented by Latinos like Gomez) but made up an estimated one-fourth of by-mail early voters.

Gomez not only enjoyed an ethnic advantage, he was endorsed by a whos who of California Democrats, from Jerry Brown and Nancy Pelosi on down. The low-profile nature of the race was enhanced by both campaigns decisions to spend their money on get-out-the-vote measures rather than ads. There were few issues dividing the candidates  who emerged from a pack of 24 contestants in the first round of the special election back in April though Ahn did try to get an outsider vibe going, which makes sense given Gomezs massive Establishment backing. In the end Gomez just had too many friends, in and out of the district, to lose.
Saying she opposed a livable wage in a debate with Jon Ossoff was an unforced error by Karen Handel. Photo: WSB-TV

The first of two scheduled debates between the candidates in Georgias sixth congressional district special-election runoff was generally rated a draw, and probably changed few minds among the highly polarized voters of this north Atlanta suburban district. But its afterlife could be a problem for Republican Karen Handel, since she committed a completely unnecessary gaffe, expressing opposition to a livable wage.

She was probably trying to say living wage, the progressive framing (used by Democrat Jon Ossoff just before she spoke) of a significantly higher minimum wage than the $7.25 that prevails nationally today. She could have and should have said that a $15 per hour minimum wage, the most commonly advanced Democratic proposal, was too high for a place like Atlanta with its relatively low cost of living (as compared to other big cities, at least). That would have forced Ossoff to specify what he meant by a living wage, and made the amount, not the concept, the focus. But she didnt do that, which is why it was an unforced error.

You can be sure Handels gaffe will be highlighted immediately in Team Ossoffs ads, and will likely come up again in Thursdays second (and at present, final) televised debate. Some pro-Ossoff commentators think it was a race-deciding moment.

I doubt that is the case, unless Handel fails to clarify her remarks or compounds them. For a debate moment to matter a lot, there have to be a lot of undecided voters watching. The only three public polls taken since the special elections first round, last month, show a small and declining undecided vote. The latest poll, from Landmark and WSB-TV (sponsors of the first debate) showed only 3 percent of likely voters undecided.

While Handel didnt have to take a hard line on a livable wage, her views are not out of the mainstream for Republicans in a place like Georgia, where opposition to any minimum wage is common. The Republican who held the district for a dozen years before becoming HHS secretary, Tom Price, voted against the increase that raised the minimum wage to where it is today.

So any celebration among Ossoff supporters about Handels gaffe is highly premature. Hell need more than that to unpin enough Republican voters from her column to edge past her on June 20. But Handel should definitely do some serious debate prep between now and Thursday night.
Coats and Rogers. Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

With carefully parsed wording, two top U.S. intelligence officials told a Senate committee today that they were never directed by the White House to intervene on the FBIs investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. They also said they never felt pressure to do so.

But neither Dan Coats, the director of National Intelligence, nor Admiral Michael Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency, would say if the White House asked them to interfere with the investigation. And asking them to interfere in the investigation is precisely what Trump did, The Washington Post reported last month.

I have never been directed to do anything I believe to be illegal, immoral, unethical or inappropriate, Rogers told the Senators. He kept returning to that statement when pressed on the topic.

Similarly, Coats said, I have never felt pressured to intervene or interfere in any way with shaping intelligence in a political way or intervene in an investigation.

Many senators were not happy with their answers.

This is an important exchange btwn DNI Coats and Sen. Heinrich on Coats' refusal to share details of discussions with Trump. (via @MSNBC) pic.twitter.com/vzxAiJQjum  Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) June 7, 2017

WATCH: Sen. Rubio asks Coats and Rogers if anyone has ever asked them to issue a statement they knew to be false https://t.co/9eGQwTTBbP pic.twitter.com/fnPYyyXVJg  CBS News (@CBSNews) June 7, 2017
Police officers control the scene, around of shrine of late Iranian revolutionary founder Ayatollah Khomeini, after an assault by several attackers in Tehran, just outside Tehran, Iran. Photo: Ebrahim Noroozi/AP

Armed militants, some apparently dressed as women and equipped with suicide vests, stormed the Parliament building in Tehran, Iran, Wednesday morning around 10:30 a.m. About a half-hour later, another group of attackers rushed the mausoleum of the Ayatollah Khomeini. The assailants went on a murderous spree, firing on people, holding hostages, and blowing themselves up with explosives. The twin terror attacks  rare in the tightly controlled Iran, with its elite security forces  left 12 people dead and more than 40 wounded. Irans intelligence ministry said it had arrested another team plotting a third attack, says Reuters.

An undercover Iranian policeman (L) holds a weapon outside the Iranian parliament in the capital Tehran on June 7, 2017, during an attack on the complex. Photo: AFP/AFP/Getty Images

ISIS immediately claimed responsibility for the rampage, and released a graphic video that was allegedly filmed by one of the attackers. If confirmed, this attack would be the jihadist organizations first in Iran, according to The Guardian. The terrorist group adheres to a bastardized version of Sunni Islam, and it considers Shiite Muslims  Irans majority religion  apostates.

Irans revolutionary guard, however, accused Saudi Arabia of being behind the attack. This terrorist attack happened only a week after the meeting between the U.S. president and the backward leaders who support terrorists, a statement from the revolutionary guard read, indicating Trump and Saudi Arabia. The statement added that the fact that Islamic State has claimed responsibility proves that they were involved in the brutal attack, an insinuation that Saudi Arabia is tied to the Sunni extremist group.

An Iranian policeman holds a weapon as he stands by a window at the Iranian parliament in the capital Tehran on June 7, 2017, during an attack on the complex. Photo: AFP/AFP/Getty Images

Irans accusation comes at a particularly tense time in the region. Saudi Arabia and other Sunni-majority nations cut diplomatic ties with Qatar this week, over its alleged embrace of radical groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood and ISIS. Yet Qatars recognition and willingness to work with Iran clearly factored into that decision to sever relations. President Trump, visiting the Saudi Arabian capital on his first foreign trip, made it clear that isolating Iran was a shared goal between the U.S. and its Sunni allies in the region.

The Saudi foreign minister denied that Saudi extremists were involved in the attack, but Wednesdays attack adds fuel  bolstered by Trumps pointed statements against Iran  to the volatile regional rivalry. As Reuters points out, it may also roil tensions within Iran between the more moderate forces  which claimed victory in the recent reelection of President Hassan Rouhani  and conservative hard-liners.
Theres something going on. Photo: Patrick Semansky/AP

Last November, voters who considered terrorism the most important issue facing America supported Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton by almost 20 points. Its unlikely that Trumps response to last weekends terrorist attacks in London caused many of them to regret the choice. Just as in the campaign, he treated the bloodshed as personal validation (appreciate the congrats for being right, he wrote after the Orlando nightclub shooting a year ago). Just as in the campaign, he rushed to peddle uncertain information from unreliable outlets. Just as in the campaign, he blamed political correctness and bashed gun control. Just as in the campaign, he took a gratuitous swipe at a Muslim leader  in this case, the mayor of the city that was attacked. And just as in the campaign, he did it all on Twitter.

This stream of post-attack tweets marked a new low in a low and dishonest presidency, at a moment when the right course would have been straightforward: Had Trump merely offered boilerplate condolences, praised first responders, expressed due outrage and horror and solidarity and resolve, he could have spent days watching cable-news commentators extol him as statesmanlike and speculate about a turning point in his presidency. Instead, he further damaged relations with an ally and unleashed a cascade of criticism at a time when he can ill afford it.

But as the record of the campaign shows, when it comes to terrorism, bad policy can be very good politics. Trumps unhinged response to the London (and prior) attacks may ultimately serve him well  even, or especially, if it makes Americans less safe.

Good policy, by the same token, can be bad politics. Barack Obama entered office intent on putting terrorism in proper perspective, as no longer the primary driver of American foreign policy or paramount fear in American life. He was less interested in chest-beating about vanquishing evil than in encouraging resilience and implementing sensible if unglamorous policies, while avoiding counterproductive ones. Even as he ramped up drone strikes and ordered a raid on Osama bin Ladens compound, he reminded Americans that they were more likely to be killed by a lightning strike or bathtub fall than a terrorist attack; he was more interested in calming and fortifying than swaggering and scaring.

By the end of his eight years in office, there had not been a single attack by a foreign terrorist organization in the United States. Yet as the threat of ISIS-inspired solo attackers, a la Orlando and San Bernardino, started to rise near the end of his second term, approval of U.S. counterterrorism efforts hit a post-9/11 low. Obama may have kept Americans safe, but he did not make them feel safe. So when Trump stood before crowds or cameras and declared that it was time to stop being so nice and so soft, audiences roared. And it set the stage for an approach that will, as Trump promised, take Obamas and do the opposite: undermine counterterrorism policy while exploiting our uniquely perverse counterterrorism politics.

Even before Trump entered office, the main threat on U.S. soil had become one that is especially hard to stop: not highly trained operatives coming from overseas, but solitary and maladjusted Americans, typically radicalized inconsistently and online, often after a life of decidedly non-Islamic delinquency. They act mostly on their own, against soft targets, with any weapon available. (They are aided by the fact that, in the United States, any weapon available often means AR-15s and Glock semi-automatics rather than hunting and kitchen knives.) As Trump continues to implement the Obama administrations military strategy for defeating ISIS  for all his bluster about bomb[ing] the shit out of  those suckers, he has stuck pretty much to the same approach and personnel  that threat may, in the short term, grow rather than subside, as ISIS increasingly focuses on the West. And by word and deed, Trump has systematically weakened the measures necessary to counter it.

His reckless handling of code-word intelligence shared by allies makes it less likely that they will readily share sensitive intelligence in the first place  and the lifeblood of counterterrorism, said one senior U.S. operative, is intelligence sharing. In this respect, it is not just embarrassing that the White House got into a Twitter fight in the middle of a serious terrorist incident, as a State Department official told Buzzfeed in response to Trumps post-London tweets, it is chilling.

Meanwhile, the agencies responsible for counterterrorism policy are largely unstaffed by appointees and, in the case of State Department, facing budgetary evisceration. Within the Department of Homeland Security, an expansive anti-immigration mandate has drawn resources and attention away from functions like the Coast Guard and aviation security, which would see cuts under Trumps budget. (When youre avidly hunting every Central American who has driven without a license, theres less time to look out for real dangers.) The budget would also end support for community groups that combat radicalization and gut aid to local law enforcement. Counterterrorism efforts, according to New Yorks police chief, would be hobbled.

Trump boasts of his disdain for political correctness. He has questioned the loyalty of Muslim-Americans. He has proclaimed that Islam hates us. He has called Obamas refusal to embrace the term radical Islamic terrorism a sign not just of weakness, but perhaps also of disloyalty. (Well, all I can say  theres something going on.) But what Trump derides as political correctness is in fact crucial to Americas relative success in preventing the proliferation of the kinds of attacks all too common in Europe. When Muslim-American communities are respected, well-integrated, and confident of their future in an open society, they have every reason to help prevent violence by homegrown extremists. (George W. Bush knew this well.) Tips from family members and fellow worshippers lead to many more terrorism arrests than high-tech surveillance.

Finally, Trump routinely violates one of the first pieces of advice from counterterrorism officials and experts: overreacting helps terrorists achieve their goal. Usually it falls to terrorist propagandists to gloat about the damage done by an attacker; now Trump does it for them. It is exactly the opposite of good messaging after a terror attack, as one long-time security official puts it, the kind of thing that terrorism thrives on  a sense of constant danger, of a society under siege and ready to discard its values and consume itself out of fear. If he knew what I knew about terrorism, hed never leave the house, Trumps Secretary of Homeland Security, John Kelly, said of a journalist recently. Ariana Grande, back in Manchester within weeks of the bombing at her concert, did a much better job of projecting the right spirit of solidarity and resolve.

There was a reason Trump was ISISs preferred candidate in November: For terrorists he is, as one put it to researchers before the election, the perfect enemy. By talking about seizing Iraqs oil, he reinforces the most feverish jihadist myths about America. By saying hateful things about Muslims, in the words of an ISIS defector, he proves that the jihadists are right to fight against the West, because the West is against Islam. Since his election, ISIS fighters have concluded that Trump is good for us, and recruiters have found in his travel ban an ideal hook. To repurpose Trumps tweet after a federal judge first blocked the ban: Bad people are very happy.

Given all that, it is no surprise that some Trump opponents have taken to warning of a Reichstag fire scenario  a security incident opening the way to a sweeping authoritarian crackdown, as in Nazi Germany. (During Watergate there were also cracks about the Reichstag fire.) Trump has already said and done enough to give some credence to those fears, however outlandish they may seem. He could use an attack as a pretext for closing mosques, or pushing through his travel ban, or cracking down on civil liberties, or sweeping up Muslim-Americans. He could reopen black-site prisons, or reinstitute waterboarding, or launch a new war.

But you dont have to imagine such an extreme scenario to recognize how dangerous the dynamic would be. Trump would only have to respond to an attack here, on his watch, the way he has been responding to terrorist attacks for years. The more attacks happen, the more his talk seems warranted. And the more he talks, the less safe we become.
London. Photo: Waring Abbott/Getty Images

On the night of the U.S. election last November, I was in London flipping between cable channels and refreshing poll results with about a dozen journalist friends who stayed up too late to hear the bad news. The Welsh writer Dawn Foster was the one who passed me the laptop with the headline that read New York Times Sees Trump Path to Victory. I fell asleep before the race was called, so when I woke up for a few minutes I thought the world still hadnt turned into a joke. Foster wasnt surprised that night. Shes the author of Lean Out, a feminist tract for the 99 percent, writes a column for The Guardian, contributes to the London Review of Books and Dissent, and is working on a history of the dole in the U.K. In 2015 she was the person I knew who won the most money betting on the U.K. election, when the Conservatives won an unexpected majority; and she won enough money betting on Jeremy Corbyn taking over Labour leadership she was able to fund a trip to New York. Yesterday I admitted I had next to no clue whats going to happen, so I asked Foster about her predictions for tomorrows U.K. election.

Alright, lets start with your gambling habit. How much did you win betting on the Tories in 2015 and how did you sense that the polls were off, and underestimating them?

I put a tenner on the Tories winning at 10/1. Everyone told me Labour were going to win, or thered be a hung parliament, but I thought the Lib Dems would lose drastically, while the Tory vote increased. The polls said the opposite, but when I spoke to people in reporting, they tended to attribute every wrong in the coalition with the Lib Dems, meaning the Tories were getting away with little scrutiny, which bolstered them. And Ed Miliband was gaffe-prone and nervous about going against Cameron, so I thought that when it came to crunch, people would vote Tory over Labour. It had only been five years since they were in power, so they werent seen as having changed much.

Did you bet on the Brexit referendum?

I didnt bet on the outcome, because it was too close for me to decide, but I bet that Wales would vote to leave, and they did. I also just won a load of cash in the French election too.

Simply by betting on a Macron landslide?

I bet the final two would be Macron/Le Pen, and that Macron would win. For some reason the bookies thought Macron wouldnt reach the top two for a while?!

Labour has been surging in the past few weeks. How much do you attribute that to Theresa Mays weakness? How much to a Jeremy Corbyn renaissance?

I think its much more about Labour and Corbyns strength. There have been some big May gaps, but most of her weakness has come from the shock of the Corbyn surge, not vice versa. Labour have a very positive message  let us invest in schools, give your kids free school meals and free university, you higher wages, better hospitals, more houses. Those are very easy messages to sell, but also remind people of the importance of community. Thats why the rallies are mobbed too: People feel part of something bigger in terms of policy and the movement. Whereas Mays only done tiny stage-managed events where she refuses to meet the public, so looks as though she takes the public for granted. Corbyn cleverly trapped her with the TV debates: knowing hed do them, but not confirming at the last minute, asking May to join him whilst knowing she wouldnt. So all the headlines were about her refusal to show, and when the debate began, Corbyn could focus on selling Labour policies in questions, while all the other party leaders used their time to criticize May for refusing to debate. It was a complete strategic masterstroke on Labours part, and the footage of May trying to justify it made her look as if she was collapsing under the pressure.

Do you think these poll numbers are going to translate into Labour seats?

No. I think Labour will lose a few seats. But I do think its possible we see a similar scenario to the U.S.: in that Labour could get almost as many votes as the Conservatives, but the share of seats is disproportionately low. So more people complain that their votes arent counted in essence, which means more calls for proportional representation. So I think we could see a Labour government in 2022, and that Labour government would consider changing the voting system, and looking more seriously at a progressive alliance, calls for which have been huge in this election.

So you think therell be another Conservative majority, just not as big as the one May presumably expected when she called the snap election in April?

Yes, I think she might increase her majority by about ten seats, but the Conservatives will have knives out for her as a result. I think shell quit maybe two years into the next term, as Brexit explodes, especially since theres likely to be a referendum over whether to reunify Ireland.

Hypothetically, if youre wrong, what are the possibilities if theres a hung parliament? What coalition alliances are possible?

So if theres a hung parliament, I dont think the Tories can forge a coalition. Some polls say otherwise, but I think the Lib Dems will lose seats, so there simply arent enough numbers. The only Tory prospect in the event of a hung parliament is if the Lib Dems get 13 seats (no way) and Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland stay the same. Not going to happen. So theoretically, Labour could just make it work if they agreed to a rainbow coalition of Labour, Plaid Cymru [the nationalist party in Wales], Greens, the Social Democratic and Labour Party, and if the Scottish National Party decided they would join to keep the Tories out. But Im not sure SNP would. So wed end up with a Tory minority government, or a second election called. Whats interesting is weve essentially gone back to two-party politics, but neither party has quite enough to make it sustainable.

How often in the past has a second snap election resulted?

Theres not been a second one called since Wilson formed a minority government in 1974 after Heath failed to do a deal with the Liberals, and called the October election to try to get a majority (which he got, but a tiny one).

If the Conservatives retain a majority, what does that mean for Corbyns prospects for remaining leader? Will he fall on his sword like Miliband, Cameron, and Brown? Will his turn as leader mean a permanent move away from Blairism for Labour?

He wont fall on his sword: Hell point out that he came from 20 points behind to neck and neck by the end, and that Britain, particularly young Britons, really got behind him and the party. I think Labour will force a challenge  sources have told me Yvette Cooper has staff, a bus, and her plan in place for the leadership campaign, but I think Corbyn will win again and the party moves permanently as it did in 1994 with Blair, into a new socialist position. At that point, I think Labour will start winning Scotland back, if Corbyn stays. Hes done far better in terms of polling in Scotland than the party could have dreamt of after 2015.

How much has it hurt Theresa May to be friendly with Trump, or has it helped in some quarters?

Its not been great, but I dont think its been the biggest problem. Worse was the social care U-turn on the dementia tax and now the fact two terrorist attacks have left the police complaining at length about their fundings cuts, and the fact that the terrorists were all known to and reported to the authorities while she was in charge as Home Secretary. The Trump link looks worse now, when were leaving the EU, and our only ally, Donald, is blaming Londons Muslim mayor for terrorism.

Does UKIP remain a live force in British politics or has its Brexit victory rendered it inert?

Absolutely not, theyve completely flopped. Its incredible to watch. I think they lost all or nearly all their councillors in the local election. Even though the Tory candidate for Thanet South (where Farage stood last time) has been arrested for electoral fraud, they still dont stand a chance: Labour or the arrested candidate are more likely to win. Their votes slumped incredibly, theyll poll less than the Lib Dems.

After his nasty tweets at Londons mayor Sadiq Khan, is Trump ever likely to get an audience with the Queen?

Yes, unfortunately. Theyll still invite him, and therell be perfunctory meetings but the public reception to him will be even worse.
President Trump attempts to show dominance over a six-foot-eight intelligence expert. Photo: Pool/Getty Images

Former FBI director James Comey is a reserved and meticulous lawman who boasted that the bureau was nonpartisan under his watch, saying, Were never on anybodys side, ever. Donald Trump is a mercurial businessman and reality-TV star who repeatedly makes claims that have no basis in fact, and who values loyalty above all else.

The bizarre relationship between these polar opposites has greatly influenced American politics for nearly a year. During the campaign, Trumps stance on Comey was wildly inconsistent; he pointed to the director as proof that the system was rigged against him, while praising him for any move that hurt his opponent, Hillary Clinton. Once in office, Trump reportedly tried to influence Comey to roll back the Russia probe hanging over his administration. When it became apparent that Comey  who has angered and confounded both Democrats and Republicans at various points  was not interested in doing anything to aid the White House, Trump fired him.

If Trumps aim was to get rid of this Russia thing, as hes suggested, the move had the opposite effect. Comeys firing made the Russia scandal even bigger and more serious, leading to the appointment of a special counsel.

Leaks in recent weeks have painted a fuller picture of Comeys handling of the FBIs investigations into both candidates, and his deteriorating relationship with the president. As we await Comeys testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday, his first appearance before Congress since his ouster, heres a look at the bizarre path that led us here.

The Campaign and the FBI Probes

Trump is far from the only politician who had a complicated stance on Comeys handling of the probe into Clintons private email server, but Trumps reaction was especially contradictory.

On July 5, 2016, Comey held a press conference to announce his recommendation that Clinton not be charged over her private email server. (Apparently, at that point, the FBI had been investigating Russian election meddling and the Trump campaigns possible involvement for months, but reports about that probe only emerged in early 2017.)

At a rally that night, Trump said, Today is the best evidence ever that weve seen that our system is absolutely, totally rigged. Its rigged. But while suggesting Comey was letting Clinton off the hook for political purposes, he simultaneously cited Comey while attacking her. He talked about extremely careless. She was extremely careless, Trump said. Thats a tremendous word.

As CNN notes, Trump kept repeating this mixed assessment of Comeys credibility throughout the campaign. Hillary Clinton is guilty, of all the things that Director Comey stated at his press conference and congressional hearings, and far more, he said on October 13. He stated many things, but its far more and he knows that. And yet, after reading all of these items, where shes so guilty, he let her off the hook.

Then suddenly, Trumps position on Comey changed. On October 28, when Comey informed Congress that the FBI was reopening the Clinton probe over the discovery of new emails found on Anthony Weiners laptop, Trump proclaimed that Comey had redeemed himself.

It took a lot of guts, Trump said. I really disagreed with him. I was not his fan. But Ill tell you what, what he did, he brought back his reputation. Hes got to hang tough, because theres a lot of people want him to do the wrong thing. What he did was the right thing.

Trump also attacked Democrats for being fickle about Comey:

Hillary and the Dems loved and praised FBI Director Comey just a few days ago. Original evidence was overwhelming, should not have delayed!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 30, 2016

By November 5, Trump was casting Comey and the FBI as victims of the Clinton machine. Theres virtually no doubt that FBI Director Comey and the great, great special agents of the FBI will be able to collect more than enough evidence to garner indictments against Hillary Clinton and her inner circle despite her efforts to disparage them and to discredit them, he said.

When the FBI said two days before the election that there was nothing incriminating in the new batch of emails, Comey went back to being a pro-Clinton conspirator. Hillary Clinton is guilty. She knows it, the FBI knows it, the people know it, Trump said. She is being protected by a rigged system. Its a totally rigged system.

Comey Under the Trump Administration

Days after the election, Trump told 60 Minutes that he hadnt decided whether he would ask for Comeys resignation, explaining hed like to talk to him first. I havent made up my mind, he said. I respect him a lot. I respect the FBI a lot.

President Obama ordered a review of Russias election meddling, and on January 6 Comey and three other intelligence chiefs went to Trump Tower to brief the president-elect on their conclusion that Russia conducted an influence campaign in the 2016 election, with the goal of aiding Trump. During the meeting, Comey reportedly presented Trump with a summary of an unverified dossier compiled by a former British spy that described alleged collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. It also asserted that Russia has compromising personal and financial information about Trump.

On January 22, two days after taking office, Trump singled out Comey during an event at the White House, saying, Oh, and theres Jim. Hes become more famous than me.

Last month, Comeys friend Benjamin Wittes, the editor-in-chief of the Lawfare blog, said Comey didnt want to attend the event, and hoped his blue suit would allow him to blend into the blue curtains behind him and avoid drawing Trumps attention, though he is six-foot-eight.

Comey said that as he was walking across the room he was determined that there wasnt going to be a hug, Wittes told the New York Times. It was bad enough there was going to be a handshake. And Comey has long arms so Comey said he pre-emptively reached out for a handshake and grabbed the presidents hand. But Trump pulled him into an embrace and Comey didnt reciprocate. If you look at the video, its one person shaking hands and another hugging.

Wittes said on Lawfare that Comey was disgusted by the incident and felt Trump was making a physical attempt to compromise him in the eyes of Democrats. He noted that at the time Comey was preoccupied with training Trump officials to respect the FBIs independence.

Then, five days later, Comey was summoned to the White House to have dinner with the president. Two sources told the Times that during the dinner, Trump asked Comey to pledge his loyalty to him, circling back several times after the director demurred. Comey reportedly told Trump he could only promise honesty.

But Mr. Trump pressed him on whether it would be honest loyalty.



You will have that, Mr. Comey told his associates he responded.

The meal took place on Friday, January 27, two days after Acting Attorney General Sally Yates told the White House that the FBI had just interviewed National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, and the Justice Department had concluded his false statements about his conversations with the Russian ambassador could open him up to blackmail. Eighteen days later, Flynn was forced out of the administration following reports that he had lied to Vice-President Mike Pence.

Several aspects of the Trump-Comey dinner are in dispute. Trump claims Comey requested the meeting and wanted to have dinner because he wanted to stay on, but several other people said Comey was reluctant to attend. Weeks later, Trump said he didnt ask Comey for his loyalty, but suggested it would have been completely proper to do so.

I didnt, but I dont think it would be a bad question to ask. I think loyalty to the country, loyalty to the United States is important, Trump told Fox News. You know, I mean it depends on how you define loyalty. Number one. Number two, I dont know how that got there, because I didnt ask that question.

Comey reportedly wrote memos describing his interactions with the president and shared them with colleagues. The Times reported that, in one memo, Comey described a February 14 meeting in the Oval Office in which Trump asked him to end the FBIs investigation into Flynn, a day after Flynn resigned.

I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go, Mr. Trump told Mr. Comey, according to the memo. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.



 Mr. Comey had been in the Oval Office that day with other senior national security officials for a terrorism threat briefing. When the meeting ended, Mr. Trump told those present  including Mr. Pence and Attorney General Jeff Sessions  to leave the room except for Mr. Comey.



Alone in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump began the discussion by condemning leaks to the news media, saying that Mr. Comey should consider putting reporters in prison for publishing classified information, according to one of Mr. Comeys associates.

The next day, Comey confronted Sessions and said he didnt want to be left alone with Trump again, according to a Times report on Tuesday.

Mr. Comey believed Mr. Sessions should protect the F.B.I. from White House influence, the officials said, and pulled him aside after a meeting in February to tell him that private interactions between the F.B.I. director and the president were inappropriate. But Mr. Sessions could not guarantee that the president would not try to talk to Mr. Comey alone again, the officials said.

However, Benjamin Wittes said Comey told him about another unnerving interaction with Trump on March 1:

 he described one incident in particular that had bothered him. Comey was about to get on a helicopter when his phone rang. It was the White House saying that the President wanted to speak with him. Figuring there must be something urgent going on, he delayed his flight to take the call. To his surprise, the President just wanted to chitchat. He was trying to be social, Comey related; there was no agenda, much less an urgent one. Notably, since the President has claimed that Comey told him in two phone conversations that he was not under investigation, Comey said nothing to me about the subject coming up in this call. Indeed, he regarded the call as weird for how substanceless it was. What bothered Comey was twofold  the fact that the conversation happened at all (why was Trump calling him to exchange pleasantries?) and the fact that there was an undercurrent of Trumps trying to get him to kiss the ring.

Throughout March, Trump and Comey publicly clashed over the presidents unfounded claim that his predecessor wiretapped Trump Tower:

How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017

Comey reportedly asked the Justice Department to publicly reject the claim, but top officials said nothing. During his testimony before the House Intelligence Committee on March 20, Comey and NSA director Mike Rogers said they found no evidence to support Trumps assertion.

The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that in addition to asking two top intelligence officials  Dan Coats, the director of National Intelligence, and Admiral Michael Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency  to publicly deny that there was collusion between his campaign and the Russians, the president asked Coats to try to make Comey back off the Flynn investigation.

On March 22, less than a week after being confirmed by the Senate, Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats attended a briefing at the White House together with officials from several government agencies. As the briefing was wrapping up, Trump asked everyone to leave the room except for Coats and CIA Director Mike Pompeo.



The president then started complaining about the FBI investigation and Comeys handling of it, said officials familiar with the account Coats gave to associates  After the encounter, Coats discussed the conversation with other officials and decided that intervening with Comey as Trump had suggested would be inappropriate, according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal matters.

Comey's Firing

Responding to a May 2 interview in which Hillary Clinton suggested Comey cost her the election, Trump attacked his own FBI director on Twitter:

FBI Director Comey was the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton in that he gave her a free pass for many bad deeds! The phony...  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 3, 2017

...Trump/Russia story was an excuse used by the Democrats as justification for losing the election. Perhaps Trump just ran a great campaign?  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 3, 2017

The next day, Comey told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he revealed there was a new batch of Clinton-related emails just days before the election because he felt failing to disclose that information would be even worse. It makes me mildly nauseous to think we might have had an impact on the election. But, honestly, it wouldnt change the decision, he said.

This was reportedly the final straw for Trump. Per the Times:

Mr. Trump burned as he watched, convinced that Mr. Comey was grandstanding. He was particularly irked when Mr. Comey said he was mildly nauseous to think that his handling of the email case had influenced the election, which Mr. Trump took to demean his own role in history.

He began talking to aides about firing Comey, and on May 8 he asked Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein to write out the case for his firing.

On May 9, while speaking to FBI agents in Los Angeles, Comey learned from TV reports that he had been fired. The White House released Sessionss recommendation for Comeys firing, which was based on a memo from Rosenstein describing Comeys improper handing of the Clinton email probe.

In a brief letter firing Comey, Trump said, I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation. Sources close to Comey deny that he ever told Trump he wasnt under investigation.

BREAKING: Pres. Trump's letter to FBI Director Comey informing him that he has been fired - @KatyTurNBC pic.twitter.com/oe26REZYMn  NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt (@NBCNightlyNews) May 9, 2017

Initially, the White House suggested Sessions and Rosenstein came up with the idea of firing Comey on their own, but later in the week Trump himself contradicted that claim.

The next day, Trump reportedly made comments to Russian officials in the Oval Office that suggested Comey was fired over the Russia probe. I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job, Trump said, according to a summary of the conversation read to the Times. I faced great pressure because of Russia. Thats taken off.

I was going to fire him regardless of recommendation, Trump told NBCs Lester Holt. Look, 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.

In the same interview, Trump suggested he fired Comey to get rid of the Russia investigation: 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 should have won.

On May 12, Trump added even more Nixonian flair to the scandal, suggesting that he might have recorded his conversations with Comey in the White House. Days later, sources revealed that Comey had been writing memos on his meetings with Trump all along.

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

On May 17, several congressional committees requested any tapes or memos related to Trump and Comeys interactions, and the Senate Intelligence Committee invited the former director to testify.

Later that day, Rosenstein appointed former FBI director Rober Mueller, Comeys mentor, as special counsel. Hes tasked with looking into any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump, as well as any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation.

What to Expect on Thursday

Theres so much interest in Comeys testimony that the major networks will break into daytime programming, and bars are holding special screening events. His public remarks before the Senate Intelligence Committee are set to begin at 10 a.m., and hell speak to senators in a private afternoon session.

The White House has repeatedly shifted its story on why Comey was fired, and Comey himself has yet to confirm any of the reports about Trumps efforts to influence him. Questioning is expected to focus on whether Trump actually asked Comey for a loyalty pledge, whether he pressured the director to shut down Russia-related investigations, and whether theres evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia.

Sources close to Comey told ABC News that he will dispute Trumps claim that he told him he wasnt under investigation on three occasions. However, hell stop just short of accusing the president of obstruction of justice  though its possible others will draw that conclusion from his memos.

He is not going to Congress to make accusations about the presidents intent, instead hes there to share his concerns, a source said. Hell also describe what made him uneasy and why he wrote the memos.

Another Comey source told Politico that he wants to be careful to just describe what happened with the president and how he felt about it, but he wants to correct the record, from his point of view, on certain things the president and his aides have said.

Comey has reportedly been in contact with the special counsel, so Mueller wont be surprised.

As for Trump, White House officials are trying to keep him busy on Thursday, but hes suggested he may live-tweet Comeys hearing, against their advice. According to the Post, hes been stewing in recent days:

Glued even more than usual to the cable news shows that blare from the televisions in his private living quarters, or from the 60-inch flat screen he had installed in his cramped study off the Oval Office, he has fumed about fake news. Trump has seethed as his agenda has stalled in Congress and the courts. He has chafed against the pleas for caution from his lawyers and political advisers, tweeting whatever he wants, whenever he wants.

In public, Trump has restrained himself this week, at least on the topic of Comey. When reporters asked on Tuesday if he had a message for the former FBI director, he said, I wish him good luck.
Travis Kalanick. Photo: Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Three and a half months after an engineer named Susan Fowler published a blog post detailing her experience of sexual harassment as an employee of Uber, the company has at last begun to detail the results of multiple investigations into its infamous workplace culture. At Ubers weekly all-hands meeting on Tuesday, lawyers from an external law firm told the companys 12,000-plus employees that it had received 215 claims of misconduct  sexual harassment, discrimination, retaliation, bullying  and fired 20 people as a result. Three dozen others had been required to undergo counseling or given a final warning. More than 50 cases were still pending. On Twitter, a female Uber engineer responded to the news by writing that she was [f]eeling 20 assholes lighter. She quickly had second thoughts and deleted her tweet.

While none of the female Uber employees I spoke to for my piece on the companys various crises had experienced anything close to Fowlers horror stories, almost all reported a variety of incidents and interactions that made the company a difficult place to work. (Uber employees I reached out to who had spoken positively about the companys culture all referred me to its press office.) One engineer told me that her boss, a six-foot-five man, responded to her criticism of an idea of his in a one-on-one meeting by standing up, getting red in the face, and declaring, Im the manager, and you should care about whether I agree or not.

One theme that comes up routinely in my conversations with people across the company is the fact that there are many distinct Ubers, each with its own culture and issues. While Uber has claimed, for various regulatory reasons, that it is a technology company, it is by any honest estimation a transportation provider that resembles a modern Greyhound as much as it does Facebook. The vast majority of its employees  setting aside its hundreds of thousands of drivers, who are the companys public face, but who it insists are not employees  are not programmers; they work in operations, marketing, public policy, communications, finance, and the numerous other nontechnical positions required to address the various challenges involved in running a global taxi business.

In those departments, nearly half of Ubers employees are women, according to the companys recent diversity report; at one point, the heads of legal, human resources, communications and public policy, and North American operations were all women. And while sexism and sexual harassment know no departmental barriers, and occurred throughout the company  a report from the Intercept earlier this spring found that many female Uber drivers had experienced harassment on the job and found themselves without adequate recourse  many employees told me that the major workplace issues in the companys nontechnical departments were less overt incidents of sexual harassment than a general culture of aggression, insensitivity, and growth at any cost that trickled down from the companys CEO Travis Kalanick and his inner circle. The values Kalanick codified as the companys guiding principles  toe-stepping, always be hustlin  may not have explicitly enabled sexual harassment, but they did little to discourage the 33 people among the 215 claims who were accused of bullying. People say the cultures really bro-y, which it is, but people think that bro automatically means male, one male former employee told me. The lady bros at Uber are just as bad. One woman told me that her female boss called her into a meeting, and casually had her feet kicked up on her desk as she told the woman that she could either be reassigned to a new city or find a new job.

Of all the many distinct Ubers, however, the engineering department might have the most hostile  and most recalcitrant  culture. Just 15 percent of Ubers technical staff are women; most of the men are young, many are in their first jobs. According to a number of former employees, stereotypes often hold true, and many of the male programmers at Uber seemed to have little experience in how to interact appropriately with the opposite sex. I was taken aback when I asked one former senior Uber engineer about Fowlers blog post, to which he responded by dismissing her claims. I dont think Susan Fowlers claims were even mostly true, he said  acknowledging that they may have been partly true, but declining to explain how or why he had reason to doubt them. (According to Recode, the manager she accused of harassment was fired before the investigation.) He was willing to admit that Fowler had likely experienced sexism at Uber, but defended the company largely on the grounds that it was no worse than anywhere else.

Setting aside the considerable evidence that Uber was in fact a demonstrably less friendly place for women than other major tech companies, the engineer was right that tech remains a particularly difficult field for women. While the number of female engineers at Uber is shockingly low, it is not out of line with the rest of the tech world. According to a lawsuit brought earlier this year by a former employee at the augmented-reality company Magic Leap, sexism was rampant, as when a member of its IT staff answered a female employees question by saying, Yeah, women always have trouble with computers. (The case was settled out of court last month.) At Google, some 15,000 employees subscribe to an employee-run newsletter that details incidents of sexual harassment and sexism, among other concerns. According to Bloomberg, the newsletter is titled, Yes, at Google, making the point that these types of incidents occur even at a place viewed as overwhelmingly welcoming to its employees.

Will anything change at Uber? Twenty firings certainly send a message, but the fact that it took an outside law firm to sort out the problem was a fairly damning assessment of the companys human-resources department, which has never quite kept up with its shocking growth thus far. (If Uber adds as many employees this year as it did last year, it will have built a workforce roughly as large as Facebooks in half the time.) While many people at Uber told me that it seemed to be business as usual at the company, a roughly equal number said Kalanick was making a sincere effort to change both his own leadership style and the culture. Ubers most prominent recent hires  an artificial-intelligence expert to bolster its flailing self-driving effort; a marketing executive from Apple; a respected management guru from the Harvard Business School who helped the school become more welcoming to female students  have all been women, all with stellar credentials. Whether their respective hirings will make a real impact or are merely a means of dampening the blow of yesterdays report, and another report on the companys culture that is expected to be released next week, remains to be seen.

As important as what Uber learns from this will be what Silicon Valley learns, which may be very little. One venture capitalist told me that the Valley tended to see the missteps and flaws in other start-ups and presume that they were unique to that company. Theres very little soul-searching, he said. Several people I spoke with compared Uber to GitHub, a start-up that similarly became the subject of a highly public investigation into workplace culture in 2014, after a female engineer complained of a hostile environment. In the aftermath of the GitHub investigation, one of its founders resigned. Three years on, a female engineer told me that GitHubs reputation among women had more or less normalized, but as the experience of many women at Uber has shown, the GitHub controversy seemed to have done little to change the situation for women in the Valley more broadly. Even Ubers critics point out that the workplace concerns have had little effect on the companys growth. Unless its bottom line takes a hit, its unlikely that techs next aspiring unicorn will see much reason to act any differently.
cute names

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Yay congratulations to them! Never thought I'd see the day George Clooney would become a dad.

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no kidding. no wonder hes sedated. he cant believe it either

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LOL

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Lmfao

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LMAO

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lmao

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lol

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yeah, it didn't really seem like he wanted kids but idk her so congrats to him

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mte proof we're living in bizarro world

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All it took was the love of an internationally-acclaimed human rights lawyer who is also stunningly beautiful.

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I wonder what changed his mind. Those names are cute though.



Are Bey and Jay next?

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whenever an older guy suddenly has kids I always assume they had that all too common "but who will carry on my legacy?!" midlife crisis and decide kids might be worth it afterall

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I thought that was always the best way to do it. One shot and close up shop.

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I wanted twins too lol. Twice the pain at the time, but after that you're done.

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While that sounds ideal. The thought of taking care of two or more babies at once terrifies me. One was hard enough.

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Aww, congrats <3

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baby names post, anyone? lol



i'm not crazy about ella, but they're both solid names

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Pretty simple names with me. Our son's name is James (husband is a Metallica fan lol). For a second one we were thinking Robyn for a girl. Luke and Stanley are possibilities for a boy.

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Yessss @ Robyn.

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i love james and robyn! i also like cute old man names like stanley lol

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at least you didn't name your son hetfield. i know a pearl jam fan who named his son vedder....

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I like the name James too. I would be tempted to call the kid Jimmy though. idk, just makes me think of the White Stripes.

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Honestly, I would avoid Luke. It's super popular right now, especially the Star Wars resurgence. My nephew has the name, along with an older brother named Liam. As a Jessica, it's really hard to be distinctive with common names.

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I like old fashioned names. If I have kids my top two names are Lydia for a girl and Ezra for a boy.

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Alexander is actually what I have picked out for a boy. I know it's pretty common but I've just always liked the name. For girls I actually have a lot of different names lol I guess we'll see whenever I have kids

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I just came to a revelation of what I would want my daughter to be named after never having a name picked out. Sayyora.



My inspiration came from a girl on the Bad Girls Club as well... lol







Edited at 2017-06-06 05:32 pm (UTC)

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for boys I like Sebastian and James. For girls I like Alexandria, Marina, and Summer.

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i love the name Alexander, and my mom's last name is Henry, so i'd like to use that as a possible middle name.



for girls, i love Lily, Isabella and Amaya/Maya.

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My two boys are Conner and Luke and our new baby is Johanna but goes by JJ. I didn't get to use my favorite names but all their news suit them, I think :) If I ever had another girl (which I won't) she'd probably be an Emily.

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At the top of my head,River,Forrest, Rooney, Rowan, Valentina, Theodore(idk if I'd name my kids Theo because I think it's a nickname), Ezra.



I love gender neutral names.



Edited at 2017-06-06 05:28 pm (UTC)

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I like Noah if i ever have a kid/boy which at this point feel like having a godson is enough

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My family has had a tradition of giving the females french names. The past few generations have been: Lucille, Marie, Rachelle, Camille...



I like the names Joelle, Maxine and Andree so far. Can't think of many male french names I like though.



Edited at 2017-06-06 05:30 pm (UTC)

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My boy name is Layne... girl name maybe Carey or Camille. Probably never growing a person in my uterus though so I will just keep pushing those names on my friend's babies.

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For a boy, husband and I have Elliott James (miiight change to Elliott David) picked out. For girl, our #1 pick is Norah Josephine, but we also love Viola Marie and either Rosalie Rey or Rosalie Jane.

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scarlett for a girl, altho i'm never having kids lol

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Cecilia Felicity has been my girls name choice for 18 years. Also really like Eleanor.



I like Noah and Liam for boys, but they're so common right now. I've also like Jack, but my cousin has an Ex named Jack, and I'm sure there'd by drama, and it's pretty common too. I like Nathaniel, but my sisters ex is named Nathan.

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the kids i'm probably never having would the same treatment almost everyone in my family got: very polish name on the birth certificate and going by a nickname for the rest of their life

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My picks for girls are Charlotte, Elizabeth and Caitlin. For boys...I'm less sure. Jake, maybe, as it was my late brother's nickname.



I dunno what I'd choose for a boy because I don't want to choose the name of any children my family and friends have.

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I'm never having kids, but I like the name Liliana for a girl and Sebastian for a boy.

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i love classic-sounding names. claire and diana are my top choices for girls. i really like emma and elizabeth for names, too, but they're so popular it'd be too intense. for boys...i don't care as much lmao i don't even see myself with male kids but if it ever happened i like david the best.



Edited at 2017-06-06 05:54 pm (UTC)

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my brother was almost named alexander but my mom changed it to his middle name, which worked out because it's a popular name in his age range so there were a lot of alex s, alex b, alex j, in his classes.



if i were to have kids, i'd adopt so no need to worry about names. but i love girls with traditionally male names. any way to get them a foot in the door later in life. there's a male version of my name that i'd probably use cause why the fuck not.

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not having kids, but if i did i would name them after my friends, who are smart and kind (and, luckily, have normal names lol).

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No idea for boy's names but my girl's name pick is Gwendolen (or Gwendolyn) Sophia. Not that we're having kids in the next few years.

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I like Willa and August for girls, Weston and Henry (Hank) for boys.

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Frida, Hilda and Emil for first names and I like Elisa for second name, it's a family name (great grandmothers name, my mom and cousin have variants of it as their name).

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aisling regina/regina aisling

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I like names with different meanings in different languages.

Sabrina (Welsh, Arabic, Hindi), Alma (Arabic, Aramaic, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Latin, Spanish, Turkish)

Taran (Celtic, Sanskrit), Idris (Welsh, Arabic)

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No idea if I'll ever have kids but a girl would definitely be Zelda and for boys recently I've been thinking Cyril or Ferdinand.



I love Kit but I really don't like Christopher (it's also the name of my sister's abusive ex-boyfriend) and I kinda just want to name a boy whatever I want and then call him Kit. I know several people with nicknames they use all the time that have no or only tangential connection to their birth certificate names. Shrug.

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I love the name Odette for a girl and Peter for a boy.

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Hm. I like Charlotte, Cecily and Felicity for a girl. I kind of like the name Reed for a boy. It would have been my name, had I been a boy.

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For girls: Eleanor (call her Lola), Beatrice (Trixie), and Margaret (Margo)

For boys: Julian (Jude), Elliot, Alexander, Theodore

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I'm a big fan of Martha but people always tell me it sounds like an old lady. I also love Edith but again, old lady. For boys I've always loved Wesley.

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If I ever have kids (doubtful) I've always wanted to name a daughter Sadie Elizabeth. A boy would be William Lee, after my dad.

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tbh, i have lists upon lists of kid names.

but im mostly set on juliette larae and garrett dean. my mom's name is julie, and she was named after my great-grandma, julia. larae is my sister's middle name.

and my dad was named gary, but i've always had a problem with that name. it just is such an old man name, i can't picture a cute little chubby baby being named something hard like gary. dean was also my dad's middle name.

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I used to have different faves, but now when I'm thinking about it with a certain surname in my mind, it changes everything! even if the first name is super pretty, sometimes it just doesn't match the surname, like the flow isn't right.



anyway, if I ever have kids, I'd like to find names that are sorta "international" but don't sound (too) weird in my country

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Jamison, Beau, Elizabeth, and June



My sister wants to have a girl and name her Capri. I haaaaaate it. Her daughter is Sienna (which is a gorg name) so why ruin your second kid with CAPRI.

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I have an Oliver but he would have been either Carina or Abigail had he been a girl. Idk what I'll call any other boys I end up having though, his middle name is Luke and now I've used up all the boy names I like oop.

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I'm not having kids but the name options for the kids I once thought I'd have included Romola, Vania, Sofia and Sasha.



for a boy name I only had Daniel (after my grandfather).

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I've become recently obsessed with mythology and ancient Roman names. I blame the hours I spent listening to Totalus Rankium.

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My son is Julian and if I ever had a girl she would be Lucy or Olivia.

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I love their names! Congratulations to them.

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What refreshingly normal names

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Aw, congrats to them!

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I actually just googled them like a week ago to see if she was actually pregnant or if it was a weird dream I had lol. They laid really low during the pregnancy.

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Oh my god, America is on a new show?! I missed this. Is it any good?

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the girl looks just like my teacher

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I like those names.

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ita

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Don't forget the young sis Apple!

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Umm excuse you. It's Pilot Inspektor! That k makes all the difference...

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Rude.

Alexander is my middle name.

You're off my Christmas list now.



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Oh what cute names!



I named my kids in alphabetical order for some reason and in planning to have my 4th I want to break the "tradition" but feel kind of bad about doing so.

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My sis did that and ended up doing it with 4 & 5's middle names (mostly cause her husband just HAD to name their twins after himself)

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So many nice names with a D (?), just keep on alphabettin' gurl!

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aw lol that statement



cute names!

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why did George need to be sedated???? miracle of birth too much for him?

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.....coming out of my cage

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GOTTA GOTTA BE DOWN

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and idgaf I love how close they are with vegas. I don't live in Nevada, but am in the desert and there's something so relatable about that location to me.

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R WE HUMAN







OR R WE DANCER









Edited at 2017-06-06 11:44 pm (UTC)

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lmao i was at this super-hipstery party a few days ago and that was literally the only song i knew apart from 1 by the weeknd that they were playing there, it's iconic lol

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omgggggggg cant wait

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its my fav to sing in the car and i had a friend where we'd both JAM with the windows down in the middle of summer going to go get drunk singing this at each other, lol.

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When You Were Young is my go to kareoke fav

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MY BODY IS SO READY, I LOVE THEM SO MUCH!!!

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I got soul, but I'm not a soldier.

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In the shower I sing Andy You're A Star

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causeeee rainstormraider



what a flawless pick.causeeeeyou're a STARRRRR. in nobody's eyeeeees but miiiine. <3

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OMG @ this perfect gif. <3333333333333



brb, spending some quality time with it.



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I love that song

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He's so hot I will never get over him

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He's so portable, the things I would do...



The Killers were the first concert I ever attended. It was really fun. It was during the debut album and I had been listening to the CD on repeat so it was a really fun show to be a part of and I had such a good time. It was also the first time I kissed a boy driving home.

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Dustland Fairytale speaks to my soul in a way that no other song has ever done.

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I saw the Killers in march and they had song on their setlist and I STG i almost cried. It's just. I love it.

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I think that's one of their best songs ever written

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runaways is my ringtone atm

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img shaking and crying rn best thing to happen to me today!!! ugHh!!



at a show a few weeks ago my bff and i found out the killers played at the same bar we were at (capacity 250) after a gig and we were pissed that past us weren't able to go, lmao. i hope they do small vegas gigs!!

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Battle Born is my favorite album.



Be Still makes me cry every time.

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that song is gorgeous.

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Completely changed my mind about her i used to refer her as an American Hating (Half-warranted) Donut Licker but now i have nothing but respect and admiration for the way she handled the situation I will actually look forward to her singles as I never cared for her music.



Edited at 2017-06-07 12:13 am (UTC)

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you and everyone on fox news' facebook page

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dont compare me to those pricks k thanx bai

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lol

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I still can't believe how much people ran with the "I hate America" thing.

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Did you copy and paste this from Blue Lives Matter Facebook comment?

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I didn't realize Piers Morgan had an account on ONTD.

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jsyk anti-american is good and what she did was "who cares" level of news but yeah

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Who the fuck even cares if she hates America? I hate America. There are plenty of valid reasons to, especially since November.

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The American thing I didn't gaf about but the donut thing was so fucking rude and uncalled for. But now I like her lol.

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Lol at people coming for you as if they weren't all judging the shit out of her at the time.



I was with her regarding America but licking donuts that other people are gonna eat is gross af. It's all pretty miniscule compared to her response to Manchester though.

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I've always liked her so this made me like her even more. Mad respect, I honestly don't know if I would have the strength/mentality to do what she did.

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My Everything & Dangerous Woman are great pop albums. Yours Truly was also a solid debut with good songs. She's more talented than most of her peers. And while she's done some problematic things in the past (who hasn't when that young) she handled this situation with maturity and grace. It seemed 100% genuine and not exploitative at all. So I hope she has a good career ahead of her also

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The fact that she bravely returned to Manchester and then met with the victims was really incredible on her part. The photos of her in the hospital made me all teary-eyed. Those young girls were so fucking happy.

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I love that apparently she put like no time restrictions on the visits or say peeps couldn't take pictures, she just showed up and visited with them, gave them flowers and stuffed animals. i mean you could tell it was genuine

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You can still dislike someone's past actions but be entirely empathetic to what they're facing. The donut situation seems so minor compared to what's happened.

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Agreed completely in the grander scheme of things she is a genuinely good person and thats what mattered.

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this is really true

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Definitely, my feelings are the same.

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MTE, I've really began to start liking her. She's handled this entire situation very well and seems so genuinely caring tbh.

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Yep. In everyday situations she's been a bit immature in the past but she stepped up when it mattered so.

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I'm not a fan of her music (or any current pop acts, so it's not her fault) but the way she's handled this has made me a fan of her as a person.

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Agreed. This was lovely of her.

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Same here - I was completely indifferent to her as a musician/pop culture thing but now I have serious respect for her as a person bc of everything she's done after the bombing



what happened was any performer's worst nightmare but she found a way to do something beautiful and positive afterwards, and she went above and beyond for it.

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lol yup. they're called Dame.

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There's a petition to give her honorary Damehood, whatever that means

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It she's given one it can only be Honorary because she's not a British citizen. She would not be allowed to use Dame in front of her name.

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yeah, they're called Dames

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yes but as an american citizen, she legally cannot accept any title or honor of nobility from a foreign ruler, so it would have to be an honorary knighthood only.

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I didn't really care for her music until dangerous woman so that album definitely made me like her



What Ariana did was really above and beyond, she could've just released a song and donated the proceeds and be done with it. I feel very proud of her lol

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I found her to be pretty hit and missed with her first two albums but yeah the latest one is really solid!

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she's not a 'household' name tho - people might hear her on the radio or in the charts but the average layman in the UK wouldn't have known who she was

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i mean in my other posts about this a lot of british ONTDers said they never knew much about her until the Manchester bombing

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I (i'm in Manchester) only knew about her through ONTD!



I don't recall ever hearing her on the radio here idk, though I only listen when i'm driving, and I don't watch terrestrial TV.

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I do have a lot of respect for her - regardless of whether you like her music or whatever, she had some balls to put that concert on



we found out this week that one of my colleagues at work lost one of her close family members and she was there on sunday - she seemed to be treating it as a bit of closure, even so soon afterwards

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That's what I felt the concert was ...closure for those affected. From the epic clouds/sunset to Ariana's rendition of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow", it felt like such a beautiful, heartfelt, positive way to say goodbye given the circumstances. I have nothing but the utmost respect for everyone involved. It was wonderful just to watch on TV.

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That was such a perfect way to end it tbh

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Yes, I really think it provided comfort to those affected (and probably to Ariana herself)

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iconic isn't the word i'd use.. but I can see where you were going and I agree

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pivotal maybe

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yes -- her profile will be raised quite a bit

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it'll be one of those benefit gigs that'll be remembered like the Freddie Mercury one

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i watch the concert today, it was really nice and Ariana was perfect

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i was just wondering that... was he even there?

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he snapchatted throughout the whole damn thing. i only know because i watched snapchat's recap story and lawd every other clip was of him and his creepy little face.

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I hate that you reminded me of his existence

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Frankie is like a stress sore man. He is trying his hardest to ride them coattails to success.

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I'm honestly so proud of her and I am glad I chose to stan her when yours truly came out. 

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I'm pretty sure she was genuine, but I can't forget what she did when she thought no one was watching.

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Was that four years ago already?? Omg.

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Mte

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right i mean the situation being as tragic as it is and the whole world is watching you respond to it, so of course you're going to be on your best, most compassionate & gracious behavior. which isn't to say she can't be genuine, just that y'know.... c'mon

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People treating customer service workers badly makes me instantly see red, so while I definitely respect how she's handled this horrible situation, I'm not going to forget that she was rude to the donut shop servers and never apologized for that specifically.



I like some of her music, but am mostly neutral about her as a person. People here used to get riled about her being "fake" and I never gave a damn about that.

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You are the MVP

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So Trump didn't stop Comey because he's not going to implicate him?

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No. His legal argument was weak considering he spoke about their convos on twitter.

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And fuck you, Eric Trump 

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So Rodgers and Coats are basically going against yesterdays WaPo report. I believe the WaPo.



Edited at 2017-06-07 03:53 pm (UTC)

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funny thing is they arent saying flat out no. they keep using "directed" and "felt pressure" committee dont care about feelings and trump coulda suggested or asked



Edited at 2017-06-07 03:55 pm (UTC)

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dbil

2. i pity the person that will eventually have to catalog his tweets 1.100% serious about paying you for jenna maroney icons, hit me up with paypal info! (also i'll eventually have a yt video...)2. i pity the person that will eventually have to catalog his tweets

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i messaged you!

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If I had to go through all his tweets, I'd make it a point to also read Cher's tweets commenting on his dumb tweets as a relief.

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these dem senators (angus king) are on FIRE! these dudes are stonewalling OMG

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Waste of a hearing considering none of these assholes will answer anything.

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Seriously. All these old white men neglecting to answer questions because of their "feelings." If a woman pulled that, they'd be calling for her imprisonment before she even turned off her mic.

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If Kushner gets fired, I see Ivanka divorcing him and using it as a pity party on how he betrayed the family and her and now she is a hard working single mother.

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Same. Her loyalty will always lie with her dad over any husband.

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i'm fucking cackling rn tbh

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What's going on with the recent Sessions v Trump? Are they trying to use (another) BS story to detract from something bigger?

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Nah it was just a dumb story put out there. Prob trying to distract from Comey hearing.

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i won't get excited unless something actually happens

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wise

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Yeah I wanna be excited but I know he's not gonna come through. I can almost guarantee he is going to say that trump asked him to stop the investigation but he didn't know that wasn't protocol. And that's IT.

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the refusal to answer questions verging on contempt of congress. king asking what is legal basis for not answering. said they swore oaths  Laura Rozen (@lrozen) June 7, 2017

This is maddening to watch, these fuckers are part of the cover up and not cooperating. Thank god for senators like Mark Warner and Angus King.

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I don't think they're part of the cover up lol. I would say it's bc of Mueller's investigation but they aren't even giving that as a reasoning.

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ikr its crazy how they wont answer. i like the senators that keep saying you took an oath

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literally wtf

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OMG, dying. XD This cat's epic pelvic thrusts.

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my TL is crazy this morning from Hillary and prison labor wank to Eric Trump calling detractors non human. but I'll be home tomorrow for Comey's testimony tho

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http://www.newsweek.com/hillary-clinton-prison-labor-african-americans-arkansas-622209



When we moved in, I was told that using prison labor at the governors mansion was a longstanding tradition, which kept down costs, Clinton writes. She adds that most of the workers were convicted murderers and she became friendly with a few of them, African-American men in their thirties who had already served 12 to 18 years of their sentences.



Despite her alleged friendships with these men, Clinton tells her readers: We enforced rules strictly and sent back to prison any inmate who broke a rule. Despite having no psychological qualifications, she later asserts that these men did not have inferior IQs or an inability to apply moral reasoning but instead they may have been emotional illiterates.

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Eric Trump stole charity money meant for cancer kids and he has the audacity to say democrats aren't human.

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i love this gif

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lol mte Max

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Same.



With the way certain mods allow Islamophobia to run rampant here I won't be surprised by anything that happens.



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late af but this gif can be used every day on ontd

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is linda sarsour so well known that this exchange can be posted with absolutely no context? who tf is she?

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She's a Muslim, Palestinian-American activist--- she worked on Bernie's campaign and I THINK serves on Our Revolution's board.

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okay but...i feel like that's not the reason she's being called "a vile disgrace to women and all mankind" tho



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was going to ask the same thing



the inciting incident would be important to include here

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Courtney is a fucking LEGEND!

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She's more famous for the legends shes fucked / married / gotten to write songs for her lbr







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Is she? Because I have no clue who she's fucked or what songs are written about her. I only know her from her music but is the other stuff well known? I mean, besides her being married to Kurt.

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that's part of it but nah she doesn't keep filling up concert halls for no reason, like her music stands on its own and was made with fantastic musicians.

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This is a scientific fact!

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and she always will be, no matter how nuts she gets.

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mfte even the original post is a disaster so the comments will be.....well...

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this post needs some context on wtf Linda Sarsour is

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She's a Muslim, Palestinian-American activist--- she worked on Bernie's campaign and I THINK serves on Our Revolution's board.

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Also helped organize the women's march.

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lol mte i have no idea who she is or what she did

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As a progressive jew, Linda's recent popularity is... worrisome?



I feel like we, in general, do a competent job at highlighting the virulent anti-semitism of the right, but tend to come up WAY WAY short at calling out the clear anti-semites of the left (*cough* Jeremy Corbyn *cough*).

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.... Are you suggesting her being anti-zionist is anti-semetic??

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JFC.



She's openly advocated for Sharia Law... which is clearly incompatible with the /existence/ of Jews, not just the existence of a Jewish state. And also: many, many progressives use "anti-zionism" as a shield for their anti-semitism, it's easy to snuff out the difference, I've been dealing with it my entire adult life.

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A lot of people choose to pick up anti-zionism/pro-Palestine as a cause because it affords them the ability to be openly antisemitic. It's super gross. (saying this as a Pro-Palestine Jew btw - a lot of people have basically accused me of supporting genocide bc I ... practice my own religion?)



I have no comment about this situation in particular though. I don't know anything about her/her views (yet).

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She says zionists can't be feminists. She supports the murderer of Jews. She is anti Semitic.

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Linda Sarsour says "antisemitism is not systemic", but islamophobia is.



Is antisemitism systemic in your community @lsarsour? pic.twitter.com/7vSSEEcQi2  Lalo Dagach (@LaloDagach) 28 avril 2017

As a black person, the way she uses black people to make her points make me sick.

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Honest question, how is Corbyn an anti-semite?

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It's hard cuz I want to participate but then she brings on people like rasmeah odeh she clearly doesn't care about Jewish suffering

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Yeah, I've seen too many people on the Left associate Zionism with blindly supporting Israel's policies, or even more broadly, that being Jewish = Zionism. There is a lot of criticism from Jews in America and indeed in Israel, about some of their policies towards Palestine. Lots of them want a just two state solution, returning of lands, etc. Indeed in the US lots of Rightwing non-Jews use Israel as a bludgeon against anyone, even Jews, who have problems with Israeli policies. It's fucked up.



There are lots of people in Israel who don't support Netanyahu in the same way there are lots of people in America didn't support Dubya or now Trump. Or British people who didn't support Cameron, or Canadians who didn't support Harper. Now as to how these horrible people keep getting elected? ugh. But assuming that people in a place are all like their fucked up leaders, is simplistic.



Linda seems to be one of those people who seem to conflate being for an Israeli state existing (which is Zionism), with supporting all of it's policies. Linda's said you can't be a feminist and be a Zionist, because the Israeli government is doing bad things to Palestinian women. Which by her "logic" she can't be an American and be a feminist because America is doing terrible things to women. She can't be feminist and Muslim, because some Muslim countries do terrible things to women. Yeah, not impressed with her thinking, frankly.



Edited at 2017-06-07 11:57 pm (UTC)

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Corbyn is an anti-semite? Can you fill me in as I don't read The Daily Mail.

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WHAT ARE YOU SAYING. SAINT JEZZA IS THE GREATEST POLITICIAN OF OUR TENDER GENERATION.

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i didn't know anything abt LS before the women's march...i'm confused. context?

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Yeah... her comments about Ayaan Hirsi Ali (who I often disagree with politically but respect as an important voice in general) were utterly disgusting... just totally unconscionable given her past trauma

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Proof for both these claims?

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AHA was a victim of FGM when she was a teenager, making this statement utterly disgusting on multiple levels AHA was a victim of FGM when she was a teenager, making this statement utterly disgusting on multiple levels

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I forgot about that. Gross.

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There's a case in Detroit right now about a doctor performing FGM on a little girl here in the states.

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Maybe only specific victims? Ya know, the ones how deserve it? Who don't deserve to be women anymore? (like the screenshots above prove).



Which also let me say, having a vagina does not equal being a woman.

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why is this happening

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What the HELL is this zero context post? If you have a legitimate criticism of Linda post some actual quotes of hers. All I have ever seen her do is stand up to injustice and bigotry?

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The taking vaginas away part is harsh, but if wishing somebody would get their ass whooped is problematic we literally all are. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, although I think what happened to her is horrific, is terrible.

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Here's her defending Saudi Arabia's women's rights







Edited at 2017-06-07 08:30 pm (UTC) Here's her defending Saudi Arabia's women's rights

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Because the OP hates Muslims.

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there are progressive religious people, but books and belief systems that are thousands of years old are bound to be pretty fucked.



cant recall who said it or where it came from, but the idea that secular people view women's bodies as public property, and religious people view our bodies as private property is pretty spot on.



we lose either way.

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I had no idea she was problematic?

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imo, it's a very nuanced problematic so, opinions may vary. I'm interested in learning more about the different viewpoints in this post honestly.

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for god's sake sttttoopppp using that word. She's being accused of very specific things and we have words for them.

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man this post could be a huge mess



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lmao it is and it didnt even start yet

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welp i'm ducking out

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Yeah, I'm going to homer bush my way out of this one.

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team nobody

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Is that you in your icon?

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Lol

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India, the worlds third largest oil consumer, imports about 82 percent of its crude oil requirements, and meets just 18 percent of its demand through local sources. The Indian Government has introduced several new initiatives, and changed existing policies, with a view to increasing domestic production and hence reducing hydrocarbon imports. The current economic scenario presents India with the opportunity not only to get its policy decision-making processes streamlined for exploration, but also to build up reserves.

According to most reports and estimates, Indias dependency on importing hydrocarbons is likely to deepen, as the already vast middle classes grow in numbers, and consumer demand rises. In order to counter this dependency, the Indian Government has been trying not only to make the operating environment more favourable for oil investment, but also has dedicated efforts towards the ease of doing business, in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modis motto of minimum government, maximum governance.

NEW POLICY INITIATIVES

To move forward on the target set by Narendra Modi of reducing the nations oil import dependency by 10 percent by 2022, several new policy initiatives have been announced. The start was made by the Petroleum Minister, Mr. Dharmendra Pradhan, on 2 September 2015 when he announced the Marginal Fields Policy (MFP), which was accompanied by the auctioning of 67 marginal fields under the Discovered Small Fields (DSF) Licensing Round. The MFP entailed two significant changes; the first was the adoption of a revenue-sharing model, and the second the grant of a single (uniform) license to the successful bidder, enabling the operator to explore and produce by conventional and unconventional means. These two facets of the policy have also formed the basis of subsequent exploration policies. Companies successful in the DSF Round were granted a 20-year license for a field, and will be able to sell gas at the prevailing market price rather than the administered price. The move to auction marginal fields was a positive one, and will be followed by DSF II in September 2017; however, it only witnessed participation from small domestic Indian companies, seeking to diversify their portfolios.

The government is expecting a significant response (especially from IOCs) to its Hydrocarbon Exploration Licensing Policy (HELP) under the revenue-sharing model. The previous New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP), introduced in 1998, had shown increasingly evident deficiencies  the major ones being the inability to cater for unconventional hydrocarbons and inadequacies in the PSC. The most significant part of HELP is the Open Acreage Licensing Policy (OALP), enabling bidders to nominate areas for exploration; and the Petroleum Operations Contract (POC) for all hydrocarbon types, for a period of six years with a possible one-year extension. Under the OALP, a bid round will be held twice a year, starting in July 2017. The bid rounds will be facilitated by the new National Data Repository (NDR), established and populated over 2015-2017, and due to open its doors in July 2017; the provision of data through NDR will finally help to eradicate the sense of oil and gas data starvation that has persisted for several years. Related: The Worlds Top Oil Consumers

AGGRESSIVE DOMESTIC EXPLORATION AND PRODUCTION

While many explorers world-wide decided to slow down investment on account of the prevailing low oil-price scenario, Indian state companies have made a conscious decision to aggressively pursue domestic E&P activities. This is evident from ONGCs FY 2016-17 drilling campaign, under which 501 wells (167 offshore) were drilled, against 386 wells in FY 2015-16. Also, following the approval of the Marketing and Pricing Policy for new gas production from deep-water, ultra-deep water and high pressure/high temperature (HPHT) areas, the Indian major has embarked on a US$ 5 billion field development plan in the deep-water environment of the Krishna-Godavari basin. With the fall in oil prices, there had been much criticism of the previous gas-pricing model for not providing sufficient incentive to encourage investment in high risk areas.

(Click to enlarge)

The governments aggressive domestic E&P approach is also evident from the blueprint Vision 2030 for North East India document, released in Q1 2016. Headline aims laid out in the document include doubling regional oil and gas production by 2030, increasing refinery capacity and extending the pipeline network. The predominantly rural and remote Assam region is where Indian oil and gas exploration and production began, at the Digboi field (1890). Although the fields are small in reserves terms and most are in decline, the Northeast region contributes 12 percent of national production. In E&P, challenges include mountainous terrain, access, infrastructure and connectivity, and the government recognizes that many aspects have to be improved in order to attract new private sector E&P investment. Special license conditions are under consideration (longer periods, tax holidays, partnerships with service companies  PECs or Production Enhancement Contracts). It is anticipated that there can be a significant increase in gas production, particularly through exploration in the under-explored states of Manipur, Tripura and Mizoram.

Related: The Dark Side Of The Oil Tech Boom

ONGOING LITIGATIONS

Although there has been no major oil and gas litigation under the rule of the current government in power from May 2014, a strong perception of delay in resolving disputes persists. Such is evident from the infamous KG-DWN-98/3 (D6) (Krishna-Godavari Offshore) deep-water block gas migration dispute between ONGC and Reliance Industries Ltd (JV partners BP & Niko). In early March 2017, a three-member arbitration panel had started the hearing into the legitimacy of governments demand of US$1.55 billion compensation from RIL for unfairly producing ONGCs gas in the basin. Sluggishness, and at times inefficient, Indian bureaucracy has always been a concern for domestic and international investors. As such, while acknowledging the governments intent of creating a business-friendly environment, more needs to be done to fast-track contested matters.

(Click to enlarge)

To conclude, in an industry where being opportunistic is a vital forte, India needs to be lean and efficient with its decision making to attract investment, particularly at a time when China, a major competitor in seeking overseas acreage, is suffering a market slow down. Fast-tracking policy decision making, aggressively pursuing domestic exploration and production activities and launching an OALP are certainly positive steps to encourage direct investment.

By Drilling Info

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
The U.S. shale-vs-OPEC-cuts tale has been the predominant theme in oil markets this year, and like the cartels output cut, it will be rolling over into next year as well.

Major banks, the same that at the time of the initial OPEC deal were seeing the markets tightening and glut eliminated as soon as the second or third quarter this year, have started slashing their oil price forecasts for this year and next, as the six-month OPEC deal failed to rebalance the markets and cuts were extended into March 2018.

U.S. shale production is expected to continue growing through this year and into next year. Meanwhile, JP Morgan sees OPECs extension deal as having no exit strategy, with the cartel not communicating what its end game is.

Neither the length of the extension, nor the compliance rate of its participants, concerns me as much as OPECs lack of an exit strategy. If OPEC really has the courage behind their convictions, then the optimal decision would have been to extend cuts through the end of 2018, Ebele Kemery, head of energy investing at JP Morgan, said on the day on which OPEC announced they would roll over the cuts.

Major investment banks hastened to revise further down their oil price projections, seeing a flow of supply hitting the market as soon as production cuts expire in March 2018. Add the second U.S. shale boom to this, and it looks like the glut will return with a vengeance in 2018.

Last week, Goldman Sachs cut its Brent price forecast for this year to US$55.39 per barrel from its previous estimate of US$56.76 a barrel. It also revised down its WTI projections to US$52.92 from US$54.80 a barrel. Just days before that, Goldman said that it sees the oil glut returning after OPECs deal expires.

For 2018, it was JP Morgan that made the most drastic cut to its oil price projections, expecting not only U.S. shale to continue roaring back at OPEC, but also the cartels deal falling apart by the end of this year.

JP Morgan slashed its 2018 WTI forecast by US$11from US$53.50 to US$42. The price projection for Brent was also axed, by US$10, from US$55.50 to US$45.

Related: The Worlds Top Oil Consumers

We assume that the OPEC/non-OPEC deal collapses at the end of 2017, as cheating becomes untenable for core OPEC members. Consequently, the 2018 oil market balance now points to rapid builds in inventories which, absent continued OPEC support, should depress oil prices, David Martin, executive director at JP Morgan, said in the banks note, as quoted by Business Insider Australia.

On the other hand, U.S. crude output is expected to keep growing for several quarters due to lower breakeven costs and higher investment, according to JP Morgan.

To compare, as of January 30, 2017, merely a month into OPECs production cuts, JP Morgans global outlook 2017 suggested that oil markets look set to tighten further in the coming quarters as better than expected compliance from OPEC ensures drawdowns in oil inventories. The bank had expected back then Brent at US$58.25 for 2017 and at US$60 for 2018, and WTI - at US$56.25 a barrel in 2017 and US$58 in 2018.

In the oil markets, however, four months is a very long time, during which it became evident that OPECs efforts failed to draw down the glut in six months, and failed to lift prices. And now JP Morgan is the bank warning that oil prices may go substantially lowernot only compared to previous price projections, but also compared to the current price of oil.

JP Morgan also sees OPEC losing more than it gains with the output cut deal.

Related: The Dark Side Of The Oil Tech Boom

As we have previously flagged, the longer-term consequences of OPECs actions will likely prove unpleasant for the cartels members, JP Morgans Martin said.

Other analysts do not see the current cuts balancing the oil market next year.

If OPEC wants to keep the market balanced next year, they will probably need to extend the production cut to all of 2018, Martijn Rats, managing director at Morgan Stanley in London, told Bloomberg in an email.

Currently, the expected surge in supply after the OPEC deal ends, coupled with continuous U.S. production gains, does not bode well for oil prices to move much higher in 2018 than they are now.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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OPECs crude oil production increased by 270,000 bpd in May over April, to stand at 32.12 million bpd--the highest level since January this year--as exempt Libya and Nigeria saw their respective output sharply recovering, according to an S&P Global Platts survey.

Despite the high compliance from the cartels biggest producer and de facto leader Saudi Arabia, as well as from Angola, output jumped from exempt OPEC members Libya and Nigeria, and Iraq continued to under-comply significantly, increasing its production in May, the survey showed.

According to the Platts survey, Nigerian output increased last month to 1.73 million bpd, up by 80,000 bpd from April, and the highest level since March 2016, due to the restart of Forcados crude exports. According to Platts shipping data, two Suezmax tankers fully laden with crude oil set sail from Nigerias Forcados terminal at the end of May.

In Libya, crude output increased by 180,000 bpd to 730,000 bpd in Maythe highest level since October 2014with the giant Sharara field resuming production, and exports from both key eastern and western ports rising steadily.

Expectations are that output from Libya and Nigeria will continue to rise in the summer, which will be, for OPEC, a tricky period in its attempt to accelerate the markets rebalancing, Platts said.

While production at OPECs no.1 producer Saudi Arabia dropped to 9.93 million bpd in May, down 40,000 bpd from April, output at the cartels no.2. producer Iraqincreased, by 70,000 bpd to 4.43 million bpd in May, the Platts survey found. Iraq continues to go rogue, and its compliance in the first five months of the deal is 70 percent, one of the least-compliant producers, according to calculations by Platts.

OPECs no.3 Iranwhich was allowed to slightly raise and cap output at 3.797 million bpd in the dealwas just below that level, at 3.78 million bpd in May, Platts said. Related: The Dark Side Of The Oil Tech Boom

Despite strong compliance overall so far, OPECs efforts have not borne much fruit, as far as oil prices are concerned. If global stocks do not start to show demonstrative signs of steady draws, OPEC may have to be more creative with its strategy, Eklavya Gupte, Senior Editor, Europe and Africa Oil News, S&P Global Platts, said.

To add to this, OPEC could face a brewing political crisis as two key members have broken diplomatic ties with Qatar. In the past, the group has managed to put aside political rivalries to focus on production management, but geopolitical risk is always something that bears watching within OPEC, Gupte noted.



OPEC will release its Monthly Oil Market Report with data for May next Tuesday, 13 June.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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An oil workers union in Norway has threatened that some 150 of its members will go on strike if the union fails to reach an agreement on wages by Friday, Reuters reports. The potential strikers work on platforms operated by Eni, Shell, and Statoil. A strike will effectively shut down production from these platforms, a spokesperson for the union said.

The sides have until Friday to reach an agreement. If this doesnt happen, the unions members could go on strike on Sunday.

The five fields produce 326,000 barrels of crude oil equivalent daily, according to figures for March. To compare, Norways total average daily production in April this year was 2.111 million barrels of oil, condensate, and natural gas liquids.

Lederne, the union that is preparing for a strike, is the only one among the unions that last year had a long dispute with employers in the oil industry of Norway that did not reach a wage agreement brokered by the government last month. It is also the smallest: Industri Energi and Safe represent 87 percent of the countrys oil industry workforce.

Oil workers in Europes biggest crude oil producer went on strike last year over pay disagreements with their employers, amid a global cost-cutting drive in the oil industry. The negotiations dragged on, and there was worry that the strike would affect Norways 2-million-bpd crude oil output if it escalated.



Related: Is $75 Oil Still Possible?

After the negotiations, Industri Energi and Safe both said they were disappointed with the outcome, but took what they were offered for lack of alternatives: the unions undertook to not strike again, as per an agreement closed with employers after last years events.

Lederne is the only union, representing some 1,000 or 13 percent of Norways oil workers, that did not sign that agreement, so the option of new industrial action is still open for its members.

Oil companies operating in Norway include, besides local state major Statoil, also BP, Exxon, Shell, ConocoPhillips, and service providers Schlumberger, Halliburton, Baker Hughes, and Oceaneering.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Lost in the uproar over the United States withdrawal from the Paris accords and the renewal of Islamic terrorists attacks in Great Britain is the pitiful story of former Secretary of State and once (well actually twice) and future Democrat presidential aspirant Hillary Rodham Clinton. Ms. Clinton is a woman scorned.

No, Im not referring to her nearly four decades of watching her Lothario husband, former President Bill Clinton, try to nail virtually every woman who fell within his orbit (some more aggressively than others  Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey, and Paula Jones, for instance). Im not even talking about the embarrassment of having publicly stated:

You know, Im not sitting here  some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette.

Except that she not only stood by her man amidst all of his sexual scandals and lies, she served as one of his principal attack dogs, denying the facts, and denigrating Mr. Clintons accusers.

Elizabeth Wurtzel, author of Prozaic Nation and Bitch (odes to a muscular feminism) was a frequent observer of Ms. Clintons travails. In a Washington Post article, Alyssa Rosenberg referred often to Elizabeth Wurtzel comments in describing the relationship between the Clintons:

. . . the horror story of every woman who has lived rightonly to find it all wrecked by some man who lives to make bonfires out of other peoples to-do lists, who makes her forget to do the laundry until he asks her to do his.

And Karen Lehrman (feminist, critic and author), again referencing Ms. Wurtzel, was quoted in a New York Times article:

The difficult part is not being bad; its figuring out when to be bad and when to be good. Its true that society still sees an authoritative woman and immediately thinks: bitch. But its also true that many women are bitches, not from too much strength but from the lack of it, just as arrogant men tend to be the weakest of the lot. Confident women dont need to be controlling. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Wurtzel notes, is not only a faux feminist, she is also a faux bitch. Her cold self-righteousness stems not from liberation but from frustration; like Barbara Bush, Wurtzel writes, Hillary is just her husbands wife.

Somewhere along the line, Ms. Clinton apparently decided that she would trade marital fealty for power and public humiliation for prominence. And therein lies her primary mistake in life.

And that leads us to the reason that Ms. Clinton is a woman scorned.

After Mr. Clinton left the presidency in 2000, Ms. Clinton assumed that it was her turn  after all they had once described their time in the White House as a co-presidency and campaigned on the theory of getting two for the price of one. With no practical political experience, Ms. Clinton decided that she needed a political position of prominence  senator  but from where. She settled on New York  not Illinois where she was born and raised, not Arkansas where she spent most of her adult life  no, New York where she had never lived, had no reasonable ties and no earned loyalties. But she knew that New York was overwhelmingly Democrat and that it would elect a yellow dog if that were the Democrat nominee. And she knew that as retiring President, her husband, Mr. Clinton remained the titular head of the Democrat Party and most certainly the voracious Clinton political machine. So they cleared out the primary leaving Ms. Clinton to run against a nobody named Mark McMahon and then a general election against Rick Lazio. And Ms. Clinton was off to the races  presumptively as a result of her own efforts but actually as the result of being her husbands wife.

She served her one term as a senator with no definable achievements and promptly moved on to run for the presidency in 2008. She was assumed to be unbeatable and that it was her destiny to become the nominee. But then she was scorned by the public for the first time through a unknown freshman senator from Illinois  Barack Obama, a virtual nobody whose background was mostly a mystery and who had no definable achievement in either the Illinois legislature or the United States Senate. It would be the moral equivalent of Babe Ruth being struck out by a ten-year old Little League pitcher. He not only beat her, he embarrassed her. But Mr. Obama needed the Clinton political machine to win the general election and the Clintons traded their support to Mr. Obama for his nomination of Ms. Clinton as Secretary of State  a position from which she could maintain public exposure and relevance in her anticipated run for the presidency after Mr. Obama was done. An achievement that was once again the result of being her husbands wife.

Ms. Clinton spent the next eight years preparing to run again, amassing both a campaign and a personal fortune, and organizing within the Democrat Party to ensure that there would be no serious challenge to her nomination  particularly by installing her own supporters in party leadership positions and ensuring that the party appointed super delegates who were loyal to her. And yet, despite an eight year running start, tons of cash, a robust political machine and a delegate selection process rigged to ensure her victory, Ms. Clinton was scorned again through Sen. Bernie Sanders (Socialist  VT)  not even a member of the Democrat Party. While Mr. Sanders was drawing crowds numbering in the thousands, Ms. Clinton was having trouble filling a water closet. In the end she won the primary but primarily because she had rigged the super delegate process. She was a terrible campaigner, appearing aloof, staged, and scripted. In spite of portraying herself as every woman she came off as a noblesse oblige elite stooping to conquer. But the public scorn was not over.

Ms. Clinton was met in the general election by the anti-candidate Donald Trump  a billionaire real estate magnate and reality star host with zero political experience. He was big, boisterous, and not bothered by the nuances of political niceties. He called out Ms. Clinton as a crook, a liar, and an abuser of women for denigrating the women who were victims of her husbands sexual aggression. He stood right in her face on national television and told her she belonged in prison. He blamed her for Benghazi, for Syria, for Russia, for the collapse of Iraq and the rise of ISIS. He renounced many of her decisions as Secretary of State  particularly the sale of the countrys uranium reserves to Russian interests  as part of the pay to play corruption involving Ms. Clinton, her husband and her foundation. He called her physically weak and not up to the strenuous campaign and surely not the presidency. There was not a weakness  political or personal  that Mr. Trump did not exploit and in the process exposed her not as a leader but rather asjust her husbands wife.

In the end Ms. Clinton was abandoned by African-Americans, women, and the young  her presumed electoral base. Yes, she won the popular vote but that was due entirely to California  not something of which to be proud. She lost the electoral college vote by a wide margin. The inevitable Hillary Clinton was denied for a third time  everything but the cock crowing announced her failure.

And as with other tragedies, Ms. Clinton is running through the five stages of grief  denial, anger (dominated by a quest for revenge), bargaining, depression, and acceptance. In the first stage, Ms. Clinton, while acknowledging her loss publicly, worked diligently to deny Mr. Trump inaugurations though attempting to nullify the results through the electoral college, the congressional process and the courts (denial). Now we are in the second stage which finds Ms. Clinton racing to the front of the line to claim leadership of the resistance in an effort to deny Mr. Trump any success as president (revenge). She has begun making public appearance in which she seeks to impose blame for her loss on everyone else (Mr. Trump, Russia, white men, Russia, the Washington Post, Russia, the Democrat National Committee, Russia and  oh, yes. Russia). She steadfastly refuses to accept responsibilities for her own actions, her campaign strategies, her difficulty with the truth, her email scandal, or the information from emails hacked from her campaign chairman, John Podestas files  yes, Russia is probably responsible for disclosing the emails but Ms. Clinton and her allies are solely responsible for their content.

It is doubtful whether Ms. Clinton will ever move past the early stages of grief because acceptance requires acknowledgment of the truth. And in Ms. Clintons case the truth is that despite her Faustian deal to trade fealty for power, the power always remained with Mr. Clinton  as Ms. Wurtzel noted: Hillary is just her husbands wife and always will be. Even in a third run for the presidency in which she will again be scorned.








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LOS REVOLUCIONARIOS NO TOMAN CACA-COLA No se trata solamente de un capricho, sino de una sana actitud en todos los sentidos. Desde la solidaridad con el pueblo colombiano donde la empresa Caca-Cola ha cometido los mas grandes abusos contra sus trabajadores incluyendo el presunto secuestro y asesinato de los dirigentes del sindicato, hasta la proteccion de la salud de nuestros hijos, enviciados por ese jarabe de cola y azucar, que les produce obesidad prematura. Pensemos tambien los revolucionarios, que ese dinero que gastamos en los refrescos es utilizado por esas empresas para financiar el terrorismo en nuestro pais. Es cierto, no se trata solo de la Caca-Cola, sino tambien de la cerveza, de los cigarrillos y todos esos articulos innecesarios y mas que eso, daninos para nuestra salud. Podriamos incluso pensar en un dia de parada para cada uno de ellos. Es cuestion de irnos organizando. Pero para empezar, que tal si dejamos de comprar Caca-Cola y sus similares?



























Cuando lo extraordinario se vuelve cotidiano...



Discurso del Acto de Grado en Barinas en 12 de Febrero del 2005 Queridos Graduandos:



Mas que un discurso, quiero dirigirles algunas palabras que escribi anoche, despues de visitar en las clinicas, a los estudiantes heridos, a consecuencia de los enfrentamientos con la policia de hace apenas dos dias.



Me ha tocado por razones del destino, ser la persona que les otorgue el titulo que bien merecieron con sus estudios. Y me siento sumamente orgulloso de serlo. Me consta que la Universidad de Los Llanos Occidentales Ezequiel Zamora, a pesar de lo dicho por los enemigos de esta universidad, es una universidad de primera.



No tendremos la mejor planta fisica, en los salones hace calor. En el comedor hace calor. Pero no es en lo material que las cosas deben valorarse. El mayor capital es el ser humano. Y en eso, nuestra UNELLEZ, lo digo con conocimiento de causa, esta sobrada. Los llaneros venezolanos son nobles, valientes, de coraje.



En la UNELLEZ hacen vida, en este momento, aproximadamente 67000 personas. El 97% de ellas son estudiantes. Jovenes que, como Ustedes hasta el dia de hoy, buscan ese titulo, que constata los anos de dedicacion y de estudio.



Los jovenes son el rio de la vida, ustedes graduados deben ser los capitanes de esos barcos que naveguen por el rio de la vida.



Nuestra Patria atraviesa momentos muy dificiles porque decidio dejar de ser esa matrona de edad vetusta y complaciente, para ser joven, rebelde y altanera. Nuestra imagen ya no es la de una acaudalada ricachona mayamera. En nuestro rostro brilla ahora la sonrisa del Che Guevara, con su diente delantero torcido, su pelo largo y su boina con la estrella.



Entender esto, a mi me ha tomado practicamente toda la vida. Tengo 53 anos, y ya perdi mi oportunidad de derramar sangre joven a causa de un ideal.



Ustedes son jovenes, estan en la flor de la vida. No cometan por favor el error de renunciar a su instinto de rebelion. El Che Guevara fue Ministro de a Economia en Cuba. Los billetes y las monedas se adornaban con su rostro. Nada de eso le importo. Primero fue a Angola donde paso un penoso ano de combate. Despues se fue a Bolivia, donde encontro la muerte. El Che era el ultimo que comia, el que cargaba la mochila mas pesada. Siempre se sacrificaba por los demas en un estoicismo que mas parecia fervor religioso que ideologia marxista.



Si quieren un modelo de vida. Ahi lo tienen.



Dije hace unos momentos que el 97% de la poblacion de la UNELLEZ es estudiante. Se imaginan Ustedes la Universidad que podriamos tener si todos los estudiantes tuvieran la abnegacion, la combatividad del Che?



Los momentos que se avecinan van a requerir de una gran unidad del pueblo venezolano. La alternativa de continuar siendo libres o regresar a la pobreza se nos planteara en los proximos dias de forma enmascarada, o quizas peor, desenmascarada, vestida con uniforme de soldado del Imperio.



Por nuestra parte podemos esperar lo mejor. La macroeconomia no podria ir mejor, la justicia social ha mejorado notablemente. Las misiones ocupan un papel muy importante en el pago de dicha justicia social. Aqui en Barinas ya hemos cumplido con dos de las misiones, la mision Robinson y la mision Sucre. No hay analfabetismo y no hay exclusion en la educacion superior, en estas tierras de Zamora.



Pero ay malhaya! Son precisamente estos exitos los que nos hacen mas antipaticos al Imperio. Para ellos, somos inclusive un mal ejemplo que se esta contagiando al resto del continente y cuidado sino al resto del mundo.



Nunca venceremos al Imperio. Estara siempre ahi, acechando. Por lo menos hasta que el mismo no se autodestruya. Porque, sepanlo senores, el neoliberalismo es canibal. Cuando le ataque el hambre, se devorara a si mismo.



Ustedes, queridos graduandos, a partir de hoy pasan a conformar la elite profesional que debe sostener este pais en los proximos cuarenta o cincuenta anos. Anos decisivos para el logro de nuestra libertad y del rescate de nuestra Soberania.



No se dejen comprar. No se dejen corromper. No se dejen gritar. No se dejen pisar. Que nadie les diga que comer, o que vestirse, o que leer. Sean siempre autenticos, rebeldes, contestatarios. Pero eso si, profundamente patriotas, dignos de ser hijos de Bolivar.



Muchas gracias y que Dios los bendiga.





Alguna duda?



Medio siglo de Holocausto Palestino



Oscar Zanartu Nacio en Caracas en 1960. Ha realizado exposiciones individuales en las galerias Minotauro, Clave y San Francisco, y en salas de Coro, estado Falcon, y Puerto Ordaz, estado Bolivar. En Paris su obra ha sido exhibida en el Centro Cultural Tanagra, en la Exposicion Cite Internationale des Arts, en las galerias De Mars y Arver Space, al igual que en la Galeria Municipal Levallois, en Levallois Perret (Francia). En muestras colectivas, su obra se ha expuesto en Belgica, Francia, Estados Unidos y Venezuela; en Caracas intervino en la exposicion "Del genesis a la memoria", 1995, organizada por la Fundacion La Previsora. En 1982 obtuvo el Premio Nacional Critven y en 1990 la Mencion de Honor Jose Antonio Paez, en la Embajada de Venezuela en Paris. En 1991 se le concedio el primer premio de Pintura Itinerante, en Levallois Perret, Francia.



OZ1



OZ2



OZ3



OZ4



Homenaje a Jason Galarraga



La Victoria de Samotracia



Odalisca



Mas fotos de la nevada del pasado agosto 2008



























La Sierra Nevada de Merida



Nuestro precioso Churum Meru



Homenaje a Picasso



Autoretrato



Sabes lo que bebes en una Coca-Cola?

La formula de la Pepsi tiene una diferencia basica con la de la Coca-Cola y es intencional, para evitar el proceso judicial. La diferencia es a proposito, pero suficientemente parecida como para atraer a los consumidores de Coca-Cola que prefieren un gusto diferente con menos sal y azucar.

Mi profesion?

Tuve que aprender quimica, entender todo sobre componentes de gaseosas, conservantes, sales, acidos, cafeina, enlatado, produccion, permisos, aprobaciones y muchas otras cosas. Monte mi propio mini-laboratorio de analisis de productos.

Sal en la Coca Cola?

A patadas. El Cloruro de Sodio no solo refresca sino da mas sed, como para pedir otra gaseosa. Y no resulta desagradable porque la sal mata literalmente la sensibilidad al dulce... del que por cierto tambien tiene mucho: 39 gramos de azucar.

De los 350 gramos de producto liquido, mas del 10% es azucar, o sea que en una lata de Coca-Cola mas de un centimetro y medio es puro azucar en polvo. Aproximadamente tres cucharadas soperas llenas de azucar por lata!!La formula de la Coca Cola es muy sencilla:

Concentrado de azucar quemado caramelo- para dar color oscuro y gusto

Acido fosforito (para darle el sabor acido)

azucar (HFCS-jarabe de maiz de alta fructosa)

Extracto de hojas de la planta de Coca (Africa e India) y otros pocos aromatizantes naturales de otras plantas

Mucha Cafeina

Conservante que puede ser Benzoato de Sodio o Potasio

Dioxido de Carbono en cantidad para sentir freir la lengua cuando se bebe

Sal para dar la sensacion de refrigeracion

El uso del acido fosforito y no del acido citrico como en todas las demas gaseosas, es para dar la sensacion de dientes y boca limpia al beber. El acido fosforito literalmente frie todo y dana el esmalte de los dientes, cosa que el acido citrico lo hace en menor grado.Trate de comprar acido fosforito para ver las mil recomendaciones de seguridad que te dan para su manipulacion (quema el cristalino del ojo, quema la piel, etc...). Esta prohibido usar el acido fosforito en cualquier otra gaseosa; solo la Coca Cola tiene permiso. Porque claro, sin el acido fosforico, la Coca Cola sabria a jabon.El extracto de coca y otras hojas casi no cambia en nada el sabor. Es mas bien un efecto cosmetico. El extracto forma parte de la Coca-Cola porque legalmente tiene que ser asi. Pero sin el, no se nota ninguna diferencia en el gusto, que esta dado basicamente por las cantidades diferentes de azucar, azucar quemada, sales, acidos y conservantes.Sabor a que...? ja, ja, ja.

Aqui en Bartow, sur de Orlando, hay una empresa quimica que produce aromatizantes y esencias para zumos. Envian diariamente camionadas de sales concentradas y esencias para las fabricas de helados, gaseosas, jugos, enlatados y comida colorida y aromatizada.Cuando visite por primera vez la fabrica, pedi ver el deposito de concentrados de frutas, que deberia ser inmenso, especialmente los de naranja, pina, fresa y tantos otros. El encargado me miro, se rio y me llevo a visitar los depositos inmensos... pero de colorantes y componentes quimicos.

Las gaseosa de naranja no contiene naranja.

En los zumos dizque de fresa, hasta los puntitos que quedan en suspension estan hechos de goma (una liga quimica que envuelve un semi-polimero).

Pina, es un popurri de acidos y goma.

La esencia para helado de aguacate usa peroxido de hidrogeno (agua oxigenada) para dar la sensacion espumosa tipica del aguacate.

Bebidas Light?

Quieres saber la cantidad de basura que tiene un refresco 'light'? Yo ni siquiera los uso para destapar mi lavaplatos pues temo que danen los tubos de PVC. Los productos endulzantes 'ligth' tienen una vida media muy corta. Por ejemplo el

Despues de toda mi experiencia con la produccion de bebidas embasadas, puedo afirmar sin dudar un segundo: la mejor bebida es el agua, como tambien los jugos exprimidos de naranja o limon. Nada mas, cero azucar y cero sal.



Publicado por loretahur



En realidad, la formula secreta de la Coca-Cola se puede detallar en 18 segundos en cualquier espectrometro optico, y basicamente la conocen hasta los perros. Lo que ocurre es que no se puede fabricar igual, a no ser que uno disponga de unos cuantos millones de dolares para ganarle la demanda que te metera la Coca-Cola ante la justicia (ellos no perderian).La formula de la Pepsi tiene una diferencia basica con la de la Coca-Cola y es intencional, para evitar el proceso judicial. La diferencia es a proposito, pero suficientemente parecida como para atraer a los consumidores de Coca-Cola que prefieren un gusto diferente con menos sal y azucar.Tuve que aprender quimica, entender todo sobre componentes de gaseosas, conservantes, sales, acidos, cafeina, enlatado, produccion, permisos, aprobaciones y muchas otras cosas. Monte mi propio mini-laboratorio de analisis de productos.A patadas. El Cloruro de Sodio no solo refresca sino da mas sed, como para pedir otra gaseosa. Y no resulta desagradable porque la sal mata literalmente la sensibilidad al dulce... del que por cierto tambien tiene mucho: 39 gramos de azucar.De los 350 gramos de producto liquido, mas del 10% es azucar, o sea que en una lata de Coca-Cola mas de un centimetro y medio es puro azucar en polvo. Aproximadamente tres cucharadas soperas llenas de azucar por lata!!La formula de la Coca Cola es muy sencilla:Concentrado de azucar quemado caramelo- para dar color oscuro y gustoAcido fosforito (para darle el sabor acido)azucar (HFCS-jarabe de maiz de alta fructosa)Extracto de hojas de la planta de Coca (Africa e India) y otros pocos aromatizantes naturales de otras plantasMucha CafeinaConservante que puede ser Benzoato de Sodio o PotasioDioxido de Carbono en cantidad para sentir freir la lengua cuando se bebeSal para dar la sensacion de refrigeracionEl uso del acido fosforito y no del acido citrico como en todas las demas gaseosas, es para dar la sensacion de dientes y boca limpia al beber. El acido fosforito literalmente frie todo y dana el esmalte de los dientes, cosa que el acido citrico lo hace en menor grado.Trate de comprar acido fosforito para ver las mil recomendaciones de seguridad que te dan para su manipulacion (quema el cristalino del ojo, quema la piel, etc...). Esta prohibido usar el acido fosforito en cualquier otra gaseosa; solo la Coca Cola tiene permiso. Porque claro, sin el acido fosforico, la Coca Cola sabria a jabon.El extracto de coca y otras hojas casi no cambia en nada el sabor. Es mas bien un efecto cosmetico. El extracto forma parte de la Coca-Cola porque legalmente tiene que ser asi. Pero sin el, no se nota ninguna diferencia en el gusto, que esta dado basicamente por las cantidades diferentes de azucar, azucar quemada, sales, acidos y conservantes.Sabor a que...? ja, ja, ja.Aqui en Bartow, sur de Orlando, hay una empresa quimica que produce aromatizantes y esencias para zumos. Envian diariamente camionadas de sales concentradas y esencias para las fabricas de helados, gaseosas, jugos, enlatados y comida colorida y aromatizada.Cuando visite por primera vez la fabrica, pedi ver el deposito de concentrados de frutas, que deberia ser inmenso, especialmente los de naranja, pina, fresa y tantos otros. El encargado me miro, se rio y me llevo a visitar los depositos inmensos... pero de colorantes y componentes quimicos.Las gaseosa de naranja no contiene naranja.En los zumos dizque de fresa, hasta los puntitos que quedan en suspension estan hechos de goma (una liga quimica que envuelve un semi-polimero).Pina, es un popurri de acidos y goma.La esencia para helado de aguacate usa peroxido de hidrogeno (agua oxigenada) para dar la sensacion espumosa tipica del aguacate.Quieres saber la cantidad de basura que tiene un refresco 'light'? Yo ni siquiera los uso para destapar mi lavaplatos pues temo que danen los tubos de PVC. Los productos endulzantes 'ligth' tienen una vida media muy corta. Por ejemplo el aspartamo , despues de tres semanas mojado, pasa a tener gusto de trapo viejo sucio.Para evitar eso, se agregan una infinidad de otros productos quimicos, uno para alargar la vida del aspartamo, otro para neutralizar el color, otro para mantener el tercer quimico en suspension porque sino el fondo de la gaseosa quedaria oscuro, otro para evitar la cristalizacion del aspartamo, otro para realzar el sabor, dar mas intensidad al acido citrico o fosforito que perderia su sabor por el efecto de los cuatro productos quimicos iniciales... y asi sucesivamente.Un consejo final !!Despues de toda mi experiencia con la produccion de bebidas embasadas, puedo afirmar sin dudar un segundo: la mejor bebida es el agua, como tambien los jugos exprimidos de naranja o limon. Nada mas, cero azucar y cero sal.Publicado por loretahur

MARGARINA o MANTEQUILLA La margarina fue producida originalmente para engordar a los pavos; cuandolo que hizo en realidad fue matarlos.Las personas que habian puesto el dinero para la investigacion quisieronrecobrarlo asi que empezaron a pensar en una forma de hacerlo.Tenian una sustancia blanca, que no tenia ningun atractivo como comestible,asi que le anadieron el color amarillo, para venderselo a lagente en lugar de la mantequilla.Que tal esa?... Ahora han sacado algunos nuevos sabores para vender mas alos incautos como usted y yo.CONOCE USTED la diferencia entre la margarina y la mantequilla?Siga leyendo hasta el final... porque se pone bastante interesante!Comparacion entre mantequilla y margarina:

1.- Ambas tienen la misma cantidad de calorias.

2.- La mantequilla es ligeramente mas alta en grasas saturadas: 8 gramos,comparada con los 5 gramos que tiene la margarina.

3.- Comer margarina en vez de mantequilla puede aumentar en 53% el riesgo deenfermedades coronarias en las mujeres, de acuerdo con un estudiomedico reciente de la Universidad de Harvard.

4.- Comer mantequilla aumenta la absorcion de gran cantidad de nutrientesque se encuentran en otros alimentos.

5.- La mantequilla provee beneficios nutricionales propios mientras lamargarina tiene solo los que le hayan sido anadidos al fabricarla.

6.- La mantequilla sabe mucho mejor que la margarina y mejora el sabor deotros alimentos.7.- La mantequilla ha existido durante siglos mientras que la margarinatiene menos de 100 anos.

Ahora... sobre la margarina:

1.- Es muy alta en acidos grasos trans. (Si, esos que recien ahora loscientificos descubrieron que son malisimos y los gobiernoscomenzaron a prohibirlos) .

2.- Triple riesgo de enfermedades coronarias.

3.- Aumenta el colesterol total y el LDL (el colesterol malo) y disminuye elHDL (el colesterol bueno).

4.- Aumenta en cinco veces el riesgo de cancer.

5.- Disminuye la calidad de la leche materna.

6.- Disminuye la reaccion inmunologica del organismo.

7.- Disminuye la reaccion a la insulina.

Y he aqui el factor mas inquietante (AQUI ESTA LA PARTE MAS INTERESANTE! ):A la margarina le falta UNA MOLECULA para ser PLASTICO...!!Solo este hecho es suficiente para evitar el uso de la margarina de porvida, y de cualquier otra cosa que sea hidrogenada (esto significaque se le anade hidrogeno, lo cual cambia la estructura molecular de lassubstancias).Usted puede ensayar lo siguiente:Compre un poco de margarina y dejela en el garaje o en un sitio sombreado.Dentro de unos dias notara dos cosas:

* No habra moscas; ni siquiera esos molestos bichos se le acercaran (esto yale debe decir a usted algo).

* No se pudre ni huele mal o diferente porque no tiene valor nutritivo; nadacrece en ella. Ni siquiera los diminutos microorganismos puedencrecer en ella.Por que? Porque es casi plastico!!



No a la guerra, Si a la Paz



Misterios de la ciencia...



Los costos de la guerra



medicos y capitalismo...



Capitalismo...



medicos (2)



Quien educa a nuestros hijos?



Los Medios...



Sin Palabras...



Chistes feministas

- Cual es el problema, Eva?

- Se que me has creado, que me has dado este hermoso jardin, todos estos maravillosos animales y esa serpiente con la que me muero de risa... pero no soy del todo feliz...

- Como es eso, Eva? - replico Dios desde las alturas.

- Me encuentro sola, y ademas estoy harta de comer manzanas...

- Bueno Eva, en tal caso, tengo una solucion... creare un hombre para ti.

- Que es un hombre?

- Un hombre sera una criatura imperfecta, con muchas artimanas. Mentira, hara trampas, sera engreido... vamos, que te va a dar problemas... Pero, va a ser mas fuerte y rapido que tu y le gustara cazar y matar cosas... Tendra un aspecto simple, pero como te estas quejando, le creare de tal forma que satisfaga tus... eh... necesidades fisicas... Y tampoco sera muy listo, y destacara en cosas infantiles como pegarse o dar patadas a un balon... Necesitara tu consejo siempre para actuar cuerdamente.

- Suena bien - dijo Eva, mientras levantaba la ceja ironicamente.

- Cual es el truco?.

- Pues... que lo tendras con una condicion.

- Cual?

- Como te decia, sera chulo, arrogante y muy narcisista... asi que le tendras que hacer creer que le hice a el primero... recuerda... es nuestro secreto... de mujer a mujer.





Por que a los hombres no les puede dar la enfermedad de las vacas locas?  Porque todos son unos cerdos

Un dia, en el Paraiso, Eva llamo a Dios: Tengo un problema.- Cual es el problema, Eva?- Se que me has creado, que me has dado este hermoso jardin, todos estos maravillosos animales y esa serpiente con la que me muero de risa... pero no soy del todo feliz... - Como es eso, Eva? - replico Dios desde las alturas.- Me encuentro sola, y ademas estoy harta de comer manzanas...- Bueno Eva, en tal caso, tengo una solucion... creare un hombre para ti.- Que es un hombre?- Un hombre sera una criatura imperfecta, con muchas artimanas. Mentira, hara trampas, sera engreido... vamos, que te va a dar problemas... Pero, va a ser mas fuerte y rapido que tu y le gustara cazar y matar cosas... Tendra un aspecto simple, pero como te estas quejando, le creare de tal forma que satisfaga tus... eh... necesidades fisicas... Y tampoco sera muy listo, y destacara en cosas infantiles como pegarse o dar patadas a un balon... Necesitara tu consejo siempre para actuar cuerdamente.- Suena bien - dijo Eva, mientras levantaba la ceja ironicamente.- Cual es el truco?.- Pues... que lo tendras con una condicion.- Cual?- Como te decia, sera chulo, arrogante y muy narcisista... asi que le tendras que hacer creer que le hice a el primero... recuerda... es nuestro secreto... de mujer a mujer.Por que a los hombres no les puede dar la enfermedad de las vacas locas?  Porque todos son unos cerdos

Ellas...



Ellas (2)...



Tres venganzas femeninas VENGANZA NUMERO 1

Hoy mi hija cumple 21 anos y estoy muy contento porque es el ultimo pago de pension alimenticia que le doy, asi que llame a mi hijita para que viniera a mi casa y cuando llego le dije:

-Hijita, quiero que lleves este cheque a casa de tu mama y que le digas que: Este es el ultimo maldito cheque que va recibir de mi en todo lo que le queda de su puta vida!!! Quiero que me digas la expresion que pone en su rostro.

Asi que mi hija fue a entregar el cheque. Yo estaba ansioso por saber lo que la bruja tenia que decir y que cara pondria.

Cuando mi hijita entro, le pregunte inmediatamente: -Que fue lo que te dijo tu madre?

-Me dijo que justamente estaba esperando este dia para decirte que no eres mi papa!



VENGANZA NUMERO 2

Un hombre que siempre molestaba a su mujer, paso un dia por la casa de unos amigos para que lo acompanaran al aeropuerto a dejar a su esposa que viajaba a Paris.

A la salida de inmigracion, frente a todo el mundo, el le desea buen viaje y en tono burlon le grita:

- Amor, no te olvides de traerme una hermosa francesita Ja ja ja!!

Ella bajo la cabeza y se embarco muy molesta.

La mujer paso quince dias en Francia.

El marido otra vez pidio a sus amigos que lo acompanasen al aeropuerto a recibirla.

Al verla llegar, lo primero que le grita a toda voz es:

- Y amor me trajiste mi francesita??

- Hice todo lo posible, - contesta ella - ahora solo tenemos que rezar para que nazca nina.



VENGANZA NUMERO 3

El marido, en su lecho de muerte, llama a su mujer. Con voz ronca y ya debil, le dice: - Muy bien, llego mi hora, pero antes quiero hacerte una confesion.

- No, no, tranquilo, tu no debes hacer ningun esfuerzo.

- Pero, mujer, es preciso - insiste el marido - Es preciso morir en paz.

Te quiero confesar algo.

- Esta bien, esta bien. Habla!

- He tenido relaciones con tu hermana, tu mama y tu mejor amiga.

- Lo se, lo se Por eso te envenene, hijo de puta!!!



machismo y cibernetica



Chiste machista La NASA ha enviado al espacio una mision experimental tripulada por dos monos y una mujer.Apenas abandona la atmosfera, se establece comunicacion con Houston.

-Atencion, simio 1, verifique sistemas hidraulicos, controle adecuada presion de los propulsores de arranque. A 60.000 pies disminuya un 25% la velocidad.

El simio hace la sena de OK.

-Atencion, simio 2, nivele al cruzar la estratosfera y active sistemas anticongelantes. No olvide monitorear sistemas de comunicacion e indicadores de presion. Comprendido?.

El simio hace la sena de OK.

-Atencion, Houston llamando a mujer: no se olvide.

-Mujer: Si, si, ya se! -interrumpe enojada- que no me olvide darles de comer a estos monos de mierda y que no se me vaya a ocurrir tocar nada!.



.Spaghetti, Spaghetti, Spaghetti, Spaghetti, Spaghetti.

Un abogado mantiene un romance con su secretaria.Al poco tiempo, esta queda embarazada y el abogado, que no quiere que su esposa se entere, le da a la secretaria una buena suma de dinero y le pide que se vaya a parir a Italia.Esta pregunta: Y como voy a hacerte saber cuando nazca el bebe ? El abogado responde: Para que mi mujer no se entere, tan solo enviame una postal y escribe por detras: Spaghetti. Y no te preocupes mas, que yo me encargare de todos los gastos.

Pasan los meses y una manana la esposa del abogado lo llama al bufete, algo exaltada: Querido, acabo de recibir el correo y hay una postal muy extrana viene desde Italia. La verdad, no entiendo que significa.El abogado, tratando de ocultar sus nervios, contesta:Espera a que llegue a casa, a ver si yo entiendoCuando el hombre llega a casa y lee la postal, cae al suelo fulminado por un infarto.Llega una ambulancia y se lo lleva. Ya en el hospital, el jefe de cardiologia se queda consolando a la esposa y le pregunta cual ha sido el evento que precipito tan masivo ataque cardiaco.

Entonces la esposa saca la postal y se la muestra diciendole: No me explico, doctor; el solamente leyo esta postal. Vea usted mismo lo que trae escrito.Spaghetti, Spaghetti, Spaghetti, Spaghetti, Spaghetti."Tres con salchicha y albondigas y dos con almejas



Gol !!!!



Chistes de Borrachos Entra un borracho a su casa todo manchado con lapiz labial por todos lados hecho un desastre, y la mujer le pregunta:-Hombre que te paso?Y el borracho le responde:-No me vas a creer, me pelee con un payaso!



Este es un borracho que entra en un bar y le dice al camarero:-Me da cinco copas de whisky?Al rato:-Me da cuatro?Al rato:-Me da tres copas?Despues:-Me da dos copas?Luego le dice:-Me da una copa?Y le dice al camarero:-Ves? Cuanto menos bebo, mas borracho estoy!


Doris Kelly, the local Democratic congressional candidate in 2004 who ran on a universal health care platform against Republican incumbent John Sweeney, has died, according to Warren County Democratic Chairwoman Lynne Boecher.

Boecher said the state Democratic Committee notified county party leaders that Kelly, of Dutchess County, died peacefully Wednesday morning after entering hospice on May 22.

She was spirited, she was feisty and a loyal Democrat who certainly stood to the old-time principles of the Democratic Party, Boecher said.

Kelly, a retired teacher and a former Hyde Park Town Board member, won a Democratic primary in 2004 to challenge Sweeney, in what was then the 20th District, from Essex County south to the Hudson Valley.

She remained active in the Democratic Party after 2004.

Boecher said she last spoke with Kelly at a 2016 state Democratic Committee meeting in New York City.

She was as spirited and as feisty as ever, Boecher said.

Click here to read about an interview with Kelly in 2004.
FORT EDWARD  Court records filed in the case of a Granville man who is accused of trying to kill his then-girlfriend show he repeatedly told police that he wanted her to die for having him arrested.

Documents filed in Washington County Court in the case of Jonathan W. Vilbrin show he made statements about wanting to stab the victim to death to three Granville Police officers after the March 21 attack.

I would have killed her if the knife didnt break, court records quote Vilbrin as telling police.

Vilbrin faces a six-count indictment that includes felony counts of attempted murder, assault and lesser counts for the alleged ambush of the victim outside her Morrison Avenue home.

Police said he waited outside for her to leave the home to head to work before dawn, then repeatedly stabbed her in the abdomen with a steak knife. She suffered injuries to her hand and abdomen, but authorities said the knife blade broke and spared her serious injuries.

In statements to police, Vilbrin is quoted as saying that he was upset that she had him arrested weeks earlier on a misdemeanor charge of endangering the welfare of a child for allegedly making a sexual comment to a 13-year-old girl who lives in the home. He had been barred from the home by an order of protection.

Vilbrin told police the victim should have known better than to (expletive) with someone who has nothing to lose.

He also said he messed up because I didnt kill the bitch.

I wanted her to die so she wont have her kids, Granville Police Patrolman Jason Vandenburgh quoted him as saying.

Vilbrin then directed police to the broken knife on the street nearby. In addition to the oral statements, he was interviewed by police on video later that day.

Washington County District Attorney Tony Jordan said there have not been any plea discussions in the case. Vilbrin is due in County Court again on June 23 for a decision on pre-trial motions, and a trial date may be set at that point.

Vilbrins lawyer, Martin McGuinness, did not return a phone call for comment this week.

Vilbrin is being held in Washington County Jail for lack of bail. He faces up to 25 years in state prison if convicted of attempted murder of first-degree assault, the two weightiest charges against him.
FORT EDWARD  Washington Countys former district attorney has been added to the witness list for the trial of an accused triple murderer he once convicted.

Kevin Kortright may be called to testify during the trial of Matthew Slocum, which is to start Thursday with jury selection.

Kortright may be asked to testify about his rationale to grant Slocums girlfriend, Loretta Colegrove, immunity from prosecution in 2011, shortly after Slocum and Colegrove were picked up by police after the killings of his mother, stepfather and stepbrother.

He is accused of shooting them, then setting their Cambridge home on fire on July 13, 2011. Colegrove testified at Slocums first trial that she was with him, and she saw Slocum shoot stepbrother Joshua OBrien before they fled to Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

Slocums lawyer, Washington County Public Defender Michael Mercure, has asked to call an expert legal witness to discuss the impact and meaning of the immunity agreement that Colegrove was given.

Slocum was convicted of murder and arson during a trial in 2012, but the convictions were overturned on appeal and a retrial ordered.

Kortright lost a bid for re-election in 2013, and now works as a lawyer for the state. A special prosecutor, the Albany County District Attorneys Office, is handling the case this time around.

Mercure has asked Washington County Judge Kelly McKeighan for permission to call Queensbury lawyer Joseph Brennan to the stand to talk about the effect of Colegroves immunity agreement.

It is anticipated that Joseph Brennan will testify that, in his opinion, as a result of Loretta Colegroves immunity, she cannot be charged with any crimes regarding the subject for which she testified before the grand jury, Mercure wrote.

McKeighan has not ruled on the request.

Lawyers hope to have jury selection done by Friday, with opening statements anticipated on Monday.

There were 63 names on the trial witness list as of Tuesday. The trial is expected to take two to three weeks.

The charges stem from the shotgun deaths of his mother, Lisa Harrington, 44; her husband, 41-year-old Dan Harrington; and OBrien, who was Harringtons 24-year-old son.

Slocum, Colegrove and their infant son had been staying at the familys Turnpike Road home before the killings, which occurred after the Harringtons had suggested to Slocum that he and his family find a new place to live.

He was convicted of murder and arson in 2012 and sentenced to 88 years to life in state prison, but the convictions were overturned when the Appellate Division of state Supreme Court ruled that he had been improperly questioned by police and denied his right to counsel. That ruling struck his confession from the retrial.

Slocum had an extensive criminal record before the killings, which included a felony conviction for grand larceny stemming from the theft of a car from his mother.

He testified at his first trial that Colegrove was responsible for the killings.

He is being held in Washington County Jail pending trial.
GLENS FALLS  Both candidates for an open Glens Falls 3rd Ward Common Council seat moved to the city from larger metropolitan areas.

We love the neighborhood schools, the parks and all of the wonderful community events that bring people together, said Republican Rachel Murray, who owns an insurance claims adjustment firm in Glens Falls.

We saw so much of what we were looking for here: good schools, safe neighborhoods for our daughter to play in, proximity to natural resources like the Adirondacks, said Democrat Diana Layous Palmer, a therapist in private practice at True North in Glens Falls.

Murray and Palmer cite the importance of maintaining pedestrian infrastructure, neighborhood schools, parks and a vibrant culture as their motivations for running for the seat that is open because current 3rd Ward Councilwoman Jane Reid is running for city councilwoman at-large.

Murray, who graduated from Glens Falls High School, returned to the city in 2010 after living in Portland, Oregon; Philadelphia, Maryland and Wilton.

Palmer moved to Glens Falls from Los Angeles.

Her husband grew up in upstate New York.

Both Murray and Palmer have been active in the Kensington Elementary School Parent Teacher Association.

In their respective campaigns, the candidates, so far, have focused on the citys quality of life and have not staked out policy distinctions.

Both said they have expertise in consensus-building.

I have experience running my own business. I am trained and every day help people negotiate conflicts, said Palmer, a member of the board of the New York State Association of Marriage and Family Therapists.

Murray is a member of the city Planning Board and previously was a member of the city Zoning Board of Appeals.

She said she was acting chairwoman of the Zoning Board when the board approved a controversial application for Just Water to locate its packaging plant in the former St. Alphonsus Roman Catholic Church on Broad Street.

The meeting went well and I am proud of my ability to work calmly and collaboratively with others, she said.

The race is one of four contested city government races in November.

Democrat Dan Hall, currently councilman at-large, and Green Party candidate Rich Cirino are running for mayor.

Green Party candidate Robin Barkenhagen is running for councilman at-large against Reid, a Republican.

Phillip Underwood, an Independence Party member, is running with the Republican endorsement against incumbent 1st Ward Councilman James Campinell, a Democrat.
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Honor Flight of the Quad-Cities will send off its 40th flight on Thursday, but its leaders have their eyes on the number 4,000.

That is the number of veterans the local hub expects it will have served  transporting them to Washington, D.C., to see their war monuments  by year's end. The hub was formed in 2008.

"We're going to get close to 4,000 veterans this year," said Steve Garrington, Honor Flight's hub director. "If we don't have it on the last flight of the year, it will be on the first one next year."

Two more flights are scheduled this year on Aug. 31 and Nov. 1.

The latest flight, which takes off about 7:30 a.m. Thursday from the Quad-City International Airport, will add another 95 veterans to the ranks of Honor Flight's participants. The veterans, escorted by volunteer guardians, will tour all the monuments in the nation's capital erected in their honor and attend the Changing of the Guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The chartered 737 returns Thursday night.

This flight is sponsored by the Rock Island Arsenal Federal Credit Union. Honor Flight board member Mike Haney, a U.S. Air Force veteran, will lead the flight.

"We really hope for a large crowd when we arrive," said Haney, who retired from the airport.

According to Garrington, the previous flight was the hub's first flight without a World War II veteran onboard. Due to their dwindling numbers, Honor Flight of the Quad-Cities now also transports Korea and Vietnam war veterans. But Flight No. 40 is back to having two World War II veterans, who will join about 60 Vietnam War veterans and nearly 30 Korea-era veterans.

He said the hub still is working with about a dozen area World War II veterans to take them on an Honor Flight. "But when you're working with 90-year-olds, they can't always go for one reason or another."

As with every Honor Flight, the public is invited to join the Welcome Home ceremony to greet the veterans at the Quad-City International Airport, Moline. The flight returns about 10 p.m. Parking is free for Honor Flight.

Garrington said the welcome home is an event to be experienced. Traditionally, crowds of family, friends, well-wishers, Boy Scouts and others are on hand when the plane returns.

"This is the welcome a lot of them didn't get," he said. "When the Korean guys came home, they weren't thanked. But when the Vietnam guys came home, they just were not thanked but they were hated, persecuted and told not to wear their uniform. What we did to the Vietnam vets is one of the great black marks on our nation. Now we have a chance to make up for it."

For more information and Honor Flight applications, visit honorflightqc.org or stop by the Main Office at Ridgecrest Village in Davenport.
After nearly two years of shuttling passengers between the Quad-Cities and Iowa City, the River Bend Transit, or RBT, is expanding the service and slashing a one-way fare to $5.

Beginning June 20, the agency's QCIC X-press will add a second daily run to become more attractive to Quad-Citians who work in Iowa City as well as to University of Iowa commuters.

"We know there are a lot of folks who travel between the Quad-Cities and Iowa City on a regular basis for a number of reasons: school, employment, medical appointments and visits, to name a few," said Randy Zobrist, RBT's executive director. "We listened, took the feedback received, and added another run to better accommodate commuters."

The shuttle provides "to the door" service from Tuesday through Friday between Davenport and Iowa City.

Launched in August 2015, QCIC X-press has not drawn the ridership that RBT expected, said Becky Passman, the Iowa Quad-Cities transit coordinator. "A lot of people are using it for medical (appointment) purposes. But we were hearing a lot of feedback from people that work in Iowa City and said that 'Oh, I'd love to use it but the times don't work for me.' "

The service is open to the general public.

"We're also slashing the cost to just $5, making it easy for people to see just how much they can save by taking the shuttle rather than driving (and parking) themselves," Zobrist said.

The current cost is $10 per trip, but it will be cut in half beginning June 20. Children age 5 or younger, riding with an adult, will continue to ride free.

Passman said the new times add "a whole lot of flexibility to try to meet the needs of a larger variety of riders."

The current schedule did not accommodate 8-5 workers, she said. The X-Press now leaves Davenport at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday, and 6:30 a.m. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Its return bus leaves Iowa City at 4 p.m. each day.

But with a second daily run, it will offer two different departures, one at 6:15 a.m. and one at 11:45 a.m. The two routes then leave Iowa City at 12:15 p.m. and 5:30 p.m.

Passman said riders are allowed to mix and match the two schedules. Rides also can originate from Iowa City, such as for university students.

In 2014, supplemental funding for the QCIC X-press was awarded through a $266,000 Iowa Clean Air Attainment Program grant awarded. The award enabled the transit agency to purchase three new buses for the route. The three will be rotated to add the new route, she said.

"Our whole goal is to make it a viable service for as many people as possible," she said.

Shuttle vehicles are fully accessible and have free Wi-Fi. Riders can be dropped off anywhere in the general downtown Iowa City area.

The shuttle departs from a Park & Ride location at the northeast corner of NorthPark Mall parking lot in Davenport. While in Iowa City, the bus remains available to riders throughout the day at no additional charge for extra Iowa City area trips, as time allows.

Walk-ons are welcome to board at the Park & Ride location if seating is available. But advance reservations are preferred. To make a reservation, call RBT at 563-386-1350 or toll-free at 800-292-8959. Rides may be reserved for either a one-way or round trip on the same day or in advance.

The shuttle will maintain its original schedule until June 20.
Search and rescue crews from Moline, East Moline and the Rock Island Arsenal spent the late hours of Tuesday searching the Mississippi River at Ben Butterworth Parkway for a man who went into the waters about 8:30 p.m. and never surfaced.

Moline Police Lt. Terry Garmon said crews were called to the 5500 block of River Drive at 8:32 p.m. because a child had fallen into the water.

A male did rescue the child but there were multiple attempts to get the child out of the water, Garmon said. In one of those attempts it is believed that the male were looking for now went into the water and has not come back up.

Garmon said he was told the child is 6-years-old and was checked out and is fine.

Riley Gomez, 16, of Moline was standing on the dock watching the sunset with her little sister, Beandria, 15.

Its a daily thing we do, Riley said. I saw the man sitting on a bucket on the dock fishing and his son was on the edge of the dock.

Riley even got a picture of the man and boy silhouetted against the setting sun. The boy is looking at Riley, and the man is fishing.

And then, me and my sister were leaving, and I happened to turn around to see the sunset one more time and I noticed the child wasnt on the dock anymore, Riley said. I walked quickly back to see what was going on."

Riley said she saw the man jump in to save the child and neither could swim. The mans fiancee or girlfriend was screaming for help, she said.

Riley said she and others were able to save the child, but the man was still struggling. Another person jumped in to help the man but the current was too strong, she added.

It was the scariest thing Ive ever seen, Riley said. Ive never seen anything like that before in my life.
This year's school board elections are set for Sept. 12, and districts now are getting ready for a change in leadership.

The Davenport Community School District will host an informational session for those interested in running for school board from 6-7:30 p.m. Wednesday, June 28, in the Jim Hester Board Room at the Achievement Service Center, 1606 Brady St.

The first day to file nomination papers is July 10, and filing ends at 5 p.m. Aug. 3 in the district's secretary's office.

In Davenport, Richard Clewell, first elected 16 years ago in 2001, plans to retire after his term ends in December. Clewell has served in the past as board president and is active in representing the district's interests at the state level and in the Iowa Legislature.

This year in Davenport, Clewell's seat is up for election as are seats held by Jamie Snyder and Clyde Mayfield. Mayfield was elected in a special election in February 2016 after former board member Maria Dickmann won a seat on the Davenport City Council.

David Reke of Davenport has announced he is running for the Davenport board. His campaign will focus on bullying and finances, he said.

He said he was bullied as a student, and he remembers the experience and hopes to help other children who face the same challenges.

Reke, with a background in the finance industry, also is interested in district finances, especially the state's per-pupil funding formula.

In Bettendorf, terms end for seats held by Betsy Justis, Scott Tinsman and Pepper Trahan.

In North Scott, 2017 ends the terms of Reid Blanche, Nick Hansel and Donn Wilmott.

Pleasant Valley is organized into "director districts." Seats up for election this year are District 2, President Heather Witters; District 7, Jean Dickson; and District 1, Chris Cournoyer.

School district secretaries are located in offices at the following addresses:

 Bettendorf, 3311 18th St., Bettendorf.

 Davenport: 1606 Brady St., Davenport.

 North Scott: 251 E. Iowa St., Eldridge.

 Pleasant Valley: 525 Belmont Road, Bettendorf.
The turnout for the public hearing into rezoning the site of a proposed Costco may have been a far cry from a previous meeting, but residents remain concerned over the impact of the wholesale giant moving into the neighborhood off East 53rd Street.

The Davenport Plan and Zoning Commission held a public hearing Tuesday evening for the request to rezone 17.88 acres, located north of the intersection of Fairhaven Road and East 53rd Street, from A-1 Agricultural and R-1 Low Density Residential to Planned Development District.

Costco intends to build a 156,180-square-foot warehouse store in addition to a gas station with 16 pumps.

While Costco made some changes to the plan it presented at a neighborhood meeting one month ago, concerns remain over traffic and impact of water runoff from the property.

"We're not against economic development for the city of Davenport," resident Jerry Ludden said. "We're not against Costco per se. It's the plan that exists."

Costco Midwest Development Manager Ted Johnson presented the commission with a proposed site plan for the development and played down concerns about traffic stating that Costco's peak hours were not during rush hour.

With the level of commercial activity already in the vicinity, Ludden said despite Costco not opening until 10 a.m., it's hours of operation would play into the existing traffic problems.

"I want you to think about there are going to be 715 parking spaces," Ludden said. "That's a lot of traffic. Fifty Third (Street) is already busy and the thing about it is it's busier from noon to 2 p.m. than in the rush hours."

Resident Dianne Siefers, who shared similar concerns about traffic, also voiced concern about potential impacts from water runoff for residents living on Lorton Avenue and Fairhaven Road.

"We do not have storm drains and we rely on a system of open creeks," Siefers said. "Some of them are dry when we don't have a storm going on, but I want the city to keep in mind that water drainage is very important to us. When we have water running to us from 53rd, we're already at capacity for handling runoff."

Tina Schindler, who owns a property on the south side of 53rd Street, also raised questions about the ability to access that area, given its proximity to a stop light positioned west of Fairhaven Road.

As was the case during last month's meeting, Johnson was asked why Costco did not have an entryway that ran toward Elmore Circle like nearby AT&T.

Johnson said that after the neighborhood meeting, Costco contacted the land owner of the site AT&T leases to inquire about creating a shared driveway.

"At the very southern end of AT&T, they have an east-west drive," Johnson said. "We are suggesting we have a shared access point that extends this drive to the Costco property."

This shared driveway would allow customers to access the property from Elmore Circle, but Johnson said they have not heard from the land owner yet which is why it was not included in the site plan.

"It's on our list of things we're trying to do," Johnson said.

City Planner Matt Flynn said city staff will publish a recommendation for the project by June 16, four days before the commission meets again to vote on the rezoning.

If it pushes forward without interruption, another public hearing would be scheduled for the July 5 Davenport City Council committee-of-the-whole meeting.

A vote on the first of three readings for the rezoning of the property could take place as early as July 12.

While Johnson said Costco is receptive to the feedback it receives, whether positive or negative, Ludden said there needed to be significant changes to the current plans to assuage concerns.

"If this allowed to happen with the setup as is, we might as well be living in Chicago because the traffic is going to be so bad in that part of Davenport," Ludden said.
MINNEAPOLIS | Delta Air Lines says the captain of a jet that landed at the wrong airport in South Dakota last year retired shortly after the incident.

Delta spokesman Michael Thomas also says the first officer underwent retraining and is back flying for the airline.

The National Transportation Safety Board blamed pilot error for the incident, noting in its final report that the flight crew had been cautioned that the two airports are close and easy to confuse.

Delta Flight 2845 from Minneapolis landed July 7 at Ellsworth Air Force Base, about 6 miles northwest of the intended destination, Rapid City Regional Airport.

The report says the two airfields have runways that nearly line up and that pilot confusion between them is "fairly common."

According to the report, the pilot was 60 years old at the time while the first officer was 51.

The airline said last July that the crew was taken off duty while the NTSB investigated. The airline also offered apologies to the passengers, who were kept in the plane for about 2 hours and ordered to pull down their window shades while base security personnel investigated.

An Associated Press search three years ago of government safety data and news reports since the early 1990s found at least 150 flights in which U.S. commercial passenger and cargo planes had either landed at the wrong airport or started to land and realized their mistake in time.
As a continuation of the popular Niobrara Meanderings talk series there will be a final Wildflower Talk and Walk on June 11 at 2 p.m. beginning in the Agate Fossil Beds theater then continuing on the one mile round trip Daemonelix trail. Ranger Lil Mansfield will present Wildflowers 101 talking about the areas wildflowers, where and how they grow and many uses of the plants.

Nebraska Wildflower Week, June 1 through June 11 this year, is celebrated later than National Wildflower Week to highlight the prairie wildflowers that bloom at this time of year. Spring snowstorm moisture and recent rains have given the wildflowers a head start.

The Yellow Flag (Iris pseudacorus) will be blooming during Wildflower Week this year. Harold Cooks father-in-law, E. H. Barbour loved iris and brought bulbs to the Agate Springs Ranch around 1906. He planted them near a pond behind the ranch house and they have since migrated all the way through the park, a distance of 11 river miles or three road miles. Many local visitors make a yearly excursion to view the spring bloom..

According to the Flora of Nebraska (2006), A few deliberately introduced plants are threats to the native flora. Purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria) and yellow water iris (Iris pseudacorus) are European ornamentals now widespread and increasingly troublesome along Nebraskas waterways. Agate Fossil Beds National Monument is working with local, state, and regional partners to evaluate the aggressive spread of the plant, and is involved in research, education and control of this invasive non-native iris.

Before there were National Parks, many groups of scientific explorers discovered the varied plant life in the west. They named the plants and sent examples of the plants to eastern museums and universities. American Indian tribes knew the many uses of the plants. Now during Nebraska Wildflower Week, visitors have a chance to see and learn about those same plants growing in mixed grass prairie at Agate Fossil Beds National Monument.

During Wildflower Week and throughout the summer visitors are encouraged to walk the trails on their own using plant signs identifying plants on the trails and the herbarium in the visitor center to aid their identification of the blooming wildflowers.
BARKSDALE AIR FORCE BASE, La. | An elderly man entertains guests from his chair, which is surrounded by medical equipment. Moments later, a familiar shade of blue walks through his front door, causing him to rise and greet the newcomer. The newcomer picks up the elderly mans military service coat, the same as his own and places it on its owner, who will now receive the honor he earned over 60 years ago.

Retired Maj. Joe Campbell, a B-29 Superfortress pilot, received the Distinguished Flying Cross May 18, 2017, for his support of aerial operations during the Korean War.

We are here today to give Maj. Joe Campbell one of the most prestigious awards and decorations that an aviator in the United States Air Force and the Department of Defense can have, said Col. Ty Neuman, 2nd Bomb Wing commander, who presented the decoration to Campbell.

Before the commencement of the ceremony, Neuman, also an aviator, exchanged stories with Campbell and complemented him on his unusual feat of being both a pilot and a navigator.

Campbell recalls the mission in which he earned the medal.

Our mission was in support of one of the largest air combat operations in Korea, but before the operation could be launched, up-to-date intelligence was needed and thats where we came in, Campbell explained. Our crew was sent out alone, over enemy territory to verify a target, and gather intelligence. We were told it was for the largest air combat operation during the Korean War.

For those accomplishments, Campbell shortly thereafter was recommended for the Distinguished Flying Cross, but due to chaos brought by war, fire and file mismanagement, the decoration was never issued.

Campbell retired honorably from Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana, and stayed in the local community, settling in Shreveport with his family.

Campbell was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2016, and was very recently placed on hospice.

We contacted the base to make arrangements for my dad. When we reviewed the records we found out that he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross decades ago but it was never presented to him, Campbells daughter explained.

Barksdales senior leadership worked swiftly to arrange a ceremony to award Campbell and thank him on behalf of the men and women of Barksdale Air Force Base and the generations of bomber Airmen who have followed in his footsteps.
Ex-banker Ablyazov sentenced to 20 years in absentia by Kazakh court

MOSCOW, June 7 (RAPSI) - The Specialized Criminal Interdistrict Court of Almaty has sentenced ex-chairman of the Kazakh BTA Bank Mukhtar Ablyazov to 20 years in prison in absentia for embezzlement and organizing a criminal gang, the court told RAPSI on Wednesday.

The court also ordered forfeiture of Ablyazovs property.

Ex-Director for Lending Issues Kairat Sadykov was sentenced to 15 years in prison and asset seizure. Former Chairman of the Board Saduakas Mamesh and ex-First Deputy Chairman of the Board Zhaksylyk Zharimbetov received a 5-year suspended sentence each.

According to indictment, Ablyazov has organized a criminal group to embezzle BTA Banks funds. Prosecutors claimed that companies controlled by Ablyazov had purchased the banks shares on money from loans illegally received from the bank. Therefore, Ablyazov and his accomplices increased the bank stock. The increase in the bank's capital gave the appearance of BTA Banks success and enticed investors and depositors, prosecutors believe. The total amount of damage caused exceeded $7.5 billion.

Zharimbetov pleaded guilty to charges, while Sadykov and Mamesh pleaded guilty in part.

Interestingly, Ablyazov also stands charged with embezzlement, forgery of documents and abuse of office in Russia. He has been arrested in absentia.

BTA Bank ex-chairman fled to the UK after the Kazakh government acquired a stake in BTA Bank in 2009 and the bank came under the control of its sovereign wealth fund Samruk-Kazyna.

He was granted political asylum in Britain in 2011. However, he remained a fugitive from justice since February 2012.

His whereabouts remained unknown until he was detained on July 31, 2013 near Cannes, France. Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine are all seeking his extradition.

In October 2015, French authorities approved Ablyazovs extradition to Russia. In December 2016, French Conseil d'Etat, highest administrative government body, overruled prime-ministers decision to extradite Ablyazov and released the tycoon from jail.
Alleged member of St. Petersburg Church of Scientology detained in extremism case

ST. PETERSBURG June 7 (RAPSI, Mikhail Telekhov)  The Nevsky District Court of St. Petersburg on Wednesday ordered the detention of the alleged member of Church of Scientology in St. Petersburg Anastasia Terentyeva, who stands charged with participating in an extremist organization, RAPSI reports from the courtroom.

Defense asked the court to place Terentyeva under house arrest, or release her on a 1-million-ruble bail ($17,600) or travel restrictions. The defendant said in turn that detention is an excessive measure, and expressed her willingness to cooperate with investigators.

On Tuesday, the Federal Security Services (FSB) officers raided the Church of Scientology of St. Petersburg as part of investigation into illegal business operations, incitement of hatred and enmity, and organization of an extremist community.

According to investigation, from 2013 to 2016, the organization received over 276 million rubles ($4.9 million) for rendering its services. Terentyeva was authorized to control cash receipts, an investigator said in court.

Dianetics and Scientology are a set of religious and philosophical ideas and practices that were put forth by L. Ron Hubbard in the US in the early 1950s.

The scientific community never recognized it as science.

A resolution passed in 1996 by the State Duma, the lower house of Russias parliament, classified the Church of Scientology as a destructive religious organization.

The Moscow Regional Court ruled in 2012 that some of Hubbards books be included on the Federal List of Extremist Literature and prohibited from distribution in Russia.
Terrorism intrigues and disturbs policy makers, the media, and the public even more in the infancy of the new millennium than it did in the last quarter of the twentieth century. And although this fact no doubt delights terrorists themselves, and consoles them for the apparent ineffectiveness of much terrorist activity in achieving ultimate political goals, it is nonetheless surprising that the phenomenon has commanded such attention. Prior to September 11, 2001, the death and damage done by what are commonly called terrorist attacks in any single year had been mostly insignificant compared to the annual road toll in the United States, or to the collateral death and damage cause by the NATO bombing of Serbia in just one month of 1999. Even the September 11 attacks were small-scale compared to the destruction wrought by other dramatic attacks, such as the bombing of Dresden and the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II. These might well qualify themselves as terrorist acts, and indeed I shall argue that they should, but most of the contemporary anxiety about terrorism is focused on the activities of substate agents whose successes have been nowhere as spectacular. The explanation of what can seem a disproportionate concern with substate terrorism is sometimes said to lie in the random and unexpected nature of the attacks, but this cannot be the whole story, since most road deaths are, if anything, even more random and unexpected, though of course they are not usually attacks [that is, not until recently].  C.A.J. Coady, Morality and Political Violence (Cambridge University Press, 2008): 154.

Both Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump are tryingand succeedingto be as dumb and disingenuous as their father. Ill cite only the former here: Maybe rather than the mayor of London attacking, maybe he should do something about it, Trump Jr. said. Maybe he should do something to fix the problem rather than just sit there and pretend there isnt one.

First of all, theres no truth whatsoever in the claim that Londons Mayor Sadiq Khan has been just sitting there and pretending terrorism doesnt exist. In other words, that proposition is utter bullshit. Second, the battle against terrorism is not a problem that needs fixing, like a leak on ones roof, or a broken down washing machine, or a flat tire (or, for some, an insufficiently diversified investment portfolio). The problem of terrorism is hydra-headed and thus enormously complex, and it varies with time, place, politics, ideologies, and so forth. We have learned that the battle is often (thus not invariably) lost once individuals become avowed militant or self-described jihadists, in other words, there is only so much we can do, security-wise, to prevent them, alone or in concert with others, from committing terrorist acts once theres wholesale identification with these ideologies and this identification is shared with the requisite reference groups (a sharing that may be only virtual). Several countries have begun to appreciate this fact, believing it imperative that we understand why and how (largely) young men (and increasingly women) are socialized into ideologies wedded to indiscriminate violence. The attempt to counter such socialization is an enormous task and involves in part significant socio-economic, political, and cultural changes in the host societies, changes that will require decades in some instances and demand a leadership with a kind of courage that is equivalent to and perhaps even greater than that evidenced by those who confront terrorists face-to-face, be it in large cities or on the battlefield.

There is well-documented evidence of terrorist groups and organizations abandoning terrorist methods to achieve their political ends, and social scientists have proffered more-than-plausible explanations for why this has occurred, suggesting strategies for creating the kind of social and political environments conducive to the conditions that increase the probability of this occurring with more frequency. 1 Any would-be democratic state must completely forswear resort to state-(or state-sponsored) terrorism (e.g., carpet bombing or collective punishment 2 ), for until they do, moral and political self-righteousness (and hysteria) about terrorism will be rightly seen as hypocritical or empty by those willing to consider its utility ... and that in no way aids our efforts, however sincere, to protect civilians from terrorist attacks, let alone eliminate terrorism. Finally, and by way of keeping proper perspective, we need a sufficiently moral (including moral-psychological), political, and legal appraisal of, and national conversation on, the nature of routine gun violence in this country, the deaths to date from which far outweigh the fatalities from political terrorism of all kinds. If only we could devote half as much attention and urgency to this uniquely American nightmare.

Notes:

1. See, for example:

Ashour, Omar. The De-Radicalization of Jihadists : Transforming armed Islamist movements . New York: Routledge, 2009.

Atran, Scott. Genesis of Suicide Terrorism, Science (March 2003) Vol. 299: 1534-1539.

Atran, Scott. Who Becomes a Terrorist Today? Perspectives on Terrorism , Vol. II, 5 (March 2008): 3-10.

Atran, Scott. Talking to the Enemy : Faith, Brotherhood, and the ( Un ) Making of Terrorists . New York: HarperCollins, 2010.

Gambetta, Diego, ed. Making Sense of Suicide Missions. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2005.
An Oregon man being held in the Ravalli County jail was charged with punching a female detention officer in the face last week.

Jeffrey Joseph Grau, 35, appeared in Ravalli County Justice Court on June 2 on a felony charge of assault of a peace officer.

According to charging documents, Grau had asked to be escorted to the bathroom at about 3:44 a.m.

When the female detention officer opened the door, Grau allegedly immediately punched her in the face, according to the charging documents.

The officer said the blow knocked off her glasses. She had a small contusion where the punch landed.

Grau initially said the punch was a mistake, but later admitted that he intentionally hit the woman, the affidavit said.

Grau was in the detention center on a probation violation.

He has served time at the Montana State Prison on charges on theft and criminal endangerment committed in Ravalli County.

Grau now claims that St. Helens, Oregon, is his home.

Hamilton City Judge Michael Reardon was serving as justice on the day of Graus hearing. He set bail at $50,000.
The opportunity to find a property that's truly unique may seem unlikely in a city with 1,500 real estate listings and 30,000 abandoned homes.

But that's not the case for a connected pair of geodesic domes that came onto the market days ago in Detroit.

The look and location of the domes make them what Realtor Chad Hooks calls a "cult classic."

The domes sit on the curve of West Vernor, three blocks east of I-75 near St. Anne. More definitively for anyone outside of Detroit is the fact that the curve is steps from the south entrance to the railroad tunnel next to the long-vacant Michigan Central Station building.

The domes, lower central in this photo, are close to the tunnel next to the Michigan Central Station.

That building - a multi-story symbol of Detroit's blight since 1988 and home to a "Transformers" movie when the action required a dilapidated backdrop - rises above the trees on the domes' raised lot, reached from the sidewalk by a series of older concrete steps.

The road under the railroad bridge also connects Corktown and Downtown to Mexicantown, as the Ambassador Bridge defines the skyline in another direction.

The domes - now building shells - were put on the 0.11 acre lot at 2667 W. Vernor in 1999, according to the listing. They were owned then by Leo Gillis, a Detroit area native and musician, and brother to Jack White of The White Stripes and The Raconteurs.

At one time the domes were painted bright blue, photos show, complementing the bright mosaic tiles that still remain at the main entrance.

Their distinctive look on the edge of two popular districts gave them a notoriety over time, with occasional media stories following.

One, in 2005, described original pricing: The article said Gillis paid $20,000 for the dome kits, then spent $90,000 building them into a home.

The domes came from American Ingenuity, a Florida-based company that's sold them for 40 years, according to its website.

Each dome is made of triangular panels with a concrete exterior and Styrofoam. From the company's website: "This method provides for a free span, self-supporting structure requiring no internal supports such as roof load bearing partition walls. This allows for maximum flexibility of floor plan design and utilization of interior space."

Proponents say the domes are energy-efficient and resistant to both fire and tornadoes up to F4 ratings.

In Detroit, the West Vernor domes also have withstood years standing vacant, though they do require significant interior restoration. Mold from water damage is obvious upon entering. Some remnants of their years as a home remain, including some places where marble flooring is in place; pipes and drains inspire visitors to envision where the bath and kitchen may once have stood.

The domes also invite more imagination about how to use the space. Unlike typical construction that results in angles, the curved and tall interior can become what an inhabitant chooses. Hooks said there has been an upper level loft; a garage door at the back suggests that use for part of the space at one time.

Hooks said the property could be either residential or commercial, opening possibilities for either option. Other housing is nearby, including across Vernor and to the south; the property also is adjacent to Tamaleria Nuevo Leon restaurant, which welcomes people to the east end of Mexican Village.

"I think it would be the coolest single-family home ever," Hook said.

Light now enters the domes from high triangular windows. But restoring the ground level windows and the three French doors "would bring in a lot of natural light," Hook said.

The last buyer paid $25,000 for the property, according to city records on Loveland.com.

The new listing price of $399,000 came from the sellers, Hook said, as the real estate investors see the heated market in Corktown, Midtown and Downtown areas of Detroit. Now an agent at Berkshire Hathaway in Birmingham, Hooks said he was active in Detroit redevelopment before the Great Recession. He participated in Brush park condo developments and the Grinnell Building in Corktown, among other projects, then saw the prices plummet along with confidence in the city.

Now, that's coming back in those areas, along with record prices.

"It's almost crazy what things are going for," he said, noting that recent Midtown deals are selling at higher prices per square foot than Birmingham.

So far, the listing has generated a lot of interest, Hooks said, but no serious offers. He said there's "wiggle room" in the price, and he and the owner know it won't appeal to every buyer looking at higher-end properties in the city.

"This is going to take somebody who truly believes in the city and wants to be there," Hooks said.

"It's a great opportunity," he continued. "I'm sure someone will see it."
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Nepali Congress (NC) president Sher Bahadur Deuba

Kathmandu, Nepal: Nepali Congress (NC) president Sher Bahadur Deuba has registered his candidacy for the 40th Prime Minister of Nepal at the Legislature Secretariat at 11 am on Saturday.

Outgoing Prime Minister and CPN Maoist Center chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal proposed Nepali Congress president Sher Bahadur Deuba as the candidate for the post of Prime Minister.

Similarly, NC senior NC leader Ram Chandra Paudel and Nepal Democratic Party chairman Bijaya Kumar Gachchhadar supported Deubas candidacy for Prime Minister.

The legislative parliament has already scheduled the date for electing the Prime minister on Sunday. NC president Deuba will be elected as the 4oth prime minister of the country on Sunday as Nepali Congress and the CPN Maoist Center has the clear majority in the parliament to form or dissolve the government.
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IMF WARNS

Austerity measures or debt crisis

Montenegro would experience a debt crisis if there were no strategies and austerity measures that the Government plans to implement, said Martin Petri of the IMF at the press conference.

He said that the package of measures was good, that the measures were realistic and that the result could be even better than we currently expected.

The Government of Montenegro will increase the general value added tax (VAT) rate from 19 to 21 % in the next year, and the excise tax on cigarettes, alcohol, coal and carbonated water will also increase, while the lower VAT rate of 7% will remain unchanged.

It is planned to freeze employment in the public sector by replacing three natural job vacancies with one new employee.

The revision of compensation payments to mothers with three or more children is also planned. Among other things, the measures provide 6% reduction of officials salaries .

The Government of Montenegro says that measures are unpopular, but that the consolidation of public finances is necessary. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) today expressed support to the Government for the proposed measures.

According to Finance Minister Darko Radunovic, the aim of the new package of measures is to make public debt fall from 2019 and drop significantly in 2020 to 67 % , as well as to achieve deficit reduction, with the expected 4.5 % GDP surplus in 2020.

At today's joint conference of Minister Radunovic, CBC Governor Radoje Zugic and Head of Mission of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Martin Petri, one of the subjects was the fiscal consolidation by 2020.

Finance Minister Darko Radunovic said that all citizens would be effected by new austerity measures in "the slightest form" and that the situation is not ideal, but that the goal is to have a sustainable budget.

He said that the state would not enter into an arrangement with the IMF, but that international organization provided technical assistance. He explained that new measures in public sector did not mean dismissing workers, but retirements, redistribution of jobs and internal ads, while the pensions would not be freezed.

The IMF chief Martin Petri stressed that Montenegro's biggest problem is debt.
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Beyond the Black Rainbow's Panos Cosmatos will be giving to us a piece of cinematic (black) magic, maybe delivered by the gods, or demons, we do not really care as this point. News from Deadline this morning is that's Panos Cosmatos will be giving to us a piece of cinematic (black) magic, maybe delivered by the gods, or demons, we do not really care as this point.

Why? Cosmatos is currently in pre-production on a new film called Mandy. It will star Nicolas Cage in a story described as, "...heavy-metal-soaked story of battle axes and demon bikers". I have also seen elsewhere someone involved with the production say that when Cosmatos submitted the screenplay he said, "...imagine Nordic mythology by way of heavy metal van art".

Mandy is set in the primal wilderness of 1983 where Red Miller, a broken and haunted man hunts an unhinged religious sect who slaughtered the love of his life. Panos is one of the most vital young filmmakers alive, a pop-culture Kubrick in the making, said Noah, SpectreVisions Head of Development. Nicolas Cage is a veritable god to those of us who grew up watching his classic performances. Bringing these two together for this surrealist, heavy-metal-soaked story of battle axes and demon bikers is unfathomably exciting to us.

The film is being produced by the plucky lads SpectreVision (Cooties, The Boy, Greasy Strangler), the always reliable XYZ Films (The Raid, XX, Headshot) and UMedia (I Kill Giants). Also aboard the project is Oscar-nominated composer Johann Johannsson (Sicario, Arrival).

Just take our money already!

Mandy is currently in pre-production and will film in Belgium this Summer. XYZ Films is handling worldwide sales which leads to this...

(ScreenAnarchy founder and editor Todd Brown is the Head of International Acquistions for XYZFilms. Other than looking his most metal with long hair back when we were in college he had no bearing on this article's publishing.)
If you have been left wondering when you would be able to see the first ever Welsh language genre film, Gareth Bryn's dramatic horror flim The Passing, your long wait is about to end. Global Digital Releasing announced today they will release Bryn's film on multiple digital platforms worldwide on June 13th.

To celebrate the release two clips from the film were released today. We have also included the original trailer from some time ago. GDR promisese there will be a new poster and trailer leading up to the release. While you are at it you may also want to read Pierce's review when The Passing played at Fantastic Fest back in 2015. You will find the link for that review below.
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June 16, 2011

A few (too quick and too biased?) reactions to SCOTUS' work in Tapia

I have now had a chance to read quickly the Supreme Court's work in Tapia v. US (available here), the one major sentencing ruling handed down this morning with a group of interesting criminal justice decisions (basics here). My reactions to the Court's opinion are necessarily biased by the fact that I helped Professor Stepohanos Bibas put together the amicus arguments rejected by the Court. (Like every committed advocate I became convinced we should prevail, even though I was pretty sure we would not.) Thus, my quick reactions/perspectives here are not as objective as on other issues. With that caveat, here are some thoughts:

1. Justice Kagan's opinion for the Court is really engaging and effective: it is easy (dare I say fun?) to read with lots of cool (but not off-putting) terms, all the while making basic points crisply but not laboriously. (The use of words like "aficionados" and "loosey-goosey" and "ditto" and "armchair legislators" leads me to believe Justice Kagan aspires to a writing approach and style most akin to the Chief and also her hunting partner, Justice Scalia.)

2. The Court's opinion does not take on directly what I had always considered the best counter-argument to its holding, an argument based on a very technical canon-of-construction statutory argumenbt based on a comparision of the text and structure of the provisions of 18 USC 3582(a) versus 3583(c). I will not rehearse this argument here, but I do think it notable that this very technical argument is not directly rebutted (though, this is understandable given that the argument was not stressed or developed at extensive length in the amicus brief).

3. The Court's opinion, quite usefully in my view, keeps its holding narrow by adding this important coda:

A court commits no error by discussing the opportunities for rehabilitation within prison or the benefits of specific treatment or training programs. To the contrary, a court properly may address a person who is about to begin a prison term about these important matters.... So the sentencing court here did nothing wrong  and probably something very right  in trying to get Tapia into an effective drug treatment program.

I was eager to help the amicus in this case driven mainly by a (misguided?) concern that a broad ruling might in other cases dissuade sentencing judges from being candid about their interests in helping defendants get needed treatment or from giving appropriate thought to sentencing advocacy that sounded in rehabilitative terminology. This coda (and the overall approach of the opinion) would seem to alleviate any such concern.

4. The Court's opinion, quite tellingly and appropriately in my view, dodges what might eventually be a follow-up issue with this notable footnote:

The Government argues that Congress did not intend to prohibit courts from imposing less imprisonment in order to promote a defendants rehabilitation. Brief for United States 40 (emphasis added). This case does not require us to address that question, and nothing in our decision expresses any views on it.

I suspect the Court's opinion might not have been unanimous if it had spoken to this issue, though it makes sense that it left this issue for future resolution in a case raising it directly.

June 16, 2011 at 05:12 PM | Permalink

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Being too tired/lazy to read the actual opinion, I'm curious if the opinion or briefs addressed the fact that successful RDAP participants can receive time off their sentence for completing the program? As far as I know, RDAP is the only way an inmate can reduce his sentence, beyond the 54 days/year for good behavior. I'm wondering to what extent the district judge increased the sentence to offset this reduction? I have seen at least one judge grousing about the fact that drug addicts get time off their sentence while non-addicts don't have the same opportunity.

And, for a little bit of context, here are some of the issues that are swirling around the RDAP program:

The limitations on the sentence reduction for completing RDAP are many: inmates with sentences below some number (I think it's 30 months) will never get into the program to begin with, simply because of logistical problems in making sure they can complete the sentence by the time they are designated to a BOP facility. Inmates whose convictions involve the possession of firearms, even if the firearms were never used or threatened to be used, do not qualify for a reduction in sentence. Non-US citizens with immigration detainers, including lawful permanent residents, do not qualify for a reduction. Defendants convicted of sex offenses, I believe, cannot get into the program.

Defendants are well aware of the RDAP program by the time they approach their sentencing date. The really informed ones know that they need to start emphasizing their drug or alcohol problems early and often, and they make sure to bring these problems up during their interview with the probation officer preparing their presentence report. Suddenly, defendants who don't really drink much become "heavy drinkers." People who smoke a joint now and then are suddenly "addicted to marijuana." I imagine that these "dependencies" become part of the statistics illustrating how many criminal defendants suffer from drug and alcohol abuse problems.

I'm sure the RDAP program is as successful as other drug abuse programs (i.e., not much), but it has become much more of a sentencing tool than just an opportunity for that elusive goal of rehabilitation.

Posted by: Anonymous | Jun 17, 2011 12:55:11 AM

Plus of course, you are talking about criminals, a population that for the most part is looking for the quick score or the next scheme. Talking up drug and alcohol problems to get into such a program and get a sentence reduction would seem to fit in with that general personality quite well.

Posted by: Soronel Haetir | Jun 17, 2011 8:55:21 AM

As amici we discussed the RDAP credit, Anonymous, but the Supreme Court did not.

Posted by: Doug B. | Jun 17, 2011 10:12:48 AM

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March 20, 2012

The Machinery of Criminal Justice #1: Colonial-Era Mercy

Hello all. I'm Stephanos Bibas, and I'd like to thank Doug Berman for inviting me to guest-blog about my new book The Machinery of Criminal Justice, just published by Oxford University Press and available here.

(Alas, posts will continue to show Doug's name rather than my own.) Though I can't match Doug's speed and quantity of blogging, if time permits I may throw in a few other posts as well.

In a nutshell, the book is about:

1) how America moved from a populist system of public jury trials and punishments to a hidden plea bargaining assembly line run by lawyers and ever-longer punishments hidden behind prison walls;

2) what we have lost in our quest to process ever more cases efficiently; and

3) how we could swing the pendulum part-way back toward greater transparency, public involvement, and confidence within a lawyer-run system.

I cant cover the entire book in a week and wont try to excerpt it. This week, I'll focus specifically on punishments and how we might make punishment more visibly satisfying and less permanent, to better re-integrate ex-cons into society after they complete their sentences.

Today, I'd like to start by sketching out a couple of distinctive features of colonial American punishments that set them apart from our modern punishments. In this post I'll focus on the room left for mercy, and in the next post I'll explore how colonial justice was more open to reintegrating and forgiving convicts.

When we look back at colonial-era punishments, we think of them as promiscuously bloody, far too quick to execute. But while there were many more capital crimes than today, colonial America was much less bloody than England, both on paper and even moreso in practice (with the important exception of slave justice). Even though they were often capital crimes, burglaries, robberies, and thefts very rarely resulted in hangings. Before the Revolution, Pennsylvania convicted fewer than two people per year of capital offenses and executed only about one per year.

Though crimes carried fixed penalties, colonial justice was more lenient in practice because criminal procedure left plenty of room for mercy. One avenue was "pious perjury," in which juries convicted sympathetic defendants of lesser, noncapital offenses, often at the prompting of judges. Judges also interpreted rules loosely to allow sympathetic first offenders to avoid the death penalty. Likewise, juries took convicts' branded thumbs (marks of a first conviction) into account, factoring prior criminal records in deciding whether to convict of the latest offense. No rules of character evidence precluded common-sense inferences about whether a thief was likely to steal again or deserved mercy if he had.

Finally, executive clemency frequently softened sentences, on the recommendations of juries and judges. One of the most important grounds for pardon was the convict's character, including his upbringing, employment, family support, sobriety, honesty, and trustworthiness. While this could introduce some class bias, most pardons occurred without intervention by anyone but a judges, so plenty of poor and powerless people received mercy. Today we exclude much of this evidence as suspect, but it did cast light on the wrongdoer's broader blameworthiness, dangerousness, and prospects for reform. The emphasis was not on formal equality but on fully textured evaluation of everything known about this particular person.

Perhaps the most interesting factor in clemency decisions was the role of remorse. Then as now, one of the most powerful grounds for mercy was a convict's apparent remorse and change of heart. Thus, the colonists left plenty of time between sentence and execution for repentance. Of course, convicts often feigned repentance to postpone or evade the gallows, but then as now, officials saw through much of this fakery.

That's all for the moment. In my next post on the book, I'll discuss how colonial punishment sought not to exile wrongdoers but to reintegrate them into the community. After that, I'll move to how things changed over the past two centuries.

Stephanos Bibas

March 20, 2012 at 03:18 PM | Permalink

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"1) how America moved from a populist system of public jury trials and punishments to a hidden plea bargaining assembly line run by lawyers and ever-longer punishments hidden behind prison walls;"

You may already be planning a post on this issue. I hope so. I'm curious to know your thoughts as to whether the historical movement to plea bargaining was a /deliberate self-conscious/ process or whether it was just something that happened from the confluences of various historical coincidences, or some other theory. My own non-expert impression is that the system we have today isn't a system that anyone really intended but a side-effect of worshiping at the great judicial alter of "efficiency". But I could very well be under the wrong impression.

Posted by: Daniel | Mar 20, 2012 4:19:22 PM

As you cover eras, data on crime rates would be appreciated, unless you do not care about those.

Posted by: Supremacy Claus | Mar 21, 2012 6:53:02 AM

Stephanos:

One caution, be careful not to exaggerate the "lenien[cy]" and "plenty of room for mercy" in New England or elsewhere during the colonial period, at least in regard to rape and murder.

My research finds the unforgiving use of hanging et al for cases of "pre-meditated murderrape, statutory rape. {Under the Capital Laws of New-England1636-1647 pbs.org}

I'm sure your inquiries would make similar discoveries.

e.g.::_._ On this day in 1675, in the then-Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony (now Essex County, Massachusetts), 27-year-old Samuel Guile was hanged for violently and forcibly raping Mary Ash on Christmas Day the previous year.

e.g.::_._ On this date in 1777, crying out Stand clear! Look to yourselves! I am the first hypocrite in Sion!, a clerical schoolmaster was hanged at Tyburn for raping one of his charges. .....www.executedtoday.com



Posted by: Adamakis | Mar 21, 2012 9:40:27 AM

Such a informative post specially for me because by profession i am a lawyer and at this period of time i handle those cases which are similar as above mentioned. Really this blog helps me alot.

Posted by: online auction | Apr 28, 2012 7:47:06 AM

I am a student of politics and your post has convinced me to buy the book. Although i dont possess enough working knowledge on the subject of colonial justice system, but i do know that the system practiced in England was barbaric to a certain extent. The new justice system beign practiced by the US in places like Guantanomo have uncanny similarities with the colonial systems, doesnt it? I would love to hear your views on the subject.



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I`m really inspire with what you write in your article as it really helps me out to understand the real face of politics. Although it directly relates with country population as it is growing very rapidly day by day. Although Law and its enforcement must be strong as the growth of population. Thanks for sharing such amazing facts.

~Thomas

Thomas Sanfilippo

Posted by: Thomas Sanfilippo | Jul 23, 2012 2:06:28 AM

I wanted to thank you for this great read!! I definitely enjoying every little bit of it I have you bookmarked to check out new stuff you post



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March 21, 2012

The Machinery of Criminal Justice #2: Reintegrative Punishment

[By Stephanos Bibas]

So, after the excitement of the twenty-first-century Supreme Court decisions today, I'm going to flash back to guest-blogging about my new book, The Machinery of Criminal Justice. In particular, I'll return to the story I was describing about what punishments looked like in the colonial era. Today my focus will be on how punishments were much better at reintegrating convicted defendants into the community.

DISCLAIMER: Right now I am engaging in historical description. I am not recommending going back to the practices described below; my mission is simply to contrast the public, communal, reintegrative aspect of colonial punishment with modern punishments. I will not be making normative recommendations until later in this series of posts. SO please don't assume that I am advocating whipping or corporal punishments.

In the colonies, punishment was public, shameful, and even painful, but it was most often temporary. The point was to make the wrongdoer remorseful and get him to make amends, so the victim and community would forgive him and welcome him back into the community. Punishment let wrongdoers pay their material and moral debts to victims and society, wipe their slates clean, and return to the community as equals. It did not create a durable underclass of ex-cons, as our prisons do today.

Today, imprisonment has a near-monopoly on punishment (at least for moderately serious crimes). But in the colonies, imprisonment was not a common sanction. The dominant punishments were fines, corporal punishments, and shaming punishments. Fines were probably the most common punishment. Others included sitting bent over in the stocks or standing in the pillory. Other common punishments included whipping, wearing a letter advertising one's crime, or mock executions (having wrongdoers stand on scaffolds with nooses around their necks for a time). More severe punishments included branding, nailing and cutting off ears, and banishment; these brutal punishments were rare and reserved for repeat or permanently dangerous wrongdoers.

While many of these punishments were downright painful, only branding and mutilation were permanently disfiguring. What burned more than the transient physical pain was the humiliation of public shaming, particularly in small, tightly knit communities, as Nathaniel Hawthorne describes in The Scarlet Letter.

Punishments were extremely visible. Until the nineteenth century, they took place outdoors, typically in or near the town square. OFten there was a procession to the scaffold. Executions in America were not "macabre spectacles" but somber, dramatic rituals. The same was true of noncapital punishments.

These punishment rituals educated viewers about the horrors of crime, drunkenness, and debauchery and reinforced communal moral teachings. Ministers came to preach about the temptations and sins that lurked in each of our breasts and the dangers of giving in to those temptations. The point was not to ostracize and demonize wrongdoers, but to recognize one's own sins too. Everyone needed to repent and seek forgiveness. Condemned criminals were expected to play the same tune.

Those who attended were witnesses to the final act of the morality play, literally seeing justice done. But they were also participants in doing justice, manifesting their disapproval and reinforcing social solidarity by denouncing the transcression and vindicating the victim.

This morality play had a negative side, denouncing the crime. But it also had a positive side, offering forgiveness and redemption to the criminal. Most crime resulted from weakness of will and character, as some fell prey to temptations that assail each of us. The point was to teach a swift, memorable lesson and lead errant brethren to submit, repent, and make amends.

Once wrongdoers did so, the morality play could conclude with forgiving and welcoming them back into the fold. Community members had seen wrongdoers pay their debts to society. Having seen justice done, they were more ready to forgive. (As I mentioned previously, actual executions were rare, and even in those cases there was forgiveness and symbolic reintegration.)

Colonial convicts paid their debts to society and victims, not only symbolically, but also concretely, through restitution, fines, and extra damage. When on occasion wrongdoers were confined, they were put in workhouses and made to labor, to hold them publicly accountable.

Empirical evidence from both Middlesex County, Massachusetts and the Quaker colonies of Pennsylvania and western New Jersey confirms that colonial wrongdoers were reintegrated. They frequently went on to hold town offices, militia offices, and church offices. In sum, by suffering their punishments, wrongdoers paid their debts to society and victims. After that, colonists stood read to welcome them back as members of society in good standing.

Forgiving wrongdoers was particularly important because, then as now, most crimes involved family members, friends, and neighbors. Most people had to go back to living among those whom they had wronged. Besides, a small society could hardly afford to kill, imprison, or exile more than a tiny fraction of its members. Everyone was valuable, too valuable to execute or lock away for years at great expense. Most wrongdoers returned from punishment to society, and remorse, apology, and forgiveness paved the way for their reentry.

That's all for now. In the next few days I'll try to sketch out how punishment changed beginning in the nineteenth century.

Stephanos Bibas, guest-blogging

March 21, 2012 at 10:23 PM | Permalink

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Public and painful corporal punishments were cheap and effective. The rent seeking lawyer will never say that. There should be a return to those once the lawyer rent seeker can be stopped.

Posted by: Supremacy Claus | Mar 22, 2012 1:30:01 AM

Newsflash: an agrarian society in 18th century had different ideas about punishment due to practical realities and the influence of religious belief. Add a dash of romanticism, and we have a charming little post.

Posted by: federalist | Mar 22, 2012 1:54:32 AM

I would be interested in the unofficial remedy. Disappearance. Someone does not learn, they disappear, and no one knows the difference. This remedy would be an early 123D. Discuss disappearance as a the best remedy to maintain a low crime rate. The rent seeking lawyer will not discuss it because it works, but ends lawyer employment.

Posted by: Supremacy Claus | Mar 22, 2012 4:27:42 AM

It would be useful to learn the crime rates of those days. One would bet they would be low because of public self help. You invade a home, you get blasted, hatcheted, and stabbed. No lawyer comes around to arrest or sue the home owner crime victim. It would be useful to go beyond the Fifth Grade American history lesson, to new substance on crime rate factors.

One obvious inverse correlate. Low lawyer to population ratio, low crime rate. Contrast to London, with its infestation of lawyers, and high crime rates.

Posted by: Supremacy Claus | Mar 22, 2012 4:39:51 AM

"As I mentioned previously, actual executions were rare"

1--} Yes, but they were certain, despite legitimate trials.

a|| Plymouth (man shot neighbour): "This year John Billington the elder, one that came over with the first, was arraigned,

and both by grand and petty jury found guilty of wilful murder, by plain and notorious evidence. And was for the same

accordingly executed. This, as it was the first execution amongst them, so was it a matter of great sadness unto them." 9/30/1630

b|| Mass Bay/Plymouth (murder & robbery): "Arthur Peach, Thomas Jackson, Richard Stinnings, & Daniell Crosse were

indicted for murther& robbing by the heigh way.They killed and robd one Penowanyanquis, an Indian, at

Misquamsqueece, & took from him fiue fadome of wampeux, and three coates of wollen cloth.. . . They found the said

Arthur Peach, Thomas Jackson, and Richard Stinnings guilty of the said felonious murthering & robbing of the said Penowanyanquis.

Daniell Crosse made an escape, & so had not his tryall; but Peach, Jackson, & Stinnings had sentence of death pnounced; vizt, executed upon them accordingly." 9/4/1638

www.executedtoday.com, www.histarch.uiuc.edu

Pretty good blog, Bibas, IMO.



Posted by: Adamakis | Mar 22, 2012 10:34:41 AM

2--} re: rarity of criminality::

Many settlements, such as Plymouth, the Moravians, &ct. were homogenous ideologically, voluntarily in concurrence with moral values (opposed to malfeasance). Conspicuously, the worst crimes in Mass. Bay seem to have been done by the uncommittedboth aforementioned-- such as sailors.

In Virginia, the notion of the law [w]as an arm of religious orthodoxy.

...............In the Puritan north a religious message leaps out from almost every page of the early criminal codes.

--Crime and Punishment in American History (Lawrence M. Friedman)



Posted by: Adamakis | Mar 22, 2012 10:38:22 AM

In particular, I'll return to the story I was describing about what punishments looked like in the colonial era. Today my focus will be on how punishments were much better at reintegrating convicted defendants into the community.

Posted by: london apartments | Nov 13, 2012 6:58:35 AM

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March 23, 2012

The Machinery of Criminal Justice #3: Hiding Punishment Behind Prison Walls

[Stephanos Bibas, guest-blogging]

In my last two guest-blog posts on my new book, The Machinery of Criminal Justice, I described a couple of the key features of colonial-era punishments: the room they left for showing mercy and for reintegrating defendants after they were punished. Now I'll start to describe a couple of key changes that happened in the nineteenth century with the shift to imprisonment as the dominant punishment. In this post I'll focus on how prison hid punishment from public view.

An ideological change led to the great prison experiment. Reformers no longer saw the roots of crime in weakness of free will or in the devil's temptations. Rather, they blamed wrongdoer's families, associates, and vice-filled cities for dragging wrongdoers down into crime. The solution seemed to be to remove them from their criminogenic environments and to instill new, law-abiding habits and discipline.

After a few failed experiments with hard labor in public or having the public come into prison to watch prisoners work, a newer vision took hold, starting in Philadelphia and New York. The Pennsylvania system kept each inmate in solitary confinement, separate from one another and in complete silence. If each man was kept in silence, with only a Bible as his companion, optimistic reformers believed that his inner light or reason would convict his conscience and lead him to repent and reform.

New York's Auburn prison was less austere, as inmates worked together in silence each day but slept alone at night. Both the Pennsylvania solitary system and the New York silent system involved at least some isolation, as well as almost military structure and discipline. Both had as their central aims to reform wrongdoers through structure, and in some cases through work.

These reformers were far too optimistic about human nature. Penitentiaries did not breed penitence but crime. Solitary confinement without work drove some inmates insane or to suicide and did not reform them. True solitary confinement also proved too costly and difficult. Crime kept rising, leading to double-bunking and more cells. Once prisoners talked and bunked together, prison became a school for crime, providing criminal networks and contacts.

Though prison had failed, few people could stomach going back to bloodier punishments, and there was no obvious alternative. Thus, prison has remained our default punishment for the last two centuries. Inertia triumphed. Prison bred everything from abusive guards to gang violence to rape, but these brutalities were out of sight and mind.

One of the biggest barriers to reentry was the prisons bred idleness, not job skills and responsibilities. Though at first work had been central to prison administrators' ambitions to reform inmates, prison labor dwindled between 1870 and 1940. The fatal blow was not humanitarian but economic, as labor unions and small businesses opposed potential competition and got Congress to outlaw interstate transportation or sale of prison-made goods, choking the market for prison labor.

Today, prisoners can work for private firms only at prevailing local wage rates. That requirement, on top of the added security costs in prison, makes prison labor uneconomical for private firms. Prisoners can instead produce goods for state governments' internal use, but that internal market is too small to keep most prisoners busy. As a result, only about 1/9 of state prisoners and 1/6 of federal prisoners work in an industry or farm. Far more waste their days in mind-numbing idleness, watching television or killing time.

March 23, 2012 at 12:46 PM | Permalink

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"The fatal blow was not humanitarian but economic, as labor unions and small businesses opposed potential competition and got Congress to outlaw interstate transportation or sale of prison-made goods, choking the market for prison labor.

"Today, prisoners can work for private firms only at prevailing local wage rates. That requirement, on top of the added security costs in prison, makes prison labor uneconomical for private firms. Prisoners can instead produce goods for state governments' internal use, but that internal market is too small to keep most prisoners busy."

Glad to see this issue brought up. It is one that does not get nearly enough attention.

Deciding whether prisoners can or cannot make certain goods by the identity of the purchaser is economic nonsense. If the competing goods are made in the U.S., then diverting any portion of the purchasing pool, whether government or not, costs law-abiding workers' jobs. Conversely, if substantially all of the market segment is imported, then allowing prison-made goods to compete in that segment does not cost any American jobs whether the goods are sold to government of the general public.

That should be the criterion. And we should get rid of the prevailing wage requirement. A person provided food, clothing, shelter, and medical care by the government does not need to make prevailing wage. He should be able to buy an upgrade to better accommodations with his earnings.

Posted by: Kent Scheidegger | Mar 23, 2012 2:15:41 PM

Typo in previous comment: should be "or the general public."

Posted by: Kent Scheidegger | Mar 23, 2012 2:44:10 PM

not to mention any restitution or fines plus save part to be given upon release to support themself

other than that. i agree completly Kent!

Posted by: rodsmith | Mar 23, 2012 7:29:17 PM

I have proposed that prisoners make unique products in short supply. An example, are the drugs used to execute prisoners.

Posted by: Supremacy Claus | Mar 24, 2012 1:02:21 AM

I would add to Kent's point.

Inmates should also be able to work on public work projects. This may include picking up trash on the side of the road and move up the spectrum all the way to disaster recovery and road paving that is being done by the local government (but not large jobs contracted out to private companies). Although this will indeed cost jobs, it is public sector jobs that will suffer and the economic benefit of these jobs being done with cheap labor far outweigh that concern.

This is being done to a small extent. However, there are tons of idle inmates who should be doing work for the benefit of society that local government is paying union wages to have completed.

Posted by: TarlsQtr | Mar 24, 2012 10:22:02 AM

'A person provided food, clothing, shelter, and medical care by the government does not need to make prevailing wage.'

maybe a return to slavery would be a cheaper and quicker solution

Posted by: lax | Mar 26, 2012 6:19:06 PM

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March 26, 2012

The Machinery of Criminal Justice #4: The Decline of Mercy

[Stephanos Bibas, guest-blogging]

In one of last week's posts on my new book, The Machinery of Criminal Justice, I noted that colonial criminal justice left room for mercy. Today I'll contrast how justice over the past two centuries has grown increasingly mechanistic and squeezed mercy out of the system.

Colonial justice embraced mercy as unfettered sovereign grace and individualized moral assessment. But to Enlightenment minds and scientists, mercy was arbitrary. Rational criminal justice, they thought, demanded equal, predictable deterrence, and mercy undercut deterrence.

Sustained criticism of exective clemency gradually restricted its use, and states gradually regulated pardons and commutations, making hearings more formal, closed to the public, and even ex parte. The clemency power, like jury nullification, came to seem lawless and unpredictable. The administrative ideal of equality across cases seemed to conflict with individualized justice and compassionate mercy. Thus, both executive clemency and jury nullification dwindled.

Another limit on mercy was the trend from indeterminate or unstructured sentences to structured sentencing guidelines. Reformers decried the dangers of arbitrariness, bias, and disparity in sentencing judges' unfettered discretion. Thus, the federal and more than a third of state sentencing systems enacted guidelines and mandatory minimum penalties to cabin harshness and mercy. The main discount available under the federal guidelines that could have related to mercy is an acceptance-of-responsibility discount. In practice, it has little to do with remorse or repentance and everything to do with whether a defendant pleads guilty.

Back in the colonial era, penalties were fixed and so nominally even less flexible than they are today. In practice, however, the rule-bound system was far more flexible than it seemed. Jurors frequently acquitted or convicted defendants of lesser offenses, and judges procured clemency for sympathetic defendants. Jurors knew the sentencing consequences of their decisions; indeed, judges advised them to take sentences into account in deciding whether to convict and for which crimes.

Today, however, jurors usually do not know the penalties, and judges instruct them to disregard sentencing in reaching their verdicts. Jurors cannot serve as the conscience of the community when they do not know what punishments they are authorizing (except in capital cases, where jurors must at least find the defendant death-eligible).

The one substantial source of leniency left is prosecutorial discretion. Prosecutors can decline to charge, drop charges, sign cooperation agreements, and recommend mercy in various other ways. Particularly sympathetic defendants may receive mercy as a result. More often, however, prosecutors use these tools as plea-bargaining chips, rewarding guilty pleas and punishing protracted litigation irrespective of the usual grounds for mercy.

This discretion hardly corresponds to the colonial model of transparent, accountable, individual moral evaluation. Unlike executives and juries, prosecutors retain discretion in part because their decisions are hidden from criticism and in part because they are supposedly making expert decisions about ranking priorities. Far from serving substantive justice and mercy, the discretion that remains in the system drives the plea-bargaining machinery.

So, that's all for now on the descriptive account of the historical changes from the colonial through the modern eras. In my last few guest posts this week, I'll offer several suggestions about how to make our punishments more transparent, pro-social, and reintegrative.

Stephanos Bibas, guest-blogging

March 26, 2012 at 02:39 PM | Permalink

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Thank you very much for your thoughtful and helpful description. What I take away is that our social control practices have become more and more institutionalized. Social institutions eventually rot away, becoming impediments. Social institutions are a function of what the cognitive scientists call System 1, an intuitive way or mode of thinking about things. (Kahneman) I will be interested in your recommendations for change. Presumably they will involve System 2, which is deliberate way of thinking; a paradigm shift.

Thank you again.

Posted by: Tom McGee | Mar 26, 2012 3:26:27 PM

Interesting. One aspect of colonial, or Puritan justice, that cannot be replicated, I fear, is the closeness of community. "Community" kept everyone in everyone else's business and helped magistrates and constables make discretion-laden decisions in individual cases. There's a wonderful execution narrative about a woman of color named Patience Boston, who was executed for killing her master's son. One of my favorite details in the narrative is that she apparently had a habit of falsely reporting herself guilty of infanticide. On one occasion, she turned herself in for killing her own child. The magistrates ordered that women in the community examine her to see if she had, in fact, given birth. When the women reported that she had not, the magistrates sent her on her way. That detail strikes me as heavily dependant on the nature of the Puritan community.

I will have to pick up your book. I'm especially interested in how, or if, people of color (or, more broadly, servants) were granted any kind of mercy.

Posted by: Donna Coltharp | Mar 26, 2012 4:13:32 PM

Mercy will continue to diminish,

unless conservatives see justice

for victims in the form of

meaningful punishment.

Examples include: the return to

the swift use of the death penalty,

the execution of rapists,

the decline of the psychological defense,

& fulfilled sentences [e.g. life = life].

To be simple, since liberals have gained

so much heretofore, it is unlikely that

conservatives will give any more in terms

of being more merciful to convicted criminals.

Posted by: Adamakis | Mar 29, 2012 11:28:45 AM

Very interesting to read from you,is like we are thinking in the same way. I am a lay man, a prison chaplain in Nigeria and the initiator for a small NGO in Nigeria. It is the same spirit that is working across the globe. It is so worst here in Nigeria that when a criminal is sentence to death they don't consider mercy for such person. The so called Board of Prerogative of Mercy have a yardstick to grant amnesty to the prisoner who is serving a minor offense or about few days to complete the sentence.The major reasons for initiating the organization is to advocate for mercy on repented offender especially those on death row and serving life imprisonment. Much more voices are needed to revive mercy in the conscience of those in the hem of the affairs of our nations. Mercy is one of the attribute of God. I will definitely want to read more from you sir. Please keep me posted. I will be glad if you can read through one of the case am pursuing now on my web site and let me have your suggestion.

Posted by: Hezekiah Olujobi | Mar 31, 2012 11:07:03 AM

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March 27, 2012

The Machinery of Criminal Justice #5: From Idle Imprisonment to Work

[Stephanos Bibas, guest-blogging]

In my previous posts about my new book, The Machinery of Criminal Justice, I've sketched out a few of the ways in which punishment has changed in recent centuries and how modern punishment has become mechanistic, insulated, and hidden. In my last few posts, I'll propose a few reforms to make punishment more visibly pro-social, by encouraging work, accountability, reform, and reintegration. Today I'll focus on prison labor.

When we convict defendants of moderately serious crimes, we usually imprison them. American prisons, however, are deeply flawed. Prison severs inmates from their responsibilities, hides their punishment, and does little to train or reform them. Victims and the public do not see wrongdoers being held accountable, paying their debts to society and victims, and learning disciplined work habits. Instead, they visualize lives of idleness, funded by taxpayers. Thus, wrongdoers are unprepared to reenter society. And victims and the public, believing that wrongdoers have neither suffered enough nor learned their lessons, are loath to welcome them back.

The vast majority of prison inmates spend their days in idleness, with endless television and little labor. The minority of prisoners who do some work in a prison laundry, cafeteria, or license-plate shop rarely cultivate skills that are in demand in the outside world. Even prisoners who are able to work earn far less than the minimum wage, not enough to support a family or repay victims.

Nor is life inside most prisons structured to teach good habits such as self-discipline or productivity. On the contrary, prison encourages listless dependence on institutional routine, setting prisoners up for failure upon release. Healthy habits, such as the orderly work envisioned by prison reformers, broke down long ago.

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of imprisonment is its hiddenness. It is out of sight behind high prison walls and thus out of mind. It is too easy for the public to forget about it, to overlook the sporadic prison stabbings and rapes, or simply to discount the terrible soul-destroying, idle monotony.

Because the punishments are invisible and idle, the public never sees justice done. Voters may clamor for higher sentences to express outrage at crimes. But, because they do not see and appreciate the punishment, they have less sense of how much is enough and when inmates have paid their debts to society and to victims. Sunlight is the best disinfectant in a democracy, but prisons are shrouded in gloom.

Prisons must change from dens of idleness and crime to places of public accountability, mandatory work, and sustained reform. First and foremost, prisons must force all able-bodied prisoners to work. Governments could abolish restrictions on trade in prison-made goods and prevailing-wage requirements, relying on competitive bidding to raise wages. While medium- and maximum-security inmates would have to work in prison for security reasons, minimum-security inmates could transition back to the outside by working outside of prison, as many already do in halfway houses. Inmates might even be able to prove themselves to employers and so have jobs waiting for them upon release.

To make their work pro-social and accountable, inmates should have to use their wages to pay at least a portion of their moral and monetary debts. Perhaps a quarter of their wages could go to the government to defray the costs of investigation, conviction, and imprisonment. Perhaps a quarter could go to victims to make restitution and pay for medical care. Perhaps a quarter could go to inmates' families, requiring inmates to support their spouses and children. And the remaining quarter might go to inmates themselves, to encourage their efforts. Though these earnings might never fully repay the state or victims of serious crimes, even partial repayment would be materially and symbolically important.

Certainly there are practical obstacles. Most prisoners have few skills and many have disciplinary problems, so their unskilled labor is not especially valuable. Many law-abiding businesses and workers will fear that competition will undercut their wages and cost jobs. The political and practical hurdles are substantial enough to make this proposal a long-term hope rather than a realistic short-term goal.

That's all for now. Next I'll discuss possible military service, educational and vocational training, and drug treatment.

Stephanos Bibas, guest-blogging

March 27, 2012 at 09:46 PM | Permalink

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Many people actually see the gloom and doom atmosphere of prisons as a POSITIVE social component. They do not want to see the prisoner gain anything for himself, especially in crimes that involved victims. In many cases, they would rather hear that the prisoner is having a horrible time in prison, and the "serves him right" attitude easily trumps the long-range, societal integration plan. Finally, the public would MUCH rather see an ex-con fail and go back to prison so they can justify their own moral compass.

The proof, of course, is the sex offender registration laws which defy any reasonable reintegration effort in residency, employment, or even technology attributes, almost guaranteeing their failure at contributing to society's well-being, OTHER than providing citizens with an artificial "serves 'em right" moral antipathy that can never be replaced.

And of course, the victims and their families retain the greatest antipathy, and society wants to ensure their needs are first and foremost. To that end, only continual prosecution of offenders, both in and out of prison, can feed this need.

Posted by: Eric Knight | Mar 27, 2012 11:37:22 PM

I apologize in advance for my rudeness, but this lawyer's pro-criminal bias has finally reached my last nerve. I can't take his stuff anymore.

1) The lawyer needs to disclose its conflicts of interest. It was a prosecutor, a worthless, coffee slurping, lazy, criminal dependent government worker. This lawyer allowed 90% of serious crime to go unanswered. He went after people that would get him in the papers, looking out only for itself. Never mind public safety. When it had a guy, some large fraction of the time, it was the wrong guy. It stacked charges so that even innocent people took the false plea deal. Plea deals are yet more lawyer fictions. So fail 90% of the time. When you bother to act, 20% of the time it is on the wrong guy. Then you have absolute tort immunity for your carelessness and idiocy. Not even mentally retarded people in a sheltered would be allowed to operate at such a shocking level of incompetence. No other industry would either. Imagine a mechanic that refuses to repair 90% of broken cars, then does the wrong repair on 20% of the few he chooses to try to repair. What other industry would be allowed this amount of failure?

2) The lawyer takes for granted that other goals than incapacitation have any value. They do not. He has no data to present that any other is of any benefit to anyone. Retribution is from the Bible and violates the Establishment Clause. It comes from the culture of the unwashed, Iraqi low lifes that wrote the Bible. It brings Takriti mentality to our lawyer besieged nation.

3) If incapacitation is the sole mature goal of the criminal, 123D is the best path to safety. The deceased have a low recidivism rate. And death is less cruel than the government run prison conditions.

4) When does this lawyer plan to present any external validation data, rather than a long series of self-dealing ipse dixits? I usually do not make personal statements. However, he got to me. I can't take his stuff anymore. These feminist running dogs deserve no human consideration. They protect the criminal. They go after the law abiding citizen who would defend people and property. This form of low life caused 9/11 by bullying law abiding citizens into not competing with government workers for the eradication of crime. All PC intimidation stems from case law, and the prosecutors are the cause of all PC.

5) On an editorial note, if the above were a high school paper, I would demand the student redo it or get a failing grade. Try to put in more content, less fatuous pronouncements. I regret the lack of hospitality for a guest blogger, but the tripe level is reaching my neckline, and lapping at my mouth.

6) I am local to him. I will gladly give a brief presentation to his criminal law class on how badly it sucks, and the reasons why they are being lied to on every page of their law books. This would be the only opportunity his students would have to hear news from outside the lawyer Twilight Zone to counteract his phony, lying propaganda. He is a hopeless denier. There is no debating deniers. These facts would be for the students' benefit. He can bring his high fallutin' lawyer education. I will come with my 10th Grade World History course. It will be a debate slaughter. Ultimate debate point: wait until nightfall. Now go outside your law school, take an hour's walk West. Period. A good pistol whipping or rape is more persuasive hours of debating about the state of the criminal law.

Posted by: Supremacy Claus | Mar 28, 2012 12:22:58 AM

Many thanks for these "snapshots" of your arguments from the book. I look forward to having an opportunity to read the full text in due course, and to the further snapshots to come. My only wish is that your publishers had regard to the essential target audience of it, which must extend into public readership and not be limited to privileged professionals and students within the legal fraternity. Perhaps a mass production edition will emerge later, or more likely a more realistically priced Kindle edition (I have requested this through Amazon). Meanwhile, I am grateful to Professor Berman for inviting your input here. I have come across an excellent review, which compliments your snapshots, which can be read here:

http://crim.jotwell.com/tinkering-with-the-machinery-of-justice/

(click on my name for a direct link)

Posted by: peter | Mar 28, 2012 4:11:41 AM

I demand Prof. Bibas utter the V word. He cannot. No lawyer can without choking, requiring resuscitation by fire rescue.

However, public safety is the only reason to put up with any government. It is Job One, and Job Last of government. The lawyer cannot look at that reality because the conclusion is we have to kill his customer, the criminal. The crime victim generates no lawyer income and may rot. The lawyer is absolutely worthless to the crime victim. Thus all the lawyer boohooing for vicious predators and hug-a-thug proposals. Prof. Bibas in the final analysis joins the lawyer hierarchy in protecting the criminal, and generating lawyer employment. Because rent seeking is at the point of a gun, and because there is no legal recourse to their self-dealt immunities, there is full intellectual , moral and policy justification for violent self-help against the criminal cult enterprise that is the lawyer profession. I am trying to save the profession, by proposing limiting the purges and mass executions to the hierarchy, around 15,000 cult criminal bosses. Once they are gone, the public can eradicate their customer the career, violent, repeat offender, and lower crime by 90%. The boost to our wealth and productivity will be astounding. Inner city real estate values will shoot up like fireworks. Just about all our social and economic problems will end once the lawyer hierarchy is executed. The lawyer is a denier of the toxic effects of the profession on every minute of our lives.

Posted by: Supremacy Claus | Mar 28, 2012 6:58:55 AM

Notwithstanding all the ranting and raving, and more to the point of the blog excerpt, it should be noted that the Federal Bureau of Prisons already has implemented - and has for quite some time - many of the proposals Mr. Bibas sets forth; i.e., work is required of all able inmates at most facilities (although the pay scale is still exploitative and miserly), inmates must pay restitution through the Inmate Financial Responsibility Program (IFRP), and once transferred to a Residential Reentry Center (halfway house), a federal inmate must get a job. If the author would like to get an education about the federal prison system and the recidivism consequences of the BOP programs, he might do well to engage in some research and could start with the mass of available tracking data.

Posted by: Paul Kurtz, FEDERAL ADVOCACY CENTER | Mar 28, 2012 8:54:03 AM

Mr. Kurtz, The intent of the BOP to demand that prisoners have a job is admirable BUT sitting in the shed on a long bench waiting for your turn to push the lawnmower 30 feet is hardly a job. The truth is that the BOP has so many prisoners there are not enough real jobs for them.

Posted by: Obvious | Mar 28, 2012 10:27:49 AM

The trackback system doesn't seem to be working.

A comment on this post is on Crime and Consequences here.

Posted by: Kent Scheidegger | Mar 28, 2012 11:56:08 AM

Thank the lawyer for 1) the end of meaningful work in prison; 2) the barriers to re-entry upon discharge.

1) It was a privilege to be earned by good behavior to work in a beef operation that fed the entire prison system in Pennsylvania. Prisoners loved it. Prisons were quieter and safer with much fewer staff. Lawyers demanded minimum wages, despite the provision of shelter, food, and other considerations provided by the prison. Program is shut down.

2) If an employer hires an ex-convict, and litigation ensues, the liability is per se, if one of the many regulations prohibiting such hiring is violated. If you want to lower barriers to re-entry, stop the plaintiff tort litigation bar, stop the relentless onslaught of lawyer generated regulations.

Those are obstacles no lawyer here has ever mentioned. The lawyers here are deniers. They refuse to face the fact that the lawyer is the cause of all problems and failures of the criminal law, including wasting the time in prison, and the barriers to re-entry.

At some point, the public will get tired of this toxic profession, and mass eradications will result. I would like to limit these to the moronic, self-dealing, lawless hierarchy of this criminal cult enterprise.

Posted by: Supremacy Claus | Mar 29, 2012 7:01:42 AM

To make their work pro-social and accountable, inmates should have to use their wages to pay at least a portion of their moral and monetary debts.

Posted by: Snapback Hats | Jul 6, 2012 8:04:53 AM

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March 29, 2012

The Machinery of Criminal Justice #6: Military Service, Education, Treatment

[Stephanos Bibas, guest-blogging]

In my last guest-blog post about my new book, I suggested making prison more pro-social by requiring able-bodied convicts to work. In today's post, I'll extend the idea, first by suggesting military service for convicts without serious violent tendencies or major disabilities.

Throughout history, many societies have sentenced convicts to military service, offering them a concrete way to work off their debts and earn freedom. Currently, however, most of the American military services forbid enlistment as an alternative to criminal prosecution or as a form of punishment. The rigors of military service are vivid and easy to visualize: think of boot camps, with bugles at dawn, shouting drill sergeants, and strenuous calisthenics. The public sees military service as rigorous, demanding labor. Yet these rigors would be productive and prosocial, inculcating work habits and discipline that wrongdoers often lack.

Now, readers from both sides of the political spectrum will doubtless object. Those on the left may complain that military service would put defendants in harm's way and degrade them. Those on the right may fear that using military service would demean the honorable service of law-abiding men and women who choose to serve their country. And military leaders might well resist the change, both for reasons of honor and for concerns about administering unruly convicts.

But a properly crafted program could allay all three sets of concerns. To satisfy those on the right, prisoners would be compelled to join, not free to choose. They would come in at lower ranks and lower wages than ordinary enlistees. Garnishment and restitution would further reduce their take-home pay, and GI Bill benefits would not vest for some time. They could wear different uniforms and enjoy fewer privileges, by for example being confined to base. They would have to endure the lowliest of jobs, even cleaning latrines, and suffer push-ups and other punishments for the smallest infractions. In other words, prisoners would not start out equal.

On the other hand, those on the left might note that the military has one of the best records of racial equality and meritocratic advancement in America. Integrating minority prisoners into the military, full of minority officers, would be far less vulnerable to charges of racism than exiling them to prisons. Integrating prisoners into barracks would also reduce the crmiminogenic clumping and self-segregation that prisons breed. Any harms faced would be prosocial, in the service of their country and as payment of their debts to society, offsetting the harms they threatened or caused to others.

Any humbling would be productive and temporary. Inmates could prove themselves and in time earn promotions and restoration to full equality, including equal rank, pay, and benefits. After a time, their families could come to live with them on military bases, helping to reintegrate them. Convicts would learn productive, marketable skills, and employers view military service as a valuable credential, paving the way for reentry and future employment.

Military leaders might note that military service in lieu of criminal punishment has a long history and has hardly dishonored the law-abiding soldiers who served alongside wrongdoers. At least if one screens out problem candidates, the disciplinary problems have historically been manageable and may have been improved by the structure, rigor, and sense of purpose in military life.

Nevertheless, the military almost certainly will resist being asked to take on a social purpose in addition to fighting wars and defending against attacks. Moreover, the current all-volunteer ethos of the American military may conflict with effectively drafting convicts. If military opposition proves insurmountable, the military could at least repeal its bans and selectively admit convicts who are most compatible with military life. Or one could experiment with creating a civilian analogue to the military, something like the Civilian Conservation Corps, with uniforms, ranks, strict discipline, and a mission, to build character and skills.

That's all for now. In my next post, I'll discuss other possible measures to facilitate reentry.

Stephanos Bibas, guest-blogging

March 29, 2012 at 10:25 PM | Permalink

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"But a properly crafted program could allay all three sets of concerns. To satisfy those on the right, prisoners would be compelled to join, not free to choose. They would come in at lower ranks and lower wages than ordinary enlistees. Garnishment and restitution would further reduce their take-home pay, and GI Bill benefits would not vest for some time. They could wear different uniforms and enjoy fewer privileges, by for example being confined to base. They would have to endure the lowliest of jobs, even cleaning latrines, and suffer push-ups and other punishments for the smallest infractions. In other words, prisoners would not start out equal."

The unreality of this quote is striking. I've cleaned the head (the Navy term for latrine) many times--it's not punishment--it's work, and there's nothing lowly about it. And physical training as punishment? Really? That's nothing when you're young. And how are you going to have an esprit de corps when you have second-class citizens in the ranks, with all the resentment that builds.

The military is good at instilling discipline in basically good people who made a few mistakes. It's not a place for any serious criminals.

Posted by: federalist | Mar 29, 2012 11:04:24 PM

The transition to an all-volunteer force was not an easy one, I can't imagine how difficult bringing in a third tier lower than dirt set of soldiers would be. Especially if you are going to go out of your way to set them apart rather than try to get them on the program.

Posted by: Soronel Haetir | Mar 30, 2012 12:12:40 AM

They would come in at lower ranks than ordinary enlistees? Lower than E-!? With different uniforms to boot? What an utterly moronic idea. Talk about undermining good order, discipline and unit cohesion! This idea is an absolute recipe for disaster. Back to the ol' drawing board, professor.

Posted by: alpino | Mar 30, 2012 2:26:22 AM

See and I have a completely different perspective. Why wouldn't the military want convicts with a violent past. Isn't that military do? Violence. Seems to me these guys would be good cannon fodder. I've always wondered if we wouldn't have won the war in Vietnam if we had just let Charlie Mason and his gang take on the Viet Cong. Those slanty-eyes wouldn't have stood a chance.

http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/467fe1311e3344cda21ff516c0b719ea/US--Serial-Killer-Texas/

Now to my mind the man in the above article is just a four star general that missed his calling. Such a waste all around.

Posted by: Daniel | Mar 30, 2012 3:01:34 AM

I can't take it.

You want to give people with antisocial personality disorder weapons and combat training, access to devastating weapons, then try to make them obey rules that are ten times more strict and demanding than the rules they could not obey in civilian life? You are expecting a highly selfish person devoid of any empathy, to stand his ground and to support his fellow soldiers under fire? You want an impulsive, lazy, violent, dope fiend, fatherless bastard spawn of a single mother slut to work 16 hour shifts without complaint, and without shooting commanding officers?

Is there any lack of opportunity in civilian life if you choose to not disrupt ordinary schools, to get a skill in votech, and get paid $50,000 at age 19, just for showing up, and fixing things? There may be a high unemployment rate, but not in skilled professions and vocations. There is no lack of opportunity in civilian life, just a lack of tolerance for criminal conduct on the job or in school.

Putting an amoral criminal into a military unit opens a third front on the combat unit. You have the ruthless enemy that beheads children, without a word of criticism from our lawyer internal traitors. You have the traitor lawyer embedded in the unit, cancelling tactical orders and prosecuting our heroes for ordinary combat decisions. Now, the lawyer wants to add his criminal client as a burden to carry, making the entire unit have to watch its back for fear of being attacked by this imposed lawyer client.

No.



Posted by: Supremacy Claus | Mar 30, 2012 8:29:16 AM

"I'll discuss other possible measures to facilitate reentry."

Do you ever plan to discuss the fact that all obstacles to re-entry are the fault of the lawyer, from idiotic registries, to unproven Draconian regulations, to 50,000 civil consequences of the tiniest criminal conviction, to employer tort liability for negligent hiring?

How about stopping the out of control lawyer profession, as a remedy?

Posted by: Supremacy Claus | Mar 30, 2012 8:40:32 AM

Last time I looked, the military existed to be warriors to fight to protect the national interest. This requires an extra measure of discipline, self-sacrifice and, in battle, courage. It did not exist to serve the needs of the criminal justice system, much less the interests of lawbreakers.

By its nature, the military requires from its members more than the average willingness to abide by rules and orders, and to live a disciplined and regimented life for the sake of the greater good. By definition, convicts have less of all those things than the average.

With all respect to Professor Bibas, I don't think this dog will hunt.

Posted by: Bill Otis | Mar 30, 2012 10:00:58 AM

i'm going to have to give SC this one. This is about the most idiotic ideal i've heard in a long time! and in an election year with the continual criminal stupidity coming from our glorious politicans! That is saying something!

Posted by: rodsmith | Mar 30, 2012 10:02:21 AM

"The rigors of military service are vivid and easy to visualize: think of boot camps, with bugles at dawn, shouting drill sergeants, and strenuous calisthenics."

That visualization may be easy, but it is not correct, at least after boot camp. Military service has changed a lot over the years. The military today needs to be considerably more selective about who it takes in than it did in World War II or even in Vietnam.

Bill's right. This dog won't hunt.

Posted by: Kent Scheidegger | Mar 30, 2012 11:58:34 AM

I am a note-taker/reader at a community college, and I have to take issue with you on advocating military service instead of other types of service. First, the military teaches people how to kill and maim on command along with blind, to put down domestic unrest (i.e.: strike-breaking scabbery), and robot-like obedience to authority. Teaching such blind obedience does not teach an inmate the give-and-take skills that he or she will need for a participatory democracy. Second, the draft registration is currently sexually discriminatory against men. Third, many of these convicts might chafe and resist being treated more lowly than enlistees and decide to mutiny. Finally, putting weapons in the hands of men and women serving time is taking a big risk in the event they become bitter to being used as drudgery and cannon fodder for the Pentagon's war agenda. How does one know that they might not decide to aim their weapons at their commanding officers instead of at the people that their commanding officer orders them to fire upon?

Posted by: william r. delzell | Mar 30, 2012 1:10:22 PM

Correct, Kent. It's been a while, but the physical requirements weren't all that bad. It was the 18 hour days of a shipboard watchstander that get to you.

Professor, I don't mean to be mean, but this post seems very ignorant. From the caricature of military life to the serving up of a completely unworkable idea (an underclass in the military), your point of view seems rather ill-informed. My guess, Professor, is that you have started to believe that your credentials mean that every bit of your product is somehow great because of those very credentials. I think that's what led you to your "flamethrower" comment a few threads back. Your implication in that post that real originalists would bar plea bargains was ill-thought out, and the defense (a combination of a rhetorical rear-guard action, a bad Constitutional cite and an attempt to cover up a weak argument with a citation to scholarly pieces). You may be smarter than I am, and you may be able to whip me in an argument, but you still have to do the work. Your post doesn't reflect work--it's just a well-written musing.

Posted by: federalist | Mar 30, 2012 1:29:40 PM

Correct, Kent. It's been a while, but the physical requirements weren't all that bad. It was the 18 hour days of a shipboard watchstander that get to you.

Professor, I don't mean to be mean, but this post seems very ignorant. From the caricature of military life to the serving up of a completely unworkable idea (an underclass in the military), your point of view seems rather ill-informed. My guess, Professor, is that you have started to believe that your credentials mean that every bit of your product is somehow great because of those very credentials. I think that's what led you to your "flamethrower" comment a few threads back. Your implication in that post that real originalists would bar plea bargains was ill-thought out, and the defense (a combination of a rhetorical rear-guard action, a bad Constitutional cite and an attempt to cover up a weak argument with a citation to scholarly pieces) was weaker. You may be smarter than I am, and you may be able to whip me in an argument, but you still have to do the work. Your post doesn't reflect work--it's just a well-written musing.

Posted by: federalist | Mar 30, 2012 1:31:09 PM

hmm let me see if i get this straight!

Bill, SC, federalist, Kent and I all AGREE.....shit we're dead! the world is ending!

Posted by: rodsmith | Mar 30, 2012 5:21:07 PM

Rod: These comments are expressions of love. There is no love greater than the love great enough to correct.

Posted by: Supremacy Claus | Apr 1, 2012 6:28:15 AM

i have to agree SC. It's right up there with your parent as they bring the switch back and state..."this is gonna hurt me more than you!"

sometimes it just needs to be done!

Posted by: rodsmith | Apr 2, 2012 12:05:34 AM

It may well be that I am just too old and out dated to see the concerns expressed in the posts here. I can recall when many young men were offered the option of enlistment or prison - usually in the Marines. However, the option was not limited to any one branch of service. Having been in prison I do know that it would be hard to find a more patriotic group of persons than the average group of convicts. I was in during the "911" event and was quite surprised to see and hear the reactions of the inmate population.

As to rehabilitation: service in the military could serve this function if - if - there were no stigma attached to the convict entering into this service nor upon their release. Just another troop. Same training and training options as any other. The relegation to a special class would destroy any benefits otherwise realizable and should, IMHO, be rejected.

Posted by: tim rudisill | Apr 2, 2012 6:56:27 AM

that is true tim. My problems about it come for the other details!

the 2nd class status and the other ways they were to be seperated.

Posted by: rodsmith | Apr 2, 2012 3:04:15 PM

I know a guy whose brother was a bad apple. This was during the Vietnam war. He was arrested for his infractions and instead of going to prison, they sent him to Vietnam. This man told me that he came out much better for it, that the experience totally changed him. He did not go voluntarily into war, but I am sure that because they were in battle, he quickly started to learn about loyalty to his band of brothers. It purged the selfishness out of him. I know a guy who stole a considerable amount of money from his family and they want to press charges. This guy wants to go in the Navy. I say let him. The military will make a change on him, and prison will only incite the fear of being raped or killed. He has great potential but has gone astray. There are many men and women in prison with great potential, but no one to work with them to help them realize it. Perhaps if prisons were ran more like basic training and the military, instead of just lockup and an hour out of their cell each day, we wouldn't have so many people who re-affend. Military training would give them a sense of purpose, not a set of rules only. Prisoners deserve a chance at rehabilitation. Prisons don't rehabilitate. There is nothing in the prison environment that inspires people to want to watch someone's back. But in the military, there is. Prisoners are not beyond being inspired or wanting to change. But for most, it will take the right kind of people to help them change, and you won't find that in the prison environment.

Posted by: Jennifer | Jun 2, 2014 8:36:58 AM

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June 7, 2017

Prof Stephanos Bibas among new slate of notable nominees to the circuit courts by Prez Trump

This big news in the world of Presidential nominations this morning would seem to be Prez Trump's decision, reported here, to nominate Christopher Wray to serve as head of the FBI. Long-time and hard-core sentencing fans will perhaps recall that Wray was an Assistant AG for the Justice Department back when Blakely and Booker came down, so there is an interesting sentencing history that his name necessarily evokes.

But, other nomination news from inside-the-Beltway should be of even more interest to long-time and hard-core sentencing fans. According to this Washington Times article, sentencing scholar Stephanos Bibas is getting tapped for an open position on the Third Circuit. Here are the details from the press account, along with a bit of notable commentary therein:

President Trump announced a new round of 11 judicial nominations Wednesday, including three nominees for high-profile federal appeals courts. One of the nominees, Colorado Supreme Court Justice Allison H. Eid, is being tapped by the president to fill a vacancy on the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals created when Justice Neil Gorsuch was confirmed for the Supreme Court in April. Justice Eid was on Mr. Trumps list of conservative potential Supreme Court nominees that he presented to voters during the presidential campaign last year. She has served on Colorados high court since 2006, and previously was the states solicitor general. These appointments follow the successful nomination and confirmation of associate Justice Neil M. Gorsuch to the United States Supreme Court, the successful nomination and confirmation of Judge Amul R. Thapar of Kentucky to serve as a circuit judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and the nomination of numerous candidates to other judgeships, the White House said in a statement. Mr. Trump also is nominating U.S. District Court Judge Ralph R. Erickson of North Dakota for the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and University of Pennsylvania Law School professor Stephanos Bibas to serve on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Judge Erickson has served on the district court since 2003. The White House called Mr. Bibas, director of the universitys Supreme Court Clinic, one of the nations leading experts in criminal law and procedure. He has argued six cases before the Supreme Court, taught at the University of Chicago Law School and served from 1998 to 2000 as an assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York.... President Trump continues to put forward superlative judicial nominees with sterling credentials and impressive intellects, said Jonathan Adler, director of the Center for Business Law & Regulation at Case Western Reserve University School of Law. Its especially notable that President Trump continues to pick current and former academics for the appellate bench  more so than any recent president. This will only magnify the impact his nominees are likely to have on the federal courts.

I have previously noted in this space Prez Trump's apparent affinity for academics in his early judicial selections (as well as for folks with some sentencing history). And I have a particular affinity for Prof Bibas not only because of his long history as a sentencing scholar, but also because we worked together on a Supreme Court case Tapia in which he was an appointed amicus and we co-authored one of my favorite articles, Making Sentencing Sensible. Stephanos and I also co-authored an essay about capital sentencing, Engaging Capital Emotions.

Also, long-time and eagle-eyed blog readers may recall that Prof Bibas did a stint of guest-blogging in this space in conjunction with the release of his book, "The Machinery of Criminal Justice," which was published in 2012 by Oxford University Press and is available here. All of his posts are linked under the category tab, Guest blogging by Professor Stephanos Bibas, and here are links to my introduction and then to all his substantive posts:

June 7, 2017 at 02:04 PM | Permalink

Comments

Mr. Bibas got clowned by yours truly on this very blog.

Posted by: federalist | Jun 7, 2017 3:43:09 PM

Got clowned in Tapia too.

Posted by: whatever | Jun 7, 2017 4:22:42 PM

Hope you liked your trip to LegoLand (cited in one of his posts).

Bill Otis took part in the conversations. I see that I commented in one thread at least.



Posted by: Joe | Jun 7, 2017 4:33:06 PM

Are you planning to write to the Senate Judiciary Committee about the clowning, federalist? I am sure they would benefit from the details.

Posted by: Doug B. | Jun 7, 2017 6:33:53 PM

Nope. Why would I? I do note that he turned tail and ran.

Posted by: federalist | Jun 7, 2017 6:48:13 PM

federalist, I think it would be your civic duty to tell the SJC about Prof Bibas' talents and courage if you have unique insight and information about him.

Posted by: Doug B. | Jun 7, 2017 7:09:32 PM

As much as I appreciate your work on this blog Doug I still think this preening for your own judicial appointment is unseemly. Maybe highlight some people who aren't law professors so it isn't quite so obvious.

Oh and BTW I think you would make an excellent judge insofar as the phrase "excellent judge" isn't an oxymoron when human limitations are taken into account.

Posted by: Daniel | Jun 7, 2017 7:16:52 PM

Bibas organized a conference. A dozen participants were pro-criminal. He invited one weak pro-victim lawyer, Heather McDonald. He is a Yale Law indoctrinated pro-criminal lawyer. He is confirmed for the Third Circuit, I look forward to trying to destroy his life, and to hound him out of the state.



Posted by: David Behar | Jun 7, 2017 8:09:12 PM

Stalking is a crime

Conspiracy is a crime

Speech integral to criminal conduct is not protected by the first amendment. I'll leave it to Doug to police his blog but maybe Mr. Behar needs a visit from the FBI so he can clarify his remarks about a federal judge.

Posted by: Apple Valley DA | Jun 7, 2017 8:45:18 PM

Daniel, the likelihood I would be a Trump judicial appointee is about as high as my odds of getting a Tony award. The blogging done by John Bush is the type that gets noticed by Trump and his team, and I tend to be disliked and distrusted by most partisans on both side of the aisle. But I am flattered you think I would be a good judge and bemused that you see my posting here as preening for Prez Trump.

Posted by: Doug B | Jun 7, 2017 10:39:31 PM

Apple Valley DA. Can you tell me your real name, and in which state you are licensed?

Posted by: David Behar | Jun 7, 2017 11:39:00 PM

Apple Valley DA. Are you from Excelsior, Minnesota?

Posted by: David Behar | Jun 8, 2017 12:16:49 AM

Doug, you certainly could do so---the exchange is for all to see--I hardly see how that's really all that relevant anyway. People make mistakes . . . . just check out the jurisprudence of the "wise [sic] Latina."

Posted by: federalist | Jun 8, 2017 7:38:49 AM

Professor Berman (Doug),

For what it is worth, and from a couple of interactions with him when he was at Iowa (2001-06), Professor Bibas strikes me as a very kind, very nice, and very humble person. Of course, he is also brilliant and a wonderful writer and researcher. All the best.

Rich Kopf

Posted by: Richard Kopf | Jun 8, 2017 6:21:54 PM

A nice endorsement, Judge Kopf, and one that especially pleases me as evidence that you are still a regular reader.

Posted by: Doug B. | Jun 8, 2017 10:50:33 PM

I am a huge fan of anyone who told the Supreme Court to STFU.

Posted by: David Behar | Jun 8, 2017 11:14:53 PM

Hey, Apple Valley DA. If you are a law student, we are cool. I do not think people who prosecute others for a living write the way you do. I am not going to come after you.

Posted by: David Behar | Jun 8, 2017 11:17:28 PM

Prof. Bibas has always been generous with his time to those of us who are not regular SCOTUS litigators. He does have some off-the-wall ideas, but he's an academic, so he's supposed to have off-the-wall ideas.

Posted by: Stephen Hardwick | Jun 9, 2017 1:37:59 PM

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June 6, 2017

Senators Grassley and Feinstein working on enhanced federal penalties for synthetic opioid offenses

This slightly confusing new NPR story, headlined "Lawmakers Consider Tough New Penalties For Opioid Crimes, Bucking Trend," suggests that the only kind of sentencing reform being now discussed in Congress involves increasing rather than decreasing drug offense sentences. Here are the still opaque details as reported by NPR (with my emphasis added, for subsequent comment):

For nearly four years now, an unusual coalition of Republicans and Democrats has worked to reduce mandatory prison terms for many federal drug crimes. But that bipartisan movement may be shallower than it appears. Indeed, Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, who both supported a cut-back on some drug punishments, are preparing a bill that would create tough new penalties for people caught with synthetic opioid drugs. Grassley chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Feinstein is the panel's ranking member. A draft of the legislation reviewed by NPR suggests the plan would give the attorney general a lot more power to ban all kinds of synthetic drugs, since criminals often change the recipe to evade law enforcement. It would impose a 10-year maximum sentence on people caught selling them as a first offense. That would double if they do it again. Michael Collins of the Drug Policy Alliance, which advocates for lighter punishments for drug offenders, has seen language in the proposal. He said he thinks it's a bad idea. "These synthetic drugs are added to heroin often outside the U.S., but the bill takes such a broad approach that it's penalizing individuals who sell drugs at a low level inside the U.S., and so it's going to do nothing to deter and stop the supply of drugs," Collins said. Collins said drug addiction is a public health challenge. He said sending more people to prison won't help, just as it didn't help in the crack cocaine era a few decades ago. "The problem is really we've been here before with this approach in terms of the war on drugs and ramping up sentences, and we know that escalating sentences ... does nothing to help the opioid epidemic," Collins said. "In fact, it only serves to increase the prison population." Many people inside the Justice Department disagree. Just last week, federal prosecutors in Utah announced charges against a half-dozen people in suburban Salt Lake City. Authorities say two of them quit their jobs at eBay to embark on a new enterprise. They allegedly ordered a version of the synthetic opioid fentanyl by mail from China, then pressed the drug into counterfeit pills and sold them online to customers across the country. U.S. Attorney John Huber brought the case. "Like much of the country, we are not escaping the heroin and opioid epidemic and this latest version or brand of it with the fentanyl danger just makes it that much more pressing of a concern for us," Huber said. The alleged ringleader  27-year-old Aaron Michael Shamo  could spend the rest of his life in prison if he's convicted under the current drug laws. "Mr. Shamo faces a mandatory life minimum sentence if he's convicted and that shows how serious this is, when you're dealing in such large quantities of such a dangerous substance," Huber said. "This is as serious as it gets."

As this NPR story already indirectly indicates, severe federal sentences are already on the books for serious drug dealers who traffic in fentanyl, and I am pretty sure a first offense of even a small amount of fentanyl dealing already carries a mandatory maximum sentence of decades. Thus, I think the highlighted line from the article here meant to report that Senators Grassley and Feinstein are working on a bill that would have a 10-year mandatory minimum sentence for even low-lever, first-time dealing of fentanyl.

I am not yet going to criticize a bill I have not yet seen, nor am I going to criticize the instinct of many legislators and law enforcement officials that drastic action needs to be taken in response to the still growing opioid epidemic. But I am certainly prepared to express disappointment that leaders like Senators Grassley and Feinstein still apparently think that new mandatory minimum sentencing provisions serve as a wise and appropriate response to a national drug problem.

June 6, 2017 at 09:28 PM | Permalink

Comments

This must be a sign of the Apocalypse.

Posted by: Fat Bastard | Jun 6, 2017 10:28:57 PM

Just what the doctored ordered: longer sentences for more crimes. So much for sentencing "reform."

Posted by: anon2 | Jun 7, 2017 12:04:24 AM

"prepared to express disappointment"

oh no. He's getting pessimistic. Bad sign.

Posted by: Joe | Jun 7, 2017 10:31:08 AM

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Mother Jones has this notable new article about Henry Montgomery and other juveniles who are still fighting to get relief after seemingly helpful recent Supreme Court Eighth Amendment rulings. The full headline of this piece is "The Supreme Court Said His Prison Sentence Was Unconstitutional. Hes Still Behind Bars. Despite a ruling in their favor, Henry Montgomery and other juvenile lifers are no closer to getting out." Here are excerpts:

But although the Supreme Court often appears all-powerful, its clout is more limited than it seems. Nearly 18 months after his victory, Montgomery is still sitting in Angola, and theres no guarantee that he  or many of the roughly 1,000 others serving similar sentences across the country  will ever get out....

Montgomerys saga began in November 1963 in East Baton Rouge, Louisiana, during a turbulent time of racial tensions, Ku Klux Klan activity, and cross-burnings. Montgomery, who is African American, was in 10th grade and playing hooky when he encountered the local sheriff, Charles Hurt, who was white. In a panic at being caught out of school, Montgomery allegedly shot and killed Hurt with his grandfathers gun, which he had stolen....

[If sentenced today], Montgomery would be allowed to present evidence of mitigating circumstances, and his lawyers could argue that his youth and mental disability  he had an IQ of around 70  should be grounds for a reduced sentence. Instead, a state appellate court upheld his mandatory life sentence, and that was the end of his contact with a lawyer for decades to come....

In 2012, the US Supreme Court offered juvenile lifers such as Montgomery a glimmer of hope. In Miller v. Alabama, a case of two men whod been sentenced to mandatory life without parole for crimes they committed at the age of 14, the court ruled 5-4 that such sentences were unconstitutional. Mandatory life without parole violated the Eighth Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, the court said, because such sentences failed to recognize that adults differ from children, who have diminished culpability and greater prospects for reform. The court held that life-without-parole sentences should be used only for the rare juvenile offender whose crime reflects irreparable corruption.

The decision set off a flurry of litigation by inmates incarcerated as children who argued that the Miller decision should be applied retroactively. Montgomery filed a petition to have his sentence overturned without the help of a lawyer, but the Baton Rouge public defenders office eventually took up his case. The local district attorney fought him every step of the way, and he lost in all the state appeals courts. But in 2015, the US Supreme Court agreed to hear his case.

In January 2016, the court ruled in Montgomerys favor, with Kennedy writing that the decision, which gave juvenile lifers a shot at parole, would afford someone like Montgomery, who submits that he has evolved from a troubled, misguided youth to a model member of the prison community, the opportunity to demonstrate the truth of Millers central intuitionthat children who commit even heinous crimes are capable of change.

But the decision was only the beginning of Montgomerys fight. The Supreme Court decision gave states a lot of leeway in how they handle cases like Montgomerys and punted the details to lower-court judges and state legislators. In Louisiana, a judge could reduce Montgomerys sentence to life with parole, but that would leave his fate to Louisianas notoriously stringent parole board, which could deny him release. The Supreme Court also left room for judges to simply resentence eligible inmates to life without parole by declaring them irreparably corrupt. And thats exactly what the Baton Rouge district attorney pushed for in Montgomerys case....

Montgomerys case has languished in part because the state didnt know quite how to handle Louisianas 300 juvenile lifers whod won the right to resentencing. Should an inmate have a full-blown sentencing hearing that would resemble those used in capital cases? And who should decide the outcome, a jury or a judge? The courts put Montgomerys case on hold while the state Legislature considered a bill that would automatically grant juvenile lifers a shot at parole after theyd served 30 years in prison. But the bill died last summer, and although its been taken up again this year, the courts have decided to move forward without any new legislation. Some juvenile lifers have been able to win plea bargains that freed them, but they arent the majority.

Working against Montgomery is the fact that the adult children and grandchildren of his victim have been involved in the process and are opposed to his release....

Montgomery is one of many juvenile lifers whose sentences remain in limbo after the Supreme Court decision. Michigan, for example, has about 350 juvenile lifers behind bars. Since the Supreme Court decision in Montgomery, the state has begun resentencing them. [Juvenile Law Center's Marsha] Levick says that in about 85 percent of those cases, prosecutors are again seeking life without parole. In one jurisdiction, the local prosecutor is the same former judge who sentenced many of the inmates to life in the first place. She has requested new life sentences for 44 of 49 inmates serving life without parole for murders they committed before the age of 18....

Jody Kent Lavy, executive director of the Campaign for Fair Sentencing of Youth, visited Montgomery in Angola earlier this year and says that because of the resistance of states like Louisiana and Michigan to implementing the Montgomery decision, the high court really needs to take another step to bar life without parole [for juveniles] outright. She notes that local district attorneys are usually elected, and so the Montgomery decision still leaves room for racially charged decisions, politically motivated decisions, as opposed to what is fair. It keeps me up at night.

A state court judge heard Montgomerys case last month and promised a decision by late June.
It will be come as both a welcome haven for cocktail lovers on one of the rougher corners of the Tenderloin as well as one of the clearest examples of neighborhood gentrification in recent years. But with the debut of 98 Turk, a.k.a. Biig, the new upscale cocktail spot in what was once the extremely dive-y 21 Club at Turk and Taylor  and opened sporadically in recent months, from the team behind the tiny former TenderNob bar named Big  the neighborhood now has what appears to be its first reservation-only drink oasis since the opening of Bourbon & Branch and its interior Wilson Bar.

Hoodline has the word on the rebranding (though it seems as though the name Biig may be sticking around as well), which comes after a couple of months in which the bar was open only softly open at certain hours. Bar manager Ronnie Buders  who also served as co-curator of the Trick Dog Mural Project  says that the team is hoping to create an elevated and adult cocktail experience, something like what existed at Big but with a little more breathing room.





Guests can currently make reservations by email or via Instagram, or show up and buzz at the door and take your chances  possibly getting sent to another nearby bar until a seat opens up. Hours remain somewhat limited, with the bar only open Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday evenings until July, when they plan to open on Wednesday as well  Annie from the Biig team suggests they're doing to this build a clientele on nights when other nearby bars aren't open.

And like Big before it, it sounds like there's no menu, and bar staff will create bespoke drinks based on your mood, tastes, and spirit preferences. Buders explains to Hoodline that the host will serve guests water upon arrival and will be able to fix a simple Martini or Manhattan from a rolling cocktail cart to tide you over until a bartender can come and suss out your desires.

The process of creating 98 Turk/Biig has taken a fairly long time. It's been nearly two years, in fact, since the 21 Club closed and we first heard that the team of Jordan Langer and Peter Glickshtern, along with Ryan Hisamune and Ryan Melchianothe (who are also partners in Oddjob and SRO in SoMa, and Jones in the Tenderloin) were going to bring Big back to life in the space.

And as we discussed in our roundup of the city's best craft cocktail establishments last week, for such a tiny bar, Big gave birth to several other notable cocktail spots, including SRO, and Benjamin Cooper, where former Big bartenders Brian Felley and Mo Hodges took their talents in 2015.



98 Turk / Biig - 98 Turk Street at Taylor - Open Sunday to Tuesday, 6 p.m. to 1 a.m. Opening Wednesdays starting in July.

Related: The 23 Best Cocktail Bars In SF
A UC Berkeley student who says she was violently attacked by protesters on campus the night of a planned speech by Milo Yiannopoulos in February is now suing the university  along with a host of others including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi  for withholding police protection and allowing attacks like the one she suffered. As TMZ reports, the woman says she was "painfully pepper-sprayed" by "masked and unmasked assailants" within 15 minutes of her arriving at the Feb. 1 event, which was quickly canceled by the university as protests erupted that were both peaceful and anarchic  ultimately making national headlines and garnering a tweet from President Trump.

Kiara Robles, who on Twitter calls herself a conservative who is against political correctness and SJWs (social justice warriors), is suing for $23 million and names as defendants UC Berkeley, the university president, chancellor, the UC Regents chair, the mayor of Berkeley, Berkeley's chief of police, and Pelosi.

In the video below you can see Robles wearing a Make Bitcoin Great Again* hat and getting interviewed by ABC 7, followed by the pepper-spray attack from an on-looker.

My friend was giving an interview when some coward peppersprayed her #Berkeley pic.twitter.com/CDpEqDsw2A  janey  (@janeygak) February 2, 2017

Per TMZ, which obtained documents from the suit, Robles is accusing university officials of "willfully withholding police manpower" because they disagree with conservative views, and she accuses Pelosi of encouraging violence toward Trump supporters.

The university has responded in a statement saying, "We are confident that UC [Police Department's] actions will be vindicated against the plaintiff's uninformed allegations." And they say they will vigorously defend their actions and look forward to "contesting this collection of false claims."

Robles posted a video to YouTube last fall coming out as both gay and as a Trump supporter. Subsequently, after her attack on campus the night of the Yiannopoulos event, she posted the video below, condemning the violence of protesters on the left, and detailing what she experienced after the pepper-spraying.

The cancelled event with Yiannopoulos on February 1 was followed by a pair of pro-Trump/alt-right rallies in downtown Berkeley that also turned violent, with anarchists and various liberal factions seeking to face off against conservatives and those they deem to be neo-Nazis. Arrests were made during and after both rallies, and all three events led the university to cancel a planned speech by conservative firebrand (and newly minted Trump critic) Ann Coulter last month.

At the time, UC Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks wrote an op-ed in the New York Times suggesting that the school was "under attack from both sides." In defending the university's decision to either reschedule or cancel the Coulter event, Dirks wrote, "While the school remains absolutely committed to ensuring that all points of view can be voiced and heard, we cannot compromise the physical safety of our students and guests in the process."

Previously: UC Berkeley Cancels Breitbart Editor Milo Yiannopoulos Event Amid Protests, Trump Pens Angry Tweet



*This post has been corrected to show that Robles is wearing a "Make Bitcoin Great Again" hat, not a "Make America Great Again" hat.
A Santa Clara County jury has spared the life of 26-year-old Antolin Garcia-Torres by giving him a sentence of life in prison without the possibility parole.

According to KRON 4, Garcia-Torres was convicted of the 2012 murder of 15-year-old high school student Sierra LaMar last month. The jury was given the option of sentencing Garcia-Torres to death by lethal injection, but after two days of deliberation, they instead chose to just lock him up forever.

LaMar disappeared on her way to school on March 16, 2012 and her body has never been found. DNA has linked Garcia-Torres to the disappearance and presumed murder of the girl. Her DNA was found in his trunk, among other evidence. (SFist has brought you news of this case before.)





Garcia-Torres was also charged with three attempted kidnappings of women in a Safeway parking lot in 2009. The Santa Clara District Attorney's Office has issued the following statement:

A jury today sentenced the murderer of 15-year-old Sierra Lamar to life without parole. Antolin Garcia-Torres, 26, was convicted last month by the same jury of Sierra's first-degree murder, as well as Taser attacks and kidnapping attempts on three other women. District Attorney Jeff Rosen, who had sought capital punishment, said he was satisfied that the convicted murderer would never draw "another free breath." District Attorney Rosen said, "For us, for our community, this is a day of significance and sadness. Yes, it is a day of justice and ultimate accountability for the person that snatched Sierra's future away. But, no, Sierra is not coming home. Human justice can hold the guilty accountable, but it cannot resurrect the dead. There is no joy with today's death verdict, only mourning for the murder of a child, a void that will ache forever, a hole that will never be filled." The jury deliberated for three days to decide the sentence, following a penalty phase trial. The three kidnapping attempts - all against women in grocery store parking lots - occurred in 2009. Sierra Lamar was kidnapped in Morgan Hill in 2012 and killed. Her body has not yet been found.

LaMar's family was hoping Garcia-Torres would receive the death penalty. At a press conference following the sentencing, LaMar's father Steve said, "I would be lying if I didn't say I am disappointed in the verdict. He'll be able to live, Sierra won't. He'll be able to breathe. Sierra doesn't. He'll be able to eat everyday, see his family, and we don't have that."

"He will continue to live in bondage as long as he lives his life. I feel at peace that he will not be on the streets to harm another child but the angst will be in our lives forever," said LaMar's mother, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. She also hopes that Garcia-Torres will one day confess to the crime and reveal the location of Sierra's body.

Garcia-Torres showed no reaction when his sentence was read.

Related: Defense Lawyer In Sierra LaMar Case Says She's Not Dead, Just Missing
It is none too unusual for the conservative blogosphere to gin up conniptions over any LGBTQ artistic endeavor or any institution with rolls of public employees. But the latest coordinated takedown attempt hilariously targets the completely innocuous childrens face-painting-and-cookies program known as Draq Queen Story Hour. The Michelle Tea-founded kids' storytime program is held regularly at libraries, schools, and bookstores here in SF, in Los Angeles, and Brooklyn. But Drag Queen Story Hour just got dragged into the culture wars by the widely read and influential National Review, in their piece titled "Tax Dollars Are Paying for Drag Queens to Read Stories to Children," which goes orange-alert over the claim that people around the country are interested in having their tax dollars spent paying for drag queens to read to their children.

While that is the future that liberals want, the claim is inaccurate. The Library's Drag Queen Story Hours are not taxpayer funded, the San Francisco Public Library's public relations team says in a statement to SFist. Drag Queen Story Hour is paid for through the programming grants for innovative and engaging community programs at each neighborhood library, supported by Friends of the San Francisco Public Library and not with city tax dollars.

The National Reviews attack on Drag Queen Story Hour is not isolated. In recent weeks, the program has also been criticized on Breitbart, in the Glenn Beck-founded The Blaze and on smaller wingnut blogs like the Illinois Family Institute and Christian News. Intrigued by the fuss, SFist visited Drag Queen Story Hour this weekend at the SF Public Librarys Eureka Valley Branch, where local queen Panda Dulce (known in the default world as multimedia journalist Kyle Casey Chu) read two children's books to a crowd of more than 200 parents and children.





"Youth are fascinated and enchanted by the makeup, the larger-than-life features, the fantasy," Panda told SFist. "Why not indulge their imaginations, and teach them acceptance in the process?"



"When I taught second grade, I heard kids yell faggot all the time in the playground, she continued. Even as an adult, it struck me with the same visceral sharpness. Before leaving that position, I told my class that I was gay. Concerned, one student responded, 'Dont say that about yourself, Mr. Kyle. This student wasn't aware that gay was an identity, that it was anything more than a name to make you hurt.

Juliana Delgado Lopera, executive director for Radar Productions who produce the event, sees the programs popularity as proof that it addresses a genuine need. The Library feels that this is a necessity that the community is responding to, Lopera told SFist. Right now, were divesting [money] from education and the safety net for low-income people to go and invest in the military and in a wall.





Image: Radar Productions

"Having a drag queen in a position of leadership shows [kids] that they can be whoever we want to be, she continues. Usually drag queens have been relegated to the bar. Were taking the drag queens out of the bar and putting them in a position of power where she is leading the youth. Maybe thats where some of the anxiety comes from."



But despite the grief from right-wing media, The response has been overwhelmingly positive, according to Eureka Branch childrens librarian Bix Warden. "Most publications who've covered it think its a wonderful thing. Its been in the New Yorker, its been in the New York Times. Its a very sweet and innocent program. The drag queens come in and they read a couple of stories, they sing some songs, the kids get their pictures taken with them. Theres face-painting and cookies. Its a great family day at the library.



Additional Drag Queen Story Hours will feature Honey Mahogany this Saturday, June 10 at the Main Library, Yves St. Croissant on Saturday, June 17 at the Bernal branch, and Black Benatar on Saturday, June 24 at Oaklands Dimond Recreation Center. Draq Queen Story Hour isn't a gay recruitment program, said Panda Dulce, who then joked, we are still workshopping on that proposal for 2018.



Related: What It's Like To Be Gay, Out, Or In Drag At Mission High School


Meet CrimeMapping.com, the website that BART police are now utilizing to upload the transit agency's crime data.

"It works by, uh, people loggin' on to the internet," explained BART Police Deputy Chief Ed Alvarez to KRON 4.

After one has dialed up to the information superhighway, exploring CrimeMapping is just like any other crime tracking website. You just scan a map of the area you're in, or curious about, and click on the various pop-up clip art bits of each crime at the location of occurrence. For example, the little bubble with the "Hamburglar" icon means a robbery was reported. The martini glass/pill icon represents a drug or alcohol-related crime. Those of us obsessed with locating every registered sex offender in our neighborhood are all too familiar with this technology.

"This new effort reflects my department's commitment to transparency and community oriented policing," said brand new BART police Chief Carlos Rojas according to the East Bay Times.

A new and easy way to access crime data for the BART system. More on the new transparency initiative: https://t.co/wRXkOKtCTZ  SFBART (@SFBART) June 7, 2017

What makes CrimeMapping news is that BART Police have recently added themselves to the list of agencies actively uploading crimes to the site. The San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, Berkeley, Hayward and Richmond police departments already add their incidents to the free site. One can search crimes using a number of filters, including reports by agency. Now that BART's on board, we can see everything that BART Police have been up to. For those of us true crime nerds and amateur sleuths, CrimeMapping is definitely an engrossing time-suck.

"This gives you the information at your fingertips. There is no reason not to know what is going on. The information is out there, it updates daily, gives you parameters to search on a daily basis or a monthly basis, to give you a good snapshot of the area you are traveling to and from or where you live. So we are definitely excited about it, putting that information out there, letting our customers know that everything we will know, you will know as well," Alvarez told KRON.

Explains CrimeMapping, which operates throughout the country, "Crime data is extracted on a regular basis from each department's records system so that the information being viewed through a Web browser is the most current available. This data is always verified for accuracy and all address information is generalized by block in order to help ensure privacy is protected."

Technology and BART have not always been the best of friends. The transit agency is currently embroiled in a lawsuit filed by a woman who used the BART Watch app, a smartphone app that lets users alert BART police to incidents in real time. The app also collects data about the user, including their location. Cue: lawsuit.

Crimes stay on the site for 180 days. You can start searching you own neighborhood, ex-boyfriend's house, or favorite BART station right here.

Related: The Safest And Most Dangerous BART Stations
We mentioned this in brief yesterday, but in some pretty big news, California Governor Jerry Brown has just signed a pact with China's Ministry of Science and Technology to cooperate on climate research and invest in low-carbon energy sources, with California acting essentially as nation-state in its own negotiations with the world's larges emitter of greenhouse gases. The New York Times refers to Brown as "a de facto envoy from the United States on climate change at a time when President Trump has renounced efforts to battle global emissions."

As the Associated Press reports, in addition to cutting separate deals with a pair of regional ministers, Brown also held a closed-door meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in which the two leaders "pledged to expand trade between California and China with an emphasis on so-called green technologies that could help address climate change."

"Nobody can stay on the sidelines," Brown said during his trip. "We can't afford any dropouts in the tremendous human challenge to make the transition to a sustainable future. Disaster still looms and we've got to make the turn." And without mentioning President Trump by name, Brown was clearly giving a nod to last week's decision to pull out of the Paris Agreement when he told a crowd "there are still people in powerful places who are resisting reality."

President Xi & I discussed the importance of expanding cooperation on green tech, innovation & trade: https://t.co/wxaB5hiUu1 #CAinChina pic.twitter.com/7dXPAxqc5t  Jerry Brown (@JerryBrownGov) June 6, 2017

Brown was careful to say that Xi spoke only in positive terms and appeared to have no "desire to get into verbal battles with President Trump."

Brown said of Xi that "It's very clear he welcomes an increased role on the part of California."

Earlier this week, the LA Times reported on Brown's stops in "cities that look a lot like California," and quoted the governor as saying, "The key to Paris was President Xi and President Obama meeting together. [Now] its up to President Xi to advance the ball. We want to stand behind him and make that possible."

Mother Jones broke news of Brown's rogue climate accords on Tuesday, noting that he and his delegation appeared at the Clean Energy Ministerial in Beijing and had plans to meet with 75 Chinese companies to discuss doing business with California. And they note that America's most senior government official, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, was in Beijing as well, but there were no reports of his having such high-level meetings with government officials.

The pacts Brown signed, including those with the Chinese provinces of Jiangsu and Sichuan and his talk with Xi, are non-binding, just as the Paris Climate Accord was non-binding, and they do not establish any new emission limits, as the AP reports.

But there are signs that China is committed to reducing coal emissions in the wake of the Paris Accord, and in the wake of public pressure to reduce the intense smog that covers many of the country's urban areas. Under the accord, China's emissions are supposed to peak in 2030 and fall after that, but the AP says they could achieve that goal a decade early. The country has canceled plans to construct 100 coal-fired plants, and China's coal consumption fell for three consecutive years through 2016, bumping back up so far in 2017.

California may be the world's sixth largest economy, but as Mother Jones points out, Brown's power as a state governor are limited in that he can't make unilateral commitments, and the state "cant shape foreign policy by itself, nor staff an embassy."

But as He Weiwen, senior fellow of the Beijing-based Center for China and Globalization and a former economic counselor at the Chinese consulate in San Francisco, tells the LA Times, "Washington and Beijing decide the policy level. [But] the actual investment projects on trade and other activities happen in the states and provinces."

Previously: Videos: Watch Jerry Brown And Gavin Newsom Trash Trump At The DNC


The SoCal man arrested in the beating death of an Australian tourist outside a San Francisco hotel was reportedly employed by the establishment to hang some curtains, and claims the admitted attack was self defense.

As previously reported, 33-year-old Matthew Bate, an analytical chemist visiting SF from Darwin, Australia, was killed in a brawl outside the Da Vinci Villa hotel on Van Ness Avenue at around 2 a.m. on Friday, June 2.

Shortly thereafter, police announced the arrest of 34-year-old Hesperia resident David Murillo in Bate's death by way of "severe head trauma," a San Francisco Police Department press release said at the time.

"Based on information and evidence immediately obtained at the scene, officers located and detained a possible suspect" at the Da Vinci Villa, police said. "At the conclusion of an interview with the detainee, it was determined that [Murillo] was responsible for Bates murder."

Murillo, who KRON 4 reports "was in San Francisco for work, installing drapes at the hotel," has no criminal record, San Francisco Public Defender Mark Jacobs says.

In court Tuesday, Jacobs said that Mr. Murillo had no intention to harm him or kill him, especially to kill him, the Ex reports. What happened was horrible for [the victim], but also horrible for Mr. Murillo.

KRON 4 reports that the confrontation "was among six people (3 vs. 3)." Per the Ex, "the fight began when two groups of men came upon one another near or inside the da Vinci Villa hotel."

Jacobs "could not say who instigated the conflict because he has not yet been given access to the police report," the Chron reports, but tells KRON that the punch that allegedly knocked Bate to the ground and caused him to fatally hit his head "was self-defense" and that Bate "fell awkwardly, and the incident could have happened to anyone."

In fact, Jacobs says that Murillo was "unaware that Bate was gravely injured until police knocked on his door at the Da Vinci Villa and detained him for questioning," according to the Chron.

He was crying, he was in shock, Jacobs tells the Chron, Hes a gentle, hardworking man with two little girls.

Prosecutors disagree, characterizing the punch as an "unprovoked attack."

It is our belief that the victim was punched in the head when he didnt see the punch coming, a District Attorney's office spokesperson says.

In court Tuesday, the charges against Murillo were reduced to involuntary manslaughter, assault, and battery. He pled not guilty, and is currently being held on $100.000 bail. He is expected return to court for a preliminary hearing next week.

Previously: Arrest Made In Death Of Australian Tourist; Family Of Victim Comes SF


A toddler was hospitalized and a woman arrested this week, after she allegedly fed meth to the child as he played in a popular Berkeley Park.

The strange and disturbing saga began Monday at around 3:31 p.m., when a woman later identified as 36-year-old Sayyadina Thomas allegedly approached a 2-year-old at Berkeley's People's Park as he played with his nanny, KRON 4 reports.

As the child climbed on a play structure, Thomas allegedly grabbed him and shoved something into his mouth. The Daily Californian reports that the nanny immediately checked his mouth, but found nothing. She called the University of California Police Department, which responded to the scene.

As police detained Thomas for a psychiatric evaluation, paramedics transported the child to UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital Oakland, NBC Bay Area reports. While speaking with police,Thomas said that she gave the child meth. An evaluation at the hospital confirmed that the child had indeed consumed methamphetamine. He was promptly treated, and is expected to make a full recovery.

"He was playing with the nanny in the play yard," a witness to the incident told NBC. "She just walked up to him a grabbed him, and she stuck her hands in his mouth."

ABC 7 reports that Thomas is well-known to park denizens, with one saying that "She's not a very good person. She steals everyone's stuff. She runs around talking to herself. She's crazy."

"Police also know Thomas, who they say lives in the park, alone," ABC 7 reports. "She's been busted for trespassing, indecent exposure, and probation violations."

And this time she faces charges of attempted murder, police say. According to ABC 7, she is expected to be arraigned Wednesday, and remains in police custody.
 Expand Mike Crute, owner of WWRD 1510AM and host of "The Devil's Advocates"

Long ago, talk radio wasnt synonymous with right-wing diatribes. Restoring balance on the airwaves (and via podcasts) motivates Mike Crutes recent purchase of WRRD 1510 AM as a medium for his talk show, The Devils Advocates, with co-host Dominic Salvia.

Why do you call it Devils Advocates?

We envisioned a show with passionate political debate among ideologically different hosts and guests. We launched in Madison in the midst of the Scott Walker recall in early spring 2012. Dominic and I have a similar a sense of humor, a 25-year history as former college roommates, and the shared philosophy that the arguments are never personal, only politics.

I bought WRRD 1510 AM, in response to IHeart Media, our former host station and local production partner in Madison, giving us a 10-day notice that they were flipping the successful Progressive Mic 92.1 FM format to music, on the day Donald Trump was elected president.

Our show had already signed a national syndication contract, effective Jan. 2, 2017. We had a loyal local Wisconsin audience we could no longer reach and an obligation to produce, but no studio to produce our new national show. We launched The Devils Advocates with no Wisconsin affiliate in a rental studio for the first month of our syndication.

When we only played in Madison, we always led The Devils Advocates show with Wisconsin politics. Now we do two hours of Trump for 18 markets with a mix of other relevant national politics between 3-5 p.m. CT. We then do a Wisconsin happy hour beginning at 5, focusing on Wisconsin callers and politics.

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As a station owner, I am able to allow others to expand upon my vision as well. Earl Ingram Jr. hosts our morning show between 6-8 a.m. weekdays. Earl does more Milwaukee-centric politics, long-form interviews, and has insights into the African American community that I do not.

What else are you airing?

We have the nationally syndicated, progressive favoritesStephanie Miller Show 8-11 a.m. and the Thom Hartmann Show 11 a.m.-2 p.m. I am also hosting Wisconsin News Hour, afternoons between 2-3 p.m., doing more Wisconsin-centric politics and interviews as a lead-in to The Devils Advocates.

Whats your goal?

My goal for the station is commercial success. This is a business, and I have everything I own at risk or collateralized to pull off the financing. My family is taking a huge risk. I need some local businesses to take a leap of faith with me and become sponsors.

My ultimate goal is to change the politics in the state of Wisconsin. That starts by appealing to a broader segment of audience, finding appeal with more than just the political left, influencing politically independent Wisconsinites by presenting facts first, not partisanship. You will know if we are succeeding if Republican turnout in Waukesha County declines 5-10% in 2018.

Do you sense a hunger for what youre doing?

WRRD 1510 AM is Wisconsins only independent radio voice. WISN, WTMJ pander to political conservatives in southeastern Wisconsin, propping up Scott Walker and Donald Trump with their support. The vast majority of Wisconsinites do not support Trump and many see that Walkers policies favor his wealthy campaign contributors over the rest of us.

WRRD is about trying to change the future of Wisconsin and America; this is my contribution. Please join us in the resistance. WRRD is Wisconsins Resistance Radio.
The former site of the Pabst Brewery is in the news again as plans are unveiled for new condos and apartments. Already anchoring development in that city within a citya district of turreted Teutonic castles and imposing crenellated strongholdsis the Brewhouse Inn and Suites along with its restaurant and bar, Jacksons Blue Ribbon Pub, 1203 N. 10th St.

The Brewhouse Inn boasts impressive, one-of-a-kind suites carved out of the fortress-like brewery. Dominating the lobby and public spaces are giant copper brewing kettles where workmen once labored with hops and grains alongside beautiful countertops made from crushed beer bottles and tables fashioned from repurposed plank floorboards. Jacksons Blue Ribbon Pub, formerly a warehouse where wheat and barely were stored, provides room service for guests and catering for events at the Brewhouse.

Although tucked away inside the Pabst district, Jacksons Blue Ribbon Pub attracts a lively crowd for lunch, dinner and drinks. Housed under 20-foot ceilings and with a patio attached, its inventive bar menu includes a variety of soups and attractively served salads, appetizers, sandwiches and wraps. The portions can be described as old Milwaukee and are geared toward a city with a big appetite. Appetizers include a giant hot pretzel served warm with horseradish and hot cheese dipping sauces and dusted with salt. Its large enough to feed a family.

Not surprisingly, given the buildings past, the Pub sells Pabst Blue Ribbon in cans, bottles and on tap. But they also serve Leinenkugel, Miller, Lakefront and other tap beers plus an enviable list of 60 bottled craft beers. Although it seems heretical to refuse a beer in such a setting, wine and cocktails are also served.

While the Brewhouse Inn and Jacksons Blue Ribbon Pub are full of history, they arent museums. The old brewery buildings have been put to new uses in a rapidly developing destination zone at the edge of Downtown.
Agatha Christies 1939 mystery And Then There Were None is a delightfully episodic little crime drama. Sunset Playhouse revisits the classic tale in three acts with two intermissions. At the beginning of the show, the 10 characters arrive at a spacious island estate tastefully rendered for the stage by scenic designer Nick Korneski. In the course of the drama, members of the ensemble are killed off one by one until the big climactic ending. Director Carol Dolphin has found a nice pacing for the show, allowing various members of the ensemble some rather sharp moments.

Of particular note in the cast is Michael Pocaro as retired judge Sir Lawrence Wargrave. A piercing intellect in a traditional murder mystery can feel tedious in the wrong hands. Pocaro deftly navigates the role in a calmly charismatic performance. Its also nice to see a couple of new faces in a Sunset cast. James Boylan makes his debut as a roguish soldier of fortune who seems quite comfortable at the estate. Boylans leading male charm is matched by Caitlin Elftman in her Sunset debut as secretary Vera Claythorne. Claythorne may be one of the more levelheaded intellects in the cast, but Christie doesnt give her much to do in the twists of the plot. Thankfully Elftman is able to keep the character quite interesting without upstaging the rest of the ensemble.

Through Jun. 18 at Sunset Playhouses Furlan Auditorium, 800 Elm Grove Road, Elm Grove. For tickets call 262-782-4430 or visit sunsetplayhouse.com.
Five years ago, Republican legislators were suddenly thrown into a panic to pass a new wave of gun laws across the country. The cause of all that panic was a truly horrific event.

Shortly before Christmas in Newtown, Conn., a troubled young man who never should have had a deadly weapon massacred 20 beautiful 6- and 7-year-old elementary school children along with six school staff members. That heart-breaking national tragedy had a powerful, emotional impact on most decent Americanswhich, of course, was what Republicans and their campaign supporters at the National Rifle Association (NRA) were in such a panic about.

The NRA was terrified the massive slaughter of sweet, innocent children would put tremendous pressure on politicians to pass universal background checks to keep guns out of hands of dangerous people and possibly even ban civilian possession of military assault weapons designed solely to kill human beings in large numbers.

But not to worry. The NRA could still count on Republicans to fend off sensible gun regulations. In the year after Newtown, Republican legislators around the country obediently passed laws weakening gun regulations even further and repeatedly defeated universal background checks.

Wisconsin Republicans, under Gov. Scott Walker, had done their part for the NRA the year before Newtown to flood city streets with guns when it became one of the last states in the nation to allow citizens to secretly carry concealed deadly weapons. But if you think the NRA is done having Wisconsin Republicans perform stupid pet tricks, youre wrong. The next absurd step the NRA wants legislators in Madison to take is incredibly dangerous for gun owners themselves as well as anyone within shooting range.

Get this. Its to eliminate any screening, licensing or training at all for anyone carrying and using concealed weapons in Wisconsin. The 328,820 citizens known to be carrying weapons of mass destruction on Wisconsin streets would no longer need a permit or any training in how to use those deadly weapons to blow away anyone who frightens them.

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How exactly does not knowing how to safely operate a deadly weapon benefit a gun owner or anyone unfortunate enough to be in his or her vicinity? It clearly doesnt.

Deer hunters often boast about receiving 10 hours of gun safety education to receive a hunting license in Wisconsin. Its long been recognized as a basic requirement for a responsible hunter. And deer hunting is a piece of cake compared to killing another person. The deer are never armed or even very scary.

Theres always been something highly suspicious about the strong objection by the NRA and other supporters of concealed carry toward properly training people how to safely use personal handguns. After all, people acquire those deadly weapons for the express purpose of protecting themselves and their families in times of extreme terror.

We should assume everyone in that situation is an amateur at shooting and killing other people. Anyone whos shot so many other people its become old hat probably shouldnt receive a permit. Oh, wait. The NRA wants to eliminate screening and permits.

Loading Which End of the Gun?

But if the idea is to protect yourself or your loved ones, wouldnt it help to know which end of the gun the bullets come out of?

The biggest controversy former Republican Atty. Gen. J. B. Van Hollen stirred up in 2011 after his party passed concealed carry was when he tried to require four hours of training with an actual gun to receive a permit.

Republican legislators reviewing administrative rules immediately threw out that lengthy safety training as too onerous. The requirement was reduced to pretty much any training providing tips on gun safety whether it included actually handling a gun or not. Now Republican state Sen. David Craig of the Town (R-Vernon) and state Rep. Mary Felzkowski (R-Irma) are pushing the NRAs effort to end even that minimal training.

The NRA still boasts about training more than a million gun owners every year in gun safety. But today the concealed carry link on its website seems to be devoted primarily to hustling hefty insurance coverage in case you happen to murder someone you shouldnt.

The truth is the NRA doesnt really care about the safety of gun owners anymore. The organization appears to have become a front for gun manufacturers whose only concern is selling more guns. Gun manufacturers dont really care whether the gun purchasers swelling their profits are homicidal, suicidal or crazier than an outhouse rat.

Once people have been scared into buying guns, let them figure out how to use the things without hurting themselves. The ridiculous fantasy people have of heroically saving the day by shooting all the bad guys isnt going to happen anyway.

Guns have never improved anyone on either end of them and now even the NRA has given up on trying to protect gun owners from themselves.
Another attack on our democracy is swirling around the state capitol these days and that is a bill promoted by the right-wing, corporate-funded national group, ALEC, to add Wisconsin to the group of states calling for a constitutional convention to amend the U.S. Constitution to mandate a balanced budget. They need 34 states to call for the constitutional convention and currently there are 29 signed on, all states with legislatures dominated by Republicans.

There are a number of problems with this idea and there are very good reasons why America has had only one constitutional convention. That was in 1787, and it was chaired by George Washington. If we have a constitutional convention, you cant limit the potential changes to one topic. Everything is on the table, especially the Bill of Rights and its First Amendment. Free speech, freedom of the press, right to assemble and a womans right to reproductive choice are among the list of items the right wing wants to change.

Even if you make the unrealistic assumption that the constitutional convention would stay limited to a balanced budget amendment, that in itself would be a disaster. If the federal government had a balanced budget amendment, we would find ourselves in a depressionnot just a recession but a depressionin the next decade or two. We basically have a version of a free market economy, and free market economies have business cycles. Since entrepreneurs and businesses make individual choices and invest heavily in a growing economy, they eventually produce far more than people or businesses are willing to buy. This overproduction causes layoffs and laid-off people buy fewer goods and services and the economy begins to spiral downward. There are basically two ways to end this downward spiral: have the economy hit bottom, go into a deep depression and eventually begin to start growing again by itself which can take years and years; or have the federal government step in and deficit spend. Once the economy has recovered and is generating a surplus, the government can pay down the debt.

Guaranteeing Another Great Depression

In the 1930s, we learned how to manage the business cycle and have not had a depression since then. Franklin Roosevelts New Deal helped to lessen the Great Depression, but it was only when we entered World War II and had massive government spending that we fully recovered. For about four decades after the end of the Depression, there was pretty much agreement across the political spectrum on the fact that the government plays a necessary role in managing the flow of the economy to prevent another depression. Unfortunately, things changed in the Reagan years when the right wing ideologues were in control. Despite our learning how to manage our economy, there are those wealthy special interest groups that choose to ignore what we have learned and push for austerity, so they could have lower taxes. There are enough of their well-funded legislators who basically do not understand how a complex economy works, but are happy to listen to those who fund their campaigns.

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For those who are overly concerned about the deficit, the solution is straight forward: fair taxation, and that means that the wealthy pay their fair share. The problem arises because whenever the Republicans get in power the first thing they want to do is cut taxes for the wealthy and a little for the rest of us, whether the country has a surplus or a deficit. The last time we saw a surplus was toward the end of the Clinton administration. The reason we had a surplus under Clinton was that he raised taxes on the wealthy and at the same time he created an environment for growth that saw 23 million new jobs created during his eight years. Then, the Bush administration came into office and we had massive tax cuts for the wealthy and two unfunded wars. So, if we want to lower the deficit we know what to do, and that is to raise taxes on the wealthy. Raising taxes on the wealthy has very little impact on economic growth because they will spend what they want to spend whether they pay a little more in taxes or not.

In the end, this idea of a balanced budget amendment is ridiculous and it is sad to see all of these state legislators falling in line and supporting an idea that will create a depression and severely hurt their constituents. Any honest Ph.D. economist, meaning one who is not on the payroll or a consultant for some special interest group, understands that a balanced budget amendment is a recipe for disaster.
Because theres no better way to celebrate the unique character of your city than with a contest directly Xeroxed from another citys, two Wisconsin municipalities have launched campaigns that might look mighty familiar to Milwaukeeans. Artist submissions are being sought for The Peoples Flag of La Crosse, a project to connect the people of La Crosse through a shared symbol of unity and togetherness, and promote La Crosses creative culture, the La Crosse Tribune reported in February. If Milwaukees remarkably similar Peoples Flag campaign is anything to go by, that part about promoting the citys creative culture probably should have been in bold.

This Saturday the winner of that contest will be unveiled. The winning design will become an alternative to the La Crosses current flag whichagain, this may sound familiaris a quaint but dated relic with the audacity to capture the character and feel of the city. Its charming as hell; just look at how many beams of joy are radiating out of the sun:

Seriously, stare at that flag for 10 seconds and youll feel a little bit better about the world. Replacing that flag would be like throwing away the blanket your grandma hand-stitched for you because it doesnt match your iPhone case.

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Meanwhile, this week Eau Claire announced the winner of its own Peoples Flag campaignno, its not a coincidence that these campaigns all share the same name, contest models and website designs. The one's harder to criticize, since Eau Claire doesnt actually have an official flag for the people to usurp. The winning design, Clear Water Revival by Mike Berge, is clean, pleasant, modern and utterly nondescript, using blue to symbolize the most unique thing about any city: water. Again, stop me if this sounds familiar.

Eau Claires winning design was just announced Monday, but in the spirit of unity and togetherness, the Peoples Flag campaign has already set up an online shop selling prints, posters, hoodies, T-shirts, cell phone cases, laptop skins, throw pillows, tote bags, mugs and, uh, an acrylic block. To be fair, thats a fraction of the swag the Milwaukee Peoples Flag campaign is hawking (nine different kinds of bedspreads!), but still: an acrylic block.

So whats going on here? Honestly, is there some sort of powerful vexillology think tank raising money to launch these campaigns all over the country? Is Roman Mars overseeing a vast conspiracy to remake every city flag in America in the image of a circa-2014 fast-casual restaurant logo? Is this the strangest astro-turf phenomenon of our time, or are Millennials honestly just that passionate about flag design? All I can say is watch out, Town of Winchester: The creative class is coming to wipe that smug rural image off your face.
PRIMGHAR, Iowa | I'll have a feature in Thursday's Journal about the upcoming 100th birthday celebration for the O'Brien County Courthouse, which takes place June 16.

I didn't quite have enough time in that piece to write a bit about Hannibal H. Waterman, so I'll share here. Waterman came to O'Brien County with his wife, Hannah Waterman, and their daughter, Emily Waterman, in 1856. They settled five miles northwest of Peterson, Iowa, which, for a time, was the Clay County seat.

Hannah Waterman taught school as other settlers became established locally. The first O'Brien County Courthouse was a log structure built on the Waterman farm. Eventually, the county bought 40 acres nearby and moved the log courthouse to that site, which became known as the town of O'Brien, about three miles west of Peterson.

For about four years, this site served as the county seat, although many residents went to nearby Peterson for their business needs. In 1872, voters in O'Brien County voted to move the county seat to a central location, a site that had nothing but prairie grass at the time.

The site became Primghar with two courthouses eventually being built in the center of town, followed by a third, which stands today. The $160,000 structure remains as a hub of government activity, the work-site for 32 employees.

The result would likely please Hannibal Waterman, who, according to the local history annals, "frankly stated that he wanted the county seat, its affairs and business as far away (from his farm) as possible."
CHICAGO  Chef Diana Davila ran the first part of our meal to the table. It was two tacos, one robustly meaty and salty, the other a nuanced, layered vegetarian delight. She set the plates down with a smile and began to walk off. It was a lively Saturday night in her shoebox of a restaurant, but I stopped her.

Whats your favorite beer on the menu? I asked.

She began to answer, then stopped herself. Clearly she expected me to ask her favorite dish at Mi Tocaya Antojeria, the Logan Square restaurant that Davila opened in March as a love letter to her time living and traveling in Mexico.

The beer list was built of six Mexican imports  Corona, Modelo Especial, Modelo Negra, Pacifico, Sol and Victoria  and one local craft beer on draft. In the spirit of a menu that seemed to be pushing me toward an imported Mexican beer, I chose Victoria, mostly because I couldnt remember how it tasted.

In a happy coincidence, Davila replied, Victoria is my favorite Mexican drinking beer.

The label on my beer bottle faced away from her so she spun it around and brightened.

Perfect! she said.

That cold 12-ounce bottle of Victoria had arrived at our small table with a thud  a handsome bottle with a white-and-yellow painted label featuring Victoria written in elegant cursive with long sloping lines curling off the V and the A. A sliver of lime poked out from the rim. I couldnt remember the last time Id been served a beer in a bottle. Or the last time Id resisted the urge to ask for a glass.

To see exactly what I was dealing with, I cast aside the lime and took a swig.

Delicious.

Victoria was bright, dry and refreshing with just the faintest malt body to make it interesting. It was simple and clean, with no cloying grain notes weighing it down. It worked especially well in the context of Davilas menu, providing a tidy counterpoint to the weight and complexity of the meaty taco, the tender ahi tuna atop rich mole verde and lightly gamy lamb meatballs coated in a fiery red ranchero sauce.

Halfway through the meal, I tried my luck with a second beer: Modelo Especial, which has overtaken Corona as the biggest-selling imported beer in some markets (including Chicago).

Meh.

Not the worst but a bit too much of that cloying grain flavor not present in Victoria. Unlike Victoria, it was better with lime.

I spent the next couple of weeks drinking 15 imported Mexican beers, weighing what works, what doesnt and why the style has been a rocket in the American beer market for the past 20 years, since Corona overtook Heineken as the nations biggest-selling import.

According to Chicago-based market research firm IRI, Mexican beer has accounted for nearly 70 percent of imported beer sales during the past year  and growing. Nine of the nations top 54 brands are Mexican imports, including two of the top seven (Corona Extra and Modelo Especial).

The old faithful top four brands  Bud Light, Coors Light, Budweiser and Miller Lite  are all down or flat from a year ago while their Mexican competitors are up: Corona nearly 9 percent, Modelo Especial 24 percent and Modelo Negra (recently rechristened from Negra Modelo), Pacifico and Modelo Especial Chelada all in the neighborhood of 20 to 30 percent.

So whats going on with Mexican beer? Though the best Mexican imports are legitimately tasty, its not just quality at work; if it were, three of the biggest sellers  Corona Extra, Modelo Especial and Sol  wouldnt be packaged in clear glass, which allows light to degrade beer in literal seconds. (The result is a taste most often referred to as skunky.)

The answer is a complex mix of demographics, marketing, history and nostalgia. Mexico is the sun-dappled place where we are from. Or it is where our family is from. Or it is where we vacation. We adore its food. And its impact on our culture is growing.

Mexicos brewing history dates to the arrival of German and Austrian immigrants in the mid-1800s, who made the Vienna lager  a clean lager with faint malt-forward heft (Samuel Adams Boston Lager is a modern example)  a common staple. However, like its American neighbor, body- and taste-lightening adjuncts slowly worked their way into recipes, and consolidation pushed the industry toward a lowest common denominator. Most major Mexican brands are currently in the hands of two dominant players: Grupo Modelo (owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev) and Cerveceria Cuauhtemoc Moctezuma (a subsidiary of Heineken International.)

For Davila, the appeal of Mexican beer lies in both personal history and the quality among the top tier. She is a first-generation American whose parents emigrated from San Luis Potosi, 250 miles north of Mexico City. She spent summers there from the ages of 6 to 18. Davila grew up in the Chicago suburbs, but Mexican beer reminds her of home.

Victoria reminds me of the times wed take an hour trip to the beach, she said.

Its also what she wants to drink alongside her food. Davila thought hard about assembling a lengthy list of craft beers for her restaurant  its just what new restaurants do in 2017  but she decided shed rather do whats best for her food.

When you think about Mexican food, and how complex and big and bold the flavors are, Mexican beer goes perfect, she said. I feel like food and beer pairings have gone off the wall. They can be fun, but when youre eating something, I like contrast. Mexican lagers are the perfect contrast. Why would I want to eat something with all these things going on in it and then a beer with all these things going on? They cross each other out and confuse the palate.

As a nod to craft beer, she opened with one tap reserved for Huitzi, a fairly complex strong golden ale brewed with hibiscus flowers, ginger, Thai palm sugar and honey made by local Latin brewery 5 Rabbit Cerveceria. Shes planning to add two more taps: one for 5 Rabbit golden ale and a low-alcohol, fruit-forward beer called Paletas.

But her biggest seller has been Modelo Especial, followed by Victoria (the majority of staff is Mexican and they love it) and Sol. In a neighborhood rooted somewhat in counterculture  at least as compared to, say, Lincoln Park  her customers tend to shun Corona as a mainstream option. She wondered if those same customers would be aghast at a beer list lacking, as she called it, bougie beer. Especially IPA.

No one has said anything, she said.

But heres the funny little secret about Mexican imports: Many are barely imports.

All Corona, Modelo, Pacifico and Victoria beer in the U.S. is brewed just outside the city of Piedras Negras, a mere 12 miles from the border with Texas. Anheuser-Busch InBev and Grupo Modelo were forced to divest the brewery and the U.S. rights to those brands by the U.S. Department of Justice as part of those companies merging in 2013.

The brands and the Piedras Negras brewery went to Constellation Brands, which had been importing and marketing the beers for 30 years. Suddenly it was also in the business of production, which it plans to augment with a new brewery in Mexicali, along the California border, in late 2019.

The loss of the Modelo portfolio was a blow for Anheuser-Busch InBev, whose bedrock domestic brands are mostly losing share. The company tried to compensate by importing Montejo (popular in the Yucatan) in 2014 and Estrella Jalisco (from the state of Jalisco) last year. Distributed in 12 states, including Illinois, Estrella Jalisco has performed reasonably well but lags far behind the Modelo brands. Montejo, which is available in Texas and California, has failed to make much of a dent.

Though Heineken International has several strong brands via Cerveceria Cuauhtemoc Moctezuma  Dos Equis, Sol and Tecate among them  Constellation is the clear leader.

Mexican beer is popular, but its not just about developing a Mexican imported brand and throwing it out there because that doesnt necessarily work, Constellation spokesman Mike McGrew said. Brands still matter. We are in a very, very fortunate position because we have been building our brands for more than 30 years.

Corona, for instance, has thrived when sold to Americans as beach, fun, sun and relaxation in a bottle. There may be no beer industry campaign in recent memory more effective than Find Your Beach, accompanied by spare, alluring images of beach and ocean.

But growth for Modelo Especial has been in double digits for 30 years, McGrew said. Hispanic consumers drove the growth until about three years ago, when a more multicultural audience kicked in. Next, the company has similar plans for Pacifico (framed as embodying the spirit of Baja  the adventure-seeker consumer, McGrew said) and ultimately, Victoria, which so far only gets Spanish-language advertising and retail support in the U.S.

Riding the coattails of Modelo Especial is Modelo Negra, a darker, malt-forward, food-friendly beer. Constellation is also using its portfolio to take a stab at innovation: low-calorie Corona Premier is being test-marketed in Atlanta, Charlotte, N.C., and Texas as a potential challenger to one of Anheuser-Busch InBevs strongest brands: Michelob Ultra.

Even American craft beer is taking notice.

Flying Dog, Oskar Blues, Ska and 21st Amendment breweries have all released Mexican-style lagers, joined in recent months by Sun King in Indianapolis (called Pachanga), Clevelands Great Lakes (Grandes Lagos, a lager brewed with hibiscus) and Uinta in Salt Lake City, which introduced Lime Pilsner in early spring.

Isaac Winter, Uintas head brewer of research and development, drank endless amounts of Tecate, Dos Equis and Pacifico while figuring out what Lime Pilsner should taste like.

Im not bashful about saying this  I really like Modelo and Tecate, Winter said, adding that his favorite is Pacifico. I tend to think of a lot of Mexican imports as drinkable and refreshing and not too heavy.

Winter points out that the best ones also boast slightly fruity esters from the yeast used, whereas a lot of domestic beers use boring yeasts.

Winters gripe against some Mexican imports is the same one I developed from drinking through those 15 beers over the course of a couple of weeks: Several are too sweet.

Sometimes breweries add too many crystal malts  sweet malts  that make the beer too cloying, Winter said. That does not lend itself to drinkability. There were a few beers that I felt on my teeth afterward.

He declined to name the beers too cloying for his taste, but I have no such issues: Ill always take a Tecate with a squeeze or two of fresh lime over a Corona for precisely this reason. Or even a Corona Light over a Corona. Corona Light might taste like carbonated carpet, but at least it dries out. And with an ample infusion of fresh lime, its passable.

Uintas Lime Pilsner is what a lot of these beers should be; its lean, dry and effervescent up front, followed by a long citrus finish. It was initially intended as a summer-only release, but interest from distributors was so fierce that it quickly became a year-round offering. In a sense, American crafts embrace of Mexican imports is the biggest compliment imaginable. Who knows  a couple might even make it onto Davilas beer list.
SIOUX CITY | Each day forward is described as a "grueling grind." But progress continues for the man seriously injured in a crash with a Sioux City Transit bus in November.

Following nearly seven months of medical care and therapy, Chad Plante, of rural Hinton, has learned to walk with a cane and is expected to regain full speech and cognitive abilities following the crash that left him with a traumatic brain injury and two broken legs.

"We are blessed, but we have an extremely long road ahead of us," Chad Plante's wife, Rosanne, said in a phone interview Tuesday. "He will probably be in outpatient therapy for months."

Chad Plante was injured in a Nov. 15 crash at the intersection of Lewis Boulevard and Outer Drive when a turning Sioux City Transit bus failed to yield and struck Plante's 1999 Chevrolet Tahoe.

The driver of the bus, Jamie Pica, was cited for failure to obey a traffic control device and failure to wear a seat belt. She is no longer employed by the city.

Plante returned to the home he shares with his wife, April 26 following two months at a Lincoln, Nebraska, rehabilitation hospital and 2 1/2 more at a rehabilitation center.

On Monday, the Sioux City Council voted to further assist the Plantes with payments for health insurance premium costs, lost wages, home health care costs and mowing expenses. They are authorized for a time period of six months.

The city had previously approved a payment assistance agreement in January to cover out-of-pocket medical expenses not covered by health insurance, as well as Plante's lost wages for 26 weeks and lodging, food, mileage and other miscellaneous expenses.

The city's legal department did not return a request from the Journal Tuesday for a total of the payment amount thus far.

"Obviously this is a traumatic and life-changing situation, and this was very needed," Rosanne Plante said of the agreement. "We were pleased this was approved."

She said that the agreements are by no means a final settlement, and the couple plans to file a lawsuit against the city for other damages, such as the pain and suffering involved, medical bills, property damage and the hours Rosanne has spent caring for Chad.

"When the lawsuit does happen, the city will be given credit for what they are paying us," she said. "But they will not be the only damages."

The lost wages will help, Rosanne Plante said, since Chad Plante was terminated from his job at Palmer Candy Co. last month. The addition of a home health aide will alleviate her from providing round-the-clock care in addition to running the acreage and continuing her law job -- responsibilities she juggled for the first month of their home stay.

She said she is thankful for the support her family has received in the past seven months. Last month, Chad Plante was able to escort Rosanne -- who was crowned Mrs. Iowa International in 2016 -- during the Morningside Days Parade.

She said the progress her husband has made has been due to his dedication to go above and beyond in his physical therapy.

"This has been hard-fought," she said. "This is 100 percent his incredible will to regain our life together. It is not easy."
PISGAH, Iowa | Two men have been charged with felony theft after authorities say they cut down walnut trees in a state-owned park and sold them for a profit.

Bradley Hagerman, 38, of Pisgah, and Eric Freihage, 30, of Council Bluffs, Iowa, face second-degree theft and two timber buying violations, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources said.

According to a press release the agency accuses the two of cutting down nine walnut trees at Loess Hills State Forest, a state-owned and DNR-managed park, in late January. The trees were then sold to Midwest Walnut in Council Bluffs for a profit of $4,713. The appraised value of the trees is more than $7,500, the release said.

On May 25, the department charged the men with the crimes and they turned themselves in after learning about their arrest warrants.

The release said both Hagerman and Freihage admitted to a DNR conservation officer that they transported and sold the trees.

Second-degree theft is a class-D felony and the timber buying violations are serious misdemeanors.

They have since bonded out of custody, the release said.
SIOUX CITY | In a press conference on Tuesday, the presidents of Morningside College and Western Iowa Tech Community College (WITCC) announced their schools will be joining forces for a new program to help students in the community college get a bachelor's degree.

Beginning this fall, the initiative, called "Pathways Program," will assist WITCC students in getting an associate degree there and then transitioning to Morningside to further their education.

Terry Murrell, president of WITCC, said this partnership will open new doors for his students.

"We know that many of our students would not have the option to attend a college like Morningside College right out of high school," Murrell said. "But with the strong foundation they receive here at Western Iowa Tech Community College, and the commitment by Morningside College to be as affordable and flexible as possible with those students... it's now very much a reality for those students."

Morningside president John Reynders said that launching the program was a matter of working together and jointly cultivating students.

Students that participate in the program should, by the time they receive their associate degree from WITCC, be ready for two years at Morningside, Reynders said.

"The goal is to ensure that each Western Iowa Tech student participating in this Pathways Program, is junior-year ready, to take full advantage of the Morningside College experience," Reynders said.

Morningside provost William Deeds said that specific academic programs were chosen by the colleges to be a part of the program as it launches.

"Those are programs in education, business and accounting, and social (and) behavioral sciences, we think there's mutual interest among the Western Iowa Tech and the Morningside College students to make those programs a viable way to start this program," Deeds said.
SIOUX CITY | State budget cuts could make spreading the word about tourist attractions in western Iowa more challenging, local tourism officials heard Wednesday.

Lawmakers reduced spending for the Iowa Tourism Office by 13.6 percent, or more than $2 million, from $15.5 million this year to $13.4 million for the fiscal year that begins July 1.

"At the Iowa Tourism Office, the way we'll absorb our share of the cuts is we'll reduce our marketing and advertising," Iowa Tourism Office manager Shawna Lode said. There will also be some staffing cuts as well as cuts to grants provided by the office.

Sioux City tourism shouldn't take too much of a hit from the state funding shortfall, though it will impact regional tourism organizations, said Erika Newton, the executive director of Sioux City's events and facilities department, and the president of Western Iowa Tourism.

"The state budget cut won't affect us too significantly," Newton said of the city.

The city will continue to actively promote Sioux City online as well as in print, she said.

Lode, who spoke Wednesday at Western Iowa Tourism's annual meeting Wednesday at the Sioux City Convention Center, said the expenditures are a key component to attracting out-of-state visitors, she said.

"We know this from research that we've done -- people don't consider Iowa as a travel destination," Lode said. "They just don't know what we've got to offer."

So, the Tourism Office is working on creative ways to market the state, and to meet prospective tourists where they are. This week, the agency brought in a group of famous Instagram users to promote Iowa.

"This week is the first time that we're hosting what we're calling an 'Insta-fam,' so it's a familiarization tour, it's bringing people into Iowa who aren't familiar with our state, and helping them experience some specific places," Lode said. "And in exchange for our hosting them, they're required to post on their own Instagram channels using our hashtag."

Promoting the state on Instagram, Lode said, is worth a shot.

"We know that people are getting their travel ideas more and more on social media," she said.

"Iowans are very humble people, we don't like to brag," Lode said. "And for the purposes of tourism marketing, we need to tell our story -- we need to tell why our communities are great."
According to court documents, Morales told investigators he was talking to his wife in his car in the 2200 block of Floyd Boulevard when he became upset after she told him she no longer wanted to be in a relationship with him and had been seeing another man. Morales said his next memory was that his wife was not breathing and she may have been dead, court documents said.
SIOUX CITY | A fresh paint job on a prominent water storage tank will pay homage to a hit 1940s song that put the city on the map for many outsiders.

During its scheduled repainting, the city plans to decorate the Singing Hills water tank with the city's name and notes from "Sioux City Sue," the 1945 tune by Dick Thomas and Ray Freedman.

"There are water towers all over the United States, and there are always the ones that you remember where theyre at. Thats what I wanted it to be," said Councilwoman Rhonda Capron, who came up with the idea as part of a local committee tasked with creating the design.

The tank, one of eight water storage facilities in Sioux City, sits atop a hill in Sertoma Park, where it is noticeable from Interstate 29, the Highway 75 bypass, Cone Park and Southern Hills Mall. It hasn't been repainted since its construction in the mid-1990s and would be the first to sport a city-funded painting design.

The idea came about at the suggestion of Sioux City Council members, who wanted a distinct yet cost-effective design on at least one of the city's repainted water storage tanks. The city formed a small committee -- which included Capron, special assistant to the city manager Rick Mach, Cindy Waitt and local artist Steve Avery -- to toss out ideas.

Mach said ideas included a carousel, a fishbowl and a bubble gum dispenser, but the musical notes -- a creative nod to the "singing" in Singing Hills -- won over the panel.

"We wanted something where kids would think, 'Lets go to that town that has that unique water tank,'" he said. "Ultimately, the tie-in to the Singing Hills came into play."

"Sioux City Sue" is a folk song about a red-haired, blue-eyed girl named Sue who fell in love with a cattle herder as he was "passin' through" Sioux City. Several performers, including Bing Crosby and Gene Autry, covered the song, with Autry starring in a 1946 movie of the same title.

The song's popularity also for a few years sparked a local "Sioux City Sue" contest, which required entrants to be blue-eyed, red-haired girls like in the song.

As staff continue to finalize the design, the City Council on Monday approved a $40,700 consulting services agreement with DGR Engineering of Rock Rapids, Iowa, for the project. The agreement will cover design and bidding services and administration and oversight of the project.

The city plans for painting to occur in spring 2018. An engineer's estimate for the painting costs is $220,000.
When I heard that Ajit Pai, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), was visiting Iowa this week and was scheduled to stop in Sioux City today to talk about one of his core priorities - expanding broadband internet access to all corners of rural America - I must confess, I got excited.

Growing up in rural Parsons, Kansas, Chairman Pai has publicly recognized the urgent need to help rural America keep pace. This, of course, is something I absolutely agree with.

In a day and age when connectivity is king, it's a problem that we must solve. From Wall Street to Main Street to the family farm, Americans are increasingly relying on broadband capabilities to access a wide range of information, run their businesses, or operate their farm equipment more efficiently. The digital age is here and no one should be left behind.

I support efforts in this endeavor because it means students living in small towns like Bronson and Oto will have access to the best educational resources in the world, it means rural business owners will have the connectivity they need to compete globally, and it means farmers will have a host of new tools available to remotely manage their operations, crops and cattle.

When Chairman Pai is in Woodbury County I hope he meets with the companies and cooperatives that serve our rural areas. Id like for him to learn about Western Iowa Telecom (WiaTel) and their current $25 million effort to extend fiber optic gigabit service to each commercial and residential customer throughout its 200-square-mile service territory or about Long Lines and how in the past four years, theyve invested over $15 million in fiber resources and new distribution technology to provide high-capacity backhaul to hundreds of towers to enable the major national cell phone carriers to deliver 4GLTE broadband to our rural markets. I believe that hearing from organizations like WiaTel and Long Lines will help generate the fresh ideas needed on to how to deliver broadband to those who still need it.

As Chairman Pai tours Iowa, no doubt he'll see firsthand the character, spirit and the work ethic of Iowans and affirm his commitment to helping us forge a better digital future. That being said, Welcome to Iowa, chairman. We have work to do.

David Gleiser is rural economic development director for Woodbury County.
IOWA CITY, Iowa  Gov. Kim Reynolds continues to keep her cards close to the vest as she considers end-of-the-fiscal-year budget decisions in the face of lower than expected revenue collections.

Wednesday at the University of Iowa, the new governor continued to say cuts  if needed  would be made selectively but declined to say if any area of the states $7.26 billion general fund budget would be spared.

Were going to take a look at everything, she said after hearing a presentation on the UIs growing use of biomass as an energy source.

Were not going to speculate on what thats going to look like because I dont know right now, she said. It fluctuates day-to-day.

Asked about higher education, Reynolds reiterated its too early to make promises. Lawmakers already reduced funding for the UI and Iowa State University by 6 percent and the University of Northern Iowa by 3 percent.

Right now, it wouldnt do anybody any good to speculate because we dont know what the numbers are and what the options are, she said.

Reynolds is working with Dave Roederer and Courtney Kaye Decker, directors of the departments of management and revenue, respectively.

Theyre looking at our options. Theyll be presenting those options to us in the near future, she said.

Her options are limited. State law requires a balanced budget and the fiscal year ends June 30.

Reynolds said her administration is looking at opportunities to grow the states economy  and state revenues.

Im leading a trade mission to China in July. Hopefully, thats another opportunity for us to bring investment and to grow our market share for our economy, said Reynolds, who became governor two weeks ago.

The state Department of Revenue reported taking in $966.3 million in gross tax receipts in May  the largest revenue month, given the April 30 deadline for filing personal income tax returns. But that total was 6.2 percent below the $1.03 billion collected the previous fiscal year, according to the Legislative Services Agency.

Coupled with a spike in state tax refunds, the states balance sheet was $75.1 million short of the projected 2.8 percent growth in tax revenue.
"The surviving victim in a fatal stabbing at Cornell University last August took the stand and the jury viewed police footage of the incident's aftermath Tuesday in the murder trial of Nagee Green.Green, 23, of Freeville, is accused of fatally stabbing 19-year-old Ithaca College student Anthony Nazaire to death following a party on Cornell's campus in the early hours on Aug. 28. Green has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder, first-degree manslaughter and second-degree assault. Nazaire was stabbed once, and classmate Rahiem Williams was stabbed three times in the back.Williams, who will be a junior in the fall, took the stand Tuesday morning in Tompkins County Court and said Nazaire was like a brother to me since they met freshman year. Williams then described the chaotic events of the night of the stabbing.........It was the first day for the prosecution to present its case following the conclusion of jury selection and opening statements Monday. Williams was the third witness of the day, following two first responders who painted the scene of what happened and where. Cooper Klein, a friend of Nazaire and Williams who graduated from Ithaca College in May, was the fourth witness to testify. He was involved in a fight during the altercation after the party but did not see either Nazaire or Williams get stabbed......... The trial will pick up Wednesday morning with the cross-examination of Klein.
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.
Benjamin Stoddert Middle School sixth grader Justin Tate, left, and seventh grader Reggie Johnson, check out sixth-grade reading teacher Holly Walshs freshly-shaved head.

WALDORF, Md.

Diane Richards, left, shaves teacher Daniel Di C occos head. Stoddert's Builders Club raised more than $4,000 for Relay for Life Charles County. The goal reached meant Di Co cco and sixth-grade teacher Holly Walsh would shave their head in front of students who donated to the fundraiser.

(June 07, 2017)About a month ago, the eight-member Builder's Club at Benjamin Stoddert Middle School in Waldorf started collecting money for Relay for Life Charles County. Eighth graders Alyssa Gerhart and Taylor Somerville asked the band teacher, Daniel DiCocco, if he'd be willing to shave his head if the club reached a certain monetary goal.He said he'd do it for $2,000. There was no way a small club was going to pull in that much, he figured. The Builder's Club collected donations outside of area businesses, put out coin collection jars at others and asked for a dollar or two from classmates.As the collections grew, sixth-grade reading teacher Holly Walsh said she would be willing to shave her headbut the group would have to collect a total of at least $4,000. Walsh is a volunteer with Relay for Life Charles County, helping organize the event and participating. She lost her maternal grandmother, Mae Jesswein, to cancer in 2010. "She's the reason I Relay," Walsh said.The Builder's Club raised more than $4,000, and on June 6 DiCocco and Walsh kept their promises. Walsh discussed why she was going through with it with her students. She wasn't getting rid of her long, dark hair for no reason. She asked them about the causes that they would be willing to do it for. "I want them to understand the background of it," Walsh said. "To see the reasoning behind it."DiCocco doesn't have a personal reason for participating. He said he likes the students who asked him to be a part of it. "I can't believe they really raised so much money," he said. "That blew my mind. But it's a good cause  they whittled me down."Diane Richards, a stylist at Nancy's Beauty Shop and a cancer survivor, first shaved DiCocco's head. Then, Richards lopped off Walsh's ponytail before getting out the clippers. While some girls urged Walsh to keep her sudden and asymmetrical bob, others encouraged her to get the buzz cut. "It's hair," Walsh said. "It'll grow back."DiCocco, a first-year teacher at Stoddert, agreed. "At the end of the day, it's just hair. It'll grow back," he said. "It's my first year  I survived and I'm bald."Relay for Life Charles County starts 6 p.m. June 9 at the Charles County Fairgrounds in La Plata. For more information, go to bit.ly/2qTSSrb.
PRINCE FREDERICK, Md.

Disclaimer: In the U.S.A., all persons accused of a crime by the State are presumed to be innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. See: so.md/presumed-innocence. Additionally, all of the information provided above is solely from the perspective of the respective law enforcement agency and does not provide any direct input from the accused or persons otherwise mentioned. You can find additional information about the case by searching the Maryland Judiciary Case Search Database using the accused's name and date of birth. The database is online at so.md/mdcasesearch . Persons named who have been found innocent or not guilty of all charges in the respective case, and/or have had the case ordered expunged by the court can have their name, age, and city redacted by following the process defined at so.md/expungeme.

(June 07, 2017)The Calvert County Sheriff's Office released the following incident and arrest reports.WEEKLY SUMMARY: During the two week period of May 22 through June 4, deputies responded to 2,506 calls for service throughout the community.FALSE STATEMENT:, is facing criminal charges for making a false statement to a peace officer. On April 5, Hutchins went to the Calvert County Sheriff's Office and filed an official complaint against Calvert County deputies alleging that he was the victim of police brutality and injured as a result. The Office of Professional Standards within the Calvert County Sheriff's Office conducted an internal investigation into the allegations which determined Mr. Hutchins' allegations were false. The investigation was reviewed by the Calvert County State's Attorney's Office at which time criminal charges for making a false report to a peace officer were pursued.BICYCLE ACCIDENT: On Tuesday, May 23, at approximately 4:07 pm, deputies were dispatched to the area of Calvert Towne Way and Calvert Towne Drive in Prince Frederick for a report of a juvenile bicyclist struck by a motor vehicle. A detailed investigation revealed a vehicle being driven by Mr. Robert Lehman, of Prince Frederick, was slowing down as he was approaching the intersection. At the same time a 12-year-old juvenile on a bicycle entered the roadway from a wooded area next to the road. The vehicle struck the bicyclist before being able to come to a stop. As a result of the crash, the bicyclist was ejected from the bike onto the roadway. The juvenile was transported via ambulance for minor injuries. The investigation ultimately determined the juvenile was at fault in this accident.MD. ROUTE 231 ACCIDENT: On May 23, at approximately 1:52 pm, a tractor trailer with a load of water, driven by Mr. James Bryan, of Lexington Park, was traveling eastbound on Maryland Route 231 in the area of Barstow Rd. At the same time a 2016 GMC, driven by Ms. Patricia Mento, of Waldorf, was traveling westbound on Maryland Route 231 when it crossed into the oncoming lane of traffic and struck the tractor trailer. The GMC came to rest on the right side of the west bound lane and the tractor trailer left the roadway into the parking lot of Home Place Hair Studio. The tractor trailer struck three vehicles in the parking lot, one of which was occupied by Ms. Kelly Roth of Huntingtown. The tractor trailer then rolled over and came to rest just east of Home Place Hair Studio. Mr. Bryan was flown by Trooper 7 to PG Shock Trauma. Ms. Mento and a 4-year-old child were treated on the scene and released. Ms. Roth was transported to Calvert Memorial Hospital with non-life threatening injuries. The accident is still under investigation and charges are pending.BURGLARY CASE #17-26930: On May 23, at approximately 4:00pm, Deputy B. Sampson responded to German Chapel Road, in Prince Frederick, for the report of a burglary. The victim stated he discovered a Dewalt nailer, kept in a gray case, had been stolen out of his shed. He last saw it approximately two weeks earlier.BURGLARY CASE #17-#17-26651: On May 22, at approximately 6:00am, Deputy T. Holt was dispatched to the Frying Pan Restaurant, located on HG Trueman Road, in Lusby, for the report of a burglary. The victim advised that sometime after 8:30pm on May 21st, someone had broken into the restaurant's freezer, by breaking the lock on the freezer door. There are no suspects at this time.CDS VIOLATION CASE #17-28168: On May 30, at approximately 3:00pm, Deputy M. Trigg conducted a traffic stop at Tulip Court/Ponds Wood Road, in Huntingtown, when he observed the driver not wearing a seatbelt. He made contact with, while Deputy C. Childress and his K9 partner arrived on the scene. A positive alert was made. Found in the vehicle was a Newport Cigarette Box containing 21 round pills (Oxycodone). He was taken to the Detention Center where he was charged with Possession of a Synthetic Narcotic (Oxycodone) and Possession of Paraphernalia (box).CDS VIOLATION CASE #17-27217: On May 25, at approximately 12:15pm, Deputy G. Gott responded to the area of Holly Drive and Calvert Boulevard, in Lusby, for the report of a suspicious person., matched the description of the male who had been going door to door asking strangers for money. After he was asked to leave the property, he requested a ride by Deputy Gott who agreed but stated he would need to be searched first. Found on his person was a plastic bag containing crack cocaine. He was transported to the Detention Center and arrested for Possession of Crack Cocaine.CDS VIOLATION CASE #17-27035: On May 24, at approximately 10:20am, Deputy G. Gott responded to the area of Appeal Lane/HG Trueman Road, in Lusby, for the report of a suspicious person seen along the wood line of the Appeal Elementary School. Upon arrival he observed a white male dressed in all black matching the description. While speaking with, Deputy Gott could smell a strong odor of marijuana emitting from Gibson's person. A search revealed a white pill in his left front coat pocket. He was placed under arrest for Possession of a Synthetic Drug (Suboxone) and Possession of Paraphernalia (plastic wrapper).CDS VIOLATION CASE #17-26946: On May 23, at approximately 7:30pm, Deputy E. Yates, Deputy D. Jacobs and Deputy D. Gatton responded to the Bayfront Park located on Bayside Road, in Chesapeake Beach, for the report of a firearms complaint. The complainant advised that he heard two gunshots coming from inside of the gated area of the park prior to calling 911. As deputies arrived an additional two shots were heard from inside the Bayfront Park, which was closed at dusk. The deputies observed two people in the park and after identifying themselves, the two individuals fled on foot. A foot chase ensued while establishing a perimeter around the area in hopes to locate the individuals. Around 8:30pm one of the individuals, identified through an El Salvador passport as, emerged from the woods. Rivera refused to identify himself, claiming he did not speak English. While searching through his wallet for proper identification, a paper fold containing a brown sticky substance (amphetamines) was discovered. A further search of Rivera's wallet revealed numerous compartments that were hiding controlled dangerous substances: two (2) plastic baggies containing a crystalized powder, (methamphetamines) weighting 17.5 and 16 grams each; five (5) plastic folds, each weighing between 3-4 grams, contained a brown powder (amphetamine); a separate plastic fold, weighing 2 grams, containing a brown sticky substance (amphetamine). Rivera was transported to the Detention Center for prisoner processing. During the processing Rivera refused to continue speaking in English and refused to provide critical information for his processing. He received charges of Obstruction of Justice, Reckless Endangerment, Trespass-Posted Property, Possession with intent to Distribute (Amphetamines) and Possession of nonnarcotic drugs (Methamphetamine and Amphetamines).CDS VIOLATION CASE #17-26739: On May 22, at approximately 5:30pm, Deputy T. Rzepkowski conducted a traffic stop when he observed a driver not wearing a seatbelt in the area of Bayside Rd/E Chesapeake Beach Road, in Chesapeake Beach. As the driver, identified as, rolled his window down, Deputy Rzepkowski could smell the odor of Marijuana coming from inside of the vehicle. Located on his person was a small silver pill holder containing two (2) different types of pills. A search of the vehicle revealed a white plastic bag containing 40.1 grams of marijuana, separated into individual zip lock baggies. Also seen on the front seat of the vehicle was a black digital scale, containing marijuana residue, and a black and silver smoking device. Meyers was arrested and charged with Possession of Marijuana 10+ grams, Possession of a Nonnarcotic Drug (Adderall), Possession of a Synthetic Narcotic (Suboxone) and Possession of Paraphernalia (digital scale).CDS VIOLATION CASE #17-26727: On May 22, at approximately 2:00pm, Deputy B. Sampson was dispatched to the Detention Center for the report of a drug violation. Upon arrival he was informed by Officer Lanier that during a routine cell search, various pills and a pair of tweezers were found in the bedding belonging to inmate, Ashley Howes, 31. Howes was charged with Possession of a Synthetic Narcotic (Suboxone) and Possessing/Receiving a Controlled Dangerous Substance while confined.DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY CASE #17-28088: On May 30, at approximately 7:30am, Deputy A. Ostazeski responded to Santa Fe Trail, in Lusby, for the report of damaged property. The victim explained that on the night of May 29th, at approximately 10:30pm, they were wakened by a loud noise outside of their residence. They checked outside but did not locate the cause of the noise. About an hour later they heard another loud noise but did not see anyone around their home. Later the morning of the 30th, they discovered that someone had damaged one of their vehicles. There were dents and scratches on the hood and trunk. Several egg shells were found in the grass, on the roof and pieces of brick were also seen in the yard and driveway. There was no damage to the residence.DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY CASE #17-27785: On May 28, at approximately 10:15am, Deputy J. Livingston responded to Dunleigh Drive, in Dunkirk, for the report of damaged property. The victim stated that someone had slashed their front and rear tires. The last time the vehicle had been driven was a month prior to the incident; therefore, it is not clear when the damage took place.DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY CASE #17-27684: On May 27, at approximately 8:00am, Deputy R. Kreps was dispatched to 10th Street, in Chesapeake Beach, for the report of damaged property. Upon arrival he made contact with the victim who advised the side of one of their front tires had been slashed. This damage occurred between 11:00pm on May 26 - 6:00am on May 27.DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY CASE #17-27565: On May 27, at approximately 7:00am, Deputy B. Boerum responded to Regency Drive, in St. Leonard, for the report of damaged property. The complainant advised someone(s) damaged their mailbox and the "Regency Drive" street sign. This damage occurred between 8:00pm on May 26 - 6:00am on May 27th.THEFT/BURGLARY CASE #17-28481: On June 1, at approximately 11:00am, Deputy T. Holt responded to Cove Point Road, in Lusby, for the report of a theft. The victim advised someone had stolen numerous pieces of jewelry from their residence: One two-piece Gold Diamond ring with a double diamond band, one pair of ruby earrings with diamond accents, one pair of gold link earrings, two pearl necklaces with 14ct gold and diamond accents, three Tasmanian devil charms and two pearl charms with 18ct. diamond accents.THEFT CASE #17-28238: On May 30, at approximately 10:30pm, Deputy D. Clark responded to the Rod n' Reel Restaurant, in Chesapeake Beach, for the report of a theft. A Security Guard advised he witnessed an employee,, leaving the restaurant with a (full) book bag and a (full) large trash bag. Due to prior thefts of food with no suspect identified, the employee was questioned as to what was in the bags. Curtis voluntarily opened both bags revealing 10 plastic one pound tubs of Fulcher's Gourmet Crabmeat, 8 plastic one pound tubs of Mary Ellen Brand Crab Meat and 6 one pound cans of Heron Point Seafood Crab Meat. He was arrested for Theft Less than $1,000.00.THEFT CASE 17-#28209: On May 30, at approximately 8:00pm, Deputy R. Shrawder responded to Avenue B, in St. Leonard, for the report of a theft. The victim stated that sometime between Saturday, May 27 - Tuesday, May 30 three (3) iPhone chargers and a camo strap were stolen from three of their unlocked vehicles. The vehicles had all been parked in front of their residence.THEFT CASE #17-27913: On May 29th , at approximately 8:30pm, Deputy R. Evans responded to Oak Crest Drive, in St. Leonard, for the report of a theft. Upon arrival the victim stated they noticed their unlocked van, parked in their driveway, had the glovebox opened and items were scattered throughout the vehicle. The only item that appeared to be missing was the owner's manual to the vehicle. The manual was last seen in the vehicle at 9:00pm on May 28th. A short time later, a neighbor discovered the manual located on the edge of the woods near Oak Crest Drive/Oak Crest Circle and returned it to the victim.THEFT CASE #17-27892: On May 29, at approximately 1:15am, Deputy R. Spalding responded to Briscoe Road, in St. Leonard, for the report of a theft and destruction of property. Upon arrival victim #1 explained they had parked their car at approximately 7:30pm and returned to it, around 12:30am, to discover the driver's side mirror damaged. The mirror was intact but the glass had been broken. Victim #2 reported the driver's side mirror had been knocked off the vehicle and money was stolen from the center console. He last observed his vehicle intact at 11:00pm that evening.THEFT CASE #17-27836: On May 28, at approximately 6:00pm, Deputy R. Kreps responded to the Giant Grocery store in Dunkirk in reference to a theft. Upon arrival he made contact with the manager who advised that an employee had asked a couple if they had paid for the cart of items they were pushing as they walked towards the exit. They didn't respond as they continued to their vehicle. The light skinned black male and female were well-dressed and had a cart loaded with "high value items". They placed the items into their car and took off before Deputy Kreps could arrive.THEFT CASE #17-27672: On May 27, at approximately 7:00pm, Deputy W. Beisel was dispatched to the Prince Frederick Safeway for the report of a shoplifting. The complainant advised that a white male attempted to purchase fireworks with food stamps and after being denied, took off running towards the woods with the fireworks in his hand. Deputy Denton arrived on the scene and helped to locate the male in the wooded area, where homeless individuals are known to frequent. They observed a white male fitting the description exiting a tent. As they approached the individual,, he admitted he had been in the Safeway. The Control Center advised Rice had previously been banned, indefinitely, from entering the store. An unopened can of Old Bay Seasoning was also discovered on his person, which he also had stolen. He was arrested for Theft Less Than $100.00 and Trespassing on Private Property.THEFT CASE #17-27386: On May 26, at approximately 11:00am, Deputy B. Boerum responded to Golden West Way, in Lusby, for a theft complaint. Upon arrival he met the complainant who advised someone stole his boat trailer from the side of his house. The victim last saw the trailer on April 25th when he parked the trailer in the side yard of the residence. The trailer was discovered missing on May 26 at approximately 6:00am. The trailer was approximately 25 feet long, silver, with an orange winch cable, yellow rollers and had one brake light out.THEFT CASE #17-27342: On May 26, at approximately 6:30am, Deputy B. Sampson was dispatched to Plateau Road, in St. Leonard, for the report of a theft. The complainant stated two vehicles had been broken into and items were stolen. The vehicles were unlocked and had been accessed through the rear sliding window. A wallet, credit cards and money were stolen. The credit cards had been fraudulently used at several locations.THEFT CASE #17-27316: On May 25, at approximately 10:15pm, Deputy P. Wood responded to Rivers Reach Court, in Prince Frederick, for the report of a theft. The complainant stated he parked his vehicle in a back parking lot, at approximately 7:00pm the night before; he attempted to drive the car at 9:00am this morning and realized the gas tank was empty. No suspects at this time.THEFT CASE #17-27089: On May 24, at approximately 4:00pm, Deputy R. Evans responded to Moonlight Lane, in Prince Frederick, for the report of a theft. The complainant advised a gray, 3-4 foot concrete "seahorse" statue was taken from their front yard. The statue was last seen on May 23th around 8:00pm. The statue was discovered missing around 4:00pm. The statue is rather large and weighs hundreds of pounds; therefore, it would probably take more than one person to move it.THEFT CASE #17-26697: On May 22, at approximately 1:00pm, Deputy T. Holt responded to Cove Point Road, in Lusby, for the report of a theft that had just taken place. The victim advised he watched someone get out of a white pickup truck, walked onto his yard and steal his "Don't Frack Maryland" yard sign. After removing the sign the individual got in a white truck and drove off.
LEONARDTOWN, Md.

(June 07, 2017)The St. Mary's County Sheriff's Office released the following incident reports.MOTOR VEHICLE COLLISION INVOLVING FIRE TRUCK: On May 21, at approximately 1:59 a.m., patrol deputies responded to Maypole Road near Friendship School Road in Mechanicsville for a single motor vehicle collision involving a Leonardtown Volunteer Fire Department fire truck. The preliminary investigation reveals, the fire truck left roadway and struck an embankment while responding to an unrelated motor vehicle collision. Two occupants of the fire truck were transported by Trooper 7 for the treatment of non-life threatening injuries.BURGLARY: Unknown suspect(s) attempted to enter a residence in the 41000 block of Glenwood Place in Oakville. Cpl. Kirkner is investigating the case. CASE# 2485-17BURGLARY TO MOTOR VEHICLE: Unknown suspect(s) forced entry into a motor vehicle and stole property in the 21000 block of Lookout Drive in Lexington Park. Cpl. Vezzosi is investigating the case. CASE# 28534-17BURGLARY: Unknown suspect(s) forced entry into a shed behind a business in the 22000 block of Three Notch Road in Lexington Park. DFC. Schultz is investigating the case. CASE# 28782-17BURGLARY: Unknown suspect(s) entered a residence and stole property in the 45000 block of Langley Park Way in Lexington Park. DFC Maguire is investigating the case. CASE# 28867-16BURGLARY: Sometime within the last three months, unknown suspect(s) forced entry into a shed and stole property in the 41000 block of Garner Road in Mechanicsville. Dep. Holdsworth is investigating the case. CASE# 28978-17BURGLARY: During the overnight hours of 6/1/2017 into 6/2/2017, unknown suspect(s) attempted to force entry into a shed at Carver Elementary School in Lexington Park. It does not appear entry was made into the shed. Dep. M. Beyer is investigating the case. CASE# 28986-17BURGLARY: Unknown suspect(s) entered a residence in the 27000 block of Hills Way in Mechanicsville and damaged property. Dep. Payne is investigating the case. CASE# 29056-17BURGLARY: Unknown suspect(s) forced entry into a residence in the 21000 block of Barkentine Court in Great Mills. Nothing appeared stolen from the residence. DFC Maguire is investigating the case. CASE# 29595-17BREAKING AND ENTERING TO MOTOR VEHICLE: Unknown suspect(s) entered a motor vehicle and stole property in the 37000 block of Apache Road in Charlotte Hall. Dep. Robinson is investigating the case. CASE# 29713-17BURGLARY: During the overnight hours, unknown suspect(s) forced entry into a shed and stole property in the 39000 block of Foley Mattingly Road in Mechanicsville. Cpl. Handy is investigating the case. CASE# 29667-17BURGLARY: Unknown suspect(s) forced entry into a shed and stole property in the 26000 block of Jacqueline Court in Mechanicsville. Dep. Shelko is investigating the case. CASE# 29709-17BURGLARY: Unknown suspect(s) forced entry into a shed and stole property in the 27000 block of Cannon Lane in Mechanicsville. Cpl. Kerby is investigating the case. CASE# 29752-17BURGLARY: Cpl. Snyder responded to the 30000 block of Point Lookout Road in Mechanicsville for a burglary where the witness advised there was damage to the front door. Nothing was disturbed in the residence and it did not appear entry was gained. Cpl. Snyder is investigating the case. CASE# 29753-17
LEONARDTOWN, Md.

Disclaimer: In the U.S.A., all persons accused of a crime by the State are presumed to be innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. See: so.md/presumed-innocence. Additionally, all of the information provided above is solely from the perspective of the respective law enforcement agency and does not provide any direct input from the accused or persons otherwise mentioned. You can find additional information about the case by searching the Maryland Judiciary Case Search Database using the accused's name and date of birth. The database is online at so.md/mdcasesearch . Persons named who have been found innocent or not guilty of all charges in the respective case, and/or have had the case ordered expunged by the court can have their name, age, and city redacted by following the process defined at so.md/expungeme.

(June 07, 2017)The St. Mary's County Sheriff's Office released the following juvenile arrest reports.04/03/2017: A 15-year-old male juvenile of Hollywood, was arrested and charged with Disruption of School Activities and a 15-year-old female juvenile of Leonardtown, was arrested for Disruption of School Activities and Assault 2nd Degree while at Leonardtown High School. Both Juveniles were arrested and charged by School Resource Officer Corporal G. Maloy. CCN# 18113-17 and CCN #18137-17.04/03/2017: A 15-year-old male juvenile of Hollywood and a 15-year-old male juvenile, both of Leonardtown, were arrested and charged with Disruption of School Activities and Affray, while at Leonardtown High School. Both juveniles were arrested and charged by School Resource Officer Corporal G. Maloy. CCN# 18280-17.04/16/2017: Deputy V. Pontorno arrested a 16-year-old male juvenile of Lexington Park, for theft less $1000, after the juvenile stole a business sign from the Lexington Park business community. CCN# 22605-17.04/21/2017: A 14-year-old male juvenile of Great Mills, was arrested for a Weapons Violation on School Property and Disturbing School Activities at Esperanza Middle School. The juvenile was arrested and charged by the School Resource Officer, Corporal C. Hartzell. CCN# 21306-17.04/23/2017: Two, 15 year-old male suspect(s), both of California, were arrested and charged with 2nd Degree Burglary, Trespassing and Property Destruction over $1000. The juveniles were arrested and charged by Deputy D. Holdsworth. CCN# 21682-17.04/24/2017: A 13 year-old female juvenile of Hollywood, was arrested and charged with Theft less $1000 and Rogue & Vagabond. The juvenile was arrested and charged by Deputy D. Lawrence. CCN# 21847-17.04/25/2017: A 17 year-old male juvenile of Lexington Park, was arrested and charged with Assault 2nd Degree. The juvenile was arrested and charged by Deputy P. Henry. CCN# 19574-17.04/26/2017: A 14-year-old female juvenile of California, was arrested for Assault 2nd Degree. The juvenile was arrested and charged by Deputy G. Muschette. CCN# 22290-17.04/26/2017: 14-year-old male juvenile of Mechanicsville, was arrested at Chopticon High School for Assault 2nd Degree and Disruption of School Activities. Arrested by School Resource Officer, Corporal A. Holton. CCN# 22214-17.04/28/2017: A 12-year-old male juvenile of Great Mills, was arrested for Assault 2nd Degree and 4th Degree Sex Offense. The juvenile was arrested and charged by Deputy S. Bowie. CCN# 22668-17.04/28/2017: A 17-year-old male juvenile of California, was arrested and charged with Assault 2nd Degree. The juvenile was arrested and charged by Deputy P. Robinson. CCN# 22589-17.04/28/2017: A 16-year-old male juvenile of Lexington Park, was arrested for Theft less $100 from a local business. The juvenile was arrested and charged by Deputy V. Pontorno. CCN# 22596-17.04/30/2017: A 7-year-old male juvenile of Lexington Park, was arrested for Malicious Destruction of Property. The juvenile was arrested and charged by Deputy First Class R. Steinbach. CCN# 23018-17.05/01/2017: Deputy D. Holdsworth arrested a 7-year-old male juvenile and a 9-year-old female juvenile both of Lexington Park, for Assault 2nd Degree and Disturbing School Operations. Both of the suspects engaged in a verbal altercation while on a school bus that turned into a physical altercation. CCN# 23163-17.05/09/2017: A 12 year-old female Juvenile from Lexington Park, was issued a Civil Citation for Possession of Marijuana less than 10 grams while at Spring Ridge Middle School. Charged by Corporal J. Davis. CCN# 24535-17.05/09/2017: A 14 year-old male juvenile from Mechanicsville, was arrested by Deputy C. Edwards for Assault 2nd Degree. CCN# 24548-17.05/11/2017: A 17-year-old male juvenile, of Lexington Park, was arrested for Assault 2nd Degree. CCN# 25004-17. Arrested by Deputy G. Muschette.05/12/2017: A 12-year-old male juvenile, of Lexington Park, was arrested for Vandalism inside of a residence. CCN# 20380-17. Arrested by Deputy A. Schultz.05/14/2017: A 14-year-old male juvenile and 17-year-old male juvenile, both of California, were arrested for Burglary, Vandalism, and Theft to several California, businesses. CCN# 18642-17. Arrested by Deputy P. Robinson.05/16/2017: A 15 year-old male juvenile, of California, was arrested for Destruction of Property valued at less $1000, at Esperanza Middle School. The case was investigated, and the arrest was made by School Resource Officer, Cpl. Chad Hartzell.05/17/2017: A 14 year-old male juvenile, of Great Mills, was arrested for numerous traffic violations to include: attempting to elude police by failing to stop; operating motorcycle without required head protection; driving without required license; driving uninsured vehicle; unauthorized use and display of registration plate; reckless driving; negligent driving; speed greater than reasonable. He was arrested by DFC. V. Pontorno.05/17/2017: A 14 year-old male juvenile of Lexington Park, was arrested for Assault 2nd Degree on another student at Spring Ridge Middle School. She was arrested by Corporal C. Hartzell. CCN# 23880-17.05/18/2017: A 16 year-old male juvenile, of Hollywood, was arrested for Telephone Misuse and Harassment of another juvenile while at Leonardtown High School . He was arrested by Corporal G. Maloy. CCN# 23905-17.05/19/2017: A 13 year-old female juvenile, of Lexington Park, and a 12 year-old female juvenile, of Lexington Park, were arrested at Spring Ridge Middle School after they both engaged in a physical fight during recess. They were both charged with second-degree assault. The females were arrested by Deputy D. Sidorowicz. CCN# 26492-17.05/20/2017: A 15 year-old male juvenile, of Tall Timbers, was arrested for Assault 2nd Degree within the community. He was arrested by Deputy G. Muschette. CCN# 26703-17.05/21/2017: A 15 year-old male juvenile, of Chaptico, was arrested for Burglary and Theft less $100 from Dynard Elementary School . He was arrested by Corporal E. Johnson. CCN# 23953-17.
WASHINGTON

(June 07, 2017)The U.S. Department of Defense recently announced the following contract awards that pertain to local Navy activities., is being awardedfor modification P00004 to a previously awarded firm-fixed-price contract (N00019-16-C-0050) for the procurement of 17 BRU-75A and BRU-76A Bomb Rack Unit ship sets for the Navy (11); and the governments of Australia (4); and UK (2), in support of the P-8A Lot 8 aircraft. Work will be performed in Amityville, New York, and is expected to be completed in February 2022. Fiscal 2017 aircraft procurement (Navy); cooperative engagement agreement; and foreign military sales funds in the amount of $15,164,935 are being obligated on this award, none of which will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract combines purchases for the Navy ($9,812,605; 64.7 percent); the government of Australia ($3,568,220; 23.5 percent); under a cooperative engagement agreement and the government of the UK($1,784,110; 11.8 percent) under the Foreign Military Sales program. The, is the contracting activity., is being awardedfor cost-plus-fixed-fee modification 01 to delivery order N0001917F1032 under previously issued against basic ordering agreement N00019-16-G-0001 for production engineering support for the installation and integration of systems required for the F/A-18 E/F and EA-18G and Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System follow on test and evaluation. Work will be performed in Patuxent River, Maryland (75 percent); and St. Louis, Missouri (25 percent), and is expected to be completed in May 2018. Fiscal 2017 aircraft procurement (Navy) funds in the amount of $11,601,558 will be obligated at time of award, none of which will expire at the end of the fiscal year. The, is the contracting activity., is being awardedfor modification P00063 to a previously awarded firm-fixed-price contract (N00019-13-C-0004) for the procurement of upgrades for the Block I Sustainment and Support System in support of the E-6B Block I aircraft. This modification is an engineering change proposal for technology refresh, obsolescence mitigation, and material and software builds. Work will be performed in Richardson, Texas, and is expected to be completed in October 2018. Fiscal 2015 aircraft procurement (Navy) funds in the amount of $9,145,465 are being obligated at time of award, all of which will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The, is the contracting activity., is being awarded aindefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for the production of the AN/SPQ-14 Advanced Sensor Distribution System (ASDS) and the AN/SPQ-15 Data Distribution System (DDS), to include logistics support and engineering services. DDS was developed as a replacement for AN/SPQ-14 ASDS. The intended use of the equipment is to provide radar and sensor distribution on board Navy ships and foreign military sales customers as requested. User requirements will determine the actual number of units ordered, and delivery for most items will be made within nine months of order issuance. This contract combines purchases for the Navy (85 percent); and the governments of Japan (10 percent), and South Korea (5 percent), under the Foreign Military Sales program. Work will be performed in Stillwater, Oklahoma, and is expected to be completed by June 2022. Fiscal 2017 foreign military sales funding in the amount of $1,947,315 will be obligated at time of award and will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was not competitively procured, in accordance with 10 U.S. Code  2304(c)(1) - one responsible source, and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements. The, is the contracting activity (N00178-17-D-0026).
When the South Florida Equality Rally for Unity and Pride in Fort Lauderdale was first announced, pro-LGBT, pro-women, and pro-human rights organizations in Palm Beach County planned on attending.

Now, they have their own rally at West Palm Beach City Hall, 401 Clematis St., on Sunday, June 11 from 1 to 3 p.m. Its just one of several rallies in Florida and many more across the nation and the world, including in Florida Naples, Fort Lauderdale, and Key West and elsewhere in New York, Boston, Australia, Ontario, and Zurich.

The marches are planned to coincide with the national Equality March on Sunday, June 11 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in Washington, D.C. Information on all rallies being organized can be found at EqualityMarch2017.org.

Traveling from South Florida to D.C. will be some protesters and the Sacred Cloth Project, the worlds longest [1.25 miles] Rainbow Flag, sewn in Key West, which was created in 2003 by Gilbert Baker to commemorate the 25th anniversary of his creation of the first Rainbow Flag.

After D.C., the flag will be brought back to Florida to be used in Orlando United Day on June 12 as part of the one-year observance of the Pulse Nightclub attack which occurred June 12, 2016. The flag is being delivered to the event by Hope Unity & Global Equality.

We needed something in Palm Beach County, said Julie Seaver, center operations director at the LGBT Compass Community Center, one of the organizations involved in planning the West Palm Beach march. The people want a march here in Palm Beach.

Other organizations include the Palm Beach County Human Rights Council, National Organization for Women, Planned Parenthood, MCC of the Palm Beaches, Lambda Legal Palm Beach, and the ACLU. The goal, said Seaver, was to include as many organizations possible, including religious groups.

This is a march for unity and pride for all social justice causes. Its not an anti-Trump rally but we do have to recognize that Trump is in our backyard, said Seaver, referring to Trumps winter White House at Mar-a-Lago.

West Palm Beach has been at the forefront, not just of LGBT rights but of social justice rights. It makes perfect sense [to have it there].

Marianne Baker isnt gay but she wants to support her friends in the LGBT community by marching. Shes also afraid that federal resources for individuals like herself, who are HIV positive, will shrink under Trump.

Im surrounded with it all the time and Im sick and tired of seeing the unfair way that people are treated, especially with someone like Trump coming in now, said Baker, who lives in Lake Worth. Considering the way he is trying to gut the Affordable Healthcare Act . . . I think Im scared of what hes going to take away.

Seaver said multiple locations were considered for the march but didnt work out for various reasons. Luckily, she said, the City of West Palm Beach provided the public plaza at city hall for free and without the need for permits, which made organizing the event virtually free of cost.

Unfortunately for the Equality Rally in Fort Lauderdale, held on Sunday, June 11 from 4 to 6 p.m. at Huizenga Plaza, 1 E Las Olas Blvd., fundraising is a necessity. To help pay for police officers to provide security and to control the crowd, rent the facility, pay for insurance, and other expenses, a GoFundMe page has been set up  GoFundMe.com/EqualityRallyFTL. As of June 5, $4,925 of the $10,000 goal has been raised.
You may not know Gilbert Bakers name, but you definitely know his creations. In 1978, Baker sewed together eight pieces of vibrant colors to create the iconic rainbow flagan enduring symbol of gay pride.

Baker passed away at his home in New York City on March 31st. He was 65 years old. To celebrate his life and legacy, Bakers friends and associates are planning two memorial eventsone in New York City, the other in San Francisco. Bakers mother and sister wanted them held on June 14th, Flag Day.

Gilbert loved Flag Day so much, it was as important to him as Gay Pride Day, said Bakers longtime friend Charley Beal. Shortly after his death, Bakers friends decided his service shouldnt be a somber memorial in a church. Instead, we decided on a rally and march because Gilbert was a street activist, not a country club activist.

Baker was also a visionary.

His rainbow flag was unfurled at a time when the gay rights movement was thriving in New York City and San Francisco. Both cities will honor him. The New York memorial takes place on Flag Day. A celebration of Bakers life is planned for Thurs., June 8 at 7 p.m. at the Castro Theatre. The event is free and open to the public. The celebration includes a multimedia celebration of all stages of Baker's life and work, including music, visual art, video, film and photography.

Bakers flag was unveiled at a time when the gay rights movement was thriving in New York City and San Francisco. He called both cities home at different times in his life, when he was busy marching, demonstrating and creating. Gilbert created art every day, Beal said.

His original rainbow flag had eight colors, each stripe carrying its own significance: pink for sex, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sun, green for nature, turquoise for magic, blue for peace and purple for spirit. Pink was later removed and turquoise and blue were combined into one color, royal blue.

Since its introduction, the rainbow flag has become a universal symbol for peace and love. It is the symbol for LGBT rights. After the United States Supreme Court legalized gay marriage in 2015, more than 26 million people on Facebook changed their profile photos to include the flag, created by Baker.

Wilton Manors is one town of many nowadays, where the rainbow flag is ubiquitous. Beal said after Stonewall 25, in 1994, Baker would become annoyed seeing the rainbow flag as a series of tchotchkes, but his feelings eventually changed.

I think within a few years, he had a 180 degree turnaround and he grew to embrace it all, Beal said. Gilbert came to realize how important it was and how this thing he created had gotten much bigger than him. Whether it was on the White House, Eiffel Tower, a coffee mug or keychain, he came to love it all and it was a great compliment to him.

Shortly before his passing, Baker had finished creating 39 nine-color flags  the eight original colors, plus lavender to represent diversity  to commemorate the 39th anniversary of the first rainbow flag.

The June 14 memorial for Baker in New York City begins at 6 p.m. at

the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street and continues to the Christopher Street Pier. They will raise a Rainbow Flag and call for a rededication to progressive and radical activism, completing the tribute at 9 p.m.

Members of Bakers family, as well as other LGBTI activists, will be speaking.

More information about both events can be found here https://www.facebook.com/gilbertbakermemorial/.

For people who cannot attend the events in San Francisco or New York, Beal hopes that people all over the world will wear or raise a rainbow flag in Bakers honor. You can read more about Baker and his work here http://www.gilbertbaker.com/site/.
R Aquarii NASA

In biology, symbiosis refers to two organisms that live close to and interact with one another.



Astronomers have long studied a class of stars  called symbiotic stars  that co-exist in a similar way. Using data from NASAs Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes, astronomers are gaining a better understanding of how volatile this close stellar relationship can be.

R Aquarii (R Aqr, for short) is one of the best known of the symbiotic stars. Located at a distance of about 710 light-years from Earth, its changes in brightness were first noticed with the naked eye almost a thousand years ago. Since then, astronomers have studied this object and determined that R Aqr is not one star, but two: a small, dense white dwarf and a cool red, giant star.

The red giant star has its own interesting properties. In billions of years, our Sun will turn into a red giant once it exhausts the hydrogen nuclear fuel in its core and begins to expand and cool. Most red giants are placid and calm, but some pulsate with periods between 80 and 1,000 days like the star Mira and undergo large changes in brightness. This subset of red giants is called Mira variables.

The red giant in R Aqr is a Mira variable and undergoes steady changes in brightness by a factor of 250 as it pulsates, unlike its white dwarf companion that does not pulsate. There are other striking differences between the two stars. The white dwarf is about ten thousand times brighter than the red giant. The white dwarf has a surface temperature of some 20,000 K while the Mira variable has a temperature of about 3,000 K. In addition, the white dwarf is slightly less massive than its companion but because it is much more compact, its gravitational field is stronger. The gravitational force of the white dwarf pulls away the sloughing outer layers of the Mira variable toward the white dwarf and onto its surface.

Occasionally, enough material will accumulate on the surface of the white dwarf to trigger thermonuclear fusion of hydrogen. The release of energy from this process can produce a nova, an asymmetric explosion that blows off the outer layers of the star at velocities of ten million miles per hour or more, pumping energy and material into space. An outer ring of material provides clues to this history of eruptions. Scientists think a nova explosion in the year 1073 produced this ring. Evidence for this explosion comes from optical telescope data, from Korean records of a guest star at the position of R Aqr in 1073 and information from Antarctic ice cores. An inner ring was generated by an eruption in the early 1770s. Optical data (red) in a new composite image of R Aqr shows the inner ring. The outer ring is about twice as wide as the inner ring, but is too faint to be visible in this image.

Since shortly after Chandra launched in 1999, astronomers began using the X-ray telescope to monitor the behavior of R Aqr, giving them a better understanding of the behavior of R Aqr in more recent years. Chandra data (blue) in this composite reveal a jet of X-ray emission that extends to the upper left. The X-rays have likely been generated by shock waves, similar to sonic booms around supersonic planes, caused by the jet striking surrounding material.

As astronomers have made observations of R Aqr with Chandra over the years, in 2000, 2003, and 2005, they have seen changes in this jet. Specifically, blobs of X-ray emission are moving away from the stellar pair at speeds of about 1.4 million and 1.9 million miles per hour. Despite travelling at a slower speed than the material ejected by the nova, the jets encounter little material and do not slow down much. On the other hand, matter from the nova sweeps up a lot more material and slows down significantly, explaining why the rings are not much larger than the jets.

Using the distances of the blobs from the binary, and assuming that the speeds have remained constant, a team of scientists from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) in Cambridge, Mass, estimated that eruptions in the 1950s and 1980s produced the blobs. These eruptions were less energetic and not as bright as the nova explosion in 1073.

In 2007 a team led by Joy Nichols from CfA reported the possible detection of a new jet in R Aqr using the Chandra data. This implies that another eruption occurred in the early 2000s. If these less powerful and poorly understood events repeat about every few decades, the next one is due within the next 10 years.

Some binary star systems containing white dwarfs have been observed to produce nova explosions at regular intervals. If R Aqr is one of these recurrent novas, and the spacing between the 1073 and 1773 events repeats itself, the next nova explosion should not occur again until the 2470s. During such an event the system may become several hundred times brighter, making it easily visible to the naked eye, and placing it among the several dozen brightest stars.

Close monitoring of this stellar couple will be important for trying to understand the nature of their volatile relationship.

Rodolfo (Rudy) Montez of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) in Cambridge, Mass, presented these results at the 230th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Austin, TX [https://aas.org/meetings/aas230]. His co-authors are Margarita Karovska, Joy Nichols, and Vinay Kashyap, all from CfA.

NASAs Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program for NASAs Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, controls Chandras science and flight operations.
Ljubljana (Slovenia), June 07, 2017 (SPS) - The Saharwi Coordinator with MINURSO, member of the National Secretariat, Mr. Emhamed Khaddad, held meetings with the leaders of several Slovenian political parties such as the ruling party group  the Middle Party, the Pensioners Party, the Socialist Party and the United Left Party.

Mohamed Khaddad has briefed the Slovenian officials on the latest developments in the Saharawi issue on political, legal and human rights issues, focusing on The recent Security Council resolution, which called on the POLISARIO and Morocco to engage in direct negotiations Without preconditions for a just and lasting solution that guarantees the right of the Saharawi people to self-determination and independence.

Saharwi diplomat also point out the decision of the European Court of Justice issued on 21 December 2016, which explained that Western Sahara "is not part of the Kingdom of Morocco and therefore Morocco is not legally entitled to sign agreements with a third party on the wealth of this region, which has not yet completed the decolonization process.

The Sahara coordinator with Minorso said that the Slovenian government is committed to respecting this decision and defending it in the European forums. Stressing that any agreement with the Kingdom of Morocco includes the Saharwi territory is contrary to the law according to international resolutions and contradicts the judgment of the European Court.

It should be noted that he attended the meetings together with the Saharawi coordinator with MINURSO Mr. Maulainain Baghdadi, representative of the Frente POLISARIO in Slovenia. SPS

125/090/TRA
Harness racing driver Stephane Gendron reached a major milestone in his career, scoring his 4,000th career win in the sixth race at the Hippodrome 3R Tuesday evening.

Gendron, 47, of Quebec City, first started driving professionally back in 1989, scoring just 11 wins that first season.

His milestone victory came aboard Y S Suzanne in a division of the second round of the $100,000 Quebec-Bred Series for four and five-year-old trotters.

The sixth race first saw Double Chance and driver Jocelyn Gendron shoot to the early lead from post two, but that lead was short lived by the opening quarter mile as Stephane Gendron had Y S Suzanne, the 2/5 morning line favourite, on the move and soon on the lead.

From that point, Y S Suzanne and Gendron held command, despite a game first-over effort after the half mile marker and through the backstretch by Y A Jailhouse Jody (Guy Gagnon).

Coming down the stretch, Gendron and Y S Suzanne were able to hold on to the finish wire, winning by a quarter of a length in 2:01.1 over a late closing Artemis Duharas (Raymond Gingras) with Double Chance third.

Owned and trained by Carl Duguay, it was the fourth straight win and fifth victory on the year for Y S Suzanne. The four-year-old mare by Angus Hall paid $2.80 to win.

I was a little worried as my mare she was not feeling so strong tonight as she usually is, Gendron explained. I thought that maybe the other mare (Artemis Duharas) that she beat me, but we were ok.

I am very happy winning my 4,000th race, Gendron said. It means a lot to me. I do not drive regular around the circuit anymore. I pretty much stay at the Hippodrome 3R, but it is nice to have achieved so many wins. Feels really good.

For his career, Stephane Gendron has started in 22,518 races with 4,000 wins, 3,299 second place and 2,876 third place finishes. The horses he has driven have won $13,602,638.

An upset took place in the fourth race Quebec-Bred Series for horses as the 1-9 favourite and track record holder, Wildwild Men, went off-stride at the start of the race.

His stablemate and full brother, Seeyou Men (Guy Gagnon) took the early lead with KFB Amigo Cool (Stephane Brosseau) sitting second until the half mile when 5-1 Holiday Party and driver Pascal Berube came first-over to challenge and take commend in the backstretch.

Wildwild Men and driver Robert Shepherd recovered and caught the field, but it was too late as Holiday Party held on to win by a half-length with Wildwild Men second and KFB Amigo Cool third. The time of the one mile race was 1:59.1.

For Holiday Party, a $105,000 winner last year at age three, who set the track record for his age and gait at H3R in being the Sire Stakes Champion, it was his first win in 2017 after three starts.

Sired by Holiday Road, Holiday Party is trained by Dany Fontaine for the Gaetan Bono Stable of Montreal. He paid $12.40 to win.

Driver Pascal Berube had the hot hands Tuesday, winning three races on the program. Racetrack superintendent at H3R, Sylvain Blais, who had the track surface in prime shape Sunday, saw three horses take lifetime marks also on Tuesdays program.

Next Sunday, the Quebec Jockey Club will host the $30,000 finals of the Quebec-Bred Series for four and five-year-old pacing mares and horses.

For more information, visit www.quebecjockeyclub.com.

(Quebec Jockey Club)

To view results for Tuesday's card of harness racing, click the following link: Tuesday Results  Hippodrome 3R.
Kdk Standardbreds' Apple Bottom Jeans overcame outside post number eight for a win in the $17,500 Mares Open feature Tuesday at Harrington Raceway.

Empress Deo assumed the early lead from St Kitts to an opening quarter in :27.4. St Kitts re-took the lead and was the boss to the half mile in :56.3 while Sweet Bobbie attacked first over to the three-quarters mark in 1:25.1. Mosquito Blue Chip circled three wide on the final turn while Purrfect Bags flanked four wide in a stirring stretch finish, but it was Apple Bottom Jeans who was widest of all and out kicked her rivals for the win. Purrfect Bags was second with Mosquito Blue Chip third.

Trained by Kevin Switzer and driven by Montrell Teague, "Apple" notched her fifth seasonal win and put her over the $80,000 mark in seasonal earnings. She paid $7.00 to win.

Apple Bottom Jeans had been racing in New York (Yonkers) for the past month before returning to her home state. It's not often the top four finishers on a half-mile racetrack have the outside posts, but it happened in this case as the top four finishers in order by post position were 8-7-6-5.

Teague and Tony Morgan each had three wins on the program.

Delaware Standardbred Breeders Fund action will commence Monday, June 12 with three $20,000 divisions of pacing colts and geldings in action. Tuesday, June 13 will feature the first leg of pacing fillies and Wednesday June 14 will highlight the trotters.

The $100,000 finals will be contested on July 27.

(Harrington Raceway)
Mohawk Racetrack hosted five OSS Grassroots divisions during its Tuesday evening program, and trainer Dustin Jones had to be pleased with what his three-year-old male trotters managed to do.

Try Try Again, a bright star from Jones barn, took his $15,950 division in 1:56.2 with driver Chris Christoforou in tow. Sent off as the 1-9 favourite, the son of Kadabra-Sweetspellosuccess got away sixth and held that position while Yo Yo Mass and Parkhill Nonstop took turns on the lead through first-half fractions of :28 and :58.

Try Try Again started his rally in the backstretch, and by the time Parkhill Nonstop hit the three-quarter pole in 1:26.3 Christoforou and Try Try Again were sitting second on the outside. Try Try Again then used a :29-second final frame to post the win by 3-1/2 lengths over Parkhill Nonstop. Third prize went to Masster Blue.

I thought he was probably my best horse in the barn last year and he had a knee issue so I had to shut him down for the year, said Jones.

Now hes shown that hes 'Gold,' for sure, the horseman continued. Id like to race him in a non-winners of two the week before the (June 27) Gold, thatll be his next start, and then the Gold, hopefully, if everything works out as planned. You have to go week-by-week, but thats the plan for him.

Dustin Jones Stables Inc, Ecuries Daniel Plouffe, Noblock Racing Stable and Andrea Lea Racingstables Inc own the colt who is 3-for-3 in his career. Try Try Agains first stakes score bumped his career bankroll to $22,975.

The Dustin Jones-trained Northern Major found his way to victory lane one race later, but unlike his stablemate  he posted a big upset. Sent off at odds of 17-1, Northern Major and driver Trevor Henry made a big, three-wide move at the three-quarter pole and then used a :28.4 closing quarter to win by half a length over odds-on favourite Santini in 1:58.2. Taking home the show dough was Amanforallseasons.

We made a bridle change on him, we went from blinkers to open, and I think that helped him a lot, said Jones of Northern Majors first lifetime win. Actually thats the fastest last quarter he trotted this year, maybe hes just starting to get into shape.

Last week (June 1) he made a break and, I dont really know, he just sort of jumped it off, or skipped it off, added the trainer. Im glad that everything worked out (tonight), because he sort of got a pretty tough first quarter and then he was like four or five wide in the last turn, so it was a pretty good mile actually. We were pretty encouraged with that effort.

Jones went on to say, Hes a great big tall horse and I think he just needs to come into himself a bit. I think once he gets it all figured out he might improve.

The trainer also said, We might give both [of the] colts a start in non-winners of two before the (next) Gold and then make up our mind what we want. Well for sure, Try Try Agains going (to the Gold), and then maybe Northern Major also.

Synerco Ventures Inc of Toronto, Ont. owns the son of Kadabra-Dover Miss. The gelding, who was winless in his first 14 attempts, pushed his lifetime earnings to $34,015.

Warrawee Shipshape was a popular winner in his $15,950 division for owner/driver Eddie Green of Ohsweken, Ont. The gelding got away second before moving to the lead in the backstretch. He rolled the field through middle panels of :58.4 and 1:29.2 before sprinting home in :28.3 to win by 1-1/4 lengths over R First Class in 1:58. Rounding out the top three finishers was More Than Majestic.

Paul Reid trains the son of Muscle Mass-U Can Cruise. After going 2-for-9 as a rookie, Warrawee Shipshape has kicked off his sophomore year with a 2-1-0 record from just three trips to the track. The youngster lifted his cash stash to $55,645 with the win.

Team Clements captured the fourth division with P C Silent Drive in 1:58.3. The gelding was second and parked past the quarter in :28.4 before working his way to the front. Driver Curtis Clements sped through middle fractions of :58.3 and 1:29.3 before using a :29-second closing quarter to win by a neck over Dontcrampmystyle. Rounding out the Triactor ticket was Blood Moon.

Sent off as the 5-2 favourite, the son of Cornaro Dasolo-PC Silentseduction won for the fourth time this season from just six trips to the track. Bred, owned and trained by Peter Clements of Dobbinton, Ont., the gelding bumped his career earnings to $21,499 with the win.

Rose Run Speedster was treated to a ground-saving trip in the final division by teamster Louis Philippe Roy, and when room opened up for the colt in the lane he stormed home to win for the first time this season.

Lucys Man rocketed to the top and carved out fractions of :28.2, :59.2 and 1:29.3, but he couldnt fend off Rose Run Speedster who shook loose in the lane and fired home in :28 to win by a nose over Lucys Man in 1:58.2. Taking home the show dough was Majestic Streak.

Trainer Rene Allard co-owns the son of Windsong Espoir-Padam Hall with the Rose Run Speedster Stable of Guelph, Ont. The colt, who went 3-for-9 as a rookie, lifted his lifetime earnings to $126,475 with the win.

To view results for Tuesday's card of harness racing, click the following link: Tuesday Results  Mohawk Racetrack.

For the official judges' report from Tuesday's card, click the following link: Judges' Report - Mohawk - June 6.

(With quotes from the OSS)
Trot Insider has been informed that there has been a delay in regard to the results from the Tuesday, June 6 qualifying session at Exhibition Park Raceway.

The results from the qualifying session will be available Wednesday morning (June 7).

Standardbred Canada would like to apologize for any inconvenience that the delay may have caused.
It is with sadness that Kawartha Downs reports the death of Blazinhart Hanover, a regular performer at the Fraserville, Ont. racetrack for the past seven years.

A 10-year-old daughter of Art Major, Blazinhart Hanover has been owned by Richard Wright and trained by Joe Wright both of Port Perry, Ont. The Wrights also operate the tracks tack shop.

Blazinhart Hanover was scheduled to compete in the tenth race last Saturday night (June 3), but moments before the race she fell in the paddock and suffered a broken leg. The track vet was forced to euthanize her.

Bred by Hanover Shoe Farms, the mares dam is a full sister to Barnett Hanover ($461,000). Its the immediate family of Breeders Crown champ Popcorn Penny ($624,000), Westwardho Hanover ($691,000); etc.

Over the course of her career, Blazinhart was never a superstar, but she was a steady performer with 102 starts to her credit. Kawartha Downs was her home track and the Kawartha fans will miss watching her perform and extend sympathy to the Wright family on their loss.

Please join Standardbred Canada in offering condolences to the connections of Blazinhart Hanover.

(Kawartha Downs)
Judith Marie Wall, 73, passed away peacefully while under hospice care at Navicent Health in Macon, Ga., on June 3 following a long illness.

She was born May 8, 1944, in Battle Creek, Mich., and moved to Hawkinsville, Ga., in 1977. She was preceded in death by her parents, Robert and Elsie Mix, and first husband, Charles Alan Wall. She is survived by husband, Rodney Hall, and son Doug (Angel) Wall and grandson Charles Charlie Adams Wall of Hawkinsville; son David (Lori) Myers of Ohio; and daughter Cara Wall Manness; brothers Randy (Stevie) Mix of Va., and Tom (Patty) Mix of N.H.; sister, Martha (Lucio) Morales of Fla.; brother-in-law Rick (Hazel) Hall; sisters-in-law, Rene (Rob) Rubin and Ruth Hall. She is also survived by her mother-in-law Mildred Hall of Mich.

Judy was a huge horse racing enthusiast working in nearly every facet of the harness horse racing industry throughout her life from mucking stalls, managing a racing stable, travelling the Michigan Fair Circuit charting races, working at a breeding farm, and even arranging the shipping schedules for a horse transport company. She was a member of the United States Trotting Association for 45 years, the Middle Georgia Horsemans Association, and an absolute untiring advocate to bring pari-mutuel harness racing to Georgia, travelling the state on numerous occasions to meet with legislators.

Middle Georgia has a rich harness racing history. The Pulaski County Fair hosted harness racing since 1894, long before the Hawkinsville Training Center opened 95 years ago in the city that bills itself as the Harness Horse Capital of Georgia. For the past 30 years, Judy could be found in the judges booth charting qualifying races at the Hawkinsville Harness Training Center and during the Harness Festival. No other place in Georgia would benefit more than Hawkinsville if pari-mutuel racing were permitted, and Judy helped to spearhead the fight.

Not only could Judy be found working around horses at the racetrack, for many years she owned Grooming by Judy Pet Salon, a pet care and dog grooming business in Hawkinsville. She was one of the most popular and most requested dog-sitters in the city, lavishing her love on the four-legged fur babies of friends who were lucky enough to know their beloved pets were in loving hands while they were away.

A memorial service will be held Tuesday, June 6, at Clark Funeral Home, Hawkinsville. Donations may be made to the family, the American Cancer Society, ASPCA or the Harness Horse Youth Foundation.

Please join Standardbred Canada in offering condolences to the family and friends of Judith Marie Wall.

(USTA)
Dresden Raceway is proud to announce the Mark Austin Pacing Series to its 2017 schedule.

The series will be a late closer for maiden pacers who are non-winners of 1 pari-mutuel race or $5,000 lifetime (fillies $6,000 lifetime) Canadian funds as of May 27, 2017 with no allowances.

Each division will race for a $5,000 purse in the eliminations Sunday, July 9 and Sunday, July 16, with the $10,000 final scheduled for Sunday, July 23.

The nomination closing date is Sunday, June 25 at 4:00 p.m.

Austin was a trainer who hailed from Chatham, Ont. and got his start at Dresden Raceway in early 1980s training for owners such as Graham Chambers. In 1988, his reputation of being great with young horses caught up with him, as he was asked to break a yearling trotter named A Worthy Lad for Joe Johnston. A Worthy Lad never lost a race in North America.

Austin then moved his stable closer to Windsor and worked with Jack Darling during the 90s when Darling Stables produced champions like Northern Luck and Gothic Dream.



(L-R: Dan Smith, Julie Austin, Fool Me Once, Mark Austin, Paige Austin, Sylvain Filion, Paula Austin.

Photo credit, New Image Media) (L-R: Dan Smith, Julie Austin, Fool Me Once, Mark Austin, Paige Austin, Sylvain Filion, Paula Austin.Photo credit, New Image Media)

When Windsor Raceway started to stumble, Austin moved his operation to Fergus, Ont. where horses like Sparky Mark and Fool Me Once headlined his stable.

Austin, who passed away suddenly in 2014, had a career training average of .345 and over $9 million in earned purses thanks to 837 wins.

Austin wasnt only a top-notch trainer  he was also a favourite around the track, as he was described as a true gentleman and was one of the nicest guys in the business.

Mark was married to Julie, with two daughters, Paige and Paula.

(Dresden Raceway)
Post Time with Mike and Mike, presented by BetAmerica, is excited to announce its line-up for Thursday morning (June 8) at 10:30 a.m.

Trainer Tony Alagna had the thrill of a lifetime on Saturday night with a victory in the Graduate with Dr J Hanover. While the win was special, the time of the mile is what was impressive. Dr J Hanover paced his mile in 1:46.4, the fastest Canadian mile of all time. The show will speak with Alagna about his horse and what is next down the road for his stable.

Bob Boni, the manager of Northwood Bloodstock Agency, will join the program to discuss his career in harness racing. The hosts will talk to him about champion Always B Miki and what is coming up in his illustrious stud career.

Ken Warkentin, the track announcer at the Meadowlands Racing, will join the show to discuss the upcoming USTA Announcing School. This will be the second Announcing School hosted by the USTA, the last hosted by Tom Durkin in Goshen, New York.

Guantanamo Bay owner Leonard Sorge will join as the show continues to highlight some of the owners in the sport. Sorge will join to discuss his career as an owner in the sport of harness racing and what is next for Guantanamo Bay.

The sho will also continue its discussions with Running Aces Track Announcer Darin Gagne, who will highlight the happenings at the Minnesota track from this past week.

Post Time can be heard via its website (posttimewithmikeandmike.com) or on the archive at (betamerica.com/BARN).

(Post Time)
Four former Cowlitz County commissioners Tuesday announced that they oppose the sale of the countys headquarters landfill to a private company, but county officials also warned that keeping the Silver Lake-area dump would be costly to the county and garbage ratepayers.

At a public hearing attended by about three dozen people, officials did not reveal the name of the firm that made an unsolicited offer for the landfill. Nor did they reveal the offering price.

But Ron Junker, the countys interim solid waste director, said the countys interest in selling comes from new state requirements to control greenhouse gas emissions that Gov. Jay Inslee imposed last year. Complying with the regulations will cost the county more than $5 million yearly by 2033 due to the rising amount of garbage disposed of at the Headquarters site.

Decaying trash gives off methane and other greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change.

To cover the costs of emission reductions, tipping fees are estimated to double by 2035, from about $50 per ton now to nearly $100 per ton, Junker said.

The landfill has earned the county a little over $4 million in each of the past two years, but these profits would be wiped out by the cost of meeting the air rules, Junker said.

Addressing the commissioners, former Longview Mayor and former Cowlitz County Commissioner George Raiter read aloud a letter opposing the sale. In addition to Raiter, it was signed by former county commissioners Mike Karnofski, James Misner and Axel Swanson. While in office, all four of these former commissioners voted for or voiced support for the countys purchase of the landfill from Weyerhaeuser Co., which ultimately was completed in February 2014.

The letter (available online at TDN.com) cited many reasons for the county to retain ownership, including making sure it is run safely.

For certain public services, the paramount goal is assuring the safety of the public and the protection of the environment, the letter states. Water treatment, bridge inspections and waste disposal are among these. There should be no possible risk that the profit motive could cause a lapse in the numerous safeguards against short- or long-term harm.

The former commissioners also wrote that they believed the landfill is a key financial asset for the county.

At current volumes (50 percent of the permitted volume) incoming revenue covers all operating cost and debt expenses, the former commissioners state. Increased volume would result in large positive cash flows to the county.

Finally, the four former commissioners appealed for some deference, stating that while they no longer are in office their actions should be respected by incumbent officeholders.

We strongly believe that, absent major events, the public has the right to expect that reasonable commitments and assurances made will be followed by succeeding boards, the letter stated.

Selling the landfill would be somewhat akin to selling your home and then renting it for the rest of your life  while your landlord also brought in other tenants, the letter states.

Other members of the public present at the meeting also disagreed with a potential sale of the landfill. Kelso City Councilman Jim Hill was concerned that a private company would hike rates.

People who want to buy this only care about making a profit, Hill said at the meeting. How would we enforce the regulations? We need to write that in (a potential contract) to make certain they use the emission reductions equipment, so our costs dont go up.

Kelso resident Rick Von Rock echoed Hills concerns about tipping fees.

If a private enterprise was to buy (the landfill), we dont have control of what the tipping fees might be, he said Tuesday morning. Private enterprise is solely for the businesses to make money.

The commissioners will hold another hearing on the matter at 7 tonight in the Commissioners Hearing Room, and there will be another opportunity for public discussion. At their next meeting on June 13, county solid waste officials will ask the commissioners to officially invite sales offers from private companies.

The four former commissioners succinctly described the difficulty in deciding what to do with the profitable landfill in their letter.

If its possible to envision a garbage dump as a jewel, this is certainly it, they wrote.

The county bought the 380-acre landfill because its old landfill along Tennant Way was at capacity. The alternative would have been a politically risky effort to build a new landfill or ship garbage to the Roosevelt in Eastern Washington, an expensive proposition. Weyerhaeuser, which built the landfill to handle its own industrial waste in 1993, sold it in part because it was getting out of the paper business.

Residents of the Silver Lake landfill have opposed the landfill from the beginning, saying it would pollute the air and Lake. The landfill is equipped with plastic liners and pipes to contain and collect stormwater contaminated by contact with waste. This leachate is then sent to Longview by a county-built pipeline for treatment at the regional wastewater treatment plant on Fibre Way.

The landfill has an estimated 100-year lifespan.
The Portland Rose Festivals Fleet Week has begun. Ships from the U.S. Navy, U.S. Coast Guard and Royal Canadian Navy will pass by Longview today between around 11 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. as they make their way to Portland.

Vessels also will be steaming upriver Thursday.

Since the beginning of the Rose Festival in 1907, ships and other fleet-related watercraft have made their way to Portlands waterfront. Portland is one of the few U.S. ports of call that receive a courtesy visit from the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard and the Royal Canadian Navy.

The ships have been visiting the Portland Rose Festival for more than 80 years. The event helps celebrate and thank active and reserve military personnel and veterans.

The following ships will arrive in Portland around 1 p.m. Wednesday. The transit time from Longview is about two hours, meaning they'll pass by Longview at about 11 a.m. or a little earlier.

 HMCS Brandon

 HMCS Edmonton

The following ships will arrive in Portland around 3 p.m. Wednesday, passing Longview between noon and 1 p.m.

 USCGC Alert

 USCGC Orcas

 USCGC Bluebell

 USCGC T/V Ironwood

The following ships will arrive in Portland on Thursday:

 USS Bunker Hill will arrive around 3 p.m.

 USS Jackson will arrive around 4 p.m.

 These ships will dock between the Steel and Burnside bridges. Bridge lifts will be required at Steel and Broadway.

All ships above will dock between the Morrison Bridge and Burnside Bridge. Bridge lifts will be required at Burnside, Steel and Broadway.

The vessels will depart Sunday morning and Monday morning for their trips back down the Columbia River.
tech2 News Staff

China is making preliminary preparations to send a manned mission to the Moon, a space official said. The project is expected to receive government approval and funding shortly, said Yang Liwei, Deputy Director General of China Manned Space Agency, who in 2003 became the first Chinese astronaut to travel to space, reports Efe. The mission will be the culmination of China's two ongoing space programmes, the Shenzhou manned missions and the Chang'e lunar probes.

Nine men and seven women from China have flown on the Shenzhou missions, whose main objective is to set up a permanent space station. The next mission, Shenzhou-12, will be launched in 2018. China has already sent three missions to the Moon (the last one in 2013 was the country's first mission to land on the Moon's surface) and it will send the next two missions in 2017 and 2018.

China plans to become the first country to soft land a probe on the far side of the moon with one of these missions.

China is planning a number of manned missions into space between 2019 and 2020. China plans to build its own 60 tonne space station over the course of these missions. The Chinese astronauts are making preparations for the missions, and expected to stay in the space station for three to six months initially, and for longer durations later on.

With inputs from IANS
tech2 News Staff

NASA's Curiosity rover could have found evidence that Mars might have held life in the Gale Crater. Curiosity's primary goal when it landed inside Gale Crater in 2012 was to determine whether Mars ever had environmental conditions suitable to support microbial life.

Previous observations had revealed the presence of a lake more than three billion years ago in Mars' Gale Crater and now new data provided by the Curiosity rover forms the basis of a theory that the Gale crater had indeed been home to a lake with conditions suitable for life for around 700,000,000 years approximately 3 and a half billion years ago.

After an analysis of the rock samples which were collected in Gale crater during the Curiosity's exploration time period, it was confirmed the lake had once an abundant supply of minerals necessary to support life.

The Gale crater, named after an amateur astronomer called Walter Frederick Gale, lies in the Aeolis quadrangle and is about 160 kilometers in diameter. The scientist were able to successfully create a climate history map of the planet based on the data collected by the rover and confirm that Mars had a very Earth-like climate in its early years

The rover on its way to Mount Sharp in the Gale crater, drilled into six rocks and pulled samples which contained many elements including nitrogen, phosphate minerals and organic carbon compounds, as well as sulfur and iron as told by Joel Hurowitz of Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York to the Los Angeles Times. Curiosity Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, told Los Angeles Times "These results give us unprecedented detail in answering questions about ancient environmental conditions on Mars."

The researchers feel that this is compelling evidence that established an environment which could be habitable by living organisms, said the Los Angeles Times. Hurowitz who is the lead author of a report of the findings in the June 2 edition of the journal Science contains revealing new information about chemical conditions within the lake,and also documents explaining fluctuations in the climate of ancient Mars.
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Online food takeaway firm Delivery Hero, is preparing a flotation that could value one of Europe's largest internet startups at up to 4 billion euros ($4.5 billion), raising funds to help it fend off new competitors such as Uber and Amazon.

Delivery Hero said on Tuesday it would issue new shares worth about 450 million euros, while existing shareholders including Rocket Internet may sell up to the same amount, people close to the matter have said.

Founded in Berlin in 2011, Delivery Hero has grown rapidly and now employs over 6,000 people, providing a digital platform to order meals from more than 150,000 restaurants in 40 countries in Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia.

Delivery Hero wants to have a strong net cash position so it can be prepared to grow both organically and through possible further acquisitions, Chief Executive Niklas Ostberg said. "This is a big step for us and the whole European tech scene," Ostberg told a call for journalists.

The listing, expected in the coming weeks, would provide a much-needed boost to struggling German ecommerce investor Rocket Internet, which holds a 35 percent stake in Delivery Hero, making it the biggest holding in its portfolio. Rocket Internet had early success with online fashion firm Zalando, which listed in 2014, but it has not brought any other companies to market yet.

Rocket's shares have rallied in anticipation of the Delivery Hero IPO but were flat on Tuesday at 21.51 euros. South African media and e-commerce firm Naspers took a 10 percent stake in Delivery Hero last month.

Well-Trodden Path

There has been a wave of capital raising and consolidation in online meal delivery as Uber and Amazon push into the sector, with Delivery Hero last week buying Middle East rival Carriage.

Delivery Hero will become the fourth major online food delivery firm to go public in recent years, following GrubHub, Just Eat and Takeaway.com, which have all seen their shares soar since listing.

Delivery Hero narrowed its loss before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization to 116 million euros last year from 175 million in 2015, with half of that due to increased costs, including heavy marketing, for its Foodora unit which delivers from high-end restaurants.

Ostberg said the reason the company was still loss-making, unlike rivals such as GrubHub and Just Eat, was because Delivery Hero is operating in less mature markets and investing more in marketing.

Delivery Hero may use the IPO proceeds to step up marketing spending by 10-15 percent, a person close to the company said on condition of anonymity.

Delivery Hero takes a commission of about 1.60 euros, or 10 or 11 percent on each average order, and slightly higher fees if it does the delivery itself, compared to figures closer to 15 percent or above for peers like Just Eat and GrubHub.

Citigroup, Goldman Sachs International and Morgan Stanley will act as joint global coordinators and joint bookrunners, Delivery Hero said. UniCredit Bank AG, Berenberg, Jefferies and UBS Investment Bank have been mandated as additional joint bookrunners.

Reuters
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Russian security software maker Kaspersky Lab has filed antitrust complaints against Microsoft with the European Commission and the German federal cartel office, it said in a statement on Tuesday.

Kaspersky Lab said Microsoft was abusing its dominance in the PC operating system market, creating obstacles for independent software security vendors by distributing its own Defender anti-virus software with the ubiquitous Windows operating system. Microsoft built the anti-virus software into Windows, saying this protected users but Kaspersky said it was anti-competitive. Microsoft said in a statement on Tuesday that it had not violated any laws.

Microsofts primary objective is to keep customers protected," the company said in an emailed statement. "We are confident that the security features of Windows 10 comply with competition laws. And we will answer any questions regulators may have.

Kaspersky filed the complaints after the two companies failed to resolve their differences through private negotiations. The Moscow-based company said in a statement that Microsoft's action had resulted in "a lower level of protection for users, a limitation on their right to choose and financial losses both for users and security solutions manufacturers."

Kaspersky in November threatened to complain to the European Commission but in April said it would hold off because Microsoft had agreed to make some changes. Microsoft said it had "taken a number of steps" to address Kaspersky's concerns, including offering several months ago to set up a meeting between executives of both companies."That meeting has not yet taken place, Microsoft said.

"That meeting has not yet taken place, Microsoft said. The European Commission confirmed it had received Kaspersky's complaint without giving further details.

Reuters
tech2 News Staff

OnePlus will launch its upcoming flagship, OnePlus 5, for the Indian market on 22 June 2017. The company sent out official invitations for the event to us for the launch event in Mumbai. OnePlus Founder and CEO, Pete Lau will be present at the launch event of the flagship along with the global leadership team from the company. The company pointed out that this is the first time that OnePlus is holding a launch event in India.

This information comes right after OnePlus announced that the global launch event for the OnePlus 5 is scheduled for 20 June 2017. In the meantime, you can check everything that we know about the smartphone right from the specs to the design.

Are you prepared for the OnePlus 5? Focus on what matters and join our keynote live on June 22. https://t.co/i91k8PZgn6 pic.twitter.com/xjq0uKNZpl  OnePlus India (@OnePlus_IN) June 7, 2017

OnePlus clarified that the gates for the launch event will be open for the OnePlus fans in the country. People who want to attend the invite-only event can purchase the tickets from the OnePlus India store on 12 June 2017. The company will give a gift hamper to all the fans that will attend the event which will include super add-ons and OnePlus merchandise.

The interesting part about the event is that the company will also give select fans, a chance to purchase OnePlus 5 at the event to give them an opportunity of being the first in the country to purchase the smartphone.

Last but not the least, the company will hold the live finale of the Best Smartphone Contest at the OnePlus 5 launch event. One winner out of the five finalists will take home the grand prize of Rs. 1 crore cash.
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How do we change the world? One random act of kindness at a time. Kindness is a gateway for all of us to connect and care for each other.  Morgan Freeman Whether its a supporting...

MAKING CONNECTIONS Editors note: The following random acts of kindness were emailed or called into County Press editor Jeff Hogan at jhogan@mihomepaper.com. The following acts of kindness experienced by County Press readers...

Ed-Tech students connect with community ATTICA TWP.  The Lapeer County Education and Technology Center (Ed-Tech) is a place where students can get a taste of the career opportunities that exist in their field of...
US-backed force gains ground on IS in Syria's Raqa

AFP, Beirut :

US-backed fighters gained ground against the Islamic State group in the streets of Raqa on Wednesday, their command said, a day after breaking into the jihadist's Syrian bastion.

The Syrian Democratic Forces have spent months advancing on the northern city and finally thrust into the eastern neighbourhood of Al-Meshleb on Tuesday.

Early on Wednesday, the Arab and Kurdish fighters captured the neighbourhood and the Harqal citadel to the west of the city, the command of Operation Wrath of the Euphrates said.

The citadel sits on a hilltop roughly two kilometres (just over a mile) from the city limits.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said there was also fighting inside the Division 17 military complex, around two kilometres north of Raqa, but the area had been heavily mined by IS.

The Britain-based monitoring group said the US-led coalition had carried out heavy bombing raids on the city overnight.

Captured by the jihadists in early 2014, Raqa became notorious as a hub for IS's operations in Syria, Iraq and beyond.

The city has been the scene of some of the group's worst atrocities, including gruesome executions, public displays of bodies and the trafficking of women.

An estimated 300,000 civilians were believed to have been living under IS rule in Raqa, including 80,000 displaced from other parts of Syria.

Thousands have fled in recent months to other parts of the province or to makeshift camps in territory newly captured by the SDF.

Formed in 2015, the SDF is an alliance of Arab and Kurdish fighters that has been backed by the US-led coalition with air support, military advisers and weapons deliveries.

US-Backed Syrian Democratic Forces Enters ISIS-Held Raqqa From East: Commander

The US backed Syrian Democratic Forces broke into the ISIS's bastion city, Raqqa for liberating it from the ISIS.
EU wary of Brexit talks walkout whoever wins UK vote

Kiss, off: European Commission President, Jean-Claude Juncker embraces British Prime Minister Theresa May outside 10 Downing Street in April.

AFP, Brussels :

The EU is steeling for a possible collapse of Brexit negotiations whoever wins Britain's increasingly close general election this week, officials and analysts say.

While many in Brussels still bet on Prime Minister Theresa May's return to power, despite a fading poll lead, the real focus is on British threats to walk out when the talks start.

European Union Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier says he is ready to begin immediately but has warned London of the risks of walking away without agreement on Britain's departure.

"A big punch-up or blow-up is not unlikely" after Brexit negotiations formally start, an EU source told AFP on condition of anonymity.

"A 'no deal' is possible-absolutely."

May and her Brexit minister David Davis have repeatedly warned that "no deal is better than a bad deal", particularly when it comes to a 100-billion-euro exit bill that Brussels is demanding.

London is also still insisting on having talks on a future trade deal at the same time as negotiations on the actual divorce, something Brussels won't allow.

The EU is eyeing June 19, 11 days after Thursday's election, for the formal start of two years of tough talks, with informal contacts "soon" after the election result.

While Brussels is officially neutral about national elections, European sources say they want a "strong leader in London" who can negotiate backed by strong support from the British electorate.

While this might seem counterintuitive in an adversarial process, the idea is that if May, for example, increases her slim majority she would be less beholden to eurosceptics in her own party.

This, the reasoning goes, would make her able to make compromises on thorny issues such as the exit bill, and on safeguarding benefits and immigration rights of EU citizens living in Britain.

But the increasingly harsh tone on Brexit and the threats to walk away which have emerged during the election campaign have worried some in Brussels.

Frenchman Barnier insisted when EU states gave him his formal mandate on May 22 that quitting talks was "not my option, my option is to succeed."

He strongly warned that if Britain does so he would "advise everyone to explain well what the consequences are", not least for a future EU-British trade deal.

European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker has delivered a similar warning about the threats. "My experience in politics always was that those who are going out have to come back,
RAJSHAHI: RCC Mayor Mosaddique Hossain Bulbul inaugurating construction work of a modern slaughter house at Kazla area in the city as Chief Guest on Monday.
China Eastern Airlines to further expand overseas business

Xinhua, New York :

China Eastern Airlines Tuesday signed a global strategic cooperation framework agreement with the law firm Baker McKenzie, in a bid to further expand its operations overseas.

Under the agreement, Baker McKenzie will continue providing legal counsel and services to China Eastern as the latter carries out its internationalization strategy, said Tang Bing, deputy general manager of China Eastern Airlines.

Tang said the company faces challenges and risks doing businesses overseas and being able to understand business ethics, principals, regulations and laws of other countries is essential for the company's success.

Jim Colihan, managing partner of Baker McKenzie's New York office, said Baker McKenzie is honored to partner with one of the world's leading airlines.

The law firm has a China team that includes partners, associates and professionals from 77 offices in 47 countries, according to Colihan. The team focuses on helping Chinese companies from all industries and sectors navigate the legal regulatory and cultural landscape around the world.

"While we continue to face political and regulatory uncertainties in the U.S. and around the world, we see opportunities for leading Chinese companies to grow and innovate outside their home markets," said Colihan.
Although leprosy is curable and - if diagnosed in time - disabilities resulting from this disease can be prevented. Leprosy continues to pose serious health and other problems for us. It is one of the oldest diseases and people having affected with leprosy, along with their family members, are being despised and abandoned. They suffer multiple forms of discrimination, including denial of access to work, education or even community living.According to National Leprosy Elimination Programme (NLEP) and The Leprosy Mission International-Bangladesh (TLMI-B), annually on an average 3500 new leprosy cases are detected in the country in the recent years. About 10 percent of them later turn disabled due to failure of taking timely treatment.The disease is an infection caused by slow-growing bacteria called Mycobacterium leprae. However, if left untreated, it can affect the nerves, skin, eyes, and lining of the nose (nasal mucosa). The nerve damage can result in crippling of hands and feet, paralysis, and blindness, said TLMI-B.We need to make leprosy free society where there is no new leprosy case and all the needs of existing leprosy affected persons having been fully met. It is needed to reduce stigma in the community against leprosy, provide high quality service for all persons affected by leprosy, and integrate leprosy in the integrated health care delivery set-up for provision of quality services.There are components such as training, smooth supply of Multi-drug therapy (MDT) drugs, early case detection, monitoring, launching awareness campaign, follow-up, carrying out regular contact survey, and skin camp for eradicating the disease. A lot of money is needed for performing the tasks, but these are being hampered reportedly due to lack of necessary funds.According to NLEP sources, the government spent Tk. 15.58 lakh for the year 2012 under the leprosy elimination programme, Tk. 30 lakh in 2013, Tk. 23.50 lakh in 2014, Tk 23.50 lakh in 2015 and Tk. 25.50 lakh in 2016.The sources, however, opined that that it would have been better if more money had been allocated for the programme.Jiptha Boiragee, programme support coordinator of TLMI-B, said the allocation is inadequate compared to the needs. He suggested increasing the amount in the interest of leprosy elimination programme.The capacity of those working at the field level for health and leprosy eradication should be increased through regular training so that they can work better.Skill of the medical officers on leprosy complications especially reaction management should be enhanced through training.Early leprosy case detection is very important in leprosy elimination programme. Leprosy is such a disease for which initiative to detect new cases has to be taken. Those found to be affected show their negligence to take treatment for various reasons. If initiative is not taken to detect new cases and bring them under treatment, the goal of eradicating leprosy will not be achieved.It is important to hold regular contact/screen survey to find out cases if other people are found to be affected in an area. When a leprosy case is detected in an area, it is needed to carry out a survey in the areas to ascertain whether there is any other case in that area.Holding regular skin camp aimed at identifying new cases is needed to be done. Besides, it is important to pursue follow-up, and hold regular monitoring on the activities of leprosy elimination programme centrally.But the matters, mentioned above, are being hampered due to constraint of money.Field visit and awareness raising activities by Tuberculosis Leprosy Control Assistants (TLCAs) and Programme Organizers (POs) are being disrupted for funds scarcity. They also failed to do other relevant works for lack of money. TLCAs and POs need necessary training on leprosy and to participate in awareness raising activities.It is needed to raise the awareness levels of early signs of leprosy, ensure access to leprosy services and skills of health-care staff in diagnosing leprosy.Ensuring availability of MDT drugs and their proper distribution at the community level is essential. Otherwise, all the efforts of case finding, diagnosis, classification and treatment are rendered meaningless.There is no alternative to eradicating the disease as it continues to inflict sufferings on our people. But scarcity of money, needed for fighting the disease, is hindering our desired dream of making a leprosy-free Bangladesh."If there were adequate financial allocation for the leprosy control, leprosy case detection and other related activities would have been done more smoothly, preventing the chance of disability caused by leprosy", said Boiragee.International assistance to leprosy control programme in Bangladesh is decreasing gradually. It a matter of concern that leprosy elimination programme is being slowed down at the field level due to lack of necessary funds and trained employees. Few NGOs, working in the field with their limited resources amid dwindling of foreign funds, find it tough to handle the task. The government should come up with necessary steps, including allocating more funds for the programme, said sources.If leprosy does not get adequate attention, it will bring our sufferings. It is hoped that the government, taking the matter into consideration, would attach due importance to the issue.Bangkok Declaration, which was adopted at the International Leprosy Summit in 2013 in Bangkok, Thailand, called for reaffirming political commitment, enhancing financial allocations and including persons affected by leprosy.The Summit noted that the challenges facing the high-burden countries include reducing Grade 2 disabilities in new cases through early case detection, access to equitable and quality health care, and promoting leprosy, wherever appropriate, as an integral part of neglected tropical diseases.The Global Leprosy Strategy 2016-2020 aims at accelerating action towards a leprosy-free world. One of its three pillars called for strengthening government ownership, coordination and partnership.The strategy aims at early detection of leprosy disease and prompt treatment to prevent disability and reduce transmission of infection in the community. It is designed to achieve a long-term goal of a leprosy-free world, which refers to a situation wherein the community is free of morbidity, disabilities and social consequences due to leprosy.The WHO priority to promote early detection and to monitor this through measuring disability in new case detection is a vital component to evaluate enhanced initiatives designed to reduce transmission. However, addressing the gap between the incidence and case detection of leprosy requires improved strategies for case detection, new tools for early diagnosis, and major efforts to improve community awareness and capacity of health staff to diagnose and manage leprosy and its complications.Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights." This includes every person affected by leprosy.Solving the leprosy issue will help us in realizing a society where the fundamental rights and dignity of every human being is recognized and enjoyed by its citizens including persons with leprosy and disabilities.We should let people know that this is not only a cause of injustice against leprosy victims, but also a major hindrance to overall development. If you hinder large number of people from relishing their rights, deny their development, and refuse to recognize their contribution, you cannot progress.It is hoped that the leprosy issue would get its due attention in the greater interest of the nation. Any negligence, in this regard, will not augur well for us.(The writer, a journalist, can be reached at [email protected] Md. Sazedul Islam
Renewing commitment to SDGs

Paloma Duran :

Just last month business representatives from around the world joined the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Fund commemorate their work as part of the Private Sector Advisory Group (PSAG).

For much of the last two years, the group has been collaborating with the Fund on how the business community can work towards the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, UN's roadmap to promote inclusive economic growth, social justice and environmental protection.

This group of businesses committed to sustainability has accomplished a number of goals since it was formed in 2015, including establishing a set of pioneering public-private partnerships in areas such as food security, education, and employment for women and youth.

The group has served as an important link between the business sector and SDG Fund partners to raise awareness about the SDGs, participate in research on public-private partnerships and promote best practices. Under our ongoing strategy, the group will intensify its work on advancing and advocating for greater inclusion linked to the goals and helping us widen our private-sector approach.

Advocacy and outreach

The PSAG continues to play a vital role in informing the SDG Fund on how businesses can better work with partners at the UN, particularly how they can improve people's living standards and make investments that will create more jobs. It's also become clear that companies are slowly embracing and adopting the Sustainable Development Goals in their strategies - working on projects that align with their core business and interest and adhere to a larger framework

In fact, the SDG Fund has engaged new private sector partners to generate a number of key initiatives, including the Food Africa Project in Nigeria, an innovative partnership between private enterprise, UN and government agencies, and renowned chefs that aims to alleviate poverty through food security.

At the SDG Fund, it is clear that companies are eager to think more expansively on their role in development, and business of all sizes are demonstrating that they can effectively incorporate SDGs as a part of their strategic planning.

There are a few signs that we are on track, especially as members of the Private Sector Advisory Group continue to provide valuable perspective about building new partnerships to eradicate poverty, achieve food security and improve nutrition, water access and sanitation. Since joining the group, many companies have successfully incorporated the SDGs into their work and sustainability reports.

For example, Nutresa and Sahara Group now report annual results and sustainability activities using SDG goals and indicators. More than half of the members are engaging with the SDG Fund to create public-private partnerships and working to design and co-create programs in the field. Equally encouraging is that new companies, like Intel have joined the group.

It is probably worth noting that a business as usual approach is no longer possible. Thankfully, the number of businesses interested in joining forces on the SDGs has been encouraging. Companies like Ebro Foods have used the power of social media to raise awareness about a new initiative that brings together philanthropists, governments and academics.

Other milestones include the engagement of UN Goodwill Ambassadors - the Roca Brothers. The master chef brothers have committed to bringing attention to the SDGs and using their expertise to advocate for enhanced food security and access to nutritious food. They are working with local partners to provide guidance on how to improve food industry and agricultural practices to protect the environment and create jobs.

In 2017, working with our public and private sector partners we have witnessed how companies have continued to deepen their knowledge of the SDGs, asking key questions and exploring how their organizations can contribute to the global development agenda. This has come to mean everything from devising innovative partnership agreements to investing in large-scale infrastructure or improving agriculture inputs.

In fact, if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery building on this group's experience, some countries have drawn lessons from our success and began replicating the model and creating national versions of the group.

For example, Nigeria, recently launched a Private Sector Advisory Group. The private sector has come together to advise the government to share ideas across industry sectors and regions with the aim of creating a connective platform for more impactful and local-driven models and solutions to achieve the SDGs.

Projects in the pipeline

We believe there is a lot to do in the next 13 years, we know from our series of reports, there must also be more robust public-private collaboration across the UN to achieve SDGs start taking shape. We heard and we listed to companies as reflected in our "Business and the United Nations: How business can contribute to the SDGs," which provided case studies and best practice advice for companies eager to engage in the SDGs.

A second report, "Universality and the SDGs: A Business Perspective," put out this year was based on input from more than 100 companies during interactive workshops in Africa, Latin America, Europe and the United States. Looking forward, the SDG Fund is committed to bringing public and private institutions together to achieve development results.

Our private sector strategy has two objectives: to involve businesses in all of our 22 field programs and expand the reach of our global business advisory partners. We are also preparing a new report, taking a deep dive into how businesses can contribute to peace outlined as part of SDG 16 (Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions).

As in much of our work, this will be a collaborative effort with the University of Pennsylvania Law School and McDermott Will & Emery LLP to analyze the links between inclusive growth, partnerships and peace.

As champions for promoting the SDGs, we also believe that policy, direction and action will be instrumental for setting the stage for SDG integration. We look forward to working with the private sector and continuing to explore ways to create an ongoing mechanism to boost cooperation and development through the SDGs in all industries.



(Paloma Duran is Director of the Sustainable Development Goals Fund).


Refusing religious rites to London killers is a timely decision

BRITISH police on Tuesday published names of the terror trios that murdered seven people on Saturday night around London Bridge in a knife attack before police shot the jihadists dead. It has shocked the world and naturally the Muslims world over since the killers also carry Muslim names pretending to be Muslims.



But in a timely move to denounce the killers the right to claim to be Muslims more than 130 Muslim religious leaders in London city have refused to perform the funeral service of those ISIS linked killers and gave the call to others to join their stance to denounce them as Muslims. We hope the message will be straight.



Youssef Zaghba, a Moroccan-born Italian man, was identified Tuesday as the ringleader of the trios that carried out the mayhem. The other two attackers were also Muslims by names. East London Mosque and London Muslim Centre Chairman said the decision to deny them the religious rites was made at the right time because terrorism is against the core teaching of Islam and of Prophet Muhammad. One can't kill innocence people for any cause. They have rightly vowed that London Muslims will be active to resist such conspiracy against the Muslim community in Britain and western countries.



Mayor Sadiq Khan, who is also a Muslim in an article in the London Evening Standard on Monday condemned the killing again saying Muslim population was overwhelmingly disgusted by this act. This must be a crystal-clear message around the world: The sick and wicked ideology of these evil extremists is no form of Islam. He unequivocally denounced them and their twisted beliefs. In this background, the decision by Muslim religious leaders has been seen as an "unprecedented" move because the funeral ritual is typically performed on a deceased Muslim no matter the person's past actions. The religious leaders call on others to deny the religious rites to such killers now and for any time in future carries far reaching impacts.



We must say, as the Muslim religious leaders in London have said this is a conspiracy against Muslims in Britain and in other western countries. The so-called jihadists are creation of Israel to defame the peaceful Muslims living in those countries branding them as criminals to isolate them and ultimately to expel them from those countries. This will be a big success to people treating Muslims as their enemies.



Had these Jihadists been championing the cause of Islam, they would naturally target Israeli establishments killing helpless Palestinians in their homes as they are continuing the illegal occupation of their land. But these criminals are tolerating the enemies of the Muslims and it shows their real identity behind the so-called Muslim names.



Britain is the peaceful abode of the Muslims where they are members of a multiracial community working for the prosperity of all. But terrorists activities by some namesake Muslims are bound to irritate racial tension and this must be taken care of by the community leaders all over Britain and other European countries.
Husband kills wife in city

Staff Reporter :

A woman was allegedly tortured to death for dowry by her husband at Purba Anantanagar in the city's Darus Salam area on Wednesday morning.

The victim has been identified as Hashi alias Priya, 30, wife of Delwar Hossain Kanon.

Quoting victim's family, Tahmudul Haque, Sub-Inspector of Darus Salam Police Station, said, "Delwar clubbed Priya mercilessly for dowry on June 1, leaving her seriously injured. She was admitted to Suhrawardy Hospital where she

succumbed to her injuries on Wednesday morning.

Police recovered the body and sent it to Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) for an autopsy, the police official said.

A murder case has been filed in this connection, the SI said.


Moudud evicted from Gulshan house He had long been occupying it illegally: RAJUK

I'll take shelter on the street: Moudud

Rajuk on Wednesday launches eviction drive to take over the property as the Apex Court ordered to mutate the 1.13 bigha land and residence at Gulshan. Barrister Moudud Ahmed appeared in front of the huse while evicting.

Staff Reporter :

Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha (RAJUK) on Wednesday evicted BNP leader Barrister Moudud Ahmed from his Gulshan house, which was under his occupation for more than four decades.

Following a verdict of the Supreme Court, the RAJUK conducted the drive."As per the highest court's verdict, we are vacating the house and taking control of it," Waliur Rahman, Zonal Director of Rajuk, told The New Nation on Wednesday.

RAJUK started the eviction drive around 12pm on Wednesday and continued it till sround 5PM.

"It's RAJUK's property. It had long been occupied illegally. We have secured a court verdict in our favour," Rahman said. Apart from RAJUK officials, a large number of policemen took part in the drive. Moudud arrived on the scene after the drive kicked off and stood in front of the main entrance. He, however, stepped aside upon the RAJUK magistrate's request. The senior lawyer had been living in the Gulshan-2 house since 1972.

"What else can I do? I'll sleep on the pavement at night. What can a citizen like me do against such illegal forces," Moudud told reporters. A few number of lower level activists of BNP were seen in the spot during the evection drive but none raised their voice against the drive.

Around 4:30pm, Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain, the party's another standing committee member like Moudud, appeared on the scene, but left soon after.

RAJUK brought in four trucks to shift furniture and other belongings owned by Moudud.

The belongings will be kept in two apartments, Moudud's associate Barrister Ehsanur Rahman told the reporters. "Some will go to an apartment on Road 48, which he owns and the rest to another flat on Road 51, owned by a relative," he said.

However, expressing frustration over the eviction drive at his Gulshan Avenue house, the BNP senior leader said he will take shelter on the street.

"Where will I stay? What will I do now? If needs be, I'll take shelter to the street," he told reporters replying to a query when Rajuk was conducting the drive.

The legal battle over the house on Plot-159 began after the Anti-Corruption Commission filed a case in 2013 against Moudud and his brother Monjur Ahmed, accusing them of illegally occupying the property.

The ACC said the BNP leader produced a 'fake' power of attorney for the property and has been living in the house as a tenant. The Gulshan house originally belonged to Md Ehsan, a Pakistani national, who got the rights of the house from the then Dacca Improvement Trust or DIT in 1960.

The owner had left Bangladesh in 1971 after the Liberation War started and the property was listed as abandoned after the couple did not return. Moudud moved into the house in the same year.

In 2010, the High Court granted a plea by Moudud's brother who sought to transfer the house's ownership under his name. The order was separately challenged by RAJUK and the state in 2014.

The Appellate Division then overturned the High Court's order in 2016 and later scrapped Moudud's petition for a review of the decision on Sunday, clearing the way for his eviction.
Qatar row: Trump urges Arab unity in call to Saudi Arabia`s King Salman

US President Donald Trump has called the king of Saudi Arabia to urge Gulf unity amid an escalating dispute over Qatar's alleged support for militants.

Earlier, he said the Saudis' move to isolate Qatar could mark the "beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism". Several Gulf countries cut travel and embassy links with Qatar on Monday.

Qatar strongly denies supporting radical Islamism. The rift has affected oil prices, travel and shipping, and has raised fears of food shortages.

The emir of Kuwait is mediating in the dispute and the president of Turkey has also offered to help, saying isolation and sanctions will not resolve the crisis.

"His [Mr Trump's] message was that we need unity in the region to fight extremist ideology and terrorist financing," a US official told Reuters news agency.

Mr Trump had earlier claimed credit for the pressure placed on Qatar, saying his recent visit to Saudi Arabia was "already paying off".

In a series of tweets on Tuesday morning, Mr Trump accused Qatar of funding terrorism, saying: "During my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology. Leaders pointed to Qatar - look!" In his phone call to King Salman, he was quoted by Reuters as saying: "It's important that the Gulf be united for peace and security in the region,"

Separately, the Pentagon thanked Qatar for hosting the largest US air force base in the Middle East.

Saudi Arabia's foreign minister called on Qatar to cut ties with Palestinian group Hamas in the occupied territories, and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, if it wanted to end its isolation in the Gulf region.

Adel Al-Jubeir said: "Nobody wants to hurt Qatar. It has to choose whether it must move in one direction or another direction."

Speaking in Paris, he said the economic measures should put pressure on Qatar to act "like a normal country".

He name-checked "support of extremist groups", "hostile media" and "interference in affairs of other countries" as things Qatar would have to change if it wished to restore ties.

He added that Qatar was undermining the Palestinian Authority and Egypt by supporting Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, and said stopping these policies would "contribute to stability in the Middle East".

Hamas is the largest of several militant Islamist Palestinian groups, and was the first Islamist group in the Arab world to win election at the ballot box, before it took power in Gaza after a battle 10 years ago.

The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is another Islamist group that became politically active. Some countries designate both as terrorist groups.

The BBC's Barbara Plett Usher in Washington says Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have all funded extremists in Syria but pulled back under US pressure, while Qatar, which likes to see itself as a neutral player and potential intermediary, has dealings that are arguably murkier than the others'.

But Qatar's Foreign Minister, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman al-Than, said: "There is no single evidence that the Qatar government is supporting radical Islamists."

On Monday, several countries withdrew their ambassadors from Doha, Qatar's capital, while some cut transport links and gave Qatari nationals two weeks to leave their territory.

Disruption to airspace in the Gulf began on Tuesday morning local time. Doha, Qatar's capital, is a major hub for international flight connections.

Airlines affected include Qatar Airways, Etihad Airways and Emirates. Saudi Arabia and Bahrain have revoked the licences of Qatar Airways and ordered its offices to close.

When avoiding Saudi Arabia, their massive - and only - neighbour, Qatar's planes are having to take more indirect routes, leading to longer flight times.

Qatar is heavily dependent on food imports and residents have been queuing at supermarkets to stockpile.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said isolating Qatar would "not resolve any problems" and called for "mutual dialogue".

"In this respect, we appreciate Qatar's constructive stance," he said.

"Trying to isolate Qatar, which certainly carries out an efficient fight against terrorism, will not resolve any problems."

France's President Emmanuel Macron spoke to Mr Erdogan and to the emir of Qatar in separate telephone calls, saying he was ready to back "all initiatives to encourage calm".


UK polls today

Leaders tour country in final appeal for votes

Britain\'s Prime Minister Theresa May gives an election campaign speech to Conservative Party supporters in Norwich, June 7, 2017. Internet photo

Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn are stressing core themes as they and other party leaders criss-cross the UK in a last push for general election votes.

The Tory leader said she was the only person who could "deliver for Britain" and negotiate the right Brexit deal.

Warning of "five more years of Tory austerity", Labour's leader promised more spending on health and education.

The Lib Dems are focusing on Remain-voting target seats while UKIP says only it can stop Brexit "backsliding".

In Scotland, the SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon has warned that a vote for Labour risks " handing the keys of No 10" to Theresa May, while leaders in Wales and Northern Ireland are also making their last pitch for votes.

After a week dominated by security issues since the terror attack in London, the prime minister promised on Tuesday to change human rights laws if they hamper a crackdown on terror suspects, by potentially seeking opt-outs from the European Convention on Human Rights.

The proposals have been criticised by her opponents, who have urged that "basic rights" should be upheld.

But returning to her central message on Brexit - the reason she gave for calling Thursday's election 50 days ago - Mrs May said that money which has until now been spent on EU projects could deliver "huge benefits" across the UK after its withdrawal, due in 2019.

She has been highlighting her party's promise to put 23bn into a National Productivity Investment Fund, focusing on housing, road, rail and broadband improvements.

The PM's day started in London, where she chatted to butchers at Smithfield meat market in the City. She was accompanied by her husband, Philip, who was also at her side as she visited Southampton and Norwich.

Speaking in Norwich, she said a Labour government would "wreck the economy" while she wanted to build a country that was "more confident in itself and in which no community was left behind".

Mrs May, who will end the day in the West Midands, said that negotiations with the EU would begin in less than a fortnight and the question for voters was about who they trusted to deliver the best deal for Britain: "Brexit matters, Brexit is the basis of everything else. We need to get that Brexit deal right."

But emphasising Labour's plan to invest billions on public services, to be paid for by higher taxes on business and top earners, Mr Corbyn said the NHS could not afford "five more years of underfunding, understaffing and privatisation".

Addressing activists in Runcorn, he said the election was "all about the kind of society we want to live in", saying: "Never before has there been a clearer choice between the parties... a choice quite simply between hope and fear."

He said: "The re-election of a Theresa May government will mean five more years of cuts to the NHS, five more years of increases in waiting times, five more years of more and more people waiting for social care and five more years of austerity."

Instead, Mr Corbyn - who has also addressed crowds in Glasgow and Colwyn Bay - urged people to reject this "arid road" and back Labour's "positive and inclusive" vision.

The Labour leader has had to reshuffle his top team on the eve of the election after announcing shadow home secretary Diane Abbott would be taking a break because of ill health.

Ms Abbott pulled out of a number of media engagements on Tuesday and the BBC's political editor, Laura Kuenssberg, said Lyn Brown, the shadow police minister and candidate for West Ham, had been asked to stand in for her indefinitely.

Meanwhile, Lib Dem leader Tim Farron has urged Labour supporters to "send a message" to Theresa May on issues such as Brexit and social care by supporting his party in seats where they are the Tories' main challengers.

Endorsing tactical voting on campaign stops in Solihull, St Albans and Twickenham, he said: "This was undoubtedly an election called in the interests of the Conservative Party and it hasn't quite turned out the way she expected because Theresa May's made some very poor decisions, that have shown weakness and a level of heartlessness."

Former Business Secretary Vince Cable said his party offered an alternative to the continuing austerity proposed by the Conservatives and Jeremy Corbyn's "Venezuelan-style socialism".

Campaigning in Edinburgh, the Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon said re-electing SNP MPs would ensure Scotland retained a "strong voice" in Westminster and deny the Conservatives the "crushing majority" they were expecting.

"People in Scotland should not risk waking up to Tory MPs who can hand Theresa May a majority and then rubber stamp anything she wants," she said.

"Instead, voters should take the opportunity to stand up for Scotland's schools, hospitals, public services, pensioners and jobs by rejecting the Tories' extreme and dangerous plans."

At their final election rally, the Green Party called on people to "vote with their hearts".

"I'm calling on people across the UK to vote not just for the MP they want, but the kind of country they want," co-leader Jonathan Bartley said, emphasising his party's opposition to the Trident nuclear deterrent and support for a universal weekly basic income.

Visiting Great Yarmouth, UKIP leader Paul Nuttall said only his party could keep the pressure on the next government to deliver a "real Brexit" - with lower immigration, exclusive fishing rights for British trawlers within UK territorial waters and no "divorce bill".

And Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood said a re-elected Conservative government with an increased majority would pose a "threat" to Wales and her party would stand up for Welsh interests in the run-up to Brexit and afterwards.




Jewellers threaten indefinite strike from Sunday

Staff Reporter :

Bangladesh Jewellers Samity has threatened of strike for an indefinite period from June 11 in case of the Customs Intelligence and Investigation Directorate's failure to return the gold seized from the Apan Jewellers within 48 hours.

It has also outlined the strike program to press home their demands for a gold trading policy.

BAJUS Vice-President Enamul Haque Khan read out the statement on Wednesday afternoon while briefing reporters after a meeting held at the association's Baitul Mukarram Market office.

Terming the seizure of gold from Apan Jewellers illegal, Enamul Haque demanded the resignation of CIID's Director General Dr Moinul Khan.

The jewellers' association has also asked the all jewellery shop owners across the country to respond to the shutdown call on June 11.

They have also a plan to submit a memorandum to the Finance Minister and the Commerce Minister on June 12 and to hold a grand-rally on June 15 with the participation of all gold traders in the country.

He has also requested the Prime Minister to intervene on this issue for the betterment of 28 lakh gold traders in the country.

On Tuesday, a five-member body was formed to return Apan Jewellers' customers their ornaments. The body was formed with CIID Joint Commissioner Shafiur Rahman, Deputy Director Md Zakir Hossain, Deputy Director SM Shariful Islam, and two representatives of Bangladesh Jewellers Association and Apan Jewellers each.

When contacted, the CIID Director General Dr Moinul Khan said that they got a list of 389 customers who ordered or booked ornaments from Apan Jewellers.

"We have already delivered ornaments to 85 customers as per their order or booking and the rest will be given within next 10 days," he said.

Earlier on Sunday, the customs intelligence department deposited 13.5 maunds (approximately 503.88kg) of gold and 427 grams of diamonds seized from Apan Jewellers in the Bangladesh Bank's vault as there were no legal documents for them.

The CIID official in May went for the crackdown amid allegation by one of the Banani rape victims that the prime accused Ahmed Shafat, son of one of the owners of Apan Jewellers, bragged about being a gold smuggler.

Shafat and the four other accused also boasted about their wealth and said police would not touch them when the two girls warned that they would go to the law enforcers, according to the testimony of one of the two girls.

Invited to Shafat's birthday party on March 28, the two girls went to The Raintree Hotel at Banani in Dhaka around 9:00pm. After the programme ended around midnight, Shafat and his friend Nayem Ashraf alias Halim raped them forcibly in two rooms, alleged one of the two girls who filed the case on May 6.
No worry for BD workers in Qatar: Minister

Following Qatar's diplomatic problems with the neighbouring countries, Expatriates' Welfare and Overseas Employment Minister Nurul Islam on Wednesday said Bangladeshi workers in the Gulf country will not be affected.

He made the remarks while speaking at a consultation on challenges of women migrant workers of Bangladesh and addressing the role of intermediaries at the Probashi Kalyan Bahban.

Expatriates' Welfare and Overseas Employment Secretary Begum Shamsun Nahar also said the labour market in Qatar will not be affected as Bangladesh maintains its individual relationship with each country in the Middle East. 'We aren't working with any alliance. So, there'll be no problem for us," she said.

Bangladeshi Ovhibashi Mohila Sramik Association (BOMSA) in collaboration with British Council's PROKAS programme organised the consultation held with Manusher Jonno Foundation Executive Director Shaheen Anam in the chair.

At least six countries-Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, the UAE, Yemen, Libya and the Maldives-on Monday severed the diplomatic ties with Qatar, accusing it of collaborating with 'Iran-backed terrorist groups'.
Danny Wimmer Presents Nine Inch Nails and Ozzy Osbourne will headline the 2017 Aftershock festival, scheduled for October 21-22 in Sacramento, California.

And the heavy doesn't stop there: the lineup also includes A Perfect Circle, Five Finger Death Punch, Stone Sour, Marilyn Manson, Mastodon, Halestorm, Highly Suspect, In This Moment, Eagles of Death Metal and Of Mice & Men, among many others.

Tickets will go on sale this Friday, June 9. Visit AftershockConcert.com for ticket info.

Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
If you are looking for the new Immoral Minority posts, you should know that they can be found here at our new home Please stop by to get caught up on politics, join the conversations, or simply check out the new digs.
On a more positive note, Louisiana tied with Texas and Washington for most exports per capita.

LEDA Job Fair

Louisiana has the second to worst economy in the country, according to a recent study.

NOLA.com/the Times-Picayune reports an analysis released by WalletHub found the states economy ranks 50th among others plus the nations capital. The Washington, D.C.-based financial advising website released its findings June 6 after examining indicators including employment, building permits, government spending and growth in science and technology industries.

Only West Virginia ranked below Louisiana, with the bottom five also including Mississippi, Arkansas and Oklahoma. However, Louisiana tied with Texas and Washington for most exports per capita.

Washington had the top spot, followed by California and Utah.

WalletHub used data from the federal census, labor statistics and economic analysis bureaus, the United Health and National Science foundations, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and others.
UL Lafayette will offer the states first masters degree in informatics starting next year.

The Louisiana Board of Regents approved the new graduate program in the School of Computing and Informatics during its May 22 meeting.

UL Lafayette first offered its undergraduate informatics major in 2011. The newly approved masters degree program will begin in the Spring 2018 semester, according to a press release from the university.

It is designed to provide advanced education and research in information sciences and information technology, said Dr. Azmy S. Ackleh, dean of the Ray P. Authement College of Sciences, which includes the School of Computing and Informatics. It focuses on training graduate students in computing applied to

multiple disciplines.

Informatics is applied computer science. It examines how individuals interact with and share information. Informatics students learn to design and adapt information systems to solve problems that arise in the workplace and in everyday life.

Dr. Michael W. Totaro, an associate professor in the School of Computing and Informatics, said UL Lafayettes program will emphasize enterprise computing, which will allow its graduates to assess an institutions needs comprehensively. Those skills can help businesses and government agencies run more efficiently.

Enterprise computing includes the analytics, reporting, database management and other software solutions systems that span the entire organization, Totaro said. One of the most exciting aspects of our new master of science in informatics program is the fact that it is truly interdisciplinary, as information technology is used today in virtually every area.

Dr. Xindong Wu, director of the School of Computing and Informatics, said the new program arrives at a promising time for Louisiana and Lafayette. Over the past five years, a number of information technology companies, including IBM in Baton Rouge, General Electric in New Orleans and CenturyLink in Monroe, have either relocated to the state or expanded existing operations here.

Lafayette continues to develop into a regional hub for information technology industries, Wu said. He pointed to Enquero, CGI and Perficient, all of which opened facilities in the city since 2015. Enquero and CGI are tenants of UL Lafayettes University Research Park, while Perficient operates Downtown.

Nationally, the outlook is equally good. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that job opportunities for computing and information technology professionals will increase at a higher-than-average rate over the next decade.

Students with a bachelors degree in a related scientific or engineering field can apply for admission into the program. The 33-hour curriculum includes thesis and non-thesis options. A full-time student can complete a degree in four regular semesters, or about 24 months.

This program further solidifies Louisianas position as a national leader in computing and information technologies, Ackleh said. It will also supply the Louisiana workforce with much-needed graduates who are trained in applied computing with an emphasis on solving real-world problems.

For more information on the new masters degree in informatics, e-mail [email protected] or click here.
[Editor's Note: This story was updated at 1:54 Wednesday afternoon to include a comment from the constituent involved in the exchange with Higgins.]

Replying to a barbed comment about one of his more controversial videos, Rep. Clay Higgins appeared to tell a commenter he wished she were dead.

This is sensationalism and a cheap tactic to appeal to uneducated voters. You are disgusting, just like tRump [sic], wrote Katy Richard in a comment posted to a thread about the video, in which Higgins rattles off rifle rounds and his signature rhetoric, his arms bare in a SWAT vest.

Which makes me aspire to your eventual absence, dear lassie, Higgins responded to Richard from his personal Facebook account. The exchange happened in late May, just as the video was published.

The sentiment falls short of a threat, but the tone of his whole response comports with his penchant for rhetoric decorated with themes of righteous violence.

There was furor over Higgins recent call to a Holy War in response to recent terror attacks in London and Manchester. Kill them all, he said in the widely distributed post, invoking a war against Islamic horror.

He took heat from the national press, with the post going viral via pieces published by CNN, the Washington Post, Huffington Post and others. In responses to media inquiries about the statement, Higgins softened and clarified his sentiments, but stood by them. Ive never been accused of being politically correct. I call things the way I see them, he said in a statement.

Im passionate about it because I love my fellow man, Higgins told the Post. I would remove those that would destroy the innocents amongst my fellow man.

Rep. Clay Higgins Photo by Robin May

Higgins has a reputation for a fiery tongue, one that hes brandished liberally in public, typically while embracing his sometimes controversial Captain Clay persona. His reply to Richard is not the first time hes verbally abused a commenter on Facebook. During his campaign for office last year, he belittled a woman in a thread about the Orlando massacre, in which dozens were murdered in a mass shooting at a gay nightclub, and appealed to a need for superior violence in the fight against terror. Panzer tanks will not be stopped by flowers, he replied to the woman, who criticized his call to righteous violence. He then told her to shut the f**k up.

A shrewd man with a knack for showmanship, this kind of outburst could readily be designed to garner the sort of attention in which the Cajun John Wayne revels. Hes not readily backed down and apologized for episodes like these, the common strategy for politicians in scandal. That attitude has played well for some voters, certainly many that see virtue in holding a hard line in an increasingly ugly culture war.

We reached out to Higgins for comment, but have not received a reply as of publishing this piece.

We also reached out to Katy Richard on Facebook Wednesday morning and received this response:
CARBONDALE  Murdale Water District has cancelled the boil water order previously in effect for the east half of the District in and around major roads, Illinois 13; Airport and Country Club roads; Old Illinois 13; Chautauqua, Pump House, Wood, W. Lake and New Era roads; and all the minor roads off of these.
The Pinckneyville Chamber of Commerce and city officials welcomed a new loan company to the area with a ribbon-cutting in June.

The ribbon-cutting welcomed Central Illinois Loans, opening at 1010 S. Main St. in Pinckneyville. The business opened in April.

Central Illinois Loans was established more than 13 years ago, and its Pinckneyville location becomes its ninth branch opened, according to a press release.

Rick Williams, the branch manager, brings more than 22 years of consumer finance experience to the position.

"We picked Pinckneyville in part as it is a growing, beautiful and friendly town," Williams reportedly told the Chamber in the press release.

The Pinckneyville branch will be open from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday to Friday and can be reached by calling 618-318-8346.

 The Southern
Its a promise that seems too good to be true. For tens of thousands of seniors in Illinois, the stakes are too high for it to be yet another government fantasy.

The Illinois Department of Aging is moving ahead this summer to bypass the General Assembly with rules to implement its proposed Community Reinvestment Program, intended to replace the Community Care Program. For nearly 40 years, Illinois has provided services  health monitoring, personal care and meals  to tens of thousands of seniors who arent ready to enter more extensive nursing home care but need some help to remain living on their own.

The Rauner administration has decided Illinois simply spends too much money on caring for more than 30,000 seniors in CCP who are not covered by Medicaid, and has developed this plan to provide flexible services instead of the regular home care they receive now. Department officials, in several hours of testimony before the House Aging Committee and in media interviews, insists it can save the state $120 million and help these seniors receive services better targeted to meet their needs.

Sounds great, right? Has the Department really found the doing more with less formula that is so elusive in public policy?

I dont believe so, and Im not alone. The AARP, the Alzheimers Association of Illinois, SEIU Healthcare and many local experts, who provide care to seniors every day around the state, are coming together to oppose the departments proposed Community Reinvestment Program. There are too many questions about how the program will save money and provide critical care to our elderly.

At our initial hearing on this shift in direction in Springfield earlier this year, one senior care advocate said the proposed transition is personal as his mother is one of the non-Medicaid seniors who would be affected.

The CCP program does breakfast and lunch Monday through Friday for her. The Department is doing no justice to the many moms and grandmas around the state, Mike Egbert said tearfully.

There are hundreds of seniors whose services could be cut in every legislative district around the state. In some districts in and around Chicago, more than 1,000 seniors rely on CCP every day. Where will they turn when $120 million in services goes away?

We need to do a more thorough review of our existing senior care plans to make sure we are running them as efficiently and effectively as possible. But the answer is not creating a new program, moving to implement it through a small legislative rules oversight committee and putting at risk the care of thousands of seniors that could cost all of us much more.

Join me in urging the governor to move away from his plans to cut funding and services that are so important to the elderly in our state, and lets get back to a real conversation about supporting our parents, grandparents and seniors everywhere live full and independent lives.
Its miraculous really, said Fred Wimberly of Columbia as he listened to the whirs of chainsaws and pumps of nail guns at Cattle Creek Campground.

Wimberly hadnt returned to the historic campground since just after the horrific fire on March 10, which destroyed 15 wooden tents.

Wimberly grew up in the annual tradition of campmeeting, a two-century-old Methodist practice in rural South Carolina.

But three months ago, the families of Cattle Creek Campground near Branchville wondered if that annual tradition would have to hold off a year so they could rebuild the destroyed tents.

The effort to rebuild the tents is astounding, campground trustee chairman Harry Wimberly said.

The progress that has been made is surprising, he said at a special called workday on June 3. We are way ahead of schedule.

Wimberly said every tent owner decided to rebuild and there is 100 percent participation.

The rebuilding effort is being completed by volunteers, monetary donations and supplies at discounted rates.

We express our greatest gratitude to Cox Industries. Theyve bent over backwards to help us, Wimberly said.

On June 15, an aluminum provider will deliver supplies for the tin roofs.

Everythings going way and beyond better than I thought it could be, Wimberly said.

Project manager Johnny Chavis agrees.

Everything is way above expectations, he said.

I was under a lot of pressure to get those posts and all set and once we go to a certain point there, we just started getting lumber and we just started cutting and nailing, Chavis said.

Its been an amazing adventure, he said.

Weve come a long way, but theres a long way to go, Chavis said, emphasizing that the progress to date is Amazing! Amazing! Amazing!

Chavis said hes seen Branchville, Rowesville, Bowman and nearby communities come together like this during other efforts, such as when a tornado tore through Branchville on March 15, 2008.

Hes been part of the efforts to assist local communities after ice storms and hurricanes.

Faye Hutson, 78, of Charleston, hasnt missed a single campmeeting gathering.

It was slow riding and sad singing when it burned down, she said.

But tent 31 is going to be ready for the last full week of July when Cattle Creek holds its annual campmeeting.

They say out of ashes wonderful things happen, she said.

Stephanie Heffelfinger, who lives in the Cattle Creek community, owns tent 27.

There are people out here helping that have no rhyme or reason to be out here, except that theyre part of the community, she said.

Heffelfinger said in the days after the fire, she didnt know if she and her family would have the tent rebuilt this year.

The next phases of work, after the aluminum roofs are installed, will be electrical and plumbing projects, Heffelfinger said.

Church groups and individuals whod like to volunteer in the rebuilding efforts at Cattle Creek Campground are asked to contact Harry Wimberly at 803-600-6492 or 803-829-2561.

Wimberly said work at the campground takes place Monday through Friday. No experience is required; just bring hand tools.

Monetary gifts should be made payable to Cattle Creek Campground, c/o J. Steve Summers, 4806 Cattle Creek Road, Branchville, S.C. 29432.
DENMARK -- The Center for Heirs Property Preservation and the USDA/SC Natural Resources Conservation Service will hold the 2nd Annual SC Rural & Limited Resource Landowner Symposium on the Voorhees College campus in Denmark June 22-23.

Those who want to learn about forestland management, how to grow trees for income, heirs property rights and resolutions, conservation planning options and agricultural farming for income are invited to call the Center for Heirs Property Preservation to make a reservation to attend the symposium.

The free event will offer a full day and a half of expert speakers and programming. All housing accommodations and meals on campus will be provided with a formal reception and dinner scheduled Thursday evening. The first 100 rural landowners to register will receive priority access to USDA conservation and resource opportunities.

Among the featured speakers will be Dr. Drew Lanham, alumni distinguished professor of Wildlife Ecology, Forestry and Environmental Conservation at Clemson University. Lanham describes himself as a conservationist, a man in love with nature  an eco-addict. His latest book is "The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Mans Love Affair with Nature."

Symposium topics will include: Forestry and the Future for the Historically Underserved Landowner; Estates and Heirs Property; A Helping Hand to Generations of Farms and Families; and Youth in Agriculture.

Immediately following the symposium, families can schedule a free hour with one of the centers attorneys to discuss their particular heirs property issues.

Space is limited; register by Friday, June 16 by contacting Prenita Hudson at 843-745-7055 or phudson@heirsproperty.org.
COLUMBIA -- House Speaker Jay Lucas has warned two veteran South Carolina legislators not to let another disagreement turn physical.

Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter told The AP on Wednesday she's offended by Lucas' suggestion she and Rep. Jerry Govan were equally at fault.

Lucas advised both in a letter Tuesday to keep their future disagreements civil, saying he was unable to determine what happened May 11 because their accounts varied widely and no one saw how it started.

Cobb-Hunter says she held out her hand to keep Govan at bay, and he grabbed and twisted her wrist and pushed her. She says she had to keep ice on her swollen wrist for two days, and it's still not healed completely.

Govan insisted to The AP he didn't initiate the physical contact. But he would not give specifics.

The two Orangeburg Democrats were arguing May 11 in a hallway leading to the chamber over legislation consolidating Orangeburg County school districts. The bill was approved Tuesday.

Lucas calls Govan the "initial aggressor," since he approached Cobb-Hunter as she was walking away from him.

The speaker says Govan should have avoided the confrontation entirely.
Authorities are seeking a man they believe used an illegally manufactured credit card to steal $500 from a persons account.

The Calhoun County Sheriffs Office says a male suspect was captured on video using the card on May 27, 2017 at the Quick Stop located in Cayce.

The male has allegedly used the card at several ATM machines in the Augusta Road and Charleston Highway areas of Lexington County.

The sheriffs office and Crimestoppers are asking for the publics help identifying the suspect. Tips may be provided anonymously and could lead to a cash reward of up to $1,000.

Tips can be provided to Crimestoppers at 1-888-CRIME-SC (1-888-274-6372) or at the website at www.midlandscrimestoppers.com.

Information can also be provided to Capt. Regalis with the Calhoun County Sheriffs Office at 803-874-2741.
Lawmakers approved a bill merging Orangeburg Countys three school districts into one on Tuesday. The bill is now headed to the governors desk for his signature.

I am very glad that this issue has been dealt with and I believe even more so that it will be in the best interest of all children in public schools in the county, said Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter, D-Orangeburg.

Cobb-Hunter said this keeps the county ahead of the curve. Lawmakers have said the state could mandate that all counties consolidate their school districts.

We did it before it was mandated, which is always good, Cobb-Hunter said.

Under the bill, the countys public schools will be run by the Orangeburg County School District effective July 1, 2019.

Attendance zones will remain the same through 2021-2022, unless a change is required by a federal court order.

Lawmakers made several changes to the bill on Tuesday. For instance, it was amended to delete language increasing teacher pay to meet the Southeastern average.

Sen. Brad Hutto, D-Orangeburg, said thats an issue to be left to the new school board.

Cobb-Hunter said increasing salaries to the Southeastern average would have required a tax increase.

One of their top issues was the fear of increased taxes, she said.

The final version of the bill also details the composition of the transition committee that will guide the county through consolidation.

The original bill called for a transition committee of 13 members with the purpose of coordinating the consolidation of the three present districts.

The committee will instead be comprised of the board chairs and a second board member from each of the current boards. There will also be five members appointed by the legislative delegation.

Non-voting members will include the three superintendents and one parent from each of the three present school districts.

The bill calls for this transition committee to be created within 60 days of the governor signing the bill.

Hutto said meetings should begin after summer vacation in late August.

The new school districts board will be composed of nine members.

Seven of the members will be elected from single-member districts following the Orangeburg County Council lines. Hutto said the final two members will be elected on a countywide basis.

Everybody in the county will get to vote for three school board members, Hutto said.

Cobb-Hunter said this will address the concern of rural voters about representation on the school board.

I feel very positive that that will result in appropriate representation, she said.

Rep. Jerry Govan, D-Orangeburg, said lawmakers were able to reach a compromise on consolidation because they agreed to continue improving the plans.

I think we all agree that we need to do some more work, he said.

We can always go back, Cobb-Hunter said. The door is always open to future changes in the event that they are warranted.

Hutto said, We want to make public education in Orangeburg County the best for all the students.
A state committee on Tuesday approved a package that will help bring Wanli Tire Company to Orangeburg County.

Wanli says it is planning to invest up to $1 billion and create up to 1,200 jobs at an unspecified location in the county. The investment is projected to take place over an eight-year period.

The companys plans became public Monday when the states Joint Bond Review Committee announced it would consider issuing $40.5 million in bonds to assist in site development, a rail line and roads.

The committee approved the package on Tuesday.

The committees paperwork says Wanli plans to invest at least $400 million and create at least 400 jobs.

Wanli chose Orangeburg County for its newest manufacturing plant because of its central location on the East Coast and its available workforce, according to a company press release.

The Vanlead Group Co., which is the parent company of Wanli Tire Co., cited the region's solid industrial foundations, strong scientific strength and highly efficient labor forces as the reason for locating here.

The company also cited the state's central location on the Atlantic Coast and its more than 200 auto parts makers as instrumental in their decision.

Lewis Gossett, president of the South Carolina Manufacturers Alliance, described the project as a big deal. Hes not surprised Orangeburg County landed it.

"Orangeburg makes perfect sense," Gossett said.

The county is near the Port of Charleston and is home to two major interstates, Orangeburg-Calhoun Technical College and several industrial parks, he said. The county also has rail access for both Norfolk Southern and CSX.

Last month, county and state leaders celebrated the upgraded Interstate 95-U.S. Highway 301 interchange.

"These things are very exciting and very good deals in the state," Gossett said. The returns on investment are very good."

Gossett praised Orangeburg County Development Commission Executive Director Gregg Robinson as one of the best economic development professionals in the state.

He also gave Robinson and county officials credit for developing the infrastructure the county needed to land such a large industry.

"A few weeks ago, the tire industry was abuzz about another tire company coming to South Carolina," Gossett said. "We did not know who it was, but you all sure as hell did a good job of getting ready."

Wanli Tire, with annual capacity of 16 million tires and 2,100 employees, is the largest radial tire manufacturer in southern China, according to the company's website.
NORWAY -- More than 80 people attended the town of Norway's 42nd annual Memorial Day program on May 29 to remember and honor those service members who gave their lives for their country.

The event was held at the Veterans' Monument at the Old Willow School.

Norway Mayor Ann Johnson welcomed everyone to the event, and Kathy Berry sang "The American Christian." The opening prayer was offered by Rev. Ken Jernigan.

Jack Hydrick (U.S. Air Force retired) led the Pledge of Allegiance. American Legion Post 4 Commander Hugh Taylor and Past Post Commander Joe Wyrosdick conducted the Flag Disposal Ceremony. Hydrick retired the town's worn American flag by burning it as prescribed by federal law, and Keith Phillips read the poem I Am The Flag."

Marcia Traywick then conducted the Recognition of Fallen Soldiers and the release of white balloons in their honor.

Coker Fogle introduced guest speaker Col. Woodrow O. Wilson (U.S. Army Ret.), who gave a brief history of Memorial Day and eulogized those soldiers who died to preserve this country's freedoms.

Wilson, who was born in Columbia to Woodrow Wilson Sr. and Rose Victoria Morris Wilson, served 30 years in the military. He was stationed throughout the United States, Europe, South Korea and Vietnam, where he commanded units at all levels from battery/company commander to brigade commander.

Sgt. Jason Walker (U.S. Army Ret.) placed the Memorial Wreath following the address, and Berry sang God Bless the USA." Rev. Ben Harr played Taps, and Rev. Wendell Johnson offered the closing prayer.

Following the program, everyone enjoyed light refreshments and fellowship.
NORWAY -- Citizens who have their own wells but are also hooked up to Norway's sewer system and have not paid their sewer bills are being put on notice, the town's mayor says.

Those who have failed to pay their bills have been notified their service will be cut off, Mayor Ann Johnson reported at the June 5 Norway Town Council meeting. As a result, two of those individuals have already paid up, she said.

Johnson said the state Department of Health and Environmental Control requires that customers be notified if they are in arrears and given a 10-day notice before their sewer service is terminated.

If a customer's service is cut off and raw sewage then backs up on their property, DHEC can bring charges against that individual, the mayor said.

She noted that some citizens are contesting the policy.

Also during the meeting, Police Chief Scott Ward reported he is currently preparing an application for a 100-percent DUI grant that would pay for a full-time police officer, their training, vehicle and equipment.

"It can be resubmitted and renewed for up to three years, depending on our (DUI) statistics," Ward said of the grant. "The town would need to absorb the costs on the fourth year.

He said he would update council on the progress of the grant application, which must be submitted by the end of June.

In other business, Johnson reported that during an inventory of the chemicals at the wastewater treatment plant, it was discovered some of the lids on the chemical canisters had corroded. The lids have since been replaced, she said.

Council also discussed the selection process for a landscaper to maintain the Main Street streetscape project when the current contract ends in March 2018.

The town is looking for a local person to work one day a week to weed and water the plants, it was reported. Those interested should contact Norway Town Hall at 803-263-4300.

In addition, council discussed the possibility of initiating a Crime Watch program. Residents interested in getting involved are invited to attend a meeting at 6:45 p.m. on Tuesday, July 11 at the Old Willow School, it was announced.

Also during the meeting:

Council agreed to move its regular meeting next month to 7 p.m. on Tuesday, July 11, due to the Fourth of July holiday.

The mayor announced the members of the Norway Municipal Election Committee are Cal Steadman, chairman; B. McColl, Mark Whetstone and Toni Hydrick.

Norway Municipal Court will be moved from Tuesday evenings to Wednesday mornings beginning July 12, it was announced. Janek Kazmierski will be sworn in as municipal judge on July 12, Johnson said.

Coker Fogle thanked everyone who helped plan the 42nd Annual Norway Memorial Day Service held at the Veterans' Memorial Site at the Old Willow School on May 29. The turnout was the largest in recent years, it was noted.

Fogle reported grants will be sought to pay for the town's Christmas programs this year and the Norway Museum upgrades.

In public comments, resident Shanell Singleton complained that although she has lived in Norway for about 41 years, she received a ticket for having illegal tint on her vehicle's windows. She said her sister received a similar ticket two weeks later. Singleton said she was told by the Norway police officer that if she is stopped again for failing to have the required sticker on each tinted window, she would go to jail. She said her vehicle was towed because she did not have the proper sticker and she had to make special arrangements to retrieve it.

Johnson told Singleton she needed to complete and submit a complaint form stating all the particulars before the council could take any type of action.

Singleton said she was being singled out or profiled and requested that everyone with tinted windows who don't have the required stickers also be stopped and ticketed.

She was referred to the state code of laws and again advised to complete and submit a complaint form.
earMUSICThe cover of Alice Cooper's forthcoming studio album, Paranormal, has been revealed at the shock rocker's official website and at the earMUSIC label's site. The album features a composite photo by Rob Fenn making it appear that Cooper has two heads.

Meanwhile, the record's lead single, a track called "Paranoic Personality," will arrive this Friday, June 9.

As previously reported, Paranormal is scheduled to be released on July 28, and was produced by Alice's longtime collaborator Bob Ezrin. The 12-track collection features guest appearances by U2 drummer Larry Mullen Jr., ZZ Top frontman Billy Gibbons and Deep Purple bassist Roger Glover, as well as by the three surviving members of the original Alice Cooper band -- bassist Dennis Dunaway, drummer Neal Smith and guitarist Michael Bruce.

Cooper collaborated on three new songs with Dunaway, Smith and Bruce, and those tracks will appear on a special bonus mini-album packaged with Paranormal that also will feature select live recordings. The album will be available as a two-CD digipack, two-LP collection, limited-edition box set and digital download.

Cooper currently is busy with a U.S. headlining tour that winds down on June 24 in El Paso, Texas. His next show takes place tonight, June 7, in Appleton, Wisconsin. After the current trek, Alice will mount a European summer tour leg running from early July to early August, after which he'll return to North America for his previously announced late-summer trek with Deep Purple and The Edgar Winter Band.

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By Azernews





By Laman Ismayilova

Baku will host Indian Food Festival on June 11 to mark the 25th anniversary of establishment of the diplomatic relations between Azerbaijan and India.

The festival will take place at Hyatt Kishmish Hall from 11am to 5pm (UTC +4), Trend Life reported.

The event is co-organized by the Indian Association in Azerbaijan and the Embassy of India.

The festival offers an opportunity to enjoy Indian cuisine from different parts of India, shop before summer holiday starts, familiarize Indian traditions, and participate in a lottery.

Moreover, special surprise awaits little guests of the festival.

Ticket price is 2 AZN ($ ).

India has close and friendly relations with Azerbaijan and was among the first countries to recognize Azerbaijan and establish diplomatic ties.

Last year the trade and economic exchanges between India and Azerbaijan progressed from strength to strength, increasing by 63 percent in 2016 as compared to 2015.

India has recently facilitated the visa application procedures for Azerbaijan. From now on, Azerbaijani nationals would be able to get online e-Visa for visits to India for recreation, sightseeing, casual visit to meet friends or relatives, short duration medical treatment or casual business.
By Trend





Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has congratulated Azerbaijani people on the occasion of the Republic Day.

"On behalf of the American people, I want to extend my sincere congratulations to the Azerbaijani people on the commemoration of their Republic Day.

The United States and Azerbaijan share a strong partnership, built through years of cooperation on energy and security issues as well as dialogue on democratic principles. As the month of Ramadan begins, I also congratulate Azerbaijan on its rich history, including the establishment of the first Muslim-majority parliamentary republic 99 years ago. Then, as now, you had a vision and worked to make it a reality. The United States encourages efforts to build a more secure and prosperous nation that respects the fundamental freedoms of its people. We also remain committed to the peaceful resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

The United States looks forward to even greater cooperation with Azerbaijan across all areas of our relationship in the years to come" said Rex Tillerson in his letter.
By Azernews





By Rashid Shirinov

The monitoring exercises on the line of contact of troops are an important confidence building measure, the spokesperson of the OSCE Chairmanship Helene Spitzer said on June 6.

The OSCE mission regularly holds monitoring on the contact line of Armenian and Azerbaijani troops. The monitoring exercises provide a snapshot, a way of accessing information regarding the situation on the ground.

The monitoring exercises of the Office of the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Ambassador Andrzej Kasprzyk, are carefully prepared and agreed with the sides. They are conducted with the assistance of military escorts to ensure the safety of all participants, said Spitzer.

She also noted that Ambassador Andrzej Kasprzyk is continuously exploring other avenues to increase confidence between the sides. In the preparatory phase, the Personal Representative clearly defines the area in which he would like the monitoring exercise to take place. He chooses locations which provide an opportunity to evaluate the situation.

A monitoring exercise is considered to be successful if the Personal Representative and his teams are led by the sides to the agreed area, which is confirmed by establishing visual contact, Spitzer noted. In addition, the Personal Representative and his teams are provided with information through briefings.

Armenia captured Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions from Azerbaijan in a war that followed the Soviet breakup in 1991. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and nearly 1 million were displaced as a result of the war.

Large-scale hostilities ended with a Russia-brokered ceasefire in 1994 but Armenia continued the occupation in defiance of four UN Security Council resolutions calling for immediate and unconditional withdrawal. Peace talks mediated by Russia, France and the U.S. within the OSCE Minsk Group have produced no results so far.

The frequent ceasefire violations occur almost every day, causing great hardship for the people living near the frontline, as they can't live their normal everyday lives and are always under a threat. Persistent shootings by the Armenian forces lead to casualties and even deaths among the civilian Azerbaijani population.
Azerbaijani Ambassador to Mali Tarik Aliyev has presented his credentials to country`s President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita.

Aliyev provided an insight into Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, saying Azerbaijan now has more than one million refugees and IDPs, Azertac reported.

The two also exchanged views on cooperation prospects, and pointed out great potential for development of relation between the two countries.

President Boubacar Keita asked the Azerbaijani ambassador to extend best wishes to President Ilham Aliyev.

The two counties established diplomatic relations in November 1996.

Mali is keen to develop bilateral ties with Azerbaijan and seeks to study Azerbaijan's experience, technical capabilities as well as management experience in various fields of economy.

There are also good prospects for cooperation with Azerbaijan in military-technical and energy spheres.
By Azernews





By Amina Nazarli

The European Union attaches special importance to the education system in Azerbaijan, said Malena Mard on June 7.

The head of the EU mission in Baku announced about this when addressing a conference dedicated to the project of technical assistance, EU Support to Vocational Education and Training, in Baku

She noted that the EU and Azerbaijan will start four new grant projects from July. All these projects will be implemented for the modernization of vocational education centers, according to Mard.

A joint approach will contribute to ongoing reforms in the country, added Mard.

Stressing that the cooperation with Azerbaijan plays an important role for the EU, she noted that the improvement of vocational education and training together with higher education are the basis of economic diversification, economic reforms in Azerbaijan.

This system expands opportunities for those who entering or re-entering the market, said Mard. Saying that the improvement of vocational training should be conducted in the right direction, she noted that the EU has extensive experience in this field.

She also spoke about the importance of having a content of curriculums and programs that meets the market requirements. They should be written in such a way that students can easily learn and use them, added Mard.

The new project is aimed at the development of vocational education in Azerbaijan, said the official, adding that the EU will continue to support reforms in Azerbaijan.

The project, presented today and funded by the EU, shows the great importance that the EU attaches to the educational system of Azerbaijan, she added.

Meanwhile, Deputy Foreign Minister Mahmud Mammadguliyev told APA that next stage of negotiations on a new agreement between Azerbaijan and the EU will be held on June 13-14. He said that he meeting will be held in Baku.

Director for Russia, Eastern Partnership, Central Asia and OSCE of the European External Action Service Luc Devigne will arrive in Azerbaijan. Negotiations will be conducted on two blocks - political security and trade, he said.

The new agreement between EU and Azerbaijan should replace the 1996 partnership and cooperation agreement and should better take account of the shared objectives and challenges the EU and Azerbaijan face today.

The agreement will follow the principles endorsed in the 2015 review of the European Neighborhood Policy and offer a renewed basis for political dialogue and mutually beneficial cooperation between the EU and Azerbaijan.

The new agreement envisages the compliance of Azerbaijans legislation and procedures with the EUs most important international trade norms and standards, which should lead to the improvement of Azerbaijani goods access to the EU markets.
By Trend





President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has extended his condolences to President of the Islamic Republic of Iran Hassan Rouhani.

We were deeply saddened and outraged by the news of casualties and injuries as a result of terror attacks in Tehran, said President Aliyev in his letter.

This bloody incident is yet another reminder that terrorism has become evil for the entire world and that it is important to resolutely and consistently fight it in all its manifestations, noted the Azerbaijani president.

On the occasion of this tragedy, on my own behalf and on behalf of the people of Azerbaijan, I extend my deepest condolences to you, families and loved ones of those who died and the whole people of Iran, and wish the injured the swiftest possible recovery. May Allah rest the souls of the dead in peace! he added.
By Rufiz Hafizoglu

Immediately after the Qatar crisis broke out, the Turkish Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying that Turkey is ready to become a mediator in resolving the crisis. Meanwhile, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had a number of phone conversations with the leaders of foreign countries, where the main topic of discussion was the Qatar crisis.

According to the Turkish presidential administration, Erdogan had telephone conversations with Qatari Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Amir of Kuwait Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jabir Al-Sabah and King of Saudi Arabia Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud.

To understand the importance of Qatar for Turkey, it is worth recalling the relations between the two countries, as well as Turkey's relations with the Arab countries in recent years. Firstly, despite Turkey and Saudi Arabia have normal relations now, the relations between Ankara and Doha are much stronger than those with Riyadh or Abu Dhabi. Secondly, Qatar is the 18th biggest investor in the world. The total amount of Qatar's investments worldwide is $335 billion, while Qatars investments in Turkey amount to $18 billion. Qatar has also acquired a number of big companies and banks in Turkey since 2015, such as QNB Finansbank, ABank, Digiturk, BMC and Boyner. Meanwhile, Turkish investments in Qatar amount to $14.2 billion. Turkish companies are engaged in about 130 projects, including the construction of a subway in Doha, which costs $4.4 billion. Qatar and Turkey also had a trade turnover of $692 million in 2016.

But, of course, Turkey is concerned not only with Qatars economic interests. At present, Qatar is the only reliable ally of Turkey in the region, and also Turkey has a military base in Qatar.

Despite some experts say that the Qatar crisis can only indirectly affect Turkey, Ankara has something to fear. Ankara understands that if Qatar faces serious economic problems, it will primarily affect Turkey. All this, of course, pushes Ankara to mediation in resolving the crisis.

But how real is Turkeys chance to solve the Qatar crisis?

No matter how hard Ankara tries to solve this problem, it will not be so easy. The key countries in the Qatar crisis are primarily the US, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE. And in order to conclude whether Ankara has chances to become a mediator between these countries and Qatar, it is necessary to look at Turkeys relations with these countries separately.

Turkey and the US

The US and Turkey have close relations. But there is a crisis in these relations. First of all, this is connected with the US providing Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the Democratic Union Party (PYD), considered as terrorist groups in Turkey, with weapons in the operations against the so-called Islamic State (IS aka ISIS/ISIL) in Syria.

Secondly, despite Turkeys all efforts, the US has not yet extradited leader of the Hizmet movement Fethullah Gulen, who was involved in the recent military coup attempt in Turkey.

The media is silent about another important thing. The Trump administration looks at the IS and the Muslim Brotherhood within one and the same context, while Muslim Brotherhood is not considered by Turkey as a terrorist organization.

Turkey and Egypt

After General Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi overthrew Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi in July 2013, who was a member of Muslim Brotherhood, the relations between Turkey and Egypt greatly deteriorated.

Erdogan did not recognize legitimacy of Al-Sisis presidency. Despite Egypt was an important country for Turkey, Ankara lost Egypt as a partner for an indefinite period. And despite all the attempts by the Turkish authorities to improve relations with Egypt, everything has turned out to be ineffective.

Turkey and the UAE

Although at first sight the Turkey-UAE relations seem to be normal, these relations are also in state of crisis. Earlier, the UAE accused Turkey of supporting the IS terrorists in Syria and providing them with weapons in Libya.

Meanwhile, the Turkish media claim that the UAE was one of the "sponsors" of the July 15, 2016 military coup attempt. Despite Turkish and UAE foreign ministers solved this issue, there is still tension in the relations between Ankara and Abu Dhabi.

So, Turkey has problems with the mentioned countries, except for Saudi Arabia. Taking all this into account, Turkey has still no chance to mediate in the Qatar crisis.




By Trend

Deputy Interior Minister for Security Affairs Hossein Zolfaqari says the terrorists walked into the Parliament in women outfit.

He said the security forces killed one terrorist and another one blew himself up, Tasnim reported.

The security forces caught the other shooters. Their number is not reported.

13:58 (UTC +4) Iranian MPs are being evacuated from the Parliament building in groups of 5 to 7 people under protection of the IRGC, Mehr news agency reports.

13:53 (UTC +4)? Iran's Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani downplayed the June 7 terror attack on the Parliament, IRNA news agency reported.

The security forces will deliver a severe blow against the terrorists, Larijani said, adding that this is a minor issue, but reveals that the terrorists pursue troublemaking.

13:30 (UTC +4)? Iran's Mehr news agency reported that gunfire stopped in Iran's parliament. Police deployed UAVs in its operations against the terrorists in the Parliament.

13:17(UTC +4) Fars news agency says ISIS has claimed responsibility for the todays terror attacks in Tehran.

13:10 (UTC +4) ISNA news agency reports that at least 35 have been transported to nearby hospitals following two terror attacks this morning in Tehran.

13:00 (UTC +4)? Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari, commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), has arrived at Irans Parliament. Irans Intelligence Ministry urged people not to use the subway today.

12:37 (UTC +4) Police have deployed snipers to buildings surrounding the parliament building in Tehran. Shooting inside the building has intensified.

12:36 (UTC+4)? An explosion occurred on the 5th floor of the Iranian parliament, where the attackers are positioned and exchanging fire with security forces, Tasnim news agency reported.

Reportedly one of the terrorists exploded himself inside the building.

12:25 (UTC +4)? Mehr news agency reported that the attackers in the parliament are running low on ammo, but they seem to have suicide vests on, which may explode.

12:01 (UTC +4)? Unconfirmed reports say seven people were killed in Iran's parliament shooting, while four people have been taken hostage, Tasnim news agency reported.

11:58 (UTC +4)? The death toll at the parliament attack in Iran has risen to two people, local media outlets reported.

11:49 (UTC+4)? Currently, the situation in the Iranian parliament is stable. Ardabil representative Hemayat Mirzadeh told Trend he and his colleagues are attending their regular sessions in the parliament.

One of the four men who attacked the Iranian Parliament has been arrested, he told Trend.

11:33 (UTC+4) A well-informed source told Trend on condition of anonymity that a security guard has been killed following attack at Parliament building. Iranian President Hassan Rouhanis office has raised security following the terrorist attack in Tehran.

11:25 (UTC+4)? Fire exchanges continue between security forces and armed attackers in Iran's parliament building, Tasmim news agency reported. Iran's counter-terrorism Special Forces(NOPO )have been dispatched to the parliament.

11:15 (UTC+4)? According to Fars news agency one of gunmen inside the parliament is a suicide bomber, currently surrounded by security forces.

11:01 (UTC+4)? Iran's Mizan news agency quoted Akbar Ranjbarzadeh, a presidium member of the parliament as saying the attackers are 4 people and 8 people were injured in the attack. IRNA reported the arm attackers have targeted pedestrians at streets around parliament building in Tehran, Asr-e Iran portal reported.

Elyas Hazrati, an Iranian MP also said that the attackers were armed with two AK-47and a pistol.

10:40? (UTC+4)? Unconfirmed news by Tasnim news agency reporter inside Parliament says one security guard died of injuries.

10:31? (UTC+4)? Three people including a security guard reportedly have been injured in a shooting incident in Irans parliament on June 7, Irans Tasnim news agency reported.

Reportedly unknown men fired several rounds at the guards protecting the parliament building in Tehran, wounding one of them.

According to initial reports, the assailants opened their way into the parliament building while shooting at the guards, leading to the injury of three people.

Conflicting reports suggest Iran parliament's attackers arrested, however, some reports have not confirmed his arrest and say fire exchanges continue.
By Trend

Security has been restored at the Imam Khomeini Mausoleum in Tehran, IRIB news agency reports.

According to an informed source, a bomber blew himself up, another one was shot dead by security forces, and eventually the law enforcement forces detained a female assailant who was earlier wounded.

Four pilgrims were wounded. A mausoleum gardener is among the victims.

13:33 (UTC +4)? Irans Press TV reported that shooting is still heard at the Imam Khomeini Mausoleum.

13:10 (UTC +4) ISNA news agency reports that at least 35 have been transferred to nearby hospitals following two terror attacks this morning in Tehran.

12:55 (UTC +4)? IRIB reports that another suicide bombing was carried out at the Imam Khomeini shrine.

12:28 (UTC +4) IRGC Special Forces have arrested two suspect terrorists at Imam Khomeini shrine.

12:05 (UTC +4) Iranian security forces have killed a second suicide bomber at the Imam Khomeini mausoleum, Mehr News agency reported.

11:49 (UTC +4)? Tabnak news website reported that the armed attack on the Imam Khomeini shrine has left at least one killed and four injured.

11:05 (UTC +4) Tasnim news agency reported that an attacker has been arrested at Khomeinis tomb. The arrested attacker is a female.

YJC (Iran's Young Journalists Club) also reported that the bomber of Imam Khomeini shrine was a female.

10:47 (UTC +4) An unknown gunman has injured several people at the tomb of the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, near capital Tehran.

The incident has left several people injured, Fars news agency tweeted.



The officials have not revealed any details regarding the attack, or the casualties thus far.



In a separate incident on the same day, several attackers reportedly tried to storm the building of Iran's parliament, engaging in a shootout with the guards.



According to reports, several people got injured as a result of the attack.

According to ISNA, the attacker of the tomb has committed suicide bombing following the attack.




International property specialist Chestertons has appointed Russell Owen, an industry veteran, as the head of agency for the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region.



Based in the companys Middle East headquarters in Dubai, UAE, Owen will be responsible for leading the expansion of Chestertons sales and leasing portfolios, said a statement from the company.



Owen, who brings over 13 years of real estate and property experience, has an impressive track record having worked with a range of companies from small, privately-owned firms to large corporate multi-nationals, where he developed expertise in disciplines including residential sales and leasing, brokerage services, marketing, reorganisation and restructuring.



Prior to joining Chestertons, Owen held senior positions in his native Britain and in Dubai. Following two years in the UK where Owen set up and managed his own residential sales and leasing agency in Cheshire, he joined the largest real estate brokerage in Dubai, specialising in sales of high-end villas.



Welcoming the appointment, Robin Teh, the acting managing director and country manager, UAE, said: "Owens track record in the real estate market speaks for itself. His ability to increase revenue and generate sales makes him an important asset to the company, particularly as we continue to consolidate our position in the market and eye further growth throughout the region."



"Russells experience will be a key driver in ensuring we achieve our business goals," he added.



Russell, who is a member of Rera, and has previously been a member of the National Association Estate Agents (NAEA); Association Residential Lettings Agents (ARLA); National Federation of Property Professionals (NFOPP); and The Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) commented:



On his new role, Owen said: "The Chestertons brand has been in existence for some 200 years and has built a strong reputation from both a global and a Middle Eastern perspective. The importance of the real estate industry is intensifying as we edge closer to Expo 2020."



"I look forward to working with the Chestertons team to capitalise on these opportunities, to further develop our sales and leasing credentials and expand our footprint in the region," he added.



Headquartered in Dubai, Chestertons Mena operates four offices in the region, covering the whole GCC region  with over 100 employees in total.-TradeArabia New Service
The Fjords, the operator of a fleet of seven tourism and transport vessels in Norway, has confirmed that it is building a sister ship to the striking diesel-electric plug-in hybrid Vision of the Fjords, launched in 2016.



However, unlike its predecessor, this 42m long carbon fibre vessel will be all electric and completely emission free, said a statement from company, part of The Fjord1 Group - a major transportation company in Norway.



The vessel, named Future of the Fjords, will be launched in April next year, it said.



Currently under construction at specialist shipbuilder Brdrene Aa, the new vessel retains the previous vessels mountain path design and environmentally friendly build, with a hull that minimises wake and reduces shoreline impact erosion. It also offers up to 400 passengers the panoramic views of the Western Norwegian fjords.



Future of the Fjords will cost NOK144 million ($17 million), marking a significant increase over the ships NOK90 million ($10.06 million) price tag. Much of the extra investment is the result of opting for an all-electric solution, it added.



Rolf Sandvik, CEO, The Fjords, said: Under the skin this new craft is a different beast.



Vision of the Fjords switches from diesel to electric power when entering the UNESCO World Heritage Listed Nryfjord, he said.



It represented an important step forward on our journey to transform tourism in this delicate natural wonderland, but this new ship is, quite simply, our dream come true. It marks the fulfilment of a vision, he added.



Sandvik continued: It not only provides an optimal passenger experience, with the only noise being the fjords natural soundtrack, but it also showcases a new, zero emissions way to enjoy and safeguard this fragile landscape.



The vessel will be totally different to anything else on the water, showing what can be achieved with the determination, investment and ambition to operate responsibly and sustainably. We want this to be a paradigm for the industry. We believe this really is the Future of the Fjords, he added.



The new DNV GL classed light craft will be propelled by two 300kW electric motors, enabling cruising speeds of 16 knots along the spectacular fjord route between Flam and Gudvangen. Work to develop the charging infrastructure to enable its planned 700 trips a year is currently in the early stages, with local supplier Aurland Energiverk at the vanguard, said a statement.



Alongside the changes to the propulsion system, the new ship will boast upgraded IT systems, to ensure it meets the digital demands of tomorrow, and a refined restaurant and comfort levels, it said.



Sandvik said: Responsible operation is one focus, the best possible passenger experience the other.



He noted: This is a ship that will draw people from around the world to experience the fjords in a manner that no other craft can emulate. Its a trip of a lifetime and we want to make our passengers memories of their voyage as enjoyable as possible.



By introducing another vessel of this class were also able to expand the premium capacity on this special waterway. That leads to some economy of scale and will help keep ticket prices at very attractive levels, he added.



We, and our progressive owners Fjord1 and Flam AS, are determined to make this as accessible as possible. We want everyone to have the opportunity to experience the Future of the Fjords, he concluded.  TradeArabia News Service
UAE-based Signtrade will be showcasing its latest technical innovations and disruptive technologies at the SGI Dubai, a leading tradeshow for signage, outdoor media, screen and digital printing sector.



UAE-based Signtrade will be showcasing its latest technical innovations and disruptive technologies at the Sign and Graphic Imaging Dubai (SGI Dubai), a leading tradeshow for signage, outdoor media, screen and digital printing sector.



Leading global architects, sign makers, print and production manufacturers, media agencies, real-estate developers, brand and image consultants will be at the Dubai World Trade Centre from January 14 to 16 for SGI Dubai, said the event organisers International Expo Consults (IEC), part of Falak Holding.



The event is a well-established business forum, which is recognised globally and constitutes workshops and seminars held by industry experts.



Lauding Signtrade's particpation, Sharif Rahman, the chief executive of IEC, said: "The signage and outdoor media industry in the Middle East is growing at a rapid pace and we have seen a lot of interest from the exhibitors from across the globe."



"Leading names across the region and beyond have signed for the exhibition and will showcase the industries best kept secrets on the decisive three days," he stated.



The journey so far would have not been possible without the support of all our esteemed exhibitors, he added.



Yasin Merchant, managing director, Signtrade, said: "We are pleased to be associated with one of the distinguished shows in the region. Our massive participation at SGI Dubai, spanning an entire hall, none-the-less manifests our commitment to the growth and success of the signage industry, in the region."



In addition to our company celebrating its 30th anniversary, we plan to exhibit the latest technical innovations and disruptive technologies, coupled with industry talks, to give our visitors an exceptional, valuable experience, he said.



Positive attitude in the backdrop of innovation is the key element that drives us, as we lead the sign, graphics and textile industry, he added.-TradeArabia News Service
Dubai-based ISYX Technologies, a fast-growing business technology consulting company, has signed an agreement with IFS, a global enterprise applications company, to join its channel partner network with focus on Middle Eastern and African businesses.



The partnership will help deliver IFSs innovative product portfolio to customers across the Middle East and Africa (MEA), said a statement from the company.



Drawing on the companies long and successful track record in areas such as aviation, construction, manufacturing, and asset intensive industries, ISYX will work with IFS to build a strong customer base, it said.



As part of the agreement, ISYX will market and deploy IFSs complete range of enterprise applications including enterprise resource planning (ERP), enterprise asset management (EAM) and field service management (FSM) for its customers across the MEA region, it added.



ISYX is also investing in training and certification of its presales and delivery teams through the IFS Academy. By building local competency and capabilities in IFS Applications, ISYX will help customers transition through the digital era.



Sharoon Shamsuddin, CEO, ISYX Technologies, said: We are very excited to be developing joint opportunities with IFS and look forward to a rewarding partnership.



IFS is a globally recognised leader in enterprise software, and coupled with our global presence in 10 countries servicing over 500 customers, the partnership will empower organisations to advance their digital transformation by adding value and industry expertise, he said.



Our approach is to adopt the role of an advisor to our customers, understand their business challenges and address them by providing fully integrated end-to-end solutions to support their complex business needs, he added.



Luis Ortega, managing director for IFS in the Middle East, South Asia and Africa, said: We are pleased to announce the partnership with ISYX Technologies and we expect that our cooperation will result in a growing customer base in MEA.  TradeArabia News Service
For the first time in the UAE, Sennheiser will be offering its personal assistive hearing and translation tool, CinemaConnect to audiences at dedicated screening destination.



Dubai International Film Festival (Diff) and Sennheiser have teamed up with the National Media Council (NMC) to make all films enjoyable for everyone by offering a personal assistive hearing and translation tool, CinemaConnect, to audiences at Diffs dedicated screening destination DIFF365 at VOX Cinemas, Mall of the Emirates, and to Dubai International Film Festival which will run from December 6  13, 2017.



Both will be equipped with Sennheisers state of the art hearing and visual assistance platform CinemaConnect, providing a free and seamless movie-going experience to suit the needs and preferences of all cinema enthusiasts. Compatible on both IOS and Android, the CinemaConnect application can be conveniently downloaded directly to your smartphone and offer hearing assistance, audio description and a portable display unit for closed captioning. This can be directly connected to the assistive listening device or headphones.



Abdulhamid Juma, DIFFs chairman said: We are thrilled to be partnering with Sennheiser who with their incredible technology and great efforts are enhancing the big screen experience for those with hearing and visual impairments. Our mission is to bring the most exciting, original and compelling films from the Arab world and beyond to as many people as possible to discover different cultures, make observations about the world around us and provoke conversations that matter. We look forward to launching further initiatives during this very special Year of Giving to bring the community together through the power of film.



Mansour Al Mansouri, director general of National Media Council, said: This initiative is a natural development for us and ideal platform to highlight the National Media Councils continuous efforts to enable those with hearing and visual impairment to enjoy the offerings at cinemas across the UAE and have access to the latest in international cinematic innovation. This is in line with one of our core beliefs in the importance of providing access to all mediums of content for all our residents across the UAE.



Mig Cardamone, director of Sennheiser Middle East, said: We are extremely proud to collaborate with the Dubai International Film Festival and receive a full endorsement from the National Media Council to showcase our intuitive assistive listening tool to audiences in the UAE through CinemaConnect. Sennheiser fully supports inclusion and recognises that hearing is an important prerequisite for the ability to participate in social and cultural life. With its uncomplicated, readily accessible and easy to understand technology, the CinemaConnect system enables all theater enthusiasts to discreetly enhance their cinematic experiences. It reinforces Sennheisers commitment to inclusion outlined in the Dubai Disability Strategy 2020 and our desire to deliver optimum audio experiences to a diverse, international community of cinema lovers.



How it works:

1. Download free App

2. Select CinemaConnect network

3. Start App and choose channel

4. Modify sound choose translation services intuitively with the Personal Listening Assistant. - TradeArabia News Service


At least twelve people are dead and several more have been injured in twin shooting and suicide bomb attacks at the Iranian parliament and the the Mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini in Tehran, said media reports.



Gunmen went on a shooting spree in the parliament, where at least one attacker detonated a suicide bomb. At the same time, a gun and bomb attack targeted the Ayatollah Khomeini mausoleum on the southern outskirts of the Iranian capital, reported CNN.



One guard and six others were killed in the incident in parliament early on Wednesday, Tasnim news agency reported.

The Iranian Intelligence Ministry said security forces had arrested a "terrorist team" planning a third attack, without giving further details. The head of Iran's emergency department, Pir-Hossein Kolivand, was quoted as saying by state broadcaster IRIB that 39 people were wounded in the attacks.



Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attacks in a statement.

Earlier in the day, reports emerged that a suicide bomb was detonated on the fourth floor of parliament and several people had been taken hostage later on Wednesday morning.



In the mausoleum attack assailants killed a security guard and injured at least four others at the mausoleum in southern Tehran, state television said.



A woman was arrested after the attack at the tomb, according to the semi-official Fars news agency. As per the agency's reports another attacker has been surrounded by security officers. Two people were injured there.



The attackers were holding a number of hostages inside the highly-fortified parliament building, Press TV reported, as Iranian officials scrambled to establish who was behind the attacks or whether they were coordinated.



A witness told Reuters the parliament's entrances were barricaded as security forces massed inside and outside. There are conflicting reports as to how many gunmen were involved but at least four people have been taken hostage.



Unconfirmed reports said that the attackers had been looking for the chamber where MPs were in session, but lost their way once inside the building.



At least one male assailant escaped the building but was captured as he was on the run, the agency reported.
Saudi Arabia and Russian companies are discussing a number of joint oil and gas projects, Russias Energy Minister has said.



"Yes, those issues have been discussed by our oil companies, Saudi Aramco and Saudi Arabias minister who is currently in contact with heads of Russian companies," Alexander Novak said when asked whether Saudi Minister of Energy, Industry and Mineral Resources Khalid Al-Falih had touched upon the participation of Saudi Arabia in Russias oil and gas projects.



Russias Energy Ministry reported on May 30 that the sides had held talks focusing on technological cooperation, Tass said.



Novak noted an increasing interest of Russian oilfield services companies in the Saudi market.



The minister also mentioned the creation of joint R&D centres focusing on areas such as oil and gas production, oilfield services and transportation of crude hydrocarbons among promising projects, Tass said.



Meanwhile, Russia and Saudi Arabia are also considering projects in renewable energy sector, Tass quoted Russias First Deputy Energy Minister Aleksei Texler as saying.



He added that Hevel, Russias biggest integrated company operating in the solar energy field, will hold talks on the issue later in the day.



"There is an exchange of views regarding renewable energy resources, well be developing it. Weve agreed to send a business mission to Saudi Arabia. Our companies are interested. Hevel is taking interest, talks are expected later in the day," he said.



In another development, Al-Falih may visit a number of towns in Western and Eastern Siberia this summer, Novak said in an interview with Tass.



"I do hope that this summer Al-Falih will be able to see for himself some places where oil is produced in Western and Eastern Siberia: Talakan, Vankor, and Surgut," Novak said. "We decided to show him the newly-built LNG plant in the north of the Yamal Peninsula. This is a unique project being implemented in rigorous Arctic conditions."



"Last October, we travelled to Saudi Arabia, where we had a tour of various facilities, including offshore rigs in the Gulf. Now it is our turn to welcome guests," the minister added.
The biggest Middle East oil and container ports banned all vessels sailing to and from Qatar from using their facilities amid a diplomatic crisis gripping the worlds main energy-exporting region, thus disrupting trade in commodities from crude oil to metals and food, said a report.



The dispute pits two of Opecs largest oil producers - Saudi Arabia and the UAE - against the worlds biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas and further disrupts stability in the region, reported Bloomberg.



The shipping restrictions risk hurting shipments of oil and refined products from the worlds biggest energy exporting region, it stated.



Saudi Arabian and Bahraini authorities closed off all of their ports to Qatari-flagged vessels or ships travelling to or coming from the Gulf state, according to a notice posted on the website of Inchcape Shipping Services on Tuesday.



Container and oil terminals in the UAE also closed off traffic to any ships touching Qatar, according to separate statements from three port operators.

Traders are now worried that Riyadh's allies would refuse to accept LNG shipments from the Gulf state, and that Egypt might even bar tankers carrying Qatari cargoes from using the Suez Canal as they head to Europe and beyond - although Cairo is bound by an international agreement to let them use the waterway, reported Reuters.



The three Gulf countries along with Egypt severed ties with Qatar on Monday citing its support for regional rival Iran and for extremist groups.

US President Donald Trump too joined in the dispute on Tuesday, saying leaders he met on a Middle East trip had warned him that Doha was funding "radical ideology" after he had demanded they take action to stop financing militant groups. Qatar vehemently denies the accusations made against it.

With the crisis deepening, Qatar is now unable to load crude oil onto supertankers together with other Gulf-based grades, and price agency S&P Global Platts said it would not automatically include the country in its Middle East price benchmark.

The agency noted that tankers usually combine Qatari shipments with crude from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Oman before heading from the Gulf. "Restrictions on vessels calling into Qatar and associated uncertainty could impact the inherent value of crude loading from Qatar," it said.



More worryingly, food imports are getting affected in Ramadan as Saudi Arabia closed its land border with Qatar, stranding thousands of trucks carrying supplies. Sources said the UAE and Saudi Arabia have already cut exports of white sugar to Qatar. Its consumption is traditionally higher during the holy month.

Qatar, which largely depends on food imports for its population of 2.5 million, has assured residents it has taken measures to assure that normal life continues, said the report.



However, shoppers packed stores on Monday to stock up. On Tuesday, fresh poultry and some types of milk were in short supply at two supermarkets visited by a Reuters reporter. However, plenty of fruit and vegetables remained on the shelves.

With exclusion zones sweeping into effect, vessels from Qatar are no longer able to dock in the UAE or Saudi Arabia as planned.

According to shipping data on Thomson Reuters Eikon, around half a dozen oil, chemical and LNG tankers have had to leave UAE waters or have halted in the open ocean.



Bans on Qatar-linked oil and LNG vessels refuelling at the UAE's port of Fujairah have added to chaos, pushing shippers to find new refuelling points at extra cost, industry sources said.



Lying near the Strait of Hormuz, through which ships pass on their way to customers in Asia, the US or Europe, Fujairah is one of the world's most important ports for the global energy market.



Qatar, the world's biggest LNG seller, is moving to send a first batch of LNG tankers as far afield as Singapore and Gibraltar to refuel with Fujairah now off limits. Some trade sources said this could increase costs and delay deliveries to its clients globally.



The UAE's ban also effectively halts deliveries of LNG produced in Qatar to the Gulf state, trade sources said. Royal Dutch Shell has a deal with the Dubai Supply Authority to deliver up to three LNG cargoes per month, typically sourced from Qatar, said the Reuters report.

Saudi Arabias eastern coast is home to the port of Ras Tanura, which state-owned Saudi Arabian Oil Company, says is the biggest crude terminal in the world.



Jebel Ali port, the regions biggest container terminal, will be restricted from Tuesday until further notice, its operator Dubais DP World Ltd. said in an emailed statement.



In the UAE, DP World operates Jebel Ali along with Dubais Mina Rashid and Mina Al Hamriya ports, according to its website.



Government-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company closed its crude and refined-product ports to any vessels to or from Qatar, according to a notice obtained by Bloomberg News.



The port at Fujairah, a main oil transit and refined product hub, said Monday it was closed to Qatar-linked traffic.



Shipping at Egyptian ports was operating normally as of Tuesday, according to Inchcape.



The company also said the Suez Canal Authority has advised that there arent restrictions on vessels in the waterway since it is an international route, it added.
Chaos descended on the Qatar Airways offices across the GCC as passengers rushed to the airline's centres for refunds following a diplomatic row between major GCC states and Qatar.



Passengers with existing bookings queued up and waited for hours outside the airline's offices in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain and Egypt to find out whether they would be re-routed on alternate flights or get their money back.

Passengers who were stranded in Saudi Arabia were offered a reroute flight to Doha via Muscat on Oman Air.



Panic arose after flights between the GCC states and Qatar were suspended on Tuesday and the Qatar Airways' office were ordered to be closed in 48 hours.



The airline has advised passengers who have booked through the its website to visit www.qatarairways.com/us/en/refund-request.page to submit a refund request.



The airline also announced on its website that affected passengers would be given alternative options. - TradeArabia News Service
Welcome to Transfigurations! This blog is intended to serve the orthodox Anglican community and the wider Christian community. We pray that all that is posted here will be faithful to the Scriptures as the inspired word of God, speak the truth in love, edify, bless and transform this local body of Christ, and be an impetus for revival, repentance, prayer and intercession!
He has his own blog, is one of 13 children, loves to cook and worked for awhile in Glenrock, filling underground coal mine cavities.

Now, the Most Rev. Steven R. Biegler, or Bishop Steven, as he prefers, is the spiritual shepherd of Wyomings more than 54,000 Catholics.

A solemn Mass of Ordination and Installation was held Monday afternoon in front of a capacity crowd at the Cheyenne Civic Center. Among those in attendance were almost 90 members of his immediate family, including his mother, Mary Biegler, of Timber Lake, South Dakota.

I count the immediate family as my mother, siblings and their spouses, their children and their children, and we were expecting 96, but a few couldnt make it, so it was close to 90, and then there were first cousins and other relatives that came, so it was well over 100, Biegler said Tuesday afternoon.

Asked his mothers reaction to the day, he said, Her main reaction was, You know, our family has been so blessed. She looks at it through that lens and sees it as part of the Lords work with me, and I look at it that way as well.

Since the day in March that he was announced as the dioceses next bishop, Biegler has said that he did not choose this.

The Lords heart was always set on the Father, and that means even family has to come second to that, he said. I didnt want to say yes to priesthood, I didnt want to say yes to be a bishop, but Im excited to trust the Father.

Asked if he had a plan for the first 30 days or 100 days, he laughed and said, The first thing is to listen. Listen to the priests. Ive really been listening to them over the last three months. Listen and learn and know where people have been and whats going on in their journey now.

Biegler succeeds Archbishop Paul Etienne, who was named Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Anchorage, Alaska, in October.

Etienne and The Most Rev. Robert D. Gruss, Bishop of Rapid City, were co-ordaining bishops at Mondays event. Except for time in Rome, Biegler served all of his priesthood in the Diocese of Rapid City, most recently as pastor of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Perpetual Help.

The Most Rev. Samuel J. Aquila, Archbishop of Denver, of which Cheyenne is a part, was the principal ordaining bishop.

I think I counted 16 bishops, three archbishops, three cardinals and dozens and dozens of priests, said Cyndy Novotny, principal of St. Anthonys Tri-Parish School in Casper. She was among a large contingent of attendees from Casper, including a team of her staff that coordinated and produced the live stream of the Mass.

Well, it was amazing, Novotny said. That is definitely an overused word, but it was. What a privilege to be there, to be part of that experience, representing the school. It was just amazing.

Novotny said there were two goosebump moments for her at the event.

The first was listening to Cardinal Blase Cupich, Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago, deliver the homily, in which he said, Unity is a non-negotiable goal of a bishops ministry.

The second was when Bishop Steven took the Apostolic Mandate, the document that officially names him a bishop, left the stage and walked through the Civic Center crowd, showing the Latin writing on vellum and bearing the signature of Pope Francis, which simply said, Francis.

He was beaming from ear to ear and the people were all standing and applauding, Novotny said. That was a moment.

The Civic Center has a pretty intimate feel to it, and that was an amazing experience for the people of Wyoming to be able to witness that, Novotny said.

The Mass was celebrated in both English and Spanish, and the offertory gifts were presented by representatives of the ethnic and linguistic diversity of the diocese, according to the event program, including a Native American child dressed in a formal dancing dress.

Biegler, 58, was appointed by Pope Francis in March after Wyoming Catholics waited an unusually short time of just five and a half months for a new bishop to be named. He becomes the ninth bishop of the Diocese of Wyoming, which encompasses all 97,548 square miles of the state.

The diocese was established on Aug. 2, 1887, by Pope Leo XIII and today has 37 parishes and 35 missions, 67 active and retired priests and 36 permanent deacons.

The first official visit by Bishop Steven to Casper is expected later this month, on June 23, when he will celebrate Mass and dedicate a 17-foot statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus at Our Lady of Fatima Church.

He will live in Cheyenne and his home parish is St. Marys Cathedral, where the cathedra, or bishops chair, resides. Anyone interested can visit his blog at bishopsteven.dioceseofcheyenne.org.
A Casper woman charged in connection to the sale of painkiller prescriptions faces a new charge for allegedly using her husbands prescription database account to look up information on former patients and violating federal laws that protect patient privacy.

Lyn Kahn made her first court appearance Monday on the new charge of knowingly obtaining individually identifiable health information under false pretenses in U.S. District Court of Wyoming. Kahn was free on bond when she allegedly committed the new crime.

Kahn previously pleaded not guilty to eight charges outlined in a grand jury indictment: one count of conspiracy to distribute oxycodone and alprazolam, two counts of dispensing oxycodone and five counts of unlawful use of a communication facility. She and her husband, Shakeel Khan, were arrested in December for allegedly selling large amounts of prescriptions for painkillers. Some of their customers allegedly then took the painkillers and sold them in other states.

Kahns probation officer visited the home on May 19 as part of a routine check, according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court. During the visit, the officer reviewed the contents of Kahns two cellphones and a laptop as required by her bond conditions.

The officer then found several files on the laptop that appeared to be prescription information related to former patients of Kahns husband, Shakeel Kahn. Investigators later learned that the information was from the states Prescription Drug Monitoring Program database, some of which is information protected by law and not to be shared, the complaint states.

Investigators then contacted the monitoring program, which verified that Shakeel Khan was the only authorized user of his account. Activity logs on the account showed that someone was using it to look up patient information on Feb. 13 and Feb. 16  both dates when Shakeel Khan was in jail and did not have access to internet or the database, according to the complaint. The doctor has been continuously incarcerated since his arrest in January for violating a bond condition.

Authorities believe that Lyn Kahn illegally used the database to look up information on former patients.

A representative with the monitoring program terminated Shakeel Kahns account after learning of the allegations. His Wyoming medical license was suspended in November due to an investigation by the Wyoming Board of Medicine.

Lyn Kahn remained in the custody of the U.S. Marshals on Tuesday pending a detention hearing scheduled for Thursday.
A state school construction funding shortfall, created as coal lease bonus money has dried up, could grow to more than $205 million by 2022, according to a legislative report.

More than $2 billion worth of construction and maintenance in Wyoming has been funded over the years through those bonuses, paid to Wyoming from the federal government. Roughly 100 schools were renovated or built during that time, and the state is now home to more than 22 million square feet of school facilities. Maintenance on those buildings costs at least $65 million annually, officials have said.

But the coal lease bonus money, which has put $2.7 billion in Wyoming coffers since 1980, has been dwindling in recent years: In 2013 and 2014, the school construction account received $433.4 million in coal lease bonus money. In 2017 and 2018, its projected that amount will shrink to $120.6 million. In the two years after that, the Legislative Service Office estimates that it will disappear altogether.

The departing bonus money will leave a widening shortfall in its wake. Lawmakers say construction and maintenance is funded through the current biennium, which ends next July. In the next two-year budget cycle, the shortfall is projected to reach $97.7 million per year. In 2021 and 2022, it could grow to $102.7 million per year.

The situation leaves lawmakers in the position of having to raise new revenues. Powell Republican Rep. David Northrup, the chairman of the Education Committee and a member of the facilities committee, said a tax will have to be raised to fund school construction. But he warned that it wont be a popular decision, among legislators or the voters who put them in office.

I have a hard time raising taxes, just like everybody else does, he said, acknowledging that some lawmakers have said they may not be re-elected if they vote to hike taxes.

Sen. Bill Landen, a Casper Republican and the vice chair of the facilities committee, said the same thing.

Hardly any of us who were elected to the Legislature are elected with the idea that were going to raise taxes, he said. In fact, quite the opposite. Most of us are pretty conservative. Thats a sentiment shared by a lot of folks.

That conviction will be tested by the current situation that education faces. A shortfall looms not only over construction but also over the day-to-day operations of schools: In the coming years, it could reach more than $1 billion.

During this years legislative session, Northrups committee sponsored an omnibus education funding bill that would have, among other things, temporarily increased the sales tax. It also included a provision for another tax increase should the Legislatures savings account dip below a certain level.

Both of those proposals were eliminated from the bill by other lawmakers. During the session, Senate President Eli Bebout flatly rejected raising taxes.

Messages left for several other lawmakers, including facilities committee chairman Rep. Tom Walters, were not returned earlier this week.

Landen said that despite his aversion to tax increases, there was a risk that Wyomings education system, recently ranked among the best in the country, could slide backward.

We have to get to a point with our education funding that is sustainable and at the same time does not diminish all of the gains that weve made over the past several years, he said.

Focus on preservation

That means not only keeping test scores up but also maintaining the states new school buildings. Northrup said he favored shifting the states focus from building new facilities to maintaining those constructed over the past decade. Officials have said that with proper upkeep, those buildings could last for 75 years.

Go back to the preservation side, he said. What will it take to put on a roof? What will it take to put in a new furnace? I think thats going to be a much easier pill to swallow for everybody, not just the Legislature. ... The House wont raise new taxes just to build new buildings.

As an example, he pointed to schools in Cheyenne, several of which are near the top of the list for replacement given their current condition. But, he said, with some repairs, those schools could drop down that list and be used for another decade. It would be cheaper, he said, and begin a shift to preservation.

The situation in Cheyenne is contentious. In this past session, the Legislature approved tens of millions in reserve funding for maintenance and construction. But that didnt include $42 million that had been recommended by the facilities committee to build a new school in Cheyenne, which is experiencing overcrowding. The money was stripped and the new school was scrapped, despite protests from Cheyenne lawmakers and educators.

Even if the lawmakers and educators moved toward a more preservation-minded position, it would still require a new revenue source, albeit a potentially less substantial one. The Legislative Service Office, in its memo to lawmakers outlining the shortfall, identified three potential taxes that would be required if the full $205 million shortfall were to be realized in 2021 and 2022:

A 0.63 percent statewide sales and use tax increase, the entirety of which would go to school construction.

A 1.07 percent severance tax increase on all minerals.

Ten statewide mills.

Landen said he had no preference out of those three options. Northrup said the sales tax was probably the fairest as it would affect all Wyomingites, not just property owners or minerals.

Northrup said lawmakers had discussed a number of options, including a lodging tax. An additional $7 or $8 charge on hotel room bill is a drop in the bucket on a vacation, he said.

The coming weeks will be pivotal for Wyomings school funding situation. On Monday, members of the Select Committee on School Finance Recalibration, which is examining the school funding model, will meet with the Joint Revenue Committee in Riverton. Lawmakers have said new potential revenue sources will likely be discussed there.

Then, on June 19, the facilities committee will meet in Casper for a discussion that will likely be influenced by what was discussed at the recalibration committee meeting the week before.

Northrup said lawmakers needed a plan to address the school funding situation before the next legislative session starts in February.

If we dont have a plan coming out of the interim, if we havent put something together with the revenue committee on all of schools problems, we probably havent done a very good job in the interim, he said.
The University of Wyoming closed the chapter of UW budget reductions, President Laurie Nichols said Wednesday, when its Board of Trustees approved the schools budget for the 2018 fiscal year.

The action, all but a formality after officials presented the budget to the board last month, ends a tough 12 months for the university. The states sole four-year university lost roughly $42 million in funding as a result of the economic downturn in Wyoming; it laid off 37 staff members in mid-May and announced more than $29 million in current and future cuts.

UW is moving forward as a leaner, more focused institution, Nichols, who took charge of the university a year ago, said in a press release.

Nichols has eliminated more than 300 positions during her time at the school, the majority of which were already vacant. Last summer, she declared a financial emergency when it became apparent the universitys fiscal situation was dire but stopped short of declaring exigency, which would have allowed the administration to target tenured faculty for layoffs.

Over the past year, the university also implemented two rounds of buyouts for faculty and staff to cut costs. Its eliminated five programs and placed several more on hold while dismantling the Outreach School and shuttling its duties elsewhere on campus. Officials have said they dont anticipate more cutbacks in the coming fiscal year, barring reductions from the Legislature, which will meet in February 2018.

The budget approved expenditures totaling roughly $462 million for the 2017-18 fiscal year.

The board voted to use $49.7 million in funds left over from last year to create several centralized reserve and sinking funds. Those funds include one to save money to replace UWs passenger aircraft, another for the replacement of UWs residence halls and a third to be used as a permanent risk pool/litigation fund.

Though UWs fall 2016 enrollment was down compared with the previous year, the university expects the incoming freshman class will be the largest in the schools 130-year history. UW had previously announced tuition hikes.
Fremont County Attorney Pat LeBrun will not seek the death penalty in the prosecution of Florin Brandon Wyatt.

The maximum sentence LeBrun might seek is life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The public defender's office had asked LeBrun to make a decision by June 3 because of the effect a potential death penalty prosecution could have on trial preparations.

Wyatt admitted to killing Riverton man Keith Stephenson with a claw hammer in March while living in a bedroom in Stephenson's basement.

After his arrest, Wyatt told police Stephenson had tried to kick him out of the house. Wyatt told police he also shot Stephenson after the hammer attack.

Wyatt's trial is set for Sept. 25.
The go-karts were making me nervous.

They looked to be built for third-graders, but apparently adults wedge themselves inside the little death cages all the time. Willingly.

And for the first time, I was about to join them.

I had managed to navigate an entire week with my boyfriends family in Virginia without embarrassing myself publicly. Now, on our last full day before returning to Wyoming, we had arrived at the tracks, and there would be no getting around it.

My boyfriend had tried to be helpful. Its just like Mario Kart, he said, forgetting to mention that anytime we play the video game I dissolve into giggles on the couch while the tiny referee onscreen has to lug my virtual vehicle back on the track because Ive plummeted off or raced backward too far.

And sure its like that. Kind of. If Mario Kart involved compressing full-grown adults into tiny cars made for schoolchildren and the threat of actual physical danger, not to mention an unlimited potential for humiliation and possibly death, they would be just the same.

But I tied back my hair and hopped in. The only thing worse than being terrible at something, I figured, is refusing to try it at all.

On the first course, I actually had fun once I stopped simply trying not to die. At the tail end of the race  though Im not sure thats the appropriate term for what I was participating in  I was able to keep up with some of the others on the course. This felt like a tremendous success.

On the second course, turning the steering wheel turned out to be almost impossible but did result in dramatic side-to-side whooshes for which I was unprepared. I stayed out of the way as I figured it out, but a concerned-looking attendant flagged me down after the first lap.

Is everything OK? he asked, probably noting that everyone else had already driven to Germany while I puttered along.

Yes, I told him. But these are very hard to steer. This might just be my speed today.

He laughed and waved me on as I glanced around to make sure no one had witnessed that interaction. And for the next 10 minutes, I learned just how much I appreciate power steering and also my continued existence.

Eventually, I came to enjoy sailing very slowly around the curves, but given my unpredictability and inexperience I also knew it would be best if nobody looked at me too closely, particularly if they happened to be related to my boyfriend.

No matter. I was doing it. And although finishing felt like a huge victory to me, I couldnt help but worry that I had drawn attention to myself in a not-great way.

Whats wrong with her? I could imagine these wonderful people asking my boyfriend in low tones. Does she hate all things that are fun?

If they  or I  had wondered, the answer arrived a few minutes later. And like the answers to so many essential questions, it came in the form of bumper boats.

The last ride we had chosen was in a shallow pool with water fountains spraying mist into the air from the side. All you had to do was sit in a little inflatable boat, grab the throttle and run into other people.

And I love water. Im comfortable there in a way that I have never been on solid ground. After I entered my jauntily striped vessel without falling in, I knew Id be OK.

And I was. Better than OK. The four of us  all adults  shrieked with glee under the East Coast sun as we chased and crashed into each other, water jetting up between us as we collided, then bounced away. We spun in circles and banged into the pool walls. In the middle of the aquatic commotion, wed catch each others eye and just grin.

We finally exited the ride, sunburned, damp and aching from laughing. I had been so nervous about meeting these people a week ago and trying not to embarrass myself on this particular day, and now here we were, making absolute fools of ourselves together without one worry about who was watching.

I tried to identify what I was feeling. Welcome, yes, but that didnt quite cover it. Then I realized I knew just what it was: family. It felt like family. This Wyoming girl had found a sense of comfort and familiarity at the least likely place  at a racetrack in Virginia.
RIVERTON  Five Wyoming residents have died in a head-on collision involving two vehicles south of Riverton in Fremont County.

Fremont County Coroner Mark Stratmoen would not immediately release their names pending family notification.

All the victims were from Fremont County and they included a 54-year-old woman, a 54-year-old man, two 25-year-old women and a 67-year-old woman.

Four victims were in one vehicle, while one was in a second vehicle with three others.

Stratmoen says the survivors were taken to a hospital and were listed in serious but stable condition Tuesday.

The crash occurred about 10:45 p.m. Saturday.
Build-A-Bear Workshop celebrated the grand re-opening of its newly remodeled store at Tucson Mall on Tuesday with free teddy bears for the first 20 guests.

The remodeled store, 4500 N. Oracle Road, has an updated layout, color palette and logo. It also features a 7-foot-tall stuffer prominently placed at the center of the store.

Build-A-Bear Workshop has approximately 400 stores worldwide where guests can create customizable stuffed animals. The Build-A-Bear brand refresh began in 2015 and is ongoing.

The retailer also donated 20 bears to a local Boys & Girls Club as part of the grand re-opening.
Early on in his career in the 1960s and 70s, award-winning documentary photographer Danny Lyon practiced New Journalism, embedding with a subject and immersing himself in their lives to better tell their stories.

He was in good company alongside his contemporaries Hunter S. Thompson, Truman Capote, Tom Wolfe and Gay Talese, and his images a stark look into the worlds in which he traveled, from Chicagos Outlaws motorcycle club to activists marching during the civil-rights movement.

Lyons photographs have been exhibited at museums and galleries around the country including Tucsons own Etherton Gallery, 135 S. Sixth Ave., where owner Terry Etherton has represented Lyons works for 35 years. On Saturday the downtown Tucson gallery will host an opening reception for Present Future, an exhibit of more than 60 of Lyons vintage gelatin silver prints from the Silverman Museum Collection in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

The exhibit is a spin-off of sorts from a much larger show of Lyons works mounted last year by New Yorks Whitney Museum of American Art. The Whitney show is now touring Europe, but several of the rare images made the trip to Tucson instead of Germany and Switzerland. Ethertons Present Future exhibit includes never-before-seen mural-size prints  30- by 40-inch gelatin silver prints.

Etherton said Lyon has made the trek to Tucson from his home in New Mexico several times over the years, including two years ago when Etherton mounted Lyons Conversations with the Dead, a book based on images he captured during 14 months he spent between 1967 and 1969 photographing inmates and living conditions at six prisons.

The Tucson gallery owner said he is working on a possible film series of Lyons documentaries  he made more than 20 films in his 50-plus-year career  that would be held at downtowns Screening Room.
We've collected a few front pages from newspapers.com to give you a look at some June 7 papers in history. With a subscription to newspapers.com you can search the Arizona Daily Star and many other newspapers using keywords or dates, and download articles or pages.
(Column updated)

Will Humble used to be a skeptic.

He was the director of Arizonas Department of Health Services when voters were asked to consider approving medical marijuana in 2010. He publicly opposed it.

But then the initiative passed, and Humble gradually put a system together, as required by the new law, to license dispensaries and approve customers. He didnt like it, but he did it.

Now, though  two years after leaving public office  Humble is a believer. Hes convinced that medical marijuana can work against chronic pain and some other conditions, though it also poses some risks.

I changed my mind, he told me Tuesday.

And that suggests an interesting possibility now that we are officially in an opioid overdose emergency, as Gov. Doug Ducey declared Monday. The problem that has led to the growth of addiction and overdoses is too many opioid pain prescriptions, said Dr. Cara Christ, the current state health director.

What if there is some other, less addictive substance that can work on pain? After the National Academy of Sciences published a detailed assessment of what marijuana works for and what harms it causes, Humble sees it as part of the solution.

When the January report came out that said there was substantial and conclusive evidence that marijuana is effective in managing chronic pain, thats when I changed my mind and became a believer, said Humble, now the director of the Arizona Public Health Association.

Now he thinks marijuana is one of the options that should be offered for relieving chronic pain and reducing opioid use.

There are plenty of people who say they have already figured that out. I talked with one Tucson woman, Mary Beth Roberts, who told me she took opioid pain relievers for neck pain for at least a decade. She didnt get addicted, but she had to take increasing amounts to make a dent in the pain, she said.

I just kept taking them because I didnt have any other alternatives, she said.

Early last year she got a medical marijuana card and stopped taking the opioids.

Ive been to Barrow (Neurological Institute, in Phoenix), Ive been all over the place, and I just wanted to get rid of the pain, she said. The marijuana is the only thing that has ever really touched it.

She eats half a medical marijuana edible in the morning, and a chocolate before bed. So far, so good, said Roberts, 69.

The National Academies of Sciences report says there is conclusive or substantial evidence that cannabis or cannabinoids (marijuana and its derivatives) are effective for the treatment of chronic pain in adults. The same level of evidence says they are effective in reducing chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting and in multiple sclerosis-induced spasticity symptoms.

The report lists dozens of other conditions for which there are lower levels of evidence that marijuana may prove effective in treating. It also says there is substantial evidence of an association between marijuana smoking and respiratory illnesses, and between marijuana use and schizophrenia and other types of psychosis, among other problems.

The picture it paints is of a drug with potential benefits and harms.

But other new research also suggests medical marijuana can reduce opioid-related problems. A study published in April showed that hospitalizations for opioid dependence and overdoses decreased significantly in states where medical marijuana was legalized. A study by different researchers had similar results in 2014.

Arizona's medical marijuana program is clearly used by many people for recreational purposes. Otherwise, why would medical marijuana sales spike to at least three times the normal level on April 20, the day that marijuana is celebrated worldwide? People don't need more medicine that day.

But for those who do use it medicinally, marijuana itself is expensive, and so is the card that you must obtain to buy it. The card costs $150 every year, a fee that under the law must go to the operation of Arizonas medical marijuana program.

That fee is too high. I learned that when talking with a medical marijuana customer at a Tucson polling place on Nov. 8, when he showed up just to vote in favor of legalizing recreational marijuana because he couldnt afford to pay his fee every year. Of course, we voted that initiative down.

The fact that the fee is too high is also demonstrated by this: Over the years the state has accumulated $31 million in medical marijuana fees that is just sitting in an account because it is not needed to operate the program. Howard Fischer of Capitol Media Services reported last month that this fiscal year alone  the year that ends June 30  the state had collected $19.9 million in fees, but the program had only cost $7.8 million.

Patients have sued to force the state to reduce the fees, but a judge ruled last month that she has no authority to dictate the fees.

None of this is to say that medical marijuana will be an adequate or healthy substitute for opioids in all pain patients. But the science is showing that it works for some people, is less harmful than opioids, and helps reduce overdoses and hospitalizations.

If the state is serious about addressing the opioid emergency, one thing it can do unilaterally is reduce the excessive medical-marijuana fees that are a barrier to some patients.
A man pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder Tuesday in the brutal stabbing deaths of his grandparents in 2013.

Kyle Austin Drattlo, who was 20 at the time of the murders, took the plea before Pima County Superior Court Judge Scott Rash, said Krisanne LoGalbo, a spokeswoman for the court.

Drattlo is scheduled to be sentenced July 28. He faces natural life for both counts, and is not eligible for parole, LoGalbo said.

On July 23, 2013, Drattlos grandparents, Erskin Fulgham, 87, and Mary Louise Fulgham, 83, were found in their home with stab wounds. Erskin also had been beaten and stomped. Mary Louise was killed as she sat in the living room, and Erskin, who was in need of an oxygen tank, was killed in the kitchen.

The next morning Drattlo and two friends  Christopher Edward Terry and Brianna Harding  were picked up by a deputy while traveling in the Fulghams 2004 Buick through Nevada.

The deputy learned the car was reported stolen out of Tucson and was associated with a double homicide. Drattlo told the deputy that when he left his grandparents home that he must have left the front door open and he hoped his grandparents were OK. He also said that his grandparents gave him $150 and kissed him goodbye, according to police documents.

Drattlo also told detectives that he made a Juggalo family with Terry and Harding, who were also in their early 20s at the time of the slayings. Juggalos are fans of the band Insane Clown Posse.

In 2011, the FBI formally classified the Juggalos as a gang. Arizona is one of the top five states in the U.S. reporting the most Juggalo gang-related criminal activity, according to a 2011 gang threat assessment.

Terry and Harding were both sentenced to prison in 2015.
The Tucson Unified School District will not get the oversight relief it sought in court as part of its decades-old desegregation lawsuit.

U.S. District Judge David C. Bury denied the school districts request for partial unitary status in the areas of transportation, family and community engagement, technology, facilities, evidence-based accountability system and extracurricular activities.

In March, TUSD asked the court to lift oversight in those areas, arguing that there are no remaining traces of discrimination. The district declined to comment on the judges decision.

Without considering the merits of TUSDs petition, the court does not have enough information to make that decision, Bury said in his order. The special master who oversees the districts desegregation efforts has not yet submitted the 2015-16 annual report.

Special Master Willis Hawley recommended in May that the court defer action on the matter.

The Latino and African American plaintiffs in the case opposed TUSDs appeal for partial unitary status, calling it premature. They argued that the areas the district wanted relief in were too closely intertwined with the remaining areas of the unitary status plan, which are student assignment, quality of education and discipline.

Sylvia Campoy, who represents the Latino plaintiffs, said the district should focus on fully implementing the unitary status plan instead of pursuing other avenues.

The Mendoza plaintiffs passionately desire that TUSD obtain unitary status. However, doing so must be through a bona fide effort in its implementation of the USP and based on verifiable evidence of its full compliance, Campoy said.
The U.S. Forest Service gave a major boost to the proposed Rosemont Mine today by approving a formal decision authorizing the project.

Coronado National Forest Supervisor Kerwin Dewberry posted the decision shortly after 1 p.m. today, putting the mine three steps from being able to start construction. Dewberry selected the Barrel Alternative for the mine out of five previously studied. It's the same alternative that his predecessor Jim Upchurch tentatively selected for the mine nearly three and one-half years ago, before the project got bogged down due to the discovery of an endangered ocelot near the site in April 2014.

Dewberry's decision also made many of the same arguments for the Barrel Alternative as did Upchurch, who wrote that it would have the fewest environmental impacts of any alternative studied except for a "no action" alternative, which the service has long said it can't legally approve for Rosemont.

For instance, Dewberry wrote that Barrel will disturb the fewest acres total, of riparian areas and of terrestrial vegetation, the smallest number of springs, and leave behind the smallest number of disturbed acres that could be welcome turf for invasive species. Dewberry, also like Upchurch, wrote that Barrel is the only alternative that can meet federal air quality standards. Dewberry also noted that the Barrel Alternative will leave alone McCleary Canyon, which he termed the most biologically diverse of the canyons near the mine.

Before construction can begin, the Forest Service must also separately approve a detailed plan outlining the mine's day to day operations. Hudbay Minerals Inc., the Toronto company proposing to build the project, must also develop a reclamation plan and submit a bond guaranteeing payment for the reclamation work.

Finally and probably most importantly, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers must approve a federal Clean Water Act permit for the project. The mine must also survive expected lawsuits by opponents.

Particularly because the Corps hasn't decided, the leading mine opposition group Save the Scenic Santa Ritas blasted today's decision by repeatlng its past assertion that it's premature.

The action "is a waste of taxpayers' money and is nothing more than a public relations victory for a foreign mining company and its investors, said Gayle Hartmann, the group's president, in a statement. "This mine is far from reality - Save the Scenic Santa Ritas (SSSR) will continue to fight it in every relevant arena. The stakes are too high to do otherwise.

In mid-afternoon, U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva, another longtime Rosemont opponent, added that the Forest Service could have waited until the Corps completed its assessment, "which will be key to our communitys environmental and economic well-being.

"Instead it pushed out a premature decision that ignores widely understood science on Rosemonts potential damage to habitats, waterways and land quality. This was not necessary, it is not helpful, and it will not be the final word on whether this unpopular mine is built," Grijalva said in a statement.

Hudbay said that this decision concludes "a thorough process involving 17 co-operating agencies at various levels of government, 16 hearings, over 1,000 studies, and 245 days of public comment resulting in more than 36,000 comments."

Now, Hudbay will work with the Forest Service to complete its mining plan over the next several months, the company said in a statement.

"This decision brings us another step closer to being able to build a modern mine that will fulfill the requirements of its permits, create jobs and strengthen the local economy," said Patrick Merrin, vice president of Hudbay's Arizona business unit. "The Final Record of Decision was granted based on years of public input allowing rigorous study and analysis of fact and science.

"The Rosemont team thanks the Forest Service and all the other cooperating agencies for their hard work and dedication to the public interest over the past 10 years."

But the Center for Biological Diversity noted today that the mines footprint lies "squarely" in jaguar critical habitat, land thats been scientifically determined to be critically important for the survival and recovery of jaguars in the United States. The mine would destroy much of the home territory of the jaguar El Jefe, who was photographed more than 100 times in the Santa Ritas over a period of three years, the group said.

Forest Service officials have said repeatedly that they would approve the Rosemont Mine only if it complied with all other applicable laws, said Randy Serraglio, a conservation advocate for the center. Apparently, with the Trump administration, laws no longer have meaning and promises are meant to be broken.

Dewberry's decision clears a major hurdle for Rosemont, about a decade since Rosemont Copper first proposed a mining plan for the site covering well over 4,000 acres in the Santa Rita Mountains. Dewberry's predecessor, former Coronado Supervisor Upchurch, had tentatively approved the mine in Dec. 2013 but put off a final decision in spring 2014 after the ocelot discovery and after other endangered species issues arose. That kicked off three more years of environmental reviews and studies.

But in his decision today, Dewberry wrote that this and other new information obtained about the project since then did not require any major changes in the mine proposal. The information also wasn't considered significant enough to warrant additional, detailed analysis in the form of a supplemental or revised Rosemont final environmental impact statement, Dewberry wrote.

Just last month, Rosemont opponent Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry and environmentalists asked the Forest Service to hold off on a decision to give more time to review impacts to lands near the mine site from two recent fires, led by the Sawmill Fire that burned nearly 47,000 acres in late April and early May 2017. But after an interdiscplinary team of officials reviewed post-fire conditions in those areas, Dewberry wrote that it's been again determined that "correcting, supplementing, or revising the EIS is not necessary."

The decision is one of the last government approvals needed to allow Hudbay to remove 224 million pounds a year of copper from an open pit in the Santa Rita Mountains, 30 miles southeast of Tucson. The pit would drop more than a half-mile deep and spread more than a mile in all directions.

The Rosemont mine is expected to produce an estimated 5.88 billion pounds of copper, 194 million pounds of molybdenum, and 80 million ounces of silver. This represents approximately 11 percent of U.S. copper production and less than 1 percent of world copper production, based on 2011 statistics, Dewberry wrote in his decision.

Ultimately, mine construction could disturb a total of about 5,431 acres of private, state and Forest Service lands, Dewberry wrote.

The decision follows emotional, often gut-wrenching public debates and inter-agency disputes over this project. At various times, it has been billed as either the U.S.'s third or fourth largest copper mine.

The business community has hailed the mine as an economic boon. The company has said it would hire at least 400 people to permanent jobs, paying good salaries in the $60,000-a-year range. Its economic analysis concluded that the mine would generate another 1,600 indirect jobs for suppliers, contractors and other outside parties.

At public hearings and at news conferences, business leaders said the mine offered a better economic future for a county that has one of the highest poverty rates in the U.S. Some business leaders and other mine supporters have derided opponents as people insensitive to economic concerns.

Environmentalists and community leaders and neighborhood activists from Green Valley to Sonoita, however, saw pollution, congrestion and degradation where the business community saw progress. In particular, they're concerned about the potential for water and air pollution from the mine, about the potential for mine grading and operations to affect a dozen endangered species living in and around the site. They've also said the mine will discourage tourists -- a point contested by supporters -- and that protecting this area will offer the surrounding communities a better long-term economic future than they'll get from the traditional boom and bust cycle of mining.

Their biggest concern, however, has been about potential impacts from the mine's water use and its pumping of water from the nearby aquifer to empty out its open pit.

"Rosemont is proposing to dig an open-pit that is a half-mile deep, and one mile rim-to-rim, piling potentially toxic mine waste 600-800 feet high covering more than 3,000 acres of the Coronado National Forest, in a vital regional watershed, opponent Hartmann said. "Its indisputable that this project threatens our drinking water along with critical desert aquatic habitats and must be stopped.

Yet the decision comes as no surprise, since the Forest Service has said for many years that it can't say "no" to the mine if it meets all environmental laws. And, it has said repeatedly that it believes the mine would meet all applicable state and federal laws, including the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air Act and the Arizona Environmental Quality Act.

Today, Dewberry wrote that his decision "is guided by federal law," primarily the long-debated and in some circles despised 1872 Mining Law, granting citizens and private companies the right to conduct mining activities on public lands that are open to mineral prospecting, exploration, and development. Dewberry also cited the Multiple-Use Mining Act of 1955, which he said reaffirms the right to conduct mining activities on public lands, including mine processing facilities and the placement of tailings and waste rock.

But many of the issues raised by opponents remain both legally and scientifically unsettled today. Although the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wrote a favorable biological opinion on the mine, the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity has signaled its intention to sue to have that opinion tossed out as inadequate. Although the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality has certified that the mine will meet state water quality standards, Pima County is challenging that certification in court.

And although the Forest Service has said it doesn't believe the pit dewatering will dry up nearby Davidson Canyon and Cienega Creek, University of Arizona Associate Prof. Jennifer McIntosh wrote the service just last week that a new study that she headed the research on found that the Cienega Basin's groundwater resources "are vulnerable to over-extraction from unregulated groundwater use with resulting depletion of connected surface water resources."

Summing up his case, Dewberry wrote, "Conducting a mining operation of this type and size will undoubtedly impact the natural, cultural, and social resource values found on the Coronado National Forest as well as adjacent lands outside the forest. There will also be associated economic and job creation effects, as well as contributing to the worldwide supply of copper.

"This decision incorporates a wide array of mitigation and conservation measures that will minimize or avoid impacts on (forest) lands to the extent practicable. In addition, a comprehensive monitoring program will be implemented to verify that effects disclosed in the FEIS are within predicted ranges and to ensure that mitigation requirements are being met."

The biggest remaining unknown about the mine and environmental laws is the federal Clean Water Act. That unknown underscores the one remaining outstanding permit for the mine, with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Before Hudbay can start construction, the Corps must authorize it to dredge and fill material from several washes surrounding the project site. So far, the Corps has not been favorable to this project but it has yet to make a final decision on it. Its Los Angeles and Tucson staffs have repeatedly written critical memos and letters on the mine. The Corps' Los Angeles District office last July recommended denial of the permit.

Since then, the Corps' San Francisco-based South Pacific Division, which will make the final decision, has been publicly mum on the permit issue. Its staff toured the mine site in December, met with Hudbay officials in San Francisco in March and hosted a San Francisco meeting attended by EPA, ADEQ, Hudbay and Pima County officials in April. But to date, the Corps has refused to even give a timetable for making a decision, let alone indicate which way it's leaning.
Pima County and the city of Tucson are taking a stand against President Trumps proposed expansion of the U.S.-Mexico border wall, calling it an offensive and damaging symbol of fear and division.

On Tuesday, the county Board of Supervisors and City Council approved similar resolutions denouncing Executive Order 13767, which directed the Department of Homeland Security to take all appropriate steps to immediately plan, design, and construct a physical wall along the southern border, among other policy changes.

Tucsons resolution went a step further by originally calling for the city to stop working with companies that become involved in the designing, building or financing of the border wall.

However, the countys resolution didnt contain such a provision because the County Attorneys Office advised against it, said Supervisor Richard Elias.

The citys resolution originally stated the council would require the disclosure by companies of their involvement with the border wall prior to city investment in those companies and that the city of Tucson does not wish to be associated with any company that participates in the design, construction or financing of the border wall in any way.

The council opted to revise a section of the proposal, changing that the city would not "associate with" businesses that work on the wall to "does not wish to condone" any business that works on the wall. The resolution calls for the city to divest holdings in any companies that would profit from building the wall along the Mexico border.

The language contained in the citys resolution is largely ceremonial, although it does direct the city to divest its investment funding "as allowed by law." No publicly traded stocks or mutual funds are tied to the proposed border wall project at this time, city officials said.

City Councilwoman Regina Romero attempted to salvage the controversial section directing the city to refuse to work with certain companies, saying it was the teeth of the resolution. But she failed to convince her colleagues as City Attorney Mike Rankin said federal procurement laws would prohibit the city from going further than reviewing its investment portfolio.

Mayor Jonathan Rothschild said it was still important to oppose the border wall even if the citys resolution is mainly symbolic. It is a terrible, terrible, terrible idea, he said of the proposed wall.

Michael Varney, the president and CEO of the Tucson Metro Chamber, wrote a letter hours before the meeting to the council formally opposing the resolution. He said the council can move forward with any political statement it wants but should leave local businesses out of it.

The city does not have to include punitive measures that will only damage local companies in order to make that statement, he said.

Brian Turmail, a spokesman for the Associated General Contractors of America, was initially critical of the resolution, saying it hurts the local construction industry.

It holds construction workers hostage to a policy fight that has nothing to do with them, Turmail said.

The precedent of blacklisting companies for participating in a federally backed program is a very slippery slope, he said, arguing other jurisdictions might refuse to work with a construction company because it once built a Planned Parenthood center.

It is a really poorly-thought-out policy, Turmail said before the changes were made to the resolution, which was approved by the council 6-0, with Councilman Steve Kozachik not at the meeting.

County resolution

The county resolution raises a number of economic, social, environmental and humanitarian objections to additional border wall construction.

Among other things, it argues that migrant apprehensions are at historic lows, border communities often have low crime rates, thousands of migrants have died in the borderlands trying to evade fencing and other elements of militarization, and that a border wall is an offensive and damaging symbol.

We share the Sonoran Desert together with our neighbors, said Elias, who asked that the resolution be put on the agenda. And the nation of Mexico has been a good neighbor to us.

Supervisor Ramon Valadez decried the proposed border wall as a tool that doesnt solve any issue.

The county resolution was approved with a 3-2 vote, over the objections of supervisors Ally Miller and Steve Christy.

Miller argued that additional wall construction is an effective way to protect against the entry of criminals and drugs, and rejected the resolutions claim that the wall has led to a human rights crisis.

I dont think our border is militarized enough, she said.

Christy said the resolution was another example of the board delving into areas outside of its purview, and mocked the prospects of such a measure having any meaningful impact on federal policy.

This board has a county to run, he added. And what are we doing with these national issues in a grandstanding manner to make us all feel good?

Elias countered that Pima County has the longest border with Mexico of any southwestern county, adding that the people in the borderlands deserve to have a voice.
The U.S. Forest Service intends to decide who will operate the Sabino Canyon Recreation Area shuttle service through a competitive process.

Thats according to a May 31 letter from Regional Forester Calvin Joyner to Donn Ricketts, the owner of current operator Sabino Canyon Tours, which is a private concessionaire. Ricketts has operated the trams in the canyon since 1986 and is seeking a new 20-year permit.

During the environmental analysis process, the Forest became aware of several parties who are interested in providing a shuttle service in Sabino Canyon, reads the letter, referencing the still-unreleased final study. Based on this demonstrated competitive interest, the Forest will issue a prospectus to operate and maintain a shuttle service in the Sabino Canyon Recreation Area, consistent with applicable regulations and directives.

Issuing a prospectus is mandated when there are one or more unsolicited proposals, according to Forest Service regulations cited in the letter. Those same regulations also require the agency to make every effort to obtain the best qualified permittee as well as an equitable return to the United States.

The letter proposes extending Ricketts special-use permit, which expires June 30, for another year, and possibly one more after that if the competitive process is still pending.

A Forest Service official previously told the Star that Ricketts could enjoy a first right of refusal on a new permit, meaning he could be awarded the 20-year permit without competition as long as his company was able to meet the Forest Services requirements.

But on Tuesday, Deputy Coronado National Forest Supervisor Deb Bumpus told the Star that, after consultation with lawyers, her agency determined that they could not offer Ricketts that option, given that other potential tram operators have expressed interest.

Rep. Martha McSally, R-Arizona, who has heard from a number of prominent constituents in recent months criticizing the current shuttle arrangement, praised what she described as the Forest Services right decision.

In numerous meetings with the agency about the Sabino Canyon Recreation Area shuttle over the past few months, my staff and I strongly advocated for an open, competitive and transparent process, the written statement said. Our position was that such a process would be the best way to achieve the goal of an overwhelming majority of stakeholders: a clean, modern and efficient shuttle that could safely serve the thousands of residents and visitors who use Sabino Canyon every year.

Among those who reached out to McSally earlier this year were local businessmen, auto dealer Jim Click and Canyon Ranch co-founder Mel Zuckerman, who, in identical March letters, criticized the Forest Service for considering renewing the 20-year permit for shuttle service at Sabino Canyon to the current operator  without a request for proposals or offering open competition.

They also said that Sabino Canyon Tours has performed at an extremely poor level consistently. The outdated shuttles are ill equipped to provide such an important service to over a million visitors to Sabino Canyon each year.

Ricketts, who had not read the letter until contacted by the Star on Tuesday afternoon, said he has been looking into replacing his fleet with electric vehicles for roughly the last year.

I do know of a couple others that were interested, but they have no idea how to run a shuttle, he said about the new permit process.

Ricketts has been operating the shuttle service since 1986, and the biodiesel and gasoline vehicles date back several decades, according to the Forest Services draft environmental assessment. The shuttles serve around 150,000 visitors every year. Only cash payment is accepted for rides on the shuttle.

Paul Marques, president of Friends of Sabino Canyon, which has been lobbying for shuttle changes and was founded by Click and Zuckerman in 1993, said he hopes to see someone other than Ricketts take over.

He described the current shuttles as noisy and an eyesore, and said the prospect of a competitive process is welcome news.

Bumpus pointed out that Ricketts will be welcome to compete along with any other applicants.
As any Tucsonan can attest to, delicious food doesn't have to cost a fortune.

Just in time for summer vacations, long-running magazine Travel + Leisure spoke to Ali Khan, host of the Cooking Channel's series "Cheap Eats," to get the scoop on the best low-priced cuisine in each state.

According to Khan, the best cheap eat in Arizona can be found at a local Tucson favorite that for many, will come as no surprise.

"Ive talked to enough homesick Arizonans to know that they love their version of Mexican food, which makes me keen on trying this popular Tucson Tamale operation," Khan said.

With the two tamale plate costing only $7.69, Khan said that makes the dish a "go-to" for him. (In case you're curious, Khan tried the green chile pork and green corn tamales.)

"Though these aren't the cheapest tamales I have had, they do come with an Alton Brown tweet of approval," Khan said.

Check out the article here and get in the mood for lunch.
Photo by John Shearer/Getty Images via ABC2017 is turning out to be the year of a country music baby boom, and now Florida Georgia Lines Tyler Hubbard is joining the phenomenon.

Weve had such a hard time not telling everybody for the last few months because we are SO excited Tyler shared on Instagram, along with a couple Polaroids with his wife Hayley, proudly displaying her pregnancy test.

WE ARE PREGNANT, he went on. Holy cow were going to be parents. God is so good and we cant wait for this next chapter of our life, he said, adding the hashtag #lilHubbard.

The little one will even arrive at a convenient time in FGLs touring schedule.

The due date is the end of December, Tyler told People. Were going to be off the road [and] be able to be home for the first few months. Its just crazy how it all worked out so perfectly.

Thomas Rhett, Justin Moore and Brantley Gilbert still have babies on the way this year, while Lee Brice and Dan + Shays Shay Mooney have both welcomed bundles of joy earlier in 2017.

Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Help India!

Mandsaur/Indore (Madhya Pradesh), (IANS): Hundreds of angry farmers on Wednesday blockaded roads and attacked two top officials at Mandsaur in Madhya Pradesh as their leaders claimed that eight people died in police firing a day earlier.

Mandsaur District Magistrate Swatantra Kumar Singh and Indore Superintendent of Police O.P. Tripathi were roughed up by a mob when they reached Barkheda Pant in Mandsaur where farmers were squatting on a road with the body of one of those killed on Tuesday.

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Singh and Tripathi wanted to talk to the farmers in a bid to persuade them to end their protest but the attempt backfired.

Singh was chased by the farmers, with some repeatedly hitting him on the head. Tripathi had a tough time too. Police reinforcements which rushed to the spot rescued both the officials.

The situation is tense but under control, a senior official said on Wednesday.

The farmers allege that the Madhya Pradesh Police and the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) deliberately opened fire at them when they were protesting on Tuesday. Seven farmers were also wounded in the firing.

Police said that it were the farmers who triggered the violence.
Help India!

New Delhi, (IANS): The Congress on Wednesday said party Vice President Rahul Gandhi was denied permission by the Madhya Pradesh government to visit Mandsaur where five farmers were reported killed in firing.

Rahul Gandhi was not given permission by the state government to visit Mandsaur, Congresss Madhya Pradesh unit chief Arun Yadav told IANS over phone.

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Congress leaders said Gandhi was to visit Mandsaur to express his solidarity with the families of farmers killed reportedly when the police opened fire.

On Tuesday, at least five farmers were killed and many were injured in the firing when the farmers were staging protests.

Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has ordered a judicial probe into the incident. Mandsaur city and Piplya Mandi area where the farmers were protesting have been put under curfew.

Farmers in Madhya Pradesh have been on strike since June 1, demanding their loans be scrapped and their produce be bought at a fair price.
Help India!

Bengaluru, (IANS): A burqa-clad student who came with her classmates to witness a Karnataka Assembly session on Wednesday had a horrific experience when the police asked her to remove the burqa and subjected her to security check for around 20 minutes.

The girl student of Christ Junior College was in tears when the security staff told her to remove the burqa.

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Someone took a video of the police asking her to remove the burqa, Christ Junior College Principal Fr. Biju K. Chacko told IANS.

The police allowed her to enter the assembly gallery only after the teachers assured them about the girls identity, he said.
Help India!

New Delhi, (IANS): Condemning police firing in Mandsaur of Madhya Pradesh, in which five farmers were killed on Tuesday, All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS)  a wing of Communist Party of India (CPI)  and Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU) held a protest near Madhya Pradesh Bhavan here on Wednesday.

The protest by around 30 people was led by former MP and AIKS General Secretary Hannan Mollah and JNUSU President Mohit Pandey.

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They criticised the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led governments in the Centre and states for anti-farmer policies and suppressing farmers protest through unwarranted ways.

The Modi government has created a very painful and adverse situation for farmers in its three years of governance. At least seven farmers were killed in Chhattisgarh last year. Now, the BJP-led governments in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh are trying to suppress farmers protest through unethical and unwarranted ways, Mollah said.

Pro-BJP and pro-RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) organisations are being used to overpower the ongoing protests. Farmers in Mandsaur were protesting against the government peacefully but it resorted to firing and killed farmers.

The farmers allege that the Madhya Pradesh Police and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel deliberately opened fire at them when they were protesting on Tuesday. Five farmers were killed and seven were injured in the firing. The farmers, however, claim that eight persons lost their lives.

Pandey said people in the country will have to fight the brutal ways being adopted by the governments to control farmers protests.

In the name of nation-building, the BJP-led governments have been killing farmers and poor. Earlier, they killed Pahlu Khan, and now they brutally killed farmers in Madhya Pradesh, Pandey said.

Delhi University Professor Apoorvanand, who also joined the protest, said the government had no concerns left for farmers.

The BJP government is saying the protesting farmers in Maharashtra are fake since they wear shirt and pant. These BJP governments have shown no remorse for their brutal action against farmers so far, he said.

The AIKS handed over a memorandum to officials at the Madhya Pradesh Bhavan, in which they demanded judicial inquiry into the police firing in Mandsaur, action against those responsible for the firing, loan waiver to farmers and Rs one crore compensation to the deceased farmers.
Help India!

By TwoCircles.net Staff Reporter

New Delhi: Coordination of Democratic Rights Organisations (CDRO), a coalition of civil and democratic rights organizations from across India, condemned Army Chief statement of asking citizens to pick up arms instead of stones and termed it as a means to facilitate Indian army to use equal and proportionate force while exercising self defense which otherwise will be prohibited by International Law.

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General Bipin Rawats remarks as mocking the Democratic process, which the Indian army, and as its chief, he is expected to defend and uphold, said CDRO.

The rights organization termed remarks in total disregard for Rules of War as well as utter contempt for the Rule of Law, authorizing violation of Article 21 of the Constitution, and amounts to normalising lawless war, which is already unleashed by army on the people.

One fact which even the army chief knows is that Kashmiris have lost their fear and awe of Indian army. Their memory of what army is capable of doing is a constant reminder etched on their lives. So the army is not feared, they are simply disliked if not hated for all the pain and loss caused to the native Kashmiri Muslims. In such a situation to privilege military solution is like pouring oil on fire, said CDRO.

The rights group have alleged that the Army has been given a free hand under present dispensation. Army which had come to acquire a veto power over repeal of AFSPA under the UPA Government now is being allowed to pursue its own course of war in Kashmir, because BJP prefers soldiers to resolve problems, it does not have the political stomach to resolve.

CDRO believes that BJP has no Kashmir policy other than a brutal suppression to erase the idea of Azaadi in Kashmir.

Kashmiris are considered as anti-nationals, whether they throw stones, shout slogans, waive flags, stage sit ins, hold meetings, simply by virtue of a concocted understanding of the situation. For another it means that leadership of the Indian army, while grossly misreading the situation in Kashmir, remains innocent of the deleterious impact rapid expansion of Hindu right wing vigilantism has on developments in Kashmir, the organisation said.

The rights group said that BJP government which on the one hand promotes and patronises Hindu vigilantism in India and especially Jammu and on the other side an Indian army which speaks of a military solution in Kashmir is a double whammy on Kashmir.

CDRO further said that constitution nowhere, even in its list of duties, demands the citizens to fear and obey the army. Such outrageous interpolations, therefore, serves as a reminder that the even the most disciplined army can get hollowed out by a long drawn out engagement in wars against our own people, hte organisation added.
Help India!

By Raqib Hameed Naik, TwoCircles.net

New Delhi: Students Islamic Organization of India (SIO), the student wing of Jamaat-e-Islami, organised an Iftar get where families affected by mob violence were invited to share their experiences and interacted with media persons and social activists.

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The guests included family members of Najeeb Ahmed, Mohd Akhlaq and Pahlu Khan. The event started at 5:30 in the evening with victim family members sharing their ordeal and their experiences post the killing/disappearance of their loved ones.

Azmat Khan, neighbor of Pehlu Khan who was accompanying him on the day of lynching in Behror area of Alwar, narrated the sequence of the events leading to lynching. He said that the mob had stopped them with the intention to kill.

Only the driver was allowed to go, whereas all the other persons in the vehicle were badly beaten. We even showed them all the necessary papers, but they didnt wanted to hear a word and started beating us. The police instead of registering case against the culprits charged us under different sections.

Azmat further alleged Alwar-based BJP and RSS leaders of involvement in the lynching episode. No one has been arrested as of now, he added.

Jumping in the conversation, Pehlu Khans son Arshad Khan, who was also accompanying his father alleged that his father was killed because he was sporting a beard.

We were all clean shaven and my father was sporting a beard. It is the reason behind his killing, Arshad alleged.

Further narrating the reason behind buying the cows, he said, We had initially planned to buy a buffalo but it too costly and we couldnt afford it thats why we bought cows and we had all papers in procession to transport. Now, we even fear buying buffaloes.

He said that no one from Haryana government have visited them. The lynching incident occurred on Saturday, April 1, when a group of self-styled cow vigilantes attacked dairy farmer Pehlu Khan in Behror area of Alwar. Khan, hailing from Haryana, died on Monday night, April 3 in hospital.

He was travelling in a truck with two cows and two calves, when the attackers accused him of illegally smuggling cows for slaughter. However, the evidence has pointed that he wasnt carrying cows for slaughter and instead for dairy purposes.

From Akhlaqs family his younger brother Jan Mohammad was present. While recalling the incident, he said, He was beaten and dragged like he was not a human but animal. He was beaten by bricks and I even have a video of the same. And the irony is, 9 months after the lynching, police framed charges on us.

He further claimed that there is a conspiracy behind the Akhlaqs killing and it was a preplanned murder.

Regarding the claims of cow slaughter in Akhlaqs house, Jan said that not even a chicken was slaughtered before the Eid.

There was no meat in the house except a small bowl containing cooked mutton. There are lot of discrepancies in the police and forensics experts versions itself, he added.

Akhlaq, a resident of Bisara village near Dadri in Uttar Pradesh, was lynched by a Hindu mob on September 28, 2015 for allegedly possessing and eating beef. The incident, which drew attention of international media, was widely condemned in India.

Fatima Nafees, mother of missing JNU student Najeeb Ahmed was crying while narrating the incident leading to her sons disappearance. She alleged that accused are deliberately being saved by the police.

She said that Muslims are being deliberately targeted and argued all the Muslims to unite and come on one stage to fight against the atrocities being inflicted on the minority community.

All victims here on the stage are Muslims, so we can say that they are mostly targeting Muslims. We (Muslims) must unite against their agenda, otherwise they will crush us, she said.

As a mother I didnt get justice yet but he was an Indian citizen, at least give him justice in this capacity, she said.

Fatima anticipates that she will definitely get justice one day.

Najeeb, 27, a first year M.Sc. student, went missing from his JNU hostel on the night of October 14-15 last year, allegedly after a row with members of RSS student wing Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP). The event concluded with breaking of fast.

Mohammad Salim Engineer, General Secretary, Jamaat-e-Islami, said that the idea of organising interaction with the families of mob lynching with media over Iftar is an answer to Muslim Rashtriya Manch (the RSS affiliate) Iftar organised in Jamia Millia Islamia.
What is it about Diane Abbott and her painful media performances that persuades Jeremy Corbyn to keep her in her brief as shadow Home Secretary? Is it the 'sexy' naked pictures he has of her to parade in front of his buddies? Is it their past love affair? Because if the Labour leader was the CEO of a large corporation, he should have fired Ms Abbott by now. Yet that sometimes fails to suffice in the world of politics at times. But it is his apparent inability to sack the Hackney PPC, regardless of her constant failures, that proves he is not ready to take on the office of prime minister.

'Britain would have elected a leader who is ready to surrender'

However, it is not just Ms Abbott he has let off the hook. The shadow Education Secretary, Angela Raynor, failed to clarify her numbers on education not that long ago. Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry is spectacularly embarrassing herself every time she appears on television. How can anyone believe that the Labour leader will be tough on terrorism, immigration and Brexit, three of the most critical issues that will help determine the outcome of this election,when he cannot even manage his own team? Mr. Juncker would laugh at every empty threat he intends to make to Brussels. Britain would have elected a leader in Mr. Corbyn who is ready to surrender under any circumstance.

If he was nominated as a candidate for the Labour leadership as part of a joke, then it is not funny anymore. Defeating Mr. Corbyn was always the best result the Conservatives could hope for, and the talented Labour backbenchers keen to overthrow him. But the more worrying prospect is who should replace him, if he chooses to resign on Friday morning? Given the current state of Labour's membership, the alternatives are frightening.
Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott was roasted by Channel 4's Jon Snow over Jeremy Corbyn's U-turn on his party's 'shoot-to-kill' policy.

The Labour Party appears to have reversed its original policy in the wake of the devastating London Bridge attacks last Saturday night, which resulted in 3 terrorists murdering 7 people and injuring 48 more.

Mr. Snow challenged Ms Abbott after it appeared that Labour supports the right of armed policemen to shoot to kill terror suspects in the aftermath of recent terrorist attacks in Britain.

'The IRA are my friends'

With a day left before the 2017 General Election, Mr. Corbyn has vied to be tough on terrorism in a bid to secure more votes for his party, after Prime Minister Theresa May declared 'enough is enough' following Saturday night's atrocity.

Yet the Labour leader has received relentless scrutiny in the past few days over his past links with terrorist organisations, including Hamas and Hezbollah. He has even referred to members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) as his 'friends.'

It has also come to light that when Mr. Corbyn was a Labour backbencher, he attempted to block different pieces of anti-terror legislation.

Appearing exclusively on Channel 4, Mr. Snow said that it is painful to watch Mr.

Corbyn and Ms Abbott re-brand themselves as credible leaders-in-waiting prior to Polling Day on Thursday.

He accused the Labour shadow Cabinet of opposing Trident's continued existence whilst tolerating its development, and lambasted them over their contradictory approach to the shoot-to-kill policy whilst calling for more police officers.

But the shadow Home Secretary hit back, claiming Labour has consistently supported the right of police officers to employ maximum force when protecting peoples' lives.

'Shoot-to-kill is dangerous'

Despite his established history of opposing measures to curb terrorism, the Labour leader has said he is willing to take whatever action is necessary to defend the British people, as part of his bid to compete with the Conservative leader on the issue of security and defence.

He also commended the actions of the police in protecting those who suffered during March's Westminster attacks.

This is despite saying in 2015 that he believed the shoot-to-kill policy is dangerous and counter-productive, and prior to that in 2011, saying he has been a consistent opponent of anti-terror legislation since 1983.

'List of catastrophic errors'

This interview has been part of a list of catastrophic errors the shadow Home Secretary has made on news stations since the start of this year's general election.

On Monday night, she failed to clarify during an interview with Sky News presenter Dermot Murnaghan how many of the 10,000 officers Labour intends to recruit, should they win on Thursday, would be community support officers or police officers.

There have also been rumours that Labour intends to prevent Ms Abbott from appearing on live interviews until after Thursday.

Before that, she humiliated herself during an interview with LBC's Nick Ferrarri after getting her numbers muddled on how much her party's policy to recruit 10,000 police officers would cost.

She originally suggested the measure would cost 300,000, which Mr. Ferrarri highlighted would result in each police officer being paid 30 a year.

The Hackney PPC went on to say it would cost 80 million, which the LBC presenter said would result in each police officer earning 3,000 a year.

She then contradicted herself again, saying her party in government intends to employ 25,000 over a year by reversing Conservative cuts to Capital Gains Tax.

Despite this, it has not been a spectacular week for the Labour leader either.

Anti-establishment political blog Guido Fawkes revealed that he was caught on camera during a train journey chatting to his spin doctor, Seamus Milne, who helped Mr. Corbyn change his mind on his party's defence policy.

Regardless of the narrowing of opinion polls in recent weeks, canvass returns from the Conservatives have pointed to an unenthusiastic response to Labour on the whole throughout Britain's streets.
Perhaps the biggest story to come out of the 2016 presidential election has been over what impact Russia had in its results. As the pressure mounts on the White House, it's clear Donald Trump is starting to panic.

Trump on Twitter

When Donald Trump announced he was running for president, it didn't take the media long to question how his history as a businessman would conflict with his time as president. From the early days of his campaign, Trump was accused of having a possible relationship with Russia. The former host of "The Apprentice" avoided any criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin, while never holding back an attack on other world leaders.

Trump refusing to release his tax returns created further speculation as to what he could be hiding in his financial information, which has not slowed down after almost four months in office. Over the last two years, several associates and advisers to the president have been linked to Russia, including retired Gen. Michael Flynn who was forced to resign as National Security Advisers after being caught speaking with a high-ranking Kremlin official just a month after the election. As Congress continues to investigate the role Russia played in the election, the highly anticipated testimony from former acting Attorney General Sally Yates is upcoming, which Trump addressed during a pair of Twitter posts on May 8.

General Flynn was given the highest security clearance by the Obama Administration - but the Fake News seldom likes talking about that.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 8, 2017

Taking to Twitter on Monday morning was Donald Trump, and the president made it clear that he was not happy with what was taking place. "General Flynn was given the highest security clearance by the Obama Administration - but the Fake News seldom likes talking about that," Trump tweeted out.

Ask Sally Yates, under oath, if she knows how classified information got into the newspapers soon after she explained it to W.H. Council.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 8, 2017

In a follow-up message on Twitter, Donald Trump shifted his focus onto Sally Yates in an apparent attempt to discredit her testimony. "Ask Sally Yates, under oath, if she knows how classified information got into the newspapers soon after she explained it to W.H.

Council," Trump wrote.

Sally Yates expected to contradict White House on Flynn in testimony today: https://t.co/dZDRcggnCj pic.twitter.com/wO9pK0iSt3  The Hill (@thehill) May 8, 2017

Moving forward

Despite the best effort of Donald Trump, his team of advisers, and members of the right-wing media, the controversy surrounding the Russian scandal doesn't appear like it's ending anytime soon. The commander in chief has long denied any wrongdoing on the subject, but evidence has mounted to conflict with his narrative. Instead, Trump has done his best to deflect blame onto others, including former President Barack Obama, but the American people don't seem to be buying his excuse, which is reflective in his 40 percent approval rating.
Over the last two years, Donald Trump has taken the American political system by storm with his controversial style and rhetoric. However, due to his tendency to lash out on social media, Trump often posts his thoughts before proofreading them.

Trump on Twitter

When Donald Trump kicked off his campaign for president back in June 2015, he quickly clashed with the mainstream media after referring to illegal immigrants from Mexico as "rapists" and "murderers." Once it became clear that the former host of "The Apprentice" was not going to see eye to eye with the press, he decided to take a different routine in getting his message across.

At that point, Trump decided social media would be the most effective way in reaching potential voters, as he used Twitter on an almost daily basis to promote his campaign message. However, Twitter became more than just an megaphone for his policy proposals, as it quickly turned into an outlet to voice his thoughts on a variety of issues. Whether it was bashing critical celebrities in Hollywood, pushing back against the satire on "Saturday Night Live," promoting questionable right-wing sources as fact, or lashing out at his political opponents and world leaders, Trump made it clear that he was willing to bypass traditional media in order to get his point across. As Congress continues to investigate the role Russia played in the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, Trump is doing his best to deflect the story in another direction.

After tweeting out criticism prior to the testimony of former acting Attorney General Sally Yates, Trump was forced to delete, and re-post his comment on May 8 after getting caught in an embarrassing grammar and spelling error.

Ask Sally Yates, under oath, if she knows how classified information got into the newspapers soon after she explained it to W.H. Counsel.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 8, 2017

Taking to his Twitter account on Monday morning, Donald Trump sent out several tweets to defend himself from potentially damaging comments made by Sally Yates.

Yates is expected to contradict the remarks made by former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn in regards to the growing Russian scandal surrounding the White House. Due to this, Trump accused the "fake news" media of not being critical of President Barack Obama's vetting of Flynn, while following it up with a tweet about Yates.

In his message about Sally Yates, Donald Trump called on Congress to ask her "how classified information got into the newspapers soon after she explained it to W.H. Counsel." However, in the original tweet, Trump spelled "counsel" as "council," using the incorrect form of the word. After three hours, the commander in chief was apparently made aware of the blunder, as he then took down his original message and replaced it with the correct spelling. This isn't the first time that Trump has been caught with a spelling or grammar error in one of his social media messages, as his critics are always quick to point out the mistake.

counsel:  a lawyer appointed to advise and represent in legal matters

council: an assembly or meeting for consultation or discussion  Merriam-Webster (@MerriamWebster) May 8, 2017

Twitter trolls

In response to Donald Trump's spelling issue, Twitter users had a field day pointing out the obvious, including the official account of the Merriam-Webster dictionary. "counsel: a lawyer appointed to advise and represent in legal matters. council: an assembly or meeting for consultation or discussion."

@realDonaldTrump Wow, it took you over an hour to fix it. That must be a record. https://t.co/OHhxQ1wRwn  Holly O'Reilly (@AynRandPaulRyan) May 8, 2017

@realDonaldTrump dude. the problem with the tweet isnt your misspelling of the word, but your use of the office of president to target an individual  Joel L. Watts (@eJoelWatts) May 8, 2017

"Dude.

the problem with the tweet isnt your misspelling of the word, but your use of the office of president to target an individual," one tweet read. "Wow, it took you over an hour to fix it. That must be a record," songwriter Molly O'Reilly wrote on her Twitter account. The hits kept on coming as it was clear that many Americans still think of Donald Trump as the butt of a joke.
Last Friday, Acting United States Attorney William D. Weinreb; Matthew J. Etre, Special Agent in Charge of Homeland Security Investigations in Boston; announced the arrest of two Dominican nationals for allegedly trafficking cocaine to the United States. Juan Luis Perez Garcia, 44, a Dominican national residing in Bronx, N.Y., and Juan Artiles Taveras, 43, of Lakewood, N.J., were arrested in Attleboro, Mass., after an investigation of a narcotics organization operating in the Dominican Republic.

According to court records a cooperating witness, who worked at the airport in Boston, helped in the investigation.

A meeting was set up in the Dominican Republic in June 2015, after it was learned that a member of the Dominican Republic narcotics organization was planning to put drugs on a JetBlue flight bound for the United States.

In need of a helping hand

The member stated that he was in need of assistance in Boston to get the drugs off the plane, so plans were set up with the cooperating witness to unload the drugs without having them discovered by airport officials. According to court documents, the next meeting was set up in July 2015 with another member of the organization to once again smuggle drugs into the United States from the Dominican Republic via a JetBlue flight.

Investigation leads to arrest

Court records showed that as the investigation continued, it is alleged that Perez Garcia contacted the cooperating witness and arranged for cocaine to be delivered to the cooperating witness in Boston from the Dominican Republic. It is also alleged that on June 2, 2017, plans were made for a suitcase containing cocaine to arrive from the Dominican Republic via a JetBlue flight into Boston.

Unannounced to the members of the narcotic organization, federal agents intercepted the suitcase when it arrived in Boston. They conducted a field test on the suitcase contents and verify that it was cocaine with a weight of about seven kilos. Later that evening, the cooperating witness and undercover officers met with Juan Luis Perez Garcia and Juan Artiles Taveras in a parking lot in Attleboro, Mass.

to exchange money for the drugs. At which time both men were placed under arrest. If found guilty of intent to distribute cocaine both men could face a mandatory maximum sentence of 10 years or life in prison, with a five-year supervision upon release and a fine of $10 million.
According to London Metropolitan Police, they have identified two of the three men involved in the terror attack on London Bridge and in Borough Market on Saturday. Police still have to confirm formal identification of the two men, but they believe the two men, Rachid Redouane and Khuram Shazad Butt  both residents of Barking in east London  were involved in the terror attacks which killed seven people and injured 48 more.

Armed Metropolitan police officers shot all three attackers dead within eight minutes of arriving at the scene of the incident.

Of the 30 victims still in hospital on Sunday, 21 are still in a critical condition, according to police.

Investigations continue to identify third attacker

Reuters reports that Butt, 27, was a Pakistan-born British citizen, while Redouane, 30, had reportedly claimed to be of Libyan and Moroccan descent. Redouane also used a separate identity, that of Rachid Eikhdar. Investigations continue to identify the third attacker.

One attacker featured in a documentary about jihadists

According to Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, it was when the Metropolitan polices Counter Terrorism Command was conducting an operation on Monday near Barking that they searched two residences and detained several people for questioning.

As reported by ABC News, neighbors identified Butt, who apparently featured in a British Channel 4 documentary The Jihadist Next Door in 2016. The attacker was part of a group  closely monitored by British authorities  who openly preached the need for Sharia law.

According to the Metropolitan police, 12 people have so far been arrested in connection with Saturdays attacks in London.

Of those arrested, five were men and seven were women. According to police, eleven of the arrests were made at one residence. However, according to a tweet sent out by police, all 12 have been released.

British Prime Minister says more robust approach needed to fight extremism

British Prime Minister Theresa May on Monday applauded the actions of the Metropolitan Police while responding to the terror attacks on Saturday, saying they had saved countless lives. However, May went on to say that Britain needs a more robust approach when dealing with extremism in the country.

May had just completed an election campaign speech when she spoke to reporters in London. She went on to say there has been too much tolerance towards extremism in the country and that she plans to push to stamp out extremism in Britain. The prime minister had earlier held an emergency meeting to discuss the British governments response to the latest terror attack, which was the third deadly incident in the U.K. in less than three months.
Michelle Carter was 17-years-old when she played a sick game that cost 18-year-old Conrad Roy III his life, according to Massachusetts prosecutor Maryclare Flynn. Carter was charged with manslaughter. She is alleged to have texted messages to Roy, her boyfriend, encouraging him to kill himself after he had second thoughts.

Flynn opened Carters jury-waived trial today with the contention that Carter, now 20, urged Roy to commit suicide through dozens of telephone calls and text messages. A judge will decide her fate in the case.

July 2014, Carter and Roy had a 47-minute phone conversation while he sat in a truck.

He shared reservations about killing himself when Carter reportedly told him to get back in the truck. Roy used a generator connected to the exhaust system of a truck to commit suicide. He died of carbon monoxide poisoning. The following day, Roy was discovered dead in a Kmart parking lot outside of Boston.

When Carter was indicted in 2015, her attorney tried to get the charge dismissed. A juvenile court judge denied his request, so her attorney appealed to Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC). A year after Roys death, the SJC ordered Carter to stand trial. The court stated that a grand jury, in Bristol County, had probable cause for indicting her, determining that her verbal conduct had a coercive quality.

The ruling found that Roys willpower to cope with his depression was overwhelmed by Carters conduct. Justice Robert Cordy, who has since retired, noted in his ruling that Roy would not have gotten back into the truck or poisoned himself if not for Carters pressure, admonishments, and instructions.

In 2012, Carter and Roy met in Florida and lived in southeastern Massachusetts just 35 miles apart, but they saw each other in person a few times.

The majority of their communications were by telephone and text messages.

Defendants actions after boyfriend killed himself

Carter didnt call Roys parents or authorities when he died, according to Flynn. She allegedly wanted attention and sympathy from being a grieving girlfriend. Carters attorney, however, presented an entirely different view of his client.

Joseph Cataldo, representing Carter in her defense, said Carter urged her boyfriend to get help. He was reportedly depressed following his parents' divorce and after having been verbally and physically abused by his family members. He researched suicide methods online and had suicidal ideation for some time.

Carter allegedly rejected idea of Romeo and Juliet

It was Roy, according to Cataldo, who told Cater that the couple should be like Romeo And Juliet, teen lovers who killed themselves in Shakespeares same-name play. Carter rebuked the idea, saying she didnt want them to die.

Cataldo said it was a sad and tragic suicide, but not Carters idea and not a homicide. Carters judgment may have been clouded, he stated, by medications for her mental health struggles.

Lynn Roy, Roys mother, was the prosecutions first witness. Hours before her son killed himself, the two had walked on the beach. During that time, according to her, he displayed no signs that he was going to hurt himself. After she noticed that her sons truck was missing, she called police

Following her sons suicide, Roys mother also stated that Carter sent her text messages expressing sympathy, yet Carter did not mention knowing anything about plans to commit suicide. His mother did acknowledge that there was tension in the relationship her son had with his father.

Roys sister, Camdyn Roy, was 13-years-old when he died. Her testimony was similar to her mothers: Roy wasnt sad when they were at the beach.

Carter also texted her sympathetic messages, yet did not indicate the two were in contact.

The worst evidence against Carter is a litany  dozens  of text messages that the prosecution contends pushed Roy to kill himself.
North Korea is reportedly not pleased with Donald Trump's decision to withdraw from Paris agreement, which intends to fight the ongoing issue of climate change. In an official statement released by KCNA, the Pyongyang government slammed the U.S. president for his "selfish act" that is expected to pose "grave consequences" for an international movement participated by most countries.

Paris accord: 194 versus 3

A total of 194 nations agreed to follow the terms of the international effort to combat climate change, while three, including the U.S., Nicaragua, and Syria, pulled out from the Paris agreement.

Trump even delayed his decision and refused to give his commitment during the G7 summit in Sicily, Italy.

Speaking from the White House, the American leader confirmed the U.S. is "getting out" of the Paris agreement due to its "unfair" terms. The POTUS, however, added that he would reconsider their withdrawal if the Accord will offer a good deal that will benefit all parties.

"The Paris accord is very unfair at the highest level to the United States," the president insisted. "We will start to renegotiate, and we'll see if there's a better deal."

While most members of the Republican Party are convinced that Trump's decision was the right thing to do for the welfare of the American people, world leaders have expressed their disappointment on the U.S.

government's refusal to participate in an international effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

'Unreasonable and reckless'

The North Korean government likened Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris accord to his respond to Pyongyang's nuclear programs, which they deemed "unreasonable and reckless." North Korea added the leader's settlement showed "the height of egoism and moral vacuum seeking only their own well-being, even at the cost of the entire planet."

Pyongyang added that the U.S.

was "selfish" for backing out from the accord without realizing the "grave consequences" that could come after. It also said that the withdrawal would not only affect international efforts to protect the environment but will also pose negative effects to other areas of international relations.

North Korea has been pursuing environmental protection actions as a signatory of the Paris agreement. In fact, the Pyongyang government has declared a "war against deforestation" and has adopted the use of renewable technologies.
The assault on Raqqa is underway. Thousands of U.S. backed Kurdish fighters of the Syrian Democratic Forces pounce on the major ISIS stronghold as U.S. Military rain down Air Strikes on key installations in the city. However, the strikes were also directed to against Pro-Assad forces entering the "de-confliction zone" in Syria. This is the first major move of the U.S. backed coalition in its fight to destroy the home territories of the Islamic state.

Why did the U.S. attacked Pro-Assad forces?

A contingent of Syrian government forces bore the brunt of an air strike after it neglected warnings from the U.S.

military not to enter the "deconfliction zone." This is an area around the town of Al Tanf, where U.S. forces are training Syrian rebels to fight ISIS. United States forces in the ground repeatedly issued warnings on Assad's forces that entered this zone to immediately vacate it.

However, despite these warnings, Assad's forces continued to enter this zone. This forced the U.S. Military to conduct air strikes on the incoming forces thus inflicting heavy damage. This is the second time U.S. forces deliberately attacked Pro-Assad forces in Syria. This incident may lead to further tension as the Syrian forces as also on the march against ISIS and actually reclaiming huge swathes of territory, more than the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the Syrian rebels combined.

Russia had condemned the attacks saying that the U.S. strike is a step towards engaging open conflict with Syria and that it is an act of aggression. Assad's regime also have openly protested U.S. military involvement in the Syria.

What is the progress of the Raqqa offensive?

Thousands of Kurdish warriors in the SDF poured down into Raqqa, the capital of ISIS power in Syria.

The attack was orchestrated by the U.S. Military and supported by tactical air strikes. The attack is reportedly on its final leg as it tries to exterminate remaining ISIS fighters still entrenched inside the city.

However, the Syrian government and even Turkey are weary of the SDF. They fear that the rebel forces will be used by the United States as a tool to take over Syria, destabilizing the region once more.

Turkey have warned Washington that they will not hesitate to bomb SDF locations if provoked, knowing that most of its soldiers are Kurds, a tribe condemned by Turkey as terrorists.

The assault on Raqqa is far from over, but ISIS is indeed losing its place in Syria. It is just a matter of time that the Islamic state will be pushed out of the country and into Iraq, where the United States has more freedom of movement to inflict the fatal blow to this terrorist group.
George and Amal and Clooney are now proud parents of twins. Ella and Alexander Clooney were born on Tuesday morning, June 6, 2017, ahead of Beyonce and Jay Z's twins that are due any day now.

A rep for the Clooneys said in a statement that mother and twins are all healthy, happy and doing find. The rep jokingly said George is sedated and should recover in a few days.

First-time parents

For many years, Clooney described himself as Hollywoods most eligible bachelor. He met his wife in 2013, and they were married a year later in September 2014 in Venice, Italy.

Not only is George married, but he is now a first-time father at 56. His 39-year-old international and human rights lawyer wife is also a first-time parent.

The Oscar-winning actor has often joked about becoming a dad in his 50s. He has said that many of his friends already have adult children and he is just starting out. However, he is looking forward to the challenge of having babies late in life.

The couple wanted their twins to be born in the United Kingdom, and that's where the family of four will stay for now. They have agreed to live and raise the children in their London home for the first few years.

The fraternal twins' names

Perhaps the parents will reveal why they gave their twins such classic names.

According to the Baby Center, Ella is a shortened form of Eleanor and Ellen. The name means "light." Ella is the twelfth most popular name for girls this year. After 2017, it will probably shoot up to the top of the list of girls' names. Ben Stiller, John Travolta, and Alex Rodriguez's daughters are also named Ella.

The name Alexander is a Greek name that means "defender of men." The Baby Center reports that Alexander is the sixteenth most popular name for boys in 2017.

Social media reactions

Since the birth of the twins, there have been many comments on social media. There are congratulatory messages and many comments about the normal names of the babies. One person posted on Twitter that the parents are classy and gave their kids classy names. Another asked if the Clooneys violated any celebrity rules by naming their daughter Ella and their son Alexander.

The person was referring to the unique names that celebrities are giving their kids these days.

It is interesting that one day the Clooneys were a family of two and today they are a family of four. Comedian Ellen DeGeneres said she is calling the family Oceans Four. She was alluding to Clooney's 2001 film "Ocean's Eleven" that was so successful that there are two sequels, "Ocean's Twelve" released in 2004 and "Ocean's Thirteen" in 2007.
The middle eastern diplomatic standoff that has led to the isolation of Qatar by seven countries might finally be taking its toll on the oil-rich nation. According to reports, there are suspicions that there might be food shortages in the country and supermarkets in Qatar have experienced unprecedented overcrowding today. However, the Qatari government has come out strongly and stated that those fears are unfounded.

No food shortage

The overcrowding at several supermarkets in Qatar had sent alarm bells ringing across the country, which also happens to be the richest in the world per capita.

United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, which are among the seven countries that severed ties with Qatar are among the biggest exporters to the country. As a result, it is only natural that there were widespread fears that country might be staring at a Food Shortage.

However, the government has allayed such fears by categorically stating that there is no such problem and the country has enough food reserves as well as other sources of food supply to take care of the food situation in Qatar. The Ministry of Economy & Commerce released their statement today through a video and the narrator stated that the government has a provision in place by way of which it is sufficiently capable of tackling any problems with food imports.

Additionally, Qatar has been getting the regular supply of food from other countries with which it still has trading relations. The narrator added that the members of the public would not have to worry about any rise in food prices either and a rise in price, if any, will be announced by the relevant ministry.

Additionally, Qatar has been getting the regular supply of food from other countries with which it still has trading relations.

The narrator added that the members of the public would not have to worry about any rise in food prices either and a rise in price, if any, will be announced by the relevant ministry.

Just empty boasts?

In spite of the Qatari government's bold stance about the food supply problem currently engulfing the country, it is necessary to look at the facts behind the statement that was made today.

The country has a population of 2.7 million, which is not much by global standards but what would definitely be a cause for concern is the fact that a lion's share of the food required to feed the population is imported. Of that, 38% is imported from Saudi Arabia, which has severed all ties with Qatar along with 6 other countries and this is something that the country will have to address sooner rather than later. Conversely, this could also be a panicked reaction from the people to rumors of food shortage and any unexpected rise in food prices, in case the standoff drags on for some time.
Doha, Qatar is reportedly facing the worst Diplomatic crisis in years. Earlier reports on Tuesday revealed that Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Bahrain have cut their relationships with Qatar over accusations that they are supporting terrorism.

Apparently, Qatar has denied the allegations and confirmed that this is the biggest diplomatic crisis that they have ever faced. Meanwhile, the country's Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman has called for dialogue in order to resolve this relationship issue. Further, Qatar also insisted that their ties to the U.S.

will remain strong despite the diplomatic storm.

Qatar called accusations baseless

According to reports from CNN, Qatar citizens have been given 14 days to leave the borders of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, UAE, Egypt and all other countries which have banned their own citizens from entering Qatar. Further, Saudi Arabia announced on Monday that cutting of ties is the country's way of seeking protection from the dangers of terrorism and extremism.

Meanwhile, these Gulf allies are reportedly criticizing Qatar for alleged support for the Muslim Brotherhood, which is a nearly 100-year-old Islamist group which is considered to be a terrorist organization by Saudi Arabia and UAE. The UAE accused Qatar of funding the group in the official statement announcing the cutting of diplomatic ties.

In reaction to the accusations and allegations, Qatar called them baseless and unjustified. They also denied the accusations that they fund and support terrorism and extremism of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Suspended diplomatic relations

Right now, the diplomatic crisis has affected Qatar in so many ways. Some flights of the Emirate airlines to and from Doha will be suspended starting Tuesday morning.

More than that, Yemen and the Maldives have also cut their diplomatic relations with the country. With all this tension, Iran is blaming U.S. President Donald Trump after his recent visit to Saudi Arabia.

Because of the crisis that is happening in the region, the government of Turkey has appealed for dialogue that will resolve the rift.

On the other hand, Bahrain's foreign ministry has called the crisis a suspension of diplomatic relations among the Gulf Cooperation Council which was established in 1981.

Meanwhile, the U.S. indicated some interest over the issue and has urged Gulf territories to work on their differences in order to settle the crisis. According to CNN, Tillerson said "We certainly would encourage the parties to sit down together and address these differences. And if there is any role that we can play in terms of helping them address those, we think it is important that the GCC remain unified."
Magnificent View of Maoshan Mountain [Photo provided to China Daily]

An ink-brush landscape by modern master Fu Baoshi (1904-65) was sold for 187 million yuan ($27.5 millionto a real estate developer from northwestern Gansu province at a Beijing auction Sunday night.

Magnificent View of Maoshan Mountain was completed in the traditional shanshui mountain-and-water-style just three months before Fu's death. The nearly three-meter-long painting depicts a grand panorama of the mountain, an important seat of Taoism that is located in the eastern Jiangsu province.

Fu also painted at the seat of the mountain and in between the dense forests many factories and towns that are being built. The work exemplifies his distinctive approach to hailing socialist construction, a major topic of the artists at the time.

Han Qing, chairman of Tian Qing Group Real Estate Company, acquired the painting to enrich the collection of Tian Qing Museum, an institution funded by the company.

Magnificent View of Maoshan Mountain is the third most expensive of Fu's output at auction.

The work is the top lot of Beijing Poly Auction's night sale of classic Chinese paintings.

In the same sale, Fu's ink-brush figure painting, Goddest (Shan Gui), fetched 64 million yuan.

Goddest (Shan Gui) by Fu Baoshi [Photo provided to China Daily]

Related:

Top artists' works sell at Christie's HK auction

French collector's Chinese art going to auction
President Xi Jinping meets with his Kazakh counterpart Nursultan Nazarbayev during the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing. [Photo/Xinhua]

President Xi Jinping will pay a state visit to Kazakhstan from June 7 to 10, during which he will attend the 17th meeting of the Council of Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the opening ceremony of the World Expo in Astana.

Xi's trip will be the first by a Chinese leader to Central Asia this year, which marks the 25th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Kazakhstan. It was during his visit to Astana four years ago that Xi proposed the Silk Road Economic Belt, the on-land component of the Belt and Road Initiative. This time, his visit to the Central Asian country is expected to influence in multiple ways the bilateral cooperation under the frameworks of the initiative and the SCO.

Since their comprehensive strategic partnership came into force in 2011, Beijing and Astana have managed to strengthen bilateral exchanges in many fields, as Kazakhstan became the first country to reach agreements with China on cross-border rail transport of goods, overland oil pipelines, and capacity cooperation. China is also its largest trade and investment partner.

With their cooperation deepening, Xi's visit is expected to add fresh momentum to the already exemplary bilateral ties. During his visit, Xi is also expected to compare notes with Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev on a variety of issues, release a joint statement, and witness the signing of more than a dozen cooperative deals on trade and cultural exchanges.

The two presidents, who have met 15 times on various occasions, will also witness the launch of the Eurasian cross-border transportation through video connection. Thanks to the efforts made by enterprises from both sides, an inland port near the China-Kazakhstan border allows the landlocked country's railway cargoes to reach the port of Lianyungang, East China's Jiangsu province, in five days.

Events like these could further deepen cooperation between the two sides, and China's success in improving its development path could inspire Kazakhstan to do the same as it aspires to play a bigger role in regional and international affairs. And to maintain regional stability, the two key members of the SCO, which will officially include India and Pakistan as members during Xi's visit to Astana, have to work more closely to uphold the "Spirit of Shanghai".

Since the SCO's establishment in 2001, its member states have cooperated extensively and fruitfully over not just defense issues, but also economic and cultural exchanges. The inclusion of India and Pakistan into the SCO at Astana means it will have the largest population coverage of any multilateral organization (except the UN) with great potential to counter terrorism, separatism and extremism. Under the Regional Anti-Terrorism Structure set up three years ago, the organization will continue to make efforts to root out extremism from Afghanistan and contribute to the country's peaceful reconstruction.

Calling for wider participation in the Belt and Road Initiative will also be high on Xi's agenda in Kazakhstan. And Nazarbayev has more than once expressed willingness to connect Kazakhstan's "Bright Road" economic policies with the Silk Road Economic Belt. Moreover, the two countries' cooperation in the fields of energy, railways, agriculture and high technology could encourage other economies involved in the Belt and Road Initiative to join the efforts to build a community of shared destiny.

The author is secretary general of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Research Center affiliated to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
China-Kazakhstan cooperation on jointly building the Belt and Road is helpful for the revival of the ancient Silk Road trade route, President Xi Jinping said in a message on Tuesday.

Xi's remarks were presented at a ceremony in Kazakhstan's capital, Astana, for the publication of Beautiful China and Beautiful Kazakhstan, a joint picture album with over 200 photos of the countries' natural scenery and people. The publication marks the connecting of China-proposed Silk Road Economic Belt with Kazakhstan's Bright Road new economic policy.

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev also sent a message.

This year is the 25th anniversary of Sino-Kazakhstan diplomatic relations. They should deepen cooperation, encourage their traditional friendship and join hands to create a better future, Xi said.

Xi said that the two countries have made great contributions to promoting cultural exchanges. The publication of the album has great significance since it displays the beauty of the two countries and shows the friendship of its peoples, Xi said.

Nazarbayev said in his message that the China-proposed Silk Road Economic Belt and Kazakhstan's Bright Road new economic policy will bring new opportunities for the development of the ancient trade route.

This year is Tourism Year of China in Kazakhstan, he said, adding that tourism will boost mutual understanding and deepen friendship between the two countries.

A series of activities involving Sino-Kazakh cooperation was unveiled at the ceremony, one day before Xi's state visit.

Television entities from the countries signed agreements about exchanging TV programming as the two countries started the Silk Road Theater project. Among those signing such exchanges were Xinjiang Television and Kazakh partner Habbar Channel.

Talent exchanges and media cooperation have become the new highlights of Sino-Kazakh relations, said Zhou Jihong, deputy director of the international bureau of the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television.

"Several Chinese dramas have been broadcast by Kazakh television channels, and were welcomed by local people," she said.

Zhou said that as the Silk Road Theater project begins, the Xinjiang channel and Kazakh channels will be among those able to broadcast more quality TV projects from each other's country.
Foreign tourists in safari riverboats observe elephants along the Chobe river bank near Botswana's northern border where Zimbabwe, Zambia and Namibia meet, March 4, 2005. [Photo/Agencies]

GABORONE - Botswana's Health and Wellness Minister, Dorcas Magkato, Tuesday hailed the partnership between China and Botswana in the sector of health, saying it bridged the human resource gap in the country's health sector.

Magkato was speaking at a farewell dinner for the 14th Chinese medical team that was organized by Botswana's Health and Wellness ministry.

Magkato appreciated the Chinese government for its continuous support to Botswana.

She also commended the medics for the sacrifices they have made by being separated from their families and their country for the past two years.

Speaking at the farewell dinner, the Chinese ambassador to Botswana Zhao Yanbo, said medicine and health-care has been one of the top priority areas in China's assistance to Botswana.

He said cooperation in medical care and public health has brought huge benefits to African countries, making it a big plus to strengthen ties between China and Africa.

China began to dispatch medical teams to Botswana since 1981. So far, a total of 415 medical personnel of 14 Chinese medical teams have been sent to Botswana.
Chinese internet portal Tencent has cracked the top 10 of the world's 100 most valuable brands, according to an annual ranking.

The 2017 Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands was released on Tuesday by WPP and Kantar Millward Brown.

Tech giants Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook took the top five places on the list.

Tencent was ranked No. 8, and was one of 21 brands from the Asia Pacific region to make the list.

Other Chinese brands on the list are Alibaba (14), China Mobile (17), ICBC (28), Baidu (39), Huawei (49), China Construction Bank (54), Ping An (61), Moutai (64), Agricultural Bank of China (72), China Life (78), Sinopec (85) and Bank of China (94).

The report examines both consumer-facing and business-facing brands across 14 product categories, with an analysis of five geographic regions and additional details about brands and consumer attitudes in China, India, Russia, Latin America and Southeast Asia.

The US dominates the rankings with 54, and US brands make up 71 percent of the list's value. But more Chinese brands are moving up.

When the annual report was first released 12 years ago, only one Chinese brand - China Mobile, the state-owned telecommunications company - ranked in the BrandZ Global Top 100.

Since then, the number of Chinese brands ranked in the Top 100 has increased, and the value of Chinese brands has surged 937 percent, making up 11 percent of the list's value.

Tencent, with a brand-value increase of 27 percent to $108.3 billion, rose three places to enter the top 10. Tencent has almost 890 million monthly active users on its social media apps, including WeChat.

Tencent also benefited from its online gaming business and payment-related and cloud services, according to the report's analysis.

According to the report's analysis, the Chinese brands come mostly from categories dominated by state-owned enterprises: beverages (including brands like Moutai), banks, insurance, oil and gas and telecom providers like China Mobile.

Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook combined account for 25 percent of the value of the Top 100. Amazon achieved the highest dollar-value growth of all brands in the Top 100, increasing by $40.3 billion, or 41 percent, to $139.3 billion.

xiaohong@chinadailyusa.com
Protecting marine life has been a critical part of China's environmental efforts since its reform and opening up, said a Chinese official at the UN's Ocean Conference in New York.

Results from China's marine preservation efforts are still "preliminary", but the government has been exploring various means of controlling pollution and preventing further ecological damage to marine systems in China, said Lin Shanqing, deputy administrator of China's State Oceanic Administration (SOA), on Tuesday at a meeting on conserving marine ecosystems at UN headquarters.

"Since the launch of its reform and opening up policy, China has seen tremendous social and economic development. As the country has grown rapidly, there emerged inevitable environmental and ecological problems," he said.

"China has been strengthening the management, protection, conservation, and restoration of marine and coastal ecosystems, and has seen many preliminary - yet major - results," said Lin.

The country has enacted new marine-related laws to regulate and prevent pollution damage to marine environments in marine construction projects. Those measures include the Marine Environment Protection Law, which promote sustainable economic and social development, and the Law on the Administration of the Use of Sea Areas, which promotes sustainable use of sea areas.

"Thanks to over 10 years of efforts, China has established a comprehensive system of marine resource utilization," said Lin. "It is revising the system of functional division to increase the percentage of marine-protected areas, and marine reserves and introduce more strict management."

High population growth rates in China coupled with climate change have negatively affected the country's marine and coastal ecosystems, which include chemical pollution in water systems due to runoff from agricultural lands, pressure on animals and plants in marine ecosystems, and ocean acidification in places like the Bohai Sea.

Lin said that the government has put in place a system to control total pollution discharge in key marine areas that will tackle both land and marine-based sources of pollution, a pilot program that will be used in the Bohai Sea area.

He added that the government is looking to transition from a 100 percent publicly funded protection and conservation system that provides "inadequate coverage" to one that is funded by various sources.

Investments in several major restoration projects topped $1.18 billion (8 billion yuan), and have gone toward establishing wetlands like that in the Liaohe Delta, one of six of the country's biggest marsh wetlands. There are 269 species of birds in the wetlands, comparable to 1980 levels, according to incomplete data, Lin said.

Tommy Remengesau, president of Palau who co-chaired the meeting, emphasized connecting existing funding mechanisms - such as the Green Climate Fund, the Global Environment Facility, and the World Bank - to focus solely on oceanic issues. Preserving marine ecosystems and preventing further damage is a key goal of the Sustainable Development Goals, with ocean issues known as Sustainable Development Goal 14.

"We have a responsibility to be leaders to protect this resource that will determine the future of our people. We can all be leaders in our own individual way, by doing what we can to save the ocean, not only for our generation but for our children and their children as well," he said.

amyhe@chinadailyusa.com
US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin emphasized Tuesday that he is pleased with the direction of the US-China economic relationship.

"It is very much a very important relationship for us," he told the annual meeting of the US-China Business Council, which represents some 200 US companies doing business in China.

Mnuchin described the summit between President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, in April as a good start.

"I think it was a great opportunity for President Trump and President Xi to build a relationship, or each of them to understand the other's perspective," he said.

"I think we made very good progress," he said, citing the newly established Comprehensive Economic Dialogue, which is expected to be held this summer.

Mnuchin applauded the 100-Day Plan agreed upon by the two sides at the summit. The United States and China released the first results of the action plan in May, covering agricultural trade, financial services, investment and energy.

As a result, China will resume the importation of US beef and open the market for some US financial services firms, while the US will open the market for cooked poultry from China and export liquefied natural gas to China.

On Tuesday, Mnuchin also cited as a major accomplishment the bilateral cooperation on terrorism and financial intelligence and the countries' discussions on sanctions and related activities pertaining to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

"So I couldn't be more pleased with the direction of where we are heading," he told an audience of mostly corporate and policy leaders.

The former Goldman Sachs executive reiterated Trump's emphasis on balanced trade. "The Chinese heard that," Mnuchin said. "They understand that. That's not going to change overnight. But that's something we are working towards," he said. But he said the objective is to increase US exports, not for the US to decrease its imports.

Mnuchin noted that both sides know that certain things they want to change will take time. "We want to make sure that we are on the same page, (that) we have the same objective. We will figure out how we execute through our system and their system," he said.

The 54-year-old emphasized that the Trump administration is looking to negotiate specific issues of market access and fairness, as opposed to a large agreement like the Bilateral Investment Treaty. "Once we make progress in that, we can turn to the bilateral investment agreement," he said.

The USCBC has called in recent months for the Trump administration to conclude a high-standard BIT with China as soon as possible. The two countries had made good progress in negotiating the BIT under the Obama administration but still failed to reach a final agreement.

Mnuchin also said that the US had discussions with the Chinese on the currency issue. He said the good news is the Chinese used significant reserves in stabilizing the yuan, which indirectly helps US companies.

"But it is definitely something we are going to be vigilant about and make sure that in no way it is used for competitive advantage on their part," he said.

chenweihua@chinadailyusa.com
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HCM CITY  Vietnam ICT COMM and Broadcast Vietnam, international expos respectively on telecommunications, IT and communications products and services and broadcasting, will open in HCM City today.

The two expos will have 350 booths set up by 250 exhibitors from 10 countries and territories, Bui Quoc Viet of the Viet Nam Association for Information Processing, one of the expos organisers, told a media briefing held in HCM City on June 5 to introduce the two shows.

The three-day events have attracted leading brands like VNPT Technology, Mobifone, FPT, VTC, TP-Link, C-Link, Viet Fiber and Taiwan Excellence, who will bring broadcasting, satellite, digital television, HD, and radio technologies; telecom services; Internet services and applications; games; software; electronics; and ancillary products.

Many small and medium-sized enterprises, especially start-ups, have also signed up hoping the events will be an opportunity for them to promote their brands and seek collaboration and business development opportunities.

The exhibitions will include seminars on smart cities, ICT with legal and online marketing, opportunities and challenges in ICT development in Viet Nam, 4G-LTE technology, high-speed internet access, big data, and the Internet of Things.

To be held at the Saigon Exhibition and Convention Centre from in District 7, the expos are expected to welcome 15,000 visitors.  VNS
HCM CITY  Vissan Co Ltd is slashing VietGap pork prices by 30-42 per cent under a promotion from now to Saturday to stimulate consumption to support farmers.

It will roll out the promotion at all its fresh meat sales points like Vissan shops, Saigon Co.ops retail system, Vinmart supermarkets, Vinmart+, Satrafoods, Aeon Citimart, Giant Hypermarket, Auchan, Cocomart, Queenland mart, HQC Mart, and others.

It is part of a programme called "Support Farmers  Price Subsidy to Consumers" launched by the Central Committee of the Viet Nam Youth Federation to help pig farmers sell their stocks.

Since there is an oversupply of pork in the country, the company has already stopped imports and instead buys and slaughters an extra 500-600 pigs a day, raising the total number of pigs slaughtered at its facilities daily to 1,600-1,800.

It has also cut the prices of pork and processed foods.  VNS
HA NOI  Even as Japan is the fifth largest importer of Viet Nams agricultural products, only three kinds of Vietnamese fresh fruits are being sold in the country.

A report from the Ministry of Industry and Trades Export and Import Department showed that Viet Nam earned US$1.46 billion from exporting agricultural products and seafood to Japan last year, a year-on-year increase of 6.6 per cent. Of these, vegetables and fruits were valued at $75.1 million, up 1.5 per cent.

The department said the implementation of Viet Nam-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement had opened a great opportunity for Vietnamese exports to enter this market, in which agricultural products and seafood had been given tariff preferences.

However, Japan is a market that demands high food hygiene and safety and implements many measures, as well as technical barriers to import agricultural products.

Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade (MoIT) Tran Quoc Khanh said Japans standards of quality and food safety was almost equivalent to or even higher than normal international standards.

Khanh said whats important was that those standards were in line with the World Trade Organisations principles  it meant there was no discriminatory treatment between domestic goods and import products. All Vietnamese vegetables and fruits for export would have to undergo adjustment on import tax, as well as hygiene measures.

Meeting Japans quality standards is a compulsory requirement for every importer. The Vietnamese exporter will have to meet the demand, if they want to penetrate this market, Khanh told chinhphu.gov.vn.

As for frozen vegetables and fruits, their imports need a certificate of hygiene quarantine issued by the Vietnamese authorised body and random examination by Japanese quarantine and food hygiene and safety agency, so that their import do not run into hurdles.

Meanwhile, Vietnamese fresh vegetables and fruits have not been able to enter the Japanese market much, because the country closely regulates its import products over concerns about the spread of epidemic diseases and pests from exporting countries.

Currently, Japan has just opened its market to Vietnamese banana, mango and dragon fruits, as they have met the countrys plant quarantine regulations.

The import of these three fruits was made possible through the joint efforts of MoIT and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development in resolving technical barriers on quarantine.

The import of fruits to Japan will be considered by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, case by case, based on proposals from export countries through a process of many procedural steps, including their visit to export countries to examine and evaluate the products quality, said Khanh.

Technical standards

To push up trade, the Japanese Government still cooperates with the Vietnamese Government in raising the capacity to meet Japans quality standards for import products.

MoIT said the implementation of the pilot project for self-certification of the origin of goods within ASEAN was a general trend in the current negotiations of free trade agreements, contributing to helping businesses minimise the waiting time for certificate of origin and creating conditions for trade and export of goods, not only for vegetables and fruit, but also other products.

The ministry was pushing for reform in administrative procedures by issuing certification of goods through internet to help exporters save time.

Nguyen Son, the deputy head of the Inter-sectorial Steering Committee for International Integration, said Viet Nam spent eight years of negotiation to reach an agreement on shipping dragon fruit to Japan and five years to bring mango to this country. The Japanese market was a "severe test" of the quality of Vietnamese fruits.

"When Viet Nam passes such examination easily, the countrys export of agricultural products in general and fruits in particular will actually take off," said Son.  VNS
The Prime Minister has approved the equitisation plan to offload the States capital in the Viet Nam Urban and Industrial Zone Development Investment Corporation (IDICO).  Photo thesaigontimes.vn

HA NOI  The Prime Minister has approved the equitisation plan to offload the States capital in the Viet Nam Urban and Industrial Zone Development Investment Corporation (IDICO).

The company, with a charter capital of VN3 trillion (US$133.3 million), will offer up to 300 million shares in the initial public offering (IPO) at a par value of VN10,000 per share.

The upcoming IPO will reduce the States ownership in IDICO from 100 per cent to 36 per cent, equal to 108 million shares.

The Government will remain a shareholder of IDICO until December 31, 2018, and offload its entire stake in the company after this date.

In the IPO, strategic investors will be able to purchase up to 45 per cent of capital in IDICO, or 135 million shares; 18.4 per cent of capital, or 55.3 million shares, will be sold publicly, and the remaining stake will be transferred to the companys employees at a preferential price.

The PM has also asked the Minister of Construction to develop the standards to select the strategic investor in accordance with the Governments Decree 58/2011/N-CP dated July 18, 2011, converting 100 per cent State-owned enterprises to joint-stock companies.

The construction ministry has also been requested to transfer its representative State ownership in IDICO to the State Capital Investment Corporation (SCIC).

IDICO plans to earn a total revenue of VN5 trillion and a pre-tax profit of VN384 billion for 2017, down 52.5 per cent and 14.4 per cent, respectively, from the 2016 figures.

IDICO is one of the five constructions and building material corporations that hold large-valued assets and need to cut the States ownership in their capital to below 51 per cent by 2019, in accordance with the Governments plan to reduce its stake in State-owned enterprises between 2016 and 2020.

Another such company is the Housing and Urban Development Corporation (HUD). The Government will remain as controlling shareholder of HUD until the end of 2020 with a 51 per cent stake and offload its entire stake in HUD after 2020.

The construction ministry has recently submitted an equitisation plan for HUD to the Government, which values HUD at VN10.94 trillion, including the State capital of VN3.4 trillion.

The construction ministry plans to issue around 340 million shares in the companys IPO at a par value of VN10,000 per share.

The States ownership in HUD is projected at 173 million shares, equal to 51 per cent of the companys capital.

Strategic investors will be able to buy 85.1 million shares, or a quarter of the charter capital; 80.68 million other shares (23.7 per cent of capital) will be sold to the public, and the remaining stake will be issued to employees.  VNS
Though business ties between Viet Nam and the Czech Republic have seen dynamic development, there remains great potential to develop trade and investment ties between the two nations. VNA/VNS Photo

HA NOI  Though business ties between Viet Nam and the Czech Republic have seen dynamic development, there remains great potential to develop trade and investment ties between the two nations.

Deputy Prime Minister Vuong inh Hue made the statement during his speech at the Viet Nam-Czech business forum held yesterday in Ha Noi. The event was also attended by Czech President Milos Zeman.

Bilateral trade has enjoyed stable growth in recent years, hitting nearly US$250 million in 2016. By the end of last year, the Czech Republic was running 36 investment projects in Viet Nam worth about US$100 million, while Viet Nam was directing four projects in the Czech Republic valued at more than US$5 million, Hue said

This is very encouraging, yet, frankly speaking, it is still low compared to the potential and needs of our two countries, he added.

The EU-Viet Nam Free Trade Agreement coming into force in 2018 was hoped to open new opportunities in co-operation between Viet Nam and the European Union and between the country and the Czech Republic, Hue said.

He added that the 65,000 strong Vietnamese community in the Czech Republic contribute greatly to economic ties between the two countries. Thanks to support from the Czech Government, the Vietnamese community resides in almost all parts of the country and is increasingly integrated into the Czech society.

We hope that the Vietnamese community will continue to bring the Viet Nam-Czech relationship to new heights, Hue said.

"Viet Nam could be a gateway for Czech enterprises to enter ASEAN markets, and the Czech Republic could be an important partner helping Vietnamese commodities enter the EU," said oan Duy Khuong, vice chairman of the Viet Nam Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

He encouraged both nations enterprises to study each others specific demands and business customs in order to devise export strategies.

During his speech, Jaroslav Hanak, President of the Czech Confederation of Industry underlined the economic, trading and investment co-operation between the two nations, particularly in energy, manufacturing, infrastructure, chemistry, environmental protection and information and communication technology.

However, the full potential of relations has yet to be realised, he said. "Bilateral trade is dominated by exports from Viet Nam, while other means of co-operation that could benefit both countries have been neglected."

The forum also saw the signing of six co-operation agreements between Czech and Vietnamese companies.

Hosted by the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Czech Confederation of Industry and the Czech Embassy in Viet Nam, the forum brought together Vietnamese firms and nearly 60 Czech enterprises operating in the fields of energy, ICT, pharmaceuticals, water resource management, tourism and services.  VNS
HA NOI  Domestic auto assemblers and parts suppliers are showcasing their latest products at the 14th International Automobile and Supporting Industries Exhibition (Auto Expo 2017), which opened in Ha Noi today.

The four-day event, sponsored by the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT), is being held at the Ha Noi International Exhibition Centre by the MoITs Industry Policy and Strategy Institute (IPSI) and the Viet Nam Society of Automotive Engineers (VSAE).

The expo has around 450 booths that have on display a wide range of vehicles, including passenger cars, buses, trucks, vans, vehicles for special purposes such as those serving construction, mining, agricultural, military, medical and hygiene activities, as well as two-wheelers such as scooters, motorcycles and electric bikes.

With an exhibition space spanning 10,000sq.m, the expo also showcases spare parts and components for producing, manufacturing and assembling automobiles, motorbikes and other vehicles. On display are technologies in moulding, welding, plating, painting, automobile interior decor and toys; maintenance and repair equipment; measurement and diagnosis systems; as well as transportation rescue vehicles and devices.

At the event, exhibitors have introduced services such as garage services, banking and insurance services, and consultative and assistance services for activities related to vehicle manufacturing and trading.

In addition to the participation of local auto firms such as Viet Nam Engine and Agricultural Machinery Corporation (VEAM), CAMC Viet Nam and Viet Nam Machine Investment Development JSC (VIMID), the exhibition has also attracted foreign manufacturers and companies from the US, Japan, Thailand, South Korea, mainland China, Taiwan and Malaysia.

Speaking at the opening ceremony of the exhibition, Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade o Thang Hai said the expo would bring more business opportunities for auto firms, help them connect with the auto market and provide a favourable environment for enterprises looking for clients.

In 2016, the Vietnamese auto market sold around 300,000 cars, up 24 per cent over the previous year, of which the sales of commercial vehicles and special purpose vehicles increased by 25 per cent and 33 per cent, respectively. In the first quarter of 2017, the auto market sold around 65,000 vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 8 per cent.  VNS
HCM CITY  HCM City and the Central Highlands province of Gia Lai on Tuesday signed a cooperation agreement in industry and trade between the two localities that will extend between this year and 2020.

The ageement is expected to unleash the potential of each locality, contributing to socio-economic development through full cooperation in industry and trade.

Under the agreement, HCM City and Gia Lai Province will exchange information and practical experiences as well as improve State management of industry and trade in the two localities.

The localities will implement the market stabilisation programme, and update and share market information as well as resolve any problems related to fluctuations in the market.

They will also offer support to enterprises to invest in infrastructure projects in industrial zones and clusters, and help them resolve their challenges.

HCM City and Gia Lai will work to implement the supply-demand connection programmes, and promote trade and support enterprises to participate in trade fairs in the city and trade fairs in rural areas.

The two localities will also cooperate in setting up a chain of diverse agricultural products, livestock and poultry, from production to consumption.

The goal is to promote farm produce such as livestock and poultry products from Gia Lai Province in the HCM City market.

The localities will also strengthen inspection of goods transported between the two localities, and fight smuggling and trade fraud as well as ensure food safety and promote primary processing at the source.

The localities will also cooperate in human resource training, improve the management capacity in the trade and industry sector as well as apply e-commerce in production and business.

In addition, the city and the province will work with other localities to develop four key industries (food processing, chemicals; rubber  plastics; mechanical engineering and electronics; and information and technology), and the support industry.

Bui Khac Quang, director of Gia Lai Provinces Department of Industry and Trade, said HCM City is a large and important market for Gia Lai.

The province wants to improve connections between the two areas so that quality farm produce from Gia Lai such as vegetables, fruits and beef can be brought to the market in HCM City.

Quang also suggested the citys Department of Industry and Trade will encourage enterprises to join the conference on supply-demand in Gia Lai Province to be held in September.

He also called for businesses in HCM City to invest in infrastructure development projects in the province.  VNS
HA NOI  The midterm Vietnam Business Forum (VBF) 2017 between the Vietnamese Government and the business community will be held in Ha Noi on June 16.

The forum will provide a platform to engage in a high-level public-private policy dialogue with key decision-makers in the Government to focus on the impact of global policies on private sector investment in Viet Nam, the connection between FDI and domestic enterprises, and efficiency enhancement in the implementation of the current laws.

According to the Vietnam Business Forum Consortium, the forum is held in the context that recent changes and movement in global policies have posed many opportunities, challenges and reform request for Viet Nam. The changes have impacted Viet Nam and the private sector investment.

Vietnam Business Forum is an ongoing policy dialogue between the Government and the business community, aiming at a favourable business environment and a sustainable economic development in Viet Nam.

It is held by the Vietnam Business Forum Consortium in collaboration with the Ministry of Planning and Investment and the World Bank.  VNS
QUANG NAM  More than 80 examples of moc ban (wood blocks) and chau ban (official administrative manuscripts) used by Kings of the Nguyen dynasty (1802-1945) are on display at an exhibition in Hoi An.

The exhibition presents items related to the founding of Quang Nam and Hoi An in 1471, as well as important pieces on the development of the province.

The exhibition, organised by the citys Peoples Committee in collaboration with the State Archives of Viet Nam, is part of the 6th Quang Nam Heritage Festival.

Visitors can explore the carvings of Han Chinese or ancient Vietnamese Nom ideographic scripts at the citys conservation and heritage management centre at 10B Tran Hung ao Street in Hoi An.

The event lasts until June 16.

Both moc ban and chau ban were recognised by the UN cultural agency UNESCO as a World Documentary Heritage in the Memory of the World Programme in 2009.

Also during the festival on June 9-14, the My Son Sanctuary in Duy Xuyen District will host an exhibition of heritages of Cham towers in the coastal central region from Hue to Ninh Thuan Province.

The Cham towers were built to honour Champa kings, who ruled the region between the 4th and 13th centuries.

Rural market launched

Tien Phuoc District in the central province of Quang Nam has debuted a rural market in Tien Ky town as a new eco-tourism site, also part of the 6th Quang Nam Heritage Festival.

Vice chairman of the district Phung Van Huy said the market, which has been built on an area of 1 hectare, offers pavilions and stalls of farm produce, forestry products and local cuisine from 15 communes in the district.

Tien Phuoc is known as a centre of aloe wood and essential oil production from the aromatic wood.

Huy said the market will open daily from this month to host tourists from Hoi An, Tam Ky and a Nang.

The district also launched the ancient village of Loc Yen as a new destination in connection with world heritage sites in Hoi An, My Son Sanctuary and world biosphere Cham Island-Hoi An in the province.

The village, which is known for its centuries-old houses with stone pathways, still preserves houses, nature and the lifestyle of the villagers from 200 years ago.

The district will host an exhibition of the best 46 photos during a photo contest of the districts land and people from last year.

The district was established in the central province in late 1816, during the Nguyen dynasty, under the reign of King Khai inh. Tien Phuoc became a base for revolutionary forces during the anti-French war and was the headquarters of the liberation army during the American war.  VNS
Soaring into the sea: Director Vogt-Roberts took director of Godzilla for a tour at Ha Long Bay by seaplane of Hai Au Aviation to introduce the beauty of Viet Nam. The tour of two movie directors is a promising opportunity for promoting films of Viet Nam tourism to the world.  Photo Courtesy of Hai Au Aviation
HA NOI  Some 50 sketches and paintings illustrating the life of Russian poet, playwright and novelist Alexander Pushkin, and his works are on display at the Russian Centre of Science and Culture in Ha Noi.

It is part of the activities to celebrate his birthday on June 6 during the Russian Language Week in Viet Nam.

A number of sketches were made by Pushkin himself, featuring the portraits of his family members, politicians, and cultural and historical figures. He also drew to illustrate his works.

Most of his sketches were discovered after his death in 1837.

Other paintings illustrating his works on display at the centre were created by well-known Russian illustrators.

At the event held on Tuesday evening to celebrate his birthday, a group of Vietnamese students learning Russian language in Ha Noi played the theatre piece which was adapted from The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish, a fairy tale in verse by Pushkin.

Vietnamese students who studied in Russia and had come back to Viet Nam many years ago also performed Russian songs.

An award ceremony was held to honour young Vietnamese students nationwide who won the contest testing their knowledge of the fairy tales of Pushkin.

Natalia Valerievna Shafinskaia, director of the Russian Centre of Science and Culture in Ha Noi, said that in 2011, Russias President Vladimir Putin had signed a decree deciding that June 6  Pushkins birthday  would mark annually the Russian Language Day.

Considered by many to be the greatest Russian poet, he is the founder of modern Russian literature. His rich vocabulary and highly sensitive style are the foundation for modern Russian literature. His accomplishments set new records for the development of the Russian language and culture.

The events are expected to help visitors discover further the world of literature of Russia, the great works of Pushkin and promote the knowledge of the cultures between the two countries, she added.

Besides the Pushkin gala evening on June 6, various activities were organised at the centre, located at 501 Kim Ma Street, on the occasion of the Russian language week in Viet Nam, which lasted until June 9.

In her speech during the opening ceremony of the Russian language week on June 5, Shafinskaia said that for many generations of Vietnamese people, Russian language was not only a symbol of the fight for freedom and independence in the past, but was also the tool for development in the future.

During the whole week, Vietnamese linguistics specialised in the Russian language were introduced to the new methods in the teaching of the Russian language.

On this occasion, free Russian languages classes are open to Vietnamese students from different cities.  VNS
o Van Sinh, a permanent member of the NA Committee for Economic Affairs, speaks to online newspaper VietnamNet about the importance of finding workable measures to construct the future North-South expressway.

What is the future for the construction of the North-South expressway project?

There are three issues that the Government has to make clear.

First, is the scope of investment. Under the Prime Ministers Decision 326, the North-South expressway will have between 4 and 6 lanes. However, there is another option saying that the expressway could have between 6 and 10 lanes to cater for future needs.

The decision of how many lanes will be constructed is very important, as if the projection is wrong, there could be two serious consequences.

If the first option is chosen, the number of vehicles could be high and we have to increase the number of lanes. This will incur huge wastage for the national budget. However, if we decide on the second option with a vision until 2050, is this too long term?

Second, will the project be constructed in the form of phased, or staged, investment?

According to decision 326, some portions of the expressway will have 6 lanes with widths of 32 metres, while some others will be 4 lanes with a width of 22 metres.

But if the project is in the form of phased investment, and in this phase the road is 17 metres and only one portion will be 25 metres. If thats the case, in the following investment, the road will be enlarged. However, the road enlargement will be done segment by segment, not throughout the North-South expressway due to the shortage of funding.

Some people have strongly opposed this proposal and said it would be a big waste of money and the road would be patchy.

But, in my opinion, the most important thing is the effectiveness of using the available capital and the use of the constructed road.

Finally, the land settlement and compensation. As we all know the North-South expressway will go through 16 provinces. This is a tough question for the project owner to solve, as each province has its own mechanisms.

To solve this problem, the Government has suggested that due to the shortage of capital investment, we will do the land clearance according to the project implementation stage. However, many people have opted for the idea that land clearance should be done at once for the entire length of the North-South expressway. In my opinion, I agree with the second option. As from now until 2025 we still have to invest in the construction of the North-South expressway.

How will the project be implemented?

The Government has proposed four mechanisms to implement the project.

First, the project will be divided into 20 project components with different forms of investment and work contracts. This format has already been applied in constructing National Highway No.1.

Second, according to Vietnamese law, before making a final decision on the project, an environmental impact assessment (EIA) must be completed. However, in order to speed up the project process, we may ask the National Assembly to allow us to write the EIA report while writing the feasibility study (FS).

Third, the Government will call on investors to invest in the project in accordance to the Vietnamese Investment Law: 15 percent for small-scale projects and 10 percent for large-scale projects. However, according to Government Decree 15 on BOT projects, investors are allowed to invest according to project phases.

And finally, the tendering of the construction of the national expressway will be opened in the form of BOT.

The Government has given a nod to the Ministry of Transport proposal to set the toll road right in the official contracts signed between the MOT and contractors. However, in my opinion, such a proposal needs further discussion!

How can the Government mobilise VN 312,000 billion ($13.74 billion) for the construction of this project if our public debt has almost reached its ceiling?

We all agree that the North-South expressway is a big project requiring a huge sum of investment ($13.74 billion). It is projected that the project will be divided into three mid-term investment phases, namely from now till 2020, from 2020-2025 and after 2025.

According to a Government report, the project will need VN 130,000 billion ($5.72 billion) from now till 2020. But now we have only VN 55,000 billion (2.42 billion). That means we need to mobilise the remaining sum to invest in the project. This is a demanding job for us.

Our public debt has already reached its benchmark. That means we have to borrow money from the banks. But in our country, the term of depositing money in the banks is often short term. Therefore, it is not easy for the banks to have money available for long-term lending to the project. Furthermore, the banks themselves have put a cap on the sum of money they can lend out.

This is a tough issue! But the good news is that the Prime Minister has assigned the State Bank of Viet Nam to work out a plan to mobilise the money to cover the construction cost in the first phase from now till 2020. Of course, well try to look for other sources to invest in the second phase.

However, in my opinion, the National Assembly should explain the problem to all deputies to help them understand and share the difficulties and challenges with the Government.

When the project is proposed to the full housing meeting, do you think the deputies will vote to give it the go-ahead?

This is one of our concerns. We have already asked the Government to prepare the report carefully so that the deputies will get a full picture of the project. In this NA full house sitting, we have no plan to have a project vote, but instead we will have time to let the deputies discuss about the projects pros and cons.

In short, I should say, money is the most important issue, but for the 4-5 issues that I have mentioned above, the deputies will discuss and find ways to bring the project into life in the most efficient way.  VNS
President of the Czech Republic Milos Zeman arrived in Ha Noi yesterday to start his three-day State visit to Viet Nam at the invitation of President Tran ai Quang.  Photo AFP

HA NOI  President of the Czech Republic Milos Zeman arrived in Ha Noi yesterday to start his three-day State visit to Viet Nam at the invitation of President Tran ai Quang.

President Zemans delegation includes his spouse Ivana Zemanova, Minister of Justice Robert Pelikan, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Vaclav Kolaja, Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Jiri Koliba, Deputy Minister of Interior Petr Mlsna and several other officials. President Zeman, born in 1944, took office in 2013. He served as Prime Minister of the Czech Republic from 1998-2002. The visit aims to affirm the Czech Republics wish to enhance friendship and cooperation with Viet Nam, as well as the countrys desire to make bilateral ties more extensive and effective.

The visit is also a chance for the two sides to seek measures to boost bilateral partnership in all fields, especially economy, trade, investment, education-training and labour export and discuss regional and international issues of shared concern.

The visit of Czech President Milos Zeman to Vietnam is one of his most important overseas trips in 2017, as the country is a key partner of the Czech Republic in Southeast Asia, according to Rudolf Jindrak, head of the Czech Presidential Offices foreign section, who made the remark at an exclusive interview for the Vietnam News Agency.

He said this is the first visit to Vietnam by Milos Zeman since taking office as President of the Czech Republic.

The official noted that the visit aims at boosting bilateral cooperation across sectors, particularly trade and tourism.

In 2016, about 14,000 Czech tourists arrived in Vietnam.

"The Czech Republic is the only country in Europe has recognised Vietnamese among its ethnic minority groups," he stated, adding that the community had contributed significantly to local socio-economic development and to bilateral relations.

Vietnamese is the third biggest ethnic minority group in the Czech Republic.  VNS
LA HAVANA  The ongoing visit to Cuba by a high-level Vietnamese military delegation from June 1-7 is a chance for the two countries to strengthen ties in various fields, including defence.

General Ngo Xuan Lich, Politburo member, Vice Secretary of the Central Military Commission and Minister of National Defence, made the remark at a meeting with General Raul Castro, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party, President of the Council of State and President of the Council of Ministers, in Havana on Tuesday (local time).

Lich thanked his Cuban counterparts for supporting Viet Nam in the cause of national liberation, reunification, building and safeguarding.

Castro expressed his belief that the Vietnamese military delegations visit will boost relations between the two countries Parties, States, peoples and armed forces.

On Monday, Lich talked with Sen. Lieut. Gen. Leopoldo Cintra Frias, Minister of the Cuban Revolutionary, Armed Forces (MINFAR).

He said his visit aims to enhance cooperation that the two sides agreed to during the trip to Viet Nam by Leopoldo Cintra Frias in March 2017 to deepen bilateral defence ties.

The two ministers agreed to actively implement cooperation agreements to reinforce friendship, mutual trust, and close-knit ties between Vietnamese and Cuban people and armed forces.

They also exchanged measures to boost collaboration in fields of their strength, especially training, medical military, defence industry and logistics.

Both sides decided to promote high-level delegation exchanges and share experience in building the army and cooperation plan for 2017-2019 as a foundation to implement bilateral defence agreements.

After talks, the two ministers witnessed the signing of a cooperation agreement between the Cuban department of counterintelligence under the MINFAR and the army security protection department under the Vietnamese Ministry of National Defence.  VNS
HCM CITY  The HCM City Peoples Committee has instructed district leaders to monitor preventive action taken against dengue fever and Zika as the southern region enters the rainy season.

It said relevant agencies should organise campaigns and encourage locals to destroy mosquitoes and larvae by clearing wastes in which water could collect to prevent the spread of the diseases.

It instructed the city Department of Health to follow the Ministry of Healths directions to closely monitor the spread of the diseases.

The department should also ensure there are enough drugs and other medical supplies for effective prevention of the diseases since the city is seeing outbreaks, it said.

It has been ordered to regularly report on the situation to the Peoples Committee and ministry.

It has also been ordered to collaborate with the city Department of Information and Communication to strengthen public communication about preventive methods to improve awareness and prevent the spread of inaccurate information to avoid panic.

According to the city Preventive Health Centre, there have been 233 cases of dengue in the last two weeks, 6.9 per cent higher than in the previous four weeks.

This year there have been a total of 7,779 cases, almost unchanged from last year.

The HCM City Hospital for Tropical Diseases has been admitting 20 dengue patients every day since late last month.

Dr Nguyen Thanh Phong, head of the hospitals infectious diseases department D, said the number of patients is increasing with the rains.

Of the patients, several have been infected a second or third time because their awareness of preventive methods is not high, he said.

He explained that there are four common types of dengue strains, and getting infected with one is no guarantee against contracting another kind.

A second infection is more serious than the first, he said.

A patient from District 8 who is being treated at the hospital said it was his second dengue infection.

He lives in a house on the edge of the oi Canal, a place filled with mosquitoes.

Since he had contracted dengue once earlier he thought he was immune and ignored preventive methods, he said.

ong Nai Province

According to the ong Nai Province Preventive Health Centre, there have been 1,365 dengue cases this year.

Nhon Trach District has reported the largest number, 441, or 32.3 per cent of the cases reported.

The number is up by 77 per cent from the same period last year.

Most of cases have been in the communes of Long Tho, Phuoc Thien and Hiep Phuoc, which are mostly home to migrant workers. They live in dank rented rooms without standard drainage systems and surrounded by rubbish.

The centres officials have sprayed chemicals two times so far this year to destroy mosquitoes.

The centre has urged district health officials to spread awareness of preventive methods. VNS
HCM CITY  Fulbright University Viet Nam (FUV) has received two grants worth US$15.5 million from the US Government.

A $7.2 million grant from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) will support admissions and student recruitment policies and help establish financial aid and scholarship procedures for bachelor degree programmes.

The US State Departments Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs will provide $8.3 million to support bachelors and masters degree programmes.

FUV recently got its operating licence and is preparing for its first masters course in autumn this year, am Bich Thuy, its president, said.

The first undergraduate class will begin a year later.

Thuy announced the launch of an English language summer programme.

Fulbright Everest Launchpad will select 40 high school students for an eight-week course fully funded by FUV.

For the first four weeks all participants will study in a campus in HCM City before learning at home with online personal tutors.  VNS
AN GIANG  The An Giang Peoples Court on Tuesday sentenced a 60-year-old Cambodian woman to two years and three months of imprisonment for illegally transporting money and gold via the border.

On March 11, the Tinh Bien International Gate Customs stopped Vuoch Hea, a resident of Cambodias Kirivong District in Takeo Province, as she drove into the country via the border gate without making any declaration.

Customs officials found that she was carrying 100 million Cambodian Riel (US$24,500) in her bag, and 8kg gold, worth around VN7.4 billion ($328,800), hidden on her body. The objects were seized and put into State custody.

Hea confessed to officials that the money she was carrying was meant to pay off debts incurred on purchasing goods at Nha Bang Market in Tinh Bien District and Chau oc Market in Chau oc City. She also admitted that she was planning to sell the gold and use the money to buy construction materials to take back to Cambodia.  VNS
HA NOI  The Vietnamese embassy in Indonesia and Indonesian agencies are finalising repatriation procedures for 690 Vietnamese fishermen captured for illegally fishing in Indonesian waters.

It is expected that three Vietnamese coast guard ships will arrive at Batam Port on Friday morning to pick up the fishermen.

According to Hoang Anh Tuan, Vietnamese Ambassador to Indonesia, the return of fishermen on boat is the safest and most effective way of transporting such a large number of fishermen to Viet Nam.

If they were transported by airlines, the fishermen wouldnt be back to the country until the end of this year.

The number of Vietnamese fishermen brought home since the beginning of this year would be 1,030 people, including 690 fishermen returning this turn, equal to the number of those handed over in 2016.  VNS
HCM CITY  Deputy Prime Minister Vu uc am has conceded that while the Government keeps stressing the importance of grassroots healthcare stations, people dont have much faith in them.

The candid concession came during a working session the Deputy PM held with the HCM City Peoples Committee on local healthcare last week.

However, Dam also stressed that privatisation of healthcare facilities in the country was not the answer.

While he was in HCM City, the Deputy PM Dam visited two ward-level healthcare stations in the city and found major disparities between them.

One of them, in Ward 11, District 13 was outfitted with latest equipment and capable staff, but the other, in Ward 16, District 4 had outdated equipment and infrastructure.

Officials attributed the stark difference to the fact that the former was a good example of the public-private partnership (PPP) model, while the latter was almost solely dependent on State Budget allocations.

The clinic in Ward 11 also functioned both as a traditional health station and a general medicine facility.

Vo Khac Thai, Chairman of the District 3 Peoples Committee, said that out of 20 private firms that theyd contacted, VietAnhMed Co. specialising in manufacturing and trading medical equipment  was the only company that had agreed to invest in this difficult market.

The company said it was willing to accept losses for the first few years and begin to earn profits in 10 years, Thai said.

Nguyen Thanh Long, Deputy Minister of Health, said 50 per cent of the 12,000 healthcare stations in the country had to be upgraded or rebuilt.

He said that the lack of public confidence in these healthcare stations had driven most patients to central-level hospitals in major cities, causing constant overload.

This fact also discouraged businesses from investing in such stations, he said. He praised the involvement of private sector in healthcare and said it should be encouraged.

The Deputy PM, however, urged caution, saying international health advisors were against the privatisation of healthcare in Viet Nam.

The goal of the private sector, understandably, is profit. If the public health facilities are privatised, social welfare beneficiaries might not receive due attention, am added.

If we want to push the co-operation between public and private sector, then it must be based on a non-profit spirit, he said.

He explained that the non-profit approach he advocated did not mean doing everything for free, but using profits to reinvest and expand.

Responding to concerns about privatisation, Phan Quoc Viet, VietAnhMeds representative, said his companys profits will go towards upgrading equipment and infrastructure upgrades, capacity building for staff, and expanding into a chain of health stations in other districts in HCM City.

The public must benefit from the PPP model. They should be able to receive better services at an affordable price. The money made from people with more financial means will be used for reinvestment, am said.

Nguyen Tan Binh, Director of the municipal Department of Health, there are 319 health stations at the ward and commune levels in the city.

Despite considerable efforts by city authorities, these health stations have not met expectations in delivering quality primary healthcare.

This prompted the city to implement on a pilot basis the PPP (Public Private Partnership) healthcare model, he added.

The aim is to improve grassroots level healthcare and alleviate pressure for centrally administered hospitals, he said.

Binh said the city would conduct a thorough examination of the effectiveness of the pilot model after a certain period to see if it was a right way forward for the health sector.  VNS
HA NOI  Various shortcomings still exist in traditional medicine in terms of healthcare and paying health insurance fees.

This was revealed at a meeting organised by the Ministry of Health and the Viet Nam Social Insurance Agency on Monday in Ha Noi.

Some traditional medicine hospitals do not have doctors specialised in diagnostic imaging, leading to less patients coming to the hospitals as they cannot benefit from the services, according to Nguyen Ngoc Tuan, deputy head of the ministrys Traditional Medicine Management Department.

Another shortcoming is a lack of detailed instructions for insurance agencies on how to pay health insurance fees for patients diagnosed with chronic diseases, who are the typical patients visiting traditional medicine hospitals.

Normally, patients with chronic diseases need to be treated for a long time.

Thus, the lack of instructions affects patients and heath insurance agencies as they are confused on how to pay health insurance fees for these patients.

At present, many medical universities declined to train traditional-medicine doctors in modern medicine, Tuan said.

"This means traditional medicine hospitals fail to meet standards required by the health ministry to become primary healthcare facilities where health insurance card holders can register for examination and treatment," he said.

Pham Luong Son, deputy general director of the Viet Nam Social Insurance Agency pointed out defects in implementing and paying health insurance fees for patients treated with traditional medicines.

Some traditional medicine hospitals were found to keep patients for longer than necessary, he said.

Son also said the price of ba kich (Indian Mulberry)  a kind of traditional medicine, differed between localities. For instance, the price was VN338,500 (US$15) per kilo in Quang Nam Province, VN630,000 ($28) in Thanh Hoa Province and VN730,000 ($32) in ien Bien Province.

He asked for the difference to be clarified.

He gave an example that an insurance agency branch in Binh inh Province revoked VN1 billion ($44,000) after finding a difference between the real price of traditional medicine with the price a local hospital quoted to the agency in 2016.

How to fix

Tuan said inconsistencies in policies were behind the shortcomings.

He asked the ministry and the insurance agency to sit down together and issue a consistent policy to fix the shortcomings, Tuan said.

Son asked the ministry to assess examining and treating patients by traditional medicine at national level.

He also advised the ministry to evaluate the effectiveness of traditional medicine in treating patients with health insurance cards at hospitals.

The ministry was asked to publicise the average bid winning prices for each kind of traditional medicine, he added.

Deputy Minister Nguyen Viet Tien urged reaching a consensus between the two agencies to deal with the shortcomings soon.  VNS
UNITED NATIONS, United States  France will ask the UN Security Council to authorise an African military force for the Sahel region that will be sent to root out jihadists and drug traffickers, the French ambassador said on Tuesday.

A French-drafted resolution is expected to be presented this week to the Security Council, which could vote on the measure as early as next week.

Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger  which make up the G5  agreed in March to set up the force of 5,000 troops for the Sahel region.

The force will have its headquarters in Mali, but will be under a separate command from the UN peacekeeping force MINUSMA, which has been deployed in the country since 2013.

"France is going to propose a draft Security Council resolution to authorise the G5 Sahel counter-terrorist force," Ambassador Francois Delattre told reporters.

Delattre said he expected the council to back the measure, drafted under chapter 7 of the UN charter, which provides for the use of force.

"We cannot afford to let the Sahel region become a new safe haven for terrorists from across the region," he said.

Speaking in the Malian capital Bamako, Nigers Foreign Minister Ibrahim Yacouba said the G5 hoped to have a UN mandate "by the end of June," paving the way to deployment of the force.

France carried out a military intervention in Mali in 2013 to drive out jihadist groups, some of which were linked to Al-Qaeda, which had seized key cities in the countrys north.

July summit on Sahel force

French President Emmanuel Macron will attend a summit in Bamako in July to consider how the Sahel force will work alongside Frances own 4,000-strong military presence in the region.

"France is an important partner," said Chads Foreign Minister Hissein Brahim Taha.

Although the Islamists have been largely ousted from the north, jihadist groups continue to mount attacks on civilians and UN forces in violence that has engulfed parts of central Mali.

The measure will include a request to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to propose ways to support the Sahel force through logistical and financial means.

UN support for the Sahel force would come at a time when the 12,000-strong MINUSMA force has come under a series of attacks in what has become the UNs deadliest active mission.

Two peacekeepers from Chad were killed in an ambush in the north on May 23.

The attack, like many others in the last weeks, was claimed by a powerful jihadist alliance, the Group to Support Islam and Muslims (GSIM), a fusion of three Malian jihadist groups with previous Al-Qaeda links.

On Monday, Malis foreign minister said regional leaders had decided that the strength of the Sahel force would be doubled to 10,000.

The draft resolution will authorise the deployment of 5,000 troops.  AFP
LONDON  A man has been arrested at Heathrow airport as part of the investigation into last months deadly suicide bombing in Manchester, British police said on Wednesday.

"The 38-year-old was arrested on suspicion of offences contrary to the Terrorism Act and remains in custody.

"The arrest was planned beforehand and there was no direct threat to the airport," Greater Manchester Police said in a statement.

Police did not immediately confirm when the suspect was detained at Europes busiest airport, or whether he landed at the airport as part of an extradition procedure.

The arrest comes more than two weeks after the May 22 attack on Manchester Arena at a concert by US pop star Ariana Grande.

The bombing carried out by Salman Abedi killed 22 people, including children, and wounded more than 100 others.

A total of 19 people have been arrested in Britain as part of the terror probe, 12 of whom have been released without charge.

Abedis father and brother are also in detention in Libya, where authorities say the two brothers were both part of the Islamic State group which claimed responsibility for the deadly attack.

Grande returned to the British city on Sunday evening for a benefit concert for the victims, joined by fellow music stars including Katy Perry and Justin Bieber.

Police ask for help

Police in Manchester are still trying to piece together the bombers final movements and on Tuesday released photos of a bag within which forensics had "uncovered significant evidence".

They also published images of a white car which investigators believe Abedi took items from to build the bomb.

"Although it is positive that we are making significant progress, we still need you to help us build a picture of exactly what led to this atrocity," police said, appealing for anyone who recognised the car or bag to come forward.

The citys police force had previously published CCTV images of Abedi and a blue suitcase he used, in a bid to jog the publics memory of any sightings of the attacker.

The Manchester bombing was Britains deadliest terror attack in more than a decade.

It prompted the government to raise the countrys terror threat level to critical, meaning an attack was expected imminently, but scaled back to severe within a week.

As the probe into the Manchester bombing continued, three men carried out an attack in central London on Saturday evening killing seven people.

The assailants first drove a van into pedestrians on London Bridge, before descending into the nearby Borough Market where they stabbed revellers in the area bustling with bars and restaurants.

A total of 48 people were hospitalised following the attack, which ended when police shot dead the assailants who had been wearing fake suicide vests.

Twelve people arrested since the rampage have since been released without charge, while a 27-year-old man remains in custody.

In Ireland two men were arrested over documentation related to one of the attackers, one of whom has been released without charge.

In the aftermath of the terror attacks the spotlight has fallen on Britains security services, which admitted to previously having Abedi on their radar and at least one of the London attackers.  AFP
BRASILIA  Brazils electoral court started hearings on Tuesday that could topple scandal-tainted President Michel Temer, plunging Latin Americas biggest country into its second leadership crisis in a year.

The Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) held the first of four scheduled sessions to decide whether the 2014 reelection of president Dilma Rousseff and her then-vice president Temer should be invalidated because of corrupt campaign funding.

There was no immediate indication of which way the seven-judge panel will vote after the initial session which included a summary of the case and resolution of legal objections. However, voting was expected to begin, judge by judge, on Wednesday.

If the court votes to scrap the election result, Temer  who took over only last year when Rousseff was impeached  would himself risk losing his office.

The centre-right president, who faces a separate, potentially devastating corruption probe, says the election court will absolve him.

"Temer should not have to pay the price for the history of corruption in Brazil," Temers lawyer Gustavo Guedes said.

But Nicolao Dino, a deputy prosecutor, said there had been "a clear abuse of economic power."

Even if found guilty, Temer would be able to appeal. A judge on the TSE could also decide to adjourn the court hearings, scheduled to end Thursday, with the whole process potentially still dragging on for some time.

There was a heavy police presence at the election court in the capital Brasilia, with only a small protest by leftwing demonstrators outside.

Temer cancelled a previously announced official event to watch the court session on television from the presidential palace, with several loyal ministers and congressmen for company, according to local media.

Parallel corruption case

The TSE had previously been considered something of a sideshow in Brazils multi-level corruption scandals. At most, it was expected to put the blame for use of dirty campaign money exclusively on Rousseff.

Since the unpopular leftist leader is already out of the picture  having been impeached for breaking government accounting rules in 2016  Temer was widely expected to be allowed to finish his mandate through 2018.

But Temers standing has been dramatically weakened by the revelation last month of a secretly made audio recording in which Temer is allegedly heard approving payment of hush money from a meatpacking tycoon to a top politician jailed for corruption.

The opening of a probe into the hush money allegations led to hopes among his opponents that the TSE will seize the opportunity to bring him down  even if the election case is unrelated.

However, the lead judge in the case, Herman Benjamin, told the court Tuesday that Brazils judges "judge facts as facts and not based on political expediency."

Temers lawyer Gustavo Guedes on Sunday claimed that Prosecutor General Rodrigo Janot  who heads the corruption probe  was leaning on the TSE "to find the president guilty."

Temer came under renewed pressure from Janot late Monday when he was ordered to answer more than 80 questions in a written deposition for his corruption case. The Supreme Court granted Temers lawyers a request to extend that deadline to the end of the week.

Coalition in danger

If Temer is convicted by the electoral court, he can appeal, but hed still face the ongoing parallel corruption probe and his grip on power may become untenable.

The key partner in his centre-right alliance in Congress, the PSDB party, has indicated that it is waiting to hear the results at the election court before deciding whether to withdraw support for Temer.

Without the PSDB, Temers PMDB party would be highly unlikely to find the necessary support to enact a controversial pension reform that is at the centre of Temers policy for repairing Brazils broken economy.

That would turn him into even more of a lame duck, just as the corruption probe intensifies.

Janot could at any time request that the Supreme Court accept formal corruption and obstruction of justice charges against Temer, triggering a trial.

And Janot could bring more compromising allegations against the president through plea bargains with other suspects.  AFP
WASHINGTON  The United States and Mexico reached an agreement on Tuesday to resolve a long-standing dispute and allow duty-free sugar imports to resume from south of the border, albeit with new conditions.

US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the new deal will "address the flaws in the current system" and protect American sugar refiners, confectioners and soft drink makers from harm caused by imports of subsidised Mexican sugar.

"The new agreement prevents dumping of Mexican sugar and corrects for subsidies the Mexican sugar industry received," Ross said at a joint press conference with Mexico Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo Villarreal.

However, he said the US sugar industry does not support the new deal.

US sugar producers have protested the amount of cheap sugar pouring across the border, accusing Mexico of subsidizing its sugar industry, then dumping the excess product.

Washington had threatened to slap tariffs of up to 80 per cent on Mexican sugar unless a deal was reached.

Guajardo said the new deal, which increases the set price for raw and refined sugar, and increases the share of raw sugar exports, "protects Mexican companies and workers" and "maintains Mexicos position as the main supplier" to the US market.

Smoothing the way

The dispute comes as the two neighbors, along with Canada, are set to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and the officials indicated the negotiations on sugar over the past several weeks should help with those talks.

"We needed to get out of the way this very contentious issue that has been polluting the relationship between the two countries for quite some time," Ross told reporters.

"I think its important to get a very hard issue like that out of the way before the big negotiations start."

And both Ross and Guajardo said work on the sugar deal has strengthened their working relationship and showed they could reach a mutually-beneficial agreement.

It has "given us the opportunity to know each other better, to really get to trust and to develop a strong relationship, that definitely will be one of best assets for coming negotiations on NAFTA," Guajardo said.

Price increase

The deal will increase the import price to 23 cents a pound of raw sugar from 22.25 cents, and for refined sugar to 28 cents a pound from 26 cents.

In addition, the share of refined sugar imported will be reduced to 30 per cent from 53 per cent, increasing the amount of raw sugar imports to 70 per cent.

In addition, Mexico was granted "right of first refusal" to supply any excess US demand, as determined each year by the US Department of Agriculture.

The USDA monitors the market and US production and allocates additional quota of imports as needed. It did so this year  calling for an additional 40,000 tonnes  and in 2016, but prior to that there were three years when no additional imports were allowed.

However, the American Sugar Alliance objects to this "major loophole" in the deal, which it says give too much power to Mexico.

"Mexico could exploit this loophole to continue to dump subsidised sugar into the US market and short US refineries of raw sugar inputs," the groups spokesman Phillip Hayes said in a statement.

It also allows the Mexican government the ability to determine the purity of the sugar it exports under these conditions, Hayes said.

Ross said he hopes the sugar industry will support the deal once it is finalised in the coming days.

In contrast, the Corn Refiners Association, which represents makers of corn syrup, supports the agreement which it said "maintained vulnerable export markets."

Last year, Mexico exported 1.1 million tonnes of sugar to the United States, some 40 per cent of which was refined.

Mexican sugar has entered the US market tariff-free since 2008. In exchange, the Mexican market was opened to US corn-based fructose, used mainly to sweeten soft drinks.

After protests from US sugar companies and farmers, both governments agreed to Mexican sugar export quotas in 2014. But complaints from US sugar refiners continued, and Washington and Mexico City reopened talks last year.  AFP
PARIS  French police shot and injured a man who attacked an officer with a hammer outside Pariss Notre Dame cathedral on Tuesday, as he shouted "this is for Syria".

Police sources said the officer sustained minor neck injuries in the assault, which comes with France on high alert after jihadists killed seven people in London on Saturday.

Documents found on the attacker identified him as a 40-year-old Algerian who was a doctoral student in information science at a university in the east of France.

The suspect later claimed to be a "soldier of the caliphate" of the Islamic State group, according to a source close to the investigation.

The policemans colleague opened fire on the man, hitting him in the chest in panicked scenes around the Gothic cathedral that is one of Frances most visited tourist attractions.

The man lay bleeding on the ground as police sealed off the area and searched for possible accomplices.

About an hour after the attack he was taken to hospital and police declared the situation to be under control.

Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said the man, who was also carrying kitchen knives, had shouted "this is for Syria" as he lunged at the officer.

Anti-terrorist prosecutors were put in charge of the investigation.

A witness said he heard someone "shout very loudly".

"Then there was a crowd surge and people panicked. I heard two shots and saw a man lying on the ground in a pool of blood," he said.

On Tuesday evening a group of 15 heavily armed elite police officers searched student accommodation in the suburbs of Paris, where the suspect rented a studio, a journalist said.

A tenant of the building described him as "very quiet".

The suspects thesis director at the University of Lorraine, where he enrolled in 2014, said the doctoral student showed "no outward sign of an excessive adherence to Islam."

"When I knew him, he had a pro-Western, pro-democratic outlook," Arnaud Mercier, who said he had not heard from the suspect since November, told the French television chain BFMTV.

Notre Dame, which is situated on the banks of the Seine river in the heart of Paris, draws 13 million visitors a year.

Over 1,000 people were inside the cathedral at the time of the attack.

Authorities in Paris asked the public to stay away from the area.

Pictures on social media showed people sitting in the pews with their hands in the air  apparently at the request of police.

Andre Finot, the cathedrals head of communications, later described the situation as calm. "People are talking to each other, praying and continuing their visit," he said.

In September, Notre Dame was the scene of a scare after a car full of gas canisters was found parked nearby.

The car was tracked to an all-female terrorist cell, allegedly acting on the orders of Syria-based Islamic State jihadists.

Renewed state of emergency

Tuesdays incident comes three days after extremists used a van and knives to crush to death and kill seven people enjoying a night out in London. One of the victims was French.

France is still under the state of emergency imposed after the November 2015 attacks in Paris, when Islamic State jihadists killed 130 people in a night of carnage at venues across the city.

The last fatal attack in France dates to April 20, when a policeman was shot dead on Pariss prestigious Champs-Elysees avenue, three days before the first round of the presidential election.

Previous major attacks targeted the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine in January 2015 and in November that year, gunmen and suicide bombers attacked venues around Paris including the Bataclan concert hall, killing 130 people.

Then in July last year, a radicalised Tunisian man drove a lorry at high speed through a Bastille Day fireworks display on the Nice waterfront, massacring 86 people.

Since then there have been a series of smaller attacks, often targeting security forces.  AFP
CHARLES CITY -- Items stolen during recent burglaries at the YMCA and a local church were found Tuesday during a search warrant at two Charles City residences, police say.

Many charges in the case are pending, according to a post on the Charles City Police Department's Facebook page.

During the execution of the search warrants, Jonathon Goodman, 29, Charles City, was arrested on a Kentucky warrant for methamphetamine.

The Charles City police, along with the Floyd County Sheriff's Office, executed two search warrants shortly after 7:30 a.m. Tuesday at a residence in the 800 block of Wisconsin Street.

Another search warrant was executed in the 800 block of Richings Street.

Police say they located items taken during two burglaries reported in late May. One of the burglaries was at Trinity United Methodist Church and the other was at the Charles City YMCA.
HAMPTON -- A Waukon man was given a suspended two-year prison sentence this week for his role in stealing guns and other items from a Hampton residence in December.

Christian Carstens, 19, was put on probation for two years after pleading guilty to misdemeanor third-degree theft. He also was ordered to spend 180 days at a residential correctional facility.

Carstens and co-defendants Jason Riggan, 20, Charles City, and Nicholas Howe, 20, Waukon, were arrested in February and originally charged with felony third-degree burglary in Franklin County District Court.

They were accused of stealing guns, ammunition and a gun safe on Dec. 30 from a home in the 1600 block of Club Drive in rural Hampton.

Carstens kicked in a locked basement door and Riggan went inside to help get the items, according to court documents. Howe allegedly drove the others to the house, waited for them in the vehicle and then drove them away.

Howe received a two-year suspended prison sentence in March after pleading guilty to a reduced charge of third-degree theft. He was put on probation for two years and ordered to spend one year in a residential correctional facility.
CEDAR FALLS  The University of Northern Iowa was one of 15 higher education institutions to receive a federal grant in 2017 to address suicide prevention on campus.

The grant is for a little more than $300,000 and will be expended over a three-year period.

Were just thrilled to get it, said Shelley OConnell, executive director of UNI Health and Recreation Services. This is a really big grant, and were really looking forward to having some funds to dedicate to helping our students.

The university has worked in recent years to build its mental health services on campus, hiring new staff to work with individual students. The grant will allow the university to hire a suicide prevention specialist who will work on outreach, awareness and training across campus.

OConnell said the university has been working for at least 18 months to apply for and receive the Garrett Lee Smith Suicide Prevention grant through the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

Though the application process predated two suicides on campus in 2015 and another students death by suicide in 2016, OConnell said she believes those deaths helped motivate the faculty, staff and students involved in the grant-writing process to move expeditiously.

The notification the university would receive the grant comes on the heels of a National College Health Assessment survey that showed 8.9 percent of students at UNI seriously considered suicide in the past 12 months.

The university conducts the survey every other year. The 2017 results are slightly below the 2015 figure of 9.6 percent but above the 2013 figure of 7.1 percent.

Those figures, though, are lower than the most recent national data that shows 10.4 percent of college students nationwide considered suicide the past 12 months. The same national data shows 1.9 percent attempted suicide.

Its always something thats a part of the fabric of a university, unfortunately, OConnell said.

The university will receive its first $102,000 award sometime next month, and OConnell said she hopes to have the suicide prevention specialist on campus in time for the start of the fall semester.

The grant is called Building Capacity and Culture of Care at UNI, so the specialist will be tasked with addressing goals related to that.

OConnell expects the specialist will do training with staff and students, and work to further build a culture that stresses students matter and makes sure theyre aware of the resources available on campus. The person also will help to reduce stigmas associated with getting help.

OConnell said work will continue behind the scenes during the next three years to secure funding to ensure the specialist will be able to continue their work after the grant funding runs out.

UNI student leadership has been active on campus during the past couple of years to raise awareness about mental illness and resources available. The past two student body presidents, spurred in part by the on-campus suicides in 2015, have, respectively, spoken out to the state Legislature about mental health funding needs on campus and organized a mental health awareness week called You Matter at UNI. OConnell said the on-campus specialist will be a good complement to the students activities.
CEDAR FALLS  Iowa Board of Regents Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer Robert Donley announced his resignation Wednesday.

Donley said in a statement it has been a pleasure to serve in the position since 2008.

Higher education is a passion of mine, and being able to move the regents enterprise forward in so many ways is a point of pride, Donley said. I am thankful for the opportunity Ive had to serve the Board of Regents, the people of Iowa and the nation as chair of the State Higher Education Executive Officers association.

Donleys resignation letter was dated June 1, ahead of the boards scheduled evaluations for institutional heads, including its executive director. Because Donley had told the board about his planned resignation, he was not a part of the evaluations Tuesday, according to regents spokesman Josh Lehman.

His announcement came ahead of the boards regularly scheduled meeting on the University of Northern Iowa campus Thursday.

Donley noted he had served under multiple board presidents, and with the recent change in leadership it is the right time to move on. Board President Michael Richards succeeded Bruce Rastetter at a special May 1 board meeting.

We are thankful for the knowledge, expertise and leadership that (Donley) has provided during his time as executive director through multiple board presidents and members, Richards said in a statement. We thank him for his service, and wish him nothing but the best in future endeavors.

The board will accept Donleys resignation Thursday. Donley will attend the meeting, and he and the board are expected to have additional comments at that time.

Donleys resignation goes into effect July 15. The board will appoint an interim executive director and initiate a search for a permanent replacement. The interim director will not be a candidate.

Before his appointment, Donley served as chief of staff and operations for the board of governors and chancellor for the State University System of Florida, which includes 12 public universities.

He holds several positions on higher education boards, including the State Higher Education Executive Officers and the National Association of System Heads.
CEDAR RAPIDS -- Sen. Chuck Grassley said Wednesday he has low expectations for the testimony that fired FBI Director James Comey is expected to deliver to a Senate committee looking into the possibility President Donald Trump attempted to block an investigation of his former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Comey, who was fired by the president earlier this spring, is expected to be asked Thursday about his investigation into Hillary Clintons use of a private email server as well as allegations that Flynn had improper communications with Russia during the transition from the President Barack Obama administration to the Trump administration.

Well, obviously we are going to hear his version of what the president and he talked about in regard to Flynn, Grassley said.

I think were going to be in the same boat were in right now reading the memo he wrote after the meeting, Grassley said during his weekly conference call with Iowa reporters. Were going to end up with a she-said, he-said sort of dispute about what went on in a private conversation.

So I dont know whether were going to be any smarter when its said and done other than hearing it directly from Comey rather than reading a memo leaked by the former directors friends, Grassley said.

Theres only one way to resolve that, Grassley said, and he doesnt think thats likely.

I dont know how you get clarity unless you get the president before the same committee, Grassley said. President George Washington did once and he said hed never do that again. Another was President Gerald Ford, who testified about his pardon of Richard Nixon.

Grassley, R-Iowa, is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee but is not a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee that Comey will testify before.

Grassley seemed skeptical that Trump, like Nixon, taped conversations in the Oval Office.

Well, if they do have, they havent learned anything from Nixon, have they? Grassley said. After Nixons experience, any president would be stupid if he tried to get away with that stuff.
U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley accused the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs on Tuesday of providing misleading information about wait times at VA facilities in Iowa City and Des Moines, where he said there is a massive backlog.

Just last week, VA Secretary David Shulkin said conditions are getting better and the agency is being transparent.

Grassley, R-Iowa, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, said hundreds of Iowa veterans have been waiting for appointments for more than 90 days, even as he said the department assured his office there were none waiting that long.

Had the Committee not obtained the actual numbers independently from a whistleblower, we would not have known the truth, Grassley said in a letter last week to Shulkin.

The senator said he had been trying for months to get data on wait times at VA facilities in Iowa City and Des Moines. In an April letter to the VA, which was released Tuesday, Grassley said the information from the whistleblower showed that, in Iowa City, 537 veterans had been waiting between 91 and 180 days for a clinical appointment, and 539 had been waiting between 181 days and a year and 232 between one and two years.

The VA could not be reached immediately for comment. But a May 26 letter from Shulkin to Grassley, which the senators office also released on Tuesday, said that he thinks this was a case of misunderstanding between VA and Committee staff. Grassleys office said the contacts were between committee staff and VA staff in Washington, D.C.

Grassley dismissed the idea this was a misunderstanding, and in yet another letter to Shulkin, sent last week, he said hundreds of veterans were waiting between one and two years for an appointment.

This is completely unacceptable, Grassley said.

Wait times at VA facilities have been especially controversial since news reports three years ago highlighted problems at VA facilities, most notably in Phoenix. The controversy led to VA Secretary Eric Shinseki stepping down. Also, Congress passed legislation that widens the ability of veterans in some circumstances to get care at private facilities.

Just last week, Shulkin told Fox News that wait times were getting better around the country. He also said the VA had been transparent about wait times, so theres no hiding these problems. He said the department is focused on fixing problems where they persist.
NORTH LIBERTY North Liberty Police Chief Diane Venenga said Omaha police have located Michael Graham, a missing Coralville man, with his car at a hotel.

It is not known at this time if he was kidnapped or on his own.

Police say he will not face charges for reporting a false crime since he did not directly report it to law enforcement.

Graham was considered a missing person after his wife, Jill Graham, filed a missing persons report with North Liberty Police on Monday. Police said Graham sent text messages indicating he had been tied up and forced into the trunk of his vehicle while working at 7 Hawkeye Drive in North Liberty on Monday, according to a news release.

The North Liberty Police Department was assisted by the Coralville Police Department, Iowa Missing Persons Clearing House, Washington County Sheriffs Office, Iowa Department of Natural Resources, Iowa State Patrol and Omaha Police Department.
WAVERLY  A junior from Wartburg College read from the Quran as the first guest invocation for the Waverly City Council in several months.

Amir Matoufiazar, an international student from Iran who practices Islam, read a passage from the Quran in Arabic for the prayer portion of the meeting.

Afterward, Waverly Mayor Charles Infelt, who invited Matoufiazar to give the invocation, asked him to roughly translate what he had read. Matoufiazar explained it was about God creating the world and then resting.

God is the greatest and he is the one who created the sky and heavens and Earth, and we always say this to remind ourselves how great God is, Matoufiazar said.

The prayer was an about-face for Infelt, who previously had given a Christian invocation himself, if one was given, at council meetings.

I hope we enjoy and feel anchored by todays invocation, Infelt said.

Infelt was challenged on his council prayer process in recent weeks by Justin Scott, an activist with Eastern Iowa Atheists, who had begun attending council meetings and speaking regularly about the issue during the public comment portion.

Infelt said the new policy would be to have a prayer and Pledge of Allegiance at the first council meeting of the month, the mayor would organize people to give the invocation with respect to Waverlys diversity, and all prayer requests must be delivered or be initiated by residents of the city.

Scott, who lives in Waterloo, filmed Monday nights prayer on his phone and later stood and thanked Infelt for allowing the first guest invocation since September.

This is a very proud moment for not only me, but also Mayor Infelt and the city of Waverly, Scott said. I know that there were some challenges for both sides. I really applaud you, Mayor. I know this took a lot of soul-searching.

Scott later sent a press release taking at least some credit for changing Infelts mind.

In a perfect world, prayers and other religious ceremonies would have no part in our secular government, Scott said in the release. But since the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled them to be legal, we want to insure the most inclusive and constitutionally sound process is offered by cities that choose to include this practice so that atheists have an opportunity to take in the process and have their voices heard.
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I found this interesting and maybe you can gather some insight of Orthodox Religion thoughts/knowledge from it

[contentcards url=http://orthodoxhistory.info/]

Welcome to the History of the Orthodox People (HOP) project website!

The HOP is currently at the very first phases of its development. Please think of every page you will see here as being under construction.

At this point in time we have assembled a number of teams which will each work on the history of one of the following local Orthodox Churches: Serbian, Bulgarian, Russian, West European, African, Greek and Romanian.

We are still hoping to have more people join our project and look at the history of the many other Orthodox Churches not listed above. If you are interested in joining, please email the Editor in Chief at historyorthodox@gmail.com

Thank you.
Jun 7, 2017 | By Tess

There is no question that the shopping experience has changed drastically over the last decade or so. Remember when you had to go to the store to buy something you wanted? Now, with major online retailers like Amazon and virtually every retail company having its own website and online shop, consumers are finding it easier and easier to buy things with the click of a button.

In light of this changing shopping experience, retailers around the world have had to navigate how to stay relevant and how to increase their appeal to consumers. Apparently, 3D printing could play a key role in this effort.

According to a recent survey about shopping and technology by self-service solutions company Interactions, 95% of shoppers said they were eager to buy products that were 3D printed, and 79% said that they would even spend more money at a store that offered product customization through 3D printing.

Evidently, consumers are becoming more interested in buying personalized products and goods that can be manufactured locally, a drastic change from the current dominance of buying mass manufactured goods often made by exploited workers.

Of course, some retail brands have already caught onto this. Sportswear giant Nike, for instance, has spoken about how its shoes could one day be 3D printed in-store or even at home, while Boston-based brand Ministry of Supply recently debuted its 3D knitting technology at its flagship store, allowing people to order custom blazers on the spot.

The survey, called What Shoppers Want from Retail Technology, also found that shoppers are generally inclined to buy more from a store that sends them virtual notifications. For instance, 60% of shoppers said that they would likely spend more money at shops that sent them mobile notifications, with many respondents even saying theyd be more likely to make an unplanned purchase because of a mobile notification.

Interestingly, while many people are increasingly worried about the safety of their personal information online, 68% of shoppers interviewed believed that technological advances could lead to increased safety.

Boston-based Ministry of Supply installed a 3D knitting machine at its Boston flagship store

To touch on automation within the retail industry, 62% of the shoppers surveyed said they liked to be greeted in-store by a real person, while only 10% felt they wanted a person to help them at the checkout and 25% said they would happily rely only on technology to answer their queries in-store. What does that mean for the future of retail experiences?

"Consumers want both digital and human interfaces today, explains Bharat Rupani, president of Interactions. They desire the integration of technology into their shopping experience, but nothing can truly replace the accessibility of a traditional store associate. The key for retailers is to balance human interaction with technology to streamline and compliment the consumers overall retail journey."

The survey findings are based on information obtained in March 2017 from a representative sample (over 1,000) of men and women aged 18 to 64 across the U.S.

Posted in Statistics

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sam wrote at 6/9/2017 5:30:01 PM:95% of shoppers do not know what 3D printing is.




Daphne Merkin at Bookforum:

IN THE ANNALS OF EROTIC LITERATURE, a subject that consistently draws women writers of a certain ilksmart, literate, and tough-mindedis sexual submission. (The Germans, leave it to them, have a word for this kind of abjection: Horigkeit.) There is something about the theme of a relational power imbalance, of inequality in the bedroom, that seems to exert a fascination in quarters that one wouldnt ordinarily expect. I am thinking, of course, of Story of O, but also of Marguerite Durass The Lover, Mary Gaitskills Bad Behavior, the pseudonymously penned Nine and a Half Weeks (a spare and inexorable account that bears little resemblance to the movie based on it), Edith Templetons Gordon, and Toni Bentleys The Surrender.

One of the most memorable novels I have read in this genre came out in 1986, to no great attention or acclaim except from those of us who were instantly captivated by the authors intelligence and writing skill. It was called Nothing Natural, and it was in fact the first book by the English writer Jenny Diski, who would go on before she died in 2016 to achieve literary renown for her other books and particularly for her essays in the London Review of Books. I noticed the novel because it was published in the same year as my own first novel, Enchantment, and, I would assume, because I read a review of it somewhereperhaps in a British publication. I was instantly drawn to its tawdry and subversive doings because they spoke to my own erotic tastes at the time.

more here.
Oliver Roeder in FiveThirtyEight:

Ten years ago, Jeffrey Adams, a mathematician at the University of Maryland, made an appearance in The New York Times that prompted a series of angry emails. His correspondents all wanted to know one thing: Who the hell do you think you are?

Who Adams is is the leader of a cutting-edge mathematical research project called the Atlas of Lie Groups and Representations. Lie groups are named after Norwegian mathematician Sophus Lie (rhymes with free, not fry), who studied these crucial mathematical objects. Lie groups are used to map the inner machinery of multidimensional symmetrical objects, and theyre important because symmetry underpins far-flung mathematical concepts, from a third-grade number line to many-dimensional string theory. The Atlas project is a bona fide atlas of these objects, an exhaustive compendium of Lie group information, including tables of data about what they look like and what makes them tick. Youd think that cracking the code on these fundamental mathematical ideas would be a big deal. It is, but Adams would rather not dwell on it.

The success of the atlas project poses a tough math problem of a different kind: What should maths relationship be with the broader, non-expert public? On the one hand, mathematicians in particular and scientists in general relish publicity. It allows them to trumpet good work, lobby for funding and inspire the next generation. On the other, in an ultra-specialized field such as math, publicity can twist finely constructed theorems, proofs and calculations beyond recognition.

More here.
Daniel N. Robinson at The New Atlantis:

In attempts to account for distinctly human endeavors, explanations have a narrative quality. Thus, Janes aspiration to be a concert violinist accounts for  that is, explains  the many hours of practice expended over a course of years. Henry wishes to understand the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo. The story  the explanation  runs along these lines: Wellington, after the battle of Quatre Bras, moved his forces to Waterloo. The allied Prussians moved to positions drawing a large portion of the French forces away from Waterloo to Wavre. With Prussians attacking Napoleons right flank and Wellington attacking the center, Napoleons fate was sealed.

Try to translate these two explanations  for why Jane practices the violin, and for why Napoleon was defeated  into terms faithful to evolutionary biology or neuroscience or the concentration of potassium in the human body. Try again. Alas, the thing just doesnt work. Now adopt the empirical stance and see if you can come up with a theory of any sort that, even if not complete, would still be adequate for explaining these events. This wont do much for us either, for events of historical moment express the beliefs, skills, powers, and plans of specific persons who, if removed from the narrative, leave us with an entirely different set of events. No doubt, absent a properly functioning nervous system, Jane cant even hold the bow of a violin. Absent the evolutionary roots and branches, there are neither armies nor nations. We might agree with all of this and, at the same time, acknowledge the unique, personal, individuated character of those responsible for the events in question. There could not be War and Peace had there not been a developed language. But there could not have been War and Peace had there not been Tolstoy.

more here.
You may have seen the work of Aleksandra Zee at the Kimpton Buchanan Hotel in Japantown, the Joshua Tree House, West Coast Craft, and almost certainly on Instagram. She has tirelessly worked for the past seven years to turn her passion into a full time job; and in just the past three years her dream became a reality. Within that span of time, Zee's signature chevron wood artwork has shifted and transformed, pushing beyond the boundaries of what she (and we) had become so familiar with. When she moved her studio, and then her apartment to Oakland, things changed again.



"It all started in the basement of my old apartment in the Mission and has grown to fill a 800-square-foot warehouse in Oakland," says Zee.

Moving her workshop was just the first step, and an "adventure." Her space was in a condemned building and finding an affordable space quickly seemed impossible. She and her studio mate, Kate Gong, quickly found a space in Oakland that they later realized wasn't conducive to their needs. Luckily, their landlord had just purchased another building just a few minutes away. When she saw the exposed brick, large, exposed windows and a welcoming environment, she knew it was the one.

"When I walked into my current space, I gasped. It was the most beautiful space I had ever seen and we would be the first tenants in and could pick where we wanted to go. The price was perfect and the energy that theses walls held filled my entire being. This shop has been perfect ever since I moved in; and every single day I get goose bumps walking into work. I can't believe this is my life and I get to create here."

From there, she slowly began to gravitate to Oakland's pace of living and decided to leave her Mission home of seven years for a Lake Merritt apartment just minutes from her studio.

"The space is beautifulthe sunlight and the Moroccan vibe of the 1920s building is stunning. Being inspired by where I live is so important to me and this was for sure the place. And my commute is literally five minutes."

With the appeal of cheaper rent in Oakland has come the influx of artists that can no longer afford to live in San Francisco. It feels like a revolution even of creators inventing their own way of living, building up warehouses and art spaces to make live/ work situations and galleries. This robust creative culture is where Zee credits her newfound inspiration.

"The art community in the Bay Area is like nowhere else I have experienced. It is rooted in collaboration and exploration and sharing."

Her art has taken on a new 3-D dimension, and she has begun collaborations with artists there including Heather Day and Searoon Succulents. Beyond the physical adaptations, the move has also shifted her state of mind and allowed her to plunge fully into her craft.

"Living in Oakland has brought an element of peace to my practice," Zee says. "City life is always buzzing, always moving, and being present in that lifestyle is sometimes a challenge. The slower pace in Oakland has allowed me to really take the time to calm my mind and be deeply involved in my practice."

With the ability to live more in the moment, a facet that she continually emphasizes is crucial to her craft, she's been able to just flow and move into other areas of interest including workshops. Available for groups and one-on-ones, Zee teaches her process and shows her students how to make their own personalized works of art.

"Over the past year, I have completely fallen in love with Oakland, Zee says. "There is an incredible artist community, endless parks for my pup, food is amazing out here and some of my closest friends live out there. I have also become involved in my community and support the rich culture that is Oakland. My goal is to leave a beautiful mark on this town; not change it or take awayjust support those that have made Oakland such a fulfilling place to call home." // aleksandrazee.com
Aberdeen man recovering after crashing vehicle into house

The driver of a van was injured and taken to the hospital after driving through a field and crashing into a house.
Several incidents of violence were reported on Wednesday during a 12-hour bandh called by farmers bodies in protest against the killing of five farmers in Tuesdays police firing in Mandsaur district of Madhya Pradesh.

A senior officer was manhandled and chased on Wednesday morning by an angry crowd protesting on the highway in Mandsaur a day after five farmers were killed in clashes with the police.

A curfew was in force and mobile internet was cut off in the region after the violence during protests by farmers demanding higher prices for crop and loan waivers.

A former parliamentarian from Mandsaur, Meenakshi Natarajan of the Congress, was detained when she was on her way to meet the family members of the farmers who were killed. Top Congress leaders, including Rahul Gandhi, may meet the protesters on Thursday.

Taking on the Chief Minister, Congress leader Ajay Singh said: All the claims of the chief minister have proved false so far. Now the government is using bullets to suppress farmers voice. Chouhan should resign immediately.

A lack of irrigation facilities and years of erratic monsoon rain have led to a crisis for farmers, with many suicides reported over crop failures and debt. Madhya Pradesh is one of several states that have suffered disappointing rains and crop failures in recent years.

The Congress Party on Wednesday demanded Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhans resignation over the Mandsaur incident.

At least six persons were killed as the farmers agitation turned violent in Mandsaur district of Madhya Pradesh, prompting the authorities to clamp curfew in the trouble-hit area.

Some eyewitnesses alleged that the victims suffered bullet wounds, but Mandsaur district authorities denied that police fired on the protesters, who were on a rampage.

Congress leader Kamal Nath said the government was bidding over the farmers dead body.

I demand proper investigation into Mandsaur incident. They are bidding over the dead bodies. It is very shameful. They are talking about Rs. five lakh, 10 lakh, one crore. Shivraj Singh Chouhan must resign. At the end it is his responsibility and it would be unjustified if it is shifted on any police officer, Nath said.

However, expressing concern, the Centre warned the Congress Party not to fuel violence and instigate the farmers.
Aiken, SC (29801)

Today

Periods of rain. Potential for heavy rainfall. Low around 60F. Winds E at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall around a half an inch..

Tonight

Periods of rain. Potential for heavy rainfall. Low around 60F. Winds E at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall around a half an inch.
Governor David Y. Ige/Flickr(HONOLULU) -- Hawaii has become the first state to enact a law that aligns with the Paris agreement after its governor signed two bills into law Tuesday that "support the commitments and goals" of the accord, Gov. David Ige's office announced Tuesday.



The governor, as well as the state's county mayors and state representatives gathered in Honolulu to sign two bills and a mayor's agreement in support of the Paris agreement, according to a press release.



Ige signed Senate Bill 559, which "expands strategies and mechanisms to reduce greenhouse gas emissions statewide," the release states. Ige also signed House Bill 1578, which aims to "identify agricultural and aquacultural practices to improve soil health and promote carbon sequestration  the capture and long-term storage of atmospheric carbon dioxide to mitigate climate change."



In a statement, Ige said the state of Hawaii is "committed to environmental stewardship" and is looking "forward to working with other states to fight global climate change."



"Together, we can directly contribute to the global agenda of achieving a more resilient and sustainable island Earth," Ige said. "The Hawaii State Legislature understands the importance of taking action, and I applaud its work this session to ensure that we continue to deliver the island Earth that we want to leave to our children."



Sen. J. Kalani English, the senate majority leader who introduced SB 559, said the the state law will give lawmakers a "legal basis to continue adaption and mitigation strategies" for the state, "despite the Federal government's withdrawal from the treaty."



Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell and representatives for other mayors in the state also signed a statement declaring continuing support for the Paris agreement.



Last week, several state governors and dozens of mayors across the U.S. pledged to uphold the guidelines set forth in the Paris Accord following President Donald Trump's announcement that he was removing the U.S. from the agreement.

Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
June 7, 2017

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan broke his silence over the crisis engulfing his countrys closest Arab ally Qatar today, condemning the actions of the group of Gulf countries that cut off ties with the emirate over its alleged support for extremist groups and Iran. In a related move, Erdogans ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has decided to fast-track bills to deploy Turkish forces in Qatar and train Qatari troops in its legislative agenda. Turkey is building a base in Qatar that will eventually host up to 10,000 troops under an accord in which Turkey pledged to defend the Gulf state.

Erdogan was, however, uncharacteristically mild in his rebukes. Id like to say that we dont find sanctions against Qatar right, he said at a gathering in Ankara. He added, The most appropriate way for the Gulf Cooperation Council countries to solve their internal problems is through dialogue. In this respect, we admire Qatars constructive and level-headed approach.

Erdogan also renewed an earlier offer by Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu to mediate between Qatar and the group of countries led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that are squeezing its independent-minded leader, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. We are ready to do everything to resolve other countries problems with Qatar," he said.

His comments came before a surprise meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in Ankara. Iran's envoy is believed to have requested the meeting to discuss the dispute. Speaking to reporters in Ankara amid news of todays terrorist attack in Tehran, for which responsibility has been claimed by the Islamic State, Zarif underlined the need for greater cooperation between Turkey and Iran.

The head-spinning developments in the region have made for interesting realignments. Until recently, Erdogan was lambasting Iran over its alleged Persian nationalist and Shiite sectarian policies in Iraq and Syria, where Turkey and Iran are backing rival blocs.

But US President Donald Trumps courtship of Saudi Arabia followed by his recent tweets suggesting that he backs the actions against Qatar have set off alarm bells in Ankara.

Erdogan had invested high hopes in Trump, but his meeting with the American president last month yielded little. Overriding Turkish howls of protest, the United States is arming the Syrian Kurds and is unlikely to extradite Fethullah Gulen, the Turkish preacher whose disciples in the armed forces are accused of taking part in the failed July coup in large numbers. Nor will it hand over Reza Zarrab, the Iranian-Turkish gold trader with close ties to key members of Erdogans AKP who is accused of busting US trade sanctions on Iran. On June 6, the US House of Representative unanimously approved a resolution calling for members of Erdogans security detail who were involved in the violent suppression of pro-Kurdish protesters outside the Turkish ambassadors residence last month to be brought to justice.

Erdogan and his inner circle apparently believe that there is a broader US-orchestrated conspiracy to squeeze him together with Qatar and Iran. The conspiratorial mindset was palpable in Erdogans comments at an iftar gathering of foreign ambassadors in Ankara: There is a game being staged behind the Qatar crisis, but we have failed to decipher it thus far.

Tellingly, Erdogan also mentioned Andrei Karlov, the Russian ambassador to Ankara who was assassinated by a rogue Turkish police officer in December. He was a regular at our table. We remember a good man and a real friend of our country.

Turkey has made a big show of drawing closer to Russia in recent months, partly in reaction to continued US support for the Syrian Kurdish group known as the Peoples Protection Units, which is closely tied to a militia that is waging a bloody campaign for Kurdish self-rule in Turkey.

Russia is clearly delighted by the growing rift between Turkey and its NATO allies. Germany announced today that it is withdrawing its troops from the Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey after the Turkish government denied a request from German lawmakers to visit German troops deployed at the base as part of the US-led anti-IS coalition.

Relations between the two countries have soured in recent months, in particular over Germanys refusal to extradite Turkish officers who allegedly took part in the failed putsch and a declaration by the German parliament that labeled the mass extermination in 1915 of more than a million ethnic Armenians by Ottoman forces a genocide.

All Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim had to say about the German withdrawal was, They can do whatever they like.
June 7, 2017

Iranians experienced almost six hours of terror on June 7, as terrorists attacked two important sites in the capital of Tehran, which has not seen major bombings since the post-revolutionary violence of the 1980s.

At 10:15 a.m. local time, four terrorists disguised as women tried to enter the parliament building through the special gate for citizens who seek to meet with members of parliament. However, at the gate, the attackers started shooting at the security officers. Meanwhile, one of the parliamentarians who had just arrived at the meeting joined the clash and started shooting at the terrorists.

With the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and anti-riot forces on site, the terrorists were still able to enter the offices of the members of parliament.

Mahmoud Sadeghi, a Reformist parliamentarian, said, When we were in the parliament, we couldnt hear anything [about what was happening]. We became aware of the story through text messages and cyberspace. 

He added, Inside the parliament, everything was as usual and the session was managed by [Deputy Speaker Masoud] Pezeshkian.

After the terrorists entered the offices of the members of parliament, they took a few people hostage and also started shooting at pedestrians from the windows. In the first minutes, it was reported that the wife and daughter of a parliamentarian had been taken hostage, but this was later denied. However, the terrorists took over the office of the parliamentarian of the town of Shahin Shahr, Hossein Ali Haji Deligani.

Deligani said that his secretary was killed, noting, The video that Daesh [Islamic State (IS)] released from the parliament building shows my offices, and [today] two of my colleagues were martyred.

According to the official IRNA news agency, the terrorists were killed by the security officials. However, other reports indicate that two of them at the parliament building were killed by their own explosive vests.

Minutes after the announcement of the end of the operation at the parliament, the spokesperson for the parliamentary National Security and Foreign Policy Commission stated that one of the terrorists had been captured.

The second attack

At 10:40 a.m., just 25 minutes after the first attack at the parliament, two terrorists who were wearing explosive vests tried to go inside the monument of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic. According to the manager of the monument, once the attackers entered the building, they started shooting blindly, killing one person and injuring three others.

The security officers confronted the attackers, and within minutes one of them blew himself up. In the meantime, the other attacker tried to flee but was killed by the security officers. His suicide vest was defused.

The Ministry of Intelligence announced that a third attack had been planned and these attackers had been captured before beginning their operation.

According to Ministry of Health officials, at least 12 people were killed and 42 others injured. It is unknown if more than one security officer is among the 12 fatalities.

The IS video

In the IS video, which was released during the terrorist attacks, one man, who is believed to be Deligani's secretary, can be seen lying on the ground. A terrorist is seen in the video, and the calls of the other attacker can be heard: Do you think we are leaving? We will stay by Gods permission.

Moreover, Entekhab quoted an Arabic-language expert as saying that the terrorists in the video have the accents of people from Morocco, Tunisia or Libya.

Meanwhile, Abdollah Shahbazi, a well-known historian and researcher, published a short text saying that the terrorists werent related to IS. He wrote on his Telegram page, I think that Daesh [IS], MEK [Mujahedeen-e-Khalq] and the likes are [only] for branding. We should differentiate between which group claimed responsibility [for the attacks] and which group [really] committed [the attacks].

He added, If the origin of the video is the Twitter account of the SITE Intelligence Group, [then] it is not valid. Shahbazi explained that Israeli terrorism analyst Rita Katz is the director and co-founder of SITE.

The reactions

Iranians were shocked by the attacks and for a few hours the situation took them back to the first decade after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, when the MEK terrorist group slayed many citizens and officials, including 72 high-ranking figures of the revolution, as well as elected President Mohammed Ali Rajai and Prime Minister Mohammad Javad Bahonar in 1981.

Ordinary people in Iran have taken to social media including Instagram and Twitter to express their rejection of terrorism and call for unity. In addition, various Iranian artists and athletes have posted images that read Pray for Tehran, or they are calling for unity and courage in the face of the terrorist attacks.

Meanwhile, some are attributing the events to Riyadh, as Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir had vowed to punish Iran minutes before the attack.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who is on an official trip to Turkey, said upon his arrival June 7, We condemn this blind action.  Terrorism is a problem that we are facing across the Middle East region and the world.  The situation is very bad in terms of security and terrorism.

Former IRGC Cmdr. Mohsen Rezaei wrote on his Instagram page after the attacks, With their actions today, the terrorists will be punished severely wherever they are.

Moreover, in reaction to criticism of some conservatives on social media who are slamming moderate President Hassan Rouhani for saying he had distanced the shadow of war from Iran through the nuclear deal, Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, a prominent Reformist, wrote on his Telegram page June 7, Today is the day of unity against a foreign enemy, do not increase the [internal] disagreements.

Hamid Aboutalebi, the deputy chief of staff of the presidential office for political affairs, tweeted after the attacks, "If the terrorist attacks had happened in Europe or any other place, the number of casualties would have been higher. Kudos to the power and strength of the IRGC, Basij, police and security forces of Iran."

He added, "The world should show that terrorism is condemned and not differentiate between Tehran, Paris, London, and the East or West. We should fight it seriously, more coherently and as one."

In a statement after the attacks, the IRGC said, "The world public opinion, especially that of the Iranian nation, views this terrorist attack that comes one week after a joint meeting between the president of the United States and the heads of a reactionary regional government  that has continuously supported extremists  as very meaningful and believes the claiming of responsibility for the attack by IS further indicates their hand in this brute attack.

"The IRGC has proved that it will not let any blood be lost without revenge, and just as it killed all the terrorists today with the help of the security forces, it guarantees to not hesitate in safeguarding the countrys national security and protecting the lives of its dear people."
June 6, 2017

The decision by US President Donald Trump to sign the June 1 waiver suspending the move of the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem was rather expected. Nonetheless, when the signer is one of the most unpredictable politicians in the world, the Israeli and Palestinian peace camps should be sighing in relief at his decision. Concerned American citizens can also find some solace in the responsible move by their president on this score. This may be an indication that he is starting to understand that in the Oval Office you view things differently, as Republican President Gerald Ford said in 1974 when asked why he was not fulfilling his campaign pledge to move the embassy to Jerusalem.

Ford explained at the time that such a move could undermine efforts to achieve a just and sustainable peace between Israel and its neighbors. A decade later, Ford also signed a 1984 letter urging Congress to reject proposed legislation by New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan that would have required the transfer of the embassy to Jerusalem. Former President Jimmy Carter and former President Richard Nixon also wrote similar letters; former Secretaries of State Dean Rusk, Cyrus Vance and Edmund Muskie also wrote a joint statement saying such a move would jeopardize US interests in the Middle East. The former top officials' messages generally noted that moving the embassy would damage US ties with the Arab world and harm Israels vital interests.

All the efforts made since then by the pro-Israel American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobby in Washington and the Israeli political right to alter the status quo in the city have come to naught despite congressional passage of a law in 1995 seeking to move the embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. Trump is the fourth president to sign the waiver suspending implementation of the law. The waiver must be signed every six months to prevent triggering the embassy's move; the 1995 law had been opposed by then-President Bill Clinton and then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu probably understands better than all the American presidents and secretaries of state what is good for Israel, and even for the United States. Whats more, Netanyahu and his friends on the Israeli right can also teach the leaders of the world what is best for the relationship between Israel and its Arab neighbors.

For example, shortly after Trump signed the executive waiver, Netanyahu announced that maintaining embassies outside the capital drives peace further away. Education Minister Naftali Bennett knows that delaying the move of the embassy actually hurts the prospects of a true peace. How does the order that forces new US Ambassador David Friedman to make do with the view of the Mediterranean from his Tel Aviv office window harm peace? Here is Netanyahus explanation: It contributes to keeping alive the Palestinian illusion that the Jewish people and their state do not have an affinity for Jerusalem. Bennett, the leader of the West Bank settlers party, HaBayit HaYehudi, is also concerned about the damage inflicted by the presidential waiver on the peace for which he yearns day and night. According to Bennett, only full recognition of a unified Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty will once and for all end the Palestinian illusion about a division of Jerusalem and pave the way to true peace with our neighbors.

Let's assume that Trump would have been won over by the argument that moving the embassy is the most effective remedy for the ongoing diplomatic paralysis. Would Netanyahu then agree to conduct negotiations with the Palestinians over the sovereignty in East Jerusalem, as mandated by United Nations resolutions and the positions adopted by all the member states? And what kind of true peace would Bennett discuss with the Arabs, given that his party does not recognize the right of the Palestinian people to an independent state? Would he suggest that they make do with his plan to annex 60% of the West Bank to Israel, the territory known as Area C, currently under full Israeli control?

Netanyahu and Bennett know full well that a true peace without dividing Jerusalem and giving the Palestinians the eastern part of the city would be a false peace. They certainly understand that moving the embassy to Jerusalem would damage the fragile standing of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and play into the hands of those opposed to recognition of Israel and to the Arab Peace Initiative. A reliable American source told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity over the weekend that Netanyahu had made it clear to Trump that he would understand the presidents decision to sign the waiver. But Netanyahu did not promise to give up the opportunity to portray himself to the Israeli public as a victim, at the expense of the American president whom Netanyahu had praised so lavishly during Trump's visit to Israel on May 22-23. Tourism Minister Yariv Levin, one of Netanyahus closest associates, went even further in an effort to get a smidgen of a headline, when he dared read Trump the riot act. This is not the way to make America great again, the minister rebuked the president of the United States.

Trumps conduct on a variety of issues  from his moves against Muslim immigrants through the withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement  have not contributed much to making America great. But when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Trump has displayed responsibility and sound judgment. Opposition Chairman Isaac Herzog phrased it well when he said, in response to the signature of the embassy move waiver, that the president had realized that in order to obtain international recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, a courageous diplomatic arrangement must be achieved. It is highly doubtful that Herzog will get his wish and after 50 years of occupation Netanyahu, too, will arrive at this understanding.

On the other hand, the reaction of Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat shows that the embassy issue will be around in the coming months, if not the coming years. Barkat promised to keep trying to make it [the embassy move] happen as soon as possible. And, indeed, in six months the president will once again have to re-examine his policy on moving the embassy to Jerusalem. Blowing this symbolic issue out of proportion and making it a litmus test of US-Israel relations has turned it into a very valuable commodity in Trumps tool box. He can promise Netanyahu that if he is convinced that Israel is displaying a true desire to move toward an agreement with the Palestinians, Friedman will call the movers to the embassy building in Tel Aviv. After all, Netanyahu said that any delay in moving the embassy to Jerusalem would undermine his precious peace, so that to a certain extent, the ball is in his court.
June 7, 2017

While Israeli security figures look for the trigger of the Sunni axis' surprise charge against Qatar, they ignore the recent reports of how Russian hackers supposedly planted fake news items on a Qatari news agency's website. Instead, they focus on the border region where three states  Syria, Iraq and Jordan  meet.

"Take note," a senior Israeli security official told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. "Just this week, the United States attacked a convoy of Syrian forces in that sensitive region. It happened at the exact same time as events were unfolding in the Persian Gulf, when the Sunni states broke diplomatic relations with Qatar. This was the second American attack in that same region in the past two weeks. It is a much more dramatic move than it seems from the outside, yet it is passing beneath the radar. It represents a full-force change in US policy in the Middle East."

The source added that the Americans went "over the heads" of the Russians and made it clear that they have no intention of allowing the Shiite axis to dominate the vital border region between the three countries. It seems as though the United States intends to block the establishment of Shiite territorial continuity from the Gulf to the Mediterranean, even if it requires force. Jordan's stability, Israeli interests and most of all Saudi fears of Iran have become the foundations of US foreign policy.

Israeli intelligence has yet to fully decipher what took place behind the scenes. Who planned, who coordinated and who led this complex attack against Qatar that surprised the Middle East and the entire world? How did they carry it out? The current assessment is that the event at which US President Donald Trump appeared before the leaders of the Arab states in Riyadh on May 20 was the watershed. As a senior Israeli official with access to Security Cabinet discussions told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, "The sword dance that we witnessed there was no accident. Trump actually launched the formation of this large, pragmatic Sunni alliance, threw all his weight against Iran and made it clear to the Saudis and their allies that the Obama era is over. You can come out of your bunker. You can stick your head out. Now it's time to restore order in your own backyard."

After President Barack Obama cooperated with Iran and made the Shiites of the Middle East seemingly less of an obstacle for the West, Trump is going in a new direction. A senior Israeli minister told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, "In effect, he adopted the Netanyahu approach, which considers Iran to be the head of the serpent and the source of regional terrorism."

Once the Saudis, Egypt, Jordan and other countries concluded that this was the case, according to the Israeli sources, they gained the necessary confidence and decided to act. "There is a long blood feud between Qatar and the other Sunni states," another senior Israeli security source told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. "We mustn't forget that the Egyptians consider Al Jazeera to be one of the direct sources of the revolution that overthrew [Egyptian President Hosni] Mubarak and brought the Muslim Brotherhood to power. The romance between Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood was getting on everyone's nerves. It was starting to pose a real risk to the various regimes. They simply decided to put an end to it."

In Jerusalem, it is almost inconceivable to hear the Saudis demand publicly that the Qataris cease their cooperation and aid to Hamas. "It is as though the Israeli-Saudi alliance is suddenly breaking out of its dark confines and being showcased internationally," another Israeli minister told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. "But when the actual statement is analyzed, it quickly becomes obvious that this is not about Israeli interests. It is the continuation of that same old war between Sunnis and Shiites."

The common explanation in Israel is that Hamas is in the wrong camp, as far as Egypt and Saudi Arabia are concerned. The camp of the Muslim Brotherhood includes Turkey and many Sunni terrorist groups.

For the past few years, Qatar has been playing both sides. On the one hand, it sat down with its sister states in the Gulf, coordinated positions and maintained extensive relations with them, including intelligence cooperation. At the same time, it continued to fund the Muslim Brotherhood around the world, keep Hamas above water in Gaza, support incitement and foment passions throughout the Middle East through Al Jazeera and "dance at all the weddings." No more. The Saudis and Egyptians grew fed up with the situation and declared diplomatic war. According to intelligence sources in the Middle East, Qatar will be faced with a simple choice: Choose your partner, our enemies or us. This dancing at all the weddings is over.

This is a positive and encouraging development from an Israeli perspective. In a June 6 response to queries in the Knesset, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman said, "The Arab states who broke off diplomatic relations with Qatar didn't do so because of Israel, nor did they do so because of the Palestinian issue. They did it because of their own concerns about radical Islamic terror. There can be no doubt that this opens many opportunities for cooperation in the war against terror. We saw the US president visit Saudi Arabia and speak, first and foremost, about a coalition against terrorism. The State of Israel is more than open to such cooperation. The ball is now in their court."

Israel is feeling hopeful. After he was ousted from Turkey, senior Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri found sanctuary in Qatar. Expelled from Israel seven years ago, he has planned and coordinated terrorist activities in the West Bank from exile. Arouri has now been reportedly kicked out of Qatar, too. This is a dream scenario, as far as Israel is concerned, of a Middle East in which terrorists who try to attack it will have a hard time finding sanctuary or another base from which to launch further attacks.

With the lines delineating the Middle East becoming sharper, the camps are taking shape and it's up to the key players to decide whose side they're on. Israel is one of the major beneficiaries of this new situation. Its intelligence, technological and military capacities should adequately reward its covert partners in the region. The regional alliance is alive and well, even if it is still kept in the shadows.
June 7, 2017

AMMAN, Jordan  The Jordanian security forces raid on a restaurant on June 2 in the town of Naour has sparked debate over whether Jordan is an Islamic state or a civil state based on the rule of law. The restaurant, Buzz, was raided for serving food to students from the German Jordanian University during the holy month of Ramadan.

Acting on the orders of Jamal al-Fayez, an administrative governor, the security forces arrested the owners of the establishment, located 12 miles south Amman, and kicked the students out, raising the issue of the freedom to eat in public during Ramadan.

Activists came to the restaurant's defense with the hashtag #Ghazwat_Naour (Invasion of Naour). It was not the first time that Jordanians have rallied behind the right to eat. In 2014, activists launched a Facebook campaign under the banner Just like you are entitled to fast, respect my right to live a normal life, and media figures took to Facebook that same year to start the Secular Movement in Jordan, to demand the non-criminalization of people who eat in public in Ramadan.

Some Twitter users accused the security forces of acting like the Islamic State, which punishes people in areas it controls if they are discovered eating in public during Ramadan. Liberal writer Basel Rafayeh sarcastically wrote on his Facebook page, The Naour invasion will make the headlines in IS' Dabiq magazine. I offer my congratulations to the Jordanian government on this victorious and blessed invasion during the month of Ramadan. Its reward shall be multiplied.

Article 274 of the Jordanian Penal Code stipulates that persons who publicly violate fasting during Ramadan shall be punished by imprisonment of up to a month or a fine of up to 25 dinars (around $35). The Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, however, allows licensed tourist facilities to serve food and drinks during the month under certain conditions, chief among them after installing window curtains.

Lawyer Lyn al-Khayyat told Al-Monitor, The law criminalizes the violation of Ramadans sanctity in general, not merely eating in public, given that eating in public can raise sensitivities in society in light of Article 274.

The restrictions imposed on people who eat in public during Ramadan came after Amman Gov. Saad Shehab had threatened in a May 25 statement to the Hala Akhbar website to take administrative and legal measures and arrest anyone violating the sanctity of Ramadan. Shehab shut down four tourist establishments during the first 10 days of Ramadan, which this year began on May 26, for failure to comply with food-serving conditions. In a June 4 statement to the Ammon website, he said that the Naour restaurant had been closed because it did not have curtains and passers-by could see people eating inside.

Several similar cases have been reported in Jordan. Rafayeh said that on June 5, two Christian girls eating on a tourist bus traveling between Amman and Aqaba were reprimanded by a Muslim girl, who called the police and complained to the driver, who stopped at the next traffic point where there were police and forced the girls off the bus.

The state is using religion to impose its authority on certain segments of the people, one of the Hala Akhbar page administrators told Al-Monitor, speaking on the condition of anonymity. The criminalization of people who eat in public during Ramadan is contrary to the most basic human rights that Jordan has ratified in international agreements as well as to the principle of citizenship. The state shall neither protect nor serve one segment at the expense of another.

Article 2 of the Jordanian constitution stipulates, Islam is the religion of the state. For Muslims, fasting is the fourth pillar of Islam and therefore mandatory.

Hayel al-Daoud, the former minister of Awqaf, told Al-Monitor, Calls to allow eating in public during Ramadan are improper, as they violate the states constitution, which stipulates that Islam is the religion of the state. We do not force citizens to fast, but to each society its traditions and laws, and everyone has to respect societys customs.

Despite Article 2's stipulation, Jordanian civil and criminal laws are not based on Sharia, except those relating to inheritance and personal status, such as marriage and divorce. In addition, on Oct. 16, 2016, King Abdullah issued his sixth discussion paper, in which he presented a road map for Jordan to fulfill the requirements of being a civil state, in which, the Jordan Times reported, social justice, equality and the rule of law prevail, and religion is a key contributor to the value system and social norms, while pluralism is protected.

Mohammed Shamma, a journalist who focuses on human rights affairs at Journalists for Human Rights, told Al-Monitor, Criminalizing people who eat in public is a form of restricting freedom. It violates the conventions signed and approved by Jordan. Chief among these is the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, whose ninth article stipulates that everyone has the right to liberty and security of person and no one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest or detention.

Shamma also said that such criminalization violates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in which Article 12 stipulates that no one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence.' He asserted, [Fasting is] a personal matter, not a public one. Consequently, the state should not invade citizens privacy. Everyone should have the freedom to practice their own beliefs and ideas.

Shammas view of the problem in Jordan contrasts sharply with Daoud's. Those who fast are imposing their will on the others, and the state is forcing everyone to abide by the [Muslims'] religion, said Shamma.

Rafayeh, who writes for the Takwin section of the Amman Net website where liberal authors tackle religious and social issues, said, The states utmost duty is to protect its citizens human rights regardless of any religious classification, be they Muslims or Christians, fasting or not. However, the state is conspiring with the public religious opinion against the rights of some of its citizens.

He further asserted, The state is using the pretext that Islam is the [state] religion in Jordan under the constitution, and this somehow justifies the pressure the political Islam currents put on the regime and the society. Jordan is a country that is not based on Sharia. Commercial banks and liquor stores operate normally in the country, and gender mixing is not forbidden, but people who eat in public during Ramadan can spend up to a month in prison. This is sheer political and religious hypocrisy.

Jordanians were divided on social networking websites between supporters and opponents of the police raid on the restaurant, which sparked a debate over the identity of the Jordanian state and whether it is an Islamic or a civil state whose basis is the rule of law."
June 6, 2017

WASHINGTON  Diplomats expressed hope June 6 that mediation efforts could ease the standoff between US Gulf allies, despite a series of incendiary tweets from US President Donald Trump.

But it was not clear whether Kuwaiti mediation efforts on June 6 had managed to cool off the day-old rift between Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and their Arab allies on one side and tiny Qatar, diplomats said.

US officials also sought to bring together the erstwhile allies in the fight against the Islamic State (IS), even as their commander in chief appeared to side with the Saudis and Emiratis in their feud with Doha.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, speaking to reporters in New Zealand on June 6, urged dialogue to resolve the crisis. We are hopeful that the parties can resolve this through dialogue, and we encourage that, that they do sit together and find a way to resolve whatever the differences are that have led to this decision, Tillerson said.

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt on June 5 announced a virtual blockade of Qatar, which hosts the largest US air base in the region. Some 8,000 US military personnel help conduct operations in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan out of Central Commands al-Udeid base.

The Saudi-aligned nations accuse Qatar, the home of Al Jazeera television, of supporting Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood; these groups are accused of destabilizing Muslim countries and promoting terrorism. The Saudis are also furious at Qatar for promoting a less-confrontational stance regarding Iran.

The Pentagon insisted the rupture between the Sunni allies would not affect ongoing military operations, even as US-backed forces announced the beginning of a military operation to take back the IS stronghold of Raqqa.

We recognize that there are differing views in the region that have gotten us to this point, Defense Department spokesman Maj. Adrian J.T. Rankine-Galloway told Al-Monitor on June 6. We encourage all our partners in the region to reduce tensions and work towards common solutions that enable regional security.

Rankine-Galloway said, US military aircraft continue to conduct missions in support of ongoing operations in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. The United States and the coalition are grateful to the Qataris for their long-standing support of our presence and their enduring commitment to regional security. We have no plans to change our posture in Qatar.

Tillerson said he had been dealing with the Qatari leadership for 15 years and knew it well. Regarding the current breach between the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members, Tillerson said there had been long-standing differences of views and frustration had been building. But he also seemed to suggest that the countries accusing Qatar of backing extremism do not have perfect records on that front either.

I think every country in the region has their own obligations they need to live up to, and they have their own challenges to live up to that commitment to terminate support for terrorism, extremism  however it manifests itself anywhere in the world, Tillerson said. And I would say thats true of all the GCC countries; they have their own work to do in that regard.

Kuwait's Emir Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah traveled to Saudi Arabia on June 6 to meet with Saudi King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud to try to mediate the dispute, after speaking by phone overnight with Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.

The Qatari leader, in order to allow Kuwait to mediate, decided to put off a planned speech to the nation, Reuters reported, citing an interview by Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani with Al Jazeera TV.

But the Kuwaiti emir returned to Kuwait on the night of June 6 after three hours of meetings in Saudi Arabia without going to Qatar, in what some analysts saw as a sign there had not been a breakthrough.

Trump, tweeting June 6, suggested he saw the rift between GCC partners as a sign of progress in his efforts to get the Muslim world to eradicate extremism. During my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology, Trump tweeted. Leaders pointed to Qatar  look!

So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off. They said they would take a hard line on funding  extremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar, he wrote. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism!

Current and former US diplomats were left shaking their heads at the tweets, which contradict the administrations message urging dialogue to resolve the dispute.

Hard to tell if we will see different messaging after the run of recent tweets from POTUS, which to me sound clearly supportive of pressure on Qatar to change policies/posture on Iran and Islamists, former US Ambassador to the UAE Marcelle Wahba told Al-Monitor.

You could certainly interpret it as encouragement, but it looks to me like this is mostly ex post facto self-congratulation, former US Ambassador to Yemen Gerald Feierstein, now with the Middle East Institute, told Al-Monitor. The rooster crowed, the sun rose, thus the rooster made the sun rise! He should talk to his secretary of state, who took a much more nuanced position.

Diplomats had earlier suggested the crisis was ripe for quiet US mediation.

If John Kerry were still secretary of state, hed be working the phone like crazy, former US Ambassador to Yemen Stephen Seche, now with the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, said. We dont know if Rex Tillerson has the same modus operandi. [But this rupture is an] opportunity to invite ourselves in to preserve the coalition that the president announced when he was in Riyadh.

Wahba, who is now president of the Arab Gulf States Institute, said, Given the close [US] relationship both with the UAE and Saudi Arabia, I think the US will step up to the plate to help resolve the dispute. She added, I doubt very much the US will just sit on the sidelines and let this crisis get more serious.

The current US ambassador to Qatar, Dana Shell Smith, has also taken to Twitter to defend improvements in Qatars efforts to reduce funding of extremist groups. On June 4, she retweeted several older tweets that thanked Qatar for the great partnership, real progress to counter terrorist financing.

State Department sources, speaking not for attribution, said Shell Smith was expected to wrap up her tour in two weeks. She could not immediately be reached for comment.

Officials said the overall slowness with which the Trump administration is nominating people for positions is not really affecting the United States ability to engage in diplomatic conversations to contend with the current crisis.

Were very clear in the fact that it is in our interests that the GCC work this out and they figure out a way to combine this commitment to get rid of terrorism without further fragmenting, said one US official, speaking on condition of anonymity. We dont need to be fracturing along ideological lines.

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said at the department press briefing June 6 that the United States was only informed of the rupture just before it was publicly announced.

We were informed of that decision, but only immediately prior to that decision being made, Nauert said. My understanding is we learned from the UAE, just prior.

We recognize Qatar has made some great efforts to stop the funding of terror groups, Nauert said. They have made progress, but they still have work to do.
June 6, 2017

The Tunisian government has launched what it says is an unprecedented campaign against corruption, arresting eight businessmen May 23 and confiscating their property.

In one case, however, the government went well beyond allegations of corruption: One of the men, Chafik Jarraya, was referred to the military judiciary May 26 for alleged treason, breaching state security and being at the disposal of a foreign army  a crime punishable by execution. Jarrayas lawyer, Faisal al-Jadalawi, said in a press statement June 1 that the accusations against his client have no legal grounds and can be classified as political score-settling.

The other accused men are Munji Bin Rabah, Kamal Bin Ghulam Faraj, Yassine Chennoufi, Nejib Bin Ismail, Ali al-Qaryawi, Munzir Juneih and Hilal Bin Massoud.

Some members of the public and several political parties and civil society organizations declared their alignment with the government. However, some Tunisians worry that the government engineered the campaign merely to garner public support following protests last month in Tataouine during which a young man was run over and killed by a police car. Also, citizens have been protesting a proposed law that would grant amnesty to those accused of corruption under the administration of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who was overthrown in 2011.

Abdul Latif Haddad, a political activist and member of the Tunisian General Labor Union, believes the timing of the anti-corruption campaign caught people off guard. He told Al-Monitor, The government is smartly capitalizing on [its powers under] the state of emergency in the country," which was imposed 1 years ago in the wake of a suicide attack that killed 12 presidential security officers in the capital, Tunis. On May 16, the Tunisian presidency extended the state of emergency for another month.

Optimism about the anti-corruption campaign waned somewhat, Haddad said, when the security-related charges were filed against Jarraya. The security issue overshadowed the corruption angle and spawned "fears that the campaign might become a selective, superficial process or a settlement of [political grudges], leaving the corruption ghost and its toxic cells safe and sound."

The government and judiciary did not make any official statements about the accusations against the arrested men, except for a brief statement May 24 by Prime Minister Youssef Chahed, who said unchecked corruption would doom the country. There's no choice. It's either corruption or the state. Either corruption or Tunisia. I have chosen the state and Tunisia, Chahed said.

Security authorities continued their arrests and on May 30 seized Saber Ajili, the director of the touristic security department at the Ministry of Interior and former director general of the counterterrorism unit. Authorities said Ajili is linked to Jarrayas case, but they gave no details about the nature of the men's relationship.

Abderraouf al-Ayadi, the head of the Tunisian Wafa Party, said in a June 1 press statement that he doubts the seriousness of Chaheds government in fighting corruption, saying the arrests are "part of the ruling party Nidaa Tunis plan to settle accounts.

The party is suffering serious internal conflict, and some parliament members allege the arrests  particularly of Jarraya  are designed to exacerbate the rift and damage the reputations of parliamentarians with ties to him.

Haddad believes the plethora of potential explanations for the governments campaign comes from a lack of official and reliable information. He said there is unmistakable inconsistency between the campaigns slogan  the war on terrorism  and its actual work, which was marked by two waves."

"The first wave created a buzz due to the arrest of smuggling lords and heads of some corruption lobby groups; the arrested businessmen [supposedly] have a record of smuggling and engaging in illegal economic activities," he said. The second wave pointed fingers at some figures for breaching state security and spying for a foreign army. This is a dangerous deviation from the corruption case, which now becomes a matter of military and security intelligence."

Independent political analyst Abdul Sattar al-Ayidi told Al-Monitor, The government campaign against some businessmen accused of corruption reveals a conflict within the ruling party. Many of those arrested are known in local political circles to be close to a faction within Nidaa Tunis, especially Jarraya."

He added, Although Chahed is a member of Nidaa Tunis, he decided to settle the disputes by arresting the said figures, reportedly with the support of the president. Thus, [Chahed] achieved more than one goal: On the one hand, he garnered more public and political support for his government, which is facing several economic and political challenges made worse by protests in poor central provinces. On the other hand, he fulfilled a promise he had made when appointed as prime minister in August to fight terrorism." As a bonus, "he was able to weaken the other faction in Nidaa Tunis.

Regardless of the governments true intentions behind its campaign against these suspects, it is ostensibly meeting a longstanding public demand to fight rampant corruption in the country.

The campaign comes as the government desperately needs to be saved from the protests that broke out demanding more job opportunities in the oil fields in Tataouine. The government lost political and public support only a year after its inauguration due to the social and economic situation in the country. This anti-corruption campaign will give the government an extra push to carry on, and it has apparently increased Chaheds popularity and might put him on top of the list of candidates in the 2019 presidential elections. Still, the campaign has vague objectives and intentions amid governmental secrecy.
June 6, 2017

Relations between Ankara and Berlin hit a new low today as Germany's Cabinet approved moving its troops from Turkey's highly valued and strategic Incirlik Air Base to Jordan. The move, which still needs parliamentary approval, could affect the battle against the Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq.

The widening rift between Turkey and Germany also is likely to have a strong impact on the entire NATO alliance, which perhaps hasn't witnessed such a dramatic row among its members since France withdrew from the alliance's military command in 1966.

The most recent provocation in the long-running feud came when Turkey refused to allow German parliamentarians to visit troops stationed at Incirlik. German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel visited Ankara on June 5 but was unable to resolve the dispute. Even before Gabriel's visit, he had said, We have already reached the limits of what is acceptable.

Also just before Gabriel's trip, German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen said, "It is unacceptable that our deputies cannot visit the troops." She added that troops at Incirlik would be moved to the air base in Azraq, Jordan, indicating Germany already had considered alternatives in case Gabriels efforts proved unsuccessful. We are ready for a transfer," she said, adding that Jordan's King Abdullah supported the move.

Her statement also indicated that moving from Turkey to Jordan could interrupt Germany's air intervention against IS for two or three weeks during a very crucial period  while the liberation of Mosul and Raqqa is underway. That could paint Turkey, in the eyes of the Western world, as an unreliable NATO ally and an impediment to the coalitions fight against IS. Germany's Tornado aircraft at Incirlik fly surveillance missions over Syria and conduct refueling flights for coalition partners. Germany has 250-280 military personnel at the base.

If Germany indeed removes its troops from Turkey, Berlin would no longer be able to implement Article 5 of NATO's charter on Turkey's behalf. Article 5 is the backbone of the alliance under which every member country agrees to defend the others. In the wake of US President Donald Trumps failure to express support for Article 5 during his speech at the Brussels summit, the Turkish-German frictions may be the harbinger of an overhaul of the transatlantic security system.

Germany is Turkey's top trading partner. It accounts for $14.8 billion in annual exports to and $21.5 billion in imports from Turkey, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. There are more than 3 million Turks living in Germany, making them the largest ethnic minority in Germany. Almost half of them are also citizens of Germany. Germany is the lead country of the European Union in the EUs relations with Turkey. Therefore, Turkish-German relations have the potential to affect Turkey's relationship with the entire West.

Turkeys leaders, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan above anybody else, are aware of Germanys importance for Turkey. It is therefore unthinkable for them not to assess the damage caused by the deteriorating relations with Germany. German officials have more than once emphasized that the German army is a parliamentary army and it would be unacceptable for German parliamentarians not to be visiting their military personnel wherever they are. Why, then, is Turkey preventing their visits? Why are Turkish leaders pushing Germany to such a dramatic decision?

The reason lies in the desperate and wrong-headed political decisions of Erdogan and his small circle of loyalists, including Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu.

Turkey's decision to deny Germany access to its soldiers reflects Turkey's resentment of Germany for harboring Turkish dissidents. German officials disclosed that last month, 414 Turkish citizens with diplomatic and service passports had requested asylum since the July 15, 2016, coup attempt. The German Interior Ministry confirmed some asylum requests have been approved.

The German move angered Turkey's irascible Erdogan. Among those 414 Turkish citizens are dozens of Turkish military officers, some with the rank of general, who have been serving at NATO bases in Germany and declined to return to Turkey in the wake of the failed coup, saying they have no confidence in Turkey's judiciary. Germany is not alone in this regard; some Turkish military officials serving in NATO posts also have applied for political asylum in Belgium, Norway, Denmark and Italy  which are NATO members as well.

But Turkish-German relations have been deteriorating for some time, especially since the run-up to the April 16 referendum, when Germany refused to allow supporters of the referendum to stage campaign rallies there. Although voters supposedly approved the referendum, which granted unprecedented executive powers to the already-powerful Erdogan, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe deemed the results fraudulent.

Turkey also has been holding Deniz Yucel, a reporter for the German newspaper Die Welt, since February, alleging he supports terrorism.

German weekly Der Spiegel wrote June 1 that Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel "is unlikely to oppose Erdogan too strongly because she pegged her political fate to Ankara's goodwill by making Turkey the gatekeeper for refugees yearning to make their way to Europe.

The appeasement policy is not confined to Merkel in the West; it is a general phenomenon. Der Spiegel reminds us that even NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg is determined to tolerate Erdogans attacks because he needs Turkey as a base for Middle East operations.

Erdogan, meanwhile, sees these reasons as weaknesses of Germany, NATO and the West. He is therefore determined to take the risk and follow a brinkmanship policy with them.

Yet Erdogan might have overestimated the patience of Western leaders.

Merkel, in her May 25 speech during the NATO Summit in Brussels, praised NATO as a guarantor of cooperation, freedom and trust. Der Spiegel wrote that her remarks were aimed at Erdogan.

In that June 1 story, Der Spiegel said, The brief [listing] of Western values was aimed at a man who, though he stood in the second row at the ceremony, actually dominated the agenda of Thursday's NATO summit: Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the heavy-handed Turkish ruler who is in the process of transforming his country into an autocracy. The same man who disparaged Merkel earlier this year as a supporter of terrorism and who has plunged the Western defense alliance into chaos.

Despite all these observations, Der Spiegel predicted the escalation "is unlikely to cause a major breach  because NATO needs Turkey.

That assessment proved to be wrong following Gabriels visit to Ankara; there is now a major breach in NATO. But much more important is, what will be the scope of the damage inflicted on NATO, and how  if at all possible  can it be repaired?
Main Street Alabama has been an economic engine for the state since 2009, revitalizing downtown districts throughout the state. But a new national pilot program offered through the organization may bring hope to urban centers.

Later this summer, the statewide downtown revitalization program will launch a new concept, UrbanMain, in partnership with the National Main Street Center. That program will target an urban district somewhere in the state.

The location is set to be announced later.

UrbanMain could mean economic activity, attention and revitalization to one of the state's urban centers, using a model that has worked in some of the nation's biggest cities.

Dionne Baux

Dionne Baux, director of urban programs for the National Main Street Center, said UrbanMain is a compliment to existing Main Street America programs. Alabama will be the second national site of the pilot program - the first being Salt Lake City. But Main Street programs have previously been used in other metro areas such as Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Orlando and Washington, D.C.

In Alabama, the Main Street approach is being used in 20 cities, which recently added Marion. Other cities are Alexander City, Anniston, Athens, Birmingham, Columbiana, Decatur, Dothan, Elba, Eufaula, Florence, Fort Payne, Gadsden, Heflin, Monroeville, Montevallo, Jasper, Opelika, Oxford, Selma and Wetumpka.

Since 2014, communities have reported 373 net new businesses, 2,774 net new jobs, and 45,213 volunteer hours in their districts.

But where previously the Main Street program has dealt with small towns and rural areas, Baux said, it has involved creating resources for revitalization. In urban areas, that infrastructure already exists, in the form of chambers of commerce, neighborhood organizations, business improvement districts and other organizations.

"By using extensive community engagement, market analysis, and really focusing on data, we can make sure we are hearing the desires of the community," Baux said. "By bridging the on-the-ground assets, as well as their relationship with stakeholders on the ground, we can make it easier for property owners, businesses and residents to engage in economic planning."
Comedian Bill Maher ignited debate regarding the use of the "n-word" after uttering the racial slur in a

. One

Alabama-born comedian took to Facebook to defend him.

Orlando Jones, who was born in Mobile, before spending his teenage years in South Carolina, is best known as an original cast member on the long-running sketch comedy program, MADtv. In the wake of controversy surrounding Bill Maher's use of the "n-word", Jones displayed that he's just that: mad.

Advisory: The video below contains adult language.

IDK what's in Bill Maher's heart & neither do u, but I know this... #Trollando Posted by Orlando Jones on Monday, June 5, 2017

"Trust and believe, Bill Maher's said plenty of stuff that people could consider racist, or Islamophobic, or homophobic, or sexist. But, it's all in the name of 'new rules' and a joke. And we let it slide. We let it go. For 20-plus years!" Jones says in a video posted to his Facebook fan page Monday at 9 a.m.

"And now? Now, because he said the 'n-word' we're going to 'pin the tail on the racist donkey?'" he continues. "I call 'bullsh**!"

"Why don't we start judging people by what they do, and not what they say?" Jones pleads, before turning the attention around on himself.

"When it comes to telling me about my blackness or my race, or what you gon' tell me about racism; They burned cross(es) in my front yard! I'm from Mobile, Alabama in the Deep South!" he says. "You don't know sh*t about my racism and my experience with it."

Jones is among many notable voices in the black community who have responded publicly regarding Bill Maher since the incident.

Chicago musician Chance the Rapper tweeted at HBO, asking the network to pull Maher's program, "Real Time with Bill Maher", on which the comedian made the original comments. Activist DeRay McKesson expressed similar sentiments.

Atlanta rapper, Killer Mike, is no stranger to political activity or Maher's HBO program, having appeared on Maher's panels previously. He took to TMZ Monday to tell reporters, if he were on the program when Maher said the joke, he would "punch him", before making up with Maher, in order to teach him a lesson. He disagrees that the comedian should be removed from television, however, citing Maher's Freedom of Speech.

"I am not going to start to limit entertainers in what they can say," he says. "Because, when you start doing that, you're painting yourself into a corner and you're making sure your (own) First Amendment rights are going to be out the door."

On Tuesday, HBO announced that Michael Eric Dyson would be replacing Sen. Al Franken on the upcoming episode of "Real Time with Bill Maher" to engage in a discussion about the "n-word" that will include rapper Ice Cube, journalist David Gregory, former Florida Rep. David Jolly and activist Symone Sanders. The installment of the show will air Friday at 9 p.m. CST.

Maher responded to the issue via an apology Saturday, stating "Friday nights are always my worst night of sleep because I'm up reflecting on the things I should or shouldn't have said on my live show. Last night was a particularly long night as I regret the word I used in the banter of a live moment. The word was offensive and I regret saying it and am very sorry."

HBO issued an individual statement, as well: "Bill Maher's comment last night was completely inexcusable and tasteless. We are removing his deeply offensive comment from any subsequent airings of the show."
A new 18-acre green space and memorial to civil rights leader the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth is proposed for the north Birmingham neighborhood of Collegeville.

The proposed $5 million project was announced by Mayor William Bell and other city officials on Wednesday. The green space is located between Macklin Park and the historic Bethel Baptist Church.

Funding will come primarily from federal and national foundations, according to the mayor's office.

City leaders said proposed green space will be incorporated into the Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument due to its proximity to Bethel Baptist Church, which was named in the federal designation.

The green space would include water features, walking trails, gathering spaces and other passive recreation spaces for the neighborhood residents, according to the mayor's office.

Councilor William Parker, who represents Collegeville, said the proposed park is part of a continued effort to improve the neighborhood. He said the $10 million Maxine Herring Parker Vehicle/Pedestrian Bridge, named in memory of Parker's mother, will open on Tuesday.

The bridge carries Fred L. Shuttlesworth Drive from 29th Avenue North to 32nd Avenue North, over a set of railroad tracks that have long caused traffic problems for residents. The bridge has three lanes wide, including an emergency lane, and will have sidewalks.

A $22 million extension to Finley Boulevard from Macklin Park to where Finley Boulevard and Highway 31 intersect is also in the works, Parker said.

Birmingham is working in cooperation with the Environmental Protection Agency and Trust for Public Land to develop the green space.

Parker said he plans to bring a delegation of Collegeville residents to the EPA office in Atlanta to advocate for the park funding.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall announced today that his office and federal authorities are investigating current and former employees of the Selma Police Department.

Marshall said the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms are taking part in the investigation with the help of Selma Police Chief Spencer Collier, who requested the assistance from the state and the FBI.

Marshall said the joint investigation will include an audit of the evidence room after recent reports of items missing.

"I appreciate the assistance of Chief Collier who has provided complete access to department's records as we conduct our joint investigation into possible corruption and missing evidence," Marshall said in the release.

Among the items that may be missing are guns that have been confiscated as evidence in criminal cases.

The Selma Times-Journal has reported that a former evidence technician and two others were arrested in connection with guns stolen from the department's evidence vault.

Authorities caution that if a consumer is considering a gun purchase and has a concern that it may be one of those related to this matter, that they should contact the ATF Hotline at 1-800-283-4867.

Updated at 7:34 a.m. on June 7 to say that Spencer Collier requested the assistance of the state and of the FBI.
The Alabama Ethics Commission unanimously ruled Wednesday that there was probable cause Brighton Mayor Brandon Dean violated ethics rules when he used a police vehicle for personal transportation.

The commission ruled 4-0 to send the matter to the Bessemer cutoff of the Jefferson County district attorney's office. There was no public discussion before the vote.

In an interview with AL.com, Dean contended that the decision went against him because he couldn't attend a hearing on the case because he had a funeral. He said he emailed a commission agent to postpone the hearing but he said the agent did not get his email in time.

"It was a matter of me not being there," Dean said.

But the commission did not back up that account during its meeting Wednesday.

Dean has used the police vehicle after his personal car was vandalized. He said neither he nor Brighton's police commissioner was aware of the ethics rules and that he only used the car twice on city business in Atlanta.

The Brighton mayor said he wasn't concerned about the DA's office looking into the matter.

"I think I'm more comfortable with it being in the hands of the local DA, where they can look at it for what it is and use their discretion, instead of making a decision from strict parameters in the commission's bylaws," he said.
The execution of Robert Bryant Melson is back on for Thursday after the U.S. Supreme Court tonight lifted a stay that had been granted last week by an appeals court.

The stay of the execution was lifted in an order issued by U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas shortly before 10 p.m. Tuesday.

Three of the nine Supreme Court associate justices - Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, and Sonia Sotomayor - said they did not want to vacate the stay of execution, according to the brief order.

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall on Monday had asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overrule the appeals court and reinstate Thursday's planned execution of Melson, the man convicted in the 1994 shooting deaths of three fast food employees at a Popeye's in Etowah County.

The execution is set for 6 p.m. Thursday at Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore.

The 11th Circuit on Friday had granted a stay of Melson's execution. Melson is challenging his execution on grounds that the three-drug cocktail Alabama uses for lethal injections "has failed to work properly."

The 11th Circuit issued the stay so it can rule on Melson's challenge, which is also being appealed by four other death row inmates.

Melson and the other inmates argue that the first drug administered in the cocktail, the sedative midazolam, doesn't work well enough prevent the inmates from experiencing the pain caused by the other two drugs that stop breathing and the heart.

The Alabama Attorney General on Monday, however, filed a motion to the U.S. Supreme Court that argues in part that the U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled that midazolam can be used in drug protocols.

Also, the Attorney General argues, the U.S. Supreme Court denied the stay requests of four Arkansas inmates who were executed using the same drug protocol as Alabama. And Alabama has already carried out three executions using the protocol, including the May 25 execution of Tommy Arthur in which the 11th Circuit denied a stay.

The other two Alabama inmates who were executed - Ronald Smith and Christopher Brooks - also were co-plaintiffs in the case with Melson "and their stay requests were denied by the Eleventh Circuit because their nearly identical claims were also time-bared," the Attorney General also argued.
The Alabama Ethics Commission this morning rejected its staff's opinion that site consultants for companies considering moving to Alabama are required under certain circumstances to register as lobbyists under the ethics law.

The staff's opinion said the companies who hire the consultants to scout locations and incentive opportunities from Alabama governments would have to register as principals under the law. Principals are defined in the ethics law as businesses or people who employ lobbyists.

The commission declined to vote on the recommendation after economic development officials told the commission it would hurt their recruiting efforts because companies place a high value on confidentiality when they are considering a new location.

"I'm here because this is a huge concern for our ability to compete," State Department of Commerce Secretary Greg Canfield told the commission.

Ethics Commission Executive Director Tom Albritton said he understood those concerns but said the work of site consultants, in certain circumstances, fits the definition of lobbyist in the ethics law. Albritton said the requirement would not disclose any information other than the names of the consultants and the companies that hire them.

Commissioner Frank C. "Butch" Ellis of Shelby County, who said he has been involved in a dozen or more efforts to recruit employers, said he did not think it was the intent of the Legislature to include site consultants under the definition of lobbyists.

Commissioner Stewart Hill Tankersley of Montgomery said he agreed with the staff's opinion because he thought it accurately reflected the law although he also understood the concerns of business recruiters. Tankersley suggested postponing a decision on the recommendation.

The motion to approve the commission's recommendation died for lack of a second, so there was no formal vote.
Thirteen years ago today, Birmingham cab driver Eldridge Knighton was shot twice in the head and left for dead in a robbery on a dark street near the remote Tarrant landfill.

Instantly blinded in one eye, Knighton pulled himself out of the ditch where he had collapsed, staggered a block to the first house he could find and banged on the front door pleading for help.

Knighton, then 27, was determined to live - for his children. And not just live, but live better.

Now he has a message for the other young men and women, especially those who live in Birmingham's public housing communities. "Man up,'' he said. "If I can do it, so can you."

Knighton, now 40 and the resident council president of Birmingham's Morton Simpson public housing community, is speaking out because he was given a second chance that night 13 years ago. Since then, he rose to become a leader and role model among participants in the 2015 Fatherhood Initiative sponsored by the Housing Authority of the Birmingham District and wants others to know a second chance for them is also there for the taking.

"Don't be afraid to ask for help,'' he said. "God says you have not because you ask not."

In 2004, Knighton worked for Yellow Cab as a driver. He picked up a young man, who was to be his last fare of the night before he went to pick up his 3-year-old son and 6-month-old daughter who were at a friend's house while he worked.

That young man, in the passenger's seat, listened while Knighton finished his phone call "I told my son, 'Give Daddy 15, 20 minutes,' I'm on my way to pick you up,'' he recalled. Moments after hanging up, he got a bad feeling.

"I said, 'Lord, please don't let this be what I think this is,''' he said. "When I looked over at the young man, he had the gun in my face."

The gunman ordered Knighton out of the cab, and then demanded his money. "I told him it was only $70 and he said, 'Give me all your money,''' he said.

Knighton tossed him the cash, and the robber then demanded his wallet - which was in the glove compartment - and his car keys, which Knighton also handed over. "He rose up and shot me in the head two times,'' he said. "My head went back. I turned, and started running back the way I came in. It was about 10:30, 11 at night."

"He heard me get of the phone with my son and he still shot me in my head two times,'' he said. "You think he cared? No, but God cared. He gave me the strength, and this is why I fight for my community. This taught me how to fight."

He spotted one house but it was empty. "I knew I couldn't go that way,'' he said. "As I'm running, the only thing running through my mind is, 'Lord, please, not like this. I can't die like this.'''

The first bullet entered Knighton's head above his right eye. The second bullet pushed the first bullet out through the top of his head. After trying to run, he collapsed, and rolled into a ditch. "I knew this was it for me,'' he said. "I laid there for a few minutes. But I could feel something up under my back, lift me up to give me the strength to crawl out. I crawled up out this ditch. I didn't know which way, because I can't see, but I'm running on the grace of God."

He ran about a block, uphill, before he saw another house. He crawled up the stairs of their front porch and banged on the front door, as if his life depended on it. "I could hear the lady of the house saying, 'Who is it?' I say, 'I'm a cab driver. I've just been robbed. I've just been shot in the head two times. Help me. Help me,''' he said. "I could hear them say, 'Get away, get away. I found myself collapsing on their steps.'''

Ultimately the couple opened the door, and summoned help for Knighton. He didn't know that until later. "When I came to,'' he said, "I came to at the hospital."

The shooting, along with two months in the county jail in 2006, awakened Knighton to the true victim of his circumstance - his children, he has previously said. "When I went to jail in November 2006, my wife was in prison - my children didn't have their mama or their dad,'' he told AL.com in a previous interview. "I told myself I can go back to the streets, I can sell drugs, grab a gun - which is the easiest thing to do - and attempt to rob somebody, but what's the point of that? Right in the middle of the drugs and the gun are my children sitting right...I stepped away from all of it."

Knighton two years ago joined HABD's Fatherhood Initiative. It is a six-week program which includes group sessions and peer support group of 20 men. The Family Guidance Center of Alabama facilitates the weekly meetings, and the program is designed to strengthen the bonds between fathers and their children. Education, health care and employment resources are made available to fathers through the initiative, which began in 2011 in a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development initiative.

That's why he says if he can do it, others can as well. And he's more than willing to deliver a strong message to anyone who will listen. And even if they won't. "I had to man up after I got shot. You call yourself a man? Put your guns down and take responsibility,'' he said. "Your children need you out here. You can't take care of your children behind bars. You can't take care of your children from no grave site. Man up. You want to claim your hood? Clean up your hood."

The young man who shot Knighton was never identified or arrested. Several years ago, he learned to forgive him. Still, he would like to meet him face to face. "All I want to do is see you in person to let you know that what you tried to do to me - you tried to take me from my children, you tried to end my life over $70,'' he said. "But you see, God had a greater plan for me. What you tried to do, God did better."

He is now serving a purpose in his community. He started a community movie night for families, and a school crossing for the kids of Morton Simpson. When crime happens there - and it does as it does everywhere - Knighton is there to decry the violence.

"To the young men and women out there doing these foolish acts, I too was foolish when I was young,'' he said. "At some point, we've all been foolish. You think this is the way, but it's not."
Family members have launched an online fundraising campaign to help pay for the funeral expenses of a beloved store clerk gunned down during an apparent robbery over the weekend.

Mike Ngangi, also known as Mike Mulwa, was shot about 11:30 p.m. Saturday at the Citgo in the 9800 block of Parkway East. Birmingham police Sgt. Bryan Shelton said East Precinct officers were dispatched to the store on a robbery alarm. When they arrived, they found two people consoling Ngangi, who had been shot one time.

Ngangi was taken to UAB Hospital where he underwent surgery. He died about 4:30 a.m. Sunday at the hospital.

Authorities have not announced any arrests in the case, but said it appears robbery was the motive. There were signs of a struggle inside the store. "Investigators are sure an altercation took place inside the location, and at some point the victim was shot,'' Shelton said.

A clerk was shot at the same Citgo in December, but survived. In that incident, the victim was shot with a handgun in the torso area around 9 p.m. Ngangi was working that night as well, and witnessed the shooting.

"People should be able to go to work and return home without being the victim of a crime,'' Shelton said Sunday. "Our investigators will work hard to bring this family answers and bring the killer to justice."

Family members said he told a friend by telephone that he had been shot and asked that friend to call 911. He was from Acworth, Georgia. His mother, Violent Mueni, and father, Councillor Ngangi, live in Kenya, as well as his only surviving brother, Vincent Mutuku. His cousins living in the U.S. include Erik Sukulu in California, Lilian Musyoki in Tennessee and Eunice Munyiva, in Georgia. All of his other cousins and family remain in Kenya.

He leaves behind a wife, two children and a third due to be delivered in less than one month. "Mike had the entrepreneurial spirit that guided him in his pursuit of the American dream,'' his cousin, Eric Sukulu, told AL.com. He moved to the U.S. in 2008, and worked in various department stores in Atlanta before landing a job with Shaw Industries.

"His ambition and thirst for success led him to open a cultural clothing line, "254," and he traversed the country selling his merchandise to his Kenyan-American target market during major sporting events,'' Sukulu said. "He was an outstanding citizen who knew that the path to success is a treacherous one but, step by step, one can get there through hard work and commitment."

Family described him as soft-spoken and kind - a man of the people. "His smile was contagious. He lit the room,'' his cousin said. "His demise is one that has sent waves through the Kenyan-American community.''

"If only that senseless killer knew him, he could not have pulled the trigger,'' Sukulu said. "If only he knew he just had a baby and another on the way, he could not have robbed them of their father."

A fundraiser and memorial will be held for him at KACC Church Sunday in Marietta, Georgia. Ngangi's wife, daughter and son live in Atlanta. His third child is due in three weeks. The GoFundMe link can be found here.

"Remember his family here and back home in your prayers,'' the family wrote on the site.

Anyone with information is asked to call Birmingham police at 205-254-1764 or Crime Stoppers at 205-254-7777.
Rep. Mike Jones, R-Andalusia will take over as chairman of the Rules Committee in the Alabama House of Representatives, Speaker Mac McCutcheon announced today.

Jones, who had been chairman of the Judiciary Committee, replaces Rep. Alan Boothe, R-Troy, who stepped down as Rules chairman. Boothe is not seeking reelection next year.

The appointment of Jones as Rules chairman applies through the end of next year, which concludes the current four-year term for the Legislature. All 105 seats in the House are up for election next year.

The Rules Committee is important because it drafts the list of bills the House will consider each day.

McCutcheon praised Jones, who has a private law practice in Andalusia, for the way he oversaw the Judiciary Committee's impeachment proceedings against former Gov. Robert Bentley. The committee was holding hearings when Bentley resigned from office in April.

"The attention to detail and fairness that he demonstrated and the deep respect that he earned from members on both sides of the aisle are exactly what we need in a House Rules Committee chairman, so I am proud to make this appointment," McCutcheon said in the press release.

The speaker did not immediately name a new Judiciary chairman.
Police are trying identify two suspects in an eastern Birmingham business robbery.

The holdup happened about 4:30 p.m. Tuesday at Advance America in the 7800 block of Crestwood Boulevard. Police gave few details but said there were no injuries. The suspects fled in a black Nissan Altima.

Anyone with information is asked to call police or Crime Stoppers at 205-254-7777.
A north Alabama grassroots organization is seeking to pressure Madison County officials to defy a new state law and remove a Civil War statue from the courthouse grounds in downtown Huntsville.

Under the bill signed into law last month by Gov. Kay Ivey, entities that remove historical statues or memorials without permission face a fine of $25,000.

So the Tennessee Valley Progressive Alliance is seeking to raise the money to cover the fine that would be incurred by the Madison County Commission for removing the statue.

"We read the fine print of the law and the law just says the state will fine localities up to $25,000 for removing monuments," said David Odom, organizer for the alliance. "And we said, 'Well, shoot, we ought to be able to put that together. Let's just see what happens - what do we have to lose?'

"We thought crowdfunding might be an option."

The group started a GoFundMe page to solicit donations and, as of Wednesday afternoon, had raised $450.

The office of Madison County Commission Chair Dale Strong said that he was not available for comment Thursday about the statue.

The Tennessee Valley Progressive Alliance, along with other organizations, had started a petition calling for the removal of the statue last month before Ivey enacted the new law. That petition, as of Wednesday afternoon, has 609 signatures.

The law went into effect immediately upon Ivey's signing. It blocks any local government from moving historical monuments on public property that have been in place for 40 years or more.

Government entities must receive a waiver to relocate a statue.

Odom said he believed government leaders could be convinced to break the law - particularly if the money is raised for the fine.

"With sufficient public pressure, any politician can be persuaded to do the right thing," he said. "We view it as our job to generate that public pressure. I think Huntsville is in a unique position to lead Alabama on this issue. Huntsville is kind of a melting pot and likes to think of itself as a progressive city. We've got two (Historically Black Universities), the federal government presence, all of that makes this symbol of white supremacy even more abhorrent when it's in the center of downtown Huntsville.

"We're optimistic in the long run. We think we can continue to build pressure around this issue and educate folks about what this means. The inscription on the monuments talks about the principles that gave birth to the confederate cause. Well, those principles were slavery and white supremacy. It's just a plain matter of right and wrong."

The group said that if enough money was not raised to cover the fine, the funds would be redirected to a public memorial for lynching victims in Madison County.

Updated June 8, 2017, at 11:37 a.m. with Madison County Commission Chair Dale Strong not available for comment Thursday.
You may have read recently that Huntsville is on track to become Alabama's largest city in the next decade, having already overtaken Mobile and with Montgomery and Birmingham in its sights. We know Alabama's largest cities: Birmingham, Montgomery, Huntsville and Mobile...but what about the opposite ends of the spectrum?

The U.S. Census population data released last week also shows us the smallest incorporated towns in Alabama. The data comes from July 1, 2016.

Here are the 15 smallest incorporated towns in Alabama:

Blue Spring (Barbour County) - Population 91

Needham (Choctaw County)- Population 89

Union Grove (Marshall County)- Population 79

Ethelsville (Pickens County) - Population 73

Petrey (Crenshaw County) - Population 58

Mooresville (Limestone County)- Population 58

Cardiff (Jefferson County)- Population 54

Goldville (Tallapoosa County) - Population 53

Emelle (Sumter County) - Population 50

Dayton (Marengo County) - Population 49

Benton (Lowndes County)- Population 46

Natural Bridge (Winston County)- Population 36

Memphis (Pickens County) - Population 28

Oak Hill (Wilcox County)- Population 25

McMullen (Pickens County) - Population 9

Are there any population booms or busts in these places?

Of those on the list, only three towns maintained or grew their population since April 1, 2010: Mooresville (plus 5); Union Grove (plus 2) and Petrey (flat). Most of the places lost one or two residents, with the biggest drop - a whopping eight people - was seen in Ethelsville.

Welcome to Wednesday's Wake Up Call. Let's see what's going on:

'Do not disturb' button coming to iPhone

Apple is introducing a new feature for the iPhone - a "Do Not Disturb While Driving" button.

The feature will be part of Apple's iOS 11, the latest version of the operating software for Apple's mobile devices. It can be activated whenever a phone is connected to a car using either Bluetooth or cable or if the car is moving. When in use, the phone will withhold notifications for things like text messages or news updates. If someone does text you while you are driving, the phone can respond with an automatic reply.

The iPhone screen will also be locked to prevent drivers from using many of their apps while driving.

Group calls for Confederate memorials to be removed

A group of black leaders in Arizona are calling for the removal of Confederate markers in the state.

The state currently has six monuments, highways or statues dedicated to the Confederacy, the name given to Southern states that fought Union armies in the Civil War. A group of African-American lawmakers sent a letter to Gov. Doug Ducey asking for them to be removed.

Southern forces claimed part of Arizona in their efforts to create a coast-to-coast Confederacy. The state's most famous Civil War battle occurred in February 1862, 120 Confederate forces turned back Union soldiers at Picacho Peak in the westernmost battle of the conflict.

FBI investigating incident at Arlington National Cemetery

The FBI is seeking information about a man who allegedly made illicit sexual contact with a minor female at Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day.

The unidentified man - described as a Hispanic male between 50-60 years old - was among those in the crowd during a wreath laying ceremonies that included President Donald Trump. The man allegedly repeatedly touched in the victim inappropriately.

According to the FBI, the incident occurred around 11 a.m. local time, about the time the president was attending ceremonies at the historic cemetery.

Until tomorrow.
Rep. AL Green, a Texas Democrat, said he's readying articles of impeachment against Donald Trump, the first official step to remove a sitting president.

Green took to the House floor last month to call for the impeachment to of President Trump for what he said was obstruction of justice in connection to the firing of FBI chief James Comey, who was investigating ties between Trump's presidential campaign and Russia. Comey is set to testify tomorrow before a Senate committee on his interactions with Trump.

"The facts are simple and indisputable. The President fired the FBI Director because the Director was investigating the President's campaign connections to Russian interference in the Presidential election," Green said in a statement. "This is obstruction of justice."

The articles are mostly symbolic and highly unlikely to go anywhere in the Republican-controlled House. Green has not officially introduced them on the House floor and it's unclear if he has any co-sponsors. A spokesperson for Green said the Congressman will provide more information on his plans later today.

Green, whose district includes most of southwestern Houston, said he has received death threats in connection to his calls to impeach Trump.

Only two presidents have been impeached: Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998. Both remained in office after the Senate voted to impeach failed.
President Donald Trump has "confidence" in Attorney General Jeff Sessions amid reports that Sessions offered to resign because their relationship is deteriorating, presidential adviser Kellyanne Conway said Wednesday.

"He has confidence in the people who work for him. He has confidence in his cabinet. He has confidence in his staff," Conway told Axios' Mike Allen.

Multiple reports surfaced Tuesday that Sessions suggested he would resign after Trump grew angry at him for recusing himself from the Russia investigation. Trump has blamed Sessions' recusal for the investigation expanding under the special counsel's probe.

Despite Conway's comments, Trump declined to answer that question Wednesday:
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions suggested he could resign amid an increasingly fraught relationship with President Donald Trump, ABC News reported Tuesday.

Tension between Trump and Sessions heated up after the attorney general recused himself from the investigation into alleged collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign in the 2016 election, the network reported. The president reportedly blamed Sessions' recusal for the broadening of the Russia investigation.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer declined to say if Trump had confidence in Sessions, Alabama's former junior senator and the first sitting senator to endorse Trump, during Tuesday's White House briefing.

"I said I have not had a discussion with [Trump] on the question," Spicer said. I don't, If I haven't had a discussion about a subject, I tend not to speak about it."

The New York Times also reported Tuesday that Sessions offered to resign "in recent weeks," and that former FBI Director James Comey told the attorney general that it was inappropriate for Trump to meet with him privately. Comey also reportedly warned Sessions that he did not want to be left alone with Trump after the two met privately and Trump urged Comey to drop the investigation into ex-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.
Two groups connected to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have bought a combined $2.4 million in ads buys blanketing Alabama television and radio stations with ads supporting Sen. Luther Strange.

The Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC controlled by McConnell, cancelled a $2.65 million ad buy and replaced it with more than $2 million in air time that includes radio ads. The new buy also moves up the date of the first spot.

The other McConnell-connected group, One Nation, is planning to spend $385,000 on issue ads backing Strange.

Chris Pack, spokesman for both groups, declined to comment on the tone of the ads, but One Nation has typically released advocacy ads while the Senate Leadership Fund usually targets an incumbent's opponents.

The previous buy from the Senate Leadership Fund was a placeholder, and the new reserving of air time bumps up the start date of the ads and includes about $500,000 in radio ads. Radio ads will be running statewide and in the Birmingham and Mobile markets.

The Senate Leadership Fund's television and radio ads will start running next week in Birmingham and Mobile, from June 13 to June 27. The last batch of airtime will run until the day of the Aug. 15 special election primary.

Ads from One Nation will run from June 28 through July 12 statewide and in the Birmingham, Huntsville and Mobile markets.
U.S. Education secretary Betsy DeVos found herself on the hot seat again this week, testifying before a Senate appropriations subcommittee, defending President Donald Trump's 2018 education budget.

President Trump proposed a $59 billion federal education budget, cutting more than $9 billion, or 13 percent, from current levels.

Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., chairs the committee and opened by telling DeVos, "This is a difficult budget request to defend," and saying the proposal likely will not be adopted as is.

This was DeVos' second time defending President Donald Trump's 2018 education budget, having been grilled at a House appropriations committee hearing on May 24.

Cuts are proposed at both the higher education and K12 levels, because of what DeVos called duplicative and ineffective programs. She has been a strong proponent of pushing control for education back to state and local education officials, reducing the federal role in education.

DeVos defended the cuts in part by saying only eight percent of education funding comes from the federal government.

In Alabama, the percentage of reliance on federal dollars is higher, providing nearly 11 percent of K12 education funding in 2016, the latest year for which figures are available.

Under Trump's budget proposal, K12 education will take the biggest hit, decreasing from $547 million to $477 million, or 13 percent. Special education will continue to be funded at 2017 levels, according to DeVos.

Title I funding, which targets low-income students, will not be decreased, according to DeVos.

Higher education funding would be cut by 7 percent, from $1.14 billion to $1.07 billion, under the proposal. Though Pell Grant funding for low-income students would be maintained, other federal funding designed to supplement those most in need will be severely reduced or eliminated entirely under the proposal.

Popular programs on the chopping block

Twenty-two programs are being eliminated under the proposal, including more than $1 billion for the 21st Century Community Learning Centers (CCLC), which provides out-of-school programming for students including academic and enrichment activities. The current budget allocates $18 million for Alabama, providing funding for 79 CCLC programs in Alabama.

As to why CCLC is being eliminated, DeVos said less than half of the students participating in the program don't attend the programs, those that do attend sporadically, and there are no measurable outcomes to prove the program makes a difference in student outcomes.

After Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., said the program is very successful in her home state, DeVos suggested states could funding instead of the federal government.

More than 1,450 organizations submitted a letter to House and Senate appropriations chairmen in April, asking for CCLC funding to be continued.

Trump's budget also proposed eliminating a $2.3 billion federal program that provides support to teachers, known as Title II, Part A programs. According to the U.S. Department of Education, "evidence shows that the program is poorly structured to support activities that have a measurable impact on improving student outcomes."

Alabama school districts received $33 million for Title II, Part A programs this year. That money is used not only for teacher training, but also to reduce class sizes, according to state department of education spokesperson Malissa Valdes-Hubert, and 366 additional teachers were hired with Title II, Part A funding for the current school year.

Alabama superintendent Michael Sentance said he had hoped to use Title II funds to improve math and science instruction for teachers in Alabama's classrooms for the coming school year.

For students and teachers in Jefferson County schools, Title II provides nearly a million dollars, which concerns the district's chief financial officer Sheila Jones. Jones said any elimination of federal funding is a loss for Alabama's school districts, because there is no way to replace that funding.

Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., asked DeVos if colleges should consider operating charter schools in order to better serve students in rural areas. DeVos agreed that is an option, but also recommended rural areas consider virtual learning option as well.

Shelby questioned the wisdom of cutting career and technical education when workforce needs are great.

DeVos said the $168 million in cuts to career and technical education are an effort to reduce overlapping between federal agencies, including programs in the Department of Labor. DeVos said efforts should be made to ensure programs are efficient, but pointed out there is still nearly a $1 billion investment in career and technical education.

New school choice programs

Possibly the most controversial part of the proposal is a $1 billion investment in school choice programs for low-income students, and a $250 million program allowing students to attend private schools, including religious ones. Funding for public charter school grants would increase by $167.5 million, for a total of $500 million.

Pressed on how the program will dole out funding, DeVos told the committee, "It won't necessarily be a voucher program. It's intended to be a choice program." Regulations will have to be created for the school choice program if Congress ultimately appropriates funding.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) pressed DeVos whether schools participating in a voucher program would be required to follow IDEA, the federal law outlining school responsibilities for children with disabilities, and whether LBGT students will be protected from discrimination.

In response, DeVos said, "Schools that receive federal funds must follow federal law. Period."

Higher education cuts

Some proposed cuts will have a direct effect on the ability of students to afford college.

Under the proposal, Pell Grant spending will increase to $505 million from $499 million, but the annual $5,920 maximum would remain the same as 2017 levels. Freezing that payment level reduces the purchasing power of the grant, which will ultimately shift additional costs to students.

Subsidized federal student loans, which delay the accumulation of interest until after a student graduates from college, will be eliminated under the proposal, which according to the Center for American Progress, could result in higher monthly payments for the 97,967 Alabama students currently attending college in Alabama that rely on those loans. The proposal would affect those taking loans after July 1, 2018.

The Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, which encourages graduates to work in public service jobs and forgives remaining debt after 10 years in public service, will be eliminated in the proposal. Those already in the program will be allowed to continue to work toward forgiveness.

Income-driven student loan repayment plans will be simplified, from five different types of plans to one.

Trump's budget proposal reduces funding for federal work-study programs by half. Again, according to the Center for American Progress, nearly 8,000 Alabama students participate in work-study programs, which help fund college costs. Those cuts put the education of those students in jeopardy, according to the Center.

Congress has given little indication of which education programs it plans to spare from Trump's knife, but those on both sides of the aisle have, in their questions to DeVos, indicated their concern over individual programs.

U.S. Rep. Bradley Byrne, R-Fairhope, serves on the House Education and Workforce committee and told AL.com, "The President's budget proposal is just that - a proposal."

"It will ultimately be Congress that decides where federal money should be spent. I will say there is a need to eliminate much of the bureaucracy at the Department of Education, and we can do that by consolidating programs and cutting down on operational costs."

Congress will take up the budget proposal later this summer.

The full hearing was broadcast on C-Span and can be seen below.
A NASA research pilot who received his master's degree from the University of Alabama and a former flight surgeon at Huntsville's Redstone Arsenal are among 12 new astronauts announced today by the U.S. space agency.

Bob Hines and Dr. Frank Rubio are among the five women and seven men tapped for this year's NASA astronaut class, which includes a physician, a surgeon, two geologists, three engineers, a senior manager for SpaceX and four test pilots.

Hines, a native of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, lives in Houston where he is a research pilot at Johnson Space Center. Hines is also a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School and received his master's degree in aerospace engineering from UA in 2010.

U.S. Army Major Rubio is a native of Miami, Florida and a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy. Rubio served as a UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter pilot and flew more than 1,100 hours, including deployments to Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. He went on to earn a Doctorate of Medicine from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences.

Rubio later served as a clinic supervisor, executive medicine provider and flight surgeon at Huntsville's Redstone Arsenal. At the time of his selection for the astronaut class, he was a battalion surgeon for the 3rd Battalion of the 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) in the U.S. Army.

NASA's new astronauts were announced today by Vice President Mike Pence and Robert Lightfoot, NASA's acting administrator.

Hines, Rubio and the rest of the astronaut class will report for duty in August. Training for the astronauts will take about two years.

Joining Hines and Rubio in this year's astronaut class are:

Kayla Barron of Annapolis, Maryland; U.S. Naval Academy graduate, master's in nuclear engineering from the University of Cambridge, England; currently serves as Flag Aide for the Superintendent of the Naval Academy

Zena Cardman of State College, Pennsylvania; National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow with a master's degree in marine science; currently completing a doctorate in geoscience at Pennsylvania State University

Air Force Lt. Col. Raja Chari of Lancaster, California; U.S. Air Force Academy graduate, U.S. Navy test pilot school graduate; master's in aeronautics and astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; commander of the 461st Flight Test Squadron

Navy Lt. Cmdr. Matthew Dominick of Wheat Ridge, Colorado; Navy test pilot school, master's in systems engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School; Navy strike fighter squadron 115

Warren "Woody" Hoburg of Boston; assistant professor in aeronautics and astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; doctorate in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of California-Berkeley

Jonathan Kim of Newton, Massachusetts; resident physician for Partners Healthcare at Massachusetts General Hospital; active duty reserve with the U.S. Navy; doctorate of medicine from Harvard

Robb Kulin of Redondo Beach, California; senior manager for flight reliability at SpaceX; masters in materials science; Ph.D. in engineering from the University of California-San Diego

Marine Maj. Jasmin Moghbeli of Yuma, Arizona; quality assurance and avionics officer; master's in aerospace engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School; graduate of the U.S. Navy Test Pilot school

Loral O'Hara of Woods Hole, Massachusetts; research engineer at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; master's degree in propulsion and fluid Dynamics from Purdue University

Jessica Watkins of Pasadena, California; post-doctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology; Ph.D. in geology from the University of California-Los Angeles
The death of 16-year-old Brian "Jessie" Parker of Semmes has been ruled a homicide by the Mississippi Crime Laboratory.

The Greene County Sheriff's Office issued a brief statement from the Greene County Coroner on Wednesday afternoon.

"According to Greene County Coroner, Ladd Pulliam, the Mississippi Crime Laboratory results state that Brian Parker's death was the result of a homicide. The body has been turned over to the Anthropologist for a study of the bones to determine the exact cause of Parker's death."

Authorities in Mobile, along with the Federal Bureau of Investigations found the remains of Parker in a wooded area off of Highway 63 in Greene County, Mississippi on May 31.

Parker had been missing since May 23 and was last seen with 22-year-old Matthew Moberg at a Dollar General store in Lucedale, Miss., which about 20 miles south of Greene, Miss., where his body was found.

No criminal charges have been filed in the death of Parker at this time. Moberg remains in the Mobile County Jail for attempting to elude, second-degree burglary, obstructing governmental operations and felony probation violation charges.

Moberg picked up those charges on May 24 when Mobile County Sheriff's Office deputies attempted to bring him in for questioning in Parker's disappearance.

The Mississippi Bureau of Investigations, Greene County Sheriff's Office and the District Attorney are now the leading the investigation into Parker's death.

According to Pulliam, it could take at least a week before the study of Parker's bones is completed to determine an exact cause of death.

No additional details on the case have been made available at this time.
Alabama conservatives love former Senator and now U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and they backed President Donald Trump with historic support last November.

But if recent national news accounts about a growing rift between the two continues to fester, sides could be taken. And for the GOP candidates seeking Sessions' former Senate seat, it could be a tricky issue to address this summer, political observers note.

"If there is a Trump-Sessions fallout, it puts those desiring to be his Senate successor in a difficult situation," said William Stewart, professor emeritus of political sciences at the University of Alabama and a longtime observer of the state's political scene. "A lot would depend on what the fallout is about."

'Speculative' reports

Reports that Trump has grown sour on Sessions is merely anonymous speculation reported by the national media, according to most of the GOP field who responded to requests for comments on Wednesday.

A good number of them are likely to tout allegiances to both Trump and Sessions, if nothing changes in the relationship between the president and the attorney general between now and the Aug. 15 primary.

"In politics, there is always the rest of the story and I would be hesitant in getting ahead of ourselves," said Trip Pittman, an Alabama state senator from Baldwin County. "Both are doing their jobs and my belief is that they are close and are still working together and that is where I am at (in my beliefs) at this point."

Others are equally skeptical of the news reports, which indicate that Sessions recently suggested to the president that he resign following Trump's displeasure with the attorney general's decision to recuse himself from any Justice Department probes related to the Trump campaign's ties with Russia.

"The speculation by the mainstream media regarding the relationship between President Trump and Attorney General Sessions is purely innuendo and speculative at best," said Randy Brinson, a Montgomery gastroenterologist and the president of the Christian Coalition of Alabama.

Said Dom Gentile, a Birmingham businessman: "I'm not exactly sure what to believe. We don't know the conversations that have taken place between these two heavyweights."

Added Bryan Peeples, a business consultant from Birmingham: "As with all the reports coming out of the media, I prefer to take a step back and let the hysteria die down before I make any judgements."

Pondering recusal

At least two Republican candidates are not sure if Sessions' recusal was a good idea.

Mary Maxwell, who moved from Australia to run for the Senate seat as a Republican, said that the recusal perhaps "was not a good idea." She said she hopes Sessions doesn't resign, and that it would "be a catastrophe for justice."

James Beretta, a physician who practices in Pelham, said that if Trump doesn't answer media inquiries about the president's confidence in his attorney general, he believes Sessions' tenure "as AG may be shortened."

"The statement to the president asking if he has confidence in him to continue as AG can go both ways by either asking to be dismissed to avoid a more detail investigation or looking for a verbal unifying comment," said Beretta. "There is no doubt that standing aside and not performing your sworn duty for the official position you hold can haunt you."

The campaigns for the three leading candidates for the Senate seat - current officeholder Luther Strange, U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks, and former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore - did not respond to a request for comment.

But all three candidates have embraced Trump's policies, and have praised Sessions as well.

Strange, on his campaign website, said he stands with Trump in ensuring the administration achieves "landmark conservative success." Meanwhile, he also indicates support for Sessions.

Brooks, in an interview with AL.com, said that Alabama "needs another Jeff Sessions" to serve in the Senate.

Taking sides

Political commentator and historian Steve Flowers said he doesn't foresee the GOP Senate candidates discussing the rift while campaigning. But, he said if the issue surfaces - and if Sessions ultimately resigns as attorney general - the candidates would be best served by backing Sessions.

"Sessions, whatever you may want to say about him, is a person of extreme high integrity and will do the right thing," said Flowers, a former conservative member of the Alabama House. "What Trump lacks in integrity, Sessions makes up for it. Jeff Sessions is an Eagle Scout. He's a straight-arrow."

Jonathan Gray, a political strategist based out of Mobile, also doesn't believe the rift will matter much in the Senate campaign. He said the Trump/Sessions dispute might be "news today" but concerns an event that occurred weeks ago.

But if boiled down to taking sides, Gray said that candidates will likely line up behind Trump.

He said that Trump won Alabama's GOP primary and the subsequent general election last year long before Sessions was tapped as the next attorney general.

"The folks of Alabama voted overwhelmingly to elect Donald Trump not only in the general election, but in the primary," said Gray. "If it came down to choosing sides ... Donald Trump has a much deeper bench. Jeff Sessions would be seen as an honorable man who took a fall for the president."

'Media thing'

Alabama Republican officials are also not too caught up in the rift that involves arguably the state's most popular politician against a president who was embraced by more than 62 percent of the state's voters last year.

Perry Hooper, who helped run Trump's Alabama campaign and who has publicly endorsed Strange's candidacy, dismissed the reported tensions as "a media thing."

"We are in the world of politics right now, the left and the Democrats hate Donald Trump and will do everything to create controversy," said Hooper. "I hope the candidates running for United States Senate don't buy into that. It's not an issue that Republicans should be involved with."

Terry Lathan, chairwoman of the Alabama GOP, also blames the National media for continuing "on this path with rumors and no facts. The stories are now about if's and maybe's. It's getting old."

She added in an email statement, "The Republican senatorial candidates are on a tight time line to make their case to the GOP voters. They are sharing issues that will matter to our citizens - health care, tax reform and national security among other subjects.

"Nowhere in our summer is there time for anonymous source stories that ends in a waste of ink and airtime."
A 24-year-old man is in jail after he was struck with a buck shot, in the cheek and shoulder, when a homeowner he held at gunpoint seconds earlier fired at him when he fled the scene.

Escambia County Sheriff's Office Spokeswoman Teri Tolbert said the incident occurred on Monday (June 5) at approx. 2:30 p.m.

The ECSO received a 9-1-1 call regarding a home invasion, armed robbery and shooting at 3270 Foshee Road. The male victim told authorities that black males came into his home, pulled a gun on him and struck him in the head with a handgun.

The male victim said the group also robbed him before fleeing the home.

Tolbert said as the suspects left, they got into a dark blue SUV. Seconds later, the male victim exited the home with a single barrel shotgun and fired one shot in their direction striking the vehicle.

The driver of the SUV was struck in the shoulder and alongside the cheek with what appeared to be a buck shot.

The group fled the scene and headed back to the Brewton area where two of the suspects left the vehicle and the other one drove to a residence where he was taken to a local hospital.

Law enforcement from the Escambia County Sheriff's Office and Brewton Police Department responded to the scene and the male victim. Authorities also spoke with the suspect at the hospital that was shot.

The ECSO arrested Mikeal Starks, 24, of Atmore and charged him with first-degree robbery and first-degree burglary. He remains in the Escambia County Detention Center awaiting a bond hearing.

Authorities believe that further arrests in the case are forthcoming. Tolbert says while the case remains under investigation at this time, warrants for armed robbery are pending.

Anyone with any information can contact the Escambia County Sheriff's Office at 251-809-2145.
A Coffee County man was found dead Tuesday evening inside a crashed vehicle.

Alabama state troopers said the crash that killed Henry Lewis Eason, 31, occurred on Sunday, but his body wasn't found until two days later.

The crash occurred when the 2010 Ford Ranger Eason was driving left the roadway, drove through a fence and struck a tree, troopers said. His vehicle was found off Coffee County 114.

Trooper Kevin Cook said family members last heard from Eason on Sunday afternoon.

Troopers continue to investigate.
gavel

Win Johnson

By Win Johnson, who has been an attorney for the State of Alabama for 30 years. He served 28 years as a JAG Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force, active duty & reserve, and he was senior staff attorney for Alabama Chief Justices Perry O. Hooper, Sr., and Roy Moore (1st term) for almost 9 years. Until recently, he was the Legal Director for the Alabama Administrative Office of Courts. He's also the author of Courting Votes in Alabama , a history of the 1994 Alabama Chief Justice election. He lives in Montgomery with his wife, Beth, and daughter, Anna.

With the recent appointment of a new Justice to the Alabama Supreme Court, the disciplinary trial of Chief Justice Roy Moore, and the upcoming season for candidates to announce runs for judicial office, it seemed timely to give the people of Alabama some questions that they should ask candidates and judges. Also, I'm concerned about the rule of law because it has lost its plumbline, and certain judges impose their will, instead of the law, upon the rest of us. I'm concerned about the consciences of judges.

How do they deal with this dilemma? The six questions below are a litmus test, offered in the hope that we can elect judges who will stand for the law.

Conservative judges respect precedent, as they should. But what if a judge thinks that strict adherence to the Constitution of the United States must give way to precedent from a higher court. And what if that precedent means the destruction of our federal system and the loss of the Constitution?

We have moved into a new realm with U.S. Supreme Court cases like Obergefell on same sex marriage and the recent immigration opinions issued by the 9th and 4th Circuit Courts of Appeals, in which a handful of unelected judges issue proclamations from on high, changing the law and imposing their own personal, religious, moral viewpoint upon the nation. This rule by a few men (and women) over the rest of us they call "the rule of law," when it is, of course, the opposite.

Like a king of old, these judges' words have become "the law." I thought we as a nation had defeated such royal prerogative. Too many in the legal profession seem blinded by their tradition of respecting precedent. It is as if the guardians standing on the castle bulwarks for what we'll call "King Rule of Law" don't know that the enemy has tunneled under the walls, slit the King's throat, & now sits on the throne snickering at the so-called conservatives standing guard, saying, "They think that they're defending the rule of law."

Therefore, we need a new litmus test for all judges. If you want to know where a judge or judicial candidate stands, ask him or her the following:

Question 1. Where is it written in the U.S. Constitution that the U.S. Supreme Court's opinions become the "supreme law of the land?"

Answer: The answer should be, "It's not there; the Court arrogated to itself that power over time. When a court claims final infallibility and brooks no disobedience, it has claimed godhood and abrogated its right as a court of law." If the candidate fudges the answer saying, "We all have opinions with which we might disagree," or, "It's too complicated," or asserts that the Court's opinions are equivalent to "the supreme law of the land," that candidate plans to sell out the Constitution at the first opportunity.

Question 2. Will you preserve precedent issued by the U.S. Supreme Court, no matter how it undermines the U.S. Constitution and law?

Answer: Should be "No" plus elaboration. If the answer is yes or dances around the question, that candidate is a polluted spring. See Prov. 25:26.

Question 3. Do you agree that Chief Justice Roy Moore was wrong in requiring proper procedure be followed in the Alabama case of API in light of Obergefell?

Answer: Should be "No" plus elaboration. If the answer is yes, they don't even know (or care about) what's going on.

Question 4. Did you have anything to do with the prosecution of Roy Moore for judicial ethics violations? Or did you urge on that prosecution verbally (or in writing) with your colleagues in the legal community?

Answer: Should be "No" to both questions. If the answer is yes to either question, that person threatens the future of Alabama's judicial system and the rule of law. Oppose at all costs.

Question 5. When you stand before Almighty God on the day of final judgment, do you think God will grant you judicial immunity for issuing an evil opinion or ruling as a judge because you were just following orders?

Answer: Here is where the Church of Jesus Christ has failed to educate public officials. The correct answer is "No, God will hold me accountable for my personal life AND ALL my decisions as a public official/judge." Even though God had ordained that his Son die for the world, Pontius Pilate was still guilty of sentencing an innocent man to death.

Question 6. What is your plan as a judge if told by a higher court to violate the U.S. Constitution or undermine AL law in defiance of the Constitution?

Answer: At a minimum, it should be something to the effect of "My plan is to oppose the destruction of our constitutional republic, no matter the cost to my reputation, career, or professional standing in the Bar Association." If they say they'll recuse in the key cases that are destructive to the republic and the Constitution, then recognize that they plan on being AWOL in defending the law; that candidate is a polluted spring. If they don't think a higher court is capable of violating the Constitution with its opinion, then reask Questions 1 and 2.

Anyone on a court or considering running for judicial office needs a plan and to face up to Jesus' words, "Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake." Matthew 5:10, KJV.

And, "For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?" Matthew 16:24-6, KJV. Judges and judicial candidates, the legal world has a "jurisprudential" vice for you if you don't kowtow to their agenda: "Do as we say, no matter how lawless it is, and we'll keep you in your position. Otherwise, we'll tighten the screws to squeeze you out and damage all that you hold dear in your legal career."

Do you have a plan? Or will you go AWOL and recuse instead of protecting the people, the law, the Constitution, and, most importantly, your conscience from defilement?

In a moral sense, some Justices on the Alabama Supreme Court owe their positions to the illegitimate attack waged against Chief Justice Moore, defender of the rule of law. Will you continue his legacy of fidelity to the Constitution and the rule of law? What are you prepared to do?
For the Trump administration, the terrorist label is little more than a foreign policy tool of the US and its allies.

On May 21, US President Donald Trump headlined a widely celebrated summit in Saudi Arabia bringing together the heads of state of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and many of their regional allies to affirm their commitment to the never-ending battle against terrorism.

Just two weeks later, one wonders whether the GCC will go down as yet another in a long line of failed enterprises that got the patented Trump touch. During the festivities in Riyadh, all participants agreed with the general tenor of Trumps terrorism is bad speech.

They applauded enthusiastically, touched a glowing orb, and returned home committed to fighting their common scourge.

READ MORE: Qatar-Gulf crisis  Your questions answered

The essence of the problem, it seems, is that no one can quite agree on who the terrorists are that they are meant to be fighting.

But Air Force One had barely departed Riyadh when the governments of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates launched a well-coordinated diplomatic and media assault on neighbouring Qatar, attributing false statements to its ruler, banning its news outlets, and accusing Qatars government of supporting terrorism.

Then on Monday, Saudi Arabia and the UAE were joined by Egypt and Bahrain in severing all diplomatic ties with Qatar. The following day, Trump tweeted his enthusiastic support for the blockade of a longtime US ally, potentially launching the crisis into uncharted waters.

The latest escalation in this regional rivalry represents a combination of settling old scores and aggressively consolidating a unitary vision for the Middle East.

Trumps expansive view of terrorism, shared by his Saudi and Emirati allies, effectively includes any group or party opposed to authoritarianism or occupation, irrespective of whether they engage in actual violence.





Although the Trump administration has stopped short of formally designating the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organisation thus far, it has endorsed the view that it should nevertheless be treated as one.

As the recently leaked emails of the Emirati ambassador to Washington confirmed, the UAE spent considerable resources lobbying US officials to endorse the 2013 military coup that brought a violent end to Egypts revolutionary moment and the tenuous transition to democracy dominated by the Muslim Brotherhoods political party.

The Emirati ambassador was revealed to have coordinated closely with the most hawkish pro-Israel think-tanks in Washington to promote a view of the Middle East that posits the conservative monarchies, military dictatorships, and Israel as the bulwark against Iranian expansionism and Sunni Islamists.

For its perceived role in promoting the Muslim Brotherhood, hosting members of Hamas political bureau, and taking a softer line on Iran, Qatar became a central target of the Saudi-Emirati-Israeli joint lobbying efforts.

Although this conflict has been simmering for the better part of a decade, it is clear from the rapid escalation over the past two weeks that Trumps visit signalled the green light for the aggressive action by the Saudi and Emirati bloc.

OPINION: Why is Egypt involved in the latest GCC crisis?

Within hours of Trumps Riyadh speech in which he lauded the anti-terror measures of some of the most notorious violators of human rights in the region, Bahraini security forces conducted one of their deadliest raids in many months, while Egyptian officials arrested a prominent human rights lawyer and clamped down further on alternative media outlets.

Whereas the Obama administration represented a significant obstacle to their agenda, Saudi leaders believe the opening provided by Trump has given them the opportunity to settle a score many years in the making.

Qatars original sin was in attempting to forge a path independent of Saudis traditional hegemony in the region. Since the mid-1990s, Qatar has tried to escape the looming Saudi shadow, at times by developing even closer ties with traditional Saudi allies like the United States, which relocated its militarys Central Command to Qatar after 9/11 and used it to launch the 2003 invasion of Iraq.





Qatar also gradually eclipsed Saudi Arabia as a regional leader entrusted to resolve civil disputes, frequently hosting warring factions from Afghanistan, Sudan, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories for reconciliation talks.

At other times, Qatar supported the emergence of alternative centres of power around the region, launching the Al Jazeera network in 1996 with the aim of bringing to light views that had been largely suppressed by regional dictatorships, including those of the Islamist opposition.

Most of the current accusations against Qatar date back to the years leading up to and during the Arab Spring uprisings that began in 2010. Unlike its neighbours, Qatar lent its support for the removal of authoritarian regimes in Egypt and Tunisia, and generally endorsed the possibilities offered by a new era of political openness for repressed populations around the region.

That support was quite often channelled through Islamist parties poised to take power in democratic elections such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the Ennahda Movement in Tunisia. Even amid questions surrounding Qatars actual motives for pursuing such a policy, or the fact that it stopped short of supporting the uprising in neighbouring Bahrain, Qatar was placed in the anti-establishment camp.

READ MORE: Timeline of Qatar-GCC disputes from 1991 to 2017

With the success of the counterrevolutionary wave and the total suppression of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and much of the region, the movement has ceased to have any effect on the regional order, which highlights the question: Why the current escalation?

Along with punishing Qatar for past offences, this battle appears to be more about crushing the last vestiges of hope for any independent political thought in the Middle East.

That would explain why, in its supposed battle against terrorism, the Saudi-Emirati bloc would target internationally established media organisations and research institutions and seek to ban prominent Arab intellectuals and thinkers.

The demands issued by Saudi and Emirati leaders have little to do with fighting terrorism and everything to do with barring all forms of dissent in a region where the rise of violent opposition has often been linked to the absence of political freedoms.

In supporting these measures, the Trump administration has demonstrated that the terrorist label remains little more than a foreign policy tool of the US and its allies.
The recent Qatar-GCC rift has to do with an attempt to impose a new leadership on the Palestinians, analysts say.

On Tuesday, Saudi Foreign Minister, Adel al-Jubeir, called on Qatar to end its support for the Gaza-based Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas. But it is Qatars strength as a regional player, rather than its support for Hamas, that is at the heart of the recent rift between some GCC countries and Qatar, analysts told Al Jazeera.

The pressure on Qatar is not to do with Hamas, but its the fact that it is a successful state that tries to engage in dialogue and it has been very successful in solving issues in the region, says Waleed al-Modallal, head of political science at the Islamic University of Gaza.

Qatar is a small country playing a big role in the region. That is what seems to have angered the bigger countries nearby, Modallal told Al Jazeera by phone from Gaza.

Jubeirs statements came shortly after Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, severed diplomatic ties and transport links with Qatar on Monday, with air, sea, and land borders shut down and Qatari diplomats and residents expelled from the neighbouring countries. Yemen, Libya, the Maldives, Mauritania, followed later and broke off diplomatic ties, as well.

Jordan also announced that it will downgrade its diplomatic representation in Qatar, and asked the Qatari ambassador to leave.

The rift is the worst to hit the Gulf states in decades.





Al-Jubeir told reporters in Paris on Tuesday that Qatar was undermining the Palestinian Authority and Egypt through its support of Hamas and the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood.

Hamas responded to Jubairs statements in a press release, stating: We express deep regret and indignation at the statements made by Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir against Hamas, which we consider to be alien to the kingdoms positions.

The movement said the ministers remarks are a shock to our Palestinian people and our Arab and Islamic nation, which considers the Palestinian cause its central cause.

We in Hamas call on the brothers in Saudi Arabia to stop these statements that harm the Kingdom and its positions towards the cause of our people and legitimate rights.

Qatar has long hosted Hamas political leaders in Doha and has provided large sums of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, which has undergone a decade-long Israeli blockade and three Israeli assaults that massively damaged its infrastructure.

READ MORE: Gazans worried by Qatari crisis

Some analysts interpreted Qatars diplomatic approach as supportive of Hamas, though Qatar repeatedly stated that its policy was one of engagement with all sides to push for peace.

Qatar is supportive of Gaza, not Hamas, and it has supported the Palestinian Authority in Gaza more than once. by Belal Shobaki, political analyst

Analysts say Qatars role has been to accommodate and support the Palestinian political players, namely Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, a semi-governmental body that administers the Israeli-occupied West Bank, rather than supporting one over the other.

We cannot speak of financial support. Qatar is only hosting Hamas and standing by it and its positions, said Modallal. Qatars position has been to balance between all the sides  it has supported the PA and Hamas. Qatar has  on multiple occasions  expressed its support of a two-state solution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Despite hosting Hamas political leaders, Qatars vision for peace was in direct contradiction with Hamas until recently when Hamas changed its long-held position on the two-state solution in a new political document.





In 2006, Qatar attempted to bridge the divide between Fatah, the ruling party of the PA, and Hamas, asking the movement to recognise the state of Israel and renounce violence as a form of resistance, which Hamas rejected. A year later, Qatar also hosted the former Israeli Vice Prime Minister Shimon Peres, where it tried to encourage Israel to negotiate directly with Hamas.

And, in the 2017 Arab League Summit in Jordan, Qatar was among the 22 member states that backed the Saudi-brokered Arab Peace Initiative, supportive of a two-state solution in return for normalisation of relations with Israel.

Qatar supports Gaza, not Hamas, and it has supported the Palestinian Authority in Gaza more than once, thus dismissing claims that Dohas support for Gaza is political support for Hamas, Hebron-based political analyst, Belal Shobaki told Al Jazeera.

READ MORE: The Muslim Brotherhood and Trumps terror list

And while the humanitarian support to Gaza may indirectly serve Hamas, Shobaki says that Doha saved the PA President Mahmoud Abbas authority from collapsing more than once when the deficit in the PA budget has been blocked.

Hamas links to the Muslim Brotherhood are also at heart of the Saudi foreign ministers statements, analysts say.

The US-allied Arab countries, Egypt, Saudi, and the UAE designated the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organisation. Although in its founding charter Hamas defined itself as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, the movement clarified its position in the new document describing itself as a purely Palestinian movement.

READ MORE: Hamas decries Trumps terror allegation

The other angle, says Shobaki, is the UAE-Egyptian interest in imposing a new leadership on the Palestinian people, referring to Mohammed Dahlan, a controversial figure whose membership in the Fatah Central Committee was revoked after an exchange of corruption claims between himself and Mahmoud Abbas.

Living in exile in Dubai, Dahlan has forged relations with Egyptian and Emirati leaders who have reportedly backed a plan for his takeover of the Palestinian presidency after Abbas.

The target of this Gulf and Egyptian pressure is not only Qatar, Hamas, the Brotherhood, but even the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, said Shobaki.

What is happening now is an attempt to impose a new leadership on the Palestinian people to be exported from Dubai, represented by Mohammed Dahlan, to pave the way for new concessions in relation to the Israeli occupation.
Jill Farrant first learned about resurrection plants when she was nine years old. A dead plant she had seen on her familys farm in Limpopo, South Africa, had come back to life after it had rained. The ded [sic] plant on the rocks was alive, but Dad said it was too soon after the rain, she wrote in her diary.

Now, more than four decades later, Farrant is the worlds leading expert on plants which can resurrect from a desiccated state after they are rehydrated. Some species of resurrection plants can live without water for years and rehydrate within hours after rain.

With droughts likely to become more common in Africa due to global warming, Farrant hopes her work can mitigate the effect of disrupted weather patterns on food security.

She wants to find out how resurrection plants can lose large amounts of water without dying  and then make crops do the same thing by switching on the genes responsible for inducing desiccation tolerance as well as those important for recovery from extreme water loss.

Al Jazeera spoke to Farrant about her research.

Al Jazeera: Where can your work on resurrection plants make the biggest difference?

Jill Farrant: In terms of what I want to do, Africa, Africa, Africa. We are a continent thats reliant on rain for our crops: we are already a poor continent so we cannot put in a lot of irrigation. It is also the continent where there is the greatest predicted food shortage compared to the population growth. The United Nations has projected the African population to double to 2.4 billion by 2050, while global warming is likely to worsen droughts and reduce crop yields. But apart from all of that, it is my passion to do this for Africa.

Al Jazeera: Will resurrection crops put an end to famines caused by droughts?

Farrant: No, definitely not. It can be a solution for only a small amount of crops that are going to help with food security. People are thinking about aeroponics, hydroponics, eating insects, eating all sorts of other foods. Resurrection crops is one solution of many  but I think it is a very important one.

Al Jazeera: What would you tell people who oppose your research because they take issue with genetically modifying plants?

Farrant: Without trying to be rude, they are very ignorant about the subject. Genetic modification of plants is probably the safest kind of GM, yet it is the most vilified one. The crops that we are eating [today] are highly genetically modified. Through conventional breeding, thousands of gene changes happened without us knowing that we were doing GM all along.

The second thing I would say is that the way I am planning to do this is not by putting in any new genes, but by activating genes that are already in the plant. Finally, anything we eat gets a high level of scrutiny. There are a lot of things that are going to have to happen before we allow [these crops] in the fields.

Al Jazeera: How is the Trump presidency affecting your work?

Farrant: It has the potential to have a huge impact because a lot of people in the world listen to what America is doing. I collaborate with scientists in the US who are terrified about what is going to happen to their funding in key areas of research, particularly agricultural research. I would like to think that Trump is an exception, but he has a very strong say and strongly dominates public opinion. If more people buy into what he is saying and what he is saying is without proof, were in trouble.

Al Jazeera: Is the momentum for research into countering the effects of climate change increasing?

Farrant: The momentum has been increasing hugely. Ive seen an enormous passion to tackle key agricultural issues that we are facing around the world. But one of the things Ive noticed is that plant scientists are not given as much credibility as medical scientists or anyone who might tell us more about ourselves or animals. So I think that us in the field feel very urgent about it, but Im still in doubt about whether our funders feel urgent about it as well.

Al Jazeera: What goal are you working towards now?

Farrant: Right now, my biggest goal is to get money to do the research that I think still needs to be done to get proof of concept, switching on certain genetic pathways in crops that we believe might improve their tolerance of water loss.

Most plants dont tolerate much water loss. They have very good ways of avoiding or resisting it, but I want to push them beyond that 50 percent barrier where they would all die, and then be able to bring them back to life with rehydration. If I had all the pairs of hands and all the money I needed, my collaborator and I have estimated that within five to 10 years we could get to the proof of concept stage.
President Rouhani calls for unity to fight terror, but Revolutionary Guard vows revenge after attack killed 12 people.

Armed attackers and suicide bombers have targeted two of the most important national symbols of Iran, leaving at least 12 people dead and throwing the country into a state of unease, amid already heightened regional tensions.

Wednesdays attack on the national parliament and the shrine of the Islamic Republics founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini were unprecedented actions against state institutions in recent years, and it could reverberate across the Middle East, said Reza Khaasteh, a journalist of the Tehran-based Iran Front Page.

We did not have any similar attack in Iran for a long time, Khaasteh told Al Jazeera. This one is like those that happened in Europe.

READ MORE: Iran and ISIL top priority for Iraq-US relations

If links to foreign sources are found, it can be an escalation, he said.

The armed group, Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS), said its fighters carried out the attack.

All four suspects involved in the parliament siege are dead, and the three others at the Khomeini shrine were killed.

Al Jazeera could not independently confirm the claim that they were ISIL fighters.

Until the attack on Wednesday, Iran has been fighting against ISIL in Iraq and Syria. However, during Ramadan in 2016, the Iranian government reported that it foiled a major ISIL plot within the country.

There were numerous attempts by ISIL elements to enter Iran for terrorist operations. But all of them have been diffused. This time, we do not know what will happen, Khaasteh said.

Following the attack, Irans Revolutionary Guard vowed revenge against ISIL and its supporters, even as the countrys Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the firecrackers would not affect the will of the nation.

After calling an emergency security meeting, President Hassan Rouhani called on world leaders to unite to combat extremism.

Cowardly attackers

But the attack, which left at least 39 people injured, was a clear assault on both secular and religious pillars of the Iranian society, said Amir Havasi, a journalist at Tehrans leading English-language financial newspaper.

The parliament is a symbol of Irans struggle against monarchy and enforcing the Constitution, and the [Khomeini] mausoleum is a symbol of the revolutions triumph, Havasi told Al Jazeera.

Sitting next to Tehrans largest mosque in the central part of the city, the pyramid-like structure known as Baharestan, houses the 290-seat unicameral parliament, or the Majlis.

The actual attack took place in an adjoining building, where the offices of the parliament members are located. Reports said the attackers failed to reach the main hall.





Images and videos posted online showed shots flying out from the upper floors of the building, as special forces and police fought off the attackers for several hours.

Afterwards, Irans Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani denounced the cowardly attackers, even as he downplayed it as a minor incident.

Iran is an active and effective hub for combating terrorism, and terrorists wish to undermine such activities, he was quoted by Mehr News Agency as saying.

The other attack hit the Khomeini shrine, which houses the tomb of the revered architect of the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the countrys first supreme leader, who died in 1989.

The complex, located about 30km south of the city and halfway to Tehrans main international airport, attracts hundreds of thousands of pilgrims every year. It was also hit by a suicide attack in 2009.

In the latest incident, one of the attackers was caught on phone camera blowing up an explosive, as shots rang out and visitors ran for protection.

It was unclear if all the attackers at the shrine were also killed. According to an earlier report, two attackers were arrested.

Authorities also said it prevented a third attack, but did not disclose the location.

Audacious attack

Javad Zarif, Rouhanis foreign minister, who is in Ankara to meet Turkish leaders, condemned the attack saying terrorism is a problem in the Middle East and the rest of the world.

The region is witnessing worrisome developments for us, he told reporters.

Out in the streets of Tehran, political analyst Amir Havasi told Al Jazeera it was back to normal after the attack.

From what I have seen so far, ordinary life is continuing. People are still taking the subway, using public transportation, he said.

Still, the audacious attack on Wednesday raises questions about security in the Iranian capital, which is known as a safe city, said Al Jazeeras Andrew Simmons, who has extensively covered Iran, including the latest presidential election.

Here, we have a credibly well-planned attack, he said. Why did these people slipped through the net?

Tehran is always been known as a safe city. Its people are not used to this sort of attack. What the government faces right now is a security problem.

He said it could result in the newly re-elected and moderate president taking a harder line on the issue of security and surveillance.

Rouhani thought the economy is his biggest problem. Now security could well end up at the top of his [agenda].
Around half of the British population consider the future of the NHS to be the most important issue going into the vote.

Like many other staff in the UKs National Health Service (NHS), Dr Aisha Awan is prepared to go beyond the call of duty, staying after her shift ends to continue treating and checking up on patients.

The GP (General Practitioner) from Manchester explained that a medic on duty finds it difficult to walk away, and junior doctors in particular work vastly above the hours in their contracts.

The vast majority of people who work in the NHS go above and beyond just because they believe in the system, she told Al Jazeera.

While its staff have faith in the system, they are not without anxiety about its future.

For Awan, the seven years since the Conservative Party took power have been marked by a lack of funding and political commitment to the NHS.

READ MORE: Major disruption as UK hospitals hit by cyberattack

Ive seen what it was like before and after the Conservative government, she said.

What Ive seen consistently over the last seven years is a lack of investment in the NHS.

There is a lack of commitment towards the future of the National Health Service.

The by Dr

have destroyed the morale of NHS frontline staff, creating shortages of staff and therefore a more dangerous environment to work in]

Hers is an opinion shared by many other doctors.

Dr Enam Haque, a lecturer at the University of Manchester Medical School, said government mismanagement has caused a severe deterioration in the level of care the NHS provides.

The Tories [Conservatives] have destroyed the morale of NHS frontline staff, creating shortages of staff and therefore a more dangerous environment to work in, he told Al Jazeera.

The root cause is chronic underfunding by the Tories.

They have reduced funding to the NHS at a time when chronic disease is rising with the ageing population.

RELATED: NHS England at a glance

Free healthcare for all

Founded in 1948 by the Labour government of Clement Attlee and his Health Minister Aneurin Nye Bevan, the NHS operates on the principle of providing free healthcare to all those who require it irrespective of their wealth and social background.

Today, the service employs more than a million people and is considered a national institution by most Britons.

As the general election approaches, around half of the country considers its fate the top issue heading into the vote, according to polling company YouGov.

Roberta Bivins, a cultural historian of the NHS at Warwick University, told Al Jazeera the service carries a deeper significance for Britons than just providing free treatment.

Since its origins in 1948, the NHS has been taken as the living symbol of the nations commitment to equalitarianism, to the idea of a society in which all citizens are equally able to achieve their fullest potential, she said.

Since the NHS operates as the symbol and guarantor of equality, at least in terms of healthcare, the perception that it is threatened brings with it considerable anxiety, and prompts passionate debate. by Roberta Bivins, Warwick University

The British public has been repeatedly exposed to claims that the NHS is under threat, she explained, adding that as a result there is a fear that the country may one day end up with a system like the one in the US.

Popular culture often suggests that the only alternative to the NHS is US-style private medicine, with all its inequalities of access and health outcomes.

Since the NHS operates as the symbol and guarantor of equality, at least in terms of healthcare, the perception that it is threatened brings with it considerable anxiety, and prompts passionate debate.

That fear of a US-style system was evident in conversations with Awan, who used the example of the recent Manchester bombing to stress the importance of what the NHS provides.

One thing that really hit me after the bombing was an American who put up a very poignant post online. That if the victims of this horrible atrocity had been in America, the families wouldnt just be dealing with the awful incident, she said.

Within 24 hours they would have received an ambulance bill and [been] asked Are you insured for this procedure?.

What happened in our city really makes me value the NHS.

Privatisation fears

The extent to which the British healthcare system is moving towards the US model is the subject of intense debate in the UK.

Current Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt was one of the co-authors of a policy book titled Direct Democracy: An Agenda For A New Model Party, which called for the de-nationalisation of the NHS and its replacement with an insurance-based system, such as in the US.

Hunt denies that he is a supporter of a privatised healthcare system and the Conservatives have pledged annual real-term increases for the NHS, but critics say the size of the increase is the lowest it has been since the service was founded.

In the financial year ending in 2010, 111.7bn pounds ($144bn) was spent on the NHS, and the 2021 budget is set to be 126.5bn pounds ($163bn).

READ MORE: NHS wants ethnic minorities to donate organs

The Kings Fund, a charity working to improve healthcare in the UK, says spending on the NHS grew roughly four percent a year from its establishment until 2010.

After the Conservatives came to power, that yearly increase will average 1.1 percent between 2010 and 2021.

The charity warns that as demand for services continues to grow, there will be increasing pressure on the NHS owing to insufficient funding.

Bad policy and mismanagement

New York Universitys Andrew Seaton, a historian of the NHS, said the British healthcare system is not alone in facing challenges and that its problems had both a domestic and international dimension.

The increased technologisation of medicine, rising expectations by individuals as to what care they deserve to receive, the shift from acute disease to morbid disease, particularly cancer, being among the primary causes of mortality, and longer average life expectancies have all combined to push up medical costs throughout the world, he said.

The NHS is an institution that regularly polls higher than the Armed Forces and Royal Family as the thing that makes people most 'proud' to be British, so there's a great deal of goodwill to draw on in addressing its problems. by Andrew Seaton, New York University

These, he added, were problems that transcended the funding models countries used, whether they be insurance-based or state-funded.

Domestically, he said there were particular dynamics within the British system that help or hinder the situation of the NHS, one of which is the services reliance on the state to underwrite most of its spending.

Historically, Labour governments have proved far more willing to pump money into the NHS than the Conservatives, especially under the Blair and Brown Labour governments between 1997 and 2010, Seaton said, adding that increased spending had brought about higher patient satisfaction.

But money alone does not account for the difficulties, according to Seaton, with bad policy and mismanagement also factors.

The Conservative Health and Social Care Act 2012 was the most sweeping transformation of the NHS since its birth, costing millions that could have been more wisely spent elsewhere, he said.

Seven years of Conservative government have demoralised many working within the service, he added. But he didnt reserve his criticism for the Conservatives alone.

On the other side, the Labour Party have been weak since they left government and have not articulated a clear vision for the service or held the government suitably to account for their failings. There is a vacuum of leadership on this issue.

For Seaton, predictions about the end of the NHS are premature owing to the level of feeling the British people have towards it, nevertheless he said there was a need to boost its finances.

The NHS is an institution that regularly polls higher than the Armed Forces and Royal Family as the thing that makes people most proud to be British, so theres a great deal of goodwill to draw on in addressing its problems.
With food insecurity a hot-button issue in UK politics, the individuals who survive on food aid share their stories.

London, United Kingdom  On a weekday morning in west London, mugs are clinking as volunteers prepare tea and pastries at a local community centre. Only a short walk from the affluent neighbourhood Maida Vale, people are preparing for the weekly drop-in food bank, where those referred by social services can receive bags of non-perishable goods and toiletries.

There are now an estimated 2,000 food banks operating across the UK, some run by charities, others by churches, schools and hospitals.

Years of austerity and an increasingly adversarial welfare state have caused the numbers of individuals and families reliant on food aid to soar. The Trussel Trust, which operates around 400 food banks, said it gave out almost 1.2 million three-day emergency food supplies in the past year, up from only 41,000 in 2010.

Most of those referred are benefit recipients who are suffering from delays or punitive sanctions from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). Those sanctioned receive a reduction or suspension of their payments, often leaving them without a sufficient income to feed themselves.

Food insecurity is a hot-button issue in UK politics and has featured heavily in the campaign before Thursdays general election. Members of Parliament from the ruling Conservative Party have been criticised for saying they are really pleased we have food banks or suggesting those using them are suffering a cash-flow problem.

When asked during an interview with state broadcaster, the BBC, why some nurses must use food banks to get by, Prime Minister Theresa May explained there are many complex reasons, which earned her widespread derision.

READ MORE: UK election: Is this the NHS election?

Scrapping punitive sanctions

The main opposition Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn has been eager to press the topic, repeatedly raising it at rallies, debates and during television interviews.

Its manifesto promises a raft of welfare reforms with the aim of reducing reliance on food banks. These include the scrapping of punitive sanctions against benefit recipients and the reduction of delays in processing claimants under the new streamlined Universal Credit benefit system.

Labour has also proposed the abolition of the bedroom tax, which reduces housing benefit for residents of a council property who are deemed to have a spare bedroom. The much-maligned policy was intended to free up housing for those in overcrowded dwellings, but a Newcastle University study concluded it increased poverty and had broad-ranging adverse effects on health, well-being and social relationships.

Since Ive been here, two years in September, its pretty much doubled, says Tara Osman, the manager of the North Paddington Food Bank, noting a significant increase since last November, when further benefit cuts came into effect.

Weve got people here in the community with no money and we have people who have some money but are struggling.

After picking up some bags of cereal, bread and canned food  donated by local supermarkets and bakeries  Leo, a lifelong resident of the area, explains how he began using the service.

After 14 years of driving for Royal Mail, his girlfriend became seriously ill, and he lost his job last July while acting as her carer before she passed away from liver cirrhosis. Though he consistently looked for driving work through friends and contacts, he was unfamiliar with computers and did not have a CV. He was sanctioned twice for a total of six months for not seeking work, receiving only 26 British pounds, or $33, in this period.

If this food bank werent open, I could guarantee Id be locked up in prison, he says. Youve got to go out shoplifting. Thats all you can do. There have been days where Ive been indoors and had no toiletries and no food. For three or four days, Ive starved myself to death.

Hes thankful for the effort put in by volunteers at the community centre, but finds his situation isolating and depressing. Without money to socialise, he rarely leaves his apartment.

You cant go out for a drink. Your social lifes completely finished. You dont go out at all, the 48-year-old says.

READ MORE: UK election  Croydon Central, Labours must-win seat

Dispel the stigma

Around a table, several volunteers discuss how common it is for people to approach the threshold of the building, only to begin crying or to turn away. They often have to be coaxed in, Osman says.

Though community organisers do their best to dispel the stigma, many of those who are eligible for food aid still refuse to accept it out of shame or embarrassment.

Debbie, who works with an addiction treatment charity, is here on behalf of her daughter, who is recovering from post-natal depression and has had her benefits delayed.

Because shes only 20, she has a bit of a stigma about coming here, she says.

She has watched the election coverage keenly, but has been disappointed with much of what shes seen.

[Politicians] try to pretend there arent any food banks and theyre not needed, she says calmly, over a cup of tea in the centre, her voice edged with frustration. Its people from our own community giving and supporting because we see the reality of what is happening.

Debbie plans to vote Labour, but believes the government needs to address the wider issue of underfunding in health, education and housing.

I dont think [the election] will change anything. I dont think whats happening in this country is going to be a quick fix, and I worry about generations coming after us.

READ MORE: Intrigue surrounds the electoral trajectory of Scotland

Frozen benefits

Those with long-term illnesses and disabilities are particularly vulnerable to incorrect assessment by the DWP.

Over half of disabled people declared fit to work successfully appealed DWP decisions. Former civil servants who worked as assessors in the DWP have revealed how they were obliged to pressure claimants into looking for jobs even when they were aware of their inability to work.

Ive got some serious illnesses but those serious illnesses dont come under the category of what theyre asking for in the DWP, says James, 52, who has been homeless for over a decade.

With Conservatives in, homeless people and people that are coming to food banks have got no chance. by James, 52, has been homeless for over a decade

Despite suffering from testicular cancer, pancreatitis, duodenitis, gout, arthritis and a painkiller addiction, James has been ruled fit to work.

He is challenging this decision through the courts, but his benefits have been frozen for eight months, forcing him to spend all his savings.

You cant be treating people like this when they fail, and theres a lot of people out there that are failing and theyre walking through this door every day, he says.

James did not receive information on how to register to vote without a fixed address, but hopes Corbyn might bring some welcome change from the new status quo.

With Conservatives in, homeless people and people that are coming to food banks have got no chance, James says. Theyre causing people to have mental health problems instead of helping people with them.

READ MORE: Homeless in Manchester  Bursting at the seams

Lack of compassion

Users of this west London food bank spoke frequently about the byzantine nature of the benefits system, with endless applications and re-applications to different schemes, which can take months only to leave them back where they started. The centre, like many others, also runs an information clinic, where volunteers offer guidance on applications and sanctions.

Ken, 54, worked as a systems analyst for IBM, a tech multinational corporation, for several years  travelling the world before his wifes illness and his own epilepsy left him unable to find work. He is now a full-time carer for his wife, who cannot feed or bathe herself, and is waiting for a liver transplant.

While being moved from the Personal Independence Payment disability allowance to the new Universal Credit system, they have not received benefits in five weeks and have been told it may take a further two months before payments resume.

Attempts to resolve this have failed and he has not yet been able to receive a carers allowance, leaving him in debt to friends and family.

He could scarcely believe Prime Minister Mays comments about complex reasons when he saw them on television.

The reason you go to a food bank is because youre f***ing hungry and you havent got enough food, he says. Thats it. You dont go there by choice. Its kind of demeaning. If there were any alternative you would take it.

Theres no compassion at all. I think Corbyns got it. I genuinely do, but he wont get in.

Though Ken will vote Labour, he lives in nearby Kensington, one of Londons wealthiest areas and a predictably Conservative seat. As a result, he thinks its unlikely hell be represented by anyone familiar with the sharp end of the benefits system.

Well be strolling down the road with our little bag of Pop-Tarts or whatever and someone will scream past us in a Lamborghini, he says.
Last month, as Donald Trump danced with Saudi princes and scolded European leaders, the United States Agency for Aid and Development (USAID) released its budgetary request for the 2018 fiscal year. The document, which presents an argument of sorts to American politicians for why it is necessary to commit money for international development, makes for interesting reading.

The very first argument listed by the agency is that the requested money will enable USAID to help defeat ISIS and other terrorist organizations, threats and networks. In the short explanation appended, USAID claims that the $2.5bn being requested will permit the agency to target the root causes of violent extremism, rebuild economic opportunities and good governance.





It all sounds very good and admittedly it feels harsh to berate the well-intentioned bureaucrats at USAID for their attempt to tie their budgetary requests to what the Trump administration has decided will be its number one goal. What sounds good in intention, however, is rarely good in actuality. So it is with this latest claim, one that belies all existing evidence that pairing bombings with development agendas is wasteful at best and a decrepit example of neo-imperialist deception at worst.

Bombing one corner of a country while doling out development dollars in other parts not only fails to accomplish development goals, it taints development programmes. Womens education, childhood vaccination, even better roads become associated with selling out and caving in, goodies paid for in the lives of dead fellow citizens.

Nullifying development goals

Examples of this dynamic abound in countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan, the largest recipients of US development aid. In Afghanistan, the site of USAIDs last attempt to defeat terror with development, millions of dollars were wasted when USAID went to war with the Taliban.

In 2015, the agency implemented the Rural Stabilization Programs, aimed at helping the Afghan Government to reach into unstable areas and build local governance capacity. Unstable here referred to, among other things, areas where there was significant Taliban activity. Following implementation of the programme, an oversight agency was tasked with reviewing whether the USAID programmes had accomplished their goal.

READ MORE: How US security aid to PA sustains Israels occupation

Their report, compiled from data from hundreds of districts, found that stability was actually lower in those villages that had received USAID support. In addition to the fact that the villages that received no aid from USAID were better off in stability, the report also found that there was actually increased support for the Taliban in the areas that had been the recipients of USAID stabilisation funds. The programme, which cost more than $300m, is scheduled to continue until February 2018.

If the language of its budgetary request is any evidence, for USAID development seems only a secondary goal, while alignment with the ISIL-crushing strategic priorities of the Trump administration is a primary one. by

The results reveal the truth that most people in conflict zones already know: bombing one portion of the country and providing stabilisation funding to another not only nullifies development goals but actually helps terrorist recruitment. At the core of the issue, however, lies the central question of whether development aid can and should be an instrument of foreign policy and military goals.

Most in the United States, of administrations past and present, not only support such a marriage, they insist that it can be a harmonious one. In their view, the US is committed to a free market economy and to democracy, so it should invest development dollars in creating more societies in its own image.

The premise seems unproblematic in theory, an easy statement of purpose that may very likely be workable. In practice, however, post-9/11 development dollars disbursed by USAID have been accompanied by military interventions. The recipients have received destruction and development in a single package.

This can be seen in the headlines from the same week in which USAID released its budgetary request to Congress. On May 25, only two days after USAID released its budgetary request, a Pentagon investigation found that a US air strike that targeted a building in the Iraqi city of Mosul in March had killed over 100 civilians  the largest number killed in a single incident since 2014.

The US had initially denied that it had undertaken any strikes at all in Mosul. Nothing was said even when locals reported that nearly 200 people had been killed by the bomb. Two long months had to pass before the Pentagon admitted that the US did in fact strike the building, that the strike took place in a very crowded area of the city and that, yes, a large number of civilians, people already pummelled by the incursion of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS), had died.

READ MORE: Trump budget  UN sounds alarm over foreign aid cuts

The news of the strike and the accidental killing of more than a hundred civilians is relevant to the discussion of USAID and aid in general, because it points to exactly the sort of actions the US attempts to cover up with development activity.

Aid as bribe

The US sees no disconnect between bombing one portion of the country (and inevitably killing civilians) and showering aid projects on another and imagining the pain from lost lives to be thus extinguishable. Receiving populations do not buy this transactional crossing out of pain with projects; they are smart enough to assess the cost of a school or a health clinic or a road in comparison to the lives of countrymen they have lost. It is a grisly calculus and its macabre nature betrays the truth that militarised aid, aid as a function of a super-powers strategic interests, is in reality a bribe and not aid at all.

To achieve development goals, actual uplift of societies, actual improvement of governance, commitment must be to development first and accomplishment of strategic and other objectives last. As the example of USAID and the Rural Stabilization Programs in Afghanistan exposes that people, poor and desperate as they may be, know when you are trying to buy their allegiance and most wont sell it.

USAID does not agree. If the language of its budgetary request is any evidence, for USAID development seems only a secondary goal, while alignment with the ISIL-crushing strategic priorities of the Trump administration is a primary one. Facing a large budgetary cut and a re-organisation that would place it within the US Department of State rather than as an independent agency, USAID bureaucrats have decided to bow before the administration and say what is necessary to save their jobs. The loser in this equation is development itself, a goal that was already becoming marginal because of the post 9/11 militarisation of US development aid and that is now completely abandoned in the rage-filled era of Trump.

Rafia Zakaria is an attorney and author of The Upstairs Wife: An Intimate History of Pakistan; and Veil.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
The rapid escalation of tensions in the Gulf over the past week is a serious and deeply troubling moment in the history of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). But make no mistake, the GCC will survive this most severe of crises and it will ride out the storm as it has done many times in the past.

Since its inception in 1981, the GCC has never been a perfectly functioning body. The six states that comprise it still struggle to coordinate on economic, security and infrastructure matters, and have on many occasions clashed over the demarcation of borders and allocation of joint resources. However, like all families despite its myriad of disagreements and problems, the GCC holds together.





Although there can be no doubt that the GCC as a bloc will suffer reputational damage from this particularly serious episode, the hope on all sides is that the problem can be resolved quickly. For Qatar especially, hemmed in by land border closures and restrictions over regional airspace, it will be necessary to reach a quick and amicable compromise.

Nevertheless, bringing Qatar back into the fold and away from its current policies is unlikely to change the dynamics within the GCC very much. As expected, Kuwait has sought to mediate the dispute, while Oman has stayed out entirely, leaving Manama, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi to form a united front against Qatar.

The Iran factor

One of the key issues underpinning the decision by Saudi Arabia the UAE and Bahrain to isolate Qatar centres on its perceived softness toward Iran, and comments attributed to the Emir that Doha maintained good relations with Tehran. Comments that the Qataris strenuously deny were ever made.

The GCC is primarily still a collective security organisation, and the challenge of the Islamic Republic of Iran is still the biggest threat to its interests. With regard to Iran, Qatar has gone off message. And Riyadh -currently in the midst of a regional power struggle against Iran in Yemen, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq  is particularly aggrieved that a Gulf ally would stray off course.

READ MORE: Qatar-Gulf rift: The Iran factor

But regardless of what media pundits and talking heads say over the coming days, the GCC is not unified in its policies toward Iran, and it has never been. Kuwait seeks a balance in its own relations with Tehran, as does Oman which frequently plots an independent path, while Dubai relies on Iranian trade for one third of its economic productivity. In fact, it is the Qataris who by and large struggle to reconcile their distrust of Iran with the need to formulate pragmatic policy toward it. To this extent, the Qatari view of Iran is far closer to Saudi than elsewhere in the Gulf.

More problems in the future will surely lie ahead, but alarmist analyses misunderstand that in the Gulf disagreements subside with time, no matter how severe. by

Outside of the Gulf, the GCC has maintained a much more aggressive posture vis-a-vis Iran, most importantly of all fighting the Iranian-supported Houthis in Yemen. With the exception of Oman, which prefers a quietist approach, there is very little daylight between the other Gulf nations and the belief is that Iranian interference in the region must be resisted at all costs. Qatar does not sit outside the GCC consensus on this issue, and it is likely that in the coming months Qatar will restart its contribution to Saudi-led operations in Yemen, after having been removed from the coalition following this recent flare-up in tensions.

Political Islam

Another important reason for Qatars isolation centres on the perceived threat of political Islam to the Gulf monarchies. This is perhaps the biggest point of difference between Qatar and the UAE, and also explains why Egypt has decided to cut ties with Qatar.

Qatars policies post the 2011 revolutions in the Arab world saw it courting a whole host of actors, many of whom had Islamist connections. This is a particular bone of contention for the UAE and Egypt, who are deeply unhappy with Qatari behaviour. It is likely that on this file Doha will have to bend to the GCCs collective will. Simply put, Abu Dhabi and Riyadh will not back down until Qatar divorces itself from its regional alliances.

OPINION: Why is Egypt involved in the latest GCC crisis?

Important to note is the influence of powerful international actors in the West who guarantee the Gulfs security. Although US President Donald Trump has waded into the diplomatic furore, clearly signalling his displeasure with Qatar, US assets in the country are too valuable to risk. The US, United Kingdom and France are highly unlikely to take sides in this dispute. Likewise, eastern energy consumers China and Japan are unlikely to jeopardise their own energy security by breaking off relations with the Qataris, and a swift return to business as usual is in the interest of all parties.

Although the current situation is severe, the GCC will not emerge a fundamentally altered structure, nor will its collective deterrence be enhanced. More likely to emerge is the same slightly dysfunctional GCC structure, just with a quieter Qatar, more likely to play by the rules and tamp down its regional ambitions. Given that Riyadh already leads the GCC on a number of files  for example in Yemen, Syria and Horn of Africa- this will actually make little structural difference to the Middle Easts regional politics, the regions myriad problems and unstable nature remain.

The question for Saudi Arabia, in particular, is what to do about all these problems once this spat with Qatar is over, and how best to mobilise the GCC to deal with those problems. For all the goodwill Mr Trump has shown Riyadh, it is unclear how this favour is transformed into a genuine policy to roll back Iran from the region, as well as to stabilise five Arab countries that are havens for non-state actors, including the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) and al-Qaeda. In order to turn their eye toward fixing these problems, the last thing the Saudis need is a lengthy argument with Qatar.

The GCC will come back together after the storm, bruised and battered but not broken. More problems surely lie ahead in the future, but alarmist analyses misunderstand that in the Gulf disagreements subside with time, no matter how severe.

Michael Stephens is a research fellow for Middle East studies and head of the Royal United Services Institute in Qatar.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
The GCC is in crisis, but with a little help from Kuwait, the cooperation can still turn this rift in to an opportunity.

Riyadh, along with a number of GCC and allied capitals, has cut diplomatic relations with Doha on Monday. This followed an alleged statement by the emir of Qatar on regional politics, which triggered a backlash from Saudi and Emirati media outlets. The Qatari government denied the statement, claiming their national news agency was hacked. Shortly thereafter, the Saudi government accused Doha of several charges, ranging from supporting terrorism in the region to cosying up to Iran.





While the two countries were able to contain their policy differences through diplomatic means for the better part of the four decades since the establishment of the Gulf Cooperation Councils (GCC), there have been previous precedents to the current Riyadh-Doha rift. In 1992, for example, the two neighbours had a border skirmish. More recently, Saudi Arabia, along with United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain, withdrew its ambassador from Doha back in 2014.

However, the recent rift marks two unparalleled developments. First, we are witnessing the most coordinated effort, led by Saudi Arabia and fully supported by the UAE, against Qatar. Recently leaked emails show that the UAE ambassador in Washington is playing a key role in this campaign.

The second development has even more noteworthy consequences. Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt closed land, air, and sea traffic routes to Qatar. While Doha will be able to overcome the financial burden in the foreseeable future, this will likely put significant economic as well as psychological pressure on Qatar. The question remains: why the Saudis are stepping up their actions against Qatar? And why now?

OPINION: Why is Egypt involved in the latest GCC crisis?

The Saudi camp seems to be running out of patience for the same Doha policies that triggered the 2014 diplomatic crises. In my view, the Saudis have three main demands: Ejecting Muslim Brotherhood leadership as well as other prominent figures from Doha, neutralising the Qatari media, especially Al Jazeera, towards the Gulf states and Egypt and moulding Qatars regional policies so they do not collide with Saudi/Emirati interests. While Qatar is expected to offer concessions, it will deem some of these demands as a violation of its sovereignty.

This rift can be an opportunity for all members to bring their differences to the surface. An effective internal discussion, followed by concrete trust-building measures could lead to a stronger GCC. by

The US factor

The timing of the campaign is also interesting, as it followed the Arab-Islamic-American summit in Riyadh. It is possible to argue that the Saudi camp sought to use its renewed partnership with the US to modify Qatars policies once and for all.

But it is also necessary to evaluate the US position in the region. Qatar, after all, is the home of the largest US military base in the region. I think the Trump administration is implicitly pleased to see the Qataris sweat this crisis out. From Washingtons point of view, this crisis may help Doha to fully understand the importance of the American presence, and to modify some of its regional policies that are not aligned with US interests.

In the American capital, some view Dohas support for political Islam to be at odds with its relations with the United States. Only hours after Riyadh and UAEs announcement about severing ties with Doha, US Secretary of State Tillerson stated that he encourage[s] the parties to sit down together and address these differences  it is important that the GCC remain unified. It would be safe to say that a military activity on the Qatari-Saudi border is highly unlikely, and it would constitute a red line for the Pentagon. Also, the US government will not allow Doha to fall out of the American sphere of influence.

Kuwaiti mediation

When it comes to the GCC, it is clear that the current crisis a symptom of the long-term problems between Qatar, Saudi, UAE and Bahrain and does not effect the entirety of the cooperation. Kuwait and Oman did not  and are less likely to  cut relations with Doha. Both Kuwait and Oman are the only two members who never severed diplomatic ties with any other GCC states. In fact, the Kuwaiti leadership undertook shuttle diplomacy between Doha and Riyadh to end the 2014 diplomatic crisis.

Since the establishment of the GCC, Kuwait has always sought to keep the cooperation unified, and it was never hesitant to use its diplomatic capital to defuse tensions between other member states. This legacy allows Kuwait to be perceived as a credible mediator by other GCC countries. There is no doubt that Kuwait, led by Emir Sabah Al Ahmad, will intervene to de-escalate the current GCC rift.

READ MORE: Kuwaits ruler to meet Saudi King over Qatar row

Recently, the Kuwaiti emir called upon the emir of Qatar, Tamim Al Thani, to refrain from escalating the worst diplomatic rift among Gulf Arab states. He is also currently conducting diplomatic shuttles between Saudi Arabia and Qatar to reach a compromise between the two parties. But I think Kuwaits diplomatic success will mainly depend on the Qatari response to Saudi concerns.

Tough choices

Doha faces tough choices. If it does not address the concerns of the Saudi camp, it will be geographically isolated. Saudi Arabia could also push to freeze Qatars membership in the GCC. Over time, this will place an unprecedented geopolitical pressure on the Qatari policymakers. At worst, this could slide Qatar towards Iran. This would be an unintended consequence that neither Riyadh nor Doha aspire towards. If Doha gives in to all of the demands at once, the Qatari government might not be able to survive the humiliation at home. Giving in to all Saudi demands and handing sovereignty to Riyadh would be viewed as political suicide by many in Qatar.





But it is possible to find a middle ground. I think the Qatari government will be flexible and willing to negotiate on a broad range of topics, except shutting Al Jazeera down. To Doha, Al Jazeera is an asset to safeguard its interests. It is an instrument that makes Qatars voice heard effectively all over the Arab world. This, however, should not hinder the parties of the conflict from embarking on a constructive dialogue to address their differences and anxieties.

If and when they reach an actual compromise, they can implement the necessary changes over a period of 12 months. This will allow both parties to phase out the process, de-escalate tensions and make the necessary compromises more swallowable for everyone. It is critical for both Riyadh and Doha to seize the Kuwaiti conciliation efforts if they want to put an end to this crisis.

Today, the GCC faces its hardest challenge since its foundation. This rift can be an opportunity for all members to bring their differences to the surface. An effective internal discussion, followed by concrete trust-building measures could lead to a stronger GCC. Until that happens, the future of the GCC is gloomy.

Hamad Althunayyan is a PhD Researcher in Political Science at University of Maryland  College Park. He earned his BA in Political Science from Virginia Commonwealth University and MA in International Relations from American University  Washington, DC. He wrote several articles on Gulf security, Iran, and U.S. role in the region. Follow him on Twitter: @HAlthunayyan

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
South Koreas military says the launch appears to be barrage of land-to-ship missiles fired off Norths east coast.

North Korea fired what appeared to be multiple land-to-ship missiles off its east coast on Thursday, South Koreas military said.

The projectiles were launched Thursday morning from the North Korean coastal city of Wonsan, South Koreas Office of Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.

The missiles flew about 200km, it said.

Isolated but nuclear-armed, North Korea has test-fired a missile almost every week for the past few weeks.

North Korea fired multiple unidentified projectiles, assumed to be surface-to-ship missiles, this morning from the vicinity of Wonsan, Gangwon province, the Souths military said.

OPINION: Is war coming to North Korea?





The Japanese government also confirmed the missile launches, according to the Kyodo news agency.

We have not confirmed any immediate effect to our nations security, at this point. We will continue to coordinate with the United States and South Korea to gather and analyse information, and maintain a high level of alert, said Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida.

The statement by South Korea said the launches were immediately reported to President Moon Jae-in but gave no further details

The missile tests  and Pyongyangs threat to stage its sixth nuclear test  have prompted calls for tougher United Nations sanctions and a warning from US President Donald Trump that military intervention was an option under consideration.

The launches come less than a week after the UN Security Council passed new sanctions on the reclusive state, which said it would continue to pursue its nuclear and weapons programme without delay.

Pyongyang has slammed the latest UN sanctions as mean.

North Korea has conducted dozens of missile tests since the start of last year, as well as its fourth and fifth nuclear bomb tests.

It has said it is working to develop a nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of reaching mainland United States, presenting Trump with perhaps his most pressing security threat.

READ MORE: North Korea fires missile in third test in three weeks

The head of the US Missile Defense Agency, Vice Admiral James Syring, said on Wednesday that the technological advances demonstrated by North Korea in its ballistic missile programme over the past six months had caused him great concern.

Syring told a hearing of the US House Armed Services Committee that it was incumbent on his agency to assume that North Korea today could range the US with an ICBM carrying a nuclear warhead.





I would not say we are comfortably ahead of the threat; I would say we are addressing the threat that we know today, Syring said.

The advancements in the last six months have caused great concern to me and others, in the advancement of and demonstration of technology of ballistic missiles from North Korea. It is incumbent on us to assume that North Korea today can range the United States with an ICBM carrying a nuclear warhead.

North Koreas weapons tests are meant to build a nuclear and missile programme that can stand up to what it sees as US and South Korean hostility, but they are also considered by analysts as ways to make its political demands clear to leaders in Washington and Seoul.

OPINION: Will China intervene in North Korea?

These demands include the removal of nearly 30,000 US troops in South Korea meant to check North Korean aggression.

Professor Yang Moo-jin, of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, told AFP news agency: North Korea has been stepping up missile tests  in order to project an image to the world that international sanctions can never bring it to its knees.

It is also expressing displeasure of the arrival of a US nuclear submarine in South Korean.

The 6,900-tonne USS Cheyenne, whose home port is Pearl Harbor, arrived in the South Korea port of Busan on Tuesday.








US dangerously stoking tensions and a new arms race among Middle East neighbours, Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel says.

German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel accused US President Donald Trump of stirring up conflicts in the Middle East and risking a new arms race as Qatars neighbours cut ties with Doha.

Saudi Arabia and allies including Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain announced Monday they were severing diplomatic relations and closing air, sea and land links with Qatar.

The dispute comes less than a month after Trump visited Saudi Arabia and called for Muslim nations to unite against extremism.





US President Trumps recent giant military contracts which Gulf monarchies raise the risk of a new spiral in arms sales, Gabriel warned in an interview with the Handelsblatt daily to appear on Wednesday.

This policy is completely wrong and is certainly not Germanys policy, he added, in extracts of his interview released Tuesday. I am very concerned with the dramatic escalation and the consequences for the whole region.

Trump on Tuesday backed the regional efforts to isolate Qatar, supporting Saudi Arabia and its allies and suggesting the key US ally  home to the largest American airbase in the Middle East  has been funding extremism.

During his recent visit to Saudi Arabia, Trump signed arms contracts worth $110bn with Riyadh.

READ MORE: Qatar diplomatic crisis  All the latest updates

Gabriel warned against completely isolating Qatar and said the move is an attack on the Gulf states very existence.

Apparently, Qatar is to be isolated more or less completely and hit existentially. Such a Trumpification of relations in a region already susceptible to crises is particularly dangerous, Gabriel said.

He added the nuclear deal agreed with Iran in 2015 had allowed just such an escalation to be avoided.

A toxic conflict between neighbours is that last thing we need, Gabriel warned.

He will meet his Saudi counterpart Adel al-Jubeir in Berlin on Wednesday.
The decision comes following Turkeys refusal to allow German lawmakers access to visit soldiers in the Incirlik base.

The German cabinet backed the withdrawal of its troops from Incirlik airbase in southern Turkey, the German Minister of Defence Ursula von der Leyen said, following Ankaras refusal to allow German lawmakers access to its soldiers there.

The decision announced by the defence minister on Wednesday followed a lengthy impasse over the visits, which had increased friction between the NATO allies.

Germany plans to redeploy the 280 military personnel stationed at Incirlik, along with surveillance planes and refuelling jets, to an airbase in Jordan. However, it stressed it wants to minimise any disruption to the coalition operation against ISIL (the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, also known as ISIS).

Foreign deployments in Germany require parliamentary approval.

Lawmakers are still discussing whether the proposed withdrawal should be put to a parliamentary vote.

Von der Leyen said she would hold immediate talks with the United States army and the US-led coalition fighting ISIL to minimise the impact of the move and would brief the cabinet and parliament next week.

READ MORE: Germany angers Turkey with coup remarks and PKK rally

However, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said talks would continue with Turkey even after troops leave the airbase.

We have a huge range of common interests with Turkey, and also close economic relations, she told reporters after the decision.

Discussions are very necessary.

The withdrawal process for refuelling aircraft would take about two to three weeks and the relocation of reconnaissance jets two to three months.

German Minister of Foreign Affairs Sigmar Gabriel visited Turkey on Monday in a last attempt to convince Ankara to avert a pullout, however, Turkey had once again refused for domestic political reasons.

He said he wanted to avoid further hurting ties with Turkey and pushing it towards Russia.

Turkey was infuriated over German authorities decision to grant asylum to soldiers and other individuals that Turkey accuses of participating in a failed coup attempt last July.

Relations were further tested when Germany, citing security concerns, banned some Turkish politicians from campaigning on its soil and Turkey jailed two German journalists.
Qatars ambassador to US says Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain and Egypts severing of ties came as a shock and surprise.

Qatars ambassador to the United States, Meshal bin Hamad Al Thani, says he has hopes for a quick resolution to the ongoing diplomatic dispute with neighbouring Gulf countries.

Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates severed diplomatic ties and transport links with Qatar on Monday, accusing it of supporting extremism.

Talking to Al Jazeeras Shihab Rattansi in Washington, DC on Tuesday, Al Thani admitted the situation was deteriorating.

Al Jazeera: Just in the last few hours, more countries have distanced themselves from Qatar. This seems to be getting worse by the hour?

Meshal bin Hamad Al Thani: Indeed. This situation is becoming worse. We count on the mediation by His Highness, the Emir of Kuwait, and we hope that this crisis will be resolved very quickly.

READ MORE: Qatar diplomatic crisis  All the latest updates

Al Jazeera: But how can it be resolved quickly  it seems that Saudi Arabia, UAE want concessions on the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Iran and Al Jazeera. Is Qatar willing to move on all of these subjects?

Al Thani: Until now, after this act of aggression to Qatar, we havent received any justifications or motives or details on why such aggression is happening in the first place. We all met in Riyadh, and nothing was raised there.

Qatar took part in a very successful conference on countering terrorism. His Highness Sheikh Tamim attended this conference and signed on to establish a centre to combat financial terrorism. So we dont understand where this is coming from.





Al Jazeera: This isnt the first time that Qatar has been accused of funding terrorism, al-Qaeda-linked groups, and Syria and even ISIL.

Al Thani: There are certain institutions pushing arguments that Qatar is financing terrorism without any proof. What matters is the cooperation with the United States. Our cooperation with the US is very solid.

Al Jazeera: We understand Donald Trump called the Saudi King. Has he called the Emir of Qatar yet? How close is this cooperation with Trump? Because he is giving all these indications, that as far as he is concerned, the Saudis have convinced him that Qatar is not helping, and is in fact hindering, the fight against extremism.

Al Thani: Again, there is no ground for these accusations.

Al Jazeera: But the president appears to thinks there are, and that is quite a serious problem, isnt it?

Al Thani: I think the cooperation with the United States is long-standing, and it speaks for itself. There is good cooperation with institutions here in Washington

READ MORE: Saudi FM: Qatar must stop supporting Hamas, Brotherhood

Al Jazeera: So is the president irrelevant?

Al Thani: No, of course he is relevant. There is proof that Qatar is combating terrorism. In Riyadh, Qatar was commended when the president mentioned the Al-Udeid base and said the role of Qatar is crucial for the fight against terrorism.

Al Jazeera: Donald Trump hasnt contacted the Emir of Qatar since all of this blew up?

Al Thani: Not at this moment.





Al Jazeera: You mentioned the airbase. Is that a point of leverage in negotiations?

Al Thani: Not at all. Our commitment to the United States is a solid commitment. Our commitment to our allies and to regional efforts is solid. This is not at all a question.

Al Jazeera: What leverage does Qatar have?

Al Thani: Our leverage is that we are open and we are not afraid to say that if there is something wrong, we will fix it. However, no one came to us and said there is something wrong.

Al Jazeera: Has there been demands to kick out Hamas? Or close down Al Jazeera?

Al Thani: Our engagement with Hamas is an engagement in the context of the peace process. Thats very important to clarify. In order to start negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians, first we need to have reconciliation between the Palestinians themselves. And this is being done in coordination with the United States.

READ MORE: German FM blasts Trumpification of Qatar-GCC dispute

Al Jazeera: What do you think of the timing of all of this? Why now?

Al Thani: It came as a shock and a surprise.

Al Jazeera: Did Donald Trump perhaps embolden the Saudis to take this action?

Al Thani: Until we really know what their requests are, I cannot comment on that.





Al Jazeera: It was reported in the Financial Times that there was a ransom paid for an abducted hunting party in Iraq. US$700m goes to Iran and Shia militias, and US$300m goes to al-Qaeda-linked groups.

Al Thani: That is not true. The efforts were by the Qatari government, in coordination with the Iraqi government. No ransom went to militias. Again, all of this is based on fabrications.

We have to take into consideration the evolution of these fabrications. There was a campaign, starting in Washington, DC, against the State of Qatar.

Al Jazeera: From the UAE? Who is driving this?

Al Thani: I really dont know who is driving this campaign. But there is no doubt that there is a campaign against Qatar. Not only in Washington, DC, but in our region as well after the cyber-attack on the Qatar News Agency (QNA). I dont know who is behind this, but for sure, recent events in Washington, DC, and hacking of the emails of the ambassador of the UAE  [interrupted]

Al Jazeera: Do you think the Russians are behind this as has been reported by some channels?

Al Thani: The QNA hacking is still under investigation. I wouldnt come to a conclusion on it. But if I may, going back to the hacking of the UAE ambassadors emails  surprisingly it shows there is a sentiment against Qatar.

READ MORE: Qatar-Gulf rift  The Iran factor

Al Jazeera: Where is the room for compromise? It seems the Saudis and the UAE have a great deal of leverage on their side. Not least because of the geographical position of Qatar.

Al Thani: Again, there have been no requests yet. I would like to talk about, as you mentioned, our relations with Iran. Our relations with Iran is in line with the GCC. There is nothing out of the ordinary with Iran. It is a neighbouring country.

In terms of the Muslim Brotherhood, the state of Qatar has reiterated many times that there is no support to them. Unfortunately certain parties dont want to believe that.





Al Jazeera: Is there an endgame here from the Saudis? We have long heard that perhaps they want to get rid of the royal family of Qatar. Replace them with someone else?

Al-Thani: The royal family of Qatar has a very solid relationship with the people of Qatar. And thats what matters. Other than that, Qatar is open to discuss any issues that our brothers in the GCC feel  [interrupted]

Al Jazeera: So you could shift some of these position within the GCC on Iran or the Muslim Brotherhood or Hamas or Al Jazeera?

Al-Thani: As I told you, we can shift any position if we believe that this is the wrong position, and if the parties would sit with us and convince us that we are wrong.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
An aircraft carrying more than 100 people was flying over the Andaman Sea when it lost contact with air traffic control.

Pieces of a Myanmar military plane that went missing with more than 100 soldiers and family members aboard were found in the Andaman Sea late on Wednesday, a local official said.

Navy ships and aircraft had been searching since the afternoon when the plane lost contact with air traffic controllers.

More than a dozen children were believed to be among the passengers on the plane travelling from the southern city of Myeik to Yangon.

Now they have found pieces of the damaged plane in the sea 136 miles (218 km) away from Dawei city, said Naing Lin Zaw, a tourism official in Myeik, adding the navy was still searching the sea.

An air force source confirmed to AFP that a navy search and rescue ship had found pieces of the plane in the sea an hours flight south of Yangon, Myanmars commercial capital.

OPINION: Tough choices in Myanmar as a new era begins

The commander in chiefs office said the plane lost contact at about 1:35pm (07:05 GMT) off Myanmars southern coast.

There was conflicting information about the number of people on board.





General Myat Min Oo had earlier said the Chinese-made Y-8 aircraft was carrying 90 passengers  mostly families of military personnel  and 14 crew members when it went missing.

Giving an updated figure, the commander in chiefs office said 106 passengers were on board  soldiers and family members  along with 14 crew.

Four naval ships and two air force planes were sent to search for the plane, which was flying at an altitude of more than 18,000 feet (5,486 metres).

It is monsoon season in Myanmar but there were no reports of bad weather at the time the plane went missing.

We think it was a technical failure. Weather is fine there, an airport source told AFP, asking not to be named.

Poor safety record

The plane was a Y-8F-200 four-engine turboprop, a Chinese-made model still commonly used by Myanmars military for transporting cargo.

The army said it was delivered in March last year and had logged 809 flying hours.

The former military government bought many of the aircraft from Myanmars giant neighbour during their 50 years of isolated rule, when they were squeezed by Western sanctions.

A former executive at the aviation ministry said many of the aircraft in Myanmars fleet were old and decrepit.

Myanmar air force has very bad safety performance, he told AFP, asking to remain nameless.

Myanmars military fleet has a chequered history of plane crashes.

REPORTERS NOTEBOOK: The trouble with Aung San Suu Kyi

All five crew died when an air force plane burst into flames soon after taking off from the capital Naypyidaw in February last year.

Three army officers were killed in June when their Mi-2 helicopter crashed into a hillside and burst into flames in south-central Bago.

A surge in demand for air travel as Myanmar opens up has stretched the impoverished countrys aviation infrastructure, in particular in remote airports.

Commercial jets have also suffered frequent incidents.

The worst in recent years was in 2012 when an Air Bagan jet crash-landed in thick fog and burst into flames short of the runway at Heho airport, killing one passenger and a motorcyclist on the ground.
Family of Xavier Thomas, a Frenchman missing since attack on London Bridge, informed of discovery of body, police say.

Police searching for a Frenchman missing since Saturdays attack on London Bridge say they have recovered a body from the River Thames, potentially taking the death toll to eight.

The Metropolitan Police said the body was found on Tuesday downstream from the bridge.

Formal identification of the body has not taken place, but the family of 45-year-old Xavier Thomas has been informed of the discovery.

France said earlier on Wednesday that two of its citizens had died when three men drove a van into pedestrians on the bridge before going on a stabbing spree in the nearby Borough Market.

READ MORE: US politician says kill them all after London attack

Thomas was walking with his girlfriend over the bridge when the attack began. Witness accounts suggest Thomas might have been thrown into the river, police said.

His girlfriend was struck and seriously injured by the van.

The attackers killed several people and wounded nearly 50 people before being shot dead.

Some 48 people were initially admitted to hospital. Of these, 32 are still being treated, 15 are in critical condition.

Police have identified the attackers as Khuram Shazad Butt, Rachid Redouane and Youssef Zaghba.





Butt, 27, was a British citizen born in Pakistan. He was known to security services and even featured in a television documentary entitled The Jihadis Next Door.

He was investigated in 2015 but he was prioritised in the lower echelons of our investigative work and there was no evidence of attack planning, police said.

Redouane was 30 and claimed to be Moroccan and Libyan, police said. Irelands national broadcaster RTE reported that Redouane had an Irish residency card and had lived in Dublin.

Butt and Redouane both lived in Barking in suburban east London.

READ MORE: Police face scrutiny as third London attacker named

Police said Zaghba was an Italian national of Moroccan descent, living in east London. Neither he nor Redouane was known to police or security services.

The attack came just five days before Thursdays general election and has dominated the debate since.

The main Labour opposition, led by Jeremy Corbyn, has attacked Prime Minister May for cutting police numbers by 20,000 during her tenure as home secretary from 2010 to 2016.

Mays Conservatives have insisted that counter-terrorism budgets and the number of armed officers  British police do not regularly carry arms  have risen.
Investigation team identified sources through which the cyber-attack was carried out, interior ministry says.

Qatars Ministry of Interior said investigation teams have identified the sources through which a cyber-attack was carried out on the countrys state news agency website and its social media accounts.

In a statement issued on Wednesday about preliminary results of its ongoing probe, the ministry said the hacking operation exploited a cyber-bug in the website of Qatar News Agency (QNA).

Doha launched the inquiry last month after accusing hackers of publishing false remarks attributed to Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani on QNA platforms.

READ MORE: Qatar diplomatic crisis: All the latest updates

The investigation team confirmed that the hacking operation used high technology and innovative methods by exploiting a cyber-bug in the website of Qatar News Agency. The investigation team was able to identify the sources through which the cyber-attack was carried out, the ministry said.

The evidences are being analysed to ensure legal and judicial prosecution of the perpetrators. The team confirmed that the hacking file was installed in month of April, which was later exploited to disseminate the fabricated news on 24 May 2017 at 12:13am, it added.

The fake report said Sheikh Tamim, in a speech at a military graduation ceremony, was critical of renewed tensions with Iran, expressed the need for contextualising Hezbollah and Hamas as resistance movements, and suggested US President Donald Trump might not last long in power.

A Federal Bureau of Investigations team has been in Doha for the past week after the Qatari government asked the United States for help following the security breach by hackers.

The ministry said it will release the full findings once the investigation is complete, but didnt say when that would be.
Qatar is seeking to secure food and water supplies to stave off possible shortages amid worsening Gulf diplomatic rift.

Qatar is in discussions with Iran and Turkey about securing food and water supplies to stave off possible shortages two days after its biggest suppliers, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, cut trade and diplomatic ties, a government official said on Wednesday.

We are in talks with Turkey and Iran and other countries, said an official, who spoke to Reuters news agency on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject, adding that the supplies would be brought in through Qatar Airways cargo flights.

The official said there were enough grain supplies in the market in Qatar to last four weeks and that the government also had large strategic food reserves in Doha.

The head of Turkeys main exporting trade body told Reuters on Wednesday that Turkish exporters are ready to meet the demand for food and water in Qatar.

READ MORE: Qatar-Gulf crisis  Your questions answered

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt and Bahrain severed relations with Qatar and closed their airspace to commercial flights on Monday, charging it with financing militant groups. Qatar vehemently denies the accusations.

This is the worst split between powerful Arab states in decades.

The moves isolating Qatar are disrupting trade in commodities from crude oil to metals and food, and deepening fears of a possible jolt to the global gas market, where the Gulf state is a major player.





Food imports are affected as Saudi Arabia closed its land border with Qatar, stranding thousands of trucks carrying supplies.

Qatar, a country heavily dependent on food imports to feed its mostly foreign population of 2.6 million, has assured residents it has taken measures to ensure that normal life continues.

The Ministry of Economy and Commerce released a video on Tuesday that showed supermarket shelves stocked with food and other goods after citizens and residents crowded into stores on Monday to stock up, fearing shortages.

Qatars ports and airports remained open to trade with countries not taking part in the Saudi-led boycott on Wednesday, a government official said.

We have no problem with food supplies, Qatars foreign minister told CNN on Tuesday. We have strategic reserves in place since 2014, we dont see that life will be affected.

Although Qatar is located in a volatile region of the world, its huge foreign currency reserves and comparatively small population mean arranging adequate new sources of food imports in an emergency is possible.

Support from Turkey

Mehmet Buyukeksi, the head of Turkeys main exporting trade body Turkish Exporters Assembly (TIM), told Reuters on Wednesday that Turkish exporters are ready to meet the demand for food and water in Qatar.

Al Jazeeras Sinem Koseoglu, reporting from Istanbul, said the Turkish government and some opposition parties had expressed support for Qatar during the rift and had said its isolation was not acceptable.

Since the tension between Qatar and other Gulf states has risen, Turkey has shown great support for Qatar  not only on a political level but on a public level as well, she said.

On the public level, social media has been showing great support to Qatar with the hashtag Qatar is not alone, she said.

Pro-Qatar protests are also planned in Istanbul for Wednesday night.

OPINION: The GCC will ride out the storm

Koseoglu also said there were reports that legislation to deploy Turkish troops to Qatar, first agreed in May, could be fast-tracked through Turkeys parliament on Wednesday night.

Turkey is a key ally of Qatar and is setting up a military base in the country which also hosts the largest US airbase in the Middle East, Al-Udeid.

Meanwhile, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif arrived in Turkey on Wednesday, saying there was a need for close discussions with Turkish officials on worrying developments in the region.

Zarif was scheduled to meet President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu for talks on bilateral and regional issues, Turkish officials said.

Iran shares access with Qatar to the worlds biggest natural gas field.
Adel al-Jubeir says punitive steps against Qatar were a well-intentioned effort to stop its support for extremism.

Saudi Arabias foreign minister has said that Qatar is a brother state and that punitive steps against it were a well-intentioned effort to stop its support for extremism.

Speaking in Germany, Adel al-Jubeir said on Wednesday that it was with great pain that the measures against Qatar were taken.

We see Qatar as a brother state, as a partner, he told a joint press conference with German counterpart Sigmar Gabriel.

But you have to be able to tell your friend or your brother when they are doing the right thing and when they are doing the wrong thing.

The Saudi top diplomat said the crisis with Qatar went back years, adding that the Gulf nation had not lived up to commitments it made earlier to end support for extremist organisations and halt interference in the affairs of countries in the region.

Jubeir said that we have taken these steps in the interest of Qatar and in the interest of security and stability in the region.

And we hope that our brother Qatar will now take the right steps in order to end this crisis.

Jubeir also said efforts would be made to resolve the conflict within the Gulf Cooperation Council.

READ MORE: Qatar diplomatic crisis: All the latest updates

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain are among seven states that have cut diplomatic ties and many major transport links with Qatar.

The Arab states accuse Qatar of supporting extremism, a charge Doha firmly denies.

The Saudi diplomats comment comes a day after he said Doha must end its support for the Palestinian group Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood before ties with other Arab Gulf states could be restored.

Speaking in the French capital, Paris, Jubeir accused Qatar of undermining the Palestinian Authority and Egypt in its support of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, a charge Doha denies.

Meanwhile, the German foreign minister said Berlin was worried about the possible consequences and a growing escalation after the very tough measures taken against Qatar.

Berlins main concern was to de-escalate the conflict and rebuild Gulf regional cooperation, saying that we need this cooperation in the anti-Islamic State coalition.
Saudi Arabias Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir lays down several steps for restoration of ties with Arab allies.

Qatar must end its support for the Palestinian group Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood before ties with other Arab Gulf states could be restored, said Saudi Arabias foreign minister.

Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates severed diplomatic ties and transport links with Qatar on Monday, accusing it of supporting extremism.

The dispute between Qatar and the Arab countries escalated after a recent hack of Qatars state-run news agency.





We want to see Qatar implement the promises it made a few years back with regard to its support of extremist groups, to its hostile media and interference in affairs of other countries, Saudi Arabias Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told reporters in Paris.

Nobody wants to hurt Qatar. It has to choose whether it must move in one direction or another direction. We took this step with great pain so that it understands that these policies are not sustainable and must change.

Jubeir added that Qatar was undermining the Palestinian Authority and Egypt in its support of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.

We dont think this is good. Qatar has to stop these policies so that it can contribute to stability in the Middle East, he said.

Jubeir declined to say exactly what he wanted Qatar to do immediately, but said the measures taken by Arab states, including a sea, land and air blockade would have a considerable cost on the country.

We believe that common sense and logic will convince Qatar to take the right steps. The decisions that were made were very strong and will have a fairly large cost on Qatar and we do not believe that Qataris want to sustain those costs, he said.

READ MORE: No justification for cutting diplomatic ties

Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, said it was shocked by Saudi Arabias call on Qatar to stop supporting the group.

Jubeirs remarks constitute a shock for our Palestinian people and the Arab and Islamic nations, according to a Hamas statement released on Wednesday.

It alleged that Israel exploits these statements to carry out more violations against the Palestinian people.

Kuwaits Emir, Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Jaber Al Sabah, visited Saudi Arabia on Tuesday to hold talks with the Saudi King Salman bin Abdul Aziz on ways of defusing the escalating crisis.

No details were given on the talks.

Yemens internationally recognised government also cut ties with Qatar, accusing it of working with its enemies in the Iran-aligned Houthi movement. The Maldives and Libyas out-of-mandate Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thinni later joined the Arab nations in saying they too would cut ties.

On Monday, Qatar expressed surprise over the unjustified decision to cut diplomatic ties, saying it was in violation of its sovereignty.

It was clear from the outset that the aim of the media campaign and the decision to cut off diplomatic and consular relations and close the borders is to pressure Qatar to abandon its national decision-making and sovereignty, the Qatari Cabinet said in a statement on Monday.





The measures are unjustified and are based on claims and allegations that have no basis in fact, the foreign ministry said in another statement.

The aim is clear, and it is to impose guardianship on the state. This by itself is a violation of its [Qatars] sovereignty as a state.

Jubeir also dismissed Qatars recent rapprochement with Iran, saying that countries that deal with Tehran deal with it at their own peril.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan defended Qatar, saying he personally would have intervened if accusations that the country supports terrorism were true.

Let me say at the outset that we do not think the sanctions against Qatar are good, Erdogan said in a speech in Ankara on Tuesday.

Turkey will continue and will develop our ties with Qatar, as with all our friends who have supported us in the most difficult moments, he added in reference to last years failed coup.

Efforts to isolate Qatar  will not solve any problem, said Erdogan.

READ MORE: Qatari riyal under pressure amid Gulf diplomatic rift

US President Donald Trump weighed in on the ongoing diplomatic dispute, saying his trip to the Middle East is already paying off.

In a series of posts on Twitter on Tuesday, Trump referenced Qatar when he said leaders of the Middle East have stated that they would take a hard line on funding extremism.

During my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology. Leaders pointed to Qatar  look! Trump said.

So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off. They said they would take a hard line on funding

extremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism!
Former FBI director James Comey to testify that Trump asked him to drop probe into his former national security adviser.

Former Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) director James Comey accused US President Donald Trump of asking him to drop an investigation of former national security adviser Michael Flynn which was part of a probe into Russias alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

In dramatic written testimony, Comey said on Wednesday that Trump told him at a meeting in the White House in February, I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go.'

Comey described the exchange as very concerning.

I had understood the president to be requesting that we drop any investigation of Flynn in connection with his false statements about his conversations with the Russian ambassador in December, Comey said ahead of his appearance before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday.

READ MORE: Donald Trump and James Comey  A timeline

The account appears to confirm media reports about Comeys interactions with Trump that are to be at the heart of Thursdays hearing, although the information had not previously come directly and publicly from Comey.

Comey had been leading an FBI investigation into allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election and possible collusion with Trumps campaign.





Trump fired Comey last month and questions have since swirled about whether he had pressured Comey on the ongoing Russian investigation  allegations that could amount to obstruction of justice. Trump has denied the allegations.

The prepared testimony also details other interactions between the president and FBI chief, including informing Trump he was not personally under investigation and the presidents demand for loyalty from Comey.

Comey said he documented their meeting afterwards by typing up notes on a laptop in an FBI vehicle outside Trump Tower the moment I walked out of the meeting.

READ MORE: Why was James Comey so controversial?

Adam Schiff, the ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said Comeys testimony was disconcerting.

Former FBI Director Comeys written testimony confirms a host of troubling allegations concerning the presidents conduct, Schiff said in a statement on Wednesday.

The president sought to obtain a pledge of loyalty from the director of the FBI during a conversation that centred on whether the director would be able to keep his job.

Sarah Sanders, deputy White House press secretary, said aboard Air Force One on Wednesday that Trump hadnt had time yet to read Comeys released testimony.

Im not aware if hes had a chance to review any of the specific details of that testimony. I did find the timing of the release a little bit interesting, she told reporters.

Trump abruptly fired Comey last month; the dismissal sent shockwaves across Washington and was swiftly condemned by Democrats  as well as some in Trumps own Republican Party.

The administration has given a series of varying accounts for what led the president to sack Comey.
In a phone call with Qatars emir, Trump offers a meeting in the White House if necessary.

US President Donald Trump has expressed Washingtons readiness to participate in efforts to solve the Gulf crisis.

This came in a phone conversation with the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, on Wednesday.

During the conversation, Trump highlighted the necessity of maintaining the stability of the Gulf and emphasised the importance of all countries in the region working together to prevent the financing of terrorist organisations and stop the promotion of extremist ideology.

The president offered to help the parties resolve their differences, including through a meeting at the White House if necessary.

READ MORE: Qatar diplomatic crisis  All the latest updates

Trump reiterated that a united Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and a strong United States-GCC partnership are critical to defeating terrorism and promoting regional stability.

On Tuesday, Trump spoke with Saudi Arabias King Salman and emphasised the need for unity among Gulf countries, the White House said.

The president underscored that a united Gulf Cooperation Council is critical to defeating terrorism and promoting regional stability, the White House said in a statement.

Trumps phone call is his first known contact with Qatars emir since a diplomatic crisis broke out in the Gulf earlier this week.

Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and other Arab nations cut off relations with Qatar after accusing it of supporting terrorism.
Kilic detained for alleged links to the Gulen group, which Turkey blames for orchestrating last years failed coup.

The chairman of Amnesty International Turkey has been detained in the western city of Izmir along with 22 other lawyers over alleged links to the Gulen movement, an organisation that the government blames for last years coup attempt, according to Turkish authorities and the UK-based rights group.

Amnesty International condemned the move by Turkish authorities after Taner Kilics arrest on Tuesday for having suspected ties with the Gulen group. The group added his home and office were searched by the police.

State media said Kilic was detained for using ByLock, an encrypted communication software which the government says is used by members of the outlawed group.

READ MORE: Ankara focuses on Gulen links in Karlov assassination

The fact that Turkeys post-coup purge has now dragged the chair of Amnesty International Turkey into its web is further proof of just how far it has gone and just how arbitrary it has become, Salil Shetty, Amnesty Internationals secretary-general, said.

In the absence of credible and admissible evidence of their involvement in internationally recognised crimes, we are calling on the Turkish authorities to immediately release Taner Kilic along with the other 22 lawyers, and drop all charges against them.

Turkey accuses Fethullah Gulen, a religious leader who lives in self-imposed exile in the US, and his group of orchestrating the coup attempt last summer which killed around 300 people and led to arrests in the country.

The government said the purges and detentions are aimed at removing Gulen supporters from state institutions and other parts of society.

Local and international rights groups, as well as many of Turkeys European allies, say the arrests and purges are arbitrary, claiming that the government is using the coup attempt as a pretext to silence opposition in the country.

Judiciary should be prudent

Orhan Miroglu, a member of the parliaments human rights commission, said the investigation into the Gulen group is wide-reaching due to the size and 40 year-history of the organisation.

Its unfortunate that the head of a reputed human rights organisation has been detained, Miroglu, who is also an MP with the ruling Justice and Development Party, told Al Jazeera.

However, people are investigated over Gulen links regardless of their affiliation. The judiciary allows all suspects to defend themselves and investigations are carried out according to the rule of law. Nonetheless, the judiciary should act prudently to avert possible suffering of innocent parties, he added.

READ MORE: Turkey suspends 9,000 police officers for Gulen links

People who are detained or sacked are released or get back to their jobs in state institutions after they are cleared. This is valid for people who allegedly used ByLock or have been investigated for other possible links to the terrorist group.

According to Amnesty International, Kilic has served on the board of Amnesty International Turkey for various periods since 2002 and has been the groups chairperson since 2014.

During his work for human rights organisations in Turkey, he has consistently demonstrated an unswerving commitment to human rights, Amnesty said.

Follow Umut Uras on Twitter: @Um_Uras
Turkeys parliament has approved a legislation allowing its troops to be deployed to a Turkish military base in Qatar.

The bill, first drafted in May, passed with 240 votes in favour, largely with support from the ruling AK party and nationalist opposition MHP.

Wednesdays decision is a show of support for Qatar as it faces diplomatic and trade isolation from some of the biggest Middle Eastern powers.





Turkey is a key ally of Qatar and is setting up a military base in the country which also hosts the largest US airbase in the Middle East.

Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain severed relations with Qatar and closed their airspace to commercial flights on Monday, accusing it with financing extremist groups.

Qatar vehemently denies the accusations. This is the worst split between powerful Arab states in decades.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has criticised the Arab states move, saying isolating Qatar and imposing sanctions will not resolve any problems and adding that Ankara will do everything in its power to help end the crisis.

Turkey has maintained good relations with Qatar as well as several of its Gulf Arab neighbours.

Turkey set up a military base in Qatar, its first such installation in the Middle East, as part of an agreement signed in 2014. In 2016 Ahmet Davutoglu, then Turkish prime minister, visited the base where 150 troops were already stationed, the Turkish daily Hurriyet reported.

In an interview with Reuters in late 2015, Ahmet Demirok, Turkeys ambassador to Qatar at the time, said 3,000 ground troops would eventually be deployed at the base, which was planned to serve primarily as a venue for joint training exercises.
Jail term up to 15 years and $136,000 fines could be handed out to offenders, attorney general statement says.

The United Arab Emirates has banned people from publishing expressions of sympathy towards Qatar and will punish offenders with a jail term of up to 15 years, the UAE-based newspaper Gulf News and pan-Arab channel Al-Arabiya reported.

In a statement released on Wednesday, UAEs Attorney General Hamad Saif al-Shamsi said sympathising with Qatar was a cybercrime punishable by law.

Strict and firm action will be taken against anyone who shows sympathy or any form of bias towards Qatar, or against anyone who objects to the position of the United Arab Emirates, whether it be through the means of social media, or any type of written, visual or verbal form, Gulf News quoted Shamsi as saying in the statement.

The Federal Public Prosecution also announced that according to the Federal Penal Code and the Federal law decree on Combating Information Technology Crimes, anyone who threaten the interests, national unity and stability of the UAE will face a jail term from three to 15 years, and a fine not less than AED 500,000 ($136,000).

Since the diplomatic row erupted, slogans against and in support of Qatar have been among the top topics discussed on Twitter in Arabic, which is a hugely popular medium of expression in the Arab world, particularly in Saudi Arabia.

I'm afraid if i sympathized with the sympathized people, my gov is gonna punish me under the law of unsympathizing with sympathy with Qatar!  Mohamed Thabet (@MuhammadThabet1) June 7, 2017

Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt severed diplomatic ties and transport links with Qatar on Monday, accusing it of supporting extremism.

The dispute between Qatar and the Arab countries escalated after a recent hack of Qatars state-run news agency.

On Tuesday, Saudi Arabias Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir told reporters in Paris that Qatar must end its support for the Palestinian group Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood before ties with other Gulf Arab states could be restored.

Qatar diplomatic crisis: All the latest updates

Hamas said in a statement that al-Jubeirs remarks constitute a shock for our Palestinian people and the Arab and Islamic nations.

German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel accused US President Donald Trump of stirring up conflicts in the Middle East and risking a new arms race.

The dispute comes less than a month after Trump visited Saudi Arabia and called for Muslim nations to unite against extremism.

Qatar said there was no legitimate justification for several nations severing diplomatic ties and the decision was in violation of its sovereignty.
Four bikers who fought on different sides of the Lebanese civil war find friendship in the local Harley Davidson Club.

Filmmaker: Rami Kodeih

This is the story of four bikers who fought on different sides of the Lebanese civil war but who have now discovered friendship and a common cause in the local Harley-Davidson Club  which they founded.

The 15-year war between 1975 and 1990 divided communities along sectarian lines, split a country and left deep scars.

George Greige is Maronite; Marwan Tarraf, Shia; Jamal Kahwaji, Sunni; and Ghassan Haider is Druze.

But they all share a passion for biking and Harleys, their saving grace.

Reflecting on the senselessness of war and the dangers of power and greed, the four bikers say they fought in the war not out of deep personal conviction, but because they felt they had to pick a side and defend themselves.

At a crucial age, we found ourselves in an atmosphere of war, explains Ghassan Haidar. We had to take part in the war to protect ourselves. Everyone was armed, regardless of their age. So why not us?

The war involved a mix of local, irregular militias, both Muslim and Christian  as well as the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) which arguably also drove a wedge between communities. The different factions were backed by regional and international powers that flooded the country with arms.

Weapons were available everywhere and in every house, says Marwan Tarraf, who became an expert at handling guns. We had them in our homes, underneath our houses. Everyone was armed.

On a motorcycle, we see life without a frame. The world is open. by Marwan Tarraf, biker

Christians tended to live in East Beirut while the Muslims were concentrated in the west of the city Beirut.

There were rumours that people from East Beirut might attack and kill us, recalls Jamal Kahwaji. Kahwaji was a teenage motocross stunt prodigy before the war. Nearly everyone armed themselves at that time, he says.

George Greige wanted to carry a weapon, so his father told him to join the army, which had men from all religions. But in the army, we heard that Christians were being killed. Im a Christian. This pushed me to leave and defend the Christians. It was an ideology thing, says Greige.

Unlike Greige, Tarraf was more pragmatic and joined a party, he says, just because it was the closest one to my house. I made friends on the basis of the people, not politics. But at that time, you defended the party and its doctrines. And you might even die for it without understanding a thing, says Tarraf. Its doctrine might even contradict your own but you just followed everyone else.

He describes how he found rocket fuel left by the departing PLO and used it to power heaters and so finance his first motorbike.

When the PLO left Beirut [in 1982], I discovered a storeroom in the university behind our house. I went down to the storeroom and saw that weapons and ammunition had been left there. Two bags contained something that looked like small pebbles. I scooped up a handful and put them into my pocket  A few days later, someone must have lit a fire and I still had some pebbles in my pocket. I threw one into the fire and it exploded, explains Tarraf. Later, I mixed them with water and sawdust which made them very flammable. A guy bought the mixture from me and sold it as fuel for bathroom water heaters. With the cash, I bought my first motorbike and began training with Jamal  Jamal was the leader of our group at that time.

When the war ended in 1990, each of the men struggled to get back on track. But today theyre firm friends and all agree that the war and their role in it was pointless.

In 2006, they founded a branch of the Harley-Davidson Club in Lebanon and began riding together.

Many people own motorbikes and want to be part of this global community, says Tarraf, whos currently the president of the Lebanon chapter. The club became popular. It filled a social role in the country, not just a recreational role.





As president, The first decision I made was to ban anything related to politics or religion, says Tarraf. Club members know that these subjects are banned.

Tarraf and Kahwaji have pooled their talent and resources and now work together in Tarrafs motorbike garage. Kahwajis son, Adam, has also joined the business and is training to compete at motocross.

My hope in training Adam is that it will open opportunities for him so he doesnt have to be stuck in this country, says Kahwaji.
About the show

earthrise is Al Jazeeras award-winning environmental show exploring the most significant threats to our planet by highlighting eco-friendly solutions from around the world. earthrise brings you the stories of those who strive to improve our quality of life and reduce our negative impact on the earth.










English News Astana ready for 2017 World Expo

Alwihda Info | Par peoplesdaily - 7 Juin 2017



The theme of Future Energy stems from the reality, said Adilet, a college student and volunteer. Energy has demonstrated its importance in driving world development, therefore looking for new energies is a must. The theme chosen for the expo by Kazakhstan, a resource-rich country, showcases the priorities it gives to the future of the earth, the student added.

By Wu Yan, Zhou Hanbo, Zhao Cheng and Xie Yahong from Peoples Daily Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, has been well prepared for the Expo 2017 which will start on June 10, under the theme of Future Energy.



It is the first time for a Central Asian country to host the event, which will attract a total of 115 countries and 22 international organizations to participate in the expo and the number of visitors is expected to reach 5 million.



Staffs, volunteers and reporters from all over the world can be seen in the expos news center. Besides, there are about 150 interpreters to offer various language services for visitors, the Astana Convention Bureau told the Peoples Daily.



Anastasia Noziya, a volunteer, said Astana has become more beautiful because of the expo. It makes me excited and proud seeing so many foreign friends coming to my city for the expo. I hope that inspired by the expos theme of Future Energy, my city will become better and better.



The theme of Future Energy stems from the reality, said Adilet, a college student and volunteer. Energy has demonstrated its importance in driving world development, therefore looking for new energies is a must. The theme chosen for the expo by Kazakhstan, a resource-rich country, showcases the priorities it gives to the future of the earth, the student added.



Shaposhnikova Tatyana, a retired nurse, said that the pavilion she wants to visit most is the China pavilion. Tatyana said she liked to watch the Russian channel of China Central Television.



My children showed me lots of photos they took during their visit to the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, which left deep impressions on me. Now Im going to visit the China pavilion on my own like Im in China. I believe the pavilion will bring me a lot of surprises, she noted.



China is the first country to confirm to attend the expo, and the China pavilion is the first to start trial operation. Those efforts have been praised by the host country.



Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev paid two visits to the China pavilion during his tours to the expo site.



Editor-in-Chief of the online version of the Yegemen Serik, who has been to China for many times, said his dream is to travel along the Silk Road by train. That dream will soon be fulfilled in the China pavilion, which has set up a stimulated high-speed train driving platform that allow spectators to drive from Xian in Northwest China to Astana, watching the spectacular sceneries along the route.



The pavilion has been praised as a role model by the organizing committee of the expo, said Yang Hong, deputy director of the China pavilion.



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)
The China-proposed Belt and Road initiative is a great blueprint since it incorporates several billion of population under the same framework of win-win development, Shigeo Katsu, president of Nazarbayev University, told the Peoples Daily in a recent interview.



The scholar made the remarks just before Chinese President Xi Jinping kicked off his state visit to Kazakhstan on Wednesday.



President Xi delivered a speech in the university, proposing to jointly build a Silk Road Economic Belt on September 7, 2013. The Belt and Road construction officially started hereafter.



Katsu, who was also former vice-president of World Bank in charge of European and Central Asian economic affairs, has a deep understanding of global and regional economic development.



He believed the China-proposed Belt and Road initiative is of great significance for global trade liberalization and economic globalization, especially against the uprising tide of protectionism.



As a Japanese working in Kazakhstan, Katsu has witnessed the changes brought by the Belt and Road construction on the country over the last three years. He said that the proposal has provided tangible benefits for the country located in the hinderland of the Eurasian continent.

Kazakhstan has benefited in terms of both transportation and talent attraction, Katsu said, adding that Chinas increasing direct investment injects new energy to Kazakhstans economic growth.

Im looking forward to Chinas bigger role in the international community, the president said. The world is facing various challenges including climate change, which calls for joint efforts rather than independent actions, he furthered.

Katsu noted that Xis calls to build the community of common destiny for all mankind in his speech delivered at the UN headquarter in Geneva in January is encouraging as it reveals Chinas sense of responsibility as a major country.

Katsu, also an economist, is optimistic on Chinas economic development, saying that China has already made progress in its transformation from export-oriented economic growth model to one that is driven by domestic demand. Chinas economy is developing on the right track, he added.


The China-proposed Belt and Road initiative has a bright future, Kaukenova Tatiana, a researcher of the international center of the Kazakh-Chinese Cooperation, said in a recent interview with Peoples Daily.



The scholar made the remarks before Chinese President Xi Jinping kicked off his state visit to Kazakhstan on Wednesday.



Praising the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation held in Beijing last month, Tatiana said that the forums agendas have increased the worlds confidence that the initiative will yield fruitful results and bring win-win outcomes to the globe.



Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayevs presence at the forum indicates that Kazakhstan pays high attention to the Belt and Road initiative, and the country is willing to push forward the initiative together with other en-route countries, Tatiana noted.



The researcher added that it is of great significance to reinforce consensus on international cooperation, beef up pragmatic cooperation in key fields and plan a long-term cooperation, so that new accomplishments will be made from the initiative.



She suggested that the Belt and Road en-route countries enact legal documents and take concrete measures to lower exchange costs, remove tax barriers, streamline trade procedures and improve investment environment in order to make Belt and Road construction more efficient.



The Belt and Road initiative has created new platforms and new ideas to address the challenges faced by todays world, Tatiana said, explaining that due to the rise of regional protectionism and isolationism in some countries and regions, lots of fields are in shortage of cooperation mechanisms that could be widely responded.



The initiative has been echoed by related governments, international organizations, important financial institutions and enterprises, indicating that its significance to promote global stability and development has won support around the world, the scholar added.



As an important participator, Kazakhstan has successfully aligned the Belt and Road construction with its "Bright Road" new economic policy, the countrys infrastructure development plan, setting an example for cooperation and common development under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative.



China-Kazakhstan joint-ventures are developing rapidly, which will help advance Kazakhstans industrialization process, Tatiana added.










English News Commentary: SCO members extend economic cooperation frontiers

Alwihda Info | Par peoplesdaily - 7 Juin 2017



The heads of state from the SCO members pledged in the SCO Declaration they issued when the organization was founded in June 2001 that they will make use of the great potential and extensive opportunities in trade and economic cooperation among the member states to launch regional economic collaboration under the SCO framework.

Source: People's Daily Chinese President Xi Jinping kicked off his four-day state visit to Kazakhstan on Wednesday, during which he is expected to attend the 17th meeting of the Council of Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the opening ceremony of Expo 2017 Astana.

Since the SCO was founded 16 years ago, its members have been lifting their economic and trade ties. They have managed to share resources by extending the collaboration frontiers from energy to free flow of regional commodities, personnel, materials and services.

With abundant oil and gas resources, the other five SCO members have included the exploration of the Chinese market as a key step to diversify their exports. The Chinese market also serves as a springboard to integrate them into Asia-Pacific economy.



A 962-kolometer-long pipeline pumping crude oil from Kazakhstan to northwest China was opened in May, 2006. It was China's first cross-border crude oil pipeline.



Other members, in the following years, reinforced their energy cooperation with China by building oil pipelines, natural gas pipelines and rail lines, as well as increasing energy exports. An energy pathway stretching across Central Asia and East Asia has therefore taken shape.



The closer energy cooperation among SCO members has given a strong boost to their economic growth.



A groundbreaking ceremony, for instance, was held in Buxoro of Uzbekistan on May 31 to mark the inauguration of an oil field contracted by Uzbek branch of China Petroleum Engineering & Construction Corporation affiliated to China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), the country's largest oil and gas producer.



The project is now under construction in full swing and the phase-I part is expected to be put into operation at the end of this November.



The project will bring great benefits to Uzbek society and economy by not only meeting Uzbekistans demands for domestic oil consumption and natural gas exports, but also creating more job positions and tax incomes for the country, said Tukhtayev Kabul Mukhammadiyevich, vice chairman of Uzneftegaz, Uzbekistans oil and gas company.



He stressed that the Uzbek government gives emphasis to the investment and cooperation from Chinese businesses.



Whats more, the mechanisms the SCO members set up to ensure smooth oil, gas and other energy cooperation have helped them resist risks brought by supply, demand and price fluctuations.



The SCO has prioritized their efforts in deepening multilateral cooperation, securing benefits of the peoples of its members, and seeking regional economic cooperation.



The heads of state from the SCO members pledged in the SCO Declaration they issued when the organization was founded in June 2001 that they will make use of the great potential and extensive opportunities in trade and economic cooperation among the member states to launch regional economic collaboration under the SCO framework.



The current multilateral cooperation mechanisms adopted by the SCO also lay a foundation for the alignment of the China-proposed Belt and Road initiative and the Eurasian Economic Union since the SCO members, observer members as well as dialogue partners, mostly emerging economies and developing countries along the routes, are in urgent demands for infrastructural construction, connectivity, capacity cooperation and financial platforms.



The SCO members are visioned to realize the free flow of regional commodities, capital, service and technologies and build a free trade zone under the framework, with a priority in transportation, energy, telecommunication, agriculture, home appliance, light industry and textile.



So far, China and Russia have reaped rich fruits in big energy, transportation, aviation and aerospace projects, while Kazakhstan has grown into a pioneer for Belt and Road cooperation on production capacity. China and Kyrgyzstan also exhibit a new outlook in dovetailing their development strategies.



The SCO has great potential in bolstering regional economic collaboration in the future, concluded Zhao Jinping, Director-General of the Research Department of Foreign Economic Relations under Development Research Center of the State Council.



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English News India, Pakistan to become SCO's full members

Alwihda Info | Par peoplesdaily - 7 Juin 2017



The membership process for India and Pakistan began in 2015. Kyrgyz Deputy Foreign Minister Emil Kaikiyev told media that "the decision [to grant India and Pakistan full membership to the SCO] is historic, because with the increase in membership to eight states, the SCO can become an essential component of the global security system."

By Yang Sheng Source: People's Daily and Global Times The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) will accept India and Pakistan as full members, which will not have an impact on the unity of the organization, but the SCO will offer a platform for New Delhi and Islamabad to solve their disputes between themselves, experts said.



Chinese President Xi Jinping is set to visit Kazakhstan from Wednesday to Saturday and attend the 17th SCO summit in Astana, capital of Kazakhstan, where India and Pakistan, two SCO observers, will be granted full membership, Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Li Huilai said at a press conference on Monday.



The six current SCO members, China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, are all located along the ancient Silk Road and share the "Shanghai Spirit" of mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality, consultation, respect for cultural diversity and the pursuit of a common development.



The membership process for India and Pakistan began in 2015. Kyrgyz Deputy Foreign Minister Emil Kaikiyev told media that "the decision [to grant India and Pakistan full membership to the SCO] is historic, because with the increase in membership to eight states, the SCO can become an essential component of the global security system."



There is some concern that the hostility between India and Pakistan might affect the organization's unity. However, the SCO will also become an ideal platform for members with disputes to solve their problems bilaterally based on the "Shanghai Spirit," Li Wei, an anti-terror expert at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, told the Global Times on Tuesday.



"India and Pakistan are accusing each other of 'supporting terrorism,' and this is generally based on their domestic political agenda and dispute. SCO members will support them and offer help if the two countries need it, rather than internationalize their dispute within the organization," Li Wei said.



"In short, the SCO is not a place for India and Pakistan to quarrel, but a platform for members to settle their disputes," said Lin Minwang, a professor at the Institute of International Studies of Fudan University.



Counterterrorism cooperation is an important issue of the SCO, and the organization has staged biennial military exercises code-named "Peace Mission" since 2003 to deal with the threat of "terrorism, separatism and religious extremism," people.cn reported. The latest, "Peace Mission 2016," was held in Kyrgyzstan in September 2016.



"All SCO members are participating in the Belt and Road initiative, and this organization is the initiative's security guarantee," Wang Yiwei, senior research fellow at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies of the Renmin University of China, said.





SCO membership and the B&R initiative help Pakistan's economic development and security, and if Pakistan becomes a wealthy and prosperous country, it would be difficult for extremism and terrorism to grow, and that would, in turn, improve conditions along the India-Pakistan border, Li Wei said. "So I don't think India and Pakistan should quarrel within the SCO, because they will find more reasons to cooperate."



"The membership of India and Pakistan will add to the SCO's international reputation and allow the bloc to better coordinate the positions of its member states on various issues, so as to enhance their cooperation," Askar Nursha, a researcher at Kazakhstan's Institute of World Economy and Politics told media.



Iranian membership



During the press conference, Li also said China supports membership for Iran, which is currently an observer. Li said Iran has "proactively participated" in its activities and has made positive contributions to the SCO's development, Reuters reported.



"China welcomes and supports Iran's wish to become a formal member of the SCO," and "I think that at this meeting all sides will continue to conscientiously study the issue of Iran becoming a member on the basis of the SCO's relevant rules and consensus through consultations," Li Huilai said.



"In the next stage, Turkey and Afghanistan might also become members after Iran. The SCO's expansion will definitely bring more diverse voices, and the period of reaching consensus will also be extended. But in the long-run, once the members reach agreement, it will represent the interests of a broad region with great international influence," Lin said.



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English News Stories of China- Kazakhstan friendly exchange a rich mine: diplomat

Alwihda Info | Par peoplesdaily - 7 Juin 2017



Attracting Chinese tourists has been regarded as an important mission for Kazakh tourism departments during the 2017 World Expo which will be held in Astana from June to September. The host estimated that the number of Chinese visitors will reach 100,000 or more.

By Ma Xiaoning, Zhou Hanbo, Xie Yahong and Liu Junguo from Peoples Daily The story of friendly exchanges between China and Kazakhstan is a rich mine that should be fully exploited, Zhang Hanhui, Chinese Ambassador to Kazakhstan, told the Peoples Daily on the eve of Chinese President Xi Jinpings state visit to the Central Asian nation.



In the National Museum of Kazakhstan, one of the landmark buildings in Kazakh capital Astana, many exhibits which were excavated along the ancient Silk Road seem to tell visitors the history of China-Kazakhstan friendship.



Later this year, some cultural relics will be exhibited in Hong Kong, helping Chinese public better understand the important role Kazakhstan has played in the ancient Silk Road, said Zhanara Zharmukhametova, executive head of external affairs department of the museum.



The Silk Road history has been included in textbooks for 4th graders of primary schools in Kazakhstan, she said with pride.



In the 1940s, Xian Xinghai, a renowned Chinese composer, found his way to Almaty and was taken care of by Kazakh composer Bakhitzhan Baykadamov. It was in Almaty that Xian composed many of his famous works.



The much-told tale of close ties between the two sides spread widely after President Xi recalled the story in a visit to Kazakhstan in 2013.



Baldyrgan, daughter of the Kazakh composer, said her grandmother told her that it was because the two peoples share the tradition of helping each other when in trouble that her family took the risk help Xian even when they lived in poverty.



Our genes carry the historical memory of long-time friendship and will pass it on from generations to generations, she said.



Besides, research institutions of the two countries are co-working on a history book of China-Kazakhstan exchange, Zhang disclosed.



The story of friendly exchange is a rich mine that should be fully exploited, he said, adding that a Chinese cultural center will start construction in a year or two.



Not long ago, a Confucius Institute in Almaty was jointly unveiled by Chinas Southwest University and Kazakh Ablai khan University of International Relations and World Languages. The institute marks the 2nd of its kind in Almaty and the 5th in Kazakhstan.



Kounanbayeva, president of the school known as the cradle of diplomats in Kazakhstan, said that the Confucius Institute will focus on localized teaching program, teaching materials and faculty training, to enhance people-to-people and cultural exchanges between the two countries.



Being proficient in Chinese has become a dream among young Kazakhs. Nowadays, more and more of them are choosing to study in Chinese universities, inspired by former deputy Prime Minister Dariga Nazarbayevas remarks that In the near future, we all need to understand Chinese.



This year marks the 25th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between China and Kazakhstan and the Chinese Year of Tourism in Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan has taken measures to develop its tourism industry, aiming to benefit from the dividends brought by China.



China has become the worlds largest tourist market, largest consumers of outbound tourism for four straight years and contributor of an average 13 percent to global tourism income.



Attracting Chinese tourists has been regarded as an important mission for Kazakh tourism departments during the 2017 World Expo which will be held in Astana from June to September. The host estimated that the number of Chinese visitors will reach 100,000 or more.



Ulazakov, director of the international participation department of the host company of the expo, said that foreign affairs department has taken measures on visa convenience for Chinese visitors, and more than 40 itineraries have been designed for tourists.



We hope to take this opportunity to display the most beautiful scenery to Chinese tourists and boost our tourism industry, Ulazakov added.



Pic: Kazakh kids have fun in a street named after famous Chinese composer Xian Xinghai, in Almaty, the largest city of Kazakhstan. (Photo by Zhou Hanbo)



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English News Xi Jinpings visit to Kazakhstan is of great significance: expert

Alwihda Info | Par peoplesdaily - 7 Juin 2017



The upcoming Astana Expo 2017 will be the first time for a Central Asian country to host the event. Ruan said that China Pavilion themed with Future Energy and Green Silk Road will be a highlight of the expo. It will be the second largest exhibition hall after Kazakhstan Pavilion as well.

Source: People's Daily Chinese President Xi Jinpings ongoing state visit to Kazakhstan will on one hand enrich the comprehensive strategic partnership between the two countries, and on the other hand drive Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) development and international energy cooperation, said an expert.



It will finally add new energy to the new type of international ties with win-win cooperation at the core, said Ruan Zongze, Vice President of the China Institute of International Studies (CIIS), in a signed article published on the Peoples Daily.



Xi kicked off his four-day trip to Kazakhstan on Wednesday, during which he is scheduled to attend the 17th meeting of the SCO Council of Heads of State and the opening ceremony of Astana Expo 2017.



It is his third tour to the Central Asian nation, and also first overseas trip and major diplomatic action after the just-concluded Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation.



Both the historic bonds and current ties of China and Kazakhstan, as important neighbors to each other, are connected with the Belt and Road routes, wrote Ruan.



He illustrated that Xi firstly proposed to build the Silk Road Economic Belt rightly during his stay in Astana, the capital city of Kazakhstan in September, 2013.



During the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation hosted by Beijing this May, the international community reached important consensus to upgrade Belt and Road cooperation from China solution to an global one, the scholar reviewed, adding that Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev attended the event as well.



Over the last four years, China and Kazakhstan have intensified cooperation and tapped potential on Belt and Road construction, bringing their collaboration into a new stage and creating benefits to their peoples, said Ruan, also a research fellow with the CIIS.



Xis visit this time will strongly reinforce bilateral ties, deepen political mutual trust, and push forward Belt and Road cooperation, the expert pointed out.



During the upcoming 17th meeting of the SCO Council of Heads of State, the organization will witness its first enlargement since its founding in 2001, Ruan pointed out, adding that the new members, India and Pakistan, will make it a regional cooperation organization with largest population and area.



He praised that the SCO has played a unique role in building new regional and global order amidst the complicated international and regional vicissitude.



Persisting to the "Shanghai Spirit" featuring mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality, consultation, respect for diverse civilizations and shared development, the organization contributed to regional peace and stability by cracking down on the three evil forces of separatism, extremism and terrorism and coordinating on information security, he explained.



The upcoming Astana Expo 2017 will be the first time for a Central Asian country to host the event. Ruan said that China Pavilion themed with Future Energy and Green Silk Road will be a highlight of the expo. It will be the second largest exhibition hall after Kazakhstan Pavilion as well.



Ruan also lauded the contribution China made to the organization as a founding member, adding that Xi and leaders of other members, during the upcoming summit, will issue Astana Declaration, release press communique, and sign documents including the anti-extremism convention.



They will pass the resolutions to grant India and Pakistan with SCO membership as well, he added.



China will take over the baton to host the 2018 meeting as the rotating presidency of the organization after the meeting, Ruan said.



China now also holds the presidency of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA), a mechanism first proposed by Nazarbayev in1992 at the 47th session of the UN General Assembly.



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INTERNATIONAL Xis Kazakh visit to promote B&R initiative

Alwihda Info | Par peoplesdaily - 7 Juin 2017



"The SCO used to focus on cooperation against terrorism, but has gradually shifted to economic cooperation under the framework of the Belt and Road initiative," said Wang Dehua, director of the Institute for Southern and Central Asian Studies at the Shanghai Municipal Center for International Studies.

By Leng Shumei Source: Peoples Daily and Global Times China and Kazakhstan will sign agreements on trade, economy and water conservation during Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to the country from Wednesday to Saturday, the foreign ministry announced Monday.



Xi will attend the 17th Meeting of the Council of Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the opening of the Astana Expo 2017, Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Li Huilai said at a press conference on Monday.



The two sides will exchange in-depth views on the bilateral ties, a mutual developmental strategy between the two countries, the construction of the Belt and Road initiative, as well as other regional and international issues of common concern. A joint statement will be released, Li Huilai said.



"Xi's visit to Kazakhstan is another major Chinese diplomatic activity after the Belt and Road forum in Beijing in May," Li Xing, director of the Eurasian Studies Center at Beijing Normal University, told the Global Times on Monday.



"Xi's visit will continue to promote the construction of the Belt and Road initiative and the strategic link between the initiative and the Eurasian Economic Union," Li Xing said, noting that Kazakhstan is a vital country on the ancient Silk Road and has always been supportive of the initiative.



The 17th SCO summit in Astana, capital of Kazakhstan, will focus on the future of the organization, and SCO members will exchange views on vital regional and international issues, Li Huilai said.



China hopes all SCO members can reach a consensus on current regional and international issues and work together to sustain regional peace, encourage mutual prosperity as well as promote a fair and reasonable direction for the international order, Li Huilai added.



Li Huilai also announced that the SCO members will sign a treaty against terrorism. India and Pakistan will complete the process of joining the SCO during the summit.



"The SCO used to focus on cooperation against terrorism, but has gradually shifted to economic cooperation under the framework of the Belt and Road initiative," said Wang Dehua, director of the Institute for Southern and Central Asian Studies at the Shanghai Municipal Center for International Studies.



Cooperation against terrorism still needs to be strengthened among SCO member countries, especially after recent terrorist attacks in London and the Philippines, Wang stressed.



The membership of India and Pakistan will make the SCO the world's largest regional cooperation organization in terms of population, which will create unprecedented development potential and cooperation, the Xinhua News Agency reported last month.



Li Xing pointed out that the two countries' membership in the SCO will help the organization act better as a platform to link the Belt and Road initiative. However, he warned that territorial disputes between the two countries might create challenges to their cooperation within the organization.





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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.
For a republic to be worthy of the name, it must have certain features. Most obviously, political power must, in some meaningful sense, reside with the people and be expressed through their elected officials. Even at this most basic level, our country has a problem. To the extent that we are governed by an unelected bureaucracy we are no longer a republic. Unfortunately, the political disease that afflicts America runs far deeper than that. For power to reside with the people there must be a single, generally unified nation which can be identified as the people. This nation need not be racially, ethnically, or even religiously homogenous, but the overwhelming majority of its members do need to agree on some common set of interests and values. They need a common identity. That is what a nation is. American now contains at least two nations, and arguably many more. Democratic institutions like elections, intended to settle differences between fellow countrymen, of people who simply disagree on means or minor matters of policy -- cannot settle differences of national identity. This is why organizations like the European Union and the United Nations are only superficially democratic. More to the point, elections staged between competing nations trapped under the authority of a single state -- nations so different in their ideals that each seeks the others subjugation or destruction -- such elections settle nothing. Any election that takes place under such conditions will inevitably be seen as illegitimate by the losing side. Trump, progressives say, is not their president -- and neither would Hillary ever have been ours.

When elections and legislatures attempt to assert the dominance of one nation of people over another they are, in effect, engaging in a kind of warfare. It is a civil war with a bit less bloodshed -- or, perhaps, it is a civil war in its initial shouting and shoving phase. Our daily outrage at the dishonest press, the usurpation of power by minor federal judges, and the predictable shrieking lunacy of our opponents only shows that most of us have not yet come to terms with the reality of our situation. We are in an existential conflict between competing nations -- we are not debating the merits of particular policies. Our differences will not be resolved by orderly procedural means. Reason no longer persuades. Hallowed traditions are despised. The law has become unworthy of respect, because it is so often merely the convenient weapon of people who are willing to cause us real and tangible harm. Indeed, as progressives and conservatives have diverged, we have seen the federal authorities selectively disregard the laws made by their opponents and favor governing by the fiat of executive orders. I have a phone and I have a pen, Obama famously declared. He might just as well have added: and I dont care what happens to those hicks in Kentucky and Kansas.

A federal government attempting to preside over separate nations bent on one anothers destruction can be neither legitimate nor effective. Our federal government has become little more than a hideous game of ideological badminton between opposing camps of corrupt officials -- smacking enraged and increasingly divided peons back and forth across the political net. Winning national elections no longer means anything, not merely because the individual officials themselves are crooked, but because the institutions they head are now unfit to govern a republic.

It is no longer possible for conservatives and progressives to coexist within a single state. Sooner or later, the emerging blood feud between our separate nations will overwhelm the superficial political game. It must. We are nationalistic; they are globalists. We are the inheritors of Western civilization; they are its detractors. We are the voice of stability; they are the voice of chaos. We are the battered remnants of Christendom; they are the unholy and improbable alliance of militant atheism and Islam.

In the last few years I have heard quite a few ordinary conservatives raise the terrifying specter of secession. I am sympathetic to their frustration but am dumbstruck by the irony. How can we secede from the suicidal, anti-American institutions the lunatic left has produced? Have progressives not, in every way imaginable, already seceded from us? How can we rebel against the United States by trying to uphold the U.S. Constitution? Are we radical and rebellious in thinking that men are men and women are women? Are we xenophobic bigots because we do not believe that every one of the 7.5 billion people in the world should be, for all practical purposes, counted as U.S. citizens? We cannot rebel against a government that has been so thoroughly usurped. We can only declare, eventually, its utter illegitimacy.

Only God can know precisely how events are going to unfold, but one need not foresee the details to feel the bitter hatred escalating. Donald Trump, though he may be well-meaning, an able manager, and the greatest showman since P.T. Barnum, lacks the power to make a unified country from two utterly antithetical and hostile nations. The more he thwarts the progressive agenda, the more desperate and violent our enemies are likely to become. Left-wing celebrities have been insulting Republican presidents for decades, but this is the first time they have raised ones bloody head in effigy. War, the last resort of desperate people when all political and legal remedies have failed, waits only for a triggering event. It waits for people to believe their futures and their childrens futures will be so unbearable that they have nothing left to lose.
Although Hassan Rouhani failed to deliver any of his first-term promises as the president of the Islamic Republic (I.R.) of Iran, he was reinstated by voters in the May 19 election. Apparently, he was elected for a second term because the choice for the Iranian people was between bad and worse. Further, he was more vocal this time around in criticizing his opponent, hardliner Ebrahim Raisi, and making many electoral promises, mainly opening the doors to international investors, improving living and economic conditions, providing freedom and social liberties, dismantling the widely spread economic corruption in the governing system, and so on. However, everything he and other candidates said and promised during the electoral campaign was basically designed to save the rotten regime from falling apart. All candidates, moderates or fundamentalists, were and are regime insiders, and loyal to the supreme leader.

The presidential elections in Iran are processes that have been engineered by the regime every four years to motivate and bring the citizens to the polling centers on election day, and therefore mislead the international community into thinking that the I.R.'s president is elected by the people, that the process is democratic, and that the Islamic government is legitimately running the country. But in reality, the presidential election is the same show every four years, only with different players.

The presidential election this time was also a fabricated competition between a so-called moderate cleric, Hassan Rouhani, and a fundamentalist cleric, Ebrahim Raisi. The same scenario was played in the 1997 presidential election: a moderate cleric, Mohammad Khatami, was confronting a fundamentalist cleric, Ali Akbar Nategh-Nouri. Mohammad Khatami encouraged Iranians to vote for a great change, but in his two-term presidency from 1997 to 2005, he failed to deliver what he promised. In his farewell address after eight years in office, he admitted that all these years, he was only a deliveryman and nothing else.

Unexpectedly, four years later, in the election year 2009, in the dawn of the Green uprising in Iran, the clergy in Tehran lost control of "presidential election" processes. Therefore, the disputed presidential election in that year resulted in extensive nationwide protests that shook the foundation of the regime, initiating a brutal street shooting followed by a crackdown of demonstrators and mass arrests of innocent citizens by the dictatorial Islamic regime.

Many people were killed while peacefully protesting the repression and brutality of the regime. Hundreds disappeared and were likely kidnapped, thousands were detained and tortured, and some were put on fabricated trials to impress foreign reporters. Initially, all these were ignored by the international community and freedom-loving people, and the U.S. president, Barack Obama, viewed these as internal issues. However, the crying out of the Iranian people and intense advocacy by a few international and various domestic human rights organizations, and also by individuals including the secularist and human rights advocate Prince Reza Pahlavi, the son of the late monarch of Iran, resulted in the Iranian case being put on the U.N. Security Council agenda as "the human rights issue in Iran."

Gradually, after a few months, a campaign formed by democratic countries that was initiated and led by Sweden. The goal of this campaign was to overcome the political hurdles for achieving united action to control the misbehavior of the I.R. regime. There was a desire to address resolutions on the human rights condition in Iran yearly, including any investigations conducted outside the country, and for resolutions to be guaranteed to have diplomatic support. In late 2009, the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC) unanimously agreed to recognize the I.R. in Iran as a government needing a special rapporteur on issues of human rights to monitor and report its misbehavior and abuses to the UNHRC.

Finally, all those efforts resulted in the U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) favorably voting to establish a monitoring system to report the situation of human rights issues in Iran in late 2010. The passage of the resolution enabled the UNHRC to assign a rapporteur for the I.R. for the first time, and Ahmad Shaheed was overwhelmingly elected as the first special rapporteur for human rights in Iran. The mandate of the rapporteur is established by the Human Rights Council and is subject to yearly renewal. The intergovernmental process provides formal recommendations to the I.R. on observing international obligations and accountability of human rights violations in Iran. This was a great achievement for the freedom-loving people of the world and a major victory for Iranians and human rights groups. Since then, until the end of 2016, the UNHRC had extended Ahmad Shaheed's mandate every year to lend its special rapporteur the authority to report on the miserable human rights conditions in Iran.

Expectedly, the I.R. rejected and ridiculed the human rights resolution of the UNGA. Its officials, including the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, questioned the level of professionalism of UNHRC experts and questioned if they were qualified to visit Iran. The I.R. has continuously referred to the "Islamic Human Rights Charter" as its guide. The Charter was adopted nearly three decades ago by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), of which the I.R. is a member. The OIC declaration stated that "sharia" is the only valid document that Islamic nations must obey. The rules of sharia clearly challenge and contradict the components of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Sharia denies the most basic of human rights, including freedom of expression, equality of men and women, and freedom of choice of religion. Naturally, in the I.R., death has been the punishment for those not observing these sharia principles.

In addition, the I.R. has never allowed any international human rights organizations' rapporteurs to visit Iran, whose reports have been based mainly on interviews with those who had experienced the savage side of the I.R. Its excuse is that Islamic beliefs and culture prescribe entirely different views and values regarding human rights. The I.R. apparently believes that the UDHR is a document fabricated by infidel Western neo-imperialism, designed to change the beliefs and behavior of the Muslim population, and it has made considerable efforts to manipulate the free and democratic world into believing that Iranian society proudly rejects universal human rights.

A new special human rights rapporteur, Asma Jahangir, was appointed to replace Ahmad Shaheed for Iran in November 2016. As was expected, immediately after her first report on the condition of human rights in Iran, foreign affairs officials in Tehran demanded that the UNHRC remove the new rapporteur because her mission is "politically motivated."

In her first official report about the I.R. on March 6, Jahangir stated that "all reports indicate a tight control over media workers and censorship efforts adding a high level of pressure over general citizens, indicating that democratic space is severely limited" (Radio Free Europe, March 2017). Further, she voiced concern that "as of December 13, 2016, at least 24 journalists, bloggers, and social media activists were either in detention or sentenced to death for their peaceful activities."

In the March 6 report, Jahangir expressed her concern about the alarming level of executions in Iran, where she reported that at least 530 (567 according to Amnesty International) citizens were executed in 2016, and at least five of them were below the age of 18 at the times of their alleged offenses. Additionally, she mentioned that 156 people have been put to death since the beginning of the current year, and that two of them were reported as juveniles.

Jahangir stated that she has received many reports regarding the I.R.'s systematic use of torture in detention centers across the country and its continued use of amputations, blinding, and flogging, as well as its use of prolonged solitary confinement for detainees. According to her report, most people who are executed have been falsely convicted of only drug-related crimes, a label the regime automatically applies to any political activist who must be eliminated.

On March 13, at the 34th session of the UNHRC in Geneva, Switzerland, Asma Jahangir described the situation of human rights in Iran as "alarming." In a 40-page report, she accused the I.R. of numerous human rights violations. Innocent citizens, mainly political opposition, religious minorities, and innocent journalists, are arrested on fabricated charges, and detainees face torture, abuse, imprisonment, and often execution.

The reaction of the theocratic regime to all these in mid-March 2017, expressed by the I.R.'s Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi, was that "Tehran does not recognize these reports" (Tehran Times, March 2017). He added that Jahangir's reports, "like her predecessor Ahmad Shaheed's reports[,] have been prepared based on inaccurate and contrived information regarding the human rights situation in the Islamic Republic."

Now, President-Elect Hassan Rouhani, who has bragged about being a "moderate," has one of the darkest records in human rights issues, as mentioned before, according to the last report of the U.N. special rapporteur and Amnesty International. He has presided over the highest rate of executions in Iran, the largest number per capita in the world, all in his first term. That is only less than the well known massacre of the notorious summer of 1988, in which, within a few weeks, near 20,000 Iranians belonging to various opposing political groups were executed at the end of the Iran-Iraq war on a fatwa (religious decree) by Shiite clergyman Khomeini, the founder of the I.R.

The labeling of the I.R.'s factions as either "reformists" and "moderates" or "hardliners" and "fundamentalists," and a free and democratic election as claimed by the I.R., is nothing but a hoax. The I.R.'s only interest is to save the regime as it is. Human rights are never on its agenda.

Mansour Kashfi, Ph.D., is president of Kashex International Petroleum Consulting and is a college professor in Dallas. He has over 50 years' experience in petroleum exploration, primarily in the M.E. He is also author of more than 100 articles and books about the petroleum industry.
The current wave of Islamic terror seen in Manchester and London, only reinforces the general feeling that the excessive political correctness of recent years by the Obama Presidency, by the British Labor party, and the European media has fostered and festered productive breeding grounds for Islamic terrorists in the heart of England. Londons current Mayor Sadiq Khan, a practicing Muslim, could have a significant impact on the minds and hearts of many of Englands young Muslims should he decide to express what should have been said years ago to Muslims living in England and throughout the Western World.

Khan could have reinforced the idea that practicing Muslims such as himself are modern citizens who happen to worship Allah, yet do not bring any kind of belief in the preeminence of Sharia Law. Islamic terror is the logical extension of the belief that Sharia must be imposed. Mayor Khan could state that the former would not pose a threat to England or the Western lifestyle while the latter belief would be a mortal threat. The danger facing Britain and other Western nations from the Islamic wave sweeping the Middle East and beyond arises not from the fact that people practicing the Islamic religion are Muslim, but rather from the degree to which they adhere to the totalitarian, supremacist Islamic doctrine of Sharia.

However, you dont have to go back very far in Mayor Sadiq Khans past to find links with some pretty questionable characters. Some of these associations date back to his time as a human rights lawyer trying to get England to lift its ban on the American Nation of Islam leader, Louis Farrakhan, who has described Jews as blood-suckers and called Hitler a very great man. Khan didnt mind speaking at the same conference as Sajeel Abu Ibrahim, a member of the now proscribed Islamist organization that trained the 7/7 bomber Mohammad Sidique Khan. In 2004, Sadiq Khan appeared on a platform with five Islamic extremists at a conference in London organized by Al-Aqsa, a group that has published works by the notorious Holocaust denier Paul Eisen.

In the same year, Khan was the chair of the Muslim Council of Britains legal affairs committee, and was involved in defending the Muslim scholar Dr Yusuf Al-Qaradawi. Among other things, hes the author of a book called The Lawful and Prohibited in Islam, in which he justifies wife beating and discusses whether homosexuals should be killed. Most notoriously, he condones martyrdom operations, i.e. suicide bombings, against Israeli civilians, which he describes as Gods justice: Allah Almighty is just; through his infinite wisdom he has given the weak a weapon the strong do not have and that is their ability to turn their bodies into bombs as Palestinians do.

In spite of holding these views, Qaradawi was not an extremist in Sadiq Khans eyes. In 2006, by which time Khan had been elected to Parliament, Khan was one of the signatories of a letter to the Guardian that blamed terrorist incidents, such as 7/7, on British foreign policy, particularly Britains support for Israel. It is our view that current British government policy risks putting civilians at increased risk both in the UK and abroad,

Should Mayor Khan decide to, he can render a real public service by not shying away from the issue of what it means to be a practicing Muslim in a Western nation. He can align himself with the call for tougher counterterrorism measures suggested by the British PM and be the first to demand that the UK must not pretend that things can remain the same. Khan can abandon the politically correct rhetoric about Islam and the legitimacy of terror to advance political goals, whether it be ISIS or the Palestinians who have been using terror for the latter part of the past 100 years, at first against Jews and later against the State of Israel. Khan could share his new understanding that what was perceived in the past as threat on Israel is now beginning to be understood as a problem for Britain and the Western world as a whole. This is the meaning of the Islamic Domino Effect.

During the latter part of the previous century, a powerful and belligerent conglomeration of state and non-state Islamic forces adopted the use of terror to create a strategic threat on the continuing survival of the State of Israel. During those years the use of Islamic terror was considered a local threat to Israel and a consequence of the ongoing conflict between Israel and her Arab neighbors. Islamic terror was perceived in the West as a complementary Islamic tactic to weaken Israel between periods of intermittent full-blown military warfare, always resulting in Israel's defeat of combined Arab military forces. Islamic terror was not understood or interpreted as a strategic threat for Western nations. This acceptance of Islamic terror as a genuine and justifiable expression of nationalistic aspirations provided for the leaders of Radical Islam the belief that the Western world must accept Islam, by force if necessary, and that they have a divine right to impose Islam on the Western world.

Until recently, Israel stood alone in the Middle East in the midst of a sea of Islamic forces. Israel, a bastion of democratic stability, a regional military superpower, and a frontline defense for Britain and the Western World against the belligerency and imperialistic inspirations of Islamic forces who wish to conquer the West. No longer should politically correct rhetoric be articulated unchallenged, presenting the conflict between the Palestinians and Israel as a localized conflict rather than as the preliminary stage for the Islamic threat to pose a direct territorial threat on France, on England, and on the rest of the Western World. The seeds of this Islamic threat on the integrity of the Western World are already planted to grow and attack from within and from without, creating a domino effect that will disrupt Western societies as we know them. This weeks terror in the streets of London is only a preview of what to expect in the future. The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, can be an agent of change that modern Islam so clearly needs.

The writer, a 25-year veteran of the I.D.F., served as a field mental health officer and Commander of the Central Psychiatric Military Clinic for Reserve Soldiers at Tel-Hashomer. Since retiring from active duty, he provides consultancy services to NGOs implementing Psycho trauma and Psychoeducation programs to communities in the North and South of Israel and is a strategic advisor to the Chief Foreign Envoy of Judea and Samaria Contact: medconf@netvision.net.il
The liberal position on Islamic terrorism, unchallenged by the media, and shared not only by most on the political left but also by some on the right (including Republican "moderates"), relies on the following arguments:

1. Islam (as practiced by the vast majority of Muslims) is a peaceful religion.

This is a logical fallacy, known as missing the point. Basically, even if correct, this conclusion is completely irrelevant because it fails to address the actual issues. Moreover, for the sake of argument, even if 99 percent of the world's (estimated) 1.8 billion Muslims opposed acts of terrorism committed in the name of Islam, there still would be (approximately) 18 million Muslims who supported terrorism. And in reality, the number is much higher; reputable polls have repeatedly shown that 10 percent to 40 percent of Muslims from various nations in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa support terrorism. In the United States, nearly 10 percent of Muslims have consistently said that suicide bombings against civilians are justified "often" or "sometimes."

2. Islamic terrorists are reinterpreting the Koran.

This is demonstrably incorrect. The Koran not only instructs Muslims to engage in Jihad and fight nonbelievers until Islam is supreme, but also promises eternal paradise to Muslims for killing, and being killed, in this fight. Therefore, after the Koran was revealed in the 7th century, Muslims waged "holy war" against nonbelievers, spreading Islam -- with violence -- across the Middle East, northern Africa, and southern Europe. In short, the Muslims (and particularly the Islamic terrorists) who are waging holy war against the United States and other nations today are following the Koran according to both its literal interpretation and its original interpretation by Muslims in the 7th century. (For fighting nonbelievers, see Koran 2:216; 4:76; 9:5. For Islamic supremacy, see Koran 8:39; 9:29; 61:9. For eternal paradise, see Koran 9:111. For holy war, see Sahih Muslim 19:4294; Sahih al-Bukhari 53:392.)

3. Like the Koran, the Bible also contains violent passages.

This is a false analogy. To repeat, the Koran (specifically, Allah, the god of Islam) instructs Muslims to fight nonbelievers until Islam is supreme; the instructions apply to past, present, and future Muslims. The Bible simply does not contain any comparable instructions to present or future Christians; the Koran's timeless instructions to Muslims are fundamentally different from the Bible's description of events where people (Israelites) of a past era, under the command of God, engaged in violence, or where God (in judgment of people) inflicts or threatens violence.

4. Like Muslims, Christians also have engaged in violence.

This is another false analogy. Again, the Muslims who are committing acts of violence in the name of Islam are interpreting passages of the Koran (instructions from Allah) according to both their literal and original meanings. In contrast, Christians who committed acts of violence in the name of Christianity disregarded the words of Christ; both their literal and original meanings. The early Muslims engaged in violence, spreading Islam by attacking non-Muslims, whereas the early Christians endured violence, including being thrown to the beasts (wild animals) by non-Christians (Romans).

5. Like the Islamic world, the West also has produced terrorists, including the United States, which has produced domestic terrorists (both left wing and right wing).

This is a "red herring," a separate argument that liberals introduce to divert attention from the actual issues. Among other things, domestic terrorists from any one nation, by definition, are only a threat to the people in that nation, whereas Islamic terrorists are posing a threat to the people in many nations. Therefore, domestic terrorism in one nation does not require a response by any other nation, whereas Islamic terrorism requires a response by many nations. Additionally, as a result of the decades-long influx of Muslim immigrants and refugees to non-Muslim nations, Islamic terrorists are increasingly also domestic terrorists in non-Muslim nations. Yet liberals support policies (such as continuing to accept immigrants and refugees from Muslim nations) that prevent the United States, and Western nations in general, from effectively dealing with the Islamic threat.

6. An underlying cause of terrorism is the failure of Muslim nations to provide Muslim youth with alternatives to Islamic groups like al Qaeda and ISIS.

This is an unfounded assertion. The premise is that certain factors in Muslim nations (such as poverty, injustice, and instability) are root causes of Islamic terrorism. However, in other regions of the world, non-Muslims also live under these kinds of severe conditions, and they have not responded with this kind of terrorism. Ultimately, the Koran, the collections of hadith (the reported words and conduct of Muhammad, the last prophet of Islam), and Islamic history are the root causes of Muslims waging holy war against nonbelievers today in what is a timeless struggle to make Islam supreme.

7. Another underlying cause of terrorism is the use of military force by Western nations in the Middle East and northern Africa.

This is a classic example of a "half-truth." Indisputably, there have been, and still are, Muslims motivated by the actions of the West, but this is a secondary, not underlying, cause of Islamic terrorism, which is a crucial difference. With regard to policy, the West cannot successfully use military force to change people who have resisted change for over a thousand years, but the West can successfully use military force, in targeted operations, when necessary to prevent future terrorist attacks. Nevertheless, there is a lack of consensus among both the political left and right on when military force is necessary; most recently, some opposed, while others supported, the use of military force by the West in Syria. Furthermore, even the use of military force, limited to targeted operations, only when necessary, will still provoke Muslims. Every possible course of action or nonaction by the West will have consequences, and liberals offer criticisms, not solutions.

8. Yet another underlying cause of terrorism is the failure of Western nations in Europe to provide social and economic opportunities to Muslim immigrants, refugees, and their descendants.

This is pure speculation. The facts tell a different story. In Europe, large blocs of Muslims, concentrated in cities, have chosen to isolate themselves, by refusing to adopt their European nation's culture, and instead adhering to Islamic culture. In the end, the main problem is that many practices and principles of Islam are incompatible with Western civilization.

9. The threat of terrorism increases when Western nations implement policies that are directed at Muslims.

This is a revealing assertion. The premise is that certain policies (such as the surveillance of activities at mosques, the enhanced screening of Muslims at airports, or a travel ban on foreigners arriving from Muslim nations) incite, or will incite, so-called "moderate" Muslims to join Islamic groups like al Qaeda and ISIS. But what type of person (moderate person, no less) can be incited by such policies to savagely attack other human beings? The answer, following liberal reasoning, is a person already predisposed to violence; namely, a moderate Muslim.

10. Opposition to Islam is based on fear and hate; the individuals who oppose immigration from Muslim nations or who oppose accepting refugees are Islamophobic.

This is a blatant lie that also employs a personal attack. Like opposition to communism and fascism, opposition to Islam is based on knowledge, not fear or hate; like communism and fascism, Islam is a belief system with principles that violate the rights of individuals. Opposition to the beliefs and actions of an individual or group is not a phobia; such opposition is legitimate.

11. We cannot allow the terrorists to divide us.

This is a raw appeal to emotion. If worded honestly, this statement would assert, "We cannot allow the terrorists to wake the public up to either the dangers or injustices of multiculturalism." Essentially, what liberals want is for people from all cultures and regions of world, no matter how incompatible their belief systems, to live together, in the same nation, right now. And if the result is carnage, so be it. The slaughter of civilians, including children, by Muslim immigrants, refugees, or their descendants is a price that liberals are willing to pay: a sacrifice at the altar of multiculturalism, faithfully suffered in the name of such ideological concepts as diversity, openness, and tolerance.

12. The terrorists will never win; our values and our way of life will prevail.

This is rhetoric. Often, when used by politicians, "our values" means, first and foremost, the liberal value of multiculturalism, and "our way of life" means a liberal way of life in a multicultural society. Indeed, the way of life enjoyed in the West since the close of World War II has already deteriorated in sections (controversially described as "no-go zones") of numerous cities in Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, the United Kingdom, and other European nations, while politicians have been working to lull the public into a passive acceptance of this (entirely avoidable) decline, by saying things like terrorism will be "part of our daily lives" and "we should learn to live with terrorism." And in the United States, the federal government's policies of the last several decades, especially on immigration and refugees, have the American way of life set on this same downward course.

Paul Pauker is the author of Morality and Law in America. He also runs a site dedicated to advancing the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and property.
In a videotape broadcast on American TV after 9-11, Osama bin Laden once referred to the tragedy of Andalusia, considered the greatest disaster in Muslim history before the re-birth of Israel. The subtitles conveniently forgot to note that Andalusia meant the Iberian Peninsula, and that Muslims want it back.

Let the whole world know that we shall never accept that the tragedy of Andalusia would be repeated in Palestine. - Slate

When I saw that videotape on TV in 2011, I nearly jumped out of my chair. As an amateur historian, I knew what was meant. I could not believe that no one noted the connection.

We tend to associate Andalusia with Spain, because Spain's southern most province is called Andalusia, an homage to the invaders former presence. In reality, the Arab word Andalus referred to the whole peninsula, not just Spain, and that is what Bin Laden had in mind. Except for a small sliver of land on the Northern Coast of Spain, the whole territory had been conquered.

The question naturally arises: What about Portugal?

In 1249, the Moorish rulers were finally defeated in Portugal, about 243 years before the last of the Moorish rulers were defeated in Spain. All the while, Spain was liberating its country in stages, but sort of stalled when it came to retaking Andalusia (The Emirate of Granada). Why?

The Emirate of Granada had been reduced to a vassal state of Spain, and paid considerable tribute in gold  from central Africa -- to the Christians in the north. In spite of that, Grenada prospered. It was only after Portugal opened up ocean routes in the 15th century, that Grenada's economic fortunes declined.

Until Ferdinand and Isabella, Spain was content to profit of this cash cow. Near the end, profits dropped, and the Moors got aggressive. The rest is history. But the damage was done.

Anyone who has studied Spanish becomes immediately aware of odd words, which don't look European. One of Spain's longest rivers, the Guadalquiver (Wadi al kabir), is testimony to Arabic's influence. A simple word like mayor, which in Portuguese is prefeito (similar to prefect, coming from Latin praefectus ) is contrasted with the Spanish alcalde, which comes from the Arabic word for judge (alqadi). In simple terms, Spanish was more strongly influenced by Arabic. Anyone who speaks Spanish immediately hears the difference between Spanish and Portuguese. Though they are written similarly, they sound completely different. That 243 years of extra Moorish occupation significantly shifted the Spanish language.

While seven centuries of Arab rule in Andalusia produced architectural treasures like the Giralda in Seville, Cordobas Great Mosque and the Alhambra palace in Granada, the Islamic period in Portugal left few major monuments. The Andalusian cities developed as major centers of Islamic culture to rival Damascus or Marrakesh, but Portugal was always on the outer edge of the Muslim world and its frontier rulers invested little in grandiose construction. - The Islamic heritage in Portugal's past - PRI

What we notice is that by getting rid of Moorish rule earlier, Portugal minimized Arab influences, even as Portuguese incorporated more French words. The result is substantial. When we think of the Moorish invasion of Iberia, we tend to emphasis its impact on Spain. With good reason. The Arabs left less of a footprint in Portugal; while Spain dallied far too long in getting rid of the Moors.

The difference lingers to this day.

Spain is over 4% Muslim today, with almost 2 million Muslims. Portugal by contrast is roughly at 40,000 or so  and that number is taken from Islamic sources, which may be exaggerating  or 0.4% (charts can vary a bit). In absolute numbers, Portugal has 22% the population of Spain, yet only roughly one fiftieth (1/50th) the number of Muslims. This mean that Portugal has one of the lowest Muslim populations in Western Europe. Even Ireland has a higher percentage of Muslims. So what is going on?

Why is Islam ignoring Portugal (relatively speaking)? I doubt the Muslims are singularly averse to Fado Music, or feijoado.

The general consensus seems to be that the Muslims are following the money. Portugal is the poorest nation in Western Europe. But that would not explain Ireland, which is one of the richest nations in Western Europe, with a relatively small population of Muslims  though that seems to be changing fast.

According to Irish figures, the number of Muslims increased 29% in Ireland from 2011 to 2016. Ireland is catching up to the rest of Western Europe.

Nor is it that Portugal's government is anti-Muslim. Portugal wants immigrants to replace a population that is emigrating due to a bad economy. It seems that most Muslim refuse to go to Portugal, as this commentary shows:

Luis Gouveia, the national deputy director of borders and immigration service SEF, has told Diario de Noticias that Portugal may be ready to receive 4,754 refugees (as part of EU quotas) but is unlikely to see more than 50 arrive before Christmas, and even that isnt set in stone. The problem, he explained, is not simply bureaucratic. People are actively refusing to come here. The crushing majority of asylum seekers coming into Europe want to get to Germany and Sweden where they have family, or where they know they can find work and have a good lifestyle. Preferences are always for northern countries, said Gouveia. The Iberian Peninsula is unknown. He added that of 40 asylum seekers recently offered refuge in Spain, only 12 agreed to it. [Note: Spain had an economic crisis recently] - Refugees dont want to come to Portugal, 2015

It can't be a case of family ties. Spain has 2 million Muslims and should be a destination for more Muslims, who prefer Northern Europe It is certainly a case of the economy.

Is that all there is to it? No! Unlike Spain, Portugal's post-Islamic Catholic empire often tended to be in non-Muslim majority regions of Africa and Asia. There were exceptions, though, like Portuguese Guinea.

However, post-Islamic Catholic Spain took control of Morocco, which supplied troops to Franco; and still has Ceuta and Melilla on the North African coast. Ceuta is already half Muslim. Spain did not so much get rid of Muslims as trade positions of ruler and vassal. Spain did expel Muslims from Iberia, but did not break connections with them. Spain had a lingering strong historical connection to Islam that Portugal did not. This is also true of England and France, especially France, where a lot of the Muslims are of Algerian origins. Of course, history is not the only reason. Sweden, with lots of Muslims today, had a empire which was generally confined to the Baltic. Lutheran Sweden's historical religious opposition was Catholic, not Islamic. Money is the factor in Sweden.

Portugal has the unenviable position of being the poorest nation in Western Europe. However, it has the enviable position of being the least Muslim nation in Western Europe. Money and benefits are certainly a factor, but not the only one.

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. He also started a small website about small computers at http://minireplacement.com.
Venezuela is one of the most unreported tragedies of our time. We can guess why: the left-leaning media are not interested in telling us what happened in Venezuela because it disproves so many of their narratives.

In a nutshell: Venezuela was once the most prosperous country in South America. It is now one of the poorer nations in the world. Food is hard to find, toilet paper is scarce, and civilization as the citizenry once knew it is gone. Venezuela's story has been one of going from first to worst, a fact the left does not want anyone to know. The socialist paradise the left inexplicably wants for the U.S. lies in tatters at the top of South America.

Venezuela matters because socialism is one of the two great political blights foisted on the world in the past century. There are multiple examples of the horrors of this system, be it Soviet socialism, the socialist killing fields of Cambodia, the rotting Euro-states, or the current and unfinished calamity of Venezuela. Socialism is a system that always promises great things for humanity but in the end is dehumanizing, destructive, and false. Dressed as an angel of light, offering equality, fairness, and goodness, socialism always seems to change clothes into the angel of death. Destruction of the human spirit becomes its normative end.

Its siren song is hard to resist. It always sounds so good. Hearing about it during the college years captures your attention and consideration. The professors espousing it seem knowledgeable, credentialed, and persuasive. Not many teach against it.

My first conversation with someone who explained the horrors of socialism was with my grandfather. Coming home from college, I was asked to walk him around the neighborhood. He was in his eighties. During that walk, he tried his best to pass on how he had fought socialism his entire life. He was a public school teacher from Tacoma, Washington, who made it one of his projects in life to teach about the ills of socialism.

Needless to say, it was surprising, having heard my professors. I, being young and impressionable, thought he seemed misguided and weak.

Since then, history has vindicated my grandfather's vision. The mask had yet to come entirely off the Soviet failure, the Killing Fields had not happened, the horrors of Mao's China lay unexposed, Vietnam had not fallen, Solzhenitsyn had not been published, and Venezuela was wealthy. Yet socialism was already something this man knew was disastrous.

With all these clear historical monuments to the abject failure of the socialist system, Bernie Sanders remains the most popular figure on the left. Anyone running with a (D) behind his name will have to be "with him" (the unintended political slogan). It's sad. An entire generation have not yet had their grandfathers walk with them to share the collectivist nightmare. Instead, we have too many grandfathers like Bernie: delusional, incompetent, and ignorant of history.

Once upon a day, this widespread and full acceptance of socialism was not possible in this country. The Democratic Party was not fully pro-socialist; they were once the party of JFK and Scoop Jackson, along with many other fervent anti-socialists. They had not swallowed the Kool-Aid. Unfortunately, too many of our ill-informed citizens now accept it, considering it just another system of governance.

It's not.

Venezuela has become the clearest current object lesson against socialist destruction. It's a vital lesson for economic discussion in our own public square, one of the most important lessons our current snowflake generation could learn. Everyone knows a few decent, hardworking, and talented Millennials. Most know some of the snowflakes, too. Trust me: they need help. They need to see what is happening in Venezuela. They need to see just how badly they don't want Venezuela to happen here. That lesson needs a bullhorn.

These kids love their smartphones. They love good beer, good wine, cultural and sporting events. Most even love nice cars and nice places to live. They prefer civilization. In spite of their current alliance with environmentalism and "climate change," they love the material advantages we all enjoy that socialism did not bring them. They use (and love) so many technological advances that you would think that convincing them to avoid socialism would be easy.

But it's not. Because now there is an entire home-grown army of angels of light preaching the gospel of socialism daily, and too few like my grandfather.

- Our public education has indoctrinated an entire generation to favor socialism.

- Our universities teach it uncritically as if it has brought us paradise on Earth, rather than reduced countries to poverty.

- Our leftist media rarely speak or sneer against it; they save that for the capitalistic freedom that gives them their lifestyles.

- Hollywood has shown a nonstop narrative of villains as either businessmen (capitalists) or U.S. military officers (who love capitalism) for twenty-five years. Few heroes are entrepreneurs to Hollywood.

- An entire political party has renounced free enterprise for socialism.

- Rich fools such as Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Google principals, media moguls, and the Hollywood elite naively push it. That's most of our information base.

- We had eight years of a president who sounded like Hugo Chavez, nothing like JFK, and a leftist media that didn't care to know the difference.

Venezuela is the perfect truth for countering these "angels of light" and unmasking them for what they are: delusional shills for darkness and tyranny. This darkness, unlike the half-year-old moronic Russia-Trump collusion story, actually is a fact and has evidence  evidence ignored and unreported.

Chavez came to power by promising to redistribute, and then redistributing Venezuela's wealth to the poor. Giving money to the poor is always the bait for socialism; it allows power to be won and kept, as it did for Chavez. It allowed our cultural saviors to say how much Chavez helped the poor. In the end, it destroyed the people who voted for him. Too late, they finally burned the Chavez childhood home.

Barack Obama sang this same song to win his nomination and did untold damage by following socialist tendencies. His "stimulus" was nothing more than a handout to Democrat constituencies to consolidate power. Yes, that sounds familiar. Venezuela redux. He was headed there.

Chavez nationalized thousands of businesses under the guise of helping the downtrodden, ultimately destroying the ability of the Venezuelans to escape poverty. Chavez gave them fish for a day and then prevented them from fishing for themselves, convincing them he was the only one who would help them. He demonized business, then took it away, making the chaos that reigns now. It sounds unusually close to the Democrat platform today. As Trump noted, the Democrats care about the poor only for their votes to keep power, but Democrats give the poor no tools to dig themselves out.

Chavez ended up obscenely wealthy, as did his daughter  billionaires for ruining a country and the lives of countless millions. Similarly, the Clintons had their illicit and obscene pay-to-play foundation scheme; Obama is going to get millions for being a Chavez echo, huge speaking fees, along with free everything from suck-up celebrities. A visionless (and obtusely rich) Democratic Party does not know that Venezuela matters, or why.

While Venezuela descends into darkness, the leftist media focus on how Islamophobic we are.

Pounding the left for their awful, dark, and literally wrong vision of socialism needs to be done  all while exhorting a new generation to embrace the creative vision of free enterprise and of entrepreneurship, giving them what they are used to in their lifestyle and more.

An entire generation needs to rediscover what my grandfather knew. If we miss this opportunity to show why Venezuela matters, we might get there sooner than we think.
A free speech group sent a letter to President Trump demanding that he unblock Twitter trolls and other critics because it violates the First Amendment. The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University in New York says the president blocking anybody suppresses free speech in a public forum.

Reuters:

Alex Abdo, the institute's senior staff attorney, likened Twitter to a modern form of town hall meeting or public comment periods for government agency proposals, both venues where U.S. law requires even-handed treatment of speech. Eric Goldman, a Santa Clara University law professor who focuses on internet law, said that previous cases involving politicians blocking users on Facebook (FB.O) supported the Knight Institute's position. If the institute should sue, Trump could claim his @realDonaldTrump account is for personal use and separate from his official duties as president, Goldman said. But he called that defense "laughable." Trump also has a presidential @POTUS Twitter account. The Knight Institute said its arguments would apply with "equal force" to both accounts. Trump's Twitter use has drawn intense media attention for his unvarnished commentary about his agenda and attacks on critics. His tweets are often retweeted tens of thousands of times, and can shape the news cycle. Legal experts have said his tweets may directly affect policy. A chain of postings about his travel ban may hamper his administration's defense in courts.

Trump's own staff can't agree on whether his tweets are statements of policy or expressions of presidential opinion on social media.

Newsweek:

On Monday, national security aide Sebastian Gorka insisted they are "not policy," while adviser Kellyanne Conway blasted the media's "obsession" with them. A day later and the message from Press Secretary Sean Spicer was radically different. Asked whether Trump's tweets constituted official statements, Spicer said, "The president is the president of the United States so they're considered official statements by the president of the United States." Earlier, Spicer also defended the content of Trump's messages on Twitter, pointing out their effectiveness during the 2016 campaign. "The president is the most effective messenger on his agenda, and I think his use of social mediahe now has a collective total of close to 110 million people across different platformsgive him an opportunity to speak directly to the American people, which has proved to be a very effective tool," he said. "The same people who are critiquing his use of it now critiqued it during the election, and it turned out pretty well for him then."

The president's tweets are statements of policy. Any time a president opens his mouth  even if the communication is not meant for the public, as in a hot mic situation  those statements carry the weight and prestige of the president of the United States.

Spicer's observation about the effectiveness of Trump's tweets during the campaign ignores the monumental difference between candidate Trump and President Trump. And there are real-world consequences when the president's tweets are directly at odds with policies he has proclaimed previously, including the tweets about his travel ban that contradict what the Justice Department has been saying and that could cost him at the Supreme Court, and his tweets yesterday regarding the Qatar crisis that were completely at odds with what the Pentagon had been saying about the matter..

But even if they are statements of policy, does the president have the right to block trolls and other critics? The notion that Twitter is a "modern-day town hall" is absurd. Questioners at town halls don't call the president names or question his loyalty to the U.S. I think this kind of behavior by "critics" deserves to be blocked because it distracts from the ability of all other users to read and understand the president's positions. It's like standing up in the middle of a Trump speech and screaming at him, attempting to prevent him from speaking.

Cluttering up the president's Twitter page with rants by paranoid, hysterical liberals should lead to the perpetrators being blocked. Twitter may be a public forum, but the account belongs to the individual. There's nothing in the Constitution that prevents an individual from policing his own Twitter page.
Take a plain-spoken heroine who decides for a variety of family reasons to sign up for the Marines. Add a positive take on the U.S. Marine Corps, plus memorable and upstanding characters who ring true.

Then add amazingly lovable (though not at first) German shepherds in the Marine Corps's canine unit, "sniffers" who save lives by detecting landmines and improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

Full disclosure: Having been lucky enough to have been bivouacked in the U.S. Air Force, as well as a sometime volunteer in the Israeli IDF  Army, Navy, and Air force  the author has a huge tender spot for anything military. And as far as canines go, the heart melts with affection and amused marveling, indulgence, and love when there's a dog in the picture. Aside from cats, who doesn't love dogs?

Add to this mix is the fact that Megan Leavey is a true story, portrayed with affecting simplicity and honesty by Kate Mara, and you have a winning combo. What's maybe a little bit more amazing is that both sides of the current political divide, left and right, are charmed by this winning film  a contender in my estimation for one of the best of the year, easily in competition for the kind of praise rightly lavished on the outstanding  and somewhat parallel  The Hurt Locker (2008).

In terms of combat canine training, personal exposure to a colleague's canine training biz over a few years provides insights about what it takes. One thing that may not be evident, but should be, is that soldiers and their canine warrior companions must withstand huge noise assault. Dogs who buck or cower at explosions and sustained gunfire are automatically decommissioned and excluded from further training. I did not see this aspect of the training, which is crucial to the expert wrangling of such prized four-legged soldiers. But it is a point that most won't think of in viewing this standout lenser.

If you wonder why Kate Mara, as Marine corporal Leavey, strokes her amazing sniffer, Rex, and murmurs, "Good boy!" instead of feeding him food and treats, each dog has his own reward mechanism, and here, bonding with the trainer and getting embraced with love and encouragement are reward enough for the four-legged hero.

In life, as shown in the film, Corporal Leavey saved hundreds of lives by IDing mines and explosives in unexpected loci in Iraq.

This is not to say there aren't lethal surprises.

The director cut new terrain, for this viewer, at least, by filling the compassion chambers with affection for Mara as she slowly and painstakingly works with her ultra-aggressive Shepherd. You're full of affection and joy for a while. Shortly thereafter, you are transported into maximal anxiety as the two, with hardcore soldier men in her company, encounter Iraqi irregulars, unknown snipers, seemingly innocent civilians and ground forces shooting at them, exploding ordnance mere feet from them  the suspense and anxiety are much more than the usual film, such as the current acceptable Alien: Covenant, which, for all its remarkable SFX, does not generate fear or anxiety, only attention and interest  especially for the always galvanizing Michael Fassbender in a tour de force double-role.

You don't really bond with the actors in A:C the way audiences do with Leavey.

A small but not uninteresting note is that the excellent direction and writing are all female. I'm not here claiming that women can't be every bit as dogged and accomplished as male directors and writers in describing military circumstances, but this film is a standout in having all the top-billed creatives being female. Nice to see. Perhaps unexpected.

For all that the plot involves a female Marine, there is little unwanted sentimentality. Leavey seeks, and gets, no favors or extra consideration. That she serves with heroic distinction and physical injuries is all the more laudable. Furthermore, there seems to have been a sea change in that, as portrayed in the film, at least, the sexual harassment quotient seems at a blessed remove from this man's Marines. Leavey faces her tasks and reg-related rejections and obstacles of all sorts with persistence and tenacity. It beats the likes of Ridley Scott-directed Demi Moore's rugged but idealized G.I. Jane (1997). She was expected to fail. Twenty years on, we don't expect Leavey to fail quite so automatically.

A restrained, uncloying, unusually worthwhile and entertaining movie, this is one of the best we are likely to see in a special effects-happy universe.

And, no small miracle, makes you proud to be an American.
President Trump has come in for a lot of criticism, from both friends and enemies, for tweeting out a challenge to London Mayor Sadiq Khan over his comments after the London Bridge terror attack:

"My message to Londoners and visitors to our great city is to be calm and vigilant today," Mr Khan said. "You will see an increased police presence today, including armed officers and uniformed officers. "There is no reason to be alarmed by this. We are the safest global city in the world. You saw last night as a consequence of our planning, our preparation, the rehearsals that take place, the swift response from the emergency services tackling the terrorists and also helping the injured."

His tweet in response has been criticized as taking the mayor out of context.

Pathetic excuse by London Mayor Sadiq Khan who had to think fast on his "no reason to be alarmed" statement. MSM is working hard to sell it!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 5, 2017

The U.K. Independent lays out the criticism: "[w]hat Mr Khan actually said was that there is no reason to be alarmed about the increased police presence on the streets after the attack."

However, some alternative facts have appeared that render this criticism meaningless. In an interview on ITV's show Good Morning, Britain, former CNN host Piers Morgan, now an outspoken conservative working at the U.K. Daily Mail, pressed the mayor on jihadis returning to the U.K. from training camps in the Middle East.

ITV reports:

This morning the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan joined us to address the issue of whether Britain has enough police officers on the streets after Saturday's tragic terrorist attack. "For the past 13 months I've been campaigning for more support for the Met Police service," he told Piers and Susanna. "We've lost over the last seven years six hundred million pounds from the Met Police budget." As London's first ever Muslim mayor he was also asked by Piers to address the fact there are 400 Jihadis currently in the city and what he is doing to try and stop them from committing more atrocities. "I can't follow 400 people", he said before blaming budget cuts to the police services. Addressing how everyone has a responsibility to report any signs of radicalisation in young people, Khan said: "All of us have a role to play".

The Fox News Insider adds that Khan also said "just over half" of the 400 Britons who trained with terror groups in the Middle East have returned to the U.K. capital.

So the mayor admits that there are 200+ trained insurgents roaming the streets of Britain, but there is no reason to be alarmed!

Hmm, that sounds like a guy who has an armed security detail that follows him everywhere he goes. Don't worry about the cops not following these trained killers who believe that murdering the mayor's constituents is a holy obligation because "all of us have a role to play"? Does this mean the mayor believes that family, friends, and neighbors would turn in anyone suspected of planning terror attacks? That hasn't been the way it has worked.

It seems to me that there is ample reason to be alarmed. The mayor is just blustering.

Watch the exchange here:

Morgan does a good job debunking the mayor's excuse of budget shortfalls. Has there ever been a government official who had enough money to discharge his responsibilities?
Do you know this term? It is really important that you know it and really important that you understand it, too. Why? Because according to Islam, it's where you live.

According to the adherents of Islam, the world is divided into two parts: the House of Submission and the House of War, Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb. The House of Submission, Dar al-Islam, exists wherever a Muslim government rules according to sharia (Islamic law). All lands that have not submitted to sharia constitute the House of War, the Dar al-Harb.

You probably do know the word "jihad." Jihad is holy war. Jihad is all about expanding Dar al-Islam. Islam requires of its believers jihad until all of the House of War is subjugated and has thereby become part of Dar al-Islam.

That means if you live in America or Europe, you live in the House of War, and Muslims are in a perpetual state of war with you and your fellow citizens. This is the explanation for the headlines we are presented with every day, dateline: Manchester, England; Paris, France; and many other places.

The American Founders learned what it meant to live in the House of War early on. At the time of the Founding, Muslims were conducting jihad on a grand scale on Mediterranean shipping. Colonial America's ships in the Mediterranean had been under the protection of the British navy. When Britain withdrew its protection, the Founders were forced to confront jihad for themselves, so in 1786, John Adams met with Tripoli's ambassador in London. At that meeting, Tripoli's man explained to Adams that American Christians were fair game for piracy because it was the right and duty of Muslims to plunder and enslave all who had not acknowledged the Prophet of Islam. John Jay and others soon argued for ratifying the new Constitution so America would have a central government and navy strong enough to defend her citizens and interests. And it was America's decision to suppress this threat that sent American Marines to "the shores of Tripoli."

But if Islam is in a state of perpetual war with every part of the world outside the House of Islam, what is all this talk about Islam meaning "peace" and Islam being a religion of peace? In the first place, Islam does not mean peace; it literally means "submission."

In the second place, when everyone either has submitted to Islam or is subject to rule by sharia, everyone will live in Dar al-Islam, the House of Submission, because of course the House of War, Dar al-Harb, would no longer exist.

Muslims claim that worldwide submission to Islam constitutes peace. It is not, I believe, what you and I mean by peace.

Robert Curry is the author of Common Sense Nation: Unlocking the Forgotten Power of the American Idea from Encounter Books. You can preview the book here.
Last week, Leonard Pitts, the Pulitzer Prize-winning star columnist and op-ed writer at the venerable Miami Herald, penned a column that could be judged only as harsh and vitriolic, even by his own standards. Those who read Mr. Pitts's work know that he works himself into a fine lather over certain topics, and he can easily get quite agitated. The Pulitzer Prize Committee cited his "vibrant columns that spoke, with both passion and compassion, to ordinary people on often divisive issues."

Pitts receives his Pulitzer Prize from Lee Bollinger, president of Columbia University, in 2004

He has outdone himself this time, with a piece entitled "No Pass for 'Thoughtful' Conservatives.'" The subheading reads, "The need to use the modifier is a concession that something has gone wrong with conservatism." He then launches into an anti-Trump rant, which we could all see coming, but also lambasts a significant percentage of the entire American population with his heated rebuke.

Let us set the table here so we can fully understand the factors in play. Mr. Pitts has decided that there is no such thing as a "thoughtful" conservative. By that he does not mean that you can't find a conservative or two who help elderly women across the street, or conservatives who send out Christmas cards or practice the corporal works of mercy. He means that there is no longer a conservative intellectual movement, or a thinking conservative political movement in Washington. According to Mr. Pitts, Trumpism has squeezed all of the gray matter out of the conservative mind and has planted a Know-Nothing flag in its place.

The column predictably devolves into an anti-Trump rant. Pitts claims, without exactly uttering the name "Trump," that conservatism is now about "the feeding of ego and the gratification of self." Pardon me, but that line of attack fits Hillary Clinton like a glove. He also charges that conservatives are "willing to see America embrace its enemies." It is heartening, at least, to see the liberals admit that Russia is not a friend. When Ronald Reagan insisted such, he was labeled a warmonger, and more recently, when Mitt Romney suggested the same, he was called delusional and a captive of the 1980s. While we're talking about cozying up to American enemies, should we not mention a recent president who lavished money, attention, and weapons technology on Iran and Cuba?

These are breathtaking slanders, but Mr. Pitts is just getting warmed up. He continues that conservatives are "willing to look the other way as justice is being obstructed." Where was Leonard Pitts when President Obama's Justice Department illegally ran guns into Mexico and instructed the IRS to harass conservative non-profit foundations?

Pitts goes on to say that conservatives are "willing to shut down programs funding the arts, housing, and food for the poor." We have heard the same thing every time an administration proposes slowing the growth of spending in these programs. We heard it in the 1980s, during the GOP resurgence of 1994-96, and during the sequestration battles of 2011-14. Where are we now? These programs are still alive and spending more than ever before. All signs point to a breakdown coming, but Mr. Pitts and the liberals don't care. They'd rather toss rhetorical Molotov cocktails at the conservatives, because that's more fun.

By this juncture, one would think Leonard Pitts has vented his spleen, but he still isn't finished. He states that conservatives "are willing to let rivers be contaminated, air befouled, and sea levels rise." He is referring, obviously, to President Trump pulling out of the Paris climate accord. It might interest Pitts, and liberals in general, that our Constitution very clearly vests the treaty power in the U.S. Senate, and their consent is necessary to complete a binding agreement. The Senate was given no part in the Paris Accord, or in the Obama administration's capitulation to Iran in the nuclear deal. Therefore, neither of these "treaties" is binding, and conservatives are right to celebrate the return of the nation to a constitutional order.

Pitts finishes with a flourish when he states, "So let us hear no more about thoughtful conservatives saving us from the excesses of their peers." He thus writes out of public discourse the 36% of Americans who call themselves conservatives. Would Mr. Pitts and other liberals object if our side characterized every leftist as belonging to one of three groups  namely, the chardonnay-sipping elitists populating Georgetown, the Hamptons, and Northern California, or the social democrats who see every problem as an excuse to raise taxes, grow government, and impose affirmative action quotas, or finally the lunatic fringe destroyers known now as the "resistance," just as they were known five years ago as the "occupiers"?

Of course, they would cry foul over such a characterization of their own movement. There are some sane liberals out there, and, while they may be hard to find, rest assured that they do exist. We do the country no favors when we resort to questioning the motives and the intent of those who respectfully disagree with us. Still, two sides can play at Mr. Pitts's game.

What is to be done? Leonard Pitts has a position, a profession, and a career founded largely on angry columns featuring anti-Americanism, anti-law enforcement, and other regrettable sentiments. It is unlikely that he will respond favorably to an invitation to join our side. We must maintain our good humor in the face of repeated provocations, and insist that with 36% of our nation's 325 million people on our side, he could find a few "thoughtful" conservatives out there, if he looked hard enough!
In "The 50-Years War" (06/04/17), the Washington Post describes, in five full pages, in a special issue, the historic Six-Day War of 1967 and its aftermath. The author, Dan Ephron, states that the Six-Day War was a "military campaign that brought the West Bank under Israeli control." The article further refers to the war in the sub-headline as "the battle to capture territory."

All of this is bunk. It was a war for Israel's survival. It was one of the greatest victories in history of a tiny country against massive odds.

Israel defeated Egypt, Syria, and Jordan  all of its surrounding countries other than Lebanon. Israel's enemies had been all set to pounce  the U.N. forces in the Sinai to separate Egypt from Israel had been kicked out by Egypt. Arab leaders were all calling for the destruction of the Jewish state. But what happened? After Egypt started the war with the blockage of the Straits of Tiran (in itself an international act of war), Israel launched a pre-emptive strike to destroy the Egyptian air force in one fell swoop and then the rest of the surrounding armies in just six days. It was a miracle of unparalleled proportions!

But how does the Washington Post report it? It took five full pages to describe a war it says was all about the conquering of land by Israel  the West Bank. This acquisition of land wouldn't have happened if the Jordanians had abided by their agreement with Israel to stay out of the war. They instead shelled Israel with 7,000 rockets and were defeated, with the final triumph for Israel being the house-to-house battle for the historic old city of Jerusalem. With this victory, Israel won its holiest sites and opened the old city to all religions, quite unlike the earlier era, when it was under Arab control.

The Washington Post missed reporting on Israel's great victory against tremendous odds, which, had Israel lost, would have ended in catastrophe for the Jewish people and state  the clear aim of the Arab aggressors. Why is the Post so incessantly blind to its own bias?
Over the past few days, the Western world has witnessed a serious of deadly terrorist attacks, most of which were carried out by Muslim refugees. Whether in London, Paris, or Sydney, the attacks focused on soft targets and were carried out during the Muslim month of Ramadan, a month characterized by an increase in terror attacks. As in the past, the response of the Western world was not strong enough.

From the outset, it must be stated that terrorism is not always avoidable. There will always be evil, violent people in every country. Having said that, as has been suggested by President Trump, the time for a moratorium on immigration coming out of Islamic war zones and terrorist-supporting countries has come. It is simply common sense that a society will be safer from terrorism if the population most likely to commit terrorist attacks  that is, those from the Islamic world  is kept out.

Terrorist groups have said they would infiltrate the refugee population, and they have. At least two of the London attackers, for example, were Muslim refugees. The Boston bombers and at least some of the attackers in Europe were as well.

Contrary to mainstream media and left-wing talking points, Muslims in Libya are not entitled to constitutional rights, and they certainly have no inherent right to immigrate to the U.S. Immigrating to the USA is and should be a privilege, and too many Muslim immigrants or refugees in Europe and America have abused that privilege.

Of course, not all Muslim refugees wish the USA harm, but for the safety of the American people, at the very least, a pause of immigration from terror and war-ridden countries in the Islamic world is in order, and long overdue.

For too many on the left, this commonsense suggestion is greeted with name-calling and terms like "unconstitutional." Sadly, many on the right have embraced this as well. Instead of defending the president's executive order on immigration and recognizing the perils of open borders to Western civilization, many on the establishment right focus on either the need to work with moderate Muslims or the need to project further military engagement in the Middle East.

We have seen the failure of those strategies for far too long. Nation-building in the Islamic world does not stop terrorism, and simply working with moderate Muslims has not prevented their violent brethren from attacking America. Despite the U.S.-led intervention on a primarily Muslim community on Yugoslavia's behalf and the overthrow of the brutal Taliban, the Islamic world overwhelmingly remains a dangerous place. America cannot transform other countries and cultures, but it certainly has the right to keep those countries' inhabitants out of America.

Some on the right have sought to distance themselves from the president's executive order as well as organizations like ACT for America, which seek to protect the West from Islamic infiltration. The politically incorrect truth is that the best way to protect from terror is to limit immigration to America and halt all immigration and student visas from Islamic war zones like Libya, Syria, Iraq, and others. The first obligation of the president and elected officials is to the American people, not to the Arab world. Those conservatives who wish to deny this in order to win favor with the media and the liberal establishment will find that it will not do the trick and will instead continue to put Western civilization and American lives in peril.
After establishing the Iran nuclear deal as his first-term legacy, the question now is, what new initiative will Iranian president Hassan Rouhani embark on in his second term? Should there be any expectation from the international community in Rouhani's second term as this regime's president? And if Rouhani has the will to bring about any change in, for example, Syria, a big if, will it be for the better good of the Syrian people and the region? Or merely seeking Iran's interests?

Iran's policies in the region have been considered by many to be based on double standards. How does Iran legitimize its interference in Syria, in Iraq, in Yemen, and across the region while millions have been killed, injured, and displaced as the entire region remains in turmoil?

Iran claims to seek peace, stability, and cooperation in the Middle East through negotiations with neighboring countries. Yet the status quo has changed significantly for Rouhani's second term. Donald Trump is now the U.S. president, bringing an end to Obama's appeasement policy and calling on all countries to isolate Iran.

Many of Iran's regional neighbors view the regime as an ally of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, who has massacred tens of thousands of his own people.

Iran, however, continues its support for Assad, arguing that international law considers Assad the president of a legal government in Syria. Does being a legal government legitimize such measures against its own constituents?

Tehran is validating its support for the Syrian regime based on a request placed by Assad and claiming that 60% of the country's lands are in the hands of ISIS and al-Qaeda. And the mullahs' regime refuses to accept the existence of a Syrian opposition that enjoys international legitimacy and support.

While the international community accepts the fact that ISIS and other terrorists must be destroyed in Syria, this does not provide the grounds for Assad, with Iran's support, to massacre innocent civilians. Former United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon accused Assad of committing war crimes and using starvation as a tool in this regard.

U.N. special rapporteurs and envoys have leveled concerning allegations against the Assad regime, and for Iran to continue its support for Assad is troubling, to say the least. The U.N. special envoy to Syria, Staffan da Mistura, has also cited Iran providing $6 billion a year to Assad, considered a conservative figure by many.

Iran accuses other countries of recruiting terrorists from across the globe to fight against Assad and places the blame of enormous civilian losses on them. And yet one cannot neglect the fact that Iran is providing arms, ammunition and tens of thousands of militias to prop up the Assad regime and killing tens of thousands of civilians, as reported by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

Iran accuses other countries of interfering in Syria and Bahrain, for example, and yet refuses to accept its role in the Levant as such meddling by an outside party.

Iran is proposing talks with the three other regional powers, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, aimed at:

preserving the unity of Syria,

establishing a power-sharing government, yet failing to determine the highly sensitive subject of the fate of Assad as president of Syria,

holding U.N.-supervised presidential elections.

The sensitive question is whether Hassan Rouhani will pressure Assad to accept such terms.

It is crucial to understand why Tehran's regime is deeply interested in Syria. The Levant, under the rule of Assad, provides a land bridge to the Lebanese Hezb'allah, and thus the Mediterranean, for Iran, allowing this regime to spread its influence from its soil all across the region. In the case that Iran loses its foothold in Syria, considering that it is its 35th province, it will be the beginning of the end of Tehran's regional hegemony.

Such an outcome would reflect all of Iran's dilemmas inward and provide the grounds for social unrest to overcome the mullahs' regime. As a result, the very nature of Iran's ruling apparatus prevents the rendering of any meaningful change in its regional policy.

"Take into notice any change in behavior is no different from the change in the entire establishment," said Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei recently.

Heshmat Alavi is a political and rights activist. His writing focuses on Iran, ranging from human rights violations, social crackdown, and the regime's support for terrorism and meddling in foreign countries to the controversial nuclear program. He tweets at @HeshmatAlavi & blogs at IranCommentary.
Mark Wilson/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- President Donald Trumps tweets should be considered official statements, according to Trumps top spokesperson.



The president is the president of the United States, so they're considered official statements by the president of the United States, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Tuesday.



Spicers comments refute the argument made by two Trump advisers that what the president posts on Twitter is simply social media.



Sebastian Gorka, a deputy assistant and a national security adviser to the president, on Monday firmly stated Trumps tweets should not equate to statements of substance or administration policy.



It's not policy, it's not an executive order. It's social media, Gorka said in an interview on CNN's "New Day."



In an interview with NBCs The Today Show, Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway downplayed Trumps tweets and said theres an obsession with covering everything Trump says on Twitter and very little of what he does as president.



Spicer did not provide a specific answer when asked at Tuesday's press briefing if Trump was concerned that his tweets Monday could be used against him in the ongoing legal battle over the travel ban executive order.



The Justice Dept. should have stayed with the original Travel Ban, not the watered down, politically correct version they submitted to [the Supreme Court], Trump said in just one of many tweets aimed at his Justice Department and immigration executive order.



Federal court decisions have already cited statements by Trump on the campaign trail, as well as comments by aides, in decisions as judges sought to determine intent.

In one such ruling in March, a Hawaiian federal court judge pointed to Trump's own claims that his revised travel ban was merely a "watered-down" version of the first order which had already been blocked by a federal judge -- a decision later upheld in an appellate circuit. Trump repeated the sentiment twice Monday.

The Justice Dept. should ask for an expedited hearing of the watered down Travel Ban before the Supreme Court - & seek much tougher version!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 5, 2017

When asked if Trumps tweets are hindering his ability to get things done, Spicer defended Trump as the most effective messenger.

"The president is the most effective messenger on his agenda and I think his use of social media -- he now has a collective total of close to 110 million across different platforms -- gives him an opportunity to speak straight to the American people, which has proved to be a very, very effective tool," said Spicer, echoing a noting Trump himself promoted on Twitter Tuesday morning.

The FAKE MSM is working so hard trying to get me not to use Social Media. They hate that I can get the honest and unfiltered message out.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 6, 2017

"The same people critiquing his use of it now critiqued it during the election and it turned out pretty well for him then," said Spicer.

Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Politicians and students agree that looking is a gateway to crime

Politicians all want to censor the web. CapX writes:

It took us many centuries, a lot of effort and much expended blood and gore to get to this place where we are free  at liberty and ruled by the law, not the whims of people nor the rage of the mob. That we have those who would snatch them from us worries me far less than what our rulers will do to us and our liberty in the name of protecting us from those bearded nutters.

Just wait until the next generation of politicians arrive in Westminster from our elite universities. Spikeds Free Speech University Rankings tells us: The more prestigious universities, those ranked highest in popular league tables, are nearly always the most censorious; the few green-ranking institutions are generally less highly esteemed.

Joanna Williams adds:

The link between academic success and a fondness for censorship is more than just a mindset. It is precisely because they are the academic achievers that students at elite universities demand freedom from speechTheyve learned that language constructs reality, and that words that wound can inflict spirit murder on those who, according to their gender, ethnicity or sexual identity, are assumed to be forever powerless. The students who excel in elite universities today have come to embody the vulnerability they see in others.

They dont trust us. They moralise about our choices, thoughts and movements. They pick technical arguments about what should be banned and permitted over debating the root cause of the problem that leads people to become Islamist killers. In the minds of these superior prudes and knowing gatekeepers, the mere act of looking becomes a gateway to crime.

Anorak

Posted: 7th, June 2017 | In: News, Politicians, Reviews, Technology Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
(ANSA) - Paris, June 7 - The OECD predicted that Italy's recovery will continue to be "moderate" in its latest economic outlook on Wednesday. Italy's GDP is projected to grow by 1% in 2017 and then slip to 0.8% next year, considering "a fiscal retrenchment of about 1% of GDP in 2018, as required by EU fiscal rules".

The OECD called on Italy to continue with its programme of structural reforms. "The public debt has stabilised in relation to GDP, but its high level remains a vulnerability," it said. "The government has earmarked 20 billion euros for bank recapitalisation, which, if it were all used, would increase public debt by 1.2% of GDP. Progressing on structural reforms and continuing prudent fiscal policies, by shifting the spending mix towards infrastructure, innovation and anti-poverty programmes, are crucial to raise growth in an inclusive way and steadily reduce the public debt-to-GDP ratio".


Libya rescues 110 more African migrants at sea - IOM East of Tripoli, taken to detention centre

(ANSAmed) - CAIRO, JUNE 7 - The Libyan Coast Guard rescued 110 people of "African nationalities" including 40 women and three children on Monday in the waters off the coast of Zliten, about 150 km east of Tripoli, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM) as part of a report released Monday with an updated Mediterranean migrant death toll.



It said the migrants were taken to the Al Khums detention centre.



The Libyan Coast Guard has intensified its rescue operations in recent weeks as the result of a collaboration agreement with Italy signed in early February.



In May, Libya carried out several so-called "rescue and arrest" operations, one involving nearly 500 migrants.(ANSAmed).




US-led coalition airstrikes kill 17 Syrian militants - SOHR Civilian victims in Raqqa. Damascus: 'US supports terrorists'

(ANSAmed) - BEIRUT, JUNE 7 - At least 17 pro-Syria militants were killed in southeast Syria by US-led anti-ISIS coalition airstrikes, according to the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).



The SOHR report confirmed reports on Tuesday from U.S.



Central Command indicating that a convoy headed for the border gate at Tanf, controlled by US-backed Syrian forces, was hit.



However, the number of militants killed in the strike is unclear, which is similar to another airstrike in the same area in recent days.



SOHR said the bombing took place near the checkpoint at Zaza, 100 km northwest of Tanf.



It also reported that 30 civilians have been killed in the last 48 hours in US-led anti-ISIS coalition airstrikes on Raqqa.



Damascus, through Syrian government news agency SANA, released a statement denouncing the coalition airstrikes and claiming that the action "shows that the coalition supports terrorist groups" such as ISIS and al Qaeda.



Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said US airstrikes against pro-government forces in Syria violate international law, according to TASS Russian news agency.



"The Russian and US militaries continue in general to be in contact," he said.



"It's not about whether or not there was a warning about the attack or not, but rather the political side of the event. As in the case of May 18, the airstrike, according to our estimates, was undertaken in violation of international law. The explanations that we're hearing from US Central Command are dubious, to say the least," he said.(ANSAmed).




AMMAN - Jordan has joined the bandwagon of gulf nations that boycotted Qatar by asking Qatari ambassador to leave the kingdom within a week, before revoking license of al Jazeera station.



"After studying the reasons for the crisis between Saudi, UAE, Bahrain and Qatar the government decided to reduce diplomatic representation of Qatar in the kingdom and revoke al Jazeera license," Government spokesman Mohammad Mumani was quoted by Petra news agency late Tuesday.



The decision by Amman is likely to widen scale of the crisis that hit the region after the giant gulf states declared diplomatic war on Qatar on allegation of supporting terrorism.



Western diplomats told ANSA that Amman had no choice but to follow policy of Saudi Arabia after blessing of US president, Donald Trump to the recent measures adopted against Qatar. Jordan is considered key Saudi ally, receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in annual assistance to maintain its fragile economy in stable condition. Jordan has around 40,000 nationals working in Qatar, but considers its ties to Saudi and UAE more strategic due to the vast financial assistant it receives annually from both oil rich nations.
LAMPEDUSA (AGRIGENTO) - Italian police chief Franco Gabrielli on Wednesday said the objective of a meeting of counterparts from eight Mediterranean countries ongoing in Lampedusa was to ''select and confront critical issues'' rather than to discuss their reasons, ''which we know well''.



Migrants, terrorism and organized crime are at the center of the gathering's agenda.



''The effectiveness of the meeting - he concluded - will be measured on concrete things, we are a bit tired of analyses, which are important, but we have to give answers'', he said.



Migration flows towards Europe's coasts and the risk of terrorists infiltrating them, the need to implement better strategies against human trafficking rings, managing repatriations at a European level and the risk of foreign fighters travelling back from war zones are the issues at the heart of the first summit of the European Relationship for Mediterranean Security (ERMES).



The gathering chaired by Gabrielli is attended by police chiefs from France, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Malta, Cyprus, Croatia and Slovenia.



Before the start of the meeting, participants were welcomed by the island's mayor Giusi Nicolini and paid homage to the Door of Europe, a monument dedicated to the thousands of migrants who died in the Mediterranean. The gathering will also discuss the latest attacks in London and the need to further improve the exchange of information between police and intelligence forces.
ISTANBUL - The Izmir prosecutor's office issued 23 arrest warrants for attorneys, including the president of Amnesty International in Turkey Taner Kilic, for having ties to presumed coup leader Fethullah Gulen.



Kilic was the attorney for Italian journalist Gabriele Del Grande, who was held for two weeks in April after having been stopped by authorities at the Syrian border.



Kilic was arrested in his home, which was also seized as his office.



At least 17 of the other lawyers for whom warrants were issued have already been taken in.



"The fact that Turkey's post-coup purge has now dragged the Chair of Amnesty International Turkey into its web is further proof of just how far it has gone and just how arbitrary it has become. Taner Kilic has a long and distinguished record of defending exactly the kind of freedoms that the Turkish authorities are now intent on trampling," said Salil Shetty, Secretary General of Amnesty International, who called for the "immediate release" of the attorneys.



"At present, Taner Kilic's detention does not seem to be connected to any of Amnesty International's work, nor to be specifically targeting the organization," said a statement by the organization. Kilic has been part of management at Amnesty International's Turkish branch for various periods since 2002 and has been its president since 2014.


United in terror fight Alfano tells Zarif Condolences for 'brutal attack', discuss crisis involving Qatar

(ANSAmed) - ROME, JUNE 7 - Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano phoned Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif Wednesday to voice condolences for the "brutal terror attack" that hit Tehran this morning killing at least 12 people.



Alfano told Zarif that Italy and Iran were "united in a common commitment to the fight against terrorism that strikes everywhere, with the same contempt for human life".



The ministers also discussed the crisis involving Qatar and nearby States and concurred that "the sides involved should refrain from all actions that could further compromise the situation, resorting to the good offices of the Gulf Cooperation Council".



Alfano said "Italy supports the efforts of the countries that are working to reach a diplomatic solution to the crisis and welcomes all initiatives aimed at reducing tension in the Gulf region".




If youre considering a subscription to the Disney Plus streaming service, you may be wondering how much it costs. The service is available on both
The MOU was signed at Royal Air Marocs headquarters in Casablanca by David Kerr, Senior Vice President, Etihad Cargo, and Amine El Farissi, Vice President Cargo, Royal Air Maroc. Abdelhamid Addou, Chief Executive Officer of the Moroccan national airline, also attended the signing ceremony.

Kerr said: This new MOU reinforces Etihad Cargos commitment to our customers by providing more capacity and greater frequency to destinations around the world. Together with Royal Air Maroc, we have been working for the past year to deliver improved services for shippers to the US, Canada, Brazil and West Africa.

This MOU is a testament to the success of our partnership  both commercially for our respective airlines, and for our customers who have benefitted from enhanced connections.

El Farissi said: We are very pleased to strengthen our existing partnership with Etihad Cargo through this agreement. The signature of this MOU is a milestone for our long-term cooperation.

Thanks to the geographic and commercial synergies which will result from this game-changing partnership, we will take our performance to the next level, mainly in the African and the American markets. Royal Air Maroc Cargo will also benefit from Etihad Cargos operational and technological know-how.
Under the theme Building blocks for North African revival the two-day summit will focus on the key drivers to grow business and opportunities across North Africa. Alongside the summit will be an exhibition area featuring more than fifty exhibitors.



His Excellency Sherif Fathi Attia the Minister of Civil Aviation said he welcomed the decision to bring the event to Cairo. We are working with the event organiser to shape the agenda for the Summit, he said. There are key issues affecting Africa in general, North Africa in particular in subjects like aviation security, infrastructure needs and regional cooperation. The Egyptian government is lending its full support to the event and will be inviting our neighbours and friends across North Africa to be part of this important event.



EgyptAir is to be the host airline of the event. Chairman and CEO of the EgyptAir Holding Group -which includes the national carrier as well as regional carrier Egyptair Express; Egyptair Cargo; Egyptair Tourism ( Karnak ) & Duty Free; Egyptair Maintenance & Engineering; Egyptair In-Flight Services; Egyptair Medical Services and Egyptair Supplementary Industries - Safwat Musallam said: This event gives an opportunity for all of our businesses to come together with suppliers, customers and competitors under one roof. We are very positive about the future but agree it is important that we can share ideas and get new ideas too.



Mark Brown chief executive of show organiser Times Aerospace, said: We are also pleased to have MoUs from all of Egypts airlines including charter, cargo and low cost carriers. These will all have top executives taking part in the event and meeting with exhibitors. We are expecting delegations from other African governments and their civil aviation authorities and of course other airlines, business aviation operators and from companies across the Middle East and Africa.



The two-day summit will be chaired by Alan Peaford, MBE, the editor-in-chief of African Aerospace and Arabian Aerospace. Cairo is the cross roads between the Middle East and North Africa and I would expect to see a lot of interest from the region  particularly given the close ties between Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

There are a lot of misconceptions about the current situation in North Africa  but there are also some hard realities. Business has been in freefall for a few years. Tourism is the key to the revival of North Africa fortunes and that involves some challenges in terms of security measures, in safety culture and political will, Peaford said. This cuts across our entire industry from airline operations, to maintenance and other service providers through to airports, air navigation service providers and regulators.



We proved at Aviation Africa in Kigali last year that the very open summit, addressing some challenging issues in an open and frank way and across the whole gamut of stakeholders proved beneficial and I was delighted that His Excellency, the Minister of Civil Aviation agreed that we should aim as high for the Cairo event.



The Aviation Africa Summit and Exhibition will take place in Heliopolis, close to Cairos international airport on April 17-18 2018. Further details on exhibition space, sponsorship and programme can be found at www.aviationafrica.aero

Egyptian accord: (L-R) Mark Brown,CEO Times Aerospace; HE Sherif Fathi Attia Egypt's Minister of Civil Aviation and Alan Peaford, chairman of the Aviation Africa Summit
Bigger aircraft are due to start operating from Muscat to Doha on June 8 until June 14, according to a Times of Oman report. Both Qatar Airways and Oman Air fly daily between Muscat and Doha. The upgraded flights are expected to help Qatar nationals and residents return to the emirate prior to the 14 day deadline to leave the UAE that has been given during the diplomatic disagreement to hit the GCC this week.

Travel agents have reported that flight times between Muscat and Doha have increased from 90 minutes to two hours with some GCC countries closing their airspace to flights from Qatar.



The longer route now taken by Qatar Airways to reach nearby Muscat
This now means that when travel agents and retailers are making air travel booking for Saudia guests, they will be able to see images of the seats and layout on board. In addition, passengers can purchase additional services when available.

With this new capability, Saudia will have the ability to provide IATA-accredited Travel Agencies a full view  displayed through rich media content  that includes fare family products and dynamic pricing, the platform used by the travel retail industry aggregated text-based information with basic product facts about the on-board specifications.

The New Distribution Capability (NDC) standard introduced by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), is an XML-based data transmission standard that was launched for the development and market adoption of a new standard for merchandising airline products.

IATAs aim with the implementation of the NDC standard is to enhance the capability of communications between airlines and travel agents. The NDC Standard enables the travel industry to transform the way air products are retailed to corporations, leisure and business travellers.

The certificate was awarded to Saudia during the 73rd IATA Annual General Meeting held in Cancun, Mexico from 4-6 June.

Saudi Arabian Airlines Director General Saleh bin Nasser Al-Jasser received the award from IATA Director General and CEO, Alexandre de Juniac.

Commenting on the new certification Al Jasser said: The IATA Level 3 certification is an important achievement for Saudia. The implementation of the new digital merchandising gives Saudia the ability to offers the 69,500 IATA accredited Travel Agencies across the world with a view of the latest Saudia onboard products.

He added: Saudia has utilised modern technology to make the passenger booking experience as seamless and as transparent as possible. By obtaining the IATA certification, we have adopted the new standard to communicate effectively with our travel retail partners and provide them with access to the full-scale of value-added options that are available to guests flying with Saudia.

We congratulate Saudia on becoming the latest airline in the MENA region to achieve NDC Level 3 Certification. With this milestone, Saudia joins the growing fold of global airlines that are transforming airline distribution and launching a new era of airline retailing in which travellers have access to all of an airlines products and services, regardless of their choice of shopping channel, said Alexandre de Juniac, IATAs Director General and CEO.
The international event, which attracted more than 600 experts and around 90 speakers, was held under the patronage of HH Sheikh Mohamed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, vice president and prime minister of the UAE and ruler of Dubai.

His Highness attended the first day of the event, hearing how the UAE space sector is forging ahead with its plans and inspiring youngsters across the Emirates.

Dr Mohammed Al Ahbabi, director general, UAE Space Agency, said that this was part of the wider plan to move the Emirates away from an oil-based economy to one based on science, technology and engineering.

The benefits include economic growth and diversification, encouraging advanced scientific research among students and graduates, and long-term global partnerships. Emirati space-based companies already include Thuraya and Yahsat.

This was emphasised with the signing of a memorandum of understanding with the Korean Space Agency at the event, the latest in a long series of MoUs with agencies worldwide. The UAE has a long-standing relationship with South Korea, as the countrys Satrec Initiative is its partner on the DubaiSat and KhalifaSat programmes.

Dr Khalifa Al Romaithi, chairman of the UAE Space Agency, said: The UAE space sectors strategic goals focus on building and strengthening international relationships and partnerships in the field, including developing bilateral relations with Arab states.

To underline the regions commitment, Yosouf Hamad Al Shaibani, director general of the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC), announced that the centre had submitted a request to host the 71st session of the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in 2020.

The audience also heard that the UAE is on target with its Hope Mars mission, which will launch aboard a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries rocket from Japan in 2020.

It should reach the Red Planet in 2021 to coincide with celebrations that will mark the 50th anniversary of the UAEs foundation.

Once in orbit, Hope will explore the Martian atmosphere using scientific instruments that include visible, infrared and ultraviolet spectrometers.

Its data should help scientists build a holistic model of the planets daily and seasonal cycles, and may explain why Mars lost a lot of its atmosphere to space.

Sarah Amiri, acting director, space science department at MBRSC, said that Earth and Mars have a lot in common, so this is a vital step to understanding our own world.

Shortly after the conference, the UAE also unveiled a new project that aims to establish the first inhabitable human settlement on Mars by 2117.

Called the Mars 2117 Project, it is set to be developed and executed in partnership with major international scientific research institutions.

Meanwhile, MBRSC showcased its space projects and initiatives including KhalifaSat, a 350kg Earth observation satellite, due for launch in 2018. This will join DubaiSat 2, which was launched in 2013, and DubaiSat 1, which pioneered UAE Earth observation technology in 2009.

It was also due to launch its Nayif-1 cubesat a week after the congress, a nanosatellite with a standardised and simplified cubic design, weighing about 1kg and with sides 10cm long.

Nayif-1 was eventually launched on Wednesday, February 15 and is transmitting data to schools and universities. It produces a communication footprint ranging from 5,000-5,500km and will orbit at a height between 450km and 720km for up to three years.

MBRSC also talked of future cubesat missions to follow on from Nayif-1, which was built by engineering students from the American University of Sharjah (AUS). It confirmed that there are other cubesat projects planned at five UAE universities.

The event was also an opportunity for youngsters to find out more about the industry through the Airbus Little Engineer space workshop.

This gave students the opportunity to simulate a space mission and send an unmanned mission to Mars. Students were tasked with building space vehicles and a rocket, using science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) in a hands-on fun way.

Industry partnership on education is a vital part of the Emirates space programme. The congress heard how 16 young Emiratis had spent an intensive four months with Lockheed Martin in the US in 2016. This culminated in them witnessing the launch of the OSIRIS-Rex spacecraft, which will study Bennu, a near-Earth asteroid. A further event is planned for later this year.

Dr Alice Bunn, director of policy at the UK Space Agency, said that activities like this were vital to guarantee the next generation of space scientists and engineers, citing how UK European Space Agency astronaut Tim Peakes Principia mission had done just that.


Located in the heart of Brooklyn, the Wythe Hotel is an 8-story hotel on the Williamsburg waterfront. Built in 1901, this former cooperage has been meticulously converted into a 70-room hotel offering service and amenities yet to be seen in the borough, while the buildings industrial character  including its concave corner entrance, original pine beams, masonry, arched windows and cast-iron columns  has been beautifully preserved. Like its surrounding neighborhood, the Wythe Hotel melds historic with modern, creating something entirely unique and authentic. Atop the original 5-story structure sits a new 3-story glass and aluminum that references the hotels existing factory windows while dramatically pulling the building into the present. Throughout the hotel, 70 guest rooms feature 13 high original timber ceilings, oversized windows, radiant heat concrete floors, seasonally sourced mini-bar offerings, custom amenities and works by local artists. Many rooms boast floor-to-ceiling views of the Manhattan skyline and East River. Renowned Brooklyn restaurateur Andrew Tarlow, of Marlow & Sons, Diner, and Romans, manages the hotels expansive food and beverage program. Venues include Reynard - a ground floor restaurant and bar with a wood-fired oven and grill, courtyard seating, and a daily menu featuring market-driven American fare and seasonal cocktails, and The Ides - a 6th floor bar and terrace with stunning Manhattan and Brooklyn views. There are various event spaces as well, including a main event hall, a private dining room, large guest lofts and 60-seat screening room and bar. Wythe Hotel is located in Brooklyns most dynamic neighborhood, with Williamsburgs best galleries, boutiques, bars, restaurants and concert halls within walking distance. It is one subway stop from Manhattan, and minutes from the central hub of Union Square.
A report by the Portuguese public broadcaster RTP suggested recent filming for The Man Who Killed Don Quixote left behind chipped masonry, broken roof tiles and uprooted trees at the 12th-century Convent of Christ in Tomar, central Portugal. The director  whose years-long quest to complete the movie has been legendarily troubled  denies all: People should begin by getting the facts before howling hysterically.
Its hard to dismiss someone who looks you in the eye and tells you their truth. We were in the front row for Atlas des Kommunismus at the Gorki Theatre in Berlin, so the amateur performers could and did catch our gaze  amateur because they were there to tell their stories not to dazzle with professional sheen.

This is a documentary play from the Argentinean director Lola Arias  whose Minefeld in LIFT last year was equally arresting, performed by veterans of the 1982 Falklands conflict. Atlas des Kommunismus is more ruminative  a citizens relationship to tumultuous events isnt quite the same as a soldiers. But Arias cuts the speakers recollections with theatrical panache  political anthems, melancholy ballads, famous speeches embodied by a nine-year-old girl. The cast don costumes, grab instruments, manipulate the cameras during live film sequences. Sitting on both sides of a traverse stage, close-up video of performers with their backs to us is projected on a fluttering paper barrier across the stage. (Is this the wall? So flimsy, so fragile? How did it hold up all that time?)

A history of communism might be male  Lenin to Gorbachov, Honeker to Helmut Kohl. Men  straight, governmental men  stamping their names in the record, their deeds in the chronicle. Arias atlas is different  seven private women and a self-styled dissident queen marking out the boundaries of ideology by the impact upon their own lives. This isnt just a bottom-up telling but also a beguilingly sideways one.

The older speakers have been through the ideological wringer  living under fascism, embracing communism as a shining alternative, watching the shine come off. The middle aged came to adulthood with the socialist state already in place, so knew more of its shackles than its sparkle. The young activists, for whom identity politics are vital, long for such simplicity.

A woman in her eighties (Salomea Genin, pictured above by Ute Langkafel) describes being willingly recruited by the Stasi. She reported on the lives of others: friends, neighbours, colleagues  including, possibly, one of the other women in the piece. Slow-moving (she has a back problem, were told), stern-featured, Genin carries the gravity of what shes done. She stopped working with the Stasi before the wall fell  and, bravely, straight away began telling people what she had been doing. Its a life worthy of a play in itself.

Everyone announces their age and relationship to this material as the piece began. For some, theres a poignant distance between the people they were and those they are now. The self-contained middle-aged stoic who bursts into snarling song and stompy movement as she relives her punk youth (Nazis! Nazis! Nazis living in East Berlin!). The Vietnamese woman, sent to Europe on a harshly-monitored student programme, describing decades of prejudice and privation as she made her home in the GDR.

Tease out the truth

These arent professional performers. They shuffle, stumble, in one case read from file cards. Yet their amateur status is their authenticity. Its harder to know what to make of the elegant Ruth Reinecke, a member of the Gorki ensemble, whose anecdote concerns an adaptation of Three Sisters at the theatre in the last years of the east German state. Her warm professional poise occupied a different register to the people around her.

Far different was the irrepressibly twinkly Monika Zimmering, who looks utterly delighted to share absurdist stories or bang a pair of egg whisks as percussive accompaniment. Yet shes the most conflicted when recounting the decline of east Germany. She resisted a move to the west, but doesnt recognise the country regrouping around her. She stayed still, she says poignantly, but the country moved. The old GDR may have betrayed her hopes for a just international socialism  but it was still a repository of those hopes, however flawed.

Verbatim and documentary theatre can  and often do  feel fake. The National Theatres calamitously wrong-note My Country sought out anxious voices of the Brexit debate, only to parrot them through accent-audition performances drained of all conviction. (And lets not forget the poems. I may never forget the poems.) Public-address voices, knotting a degree of stiltedness alongside the suit and tie, sound greyly convincing (as in the series of tribunal-style reconstructions directed by Nicholas Kent). Far happier are the verbatim texts swirled through a theatrical shape by artists like Alecky Blythe or Nadia Fall.

But Arias speakers offer their own words in their own voice. Political systems engrave themselves upon their citizens  whether embraced, resisted or simply endured. Thats why we listen, to tease out their truth and perhaps relate it to our own. Teetering as we are on the verge of a new world order, its useful to look back at what an old world order felt like, for good and bad. Im writing on the day before Britain votes in a general election. The last time we did this, I went to the theatre and allowed myself unguarded optimism. This time, Im keeping my hopes in check.

Follow David on Twitter  @mrdavidjays
iStock/Thinkstock(ATLANTA) -- Never before has so much of the national electoral narrative rested on the shoulders of two suburban candidates for one of 435 seats in the U.S. House.



But when the former Georgia secretary of state who flopped in bids for the Senate in 2012 and governor in 2014, and a 30-year-old former Congressional staffer who makes documentaries came face-to-face on the debate stage on Tuesday night, it was clear that Karen Handel and Jon Ossoff knew their race means so much more than just one seat on the floor of the U.S. House.



This election in northern Atlanta, just two weeks away, is largely seen as a gauge of anti-Trump motivation and a signal for a potential Democratic wave coming in 2018.

Here are the highlights from Tuesday's Georgia 6th Congressional district debate, which aired on ABC News affiliate WSB-TV and moderated by Channel 2 Action News Anchor Justin Farmer:



HANDEL TO TRUMP: TIME TO CUT BACK THE TWEETING

"I think I would really like to recommend some Twitter policy changes," said Handel, when asked where she disagreed with what President Trump had done in office so far. "Sometimes you should just put down the computer, the phone and walk away." She added that she was also troubled by some of Trump's proposed budget cuts to research.



LIBERALS POUNCE ON HANDEL'S ANSWER TO MINIMUM WAGE QUESTION

One comment from Handel on the minimum wage is raising some eyebrows on the left. After Ossoff said he supported raising the minimum wage so that it was also a "living wage," Handel said, "This is an example of a fundamental difference between a liberal and a conservative. I do not support a livable wage.



OSSOFF ON HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH TRUMP

"I don't think that I will get a congratulatory tweet from the president if I win," Ossoff said on stage, adding that he would like to work with the president to find common ground if elected. Handel received a congratulatory call from Trump after taking second place in the jungle primary in April.



ATTACKS OVER OUTSIDE MONEY

Both candidates have been bolstered by big outside money in what has become the most expensive House race in U.S. history. But neither candidate wanted to own that on the stage. Ossoff said Handel's "campaign has been bailed out by these special interests." Handel attacked Ossoff by saying "your values are some 3,000 miles away in San Francisco."



BATTLE OVER HEALTHCARE

Ossoff went on the attack against the GOP health care bill, saying it "would gut protections for pre-existing conditions." Handel defended it by saying her premiums had personally skyrocketed on Obamacare exchanges and "I reject the premise of CBO" score.

Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
IREDA has sanctioned around Rs 37,000 crore of credit for clean energy projects in the country.

IREDA will issue fresh 13.90 crore shares, increasing the paid up share capital of the company from Rs 784 crore to Rs 923 crore.

New Delhi: The Cabinet today approved the initial public offer of Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency, enabling it to mobilise funds for the clean energy sector.

"The IPO proposal of IREDA was discussed and approved in the meeting of the Cabinet Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) held today," a source said.

Under the listing proposal, IREDA will issue fresh 13.90 crore shares, increasing the paid up share capital of the company from Rs 784 crore to Rs 923 crore. At present the company has 78.46 crore equity shares.

The quantum of funds to be raised through the IPO will be ascertained later as the shares will be issued at premium through the book building process, which will lead to price discovery.

Following the CCEA approval, it will take 180 days to list IREDA, which is state-owned non-banking financial firm. IREDA has plans to disburse Rs 13,000 crore for clean energy projects this fiscal and vying for around 20 per cent of the loan market share for such projects.

With the government aiming at adding around 15 to 16 GW of clean energy projects, including solar and wind, there would be total credit market size of around Rs 65,000 crore this fiscal.

IREDA has sanctioned around Rs 37,000 crore of credit for clean energy projects in the country so far and has released around Rs 28,000 crore to developers, which aids generation capacity of around 7,000 MW.
The Forbes list once mentioned Deepika as one of the highest paid actresses in India, and the actress has got herself a house attesting that.

Ranveer Singh has always wanted to own property in Goa and perhaps shuttle between Mumbai and Goa for work. At some point, I thought I would function out of Goa. But it makes more sense to get a bigger, better place in Mumbai because that is where I am most of the time. I probably might never go to Goa, he once quipped.

With girlfriend Deepika Padukone having ensconced herself in a plush Mumbai property, Ranveer is now planning to move into the same building and become her neighbour. The Forbes list once mentioned Deepika as one of the highest paid actresses in India, and the actress has got herself a house attesting that. Ranveer, who now endorses over 16 brands, can manage to make that jump, too. So, if all goes well, Ranveer will shift to the thirty-three storeyed, three tower complex called Beau Monde at Prabhadevi.

Due to their tight schedules, Deepika and Ranveer have not managed to be together, even though they briefly spent time in Ranveers apartment on the outskirts of Mumbai during the shoot of Padmavati. This move should bring them closer, and we couldnt be happier.

Sanskriti Media
Ramzi Alamuddin and Baria are delighted to welcome their grandchildren, twins, who have been named Ella and Alexander.

Los Angeles: Amal Clooney's parents said they were elated Tuesday to welcome their twin grandchildren Ella and Alexander, and added that the birth had gone well.

"They are in great health, all is perfect," Amal's father Ramzi Alamuddin, who lives in Beirut, told AFP.

"I am very happy for them, (Amal and George) will be great parents."

He added that he had spoken with his daughter and son-in-law after the birth and hoped to travel to London soon to meet his grandchildren.

Amal's mother Baria, reached in London, where she was in hospital with her daughter, said everyone was doing well.

"We are over the moon," she said in an interview. "It was a beautiful delivery. The babies are beautiful and are doing well."

The first-time parents welcomed their twin babies in the morning, the actor's publicist said.

"This morning, Amal and George welcomed Ella and Alexander Clooney into their lives," Stan Rosenfield said on behalf of the couple. "Ella, Alexander and Amal are all healthy, happy and doing fine."

"George is sedated and should recover in a few days," he joked about the 56-year-old Hollywood heartthrob.

The 39-year-old Lebanese-British international human rights lawyer and Clooney tied the knot in Venice in 2014.

The couple have kept a low profile since announcing they were having twins in February, staying at their rural home outside London.
State home minister Bhupendra Singh denied that the police opened fire, saying that "anti-social" elements in the crowd fired bullets.

Bhopal: Six farmers were killed and several others injured in western Madhya Pradeshs Mandsaur on Tuesday when the police opened fire during protests for debt relief and better farm prices.

Soon after the incident, hundreds of irate farmers torched two police stations, eight trucks, an ambulance and two motorbikes at different places in the region ravaged by drought and farm suicides.

The administration rushed extra forces and imposed curfew restrictions in the district headquarters town of Mandsaur, some 350 km from state capital Bhopal.

Internet services were also suspended in areas such as Mandsaur, Ratlam and Ujjain to prevent protestors from fuelling further unrest through inflammatory posts on social media.

Spiralling farm protests in BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh and neighbouring Maharashtra pose a challenge for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has promised to double farmers' incomes over the next five years. Farmers last week started protests in both the states, dumping vegetables and milk on roads.

Ujjain divisional commissioner O M Jha said the police had to open fire to control stone-throwing mobs. Two persons died on the spot and four others succumbed to injuries during treatment.

"Police started firing to disperse the crowd. Farmers were not carrying weapons," said Gajendra Tokas of the Rashtriya Kisan Mazdoor Sangh, which launched a 10-day agitation on June 1.

State home minister Bhupendra Singh denied that the police opened fire, saying that "anti-social" elements in the crowd fired bullets.

On Monday night, demonstrators broke the gates of railway crossing in Mandsaur town and unsuccessfully tried to uproot railway tracks, the police said.

One police sub-inspector lost one of his eyes in stone pelting. Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan convened an emergency meeting of his Cabinet to take stock of the situation. He ordered a judicial probe into the police firing.

He also announced an ex-gratia of Rs 10 lakh to the families of those killed and Rs 1 lakh for those injured.

"The state government is sensitive to farmers demands and stands by them. But, Congress, through conspiracy, tried to fuel violence," the chief minister said.

The violence also sparked a political slugfest. This govt is at war with the farmers of our country, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi tweeted.

Congress leader and MP Jyotiraditya Scindia condemned the police action.

"Chief minister boasts of being a farmers son. Nothing can be worse than farmers being killed by his police," he said.

The chief minister said he has already announced Rs 1,000 crore to procure farmers produces by his government.
Farmers's agitation further intensifies in Madhya Pradesh's Mandsaur; 8-10 vehicles set on fire.

Mandsaur (MP): Farmers's agitation in Madhya Pradesh's Mandsaur district on Wednesday further intensified with protestors setting at least eight to ten vehicles on fire.

Demanding the presence of Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, protesting farmers, earlier on Wednesday, got into a scuffle with the Collector and Superintendent of Police of Mandsaur district over them delaying their visit to the area.

Also read: MP farmers facing injustice, probe Mandsaur violence: Kamal Nath

Madhya Pradesh farmers have hit the streets protesting over their demands for remunerative prices for their produce and a farm loan waiver not being met.

This unfortunately took an ugly turn on Tuesday when five farmers were killed and eight others were injured in two separate incidents of firing in Mandsaur.

#WATCH: Farmers in MP's Sehore vandalize vehicles & block roads as a part of protest for demanding loan waiver and better procurement prices pic.twitter.com/3ruS44j6fR  ANI (@ANI_news) June 7, 2017

The protestors alleged that police fired at them. A judicial probe has been ordered in the matter.

Internet services in Mandsaur, Ratlam and Ujjain were also suspended following the farmers' protests, and a curfew was reportedly imposed.

Apart from the loan waiver, the farmers are also demanding that they should be given Rs. 50 per litre of milk bought from them as they spend Rs 37 per litre.

Reacting to the incident, Chief Minister Chouhan, earlier in the day, apprised Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah of the situation in Mandsaur over the phone.
The apex court earlier on May 19 rejected Justice Karnan's plea for recall of the six-month jail term for contempt of court.

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to grant relief to Justice C S Karnan in the contempt of court case where he was sentenced to six-month imprisonment.

The apex court earlier on May 19 rejected Justice Karnan's plea for recall of the six-month jail term for contempt of court, stating that the petition was "not maintainable" in the court.

"I am constrained, but to hold that the present writ petition is not maintainable. The relief, if any, lies somewhere else. I, thus, see no reasonable cause to receive the present writ petition for registration under the provisions of order XV, rule (5) of the Supreme Court rules, 2013," the Supreme Court Registrar said in the order.

Earlier this month, Justice Karnan had approached the apex court seeking recall of the May 9 order, in which he was convicted and was sentenced to six-month imprisonment.

The apex court also banned the media from publishing the orders passed by him during his tenure.

The top court had taken suo motu cognizance of numerous letters written by him against judges of the Madras High Court and the apex court and restrained him from exercising administrative and judicial powers from February 8.

Karnan is the first ever sitting judge of a higher court in judicial history to be sent to jail.
Last year 220,000 devotees paid obeisance at Amarnath.

Jammu and Kashmir governor N.N. Vohra, who is also the chairman of the SASB, held a review meeting of the yatra with the concerned officials here on Monday.

Srinagar: With Amarnath yatra still being more than three weeks away, as many as 2,00,000 devotees have secured advance registration to be part of the annual pilgrimage deep inside Kashmir Himalayas.

Umang Narula, CEO of the Shri Amarnathji Shine Board, said that these pilgrims have secured registration through the designated bank branches, group registration facility and booking of helicopter tickets for the yatra.

The process started on March 1 through 437 designated bank branches of the Punjab National Bank, J&K Bank and YES Bank, located in 32 states and Union Territories across the country.

Jammu and Kashmir governor N.N. Vohra, who is also the chairman of the SASB, held a review meeting of the yatra with the concerned officials here on Monday.

The ongoing trend of registration shows that about 1,200 persons are being registered every day with maximum numbers coming from Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan and West Bengal, in the same order, he said. He added that it was also noted that the advance registration via the traditional Pahalgam route is slightly more preferred than the shorter Baltal route via Srinagar. This conforms to the traditional pattern of the yatra, he asserted.

Jammu and Kashmir governor N.N. Vohra, who is also the chairman of the SASB, held a review meeting of the yatra with the concerned officials here on Monday. The CEO of the board told the meeting that 143 groups have, so far, utilized the GRF which is being especially provided by the SASB. He also reported that with the reduced helicopter ticket fare for this years yatra, as compared to previous years, pilgrims in larger numbers have booked tickets in advance of the pilgrimage.

Per passenger one-way heli-fare for the Yatra 2017 is Rs. 1,715 (inclusive of all taxes) for Neelgrath-Panjtarni (Baltal route) and Rs. 2,950 (inclusive of all taxes) for Pahalgam-Panjtarni (Pahalgam route), the official said.

Narula once again urged the intending pilgrims to secure their advance registration only from the branches of the authorized banks and not from any other person(s) or agent(s) who may try to cheat and sell fake Yatra Permits to them. The list of all authorized bank branches for providing advance registration for the yatra along with the authorized doctors and medical institutions competent to issue compulsory health certificates is available on the website of the SASB at http://www.shriamarnathjishrine.com.

This years Amarnath yatra will be of 40 days duration and begin on June 29, coinciding the Skandshasthi which is an auspicious day as per Hindu calendar, and conclude on Shravan Purnima (Raksha Bandhan) on August 7. The SASB will organise a special pooja ritual at Chandanwari, a base-camp of the yatra near Kashmirs premier resort of Pahalgam, on the day of Jyesth Purnima, which falls on June 9 this year, to invoke the blessings of Lord Shiva for the smooth and safe conduct of the pilgrimage, the SASB officials said.

They also said that considering the carrying capacity of the existing tracks and other available infrastructure in the yatra area, 7,500 pilgrims, per day per each of the two routes (traditional Pahalgam and shorter Baltal), excluding the pilgrims who would fly to the shrine area by helicopters, would be allowed to register for the pilgrimage.

The authorities here said that extraordinary arrangement is being put in place to ensure smooth yatra during which three to four lakh devotees are expected to visit the 12,729 ft. (3,888 m) high cave-temple. The arrangement includes foolproof security for the pilgrims and also the organisers and volunteers and as part of it additional 54 companies brought to the Valley for the Anantnag Lok Sabha by-poll which has since been rescinded in view of the hostile law and order situation and all-time low turnout recorded in the by-poll to the Srinagar seat will stay put till the completion of the yatra. The CRPF personnel apart from performing route duties will be deployed for area domination during the pilgrimage, the official sources said.

Last year 220,000 devotees paid obeisance at Amarnath. This was the lowest number of pilgrims to have visited Amarnath since 2004 and the decrease in numbers was attributed to the post Burhan Wani killing unrest in the Valley and also because the naturally formed ice lingam of Lord Shiva at the cave-shrine completely melted in just first 13 days of the yatra owing to the rise in temperature. In 2015, as many as 352,000 pilgrims had visited Amarnath during the yatra period whereas in 2011 and 2012 the figure stood at 6.21 lakh and 6.30 lakh, respectively. After 2012, it started declining.
The situation, officials added, is expected to become normal within the next two-three days.

New Delhi: Concerned over the apparent political fallout of the farmers agitation in Madhya Pradeshs Mandsaur district, which turned violent on Tuesday claiming six lives, the Centre government has sought a detailed report from the state government.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi held detailed discussions on the issue with his senior ministerial colleagues immediately after the Cabinet meeting on Wednesday.

The home ministry, sources said, wants to specifically know as to who fired on the agitating farmers, resulting in the casualties. In a bid to contain the violence, the Centre has already rushed 600 personnel of Rapid Action Force to the trouble hit area even as 500 more are being sent.

Senior ministry officials are in touch with the state administration to discuss various measures being taken to help normalise the situation. The ministry officials claimed the situation remained tense, though under control, in areas like Mandsaur, Inasmuch and Rattle even as curfew and Section 144 of Croc, which bans large gathering of people, has been clamped in some parts of these areas.

Home ministry officials admitted that the extent of Tuesdays violence clearly reveals that neither the state administration had any local intelligence on the mobilisation of farmers nor was it prepared fully prepared to handle the violent agitation. The situation, officials added, is expected to become normal within the next two-three days.

Farmers have been protesting since June 1 in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, demanding loan waivers and higher minimum support prices among other benefits.

The home ministry has assured all support to the State government, saying if required additional reinforcements could also be rushed.

Sources said the Cabinet meeting, which began at 10.30am, lasted over three hours, as the PM is understood to have held discussions with home minister Rajnath Singh over the issue, soon after the cabinet agenda items were dispensed away with.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi discussed the volatile situation in the BJP-ruled state with senior Union ministers in Delhi.

Farmers' agitation turns violent as they torch trucks at Mhow-Neemuch Highway in Mandsaur district of Madhya Pradesh. (Photo: PTI)

Bhopal/New Delhi: A day after six farmers were killed in police firing in Madhya Pradeshs Mandsaur, violent protests continued there despite prohibitory orders and spread to five more districts on Wednesday.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi discussed the volatile situation in the BJP-ruled state with senior Union ministers in Delhi.

The Centre has sought a report from the government, and sent 1,100 security personnel to the state since Tuesday night. Farmers began a ten-day agitation on June 1 for debt relief, pension benefits and better crop prices.

Chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who has been in office since 2005, appealed for calm and promised to look into the demands of farmers. He also announced a compensation of Rs 1 crore for the families of those killed Tuesday, while spiralling protests handed the Opposition a rallying point.

Mandsaur district collector Swatantra Kumar Singh and superintendent of police O.P. Tripathy were heckled on Wednesday when the two tried to pacify a group of agitators sitting with the body of one of the police firing victims.

Protesters assaulted policemen and journalists in Mandsaur and torched police vehicles, trucks, a petrol station, a warehouse and a factory. Violence was also reported from Ujjain, Dewas, Neemuch, Dhar and Ratlam districts.

Curfew was in force in many parts of Mandsaur for the second day, while mobile phone and Internet services remained suspended in the district where hundreds of policemen in riot gear patrolled the streets.

Farmers said they plan to scale up their protests. We will continue our protest until the government accepts our demands, said Sunil Gaur of Rashtriya Kisan Mazdoor Sangh.

A Madhya Pradesh bandh called by the Congress affected some western parts of the state, but petrol stations, markets and other establishments remained open in Bhopal.

Former Congress MP from Mandsaur, Meenakshi Natarajan, was detained when she was on her way to meet the family members of the deceased.

The violence is bad news for the BJP, which swept to power in the state 14 years ago. Ravaged by drought and farm suicides, Madhya Pradesh goes to the polls next year.

Union home ministry officials admitted that the extent of Tuesdays violence reveals that the state administration did not have local intelligence on mobilisation of farmers and it was not fully prepared to handle the violent agitation.

The situation, officials said, is expected to become normal within the next two-three days.

Spiraling farm protests in BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh and neighbouring Maharashtra pose a challenge for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has promised to double farmers incomes over the next five years.
Police sources said the toll may go up with bodies of victims still being extricated from the blast site.

Rescuers try to douse the fire after an explosion in a firecracker factory in Balaghat, Madhya Pradesh, on Wednesday. (Photo: AP)

Bhopal: At least 27 workers were on Wednesday killed in an explosion in a firecracker factory at Kater, nearly five km from district headquarters town of Balaghat in Madhya Pradesh.

Police sources said the toll may go up with bodies of victims still being extricated from the blast site.

Fifteen bodies have so far been removed. We could see at least a dozen more bodies in the debris inside the factory, a senior police officer in the district told this newspaper.

The explosion that took place around 3.30 PM was so powerful that even factory walls were collapsed under its impact, additional director-general of police G.Janardan said.

Several bodies have been removed and more bodies could by lying under the debris, he added.

According to the police, nearly 50 labourers were working in the factory, built illegally, when the fire broke out leading to the tragedy.

A woman worker injured in the incident reported the matter to the local police leading the administration to launch rescue operation.

The powerful explosion threw away several bodies out of factory, the account of the injured woman worker said. Bodies were seen strewn around 100 meter area near the blast site.

CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan ordered a probe into the incident and announced an ex-gratia of Rs 2 lakh each to the next kin of the deceased and Rs 50,000 each to the injured.
The police is probing whether they belong to the ultra right-wing organisation, Hindu Sena.

New Delhi: CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury was attacked by two alleged right-wing activists at the partys headquarters in New Delhi on Wednesday. He did not sustain any injury.

The attackers, who pushed Mr Yechury and raised slogans like Hindu Sena zindabad, CPI(M) murdabad, have been detained by the police. The police is probing whether they belong to the ultra right-wing organisation, Hindu Sena.

The attackers, who had entered the building posing as journalists, tried to push Mr Yechury as he was entering the floor for a press briefing. But before they could move closer to him, party workers pounced on them.

Mr Yechury addressed the media briefing and later tweeted: We will not be cowed down by any attempts of Sanghs goonda-gardi to silence us. All political parties condemned the attack.
Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghose has retired and fresh orders can be passed only after reconstituting the bench.

New Delhi: Pointing out that a seven-judge Bench of the Supreme Court had passed the order of six months imprisonment, the vacation court on Wednesday refused to consider the fresh plea of Justice C.S. Karnan (who is absconding and evading arrest) seeking suspension of the sentence. A bench of Justices Ashok Bhushan and Deepak Gupta refused to entertain the plea of advocate Nedumpara Mathews for listing the petition challenging the orders of the Registra judicial holding Justice Karnans writ petition as not maintainable and for stay of the order of sentence passed on May 9.

The seven-judge bench had then indicated that it will pass a detailed order giving reasons for holding Justice Karnan guilty of contempt of court. In the meanwhile one of the judges in the bench, Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghose has retired and fresh orders can be passed only after reconstituting the bench.

In view of this position Justice Karnan,who is due to retire on June 12 as a judge of the Calcutta High Court filed an Application challenging the order of the Registrar Judicial declining even to register his petition for Recall of the May 9 order.

He said his petition to the President of India for suspension of the sentence is still pending and till it is considered, Justice Karnan should not be arrested.
They have been identified as Pawan Kumar Kaul and Upendra Kumar.

Police personnel takes away one of the two alleged right-wing activists at the CPI(M) headquarters in New Delhi on Wednesday. (Photo: Pritam Bandyopadhyay)

New Delhi: CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury was attacked by two alleged right-wing activists at the party headquarters, A.K.G. Bhavan, on Wednesday. The attackers who raised slogans of Hindu Sena zindabad and CPI(M) murdabad have been detained by the police. They have been identified as Pawan Kumar Kaul and Upendra Kumar.

The police is trying to probe whether they belong to Hindu Sena  an ultra right-wing organisation. This is the first time a CPI(M) leader was attacked in the party office in the national capital by any right-wing element.

The CPI(M) general secretary did not sustain any injury. The attack came when Mr Yechury was entering the floor for a press briefing. The assailants, who had entered the building posing as journalists, tried to push Mr Yechury and began raising the slogans. Before they could move closer to the CPI(M) general secretary, they were immediately surrounded by party workers, who then pounced on them. One of the attackers managed to run out of the building, but was caught by the police outside.

The other one was handed over to the police by CPI(M) workers. There was heavy police presence outside A.K.G. Bhavan as the party was concluding its two-day politburo meeting, being attended by senior leaders and chief ministers of Kerala and Tripura.

Mr Yechury, who later continued with the media briefing, tweeted: We will not be cowed down by any attempts of Sanghs goonda-gardi to silence us. There was an all round condemnation by the political parties, particularly the Opposition.

Congress spokesperson Sandeep Dikshit strongly condemned the incident saying it was a dastardly attack against the Opposition and shows the intolerance of right-wing elements. Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan said that the assault amounted to an assault on Indian democracy.

DCP (Delhi) B.K. Singh said that it seemed that the accused belonged to one Hindu Sena. He, however, said that the police is trying to verify the credentials of the accused.

The Hindu Sena appeared to be another fringe Hindutva groups among many which have been mushrooming of late. The official website of the organisation, also seemed to have organised protests against BJP during the Uri attack. The catchline of the organisation stated-Bhagwa dalne ki zaroorat nehi-andar se Hindu hona chahiye (Thres no need to put on saffron garb-one has to be Hindu from inside.
The Army officials in Srinagar said that the trio were part of a heavily armed group of infiltrators which had sneaked into J&K from PoK.

Srinagar: Three militants were killed in a fire fight with the Army in Machael sector along the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmirs Kupwara district on Wednesday.

The Army officials in Srinagar said that the trio were part of a heavily armed group of infiltrators which had sneaked into Jammu and Kashmir from PoK overnight but were confronted by Army troops deployed in the frontier region.

The soldiers from the Army 56 Rashtriya Rifles engaged the militants during a cordon-and-search operation launched in Sardari Nad forest area of Macheal after they learnt about the infiltration. The terrorists hiding in the woods opened fire, triggering an encounter which is still underway. One terrorist has died, so far," said a defence spokesman here. Latest reports from the area said that two more militants have been killed in the encounter raising the toll to three.

Confirming this, the Army sources in Srinagar said, Soon after the terrorists sneaked into Macheal sector they were engaged by own troops and foiled their attempt to escape taking advantage of thick forest cover. Three terrorists have been gunned down and three weapons recovered during the operation which is still on. The sources said that the identity of the slain men is being ascertained.

The Army also said that this was the third infiltration bid foiled by it along the LoC in Kupwara-Baramulla-Bandipora belt of the Kashmir Valley. On May 26, the Army had claimed killing two members of Pakistan Armys Border Action Team (BAT) in Baramullas Uri sector whereas six militants were gunned down in the same sector a day later.
There are also efforts to get Samajwadi Party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav to attend the rally.

Lucknow: Arch rivals in UP, the Samajwadi Party and the BSP will share a common platform at a rally organised by Lalu Prasad's Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) in Patna, heralding a new phase of politics in the country's cow belt.

SP chief Akhilesh Yadav and BSP president Mayawati have confirmed their participation in the Patna rally on August 27 for which the RJD supremo made a personal call to both of them recently, RJD state unit President Ashok Singh said on Wednesday.

There are also efforts to get Samajwadi Party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav to attend the rally, Singh said.

The coming together of SP and BSP leaders on one platform is being seen in the political circles as emergence of a new phase of politics in the state after a dismal show of all anti-BJP parties in the 2014 Lok Sabha and 2017 Assembly polls.

The RJD president has also invited leaders like Mamata Banerjee (Trinmool Congress), Naveen Patnaik (Biju Janata Dal), Sharad Pawar (Nationalist Congress Party) and many of them are likely to attend, Singh said.

Congress is likely to be represented by its president Sonia Gandhi, Singh said, adding MK Stalin (DMK) has already confirmed his participation.

The effort is to repeat a Bihar-like experiment at the national level with all parties opposed to the BJP coming together, Singh said.

The coming together of sworn enemies SP and BSP in the politically crucial state of Uttar Pradesh could have a far reaching effect to check the rise of the BJP, say political pundits.

The SP and the BSP together make a formidable alliance with consolidation of Dalit and backward votes which could effectively checkmate BJP.

The BSP won only 19 seats this time (2017 Assembly) in the 403-member House, down from 80 in 2012. This is its lowest tally since 1991, when the party won 12 seats. The SP won 47, its lowest tally since the party s inception in 1992.

The SP's lowest score so far was 97 seats in 2007.

While the SP s vote share was 21.8 per cent, BSP s vote share was 22.2 per cent. BSP contested all the seats while SP left 105 seats for the Congress.

As the BJP s unprecedented tally dwarfed the opposition, which has together been reduced to less than 75 seats, the call for an alliance between the SP and BSP started growing louder.

BJP cornered 40 per cent of the votes polled, an increase of 25 per cent since last time, grabbing along with its NDA partners a whopping 325 seats.

Akhilesh Yadav has already confirmed his participation in the Patna rally.

"I will be present at Lalu Prasad s Bihar rally on August 27. If there is any announcement (regarding future alliance) it will me made there," he has said.

Though BSP is yet to confirm Mayawati's participation in the event, its likelihood gained momentum when she attended a recent lunch hosted by Sonia Gandhi along with leaders of 16 other parties who have been traditionally hostile to each other.

Before the start of hostility between SP and BSP, the two parties had contested the 1993 UP Assembly elections in an alliance with BSP contesting 164 seats and winning 67, while the SP had contested 256 seats winning 109 in the then House of 425 (before the creation of Uttarakhand).

The government was formed with Mulayam Singh as the chief minister.

The relationship, however, turned sour and BSP withdrew support.

Mayawati went on to form the government with the help of the BJP in 1995.

Faced with the worst political scenario with even Mayawati not in a position to get re-elected to the Rajya Sabha when her present term expires in April next year, the RJD president has already announced that he was ready to send her to the Upper House of Parliament to secure her political future.
Election for the post of party president will be held between September 15 and October 15 this year.

New Delhi: The son finally rises. Coronation of Rahul Gandhi as Congress president, replacing his mother Sonia Gandhi, will take place after the completion of the party's organisational elections in October this year.

There have been demands from various quarters for putting Rahul Gandhi at the helm of affairs, especially since the rise of the BJP and the failing health of Sonia Gandhi. And on Tuesday, at the crucial Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting, the schedule for the party's internal elections was ratified.

Election for the post of party president will be held between September 15 and October 15 this year.

Gandhi, who apparently believes in "inner party democracy", will pitch himself as a candidate for the president's post. So far there is no opposition and "electing" Gandhi to the top post is expected to be a mere formality, a party functionary said.

The CWC is the party's highest decision-making body, and it has the power to appoint the party chief, a decision that can be ratified by Congress members later. But Gandhi is keen that he be elected democratically.

Given Rahul Gandhi's track record in electoral politics, a few Congress leaders were sceptical of the transition. However, they remain a minority and in the shadows since an overwhelming section of the Congress wants the dynasty to continue.

Rahul Gandhi chaired the last CWC meet in November 2016 since Sonia Gandhi could not attend due to "health reasons." During the meeting all CWC members rooted for Mr Gandhi to take over as the party president.

Speculation is rife that with Rahul Gandhi taking over, some senior leaders, referred to as the "old turks", would give away to the younger generation. The generational shift, in fact, is already visible.

Rahul Gandhi's team - which includes Ajay Maken, Randeep Singh Surjewala, Deepender Hooda, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Gaurav Gogoi - is already calling the shots in the organisation. Even the venue for crucial party meetings has shifted from 10 Janpath to Mr Gandhi's residence, 12 Tughlaq Lane.

However, trying to ally the fears of "old party loyalists", Rahul Gandhi has gone on record to say that he would "use the experience of the old and the energy of the young."

During the CWC meet on Tuesday, Rahul shared his plan to "expand" his party's influence among professionals, including doctors, teachers and chartered accountants. He will set up a "professional cell" to focus on these sections. To make inroads into the traders' community, the Congress will also set up a "traders' cell."

Rahul Gandhi said that the Congress has not been able make inroads into these groups though they were among the "opinion makers of our society".

This was the CWC's first meeting after the Congress was washed out in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand in the Assembly elections. It is felt that structural and organisational changes will revive the party.

As mandated by the Election Commission of India, in April this year the Congress agreed to complete its internal elections and re-constituted the central election committee.

Following the president's election, there will be another round to appoint CWC members. The CWC has 25 members, of whom at least 12 are elected by All India Congress Committee (AICC) members. There has been no need to conduct elections to the CWC since 1997.
Police are trying to ascertain if the accused had a valid driving licence as no such document was found on his possession.

New Delhi: A 21-year-old woman was killed and another injured after they were hit by a car in northwest Delhi's Ashok Vihar on Wednesday.

The driver of the car has been arrested, the police said.

Pooja (21) and Kamlesh (32) were doing dishes in front of an under-construction building in the morning when the car, driven by Krishna (25), hit the two.

The women were rushed to a hospital where Pooja was declared brought dead. Kamlesh was referred to Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan Hospital since her condition was serious, the police said.

The accused, who used to wash the car, decided to go for a drive in the vehicle. Since he did not know how to drive, he pressed the accelerator, instead of applying the brakes, they added.

Police are trying to ascertain if the accused had a valid driving licence as no such document was found on his possession.

Pooja and Kamlesh were staying in the under construction building with their families.
When Rahul asked the men to leave, they left but later returned to avenge the insult and stabbed him multiple times.

New Delhi: A man was allegedly killed by a group of persons after he asked some of them not to take drugs in outer Delhi's Nangloi on Wednesday, police said.

Rahul, in his 20s, owned a toilet complex in Punjabi Market and was a resident of Mundka.

When he arrived there, he found three to four men taking drugs. He also came to know that his mother had been thrashed by them, they added.

He asked them to leave. The men left but later returned to avenge the insult. They stabbed Rahul multiple times and when his mother tried to intervene, they thrashed her again, police said.

Hearing the commotion, locals rushed to the spot. The attackers fled from the spot while Rahul was rushed to a hospital where he was declared dead, they added.

An e-rickshaw driver was beaten to death by nearly a dozen men on May 27, after he had objected to two men urinating in public outside GTB Nagar Metro station in northwest Delhi. Two persons were arrested in connection with that case.
Efe had procured these things from another Nigerian called Oscar, whom he met at the New Delhi railway station.

New Delhi: A Nigerian national was arrested at the Indira Gandhi Airport in New Delhi for "forgery" and carrying "suspicious papers" and a liquid chemical substance, the police said.

The accused was also found to be travelling on forged documents.

On May 2, a Nigerian national was off-loaded from a flight after a scan of his check-in luggage showed a "suspicious" bundle of papers and a bottle containing a chemical substance, the police said.

During interrogation, the Nigerian revealed his real name  Gabriel Blessing Efe.

He also confessed that he was travelling on a fake name and his passport and visa were forged.

Efe revealed that he was asked by a Nigerian friend called Tonny, who is based in Kolkata, to get the chemical and "papers of the size of currency notes" from Delhi.

Efe had procured these things from another Nigerian called Oscar, whom he met at the New Delhi railway station.

Tonny and Efe had plans to dupe a businessman in Kolkata on the pretext of getting him US dollars for cheap, the police said, adding that the duo would have told the businessman that after being washed in the chemical, the papers would transform into US dollars.

However, before Efe could reach Kolkata, he was arrested in the national capital.

Fourteen bundles with 100 notes each and the chemical substance were seized from his possession. The police is going through the CCTV footage to trace the man who handed over the liquid chemical to Efe.
BMC senior staff will now work for seven hours without break.

Mumbai: The British-era working hours in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) will soon cease to exist. Taking into account citys changed lifestyle, the civic body has decided to do away with more than 100-year old work timings for its employees and will implement a new schedule for them. Instead of break-duty, the employees will have a straight hours duty.

As per the new changes, the duty hours of superior staff like clerks, engineers, inspectors and etc will now be straight seven hours  from 10 am to 5 pm, whereas that of labourers (conservancy, water supply) will be of eight hours  from 9.30 am to 5.30 pm. These timings will be applicable for ward-level employees, especially for those who work outdoors, from next month.

Till now, the ward-level employees were having a break-duty, which has been prevailing ever since the British Raj. Despite having eight hours duty, they had to spend close 10 to 11 hours at the civic offices due to the old schedule. The working hours for labourers, which used to start at 7 am, would continue till 5.30 pm with a gap of two and half hours in between. It means they would work from 7 am to 11 am and then wait for another 2.30 hours to resume the second part of their duty from 1.30 am to 5.30 pm. The same went for the senior staff, who started their day at 8 am and finished at 5.30 pm.

A senior civic official said, These timings were decided taking into account the public convenience during old days. There was a break so that employees can carry out other works in between. But now there is no such need. With online facilities available everywhere, they can now carry out these works anytime.

We have accepted BMCs proposal to change duty hours provided whatever benefits available to employees should not be discontinued, said Prakash Devdas, general secretary of Mumbai Municipal Subordinate Staff Union. They get offs on second and fourth Saturdays and the concession should not be withdrawn.

Sudhir Naik, deputy municipal commissioner (general administration) said, The change in timings will be beneficial for civic employees. As far as the issue of offs on second and fourth Saturdays are concerned, it will be sorted out amicably.
The NGOs have warned against treating poor children across the state as guinea pigs, putting their health at risk.

Mumbai: Instead of providing hot cooked, nutritious meals to malnourished kids, the state women and child welfare department has recently decided to purchase corporate-manufactured ready to use therapeutic food (RUTF) packets for severely malnourished children across Maharashtra. A memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed on August 4, permitting the use of RUTF for severe acute malnutrition (SAM) children in the Mokhada block of Palghar district.

Now, NGOs Jan Arogya Abhiyan (Peoples health movement, Maharashtra) and Anna Adhikar Abhiyan (Right to food campaign, Maharashtra) have demanded that malnourished kids be provided healthy home-style cooked food as the RUTF paste (basically groundnut paste) given to children for three months is not adequate for them to overcome malnutrition.

The NGOs have warned against treating poor children across the state as guinea pigs, putting their health at risk. They have demanded that the government instead implement healthy, sustainable and less expensive options based on locally prepared and acceptable foods for malnourished children, especially those below three years of age, who are currently totally neglected.

Women and Child Development minister Pankaja Munde, rebutting the allegations of NGO on Ready to use therapeutic food (RUTF) told The Asian Age,  The food packets are tested and approved by UNICEF and are being used all over the world. All the products are safe and sufficient for the malnourished kids, the NGO claims are improper.

When asked about providing hot cooked meals and locally produced nutritious foods to affected malnutrition kids, Minister said, We are providing the hot cooked meals where it is required, most of the malnourished belt are getting these meals which are healthy and balanced with nutrients.

The RUTF paste packets have recently been provided to children in Dhadgaon, Nandurbar and Shahada blocks (Nandurbar district) on a pilot basis.
Lenovo-backed Motorola made an official announcement recently, suggesting that its Moto X Play smartphone  which currently runs on Android Marshmallow 6.0  is set to receive the latest Android Nougat update soon. While, the specific date has not been established, the company will be rolling out the update along with other software upgrades as well.

To recall, Motorola in November last year released a list of smartphones that will be receiving the Nougat update. While as many as 15 Moto smartphones received the update, the Moto X Play was left behind. The latest update will be bringing along with, several improved features like the ability to quick switch the apps, split-window view, direct reply from notification panel and customised quick settings.
The metal mask - along with a collection of human bones was found in a tomb near a village in north-western Argentina.

Washington: Scientists have discovered a 3,000-year-old rectangular copper mask in Argentina - one of the oldest human-made metal object from South America.

The mask, which dates back to about 1000 BC, was found at a site where adults and children were buried. Holes mark the position of the mask's eyes, nose and mouth, with additional small, circular openings near the edges that could have been threaded to secure it to a face or an object.

Scientists from University of Buenos Aires in Argentina also found a source of copper ore within 70 kilometres of the location where the mask was uncovered, suggesting that it was produced locally.

It is probable that metalworking emerged in Argentina at the same time that it was developing in Peru, the researchers wrote in the study published in the journal Antiquity.

The metal mask - along with a collection of human bones was found in a tomb near a village in north-western Argentina. There were about 14 bodies in the burial area, with the bones all mixed together and the mask placed on top of one corner of the pile.

Another burial area nearby held a single occupant. The bones of a child about 8 to 12 years old, also dating to about 3,000 years ago, were buried with a stone bead and a copper pendant, 'Live Science' reported.

The mask measures about 18 centimetres long and nearly 15 cm wide. To create the mask, someone would have hammered the metal flat while it was cold and then reheated it, researchers said.

The age of these metal objects - particularly the mask, crafted to deliberately resemble a human face  strongly suggests that people in the Argentinian regions of the Andes were shaping copper into artifacts earlier than previously thought, they said.
Debris from the missing military plane found in the Andaman Sea.

An unverified report in the Mirror claimed that 15 passengers had reportedly survived the crash. (Photo: Pixabay)

Yangon: Debris of a missing Myanmar military plane carrying more than 120 people was found in the Andaman Sea late Wednesday, officials said.

The military transport plane  with 14 crew members and 106 soldiers and their relatives  was reported missing after taking off Wednesday afternoon from an air base in the southern part of the country.

For hours ships and planes were scouring the coast of southern Myanmar for the Chinese-made Y-8-200F transport plane which can carry a maximum of 200 people.

The plane, which left Myeik at 1:06 pm local time, lost contact 29 minutes after take-off, while flying at 18,000 feet (5,485 metres) over the sea, about 70 km west of the town of Dawei, the military said. It was heading north, to Myanmars largest city of Yangon, on a regular weekly military flight that stops at several coastal towns along the way.

Now they have found pieces of the damaged plane in the sea 218 km away from Dawei city, said Naing Lin Zaw, a tourism official in Myeik city, adding that the Navy was still searching the sea.

We dont know what exactly happened to this plane after the loss of contact, said Kyaw Kyaw Htey, a civil aviation official at Myeik airport.

An unverified report in the Mirror claimed that 15 passengers had reportedly survived the crash.
The statement added that Pakistan had shown exceptional restraint even when Afghan territory was being used for terrorist acts in Pakistan.

Islamabad: Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Wednesday rejected Afghanistans allegations that Pakistan was supporting terrorism, expressing concern over the deteriorating law and order situation in the neighbouring country.

Chairing the National Security Committee meet in Islamabad, Mr Sharif said Pakistan was not only committed to a peaceful and stable Afghanistan but was also working with all regional and global initiatives to reach that end.

It was observed at the meet that Pakistan was the only country which had achieved clear and measurable success against terrorism, despite its limited capacity and at huge human and economic costs, said an official statement.

The statement added that Pakistan had shown exceptional restraint even when Afghan territory was being used for terrorist acts in Pakistan.
Foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said during a regular briefing that China is firmly opposed to aspects of the publication.

Published on Tuesday, the Pentagon report estimated that China spent $180 billion last year on its military -- the world's largest -- a figure well over the country's official $140 billion defence budget. (Photo: AP)

Beijing: Beijing on Wednesday dismissed as "irresponsible" an annual US Defence Department report that predicted China would expand its global military presence, building overseas bases in countries like Pakistan.

Published on Tuesday, the Pentagon report estimated that China spent $180 billion last year on its military -- the world's largest -- a figure well over the country's official $140 billion defence budget.

"China most likely will seek to establish additional military bases in countries with which it has a longstanding friendly relationship and similar strategic interests, such as Pakistan, and in which there is a precedent for hosting foreign militaries," the report said.

Foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said during a regular briefing today that China "is firmly opposed" to aspects of the publication.

"We have noted the report released by the US which made irresponsible remarks about China's national defence development in disregard of the facts," Ms Hua said, declining to comment on "speculation" and noting that the "friendly cooperation (between China and Pakistan) does not target any third party".

As part of China's expansive Belt and Road regional infrastructure project, China and Pakistan are building an economic corridor aimed at linking northwest China to the Arabian Sea.

India has voiced displeasure at the planned route, which cuts through Gilgit and Baltistan in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

China started building its first overseas military base in February 2016 in the small nation of Djibouti, where it will be stationed just a few miles from a US camp.

The outpost will support the country's UN peacekeepers in Africa, allow it to evacuate its nationals in a crisis, and support anti-piracy activities off Somalia, according to China.

The Pentagon report noted that the strategically-sited camp, "along with regular naval vessel visits to foreign ports, both reflects and amplifies China's growing influence, extending the reach of its armed forces".
Two weeks after gunmen waving black flags of the Islamic State (ISIS) group rampaged through the Muslim city of Marawi.

Smoke rises after aerial bombings by Philippine Air Force planes on Islamist militant positions in Marawi, on the southern island of Mindanao. (Photo: AFP)

Marawi, Philippines: With bomb-proof tunnels, anti-tank weapons hidden in mosques, human shields and a mastery of the terrain, Islamist militants holed up in a southern Philippine city are proving a far tougher opponent than military chiefs expected.

Two weeks after gunmen waving black flags of the Islamic State (ISIS) group rampaged through the Muslim city of Marawi, initial assertions from authorities that the conflict would be over in days have given way to warnings of a protracted battle.

The advantage of the (enemy) is their mastery of the terrain. They know where even the smallest alleys lead to and they are free to go around, Major Rowan Rimas, an operations officer for the marines, told reporters in Marawi this week.

They know where the government forces are coming from and where they are taking cover. They have snipers and their positions are well-defended.

Defence secretary Delfin Lorenzana admitted at the start of the conflict that security forces were taken by surprise when dozens of gunmen appeared on the streets of Marawi following a failed raid to capture one of their leaders.

They emerged from homes in Marawi, the biggest Islamic city in the mainly Catholic Philippines with 200,000 residents, and went on a rampage that included taking a Catholic priest hostage, opening up two jails and destroying many buildings.

Lorenzana and military leaders have since said they unexpectedly interrupted plans by the militants to take over Marawi in a spectacular event to show that ISIS had arrived in the Philippines and was intent on carving out a local territory.

They initially estimated there were about 100 gunmen but later said there were as many as 500, supplemented by foreign fighters, including from Chechnya, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

The fighters have also had a surprisingly large arsenal of military hardware, including rocket-propelled grenades and a so-far inexhaustible amount of ammunition for high-powered assault rifles.

Authorities said two brothers from Marawi surnamed Maute were key leaders in the battle, giving the militants a crucial home-ground advantage that has allowed them to withstand a relentless air campaign of bombs and rocket strikes.

The roughly 10 per cent of Marawi held by the militants has many tunnels and basements that can withstand 500-pound bombs, military spokesman Lt. Col. Jo-ar Herrera told AFP on Monday.

Even mosques here have tunnels, Herrera said, adding the fighters were using them to escape the bombing as well as to store high-powered weapons.

These are all part of the dynamics of the battlefield that makes it more difficult for us.

Herrera said Philippine military protocol called for mosques and Islamic schools known as madrassas to be spared from air strikes and artillery, a limitation exploited by the gunmen.

Residents built reinforced bunkers and tunnels underneath their houses after a 1970 Muslim uprising led to large parts of the city being burnt, Norodin Alonto Lucman, a senior Marawi politician, told AFP.

The Mautes are in partnership with Isnilon Hapilon, the target of the initial raid whom the military regards as the ISIS amir, or its top leader in the Philippines. Military chiefs said they believed he was still in Marawi.

Adding to concerns that the militants were running a far more complex and extensive operation than authorities initially believed was the discovery on Monday in a house the gunmen had been using of 52.2 million pesos ($1.05 million) in cash.

The gunmen have the added insurance of about 2,000 trapped civilians serving as virtual human shields, along with the priest and more than a dozen civilians kidnapped at the start of the crisis.

President Rodrigo Duterte imposed martial law across the entire southern region of Mindanao, home to 20 million people, within hours of the crisis erupting in a bid to quickly crush what he said was the fast-rising threat from ISIS.

He set a target late last week of Tuesday to clear the city of the militants.

As that deadline passed, Duterte issued typically aggressive rhetoric to soldiers.

I am ordering you to crush our enemy, he said in a speech to troops in the south,

When I say crush them, you have to destroy everything, including lives.

But a quick military victory looks increasingly unlikely.

Lorenzana, who saw his own 10-day target pass on the weekend, said battles in recent years with Islamist militants in the south typically led to them running away but that this time they were showing far more resolve.

Normally in this kind of conflict the local fighters will just scamper away and maybe hide in the mountains, he said while on a visit to Marawi on the weekend.

But surprisingly this group has just holed up there and are just waiting to fight it out, maybe to the last.
Taner Kilic and 22 activists and lawyers arrested. Birol Erdem, Prime Minister Yildirim's advisor, and the ex-vice-premier Bulent Arn's son-in-law also targeted. Over 120,000 people detained in government purge.

Istanbul (AsiaNews) - Turkish authorities have arrested the local Amnesty International president, Taner Kilic, along with another 22 people for suspecting ties with Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen, considered the master mind of last Julys failed coup.

According to the activist movement, the police stopped him yesterday in the western town of Izmir. "We are calling on the Turkish authorities - says Secretary-General Salil Shetty  to immediatley release Taner Kilic and other 22 lawyers."

According to Amnesty International, the arrest is evidence of how "arbitrary" Ankara's detentions have become and the repression in the months following the attempted coup. The activists claim there is no link between Kilic's arrest and work in the country for human rights, which began in 2014.

In recent days, the Turkish authorities have made several high levelarrests in the context of the purges. In early June, Birol Erdem, chief advisor to Turkish premier Binali Yildirim, also suspected of linking to Gulen's network, was detained. He has been a secretary for Justice in the past and was arrested with his wife in their residence in Ankara.

On June 5th, it was the turn of Ekrem Yeter, son-in-law of former vice-premier Bulent Arnc. He was taken inside his home and conducted in front of the prosecutor for an interrogation, after which he was sentenced to custody in prison for "belonging to a terrorist organization" (Gulen).

Since July 2016, Turkish authorities have arrested more than 45,000 people, including teachers, soldiers, intellectuals, opposition politicians, businessmen, journalists, activists and ordinary citizens. More than 135,000 public servants have been either suspended or dismissed.

The crackdown is aimed at Kurds, and sympathisers (real or assumed) of the movement led by Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen, who lives in exile in Pennsylvania, US.

According to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other government leaders Gulen was behind the coup in Turkey that killed 270 people, wounding thousands.
Youssef Zaghba studied computer science at Fez University. He worked as a waiter in London where he met the two other terrorists. He had invited his mother Valeria Collina to England to celebrate the end of Ramadan. Italian authorities had flagged him as a person of interest on the Schengen Information System. He wanted to go to Syria to live a "pure" Islam, and aspired for martyrdom. His mother now swears that she will spend the rest of her life teaching the true Islam.

London (AsiaNews/Agencies)  Youssef Zaghba, the third terrorist in the London attack, was in Italy until December 2016.

In March of last year, 22-year-old Italian-Moroccan had only a small rucksack, a passport, a mobile phone, and a one-way ticket when he was stopped at Bologna airport on his way to Istanbul, then Syria.

Italian officials found Islamic State-related photos and materials on his mobile. They accused him of international terrorism, reporting him as a person of interest to international law enforcement agencies.

However, within a week, a court ordered the return of his passport and mobile phone. Afterwards, he moved to London where he found work in a restaurant and began attending Islamic extremist circles.

His mother, Valeria Collina, 68, still lives in Fagnano of Valsamoggia near Bologna. She converted to Islam 26 years ago when she married Youssef's father, Mohammed.

When she refused her husband's second marriage, he repudiated her. On at least one occasion, he beat her so badly that she had to spend 40 days in hospital.

Youssef was born in Fez in January 1995 and has dual nationality. He studied computer science at Fez University. Over the past year he came to Italy three times to see his mother who always cooperated with Italian police and reported her son's movements.

His last trip was in December. He flew from Bologna to Stansted and when he landed at London airport, police ran a security check through the Schengen Information System (SIS). His name came up as a person of interest, but this was not enough for the authorities to stop him.

A few days ago, Youssef spoke to his mother on the phone saying that he was planning to pick her up in London where she was supposed to travel for the end of Ramadan. His relationship with his sister was difficult; he wanted her to dress the way he wanted.

Youssef's mother now blames the internet for her sons radicalisation. "He would say to me 'Come on Mum let's go live in Syria. Over there, they have a pure Islam. With his new London friends, he aspired to martyrdom.

Valeria Collina says she supports the decisions of imams who do not want to bury her son. She swears that she will devote the rest of her life to teaching true Islam to people.

The other two London Bridge terrorists were Khuram Butt, 27, a Briton of Pakistani origins, and Rachid Redouane, 30, of Moroccan and Libyan origins, both from Barking, a suburban town in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham.

Butt is thought to have led the cell that carried out the attack. He appears in a Channel 4 documentary on Islamic extremism in the United Kingdom unfurling an Islamic State flag at Regent's Park.

In the video aired last year, he is seen with two Islamic preachers known to law enforcement. In the same documentary, Butt is seen talking with police called to the park by some locals.

The twin attack was carried out late Saturday evening in two stages. First, the attackers drove a van on London Bridge hitting pedestrians, and then got out and began stabbing people. Second, they moved to the nearby Borough Market, where they continued their deadly spree before they were shot by police.

The official death toll now stands at seven with 48 wounded, 21 in critical conditions.
His first contact in the Land of the Rising Sun was with the impermeability of the reasoning of faith. The Japanese are unique and different. But even for them, Christianity is the opportunity of a life with a more human face.

Rome (AsiaNews) - "Japan seemed so different to what I had imagined." This is the first vivid impression of Father Mario Bianchin, from Treviso, 76 years old, 45 of which spent in the Land of the Rising Sun, the last four as regional superior of Pime, a missionary life. He is in Europe for a few weeks, first in Rome, then in Ireland, accompanying a group of Japanese. Today he works in the diocese of Yokohama, a city that is now one with Tokyo's megalopolis. However, he has lived in rural areas for a long time: where he says that "ties" with tradition and between people "hold a little more". He discovered Japan after a period in Hong Kong. He crossed the Pacific Ocean to Asia after a degree in mass media in Los Angeles. He arrived there at just 20 years of age in 1961, "when John Fitzgerald Kennedy had just been elected president," he remembers.

Father Bianchin, in what sense did the Japanese appear different?

In their public life and at work they are western in all respects, but when they come home they wear traditional Japanese dress. It is as if they lived in two different worlds. Being in Japan, means finding yourself in a reality that evolves externally, but never changes its foundations.

Did you express a desire to go to Japan?

Yes, I did. In my day, you usually went to missions in the so-called underdeveloped countries. Japan was certainly a developed country, yet it was not Christian. I said to myself: why are they so educated and not Christians? This was a deep question for me. An unresolved issue.

So let's start from the beginning ...

I arrived in Japan in 1972. I did not speak Japanese. After a week I met a man who spoke a bit of English learned in Siberia where he was a prisoner of war. A normal conversation. He asked me what I has come to do there. When I explained, he objected to me: "You must know that we have a religion already. I thought you had come to teach English. " The reaction was unsettling.

How did you deal with this Japanese impermeability?

It questioned all my preconceived ideas. I soon learned that in the mission as in life what is good in one place or in one situation is not good in another. I remember, for example, that I was struck by the absence of the problem of fracture between faith and life. A cultural problem of that time that Pope Paul VI had faced in his encyclical Ecclesiam Suam. It was called the "dichotomy" between faith and culture. However, I did not find anything in Japan. There, society worked on two levels, publi and the private, different from each other, but both were very concrete. There was no type of intellectual or religious speculation. A great interest in science and technology, in which the Japanese excel. But when I attempted to approach other topics, my interlocutors nodded, out of pure kindness, but I saw that they were not interested at all.

Why do you think this is so?

After many years I realized that in Japanese history there has never been a real social and religious affirmation of man, understood as a single person, as unique. We know that it is only in Christianity that the person takes on the extraordinary and unique dimension of being. We also know that the root of this problem is the understanding of God. Some Japanese say that they believe in a "little" God: it means that in their religious perception God is not "Something Other than oneself" who seeks a relationship with man. So they tend to be confused about who they are and who God is.

Why are conversions rare?

They are often excited about what they read in the Gospel. There is obvious correspondence with their heart. They are attracted to those ever-new values, they find them beautiful and moving, especially gratuitous love. However, the context is overwhelming. The converts find themselves alone and as they have no strong concept of the person it is more difficult for them to go on. So, when a heartfelt admiration for Christianity is usually followed by the phrase: it is not for me, or rather, for us.

Which path did you choose?

I chose to point to Heaven. Or God's voice ("I am the voice," says John the Baptist). The Japanese constant reference point is nature, the inevitability of nature, renewal, resurrection. Their perception is never abstract or intellectual, but phenomenological. It must be said that they are magnanimous in taking a snapshot of the phenomenon. The meaning of the ancient Haiku poems (for example, the famous one of Matsuo Basho "The old pond / frog jumps / drips into the water") is taken up just this way. I think they still match the Japanese soul. In art, in movies, in literature, in music (for example in Enka songs), form is already the content. There, feelings are very well relayed, and they believe that it is too much to attempt to translate into thoughts and deductions. All this continues to represent the nourishment of a common sensibility. However, if you do not see nature as God's providential work, there is no hope, but only fatalism.

Is this the cause of so many and serious social problems that exist in Japan?

This is the background. Take the tragic and emblematic case of many suicides. What I have always been impressed with in their deep analysis is the motivation, which I find superficial. Though they are dramatic when the perception of an omnipotent God is lacking. A young man who took his life wrote that he wanted to press the "reset" button. As if it were a computer. To restart everything. To erase the past.

The recently released book "The Vanished" says the Japanese are evaporating, disappearing, erasing their identities to make a clean break, exploiting the privacy law. They do it because they are tormented by the shame of losing work, a failed wedding or a debt ...

Every Japanese conceives himself in the role and in the place he has been assigned. If it does not work, he no longer feels worthy of being Japanese. It does not matter much about the prestige of the charge or role, but the pride is to be functional in the assigned place whatever it may be. Even in afflictions, for example, between husband and wife, this aspect of gratitude for the place assigned, the value of the bond, and the resistance to the difficulties of life are recorded. Functionality is the sign of the person's vitality. For many, it is considered a disgrace to have disabled member in the family. Among other things, it is the principle of trying to never become a burden for each other. The more one has strength and energy, the greater the honor. But you can not stand alone at all. And here it is understood how Christian faith is a great opportunity for many. Christian faith is not a culture. It makes culture, but it is not culture. It is Heaven. It is the voice of God that even the Japanese can see and hear.
by Christopher Sharma

Elected by parliament with 388 votes against 170, he has promised to defend the rights of ethnic and religious minorities and democracy. His statement has been met with happiness, but people will wait to see how much they will respect minority rights and voice.

Kathmandu (AsiaNews)  Sher Bahadur Deuba is the new prime minister of Nepal. Elected yesterday afternoon, he is the countrys 40th head of government.

This follows the resignation of Pushpa "Prachanda" Kamal Dahal on 24 May in accordance with deal worked between the parties in the ruling coalition. Mr Deuba received 338 votes with 170 voting against him. Some 558 lawmakers out of 593 were present.

Deuba, 71, is the president of the Nepali Congress and this is his fourth time to serve as head of government. Speaking to parliament, the new prime minister said that although "the Nepali Congress is the largest political party, we accepted the leadership of a third party in the ruling coalition to strengthen democracy."

"The Nepali Congress has never accepted compromises on democratic values and rights," he added. "We respect all minority castes and faiths, and my government will emphasise the protection and promotion of minority rights. Christians, Tibetans and other religious groups no longer have to worry about their religious and democratic freedom."

Religious leaders happily welcomed the news, but want to see words turned into practice. "We want democratic culture and practice, said Christian Federation president C B Gahatraj. In the past, many leaders promised democracy and rights to minorities, but each failed to fulfill their promises. So, we are positively waiting to see how much they will respect minority rights and voice."
Farid Ikken, 40, of Algerian origin, tried to hit a policeman with a hammer. He had kitchen knives in his pocket. Hundreds of faithful and tourists immobilized in the cathedral. Olivier Roy: New Daesh terrorists are losers, isolated, without roots.

Paris (AsiaNews) - A man in his forties, who defines himself as "a soldier in the Islamic State (IS)" attacked a policeman in front of the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris yesterday afternoon. His weapons: a hammer and kitchen knives in his pocket. The policeman suffered a serious blow, and one of his fellow officers shot the assailant, wounding him in the legs. At the time of the attack he reportedly shouted: "For Syria." Now the assailant is in the hospital.

Hundreds of visitors and faithful filled the cathedral at the time of the attack. Everyone was obliged to stay in the church while the police inspected the throng for other assailants. The Notre Dame cathedral, in the center of Paris, is one of the most visited monuments in the city, with about 13 million people a year. It is also an appetizing symbol for terrorism. In 2016, the French authorities had managed to dismantle a commando of jihadist women who were preparing an attack with a car bomb not far from Notre Dame.

The assailant in Notre Dame was identified as Farid Ikken, of Algerian origin, born in 1977 who arrived in France in March 2014. He is a researcher at the Lorraine University and a graduate in sociology.

Married to a Swede, a video was found in his apartment where he swore allegiance to Isis and promises to carry out attacks.

Interior Minister Gerard Collomb, speaking in the press, said that "we have now gone from a very sophisticated terrorism to terrorism where any instrument can be used to commit aggression."

Ikken lived in Cergy-Pontoise campus in recent months. People who knew him said he was "very kind, busy, quiet, polite". He lived his Islamic religion strictly, but was not known as a radical.

Law enforcement are astonished by the use of the hammer as a new offensive weapon on an armed police officer.

According to political scientist Olivier Roy, the identity of the new Daech terrorists consists of "losers, isolated, uprooted". The shortage of more professionally and ideologically prepared suicide bombers is largely due to the suffocating circle that is tightening around the IS "capitals" of Raqqa and Mosul.
Surrogacy services are new to the country. On facility that was shut down offered "consulting services" to sterile couples and pregnant women. The authorities uncovered transborder trafficking. Although the law does not allow the sale of human organs and cell tissues, it does not restrict uterus renting. Thailand and Cambodia have taken step to ban illegal surrogacy.

Vientiane (AsiaNews / RFA)  Laotian authorities have ordered a clinic in the capital Vientiane to shut down amid indications that it was using Thai women to provide illegal surrogacy services to infertile couples, an official from the Lao Ministry of Public Health said.

The move comes amid signs that a commercial surrogacy industry is growing in the small impoverished Southeast Asian nation.

The facility was shut down on 24 May after the relevant authorities checked it and discovered that it was operating without a permit from the ministry.

The clinic, which offers consulting services to well-off infertile couples and pregnant women, is now being investigated by anti-human trafficking police.

The relevant agencies could not determine if the clinic, located in a house along the Kamphaeng-Meuang road in Nonghay village in Vientianes Hadshaiyfong district, had definitely been providing surrogacy services supplied by Thai women, as suspected by Thai officials at a nearby border checkpoint.

Vientianes public health department, however, had already reported the problem to the Ministry of Public Health and Ministry of Public Security and passed the case to the anti-human trafficking police.

Ministry of Public Health regulations do not allow the sale of human organs and human cell tissue, but surrogacy agencies and fertility clinic have recently started operating in the landlocked country.

Although Laos has no laws or restrictions pertaining to surrogacy services, neighbouring Thailand and Cambodia have taken measures to eliminate illegal surrogacy amid growing concern over the exploitation of women who serve as surrogate mothers.

Thailand passed a law in 2015 banning foreigners from hiring Thai women as surrogates after high-profile cases sparked debate the previous year. Anyone found guilty of paying surrogates in Thailand can receive a maximum prison sentence of ten years.

In November 2016, Cambodia banned surrogacy arrangements. But four months later, the Foreign Ministry said the government was preparing to draft a new law to make surrogacy legal.

Thai authorities at the Vientiane-Nongkhai border checkpoint first became suspicious that the Vientiane clinic was providing cross-border surrogacy services after they arrested a 25-year-old Thai man for smuggling human sperm into Laos in April.

This led to the discovery of trafficking in sperm, human eggs, and surrogate mothers in Laos through the aforementioned clinic.

For Laotian police, surrogacy services are a new phenomenon in Laos. Pending new legislation to define the procedure, the Health Ministry will continue to ban the practice. It also announced plans to set up a specific unit to stop clinics and agencies from offering surrogacy services.
At the general audience, Francis recalls the Vatican meeting with Peres and Abbas. God never abandons us. "We can be distant, hostile, we can also profess" a world without God, "but the Gospel reveals that" God cannot be without us: He will never be a God without man. "

Vatican City (AsiaNews) - God never leaves us alone. "We can be distant, hostile, we can also profess" a world without God, "but the Gospel reveals that" God cannot stand without us: He will never be a God without man." This certainty is the source of our hope, which is kept in all the invocations of our Father. "The Fatherhood of God is the source of our hope" (cf. Lk 11: 1-4) was the theme of which Pope Francis spoke at today's general audience, after which he invited prayers for peace by joining the initiative "One Minute for Peace", which in various countries recalls "the Vatican meeting between myself, the late Israeli President Peres and Palestinian President Abbas (June 8, 21014, ndr). In our time - he stressed - there is so much need for prayers - Christians, Jews and Muslims - for peace. "

Earlier, in addressing the 25,000 people in St. Peter's Square, Francis emphasized the "Father" of Jesus' prayer. "All the mystery of Christian prayer - he said - is summed up here, in this word: to have the courage to Call God by the name of Father. The liturgy also states that when inviting us to the community recitation of Jesus' prayer, he uses the expression "we dare say". In fact, calling God by the name of 'Father' is by no means a deserved fact. We should use the highest titles, which seem more respectful to His transcendence. Instead, invoking him as "Father" puts us in a relationship of trust with Him, like a child calling out to their dad, knowing that they are loved and cared for by him. This is the great revolution that Christianity embodies in the religious psychology of man. God's mystery, which always fascinates us and makes us feel small, but no longer afraid, does not crush us, there is no anguish. This is a difficult revolution to welcome in our human soul; It is true that even in the stories of the Resurrection it is said that women, after seeing the empty tomb and the angel, "fled away ... for they were full of fear and amazement" (Mk 16: 8). But Jesus reveals to us that God is a good Father, and He says to us, 'Do not be afraid!'

"Let us consider the parable of the merciful father (cf. Lk 15: 11-32). Jesus tells of a father who has a just love for his children. A father who does not punish his son for his arrogance and who is even able to give him his share of inheritance and let him go. God is Father, Jesus says, but not in the human way, because there is no father in this world who would behave like the protagonist of this parable. God is Father in his own way: good, helpless in the face of the free will of man, able only to conjugate the verb 'to love'. When the rebellious son, after having squandered everything, finally returns home, that father does not apply the criteria of human justice, but first he feels the need to forgive, and with his embrace makes the child understand that in all that long absence He misses him, he is painfully missed in his father's love. What an unfathomable mystery is a God who nourishes this kind of love for his children! "

"Perhaps it is for this reason that, evoking the center of the Christian mystery, the Apostle Paul does not feel able to translate into a Greek word that Jesus, in Aramaic, pronounced Abba. For twice Saint Paul, in his epistle (cf. Rm 8:15, Gal. 4: 6), touches on this theme, and twice leaves that untranslated word, in the same way that it flourished on Jesus' lips, ', A term more intimate than' father ', and which some translate as dad' ".

"Dear brothers and sisters, we are never alone. We can be distant, hostile, we could also profess to be 'without God'. But the Gospel of Jesus Christ reveals to us that God cannot stand without us: He will never be a God without man. This certainty is the source of our hope, which is kept in all the invocations of our Father. When we need help, Jesus does not tell us to resign ourselves and close ourselves, but to turn to the Father and ask him with confidence. All of our necessities, from the most obvious and everyday ones, such as food, health, work, to being forgiven and sustained in temptations, are not the mirror of our solitude: there is a Father who is always there and gazes upon us with love, and who surely does not abandon us. "

The Pope also talked about praying for peace in his greeting to the Polish faithful when he recalled that the Radical Peace Community Association, "inspired by the 12 stars in Mary's Wreath, Queen of Peace, which is building 12 centers of Eucharistic Adoration and perpetual prayer for peace in the most conflict ridden places in the world. At their request, I blessed the Adoratio Domini's altar today, dedicated to the sanctuary of the Rosary in Namyang in South Korea. This June, devoted to the Sacred Heart of Jesus - he concluded  let our individual prayers for peace not be lacking."
By Mata Press Service

In a remote area northwest of Vancouver Island called Kyuquot Sound, sablefish, a Japanese delicacy for decades, is gently cultured in pristine, cold, deep water pens.

After about 36 months, the sablefish, also known as black cod, are harvested from their deep water habitat using a traditional Japanese system to prevent tissue damage and end up as sashimi-grade fish on the other side of the ocean.

Further up north on Vancouver Island off Campbell River, salmon farmers cant keep up with the demand for their world renowned sustainable seafood.

Along the same coast in the Baynes, Desolation, and Okeover Sounds, oysters, clams, and mussels farmed there in naturally nutrient rich areas for over 30 years have gained global recognition for taste and quality.

While most in Canada have feasted and reaped the health benefits from British Columbias waters, Asia is now waking up quickly to the bounty of the same seas.

This week dozens of buyers, foodies and chefs from Asia and rest of the world will congregate at the BC Shellfish and Seafood Festival in the Comox Valley on Vancouver Island to taste and buy a variety of local aquaculture products.

A trade expo during the week will also bring together leading aquaculture businesses & suppliers, seafood & shellfish producers, chefs, exporters and educators to discuss and explore innovations, challenges and opportunities around the Pacific Northwest seafood sector.

The BC Shellfish and Seafood Festival and the BC Seafood Expo attracts incredible interest from a range of international media, as well as seafood buyers, said John Watson, the executive director of the Comox Valley Economic Development and Tourism agency.

This year the visiting nations include, Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan, Philippines, USA, China, Vietnam and India, he said.

Over the last two years the BC Seafood Festival has worked with the BC Salmon Farmers and BC Shellfish Growers to host 40 seafood buyers each year  the majority from key Asian markets, said Jeremy Dunn, Executive Director of the BC Salmon Farmers Association.

Over that time, sales of salmon alone into Asia has grown by more than four times the volume from under $10-million in value to almost $40-million in value.

B.C. is also leading the way in achieving third party certification for its farm-raised salmon, said Dunn adding that as of now 15% of active Atlantic salmon farms in BC are certified to the ASC standard  a higher rate than any farming region in the world.

This week, Seafood Watch standards of the world-renowned Monterey Bay Aquarium announced that farmed salmon, certified by the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC), have advanced in their seafood ranking to a Good Alternative.

This moves ASC-certified farmed salmon onto the programs recommended list of seafood for consumers to buy.

It is, not only Japan, Korea and China that have grown a taste for BC salmon and shellfish. India is also awakening to the health benefits of our seafood.

Research has shown that people of South Asian descent are two-to-three times more likely to experience heart disease, kidney disease, stroke and diabetes  and ten years earlier  compared to other ethnic groups.

India has a great costal cuisine and salmon is becoming increasingly popular in India because of its taste and health benefits, said Chindi Varadarajulu, one of the chefs specially flown in to showcase her Indian fish curry in Comox.

I am hoping we can get more BC salmon and shellfish in India, said Varadarajulu, who operates Lattitude 49, a unique destination restaurant within the Grande Bay Resort and Spa.

The growing demand for BC seafood, especially salmon in Asia comes on the heels of growing concerns by a variety international organizations about the depletion of ocean stocks.

Nearly a third of the worlds fish stock is being overfished  harvested at biologically unsustainable levels  according to assessments by the United Nations. In part, that is because Asians are hungry, and ready to pay, for its regional bounty.

A recent report by the UNs Food and Agriculture Organization found that Asians ate 99m tons of fish in 2013  about 70 per cent of the 140m tons that were available for human consumption. Fish meal production  made from smaller fish that are less valuable  is also on the rise for use in feeding livestock and to support aquafarms.

BC Seafood by the numbers

In 2015, B.C. produced more than $40 million of farmed oysters, almost $11 million of farmed clams, and $5.5 million of mussels and other shellfish.

Global sales of fresh B.C farm-raised salmon reached a record $745-million CAD in 2016 with exports to 12-markets valued over $544-million.

The volume of salmon raised in B.C. exported to Asia increased 40% over 2015s record volume with more than 4.7-million kilograms of fresh salmon exported. China and Japan continue to be the top two Asian destinations for exports, with South Korea now emerging as a key growth market.

Overall Canadian exports of farm-raised salmon reached over $950-million, with the total value of Canadian farm-raised seafood exports over $1-billion.

B.C. accounts for 58% of all Canadian exports of farm-raised salmon. Salmon farming has a total economic impact of more than $1.1-billion in British Columbia and accounts for more than 5,000 total jobs.

Salmon farmers are working closely with coastal First Nations with 20 social and economic agreements in place. 78% of the B.C. harvest is from farms covered under First Nation Agreements.
Guest Commentary

By Dr. Eva Busza and Dr. Iris Jin

Beijings Belt and Road Summit and Gala recently was not just an elaborate dinner party and display of theatrics  it was Chinas version of an invitation to the global community to engage with its most ambitious trade and infrastructure project yet  the US$1-trillion Belt and Road Initiative.

First announced by President Xi Jinping in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative is an infrastructure mega-project linking China through Europe and the Middle East to Africa by road, rail, air and sea. Based on a draft communique released alongside the two-day event, the summit sought to emphasize the grander visions for the Initiative, which include multilateral collaboration on a long-term and sustainable financial system, co-operation on infrastructure projects along the route, promoting inclusive and equal trade opportunities, as well as committing to greener practices and curbing climate change.

The Belt and Road Initiative would ultimately cover over 65 countries, 60 per cent of world population, and 40 per cent of global GDP. China views the Initiative as the cornerstone of a global geo-political paradigm shift in which it features as a new hegemon. Its commitment to the super-project is profound, and even includes a series of slick, new, multi-language YouTube propaganda reels featuring singing children and an animated history lesson for the worlds high-school students affirming the benefits of the project.

China has also made it clear that the Initiative creates no boundaries, and that any country can join in its own way. During the summit, in fact, fellow APEC member Chile became one of the newest members of the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), a move that aligns with ambitious plans for a potential China-Chile collaboration on a Trans-Pacific fiber optic cable to improve digital connectivity between the two countries.

Notwithstanding Ambassador John McCallum and Parliamentary Secretary Pamela Goldsmith-Jones participation in the summit, to date Canadas engagement with the Belt and Road Initiative has been weak. With a few exceptions, our business community is behind the curve in terms of taking advantage of Belt and Road opportunities  opportunities that extend well beyond physical infrastructure to the development of key social infrastructure projects, including education and the provision of medical, legal, financial, and other social and professional services. Certain Western European countries are even toying with the idea of a Digital Silk Road, which places an emphasis on developing ICT and digital connectivity platforms to deliver services like e-commerce and e-medicine to harder to reach regions that are still currently underdeveloped. Other pathways for engagement with the Belt and Road Initiative include the contribution of physical resources, technological consulting, and consultation on green ethics and workforce training. Needless to say, the Initiative presents a multitude of potential business opportunities that might not only benefit our own companies and economy, but could present an opportunity to disperse the worlds current excess capacities more equitably.

There are tools and methods available to help Canadian business get involved with the Belt and Road Initiative. For starters, they can leverage Canadas recent membership in the AIIB to indicate their interest and capacity to join the Initiative. Ottawas exploratory talks on a free trade agreement with China further aligns Canada with the summits emphasis on greater trade liberalization.

Canadian businesses can also follow the lead of a handful of pioneer companies that have already decided to take steps to invest in countries along the Belt and Road route. Thats the approach Quebec-based Bombardier has taken  the company recently announced its plan to make a C$100-million technology transfer investment into Turkey to help realize the countrys high-speed rail vision for 2030. Similarly, Calgarys Grand Power Logistics has tapped into the Belt and Road Initiative by expanding its operations in China to include a cross-continental rail service. Running from Chinas Suzhou through Russia and Europe, and terminating in Hamburg, Germany, this major railway significantly shortens the shipping time between Europe and China.

Canadian companies with operations already established in China also have an opportunity to collaborate with Chinese counterparts to provide goods and services in other countries along the route. For example, Mississaugas engineering firm Hatch signed a joint venture agreement with a subsidiary of the China Communications and Construction Company (which ranked No. 110 in the 2016 Fortune 500) in 2016, and is now well-positioned to bid for emerging projects.

Finally, being a champion of multilateralism, the Canadian government and relevant business associations could make use of Canadas membership and influence in international organizations beyond the AIIB, like the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, and IMF, to secure contracts in the governmental procurement of goods and services along the Belt and Road route. A say at the table in these multilateral organizations also gives Canada a greater bargaining chip when it comes to negotiating the terms and conditions of such contracts.

While Canada may want to wait a little longer to see how the Initiative unfolds, we should be monitoring developments carefully, and educating ourselves on the players and possibilities. We must make ready to jump aboard this remarkable new ship lest it sails into the future without us.

Dr. Eva Busza is Vice-President, Research and Programs, at the Asia Foundation of Canada. Dr. Iris Jin is a Senior Program Manager, Trade, Investment, Innovation and Canada-China Relations, at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada.
Try out new games at the Nothing But Games event at Sheraton Guilford in Surrey June 17 and 18.

The West Coast Science Fiction Association (WCSFA) is launching the new two-day gaming convention for Metro Vancouver.

There will be plenty of gaming options for beginners and long time fans, including board games, modern and retro console games, retro PC LAN games, miniature games, tableptop role play games (RPGs) and popular collectible card games (CCGs).

Nothing But Games will bring together players of all types for 32 hours of gaming fun, says Andrea Driedger, WCSFAs social media coordinator. Metro Vancouver has an active and welcome gaming community. If you love games, or wantto learn, we invite you to come join us.

Game stewards will be teaching games. There will also be game tournaments, a large borrowing library, and vendors selling games and game-related merchandise. Tickets are $25 for one day or $35 for full weekend passes.

For more information, visit Nothing But Games: http://nothingbutgames.ca/ or West Coast Science Fiction Association: http://www.wcsfa.org
Event organizers say this years event will showcase nine diverse Taiwanese films as well as films from emerging film directors. These new films recognize the link between Taiwan and the world through humanity, culture and social diversity.

Director Hou Chi-Jan will meet with audience for a question and answer session after his feature film Ode to Time. The folk song band, JAGA, is also performing after the screening. Two of his short films Green Island Serenade and The Rose Boy are also playing at Vancouver Taiwanese Film Festival this year.

The event is co-presented by UBC Literature Etc. and Taiwanese Canadian Cultural Society.

Ode to Time

Legendary musicians from the Taiwanese folk-rock scene of the 1970s reunite after 40 years for a big concert. The documentary Ode to Time captures the past and current lives of the musicians, combining social and political themes like the China-Taiwan relationship and the influence of American culture.

My Egg Boy

A 32-year-old single woman who is longing for love, believes that love can be preserved by freezing time just like frozen food. A spark ignites when she meets a restaurant owner who believes in fresh only and fresh first when it comes to his ingredients.

Hang in There, Kids! (Loka Laqi!)

Three innocent, optimistic, and naughty boys grow up in a secluded Taiwanese indigenous tribe in the rural mountains. In an after-school class the boys discover their disabled teachers musical audition tape and bravely decided to bring the tape to the capital city, Taipei.

Formosa Betrayed

This film is inspired by actual events. In the early 1980s, an FBI Agent who is assigned to investigate the murder of a respected professor, unearths a web of international secrets that has been thriving within college campuses across America for decades. After travelling to Taiwan, he learns that the Professor's death was a desperate move by a scandalous government intent on keeping its nefarious activities under wraps.

White Lies, Black Lies

In the basement of the Rainbow Salon, the shop owner's wife lies in the basement has her windpipe cut. The shop owner rushes her to the hospital and then flees. A reporter following the case finds that the shop owner has fled the city with his first love. The reporter also uncovers an unsolved murder from the past seemingly connected to the case.

Betelnut Girls

With the financial pressure of raising a son independently and supporting her gambling-addicted father, a single mom makes her living as a betelnut beauty at night. She meets a police officer and develops an intimate relationship with him. Meanwhile, the conflict of their social status and challenges of social discrimination invades their relationship.

The Tag-Along

Based on true events and an age-old Taiwanese urban legend, "Moo-Sin-A". Wei suddenly goes missing just one day before his grandma returns from her own strange disappearance. Wei's girlfriend, Yi-Chun desperately searches for his whereabouts and discovers that it is the horrifying mystery of the little girl in red that has followed and haunted them all along.

52HZ, I love You

This musical film, directed by Director Te-Sheng Wei, incorporates a series of romantic stories with 17 original songs. Set in modern Taipei City, Taiwan, on Valentine's Day, the title is inspired by the 52-hertz whale, dubbed the world's loneliest whale. His story reflects the loneliness that might be felt by those who are looking for love in the city.

For more information, please visit our website www.twff.ca
Dedicated plant-based meal delivery service now operating in Australia





A dedicated plant-based meal delivery service is now available in Australia.

Soulara will deliver breakfast, lunch and dinner options to customers in Melbourne, Queensland, Canberra and Sydney.

Example meals include granola bowls, turmeric and farro soup and truffle potato and kale cakes.

The meals will be delivered weekly in recyclable packaging with insulation liners that can keep the food cool for up to 12 hours.

Soulara Head Chef, Tobias Hayes, said Soulara aims to provide nutritious foods which support the environment.

It is increasingly clear that consumers are more aware of the quality of the produce they choose to eat, he said.

Prices start from AUD $9.50-$11.50 per meal.

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Huon lodges court proceedings against Tassal





Tasmanian salmon producer Huon has lodged proceedings against fellow Tasmanian salmon producer Tassal.

In a statement to the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX), Huon said it has lodged proceedings in the Federal Court seeking a declaration that Tassal is in breach of the Macquarie Harbour biomass determination issued by the Tasmanian Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that took effect on 1 June 2017.

Tassal has however already denied that it is in breach of any Macquarie Harbour biomass determination.

The biomass determination in question provides Tassal with an allocation of 2, 067 tonnes across Tassals 214 and 219 leases.

Huon said Tassals submission to the EPA on 23 May 2017 shows a proposed production schedule with biomass levels of over 4, 000 tonnes in in 2017, increasing up to 5, 000 in August 2017 and peaking at 7, 000 in December 2017 and January 2018.

This means that based on Tassals own information they will be in breach of their biomass allocation from June 2017, Huon said.

Tassal has responded to news of the proceedings by saying there are misleading errors in Huons ASX announcement, denying any breach.

Tassal further stated that the EPA is in possession of Tassals current production and biomass numbers and that Tassal can confirm it has received approval to trial a waste capture system to improve environmental conditions in Macquarie Harbour.

Chief Executive Officer of Tassal, Mark Ryan, said All three of Tasmanias salmon farming companies had historically worked collaboratively, getting back to that position is critica.

Huons decision to lodge legal proceedings follows on from its February 2017 decision to lodge Federal Court proceedings against the Tasmanian government, accusing the government of not properly regulating salmon farming at Macquarie Harbour.

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Kelloggs surpasses sugar and sodium reduction goals





Kelloggs says it has surpassed its goals for reducing sugar and sodium its cereals worldwide.

In 2014, Kelloggs set the goal of achieving 10g or less sugar per 30g serving in 90 per cent of its cereals by 2020.

Also in 2014, Kelloggs pledged a 30 per cent overall sodium reduction in its cereals.

In its newly released 2016/2017 Corporate Responsibility Report, Kelloggs says it is also continuing to remove artificial colours and flavours from is foods.

Other corporate responsibility achievements recorded by Kelloggs in the report included support of Foodbank Australias school breakfast program, food donations to Auckland City Mission and guidance on climate smart agriculture to its farmers.

Kris Charles, Senior Vice President of Global Corporate Affairs at Kelloggs said Kelloggs employees work together to fulfil Kelloggs vision of enriching and delighting the world through foods and brands that matter.

The reason these brands matter goes beyond the fact that we make delicious, high-quality foods, he said.

Were a company with a heart and soul, focused on making a difference while responsibly growing our business. Were proud to share information about how we are Nourishing With Our Foods, Feeding People In Need and Nurturing Our Planet, all while Living Our Founders Values.
Murray Goulburn announces review of co-op





Murray Goulburn dairy co-operative has announced it will be conducting a comprehensive strategic review into all aspects of its strategy and corporate structure.

MG has at the same time announced a 2018 financial year opening farm gate milk price for the Southern Milk Region of $4.70 per kilogram of milk solids.

MG is also forecasting a FY18 full year Southern Milk Region farmgate milk price in the range of $5.20 per kilogram of milk solids (MS) to $5.40 per kg MS.

MG said the range is subject to various assumptions, including dairy commodity prices, exchange rates, achieving cost out initiatives and achieving milk intake of approximately 2.5 billion litres.

Chief Executive Officer of MG, Ari Mervis, said MG has taken a prudent view in its forecasts.

Although global commodity prices have shown some recovery since this time last year, whole milk powder and particular skim milk powder prices remain under 10 year averages, Mervis said.

This has been somewhat offset by firmer butter and cheddar prices, he stated.

MG also named recent Global Dairy Trade action results and current future prices as suggesting some ongoing price volatility in the global dairy market.

Mervis said although the new forecast prices for FY18 are better than FY17 prices, MGs performance remains below his expectations.

MGs strategic review will include examination of the co-operatives profit sharing mechanism and capital structure.

I see this review as a fundamental next step to strengthen MG for the future, Mervis said.


(Yuinai/Bigstock.com) (Yuinai/Bigstock.com)

Questions are being asked about fake religion being used to get access to living in Australia with the immigration department confirming people who are found to have lied on their visa application face deportation.In particular asylum seekers have been found to be claiming they are Coptic Christians when they are not. The Department of Immigration and Border Protection has said it will deport 80 who claim to be Coptic Christians but have failed to prove their claim for a protection visa.And Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said that while no one would be deported who genuinely faces harm, there is an issue around fake religious claims. He told a Sydney radio station that each case would be thoroughly examined. 'We're not going to send people back into harm's way, we don't do that,' he told 2GB radio.'But we just have some cases where we're concerned about where the court, for example, has found that the application is fraudulent. We're not going to deport anyone until we can have another look at each of the cases. But in some cases, we do have concerns about the legitimacy of the claims made,' he added.It is believed that a number of Muslims applying for asylum and visas have converted to Christianity in the belief it will help their claim. But there are also those doing so while having no intention of embracing their new religion once established in the country.The Administrative and Appeals Tribunal, which reviews decisions made by officers of the Department of Immigration and Border Protection to refuse or cancel visas and also reviews decisions relating to approval and cancellation of sponsorship and nomination, has found that many asylum seekers deliberately lie on their visa applications.But it has been criticised for not rejecting such applications on numerous occasions. But it is hard to find out which are being rejected and which are not as not all decisions are made public.However, a recent decision earlier this year rejected an application for a protection visa from a man who had arrived on a student visa and his wife who arrived subsequently who claimed that as he had worked for a Christian organisation in Australia he could not return to the Middle East as he would be regarded as a traitor.The couple were found that have created a web of lies about where they used to live in Tripoli, that they would be targeted by extremists if they returned. They also claimed relatives had been shot at therefore it was not safe. He also said that he would be seen as having converted to Christianity which would put his life in danger.In other cases the AAT has upheld refusals to grant visas on the grounds of applicants being vague and lacking credibility.However, Dutton has signalled that he is not happy with some of the decision making. The AAT assessed 11,300 visa decisions in the 12 months to April 2017, overturning 39% of Dutton's decisions. Now he is reviewing the contracts of more than 50 of its 300 plus members.Dutton does have the authority to overrule the decisions of the AAT in visa cases on character grounds. New sections were introduced into the migration act by former immigration minister Scott Morrison to give the minister greater powers to overrule AAT decisions.
Hi,



I've been approved for a guardian visa and my child has also been approved for the student visa.

We purchased the insurance (OVHC & OSHC) to start on July 5th as that was our plan to arrive together in Australia on the same date.



However, now I just found out that I actually need to go there prior to that date for a few days this month to set up quite a few things as it's going to be very difficult to do everything if I stick to my original plan.



I understand that I can't leave Australia if my child is there without any other guardian set up.

But, can I go to Australia by myself for a few days this month ?

I assume that I will have to purchase additional OVHC, but this is not an issue as it's quite simple and can be done online.

Is there any other requirement ?





Thanksss
Discounts range from Rs 1 lakh on Chevrolet Beat to Rs 4 lakh on Chevrolet Cruze

General Motors on May 18 left many in the lurch when it announced shuttering its India sales operations. Now, in order to clear vehicle inventories, GM, along with its dealers is offering huge discounts.

Chevrolet's Beat is now available with a straight-up cash discount of Rs 1 lakh on all variants. The Cruze, on the other hand, can be availed at a price cut of Rs 4 lakh for both manual and automatic versions. Also, with a bit of bargaining, you can expect the asking price to drop even further. Interestingly, dealers are also accepting bookings, albeit at an 80 percent down payment, for variants that they might not have in stock but can procure from GM's plant within a little over a week.

Chevrolet's Trailblazer SUV, the only imported model in the brand's India line-up, is also coming at a discount of Rs 4 lakh, but sources tell us that the stock for this model has almost been cleared. Chevrolet had earlier discontinued the U-VA, Sail and Enjoy models.

While its sales outlets will shut down by December 2017, Chevrolet has promised to maintain a service network across key locations of the country. However, it has not yet specified where these locations will be. GM will continue to manufacture cars in India for exports and has committed to honour all warranty, service package agreements and maintain spare parts support for its vehicles.

Discounts on offer Models Discount Chevrolet Beat (All variants) Rs 1 lakh Chevrolet Cruze (All variants) Rs 4 lakh Chevrolet Trailblazer (All variants) Rs 4 lakh Chevrolet Sail Sold out Chevrolet U-VA Sold out Chevrolet Enjoy Sold out

Disclaimer: Discounts are subject to availability of cars.
Photo via EveryCarListed/Flickr.

The average fuel economy for new vehicles sold in the United States in May has remained unchanged since April at 25.3 mpg, according to Michael Sivak and Brandon Schoettle, researchers from the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI).

The May value is up 5.2 mpg since October 2007, the first month of monitoring by UMTRI. This value is 0.2 mpg below the peak of 25.5 mpg from August 2014.

The University of Michigan Eco-Driving Index, which estimates the average monthly emissions of greenhouse gases generated by a single driver in the U.S., was 0.85 in March 2017, remaining stable since February 2017. A lower value indicates fewer emissions.

The average new-vehicle driver produced 15% lower emissions in March 2017 than October 2007, but 7% higher than the record low value in November 2013.
Two former Sixt franchisees protested in front of the Sixt South Beach location in Miami.

Two former Sixt franchisees protested in front of the Sixt South Beach location in Miami Beach on Wednesday May 31. The protest then moved to the Sixt Ft. Lauderdale location.

Brian Canin, former owner of Sixt San Diego, and Andrew Almand, former owner of the Sixt franchise serving Austin, Texas, protested along with friends and family with picket signs that read Sixt Hurt American Families and No More Lies to the Franchise Guys, among others.

Canin filed a lawsuit against Sixt Franchise USA in Sept. 2015 for misrepresentation, violation of franchise investment laws, fraudulent business practices, and breach of contract. The lawsuit is currently pending.

Sixt illegally terminated my franchise, Canin said. The business tactics employed by Sixt destroyed my livelihood. I bled orange. I fell in love with the brand and did everything to be great. As I started to realize what this company did to me, I lost faith until I was forced to sue.

Almand, who was an Avis agency operator for 13 years before becoming a Sixt franchisee, sued Sixt Franchise USA in Oct. 2015 for misrepresentation, breach of contract, and deceptive trade conduct. He settled his lawsuit for an undisclosed sum.

I was forced to settle, I had no choice, Almand said. At that point, I was out of money. I could not put food on the table. Im still struggling.

"Sixt rejects Canin's allegations, will vigorously defend the lawsuit, and has filed its own counterclaim, said Todd Sazera, executive vice president of Sixt U.S. Despite Canins continuous actions, during and after the operation of his San Diego franchise, made with the apparent sole objective to harm Sixts reputation, Sixt does not want to comment further on pending legal proceedings and places its trust with the U.S. court presiding over the lawsuit.
Harold Pierce covers education and health for The Californian. He can be reached at 661-395-7404. Follow him on Twitter @RoldyPierce
Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd provided new details Tuesday about the deadly deputy involved shooting a day earlier near Lake Wales.

Deputies: Quentin Case drew weapon on deputy after pursuit

At one point, Case tried to get into patrol car, Judd said



More than 50 rounds were fired by deputies in shootout

Judd said Deputy Clifford Wofford spotted 34-year-old Quentin Case going 112 mph on a motorcycle on Highway 60 and followed him to a side road. There, he spotted Case standing next to a motorcycle, which was lying on its side on the ground.

Judd said the deputy told investigators that's when Case pulled a gun on him.

He pulls the gun on me, and he fires a shot, said Judd, quoting Wofford. Judd said the deputy returned fire, and Case ran into a nearby orange grove.

The shootout continued moments later, according to Judd.

[Wofford] says, 'The suspect runs back out and tries to gets in my patrol car, and he shoots at me again, and I shoot at him again. And we have another exchange of gunfire,' Judd said.

Eventually, another deputy, Clayton Coquyt, arrived at the scene, and both deputies shot Case while he was on ground but still armed, Judd said.

And when he picks the gun up again, both deputies shoot at him, and hes deceased at the scene, Judd said.

Judd said deputies fired more than 50 rounds in the shootout, and Case was struck at least 13 times.

We dont choose to shoot people; they chose for us to shoot them," Judd said. "And if you choose for us to shoot at you, we are going to shoot at you a lot.

Both deputies are on standard administrative leave while the Florida Department of Law Enforcement conducts an investigation.

Cases family declined to comment about the shooting.
The Childs Park neighborhood of St. Petersburg is making progress when it comes to the number of vacant homes within its boundaries.

188 vacant homes in 2014

Number has dropped to just 40 this year

Incentives to investors, home owners helping with turnaround

"We've been selling a lot more, and it's neighborhoods like this right now that are seeing a little bit of revitalization," said realtor Ed Inglesby, who specializes in homes in Childs Park.



According to city officials, the number has dropped 70 percent, from 188 vacant homes in 2014 to just 40 this year.

&amp;nbsp;

Along with a better economy, city officials said programs that offer incentives to investors and home owners are helping with the turn around.



Anything we can do to reduce boarded and vacant properties and reduce blight and help facilitate affordable housing, we think its a win, said James Corbett, Codes Compliance Department Operations Manager.



The city offers a lien forgiveness program, eliminating code liens for rehabbed properties. Another program, Rebates for Rehab, provides up to $10,000 for certain rehab costs, such as new windows or electrical work.



For more information, visit the citys Housing & Community Development website at www.stpete.org/housing/index.php.
George Ourfalian/Getty Images(RAQQA, Syria) -- As ISIS claims responsibility for one attack after another, experts warn that understanding the terrorist groups geopolitical, ideological and religious motivations are crucial to stopping it.



The U.S.-backed military offensive to retake ISIS-held areas of Iraq and Syria, coupled with propaganda during the holy month of Ramadan, could be contributing to the recent increase in attacks in Europe.



Experts also say an ongoing directive from the group's leaders for believers to fight with whatever is available and anti-Muslim backlash in Western societies after such attacks may also play a key role.



"I think you've seen a slight uptick right now because ISIS has put out a message to its followers saying, 'Don't come to Syria, don't come to Iraq, stay at home and create a problem,' " Jeffrey Ringel, a director at the Soufan Group and 21-year veteran of the FBI, told ABC News.



"That message came out about a year ago when it became more difficult for people to go there. ISIS was losing its land mass. They were losing their caliphate, so the leader of ISIS basically encouraged followers to stay home and attack Westerners in their own backyards," Ringel added.



There's no doubting ISIS's shrinking land mass.



By early Tuesday morning, fighters from the Syrian Democratic Forces had retaken nearly 4 square miles outside of the city of Raqqa as part of their latest offensive against ISIS. And Iraqi forces had successfully fought to retake about 190 square miles from ISIS near Mosul, according to a May 5 U.S. Department of Defense news release.



ISIS propaganda during the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims around the world devote time to fasting, studying the Quran and cleansing their spirit, is also a factor, according to Joby Warrick, author of Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS and the national security reporter for The Washington Post. The group has been encouraging its followers to commit violent acts during Ramadan since at least 2015, and violence has spiked during the holiday in the past.



"When you follow their propaganda online, it's almost like a PR campaign that has sort of promotional cycles," Warrick said. "They have now, for a couple of years, emphasized Ramadan as a holy time, so when people are fasting and thinking holy thoughts, they should also carry out attacks against convenient targets."



"Essentially, it's like, 'It's the holiday season. It's time to consecrate yourself to Allah by killing someone.' That's kind of what we are seeing right now," Warrick added of the month-long holiday that began May 26.



But violence is not a fundamental part of Islam, said Carla Power, author of If the Oceans Were Ink, a book about a yearlong examination of the Quran in which she engaged with Sheikh Mohammad Akram Nadwi, an influential scholar and imam.



"These groups are a tiny, tiny minority of really fringe elements who are rejected overwhelmingly by mainstream imams and Muslims," Power told ABC News. "I do draw the line at saying they're not connected to Islam at all because, clearly, they're wrapping themselves in the flag and the language of Islam. But they're trying to give legitimacy to what is effectively criminal behavior and a highly political land grab."



Fundamental misunderstanding of and the desire to equate the beliefs of all Muslims with those of ISIS plays directly into the terrorist group's strategy, Warrick said.



"They want to raise this Muslim army, and they commit terrorism attacks abroad in order to sharpen the divide and make it harder for Muslims in their adopted homes," he said. "Not because young Muslims are necessarily going to be inspired by the terrorist acts, but because they anticipate that there will be a backlash against Muslims that it will be so painful to be a Muslim in a place like London because of regulation or discrimination or people looking at you like you're dangerous because you're Muslim."



"All of that drives a wedge between Muslims and makes them uncomfortable in the places that they live, and thus more apt to join [ISIS's] side," Warrick said.



Seizing land and preparing for the apocalypse



ISIS rose out of the group that once called itself al-Qaeda in Iraq, Warrick said. It was previously run by the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, whom the U.S. Air Force killed in a bombing raid in Iraq in 2006.



"This figure, al-Zarqawi, was really a loser and a nobody whom history would never have heard of except for the fact that the U.S. decided to invade Iraq in 2003, Warrick said. The invasion give him this platform that he always wanted, and dismantling the Iraqi government and armed forces gave him an army of unhappy former colonels and majors who wanted to fight the Americans and now had a leader to command them.



That was kind of the original sin that allowed this group to flower -- everything from what it professes to its use of the internet to its brutal displays of violence."

Warrick said al-Zarqawi was initially rejected by al-Qaeda because he was too extreme.



"Bin Laden tried to personally rein them in and get them to stop doing things like beheading people on the internet, and they insisted on going their own way," Warrick said. "This rift that started between al-Zarqawi and bin Laden is still the rift that exists between al-Qaeda and ISIS."



After al-Zarqawi's 2006 death, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi took over and the group was renamed the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. The group was able to take advantage of the chaos resulting from Syria's civil war and the Arab Spring to gain a foothold.



ISIS believes it is responsible for creating a caliphate, or state governed by an Islamic ruler and religious successor to the Prophet Mohammed, according to the group's leader, al-Baghdadi.



The group has forcibly taken over land in Syria and Iraq to achieve that aim. ISIS's treatment of religious minorities, including Yazidis and Christians, has been especially brutal, according to Matthew Barber, a Ph.D. student studying Islamic thought and history at the University of Chicago who has worked extensively with minorities in Iraq.



"[ISIS] jihadists reject the legitimacy of all worldviews that differ from their own. This orientation is inimical to any form of religious diversity or pluralism," Barber told ABC News via email. "The goal of this movement to cleanse society of any perspective contradicting their supremacist doctrine -- as well as their penchant for pillaging the wealth of their neighbors -- has made life impossible for religious minorities in areas under their control."



ISIS fighters have engaged in beheadings, systematic rape and mass killings.



In their genocide against the Yazidis, for instance, ISIS fighters went about "slaughtering all adult males who refused to be force-converted to Islam, and sexually enslaving over 3,000 women and girls," Barber said.



Unlike other terrorist groups, ISIS is fundamentally apocalyptic, Warrick said.



"This is not like al-Qaeda. You can almost think of them as part of a doomsday cult because they really do see the world heading to an end and they are part of it," Warrick said. "They see themselves as marching on the side of righteousness toward the cataclysm, which is this big fight between the rest and Islam."



ISIS fighters believe they have an important role to play in the end of the world, which will begin when Western forces and Muslims fight in the town of Dabiq, Syria.



"Way before they became known as the Islamic State, they were fixated on this idea that there was going to be an Armageddon-like battle. Their successes encouraged them to believe that this was all happening, that the prophecy was going to be fulfilled," Warrick said. "That complicates things for us because these are fanatics; they can't be negotiated with."



Anti-ISIS forces reclaimed the Syrian town of Dabiq in October of last year. Offensives to retake the ISIS strongholds of Mosul, Iraq, and Raqqa, Syria, mean that the group's territory is shrinking.



That might also explain why ISIS is increasingly eager to claim responsibility for attacks abroad; they help the group maintain influence even as it loses land, the Soufan Groups Ringel said.



"I think ISIS likes to say, 'Look how powerful we are.' ISIS always claims responsibility for attacks that happen anywhere in the world, but then when you go back to look at it, there is no association with ISIS. So it's ISIS trying to claim credit for something they didn't do," Ringel said.



Encouraging attackers to use whatever is available



In September of 2014, an ISIS spokesman, Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, released a statement urging his followers to use whatever was at their disposal to attack other people wherever they are.



"If you are not able to find an IED or a bullet, then single out the disbelieving American, Frenchman or any of their allies. Smash his head with a rock, or slaughter him with a knife, or run him over with your car, or throw him down from a high place, or choke him, or poison him," al-Adnani said. "If you are unable to do so, then burn his home, car or business. Or destroy his crops. If you are unable to do so, then spit in his face."



Al-Adnani was killed in a U.S. airstrike in Syria last year, but experts say this directive has been repeated often by ISIS and is the root of the latest unsophisticated attacks using cars, knives and other everyday objects.



"The fact that people are using everyday items show that these attacks are almost spur-of-the-moment. They don't require a lot of training. They don't require a lot of planning. All they need is for someone to rent a U-Haul -- like was done the other day -- and just drive like a crazy person and hop out with a knife," Ringel said. "They're easy to commit and they're under the radar, because there is no prior training or need to obtain precursor chemicals that could give them away or warn enforcement."



Such attacks also make people feel afraid as they go about their daily lives, said Dr. Karen Greenberg, director of the Center for National Security at Fordham Law School in New York.



"The frequency of these events is gaining speed, and they're starting to have a pattern as well, which is using not very technological stuff, whether it's a homemade bomb, a car, a knife," Greenberg told ABC News. "People are more fearful when they go about their daily lives."



Counting on anti-Muslim backlash



ISIS wants anti-Muslim backlash in the wake of these attacks to help recruit more isolated and alienated people to commit acts of terror in its name, The Washington Posts Warrick said.



"One of the reasons they want their followers to strike out around the world is because they really see this as not about killing a couple dozen Westerners in London or Paris, but about awakening the Muslim community. They want this army to materialize," Warrick said.



But the public and political leaders must be careful to differentiate between Muslims and extremists, Power said.



"To say that it's a religion of violence based on three crazy guys who heeded people who are reviled by anybody who knows anything about the classical text or the mainstream traditions is a convenient propaganda tool for people who want to see violence in the faith," Power said.



That ISIS will capitalize on anti-Muslim sentiment makes the response after these attacks more complex, Warrick said.



"This requires a kind of maturity and leadership and thinking beyond the immediate political impulse, which would be to get tough and crack down," Warrick said. "The one thing that would be really counterproductive is to vindicate them by making this a war against Muslims, because that is what they want it to be."



"If we feed into their rhetoric by essentially declaring war on Muslims or declaring Muslims to be the enemy, then we are really helping them," he added.



Anti-Muslim sentiment can also waste law enforcement's time investigating leads that are not worth the resources.



Ringel said law enforcement agencies are already challenged by the sheer volume of tips they receive.



"It's very difficult because you're weighing freedom of expression and freedom of religion with criminality. When people cross the line of criminality, then law enforcement can act," Ringel said. "I will say from my previous experience in the FBI, we would get a lot of leads where people would call in and say, 'My neighbor is dressing in Islamic clothes. My neighbor looks at me funny. My neighbor doesn't like Jews. My neighbor won't shake the hands of women.' OK, well, they're not breaking the law."



If someone is a cause for concern, law enforcement can follow up and carry out different levels of investigation, but it's sometimes difficult to know if or when a person will decide to "go operational," he added.



Looking ahead, understanding why people join ISIS is also crucial to any efforts to de-radicalize and reintegrate them into society, Power said.



"You talk to people in this space, and they say that we have to get ready for the influx of people coming back -- if that ever happens -- both from a security standpoint, but also looking at if there is a chance that these folks can turn. It's a political hot potato, certainly, Power added.



"But the people who are thinking about these things are looking to see if there is a best practice and an alternative to 'lock them all up,' " Power said. "In all but the most hardline quarters, there's a sense that there have to be new ways of looking at this."



Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Oregon Coast Red Blob Mystery Not a Mystery At All, Turns Out

Published 06/06/2017 at 8:53 PM PDT - Updated 06/06/2017 at 9:33 PM PDT

By Oregon Coast Beach Connection staff





(Oregon Coast)  Early this winter and even through spring, weird reddish blobs that appear to have tentacles were popping up all over the Oregon coast. The rather striking sights were puzzling some of the best of science experts in the area: even the Haystack Awareness Program in Cannon Beach and Seaside Aquarium staff didn't really know what it was. (Photo above: courtesy Haystack Awareness Program in Cannon Beach).

Then an interesting plot twist: it seems the mystery creature wasn't really a mystery at all. It's quite common here, but its odd shape while bunched up on beaches threw everyone for a loop.



Above: the moonglow anemone as it normally looks in a tide pool, photo courtesy Ken-ichi Ueda and iNaturalist.org

It turns out it's a red anemone, according to scientist Cynthia Trowbridge, with Oregon State University and Newport's Hatfield Marine Science Center.

Yet another small mystery happens here, however. Trowbridge said it's one of two types of red anemone, as it's hard to tell from the photos taken by beachgoers. But it's more likely that it's one kind than the other

The more common one is the intertidal moonglow anemone (Anthopleura artemisia) which comes in many colors including red, Trowbridge said. It dwells on rocky shores inundated with sand and often gets detached. It can reattach on hard substratum if the water is calm enough. The other one is the subtidal crimson anemone (Cribrinopsis fernaldi). This is a bit far south for this species (based on its published range) but since Oregon Coast Aquarium has frequently displayed them, the range may well be wrong. Or the OCA may display out-of-range species.

Not all are bright red, by any means. They're not even necessarily red. Trowbridge said they can also be a drab gray or green. Thus, it's possible people have been seeing more than one type laying about.



Trowbridge said these are very common on the Oregon coast, so she admits she was surprised to hear so many people stumped by what they were. She sees them every year. The fact they are laying around on a beach and slumped over  in a much different shape than when seen in tide pools  probably confounds even more educated observers, however.

If you were to learn five Oregon anemones, this would certainly be one of them, she said.

These anemones manage to get pushed around by nature in some interesting ways.

The burrowing or moonglow anemone species is often on rocky shores that are periodically inundated by sand, she said. Sand often moves off these beaches during El Nino winters and then returns. The anemones stretch out taller and taller until they finally need to let go from the rocks (or be buried).

This could explain why so many were seen in recent months. All the sand scoured out in winter has been returning steadily since February, dislodging these creatures.

Do they pose any health risk? No, said Trowbridge. But they could wind up irritating to dogs. (Note: you should never let your dog eat anything it finds on Oregon coast beaches).

There are a lot of anemones, hydroids (e.g. by-the-wind sailors), etc. that wash in and all have stinging structures (nematocysts) on their surfaces, Trowbridge said. Letting dogs ingest them or walk across washed in accumulations of all such animals may irritate their mouths and/or paws. They are not dangerous per se as they are not known to have high levels of anti-predator chemicals. But they definitely could be irritants to dogs.- More Oregon Coast Science - Oregon Coast Hotels in these areas - Where to eat - Maps - Virtual Tours

Above: this shot of a beach-stranded anemone was found in Yachats by the owners of Deane's Oceanfront Lodge. Below: more from the Haystack Awareness Program. Below that more tide pool photos from the coast, courtesy Seaside Aquarium.











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Update, 12:00 p.m.: Electricity is restored on campus, with the exception of the Setzer building. Employees are to return to work.

Original Story: All Lamar University classes scheduled for today have been canceled due to a power outage, the school announced on social media.
A Lancaster High School teacher has resigned amid allegations of inappropriate behavior towards a student, Lancaster Independent School District officials said.

LISD officials said a 16-year-old high school student in the community south of Dallas told a staff member that a male teacher allegedly sent him sexually explicit text messages. That teacher was sent to Human Resources and immediately placed on leave. The following Monday, the teacher resigned.

The alleged texts were reported as offering extra credit to at least two students in exchange for sexual acts, according to FOX4.

TEXAS TEACHERS: Former sixth grade Texas teacher charged with meth possession

Child Protective Services, the Texas Education Agency and law enforcement officials have all been informed.

The teacher has not been arrested or charged, so his name is not being made public at this time.
ConsumerMedical conducted a study comparing top rated physicians on rating sites such as YELP, Vitals and Healthgrades with actual performance data related to the medical specialty.

The report authors examined 10 ranked physicians across five common specialties in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, comparing their presence on patient rating sites to a list of top physicians generated using more than 5 billion data points at the procedure level.

Here are five things to know:

1. Just 2 percent of the physicians that were top performers on the ConsumerMedical report based on patient readmission rates, infection rates, length of stay at the hospital, procedure volume and patient outcomes, also showed up as top performers on the patient rating websites.

2. The reviews left on the physician rating websites addressed bedside manner and availability in addition to the office location and punctuality.

3. In a separate study, around 62 percent of respondents reported using online reviews as their first step to finding new physicians; another 19 percent reported validating their choice with online reviews before making the initial appointment.

4. While there are quality rating websites available, many aren't consumer friendly and the average person isn't aware they exist. "The absence of consumer-friendly tools that help the public understand that quality matters, and that offer them meaningful quality information so they can choose a high-quality physician, is very problematic," said ConsumerMedical CEO David Hines.

5. Mr. Hines called for additional tools that can help patients find the best surgeon for quality, not necessarily experience.
St. Paul, Minn.-based HealthEast and Minnesota-based Summit Orthopedics formed a deal that gives HealthEast a minority interest in Summit's Vadnais Heights (Minn.) Surgery Center.

Here are four key points:

1. The surgery center has The Joint Commission's Gold Seal of Approval for Advanced Certification for Total Hip and Total Knee Replacement.

2. The deal is part of Summit and HealthEast's outpatient and inpatient agreement in which Summit will be HealthEast's exclusive orthopedic care partner.

3. As per the agreement's terms, Summit Orthopedics will work with HealthEast's inpatient hospitals to offer orthopedic care and will offer innovative ways to bolster orthopedic patients' care experience.

4. HealthEast physicians will refer patients to Summit, as well.

"We've always had a deep respect for the compassionate and quality patient care that HealthEast offers," said Adam Berry, CEO of Summit. "This agreement presents Summit with a wonderful opportunity to work in tandem with HealthEast to bring to market a healthcare model that doesn't currently exist in the Twin Cities and to have a tremendous and positive impact on patient care."
Panama City (Fla.) Surgery Center administrators faced an issue faced an issue related to efficiency in the facility and patient satisfaction, healthcare informatics reports.

Touting a high-volume caseload of 900 cases a month, with an 84-staff member team, the center's administrators were looking for ways to improve patient experience and practice productivity.



Here's what they did:



1. The center adopted technology vendor Jellyfish Health's Jellyfish Access platform adding self-service check-in stations to the practice. The stations shorten wait times while providing updates to family members on a patient's progress.



2. Through the use of the check-in machines, Panama City Surgery Center reduced registration time by 68 percent, allowing administrative staff to reallocate their time elsewhere.



3. The platform also allows patients to submit their satisfaction surveys electronically resulting in a 28 percent increase in submitted surveys.



4. Healthcare informatics interviewed Panama City Surgery Center Administrator Mike Madewell. Mr. Madewell said the center had identified registration and patient satisfaction as areas for improvement.



The center adopted OneMedicalPassport to allow patients to submit their pre-registration information online.



The aforementioned Jellyfish Access platform helped increase patient satisfaction by providing updates on patient's conditions.



5. The Jellyfish platform is still evolving. It will soon integrate physician communication into the platform to notify physicians of potential delays, once again increasing productivity.



6. Mr. Madewell said to healthcare informatics that although there is an occasional learning curve, once the learning takes places the investment pays immense dividends.



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As hospitals and health systems juggle compliance issues under the ACA and implement new payment models to transition away from fee-for-service medicine, many institutions are looking to strengthen their financial management arms.

Below are 10 hospitals and health systems that posted job listings seeking revenue cycle management expertise during the past week.

Note: This is not an exhaustive list. Job listings were compiled from online job seeker websites. Hospitals and health systems are listed in alphabetical order.

1. Albany (N.Y.) Medical Center: seeks a revenue cycle auditor

2. All Children's Hospital (St. Petersburg, Fla.): seeks a revenue integrity auditor

3. Christus Health (Irving, Texas): seeks a Medicare collector and a revenue integrity auditor

4. Florida Hospital Tampa: seeks a senior financial analyst

5. Houston Methodist: seeks an accounts receivable representative and a compliance coding analyst

6. Landmark Hospitals (Cape Girardeau, Mo.): seeks a director of health information management

7. Mercy (St. Louis): seeks a risk coding auditor

8. Parkland Hospital (Dallas): seeks a senior vice president of revenue cycle

9. St. Croix Regional Medical Center (Saint Croix Falls, Wis.): seeks a charge audit analyst

10. WakeMed Health & Hospitals (Raleigh, N.C.): seeks a manager of reimbursement and a clinical documentation specialist

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Philadelphia-based Wills Eye Hospital could regain recognition as a hospital under Medicare depending on CMS' review of how it decides which facilities meet its statutory definition of a hospital, according to philly.com.

Medicare hospital certification requires inpatient services, and is denoted for reimbursement and treatment purposes. Wills Eye dropped the designation in July 2006 when it sold its inpatient business to Philadelphia-based Jefferson Health and began functioning as an ambulatory surgery center.

Wills Eye has since sought to regain Medicare hospital certification following its completion of a $6.5 million renovation, which included a four-bed inpatient unit. However, CMS denied Wills Eye's request for hospital certification, stating it was still an ASC due to its low inpatient volume, according to the report.

CMS Administrator Seema Verma sent a letter to Wills Eye Tuesday, saying the agency "is in the process of reviewing our hospital surveyor guidance to better clarify when a facility meets the statutory definition of a hospital. The surveyor clarification would focus on a hospital's capability and capacity to provide inpatient care."

If Wills Eye reapplies for Medicare hospital designation, Ms. Verma said the provider "would be surveyed under these new expectations once implemented," according to the letter obtained by philly.com.
After a closed-door luncheon Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Republicans are closing in on an ACA repeal proposal, according to The Hill.

Here are four things to know about the meeting and the Senate's progress on healthcare reform.

1. The Senate GOP's working group on healthcare presented an early draft of the bill in a closed-door meeting Tuesday, Politico reported. This version allots more funds for tax subsidies than the House-passed American Health Care Act, according to the report.

2. The meeting also involved a discussion of more divisive policy decisions. These policy items included how to reduce premiums and how to approach Medicaid expansion, according to Politico. Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., told Bloomberg senators are discussing a softer rollback of Medicaid expansion that extends beyond 2020.

3. Though some Republicans are doubtful legislation will be ready soon, GOP leaders plan to have a bill ready between the July 4 and August recesses, according to The Hill. Sources told Politico a draft could be ready as soon as the end of this week.

4. Republicans plan to pass their healthcare plan through the budget reconciliation process, which requires only a simple majority vote to pass. This means they need to whip at least 50 votes, according to The Hill. Republicans hold 52 seats in the Senate.

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After a four year break, former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R) is returning to lobbying after signing a contract to represent Coolin, Idaho-based HAPPE Corporation with his firm First Principles, according to Politico.

On the lobbying disclosure form, HAPPE is described as "healthcare partnerships." The company has no website and has never hired a lobbyist before.

Mr. DeLay represented the 22nd district of Texas in the House for over 20 years before resigning in 2006 after being investigated for campaign finance indiscretions as well as his staff's involvement in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal.

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Physicians from Pittsburgh-based University of Pennsylvania and Philadelphia-based Thomas Jefferson University Hospital affiliates were called in to help deliver a baby gorilla at the Philadelphia Zoo Friday, according to philly.com.

Zoo officials said Kira, 17, an endangered Western lowland gorilla, began to show signs of fatigue after enduring 24 hours of labor Friday.

Officials brought a team of veterinarians and physicians to perform an emergency delivery using procedures and equipment similar to those used in the birthing of human babies, including forceps and an episiotomy. Kira was also anesthetized during the delivery to make the birthing process easier, zoo officials said.

Zookeepers cared for the newborn gorilla for approximately 24 hours while Kira recovered from the procedure. Officials said the 5-pound gorilla baby and its mother were healthy following the surgery.
A top White House aid on Monday said the congressional investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials during the 2016 election has slowed the pace of the president's agenda, including efforts to repeal and replace the ACA, reports Business Insider.

"There's no doubt that keeping members focused on investigations detracts from our legislative agenda, detracts from what we're trying to deliver for the American people," Marc Short, the White House director of legislative affairs, said during a briefing on Monday, according to the report.

The comment comes ahead of testimony Thursday by fired FBI Direct James Comey before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

President Donald Trump has called the investigation a "witch hunt."

The Russia investigation poses a distraction as senators work to revise the House-approved American Health Care Act. Mr. Short said the White House wants the Senate to pass the AHCA before the five-week congressional recess begins in August, but the investigation, on top of divisions over the bill within the Republican party, could make that a challenging goal.

The Trump administration said it also wants to mark other legislative priorities off its checklist before the recess begins, including raising the nation's debt ceiling and tax reform, according to the report.
Republican Gov. Doug Ducey on Monday declared a statewide health emergency in Arizona due to surging rates of opioid overdose deaths.

The declaration will allow Arizona Department of Health Services to more rapidly respond to the crisis via the distribution of the opioid-overdose antidote naloxone and increased coordination for public health efforts between state, local and private-sector partners. The official designation puts Arizona in league with multiple other states hard hit by the nation's drug epidemic that implemented the same designation.

"As the number of opioid overdoses and deaths increase at an alarming rate, we must take action. It's time to call this what it is  an emergency," said Mr. Ducey. "Most of us know someone impacted by substance abuse  our family, our friends, our neighbors. Our hearts ache for them, but that isn't enough. We must do more. I'm declaring a statewide health emergency because we need to know more about the epidemic, including enhanced data that illustrates when and where these overdoses occur so that we can develop real, targeted solutions."

An average of more than two people a day died of opioid overdoses in Arizona in 2016, bringing the statewide total to 790 opioid overdose deaths.

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Twenty-two opioid-related overdoses occurred in the span of 48 hours in Suffolk County, N.Y., resulting in at least one fatality, according to a report from NBC New York.

The overdoses were caused by heroin, prescription opioids and fentanyl. Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid and is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine. The drug has been linked to a rash of overdoses around the country as drug dealers are frequently cutting the substance into the heroin supply.

"This is a serious public health concern, with a[n] approximately 60 percent uptick in opioid-related doses," said Suffolk County Police Commissioner Timothy Sini said at a Saturday news conference, according to NBC New York. "We want to get the message out, particularly to family members and loved ones and friends of those who are suffering from substance abuse disorder. This is now the time to intervene  to get your loved one help."

Sini said that police are targeting drug dealers and working with the New York Police Department by sharing data. He emphasized that the problem is not clustered in one neighborhood.

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Effective on June 1, 2017, Bioventus' full surgical orthobiologics portfolio was made available through premier.

Here are three takeaways:

1. Bioventus Surgical has numerous offerings for bone healing and spine fusion including allograft bone, synthetic bone graft substitutes and cell and marrow extraction needles.

2. There are eight new products in the expanded portfolio.

3. Senior Vice President Henry Tung, MD, said, "The Bioventus Surgical portfolio is designed to meet the needs of surgeons and their patients across a broad range of clinical situations, procedures and costs."
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The director of a Northern Ireland beauty business has been banned from the boardroom for six years after his company went bust owing nearly 1m. Michael Burnside of Knightsbridge Park in Belfast was the director of Zen Beauty Services Ltd on Heron Road, which sold cosmetics and toiletries.

The company was set up in 2006.

In the proceedings brought by the Department for the Economy, Mr Burnside (52) accepted instances of unfit conduct including failing to submit a sworn statement of affairs, and entering preferential transactions which harmed the interests of the company and its creditors.

The department said Mr Burnside had caused the company to settle his personal capital gains tax liability, which was a breach of his duty to the company.

When PJG Recovery was appointed administrators in December 2014, the company owed 981,276 after assets of 226,512 were taken into account. According to an administrators' report filed in March, the company was sold at auction for 145,000 in April last year.

Mr Burnside and fellow director Andrew Porter also entered individual voluntary arrangements for their own financial affairs, which led to just under 7,300 being recovered.

Claims from creditors included unpaid bills from beauty companies. Skincare giant Elemis was owed just over 127,821, and an agreed claim was concluded of around 106,000.
Gary Martin (left), of Lambert Smith Hampton with Steven and Jeane Simpson, owners of Rio & Brazil outside the new unit in Victoria Square

Northern Irish high-end fashion store Rio & Brazil, one of the province's oldest surviving independents, is set to open in Victoria Square Shopping Centre. The business, which was founded 40 years ago by David Simpson, is relocating from Wellington Place to set up in a new store in the shopping centre in a 200,000 investment.

The new store will employ 14 people, including three new employees.

For many years Rio, which sold menswear, and its womenswear section Brazil, were go-to destinations in Belfast for mid-market to high-end labels.

Steven Simpson - the son of David - and his wife Jeane now run the business. It was originally based in Bradbury Place on Belfast's Golden Mile, and later operated two shops in Donegall Arcade.

But the Donegall Arcade shops closed some years ago, and the shutters came down on the Bradbury Place spot in 2012.

However, the company fought back with successful online business mrandmrsstitch.com, along with a bricks and mortar store in Wellington Place.

Mr Simpson said the opening of Victoria Square had forced it to adapt. "Before Victoria Square opened in 2008 we were the only place in Belfast where you could buy labels like Tommy Hilfiger and Ted Baker, but everything changed when Victoria Square opened.

"But that made us change the way we did things and look for other labels to stock."

It will now bring labels including Circle of Gentlemen, Farah Vintage, Matchless London and Save The Queen to Victoria Square for the first time.

Mr Simpson added: "Our new unit is 25% bigger than our current store and is situated at the main Victoria Street entrance, with prominent, on-street windows.

"This store will give us a bigger presence, allowing us to carry more labels and offer our consumers a bigger choice."

Mr Simpson added: "The high footfall and location of the unit in Victoria Square presented us with an opportunity to grow the business.

"The centre has high visibility and attracts a lot of international customers."

Commercial property agency Lambert Smith Hampton acted on behalf of Victoria Square to secure the new tenant.

Associate director of retail agency, Gary Martin, said: "We are delighted to have been able to bring Rio & Brazil to Victoria Square.

"The owner's decision to invest in a new store in Victoria Square is testament to the strength of the scheme as the top retail destination in Northern Ireland. We're confident Rio & Brazil will add to the already diverse retail offering in the centre and be a huge hit."
When Fionnuala Kennedy was a young mum with a two-year-old daughter, her life suddenly took a turn for the worse, forcing her to live in a Belfast hostel. Her drastic move followed the break-up of her relationship with the toddler's father.

With a new production of autobiographical play, Hostel, which was first commissioned by Choice Housing and the Simon Community, due to open at the Baby Grand, Grand Opera House, Belfast on June 12, she says that difficult time is a constant source of inspiration in her work.

Fionnuala (33) is keen to reveal just how she came to seek shelter in a hostel on Belfast's Falls Road back in 2007, with her two-year-old daughter in tow, as a means of raising awareness and potentially giving strength to those who find themselves in similar positions.

She says: "With more than 50 individuals declaring themselves homeless in Northern Ireland every single day, and over 18,600 households presenting as homeless in the last year alone, it is a problem that has gotten much worse since I found myself destitute a decade ago."

Fionnuala's circumstances were relatively secure. Having done well at school and attended college, she was living with her partner and their daughter in a flat in West Belfast when the pair separated. "And I suddenly found myself homeless.

"I moved out of the house we were in and moved in with my mum. That was difficult as the house was already full. When it became too much, a friend offered us her spare room and we lived there for a few months."

While she found herself part-time work, the effort to raise funds for a deposit and first month's rent on a flat was just too great.

Providing for herself and her young daughter, coupled with the stress of living in another person's home, placed a great burden on Fionnuala's young shoulders. She was 23 at the time.

"When you're living like that, from one day to the next, as a parent, feeling like a burden in someone else's family space, and being unbelievably skint, it's near impossible to begin to rebuild your life," she adds. "Everyone, parent or not, needs a stable base.

"I never realised until years later that sofa surfing is homelessness. It's a temporary solution that prolongs difficult circumstances, that delays progress, that fuels depression, anxiety, stress. Living with family is also only a short-term solution, while lots of people don't even have family to rely on."

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Eventually, inevitably, Fionnuala began to search for sheltered accommodation in her native Belfast. It was not as easy as it might sound.

"The rent I would have to pay was huge," she reveals. "People think it's free to move into a hostel, but it's not. In fact, it's ridiculously expensive because of the support services charge. Unfortunately, that hasn't changed."

When she did find a suitable establishment, Fionnuala moved in immediately with her daughter and recalls, on that first night, feeling "a mix of relief that I was no longer a burden to anyone, or reliant on anyone to house me, combined with shame that I lived there, that this was my life. It was never part of the plan.

"Loneliness was palpable and I was terrified. For the first time in my life, I felt I had no control over my own future, that it was in someone else's hands."

That sense of shame initially led her to keep her situation secret from friends and family.

"At the beginning, I never told people I lived in a hostel, mostly because it was awkward dealing with their reactions, and pity would have infuriated me."

She found strength, companionship and support from the other residents, however, whom she remembers as coming from all sorts of backgrounds and differing social circumstances. "It was a hostel for young families, but it was mostly girls. There were a few couples there, but the majority were single mums. There were people who had been in the care system. There was a woman who had been burnt out of her home. There were women like myself.

"You sort of become institutionalised. As soon as I made friends, it was easier. We were a support to each other and had some really good times. Most of the staff were great. My key worker, Kevin, was brilliant and always encouraged me to keep my chin up.

"The hostel creates friendships that probably wouldn't happen in any other place. Sadly, once you're out, you're out, and you suddenly don't have the time to go back, or when you do, you're afraid they won't care about you anymore because you've left. But I remember all of them with such fondness because their friendships got me through a difficult time."

Expand Close Playwright Fionnuala Kennedy promoting Accidental Theatres play Fast & Loose, which ran in the Lyric with (from left) Emily DeDakis (project dramaturg), Richard Lavery (artistic director), and Andrea Montgomery (writer) / Facebook

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Whatsapp Playwright Fionnuala Kennedy promoting Accidental Theatres play Fast & Loose, which ran in the Lyric with (from left) Emily DeDakis (project dramaturg), Richard Lavery (artistic director), and Andrea Montgomery (writer)

Fionnuala spent a total of one year in the hostel before taking up the third of three relocation offers that saw her move into a two-bedroom flat. "I was delighted to finally have somewhere to call my own, and began to build a life with my daughter, who started nursery just after we moved out."

The idea for her play came about before she shipped out, following a protest held by residents after hostel staff banned them from wearing pyjamas outside of their rooms. A local newspaper got hold of the story and spun it as "benefit-slob single mums rock about in their PJs".

"And it was humiliating," she recalls. "Everyone ate it up. The initial point wasn't that we wanted to wear our pyjamas, it was that even though it was temporary, the hostel was our home. Here we were being told that it wasn't. So, we all decided to write a letter of complaint as a group.

"I knew then, as a young woman, that it wasn't right, and that inspired me to write the play, to let the general public know that they also judged us and that their judgment had an impact on us."

Looking back, Fionnuala says that her time in the hostel made her realise "the importance of owning your life experiences, of being proud of making them work for you. It informs all of the work I want to create".

It ultimately also led to her finding employment with Kabosh Theatre Company, with whom she has become synonymous over the past number of years.

Fionnuala says that there is still a huge stigma associated with homelessness, a prejudice informed by ignorance that can have "dangerous consequences" for the most vulnerable members of society.

"Now more than ever, people who are homeless are often viewed as exaggerating their situations to get a free house, as drug-addled wasters who don't want to work or help themselves," she adds. "Young mums are still being labelled as feckless, benefit-stealing slobs living the dream on nothing per week. This stigma can really impact negatively on the individual. The welfare system should be designed to support."

Kennedy is quick to encourage young women and mothers who find themselves cast adrift to sign up for benefits and seek out the assistance of organisations like the Simon Community, which helps thousands of homeless people across Northern Ireland every year, as well as individuals like academic and activist Gerry Skelton.

"I am not ashamed of having been on benefits," says Fionnuala. "As I made the leap from not working to working part-time and finally full-time, benefits supported me and obviously decreased as my career grew. If we actually want young mums to be able to progress, we need to give adequate benefits, training and support, and most importantly, affordable childcare to support all women to continue in employment."

With regards to the homelessness situation in Northern Ireland, she believes that adequate housing is the key to eradicating the problem. Consecutive governments, she claims, have failed to supply the obvious demand.

"The Northern Ireland Housing Executive no longer builds houses. Housing associations and homeless charities are stretched. Vital services have been reduced or stopped altogether. With the number of deaths of people living on the streets increasing, we are not getting it right. In fact, we're getting in very wrong."

Today, Fionnuala sees herself as one of the lucky ones, an individual who was able to seek out help and, as a result, turn a negative into a positive. "My daughter doesn't really remember us living in the hostel," she says, "but she remembers the little park that was out front. She had a great time, really. There were always lots of kids to play with and the staff were really good to her.

"I continue to have an interest in homelessness and I want my play to offer hope in navigating and surviving this sometimes brutal system, showing that compassion and understanding can make all the difference."

That is why, two years ago, she co-created Macha Productions, a company dedicated to "democratising cultural expression" and giving voice to communities and individuals on the fringes of society.

She adds: "For me, theatre is a vehicle. A means of telling stories that need telling."
Dark looks: self-tans take the work off achieving that golden glow

We all hope by the end of summer we'll be bronzed to perfection, but somehow the reality - not enough holidays, the good old UK weather - always scuppers our plans.

Thank heavens, then, for the self-tan saviours that will turn lacklustre limbs from pale to golden, even when it's pouring outside.

Even better, this year there are a whole heap of innovations making the bottle-bronze process easier than ever.

Whether you're a fake-tan fanatic or a newbie to the DIY game, these are the products that will have you glowing in no time.

THE SUPER SHEET MASK

Love a weekly sheet mask? Switch your regular treatment for St Tropez Self Tan Express Bronzing Face Sheet Mask, 15 for a pack of two, Boots, for a powerful dose of hyaluronic hydration and light tan in five minutes, or a darker glow in 10 (www.boots.com).

THE CLEAR WINNER

Not only is Tan Luxe Hydra Mousse, 33, QVC, packed with nourishing raspberry oil and vitamins, it's also the first ever completely clear tanning mousse, meaning no more stained clothes or bedsheets. Genius (www.qvcuk.com).

THE PHOTOSHOP FAKER

Like an Instagram filter you spray on, ModelCo Tan Airbrush In A Can, 15, is a glow-giving spray-on self-tan. The beloved Aussie brand has just landed here in the UK, bringing that Gold Coast glow to our shores - hurrah (LookFantastic.com).

THE MAN TANNER

Another Aussie import, Bondi Sands Everyday Gradual Tanning Foam For Men, 13.99, is a foam tanner formulated with a fresh masculine scent for all those bronzing blokes out there (www.bondisands.co.uk).

THE COCONUT COOLER

A lightweight spritz that works as a make-up primer and setter, UTan & Tone Coconut Tanning Water, 18, delivers an even, sun-kissed glow in four to six hours (utanandtone.com).

THE OVERNIGHT SUCCESS

Solait Overnight Tan Mask, currently reduced to 3.29 from 4.99, Superdrug, imparts a gradual golden glow while you sleep. Use it nightly until you've achieved your desired colour (www.superdrug.com).

THE POWER POWDER

Previously only available as a loose powder, Vita Liberata Trystal Pressed Self Tanning Bronzing Minerals in Sunkissed, 25, now come in a handy compact. Swirl on with a kabuki brush (short make-up brush with big, dense bristles) for instant bronzing plus a natural-looking tan that gradually develops over time, even when you've taken your make-up off (FeelUnique.com).

THE DOUBLE WHAMMY

Smooth on Skinny Tan 7 Day Tanner, currently reduced to 13.19 from 19.99, Superdrug, and you'll get an instant rose gold shimmer, while a deeper tan develops overnight. The cream tanner comes in Dark and Ultimate Dark shades as well (www.superdrug.com).

THE DARK DELIGHT

For a rich two-weeks-in-the-Caribbean level tan, you need Cocoa Brown by Marissa Carter 1Hr Instant Tan Extra Dark Tan Mousse, currently reduced to 5.29 from 9.95, Superdrug. The new shade from the best-selling brand develops rapidly and lasts up to seven days (www.superdrug.com).
More than 11,000 people will have their vote cast in Thursday's General Election by someone else.

Across Northern Ireland voters will head to the polls, once again, for the third election in the past year.

A potential 1.2million people will be eligible to cast their vote at one of the 628 polling places.

However, of those eligible to vote 11,000 have applied for a proxy vote meaning someone else will go along on polling day to complete the ballot on their behalf.

That is a rise on each of the past two Assembly elections and more than double the number who cast a proxy vote in the 2015 General Election.

It is also up on the UK average with voters in Foyle, Newry and Armagh, Fermanagh and South Tyrone, Mid Ulster and West Belfast issued the most proxies.

Virginia McVea chief electoral officer explained: "It's a fairly rigorous time-consuming process to verify each application for a postal or proxy vote, or as we refer to them, absent votes."

She said each application is considered on its merits and the evidence provided to determine if a proxy vote will be issued. Reasons given can include being on holiday or being ill for a valid proxy to be issued while many are rejected because of problems with the forms.

"It is not a tick box exercise, we check everything and we do get a lot of applications that are not approved.

"While the numbers are up, it is still a small amount of the eligible electorate. We publish all the figures and if anyone has any concerns they just have to pick up the phone to contact us."

Asked what she is predicting for Thursday, she added: "Rain, that's the only certainty."

Polling stations are open between 7am and 10pm and if you are in the queue to vote by closing time, you will be allowed to cast a vote.

Come 10pm on Thursday, the 1,380 ballot boxes will be transported to counting centres at the Titanic exhibition centre, Eikon centre in Lisburn, and the leisures centres at Bangor, Foyle, Ballymena, Omagh and Newtownabbey.

The count must begin within four hours of polling stations closing and will continue through the night.

People have been reminded that you must bring photographic identification to the polling station which could include an electoral identity card,British or Irish passport, the photographic part of any driving licence, a senior smartpass, 60+ smartpass blind persons smartpass or a war disabled smartpass.

Ann Watt, head of the Electoral Commission in Northern Ireland added: "Voters in Northern Ireland have had plenty of experience of visiting the polls recently, but its important that they do take a few minutes to make sure they have done everything to ensure that their vote will be counted once the polling stations close at 10pm on Thursday.

"Its important to remember that the voting system used for Westminster elections is different to that used at the Assembly election last March. You only need to place one X on the ballot paper against the name of the candidate of your choice.

Voters can find out more information by visiting yourvotematters.org.uk or by calling 0800 4320 712.

You can find your polling station by entering your post code here.
DUP leader Arlene Foster has said her party fundamentally rejects the endorsement of anyone involved in paramilitarism.

Mrs Foster's comments came amid growing calls for the DUP to clarify its response to the backing of a body representing loyalist paramilitaries.

Sinn Fein and the Alliance Party had demanded that Mrs Foster distance herself from the public support of the Loyalist Communities Council (LCC), an umbrella group linked to the three main loyalist paramilitary groups - the UDA, UVF and Red Hand Commando.

The LCC issued a statement on Monday urging voters to back DUP and Ulster Unionist candidates in four battleground constituencies.

The council also heavily criticised the Alliance, and warned unionists not to vote for it, claiming that would drive a "nail into the coffin of the Union".

"Many unionists think they can retain their unionism yet vote for Alliance candidates. They are sorely mistaken in that belief," the LCC said.

In response, UUP leader Robin Swann said he did not want the backing of organisations still involved in paramilitarism.

The call for clarity from the DUP came after two senior members gave somewhat different answers when pressed on whether they rejected the LCC backing.

While Sir Jeffrey Donaldson said he rejected the endorsement, Simon Hamilton stopped short of specifically rebuffing the council's statement, insisting the body had done good work to move paramilitaries away from violence.

Last night, Mrs Foster (right) said: "I am aware, of course, of the LCC statement. We did not seek that statement, we did not seek endorsement from any paramilitary organisation and indeed I fundamentally reject an endorsement from anyone that's involved with paramilitarism or criminality."

Mrs Foster said there were people in the LCC "trying their best" to move loyalists away from their past. She said she would support those efforts.

"I am certainly not going to walk away from loyalist communities in Northern Ireland," she told UTV.

Last week, a UDA-linked paramilitary feud claimed its latest victim when Carrickfergus man Colin Horner (35), was shot dead in a supermarket car park in Bangor, Co Down.

Prior to the LCC statement, last week a newspaper produced by the Ulster Political Research Group, which is politically aligned with the UDA, publicly endorsed the DUP's candidate in south Belfast, Emma Pengelly.

Sinn Fein and Alliance had urged the DUP to distance itself from the public support of the LCC.

Earlier, Ulster Unionist leader Robin Swann said he did not want the backing of organisations still involved in paramilitarism.

Mr Hamilton branded Sinn Fein's criticism "ironic", given the party's links with the IRA.
Britain's main opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn (bottom R) addresses supporters at a campaign visit in Colwyn Bay, north Wales on June 7, 2017, on the eve of the general election. Britain on Wednesday headed into the final day of campaigning for a general election darkened and dominated by jihadist attacks in two cities, leaving forecasters struggling to predict an outcome on polling day. / AFP PHOTO / Oli SCARFFOLI SCARFF/AFP/Getty Images

Leader of the Liberal Democrats, Tim Farron attends a campaign visit in Twickenham, south-west London on June 7, 2017, on the eve of the general election. Britain on Wednesday headed into the final day of campaigning for a general election darkened and dominated by jihadist attacks in two cities, leaving forecasters struggling to predict an outcome on polling day. / AFP PHOTO / NIKLAS HALLE'NNIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP/Getty Images

UNSPECIFIED, UNITED KINGDOM - JUNE 07: Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn speaks on the Promenade on June 7, 2017 in Colwyn Bay, Denbighshire, United Kingdom. The Labour leader is holding six rallies across Scotland, England and Wales today on the final day before polling day in the General Election (Photo by Anthony Devlin/Getty Images)

Prime Minister Theresa May speaking at an event at The Space in Norwich while on the General Election campaign trail. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday June 7, 2017. See PA story ELECTION Main. Photo credit should read: Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire

UNSPECIFIED, UNITED KINGDOM - JUNE 07: A young girl holds a sign as Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn speaks to supporters on the Promenade on June 7, 2017 in Colwyn Bay, Denbighshire, United Kingdom. The Labour leader is holding six rallies across Scotland, England and Wales today on the final day before polling day in the General Election (Photo by Anthony Devlin/Getty Images)

UNSPECIFIED, UNITED KINGDOM - JUNE 07: Members of the public look-on as Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn speaks on the Promenade on June 7, 2017 in Colwyn Bay, Denbighshire, United Kingdom. The Labour leader is holding six rallies across Scotland, England and Wales today on the final day before polling day in the General Election (Photo by Anthony Devlin/Getty Images)

UNSPECIFIED, UNITED KINGDOM - JUNE 07: Supporters applaud as Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn arrives to speak on the Promenade on June 7, 2017 in Colwyn Bay, Denbighshire, United Kingdom. The Labour leader is holding six rallies across Scotland, England and Wales today on the final day before polling day in the General Election (Photo by Anthony Devlin/Getty Images)

UNSPECIFIED, UNITED KINGDOM - JUNE 07: Supporters lok-on as Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn speaks on the Promenade on June 7, 2017 in Colwyn Bay, Denbighshire, United Kingdom. The Labour leader is holding six rallies across Scotland, England and Wales today on the final day before polling day in the General Election (Photo by Anthony Devlin/Getty Images)

Liberal Democrats leader Tim Farron visits Twickenham during the final day of the General Election campaign trail. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday June 7, 2017. See PA ELECTION stories. Photo credit should read: Victoria Jones/PA Wire

TOPSHOT - Tourists gather near the Elizabeth Tower, commonly referred to as Big Ben, at the Houses of Parliament in central London on June 7, 2017, on the eve of the general election. Britain on Wednesday headed into the final day of campaigning for a general election darkened and dominated by jihadist attacks in two cities, leaving forecasters struggling to predict an outcome on polling day. / AFP PHOTO / Justin TALLISJUSTIN TALLIS/AFP/Getty Images

TOPSHOT - A supporter of Britain's main opposition Labour Party takes a photograph as they wait for the leader Jeremy Corbyn to arrive at a campaign visit in Colwyn Bay, north Wales on June 7, 2017, on the eve of the general election. Britain on Wednesday headed into the final day of campaigning for a general election darkened and dominated by jihadist attacks in two cities, leaving forecasters struggling to predict an outcome on polling day. / AFP PHOTO / Oli SCARFFOLI SCARFF/AFP/Getty Images

GLASGOW, UNITED KINGDOM - JUNE 07: Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of the Labour Party, gives the thumbs up during a campaign rally on Buchanan Street on June 7, 2017 in Glasgow, Scotland. The Labour leader is holding six rallies across Scotland ,England, and Wales on today on the final day before polling day in General Election. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images) ***BESTPIX***

Prime Minister Theresa May and her husband Philip meet staff at a Dunelm home furnishing shop in Nottingham while on the General Election campaign trail. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday June 7, 2017. See PA story ELECTION Main. Photo credit should read: Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire

Liberal Democrats leader Tim Farron visits local voters at the campaign office in Carshalton during the final day of the General Election campaign trail. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday June 7, 2017. See PA ELECTION stories. Photo credit should read: Victoria Jones/PA Wire

(FILES) A combination of pictures created in London on May 31, 2017 shows Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May (top) speaking during an event to launch the Conservative Party general election manifesto in Halifax in northern England on May 18, 2017 and Britain's main opposition Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn (bottom) delivering a general election campaign speech on leadership in London on April 29, 2017. Britain goes to the polls to vote in a general election on June 8. / AFP PHOTO / Ben STANSALL AND Niklas HALLE'NBEN STANSALL,NIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP/Getty Images

(FILES) A combination of pictures created in London on May 31, 2017 Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May (L) speaking during an event to launch the Conservative Party general election manifesto in Halifax in northern England on May 18, 2017 and Britain's main opposition Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn (R) delivering a general election campaign speech on leadership in London on April 29, 2017. Britain goes to the polls to vote in a general election on June 8. / AFP PHOTO / Ben STANSALL AND Niklas HALLE'NBEN STANSALL,NIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP/Getty Images

First Minister and SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon speaks during an event at the Malmaison Hotel in Edinburgh while on the last day of campaigning for the General Election. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday June 7, 2017. See PA story ELECTION Main. Photo credit should read: Jane Barlow/PA Wire

EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND - JUNE 07: SNP Leader Nicola Sturgeon, holds a final campaign rally in Leith on July 7, 2017 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Ms Sturgeon urged people to unite behind the SNP and deprive Theresa May of a majority in the 2017 General Election. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

First Minister and SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon speaks during an event at the Malmaison Hotel in Edinburgh while on the last day of campaigning for the General Election. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday June 7, 2017. See PA story ELECTION Main. Photo credit should read: Jane Barlow/PA Wire

TOPSHOT - This combination of pictures made on June 6, 2017, shows Britain's Prime Minister and Leader of the Conservative party Theresa May (top L) on May 30, 2017 in Wolverhampton, Britain's main opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn (top R) on May 22, 2017 in Kingston-upon-Hull, Scotland's First Minister and leader of the Scottish National Party Nicola Sturgeon (bottom L) on April 20, 2015 in Edinburgh, and Liberal Democrats leader Tim Farron (bottom R) on May 26, 2017 in Manchester. Britain goes to the polls to vote in a general election on June 8. / AFP PHOTOLEON NEAL,OLI SCARFF,LESLEY MARTIN/AFP/Getty Images

WATFORD, UNITED KINGDOM - JUNE 07: Labour supporters cheer as Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of the Labour Party speaks during a campaign rally at the Parade on June 7, 2017 in Watford, United Kingdom. The Labour leader is holding six rallies across Scotland, England and Wales today on the final day before polling day in the General Election. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

SOLIHULL, UNITED KINGDOM - JUNE 07: Prime Minister Theresa May greets supporters as she arrives for her last campaign visit at the National Conference Centre on June 7, 2017 in Solihull, United Kingdom. Britain goes to the polls tomorrow to vote in a general election. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images)

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn speaking at an event at the Parade in Watford while on the General Election campaign trail. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday June 6, 2017. See PA story ELECTION Main. Photo credit should read: Jonathan Brady/PA Wire

Scotland's First Minister and leader of the Scottish National Party Nicola Sturgeon waves as she holds a final general election campaign rally on June 7, 2017, in Edinburgh, Scotland. Britain on June 3 headed into the final day of campaigning for a general election darkened and dominated by jihadist attacks in two cities, leaving forecasters struggling to predict an outcome on polling day. / AFP PHOTO / Andy BuchananANDY BUCHANAN/AFP/Getty Images

Supporters hold placards as they attend the final general election campaign rally of Scotland's First Minister and leader of the Scottish National Party Nicola Sturgeon on June 7, 2017, in Edinburgh, Scotland. Britain on June 3 headed into the final day of campaigning for a general election darkened and dominated by jihadist attacks in two cities, leaving forecasters struggling to predict an outcome on polling day. / AFP PHOTO / Andy BuchananANDY BUCHANAN/AFP/Getty Images

EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND - JUNE 07: SNP Leader Nicola Sturgeon, holds a final campaign rally in Leith on July 7, 2017 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Ms Sturgeon urged people to unite behind the SNP and deprive Theresa May of a majority in the 2017 General Election. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

NOTTINGHAM, UNITED KINGDOM - JUNE 07: Britain's Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party Theresa May and husband Philip speak to staff at a Dunelm department store during a campaign visit on June 7, 2017 in Nottingham, England. Britain goes to the polls tomorrow June 8 to vote in a general election. (Photo by Ben Stansall - WPA Pool/Getty Images)

EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND - JUNE 07: SNP Leader Nicola Sturgeon, holds a final campaign rally in Leith on July 7, 2017 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Ms Sturgeon urged people to unite behind the SNP and deprive Theresa May of a majority in the 2017 General Election. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

WATFORD, UNITED KINGDOM - JUNE 07: Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of the Labour Party and Chris Ostrowski, Labour candidate for Watford during a campaign rally at the Parade on June 7, 2017 in Watford, United Kingdom. The Labour leader is holding six rallies across Scotland, England and Wales today on the final day before polling day in the General Election. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

WATFORD, UNITED KINGDOM - JUNE 07: Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of the Labour Party greets supporters during a campaign rally at the Parade on June 7, 2017 in Watford, United Kingdom. The Labour leader is holding six rallies across Scotland, England and Wales today on the final day before polling day in the General Election. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn speaking at an event at the Parade in Watford while on the General Election campaign trail. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday June 6, 2017. See PA story ELECTION Main. Photo credit should read: Jonathan Brady/PA Wire

NOTTINGHAM, UNITED KINGDOM - JUNE 07: Britain's Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party Theresa May and husband Philip speak to staff at a Dunelm department store during a campaign visit on June 7, 2017 in Nottingham, England. Britain goes to the polls tomorrow June 8 to vote in a general election. (Photo by Ben Stansall - WPA Pool/Getty Images)

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn after speaking at an event at the Parade in Watford while on the General Election campaign trail. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday June 6, 2017. See PA story ELECTION Main. Photo credit should read: Jonathan Brady/PA Wire

WATFORD, UNITED KINGDOM - JUNE 07: Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of the Labour Party greets supporters during a campaign rally at the Parade on June 7, 2017 in Watford, United Kingdom. The Labour leader is holding six rallies across Scotland, England and Wales today on the final day before polling day in the General Election. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

Labour supporters an event at the Parade in Watford, during a speech by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn while on the General Election campaign trail. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday June 6, 2017. See PA story ELECTION Main. Photo credit should read: Jonathan Brady/PA Wire

Labour supporters an event at the Parade in Watford, ahead of a speech from Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn while on the General Election campaign trail. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday June 6, 2017. See PA story ELECTION Main. Photo credit should read: Jonathan Brady/PA Wire

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland 5th June 2017 - Picture by Stephen Hamilton / Press Eye. SDLP Candidate Margaret Ritchie pictured on the campaign trail at Warrenpoint. Speaking while campaigning in South Down for Margaret Ritchie, the former SDLP Deputy Leader said: The SDLP's Margaret Ritchie is in a two horse race and the choice is very clear - elect a candidate who can represent people of all backgrounds, who will protect the Good Friday Agreement and who will fight against Theresa Mays plans for a dementia tax and a hard Brexit. Or choose a party who wont take their seat, cant represent all those who live here, and whose main political ambition is to silence South Downs voice and abandon the fight for the Good Friday Agreement. Sinn Feins plan for Irish politics is to remove all representation from Westminster for the first time since the 1960s, and to end a tradition in Irish politics starts by Daniel OConnell himself. Without a functioning Assembly, MPs could be our only public representatives with any power to hold direct rule Ministers to account. To give up that card by voting for abstentionism MPs risks all the progress weve made in the last thirty years.

Pacemaker Press 31/5/2017 DUP Leader Arlene Foster and Deputy leader Nigel Dodd during the DUP Manifesto Launch at The Old Courthouse in Antrim on Wednesday morning ahead of the General election on the 8th of June. Pic Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker

Pacemaker Press 5/6/17 Sinn Fein's Michelle O'Neill during A television debate from the five main parties which was recorded at UTV in Belfast. Pic Pacemaker

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland 31st May 2017 - Picture by Matt Mackey / Press Eye. Alliance party general election Manifesto launch at CIYMS in East Belfast. Paula Bradshaw

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland 31st May 2017 - Picture by Matt Mackey / Press Eye. Alliance party general election Manifesto launch at CIYMS in East Belfast.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn speaking at an event on the Promenade in Colwyn Bay, Wales, while on the General Election campaign trail. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday June 6, 2017. See PA story ELECTION Main. Photo credit should read: Peter Byrne/PA Wire

Liberal Democrats leader Tim Farron and Vince Cable, local candidate for Twickenham, visit in Twickenham during the final day of the General Election campaign trail. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday June 7, 2017. See PA ELECTION stories. Photo credit should read: Victoria Jones/PA Wire

Britain's main opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn greets supporters as he leaves after attending a campaign visit in Colwyn Bay, north Wales on June 7, 2017, on the eve of the general election. Britain on Wednesday headed into the final day of campaigning for a general election darkened and dominated by jihadist attacks in two cities, leaving forecasters struggling to predict an outcome on polling day. / AFP PHOTO / Oli SCARFFOLI SCARFF/AFP/Getty Images

Britain's main opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn leaves after attending a campaign visit in Colwyn Bay, north Wales on June 7, 2017, on the eve of the general election. Britain on Wednesday headed into the final day of campaigning for a general election darkened and dominated by jihadist attacks in two cities, leaving forecasters struggling to predict an outcome on polling day. / AFP PHOTO / Oli SCARFFOLI SCARFF/AFP/Getty Images

Britain's main opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn greets supporters as he leaves after attending a campaign visit in Colwyn Bay, north Wales on June 7, 2017, on the eve of the general election. Britain on Wednesday headed into the final day of campaigning for a general election darkened and dominated by jihadist attacks in two cities, leaving forecasters struggling to predict an outcome on polling day. / AFP PHOTO / Oli SCARFFOLI SCARFF/AFP/Getty Images

Leader of the Liberal Democrats, Tim Farron (R) and attends a campaign visit with the party's candidate for the Twickenham constituency, Vince Cable, in Twickenham, south-west London on June 7, 2017, on the eve of the general election. Britain on Wednesday headed into the final day of campaigning for a general election darkened and dominated by jihadist attacks in two cities, leaving forecasters struggling to predict an outcome on polling day. / AFP PHOTO / NIKLAS HALLE'NNIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP/Getty Images

TWICKENHAM, ENGLAND - JUNE 07: Liberal Democrat Leader Tim Farron (L) and former Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills Vince Cable (R) sit in a restaurant as they campaign in Twickenham on June 7, 2017 in Twickenham, England. Mr Cable is campaigning to retake his former seat after it was won by Conservative Tania Mathias in the 2015 general election. Britain goes to the polls tomorrow June 8 in a general election. (Photo by Jack Taylor/Getty Images)

NORWICH, UNITED KINGDOM - JUNE 07: Philip May (L), husband of Britain's Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party Theresa May, listens as she speaks during a Conservative Party general election campaign visit at The Space on June 7, 2017 in Norwich, United Kingdom. Britain goes to the polls tomorrow June 8 to vote in a general election. (Photo by Ben Stansall - WPA Pool/Getty Images)

Britain's main opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn leaves after addressing supporters at a campaign visit in Colwyn Bay, north Wales on June 7, 2017, on the eve of the general election. Britain on Wednesday headed into the final day of campaigning for a general election darkened and dominated by jihadist attacks in two cities, leaving forecasters struggling to predict an outcome on polling day. / AFP PHOTO / Oli SCARFFOLI SCARFF/AFP/Getty Images

TWICKENHAM, ENGLAND - JUNE 07: Liberal Democrat Leader Tim Farron speaks to the media in front of a betting shop as he campaigns with former Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills Vince Cable (not pictured) in Twickenham on June 7, 2017 in Twickenham, England. Mr Cable is campaigning to retake his former seat after it was won by Conservative Tania Mathias in the 2015 general election. Britain goes to the polls tomorrow June 8 in a general election. (Photo by Jack Taylor/Getty Images)

Britain's main opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn addresses supporters at a campaign visit in Colwyn Bay, north Wales on June 7, 2017, on the eve of the general election. Britain on Wednesday headed into the final day of campaigning for a general election darkened and dominated by jihadist attacks in two cities, leaving forecasters struggling to predict an outcome on polling day. / AFP PHOTO / Oli SCARFFOLI SCARFF/AFP/Getty Images

Britain's main opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn (bottom R) addresses supporters at a campaign visit in Colwyn Bay, north Wales on June 7, 2017, on the eve of the general election. Britain on Wednesday headed into the final day of campaigning for a general election darkened and dominated by jihadist attacks in two cities, leaving forecasters struggling to predict an outcome on polling day. / AFP PHOTO / Oli SCARFFOLI SCARFF/AFP/Getty Images

Leader of the Liberal Democrats, Tim Farron attends a campaign visit in Twickenham, south-west London on June 7, 2017, on the eve of the general election. Britain on Wednesday headed into the final day of campaigning for a general election darkened and dominated by jihadist attacks in two cities, leaving forecasters struggling to predict an outcome on polling day. / AFP PHOTO / NIKLAS HALLE'NNIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP/Getty Images

UNSPECIFIED, UNITED KINGDOM - JUNE 07: Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn speaks on the Promenade on June 7, 2017 in Colwyn Bay, Denbighshire, United Kingdom. The Labour leader is holding six rallies across Scotland, England and Wales today on the final day before polling day in the General Election (Photo by Anthony Devlin/Getty Images)

Prime Minister Theresa May speaking at an event at The Space in Norwich while on the General Election campaign trail. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday June 7, 2017. See PA story ELECTION Main. Photo credit should read: Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire

UNSPECIFIED, UNITED KINGDOM - JUNE 07: A young girl holds a sign as Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn speaks to supporters on the Promenade on June 7, 2017 in Colwyn Bay, Denbighshire, United Kingdom. The Labour leader is holding six rallies across Scotland, England and Wales today on the final day before polling day in the General Election (Photo by Anthony Devlin/Getty Images)

UNSPECIFIED, UNITED KINGDOM - JUNE 07: Members of the public look-on as Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn speaks on the Promenade on June 7, 2017 in Colwyn Bay, Denbighshire, United Kingdom. The Labour leader is holding six rallies across Scotland, England and Wales today on the final day before polling day in the General Election (Photo by Anthony Devlin/Getty Images)

UNSPECIFIED, UNITED KINGDOM - JUNE 07: Supporters applaud as Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn arrives to speak on the Promenade on June 7, 2017 in Colwyn Bay, Denbighshire, United Kingdom. The Labour leader is holding six rallies across Scotland, England and Wales today on the final day before polling day in the General Election (Photo by Anthony Devlin/Getty Images)

UNSPECIFIED, UNITED KINGDOM - JUNE 07: Supporters lok-on as Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn speaks on the Promenade on June 7, 2017 in Colwyn Bay, Denbighshire, United Kingdom. The Labour leader is holding six rallies across Scotland, England and Wales today on the final day before polling day in the General Election (Photo by Anthony Devlin/Getty Images)

Liberal Democrats leader Tim Farron visits Twickenham during the final day of the General Election campaign trail. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday June 7, 2017. See PA ELECTION stories. Photo credit should read: Victoria Jones/PA Wire

TOPSHOT - Tourists gather near the Elizabeth Tower, commonly referred to as Big Ben, at the Houses of Parliament in central London on June 7, 2017, on the eve of the general election. Britain on Wednesday headed into the final day of campaigning for a general election darkened and dominated by jihadist attacks in two cities, leaving forecasters struggling to predict an outcome on polling day. / AFP PHOTO / Justin TALLISJUSTIN TALLIS/AFP/Getty Images

TOPSHOT - A supporter of Britain's main opposition Labour Party takes a photograph as they wait for the leader Jeremy Corbyn to arrive at a campaign visit in Colwyn Bay, north Wales on June 7, 2017, on the eve of the general election. Britain on Wednesday headed into the final day of campaigning for a general election darkened and dominated by jihadist attacks in two cities, leaving forecasters struggling to predict an outcome on polling day. / AFP PHOTO / Oli SCARFFOLI SCARFF/AFP/Getty Images

Prime Minister Theresa May and her husband Philip meet staff at a Dunelm home furnishing shop in Nottingham while on the General Election campaign trail. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday June 7, 2017. See PA story ELECTION Main. Photo credit should read: Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire

Liberal Democrats leader Tim Farron visits local voters at the campaign office in Carshalton during the final day of the General Election campaign trail. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday June 7, 2017. See PA ELECTION stories. Photo credit should read: Victoria Jones/PA Wire

(FILES) A combination of pictures created in London on May 31, 2017 shows Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May (top) speaking during an event to launch the Conservative Party general election manifesto in Halifax in northern England on May 18, 2017 and Britain's main opposition Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn (bottom) delivering a general election campaign speech on leadership in London on April 29, 2017. Britain goes to the polls to vote in a general election on June 8. / AFP PHOTO / Ben STANSALL AND Niklas HALLE'NBEN STANSALL,NIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP/Getty Images

First Minister and SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon speaks during an event at the Malmaison Hotel in Edinburgh while on the last day of campaigning for the General Election. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday June 7, 2017. See PA story ELECTION Main. Photo credit should read: Jane Barlow/PA Wire

EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND - JUNE 07: SNP Leader Nicola Sturgeon, holds a final campaign rally in Leith on July 7, 2017 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Ms Sturgeon urged people to unite behind the SNP and deprive Theresa May of a majority in the 2017 General Election. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

First Minister and SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon speaks during an event at the Malmaison Hotel in Edinburgh while on the last day of campaigning for the General Election. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday June 7, 2017. See PA story ELECTION Main. Photo credit should read: Jane Barlow/PA Wire

This combination of pictures made on June 6, 2017, shows Britain's Prime Minister and Leader of the Conservative party Theresa May (top L) on May 30, 2017 in Wolverhampton, Britain's main opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn (top R) on May 22, 2017 in Kingston-upon-Hull, Scotland's First Minister and leader of the Scottish National Party Nicola Sturgeon (bottom L) on April 20, 2015 in Edinburgh, and Liberal Democrats leader Tim Farron (bottom R) on May 26, 2017 in Manchester. AFP/Getty Images

WATFORD, UNITED KINGDOM - JUNE 07: Labour supporters cheer as Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of the Labour Party speaks during a campaign rally at the Parade on June 7, 2017 in Watford, United Kingdom. The Labour leader is holding six rallies across Scotland, England and Wales today on the final day before polling day in the General Election. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

SOLIHULL, UNITED KINGDOM - JUNE 07: Prime Minister Theresa May greets supporters as she arrives for her last campaign visit at the National Conference Centre on June 7, 2017 in Solihull, United Kingdom. Britain goes to the polls tomorrow to vote in a general election. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images)

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn speaking at an event at the Parade in Watford while on the General Election campaign trail. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday June 6, 2017. See PA story ELECTION Main. Photo credit should read: Jonathan Brady/PA Wire

Scotland's First Minister and leader of the Scottish National Party Nicola Sturgeon waves as she holds a final general election campaign rally on June 7, 2017, in Edinburgh, Scotland. Britain on June 3 headed into the final day of campaigning for a general election darkened and dominated by jihadist attacks in two cities, leaving forecasters struggling to predict an outcome on polling day. / AFP PHOTO / Andy BuchananANDY BUCHANAN/AFP/Getty Images

Supporters hold placards as they attend the final general election campaign rally of Scotland's First Minister and leader of the Scottish National Party Nicola Sturgeon on June 7, 2017, in Edinburgh, Scotland. Britain on June 3 headed into the final day of campaigning for a general election darkened and dominated by jihadist attacks in two cities, leaving forecasters struggling to predict an outcome on polling day. / AFP PHOTO / Andy BuchananANDY BUCHANAN/AFP/Getty Images

EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND - JUNE 07: SNP Leader Nicola Sturgeon, holds a final campaign rally in Leith on July 7, 2017 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Ms Sturgeon urged people to unite behind the SNP and deprive Theresa May of a majority in the 2017 General Election. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

WATFORD, UNITED KINGDOM - JUNE 07: Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of the Labour Party and Chris Ostrowski, Labour candidate for Watford during a campaign rally at the Parade on June 7, 2017 in Watford, United Kingdom. The Labour leader is holding six rallies across Scotland, England and Wales today on the final day before polling day in the General Election. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

WATFORD, UNITED KINGDOM - JUNE 07: Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of the Labour Party greets supporters during a campaign rally at the Parade on June 7, 2017 in Watford, United Kingdom. The Labour leader is holding six rallies across Scotland, England and Wales today on the final day before polling day in the General Election. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn speaking at an event at the Parade in Watford while on the General Election campaign trail. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday June 6, 2017. See PA story ELECTION Main. Photo credit should read: Jonathan Brady/PA Wire

Britain's Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party Theresa May and husband Philip speak to staff at a Dunelm department store during a campaign visit on June 7, 2017 in Nottingham, England. Britain goes to the polls tomorrow June 8 to vote in a general election. (Photo by Ben Stansall - WPA Pool/Getty Images)

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn after speaking at an event at the Parade in Watford while on the General Election campaign trail. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday June 6, 2017. See PA story ELECTION Main. Photo credit should read: Jonathan Brady/PA Wire

WATFORD, UNITED KINGDOM - JUNE 07: Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of the Labour Party greets supporters during a campaign rally at the Parade on June 7, 2017 in Watford, United Kingdom. The Labour leader is holding six rallies across Scotland, England and Wales today on the final day before polling day in the General Election. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

Labour supporters an event at the Parade in Watford, during a speech by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn while on the General Election campaign trail. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday June 6, 2017. See PA story ELECTION Main. Photo credit should read: Jonathan Brady/PA Wire

Labour supporters an event at the Parade in Watford, ahead of a speech from Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn while on the General Election campaign trail. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday June 6, 2017. See PA story ELECTION Main. Photo credit should read: Jonathan Brady/PA Wire

EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND - JUNE 07: SNP Leader Nicola Sturgeon, holds a final campaign rally in Leith on July 7, 2017 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Ms Sturgeon urged people to unite behind the SNP and deprive Theresa May of a majority in the 2017 General Election. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

NOTTINGHAM, UNITED KINGDOM - JUNE 07: Britain's Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party Theresa May and husband Philip speak to staff at a Dunelm department store during a campaign visit on June 7, 2017 in Nottingham, England. Britain goes to the polls tomorrow June 8 to vote in a general election. (Photo by Ben Stansall - WPA Pool/Getty Images)

Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of the Labour Party, gives the thumbs up during a campaign rally on Buchanan Street on June 7, 2017 in Glasgow, Scotland. The Labour leader is holding six rallies across Scotland ,England, and Wales on today on the final day before polling day in General Election. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

A voter arrives at the polling station in St Nicolas Parish Hall, Belfast, as voting gets underway in the 2017 General Election. Pic: Liam McBurney/PA Wire

Arlene Foster, Leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, leaving Brookeborough Primary School, Co Fermanagh, having cast her vote in the 2017 General Election. Brian Lawless/PA Wire

Sinn Fein leader in Northern Ireland Michelle O'Neill arrives at a polling station at St Patrick's primary school in Annaghmore, Clonoe to cast her vote in the General Election. Liam McBurney/PA Wire

Alliance candidate for West Belfast Sorcha Eastwood casts her vote in the 2017 General Election, with her husband, Dale Shirlow, at a polling station in Lisburn, Northern Ireland, still wearing her wedding dress after they were married earlier in the day. Brian Lawless/PA Wire

Dougie the Cocker Spaniel sits beside a sign reading 'Pawing Station' outside a polling station on June 8, 2017 in Stalybridge, Greater Manchester, United Kingdom. Voters are going to the polls today to vote in the General Election (Photo by Anthony Devlin/Getty Images)

Copies of the Evening Standard newspaper, with the headline 'You decide' are pictured in central London on June 8, 2017, as Britain holds a general election. AFP/Getty Images

A sign is pictured outside a polling station in Kingston-Upon-Hull, northern England, on June 8, 2017 as Britain votes in the general election. AFP/Getty Images

Voting activists encouraging commuters to vote in the General Election 2017, at Turnham Green station in London. PA

Toby, a beagle cross waits for his master outside a polling station on the Glen road on June 8, 2017 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images)

LONDON, ENGLAND - JUNE 08: Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn casts his vote at a polling station at Pakeman Primary School on June 8, 2017 in London, England. Polling stations have opened as the nation votes to decide the next UK government in a general election. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)

Two anti-Brexit activists pose with their hand-puppets depicting British Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative party Theresa May, left, and Britain's Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn, in front of the the Houses of Parliament on election day in London, Thursday, June 8, 2017. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

Leader of the Conservative party Theresa May and Britain's main opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. AFP/Getty Images

Nicola Sturgeon and Stephen Gethins eat chips on the General Election campaign trail (Jane Barlow/PA)

Winner: Jim Shannon (DUP) with his electoral agent Simon Hamilton during the 2017 Westminster Election count at Aurora Leisure Complex, Bangor. Picture by Brian Little/PressEye

Winner: Sinn Fein candidate for South Down Chris Hazzard celebrates after winning the seat at the election count at the Eikon Exhibition Centre Sprucefield for Lagan Valley, Newry & Armagh, South Down and Upper Bann. Picture by Jonathan Porter/PressEye.com

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 9th June 2017 - Westminster General Election 2017 The election count at Valley Leisure Centre Newtownabbey for East Antrim and South Antrim DUP's Sammy Wilson Photo by Matt Mackey / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 8th June 2017 - Westminster General Election 2017. Michelle Gildernew celebrates at the election count at Omagh Leisure Complex Omagh for West Tyrone and Fermanagh & South Tyrone. Photo by John McVitty / Press Eye.

PACEMAKER BELFAST 09/06/2017 Gregory Campbell with his wife Frances after he was re-elected to represent East Londonderry

9 / 6 / 17 PACEMAKER PRESS Francie Molloy wins the Mid Ulster seat for Sinn Fein in the UK Parlimentary Election. PICTURE MATT BOHILL PACEMAKER PRESS

DUP leader Arlene Foster (2nd L), DUP deputy leader and north Belfast candidate Nigel Dodds (L), Emma Little Pengelly (2nd R) DUP south Belfast candidate and Gavin Robinson (R) DUP east Belfast candidate celebrate at the Belfast count centre on June 9, 2017 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. After a snap election was called the United Kingdom went to the polls yesterday, after a closely fought election the results from across the country are being counted and an overall result is expected in the early hours. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images)

DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds, leader Arlene Foster and former leader Peter Robinson cheer as Emma Little Pengelly is elected to the South Belfast. PA Niall Carson/PA Wire

Paul Nuttall has resigned as the leader of Ukip (Joe Giddens/PA)

Leo Varadkar said the UK election result presents an opportunity for Ireland

Liberal Democrat Party leader Tim Farron speaks to suporters and the press at 1 Whitehall Place on June 9, 2017 in London, England. (Photo by Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images)

Liberal Democrat Party leader Tim Farron speaks to suporters and the press at 1 Whitehall Place on June 9, 2017 in London, England. (Photo by Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images)

Britain's Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party Theresa May (L) leaves 10 Downing Street in central London on June 9, 2017, en route to Buckingham Palace to meet Queen Elizabeth II, the day after a general election in which the Conservatives lost their majority. British Prime Minister Theresa May will on Friday seek to form a new government, resisting pressure to resign after losing her parliamentary majority ahead of crucial Brexit talks. May is set to meet the head of state Queen Elizabeth II and ask for permission to form a new government, according to her Downing Street office. / AFP PHOTO / ADRIAN DENNISADRIAN DENNIS/AFP/Getty Images

Britain's Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party Theresa May leaves 10 Downing Street in central London on June 9, 2017, en route to Buckingham Palace to meet Queen Elizabeth II, the day after a general election in which the Conservatives lost their majority. British Prime Minister Theresa May will on Friday seek to form a new government, resisting pressure to resign after losing her parliamentary majority ahead of crucial Brexit talks. May is set to meet the head of state Queen Elizabeth II and ask for permission to form a new government, according to her Downing Street office. / AFP PHOTO / Daniel LEAL-OLIVASDANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS/AFP/Getty Images

The car carrying Prime Minister Theresa May arriving at Buckingham Palace before her audience with Queen Elizabeth II after the General Election resulted in a hung parliament. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday June 9, 2017. See PA story ELECTION Main. Photo credit should read: Yui Mok/PA Wire

Prime Minister Theresa May with her husband Philip arrives at Buckingham Palace where she will seek the Queen's permission to form a UK government on June 9, 2017 in London, England. (Photo by Victoria Jones - WPA Pool/Getty Images)

Britain's Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party Theresa May leaves 10 Downing Street in central London on June 9, 2017, en route to Buckingham Palace to meet Queen Elizabeth II. AFP/Getty Images

DUP leader Arlene Foster along with her MPs pictured at the Stormont Hotel in south Belfast this afternoon. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Leader of the DUP Arlene Foster holds a press conference at the Stormont Hotel in Belfast on June 9th 2017 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph)

Leader of the DUP Arlene Foster holds a press conference at the Stormont Hotel in Belfast on June 9th 2017 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph)

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 on June 9, 2017 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images)

Sinn Fein's Northern Ireland leader Michelle O'Neill (left) and party president Gerry Adams (right) speaking outside Sinn Fein offices on the Falls Road in Belfast after the party emerged with seven MPs following the General Election. PA

DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds (L) points to DUP leader and Northern Ireland former First Minister Arlene Foster (R) as they hold a photocall with their newly elected candidates who stood in the general election on June 9, 2017 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images)

Sinn Fein's party president Gerry Adams speaking outside Sinn Fein offices on the Falls Road in Belfast after the party emerged with seven MPs following the General Election. PA

Sinn Fein's Northern Ireland leader Michelle O'Neill (centre left) and party president Gerry Adams (centre) speaking outside Sinn Fein offices on the Falls Road in Belfast after the party emerged with seven MPs following the General Election. PA

UKIP Leader Paul Nuttall leaves via a fire exit following the vote count for the constituency of Boston and Skegness on June 9, 2017 in Boston, England. (Photo by Anthony Devlin/Getty Images)

A television presenter stands outside 10 Downing Street in London on June 10, 2017, holding a copy of The Daily Mirror newspaper with the headline "Coalition of Crackpots" the day after the general election resulted in a hung parliament and British Prime Minister Theresa May forming a minority government. AFP/Getty Images

DUP leader and Northern Ireland former First Minister Arlene Foster (R) waves to the media alongside Gregory Campbell (L) after holding a press conference with the DUP's newly elected Westminster candidates who stood in the general election on June 9, 2017 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images)

British Prime Minister and Conservative Party leader Theresa May (far left) stands with other candidates at the declaration at the election count at the Magnet Leisure Centre on June 9, 2017 in Maidenhead, England. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

Prime Minister Theresa May at the Magnet Leisure Centre in Maidenhead, after she held her seat. PA

Prime Minister Theresa May reacts at the Magnet Leisure Centre in Maidenhead, after she held her seat. PA

Theresa May kept her senior ministers in post after suffering humiliating losses in the snap election. AFP/Getty Images

British Prime Minister and Conservative Party leader Theresa May speaks at the declaration at the election count at the Magnet Leisure Centre on June 9, 2017 in Maidenhead, England. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

DUP leader Arlene Foster (2nd L), DUP deputy leader and north Belfast candidate Nigel Dodds (L), former DUP leader and Northern Ireland First Minister Peter Robinson (R) watch on at the Belfast count centre on June 9, 2017 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images)

Local candidate Mr Fishfinger waits as ballot papers are counted at the Westmoorland and Lonsdale constituency count at Kendal Leisure Centre on June 8, 2017 in Kendal, United Kingdom. (Photo by Dave Thompson/Getty Images)

General Election 2017: Theresa May clings to power - hoping to get by with a little help from friends in DUP [Photos] Close

Record numbers of people have signed up to vote on deadline day before registrations closed, with more than 600,000 names added to the electoral roll in the final 24 hours.

On the last day that new voters could register, a total of 622,398 applications were received by the Governments Individual Electoral Registration digital service.

That exceeded the previous record of 525,254 applications on a single day, set before the EU referendum on 7 June 2016  a spike of around 20 per cent.

The figures point to a sharp increase in young voters adding their names to the register, with around two-thirds  453,000  of the new voters to sign up on deadline day aged between 18 and 34.

A late surge in young voter registrations will be seen as good news for Labour, whose election day hopes have historically hinged on a high turnout among young people.

Jeremy Corbyns party has traditionally attracted more support from young voters, many of whom will be attracted to Labours promise to scrap university tuition fees,

However, pre-election polling still suggests the Tories will emerge on 9 June as the largest party.

John Curtice, a political scientist at the University of Strathclyde, cautioned against reading too much into the figures.

He told The Independent his own calculation of the new voter registrations since last December put the figure at 1.1 million, down from 1.35 million in England and Wales over the same period a year earlier.

Almost three million people registered online to vote in the period between the announcement of the election on 18 April and the registration deadline of 22 May.

Belfast tech firm Kainos, which helped develop the online registration system with the Cabinet Office, said the biggest single spike in applications on 22 May coincided with the 10 oclock news, when 23,854 voters signed up.

Theresa May announced her intention to call a general election from the steps of Downing Street on 18 April.

On that day, 147,000 people registered online and 3,364 paper forms were submitted.

The total number of new registrations is likely to be even higher as the Kainos figures do not take into account the small proportion of paper applications.

However, Dr Caitlin Milazzo, politics professor at the University of Nottingham, told The Independent the sharp rise in voter registrations did not automatically translate into extra votes.

If all those voters actually vote, obviously it helps Labour a lot," she said.

"But it is easier to register to vote than it is to check the electoral roll, so a lot of people may already be registered to vote. We dont actually know how many of those people are new voters.

The second point is that these new voters have to be in the right places. If you interject half a million new voters, but they are spread across the country, it may not have an effect.

Under the first-past-the-post system, you can boost Labours vote share and not have an impact on the overhaul allocation of seats.

A recent report found that if 18-to-34-year-olds had turned out to the polling stations in similar proportions to the over-65s in the 2015 election, it would have been enough to deny David Cameron an overall majority.

Labour would claim election victory if only people under 40 voted, despite being behind overall, according to one YouGov poll.
Sinn Fein has been slammed for using Shankill bomber Sean Kelly as an election canvasser and activist while Britain reels from terror outrages.

Kelly has been seen visiting homes and handing out leaflets for the party in North Belfast  doors away from the home of a man whose murder he was questioned over last year.

Unionists last night said there was a horrifying and sickening disregard by Sinn Fein for the possibility that families affected by the Shankill bomb could be confronted on their own doorstep by the only man convicted of the 1993 atrocity that left nine Protestants dead.

They added that the presence of a convicted terrorist canvassing on the streets was vile in the wake of the recent terror attacks in Manchester and London.

Gina Murray lost her 13-year-old daughter Leanne in the Shankill blast.

They had been shopping together when Kelly and IRA colleague Thomas Begley carried the bomb into Frizzells fish shop, where it exploded prematurely.

Its disgusting they would even allow him to do that, she said about Kelly canvassing for Sinn Fein.

I wouldnt like to come face to face with him on my doorstep.

Ive managed to avoid him but the thought of him knocking on peoples doors just isnt right.

Sinn Fein shouldnt have somebody like that canvassing for them, but then again Sinn Fein have no respect for anybody, so it makes no difference.

If he came to my door it would be terrible, at my age I dont think I could stand something like that. So what would it do to others?

The DUPs Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, whose cousins Sam and Alex Donaldson were killed in IRA attacks in 1970 and 1985, criticised Sinn Fein over the move, saying it showed a complete lack of sensitivity.

He said: My party accepts that just because people have a past involvement in paramilitary activity does not mean they cannot have a future involvement in terms of political activity.

However, I do wonder about the wisdom of using people who have been convicted of multiple murders at this sensitive time for the UK.

And it is not just a question of showing sensitivity for the victims of the recent Manchester Arena and London Bridge attacks  those attacks will have brought up memories for those who have suffered terrorist trauma in Northern Ireland.

It is a horrifying possibility a family affected by the Shankill bombers acts could come face to face with him at election time.

Mr Donaldson added he found it rich Sinn Fein had made a show of sending its condolences to victims of the Manchester Arena and London Bridge outrages while allowing Kelly to go door to door for the party.

He added: I think Sinn Fein are quick to point the finger at terrorists in the UK. But on this occasion the finger is very much pointed at them.

Sinn Feins John Finucane, who is campaigning for the North Belfast Westminster seat in the area where Kelly has been seen canvassing, is the son of lawyer Pat Finucane. He witnessed his father being murdered by UFF terrorists in the family home in 1989.

During a debate on Monday between candidates, Mr Finucane was asked if he would give an unqualified condemnation of the terror carried out by the IRA and other groups in Northern Ireland. He replied that he condemned all acts of violence.

Kelly (43) was part of a two-man team who carried out the Shankill bombing on October 23, 1993, one of the most notorious atrocities of the Troubles.

The IRAs intention was to assassinate the UDA leadership, due to be meeting in a room above Frizzells fish shop.

Instead, their bomb exploded prematurely killing nine people in the shop, including Begley, and wounding 50 more.

The dead were: John Frizzell (63); George Williamson (63); Gillian Williamson (49); Sharon McBride (29); Michael Morrison (27); Evelyn Baird (27); Michelle Baird (7), Leanne Murray (13) and Wilma McKee (38).

It later emerged the UDA meeting above the shop had been cancelled.

Kelly was given nine life sentences for his role in the bombing but was released early in 2000 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.

He was jailed again in 2005 for about a month by then Secretary of State Peter Hain amid allegations he was involved in paramilitary activity and rioting.

Sinn Fein insisted he was trying to stop trouble at the time.

Kelly was arrested in February 2013 for questioning in relation to a punishment-style attack in which an 18-year-old man was shot in both legs, but was not charged.

He was arrested again in August 2015 and quizzed in the wake of the killing of ex-IRA man Kevin McGuigan, before being released without charge. Dad-of-nine McGuigan was shot dead in revenge for his alleged role in the May 2015 killing by criminals of the Provos former Belfast commander Jock Davison. As part of their investigation into the McGuigan execution, detectives took all of Kellys clothes for forensic testing.

After he was freed without charge, Kelly lost his job as a delivery driver at an Ardoyne supermarket.

Seeing that Kelly had no clothes or cash, sources say local dissident republicans held a whipround for him that raised around 500.

Kelly, who has since been linked to dissident mob the New IRA, was arrested most recently last year as part of the investigation into the murder of father-of-two Conor McKee (31).

He was found shot dead at his home off the Oldpark Road in north Belfast in January last year.

He suffered from a heroin addiction and was on bail for drug offences at the time of his death.

His family still live in the area where Kelly has been seen canvassing.

One resident, who did not wish to be named, last night said: Its sick Sean Kelly is openly canvassing for Sinn Fein at a time when terror attacks are hitting the UK.

Its even sicker hes doing it in an area where the family of a man whose murder he was questioned over still live.

Kelly last year complained his arrest over Mr McKees murder showed he was the victim of political policing.

He said he had met with Mr McKees family to say he had no part in the killing.

During a 2013 commemoration for fellow Shankill bomber Begley, Kelly said he was truly sorry for the loss of life and the injuries suffered that day and the sufferings the families have endured.

Neither Sinn Fein nor Mr Finucane returned calls or emails from the Belfast Telegraph offering them the chance to comment on Kellys involvement in their election drive.
Arlene Foster said her party did not seek endorsement from any paramilitary organisation

Democratic Unionist leader Arlene Foster has said her party fundamentally rejects the endorsement of anyone involved in paramilitarism.

Mrs Foster's comments came amid calls for the DUP to clarify its response to the backing of a body representing loyalist paramilitaries.

Sinn Fein and the Alliance Party had demanded that Mrs Foster distance herself from the public support of the Loyalist Communities Council (LCC), an umbrella group linked to the three main loyalist paramilitary groups - the UDA, UVF and Red Hand Commando.

The LCC issued a statement on Monday urging voters to back DUP and Ulster Unionist candidates in four battleground constituencies.

The council also heavily criticised the cross-community Alliance Party, and warned unionists not to vote for it, claiming that would drive a "nail into the coffin of the Union".

In response, UUP leader Robin Swann said he did not want the backing of organisations still involved in paramilitarism.

The call for clarity from the DUP came after two senior members gave somewhat different answers when pressed on whether they rejected the LCC backing.

While Sir Jeffrey Donaldson said he rejected the endorsement, Simon Hamilton stopped short of specifically rebuffing the council's statement, insisting the body had done good work to move paramilitaries away from violence.

On Tuesday night, Mrs Foster said: "I am aware, of course, of the LCC statement. We did not seek that statement, we did not seek endorsement from any paramilitary organisation and indeed I fundamentally reject an endorsement from anyone that's involved with paramilitarism or criminality."

Mrs Foster said there were people in the LCC " trying their best" to move loyalists away from their past. She said she would support those efforts.

Expand Close Party leader Arlene Foster and deputy leader Nigel Dodds at the launch of the DUP manifesto at the Old Courthouse in Antrim for the upcoming General Election. PA PA / Facebook

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Whatsapp Party leader Arlene Foster and deputy leader Nigel Dodds at the launch of the DUP manifesto at the Old Courthouse in Antrim for the upcoming General Election. PA

"I am certainly not going to walk away from loyalist communities in Northern Ireland, " she told UTV.

Last week, a UDA-linked paramilitary feud claimed its latest victim when Carrickfergus man Colin Horner, 35, was shot dead in a supermarket car park in Bangor, Co Down.

Prior to the LCC statement, last week a newspaper produced by the Ulster Political Research Group, which is politically aligned with the UDA, publicly endorsed the DUP's candidate in south Belfast, Emma Pengelly.
A Belfast high school at the centre of a highly critical report may need outside help after "serious and significant" concerns were raised. (David Davies/PA)

A Northern Ireland school at the centre of a highly critical report may need outside help after "serious and significant" concerns were raised.

A damning report revealed exam results well below the Northern Ireland average, inadequate planning, concerns about leadership roles, and pupils feeling unsafe, following an inspection at Glengormley High.

The Education and Training Inspectorate (ETI) report stated there was "limited confidence" in aspects of governance at the non-selective school on the outskirts of north Belfast.

The school faced controversy last year after it was accused of failing to address its bullying issues by current and former pupils.

The recent report said that the school was a high priority for a no notice inspection, and that it may require external support.

ETI said it will return to the school within weeks to monitor progress in how it is addressing issues.

As part of the long-running dispute over pay, teachers and principals in Northern Ireland are refusing to co-operate with ETI.

This includes teachers at Glengormley High School, and prior to its inspection the body was made aware of this, although ETI said it still has a statutory duty to report on the quality of education.

The report highlighted that pupils' exam results were "too low" and needed significant improvement at all levels.

It added that the curriculum planning and review process was not adequately meeting the needs of all the pupils.

It criticised the leadership and management in the use of their planning process and said it needed to be revisited and revised as a "matter of urgency".

It further stated that a high proportion of middle and senior leadership posts were either recent appointments or acting in a temporary capacity.

And it said a "significant minority" of pupils told inspectors they did not always feel safe in the school and were not confident that any issues raised will be resolved.

The Department of Education said: "The (areas) that were evaluated identified serious and significant concerns and under normal circumstances the department would place the school into the formal intervention process.

"In the absence of such an overall effectiveness conclusion, the school will not enter the process at this stage.

"The department will, however, be writing to the Education Authority (EA) to seek assurances that they will work with the school to bring about the required improvements identified."

A concerned parent of a pupil, who asked not to be named, said she no longer had confidence in the school.

The Newtownabbey mum said: "The results are going down and they are not offering as many subjects as they should be.

"I am tempted to move my child somewhere else if the school doesn't improve."

A statement from the school said it acknowledged the outcomes of the report.

"We are currently working closely with the EA to implement the recommendations in the report. Many of these recommendations have already been fully addressed and we continue to focus on the other areas identified for improvement," it added.

"Due to action short of a strike, the ETI inspectors were not able to observe the teaching, which the governors and staff believe to be of a very high quality.

"There is a strong sense of community in our school, with positive relationships between staff and pupils. We strive to provide the best possible education."
Armed police outside Borough Market, London, near the scene of last night's terrorist incident. Photo: Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire

Armed police on St Thomas Street, London, near the scene of last night's terrorist incident at Borough Market. Photo credit should read: Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire

Armed police are on Borough High Street after an incident around London Bridge (Dominic Lipinski/PA)

A helicopter lands on London Bridge as police are responding to three incidents in the capital, amid reports that a vehicle collided with pedestrians on London Bridge, Scotland Yard said. Photo: Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire

Police are responding to three incidents in the capital (Yui Mok/PA)

A paramedic rushes to the scene as police are dealing with a "major incident" at London Bridge. Photo: Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire

Police officers on Borough High Street as police are dealing with a "major incident" at London Bridge. Photo: Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire

Armed police are on the scene on London Bridge after an incident (Dominic Lipinski/PA)

Emergency personnel on London Bridge as police deal with an incident (Yui Mok/PA)

LONDON, ENGLAND - JUNE 04: Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May addresses the media as she makes a statement, following a COBRA meeting in response to last night's London terror attack, at 10 Downing Street on June 4, 2017 in London, England. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)

Police forensic officers work on London Bridge in London on June 4, 2017, as police continue their investigations following the June 3 terror attack. Seven people were killed in a terror attack on Saturday by three assailants on London Bridge and in the bustling Borough Market nightlife district, the chief of London's police force said on Sunday. / AFP PHOTO / Daniel LEAL-OLIVASDANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS/AFP/Getty Images

LONDON, ENGLAND - JUNE 04: Armed Police are seen at London Bridge near the scene of last night's terrorist attack on June 4, 2017 in London, England. Police continue to cordon off an area after responding to terrorist attacks on London Bridge and Borough Market where 6 people were killed and at least 48 injured last night. Three attackers were shot dead by armed police. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

Armed police officers patrol outside The Shard tower and London Bridge railway station in London on June 4, 2017, as police continue their investigations following the June 3 terror attack. Seven people were killed in a terror attack on Saturday by three assailants on London Bridge and in the bustling Borough Market nightlife district, the chief of London's police force said on Sunday. / AFP PHOTO / NIKLAS HALLE'NNIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP/Getty Images

Police vehicles block the acccess to London Bridge in London on June 4, 2017, as police continue their investigations following the June 3 terror attack. Seven people were killed in a terror attack on Saturday by three assailants on London Bridge and in the bustling Borough Market nightlife district, the chief of London's police force said on Sunday. / AFP PHOTO / Daniel LEAL-OLIVASDANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS/AFP/Getty Images

Armed police officers with police dogs patrol outside The Shard tower and London Bridge railway station in London on June 4, 2017, as police continue their investigations following the June 3 terror attack. Seven people were killed in a terror attack on Saturday by three assailants on London Bridge and in the bustling Borough Market nightlife district, the chief of London's police force said on Sunday. / AFP PHOTO / NIKLAS HALLE'NNIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP/Getty Images

A woman reacts after asking a Police officer to lay flowers near London Bridge in London on June 4, 2017, as a tribute to the victims of the June 3 terror attack. Seven people were killed in a terror attack on Saturday by three assailants on London Bridge and in the bustling Borough Market nightlife district, the chief of London's police force said on Sunday. / AFP PHOTO / Daniel LEAL-OLIVASDANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS/AFP/Getty Images

LONDON, ENGLAND - JUNE 04: A police officer looks at floral tributes near the scene of last night's terrorist attack on June 4, 2017 in London, England. Police continue to cordon off an area after responding to terrorist attacks on London Bridge and Borough Market where 7 people were killed and at least 48 injured last night. Three attackers were shot dead by armed police. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

Police forensic officers on London Bridge following last night's terrorist incident. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday June 4, 2017. See PA story POLICE Bridge. Photo credit should read: Andrew Matthews/PA Wire

A man lays flowers on London Bridge after it was reopened following the June 3rd terror attack on June 5, 2017 in London, England. Seven people were killed and at least 48 injured in terror attacks on London Bridge and Borough Market. Three attackers were shot dead by armed police. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)

An armed police officer is seen on London Bridge after it was reopened following the June 3rd terror attack on June 5, 2017 in London, England. Seven people were killed and at least 48 injured in terror attacks on London Bridge and Borough Market. Three attackers were shot dead by armed police. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)

A commuter looks at some of the floral tributes on London Bridge after it was reopened following the June 3rd terror attack on June 5, 2017 in London, England. Seven people were killed and at least 48 injured in terror attacks on London Bridge and Borough Market. Three attackers were shot dead by armed police. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)

(left to right) Fareed Rehman, Usman Saifi and Imam Zishan Ahmed at a vigil in Potters Fields Park, central London in honour of the London Bridge terror attack victims. PA

Abdul Qayum, Chief Imam of East London Mosque, speaking during a press conference at East London Mosque and London Muslim Centre in Whitechapel, east London, following Saturday's terrorist attack. PA

Flowers near London Bridge following Saturday's terrorist attack. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Monday June 5, 2017. See PA story POLICE Bridge. Photo credit should read: Yui Mok/PA Wire

Pupils from Eden Girls' School in Waltham Forest take part in a vigil for the victims of the London Bridge terror attacks, in Potters Fields Park on June 5, 2017 in London, England. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

A man stands near flowers layed at Potters Fields Park in London on June 5, 2017, after a vigil to commemorate the victims of the terror attack on London Bridge and at Borough Market that killed seven people on June 3. London police made a fresh round of arrests on June 5 after the country's third terror attack in less than three months as Prime Minister Theresa May came under mounting pressure over security three days ahead of elections. The aftermath of June 3 night's rampage, which left seven dead and dozens wounded, dominated the campaign trail. / AFP PHOTO / Chris J RatcliffeCHRIS J RATCLIFFE/AFP/Getty Images

A man stands kneels near flowers laid at Potters Fields Park in London on June 5, 2017, after a vigil to commemorate the victims of the terror attack on London Bridge and at Borough Market that killed seven people on June 3. AFP/Getty Images

Brexit Secretary David Davis has said there is no advantage for terrorists attempting to get into the UK from the Republic of Ireland.

It comes as it was revealed one of the London Bridge attackers moved to London from Dublin.

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Speaking to the BBC, David Davis, the minister responsible for handling the UK's departure from the European Union, said the intention was to maintain the border arrangements between the Republic and Northern Ireland.

"We want to have a very light touch open border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland," he said.

"If you are trying to get to Britain, into the UK, you can come through London. Vast numbers come through there.

"It is of no particular advantage to somebody trying to get into the United Kingdom via the Republic of Ireland."

Rachid Redouane was one of the terrorists who launched a murderous rampage around London Bridge and Borough Market on Saturday night.

The 30-year-old was a pastry chef who moved to Dublin in 2016 along with his wife Charisse O'Leary (38), who is originally from the UK.

They have an 18-month-old daughter together. Security sources believe the terror attacker lived in an apartment block in Rathmines, Co Dublin with his family over a period of time.

Seven people were killed while a further 48 were injured in the attack, for which terror group Islamic State (IS) has claimed responsibility.

The attackers were shot dead within eight minutes of the first police call-out.
Police at the scene of Bernard McGinleys shooting at a wedding in 2015

A man and a youth charged with the murder of a wedding guest in Co Fermanagh can be released from custody, the High Court ruled on Wednesday.

A judge rejected a prosecution appeal against the granting of bail to Patrick McGinley, 23, and a 17-year-old who cannot be named because of his age.

The pair are jointly accused of the murder of 63-year-old Bernard McGinley in February 2015.

The victim was shot dead outside St Mary's Church in Newtownbutler.

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He was gunned down in front of his wife and family as they attended a Traveller wedding ceremony.

Police have linked the killing to a wider feud within the community.

Two other men are also charged with the murder.

Patrick McGinley, of Lisfarrell in Edgeworthstown, Co Longford, and his teenage co-accused both surrendered themselves to the PSNI earlier this week.

They attended a police station in Northern Ireland knowing they were also to be charged with the murder, their lawyers stressed.

Both were granted bail when they appeared together at Omagh Magistrates' Court on Tuesday.

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But the Public Prosecution Service sought to overturn that decision at the High Court in Belfast.

It was claimed that the pair may flee if released from custody.

However, Mr Justice O'Hara dismissed the challenge to the bail order.

He ruled that the defendants can be released on strict terms, including sureties of 10,000 and 2,000.

They are to live at approved locations and must not leave Northern Ireland.
Five children who are part of the delayed inquiry were being treated at the Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children

An inquiry into the deaths of five children in Northern Ireland hospitals will publish its report in the autumn.

The chairman of the Hyponatraemia Inquiry, John O'Hara, QC, issued a statement on Tuesday confirming that the long awaited report will be delivered in a few months time.

The inquiry was set up in 2004 after allegations that fatal errors had been made by hospital staff administering intravenous fluids.

It investigated the deaths of four-year-old Adam Strain, who died in November 1995; Claire Roberts, who died aged nine in October 1996, and nine-year-old Raychel Ferguson, who died in June 2001.

It also examined events following the death of 17-month-old Lucy Crawford in April 2000, as well as specific issues arising from the treatment of 15-year-old Conor Mitchell in May 2003.

All five children were being treated at the Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children, although some had been transferred from hospitals in other parts of the region, when they died.

The report, which was due to be published in 2014, has been delayed a number of times.

Last autumn, Mr O'Hara announced another delay, saying hoped it would be published "as early as possible in 2017".

At that time, Alan Roberts, father of Claire: "The wait for publication of this report continues to cause us immense distress and mental torment."
A teenager allegedly robbed and murdered a man in a knife attack in Belfast city centre, a court has heard.

Callin Wilson is accused of stabbing Hazem Ahmed Ghreir to death last Sunday evening.

The 18-year-old defendant, of no fixed abode, was remanded into custody due to the unavailability of any potential bail address, during a hearing on Wednesday.

The victim, who was in his 30s and originally from Syria, was fatally wounded at Downshire Place, off Great Victoria Street.

Police are not treating his death as a hate crime.

Friends and relatives of Mr Ghreir attended Belfast Magistrates' Court as Wilson appeared in the dock to be charged with his murder.

The teenager also faces further counts of robbing the victim of a mobile phone, and possessing a blade or point in a public place.

Dressed in a grey sweatshirt, he spoke only when asked to confirm he understood the charges, replying: "Yes."

Although no further details were disclosed, a detective inspector said he could connect Wilson to the alleged offences.

Defence solicitor Brian Archer put no questions to the detective and did not apply for bail.

Mr Archer told the court: "This case is obviously a tragedy for all concerned.

"The family (of Mr Wilson) wish to offer their sincere sympathy to the Ghreir family."

He also expressed concern for his client's well-being while being held at a youth detention centre.

"I would ask the authorities at Hydebank to ensure he's closely monitored," the lawyer added.

District Judge Amanda Brady remanded Wilson in custody to appear again by video-link in four weeks time.
Irish police have arrested a second man in connection with the London Bridge terror outrage.

A man aged in his 30s was detained in Wexford at around 5pm yesterday as part of ongoing investigations into Irish links to the atrocity.

The suspect is being questioned about documentation connected to Rachid Redouane, one of the three killers behind the weekend attack.

Redouane married British woman Charisse Ann O'Leary in the Republic in November 2012 and had an address in Rathmines, Dublin.

A file is being prepared on another man arrested and later released without charge over the discovery in Limerick of identity documents in Redouane's name.

One of the London attackers, Khuram Shazad Butt (27), a Pakistan-born British citizen, was known to police and MI5.

He is alleged to have been an associate of jailed hate preacher Anjem Choudary.

The third London attacker has been named as Youssef Zaghba (22), an Italian national of Moroccan descent, who was living in east London. According to his mother, he became radicalised online.

Meanwhile, specially trained officers from the PSNI have been involved in providing help to police colleagues dealing with the recent terrorist attacks in England.

Ten officers from the PSNI's Casualty Bureau are supporting the Met by working on a dedicated helpline and dealing with the information flow to and from officers to worried relatives and friends.

Elsewhere, an assailant wielding a hammer and crying "This is for Syria" has been shot and wounded by police outside Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris.
Flowers left on London Bridge for the victims of the terrorist attack on Saturday.

Gardai have arrested a second man in connection with the London Bridge terror outrage.

A man aged in his 30s was detained in Wexford at around 5pm on Tuesday as part of ongoing investigations into Irish links to the atrocity.

The suspect is being questioned about documentation connected to Rachid Redouane, one of the three killers behind the weekend attack.

Redouane married British woman Charisse Ann O'Leary in Ireland in November 2012 and gave an address in Rathmines, Dublin.

He left the country at some point and is believed to have lived in Ireland again in 2015.

Gardai confirmed a suspect was being held at Wexford Garda station in connection with documentation linked to Redouane under the Theft and Fraud Offences Act.

He can be questioned for up to 24 hours

A case file is being prepared on another man who was arrested and later released without charge over the discovery in Limerick of identity documents in Redouane's name.

The Director of Public Prosecutions will be asked to assess if he should be charged in relation to offences under theft and fraud laws.

Redouane is known to have lived in Ireland at different times over the last number of years.

He married Ms O'Leary at the office of the Civil Registration Service at Sir Patrick Dun's Hospital in Dublin.

It is not clear when he came to the Republic or how long he stayed but it is believed he used Irish jurisdiction to get a European Union permit which allowed him to be in the UK.

He is also thought to have travelled to Morocco after leaving Ireland before settling in the UK.

Redouane returned to Ireland in 2015, again for an unknown length of time, but Taoiseach Enda Kenny said he was not one of a small number of radicals under surveillance in Ireland.

A security source described the killer as having "extensive immigration history related to the UK".
The sister of Seamus Ruddy, one of the 'Disappeared' during the Troubles, has said her prayers have been answered after the Newry man's body was finally repatriated yesterday.

Mr Ruddy was abducted from Paris in 1985 by the INLA, who killed him and hid his body in the forest of Pont-de-l'Arche near Rouen.

His body was finally found on May 6 this year after days of searching by the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims' Remains (ICLVR.)

It's understood the plane carrying his remains arrived in Dublin yesterday evening.

Mr Ruddy's sister Anne Morgan campaigned for years to have her brother's remains found.

"We have waited over 30 years to get Seamus home and to lay him to rest," she said yesterday.

"We never gave up hope despite some very dark times and now our prayers have been answered."

ICLVR commissioners Mr Frank Murray and Sir Ken Bloomfield said in a statement that Mr Ruddy's remains would be taken to Dublin City Mortuary and released to the family when the Dublin Coroner, Dr Myra Cullinane, fulfilled her legal obligations.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with the Ruddy family and we would ask that their privacy is respected as they prepare to lay Seamus to rest," they said.

Ms Morgan also appealed for information in relation to the three outstanding Disappeared cases: Joe Lynskey, Columba McVeigh and Robert Nairac.

Mr Ruddy is due to be brought back to Newry to be waked on Thursday, June 15 with the funeral to be held on Saturday, June 17 at St Catherine's Dominican Chapel, Dominic Street, Newry.
Theresa May works on her campaign bus during a tour of Britain (Stefan Rousseau/PA)

On the campaign trail today:

Expand Close Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn gives a speech in Telford (Ben Birchall/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook

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As the battle for No 10 enters its final hours the party leaders will make a last dash around the country for votes. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn will attend six rallies from Glasgow in the north to London in the south via North Wales. After kicking off with an early morning trip to a London meat market with husband Philip, Theresa May will cross the country from east to west with events across the Midlands. Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron will attend events in the South East, while SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon will address voters from Edinburgh.

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National security looks set to dominate the campaign into polling day and beyond. The Daily Mail, The Sun and Daily Express urge voters to back the Conservative leader, with the Mail branding Mr Corbyn and allies John McDonnell and Diane Abbott apologists for terror. The Guardian carries Mrs Mays declaration that she is prepared to rip up human rights laws to impose new restrictions on terrorism suspects, while Mr Corbyn tackles claims he is soft on security in the Daily Mirror.

Whos saying what?

Expand Close Tim Farron said Theresa May "will get us a bad Brexit deal" (Victoria Jones/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook

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Vote Labour  butchers shout to Mrs May as she visited Smithfield market in central London.

Have no doubt, Theresa May will get us a bad Brexit deal  and I mean dementia tax bad  from a speech Mr Farron will deliver in Oxford.

My plan to deliver that brighter future will make sure all four corners of our United Kingdom benefit from the opportunities Brexit will bring  Mrs May.
Rachid Redouane was one of the London terror attackers (Metropolitan Police/PA)

Families of the London Bridge attackers have expressed their disgust at the murderous rampage which left eight people dead on Saturday.

Both the relatives of Khuram Butt and the ex-partner of Rachid Redouane distanced themselves from the extremists, saying the atrocity had left them shocked.

Their condemnation came as footage emerged online appearing to show the moment armed police gunned down the three knife-wielding terrorists.

In the CCTV, the trio can be seen rushing at a passing pedestrian near Borough Market, raining down a series of blows while police cars approach.

The marksmen are charged as they train their guns on the attackers, with one knifeman, who appears to be Butt, swinging his weapon wildly towards an officer.

A volley of gunfire in unleashed during the melee and all three perpetrators are felled within seconds, the footage shows, eight minutes after the emergency services were first called.

During the confrontation, brave passers-by can be seen throwing missiles in the direction of the gang and their last victim is shown stumbling away at the end of the clip.

Separate video published by The Times shows the conspirators meeting in the dead of night on May 29, five days before the attack.

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According to the paper, the images were captured near Butts gym, the Ummah Fitness Centre in Ilford, east London, and show Redouane placing his phone on the floor, before the men move down the road for 10 minutes.

Butt wore an Arsenal shirt and a fake suicide belt during his bloody spree and was later pictured sprawled on the concrete outside the Wheatsheaf pub.

On Wednesday, the 27-year-olds family said they were shocked and appalled by his actions.

In a statement, they wrote: As a family we are shocked and appalled by the actions of Khuram and his associates.

We strongly condemn these actions.

Our heartfelt thoughts and prayers are with the victims and families at this time.

Now more than ever we need to work together to stop the actions of the mindless few who claim to be acting in the name of Islam.

As the fallout from the atrocity continued, all eight people killed in the massacre were identified, while a further 10 victims remained in a critical condition.

The ex-partner of 30-year-old Redouane earlier spoke of her shock at discovering he had inflicted the outrage on the capital.

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Charisse OLeary said she has shed many tears for the people caught up in this horrific incident.
Armed police outside Borough Market, London, near the scene of last night's terrorist incident. Photo: Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire

Armed police on St Thomas Street, London, near the scene of last night's terrorist incident at Borough Market. Photo credit should read: Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire

Armed police are on Borough High Street after an incident around London Bridge (Dominic Lipinski/PA)

A helicopter lands on London Bridge as police are responding to three incidents in the capital, amid reports that a vehicle collided with pedestrians on London Bridge, Scotland Yard said. Photo: Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire

Police are responding to three incidents in the capital (Yui Mok/PA)

A paramedic rushes to the scene as police are dealing with a "major incident" at London Bridge. Photo: Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire

Police officers on Borough High Street as police are dealing with a "major incident" at London Bridge. Photo: Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire

Armed police are on the scene on London Bridge after an incident (Dominic Lipinski/PA)

Emergency personnel on London Bridge as police deal with an incident (Yui Mok/PA)

LONDON, ENGLAND - JUNE 04: Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May addresses the media as she makes a statement, following a COBRA meeting in response to last night's London terror attack, at 10 Downing Street on June 4, 2017 in London, England. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)

Police forensic officers work on London Bridge in London on June 4, 2017, as police continue their investigations following the June 3 terror attack. Seven people were killed in a terror attack on Saturday by three assailants on London Bridge and in the bustling Borough Market nightlife district, the chief of London's police force said on Sunday. / AFP PHOTO / Daniel LEAL-OLIVASDANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS/AFP/Getty Images

LONDON, ENGLAND - JUNE 04: Armed Police are seen at London Bridge near the scene of last night's terrorist attack on June 4, 2017 in London, England. Police continue to cordon off an area after responding to terrorist attacks on London Bridge and Borough Market where 6 people were killed and at least 48 injured last night. Three attackers were shot dead by armed police. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

Armed police officers patrol outside The Shard tower and London Bridge railway station in London on June 4, 2017, as police continue their investigations following the June 3 terror attack. Seven people were killed in a terror attack on Saturday by three assailants on London Bridge and in the bustling Borough Market nightlife district, the chief of London's police force said on Sunday. / AFP PHOTO / NIKLAS HALLE'NNIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP/Getty Images

Police vehicles block the acccess to London Bridge in London on June 4, 2017, as police continue their investigations following the June 3 terror attack. Seven people were killed in a terror attack on Saturday by three assailants on London Bridge and in the bustling Borough Market nightlife district, the chief of London's police force said on Sunday. / AFP PHOTO / Daniel LEAL-OLIVASDANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS/AFP/Getty Images

Armed police officers with police dogs patrol outside The Shard tower and London Bridge railway station in London on June 4, 2017, as police continue their investigations following the June 3 terror attack. Seven people were killed in a terror attack on Saturday by three assailants on London Bridge and in the bustling Borough Market nightlife district, the chief of London's police force said on Sunday. / AFP PHOTO / NIKLAS HALLE'NNIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP/Getty Images

A woman reacts after asking a Police officer to lay flowers near London Bridge in London on June 4, 2017, as a tribute to the victims of the June 3 terror attack. Seven people were killed in a terror attack on Saturday by three assailants on London Bridge and in the bustling Borough Market nightlife district, the chief of London's police force said on Sunday. / AFP PHOTO / Daniel LEAL-OLIVASDANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS/AFP/Getty Images

LONDON, ENGLAND - JUNE 04: A police officer looks at floral tributes near the scene of last night's terrorist attack on June 4, 2017 in London, England. Police continue to cordon off an area after responding to terrorist attacks on London Bridge and Borough Market where 7 people were killed and at least 48 injured last night. Three attackers were shot dead by armed police. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

Police forensic officers on London Bridge following last night's terrorist incident. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday June 4, 2017. See PA story POLICE Bridge. Photo credit should read: Andrew Matthews/PA Wire

A man lays flowers on London Bridge after it was reopened following the June 3rd terror attack on June 5, 2017 in London, England. Seven people were killed and at least 48 injured in terror attacks on London Bridge and Borough Market. Three attackers were shot dead by armed police. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)

An armed police officer is seen on London Bridge after it was reopened following the June 3rd terror attack on June 5, 2017 in London, England. Seven people were killed and at least 48 injured in terror attacks on London Bridge and Borough Market. Three attackers were shot dead by armed police. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)

A commuter looks at some of the floral tributes on London Bridge after it was reopened following the June 3rd terror attack on June 5, 2017 in London, England. Seven people were killed and at least 48 injured in terror attacks on London Bridge and Borough Market. Three attackers were shot dead by armed police. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)

(left to right) Fareed Rehman, Usman Saifi and Imam Zishan Ahmed at a vigil in Potters Fields Park, central London in honour of the London Bridge terror attack victims. PA

Abdul Qayum, Chief Imam of East London Mosque, speaking during a press conference at East London Mosque and London Muslim Centre in Whitechapel, east London, following Saturday's terrorist attack. PA

Flowers near London Bridge following Saturday's terrorist attack. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Monday June 5, 2017. See PA story POLICE Bridge. Photo credit should read: Yui Mok/PA Wire

Pupils from Eden Girls' School in Waltham Forest take part in a vigil for the victims of the London Bridge terror attacks, in Potters Fields Park on June 5, 2017 in London, England. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

A man stands near flowers layed at Potters Fields Park in London on June 5, 2017, after a vigil to commemorate the victims of the terror attack on London Bridge and at Borough Market that killed seven people on June 3. London police made a fresh round of arrests on June 5 after the country's third terror attack in less than three months as Prime Minister Theresa May came under mounting pressure over security three days ahead of elections. The aftermath of June 3 night's rampage, which left seven dead and dozens wounded, dominated the campaign trail. / AFP PHOTO / Chris J RatcliffeCHRIS J RATCLIFFE/AFP/Getty Images

A man stands kneels near flowers laid at Potters Fields Park in London on June 5, 2017, after a vigil to commemorate the victims of the terror attack on London Bridge and at Borough Market that killed seven people on June 3. AFP/Getty Images

The death toll from the London Bridge terror attack has risen to eight after police searching for a French man missing since Saturday recovered a body from the River Thames.

Xavier Thomas, 45, is thought to have been struck by the terrorists' van on the bridge and witnesses reported him being thrown into the water.

The body was recovered near Limehouse, downstream of London Bridge, at around 7.45pm on Tuesday by specialist officers from the marine police unit.

Scotland Yard said formal identification had not yet taken place, but Mr Thomas' next of kin had been informed.

James McMullan, 32, from Hackney, Canadian Christine Archibald, 30, Australian nurse Kirsty Boden, 28, and Alexandre Pigeard, 27, have already been named among the dead.

Nathalie Cros Brohan, sister of Mr Thomas's girlfriend Christine Delcros, posted on Facebook on Wednesday morning that the family "fear the worst".

Mr Thomas had been missing since he was caught up in the attack with Ms Delcros.

The couple, who were visiting London for the weekend, were walking south over London Bridge around the time the attack started, according to police.

Ms Delcros was seriously injured by the van, although her condition in hospital has stabilised, her family said.

The announcement came as UK authorities faced new questions over how one of the London Bridge attackers was let into Britain despite being on a security watch list.

Youssef Zaghba had been flagged to British intelligence services after telling Italian police "I'm going to be a terrorist" when he was reportedly stopped trying to travel to Syria.

Italian prosecutor Giuseppe Amato said there was not enough evidence to arrest or charge the 22-year-old when he was caught at Bologna airport last year.

He said Zaghba was always tracked by Italian intelligence officers while in the country and that UK authorities were informed.

"We did everything we could have done, but there weren't elements of proof that he was a terrorist," he added.

The youngest of the attackers, an Italian national of Moroccan descent, he was allowed to enter the UK and had been living in east London.

Counter-terror agencies were already under intense scrutiny after it was revealed Khuram Shazad Butt, 27, and Rachid Redouane, 30, were also known to security services.

The trio killed eight and injured 48 in their rampage around London Bridge and Borough Market on Saturday night.
Flowers left on London Bridge for the victims of the terrorist attack (Dominic Lipinski/PA)

Identities of the London Bridge attack victims have continued to emerge as police launched a missing persons appeal for a French tourist who remains unaccounted for.

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:: Canadian Christine Archibald, 30, was the first victim to be named.

She died in her fiances arms after being struck by the speeding van on London Bridge.

Her family said she would have had no understanding of the callous cruelty that caused her death.

Expand Close James McMullan was last seen outside the Barrowboy And Banker pub Press Association Images / Facebook

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:: James McMullan, 32, from Hackney, was last seen outside the Barrowboy And Banker pub and his sister said police have told her his bank card was found on a body at the scene of the attack.

Melissa McMullan described her brother as an inspiration and told Sky News: While our pain will never diminish, it is important for us all to carry on with our lives in direct opposition to those who wish to destroy us, and remember that hatred is the refuge of small-minded individuals and will only breed more.

She added that police told her they were unable to formally identify him until the coroners report is released.

:: Alexandre Pigeard, 27, has been named by French media as one of those killed.

Brittany news outlet Le Telegramme reported an account from Boro Bistro manager Vincent Le Berre, who told how his colleague, Mr Pigeard, was attacked by a terrorist in the bar near Borough Market on Saturday night.

I managed to escape him, but my friend Alexandre did not have that chance. He was hit in the neck with a knife, he said.

According to French media, Mr Pigeard was from Caen, in Normandy, but had been living in London for more than two years.

Expand Close Sebastien Belanger was last seen drinking at the Boro Bistro near Borough Market (Damien Lecomte/PA) Press Association Images / Facebook

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Whatsapp Sebastien Belanger was last seen drinking at the Boro Bistro near Borough Market (Damien Lecomte/PA)

:: French chef Sebastien Belanger, 36, is thought to be among those who died.

He was drinking at the Boro Bistro near Borough Market when the area came under attack.

Originally from Angers, western France, Mr Belanger had lived in London for several years and worked at the Coq dArgent restaurant in the City, the Daily Telegraph reported.

French media have reported that his family are travelling to London on Wednesday to identify a body which is believed to be his.

Expand Close Kirsty Boden ran towards danger in an effort to help people (Metropolitan Police/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook

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:: Australian nurse Kirsty Boden was killed after she ran towards danger to help people, her family said.

Relatives said the 28-year-old was loved and adored by her family, friends and boyfriend, while colleagues at Guys and St Thomas Hospital in central London described her as one in a million.

As she ran towards danger, in an effort to help people on the bridge, Kirsty sadly lost her life, her family said in a statement. We are so proud of Kirstys brave actions which demonstrate how selfless, caring and heroic she was.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told Melbourne Radio 3AW Ms Boden was killed by cowardly, vicious terrorists.

:: Family and friends of Australian Sara Zelenak have said she died in the attack as they posted tributes to her online.

Her father, Mark Wallace, shared a video of his daughter and wrote: I really miss that funny little laugh.

Friend Elle Bishop said on Facebook: I find solace in the fact that the hate that saw you taken from us, you have never felt inside, making you a remarkable young woman.

Ms Zelenak has not been seen since the attack after she became separated from friends on Saturday night.

Two Australians were confirmed among the dead by the countrys minister for foreign affairs, Julie Bishop.

Meanwhile the grim wait continues for the families and friends searching for loved ones since the attack:

:: Spanish banker Ignacio Echeverria, 39, remains missing after trying to help an injured woman in Borough Market, his father said, based on the account of his sons friend who was at the scene.

Joaquin Echeverria told the Associated Press that the family were flying to London on Tuesday to join other relatives, adding that authorities had not shared any information with them.

The sons employer, HSBC, has provided the services of a private detective to help in the hunt for information.

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:: Xavier Thomas has been missing since he was caught up in the attack with his girlfriend, Christine Delcros.

The French couple, who were visiting London for the weekend, were walking south over London Bridge around the time the attack started, according to police.

Ms Delcros was seriously injured when she was struck by the van, while witnesses accounts suggest Mr Thomas was thrown into the River Thames by the impact, Scotland Yard said.

Nathalie Cros Brohan said on Facebook on Monday that her sister, Ms Delcros, had been taken to hospital, while Mr Thomas was yet to be found.

On Tuesday the Metropolitan Police issued an appeal for help to find the 45-year-old as Marine Policing Unit and Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) teams searched the river.

Anyone who has seen Mr Thomas since June 3 or was present on the bridge at the time is asked to ring police on 0800 0961 233.

Expand Close Emergency personnel on London Bridge (Yui Mok/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook

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Dozens of others were injured, including four police officers:

:: A British Transport Police (BTP) officer was stabbed in the head, face and leg after taking on the knifemen armed only with his baton.

:: An off-duty Metropolitan Police officer was in hospital with serious injuries after he confronted the attackers with no weapon.

:: Two other Met officers, who were both on duty, received less serious injuries during the rampage.

:: New Zealander Oliver Dowling, 32, from Christchurch, is reported to have been left in a coma after being stabbed in the face, neck and stomach.

It was reported that his girlfriend, Marie Bondeville, was also injured.

:: Sunday Express business editor Geoff Ho was left in intensive care after being stabbed in the throat when he tried to help a wounded bouncer.

He has tweeted: Thank you every one for the best wishes. I got out of surgery yesterday and am on the mend.

:: Two Australians were stabbed in the neck, premier Mr Turnbull said.

Candice Hedge underwent treatment in St Thomas Hospital, while Andrew Morrison received stitches for a wound and was on his way home to Australia.

:: Daniel ONeill, 23, was left with a 7in wound from his stomach to his back and was saved by a friend who applied a tourniquet and took him downstairs in a pub.

:: Millwall FC fan Roy Larner, 47, told the Sun he was knifed eight times as terrorists targeted drinkers at the Black & Blue restaurant and bar.

Speaking to the paper from hospital, he said he tried to fight them off with his bare hands, adding: They got me in my head, chest and both hands. There was blood everywhere.
Rachid Redouane was one of the London terror attackers (Metropolitan Police/PA)

Charisse O'Leary, the ex-partner of London Bridge terrorist Rachid Redouane has condemned his actions.

Miss O'Leary said she has "shed many tears for the people caught up in this horrific incident". She married Redouane in at Sir Patrick Duns Hospital, Dublin in 2012 and lived with him in Rathmines.

She said in a statement released to the Press Association: "I am deeply shocked, saddened and numbed by the actions of my ex-partner who has killed and injured so many innocent people."

Miss O'Leary said she had been separated from Redouane for six months.

"We have a beautiful young daughter, that for the last six months has been our only bond and reason for contact," she continued.

"My thoughts and efforts now are with trying to bring up my daughter with the knowledge that some day I will have to try and explain to her why her father did what he did.

"I wish to make it absolutely clear, so there can be no doubt, I condemn his actions and do not support the beliefs he held that led to him committing this atrocity."

Expand Close Rachid Redouane used to live in Grosvenor Square, Rathmines, Dublin / Facebook

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Whatsapp Rachid Redouane used to live in Grosvenor Square, Rathmines, Dublin

Redouane was not involved in any terror cell in the Republic during his time there, Garda Commissioner Noirin O'Sullivan has said. But she accepted he went through a "normal process of immigration" in Dublin.

Redouane, who claimed to be Moroccan-Libyan, had previously been refused asylum in the UK in 2009.

His marriage to Miss O'Leary, a UK citizen, gave him an EU travel permit and has prompted claims that the Republic of Ireland is being used by jihadis as a back door into Britain.

Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close A man stands kneels near flowers laid at Potters Fields Park in London on June 5, 2017, after a vigil to commemorate the victims of the terror attack on London Bridge and at Borough Market that killed seven people on June 3. AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images A man stands near flowers layed at Potters Fields Park in London on June 5, 2017, after a vigil to commemorate the victims of the terror attack on London Bridge and at Borough Market that killed seven people on June 3. London police made a fresh round of arrests on June 5 after the country's third terror attack in less than three months as Prime Minister Theresa May came under mounting pressure over security three days ahead of elections. The aftermath of June 3 night's rampage, which left seven dead and dozens wounded, dominated the campaign trail. / AFP PHOTO / Chris J RatcliffeCHRIS J RATCLIFFE/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Pupils from Eden Girls' School in Waltham Forest take part in a vigil for the victims of the London Bridge terror attacks, in Potters Fields Park on June 5, 2017 in London, England. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images) Getty Images Flowers near London Bridge following Saturday's terrorist attack. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Monday June 5, 2017. See PA story POLICE Bridge. Photo credit should read: Yui Mok/PA Wire PA Abdul Qayum, Chief Imam of East London Mosque, speaking during a press conference at East London Mosque and London Muslim Centre in Whitechapel, east London, following Saturday's terrorist attack. PA PA (left to right) Fareed Rehman, Usman Saifi and Imam Zishan Ahmed at a vigil in Potters Fields Park, central London in honour of the London Bridge terror attack victims. PA PA A commuter looks at some of the floral tributes on London Bridge after it was reopened following the June 3rd terror attack on June 5, 2017 in London, England. Seven people were killed and at least 48 injured in terror attacks on London Bridge and Borough Market. Three attackers were shot dead by armed police. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images) Getty Images An armed police officer is seen on London Bridge after it was reopened following the June 3rd terror attack on June 5, 2017 in London, England. Seven people were killed and at least 48 injured in terror attacks on London Bridge and Borough Market. Three attackers were shot dead by armed police. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images) Getty Images A man lays flowers on London Bridge after it was reopened following the June 3rd terror attack on June 5, 2017 in London, England. Seven people were killed and at least 48 injured in terror attacks on London Bridge and Borough Market. Three attackers were shot dead by armed police. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images) Getty Images Police forensic officers on London Bridge following last night's terrorist incident. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday June 4, 2017. See PA story POLICE Bridge. Photo credit should read: Andrew Matthews/PA Wire PA LONDON, ENGLAND - JUNE 04: A police officer looks at floral tributes near the scene of last night's terrorist attack on June 4, 2017 in London, England. Police continue to cordon off an area after responding to terrorist attacks on London Bridge and Borough Market where 7 people were killed and at least 48 injured last night. Three attackers were shot dead by armed police. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images) Getty Images A woman reacts after asking a Police officer to lay flowers near London Bridge in London on June 4, 2017, as a tribute to the victims of the June 3 terror attack. Seven people were killed in a terror attack on Saturday by three assailants on London Bridge and in the bustling Borough Market nightlife district, the chief of London's police force said on Sunday. / AFP PHOTO / Daniel LEAL-OLIVASDANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Armed police officers with police dogs patrol outside The Shard tower and London Bridge railway station in London on June 4, 2017, as police continue their investigations following the June 3 terror attack. Seven people were killed in a terror attack on Saturday by three assailants on London Bridge and in the bustling Borough Market nightlife district, the chief of London's police force said on Sunday. / AFP PHOTO / NIKLAS HALLE'NNIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Police vehicles block the acccess to London Bridge in London on June 4, 2017, as police continue their investigations following the June 3 terror attack. Seven people were killed in a terror attack on Saturday by three assailants on London Bridge and in the bustling Borough Market nightlife district, the chief of London's police force said on Sunday. / AFP PHOTO / Daniel LEAL-OLIVASDANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Armed police officers patrol outside The Shard tower and London Bridge railway station in London on June 4, 2017, as police continue their investigations following the June 3 terror attack. Seven people were killed in a terror attack on Saturday by three assailants on London Bridge and in the bustling Borough Market nightlife district, the chief of London's police force said on Sunday. / AFP PHOTO / NIKLAS HALLE'NNIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images LONDON, ENGLAND - JUNE 04: Armed Police are seen at London Bridge near the scene of last night's terrorist attack on June 4, 2017 in London, England. Police continue to cordon off an area after responding to terrorist attacks on London Bridge and Borough Market where 6 people were killed and at least 48 injured last night. Three attackers were shot dead by armed police. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images) Getty Images Police forensic officers work on London Bridge in London on June 4, 2017, as police continue their investigations following the June 3 terror attack. Seven people were killed in a terror attack on Saturday by three assailants on London Bridge and in the bustling Borough Market nightlife district, the chief of London's police force said on Sunday. / AFP PHOTO / Daniel LEAL-OLIVASDANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images LONDON, ENGLAND - JUNE 04: Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May addresses the media as she makes a statement, following a COBRA meeting in response to last night's London terror attack, at 10 Downing Street on June 4, 2017 in London, England. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images) Getty Images Emergency personnel on London Bridge as police deal with an incident (Yui Mok/PA) PA Wire/PA Images Armed police are on the scene on London Bridge after an incident (Dominic Lipinski/PA) PA Wire/PA Images People run down Borough High Street to flee (Dominic Lipinski/PA) PA Wire/PA Images Police officers on Borough High Street as police are dealing with a "major incident" at London Bridge. Photo: Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire PA A paramedic rushes to the scene as police are dealing with a "major incident" at London Bridge. Photo: Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire PA Police are responding to three incidents in the capital (Yui Mok/PA) A helicopter lands on London Bridge as police are responding to three incidents in the capital, amid reports that a vehicle collided with pedestrians on London Bridge, Scotland Yard said. Photo: Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire PA Emergency personnel tend to the wounded on London Bridge. Photo: Yui Mok/PA Wire PA Armed police are on Borough High Street after an incident around London Bridge (Dominic Lipinski/PA) PA Wire/PA Images Armed police on St Thomas Street, London, near the scene of last night's terrorist incident at Borough Market. Photo credit should read: Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire PA PA Wire/PA Images PA Wire/PA Images AP/PA Images PA Wire/PA Images Armed police outside Borough Market, London, near the scene of last night's terrorist incident. Photo: Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire PA / Facebook

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Whatsapp A man stands kneels near flowers laid at Potters Fields Park in London on June 5, 2017, after a vigil to commemorate the victims of the terror attack on London Bridge and at Borough Market that killed seven people on June 3. AFP/Getty Images

"The indications at this time are that this individual lived in this country for a short period of time, going through a normal process of immigration," Ms O'Sullivan said during an international policing conference in Dublin.

"Thereafter, he left and went with his wife, who is a UK citizen, to the UK and we are satisfied with the inquiries we have made at this time, that there is no link to terrorism in this country.

"We are also satisfied from the indications from our partners (in the UK) that that is also the case."

Garda inquiries into Redouane's time in Ireland currently centre around suspected immigration offences.

Two people believed to have documents linked to the killer have been arrested.

One Garda source said there is no knowledge of Redouane being involved with other international terror suspects who have been under surveillance in Ireland, and that he lived an apparently normal life during his time in Dublin.

But the source added that investigators were "still shaking the tree".

Ms O'Sullivan defended Ireland's security response to the international terror threat, saying there had been a number of arrests and deportations in recent times.

A number of individuals are also being "monitored very, very closely" and some of them are before the courts.

The Garda chief said her force was working with UK counterparts within an hour of the London Bridge attacks at the weekend.

She also pointed to a beefing-up of armed police in Ireland, with numbers in the armed support unit to increase by a third by the end of this month.

"There will be more visible, overt armed patrols," she said.

"People shouldn't be afraid of that. That is actually to make sure the public are safe."

Ms O'Sullivan said counter-terrorism investigations around the country "make sure we know exactly what is happening in communities".

Irish detectives are attempting to trace whether another of the London Bridge attackers, Khuram Shazad Butt, had spent any time in Dublin.

It is understood some members of the Muslim community in Dublin have been contacted.

Shaykh Dr Umar Al-Qadri, imam of the Islamic Centre of Ireland, said he thought he recognised the killer's face after seeing police pictures but later said he had no idea why he thinks the face is familiar.
Christopher Wray is Donald Trump's pick to be the next FBI director (Lawrence Jackson/AP)

US President Donald Trump has expressed confidence in his pick for FBI director.

Speaking to reporters in Cincinnati, he said that Christopher Wray is "gonna be great".

Mr Trump announced his plans to nominate Mr Wray, a former Justice Department official under George W Bush, on Twitter earlier on Wednesday.

It comes one day before the FBI director that Mr Trump fired last month, James Comey, was to testify in public on Capitol Hill for the first time since his dismissal.

Mr Trump, in a statement later on Wednesday, called Mr Wray "an impeccably qualified individual".

"I know that he will again serve his country as a fierce guardian of the law and model of integrity once the Senate confirms him to lead the FBI," he said.

Mr Wray said he was honoured to be selected.

"I look forward to serving the American people with integrity as the leader of what I know firsthand to be an extraordinary group of men and women who have dedicated their careers to protecting this country," he said.

Mr Wray rose to head the department's criminal division in the Bush administration and oversaw investigations into corporate fraud, at a time when Mr Comey was deputy attorney general.

He took charge of a task force of prosecutors and FBI agents created to investigate the Enron scandal.

Mr Wray also played an important role after September 11, providing oversight as the FBI and Justice Department shifted their focus to counter-terrorism and performing "superbly during the incredibly intense period", according to the current attorney general Jeff Sessions.

Mr Sessions said in a statement that Mr Wray "combines a brilliant legal mind, outstanding accomplishments and a proven record of public service".

Mr Wray is a traditional choice for the job. Mr Trump had considered current and former politicians, including former senator Joe Lieberman, and some FBI agents worried that Mr Trump would try to politicise the bureau.

Thomas O'Connor, president of the FBI Agents Association, said the group looked forward to meeting with Mr Wray and learning about his views on the bureau and the challenges agents face.

House Speaker Paul Ryan said Mr Wray seemed like "the perfect kind of person" for the important job.

Mr Ryan said he favoured a "career person" and that Mr Wray "certainly seems to fit that bill".

Reaction to Mr Wray was slow on Capitol Hill as lawmakers were not given advance notice and few in Congress know him.

Presidents traditionally give members of the same party a heads up about such an announcement, allowing lawmakers time to prepare positive statements about the nominee.

A top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, said Mr Wray had "impeccable credentials, vast experience and strong support across the board".

A GOP colleague was more cautious.

"With the many threats that the US faces domestically and internationally, we need a strong FBI director," said Oklahoma Senator James Lankford, a member of the Senate intelligence committee.

"In the coming weeks, we will evaluate Christopher Wray's qualifications to lead the FBI and his plans for our security and law enforcement."

The timing of Mr Trump's announcement appeared to be an effort to redirect attention on the eve of Mr Comey's testimony before the Senate intelligence committee.

Mr Comey is expected to describe his encounters with Mr Trump in the weeks before his May 9 firing.

He could offer new details regarding discussions with Mr Trump about the federal investigation into Russia's election meddling and possible co-ordination with the Trump campaign.

The White House and its allies have been looking for ways to offset that potentially damaging testimony and have been working on strategies aimed at undermining Mr Comey's credibility.

AP
Security personnel take position in front of Iran's parliament building after an assault by several attackers, in Tehran, Iran, Wednesday, June 7, 2017. (AP Photo/Fars News Agency, Omid Vahabzadeh)

A child is lowered from a window in the Iranian parliament building following an attack on June 7, 2017 in Tehran, Iran. (Photo by Omid Vahabzadeh/Getty Images)

Members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard secure the area outside the Iranian parliament during an attack on the complex in the capital Tehran on June 7, 2017. AFP/Getty Images

Donald Trump has said that Iran has fallen victim to the 'evil' it promoted following dual attacks in Tehran that killed at least 12 people and wounded more than 40.

In a statement the US president said: "We grieve and pray for the innocent victims of the terrorist attacks in Iran, and for the Iranian people, who are going through such challenging times.

"We underscore that states that sponsor terrorism risk falling victim to the evil they promote."

The violence began in mid-morning when assailants with Kalashnikov rifles and explosives stormed the parliament complex where a legislative session had been in progress.

The siege lasted for hours, and one of the attackers blew himself up inside, according to Iran's state TV.

Images circulating in Iranian media showed gunmen held rifles near the windows of the complex.

One showed a toddler being handed through a first-floor window to safety outside as an armed man looks on.

Expand Close A child is lowered from a window in the Iranian parliament building following an attack on June 7, 2017 in Tehran, Iran. (Photo by Omid Vahabzadeh/Getty Images) Getty Images / Facebook

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Whatsapp A child is lowered from a window in the Iranian parliament building following an attack on June 7, 2017 in Tehran, Iran. (Photo by Omid Vahabzadeh/Getty Images)

The Isis group's Aamaq news agency released a 24-second video purportedly shot inside the complex, showing a bloody, lifeless body on the floor next to a desk.

An Associated Press reporter saw several police snipers on the roofs of nearby buildings.

Police helicopters circled the parliament and all mobile phone lines from inside were disconnected.

Shops in the area were closed as gunfire rang out and officials urged people to avoid public transportation.

Witnesses said the attackers fired from the parliament building's fourth floor at people in the streets.

"I was passing by one of the streets. I thought that children were playing with fireworks, but I realised people are hiding and lying down on the streets," Ebrahim Ghanimi, who was around the parliament building, told the AP.

"With the help of a taxi driver, I reached a nearby alley."

As the parliament attack unfolded, gunmen and suicide bombers also struck outside Khomeini's mausoleum on Tehran's southern outskirts.

The ayatollah led the 1979 Islamic Revolution that toppled the Western-backed shah to become Iran's first supreme leader until his death in 1989.

Expand Close Security personnel take position in front of Iran's parliament building after an assault by several attackers, in Tehran, Iran, Wednesday, June 7, 2017. (AP Photo/Fars News Agency, Omid Vahabzadeh) AP / Facebook

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Whatsapp Security personnel take position in front of Iran's parliament building after an assault by several attackers, in Tehran, Iran, Wednesday, June 7, 2017. (AP Photo/Fars News Agency, Omid Vahabzadeh)

Iran's state broadcaster said a security guard was killed at the tomb and that one of the attackers was slain by security guards.

A woman was also arrested. The revered shrine was not damaged.

The Interior Ministry said six assailants were killed, four at the parliament and two at the tomb.

Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close President Donald Trump holds a sword and dances with traditional dancers during a welcome ceremony at Murabba Palace (AP) Donald Trump and wife Melania with King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud AFP/Getty Images AP/PA Images Donald and MelaniaTrump arrive in Riyadh (AP) / Facebook

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Whatsapp President Donald Trump holds a sword and dances with traditional dancers during a welcome ceremony at Murabba Palace (AP)

A senior Interior Ministry official told Iran's state TV the male attackers wore women's attire.

Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani called the attacks a cowardly act.

Five suspects have been detained following the deadly attacks.

General Hossein Sajedinia told the semi-official ISNA news agency on Wednesday night that police are interrogating the suspects.

He did not elaborate, but said Tehran is safe and police and other security forces are deployed and closely monitoring the Iranian capital.

The attacks were claimed by the Islamic State group but Irans Revolutionary Guard has blamed Saudi Arabia.

"This terrorist attack happened only a week after the meeting between the US president and the backward [Saudi] leaders who support terrorists. The fact that Islamic State has claimed responsibility proves that they were involved in the brutal attack," the Revolutionary Guard said.

There was no immediate response from Saudi Arabia.

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An Iranian security official later said the attackers were Iranian nationals.

The website of independent Shargh daily quoted Reza Seifollahi, an official in the country's Supreme National Security Council, as saying the operatives were from Iran. He did not elaborate.

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Iran v Saudi Arabia

Iran and Saudi Arabia are sworn enemies with the latter having been accused of providing support to Isis and other radical Islamic militants.

Last month Mr Trump basked in Saudi Arabia's lavish royal welcome as he left behind, at least temporarily, the snowballing controversies dogging him in Washington.

Mr Trump rewarded his hosts with a 110 billion US dollar arms package.

Terror funding report

Meanwhile calls are growing for the release of the Home Office inquiry into the sources of jihadist propaganda materials and funding are growing more vocal after Saturdays terror attack in London Bridge, in which seven people were killed.

Isis, which espouses an extremist version of the puritanical Sunni Wahabism practised in Saudi Arabia, claimed responsibility for the incident, the third terror attack on British soil in less than three months.

Speaking in Carlisle on Sunday evening, Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn said that the UK needs to have some difficult conversations, starting with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states that have funded and fuelled extremist ideology.

It is no good Theresa May suppressing a report into the foreign funding of extremist groups. We have to get serious about cutting off the funding to these terror networks, including Isis here and in the Middle East.

Writing in the Guardian on Monday, Liberal Democrat leader also called for the reports release.

Theresa May now has a choice. Does she publish that report or keep it hidden? Mr Farron said.

May talks of the need to have some difficult and sometimes embarrassing conversations. That should include exposing and rooting out the source funding of terror, even it means difficult and embarrassing conversations with those like Saudi Arabia that the government claims are our allies.

The Conservative government has been repeatedly criticised for increased arms sales to Riyadh, one of the top destinations for UK arms export licences: recent British arms export licences sold to the Gulf state exceed 3.5bn. Critics say those weapons are fuelling conflict and extremism across the Middle East, including in Yemen.

The inquiry was commissioned by David Cameron at the insistence of the Liberal Democrats in exchange for their support of extending UK air strikes against Isis into Syria in December 2015.

It was supposed to be published by spring 2016 - but it is still incomplete and may never see the light of day due to its sensitive content, a Home Office source told the Guardian said last month.

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A brief seen by the Suddeutsche Zeitung and broadcasters NDR and WDR raised concern over a reported increase in support for fundamentalist Salafism in Germany, warning that the ideology already has 10,000 followers and is growing.

The report, by Germanys BfV domestic intelligence agency and Federal Intelligence Service (BND) reportedly accused Gulf groups of funding mosques, religious schools, hardline preachers and conversion or dawah groups to spread the ideology.

'Clandestine financial and logistic support'

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The email exchanges between Hillary Clinton and her 2016 campaign chair John Podesta contained an exchange that showed the presidential candidate identified the Gulf states of Saudi Arabia and Qatar as clandestine financial and logistic supporters of the terrorist group, despite surface cooperation between the US and the Sunni states on combating the militants and other actions in Syrias multi-sided civil war.



While this military/para-military operation is moving forward, we need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL [Isis] and other radical Sunni groups in the region, Ms Clinton reportedly wrote.

This effort will be enhanced by the stepped up commitment in the [Kurdish Regional Government]. The Qataris and Saudis will be put in a position of balancing policy between their ongoing competition to dominate the Sunni world and the consequences of serious US pressure.
Syrian Democratic Forces fighters have launched an offensive for Raqqa (Syrian Democratic Forces/AP)

The fight for Raqqa, Islamic State's de facto capital in Syria, will "only accelerate" as the militants lose their grip on the Iraqi city of Mosul, a senior US official has said.

Brett McGurk, the US envoy for the global coalition against IS, said America and its local allies, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, are prepared for a protracted fight for the northern Syrian city.

The jihadist group is now locked in twin battles for its key strongholds, Raqqa and Mosul.

The SDF launched its attack on Raqqa on Tuesday and has already captured a neighbourhood in the city's eastern end.

Iraqi forces have been battling IS in Mosul since October.

Speaking in Baghdad, Mr McGurk said the fight for Raqqa will be a "difficult and very long-term battle".
Iranians mark the anniversary of the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini outside his shrine in Tehran (AP Photo/Hasan Sarbakhshian, File)

Terrorists have launched attacks on Iran's parliament and the tomb of its revolutionary leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the onslaught in which a t least 12 people were killed and 40 wounded.

Tehran police chief General Hossein Sajedinia announced late on Wednesday night that five suspects had been detained for interrogation, the semi-official Isna news agency reported.

Reza Seifollahi, of the country's Supreme National Security Council, was quoted by the independent Shargh daily as saying the perpetrators of the attacks were Iranian nationals.

The bloodshed shocked the country and came as emboldened Sunni Arab states, backed by US president Donald Trump, are hardening their stance against Shiite-ruled Iran.

In recent years, Tehran has been heavily involved in conflicts in Syria and Iraq against the Islamic State, but had remained untouched by IS violence around the world.

Iran has also battled Saudi-backed Sunni groups in both countries.

Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard indirectly blamed Saudi Arabia for the attacks.

A statement issued on Wednesday evening stopped short of alleging direct Saudi involvement but called it "meaningful" that the attacks followed Mr Trump's visit to Saudi Arabia, where he strongly asserted Washington's support for Riyadh.

The statement said Saudi Arabia "constantly supports" terrorists including the Islamic State group, adding that the IS claim of responsibility "reveals (Saudi Arabia's) hand in this barbaric action."

The "spilled blood of the innocent will not remain unavenged", the Revolutionary Guard statement said.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country's supreme leader, used the attacks to defend Tehran's involvement in wars abroad.

He told a group of students that if "Iran had not resisted", it would have faced even more troubles.

"The Iranian nation will go forward," he added.

The violence began in mid-morning when assailants with Kalashnikov rifles and explosives stormed the parliament complex where a legislative session had been in progress.

The siege lasted for hours, and one of the attackers blew himself up inside, according to Iran's state TV.

Images circulating in Iranian media showed gunmen held rifles near the windows of the complex.

One showed a toddler being handed through a first-floor window to safety outside as an armed man looks on.

The IS group's Aamaq news agency released a 24-second video purportedly shot inside the complex, showing a bloody, lifeless body on the floor next to a desk.

An Associated Press reporter saw several police snipers on the roofs of nearby buildings.

Police helicopters circled the parliament and all mobile phone lines from inside were disconnected.

Shops in the area were closed as gunfire rang out and officials urged people to avoid public transportation.

Witnesses said the attackers fired from the parliament building's fourth floor at people in the streets.

"I was passing by one of the streets. I thought that children were playing with fireworks, but I realised people are hiding and lying down on the streets," Ebrahim Ghanimi, who was around the parliament building, told the AP.

"With the help of a taxi driver, I reached a nearby alley."

As the parliament attack unfolded, gunmen and suicide bombers also struck outside Khomeini's mausoleum on Tehran's southern outskirts.

The ayatollah led the 1979 Islamic Revolution that toppled the Western-backed shah to become Iran's first supreme leader until his death in 1989.

Iran's state broadcaster said a security guard was killed at the tomb and that one of the attackers was slain by security guards.

A woman was also arrested. The revered shrine was not damaged.

The Interior Ministry said six assailants were killed, four at the parliament and two at the tomb.

A senior Interior Ministry official told Iran's state TV the male attackers wore women's attire.

Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani called the attacks a cowardly act.

Saudi Arabia and Iran regularly accuse each other of supporting extremists in the region.

Saudi Arabia has long pointed to the absence of IS attacks in Iran as a sign of Tehran's culpability.

For its part, Iran has cited Saudi Arabia's support for jihadists and its backing of hard-line Sunni fighters in Syria.

AP
Just last November Arlene Foster and Martin McGuinness, in a much praised joint statement, wrote that, day by day, slowly but surely politics here was changing and it was for the better

Just last November Arlene Foster and Martin McGuinness, in a much praised joint statement, wrote that, day by day, slowly but surely politics here was changing and it was for the better.

As Northern Ireland goes to the polls tomorrow for the second time since then, it is difficult to share that optimism. This general election has been called to strengthen Prime Minister Theresa May's hand in the Brexit negotiations, but here the impression is that it is merely a sectarian headcount.

Perhaps that is inevitable given the results of the recent Assembly election, which saw unionists lose their majority at Stormont and the DUP out-poll Sinn Fein by a mere hair's breadth. That was a shock to unionists, and the triumphalism of Sinn Fein after that poll has ensured that both parties are determined to maximise their vote.

While Brexit is the reason for this election, here the issue of leaving the EU has been distorted into a poll on where voters stand on the Union or Irish unity. It is the politics of fear versus aspiration.

The hope last November that, as the two political leaders said, their parties were in the Executive facing in the same direction has been dashed in the interim.

The peace process, which was much heralded around the world, is, at best, stalled. At a time when the rest of the UK is showing its abhorrence of terrorism, here the evil spectre of the gunmen and bombers continues to lurk in the shadows with a loyalist feud claiming two lives in recent weeks and dissident republicans continuing to plot violence.

That is not to deny the gains that have been made since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement almost 20 years ago or the risks that politicians took to restore the primacy of democracy over violence. Yet sectarianism still flourishes to a dispiriting degree.

And no longer can we expect someone to ride to our aid. Our sordid squabbles which have seen power-sharing devolution flounder yet again can only be sorted out by ourselves.

While commentators may complain about the ability of our political classes, we should remember that many of them are decent men and women trying to do their best in a society that, for all its changes, remains somewhat abnormal.

The politicians do not operate in a vacuum. Perhaps, uncomfortably for all of us, they merely reflect the people who elect them.

Tomorrow's poll is vitally important to all of us. While events have overtaken the debate on Brexit, leaving the European Union is perhaps the biggest political challenge posed in the UK for generations. Northern Ireland may have voted to remain in the EU but that argument has been lost. If the polls are to be believed, Labour could be closing the gap on the Conservatives, leaving the government with a narrow majority, which would strengthen the hand of local MPs at Westminster, but only if they take their seats to press our concerns over Brexit.

But the count will have barely concluded when the parties here will again have to get down to the business of finding a way to restore devolution at Stormont. The deadline is June 29, but will the result of the general election here aid or hinder that process?

Perhaps we should reflect on the words of Mrs Foster and Mr McGuinness last November when they argued that it was vital for the peace process that politics can move on and that this was essential for the people they represented.

The political climate may have changed in the intervening months, but those words still ring true.
If I understand Michelle O'Neill on Radio Ulster correctly, she'd like us to see Sinn Fein as a progressive, anti-Brexit party, far removed from the isolationist DUP and Ukip.

However, Sinn Fein is closer to Ukip and Gerry Adams more like Nigel Farage than either would care to admit.

They are like two sides of the same, xenophobic coin.

Both parties have struggled to remove 'foreign' influence from their country - Sinn Fein don't want British influence in Ireland, while Ukip don't want French or German influence, and both parties succeed by stirring up division and fear between communities, but both would deny encouraging racism (Sinn Fein still tries to argue that 'Brits out' is not a racist slogan, but just try inserting another nationality instead of 'Brit' and see how it reads).

They do differ in one important aspect, however.

As far as I am aware, Ukip has never called for armed violence against the European influence and it has never supported the killing of those who oppose it, such as the murder of MP Jo Cox.

By contrast, Sinn Fein did fully support the IRA's campaign of murder against MPs and others (eg Edgar Graham) who opposed its political will.

Michelle, I choose to vote for the progressive, anti-Brexit candidate.

But this isn't Sinn Fein.

observer

Belfast
The Green Party has criticised Theresa May and her handling of Brexit

With the Westminster election now just 24 hours away, we hear the views being put forward by two of Northern Ireland's smaller parties, People Before Profit and the Green Party.

Jeremy Corbyn is transforming politics. And he is doing so with some very basic demands: free education, higher taxes on corporations and a programme of borrowing money to create homes and jobs. Basic demands to improve people's lives, therefore. Hardly the storming of The Bastille, as some in the media would have you think.

It is true that living standards would not be transformed overnight if Corbyn became Prime Minister. But there would be some change, at least, a flicker of light for those who have endured a decade of austerity.

But here's the problem. Even if Corbyn were elected people here would not automatically benefit. Most of the changes that Corbyn wants to make remain as devolved matters.

He wants to increase corporation tax, for example, but Sinn Fein and the DUP are intent on doing the very opposite.

Corbyn wants to borrow money to create jobs. But Sinn Fein and the DUP wasted nearly all of our borrowing power on the Civil Service voluntary exit scheme, costing up to 20,000 jobs.

Corbyn wants to reform labour laws. Sinn Fein and the DUP, by contrast, were happy to use Thatcher's anti-trade union laws and showed no interest in repealing them.

And what of free education? Unfortunately, we would still be left with the tuition fees that Stormont has steadfastly refused to abolish. Perhaps Stormont will collapse and Corbyn will enact these policies here. The odds on that are far from certain.

Or maybe we will be left with an unfettered Tory government, or the same old, same old from the Assembly.

Regardless of the outcome of this election and the talks process after it, we will need a voice in the north for the kind of demands Corbyn is calling for. People Before Profit (PBP) is that voice.

And we will need an independent voice like PBP during the Brexit negotiations that does not side with either London or Brussels. PBP is very clear: we will oppose a Tory Brexit, including any calls for a hard border, restrictions on movement or travel.

We want to build a social Europe. But we will also oppose any attempts by the EU to inflict pain on people, or impede sovereignty.

There was a time when we were not the sole voice who did so. In 2003 Sinn Fein's Alex Maskey said: "Too much of our sovereignty has already been ceded to EU institutions." In 2014 his colleague Lynn Boylan MEP said: "The people of Ireland are suffering immensely due to the policies of austerity being pushed by the institutions of the EU." We agree with Sinn Fein on both accounts.

It is unclear whether they still agree with themselves.

PBP will demand the voice of the people is heard. We demand a vote on any Brexit deal, north and south, and for the right of people to vote on ceding from the Union, as appears likely in Scotland.

And during any talks we will fight for the things that make a difference: free education, higher taxes on corporations, job creation and the building of homes.

PBP serves neither London nor Brussels, but the interest of the people instead.

Gerry Carroll is People Before Profit candidate in West Belfast

Steven Agnew: The UK voter must have the final say on any Brexit deal

Theresa May wants this election to be a referendum on her vision of Brexit. You should not accept that. You've already had one referendum based on false pledges. Like a promise on the side of a bus, a Tory manifesto is not to be trusted.

You must be given all the facts. You must be allowed to make an informed choice. You must have a say on the final Brexit deal.

The Green Party's priority is to secure a referendum on the final deal.

Almost a year on from the EU referendum we still do not know what Brexit means. The small print is still being written.

We do not know what "no hard border" means in reality. We do not know which environmental protections are at risk.

And we do not know what opportunities could be lost for our young people.

We will only fully understand the implications of Brexit when a final deal is put forward. Then it is for you, not Theresa May, to decide whether to accept that deal.

When we get to that point, we must all take a step back, have a reasoned debate on the Brexit deal and you must have your say on its contents. Democracy did not end with the EU referendum.

At present we are negotiating with one arm tied behind our backs. If the UK gets a good deal, we leave; if we don't like the deal on the table, we still leave.

There is no motivation for the EU to make concessions. A referendum on the final deal strengthens our negotiating hand and ensures that the people of the UK get the best deal possible.

The Green Party is also putting you first through the protection of our public services and the promotion of equality for all citizens.

Seven years of year-on-year cuts have devastated our public services. Ever-lengthening waiting lists in our hospitals and an education system going into debt is the result of continuing Tory austerity policies.

That's why we would introduce a wealth tax on the top 1%, which would raise 28bn per year across the UK. Investing this in our health and education systems, we would meet the needs of an ageing population and ensure that our children get the best start in life, including those with special educational needs.

Putting you first also means an equal society, where every member of our community is valued.

As the traditional parties play politics with the future of our Assembly, Green MPs would seek to extend marriage equality laws to Northern Ireland with marriage equality through Westminster.

The Green Party is growing. While other parties are contracting, we are standing candidates across Northern Ireland, fielding more candidates than in any previous Westminster election.

Having increased our representation in the Assembly, there has never been a better chance to elect a Green MP.

Only the Green Party is committed to putting you first - let's get more Greens on the green benches at Westminster.
Sinn Fein MPs refuse to take oath to Queen thats required to sit in the House of Commons

Electing an abstentionist candidate as your MP is like employing a plumber who refuses to do house calls. It is an exercise in futility and absurdity. It is an archaic act of gesture politics that will achieve nothing.

Arthur Griffith, the original founder of Sinn Fein, advocated withdrawal from the British parliament as a tactic in the early-1900s.

He saw abstentionism as a tactic to highlight the principle of Irish independence and a dramatic and visual rejection of British sovereignty in Ireland.

He advocated that the Irish Home Rule Party shouldn't go to Westminster and, instead, a council of 300 should meet in Dublin and usurp, by peaceful means, so much of the powers of government as it could.

Later on, in the context of the enormous 1918 election victory for Sinn Fein, it made sense for its members to abstain from Westminster and meet as an embryonic Irish parliament in the Mansion House in Dublin instead.

However, Griffith did not regard abstention as a principle in itself, but as a way of demonstrating the principle of self-determination and national independence.

Today's Sinn Fein has elevated this political tactic into a long-standing, fundamental principle that cannot be breached by its elected MPs.

Mind you, that does not prevent it - quite cynically and literally - taking hundreds of thousands of pounds in parliamentary expenses from Westminster.

Not a very honest nor principled position, one would suggest.

Yet, curiously, it heartily abandoned its abstention from Dail Eireann in the 1980s and from Stormont in 1998.

Both of these institutions were rejected for decades as being illegitimate institutions and instruments of British sovereignty in Ireland.

Dail Eireann was allegedly not the true parliament of the Irish people and was to be shunned and boycotted by republicans.

Now Sinn Fein members can't wait to join the fun and games of parliamentary life in Leinster House.

As for the Assembly at Stormont, since its initiation in 1998 Sinn Fein has never advocated abstention or withdrawal from that institution - even though you could strongly argue, from a purist republican point-of-view, that Stormont is a very obvious exercise in British sovereignty over the north and its people.

All of this stands in stark contrast to the archaic and myopic ideological stance of Sinn Fein against any northern parliamentary institution over many years.

We know to our painful cost about its aggressive boycott of the elections to the power-sharing Assembly in 1973 and the vehemence and violent rhetoric with which it opposed that power-sharing Assembly in 1974.

Therefore, having abandoned its abstention from Dail Eireann and Stormont, it is hard to understand why, in the cold light of day, it can possibly justify absenting its MPs from Westminster now in the year 2017.

This archaic nonsense is compounded by the current opinion polls that put Labour within three points of the Conservative Party.

The recent YouGov constituency-by-constituency projection had the Tories actually losing 20 seats and Labour gaining 30, leading to a hung parliament.

It has been Theresa May's lacklustre campaign, her U-turn on social protection and her failure to endorse the triple-lock protection for the state retirement pension - as well as the fear of a "dementia tax" - that has frightened the grey vote in England that is traditionally more Tory than Labour. May, by her incompetence, could well be throwing the election away to Corbyn.

Only the weekend terrorist attacks in London might damage Corbyn, who is seen as weak on security and defence.

The Tories are traditionally seen as strong on law and order, and could be beneficiaries of people's rightful concerns over security and terrorist attacks.

In any event, the opinion polls clearly indicate a closer result than anticipated at the beginning of this dreary general election campaign.

The prospect of Corbyn being Prime Minister is no longer regarded as a fanciful joke. A hung parliament seems a real prospect.

Given its crucial numbers, the Scottish Nationalist Party could be about to claim the mantle of Charles Stewart Parnell and his Irish Parliamentary Party in determining the future direction of British politics.

In such circumstances, you cannot rule out the creation of a future Westminster government being dependent on some of our Northern Ireland MPs.

That the SDLP or DUP could hold the balance of power and become kingmakers is not an idle thought.

With so many crucial issues surrounding Brexit, it would be criminally irresponsible for our MPs not to be actively involved in parliament.

At such a pivotal moment in Irish/British history, it really does matter that your duly-elected MP attends parliament.

There are many vital issues at stake in Westminster for our MPs to urgently address.

Now, with the Assembly paralysed and unlikely to return soon, undoubtedly our politics will become Westminster-focused.
In this screen grab from a video shot by IS-linked militants in the southern Philippines, top militant leaders plan their siege of the city of Marawi. From left: Madie Maute; unidentified fighter; Isnilon Hapilon, the leader of the Islamic State branch in the Philippines; Humam Abdul Najib; unidentified fighter; and Abdullah Maute.

Over the past two weeks, the East Asia division of the so-called Islamic State (IS) has held parts of the southern Philippine city of Marawi. Different IS-linked groups came together to meticulously plan the citys siege. The division wanted territorial control to win recognition from IS leaders in the Middle East.

The Philippines government has yet to fully retake the city, despite declaring martial law in the south on May 23 and deploying planes, combat helicopters and ground troops. Militants still hold about a tenth of Marawi.

The ranking leaders of IS engaged in planning the attack against Marawi. These included Isnilon Hapilon, the leader of IS Philippines (pictured above); Humam Abdul Najib, the founder and leader of Khilafah Islamiyah Mindanao; and Abdullah Maute, the leader of Islamic State Lanao, who oversaw the entire operation. Mautes brother, Omar, was killed in battle in Marawi but another sibling, Madie Maute, was involved in the planning phase.

IS planned to control Marawi during the Muslim month of Ramadan. But the plan was disrupted when the Philippine government received intelligence that Isnilon was recuperating in Marawi.

When a combined army and police team launched an operation to capture or kill Isnilon, about 100 IS operatives including foreign fighters took up positions to control the city. Through the lake, mountains, and by road, some 200 to 300 fighters arrived in Marawi in the following days.

Plotting and executing the siege

When Islamic State declared a caliphate in Syria and Iraq in late June 2014, one of the first people in Southeast Asia to pledge allegiance to its leader, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, was Isnilon, the former deputy leader of the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG).

We pledge to obey him on anything which our hearts desire or not and to value him more than anyone else. We will not take any leader other than him unless we see in him any obvious act of disbelief that could be questioned by Allah in the hereafter, Isnilon said in declaring his loyalty to IS the following month.

Sixteen groups including Islamic State Lanao (ISL), Ansar Khilafah Mindanao (AKM), the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF), ASG Basilan and a faction of ASG Sulu also joined IS.

With the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) stepping up operations in Basilan, Isnilon moved with nearly one hundred fighters from the Sulu archipelago to mainland Mindanao in late 2016. He combined forces with ISL, led by the Maute brothers in Lanao del Sur. After Isnilon was wounded in an airstrike in Sitio Basudan, Butig on Jan. 25, 2017, he relocated to Marawi together with the ISL rank-and-file.

Protected by his own team of IS fighters, including foreigners, Isnilon lived in a residential and commercial area of Marawi between the campus of Mindanao State University and the police headquarters in the citys center.

When the combined military-police team approached the apartment in Marawi city at 1:45 p.m. May 23 to arrest Isnilon, heavy fighting broke out in Barangay Basak Malutlut. As two dozen heavily armed men  who had previously served with ASG  fought fiercely, foreign and local IS fighters hiding in the neighborhood joined the gun battle.

As it expanded into a deadly rampage, IS fighters attempted to take control of the city by taking up positions strategically. Replacing the Philippines national flag with its iconic black flag, IS fighters armed with heavy weapons and homemade bombs began the siege.

IS placed snipers on top of buildings and at checkpoints along key roads, and commandeered vehicles. IS used megaphones to urge a shocked public to join the Dawlah, a reference to the Islamic State.

This screen grab from a video shot by IS-linked militants shows a map being drawn of Lanao del Sur with key exit-and-entry roads to Marawi, Iligan, Kapai, Butig, Malabab and Mindanao State University in Marawi. [Courtesy of Rohan Gunaratna]

An IS attack in Mosul, Iraq, in June 2014 provided IS Philippines with a template for the siege of Marawi. But contrary to IS expectations, there was no local Maranao support for IS. Except for a handful of political figures opposed to the leaders of Marawi, the people of Marawi rejected the IS message.

The IS strategy was to shock the city by attacking centers of government. IS attacked the Marawi police station in the downtown area and set fire to it. After attacking the city jail, IS freed 107 prisoners, including IS fighters. The militants also attacked areas near the 103rd Brigade, based at Camp Ranao in Marawi city, but the military prevailed.

After desecrating and burning both the Mary Help of Christians Cathedral and the Bishops House in Marawi, IS fighters abducted Vicar General Teresito Chito Soganub, and took others hostage. After taking an injured IS fighter to the Amai Pakpak Hospital, IS killed Senior Inspector of Police Freddie Manuel Solar.

In addition to torching several homes, IS set fire to the Ninoy Aquino School and Dansalan College. To spread terror and create a human shield, IS claimed to have taken nearly 250 hostages and to have killed government officers and Christians.

Soon, the entire population started to move out on foot and vehicles. Power and communication lines were shut down. The mass exodus transformed Marawi into a ghost town. Although the number of fatalities and casualties was placed at 200, a larger number died, many of them civilians.

Islamic heartland

Marawi City, the capital of Lanao del Sur province, has 220,000 people, 99 percent of them Muslim. Hundreds of mosques and madrassas ring Lake Lanao, which sits in a green bowl circled by distant mountains. Considered the Islamic capital of the Philippines, Marawi is like the rest of Mindanao, where Christians and Muslims coexist.

The IS interpretation of Islam was challenged by a traditional Islam that characterized Marawi for centuries. The stoning, amputations, flagellations or other Islamic punishments are against the laws of the Philippines.

IS will stay in Marawi and fight until Ramadan is over. IS will also hold hostages elsewhere and as human shields in Marawi, demanding the withdrawal of government troops.

Although IS ideology had no appeal to Marawi Muslims, large-scale destruction can make them vulnerable to the IS belief system. While it was essential for the government to have declared martial law, it is also important to be very soft on the population.President Rodrigo Duterte cut short a trip to Russia late last month and vowed to crush the militants in Marawi, saying: Anyone now holding a gun, confronting government with violence, my orders are spare no one, let us solve the problems of Mindanao once and for all. If I think you should die, you will die. If you fight us, you will die. If theres an open defiance, you will die, and if it means many people dying, so be it. Thats how it is.

He added: I made a projection, not a prediction, that one of these days the hardest thing to deal with would be the arrival of ISIS. The government must put an end to this. I cannot gamble with ISIS because they are everywhere.

Rohan Gunaratna is professor of Security Studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at the Nanyang Technology University and head of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research in Singapore.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and not of BenarNews.
Members of the Garo Student Organization stage a protest in Dhaka to demand an end to torture against indigenous people in Bangladesh, June 6, 2017.

Human rights watchdog Amnesty International echoed calls from tribal leaders for the Bangladeshi government to try the perpetrators of Fridays massive arson attack in an indigenous community in Southeastern Bangladesh.

Witnesses said a group of Bengalis launched the attack in Tintila village, home to the indigenous people, after police on Friday returned the body of Nurul Islam Noyon, a leader of Jubo League, the youth front of the ruling party Awami League, to his home in the Langadu sub-district of Rangamati.

The attackers burned down at least 200 houses in the village and were apparently spurred by Noyons death the day before, witnesses said.

Police said Noyon was a commercial motorcycle driver in the hilly areas of Rangamati. He went missing after he drove two tribal passengers Thursday night and police found his body in the neighboring district of Khagrachhari.

Noyon was hacked to death, but no arrests have been made, Khagrachhari district police superintendent Ali Ahmad Khan told BenarNews.

Following the attack, officers imposed restrictions against gatherings in Langadu to avert the potential escalation of clashes between the indigenous people and the Bengalis who settled in the region after August 1975.

The Bengali groups called for a half-day protest on June 11 in Rangamati over Noyons death while members of the indigenous Garo Student Organization protested Tuesday in Dhaka against torture of indigenous people.

On Monday, AI posted a statement calling for justice on its website.

Bangladeshi authorities must bring to justice those responsible for a vicious mob attack on indigenous people in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, which left hundreds of homes torched and at least one person dead, AI said in the statement.

Police said no one died as a result of the arson attack.

At least one resident questioned police efforts.

We do not think the police would detect the real culprits through their investigation. Our past experiences say we will not get justice, Longodu resident Rasel Chakma told BenarNews, pointing to an unsolved case where a tribal female leader was abducted in June 1996.

Investigations

The independent National Human Rights Commission has formed a three-member team to investigate the attack, chairman Kazi Reazul Haque told BenarNews.

Haque said the team has been in Longodu and will make its findings public when finished.

This sort of attack is not acceptable, Haque told BenarNews, describing it a violation of human rights.

Rangamati district Deputy Commissioner Mohammad Manzrul Mannan told BenarNews police are conducting their own probe and has already filed cases against suspects in the arson attack.

Look, Amnesty (International) can issue a statement, and the National Human Rights Commission may investigate, but to us, the police investigation is most credible, Mannan told BenarNews, adding police arrested 12 people in connection with the arson attack.

AI also responded to the report of the arrests.

While these steps are welcome, Bangladeshi authorities have a poor track record of holding Bengali settlers to account for violent attacks on indigenous people and the perpetrators are often allowed to carry out such attacks with impunity, the London-based global rights organization said.

Settlers history

Former President Ziaur Rahman brought the Bengalis to the tribal-dominated Chittagong Hill Tracts, angering the indigenous groups who term them settlers. Since August 1975, the groups have confronted each other in three hill districts  Rangamati, Khagrachhari and Bandarban.

On Dec. 2, 1997, the government signed a peace deal with a tribal party, Parbatya Chattagram Jono Songhati Samity to end fighting. It drastically reduced the level of violence, but mistrust remains high.

Ushatan Talukder, the parliament member representing the Rangamati district, discussed the issue on Monday with his fellow lawmakers.

There should be a judicial inquiry into the attack in Langadu. Also, I urge the government to send a parliamentary team to Langadu to assure the tribal people now fearing further attacks, he told parliament.

S.M. Abul Kalam Azad, another legislator, demanded the creation of a parliamentary committee.

Ruling party whip Atiur Rahman Atik told BenarNews lawmakers have not yet decided if they would send a team to Langadu or form a panel to investigate the incident.
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of the Islamic State, addresses worshippers at a mosque in the militant-held northern Iraqi city of Mosul, Baghdad, in this image taken from a propaganda video, July 5, 2014.

Some relatives of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State (IS) militant group, are living in Indonesia but do not pose any threat to the nations security and could be tapped to join de-radicalization programs in countering terrorism, according to intelligence officials.

The kin of al-Baghdadi, one of the worlds most wanted terrorists, are living in the city of Solo in Central Java province, the spokesman for Indonesias State Intelligence Agency (BIN) said Wednesday.

Officials have identified the Solo residents who have blood ties to Baghdadi through his clan in Yemen, Wawan Hari Purwanto, BINs director of communication and information, told BenarNews in an interview.

He declined to give more details, citing security concerns. He also did not reveal the exact number of Baghdadis relatives living in Solo, about 580 km (360 miles) east of the nations capital, Jakarta.

They still have blood relations, said Wawan, a terrorism analyst. I cannot give details of whether they are older brothers or sisters, younger brothers or sisters or cousins. What is sure is they are from one clan.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the 45-year-old leader of IS, is an Iraqi national. He made his first appearance on a video in July 2014 when he gave a sermon in Mosul after IS fighters seized the northern Iraqi city. His current location is unknown.

Wawan said intelligence officials were still approaching the family members in Indonesia, urging them to help the government battle terrorism, especially through its de-radicalization efforts to encourage those with extreme ideologies to adopt more moderate views.

We continue to approach (them), so they are willing to help the country. We hope (to get) a positive response, Wawan said.

During the interview, Wawan referred to the Solo family in both singular and plural terms, refusing to acknowledge the number of relatives. But he hinted that officials have contacted at least one person.

He is Indonesian. His native family is from Yemen. He is a good person who disagrees with ISIS views.  He has contacted Baghdadi, as a family. But he disagrees with ISIS ideology, Wawan said, using a different acronym for IS.

Despite having close ties with Baghdadi, the Solo family members do not share IS views especially in terms of spreading terrorism, Wawan emphasized.

Born into a lower-middle-class and devout Sunni Muslim family in Iraq in 1971, Baghdadi uses his nom de guerre, not his real name, Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim al-Badri.

He has been careful not to reveal his whereabouts for a good reason: In 2006, U.S. forces tracked down and killed one of his elusive predecessors, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, during a bombing raid.

In December 2016, the U.S. State Department announced a reward of $25 million for information leading to Baghdadis capture  more than doubling the previous bounty for his head.

Analysts expect no impact

Other security analysts played down Wawans comments regarding the significance of having identified Baghdadis relatives in Indonesia, saying the unconfirmed information might not augment the countrys de-radicalization efforts.

Taufik Andrie, a terrorism analyst with the Jakarta-based Prasasti Perdamaian Foundation, said even if Baghdadis relatives were indeed living in the country, they would not have a meaningful involvement in the de-radicalization process.

I do not think it will be effective at all. This is a battle of mahzab (ideology). People who are affected by this (IS) ideology will stand up, he told BenarNews.

Al Chaidar, a terrorism analyst from Malikussaleh University in Lhokseumawe, Aceh, supported Taufiks opinion, adding he wasnt convinced about the presence of Baghdadis relatives in Indonesia.

How the blood relation is connected is not clear. It was also mentioned that they are harmless, he told BenarNews. So, in my opinion, this would not mean anything.

Revamping a persons radical ideology, he said, would not be easy.

Although it is said a person has a blood relationship with Baghdadi, it does not necessarily mean that people who have been contaminated with radical ideology will believe in that person, he said.
Malaysian government officials on Wednesday rejected reports that senior leaders of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which Israel and the United States have branded a terrorist organization, were in Malaysia after being asked to leave Qatar.

Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi said he had checked with immigration officials regarding the news reports that some top Hamas leaders might now be in the country.

Reports this week in the Israeli media, which cited Palestinian sources, said Qatars government had asked several Hamas leaders who were staying in the kingdom to leave and disperse by going to Malaysia, Lebanon or Turkey. On Monday, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates cut diplomatic ties with the tiny, oil-rich nation of Qatar over its alleged support of terrorist groups and Iran.

We reject the rumors that three Hamas leaders from Palestine who have been given refuge in Qatar are now in Malaysia, Zahid, who is also Malaysias home minister, told reporters at a Ramadan fast-breaking event in Kuala Lumpur.

The names of two Hamas leaders identified by Israeli authorities as wanted terrorists, Saleh al-Arouri and Musa Dudin, were on a list that Qatar gave the Palestinian organization in asking the men to leave, said Ynetnews, a website based in Israel.

The names we have received from intelligence sources have been checked with the Immigration Department. There are no such names entering into Malaysia, he added without releasing the names of the Hamas leaders.

Malaysian Inspector-General of Police Khalid Abu Bakar declined to comment on the reports when contacted by BenarNews.

Israeli intelligence officials believe that Arouri helped plot the kidnapping and murders of three Israeli teenagers in June 2014, according to a report by the Times of Israel.

Haaretz, another Israeli news outlet, reported that Arouri was military commander overseeing terror cells in the West Bank and that Dudin, who was released as a part of an exchange of prisoners, had established a cell in Gaza in charge of planning terrorist attacks in the West Bank.

Hamas denies, Qatar keeping mum

Hamas, for its part, rejected the reports that its officials were told to leave Doha, while Qatari officials have been silent on the matter.

We, in Hamas, deny the claims of some media outlets regarding a list submitted by Qatar including the names of Hamas leaders whom Qatar asked to leave the country, Hamas spokesman Husam Badran said in a statement issued Monday.

We assure that this is a part which has always been played by some media outlets who are used to promoting fabricated news about Hamas in order to distort its image and to damage its external relations.

The long-time foe of Israel is on the U.S. State Departments list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations.

Malaysias relationship with Hamas

Over the years, Malaysian officials have expressed sympathy for Hamas and the cause of Palestinian statehood.

The ruling United Malays National Organization party, led by Prime Minister Najib Razak, has hosted Hamas leaders at political events. In 2013, Najib visited Gaza during a highly publicized one-day visit and held a news conference with Hamas leader Ismail Haniya.

This is a humanitarian visit to express our deep concerns for what happens to the Palestinian people in Gaza and to express our opposition to the aggression on Gaza, he told reporters at the time.

The visit drew a negative response from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the other main Palestinian political party, Fatah.

The Palestinian presidency announces its rejection and condemnation of the Malaysian prime ministers visit to Gaza, a statement by the Palestinian official news agency WAFA said.

Hamas controls the Gaza Strip while Fatah controls the nearby West Bank.

A year later, Israel accused Malaysia of allowing Hamas militants to carry out military training on Malaysian territory. Malaysian officials have denied the allegation.

On Wednesday, Zahid said Malaysia remained friendly to all nations and denied that Saudi Arabia had placed pressure on the government to severe ties with Qatar.

The problem they are facing is regional and we hope they will be able to solve it soon, he said.

Earlier, Najib said Malaysia was tracking events in the region.

We are close to the Gulf countries and we do not know what the issues are, but, at the moment, we will monitor developments, Najib told the New Straits Times.

Hata Wahari in Kuala Lumpur contributed to this story.
Buddhists in northeastern Thailand have filed a petition to stop a Muslim communitys efforts to register a recently constructed mosque, citing fears of violence similar to that in the countrys insurgency-stricken Deep South.

Pramual Pimsen, president of the Buddhist Assembly for National Security, told BenarNews that he led about 60 Buddhists in Khon Kaen province to submit a petition with the local governor on Monday seeking to dismiss the registration of the mosque in Ban Lerng Peau village.

Local Buddhists and those in the nearby village agreed that terrorism has spread widely and imprinted a bad perception in peoples mind. The people are not feeling welcome toward the mosque because it may induce violence such as what happened in Deep South, the petition said, according to Pramual.

Buddhist establishments in Khon Kaen therefore have asked the governor to nip it in the bud, dismissing the mosque registration request, he said.

The governor of Khon Kaen could not be reached for comment, while a national Ministry of Interior official said he needed to study the complaint before he could comment. Khon Kaen province has a population of 1.8 million, of whom, 3,000 are Muslim.

Of Thailands 67 million people, about 4 million are Muslim. Almost 2 million Muslims are concentrated in the Deep South region next to the Malaysian border.

Since a long-running separatist insurgency by Malay-speaking, Muslim rebels re-ignited in 2004, nearly 7,000 people have been killed in violence associated with the rebellion in the region, where Buddhists form the minority. According to Deep South Watch, a think-tank based in the region, Buddhists comprise about half of this death toll.

They dont feel OK with Muslims

In Khon Kaen, a retired member of a local committee responsible for mosque affairs said construction on the place of worship began in August 2014, and the city granted permission a few months later. The project was finished in July 2016 and passed initial inspection on Dec. 22, 2016.

That was seven months ago and it was put on hold. All of sudden there are people coming up against the mosque even though we did follow the procedure. The province held it up, Uzman Radinghin told BenarNews, adding he did not know when the registration would be approved.

Meanwhile, Rukchart Suwan, president of the Buddhist Network for Peace in Yala  a province in the Deep South  said people in three other provinces, Nan, Chiang Mai and Mukdaharn, have harbored feelings toward Muslims in the southern border region.

In my experience from chatting with locals of Nan province, they dont feel OK with Muslims because their relatives died on tours of duty in the Deep South, he told BenarNews.

We are going to Khon Kaen, perhaps after Ramadan to create a mutual understanding, he said.

In May 2016, protest banners appeared at a mosque construction site in Mukdaharn, another province in the northeast.

Cannot build Buddha Monthon Park in Pattani because they are Muslims. Here we are all Buddhists. Who is the mosque for? one banner read.

Islamophobia concerns

Saki Pitakkhumpol, a professor at the Institute of Peace Studies at Prince of Songkla University, a campus in the Deep South, said that a lack of understanding about the regional conflict had fueled Islamophobia throughout the country. The lack of understanding is exacerbated by the medias penchant for focusing on violence, he added.

We cannot deny that there are separatists. There are many, in fact, Saki, the son of Sheikhul Islam or the Chief Muslim in Thailand, told BenarNews in 2016.

But there are contraband smuggling rings and they need to create an environment to facilitate their business. As well, there are drug-trafficking syndicates, and personal conflicts among local gang-landers, he said, adding, When they get angry at each other, they use bomb attacks. When the officials cannot identify the real cause, they say the incidents are separatist-related.
iStock/Thinkstock(LONDON) -- British police arrested a 38-year-old man at London's Heathrow Airport Tuesday in connection with the Manchester Arena attack, the Greater Manchester Police announced.



The unidentified man was arrested on suspicion of offences contrary to the U.K.'s Terrorism Act.

"The arrest was planned beforehand and there was no direct threat to the airport," police said in a statement. The suspect is currently in custody.

BREAKING: Man arrested at Heathrow Airport in connection with Manchester Arena attack pic.twitter.com/lw6nUwhch3  G M Police (@gmpolice) June 6, 2017

Nineteen people in total have been arrested in connection with the bombing after an Ariana Grande concert on May 22 that killed 22 people and injured more than 100.



Seven men remain in custody for questioning, police said.



Grande headlined the One Love Manchester benefit concert on Sunday, two weeks after the attack, which raised more than $3.5 million for the victims.

Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Founder and owner of Wantoot was Pierre (Peter) de St. Julien in the very early 1700s. Daniel Ravenel married the St. Julien heiress and became owner of Wantoot. Ravenel became a representative of St. Johns Berkeley Parish, in the First Provincial Congress in 1775 and in the S.C. First Gen Read moreWantoot Plantation and its fort
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For Immediate Release, June 6, 2017 Contact: Randy Serraglio, (520) 784-1504, rserraglio@biologicaldiversity.org Pima County Passes Resolution Opposing Trump's Border Wall TUCSON, Ariz. The Pima County Board of Supervisors voted today to pass a resolution opposing President Trump's proposed border wall and increased militarization of the border region. The resolution explicitly rejects the president's Jan. 25 executive order and calls for a comprehensive review of border-security policy. We're pleased and grateful that our local elected leaders have denounced Trump's destructive border plans, said Randy Serraglio, a conservation advocate with the Center. Let their message ring out  don't destroy our beautiful border region and terrorize its people in our name. The resolution lists many reasons to oppose the border wall and militarization. These include thousands of migrant deaths and civil- and human-rights abuses caused by existing border policy, as well as widespread harm to border environments and wildlife, many species of which are protected under the Endangered Species Act. The border wall divides and harms people and wildlife alike, said Serraglio. There's no reason to sacrifice jaguars, ocelots, Mexican wolves and other rare and precious animals to feed a delusion of border security. Border walls and militarization have done a lot of harm already  and nothing good for the cause of immigration reform. Pima County is home to the city of Tucson and more than a million people. It includes almost 100 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border, much of which lies on the Tohono O'odham Indian reservation. The Tohono O'odham live on both sides of the border, and the resolution cites the opposition of tribal leaders to the border wall, which would destroy sacred sites and impede cross-border movements for traditional and ceremonial purposes. The proposal to wall off the U.S.-Mexico border is driven by bigotry, fear-mongering and a cynically distorted image of the borderlands, said Serraglio. Trump's paranoid vision doesn't reflect the reality of border communities, which are among the safest in the country. The city of Tucson will consider a similar resolution at its meeting later today. The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1.3 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.
For Immediate Release, June 6, 2017 Contact: Randy Serraglio, (520) 784-1504, rserraglio@biologicaldiversity.org

Regina Romero, (520) 343-4038, rromero@biologicaldiversity.org Tucson City Council Votes to Oppose Trump's Border Wall, Militarization

Resolution Calls for Ban on Business With Border Wall Contractors TUCSON, Ariz. The Tucson City Council voted unanimously tonight to oppose President Trump's proposed border wall and prevent the city from doing business with companies that agree to work on the wall.



The resolution rejects Trump's Jan. 25 executive order and increased militarization of the border region, and it calls for a comprehensive review of border security policy. The resolution also calls for the identification of contractors who work on the border wall so the city can avoid doing business with them. We're pleased and grateful that our local elected leaders have denounced Trump's destructive border plans, said Randy Serraglio, conservation advocate with the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity. Let the message ring out  don't destroy our beautiful border region and terrorize its people in our name. The resolution lists many reasons to oppose the border wall and militarization. These include thousands of migrant deaths and civil- and human-rights abuses caused by existing border policy, as well as widespread harm to border environments and wildlife, including many species protected under the Endangered Species Act. The border wall divides and harms people and wildlife alike, said Serraglio. There's no reason to sacrifice jaguars, ocelots, Mexican wolves and other rare and precious animals to feed a delusion of border security. Border walls and militarization have done a lot of damage already, and nothing good for the cause of immigration reform. The resolution also cites the opposition of Tohono O'odham tribal leaders to the border wall, which would destroy sacred sites and impede cross-border movements for traditional and ceremonial purposes. The tribe's reservation includes 75 miles of the border, and the Tohono O'odham live on both sides. Both U.S. and Mexican tribal leaders have formally opposed the border wall and militarization. Trump's proposal to wall off the U.S.-Mexico border is driven by bigotry, fear-mongering and a cynically distorted image of the borderlands, said Serraglio. This paranoid vision doesn't reflect the reality of border communities, which are among the safest in the country. The Pima County Board of Supervisors passed a similar resolution at its meeting earlier today.

Tucson Vice Mayor Regina Romero, who was instrumental in the resolution's passage, said the resolutions presented a unified front that showed southern Arizona's disapproval of Trump's border wall. She said the ban on border wall contractors was the teeth to this resolution. This is a message that is going to be heard, whether they like it or not, in D.C. and with the Trump administration and with our congressional delegation, said Romero, the director of Latino engagement for the Center. So they will know exactly where the people or southern Arizona stand and that we stand solidly against further construction and militarization of the border wall. The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1.3 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.
For Immediate Release, June 6, 2017 Contact: Wendy Park, (510) 844-7100 x 338, wpark@biologicaldiversity.org Texas Fracking Protest Expanded to Include New Water-pollution Risks

Records Show Hundreds of Wells Could Leak CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas Citing new records showing the potential for drinking water contamination around Corpus Christi, the Center for Biological Diversity today supplemented its legal protest to a federal oil and gas lease sale planned for Thursday. The leases would allow fracking within and near several Texas reservoirs and dams that supply drinking water to Corpus Christi and other cities. Since its original protest was filed, the Center has obtained records showing that old plugged wells are leaking into the Choke Canyon reservoir. A new map created by the Center, using Railroad Commission well data, shows more than 20 old plugged wells located in the reservoir, most less than 2 miles from the parcels in the proposed lease sale. More than 100 active oil wells and seven gas wells are within the reservoir  many within 2 miles of lease-sale parcels. There are also more than 100 unproductive wells scattered throughout the reservoir. The best way to protect Corpus Christi's water is for federal officials to pull the Texas lease parcels from this sale, said Wendy Park, a senior attorney with the Center. Fracking near and within drinking-water reservoirs endangers people and the environment. And it's especially dangerous and irresponsible in the face of lax enforcement, risks of more leaking wells, and the potential for fracking-caused earthquakes to compromise dams. Today's supplemental protest urges the federal Bureau of Land Management to drop several parcels from the lease sale because the BLM failed to analyze the risks of water contamination from leaking wells and the potential for new leaks due to increased fracking.



There are four leaking wells at Choke Canyon and hundreds of existing wells at Choke Canyon, Lake Somerville and Lake Texana that could potentially leak, according to public records. If new wells are drilled on new federal leases, more high-pressure fracking could push chemical-laden fluid into old wells, contaminating water supplies if the old wells leak. Fracking-caused earthquakes could also threaten the stability of dams. The Center's protest cites the BLM's failure to consider Bureau of Reclamation recommendations for more analysis in the face of fracking-caused earthquake risks to Choke Canyon dam. It also notes that the Bureau of Reclamation has failed to finalize best management practices for oil and gas development around the dam, which raises questions whether the reservoir will be adequately protected in the face of new fracking. Since the Center filed its original protest in February, public records obtained from the Texas Railroad Commission and Bureau of Reclamation revealed that four plugged wells are leaking gas, two within and two near Choke Canyon Reservoir, a primary Corpus Christi water supply. After the leaks were publicly revealed, city and federal officials said they posed no risk. But records show that since then, federal, state and Corpus Christi officials have considered underwater inspections of the leaking wells. It's unclear whether such inspections have been conducted. Emails show that officials aren't sure who's responsible for re-plugging the wells and are skeptical that original well owners can be identified. The evidence suggests that regulators don't know much about these old leaking wells or their impact on the water supply, Park said. The BLM is basically ignoring the problem and encouraging new fracking in the same place. It's alarming that they're allowing this lease sale to continue. Conservation groups and the city of Corpus Christi filed formal protests in February challenging the leasing plan, raising concerns about spills, water contamination and earthquakes that could jeopardize dam integrity and harm downstream water users. In April the Brenham City Council unanimously approved a resolution opposing the BLM's plans to allow fracking beneath Lake Somerville. The resolution cited concerns that contamination of the lake's water supply would be catastrophic for its residents. Lake Somerville is the city's sole drinking-water source. Download today's supplementary protest here.

Download the February administrative protest here.

View the map of existing wells and proposed lease parcels here. The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1.3 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.
For Immediate Release, June 6, 2017 Contact: Brett Hartl, (202) 817-8121 bhartl@biologicaldiversity.org Seven States Challenge Trump EPA Decision Approving Brain-damaging Pesticide State Attorneys General Question Legality of Sudden Reversal of Planned Ban on Chlorpyrifos WASHINGTON Attorneys general from seven states announced today they are challenging the decision by Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt to approve ongoing use of chlorpyrifos, a dangerous pesticide known to cause brain damage in children. There's a good reason this dangerous toxin has been banned from indoor use for more than a decade and the EPA's own scientists recommended ending its use on food, said Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity There is no question that this pesticide causes serious harm to people and wildlife so there should be no question that it should be banned, period. In November 2016 the EPA announced a plan to ban use of the pesticide on food crops. But shortly after taking over as the agency's administrator earlier this year, Scott Pruitt announced, with no explanation, a reversal of this recommendation and allowed the continued use of the pesticide. The seven attorneys general charge that the EPA wrongly approved the continued use of this dangerous pesticide on fruits and vegetables without first assessing its safety as required under the U.S. Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. Today's challenge was filed by attorneys general from New York, California, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Washington and Vermont. Click here to read the filing . In the weeks following Pruitt's reversal, Dow Chemical requested that the EPA abandon its legally mandated requirements to assess the impacts of chlorpyrifos on endangered species and indefinitely delay implementing common sense measures to protect them. Dow's back-channel campaign to get the agency to abandon a nearly four-year effort to protect endangered species from these pesticides is revealed in letters in which Dow urges the Trump administration and Pruitt to withdraw biological evaluations that were finalized in January detailing how three highly toxic organophosphate insecticides  chlorpyrifos, malathion and diazinon  harm nearly all 1,800 threatened and endangered animals and plants. Over the past six years, Dow has donated $11 million to congressional campaigns and political action committees and spent an additional $75 million lobbying Congress. In Dow was one of three companies that donated $1 million to the Trump inauguration. The Trump administration is putting our children and our most endangered wildlife at risk simply to pay off a political debt to Dow, said Hartl. The stench from Trump's special-interest swamp is growing by the day. Around 5 million pounds of chlorpyrifos are used in the United States every year on crops like corn, peanuts, plums and wheat. A recent study at the University of California at Berkeley found that 87 percent of umbilical-cord blood samples tested had detectable levels of chlorpyrifos. The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1.3 million members and supporters dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.
Starting your day with a cup of mushroom coffee can give a much-needed twist to your daily regimen. Many speak of its benefits, and some even prefer it to regular coffee. But given its unique
Opinion | 04 November 2022 | Interviews

India needs to connect OPD with the cashless insurance network to bring them into the digital economy

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When she needed to transfer money to a friend in a faraway village last March, Mouna Ahmed, a gender equality activist in Liberia, did not have to worry about long bank queues and complex paperwork. Instead she took her phone, tapped on the mobile money app, punched in an amount and pressed the send button. Minutes later, her friend acknowledged the kind gesture.

 mipan via 123RF

Transferring the money took less than a minute, Ahmed told Africa Renewal.

A leading Liberian telecom company, Lonestar Cell MTN, launched mobile money in the country in 2013. Since then, Ahmed says, I pay my electricity, water and cable television bills through my cell phone. Last year, the company announced it will offer transfers in both US and Liberian dollarsa relief for customers who must currently use the US dollar for

payments.

Liberians havent had much experience with cashless payment methods, particularly mobile money (popularly known as mobile wallet); even credit and debit cards are little used. Although businesses and individuals still issue age-old cheques, mobile wallet use is steadily increasing.

Unlike in Liberia, where mobile money is the primary means of making cashless payments, Rwanda is using several different methods. The countrys ambitious Smart Rwanda Master Plan (SRMP) seeks to digitise all government financial transactions by 2018, which will allow citizens to make online payments as well as use debit and credit cards for services in health care, finance and education, among other areas.

This strategy is an offshoot of Rwandas Vision 2020, a government blueprint designed in 2000 for achieving a knowledge-based economy (in which growth depends more on information than on production) and leading the country to the middle-income bracket by 2020.

Already most bus operators in Kigali, Rwandas capital city, accept prepaid cards. Thousands of commuters riding swanky city buses need only swipe a debit card on a card reader fitted on a bus dashboard before taking their seats. Gone are the days when conductors collected cash payments.

M-Pesa sets the pace

Philip Ngarambe, the chief operations officer of AC Group, a digital payment systems company in Rwanda, explains that previously, by the time [cash] gets to the company there are so many hands it has gone throughfrom the conductor to the bus driver to the person collecting it, to taking it to finance and the bank account, that businesses lost between 40% and 60% of revenues through cash pilfering.

Rwanda may be ahead of the curve in cashless commuting, but Kenyas M-Pesa, a mobile payment service launched in 2007, is acclaimed for the revolutionary impact it has had on society. M-Pesa (a Swahili word for mobile money) allows people, even in rural areas, to transfer money to one another, make day-to-day purchases and pay for services such as electricity and water.

The Global System for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA), the London-based industry group that represents mobile operators worldwide, has lauded M-Pesas pioneering effort for demonstrating the potential of mobile technology to transform access to financial services in emerging markets.

Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Cote dIvoire, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa are also bellwethers of cashless payment use in Africa, according to GSMA.

The Egyptian government, in collaboration with MasterCard and the Egyptian Banks Company (EBC), is working on a similar project that will allow 50 million citizens to use a single mobile payments gateway. The gateway will link citizens national IDs to a digital system, which means all those in the financial mainstreamsuppliers, distributions, customers, government and so oncan transact with one another.

Similarly, the Nigerian government and MasterCard are planning a national ID programme with biometric functionality that citizens can use to pay for goods and services and to receive salaries. That project, targeting 100 million citizens, will be the largest of its kind on the continent.

Tantalising investment opportunity

A pan-African bank, Ecobank, and MasterCard have set their sights on 100 million customers in 33 African countries (including Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda) with a service dubbed Masterpass Quick Response (QR). Masterpass QR is a digital system that enables customers to make online and in-store payments. In-store customers can make payments by scanning a QR bar code downloaded on a mobile device.

Paradoxically, Africas lack of financial inclusionthe slow adoption of tools of global commerce, such as banking and financial literacyhas proved attractive to investors. About 90% of retail transactions in sub-Saharan Africa are cash based, while just 34% of adults have traditional bank accounts, according to the World Banksuggesting tantalising potential for investors.

More than 500 million Africans currently use mobile phones; according to GSMAs 2016 annual report, that number will rise to 725 million by 2020, while 84 million have active mobile money accounts. That report also notes the use of mobile money in 31 African countries.

Mobile money transactions in sub-Saharan Africa could exceed $1.3 billion by 2019, according to data by the consulting firm Frost & Sullivan. Experts forecast that the increasing number of mobile subscribers will inevitably lead to an increase in the mobile money market.

Also on investors radar is the $62 billion per yearand growingof international remittances to Africa, which a company like WorldRemit, an international money transfer enterprise founded by Somalilands Ismail Ahmed, has successfully targeted. Unlike the big global money transfer companies such as Western Union that mostly require receivers to pick up cash from banks, WorldRemit enables African immigrants in Europe and North America to use their debit or credit cards to send money directly to recipients bank accounts or mobile wallets in Africa.

I send money to my folks in Ghana every month. I use WorldRemit, says Naa Atswei Kodia, a Ghanaian living in the United States.

For individuals, digital payments save time; for businesses, they send monies seamlessly into accounts; and even government transparency and accountability credentials are enhanced with digital payments. The use of smart cardsalso protects the environment, as there are no longer paper tickets littering [Kigali], adds Ngarambe.

In Rwanda, electronic payments have reduced the birth registration time from six hours to 40 minutes, reports GSMA. In Tanzania, paying a vehicle license fee now takes an hour, instead of a whole day, as was the case previously.

Less cash leads to less crime, researchers say. A study by William Jack and Tavneet Suri titled, Mobile Money: the Economics of M-PESA, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a US-based nonprofit research organization, found that a few months after M-Pesa debuted, consumers cited personal safety and security as reasons for using the service.

Benefits

Jude Onwuegbuzie, a Nigerian businessman and legal practitioner, told Africa Renewal, These days, people traveling between cities dont carry cash, so highway robberies are no longer lucrative in Nigeria.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the foreign aid arm of the US government, touts success in partnering with the Liberian government to implement the Mobile Solutions Technical Assistance and Research (mSTAR) project, which enables teachers in Nimba County in northern Liberia to receive monthly salaries paid in the capital, Monrovia, through their phones.

The mobile money payment eliminated time away from their classrooms and reduced costs to receive their salaries by 84%, USAID states on its website.

Mobile money moves the poor from the informal to the formal financial sector. With 40.5% of its GDP in the informal sector, Africa has the highest rate of the shadow economy, according to the World Bank. By comparison, the figure is 16% for countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Payments provided via an account can provide the on-ramp to financial inclusion, maintains the World Bank.

Digital payments and SDGs

GSMA considers mobile payments relevant to 11 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including SDG 1, because it helps to eliminate extreme poverty; SDG 5, because financial services empower women economically; and SDG 9, because digital payments and access to credit services lead to new industries.

But regulatory bottlenecks often slow progress in the cashless payment industry. A lack of interoperability among mobile transactions in some countries, meaning individuals cannot transact across carriers, is a problem, says Daniel Monehin, MasterCards division president for sub-Saharan Africa. In Liberia, for instance, Ahmed says that she cannot send money to people on another mobile phone network.

GSMA advises countries to allow banks and nonbank actors into the financial sector and advises providers to focus on operational efficiency.

Nigeria penalises certain amounts of cash withdrawals, which encourages people to make cashless transactions. That policy will help modernise Nigerias payment system, says GSMA.

Still, Neal Estey, a former director of the Boston Universitys Center for Finance, Law and Policy, is circumspect about digital payments. Mobile money should not be sold as a miracle cure for financial inclusion, he argues, because people in developing countries who use mobile money instead of opening bank accounts cannot build a financial record, have no credit ratings and do not enjoy the benefits of banking.

But banks hungry for good returns are feeling the winds of change, which is why many are already partnering with credit card and mobile payment companies.

The future of mobile banking will sooner or later belong to the banks, says Sunil Sachdev, CEO and chief business development officer of Meed, a US-based mobile financial services company.

Source: Africa Renewal.
DURBAN: Today, 7 June 2017 marks the inaugural global Women in News (WIN) Summit, which commenced at the ICC in Durban earlier today.

Great energy and inspiration at the Women in News Summit at the World News Media Congress #WAN-IFRA #wnmc2017 #wnc2017 #WNC2017 @womeninnews A post shared by Ayesha Mall (@ayesha_mall) on Jun 7, 2017 at 1:24am PDT

In association with the World News Media Congress and World Editors Forum and a component of WAN-IFRAs Women in News initiative, the WIN Summit endeavours to increase womens leadership and voices in the news.

Breaking through is the theme of this years Summit, as it celebrates women in media who are innovatively breaking through glass ceilings and traditional ways of doing things to inspire and equip others to do the same.

Honouring such women, the Summit opened with the announcement of this years laureates of the WIN Editorial Leadership Award 2017. Karima Kamal from the Middle East, North Africa region and Pamela Sittoni from sub-Saharan Africa each received a 2017 WIN Newsroom Leadership Award for their exceptional contribution to their respective newsrooms.

The Women In News leadership award goes to Pamella Sittoni from Kenya, the first woman in such a senior print position in Kenya. #WNC17 pic.twitter.com/rUeTiGytI6  Verashni Pillay (@verashni) June 7, 2017

Some takeouts from the keynotes and interactive panel discussions include:

Maria Ressa, CEO & ED of Rappler in the Philippines shares her tips on war zone reporting at #WIN #WNC17.  Nabeelah Shaikh (@Nabeelah_Shaikh) June 7, 2017

My journo hero @mariaressa says her lessons from conflict reporting worked equally well for starting a media business! #WNC17 pic.twitter.com/Rd0USFKV4M  Verashni Pillay (@verashni) June 7, 2017

.@lisataljard's advice to her 20-year-old self is brilliant: "Learn to pick locks and not break down doors". #WNC17 #WINsummit  Verashni Pillay (@verashni) June 7, 2017

Women often are doubtful about their abilities so more feedback should be given in newsrooms, says @lisataljard #winsummit #WNC17  Simone Flueckiger (@SimoneFluckiger) June 7, 2017

"Being a journalist, wife and mom requires a superpower which I'm still trying to find." - Mahlatsi Gallens #WINSummit #WNC17 #Quicktalks  Nabeelah Shaikh (@Nabeelah_Shaikh) June 7, 2017

Mahlatse Gallens: Through all of the hurdles I had to jump, there was another woman who held my hand #winsummit #WNC17  Simone Flueckiger (@SimoneFluckiger) June 7, 2017

The Summit is being followed by a networking lunch before the rest of the Congress gets underway.

For more information, visit WAN-IFRA.org or follow @NewspaperWorld, hashtag #WNC17 and @TheWINSummit, hashtag #WINSUMMIT on Twitter, and keep an eye out on Bizcommunity for more socially shared insights from the Congress over the next couple of days.
Students from the University of Cape Town (UCT), a visiting student group from Belgium and fledgling entrepreneurs from the Raymond Ackerman Academy of Entrepreneurial Development (at UCT) are competing in a Pitch Off' on Thursday 8 June 2017. Coca-Cola Peninsula Beverages (CCPB) in Parow Industria is hosting and supporting the event.

The UCT Development Unit for New Enterprise (DUNE) Pitch-Off competition, supported by CCPB, aims to provide a safe but competitive space for student entrepreneurs to take the first step towards starting their own business as they pitch their innovative ideas to a panel of judges.

The Belgian students will be in Cape Town for the International Week of Entrepreneurial Management, which is a collaboration between UCTs DUNE, the H-Web, the CVO Hooger Insituut Der Kempen and Thomas More University in Belgium.

The participants from the Raymond Ackerman Academy (RAA) are graduates of the six-month entrepreneurship programme and are currently part of the RAAs year-long Graduate Entrepreneur Support Service where their businesses are incubated.

Business and personal development

The course is for young people who are passionate about business and personal development, who have limited opportunities for accessing tertiary education, finding or creating employment, explains Elli Yiannakaris, director of the RAA.

There is great value in developing an entrepreneurial spirit amongst young people. They possess great energy and potential to contribute to economic prosperity, job creation and ultimately to improve the community in which they operate. We are thrilled to partner with the Raymond Ackerman Academy and the Development Unit for New Enterprise on this exciting journey, says Priscilla Urquhart, public affairs and communications manager at CCPB.

Stuart Hendry, director of DUNE says, Enhanced entrepreneurship is crucial for economic development. UCT has a unique opportunity to play an important leadership role in building critical mass for the development of entrepreneurs in South Africa.

Pol Hauspie, serial entrepreneur and founder of Belgiums H-Web Foundation will be one of the judges on the panel reviewing the creative ideas presented by the students as well as Letitia De Wet, CEO of Enactus South Africa and Rob Hersov, serial entrepreneur and angel investor. It is a great privilege for me to mentor young entrepreneurs from Belgium and South Africa by sharing my experience, knowledge and insights, concludes Hauspie.
The Statistics SA Quarterly Labour Force Survey shows that unemployment is rising to a 14-year high , with 27.1% of the population without a job. The Franchise Association of South Africa (FASA) believes the franchise sector can play a key role in creating the necessary jobs to grow the economy through innovative venture creations.

Currently the sector contributes 11.6% to the countrys GDP and employs over 400,000 people through its 757 franchise systems and their 35 111 franchise outlets.

With the gap between the unemployment rate envisaged by the National Development Plan (NDP) and the current rate widening and with governments goal of 5 million jobs by 2020 fading fast, the only solution for real economic growth to happen is if 90% of South Africas jobs come from small business.

Allowing entrepreneurship to flourish

Tony Da Fonseca, FASAs chairman for 2017/2018, says, Solutions to the employment challenge need to be tackled as a matter of urgency. We, as the franchise community, have the business format expertise to assist in the establishment of new franchises in a variety of sectors not yet franchised  be it in agriculture, manufacturing or even in governments social services. However, we need to mobilise business and industry leaders, government and civil society to play a part in freeing up economic regulations and find creative solutions to allow entrepreneurship to flourish.

It has been repeatedly proven that small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are the backbone of every economy around the world. Vera Valasis, executive director of FASA, who represents South Africa at the World Franchise Council, adds, Small businesses are creating two-thirds of the jobs in developed countries and a large percentage of those small businesses are through the franchising business format. There is no reason why South Africa cannot drive the same growth through franchising that countries such as Brazil, China and India have shown.

New ways to empower business

Many of FASAs members are already exploring new ways to empower small businesses and entrepreneurs in bridging inequality, creating prosperity and employment.

According to Anita Du Toit, director at Franchising Plus, franchise consultants that have pioneered the piloting of social franchise projects, there should be more programmes with a focus on skills development and that certain skills could be turned into sustainable micro franchises, thereby helping these franchisees to earn a living and removing them from the job seeking market.

We have always said that painters, tilers and such trades could be franchised under the umbrella of a big retailer or paint manufacturer. This would solve the problem of consumer perceptions of the credibility of independent contractors while also ensuring a central referral system, ongoing training and support and helping such tradesmen to earn a good living as a small business operator. The focus should move from job creation to the creation of sustainable small businesses. Franchising offers a mechanism to enable this.

Replicating success

Kobus Oosthuizen, former chairman of FASA and MD of SA Franchise Warehouse has worked closely with government on several initiatives to stimulate entrepreneurship, skills transfer and job creation. In 2014, an initiative from the Jobs Fund, and in conjunction with Business Partners, resulted in just under R100 million advanced and more than 600 jobs to be created by the end of 2017. The second round of an emerging franchisor initiative spearheaded by the Department of Small Business Developments Micro Franchisor Development Project will see 12 such businesses replicated.

Oosthuizen points out, There is no doubt that these projects will go a long way to enhancing the reputation of franchising as an enterprise development mechanism, whilst playing a valuable role in reviving township economies, creating new businesses, passing on important skills and more importantly, creating much-needed jobs.

Da Fonseca believes that the franchise sector is perfectly poised to take the lead in transforming the business landscape and making an even bigger contribution to entrepreneurship, skills transfer and job creation.

As a group of progressive franchise entrepreneurs, historically and against the odds of sanctions, we created a franchise sector that today boasts over 90% home-grown concepts. Sustainable economic transformation can become a reality only if the public and the private sector come together to optimise limited resources and utilise available opportunities to best effect, concludes Da Fonseca.
Tanimola Oyewole in this report, suggests how northern governors and the traditional rule can set up modern farms where farmers from villages under their domain will be required to provide labour on a rotational basis, thereby boosting agriculture in the region.

Nigeria: Agriculture remains the main occupation of the majority of our rural population. And every improvement we are able to bring about in the sector will translate to an improvement in the life of the majority of our people. Agriculture productivity on the African continent is low relative to other continents because of the low level of technology that is being brought to bear in agricultural production. This is evident by the following:

 Low usage of hybrid seeds particularly varieties that are best suited for our soil type and are more tolerant of pests and diseases

 Soil degraded by poor farming technique and low fertilizer usage

 Limited use of farm machinery, rudimentary hoes and cutlasses very much like the ones used by our parents are still the predominant implements being used by our farmers

 Limited knowledge and use of sustainable farming techniques

 Absence of modern farm management skills

 Market failures which deny farmers the appropriate reward for their labour

Several states in the country are currently grappling with the payment of civil/public servant salaries; with most requiring a federal government bailout to enable them to do so. State governments that are in such sorry financial state can hardly be expected to deliver on infrastructure and other needed amenities/service, so communities have to begin to look out for themselves. And Emirs, as fathers of the community, are very well placed to champion such moves.

The below are some programmes that the Emirs can implement to help address the problems:

Demonstration farms

Emirs in the state will be supported and encouraged to set up modern farms where farmers from villages under their domain will be required to provide farm labour on a rotational basis. These will help bring the local farmers in every single village in the state in direct and personal contact with modern farming techniques and the benefits thereof.

The practical application of the above method and the immense benefit and transformation it can bring about is being played out in the Tsaragi Emirate, and will be held up as an example for others to copy.

The local staples of the community and a few other selected crops will be grown using modern sustainable farming techniques and applying the correct inputs - use of small farm machinery to help increase area under cultivation, small-scale drip irrigation to help keep farmers going all year round and hybrid seed along with inputs - fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides - will be demonstrated. It is expected that the involvement of the local farmers in the process will help them witness in practical terms the difference that modern farming techniques bring about, and that this would help hasten the diffusion of the knowledge amongst the local farmers around the state.

The average farmer in sub-Saharan Africa gets just over half a ton of cereal per acre, while the average Indian farmer gets about twice that, the average Chinese farmer about four times that, and the average American farmer about five times that amount - FAOSTAT. Accessed 2009.

Establishment of equipment hiring and extension services centre

Each Emirate should reach out to its well-to-do-sons to join hands with the state and an experienced business manager to set up an equipment hiring and extension services centre. That will have bulldozers for land clearing, and tractors equipped with plows and planters that will be available for hire at a rate affordable for farmers in the Emirate. This will make it possible for them to put a greater area of land under cultivation.

Agriculture extension officers will be on hand at each centre to provide farmers with agronomy advice, do farm visitations and help organise them into cooperatives. Short video clips on modern practice - how to grow and manage different crops - would be produced by the Ministry of Agriculture and be available for purchase as video CDs or Micro Sims for view on mobile phones.

The centres will also stock hybrid seeds for the staples grown in the state along with agrochemicals - herbicides, fungicide, pesticides, etc.

Correcting market distortion

A large portion of the farm produce by our rural state find their way into the cities, but as things stand presently, the middlemen end up with a disproportionate amount of the final consumer price paid for the foodstuff, depriving the farmers the full benefit of their labour and acting as a disincentive for new entrance into the sector. To help correct the situation, farmers in each Emirate will be encouraged to form cooperatives that will, in addition to other functions, be engaged in produce marketing i.e. getting information on the going rate of produce in the cities, and seeking ways to ensure that their produce is sold for the best possible price.

Every cooperative will be encouraged to procure at least one DAF truck (if necessary on hire purchase, with the Emir standing as surety). With this, they can directly convey their produce to the city market, cutting out the middle man. The cooperatives will buy the products off the farmers at a more competitive price than the middlemen presently offer them and sell the products in the cities at the going retail rate, with the differential going into the funds of the cooperative.

Community development officers can be recruited for each Emirate, who will be charged with ensuring that the funds been generated by the cooperative are directed towards projects that will enhance the community economically i.e. projects that complement the state government's programmes in education, health care, micro-hydroelectric power plants and road projects, etc. rather than the usual town hall, market stall and such other projects that communities are fond of undertaking. They will be in a position to recommend appropriate small and medium scale enterprises and social welfare projects in the Emirate.

The development officer will also act as an agriculture extension officer charged with introducing new farmer techniques, low-cost farm implements, new crops and other assistance in the area of agriculture.

The general aim has been to implement an integrated community development initiative in every ward similar to those being undertaken by the Millennium Villages Project.The Millennium Villages projects have been able to achieve a marked improvement in the livelihood of the rural people in the area of health care delivery, water and sanitation, education, infrastructure, and business development with just an annual outlay of N20,000 per capita over a five year period.

The above is reminiscent of the Marketing Boards run by the then Regional governments in the country.

Agro-processing plants

The Emirs can challenge communities and farmer cooperatives to attain a position where no unprocessed commodity leaves their communities. They will be encouraged to establish mini/micro agro-processing plants to add value to the produce coming out of their communities. A micro Shea butter processing plant can transform the local economy of a community, so would a micro rice or sugar mill. The groundnut growers can, for instance, come together and establish a mini oil mill with finance from the Bank of Industry's Cottage Agro Product Processing Fund, this will add substantial value to the raw groundnut, set the community on the first rung of industrial development, create additional jobs in the plant - factory, sales, admin and others. Given the extensive linkage that the plant's operation has within the community, the multiplier effect of the new monies coming into the community would have a positive impact on a significant proportion of the population.

Agri exports

Emirs can champion the exports of agri-commodities grown in their Emirate. Asian business people presently undertake the bulk of the exports, with the huge benefits accruing to them being taken out of the country when they could have been used to uplift our people.

Summary

Agriculture provided the foundation for economic growth and development in several countries around the world. The Emirs can exploit this same potential by empowering its farmers to utilise its vast amounts of arable land.

The wealth that will be generated will help ensure that the scourge of rural poverty will be drastically reduced and the inclusive growth that we are all so desirous of will begin to unfold, the way that the earnings from Cocoa, Groundnut, and Palm Oil did back in the 60's.

The above reforms and the better prospects it will usher in will also make it possible to attract youth into agriculture and help reverse the aging farming population that is threatening the future of agriculture in the country.

Assistance for the implementation of the above can be sought from Local and international organisations such as IITA, the African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF), the USAID Feed the Future Initiative, the G8 New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, the Nigeria Exports Promotion Council and the Federal Ministry of Agriculture.
While the recruitment process traditionally centred on qualifications, competencies, and experience, there has been a gradual shift in focus toward personality and potential for growth which has seen more companies opting for interactive, personality-revealing sessions instead of traditional interviews.

Dale Simpson, Curator of Radisson RED Hotel V&A Waterfront

Dale Simpson, Curator of Radisson RED Hotel V&A Waterfront, Cape Town, says that a major contributing factor to this shift is the growing importance being placed on company culture. Healthy company culture enables a team to work like a well-oiled machine and hiring candidates who are the right culture-fit positively impacts their commitment and dependability.

The culture-fit and why its important

According to Simpson, this trend is particularly prevalent in the hospitality industry. In our sector, personality is key, and while most skills can be taught, personality  for the most part  cannot. As such, when it comes to hiring, we look first and foremost for people who have the right personality and energy for a particular role, even if this means an employee will require significant upskilling for the position. We are looking for those guys and girls who have a naturally expressive and fun-loving nature.

In addition to boosting company culture, Simpson says that this hiring process results in higher staff retention. When you hire based solely on past experience and qualifications, you run the risk of employing someone who isnt a great fit for the companys culture  and thats not what were looking for. Not only is this detrimental to the greater morale of the team, but will also likely result in the candidate being unhappy and leaving, leading to a high staff turnover.

Revolutionising hotel staff recruitment

In order to ensure the right candidates are found, Radisson RED has developed a revolutionary concept for hotel staff recruitment, which aims to break traditional hotel norms. Based on new recruitment channels, new selection processes, and new criteria, the RED Casting is an interview that candidates cant prepare for, says Simpson.

Through a series of four interactive workshops, candidates are put in a position where their true behaviour will shine through, which allows us to really get a feel for who they are and what role theyd be best-suited to. Live music and interactive performances will bring a fun vibe to the day, allowing the panel of casters to really evaluate the natural passion of candidates.

Radisson RED Hotel V&A Waterfront creatives

Getting creative with staff training

Simpson says that Radisson RED Cape Town is currently recruiting three different types of staff, namely creatives (waiters, barman, baristas, and front desk); kitchen creatives (chefs, chefs and chefs); and Red Gen creatives (reservations). A person will be trained for the overall position, depending on the type of role they are filling. This means that a kitchen creative will be capable of carrying out every job in the kitchen, from cooking to cleaning and serving.

By training everyone for everything, and rotating staff on a regular basis, Simpson says that staff is able to develop a broad range of skills. This creates a well-rounded team and ensures that the ball does not drop. If the chef is off sick, for example, someone else will be fully willing and able to step in and the show will go on without a hitch.

Simpson concludes that Radisson RED is very excited to be at the forefront of this new era of talent acquisition. Being guest-centric means above all being people-centric, and for RED, moving away from the standard etiquette and approach to recruitment inspires this.
In recent years, a lack of certainty regarding Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE) has arisen, because of changes in the regulatory framework, which saw BBBEE becoming more stringent and placing a greater emphasis on ownership.

Certainty is a requirement for attracting foreign direct investment, however, certainty in the economic and legislative space in South Africa is not always forth-coming.

Generic BBBEE Codes of Practice

The present Generic BBBEE Codes of Good Practice came into force in May 2015. This set in motion a scramble to align sector-specific BBBEE codes and charters with the Generic Codes of Good Practice. Most sector-specific codes were able to get drafts to the Department of Trade and Industry to avoid being repealed. However, the Construction Sector Code and the Chartered Accountancy Code were repealed.

Notwithstanding meeting the aforementioned deadlines, many amended codes are not yet in force and therefore the relevant previous code still applies. Accordingly, from an actual legislative perspective, there is still a way to go before there is uniformity and certainty across the entire BBBEE regulatory framework.

Apart from the actual legislative uncertainty, there is also increasing uncertainty on how to interpret and apply the various BBBEE codes and charters. Two trends have emerged in this regard  one is that the BBBEE ownership targets, being required by State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) when putting out tenders, are unpredictable; and the other is the interpretation of the various BBBEE codes and charters by the BBBEE Commission.

State Owned Enterprises

In terms of the BBBEE Act, as amended, the Minister of Trade and Industry (Minister), may exempt a SOE from a requirement contained in any of the applicable BBBEE code or allow some deviation. This may only be done if the Minister has consulted with the relevant state or public entity and found that there are objectively verifiable facts or circumstances applicable, which necessitate the exemption or deviation. Further, such exemption or deviation must be published in the Government Gazette.

However, this does not appear to be happening always and the European Union Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Southern Africa recently expressed dismay that SOEs were putting out tenders calling for a 51% black ownership requirement to be met. This requirement is not in line with the various BBBEE codes and charters and is in some instances not being published in the Government Gazette. Accordingly, there are tenders being published where possible applicants are not aware of the upper BBBEE ownership thresholds required until the tender is published. This means that it is increasingly difficult for potential applicants to get their BBBEE affairs in order before submitting a tender.

Another example of this was published in December last year in relation to a coal producer's relationship with Eskom. The coal mining company supplies coal to Eskom and reported that Eskom was requiring it to be 51% BBBEE owned in order to maintain this supply relationship. There appeared to be no basis for this requirement, other than it constituted BBBEE rules, which Eskom was putting in place.

The ownership requirements set out above are not stipulated in the relevant BBBEE codes and therefore demonstrate the kind of exemption or deviation, which must only be permitted by the Minister, in consultation with the SOE, and verified with regard to objective facts and circumstances. Most importantly, such exemption or deviation must also be published in the Government Gazette. The publication requirement ensures that, notwithstanding an exemption or deviation, entities responding to SOE tenders can do so with sureness in respect of the requirements being applied. This would therefore go a long way to providing sorely needed certainty in the BBBEE space.

BBBEE Commission

The BBBEE Commission (Commission) was introduced by the amendments to the BBBEE Act in 2014. The Commission has wide investigatory powers in relation to BBBEE structures and allegations of fronting practices. There is also a requirement to report BBBEE transactions over a certain threshold to the Commission.

Once reported, the Commission has discretion to impose conditions on the transaction. There is at present no certain notification threshold but the dti has published a threshold of R100 million for comment.

Transacting parties in the South African deal-making environment are unsure of whether the deals they are presently negotiating would be notifiable. Moreover, it is unclear what sort of conditions the Commission would impose and whether these would be so onerous that the deal would have to be unwound.

This is adding to speculation on how the Commission will interpret and apply BBBEE regulation in the future and naturally further increases uncertainty about investment and doing business in the BBBEE space.

Conclusion

Clarity in relation to the above aspects of BBBEE is sorely needed, as it is now virtually impossible to do business in South Africa without meaningfully engaging with BBBEE.

However, such engagement needs to be grounded in a clear and certain regulatory system, which is uniformly and definitively applied. Obtaining such clarity is therefor vital to ensure that the South African investment environment becomes more secure, which under current unstable global conditions, will be welcomed by South African investors.
In Georgia, US, IBM Watson and Sesame Workshop have piloted their first intelligent play and learning platform on IBM cloud at the Gwinnett County Public Schools, designed to establish evidence of learning at scale.

Source: Still from YouTube IBM Watson video on YouTube

In the initial phase, Gwinnett kindergartners and teachers in six classrooms engaged with a tablet-based, cognitive vocabulary app, built on the Watson-powered platform to enhance vocabulary development of students. Fuelled by Sesame content and learning design, this adaptive app features Sesame Street characters, alongside educational videos and word games.

The new platform enables an ecosystem of software developers, researchers, educational toy companies and educators to tap IBM Watson cognitive capabilities and content from Sesame Workshops early childhood research to build engaging experiences to help advance childrens education and learning. The cognitive vocabulary app is one of the first of many cognitive apps, games and educational toys that will be built over time on this new platform, because of the two companies collaboration announced last year.

Pilot shows good results

Sesame and IBM share a belief that cognitive computing can enhance and spark excitement for learning in children everywhere, said Harriet Green, GM, IBM Watson IoT, Customer Engagement and Education. Together, we are combining Watson capabilities and Sesame's rich educational knowledge to give teachers new insights about their students vocabulary development and ultimately, create a unique learning experience personalised to each child.

Based on the initial Gwinnett pilot, with an expanded pilot currently being planned for this Fall, IBM and Sesame collected 18,000 assessments from multiple choice questions that helped to measure progression of words students were exposed to over a two-week period.

In the pilot, students learned words that are deemed difficult for kindergarteners, including arachnid, amplify, camouflage and applause, with initial observations showing that many students appeared to acquire new vocabulary because of the app.

One teacher noted, We are studying animals and children were able to notice various forms of camouflage among animal skin patterns. Another teacher said, When we found a spider in the classroom, a student yelled, 'an arachnid! Participating teachers agreed that the app was a valuable addition to their class.

Watsons augmented intelligence capabilities are designed to enable the app to provide digital assistance in the classroom. Teachers can monitor childrens vocabulary development in real-time through a secure dashboard and adjust lessons, pacing and curriculum to each childs needs. The app will use adaptive assessments to determine a child's current vocabulary range, and then deliver vocabulary-learning experiences that focus on specific words. Continuously learning as a child engages with the app, words and areas that require additional focus are refined to deliver content and experiences that are engaging, fun and inspiring.

Global adoption soon

The pilot of the cognitive vocabulary learning app is only the beginning of what is possible with this technology. IBM and Sesame are customising Watson for early childhood as well as developing new capabilities for it. Educational toys, apps and games enabled with Watsons speech- and image-recognition capabilities are expected to take the platforms personalised learning beyond the classroom. These products will be designed to engage directly with children and caregivers to deliver context-rich play experiences around literacy, emotional learning, and school preparedness, all adapted to each childs preferences and learning patterns.

Sesame Workshop is committed to reaching and teaching children in the critical years between ages 0-5, meeting them wherever they are and adapting to the ways they learn best, said Jeffrey D Dunn, CEO of Sesame Workshop. Educational technology, such as the platform we have created with IBM Watson is a promising new channel for learning opportunities inside and outside the classroom, and we are excited to explore it further.

The current pilot is the first phase of a process to understand whether multi-modal learning experiences can improve vocabulary and literary. This app and others like it will soon be available on the IBM Cloud for wide adoption in schools globally. These and other educational experiences being developed on the new platform will be modular and easy to customise, built with the needs of educators and administrators in mind.

We know that each child has unique educational needs that are difficult to address fully in a classroom, even with the kinds of differentiation strategies available to teachers today, said Dr Todd Rose, one of the projects advisors and director of Mind, Brain and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Sesame Workshop and IBM Watson are developing a technology platform that has the potential to help teachers meet their students individual needs in entirely new ways, using data from playful learning activities that adapt to each students knowledge of a topic, interests and approaches to learning. I am encouraged by the programs progress in just one year, and their attention to learning both in and out of schools. By including students, teachers and administrators in the design of the platform, this pilot program can move quickly towards becoming a resource that will be available to many more children who will benefit from it.

Program partner is top of county schools

Located in the metro Atlanta area, Gwinnett County Public Schools (GCPS) is the largest school system in Georgia and the 13th largest in the US. GCPS is a three-time finalist (2009, 2010 and 2014) and two-time winner (2010 and 2014) of the Broad Prize for Urban Education, designating GCPS as one of the nations top urban school districts.

As a key partner in this unique co-design process, it has offered insights and feedback as joint research and development teams from IBM and Sesame Workshop evolve the app.

Gwinnett County Public Schools CEO/Superintendent J Alvin Wilbanks was excited about the opportunity to participate in this pilot with Sesame and long time strategic technology partner IBM. This vocabulary learning app complements our efforts to transform the classroom, actively engaging students in a fun and interactive way. Technology is a basic tool for todays learner and with this app, our very youngest learners had the opportunity to learn new words and expand their vocabulary.

For more information, go to https://ibm.co/sesameandibm.
Chris van der Merwe, the founder and CEO of fast-growing private education group Curro, will not be relinquishing his executive responsibilities.

On Tuesday, Curro announced that Van der Merwe - a highly respected figure in the education sector - would serve as CEO of newly formed tertiary learning subsidiary Stadio Holdings. Stadio will soon be unbundled out of Curro and separately listed on the JSE.

Earlier in 2017, Curro announced Van der Merwe would step down as CEO of Curro in July to take up a nonexecutive role in guiding the company on strategic matters.

Vunani Securities analyst Anthony Clark said Van der Merwe's appointment as CEO of Stadio was a positive move.

"He leaves a very capable and experienced Andries Greyling in charge at Curro. Curro has reached critical mass and can now stand on its own two feet."

Clark said it was reassuring that Van der Merwe's experience would be brought to bear at the new tertiary business.

In a Sens statement, Curro reaffirmed its intention to unbundle and list Stadio Holdings separately in 2017.

Further details would be released in due course.

Clark said it was important for investors to understand that Stadio would need significant amounts of capital to fund expansion and growth.

"One needs to remember Curro had six rights issues...."

Earlier in 2017, Van der Merwe said research over the past 36 months indicated a huge demand for tertiary products.

He expected Stadio would have a future market of about 100,000 tertiary students.

In anticipation of this demand, the company's Embury campus in Durban had been extended to enrol 2,600 students - more than double 2017's intake - at the start of 2018.

The Waterfall Estate campus in Johannesburg had received full accreditation to enrol 1,600 students and would be in operation by the end of 2017, while the Montana campus in Pretoria - with capacity for 1,200 students - should be ready for enrolment by mid-2017.

Clark cautioned investors that Stadio would be a long-term investment scenario, adding that tougher economic times often damped the demand for tertiary education.

Source: Business Day
Cape Town is well known for those nook-and-cranny hangouts, however, when it comes to a real man-adventure - on a budget - there are some great day trip options for the bros.

Newly launched transport service, Cape Comoot, offers one-way trips from Green Market Square to Cape Point or Franschhoek which means you and your buddies can enjoy the fun responsibly without breaking the bank.

Co-founder of Cape Comoot, Martin Bo Nielsen, who also brought us Cape Town Free Walking Tours, says, "Reasonably priced access to some of the Cape's most iconic destinations is something that the tourist industry in the Western Cape has been seriously lacking. We want to encourage Cape Town residence to engage in their own sense of adventure and explore some of these previously perceived 'too far away' destinations like Cape Point and Franschhoek. People need to realise there's a lot to do in these spots and they are about more than Fynbos and Wine. The grub is good too."

Before you set out on your big journey you can grab a New York-style brekkie on Bree Street from Max Bagels. Fairly new but no less delicious, the shop serves bagels filled with both classic and gourmet toppings. Grab a breakfast bagel, a cup of freshly roasted coffee, and you're good to go. Open from 8am, this quick stop means that you will have plenty of time for a stroll to Greenmarket Square where the Cape Comoot umbrellas can be easily spotted.

Nature guys at Cape Point

Cape Point is steeped in history and ghost ships disguised as funny little rail carts, so depending on your preferences here are some of the best activities in and around the south. Remember that Cape Point forms part of SA Parks so there will be an entrance fee of R135 per adult. The 'Flying Dutchman' Funicular is named after the famous ghost ship. These little carts choo-choo your pals all the way from the car park up an incline through dense fynbos to the upper lighthouse, which is one of the best spots to visit at Cape Point.

Hiking

If you have some pep in your step and lazing around on a tram is not your style, rest not! There are many short but striking trails in the area.

Food and souvenirs

If you would like a memento or proof that you have been to Cape Point for the women back at home, there are souvenir shops and a takeaway place with sandwiches/pizzas. There is also a sit-down restaurant with a great view of False Bay.

Be aware of bad@ss baboons!

There are baboons in the area and they like to steal food a lot. So, don't eat in the open fynbos or you might find yourself in an argy-bargy over a chocolate bar with a guy who has bigger teeth.

Baboon 'photobombs' a beautiful landscape photo in Cape Point, South Africa pic.twitter.com/byXENWfSdu  Documentary Tube (@DocumentaryTube) April 15, 2015

While we can all appreciate the stunning beauty of a place like Cape Point, some guys are not nature guys and that's why Cape Comoot also gives customers a route to Franschhoek. Wine and dine or beer and baskets, this little town packs a big punch.

It's tram time

The Franschhoek Wine Tram hop-on-hop-off tour is one of the best ways to discover that there is a lot more to Franschhoek than people think. A mix of tram and tram-buses takes you on a loop of stops allowing you and your bros freedom of choice. Each tram line is colour coded and ticket prices vary, so check out the website for more details.

Manning up in Franschhoek

There is absolutely nothing wrong with wine-ing - after all Franschhoek is one of the world's most famous wine districts - but did you know that there's beer there too? Tuk Tuk Microbrewery (which is accessible by tram) offers some of the best microbrews in the province. Whether you're a Weis fan or prefer a good pale ale this stop will change how you view an ice-cold pint.

The man wine-xercise

If you like a bit of exercise between activity spots, it really is a lovely town to hop on a bicycle and get in some cardio. Finding a bike is easy - all you need to do is go to the bike rental shop which is a three-minute walk up the road towards the direction the bus came in. It's on the same side as the tram ticket office. In the bicycle shop, you can get a map of the area and recommendations on which wine farms are closest to town.
The governments of Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, and Bahrain announced on 5 June 2017 that they were cutting diplomatic ties with Qatar over claims of the country sponsoring terrorism. The travel bans that followed, including flight bans and port closures, will have a highly disruptive effect on destinations, airlines, hotels and tour operators in the GCC and wider Middle East.

Jordan Tan via 123RF

The overall size of the Qatari outbound market is relatively small at two million departures in 2016 to the rest of the world, however, Qataris spend a lot per trip, with an average outbound spend per trip of $1,400 and showing a positive upward trajectory. Overall outbound expenditure reached $2,617m in 2016.

Departures from Qatar to Saudi Arabia

Source: Euromonitor International - Travel Forecast Model

Dependency levels

The impact of cutting ties with Qatar on inbound tourism to the four countries will vary, based on the level of dependency on Qatar as a source of demand. In the case of the UAE, Egypt, and Bahrain, Qatar accounts for a small share of their inbound arrivals, of 1% or less. Whereas, Qatar plays a more important role as a source market for Saudi Arabia, accounting for 7% of all arrivals amounting to 1.3m trips, and more significantly, 27% of all inbound receipts that Saudi Arabia generates from international tourism.

The most popular destination for Qataris is Saudi Arabia, with 1.3m trips taken, and holds the majority share of outbound expenditure at $1b. After Saudi Arabia, the UAE is the most popular destination in terms of expenditure for Qataris, followed by the US, UK, and Bahrain.

Undermining long term potential

Severing ties with Qatar will act as a drag on tourism spending, especially for Saudi Arabia. Pre the diplomatic dispute, Euromonitor Internationals Travel Forecast Model indicated that outbound expenditure from Qatar to Saudi Arabia would grow strongly at 5% per year over 2017-2020. The trend will go into reverse seeing as the flows between the two countries will be stopped, and the severity of the downturn will depend on how long the diplomatic dispute lasts and when relations normalise.

Airlines in brace position

The Middle East is home to the Big Three carriers of Emirates, Etihad and Qatar Airways that have expanded rapidly across the globe in the last 15 years or more, thanks to liberalisation and open skies, much to the chagrin of many a legacy carrier around the world.

Big Three Middle Eastern Carriers Airlines % Value Shares 2010/2015

Source: Euromonitor International

Considering the high spending power of Qatari travellers, they will be a sorely missed source of revenue in the short term.

Qatar Airways, a five-star airline, is the smallest of the Big Three, with a 2.6% share of the Middle Eastern airlines market in 2015, amounting to $1.4b. Qatar Airways has a reasonable presence in the UAE market and Saudi Arabia, with 5.7% and 4% respectively. However, it has been losing in the UAE market due to intense price competition from the domestic carriers of Etihad and Emirates.

With flight bans in place and the exposure that the three Middle East carriers have to each others' markets means that it is unlikely that there will be any winners in the short term.
May 2017 spelled bad news for tourists intending to travel to Rwanda to see the gorillas. Rwanda has doubled the cost of its gorilla permits from $750 to a $1,500 - that's about R 19,300. While this is all in the name of conservation, some travellers to East Africa might find this price a little too steep.

Yet there are still alternatives for travellers who want to see gorillas in the wild - and tick this amazing experience off their bucket list.

1. Uganda gorillas

Giltedge

The most popular alternative is going gorilla trekking in neighbouring Uganda. In Uganda, the gorilla permits are $600 per person and during certain months theyre only $450 per person. Just remember that this price is per hike or per day, which doesnt guarantee  much like Rwanda  that you see any gorillas, although the chances of seeing these incredible creatures is extremely likely, says Erika Costa, product manager at Giltedge.

2. Gorilla viewing at Odzala, Congo

Odzala Discovery Camps

Western Lowland gorillas are the lesser-known relatives of the mountain gorillas in Rwanda and Uganda. They are similar to their mountain cousins but more active and like climbing trees, says Suzanne Bayly-Coupe, owner of Classic Portfolio.

Of the three habituated groups, two groups are easy to reach within a short 8km walk from the lodge through the lowlands. This means that there is no vehicle, no entrance gate, and there are no mountains to climb. This is perfect for travellers who are not super fit or avid hikers.

Odzala Ngaga Camp is a leading eco-lodge, and home to the research team who interact with the guests and give guided walks. With 25 years in the field, without which the gorilla conservation would be in peril, the research team is fanatic about gorilla survival and their passion is inspiring, says Bayly-Coupe.

3. Monkey trekking at Nyungwe Forest Lodge, Rwanda

Giltedge/Nyungwe Forest Lodge

Nyungwe Forest Lodge in Rwanda has different kinds of monkey trekking as an activity on offer. Guests are able to choose from trekking different species such as chimpanzee, grey-cheeked mangabey, black and white colobus monkeys, blue monkeys and golden monkeys. The lodge, part of the five-star One & Only portfolio, is nestled in the largest mountain rainforest in Africa, which is home to over 13 different primate species.

4. Chimpanzee trekking at Greystoke Mahale, Tanzania

Giltedge/Nomad Tanzania

Greystoke Mahale, set on Lake Tanganyikan in western Tanzania, is a great place for up-close encounters with chimpanzees. There are about 1,700 chimps living in the remote Mahale Mountains National Park, but visitors will only get to see the 60-strong Mimikere group, who are well habituated to humans.

Run by Nomad Tanzania, the lodge offers chimpanzee trekking in the mountain forests. We watch through our guests eyes as they see these primates for the first time. After tracking them, for an hour or two, or more, we find them. We sit quietly on the forest floor and watch them in their natural environment, says Amanda Corse from Nomad.
Rendani Nevhulaudzi (28) is the managing director of Joren Communications, a technology company supplying information and communication technology services. We find out more about his business and how he is providing employment to young people.

Who is Rendani Nevhulaudzi?

Rendani Nevhulaudzi is an entrepreneur, passionate about the web and born in Thohoyandou, Limpopo. He is married and lives with his wife in Pretoria.

Joren is quite a unique name - can you elaborate on the story of your brand name and what your brand is all about?

Joren started as Joren Communications, which was a combination of the founders of the company, JORdan and RENdani. We decided to choose the first three letters of our names to name the company. Even though Jordan has now left the company, I decided to continue with the name - then also decided to align the name with German writing by adding the two dots on top of the O to make it more visually unique.

My passion for the web led me to start my own business to bring premium web services at affordable prices to small and medium-sized businesses.

What were some of the challenges you faced to get Joren off the ground and how did you overcome them?

The biggest challenge initially was finding business; however, we overcame this by providing premium services which led to many of our clients referring new clients to us.

Number two was cash flow, this was due to late payment and delayed projects. We were, however, lucky to receive additional funding from our banks through an overdraft and credit card, which helped a lot in managing our cashflow and paying our bills on time.

The third was growth - which we are still dealing with - getting bigger contracts that would enable us to employ skilled workers and also be able to pay them a competitive salary. We are working on this through marketing and cold sales. We also continuously ask our clients to pay us better rates in line with the premium services that we offer.

Is there enough support for youth development and entrepreneurship in South Africa? How can we improve and who needs to come to the party?

I don't think there is enough support for youth development and entrepreneurship in South Africa. You have to be lucky or staying in urban areas to access many of the youth development centers.

I believe more could be done by building office infrastructure in remote areas and providing youth-owned businesses with business opportunities. Our company makes less than a million year, but we employ eight people - imagine if we were making R10m a year; we would be able to employ at least 100 people, who are mostly youth, in the creative and technology space.

The private sector should open up more opportunities for youth-owned businesses and this will lead to many small businesses employing more people.

What does Youth Month mean to you and your team at Joren?

For me, youth month should be a time that we, the youth, have a conversation about how to deal with unemployment and how we can pull our resources together to at least employ more people. We should also have a conversation about how we can get more youth educated beyond the first degree - we need an educated generation to move this country forward.

The Youth of South Africa...

The Youth of South Africa is alive with possibility.
CANCUN, Mexico: The International Air Transport Association (IATA) increased its profit forecast for the global airline industry Monday, citing surging demand.

Total profits for the group's 275 member airlines are now expected to hit $31.4bn this year, up more than five percent from the previous forecast late last year.

"Airlines are defining a new epoch in industry profitability. For the third year in a row, we expect returns that are above the cost of capital," said IATA's director general, Alexandre de Juniac, as the group opened its annual meeting in the Mexican resort city of Cancun.

But he warned that airlines still face risks, ranging from cost increases to security issues to growing protectionism in some countries, including the United States and Britain.

"With earnings of $7.69 per passenger, there is not much buffer," he said.

"That's why airlines must remain vigilant against any cost increases, including from taxes, labour and infrastructure."

Industry's concerns

Among the industry's concerns, he said, was the "surprise" decision in March by the United States and Britain to ban laptop and tablet computers in-cabin on flights from certain airports in the Middle East and Turkey.

The move came after intelligence officials learned of efforts by the Islamic State group to fashion a bomb into consumer electronics.

But airlines are unhappy with the bans, which affect 10 airports in eight countries, in the case of the US ban, and six countries in the case of Britain's.

De Juniac said US president Donald Trump's administration only made things worse when it threatened to extend the ban to flights to and from Europe, even though it has since backed off the idea.

Profits and passenger numbers

In the Middle East, profits and passenger numbers have fallen sharply in recent months, according to IATA.

"There is growing evidence that the ban on large electronic devices in the cabin and the uncertainty created around possible US travel bans is taking a toll on some key routes," De Juniac said.

Lost productivity caused by passengers' inability to work on affected flights is costing an estimated $180m a year, he said.

That would rise to $1.2bn a year if the ban were extended to flights between the United States and Europe, he said.

De Juniac criticised the way the ban was imposed, saying it showed an erosion of the traditionally close ties between governments and airlines.

"There was no consultation with industry and little time to implement. The action caught everybody by surprise," he said.

"We must trust that valid intelligence underpinned the UK and US decisions. But the measures themselves test the confidence of the industry and the public."

Criticism

He also had veiled criticism for Trump's attacks on free trade deals and Britain's vote to exit the European Union.

"In parts of the world, nationalistic political rhetoric points towards a future of more protectionism," he said. "They are a threat to our industry."

He called the global airline sector "the industry of freedom."

The United States led the industry's financial forecast, with expected profits of $15.4 billion this year.

Asia-Pacific and Europe were each expected to post $7.4bn in profits - the latter showing signs of bouncing back after seeing business disrupted by terror attacks in 2015 and 2016.

The Middle East was forecast to post $400m in profits, while Africa faced $100m in losses.

Source: AFP
OK, so this one isn't really about advertising. Let me explain.

I had been thinking a lot about inspiration lately. What it can do. Where it can take you. And the fact that these moments last and linger. Sometimes, for a lifetime.

So, I was all set to write about the topic when Sir Roger Moore died. This changed things for me. He had had been a big part of my childhood. My brain got a bit frazzled. I couldnt write anything for a bit. James Bond had given me writers block. I was in an unending loop of Live and Let Die followed by Octopussy. And every time I began to write, boom, 007 in the house. I know its very weird. So, I must write this down to get Roger Moore out of my head. Also, I am not sleeping well. So, think of reading this as a favour to me, or a bizarre form of online therapy.

When I was about ten I used to walk to the movies every Saturday. I can remember ambling along trying to imagine what the film was going to be like. We lived in a small suburb in Cape Town called Kenilworth. It was about as far from the magic of Hollywood or Pinewood Studios as you could get. And that was what made those films so magical every Saturday. Westerns, comedies and action movies all blurred into the perfect Saturday. However, there was one film that always stood out. A James Bond film. We waited for those and acted them out for weeks afterwards. I can vividly remember seeing Moonraker for the first time. I remember thinking I want more of those stories. It made me think of doing impossible things.

A couple of decades later, I had the amazingly surreal opportunity to shake Sir Roger Moores hand at the annual La Colombe dOr lunch in Cannes. I had seen him there a year or so before but was too shy to walk up to him. When I did, I instantly turned into my 10-year-old self. All I could muster was the word, thanks. I was trying to say thanks for the movies but all that came out was, thanks. F**k. He simply said, you are welcome. I went to the bathroom mortified and stared with a self-loathing intensity at a real Picasso, while feeling like a real, bloody idiot. I still cringe writing this.

What I had wanted to say was, thanks for the inspiration. Thanks for showing a kid that dreams can be made. Thanks for making me think stuff was possible. Thanks, for making me imagine.

Oh well, at least I got to say thanks.

Thanks for giving me that I can do anything feeling, Sir Roger.

Goodbye Mr Bond.

Some are blessed with musical ability, others with good looks. Myself, I was blessed with modesty.  Roger Moore
The creative. The upseller. The client-pleaser. The new business rockstar. The number cruncher. The strategic genius. The speedster. These are the people advertising and marketing agencies are always on the lookout for.

Image supplied.

But the people who make up the workforce of a successful business cant simply be dumped into these categories. The employees you need  really need  to succeed in the industry arent stereotypes and youll find them in all departments. These are the four employees you want at your agency.

The employee who isnt afraid to disagree

Staff members who nod their heads and tell you how great your ideas are may be good for your ego, but theyre toxic for your agency. You should aim to hire employees who arent afraid to disagree with their seniors and, yes, even those right at the top. When an idea is bad, could land your client in hot water or has simply been done 3, 567 times before, you want someone who is going to stand up and tell you. This employee could save you a lot of embarrassment and, in some cases, prevent you losing clients.

The employee who makes the most of criticism

This person will take any and all criticism and label it constructive. They dont cry in the bathroom. They dont bitch to their friends. They dont practice typing out their resignation letter. Instead, they take the time to think about the criticism theyve received and create a plan to fix all the problems. Whether its about time management, their dealings with certain clients or a creative campaign, they want to do the best job possible. They dont just accept criticism, they welcome it and see it as an opportunity to, well, simply be better.

The employee who (occasionally) works overtime

Contrary to the general industry belief, you dont want someone who works overtime every single night and every single weekend. You want someone wholl do what needs to be done when crunch time hits and there are no alternatives. You dont want someone who completely mismanages their time and fails to complete tasks within a reasonable period. You also dont want someone who is so overworked theyre going to burnout, leaving you even more understaffed than you already are. There will be times when your staff need to put in the extra hours but it shouldnt be a daily occurrence. If this happens, its either their fault for wasting time or your fault for having too few resources to get the job done.

The employee who seeks solutions

They say theres no such thing as a stupid question. They are lying through their teeth. This employee knows that. Which is why this employee wont come to you with every question or problem. Instead, they do their research first and seek a solution. They dont come to you with issues, they come to you with solutions. You can count on them to solve problems on their own and deal with the small stuff. You know when they approach you with a worried look on their face, its a big deal.

At the end of the day, you dont want a bunch of stereotypes working for your agency. What you want are staff members who get shit done and do it well. These are those people.
The much anticipated annual FNB JoburgArtFair will celebrate its 10th Edition at Johannesburg's Sandton Convention Centre from 8 - 10 September 2017.

This is when  for one weekend of every year  art becomes the focus of the city. And apart from a visual celebration of the work of over 600 artists, the FNB JoburgArtFair hosts an annual series of non-profit projects and events to create a holistic view of creative practice in Africa.

These include, the highly coveted FNB Art Prize that awards an artist a cash prize and the opportunity to create a new project for the Fair; a programme of lectures, discussions and interviews; an artisanal choice of delicious food and wine for visitors to enjoy between one gallery and the next; and of course, the obligatory champagne and wine bar alongside the FNB Private Wealth and FNB Private Clients Lounge.

Our focus this year is celebration, says FNB JoburgArtFair Director, Mandla Sibeko, celebrating our galleries who have grown with the Fair, our artists who drive the discourse, our patrons who have unwaveringly supported us and our audience whose curiosity continues to inspire our delivery. Over the years, FNB JoburgArtFair has become a benchmark platform for Contemporary African Art and we look forward to continuing that tradition in our 10th edition this September.

Featured Artist and Guest Curator of Special Projects

In 2008 at the first edition of FNB JoburgArtFair, Robin Rhode was chosen as the Fair's inaugural Featured Artist. To mark the span of a decade and to bring the celebration full circle, Rhode has once again been selected as the 2017 Featured Artist.

Rhode was born in 1976 in Cape Town and currently lives and works in Berlin. He has had major solo museum shows in NYC, Stockholm, Switzerland, Melbourne, Los Angeles, Columbus, London and Munich, as well as group shows in Vienna and Belgium and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

This year, Dr Zoe Whitely has been appointed as the 2017 Guest Curator of Special Projects. As Research Curator at Tate Modern in London  Whitely researches contemporary artists and art practices across the African continent and the African diaspora. She co-wrote Tates revised Africa acquisitions strategy and is co-curator of the Tate Modern's 2017 exhibition Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power (taking place from 12 July - 22 October 2017).

FNB JoburgArtFair takes place at the Sandton Convention Centre, Exhibition Hall 1, 161 Maude Street, Sandton.

Dates:

Friday, 8 September  Sunday, 10 September

Opening times:

Friday, 8 September: 12pm  8pm

Saturday, 9 September: 10am  6pm

Sunday, 10 September: 10am  5pm

For more information, please visit the JoburgArtFair website.
Meeting place for hearings, workshops, discussions, training, workspace, events, presentations, demonstrations, brainstorming, strategic planning space based in Cape Town.

Seats 18 comfortably around three round tables of six each.

Room configuration is flexible

Can hire in additional chairs if required

Inclusive of:

Air-conditioning, flat screen monitor, data projector available to rent (extra), Wi-Fi, flipchart stands and rails, variable lighting, comfortable, modern, stylish seating, standard set-up: round tables; other options available, i.e. school rooms or board rooms.

Standard package - R20 per person

-Arrival - morning and afternoon refreshments - includes: water/tea/coffee/biscuits

Treat package - R40 to R50 per person

-Arrival - morning and afternoon refreshments - includes: water/tea/coffee/juice/biscuits/pastries/muffins/table sweets

Lunch package - R25 per person

-Standard package plus in-room lunch, including ordering take aways, cutlery, crockery and cleaning (actual take away food order cost not included)

Monday to Friday from 7am till 6pm.

(not open on weekends or evenings)

Full day: R1,095. - eight hours

Half day: R765 - four hours
On June 1 and 2 officials from the Tak Province Joint Special Police conducted raids on garment factories, construction sites and other work sites in Mae Sot.

U Moe Gyo, chair of the Joint Action Committee for Burmese Affairs, said that the arrests were part of a special scheme by the Thai Labor Ministry to eradicate child labor and other forms of illegal labor.

Around 100 people were arrested today [June 2]. They are workers from factories, workshops, construction and general workers from Mae Pa, Mae Kasa, and Mae Ku sub-districts. Around 200 people were arrested yesterday [June 1], he said.

Two deputy directors from the Thai Ministry of Labor visited Mae Sot on May 18 to meet with Myanmar labor attache U Aung Ko Than and workers rights activists to inquire about child workers and undocumented workers in the Mae Sot area. The arrests were made after that visit, according to U Moe Gyo.

Most of the factories and workshops have been closed in Mae Sot area due to the recent crackdown and undocumented workers have fled to relatives houses, monasteries, farmlands and forest near the Myawady border, according to Mae Sot-based workers rights activists.

The employers and managers have been trying to assist workers who were arrested.

There were 197 people at the jail up to last night. Some of [the detainees] are being interrogated by police in the Mae Pa area. As far as we known, 11 child workers have been arrested but I heard that there are up to 18 child workers in total, said Ko Moe Kyaw, an officer from Yaung Chi Oo Workers Association.

According to Thai authorities, the detainees will be released after paying fines.

Over 400,000 Myanmar migrant workers working in the nine districts of Tak Province, with at least 200,000 employed in Mae Sot District alone. The majority of the workers are employed in agriculture, livestock breeding and manufacturing, according to labor rights activists.

Translated by Thida Linn

Edited by Laignee Barron
PR Newswire

WASHINGTON, June 6, 2017

WASHINGTON, June 6, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Addressing the AJC Global Forum, Gilad Erdan, Israel's Minister of Public Security and Strategic Affairs, called for an international alliance of Israel, moderate Arab states, the U.S., Europe, "and all likeminded countries" to create "an international alliance to fight terror."

Noting that Israel is in the forefront of the battle against terrorism because its citizens have been its victims for so long, he pointed out that many other countries around the world, now subject to terror attacks as well, "have come to realize that it is not just Israel's problem," and that they could profit from Israel's experience. "Tragedy and heartbreaking incidents have made people realize that terror is terror is terror," said Erdan.

"We are honored that Minister Erdan, on this all-important date in the history of Israel, the 50th anniversary of Israel's war of self-defense, which has come to be known as the Six-Day War, came to Washington to be with AJC," said AJC CEO David Harris. "His insightful perspectives on Israel's strategic challenges, especially the fight against terror, are instructive, and, as he said, many countries around the world are now recognizing as very valuable."

Erdan said that while his grandparents' generation had to fight for Israel's existence, and his parents' generation had to overcome the hostility of Israel's Arab neighbors, the threat to Israelis today is terror, especially of the "lone wolf" variety.

The minister, whose cabinet portfolio gives him the responsibility for responding to terrorism, outlined three challenges that Israel has made some progress in meeting: online incitementwhat he called the "crowd-sourcing" of terror; the need to outlaw extremist organizations; and uncovering and drying up funding for these groups.

"Social media companies must take responsibility. They can no longer ignore the misuse of their platforms by terrorists," said Erdan. Holding up a cell phone, he said, "terror has gone viral." The technology "has become their number one weapon. They spread content online that both inspires and instructs potential terrorists."

But he cautioned that no one country can deal effectively with these problems because they all have an international dimensionsocial media crosses borders, a movement might be banned in one country and not in another, and international sources of funding are notoriously difficult to trace.

Therefore, "the democracies of the world must take action" together, said Erdan, who also indicated that he planned to discuss the idea for an international anti-terror effort at a meeting scheduled with U.S. Homeland Security Kelly. Erdan called on the international community to "recognize once and for all that the world's number one sponsor of terror is Iran." He also said that "when you delegitimize a country or culture, you legitimize violence against it," and thus the denial of Israel's right to exist aids and abets terrorism aimed at the Jewish state.

"The way to counter the campaign of lies is to spread the truth about Israel," said Erdan, who praised AJC for being "a very important part of this effort."

And he called on the U.S. to cut off funding for the Palestinian Authority until it stops paying salaries to terrorists. "When the Palestinian leadership will choose dialogue over delegitimization and peace over hate," he concluded, "they will find us a willing partner ready to make compromises for peace."

This year's AJC Global Forum, taking place June 4-6, in Washington, D.C., is the advocacy organization's signature annual event, bringing together more than 2,500 participants from across the United States and 70 countries around the world. AJC was the first American Jewish organization to establish a full-time office in Israel, nearly 60 years ago.

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/israels-minister-of-public-security-and-strategic-affairs-addresses-ajc-global-forum-300469916.html

SOURCE American Jewish Committee
LUSAKA - Immigration authorities in Zambia on Tuesday released all the 31 Chinese nationals who were detained over the weekend.

The Chinese nationals, working for copper smelting Chinese companies on the Copperbelt province, were detained by police for suspected illegal purchase of copper tailing raw materials.

However, Zambia authorities have failed to provide strong proof of their crimes, and released the Chinese nationals after talks with the Chinese Embassy officials.

The Chinese nationals are expected to be flown back to China after their release, sources told Xinhua.

On Monday, China lodged solemn representations to Zambia following the detaining of its nationals.

While stating that China does not defend illegal actions, the Chinese Foreign Ministry expressed concern over "selective" law-enforcement against its citizens overseas.


The MdCN cruise missile being test fired. A file photo

PARIS (BNS): The French Navy has quietly started deploying the MdCN cruise missile system onboard its newly-acquired FREMM multi-role frigates, according to a news report.



The first of the sea-based MdCN weapon system having "deep strike capability" entered service with the French Navy in February this year, the Mer et Marine news portal reported on June 6.



The MBDA-designed MdCN (missile de croisiere naval) missile has been developed to arm the FREMM frigates and the future Barracuda-class of nuclear-powered attack submarines of the French Navy.



The final qualification test firing of MdCN was successfully carried out by the French DGA in October 2014, paving the way for the weapon's series production.



The MdCN is designed for vertical launch from the FREMM frigate using the compact A70 SYLVER vertical launcher. In its underwater configuration, the weapon will be fired from torpedo tubes.



Each FREMM frigate will be equipped with two A70 eight-cell vertical-launch silos for a total of 16 MdCN missiles designed, developed and produced in France by MBDA, the news report said.



The French Navy has officially received four FREMM class frigates so far, with two more slated for delivery by 2019.



The Navy has ordered a total of eight such new-generation warships which will carry state-of-the-art weapons and systems including the MdCN cruise missiles, Aster anti-air missiles, Exocet MM40 anti-ship missiles and MU90 torpedoes.



While the exact configuration of the MdCN system is not known, the missile's estimated weight is around 1,400kg, with an overall length of 6.50m, and a diameter of 0.5m.



The missile provides a unique operational capability "with long range metric precision strike against politically / military sensitive targets," according to MBDA.




The LRSAM being test fired from Indian Navy warship INS Kolkata. India has signed major defence contracts with Israel, including the one to acquire the Long Range Surface to Air Missile systems.

JERUSALEM (PTI): Indian Navy Chief Admiral Sunil Lanba will visit Israel next week close on the heels of Israel signing two major defence contracts with India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi's planned trip to the country.



Lanba, also the Chairman of Chiefs of Staff Committee, will visit Israel from June 11 to 15 during which he would be "reviewing progress on ongoing projects and initiatives" with Israel, besides holding meetings with Israel's Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot and the head of Israeli Navy.



He is also likely to meet Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman.



The Navy Chief's visit comes ahead of Modi's proposed visit to Israel in July, a first by an Indian Prime Minister.



Israel's state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) last month announced that it has closed yet another major deal worth US$ 630 million with India, giving a boost to the Indian government's 'Make in India' campaign in a project to be jointly executed with Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL).



The contract is related to the supply of LRSAM (Long Range Surface to Air Missiles) systems for four ships of the Indian Navy.



The contract will be carried out, for the first time, with Indian government owned BEL which will serve as the main contractor in the project as part of India's 'Make in India' policy.



In April, Israel closed a US$ 2 billion defence deal with India with IAI taking the lion's share of it with contracts worth US$ 1.6 billion. It is the largest single deal in the history of the Jewish state.



"The new contract adds to other deals signed in the last decade by IAI with India's defence forces, reinforcing IAI's global leadership position in air and missile defence systems.



The inclusion of BEL for the first time, is a step up in our relationship with the Indian industry as part of the 'Make in India' policy", IAI's President and CEO, Joseph Weiss, had said after closing the US$ 630 million deal about two weeks ago.



"This unique project represents the close collaboration between India's DRDO, IAI and the defence forces of both countries. We will proceed to implementing it with joint efforts," Weiss said.



LRSAM is an advanced air and missile defence system, a unique joint development by IAI and India's Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) in collaboration with IAI subsidiary ELTA, RAFAEL, various Indian companies including BEL, L&T, BDL and other private Indian companies.



The system comprises several key state-of-the-art elements, advanced phased-array radar (MFSTAR), command and control system, launchers and missiles with advanced RF seekers.



The system provides the ultimate protection against a variety of aerial, naval and air borne threats. It is currently operational with the Indian Air Force, Indian Navy and Israel Defence Forces.




The Su-27 fighter of Russia.

MOSCOW (AP): Russia's defence ministry said Tuesday that one of its fighter jets intercepted an American strategic bomber that was flying near the border of Russian airspace.



The defence ministry said in a statement that it had to scramble the Su-27 to the area over the Baltic Sea on Tuesday morning after Russian radars spotted an aircraft flying along the border. The ministry said the Russian jet identified it as a US B-52 bomber and escorted it until it flew further away from the border.



The defence ministry did not specify where exactly the intercept happened.



In a separate incident, a Russian MiG-31 was dispatched early on Tuesday afternoon to intercept Norwegian maritime surveillance aircraft flying over the Barents Sea near the Russian border, the Russian defence ministry said.



Similar incidents have happened close to Russian airspace in the past. In September, a Russian fighter jet flew within 10 feet of a US Navy surveillance aircraft, in what American officials called an unsafe intercept over the Black Sea.



In another dramatic incident last year, Russian jets buzzed over the USS Donald Cook in the Baltic Sea, coming within 30 feet of the American warship.



Capt Joe Alonso, a spokesman for US European Command in Stuttgart, Germany, said he could not confirm the report, but that the military was aware of it and looking into it.


Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 07/06/2017 (1982 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

About two days after a man had his throat cut at a party, the suspect told police that he had no idea what had happened.

He seemed surprised to learn from police that it was a co-worker who lay in hospital with a gash to his neck that hed be lucky to survive.

Well, hes the one thats hurt and we have witnesses seeing you cut him, Brandon Police Service Const. Lucien Ethier told the accused in a video-recorded statement.

Well, I dont remember anything, Jesus Arnoldo Sorto Granados responded through a Spanish interpreter.

Sorto Granados is on trial in Brandon Court of Queens Bench after pleading not guilty to attempted murder.

The victim, Somjeen Xayavong, has testified that he intervened in a fight between Sorto Granados and another man on the front lawn of a Brandon home during a drinking party on Aug. 16, 2014.

Xayavong said the man left, then returned with a knife, entered the home and cut his throat as he sat on the couch. The men then struggled before Xayavong retreated to a bedroom where he passed out.

He was taken to hospital with stab wounds to his torso, and a deep slice across his neck.

Another witness said Sorto Granados made a chilling statement as he left the home: Hes dead already, nobody touches my face.

During Sorto Granados second day of trial on Tuesday, Crown attorney Jim Ross began to play Sorto Granados video-recorded statement to police following his arrest.

Police had seized a truck from the construction business where Sorto Granados worked.

Theyd found blood on the door and a steering wheel inside the truck, which was driven by Sorto Granados for work.

Officers then waited for Sorto Granados to show up at work and arrested him there.

During questioning by Ethier, Sorto Granados stated that he didnt know what had happened at the party two days before. He said hed only heard that he had wanted to kill somebody.

Sorto Granados said that people at the party  where he had been drinking beer  had thrown him out, but he didnt know why.

He told Ethier that he awoke the next morning under a bridge where a woman provided him with a shirt. She took his shorts and his sandals, Sorto Granados said. A man then sold him some pants and the shoes he was wearing when police found him, he said.

Im having a hard time believing your story, Ethier said.

Sorto Granados said the last time he saw his work truck was at the business on the Friday before the party, then said he last saw it there the day of the party.

But Ethier informed him that police had spoken to witnesses whod seen him leaving the party in the truck.

Sorto Granados said he didnt remember anything about a fight on the front lawn, but couldnt explain how he had suffered a cut to his head and bumps to his face.

He said there was blood on his shorts that must have come from his cut. He said he didnt know anything about the blood found in his work truck.

Sorto Granados seemed to express surprise when Ethier described the man who was in hospital with a cut to his neck. The suspect said the man, who he worked with, was a friend.

At trial, its now admitted that the blood found inside the truck was that of the stabbing victim.

Shorts, found inside of Sorto Granados vehicle, with blood on them also belonged to the victim.

The victims blood was also found on a watch that Sorto Granados was wearing at the time of his arrest.

During cross-examination of witnesses, defence lawyer Norm Sims pursued a line of questioning in support of an account advanced by Sorto Granados during a previous court hearing.

Sorto Granados maintained his innocence, claiming that gang members had made him stab the victim. Other men had clasped his hand and forced the knife toward Xayavong.

Sims has questioned witnesses from the party about whether the victim or his client had been pushed toward each other. Or, whether they had seen anyone grab the knife or Sorto Granados arm.

None of the witnesses supported the defences theory.

Two witnesses said someone, they didnt know who, had grabbed the knife or Sorto Granados hand  but in an effort to get the knife away. Nobody helped Sorto Granados stab the victim.

Xayavong called the idea of someone forcing Sorto Granados to stab him as ridiculous.

Five witnesses besides Xayavong testified that they saw Sorto Granados stab Xayavong with a knife. Each witness from the party said there were no gang members there.

The trial continues today.

 ihitchen@brandonsun.com
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 07/06/2017 (1982 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

During the provincial election last year, the Pallister government made a number of promises to Manitobans. One of their key promises was to protect front-line services and the jobs of the workers who provide those services.

Then, in their first budget after the election, the government said it would cautiously eliminate the deficit over eight years to ensure front-line services were protected. The Premier also made another commitment: to work in consultation with all sectors, including business and labour, to seek solutions to serious issues like the deficit.

Since then, as a union representing 40,000 working Manitobans who educate our young people, keep our communities healthy and safe, and care for our most vulnerable citizens, the Manitoba Government and General Employees Union has done everything possible to participate in this collaboration and to keep the Premier to his word. We have consistently proposed balanced and strategic approaches to deficit reduction that avoids cuts to public services. For instance, in our

pre-budget submission this spring, the MGEU provided budget recommendations to the government that would both improve the bottom line and protect public service. This includes:

 Delaying unaffordable tax breaks until our finances can support them;

 Sticking to balancing the budget over eight years as originally promised;

 Ensuring large corporations pay their fair share in taxes; and

 Asking those who live in households with an income of over $200,000 to pay a little more in taxes.

We also provided poll research showing that Manitobans overwhelmingly support these ideas and oppose cuts to their public services. So when organizations like the Canadian Taxpayers Federation insinuate that Manitoba unions like the MGEU have offered no alternative solutions to tackling the deficit other than to raise everyones taxes, it is a terribly unfair and false claim. And, it doesnt help us work together to tackle major issues, like ensuring our province is on sound financial footing.

The premier has repeatedly said that addressing the deficit requires an all hands on deck approach. If this is the case, then balancing the budget cannot rest squarely on the shoulders of the hard-working Manitobans in the public service.

The reality is that as workers who provide public services, they understand they are stewards of public money. Our members have already agreed, at the bargaining table, to a two year wage freeze in recent years. They are taxpayers, too. Like most Manitobans, they want both sound financial management and quality public services.

There is a reason the premier made promises during the election and after the election to protect our public services. Maintaining and enhancing our public services remains the highest priority for most Manitobans. We know we are not alone in thinking that cutting jobs, services and projects in a race to slay the deficit can hurt our economy in the longer term.

So we will continue to come to the table, put forward balanced and strategic alternatives, and hope common sense and common purpose ultimately win the day.

Michelle Gawronsky

MGEU president
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 07/06/2017 (1982 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It was going to happen. Its surprising that it hadnt happened before this. And its entirely possible that it has happened before, but the grim evidence of earlier occurrences has not yet been discovered.

The discovery last week of the body of a Ghanaian woman, who had presumably been trying to walk across the U.S.-Canada border near Emerson in search of an eventual reunion with relatives in Toronto, marks a sad but inevitable next chapter in the ongoing saga of asylum seekers trekking across the border in a fearful attempt to flee the United States.

The woman, identified as 57-year-old Mavis Otuteye, is thought to have died of exposure in a ditch running through a farmers field near the town of Noyes, Minn., just a kilometre from the Canadian border.

Her death is tragic, but the fact we have not seen more fatalities related to the sudden increase in asylum-seeking border crossers is nothing short of miraculous.

Mrs. Otuteye died in temperatures that remained above freezing overnight, while the majority of the nearly 500 people who have been intercepted after crossing the border into Manitoba on foot did so when temperatures were -20 C or colder.

With this tragedy, the debate over what Canada must do to either deter or deal with border crossings is re-engaged.

Premier Brian Pallister, breaking the silence he has maintained on provincial issues due to a byelection-related information blackout, charged that the federal government and its U.S. counterpart must take long-overdue action to address the issue.

We have to ensure something like this doesnt occur again, Mr. Pallister said Wednesday. I would have hoped some action would have ensued by now.

The premiers point is well taken. Something must be done, or more would-be refugees will die. The confounding questions, however, are What? and How?

Mr. Pallisters suggestion that federal officials should travel to Minneapolis to warn that citys Somali community  the source of a disproportionate number of asylum seekers  of the potentially deadly perils of the hike into Canada is a bit of a stretch.

Telling people who have survived an escape from war-torn Somalia about the dangers of walking across uninhabited tundra is a message that has little chance of taking root.

Addressing the issue on a higher and more direct level by having Prime Minister Justin Trudeau directly lobby U.S. President Donald Trump  and he does, according to recent reports, have POTUSs personal cell number  might be a more productive avenue, if the recipient of such a request were anyone but Mr. Trump, who isnt known as a great listener and has well-documented toxic views when it comes to immigration, legal or otherwise.

Its those views, as well as the oft-expressed campaign-trail threat to round up and deport millions of undocumented immigrants, that led to this Trump-inspired northbound exodus in the first place.

As we have speculated before on this page, given his apparent dislike for immigration, why would Mr. Trump stop a politically useful  though ill-advised  emigration of illegals out of the United States?

What we are left with is a long, undefended border dividing a nation to the south  in which many immigrants and refugees fear being sent back to the dangerous places they fled in search of a now-disrupted American dream  from a country of our own that has pledged to maintain its welcoming attitude toward refugees.

Its a problem without an easy solution. But until Canadas government conjures up a plan that eliminates danger and desperation from the asylum-seeking equation  or Mr. Trump is removed from office  we can expect that Mrs. Otuteyes will not be the last near-the-border death.

 Winnipeg Free Press and The Brandon Sun
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 07/06/2017 (1982 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

No wonder MTS doesnt like PISA

Its no surprise that the Manitoba Teachers Society wants to end participation in the PISA test. They are against anything that holds the failing system accountable. Of course the BSD agrees with the MTS excuses as to why our students are at the bottom. I look at the work my kids do in math and its no wonder our students are last. The low standards are embarrassing. I will continue to teach my kids at home during after hours while teachers complain about a wage freeze.

No more excuses, please

Had it not been for The Brandon Sun I would have no idea that Manitoba teachers wish to end the participation of Manitoba students in the PISA tests. I am disappointed in the response from the BSD, basically parroting MTS and blaming poor results on socioeconomic conditions and the indigenous population. If Im not mistaken, First Nations schools in Manitoba do not participate in the PISA test. Nevertheless, its worth noting that in the 2000 PISA test, Manitoba students placed fourth in Canada in math, fourth in science, and fifth in reading. Maybe its time to look at the real reasons Manitoba students are performing so poorly. Thank you, Brandon Sun, for giving this attention. I wonder what else is being hidden below the surface. For the sake of Manitoba students, wholesale changes are needed. Using some common sense and refraining from excuses would be a wonderful start.

Its all about Proper Animal Stewardship!

Manitoba hog industry nervous as newest PED cases confirmed. Ten cases reported in the past four weeks. Is this just the beginning of a grim situation that will lead into far more serious events for these animals that are being raised in corporate factory barns? The warning bells are being sounded. Will the Pallister government officials and the pork council pay attention?

Brandon In Bloom! Certainly is!

Judges would be dazzled by the yellow blooms of the noxious leafy spurge growing profusely in a local developers unsightly road via the empty lot on the North Hill.
Church leaders have come together to condemn the attack last Monday on a Galway mosque.

Leaders from the Roman Catholic, Church of Ireland, Methodist and Quaker faiths issued a statement this evening saying they condemn the malicious, unprovoked attack on the Masjid Maryam Mosque.

They say the attack, coming as it did during Ramadan, makes such "loutish, criminal behaviour particularly outrageous."

Masjid Maryam Galway Mosque attacked while we were praying smashed windows pic.twitter.com/mh3Q9Oi3od  Imam Ibrahim M Noonan of AMA Ireland & NI (@ImamNoonan) June 5, 2017

Worshippers said they were terrified after rocks smashed through the windows of the mosque during prayers.

Imam Ibrahim Ahmad Noonan responded to the stoning by saying he is committed to weeding out extremists.

He said there is an onus on imams to be more proactive in checking members of their congregations for radical leanings and called for all imams to be vetted by authorities, including checks for potential links to extremism.

Canon Michael McLoughlin, the Catholic Diocesan Administrator for Galway, Church of Ireland Archdeacon Gary Hastings, Rev Helen Freeburn, representing the Methodist and the Presbyterian churches and Richard Kimball, of the Religious Society of Friends in Ireland, offered the Iman their "full and wholehearted support".

They also extended it to the Ahmadiyyan Muslim Association of Ireland and to "our Muslims brothers and sisters here in Galway and throughout Ireland".

"In an increasingly secular world, we look forward to further strengthening our bonds of cooperation, friendship, respect, prayer and peace," they said.

Two males, believed to be in their late teens or early 20s, were seen running from the mosque following the stone throwing.

There is CCTV footage of the attack.

The Iman, who was born in Waterford, raised Catholic and converted to Islam 26 years ago, said he is considering asking some women and children to stay away from the mosque for a few days for safety reasons.

"Everyone was quite shaken, including myself, and quite upset that it happened while we were praying, especially the ladies and children," he said.

"It's a kind of realisation - we all linked this to what happened in London."
Taoiseach Enda Kenny and Britain's Prince William will today pay solemn tribute to soldiers from Ireland's unionist and nationalist army divisions who fought side-by-side in the First World War.

The pair will join Princess Astrid of Belgium at the centenary commemoration of the Battle of Messines in Flanders.

The successful Allied offensive on June 7, 1917 was the first occasion the 36th Ulster and 16th Irish divisions fought together in the front line.

The two divisions predominantly comprised men who were on opposing sides of the great political upheaval back in Ireland around whether the country should be granted self-governance from Westminster.

Former Stormont first minister Arlene Foster will also be among invited dignitaries at the joint UK and Irish event in Belgium.

The commemoration will focus on the Island of Ireland Peace Park at Messines.

The park was built in 1998 - the year of the historic Good Friday peace agreement - to mark the sacrifice of all those Irishmen who fought and died in the war.

Mr Kenny and William will later visit nearby Wytschaete Cemetery, where many of those who died now rest.

The village of Wytschaete was captured by the 36th and 16th during the Battle of Messines.

A new memorial erected at the entrance of the cemetery last week depicts a scene that many believe encapsulates the legacy of the day Irish Protestant and Catholic soldiers fought together - the attempted battlefield rescue of fatally wounded 56-year-old nationalist Home Rule MP Willie Redmond by a young unionist private, John Meeke.

Major Redmond's brother John was the leader of the constitutional nationalist Home Rule movement.

Members of the Redmond family are due to attend Wednesday's commemorations in Belgium.

The capture of Messines Ridge was a key objective of the Allied Forces ahead of their mid-summer 1917 offensive on German lines between the nearby town of Ypres and the small village of Passchendaele - a battle that has since become synonymous with the horrors of trench warfare.

The Allies sustained around 10,000 casualties during the Battle of Messines, the Germans around 25,000.

Between them the 36th and 16th lost around 2,500 killed, injured or missing.

The two divisions fought together only twice in the First World War.

The second came in a heavy defeat, two months after Messines, during an ill-fated offensive at nearby Langemark in the first weeks of the Battle of Passchendaele.

The commemoration in Belgium is set to be Mr Kenny's last overseas engagement as Taoiseach ahead of him stepping down from the role later this month.
Update 2.30pm: A major joint UK-Irish ceremony has begun in Belgium to mark the centenary of a First World War battle where unionist and nationalist soldiers from Ireland fought side by side in the trenches.

Prince William and and Enda Kenny have arrived at the Island of Ireland Peace Park in Messines in Flanders, to commemorate the first day of the week-long battle.

William and the Taoiseach have been joined by Princess Astrid of Belgium and Lord Dunlop, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Northern Ireland Office to honour the soldiers who fought in the battle.

They laid wreaths at the foot of the Round Tower memorial, before meeting invited guests including descendants of those who fought at the Battle.

The successful Allied offensive on June 7 1917 was the first occasion the 36th Ulster and 16th Irish divisions fought together on the front line.

The two divisions predominantly comprised men who were on opposing sides of the great political upheaval back in Ireland around whether the country should be granted self-governance from Westminster.

Message from the four Irish Church leaders at centenary commemorations for the Battle of #Messines pic.twitter.com/sy8yEKkcBR  CatholicBishops (@CatholicBishops) June 7, 2017

Earlier Enda Kenny and The Duke of Cambridge will later this afternoon pay solemn tribute to soldiers from Ireland's unionist and nationalist army divisions who fought side-by-side in the First World War.

The Taoiseach and Prince William will join Princess Astrid of Belgium at the centenary commemoration of the Battle of Messines in Flanders.

The successful Allied offensive on June 7 1917 was the first occasion the 36th Ulster and 16th Irish divisions fought together in the front line.

The two divisions predominantly comprised men who were on opposing sides of the great political upheaval back in Ireland around whether the country should be granted self-governance from Westminster.

Former Stormont first minister Arlene Foster will also be among invited dignitaries at the joint UK and Irish event in Belgium.

The commemoration will focus on the Island of Ireland Peace Park at Messines.

The park was built in 1998 - the year of the historic Good Friday peace agreement - to mark the sacrifice of all those Irishmen who fought and died in the war.

Mr Kenny and the Duke will later visit nearby Wytschaete Cemetery, where many of those who died now rest.

The village of Wytschaete was captured by the 36th and 16th during the Battle of Messines.

A new memorial erected at the entrance of the cemetery last week depicts a scene that many believe encapsulates the legacy of the day Irish Protestant and Catholic soldiers fought together - the attempted battlefield rescue of fatally wounded 56-year-old nationalist Home Rule MP Willie Redmond by a young unionist private, John Meeke.

Everyone in place at Island of Ireland Peace Park to commemorate soldiers from Island of Irl who fought at #Messines 1917 @dfatirl pic.twitter.com/jRd1CT1EIB  Embassy of Ireland, Belgium (@IrishEmbBelgium) June 7, 2017

Major Redmond's brother John was the leader of the constitutional nationalist Home Rule movement.

Members of the Redmond family are due to attend Wednesday's commemorations in Belgium.

The capture of Messines Ridge was a key objective of the Allied Forces ahead of their mid-summer 1917 offensive on German lines between the nearby town of Ypres and the small village of Passchendaele - a battle that has since become synonymous with the horrors of trench warfare.

The Allies sustained around 10,000 casualties during the Battle of Messines, the Germans around 25,000.

Between them the 36th and 16th lost around 2,500 killed, injured or missing.

The two divisions fought together only twice in the First World War.

The second came in a heavy defeat, two months after Messines, during an ill-fated offensive at nearby Langemark in the first weeks of the Battle of Passchendaele.

The commemoration in Belgium is set to be Mr Kenny's last overseas engagement as Taoiseach ahead of him stepping down from the role later this month.
Government policies are worsening the housing crisis instead of improving it, according to a new report by think-tankTasc.

The independent social change group says the Government needs to double or even triple the funding for local authorities to build social housing, rather than relying on the private sector.
Iraqi Kurds will hold an independence referendum on September 25, according to the president of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region Masoud Barzani.

He announced the vote on Twitter on Wednesday.
An hours-long gun battle at a northern Mexico prison has left seven people dead and 13 injured, authorities said.

Continuous automatic gunfire was heard late on Tuesday at the prison in Ciudad Victoria, the capital of the border state of Tamaulipas.

The gunfire continued into Wednesday morning at the prison, which has been one of Mexico's most troubled jails.

The state security spokesman's office said seven people died and 13 were injured in the shootouts.

Authorities said earlier that the dead included three police officers; it was unclear whether the rest of the dead were inmates.

Inmates at the state prison somehow managed to obtain guns and began fighting authorities.

The prison has been the scene of shootings, smuggled guns, riots and escapes.

Ciudad Victoria has long been dominated by the hyper-violent Zetas drug cartel.

A fight between prisoners at the same facility left three inmates dead in March.

That clash followed a riot and mass escape through a tunnel that inmates built in a prison patio.

Most of the prisoners have since been recaptured.

Inmates have frequently had access to guns in the prison.

During the March escape, at least one prisoner had a gun that he used to kill a passing motorist in a carjacking.

Police later found two assault rifles buried in a planter in the prison.

AP
The Watergate scandal that brought down a president "pales" in comparison with allegations that Donald Trump's election campaign colluded with Russians, a former US intelligence official has said.

James Clapper, director of national intelligence until Mr Trump took office in January, told Australia's National Press Club the cover-up of a 1972 burglary at the Democratic Party national headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington that ended Richard Nixon's presidency "was a scary time".

Fmr. U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper: Watergate pales to what were confronting now. pic.twitter.com/LisckDgEMm  Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) June 7, 2017

But the allegations under multiple investigations of Russian meddling in last year's presidential election are more concerning, he said.

"I think (if) you compare the two that Watergate pales really, in my view, compared to what we're confronting now," he said.

Mr Clapper said Mr Trump's firing of FBI director Jim Comey, whom Mr Clapper described as a "personal friend and a personal hero of mine", reflected "complete disregard for the independence and independency and autonomy" of the bureau.

Mr Trump's sharing of classified intelligence with Russian diplomats of the Islamic State group's plotting reflected "either ignorance or disrespect and either is very problematic", he added.

He said the sharing compromised the Israeli source of the intelligence.

Mr Trump, when president-elect, branding the intelligence agencies as Nazis over their assessment of Russian political interference was prompted by "his team's extreme paranoia about and resentment of any doubt cast on the legitimacy of his election", Mr Clapper said.

"I am very concerned about the assault on our institutions coming from both an external source - read Russia - and an internal source - the president himself."
The director of the US National Security Agency has said he has never been asked to do anything illegal or felt pressure to do anything immoral during his three years at the helm.

Mike Rogers was responding to a senator's question about whether President Donald Trump asked him to intervene in or downplay the ongoing FBI investigation into Russia's election meddling and possible ties with the Trump campaign.
Happy Thursday Canberra.

Today is World Oceans Day. And here's a bit of trivia...after midnight on June 8 1942 Japanese submarines shelled Newcastle and Sydney.

In 1972 it was the day Nick Ut captured the pulitzer-prize winning image Napalm Girl, and the day in 1984 when the bill to decriminalise homosexuality in NSW was assented.

Expect a cloudy one today with temperatures creeping up from 1 degree to a top of 16.

Now, let's see what's making news.
A man charged over a car explosion outside the offices of the Australian Christian Lobby will plead not guilty to charges relating to the incident.

The man did not appear at the ACT Magistrates Court on Wednesday to face charges of arson and property damage over the explosion of a carload of gas cylinders that tore through the ACL building.

The remains of a van outside the Australian Christian Lobby offices. A Canberra man has been charged over the explosion.

His lawyer, Peter Woodhouse, said his client would enter the pleas on the grounds of mental impairment.

However, Mr Woodhouse said the man would not dispute that he caused the damage to the Eternity House building in Deakin in December.
The frozen berries recalled this month are understood to have been from the same shipment of fruit from China that caused the 2015 hepatitis A outbreak.

Fairfax Media can reveal that health authorities suspect the berries at the centre of the February 2015 and June 2017 recalls were produced at the same place in China around the same time.

"We understand the batch of frozen berries at the centre of this [current] recall [was] sourced from the same plant and area in China at around the same time as the berries responsible for the 2015 recall," a spokesman from the Department of Health and Human Services in Victoria said.

Its tests revealed the hepatitis A detected in the recalled Creative Gourmet mixed berries 300 gram packs has an identical sequence to the strain found in the Nanna's and Creative Gourmet packs recalled in 2015.
This new chain is an unlikely venture for a company commonly associated with luxury accommodations in upscale locations, and it indicates that the Trumps see dollar signs in the vast support the campaign received from conservative areas well beyond major cities. Eric Danziger, head of Trump's hotels division, speaks as Donald Trump Jr, centre, and Eric Trump (right) glance around the room at an event to launch the new chain at Trump Tower this week. Credit:AP The first hotels are expected to come online quickly because they will involve rebranding existing properties like Holiday Inns and Comfort Inns. Eric Danziger, the chief executive of the Trump Organization's hotels division, said in an interview that the company had planned a hotel expansion for nearly two years, apart from the Trump campaign. During the campaign, the Trump children would report back about the thousands of supporters attending rallies and what they saw as a chance to build a line of hotels standing out from the cookie-cutter options in midsize and small cities. "Extremely surreal": Suresh Chawla, a co-owner of Chawla Hotels. His company will partner with the Trump Organization on the American Idea chain Credit:Eric Stone/The New York Times

"I said, 'That's brilliant,'" Danziger recalled. "The reality is we should have something in those kinds of locations." Danziger, a longtime hotel executive who previously led Wyndham Hotels, said the first American Idea hotels would open in the Mississippi Delta, but he rejected the idea that the electoral map of 2016 would become a blueprint for picking future locations. The brand evolution is great. But as a president, he needs to separate himself from this. Cornell University professor Jan A. deRoos Trump sometimes hands out a version of the map to White House visitors, showing blue dots in and around major cities (indicating support for Clinton) and wide stretches of red (signalling votes for Trump) nearly everywhere else. "There is no political thought to it," Danziger said regarding the new chain, and he added that there could be "many hundreds" of American Idea hotels in both red and blue counties and states. The counties in Mississippi that will get the first hotels tilted toward Clinton, for instance.

Ethics concerns Even before Trump took office in January, ethics experts and political opponents criticised his refusal to divest from the far-flung business. Trump handed over control of the Trump Organization to his eldest sons, Eric and Donald Jr., and other executives, and he agreed to forgo new deals abroad. But he remains financially invested in the family business. The new hotels will have no overt connection to Trump - his name will not appear anywhere, Danziger said. The American Idea chain comes just months after Danziger unveiled plans for a four-star brand known as Scion. The Trumps will not own the new hotels under either brand but instead license them to business partners (who must pay royalties and other fees). The Trumps plan to manage the day-to-day operations of the Scion hotels but leave that task to their partners at the American Idea properties. Trump executives had hinted that a three-star hotel chain was in the works in recent interviews, and in April 2016 they filed for a trademark on the American Idea name.

At Trump Tower Monday evening, Danziger and Trump's eldest son announced that their partner in Mississippi would be an Indian-American family that through its company, Chawla Hotels, owns 17 hotels in the region. Those hotels are currently branded by well-known chains; the plan is to convert at least three of them to the American Idea line, Danziger said. Competing with 20,000 other hotels American Idea will compete with nearly 20,000 other hotels in the so-called midscale and upper-midscale business, according to STR, a hotel data and analytics specialist. In Mississippi, there are about 250 such properties, and that, according to hotel experts, leaves room for new players. "There's always room for new brands," Jan A. deRoos, a professor of hotel finance and real estate at Cornell University, said, noting that Hilton had recently opened a more-affordable brand called Tru. As for the Trumps joining the three-star market, deRoos said: "This completely opens up the world to them. The brand evolution is great. But as a president, he needs to separate himself from this."

Chawla Hotels will also be a partner in a Scion property being built in Cleveland, Mississippi, making it the first Scion location to be publicly announced. The boutique development is expected to include a restaurant and meeting space near a music museum. Danziger said he expected to announce four additional Scion hotels in the next couple of months, including one in Dallas. Such a deal in Dallas would come after the Trump Organization cut ties with another potential Dallas business partner, who had attracted scrutiny for connections to Russia, Kazakhstan and at least two dozen other countries. The Trump Organization's outside ethics adviser, Bobby Burchfield, had raised questions about the potential sources of financing, according to a person briefed on the process who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations. Burchfield has granted approval for the Trumps to proceed with Chawla Hotels as a partner, Danziger said. 'Most amazing thing on the planet' During the presidential campaign, the Chawlas became acquainted with the Trumps after Suresh Chawla, who runs the hotel business with his brother, wrote a letter that appeared in several local newspapers in the fall of 2015. It described how their father was inspired by Trump more than 25 years earlier when he sought advice about financing a hotel project.

Suresh Chawla recalled how their father, a convenience store owner, had cold-called Trump's office in New York to ask for a $US425,000 loan. Trump returned the call, the story goes. And while he did not offer a loan - Trump supposedly called the deal "small-fry" - he instructed the elder Chawla to explore less conventional sources of funding and said he admired his immigrant story. Eventually, Trump met Suresh Chawla during a campaign visit last summer in Jackson, Mississippi. Chawla told The Mississippi Business Journal that Trump had encouraged him to "think grand" with one of his projects. Af few months ago, the Trumps contacted Chawla about possibly becoming partners with him and his brother, Dinesh Chawla. When Danziger heard the family's story, he called Chawla and briefed him on the new brand, he said. "It would be the most amazing thing on the planet," Danziger recalled telling him, "if you were the first one."
Adnan Khashoggi, the flamboyant Saudi arms trader who rose to spectacular wealth in the 1970s and '80s  while treating the world to displays of decadence breathtaking even by the standards of that era  died on Tuesday in London. He was 81.

His family announced his death in a statement. He had been undergoing treatment for Parkinson's disease.

Adnan Khashoggi arrives at Manhattan Federal Court, New York in 1990. Credit:AP

When Saudi Arabia and other Arab states decided to embark on a vast armament program after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, backed by billions of dollars in oil money, Khashoggi became their principal link to the American arms industry. For years, he was the middleman in most of Saudi Arabia's arms purchases.

Khashoggi had several brushes with the law but was never convicted of a crime. He was involved in many of his era's highest-profile scandals, including Iran-contra and the Marcos family's effort to spirit money out of the Philippines.
I first came to Australia in 1984, visiting Alice Springs as commander of the US Air Force Technical Applications Centre. More than three decades of association with this country has reinforced my conviction of the importance of the United States' extensive relationship with Australia and its national security community.

Australia's outgoing Defence secretary Dennis Richardson said recently that "Australian governments have generally been pragmatic and hard-headed in weighing alliance considerations on matters of war and peace".

James Clapper, former US director of national intelligence, addressed the National Press Club in Canberra on Tuesday. Credit:Andrew Meares

This is, of course, both true and proper.

The United States intelligence community appreciates Australia's contribution to both the alliance and to global security, perhaps now more than at any previous time.
Conservative commentator Andrew Bolt was allegedly set upon by a gang of protesters outside a Melbourne book launch on Tuesday, and appeared to give at least as good as he got.

Footage broadcast by Bolt on his Sky News program appears to show two men attacking him outside a Carlton restaurant, with a third man wielding a camera.

Bolt alleged the two men "jumped" him and sprayed him in the face and body with "sticky liquid with glitter and dye" while he took a selfie with a woman.

"Bad luck for them of course - I don't do running and hiding," Bolt said, claiming to have delivered one assailant "a big bruise on the left side of his face and another bruise between his legs".
"Sara was so excited about her European & UK adventure. This photo was the day she left, 10th March. Harrison and I cried on the way home. "She missed us all & was so excited to catch up with us in Paris on the 30th of June for 5 days." After meeting up with her family, Sara was due to go on a Contiki trip around Europe, before coming home on August 8. "Unfortunately [this was] cut short by a senseless act of terrorism," Mrs Wallace said. "It makes no sense." Sara's former high school, Moreton Bay College in Brisbane, wrote on Facebook that she had been "a positive, popular student who always had a smile on her face".

"She embodied the values of Moreton Bay College and was adored by her peers and staff," the school wrote. "This is how she will be forever remembered." Ms Zelenak is the second Australian confirmed dead in the attack. South Australian nurse Kirsty Boden, 28, was named as the first Australian victim. She was also on London Bridge when the van hit pedestrians. She ran to help the first victims when she was fatally injured. Ms Boden had worked at nearby Guy's Hospital, about 300 metres from where she was killed, since 2014 and was recently promoted.

In a statement released by the Metropolitan Police, her family said their "heroic" and "adored" daughter would never be forgotten. "Helping people was what she loved to do in her job as a nurse and in her daily life," they said. "As she ran towards danger, in an effort to help people on the bridge, Kirsty sadly lost her life. We are so proud of Kirsty's brave actions which demonstrate how selfless, caring and heroic she was, not only on that night, but throughout all of her life. Kirsty - we love you and we will miss you dearly." Speaking to radio station 3AW on Wednesday, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said he had been in contact with both women's families. "You know, this is heart-rending," he said. "This is the last thing that anybody expects to happen to their children when they're in London. I mean, we are facing a global threat, this Islamist terrorism.

"It is a disease and it is corrupting, seeking to destroy from within the Islamic religion and of course, lashing out to destroy and undermine our way of life. "We are heartbroken by these terrible crimes and this terrible loss. Talking to mothers who have lost their children is heartbreaking, but we must be resolute." Five of the seven victims killed have been publicly identified. Dozens of people injured in the attack remain in hospitals across London. Chrissy Archibald, 30, from the Canadian province of British Columbia, was the first victim to be named. She was on London Bridge with her fiance, Tyler Ferguson, and died in his arms after being hit by the speeding van.

Her family said they grieved the loss of their "beautiful, loving daughter and sister", who volunteered at a homeless shelter and "would have had no understanding of the callous cruelty that caused her death". "She had room in her heart for everyone and believed strongly that every person was to be valued and respected," her family said. "Please honour her by making your community a better place." James McMullan, 32, from east London, had been drinking at a pub with friends when he temporarily stepped out to get some air, just before the attack began. Though he has not been formally identified, his family said his bank card was found on one of the bodies at the scene.

Mr McMullan's sister, Melissa McMullan, said: "No words can ever match his essence. There will only ever be one James. "Nowhere else will you find such humour and unique personality - someone who puts his friends above all else." Alexandre Pigeard, 27, from the French region of Normandy, was a waiter at the restaurant Boro Bistro and had lived in London for two years. As he was working on the busy Saturday night, one of the attackers ran into the restaurant and stabbed him in the neck. His family say Mr Pigeard was a "wonderful son", "a perfect big brother," and a "shining young man". His father described his death as an "incredible injustice".
Julia Gillard has proven once again she no longer has time for the perils of Australian politics or another comeback, as she continues to run the world in collaboration with her BFF Rihanna.

After making their friendship official while tearing up the stage at the Global Citizen Festival last year, the pair have let their hair down on dance floors, coined the name #Gillianna, and visited Malawi together to continue their work with the charity the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) and Global Citizen. OK, maybe the first two things only happened in our dreams, but let's roll with it.

As the founder of the Clara Lionel Foundation and ambassador for the Global Partnership for Education, Rihanna enlisted Hugh Evans, CEO of Global Citizen, and ex-PM Gillard, who's also board chair of the Global Partnership of Education, to join her in highlighting the need to educate Malawi youth as part of a political pop-philanthropy remix like no other.

The trio spent time in January with key educators, government officials, mentors and students who are working collaboratively to build a better future for the next generation of Malawians.
One of the excuses frequently offered for this kind of content is that it's "dark humour" intended to "release tension". I've lost count of the number of men who chastise me for lacking a sense of humour (a common accusation levelled when those perpetually targeted by misogyny, racism, ableism, homophobia or transphobia dare to speak out against the "jokes" that degrade and dehumanise them) when I complain about or signal boost examples of gleeful descriptions of violence against women. It's just a joke about rape, you hideous slut! It's not real and it's not like the men laughing at it are really going to go out and do it! Stop demonising men! What happened to freedom of speech?!

In Australia, the most famous of these is Bloke's Advice. With over 300,000 members, the group has frequently found itself in the news with the exposure of enthusiastic jokes about violence against women (often referred to in these groups as "2 holes"), rape and the circulation of image-based abuse (otherwise known as "revenge porn"). Gosh, why would women be upset about that?

There are a few things wrong with this argument, but let's start with the most obvious: your nominal freedom of speech does not mean people are not allowed to disagree with you. It doesn't mean they have to smile sweetly and laugh politely when you tell jokes that align yourself with the perpetrators of deeply traumatising crimes like rape and paedophilia. It doesn't mean your colleagues or employer have to accept your passions as representative of company diversity ("Shelly from Accounts is a child of Egyptian migrants while Damien over in Sales really loves sharing memes about beating women.") And people are allowed to find you gross and threatening depending on the nature of the free speech you choose to defend.

Rape culture in action.

Which leads me to this: when it comes to being a decent human being, it doesn't really matter whether the men who think it's funny to joke about raping women are out there doing it in real life because either way, they still fundamentally pose a threat to women's safety and wellbeing. When feminists talk about rape culture, we don't mean a culture in which men are being given comprehensive instructions on how to rape women and get away with it. We mean a culture in which the criminal activity of rape is minimised and normalised through dismissive attitudes, victim blaming, the defence of "boys being boys" and yes, the use of sexually violent imagery and disrespect for consent as a vehicle for laughter. Yes, there are women who rape and yes, there are male victims  but criminal statistics show that the overwhelming majority of rape is perpetrated by men against women. So when men sit around trying to outdo each other with how "savage" their rape comedy can be, those amongst their female acquaintances (particularly those who have been raped) are well within their rights to decide those men aren't safe for them to be around.

More pertinent here, though, is the fact that most rapists don't fall into the category of Alleyway Attacker. Most rapists probably wouldn't even consider themselves rapists more than they would opportunists. And I've got a news flash for you  in a group of 300,000 men, there are statistically rapists present. What do they think when they see other men sitting around and laughing heartily at the things they've done or do? When they see them brainstorming increasingly violent and "hilarious" ways to do it, talking about "2 holes", "whores" and "c---s"? I'll tell you what they don't think. They don't think, "There's something wrong with me."

The critique of misogynist humour as a bonding mechanism always results in spirited declarations of all the supposed good these kinds of groups do. Bloke's Advice in particular is often defended as providing a safe space for men struggling with depression to reach out and get support. No one could fault men seeking help for the mental health issues that traditional notions of masculinity have instructed they keep quiet, but that shouldn't come at the expense of decency and respect for women. Believe it or not, feminists welcome men deconstructing the shame inflicted on them for having feelings. What we object to is the cavalier dismissal of women's mental health alongside it. Survivors of rape and domestic violence experience elevated risk of PTSD, depression and anxiety. Why should they respect a space that claims on the one hand to be saving sad men's lives while doing it at the expense of their own sanity and wellbeing? Toxic masculinity removed from repressive stoicism remains toxic while it holds on to misogyny as a bonding exercise.
Police have launched a critical incident investigation following a major crash in Sydney's south that left a teenage driver in a coma in hospital, and four other teens injured.

Officers had attempted to stop the gold Holden Commodore on Taren Point Road in Caringbah about 5.20pm on Wednesday, when police allege the car drove away from them.

Police at the scene of a serious crash in Caringbah. Credit:Facebook

The 17-year-old male driver lost control of his vehicle in the wet conditions and slammed into a power pole, crushing the driver's side of the car.

The driver had to be cut free from the car and was taken to St George Hospital in a critical condition. He remained in hospital in an induced coma on Thursday morning.
A Sydney man who told police his wife had killed herself by jumping on a knife has been found guilty of her murder.

Gavin John De Beyer in early 2016 had curled up in a foetal position on the floor of Campsie police station, sobbing uncontrollably, and stated: "I want my baby back, she's dead, she killed herself."

De Beyer, 51, denied murdering his partner of 30 years, Sharon Louise Michelutti, at their Sydney home in February last year but after deliberating on Wednesday afternoon, a NSW Supreme Court jury found him guilty of murder.

The jury accepted the Crown's case that Ms Michelutti did not deliberately or accidentally inflict the single wound to her stomach.
An 82-year-old man is dead after a fight with a mate outside a Queensland pub.

Police said the man, described as the aggressor in the scuffle, suffered a serious head knock when he fell to the ground after being pushed.

The men had been drinking at Bernborough Tavern in Oakey, north-west of Toowoomba, on Wednesday when they broke into a heated argument in the car park about 2pm.

A police spokesman said it appeared the 82-year-old man threw a few punches before the 72-year-old man pushed him.
A 12-year-old girl is among seven people charged with drug and property offences in a police operation on the Gold Coast.

Police allege cash, drugs and other items of property were found during a search of a home in Helensvale at 7.30am on Wednesday.

A 12-year-old girl has been charged with possessing a dangerous drug and possession of property suspected to have been used in the commission of a drug offence. Credit:Glenn Hunt

A 52-year-old man and a 32-year-old woman both from Helensvale and a 27-year-old Jimbomba man are due to appear at the Southport Magistrates Court on Thursday.

A 17-year-old man and two women, aged 19 and 20, all from Helensvale are expected to appear at the Southport Magistrates Court on July 12.
Juvenile Aid Bureau, Brisbane Plain Clothes Constable Brett Handran Credit:Amy Mitchell-Whittington Plain Clothes Constable Brett Handran died after he was shot in the chest outside a block of units in Wynnum West on June 29, 1989. The 41-year-old was awarded the Queensland Police Service Valour award for his "act of exceptional bravery". Constable Handran from the Juvenile Aid Bureau arrived at the scene after reports of a domestic disturbance where a man had stabbed his wife in an argument and was firing shots from a high powered rifle onto the street.

Constable Handran got out of his car and only taken a few steps before he was shot in the chest. He managed to take cover behind a police car door and was conscious when ambulance arrived however he died in the way to hospital. In the 20 minutes that police remained at the scene, the man shot and killed his two-year-old daughter, seriously wounded four other people before he killed himself. Senior Constable Norman Watt Rockhampton District Dog Squad

QPS Roll of Honour - Senior Constable Norman Watt Credit:Amy Mitchell-Whittington On July 20, 2000, Senior Constable Norman Watt was at a hobby farm at Alton Downs after a man had shot at his friend three times during an argument. The Senior Constable had been checking the boundary fences of the residence where they believed Cooper was holed up, however the gunman had fled the house and hidden in bushes in the yard. Senior Constable Norman was shot in the groin by the gunman and fell to the ground, however officers could not safely approach their fallen colleague because they couldn't see him in the darkness and did not know where armed man was. An armoured vehicle from the Rockhampton Correctional Centre was used to recover Senior Constable Watt, who had died after the shot severed an artery.

The seven hour siege ended when the man surrendered to police. He was later charged with murder and found guilty. Senior Sergeant Perry Irwin Caboolture QPS Roll of Honour - Senior Sergeant Perry Irwin Credit:Amy Mitchell-Whittington Senior Sergeant Perry Irwin died after he was ambushed in bushland near Caboolture on August 23, 2003.

Senior Sergeant Irwin along with other officers had responded to reports of an alleged gunman who had approached two children that morning. As Senior Sergeant Irwin was walking through the area he was ambushed and shot at twice by a 21-year-old man. The gunman fired at the other officers before he killed himself a short time later. Senior Sergeant Irwin died at the scene. Constable Brett Irwin

Ferny Grove QPS Roll of Honour - Constable Brett Irwin Credit:Amy Mitchell-Whittington Constable Brett Irwin died while attempting to arrest a man in relation to a breach of bail at a home in Brisbane's north on July 18, 2007. Constable Irwin along with another officer knocked on the front door of a Keperra home where the wanted man was believed to be living. When there was no answer, Constable Irwin went around the back of the house where he shouted out "gun" before his fellow officer heard a gunshot.

Constable John Edwards called for assistance and when a negotiator arrived, the man's de facto wife and two children were released from the home. SERT crews entered the home and found the man had shot himself in the head. The body of Constable Irwin who had managed to get himself into the front yard before he died. Detective Senior Constable Damian Leeding CIB, Coomera

QPS Roll of Honour - Detective Senior Constable Damian Leeding Credit:Amy Mitchell-Whittington Detective Senior Constable Damian Leeding died in hospital after he was shot during an armed robbery at a Gold Coast tavern on May 29, 2011. The senior constable was with a fellow officer outside the Pacific Pines Tavern when he was confronted by an armed man. Loading They had been called to the tavern after reports staff and patrons were inside at the time of the robbery.
Brett Forte with his wife, fellow cop Susan. "He will be remembered by the many victims and families to whom he showed compassion and support. "More so, Brett will be remembered for his ultimate sacrifice and his selfless act of valour in protecting and preserving the lives of his colleagues." Brett Forte left behind a wife and three children. Senior Constable Forte's wife, fellow cop Susie, said her husband would have enjoyed the show of support from his colleagues.

"Brett would have absolutely loved the attention," she said. Thousands of mourners farewelled slain police officer Senior Constable Brett Forte at his funeral in Toowoomba. Senior Constable Forte's 16-year career was already decorated, including the Queensland Police Service Medal in 2011 and citations for the 2011 Queensland floods and G20. On Wednesday, Commissioner Stewart added the Valour Award, National Medal and National Police Service Medal to that list. "Brett taught us lessons in mateship and family," he said.

"He treated others with respect, and was a principled, respected and professional police officer whose opinion and advice was provided to his subordinates, peers and management, whether they wanted it or not." Earlier Thousands have gathered, including Queensland's highest-ranking police officers and dignitaries, for the police funeral of slain cop Senior Constable Brett Forte. The Toowoomba cop was remembered as a "hero and soulmate", a "guardian angel" who was funny, sarcastic and just a little bit cheeky. Wreaths were laid, prayers recited and flags delivered to the front to the sound of a lone drumbeat. Brett's children, Emma, Brodie and Sam, came together to lay a teddy bear on his coffin.

All was silent as Senior Constable Forte's wife, Susie, and daughter Emma took the stage, tears welling in their eyes as they held each other. "You were a fantastic husband to me and father to our children," a black-clad Susan said, through sniffs and tears. "I promise to raise our children to the values you held dear. "I will miss your inappropriate comments that always made me laugh so much. You are my hero and my soul mate and I will love you forever." Emma, in bright yellow contrast to her mother, asked what did it mean to be a hero, recalling when her dad proved "anyone can be a father but it takes a real man to be a dad".

"To the world you may be one person. But to my family you are the world," she said. "Rest in peace my guardian angel." In a letter written by Senior Constable Forte's mother, Heather, and read by one of his brothers, the service heard the officer first attained his "hero status" at three, when he pulled his cousin, Kylie, out of his grandad's fishpond. Senior Constable Forte's father and fellow cop Stuart Forte battled tears as he read from the bible. Family friend Jeff Lancaster remembered his lifelong mate as a lovable larrikin, giving, loving, considerate and funny.

"I've known Brett since he was born," he said. "I watched him grow from a child into a young man. I watched as he worked hard to become a cop. "Something that he had wanted since he was a boy. "His grandfather was a cop. His father was a cop. His uncle was a cop. It was a family that he was destined  and determined  to join." "Family meant everything to Brett. And if you were fortunate to be part of his family  in any context  then you considered yourself blessed."

Tears and laughter seemed in equal proportion among his nearest and dearest as Green Day's Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) formed the soundtrack to a photo montage. Crowds spilled out of the funeral venue in Toowoomba, west of Brisbane, and onto the streets as the town paused to pay tribute to a policeman shot dead in the line of duty. The 41-year-old father-of-three was killed last Monday in a rural area of the Lockyer Valley, west of Brisbane, after a low-speed pursuit of career criminal Rick Maddison. Police were investigating whether the gunman deliberately lured the Tactical Crime Squad toward a property where he had been staying before opening fire, sparking a 21-hour siege. The standoff ended with Maddison being fatally shot as he charged at specialist police officers.

After he was shot, Senior Constable Forte reportedly reversed his car away from the gunman in an attempt to save his partner, but it rolled before she smashed the windscreen to help drag him out of the vehicle. The large-scale service is in keeping with the officer's family's wishes, after Senior Constable Forte's father, Stuart, himself a former cop, expressed a preference for his son to be sent off in style. "Brett loved the police ... he loved of course the motorbikes, the horses, the band - everything, just everything that was police - so we have asked that whatever they can do for us to send him off in the best style possible," he said. Among the expected crowd of 4000 at the Clive Berghofer Recreation Centre, were Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and a host of other state and federal MPs, mayors, clergy and senior representatives from police agencies around the country. Other officers from around south-east Queensland were brought into the area to handle policing duties while local officers farewelled their former colleague.
Two new schools will open in Brisbane's inner-city and another will be significantly expanded.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced the $500 million Building Future Schools Fund on Thursday morning.

It will deliver a new state secondary school at the former Fortitude Valley State School site in partnership with the Queensland University of Technology, which should be completed by 2020.

The fund will also establish a new high school in the inner-south working with the University of Queensland to take enrolment pressure off Brisbane State High School.
The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation and Federal Police should have a say in parole decisions for dangerous offenders on the terror watch list, Premier Daniel Andrews has proposed.

This comes as Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull pushes for the states to adopt tougher uniform parole laws across all states and territories.

Parole has become a flashpoint for federal and state dispute after it was revealed that Brighton gunman Yacqub Khayre was on parole when he shot one person dead in Brighton and injured three police officers.

Khayre, too, was shot dead at the scene after taking a female hostage.
A floral tribute at the scene of the Brighton siege for Kai Hao. Credit:Ebony Bowden A floral tribute has formed for Mr Hao at the front gate of the apartments with cards written in both English and Chinese. One simply states: "We will miss you." A note left on Wednesday morning at the scene of the Brighton siege for victim Kai Hao. At the time it was thought Mr Hao and his new wife had had a child. Credit:Ebony Bowden One elderly Brighton man who didn't want to be photographed paid his respects at the apartment complex on Wednesday, leaving a bouquet with a heartbreaking message.

In a card signed only "H.P.", the man paid his condolences to the wife and child of Mr Hao, writing "we feel your sadness". A card for the Brighton terror victim left outside the apartment block where he was killed. Credit:Joe Armao "It could have been any one of us," he wrote. The card is the first outpouring of grief from the community in addition to tributes in Chinese left outside the complex overnight where Mr Hao killed. Police outside the Bay Street apartments in Brighton on Tuesday. Credit:Michael Dodge

A police information van was on Wednesday stationed on Bay Street with officers saying their presence was meant to reassure locals. Two uniformed officers who said they were the first police on the scene of the siege returned to the Buckingham Serviced Apartments on Wednesday morning. The paper evidence bag being carried away from the Buckingham Serviced Apartments on Tuesday. Credit:Julian Smith One officer told reporters he had come back "to try and get my head around it". "I'm just glad I didn't go in," he said after spending a few minutes outside the apartments before getting back into his patrol car and driving away.

The bomb squad at the scene of a terror stand-off in Brighton earlier this month. Credit:Justin McManus Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton said it was a "great tragedy" and the victim had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Police have also revealed the woman taken hostage by Khayre was 36 and lived just a few kilometres away from the Brighton apartment complex. The woman works for an escort agency and was lured to the serviced apartments by Khayre, who had pretended to be a client before taking her hostage. Deputy Commissioner Shane Patton said the woman had been tied up in an apartment for "a period of time" but was not seriously injured during the siege. She was rescued by police after Khayre had been killed.

"As I understand she was not physically injured but has been very significantly traumatised by this event, as you would expect," Mr Patton said. He said the woman was recovering and police would provide support. On Wednesday morning, Police minister Lisa Neville updated parliament on injuries to two police officers involved in Monday's terror incident. One officer has had an operation for hand injuries received from gun pellets which required skin grafts. A second officer had surgery for neck, shoulder and facial injuries.

On Tuesday, police returned to Bay Street, where they carried brown paper bags of evidence  one containing a book with Arabic writing  from the apartment building. The bomb squad was at the scene and loud bangs, possibly controlled explosions, were heard. A burgundy car was towed away from the scene. Police also raided the Roxburgh Park home Khayre shared with his mother, with computers and other electronic devices seized. Federal police, forensic crews and public order response police cordoned off the street and spoke to neighbours. Marta Tuariki described Khayre as a regular man and was shocked to learn of the siege. But a 15-year-old neighbour painted a different picture of Khayre. "He used to sit at the front of his house on a plastic chair," he said. "He used to just sit there. He used to get annoyed. He used to turn on my mates and stuff like yell at them."

Meanwhile, there were fiery scenes in State Parliament where debate raged about parole conditions and violent crime sweeping the city. On Wednesday, the Bay Street building remained closed with a padlocked chain wrapped around the front gate. A window at the front of the property remained half open and a shopping bag containing biscuits and a water bottle sat untouched in the driveway. It is unclear when the hotel will reopen for business. Some members of the Muslim community have spoken out to condemn the attack by Khayre, but others have been reluctant to comment, raising questions about his motive and mental health. Khayre, who had been on parole since November, had a long record of serious criminal offending - including offences for drugs, firearms and extreme violence - and was being investigated for possible links to terrorism.

A source in the Muslim community said Khayre's religiosity was "on and off", but that he had "serious mental health issues" and an addiction to the drug ice. "Nobody has made any reference to extremist thoughts or motivations," the source said, adding people were "shocked, but not surprised" that Khayre might have acted this way. The Board of Imams Victoria said it condemned any terrorist activity on Australian soil. "The action of the young man in the name [of] ISIS and al Qaeda is despicable and against the teaching of Islam and the violation of sanctity of Ramadan," spokesman Sheikh Mohamadu Saleem said. "Our thoughts are with the police officers injured in the operation. We ask Muslim community to be vigilant and cooperate with authorities to foil any terrorism activity in Australia."
Melbourne Express: Thursday, June 8, 2017

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Qantas is still keen to work with Dubai-based Emirates on routes to Europe, even as it starts to open up more of its own, executives say.

The airline is bypassing popular Emirates' hub Dubai on a new Perth-London flight and has indicated it wants to fly to Paris and Frankfurt from Perth, in another challenge to Emirates.

"Even when we start flying direct to London, still Dubai will play a big role," Qantas boss Alan Joyce said at a briefing on the sidelines of an airline industry meeting in Mexico.

"Emirates has 40 destinations in Europe. We're never going to fly direct to places like Venice and Prague."
A Brazilian man who allegedly left a Pakistani student fighting for life after attacking her in an apartment block in the Perth CBD may have his charge upgraded, police say.

Eduardo Santos Abrahao Filho, 27, was charged with grievous bodily harm after Mehreen Ahmad, a 31-year-old Pakistani national from the US, was found in the stairwell of the apartment block with serious head injuries last month.

Mehreen Ahmad was found in the stairwell of the apartment block with serious head injuries. Credit:Facebook

He appeared in Perth Magistrates Court on Wednesday, when police prosecutors said his charge may be upgraded.

He will next appear in court on August 31.
Washington: President Donald Trump on Wednesday ended a fraught month-long search for an FBI chief after firing James Comey by selecting Christopher Wray, who has prosecuted and defended white-collar crime cases and represented New Jersey's governor in a political scandal.

Wray, who must be confirmed to the post by the Senate, and Comey served together in the Justice Department under former President George Bush, and both worked on the government's case in the Enron Corp fraud scandal in the early to mid-2000s.

Trump's announcement that he will nominate Wray as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation came a day before Comey's eagerly anticipated public testimony before a Senate committee.

Ahead of the testimony, Comey said in a statement on Wednesday that Trump told him on January 27 that "I expect loyalty" and in a meeting on February 14 asked him to back off from a probe into former national security adviser Michael Flynn's ties with Russia.
US President Donald Trump has announced his choice for the new director of the FBI.

Taking to Twitter on Wednesday night, Trump said Christopher Wray  a former Assistant Attorney-General in the George W. Bush administration  would be nominated for the role.

US President Donald Trump. Credit:AP

He said Wray, who is 50, had "impeccable credentials".

"I will be nominating Christopher A. Wray, a man of impeccable credentials, to be the new Director of the FBI," Trump said. "Details to follow."
Tokyo: South Korea's newly elected president, Moon Jae-in, has suspended the deployment of a US missile defence system, an apparent concession to China and a significant break with the United States on policy toward North Korea.

In comments to reporters, a senior official from the presidential Blue House in Seoul said Wednesday that the two launchers of the Terminal High Altitude Area defence system that had been installed could remain but that four launchers that had yet to be deployed would not be set up until the administration completed an environmental assessment.

The missile defence system, known as THAAD, has been controversial in South Korea and has drawn sharp criticism from China, which views the system's radar as a threat. Beijing has taken retaliatory economic measures against Seoul, including curtailing the flow of Chinese tourists and punishing South Korean companies in China.

During his campaign, Moon, who won the presidency last month, complained that the United States and the previous South Korean administration rushed to deploy THAAD before the election to present him with a fait accompli.
Latest News Sydney records highest auction clearance rate in six months Almost 70% of properties sold in first week of November

ScotPac opens new broker portal System aimed at speeding up approvals

Australia may soon have its first neobank with the arrival of Xinja, a digital-only firm which hopes to gain its banking licence and eventually expand into home loans.Xinja is a full service digital retail bank built for mobiles and mirrors the neobanks popping up globally in the UK, US and Europe, CEO Eric Wilson told Australian Broker.The phrase, neobank, was coined in the UK and refers to a bank without any traditional infrastructure such as branches or legacy IT systems that often plague even the newer non-major banks, he said.An executive with National Australia Bank for four years, Wilson eventually moved on in December 2015 as he felt technology could provide better outcomes for banking customers and staff.There are all sorts of wonderful things we can do with technology to serve customers that perhaps the larger legacy banks cant because they have the old legacy systems in place.Over the past year and a half, Wilson has been working to establish Xinja and is currently talking with APRA and ASIC to gain a credit and banking licence.The next nine months are around the technology build. Well be building our first product and releasing it after six months  a pre-paid debit card  which obviously we can do without a banking licence.Wilson hopes Xinja will become an ADI within a year, start taking deposits in 18 months, and begin offering mortgages in 18 to 24 months.Half the Xinja team have banking backgrounds including an ex-treasurer from Macquarie and a chief risk officer who held the same role at one of the non-majors.Whats really interesting is the other half of my team are, quite deliberately, not bankers but from very high customer care industries, Wilson said. My customer innovation director, Van Le, is a human design expert. She builds companies around what customers need, what their problems are, and how we solve them.At the time of writing, Xinja had raised just under $3m in funding in a single funding round held in the beginning of May which closed after five days.Speaking about digital only mortgages, Wilson said that while this technology was not offered by all lenders across Australia, it is quite common elsewhere.If you look overseas, where a lot of our technology is coming from, you find that there are a number of entirely digitised processes often using brokers. Its not about replacing brokers because I think we still need that intelligent, rational review of products on the market. Its about the ability to have an end-to-end process where you dont have to speak to someone if you dont want to.While Xinja was yet to make a decision around working with brokers in the future, Wilson said there was no reason not to utilise the third party channel.More than half of Australian mortgages are done through brokers. They provide an important, rational decision-making process. We think were going to have an utterly incredible product so why would we deny ourselves that channel? Brokers have a really important part to play.With Xinja in the process of pre-registering customers now, Wilson asked brokers to register on the banks website and give their feedback in that way.Wed be fascinated to talk to brokers to find out what their financial needs are, he said. It would be great to get their feedback and build Xinja with brokers in mind as well.
Latest News Sydney records highest auction clearance rate in six months Almost 70% of properties sold in first week of November

ScotPac opens new broker portal System aimed at speeding up approvals

Melbourne-based brokerage Entourage Finance has expanded its loan writing team from four to eight, bringing on a host of young gun brokers.The brokerage nabbed two brokers from Stratton Finance, including Vincent Moore, a 25-year broker writing close to $40m a year, as well as Kristel Ongoco who was working alongside Moore.Entourage also welcomed Mikaela Patterson from Choice Capital in Prahran who has ten years of broking experience as well as Gabriella Rivett, a new-to-industry broker who will be learning the ropes while there.Weve got a good existing clientele who keep referring and giving us business and I cant continue to do every single thing, said Damien Roylance, director of Entourage Finance. Ive brought on experienced brokers who can help with the load of new business coming in the door.The new hires will also help as the business gets busier over the coming months and years, he told Australian Broker.To cope with future industry changes and the added workflow, Entourage is also set to revamp its branding and marketing  setting the bar even higher after the firm won the award for Most Effective Internet Presence at the Australian Mortgage Awards last year.Were getting recognition for our marketing which is only being done in-house by Brett Gavaghan and myself, he said. Were going to really ramp that up.Roylance noted that there was a real gap in the market with few brokerages effectively using social media and advertising to target those under 40-years-old. Entourage has expanded its strategy to include Facebook, a blog and an Instagram feed complete with photographs from clients.Were trying to build the brand up now with all these brokers on board.As part of reaching out to clients and giving back to the community, Entourage is hosting a special ladies lunch at Rockpool at Crown Melbourne next Thursday (15 June). The event will be hosted by Emma Hawkins, wife of Geelong forward Tom Hawkins, with over 30 guests scheduled to attend.Weve done a lot of things in the past like the AFL and Presidents Lunches  quite nice events with the boys  and we probably havent done enough for the ladies over time. My wife had the idea to do a ladies lunch at Rockpool.Attendees will get goody bags with vouchers and jewellery as a thank you for bringing business into the brokerage.The reason behind this is that all our business comes from referrals. Instead of spending $5,000 on Google AdWords, Id rather spend $5,000 on a lunch and give back to our clients as a way of thanks because I know it always comes back double or triple when they talk to their friends.Roylance has confirmed that Bec Daniher, daughter of former AFL player and campaigner for motor neuron disease Neale Daniher, will come along to the event.Were not just having a lunch for the sake of getting the girls drinking champagne but hopefully to have a bit of meaning behind it, he said.Entourage will put money towards FightMND, a charity which strives to combat the disease, with attendees asked to donate as well.
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76th Precinct

Carroll Gardens-Cobble HillRed Hook

Scooted out of there

A nogoodnik grabbed two scooters from outside a home on Union Street sometime overnight on May 21, police said.

The baddie ran off with the two Razor scooters from outside the home between Van Brunt and Columbia streets sometime between 8 pm and 6:15 am the next day, according to authorities.

Whacked with wood

A cur hit a woman with a wooden plank inside a store on Henry Street on May 30, police said.

The malefactor hit the 25-year-old woman on her left foot when she asked the punk to return money she had lent her inside the store between Huntington and W. Ninth streets at about noon, officials said.

The baddie fled the store, but the victim knows who she is, according to authorities.

Slashed

Cops cuffed a man for slashing another guy with a knife inside a deli on Columbia Street on May 28.

The suspect slashed him with the knife inside the store between Huntington and W. Ninth streets at about 2:45 pm, but the victim fought back in self-defense and hit him in the head with a portable speaker, according to authorities.

Police arrested the knife-wielding suspect and charged him with assault and possession of a weapon, officials said.

For baby

A jerk swiped a bunch of baby goods from a Court Street store on May 24, police said.

The baddie grabbed a box of cotton swabs, diapers, paper towels, baby food, and baby wash from the store between First and Second places at about 10:45 pm, according to authorities.

Out for lunch

A lawbreaker stole a womans computer and expensive jewelry from her home on President Street on May 26, police said.

The woman told police she left for lunch at noon and when she returned home between Henry and Clinton streets at 3 pm, noticed the latch on her door was missing and her Sony laptop, amethyst ring, suede jacket, gold and silver Geneva watch, and $400 were all gone, according to authorities.

 Julianne Cuba
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88th Precinct

Fort GreeneClinton Hill

Hitting the club

Bandits broke into a Clinton Avenue nightclub and stole more than $15,000 from a cash dispenser on May 26.

Someone broke through the wall of the club between Atlantic Avenue and Fulton Street around 2 am and damaged two automated teller machines, according to cops.

Cash was only taken from one machine, but the thieves got away with $15,700, according to the report.

Lean and glean

A nogoodnik snatched a womans wallet while she rode a bus on May 26.

The woman told police that she was riding the B38 around 3:09 pm when she felt someone leaning on her bag. When she arrived at her destination near Vanderbilt and Myrtle Avenues, she realized her wallet was missing, according to cops.

The thief got away with several of her credit cards and a learners permit, according to the report.

Not so fast

Cops arrested a man who they say tried to steal a womans smartphone on DeKalb Avenue on May 22.

The woman told police that she had just left a gym near S. Oxford Street around 2:46 am when a man grabbed her from behind, snatched her phone, and ran off with it. She began to run after the man to retrieve her phone, when she noticed police officers, and asked for assistance, according to the police report. After a neighborhood search, the woman identified the man to officers, who arrested him at a park, authorities said.

Group assault

A gang of teens attacked a teenage girl riding the G train on May 28.

The 15-year-old girl told police that she boarded the Queens-bound car at Lafayette Avenue and Fulton Street, and a group entered the train at Clinton and Washington avenues around 2:30 am. At that point, one of them began accusing her of being with her boyfriend, the girl told cops.

Police said one of the punks repeatedly punched the young victim in the head and arms, and ran off with her smartphone at the next stop, according to cops.

Train attack

A blade-wielding villain attacked a man on a B train near Flatbush Avenue on May 26.

The man told cops the Coney Island-bound train was near Hanson Place around 9 pm when a man started screaming at other riders. When the victim attempted to calm down the irate man, he lunged at him with a sharp object and fled, according to cops.

Police said the victim suffered a cut between his middle and ring finger, according to the report.

Sneaker snatch

A couple of cretins attacked a man for a pair of kicks in a DeKalb Avenue park on May 21.

The man told police that he was walking in the green space near Washington Park around 11 pm when two men approached him and said he had nice shoes. At that point, one of the brutes punched the victim in the head repeatedly, while the other held onto his legs and removed his sneakers.

After the robbery, the victim noticed that his right leg was bleeding and walked to a nearby hospital, where he was treated for two puncture wounds on his calf, according to the report.

 Alexandra Simon
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October 31, 2022

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UB Alzheimers clinics are seeing more patients at downtown Conventus and Williamsville locations

Clinical trial of new dementia drug begins in August

Some of the things we look for are when patients have trouble learning new information and saying it back. That is a sign of Alzheimers, the rapid forgetting of new information. 

BUFFALO, N.Y.  To meet Western New Yorks growing need for quality care for Alzheimers disease and related disorders, the University at Buffalos Alzheimers Disease and Memory Disorders Center is expanding its clinics in Buffalo and Williamsville. It was designated a Center of Excellence for Alzheimers Disease by New York State last year.

Part of UBMD Neurology and the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at UB, the center is conducting clinical trials on two new dementia treatments; it will begin enrolling patients in a third trial in August.

Now in new offices on the fourth floor of the Conventus medical office building at 1001 Main St., Buffalo, the downtown clinic of the Alzheimers Disease and Memory Disorders Center has been seeing patients twice a week since April, up from once a week. The clinic cares for approximately 700 patients, a three-fold increase since the center opened at Buffalo General Medical Center (BGMC) in 2011.

The center and UBMD Neurology moved into Conventus from BGMC earlier this year. UBMD Neurology was the first clinical practice to move into Conventus, followed by the other practices of UBMD Physicians Group.

The move of the practice plans into Conventus, along with the construction of the new Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences building, is part of the continued expansion and enhancement of the academic health center on the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus.

We are looking forward to the synergies that will result from having our clinics so close to where UBs medical students are training, said Kinga Szigeti, MD, PhD, associate professor of neurology at UB, the centers director and a physician with UBMD Neurology. Our clinic expansions are proof of the growing demand for neurologists, neuropsychologists and other physicians who specialize in caring for those with Alzheimers disease and related disorders.

And starting Aug. 1, patients being seen in Williamsville also will be able to access more specialty care for dementia and related disorders when the memory disorders program of UBMD Neurologys Williamsville clinic at 5851 Main St. expands from one day a month to once a week. Margaret W. Paroski, MD, UB professor of neurology and physician with UBMD Neurology, oversees the Williamsville site.

The UB center uses a multidisciplinary approach, according to Szigeti. A team of neurologists, neuropsychologists, social workers and nurses conduct a detailed evaluation, including the patients medical history, and neurological and neuropsychological exams, as well as brain imaging.

The goal is to differentiate between normal aging and mild cognitive impairment, which may be an early sign of dementia and various dementias, she said.

Earlier diagnosis

The center addresses all stages of dementia, but Szigeti noted that research is beginning to focus more heavily on the diseases earlier stages.

We treat all stages of dementia, she explained, but more and more research is being conducted on mild cognitive impairment and early signs of Alzheimers disease with the goal of slowing or even stopping progression of this neurodegenerative disease.

To that end, she said, the UB centers physicians emphasize early screening and diagnosis.

She added that Medicare reimburses primary care providers for doing cognitive assessments of patients for signs of memory disorders. Such testing may involve simple word recall, the ability to draw a clock or open-ended questions, such as asking patients to name items typically found in a supermarket.

Some of the things we look for are when patients have trouble learning new information and saying it back, Szigeti said. That is a sign of Alzheimers, the rapid forgetting of new information.

The goal is to begin treatment soon after diagnosis. With treatment, we can give patients more good years, she said.

New clinical trial launches in August

Because the Alzheimers Disease and Memory Disorders Center is part of the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, whose professors conduct medical research, the centers patients have access to some of the newest dementia treatments through clinical trials.

The UB center has enrolled 27 patients in two clinical trials, with a third coming this August. These studies focus on patients who are as young as 55 years old and who have mild cognitive impairment to early Alzheimers disease.

When one of our patients is in a clinical trial, that means that in addition to being treated with drugs now on the market, they also have access to the newest treatments, Szigeti said. These patients are getting a jump on cutting-edge treatments that wont be available to the general patient population for many years.

To schedule an appointment at either the Conventus or Williamsville clinic, contact Jodi Berner at 716-323-0556.
NJ Weedman got a license to sell NJ legal weed. He almost said no.
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After blocking Google users from reading free articles in February, the Wall Street Journals subscription business soared, with a fourfold increase in the rate of visitors converting into paying customers. But there was a trade-off: Traffic from Google plummeted 44 per cent.
On 16 May, VT-SLB, a Boeing 737-800 of SpiceJet completed its routine heavy maintenance at the Hosur facility of . It was the 200th aircraft that the maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) firm had completed after it got approval from the regulator in 2008. But MD Vivek Gour aims higher and says that while it took the firm 8 years to reach 200, it will take only 15 months for it get its 300th order. In 15 months, I am convinced that we will complete 100 more checks, my hands are full and we are expanding facility and recruiting more, Gour told in an interview.


At 61, Dilip Shantilal Shanghvi has seen many cycles since he started Sun Pharmaceutical at Vapi in 1982 with just Rs 10,000. Almost 35 years later, Shanghvi is falling back on the same strategy of building a portfolio of niche products as competition erodes the pharma majors profitability in its most important market--the US.
Software as a Service (SaaS) based customer engagement company has rebranded the entity under the name Freshworks, in order to convey its multi-product strategy to the market and the customers.
Top seven India-based IT in the US collectively experienced a whopping 37 per cent drop in approved H-1B visa petitions in 2016 as compared to the previous year, according to a new report that comes amid the Trump administration's crackdown on the "visa abuse".

The experienced a drop of 5,436 approved petitions (37 per cent) in 2016 as compared to the previous year, said a report by the National Foundation for American Policy  a Washington-based non-profit think-tank.

It said that the 9,356 new H-1B petitions for the top seven India-based approved in fiscal 2016 represent only 0.006 per cent of the US labour force.

"While the threat of job loss has long been exaggerated by critics, it reaches illogical proportions when discussing fewer than 10,000 workers in an economy that employs 160 million workers nationwide," the National Foundation for American Policy said in a statement after releasing the report.

The report comes after US President Donald Trump signed an executive order in April for tightening the rules of the H-1B visa programme to stop "visa abuses".

Trump said his administration is going to enforce 'Hire American' rules that are designed to protect jobs and wages of workers in the US.

The executive order also called upon the Departments of Labour, Justice, Homeland Security, and the state to take action against fraud and abuse of the US' visa programmes.

According to the report, the number of approved new H-1B petitions for Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) declined by 56 per cent from FY 2015 to FY 2016, from 4,674 to 2,040, a drop of 2,634.

For Wipro, the petitions declined by 52 per cent between FY 2015 and FY 2016, a drop of 1,605, going from 3,079 to 1,474 approved petitions for initial employment during those years.

For Infosys, it declined by 16 per cent (or 454 petitions), with 2,376 approved H-1B petitions for initial employment in FY 2016, compared to 2,830 in FY 2015, said the report, which based its research on government data.

"The drop in new for India-based companies, which is expected to continue when data are released on cases filed in April 2017 for FY 2018 start dates, is due to trends toward digital services such as cloud computing and artificial intelligence, which require fewer workers, and a choice by companies to rely less on visas and to build up their domestic workforces in the US," the report said.

"H-1B petitions approved for initial employment in FY 2016 were filed by employers in April 2016, which means the drop in H-B visa use by these companies is not due to Donald Trump's election.

"In the past, US policymakers have used the number of visas going to India-based companies as a political or policy reason to propose new immigration restrictions and to not raise the low annual supply of H-1B visas, which has been exhausted every year for the past 15 fiscal years," said NFAP executive director Stuart Anderson, former head of policy at the Immigration and Naturalisation Service under President George W Bush.

Among the top companies with new H-1B petitions approved in 2016 were Cognizant (3,949), Infosys (2,376), TCS (2,040), Accenture (1,889), IBM (1,608), Wipro (1,474), Amazon (1,416), Tech Mahindra (1,228), CapGemini (1,164), Microsoft (1,145), HCL America (1,041), Intel (1,030), Deloitte (985), Google (924), Larsen &Toubro (870), PricewaterhouseCoopers (713), Ernst & Young (649), Apple (631), Syntel (583), Facebook (472), Oracle (427), Cisco (380), Mindtree (327), Goldman Sachs (287), UST Global (283), JPMorganChase (271), IGATE (255), Stanford (221), Yahoo! (206) and KPMG (198).

An analysis of US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) data on FY 2016 H-1B petitions shows, similar to FY 2015, approximately 25,000 different US employers hired at least one high-skilled foreign national on a new H-1B petition in 2016.

Employers in manufacturing include Tesla Motors with 108 approved new H-1B petitions and Cummins with 197.

Uber had 121 approved H-1B petitions in FY 2016, eBay 115, and the Mayo Clinic 111.

National Foundation for American Policy said the April 2017 unemployment rate in the US for "computer and mathematical science" occupations was 2.5 per cent - a very low rate, even lower than the 4.4 per cent for "all occupations," according to the Bureau of Labour Statistics data.

The unemployment rate for "architecture and engineering" occupations is even lower at 2.1 per cent, it said, adding this illustrates a disconnect between reality and claims that high-skilled foreign nationals are preventing US workers from pursuing careers in tech fields.

According to Code.Org, Bureau of Labour Statistics data indicate there will be "1.4 million more software development jobs than applicants who can fill them by 2020...And there are more than 500,000 open computing jobs nationwide."



An analysis by Glassdoor shows 9 of the 10 highest paying majors for US students 5 years out of college are in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields, the report said.

The report disputed the figures of the Trump administration that about 80 per cent of the H-1B workers are paid less than the median wage in their fields.

"This statistic is misleading as it relies on a Department of Labour database that includes multiple applications for the same individuals, since a new filing is generally required when H-1B professional moves to a new area," the report said.

That means it "double or triple counts anyone who works in more than one geographic location (primarily younger workers sent to multiple offices)." Moreover, it may not reflect what employers actually pay individual workers, only the minimum required to be listed for government filing purposes.

The median salary in 2015 for H-1B computer-related recipients who have worked about three years (listed as "continuing employment" in DHS data) was about USD 7,000 higher than the median salary in the industry," the report said.

The foundation argued that H-1B temporary visas are important as they are typically the only practical way a high-skilled foreign national working abroad or an international student educated in the United States can work longterm in America.

At US universities, 77 per cent of the full-time graduate students in electrical engineering and 71 per cent in computer science are international students.

Reforms to increase the labour mobility of H-1B visas, raise the employment-based green card quota and eliminate the per country limit would be welcome but are not currently on the agenda. New restrictions on high-skilled immigration are more likely, it said.

"In today's global economy, companies and high-skilled professionals possess many options," said Anderson.

"The United States should maintain an openness toward high-skilled immigration or those options likely will not be in America," he added.
Lodha Ventures, the investment arm of the Mumbai-based property developer Mangal Prabhat Lodha family, is planning to launch a venture capital fund and a housing finance company soon, according to a source in the know.
Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu founded Heritage Foods, a dairy products company, is eyeing a pan-India presence as it aims to grow its revenues three-fold in the next five years. To do this the company plans to increase the share of value-added dairy products in its portfolio from 24 to 40 per cent, increase marketing spend for the brand and exploit its access to new markets through the dairy brands that it has acquired from Reliance Retail.
Renewals of deals in traditional information technology (IT) services could go down by 30 per cent as clients move budgets to digital and cloud, said Chief Operating Officer Pravin Rao on Wednesday.
(PFL), the lending arm of Piramal Enterprises, on Wednesday said that it has financed Rs 1,100 crore to Bengaluru-based Embassy Group. This funding has been done sequentially across both residential and commercial projects in Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad over the past six months.
With about 30 mobile manufacturing setting up bases in Noida and Greater Noida, the government wants to develop these areas as a hub of electronics manufacturing on the lines of Singapore.
Kolkata-based steel company Industries has filed for insolvency in an attempt to restructure its finances. The company has filed for insolvency under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), 2016, which was brought in to ensure timely restructuring of and help banks recover loans. The company has a debt of around Rs 2,000 crore, say sources close to the development. The lenders include 14 major banks like State Bank of India, Punjab National Bank, Allahabad Bank, Bank of India, IDBI Bank, Canara Bank, Central Bank of India, and ICICI Bank.
At 61, Dilip Shantilal Shanghvi has seen many cycles since he started Sun Pharmaceutical at Vapi in 1982 with just Rs 10,000. Almost 35 years later, Shanghvi is falling back on the same strategy of building a portfolio of niche products as competition erodes the pharma majors profitability in its most important market  the US.
Telecom equipment provider Tejas Networks will launch itsRs 777-crore initial public offering (IPO) on June 14. The company is looking to raiseRs 450 crore by issuing fresh equity capital through the IPO. The issue will also comprise secondary share sale worthRs 326 crore. The plans to cash in on the surge in demand for data services and need to fill the infrastructure gap in the country.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has asked the chief executive officers (CEO) of all the companies in the sector to a meeting on June 15 to discuss their financial crisis.
Uber has fired 20 employees over harassment, discrimination and inappropriate behavior, as the ride-hailing company tries to contain the fallout from a series of toxic revelations about its workplace.
Carrying 200 laptops in the bellyhold of an aircraft is dangerous and violates all safety norms, the global airlines' body International Air Transport Association (IATA) has said, asserting that a ban on personal electronic devices (PEDs) onboard flights was "not effective".

"We don't deny the threat. There is a real threat (from PEDs). But the ban is not effective," IATA Director General and CEO Alexandre de Juniac told PTI in an interview in Cancun, Mexico.

He said the confidence of the public and the airline industry has been rattled by inconsistencies in how some states have responded to concerns over the potential for explosives to be concealed in large portable electronic devices.

Carrying 200 laptops in the bellyhold of an aircraft "is dangerous and against all safety regulations", he said, quoting a top executive of an airline who pointed this out at a panel discussion during the three-day World Air Transport Summit in Cancun.

"However, we must trust that valid intelligence underpinned the UK and the US decisions to ban large PEDs on flights from some African and Middle Eastern airports. But, the measures themselves test the confidence of the industry and the public. We need to get security right. There is a clear duty for governments to make sure that the measures are logical, effective and efficient. That is not the case with the current PED ban. And it must change," the IATA chief said in response to questions.

Recently, the US and the UK barred passengers from carrying electronic devices, including laptops, in their hand baggage, while flying from certain countries, citing security concerns. The devices have to be checked in.

He said greater collaboration was needed among all governments and the airline industry stakeholders to keep flying secure by adopting a standardised global approach to check aviation security risks while minimising disruption to passengers.

"Aviation is a target for terrorists' intent on destroying the freedom that is at the heart of our business. Information sharing among governments and with the industry is the key to staying a step ahead of emerging threats. We have the same goals  to keep passengers and crew safe. So it only makes sense that we work together as closely as possible," de Juniac said.

The summit, being attended by over 1,000 representatives of airlines, airports and other stakeholders, unanimously adopted a resolution highlighting the importance of UN Security Council Resolution 2309, which calls governments to meet their responsibility to keep citizens secure while travelling by air.

It also reaffirmed the industry's strong support for the development of the Global Aviation Security Plan (GASeP) by the UN body, International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO).

"GASeP must be a pragmatic and nimble framework for all parties involved in aviation security to work together. No single entity has all the answers. By combining our strengths more efficiently, the security of passengers and crew will be better served," said de Juniac.

The resolution urges the governments to engage the industry in early dialogue when faced with a security threat to ensure that workable and effective response measures are developed that can be implemented efficiently to maximise passenger safety and minimise disruption.

The airlines also asked the governments to work in partnership with each other and with airlines, airports and other aviation security stakeholders to develop effective, long-term, security measures that effectively counter threats to aviation.

Asking the governments to take greater accountability for the implementation of ICAO standards and security measures, the resolution calls for fast-tracking of the GASeP roadmap into Civil Aviation Security Programmes as soon as possible.

The IATA called upon governments to adopt alternatives to the current ban.

"In the short-term, these include more intense screening at the gate and skills training. In the medium-term, faster and more advanced explosive detection technology is the solution to evolving bomb threats. But painfully slow certification processes must be accelerated so that we can actually use it," said de Juniac.

He said "it's clear that the long-term solution to mitigating PED threats is better screening technology. But without far greater government investment and support to accelerate development and certification of this new technology, its potential will not be realised."



Such steps "highlight the reason why we need better information sharing and better coordination to achieve risk mitigation measures that maximise the protection of passengers and crew while minimising unnecessary disruption," de Juniac said.

The IATA has already opposed the ban on carrying of laptops and said it was done without consulting the aviation industry.

The resolution also recognised the important role of industry in helping governments to keep flying secure.
A division bench of the Delhi High Court on Wednesday dismissed an appeal by Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) challenging a May 30 order directing the public sector undertaking (PSU) to pay Rs 60 crore as interest payments for outstanding loans taken by Delhi Airport Metro Express Private Limited (DAMEPL) for the construction of the Delhi airport express line. The single judge order had come on a plea by DAMEPL seeking the early payment of 75 per cent of the Rs 4,670 crore arbitration award passed in favour of the company on May 11 in the aftermath of the failed August 25, 2008 agreement between the two companies.
Fliers from India will now spend an additional half hour on their flights to Doha, with the worsening crisis in the Persian Gulf prompting carriers to skip airspace over the UAE.
Gurgaon police on Wednesday released sketches of the three accused in a case of gang rape of a woman and murder of her infant daughter.

After failing to recover any concrete evidence and clues of the three accused who gang-raped the 23-year-old woman and killed her baby daughter on May 29, Gurgaon police released the sketches of the suspects and appealed to the public for their identification.

Since the crime occurred in a moving auto-rickshaw, the police has questioned over 50 auto drivers plying in the IMT, Manesar area and detained some of them for interrogation to ascertain the auto and accused persons.

It has become a challenge for the Gurgaon police to nab the criminals after three back-to-back cases of molestation and gang-rape since last month. The accused left the victim after raping her for four hours. She then went to the spot where they had earlier thrown her nine-month-old daughter and picked her up in the middle of road and went to a hospital.

The doctors declared the infant dead but still she did not believe it and travelled with the dead child to a hospital in Delhi and later returned to M G Road metro station.

Gurgaon police commissioner Sandeep Khirwar admitted that the victim had travelled with her dead child in the metro the day after the incident and police learnt about the crime only after the victim's husband approached them.

"Her husband and Gurgaon police received the victim from M G Road metro station after she returned from hospital in Delhi. Following that, police conducted post-mortem of the infant," Khirwar said. It has been alleged that as the victim belongs to a poor family, the police tried to suppress her statement.

The police also reportedly did not register an FIR of gang rape initially but later included the charge five days after the incident.

The police constituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to nab the culprits. The SIT has taken the victim to all possible locations to identify the crime scene and sequence of events. The woman and her daughter had left home in Bas Khusla village after an altercation with her husband and neighbours on the night of May 29.

She was on her way to her parental house at Khandsa village when she was first given a lift in a truck. The truck driver also molested her but as she put up strong resistance, he dropped her off on NH 8.

As the victim was alone, the three accused in the auto offered her a lift and then gang-raped her. The accused also threw her infant daughter from the vehicle to avoid attention after she started crying.
Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Tuesday criticised CBI probe at the residence of NDTV founder Prannoy Roy and said it was an attempt to threaten the media that condemns the functioning of the Centre.

"Searches at the residence and office of NDTV head Prannoy Roy is an attempt to threaten the media that criticises the functioning of Central government headed by Narendra Modi," Vijayan said in a statement.

The Centre was using investigation agencies like CBI and the Enforcement Directorate for political vendetta, Vijayan said.

This type of infringement on the freedom of press reminds of the days of emergency, he said. Vijayan also wanted all sections of the society to raise their voice against this.

The investigation agency has registered a case against Roy, his wife Radhika and RRPR Holdings for allegedly causing a loss of Rs 48 crore to ICICI Bank.
Allegations over the use of "abusive language and obscene remarks" against officials of a government regulatory body on a 'Whatsapp' group landed 13 commercial pilots employed with leading domestic airlines in trouble on Tuesday.

According to Delhi Police, the civil aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) filed a complaint against 34 pilots, of whom 13 were summoned for examining the veracity of allegations.

"We have received a complaint by DGCA and are examining the matter. No arrest has been made yet," Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police Chinmoy Biswal said adding that the questioning took place on Tuesday afternoon.

The 13 pilots, some of whom belonged to airlines like Jet Airways, IndiGo, SpiceJet and GoAir, were let off after questioning. However, their mobile phones were being examined by a team of IT experts.

Apart from the original complaint, the DGCA is said to have also submitted to the officers at Lodhi Road police station a "screen shot" of the usage of objectionable, obscene language.

"The text used in the message was highly objectionable, unpardonable and obscene language was used against family members of DGCA officials," a senior DGCA official said.

"Unconditional apology has come from respective airline managements."

On their part, the airlines which employ these pilots have said that they are fully cooperating with the police over the examination of charges.

"We are looking into the charges and extending full cooperation to DGCA in this matter. Basis the findings of our internal enquiry, we will take appropriate action," a spokesperson for IndiGo said.

Jet Airways said: "The airline is extending its full cooperation to the authorities."

"Jet Airways will take appropriate measures, where necessary, as per the company policy and in compliance with local law," a spokesperson for the airline said.
Residents from some parts of Hyderabad have alleged that 'plastic rice' was being sold in the market, prompting the Telangana civil supplies department to send such samples for examination at a food laboratory.

The department officials on Wednesday said the reports were wrong and it was not "plastic rice", but they have sent the samples to the laboratory for a comprehensive examination and a report it is expected by on Thursday.

Some locals and inmates of a hostel in different areas of the city on Tuesday claimed that the rice they had bought and ate was very sticky and tasted different from the normal grain. They alleged that it was "plastic rice".

Later, state Civil Supplies Commissioner C V Anand directed the officials to collect the samples of rice from Yousufguda, Saroornagar, Meerpet and other places, from where the complaints had emerged. The samples were then sent to the state food laboratory for analysis, an official said.

"A detailed report is likely to be submitted by tomorrow," he said.

City's Nandanvanam area resident Ashok on Tuesday lodged a complaint with Meerpet police alleging that the grain he purchased from a local trader turned out to be 'plastic rice' after he cooked it. He also said that it had become sticky and there a was strange smell.

However, based on preliminary investigation, police said the sample that the complainant had provided was not "plastic rice".

Police also said that they had informed about the matter to the civil supplies department and sent the samples to it.

The inmates of a private hostel too had alleged that they were served "plastic rice" which tasted quite different from the normal rice.




Fresh violence broke out on Wednesday in Madhya Pradesh, a day after security forces fired at protesting farmers killing up to eight of them and sparking tensions across the state.

Defying curfew, hundreds of farmers took to the streets in Mandsaur district where police opened fire on Tuesday at a mob of peasants, leaving five dead according to official count and eight according to farmer outfits.

And some 200 km away, a group of farmers marched to a police station in Dewas district and set fire to an unspecified number of vehicles parked there on Wednesday.

The farmers then stopped two buses and 10 other vehicles plying on the Indore-Bhopal highway and torched them. But none of the occupants was hurt.

Farmers' agitation in Madhya Pradesh turns violent as they torch trucks in Mandsaur district on Wednesday. Photo: PTI

Officials in Bhopal said Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan was keeping Prime Minister Narendra Modi informed about the situation. He also held a meeting with his senior ministers to discuss ways to restore peace.

Madhya Pradesh Home Minister Bhupendra Singh had on Tuesday denied the police opened fire but he did not reiterate this on Wednesday as he met senior police officials.

Hundreds of angry farmers on Wednesday continued to block roads and also attacked two senior officials at Mandsaur.

Mandsaur District Magistrate Swatantra Kumar Singh and Indore Superintendent of Police O P Tripathi were roughed up when they reached Barkheda Pant where the farmers were squatting on a road with the body of one of those killed on Tuesday.

Singh and Tripathi wanted to persuade the farmers to end their protest but the attempt backfired.

"The situation is tense but under control," a senior official said on Wednesday.Singh was chased by the farmers, with some repeatedly hitting him on the head. Tripathi had a tough time too. Police reinforcements which rushed to the spot rescued both the officials.

The administration in Mandsaur on Wednesday barred politicians, including those from the Congress and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, from visiting the troubled areas, saying this would only fuel more unrest.

The farmers allege that the Madhya Pradesh Police and the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) deliberately opened fire at them on Tuesday when they were protesting demanding that their loans be written off and their produce be bought by the government at a fair price.

At least seven farmers were also wounded in the police firing. Police said it were the farmers who triggered the violence.

Farmers' agitation turns violent as they torch trucks at Mhow-Neemuch Highway in Mandsaur district of Madhya Pradesh on Wednesday. Photo: PTI

The farmers retaliated by torching more than 30 vehicles. In a bid to control the situation, authorities imposed curfew late on Tuesday in parts of Mandsaur.

An official said the curfew would remain in force until further orders.

Leaders of three farmers' organisations alleged in Indore that the number of people killed in police firing was eight and not five. One of the dead was a college student.

Students and activists protesting against the killing of six farmers in Mandsaur police firing incident, at MP Bhawan in New Delhi on Wednesday. Photo: PTI

Representatives of the Rashtriya Kisan Mazdoor Sangh, the Aam Kisan Union and the Bharatiya Kisan Union accused the government of spreading lies about the farmers.

Aam Kisan Union founder Kedar Sirohi said: "By branding us anti-social elements, the government is adding fuel to the fire. On the one hand, the government has unleashed repression on us, and on the other, it is trying to defame us."

Sirohi warned that if the situation did not change immediately, the farmers would resort to a "jail bharo" campaign across the state.

"And in all the 53,000 villages of the state, we will take out a mock funeral of the Chief Minister."

The Congress extended support to a shutdown called by farmers in Madhya Pradesh on Wednesday.

Reports from Bhopal said the strike evoked a varying response in Bhopal, Jhabua, Ujjain and Neemuch.

Farmers in Madhya Pradesh have been on strike from June 1 to June 10 in support of their demands.
An eerie silence prevailed on Wednesday on the mostly deserted fields in Madhya Pradeshs soybean- and wheat-growing belt of Malwa even as violence continued in the state, where five people were killed in police firing on Tuesday.


The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) today said nearly 83% of the currency has been remonetised so far and denied there was any shortage of cash in the system.

"According to our latest data, 82.67% of the currency has been remonetised and in volume terms, it is 108%," RBI Deputy Governor B P Kanungo told reporters here today.

The government had demonetised old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes on November 9, junking nearly 87% of the currency in circulation.

In a reply to questions in Lok Sabha, Minister of State for Finance Arjun Ram Meghwal on December 2, 2016, had said the day on which demonetisation was announced (November 8), there were 17,165 million pieces of Rs 500 notes and 6,858 million pieces of Rs 1,000 notes in circulation.

The data on the amount of demonetised notes returned back, however, continues to be elusive.

Kanungo further said it would be wrong to assume that there is any shortage of currency in the system.

Customers across the country have been complaining of the severe shortage of currency at the banks and ATMs.

Kanungo admitted that there could be the shortage in some areas but said RBI is monitoring the situation on a regular basis and has made enough arrangements to replenish cash.

"Yes, there could be the shortage of currency in some pockets but whenever such things come to our notice, we respond immediately through various measures including inter-chest remittances.

"I won't agree to the view that there is cash shortage on a longer term basis or persistent basis at any place," he said.

On shortage of cash at ATMs, the deputy governor said in an area where there are seven to eight ATMs, there is always one or two ATMs which would be dispensing cash.
Three years ago Manik Ubale (name changed) convinced his family to use 1.5 acres of his land for onion farming in addition to the existing two acres as prices in the wholesale market had hit the roof atRs 60-80 a kg. A year later, Ubale hanged himself. There were many others like Ubale who borrowed thousands of rupees from banks, financial institutions or local money lenders on hopes of over 12 times profit against their Rs 4.50 - 5 a kg cost of production. Onion prices in the benchmark Lasalgaon mandi here never shot up again and remained constant at aroundRs 7.50 a kg in the last three years. Currently, farmers are not even recovering their cost as onion is trading at Rs 3.30 - 4.00 a kg. .
A day after five farmers were killed in police firing in Mandsaur in Madhya Pradesh, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday held a meeting of senior ministers to take stock of the situation arising out of farmer agitations in Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, and other states. The PM had a talk on the phone with Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and advised him to deal with farmers agitation sensitively.
The spontaneity driving the ongoing farmers strike in Maharashtra has rendered it unusual and extraordinary. Though the farmers in the Puntamba block in western Maharashtra are not known to have a strong farmers organisation, their decision to not cultivate their fields this monsoon has fired the imagination of farmers in different districts across the state. The phenomenon is unique, but the method of agitation is not.
India is still working out how to check profiteering after the goods and services tax (GST) is rolled out, but Malaysia  the inspiration behind the indirect tax regime  is diluting its regulations.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) today said it has devised a strategy to deal with large stressed accounts and expects to see some action soon.

"Overall, the has a strategy to deal with the resolution of large assets and we are working in a calibrated manner and we hope to see some actions coming soon," Deputy Governor N S Vishwanathan told reporters here.

Last month, the government cleared an Ordinance to amend the Banking Regulation Act, giving wide-ranging legislative powers to the to issue directions to lenders to initiate insolvency proceedings for the recovery of bad loans.

Vishwanathan said the RBI has decided to focus on a few large stressed accounts under the framework and accordingly a set of accounts has been identified.

"The decision on specific accounts out of these to be referred for Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) or to be restructured will be taken under the guidance of the internal advisory committee," he said.

The deputy governor also said the first meeting of internal advisory committee will be convened very shortly.

Post the clearance of the much-awaited NPA Ordinance, RBI also issued a directive bringing some changes to the existing regulations on dealing with stressed assets.

The directives said that a corrective action plan could include flexible restructuring, strategic debt restructuring (SDR) and scheme for sustainable structuring of stressed assets (S4A).

To facilitate faster decision making in the joint lender forum (JLF), the RBI changed the consent required for approval of a proposal to 60% by value instead of 75% earlier.

It was also decided to reconstitute the oversight committee under the aegis of the RBI and to enlarge it to include more members so that the committee can constitute requisite benches to deal with the volume of cases referred to it.

Vishwanathan further said the proposal to bring in the oversight committee under the aegis of the RBI and with an expanded remit has also been approved in-principle so that it will come out soon.

He said the RBI has held a series of meetings with the stakeholders like banks, rating agencies, asset reconstruction companies (ARCs), private equity (PE) firms and investors.

"The required modifications to the restructuring guidelines are under the works and the feedback received from these stakeholders are being built into the final outcome," Vishwanathan said.

In a meeting held between the RBI and bankers last week, lenders had sought a few relaxation from the central bank in the current S4A mechanism including waiver of promoters personal guarantee, for quick resolution of stressed assets.

Bankers also requested to grant fresh moratorium or extension of repayment schedule or reduction of rate of interest to help companies come out of the stress.
Indias Seafood Export at all-time High in 2016-17 :MPEDA

Riding on a robust demand for its frozen shrimp and frozen fish in international markets, India exported 11,34,948 MT of seafood worth an all time high of US$ 5.78 billion (Rs 37, 870.90 crore) in 2016-17 as against 9,45,892 tons and 4.69 billion dollars a year earlier, with USA and South East Asia continuing to be the major importers while the demand from the European Union (EU) grew substantially during the period.

Frozen shrimp maintained its position as the top item of export, accounting for 38.28 per cent in quantity and 64.50 per cent of the total earnings in dollar terms. Shrimp exports increased by 16.21 per cent in terms of quantity and 20.33 per cent in dollar terms. Frozen Fish was the second largest export item, accounting for a share of 26.15 per cent in quantity and 11.64 per cent in dollar earnings, registering a growth of 26.92 per cent in terms of value.

USA imported 1,88,617 MT of Indian seafood, accounting for 29.98 per cent in terms of dollar. Export to that country registered a growth of 22.72 per cent, 33 per cent and 29.82 per cent in terms of quantity, value in rupee and US dollars, respectively. South East Asia remained the second largest destination of Indias marine products, with a share of 29.91 per cent in dollar terms, followed by the EU (17.98 per cent), Japan (6.83 per cent), the Middle East (4.78 per cent), China (3.50 per cent) and other countries (7.03 per cent). Overall, exports to South East Asia increased by 47.41 per cent in quantity, 52.84 per cent in rupee value and 49.90 per cent in dollar earnings.

Increased production of L. Vannamei, diversification of aquaculture species, sustained measures to ensure quality, and increase in infrastructure facilities for production of value added products were largely responsible for Indias positive growth in exports of seafood," said Mrs. Nirmala Sitharaman, Minister for Commerce and Industry.

The overall export of shrimp during 2016-17 was pegged at 4, 34,484 MT worth USD 3,726.36 million. USA was the largest import market for frozen shrimp (1, 65,827 MT), followed by the EU (77,178 MT), South East Asia (1, 05,763 MT), Japan (31,284 MT), Middle East (19,554 MT), China (7818 MT) and other countries (27,063 MT).

The export of Vannamei shrimp, a major seafood delicacy, improved from 2, 56,699 MT to 3,29,766 MT in 2016-17, registering a growth of 28.46 per cent in quantity.

In value terms, 49.55 per cent of total Vannamei shrimp was exported to USA followed by 23.28 per cent to South East Asian countries, 13.17 per cent to the EU, 4.53 per cent to Japan, 3.02 per cent to the Middle East and 1.35 per cent to China.

Japan was the major market for Black Tiger shrimp with a share of 43.84 per cent in terms of value, followed by USA (23.44) and South East Asia (11.33). Frozen shrimp continued to be the principal export item to USA with a share of 94.77 per cent in dollar value while Vannamei shrimp to that country showed an increase of 25.60 per cent in quantity and 31.75 per cent in dollar terms.

Vietnam, with a share of 76.57 per cent in value (US dollar), was the major South East Asian market for Indian marine products, followed by Thailand (12.93 per cent), Taiwan (3.88 per cent), Malaysia (2.60 per cent), Singapore (2.21 per cent), South Korea (1.50 per cent) and other countries (0.30 per cent). Vietnam alone imported 3, 18,171 MT of Indian seafood, the quantity being much more than that of any other individual markets like US, Japan or China.

The EU continued to be the third largest destination for Indian marine products with a share of 16.73 per cent in quantity. Frozen shrimp was the major item of exports, accounting for 40.66 per cent in quantity and 55.15 per cent in dollar earnings out of the total exports to the EU. Exports of Vannamei shrimp to the EU improved by 9.76 per cent in quantity and 11.40 per cent in dollar value.

Japan, the fourth largest destination for Indian seafood, accounted for 6.83 per cent in earnings and 6.08 per cent in quantity terms. Frozen shrimp continued to be the major item of exports to Japan with a share of 45.31 per cent in quantity and 77.29 per cent in value out of the total exports to that country.

Besides frozen shrimp and frozen fish, Indias other major seafood product was frozen squid, which recorded a growth of 21.50 per cent, 59.44 per cent and 57 per cent in terms of quantity, rupee value and dollar earnings, respectively. Export of frozen cuttlefish showed a decline in quantity terms, but increased in the rupee value and dollar terms by 18.85 per cent and 16.95 per cent, respectively.

Dried items registered a growth of 40.98%, 20.14% & 79.05% in terms of quantity, rupee value and dollar terms, respectively. Indian ports handled a total marine cargo of 11,34,948 tons worth Rs 37,870.90 crore (5,777.61 million dollars) in 2016-17 as compared to 9,45,892 tons worth Rs 30,420.83 crore (4,687.94 million dollars) in 2015-16. Vizag, Kochi, Kolkata, Pipavav and Jawaharlal Nehru Port (JNP) were major ports that handled the marine cargo during 2016-17. Exports improved from Vizag, Kochi, Kolkata, Pipavav, JNP, Krishnapatanam and Tuticorin as compared to 2015-16.

Vizag port exported 1,59,973 tons of marine cargo worth Rs 9,294.31 crore (1,401.94 million US dollars) in 2016-17 as compared to 1,28,718 tons worth Rs 7,161 crore (1,105.76 million dollars) in 2015-16.

Vizag port was followed by Kochi (1,55,989 tons, Rs 4,447.05 crore), Kolkata (1,04668 tons, Rs 4,451.67 crore), Pipavav (2,32,391 tons, Rs 4,217.45 crore), JNP (1,49,914 tons, Rs 4,084.96 crore), Krishnapatnam (62,049 tons, Rs 3,701.63 crore), Tuticorin (42,026 tons, Rs 2,220.52 crore), and Chennai (37,305 tons, 1,693.87 crore).




Following is the text of the Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modis departure statement prior to his visit to Kazakhstan.





"I will travel to Astana, Kazakhstan for two days on 8-9 June for the Summit meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).





At this meeting, on completion of the process, India will become a full Member of the SCO upon which SCO will represent over 40% of humanity and nearly 20% of global GDP.





We launched the process of full membership in Tashkent meeting of the SCO last year. I look forward to deepening Indias association with the SCO which will help us in economic, connectivity and counter-terrorism cooperation, among other things.





We have long-standing relations with SCO members and look forward to progressing them further through the SCO for mutual betterment and growth of our countries and our people.





Together, we will harvest new opportunities for beneficial engagement and redouble efforts to address common challenges that may come in the way of realizing our full potential.





On evening of June 9, I will also attend the inauguration of the Astana Expo with the theme of Future Energy"."




RSETI Diwas 2017

As part of multi-pronged strategy to address rural poverty, Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) is undertaking two initiatives in skill development under the National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM):

(i) Placement linked skill development program called DDU-GKY which allows skilling and assured wage employment.

(ii) Skill development through 587 Rural Self Employment and Training Institutes (RSETI) in the country, which provides skilling, thereby enabling the trainee to take bank credit and start his/her own Micro-enterprise.

The Ministry today celebrated 4th RSETI Diwas in recognition of outstanding performance of RSETIs in various states. A total of 88 awards were given for the years 2014-15 and 2015-16 to best performing States, lead Banks administering RSETIs and Directors of RSETIs. Top performing States in different categories include Jharkhand, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and Chhattisgarh. Amongst Banks the top performers are State Bank of India, Canara Bank, Syndicate Bank, ICICI and Andhra Bank.

Top performing RSETIs include training institutes of SBI Vijayanagaram, SBI Vishakapatinam, PNB Gaya, Canara Bank Halial and Davangere, Syndicate Bank Manipal and Meerut, Andhra Bank Srikakulam, ICICI Jodhpur and Udaipur, and RUDSETI Ananthapur and Bijapur.

32 States/UTs with the participation of 37 Sponsor Banks. Over 22 Lakh unemployed youth have been trained by RSETIs and 13 Lakh of them are engaged in self-employment. At present 587 RSETIs are functioning in the Country, coveringStates/UTs with the participation ofSponsor Banks. OverLakh unemployed youth have been trained by RSETIs andLakh of them are engaged in self-employment. Of these credit linkage has been provided to nearly 6 lakhs candidates.

RSETIs have aligned their curriculum with Common Norms for skill development courses. It offers skilling in 56 NSQF aligned courses specially designed for entrepreneurship development.

The 4th RSETI Diwas celebration was chaired by Shri Narendra Singh Tomar, Union Minister, Rural Development, Panchayati Raj, Drinking Water and Sanitation. He emphasised the need for increase in rural entrepreneurship for sustainable livelihoods. He also emphasised on how rural livelihoods playing a strategic role in development of the rural clusters. To carry forward this momentum he appealed to the Banks to give their cooperation.

Dr. Santosh Kumar Gangwar, Minister of State for Finance, appealed to the Banks who have sponsored the RSETIs in their Lead Districts to develop these Centres as Centres of Excellence in the field of Entrepreneurship development as also increase lending to the youth skilled in RSETIs.

Shri Ram Kirpal Yadav, Minister of State for Rural Development lauded the role of RSETIs in the nation building exercise by capacity building of the unemployed youth throughout the Country.

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The founder member of RUDSET Self-employment initiative, Dr D Veerendra Heggade, also participated in the event and blessed budding entrepreneurs success.

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SNC
The Islamic State (IS) group claimed its first attacks in Iran on Wednesday as gunmen and suicide bombers killed at least five people in twin assaults on the country's parliament and the tomb of it's revolutionary founder in Tehran.

Dozens of people were also wounded in the attacks, with continuing gunfire several hours after they began.

A security guard and one other person were killed when four gunmen burst into Tehran's parliament complex with rifles and a pistol, according to the ISNA news agency.

One of the attackers blew himself up on the fourth floor of the parliament office building as a standoff with police continued for several hours.

In the coordinated mid-morning attack, a gardener was reported dead and several more injured when armed assailants entered the grounds of Ruhollah Khomeini mausoleum in the south of the city.

Two attackers -- at least one female -- blew themselves up outside the shrine, according to local media.

Iran's emergency services said they were dealing with 33 injured from the attacks and that two people had died from their injuries in hospital.

IS claimed the attacks in a report from its Amaq propaganda agency which said: "Fighters from the Islamic State attacked the Khomeini mausoleum and the parliament building in Tehran."

It also claimed two suicide bombers had blown themselves up at the shrine.

Parliament was in session as the attacks unfolded, with live footage showing members continuing with routine business even as gun battles were reported in surrounding office buildings and snipers took position on nearby rooftops.

Speaker Ali Larijani dismissed the attacks, saying they were a "trivial matter" and that security forces were dealing with them.

Intensified gunfire was heard from the neighbouring offices as Fars news agency reported police had launched an assault. A picture on social media showed police helping staff escape through windows.

An official at Khomeini's mausoleum in south Tehran said "three or four" people had entered via the western entrance and opened fire, killing the gardener and wounding several people, according to Fars.

The news agency published photos showing the suicide bomber blowing herself up outside.

The shrine lies around 20 kilometre away from parliament and houses the body of Khomeini, who led the Islamic revolution in 1979.

The ILNA news agency said security forces were dismantling a bomb inside the shrine and that firing was still going on around the site.

The intelligence ministry claimed there was a third "terrorist" team that had been neutralised before the attacks started.

The city was on lockdown, with streets blocked and parts of the metro closed. Journalists were kept away from the shrine by police.

Interior Minister Abdolrahman Fazli told ISNA he had convened a special meeting of the country's security council.

Jihadist groups have clashed frequently with security forces along Iran's borders with Iraq and Afghanistan, but the country has largely escaped attacks within its urban centres.

Iran, the predominant Shiite power, has been helping both Iraq and President Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria to battle IS.

The jihadist group is under increasing pressure in both countries, having lost significant territory in the face of offensives now targeting its last two major urban bastions, Raqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq.

IS published a rare video in Persian in March, warning that it "will conquer Iran and restore it to the Sunni Muslim nation as it was before".

IS and other extremists consider Shiites to be apostates, and the video accuses Iranians of persecuting Sunnis over the centuries and into modern times.

Militant groups are also known to operate in Iran's southeastern Sistan-Baluchistan province, which borders Pakistan and has a large Sunni community.

Jaish-ul Adl (Army of Justice), which Tehran accuses of links with Al-Qaeda, has carried out several armed attacks inside Iranian territory in recent years.

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Sunday that attacks by IS in Europe and elsewhere showed that Western policies in the Middle East have backfired.

"This is a fire that (Western powers) themselves ignited and now has backfired on them," he told a gathering of senior officials in Tehran.
Thirty young men were deported to Kabul on June 6, on a Turkish Airlines flight from Istanbul. The deportation comes as Afghanistan is again wracked by violence. Less than a week ago, a bomb in the Afghan capital killed around 150 civilians and injured 500 more. Two days later, on June 2, the police opened fire on a demonstration, killing seven. Another three explosions then cost the lives of at least 22 people. Despite this, the men were being deported  by Norway, Sweden and Turkey.
Suicide bombers and gunmen attacked Iran's parliament and the Mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini in Tehran on Wednesday morning, killing at least 12 people in a twin assault at the heart of the Islamic Republic, Iranian officials and media said.

Islamic State claimed responsibility and released a video purporting to show gunmen inside the parliament building and one man, who appeared wounded, on the floor.

The rare attacks were the first claimed by the hardline Sunni Muslim militant group inside the Shi'ite Muslim country.

Iran is one of the powers leading the fight against Islamic State militants in neighbouring Iraq and, beyond that, Syria.

Attackers dressed as women burst through parliamentas main entrance in central Tehran, deputy interior minister Mohammad Hossein Zolfaghari said, according to the semi-official Tasnim news agency.

"One of them was shot dead and another one detonated his suicide vest," he said.

The body of a suspected terrorist, at background left, lies on the ground while police control the scene at the shrine of late Iranian revolutionary founder Ayatollah Khomeini, just outside Tehran, Iran. Photo: PTI

About five hours after the first reports, Iranian news agencies said four people who had attacked parliament were dead and the incident was over.

At least 12 people were killed by the attackers, the head of Iran's emergency department, Pir-Hossein Kolivand, was quoted as saying by state broadcaster IRIB.

"I was inside the parliament when shooting happened.

Everyone was shocked and scared. I saw two men shooting randomly," said one journalist at the scene, who asked not to be named.

Soon after the assault on parliament, another bomber detonated a suicide vest near the shrine of the Republic's revered founder, Ayatollah Khomeini, a few kilometres south of the city, Zolfaghari said, according to Tasnim.

A second attacker was shot dead, he said.

Third attack foiled: Ministry

The Intelligence Ministry said security forces had arrested another "terrorist team" planning a third attack, without giving further details.

The attacks took place less than a month after the re-election of President Hassan Rouhani, a moderate, whose landslide victory defeated candidates supported by the hardline clergy and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which is responsible for national security.

"The atmosphere is tense. It is a blow to Rouhani. How can four armed men enter the parliament, where a very tight security has always been in place," said a senior official, who asked not to be named.

The Intelligence Ministry called on people to be vigilant and report any suspicious movement. Despite unconfirmed reports of a hostage situation, state television said parliament had resumed, and broadcast footage of what it said was the opening session proceeding normally.

"Some coward terrorists infiltrated one of the buildings of parliament. They were confronted. It was not a major issue. Our security forces have taken necessary steps," parliament speaker Ali Larijani said in an open session broadcast live by state TV.

A man hands a child to a security guard from Iran's parliament building after an assault of several attackers, in Tehran, Iran. Photo: PTI

Attacks are highly rare in Tehran and other major cities though a Sunni militant group named Jundallah and its splinter group Ansar al Furqan have been waging a deadly insurgency, mostly in more remote areas, for almost a decade.

Iran's restive Sistan and Baluchestan province, in the southeast on the borders with Pakistan and Afghanistan, is home to the Balouch minority and has long been a hotbed of Sunni insurgents fighting the Shi'ite-led Islamic Republic.

Last year Iranian authorities said they had foiled a plot by Sunni militants to bomb targets in Tehran and other cities during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Islamic State has often urged its fighters to attack Iranian targets and lambasted "heretic" Shi'ite Iran for helping the Syrian and Iraqi governments battle Islamic State, which considers Shi'ites to be infidels.

The video released by Islamic State's news agency Amaq included an audio track of a man saying: "Oh God, thank you. Do you think we will leave? No! We will remain, God willing."
The Internet is just going crazy over an image posted on social media that shows former US President Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau dining together at Montreals Liverpool House restaurant on Tuesday night. The picture shows Obama and Trudeau deep in conversation in the restaurant.


While the magnitude of the attack on people enjoying a Saturday evening out in London on June 3 was not on the same scale as the carnage wrought on Manchester the previous month, terrorism and fear of terrorism is not just about the body count.
Qatar-based broadcaster Al-Jazeera said on Wednesday that Saudi Arabia's decision to shut its office in the kingdom as part of the diplomatic crisis in the Gulf was "unjustified".

In a statement, the global news channel condemned Riyadh's move and called on Saudi Arabia to allow its journalists to continue to work "free of intimidation and threats".

"We firmly believe these are unjustified measures by the authorities in the kingdom against the network and its operations," the statement said.

"In spite of restrictions imposed on the network, Al- Jazeera will continue to cover the news and current affairs from the region and beyond in a balanced objective manner". As well as closing the office, Saudi Arabia withdrew the channel's licence needed to broadcast. It also accused Al-Jazeera of promoting "terrorist groups" and supporting rebels in Yemen.

The move came as Saudi Arabia, along with other Gulf states and Egypt, severed ties with Qatar.

Separately, beIn Sports, a subsidiary satellite network of Al-Jazeera, went offline in the United Arab Emirates, which was also among those to cut relations with Qatar.

Al-Jazeera, one of the largest news organisations in the world, has long been a source of conflict between Qatar and its neighbours, who accuse the broadcaster of bias and fomenting trouble in the region.

Egypt has accused Al-Jazeera of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, which it blames for violence after Egypt's military ousted the movement from power in 2013. Three Al-Jazeera journalists, including a Canadian and an Australian, were detained in Egypt between 2013 and 2015, triggering protests.
The worst crisis in decades among the Gulfs Arab monarchies intensified on Wednesday, with a Saudi-led alliance imposing more punitive sanctions against Qatar and a senior UAE official playing down the chances of a quick diplomatic resolution.
A suicide bomber on Wednesday struck the mausoleum of Imam Khomeini in Iran's capital, Tehran, according to Tasnim News Agency. According to reports, the attack was also accompanied by a shooting at the same spot, with reports saying that several civilians have been injured. The reported suicide attack came minutes into an attack on the Iranian Parliament by an unknown gunman.



At least one gunman opened fire inside the Iranian parliament on Wednesday, wounding several people, state media reported.
Islamic State claimed its first attack in Iran, as suicide bombers and gunmen struck at the heart of the countrys political and religious establishment on Wednesday.
The Italian mother of London attacker Youssef Zaghba says she tried to prevent him being radicalised, "but he had internet" and fell in with the wrong crowd in the British capital.

Zaghba, 22, has been identified as the third of the three attackers shot dead by police after their attack in London on Saturday that killed seven people and left dozens injured.

A Moroccan-Italian dual national,he had tried to join the Islamic State group in Syria last year and was notified to Britain as a suspect figure after being intercepted by Italian authorities.

His mother, Valeria Collina, a convert to Islam who is separated from the attacker's father, told Italian weekly L'Espresso that she thought her son had been radicalised by a combination of online propaganda and contacts in London.

"We always kept an eye on who he was friends with and checked that he was not mixed up with the wrong people," she told the magazine in her only interview since her son was identified.

Citing the internet as the cause she said,"He never let himself be led by anyone, neither in Italy, nor in Morocco, where he was studying computing at the University of Fez."

Collina said she had been concerned by the milieu in the part of east London where her son lived.

The Italian said that her son had shown her videos about Syria before his March 2016 attempt to board a flight for Turkey, apparently with the intention of reaching its conflict-torn neighbour.

"But he never spoke about going to fight there. For him Syria was a place where you could live according to a pure Islam. The way he told it was a fantasy...transmitted to him over the internet."
Youssef Zaghba, one of the three assailants of Saturday's deadly attack in London, was intercepted last year en route to Syria and flagged to Britain as a possible jihadist, Italian authorities said on Wednesday.

Zaghba, a 22-year-old with dual Moroccan-Italian nationality, was briefly detained after being stopped at the airport in Bologna, central Italy in March 2016.

Italian prosecutors were unable to bring charges against him for links to terrorism and he was set free, a police spokesman told AFP. Italy notified Britain and Morocco of his status as a potential Islamist radical.

But he never showed up on Britain's radar as someone capable of involvement in the attack on London Bridge, in which seven people were killed. The three attackers smashed a van into pedestrians on London Bridge before going on a stabbing spree which ended with them being shot dead by police.

London's Metropolitan Police said Zaghba had not been on their radar before Saturday, despite the Italian warning. He was not a "police or (intelligence agency) MI5 subject of interest," a spokesman said.

The mayor of Valsamoggia, a municipality near Bologna, said Zaghba was the son of an Italian mother, Valeria Collina, and a Moroccan father, Mohamed Zaghba, who had separated 18 months ago. Zaghba had been registered at an address in the village of Castello di Serravalle since 2004, as an Italian living overseas.

"In fact he never lived here," said the mayor, Daniele Ruscigno. "Only the mother lived here. She'd converted to Islam when she got married and neighbours say she wore a veil."

Neighbours told AFP the mother had moved back to the village, one of five that make up Valsamoggia, 18 months ago, living on the ground floor of a two-storey house in a leafy setting.
More than 130 imams in Britain refused to offer Islamic burials to the three London Bridge attackers who killed seven people and wounded 50 .

"We will not perform the traditional Islamic funeral prayer for the perpetrators and we also urge fellow imams and religious authorities to withdraw such a privilege," the Muslim leaders said on Monday in a statement posted on the social media.

The statement added: "This is because such indefensible actions are completely at odds with the lofty teachings of Islam."

Religious leaders of all backgrounds condemned the attack which killed seven and injured 47 on Saturday evening when three men rammed a rental van into pedestrians on London Bridge and then randomly stabbed revellers near Borough Market.

A panel of speakers at the East London Mosque said they would work to combat extremists' "twisted narrative and their perversion" of religion, the Independent reported.

"Once again we come together, to stand united against those who try to divide us," said the Chairman of East London Mosque and London Muslim Centre, Muhammad Habibur-Rahman.

"The cold-blooded murder of innocent people in London on Saturday evening will not succeed in driving us apart."

Worshippers at a mosque attended by one of the attackers condemned the "evil" atrocity as investigations continued into their background and links.

Police named all the three attackers as Pakistan-born Briton Khuram Butt (27), Moroccan-Libyan pastry chef Rachid Redouane (30) and Youssef Zaghba, a 22-year-old Italian national of Moroccan descent.

Leaders of the Jabir Bin Zayd Islamic Centre in Barking, a few minutes walk from attacker Butt's family home in London, said their thoughts and prayers were with the victims and their families.

A man coming out of prayers from a local mosque said he hoped the local Muslim community would not be demonised in Britain.

"They [attackers] are deranged, mentally disturbed."

Another worshipper leaving the mosque said the terrorists were "not Muslims".

The sentiment was echoed by Prime Minister Theresa May on Sunday morning, who said the terrorists were "perverting the truth" of Islam.
US President Donald Trump spoke to Saudi Arabia's King Salman and called for a united Gulf Cooperation Council to fight terrorism and promote stability in the region, amid deepening diplomatic crisis in Qatar.

Both the leaders discussed ways to prevent terror financing and eliminate extremism by any country in region, the White House said on Tuesday.

During the phone call, Trump emphasized that a united Gulf Cooperation Council is critical to defeating terrorism and promoting regional stability, the White House said. The White House statement came a day after Saudi Arabia and three other Arab countries - Egypt, Bahrain and the UAE, cut off diplomatic ties with Qatar. In a tweet, early morning Trump apparently supported the actions of four Arab countries to cut off diplomatic relationship with Qatar.

The US continues to be in close communication with all the parties to resolve the issues and restore cooperation which is so important to regional security there, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters.

"I think there is note that his message of toughness on terror finance and extremism is being heeded by countries in the region. But the US still wants to see this issue de- escalated and resolved immediately, keeping with the principles that the president laid out in terms of defeating terror financing and extremism," he said.

Spicer said Trump had a very, very constructive conversation with the Emir of Qatar during his visit to Riyadh.

"At that time, he was very heartened by the Emir's commitment to formally join the terrorist financing targeting centre and showing their commitment to this issue," he said.

At a separate briefing, State Department Spokesperson Heather Nauert said the US recognises that Qatar has made some great efforts to try to stop financing of terror groups, including prosecuting suspected financiers, freezing assets, and introducing stringent controls on its banking system there.

"However, let me make this clear: They have made progress, but they still have work to do. More work needs to be done," she said.

"I think our relationship with Qatar is one that's strong. It's one that we continue to cooperate with Qatar and other countries in the region in the fight against terrorism. Secretary of State Rex W Tillerson talked about this today," she added.

"He said every country in the region has their own obligations and they need to live up to terminate their support for terrorism and extremism however it manifests itself anywhere in the world," she said. Nauert praised Qatar for its role in fight against terrorism.

"The US and its coalition, we're grateful to the Qataris for their longstanding support of our presence there in that nation. They have helped to provide us with an enduring commitment to regional security. The Department of Defense has talked about this," she said.

"We have no plans to change our posture in Qatar and we would encourage all of our partners to try to work together to reduce tensions. That's something that the Secretary spoke to as well," Nauert said in response to a question.
In the wake of the ensuing feud between London Mayor Sadiq Khan with United States President Donald Trump, the United States Conference of Mayors has issued a statement offering its suppport to the former.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors, whose membership includes the more that 1,400 U.S. cities with populations of 30,000 or more, said it "stands united" with Khan.

"He has risen above this crisis of death and destruction, as mayors continue to do, to alleviate fear, to bring comfort to his people of London and to give support to the first responders who continue to protect, defend and provide emergency care to his people of London," the statement said.

"Thank you, Mayor Khan, for your leadership during this crisis," it added.

Trump, a day before, launched an attack on the London Mayor, while apparently misconstruing a statement made by him post the incident.

Trump had tweeted, "At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is "no reason to be alarmed!"

This was in reference to Khan's statement that there was no cause for alarm. It's being touted that he was referring specifically to "a visible increase in police activity on the streets of London in the wake of the attack."

"Londoners will see an increased police presence today and over the course of the next few days. There's no reason to be alarmed," he had said.

Trump's tweets were criticised by a number of British politicians.

A spokesman for Khan called Trump's tweet "ill-informed."

"The Mayor is busy working with the police, emergency services, and the government to coordinate the response to this horrific and cowardly terrorist attack and provide leadership and reassurance to Londoners and visitors to our city," the spokesman said.

"He has more important things to do than respond to Donald Trump's ill-informed tweet that deliberately takes out of context his remarks urging Londoners not to be alarmed when they saw more police - including armed officers - on the streets."

The White House on Monday denied suggestions from U.S. reporters that Trump "picked a fight" with Khan "because he was Muslim".

"I think that to suggest something like that is utterly ridiculous," deputy White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters.

Meanwhile, Khan led a vigil of hundreds of Londoners in rememberance of those who died following Saturday night's terror attack in the capital.

While addressing a multi-cultural audience, Khan said London would never be 'broken by terrorism' and that terrorism would be defeated.

"We stand together tonight to honour the memories of the innocent lives lost and people injured in the barbaric attack on our city. London stands in defiance against this cowardly attack and our city and our people and our values and our way of live," he said.

"As the mayor of London I want to send a clear message to the sick and evil extremists who commit this hideous crimes; we will defeat you. You will not win. And as a proud and patriotic British Muslim I say this: you do not commit these disgusting acts in my name. Your perverse ideology has nothing to do with the true values of Islam and you will never succeed is dividing our city."

'We send our love to the victims' families and all those injures and we thank our courageous emergency services and the brace Londoners who risked their lives. You are the best of us. Our city is filled with great sorrow and anger tonight but also great resolve and determination. Because our unity and love will always be stronger then the hate of the extremists," he added.

Flanked by Amber Rudd and Diane Abbott, Khan also accused United States President Donald Trump of seeking to divide communities in Britain after he took to the social media to criticise his leadership in the wake of the attack.

"Some people thrive on feud and division. We are not going to let Donald Trump divide our communities," The Independent quoted Khan, as saying, while he addressed the media at the Tower Bridge last night.

"I just haven't got time to respond to tweets from Donald Trump. Honestly I've got better and more important things to focus on," he added.

Khan has reportedly also said Trump was wrong about "many things" and that his state visit to the U.K. should not go ahead.

Khan received support from many, including Prime Minister Theresa May.

"I think Sadiq Khan is doing a good job and it's wrong to say anything else - he's doing a good job," she said at a press conference.
Donald Trumps decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord has received widespread condemnation from political leaders, scientists, activists and climate experts. Perhaps surprisingly, a number of big businesses have also voiced their disagreement with the US presidents move.
In a move that could help control the round-tripping of gold and misuse of bank funds meant for exports, the government is considering banning the export of 24-carat jewellery.
The National Stock Exchange (NSE) is plans to settle the allegations of preferential access to certain brokers at its co-location facility through the so-called consent mechanism. The decision in this regard was taken at the exchange's board meeting held on Wednesday, said two people with the direct knowledge of the development.
Reliance Nippon Life Asset Management (RNLAM), the asset management arm of Anil Ambani-promoted Reliance Capital, plans to come up with an initial public offering (IPO)  the first by a major asset manager in the country  before March 2018.
rallied 7% to Rs 112 on the BSE in early morning trade after the US health regulator recently inspected the companys manufacturing plant in Spain and did not issue any observations.
Expressing concern over the farmers' agitation in Madhya Pradesh's Mandsaur District, the Centre on Wednesday warned the Congress Party not to fuel violence and instigate the farmers.

"The Mandsaur violence is very unfortunate incident. I am deeply saddened by this event. We are monitoring the situation and probe will be initiated. Congress is trying to give it a political angle. I only want to tell the Congress Party doesn't politicize the issue and fuel and instigate violence in the names of the farmers because it will boomerang on you," Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu told media here.

He further blamed the Congress Party's careless attitude for the poor condition of the agriculture sector, while saying that the Union Government has been taking initiatives for the welfare of the farmers ever since it came to power.

"Whatever is the condition of farmers it is because of the long years of negligence by those government. Our government since the day one is taking pro farmer initiative. Congress is trying to defame our government by instigating farmers to agitate and I condemn this," he added.

Hitting out at the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government over the farmers' protest in Mandsaur, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi earlier on Tuesday accused the Centre of waging war against nation's farmers.

Taking to social media, Gandhi said, "This government is at war with the farmers of our country."

Yesterday, during an agitation, five farmers, who were demanding fair price and loan waiver, were killed and several others were injured in the firing by security forces.

Internet services in Mandsaur, Ratlam and Ujjain remain suspended following the farmers' protests, and a curfew has also reportedly been imposed.

The farmers in the central state are demanding remunerative prices for their produce and a loan waiver. They are also demanding that they should be given Rs. 50 per litre of milk bought from them as they spend Rs. 37 per litre.

Taking cognizance of the situation, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan yesterday appealed for peace to the agitating farmers in the state and also announced a compensation of Rs. one crore to the kin of those killed in the violence.

"In the past 11 years, there have been countless decisions made for the welfare of farmers. The various demands of the farmers have been fulfilled. I offer my condolences to the victims of Mandsaur incident. Rs. one crore will be given to the kin of the deceased and Rs. five lakh for those injured," the Chief Minister said, adding that the state government is ready to come out with a solution through communication," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Mohammed Arif Naseem Khan, Vice President of Maharashtra Congress committee has condemned the attitude of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) towards the plight of the nations' farmers.

"BJP is killing the farmers in Madhya Pradesh for performing peaceful protests." Khan told ANI, adding that the Congress has been constantly asking the BJP government in Maharashtra to help the farmers there.

The Congress leader even questioned Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis for postponing the decision on farmers till October 31.

"The government should call assembly session and take an immediate decision regarding the issue. We will support the decision but the government must at least take an action."

Earlier, senior Congress party leader and former union minister Kamal Nath on Wednesday accused the BJP government in Madhya Pradesh of committing an injustice against farmers, and demanded an immediate probe of the violence in the state's Mandsaur district.

Nath told ANI, "An injustice is taking place with farmers in Madhya Pradesh. I demand a proper investigation of the Mandsaur incident. They are bidding over dead bodies. It is very shameful. They are talking about 5 lakh, 10 lakh, 1 crore. Shivraj Singh Chouhan (chief minister) must resign. At the end, it is his responsibility and it would be unjustified if any police officer is shifted."

Atleast five farmers were killed and several injured in Madhya Pradesh's Mandsaur, when police fired on protestors.

The protestors alleged that police fired at them and a judicial probe was ordered in the matter.

Internet services in Mandsaur, Ratlam and Ujjain were also suspended following the farmers' protests, and a curfew was reportedly imposed.

Apart from the loan waiver, the farmers are also demanding that they should be given Rs. 50 per litre of milk bought from them as they spend Rs. 37 per litre.

Reacting to the incident, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan earlier in the day apprised Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah of the situation in Mandsaur over the phone.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Two accused have been apprehended in the Nangloi murder case where a 21-year-old youth was stabbed to death for asking a group of persons to not take drugs.

The police also recovered a Buttandar knife, used by the accused to stab the deceased.

Rahul, a caretaker of the public toilet was stabbed for stopping group of persons who were consuming drugs inside a toilet in Nangloi last night.

The incident took place around 8 p.m. last night at Punjabi Market area when Rahul was returning home.

When Rahul, asked them to leave, the men left but later returned to avenge the insult.

However, the attackers fled from the spot while Rahul was rushed to a hospital where he was declared dead.

Rahul's family members alleged that the addicts had been threatening the family for the past few days.

The incident comes to light weeks after 32-year-old Ravindra Kumar, an e-rickshaw driver was killed by a some people when the former had stopped them from urinating in public in Delhi's GTB Nagar Metro Station area.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who will travel to Astana, Kazakhstan for two days on 8-9 June for the Summit meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), has said that he looks forward to deepening India's association with the SCO.

"At this meeting, on completion of the process, India will become a full Member of the SCO upon which SCO will represent over 40% of humanity and nearly 20% of global GDP. We launched the process of full membership in Tashkent meeting of the SCO last year," the Prime Minister said in a statement.

Further stressing that India's association with the SCO will help in economic, connectivity and counter-terrorism cooperation, among other things, the Prime Minister added that he looks forward to progressing ties through the SCO for mutual betterment and growth.

"Together, we will harvest new opportunities for beneficial engagement and redouble efforts to address common challenges that may come in the way of realizing our full potential," he added.

On evening of June 9, Prime Minister Modi will also attend the inauguration of the Astana Expo with the theme of "Future Energy".

The Prime Minister will also hold bilateral talks with Kazakhstan President, Nursultan Nazarbayev for boosting ties in the fields of trade and commerce, education, tourism and other sectors.

Briefing media in Delhi this evening, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said, India will be benefited in trade and economic activity after it becomes a full member.

He said that trade, connectivity, energy, banking and fight against terrorism are the main areas of cooperation.

Joint Secretary, Eurasia, G. V. Srinivas said, India is joining SCO with an open mind for peace and stability in the region. Strengthening mutual trust and neighbourliness, promoting cooperation in politics, trade, economy, research, technology and culture and other areas are the main goals of SCO.

India and Pakistan signed the memorandum of obligations on 24 June 2016 at Tashkent, thereby starting the formal process of joining the SCO as full members.

Srinivasan said at the briefing, that India has signed a memorandum which is essentially a process through which an aspirant country has to go through before becoming a member of the group.

"So that process has been completed from our side - essentially entailing to a couple of agreements as per the calendar drawn by the memorandum of obligations - something which we have relayed to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation secretariat in Beijing. They have also confirmed that India has completed this process," he said

"The indications are that the last leg of the entire membership process that is the confirmation by the heads of state of existing members of the SCO, is going to happen in Astana," he added.

Kazakhstan is India's largest trading partner in Central Asia and the total trade volume between the two countries rose from 120 million US dollars to around 900 million dollars in recent years. India's imports to Kazakhstan include pharmaceuticals, tea, tobacco, telephone equipment and construction machinery.

Its imports from Kazakhstan comprise oil, uranium, titanium, steel, copper among other things.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
India is set to become a full member of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) during the two day Summit to be held at Astana, Kazakhstan from tomorrow.

The summit will be attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Briefing media in Delhi this evening, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said, India will be benefited in trade and economic activity after it becomes a full member. He said that trade, connectivity, energy, banking and fight against terrorism are the main areas of cooperation.

Joint Secretary, Eurasia, G. V. Srinivas said, India is joining SCO with an open mind for peace and stability in the region. Strengthening mutual trust and neighbourliness, promoting cooperation in politics, trade, economy, research, technology and culture and other areas are the main goals of SCO.

India and Pakistan signed the memorandum of obligations on 24 June 2016 at Tashkent, thereby starting the formal process of joining the SCO as full members.

Srinivasan said at the briefing, that India has signed a memorandum which is essentially a process through which an aspirant country has to go through before becoming a member of the group.

"So that process has been completed from our side - essentially entailing to a couple of agreements as per the calendar drawn by the memorandum of obligations - something which we have relayed to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation secretariat in Beijing. They have also confirmed that India has completed this process," he said

"The indications are that the last leg of the entire membership process that is the confirmation by the heads of state of existing members of the SCO, is going to happen in Astana," he added.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), or Shanghai Pact, is a Eurasian political, economic, and military organisation which was founded in 2001 in Shanghai by the leaders of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. These countries, except for Uzbekistan, had been members of the Shanghai Five, founded in 1996; after the inclusion of Uzbekistan in 2001, the members renamed the organisation. On July 10, 2015, the SCO decided to admit India and Pakistan as full members.

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With President Pranab Mukherjee's term in office coming to a closure on July 24, India will go on polls to elect their new President on July 17.

The counting of the votes will be done on July 20.

Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi announced today that the last date of notification is June 14, while the last date of filing the nominations is June 28.

The scrutiny of nomination will be held on June 29 and the last date of withdrawal of candidature is July 1.

The election will be held by an electoral college consisting of the elected members of both the Houses of the Parliament i.e.: the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, elected members of all the state legislative assemblies and with the elected members of the legislative assembly of the Union Territories including Delhi and Puducherry.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Two terrorist attacks in the Iranian capital of Tehran killed at least 12 people and wounded more than 40 others on Wednesday.

The Islamic State claimed the two-pronged attack - a suicide bomb and gun assault - on the Iranian parliament and the mausoleum of the founder of the Islamic Republic.

The parliament assault began when four armed assailants, dressed as women, burst into the building complex and attacked the parliament buildings in the morning, reports Tasnim news.

One of the attackers reportedly blew himself up inside as police surrounded the building.

Equipped with AK-47 assault rifles, handguns and suicide vests, the gunmen killed security guards and ordinary people before holding people hostage in the upper floors of the building.

Security forces laid a siege to the parliament for several hours. Three of the gunmen were shot dead in an exchange of gunfire, while the other blew himself up.

According to the Guardian, this the first attack conducted by ISIS inside majority-Shia Iran.

Attacks are highly rare in Tehran and other major Iranian cities, although a Sunni militant group named Jundallah and its splinter group, Ansar al Furqan, have been waging a deadly insurgency, mostly in more remote areas, for almost a decade.

ISIS, which adheres to a puritanical strain of Sunni Islam, considers Shias heretics and has carried out numerous attacks against Shia civilians, in Iraq in particular.

Also, the attack comes against a backdrop of regional tension, with Arab Gulf countries pushing for a more forceful isolation of Iran. The Gulf states earlier this week severed diplomatic relations with their neighbour Qatar over its close relationship with Tehran.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Jammu and Kashmir Cabinet on Wednesday approved the draft of the Jammu and Kashmir Transfer of Property (Amendment) Ordinance, 2017.

The meeting was chaired by Chief Minister, Mehbooba Mufti which approved the proposed draft, for its submission to the Governor for promulgation.

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A terrorist named Danish Ahmed surrendered before the Handwara Police and 21 Rashtriya Rifles (RR) Army on Wednesday.

A video of him had surfaced at Hizbul Mujahideen commander Sabzar Bhat's funeral.

These video clips were clicked in Tral, Awantipore by the local media persons.

It further surfaced that Danish was studying in B.Sc (third year) at Doon P.G. College of Agriculture Science and Technology, Dehradun.

Danish was found involved in stone-pelting incidents at Handwara in 2016 turmoil also.

He was picked up by the police but was let off after counselling in view of his career.

Once it was learnt that Danish has joined militancy, Handwara police and 21 RR army got into touch with his parents and impressed upon them to counsel their son for surrender.

His parents were convinced that if he surrenders, he would be dealt with fairly under law. Efforts made by security forces yielded results and Danish surrendered before Handwara Police and 21 RR Army.

On being questioned, he revealed that he was in touch with terrorists of south Kashmir region on social media sites and it was on their instigation that he had decided to become a terrorist.

He was tasked by Hizbul Mujahideen commanders to 'activate' some local youth in North Kashmir and make the region as militancy infested as the southern part of Kashmir.

However, after spending a few days with the terrorists in South Kashmir, he realized the futility of joining militant ranks.

A case under Arms Act has been registered in Police Station Handwara.

An investigation is currently underway in this regard.

Danish is being considered under the Jammu and Kashmir Surrendered Militants Rehabilitation Policy.

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Sri Lankan Foreign Affairs Minister Ravi Karunanayake on Wednesday dismissed the local opposition to Chinese projects as dissent, pointing that such agitations represent only a minimal faction and are not country specific.

When asked about Sri Lanka joining One Belt One Road (OBOR) in view of the recent protests against the Hambantota port being developed by China, the visiting minister told reporters, "Protests happen all over, it's not specific to any country. There is only a fraction of opposition in Sri Lanka and these people protest projects by India, China, U.S. or Maldives. I don't think the noise makes any difficulty. It only gives opportunity for everybody to give their dissenting view."

Over earlier reports that Sri Lanka rejected China's request to dock one of its submarines in Colombo in order to appease India, the minister said that the country is opposed to any offensive weapons movement noting that the move was not to target any country.

Commenting over trust restoration between India and Sri Lanka over solving the prevailing fishermen issue, Karunanayake informed that Colombo has already released 42 of the 142 Indian boats in its custody and will be swift in further resolving the issue in cooperation with the Indian side.

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One of the three London attackers involved in last week's attack in the London Bridge area, Khurram Shehzad Butt had travelled to Pakistan four years ago to visit his relatives.

According to the Express Tribune, he had stayed at the residence of his uncle Shahid Rasul Dar.

Khuram, 27, a British citizen who was born in Pakistan, was shot dead by police following the terrorist attack in the London Bridge and Borough Market areas on Saturday.

The Family of Khurram hails from Punjab's Jhelum district and Khurram's maternal uncle, Shahid Rasul Dar, is the ruling PML-N president for the district.

Dar is also head of Markazi Anjuman-e-Tajraan, the city's traders association.

Khurram's family residence is also located in Mohalla Chodhrian of Jhelum's Mujahidabad area.

His father, Saif Butt, had migrated to United Kingdom along with his family in 1998.

"My family and I have no relations with Khurram Shahzad. He was a British national but he is presented as a Pakistani to defame Pakistan and my family," The Express Tribune quoted another uncle Nasir Dar, as saying.

He added that Khurram was himself responsible if he was involved in any terrorist incident, and my family and I should not be linked with the attack.

In the van and knife attack carried out by Khurram and two of his accomplices on June 3, at least seven people were killed and 48 sustained injuries.

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Lashing out at the Centre over the death of five farmers in Madhya Pradesh's Mandsaur District, the Congress party on Wednesday said the Centre has an attitude of exchanging money for blood.

Congress leader K. K. Mishra told ANI that if the government can bring the farmers back to life, then the grand old party is ready to give Rs. five crore to the government.

"This government is adopting an attitude of giving money in return for blood. All this compensation is inappropriate. The Congress is ready to give Rs. five crore to the government for each farmer brought back to life," he said in Bhopal.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Kailash Vijayvargiya said doing politics over farmers' deaths was incorrect.

"I think this issue is very sensitive. I do not feel right that politics in being done on dead farmers. The Congress is stooping down to such levels to make their space in Madhya Pradesh. I totally condemn it," he added.

Meanwhile, the protest in Mandsaur took an ugly turn today as protesting farmers scuffled with the Mandsaur Collector and chased the officer and his staff away.

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan had blamed the Congress Party for a "conspiracy to fuel violence" in Mandsaur, but the Congress asked his government to honour the 'martyred' farmers.

"The Congress Party expresses its condolence on this incident. Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan is blaming the Congress party for his own failure. The Congress demands that the honour of being a 'martyr' should be given to the deceased farmers," Congress leader K.K. Mishra told ANI.

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has apprised Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah of the situation in Mandsaur over phone.

Appealing for peace to the agitating farmers in the state, Chouhan announced a compensation of Rs. one crore to the kin of those killed and Rs. five lakh for those injured in the Mandsaur violence.

Several others were injured in the firing by security forces yesterday, as farmers intensified their agitation demanding fair price and loan waiver.

Internet services in Mandsaur, Ratlam and Ujjain remain suspended following the farmers' protests, and a curfew has also reportedly been imposed.

The farmers in the central state are demanding remunerative prices for their produce and a loan waiver. They are also demanding that they should be given Rs. 50 per litre of milk bought from them as they spend Rs. 37 per litre.

The killing of the farmers came hours after Mandsaur collector Swatantra Kumar Singh claimed all was well in the district and that the situation was under control.

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India is set to become a full member of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) during the two day summit to be held at Astana, Kazakhstan beginning from tomorrow.

The summit will be attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who will also hold bilateral talks with Kazakhstan President, Nursultan Nazarbayev for boosting ties in the fields of trade and commerce, education, tourism and other sectors.

Briefing media in Delhi this evening, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said, India will be benefited in trade and economic activity after it becomes a full member. He said that trade, connectivity, energy, banking and fight against terrorism are the main areas of cooperation.

Joint Secretary, Eurasia, G. V. Srinivas said, India is joining SCO with an open mind for peace and stability in the region. Strengthening mutual trust and neighbourliness, promoting cooperation in politics, trade, economy, research, technology and culture and other areas are the main goals of SCO.

India and Pakistan signed the memorandum of obligations on 24 June 2016 at Tashkent, thereby starting the formal process of joining the SCO as full members.

Srinivasan said at the briefing, that India has signed a memorandum which is essentially a process through which an aspirant country has to go through before becoming a member of the group.

"So that process has been completed from our side - essentially entailing to a couple of agreements as per the calendar drawn by the memorandum of obligations - something which we have relayed to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation secretariat in Beijing. They have also confirmed that India has completed this process," he said

"The indications are that the last leg of the entire membership process that is the confirmation by the heads of state of existing members of the SCO, is going to happen in Astana," he added.

Kazakhstan is India's largest trading partner in Central Asia and the total trade volume between the two countries rose from 120 million US dollars to around 900 million dollars in recent years. India's imports to Kazakhstan include pharmaceuticals, tea, tobacco, telephone equipment and construction machinery.

Its imports from Kazakhstan comprise oil, uranium, titanium, steel, copper among other things.

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Former United States President Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met once again on Tuesday night for a dinner in Trudeau's hometown of Montreal.

A restaurant booth, a candlelit dinner and presumably some Secret Service right outside the door - the most talked-about international date night of the modern diplomatic era had every romantic element the Trudeau-Obama fandom could ever dream of.

The icing on the cake was that the photogenic pair even shared a long embrace at the end of the evening.

Obama has been succeeded in the White House by President Donald Trump, with whom Trudeau so far appears to have less chemistry.

Obama's scheduled speech in Montreal gave him and Trudeau an opportunity to reunite and talk policy goals.

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The Pakistan Army's refusal to share details of casualties suffered by the military during frequent cross-border exchanges with India along the Line of Control (LoC) has annoyed Senate Chairman Raza Rabbani.

The Pakistan Senate had for asked details of the casualties.

Speaking on behalf of Defence Minister Khawaja Asif, Minister of State for Power Abid Sher Ali gave a brief statement in the Senate on Tuesday about the situation along the LoC and provided details about civilian casualties only.

"Pakistan Army wants to withhold the information about the losses suffered by its troops due to security reasons," the Dawn quoted Ali as saying.

"We have written to the GHQ for the details of our soldiers who have lost their lives serving along the LoC. However, the military authorities refused to share the details citing security concerns," he added.

Strongly reacting to this, Rabbani said that nothing can be withheld from parliament.

Ali alleged that at least 66 civilians have died, while another 288 have been injured in Indian troops' fire across Pakistani side of the Line of Control (LoC) since the recent escalation of tensions between the two neighbours.

Rabbani was not satisfied with this figure and asked his secretariat to keep the adjournment pending for another day.

He directed the government to either provide the details during in an in-camera session of the Senate or submit them in his chamber.

Every senator would be allowed to see the written information in case the government opts to submit the details in his chamber, he added.

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The only way to resolve the ongoing dispute between the Persian Gulf's southern littoral states is to admit that the era of hegemonic aspirations is over and that dialogue is the only way to resolve exisitng problems and differences, a Iranian Middle East and nuclear policy specialist has said.

Former member of Iran's nuclear negotiating team and current researcher at Princeton University Seyed Hossein Mousavian has been quoted by Iran's official news agency IRNA, as saying in a recent article titled "Hate Industry Inflaming Middle East Insecurity", that all states in the Persian Gulf region need to accept that there exists an alternative path to current security-related dilemmas.

In the article written jointly with an Egyptian scholar Yassin El-Ayouty, Mousavian is quoted by IRNA, as saying, "An alternative path exists for the region, for all states to acknowledge that the era of hegemonic aspirations is over and work towards resolving their security dilemmas through the formation of regional dialogue and cooperation forums."

"To achieve this, the zero-sum mentalities exemplified by Trump's visit to Saudi Arabia and Riyadh's subsequent actions, must be abandoned," Mousavian adds.

Mousavian said,"Of the six PGCC states, only the UAE and Bahrain joined Saudi Arabia in severing relations with Qatar. All three have for years denounced Qatar's relatively more tolerant attitudes towards Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran. Notably, Oman and Kuwait, which share Qatar's more balanced approach towards Iran, have not joined the Saudi effort to isolate Qatar. Egypt and Israel, however, have enthusiastically supported the action, with the Israeli Defense Minister stating that it creates an opening for a "unified" effort between Israel and Arab nations against "Qatar-financed terror." Egyptian media have been raging against Qatar as "a financial feeder of terrorism in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Syria, and Yemen. An indication of the collapse of Trump's fancied edifice of an Arab grand alliance."

He also describes U.S.President Donald Trump's recent address in Riyadh as destalising, and warned nations in the Persion Gulf region that he has given license to Saudi leaders to carry out their most aggressive ambitions.

He says Riyadh's claim that Iran has expansionist plans in the Persian Gulf region are also imagined at best, and that attention needs to be paid to demographic facts with regard to Iraq and Lebanon, and governance facts in Syria, to come to the right conclusion.

Mousavian blames Saudi Arabia for taking two steps that will increase hatred and instability in the region -- its anti-Iran sword dance with Trump and now its seeming attempt to overthrow a neighboring Arab government.

"For Saudi Arabia to be at the center of American hopes for peace in the region, through an attempted isolation of Iran, Qatar, Iraq and Syria is akin to the US anchoring Middle East security on a doomed-to-failure hate industry," he adds.

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Sony's decision to offer "clean versions" of their movies is already facing backlash from Hollywood, namely Seth Rogen.

The 35-year-old actor took to Twitter and criticised the initiative by writing, "Holy s**t please don't do this to our movies. Thanks."

Holy shit please don't do this to our movies. Thanks. https://t.co/0lpoESaIQd  Seth Rogen (@Sethrogen) June 6, 2017

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the initiative launches with 24 films, including 'Big Daddy,' '50 First Dates,' 'Step Brothers,' 'Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby,' all of the 'Spider-Man' movies and more serious fare such as 'Captain Phillips' and 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon'.

The "Clean Version" project will make the broadcast TV or airline version of a title available when a consumer purchases a film in its original form on iTunes, Vudu and FandangoNOW.

None of Rogen's films have been been included in the initiative, but the studio's website states that additional "clean versions" of films will be made available in the future.

Sony feels that their Clean Version initiative gives people the chance to watch their favorite films together.

As quoted by The Hollywood Reporter, Sony Pictures noted, "The Clean Version allows viewing for a wider audience, giving people the chance to watch their favorite films together. Films of all ratings can be adapted as Clean Versions; however, the extent of such adaptation can vary.

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Sofia Boutella, who will be seen playing the titular character in the upcoming movie 'The Mummy,' has bagged another big Hollywood project.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the 35-year-old actress is all set to play the female lead in HBO Films' upcoming movie 'Fahrenheit 451.'

The cast in the adaptation of the Ray Bradbury classic include the likes of Michael B. Jordan and Michael Shannon.

Bradbury's 1953 novel is set in a futuristic America where books are outlawed and those that are discovered are burned by "firemen."

Jordan will play Montag, a young fireman who forsakes his world, battles his mentor and struggles to regain his humanity.

Shannon will portray Beatty, Montag's captain and mentor.

The 'Mummy' star will play Clarisse, an informant caught between the competing interests of Montag and Beatty.

The award-winning book has been adapted multiple times, including a 1966 film by Francois Truffaut and a 1982 Radio BBC version.

American director and screenwriter Ramin Bahrani will be behind the camera for the project.

Amir Naderi and Bahrani will co-wrote HBO's new take.

The 'Creed' star Jordan will executive produce via his Outlier Productions. Sarah Green will serve in the same capacity via her Brace Cove Productions. Alan Gasmer and Peter Jaysen will also exec produce, with David Coatsworth set to produce.

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In wake of the ongoing 'Gulf crisis', the Indian Embassy in Qatar on Wednesday issued an advisory and assured that the political developments are not something which should worry Indian citizens here.

In the advisory, the Indian citizens living in Doha have been assured that the embassy is monitoring the situation closely and is in touch with the Qatar authorities to ensure safety of the Indian nationals living there.

"The Qatari authorities have conveyed that they will take all necessary steps to ensure that normal life, including supplies of food items, is not affected," stated the advisory.

With the cancellation of several flights, the embassy has also requested the citizens to contact their travel providers for advice on modification to their travel arrangement and also to remain alerts for further developments.

Indian nationals have also been advised to update themselves and not believe in rumours.

Recently, six Arab countries including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, as well as the Western-recognised governments of Yemen and Libya, abruptly cut diplomatic ties with Qatar, after accusing it of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamist political movement that allegedly supports pro-Iran militias, and funding terror activities.

The Middle Eastern countries were later joined by the Indian Ocean island nation of The Maldives.

Earlier, a Saudi press agency statement said the move was necessary because of "grave violations being committed by the authorities in Doha over the past years in secret and public," including giving shelter to various terrorist groups, some of them backed by Iran.

Qatar has maintained its diplomatic clout in part by being the home of U.S. Central Command and the U.S's largest air base in the region and hosting branches of prestigious Western universities.

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Unidentified assailants hurled petrol bomb at the Trivandrum district committee office of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Wednesday.

The attack took place around 9.15 p.m. today.

According to reports, a few chairs that were laid on the portico of the office were damaged.

However, no casualty or injury has been reported so far.

Meanwhile, the police have launched a probe into the matter.

The BJP has called for a strike tomorrow in Trivandrum district in view of the incident.

Launching a scathing attack on theCommunist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)) for the alleged attacks on the BJP workers in Kerala, party president Amit Shah had said that the more leftist violence is unleashed upon the saffron party workers in the state, the more the Lotus will blossom here.

Shah said it had been noticed that violence against BJP and Sangh Parivar members goes up whenever the Left parties comt to power. After the Left government came to power in Kerala, 13 BJP, RSS workers have been killed.

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U.S. intelligence chiefs have refused to comment on whether President Donald Trump asked them to curb an FBI-led investigation into contacts between his election campaign and Moscow.

Following a spate of reports that Trump had asked them to use their influence to stop or restrict the investigation, Dan Coats, director of national intelligence and Michael Rogers, head of the National Security Agency faced tough questions from the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday about their communications with the President.

Coats said he had never felt "pressured" to shape intelligence "in a political way", but when pressed on his communications with Trump, he said he would not respond in a public hearing, saying it was not "an appropriate venue".

It was earlier reported that Trump had asked Coats to press "James Comey, the then FBI director, to back off from focussing on his former national security advisor Michael Flynn."

Rogers, when asked about his contacts with Trump, said, "I am not going to discuss the specifics of any interactions or conversations that I may or may not have had with the president of the United States." But he added: "In the three-plus years that I have been director of the NSA, to the best of my recollection I have never been directed to do anything I believe to be illegal, immoral or unethical."

Acting director of the FBI Andrew McCabe refused to answer when asked whether he had talked to Comey, his predecessor, about claims that Trump put pressure on him to close down Russia-related inquiries.

Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general who appointed Mueller, also declined to comment on the circumstances of Comey's dismissal.

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New Zealand have been fined for maintaining a slow over-rate during their 87-run defeat against hosts England during their second Group A fixture in the ongoing Champions Trophy at the Cardiff Wales Stadium here on Tuesday.

Andy Pycroft of the Emirates Elite Panel of ICC Match Referees imposed the fine after Kane Williamson's side were ruled to be two overs short of their target when time allowances were taken into consideration.

In accordance with Article 2.5.1 of the ICC Code of Conduct for Players and Player Support Personnel, which relates to minor over-rate offences, players are fined 10 per cent of their match fees for every over their side fails to bowl in the allotted time, with the captain fined double that amount.

As such, Williamson has been fined 40 per cent of his match fee, while his players have received 20 per cent fine each. Williamson pleaded guilty to the offence and accepted the proposed sanction, so there was no need for a formal hearing.

If there is a second minor over-rate offence committed by New Zealand during the event with Williamson as captain, he will be suspended for one match.

The charge was laid by on-field umpires Paul Reiffel and Bruce Oxenford, third umpire Rod Tucker and fourth umpire Aleem Dar, all from the Emirates Elite Panel of ICC Umpires.

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With two Hindu Sena activists detained for trying to attack Communist Party of India (Marxist) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury today, the party has lashed out at the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), accusing it of stooping low to intimidate the opposition.

"The Polit Bureau strongly condemns the efforts made by two persons claiming allegiance to an RSS outfit to disrupt a press conference being addressed by General Secretary Sitaram Yechury at the end of the two day meeting of the Polit Bureau," the CPI (M) said in a statement.

"This is typical of the RSS methodology of seeking to browbeat and intimidate the opposition. Such tactics will not be allowed to succeed," the statement added.

High drama was witnessed at Yechury's press conference, where two Hindu Sena activists were hauled by the police for heckling and allegedly trying to manhandle him.

The two men entered the premises of the building where the press conference was going on, and tried to barge in chanting slogans against Yechury and also shouted 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' slogans.

However, they were immediately brought down and carted away by the police.

Delhi police detained Upendra Kumar and Pawan Kaul at the Mandir Marg Police Station for protesting against the CPI(M) for their article against the Indian Army.

Meanwhile, Yechury responded to the attack on Twitter.

During the press conference, which went ahead without any interference, Yechury continued to tear into the Centre over the violence in Mandsaur, Madhya Pradesh, where five protesting farmers were killed in alleged gunfire by security forces.

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Adani Power rose 1.47% to Rs 27.65 at 9:36 IST on BSE after the company said its board approved a proposal to hive off its flagship Mundra power station to its subsidiary.

Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Sensex was up 78.89 points, or 0.25% to 31,269.45.

On the BSE, 2.69 lakh shares were traded in the counter so far, compared with average daily volumes of 20.92 lakh shares in the past one quarter. The stock had hit a high of Rs 28 and a low of Rs 27.55 so far during the day.

The stock hit a 52-week high of Rs 46.30 on 11 April 2017. The stock hit a 52-week low of Rs 23.35 on 9 November 2016.

The stock had underperformed the market over the past one month till 6 June 2017, falling 11.81% compared with 4.23% rise in the Sensex. The scrip had also underperformed the market in past one quarter, falling 29.22% as against Sensex's 7.92% rise. The scrip had also underperformed the market in past one year, falling 9.02% as against Sensex's 15.48% rise.

The large-cap company has equity capital of Rs 3856.94 crore. Face value per share is Rs 10.

Adani Power announced after market hours yesterday, 6 June 2017, that its board approved a proposal to hive off its flagship Mundra power generating business undertaking, generating 4620 megawatts (MW) of power, to its subsidiary company, namely, Adani Power (Mundra). The transaction will put Mundra undertaking at par with the other operating subsidiaries of the company, with specific strategic focus as well as specific financial arrangements.

On a consolidated basis, Adani Power reported net loss of Rs 4960.53 crore in Q4 March 2017 as against net profit of Rs 1012.19 crore in Q4 March 2016. Net sales declined 16.91% to Rs 6352.23 crore in Q4 March 2017 over Q4 March 2016.

Adani Power is the largest private power producer in India with an installed capacity of 10,480 MW.

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Aegis Logistics fell 1.36% to Rs 206.80 at 11:27 IST on BSE after the company sold 19.7% stake in step-down subsidiary Hindustan Aegis LPG to Itochu Petroleum Co. (Singapore) for an aggregate consideration of Rs 250 crore.

The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 6 June 2017.

Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Sensex was up 129.40 points or 0.41% at 31,319.96. The S&P BSE Mid-Cap index was up 68.90 points, or 0.47% at 14,801.29.

On BSE, so far 15,000 shares were traded in the counter as against average daily volume of 1.02 lakh shares in the past one quarter. The stock hit a high of Rs 210 and a low of Rs 206.10 so far during the day. The stock had hit a record high of Rs 219.50 on 1 June 2017. The stock had hit a 52-week low of Rs 112.10 on 17 August 2016.

The stock had outperformed the market over the past one month till 6 June 2017, rising 7.96% compared with the Sensex's 4.46% rise. The scrip, however, underperformed the market over the past one quarter, advancing 3.4% as against the Sensex's 7.38% rise. The scrip, however, outperformed the market over the past one year, surging 73.05% as against the Sensex's 16.48% rise.

The small-cap company has equity capital of Rs 33.40 crore. Face value per share is Re 1.

Aegis Logistics said that the company has entered into a share subscription agreement with its subsidiary Aegis Gas (LPG) (AGPL) and AGPL's subsidiary Hindustan Aegis LPG (HALPG), and Itochu Petroleum Co., (Singapore) Pte. (Itochu), with respect to the subscription by Itochu to equity shares of HALPG representing 19.7% of the paid-up share capital of HALPG.

The company does not directly hold any shares in HALPG, Aegis Logistics said. However, AGPL is a wholly owned subsidiary of the company, and HALPG is a wholly owned subsidiary of AGPL, it said. Therefore, HALPG is a step-down subsidiary of the company, it added.

Aegis Logistics' consolidated net profit fell 5.61% to Rs 29.77 crore on 190.13% surge in net sales to Rs 1267.78 crore in Q4 March 2017 over Q4 March 2016.

Aegis Logistics is India's leading oil, gas, and chemical logistics company. The company has five distinct but related business segments, and operates a network of bulk liquid terminals, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) terminals, filling plants, pipelines, and gas stations to deliver products and services.

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The Union Cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has given its approval for signing and subsequent ratification of the Agreement on Transfer of sentenced persons between India and Somalia.

Signing the Agreement with Somalia shall facilitate the Indian prisoners imprisoned in Somalia or vice-versa to be near to their families, for serving remaining part of their sentence and shall facilitate their social rehabilitation.

The Government of India has signed bilateral Agreements on Transfer of Sentenced Persons with United Kingdom, Mauritius, Bulgaria, France, Egypt, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Bangladesh, Brazil, Israel, Bosnia & Herzegovina, UAE, Italy, Turkey, Maldives, Thailand, Russian Federation, Kuwait, Vietnam, Australia, Hong Kong, Qatar, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Bahrain and Estonia.

Background:

Prior to 2004, there was no domestic legislation under which foreign prisoners could be transferred to the country of their origin to serve the remaining part of their sentence, nor was there a provision for the transfer of prisoners of Indian origin convicted by a foreign court to serve their sentence in India. The transfer of such prisoners to their own native countries shall facilitate their social rehabilitation.

Hence the Repatriation of Prisoners Act, 2003 was enacted for achieving the above purpose.

For achieving the objectives of the Act, a treaty/agreement is required to be signed with countries having mutual interest with us on this matter. The said treaty/agreement is required to be notified in the Official Gazette.

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The Union Cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has given its ex-post facto approval to the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), India and Direction Nationale De Industries (MLINDI), Republic of Mali on Standardization and Conformity Assessment.

The MoU aims to facilitate closer cooperation and provide a mechanism by which India and Mali can work together towards the common aim of strengthening standardization and conformity assessment activities in order to facilitate sharing of expertise and mutual trade.

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The Union Cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has approved the proposal for transfer of 4.64 hectares (46384 Sq. meters) of land belonging to the Indian Institute of Soil & Water Conservation (IISWC) Research Centre at Vasad, District Anand, Gujarat under the Indian Council of Agricultural Research to the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) on payment of compensation amounting to Rs. 12.67 crore for extension and six laning of Ahmedabad - Vadodara Highway on NH-8.

The NH-8 is an important highway connecting Vadodara and Ahmedabad.

The transfer of land to the NHAl for construction of extension and six laning of Ahmedabad - Vadodara section of NH-8 is likely to benefit the region leading to enhanced opportunities for: growth and development in terms of infrastructure, transport, communication, employment generation etc. The decision is also part of the Government's plans to boost infrastructure in key sectors for accelerating the pace of growth.

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Key benchmark indices were trading almost unchanged in mid-afternoon trade. At 14:20 IST, the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex was up 0.98 points at 31,191.54. The Nifty 50 index was up 0.85 points or 0.01% at 9,638. Investors maintained caution ahead of the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) monetary policy review today, 7 June 2017.

After opening with small gains, key indices held firm till early afternoon after extending gains and hitting fresh intraday high in morning trade. Stocks hovered near the flat line after paring almost entire intraday gains in afternoon trade.

A sharp drop was witnessed in IT stocks amid a media report saying that the Infosys' clients were asking for 20-30% cut in prices for projects. Capital goods stocks were mixed.

The S&P BSE Mid-Cap index rose 0.2%. The S&P BSE Small-Cap index advanced 0.59%. Both these indices outperformed the Sensex.

The breadth indicating overall health of the market was positive. On the BSE, 1,394 shares rose and 1,158 shares fell. A total of 148 shares were unchanged.

Capital goods stocks were mixed. Havells India (up 0.38%), ABB India (up 0.51%), Bharat Electronics (up 0.53%), and L&T (up 0.41%) gained. Bharat Heavy Electricals (Bhel) (down 0.43%), Siemens (down 1.48%) and Thermax (down 1.45%) declined.

IT stocks dropped sharply amid a media report saying that the Infosys' clients were asking for 20-30% cut in prices for projects. TCS (down 3.78%), Infosys (down 2.91%), Wipro (down 3.09%), HCL Technologies (down 1.07%), Tech Mahindra (down 2.77%), and MphasiS (down 1.21%) fell.

Hexaware Technologies fell 5.28% to Rs 244.45, with the stock sliding on profit booking after recent rally. The stock had rallied 10.12% in the preceding four trading sessions to settle at Rs 258.50 yesterday, 6 June 2017, from its closing of Rs 234.75 on 31 May 2017.

Meanwhile, the second stage forecast of Southwest monsoon seasonal rainfall was issued by Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) in New Delhi yesterday, 6 June 2017. IMD has forecast that quantitatively, the monsoon seasonal rainfall for the country as a whole is likely to be 98% of the long period average (LPA) with an error of 4%. The forecast was 2 percentage points higher than the April forecast. The monsoon delivers about 70% of India's annual rainfall, critical for the farm sector. In April, the IMD had forecast this year's monsoon rains at 96% of the 50-year average of 89 centimetres.

Investors will closely watch the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) monetary policy review scheduled today, 7 June 2017. The central bank is widely expected to keep policy rates unchanged.

Overseas, most European stocks edged higher in volatile trade ahead of Thursday's UK election and the European Central Bank's policy decision.

Orders for Germany's important manufacturing sector slumped in April, the economics ministry said. Manufacturing orders fell by 2.1% compared with March, referring to data adjusted for seasonal swings and calendar effects.

Most Asian stocks rose although investors remained noticeably risk averse ahead of several major political and economic events later this week.

While pollsters still expect British Prime Minister Theresa May to win the most seats in the Thursday election, a tight result could throw the country into political deadlock just days before formal Brexit talks with the European Union are due to begin on 19 June 2017.

Meanwhile, expectations are growing that the ECB could strike a less dovish tone at its meeting tomorrow, 8 June 2017 after recent economic reports indicated that the recovery in the euro area is deepening.

US stocks closed lower yesterday, 6 June 2017 for a second session as investors exercised caution ahead of the UK elections and political uncertainties over former Federal Bureau of Investigation director James Comey's testimony this week.

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Key indices may open with small gains tracking firm Asian stocks. Trading of Nifty 50 index futures on the Singapore stock exchange indicates that the Nifty could gain 13.65 points at the opening bell. Investors will closely watch the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) monetary policy review scheduled today, 7 June 2017. The central bank is widely expected to keep policy rates unchanged.

Overseas, Asian stocks gained but investors remained noticeably risk averse, with gold and sovereign debt set for a second day of solid gains ahead of several major political and economic events later this week. US stocks closed lower yesterday, 6 June 2017 for a second session as investors exercised caution ahead of the UK elections and political uncertainties over former Federal Bureau of Investigation director James Comey's testimony this week. European Central Bank policy meeting is also due tomorrow, 8 June 2017.

British Prime Minister Theresa May looks on course to increase her parliamentary majority in Thursday's election, an opinion poll showed, shortly after another survey suggested the race with the opposition Labour Party was neck and neck.

Oil staged a rebound to settle higher on Tuesday, as traders bet that US government data will show a ninth consecutive weekly decline in crude supplies, and concerns surrounding Qatar's diplomatic crisis eased. August Brent crude oil futures on London's ICE Futures exchange rose 65 cents, or 1.3%, to $50.12 a barrel.

Among corporate news back home, Oil India said that the company through its exploratory efforts has made one hydrocarbon discovery in the Baghjan Petroleum Mining Lease (PML) in the Upper Assam Basin in the month of May 2017 in the well South Baghjan-2. Oil India has made ten discoveries in its operational areas of Assam during 2016-17. The discoveries have opened up avenue for further exploration of already identified leads/prospects in the area. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 6 June 2017.

TCS announced that the company and Siemens unveiled a new collaboration around Internet of Things (IoT) innovation. Focused on customers in the manufacturing, energy, building technology, healthcare and railway industries the partnership will enable customers to benefit from new data insights and services based on MindSphere, the cloud-based, open IoT operating system from Siemens. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 6 June 2017.

Meanwhile, India's crucial monsoon rains are expected to reach 98% of the long-term average this year, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) reportedly said yesterday, 2 percentage points higher than its previous forecast, potentially boosting farm incomes and economic growth. The monsoon delivers about 70% of India's annual rainfall, critical for the farm sector. In April, the IMD had forecast this year's monsoon rains at 96% of the 50-year average of 89 centimetres.

Key indices settled with moderate losses yesterday, 6 June 2017 as weakness in global stocks weighed on sentiment. The Sensex fell 118.93 points or 0.38% to settle at 31,190.56, its lowest closing level since 1 June 2017.

Foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) bought shares worth a net Rs 61.16 crore yesterday, 6 June 2017, as per provisional data released by the stock exchanges. Domestic institutional investors (DIIs) had also sold shares worth a net Rs 360.01 crore yesterday, 6 June 2017, as per provisional data.

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For month of May 2017

Jaguar Land Rover retail sales reached 45,487 vehicles in May 2017, up 1% compared to May 2016 with continued strong demand for the Jaguar F-PACE, since sales began 12 months ago, and solid sales growth of the long wheel base Jaguar XFL from our China Joint venture.

Retail sales for May were up year-on-year in China (22.7%), and in North America (15.5%). Sales were down in Europe (6.3%) and in the Overseas region (15.0%) as economic conditions remain challenging in emerging markets. UK sales were down 11.2% as customers purchased new vehicles ahead of the increase in Vehicle Excise Duty rates effective from 1 April 2017.

Jaguar hit record May retails with 13,613 vehicles sold, up 28.0% on the previous year with continued solid demand for the F-PACE and growing sales of the long wheel base XFL from its China joint venture. Land Rover retailed 31,874 vehicles in May, down 7.1% on the same month last year, as the sales of the all new Discovery (now on sale in the UK, Europe and China) and solid sales of the Range Rover were more than offset by the impact of Vehicle Excise Duty rates in the UK from 1 April 2017 and challenging conditions in Overseas markets such as Russia, Brazil and South Africa.

Retail sales for Jaguar Land Rover were 265,381 vehicles in the first five months of 2017, up 8.3% compared to the same period last year.

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Vivimed Labs jumped 6.38% to Rs 111.75 at 10:52 IST on BSE after the company said its UQUIFA facility received inspection report with zero 483 observations from the US drug regulator.

The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 6 June 2017.

Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Sensex was up 129.40 points, or 0.41% at 31,319.96. The S&P BSE Small-Cap index was up 133.81 points, or 0.87% at 15,444.34.

On the BSE, 3.48 lakh shares were traded on the counter so far as against the average daily volume of 2.81 lakh shares in the past one quarter. The stock had hit a high of Rs 113.90 and a low of Rs 109.25 so far during the day. The stock had hit a record high of Rs 136.40 on 20 April 2017 and hit a 52-week low of Rs 68 on 9 August 2016.

The stock had underperformed the market over the past one month till 6 June 2017, declining 3.67% compared with the Sensex's 4.46% rise. The scrip had also underperformed the market over the past one quarter advancing 2.59% as against the Sensex's 7.38% rise. The scrip had, however, outperformed the market over the past one year advancing 32.97% as against the Sensex's 16.48% rise.

The small-cap company has equity capital of Rs 16.40 crore. Face value per share is Rs 2.

Vivimed Labs said that its active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) manufacturing facility located in Sant Celoni, Spain was recently inspected by the US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) in compliance with their requirements. At the end of the successful inspection, we have been informed by the investigator that "zero" 483 observations were issued. This was a routine inspection by the USFDA, the company said.

Vivimed Labs' consolidated net profit spurted 810% to Rs 114.75 crore on 25.8% increase in net sales to Rs 436.68 crore in Q4 March 2017 over Q4 March 2016.

Vivimed Labs is a niche specialty chemicals and pharmaceuticals company.

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At least two persons were killed on Wednesday in attacks on the Iranian Parliament and the mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini here on Tuesday, officials said.

Four armed men entered the Parliament complex in central Tehran and stared shooting. Heavy gunfire could be heard on an audio recording from inside the Parliament chamber and a security guard was killed in the attack, BBC reported.

In the other incident, three armed men raided the southern Tehran mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini, the religious Shia leader who led the Iranian revolution against the monarchy.

Two of the assailants shot at visitors, while the third "detonated himself in a suicide attack", the semi-official Fars news agency said.

The remaining two attackers were arrested, the Iranian Labour News Agency reported. Five people were wounded in the mausoleum attack and one person was confirmed dead, it said.

At least eight persons were injured in the Parliament attack, Xinhua news agency reported.

Four armed people entered the Majlis (Iranian Parliament) on Wednesday morning and started shooting, lawmaker Akbar Ranjbarzadeh told state IRIB TV.

The assailants were still inside the Majlis and had entered the offices of some lawmakers, Ranjbarzadeh was quoted as saying. The entrance and the exit doors of the Majlis were closed, the report said.

"There were three attackers armed with two Kalashnikov rifles and one Colt pistol," MP Elyas Hazrati was quoted as saying by Iran's IRIB news agency.

The attack at the mausoleum, several kilometres to the south of Tehran, happened at the same time as the strike at Parliament complex and appeared to be co-ordinated, reports said.

--IANS

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At least seven persons were killed in twin attacks on Iran's Parliament building and the mausoleum of former supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini here on Wednesday, officials said.

Four gunmen forced themselves into the Parliament during a session and started shooting at security guards and visitors, killing at least seven guards and wounding several others, Efe news reported.

Iranian news agency Tasnim reported that four persons had been taken hostage by gunmen in the Parliament building's upper floors.

According to Fars news agency, there were guards and civilians among the wounded.

The Parliament building closed its doors and neither the deputies nor the journalists gathered there were allowed to leave.

Lawmaker Tayebeh Siavoshi told Efe that the situation was very confusing and sensitive, and denied preliminary information that everything was under control.

One of the assailants was arrested, while the other three remained inside the Parliament building.

Shortly after, a similar attack took place at the mausoleum of the Ayatollah Khomeini, leaving several persons injured. The number of those gunmen who opened fire at the mausoleum was still unknown, but the state-owned television said that one of them blew himself up.

The remaining two attackers were arrested, the Iranian Labour News Agency reported.

--IANS

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The AAP on Wednesday condemned the police firing on farmers in Madhya Pradesh and said a five-member party delegation will visit Mandsaur to meet the farmers on Friday.

The AAP demanded that cases be lodged against the erring officers over the incident which left up to eight people dead on Tuesday.

"The Aam Aadmi Party strongly condemns this barbaric act of police in Mandsaur... The party does not support any kind of violence," AAP Delhi convener Gopal Rai told reporters.

On June 9, a five-member delegation of the party comprising Sanjay Singh, Ashutosh, Somnath Bharti, Bhagwant Mann and Sadhu Singh will go to Mandsaur and meet the protesting farmers, Rai said. Mann and Sadhu Singh are MPs.

"The government should also concede the demands of the farmers. Their loans should be waived off with immediate effect," the AAP leader said.

He demanded that the minimum support price of the crops in Madhya Pradesh be fixed at 1.5 times above the input cost.

--IANS

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An Army Major and four militants were killed in a fierce gunfight near the India-Myanmar border in Nagaland's Mon district on Wednesday, an official said.

Police said one of the three soldiers of the 12 Para Commandos of the Army injured in the battle at Lapa Lempong hilltop in Oting village was in critical condition.

Acting on intelligence inputs, a combined team of Para Commandos and Territorial Army ambushed a group of National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Khaplang (NSCN-K) and the United Liberation Front of Asom-Independent (ULFA-I) militants.

The militants had sneaked in from Myanmar into Nagaland's Mon district. Search operations were on to nab the fleeing militants.

Nagaland Police chief L.L. Doungel told IANS that Major David Manlum of Territorial Army was killed and three para commandos were injured in the fighting.

He said four militants, whose identities are yet to be identified, were also killed. "We are still waiting for a detailed report on the incident," Major Doungel said.

The mortal remains of Major David Manlum will be flown to Shillong for last rites.

--IANS

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The BJP West Bengal unit on Wednesday accused the state government of running an administration parallel to the GTA in north Bengal hills, adding that the renewed demand for Gorkhaland indicated its failure to address the issues in that region.

"The state government has not kept any of its promises. It is trying to run a parallel administration in the hills. That is why Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) is taking to the streets for a separate state. It is a big failure of the state government, which is deeply regretful," Bharatiya Janata Party state unit President Dilip Ghosh said after meeting some senior GJM leaders at his residence here.

Earlier in the day, he met a delegation led by GJM General Secretary Roshan Giri.

Terming the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA) -- the developmental body set up in the north Bengal hills -- a "toy", Ghosh said the Morcha leaders plan to part ways with the GTA as it hasn't resolved any of the existing issues in the hills.

"The Trinamool government has provided the hill people with a toy called GTA, but it has not resolved any of their existing problems. The Morcha leaders are worried. They are not willing to be a part of the GTA anymore," the BJP leader said.

Asked about the GJM demand for a separate Gorkhaland, Ghosh said it was for the central government to decide.

"We cannot say anything on this; nor is it in our hands. The central government will take a call on the matter," he said.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday viciously attacked the GJM, claiming it is spreading lies about the TMC government's new three-language policy.

She vowed to take action against the GTA Board members if a special audit ordered by her government revealed misuse of public money.

On Tuesday, GJM supporters led by party chief Bimal Gurung waved black flags at and burnt effigies of Banerjee in Darjeeling district.

Stating that the hill people are with the party, Gurung claimed the party members will resign from the semi-autonomous administrative body and fight for Gorkhaland.

--IANS

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Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly has said that the current blocking of President Donald Trump's "travel ban" has been limiting the US' ability to keep "potential wrong-doers" out of the country.

In a testimony before the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Kelly on Tuesday insisted that he was "not fully confident" that the government was doing everything possible to keep "dangerous" people out of the country, Efe news reported.

Trump had signed an executive order earlier in 2017 banning citizens from six Muslim-majority nations -- Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Yemen and Libya -- from entering the US.

However, a Federal court had stopped the ban from being implemented.

"Bottom line, I've been enjoined from doing these things that I know would make Americans safe, and I anxiously await the court to complete its action one way or the other so I can get to work," Kelly told lawmakers.

Kelly said that the court injunction on the executive order has prevented his department from temporarily forbidding US entry to citizens of these nations that were either involved in civil war or were state sponsors of terrorism.

He also noted that these countries were the same ones that the Congress had singled out in 2015 as nations of concern.

"It has nothing to do with religion, or skin colour or the way they live their lives, but all about security for the US, nothing else," Kelly said.

"These are countries that (are) either unable or unwilling to help us validate the identities or backgrounds of persons within their borders."

In Syria and Iraq, he warned, there were thousands of jihadists who have come from more than 120 countries, and -- as the US-led coalition advanced in battle against them -- many of them were returning to Europe, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia and the Western Hemisphere.

The US authorities felt that some were trying to enter the US to carry out terrorist attacks and Trump had this in mind when he issued the executive order banning their citizens, Kelly said.

After the London terror attack on Saturday, Trump once more insisted that his travel ban must be implemented.

The first version of the ban was blocked by the courts, whereupon the administration issued a revised version of it on March 6 that is now under review by the Supreme Court.

The Department of Justice has argued that Trump, as President, has full authority to decide how to protect US national security and to prohibit -- as the second version of the ban sets forth -- US entry to refugees for 120 days and to citizens of the six nations for 90 days.

The second version of the ban, in contrast to the first one, did not include citizens of Iraq and modified the provision on Syrian refugees.

--IANS

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The Union Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Wednesday gave ex-post facto approval to an agreement on merchant shipping with Cyprus signed in April during the visit of Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades.

"The agreement on merchant shipping will pave the way for cooperation in eliminating any hindrances which may hamper the development of sea trade between the two nations," said an official statement.

The MoU will encourage participation in the transport of goods between the countries, and also from third countries, the statement said, adding that it also seeks cooperation for employment, improvement of conditions of work and for the welfare of seafarers employed on each other's vessels.

--IANS

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Even as China has welcomed India to join the Belt and Road project, it does not need to "beg New Delhi" or agree to its demands, a Chinese daily said on Wednesday.

A commentary by a Global Times reporter said both Japan and India were welcome to join China's ambitious project and they could be an example for the countries which have not joined the initiative.

"We are willing to see the initiative help build up a cooperation platform for countries along the route, but China does not need to beg any countries, Japan and India included, to join the initiative," the commentary by Hu Weijia said.

Last month, New Delhi boycotted China's Belt and Road summit in Beijing, citing its opposition to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) that passes through a part of Kashmir held by Pakistan and claimed by India.

India's absence at the summit was sort of an embarrassment to China even though it called the forum a success.

It is chiefly because of the CPEC that India has reservations over the Belt and Road project. Besides, the CPEC has put a new strain on Sino-Indian ties.

In an another article, the Global Times said India was "over-concerned," about China's intentions and views "bilateral relationship with China through the lens of geopolitics and regards Beijing as a strategic rival.

"China has put forward the Belt and Road initiative to aid regional connectivity. Beijing sincerely hopes that New Delhi can play a part in and benefit from the infrastructure initiative.

"However, New Delhi is over-concerned about Beijing's intentions, and there are even critical voices in India against Modi's China-friendly remarks.

"It is because New Delhi still views the bilateral relationship with China through the lens of geopolitics and regards Beijing as a strategic rival," the article said.

It said every time China reaches out to strengthen cooperation with countries regarded by India as within its sphere of influence, New Delhi "worries the cooperation is deliberately targeting it.

"If New Delhi can understand China's connectivity initiative from the perspective of regional development, this will help enhance mutual trust between the two countries," it said.

The article by Liu Jainxi also said Indian media need not make a fuss over the alleged Indian airspace violation by Chinese military helicopters last week.

(Gaurav Sharma is the Beijing-based correspondent of IANS. He can be contacted at sharmagaurav71@gmail.com and gauravians@yahoo.com)

--IANS

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Actor Rana Daggubati on Wednesday said he dedicates everything he accomplishes in life to his late grandfather, legendary southern producer D. Ramanaidu.

Rana was participating in a Twitter chat with his fans when he was asked how he thinks his grandfather would have reacted to the teaser of his upcoming Telugu film "Nene Raju, Nene Mantri".

Rana responded: "Everything I do in life is a dedication to him. And he will shower his blessing on all of what I do."

On Tuesday, the teaser of "Nene Raju, Nene Mantri", in which Rana plays a politician, was unveiled amid high expectations.

The teaser has been received well so far.

Rana is overwhelmed with the reception and love.

"Wake up six hours later to see we are trending at second position on YouTube. Thanks for the love," he tweeted.

Directed by Teja, the film also stars Kajal Aggarwal, Catherine Tresa, Navdeep and Ashutosh Rana.

--IANS

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Actress Emilia Clarke says she is optimistic about the future of her "Game of Thrones" character Daenerys Targaryen.

The actress spoke about her character in an interview to Belfast Telegraph, reports express.co.uk.

She said: "Right now, I'm sort of feeling -- with her -- optimistic. She'll probably need some help, though. I'll definitely be disappointed if she doesn't make it."

"Game Of Thrones", which is based on novels by George R.R. Martin, and is a dramatic telling of a story entwined with sneaky ploys, nudity and bloodshed in a quest to claim the 'Iron Throne'.

Clarke's character was last seen sailing towards Westeros with an aim to battle for the Iron Throne.

Talking about her determination to become a fair ruler, Clarke said: "I think that there was always that idea that she would know where she was going to, but the reality is frightening."

"I mean, I always believed that Dany had the highest of hopes for what kind of impact she could leave on this world. She is continuously reaching for purest level of rulership -- is that a word? I just made it up."

The seventh season of the show will debut on July 16 in the US and will premiere in India on Star World and Star World HD on July 18.

--IANS

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Brussels, June 7 (IANS/MAP) The European Union (EU) announced on Wednesday a 382 million euro ($430,571,300) aid for the consolidation of peace, economic and social development in the Central African Republic (CAR).

Three priority sectors will benefit from the support over the period 2014-2020. These include economic and social governance, security sector reform and democratic governance along with rural resilience and job creation.

The aid was part of the implementation of the commitments made by the EU at the Brussels Conference for Central Africa in November 2016.

Combined with contributions from other partners, a total commitment of 2.6 billion euros was made to support the national plan for the rehabilitation and consolidation of peace in the CAR.

The objective was to support the Central African authorities in their reforms in terms of returning to peace, maintaining security and supporting reconciliation.

--IANS

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Four people, along with the car in which they were travelling, were washed away in a canal in Karnataka's Bagalkot district, police said on Wednesday.

Five people were travelling in the car when the incident took place on Tuesday night. Four of them were washed away while one person jumped out and swam safely to the shore, Bagalkot Deputy Superintendent of Police B.M. Lakshmi Prasad told IANS over phone.

The canal was overflowing due to heavy rains on Tuesday night. Badami, the site of the tragedy, is 30 km from Bagakot and 410 km from Bengaluru.

The dead were identified as H.B. Shirahumpi, 55, Y.B. Hadapad, 45, A.S. Satanavar, 40, and R.V. Gurappanavar, 55.

--IANS

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Urging political parties not to politicise every investigation carried out by the central agencies, the BJP on Wednesday said illegal practices cannot be covered up with the garb of secularism and freedom of press.

"BJP urges the political parties not to politicise every investigation in the name of secularism, freedom of press or other such arguments. Investigative agencies do their work independently and they should be allowed to do so.

"Illegal practices cannot be covered up with the garb of secularism and press freedom and should be answered properly," Union Power Minister Piyush Goyal told a press conference here.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader's remarks came in the wake of government's criticism by the opposition parties over recent raids on top opposition leaders by central agencies, which they termed as "political vendetta".

The premises of two top opposition leaders, Congress's P. Chidambaram and Rashtriya Janata Dal's (RJD) Lalu Prasad, were on May 16 searched by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Income Tax Department officials.

"Instead of opposing the public welfare measures, particularly the measures to curb black money and corruption, the political parties need to build a consensus in support," Goyal said.

"We would expect from political parties to support the initiatives of Narendra Modi government to put an end to corruption and black money," he added.

He took on the opposition parties for opposing demonetisation, transparency in political funding and action against black money and corruption.

"It seems that some political parties suffered losses and faced difficulty with demonetisation while the whole country supported it. This was evident from the recent election results.

"It is also evident why certain political parties has taken such an anti-government stand when the entire nation has welcomed these moves of the government," he said.

Stating that the BJP maintains the highest standard of probity and accountability in electoral process by submitting its account details to the Election Commission (EC) and the IT Department, Goyal urged all political parties to follow such standards.

"We are surprised that crores of rupees were spent on hiring aircraft or helicopters, crores of rupees were spent on publicity, crores of rupees were spent in purchasing flags and other equipment for the party, but those spends are not accounted in the accounts of these parties.

"In fact, we would urge the all political parties to follow the example set by BJP. All the money is accounted in our accounts and audit reports submitted to the IT Department and the EC," Goyal added.

--IANS

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Prince Harry on Wednesday paid a touching tribute to the Australian victims of the London terror attack, media reports said.

The royal began a speech at the Admiralty House in Sydney to promote the city's 2018 Invictus Games with a message of condolence, The Australian reported.

Two Australians were among the seven killed in London on Saturday when three terrorists in a van mowed down pedestrians on the London Bridge and attacked others with knives in the nearby Borough Market.

The family of nurse Kirsty Boden, 28, confirmed she was killed while running to help the injured on the bridge, while the second victim was believed to be 21-year-old nanny Sara Zelenak.

'I would also like to start by sending my thoughts to those affected by Saturday's attack on London Bridge,' Prince Harry said.

'Australians form an important and vibrant part of the fabric of life in London and we are reminded of that in good times and bad. Our hearts go out to the victims, their friends and families," Daily Mail quoted the prince.

Two other Australians caught up in the attack - Candice Hedge is recovering in hospital after being stabbed in the neck while Darwin electrician Andrew Morrison has returned home after sustaining a cut to the neck.

Prince Harry also explained what inspired him to found the Invictus Games for veterans and wounded soldiers four years ago.

He said the event was very important to him as "Sport would make the difference and help the wounded veterans fix their lives and reconnect with those around them. The spectacle of sport combined with recovery against the odds would inspire everyone who saw it".

--IANS

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Her injured hand throbbing in pain, Shyamlata is distressed that none of the people who saw her son being stabbed by three assailants came to his rescue.

Shyamlata's son Rahul, 24, was stabbed to death with knives and swords at a park in Nangloi area on Tuesday evening after she stopped two persons from consuming drugs inside a public toilet.

"At least 50 people were watching... I begged everyone, but no one helped my son," a broken Shymalata told IANS.

Shyamlata, a Dalit, was threatened after she objected to drugs being consumed in the public toilet where she worked with Rahul.

Rahul, who happened to reach the spot minutes after the verbal spat, was attacked by three youths in the park adjacent to the public toilet. The assailants came with about 15 accomplices, most of them taking positions in the park to prevent Rahul from escaping.

Members of Shyamlata's family, who reside in Mundka area of north Delhi, said the murderous assault took place even as a crowd watched.

They said Rahul was getting a room constructed at his small house in Mundka as he was to get married in six months. He was working at the house barely hours before he was brutally killed. And on Wednesday, it was his body that lay there.

Tools were lying in one corner of the under-construction room, bricks were strewn around, the walls were unpainted and drains were uncovered.

Showing her left palm, Shyamlata said that she got injured while trying to prevent one of the assailants from stabbing her son.

"I don't want anything else except the noose for the guilty," she said with her hands folded.

"If we don't get justice my daughter and I will commit suicide in front of the police station."

At the park near Janata Market in Nangloi, where Rahul was murdered, spattered dried blood could still be seen on Wednesday afternoon.

About a dozen people, who live or run shops within 50 metres from the park, to whom IANS spoke, said they didn't witness the murder.

Most of them said that they were away at the time of the incident, while some said that they were sleeping.

"Even if anyone witnessed the murder, who is going to tell? They are all afraid," a shopkeeper who didn't wish to be identified, told IANS.

As Rahul's body was carried away by his family members for cremation, Shyamlata ran behind her son's body crying: "Please, let me see him for one last time."

(Nikhil M Babu can be contacted at nikhil.b@ians.in)

--IANS

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Body builder and model Jodie Marsh, whose marriage with James Placido ended last year after just eight months, has slammed their sex life saying that it made her lose her sexual urges.

Marsh says Placido met her in a car park in 2015 and deceived her in order to win her heart, reports dailymail.co.uk.

The TV personality was celibate for five years before her Barbados wedding.

"I don't count the blip I had when I married that t****r because the sex was so s***, so I'd say it's been seven years now," Marsh told Heat magazine.

Marsh, who regularly posts shots of her home cooking, added: "I don't think about it and I don't miss it. I think I'm dead from the waist down. I don't have any urges or feelings. I honestly get more excited about a cheese souffle."

--IANS

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Riding a robust demand for its frozen shrimp and fish, India exported 11,34,948 tonnes of seafood worth $5.78 billion (Rs 37,870.90 crore) in 2016-17, 23 per cent more over the $4.69 billion figure a year earlier, the government said on Wednesday.

India exported 9,45,892 tonnes of seafood in 2015-16.

With the US and SouthEast Asia continuing to be major importers, the demand from the European Union grew substantially during the period, a Commerce Ministry statement said.

"Increased production of L. Vannamei (whiteleg shrimp), diversification of aquaculture species, sustained measures to ensure quality and increase in infrastructure facilities for production of value-added products are largely responsible for India's positive growth in seafood exports," Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Nirmala Sitharaman said.

"Frozen shrimp maintained its top position in exports, accounting for 38.28 per cent in quantity and 64.50 per cent of total earnings in dollar terms. Shrimp exports increased by 16.21 per cent in quantity and 20.33 per cent in dollar terms. Frozen fish was the second largest export item, accounting for a share of 26.15 per cent and 11.64 per cent in dollar earnings, a growth of 26.92 per cent in terms of value," the statement said.

The US imported 1,88,617 tonnes of Indian seafood, accounting for 29.98 per cent in dollar terms. Export to the US registered a growth of 22.72 per cent, 33 per cent and 29.82 per cent in quantity and value in rupee and US dollars respectively.

SouthEast Asia remained the second largest destination of India's marine products, with a share of 29.91 per cent in dollar terms, followed by the EU (17.98 per cent), Japan (6.83 per cent), the Middle East (4.78 per cent), China (3.50 per cent) and other countries (7.03 per cent).

Overall, exports to SouthEast Asia increased by 47.41 per cent in quantity, 52.84 per cent in rupee value and 49.90 per cent in dollar earnings.

The export of Vannamei shrimp, a major seafood delicacy, improved from 2,56,699 tonnes to 3,29,766 tonnes in 2016-17, a growth of 28.46 per cent in quantity.

In value terms, 49.55 per cent of total Vannamei shrimp was exported to the US followed by 23.28 per cent to SouthEast Asian countries, 13.17 per cent to the EU, 4.53 per cent to Japan, 3.02 per cent to the Middle East and 1.35 per cent to China.

Japan was the major market for Black Tiger shrimp with a share of 43.84 per cent in terms of value, followed by the US (23.44 per cent) and SouthEast Asia (11.33 per cent).

Frozen shrimp continued to be the principal export item to the US with a share of 94.77 per cent in dollar value while Vannamei shrimp to that country showed an increase of 25.60 per cent in quantity and 31.75 per cent in dollar terms.

The EU continued to be the third largest destination for Indian marine products with a share of 16.73 per cent in quantity.

Frozen shrimp was the major item of exports, accounting for 40.66 per cent in quantity and 55.15 per cent in dollar earnings out of the total exports to the EU. Exports of Vannamei shrimp to the EU improved by 9.76 per cent in quantity and 11.40 per cent in dollar value.

Japan, the fourth largest destination for Indian seafood, accounted for 6.83 per cent in earnings and 6.08 per cent in quantity terms.

Frozen shrimp continued to be the major item of exports to Japan with a share of 45.31 per cent in quantity and 77.29 per cent in value.

India's other major seafood product was frozen squid, which recorded a growth of 21.50 per cent, 59.44 per cent and 57 per cent in terms of quantity, rupee value and dollar earnings respectively.

Export of frozen cuttlefish showed a decline in quantity terms, but increased in rupee value and dollar terms by 18.85 per cent and 16.95 per cent respectively, it said.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Jammu and cabinet on Wednesday decided to hold a special session of the state legislature to debate and legislate on the Goods and Services Tax (GST) proposals so that these are adopted in the state.

The cabinet, headed by Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, met here and decided to call a special session of the state's bicameral legislature on June 17 on the GST.

GST proposals put forth by Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and agreed to by many other states of the country would be debated and amendments, if needed, would be made to ensure the special status of the state is protected, sources in the Jammu and government said here.

Jammu and has a Constitution of its own which is applicable here concomitantly with the constitution of India.

Acts and amendments made by Parliament in majority of the cases become applicable to the state only after these are adopted by the state legislature.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Top Kerala CPI-M leaders strongly condemned the attack on Sitaram Yechury that took place inside their national party office in New Delhi by two suspected right-wing activists on Wednesday evening.

As soon as the Communist Party of India-Marxist workers came to know of the incident, they started preparing to take out protest marches across the state.

According to the party, the incident occurred just before Yechury was to address the press meet after the two-day meeting of the CPI-M politburo.

Around 4.00 p.m, Yechury was about to enter the party's press conference hall when two people shouting "Bharat Mata ki Jai" rushed menacingly towards Yechury. But the staff of the party office quickly intervened and rescued Yechury.

The Delhi Police took away the attackers, who also tried to damage the office furniture in the office.

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, who is in Delhi, in his Facebook page strongly condemned the attack on Yechury.

"It amounts to an attack on Indian democracy," said Vijayan.

State Finance Minister Thomas Issac told the media here this was probably the first of its kind incident where a national leader was attacked inside the national office of a national party.

"Such an incident is completely unheard of. This is an attack by the BJP-RSS, as they have been doing this against all who stand against them. I will not be surprised to hear that police remained a silent witness to it."

"If they (BJP-RSS) think they can scare a party like us through these attacks, they are mistaken," said Issac.

Senior CPI-M central committee member M.V. Govindan termed this as a "clear example of unleashing fascist tendencies" by the BJP-RSS.

"This has to be dealt with very strongly, if not, the whole principle of democracy will vanish. This is a dangerous trend," said Govindan.

Former Chief Minister Oommen Chandy reacted by saying all the secular and democratic forces should join to condemn this heinous attack unleashed by right-wing Hindutva forces.

But senior Kerala BJP leaders were not willing to buy what the CPI-M is alleging.

"Let us not be in a hurry to come to conclusions as to who are behind these, and without a proper probe, it's not fair to accuse any particular party or organisation. Who knows the CPI-M themselves would have hired these people and enacted this," BJP leader V.V. Rajesh told the media here.

"Let the probe begin and find out the truth and until then, let us not come to conclusions," the senior state BJP leader said.

Another top BJP leader, J. Padmakumar, said their party or its organisations did not involve in such activities.

"We are certainly opposed to the CPI-M and its ideology and all along we have a policy of countering the CPI-M through our ideology, not by any other means," said Radhakrishnan.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Wednesday said that Lt Governor Anil Baijal agreed to his government's proposal that power companies should pay compensation to the consumers for unscheduled power cuts.

"LG agreed DISCOMS (power distribution companies) should pay compensation for unscheduled power cuts to make them accountable. Fairplay and equity to consumers to be ensured," Kejriwal tweeted.

Kejriwal on Wednesday met Baijal and discussed the issue related to unscheduled power cuts and compensation to the consumers.

After the meeting, Baijal tweeted: "Met Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and discussed issue of power cuts and compensation to consumers. Suggested to devise a rational, fair and enforceable model."

Delhi witnessed a record demand of over 6,500 MW supply on Tuesday.

Kejriwal on Tuesday directed Chief Secretary M.M. Kutty to place the proposal of compensation to the consumers by power distribution companies before Baijal for approval.

Last year, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government had issued an order to penalise power distribution companies for unscheduled power cuts. However, the order was later invalidated by the Delhi High Court citing that the government had not taken LG's prior approval.

Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia had on Tuesday talked of reviving an aborted clause in the Delhi Electricity Act which required discoms to pay compensation to the consumers for power-cuts exceeding two hours.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Technology giant Google announced a new educational programme, designed to teach children about internet safety issues such as phishing, internet harassment and passwords, the company said in a blogpost.

The programme -- called "Be Internet Awesome" -- includes a classroom curriculum and a video game called Interland.

"For kids to really make the most of the web, we need to provide guidance as they learn to make their own smart decisions online," Pavni Diwanji, Vice President of the Engineering for kids and families, said in a Google blogpost on Tuesday.

"With school out and summer break giving kids more time to spend on the Internet, it's a great time to introduce Be Internet Awesome: a new way to encourage digital safety and citizenship," Diwanji added.

The programme includes sections on how to limit sharing personal information with people online, avoid falling for scams or phishing attacks, creating strong passwords, and avoiding negative behaviour online as well as has a "Be Internet Awesome Pledge" that the students can sign.

Interland, the accompanying video game, seems less like a training tool and more like a sweetener that could get students interested in the material. Interland also uses a low-poly aesthetic that will be familiar to Daydream virtual reality (VR) users.

The programme was developed in collaboration with online safety experts like the Family Online Safety Institute, the Internet Keep Safe Coalition and ConnectSafely.

It includes a range of specific resources for kids, educators and parents, so everyone has the tools they need to learn and participate in the conversation.

The programme is compliant with Society for Technology in Education standards, awarded to programs that promote a range of tech-savvy skills, said theverge.com on Tuesday.

"Be Internet Awesome" is the latest in Google's string of educational programmes, which range from promoting Chromebooks in the classroom to offering virtual reality field trips through Google Cardboard.
The Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations on Wednesday announced plans to make a digital subject selection tool available to schools to enable students make "informed decisions" about their future prospective careers.

"It will help students make informed decision on career paths based on their interests, skills, personality and preferences. The tool would also allow students to explore various occupations to understand what kind of work each involves and what the prospects are," CISCE Chief Executive & Secretary Gerry Arathoon told the media here.

However, he added that they had not decided at which stage the tool, which would be self-administered with self-interpreting results, should be introduced.

Arathoon said the Council's Research Development and Consultancy Division are engaged in reviewing the syllabi of physical education, computer application, economics at the ICSE level and biotechnology and computer science at the ISC level to ensure that students are equipped with requisite knowledge and skills.

"They are also engaged in the development of new syllabi for Mass Media and Communication at the ICSE as well as ISC level from academic year 2018-19 onwards. Performing arts for classes 1 to 8, Sanskrit for classes 5 to 8, physical and yoga for classes 1 to 8... these new subjects are being included from classes 1 to 8 from the academic year 2018-19 onwards."

About the recently introduced DigiLocker facility, Arathoon informed that schools in India are being instructed to capture the Aadhaar number of the candidates with Indian nationality.

DigiLocker, extended to candidates of classes 10 and class 12, by the Council in partnership with India's Department of Electronics and Information Technology, provides dedicated personal electronic space in a government owned public cloud storage, where an individual can keep his/her documents, files, certificate.

The free storage space is linked to Aadhaar number of the user.

The official also said the Council will have a new office-cum-training centre at Hyderabad.

"We do have an office in Elgin road in Kolkata. It is just one floor. I have written to West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee requesting we be given a property of land in Rajarhat to establish an office for the east and northeast. I am very hopeful," Arathoon added.

Asked about the Centre's proposal to reviseAthe 'no-detention policy' till Class 8, Arathoon said: "Let the states decide... I am sure the states will agree with the Centre."

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Election Commission on Wednesday announced that voting, if required, to elect India's next President will take place on July 17 and counting thereafter on July 20.

The last date for filing nominations is June 28 while scrutiny of nominations will take place on June 29, Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi told media persons here. The last date for withdrawal is July 1.

"The date on which polling will be held, if required, is July 17. Counting, if required, will be done on July 20," Zaidi said.

The term of President Pranab Mukherjee, the country's 13th President, will end on July 24.

Zaidi said members of the electoral college -- comprising members of the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha and state assemblies, including Delhi and Puducherry -- will be provided special pens to cast their ballot and use of any other pen will render the vote invalid.

The poll announcement has set the ball rolling for the declaration of candidates by the ruling National Democratic Alliance and the opposition parties for the country's highest elected office.

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party-led NDA, which is seen to have a clear edge in the electoral college, has so far not given any indication about its choice.

Several opposition parties have since held parleys to find a consensus candidate but have decided to wait for the ruling alliance to reach out to them with the name of its candidate.

The parties have said that if a consensual candidate does not emerge, they will field a candidate "who will steadfastly defend the constitutional values".

Congress President Sonia Gandhi has initiated moves to bring the opposition parties on a common platform for the presidential and vice-presidential elections.

The term of Vice President Hamid Ansari will end in August.

Zaidi said that Lok Sabha Secretary General Anoop Mishra will be the Returning Officer for the presidential poll and ballots will be cast in Parliament House and in the respective state assemblies.

The counting of votes will take place in the national capital under the supervision of the Returning Officer.

The Chief Election Commissioner said presidential election will take place through secret ballot and political parties "cannot issue any whip" to their respective MPs or MLAs.

The election is held in accordance with the system of proportional representation by means of single transferable vote.

Every elector can have as many preferences as the candidates contesting the election and the winner has to secure the required quota of votes to be declared elected -- 50 per cent of the valid votes plus one.

Zaidi said a nomination paper has to be backed by at least 50 electors as proposers and at least 50 electors as seconders.

He said Assistant Returning Officers will be appointed in all state capitals, besides Delhi and Puducherry, to ensure smooth logistics for the election.

He said each candidate will be allowed to deploy a representative at the venue of polling.

Zaidi said MPs are expected to vote in Parliament House in Delhi and the MLAs in their respective assemblies but they can vote at another polling station in case of exigency after applying to the poll panel in advance.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Even as the BJP and the Congress indulged in a war of words over the killing of eight farmers in police firing in Madhya Pradesh, the Congress said its Vice-President Rahul Gandhi will visit Mandsaur on Thursday to meet the bereaved families.

"Will be in Mandsaur tomorrow (Thursday) to meet the families of farmers who lost their lives in the police firing yesterday (Tuesday)," Gandhi said on his official Twitter handle.

Fresh violence erupted in Madhya Pradesh on Wednesday as protesting farmers indulged in arson, a day after the police gunned down eight peasants demanding relief from debts and higher crop prices.

On Wednesday, Information and Broadcasting Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu accusing the Congress of instigating violence in the name of farmers' agitation.

Terming the violence "very unfortunate", Naidu said the government was monitoring the situation.

The Minister accused the Congress of trying to gain political mileage out of the incident.

"The Congress is trying to give it a political twist. I only want to tell them (Congress) not to politicise the issue and fuel and instigate violence in the name of farmers' agitation, because it will boomerang on you," Naidu said.

On the other hand, describing the killings as tragic and cold blooded murder, the Congress questioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi's silence on the issue.

Speaking to the media here, Congress spokesperson and Rajya Sabha member Abhishek Manu Singhvi trashed as "shameless" the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) allegation that the Congress instigated the Mandsaur violence.

Singhvi said while farmers were demanding fair price for their produce, the BJP government shot them dead.

"They were seeking loan waivers and right price, but he BJP (government) killed them with bullets. This is the sad reality of Mandsaur," Singhvi added.

Farmers in Madhya Pradesh are on strike from June 1 to June 10 to demand waiver of their loans and that their produce be bought at a fair price.

"The BJP has almost been acting like the curse of death for Indian farmers -- literally, not figuratively. Distressed farmers are looked upon by the heartless BJP virtually as objects for authorities to fire upon," said the Congress spokesperson.

"What was insulting and sad was the complete denial by the Madhya Pradesh government, which intially said there was no firing," he added.

The Congress leader questioned Modi's silence, ban on Internet and denial of permission to Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi to meet the farmers in Mandsaur.

"Prime Minister Modi speaks of development (utthan), but has instead only tweeted about 'Uttana-Mandukasana' (yoga posture) in last 24 hours," Singhvi said.

The Congress leader said those who wanted to go and express solidarity with the farmers, including Rahul Gandhi, were denied permission and instead rumours and canards were spread that he wanted to go there to participate in the protest.

"Instead of giving a healing touch to the farmers, the government is preventing communication by banning the Internet," Singhvi said.

Hundreds of angry farmers on Wednesday blocked roads and attacked two top officials at Mandsaur as their leaders claimed that eight people had died in the police firing a day earlier.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Australian scientists began a clinical trial of injecting radiotherapy to combat aggressive breast cancer, media reported on Wednesday.

Women suffering from the most aggressive types of breast cancer will undergo treatment combining radiation with immunotherapy in an attempt to "reawaken" the immune system to fight the disease, Xinhua news agency said.

"The trial was approved after promising studies on animals where radiation was used to prepare the immune system to fight cancer," Sherene Loi, head of translational breast cancer research at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne, said.

She said using radiation and immunotherapy in conjunction was an "emerging idea."

Primary cancer in the breast is usually curable, but if it comes back it is "incurable", Loi was quoted as saying.

"We think that's because it outwits the immune system. Once you develop cancer, your immune system has failed. It can't see the cancer any more, and it also actively suppresses the immune system."

Loi's study was the first in the world to trial both immunotherapy and gene therapy together.

Breast cancer is the biggest killer of young and middle-aged Australian women.

Cancer Australia estimated that 17,586 women would be diagnosed with breast cancer in Australia in 2017, accounting for 13 percent of all new cancers in the country.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will attend the 17th Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Kazakhstan capital Astana, the Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday.

Pakistan will become a full member of the SCO at the Astana summit starting on Thursday, the Ministry said. Islamabad had been a SCO observer since 2005.

On the sidelines of the SCO summit, Sharif will hold a number of bilateral meetings with other participating leaders, Xinhua news agency reported.

SCO, established in 2001, is a regional political, economic and security organisation that includes China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan as full members.

India and Pakistan's SCO accession procedures started in 2015. The two signed the SCO Memorandum of Obligations in June 2016, kickstarting the formal process of joining SCO as full members.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
US President Donald Trump has spoken with the king of Saudi Arabia on the financing of terror organisations and the Gulf region's unity after seven countries broke diplomatic ties with Qatar, the White House said.

Trump spoke to King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud over the phone, Efe news reported.

The "leaders discussed the critical goals of preventing the financing of terrorist organisations and eliminating the promotion of extremism by any nation in the region", the White House statement said.

However, "the President underscored that a united Gulf Cooperation Council is critical to defeating terrorism and promoting regional stability," the statement added.

The Cooperation Council for the Arab states of the Gulf was formed by Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain on Monday announced the rupture of diplomatic ties with Qatar and ordered the closure of the land borders and suspended sea and air transport to the country.

Soon the Maldives and the governments that Saudi Arabia supports in the conflicts in Yemen and Libya also severed diplomatic ties with Qatar.

They accuse the Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani-led Qatari government of supporting terrorist organizations, including the Islamic State, Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Qatar has denied the charges, describing them as "unjustified" and based on slander, and has assured that it "fights against terrorism and extremism".

Trump on Tuesday hinted that the "hard line" with Qatar was partly a result of his tour of the region in May.

"During my recent trip to the Middle East, I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology. Leaders pointed to Qatar - look!," Trump said on his Twitter account.

The US President also said that it was "so good to see" that his trip to Riyadh is "already paying off."

"Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism!" Trump highlighted.

Despite Trump's comments, the White House later called on the countries involved to reduce tensions and resolve the crisis "immediately," while the State Department said that the relationship with Qatar was "solid" and that Washington "continues to cooperate" with that country.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Two teenagers drowned while bathing in the Yamuna river here on Wednesday, police said.

Himanshu Singh, 13, and Manish Kumar, 14, from Pradhan Enclave in Burari had gone for a morning walk with two other friends along the river.

A police officer told IANS that the two boys decided to take a dip in the river.

"(Himanshu) slipped while bathing and fell into the deep side of the river. Manish tried to save him and both drowned. The other two then called the locals and the police were informed," the officer said.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday strongly condemned the terrorist attacks on the mausoleum of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and the Parliament (Majlis) building in Tehran, capital of Iran.

"He extends his sincere condolences to the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the families of the victims and wishes a speedy recovery to those injured," Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for Guterres, was quoted by Xinhua.

The Secretary-General hopes those responsible for this unjustifiable violence will be swiftly brought to justice. All countries must work together in fighting terrorism while upholding the universal rights and values that bind the global community, the statement said.

On Wednesday, Two simultaneous terrorist attacks struck Iran's parliament and the mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini, the late supreme leader of the country who passed away in June 1989, killing 13 people and wounding 42 others, according to media reports.

The twin assaults were claimed by the Islamic State, which would be the first known to have been carried out by the radical Sunni group in mostly Shiite Iran.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In a bid to prevent its advertisements from appearing on websites that publish fake news or promote hate speech, Vodafone has decided to stop giving ads to those online platforms.

According to a report in The Times on Wednesday, the telecommunication player has put in place global rules intended to prevent its advertising from appearing on outlets that create or share hate speech or fake news.

"Hate speech and fake news threaten to undermine the principles of respect and trust that bind communities together," Vodafone CEO Vittorio Colao was quoted as saying.

"We will not tolerate our brand being associated with this kind of abusive and damaging content," he added.

Vodafone, which spends about 750 million pounds annually on advertising, said it will implement its new policy using a "whitelist-based" approach, where it will earmark media outlets that it is willing to advertise on rather than the ones that it is not.

According to Matt Peacock, Director of Corporate Affairs at Vodafone, the whitelist would not exclude "legitimate means of expression" which might be considered offensive to some people.

The move from Vodafone comes amid growing criticism of companies such as Google, the owner of YouTube, and Facebook over their failure to tackle extremist or abusive content.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Two youths belonging to a pro-Hindutva outfit manhandled Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury at a press conference here on Wednesday.

Enraged CPI-M members pounced upon the attackers, who are Hindu Sena activists, and thrashed them before handing them over to police.

The CPI-M politburo has strongly condemned the attack and blamed the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) for the incident.

Yechury, who was addressing a press conference on the violence in Madhya Pradesh's Mandsaur where five protesting farmers were killed in alleged police firing on Tuesday, described the attack on him as an attempt by the RSS "to silence the voices of dissent".

"We will not be cowed down by Sangh's goondagardi to silence us. This is a battle for the soul of India, which we will win," he tweeted.

Upendra Kumar and Pawan Kaul -- the attackers -- were taken to Mandir Marg Police Station.

The Hindu Sena activists entered the CPI-M office premises in Gole Market area of central Delhi chanting "Bharat Mata ki Jai" and slogans against Yechury, a police official said.

Hindu Sena President Vishnu Gupta told IANS that their two party workers were detained by police "for staging a peaceful protest against CPI-M for their article against the Indian Army" and had done "nothing" but only demanded the party's apology.

The CPI-M politburo later issued a statement condemning the attack by the two Hindu Sena activists and said: "This is typical of the RSS methodology of seeking to browbeat and intimidate the opposition."

"Masquerading as journalists, these persons tried to enter the hall where the conference was being held and started shouting anti-CPI-M slogans. They were immediately apprehended by CPI-M workers present there and handed over to police posted there.

"Such tactics will not be allowed to succeed," the statement said.

--IANS

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(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Indira Gandhi was a relative greenhorn in the matter of how to control the media. She used blunt instruments like limiting access to newsprint and regulating what price newspapers could charge  earning the disapproval of the Supreme Court. Later, in her dictatorial phase, she resorted to plain censorship. Subsequent rulers have realised that it is easier to control those who own the media than those who work in them. When a newspaper owned by a Mumbai businessman, Vijaypat Singhania, was proving to be a nuisance, one of Rajiv Gandhis flunkeys called him to Delhi and treated him to what amounted to mental third degree treatment; the newspaper was quickly sold and then shut down. Later, another Mumbai businessman who owned a news magazine was subjected to tax raids; the magazines editor had to intercede with the then prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Sometimes the carrot has obviated the need for the stick; several newspaper owners (and editors too) have been happy to be nominated to the Rajya Sabha, the quid pro quo being obvious. The most recent trend has been for the media to toe the line unbid, as an outpouring of what is presented as nationalist conviction. As for what is called the official media, the days of holding up even a fig leaf called autonomy belong to the past.
Continuing its barrage on the Centre over the farmer killings in Mandsaur, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPI(M) on Tuesday called on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Madhya Pradesh government to step up and come out with a solution to end the violence.

"We have issued a statement and condemned the police firing which happened today in Mandsaur. We have also demanded action against the guilty officials and asked Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra state government to offer compensation for all those who were injured in the incident," CPI (M) former general secretary Prakash Karat told reporters in New Delhi.

"The farmers in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra have been fighting for their demands and both the governments are not taking the matter seriously. We request the demands of the farmers to be immediately met by both the state government," Karat added.

Samajwadi Party chief and former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav earlier this day announced financial assistance of Rs 2 lakh for the kin of the deceased farmers.

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan had also increased the compensation for the kin of deceased, who were killed by security forces during a protest from Rs five lakh to 10 lakh.

The Chief Minister said that his government was sensitive to the farmers' cause and blamed the Congress party for a "conspiracy to fuel violence".

"This government is with the farmers. This government is sensitive and stands with farmers but Congress party, through conspiracy tried to fuel violence. We stand with the family of the kin of deceased," he said.

However, Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi accused the Centre of being at war with the nation's farmers.

Meanwhile, Chouhan also ordered a judicial enquiry into the matter.

Several others were injured in the firing by security forces here earlier in the day, as farmers intensified their agitation demanding fair price and loan waiver.

Internet services in Mandsaur, Ratlam and Ujjain remain suspended following the farmers' protests, and a curfew has also reportedly been imposed.

The farmers in the central state are demanding remunerative prices for their produce and a loan waiver. They are also demanding that they should be given Rs 50 per litre of milk bought from them as they spend Rs 37 per litre.

The killing of the farmers came hours after Mandsaur collector Swatantra Kumar Singh claimed all was well in the district and that the situation was under control.
Amid expectation that he would succeed Sonia Gandhi as the Congress president by mid-October, Congress vice president on Tuesday suggested the Congress Working Committee (CWC) a blueprint on the future shape of the party structure. stressed the need for the party to set up mass organisations among workers of unorganised sector, farmers and reach out to professionals, like chartered accountants, doctors and others.
One person was injured after a powerful Improvised Explosive Device (IED) exploded close to a commercial hub of Kasturi Bridge in Imphal city today evening.

Officials said the IED went off in front of a pharmacy. CCTV recording showed a person cloaked in a raincoat and wearing helmet loitering near the pharmacy prior to the blast.

Police commandos led by senior officers have cordoned off the area and a search operation is underway to nab the culprit.

Investigations are on, the police said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Taking note of poor disposal of public grievances, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath today sought clarification from 10 district magistrates including the one in the state capital.

The chief minister had recently reviewed the state of public grievances disposal in the districts.

He found that Lucknow, Hardoi, Gautam Buddh Nagar, Kanpur, Gorakhpur, Allahabad, Sitapur, Agra, Jaunpur and Kheri had performed poorly in disposal of public grievances.

"The chief minister has directed the chief secretary to seek clarification from the DMs of 10 districts. SSPs of these districts will also be questioned for the performance", an official spokesperson said here.

The officials of these districts have been asked to timely dispose of public grievances else strict action will be initiated against them.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Two members of a fringe Hindutva outfit barged into the CPI(M) headquarters here today and tried to "manhandle" party general secretary Sitaram Yechury. The Left party blamed the RSS for the incident.

The two men were subsequently put under arrest, the police said, adding that they were booked under sections 451 (house-trespass) and 504 (intentional insult) of the IPC.

Hindu Sena chief Vishnu Gupta said the two men, who entered the CPI(M) office posing as journalists, wanted to "express their anger" over the Left party's alleged criticism of the Army in an editorial in its mouthpiece, People's Democracy.

The CPI(M), however, has maintained that the editorial criticised Army chief Bipin Rawat for defending the recent act of an Army Major, who used a "human shield" against stone- pelters in Jammu and Kashmir, and not the armed forces.

Reacting to today's incident, the Left party said it will not be cowed down by the "Sangh's goondagardi (hooliganism)" aimed at silencing its leaders and that it will win the "battle for the soul of India".

Top opposition leaders, including Congress president Sonia Gandhi, vice-president Rahul Gandhi, NCP chief Sharad Pawar, JD(U)'s Sharad Yadav and CPI national secretary D Raja, condemned the incident and expressed solidarity with Yechury, sources in the CPI(M) said.

The incident took place as Yechury was about to enter the Central Committee Hall on the first floor of AK Gopalan Bhavan, the CPI(M) headquarters, to address the media on the conclusion of the party's two-day politburo meeting here.

The two men, Pawan Kumar Kaul (30) and Upender Kumar (24), shouting "CPI(M) murdabad (down with CPI-M)" and "Hindu Sena zindabad (long live Hindu Sena)" slogans, tried to get close to Yechury.

Kaul worked as the driver of a city-based lawyer, while Kumar was a cook at the canteen of a private hospital, the police said.

"They tried to manhandle Comrade Yechury, but we came in their way and he was safe," a CPI(M) worker said.

The two men were thrashed by the party workers before being handed over to the police.

Speaking to reporters, Yechury said the two men would have got "an adequate response" had they reached close enough to manhandle him.

"Without violence, without terror, the RSS has never been able to spread its political influence. These tactics have been answered by the people of India in the past and we will give them an answer again," he said in a video message.

On Twitter, the Left leader wrote, "We will not be cowed down by any attempts of Sangh's goondagardi to silence us. This is a battle for the soul of India, which we will win (sic)."



The police said they had received a complaint from the CPI(M) regarding the incident and the matter was being probed.

Kaul and Kumar told the police that they were associated with the Hindu Sena.

Reacting to the incident, JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav said the opposition will not allow these "efforts to stifle" their voice.

CPI's D Raja described the incident as an "attack by the right-wing forces on the country's Communist movement", which, he alleged, had become "aggressive" under the NDA regime.

"We urge the police to take appropriate measures to get to the root of the matter as there could be a sinister design behind the incident," he said.

Delhi Police had deployed heavy security around AK Gopalan Bhavan in view of Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan's presence at the CPI(M) politburo meeting, anticipating protests by cow vigilante groups.

The two-day meeting had begun yesterday.

Vijayan has been facing flak from right-wing outfits for his criticism of the Centre's recent notification banning the sale and purchase of cattle at the animal markets for the purpose of slaughter.

Kerala has witnessed numerous incidents of political violence involving the workers of the CPI(M) and BJP-RSS in the recent past.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Twenty workers were charred to death and 10 others were injured, two of them critically, in a fire at a cracker factory in Kheri village in Balaghat district this afternoon, an official said.

The blaze started around 3 pm in the factory located around 10 kms from the district headquarters in the Kotwali police station limits, Additional Director General of Police (Balaghat range) G Janardhan told PTI.

"Twenty workers were killed in the fire and 10 others sustained injuries. Of the injured, eight have been rushed to Nagpur (in Maharashtra) for treatment, while two are being treated at a hospital in the district," he added.

The condition of two of the eight injured, referred to Nagpur, is critical, the official said.

Meanwhile, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan announced a compensation of Rs 2 lakh each to the next kin of the deceased. The state government would also bear the medical expenses of the injured.

According to Balaghat district collector Bharat Yadav, the cracker factory was owned by one Waris Ahmed and was being run legally.

He added that the victims were workers of the factory and the incident took place when the production was on.

According to Yadav, the blaze has been completely doused and the rescue operation has also got over.

"Exactly what triggered the fire is yet be known. It is possible that someone might have thrown a burning beedi," he said.

Yadav said the factory was located away from the human settlement.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Scientists have discovered a 3,000-year-old rectangular copper mask in Argentina - one of the oldest human-made metal object from South America.

The mask, that dates back to about 1000 BC, was found at a site where adults and children were buried.

Holes mark the position of the mask's eyes, nose and mouth, with additional small, circular openings near the edges that could have been threaded to secure it to a face or an object.

Scientists from University of Buenos Aires in Argentina also found a source of copper ore within 70 kilometres of the location where the mask was uncovered, suggesting that it was produced locally.

It is probable that metalworking emerged in Argentina at the same time that it was developing in Peru, the researchers wrote in the study published in the journal Antiquity.

The metal mask - along with a collection of human bones - was found in a tomb near a village in northwestern Argentina.

There were about 14 bodies in the burial area, with the bones all mixed together and the mask placed on top of one corner of the pile.

Another burial area nearby held a single occupant. The bones of a child about 8 to 12 years old, also dating to about 3,000 years ago, were buried with a stone bead and a copper pendant, 'Live Science' reported.

The mask measures about 18 centimetres long and nearly 15 cm wide. To create the mask, someone would have hammered the metal flat while it was cold and then reheated it, researchers said.

The age of these metal objects - particularly the mask, crafted to deliberately resemble a human face - strongly suggests that people in the Argentinian regions of the Andes were shaping copper into artifacts earlier than previously thought, they said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Through Darkness to Light: Seeking Freedom on...

PLEASE NOTE!

Due to the March 23, 2020 NM DOH Public Health Order, These Event Listings Are Not Accurate!

All non-essential businesses are closed, public gatherings are prohibited!

(One day some of these events will be rescheduled or will resume, but they are not happening now!)
The Akal Takht today launched a scathing attack on the Punjab government over the arrest of some Sikhs who were allegedly preventing a Hindu outfit from burning the effigy of slain leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwala here.

Describing Bhindranwala as a "martyr of Sikhs", Akal Takht head Gurbachan Singh said that he was a role model to the community.

The Akal Takht is the top temporal seat of the Sikhs.

Gurbachan claimed that some members of a Hindu outfit yesterday, under police patronage, publicly burnt the effigy of Bhindranwala.

Some of the Sikhs, who were preventing members of the outfit from burning the effigy, were arrested, he said.

He asked the Punjab government to intervene in the matter and get the arrested Sikhs released and take action against the police personnel who watched the burning of a "Sikh martyr's" effigy as mute spectators.

He demanded arrest of the members of the Hindu outfit.

Bhindranwala was a militant leader who led his self- styled force to fight against the Army when Operation BlueStar was launched in June 1984.

Issuing a warning to the state government, Gurbachan said that if the government failed to initiate action against the guilty, the community would deal with the situation themselves with iron hands.

Meanwhile, Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar) president Simranjit Singh Mann said his party would come out with a strong strategy if those arrested were not released.

He demanded immediate arrest of the members of the Hindu outfit for allegedly hurting the sentiments of Sikh community.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
: The Madras High Court has ordered notice to the State government returnable by two weeks, on a plea to probe certain allegations against the Tamil Nadu University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences (TANUVAS) Vice-Chancellor.

Justice M M Sundresh passed the direction on a petition moved by an advocate G Anbazhagan, seeking to constitute a high-level enquiry committee to probe into the allegations against TANUVAS Vice-Chancellor including those with regard to recruitment of assistant professors.

The petitioner submitted that the Vice-Chancellor S Thilagar had been facing various allegations including large-scale violations in the recent recruitments to the post of assistant professors in the university.

He said that following various complaints the Board of Management of the University at a meeting held on April 11, resolved to constitute a committee comprising members in the grade of senior professors and officers to probe into the allegations.

Claiming that the enquiry committee comprising members subordinate to the Vice-Chancellor cannot hold an independent probe and the panel would certainly have influence of the higher authorities of the university, the petitioner sought an enquiry by a committee of individual members in the grade equal to or above that of a Vice-Chancellor.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Armed miscreants today looted over Rs 6 lakh from a Vananchal Gramin Bank at Chatarpur in Palamau district, a senior police officer said.

Seven miscreants armed with fire-arms arrived in four two-wheelers and took the staff members and customers hostage at gun point and decamped with the booty, said Superintendent of Police Indrajeet Mahatha..

Initially, we had report that the miscreants looted Rs 9.50 lakh but Rs 3.26 lakh, which they could not take away in haste, was found in the bank following a search, Mahatha told newsmen here.

The SP said the miscreants could sneak into Aurangabad district of Bihar as the police detected one speeding four-wheeler followed by a pick van suspiciously moving fast from Tandwa towards the Bihar border.

Earlier, Sub-Divisional Police Officer (Chatarpur) Sanjay Kumar did not rule out the possibility of local link behind the incident.

All exit points linking adjoining Garwah district and Aurangabad district of Bihar have been sealed and massive hunt launched to track down the culprits, he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Maharashtra government today appointed senior counsel Ashutosh Kumbhakoni as the new Advocate General of the state.

His appointment was cleared by Governor C Vidyasagar Rao this evening after the state cabinet recommended Kumbhakoni's name for the key post earlier in the day.

"The Governor has approved the appointment of Ashutosh Kumbhakoni as the new Advocate General of the state," an official from the Raj Bhavan told PTI.

The post had fallen vacant after former Advocate General Rohit Deo was appointed as a Bombay High Court judge last week.

Deo had been formally appointed as the state AG in December last year. Prior to that, Deo had worked as the acting AG after Shreehari Aney resigned following a controversy over his support for statehood for Vidarbha region.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Leader of Opposition in Delhi Assembly Vijender Gupta has urged the Lt Governor Anil Baijal to direct the government to attach bank accounts of 531 private schools defaulting in refund of excess fee charged.

Gupta, also the president of Delhi Abhibhavak Mahasangh, claimed that the guardians of school children were awaiting the fee refund since an order by the Delhi High Court concerning the matter came in 2011.

"The High Court had directed the schools to refund excess fee in 2011. But most of these schools failed to do so and the Kejriwal government has not taken any action despite being in power for two years," he said.

The Justice Anil Dev Committee had recommended the refund of excess fees charged from parents in respect of 531 private unaided recognised schools of Delhi after examining the records and accounts, he said.

"Arrears of Rs 350 crore is payable by 531 schools to the concerned parents. Out of the 531 schools, 53 schools have claimed to have refund the fee, while 40 schools have that they have returned partial fee," he claimed.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Rajasthan Congress chief Sachin Pilot today accused the BJP-ruled states of being "insensitive" towards farmers and suppressing their voice.

"In the last few days, farmers demanded relief from the governments in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. But, instead of paying heed to their demands, they killed them with bullets," he said in a statement.

Accusing the BJP governments in Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh were neglecting the farmers' issues, Pilot said about 60 farmers in Rajasthan have committed suicide due to the lack of government support or crop damage.

"But, the state government did not take cognisance of the deaths and cared to compensate their families," he alleged.

Condemning the police firing on farmers in Mandsaur of Madhya Pradesh, Pilot said, "It was done on the government's direction and reflects its insensitivity towards farmers."



He alleged that the BJP government had promised 50 per cent dividend to farmers on the cost incurred, but after winning the elections it termed it "impractical".

"Nearly 10.5 lakh farmers in Rajasthan are waiting for crop compensation from the last three years and most of their produce were not purchased on the minimum support prices."



Countering the BJP's allegation that Congress was behind the protest in Mandsaur, he said that the BJP has failed to win the trust of people and giving such statements to avoid it's accountability on the issue.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The BJP Kisan Morcha will ask chief ministers to boost consumption of staple produce of farmers by ensuring their use in government-run canteens or mid-day meals, a move which comes amid protests by farmers in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra.

Its president Virendra Singh 'Mast' said it is imperative to ensure that the main farm products get a ready market in various states so that farmers do not suffer losses. They resorted to protests in Madhya Pradesh because their produce was not getting sold, he said.

He told reporters that he will write to chief ministers on the matter.

At least five protesters were killed yesterday in alleged firing by the police in Madhya Pradesh. The state government has ordered a judicial enquiry even as the police denied allegations that they had fired.

Singh asked the farmers to keep their agitation non- violent, saying yesterday's violence had diverted the attention from their real demands.

With increasing demand from farmers in different states for a loan waiver on the lines of Uttar Pradesh, he said these governments should consider it but insisted that it was a temporary solution.

The remaining loan of farmers who pay their instalments in time should also be waived off in such a situation, he said.

He also took a dig at RBI Governor Urjit Patel after he warned that the fiscal situation would get out of hand if the states unabatedly continue to waive farm loans.

People in such constitutional posts should not talk like this, he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A joint team of governments of India and Bangladesh has selected a site for establishing a border haat in Dhalai district of Tripura.

"We have agreed to set up a border haat at Kamalpur (Kurmaghat) after conducting an on the spot visit by a joint Indo-Bangla team," Additional District Magistrate of Dhalai, D K Chakma, said.

Besides location, items to be sold at the proposed border haat and finalisation of venders were also done in a meeting held yesterday in presence of Additional DM of Moulavi Bazar of Bangladesh, he said.

"This was the first meeting of border haat management committee and it was very much successful. We will meet on regular basis to establish the Border Haat at the earliest," Chakma said.

However, there was a problem too in setting up the haat at Kamalpur/Kurmaghat as a canal would come on the way if it was set up along the zero line of the international border.

As per guidelines, border haats should come up along the zero lone of Indo-Bangla border.

The Industries and Commerce department would send an expert to find a solution to the problem, said Chakma, who led the Indian team.

Currently two border haats are functional in Tripura - one at Kamalasagar in Sepahijala district and another at Srinagar in South Tripura district.

Another border haat at Raghna in North Tripura district is also in the pipeline and its site has been selected.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
India will soon sign a pact with Somalia for exchange of sentenced prisoners as the Union Cabinet today gave its nod for it.

A meeting of the cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, gave its approval for signing and subsequent ratification of the agreement on transfer of sentenced persons between India and Somalia.

Signing the agreement with Somalia will facilitate the Indian inmates imprisoned in Somalia or vice-versa to be near to their families, for serving remaining part of their sentence and shall facilitate their social rehabilitation, an official statement said.

India has signed bilateral agreements on transfer of sentenced persons with United Kingdom, Mauritius, Bulgaria, France, Egypt, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Bangladesh, Brazil, Israel, Bosnia and Herzegovina, UAE, Italy, Turkey, Maldives, Thailand, Russian Federation, Kuwait, Vietnam, Australia, Hong Kong, Qatar, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Bahrain and Estonia.

Prior to 2004, there was no domestic legislation under which foreign prisoners could be transferred to the country of their origin to serve the remaining part of their sentence, nor was there a provision for the transfer of prisoners of Indian origin convicted by a foreign court to serve their sentence in India.

The transfer of such prisoners to their own native countries shall facilitate their social rehabilitation.

Hence the Repatriation of Prisoners Act, 2003 was enacted for achieving the above purpose. For achieving the objectives of the Act, a treaty/agreement is required to be signed with countries having mutual interest with India on this matter.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Canada's foreign minister has said that the country must spend more on its military now that the US is questioning its role of global leadership.

Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland yesterday told Parliament that relying on the "the US security umbrella would make us a client state."



She said Canada is committed to make a "substantial investment" in its military and said the defense minister would elaborate on that today.

Freeland said Canadians will always be grateful for the outsized role the US has played in the world and Canada will seek to persuade Washington that its continued leadership is in the interest of the US and the free world.

She didn't mention President Donald Trump by name but reiterated Canada's disappointment in Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement.

"Many of the voters in last year's presidential election cast their ballots, animated in part by a desire to shrug off the burden of world leadership," Freeland said.

"The fact that our friend and ally has come to question the very worth of its mantle of global leadership, puts into sharper focus the need for the rest of us to set our own clear and sovereign course."



Freeland said Canada must do its fair share and dismissed those who are reluctant to spend billions on the military because Canada could "free ride on US military power."



"To put it plainly: Canadian diplomacy and development sometimes require the backing of hard power," she said. Freeland noted Canada's military contribution to Ukraine and said the atrocities of the Islamic State extremist group directly challenge both the sanctity of borders and the liberal international order. Canada has about 800 military personnel in the international anti-terror coalition but removed its fighter jets after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Liberal government was elected in late 2015.

Canada has about 200 troops the Ukraine and 220 in Poland.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Senior CPI leader D Pandian today accused the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre of working against the interests and rights of Tamil Nadu and its people.

Whether it was the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test or issues related to farmers, the Centre had acted against the state's interests, he told reporters here.

He also alleged that the AIADMK government was remaining "a mute spectator" as it wanted to 'safeguard' its position.

Referring to the death of five farmers in Madhya Pradesh, he said it showed the BJP was "against" the interest of ryots.

The central government did not meet the agitating farmers from Tamil Nadu for nearly 40 days in New Delhi, seeking among other things waiver of loans and drought relief, he added.

Pandian, who is here to attend the two-state Committee meeting of the party, said that the future strategy, like alliance, would be decided during the meet.

On supporting DMK, he said CPI would cooperate with any party that was against BJP. "This should not be treated as an alliance for the elections", he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Aamir Khan-starrer Dangal, that has scripted history in China by becoming the first top-grossing non-Hollywood film, earned rare praise today from a top Chinese leader who lauded it for being a "success story" which needs to be highlighted by the media in BRICS nations.

"If I remember it correctly, there is a movie in India 'Wrestle my father' (Chinese name for Dangal), is very popular in China in a very short time," with record revenues, raking up more revenue than Chinese movies, Liu Yunshan, a ranking leader of the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC), said while addressing participants of the BRICS Media Forum being held here.

"Dangal is the most successful movie in recent years," said Liu, who is ranked fifth in the all-powerful seven-member Standing Committee of the CPC which rules the country.

"I think this is a very typical example of a success story. We media groups need to give it more coverage. This will serve as a good example," he said.

For example, the Indian media should be proud of this movie because it is very successful in China and very influential, he said.

"Perhaps we should take this opportunity to express our voice," he said, adding that "we need things which are helpful, conducive and constructive for sure".

Editors and journalists from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) are attending the forum being organised by China's Xinhua agency ahead of this year's BRICS Summit to be held in the Chinese city of Xiamen in September this year.

Dangal which raked up over Rs 1,100 crore since it was released in China on May 5 has created history by becoming only the 33rd film in China's history to cross RMB one billion.

It is still continuing to play over 7,000 screens across China.

Liu, in his address, also attacked the western media, saying that it is spreading the fake in the past few years.

"There has been a lot of fake in the western media. Like President Vladimir Putin said some countries actually created those fake news," he said.

"Mainstream media in BRICS countries must strengthen efforts to disseminate more positive news about BRICS countries and we can convey more positive energy. This is our responsibility," Liu said.

He also claimed that media in China which is state- controlled enjoys freedom.

"In China, I don't think (there is) any problem with media freedom...China has negative news in the past," he said.

"In the western world, there is fight against fake news," Liu said apparently referring to the allegations by US President Donald Trump against the media.

He also said traditional media in BRICS countries should catch-up with the western media and strengthen mutual beneficial cooperation, assistance and learning.

Liu suggested an exchange of professionals, mutual interviews and technological cooperation among the BRICS countries.

Mainstream media in BRICS countries need to express common voice telling good stories from BRICS countries, he said.

The media should also fight the pessimistic outlook being spread by the western media. Also, some international rating agencies are downgrading credit ratings of the BRICS countries.

It is being done because "they believe we are not promising. Because they don't believe in our future".

A BRICS media joint photography exhibition has also been organised on the sidelines of the two-day forum which will conclude tomorrow.
Widespread violence, including several incidents of arson, were reported from western Madhya Pradesh, especially Mandsaur and Dewas districts, on the seventh day of the farmers' agitation on Wednesday.

The Centre rushed 1,100 anti-riots police personnel to Mandsaur district where five persons were killed on Tuesday allegedly in police firing.

Though Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan announced a compensation of Rs 1 crore each for the families of five farmers, it didn't seem to have mollified the protesters who are demanding better prices for their produce and a complete farm loan waiver.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government also announced a loan settlement scheme which it said will cover around six lakh farmers with accumulated dues of Rs 6,000 crore.

The government is contemplating a formula wherein it may waive interest on crop loans. Also, an Agricultural Costs and Marketing Commission to ensure better prices for farm produce would be set up, minister Archana Chitnis said after attending a meeting chaired by Chouhan.

The bandh called by the main Opposition Congress received a mixed response.

Curfew remained in force at Pipaliya Mandi area -- where five farmers were killed and six others were injured on Tuesday -- and in Mandsaur town. Prohibitory orders under section 144 of CrPC are still in place in the rest of the district, Inspector General of Police V Madhukumar said.

The six injured persons were out of danger while the slain farmers were cremated, Madhukumar told PTI.

Tension prevailed in Mandsaur town again on Wednesday, where all business establishments and offices remained closed. Police detained the former Mandsaur MP Meenakshi Natrajan who was not allowed to enter the district to meet families of the slain farmers.

Mandsaur collector S K Singh was heckled when he tried to persuade protesters to lift road blockade in Berheda Pant area.

Shops were torched in Suasara town in the district.

Inspector Shyambabu Sharma of Suasara police station received head injuries when the police were trying to bring a mob under control which was throwing stones at Guratiya Pratap square.

A warehouse was set ablaze in Badi Choupati area and the Mhow-Neemuch highway was blocked for hours in Mandsaur.

In Dewas district, protesters threw stones and set on fire four passenger buses running between Indore-Bhopal and eight other vehicles in Newari Fata area. Passengers in the buses got down and were safe, but Indore-Bhopal bus services were suspended.

A mob also torched vehicles parked outside the Hat Pipaliya police station in Dewas district.

Protesting Congress workers stopped a train in Dewas.

Shops and offices in Neemuch district adjoining Mandsaur also remained shut. Protesters set on fire a police outpost in Harkiya Khal Phanta area.

In Ujjain district, around 10 policemen, including Mahal Kal police station's inspector Ajeet Tiwari, were injured in stone-pelting.

Protesters threw vegetables and fruits on road in Sanwer and Simrol areas of Indore and emptied milk containers.

In Khargone district, Bharatiya Kisan Sangh workers led by Gopal Patidar burnt an effigy of state home minister Bhupendra Singh in protest of alleged police firing in Mandsaur.

In Sehore district, the car of the additional collector of Barwani district, Jayendra Kumar, was pelted with stones. Protesters blocked the Indore-Bhopal highway at Ashta.

Violence was also reported from Dhar, while other areas of the state remained peaceful.

Congress legal cell chairman and Rajya Sabha member Vivek Tankha announced that the party would extend legal help to 450-odd farmers against whom "false cases" have been registered during the agitation.
As Manhattan's top federal prosecutor, Preet Bharara cultivated an image as a lawman above politics. No more.

In the three months since he was fired by President Donald Trump, the former US attorney has lashed out at the Republican administration in speeches and on Twitter.

He's also jabbed at the president of Turkey, called one GOP congressman a "fool," and said if another were an immigrant, he'd face deportation.

With the constraints of a law enforcement job gone, Bharara has found a more political voice for himself, especially online.

He has already been approached by Democrats who want him to run for elected office as soon as next year.

People close to Bharara say he's eager to maintain an active voice in the political debate particularly anything to do with the president who forced him from the job he loved. It remains unclear, however, if the 48-year-old India-born attorney will continue to speak out as a private citizen or as a political candidate.

Some friends want him to enjoy his new post as a "distinguished scholar" at New York University, where he is contemplating writing a book or contributing to his brother's media site.

Others want him to join a private law firm, where his experience battling public corruption could be put to practical use.

"A lot of people want a lot of things from Preet. I'm not sure Preet wants any of that for himself," said former Justice Department attorney Viet Dinh, a close friend of Bharara's since college.

"Right now, what he wants to do is spend time with his family, enjoy a quasi-academic perch and take a breath." Bharara declined to be interviewed for this story, but friends and colleagues paint the picture of a man who has no plans to disappear from the spotlight after being forced out after seven years leading the US attorney's office in Manhattan a region that covers Trump Tower.

The conditions are already in place for a transition from federal prosecutor to political prospect.

Already, a captivated New York media is quick to promote Bharara's Twitter feed, which is packed with slaps at Trump and other Republicans.

He tweeted Wednesday that "people including presidents reap what they sow." Last week, he went after California Rep. Dana Rohrabacher: "One benefit of being a private citizen is that I can now publicly say that Rep. Rohrabacher is a fool."



And in March, he threw shade at New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, whose administration was plagued by the so-called Bridgegate controversy: "Yes, we all know that Chris Christie is great at spotting & screening out problematic staff," he wrote.

At the same time, Bharara wears his dismissal as a badge of honor, even if he's not quite over the hangover of losing the job Trump once told him he could keep. The president fired Bharara in March as part of a broader effort to replace US attorneys appointed by President Barack Obama.

"I loved that place like people love their family," Bharara said during an April speech at Manhattan's Cooper Union. "I was asked to resign. I refused. I insisted on being fired, so I was."



The dismissal may have helped Bharara's political career, should he want one.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Uttar Pradesh Police today arrested five persons in connection with a heist in which eight kg of gold was looted from a city-based jeweller last week near here.

On June 3, Abhilash Agarwal was returning to Bareilly from Lucknow with the gold when he was looted by five miscreants.

"Officials of the crime branch, Special Task Force and surveillance were pressed into action. The team arrested three persons -- Sonu alias Savarjit, Pradeep Kohli and Satru Singh. Two jewellers Sachin and Virendra have also been arrested," Additional Director General of UP Police B L Meena said today.

The looted gold and cash worth Rs 5.52 lakh was recovered from them, he said.

The police have also launched a search for Agarwal's former driver Manoj on the suspicion that he was involved in the heist, Meena said.

Agarwal was accosted on the busy Bareilly-Lucknow highway, 35 km from here. The jeweller was returning from Lucknow from where he purchased the gold. He told police that the robbers fled towards Shahjahanpur, the ADG said.

Eight teams of police were for to nab the culprits, Meena said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Following are the top stories from the northern region at 1815 HRS



DES2 UP-SP-BSP-COMMON PLATFORM



Lucknow: Arch rivals in UP, the Samajwadi Party and the BSP will share a common platform at a rally organised by Lalu Prasad's Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) in Patna, heralding a new phase of politics in the country's cow belt.

DEL37 JK-LD INFILTRATION



Srinagar: Two militants were gunned down when the Army foiled an infiltration bid in Machil sector of north Kashmir's Kupwara district, an official said.

DEL5 JK-SURRENDER



Srinagar: A Hizbul Mujahideen militant, who was seen in a video taken during the funeral of outfit commander Sabzar Bhat last week, has surrendered before authorities in Kashmir, police said.

DES7 MHA-BORDER



New Delhi: The government has floodlit 647 kilometres of the borders with Pakistan and Bangladesh to prevent terrorists and immigrants from infiltrating into Indian territory.

DEL20 NAIDU-MANMOHAN-ENGINE



New Delhi: Taking a dig at former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's statement that the economy was running on "just one engine of public spending", Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu thanked him for acknowledging that India was propelled by a single, high-powered engine under Narendra Modi.

DES18 UP-GOAT-EATS CASH



Kannauj: Much to the shock of a farmer in Uttar Pradesh his goat chewed up currency notes worth Rs 62,000 kept in the pocket of his trousers while he had gone for a bath.

DES16 DL-DUBOOK-LD SKIRT



New Delhi: A BCom (Honours) textbook advising students to write emails short enough to be interesting like skirts has created an outrage on social media. The book 'Basic Business Communication' has been authored by C B Gupta, a former head of the commerce department of a Delhi University-affiliated college.

DES6 UP-FACEBOOK POST ARREST



Aligarh (UP): A BSP leader and another person have been arrested for allegedly posting an objectionable picture of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Facebook.

DES3 AVI-PILOTS-SINHA



New Delhi: Union minister Jayant Sinha has said that regulators and pilots should work together in a "very collaborative manner", amid DGCA complaining to the police against some pilots.

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Following are the top stories from the northern region at 2115 HRS



DES2 UP-SP-BSP-COMMON PLATFORM



Lucknow: Arch rivals in UP, the Samajwadi Party and the BSP will share a common platform at a rally organised by Lalu Prasad's Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) in Patna, heralding a new phase of politics in the country's cow belt.

DEL53 JK-2ND LD INFILTRATION



Srinagar: Three heavily-armed militants were killed in a gunbattle in the Kupwara district as the Army foiled the third major infiltration bid in less than a fortnight along the Line of Control (LoC) in north Kashmir, a senior official said.

DEL5 JK-SURRENDER



Srinagar: A Hizbul Mujahideen militant, who was seen in a video taken during the funeral of outfit commander Sabzar Bhat last week, has surrendered before authorities in Kashmir, police said.

DES7 MHA-BORDER



New Delhi: The government has floodlit 647 kilometres of the borders with Pakistan and Bangladesh to prevent terrorists and immigrants from infiltrating into Indian territory.

DEL62 GURGAON-GANGRAPE-LD ARREST



Gurgaon: Nine days after a woman was gangraped and her nine-month-old baby flung to the ground and killed to smother her cries, the police arrested one of the three men allegedly responsible for the double crime.

DEL54 NIA-SAMJHAUTA



New Delhi: India has handed over to Islamabad summonses issued by a special NIA court to 13 Pakistanis for deposing as witnesses in connection with the 2007 Samjhauta Express blast case in which 68 people were killed.

DES25 DL-CPI(M)-LD BREACH



New Delhi: Two persons were held for allegedly barging into the CPI(M) head office here and trying to manhandle party general secretary Sitaram Yechury in an episode the Left party was quick to blame the RSS for.

DES18 UP-GOAT-EATS CASH



Kannauj: Much to the shock of a farmer in Uttar Pradesh his goat chewed up currency notes worth Rs 62,000 kept in the pocket of his trousers while he had gone for a bath.

DES16 DL-DUBOOK-LD SKIRT



New Delhi: A BCom (Honours) textbook advising students to write emails short enough to be interesting like skirts has created an outrage on social media. The book 'Basic Business Communication' has been authored by C B Gupta, a former head of the commerce department of a Delhi University-affiliated college.

DES6 UP-FACEBOOK POST ARREST



Aligarh (UP): A BSP leader and another person have been arrested for allegedly posting an objectionable picture of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Facebook.

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Deriding opposition efforts to weave together a united front in the run-up to the 2019 elections, Union Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu said today that three Cs - the corrupt, the casteist and the communal - were trying to come together.

The grand alliance that the opposition was working towards would not succeed and only help consolidate BJP's position as the principal challenger in states like Kerala and West Bengal, he said.

"I wish the best of luck to all of them to come together and leave the space for us. In Bengal, I hope the Congress, the Communist party and TMC come together so that BJP can take on the remaining space. And in Kerela, the Congress and Left can come together and benefit us. This is like cooperation in Delhi, operation in Calcutta and separation in Kerala," Naidu told reporters on the sidelines of a function here.

Naidu, who holds multiple portfolios, including information and broadcasting and urban development, said all opposition parties were scared of Narendra Modi and were spreading a disinformation campaign to malign him. However, this would boomerang on them.

"They are rattled by the steps of the PM against corruption and black money. Now, the three Cs are trying to come together - one corrupt, second casteist and the third communal," he said.

Citing previous attempts to form a national front against the BJP, the senior party leader said, "We have seen it in the past too. There is no principle, no common programme, no consensus on leadership. Rather being a national front, it became a notional front, united front became a divided front, third front became a distant third front."



"....So that being the case I don't think this effort of grand alliance will succeed," the BJP leader said.

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The Bombay High Court today dismissed a petition filed by scam-tainted Adarsh housing society seeking to defreeze two of its bank accounts, while observing that the money in the account could be part of 'benami' transactions.

The society had approached the high court after its plea for defreezing of the bank accounts was turned down by a special CBI court in September 2015.

The CBI had in January 2011 froze two bank accounts of the society after registering a case against 14 accused, including several members of the society.

According to the society, the amount - totalling Rs 1.47 crore - lying in the two accounts had nothing to do with the purported scam.

The society claimed that the two bank accounts were opened with the State Bank of India's Cuffe Parade and Wodehouse Road branches, to bear legal expenses and day-to-day expenditure of the society.

CBI counsel Hiten Venegaonkar opposed the petition and said the amount could be part of benami transactions and hence, be proceeds of crime.

Justice Anil Menon today accepted the CBI's contention.

"There is no merit in the petition. The society has been allowed by the Supreme Court in the past to open a fresh account," Justice Menon said dismissing the petition.

The plush 31-storey building at Colaba in south Mumbai is embroiled in a controversy since 2011 with the Union Ministry of Environment and Forest ordering for its demolition for violating environmental norms and the Defence Ministry claiming ownership of the land where it is constructed.

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Madras High Court Bench here today dismissed a PIL seeking a direction to the government to test the milk supplied by the private dairy firms in view of the statement of a Tamil Nadu Minister that chemicals were being adultrated by them.

Justices A Selvam and N Athinathan dismissed the petition as withdrawn after the government advocate submitted that a similar plea had been filed before the principal bench in Chennai and necessary steps were being taken in the matter.

Hence, there was no need for entertaining the PIL in the Madurai bench, he submitted.

Pettioner Raju, a PIL litigant of Ramanathapuram, said no action had been taken by the government despite the Dairy Development Minister K T Rajenthra Bhalaji recently saying that the chemicals were added in the by most private milk producers to increase the shelf life of their products.

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India today signed the OECD multilateral convention that aims to check cross-border tax evasion by multinational companies.

Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley signed the multilateral convention in Paris to implement tax treaty- related measures to prevent base erosion and profit shifting.

More than 65 countries, including India, signed the convention. More countries are expected to sign the convention in coming days, a finance ministry statement said.

"The Convention will modify India's treaties in order to curb revenue loss through treaty abuse and base erosion and profit shifting strategies by ensuring that profits are taxed where substantive economic activities generating the profits are carried out and where value is created," the statement added.

The Multilateral Convention is an outcome of the OECD/G20 Project to tackle Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) which is resorted to by MNCs through tax planning strategies by exploiting gaps and mismatches in tax rules.

It helps them artificially shift profits to low or no-tax locations, resulting in little or no overall corporate tax being paid. The BEPS Project identified 15 actions to address BEPS in a comprehensive manner, the statement said.

India was part of the Ad Hoc Group of more than 100 countries and jurisdictions from G20, OECD, BEPS associates and other interested countries, which worked on an equal footing on the finalisation of the text of the Multilateral Convention, starting May, 2015.

The Convention enables all signatories to meet treaty- related minimum standards that were agreed as part of the final BEPS package, including the minimum standard for the prevention of treaty abuse under Action 6.

The Convention will operate to modify tax treaties between two or more parties to the Convention.

The Convention will not function in the same way as an amending protocol to a single existing treaty, which would directly amend the text of the tax agreement.

Instead, it will be applied alongside existing tax treaties, modifying their application in order to implement the BEPS measures.
India will be admitted as a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) during the summit of the regional grouping on June 8-9 in Kazakhstan, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be present.

The prime minister is expected to hold a bilateral meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the summit at Kazakhstan's capital city of Astana. However, there is no meeting scheduled between Modi and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif.

Pakistan will also be admitted as a full member of the SCO along with India during the Astana summit.

"Indications are that the last leg of the entire process, as per the Memorandum of Obligations, which is the confirmation (of membership) by the heads of the states of the existing members of the SCO, is going to happen in Astana," G V Srinivas, joint secretary of the Eurasia division in the MEA, said.

Modi will also attend the World Expo 2017, an international exposition, in Kazakhstan.

Srinivas said that there could be a couple of more bilateral meetings between India and heads of the member states.

Apart from China, there is also the possibility of a meeting between India and Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan is the largest supplier of uranium to India.

When asked whether Modi would meet Xi on the sidelines of the SCO summit, MEA spokesperson Gopal Baglay said, "There is a possibility, but the schedule is being worked out and our missions are coordinating locally."



On Modi and Sharif's meeting, he said, "External Affairs Minister (Sushma Swaraj) has already said that there was neither any request from their side nor any such proposal from our side. There is no change in the status on this."



Srinivas said India had been an observer country at the SCO since 2005 and had applied for a full membership in 2014.

Founded in 2001, the SCO currently has six members--- China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, and is headquartered in Chinese capital of Beijing.

During Modi's visit to St Petersburg earlier this month, Russian President Vladimir Putin had conveyed to India about its admission as a full member of the SCO.

Highlighting the advantages of joining the regional grouping, Srinivas said one of the aspects deals with economy, connectivity and trade, while another aspect focuses on terrorism which includes protection of classified information. He said 38 different documents have been signed by India to be a part of the body.

On being asked that the SCO summit statement of 2015 had a reference to the Belt and Road Forum (BRF), a Chinese initiative opposed by India, the official said the aspect was not part of the 38 documents signed by India to become a member of the grouping.

The One Belt One Road (OBOR) project under the Belt and Road Forum seeks to connect China with Europe, Asia and Africa. The China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is also a part of the project.

India opposes CPEC as it passes through Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK).

India also hopes to benefit from Tashkent-based Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (RATS).

"There is little possibility of India staying out of such an exercise. We hope that as we join the RATS, we will be able to benefit from this collaboration against our fight against terrorism. They (RATS) do a series of activities, including joint exercises in fighting terrorism, maintaining a data bank of terrorists and undesirable elements etc," Srinivas said.

Responding to a query on whether or not India would be invited to participate in any anti-terror exercise alongside Pakistan and China, Baglay said, "We work with many countries, including Pakistan, as well as in UN peacekeeping operations. Terrorism is a fight which is incumbent on the entire humanity, not just countries."



Srinivas also underlined the importance of "connectivity" after becoming a full member of the SCO.

"Connectivity for example is the prime desire for the country as we want to connect to central Asia," he said.

For better connectivity with Central Asia, the official said India has also applied for a membership of the Ashgabat agreement.

The Ashgabat agreement is a multi modal transport agreement between Oman, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Pakistan for creating an international transport and transit corridor, facilitating transportation of goods between Central Asia and the Persian Gulf.

Baglay said the SCO has member states who are neighbours to Afghanistan and it will be an institutional forum where India can engage with these nations.

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Navy chief Admiral Sunil Lanba will visit Israel next week close on the heels of Israel signing two major defence contracts with India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi's planned trip to the country.

Lanba, also the chairman of Chiefs of Staff Committee, will visit Israel from June 11 to 15 during which he would be "reviewing progress on ongoing projects and initiatives" with Israel, besides holding meetings with Israel's Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot and the head of Israeli Navy.

He is also likely to meet Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman.

The Navy chief's visit comes ahead of Modi's proposed visit to Israel in July, a first by an Indian Prime Minister.

Israel's state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) last month announced that it has closed yet another major deal worth USD 630 million with India, giving a boost to the Indian government's 'Make in India' campaign in a project to be jointly executed with Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL).

The contract is related to the supply of LRSAM (Long Range Surface to Air Missiles) systems for four ships of the Indian navy.

The contract will be carried out, for the first time, with Indian government owned BEL which will serve as the main contractor in the project as part of India's 'Make in India' policy.

In April, Israel closed a USD 2 billion defence deal with India with IAI taking the lion's share of it with contracts worth USD 1.6 billion. It is the largest single deal in the history of the Jewish state.

"The new contract adds to other deals signed in the last decade by IAI with India's defence forces, reinforcing IAI's global leadership position in air and missile defence systems.

The inclusion of BEL for the first time, is a step up in our relationship with the Indian industry as part of the 'Make in India' policy", IAI's President and Ceo, Joseph Weiss, had said after closing the USD 630 million deal about two weeks ago.

"This unique project represents the close collaboration between India's DRDO, IAI and the defence forces of both countries. We will proceed to implementing it with joint efforts," Weiss said.

LRSAM is an advanced air and missile defence system, a unique joint development by IAI and India's Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) in collaboration with IAI subsidiary ELTA, RAFAEL, various Indian companies including BEL, L&T, BDL and other private Indian companies.

The system comprises several key state-of-the-art elements, advanced phased-array radar (MFSTAR), command and control system, launchers and missiles with advanced RF seekers.

The system provides the ultimate protection against a variety of aerial, naval and air borne threats. It is currently operational with the Indian Air Force, Indian Navy and Israel Defence Forces.

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Chinese smartphone maker iVoomi plans to make phones in India with initial investment of Rs 250 crore and export handsets to countries like China, Taiwan and Korea.

The company expects to have its manufacturing facility in the country by the first quarter of 2018.

"We are waiting for the day when we will have manufacturing in India and ship (products) to Korea, China and Taiwan. We want to develop environment and infrastructure here where we can deliver product to these countries,"iVoomi India CEO Ashwin Bhandari told PTI.

"In the first quarter of 2018, we plan to have our captive plant," he said.

The company plans to invest Rs 250 crore initially in the manufacturing facility, smartphone assembly and product development, he said.

"We will initially have our phone assembled at two plants in India. These are third party plants. We are in talks with Foxconn and VSun. Next year, we expect to start our own manufacturing unit," Bhandari said.

The company entered India around March with the launch of its 4G VoLTE smartphone iV505 for Rs 3,999. IVoomi has plans to sell 4G smartphone in the price range of Rs 4,000 to Rs 10,000 a unit.

"This is the segment which has seen the highest growth. We want to provide this segment new products with unique designs and features. We expect to capture 4 per cent market share in Indian smartphone segment by the end of 2018 which should help us in generating revenue of Rs 1,000 crore," Bhandari said.

He said that company will focus on product quality and use minimum cost communication channel to communicate about the product so that price of the product is kept low.

"We don't want to paint all the walls in the country and then escalate the price of the product. We will use the right channel to reach out to our target customers," Bhandari said.

IVoomi plans to set up 500-600 service centres across the country that will be managed by its captive nodal care offices.

"Every nodal care centre will manage 30-50 service centres. We will ensure that once a product issue reaches our nodal care, then it should be serviced within 24 hours.

"In phase 1, we will use multi-brand service centres as customer interface. By mid 2018, we will have around 110 exclusive service centres and then go for next 300 centres," Bhandari said.

He said that company will start selling products in select market namely Maharashtra, Karnataka, Gujarat, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Delhi and Kolkata.

The company plans to hire 150 people for sales and after sales services.

"We will be building system, processes, software to use minimal human resource. We will target to hire close to 150 people by mid of next year. This will be only product, after sales, and sales. Post we switch on the product development, we will have additional manpower," Bhandari said.

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Actor Jake Gyllenhaal will be starring in World War II adventure thriller, "The Lost Airman."



The "Southpaw" actor will also be producing the project along with John Lesher, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The movie is based on Seth Meyerowitz's book "The Lost Airman: A True Story Of Escape From Nazi-Occupied France."



The 36-year-old actor will be seen playing Arthur Meyerowitz, an American turret-gunner, whose plane was shot down over France in 1943.

Seth Meyerowitz, Anthony Mattero of Foundry Literary Media and Dan Bodansky of Dixon Talent will be the executive producers on the film.

Lesher is currently working on "White Boy Rick", a drug drama starring Matthew McConaughey.

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Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and other political leaders today condemned the alleged attack on CPI-M general secretary Sitaram Yechury at AKG Bhavan, New Delhi.

Vijayan said the attack amounted to an assault on Indian democracy.

The chief minister's office tweeted "strongly condemn the attack on Com: @SitaramYechury.It amounts to an attack on Indian Democracy."



Opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala said the attackers were "cowards" who could not challenge ideology with ideology and that is why they confront political rivals through violence.

Chennithala alleged that Hindu sena activists attacked the CPI-M leader and it was a challenge to democracy.

CPI-M has decided to hold protests across the state, condemning the incident, party sources said.

CPI state secretary Kanam Rajendran condemned the incident and said it exposed the 'intolerant attitude' of the Sangh Parivar.

Two persons allegedly barged into the CPI(M) head office in Delhi and shouted slogans against the Left, ahead of a press conference by Yechury.

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Security forces arrested four militants including two women in Manipur, police said today..

A team of state police apprehended one cadre of NSCN (K) identified as 48-year-old Jiten Golmei during an operation at Oinam Kabui Khul Maning Leikai in Bishnupur district, a police press release said.

Golmei was involved in extortion activities.

A combined team of police commandos, army and Assam Rifles arrested an active member of the proscribed outfit KCP (Poirei) from Yairipok Kekru Mathak Leikai in Thoubal district.

Identified as Longjam Bijando Singh, the 48-year-old during the investigation revealed name of two other woman militants of the outfit.

The two women militants were arrested from their respective residences in the presence of women police personnel, said the press release.

Meanwhile, four persons have been arrested in connection with the seizure of 342 fake driving licenses, the release added.

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After exploring the digital dating space with an app and meeting possible partners through offline meets, differently-abled people in the national capital will now get to live the city's nightlife too.

People with special needs across the country found a platform, similar to dating applications such as Tinder and OkCupid, to help them look for suitable partners, with the launch of smartphone application 'Inclov' in January 2016.

A month later, the founders started organising offline meetings, called Social Spaces. The next meetup will be held at a night club in New Delhi on June 26 in the first initiative of the kind in the country.

"We try to do these meetups at different kinds of places. Places where people with disability don't feel secluded, where anyone could be a part of it without feeling awkward," the startup's cofounder, Shankar Srinivasan, told PTI.

The casual meetings had so far been held on beaches, at public parks, yoga studios, cafes, restaurants and hotels.

After a positive initial response for the mobile application, which now has over 10,000 users and about 5,000 matches, Srinivasan and his team realised that despite using the application and other ways of communication the users were still hesitant to meet each other.

"Most of the users were not meeting each other in person, because of several reasons like safety and social stigma. More than that, they also don't know if all the places are accessible, with wheelchair ramps, accessible washrooms and so on," he said.

So Srinivasan decided that they had to step in.

"This is what we wanted to change with Social Spaces, he said.

To underline its theme of inclusivity, the Social Spaces meets are open to all and not restricted to people with disabilities, he added.

While a matchmaking meetup sounds like traditional Indian events, Srinivasan says the attempt is to just to help meet - and have fun.

"It is not like lining up 10 guys and 10 girls with their biodata. Instead of that we play games, do activities, interact with each other. We also do stand-up comedies, musical performances, Yoga sessions, karaoke, storytelling, poetry slams and much more," he said.

With success stories like that of a Polio-affected couple getting married and more in the making, the team wants to take 'Inclov' to a global level by end of next year.

However, Inclov is not the only one in the digital dating space for differently-abled, another application 'Glimmer' also promises to offer an inclusive space for those looking for partners.

While Inclov's Social Spaces have people meeting each other in person, Glimmer's functions are limited to matchmaking.

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Mauritania has become the latest country to cut diplomatic relations with Qatar as part of a growing rift between the energy-rich Gulf nation and other Arab countries.

In a statement by the Foreign Ministry, the African country accused Qatar of having connections to terrorist organisations.

It said Qatar is "promoting extremist thoughts and spreading chaos and disturbances across many of the Arab countries, resulting in big humanitarian miseries."



Qatar long has denied supporting terror groups.

Mauritania has strong military and economic ties to oil- rich Saudi Arabia, which led the diplomatic spat with Qatar.

Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and others have severed diplomatic relations and cut off air, land and sea access to Qatar, in the most serious Gulf diplomatic crisis since the 1991 war against Iraq.

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North Korea launched what appear to be ballistic missiles from its east coast tosday, South Korea's defence ministry said -- in what would be the latest in a series of tests by Pyongyang in defiance of UN sanctions.

"North Korea fired multiple unidentified projectiles, assumed to be surface-to-ship missiles, this morning from the vicinity of Wonsan, Gangwon Province," it said.

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Rafael Nadal warned of the threat presented by Dominic Thiem's "huge potential" ahead of their clash for a place in Sunday's French Open final.

The Spaniard qualified for the semi-finals at Roland Garros for the 10th time on Wednesday after compatriot Pablo Carreno Busta retired with an abdominal injury while trailing 6-2, 2-0.

Thiem is the only player to defeat Nadal on clay this season and sealed a return to the last four in Paris with a sensational 7-6 (7/5), 6-3, 6-0 upset of defending champion Novak Djokovic.

Friday's semi-final will be the fourth meeting between Nadal and Thiem this season, all of which have come on clay.

"Thiem is a tough player. I won in Barcelona, Madrid, and I lost to him in Rome," said Nadal, who is attempting to become the first man to win 10 titles at a single Grand Slam.

"So either you play well and you advance to the next round or you lose and you're out."



Nadal beat the Austrian to lift the trophy in both Madrid and Barcelona, but Thiem exacted a measure of revenge with a 6-4, 6-3 win over the 31-year-old at the Rome Masters.

"In Rome it was not a good day for me. I was not in a position to play well the way I wanted to," recounted Nadal.

"He put me in a difficult situation, so it's up to me to avoid being put in uncomfortable situations."



Thiem downed Djokovic for his first win in six matches against the Serb and is through to just his second semi-final at a major.

"He's a very good player. He hits the ball very hard. He's very powerful on both sides. Forehand, backhand, serve. These weapons are quite good," said Nadal of his upcoming opponent.

"He has a huge potential to tap, and he can hit the ball very hard. He doesn't give you a lot of options."



Neither Nadal nor Thiem have dropped a set in reaching the last four, with the Spaniard losing just 22 games through five matches.

Bjorn Borg surrendered just 32 games on his way to the 1978 French Open, but Nadal insisted he has no interest in such records.

"I don't know how many games I lost this year, but I really don't care about this. I only care that I am in the semi-finals," said Nadal.

"My only goal is try to be ready to play my best. The rest of these things, we can always find behind the stones.

"We're going to find more and more records, but at the end of the day these kind of things are not important.

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Rajya Sabha member of parliament Shantaram Naik has asked Union External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj to protect the interests ofIndians in Qatar.

"Around 6,50,000 Indians, including 10,000 Goans are living and doing business in Qatar, who according to a report, outnumber native Qataris by almost 2:1 ratio, their interest should be protected," Naik said in an email to Swaraj this week.

Naik said the whole nation is concerned on account of recent Gulf crisis due to Saudi-led grouping of Bahrain, Egypt and the UAE, Yemenand surprisingly, Maldives, cutting off diplomatic as well as, civil aviation and shipping ties with Qatar.

Naik further said that a local newspaper published from Goa has reported that "with the uncertain situation in Qatar, a large number of Goans and other Indians began rushing to supermarkets and stores in Doha to stock up on essential of food supply."



Naik said "India takes over 90 per cent of its natural gas import from Qatar. In addition, Qatar is in process of building a domestic airline in India."



"That itself puts India in a unique place. Saudi Arabia, on the other hand is among the top suppliers of oil to India," Naik said quoting a media report.

In view of a serious situation developing in Qatar, India has to use diplomatic channels in the interest of Indian population there, the MP said.

"The Government of India should not take things for granted, and that, Prime Minister's visits do not necessarily help in such matters," he said.

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NetApp today announced launch of NetApp Excellerator programme, the company's first startup accelerator here, which will provide startups with access to productivity tools and networking opportunities with potentialinvestors.

The programme will provide an equity-free grant of USD 15,000 to these startups on completion of the programme, NetApp India Senior Vice President and Managing Director Deepak Visweswaraiah said in a statement here.

"What is more is that the startups can own their IP (Intellectual Property) and NetApp would not seek a stake in the same," he added.

The programme will provide startups with access to collaboration and productivity tools, co-working space out of the company's global centre of excellence in Bengaluru as well as networking opportunities with potential investors, partners, and customers, he said.

Selected startups will have access to NetApp platforms and technologies, tools, co-working space, HR, marketing,legal and tech support, Visweswaraiah said.

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Scientists have discovered a new species of flying squirrel in North America that had been hiding in plain sight for hundreds of years.

Known as Humboldt's flying squirrel, or Glaucomys oregonensis, the new flying squirrel species inhabits the Pacific Coast region of North America.

Until now, these coastal populations were simply thought to be the already-known northern flying squirrel, researchers said.

"For 200 years we thought we had only had one species of flying squirrel in the Northwest - until we looked at the nuclear genome, in addition to mitochondrial DNA, for the first time," said Jim Kenagy, professor at the University of Washington in the US.

"It was a surprising discovery," said Kenagy, co-author of the study published in the Journal of Mammalogy.

The Humboldt's flying squirrel is known as a "cryptic" species - a species that was previously thought to be another, known species because the two look similar.

This new discovery of the Humboldt's flying squirrel is the 45th known species of flying squirrel in the world, researchers said.

What are now three species of flying squirrels in North and Central America are all small, nocturnally-active, gliding squirrels that live in woodland habitats, they said.

These creatures do not actually fly like bats or birds. Instead, they glide from tree to tree by extending furred membranes of skin that stretch from the wrist of the forearm to the ankle on the hind leg.

Their feather-like tail provides extra lift and also aids in steering.

The gliding ability of flying squirrels is remarkable; they are capable of gliding for up to 100 meters and can make sharp, midair turns by using their tail as a rudder and moving their limbs to manipulate the shape and tautness of their gliding membranes.

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The National Green Tribunal today came down heavily on various states for not submitting compliance report on appointment to the posts of chairpersons and member secretaries in their pollution control boards.

The NGT had in August last year asked the state governments to fill the vacancies in the boards as per the guidelines laid down by it and file the report.

"The judgement was delivered in August last year and you had to file compliance report in three months. But you have nothing.

"We had given you ample time for complying with our directions. Today, you are seeking time verbally. You are not putting anything on record. This is not the way," a vacation bench, headed by Justice R S Rathore, said.

The observation came after Goa sought 45 days to make appointments to its state pollution control board.

The counsel appearing for the Goa government said that panchayat elections are due in the state and the model code of conduct is in operation, making it difficult for it to comply with the NGT direction.

He said that the state government is "more than willing and has all the intentions" to implement the orders of the tribunal but some more time should be given to it.

The bench, however, refused to budge and posted the matter for hearing tomorrow.

The tribunal also directed the governments of UP, Haryana, Rajasthan, Punjab, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Manipur and Telangana to file their response to the show cause notice issued by it on appointments in their respective pollution control boards.

Earlier, the NGT had issued notices to the states and chairpersons of their pollution control boards who have not been appointed as per the norms laid down by it.

The green panel had asked them why they should not be directed to cease functioning as chairman of the respective boards for not being appointed in consonance with the judgement of the tribunal.

The green panel, which had issued a slew of guidelines for appointments to the posts of Chairman and Member Secretary, had in August said the nominations should be of persons who have "special knowledge, practical experience or qualification in environment protection studies" and not on the ground of their association with state government.

The tribunal said the chairman or member secretary should have a fixed term, which should not be extended. Such persons should not hold office in the Board in accordance to their tenure in state government.

The judgement had come on a plea by Uttarakhand resident Rajendra Singh Bhandari, who had challenged the constitution of state pollution control boards on the ground that people who did not qualify were appointed as chairman, member secretary and members of these boards.

According to the plea, these appointments are bound to affect environmental issues seriously in as much as the grant of consents under Prevention and Control of Pollution Act and the entire regulatory regime depended on the effective working of these boards.

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The NIA has roped in the government's cyber security arm to analyse various electronic evidences, collected during its recent raids on separatists and businessmen in the Kashmir Valley to check terror funding.

Official sources today said that 22 laptops and computers, 100 mobiles and nearly 200 pen drives and memory sticks have been sent to the Computer Emergency Response Team- India (CERT-IN) for creating a mirror copy or backup files.

The CERT-IN will also provide other technical details related to the data in the devices sent to it, they said.

The central probe agency has asked CERT-IN to look for deleted material in the electronic gadgets seized during the raids, the sources said.

The NIA will intensify its investigation after receiving the report from the cyber organisation, they said.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) had conducted raids on Saturday and Sunday at the residences of separatists and businessmen in the Kashmir Valley, Jammu, Delhi and Haryana's Sonepat and Gurgaon.

Among those searched by the NIA included Nayeem Khan, Ayaz Akbar, Peer Saifullah, Altaf Fantoosh (son-in-law of hardline separatist Syed Ali Shah Geelani) and businessman Zahoor Watali besides others.

The raids were part of effort's of the NIA to clamp down on separatist groups allegedly receiving funds for subversive activities in the Valley.

They recovered unaccounted account books, Rs 2 crore in cash and letterheads of banned terror groups including Pakistan-based Lashker-e-Taiba (LeT) and Hizbul Mujahideen (HM).

The investigation sought to probe the entire chain of players behind the financing of terrorist activities, including those who threw stones at security forces, burned down schools and damaged government establishments.

Bank accounts and lockers revealed during the probe had been frozen.

Besides electronic gadgets, phone diaries and documents such as 'katchcha' (informal) receipts and vouchers had been seized from alleged hawala operators, financiers and office bearers of separatist groups.

While no separatist leader from the Valley has been named in the FIR registered by the NIA, organisations like the Hurriyat Conference (factions led by Geelani and Mirwaiz Umer Farooq), HM, Dukhtaran-e-Milat and LeT besides Pakistan-based chief of Jamaat-ul Dawah Hafeez Saeed have been mentioned.

During the searches, a few thousand Pakistani rupees and currencies belonging to the UAE and Saudi Arabia as well letter heads of the LeT and the HM were seized by the NIA.

The NIA has alleged that since the cross-LoC trade, at Uri in Kashmir and Chakan-da-bad in Jammu, was based on a barter system, some businessmen "under- or over-invoiced" their bills, and the difference in payment was later used for promoting subversive activities in the valley.

This is for the first time since the rise of militancy in Kashmir in the early 1990s that a central probe agency carried out raids in connection with terror funding to separatists.

In 2002, the Income Tax department had executed searches against some separatist leaders, including Geelani, and seized cash and documents.

However, no criminal case was registered then.

The NIA raids were carried out following the questioning of three separatist leaders -- Nayeem Khan, who was seen on television during a sting operation purportedly confessing to receiving money from Pakistan-based terror groups, Farooq Ahmed Dar alias 'Bitta Karate' and Gazi Javed Baba of Tehreek-e-Hurriyat, in the national capital last month.

The sleuths believe the separatists were receiving funds from LeT chief Hafiz Saeed.

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Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is tweeting his thanks to former US President Barack Obama after the two shared a private dinner at a Montreal restaurant.

Trudeau posted a picture of the pair talking in the eatery, with the caption "How do we get young leaders to take action in their communities? Thanks BarackObama for your visit & insights tonight in my hometown."



A crowd cheered the two leaders as they left.

Last year, Obama hosted Trudeau for a state dinner at the White House, the first for Canada since 1997.

Obama spoke to the Montreal Board of Trade yesterday and decried what he called the lack of American leadership on climate change, a swipe at new President Donald Trump's administration.

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The CID has identified over 500 fake doctors practising in government hospitals and private clinics in West Bengal.

A highly-placed official of the agency said that around seven to eight fake institutes were involved in the racket.

"Fake doctors are present in sizable numbers in government and private hospitals all over the state. We have information that around seven to eight fake institutes in the state are involved in the business apart from other such establishments in neighbouring states," the official said.

State Medical Council president Nirmal Maji said that they had a list which would be handed over to the police."



The CID already arrested six fake doctors from various parts of the state including Ajay Tiwary and Naren Pandey who were attached to two renowned private hospitals in the metropolis.

It has also seized a large number of documents comprising fake marksheets, fake records of students of MBBS course after raiding the office of Alternative Medical Council of Calcutta at Barasat in North 24-Parganas district.

During the raid they also seized the soft copy of fake MBBS record of another such doctor Kushinath Halder which was detected in the hard disc of the office.

CID sleuths said that fake certificates and registration numbers were given by those institutes at a hefty price.

Maji said that the fake doctors had links with senior officials of the health department besides political laders and civil and police officers.

"The fake doctors have been practising since the days of the Left Front government. Thier contacts had helped them practice as doctors," he said.

On the insistence of CID, the Council had issued a directive to doctors to register themselves afresh, and renew and update their credentials with them.

The medical council also directed hospitals to provide it with names of registered doctors which would help the council screen the list of doctors practising in the state.

The Medical Council had lodged complaints with the police based on which the arrests were made. The Council also appealed to the people to inform it if they suspected anybody to be a fake doctor.

Police sources said that old registration numbers, used by doctors who are not in the profession now or had expired, were being provided to such persons.

Maji said that the state Medical Council would accept complaints from the people from today.

"If a complaint is found genuine, we will get an FIR lodged," he said adding that the state government was trying to formulate a mechanism to stop the practice.

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Pakistan today condemned the Islamic State-claimed terror attacks on Iran's parliament and the shrine of its revolutionary leader in Tehran and said it stands in solidarity with people of the neighbouring country.

At least 12 people were killed in the twin attacks claimed by the Islamic State group. The attack had led to a siege at the legislature that ended with four attackers dead.

"We stand in solidarity with the people of Iran in their hour of grief," Pakistan's Foreign Office said.

"We offer our deep condolences to the people of Iran, the government, and the bereaved families and pray for the speedy recovery of those injured," it said.

Pakistan and Iran share border in the restive Sistan- Balochistan region. Tehran has previously accused Islamabad of sheltering Sunni terrorist groups who often target its border security forces in the region. It has threatened to hit "terror safe havens" inside Pakistan.

Pakistan Foreign Office today also said that Pakistan condemns terrorism, "which is a global phenomenon and a common challenge, requiring resolute and coordinated approach to deal with the menace.

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The Punjab Congress today demanded the resignation of Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan over the death of five persons in the farmers' agitation in the state.

"The party condemns the killings in police firing in MP," Punjab Congress chief Sunil Jakhar told reporters here.

Holding the BJP government there responsible for "mishandling" the situation, he demanded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi seek Chouhan's resignation.

"On one hand, the BJP government at the Centre has promised to double the income of farmers by 2022 and on the other, bullets were fired on growers demanding debt relief," Jakhar said.

Five persons were killed yesterday in MP's Mandsaur district as an agitation by farmers for debt relief and better crop prices turned violent, prompting authorities to clamp curfew in the trouble-hit area.

"What happened in MP is very sad and disturbing. The Centre should immediately ask the MP chief minister to step down," the Congress leader said.

On waiving debts of farmers in Punjab, Jakhar said, "The Amarinder Singh-led state government is committed to honour its pre-poll promise."



Hitting-out at the previous SAD-BJP dispensation for doing "nothing" for the welfare of farmers, he said, "They have not done anything for growers and are now questioning us on debt waiver. Amarinder Singh is the only hope for farmers in the state."



The Congress in its poll manifesto had also promised to eliminate loan and auction and give farmers the complete payment for their crops.

Meanwhile, the Congress chief also held a meeting with all the vice-presidents of the party's district units here.

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Three domestic pilots' unions today accused a senior DGCA official of "misusing" his powers and sought his suspension.

National Aviators Guild (the pilots union of Jet Airways), Indian Pilots Guild and Indian Commercial Pilots Association, in a joint letter to Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju, demanded immediate suspension and departmental inquiry against the officer for "misusing his official powers".

The copies of the letter have also been marked to the Prime Minister's Office, Cabinet Secretary and Civil Aviation Secretary.

The unions accused the official of "victimising and threatening" with regulatory and police action some of the pilots for airing their views against a draft note on which the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) had sought comments.

The DGCA recently proposed a notice period of one year for pilots and six months for co-pilots before leaving an airline, a proposal various pilots unions are opposed to.

The DGCA and the official invited comments on the draft note. In the response by a few pilots, the official's designation was written incorrectly, for which some 10 pilots of Jet Airways were taken off flying duty.

When contacted, the official denied all allegations and said that proposed rules have been drafted on behalf of the civil aviation ministry and not by him.

In a rare move, yesterday DGCA filed a police complaint against 34 pilots of Jet Airways, IndiGo, SpiceJet and GoAir for allegedly posting "obscene" messages on a WhatsApp group against one of its officials. Following this, Delhi Police questioned 13 pilots.

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Piramal Enterprises today said it has provided Rs 1,100 crore funds to real estate firm Embassy group for development of housing and commercial projects in Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad.

"Piramal Enterprises through its subsidiary Piramal Finance Ltd has financed the Embassy Group for an amount of Rs 1,100 crore," a company statement said.

The funding has been done to residential and commercial projects in Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad over a span of the last six months, it added.

Piramal Finance first funded Rs 360 crore towards Embassy Residences project in Chennai spread over 25 acres with about 0.3 million sq ft of built up area.

Then it made an investment in Phoenix-Embassy, which is a joint venture between Embassy and Phoenix Group of Hyderabad.

The JV is developing about 1.5 million sq ft of grade-A commercial space in Hyderabad with a potential to develop a further 4 million sq ft.

Later, Piramal Finance has provided Rs 650 crore of growth capital to the Embassy Group.

Bengaluru-based Embassy Group is one of India's largest commercial real estate developers having delivered about 30 million sq ft of commercial office space and around 6 million sq ft of housing.

The Group has a pipeline of about 17 million sq ft of commercial developments across Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai.

Piramal Finance Ltd MD Khushru Jijina said the company has provided Embassy Group with customised financial solutions to scale up presence across both residential and commercial projects.

Embassy group CMD Jitu Virwani said: "We are delighted to be working closely with a large diversified conglomerate like the Piramal Group which is known for its structuring capabilities and quick turnaround time."



He said the company would leverage Piramal Group capabilities as we partner with them on our growth capital requirements going forward."



Piramal Enterprises is one of India's large diversified companies, with a presence in pharma, healthcare insights and analytics and financial services. Its consolidated revenues were over USD 1.3 billion in financial year 2016-17, with 51 per cent of revenues generated from outside India.

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British police today said a 30-year- old man was arrested following the London Bridge terror attack which killed seven people and injured 48.

The man was arrested in the eastern London suburb of Ilford, near Barking where two of the assailants lived. The Saturday attack was claimed by the Islamic State and follows the May 22 suicide bombing at the Manchester Arena by Salman Abedi, killing 22 people.

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Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and other political leaders, including from BJP, today condemned the alleged attack on CPI-M general secretary Sitaram Yechury at AKG Bhavan in New Delhi.

Vijayan said the "attack" by sangh parivar on the CPI-M leader at party headquarters is "shocking to democratic consciousness."



Vijayan alleged that it was a pre-planned attack and CPI-M would not succumb to the "sangh parivar's threat."



"No one should think that CPI-M can be cowed down or silenced with violence," he said.

The chief minister also alleged that the sangh parivar under the cover of BJP-led government at the Centre has "unleashed a fascist model violence across the country."



Vijayan said the CPI-M would move forward by uniting people against the "Hindutuva fascist violence."



The chief minister's office tweeted "strongly condemn the attack on Com: @SitaramYechury.It amounts to an attack on Indian Democracy."



Opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala said the attackers were "cowards" who could not challenge ideology with ideology and that is why they confront political rivals through violence.

Chennithala alleged that Hindu sena activists attacked the CPI-M leader and it was a challenge to democracy.

CPI state secretary Kanam Rajendran condemned the incident and said it exposed the 'intolerant attitude' of the Sangh Parivar.

BJP in Kerala also condemned the 'attack' and said it was inappropriate to physically attack a political leader in a democratic country.

BJP State President Kummanom Rajasekharan said BJP leadership had already said that neither the party nor the RSS had any role in the incident at the AKG bhavan.

Two Hindu sena workers have been arrested in connection with it, he said, adding, "they have told police that CPI-M leaders' unsavoury remarks against army had provoked them."



"Still it is with an ulterior motive that efforts are on to link BJP-RSS with the incident...CPI-M should retreat from that attempt," he said.

Rajasekharan said CPI-M leaders had not come forward even to condemn the attack on the BJP office here few months ago."BJP now condemns the attack on CPI-M leader as the party believed in democracy," he added.

He wanted stern action against those who carried out out the 'attack'.

KPCC president M M Hassan said confronting political rivals through violence is a challenge to democracy and wanted strong action to be taken against the culprits.

Condemning the incident, veteran CPI-M leader V S Achuthanandan said government should take steps to ban outfits like the Hindu Sena.

Two persons were held today for allegedly barging into the CPI(M) head office in Delhi and trying to manhandle Yechury.

The incident took place when Yechury was about to enterthe central committee hall on the first floor of the CPI(M) office to address the press on conclusion of the party's two-day politburo meeting.

The identity of the two men, who also shouted slogans of "CPI(M) murdabad" and "Hindu Sena zindabad", could not be immediately known.

However, the Left alleged the duo owed allegiance to an RSS outfit and entered the office "masquerading as journalists" in an attempt to disturb the press conference, which was later held as scheduled.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi has asked secretaries to consult Indian envoys across the world to seek their views on ways to boost the tourism sector.

The issue came for discussion during a recent meeting between Modi and secretaries of different ministries.

According to sources, the Prime Minister stated that huge potential exists in the tourism sector here.

"He asked the secretaries to consult Ambassadors and High Commissioners of all the countries and seek suggestions on ways to further boost the sector's growth as it holds huge employment opportunities," they said.

Envoys can also share the details about the movement of foreign and Indian tourists in that respective country.

Foreign tourist arrivals in India has increased by 10.7 per cent with 9.05 lakh people visiting the country in March as compared to 8.17 lakh in the same period last year.

A total of 1.46 lakh tourists arrived on the e-tourist visa in March as compared to 1.16 lakh in March 2016, registering a growth of 25.8 per cent, according to the tourism ministry.

In that month, maximum number of tourists arrived from countries including Bangladesh, the US, the UK, Russia, Malaysia, Canada, Germany, Sri Lanka, China, France, Australia, Japan, Afghanistan, Singapore and Iran.

India has jumped 16 places in the revised World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) rankings to settle at 24th for 2014 and 2015.

Earlier, it was ranked 41st and 40th in 2014 and 2015, respectively, as per the global ranking.

The UNWTO is the United Nation's agency managing promotion of



responsible, sustainable and universally accessible tourism and its barometer ranks countries in terms of their international tourist arrivals - comprising both foreign tourist arrivals as well as non- resident arrivals.

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Qatar sympathisers in the UAE will be facing a jail term up to 15 years and be slapped with a fine of not less than half a million dirhams, a top official warned today.

In a statement, Attorney-General Counsellor Dr Hamad Saif Al Shamsi, announced that the UAE has taken a firm stance against Qatar's hostile and irresponsible policies.

"Strict and firm action will be taken against anyone who shows sympathy or any form of bias towards Qatar, or against anyone who objects to the position of the United Arab Emirates, whether it be through the means of social media, or any type of written, visual or verbal form," Gulf quoted Al Shamsi as saying.

The UAE, Bahrain, Egypt were among those who joined Saudi Arabia on Monday in cutting diplomatic ties with Qatar. They alleged Qatar funds terror groups.

The Federal Public Prosecution also announced that according to the Federal Penal Code and the Federal law decree on Combating Information Technology Crimes, anyone who threaten the interests, national unity and stability of the UAE will face a jail term from three to 15 years, and a fine not less than 500,000 dirhams (approx USD 876,5260).

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Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi is expected to visit Madhya Pradesh's violence-hit Mandsaur district tomorrow to meet the kin of the five persons who were killed in violence during the farmers' agitation.

Five persons were yesterday killed as the farmers' agitation turned violent in Mandsaur, prompting the authorities to clamp curfew in the trouble-hit area.

"Rahulji is expected to visit Mandsaur tomorrow," Congress MLA Jaivardhan Singh told PTI today.

"Our leader wants to meet the family members of the deceased and comfort them," Jaivardhan, son of senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh, said.

"The entire Congress is with Madhya Pradesh's farmers in distress. The BJP-led state government should wake up from its slumber and help the farmers in need," he said.

Neemuch Superintendent of Police Manoj Kumar Singh said Gandhi was expected to visit Mandsaur today, but it got postponed.

"Rahul was expected to visit Mandsaur today but his plan got postponed. He was supposed to land in Neemuch, the adjoining district of Mandsaur," the SP said.

Mandsaur has been on the boil since the farmers' agitation in the district turned violent.

Farmers in western Madhya Pradesh are protesting since June 1 over various demands.

The protesters demanding better crop prices, among other things, "heckled" Mandsaur collector this morning when he tried to pacify them.

Also, former MP from Mandsaur, Meenakshi Natarajan, was detained when she was on her way to meet the family members of the deceased.

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Protests by farmers in Madhya Pradesh spilled into Rajasthan, with those from the state's Pratapgarh district, neighbouring Mandsaur, stopped the supply of milk and vegetables for a day in support of their demands but later withdrew their stir after assurances from the administration.

A farmer's body, Kisan Mahapanchayat today decided to go to Mandsaur in Madhya Pradesh, which is about 30 km from Pratapgarh and relatives of many farmers live there, to meet the families of those who were killed in yesterday's violence.

Five persons were killed yesterday as the farmers' agitation turned violent in Mandsaur district of Madhya Pradesh, prompting the authorities to clamp curfew in the trouble-hit area.

President of the Mahapanchayat, Rampal Jat today held a meeting and later took out a rally from Anaj Mandi to Gandhi Chowk there in support of the agitating farmers.

"We paid obeisance to the five victims at Gandhi Chowk and observe silence for two minutes. Now are moving to Mandsaur to meet the family members of the victims. Nearly 100 people will be going to Mandsaur," Jat told PTI.

He said that the farmers from across the country were with the agitating peasants in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh.

In Rajasthan, he said, farmers are holding a dharna at Mandi Bandh in Pratapgarh and the movement is likely to reach villages.

"We will be meeting farmers in Tonk, Swai Madhopur, Kota Bundi, Bhilwara, Chhittorgarh, Pratapgarh and Ajmer in the next three days to decide future course of action," he added.

Condemning the alleged atrocities by police on protesting farmers in Mandsaur, he said the government is trying to suppress the voice of farmers in the democracy, which is not acceptable.

"We will continue to fight for our demands. We have presented a memorandum to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje apprising them about the issues of farmers. We want farmers to be free from all kinds of loans and the government should implement Kisan Commission 2004 report from August 15, 2007. The Centre should also get Farmers' Income and Pricing Guarantee Bill 2012 passed," he said.

Considering it to be a sensitive matter, Pratapgarh district administration officials said they have made ample arrangement to control the situation.

"There was a protest of farmers yesterday, which was called-off after their meeting with us. The situation is under control in Pratapgarh. However, we are alert as the matter is sensitive," Pratapgarh district collector, Neha Giri said.

District Superintendent of Police Shivraj Meena said that as the district is neighbouring Mandsaur and many local farmers have relatives there, there were some agitation here. "But as a precautionary measure, we have made our arrangements," he added.

Former MLA and All India Kisan Sabha state president Pemaram said farmers in Rajasthan will also launch a state- wide agitation if the government fails to meet their demands.

"Problem of farmers in Rajasthan are same as that of those in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. We also want higher prices for milk, hike in minimum support price (MSP) and loan waiver. Farmers would submit memorandum to district collectors and the state government should take our ultimatum seriously," he said.

Meanwhile, farmers in Rajasthan's international border district Srigangnagar and neighboring towns are protesting since last one week, demanding proper water supply for crop irrigation.

"Ganga canal, which is a major source of water supply for drinking water and crop irrigation, has been damanged at 550 places. Of which 327 need to be repaired immediately. We have also been protesting for issues of equal water distribution to farmers for their crops," member of Central Farmers Council, Sheopat Meghwal said.

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Russian officials today angrily rejected allegations that Russian hackers breached Qatar's state agency and planted a fake story that led to a split between Qatar and the other Arab nations.

Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for President Vladimir Putin, today dismissed yesterday's CNN report containing the claim as "yet another fake, another lie."



Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Egypt and Yemen cut diplomatic ties with the tiny Gulf state, accusing Qatar of harbouring extremists and backing Saudi Arabia's regional rival, Iran. Qatar has denied the allegations.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also dismissed CNN's report yesterday, saying it "further undermined its reputation as an independent and objective media outlet."



"CNN and some other media sit and wait for any kind of scandal ... To automatically and without any evidence blame it on Russia or Russian hackers," he said at a conference following his talks with Spanish Foreign Minister Alfonso Dastis.

Tensions between Qatar and Saudi Arabia - a Middle East heavyweight - bubbled to the surface two weeks ago when Qatar said its state-run news agency and its Twitter account were hacked to publish a fake story claiming the emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, had called Iran "a regional and Islamic power that cannot be ignored."



State-linked media in the region ignored Qatar's denial and continued to report the comments. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt blocked access to Al Jazeera and launched an aggressive campaign accusing Qatar of supporting terrorist groups like al-Qaida and the Islamic State, destabilising the region and stabbing its allies in the back.

Putin had a telephone conversation with the emir of Qatar yesterday, urging dialogue. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said the allegations of Russian hacking weren't discussed.

Lavrov emphasised that "it's important to settle any differences at a negotiating table to ease concerns that emerged and pool efforts in the fight against the main regional threat, terrorism."



Andrei Krutskhikh, the Russian president's special envoy for cybersecurity, told the Interfax news agency that Tuesday's CNN report contains "zero evidence" that the Russian government was behind the news story.

Vladimir Dzhabarov, deputy chairman of the foreign affairs committee at the upper chamber of parliament, today dismissed the accusations as "an attempt to push the US against Russia as key players in the Middle East."



"The world has gone crazy," Dzhabarov said. "Whatever happens, there is a Russian trace there, the trace of Russian hackers.

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The Securities Appellate Tribunal has reduced by a month the duration for which broker Integrated Master Securities was barred by Sebi from accepting new clients in a case related to violation of stock broking norms in trading of shares of Gangotri Textiles.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) had barred Integrated Master Securities from accepting fresh clients for two months in an order on May 15, 2017.

In its order yesterday, the Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT) observed that as a broker Integrated Master Securities should have taken due care and diligence while executing the orders of its clients including possibilities of the clients indulging in manipulative practices.

The Tribunal noted that there is no evidence to show that the stock broker itself was party to any of the manipulative practices.

While upholding Sebi order, the SAT limited the period of restraint imposed on the broker in admitting fresh clients to one month from the date of the order.

A probe conducted by Sebi in the share trading of Gangotri Textiles during April-May 2006 had found that certain entities allegedly functioned as a group (Vishvas Group) and by trading through their respective stock brokers or otherwise, had allegedly executed synchronised, circular as well as reversal trades among themselves.

Cosmo Corporate Services and Master Finlease, who were clients of Integrated Master Securities, had allegedly executed illegal synchronised and circular trades in the scrip of Gangotri Textiles.

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The prosecution today began argument on framing of charges in two cases filed by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) against Sahara group chairman Subrata Roy and three others.

Prosecutor Poornima Advani told the court that two companies promoted by Roy -- Sahara India Real Estate Corporation (SIREC) and Sahara Housing Investment (SHI) -- issued Optionally Fully Convertible Debentures (OFCD) in 2009 without stating correct facts in the prospectus and misleading the investors.

They had no approval for 'Red Herring Prospectus' from SEBI, and didn't list OFCDs on the stock exchange, she said.

OFCDs were issued without executing debenture trust deed, appointment of debenture trustees and creation of security reserve for debenture redemption, she added.

Roy and other accused today filed applications seeking discharge from the case which may be heard on June 28.

Meanwhile, Roy's doctor, R N Jain, filed an affidavit stating that Roy could not attend the court last month as he was undergoing treatment for gastroenteritis.

However, Advani said that Roy was not at his house during the period when he was supposedly undergoing treatment. Besides, the ailment does not require bed rest and he could have attended the court, she said.

Judge M G Deshpande said he was not "adjudicating" this matter.

"My limited purpose was to ensure Roy's presence before the court," the judge said.

Apart from Roy, three directors of Sahara group firms are accused in the case.

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Following the ink controversy in the Rajya Sabha polls in Haryana last year, the Election Commission has decided to use special pens for the electors to mark their votes in the July 17 presidential election.

"For marking the votes, the Commission will supply particular pens. This pen will be given to the electors in the polling station by the designated official when the ballot paper is handed over. Electors have to mark the ballot only with this particular pen and not with any other pen. Voting by using any other pen may lead to invalidation of the vote," Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi told reporters here.

The decision to use special pens is based on the recommendations made by a working group set up by the poll panel to suggest ways to avoid repeat of such disputes in future polls.

Twelve votes marked using a wrong pen were declared invalid leading to the defeat of Congress-backed independent candidate R K Anand, a lawyer, to media baron Subhash Chandra.

The EC has mandated that all votes to be cast using a violet pen for uniformity and to ensure that secrecy of votes is maintained.

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Several policemen were "injured" today when students of two south Kashmir-based institutions clashed with them and pelted stones during their protests against the death of a youth during last evening's anti- militancy operation in Shopian district.

Students of Islamic University of Science and Technology (IUST) at Awantipora and Higher Secondary School Pampore in Pulwama district boycotted their classes and took to streets against the killing of Adil Farooq Magray, police said.

Magray, a student, had died during a clash between protestors and security forces in Shopian district last evening.

"The students, both girls and boys, pelted stones on the forces and blocked (Srinagar-Jammu) national highway. To maintain peace security forces deployed in the area dispersed them with maximum restrain," a police spokesman said.

He said a "large number" of police personnel received injuries due to heavy stone pelting by the students in Namblabal in Pampore and University Road in Awantipora.

"The situation was brought under control and the highway was kept open for vehicular movement," the spokesman said.

A complete shutdown was observed in Shopian and Pulwama districts against the death of Magray while clashes between security forces and students were also reported from Handwara town in Kupwara district of north Kashmir and Pulwama town.

However, no student or civilian was injured in the clashes, officials said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Delhi Lt Governor Anil Baijal today asked the civic bodies to submit a weekly report to him and the chief minister on action taken to combat vector-borne diseases in the city and directed them to intensify the awareness drive.

In a high-level meeting at the Raj Niwas here, Baijal instructed the three municipal corporations to fix the responsibility of field workers in their respective areas.

The meeting was also attended by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.

The LG also directed the health department to develop a mechanism of monitoring of work of all concerned agencies.

According to the latest municipal corporation report released on Monday, at least 61 cases of dengue and 131 cases of chikungunya have been reported in the national capital till June 3.

"The LG directed that a massive Information, Education and Communication (IEC) campaign be launched through handbills in newspapers, hoardings, billboards and street plays," the LG office said in a statement.

It also stated that Baijal also stressed on developing an effective mechanism by health department of monitoring of work of all concerned agencies.

"In the meeting, he instructed that local bodies should assign area wise duty to field workers and fix their accountability for their respective areas," the statement said said.

Kejriwal stated that in view of the upcoming rainy season with possibility of water logging, all the concerned agencies must ensure necessary corrective action.

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The dreaded Tyrannosaurus rex most likely had scaly skin despite its ancestors having feathers, scientists said today, restoring its image of a giant carnivore covered in hard armour-like skin.

Recent studies have found evidence for feathers in ancestors of T rex, and suggested that the giant predator may itself have sported bird-like plumage rather than reptilian scales.

Now, researchers, including those from University of New England in Australia, have analysed fossil evidence that suggests T rex had scales much like modern reptiles rather than feathers or fluff.

The team investigated skin impressions from a T rex skeleton known as Wyrex, unearthed in Montana in the US.

They also looked at its relatives that roamed during the late Cretaceous period (which extended from 99 million to 65.5 million years ago) in Asia and other parts of North America, including Albertosaurus and Gorgosaurus, 'BBC News' reported.

Skin patches from the neck, pelvis and tail of Wyrex show scaly, reptilian-like skin, said researchers led be Phil Bell from University of New England.

The fossil integument (outer covering) from T rex and other members of the group confirm that "these large-bodied forms possessed scaly reptilian-like skin, researchers said.

The team suggests that the giant tyrannosaurs lost their feathers over time because they no longer needed them as insulation.

The study was published in the journal Biology Letters.

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An officer of the Territorial Army has been killed in an encounter in Nagaland's Mon district, during which the security forces have eliminated three militants, defence sources said today.

Three army jawans were also injured in the encounter that took place in Lappa village under Tizit sub-division of the district last night.

Police sources in Tizit told PTI that besides the three militants, the driver of an auto-rickshaw the militants were travelling in, also died on the spot with bullet injuries.

The Territorial Army officer killed in the encounter is Major David Manlun of TA Battalion.

The three injured jawans are undergoing treatment at Military Hospital, Jorhat, Assam, a defence spokesperson said here.

The encounter broke out around 11 PM yesterday when a joint team of Territorial Army and 12 Para, under Headquarter Inspector General Assam Rifles (North), raided the area upon inputs on movement of Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN-K) and ULFA cadres in Lappa, the spokesperson said.

It was initially reported that the Assam Rifles (AR) had carried out the operations but subsequently, AR sources clarified that a joint team of TA and 12 Para took part in the encounter with the ultras belonging to (NSCN-K) and ULFA.

Police sources, however, said that they are yet to confirm the affiliation of the militants and that the link between the driver and the ultras is also being verified.

They have confirmed that the ultras were travelling in an auto-rickshaw.

Arms and ammunition, which included one AK-56, two AK Chinese made, two grenade, three IED and 270 rounds of ammunitions, were also recovered from the spot.

The spokesman said further details awaited.

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The Thane District police have arrested three persons from Ganeshpuri on charges of attempting to murder a villager, who objected to their nuisance during a function.

In the intervening night of June 4 and 5, a 'Haldi' function, was organised at the house of Bushan Patil at Palakhane of Bhiwandi, said API Kundan Jadhav of Ganeshpuri police station today.

The trio was apprehended yesterday. They intervened when the guests were rejoicing after which an altercation broke out between the injured Anant Patil, them and other accused, Jadhav added.

After the function, when Anant was returning home at about 2.20 AM, around 15 persons attacked him with swords, the officer said.

Patil was rushed to the Sion hospital in neighbouring Mumbai, where he is being presently treated. A case under relevant sections of IPC and the Arms Act was registered and a probe was on, said Jadhav.

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President Donald Trump called Qatar's emir today and offered US help as efforts grew to resolve a damaging feud between the emirate and its Gulf neighbours.

Trump's call to Qatari ruler Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, a key US ally, came as a senior Emirati official told AFP that Gulf Arab states were not seeking regime change in Doha.

"The president offered to help the parties resolve their differences, including through a meeting at the White House if necessary," Trump's office said after the call.

A Qatari official said Trump in the call had "expressed readiness to find a solution to the diplomatic crisis in the Gulf, and stressed his keenness that the Gulf remains stable."



Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE and Bahrain announced on Monday they were cutting diplomatic ties and closing air, sea and land links with Qatar, giving Qataris within their borders two weeks to leave.

The four countries have suspended all flights to and from Qatar, pulled their ambassadors from Doha and ordered Qatari diplomats to leave.

Riyadh and its allies accuse Qatar of supporting extremist groups and of serving the interests of regional arch-rival Iran, claims Doha has strongly rejected.

The dispute has sparked the worst diplomatic crisis in the Arab world in years and raised fears it will cause further instability in an already-volatile region.

The United Arab Emirates' state minister for foreign affairs Anwar Gargash on Wednesday accused Qatar of being "the main champion of extremism and terrorism in the region".

But he also said measures taken against Qatar this week by Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other Arab nations were not aimed at seeking new leadership in Doha.

"This is not about regime change -- this is about change of policy, change of approach," Gargash told AFP in Dubai.

Kuwait is leading efforts to find a mediated solution.

Its emir, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, met Dubai's ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum and other senior UAE officials in Dubai on Wednesday, after talks the day before with King Salman in Saudi Arabia.

There were reports he was to head to Qatar after the UAE trip.

The Kuwaiti ruler played a pivotal role in mediating a compromise in a 2014 diplomatic dispute between Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Gulf states.

The United States, France and Russia have called for dialogue while Turkey has defended Qatar and said it would further "develop" ties with Doha.

Turkey's parliament on Wednesday approved deploying troops to a Turkish base in Qatar under a previously agreed plan, in a move seen as a sign of support for Doha.

Trump waded into the dispute on Tuesday, but seemed to only muddy the waters. After first appearing to back the Saudi-led measures against Qatar on Twitter, he shifted gears and called for unity among Gulf Arab states.

Trump's Tuesday tweet -- in which he said "all reference was pointing to Qatar" as a financer of extremism -- was especially surprising given Qatar's role as host of the largest US airbase in the Middle East.

Al-Udeid, located in the Qatari desert, is home to some 10,000 US troops and is a crucial hub in the fight against Islamic State group extremists in Syria and Iraq.

German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel accused the US president of fanning conflict in the Middle East and risking a "new spiral in arms sales" with his remarks.

"Such a 'Trumpification' of relations in a region already susceptible to crises is particularly dangerous," Gabriel said.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said Gulf countries still saw Qatar as a "brother state".

"But you have to be able to tell your friend or your brother when they are doing the right thing and when they are doing the wrong thing," Jubeir said in a joint press conference with Gabriel.

Qatar has said it is open to talks to end the crisis but has also accused its neighbours of impinging on its sovereignty.

In a sign of the potential risks to Qatar's economy, S&P Global Ratings cut Qatar's credit rating by one notch to AA- and put it on watch for further downgrades.

"There are numerous uncertainties regarding Qatar's response,the extent to which these measures will be imposed, and their longevity," said the ratings agency.

Qatar has an independent streak that has often angered its neighbours, attracting criticism for hosting the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, and supporting Islamist rebels in Syria.

Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies may have felt emboldened to move against Qatar by Trump's visit last month to Riyadh, which saw the president clearly align US interests with the kingdom and lash out at Iran.

Riyadh has itself faced accusations of tolerating or even supporting extremists, in particular after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.

Of the 19 hijackers of planes used in the attacks, 15 came from Saudi Arabia, also the birthplace of Al-Qaeda founder and attack mastermind Osama bin Laden.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Prince Albert of Monaco advised President Donald Trump today to "listen a little more carefully to scientists" following his decision to pull the United States out of the Paris climate deal.

A strong environmental advocate, Albert was at the United Nations to attend the first-ever UN ocean conference aimed at agreeing on a strategy to reverse the decline of the oceans.

The withdrawal from the 190-plus nation pact of the world's biggest carbon emitter after China is, "in everybody's mind, catastrophic," Albert told a conference.

Asked what he would tell Trump, the prince said: "very simply to listen a little more carefully to scientists and to the scientific evidence that has been out there for quite a while now."



"I think he should listen more to people who have been dealing with these issues for quite some time now," he added.

While Trump's decision was "disheartening," it also has galvanized the corporate world, US mayors and state governors to "keep going and keep the fight against climate change alive," he said.

Albert noted that the process of withdrawal from the Paris deal could take at least 3.5 years and that "everybody is crossing their fingers" that there might be a reversal of the decision.

"We are not doing this just for ourselves, but for future generations. That should resonate in most people's minds and hearts," he said.

The previous US administration signed the 2015 non- binding accord under which countries have agreed to take voluntary action to meet targets for reducing carbon emissions.

Trump argued that the deal could harm the US economy.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
US President Donald Trump spoke to Qatar's emir today, a US official has said, amid a crisis that has split US allies and pushed regional powers towards confrontation.

The official said the US president had spoken to Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, a day after Trump appeared to back a Saudi-led blockade of his emirate.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Twin brothers from India have been each jailed for five months and ordered to receive three strokes of the cane for attacking a compatriot at a dormitory in Singapore.

Lakshmanan and Raman Pothiyappan, 24, pleaded guilty to one count of causing grievous hurt to their fellow countryman and colleague, Thevvan Velayutham, 41.

The duo were each jailed for five months and ordered to receive three strokes of the cane, The Straits Times reported today.

They committed the offence at a Shaw Road dormitory near Upper Paya Lebar Road on Oct 29 last year.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Soh Weiqi said Thevvan, who is also a construction worker, was sitting in the front porch of the dormitory when the two brothers started punching and kicking him.

Lakshmanan, who had consumed alcohol shortly before the attack, also threw a chair at Thevvan and it struck his head and body.

Soh said: "Raman had informed that the victim and Lakshmanan were not on good terms, and that he had joined in the assault to support his brother."



Thevvan later went to Changi General Hospital, where he was found to have injuries, including a broken nose and a fracture near an eye.

Soh told District Judge Samuel Chua that the victim has since fully recovered from his injuries.

She urged the judge to sentence the brothers, who were unrepresented, to at least five months' jail with caning.

Before handing out the sentence yesterday, Judge Chua told the brothers: "The injuries were severe... Such offences will not be tolerated in Singapore."



For causing grievous hurt, each attacker could have been jailed for up to 10 years and fined or caned.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Two persons have been arrestedfor allegedly trying to smuggle 196-kg of poppy in Punjab from Kashmir, police said today.

Joga Singh and Bika Ali Choudhary were arrested at Nagrota check post on the outskirts of Jammu city last evening when they were on their way to Punjab from Srinagar in a truck, a police official said.

"A police team stopped the truck and during a search, it recovered 196 kg ofpoppy which was packed in bags and loaded in the truck for being smuggled into Punjab," the officer said, adding the duo were arrested and a case was registered.

Since Monday, police has recovered over 350 kg of poppy after it foiledtwo smuggling bids on the Jammu-Srinagar national highway.

Police had recovered 156 kg of poppy from a Punjab-bound truck on Monday, and arrested two persons, including the truck driver, in Udhampur district of the state.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The United States today condemned the deadly twin attacks in Iran, saying the "depravity of terrorism" has no place in the world.

Yet the assaults failed to slow the US Senate which voted to move ahead on imposing new sanctions on Iran, including on its elite Revolutionary Guards.

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the US is sending thoughts and prayers to the Iranian people following attacks against Iran's Parliament and the shrine of Iran's revolutionary leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini that killed at least 12 people. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility.

"The depravity of terrorism has no place in a peaceful, civilised world," said Nauert, who said the US is expressing condolences to the victims and their families.

The US statement of solidarity with the attack's victims is notable because of the deep distrust between the US and Iran. The two countries don't maintain diplomatic relations and the Trump administration has emphasized the need to counter Iran's influence.

The distrust of Iran was evident today when shortly after the condemnation, Republicans and Democrats in Congress acted in a procedural vote to move forward on a new set of sanctions. The strong bipartisan vote was 92-7.

The bill would impose mandatory sanctions on people involved in Iran's ballistic missile program and anyone who does business with them. The measure also would apply terrorism sanctions to the country's Revolutionary Guards and enforce an arms embargo.

A few senators pleaded for a delay until next week in the previously scheduled vote in light of the attacks in Iran.

"Let us tell the people of Iran that while we have serious disagreements with them on a number of issues, that today when they are mourning, when they are dealing with the shock of a terrorist attack, today is not the day to go forward with this piece of legislation," said Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., also pushed for a delay, but Republicans and Democrats pressed ahead.

The bill is a "carefully crafted response to Iran's ongoing aggression in the Middle East," said Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J.

Last month, the Foreign Relations Committee backed the measure despite concerns from former Secretary of State John Kerry and several Democrats that it could nonetheless lead to the unraveling of the nuclear accord negotiated by the Obama administration.

Kerry cautioned lawmakers to "tread carefully" in pushing ahead with new sanctions against Iran in the wake of President Hassan Rouhani's re-election to another four-year term. Rouhani is a political moderate who scored a resounding victory over a hard-line opponent.

Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, the committee's Republican chairman and one of the bill's sponsors, said he recently reviewed top-secret intelligence that detailed Tehran's support for terrorism and other destabilizing actions.

"It is astounding what Iran continues to do around the world," said Corker, urging his colleagues to confront the threat Tehran poses.

In exchange for Iran rolling back its nuclear program, the US and other world powers agreed to suspend wide-ranging oil, trade and financial sanctions that had choked the Iranian economy. As part of the July 2015 multinational accord, Iran also regained access to frozen assets held abroad.

Israel and congressional Republicans have long assailed the agreement as a windfall to Iran. They've argued the deal only delayed Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons and failed to allow the kind of inspections of its atomic sites that would guarantee Tehran was not cheating.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley hailed a "new day" for Israel at the global body today as she held talks with Israeli leaders in Jerusalem.

Speaking ahead of a meeting with President Reuven Rivlin, Haley vowed to defend Israel at the United Nations.

"I have never taken kindly to bullies, and the UN has bullied Israel for a very long time," she said, according to Rivlin's office. "We are not going to let that happen anymore.

"It is a new day for Israel in the United Nations," she added.

Rivlin thanked Haley for her protection of Israel, saying it marked a "new era."



"Israel is no longer alone at the UN. Israel is no longer the UN's punching bag," he said.

In an earlier meeting, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also welcomed Haley's tough stance, according to his office.

He said US President Donald Trump and Haley "have changed the discourse" at the UN.

"Thank you for all your help and standing up for Israel," he added.

Trump came to power promising to lead the most pro-Israel US government in history, and Haley has been a stout defender of the country since her appointment.

Yesterday in Geneva, Haley urged the United Nations Human Rights Council to reduce criticism of Israel and urged the body to throw out abusive regimes.

US concerns about the UN rights body predate Trump's election, and Washington has long denounced an agenda item dedicated exclusively to criticising Israel.

It has also raised concerns about a nomination process that has seen authoritarian governments elected to one of the 47 rotating seats.

Israel is the only country with a dedicated rights council agenda item, known as Item 7.

Israel and its allies have denounced the council for allowing majority-Muslim states to spearhead resolutions at every session denouncing abuses against the Palestinians.

Referencing her speech, the first by an American UN ambassador to the Geneva-based council since its creation in 2006, Haley said today she had put pressure on the body.

"Hopefully it will be a new day at the Human Rights Council when it comes to Israel," she said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh today gave in-principle approval for setting up of viral vaccine production units to ensure better protection of livestock against critical diseases.

The chief minister took this decision during a meeting with the department of animal husbandry, fisheries and dairy development here, an official release said.

The units would help in protecting livestock against the foot and mouth disease (FMD), swine flu and PPR disease common amongst goats, it said.

He also directed the department to work on a detailed plan for establishing disease free zones in certain areas, beginning from the international border and between the geographical boundaries stretching from Beas to Sutlej rivers, in order to give impetus to the promotion of trade between India and its neighbouring countries.

The chief minister asked the department to prepare a comprehensive action plan to introduce new practices of cattle breeding, elimination of cattle disease, and scientific production of milk and milk products as well as meat and meat products.

Earlier, the chief minister was apprised by Advisor (Animal Husbandry) B K Uppal about the vaccine for FMD, which is free from NSP antigen, with which Punjab would become the "first state in the country to be free from foot and mouth disease".

This will facilitate the livestock farmers in the state to export their high breed cattle to the Middle East countries, and further boost their earnings.

During the meeting, Amarinder asked the Animal Husbandry department to launch a vigorous campaign to promote piggery, goatry and fishery in a big way to encourage farmers to adopt these allied sectors in order to supplement their income.

He stressed on the need for value addition and diversification as the only way to enhance the earnings of farmers and said there was dire need to motivate the farmers to go beyond production into direct marketing of milk and milk products, fish and meat & meat products.

Stressing on the need to leverage the latest reproduction technologies, Amarinder asked the department to explore avenues to adopt superior In-Vitro Fertilisation (IVF.

It will lead to faster improvement as several oocytes of superior animals could be used for fertilisation and embryo development.

Amarinder directed the Department of Finance to provide all necessary financial assistance for the required infrastructure up-gradation in the livestock sector.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Retirement fund body EPFO has extended the deadline for submitting Aadhaar number to June 30 for its over four crore members.

However, the deadline for submission of Aadhaar number would be September 30, 2017 in case of north-east states.

"All field offices are directed to ensure that Aadhaar Number is furnished by the employer in respect of all new members who join the Employees Pension Scheme, 1995 with effect from July 1, 2017 except north east states where it would be applicable from October 1, 2017.

The Employees Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) had set April 30, 2017 as the deadline for submitting Aadhaar number earlier.

The EPFO in January made it mandatory for its pensioners and subscribers to submit Aadhaar numbers.

Later the deadline by revised time and again in view of slow progress over Aadhaar number submission by members.

The central government contributes 1.16 per cent of the basic wages as subsidy to every member Employees Pension Scheme Account in addition to 8.33 per cent deposited by their employers every month.

Since the government provides subsidy to an EPFO member, it has invoked Section 7 of the Aadhaar (Targetted Delivery of Financial and other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act 2016, for the purpose.

The Section 7 of the Act provides that where government provides subsidy, benefit or service from Consolidated Fund of India, an individual can be asked to undergo authentication, or furnish proof of possession of Aadhaar number.

It also provides that where an individual to whom no Aadhaar number has been assigned, such individual can apply for enrolment.
The government has directed all universities and higher educational institutions across the country to ensure that no fees payments are made by students in cash mode from the upcoming academic session.

The HRD Ministry has asked the University Grants Commission (UGC) to issue necessary advisory to all higher educational institutions that all monetary transactions should be done using digital modes of payment.

"All receipts and payments related to the functioning of the institutions including student fees, exam fees, vendor payments and salary/wage payments shall be made 'only' through online or digital modes," the directive sent to university heads said.

"For all students' service in the hostels, digital mode should be used for all transactions. All canteens and business establishments on the campus may be encouraged to resort to only digital modes for their receipts and payments using the BHIM app by linking their bank accounts with Aadhaar," it added.

The varsities have been asked to identify all transactions being carried out in cash currently and find ways for replacing them with digital modes.

The government has also asked the varsities to appoint a nodal officer for the purpose and send a monthly report to the UGC.




Putting to rest all speculations doing the rounds on whether Tubelight star Salman Khan would be part of much-talked about reality show Big Boss 11, Colors CEO Raj Nayak confirmed that Salman Khan will indeed return to host the upcoming season of Big Boss.

Raj Nayak took to twitter to share the news and a video



Earlier, there were reports that Salman Khan might not be able to host the show, as he would be busy with his upcoming films and other commitments, but it appears that those were only rumours as Nayak's tweet confirms that the actor will be hosting the show once again.

ALSO READ: Dangal collections: Aamir Khan movie crosses Rs 1,100-crore mark in China, nears Rs 1,900 crore revenue worldwide

The registration for the upcoming season has already started which also means that the show will continue with the last season's format where both the celebrities and non-celebrities will be a part of the show. Last season of Big Boss became quite popular with the concept of bringing in both the celebrities and commoners together, who were called as 'Indiawale'.

In the last season, Noida-based Manveer Gujjar was chosen as the winner and Bani J finished as the first runner-up. Manveer was a non-celebrity contestant. Now he is in Spain shooting for another reality show Khatron Ke Khiladi Season 8.

ALSO READ: Plastic Rice fear spreads in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana: But why would anyone produce it?

Bigg Boss season 11 is expected to go on air in October. This will be the eighth time that Salman Khan will be hosting the reality show.

The above tweet invites commoners to register for Bigg Boss 11 through Colors' app Voot and upload their videos.


With the announcement of tax rates for different goods and services, the government has entered the last lap of the race to implement the much-awaited Goods and Services Tax (GST) from July 1.

While the new tax rates for products and services may not have many surprises - barring the fact that services now come under four slabs as against a uniform 15 per cent rate earlier -- the very fact that the move to GST involves complete overhaul of the indirect tax system means impact on businesses, at least during the transition period, will be huge.



Under-preparation: Though the GST law has been under discussion for quite some time, it has been finalised and notified only in the last few weeks. Some states are, in fact, yet to notify their laws. With a month to go before the roll-out, there is still confusion about the rates. Besides, many companies are yet to put in place new systems and software such as ERP (enterprise resource planning).

Some big companies: even a few public sector companies - are still in the process of floating tenders for hiring financial consultants. Any under-preparation will lead to non-compliance with the tax laws and have economic consequences such as delayed availability of input credit and loss of business.

Compliance cost: GST is a technology-driven system where every transaction - from invoicing to payment of tax - has to be done digitally. The government has invested heavily in building the technology ecosystem. But companies and other taxpayers will also have to invest in proper ERP and other software or hire third-party software providers. Here also, technology alone won't be enough, as companies need to capture input tax credits on their own and then reconcile with suppliers' returns to ensure that there is no mismatch. If there is, their tax credits will get blocked. The businesses will also have to hire professionals for help.

"Compliance costs will rise substantially. In case of services companies that have pan-India operations, compliance costs would increase manifold, as hitherto they were operating under centralised service tax registrations,' says Kumarmangalam Vijay, Partner, J. Sagar Associates, a law firm.

Working capital cycle: The working capital cycle of companies will be hit for many reasons. One is unavailability of input credit balance from the previous tax regime. Usually, businesses pay indirect taxes net of input credit in their balance. In the new system, they will start with nil input credit balance. An India Ratings and Research report says this will lead to locking up of input credit of close to `1 lakh crore, of which about `50,000 crore could be blocked for about two months - which may result in higher short-term working capital requirements. This calculation is based on a study of tax liabilities of a sample of 11,000 companies.

Tax on inter-state stock transfer will also increase working capital requirements. According to a Crisil report, "GST will increase working capital requirements across major manufacturing sectors on account of tax liability on inter-state stock transfer. Businesses will not be able to claim tax credits until the goods shipped are sold." The time lag in claiming input credit against tax paid on inter-state stock transfer will also increase working capital requirements. Stock transfers do not attract any tax in the current regime even in case of inter-state transfers.

There will also be the issue of delays in claiming tax credits due to mismatch in returns filed by suppliers and buyers or non-payment of tax by suppliers.

Challenges in using technology: The whole GST ecosystem is based on an IT-enabled platform, and its success in the transition phase will depend on how well taxpayers adapt to it. The fact that many small traders/entities still file returns and pay taxes manually means the shift from offline to online will itself be a big disruption for them. Vinay Sethi, Head, Market Development, Tax and Accounting, South Asia, Thomson Reuters, says Indian taxpayers are not keen to use technology the way GST requires them to.

In the early days, it is likely that errors in (untested) IT systems or ERP software may lead to delay in filing of returns or payment of taxes. At times, taxpayers' inability to operate these systems itself may lead to problems for them. "For the initial period of three-six months, if there are technological challenges in filing of returns or uploading of invoices, the government should take a favourable view while considering any delay in return filing or tax payment," says M.S. Mani, Senior Director, Indirect Taxes, Deloitte India.

Input credit losses: As per the draft transition provision, only 40 per cent input credit would be available for taxes paid under the old system on raw materials and semi-finished/finished goods held in stock. This will not only mean loss of input credit but also force wholesalers and dealers to de-stock inventories. This could lead to slowdown in uptake of goods from manufacturers or suppliers, leading to temporary shortages. There have been representations from industry for changing the provision and increasing the 40 per cent input credit figure to 60-70 per cent.

@dipak_journo


OnePlus 5 will be launched in India on June 22, right after it is unveiled on June 20. The Chinese smartphone manufacturer will launch its latest flagship in India at an event in Mumbai where the keynote address will be given by OnePlus CEO Pete Lau. This puts to rest the rumours that OnePlus will introduce the newest 'flagship killer' on June 15 .

OnePlus fans in India can attend the event by purchasing a ticket from oneplusstore.in on June 12. Fans attending the invitation-only event will be given a hamper of OnePlus merchandise. Some of them will be given a chance to buy the latest flagship at the event before it is available elsewhere in the country, the company said.

Leaked Images



The launch event invite has been accompanied by new images of OnePlus 5 being leaked on the internet. The recent images posted by Android Authority show how different it will be from its predecessor OnePlus 3T. The new images show the phone with horizontal dual camera arrangement and rounded edges.

The leaked designs also show that the antenna lines around the back of the phone have been nicely hidden.

Specifications



Earlier, OnePlus had confirmed that the new smartphone will come equipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor. The screen will be a 1920x1080 full HD AMOLED display. The phone will run Android Nougat out of the box.

OnePlus 5 is expected to come with 64GB of internal memory with 6GB of RAM. Some rumours even hinted at a variant with 128GB of internal memory with 8GB of RAM.

Price



Although, there is no confirmation on the price tag yet, rumours suggest that OnePlus 5 will carry the biggest price tag ever seen from the company. The phone is expected to be priced more than Rs 35,000. This price tag will, however, give it an edge over flagship devices from premium companies like Samsung or Apple.

End of Raod for OnePlus 3T



Meanwhile, OnePlus has decided to stop the production of OnePlus 3T to make way for the new OnePlus 5. Limited OnePlus 3T will be available for the remainder of the year, but no new units will be manufactured anymore.

Also watch:




A Box Elder County deputy was injured Tuesday, after a two-vehicle head-on collision along Valley View Highway, SR-30. The accident occurred west of Beaver Dam shortly after 4 p.m. and partially blocked traffic for two-hours.

Utah Highway Patrol Lt. Lee Perry said 30-year-old Zachary Moore was driving a Dodge Ram unmarked police vehicle westbound. Near milepost 97, a white Toyota pickup traveling eastbound swerved and struck him head-on. The impact of the crash flipped the Dodge onto its passenger side and crushed the cab into the guardrail.

Moore had to be extricated from the truck by EMTs. He was flown by medical helicopter to McKay Dee Hospital in serious condition.

Troopers report the Toyota was being driven by an 18-year-old man from northern Utah. He allegedly swerved into the westbound lane after failing to see several vehicles that had stopped for a farm tractor, waiting to turn left. The truck skidded for about 100-ft. before swerving. His identity is not being released pending completion of the investigation.

Lee said Moore has worked in law enforcement for several years and has two-years of service with the Box Elder County Sheriffs Department.

Troopers report speed and failing to pay attention were likely causes of the accident.

<hr /><p style=text-align: center;>will@cvradio.com
Nail salons and crime go together like ... well, actually Im not sure they go together at all. But TNTs new hourlong dramedy Claws finds a way to mix the two in an appropriately trashy, entertainingly desensitizing Southern cocktail.

Comic actress Niecy Nash (Scream Queens, Reno 911!) headlines the shows ensemble cast as Desna, the tough and protective HBIC of Nail Artisans in colorful Manatee County, Fla. Des and her girls take pride in painting hooves, but that doesnt mean they dont dream of a better life. Rounding out the strip-mall storefronts manicure and pedicure stations are straight-laced old-timer Polly (Carrie Preston from True Blood), white trash mom Jennifer (stage actress Jenn Lyon), neck-tattooed butch bitch Quiet Ann (Judy Reyes, Jane the Virgin) and nosey newcomer Virginia (celebrity stylist- turned- actress Karrueche Tran).

In addition to running the salon, Desna is energetically banging white boy gangsta Roller (sleazy hunk Jack Kesy, The Strain), whose dad (Dean Norris from Breaking Bad, adding some serious scenery-chewing to the proceedings) runs the self-styled Dixie Mafia in town. While dreaming of that better life (and a fancier salon), Desna finds herself getting entangled deeper and deeper in a money-laundering scheme with this local crime syndicate. It pays money, but not enough. As New Years Eve approaches, Desnas promise of getting out and starting a new life is complicated when things go south with her larcenous boyfriend. Naturally, things blow up (in a particularly nasty way), so the ladies decide to take matters into their own hands, rise up and stake their own criminal territory. But are these improvised plans gonna bite them in the ass? Probably.

Nash provides a lot of energy as the badass mother hen of this criminal brood. The other ladies embrace their stereotypes with a certain gusto. The script gives them various backstories to work though, stretching the narrative beyond mere crime drama. Back at home, for example, Desna gets to deal with her severely autistic brother Dean (Harold Perrineau from Lost)yet another motivating factor for her to rise up out of poverty and oppression.

The show frequentlyand with varying degrees of successtries to mix the overly stylized look of a hip-hop Miami Vice and the low-rent criminal shenanigans of Better Call Saul. Occasionally, it finds its own voice, howeverin the tough camaraderie of the ladies and in the unapologetically raunchy way it presents itself. Set amid the strip clubs and oxycodone clinics of central Florida, theres plenty sex, drugs and R-rated language to go around. She used to dance at Chi-Chis until she bit a Mississippi state legislator for trying to put a cigar in her ass, is how the show chooses to describe our gal Virginia. Family hour, this is not. But its mix of rowdy comedy, rude shocks and good, old-fashioned Florida noir tell us this could be a down-and-dirty adventure worth sticking with.
Mancho Bibixy appears handcuffed W. Musa

The Yaounde Military Court has rejected the appeal by Defense Counsel of Anglophones incarcerated at the Kondengui prison.

The presiding judge Mbezoa Abega citing article 246 of the Penal Code said the crimes allegedly committed by the 27 detainees are so heavy that a provisional release cannot be accepted. The case was adjourned to June 29, 2017 when all the cases will be heard in court.

Anglophones who trooped to the court were disappointed with the courts decision, Barrister Claude Assira said, We were very hopeful because formerly the legal department agreed with us that what we asked for will be obtained but we were very surprised that the court rejected it. We are very disappointed. We asked for a simple bail but they read it otherwise and gave the decision.

After the courts decision, one detainee Julius Ndasi collapsed and was ferried to the hospital.

Mancho Bibixy who is on hunger strike appeared in court in a ramshackle way, dressed in short trouser, bare feet and unbuttoned sky-blue shirt.
Little Bih Nora W. Musa

Cameroons electricity distributing company, ENEO has been accused of causing the death of an 8 year old girl in Alamatu neighborhood in Mankon, North West region.

The girl BIH Nora, 8, died Tuesday June 6, 2017 after stepping on a naked cable abandoned on the ground.

The father of the child in anger vowed that there will be peace for ENEO official in the area.

Family members refused retrieving the corpse asking ENEO, company in charge of distributing electricity to do so.

The State Counsel for Bamenda and the Divisional Officer for Bamenda II Peter Etoe Mbongo were on the scene to negotiate with family.

The body of class three pupil was later taken to the mortuary, negotiations will open Wednesday June 7, 2017
| BY Ricki Green |

Rare has won the national Cash Converters account following a competitive pitch as part of an extensive review of the brands marketing as it moves to becoming a financial services company.

That review has seen long-term marketing director Glenn Donaldson and media manager Nicki Sullivan both leave the business.

The decision to appoint Rare was widely expected, and is a welcome vote of confidence in the Perth industry from a locally-based national advertiser.

The incumbent of ten years, 303 MullenLowe decided not to participate in the pitch and parted company with the brand in March.
| BY Ricki Green |

CB Exclusive  Pfizer has released an integrated campaign for its prescription-only quit smoking brand, via WiTH Collective.

A first of its kind, the campaign launched this week and doesnt only target smokers, but also loved ones who want them to quit with a very simple premise  quit nagging.

Says Isabel Chan, Brand Manager, Pfizer, Most smokers dont listen to quit smoking advertising. But, for every smoker, there are several motivated family members, friends or colleagues who desperately want them to quit. Unfortunately, many people try to persuade a smoker to quit by pestering them repeatedly. The intention is absolutely right, but studies show nagging actually hinders the process of quitting. So, our campaign has focused on the simple fact youre 4x more likely to quit smoking with the help of your doctor. For this campaign, WiTH have created a world-first for us, launching World No-Nagging Day, as well as a platform that makes our modest budget work as hard as it possibly can across owned, digital and earned channels.

Says Steve Coll, chief creative officer, WiTH Collective: As a prescription brand, this product is tricky to advertise because you cant mention the brand name or any direct product attribute. So, its been wonderful working with Izzys team to find smart, strategic messages. This campaign promotes a visit to the doctor as a way to help people quit two unhealthy habits  smoking and nagging. It sets up a different way for loved ones to influence the smoker in their life  Ill quit nagging if you talk to your doctor.

As well as World No Nagging Day, the campaign consists of a series of social films featuring the most outrageous nags our panel of smokers had been subjected to, as well as a Quit Nagging site, and on-premise messaging.

The work is the first to be 100% developed in-house using WiTHs new content division  headed up by head of production, Iain Todd, and directed by WiTH creative director, Simon Fowler.

Says Justin Hind, CEO, WiTH Collective: Our insight is that word-of-mouth from family and friends remains the most powerful way to influence a smokers decision to quit, something weve worked closely with Red Planet to realise. Strategically, this campaign is a first of its kind and Im delighted with the work.

The campaign has featured on news programs and radio stations across the country, including Channel 7s Sunrise, Triple M, Today FM and ABC radio.

Says Fowler: Creative team Pat Anderson and Will Winter-Irving have nailed it with the insight that nagging doesnt work. This campaign is a testament to the talent of these two absolute mega-stars. Im quietly amazed how theyve managed to remain so modest in the face of their own brilliance. Especially when they are both so very, very handsome. Will in particular. I have no doubt their work will be well received by non-smokers and smokers alike.

The campaign has gone live via Facebook, YouTube, radio, outdoor, ambient and owned media.

Tim Nunan, Marketing Lead, Pfizer, AUS, NZ Isabel Chan, Brand Manager, Pfizer

Susan Miller, Associate Brand Manager, Pfizer Justin Hind, CEO, WiTH Collective

Agency: WiTH Collective

Steve Coll, CCO

Josh Sanford, CSD, WiTH Collective

Phil Campbell, Actual Legend, WiTH Collective

Simon Fowler & Nicole Hetherington, Creative Director, WiTH Collective

Pat Anderson & Will Winter-Irving: Creative Team

Simon Fowler: Director

Iain Todd: Senior Agency Producer

Alex Mills: Agency Producer

Editor: Brendon Killen

PR Agency: HK Strategy

Media Agency: Red Planet
| BY Ricki Green |

Dentsu Aegis Network Perth has won the national media account for Cash Converters following a competitive pitch.

Worth $8 million, the win encompasses all traditional, digital, search, SEO, content, social, data and marketing technology consultancy across Australia. The account will be led by Dentsu Mitchell Media calling upon the full resources of the network in Western Australia and nationally.

International Brand Manager of Cash Converters, Glenn Donaldson (pictured below) said: After several successful years with a different model we sought to change our approach and consolidate the media business. We were impressed with Dentsus approach, their digital and marketing technology and their ability to hit the ground running.

The Cash Converters win tops off a very successful year for Dentsu Aegis Network in Perth, which has collectively added over $30m of new billings alongside the successful launches of new services in search, social, programmatic and content.

Business Director at Dentsu Mitchell Perth, Michelle Testa, highlighted the collective specialism of the Dentsu Aegis Network as a critical element that helped the agency win the pitch.

We are very excited to announce our appointment to the Cash Converters account. Our vision was to mobilise the best talent across the Dentsu Aegis Network, and to bring the best to the table.
Wednesday, June 7, 2017 at 2:04PM

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

San Jose, California - Apple's newest product category since the Apple Watch in 2015 (or, it can be argued, since the EarPods last year) is their HomePod speaker revealed here a few days ago and which is coming to the US in December (with mid-2018 availability in Canada likely).

In typical Apple fashion, the company comes rather late into a market that's already quite mature. Amazon's Echo can be credited for creating the connected speaker/voice assistant space, and it's a huge seller in the US, Amazon's even expanded their product line to smaller Dot speakers as well as licensing Echo across various OEMs, including high-end speaker brands.

Amazon Echo is all but nonexistent in Canada. You can get the thing to work, but it is not natively supported, likely because of Canadian French language integration. This is one reason why Google Home is in a good position to thrive in Canada. Google's made the device available and it isn't exorbitant at CAD $179. I've tested the Google Home briefly in the US and found it to be a capable speaker and even better assistant. Connected to services like Spotify (for streaming music) and Netflix (for casting to Chromecast-connected TVs), makes it very useful, as does Google Home integration (I've used it with Phiips Hue smart lights) and Nest products.

The one thing the Google Home isn't is a great speaker. Sound is muffled and there's a lack of range, most users won't quite mind this but compared to a Sonos speaker, the difference is dramatic.

Here's where I think HomePod will excel. Just like the AirPods, which are a tremendous product that are truly unmatched in terms of ease of use and quality, specially for the size. Apple will re-invent the speaker, make it sound great for homes and give it the ease of connectivity that Sonos has long been known for.

The iPod business is tiny, iPhones have replaced standalone music players, as have Apple Watches. HomePod brings the entire Apple Music catalog to homes (40 million songs), enables some HomeKit functionality and, although downplayed in the WWDC keynote, should serve as a Siri-speaker for getting various things done by voice.

My big question is whether HomePod will be exclusively for Apple Music and iTunes or if users can access Spotify, Google Music, Microsoft Groove and other music or podcast streaming services. I'm afraid the answer to this will be no, at least not at first.

I am also wary about the Siri aspect of HomePod. I know Apple is improving Siri quite dramatically, but having used Siri on my iOS devices and MacBook and having used other personal assistants, there's a significant gap in range. HomePod isn't due until December (likely a soft launch, in limited quantities, only in US and UK). So, there's a lot of time to iron out the functionality. Aside from great design, awesome sound and Apple's patented ease of use, HomePod is going to need to really be something special to be able to win the smart home assistant war, just like iPod, iPhone and iPad before it.
A kiosk by The Floral Society, a nail salon and Passiontree Velvet Patisserie will also open in the space. The remainder of the new section will be filled with existing stores that will move to be part of the precinct - Lush, Aveda, L'Occitane, The Body Shop, Crabtree & Evelyn, and Napoleon Perdis.
This was because in the months after the attack their victim, who was in and out of the Rebels, had launched a vigorous and sustained attack on his ex-partner, in which he had repeatedly raped and assaulted her and thrown her around her home.
Q. What have been your key developments so far in 2017?

Our key developments so far in 2017, have included a number. The West Africa Cable System (WACS) achieved 100% operational uptime in our markets. Angonix achieved a peak of traffic of 5.2Gbps and the internet exchange became one of the top five exchanges in Africa.

We launched new products and services in order to enlarge our product portfolio.

NEC concluded the site survey for the South Atlantic Cable System (SACS). We began constructing the Tier III data centre and the cable landing station for the Monet cable and SACS in Fortaleza,Brazil.

Angola Cables IP network expanded in Europe  to Portugal, the UK, Germany, Spain and France. And we deployed an IP point of presence in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Q. What are your strategic priorities this year?

The Monet cable system will be ready for service in the second half of 2017. We will provide IP transit services for African countries including SADC and west African Countries.

We will connect more members to the Angonix IX so s to remain one of the top five largest African IXs.

Q. What are you expansion and development plans over the next year?

Our expansion and development plans over the next year are to expand the Angola Cables network to other locations  to the US and Brazil.

We will conclude construction of the Tier III data centre in Fortaleza, Brazil. We will conclude SACS by mid-2018, which is designed to provide low latency routing between Africa and the Americas.

Q. What new opportunities do you predict for the wholesale sector over the next few years?

New opportunities we predict for the wholesale sector over the next few years include tapping into the cloud segment and all support connectivity required for the internet of things in developing markets.

There will be new submarine cable system routes. We will see development of technology allowing cable systems to have bigger capacities and lowering the price per megabit. And we will see the development of terrestrial African backbones.

Q. What are you hoping to achieve at ITW 2017?

To have a commitment for both our cables, SACS and Monet, and to understand what is the demand and what are the preferred routes the markets are looking for.

To have commitments for our data centre in Brazil, and understand what is the demand and what are the preferred services related to our data centre activities,

To establish partnerships for content delivery networks and other content-centric companies that are interested in delivering or expanding their content in the African continent.
Our Promise: Welcome to Care2, the world's largest community for good. Here, you'll find over 45 million like-minded people working towards progress, kindness, and lasting impact.

Care2 Stands Against: bigots, racists, bullies, science deniers, misogynists, gun lobbyists, xenophobes, the willfully ignorant, animal abusers, frackers, and other mean people. If you find yourself aligning with any of those folks, you can move along, nothing to see here.

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You are our people. You Care. We Care2.
The very first example of the new Honda Civic Type R, VIN 01, is auctioned right now online and with all proceeds going to the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation.



Honda has donated the first 2017 Civic Type R in America to the foundation, allowing the brands enthusiasts to contribute to a great cause.

The specific example is finished in Aegean Blue Metallic and features a set of 20-inch alloys wrapped with sticky Continental ContiSportContact 6 summer tires.

The Civic Type R has long been forbidden fruit for enthusiasts in the U.S., so we thought it would be fun to offer one lucky customer a shot at owning the first of its kind in America while benefiting the leading nonprofit solely dedicated to finding a cure for childhood brain tumors, the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation, said Jeff Conrad, Senior Vice President, Automobile Division, American Honda Motor Co.

Power comes from a turbocharged 2.0-litre engine with 306hp and 295lb-ft of torque, mated exclusively to a close-ratio six-speed manual gearbox. The chassis features a fully independent suspension and adaptive dampers at all four corners.

The new Honda Civic Type R also holds the title of the fastest front-wheel drive production vehicle around the Nurburgring, posting a lap time of 7 minutes 43.80 seconds.

The car is currently being auctioned over at Bring A Trailer so head over there and prepare for a good bidding war.

PHOTO GALLERY
Robert Kubica returned to a Formula 1 cockpit for the first time in over six years for a private test with Renault at the Valencia circuit.



Kubica drove a Renault-powered Lotus E20 painted in Renaults livery for 115 laps as he conducted several evaluations with various fuel loads.

This was the first time Kubica drove a Formula 1 car since the pre-season testing for the 2011 season. Robert was seriously injured to his right hand in a rally accident prior to the start of the 2011 F1 season.

Robert didnt hide that his return on a F1 cockpit was an emotional moment for him. It has been a long time away from the paddock and I have been through difficult periods, I kept working hard and a few years ago I felt it was impossible.

I have mixed feelings, I am proud with what I achieved today, but also it shows what I have lost. I dont know what the future will bring, but I know one thing, after working for more than one year to prepare for this, I ran with good pace and consistent in difficult conditions, he added. Renault gave me my first F1 test in 2005, so I appreciate another test this time around.

Renaults Sporting Director Alan Permane said that listening to Kubicas feedback was like turning back the clock.

We tried to condense a Grand Prix weekend into one day, which was interesting for him, he said. Robert has changed a little, he is more mellow and he wasnt pushing quite as hard or asking for every detail about the set-up or the car! His comments and feedback, however, were like turning the clock back for all of us.

Permane also noted that this test was just an one-off for Kubica: It is a tricky thing to jump into an F1 car after six years and it was a great performance from him. This was a one-off event for Robert. The team was in Valencia testing with Sergey Sirotkin, so it was the perfect opportunity to offer Robert a day in the car and contribute in our way to his recovery.

PHOTO GALLERY
Skoda is on a roll lately, as the company has introduced a handful of new models including the Karoq and Kodiaq. Unfortunately, the focus on crossovers is reportedly coming at the expense of other models.



In an interview with Motoring, Skodas international sales general manager Peter Solc confirmed the quest for crossover sales has killed the next-generation Citigo. As he explained, If we see some segments are going down then we focus on different models. Solc went on to say the Citigo segment is declining so the car will be discontinued.

The Citigo isnt the only model being affected by the companys focus on crossovers, as Skoda has reportedly put plans for a pickup on the backburner. The truck was slated to be based on the Volkswagen Amarok and appeal to buyers in Australia and South Africa.

However, the automaker doesnt have a huge presence in markets were pickups are popular so a truck isnt a priority right now. As Solc noted, We have to evaluate what will bring Skoda globally the biggest return on investment. What we see as the biggest opportunity is to focus further on the SUV.

Photo Gallery
The film, a black comedy set in modern-day China, delivers unflinching social commentary on Chinese societys newfound obsessions over money, and characters in the film explicitly equate freedom with buying power. Its gritty and unvarnished portrait of contemporary China apparently crossed a line for government censors.

According to a report by journalist Stephane Dreyfus in the French paper La Croix, Chinese authorities have been concerned about the film appearing at Annecy for many months.

Even before we announced its selection, the Chinese authorities were worried about whether we intended to program it, Patrick Eveno, managing director of the Annecy festival, told La Croix. After it was selected, the Chinese government refused to grant an exit visa for the film and repeatedly asked the festival to withdraw the film, which Annecy refused to do.

In late May, however, the producer of Have A Nice Day personally requested Annecy to withdraw the film. At that point, Eveno said, they had no choice.

The festival felt it did not have the right to endanger the film team, a valid concern that takes into account Chinas recent history of turning artists into political prisoners, the most famous example being Ai Weiwei.

On May 30th, Annecy confirmed the removal of the film from competition with a terse statement on its website:

We must remove one of the feature films selected in competition at Annecy 2017, Liu Jians Have a Nice Day, from our programme following a decision that has been imposed upon us. Were disappointed about the official pressures that have prevented us from presenting this remarkable film this year and we hope that international audiences will soon have the possibility to see it.

Despite the films lack of presence at Annecy, Jians film has been screened at other international venues. Earlier this year, Have A Nice Day became the first Chinese animated feature to screen in competition at the Berlin Film Festival.

Last March, it also screened at the Holland Animation Film Festival, and this week it is screening at Animafest in Zagreb.

With multiple French media outlets picking up the story about the films censorship at Annecy and the Streisand effect now set into full motion, the Chinese government appears to have overplayed its hand and unintentionally driven more attention to Jians film than it would have otherwise received.

More damaging than that, however, Chinese authorities have tarnished the entire countrys spotlight at Annecy, showing that even as animation booms in their country, there are clear creative limits on what artists can and cant portray in Chinese-produced animation.

Jians company, Le-joy Animation Studio, produced the film in partnership with Nezha Bros. Pictures. Frances Memento Films has international sales rights for Have A Nice Day, while Edko Films is repping in Asian territories.
Photo: health.howstuffworks.com/

Barriers and solutions for urgent psychiatric care

When a person is in acute psychiatric distress  having a psychotic episode, suicidal, demented or otherwise out of control, depressed or anxious to the point that they are unable to work  urgent care is necessary to stabilize the situation and prevent harm.

Unfortunately, many people who require urgent psychiatric services have difficulty accessing them.

A variety of barriers often exist that can differ depending on the condition and are not easily recognized by those not experiencing a mental health crisis.

Here are a few of the common barriers to accessing services:

To see a psychiatrist, a referral is required from a general practitioner. There may be some exceptions to this for psychiatrists who are not paid on a fee for service basis, but these are in the minority. Referrals require access to a GP and can also often involve wait times for availability with both the GP and then the mental health professional.

Most mental health professionals require a booked appointment. Many people with even moderate degrees of mental illness have difficulty making and keeping appointments. Once a couple of appointments are missed, the patient may not be offered another.

If experiencing a moderately severe mental illness, the patient will likely be given a medication prescription. These can be expensive and the patient may not be able to afford it. There are some programs in place to cover medication costs, but many people dont know what they are or how to access them.

Financial support for food and housing may be needed. Even if eligible for social assistance, the patient may not know how to apply for it. Some qualify for provincial or federal disability pensions, but the required process needs to be followed and can take up to six months  a completely unacceptable timeline when dealing with a mental health crisis.

People experiencing moderate or serious mental health symptoms can find disability applications almost impossible to complete. It can be very difficult to explain problems verbally or in writing.

In order to stabilize a mental health crisis, it is important to find suitable and affordable housing and be able to follow the rules. Again, daunting when in the midst of a crisis.

Even those being seen by salaried case managers at government-funded institutions may have difficulty keeping appointments, getting and taking medications and looking after activities of daily living.

Often, homeless people miss out on disability pensions because they cannot get the required information together to apply.

I believe many of these issues could be much better dealt with than they currently are. Here are a few ways we could ease the situation for vulnerable individuals:

Service facilities need to be easily identifiable, well known and available without an appointment.

A facility should have all the necessary professionals in one place i.e. social services, employment counsellors, social workers, alcohol and drug counsellors, nurses, pharmacists, psychologists, doctors and psychiatrists.

Patients should be able to access their medications on site free of charge without delay.

Help should be available to complete whatever paper work is necessary (it should be kept to a minimum). Basic information should be electronic and accessible so people dont have to repeat the same database to several different people and institutions. Contact information and provincial health care number should be readily available to all necessary health care providers.

Ideally, a facility like this would be available seven days a week to reduce visits to the ER.

Overnight observation availability would also be helpful in many cases.

More affordable housing units are needed  both independent and supportive.

A clinic like this would be provincially funded and available in large and mid-sized municipalities. As it stands, all of these services are already available, but are not easily accessible or well coordinated.

Not only would it save the system money to coordinate them and make them more accessible to those in need, it would likely also go a long way toward eliminating homelessness.

I cant tell you how amazing it would be to be able to actually discuss a patients needs with the other professionals involved rather than filling out a form and sending it to someone you will never meet and from whom you will never hear.

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.
Photo: CTV Over a dozen dogs were rescued from a Cowichan Valley dog breeder.

Seventeen dogs have been removed from a Vancouver Island breeder after they were found soaked in urine and feces.

BC SPCA officers seized the badly matted dogs.

The animals were legally surrendered and included 15 neglected silky terriers and two adult shepherds.

All of the terriers were in poor condition and will need dental work. Some suffered urine scalds to their feet.

The Cowichan Valley dog breeder has agreed not to own or take possession of any new animals, according to the SPCA.

 with files from CTV Vancouver island
Photo: Wayne Emde Photography Francois Arsenault will be recognized for his work with cadets.

A Vernon man will be honoured for his work with the local cadet community.

Francois Arsenault will be receiving the Sovereign's Medal for Volunteers from B.C. Lt. Gov. Judith Guichon at a ceremony at Government House Wednesday.

Arsenault has been volunteering with the Army Cadet League of Canada since 1990, and is the creator of a virtual museum that chronicles the 137-year history of the organization.

In conjunction with the Vernon Cadet Training Centre, he opened the Vernon Cadet Museum, and is a board member of the Vernon Museum and Archives.

Twyla Gimbel will also be recognized for her volunteer work.

The Kelowna woman volunteers in the surgical day care unit at Kelowna General Hospital. She has also been helping students and teachers with educational and clerical work in the Okanagan Adventist Academy elementary classrooms since September 2009.

The Sovereign's Medal for Volunteers recognizes the exceptional volunteer achievements of Canadians from across the country in a wide range of fields. As an official Canadian honour, the Medal for Volunteers pays tribute to the dedication and exemplary commitment of volunteers.
Photo: CTV Flames tear through a barn on Ross Road in Abbotsford on Tuesday, June 6.

A massive fire tore through an Abbotsford barn Tuesday, killing thousands of chickens.

Asst. Fire Chief Ron Hull said they could see a high plume of smoke from the area while en route to the scene on Ross Road, just north of Downes Road.

The flames were starting to spread to a second barn, but crews managed to keep the fire at bay.

The first barn collapsed during the fire, and an estimated 7,000 to 10,000 chickens were killed.

Crews had the fire contained by mid afternoon, but firefighters remained at the scene monitoring the area for hot spots, and the barn was still smoking an hour later.

The cause of the fire is not yet known, nor is there an estimated value of the damage caused by the blaze.

- with files from CTV
Photo: Contributed Jason Stanley Whitford

UPDATE: Wednesday 10:45 a.m.

A suspected meth trafficker accused of sex offences against a child is now in custody.

Jason Stanley Whitford, 37, was the subject of a police alert, Tuesday.

Abbotsford Police confirmed Wednesday they tracked down Whitford and arrested him with help from Surrey RCMP.

ORIGINAL: Tuesday 9:30 p.m.

Police in Abbotsford are hoping the public can help them find a man wanted for allegedly sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl.

Jason Stanley Whitford, 37, has been charged with sexual interference and invitation to sexual touching of a person under the age of 16, exposure of genitals to a minor and sexual assault.

He is also charged with trafficking methamphetamine. The charges against Whitford were approved Monday, but police are still looking for him.

Police said Whitford has no known address and is known to frequent Abbotsford, Langley and Surrey.

Anyone who sees Whitford should not approach or try to confront him, but should call 911 immediately.

- with files from CTV
Photo: The Canadian Press Former U.S. President Barack Obama speaks at the convention centre in Montreal on Tuesday.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Barack Obama met at a restaurant Tuesday night following the former U.S. president's speech to the Montreal Board of Trade.

"How do we get young leaders to take action in their communities? Thanks @BarackObama for your visit & insights tonight in my hometown," the prime minister tweeted.

In his speech, Obama once again decried what he called the lack of American leadership on climate change, saying Tuesday his country's absence as an international force on the issue is only temporary.

He did not mention U.S. President Donald Trump by name but clearly targeted his successor's decision to pull the United States out of the Paris climate change accord.

"In Paris, we came together around the most ambitious agreement in history to fight climate change," Obama said. "An agreement that even with the temporary absence of American leadership will still give our children a fighting chance."

The former president, who was on his first visit to Canada since leaving office, also seemed to take a dig at Trump when he discussed the current age of instant information.

"Where TV and Twitter can feed us a steady stream of bad news and sometimes fake news, it can seem like the international order we have created is constantly being tested and the centre may not hold," he said.

"And in some cases, that leads people to search for certainty and control and they can call for isolationism or nationalism or they can suggest rolling back the rights of others.

"Or simply they can try to retreat and suggest we have no obligations beyond our borders, or beyond our communities, or beyond our tribe  that what's good for me and my immediate people is all that matters, that everyone else is on their own."

Obama said that while such instincts of retrenchment are understandable and tempting, they must be avoided.

"History also shows there is a better way," he said. "Canada shows, the United States, Europe, Japan show it is possible for us to overcome our fears and to reach across our divides."
Photo: CTV

Two men have been arrested after being found with hundreds of pieces of stolen mail in suburban Victoria.

West Shore RCMP say the men were arrested May 27 when police responded to a report of a suspicious vehicle in Langford.

They found two men inside a rented vehicle with controlled substances, break-in instruments and several hundred pieces of stolen mail from Victoria, the Lower Mainland and Interior.

One of the men and the vehicle were seen on surveillance video connected to a separate mailbox break-in.

A 29-year-old Burnaby man and 28-year-old Maple Ridge man are in custody.

 with files from CTV Vancouver Island
Photo: File photo

Canda's Snowbirds aerobatic squad is resuming their airshow season after it was put on hold last month to allow their pilots to get more practice.

The flying teams normal training schedule had been cut short this year because of bad weather.

Snowbird pilots have since undergone two weeks of intensive training and practice at 15 Wing Moose Jaw.

Our team has been working very hard practising and training to bring ourselves back up to our own strict performance standards, team lead Maj. Patrick Gobeil said in a news release Tuesday.

Your Royal Canadian Air Force Snowbirds are ready and very excited to get back to the air show circuit this weekend. We greatly appreciate the support and understanding of air show organizers, volunteers and audiences over the last three weeks.

The Snowbirds have been entertaining airshow visitors in Canada and across the U.S. since 1971.
Photo: CTV

A downtown Vancouver restaurant is on the move after being slapped with a $65,000 per month increase in its rent.

The owners of Italian Kitchen say their rent is jumping from $35,000 to nearly $100,000.

It is impossible for any restaurant, anywhere ... to be able to survive with this number, Emad Yacoub, president of Glowbal Restaurant Group, told CTV.

And they're not alone. Many restaurants are simply closing.

Vegetarian restaurant The Foundation closed its doors after 15 years because of spiralling rents, as did the Dover Arms Pub.

The Cactus Clubs are paying big rents, Earls is paying big rents, JOEY are paying big rents. The mom and pops can't do it, said restaurant broker Shane Morck.

B.C. Restaurant and Food Services Association president Ian Torstenson said bigger restaurants will survive, but smaller ones will be forced to relocate or simply shut down.

The extra costs are inevitably passed on to customers, he added.

 with files from CTV Vancouver
Photo: BC Wildfire Service Pantage Lake wildfire.

UPDATE: 1:20 p.m.

The BC Wildfire Service says a fire burning northwest of Quesnel is now 55 per cent contained.

As of noon Wednesday, the Pantage Lake fire had grown to 168 hectares in size. That's 10 hectares larger than the same time Tuesday.

This fire is currently classified as being held, which means that that the fire is not likely to spread beyond predetermined boundaries under the prevailing and forecasted weather conditions.This fire does not pose a threat to public safety or property at this time.

In all, 60 firefighters and an incident management team are still working to establish control lines around the entire perimeter of the fire. They are being supported by four helicopters and nine pieces of heavy equipment.

The fire was originally spotted Sunday. Lightning has been determined as the cause..

ORIGINAL: 9 a.m.

A wildfire burning in an unpopulated area near Quesnel has grown to more than 150 hectares in size.

The fire, burning about five kilometres south of Pantage Lake and 40 kilometres northwest of Quesnel, has grown in size to 158 hectares.

However, the BC Wildfire Service says it is 30 per cent contained.

Sixty firefighters, four helicopters, aircraft and heavy machinery are working to contain the blaze.

A lightning strike Sunday sparked the fire. No homes are threatened.

This is the only fire of any significance burning in the province.

The lack of fire activity has allowed provincial wildfire crews to assist with sandbagging and other flood mitigation work throughout the Okanagan.
Photo: Twitter

Canada will increase annual defence spending by $13.9 billion over the next decade, Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan said Wednesday as he unveiled the Liberal government's long-awaited vision for expanding the Canadian Armed Forces.

The money will be used to put another 5,000 troops in uniform and add new modern capabilities, such as letting the military conduct cyberattacks and to buy armed drones for unmanned airstrikes.

It will also go towards offsetting the skyrocketing financial  and political  cost of buying new warships and fighter jets.

"If we're serious about our role in the world, we must be serious about funding our military," Sajjan told a news conference. "And we are."

Sajjan described the plan as being focused on necessary outputs and capabilities in order to ensure Canada is strong at home, secure within North America and able to meet its international responsibilities.

"This is a significant investment in defence, 70 per cent incerase in our budget within 10 years," he said.

"This allows the Canadian Armed Forces now to be able to have the right resources and planned sustainable funding to be able to create the right plan and sustain itself for the future."

Sajjan did not directly answer, however, when he was asked whether the additional spending would be financed by higher deficits or spending cuts elsewhere.

Still, while some of the money will start flowing right away, the long-awaited defence policy document shows the taps aren't expected to open all the way until after the next election.
Photo: RCMP Lucas Degerness

It has been ten years since a teenaged boy disappeared in Prince George, B.C., and his grieving mother hopes someone has information that could solve the mystery.

Lucas Degerness was just 14 when he vanished on June 7, 2007.

His mother, Gina Degerness, says he spent the night at a friend's house and left sometime the following morning but was never seen again.

In a news release issued by the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, Degerness says the "horrible limbo" is wearing her out and she urges her son, or anyone who knows what happened, to contact her.

In 2014, a tip line operated by the centre received a call from a male identifying himself as Lucas Degerness and giving specific and personal details, but there has been no contact since.

The centre urges anyone who may have even the smallest piece of information about the young man to contact Prince George RCMP or the MissingKids.ca tip line.

Gina Degerness says her heart breaks a little more each day as she waits for word.
Photo: BC Hydro

The president of BC Hydro says a one-year delay in the Site C hydroelectric dam project would cost $630 million, with construction in limbo as the NDP is poised to form a minority government in the coming weeks.

The NDP, which has signed a deal with the Green party to bring down Premier Christy Clark's Liberal government, wants to send the project in northeastern B.C. to the province's utilities commission to review its economic viability.

At a briefing on Wednesday, hydro president Jessica McDonald says bids for contracts for the realignment of a highway are set to go out June 15 and a bridge construction tender is scheduled to be issued early in July.

McDonald says two homes  one owned by local farmers and the other a rental property  are in the direct path of the $8.8-billion dam.

NDP Leader John Horgan recently wrote to McDonald asking that the Crown corporation suspend the evictions for the two homes and urging it not to sign any new contracts for the project until a new government has gained the confidence of the legislature after last month's election.

On Tuesday, Clark sent letters to Horgan and Green Leader Andrew Weaver telling them the evictions are necessary.

Weaver attended Wednesday's briefing in Victoria, a day after he and Horgan replied to Clark's letters questioning her claim that any delay could postpone the diversion by a year and cost taxpayers $600 million.

The premier has asked Horgan and Weaver to reply by Saturday on whether they still want to put the evictions on hold. She says a decision to proceed must be made by June 15 to maintain the river diversion schedule.

In his reply, Horgan writes he was surprised to receive the letter from Clark.

"In it, you made unsupported claims about additional costs associated with asking BC Hydro not to sign major contracts until a new government takes office," he says.

"If you are truly concerned about this timeline, there is a simple solution: recall the legislature immediately and face a confidence vote so British Columbians can get the new government they voted for."
Photo: CTV

UPDATE: 7 p.m.

Just hours after their home was destroyed by fire, a neighbour has stepped up to buy a Surrey couple a new home.

Glenn Conley and Gerald Kameka lost their mobile home of 17 years early Wednesday, the retirees suffered second-degree burns escaping the blaze. They were uninsured.

Returning to their home to search through the ashes, they were told a neighbour will buy them a new trailer.

ORIGINAL: 10:50 a.m.

Two people suffered second-degree burns in escaping a mobile home fire in Surrey early Wednesday.

Glen Conley and Gerald Kameka lost everything in the blaze and are uninsured.

"It's all gone. All gone," a tearful Kameka told CTV.

Their cat also went missing in the fire.

A smoke alarm woke the retirees, who were able to escape on their own. But they both suffered burns that sent them to hospital.

The cause of the fire has yet to be determined.

 with files from CTV Vancouver
Photo: City News

A female parking enforcement officer says she felt powerless and unable to move or speak when three Toronto police officers had sex with her against her wishes after a long night of partying.

The woman, who cannot be identified due to a standard publication ban, is testifying at the trial of Joshua Cabero, Leslie Nyznik, and Sameer Kara, who have all pleaded not guilty to sexual assault in connection with the alleged incident.

The woman says she was out drinking with up to a dozen police officers on Jan. 16, 2015, and returned to a hotel room around midnight with two of the officers, with a plan to drag the third  who had left the group earlier  out of bed to continue the night at another bar.

The woman, who recalls being intoxicated, says her memory of the night is spotty at times, but she says she recalls Nyznik forcing her to have oral sex in the hotel room, and another man having non-consensual sex with her.

She says Kara, whom she was friends with, at one point told the other men to stop, but she testified he later had sex with her without her consent as well.
Photo: Canadian Forces

Canada will add hundreds of new elite special forces commandos, wage offensive cyber warfare attacks and deploy armed drones to international battlefields as part of its military response to new global security threats.

The new defence review identifies a wide range of harrowing and borderless threats, including the "grey zone" of hybrid warfare, ever-present terrorism and climate change.

Some of Canada's military operations will include government-sanctioned cyber attacks and drone strikes on foreign threats, and an increased role for special forces in overseas missions.

The review says this new, elite and futuristic approach to war fighting will respect domestic and international laws. However, the cloak of secrecy that envelops almost all of Canada's special forces, as well as the active expansion of fighting in cyberspace will likely raise questions about transparency and civil liberties.

The policy increases the ranks of special forces by 605 people. They will get new airborne intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance tools.

The special forces are made up of elite JTF-2 commandos and the Joint Incident Response Unit, which is responsible for responding to nuclear, chemical and biological attacks, a contingent of 2,000 in all.

The review says cyberspace is becoming an increasingly hostile place with an increase of state and non-state actors posing threats, and concludes that "a purely defensive cyber posture is not sufficient."

It says the military will launch "active cyber operations against potential adversaries in the context of government authorized military missions."

While non-state actors  terrorists  proliferate and exploit cyberspace, the review says, "the most sophisticated cyber threats come from the intelligence and military services of foreign states."
Photo: The Canadian Press Victims Terry Blanchette and his daughter Hailey Dunbar-Blanchette.

A triple-murder trial began Wednesday with the Crown telling court the suspect confessed to police that he killed all three victims: a father and daughter and a senior.

Derek Saretzky is charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of Terry Blanchette, who was 27, two-year-old Hailey Dunbar-Blanchette and 69-year-old Hanne Meketech.

The Crown said in its opening statement that Saretzky had inside knowledge of the deaths in September 2015.

"He provided details to the police that only the killer would know," prosecutor Photini Papadatou told the jury Wednesday.

Jurors also heard that Saretzky took police to a remote area where the girl's remains were found in a firepit.

Saretzky, 24, is also charged with committing an indignity to the girl's body. He has pleaded not guilty to all the charges.

Papadatou said the case started as two separate investigations: one into the death of Meketech and one into Blanchette's slaying.

His daughter was missing when his body was discovered in his home in Blairmore, Alta., and RCMP quickly realized they needed more help in an all-out effort to find Hailey alive, the prosecutor said.

An Amber Alert that extended across Western Canada and into the United States was issued, but the child was found dead a few days later.
Photo: Twitter Premier Christy Clark tours flood-control measures in West Kelowna, Tuesday.

Politicians have been called back to the British Columbia legislature on June 22, setting the stage for a possible change in the provincial government.

Premier Christy Clark has said she expects to lose a confidence vote in the house after the New Democrats and Greens reached an agreement to allow the NDP to form a minority government.

No party won a majority of seats in a provincial election May 9.

Government House Leader Michael de Jong said in a statement: "The first order of business in this new parliament will be the election of a speaker. After which, and in the aftermath of a very close election, the government will seek to determine if it continues to enjoy the confidence of the house."
Elementary school students ran and jumped, Wednesday, at the district track and field meet in Kelowna.

Hundreds of students from 34 schools will compete over two days in the annual event at the Apple Bowl.

This year, we really expanded it. Its way bigger, said meet director Jim Bradshaw.

Weve had several records broken already. The good thing about the meet this year is we have two brand-new events... the 1,200 and 200 (metres), he said.

Teja Wilson took home the 200-metre record in her first attempt at the distance.

Close to 600 students competed on Wednesday, and another 900 students will take to the track on Thursday.

Hopefully, a lot of these students realize a niche they have and maybe they pursue it into the Kelowna Track Club, said Bradshaw.
Kelowna Mayor Colin Basran is answering residents' questions about how the flooding situation came to be.

Basran has already gone public in three videos urging preparedness and reminding that Kelowna is open for business. On Wednesday, he released a fourth, promising more to come.

Emergency Operations director Ron Mattiussi says in the video a perfect storm of events led to the flooding.

The snowpack came very late, a lot of water, he said. I think looking for someone to blame is just irresponsible.

It is a complex problem, Mother Nature can wreak havoc, and lakes flood. Sometimes, we just have to accept as humans there is only so much we can do.

When we got into March, (it) really started to transition to much wetter weather, said Dave Campbell from the River Forecast Centre. By April 1, the snow base index for the Okanagan jumped up by 105 per cent, and that weather has been persistent through to May.

Campbell described the snowpack melt as a rapidly changing situation.

Its really been a situation that has been quite dynamic  extremely wet, extremely heavy snowpacks and that transition from things looking fairly reasonable to being quite extreme happened over a fairly short period of time, he said.

Public Safety and Protection head Shaun Reimer said there were no indicators pointing to the current crisis.

We could lower the lake every year, but then we would get into drought-like conditions that would have multimillion-dollar impacts on tourism and irrigation, he said.
Photo: Rob Jobin Utility cables were pulled down at Kent and Bredin roads in Kelowna on Wednesday.

Police and firefighters responded to downed utility lines in Kelowna Wednesday afternoon.

The wires came down when they got hung up on a transport truck near Kent and Bredin roads, across from Interior Electronics.

No one was injured from the incident, according to a witness at the scene.

It's not clear if power was knocked out.

Traffic is being advised to avoid the area.
Photo: The Canadian Press Boats are shown trapped in heavy ice off La Scie, Nfld.

Thick Arctic pack ice has trapped multiple vessels and triggered a high-stakes rescue operation from a sinking ship off Newfoundland.

Five fishermen were rescued Wednesday from the Avalon Princess fishing boat, which started to take on water after getting caught in heavy sea ice near La Scie, N.L.

Trevor Hodgson, the Canadian Coast Guard's superintendent of ice operations for the Atlantic region, said the heavy ice is more than two metres thick in some areas off Newfoundland's northeast coast.

He said ice conditions are so bad the Coast Guard has been unable to free trapped vessels with its icebreaker Amundsen.

Alex Roy, a naval cadet with the military's Joint Task Force Atlantic, said a Cormorant helicopter from the 103 Search and Rescue Squadron at 9 Wing Gander was in the air on a training mission and assisted the fishing boat at around 11 a.m.

He said all five fishermen were airlifted to safety by about 2 p.m. and did not require medical attention.
Photo: Twitter

An east Toronto high school has sent hundreds of students home out of concern for their safety after a suspected graduation prank that left the building smeared with cooking oil and peanut butter.

The Toronto Catholic District School Board says about two thirds of the 1,200 students at Senator OConnor College School were dismissed after the mess was discovered early Wednesday.

Spokesman John Yan says the mix was spread on floors, staircases and door handles, which made part of the school unsafe.

He says cleaning crews are working to remove every trace of the substance to ensure the space is safe for those with peanut allergies, which can be potentially fatal.

Yan says the school is working to find out who is responsible for the incident.

He says it's not unusual to see students carry out pranks around graduation time but this is one of the few he remembers where it crossed over into vandalism.

"We know that social media in terms of YouTube and Instagram drives a lot of this wanting to top other schools that are maybe doing the same thing," he said.

"This is one where unfortunately it didn't exactly go the way those involved thought it would," he said.

"It's unfortunate... this is actually something that has become dangerous for staff and students."
Photo: Alanna Kelly Crews worked to pump water off Poplar Point Drive on Sunday.

Poplar Point Drive will be reduced to single-lane, alternating traffic for flood mitigation work on Thursday.

Crews will be on site working to mitigate flood-related problems and to prevent erosion to the roadway.

The road will be partially closed at 7 a.m. and is expected to return back to normal at 7 p.m.
Photo: The Canadian Press

NDP Leader John Horgan says he will stick to his campaign promise of $10-a-day childcare in British Columbia after signing an agreement with the Green party to oust Christy Clark's Liberals.

Horgan campaigned on the commitment but the pact signed with Green Leader Andrew Weaver was less specific, saying only that a New Democrat government would expand spaces, increase affordability and ensure childcare is accessible.

Asked Wednesday which childcare plan B.C. parents would see if he is premier, Horgan said it would be the New Democrats' platform.

His government would create 22,000 new childcare spaces in the next three years, growing to 66,000 spaces in five years, he said at an event in a Vancouver playground with parents and kids gathered behind him.

"I think it's critically important to these families, it's critically important to our economy, that we get moving on ensuring we're providing quality, affordable, accessible childcare," he said.

The NDP campaign platform promised to bring in childcare with an investment of $175 million in the 2017-18 fiscal year and growing to $400 million by 2019-20. The plan would take 10 years to fully implement.

Full-day childcare would be offered for $10 a day and part-time care for $7 a day, with no fee for families with annual incomes below $40,000, while more early childhood educators would be trained and paid "fair wages," the platform says.
Photo: CTV Tim Shields enters court in Vancouver on Wednesday.

The Crown attorney in the sexual assault trial of a retired RCMP inspector says the officer assaulted a woman inside a locked washroom at police headquarters in British Columbia.

Michelle Booker told the provincial court trial Wednesday that the woman, who can't be named, will also testify that while she worked with Tim Shields she was sexually harassed and her requests for it to stop were ignored.

At the time of the alleged incidents, Shields was in charge of strategic communications and was the public face of the Mounties in the province. He previously worked at the Kelowna detachment.

Booker says the woman, who was a civilian employee, will testify that Shields sexually assaulted her in the fall of 2009 at E Division headquarters in Vancouver.

Shields arrived in court flanked by two lawyers, and did not respond to a request for comment.

RCMP Sgt. Jeff Wong was the first witness to testify, describing photos he was asked to take of the Mounties' former headquarters in May 2015 to assist with an internal investigation.

Wong says he was told only that the photos were for a "sensitive situation" involving professional standards.
Dateline: Palestine

Hangry? Try a Snickers. A Palestinian judge has banned divorces during the month of Ramadan because people make hasty decisions when theyre hungry. Mahmoud al-Habbash, head of the Palestinian Islamic sharia court system, said people who deprive themselves of food and cigarettes during daylight hoursas is traditional during the Islamic holy month of Ramadanmay create problems in their relationships and consequently make quick and ill-considered decisions. According to the Qatar-based Al Jazeera Media Network, judges will now only consider and rule on divorce applications made after the month of fasting is over. In the Occupied Palestinian Territories, there is no civil marriage, and only religious courts have the power to allow marriages and divorces. According to the Palestinian Authority, more than 50,000 weddings were celebrated in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip in 2015. During the same time period, more than 8,000 divorces were granted.

Dateline: Oregon

Police officers evacuated a 7-Eleven in Beaverton after a suspicious object exploded inside the convenience stores microwave oven. According to KATU-2 in Portland, a police bomb squad was dispatched to the store on May 30 and ultimately identified the object as a urine sample wrapped in a hand warmer. Police speculate the plastic cup full of pee was being warmed up by someone hoping to pass a drug test. It appears that whoever was on his/her way to do a drug test did not feel that it was warm enough, so they decided to microwave it at 7-Eleven, Beaverton Police spokesperson Mike Rowe said in a press release. The chemical makeup of the hand warmer did not agree with the microwave and exploded. Police are reportedly reviewing security camera footage from the store to find out who stuck the urine sample in the microwave. As Mr. Rowe put it, someone most likely did not pass their UA [urinalysis] today.

Dateline: Massachusetts

A judge at a pretrial hearing in Springfield District Court struck down defendant Orlando Melendez request to juggle in court, killing the visual centerpiece of his innocent plea. The keystone to his defense is: Hes literally a clown, the defendant, writing in the third person, explained in a motion filed last month. The juggling request elicited a curt, one-word response from Judge Robert Murphy: Denied. Melendez, 20, is charged with using a toy gun during an attempted robbery of a Forest Park convenience store last December. Melendez has pled not guilty to two counts of attempting to commit a crime. He fired his lawyer and has been representing himself in court since February. During a hearing on May 25, Melendez outlined his defense strategy in a handwritten motion, telling the judge he was just clowning around when he walked into a Cumberland Farms store and demanded money. According to Melendez, juggling 3 wads of paper for 20 seconds would show jurors that he is, in fact, a legitimate clown. According to Melendez motion, the juggling act would be not only the simplest, but the only possible proof that the defendant is a jester. Sadly, hell have to come up with another way. Jury selection continues.

Dateline: Michigan

Police in suburban Detroit say a woman robbed a bank and used the money to by crab legs, among other things. Chloe Adams, 25, was formally charged in court earlier this month with bank robbery. A judge set her bond at $1 million. Police allege Adams entered the Citizens Bank branch in the suburb of Livonia on the morning of Saturday, May 27, and gave the teller a note demanding $10,00 or things get bloody. She then fled the scene with about $5,000 in cash, officials said. Detectives tracked Adams down at her home later that week and arrested her. The next day, a search of the home turned up evidence linking Adams to the bank robbery. Adams has been cooperating with investigators and told detectives she spent most of the stolen money to pay for a delinquent car loan, a trip to Chicago, a weekend cookout, a pair of Nike Air Jordan shoes and crab legs. She is scheduled to appear in court again this week.

Dateline: New York

A Sheepshead Bay father evidently taught his drug-addicted son a valuable lesson by overdosing on heroin. I told him if youre not going to stop, I will do the same as you do, Sergey Gnatovskiy told the New York Post. I [tried] to send him to rehab. He promised me he was going to go, and I found it again. A man of his word, Mr. Gnatovskiy took his sons fresh stash of heroin and promptly shot up. His 23-year-old son Maykl says he instantly recognized that his father was overdosing. He used CPR and a Narcan nasal spray to bring him backsomething the father has had to do for his son on four separate occasions. The elder Mr. Gnatovskiy says he was feeling back to normal the next day and doesnt recall much of his ordeal. After seeing this, I definitely want to go [to rehab]. Ive been doing this since I was 15. Im 23 now. I cant keep doing this, said Maykl.
Cemex terminals achieve Energy Star Challenge

07 June 2017

Two Cemex USA terminals have achieved the US Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star Challenge for Industry by reducing greenhouse gas emissions through energy conservation. The terminals, located in La Mirada and San Diego (CA), each reduced their energy consumption by more than 10 per cent.



In 2016 Cemex USA conducted pilot programmes at its California terminals to cut energy use. The San Diego terminal achieved an impressive 12.2 per cent reduction in 2016, compared to the prior year. The La Mirada terminal achieved a considerable 23.2 per cent reduction YoY.



The Energy Star Challenge for Industry is a national call-to-action to improve energy efficiency by 10 per cent within five years. The Cemex terminals achieved it in just one year.



"Our La Mirada and San Diego terminals are leading the way in conservation for our Logistics team, and we are very proud of the effort theyve put into achieving the ENERGY STAR Challenge for Industry, said Cemex USA Executive Vice President  Logistics Matt Wild.



The La Mirada and San Diego terminals reduced their energy consumption by completing projects and executing strategies to improve their onsite energy intensity. Workers were educated on energy-management practices and procedures for the proper operation of plant equipment. Outdated light bulbs at the terminals were replaced with more energy-efficient LED lighting. The process of enhancing lighting at the terminals continues in 2017 and workers at the terminals are focussed on looking for more ways to save energy in the future. Cemex also plans to roll out programme to all of its logistics operations.



At Cemex, we are committed to sustainable business practices across our operations and to building a better future for the communities in which we live and work, said Cemex USA President, Ignacio Madridejos. Its truly an honor to receive this recognition from the EPA and Energy Star, and we look forward to many more years of participation in this important program.

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Sgt. Ronald Smith, a lifelong resident of Summerville, Ga.., was honored at the House of Representatives in New Hampshire for his actions in the Vietnam War.

His granddaughter, Sarah Wester, said, "Rep. Frank McCarthy of New Hampshire felt the need to honor my grandfather and several other Marines of his company (Lt. Jerry Flick and Cpl. Lorne Lemieux) for actions that happened 50 years ago in January (1967) during the Vietnam war.

"Sgt. Smith was part of a nine-man patrol who were part of an ambush by 40 or more Vietcong. Rep. McCarthy believes that these men deserved a medal for their valor and unfortunately they were never recognized for their bravery. As a result Rep. McCarthy proposed a "unanimous consent" be read in front of the House that would commemorate what these men did and how their actions turned the tides against the ambush.

"Due to the unanimous consent, Rep. McCarthy was able to read an account of what happened 50 years ago and that was forever recorded into the books in the New Hampshire House of Representatives.

"I was astonished by the reading of the actions of my grandfather. He often tells us stories of all he went through and endured during his time in Vietnam and it is even more impressive to hear it from another. I could write much more about the events that were retold, however I am going to attach a link to both the newspaper article that was written and the live stream feed of Rep. McCarthy's speech.

"It takes incredible bravery to do what our military men and women do for our country and it is always phenomenal when one of your own is recognized for going above and beyond to save the lives of others."
Five Minutes With Damien Geter Audio Article Vocalist, composer and Richmond Symphony artist in residence Damien Geters musical roots sprouted when he was a boy in the Matoaca District of Chesterfield County, where he was raised and...
Mark Zuckerberg is coming to Chicago for an event with Facebook Group leaders June 22. (Lluis Gene / AFP/Getty Images)

Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder and CEO of Facebook, is coming to Chicago this month for a meeting with leaders of groups that operate on the social networking site.

Dubbed the Facebook Communities Summit, the two-day event will bring together "a few hundred" people who administer Facebook Groups. The event will be held June 22 and 23; Zuckerberg is scheduled to speak on the first day.

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Aside from Zuckerberg's speech, the event will offer Facebook Group leaders workshops, information about new products, and the opportunity to give feedback to Facebook employees, according to a website for the event.

The summit was open to Facebook Group administrators who applied to attend the event in advance  before Zuckerberg announced his attendance. The event website says applications are now closed.

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Zuckerberg announced his attendance in a post on Facebook Tuesday, saying the summit is part of the company's goal "to bring people closer together and build common understanding," themes he also touched upon during his commencement speech at Harvard last month.

"I've written and talked about these themes throughout this year," he wrote. "This summit will be the next chapter and we'll discuss more of what we're building to empower community leaders to bring the world closer together."

The Chicago event is the latest in a series of public appearances by Zuckerberg. In January, he announced a plan to visit every state in the U.S., spurring some to speculate that he was running for president (he says he's not).

Zuckerberg's speech is scheduled for 10 a.m. June 22 and will be live-streamed on his Facebook profile.

bmeyerson@chicagotribune.com

Twitter: @bmeyerson
U.S. Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta, center, tours a plant in Detroit on June 1. He is expected to be asked Wednesday about Trump's proposal. (Todd McInturf / Detroit News)

Businesses and advocates for workers are forming a rare alliance against President Trump's proposal to overhaul the way the government investigates workplace discrimination, part of what his critics say is a broader swipe at decades of civil rights protections.

Trump wants to merge the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission with a lesser-known agency that also enforces laws on equality in the workplace. The EEOC is an independent agency that investigates discrimination complaints against private businesses. The second agency  the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs  polices discrimination among federal contractors. The administration contends that combining the two would reduce duplication by offering "one door" for workers to bring discrimination complaints.

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Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta, the only Latino in Trump's Cabinet, is expected to be asked about the proposal Wednesday when he appears at a House hearing on the agency's budget.

Employers' allies, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, fear the proposal would create something of a super enforcement agency with overwhelming investigatory and punitive powers.

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"If you take these two agencies and put them together, the concern is you'd have a perfect storm, a nightmare scenario for employers," said Mickey Silberman, who defends employers and contractors in government investigations for the law firm Jackson Lewis P.C. in Denver.

But workers' rights organizations predict the opposite would happen, viewing Trump's new combined agency as a way to make enforcement so onerous it happens less effectively.

"We'd be going backward in terms of enforcement, which honestly I believe is the intention," said Paula Brantner, an employment lawyer and senior advisor to the Workplace Fairness advocacy group.

Especially sensitive is the political question of whether Acosta will defend a budget that would cut the number of employees in civil rights enforcement offices at his agency.

In 2012, while he was dean at the Florida International University law school, Acosta  whose parents are Cuban immigrants  staked out a position starkly different from Trump's on immigrants who are in the country illegally. "We need them here. They provide construction jobs. They provide agricultural jobs," said Acosta, who previously served as head of the Justice Department's civil rights division.

The National Women's Law Center's Emily Martin said she hoped that Acosta would continue to emphasize the importance of civil rights protections for low-wage workers and workers of color, but added, "certainly the budget that he will be defending does not clearly speak to that."

Armed with subpoena power, the EEOC resolved more than 97,000 cases in fiscal year 2016 and took in nearly 92,000 new ones. The budget document says the number of new cases probably would drop slightly. The backlog of unresolved cases also is expected to gradually decline, to 60,000 cases in fiscal year 2020 from more than 73,000.

The second agency, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, is part of the Labor Department. The budget proposes reducing staff to 440 employees from 571 and merging it with the EEOC, for a saving of just over $17 million.

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Like most presidents' budget proposals, Trump's looks headed for the political graveyard as the Republican-controlled Congress gears up to propose its own spending plan. So far, Republicans aren't leaping to support Trump's proposal for merging the agencies.

Advocates for racial, gender and sexual equality say that Trump's budget is rife with examples supporting their suspicions about a reduced government role enforcing civil rights.

The budget would eliminate at least 10% of key civil rights enforcement positions across the government, advocates estimate.

In addition to cuts at the Labor Department, Trump has proposed cutting posts at the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights and the Legal Services Corp., which helped more than 2 million low-income individuals with legal representation last year, advocates said. Additionally, Trump proposes deleting the Environmental Protection Agency's environmental justice program, which addresses environmental and health concerns in minority, low-income and tribal communities. The administration says such concerns would be addressed by other parts of the EPA.

"It's a death by 1,000 cuts of the progress that we've made in this country," said Vanita Gupta, who headed the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division under President Obama. "You have to view these budget proposals against the larger backdrop of a really systematic rollback on civil rights."

The budget presents them all as cost-cutting measures.

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Republicans have long assailed the EEOC for inefficiencies, particularly its backlog.

"These are men and women who turned to the federal government for help and got lost in an inefficient bureaucracy," Rep. Bradley Byrne (R-Ala.), the chairman of the subcommittee on workforce protections, said during a May 23 hearing.
The top-ranked Illinois company, Walgreens Boots Alliance, is No. 17 on the 2017 Fortune 500 list with revenue of more than $117 million. (Michelle Jamrisko / Bloomberg)

Another year, another list of the country's largest and most successful companies. It's the annual Fortune 500 list, which tracks which ones are raking in increasing amounts of money and tagging those that are slipping in size, as measured by annual revenue. Overall, the roster provides a measure of how big business is doing.

Nationally, Walmart again topped the list, as it has for the past five years. Also of note on this year's list is the number of women-led businesses, which at 32 female chiefs sets an all-time high.

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In Illinois, 50 companies made the list, and among them were some companies whose places changed dramatically. Sears, which was ranked at 127, compared with 111 last year, was also listed among the top 10 money losers. And one, Kraft Heinz, ranked 106, wasn't listed in Illinois even though it has headquarters in both Chicago and Pittsburgh. New to the list is TreeHouse Foods, based in Oak Brook.

Take note: Last year's rankings are in parentheses.

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17. (19) Walgreens Boots Alliance in Deerfield, moved up this year a couple of notches, thanks to an annual revenue increase of 13.4 percent despite profits declining by 1.1 percent to $4.17 billion. The company has faced speculation that its plan to acquire RiteAid could fall apart.

24. (24) Boeing, which Fortune bills as the "world's largest aerospace company," maintained its ranking. The company saw revenues and profits decline, to $94.5 billion and $4.8 billion, respectively. Fortune noted the Chicago-based company faced higher development costs and low oil prices, which decreases demand for new, full-efficient models.

33. (35) State Farm Insurance rose two spots this year, even as its profits sank more than 94 percent, to $350 million. Revenues inched up six-tenths of a percent to $76.1 million Last month, the Bloomington-based company said it would streamline its business, closing nearly a dozen facilities and laying off thousands of employees.

45. (41) ADM, or Archer Daniels Midland, slid a few notches this year. Revenues at the Chicago-based company dropped nearly 8 percent, to $63.2 million, and profits fell over 30 percent, to $1.2 billion.

74. (59) Caterpillar, the Peoria-based maker of construction and farming machinery, had a tough year. Profits fell over 103 percent  due in part to commodity prices  to a loss of $67 million. This year has been newsy, too. It announced its headquarters would move to Deerfield and closed a facility near Aurora, laying off 800 workers, and its downstate offices were raided by the feds.

83. (80) United Continental Holdings slid in the rankings despite the airline's stock climbing 10 percent last year. Profits fell 69 percent in 2016 to $2.2 billion due to competition and a strong U.S. dollar.

84. (81) Allstate's annual sales increased 2.5 percent to $36.5 billion in 2016, while profits dropped 14.3 percent to $1.77 billion. Blame the fall in profits and the lower ranking on a good economy and cheaper gas prices that boosted claims for the Northbrook-based insurer.

89. (95) Exelon moved up in the ranking despite a profit drop of 50 percent, to $1.1 billion, as wholesale power prices fell. Fortune noted the company is turning its focus to serving customers, which could, in the end, put a positive spin on its future.

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107. (95) Deere's profits fell 21.4 percent to $1.5 billion as sales for the Moline-based company fell 7.7 percent to $26 billion, due mainly to an agricultural slowdown.

109. (94) Mondelez International's ranking plunged. It reported $25.9 billion in revenue last year, down from $29.6 billion the previous year. Profits fell 77 percent to $1.6 billion. Like other processed food companies such as Kraft Heinz and Conagra Brands, Mondelez has been challenged by growing consumer appetite for food considered natural and healthy.

Other Illinois companies that made the list were AbbVie, 111; McDonald's, 112; US Foods, 124; Sears Holdings, 127; Abbott Laboratories, 135; Conagra Brands, 197; CDW, 199; Illinois Tool Works, 202; Discover Financial Services, 277; Baxter International, 281; W.W. Grainger, 282; LKQ, 304; Tenneco, 322; Navistar International, 337; Univar, 338; Anixter International, 359; R.R Donnelly & Sons, 388; Jones Lang LaSalle, 391; Dover, 392; TreeHouse Foods, 427; Motorola Solutions, 433; Old Republic International, 439; Packaging Corp. of America, 450; Ingredion, 456; Arthur J. Gallagher, 462; and Essendant, 487.

crshropshire@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @corilyns
Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase & Co., and chairman of the Business Roundtable, speaks at the Economic Club of Washington in September. (Molly Riley / AFP/Getty Images)

Washington  Despite some stumbles by President Trump, chief executives of America's largest companies are more optimistic about the economy than they have been in three years, according to survey results released Tuesday.

The CEOs remain hopeful about a sweeping overhaul of the tax code, including a steep cut in the corporate rate, despite limited details so far from the White House and the lack of formal legislation in Congress.

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Those developments have led the Trump administration to back off its expectation to get tax reform enacted by August.

But hopes remain high that major tax changes are coming soon, according to the 148 chief executives surveyed this month by the Business Roundtable trade group.

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"The survey results reflect confidence from America's leading employers in the prospects for tax reform as well as the tangible economic benefits that tax reform will produce," said Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JP Morgan Chase & Co., and chairman of the group, which is composed of the heads of about 200 of the largest U.S companies.

Its CEO Economic Outlook Index increased to 93.9 in the second quarter, up slightly from the first quarter, boosted by stronger expectations for capital spending.

The index is based on projections for sales, capital spending and hiring over the next six months, and ranges from minus-50 to 150, with a reading above 50 indicating that the economy is expanding. Since the survey began in 2002, the average has been 80.

In the first quarter, the index jumped by its most in seven years as Trump took office with promises to slash taxes and regulations.

But Trump's agenda has been slowed as the White House deals with controversies, such as investigations into possible collusion by campaign officials with Russia during the 2016 election.

"Of course, whenever there are distractions from the agenda that we want to see accomplished in Washington, everybody's concerned," said Business Roundtable President Joshua Bolten, who served as White House chief of staff during the George W. Bush administration.

"But I'd be careful not to overstate that concern," he said. "What the survey reflects is ongoing optimism about the prospect for ongoing regulatory reform.and the prospect for tax reform."

Trump wants to to cut the corporate tax rate to 15% from 35%, which is the highest among developed economies, He also wants to eliminate U.S. taxes on foreign earnings.

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The urgency of tax reform cannot be overstated.  Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JP Morgan Chase & Co.

"The urgency of tax reform cannot be overstated," Dimon said.

A separate Business Roundtable survey last month showed that tax reform would boost corporate spending and hiring, while a delay would cause CEOs to hold off on those moves.

In the latest survey, CEOs scaled down their projection for economic growth this year to 2% from a 2.2% estimate in the first quarter.

The index for capital spending plans increased while expectations for sales remained essentially flat. Plans to expand payrolls decreased somewhat, although Bolten noted that came after a big jump in hiring expectations in the first quarter.

Twitter: @JimPuzzanghera

jim.puzzanghera@latimes.com

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In 2016, almost 500,000 airline passengers were denied boarding of flights in the U.S, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. (Kori Rumore/Chicago Tribune) (Kori Rumore/Chicago Tribune)

United Airlines is barring fewer people from boarding its planes following lingering public uproar over the carrier's handling of a passenger who refused to give up his seat on a flight in April.

The Chicago-based airline's "involuntary denied boardings"  which can occur when not enough passengers on an overbooked flight volunteer to be bumped  were down 79 percent year over year in May, according to a Wednesday news release.

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Dr. David Dao, of Elizabethtown, Ky., was one of four passengers on an April 9 flight bound for Louisville, Ky., from O'Hare International Airport picked to give up his seat to make way for airline employees. Dao refused and was then dragged off the flight  and bloodied along the way  by Chicago Aviation Department officers.

Videos of Dao's forced removal from the plane went viral, and the public outcry that followed pressured United to act. CEO Oscar Munoz issued multiple apologies, and the carrier promised to reduce overbooking and offer as much as $10,000 to customers who give up their seats on oversold flights.

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The reduction in involuntarily bumped passengers "is a direct result of the initiative we rolled out in April to be more customer-focused," United spokeswoman Megan McCarthy said.

For many passengers, the April incident was a stark reminder that they are not guaranteed a seat they paid for, bringing to light industry practices dealing with oversold flights.

Dao suffered a broken nose, sinus injury and concussion, according to his attorney, and reached a settlement with the airline by the end of April. Attorneys for Dao said he would not sue the city, though three officers from the Aviation Department were placed on administrative leave after the incident.

Speaking at a Deutsche Bank industrial summit in Chicago on Wednesday, United Airlines President Scott Kirby called the April passenger dragging incident a "setback" but said customer satisfaction with the airline is headed in the right direction.

"While our incident in April was unfortunate, disappointing and was a setback, United Airlines is running the best airline in the country today," Kirby said. "That one incident was not representative of who we are ... and the thousands of times every day that our employees are going above and beyond to take care of our customers."

An industry veteran who previously held leadership positions at American Airlines, America West Airlines and US Airways, Kirby joined United in August in the newly created role of president, reporting to Munoz.

In April, United scored the lowest of any legacy airline in the industry's annual American Customer Satisfaction Index survey, which was conducted before the passenger dragging incident.

Taking the 30,000-foot view, Kirby said United has nonetheless made progress with customer satisfaction in recent years despite the high-profile setback.

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"While they were worried about the Dr. Dao incident, they feel really good, particularly our frequent traveling customers, and they can tell the difference at United," Kirby said. "And we feel great about where we are today and the trajectory that we're going to continue on."

amarotti@chicagotribune.com

rchannick@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @AllyMarotti

Twitter @RobertChannick
The University of Chicago Medicine broke ground Sept. 15, 2016, on a new and expanded emergency department that will also offer adult trauma care. (University of Chicago Medicine rendering)

University of Chicago Medicine announced Wednesday that it plans to open its new emergency department in January and begin offering trauma services  long absent from Chicago's South Side  in May.

The opening and new services follow years of campaigning by activists for urgent, high-level medical care on the South Side  which hasn't had such care since Michael Reese Hospital in Bronzeville closed its trauma center in 1991.

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The University of Chicago emergency department is slated to open Jan. 8. Trauma services, which start May 1, will include care for patients with life-threatening injuries from car accidents, burns, serious falls and gunshot wounds. Those dates are pending approval from the Illinois Department of Public Health.

The Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board unanimously approved plans for University of Chicago Medicine's project last year, and construction on the $43 million emergency department project began last fall.

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The new emergency department, which is being built from a converted parking garage, will be 76 percent larger than the current one. It will include four trauma bays for treating patients, private patient rooms rather than spaces divided by curtains, and separate entrances for emergency medical service workers and patients who arrive on their own.

University of Chicago Medicine also plans to add a dedicated cancer hospital to its University of Chicago Medical Center campus. The overall project, including the expanded emergency department, is expected to cost $269 million and add 188 beds.

Earlier this year, University of Chicago Medicine hired Dr. Selwyn Rogers, from the University of Texas Medical Branch, as founding director of the trauma center. So far, University of Chicago Medicine has also recruited five of six additional trauma surgeons.

lschencker@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @lschencker
For the small fraternity of people who make their living coaxing musical notes out of vulnerable pieces of wood and metal, few things are more terrifying than seeing an expensive, defenseless instrument disappear on that little conveyor belt at the airport.

Horror stories abound. A musician checked his $45,000, 75-year-old cello, which airport workers promptly placed beneath somebody's golf clubs, snapping its neck. A noted German soloist said airport workers roughed up his cello case. After his flight, he found his $20,000 bow broken in half. A Florida State University music student on a flight to Tallahassee found splinters of wood where her cello used to be.

Those stories and many, many more have converged into an unwritten musician's rule: Never trust an airline with your instrument.

So when a Houston-based gate agent at United Airlines told Yennifer Correia that she would have to check her 17th-century violin, which costs more than her car, the first words out of her mouth were: "What are my other options?"

The situation soured from there, her attorney says, resulting in what is becoming another black eye for an airline industry that dragged a bleeding man off an overbooked flight this spring and allegedly booted a family from a flight over a birthday cake.

Correia, a classical violinist on her way to play in the summer season at the Missouri Symphony Orchestra, asked for an airport supervisor. But the supervisor said there were no other options. The violin had to be checked.

Her attorney, Phil MacNaughton, recounted what happened from there. Correia told the supervisor, "I can't not take my violin on board. I'll pay the money. I'll take another flight. Just tell me what I can do?"

As the altercation intensified, Correia told the agents that she would appeal to their bosses and asked the supervisor for her name, MacNaughton said. The supervisor said she wanted Correia's name and reached for the tag on her luggage.

"Without provocation, the supervisor for the Chicago-based carrier then lunged for Ms. Correia's case and, incredibly, tried to wrestle it away from the musician," said a statement written by MacNaughton.

"I start screaming, 'Help, help, help, can somebody record what's happening because this lady's trying to take my personal suitcase from me,'" Correia told Houston NBC-affiliate KPRC.

The supervisor said she was going to call security, and Correia apparently responded, "Please do." Then the supervisor dashed off. That was the last Correia saw of her.

During the scuffle, MacNaughton said, Correia's hand was injured. She doesn't believe there is permanent damage, but she went to see a hand specialist "because the stakes are high."

United Airlines didn't offer an account of what happened. Charles Hobart, a spokesman, emailed a statement to The Washington Post:

"We're disappointed anytime a customer has an experience that does not live up to his or her expectation. We are reaching out to Ms. Correia to gain a better understanding of what occurred and to offer assistance."

MacNaughton said someone from United left a voice mail on Correia's phone. He asked that anyone who had a video recording of the confrontation contact him.

"Why can't these people be polite?" MacNaughton said. "I'm sure that's what their CEO is wondering. It's like kind of everybody knows if you're frustrated with a surgeon, you don't grab their hands. This [supervisor] was willing to get in a wrestling match over a violin."

Other recent confrontations involving airlines have stoked outrage: pilots hitting passengers and passengers brawling with each other and police. In late April, a Delta Air Lines passenger said he was kicked off a plane for using the restroom.

Musicians should have it a little easier, in theory. Federal law requires airports to accommodate musicians who want to carry their instruments with them in the airplane's cabin. MacNaughton said he's still not certain whether United officials violated that law.

Either way, Correia was looking to put the incident behind her and get to Missouri.

She booked a flight for Tuesday on American Airlines instead of United - and carried her violin the whole time.
A condo board of directors is responsible for maintaining, repairing and replacing the common elements. If the common element tuckpointing is insufficient, allowing water to penetrate into the building cavity (and thus, an owners unit), the board must repair the water infiltration as a common expense. (Getty Images)

Q: I own a unit on the first floor of a small condominium building. At my expense, I replaced my kitchen window; however, when it rains, I still see water dripping into the window frame. The window installation company inspected the window, stated the installation was correct and opined the water is coming in from deteriorated tuckpointing near the window. The association board refuses to take any action, claiming the water infiltration issue is my problem because I replaced the window. Thoughts?

A: Section 18.4(a) of the Illinois Condominium Property Act says a board of directors is responsible for maintaining, repairing and replacing the common elements. If the common element tuckpointing  and/or waterproof membrane underneath the masonry  is insufficient or deteriorated such that water is penetrating into the building cavity, the board must repair the water infiltration as a common expense.

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The board's failure to maintain, repair and replace the common elements is a breach of its fiduciary duties. If the board continues to refuse to maintain the common elements to stop the water infiltration into the building cavity (and thus, your windows), a unit owner has the right to file a lawsuit against the board members for breach of fiduciary duty, or more practically, may seek board approval for the owner to take corrective action to stop the water infiltration. After the repair, the unit owner can decide whether to pursue legal remedies against the association for reimbursement.

Q: I am a board member of a condominium association, and there is a unit owner who routinely harasses the board with endless questions and demands for documents. The most recent demand was for all financial records and statements of the association for the last 10 years, which equates to thousands of pages of documents. The requestor's alleged "proper purpose" as required by the Condominium Property Act is to determine if there is financial mismanagement by the board. What is considered a proper response?

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A: Section 19(a) of the Condominium Act states that unit owners are entitled to inspect and obtain copies of books and records of account for the current and 10 immediately preceding fiscal years. According to Section 19(e) of the Condominium Act, the unit owner must state a proper purpose for such records and the records must be produced within 30 business days of the unit owner's request.

The association may charge the unit owner the actual cost of retrieving and making the requested records available for inspection as well as the actual cost to the association for such copies.

A proper purpose under Illinois case law cannot be for purposes of harassment and retaliation. A mere statement alleging financial mismanagement may not be sufficient depending on the facts and circumstances of the request, and the past conduct of the unit owner toward the board.

Q: I am on the board of a self-managed condominium association, and the association needs access to a penthouse unit to investigate and repair water infiltration coming from the roof. However, the unit owner will not allow access to the unit unless the board provides a copy of the contract with the association's architect and answers other questions. Can a unit owner condition access upon delivery of a contract and information?

A: Legally speaking, a unit owner cannot condition the board's access to a unit for maintenance, repair or replacement of the common elements when emergency repairs are necessary to prevent damage to common elements. Section 18.4(j) of the Condominium Act expressly gives the board such authority to access a unit for the above purposes.

However, as a practical matter, seeking court intervention to exercise such a right would cause a significant delay in investigating and making such repairs, even though the board would be able to recover its legal fees according to Section 9.2 of the Condominium Act.

The practical solution is to give the unit owner reasonable information to solicit his or her cooperation. Unit owners are entitled to inspect copies of contracts to which the association is a party upon stating a proper purpose, according to Section 19 of the Condominium Act.

CondoAdviserQuestions@lplegal.com







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In some jurisdictions, if a lender forecloses on property, the owner must vacate the property. However, tenants have (or may have) stronger rights, and will be permitted to stay in the property for a period of time. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images )

Q: My wife and I and our two teenage children have rented a nice house near the kids' high school for many years. We have religiously paid the rent on a timely basis. We just learned that our landlord's bank is about to foreclose on the house. Where does that leave us? Will we be thrown out?

A: This unfortunately has become a common problem in the past few years. There is always the possibility that you will be asked to leave, but there are some things you should do  and do immediately.

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Assuming you received a letter from the lender's attorney advising you about the pending foreclosure, you should call that lawyer, and ask these questions:

1. When and where will the foreclosure sale take place?

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2. Can you start making your rent payments to the lender, or putting them in escrow? I suspect your landlord has been collecting your monthly rent but not paying the mortgage with those funds.

3. If the lender purchases the property at the foreclosure sale, will the lender allow you to stay in the property? If so, for how long? At a foreclosure sale, often no one will purchase the property. Thus, the lender actually buys back the property and will own it. However, most lenders do not want to be in the real estate ownership business and will want to get rid of the property as soon as possible.

Here's a question for you: Are you interested in purchasing the property? At foreclosure sales, it is possible to get a good deal if you are the successful bidder. However, before you go down this path, talk with your own attorney. You want to perform a title search before the sale takes place. You want to know all about foreclosure sales, and what your rights and obligations will be. Too many people mistakenly believe they can get a superdeal by buying properties at foreclosure sales. This isn't necessarily so.

Finally, you should find out what your state law says in these circumstances. In some jurisdictions, such as the District of Columbia, if a lender forecloses on property, the owner must vacate the property. However, tenants have (or may have) stronger rights, and will be permitted to stay in the property for a period of time.

Additionally, in most U.S. states, a tenant cannot just be thrown out on the street without a court order. This means that the new landlord  the successful purchaser at the foreclosure sale  will have to go to court to seek an eviction order. This would give you some more time before you have to move.

As a precaution, however, you may want to start looking for another rental property. And I do not recommend you pay any more rent to your landlord. You should put your rent in escrow with your attorney. I strongly suspect that if your landlord is having financial problems, you probably will not get your security deposit back when you vacate. Thus, you want to protect yourself as soon as possible.

Benny Kass is a practicing attorney in Washington, D.C., and in Maryland. He does not provide specific legal or financial advice to any reader. Readers may email him, but he cannot guarantee a personal response.

mailbag@kmklawyers.com







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Pastor James Marks and congregation founder Ora Sherrell stand in the front of the Bethesda Church of God in Christ in Elgin. Marks is retiring his post on Sunday. ( Mike Danahey/The Courier-News )

Two years ago, Elgin designated Hickory Place between Dundee Avenue and Liberty Street on the city's east side as Honorary Pastor James L. Marks Place.

As Marks is set to retire his post this month as pastor of the Bethesda Church of God In Christ, the story behind that move bears repeating. The street signs were meant as a tribute to people whose work has made a difference for the city and for what had been one of Elgin's toughest neighborhoods.

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City Council member Rich Dunne noted in a letter he wrote to co-sponsor the street's renaming that Marks "has worked tirelessly to assist Elgin in ways as diverse as giving renewed hope to a drug-infested neighborhood to working on the boards of many local not-for-profit agencies to emphasizing the importance to the youth of the area of giving back to the community."

Marks recalled that prior to the church relocating and building on a vacant lot along Hickory, the area had been one where it was tough for women to walk down the streets without being harassed.

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Church founder Ora Sherrell recalled that there had been a tree near the church's lot that was known as "the drug tree," in a spot where drug deals would happen.

According to "Bethesda's Journey," a book Marks, Sherrell and Jackie Dussard published in 2009, the congregation has its roots in late 1970 in Sherrell's Geneva Street home, where she and friends planned to have the church, which held its first official service at the Unitarian Universalist Church with eight people in attendance.

The book noted that by 1971, Bethesda was renting space from Epworth United Methodist that was at 551 Arlington and where Bethesda would remain until 1980.

In 1975, Marks came into the picture after Sherrell and fellow church founders Lela Cadney and Delores Anderson convinced the Church of God in Christ bishop based in Rockford that Elgin's congregation needed a pastor.

Marks was born in Arkansas on July 4, 1940, and his family moved to Rockford when he was a teenager. He was working full-time at a Rockford Eagle grocery store and part-time as assistant pastor of a Rockford church when Bethesda chose him from among four candidates to become its full-time leader in 1975.

The church met at several other locations before breaking ground in August 1993 on the building along Hickory, a building that went up with the help of volunteers such as bricklayer and mason Alcide Chambers.

Sherrell said some of her fondest memories are of heading home from work at Hoffer Plastics and stopping by to watch the church being built.

Marks, too, looks back warmly on those days.

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"I was general contractor for this building," Marks said of the church, which opened in March 1994.

Over the years, Marks was one of the people instrumental in getting the city to open a Boys and Girls Club and then in the club having its own building constructed along Dundee Avenue. He served three terms on the club's board.

Marks and former Salvation Army commander Ken Nicolai helped create the Food for Greater Elgin warehouse and pantry a few years ago too.

Marks also has served on the board of the Elgin Cooperative Ministries, which runs the nightly soup kitchens, and on the Elgin Interracial Clergy Alliance. Past retirement, Marks said he intends to remain involved in the clergy alliance.

As for the blue-collar neighborhood surrounding the church, Sherrell and Marks said now it is much quieter than 24 years ago, and property values have risen in part because of the church's calming presence.

Marks gave credit for the positive changes to the congregation, the people living in the neighborhood and the Elgin Police Department having a ROPE officer living in the area.

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Marks' last official moment as the congregation's pastor will be a transfer of leadership service set for 4 p.m. Sunday. Sherrell said a retirement party is being planned for July 16.

The new pastor will be Cedric Simmons, who has been a Bethesda member since 1990 and assistant pastor since 2004.

"I am looking forward to building upon the foundation Pastor Marks has started with the church and the community," Simmons said. "I consider it a privilege to follow in his footsteps."

Simmons said, for now at least, he will continue at his full-time job as a computer programmer with Wintrust.

Marks will be an emeritus pastor for the church and said he intends to attend its services, driving down from Rockford, where he and his family have been living all this time.

"It's been a pleasure to work with him for 42 years," Sherrell said of Marks.

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Mayor Dave Kaptain recalled a time when Marks and the Bethesda congregation provided lunch for 120 people involved in a Neighbor Works Day. Such actions set the tone for what the church meant to the neighborhood where it stands, Kaptain said.

"Pastor Marks has been a great leader in the community and a real asset to the city," Kaptain said.

mdanahey@tribpub.com
Country follows White House ways: After 35 years in education, I can still remember the first education course I took. We were told that we would set the tone for our classroom on how we reacted to situations. Our national problem is that President Trump set the tone early in his campaign when he talked about jailing Hillary Clinton. He set the tone that anything goes. As we can see now with the representative from Montana, anything goes. Trump has set the tone.

Show some regard for hard of hearing: I'm calling about Obamacare. Did you know that former President Obama told everyone who can't hear or has a hearing problem that it isn't a handicap? You just have to go on. It's alright to give illegal immigrants treatment and free hearing aids. Why didn't he help American citizens? He helped that little girl from another country to get a transplant so she could hear for the first time. He did that, but he didn't help Americans with hearing aids. When you can't hear, it is a handicap. Teeth, hearing and eyes are very important to seniors. Please help the people that are hard of hearing.

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Trump was the best choice: To the caller who insists that President Trump is a disaster, a liar and a manipulator who cannot be trusted, I want to ask if we had anyone better. Hillary Clinton? She has no integrity. She accepted debate questions beforehand. She lied about the emails and her server, and the Clinton foundation was a pay for play organization. Bernie Sanders is a socialist who wants to give everything away for free. He gave speeches against the rich but owns four houses. Democrats are such hypocrites. I am so glad Trump is our leader. He is getting our country back after eight years under former President Obama.

Criminal's military records revealed: There is a trend in news reporting on violent crime. We heard it in the report of the Times Square hit and run of pedestrians, in the shooting of the train conductor in Naperville, and the punching of a female security guard in Chicago. In each case, the military history of the perpetrator is told. How is this relevant to their violent acts? Is it an attempt to somehow redeem the perpetrator?

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Taxed to the max: Wouldn't it be wonderful if Batavia, Geneva, St. Charles and all this area could get some tax relief? Our taxes are sky high. I just read that Batavia is going to give a loan and grant to bring another restaurant to town. All this that will be added to the TIF fund without giving us any benefit except higher taxes.

Frustrated about false advertising: I want to comment on some companies who get away with false advertising especially on television. The copper frying pan is a good example. You see the guy with the electric beater preparing eggs in the pan. He says it doesn't stick or get scratched. I have one. It sticks and gets scratched. The American people are being taken for a ride. This is just one example. It shouldn't happen at all. I have a floor steamer that took the finish off my kitchen floor. Someone needs to put a stop to fraudulent advertising.

Disappointed in Democrats: Just what is the Democratic response, including Linda Chapa LaVia and Michael Madigan's response, to the dire budget crisis in Illinois? Is it to cut spending? Reduce programs? Balance the budget? No, it's to increase all of our taxes and fund abortions. How sad.

Galled about gun range: This is about the gun range. I read that if they didn't put the gun range in, there would have been a lawsuit against the city. If I was the mayor and someone told me that, I would have thrown him out of the room. That sounds like a threat to me. I think Elgin police better keep a close eye on them. I wouldn't let them scare me.

Wrong word used: Did anybody read the latest "Like a Good Neighbor" section in the latest Aurora Borealis? There is a suggestion to "keep your grass trim." Does that mean I'm supposed to put my grass on a treadmill? Have it bench press some heavy branches or feed it a fat-burning supplement three times a week? Come on, city hall. When my high taxes pay for a city mailer that tells me what to do with my property, at least make those $100,000 a year proofreaders use correct English. Then I will be motivated to keep my yard "trimmed."

Appalled about city hall: I would like to see The Beacon-News do some investigative reporting on the number of executive and administrative employees at city hall. There are numerous people making over $100,000 who supervise and manage only two to four employees. I think you would find a lot of fluffy positions where the people are not doing any real work that serves the people.

Fleeing the city: Chicago residents are fleeing in droves or rather for their lives. Now you know why Mayor Emanuel made it a sanctuary city. He probably will propose putting a wall around the city to keep people from escaping.

Show dignity instead of disrespect: I've never seen the White House like the way it is now. There were a lot of things that former President Obama didn't do right or that I didn't like, but I can say that he tried to do the best he could. He carried himself with style and dignity. He also carried the White House with dignity. The president we have now disrespects everything we stand for.

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We need NATO: You can say what you want to say, but I don't think President Trump knows what NATO is. NATO is an alliance. Instead of talking about who pays what, he needs to talk about intelligence gathering. We won't have any partners to help us out. We cannot survive alone. Trust me.

Memorial Day madness: Oh joy. Memorial Day weekend, and the neighbors are playing their music, drinking their alcohol and driving their new cars. While regular people have donated food, money and clothes, they get food stamps and Medicaid and have these big parties. Who is paying for that?

Focusing on Foster: In the article about Vietnam veterans being honored, Congressman Bill Foster indicated that the event means something personal to him because he missed the draft by one year. Unlike World War II where 66 percent of the armed forces members were drafted, during the Vietnam War only 25 percent of the total force were draftees. The event would have meant so much more if Foster had been part of the 75 percent who volunteered to serve their nation.

Editor's note

Speak Out is a reader-generated column of opinions. If you see something you disagree with or think is incorrect, call us at 312-222-2460 or email couriernews@tribpub.com. Please include "speak out" in the subject line.
A complaint filed with the city of Naperville's Housing Advisory Commission charged a real estate company discriminated against a couple because of their race.

The complaint filed by Perry and Monica Jones says Concentric Realty, which serves the Chicago area, refused to rent a town home in the 4900 block of Royal Mews Circle to the couple because they are black, according to the boxes checked on the complaint.

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According to the complaint, the couple completed the application process, which included undergoing a background and credit check and providing income verification, paycheck stubs and a bank statement.

"Our income, background check, credit check was completed and we were told we could move in (the first week of May)," the complaint filed on May 4 said. Then, the couple alleges, once they submitted their driver's license pictures, "everything changed."

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Consecutive Realty requested they pay the entire year's rent $24,000  up front.

"We were then told that there were other candidates and they were being considered but mind you we had completed our application and background checks over the previous weekend and (were) to move in this week," the complaint reads.

The couple said they were told they had to provide a move-in date to the realty company by 5 p.m. that day, according to the complaint. When the couple called back the next day to provide the date, they were told the property was being leased to someone else, the complaint said.

But Concentric Realty has a different story, saying the couple did not return proof of future employment and income in a timely fashion.

"It's not discrimination against their race," managing broker Simon Liang said. "It's about employment and financial verification."

When the couple submitted their application with previous employment information, the realty company found them to be in good financial standing, Liang said. But the real estate agency wanted to ensure the couple would be earning enough after moving to Naperville to afford the town home.

"Our agent asked the husband or wife to submit an offer letter (from a new employer) to indicate what their future income was," Liang said. "We eventually found the company the husband would be working for and called them to confirm he would be employed there."

The company confirmed but couldn't offer salary details, Liang said. After requesting employment verification from the couple for a few days, they decided to rent the town home to a Naperville couple looking to downsize, he said.

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Concentric Realty received a call from the couple the next day alleging they had been discriminated against because of their race, Liang said. The real estate company wouldn't have taken the time to call the Jones' future employer if they didn't take the application seriously, he said.

The couple could not be reached for comment.

Organizations such as HOPE Fair Housing work to eliminate housing discrimination in northern and north central Illinois. Anne Houghtaling, HOPE's executive director, said this is the kind of case they would investigate.

"There are a number of different options when it comes to filing a complaint about housing discrimination, and many paths it can take including an undercover investigation or litigation and discovery, and there's a wide range of options when it comes to relief for the person filing the complaint," Houghtaling said.

"I have expressed to Naperville some concerns about their capacity to handle such complaints."

Naperville's Housing Advisory Commission discussed the complaint for the first time Monday night, and will request additional information from both parties.

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Commissioner Bob Fischer said two things about the alleged situation bothered him. The first being a management company requesting that someone pay a full year's rent in advance. The other, he said, was the company's decision to pull an acceptance offer at the last minute after requesting something in an unreasonable response period.

A housing complaint must be filed within 90 days of the alleged act, according to city code. Members of the Housing Advisory Commission will review the complaint and determine whether the city's fair housing ordinance was violated.

ehegarty@tribpub.com
An aromatic wine with good acidity will be a good companion to the grilled turkey burgers. (Getty Images)

For a burger influenced by the flavors of the Mediterranean  Kalamata olives, parsley, sage  look to the region for a wine as well. Drink local; it's good advice. These white, rose and red choices burst with flavor themselves.

MAKE THIS

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Grilled turkey burgers with Kalamata olives and herbs

In a large bowl, combine 1 1/2 pounds ground turkey, 1/4 cup chopped Kalamata olives, 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley, 2 teaspoons chopped fresh sage, 1 teaspoon salt and black pepper to taste. Gently mix together with your hands. Shape into 4 burgers, each about 1/2-inch thick. Grill burgers over medium heat, 6 minutes. Gently flip; grill until center of burgers is nearly firm to the touch, about 5 minutes. Top with a slice of provolone; grill, covered, 1 minute. Serve on toasted buns with mayonnaise and pickles. Makes: 4 servings

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Recipe by JeanMarie Brownson

Eat. Watch. Do. Weekly What to eat. What to watch. What you need to live your best life ... now. >

DRINK THIS

Pairings by sommelier Alan Beasey, of The Purple Pig, as told to Michael Austin:

2015 Cantina Terlano Terlaner Classico, Alto Adige, Italy: The village of Terlano has been making this beautiful blend of pinot bianco, chardonnay and sauvignon blanc for centuries. A perfect match for poultry, especially this hearty version, this wine is full bodied yet fresh, with aromas of cardamom, white pepper and pink grapefruit. It also has flavors of ripe, tropical citrus, kiwi and apricot, and finishes with tongue-tickling acidity and a hint of fennel.

2016 Proprieta Sperino Rosa del Rosa, Piedmont, Italy: Like the great reds of Barolo and Barbaresco, this wine is made primarily of the nebbiolo grape, giving it quite a bit of body and structure. Another regional grape, vespolina, is blended in to bring freshness and acidity. The wine features aromas of ripe strawberries, rose petals and dried herbs, plus flavors of rich fruit balanced by tart acidity and minerality, all leading to a long, complex finish.

2012 Kir-Yianni Ramnista, Naousa, Greece: The grilled meat, olives and fresh herbs in this dish are perfect for the xinomavro grape that makes this wine. Xinomavro roughly translates to "acid and black," and both characteristics come through here. Aromas of black cherry, violets and wild blackberries spring from the glass. On the palate, those black fruits are joined by hints of black olives, tobacco and tar  juicy and savory, just like a good turkey burger.

food@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @pour_man
There's a lot riding on "The Mummy." Universal Pictures has laid out an entire interconnected league of monster franchises to follow the reboot opening this week. (It's already big in South Korea.) Johnny Depp's signed on for "The Invisible Man." Russell Crowe will headline a Jekyll and Hyde act, which is introduced in "The Mummy." Javier Bardem is on deck as Frankenstein's Monster. "The Bride of Frankenstein" will be followed by everything from the Creature from the Black Lagoon to a new Phantom of the Opera to a fresh Dracula and a souped-up and no doubt extremely buff Hunchback of Notre Dame.

These titles are golden, and despite the 19th-century literary roots of several of these, the economic impetus comes from Universal's legendary 1930s horror classics, the stuff of silvery nitrate nightmares. All the sadder, then, that director Alex Kurtzman's "Mummy" movie starring Tom Cruise is terrible  more calamitous and grating than any of the 1999-2008 "Mummy" outings by a wide margin. I haven't had this little fun at an SSM (Stupid Summer Movie) in several summers, though full disclosure: I have yet to see "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales." Maybe in the next life. Wouldn't that be something? If we died and then came back as film critics assigned to a purgatorial rotation of "Pirates of the Caribbean" sequels?

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The idea, I think, with "The Mummy" was to give unfamiliar audiences every kind of modern, effects-heavy horror fantasy in one. Cruise plays Nick, wisecracking American belligerence incarnate, and therefore, in 2017 America, at least, an instant turnoff. He's a U.S. Army soldier with a sideline as a soldier of fortune, ripping off precious artifacts for resale while ripping off Indiana Jones so blatantly that he might as well be called Indiana Smith.

Annabelle Wallis plays British archaeologist Jenny and Tom Cruise is American soldier (and mercenary) Nick in The Mummy. ( Universal )

Co-star Crowe drew the short straw and, in reams of introductory voice-over narration that may still be going on, he explains the background. In 1127 England, a Crusader knight's tomb was buried beneath the future London. The movie proper gets going, and immediately gets into tone problems, in modern-day northern Iraq, where Cruise, sidekick Chris (Jake Johnson of "New Girl") and the purring British archeologist and utterly perfunctory love interest Jenny (Annabelle Wallis) stumble upon the entombed Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella). Back in the day Ahmanet was in line to rule Egypt, but sexism being what it is (i.e., a thing of the past, obviously) she was passed over, and went on a revenge killing spree, and did a deal with the God of Death involving a dagger and an all-powerful ruby. After a comic-relief airstrike and a slew of dead insurgents, Ahmanet's free, and Nick is her human conduit to global domination.

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Everywhere this "chick in a box" goes (Nick's nickname for her), superfast, zombielike mummies spring to life and do her bidding. Eventually the screenplay credited to David Koepp, Christopher McQuarrie and Dylan Kussman brings the story back to London. There Dr. Jekyll (Crowe) is heading up a league of his own, investigating and vanquishing a host of unruly gods and monsters waiting for their whack at the franchise.

The script is genuinely confused in the way it doles out information, and keeps looping back into Nick's visions of ancient Egypt. As an established screenwriter, second-time feature filmmaker Kurtzman knows his way around several brand names ("Transformers," "Star Trek," "Spider-Man"). But his facility with digitally swathed action is routine at best, visual chaos at worst. The mayhem in "The Mummy" feels desperate, mistimed, grueling in the wrong way (the film's violence is infinitely less appropriate for preteens than that of "Wonder Woman"). And in the climactic scenes of London half-destroyed by supernatural terrorists, it's also a sad victim of bad timing.

I never thought I'd miss Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz's wide-eyed facility with droll camp quite so much. I liked two things about "The Mummy." The design idea and digital execution of the mummy's eyes, both sporting two separate pupils, works nicely. And the way Crowe pronounces the phrase "the past," which goes past "the past" all the way into "the pust," really is stunning. Now that's an upper-crust dialect! The rest of the movie is a pain in the sarcophagus. I fear that it will anger the gods.

Michael Phillips is a Chicago Tribune critic.

mjphillips@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @phillipstribune

"The Mummy"  1 star

MPAA rating: PG-13 (for violence, action and scary images, and for some suggestive content and partial nudity)

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Running time: 1:47

Opens: Thursday evening

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Nature may abhor a vacuum, but holes in the timeline offer catnip to authors of historical fiction. Where facts cannot be found, imagination runs wild.

In "Her Majesty's Will," David Blixt's imagination takes us on a romp through the so-called "Lost Years" of William Shakespeare  that period from roughly 1578 to 1592 in which (other than the record of his marriage to Anne Hathaway and the birth of their children), practically nothing is known of his life. In his 2012 novel, Blixt (who is also a Chicago-based actor and fight director) tosses Will into the world of high-stakes espionage and London lowlifes. For good measure, he also tosses in Christopher Marlowe.

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It's a nearly perfect choice for Lifeline Theatre, whose best productions often include wink-and-a-nod approaches to classic storytelling tropes. In Robert Kauzlaric's adaptation, directed by Chris Hainsworth, Blixt's wild ride shows young Will Falstaff (as he's been calling himself) finding his voice as a man and artist, even as he assumes many different guises in order to survive.

Shakespearean in-jokes abound  someone actually does "exit, pursued by a bear," as in the famous stage direction from "A Winter's Tale." Amid the political intrigue, the story also tosses in same-sex attraction, feminist moxie and plenty of inventive stage fights. (Blixt created the latter, and if you've ever wanted to see tankards vs. swords in a pub fight, this is your show.)

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And somehow, it all comes together in a mix that manages to be heady and silly in equal measure. There are moments that strain toward profundity, and it takes a little while in the first act for the narrative and the production to find the balance in the tone. But Kauzlaric's well-honed adaptation and Hainsworth's smart and supple direction, along with a high-spirited cast, move the entire affair along with deft precision, almost never letting us get ahead of the twists in the story.

That story begins with Will in Lancashire, working as a put-upon schoolmaster. A chance encounter with a serving woman being manhandled by a pair of rogues sets him off on his road trip to London. The serving woman turns out to be "Kit" Marlowe, who has uncovered secret messages from Mary Queen of Scots to Catholic rebels bent on overthrowing Protestant Elizabeth I.

With the rebels in pursuit, the two men make their way to London, where an unlikely potpourri of Marlowe's fellow carousing men of letters, theater folks and courtiers become ensnared in the plot. There are also a couple of plays-within-the-play that let us see where Shakespeare lifted and refined some of his own stories and devices.

In the tradition of all great buddy escapades, amid the plot twists lies a fine bromance (well, a bit more than that, actually). Javier Ferreira's Will, entranced by the streets and stages of London, moves from an earnest schoolteacher haunted by memories of his loutish father to a man who trusts his own will and heart. Bryan Bosque's charming but maddening Marlowe shows flashes of warmhearted loyalty amid his preening. ("I always win," he declares at one point. "That's what makes being me so satisfying.")

The rest of the cast, who all play multiple roles, deliver fluid and cunning turns running the gamut of London society, from dastardly nobles to put-upon showfolk. Heather Chrisler especially holds her own as the only woman in the cast, playing the chorus/narrator, a pair of very different pub maids and a lady-in-waiting to the queen, who doesn't rely upon her corset to stand proud. (Aly Renee Amidei's costumes provide period detail and eye candy galore.)

Admittedly, the show probably offers a few more treats for people who know their Shakespeare. (An Earl of Oxford joke might sail over the heads of those unacquainted with the "authorship" debate.) But even those unaffected by Bardolatry will find much to enjoy in "Her Majesty's Will." By the end, Blixt's tale provides an uplifting homage to how common people find uncommon reserves of poetry, courage, wit and honor in times of unrest.

Kerry Reid is a freelance critic.

ctc-arts@chicagotribune.com

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"Her Majesty's Will" - 3.5 Stars

When: Through July 16

Where: Lifeline Theatre, 6912 N. Glenwood Ave.

Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes

Tickets: $40 at 773-761-4477 or www.lifelinetheatre.com

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Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 126 Woody introduces the gang to a homemade spork toy with self-esteem issues in "Toy Story 4." Read the review. (Pixar / AP)
I knew I was in trouble when that smell hit me.

Book lovers know the smell, that dusty, musky scent of old books gathered together, the smell of hidden treasure, the smell of the hunt.

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Who am I kidding? I knew I was in trouble when I saw the hand-lettered signs in the shopping center parking lot: "Book Sale," with arrows pointing the way. My heart lurched as I followed the path. I don't need any more books. I should be considering book divestiture, rather than acquisition.

But ... but  book sale!

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The Knights of Columbus had taken over a space abandoned by a defunct cooking school and filled it with rows of cafeteria tables lined with books, spine up  $1 for paperbacks, $2 for hardcovers. That the books were displayed spine up, virtually guaranteeing damage to the binding, was enough to know there were no real treasures in the monetary sense. I wouldn't be finding a hardcover first edition of Flannery O'Connor's "Wise Blood," a book on my bucket list that goes for roughly $1,000.

Even the books in the best condition at the Knights of Columbus sale would barely rate a "good" at a premium used seller. These books had been read and read hard. But I was after different game: treasures that would be meaningful to me.

The first two prizes were a couple of first edition, first printing hardcovers of "Out of Sight" and "Riding the Rap" by Elmore Leonard. That I have read both of these books  in mass market paperback  means nothing. Leonard is a favorite author. I should be able to look at these volumes on my shelf, even though I will likely never open them.

The next discovery was truly thrilling: a signed and inscribed first edition copy of "Nathanael West: The Art of His Life" by Jay Martin. Martin has inscribed the book for the "splendid" Gladkey family, thanking them for "California." The copy itself is in terrible shape, musty, with multiple dust jacket tears. Slipped into the text is a single sheet from a small notebook that lists the Marx brothers identified by their stage and then real names.

Did you know that Harpo Marx's birth name was Adolph? I do now, thanks to a slip of paper inserted into a book first published in 1970 that wound up in a Knights of Columbus book sale in a defunct cooking school in Mount Pleasant, S.C., in 2017.

So here is the real treasure: not just the stories in the books, but the stories of the books. Out of necessity, I give away many books, some of which have my own notes and annotations and inscriptions. Forty-plus years from now, a book I drop in my local Little Free Library could wind up in someone else's house, the purchaser wondering why a reader would try to recall all the lyrics to the Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" in the margins of a book.

My favorite find will be especially appreciated by Chicagoans: a first edition, first printing of Studs Terkel's "Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do." The copy is battered, and just opening it made me sneeze from the dust.

"Working" is also a book I've not only read, but drawn from many times for research purposes. "Working" is the single greatest example of human speech and dialogue ever rendered. Terkel captures how people sound.

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This copy will sit on my shelf, in a place of honor, as it deserves. To whomever let it go, I'm grateful. I'll pay it forward in another 40 years.

John Warner is the author of "Tough Day for the Army." Follow him @biblioracle.

Book recommendations from the Biblioracle

John Warner tells you what to read next based on the last five books you've read.

1. "The Stranger" by Albert Camus

2. "What to Do About the Solomons" by Bethany Ball

3. "Before the Fall" by Noah Hawley

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4. "The Pilot's Wife" by Anita Shreve

5. "Difficult Women" by Roxane Gay

 Karen T., Cleveland

One of my favorite things is to click with a debut author. Most recently this happened with"Chemistry" by Weike Wang  a good fit for Karen.

1. "A Visit from the Goon Squad" by Jennifer Egan

2. "A Constellation of Vital Phenomena" by Anthony Marra

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3. "The Zero" by Jess Walter

4. "The Women" by T.C. Boyle

5. "Vinegar Girl" by Anne Tyler

 Brian P., Highland Park

Here's a list where I've read all the books. My gut says Brian will enjoy "The Imperfectionists" by Tom Rachman.

1. "Ragtime" by E.L. Doctorow

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2. "Atonement" by Ian McEwan

3. "All That Is" by James Salter

4. "Pale Fire" by Vladimir Nabokov

5. "Cannery Row" by John Steinbeck

 Peter K., New York City

It's only been a few weeks since I recommended a Rachel Cusk novel, but I'm a little obsessed with her work right now and maybe passing on a bit of the affliction will help ease my fever. "Transit" is the book for Peter.






The Women's Board of the Goodman Theatre presented its 39th annual gala, this year themed "Sequins and Soul," on May 20 at the Fairmont Chicago Hotel. Tony and Grammy Award-winning entertainer Billy Porter headlined the event that raised nearly $1 million to support the theater's education and community engagement programs.

The evening kicked off with a reception in the International Ballroom, where over 500 black-tie-clad guests mixed and mingled. The black, pale gray and purple decor served as an elegant backdrop for model Christina Wiltjer who was spotlighted on a mini-stage wearing a pair of custom-made earrings by Nini Hale Jewels worth $50,000. The pair of earrings was featured as one of the luxury raffle items.

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The entrance to the Imperial Ballroom was draped in silver silk curtains that hid dramatic decor within. At the far end of the ballroom, the Goodman name was outlined in white lights and filled the entire wall above a stage where the Gentlemen of Leisure performed after dinner. Tabletop designs featured high-low neon lighting in a variety of colors and whimsical shapes, some reaching over 4 feet tall.

Executive Director Roche Schulfer welcomed the crowd and thanked Joan E. Clifford, a board of trustees chair; Cynthia Scholl, Women's Board president; and co-chairs Denise Ginascol, Wendy Krimins, Diane Landgren and Kristine Garrett. Linda and Peter Bynoe served as honorary co-chairs. "Everything raised tonight benefits a vast variety of programs that are all free to Chicagoland youth," Schulfer said.

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Willa Taylor, Walter Director of Education and Community Engagement, shared her excitement about a new collaboration with Disney that will launch in spring 2018.

"We have been selected to be the Chicago partner for the Disney Musicals in Schools program, which will give us the opportunity to introduce elementary school students to the phenomenal musical catalog of the Disney corporation," Taylor explained.

"This allows us to expand our programs into elementary schools, not just high schools, and it gives us a chance to see little third- and fifth-graders wearing ears doing 'Aristocats' and having their noses elongated as elephants when they perform scenes from 'Jungle Book.' Disney will provide all of the licensing, all of the music and all of the material for a 30-minute version of their musical catalog. We provide teaching artists to work with teachers and parents in the schools to build a sustainable musical theater program for young people," she said.

The $100,000 Disney grant will fund two years of programming in under-resourced schools.

After Taylor spoke, Billy Porter performed, including an audience participation number to Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On." He chose Albert Goodman, a member of the theater's founding family, and Peter Bynoe, a life trustee, to sing along.

Other numbers included selections from Porter's latest album, "Billy's Back on Broadway." He concluded his performance with a show-stopping medley from Harvey Fierstein's award-winning musical "Kinky Boots," complete with the signature thigh-high red boots he wore starring as Lola in the show.

Freelance writer Candace Jordan is involved with many local organizations, including some whose events she covers.

More coverage

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Find more photos and events at www.chicagotribune.com/candidcandace. Visit Candid Candace's website at www.candidcandace.com, or follow her on Twitter @CandidCandace.

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The biggest names in Chicago's art and social scenes gathered at the Museum of Contemporary Art on Saturday for ArtEdge: 50, to celebrate the museum's 50th anniversary and to open the "Takashi Murakami: The Octopus Eats Its Own Leg" exhibition.

The anniversary gala is always one of Chicago's best fashion parties, and with Murakimi's bold paintings as a backdrop, the crowd looked better than ever. In a massive tent behind the museum  with Murakami-inspired decor  guests were greeted with a video of Pharrell Williams introducing the evening's performer, Janelle Monae, who brought the house down with her cover of Prince's "Let's Go Crazy." Here are a few fashion highlights and a look at the evening by the numbers.

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1: Number of months it took to grow 600 bonsai basil plants from seedlings at the Nichols Farm & Orchard in Marengo, Ill. The plants were served with the salad course, so guests could cut their own fresh herbs.

20: Number of years MCA Chief Curator Michael Darling has known artist Murakami, whose exhibition was unveiled at the gala.

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40: Number of pounds of octopus served to gala guests as part of the hors d'oeuvres menu.

200: Number of hours it took a team of 14 pastry chefs from Limelight Catering to create custom birthday cakes for the museum's 50th anniversary. Guests were invited to act as live performance artists, decorating their own individual desserts.

270: Number of employees who work for Murakami's company Kaikai Kiki, which has offices in Tokyo, Saitama, Kyoto and Sapporo, Japan, New York and Seattle.

286: Number of smiling multicolored flowers in Murakami's painting "Flowers, Flowers, Flowers" in the exhibition.

500: Number of bloody mary oyster shooters served as guests entered through the doors of the tent.

600: Number of guests who danced the night away as Monae sang her chart-topping hits.

2,400: Number of cubic yards of fabric that went into the creation of nine light fixtures  each 10 feet tall and 24 feet wide  adorned with octopus imagery that Murakami designed exclusively for his exhibition debut and that took over 100 man hours to fabricate and install.

12,000: Number of pingpong balls used to create the evening's playful neon centerpieces.

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3 million: Number of dollars raised at the gala to benefit the MCA.






VANDALIA, Mich.  It takes just two hours to get from Chicago to this don't-blink-or-you'll-miss-it town in Cass County, but the drive through farmland and small towns in Southwest Michigan ends in a destination steeped in history.

Today, most visitors to Vandalia and the nearby towns of Cassopolis and Dowagiac come to enjoy the area's 100-plus lakes. Less known is the region's legacy of the Underground Railroad, which helped almost 2,000 freedom seekers passing through Michigan  many en route to Canada  on the secret network's Quaker and Illinois "lines" more than 150 years ago.

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Like Underground Railroad sites elsewhere in the country, many of the area's safe houses and landmarks have disappeared or fallen into disrepair, and records of those who passed through have been lost, making the opportunity to retrace the steps of those escaping slavery all the more meaningful.

For the last eight years, the all-volunteer Underground Railroad Society of Cass County and the village of Vandalia have co-sponsored a three-day festival to raise awareness about the region's role in the abolition movement.

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This year, Underground Railroad Days will run July 7-9. Besides guided tours of several historic sites, the festival also features a soul food dinner ($10), a living history portrayal of the role Michigan's 102nd United States Colored Troops regiment played in the Civil War, plus music, vendors and more. Parking, admission and tours are free; villageofvandaliami.com.

The restored home of Underground Railroad station master James E. Bonine and the carriage house across the street are central to the tour and the region's Underground Railroad story. The carriage house is believed to be where abolitionists hid runaway slaves from their pursuers, but finding written or photographic evidence of its use as a sanctuary is tricky.

"That's not uncommon," said Mike Smith, whose Quaker ancestors have lived in Vandalia since the 1820s. "In those days, you didn't want anyone to know you were hiding runaways because that was 'stealing.'"

Another significant Underground Railroad site just outside of downtown Vandalia is Ramptown, a 33-acre parcel of land named for the wild leeks (ramps) that grew there. Bonine, who owned the land, divided it into 1-acre lots and offered it to African-Americans to homestead in exchange for clearing the property.

An estimated 30 families built cabins in Ramptown, but all of its structures have long since been razed. Today, Ramptown is a field with a historical marker, and evidence of its existence is mostly in the form of artifacts dug from the site and from oral histories.

"When I was a child, every time we went by where Ramptown was, my grandpa would point and say, 'There used to be a whole town there,'" Smith said.

He added that his grandfather told him that his great-grandfather, Amos Smith, would drive his buckboard (carriage) to Ramptown and hire men of color from the settlement to work his farm.

Other Underground Railroad landmarks include Chain Lake Baptist Church in Cassopolis. Founded in 1838, it's one of the oldest African-American churches in Michigan and the birthplace of the area's anti-slavery society.

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Also in Cassopolis (but now on private property), the one-room Brownsville School was used from around 1850 until 1957. African-Americans and whites were educated together here at a time when school integration was unheard of.

The Cass County Courthouse may be the best known Underground Railroad-affiliated site in the area. It was here that abolitionists turned back slave catchers who had stormed local Quaker farms to retrieve runaways. The incident is known as the 1847 Kentucky Raid, and it is widely recognized as a contributing factor to the start of the Civil War. The courthouse that was the site of that pivotal Kentucky Raid trial was replaced in 1899 by the one that still stands in downtown Cassopolis.

Maps of a driving tour of all 19 historic Underground Railroad landmarks will be available during the festival at the Bonine House and Milo Barnes Park in Vandalia, or download them at the Underground Railroad Society of Cass County's website, urscc.org.

The solidarity that marked cooperation and respect between races  one that fueled the resistance in 1847  is still present in the community today, said residents with deep roots in the region.

Paul Lawson, 71, is a seventh-generation descendant of slave Zebedee Sanders, whose Virginia owner freed him and 50 other slaves upon his death. One of the stipulations for freedom was that the former slaves had to leave the state. Zebedee packed up his extended family, and they all made their way to Vandalia in 1850.

"He was 87 when they moved here, so he didn't make it through the first winter," said Lawson, who grew up in Vandalia and now lives in nearby Elkhart, Ind.

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The rest of the Sanders family put down strong roots in the region.

"I have 10 grandkids and 10 great-grandkids," Lawson said, pointing out that makes the 10th generation that continues to call this area home.

"Black people, white people ... everybody works together for the good of the community," Lawson said. "Everybody gets along."

Karen Torme Olson is a freelance writer.

If you go

After visiting the historic Underground Railroad landmarks in Cass County, switch gears and immerse yourself in treasures from a more modern era: the mid-20th century:

Sinclair Station: The mingled scents of grease and gasoline in this replica gas station's work bays are so spot-on that they trigger visions of 1952, the year the station's creator, Roger Pecina, was born. Artifacts include a green Dino the Dinosaur on the roof, a sign promoting S&H Green Stamps, a dinging bell hose and restored gas pumps. A 1954 Plymouth police car is on display outside; 200 S. Broadway St., Cassopolis, rogerpecinavisions.com/sinclairstation.

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Mahogany Outfitters: Wall-to-wall restored vintage boats are on display  and many are on sale  in this former car dealership. Sharing the site is Lakeview Diner, a throwback eatery with counter service and a jukebox. The bread is freshly baked, and the soups are homemade; 980 E. State St., Cassopolis, mahoganyoutfitters.com and lakeviewdinercass.com.

Caruso's Candy and Soda Shop: This vintage ice cream parlor looks the same as it did in 1922 when it first opened. Candies are made in-store, and sodas, sundaes and shakes are hand-dipped; 130 S. Front St., Dowagiac, carusoscandys.com.

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Is it a bird? Is it a plane?

No it's Mayor Rahm Emanuel, and his trusty sidekick, Library Commissioner Brian Bannon!

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The moderately dynamic duo is now the subject of a comic strip, part of Chicago Public Library's summer program designed to get kids reading.

"Mr Mayor, Dr. Brain-Drain is back and he's headed for Chicago this summer!" a lantern-jawed Bannon warns Emanuel in the first panel of the strip.

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Answering on the red telephone he apparently reserves for important calls from the library, the mayor bravely responds in the second panel, "Not on my watch, Commissioner Bannon! Call out the Super Explorers! Our kids will succeed!"

Bannon told Chicago Inc. that the library does have a red phone in real life but that the comic wasn't his idea because, "I'm a librarian and I don't normally put myself out there like that." The strip is designed to tie in with a theme that encourages kids to "find their own hero inside," he said.

And as parents in west suburban Cicero know, nothing gets children revved up to read better than a comic book mayor. Cicero Mayor Larry Dominick, though, went one better than Emanuel, appearing in a flattering rendition in a bilingual 2011 coloring book issued at taxpayer expense.

Don't Chicago's children deserve the same opportunity? Our felt-tips are at the ready ...

kjanssen@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @kimjnews
Eric Williams Photography

Love for Burque Pride, a shout out to Bessies Lace for hanging in there for 25 years and a veto override were part of the June 5 Albuquerque City Council meeting. With all Councilors at the table, Council President Isaac Benton took care of business in two and a half hours.

High Fives

Councilors Pat Davis and Diane Gibson gave a shout out to the annual Albuquerque Pride Parade to be held June 10. The parade will take a different route this year due to the ART construction. This year, the parade will travel east on Lomas from Washington to Expo New Mexico. This is the 20 year anniversary of celebrating Burque Pride, Davis and Gibson reminded citizens. Also getting a high five, Councilor Klarissa Pena congratulated Bessies Lace and More located at Central and Atrisco SW. Theyve been in business for 25 years. Bessie Romero said in January that she was not sure she would be able to keep her doors open due to the Albuquerque Rapid Transit construction steps away from the shops front door. Pena said Bessies has a loyal customer base. Bessie even goes as far as to serve coffee and snacks to the construction crew.

Budget Bobble

In a budget standoff, Councilors overrode Mayor Berrys veto of the councils $534.1 million budget. A compromise budget was also on the table but Councilors rejected that as well and stood by their version. Berry had said the Council budget overpromised and underdelivered, but the majority of those with the purse strings in hand disagreed. It didnt take long for Mayor Berry to shoot back saying the budget approved is already broken, needs more work and risks the citys credit rating being downgraded. But this is not the end of the budget debate, as the Council plans on considering some tweaks to the budget to address various concerns. City budgets go into effect at the start of the fiscal year that begins on July 1.

Thumbs Up

Councilors gave the thumbs up to two appointments to city boards. Douglas Alsup will take a seat on the Human Rights Board and Raymond Barrera was appointed to the Veterans and Military Affairs Advisory Board. Other action items included drafting a three-way memorandum of understanding to move forward activities between the city and the state MainStreet program and the Nob Hill MainStreet organization. The city also accepted a $75,000 grant with Living Cities for the Racial Equality Here initiative.

Gassed Tax

Councilors were set to tackle putting a gas tax question to voters but public comment seems to have given them pause. Councilors are thinking about asking voters to approve a 2-cent gas tax to fund municipal roadway infrastructure improvements. But after several public comments Councilors agreed to take the bill up at the next meeting after changes are made. Paul Gessing from the Rio Grande Foundation said he submitted hundreds of signatures opposing the added tax. Another speaker said the city should not put roadway infrastructure on the backs of the citizens. Other folks said they had concerns that the money generated from a citywide gasoline tax would not go to fixing streets, but end up helping pay for the ART project. It appears these concerns will be addressed with changes at the next meeting.

Palabras Publicas

Public comment at this meeting centered around the proposed gas tax, and on the size and type of ballot to be used for the October election regarding sick leave for part-time employees. Some of the comments include these snippets:

Please stand against unfair elections. Why use a size 6 font for the workers sick leave measure on the ballot when 8.5 is more readable?

If all you guys disappear, if the mayor disappears, what will happen to the money?

You guys are supposed to help us take care of the problems in the city.

The state fair is almost here and the ART project is not even finished yet.

Please oppose the gas tax; why are you driving people to the pueblos?

Quick Hits

Councilor Benton discoursed with the City Administrator Rob Perry over funds to finish off a second spay and neuter surgical site at the East Side Shelter. Benton wants to get the project done; Perry said there were not enough cats and dogs coming in for spay and neutering to justify the expense. He said the money would be better spent on getting new vehicles for the animal welfare department. If that is true, Benton countered, then why did the staff not tell them that during budget preparation? Then, Councilors approved selling energy savings bonds to do more solar projects. Also, Albuquerque Police Department Chief Gorden Eden said there are currently 862 sworn police officers. He added a cadet class of 24 graduated last week.

Not Now

Next go-round on June 19, Councilors will re-visit the gas tax, talk about creating a Department of Asset Management, consider approving a request for proposals for short term loans for city employees and look to evaluate how the Albuquerque Rapid Transit Project is coming along. The Council will also consider a measure to increase entrance fees to the BioPark and articulating policy for developing the Alvarado Transportation Center.
House Speaker Michael Madigan was his usual self during the final week of the General Assembly's spring session, passing bills to make one point or another, but not actually accomplishing anything.

Bills are routinely moved in the House for the sole purpose of creating TV ads, or direct mail pieces or newspaper headlines. Madigan's only real ideology is maintaining his majority, and he doesn't consider that to be a bad thing. And maintaining that majority has been inextricably tied for two long years to stopping Gov. Bruce Rauner at every turn, despite Madigan's repeated claims that he's cooperating and that Rauner should just accept a win and move on.

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But whatever else you can say about Madigan, he's not wrong about that last part. The governor could've accepted a two-year property tax freeze proposed by both Senate Democrats and Republicans as a down payment on reform. That freeze would've gotten him through the 2018 election and he could've warned voters that the Democrats would never pass another freeze if he was defeated.

The Senate's freeze proposal even included provisions for local referendums in 2018 to let voters decide whether or not to keep their freezes. That would've helped the governor gin up turnout among his Republican base next year.

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But Rauner wouldn't compromise with the Senate and here we are with nothing.

Rauner constantly derides the "headline" bills that Madigan loves. But Rep. Steve Andersson (R-Geneva) was totally right when he told Chicago Magazine's Whet Moser: "At this point, there's not enough reform to counter the damage we've done to the state in the past two years."

Rauner's own four-year property tax freeze coupled with workers' compensation insurance reform that would've saved maybe $120 million in Illinois' $700 billion economy could've done some good two years ago. But now, the reforms are little more than political cover.

Those reforms won't come close to making up for the damage already caused by running a government on court-ordered autopilot and then compounding the problem by signing state contracts that can't be paid. We as a state have starved our universities nearly to death, devastated the social safety net and, in the process, piled up billions of dollars in unpaid bills, including the $1.1 billion currently owed to K-12 schools that the state has no way to pay anytime soon.

Rauner's reforms also won't do much of anything to ease the damage from the much-needed "cure." The longer Illinois waits, the higher the taxes will have to rise and the deeper the cuts will have to go.

In other words, this whole thing on both sides is a grotesquely fake Kabuki dance.

Madigan's reforms are lip service at best and Rauner's "real" reforms won't come within a solar system of his overly promised "booming" economy.

So, now what? The attorney general's attempt to overturn a judicial order that state workers be paid without a legal appropriation appears hopelessly stuck in the courts. University layoffs have exceeded 1,500 and lasting damage has been inflicted upon their reputations, but that hasn't moved the Statehouse needle an inch. Thousands upon thousands of the poorest and most vulnerable among us have been kicked to the curb and nobody seems to care. Our bond ratings are ridiculously low and are going lower, but it's being shrugged off.

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The only thing that literally everyone is deathly afraid of is a K-12 school shutdown. There's a reason why Rauner vetoed everything out of the budget passed in 2015 except K-12 funding. The same goes for, including K-12 in the last-minute 2016 stopgap funding deal.

As long as they can "contain" the damage, the warring parties can continue their bizarre dispute. But a school shutdown would literally bring out the torches and pitchforks.

The governor has said repeatedly that he won't sign a partial budget without permanent property tax relief and term limits, which puts him in a horrible box. But a flip-flop would likely go mostly unnoticed if schools open on time.

Will the Democrats pass a partial budget for schools? I assume the House would. Speaker Madigan seems to prefer this war.

The Senate Democrats might be another story. They could impose the terms of surrender during an extreme crisis because their chamber has already courageously approved those terms  a budget, revenues and reforms. They may have to step up again and refuse to do a stopgap and finally bring this thing to an end.

Rich Miller also publishes Capitol Fax, a daily political newsletter, and CapitolFax.com.
Police guard the areaafter responding to an armed robberyin the 3200 block of West Diversey Avenue in the Logan Square neighborhood on June 6, 2017. (John J. Kim / Chicago Tribune)

An armed robbery that sparked a SWAT incident and search in the Logan Square neighborhood has ended with the arrest of a suspect Tuesday night.

Around 4 p.m., the Chicago police SWAT team responded to an incident in the 3200 block of West Diversey Avenue that was sparked by an earlier armed robbery of a business nearby in the 2700 block of North Milwaukee Avenue, according to a police spokesman, Officer Thomas Sweeney.

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Diversey between Kedzie and Spaulding avenues was blocked as officers investigated and searched for the suspect, whom they located about 7:15 p.m., police said.

Charges are pending.

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No one was hurt in the armed robbery, which happened about 10:45 a.m., Sweeney said.
Weeks after a federal judge ruled against a gay man who'd sued over his firing from a suburban Catholic parish, Colin Collette said he still struggles with a "sense of abandonment by the church."

Collette, the music director at Holy Family Catholic Community in Inverness, was with the parish for 17 years before he was let go in 2014 after announcing he was engaged to his same-sex partner.

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He filed a lawsuit against the church and the Archdiocese of Chicago last year, alleging discrimination and seeking reinstatement of his job, lost wages and damages.

Collette said Wednesday that the decision "flies in such contradiction to the wonderful things that are coming out of Rome. The pope is speaking about unity and love, and here we are creating a church of fear and division."

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But U.S. District Judge Charles Kocoras indicated in his ruling that the law gives churches more leeway than other employers to hire and fire who they want.

The judge concluded that the job Collette held was "critical to the spiritual and pastoral mission of the church." While that might speak to Collette's high standing in the parish, the judge determined that it placed him within an exemption that churches have from some employee discrimination laws.

Kocoras wrote that the Supreme Court has "recognized the right of religious organizations to control their internal affairs," and that non-ordained employees can be considered ministerial if they are responsible for conveying a church's message, teaching the faith and carrying out the church's mission.

From helping carry out mass to playing music at church ceremonies, Collette's responsibilities as director of music and director of worship fell into those categories, Kocoras wrote in his April ruling.

Collette's attorney Kerry Lavelle, who had argued that Collette's role was not ministerial, said in a statement Wednesday that the Catholic Church has "chosen to stand behind its ministerial exception to discriminate against members of the gay community."

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"That someone of (Collette's) commitment and ability is prevented from pursuing their career in this day and age is a sign of how far some institutions have to go in accepting all members of society, and demonstrates that there are still many individuals who are not granted equal rights in the workplace," Lavelle said.

Holy Family Catholic Community referred requests for comment to the Archdiocese of Chicago. A spokeswoman for the archdiocese declined to comment.

Collette was a popular figure in the parish. About 700 people attended a community meeting after he was terminated. Collette said that church leaders knew for years he was gay, but it wasn't until he posted his engagement announcement on Facebook that he was fired.

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He said he was told at the time that his same-sex relationship violated the tenets of the Catholic Church. In his lawsuit, Collette argued that many church employees, gay and otherwise, were in non-sanctioned marriages.

"It's very difficult," Collette said. "That was my whole life."

deldeib@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @deldeib
Boards cover the windows of a vacant home, onJune 6, 2017, where the remains of a 7-year-old child was found in the homes' garage in Centreville, Ill. (Christine Byers / AP)

Police in Illinois believe the remains of a child found in the garage of a vacant home had been there for four years and are investigating the death as a homicide.

Police found the remains after a woman in Las Vegas contacted police Monday night and told officers her husband had killed their then-6-year-old daughter in Illinois years earlier and hid the body in the garage of a home in Centreville, near St. Louis. She also said he had forced her into sex trafficking over the past two years and had abused two other children.

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Las Vegas police shared the tip with Centreville police, who found the small decomposed body wrapped in two blankets inside the detached garage of a dilapidated and vacant home in the impoverished town of about 6,000 residents.

Authorities suspect the child was killed in nearby Belleville in 2013, and police there have taken over the investigation. Belleville police said in a statement that a team of officers was sent to Las Vegas to coordinate the investigation. They did not respond to additional requests for comment.

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The woman's husband, Jason Quate, 34, is jailed in Las Vegas on charges of sex trafficking and living off the earnings of a prostitute. No charges have been filed yet in the girl's death. An autopsy is expected to take place later this week, St. Clair County Coroner Calvin Dye Sr. said.

The girl's mother contacted police from a women's shelter, where she said she had gone to seek refuge from her husband. She said Quate killed the child during a "physical altercation," Las Vegas police Lt. Raymond Spencer said in a video statement.

Spencer said officers were told the woman's remaining children, who are in their early teens, were never allowed outside, even to attend school. He described them as pale and lacking socialization skills, and said officers observed signs of abuse. Both children were taken into protective custody.

"It was very disturbing when you saw the children," Spencer said.

It wasn't clear whether Quate or his family had any connection to the home in Centreville. Neighbors told the Belleville News-Democrat that the small house with boarded-up windows has been vacant for more than two years.

Property records show the home was last sold for $25,500 in 2005. The man listed as its owner, Marcus Acoff, declined to comment when reached by The Associated Press, saying he did not want to interfere in the investigation.
Jeff Ziolo had burst into his sister's office last week to gloat about the 10th-row Guns N' Roses tickets he'd just bought, knowing she was the bigger fan.

Now Lori Wolff plans to attend the November concert in her brother's honor. Ziolo, 35, and a member of a local heavy metal band, was fatally beaten and stabbed early the next morning in his Des Plaines home  authorities say by a childhood friend.

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Craig Grzesiakowski, 35, of Chicago, was charged with first-degree murder and is being held on a $2 million bond. Cook County prosecutors say he was found passed out next to Ziolo's body. Police said Ziolo had been stabbed with a screwdriver.

Ziolo, known to many friends and fellow musicians by the nickname Wookie, was bassist for the band Final Dissent. He had built a recording studio in his basement, where the band had planned to produce an EP, said member Kaloyan Marinov, who was there May 31, the evening before Ziolo died, to test the recording equipment.

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Ziolo had told the group that his friend Craig would be dropping by that night and had warned them he was a "hothead who was known to carry a knife," prosecutors said.

"We told him his friend could hang out as long as he wasn't a jerk," another band member, Robert Saviano, told the Tribune after attending a court appearance by Grzesiakowski on Tuesday. "We didn't think anything of it."

Marinov said Grzesiakowski seemed nervous at first but otherwise did not act strangely. Toward the end of the band practice, Marinov said, Grzesiakowski and Ziolo appeared to be arguing, but because of soundproofing he could not hear what they were saying.

"It didn't seem like it was going to be physical and two minutes later, they're laughing again and jamming on the drum and bass," Marinov said. He said he left about 1 a.m. and didn't find out his friend was dead until the next day when he checked Facebook after a fishing trip.

"I just couldn't believe it. It was just hours before that we had seen Jeff. We had laughed together, played music together. It was just a huge shock to all of us," Marinov said.

Final Dissent bills itself as melodic death metal, and the band called Ziolo's death "a loss not just for us but for many friends and the Chicago metal scene."

And while Wolff described her brother as "rough and tough on the outside ... but on the inside he was a teddy bear."

Marinov called Ziolo "very caring, open-hearted and loved his friends and family. He was always willing to drop everything and help anyone in need."

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The medical examiner's office said Ziolo died of blunt-force trauma and also suffered three stab wounds. A bottle of bleach was near Grzesiakowski when he was found passed out about 10:30 a.m. June 1, authorities said.

When Ziolo didn't show up to work that day for his job as an operations manager at ESCO Group, Chairman Jerry Weiss said he thought Ziolo might be sick with one of his occasional cluster headaches. Weiss said he'd known Ziolo since he was born, since Ziolo's mother worked for Weiss too. When he learned Ziolo had been killed, Weiss drove to Ziolo's house and found it cordoned off with police tape.

"I considered him family and no different than my own son," Weiss said. "This has been pretty traumatic all the way down the line. He was an overly generous person who made the mistake of being overly generous to someone who he shouldn't have opened his house to."

Weiss said Ziolo was the type of person who wouldn't hesitate to let someone stay overnight or lend someone money. He made friends easily, and once got his mother, who used a wheelchair, moved to the front row of a Kid Rock concert.

"That's the kind of thing he did," Wolff said. "He just had a personality that won people over."

Ziolo's main passion was music, and he did sound engineering for local bands. He started playing guitar at a young age and switched to bass in recent years.

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"He said he played bass because he was lazy and didn't have to work as hard," Wolff said. "He could just run around and be Wookie."

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He used to be shy and rarely performed, but when he finally broke out of his shell, he became a "crazy man that nobody could stop," Wolff said.

She recalled her family taking Grzesiakowski along on trips to Michigan and to Great America. She said he hugged her at the funeral for her and Ziolo's mother seven months ago, telling Wolff he loved her mother and that Ziolo was like a brother to him.

"I wish (the alleged perpetrator) was a complete stranger," Wolff said. "It just really hurts that it was a friend, someone that close who would say all those nice things."

Visitation for Ziolo is planned for 3 to 8 p.m. Sunday at Friedrichs Funeral Home, 320 W. Central Road, Mount Prospect, with the funeral at 11 a.m. Monday. Wolff said she'd like attendees to wear Guns N' Roses T-shirts, ripped jeans or other band memorabilia.

Grace Wong is a Tribune reporter; Brian L. Cox is a freelance reporter.

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gwong@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @GraceWong630
Family members of Gizzell Ford, Angela Mendez, left, and Frandes Mercado, leave the Leighton Criminal Court Building on June 7, 2017, in Chicago. Helen Ford was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of her 8-year-old granddaughter Gizzell. (Erin Hooley / Chicago Tribune)

Moments before being sentenced for the torture killing of her 8-year-old granddaughter, Helen Ford took the stand on Wednesday and told a Cook County judge that the little girl who was found half-naked, strangled and beaten from head to toe had been hurting herself.

"Gizzell got to the point that she was throwing herself around," she told Judge Evelyn Clay, who in March convicted Ford of first-degree murder in Gizzell Ford's brutal death.

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Clay, normally soft-spoken, interrupted.

"Ms. Ford, enough. Enough!" she said, and two sheriff's deputies escorted Ford off the witness stand.

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Ford addressed the judge at the end of an hourslong sentencing hearing Wednesday, in which prosecutors had argued Ford should spend the rest of her life in prison and defense attorneys argued for leniency.

After Ford returned to her seat at the defense table, Clay announced her decision.

"This was a heinous torture murder which took place slowly, while Gizzell was imprisoned in Helen Ford's apartment," Clay said. "This was a deliberate, excruciating, painful way to die."

Clay then sentenced Ford to life in prison  the harshest sentence she could have imposed.

Ford shook her head silently at the defense table. Two of her supporters stood up, against orders from Cook County sheriff's deputies, and walked out of the courtroom. They got to the hallway and screamed.

Gizzell's 2013 death sparked outrage across the city as details emerged about the severity of the girl's abuse. She had been beaten all over her body, tied to a post, denied food and water, and forced to squat or stand for hours at a time.

Graphic photos of her body, and video of her apparent abuse, were presented again during the sentencing hearing, as were excerpts from the journals Gizzell kept over the summer of 2013 as she endured weeks of abuse.

Helen Ford has "practically zero potential for rehabilitation," Clay said during sentencing, citing Ford's lack of remorse on the witness stand moments before.

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"No, (Gizzell) did not throw herself around, which brought about her death," Clay said. "That child's murder was intentional (and) involved the infliction of torture."

Prosecutors on Wednesday argued that anything less than the most severe sentence "would diminish everything this child ever did," said Assistant State's Attorney Ashley Romito.

Even before her strangling, Gizzell was dying, authorities said  she had been deprived of food and water for so long that her kidneys were failing.

Authorities said Gizzell was kept in the apartment as a virtual prisoner after school ended in mid-June 2013. She wrote her own account of her final days in a journal that was found after her death.

Family members of Gizzell Ford, Angela Mendez, left, and Frandes Mercado, leave the Leighton Criminal Court Building on June 7, 2017, in Chicago. Helen Ford was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of her 8-year-old granddaughter Gizzell. (Erin Hooley / Chicago Tribune)

The straight-A student dreamed of the start of school in August, she wrote, when she could leave home for the safety of fourth grade.

She wrote of her pain after being forced to squat for half the day and then made to stand "an hour or two."

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"I know if I be good and do everything I'm told I won't have to do punishments," Gizzell wrote in pencil.

Toward the end of her life, much of the girl's once-neat handwriting was barely legible. "I hate this life because now I'm in super big trouble," she wrote.

Prosecutors on Wednesday played cellphone video, including one showing Helen Ford and her son Andre Ford, who was Gizzell's father, berating the girl, who appears disoriented and topless with cloth stuffed in her mouth.

Several of Helen Ford's family members in attendance had looked away as the footage played in court Wednesday.

"Everyone in this room recoils at this video, except for her," Romito said, indicating Ford. Family members declined to speak to reporters after the sentencing.

In their attempt to persuade the judge to give a lighter sentence, defense attorneys read letters and heard testimony from several of Ford's family members, who said she was a loving and reliable motherly presence who took on significant responsibilities for her family.

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Ford was caring for several grandchildren as well as her bedridden and chronically ill son, Andre Ford, at the time of Gizzell's death.

Andre Ford was also charged in Gizzell's death. He died in Cook County Jail of an apparent heart attack in August 2014 while awaiting trial.

Ford was called to speak on her own behalf at the end of the sentencing hearing. She approached the bench, walking with a cane, and spoke so quietly the judge allowed her to take the witness stand, where there is a microphone.

She told the judge she had worked hard to care for the children in her household, along with her bedridden son.

"I never treated my granddaughter any different than anybody else," she said.

Defense attorneys at trial had portrayed Ford as well-intentioned but overwhelmed.

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"Helen didn't know how to say no," Assistant Public Defender Jennifer Hodel, one of Ford's attorneys, said Wednesday. "Helen never said no, because she put family first."

Judge Clay shot back at that argument when she sentenced Ford shortly afterward.

"No, Helen Ford knew how to say no. She knew how to say no to Gizzell. No food, no water, no sleep, no praise," Clay said. "She did not know how to say yes to Gizzell."

A timeline of Gizzell Ford's short life. (Chicago Tribune)

Gizzell's death was another black mark against the state's child-welfare system.

Her case revealed failures on multiple levels, said Illinois Department of Children and Family Services Director George Sheldon, who recently announced his resignation. Sheldon was hired about a year and a half after Gizzell's death.

"Regrettably, and I've seen this too many times, everyone failed  the agency, the doctor, the courts," Sheldon told the Tribune this year.

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Barely a month before Gizzell's death, an investigator for DCFS visited the grandmother's cockroach-infested apartment on the city's West Side as she checked out the Fords' allegations that the child had been molested by her mother's boyfriend before she came to live with them.

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Prosecutors said bruises and wounds over her entire body pointed to her being brutalized for weeks, but the DCFS worker reported nothing out of the ordinary beyond a cluttered home, records show.

In addition, a respected child-abuse pediatrician who examined Gizzell for the possible sexual trauma weeks before she died didn't call the DCFS hotline about what appeared to be an old, healed loop mark he noted on the girl that might have been a telltale sign of abuse.

The doctor also may not have followed standard protocol in cases of suspected child abuse by failing to question Gizzell privately about the mark outside her grandmother's presence, according to the DCFS inspector general's office. Unable to find evidence of sexual trauma, he characterized the exam as "normal" but noted the injury and two other marks on Gizzell.

The DCFS investigator had access to the physician's report, but she failed to act as well. Later, her failures in Gizzell's care led to her firing, but no action was ever taken against the pediatrician. He is being sued, however, by Gizzell's mother.

mcrepeau@chicagotribune.com

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Twitter @crepeau

Chicago Tribune's Steve Schmadeke and Christy Gutowski contributed.
Chicago police now say an officer who opened fire on two suspects Tuesday night on the Northwest Side hit only one of them, with the other suffering an "impact head injury during the course of the incident."

The police department initially said the officer shot and seriously wounded both suspects after they fired at him and his partner in the Montclare neighborhood. Neither officer was injured.

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Authorities later determined only one suspect was shot. A spokesman for the Independent Police Review Authority, which investigates all Chicago police shooting, said it was unclear what caused the head injury to the other suspect.

"Right now, we do not know,'' spokeswoman Mia Sissac said. "Initially we thought maybe he'd been shot, but we later learned that he had a head injury.

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"We don't know if he hit his head on the concrete during the scuffle of arrest or if he hit the windshield," she said.

The two officers from the Rogers Park District were leaving a firearm certification class around 11:55 p.m. when someone fired in their direction near the 2900 block of North Newland Avenue, according to police.



The gunfire struck a car near the officers' SUV, but a man and woman inside were not injured, police said.



"Shots fired at police! Shots fired at police!" an officer shouted into his radio.



The officers chased the suspects' car through an alley, "where they were engaged in an armed confrontation with the offenders," the Police Department said in a statement. "An officer discharged his weapon."



A person in the passenger seat was shot and the driver suffered a head injury, police said.



As an officer radioed information about the chase and shooting, a lieutenant asked, "Did you have any POs (police officers) shot?"



"Negative, negative," an officer says. "No POs shot, all the POs are fine. Two bad guys need the ambulances though."



The driver was taken in critical condition to Loyola University Medical Center, but was later upgraded to good condition, officials said.

The other suspect, who was shot, was taken in critical condition to Stroger Hospital, according to Cmdr. Curtis Hudson, a spokesman for the Chicago Fire Department.

The two officers were taken as a precaution to Rush University Medical Center, according to police and fire officials.



Officers found two handguns at the scene, according to Sgt. Al Stinites, a police spokesman



The shooting occurred in a residential area filled with bungalows. Police blocked off George Street between Newland to New England Avenue as detectives surrounded an Infiniti sedan with at least five bullet holes in the back windshield. The back bumper was falling off and the license plate was left hanging from the car.



Detectives with flashlights searched nearby alleys. Later, they expanded the crime scene. Neighbors huddled outside, trying to piece together what happened.



One woman with a young boy said she heard the gunshots. "There wasn't time to count how many," she said in Spanish. "It was a lot."



The young boy told the woman he counted seven shots.



Another neighbor, Mynor Rodriguez, said he was watching television when he saw nearly a dozen police cars. He went outside and saw even more police cars. He and his 20-year-old daughter got in their car to drive closer to the crime scene.



He saw a car crashed into a parked car, and he saw paramedics putting a man who appeared to be unconscious into an ambulance.



Rodriguez has lived in the neighborhood since the 1990s and said he has seen the area change, but he suspected the people involved in the shooting didn't live in the neighborhood.



"You have the good and the bad," he said.



Tina LeNoue was dozing off in her bedroom when she heard gunfire.



"My second oldest daughter came running from the front bedroom into my bedroom saying, 'Mom, did you hear that? Did you hear that?' " LeNoue said. "I said, 'Yes, I heard it, hon.' "



She waited about 20 minutes before going outside, then later walked with a neighbor toward the scene.



She hasn't had problems in the neighborhood, though she did hear gunfire weeks ago. "It's kind of scary because it's close to home," she said.

The Independent Police Review Authority was investigating, as it does all police-involved shootings. The officers will be placed on administrative duties for 30 days, which is routine.



Standing at the edge of the crime scene with other police officials early Wednesday, Stinites noted the recent rash of shootings involving Chicago police.



"This is the fourth time officers have been fired upon since Friday while doing their job for the citizens of the city of Chicago," he said.

In three of those incidents, officers fired back.



Late Friday night, officers fatally shot Corsean Lewis, 17, in the 5800 block of South Wabash Avenue in the Washington Park neighborhood, according to officials.



Officers with the summer mobile unit had responded to a call of a person with a gun and were approaching a group of people when someone fired a shot at the officers, hitting the front bumper of the unmarked police car, according to officials.



Officers returned fire, striking the teen several times, according to police. Officers found a gun at the scene, and they believe the teen was the one who had fired the shot at them, according to officials.



About 24 hours later, officers working a similar summer mobile unit farther south in the 8100 block of South Maryland Avenue were involved in another shooting. A police officer and another man were wounded.



The man had run from officers who had seen him drinking outside. He went into a nearby apartment building, where there was a struggle over a gun. An officer was shot in the hand, and the officer's partner shot at the man, critically wounding him, police said.



Monday night, a 12-year-old boy and two 17-year-olds were arrested after shots were fired at police in the Lawndale neighborhood. Officers did not return fire, and no one was injured, police said.
Dreonta Deton, 21, is charged with robbing a cellphone store in Chicago's Logan Square neighborhood the morning of June 6, 2017, then prompting a SWAT team response when he was spotted a few blocks away. (Chicago Police Department)

A man who robbed a cellphone store in the Logan Square neighborhood Tuesday morning, then was spotted hours later a few blocks away, prompting a SWAT team response, has been charged, Chicago police said.

Dreonta Deton, 21, faces an armed robbery charge after a robbery at the store in the 2700 block of North Milwaukee Avenue about 10:45 a.m. Tuesday, according to a police news release.

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Police said Deton forced a male employee into a back room at gunpoint and demanded phones and other electonics, then forced the employee to open the cash register.

Deton ran off but was spotted sometime around 4 p.m. Tuesday, police said. He was found by Shakespeare District and SWAT officers about 6:45 p.m. in the 3200 block of West Diversey Avenue. Police found and confiscated a handgun and the items stolen in the robbery, according to the release.

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Deton, of the 1300 block of South Blue Island Avenue, was scheduled to appear in Cook County bond court Wednesday afternoon.
A 12-year-old boy and two 17-year-olds have been charged with attempted murder after police say they fired at two Chicago cops while riding in a stolen car in Lawndale on the West Side.



No officers were injured and the three boys were arrested after a brief chase Monday night, police said in a statement.



The officers were in the 1300 block of South Troy Street around 8:05 p.m. when they were fired at, police said. The suspects fled onto the Eisenhower Expressway, then I-55 before they were stopped in the 3700 block of South Pulaski Road off the interstate, according to police.



The car had been stolen from Forest Park the day before, police said.



All three suspects were charged with felony counts of attempted murder, aggravated discharge of a firearm at a police officer, aggravated possession of a stolen vehicle and aggravated unlawful use of a weapon, police said.



One of the 17-year-olds was also charged with possession of a controlled substance and the other 17-year-old was also charged with a misdemeanor count of resisting police.



The boys were to appear in Juvenile Court on Wednesday.
Illinois Democrats in Congress blast Gov. Bruce Rauner for keeping a low profile as the U.S. Senate tries to repeal the Affordable Care Act. (Zbigniew Bzdak / Chicago Tribune)

WASHINGTON  Congressional Democrats from Illinois want Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner to speak out more forcefully in the national debate over repealing the Affordable Care Act.

In a letter to the governor Tuesday, the lawmakers said they had "serious concerns" about what they called Rauner's "lack of vocal opposition" to a health care overhaul passed by the House last month. The two U.S. senators and 11 Democratic members of the House warned the measure would cause more than 1 million Illinoisans to lose insurance coverage.

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Illinois Republicans in the House voted for the plan, but GOP senators are crafting a separate bill to repeal and replace the health care law commonly known as Obamacare, with an uncertain timeline and prospects for approval.

Under the House-approved measure, Illinois is projected to lose $40 billion over the next decade for Medicaid, which helps pay for health care for the poor and disabled, the Democratic lawmakers wrote. The impact translates to $8.4 billion in lost economic activity in the state every year, resulting in a loss of up to 60,000 jobs, they said.

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The projections come from the Illinois Health and Hospital Association, which opposes the House bill and represents about 200 hospitals and health systems in the state.

"We believe it is incumbent upon state leaders, particularly governors, to weigh in and speak up when massive federal changes are being proposed that would likely pose serious and immediate health and economic dangers to residents of their state," the Democrats wrote Rauner. "You still have a chance."

Rauner has spoken out before. When the House legislation passed, Rauner in a statement expressed concern about its impact on the 650,000 Illinoisans who gained coverage through Medicaid expansion under the ACA. He also singled out for concern the 350,000 people in the individual insurance market "dealing with skyrocketing premiums and fewer choices."

"We will continue to voice our concerns as the law moves to the Senate," he said last month.

Several Republican governors, led by Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, reportedly are working together to draft an overhaul of the health care law commonly known as Obamacare. Kasich aides did not respond to Tribune questions about whether Rauner was part of the governors' group.

Rauner spokeswoman Eleni Demertzis on Tuesday declined to say specifically what the governor had done to voice concerns as the ACA overhaul is considered in the Senate and whether he had joined the Republican governors' joint effort.

"We will continue to stay closely engaged on the issue, particularly as new Senate legislation is developing," she said in a statement.

The letter said the state's two U.S. senators, Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth, wrote Rauner in January and March asking for his "concrete recommendations" for how to improve health care in Illinois but did not receive a response.

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The House Democrats sent a similar letter to Rauner in February and likewise did not hear back, the letter said. The Democrats are Reps. Cheri Bustos, Danny Davis, Bill Foster, Luis Gutierrez, Robin Kelly, Raja Krishnamoorthi, Dan Lipinski, Jan Schakowsky, Brad Schneider, Mike Quigley and Bobby Rush.

Don Stewart, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said McConnell has not announced a timeline for a Senate vote and "conversations are ongoing."

kskiba@tribpub.com

Twitter @KatherineSkiba
The U.S. Justice Department said Wednesday that it has not reached an agreement with the city of Chicago on federal oversight of police reform as Mayor Rahm Emanuel's administration has suggested.

When Emanuel's office trickled out the news late Friday that the mayor was backing away from a written commitment to seek federal court oversight of police reform, the administration characterized a new arrangement with President Donald Trump's Justice Department as "an agreement in principle."

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But Justice Department spokesman Devin O'Malley said Emanuel's office had just sent the proposal to Washington that same day, and that the Trump administration had not agreed to anything, including using a memorandum of agreement as the approach for police reform.

"The city of Chicago sent the Justice Department their proposed memorandum of understanding last week. There is no agreement at this time," O'Malley said in a statement Wednesday. "We look forward to working with the city to finding a resolution that promotes public safety and protects civil rights."

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Emanuel spokesman Adam Collins issued a statement late Wednesday saying that "the draft agreement submitted to DOJ by the city last week is exactly that, a draft. But it follows months of discussions with DOJ and an agreement on the approach."

The mayor and his office have described the new approach on police reform as including an independent monitor who would oversee police reforms, but that it would not include the mandatory court enforcement of a consent decree. Emanuel's office has declined to release a copy of the plan it sent to the Justice Department, and O'Malley declined to discuss any details of the city's proposal, citing ongoing discussions.

O'Malley also would not say whether the possibility of a consent decree remained on the table. He also declined to say whether Emanuel proposed backing off from the federal court oversight or whether it came at the suggestion of the new Justice Department leadership. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has signaled a departure from federally enforced consent decrees and civil rights investigations like the one conducted in Chicago.

The mayor has ignored questions this week on who initiated the decision to move away from federal court oversight of the police reforms, a commitment the mayor made in January after then-President Barack Obama's Justice Department completed a civil rights investigation into the Chicago Police Department. At the time, federal officials issued a damning report that found a pattern of excessive force and misconduct in the department.

Emanuel said then that he would work with the incoming Trump administration to arrive at a consent decree, adding that he "wouldn't have signed what I signed on behalf of the city if I didn't believe they (consent decrees) were right."

Criminal justice experts and reform advocates have stressed that even if the Justice Department no longer wants to pursue a consent decree under Sessions that Emanuel still could partner with community organizations to seek the oversight of a federal judge. The mayor has not answered questions this week asking whether he has considered such an approach.

Emanuel has maintained that Chicago would see the same results on police reform with the memorandum of agreement plan before the Trump administration as it would with the oversight of a federal judge. Reform advocates, criminal justice experts and the former Obama Justice official who oversaw the Chicago investigation have disagreed, saying a consent decree is crucial to reform.

Last week, Vanita Gupta, the former head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division under Obama, called Emanuel's new approach toward reform "woefully inadequate" to fix the "deep and long-standing" policing problems in the city.

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The American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois offered up similar criticism Wednesday, slamming Emanuel's decision to back away from a consent decree.

"This proposal is a nonstarter for anyone committed to real reform of Chicago's broken system of policing," said Karen Sheley, director of the ACLU of Illinois Police Practices Project. "The city is proposing to sign a set of promises with a DOJ that is hostile to real police reform."

The ACLU also noted that Emanuel's statements that he is committed to reform echo similar past City Hall assurances that "have not yielded results."

Collins said in a statement that the city already had moved forward on "meaningful reform," including adding more body cameras and officers and changing the Police Department's use-of-force policy.

"This is a discussion about a framework when the discussion should be about the substantive reforms," Collins said in response to the ACLU criticisms. "We are working hard on negotiations with DOJ and we believe an independent monitor with a public reporting process will help drive those substantive reforms in Chicago, as it has in other cities."

The ACLU, however, said anything short of a consent decree will not be enough to drive true, lasting changes.

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"The only real path to police reform in Chicago is through a consent decree overseen by a federal judge," Sheley said. "That is what the city committed to when the DOJ completed its scathing report in January. Now is not the time to back away."

bruthhart@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @BillRuthhart
A federal judge on June 6, 2017, heard arguments over wheather Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza, seen here on March 31, 2017, should be required to prioritize payments to some Medicaid providers during the state's budget standoff. (Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)

A federal judge heard arguments Tuesday over whether Comptroller Susana Mendoza should be required to prioritize payments to some Medicaid providers among Illinois' billions of dollars in unpaid bills that keep piling up during the state budget stalemate.

The court dispute reflects the mounting difficulty of balancing Illinois' competing financial obligations in the midst of an ongoing political fight between Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner and Democrats who control the General Assembly.

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Judge Joan Lefkow indicated in court on Tuesday that she was sympathetic to the complaints of the Medicaid patients, but that she was unlikely to go as far as telling the comptroller which bills should be set aside in order to make the payments.

And attorneys representing the patients said they weren't expecting the state to be required to immediately come up with the $2 billion owed to health care providers. They asked the judge to issue an order declaring those bills a priority in order to compel the two sides to negotiate a plan to funnel more money to doctors and hospitals.

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"We hopefully will be able to negotiate a compromise solution with the state," said David Chizewer, one of the attorneys representing patients. "We're not trying to wreak complete havoc on the system."

Lefkow's ruling is expected in the coming days.

A spokesman for Mendoza declined to comment on the case, but pointed to an affidavit filed with the court by Assistant Comptroller Kevin Schoeben that lays out the financial juggling act that occurs in the comptroller's office.

The Medicaid payments in question aren't counted in Illinois' "core priority category" that includes paying down debt, pension contributions and spending to elementary and high schools, which are authorized or required under state law and take up about 90 percent of the state's available cash, Schoeben said. The comptroller's office tries to spread the remaining 10 percent around, but "the ability to make these payments is stressed by the lack of revenues necessary to make expenditures."

Lefkow is the judge who initially ordered the state to continue making Medicaid payments in the midst of the stalemate that began in July 2015. The ruling drew on a 2005 court order that requires the Illinois Medicaid program to provide children in Cook County with access to health care that meets the standards of the federal Medicaid Act.

That decision came at the start of the now nearly two-year budget stalemate, after Rauner's administration sent a letter to providers in the Medicaid program asking them to continue to offer care during the impasse and wait for reimbursement from the state once a deal was reached. The ruling was among a few key court decisions that have made it possible for most of Illinois state government to continue chugging along without a budget.

Illinois' Medicaid program, which amounts to about $8 billion a year in state spending, combines state and federal money to pay for medical care for the poor and their children.

Two years after Lefkow's ruling, a cash crunch in Illinois' main checking account has caused the state to fall behind on a number of payments, including about $2 billion owed to Medicaid providers. Lawyers for Medicaid recipients argue that the doctors and hospitals who are owed the money are starting to cut off services to the poor people who need their care, putting the state in violation of federal consent decrees.

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"What we're seeing is that practices are starting to either stop taking Medicaid recipients for patients or starting to cut back on the number they will see," said Thomas Yates, a lawyer at Legal Council for Health Justice. "If the doctors don't get paid, they will not provide services to Medicaid recipients."

Yates argued Tuesday that the state is in violation of the 2015 order because it hasn't kept current on the payments, instead sending dollars to pay other bills as required under state law. Yates argued that those payments are being made for "political reasons," while the payments ordered by a federal court are being pushed to the back of the line.

Asked Tuesday if an order requiring immediate payment of the bills would create pressure for a budget deal, Rauner said "there's plenty of pressure."

"It's breaking my heart. It's so frustrating," Rauner said at an event in the South Side community of Hegewisch, where he was promoting his property tax freeze idea. "The folks in power need to recognize we can't keep doing what we've been doing."

kgeiger@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @kimgeiger
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel speaks at the 56th Annual Police Recognition Ceremony at the Hyatt Regency Chicago on May 19, 2017. (Phil Velasquez / Chicago Tribune)

The American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois on Wednesday slammed Mayor Rahm Emanuel's decision to back off his written commitment to seek federal court oversight of reforms to the Chicago Police Department.

In January, the U.S. Department of Justice under then-President Barack Obama issued a damning report that found a pattern of excessive force and misconduct in the Chicago Police Department, and Emanuel signed an agreement to pursue a consent decree in federal court. Late Friday, the mayor's office trickled out news that the mayor had retreated from pursuing court oversight and instead entered into a tentative deal with President Donald Trump's administration to have an independent monitor oversee police reforms, but without the mandatory court enforcement of a consent decree.

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"This proposal is a non-starter for anyone committed to real reform of Chicago's broken system of policing," said Karen Sheley, director of the ACLU of Illinois Police Practices Project. "The city is proposing to sign a set of promises with a DOJ that is hostile to real police reform."

The Trump administration and Attorney General Jeff Sessions have signaled a move away from federally mandated police reforms, including consent decrees and federal civil rights investigations like the one conducted in Chicago.

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Neither Emanuel nor the Trump Justice Department have responded to questions about who initiated the decision to back away from a Chicago consent decree.

Vanita Gupta, the former head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division who oversaw the Chicago investigation under Obama, has called Emanuel's new agreement with the Trump administration "woefully inadequate" to fix the "deep and long-standing" policing problems in the city.

Criminal justice experts and reform advocates have stressed that if Sessions and Trump won't agree to a consent decree, that Emanuel could still partner with community groups if he was interested in having a federal judge oversee the reforms. The mayor has ignored questions asking if he has considered that approach.

Emanuel has insisted he remains committed to police reforms. On Monday, the mayor suggested that the city would get the same results on police reform through the agreement with the Trump Justice Department for a monitor as it would if the process were overseen by a federal court.

In a news release criticizing Emanuel's new tentative agreement, the ACLU of Illinois noted that the mayor's assurances he is committed to reform echo similar City Hall assurances of the past that "have not yielded results."

Emanuel spokesman Adam Collins said in a statement that the city already had moved forward on "meaningful reform," including adding more body cameras and officers and changing the Police Department's use-of-force policy.

"This is a discussion about a framework when the discussion should be about the substantive reforms," Collins said in response to the ACLU criticisms. "We are working hard on negotiations with DOJ and we believe an independent monitor with a public reporting process will help drive those substantive reforms in Chicago, as it has in other cities."

The ACLU, however, said anything short of a consent decree will not be enough to drive true, lasting changes.

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"The only real path to police reform in Chicago is through a consent decree overseen by a federal judge," Sheley said. "That is what the city committed to when the DOJ completed its scathing report in January. Now is not the time to back away."

bruthhart@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @BillRuthhart
Mayor Rahm Emanuel, seen here last month, will host the annual Global Cities conference this week in Chicago. (Antonio Perez/ Chicago Tribune)

Welcome to Clout Street: Morning Spin, our weekday feature to catch you up with what's going on in government and politics from Chicago to Springfield. Subscribe here.

Topspin

More than a dozen world mayors will be here beginning Wednesday at a forum that will give Mayor Rahm Emanuel another platform to situate himself at the forefront of municipal leaders trying to address big issues.

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The three-day Chicago Forum on Global Cities will feature meetings on balancing "the tension between progressive urban policies and increasingly insular national agendas" as well as other pressing concerns for city leaders. There will also be tours of local corporations and plenty of evening hobnobbing at dinners and "night owl" cocktail parties, according to the event's agenda.

Following the forum on urban waterfronts he held for a group of mayors in March, along with his outspoken position with other American mayors in opposition to President Donald Trump's immigration policies, this week's third annual Global Cities event is a chance for Emanuel to raise his profile among urban bosses.

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It's also a way for the mayor to showcase some of his efforts to improve Chicago's standing on favorite progressive items like public transit upgrades, cultural diversity, technology access for residents and environmental policy without having to contend as much with the local media's fixation on such day-to-day problems as violence and school funding shortfalls.

Wednesday will feature a reception in the stock exchange room at the Art Institute, along with a meeting on globalization and an Art Institute dinner. Thursday promises a full slate of meetings, with the event wrapping up Friday afternoon following sessions on sustainability, cities dealing with the refugee crisis and other topics. (John Byrne)

What's on tap

*Mayor Emanuel will participate in a Chicago Council on Global Affairs roundtable that's closed to press. He'll introduce Department of Planning and Development Commissioner David Reifman at a City Club of Chicago luncheon. And the mayor will "file an executive order formalizing Chicago's commitment to adopting the guidelines of the Paris Agreement after President Trump withdrew the United States, reneging on a consensus with 196 countries on environment protections," according to Emanuel's press shop.

*Gov. Bruce Rauner will continue pushing his property tax freeze message with homeowners in Poplar Grove and Peoria. In the evening, he'll welcome home veterans at Midway Airport.

From the notebook

*Talk about timing: State Rep. Scott Drury's entrance into the Democratic primary race for governor came the same day union leaders endorsed J.B. Pritzker, making Pritzker the early front-runner.

The endorsement came hours after Drury posted a video and sent out a news release announcing his bid. The former federal prosecutor from Lake County has taken votes contrary to union positions in the past.

Drury touted his independence from House Speaker Michael Madigan, including refusing to vote to keep him in the post. When Madigan doled out gift clocks to his members in January marking his record tenure as speaker, Drury grumbled that he did not receive one.

In making his announcement, Drury took a shot at Pritzker by noting he did not inherit "billions of dollars" and that "money cannot buy character or judgment."

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"While my colleagues at the U.S. attorney's office and I were fighting to rid Illinois of public corruption, the current presumptive front-runner was cozying up to corrupt Gov. Blagojevich for an appointment," Drury said in a statement. "That type of small thinking is the polar opposite of what Illinois needs right now."

Campaign finance reports on file with the state Board of Elections show Drury had nearly $285,000 in his political fund at the end of March and has raised $6,600 since. (Rick Pearson)

*Mayor returns to Washington: Mayor Emanuel will take the podium at a National Press Club luncheon on June 20 for an hourlong discussion on education and other issues.

His speech is entitled "Moving Forward in Chicago" and he will take questions afterward, the club announced.

One topic he'll raise is his bid to require public high school seniors to provide a college or trade school acceptance letter, proof of military enlistment or a job offer in order to graduate, the announcement said.

The event is scheduled from noon to 1 p.m. Chicago time.

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To suggest a question for the mayor, email president@press.org with "EMANUEL" in the subject line before 9 a.m. that day. (Katherine Skiba)

*Illinoisan up for top Army post: President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced his intention to nominate Ryan McCarthy to be under secretary of the Army.

McCarthy is a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute and served in the 75th Ranger Regiment during the invasion of Afghanistan, the White House said.

He is a former Hill staffer who later was a special assistant to then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

McCarthy, who has an MBA from the University of Maryland, most recently was a vice president at Lockheed Martin, working on its F-35 fighter jet program. (Katherine Skiba)

What we're writing

*Illinois labor group endorses Pritzker, cementing Democratic front-runner status.

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*Emanuel, Trump Justice Department mum on who backed away from CPD court oversight.

*Illinois Democrats in Congress ask Rauner to speak up on health care overhaul.

*A major Chicago Tribune investigation into Cook County property tax system, "The Tax Divide," is now online. Read it here. And here's a preview video.

*Federal judge weighing whether Illinois needs to prioritize paying Medicaid bills.

*CPS to detail plan for new high school at elementary building in South Loop.

*Bottled Blonde, River North bar with lengthy dress code, has liquor license revocation hearing.

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*Illinois overhauls its 529 college savings plans, reducing fees and adding choices.

*Major video game group sues Chicago over online game tax.

What we're reading

*Doctor depression, suicide slowly coming out of shadows.

*This summer's solar eclipse is Southern Illinois' chance to shine.

*Taproom boom: In a slowing craft beer industry, Chicago brewers build locally.

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Follow the money

*Track Illinois campaign contributions in real time here and here.

Beyond Chicago (Holy cow, D.C. edition)



*Coats told associates Trump asked him if he could intervene with Comey on Russia probe, WaPo reports.

*Trump, furious and frustrated, gears up to 'punch back' at Comey testimony, WaPo reports.

*Comey asked Sessions to keep him from being alone with Trump, AP reports.

*Sessions offered to resign after tension with Trump, WaPo reports.

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*What's known about the Mueller probe so far.

*Trump takes credit for Saudi move Against Qatar, a U.S. military partner, NYT reports.

*Fear of deportation drives people off food stamps in the U.S.

*U.S.-led coalition strikes pro-Assad forces in Syria.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel and President Donald Trump's Justice Department won't say who initiated a tentative agreement that would let City Hall avoid having a federal judge oversee and enforce Chicago Police Department reforms.

In January, as the Obama Justice Department issued a scathing report citing a pattern of excessive force and misconduct at the Police Department, Emanuel agreed with federal civil rights officials that the problem was severe enough to seek a federal consent decree.

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"We are going to work with the incoming administration to  as we said in the signed principles agreement  to work through a consent decree," Emanuel said back then, adding that he "wouldn't have signed what I signed on behalf of the city if I didn't believe they (consent decrees) were right."

Late last week, though, Emanuel's office trickled out the news that the mayor no longer was considering the consent decree and instead had worked out a preliminary deal with the Trump administration to have an appointed monitor watch over any police changes.

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Back in January, the mayor also said he "obviously can't negotiate" for incoming Attorney General Jeff Sessions but was committed "to work through a consent decree."

Then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch said a consent decree would be "dependent on this city continuing to lean in."

So who leaned out of the agreement to pursue a consent decree? Neither Emanuel nor the Trump Justice Department would answer that question Tuesday.

Emanuel rushed out of a public appearance and did not respond to questions about his decision. The Justice Department again did not respond to questions about the agreement.

The mayor suggested Monday that the tentative deal with the Trump administration would get the city the same results on reforming the Police Department as a federal court.

Emanuel's about-face on who oversees the effort to fix policing problems, which have consumed much of his second term, has drawn criticism from reform advocates, criminal justice experts and the former Obama administration official who led the civil rights investigation into CPD.

Vanita Gupta, the former head of Justice Department's Civil Rights Division under President Barack Obama, has called Emanuel's new agreement with the Trump administration toothless and "woefully inadequate" to fix the "deep and long-standing" policing concerns in Chicago.

Gupta has pointed out that it was less than six months ago when Emanuel agreed to court oversight of the Police Department, a decision made after Donald Trump was elected president. And while Sessions has signaled he's not likely to pursue consent decrees, experts and reform advocates have stressed that Emanuel could still partner with community groups if he was interested in having mandatory court oversight of the reforms.

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Asked Tuesday if he had considered partnering with such groups, Emanuel ignored the question as he left an event marking 125 years for Chicago's "L" system at the Garfield Green Line station and hopped into his waiting city SUV.

Before the South Side CTA event, a group of students demonstrated against Emanuel as he boarded a vintage 1923 elevated train car at the Clark/Lake stop in the Loop. The teens were participating in a school "Know Your Rights Train Takeover" community organizing effort, in which they handed out pamphlets informing riders about how traffic stops of some African-Americans had led to their deaths in police custody.

A conductor announced that Emanuel was standing on the platform, and the students from Village Leadership Academy, an independent social justice school in the South Loop, got off the train and demonstrated against the mayor.

The students shouted two chants common in street demonstrations that erupted against Emanuel and the Police Department in the aftermath of a Cook County judge's late 2015 order for the mayor to release video of the Laquan McDonald police shooting. McDonald, an African-American teenager, was shot 16 times as he walked away from white Officer Jason Van Dyke, spurring murder charges, calls for Emanuel's resignation and the federal civil rights investigation.

"Hey, hey! Ho, Ho! Rahm Emanuel's got to go!" the students chanted in a video that circulated on Twitter.

"16 shots and a cover-up!" they yelled louder, as Emanuel walked by the students and ignored them as he boarded the vintage train.

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bruthhart@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @BillRuthhart
Musilm Imam's join together with other religious leaders in a multi-faith service to condemn the London Bridge terror attacks in London, Britain on June 7, 2017. (Andy Rain / EPA)

Reporting from London  More than 100 Muslim leaders across Britain have joined forces to denounce the actions of the three London Bridge attackers by declaring that they will refuse to perform funeral prayers for them.

In an unprecedented show of solidarity and outrage at the latest terrorist incident to hit Britain, imams across the country are also urging other Muslim leaders to follow their example.

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"We have always condemned all these type of atrocities, but we needed to send a strong message to these killers that what they have done is totally against the teachings of Islam," said the head of chaplaincy at Barts Health NHS Trust in London, Sheik Yunus Dudhwala, one of the 130 imams who signed the statement. "I think this is the strongest message that we can send."

There have previously been calls for the Muslim community in Britain to take tougher visible action against the perpetrators of terrorist acts, beyond just verbally condemning them. In 2015, then-Prime Minister David Cameron also angered the Muslim community by saying that it had to do more to tackle extremism and that it was time for the "silent majority" to stand up.

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Muslims said at the time that Cameron was wrong to link a lack of social cohesion with extremism and terrorism, and they believed that they were being forced to constantly apologize for each terrorist attack carried out in their religion's name.

But the frequency of the recent attacks in Britain by homegrown extremists has spurred the community into taking a more cohesive, strong stance against the actions of the terrorists, Dudhwala said.

"There have been three attacks in three months, and we wanted to send a strong message that that doesn't represent the 3 million-plus Muslims in the U.K.," he said. "It's becoming a trend and we can't let this happen in our name, in our faith's name, and we wanted to make sure people understand that. We abhor this killing and atrocity."

The religious leaders' statement was released through the Muslim Council of Britain.

Dudhwala said more religious leaders have pledged to support their decision since the announcement, bringing the number closer to 200. The group said that denying a funeral prayer was one of the strongest messages its members are able to send to the wider Muslim community in their capacity as religious leaders and scholars, because the prayer is the final moment the community offers acceptance to the deceased for the sins they may have committed.

"The funeral prayer is a very important prayer," said Qari Asim, a senior imam at Makkah Mosque in the city of Leeds. "It's the last prayer in which Muslims traditionally seek forgiveness from God. We will not be performing the funeral prayer, and as a result, we will not be asking for forgiveness.

"We are saying they are not martyrs, they are criminals, and they are not following a path to paradise," he said.

This move will not prevent burials of the three men who mowed down pedestrians on London Bridge with a van and then knifed civilians in Borough Market, leaving seven dead and dozens injured. Once their remains are released by the coroner, their families can arrange for their bodies to be laid to rest, but the religious leaders hoped that by denying them ritual burial rights, and urging others to do the same, it would send a powerful message to anyone who thought their actions were noble.

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"Psychologically, we hope it will have a profound impact on the people who will be considering this type of thing because they have been misguided and misled to believe that this is an Islamic thing to do," said Sheik Asim Yusuf, an imam and religious scholar in the city of Wolverhampton. "It demonstrates to a would-be person considering this type of thing that there's a profound negative consequence to this action. You are cutting yourselves off from the community of believers.

"Psychologically, the whole of the Muslim community lined up against you. Psychologically, you are not considered part of this community. We hope it will give people pause," he said.

Boyle is a special correspondent.
Yue Chen, 58, has been charged with three counts of premeditated attempted murder in a plot to kill the Bay Area oncologists who had been treating him, authorities say. (Palo Alto Police Department)

The police warnings were brief and bone-chilling: "There's an armed man intent on coming to your home or place of business to kill you."

A group of Bay Area oncologists sought to protect themselves recently when authorities told them that a terminally ill cancer patient had armed himself and appeared intent on exacting revenge.

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"He was disgruntled; he clearly bore some substantial animosity," Palo Alto Police Lt. James Reifschneider said of Yue Chen.

Though Chen wasn't able to execute his alleged plan, authorities are confident he was serious about following through on it.

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When Chen was found just hours after the warnings went out May 31, he was about 20 miles outside Palo Alto on southbound Highway 101. Police found a white rubber mask, a notebook with names, addresses and directions to the homes of several doctors and two loaded guns inside his car, court documents show.

A note titled "Why do I kill" was found. It justified the act of revenge and the consequences of treating a person "like an animal," court documents show.

According to Santa Clara County prosecutors, Chen's family had recently told him that he was terminally ill with Stage 4 cancer. He didn't have long to live.

So Chen sought to find the oncologists who had treated him the previous year and kill them, police said.

In custody, Chen told investigators he believed that doctors had treated him like a tool for experimentation, or a "laboratory monkey," according to court documents. He said he believed doctors had damaged his spine so they could train new students, court documents show. Originally from China, Chen told police that he lived in New York for 12 years before moving to California, documents show.

In his search for doctors, Chen had driven to a hospital in San Francisco but left without hurting anyone, according to a police report. He also tried another location where he thought one of his doctors lived, documents show.

But none of that was known earlier that morning on May 31, when Chen's family had just reported him missing. It wasn't until Visalia police arrived at the home and found evidence of the plot that they alerted people in the Bay Area. Inside Chen's home, investigating officers found a typed note that said he "had to kill these doctors today because they are evil," court documents show.

His computer's Internet search history revealed some of the people and places he allegedly intended to target, and a search of his home revealed that two handguns registered to his name with 16- and 32-round high-capacity magazines were gone, authorities said.

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"This is a man with nothing to lose and wants to take people with him," said Charles Huang, Santa Clara County deputy district attorney.

Visalia police notified the California Highway Patrol and police in Palo Alto, San Francisco and surrounding communities where Chen's doctors lived and worked, officials said. Police told them to be on the lookout for him  he was driving a rented red 2017 Nissan Rogue, Visalia Police Sgt. Damon Maurice said.

CHP officers found him about 7:45 p.m. May 31, about 20 minutes outside of Palo Alto and 150 miles from his home, police said.

Chen was arrested without incident and taken to the hospital. From there he was transported to Santa Clara County jail, where records show he is being held without bail.

On Friday, he was charged with three counts of premeditated attempted murder. There was evidence at his home and in the car that Chen had planned to target more than three doctors, but the evidence justifies charging him with plans to kill three people only, Huang said.

"Police were able to avert a massacre of some of the top oncologists in the world," the prosecutor added.

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If convicted, Chen could face life in prison with the possibility of parole in 21 years, Huang said.

At his arraignment Friday, Chen's defense attorney argued that due to his condition, Chen should be placed in hospice care rather than held in jail. The judge rejected the motion.

Chen's arraignment was continued to June 28. His defense attorney was not immediately available for comment.

joseph.serna@latimes.com

@JosephSerna


What do the directors of the Transportation Security Administration, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the FBI have in common?

Easy question, you may think: They are all important law enforcement officials with roles in combating terrorism. But at the moment, they have nothing in common. Why? Because they don't exist.

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The jobs, you see, are vacant. Each has to be filled by presidential appointment, and Donald Trump has felt no urgency in filling them. Only this week did he even offer names for the TSA and FBI.

That is not his only lapse when it comes to protecting Americans from danger. In January, 47 U.S. attorneys resigned, and in March, he fired the remaining 46 federal prosecutors. So far, the president has yet to submit a nomination for any of the vacancies.

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The people who voted for Trump knew they would be getting a disrupter, a critic of business-as-usual and an enemy of political correctness. Many also realized they were electing a bully and a braggart. But they may not have known what they were getting above all else: an incompetent.

There is no other way to explain most of what he has done in the White House. His most formidable opponent couldn't do half as much to foil Trump as Trump himself has done.

His travel policy was rushed out, blocked by courts, withdrawn, revised and blocked again. Administration lawyers, who hope to convince the Supreme Court it had no unconstitutional anti-Muslim motives, have been undercut by his tweets, which convey the opposite.

So flagrant is the contradiction that some analysts suspect he has a hidden logic. They speculate that Trump might prefer to lose his ban so he could blame the courts if there were a U.S. terrorist attack carried out by foreigners.

Let me suggest that they are overthinking this. Trump has no record of being deviously clever. He has a record of acting rashly out of ignorance, fury and hubris. He makes needless statements that harm his legal case because he's a self-destructive oaf.

His dismissal of FBI Director James Comey followed that pattern. The White House claimed that Trump fired him at the recommendation of the Justice Department because he botched the investigation of Hillary Clinton's emails.

But Trump then admitted making the decision before he got the Justice memo, saying he objected to Comey's probe of connections between his presidential campaign and the Kremlin. He thus helped bring on a special prosecutor, which could be fatal to his presidency.

Nothing about his performance suggests he has any idea how to handle his office. Trump complains that the Senate is obstructing his nominations. But at last count, he has yet to pick anyone for nearly 80 percent of the positions that require Senate confirmation.

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On one issue after another, he has had to flee from ill-considered positions. He said the U.S. might junk its "One China" policy  only to be forced to back down by Chinese President Xi Jinping. He lambasted President Barack Obama's "dumb deal" to take refugees from Australia but eventually decided to honor it.

In April, Trump announced that the following week, he would unveil his tax reform plan. This promise, reported Politico, "startled no one more than Gary Cohn, his chief economic adviser writing the plan. Not a single word of a plan was on paper, several administration officials said." The "plan" the White House released was one page long.

Trump promised to repeal and replace Obamacare but had great trouble getting a bill through the House, partly because he didn't know enough about the substance to negotiate with any skill. The legislation finally approved by the House was pronounced dead on arrival in the Senate. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said recently he doesn't know how a repeal bill would get enough votes to pass.

Trump's incompetence is self-perpetuating. A clueless executive is forced to rely on aides who are mediocre  or worse  because better people are repelled. Vacant jobs and poor staff work, aggravated by bad management, lead to more failure, which makes it even harder to attract strong hires  and easier for opponents to get their way.

Expect more of the same. Trump came to office uninformed, unprepared and oblivious to his shortcomings, with no capacity to recognize or overcome them. He is in way over his head, and not waving but drowning.

Steve Chapman, a member of the Tribune Editorial Board, blogs at www.chicagotribune.com/chapman.

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schapman@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @SteveChapman13

What to read next:

Donald Trump acts like someone with a lot to hide

Trump will never love America as much as he loves himself

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That "cloud" Trump wanted Comey to lift is now a gathering storm

What was John McCain trying to say?
Here are 20 questions I would like asked by senators and answered by former FBI Director James Comey in the course of Thursday's hearing, preferably in this order and preferably without preamble or theatrics:

1. Mr. Comey, you have repeatedly testified before this and other congressional committees in 2016 and 2017 about aspects of the 2016 election and investigations into those matters. Have you reviewed those appearances and that testimony prior to appearing today?

2. Do you affirm the truthfulness of all responses given in the course of those appearances, or are there any revisions that you would like to provide or perhaps answers you would like to expand upon?

3. Do you feel that President Trump intended at any time to obstruct your investigation into alleged ties between himself, his campaign, campaign associates or transition officials and Russia?

4. Is your standard for "intent" with regard to President Trump and obstruction the same as the standard you employed to determine "intent" in the matter of former secretary of state Hillary Clinton when it came to violating statutes concerning the handling of classified material?

5. If the standards of "intent" differ, could you please explain why ?

6. Did you keep notes about every interaction with President Trump?

7. Did you keep notes of every interaction with President Barack Obama?

8. If your standard for note-taking differed as to interactions with the two presidents, could you explain why?

9. Did you keep notes on interactions with any attorneys general you have served?

10. Will you provide this committee with all notes you have taken on interactions with all presidents, attorneys general and deputy attorneys general you have served, and all notes of conversations with all White House staff alongside whom you have served from the time you became FBI director to when you were fired, and by what date can you do so?

11. Did you authorize anyone to review your notes and discuss them with any media outlet?

12. If you did so, whom did you authorize and why?

13. If you did not, how did stories purporting to read from those notes become part of the media reporting?

14. Ought Americans to fear that FBI officials are keeping notes on every conversation they have with an agent of the bureau even when they are not the target of an investigation? Should anyone about whom a record of conversation is being made be informed of such an intent to create such notes?

15. Should contemporaneous notes of any conversation deemed to be in any way politically charged be shared with the inspector general of the Justice Department to assure that the notes are indeed contemporaneous to the conversations they purport to record and are in fact a reflection of the actual conversation that took place and not an exhibit in a false narrative later produced to advantage the note-taker?

16. Was the president a target of any FBI investigation at the time you left the FBI?

17. Was any member of the White House staff a target of any FBI investigation at the time you left the FBI?

18. Was the president or any member of his family a subject of interest in any FBI investigation at the time you left the FBI?

19. If so, did you inform the deputy attorney general of that situation?

20. The American people are intensely interested in whether the Trump campaign or any well-known adviser to it colluded with Russia in the attack on our election. In your opinion, did such collusion exist, and if so, by whom and what was the nature of that collusion?

Bonus Question: Can you name all of those people, if anyone, who helped you prepare for today via so-called murder boards or other such question-and-answer sessions, as witnesses frequently do?
1932: Paul Muni, the American actor of Austrian parentage is viewed, breaking up rocks with other prisoners in a scene from the film "I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang." (Hulton Archive / Getty Images)

It's a movie cliche: a bunch of men in white-and-black striped pajamas, with chains around their ankles, breaking rocks in a quarry under armed guard. The media has taught us that prison labor is the natural state of the world  a way to make the punishment for wrongdoing a little more unpleasant, and a way to make criminals sweat off whatever sinister restlessness drove them to crime.

But the reality is that prison labor is just a way that governments try to recoup some of the cost of incarceration, by farming out their prisoners as captive labor. That might help governments' bottom line a little bit, but it creates devastating competition for low-wage American workers.

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The U.S. locks up an extraordinary number of people. Its incarceration rate is the highest in the world and at least twice that of any other advanced economy, and significantly higher than authoritarian Russia. Of incarcerated Americans, about 1 1/2 million are in prison. That number surged in the 1980s and hasn't fallen much from its peak in the mid-2000s.

That enormous prison population represents a vast pool of ultra-cheap labor. A recent report by the Prison Policy Initiative found that the average wage of a prison worker is 93 cents an hour, and the lowest reported wage was 16 cents.

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Compare that to the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. How can a free American worker compete with an inmate laborer making less than one-tenth that amount? Even if prisoners are less productive than free workers, the wage difference is overwhelming.

Nor are these prison workers breaking rocks, as in old movies. In the modern day, the government contracts them out to private companies, offering inmates as a way to boost the bottom line. Over the years, prisoners have packaged coffee for Starbucks and wrapped software for Microsoft. They manufacture furniture, schools supplies and food products. They make dental products, train animals, work in call centers and even pick cotton.

All of these activities put prisoners in direct competition with blue-collar American workers; the latter essentially have no chance. In recent years, there have been political uproars over guest workers, unauthorized immigrants and offshoring U.S. jobs to low-wage countries such as Bangladesh. But low-wage immigrants don't do much to lower native-born wages, and laborers in Bangladesh don't have the tools or the proximity to compete directly with most American workers.

If you want to ease the pressure on the beleaguered U.S. working class, paying prisoners more is the best bet. Mandating that prison labor receive the federal minimum wage would open up lots of job opportunities for low-wage workers on the outside.

It would also be the moral thing to do. Detractors often call the prison labor system slavery, and while there are differences between modern prison labor and the slavery system of the old South, the similarities are way too close for comfort. The U.S. has always valued free labor over compulsory work -- as historians have documented, this was one reason slavery aroused such ire in the antebellum North.

Prison labor therefore goes against traditional American values and humanitarian concerns alike. Writers who have gone to watch the prison labor system in action report being stunned by how widespread and accepted this un-American system has become, especially in states like Louisiana with high rates of incarceration.

Morality also demands that prisoners should receive more of the money that customers pay for their services. Currently, inmates receive only about a quarter of that money, including the portion that goes to victim reparation funds.

Reduced demand for prison labor due to higher wages, especially if prisoners are allowed to keep more of what they earn, would mean government finances will take a hit. Incarceration is expensive, costing about $30,000 a year for a federal inmate. But maybe raising the cost of throwing Americans in prison is a good thing.

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The incredibly high U.S. incarceration rate is a strong indication that the country is locking people away for crimes that don't really require it, such as drug use or petty theft. But recently, high costs are forcing states to reduce their prison populations. Presumably, that will limit incarceration to those who really need to be locked up. The end of mass incarceration will also help the economy and reduce inequality -- some estimates claim that the practice of imprisoning millions of Americans has increased the country's poverty rate by 20 percent, even before taking into account the wage competition from cheap prison labor.

So paying prisoners the minimum wage shouldn't be seen as an act of charity. It will take pressure off of working-class American laborers, encourage governments to reduce mass incarceration and move the country back toward valuing free labor.

Bloomberg View

Noah Smith is a Bloomberg View columnist. He was an assistant professor of finance at Stony Brook University, and he blogs at Noahpinion.
In back-to-back news conferences on Jan. 12 and 13, officials from the U.S. Department of Justice stood alongside the leaders of two cities  first Baltimore, then Chicago  to assure citizens that efforts to overhaul their troubled police departments would not be derailed by a new administration.

Both cities had been subjected to rigorous investigations that were expected to lead to years of oversight, with a court-appointed monitor reporting to a federal judge. But incoming President Donald Trump and his soon-to-be Attorney General Jeff Sessions were scornful of such arrangements. They believe that worrying about the civil rights of suspects gets in the way of fighting crime.

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That's the same attitude that poisoned the relationship between police and public in Chicago and Baltimore. It jeopardized all the hard work those cities had invested in rebuilding that trust.

So on Jan. 12, Baltimore's leaders and then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced that they'd signed a consent decree committing the city to specific reforms and filed it in federal court that morning. The next day, the Justice Department released a report on its hurriedly completed investigation of Chicago's police department, and Mayor Rahm Emanuel pledged to continue working toward a consent decree, too. Count us among those who doubted, from the start, that it would happen. And now Emanuel has confirmed that it won't.

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Instead, the city wants the Justice Department to sign off on a plan that calls for an independent monitor but no court enforcement.

Who would select the independent monitor? Recall that the Independent Police Review Authority  the toothless disciplinary body that almost never found a cop guilty of wrongdoing  was joined at the hip with City Hall attorneys and Emanuel's spin staff.

What reforms are included in the plan? Who would enforce them and how? What's the timeline?

City Hall isn't sharing details about the tentative agreement, and Emanuel isn't taking questions. Transparency and public engagement apparently left town with Lynch.

Contrast it with what happened in Baltimore: That city's leaders, too, could have ducked a consent decree. One of Sessions' first actions was to ask a federal judge not to move forward with the agreement until the new Justice team had completed its review of all such pacts nationwide. City officials asked the judge to deny the attorney general's request.

"I want to say to the community in particular that the police department is absolutely dedicated to the consent decree process," Police Commissioner Kevin Davis said. "There's no backroom deals. There's no sleight of hand. It'll make us better, it'll make the city better, it'll make our relationships with the community better."

Days later, U.S. District Judge James Bredar approved the consent decree.

The message to Baltimore residents: The Justice Department is no longer invested in reforming our police department. But we are.

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That's not the vibe Chicagoans are getting from Emanuel. The Justice Department's exit presented him with the opportunity to go it alone, and nobody should be surprised that he took it.

But we have to wonder if he's forgotten the uproar over his initial attempt to control the review of the police department after a white Chicago cop shot black teenager Laquan McDonald 16 times. As calls rose for the Justice Department to step in, Emanuel resisted outside scrutiny  until he was overwhelmed by the public outcry.

The threat of a consent decree motivated Chicago to break a decadeslong cycle of crises followed by promises that were soon abandoned. Now the pressure's off. "There's many roads to reform, but they all hit the same destination," Emanuel said this week. In Chicago, though, the road to reform has always hit a wall.

How is Emanuel's latest oversight plan any different?

Whatever it is, he probably won't have much trouble selling it to Trump's Justice Department. He's going to have a much harder time selling it to Chicago.

Join the discussion on Twitter @Trib_Ed_Board and on Facebook.

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President Donald Trump takes his seat as he meets with Republican congressional leaders in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington, D.C., on June 6, 2017. (Nicholas Kamm / AFP/Getty Images)

On Thursday, President Donald Trump faces a leadership test: The FBI director he rashly fired in May will give congressional testimony live on television, and the president will maintain a respectful silence ... or fulminate on Twitter.

We're not taking bets, but we've seen nothing in Trump's behavior pattern to give us confidence he recognizes the harm and confusion his outbursts cause. Now in his fifth month on the job, Trump is on his way to earning a dubious award we just invented: the president most likely to break windows for no good reason.

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Strange and demoralizing as it is, Trump is vandalizing his own presidency.

The crux of what the president has done is damage his own ability to fulfill his promises to voters. He is a Republican president with a Republican Congress. But instead of delivering tax reform, fixing Obamacare or creating factory jobs, Trump is caught up in a scandal hijacking his presidency. And it is happening because he lacks self-restraint.

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It was just a month ago, with the FBI investigating whether Trump associates colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election, that the president fired FBI Director James Comey. The White House tried peddling the excuse that Comey got the boot over his investigation of Hillary Clinton's email server, but Trump quickly acknowledged he wanted Comey gone because of the "Russia thing." Firing Comey was a reckless act that appeared intended to waylay the investigation.

Remember Trump's bizarre reaction? "James Comey better hope that there are no 'tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!" the president tweeted.

When Comey testifies Thursday before the Senate intelligence committee, he'll be asked about his dealings with Trump. Comey is expected to describe situations in which the president was more interested in the ongoing Russia investigation than he should have been. According to Comey's written statement to the committee, released Wednesday afternoon, Trump in late March sought the FBI chief's loyalty and wanted him to "lift the cloud" hanging over Trump. The president also asked Comey to lay off Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser who is a focus of the FBI investigation.

Trump's actions invite serious legal questions about attempts to obstruct justice. We can't answer those questions. What's certain is that no good comes to the country from watching the spectacle of a president unable to manage his emotions or edit his words. Whatever the future direction of the Russia investigation, Trump made the situation worse by ignoring or failing to understand his obligation to respect the autonomy of federal law enforcement officials conducting an investigation. The sanctity of the rule of law is no small thing.

Trump is entitled to use social media as a megaphone. The trouble with his Twitter rants is they reinforce the perception that his real-life decision-making is irresponsible and untrustworthy. During Trump's first week in office he unleashed a hastily written executive order on immigration that remains hung up in the courts because it's arguably an unconstitutional ban on Muslims. The White House insisted that wasn't the case. This week, Trump tweeted criticism of his own Justice Department lawyers for the legal imbroglio, and then added to their headaches with an absurd Twitter rant: "People, the lawyers and the courts can call it whatever they want, but I am calling it what we need and what it is, a TRAVEL BAN!"

Putting nuanced legal responsibilities on the shoulders of an impetuous real estate developer and expecting prudent outcomes always seemed like a stretch. Many voters were willing to take a chance on an untested leader because they were fed up with politics as usual. But Trump hasn't grown into the job, and he's shown no interest in trying. His erratic temperament causes one bad surprise after another.

What happens next? Tune in Thursday to watch Comey's testimony. And stand by for the president's reaction.

Join the discussion on Twitter @Trib_Ed_Board and on Facebook.
According to a 2016 study by the University of Chicago's Consortium on School Research, only 58 percent of students in Chicago Public Schools head to a college or university immediately upon high school graduation. But iMentor is hoping to change that.

Founded in New York City in 1999, iMentor has since reached more than 13,000 students through their mentor pairings. The program began with a simple concept: Pair a low-income or possible first-generation college student with a consistent mentor over the course of their high school career to help them become college-ready upon graduation.

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The program came to Chicago two years ago and currently operates in three CPS schools around the city: North-Grand High School, Phoenix Military Academy and Richard T. Crane Medical Prep School. Since its inaugural school year in 2015, iMentor has nearly tripled its number of pairs, up to 608 mentor pairings from the initial 207 pairings. The organization plans to have 1,200 pairings by next year, according to Halleemah Nash, the Chicago program's executive director.

The commitment that a mentor makes consists of two requirements: one email a week and one in-person meeting a month.

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"We deliver continuity to our students," Nash said. "We pair a mentor with them for three years that they can learn to trust and have as a role model."

According to Nash, iMentor students are three times more likely to graduate than their peers, and in schools with iMentor programs, college enrollment increased by 13 percentage points. Access to a mentor is available to all students at iMentor-affiliated schools.

"Every student deserves a champion," Nash said. "We aren't going into these schools and selecting high-performing students."

To begin volunteering with iMentor, interested participants must go through a training process. To be a mentor, volunteers must be at least 21 years old, hold an associates' degree or higher and live in Chicago with the availability to travel to the mentee's school once a month. To learn more about the orientation process and to get started with iMentor, visit their website.

@shelbielbostedt | sbostedt@redeyechicago.com
Illinois Congressional Democrats are pressing for information about the number of jobs that could be cut at the Fox Valley's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and DuPage County's Argonne National Laboratory under President Donald Trump's budget request.

In a letter to U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, the state's Democratic senators and representatives also highlighted what they view as the role of the country's national laboratory system and scientific research, according to a copy provided by the office of U.S. Rep. Bill Foster (D-Naperville). Fermilab, near Batavia, and Argonne, in Lemont, are among the national labs supported by the Department of Energy.

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"We recognize we must set priorities and make smart, strategic decisions about federal funding," the letter stated. "But we also have serious concerns about the priorities this administration appears to be setting."

In the May letter, the delegation requested a response from the Department of Energy by June 2. A spokeswoman for Foster, Mary Werden, said Tuesday his office had not yet received a response.

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Department of Energy officials did not respond to Beacon-News questions Tuesday.

Werden referred to job-loss figures published in June in the magazine Science. Numbers compiled by contractors who run national labs for the Department of Energy showed under Trump's budget proposal, about 6,700 jobs could be lost of roughly 29,000 jobs at 12 of the 17 national labs, according to the magazine.

Argonne spokesman Christopher Kramer said it is too early in the budget process to predict what could happen to Argonne's workforce. He listed numbers he said showed the effect Argonne has on the state, including jobs the lab helped create throughout Illinois, federal research funding it has brought, and goods and services purchased from state businesses.

"Regarding the budget, it is very early in the process and much can happen as things progress," he said in an email. "Our concerns are the same as they always are  continuing our work in advancing breakthrough science for the betterment of the American people and the entire world."

A Fermilab spokesman referred questions about the budget proposal and any possible cuts to the Department of Energy.

Foster, a physicist who worked at Fermilab, said in a statement he has a right to know how many people could lose their jobs under the budget proposal in order to assess its effect on the economy and on the future of scientific research.

"As the only PhD physicist in Congress, I am deeply concerned about the effects the Trump administration's proposed budget cuts would have on the future of our country's leadership in science and innovation," he said.

In the letter to Perry, 13 of Illinois' senators and representatives outlined the work of what the delegation called "a world class workforce" at the national lab system and the role the labs play in supporting the next generation of scientists, such as graduate students and postdoctoral researchers.

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"From economic stagnation and dependence on foreign energy to curing diseases and addressing threats to our national security, scientific research is the foundation for the innovative solutions that will enable us to overcome many of our greatest challenges," they wrote in the letter. "Instead, we fear that the funding levels requested in the (fiscal year '18 budget proposal) would cause permanent damage to our research infrastructure and force our National Labs to lay off critical scientific staff. This is no way to keep America great or maintain our position as a leader in science and innovation."

They said they could not evaluate the full effect of the budget proposal without knowing how many national lab employees could lose their jobs if the proposed funding levels took effect.

sfreishtat@tribpub.com

Twitter @srfreish
A Kane County Sheriff's Department officer secures an entrance to Delnor Hospital in Geneva during a hostage situation May 13. The man who took the hostages was eventually killed by a bullet fired by a SWAT team member at the hospital. (Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune )

Without suggesting any timelines, Kane County State's Attorney Joe McMahon said he expects thorough investigations into three recent police officer-involved shootings across the county, probes which he said will be followed by an intensive review by his office.

McMahon spoke generally at his monthly press briefing about the incidents which occurred within a two-week span last month in Aurora, West Dundee and at Delnor Hospital in Geneva. The latter case involved a Kane County Jail inmate who was fatally shot after taking a sheriff's deputy's gun and holding nurses hostages during a standoff at the Randall Road facility.

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McMahon said it is "too early" for him to discuss particulars in any of the cases, including whether the shootings were justified. The Illinois State Police is the lead agency in the Delnor shooting, while Geneva police and the Kane County Sheriff's Office also are conducting reviews.

"There are a lot of aspects as to what happened in that hospital," McMahon offered, adding the case is "a lot broader" than just the shots fired in the death of inmate Tywon Salters. "I think that will be a comprehensive review. I want it to be comprehensive."

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Aside from the pending investigation, McMahon limited his comments because of a federal lawsuit filed by Delnor nurses against the sheriff's office and corrections officer Shawn Loomis. McMahon explained that his office's civil division will be assisted by outside attorneys  who could formally enter their appearances this week  in the lawsuit.

To avoid conflicts, McMahon said separate reviews of the Delnor case will be conducted by the office's civil attorneys and the criminal division, something which happens infrequently, but is not a unique occurrence when a single incident is involved. He downplayed any potential concerns about his role as the ultimate decision maker for both matters citing a "history of actions speaking louder than any words I can say" about prosecuting cases involving police officers or anyone else charged with a crime.

"We will review based on the facts and the application to the law," McMahon said.

Aside from the Delnor shooting, Illinois State Police continue to probe the wounding of a man by federal agents during a drug investigation near Route 72 and Sleepy Hollow Road on May 17. Several divisions of the Aurora Police Department are involved in the investigation of the May 24 shooting of an Aurora man hit during an exchange of gunfire after he allegedly ran toward an unmarked police vehicle and pointed a gun at officers.

McMahon said reviews of officer-involved shootings are "labor intensive" because of the time it takes for his office to go through reports and other evidence collected by investigators. While McMahon prepares for those three cases to be in hand, the state's attorney's office recently found no wrongdoing by police in two deaths earlier this year.

First, an Illinois State Police investigation determined an inmate's January death at the Kane County Jail was due to natural causes. Alan Span died on Jan. 24 of a heart attack, according to a letter McMahon sent to Kane County Sheriff Don Kramer May 25.

In a separate letter to Batavia Police Chief Dan Eul the same day, McMahon closed the investigation into the April 15 death of Joseph Graves, who sped off after a Batavia police officer attempted a traffic stop. Graves, riding a motorcycle, collided at a high rate of speed with an SUV backing out of a driveway on Wind Energy Pass.

Dan Campana is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News
Police are at the scene Aug. 15, 2016, of a double homicide in Sycamore. (Erin Gallagher / Chicago Tribune)

Investigators hope a DNA profile and a behavioral analysis will help them find the person who killed a woman and her adult son near Sycamore last August, but they still are seeking the public's help to solve the crimes, DeKalb County Sheriff Roger Scott said.

Authorities are looking for a man who likely has ties to Chicago's Lincoln Park community and to Sycamore, Scott said Wednesday.

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"The DNA shows that this primary person that we are aware of is a male," Scott said, although investigators have not concluded if others were involved.

A cash reward of up to $50,000 is being offered for information leading to an arrest in the killings. The reward amount has doubled as a result of private donations, Scott said.

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Patricia Wilson, 85, and her son, Robert Wilson, 64, were found dead in their home, in a rural area surrounded by corn and soybean fields about 70 miles west of Chicago on Aug. 15.

The DeKalb County coroner ruled that the two died of blunt-force trauma. Eight days later, Chicago police found the Wilsons' white Chevrolet Impala on North Stockton Drive near Lincoln Park Zoo.

Investigators have gathered and submitted about 100 items to the Illinois state crime lab, and a "complete DNA profile" has been developed, officials said. Over 1,100 leads have been investigated, according to a statement from the sheriff's office.

"So far, the investigation has not yielded any matches to the DNA profile," the statement said.

The FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit, based in Quantico, Va., profiled the man as likely having ties to both the Lincoln Park and Sycamore areas, "possibly through the residence of a friend or family member, or similar use of public services," according to the statement.

Authorities believe the man may be familiar with the Sycamore area, with ties to the community, but may have been living a transient lifestyle, including relying on public transportation or rides from friends to get around Sycamore, the statement said.

"It is possible that in the days leading up to the crime, the perpetrator attempted entry into other homes in the greater Sycamore area," it said.

The night of the killings, he may have been wearing clothes that didn't fit him very well, and he may have appeared to have been in some type of fight, the statement said.

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"In days following the crime, people around him may have noticed certain common post-offense behaviors, including but not limited to, suddenly departing the area, changes in mood or demeanor, changes in lifestyle patterns, increasing his use of drugs, tobacco, or alcohol, or withdrawing from social contact with others," the statement said.

He also may have changed his physical appearance, such as hairstyle or facial hair, and paid abnormal attention to the news coverage of the crime, it said.

The sheriff released a timeline of events the day the two were killed. On Aug. 14, the Wilsons went to church and out to breakfast with friends. Robert Wilson then spent the afternoon at the Sycamore Moose Lodge before returning home. Then at 7:43 p.m., Patricia Wilson spoke with a family member on the phone, according to the sheriff's statement.

About five hours later, at 12:44 a.m., a traffic camera recorded the Impala traveling east on Illinois Highway 64 at Illinois Highway 59 in West Chicago.

After Chicago police located the car in Lincoln Park, police reviewed Chicago Transit Authority bus video, and it showed the car legally parked at noon Aug. 15 at the North Stockton Drive location where it was eventually found, Scott said.

Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 815-895-3272 or email crimestoppers@dekalbcounty.org.

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Erin Gallagher is a freelance reporter.
Firefighters battled a fire Monday afternoon at a two-flat apartment building 2100 block of Vermont Street. No one was injured. (Gerald Porter/Daily Southtown )

Thanks to the timely help of a good Samaritan, some residents said they are now safe following a fire Monday afternoon in a two-flat apartment building in Blue Island.

LaMont Dembry, of Chicago, was walking out of The Blue Kangaroo Laundromat when his girlfriend told him to call 911 after she saw smoke coming from the neighboring building in the 2100 block of Vermont Street. Dembry said that after making the call, he immediately entered the building to alert any residents about the fire.

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"I know it was life-threatening, but at the end of the day, I would rather get them out before the fire actually erupts than just sit there letting it happen," Dembry said.

Dembry was able to rescue four residents, three of whom were children, in addition to three dogs.

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Blue Island Fire Chief James Klinker said no one was injured from the fire. The cause of the fire is undetermined, he added.

Justin Wilson, who lived on the building's first floor, said he was glad to learn Dembry help save his girlfriend and neighbors by notifying them about the fire. Wilson said he was at his job when the fire started.

Alvin Jenkins, who lives near the building, described the neighborhood as close-knit.

Jenkins, 20, said he was simply happy that no one was injured.

"Materials can always be replaced, but life on earth cannot," he said.
The Will County court system plans to partner with the Family Guidance Center of Joliet to help inmates addicted to heroin.

Chief Judge Richard Schoenstedt told the county board's Judicial Committee Tuesday that the non-profit guidance center has been given a $540,000 federal grant due to the county's high number of heroin deaths. So far, there have been 27 heroin-related deaths in Will County this year, according to the Will County Coroner's office.

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The county's jail has an average of 750 inmates on a daily basis and "100 or more" have substance abuse issues," Schoenstedt said.

Under a new program, staff from Family Guidance would go in to the jail to see who was interested in participating in a program that would combine the use of Vivitrol, a drug to reduce opioid cravings, with a counseling program, he said.

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The chief judge hopes to launch the program July 1.

The guidance center is a non-profit behavioral health care facility that treats substance abuse and other related problems, according to its website.

As a condition of their bond, inmates would be released, and be required to report to the Family Guidance Center, Schoenstedt said.

The program would have to be court-ordered, and if a person fails to comply, there would be a rehearing for bond, he said.

Clients would need one year of shots of Vivitrol  administered monthly  with the grant program covering the cost of the first three, and Medicaid paying for the other nine shots, officials said.

"This is a fabulous program," said Dr. Kathleen Burke, Will County's director of Substance Use Initiatives.

But it must be a combination of medication and psychological support, she said, adding that this is another strategy to reduce cravings and assist in recovery.

"It's one thing we can do to help these individuals. It's all part of our Stepping Up initiatives," Judicial Committee chair Darrin Bennefield, R-Plainfield, said.

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Last year, the county agreed to participate in Stepping Up  a national program to reduce jail time for offenders who suffer with mental illness or are non-violent.

The county's court system is expected to begin a monitoring program this year, releasing non-violent offenders under certain conditions, like participating in a drug treatment program. He has interviewed vendors of various devices and expects to make a decision this summer, he said.

Daily Southtown Twice-weekly News updates from the south suburbs delivered every Monday and Wednesday >

Some inmates could be released on home confinement, or ankle bracelets, or be required to undergo drug or alcohol testing, he said.

They do not want to keep people in jail simply because they cannot afford the bond, Schoenstedt said.

The Illinois legislature has proposed a bill that would eliminate money bonds, and the chief judge said he does not support that.

If there is no bond money, costs and fines don't get paid, and victims don't get reimbursed, he said.

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"There has to be a balance," he said.

slafferty@tribpub.com

Twitter @SusanLaff
Lulu's Locker Rescue staff and board members, from left, Lucy Pigati, Dawn Isenhart-Copp, Jamie Crawley, and Erin Lamparter play with two adoptable cats living in a home-like facility at the new cat adoption center in Frankfort. (Ginger Brashinger/Daily Southtown )

One little cat has made a big difference in the lives of others.

The legacy of Lulu, a cat who brought comfort to her young owner at a "very, very difficult time" in his life, has been numerous homeless animals have found forever homes and perhaps in the case of many  avoided an early death. because of Lulu's Locker Rescue.

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Dawn Isenhart-Copp of Frankfort, cofounder of Lulu's, said the agency's story begins in 2002, when her son Andy was being bullied at school. The issue was not being dealt with and Andy was having a hard time, she said.

Isenhart-Copp told her son they could adopt a pet, hoping it would be some comfort to him.

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The adoption proved to be the right choice for everyone.

"I really saw the bond between my son and Lulu.  We always think about how we help animals. Well, she helped him," Isenhart-Copp said.

As a result of the experience and her own interest in animal welfare, Isenhart-Copp began fostering homeless animals and holding fundraisers to support her animal care activities. She especially wanted to protect black dogs and black cats that are euthanized in greater numbers than animals of other colors, cats with Feline Immunodeficiency Virus and senior animals that are often given up or abandoned by owners and can't find homes because of their age.

Isenhart-Copp said she "felt that (Andy) was being overlooked, and I wanted to transition into overlooked animals."

In September 2011, Isenhart-Copp, her husband Mike Copp and Erin Lamparter founded Lulu's Locker Rescue, a foster-based rescue program with a focus on "overlooked animals" that has grown over the years to help numerous homeless dogs and cats.

This spring, the cofounders took another step forward in helping animals when they opened their first cat adoption center in unincorporated Frankfort. The center is a home where the animals can live as they would with an individual or a family. Seven to nine cats at a time are chosen from among the many cats in Lulu's foster care that have been rescued and fully vetted with vaccinations, microchipping and medical care, Isenhart-Copp said.

Volunteers work in shifts at the house, spending time socializing with the cats and doing the necessary feeding, watering and cleaning associated with owning a pet.

After visiting the website at www.luluslockerrescue.org to fill out an application for cat adoption, a potential cat owner will have a phone conversation with a staff member. If approved, potential cat owners are invited to the adoption center to visit the cat they think they would like to bring into their home.

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Isenhart-Copp said cat ownership is discussed in detail with potential owners so they are fully aware of their responsibilities to the animal.

"One of the things we talk about is a long-term commitment," she said. "Cats can live up to 20 years, so this is a long-term commitment," Isenhart-Copp said.

She said issues such as acquainting the cat with children and other pets in the home and regular veterinary care are among the items discussed.

"What we ask them initially, we ask them to set up a spare (room) for the cat to decompress, get used to the noises of the house. It can be a very slow integration if there is another animal in the house," she said.

New owners sign a contract that requires them to agree not to declaw the cat which is an amputation at the first knuckle which often leads to health issues, she said. New owners are also asked to keep their cat indoors and provide proper medical care.

"We talk about being respectful and how to handle the animal," Isenhart-Copp said.

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The new cat owner must also agree to return the cat to the rescue if the adoption does not work out for them for any reason.

The Lulu's Locker Rescue board does "walk the walk" when it comes to animal care.

Daily Southtown Twice-weekly News updates from the south suburbs delivered every Monday and Wednesday >

Isenhart-Copp, who serves as president, and Copp, who is the organization's treasurer, have two dogs and five cats of their own and provide foster and hospice care for numerous cats and dogs.

Lamparter, vice-president, owns two cats.

Jamie Crawley, coordinator of the adoption center, owns two cats and a dog and Lucy Pigati, media coordinator, owns one dog and is currently fostering another.

Isenhart-Copp said fundraisers are held on a regular basis because donations make their work possible, but equally important, she said, are people who will help them accomplish the mission of Lulu's Locker Rescue.

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"We are always looking for volunteers," she said.

More information, on donating, volunteering or adopting is at www.luluslockerrescue.org.

Ginger Brashinger is a freelance columnist.
Imam Senad Agic, right, seen here on Sept. 16, 2013, after the American Islamic Center, now known as the Society of American Bosnians and Herzegovinians, filed a lawsuit against the city of Des Plaines over zoning, said on June 6, 2017, that he is grateful for a resolution. At left is attorney Anthony Peraica, and at center is Ahmed Rehab, executive director of Council on American-Islamic Relations. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune)

Closing its inquiry into the city of Des Plaines' zoning practices, the U.S. Department of Justice has entered into a consent decree with the northwest suburb to ensure it does not deny zoning requests for houses of worship on the basis of religion, according to a settlement agreement released Tuesday.

The settlement stems from a civil rights case brought by the federal government against Des Plaines in September 2015 after the City Council denied permission to a Muslim congregation to convert a vacant office building into a community center and house of worship.

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The federal government's case came two years after the Bosnian Muslim congregation, formerly known as the American Islamic Center, sued the city, alleging it violated its religious freedom by ignoring a recommendation from the city's planning commission and refusing to rezone an industrial park to accommodate a mosque. Some aldermen argued that allowing any house of worship in an industrial park would endanger pedestrians and impede neighboring manufacturers.

In addition to the agreement with the Justice Department, the city agreed to pay the mosque $580,000.

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"The city has a great deal of respect for the mosque and their members, a great deal of respect for the Department of Justice and is just happy that all the parties agreed that it was time to resolve," said Peter Friedman, general counsel for the city.

The American Islamic Center, now known as the Society of American Bosnians and Herzegovinians, has since bought a former Lutheran church in west suburban Franklin Park. Imam Senad Agic said he is grateful for the resolution, especially during the holy month of Ramadan.

"We are fasting, trying to raise our spirituality and to look at everyone with good intentions," he said. "We are happy."

He added that although Franklin Park is not centrally located for members of the congregation, the relocation had at least one bright spot. The mosque insisted on keeping the former Lutheran congregation's food pantry and clothing closet open, which they now operate as a joint ministry.

The consent decree, which remains in effect for three years, requires the city to post signs in City Hall stating that it does not discriminate based on religion or any other protected status. It mandates continuing education for staff and elected officials. And it instructs the city to share news of the settlement with any party that has been denied rezoning since Jan. 1, 2010.

For 180 days, the city also must post on the front page of its website a pledge to comply with the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLIUPA), a federal law that prohibits unequal treatment of religious and nonreligious institutions, according to the settlement.

"The city has never before been accused of a RLIUPA violation and it doesn't intend to ever again have to go through this," Friedman said.

After leading a nomadic existence for several years, Agic's congregation didn't want to take chances when it applied for a zoning permit in Franklin Park, he said. To discourage more opposition, members of the congregation, many of whom fled Bosnia in the 1990s to escape war and genocide, agreed to change the name from American Islamic Center to Society of American Bosnians and Herzegovinians.

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The congregation was open to changing its name "in order to make them feel good about us," Agic said. "We are open-minded and we practice European culture and we are normal people, so they are not afraid."

mbrachear@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @TribSeeker
This rating of services is among the items on the community survey being mailed to 3,500 Elgin households next week. (City of Elgin)

A survey seeking residents' opinions on Elgin and its operations is set to be mailed out to select households the week of June 12.

Senior Management Analyst Laura Valdez-Wilson said that the community survey contains 43 questions and should take participants 10 to 15 minutes to fill out.

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Those who get the survey in the mail will have the option to complete the survey online, too, through a link that will be provided in a cover letter, or to call in their responses. While the cover letter will be in English on one side and Spanish on the other, the questions online will be available in 20 languages.

Among the questions will be one asking what sources people use to get information about Elgin; the preferred method for reporting problems to the city; and rating quality of services provided by the city.

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Answers will go directly to ETC Institute of Olathe, Kansas.

"ETC is handling the entire administrative process," Valdez-Wilson said.

In the summer of 2015, Elgin contracted with ETC Institute for the work. The city is splitting the cost with the Elgin Community Network, with each entity pitching in $12,875. Elgin Community Network is a nonprofit civic engagement group that gets some of its funding from the city.

The survey will be the first the city has commissioned in 10 years and will be mailed to 3,500 households. Four days after the surveys are mailed, ETC Institute workers will start making followup phone calls to help increase the response rate.

ETC Vice President Ron Vine told The Courier-News in 2015 that the company works to make sure that from the mailing, the company has 500 responses that will make up the sample representing a true cross-section of Elgin's population.

Valdez-Wilson said city staff will have a chance to look at the raw data, which will be broken down by block, but not by specific address, to ensure anonymity. A good deal of responses from a specific neighborhood could give the city clues to an issue there or to something which is being done well in that area.

The company expects to have all data collected by mid-July and results back to Elgin by the end of July, Valdez-Wilson said. And as the company has worked with more than 200 cities across the country, Elgin will be able to compare its results to those from other places.

Two weeks past the mailing, the city will put a survey online for anyone to complete, Valdez-Wilson said. Those results will not be considered statistically valid, and controls will be put in place asking for addresses information to help prevent duplication.

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City Manager Rick Kozal said the results of the survey will help the Council shape the next city budget and help with the update of Elgin's strategic plan.

For further resident opinion, on dates in August yet to be determined, the city also will hold public input sessions, Valdez-Wilson said.

mdanahey@tribpub.com
A lawsuit filed by former state Sen. Michael Noland against the state was necessary, the Elgin Democrat said Tuesday.

In a statement sent out by his legal counsel, Noland said the June 1 lawsuit is intended to "protect and vindicate the independence of each legislator of the General Assembly."

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According to court documents, Noland seeks pay for himself "and all others impacted" after lawmakers curbed increases for themselves from 2009 to 2016.

Noland elaborated on his decision, saying the votes against cost-of-living adjustments were politically motivated.

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"As often is the case, these measures were made part of other legislation related to our state's budget, which had great merit," he wrote. "And so, on balance, I felt it was a necessary evil requiring my very reluctant support."

He continued, "It was my hope that as time passed, the governor and our leaders would negotiate a balanced and principled budget. As we are all woefully aware, this has not occurred."

Noland filed the lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court on Thursday, a day after Illinois lawmakers adjourned from the regularly scheduled legislative session. For a third year, no budget was passed by the General Assembly, leaving in flux schools, universities and social services providers. Listed as defendant in the lawsuit is Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza.

"It is my hope that the court will remedy these constitutional violations and that the General Assembly will stop using these gimmicks for political advantage," concluded Noland, who represented the 22nd Senate District from 2007 until earlier this year, after losing a primary bid for Congress to U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi.

Neither Noland nor his counsel, Michael Scotti, could be reached for additional comment Tuesday.

raguerrero@tribpub.com
A West Dundee man is accused of striking the side of a building with his vehicle and leaving the scene on Saturday, West Dundee police said.

At 3:43 p.m., officers were called to the Dundee Supermart, 200 S. Washington St., for the report of a hit and run, according to a news release from the West Dundee Police Department.

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Robert Schlegel, 39, of the 200 block of South Lincoln Avenue, was charged with failing to give information after striking property and operating an uninsured motor vehicle, reports state.

Damage to the building included a cracked window, said Kevin Burke, supervisor of administrative services for the West Dundee Police Department.

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No estimated damage amount was listed, he said.

Schlegel was released pending a June 29 court date.
An ammonia leak at a food processing plant in northwest suburban Streamwood sent seven people, including two firefighters, to the hospital, fire officials said.

The leak was reported about 11:30 p.m. Monday night at Fresh Express in the 1100 block of East Lake Street. When firefighters arrived, building employees said the leak was coming from the refrigeration system and several workers were complaining of having difficulty breathing.

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The emergency call was elevated to a hazardous material incident, which brought additional firefighters and technicians from other fire departments, with large fans used to remove the fumes from the structure.

Five employees were taken to St. Alexius Medical Center in Hoffman Estates for treatment. Their condition was not known Tuesday afternoon. Two firefighters who were exposed to vapors also were transported and later released, officials said.

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Streamwood Fire Chief Chris Clark said firefighters remained at the scene Tuesday morning ventilating the building and trying to contain the leaking chemical, which he said was anhydrous ammonia used as a refrigerant.

Late Tuesday afternoon, Streamwood Fire Battalion Chief Joe Ratzek said that no one outside the facility had been in harm's way from the incident as crews were able to dissipate the leak through the building.

The company had contracted with a Hazmat cleanup company to clean out the building, Ratzek said, and the work was ongoing Tuesday. No one would be let into the building until after their work was complete. Ratzek said.

The factory processes foods, including packaged salads and vegetables, officials said.

At the same time responders were dealing with the Hazmat incident, a fire was reported in the roof of an industrial building in the 700 block of Bonded Parkway. The fire was extinguished by firefighters from Streamwood and other nearby towns. There were no injuries. Damage was estimated at $50,000, and the cause was unknown as of Tuesday, officials said.

Courier-News reporter Mike Danahey contributed.
Children take part in outdoor playtime at the Highland Park Community Nursery School and Day Care Center, which will be relocated after 50 years because the city is selling the Karger Recreation Center. (Mark Kodiak Ukena/Pioneer Press )

Lisa Adelmund had two pieces of important news to share in her email to teachers and parents at the Highland Park Community Nursery School and Day Care Center late last month.

The preschool's executive director first updated parents and staff about the playground damage that had occurred five days earlier when a fierce windstorm uprooted a large maple tree. The tree had toppled onto a bridge section of a popular piece of climbing equipment.

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She was waiting for an insurance adjuster to determine if the entire climber would need to be removed and replaced, or if the damaged section could be repaired in isolation. (It can.)

That brought the preschool administrator to her other piece of news. In all likelihood, the nursery school would need to relocate from the Karger Center, where it has been based for 50 of its 66 years. The city of Highland Park had taken the first steps toward the sale of the center at 1850 Green Bay Road at its meeting the previous evening.

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"To me, it doesn't make a lot of sense to replace the climber at this time," Adelman said.

The City Council May 22 hired Millennium Properties Real Estate, Inc. to market the 2.6-acre downtown property that includes the Karger Center for redevelopment with an asking price of $3.5 million. Millennium has exclusive rights to market the property for a one-year period.

The property's zoning would allow a residential building up to five stories and 63 feet in height at a density of 65 dwelling units per acre if developed as a planned development, according to city documents.

The city said the Lake County Health Department's North Shore Health Center will remain at its location at 1840 Green Bay Road east of the Karger Center. The sale does not include the Firehouse Youth Center, a city-owned building on park district property just west of the Karger Center.

The city has extended the nursery school's lease through June of 2018, and has offered assistance in finding a new location. Adelmund said the relocation could provide the center an opportunity to create classroom spaces better suited to early learning in a building that is fully handicapped accessible.

The night of the council vote, Susan Blumberg, president of the nursery school's board of directors, urged city officials to help the organization find space of comparable size in a location accessible to families.

"Before any sale of the Karger Center is consummated, we need your help in securing a permanent space of approximately 10,000 square feet," Blumberg told the council.

Currently, the center serves 104 children across its programs and has a waiting list of about 40 children. The center provides half-day nursery school; year-round day care for three- and four-year olds and a state-funded Preschool for All program for children deemed at risk of academic failure.

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The center also provides before-school care for elementary school students and an after-kindergarten enrichment program for children enrolled in morning kindergarten.

"It would be sad if the school moved, but it is not about the building," said Farrah Zick, who enrolled her son Ean in the nursery school when the family moved to Highland Park four years ago. "It is about the teachers and the relationships and the environment that they foster."

She said the nursery school has been the backbone of the friendships that have evolved since her family moved into the community.

Her three-year-old daughter Sloan is now enrolled in the nursery school, and Ean attends the kindergarten enrichment program after morning kindergarten in the dual language program at Red Oak School.

Stacey Kolthammer, who has had children at the school the past four years, is hopeful the "HP Community family" is still an option when her youngest reaches preschool age. Moving from the Cleveland area four years ago, Kolthammer said she was thrilled to find a school where each child's natural curiosity and play drive the learning process.

"The school's proximity to downtown Highland Park was also a draw since we live nearby and enjoy the option of walking to and from the school as part of the preschool learning experience," Kolthammer said.

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Maria Barraza spoke of the generational impact the school has had.

"Not only do my own children attend, but my 36-year-old husband and his siblings did as well." Some of Barraza's family members have retired from the center and an aunt is still employed there.

Barraza said the center is a community of staff members, parents and children from different backgrounds, and she believes the center's diversity is part of what makes it extraordinary.
Prompted by some recent high-profile crimes in the community, La Grange Village President Thomas Livingston has issued a statement updating residents on the status of those crimes and assuring them that the village is not experiencing an uptick in crime.

Because one of the crimes involved a homeless person, he also outlined measures the village has taken to balance the needs of the homeless with those of the community. The other crimes he cited include a robbery and a home invasion that occurred in May.

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Livingston sought to quell concerns about crime by noting some statistics. He said violent crimes in La Grange accounted for only 0.08 percent of the Police Department's total calls between 2012 and 2016, and reported violent and property crimes remained relatively consistent from year to year.

"While we have experienced three robberies in 2017, we have identified a suspect in each of these crimes who is either the offender or an accomplice," Livingston said.

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He noted that other suburban communities in the region have also recently experienced uncharacteristic crime. La Grange's crime level is not out of the ordinary, he said.

"La Grange continues to be statistically comparable to our neighbors based on total call volume," he said.

He also said the perception of an increase in crime may be because the village in recent years has worked harder to keep the public informed about crimes.

"The village has increased in the past three years its use of press releases to inform the public including alerting residents to incidences of crime, suspicious persons, and crime being reported by neighboring communities," he said. "That awareness might contribute to the sentiment that crime is significantly increasing."

In regard to a crime that occurred on May 12 in which a homeless man allegedly sexually assaulted another homeless man, Livingston said the village has worked with representatives of BEDS, a homeless shelter, to balance the needs of the community with the need to serve the homeless.

"The La Grange of yesteryear you moved to for all the right reasons had a larger overnight BEDS presence only a short time ago," Livingston wrote. "Listening to concerned citizens and working with BEDS; we will have moved from four overnight shelters in La Grange to two."

In addition, the overnight shelter schedule has been changed so that La Grange doesn't host consecutive evenings and limits have been placed on the number of clients served at the overnight shelters that are housed in churches, he said.

Tina Rounds, executive director of BEDS, agreed that the organization has responded to the village's concerns and tried to balance those needs with those of the homeless.

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"We, all along, have worked with the village to make sure we provide services (to the homeless) and that those services are harmonious with the community," Rounds said.

Following the May 12 incident, Rounds said she has not received an increase in complaints from residents.

"We're always in conversation with our neighbors," she said. "We haven't seen an uptick (in concerns)."

The crimes that Livingston mentions in his letter include a home invasion and a robbery.

"Those other crimes had nothing to do with our organization," Rounds said.

She said the organization responded immediately, as its protocols require, to the alleged criminal sexual assault, and that they are now looking for other ways to improve.

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"We addressed it immediately and we are looking at other ways to make it (the shelter) more secure," she said.

Livingston said crimes related to homelessness, are, on average, less than 1 percent of all calls for police service.

Residents who have expressed concerns about the program are asking the right questions and have a right to enjoy their home and community without undue disruption, Livingston wrote.

He said the village will continue to keep residents updated about crime.

amannion@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @triblocalam
Tim Allen will perform standup comedy in Waukegan at the Genesee Theatre on June 23. (Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP )

When ABC announced in May it was canceling the hit television comedy, "Last Man Standing," Tim Allen said he and the cast were shocked. "It was like a sudden death. I had no idea it was coming. All of the cast, all 200 of us who worked on it, we had no warning this was coming," said Allen, who played Mike Baxter, the conservative father of two daughters in the sitcom.

Allen, who comes to the Genesee Theatre June 23, described the feeling of getting the show canceled as losing a pet as a kid. "One of the things I will miss most is when Mike Baxter could do these blogs and rant," he said. "It was a very steroid-induced version  it's about everything including political correctness."

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Allen also recently lost two good friends including Don Rickles, who voice acted as Mr. Potato Head in "Toy Story," while Allen voice acted as Buzz Lightyear. Rickles died in April. Actor Powers Boothe, with whom Allen has also worked, died in May.

"I felt so bad for his (Boothe's) family. Our loss (of the show, 'Last Man Standing') pales in comparison," he said.

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"Grieving takes time," Allen said, but through it all he remains "very, very grateful to God that  I get strength, energy and resilience from standup comedy  I love it  it still scares the hell out of me. But it's been the constant in my life besides the love of my family." He's also reprising the role of Buzz Lightyear in "Toy Story 4."

Allen said he's always loved "people who make me laugh. My dad was funny. My grandfather was funny. I loved Richard Pryor."

Allen studied television production in college and then started his comedy career in Detroit, aiming at meeting just a few goals, he said.

"I was a very focused young guy  all I really wanted to do was pay my bills and support my family," Allen said. "And I wanted to do 'The Tonight Show' with Johnny Carson."

Allen did pay his bills  and them some  earning enough to buy hot rods  with a reported net worth today of $80 million.

And he did, of course appear on "The Tonight Show" with Carson.

"But the funny thing was though I prayed and worked to be on 'The Tonight Show,' I was so successful at comedy that they put me on TV as an actor (first). My preference was to be a comedian."

He's referring to the sitcom "Home Improvement" (1991-1999).

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His first five or so shows were based on standup comedy acts reflecting on his own lack of ability to repair things around the house, especially when it comes to plumbing "and cleaning the toilet," he said.

Since his first sitcom premiered, Allen has been named a Disney Legend for his work on Disney's "Toy Story" and "Santa Clause" movie series.

Now in the middle of "Toy Story 4," Allen said one of the best parts of doing those movies was becoming "buddies" with Tom Hanks, voice actor for Woody, the toy cowboy usurped as a boy's favorite toy by Buzz Lightyear.

"I really admire this guy," Allen said of Hanks. "I love working with him. We're close buddies," he said, adding they've often talked about doing a live action movie to emulate the friendship of Woody and Buzz Lightyear.

"I'm very excited to be working with Pixar again. It's always a wonderful thing," Allen said.

What he finds intriguing about Buzz Lightyear is his "familiarity. He doesn't grow old." And yet, here's this animated character that can actually make Allen feel sad and then happy at the ending, he said.

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The closest he'll ever come to becoming an astronaut  something he's dreamed of all his life he said  is portraying Buzz Lightyear.

Not only is Allen looking forward to the release of the fourth in the series, but he said he is also looking forward to spending more time doing standup.

Allen said he finds it a privilege to be able to make people laugh. "The pleasure is mine. The blessing is mine. This will be another great year of touring," he said.

Allen readily reveals his political leanings. He describes himself as a fiscal realist, who supported John Kasich in the Republican primaries, and attended President Donald Trump's inauguration.

Allen also calls himself "socially moderate to liberal."

And though his character in "Last Man Standing" was a conservative bemoaning political correctness and slamming President Barack Obama, Allen said he tries not to focus on politics when he's doing standup.

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"Essentially," he said, he wants to tell jokes "that both Democrats and Republicans can laugh at. It's the things that we all do that are funny."

He doesn't shy away from using words inappropriate for youngsters, he said, which is why his shows are often labeled as "for mature audiences only."

Although he lives in California, Allen said he has always loved the Midwest, including spending time in Michigan where he grew up, he said. He also served as the voice for Pure Michigan campaigns for nearly a decade. So he's looking forward to coming to Genesee Theatre.

"I love the Midwest. It's going to be a great time for me to get out of Dodge."

Sheryl DeVore is a freelance writer for the News-Sun.

Tim Allen

When: 8 p.m. June 23

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Where: Genesee Theatre, 203 N. Genesee St., Waukegan

Tickets: $48-$128 (sold out)

Information: 847-263-6300; www.geneseetheatre.com
Vance Wyatt, president of the Foss Park District Board and also a North Chicago Library board member, has been tapped to replace the late Audrey Nixon on the Lake County Board in the 14th District. (Lake County Board)

Vance Wyatt, the Foss Park District board president and board member for the North Chicago Public Library board, has been selected to fill out the term of the late Audrey Nixon on the Lake County Board, according to the board chairman.

"In his interview, I witnessed first-hand Vance's commitment to District 14 when he shared the story of how he was one of only two in his graduating class who came back after college," Chairman Aaron Lawlor said in a statement announcing Wyatt's selection on Wednesday.

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"I know Vance shares my deeply held belief that North Chicago is a community worth coming back to and worth fighting for, and Vance will be that champion."

Wyatt said Wednesday that Nixon was a staple in the community, and when she died in April, it was like losing a grandmother.

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"It's truly an honor to fill her position," he added.

Detailing plans to resign from both the park district and library boards to take the County Board seat, Wyatt said he will continue pushing for things that Nixon backed, such as jobs for youth to keep them out of trouble and finding jobs for those with a criminal background so they can turn their life around.

"I'll also be looking at economic development," Wyatt added. "North Chicago does not have a grocery store."

Wyatt's proposed appointment is scheduled for a vote by the County Board on June 13. He is replacing Nixon, a fellow Democrat who served on the board representing North Chicago and parts of Park City and Gurnee since 1982. Nixon was also the longtime chairman of the board's law and judicial committee.

State Senator Terry Link, who serves as a chairman of the Lake County Democratic Party, said in a statement that he supports Wyatt's appointment.

"It's important that we grow the next generation of leaders in Lake County, and Vance Wyatt is a dynamic, young leader who will bring a fresh perspective to the County Board, and serve the residents of District 14 well," he said in a statement.

Wyatt will serve the remainder of the term, which will expire in 2018.

According to information released by the county on Wednesday, Illinois law requires the County Board chairman to appoint a qualified individual to a vacancy on the board within 60 days with the advice and consent of board members.

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"Following Nixon's passing, Chairman Lawlor outlined an inclusive process and appointed an advisory committee made up of Democrat elected officials and the board leadership," the statement added. "The panel reviewed applications from eleven candidates, conducted in-person interviews with four individuals, and recommended Wyatt for the appointment."

Wyatt had a lot to take on when he became the Foss Park District board president, because the district had been rocked with scandal before he arrived with a theft case involving Toys for Tots donations that saw charges brought against two board members. In early 2015, another board member pleaded guilty to an election code violation.

Wyatt has a master's of business administration, banking and financial from Concordia University in Chicago and a bachelor's of science in business management with a minor concentration in public policy from National-Louis University. He presently works for CVS Health as a financial analyst with RxClaim.

Lawlor's statement announcing Wyatt's appointment also encouraged residents to "honor Audrey Nixon's legacy by stepping forward to serve in one of many appointed leadership opportunities," adding that information on nearly 300 volunteer positions on 70 different boards, commissions, committees and units of government are posted on the t the County Board's website.

fabderholden@tribpub.com

Twitter @abderholden
The defense team of Dr. Thomas Rudd (right) will include both Jed Stone, seen here walking with Rudd in early 2017, and Burton Odelson, who filed a complaint last year that Rudd had filed improper election petitions. (Joe Shuman / Chicago Tribune )

In a twist to an already controversial and high-profile case, the attorney who filed an initial election violation complaint against former Lake County Coroner Dr. Thomas Rudd is formally joining Rudd's defense team in fighting criminal charges of perjury stemming from the issue.

Burton Odelson, who Rudd's attorney Jed Stone described Wednesday as "probably the best election attorney in the state," confirmed that he has agreed to join Rudd's defense team and that he and Stone would file notice of that in Lake County Circuit Court.

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Rudd, 70, has pleaded not guilty to five counts of perjury stemming from allegations that he committed the offense by signing election petitions that were collected by others, not himself.

"It's basically ridiculous," Odelson said Wednesday of the perjury charges. "He was punished once (by withdrawing his candidacy for reelection as coroner). This is a punishment beyond a punishment."

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Odelson said he was "not going to get into the politics" of Rudd case, which has been politically polarizing in Lake County, but said he believed the issue involving Rudd's petitions is "an election matter," not a criminal matter.

Although a Lake County judge has already denied one motion to dismiss the charges against Rudd, Odelson said the defense team is planning to file a second motion to dismiss.

"It will include a more deep examination of election law versus criminal law in perjury," Odelson said.

Attorney Burton Odelson, who filed a complaint last year against former Lake County Coroner Dr. Thomas Rudd over election petitions, has agreed to join Rudds legal team defending him against perjury charges brought in the case. (Burton Oldelson / News-Sun)

While there had been no prior indication that Odelson would join Rudd's defense, Odelson said after the criminal indictments were announced that, despite having filed election objections against Rudd, he felt the criminal charges were "overkill."

In a separate development, Rudd's trial, which had been scheduled for July 10, has been rescheduled by Circuit Judge Victoria Rossetti to Oct. 23 following a defense request for more time.

Rudd was charged with perjury based on allegations that he signed several election petition pages for the 2016 primary without having collected the signatures himself.

Stone and several supporters of Rudd have claimed the charges against him are politically motivated, relating to Rudd's prior stances on prior high-profile criminal cases that ran counter to those of Lake County investigators and prosecutors.

"I don't believe Dr. Rudd is a perjurer," Stone said. "I'm convinced the only reason he was charged is he spoke truth to power, and power responded by slapping him."

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Both the Lake County Sheriff's Office and the Lake County State's Attorney's Office have adamantly denied any political motive behind the charges. Following an investigation by the Sheriff's Office, Rudd was indicted by a Lake County Grand Jury on the perjury counts.

Rudd has declined to comment on the case on Stone's advice.

To avoid any conflicts, State's Attorney Michael Nerheim turned the case over to the Illinois Appellate Prosecutor's Office. Attorney Brian Towne of that office is prosecuting the case in Lake County Circuit Court.

In arguing against the initial motion to dismiss the charges against Rudd, Towne said in court that Rudd withdrew from the election the night before a hearing on challenges to his petitions after he was "caught with his hands in the proverbial cookie jar."

A group of Rudd supporters have rallied behind Stone's assertions of retaliation, and several have attended Rudd's court hearings.

During his term in office, Rudd had run-ins with law enforcement officials, particularly in regard to the cases of Melissa Calusinski, the day care worker whose 2011 conviction of the murder of a boy in her care has drawn controversy, and the self-inflicted shooting death of Fox Lake police Lt. Charles Joseph Gliniewicz in 2015.

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He was first to publicly suggest that Gliniewicz killed himself while investigators were still calling the case a homicide investigation, and has maintained that medical records demonstrate that Calusinski was not at fault.

Although Rudd withdrew his Democratic candidacy after the allegations surfaced, he ran unsuccessfully in the 2016 general election as a write-in candidate prior to being indicted.

Rudd, free on bond, faces a potential sentencing range of two to five years in prison if he is convicted.

jrnewton@tribpub.com

Twitter @jimnewton5
Jamal Jackson of Chicago, was a friend of Ciera Davis, a 24 year old woman who was shot and killed in Waukegan, Tuesday, June 6, 2017. (Kevin Tanaka/Pioneer Press) (Kevin Tanaka / Lake County News-Sun)

An emotionally drained Sabrina Curtis, of Waukegan  the mother of 24-year-old Ciera Davis, who was killed early Monday outside a house party at 1632 11th St.  summed up her relationship with her daughter.

"She meant everything to me. She meant everything to me," she said. "I taught her love. She shared love. She did love."

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Curtis made her comments Tuesday evening as more than 100 people showed up to honor her daughter with nearly as many balloons, vigil candles and memorial stickers.

When Curtis first arrived, she had to be helped by family members, but she refused a chair a cousin had brought for her.

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"I'm not sitting down today. My baby, my baby," she cried as family members tried to comfort her.

"This is her son," she shouted, referring to William Davis, 6, "He's sweet. He asks for my phone to call her.

"For all of you that loved my daughter, I appreciate you coming out, I really appreciate it. She loved everybody. She didn't give up on nobody," Curtis said.

She was angry about the people responsible for the death of her daughter, and she cursed them multiple times while family members tried to calm her.

"It's about him. He has no mother now," she said, "I hope you turn yourself in because there is no rock you can hide under. You jumped her and then shot her in the head," she shouted.

Someone in the crowd began to pray, and others joined in with the hopes of calming Curtis.

"Turn yourself in, that's what I want you to do," she said.

Waukegan police responded to a call of a shooting at 4:30 a.m. Monday in the 1600 block of 11th Street. When officers arrived, they found evidence of a shooting in the street but no victim, said Cmdr. Joe Florip of the Waukegan Police Department.

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Shortly after arriving on the scene, police received a call from Vista Medical Center East, Waukegan, that a shooting victim had shown up in the emergency room, and the young woman had been pronounced dead there, he said.

According to Florip, detectives are investigating the incident. He said it appears the shooting resulted from an altercation during a house party.

The dead woman's sister, Zonnett Curtis, 28, of Waukegan, said their family moved to Waukegan from Chicago about 18 years ago, and Ciera graduated from Waukegan High School.

"She took classes at the College of Lake County and she was entering the nursing program," she said, adding that her sister worked at the Ann Kiley Center (Kiley Developmental Center) in Waukegan as an aide.

"She just made everyone laugh all the time. If someone was going through something, she was the first one to show up," Zonnett Curtis said, adding that Davis' son, "was her pride and joy," who loves going to school.

The night of her killing, Curtis said she talked to her sister about three minutes before she was shot. She said a mystery caller had called her back to the house party around 4:30 a.m. after she had already left at 3 a.m. with another cousin, Brittany Bowers, 29, of Waukegan, who said the party was uneventful.

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"We still don't know the mystery caller, but she had been jumped by some girls at the same house during a party a month ago," said Curtis. Davis said she was going to leave the party, Curtis threw on a shirt and pants and was going to go pick her up.

"I didn't even get out of the house when they called and said she was shot," Curtis said. "I went right to the hospital, but they wouldn't let us see her."

Family members said Davis was shot in the head as she started to leave. Her vehicle, with two shot-out windows, was still in the middle of the road late Monday morning behind police tape. A young woman who had been grilling food for the party took Davis to the hospital after the shooting, according to relatives.

"The way they shot her, they intended to kill her," Curtis said, urging anyone with information to call police to help the family get some closure with an arrest.

"If you can't do it for anyone else, do it for her 6-year-old son," she said.

Anyone with information on this incident is asked to call the Waukegan Police Department's "Tip-Line" at 847-360-9001.

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Curtis said they also started a GoFundMe page to help with funeral expenses and take care of Davis' son. The link is www.gofundme.com/our-beloved-ciera-davis.

Jalmal Jackson, 23, of Chicago, said Davis loved to meet him in Chicago and they would go to different food places.

"She had a beautiful smile. I'm going to miss her. She loved Uncle Raymond's, just loved that place," he said, adding she also liked to play cards.

"She should have been at my house playing hearts and this wouldn't of happened," he said.

fabderholden@tribpub.com

Twitter @abderholden
The Waukegan Historic Preservation Commission has recommended local landmark status for the old Johnson Motors water tower on the lakefront, calling it an excellent example of a structure representing Waukegans industrial past. (Dan Moran / News-Sun )

The postponement of landmark status for a relic of Waukegan's industrial past reminded me that this week marks 30 years since the release of "The Untouchables," Brian De Palma's cinematic and occasionally operatic ode to Eliot Ness and/or Al Capone.

Hang with me while we connect those dots.

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"The Untouchables" is remembered for many entries in the library of movie trivia, including the many memorable quotes in David Mamet's script. Perhaps the most memorable was when Sean Connery tells Kevin Costner "how to get Capone":

"They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way!"

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Whether or not that observation is a source of pride in our gritty resilience or a sad commentary on our culture of violence will depend entirely on your mood at the time of viewing.

Anyway, "The Untouchables" was filmed almost entirely on location in Chicago, often in settings that hadn't changed much between 1930 and 1987, such as the LaSalle Street canyon and Union Station's seemingly endless marble steps.

But there was one location that was no longer a candidate for the big screen: The Lexington Hotel on South Michigan Avenue, which was Al Capone's home base during his salad days.

According to the Internet Movie Database, the scene where Ness goes to confront the gangland kingpin at the Lexington features an exterior shot of Kevin Costner walking into Roosevelt University's Auditorium Building, and when we see Robert De Niro and his entourage walk down the stairs inside, you're actually seeing the Auditorium's foyer.

Why? Well, for one thing, the Lexington was falling apart when De Palma and his cameras came to town  a Chicago Tribune story from 1995 says the hotel was "empty and deteriorating for the last 15 years" before it was demolished in November of that year.

It is important to note that the Lexington Hotel was torn down despite having been granted some form of landmark status by the city of Chicago. And here is where we return to Waukegan and an ongoing effort to provide local-landmark status to the old Johnson Motors water tower north of Waukegan Harbor.

When we last checked in on this matter of local interest, the city had completed demolition of unwanted Outboard Marine Corp. (OMC) buildings around the tower but had left the 90-year-old structure standing, with then-Mayor Wayne Motley saying it was spared with the intention of leaving "a monument to the people who spent their entire lives working for Johnson Motors."

Since then, a formal bid to win landmark designation for the tower was recommended for approval by the Waukegan Historic Preservation Commission, which submitted a report to the City Council saying the edifice is, "an excellent example of a structure representing Waukegan's industrial past."

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Local preservationist Harry Came submitted the original petition for landmark status last fall, writing that he would like to see the tower "become a symbol of Waukegan" and be re-painted with its original Johnson Motors colors.

"Most of the industrial giants are already gone; U.S. Steel, Manville and now OMC," Came wrote. "When there is nothing left and the land cleared for adaptive reuse, there will be nothing to remind future generations of what made Waukegan great."

Lake County News Sun Twice-weekly News updates from Lake County delivered every Monday and Wednesday >

But it would appear that the sticking point involves that phrase "adaptive reuse." City officials are currently marketing the surrounding 505,000-plus square feet of land for redevelopment, and the landmark application was tabled this week by the council's judiciary committee.

"We all said we think (the tower) has some value," 3rd Ward alderman and committee chair Greg Moisio said by phone on Tuesday. "But do we want to keep it there or move it? We don't know, (and) we don't want to put any hurdles or problems in front of developers."

Moisio added that the landmark bid is "not dead," just set aside until the future of the Sea Horse Drive land is determined. Last month, the News-Sun reported that a purchase-and-redevelopment proposal from an East Asian firm is being evaluated, and more information on that solicitation could be coming next month.

As with the Lexington Hotel in Chicago, there are no guarantees that the Johnson Motors tower or anything else valued by historians can be protected for eternity. There's been past debate in Waukegan about how much legal weight is behind a landmark designation, which doesn't strictly ban demolition of a structure  it requires a "Certificate of Appropriateness" to be approved by the City Council before demolition (or alteration, among other things) can proceed.

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Arguably, it would be much easier to preserve a simple water tower  which perhaps could be taken down and re-assembled in another lakefront spot  than a 10-story, 19th-century hotel. But as anyone who has rehabbed an old house can testify, our attempts to preserve the past might deliver unexpected headaches in the present tense.

danmoran@tribpub.com

Twitter @NewsSunDanMoran
Thirteen Naperville residents were among the more than 3,200 winners of National Merit Scholarships financed by U.S. colleges and universities.

Officials of each sponsor college selected their scholarship winners from among the finalists in the 2017 National Merit Scholarship Program. These awards provide between $500 and $2,000 annually for up to four years of undergraduate study at the institution financing the scholarship.

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Three local scholars received merit scholarships from the University of Chicago. They are Vanessa Cai and Amber S. Keahey, who graduated from Neuqua Valley High School in Naperville, and Artur Genser, a Naperville North grad.

Cai plans to study economics and Keahey plans to study surgical medicine. Genser's probable career field is academia.

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Four other Neuqua Valley students received merit scholarship from their respective universities.

Lydia Chung plans to study pharmacy at Northeastern University in Boston, Mass., and Jonathan Sun will study government service at Northwestern University in Evanston.

Bound for the University of Southern California, Lilly Nie expects to study urban and city planning and Shreya Sridhara expects to study neuroscience.

Merit scholarships were awarded to three graduates of Metea Valley High School in Aurora.

Christopher Danner will attend the University of Minnesota to study business management; Samyuktha Iyer will attend Michigan State to study economics; and Vishal Prakash is headed to Purdue University and will study pharmacy.

A graduate of Waubonsie Valley High School in Aurora, Tiffany Kuta earned a merit scholarship to Arizona State University, where she will study engineering

Naperville North graduate Chen Ling received a scholarship to Northwestern University to study materials engineering and Naperville Central graduate Eric Lo earned a scholarship to Vanderbilt University to study biomedical engineering.
Unfortunately, as much as I was hoping this would be a column documenting progress, alas, it is not to be.

Many regular Help Squad readers are likely familiar by now with the saga of a group of Naperville Carillon Club active senior living community homeowners whose issues I've been documenting since early March. In my last column on this topic, optimistically titled "Progress for some with ongoing construction issues" (so titled because Carillon resident Kim had received partial reimbursement of just over $450 from builder D.R. Horton for her bath fan, fireplace pilot light and circuit breaker issues). D.R. Horton spokesperson Marissa Awtry stated: "We are in communication with each of these homeowners and are actively working to address their concerns. Customer satisfaction is important to D.R. Horton, and while we have many happy homeowners in Carillon Club, we will continue to work toward a resolution with those mentioned below."

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I decided to check in on Carillon Club owners Joanne, Dominic, Warren and Shirley, aka, "those mentioned below," to see if Awtry's commitment to continue working together had held up.

Because Joanne had been contacted by D.R. Horton warranty manager Tom Tuhy, who asked what she would settle for to address her poorly sealed windows (she replied $15,000), she went to the Carillon Club homeowners' association to request approval for replacement of all her windows and her sliding door. Her request was approved.

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Immediately following publication of my last column, Dominic received an email from Tuhy stating Horton would "revisit his request" to repair, replace or compensate him for his poor quality wood floors.

When I followed up with Joanne and Dominic in recent days, neither had seen any progress on their very expensive, and supposedly warrantied, construction issues. Dominic had heard nothing from Horton since April 19, and Joanne, who circled back with Tuhy following the association board meeting, was now told she had to supply copies of her previous months' gas bills  which, according to Nicor, can fluctuate depending on several variables including thermostat setting, time spent in the house, hot water usage, time spent cooking, etc. This latest Horton request, for gas bills, was on top of the third-party inspections Joanne had already supplied to Horton from three different window vendors and one home inspector. Each identified issues with her windows that included bad seals, warped check rails, misaligned locks, incorrectly sized screws and insulated glass that didn't align with the window sashes. Horton's recommended solution to all, which came from the energy diagnostics vendor it sent to Joanne's home, was foam plugs and thermal curtains.

Though Awtry claimed communication with, and active work on, the homeowners' concerns, Warren also had not heard from Tuhy, or anyone else from D.R. Horton, regarding the 19 windows he replaced at his own expense after Horton refused to address their leaks through the builder's one-year warranty. Warren told me his last exchange with Tuhy occurred four months ago, on Feb. 10.

I was unable to reach Shirley for an update.

With all of this information in hand, I emailed both Awtry and Tuhy to find out what was going on. I received no reply from either. So I called. A voicemail was left for Awtry, and though I reached Tuhy, he would not speak with me, stating all media inquiries had to be directed to Awtry. I requested he let her know I was seeking a response.

I've heard nothing since.

Sadly, as of June 7, 2017, Joanne, Dominic and Warren are no closer to seeing a solution to the above warrantied (now expired warranty) construction issues than they were when I first heard from them in late January.

As a result, Dominic has retained an attorney and Joanne is now considering the same.

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For readers of this column contemplating a new home purchase, remember, the onus is on you to do your homework in advance; Illinois has few laws or licensures in place to regulate builders. For pointers on what your pre-purchase research should entail, see my March 29, 2017, column titled "Expert advice on avoiding post-construction builder issues."

Need help?

Send your questions, complaints, injustices and column ideas to HelpSquad@pioneerlocal.com.

Cathy Cunningham is a freelance columnist.
To the editor,

On May 23, the Northbrook Board of Trustees, by a vote of 6-1, opted out of Cook County's minimum wage ordinance.

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While the vote was clear-cut, the sentiment expressed by a majority of the trustees was one of support for the ethical imperative at the heart of the ordinance, recognizing that it is not reasonable to expect those who work in our community to support themselves, let alone their families, on an annual salary of $17,000.

So why did our Northbrook board vote to opt out? Because as a village bordering Lake County, where the minimum wage ordinance would not apply, our businesses would have been at a competitive disadvantage to those of our neighbors. Thus, rather than addressing this issue on a village by village  or county by county  basis, Trustee A.C. Buehler called on the state to act on this matter. The state has responded.

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This week, our representatives in Springfield passed a bill to raise the state's minimum wage, putting this issue squarely on Gov. Rauner's desk. As this bill "levels the playing field" for all Illinois businesses, I expect our Village Board to publicly proclaim their support, along with the 70 percent of Northbrook voters who called for a hike in the minimum wage in a non-binding referendum during the November 2014 election.

The Bible teaches that a society is measured by how it treats those who are most at risk. In ancient times, this group was identified as the stranger, the orphan and the widow. In our age, those who toil long hours for $17,000 a year are every bit as at risk as they were.

The governor needs to hear from all of us, and I look forward to seeing our Village Board lead the way.

Rabbi Sidney Helbraun

Northbrook, IL
The developer of a new brewpub in Oak Park said he is targeting a November opening. (Steve Schering / Pioneer Press)

Though slightly behind schedule, the developer of a new brewpub at the border of Chicago and Oak Park said he is targeting a fall opening.

The brewpub, located at 1 Lake St. inside a former bank building in Oak Park, has encountered some "unexpected issues" according to developer Greg Sorg, but construction remains ongoing.

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The 144-seat brewpub is expected to include seating on two levels with a rooftop deck/bar area.

"I would say we're shooting for Nov. 1, but this is the first time we've done one of these [renovations], so we're allowing a large buffer," Sorg said. "It will have a rooftop deck. We've got to build up some extra support on the structure of the roof."

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At the June 5 village board meeting, trustees unanimously approved an amendment to a sales tax rebate sharing agreement the village has with Gugly Inc., which extends the completion due date of the restaurant from June 30, 2017, to March 31, 2018.

Last year, the Oak Park Economic Development Corp. recommended entering into a redevelopment agreement with Gugly to turn the property into a restaurant. As part of the agreement, the village provided an incentive payable in the form of a $50,000 grant and is to provide a tiered rebate of future sales taxes generated by the proposed tenant for seven years.

"In May 2016, the village board approved authorization for redevelopment and a sales tax sharing agreement," Village Manager Cara Pavlicek said. "The developer has asked for additional time to finish that project before they open it. There has been no economic benefit extended, and it's a pretty massive renovation project."

According to a letter from OPEDC Executive Director John Lynch, he expects the project to generate approximately $577,000 in sales tax based on total sales over 10 years after distribution of the proposed incentives. Lynch estimates the total incentive will be approximately $385,700 over the seven years of the incentive agreement.

"I think it's a groundbreaking project in terms of the neighborhood and linking our two neighborhoods," Sorg said. "I think it's going to provide a lot of indirect benefits to the community."

Trustees said they remain optimistic the new brewpub will be a draw to that area of the village.

"I walk by that building almost every day, and I'm very impressed with the progress that's been made," Trustee Andrea Button said. "I'm pretty excited about it."

sschering@pioneerlocal.com

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Twitter @steveschering
After visiting Scoville Park June 4 for the 44th A Day in Our Village festival, Suzanne Seeger, 67, of Oak Park stopped to answer a few questions for the Oak Leaves.

Q: How long have you lived in Oak Park?

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A: I've lived here almost 20 years.

Q: Why do you think A Day in Our Village has such enduring appeal?

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A: People are amongst each other, mingling, viewing other people, viewing things, the music. It's just relaxing. It's a nice day.

Q: Favorite warm weather activity?

A: I like to walk in summer.

Q: Is there a cause that's important to you?

A: I'm just really sensitive to the homeless population. It's an issue that keeps throwing itself at me. I want to pay attention to that, so that's at the forefront in my mind.

Q: Local restaurant you love?

A: I'm pretty much my own cook. I like salmon, baked, with honey and garlic on it, with spices. It's really good, with rice and vegetables.

Q: Book you're currently reading?

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A: Right now, I'm reading a book of poetry that's having to do with African-American heritage. I found it at the library. It's deep-seated, real-feeling poetry. It helps me relate to my son, who is biracial.

Q: Travel destination that's on your to-do list?

A: I'd love to go to New Mexico. I love the artistry. It's really interesting.

Q: Words you live by?

A: Be kind to yourself. And to thine own self be true.
Park Ridge aldermen took another step Monday toward removing city businesses from Cook Countys new laws on minimum wage and sick leave. (Handout)

Park Ridge aldermen took another step Monday toward removing city businesses from Cook County's new laws on minimum wage and sick leave.

Aldermen voted unanimously on the first reading of a motion to "opt out" of following the county ordinances, which would establish a higher minimum wage than the state of Illinois and require business owners to provide sick leave for eligible employees.

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Final action is expected to take place June 19.

The county's minimum wage ordinance, passed by the Cook County Board in October, calls for gradual increases in employee minimum wage until it reaches $13 per hour by July 2020. The first increase, requiring employers to pay workers over age 18 at least $10 per hour, is scheduled to take effect July 1.

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The current state of Illinois minimum wage is $8.25 per hour.

The ordinance related to sick leave requires employers to provide workers with up to five paid sick days per year, based on the number of hours worked.

Park Ridge City Attorney Julie Tappendorf said home-rule communities like Park Ridge can take action to avoid following the county ordinances and continue to adhere to state and federal laws related to minimum wage and sick leave.

By opting out, Park Ridge employers will not have to follow the county ordinances.

Only 1st Ward Ald. John Moran and 6th Ward Ald. Marc Mazzuca explained why they were voting in favor of Park Ridge opting out.

"My main issue with this is that I don't believe it's the county's responsibility or job to be making this matter theirs," Moran said. "I feel it's better handled at a state or federal level. I'm not opposed to [pay] increases per se, but I feel this is a very choppy job of trying to accomplish something."

Mazzuca said he agreed with Moran's statement, adding that wages in Park Ridge may ultimately increase anyway because neighboring Chicago has passed a higher minimum wage.

"They are on our doorstep," he said. "You'll see wages, I assume, go up accordingly as our businesses have to compete with folks on the other side of Higgins."

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Despite debate of the issue among residents on a Park Ridge social media site, no citizens addressed the minimum wage or sick leave issue during Monday night's City Council meeting.

A number of suburban communities have also opted out of following the county's ordinances, including neighboring Rosemont and Niles. Taking a different stand this week, the Des Plaines City Council voted to follow the county laws.

Maine Township Supervisor Laura Morask said Tuesday that she was in the process of getting a legal opinion about what, if any, steps the town board can take regarding the county laws, which would be in effect for employers within unincorporated areas of Maine Township.

jjohnson@pioneerlocal.com

Twitter: @Jen_Tribune
While tests of East Chicago's water found some levels of lead, state officials said the results failed to indicate "system-wide" problems.

The results, released last week by Indiana Department of Environmental Management, confirmed that all of the 27 properties sampled had level of lead in the water but none went about the level of concentration that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says requires intervention, according to a press release. The tests found one property with lead levels that exceeded the allowed level of lead, according to IDEM, though subsequent tests had different results.

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"There is no higher priority for this agency than the safety of Hoosiers, said IDEM Commissioner Bruno Pigott, in a statement. "As a result of these tests, I am confident that corrosion control is working and can say with certainty that no system-wide lead issues are present in East Chicago's drinking water system."

The EPA's regulation says that any concentration of lead above 15 parts per billion requires intervention.

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The Natural Resources Defense Council, which submitted a petition to the EPA asking the agency to provide water filters or bottled water to all East Chicago residents, is still reviewing the IDEM's test results.

Anjali Waikar, a staff attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said she thinks the results preliminarily raise some questions about the methodology and study itself.

The state's study didn't appear to address an EPA pilot study, Waikar said. The EPA's study, whose results were released in December, found elevated levels of lead in the drinking water of residents of the Superfund site.

IDEM's study found at least one property that had about the 15 ppb limit during one test, Waikar said, but the other homes had at least some level of lead in the drinking water.

"We know no amount of lead is safe," Waikar said.

IDEM's messaging should address how East Chicago residents can safely drinking the city's water, Waikar said, but instead simply concluded it is safe to drink based on one test.

"People are being exposed to lead in drinking water and IDEM's follow up study confirms that fact," Waikar said.

IDEM's round of water testing also looked for levels of copper and orthophosphate, an anti-corrosion treatment, according to the state environmental agency, and found concentrations in line with federal requirements. IDEM said the properties all had levels of anti-corrosion agent above federally recommended amounts and pipes were thoroughly coated to prevent lead from leaching into the drinking water.

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During the tests, IDEM drew three samples, according to a press release.

A disaster declaration signed in February by Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb and legislation entered by Rep. Earl Harris, Jr., D-East Chicago, both called for more extensive water testing throughout the city.

East Chicago Mayor Anthony Copeland said, after a ceremonial signing of the legislation in May, that the state's commitment to more water testing is a first step in restoring the public's faith in East Chicago's water systems.

The city also began replacing lead service lines, prioritizing those in the Superfund site, according to the mayor.

"The results confirm what we have been saying from the start: Our water is of exceptional quality," said Mayor Anthony Copeland in a statement Tuesday. "It is our fervent hope that these tests end once and for all the unfair speculation that our city has been subjected to by those who are not fully informed as to what is going on. The results serve as concrete proof of the resolve of the city, the governor and the state to work together in addressing this issue."

In March, a group of advocacy organizations, led by the Natural Resources Defense Council, petitioned the EPA to provide water filters and bottled water to residents throughout East Chicago.

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Water testing done by the EPA at the Superfund site show elevated levels of contaminants in the drinking water. The agency found that 18 of the 43 homes where the water was tested exceeded 15 parts per billion of lead  the EPA's threshold for water safety.

The petition asked the EPA to provide residents with free faucet filters or bottled water; test the city's drinking water; expand blood lead level testing for children; and review corrosion control measures. The request would prioritize actions at the Superfund site before expanding throughout the whole city.

As the EPA is still considering the request, IDEM delivered water filters to residents of the Superfund site. The filter distribution was one part of a disaster declaration's action items.

IDEM said the agency, through a contractor, installed 654 filters, gave out 60 pitcher filters and provided 173 filters to residents who denied the contractors entry. IDEM said 22 residents refused filters and contractors could not contact residents of 237 properties.

Residents still needing a water filter can pick one up at the East Chicago Water Department, according to IDEM.

clyons@post-trib.com

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The Dircks family had just loaded up their minivan and were getting ready to leave after the Gary Air Show on July 10 when Maureen Dircks saw a car coming toward them on Oak Avenue in Gary, she testified Tuesday before the Lake County sheriff's police merit board.

"I thought to myself, it's a police car. It's not going to hit my car," Dircks said.

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She then "heard the crunch" of the car hitting her van and saw her husband lying in the street, Maureen testified.

Guy Mikulich, 38, a suspended Lake County officer, had his evidentiary hearing before the merit board Tuesday to decide whether Mikulich will be reprimanded or fired, as Sheriff John Buncich requested, from the alleged hit-and-run crash at last summer's Gary Air Show.

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While in uniform and in his county-issued unmarked Ford Crown Victoria, Mikulich hit Derrick Dircks on July 10 after Mikulich had worked security at the air show, according to a probable cause affidavit in Mikulich's criminal case. Mikulich was pulled over in the 5900 block of Hemlock Street, about 11/2 miles away from where Dircks was hit, after reportedly fleeing the scene, the affidavit states.

The sheriff, through attorney John Bushemi, laid out his case Tuesday, presententing lab reports and photos of the scene, as well as calling on a Gary officer leading the air show's law enforcement, an Indiana State Trooper who led the investigation and Maureen Dircks, who is the wife of the victim in the incident, Derrick Dircks.

Maureen Dircks teared up as Bushemi asked her questions, including about whether the car stopped after allegedly hitting her husband.

"No, he just left us," Maureen Dircks said.

As she said that, Mikulich closed his eyes for a moment.

Maureen Dircks said her husband "was ghost white" when she ran to his side and she "thought he was dead." Their four children, all 10 years and younger at the time, chased after her, and bystanders helped as she "tried to block them from seeing their dad," she said. Neighbors brought towels for the father's wounds, she said.

"It was just so terrible for them. It was horrible," Maureen Dircks said.

Derrick Dircks had a "severe laceration" above his eye, his body was covered in road rash and he had a "deep wound" on his right thigh, she said.

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"He continues to have follow-up appointments," Maureen Dircks said Tuesday about her husband, who was not at the hearing.

Throughout Maureen Dircks' testimony, Mikulich stared forward, not moving his gaze. In addition to the merit board case, Mikulich is also facing criminal charges and a civil case. Mikulich has pleaded not guilty to his charges, and in a May court filing, Mikulich's criminal case attorney, Paul Stracci, said that his client intends to raise an insanity defense.

On Tuesday, the merit board hearing was filled with objections over procedural and legal matters as witnesses testified.

Bushemi presented more than a dozen photos taken by a Lake County detective from two scenes involving the incident showing damage to the minivan's bumper at the Oak Avenue and Pike Street scene, as well as a red stain on the pavement. Other photos showed a shattered windshield, a dangling mirror and dents to Mikulich's car after he was pulled over at Hemlock Avenue and Lake Street, according to witnesses who testified.

Gary Police Commander Sarita Titus, who coordinated law enforcement at the Air Show, recalled sitting in her vehicle when she heard the dispatch over the radio about the accident around 4 p.m. She then saw Mikulich, in uniform, drive at a "high rate of speed" past her, she said.

Titus said she tried to radio Mikulich but was unsuccessful, so she drove after him. Near Hemlock and Lake, Titus said she saw Mikulich stopped behind another car at a stop sign with his window down, and she told him to "pull this vehicle over right now."

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Mikulich complied and Titus testified that Mikulich admitted he had messed up, said she didn't know he had hit anything and asked, "What was I supposed to do?"

"I said, 'You were supposed to stop. That's why they call them accidents,'" Titus said.

Indiana State Police Trooper Anthony Potesta, who investigated the incident, said when he approached Mikulich at the Hemlock scene, Potesta noticed "a very strong odor" of alcohol on Mikulich's breath and slurred speech.

Initially, Mikulich told Potesta, "I don't know what happened," Potesta testified, but later Mikulich indicated that "he realized he was in trouble" and "it wasn't a good situation."

The trooper took Mikulich to Methodist Hospital Northlake where Mikulich ultimately agreed to give blood and urine samples, according to Potesta. The tests indicated Mikulich had a blood alcohol content over the legal limit of 0.08, Potesta testified.

Testimony is set to continue Wednesday with Potesta continuing his testimony, followed by Bushemi calling on a bystander who witnessed the accident and a woman who reportedly has home surveillance footage of the incident and, according to Bushemi. The video itself, though, would not be played at the hearing, the merit board decided Tuesday.

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Mikulich's attorney, Christopher Cooper, said he then has "a large number of witnesses" to call on Wednesday afternoon.

rejacobs@post-trib.com

Twitter @ruthyjacobs
Former Gary Mayor Richard Hatcher will be honored Nov. 4, 2017, to mark the 50th anniversary of his election. (Jim Karczewski/Post-Tribune )

The city of Gary is planning a gala celebration Nov. 4 to mark the 50th anniversary of the election of Richard Gordon Hatcher as the first black mayor of a major U.S. city.

Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson and Hatcher's daughter, Councilwoman Ragen Hatcher, announce the celebration Tuesday that will benefit the National Civil Rights Hall of Fame.

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"Growing up, dad was just dad," said Hatcher. "Now being on the council, I understand the fight and sacrifices in the '60s for equality."

She said the hall of fame has been her father's dream for several decades.

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Organizers are hoping for a star-studded lineup of guests including those who were there for the Civil Rights marches in the 1960s and current political leaders.

"It's a gala, a celebration and opportunity to take stock of where we are and where we need to go," said Freeman-Wilson.

She said the city supports Hatcher's plans for the hall of fame and has targeted Economic Development Commission planning grants for it. "Yes, it has seen fits and starts but we are collectively determined to see it to its conclusion," she said.

Last year, Hatcher, 83, sought funding from the Lake County Council for his project.

Hatcher told the council then the hall of fame would be built on a 10-acre site at the former Banneker school at 23rd Avenue and Garfield Street. The site was purchased from the school district.

Past attempts for funding were thwarted. Former mayor Scott King nixed a $5 million appropriation by the Gary City Council in 2000 saying the move bypassed his authority. The county council had pledged $750,000, but it was conditional on funding from Gary.

Lamar Taylor, fund raising chairman for the hall of fame, said the group is now seeking funding from the Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority and from federal sources.

He said a $15 million facility is envisioned that would also include a Jackson family museum to honor the Jackson 5.

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"For the first time, we finally have a mayor who's supportive," said Taylor of Freeman-Wilson.

Tickets for the Nov. 4 event will be $100. "We expect a full house," said Freeman-Wilson.

Carole Carlson is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
A 2-year-old girl drowned in a neighbor's swimming pool Monday morning in Jackson Township, police said.

The Porter County Sheriff's Department and the Porter County Coroner's Office investigated the incident, which occurred shortly after 7:30 a.m. Monday in the 600 block of County Road 500 East.

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The girl left her home around 7:30 a.m. and walked to a neighbor's pool, according to a release from Sgt. Jamie Erow, public information officer for the sheriff's department.

Investigators believe the toddler fell in the unattended pool. She was found by her mother, not breathing and unresponsive, police said. Medical attention was given to the child until Emergency Medical Services arrived on the scene.

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Despite all efforts, they were unable to revive the toddler.

"While this incident is extremely tragic, we express our deepest sympathies to the family, friends and first responders that are dealing with this incident," Erow said in the release.

She reminded residents that if they own a pool, to familiarize themselves with Indiana's Administrative Code (675 IAC 14-4.3-296) regarding safety features for residential pools.

"While summer is a wonderful time of the year, please exercise extreme caution around pools and lakes," Erow said.

Amy Lavalley is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
Robert Kyler, of Gary, waits for a westbound South Shore train Tuesday at the Gary Metro station. (Carole Carlson / Post-Tribune)

The derailment of a commuter train near downtown Chicago has disrupted service between the city and South Bend.

The South Shore Line train, which originated in Dune Park, derailed Tuesday near the final stop at Millennium station in the Loop business district. The train was traveling at a slow speed when the derailment occurred. Authorities say two people suffered minor injuries.

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The train appeared to derail in an area where trains switch tracks as they enter the station at Randolph street.

At the Gary Metro station, five passengers waited more than an hour on the platform.

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"I was going to work," said Robert Kyler, of Gary, who said he cleans out houses that have been foreclosed.

Others left as word spread of the derailment.

Alontay Plippins, of Gary, was heading to a class at the Illinois Media Center.

"I'm not sure what I'll do. I can't drive in," said Plippins, a 2016 Wirt-Emerson graduate.

About 4:40 p.m., a westbound train rumbled by but didn't stop.

The South Shore Line website says its trains are unable to enter or exit the station. The railroad is advising passengers to find alternative transportation for their commute.

The derailment has also disrupted service on the Metra Electric line. The two commuter railroads share tracks.

Freelance reporter Carole Carlson contributed.
Porter County politicians have an opportunity to improve the lives of abused women and children; instead they've turned their backs on the Caring Place by refusing matching funds for their capital campaign, funds that would come from the county-run foundation created from the sale of Porter Hospital.

The Caring Place is a shelter for women and children that have been abused by an intimate partner. The current 100-plus year old facility which provides temporary shelter is in serious disrepair. A capital campaign is underway which would improve and expand the shelter's capacity, providing greater safety to our county's most vulnerable people.

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During a recent council meeting, Mary Beth Schultz and Debbie Reynolds who lead the Caring Place asked some critical questions:

"If this place closes, what are we going to do?"

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"If the Caring Place isn't there, what number are they going to call?"

"Where are the police going to take them?"

They made clear that without funding, the Caring Place will be forced to shut down. Without the Caring Place, battered women and children in Porter County will have no where to go.

According to Sheriff Reynolds, domestic violence is the second biggest law enforcement problem facing Porter County, next to drug abuse. Statistically, 1 in 3 women will experience physical abuse; that means your family member, your neighbor, your co-worker, maybe even you, will be abused by a partner. Domestic abuse isn't someone else's problem  this is our problem. If the Caring Place closes, this problem will become a public safety crisis.

A few of the excuses given by county politicians for not helping abused women and kids include:

"We have the money to help, but we haven't created the paperwork to do it."

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Porter County politicians have had nearly two years to roll out a process by which non-profits could apply for Foundation money. Political procrastination and red tape is not an acceptable excuse to turn our backs on battered women and children.

"Nonprofits should be funded only by private entities, not with the millions available in the Foundation."

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The Porter County Government Charitable Foundation is a private entity. It is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization being administered by politicians. It is exactly the kind of entity that should fund nonprofits.

"We have to take care of ourselves first by building bridges, roads, and other special projects: these are a greater priority."

Just because politicians administer the funds, doesn't mean those funds should go to their pet projects. For 70 years, Porter Hospital operated as a social service benefiting the health and well-being of people in Porter County. Taking funds from a social service organization and designating them for government infrastructure projects is an egregious breach of public trust.

The Caring Place is facing a crisis and so is Porter County. County politicians allowing that crisis to unfold when they can use some of the $6.2 million in funds from the people's nonprofit foundation is nothing short of failure on their part.

Erin Marks Labovitz is a former volunteer and staff member of The Caring Place, wife and mother of two boys, and a concerned citizen of Porter County.
In this June 5, 2017, photo, President Donald Trump arrives to speak at an Air Traffic Control Reform Initiative event in the East Room at the White House in Washington. The White Houses self-proclaimed Infrastructure Week began with Trump appearing Monday with aviation officials and some prominent GOP lawmakers to announce plans to privatize the nations air traffic control system and separate operations from the Federal Aviation Administration. (Andrew Harnik/AP )

The statements President Trump issued on Twitter in recent days lead to a chilling conclusion: The man is out of control.

I know that is a radical thing to say about the elected leader of the United States, the most powerful individual in the world. And I know his unorthodox use of social media is thought by some, including the president himself, to be brilliant. But I don't see political genius in the invective coming from Trump these days. I see an angry man lashing out at enemies real and imagined  a man dangerously overwhelmed.

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On Monday, he started at 6:25 a.m. to comprehensively undermine his own legal team in its quest to win Supreme Court approval for a travel ban targeting Muslims. I can call it that, without legalistic hemming and hawing, because the president did so. Emphatically.

"People, the lawyers and the courts can call it whatever they want, but I am calling it what we need and what it is, a TRAVEL BAN," Trump wrote.

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Maybe he thinks that tweets, somehow, don't count. But of course they do. These are written statements typed by the president himself, and as such should carry more weight than a processed release from the White House press office, not less. Trump's lawyers  arguing in support of the blocked measure, which would bar visitors from six majority-Muslim countries  contend it is not a "travel ban" as such. Attorneys on the other side will surely use Trump's own words against him.

And he had plenty more to say:

"The Justice Dept. should have stayed with the original Travel Ban, not the watered down, politically correct version they submitted to S.C. [Supreme Court]"

"The Justice Dept. should ask for an expedited hearing of the watered down Travel Ban before the Supreme Court  & seek much tougher version!"

"In any event we are EXTREME VETTING people coming into the U.S. in order to help keep our country safe. The courts are slow and political!"

Let that last one settle in for a moment. Has a president ever publicly dismissed the entire judicial branch of our government as "slow and political," even in a moment of pique? Does Trump grasp the concept of separation of powers? Has he even read the Constitution he swore to preserve, protect and defend?

Whether Trump's statements during the campaign  calling for a surely unconstitutional blanket ban on Muslim visitors from anywhere  should be taken into account by courts considering the current "watered down" version is debatable. His written statements as president, however, are clearly germane. Opponents of the ban might want to send him flowers.

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Trump first let the cat out of the bag Saturday night, following the terrorist attack in London, when he wrote, "We need to be smart, vigilant and tough. We need the courts to give us back our rights. We need the Travel Ban as an extra level of safety!"

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He went on to express compassion and support for "London and the U.K." But by Sunday he was off the rails: "At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is 'no reason to be alarmed!'"

What rational head of state attacks the mayor of a city that has just been hit by terrorists? Why would Trump do such a thing, in the process taking Mayor Sadiq Khan's words out of context in a way that totally changed their meaning? Because last year Khan, perhaps the highest-profile Muslim public official in a non-Muslim country, criticized then-candidate Trump, saying that his "ignorant view of Islam could make both our countries less safe."

What Khan actually said Sunday was that the public had "no reason to be alarmed" about an increased police presence on the streets  not, as Trump suggests, that they should be nonchalant about terrorism. Khan's stoic and defiant response is in the tradition of Churchill's during the Blitz of 1940 and 1941, or Thatcher's during the Irish Republican Army's terror campaign. Londoners have rallied around him. Trump, by contrast, sounds like a ridiculous Chicken Little squawking about the coop.

Words have consequences. Trump's may hurt British Prime Minister Theresa May in Thursday's election. Assuming she survives, she will have learned a lesson about getting too close to a volcanic president who might at any minute erupt.

We already knew that Trump had a narrow mind and a small heart. Now we must wonder about his emotional stability, his grasp of reality, or both.

Eugene Robinson is a columnist for the Washington Post.
What's Quickly? It's where readers sound off on the issues of the day. Have a quote, question or quip? Call Quickly at 312-222-2426 or email quickly@post-trib.com.

Largemouth bass can be caught at all of the Valparaiso lakes, Lake George and a few at Riverwalk Park in Portage. The problem is, not enough people practice catch and release, so larger fish are increasingly more difficult to catch.

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At least 70 percent of the country disagree with the political direction of this country. And they wonder what the heck is wrong with the 30 percent that goes along with it.

While he was an ordinary citizen, Donald Trump viciously criticized politicians that were in power. Now that he is in power, he hates the fact that anyone says anything bad about him, even if it's the truth.

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And all this time I thought PETA stood for People Eating Tasty Animals. I stand corrected.

I think the president wants to campaign until the next election and let the staff run the country.

Parents, you need to be watching your young daughters social media sites. There are many adult men that are trying to victimize them.

A 25-year-old woman who was a government contractor was charged with leaking a classified report. This is totally unacceptable from an Air Force veteran. I hope that she gets a long jail term to think about these serious charges.

The GOP has stymied every attempt to investigate the wrongdoing of this president. Most likely, many of them have some ties to the corruption as well. But Trump will not win in the end, because his stupidity is too vast.

Post Tribune Twice-weekly News updates from Northwest Indiana delivered every Monday and Wednesday >

Trump finds himself having to answer to someone for the first time in his entire life and he hates it. So he responds by throwing a temper tantrum and trying to undermine the credibility of whoever is getting in his way. He has never respected the law, why start now.

Hillary Clinton and Kathy Griffin should be the next ticket for the Democrats in 2020, so when Trump trounces them they certainly will have plenty of time to practice the blame game why they lost.

Please get over your hang up with Hillary Clinton. Everybody else has.

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If you think Hillary Clinton is crooked, then what do you consider the man in the White House? He has mafia ties, he screws everyone he can out of payment for honest work, he lies about everything, he is a serial cheater and tax evader, etc. Care to change your equally ill-informed comments?

A commenter was comparing being a victim of gun violence in America to being run over by a car or truck in London in a terrorist attack. That's a disturbing comment to be hearing from somebody in the USA. I guess the World Trade Center in New York is just a fading memory with all the violence in the UK, where the weapon of choice is to mow people down with a vehicle.

You know, if these violent creeps were to try these massacres in the U.S., at least 1 out of 4 or 5 citizens would be armed and could stop them. People in Europe are at risk because they are not allowed to protect themselves with a sidearm. Think about it 

Read more at www.post-trib.com/quickly.
A convicted murderer who had been taken from a state prison to a Joliet hospital used a makeshift weapon to hold a corrections officer and nursing assistant hostage before he was secured by police early Wednesday, officials said.

According to a news release from the Illinois Department of Corrections, Joshua Matthews, 32, had been taken by ambulance to Presence St. Joseph Medical Center on Tuesday. According to the IDOC website, Matthews had been in the Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill, where he was serving a 100-year sentence for a murder in DuPage County.

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About 3:35 a.m., Matthews "displayed a makeshift weapon and informed the assigned correctional officer and a certified nurse's assistant that they were being held hostage," according to the release.

Joliet police responded about 3:55 a.m., and "the offender was secured and situation was under control less than an hour later, about 4:20 a.m.," according to the release.

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The incident took place less than four weeks after a Kane County Jail inmate was fatally shot after taking a sheriff's deputy's gun and holding nurses hostages during a standoff at the Delnor Hospital in Geneva.

Matthews was convicted in the murder of Sade Glover, 17, who was shot to death outside her Warrenville home.

No injuries were reported in this week's Joliet incident. IDOC, Joliet police and the hospital have launched an investigation, and will give information to the Will County state's attorney's office, IDOC said.

Matthews was on parole when he murdered Sade. He had been in prison for an attack on a cabdriver and the theft of a purse, officials said.

After Matthews was sentenced for the murder, DuPage prosecutors in an April 2011 letter warned state prison officials that the defendant was particularly violent.

"Special care should be given by the Illinois Department of Corrections in placing the defendant as he is a particularly violent and crafty criminal," prosecutors wrote. "This violent character emerged when the defendant was a juvenile."

Prosecutors said he had been charged in more than 10 delinquent petitions, "including incidents where he pushed a school secretary, told a teacher that he would slash the tires of her car and threw a 10-year-old boy into a partially frozen pond."

"The defendant's criminal conduct and violence did not end after his arrest for murder," prosecutors wrote.

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While in the DuPage County Jail, he was charged with numerous crimes, including punching a deputy; possessing numerous shanks, a hammer, a chisel and a glass cutter; possessing marijuana; and damaging a sprinkler system. But the charges were dismissed when he was sentenced for the murder.
Law enforcement investigating police shooting on Dillon Drive

The 10th Judicial Critical Incident Response Team is investigating an officer-involved shooting that left at least one dead. Police declined to comment.
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A TV program featuring Silk Road stories that is co-sponsored by China and Kazakhstan was launched Tuesday.

A TV program featuring Silk Road stories that is co-sponsored by China and Kazakhstan was launched Tuesday. [Photo/Xinhua]

The program, named "The Silk Road Theater," was jointly organized by China's State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television and Kazakhstan's Khabar television station.

According to a TV and film program exchange cooperation agreement signed by the two sides, Khabar is going to broadcast two documentaries that have been translated into the local language.

Also on Tuesday, a special edition of a Russian-language magazine was issued in Astana.

The journal focuses on showing readers the development of friendly relations between China and Kazakhstan and accomplishments in their all-round cooperation.

Chinese President Xi Jinping is going to pay a state visit to Kazakhstan to attend the 17th meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Council of Heads of State and the opening ceremony of the World Expo in Astana from June 7 to 10.
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China's Ministry of Finance on Tuesday released a guideline on public-private partnerships (PPP) in agriculture to diversify funding for the industry.

Private capital will be asked to participate in areas including green agriculture, high-standard farmland development, modern industrial parks and logistics and trading platforms for farm produce, according to the guideline.

PPPs are collaborative projects between governments and private companies that are mainly funded and operated by the latter.

China has explored funding infrastructure and public works through the PPP model since 2013 as concerns grow over local government debt.

The ministry asked local authorities to cautiously select projects, ensure fair competition and transparent information disclosure and to strengthen regulation in PPP projects.

While local governments may hold shares in project companies, they should not interfere in operations and are forbidden from undertaking all the risk in any project, according to the guideline.

The ministry also called for policy support such as expanding financing channels and ensuring land supply for PPPs.

Data from last year showed the number of signed PPP projects and total investment more than quadrupling from 2015, with private enterprises participating in more regions and sectors than ever before.

The strong momentum continued into the first quarter of 2017, which saw 28 percent more PPP projects inked year on year.
Some 60 young people from 23 countries gathered in Beijing on June 6 for the International Youth Summer School 2017, a platform to help participants develop skills and exchange experiences for their start-up businesses.

International Youth Summer School 2017 opens in Beijing on June 6, 2017. [Photo by Chen Boyuan/China.org.cn]

During the weeklong camp, under the title of "Startups and Exchanges as Pillars of a New World Order," these young people, aged between 18 and 35, will take part in workshops and case studies, attend lectures and take field trips to the workplaces of like-minded young Chinese entrepreneurs.

It is the second straight year the event was held by China, in alliance with the prestigious China Soong Ching Ling Foundation (CSCLF). The previous five summer camps, from 2011-2015, were all held in European cities.

Speaking at the opening ceremony, Julia Kinash, the founder and president of the Youth Time International Movement and initiator of the summer pogram, said the world's youth population has reached 1.8 billion at present; young people hold 60 percent of the jobs worldwide  playing an apparent vital role in world economic growth.

She encouraged young participants to think globally, shoulder social responsibility, develop forward-thinking and seek to know more about each other in such a multicultural environment.

Hang Yuanxiang, the executive vice chairman of the CSCLF reaffirmed the foundation's commitment to enhancing communication between youths from China and other countries. He said the latest Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation would offer more such opportunities for young people to share ideas on innovation and entrepreneurship.

"And I hope you will seize the opportunities in the new round of global changes to take lead in innovation and to make contribution to the peace and development of the world," said Hang.

Dr. Vladimir Yakunin, the founding president of the World Public Forum "Dialogue of Civilization" and former president of Russian Railways, shared his view on cooperation along the Belt and Road.

Yakunin noted that picking the right partner was essential for business cooperation, since, according to his own experiences, "the more partners, the more difficulties." However, he insisted that cooperating with more than 50 countries was not a mere augmentation of "troublesome partners."

Yakunin explained that Belt and Road was a grand plan meeting the development needs of all countries, hence nobody would reject it. Also, the successful docking between China's own development agenda with those of Mongolia, Russia, Kyrgyzstan and Pakistan amounted to an assurance to other countries.

However, he pointed out that such a grand plan would naturally call for a grand new type of management in that countries could consider a unified set of administration measures and even laws for the Belt and Road, similar to the practice in the European Union.
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Twelve people were injured in a gas explosion at a food processing factory in Taiwan's New Taipei City Wednesday morning, according to the local fire department.

The explosion ripped through the factory at around 11:27 a.m., with five men and seven women hospitalized.

More than 140 firefighters and 53 emergency vehicles arrived at the scene.

Preliminary investigation showed the explosion was caused by a gas leak.

Further investigation is underway.
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Passports holders of China's Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) will be granted visa-on-arrival entry to Iran and Guinea-Bissau, the authorities said in a press release on Monday.

The Identification Services Bureau of Macao SAR confirmed that holders of the Macao SAR passports visiting Iran with tourist purpose can obtain a visa upon arrival at Gheshm Island, Kish Island, Mashhad, Esfahan, Shiraz International Airport, Tabriz and Tehran Imam Khomeini International Airport for a maximum stay of 30 days.

Holders of the Macao SAR passports visiting Guinea-Bissau can obtain a visa upon arrival at the Osvaldo Vieira International Airport for a maximum stay of 90 days.

Besides, holders of the Macao SAR travel permit visiting Palau can obtain a visa upon arrival for a stay of 30 days, and can be extended to a maximum of 90 days.

A total of 132 countries and regions have agreed to grant visa-free access or visa-on-arrival to Macao SAR passport holders, while 14 countries or regions have agreed to grant visa-free access or visa-on-arrival to Macao SAR travel permit holders.
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President of the Nepali Congress Sher Bahadur Deuba was elected as the 40th prime minister of Nepal on Tuesday.

Deuba was elected as the head of the government of Nepal through parliament voting.

"I announce that respected member Sher Bahadur Deuba has been elected to the post of Nepal's prime minister," House Speaker Onsari Gharti told the Parliament to loud cheers.

Deuba, 70, secured 388 votes to become the prime minister when 558 parliamentarians cast ballots in the prime minister election. 170 parliamentarians voted against him. Deuba was the sole candidate in the election.

The veteran leader will be administered the oath of office and secrecy by President Bidhya Devi Bhandari at her official residence Sheetalnibas on Wednesday.

The election came after Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal resigned from the post on May 24.

Deuba was elected chairman of the Nepali Congress party through Nepali Congress General Convention in 2016.
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Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his Vietnamese counterpart Nguyen Xuan Phuc agreed on Tuesday to bring the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement into force at an early date during talks in Tokyo.

According to a joint statement released after the talks, both leaders reaffirmed that free and fair trade and investment are an important driver for the global economy and decided to work together in promoting open and free trade and investment against the backdrop of mounting anti-globalization and protectionism in the world.

The two countries vowed to cooperate in the discussion among TPP members to bring the agreement into force expeditiously, according to the statement.

Phuc is on a five-day visit to Japan starting Sunday. The two countries signed a number of frameworks between their ministries, local authorities and businesses.
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President Xi Jinping meets with California Governor Jerry Brown of the United States at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Tuesday. [Photo/China Daily]

Chinese President Xi Jinping Tuesday called on California to play a bigger role in promoting exchange and cooperation between China and the United States.

He said he hoped California could continue to promote bilateral exchanges between localities and contribute more to China-U.S. cooperation in areas including technology, innovation and green development.

Xi made the remarks in his meeting with visiting California Governor Jerry Brown at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

"Since the two countries established diplomatic ties, China-U.S. relations have weathered various tests and always moved forward, bringing huge benefits to both peoples," Xi said. "Bilateral relations also contributed a lot to peace, stability and prosperity of the Asia-Pacific region and the world."

China pursues a path of peaceful, open and green development, he said, calling on the two sides to enhance communication and expand cooperation to push forward the sound and stable development of bilateral ties.

Xi said local-level exchanges and cooperation were an important pillar of China-U.S. relations, hoping that the two sides could make local-level exchanges and cooperation into a new engine for the growth of bilateral relations.

He welcomed California to join the Belt and Road Initiative.

Brown said California valued the traditional friendship with China and committed itself to dialogue and cooperation with Chinese local governments.

Voicing appreciation of Xi's speech at the World Economic Forum annual meeting at Davos in January, Brown said California was willing to join the construction of the Belt and Road and was looking forward to a stronger cooperative relationship with China in trade, investment, clean technology and environmental protection.
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Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Kazakh counterpart Nursultan Nazarbayev hoped cooperation between the two countries will help rejuvenate the ancient Silk Road.

They expressed so in inscriptions in a picture album on the two countries' scenery and cooperation under China-proposed Silk Road Economic Belt and Kazakhstan's Bright Road new economic plan.

Noting this year marks the 25th anniversary of diplomatic ties and the first Chinese Year of Tourism in Kazakhstan, Xi said the picture album showed the two countries' wonderful natural landscape and mutual friendship to the world.

The album of around 200 pictures taken by photographers from both sides was launched Tuesday in Astana, capital of Kazakhstan.

As important countries along the ancient Silk Road, China and Kazakhstan have made significant contributions to cultural exchanges, Xi said.

The two have witnessed close high-level visits, strengthened political mutual trust, and comprehensive advancement in pragmatic cooperation in the last 25 years.

In 2016, the two signed a plan to synergize the Silk Road Economic Belt and the Bright Road.

Xi said the two countries have cooperated actively under the Belt and Road Initiative and this will bring new vitality to the ancient Silk Road.

Quoting a Kazakh saying which describes people at the age of 25 are as vigorous as fire, Xi called on both sides to further cooperation and make joint efforts for a brighter future.

For Nazarbayev's part, he stressed the significance of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the Bright Road, saying they will regenerate the "old while great" ancient Silk Road of commercial exchange.

He said that the 2017 Chinese Year of Tourism in Kazakhstan will enhance mutual understanding and friendship between the two peoples.

The album, specially made to revive the Silk Road, will demonstrate the two countries' remarkable achievements, he said.

The album was co-published by the China Foreign Languages Publishing Administration's China Pictorial and Kazinform International News Agency.

From June 7 to 10, Xi will pay a state visit to Kazakhstan, attend the 17th meeting of the Council of Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the opening ceremony of the World Expo in Astana.
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One of the three terrorists, slain by British police during a deadly attack in London last Saturday and having double Italian and Moroccan citizenship, had been flagged as a potential threat by Italian security services, Italian media reported Tuesday.

Youssef Zaghba, aged 22, had been identified as the third assailant in the van and knife rampage on London Bridge and Borough Market last Saturday in which seven people were killed and 48 others were injured.

Scotland Yard earlier confirmed the Moroccan-Italian national lived in the London district of Barking with the other two terrorists, Italian news agency Ansa reported.

Zaghba had been detained in March 2016 at Marconi Airport in the northern Italian city of Bologna when about to board a flight to Istanbul, according to Ansa.

Italian border police became suspicious because he was traveling on a one-way ticket and carried only a small knapsack, a passport and no money.

Investigators later found propaganda videos from the so-called Islamic State (IS) terrorist group on his cell phone, according to La Repubblica newspaper.

This led police to search the premises of Zaghba's Italian mother, who lives in the Bologna area.

The woman explained to police that her son asked her for money for a ticket to Rome, and that she knew nothing of his plans to travel to Turkey.

Prosecutors ordered the suspect's phone and passport seized, detained him on suspicion of being a foreign fighter on his way to join IS ranks in Syria, and charged him with international terrorism.

However, a judge ruled there was insufficient evidence that he might be a terrorist, and ordered him released. He then moved to London, media reported.

Italian intelligence authorities placed him on watch list, and flagged him to British and Moroccan authorities, according to Corriere della Sera, the Italian daily.

Zoghba was born in the Moroccan city of Fez in January 1995. His parents -- Moroccan father, Italian mother -- lived together in the North African country for a time.

When they separated, the mother returned to Italy, where her son visited her several times, Corriere della Sera wrote.

He was working at a London restaurant and was still in contact with his mother.
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South Korean Foreign Minister nominee Kang Kyung-wha said Wednesday that she will consider sending senior-level delegates to China over the installation of the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) missile defense system.

Kang told a parliamentary confirmation hearing that communications between South Korea and China should be maintained through a variety of channels to narrow differences in how to recognize the THAAD issue.

Since President Moon Jae-in took office on May 10, Kang said, special envoys of South Korea were dispatched to China, while leaders of the two countries held a telephone conversation.

If confirmed, Kang would become the country's first-ever female foreign minister. The top diplomat post does not require the parliamentary approval, though the nominee is required to go through the confirmation hearing.

The FM nominee said the THAAD deployment lacked public discussions and failed to win the public consensus, reiterating the new government's stance that the THAAD installation requires parliamentary discussions.

In her earlier opening remarks, Kang pledged to develop the bilateral strategic cooperative partnership with China by restoring trust and strengthening sincere communications between the two countries.
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At least 12 people died in the twin attacks by militants against Iran's parliament and Khomeini Shrine on Wednesday, Iran's Emergency chief was quoted as saying by the semi-official Fars news agency.

An additional 39 people were injured in the terrorist attacks, Pir Hossein Kolivand told reporters.

All four assailants against the parliament and two against the Khomeini Shrine were killed, reported the semi-official ISNA news agency quoting an unidentified source as saying.
PRINT | EMAIL | PERMALINK Newscity N.M. Had Highest Inmate Rate in 2013 Robert Maestas According to a study released by the Massachusetts-based Prison Policy Initiativea lobby group focused on lowering US jail and prison populationsNew Mexico had the highest number of inmates in county jails in the nation in 2013. The results were based on federal data tracking of local jail populations and found that the state had a jail incarceration rate of 340.8 per 100,000 residents in 2013, the most recent year that has been tracked. The study seems to suggest that a large portion of these statistics are cause by pre-trial detentions coupled with trial delays. It found that pre-trial detentions tripled jail population growth nationwide since 1978. It also found that people who are incarcerated for lengthy periods before they face trial run a high risk going to prison later for more serious crimes. Despite the high incarceration rate, Bernalillo County's Metropolitan Detention Center reports that its jail population has decreased 48 percent since 2013, when reforms were instituted with the issue in mind. Those reforms included allowing people charged with crimes to enter pleas earlier than in the past and efforts to resolve hearings for suspects facing detention earlier. Georgia had the second highest jail population rate in 2013 with 317.3 per 100,000 residents.

Officials Warn of Medicaid Phishing Scam State Attorney General Hector Balderas and Human Services Department Secretary Brent Earnest issued a joint Scam Alert to warn residents that callers posing as employees of the New Mexico Medicaid program are phishing for personal and financial information. The scammers are calling individuals several times a day and asking for their name, Social Security number and Medicaid number. According to state officials, Medicaid recipients should never provide personal information such as Social Security number or Medicaid identification numbers over the phone to unsolicited callers. If you have received an unsolicited call from someone claiming to be a representative of the Human Services Department or the New Mexico Medicaid program, you may file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission at ftccomplaintassistant. gov or nmag. gov/ consumer- complaint- instructions. aspx. If you have already fallen victim to this or a similar scam, please visit identitytheft.gov.
As always, the US Department of Defense's 2017 report on military and security developments involving China carries some of the all-too-familiar biased interpretations of China's actions and intentions.

Portraying Chinese moves regarding its South China Sea territories and approach to related disputes as "coercion", for instance, it ignores Beijing's endeavors to ease tensions, and its latest consensuses with the Philippines and Vietnam on dispute management and bilateral consultations.

The accusation that China supports its modernization via "cyber theft, targeted foreign direct investment, and exploitation of the access of private Chinese nationals" to foreign technologies is also included as usual.

But that might well be all that can be said of the concerns China's growing presence elicits. Because although the Department of Defense openly identifies China as one of the US' "potential adversaries"  along with Russia, Iran and Democratic People's Republic of Korea  in its "Fiscal Year 2018 Budget Request", the report appears genuine about the non-aggressive nature of Chinese military progress.

Despite being obvious, though unspoken, worries about the logistics base the Chinese navy is building in Djibouti, and likely new ones elsewhere, it acknowledges: "A greater overseas naval logistics and basing footprint would better position the PLA to expand its participation in non-combatant evacuation operations, search-and-rescue, humanitarian assistance/disaster relief, and sea lines of communication security."

No country can afford to leave its economic lifelines unprotected. In China's case, these span from the East and South China seas through the Strait of Malacca and Indian Ocean to Africa and Europe. And to every country concerned, China's participation in anti-piracy patrols and escort missions in the Gulf of Aden are an essential public service.

As the report observes, "China's expanding international economic interests are increasing demands for the PLAN (PLA Navy) to operate in more distant maritime environments to protect Chinese citizens, investments, and critical sea lines of communication". And as the inclusive, expansive Belt and Road Initiative proceeds, further overseas security guarantees will be required.

One critical, yet oft-omitted or distorted, aspect of the narrative of Chinese military developments is about purpose. The drafters of the report conclude "China's leaders remain focused on developing the capabilities to deter or defeat adversary power projection and counter third-party intervention  including by the United States  during a crisis or conflict". In other words, China's leaders are preoccupied with defense.

Since, as the report concedes, China's "military modernization program has become more focused on supporting missions beyond China's periphery, including power projection, sea lane security, counter piracy, peacekeeping, and humanitarian assistance/disaster relief", there is a question to be answered: Why is China considered a potential adversary?
Picture of avocados taken at an orchard in the municipality of Uruapan, Michoacan State, Mexico, Oct 18, 2016. [Photo/VCG]

URUAPAN - When talks turn to China, the destination of avocados, Elena Roman lights up, carefully packing the fruits at a plant in the west-central Mexican state of Michoacan.

"It's nice to think they are going to travel as far as there, it's exciting to know that," Roman, 40, said in the small verdant town of Uruapan.

The mother of four works at Avo Hass, one of eight avocado packing plants in Uruapan that export to China, a market that producers are increasingly striving to conquer.

Avo Hass alone aims to ship as many as 300 tons of avocado to China in 2017, double the 150 tons it exported in each of the past two years, when it began to trade with the Asian giant.

The United States buys the majority of the 12,000 tons of avocado Avo Hass packs, the company's director, Nadia Flores, said. But the company is now looking to increase its share of the Chinese market.

"We are turning our gaze towards China, because we see that it is an excellent opportunity," said Flores, whose company started out as a small family farm.

To win market share in China, Uruapan's producers are betting on the superior taste and quality of avocados grown in Michoacan, a state that underpins Mexico's goal of becoming the world's top avocado supplier, providing seven out of 10 avocados consumed globally.

Michoacan produced nearly 1.5 million tons of avocado in 2016, or 78 percent of the 1.8 million tons produced nationally, according to the federal government's annual agricultural records.

Uruapan, known as the avocado capital of the world, accounted for 10.5 percent of the state's total production of the so-called "green gold," as the vegetable-like fruit is called in Mexico.

At least 13,800 hectares of land in this city of 315,000 residents are home to avocado orchards, both large and small, that line both sides of the roads throughout Uruapan.

Each avocado tree can grow up to 25 meters in height, and produce as many as 3 tons of the fruit in a single season, which normally runs from July to January.

"The soil in Michoacan makes the avocados creamy and buttery," said Avo Hass' orchards manager, Fernando Alonso, who estimates some 60 percent of residents here make their living from the fruit.

The commercial director of exporter San Marcos Avocado, Angelica Villalpando, agrees, saying the "unparalleled" flavor of the region's avocados is what opens the doors to the Mexican product.

Based in the state of California, San Marcos is working to increase the 20 tons of Mexican avocado that is shipped to China each month, noting a growing appetite in Asia for the green fruit.

Avocado exports to China last year reached 10,294 tons, a huge increase over the 16.7 tons shipped in 2009, according to Mexico's Ministry of Economy.

Sales to China are still far from reaching levels. Mexico's northern neighbor bought almost 77 percent of the more than one million tons of avocado the country exported in 2016. However, China is now among the top 10 markets for avocado.

"It is a special market, a demanding market. It is a market that demands you meet infinite quality, sanitary, safety, aesthetic and packing norms," said Villalpando.

According to Avo Hass' operations manager, Miguel Patlan, China is interested in avocados with specific characteristics: small in size, lemony green color, a peel with no imperfections, and a shelf life of 15 days in stores.

"In matters of fruit quality, they tell us it must be a totally clean fruit," said Patlan.

At the 1,100-square-meter Avo Hass plant, a giant machine selects the ideal avocados for China, using sensors to detect weight and size. The chosen fruits are then inspected by workers like Roman, who packs the ones that pass muster.

The shipments take up to 26 days to travel between Mexico's Pacific coast ports and the Chinese ports of Shanghai or Shenzhen, which is why they are generally refrigerated at 3.3 degrees Centigrade to keep them fresh.

In one final but crucial step before shipments sail overseas, an inspector from the Ministry of Agriculture closely inspects each box of avocados.

Mexico's producers and exporters say they are confident they will increase sales to China, as they meet the Chinese government's rigorous standards throughout the chain of production.
International organizations and investment banks have remained upbeat about China's economic growth prospects, with analysts saying the country is set to achieve its annual growth target.

The World Bank said in a report on Sunday that China's year-on-year GDP growth will reach 6.5 percent, unchanged from its prediction in January. China's fiscal support will offset the impact of its tightening monetary policy stance on grow-th and the country will contain financial risks, according to the World Bank. It said China will encourage its economy to tilt toward consumption to expand.

China had set a GDP growth target of about 6.5 percent for the year. It achieved a higher-than-expected 6.9 percent GDP growth in the first quarter. Recent indicators, such as the purchasing managers index, a gauge of business conditions and economic health, also showed that growth remained steady in May.

Investment bank Morgan Stanley raised its forecast last week for China's growth to 6.6 percent from 6.4 percent. It said China will continue to clean up its financial sector and curb credit expansion to bring financial risks under control and resort to "counter cyclical" measures that are unlikely to derail growth, according to a South China Morning Post report.

"Growth has peaked and will moderate in coming quarters due to higher base and reduced policy support," Morgan Stanley said in a report. "Nonetheless, the slowdown will be modest."

Jing Ulrich, managing director and vice-chairman of Asia Pacific at JPMorgan Chase, said on Tuesday that China's growth will reach 6.7 percent, Bloomberg reported.

UBS also forecast China's GDP growth will be 6.7 percent this year.

"Although China faces some challenges, it has been resolute in ensuring that no systemic financial risks would occur," said Zhao Xijun, a finance professor at Renmin University of China.

By pressing ahead with supply-side structural reforms the Chinese economy has become more resilient, Zhao said.

The World Bank also predicted the global economy will expand by 2.7 percent in 2017.
NEW YORK - China Eastern Airlines Tuesday signed a global strategic cooperation framework agreement with the law firm Baker McKenzie, in a bid to further expand its operations overseas.

Under the agreement, Baker McKenzie will continue providing legal counsel and services to China Eastern as the latter carries out its internationalization strategy, said Tang Bing, deputy general manager of China Eastern Airlines.

Tang said the company faces challenges and risks doing businesses overseas and being able to understand business ethics, principals, regulations and laws of other countries is essential for the company's success.

Jim Colihan, managing partner of Baker McKenzie's New York office, said Baker McKenzie is honored to partner with one of the world's leading airlines.

The law firm has a China team that includes partners, associates and professionals from 77 offices in 47 countries, according to Colihan. The team focuses on helping Chinese companies from all industries and sectors navigate the legal regulatory and cultural landscape around the world.

"While we continue to face political and regulatory uncertainties in the US and around the world, we see opportunities for leading Chinese companies to grow and innovate outside their home markets," said Colihan.

He added that Baker Mckenzie's recent report with Rhodium Group saw a surge of Chinese foreign direct investment in North America and Europe, and such surge was highlighted by continued influence of globalization and rapid development for China's economy.

China Eastern Airlines is one of China's three flagship carriers, with a fleet of over 600 aircraft. Its revenue reached $15 billion last year, 40 percent of which came from the international market.

By 2020, China Eastern expects to reach a fleet size of 822, and 150 million of passenger turnover, according to Tang.
BEIJING - Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli Wednesday called for joint efforts to improve global energy governance to push green and low-carbon development.

China is willing to work with the international community on the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Agreement on climate change, Zhang said in a speech delivered at the opening of the Eighth Clean Energy Ministerial and the Second Mission Innovation Ministerial in Beijing.

The vice premier called for deepening innovative cooperation in clean energy, improving the energy use system and promoting greener and more efficient energy consumption, to build a low-carbon and clean energy supply system.

Zhang said that China would carry out joint action plans to mobilize businesses in the clean energy push and ensure the benefits were shared by the public.
A visitor at the Ford booth at the 2016 Mobile World Congress in Shanghai on June 29. Li Fusheng / China Daily

US carmaker Ford Motor Company and its two partners sold nearly 88,000 vehicles in China during May, down 3 percent year-on-year.

Its passenger car joint venture Changan Ford Automobile sold 59,000 vehicles in the month, down 12 percent compared to May 2016.

Sales of all seven models fell last month, with its small SUV EcoSport seeing a 38 percent dive year-on-year. Changan Ford's sales in the first five months totaled 289,728 units, a 22 percent fall from the same period last year.

By contrast, another joint venture Jiangling Motor Corporation had its best-ever May, selling more than 22,000 vehicles. Its sales till May reached 118,887 units, a 16 percent rise year-on-year.

Ford's premium arm Lincoln, which also had its best-ever May in China, sold 4,112 vehicles in the month, a 73 percent increase compared to May 2016.

By the end of May, Lincoln had sold 20,376 vehicles in China, doubling its sales from the same period last year.

Peter Fleet, vice-president of marketing, sales and service at Ford Asia Pacific, said: "We remain on track to deliver sales growth in the second quarter."

Fleet will succeed Dave Schoch, 66, as president of Ford Asia Pacific next month to lead all of Ford's operations and partnerships in the region.

The appointment is part of Ford's global management reshuffle after Jim Hackett replaced Mark Fields as Ford President and CEO late last month.
Visitors try Apple Inc's iPad Pro at the annual Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose, near Apple's headquarters in Cupertino, California, June 5, 2017. [Photo/China Daily]

SAN FRANCISCOApple Inc introduced a music speaker on Monday, its first new hardware since the Apple Watch was rolled out two years ago, at an annual gathering of software developers.

To be "smart", the latest product in Apple's portfolio, known as HomePod, comes with an A8 microprocessor chip, the same power engine in the technology company's flagship iPhone smartphone and iPad tablet computer.

Available on the market in December, the compact wireless speaker has some identical functions offered by similar products made by other companies, such as Amazon Echo and Google Home, but promises to produce higher quality sound.

Voice-activated with Apple's natural language user interface Siri, it will have access to Apple Music, a music-streaming service.

Although HomePod seems to be a more expensive competitor of Echo, which was released by Amazon.com Inc two years ago, Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook opened the Worldwide Developers Conference, with an announcement that Prime Video, a video-streaming service operated by Amazon, will be integrated into Apple TV, a digital media player and microconsole.

At the event in San Jose, not far from Apple's headquarters in Cupertino, Cook said his company now has 16 million registered software developers worldwide for its consumer electronics and 3 million of them were added last year.

A parade of executives followed Cook onto the stage and unveiled a series of updates to Apple's hardware, software and mobile apps.

Apple said its App Store has paid out $70 billion to developers, of which 30 percent was made last year.

Potentially indicative of what Apple will come up with in its next smartphone, expected to come out later this year on the 10th anniversary of its initial rollout of iPhone, is its plan to release an augmented reality kit to developers to encourage the creation of AR apps to work with the new device.
Engineers from Datang Telecom Technology and Industry Group test 5G terminal technologies in Beijing. [Photo/Xinhua]

Chinese giants aim to gain advantage in expansion of ultra-fast technology

Chinese telecom companies are accelerating their research and development of 5G, as they scramble to establish a beachhead in the next-generation mobile communication technology.

China Mobile Communications Corp, the world's largest telecom carrier by subscribers, said it aims to deploy more than 10,000 5G base stations by 2020, in a move to launch a commercial 5G service.

With less than 1 millisecond needed for data to get from one point to another, 5G is expected to allow consumers to download an 8-gigabit movie in seconds, and make remote surgery and autonomous driving a reality.

The Beijing-based company is building facilities for system verification and the development of pre-commercial 5G prototypes.

China Mobile's move is part of broad efforts by the nation to evolve from being a follower in the 3G era to an active participant that seeks to outcompete foreign firms in the 5G era.

The mobile technology is so important that it was highlighted in this year's Government Work Report. According to a report by the US firm Qualcomm Inc, 5G will help the global telecom industry create $3.5 trillion of output and generate 22 million jobs by 2035.

To accelerate the development of 5G technology, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said in a draft proposal on Tuesday that the low-frequency bandsthe 3,300 to 3,600MHz spectrum and the 4,800 to 5,000 MHz spectrumwill be used for 5G networks in China.

"A frequency band is as important to telecom carriers as land is in the real estate industry," said Xiang Ligang, a telecom expert and CEO of telecom industry website cctime.com.

"Specifying the designated frequency band for 5G tests will motivate enterprises to channel resources to that band, thus promising faster development.

According to Xiang, a low-frequency band can cover a larger area, which can lower the initial investment in 5G network construction.

"But the proposal does not mean that no other bands will be used for 5G. High-frequency bands will be used later to boost the internet speed," Xiang said.

China United Network Communications Group, the country's second-largest telecom carrier, is also scrambling to make a breakthrough in the technology. It recently set up the country's first pre-5G base station in Jilin province by partnering with telecom equipment maker Huawei Technologies Co Ltd.

The base station delivers a peak internet speed of 945 megabits per second, six times faster than the 4G network.

Earlier this year, China established the world's largest 5G test field to gain an edge in the race to standardize the mobile communication technology.

According to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, around 30 telecom base stations have been built in that test field, in which China Mobile, Huawei and ZTE Corp are conducting China's second phase of 5G R&D tests.

The second phase focuses on testing technology solutions for the 5G mobile internet and the internet of things, with the goal of developing 5G pre-commercial prototypes, the IMT-2020(5G) Promotion Group, a body set up by China to guide 5G development.

Huang Yuhong, deputy head of the China Mobile Research Institute, said: "5G will no longer be a simple technology or a system. Instead, it is a platform in which the telecom industry needs to be deeply linked with other sectors. That is a fundamental difference between 5G and 4G."

In November, China Mobile outgunned foreign rivals to lead the global 5G System Architecture project, which will determine the "structure of 5G networks". It came shortly after polar coding, a technology backed by Huawei, was approved as part of the global standard for 5G.

"The progress highlights Chinese firms' rising influence in the global telecommunication arena. It is a recognition of both their technological prowess as well as their brand influence," said Fu Liang, an independent telecom analyst.




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Students take the gaokao in 1977, Beijing.[Photo/Xinhua]

Forty years ago, the gaokao, the national college entrance exam, was revived after an 11-year hiatus, now seen as a turning point for a generation, and for China. Zhao Xinying and Luo Wangshu report.

Although Liu Haifeng, director of the Institute of Education at Xiamen University, has won a host of achievements and been awarded many honorary titles during his academic career, he firmly believes his success is the result of an event that occurred four decades ago.

"Later, many became well-known figures and pillars in all walks of life." - Liu Haifeng, director of the Institute of Education at Xiamen University

In the winter of 1977, the then-18-year-old hopeful was one of 5.7 million people who walked into exam halls nationwide to take the first gaokao given in more than 10 years, after it was suspended during the "cultural revolution" (1966-76).

The exam is China's foremost method of selecting academic talent, and one of the most important ways by which ordinary people can change their lives.

The 1977 exam is notable for two things: first, it was the only gaokao to be held during winter, not summer as is customary; and second, it resulted in the lowest acceptance rate since the 1952 creation of the gaokao and its related admissions system. Just 5 percent of examinees were granted places at colleges.

Liu was among the lucky ones. He had applied to study Chinese literature at Fujian Normal University, but after passing the exam he was unexpectedly offered a place in the history department at Xiamen University in his hometown in Fujian province. That offer set Liu on a decadeslong path of teaching and research at the prestigious establishment.

Even today, Liu, a renowned gaokao researcher, is grateful for the chance he was given, calling the experience "a historical coincidence".

For him, the revival of the exam was not just a hugely significant event for the examinees, but also a turning point for China.

"The gaokao in 1977 and the following two years selected about 1 million talents, who are called 'the new three classes' (of 1977, 1978 and 1979). Later, many became well-known figures and pillars in all walks of life, and they played key roles in China's reform and opening-up, laying a firm foundation for the country's economic takeoff and today's prosperity," said Liu Haifeng, director of the Institute of Education at Xiamen University.
Forty years ago, the gaokao, the national college entrance exam, was revived after an 11-year hiatus, now seen as a turning point for a generation, and for China. Zhao Xinying and Luo Wangshu report.

Although Liu Haifeng, director of the Institute of Education at Xiamen University, has won a host of achievements and been awarded many honorary titles during his academic career, he firmly believes his success is the result of an event that occurred four decades ago.

In the winter of 1977, the then-18-year-old hopeful was one of 5.7 million people who walked into exam halls nationwide to take the first gaokao given in more than 10 years, after it was suspended during the "cultural revolution" (1966-76).

The exam is China's foremost method of selecting academic talent, and one of the most important ways by which ordinary people can change their lives.

The 1977 exam is notable for two things: first, it was the only gaokao to be held during winter, not summer as is customary; and second, it resulted in the lowest acceptance rate since the 1952 creation of the gaokao and its related admissions system. Just 5 percent of examinees were granted places at colleges.

Liu was among the lucky ones. He had applied to study Chinese literature at Fujian Normal University, but after passing the exam he was unexpectedly offered a place in the history department at Xiamen University in his hometown in Fujian province. That offer set Liu on a decadeslong path of teaching and research at the prestigious establishment.

Even today, Liu, a renowned gaokao researcher, is grateful for the chance he was given, calling the experience "a historical coincidence".

For him, the revival of the exam was not just a hugely significant event for the examinees, but also a turning point for China.

"The gaokao in 1977 and the following two years selected about 1 million talents, who are called 'the new three classes' (of 1977, 1978 and 1979). Later, many became well-known figures and pillars in all walks of life, and they played key roles in China's reform and opening-up, laying a firm foundation for the country's economic takeoff and today's prosperity," said Liu Haifeng, director of the Institute of Education at Xiamen University.

Maintaining momentum

During the "cultural revolution" (1966-76), many graduates of junior middle schools and high schools - at least 16 million according to official records - in cities were sent to villages as part of the "down to the countryside" movement.

In October 1977, when the news was announced that the exam would be resumed, Wang Huiyao had spent almost a year and a half as a farm laborer. He was a zhiqing, a "sent-down youth", in a village 30 kilometers from his hometown, Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province in China's southwestern region.

For Wang, then age 19, gaokao was a distant and irrelevant word. When the exam was suspended in 1966, it was replaced by a college admissions policy that relied solely on recommendation. That meant only workers, farmers and soldiers were selected to attend college, irrespective of academic achievement or lack of it.

Wang, born and raised in a large city, quickly found life difficult and disappointing: he "cohabited" with mice in a thatched cottage that lacked electricity, sanitation or hot water; worked from 5 am to 10 pm every day; walked barefoot along muddy lanes on rainy days; and drank water boiled with chilies to keep warm in winter.

"At the time, I couldn't understand why people across the world were trying to move from rural areas to cities for better lives, but our mobility went in totally the opposite direction," said Wang, who is now an adviser on policies related to spotting talent both at home and abroad.

"However, I had a strong feeling that such an abnormal situation wouldn't last long. I knew the gaokao would be revived sooner or later, but didn't know exactly when."

With that belief, Wang studied at night, reading all the books available to him and learning English by listening to radio programs.

When the announcement he had waited for finally arrived, it was earlier than anticipated. On the evening of Oct 12, Wang heard on the village broadcast system that the exam would be revived and held in mid-December.

"I was so excited, knowing that it was an opportunity to change my life," he said.

Having passed the exam, Wang studied English and American Literature at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies in Guangzhou, Guangdong province. After graduation, he became an official at the Ministry of Commerce.

In 1984, he traveled to Canada to study for a master's and a doctorate in business administration, and then worked in senior positions for a number of large companies. In the mid-1990s, he returned to China and started several businesses.

Now, as director of a think tank called the Center for China and Globalization, chairman of the China Global Talents Society and a consultant to the State Council, China's Cabinet, Wang sees the 1977 revival of the exam as the starting point of all his rich, horizon-expanding experiences.

"If not for the gaokao that year, none of those things would have happened," he said.

Chilblains and classes

In 1977, Tang Min was a 24-year-old math teacher at a middle school in Nanning, the capital of the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region. He took the exam together with his students and was admitted by the math department of Wuhan University in Hubei province.

"Twenty-five was the upper age limit for examinees that year, and I was already 24. I treated it as my last opportunity to take the exam, so I seized every minute, trying to make the best preparations," said Tang, now a macroeconomic researcher and a State Council consultant.

Because the gaokao had been suspended for a about decade, large numbers of people who should have already taken it flocked to sit the exam, leading to a glut of examinees in the first few years after it was revived.

In addition to teachers and students sitting the exam together, siblings of different ages took the exam at the same time.

Liu Haifeng and his younger brother prepared for the exam in the 6-square-meter bedroom they shared. They had just two months for revision.

"Our families, particularly our parents, showed full support. My brother and I were exempted from housework so that every minute could be saved for study," he said.

Students such as Liu, who planned to pursue arts-based academic paths at college, were tested in four subjects, similar to today's gaokao: Chinese, math, politics, and a combination of history and geography.

Chinese was Liu's strength, so he didn't need much preparation, but math, history and geography were his weak points because those subjects weren't taught when his generation was at high school. He had to learn from scratch, using outdated, poorly printed textbooks, the only learning materials available at the time.

"It was during the prep that I learned the names of many national capitals for the first time. For example, I learned that Budapest is the capital of Hungary - I hadn't known those things before."

He recalled that almost all middle schools offered free classes to help examinees learn and review lessons.

"So many people came to the classes that the lecture rooms were unable to hold them all, resulting in some having to stand outside at the window to listen to the teachers," he said.

"However, no one complained. It seemed as though everyone was filled with energy and hope, and thirsty for knowledge. The atmosphere was really fantastic," he said, adding that although he often had chilblains on his hands during the harsh winter, he doesn't remember feeling cold.

Retrospective

According to Wang Huiyao, a member of the Class of '77 who now runs a think tank that formulates policies related to spotting talents, things often become clearer when people look back.

"Compared with a lot of young people who had spent three, five or even 10 years working in the countryside, I was really lucky because I was young and had only recently left school. That meant I still had a sense of learning when the gaokao was revived," he said.

"If the exam had been revived a few years later, perhaps the learning abilities of people my age would have been weakened by the long days of farm work, and we may have missed out on the opportunity to attend college."

He said students who passed the gaokao in 1977 and the years that followed were the executors of the reform and opening-up policy, and they benefited by becoming senior officials and influential figures during the process.

Now that many of them have turned 60 and have retired, he feels it's time to look back, sum up and leave a legacy.

To do that, he compiled a book, The Three Classes of 1977 to 1979: Memories of Chinese College Students. Published in 2014, the book invited 38 outstanding students from the "new three classes" - including the writer Liu Zhenyun, Xu Xiaoping, cofounder of the New Oriental Education & Technology Group, and Chen Pingyuan, professor of Chinese literature at Peking University - to tell their stories.

Wang plans to publish an updated version of the book later this year. He has invited members of the "three new classes" to share their experiences and commemorate the 40th anniversary of an epochal event in their lives.

Tang Min said members of the Class of 1977 and even those of 1978 and 1979 are special, but their achievements should not be exaggerated.

In his opinion, though many people from the group became elites in many walks of life in China, very few became world-famous scholars or successful enterprisers.

"I think we serve as a link between the past and the future; we are more like the forerunners or pathfinders, pushing forward reform and opening-up along with China's social and economic development," he said.

Contact the writer at zhaoxinying@chinadaily.com.cn

Students take the gaokao in 1977, Beijing.Xinhua

Students prepare for this year's gaokao in Lianyungang, Jiangsu province.Si Wei/china Daily

(China Daily 06/07/2017 page1)
Authorities conclude investigation of parlor where 18 people died

A total of 22 people were punished in connection with a fire that killed 18 people in Zhejiang province in February, the province's work safety watchdog said in an online statement announcing the results of its investigation on Tuesday.

One official was dismissed and two others were demoted. Ten others received lesser punishments, including demerits and admonishment.

Two of the victims were employees of the foot massage parlor that burned in Tiantai county, Taizhou city; the others were customers. The blaze, which occurred on Feb 5, also injured 18 other people.

Li Hua, Party chief of the Tiantai county fire brigade, was dismissed. Ma Lingguang, former Party chief of the brigade, and Gao Yunpeng, a former staff officer of the brigade, were demoted, the Zhejiang Work Safety Administration said.

It also said three officials, including the deputy secretary-general of the Taizhou city government, Ying Zhengnan, who was working as deputy head of Tiantai at the time of the fire, have been given demerits on their records.

Nine people, including shareholders of the parlor and heads of companies who were involved in the parlor's construction and decoration, have been in custody for criminal investigation. In addition to the potential criminal charges, the nine should shoulder the civil compensation to the victims, the administration said.

Investigators attributed the fire to malfunctioning electro-thermal film in a sauna that resulted in excess heat. The parlor resorted to deceit to get its operating permission from the authorities and also put the sauna into use after ignoring authorities' requirement to rectify problems. The lack of firefighting knowledge on the part of the parlor's employees made the situation worse, the investigation found.

The sauna malfunctioned three times from 2015 to last year, but after the malfunction in October, the parlor failed to take corrective measures, the investigation found.

There were 78 people, including 48 customers, in the parlor when the fire broke out. An employee named Xiong Shouxin tried but failed to put out the blaze with a fire extinguisher after a customer called for help. Only after finding the fire was out of control, Xiong left the parlor to shout to customers on the second floor to get out, the authorities said.

Managers failed to train employees in emergency procedures or hold evacuation exercises after it went into operation in 2014, the authorities said.
Ten Chinese police officers are working with Italian counterparts in Italy, assisting with cases involving Chinese tourists, the Ministry of Public Security said on Tuesday.

The officers, divided into four groups, are joining Italian officers in patrols of scenic spots in Rome, Milan, Florence and Naples, to help deter crimes against Chinese tourists from June 5 to 25.

During the patrols, Italian officers will have a hotline to the Chinese officers to help Italian police deal with security issues involving Chinese tourists, the ministry said in a statement.

"Joint police patrols are an effective means to establish mutual trust. They are aimed at protecting the interests of Chinese tourists overseas, and will help expand and deepen Sino-Italian law enforcement cooperation," said Liao Jinrong, director of the ministry's international cooperation bureau.

The Chinese officers were selected by the ministry from various cities. They will receive Italian language training before being sent overseas.

In recent years, increasing numbers of Chinese tourists have gone to Europe, including Italy, and it's inevitable that more cases arise in which they are targeted by criminals - theft of property or robbery, for example.

Figures from the China National Tourism Administration show that more than 800,000 Chinese and Italian tourists visited each other's countries last year.

According to the ministry, the Chinese police don't have law enforcement power in Italy, and during the patrols they may not carry weapons. But they can offer advice and assist in handling cases involving Chinese people.

In June 2014, Meng Jianzhu, China's top security chief, paid a visit to Italy, and the two countries signed a memorandum of understanding about setting up joint patrols in tourism spots during the peak season.

Under the agreement, four Chinese police officers first appeared in Rome and Milan for joint patrols in May last year. Then, from April 24 to May 7, four Italian police officers participated in joint patrols with Chinese police in tourist attractions in Beijing and Shanghai - the first foreign police officers to carry out joint patrols in China.

Ettore Francesco Sequi, Italy's ambassador to China, said in an earlier interview that Italy welcomes and supports the joint patrol program, which will "play an active role in beefing up bilateral safety cooperation".
Editor's note: In the run-up to the 19th Communist Party of China National Congress, China Daily sent six reporters to villages nationwide to live for a month and take a look at how people are working to ensure that China's poverty eradication plan succeeds.

The first recreational vehicle park in Gansu province is becoming increasingly popular with tourists.

"The number of tourists at the park has continued to increase this year, and almost all the vehicles were booked in May," said Wang Qiang, a manager at Huaqiao RV Camp.

"We received more than 200 visitors during the three-day Dragon Boat Festival."

The park in Huaqiao, Kangxian county, opened in October and occupies more than 4 hectares. It features 12 detached camping trailers, along with a number of parking places to accommodate people who drive their own RVs. The trailers provide accommodations for more than 30 visitors. Huaqiao also provides a camping area for tents, Wang said.

The RV park, funded by the Gansu Provincial Highway Aviation Tourism Investment Group, also includes a visitor's center that caters to tourists, and is equipped with water taps and areas where visitors can enjoy barbecues, he said.

"It's part of a major effort to improve tourism facilities in Kangxian," said Shen Xiaoxuan, deputy publicity chief of the county.

Over the past several years, Kangxian has focused on developing tourism to help its villages climb out of poverty, and has become a model for Gansu, he said.

Nearly half of Huaqiao's 774 residents are engaged with tourism in some fashion, whether through restaurants, hotels or selling local agricultural products, said Shi Wanlong, an official of Changba township, which governs Huaqiao.

Wang said most of the visitors are from Lanzhou, the provincial capital, which is about 500 kilometers from the village, nearby cities such as Tianshui and cities in neighboring Sichuan province.

"We expect business will remain at peak levels through the summer," he said.

Yang Zhen, a tourist from Lanzhou, said he likes the RV park because it provides different forms of accommodation, so visitors can have different experiences.

"Tourists can stay in an RV for a night, or they can put up a tent," he said. "Compared with some other RV parks in Gansu, this site is best for tourists. The weather here never gets too hot or too cold, and people can camp all year round."

Yang said he thinks the site will attract more tourists as the infrastructure improves.

"It only takes four or five hours to get here from Lanzhou by highway," he said. "People are becoming more affluent and have more time for leisure, and more people in China are enjoying road trips."
Song Miqiu, a fraud suspect who fled China, is escorted from an aircraft upon his return. [Provided to China Daily]

A fugitive suspected of conning Chinese coin collectors out of 600 million yuan ($88 million) has been brought back to China after being detained in Indonesia.

Song Miqiu, who also goes by the name Zhang Jian, is accused of selling fake shares in his company and running a pyramid scheme, according to a statement from the Ministry of Public Security on Tuesday.

Since November 2012, Song allegedly led a group in hawking wuxingbi, which he touted as a collectible gold coin that would rise sharply in value, the ministry said. The public security authority in Hunan province launched an investigation into Song's operation in December 2013, which prompted the suspect to flee abroad, it said.

"We followed the case closely and dispatched police officers several times to find Song overseas," the statement said. "We passed his name to Interpol as a most-wanted fugitive in March 2016."

Song had traveled around Southeast Asia by offering bribes to local officials and providing fake identity documents, it said.

"Although he was in foreign countries, he still led the group to get profits by making use of the internet to promote pyramid selling projects, such as wuxingbi," the statement said.

China Central Television reported that Song, 40, a native of Heilongjiang province, established a reward system to attract coin buyers. His company also made use of social media to dupe residents.

Interest in the coins reportedly increased this year, despite being identified in 2013 by the ministry and State Administration for Industry and Commerce as a pyramid scheme.

"To fight pyramid selling and the coins, we launched a campaign and arrested a large number of suspects across the country," the Ministry of Public Security said.

"At the same time, we also took the initiative to contact police in Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia to investigate Song. He was found hiding in Indonesia in May, and thanks to police in that country we finally seized him."




China plans to digitize the management of its grain industry by 2020 to enhance food security, as grain transportation between provinces and the amount of imported grain have been high in recent years, State authorities said.

One national management platform and 20 provincial ones will be established by the end of next year, and the whole country will be covered by a digital network by 2020, Zhang Wufeng, head of the State Administration of Grain, said on Tuesday during a national video conference on grain security.

A foundation has already been laid for the national digital network. In Anhui province, for example, one provincial-level and 16 prefecture-level platforms have been established, and 100 "smart" grain depots have been connected online, he said.

He asked that more digital and information technology be used to monitor the operation of grain depots, and keep watch on safety and market management so that the warning system can be improved and hazards can be responded to more efficiently.

Grain transfers between provinces have been kept at around 170 million metric tons in the past two years, while more than 100 million tons of grain have been imported annually in the past three years, he said, noting that 85 percent of soybeans in the domestic market are imported.

"All of these have raised the need to stabilize the grain market and ensure supplies, especially emergency supplies," he said.

While praising the development of China's grain industry, Zhang said the industry still faces challenges, including an incomplete legal system and a shortage of supervisory officials below the State level with the necessary knowledge.

After a grain safety project was launched in 2015, 75 million tons of new grain reserves were constructed, while depots for another 120 million tons have been renovated, he said.

According to China Grain Reserve Corp, known as Sinograin, grain depots at 336 of its subsidiaries can be monitored with the help of 56,000 surveillance cameras. Its rate of reserve grain loss has decreased from 1.33 percent to less than 1 percent.

While a grain law has yet to be enacted, some of the current regulations for grain circulation and reserve, which were enacted at least a decade ago, need to be updated in line with the current situation, Zhang said.
A section of the Great Wall in Beijing is renovated in May. [Wu Jiang/For China Daily]

The Chinese Academy of Cultural Heritage released draft guidance for Great Wall renovations on Tuesday, setting different criteria for each type of wall.

The draft calls for more use of old materials and traditional craftsmanship rather than treating the renovations as general construction projects.

Better management and supervision are also required.

Also on Tuesday, a group of cultural heritage experts reached a consensus on "the principle of minimum intervention" with regard to renovations of the Great Wall.

"For sections that have collapsed or disappeared over time, their layouts and historical information need to be maintained during renovations, but no major reconstruction should be launched," according to a consensus document agreed to at a meeting in Shanhaiguan, Hebei province, which is known for Shanhaiguan Pass, a key section of the Great Wall.

"The focus of renovation is to strengthen the structure and eliminate safety hazards. A priority is to maintain the integrity, authenticity and historical landscape of the Great Wall," it said.

Whether or not to rebuild the disintegrating parts of the wall has long been debated in China. After 1949, the country began to systematically restore the wall, followed by many reconstruction projects of sections in the 1980s.

"The Great Wall represents Chinese people's national spirit and patriotism," said Chai Xiaoming, director of the Chinese Academy of Cultural Heritage. "So, public sentiment demands that it stay intact rather than in broken sections.

"However, most sections of the wall are not well-preserved tourist destinations like Shanhaiguan, but are broken stones and bricks. It's impossible and not necessary to reconstruct them all."

The controversy reached a climax in September when images of a section in Suizhong county, Liaoning province, about 60 kilometers from Shanhaiguan, went viral online.

The photos showed a flat protective layer, like new cement, had been added to the top of a crumbling section. Its appearance stirred anger among netizens.

"Today's facades of the Great Wall have a character given by history and nature, and we cannot simply call it 'being damaged'," said Song Xinchao, deputy director of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage.

"Compared with leaving the wall broken, people will feel even more insulted seeing the national symbol being restored in the wrong way, because that is even bigger damage," he said. "A good renovation should prevent endangered sections from continuing to fall apart."

Zhao Peng, a renovation architect, believes more training programs are needed. Higher costs and a shortage of highly skilled workers are still major barriers to using traditional methods.

From 2005 to 2016, more than 200 major renovation projects were launched along the wall, but they only covered about 2 percent of its length, Chai said.

"Daily maintenance plays a more important role than renovation in regard to protection," he said. "Archaeological research, as well as monitoring and warning systems, will also help."




In China, the gaokao has long been called "the most important examination".

That was particularly true decades ago when the economy was underdeveloped and social resources were in short supply. Those who passed the exam in 1977 and attended college obtained decent, government-allocated jobs, becoming respected cadres and leading better-than-average lives.

But that's not the reason the revival of the exam, after a long suspension, deserves to be commemorated.

Instead, it is remembered because it reinforced people's faith in the power of knowledge and their respect for talent, which opened a new era of rapid economic and social development.

I think the sense of value reflected by the exam's revival is still meaningful, even though the country has become the world's second-largest economy and living standards have improved.

In recent years, there have been many media reports, online posts and much anecdotal evidence about people who had no higher education but still made big fortunes in business. Conversely, some people with master's degrees or even doctorates have failed to land well-paid jobs. That led some people to conclude that knowledge and academic qualifications are unnecessary for success.

In my opinion, that line of thinking is flawed.

Looking at the history of human development, we find that each economic development and example of social progress or technological innovation has been fueled by knowledge and talent. Many people believe that China's prosperity has benefitted greatly from faith in education and talent.

Can you imagine what the China of the future would be like if today's younger generation rush into business rather than going to school? Will the economy continue to develop? Will people's lives continue to improve?

Maybe for a short period, but not in the long run.

The significance of knowledge and talent may be overshadowed temporarily, but it becomes self-evident as time passes - that's the lesson I have learned from the revival of the gaokao 40 years ago.
Luo Ren, 64, took the gaokao in 1977 and was admitted to Beijing Forestry University. After graduation, he became a researcher at Chongqing Academy of Forestry and was later chief scientist for the Chongqing Forestry Science Society, leading several major projects. He retired in 2013.

The happiest day of my life was in March 1978, the day I received an offer of a place at university.

It was a Sunday, and I was in a remote village in the Xishuangbanna Dai autonomous prefecture, Yunnan province.

I had been sent there in 1971 as a 17-year-old as part of a campaign that saw urban young people quit school to live and work in rural areas during the "cultural revolution" (1966-76).

I was working as a lumberjack and construction worker. I got up early and went to do some lumber work, and then I headed to the nearest information center to find out whether I'd been admitted to college or not.

An acquaintance I ran into on the dirt road told me a friend had received an offer, and he asked whether I had too. I said not yet. Then, in the afternoon, I came across another friend who had also received an offer. But I still hadn't.

I'd spent my first two years in Xishuangbanna drinking beer, fighting or doing nothing, and by 20 I was feeling lost. I didn't want to spend the rest of my life in a remote area cutting down trees. My mother, a law professor before the "cultural revolution", encouraged me to keep learning, and my girlfriend, who was back in my hometown of Chongqing, said if I stayed in Yunnan, there would be no future for us. So I brought some books from home and began to study after work. The gaokao was to be my way out.

After the movie that night, I walked home, which was 5 kilometers away and usually took about an hour. I felt there was little hope, but I tried to comfort myself. It's normal to fail once, I thought to myself.

The road was covered with dirt, and there were no street lamps. It was dark; there was only the moon, stars and the glimmering light from my kerosene lamp. When I got close to home, I heard someone shouting: "Your offer is here. It arrived this morning."

My feelings were a mixture of ecstasy and relief. My neighbors rushed out of their rooms and wished me luck. After they left, I headed to my friend's place, which was 3 km away. I had the same kerosene lamp, but it didn't feel dark anymore.

My heart was pounding all the way. When I arrived, it was about 3 am. My friend was sleeping, but I shouted to wake him up: "I got my offer."

I telegraphed my parents and told them the good news. At the time, I didn't even know where my school was, or what major I would study.

All I knew was my life would be turned upside down, in a good way. I'd been given a gift.

Luo Ren spoke with Zhao Xinying.
Major reforms to the gaokao and the college admission system since 1977.

1983

The Ministry of Education devised a policy to recruit students and send them to work in areas where they were needed. The policy was carried out to ensure areas and industries that were less attractive could also have well-educated workers.

1989

Colleges and universities introduced tuition fees of about 200 yuan ($30) a year on average. The average annual income for an urban dweller at the time was 1,376 yuan. Tuition fees have been increased several times since then, with students paying an average of 2,769 yuan a year by 1999, when the average annual income for an urban dweller was 5,854 yuan.

1999

The admission rate started to rise sharply after the Education Ministry released a plan to boost literacy in the 21st century. The ministry set a goal to increase the higher education gross enrollment ratio to 15 percent by 2010, which would mean that 15 in every 100 people ages 18 to 22 would attend college.

To realize the goal, since then, the university admission rate set by the ministry has not fallen below 50 percent, although people have blamed this for the difficulties some graduates face in landing a job after college. In 1999, the ratio was 10.5 percent. Last year, it reached 40 percent.

2000

Several provinces and cities, including Beijing and Shanghai, started holding a spring college entrance exam in addition to the one in summer to give students another opportunity to pass. Previously, the exam was held once a year. Over the next decade, more provinces and cities followed suit, although some canceled the spring exam after a few years.

2001

The Education Ministry removed its restrictions on age and marital status for registering for the gaokao. Previously, only unmarried people younger than 25 were allowed to take the test. The rule change saw older people - some age 80 and older - eagerly head for the exam halls.

2003

More than 20 prestigious universities, including Tsinghua and Peking universities, won approval to start independent recruitment, although the Education Ministry required that students admitted this way should not account for more than 5 percent of enrollment in any single year.

Higher education institutes in Hong Kong were also allowed to recruit students from the mainland, while the gaokao was moved from July to June, as the former is the hottest month for many parts of China.

2014

The State Council released a gaokao reform plan that stated only three subjects would be tested: Chinese, math and English. Other subjects, such as geography, history, biology, physics and chemistry, would instead be tested at high school, and students could take these exams twice, according to the plan. Previously, the gaokao covered six or more subjects. Pilot projects started in Shanghai and Zhejiang in 2014 and will be implemented nationwide.
TAIPEI - Twelve people were injured in a gas explosion at a food processing factory in Taiwan's New Taipei City Wednesday morning, according to the local fire department.

The explosion ripped through the factory at around 11:27 am, with five men and seven women hospitalized.

More than 140 firefighters and 53 emergency vehicles arrived at the scene.

Preliminary investigation showed the explosion was caused by a gas leak.

Further investigation is underway.
BEIJING -- Chinese President Xi Jinping left Beijing Wednesday afternoon for a state visit to Kazakhstan and a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

Xi was invited by Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev. He will also attend the 17th meeting of the SCO Council of Heads of State and the opening ceremony of the World Expo in Astana during his stay.

His entourage includes Wang Huning, member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and director of the Policy Research Office of the CPC Central Committee; Li Zhanshu, member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, member of the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee and director of the General Office of the CPC Central Committee; and State Councilor Yang Jiechi.
The 2017 China International Skills Competition opened in Shanghai and neighboring Suzhou, Jiangsu province, today.

More than 240 contestants from 35 countries and regions will compete today and tomorrow in 21 categories, including woodwork, vehicle repair, mobile robotics, hairdressing and baking.

Seventy-six contestants are from China.

Shanghai is in the running along with Switzerland to host WorldSkills 2021, which is a competition held by WorldSkills, a global organization that promotes skills excellence and development. The final decision will be made in October.

"All countries require a vast pool of skilled workers who have been trained to use their heads, hearts and hands," said Simon Bartley, president of WorldSkills International, the organizations nonprofit member association.

"Work that concentrates on using hands is really important. Without it, a country cannot survive or prosper economically in the global market."
An Austrian man has managed to make paper-cut works after spending three weeks studying the skill in Shijiazhuang, capital of North China's Hebei province.

Seventy-seven-year-old painter Yahake (a translated name) was impressed by the delicate Chinese paper-cuts and went to Zhou Shuying Paper-cuts Art Museum in Shijiazhuang last month to learn how to master it.

Zhou Shuying, an inheritor of the Hebei Yuxian county paper-cuts, a national intangible cultural heritage, taught him how to sharpen a knife for paper-cutting and cut different designs.

After studying, Yahake made some paper-cuts depicting butterflies and flowers.

He hopes he can learn more in the future and hold a personal paper-cut works exhibition in Austria.

Contact the writer at: zhangyu1@chinadaily.com.cn
Work finished on the second phase of the Qingshan river beach project in Wuhan, capital of Hubei province, on June 1, according to the city government.

The beach along the Yangtze River stretches 7.5 kilometers from Luojia Port near the Erqi River Bridge to Fenwu Dam near the Tianxingzhou River Bridge.

Fu Minggui, general manager of Wuhan Bishui Group, which is involved in constructing the beach, described the river beach as "beautiful" because the original landscape has largely been preserved.

The Qingshan district government has spent 10 years renovating the river beach, gradually developing it into an urban landscape with flood defenses.

A levee made of reinforced concrete, measuring 14 meters high and 0.6 meters wide, was built as part of the project to prevent flooding.

According to the Wuhan land and resources bureau, the city will improve the beach along the Yangtze by integrating transport and tourism services.

The authority said a beautiful scenic belt along the river in Wuhan will be nearing completion by the end of 2019.
BEIJING - Senior Communist Party of China (CPC) official Liu Yunshan Wednesday met with representatives of media from BRICS countries who are in Beijing for the BRICS Media Forum.

Liu, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, praised the cooperation among BRICS countries over the past decade, saying that it had significantly boosted global economic growth, improved global governance and promoted the practice of democracy in international relations.

As China hosts the Ninth BRICS Summit in September, Liu said he hoped the member states of BRICS would further gather consensus and promote BRICS cooperation to a new level.

He hoped BRICS media would carry forward the spirit of BRICS, deepen mutually beneficial cooperation, tell good stories of BRICS countries and inject more positive energy into BRICS partnership.

This year's forum, with the theme "Deepening BRICS Media Cooperation, Promoting Fair and Just International Public Opinion," was proposed by Xinhua and jointly organized with mainstream media from Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa.
The PLA Air Force will begin recruiting this year for a new generation of female pilots, the official PLA Daily reported on Wednesday.

Sources with the Air Force's pilot recruitment bureau quoted by the paper said 35 candidates will be selected from high school graduates in 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions.

The recruits who pass years of stringent training will go on to become the People's Liberation Army planned 11th generation of female pilots.

Applicants need to have been born between Aug 31, 1997, and Aug 31, 2000, and be between 165 and 185 centimeters tall. Acceptable weight is between 85 and 120 percent of the Chinese people's standard weight, which varies in accordance with age and height. There are also vision requirements, according to the report.

The last time the Air Force recruited female pilots was in 2013. The most notable differences between this year's recruitment and the one in 2013 are that the height ceiling has been raised from 175 cm to 185 cm, and the area where candidates are being drawn from has expanded to 31 provincial-level regions instead of 20.

Wang Ya'nan, editor of Aerospace Knowledge magazine, told China Daily that the height restriction has been relaxed because Chinese women on average have gotten taller and the military does not want to narrow the field.

Applicants must take part in the national college entrance exam and their total scores must meet requirements set by local education authorities to qualify them for Air Force selection, which will start this month and end in July, PLA Daily said.

Fu Qianshao, an aircraft expert with the PLA Air Force, said the courses and training for female pilot candidates are same as those for male candidates. They will learn from textbooks, take part in flight training on basic and advanced trainer aircraft and will graduate after at least six years at the Air Force Aviation University and flight academies.

China enrolled its first female pilots in 1951 and since then about 580 belonging to 10 generations have joined the Air Force. The first seven generations of female pilots flew only transport planes.

In the selection for the eighth generation in 2005, the Air Force began to open the post of fighter jet pilot to applicants and more than 200,000 female graduates from high schools around the country applied. A total of 35 were selected and sent to the PLA Air Force No 3 Flight Academy and 16 of them graduated and became fighter jet pilots.

The ninth generation of female pilots, also numbering 16, were taught to fly fighter jets, graduated in 2013 and also joined the Air Force's combat units.

The most recent generation, the 10th, including 40 women, joined the Air Force in 2013. By now, 13 have been disqualified in training while 27 completed their first solo flight in March, according to the Air Force.
Shao Yang took gaokao in 2007 and 2008 and joined Beijing Jiaotong University

Shao is now the lead engineer of super high-rise projects at China Construction Third Engineering Bureau Co Ltd in Beijing. He took gaokao twice as he wanted to get admission in his favorite university.

In 2007 summer, Shao sat for his first gaokao at his hometown, Northeast China's Jilin province, but his score was 5 points lower than the cut-off rate of the university where he wanted to study.

As he didn't want to go to any other university, Shao decided to sit for gaokao once more, and he returned to high school for another attempt.

"By then I wasn't nervous or anxious like I during my first attempt," Shao said.

In 2008, Jilin changed its enrollment policy that students could apply to universities only after gaokao. The new policy has released the stress of students, and Shao prepared for the test whole-heartedly. He finally scored 639 points in 2008, 40 points higher than he first did.

After negotiating with family members and teachers, Shao put Beijing Jiaotong University as his first choice, and one month later, he received the enrollment notice from the university.

"Before gaokao, I lived in a small city where my life was so simple that it revolved around school and home. I had a small social circle," he said.

"After gaokao, I came to Beijing, it was a new start of my life. In 2009, I was a student representative of Beijing Jiaotong University in the parade of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. I was so excited when I walked by the Tiananmen Rostrum."

Now his busy work has made Shao feel life more fulfilling.

"Life consists of lots of nodes. Gaokao is a big node for me. It has introduced me to the outside world and to a larger stage. I have really stepped up with my dream," Shao said.
Fan Yingying, head of gynecology department in Ningbo Medical Center Lihuili Eastern Hospital, Zhejiang province

Fan was a local of Ningbo, Zhejiang province.

She graduated from the Ningbo No 5 High School on July 23, 1977, and was sent to do rural work at Feishi village in Jiangbei district of Ningbo. Two months later, Fan received a notice from her teacher that she could take gaokao test.

"I was the class monitor and the secretary of the Communist Youth League branch. The teacher knew me and told me to take the test. The school also opened a class for about 50 students to prepare for the gaokao."

Fan still remembers many details of taking the test. "The test venue was in the Ningbo No 1 High School, but I did not know the way, and I was 10 minutes late when I got to the venue. I heard someone was also late. According to the rule, students would be disqualified for being late 15 minutes. Now, when I think about it, I get a chill."

After the test, Fan returned to the village in Jiangbei. "I was so calm at that time. My parents expected me to stay home to wait for the enrollment notice. But I returned to the village. I did not expect the test would change my life too much, and I treated it like a very normal test. I had even filled my application carelessly. I clearly remember that teachers told us that the enrollment scores of medical universities would be high and asked us not to apply. I did not apply to a medical university, but agreed to follow the assignment."

It might be the assignment agreement that changed her life. "One day in December, I was working in the village when someone told me that I have been accepted by the Zhejiang Medical University (now, School of Medicine under Zhejiang University).."

"I did not think about being a doctor at that time, but I had no conflict. An unknown life was waiting for me in the university, so I was happy and excited," she said.

When she went to the university in March 1978, she knew that she had made the right decision.

"I found that I loved the lessons. While some students were scared to take the anatomy lessons, I wasn't. When I did not understand some questions, I would return to the classroom in the evening. When I went to hospital for clinical practice, my teacher told me that I am born to be a surgeon, suggesting me to work in the surgical department or gynecology and obstetrics department."

"There was a shortage of doctors at that time, especially obstetricians. I became an obstetrician. Although I was offered chances to move to other departments, but I love this field and do not want to move."

After graduating from the university in December 1982, Fan was assigned to the Zhoushan People's Hospital, and in 1995, she was transferred to the Ningbo Medical Center Lihuili Eastern Hospital.

"I was lucky that gaokao was resumed just after I graduated from high school. It was much easier for me to take the test than former graduates. Luckily, I was assigned to a medical university and I love my job. If it was not gaokao, my life would be very different."


Xu Dongsheng took the college entrance examination in 1995 and joined Shantou University.

Xu Dongsheng, a teacher in China University of Political Science and Law, is from Wenzhou city, East China's Zhejiang province. She took the college entrance examination in 1995, when the enrollment rate was much lower than that of today.

Under great pressure, candidates tried their best to prepare for the examination. Many schoolmates of Xu Dongsheng used to get up at 5 am to prepare. Before the first class, the sounds of reading books were heard everywhere from the corridor outside of the classrooms to the trees on the grounds.

They also studied until late night. After the lights out in the dormitory at 10 pm, students turned on flashlights in quilts to read books until the dormitory keeper finished his/her round at 11 pm. Then students got up and turned on lights to read books until one or two am.

In 1994, 37 key universities began to practice a new system which required students to pay a part of tuition fee and find jobs by their own after graduation. Even so, people's passion for taking college entrance examination never faded.

At the same time, peoples attitude towards taking college entrance examination diverged. In the late 1990s, the manufacturing industry embraced its golden development era in Wenzhou and many entrepreneurs became rich.

"At that time many people started thinking that college education was a waste. Some people said 'making atomic bomb is no better than selling tea eggs'," said Xu.

"But most people still attached importance to the college entrance examination, because it gave many the opportunity to study further and experience a different life," she said.

What about those who did not take or fail the college entrance examination?

"Many of my schoolmates who failed the college entrance examination became successful," said Xu. "Some of them started their own business and gained success. Some others went to graduate schools later and found dream jobs. "

"Though the college entrance examination is sacred, it is not the end of the world," she said.
Weng Zhentao

Chairman of the board of Ningbo Qianpu Mechanism, Electricity and Hydraulics Technology Development Company, China Excellent Entrepreneur of Privately-owned Technology Company

In 1977, Weng Zhentao was working at a food factory in Ningbo, East China's Zhejiang province, when he heard about the resumption of the college entrance examination, gaokao. It was his teacher who found him and persuaded him to prepare for the examination.

"Since primary school, I always came first in my class. It was my dream to take the college entrance examination and go to university," said Weng. "We all tried our best because we all knew that it was the opportunity to change our lives."

Candidates aged from 16 to 33 entered the examination room on a cold wintery day. Weng was 18 years old.

After the examination, candidates had to fill out an application specifying their university and major choices. "At the time, a father of my classmate suggested to me to learn hydraulics as it was a new and promising technology," Weng said. He was impressed by idea and applied for the hydraulic transmission control major in Zhejiang University.

However, things did not go as planned the first time he entered the college. "I did very poorly in the first test in the college. I did not even understand some questions and in the English exam scored zero score," he said.

He decided then and there to do better. He began waking up at 5 am and started learning English words while exercising. After lunch, he stopped took a nap and studied all the way to 11 pm.

"At the time, everyone studied hard. My everyday life was confined to classroom to dining room and to dormitory," he said. His scores got better and later his average marks in all courses rose over 95.

Weng graduated from the university in 1982 and worked as a technician at a plastic machinery plant in Ningbo. Four years later, he made a great innovation in the plastic machinery industry and achieved national patent. "The innovation is for the development of our nation and country," he said.

In 2004, he founded the Ningbo Qianpu Mechanism, Electricity and Hydraulics Technology Development Company and its sales volume exceeded 100 million yuan ($14.7 million) in 2007.

As the first batch of graduates since the college entrance examination resumed, Weng closely followed to the development of Zhejiang University and nurtured talents.

He founded the "Huaye awards education foundation" for excellent teachers in 1997, donated one million yuan to support overseas exchange studies for teachers and students in 2007 and donated 2.5 million yuan for the construction of academic buildings in Zhejiang University in 2011.




From 1978, Gan Fubao began collecting the test papers of national college entrance exam, or gaokao, every year.

Gan, who lives in Nanchang, East China's Jiangxi province, launched this quest to pay tribute to gaokao that changed his life when he was 30. He took the test in December 1977, and was admitted to Jiangxi University in 1978.

In August 1977, Deng Xiaoping, vice-premier in charge of culture and education, held a meeting with experts, including electrochemical scientist Zha Quanxing. Deng decided to resume gaokao that year at the meeting.

The resumption of gaokao after a decade-long suspension attracted more than 5.7 million applicants in 1977. The move reopened a channel for people to change their life and fate.

Many students who sat for the exam then later said the test changed their life forever. Writer Liu Zhenyun  the top scorer in arts in Henan province in 1978 - said if it were not for gaokao, he might still be carrying bricks.

Many students enrolled to a class of the Radio Engineering Department of Tsinghua University in 1978, who have become government officials, leaders of national labs and elites of Silicon Valley, believed their fates changed because of gaokao.

Along with the resumption of the gaokao, China launched the reform and opening-up. The students enrolled by colleges and universities, considered the "God's favored one", were urgently needed for the country's reconstruction.

It is hard to overstate the importance of gaokao. Students at primary schools, middle and high schools across the country all spend years preparing for that one exam.

Gaokao helps colleges and universities choose right candidates who would be engaged in the country's reform and opening-up after graduation.

Gaokao has changed a lot in the past decades, such as the scores calculation, test subjects, papers and time. The changes reflect the development of Chinese social education concepts.

Following the country's higher education reform in four decades, more colleges and universities were established; the admission rate has increased every year. This does not conflict with the selection of elites in the past through gaokao.

China needs more talent, and gaokao is not aimed at blocking some from higher education but to find right students for colleges and universities.

Every summer, gaokao attracts people's attention. There are many special things prepared for gaokao, including special rooms, cakes, porridge,etc., which shows that parents and students take it seriously.

People who are not students or parents also discuss the test papers in different provinces, regions and municipalities. Some even write articles on the exam.

China's rapid development has meant that people treat gaokao differently. Gaokao is no longer the "single-plank bridge". Now, students use their gaokao scores to apply to foreign universities.

Gaokao has started changing its past mode of deciding students' fates through a sole test. Now it comprehensively considers the quality of students in all aspects. Autonomous enrollment of colleges and universities is complement to gaokao.

The rapid development put forth new propositions. What kind of talent the era needs, how to realize the effective and rational utilization of educational resources, how to secure the education equality in rural and urban areas, eastern and western regions to the greatest extent? Being the powerful "baton," gaokao has to face the problems directly and give balanced answers.

Forty years have passed by in a flash, and some gaokao test-takers in the first batch are still working on their posts.

How lucky China is, most of the gaokao test-takers in past 40 years are either still contributing to the country's renovation on their posts or preparing to make their contributions.

Gaokao is still using its unique way to fuel the country's development.
For Liu Jiawei, Peking University is a place that is too far-fetched even for a dream.



He even missed the chance to be enrolled in the best high school in his province just by one point in the exam. So he secretly decided to work hard for the highest college dream in high school.

At that time, university's independent enrollment had just begun a few years ago. College admission in such a fashion was brand new, but it required long preparation through several rounds of tests in different places by students.

"I was one of the top three students in my school. Once I heard of the opportunity, I started the preparation without any hesitation," recalled Liu.

With bonus points he secured from a national writing competition, Liu finally fulfilled his dream by being admitted by Peking University in 2011.

During the four years in college, Liu would join the university's independent enrollment team in Northeast China's Jilin province as a volunteer every year, providing consultation for high school students. The experience made Liu a witness to the destinies of many high school students, which also renewed his memory about gaokao.

"Gaokao is a like a big game, which sets clear goals and gives accurate responses. Every participant follows the same logic and works hard to increase their chances to be chosen," said Liu, "I often read books of philosopher Kant and Fyodor Dostoyevsky at that time, hoping to lead a simple life."

Liu was very accomplished during college, but he felt he could never work as hard as he did in high school preparing for gaokao, "For high school students, gaokao is the only option. But in college, making plans for the future is a question."

"I am thankful to work hard for gaokao," Liu said. For him, gaokao is a witness to his efforts in the first 20 years of his life and it also marks a starting point as well the foundation of his later life.


Projects open to private investors

China will lift restrictions on the participation in research programs, announced a senior science official on Monday. "We hope private firms will join key research plans [and support] research and transform [results into] achievements," Huang Wei, vice-minister of science and technology, told attendees of the opening ceremony for the 11th China International Private Equity Forum, which began in the northern port city of Tianjin. The government, companies and individuals should all play a part in ensuring diverse funding channels for innovation, he said. In this respect, in March, the ministries of finance, science and technology released a funding guideline for research projects. It said that government departments would cease to manage key projects and allow professional agencies to manage the funding.

Finance support for rural integration
By Ren Qi in Astana and An Baijie in Beijing | China Daily | Updated: 2017-06-07 07:35

China-Kazakhstan cooperation on jointly building the Belt and Road is helpful for the revival of the ancient Silk Road trade route, President Xi Jinping said in a message on Tuesday.

Xi's remarks were presented at a ceremony in Kazakhstan's capital, Astana, for the publication of Beautiful China and Beautiful Kazakhstan, a joint picture album with over 200 photos of the countries' natural scenery and people. The publication marks the connecting of China-proposed Silk Road Economic Belt with Kazakhstan's Bright Road new economic policy.

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev also sent a message.
BOGOTA - Emptying the bins of Colombia's capital, Jose Alberto Gutierrez one day found a copy of the classic novel Anna Karenina and kept it.

That was 20 years ago - and the garbage man continued to collect Bogota's discarded books, amassing 25,000 in a free library, swelled by donations.

"I realized that people were throwing books away in the rubbish. I started to rescue them," said Gutierrez.
In recent years, the annual summit meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization has grabbed increasing global attention due to its growing influence in regional affairs.

The upcoming meeting of the SCO Council of Heads of State in Astana, capital of Kazakhstan, will be no exception as it is expected to give the green light to Pakistan and India becoming members of the organization alongside the founders China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, and see the adoption of a convention on anti-extremism.

These crucial steps will further consolidate the organizational and institutional framework of the organization, enabling it to more effectively respond to the challenges confronting the region and the world at large.
High school students prepare for the exam in Baokang county, Hubei province. YANG TAO/VCG

Former top scorers on the national college entrance exam describe their understanding of the test's true meaning and consequences. Many say it's more about future options rather than guarantees. Wang Kaihao reports.

The pressure is on. The country's high school graduates are beginning one of the most important events of their lives on Wednesdaythe national college entrance exam, known as the gaokao in Chinese.

But its top scorers from previous years suggest the test results' impact on their futures may not exactly match their expectations later in life.

About 9.4 million students are taking this year's test, which lasts two to three days, depending on the province, Ministry of Education figures show.

Their scores will, indeed, largely decide their future. Only a small number of top scorers can get into elite universities.

Tsinghua University freshman Xiao A (not her real name) says the test enabled her to realize her childhood dream of entering a leading college.

"It tested my potential and proved to me that I'll succeed if I work hard," the 19-year-old tells China Daily via WeChat.

The student from a provincial capital in southern China earned over 700 points out of 750, the highest score among liberal arts students in the province last year.

"Not much changed after I got first place," she says.

"Some people around me are smarter. So, I have to continue to work hard."

She declines to offer tips for candidates in such a "casual chat".

But she did detail advice in a newspaper interview in her hometown last year. The story revealed she didn't only earn high grades in class but also joined extracurricular activities.

"We expected her to take the top score," her high school's head teacher says.
Conductor Tang Muhai conducts the first movement of Earth Requiem by Guan Xia. [Photo provided to China Daily]

The China National Symphony Orchestra held a concert to commemorate the centenary of Chinese conductor Li Delun (1917-2001), the father of classical music in China, at the National Center for the Performing Arts in Beijing.

Nine Chinese conductors who learned with or worked with maestro Li conducted at the event.

Tang Muhai started the concert by conducting the first movement of Earth Requiem composed by Guan Xia, the head of the China National Symphony Orchestra.

He was followed by Shao En conducting Beethoven's Symphony No 5, which Li performed with the Central Orchestra in 1977, right after the end of the "cultural revolution" (1966-76).

Then, Hu Yongyan conducted Mozart's Violin Concerto No 3 in G Major.

In 1999, Li conducted the CNSO featuring violinist Isaac Stern (1920-2001) in Beijing to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Stern's first trip to China.

Lyu Siqing (left) performs Mozart's Violin Concerto No 3 in G Major under the baton of Hu Yongyan (right). [Photo provided to China Daily]

In 1979, Stern became the first US musician to collaborate with the Central Symphony and teach master classes at Beijing's Central Conservatory of Music. The trip was covered in a documentary film, From Mao To Mozart and won the 1980 Academy Award for best documentary feature.

Yu Long, arguably China's best-known conductor in the world nowadays, conducted Tchaikovsky's Symphony No 6 in B Minor. In January 1958, Li conducted the piece at his first concert with the CNSO after he returned from the Moscow Conservatory.

(From right to left) Conductors Li Xincao and Han Zhongjie, 97, and Li Lu and Li Su, daughter and son of Li Delun. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Born into an official's family in Beijing, Li started to learn music when he joined the school orchestra of Fu Jen Catholic University of Peking where he majored in history.

In 1940, he was admitted to the Shanghai Music Institute to learn the cello.

He went to study conducting at the Moscow Conservatory from 1953 to 1957.

In the 1950s and '60s, he gave regular "weekend concerts" in Beijing to promote classical music. During the "cultural revolution", he initiated moves to make the yangbanxi (the eight revolutionary Peking Opera repertoire) into a symphonic piece to help the orchestra survive.
"Gradually, the logo was transformed from an ostentatious affection to an active fashion accessory. Most significantly, the logo itself was growing in size, ballooning from a three-quarter-inch emblem into a chest-sized marque."

Naomi Klein in her book No Logo (1999)

Before ready-to-wear became standard practice, made-to-measure was a common choice when it came to getting a piece of clothing. In the 1950s, it became popular among Parisian women to collect sewing patterns  the garment template released periodically in magazines  so they could bring the pattern to a tailor's shop or sew it themselves at home.

Desperately Seeking Susan (1985) poster [Photo/Courtesy of Orion Pictures]

However, self-sewn clothes had all but disappeared by the 1980s as ostentatious, showy styles took the lead. Attire became highly conspicuous, such as Madonna's garish look in the 1985 film Desperately Seeking Susan, Joan Collins's powerful woman's shoulder pads and the yuppies' preppy upscale styling that rose in parallel with the increase of wealth in many societies including the US, Britain and Hong Kong.

People seemed to be splashing heaps of cash on clothes and desired more visibility. Fashion companies smelled a business opportunity to increase their value by elevating their brand profiles, so they spent enormously on marketing and ad campaigns. Logos evolved from a differentiating name to a strong branding force and a status symbol.

A bag from the Louis Vuitton Monogram Colors collection [Photo/Courtesy of Louis Vuitton]

From the decadent '80s to today, fashion brands have embraced marketing with glamour and creativity, putting their logos under the spotlight. Eminent players in the '80s and '90s included emerging American jeans brands such as Jordache, Calvin Klein and Guess, which put their distinctive logos on the back pocket. Traditional French fashion houses such as Chanel, Christian Dior and Louis Vuitton have been huge marketers as well, in a quest to be at the top of those consumers' minds.

Caroline Vreeland and Shea Marie wear Tommy Hilfiger for autumn 2016 [Photo/Courtesy of Tommy Hilfiger]

In that era, the size of the logo grew, as well as the influence, from runway to off-the-rack. At London Fashion Week in 1996, Tommy Hilfiger famously dressed his models and rapper Treach (from then-prominent American hip-hop group Naughty by Nature) in giant logo T-shirts with the brand's signature colors, making a big statement for the label, Hilfiger sales nearly hit $500 million in 1996  a huge jump from $107 million in 1992.

Showing off logos became a key point in styling. When Calvin Klein launched its successful underwear campaigns in the early 1990s using topless, well-endowed male models such as Mark Wahlberg for its line of boxers, countless men (and certainly women, too) started to view the logo in a different light. Now it's possible to see any type of person sporting a Calvin Klein band around their waist, whether it's a Hollywood star, a plumber or your next-door neighbor.

Moschino womenswear, SS17 [Photo/Courtesy of Moschino]

Today, logos are prominent on the street  think the Nike swoosh, the Gucci double-G, the Chanel interlocking Cs, the Louis Vuitton monogram. Still others are turning to logo-less products, such as those by Japanese lifestyle brand Muji, whose name means "no-brand quality goods". Either way, whether you love or hate logos, you can be secure that youre not defined solely by what you wear.
Like the US' "baby boomers", China's "post-90s", born between 1990 and 2000, are often seen as a transformative generation.

Born well after the start of China' s market reforms, this tranche of millennials are the first generation to take a modern, prosperous, globalized China for granted.

This has given them a profoundly different outlook to their older, more conservative peers, who grew up before China opened up and became a global superpower.

As a result, the post-90s are the subject of endless speculation. For some commentators, they are the creative, digitally native non-conformists who are going to turn China into an innovation powerhouse.

For others, they are lazy, selfish and cynical " little emperors ", made soft by their comfortable upbringings.

But what are the post-90s really like? Pingtan, an island city in Fujian province, has become a haven for many restless millennials keen to experiment with new lifestyles and forge a new path.

Here, we meet some of these post-90s making their mark in Pingtan.

Chen Jiexiao

Chen Jiexiao (left), who was born and raised in Pingtan, Fujian province, pays a visit to the former US president Barack Obama's grandma (center) in Kenya in 2015. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Chen Jiexiao, who was born in Pingtan in 1991, has dreamed of exploring the world since childhood.

Chen didn' t opt to look for a job with a stable income after graduating from Ocean University of China, as most Chinese parents expect. Instead, she embarked on her global adventure.

In the past six years, Chen has travelled to 26 countries across the world.

In 2015, Chen spent the Spring Festival in Kenya, where she paid a visit to the former US president Barack Obama' s grandma, interviewed some long-distance runners and learned how to make African wood carvings from local tribesmen.

" The point of traveling is not just to enjoy beautiful scenery," Chen said. " It is the experience that matters."
Premier Li Keqiang advocates the establishment of a free-trade zone at the 15th Meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Council of Heads of Governments in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, on Nov 3, 2016. LIU ZHEN / CHINA NEWS SERVICE

In recent years, the annual summit meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization has grabbed increasing global attention due to its growing influence in regional affairs.

The upcoming meeting of the SCO Council of Heads of State in Astana, capital of Kazakhstan, will be no exception as it is expected to give the green light to Pakistan and India becoming members of the organization alongside the founders China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, and see the adoption of a convention on anti-extremism.

These crucial steps will further consolidate the organizational and institutional framework of the organization, enabling it to more effectively respond to the challenges confronting the region and the world at large.

Sixteen years ago in Shanghai, the six countries rallied for the first time to address the "three evil forces" of terrorism, separatism, and extremism and usher in a better security environment. Since then, the SCO has adopted a series of mechanisms to curtail the penetration of the three evil forces into its member states and helped prevent the unrest in West Asia spreading into Central Asia.

Security collaboration and economic cooperation are the "two wheels" of the bloc, with enhanced security coordination to combat terrorism and maintain stability helping to drive the members' economic cooperation.

The rampancy of extremism and frequent terrorist attacks across the world call for greater international consensus and more international collaboration to combat both the symptoms and root causes of the disease.

As a bloc that is increasingly looked upon as a defender of regional peace and stability, the SCO's planned expansion and convention on anti-extremism show it is willing to shoulder this responsibility and step up its efforts to fight all forms of the three evil forces.

With the accession of India and Pakistan, the SCO will cover three-fifths of the Eurasian continent and nearly half the world's population, which will not only make it more representative but also give it a stronger voice in forging international cooperation to defeat terrorism.

As President Xi Jinping has pointed it out, the SCO members have created a new model of international security relations, partnership instead of alliance, because they have embraced the principles of mutual trust, reciprocity, equality, consultation, respect for diversity and common development.

After the Astana summit, China will take over the SCO rotating presidency and Beijing is drawing up a work plan covering six major fields, politics, economy, security, humanities, foreign relations and mechanism building, so as to promote even greater solidarity among its members.
Smoke rises from a chimneys of a steel mill on a hazy day in Fengnan district of Tangshan, Hebei province February 18, 2014.[Photo/Agencies]

JIANGSU PROVINCIAL HIGH PEOPLE'S COURT issued its first white paper on environmental protection cases heard in courts in the province on Tuesday, World Environment Day. According to the white paper, courts in Jiangsu accepted 1,880 cases related to the environment from 2014 to 2016, and, most notably, 13 officials were found guilty for their involvement in environmental crimes. Legal Daily comments:

A closer look at the officials reveals something interesting. In 2014, two officials were found guilty and sentenced to imprisonment for environmental crimes; the number rose to three in 2015 and to eight in 2016.

That shows at least two trends: First, certain officials are guilty of not doing their duty to protect the environment; second, the judiciary is determined to fight such crimes.

Most of the 13 officials were found guilty of failing in their duties or trying to cover up the crimes of others. Their mode of illegality was similar: When receiving complaints from the public about certain enterprises polluting the environment, they ignored the complaints, or even helped the enterprises evade their due punishments. Some did so because they received bribes from the polluting enterprises, while some bent the law for the polluters because curbing pollution might harm the local economic growth and dim their hopes of promotion.

In both cases, it is the local residents that suffer from their actions. The problem is, the officials that failed in their duties or abused their power seldom received judicial penalty. That only 13 officials were found guilty of any wrongdoing is a small number compared to the total number of pollution cases heard by the courts in Jiangsu. Quite a number of officials have gone unpunished despite their failure to fulfill their duty of protecting the environment.

It is time to change this. The environment cannot possibly be protected unless the responsible officials perform their duties as they should. In order to realize this, it is necessary to regulate the officials and let them receive their deserved penalties when they are involved in illegal activities.

More important, as has been called for many times, the way leading lower-level officials are evaluated needs to be changed so they do not pursue GDP growth at all costs. The environment should be included in the performance evaluation system for officials, which will encourage leading local officials to better perform their environmental protection duties.
A nurse explains how to claim reimbursement from the national medical insurance program in Longxi County No 1 People's Hospital in Gansu province.[Photo/Xinhua]

CHINA'S THIRD-GENERATION OF SOCIAL SECURITY CARDS, which are reportedly capable of contactless operation and connected to many online service platforms, will be piloted in some regions this year. Guangming Daily commented on Tuesday:

Designed to guarantee all holders enjoy full rights to employment and medical insurance at every stage of their lives, social security cards are by their nature versatile and should be able to take care of citizens from the cradle to the grave.

However, most of their more than 100 basic functions are underused, because some can only be used locally and some only according to several preconditions. The healthcare insurance, for instance, remains idle most of the time until the card holder is hospitalized.

More important, the rise of third-party mobile payment platforms such as Alipay in recent years allows people to make appointments with a doctor, pay electricity bills, even purchase insurance without enlisting the help of their social security cards. For many, it is normal that they forget where they left the social security cards or simply let them gather dust.

That is why the new social security cards are equipped with multiple, targeted functions and connected to more social services, ranging from micropayments to public transport and library use. In the foreseeable future more of their nonfinancial functions will be eligible for use across the country.

But keeping the increasingly digitized social security cards from being exploited by fraudsters requires greater technical and supervisory support. As card issuers, the human resources and social security authorities at all levels need to step up technical scrutiny to ensure the cards are not misused by criminals. On their part, supervisors and enforcers have to hold all criminals accountable no matter if the money they swindle out of the victim is a large or only a small amount.
A worker fixes a thread on the production line at Huafu Top Dyed Melange Yarn Co in Aksu, a southern city in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. Photo By Zhu Xingxin / China Daily Editor's note: The Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region has achieved remarkable results in economic, social, cultural and human rights development over the past decades, especially since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. The following are the viewpoints of some Xinjiang officials and researchers on the region's progress :

Poverty reduced, jobs created on big scale

Thanks to the support of the central government and help from other regions, Xinjiang has implemented new development projects, taken effective measures to ensure local residents get equal opportunities for individual and social development, and made great efforts to improve people's livelihoods and promote ethnic solidarity.

Xinjiang's economic development has accelerated in recent years, with its GDP increasing from 750.50 billion yuan ($110.23 billion) in 2012 to 961.70 billion yuan last year, an increase of 9.9 percent year-on-year and 2.6 percentage points higher than average national growth.

Last year, Xinjiang's per capita GDP reached 40,427 yuan, making it a middle-income region according to the World Bank. People's living conditions in the region have considerably improved, with the per capita disposable income of farmers rising from 6,394 yuan in 2012 to 10,183 yuan last year, up 9.7 percent year-on-year, and urban residents from 17,921 yuan to 28,463 yuan, a growth of 9.5 percent year-on-year.

During the 2012-16 period, 2.28 million urban jobs were created in Xinjiang and its registered urban jobless rate declined from 3.39 percent to 3.22 percent. With the implementation of a series of targeted poverty alleviation measures, Xinjiang's registered impoverished population decreased from 2.61 million in 2013 to 1.22 million last year, and seven impoverished counties and 1,286 impoverished villages were lifted out of the "poverty list".

Zhang Chunlin, vice-chairman of the government of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region and director of the region's development and reform commission

Ethnic equality is a statutory principle

Equality is the core value of human rights, and ethnic equality is a core constitutional principle of China and the cornerstone of its ethnic policy. A white paper recently published by the State Council Information Office, titled "Human Rights in XinjiangDevelopment and Progress" shows that all ethnic groups in China, including those in Xinjiang, enjoy equal political, economic, cultural, educational and social rights.

Members of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang enjoy the same status and the same rights, and their political rights as citizens are fully protected. The 12th National People's Congress, China's top legislature, has a total of 60 deputies from Xinjiang, of whom 38, or 63 percent, are from ethnic minority groups. And of the 550 deputies to the 12th People's Congress of Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, 363, or 66 percent, have ethnic minority origins. Xinjiang is the only autonomous region in China with all three levels of autonomous divisions, namely autonomous region, autonomous prefecture and autonomous county. And people's congresses and people's governments of these autonomous administrative divisions at different levels exercise the autonomous power to manage their local affairs.

Gao Jianlong and Li Xiaoxia, researchers at the Xinjiang Academy of Social Sciences

Freedom of religion integral to region

As an integral part of human rights, freedom of religion is respected and protected in Xinjiang. China's Constitution grants its citizens the freedom of religion, which is also reflected in the Regulations on Religious Affairs promulgated by the State Council (China's Cabinet) and the Regulations on Religious Affairs of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.

It is up to the individual concerned to decide which religion he or she wants to follow or practice. No citizen is discriminated against or treated unfairly because he or she believes in, or does not believe in, a given religion. Anyone who encroaches on citizens' freedom of religion will be held accountable.

The legitimate rights of religious organizations, too, are safeguarded. Xinjiang has 112 religious organizations that receive help from the government, so that they play a greater role in social development.

Steady improvements have been made in the training system for clerics and in raising religious bodies' self-management capabilities, and the government makes arrangements for Xinjiang's clerics to study in the more developed parts of China, in order to broaden their vistas and improve their overall qualities. And the central government supports the Xinjiang Islamic Institute to expand its campus, improve teaching standards, and enroll more students.

Ma Pinyan and Yu Shangping, researchers at the Xinjiang Academy of Social Sciences
SHI YU / CHINA DAILY

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the resumption of the national college entrance examinations, or gaokao. Reintroduced in 1977 after the "cultural revolution" (1966-76), the exams have changed many people's lives. Four decades ago, only 4 percent of the students taking gaokao got admission to colleges. Today, the percentage is about 80 percent in some areas, with the gross enrollment rate nationwide being more than 40 percent.

But with the passage of time, it seems gaokao's power of giving people a better future is weakening.

International experiences show that higher education can drastically change people's lives in developing regions and less-developed regions, while attending college is not the only choice of people in advanced societies. The declining attraction of gaokao is the inevitable result of China's rapid social and economic development. Therefore, it is unrealistic to expect a majority of the college students to get the same opportunities and benefits that the successful 4 percent students got four decades ago.

People should realize that the standard of gaokao and the college admission procedure have not changed much in the past four decades, even though the number of examinees has increased from hundreds of thousands to about 10 million, which could hinder China's education reform as well as the students' overall development.

Most of the gaokao examinees labor with single-minded focus to get high scores. But high scores can only get them admission to a college, without necessarily helping them get good jobs or build brighter careers. As the examinees increase in numbers and become more diversified, the contradiction between the requirements of gaokao and the path to people's healthy growth becomes more complicated.

Since the gaokao system is very rigid, it cannot help the 10 million examinees every year to choose their true calling or to succeed in the fields they are compelled to opt for. Besides, in comparison with the evaluation and admission standards in other countries, China's gaokao seems outdated.

Gaokao is in urgent need of reform, and the educators have already launched it. But it will take some time to yield results.

In the interim period, students should change their attitude toward gaokao. They have to learn to see gaokao, not as their goal, but as a means to achieve their respective goals. True, gaokao can change your life, but whether it actually will or not depends on the choices you make.

Only when students, their parents and teachers make sincere joint efforts can they strike a balance between the pursuit of high scores in gaokao and the quest for healthy individual development.

As more and more people get admitted to colleges, how to master all the aspects of your discipline and acquire practical skills are more important than just getting a college degree. If the students are conscious of this fact, they could use gaokao to make better preparations for the career of their choice and avoid the negative impact the exams can have on their development.

Countless numbers of youths with diverse natures and choices have taken gaokao in the past four decades. But to better meet the new generations' growth and development requirements, gaokao needs more practical reform. For one, more diverse standards should be introduced in gaokao to suit the disparate requirements of the students and prepare them for not just the job market but also research and development, entrepreneurship and other creative fields. And for that, the examinees should be given more space and independent choices.

The author is a researcher at the National Institute of Education Sciences.
Relatives of deceased Chinese forced laborers, accompanied by lawyer Kang Jian (center, in blue coat), attend Beijing No 1 Intermediate People's Court on Feb 26, 2014, to sue two Japanese companies over forced labor during World War II. The lawsuit seeks printed apologies to be carried in Chinese and Japanese newspapers as well as compensation from the Japanese companies. WANG JING / CHINA DAILY

Toshio Motoya, president of Tokyo-based land developer and operator of APA Group, is again playing his favorite game of manipulating historical evidence through a new book, which hit bookstores on Friday. In his latest book, The Real History of Japan: Japan Pride, Motoya continues to deny that Japanese troops were responsible for the Nanjing Massacre in 1937-38. He even goes further to blame Chinese soldiers for the looting and killings.

His previous book, The Real History of Japan: Theoretical Modern History II, says the Nanjing Massacre is "fabricated" history. Motoya's books, along with other right-wing literature, are provided for free in the rooms of APA's 400-plus hotels in Japan, which infuriated Chinese people, especially those visiting Japan, early this year. In protest, China and the Republic of Korea pulled their athletes out of the APA hotels during the Asian Winter Games in Hokkaido in February.

On Friday, Motoya said he would not remove his books from the group's hotels when Tokyo hosts the Olympic Games in 2020. Such historical revisionism shows how rightwing forces eager to whitewash Japan's war crimes are becoming emboldened with the tacit help of hawkish Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Neither has the Japanese government nor the country's media and public condemned Motoya's books. In fact, the conservative newspaper Sankei Shimbun praised the Abe administration for "neither pressuring APA nor urging self-restraint".

During World War II, Japan and Germany were the aggressors and part of the Axis. In 1945 they shared defeat and occupation. But the two countries have dealt with their war history very differently. Nazi symbols and sympathizers trigger crackdowns in Germany. As recently as last year, an 87-year-old German woman was sentenced to 10 months in prison for denying the Holocaust.

Germany has potent anti-Nazi laws. German counterintelligence officers are investigating 280 cases of pro-Nazi personnel in the armed forces, according to German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle. And 18 members of the German armed forces were dismissed for their extremist views between 2012 and 2016.

In his book, Germany: Memories of a Nation, Neil MacGregor, British historian and former director of the British Museum, says that for all of us some memories are so painful, so shameful, that we will suppress them, and the act of recovering those leads to disorientation and distress.

"Many of the huge questions surrounding the Holocaust, and the role in it of so many Germans as perpetrators, went until the 1990s not just unanswered, but unasked. It gives a very sharp edge to the decision by the German government over the last decades to force remembering by researching archives, by introducing vigorous programs of public education, and by the building of monuments like the Holocaust Memorial," MacGregor says. "In this also can be said that German monuments are not like those in other lands," he adds. "I know of no other country in the world that at the heart of its national capital erects monuments to its own shame."

In contrast, every year on Aug 15the anniversary of Japan's surrender in World War II in 1945right-wingers are free to march in Imperial Japanese Army uniforms at Yasukuni Shrine, where a museum presents the revisionist depiction of Japan's "Pacific war" with its narrative of liberating Asian peoples from Western colonialism and downplays Japanese aggression and war crimes. The shrine also honors 14 Class-A Japanese war criminals.

Chinese research shows more than 300,000 Chinese people were butchered in Nanjing in a six-week spree of killing, rape and destruction by the Japanese army that began in December 1937. And scholars across the world have no doubt the heinous war crimes were committed by the Japanese troops.

Motoya's attempt to deny the Nanjing Massacre is thus an affront to not only the survivors of the massacre but also people at large.

Germany's approach toward its Nazi past has earned it the admiration of countries around the world. And by fabricating his country's war history, Motoya can't build Japan's pride.

The author is China Daily Tokyo bureau chief.
People protest against the deployment of an advanced US missile defense system in front of the Lotte Headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Feb 27, 2017. [Photo/Xinhua]

A little over a week ago, four more anti-missile launchers for the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system were secretly shipped by the United States to the Republic of Korea making its deployment imminent. However, the deployment could face months of delay due to a legitimate environmental evaluation ordered by newly elected ROK President Moon Jae-in.

Yet while meeting with visiting US Senator Dick Durbin on May 31, Moon said his order for an investigation into the clandestine transportation is purely a domestic measure, not about trying to change the existing decision or sending a message to the United States.

The mixed signals came at a time when China and the ROK, whose relations suffered a blow because of Seouls decision to allow the deployment of THAAD, seem ready to move on to make up for lost time.

President Xi Jinping was among the first state leaders to congratulate Moon on his election victory. The new ROK president, apart from pledging on the presidential campaign that he would review the decision of his predecessor, the impeached and ousted Park Geun-hye, to deploy THAAD, also sent representatives and special envoys to attend the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing last month.

But the continuing deployment of THAAD remains a thorn in the promising bilateral ties. It is understandable that Moon is cautious about stalling the installation of THAAD, because it may thwart his partys efforts to win more seats in the National Assembly and complicate US-ROK relations. Besides, he is due to visit the US later this month, his first state visit since assuming power.

But Moon will find it very difficult to appease both Washington and those opposed to THAADs deployment  many ROK citizens and regional players such as China and Russia. During Moons campaign trail, many of his supporters hoped that, if elected president, he would stall THAADs deployment, and they will be disappointed if the US anti-missile system is installed on ROK soil.

That news of four more THAAD launchers transported to the ROK failed to reach Moon in advance highlights the disparities between the president and the conservatives, as well as the fact that the deployment serves only a few interest groups, not the ROKs national interest.

China-ROK relations will see limited improvement if Seoul decides to accommodate and activate the THAAD. The anti-missile system poses a serious threat to Chinas security and strategic interests, and the Chinese government has every reason to protest against its deployment. Paying lip service to the good-neighborly relations will not convince Beijing of the urgency of deploying THAAD.

More importantly, the deployment of THAAD could thwart global efforts to resolve the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue. Moon has advocated a constructive approach to the reconciliation with the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea. But his DPRK policy can only succeed when all involved parties are on the same page, and Seouls inclination to allow the deployment of THAAD could also sour Beijing-Washington ties.

The delay in the installation could be an opportunity for the Moon administration to double check the procedural legitimacy and notify ROK citizens of THAADs undesirable side effects. US President Donald Trump, who has more than once expressed willingness to cooperate with China on critical issues, could show his sincerity by making a right decision on THAAD.

The author is a researcher in Asia-Pacific strategy at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
A ceramic exhibition displaying 680 ancient porcelain chips and works from Jingdezhen, East China's Jiangxi province opened in Beijing on June 5.

A visitor takes a picture of porcelain from Jingdezhen. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

"The ceramic culture exhibition of Jingdezhen China", co-hosted by the CPPCC (Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference) Culture and History Museum and the Jingdezhen Municipal Committee of the CPPCC, is divided into five sections to exhibit 364 ancient porcelain chips and 316 samples of ancient ceramic, imitations, modern household ceramics, art ceramics and high-tech ceramics.

According to the organizer, the 364 specimens of ancient porcelain are from famous kilns of every period of China's history since the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220), and clearly demonstrate Chinese porcelain development.

The exhibition also includes over 200 pieces of porcelain imitating examples from the Ming, Qing and Yuan dynasties. These more modern works are selected from the most influential manufacturers of imitation porcelain in Jingdezhen, and are often even more exquisite than the originals.

A ceramic road connecting the east and the west is part of the exhibition. It aims to tell China's story to the world and respond to the national Belt and Road initiative by carrying forward the ceramic culture, according to Wu Juan, member and secretary-general of the Standing Committee of the Municipal Committee and Secretary of Jingdezhen, speaking at the opening ceremony.

"We hope we can contribute to the 'going global' strategy for Chinese culture and help to build Jingdezhen into a globalized city with frequent exchanges with the world,"Wu added.

Nie Lechun and Yu Juxian, inheritors of intangible cultural heritages and representatives of Jingdezhen craftsmen, inaugurated the exhibition. National and local officials attended the opening ceremony.

Inheritors of intangible cultural heritage and representatives of Jingdezhen craftsmen, Nie Lechun and Yu Juxian inaugurate the exhibition. [Photo provide to chinadaily.com.cn]

The exhibition will last until August 18.
French police stand at the scene of a shooting incident near the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, France, June 6, 2017. [Photo/Agencies]

PARIS - The suspect who attacked a police officer outside Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris on Tuesday was identified as an Algerian student who was believed to commit his act to revenge the war in Syria, French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said.

"What we know at this stage that he is an Algerian student," Collomb told reporters, adding that authentication of an identity card found with the suspect was underway.

"A person armed with a hammer began to hit a policeman. His colleague opened fired, allowing the attacked policeman not to be the victim of serious violence than that he has undergone," he said.

The suspect who was also armed with knives, shouted "This is for Syria" when he attacked the policeman and slightly injured him, according to the minister.

The man, wounded in the attack, was believed to act alone. His motives remain unknown, according to the minister.

Paris prosecutor's anti-terrorism unit launched an investigation into the incident.

"In the coming days, Paris prosecutor will give precise circumstances of this aggression," he said.

"We have gone from a sophisticated terrorism to terrorism where any tool can be used for aggressions," he added.

France remains in a state of emergency and on high alert over possible terrorist attacks due to its military intervention in Syria, Iraq and the Sahel region.

France imposed emergency security rules in the wake of the 2015 attacks which killed 130 people. It also deployed 10,000 of gendarmes and police units to protect public places and sensitive sites.

However, several more attacks have occurred since, with the bloodiest on Bastille Day last year in Nice where a man drove his truck into a crowd, killing 86 people.
Dancers perform underneath the logo of Tencent at the Global Mobile Internet Conference in Beijing, May 6, 2014. [Photo/Agencies]

Chinese internet portal Tencent has cracked the top 10 of the world's 100 most valuable brands, according to an annual ranking.

The 2017 Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands was released on Tuesday by WPP and Kantar Millward Brown.

Tech giants Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook took the top five places on the list.

Tencent was ranked No 8, and was one of 21 brands from the Asia Pacific region to make the list.

Other Chinese brands on the list are Alibaba (14), China Mobile (17), ICBC (28), Baidu (39), Huawei (49), China Construction Bank (54), Ping An (61), Moutai (64), Agricultural Bank of China (72), China Life (78), Sinopec (85) and Bank of China (94).

The report examines both consumer-facing and business-facing brands across 14 product categories, with an analysis of five geographic regions and additional details about brands and consumer attitudes in China, India, Russia, Latin America and Southeast Asia.

The US dominates the rankings with 54, and US brands now make up 71 percent of the list's market value. But more Chinese brands are moving up.

When the annual report was first released 12 years ago, only one Chinese brand  China Mobile, the state-owned telecommunications company  ranked in the BrandZ Global Top 100.

Since then, the number of Chinese brands ranked in the Top 100 has increased, and the value of Chinese brands has surged 937 percent, making up 11 percent of the list's value.

Tencent, with a brand-value increase of 27 percent to $108.3 billion, rose three places to enter the top 10. Tencent has almost 890 million monthly active users on its social media apps, including WeChat.

Tencent also benefited from its online gaming business and payment-related and cloud services, according to the report's analysis.

According to the report's analysis, the Chinese brands come mostly from categories dominated by state-owned enterprises: beverages (including brands like Moutai), banks, insurance, oil and gas and telecom providers like China Mobile.

The Top 100 brands increased in value by 8 percent year-on-year and now are worth $3.64 trillion, according to the report.

Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook combined account for 25 percent of the value of the Top 100. Amazon achieved the highest dollar-value growth of all brands in the Top 100, increasing by $40.3 billion, or 41 percent, to $139.3billion.

Adidas was the fastest riser by percentage growth, up 58 percent, or $8.3 billion, followed by alcoholic beverage maker Moutai, which increased by $ 17 billion, or 48 percent.

xiaohong@chinadailyusa.com
Reality Leigh Winner, 25, a federal contractor charged by the US Department of Justice for sending classified material to a news organization, poses in a picture posted to her Instagram account. [Photo/Agencies]

WASHINGTON  A federal contractor has been arrested following the leak of a classified intelligence report that suggests Russian hackers attacked at least one US voting software supplier days before last year's presidential election.

Shortly after the release of the report by The Intercept on Monday, the Justice Department announced it had charged government contractor, Reality Leigh Winner, in Georgia with leaking a classified report containing "Top Secret level" information to an online news organization. The report the contractor allegedly leaked is dated May 5, the same date as the document The Intercept posted online.

The report suggests election-related hacking penetrated further into US voting systems than previously known. A Kremlin spokesman denied the report.

The classified National Security Agency report does not say whether the hacking had any effect on election results. But it says Russian military intelligence attacked a US voting software company and sent spear-phishing emails to more than 100 local election officials at the end of October or beginning of November.

US intelligence agencies declined to comment.

The document said Russian military intelligence "executed cyber espionage operations against a named US company in August 2016 evidently to obtain information on elections-related software and hardware solutions, according to information that became available in April 2017."Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for President Vladimir Putin, denied the allegations Tuesday, saying that the Kremlin did not see "any evidence to prove this information is true." He said Moscow categorically denies "the possibility" of the Russian government being behind it.

The hackers are believed to have then used data from that operation to create a new email account to launch a spear-phishing campaign targeting US local government organizations, the document said. "Lastly, the actors send test emails to two non-existent accounts ostensibly associated with absentee balloting, presumably with the purpose of creating those accounts to mimic legitimate services."The document did not name any state.

The information in the leaked document seems to go further than the US intelligence agencies' January assessment of the hacking that occurred.

"Russian intelligence obtained and maintained access to elements of multiple US state or local electoral boards," the assessment said. The Department of Homeland Security "assesses that the types of systems Russian actors targeted or compromised were not involved in vote tallying."The Intercept contacted NSA and the national intelligence director's office about the document and both agencies asked that it not be published. US intelligence officials then asked The Intercept to redact certain sections.
U.S. President Donald Trump delivers a speech during Arab-Islamic-American Summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia May 21, 2017. [Photo/Agencies]

WASHINGTON - US President Donald Trump took sides in a deep rift in the Arab world on Tuesday, praising Middle East countries' actions against American ally Qatar over Islamist militants even though the tiny Gulf state hosts the largest US air base in the region.

Trump wrote on Twitter that his recent trip to the Middle East was "already paying off" and cast an anti-Islamist speech he made in Saudi Arabia as the inspiration for a decision by Arab powers to sever ties with Qatar in protest at what they say is the Gulf nation's support for terrorism.

"So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off. They said they would take a hard line on funding extremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism!" Trump wrote on Twitter.

Qatar vehemently denies the accusations.

Trump later spoke by phone with Saudi King Salman and stressed the need for Gulf unity, a senior White House official said.

"His (Trump's) message was that we need unity in the region to fight extremist ideology and terrorist financing. It's important that the Gulf be united for peace and security in the region," the senior official told Reuters.

US officials were blindsided by Saudi Arabia's decision to sever diplomatic ties with Qatar in a coordinated move with Egypt, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), current and former officials in Washington told Reuters. The United States was not informed of the decision until just before it was announced, the State Department said.

Even as Trump applauded the Arab countries' move, the Pentagon on Tuesday renewed praise of Qatar for hosting US forces and its "enduring commitment to regional security."

Some 8,000 US military personnel are stationed at al Udeid in Qatar, the largest US air base in the Middle East and a staging ground for US-led strikes on the Islamic State militant group that has seized parts of Syria and Iraq.
Lu Yongzheng, vice-governor of Guizhou, promotes tourism in Guizhou at a Guizhou photography exhibition at the UN in New York on June 2. Provided to China Daily

A photography exhibition displaying the splendid scenery and enchanting culture of Guizhou province was held recently at UN headquarters in New York.

The exhibition last Friday was titled Fascinating Guizhou: A Heaven of Myriad Mountains.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, and US representatives Joseph Crowley and Grace Meng of New York sent welcoming letters to the event.

"This evening's celebration of Chinese culture is also a terrific opportunity to honor the diversity on which our global city rises as we forge a brighter, more inclusive future for all. On behalf of the city of New York, please accept my best wishes for a productive event and continued success," said de Blasio in his letter.

With its marvelous landscapes, rich ethnic customs and enchanting cultural and historical sites, Guizhou, which is in the southwestern part of China, is a place that has provided an insightful experience to many international tourists, said Lu Yongzheng, vice-governor of Guizhou.

The province has more than 50 ethnic groups, charming cultural stories and amazing mountain views to explore.

Guizhou, in turn, sends hundreds of thousands of visitors to the US.

In 2016, the United States became the second-largest tourism destination for Guizhou, with 546,000 visitors to the US, 32.2 percent more than the year before.

Robert Duglin, vice-president of the American Society of Travel Agents, discussed plans for an ASTA marketing summit to be held in November in Guizhou.

The summit will be the group's first international tourism industry event and will be particularly geared to the Chinese inbound tourism market.

With a focus on tourism trends, industry conferences and trade, the event will generate a "data + market + marketing" platform.

More than 150 people from different organizations attended the event.
Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May delivers a speech during an election campaign visit to Langton Rugby Club in Stoke-on-Trent, June 6, 2017. [Photo/Agencies]

LONDON -- British Prime Minister Theresa May announced get-tough proposals Tuesday night on tackling terrorism, saying she would change human rights laws if she needed to.

May outlined her proposals at an election rally in Slough on what was the penultimate day of canvassing in the British general election campaign.

With Britain still reeling from two attacks in London and one in Manchester, May seemed determined to show voters she will respond to the terror threat if she wins the election Thursday.

May said she would look at making it easier for Britain to deport foreign terror suspects.

But controversially, she also outlined increased controls on extremists who the security services think may present a threat to public safety, but where there is not enough evidence to prosecute them.

Following the London Bridge attack on Saturday, May said she aimed to get tough on terror with her "enough is enough" speech.

In Slough Tuesday she said her plans would mean longer prison sentences for people convicted of terrorist offences, and making it easier for the authorities to deport foreign terror suspects to their own countries.

May added: "And I mean doing more to restrict the freedom and the movements of terrorist suspects when we have enough evidence to know they present a threat, but not enough evidence to prosecute them in full in court. And if human rights laws stop us from doing it, we will change those laws so we can do it."

The Guardian newspaper commented Tuesday night that May's proposed measures appear to be an attempt at strengthening terrorism prevention and investigation measures rather than a complete return to control orders introduced by the last Labour government which were repeatedly struck down by judges in the British courts.

The Guardian said May's measures could involve further curfews, restrictions on association with other known extremists, controls on where they can travel and limits on access to communication devices.
Top representatives from Britain's tourism and hospitality sector convened on Monday to discuss a potential slump in the number of visitors to the United Kingdom following Saturday's van and knife terror attack in London, which claimed seven lives and injured 48.

The Tourism Industry Emergency Response Group met to coordinate the industry's response to the third UK terror attack this year.

Xu Xiaolei, a spokesman for travel agent China Youth Travel Service, said only a few Chinese clients had canceled or changed plans, but he anticipates a future reduction. Chinese people made 260,000 visits to the UK in 2016.

"Chinese tourists are mature and rational, and they have trust in the UK's security system," he said."However, the UK has witnessed several attacks recently. I think some Chinese tourists are likely to choose other destinations, and the number of Chinese tourists to the UK will be slightly reduced."

The industry's emergency response group is facilitated by UK tourism authority VisitBritain and comprises more than 10 members, including the Association of British Travel Agents and the British Hospitality Group.

It met after the attack on Westminster Bridge and following the London attacks on July 7, 2005 in which 52 people were killed and more than 700 injured.

A VisitBritain spokesperson said: "First and foremost, we extend our thoughts and deepest sympathy to those affected by the recent events in London  London is open for business and Britain continues to welcome the millions of visitors from around the globe."

The UK's tourism industry is worth 130 billion pounds ($168 billion) a year, contributing 36 billion pounds a year to London's economy. The sector maintained healthy numbers following the Westminster and Manchester attacks and it remains to be seen whether the third attack will result in fewer tourists heading to the UK. Last year, France saw a seven percent drop in visitor numbers following multiple terror attacks there.

"There is the immediate impact and the question is how long that impact is sustained," said Ufi Ibrahim, CEO of the BHA."We've seen in France, in Paris and Nice, and in other countries where there have been terrorist attacks... that there is a sustained period. It takes months to be able to recover."

Flight bookings from China to the UK for June to August 2017 are up 37 percent compared to last year, according to data compiled at the end of May by flight monitoring company ForwardKeys.

Overall, there were a record 8.1 million overseas visits to the UK from January to March 2017, up seven percent on the same period in 2016, according to Visit Britain. Overseas visitors to the UK spent 4.2 billion pounds from January to March, up 11 percent on the same period in 2016 and setting a new record for the first three months of the year.

Chen Yingqun contributed to this story.
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The excitement of staging a Chinese concert at the world-renowned Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park was palpable among the community leaders and organizers at a recent press conference at the Chinatown Library in Chicago.

The concert, titled Friendship Lasts Forever Great Lakes Music Festival will take place on Sept 17.

"I always have had a strong desire to stage a large Chinese concert in Chicago," said Jianyun Meng, director of the Confucius Institute at Valparaiso University in Indiana. "To have the concert at Pritzker Pavilion is a dream come true."

Meng proposed the idea of a major music festival to other community leaders in the greater Chicago area late last year and soon gained the support from several organizations, including the Dongfang Chinese Performing Arts Association, the Confucius Institute in Chicago and the Asian Culture Center.

The Windiana Concert Band in Indiana also helped to produce the concert, with its music director, Jeffery Doebler, serving as the American music director for the September concert.

Doebler also works as professor of music and director of music education and bands at Valparaiso.

"The Friendship Lasts Forever concert is a great example of musical education in action and a model for international harmony and world peace," said Doebler.

Doebler is no stranger to China or Chinese music. He has been to China 12 times, teaching music and conducting performing tours across China at schools and universities.

Hong Lei, Chinese consul general in Chicago, who was present at the conference, stated the music festival would be "one of the major Chinese cultural events for the year" in the Midwest.

"With nearly 1,000 performers on stage, the scale of this concert is unprecedented," Hong said.

The Pritzker Pavilion, with a seating capacity of 11,000, has hosted a variety of musical and performing arts events since opening in 2004 and is one of the most popular venues in Chicago.

Shanker Roman, assistant provost for international affairs at Valparaiso University, called the concert "a historical event".

Roman mentioned China's Belt and Road Initiative, referring to its endeavors in bridging different cultures via language and music as "One Word One Note."

Michael Boo, an American composer who has adapted more than 40 Chinese songs for American bands to play before, said the concert, by featuring Chinese-themed music from China, the US and other countries, "will prove to the world that we are all one".

Boo said music is "the nuts and bolts" that holds the world together. He said there is something about Chinese music that speaks to him.

He will adapt more Chinese music for American bands to play at the upcoming concert.

Jan Zheng, president of the Chicago Dongfang Chinese Performing Arts Association, said that within the first week of announcing the concert, performing groups and organizations from five Midwestern states have asked to participate.

The tremendous enthusiasm and interest indicated that many more would join, Zheng anticipated.

Jane Lu, director of the Confucius Institute in Chicago (CIC), said that CIC partners with the Chicago Public Schools (CPS), which offers the largest Chinese-language program in North America.

She is looking forward to have CPS high school bands and students performing on the stage  "an experience that help the students to compete and succeed in the 21st century".

Doebler said his Windiana Concert Band and the Chamber Concert Band of Valparaiso University themselves will bring a repertoire of eight pieces to the concert, with highlights that conclude with Festive in Village from China and Fugue on Yankee Doodle by John Philip Sousa.

"The concert will conclude with two selections performed by all 800 of the festival's participants," Doebler said.

One is the famous Chinese folk song Jasmine Flower and the theme song, Friendship Lasts Forever.

For China Daily
Shoppers stock up on supplies at a supermarket in Doha, Qatar, on Monday after Saudi Arabia closed its land border with Qatar, through which the tiny Gulf nation imports most of its food. Doha News Via Ap

DUBAI - Qatar said on Tuesday it was ready for mediation efforts after the Arab world's biggest powers severed ties with it.

Kuwait's Amir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah was scheduled to travel to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, hoping to heal the damaging rift by meeting with Saudi Arabia's King Salman.

France said on Tuesday it wanted the diplomatic dispute to be resolved through dialogue, its foreign ministry said. Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drain was scheduled to hold talks with his Saudi and Qatari counterparts later in the day.

Turkey's Prime Minister Binali Yildirim also said his country will press ahead with efforts to end the standoff through dialogue.

Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain severed relations with Qatar in a coordinated move on Monday. Yemen, Libya and the Maldives joined later. Transport links shut down, triggering supply shortages. It was the biggest diplomatic crisis in the Persian Gulf since the 1991 US-led war against Iraq.

Observers said this diplomatic crisis will weaken the influence of the Gulf Cooperation Council and that other countries may take the advantage to further intervene in the Arab world's affairs.

Qatar has for years played mediator and power broker for regional disputes. The gas-rich country has backed the Muslim Brotherhood, interacted with Iran, and held open channels with Hamas and extremist groups like al-Qaida, a policy that sometimes angered its neighbors but was generally accepted by the Arab world and its Western allies.

Although Qatar stood firmly with Saudi Arabia on major regional issues, such as the civil wars in Syria and Yemen, the two countries have differed on Iran.

Qatar hopes to become a broker between the Gulf countries and Iran, advocating improved relations with Teheran, a stance resented by Saudi Arabia, said Sun Degang, deputy director of the Middle East Studies Institute at Shanghai International Studies University.

With the world's third-largest natural gas reserves, Qatar seeks to compete with Saudi Arabia to assume the leading role on regional issues, sparking disputes with its neighbor, Sun said.

Xinhua - Ap - Reuters
The Belt and Road Initiative can become an "experimental field" for China and Japan to achieve mutually beneficial cooperation and common development, Beijing said on Tuesday.

The Foreign Ministry's remark was made after Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said in a speech on Monday that Tokyo is ready to work with Beijing on the initiative, with conditions.

Conditions proposed by Abe include "harmony with a free and fair Trans-Pacific economic zone".He also said it is "critical for infrastructure to be open to use by all and to be developed through procurement that is transparent and fair", Japan's Kyodo News Agency reported.

In response, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said on Tuesday that Beijing had taken notice of Abe's remarks.

Japan is welcome to talk with China about introducing cooperation within the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative, Hua said.

"We also hope that the Japanese can translate its will of improving bilateral ties into tangible actions," she added.

Naoya Yoshino, deputy editor of Japan's Nikkei Business Daily newspaper, commented in an article on Tuesday that Abe's "conditional" support "tells Beijing that Tokyo is ready to work toward warmer bilateral ties".

Lyu Yaodong, a Japanese diplomacy researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, noted that Tokyo is "adapting itself to the evolving trend" of win-win cooperation as it tones down its negative stance toward the initiative.

"What China has proposed lives up to the interests of regional stakeholders, and it (the initiative) has won recognition by the international community, a fact that offers no excuse for Tokyo to continue defying it," Lyu said.

zhangyunbi@chinadaily.com.cn
A view shows the mausoleum of the founder of the Islamic Republic Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini during a ceremony marking his death anniversary, in Tehran, Iran. [Photo/Agencies]

Armed men launched two attacks in Iran on Wednesday morning, killing a guard at the parliament in central Tehran and wounding several people at the Mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini a few kilometres south of the city, state media reported.

Lawmaker Elias Hazrati told state television three assailants, one with a pistol and two with AK-47 assault rifles, raided parliament.

Another lawmaker said one of the assailants was surrounded by security forces and all the doors to the building had been closed, ISNA news agency reported.

"I was inside the parliament when shooting happened. Everyone was shocked and scared. I saw two men shooting randomly," said one journalist at the scene, who asked not to be named.

Around half an hour later, an armed man opened fire at the Mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini and wounded a number of people, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.

State news agency IRNA quoted an official at the mausoleum as saying that the attacker had blown himself up after shooting at people. The identity and the motivation of the assailant was still unclear, Tasnim said.

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini launched the Islamic revolution in 1979.

Reuters
Smoke is seen during a gunmen attack at the parliament's building in central Tehran, Iran, June 7, 2017. [Photo/Agencies]

TEHRAN - At least 12 people died in the twin attacks by militants against Iran's parliament and Imam Khomeini Shrine in capital Tehran on Wednesday, Iran's Interior Ministry said in a statement.

According to semi-official ISNA news agency, an additional 42 people were injured in the terrorist attacks, the Interior Ministry statement was cited as reading.

In the meantime, all four assailants against the parliament and two against the Khomeini Shrine were killed, reported ISNA quoting an unidentified source as saying.

One of the attackers on the parliament blasted his explosive belt and three others were shot dead by the security forces.

Also, out of three attackers on Khomeini Shrine, one blasted his explosive belt after shooting, the other was shot dead by the security guards and the third one, a young woman, was arrested after sustaining injuries, IRIB TV said.

Iran's Intelligence Ministry on Wednesday said in a statement that another terrorist team was busted before doing any operation in Tehran.

Besides, the security deputy of Iran's Interior Ministry said that the terrorists had entered the parliament building in the women attire, according to official IRNA news agency.

However, after their incursion into the building, the security forces brought the situation under control and the terrorists had to flee to the upper floors of the building without doing any harm on the lawmakers, Hossein Zolfeghari was quoted as saying.

The twin attacks were simultaneously carried out in Tehran at around 10:30 am local time (0600 GMT).

According to the reports, the Islamic State (IS) has claimed responsibility for the attacks.
NAIROBI - Kenya Railways said on Wednesday that some 7,000 passengers have so far traveled on the newly launched Madaraka Express between Mombasa and Nairobi, the highest number ever recorded in one week.

Kenya Railways (KR) Managing Director Atanas Maina said the first phase of the Standard Gauge Rail service, which was launched on May 31, is currently operating with scheduled passenger trains from Nairobi and Mombasa running on a daily basis.

"Over the last week we have experienced a daily surge in passenger numbers. The growing numbers demonstrate the vital role Kenya Railways plays in our nation's transportation system; we are definitely off to a strong start," Maina said in a statement issued in Nairobi.

The railway firm also announced that plans are under way to introduce the intercounty trains that will make stops at seven railway stations.

The train is scheduled to start operations by July. KR and the operator CRBC have put together a joint team to address the customer service issues in order to ensure that the service remains efficient and convenient to the customers.

Maina said they are planning to rescheduling additional trains to cope with demand for train services which is at an all-time high.

"The combination of state-of-the-art design, unrivalled comfort and convenience means that we are well placed to meet the growing demand as passengers increasingly opt for our services over other existing means," he said.

He said there are many passengers who intend to ply their businesses across the five counties that the line traverses and this new train "will ensure that we play our role in devolution by connecting businesses across the counties."

The company has also announced a partnership with National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) to enable private bus operators provide last mile services to and from the various destinations along the route.

For passengers in Nairobi, the company has scheduled a daily train to the Nairobi terminus that will be dropping off travelers in the morning from the City Centre and transporting them back to the city from 1 PM when they arrive from Mombasa.

In Mombasa, the access road is in its completion phase and thus is expected to provide a fluid road connection to the Miritini Station from Mombasa City.

"We will continue to enhance the customer experience and optimize our services through continuous improvement of our internal systems such as retraining staff on service delivery," Maina said.

This, in addition to the new online ticket payment platform to be unveiled on Monday, will ensure convenience in travel for all customers.
President Xi Jinping said that the Sino-Kazakhstan relationship has set an example of having equal treatment, mutual benefits and being friendly neighbors for international communities.

President Xi Jinping meets with his Kazakh counterpart Nursultan Nazarbayev during the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing May 14, 2017. [Photo/Xinhua]

The president made the remark on Wednesday, while calling on joint efforts to push forward the bilateral ties to a higher level, in a written statement at the Astana International Airport.

Xi was paying a state visit to Kazakhstan, which will continue on until Saturday. He will also attend the 17th Meeting of the Council of Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, as well as the opening ceremony of Astana Expo 2017, during this visit.

"The two countries have strengthened political trust, pushed forward pragmatic cooperation in all areas steadily, and enhanced coordination in global and regional affairs in the past 25 years since the establishment of diplomatic relations," he said.

The president further extended sincere greetings and best wishes to Kazakh people during his third visit to Kazakhstan. He then mentioned the amount of times he met with his Kazakh counterpart Nursultan Nazarbayev in the past few years, and said the two presidents had developed good work relations as well as a personal friendship.

"The development of Sino-Kazakhstan relationship has brought real benefits for the people of both sides," Xi said.

"I am looking forward to having intensive communications with Nazarbayev to draft the blueprint of bilateral ties."

In the written statement, Xi further expressed his hopes of exchanging views with all sides during the SCO summit, in a bid to push forward cooperation in all areas. The president said he was honored to attend the opening ceremony of Astana Expo 2017 and wished the expo great success.
Is China the Answer? Nine Years On.

Sometimes, the answer will be yes, sometimes it will be no, and sometimes it will be something in between. For those for whom the answer is yes, the China they encounter (or continue to encounter) is one that is much changed from that of 2013. But many of the fundamentals remain the same. Keeping your nose clean is no guarantee of a smooth ride, but not keeping your nose clean is pretty much a guarantee of trouble.
(Photo : ISRO) First launch of GSLV-III.

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India yesterday successfully pulled-off the first flight of its new Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark-III (GSLV-III), the largest most powerful launch vehicle India has ever produced.



GSLV-III is classified as a medium-lift launch vehicle (MLV). The successful launch of the first GSLV-III on June 5 makes India only the fifth country or organization to place a three metric ton payload into Low Earth Orbit (LEO).



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GSLV-III is considered a potential game changer for India's booming space program. It can carry up to 4,000 kg into LEO, almost double the previous capacity of India's other MLVs.



GSLV-III was launched by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), India's equivalent of NASA, at 5:28 p.m. on June 5 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Andhra Pradesh state.



A medium-lift launch vehicle is defined as an orbital launch vehicle capable of lifting a payload weighing between 2,000 kg to 20,000 kg into LEO, and 4,000 kg to geostationary transfer orbit or GTO.



Payload of the GSLV-III's maiden flight was the 3,136 kg GSAT-19 communications satellite intended to improve India's internet connectivity. Only the United States, Russia, China, Japan and the European Space Agency (ESA) have successfully orbited heavy satellites weighing over three tonnes.



Indian media said the successful launch is widely viewed as a major step towards India's long-term goal of becoming a leading player in the multi-billion dollar global satellite launch market.



Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a tweet described the launch as a proud moment for the country.



GSLV-III is affectionately known within ISRO as "Fat Boy" on account of its massive size. The three-stage Fat Boy stands 43 meters tall; has a diameter of four meters and has a mass of 640,000 kg.



GSLV-III features an Indian cryogenic third stage and a larger payload capacity than the current GSLV.



India previously paid ESA to launch satellites weighing more than 2,300 kg into orbit. There are currently 20 MLVs in operation worldwide.



Apart from GSLV-III, the other Indian MLVs are GSLV-I; GSLV-II and the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle or PSLV.



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TagsIndia, Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark-III, GSLV-III, medium-lift launch vehicle, MLV, Indian Space Research Organization, ISRO, GSAT-19 communications satellite
(Photo : Russian Air Force) Su-35S.

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The Sukhoi Su-35S supermaneuverable multirole fighter in service with the Russian Air Force is optimized for air-to-air combat but is quite useless as a ground attack aircraft as proven by its combat experience in Syria.



Russian state-controlled media reports the air force as being "more or less satisfied with the Su-35S" and its performance in Syria.



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The "less" in this case is the result of the failure of the fighter's PESA (Passive Electronically Scanned Array) radar to accurately and consistently locate and guide bombs onto their targets.



"Since the aircraft was employed for ground strike missions -- more with smart weapons and dumb bombs -- there can be some modifications for software and systems responsible for ground attack," said Vassily Kashin Ph.D., a senior research fellow at the Center for Comprehensive European and International Studies at the National Research University-Higher School of Economics.



Kashin also said "there were just some small problems (with the Su-35S), which emerged during the intense combat use during the war."



The obvious solution to the problems generated by PESA is to upgrade the Su-35S' radar system to the newer and more sophisticated active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar.



The Russian Air Force, however, has no immediate plans to upgrade the Su-35S with major new systems like an active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar.



"There will be no AESA," said Kashin.



He said the Su-35S already has "a very powerful PESA radar and it is considered to be the strong point."



He noted that what the Su-35S and the Russian Air Force for ground attack missions are targeting pods similar to the Lockheed Martin Sniper or Northrop Grumman LITENING pods, but Russia apparently has no interest in developing advanced versions of these devices.



The Su-30SM and the Su-35 have to rely on their PESA radars for targeting air-to-surface targets because they lack targeting pods.



"The lack of pods is considered to be a major weakness of the Russian Air Force," said Kashin.



"There is a targeting pod development program which started even before Syria, but no results yet."



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TagsSukhoi Su-35S, Russia, Syria, PESA, Passive Electronically Scanned Array, Radar, Vassily Kashin, Active Electronically Scanned Array, AESA
Reefs on which China is building airbases.

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China ongoing military infrastructure construction on its three largest manmade holdings in the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea will eventually see these islands capable of basing over 100 fighter jets of the People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF).



This construction activity is taking place on Fiery Cross Reef; Subi Reef and Mischief Reef, all of which are also claimed by the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam, said the U.S. Defense Department's annual report on military and security developments involving China submitted to Congress.



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"In 2016, China focused its main effort on infrastructure construction at its outposts on the Spratly Islands," the report said.



The Pentagon revealed China is building or has built 24 hardened aircraft hangars large enough to house fighters or other aircraft on each of these three islands. China has also built airbases capable of supporting take-offs and landings of PLAAF jets, plus other supporting infrastructure such as barracks and communications facilities. Each of the three runways on these islands is about 2,700 meters long.



China has also installed surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems and close-in weapons (CIWS) systems to defend these military airfields.



Once construction ends, the three islands will be able to deploy a combined total of up to three fighter regiments in the Spratlys. A PLAAF fighter regiment consists of three squadrons with each squadron consisting of three flights of four aircraft each.



This means the PLAAF can deploy over 100 fighters (mostly Shenyang J-11 air superiority fighters) to these three new airbases.



"China's Spratly Islands outpost expansion effort is currently focused on building out the land-based capabilities of its three largest outposts -- Fiery Cross, Subi and Mischief Reefs -- after completion of its four smaller outposts early in 2016," said the Pentagon's report.



"Once all these facilities are complete, China will have the capacity to house up to three regiments of fighters in the Spratly Islands."



The report said "China has used coercive tactics, such as the use of law enforcement vessels and its maritime militia, to enforce maritime claims and advance its interests in ways that are calculated to fall below the threshold of provoking conflict."



It also said no substantial land has been reclaimed at any of the seven Chinese-held outposts since China ended its artificial island creation in the Spratlys in late 2015.



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Tagschina, spratly islands, South China Sea, People's Liberation Army Air Forc, China test flight in Fiery Cross Reef, Subi Reef, Mischief Reef
More than 170 have been killed, including Christians, in fighting between the Filipino government and extremist militants that have allied themselves with the Islamic State (IS) in a majority-Muslim island in the Philippines, since May 23, according to reports.

Instability and violence in the island of Mindanao, and particularly the city of Marawi, began when the extremist group, known as the Maute group, tried to capture a militant leader in the Philippines who is affiliated with the Islamic State, according to BBC News. Violence ensued when the Maute groups attempt failed, and the group has been taking hostages, freeing prisoners, and carrying out attacks since.

In late May, the Maute group, which itself has also pledged allegiance to ISIS, is reported to have taken dozens of hostages from a church, and on May 23, eight Christians were shot and killed for refusing to recite the shahada, the creed of the Islamic faith, according to Morning Star News.

A video that was released on May 30 showed that the Maute group kidnapped a Catholic vicar-general, Rev. Teresito Chito Suganob, who appeared in the video pleading the government to stop bombing the city. Reports say that 13 other members of the St. Marys Cathedral were kidnapped along with Suganob.

Mr. President [Rodrigo Duterte], we are in the midst of this war  We are asking for your help to please give what they are asking for, to withdraw forces away from Lanao del Sur and Marawi City, and to stop the air attacks, and to stop the cannons, Suganob was quoted as saying in the video by Morning Star News.

Since May 23, Duterte began enforcing martial law in the island of Mindanao.

Sidney Jones, director of the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict in Jakarta, Indonesia, wrote in a New York Times op-ed that the government must become more strategic in fighting the growing extremist militancy in Mindanao.

The Duterte administrations response to Islamist extremism so far has been to try to crush it militarily, Jones wrote. But too often strong-arm tactics only breed more fighters  and fighters with a desire for revenge. The Philippine government must instead come up with a comprehensive strategy to fix the social, economic and political problems that have led Islamic State ideologues to exert so much appeal in Mindanao.

We are very concerned about the lives of hostages (among them a priest and 15 Catholics ) since we do not know what their fate may be, Edwin de la Pena, the Bishop of Marawi, told Fides Catholic news agency in an early June report.

Now there are ongoing contacts and militants threaten to decapitate Fr. Chito. The hostages are their guarantee of survival. We hope that the militants decide to release them safe and sound, he said.

According to reports, hundreds of thousands have fled the island since the violence broke out. However, BBC News reported on June 4 that some 2,000 are estimated to still be trapped in the city.

    press@cdaily.co.kr



- Copyright ,    

#ISIS-LinkedMilitantsinPhilippines
Despite increased persecution in China, a pastor who trains Chinese Christian leaders says the Church in China is growing and as many as 100,000 new believers are coming to Christ every year.



Rev. Erik Burklin works with China Partner, training Chinese Christian leaders. He is encouraged to see how God is working to build the Church in China, despite the governments crackdown on Christianity.



"Like Jesus said to Peter, 'On this rock I will build my church.' When He said that, He said, 'I will build my church.' Not, 'You Christians build my church,' but, 'I will,'" Burklin told Mission Network News.



Burklin also shared how the government decided to donate nearly $7.3 million to Union Theological Seminary in Nanjing.



"I was just scratching my head, thinking to myself, 'How in the world is it possible that in China, where Communism still runs the country, a person in the Central Government would donate so that a local school  in this case, the national seminary in China  can finish constructing their chapel?' It's unbelievable," Burklin said, according to The Christian Post.



Burklin shared more good news: "Then we met with leaders for dinner that night, and we asked the pastors there, 'How many baptisms did you have last year? How many new converts did you have in your city?' he then gave us an overview of what God is doing in their whole province. He was proceeding to explain to us that they have up to 100,000 new believers on the average every year. ... That's unheard of.



Join us in continuing to pray for believers in China!

Photo courtesy: Thinkstock/mamahoohooba

Publication date: June 7, 2017
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) now has an even tighter grip in Mosul after the militant group burned down a 1,800-year-old Mosul church Saturday. Christians had been forced to convert to Islam, pay a tax which is referred to as jizya, or flee the city by the deadline of Saturday at noon, according to a report by Al Arabiya.

Al Arabiya also reported that the Islamic State had been destroying other Christian properties in Mosul, the most significant of which was the destruction of what officials say was almost certainly the tomb of Biblical prophet Jonah (internal quotes excluded).

The last 1,500 Christian families left Mosul last week as a result of the Islamic States threats. Many of those families were abused and robbed by ISIS at departure checkpoints for refusing to convert to Islam, multiple reports stated.

An anonymous Mosul resident told Reuters that one hundred percent of people are angry that the Islamic State is here but there is nothing [they] can do.

Christian families who leave Mosul often flee to places such as Hamadaniyah, or Qara Qosh, and other Christian communities on the outskirts of Mosul. However, despite Kurdish protection, many of these towns are depleted of resources as ISIS cuts off their utilities from Mosul, according to the Daily Beast.

Mosul residents are given the opportunity to repent and admit that they were wrong, at which ISIS would give them a paper with the stamp of the ISIS logo to secure their future safety. Reuters reported that they would do so by visiting the home of a local sheikh who hosts a representative of the Islamic State on Fridays after midday prayers.

ISIS first seized power in Mosul when they captured 30 families as hostage, and demanded that the Mosul officials let them take over the town, threatening the families safety otherwise. Local leaders gave in to their demands in response, concerned for the families.

As the militant group has been capturing town to town in not only Iraq but also in Syria, their power has been increasing in terms of numbers and equipment, as they frequently seize weapons and vehicles from the communities that they subdue. The group says that their goal is to seize Baghdad.
Religiously affiliated hospitals, as well as other religious non-profit organizations, are exempt from the requirements of a federal pension law, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled on Monday.

Known as Advocate Health Care Network v. Stapleton, the case involved whether three religiously affiliated hospitals must afford the same requirements under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) of 1974 as other private corporations do. Employers have minimum funding requirements, among others, under ERISA.

Church pension plans are exempt from ERISA, and a portion in the law includes language that the Supreme Court interpreted on Monday to mean that religiously affiliated organizations are also included in that exemption.

A plan maintained by a principal-purpose organization qualifies as a church plan, regardless of who established it, the opinion written for the court by Justice Elena Kagan states.

ERISA states that a church plan that was established and maintained by a church also includes a plan maintained by outside organizations that are controlled by or associated with a church, which are also called principal-purpose organizations.

That use of the word include is not literal, but tells readers that a different type of plan should receive the same treatment (i.e., an exemption) as the type described in the old definition, the opinion states. In other words, because Congress deemed the category of plans established and maintained by a church to include plans maintained by principal-purpose organizations, those plans  and all of those plans  are exempt from ERISAs requirements.

Employees of Advocate and two other religiously affiliated hospitals (Saint Peters Healthcare System and Dignity Health) argued that the hospitals were essentially large organizations using their religious affiliation to opt out of the ERISA requirements.

The decision avoids deciding whether large non-profit hospital systems meet the requirements for the exemption, said Karen Handorf, who represented the employees.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor expressed a similar concern in a separate opinion in which she said she agreed with the courts interpretation of the existing statute, but suggested Congress reconsider the current law.

Large religious organizations such as Dignity Health bear little resemblance to those Congress considered when enacting the 1980 amendment to the church plan definition, she wrote. This current reality might prompt Congress to take a different path.

Supporters of the hospitals celebrated the victory, saying that church activities are not limited to the church buildings themselves.

Churches  not government bureaucrats and certainly not ambulance chasers  should decide whether hospitals are part of the church, said Eric Rassbach, deputy general counsel at Becket, a law firm which filed an amicus brief supporting the hospitals.

It is simple common sense that nuns, soup kitchens, homeless shelters, seminaries, nursing homes, and orphanages are a core part of the church and not an afterthought.

If the Supreme Court had ruled in favor of the employees, the hospitals would have been required to pay up to billions of dollars in retroactive penalties.

Justice Neil Gorsuch did not take part in the decision, as the case was argued in March before he was confirmed to his position in the Supreme Court.
I had the privilege or reading a pre-release version of "God Shines Forth: How the Nature of God Shapes and Drives the Mission of the Church." Here are 20 quotes from the book, which you should pick up.
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Image: Courtesy of TBN

A California jury has found that the late Jan Crouch, the founder and popular face of Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), is partly to blame for mishandling an incident when her teenage granddaughter was allegedly molested and raped at a telethon in 2006.

Carra Crouch, now 24, was awarded $2 million in damages in a civil case against her grandmother over the emotional pain from when she says she was sexually assaulted by a TBN employee. (Carra Crouch has opted to speak publicly about her allegations, but no one has been charged with the crime.)

In Orange County Superior Court on Monday, Jan Crouchwho died last yearwas deemed liable for 45 percent of her granddaughters trauma. Trinity Christian Center of Santa Ana, which runs TBN, was ordered to pay $900,000 of the damages. Carras mother and the perpetrator were decided to be responsible for the rest of the damages, but they were not named in the suit, so they wont be required to pay, her lawyer said.

According to a lawsuit filed in 2012, Carra Crouch was 13 when a 30-year-old Trinity employee forced himself on her in an Atlanta hotel, where she had accompanied her grandmother to attend a Praise-A-Thon fundraiser. When Carra told Momma Jan what happened, the ordained minister did not report the case to policegoing against her obligation as a mandatory reporter under California lawand also blamed the teen for being alone with the man.

In the lawsuit, Carra Crouch said her grandmother got angry and asked her, Why would you have that man in your room? Why would you let this happen?

The jury ultimately determined that Jans responseby blaming and castigating Carra, by saying words beyond ...
Patty Bruininks, chair of the psychology department at Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington, has studied hope for years. The word is stretched on a banner across a bookcase in her office. Its printed on a sign by her window. Where theres tea, theres hope proclaims a nearby mug. The more she studies hopeand explores what sets it apart from other positive anticipatory states like optimismthe more she discovers its complexity. Of the various human emotions, hope is distinct, a funny beast, Bruininks calls it, and a very cognitive emotion.

Bruininks is part of an interdisciplinary project funded by a grant by the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities to study hope in the face of climate change. She also recently participated in the Scholarship and Christianity in Oxford program with a research project aiming to bridge earthly and spiritual hope. Drawing on N. T. Wrights idea of collaborative eschatology, Bruininks examines the tension between the certainty of our hope in Christ and the uncertainty of how exactly Gods plan will unfold.

She spoke recently with CT about her research.

You write that fear and hope do not appear to be two sides of a coin but rather can occur together. Do you encounter other common misconceptions about hope?

Whenever I talk about my research, when I explain the differences between optimism, hopefulness, and hoping, people say, Oh, yeah, I totally get that. People get it because they use these words all the time. This is knowledge that everyone has that they just havent really thought about before.

1
home World Pastor who fed congregants with live snakes pleads to celebrity preacher for deliverance

A controversial South African pastor who once fed live snakes to his congregants came to a popular Nigerian preacher to seek deliverance from his bizarre actions.

Penuel Mnguni, the pastor of End Time Disciples Ministries in South Africa, was arrested in 2015 for feeding live snakes, rats, underwear and hair to his church members, The Citizen reported.

The pastor also drew other major controversies by driving a car over his congregants, locking one of them in a deep freezer for over thirty minutes and telling them to strip off their clothes during church service.

On Sunday, Mnguni stated he had realized that what he practiced in his church was wrong after watching Nigerian preacher T.B. Joshua of Synagogue Church of All Nations (SCOAN) on TV.

"I started watching Emmanuel TV and listening to Pastor TB Joshua, and I came to realise that what I was doing was not scriptural," he said in his testimony during a service at SCOAN.

The controversial pastor said that he began his bizarre practices in his church after misinterpreting several passages in the Bible, such as Mark 16:16-18, which states that believers shall "take up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them."

According to Times Live, Mnguni asked Joshua for deliverance "from the spirit that pushed him to engage in such bizarre, inhumane actions."

"It was a shock to many," Joshua wrote on his Facebook page. "Penuel told the congregation that he had read certain scriptures such as Mark 16:17-18, which led him to believe he could feed his congregants with strange items to prove the power of God," he added.

Newsweek reported that Mnguni was arrested in 2015 following a complaint from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SCPA), but the case was eventually dropped due to lack of evidence.

Joshua, one of Nigeria's most popular pastors, is also viewed as a controversial figure. He has faced legal battles in court after a guesthouse owned by SCOAN collapsed in 2014, killing at least 115 people.

He had hosted miraculous healing events, claiming to make blind people see and deaf people hear again. He also claimed to possess the gift of prophecy and predicted the death of a president of south African country in 2012. The Christian Post noted that Malawi President Bingu Wa Mutharika died two months after the prediction.

In 2016, Joshua predicted that "a woman" will win the 2016 U.S. presidential election, which has been proven to be incorrect.
With the Estates sale proceeds going to selected charities, the Rockefellers continue their long legacy of philanthropy with the Spring 2018 cross-category auctions at Christies

Christies has been selected as the global auction house for The Collection of David and Peggy Rockefeller . This vast collection will be offered for sale in May 2018 at our flagship auction rooms in Rockefeller Center in the heart of New York City. The sales will be conducted in keeping with David Rockefellers pledge to direct the majority of his wealth to philanthropy and provide for the cultural, educational, medical, and environmental causes long supported by the couple.

David Rockefeller, Jr. commented: We are delighted to be partnering with Christies to create a significant fundraising opportunity for the philanthropies that are so important to the Rockefeller family. We are proud to fulfil my fathers wish to share with the world the art and objects that he and my mother collected over a lifetime together, and use them as means to continue the long legacy of Rockefeller family philanthropy first established by John D. Rockefeller.

Guillaume Cerutti, Christies CEO, remarked: We are honoured to have been entrusted with this legendary collection. The Rockefeller family name is indelibly linked with the arts, culture, business and philanthropy around the world  and it is a fitting tribute that the auctions will be held at Christies New York in the heart of Rockefeller Center. David and Peggy Rockefeller were well-known not only for their monumental art collection, but also for their commitment to philanthropy which has benefited so many people around the world.

About Peggy and David Rockefeller



David Rockefeller (1915-2017) is remembered as one of the United States most deeply engaged and influential civic leaders. In the 1950s and 1960s he spearheaded the rebuilding and revitalisation of Wall Street and that areas emergence as the worlds financial capital, and later founded the Partnership for New York City to foster cooperation between the private sector and government. David Rockefeller led Chase Manhattan Bank for more than a decade, successfully expanding the banks international operations to more than 100 countries.

As a philanthropist, he provided visionary leadership and financial support to various organisations, serving as chairman for many years of Rockefeller University, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Americas Society/Council of the Americas and The Museum of Modern Art.

David was the last surviving grandson of John D. Rockefeller, the great industrialist who consolidated the American petroleum industry and founded the Standard Oil Company in the 19th century, subsequently building a fortune that made him one of Americas first billionaires and his family one of the richest and most influential in the nations history. Peggy McGrath Rockefeller (1915-1996) was a dedicated conservationist, a board member of the American Farmland Trust in Washington, and was a founder of the Maine Coast Heritage Trust in Topsham, Maine. David and Peggy married in 1940 and for more than half a century were true partners in family, philanthropy and art.



The Peggy and David Rockefeller Collection represents two individuals extraordinary dialogue with art and the world  a staggering collecting achievement extending across geography, history and medium. In its breadth and depth, it is unrivalled in modern times, encompassing thousands of works held at the Rockefellers residences in Manhattan, Pocantico Hills, the Hudson Valley, Maine, and beyond. It is a testament to Peggy and Davids knowledge, passion and connoisseurship that they lived surrounded by masterpieces of the art-historical canon.



Davids philanthropy was rooted in his belief in the power of individuals and communities to create a better world  the continuation of John D. Rockefeller, Seniors art of giving. He was the recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Grand Cross of the French Legion of Honour, the Andrew Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy, and numerous other awards.

In 2010 David signed the Giving Pledge, further confirming his plans to direct the majority of his personal wealth towards philanthropy. He noted at the time: Our family continues to be united in the belief that those who have benefited the most from our nations economic system have a special responsibility to give back to our society in meaningful ways.

For general enquiries about the Rockefeller auctions, contact rockefeller@christies.com
Houstonians who help house the homeless, create restaurant fundraising programs and empower girls and boys are among the 20 Texas social entrepreneurs selected for a seven-month training program hosted by BBVA Compass.

BBVA Momentum is designed to help entrepreneurs scale their businesses and potentially receive investment opportunities.
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Waving signs proclaiming "Brown Lives Matter" and "Justice for John Hernandez," more than 150 protesters marched through downtown Houston on Wednesday as community tensions build over the strangulation death of the 24-year-old Houston-area man.

The calls for fairness and impartiality in the investigation came as the Harris County District Attorney's Office announced it will present evidence starting Thursday to let a grand jury decide whether Terry Thompson, the husband of a sheriff's deputy, should be charged in the case.

District Attorney Kim Ogg said every aspect of Hernandez's death will be presented to the grand jury.

"We're going to ask a grand jury to make decisions based on all the evidence," said Ogg, who is out of state for a meeting. "We are dedicated to a fair, evidence-based process."

ALSO READ: New video surfaces in fatal altercation at Denny's

The protests followed more than a week of public outrage, fueled by a cellphone video that captured the stout Thompson pinning the smaller Hernandez to the ground outside a Denny's restaurant in eastern Harris County.

"It's not right  everyone involved should've been arrested," said Antonio Ramirez, a friend of the family who joined the march Wednesday. "If the roles were reversed and he would've killed (the deputy's) husband, John would've have been locked up days ago."

Hernandez died from strangulation and chest compression on May 31, three days after he got into an altercation with Thompson outside the restaurant. The 50-second video shows Thompson on top of a kicking and grunting Hernandez.

But sorting out who may have started the fight  and whether Thompson was acting in self-defense  will be up for the grand jury to decide. According to Scot Courtney, an attorney for Thompson, Hernandez threw and landed the first punch.

"My client was not the aggressor," he has said. "My heart goes out to the entire family, but we need to see the entire picture and not just the end result."

Companion lashes out

The emotional pain for Maria Toral, the mother of Hernandez's 4-year-old daughter, has been overwhelming, she said. Toral said the only way Hernandez will receive justice is if Thompson is sent to prison.

"That's what I want," she said. "This has all been a bad dream and I just want it to be over."

After the medical examiner's office ruled the death a homicide, Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez placed Thompson's wife, Deputy Chauna Thompson, on administrative duty until the investigation is resolved.

Gonzalez emphasized during a news conference Wednesday after the protest march that his office provided no special treatment to the deputy or her husband.

"Absolutely not," he said. "There's no favoritism being shown."

Gonzalez said his office has handed off its evidence to the district attorney's office and enlisted guidance from the Texas Rangers and the Department of Justice in an effort to be transparent.

But the sheriff's office remains on the case and will track any leads as they come in, Gonzalez said.

First Assistant District Attorney Tom Berg said Wednesday that senior prosecutor Jim Leitner will lead the presentation before the grand jury, which could decide as early as this week whether criminal charges are warranted.

The grand jury will consider the legal standard for self-defense in a confrontation, Berg said.

"Your response in self-defense has to be proportionate to the threat," he said. "In order to use deadly force, you normally have to be faced with deadly force or imminent bodily injury."

'We want justice'

Berg addressed more than 100 protesters gathered outside the county courthouse demanding "Justice Now." He said that he wants justice for John Hernandez and also for Terry Thompson.

"We want justice for John Hernandez, and we want justice for the Thompsons," the prosecutor recalled later. "We want justice for everyone involved in this case. We want the process to be transparent. And we want to remind them that they're part of our community too, and we care."

Protesters and family members believe the altercation may have been racially motivated, and that Hernandez's death would have been more aggressively investigated if he were white.

Berg said detectives have looked at a possible hate motive, including reviewing posts on Facebook, but have not seen convincing proof of bias.

Berg said Thompson was not arrested initially because Hernandez did not die at the scene, but instead was pronounced dead days later when he was removed from life support.

Because the incident was initially reported to sheriff's deputies as an assault by Hernandez and they were not aware he had been taken away without vital signs, Berg said that Thompson, his wife and other witnesses were interviewed by regular patrol deputies rather than homicide detectives, who might have asked questions and gathered evidence differently.

Instead, homicide investigators had to work days after the incident, he said. "We're concerned that things happened later than they should have," Berg said.

The prosecutor added that Thompson and his wife spoke to patrol deputies at the scene but have declined to be interviewed by the DA's investigators.

A bittersweet victory

The incident began after Thompson and his children pulled into the Denny's parking lot in the 17700 block of the Crosby Freeway in eastern Harris County. Thomas reportedly saw Hernandez urinating in public, Gonzalez said last week.

Thompson allegedly confronted Hernandez and a fight ensued, Gonzalez said. Thompson's wife, who was off duty, arrived in a separate vehicle to meet the family at the restaurant and called for assistance, the sheriff said.

On Wednesday, protesters marched about a mile through Houston streets and convened on the steps of the Harris County Criminal Justice Center to draw attention to the case.

What was originally planned as an event to protest the Harris County Sheriff's Office involvement in the case transformed into a bittersweet victory for Hernandez's family and friends as they learned that the grand jury would hear the case. Friends and family members cheered  though briefly.

Randall Kallinen, an attorney representing the Hernandez family, said they are pleased that a grand jury will hear the evidence. "This is what we wanted," he said. "The case is moving forward and we're hoping that the grand jury does the right thing. The evidence is clear."
A trial is scheduled to start Wednesday for a Jordanian soldier accused in the slaying last year of three members of a U.S. Army Special Forces team, including one from Houston, officials confirmed.

The soldier, M'aarek Abu Tayeh, will be tried by a military tribunal in Jordan and the proceedings will be closed to spectators, including family members of the three slain Green Berets: Staff Sgt. James Moriarty, 27, of Houston, Staff Sgt. Matthew Lewellen, 27, of Missouri and Staff Sgt. Kevin McEnroe, 30, of Tucson, Ariz.
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A Texas native is in federal custody after being accused of leaking classified documents from the National Security Agency to a news agency.

Reality Winner, 25, called her family in Texas on Saturday and told her family she was arrested by the FBI, reports The Guardian. The newspaper reports family members are "bewildered and concerned about the possible 10-year prison sentence that Winner could receive if convicted."

HOW SHE WAS ARRESTED: The trail that led the feds to Reality Winner, alleged source of NSA leak

Winner, who was born in Texas in December 1991 and raised in Kingsville, became the center of a national story after The Intercept published a story on Monday alleging Russians were involved in online cyber attacks days before the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Winner was working as a government contractor in Augusta, Georgia at the time of the leak, according to her arrest affidavit. FBI agent Justin Carrick said the agency found Winner had contacted a news outlet about the NSA documents after investigating her email.

The arrest affidavit further claims Winner admitted to mailing the intelligence report to a news outlet, despite knowing she was not authorized to "receive or posses the documents."

ON HER BELIEFS: 25-year-old accused of leaking top-secret documents talked of 'standing' with Iran in hypothetical war

Family members said Winner served in the U.S. Air Force as a linguist before working as government contractor.

The leak and her arrest come as a surprise.

"I never thought this would be something she would do," Winner-Davis told the Guardian. "I mean, she has expressed to me that she is not a fan of Trump - but she's not someone who would go and riot or picket."

NPR has tracked down some of Winner's believed social media accounts, which show a woman who is interested in exercise, nutrition and animals. One Twitter account linked to Winner features tweets that are critical of U.S. President Donald Trump.

OPINION: Did the Intercept bungle the NSA leak?

While it remains to be seen if Winner will be fully charged for sharing classified documents under the Espionage Act, the world is still uncovering details of the young woman's life.

Click through the gallery above to see what's been discovered about the alleged whistleblower so far.
ask the fool

The word on your IRAs

Q: Can you explain Roth IRAs? - B.T., Hattiesburg, Miss.

A: Just as there are two main kinds of IRAs - traditional and Roth - many companies now offer their workers the choice between traditional and Roth 401(k)s.

With a traditional IRA and 401(k), you contribute pretax money that reduces your taxable income and, therefore, your tax bill for the year. For example, if you earn $60,000 and contribute $5,000, your taxable income drops to $55,000. When you withdraw the money in retirement, it's taxed as ordinary income to you.

With Roth IRAs and 401(k)s, though, you contribute post-tax money that doesn't deliver any upfront tax break. But you eventually get a big tax break when you withdraw from the account in retirement - because if you follow the rules, it's all tax-free. For 2017, you can contribute up to $5,500 and $18,000 to IRAs and 401(k)s, respectively, with an additional $1,000 and $6,000 allowed, respectively, for those age 50 or older. If you contribute $8,000 per year for 20 years and your contributions grow by 8 percent on average annually, you'll end up with almost $400,000 - and you can take it all out tax-free in retirement!

Foolish Trivia

Name that company

I trace my roots back to 1851, when two Bostonians went into business in Hawaii. In 1907, I ran one of the first nationwide consumer advertising campaigns in America - for pineapples. Today, based in California, I'm the world's largest producer of bananas and pineapples, among other things. Over the years, partly through acquisitions, I moved into other fruits and vegetables. Now I even offer salads in bags. I operate the largest dedicated refrigerated fleet of containers in the world, too. I've been a public company and a private one and am looking to go public again. Who am I?

Last week's trivia answer: Cargill

the take

CVS has somehealthy prospects

Most people know CVS Health (NYSE: CVS) for its network of retail pharmacies that features almost 9,700 locations. The main driver of its success, though, is CVS' pharmacy benefits management, or PBM, business.

A PBM negotiates between payers and makers of drugs to bring prices down, taking a small chunk of the savings as its reward. CVS is one of the United States' largest PBMs - and in this industry (as in many others), size confers essential negotiating leverage.

Competition is strong between CVS and Walgreens Boots Alliance. CVS' stock has slipped over the past year, and CEO Larry Merlo sees 2017 as "a rebuilding year," aiming to "return to healthy levels of growth."

Both CVS and Walgreens have a major tailwind in the aging of America, which will only increase demand for its services. (The Motley Fool has recommended CVS Health.)

Universal Uclick
Dallas-based Rise, an all-you-can-fly membership program created for frequent business travelers, has been acquired by a competitor in California.

Surf Air announced its acquisition of Rise on Wednesday. The combined company allows its members to reserve seats on business aircraft running scheduled flights.
With the Trump administration readying to make its first foray into U.S. ethanol policy, the biofuels industry is not sitting by quietly.

In a new report released by the Renewable Fuels Association Wednesday, ethanol producers want to remind EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt just how consequential a part of the Midwestern economy ethanol production has become over the last decade.

RELATED: EPA raises ethanol mandate higher, riling oil companies

Looking back to 2005, when former President George W. Bush signed what has become known as the ethanol mandate into law, the RFA reports the following gains:

Ethanol plants: 2005 (81), 2016 (213)

Ethanol jobs: 2005 (153,725), 2016 (339,176)

U.S. corn production in bushels: 2005 (11.1 billion), 2016 (15.2 billion)

The report comes as oil lobbyists and Republicans from oil rich states like Texas continue to press the administration to freeze the ethanol mandate.

But the RFA, as well as Midwestern politicians of both parties, argue that ethanol has become a vital part of the national economy that must be supported by the federal government.

"With EPA expected to propose its 2018 RFS obligations in the near future, the agency needs to look no further than this document for what impact this vital program has had on our nation," said RFA President and CEO Bob Dinneen. "We look forward to EPA continuing to implement a strong RFS to ensure future growth for our industry and the positive impact it has throughout all sectors of our economy."
The Gulf Coast continues to dominate new U.S. chemical plant construction. Six of the eight new U.S. ethylene projects now being built sit along the Gulf, according to data from energy research firm Wood Mackenzie.

Companies like Houstons Occidental Petroleum, Michigans Dow Chemical and Japanese subsidiary Shintech are all building or have recently built there.
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Fans of Cleburne Cafeteria may soon inhale the familiar aroma of baked squash, chicken and dumplings, and turkey with dressing when the landmark eatery reopens this summer after being destroyed by fire in April 2016.

Beef lovers will be pleased to hear that steaks made to order are being added to the menu. So will beer and wine - for the first time in the 76-year-old restaurant's history.

But diners should be aware that the management still wants you to pay in cash upfront.

"A cash transaction helps the line move quickly!" signs in the restored restaurant will say. "Cash makes the serving line go fast!"

Owner George Mickelis plans to put a no-fee ATM inside the formerly cash- or check-only restaurant to encourage customers to maintain his tradition of avoiding credit card machines. He'll have one such credit card machine that's chip-enabled, but he really doesn't want to use it.

Cleburne is set to reopen in late August following its second devastating fire. The last time it burned down, in 1990, it took less than three months to rebuild. Mickelis said Tuesday that this effort is taking longer because the new place will be much larger and he has to meet many more local, state and federal regulations and inspections than he did before.

He has a few new twists in store.

"It's going to be something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue," Mickelis said.

That includes menu items that have been around since the 1940s, and a number of familiar faces will be behind the cafeteria line ready to serve up fare that has pleased crowds since before Nick Mickelis, George's father, purchased the cafeteria on Cleburne at Fannin near downtown in 1952.

It moved to its current site across from West University Place in 1969. Its 15-month absence is acutely felt.

"Everybody misses our big giant cakes," George Mickelis said.

The new cafeteria at 3606 Bissonnet will be about 70 percent larger, totaling more than 11,000 square feet. It will seat about 300. There will be 100 parking spaces and a free valet service that Mickelis says should benefit older customers.

Built by Mission Constructors and designed by Fehr Grossman Cox Architects, the cafeteria will sport a Hill Country style with rose-colored brick and stone and light alder wood in the decor. It will have a refreshed look, but keep a cozy, familiar feel using elements such as a felt-style black menu board, Homer Laughlin plates and paintings by Nick Mickelis of his native Greece.

New features will include outdoor areas for al fresco dining next to herb boxes and a private dining room with seating for 40. Separate from the kitchen will be a refrigerated butcher shop area for grinding beef and preparing chicken for chicken-fried steak and other dishes.

At the beginning of the cafeteria line will be a meat case with steaks for customers to select from before one is cooked and brought to the table.

Mickelis aims to attract a younger crowd, in addition to keeping longtime customers. His business model, going to the farmers market and preparing everything fresh on site including breads and pies daily, has gained favor recently. Everything is made in-house, as it always has been, down to squeezing the lemons used to make mayonnaise or lemon meringue pie.

"We're going to be offering beer and wine, which is something we've never done before," Mickelis said.

"We're going to have steaks cooked to order like my dad used to do on Cleburne Street."

Mickelis secured a loan to fund part of the project, which totals about $3 million. He already owned the land, totaling about 72,000 square feet.

And for the "something blue," Mickelis pointed to the artwork: "A lot of the oceans my father painted."

Nick Mickelis, who immigrated from the island of Patmos in 1948, long painted scenes of his homeland. He used to paint on walls using the ink of berries.

"As a little boy, he would chase donkeys and trim their tails and make a brush," Mickelis said. "When he came to America and could afford canvas, he painted."

The family was able to save many of his paintings after the 1990 fire. On April 26, 2016, they were not as fortunate.

"Of the 65 paintings, we only rescued 11 out of the fire," Mickelis said.

The paintings, along with photos of the early days taken by his mother, Pat Mickelis, 93, will again be a prominent part of the decor.

The Mickelis family was able to replicate some paintings from photos as Giclee prints and will bring others from home.

The new design has an expansive two-story entry with music piped in. The paintings will be on display to the right, and Cleburne Cafeteria's long history will be cataloged to the left.

"We're taking you back in time," Mickelis said. "It's nostalgic and it's comforting."
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Two home burglary suspects were scratched up and sent to jail Monday after they allegedly tried to escape Montgomery County deputies in the woods.

The investigation began June 5 at about 8 p.m., when deputies with the Montgomery County Precinct 4 Constable's Office approached a suspicious vehicle near Fostoria Road and Morgan Cemetery Road in Cleveland, the constable's office said in a release.

The 2016 Kia was reportedly stolen from Montgomery County, the release states.

An investigation into a suspicious vehicle in Cleveland led to two men being arrested and charged with Burglary of a Habitation and Evading Arrest or Detention, authorities say.

"As deputies attempted to make contact with the two males, they fled the location and into nearby woods. With assistance from the Splendora Police Department, Roman Forest Police Department and Montgomery County Sheriff's Office, a perimeter was established," said Sgt. James Slack, spokesperson for the constable's office.

A few hours later, two men were located and detained. Deputies reportedly found several stolen firearms, tools, machete, ax, bolt cutter, several needles and other property inside the vehicle. Many of the recovered items were taken from a home burglary on Crossno Dr. in Cleveland, Slack said.

The two suspects are identified as Thomas Barringer, 26, of Livingston, and Kevin Caldwell, 22, of Conroe. Both are charged with burglary of a habitation and evading arrest or detention. Barringer is facing an additional charged of unauthorized use of a motor vehicle, while Caldwell is charged with unlawful possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.

Pct. 4 Constable Charles "Rowdy" Hayden shared credit for the arrests with the surrounding agencies who came to help locate the suspects. He also thanked his deputes for their tireless work and responsiveness to residents in the area.

"Hard work pays off. Two known criminals are now in jail, stolen guns are off the street, a local resident had property returned from a recent burglary and someone is going to get their car back. Overall, [it was] a very good night and a job well done," Hayden said.
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When looking for a location to open a new Spanish Schoolhouse, Kristina Franco sought an area where the school's services could be an asset to the community.

Franco, owner and director of the new Spanish Schoolhouse in Kingwood, feels she has found this in the Kingwood community.

"Given that we are on the early side of education, we think there's a natural fit with families and the educational community," Franco said. "Anytime you have a school in a community, you want to be open to what the community has a need for."

The Spanish Schoolhouse in Kingwood opened its doors Feb. 1.

Franco's children attended the Spanish Schoolhouse in the Woodlands, where Franco served as the director for two years prior to opening the new location.

The Spanish Schoolhouse is a preschool serving children 18 months old to 4 years old. Children are taught fundamental skill sets while simultaneously learning Spanish in an immersive environment.

"As a preschool, we teach children a core curriculum, but our teachers are native Spanish speakers, so children have the added benefit of not only learning the curriculum, but also learning a second language," Franco said. "The easiest time to acquire a language is early in life. I used to teach high school Spanish, and the level of fluency for students learning a language at that age isn't anywhere near what we achieve here with our kids."

In addition to learning Spanish, children learn about different aspects of their teachers' cultures.

"Our teachers are able to incorporate language and culture to the experiences we provide to our kids," Franco said.

The Spanish Schoolhouse in Kingwood began with six students and finished the school year with 17. Currently, there are more than 40 students engaged in the school's summer camps, which are geared toward children 3 to 8 years old.

The Spanish Schoolhouse plans to continue expanding its programs. Starting in September, it will begin offering beginner afterschool Spanish classes to children in kindergarten through fifth grade.

The Spanish Schoolhouse in Kingwood is gearing up to host a grand opening and ribbon cutting ceremony Aug. 15 from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m.

The community is invited to attend and enjoy refreshments and a tour of the new facility.

The Spanish Schoolhouse in Kingwood is at 2910 Mills Branch Drive in Kingwood.

For more information, visit https://spanishschoolhouse.com/kingwood.
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Everything's bigger in Texas, including the size of catfish.

Noodling, the art of catching catfish with your bare hands, took the spotlight in North Texas last month when a pair of adventurous Texans caught an 85 pound, 2-ounce flathead catfish on Lake Tawakoni.

Nate Williams and Kelly Millsap, collectively deemed Team Adrenaline, say they have beat the prior hand fishing national record that was set in Oklahoma, which is considered the birthplace of noodling.

The Quinlan-Tawakoni News backed up the claim, saying Williams and Millsap took the title over the previous record, an 81-pound catch made in Durant, Oklahoma in 2013.

RELATED: Video: Girl goes 'redneck fishing,' catches enormous catfish with bare hands

The duo came together to catch the monster-sized fish at Lake Tawakoni's tournament on Friday, May 26. Williams said they are still in the process of hearing back from the Texas Parks & Wildlife to see if they will officially verify their catch as a record.

Though the monstrous catch could have contributed to a giant fish fry, Williams said that with fish this size, it's necessary to release it.

"We do it just for enjoyment. We want to make sure that we don't hurt the population," Williams, who is a professional noodling guide, told mySA.com.

READ ALSO: Fish bra: The latest internet trend that has women anglers going topless

When Williams first began noodling 17 years ago, he said it was just him and his friends trying to catch fish with their bare hands.

Williams said he's been teaching people to noodle since 2011, and his clientele includes Jeremy Wade, the host of Animal Planet's "River Monsters."

To reserve your spot on the boat along with the pro, visit William's Adrenaline Rush Noodling.

JThorpe@express-news.net

@jerilynnthorpe
Taylor High School art student Ana Olvera has won the Congressional Art Competition hosted by District 7 U.S. Congressman John Culberson, R-West Houston, with her oil painting "Chasing the Storm."

In addition to this honor, she received two round-trip tickets to Washington, D.C., to attend a reception at the U.S. Capitol where her artwork will hang for one year.

This national competition is coordinated by members of the U.S. House of Representatives and takes place every year to recognize the creative talents of students across the nation.

This is the second consecutive year that a Taylor High School student has received the honor of displaying their masterpiece in a legislative hall.

"The submissions we received this year are excellent," said Culberson at a ceremony held for the finalists in his Houston office. "Our office received almost 50 different entries from six different schools in Houston. These young artists are talented and have a great future ahead of them."

Each spring, the Congressional Institute sponsors a nationwide high school visual art competition to recognize and encourage artistic talent. Students from each congressional district in America submit their work to their representative's office, and panels of local artists select the winning entries.

Second place went to Sydney Bosarge of Episcopal High School for her digital photographic print entitled, "Where the Wind Takes You."

Third place went to Yvonne Kim, also of Taylor High School, for her watercolor and prima pencil piece, "Out to Pasture."

Since the competition was launched in 1982, more than 650,000 high school students across the nation have participated in the annual event.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (KCRA)  A Sacramento firefighter/paramedic has been charged with a misdemeanor count of sexual battery, the Sacramento Fire Department said.

Jared Evans, 32, turned himself in Monday after a warrant for his arrest was issued, officials said. He was booked into jail and then released on a $3,000 bail.

The charges stem from an April 1 incident while Evans was on duty, the department said.

"When these allegations were brought to the attention of fire administration, we immediately notified the office of public safety and accountability and requested a full law enforcement investigation," Sacramento Fire Chief Walt White said.

According to court documents, Evans was working as a paramedic when he allegedly touched an 19-year-old woman inappropriately while she was having seizures. The woman was in the back of the ambulance and was being transported to the hospital. The incident was witnessed by a Sacramento Fire Department paramedic intern, according to the court documents.

The court documents say Evans placed his hands down the woman's shirt and pulled her right breast out of her bra while she was "completely unresponsive to pain and verbal commands, she was out." Evans then slid the woman's breast back into her shirt, later telling the intern, "Sorry man, I had to."

The documents allege Evans touched the woman against her will "for the specific purpose of sexual arousal, sexual gratification or sexual abuse," not for medical care.

The intern reported the incident to a supervisor on April 16 and police began investigating on April 18.

Police then questioned the woman on April 24, the documents show. She told investigators while her eyes were closed and she couldn't move, she could hear the paramedics and feel everything. She then went on to tell police that she heard Evans say she has big breasts. She then felt a hand go down the top of her shirt and pull out her breast.

According to court documents, the woman said she couldn't see who touched her breast.

When police questioned Evans on April 28, he denied touching the patient and making comments about her breasts, according to the documents. He did not respond to KCRA's requests for comment on Monday.

Evans is a two-year veteran of the Sacramento Fire Department. Records show he previously volunteered at the Cameron Fire Department and now lives in Placerville. Evans has been on paid administrative leave since April 21.

"The Sacramento Fire Department takes all citizen complaints seriously, and works quickly to take appropriate actions to mitigate them," White said in a statement. "Although the case is ongoing, and all facts are not yet known, the Sacramento Fire Department wants to assure the public that we are fully cooperating with the investigation, and working to bring the matter to a successful conclusion."

Evans has a court appearance scheduled for Sept. 26.

No other details have been released.

This article originally appeared on KCRA.com
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Gov. Greg Abbott surprised many by including seven items that would directly and indirectly affect public education when he announced he would convene a special legislative session in July.

The governor's education wish list includes topics ranging from school funding to which restrooms transgender students should be allowed to used.

Here's what the special session could mean for Houston-area schools and school districts:

(Story continues below ...)

Which special session agenda items could affect public education?

They include:

Vouchers for special needs students;

A $1,000 pay raise per teacher funded by school districts;

Flexibility in teacher hiring and retention practices;

Creation of a school finance reform commission;

A "bathroom bill" that would dictate which restroom transgender students should use;

Prevention of paycheck deductions for union dues; and

Property tax changes, including automatic rollback elections for local governments and school districts.

What are special education vouchers?

Vouchers allow parents to use money the state would have spent on their child's education in a public school to help offset the cost of tuition at a private school. The vouchers proposed by the Texas Senate in May would have only allowed the parents of disabled students to qualify.

Vouchers are a controversial subject in education. While school choice advocates say it allows predominately poor and otherwise disadvantaged students to get a better education, public school advocates say it siphons money from public schools into private schools that are not held to the same accountability standards with regards to standardized testing and state oversight.

What impact could the proposed agenda items have on teachers?

Two of the items mention teachers specifically: one would see teachers receive a $1,000 raise and one would provide more flexibility in teacher hiring and retention. A third would prevent teachers and other employees from having union dues deducted automatically from paychecks.

Districts could be hard-pressed to find money to provide teachers with the proposed raises, especially if legislators change or lessen the amount districts can collect in local property taxes. But if the Legislature mandates the raises, districts could be left with no choice.

It's unclear what "providing more flexibility in teacher hiring and retention processes" actually means. It could be similar to flexibility given to districts that qualify for the District of Innovation status, including hiring teachers who lack teacher certifications, allowing districts to circumvent student-teacher ratios and eliminating some state-required positions (such as behavioral coordinators).

Transgender teachers could also be affected by any potential bathroom bills, which could mandate they use the restroom of their birth gender, not their gender identity.

How could the special session affect school funding?

Several of the agenda items could have a major affect on school districts' finances: The teacher raises, the special education vouchers and property tax changes.

And as most districts present budgets to their respective boards of education in June and July, the session could throw a wrench in those nearly finished drafts.

Legislators will not address school districts two biggest wishes during the special session: additional funding and changes to the states unpopular school finance formula. Instead, Abbott charged lawmakers with forming a committee to study overhauling Texas school-funding system, appearing to hold off on concrete changes until at least the 2019 legislative session.

The potential loss of tax revenues, lack of additional funds and possible unfunded mandates would mostly affect more than 200 of Texas districts that currently receive Additional State Aid for Tax Reduction (ASATR). The special pot of money came into being in 2006 after the state Legislature cut the rate of local property taxes that school districts could collect and was meant to help offset districts loss of local taxes. ASATR funds are scheduled to dry up this year, and without legislative intervention, could end entirely.

The Sheldon, Texas City and Barbers Hill ISDs  which serve about 20,000 students in pockets across the Houston area - will likely lose a combined $26.4 million as a result.

What are those close to education saying about the special session's agenda?

Conservative lawmakers and school choice advocates have mostly praised the governor's special session agenda.

Sen. Larry Taylor, R-Friendswood, who championed special education vouchers, said allowing a small number of parents to chose whether to send their child to a private school with some state funds should not have derailed long-awaited changes to school funding.

When people realize that moneys not coming, they may be willing to put up with a small number of parents having the opportunity to chose for their child, Taylor told the Chronicle Tuesday.

He added that mandating teacher raises will help the state become more competitive nationally and that he had already spearheaded the creation of a commission to study school finance before that bill died.

But school district officials argue that the items could potentially create millions of dollars' worth of unfunded mandates that would further stress their districts' already strained resources.

Glenn Reed, general manager of budgeting and financial planning for Houston ISD, said that the Legislature has now failed to increase the amount it pays districts per weighted attendance averages for the past three years. That lack of funding increases, coupled with rising costs and a slew of potentially unfunded state mandates, could put the district in even more precarious financial straits. It also has made developing this year's budget - which is due June 30 - extremely challenging.

"There were so many scenarios that building this budget was any mans guess," Reed said. "Usually in the past, you at least knew when the Legislature was in session -- they were at least working on something with school finance. But this session it was only the House and that was it. And with our whole (recapture) election in May, it was just impossible to know where it was going to land."

Houston ISD voters agreed last month to pay the state's "recapture" fee to help subsidize less property-rich districts, opting to write a check for $77.5 million to Texas this year rather than face the state's seizure of some of the district's most valuable properties, which would have carried a bigger financial hit.
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The U.S. Supreme Court dealt another blow Wednesday to Harris County's controversial bail system, refusing to halt a court order even as county officials began releasing more than 100 misdemeanor inmates who couldn't afford to post cash bonds.

Justice Clarence Thomas denied Harris County's request less than 24 hours after the county filed a challenge to an appeals court decision that had left in place a strongly worded order tossing out the current bail system.

Even before the high court ruled, however, Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez began releasing indigent inmates charged with misdemeanors who did not have other special holds or certain family violence restrictions.

Among those released Wednesday was Edward Gonzales - no relation to the sheriff - who was arrested Monday on misdemeanor charges of criminal mischief and trespassing.

The 38-year-old construction worker was accused of damaging a fence while helping a friend move, but he said the fence was already damaged when he arrived. He sat in jail more than 36 hours, however, because he couldn't afford to make the $500 cash bond.

Finally, early Wednesday, he was released on a personal bond after promising to appear in court.

"Free at last!" he yelled as he walked outside. "It feels good to come out."

The new no-cash bail system "helps a lot," he said.

Andre Medina, 17, a high school senior, waited outside the Harris County Jail for his grandmother.

He had been in jail for two days after being arrested on a criminal trespass charge in Pasadena. Late Tuesday night, he, too, was released on a personal bond.

"Right before I saw the TV judge, I prayed I could get out," Medina said, referring to the hearing officer who read his charges via a television link. "It feels good. I'm going to go home and shower."

WATCH: Video from 'TV judge' hearings in Harris County and related story

The court orders and costly legal fight came in a federal lawsuit 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. Similar lawsuits filed on behalf of two other people were merged into the case in August.

Chief U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal in Houston issued a 193-page ruling in April that the county's bail system was unconstitutional and ordered the release of indigent misdemeanor defendants using personal bonds.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday morning rejected the county's efforts to halt Rosenthal's injunction while they challenged the full ruling in court. The county filed the same day for emergency consideration before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Courts have 'clearly spoken'

The latest legal blow left county officials weighing their options and refocusing efforts on challenging the larger order from Rosenthal, said First Assistant County Attorney Robert Soard.

The county still has the option to ask another justice or the full Supreme Court to reconsider Thomas' ruling. Follow-up requests to other justices often are referred to the full court, according to the high court's public information office.

Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg - whose office has already begun supporting personal bonds for misdemeanors - praised the court's decision.

"There is no longer any legal reason why the county cannot comply with Judge Lee Rosenthal's order," she said, in a written statement. "Holding people in jail solely because they are poor violates due process, and the courts at every level of our federal judiciary have clearly spoken."

Ogg joined with the sheriff and County Commissioner Rodney Ellis in filing documents with the court opposing the cash-bail system. One of the 16 criminal court-at-law judges sued in the case, Darrell Jordan, has also indicated he opposes the current system. Six hearing officers and top county officials are also named in the suit.

Trisha Trigilio, staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, said being stuck in jail can ruin people's lives over minor offenses.

"What was happening under the previous system was an outrage," she said. "We have people who are held in jail with devastating consequences for their families and their lives, just because they can't afford to pay a bond."

The county, however, has argued that broad pretrial release on personal bonds can lead to dangerous criminals going free, saying the court order would "upend the pretrial bail system in the largest jurisdiction in Texas and the third largest in the United States."

County officials have invested millions of dollars to reform the bail system starting this summer, with a beefed up pretrial services department and a pilot program to provide public defenders present at bail hearings. A tool to assess the risk posed by a defendant is set to go into effect July 1.

Precinct 3 County Commissioner Steve Radack said the county wants a chance to complete its reforms without federal intervention.

"I want the end result to be fairness, and that's what we have been striving for," Radack said. "I don't think you can always get court-ordered fairness."

The bail bond industry has also opposed the order, which will release thousands of potential clients without requiring them to post bond.

Veteran bondsman Carlos Manzano, of Americas Bail Bonds, said he and many of his colleagues believe the overuse of personal bonds will create a dangerous situation for the community.

"It's kind of like just like giving everybody a slap on the hand," he said. "It's going to blow up in the county's face. It's just a ticking time bomb."

A welcome surprise

For those who were released Wednesday, however, many of whom had been facing days or weeks behind bars over misdemeanors, the change offered a surprise opportunity to resume life outside of a jail cell.

"I'm going to call my grandmother," said Traylessee Cunningham, who had been held in jail since early May. "Nobody knows I'm in jail."

Cunningham was charged with misdemeanor trespassing on May 10, just days after she said she had fronted nearly $10,000 in funeral costs for her twin brother. She was unable to post the $500 she needed to get out of jail on the trespassing charge, so she remained in jail for weeks, missing her brother's funeral.

"That messed me up really bad," Cunningham said.

She is also facing a felony retaliation charge involving her brother's former girlfriend, she said.

For Devin Walton, 27, getting out of jail means going back to work cooking barbecue in Oak Ridge North. He wants to go back to his wife and their two children in Chambers County and work on a car he's rebuilding.

"Get back to my kids, that's the ultimate goal," he said.

Walton had been held after getting into a fight with his brother. He could not come up with the $5,000 needed for the $50,000 bond and had been in jail almost a week.

He's lucky, he said, to have an understanding boss.

"I probably would have lost my job," he said.

Changes ahead?

Legal experts said the county has just about used up all its options in challenging Rosenthal's order.

"There's no question that Justice Thomas has concluded that there isn't clear and obvious irreparable harm to the state if the stay isn't granted," said Lonny Hoffman, a professor at the University of Houston Law Center who specializes in federal procedure.

Sarah R. Guidry, executive director of the Earl Carl Institute for Legal and Social Policy at the Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University, said Thomas' rejection of the county's appeal will force local changes.

"This is going to put a fire under the county to figure out how to implement this," she said. "It's also going to have a huge impact on the bail bonds industry. They're going to have to figure out a different way to make a living. They're not going the get the bulk of their income off of poor people who are charged with low-level crimes."
A former Groesbeck Independent School District sixth grade teacher was arrested and charged with possession of methamphetamine, according to the Temple Daily Telegram.

Stephanie Alfano, 49, was found sleeping and seemed to be under the influence of a substance in a white 2005 Nissan on what would have been her final day to teach at Groesbeck Middle School, according to police.
A Philadelphia television reporter who was fired this week after her tirade on a police officer was caught on video said she's "ashamed and embarrassed" and feels "ruined," according to the NY Post.

The story began when former PHL17 reporter Colleen Campbell went to the Helium Comedy Club in Philly.

Wil Sylvince, the New York comedian who captured the cringe-worthy episode posted on his Facebook account that Campbell was "disturbing the show with her loud whispering. After 3 warnings and other customers were complaining she was asked to leave."

VIRAL VIDEO: Chair-throwing brawl at Bayou City Wings

"When she got kicked out she assaulted (kicking, punching, and eye poking) 3 of the employees in bar area right outside the showroom and then outside she mock spit in the managers face when a cop came," said Sylvince. "She verbally abused this poor cop who was trying to keep the peace at first."

That's where the five-minute video below picks showing Campbell standing outside of the club.

Campbell, 28, lost her job at PHL17 and issued a statement Wednesday morning apologizing to the police officer, "who bore the brunt of my outburst," as well as the Philadelphia Police Department and her former employers.

Campbell was charged with resisting arrest, criminal mischief and disorderly conduct and was released without bail. She is due to appear in court on June 13.
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This morning, the cover of the new Us Weekly hit stands and it's already making wave. President Donald Trump's daughter, Ivanka Trump, is on the cover along with the headline, "Ivanka Takes A Stand: Why I Disagree With My Dad."

Online, a teaser of the story is posted under the headline, "How Ivanka Trump Influences Her Father Donald Trump." It highlights some of Ivanka's more liberal stances on issues like LGBTQ rights, climate change, NAFTA, and other topics where she disagrees with her father and the Trump administration.

"Sometimes [Ivanka] and Jared are a big influence on Donald and sometimes he takes other opinions into account and does something they disagree with," a source close to Ivanka told the publication. "They win some and they lose some."

EYES ON IVANKA: One weird thing you never noticed

(Story continues below.)

One such loss is the president's recent decision to abandon the Paris Agreement, which attempted to address climate change. Ivanka, the story explains, "was disappointed by his decision, but she's learned to take such defeats in stride."

Last month, Ivanka explained to The New York Times, "I'll go to the mat on certain issues and I may still lose those." But, she added, "Maybe along the way I've modified a position just slightly. And that's just great."

Notably, Us Weekly was sold to the Trump-friendly National Enquirer earlier this year, which some people pointed out on Twitter. But folks on Twitter were criticizing a lot more than the possible conflict of interest.

Almost instantly, people made memes using "Why I Disagree With My Dad" as the caption.

Others, noting that Ivanka really hasn't done all that much to denounce her father, photoshopped the cover headline to read, "Why I Silently Disagree With My Dad" with Ivanka holding a finger over her mouth. Another changed the headline to "Why I *Publicly Pretend To* Disagree With My Dad."

Check out some of the best reactions in the slideshow above. Fortunately, no "covfefe" was involved.
As the city of Pearland heads into Saturday's runoff election, some are seeking to inject partisan politics into the municipal races.

Quentin Wiltz, who is challenging longtime Mayor Tom Reid in the election, says the message relayed in one flier distributed via mail was clear.

"It's right there, and a picture is worth a thousand words," Wiltz said.

The flier, credited to a political action committee called We Are Pearland, advocates support for Reid and Position 7 City Council candidate Woody Owens and includes their photos. It has a banner headline: "There's only one way to stop the Democrat slate from taking over City Hall," and also includes in the top corner a photo of Wiltz, who is black, and Owens' opponent, Dalia Kasseb, depicted wearing a hijab, under the words "The Democratic ticket for Pearland."

"You either have these two people, an African American and a Muslim, or you have the white guys, the 'good old boys' - that's the picture that is being painted (in the flier) and that's unfortunate," said Wiltz, 36.

According to its Facebook page, We Are Pearland consists of "active Pearland citizens dedicated to electing local candidates who prioritize lowering property taxes, reducing traffic, ensuring high quality services, and conservatively managing growth while preserving our small town charm."

At the bottom, the flier appeals to residents who did not vote with a "chance for redemption," saying "The only way the Democrats win is if Republicans don't show up."

Owens, 69, distanced his campaign from We Are Pearland, saying he doesn't condone inserting partisan tactics into the election.

"This is the first election (in Pearland) where this has come up," said Owens, who previously served on the council for 12 years. "We represent all residents in Pearland, and at the end of the day everybody should be nonpartisan. I appreciate their support, but it is a nonpartisan race and should be handled that way."

Kasseb, 30, said she has wanted to stay focused on core campaign issues such as mobility and the environmental impacts of the Blue Ridge Landfill just west of Pearland. But she said the flier concerns her.

"This is not the Pearland I live in or the city I know," she said.

Kasseb said she is particularly troubled by the use of the word "redemption" in the flier.

"On the top corner, they have a picture of an African-American man and a Muslim woman, and at the bottom it says, 'chance for redemption' - yeah, that's obvious what they're getting at," she said. "People don't use that word unless they're talking about something serious, something that requires action, and harmful action a lot of time. It is not a word to use lightly, and the very fact that my face is on that flier is kind of scary to me. It can trigger violence, not only to me but to my community, toward the African-American community and any other minority communities. If some take it as an implication to go vote, that's one thing, but others can take it a different way and that's why we have to elect leadership that will not segregate and implement harm to different groups that have different beliefs."

Attempts were unsuccessful to reach Reid, 91, who has led the city for 34 years. The political action committee's website and Facebook page list no contact information for its members.

Municipal elections are officially nonpartisan throughout the state.

Wiltz and Kasseb, who both say they are Democrats, have been endorsed by the Pearland Democrats Club.

"The mayor is one position and there are seven council members; so I don't see how, for one thing, it's a 'takeover,' " Wiltz said.

For Wiltz, the flier suggests a group is upset over a possible new direction for the city's leadership and a more diverse make-up in city government.

Last month, the Brazoria County Democratic Party sponsored a video ad showing screenshots of anti-Muslim Facebook posts that appeared on Owens' personal Facebook page from November 2015 to February. The video also includes clips of Reid expressing support for Owens. The ad closes with the words: "Pearland is one of the most diverse cities in the United States. We are better than this."

Owens has said he did not share any of the posts in the video and was unsure how the posts appeared on his page.
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Shortly after losing her job at Five Guys in 2014, Cheraline Canida was homeless again.

It wasn't a huge adjustment though; soliciting donations from car windows was familiar. She already knew the most lucrative blocks, the best times of day, and which intersections had polite passerby's in north Houston.

Although Canida's story ultimately provides a loose model for recovery, it encapsulates why the Houston Northwest Chamber of Commerce and Harris County Precinct 4 Constables' Office say panhandling is a significant issue.

Precinct 4 Constable Mark Herman said his department takes a zero tolerance approach to panhandlers, "we just don't allow them to violate the law," he said, arguing that they endanger their own lives and that of drivers when they march alongside traffic.

Herman added that warning or arresting these individuals has been a priority to the point that "it's diminished out here."

Still, the Houston Northwest Chamber launched its "Don't give Change-Be the Change" campaign with HOPE Haven, a homeless service, which aims "to educate the public about the importance of not giving money, rather helping nonprofit organizations that transition homeless people back into society."

"Donors of money are sustaining the unhealthy lifestyles of the homeless and allowing them to settle deeper into their homeless or substandard lifestyle," said Kristyn Stillwell, HOPE Haven's executive director. "With our generous community funding this way of living, there is no motivation for these people to become productive contributors of society."

Canida said it's possible to earn anywhere from $10 a day to $40 an hour.

When she set out with her sidekick Timmy, a fawn-colored Chihuahua, Canida earned even more - on one occasion, a woman gave her $50 as she pushed Timmy through Walmart in a shopping cart, browsing to cash in that day's earnings.

"People gave pretty regularly," she said of her hours on street corners, "Timmy had plenty of food."

Canida said her earnings depended on how much she sought in a given day. Typically, she just wanted enough to buy alcohol and get her fix. A proactive panhandler can earn up to $100 staying longer hours or changing corners throughout the day though, she said.

"I'm iffy on giving money to people because I know from my experience that I used it for alcohol," she said.

Canida recalls Stillwell regularly driving by on FM 1960. Some days she dropped off food or water, leaving her business card behind after each encounter.

Canida had a cell phone but hadn't been interested enough to follow up until she blacked out in a motel room one night after a disagreement with a friend on the street. Stillwell tracked her down and called an ambulance. Later, she helped Canida get into Santa Maria Hostel, an addiction treatment center in north Houston.

"Every dollar keeps them captive," Stillwell said.

The goal is not to give panhandlers money, but rather to help them find a job or navigate their mental illness in a way that leads to longer-term success, she said. HOPE Haven's goal, through the 'change' campaign, is to do just that while spreading this awareness to local residents and business owners.

They've helped more than 100 individuals, she said.

"We try to get the whole picture by tracking down family and friends," Stillwell said, depicting the early stages of this transition process that starts with getting healthy - or clean - before helping them earn an income and then situate into a more stable housing arrangement.

She's hoping local businesses will help too. Through them, she's hoping to employ former panhandlers to do tasks that your average employee might not, like washing windows or cleaning the bus stop outside of a store.

"When you make a difference in the community it gives them sense of pride and ownership," she said.

Stillwell, like the chamber, is hoping churches and other organizations share the responsibility in resolving the panhandling issue which has persisted along FM 1960 for the last six or seven years, she said.

A recent survey by the Coalition for the Homeless illustrated a continued six-year trend in reducing homelessness - a cumulative 60 percent reduction since 2011. It also showed that 25 percent of unsheltered homeless individuals reported having no income, while 20 percent reported panhandling for income.

A month prior, Houston city officials introduced an ordinance to charge panhandlers with a misdemeanor if they impede the use of a Houston roadway, or block a sidewalk or building entrance. This was coupled with a ban on unauthorized encampments in public places - an effort to crack down on homeless camps that have drawn resident and council member ire in recent months.

For her part, Canida, who's not officially associated with Hope Haven, appreciates sobriety and recovery. She's working at the Cottage Thrift Shop on Westheimer where she's happy to have stability and comradery with other women like her.

View more about the "Be the Change" campaign: http://bit.ly/BeTheChangeCampaign

For more information about HOPE Haven contact: Kristyn Stillwell, 832-257-8790.
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Conroe ISD elementary school students experienced a win of playful proportions when parent advocacy persuaded changes in recess time.

Students at Galatas Elementary School in The Woodlands have enjoyed a mere 15 minutes of recess - the short end of playtime, which did not sit well with for some concerned parents.

State law requires kindergarten through fifth-grade students to engage in at least 135 minutes of physical activity per week or 30 minutes per day. Sixth-grade students are also required to have at least 135 minutes of physical activity per week.

TEXAS' TOP SCHOOLS: 5 campuses land on best-of-America ranking

In CISD, recess durations are mandated by campus administrators. The district achieves the minimum through physical education curriculum, rather than a 30-minute recess. However, some parents and researchers have argued that unstructured playtime offers different benefits than structured activity during PE.

In response to the limited time on the playground at Galatas, two parents addressed CISD board members in September 2016 to fight for their children's rights to playtime.

Kari Daily expressed concern with what she called a "lack of unstructured play," according to a previous Courier article. She told the board her daughter, a first-grader at the time, had become uncharacteristically "fidgety," moody, stressed and unhappy.

Galatas parent Katy Clarke, whose son was a third-grader at the time, said after hearing her son talk about 15-minute recess, she and other parents felt this was not enough time. After doing research, Clarke said an "overwhelming" amount of resources supported the benefits of adequate recess time.

"I think it's a classic example of the principle of diminishing returns," Clarke said. "I think extra time devoted to academics is only helpful to a certain extent. It's important for the children to have the time they need in a day to have a break and unwind, which I think will make the academic time they have more effective."

Multiple studies lent to the argument, with the American Academy of Pediatrics stating recess is a "necessary break from the rigors of concentrated, academic challenges in the classroom."

Additionally, the U.S. Play Coalition published a 2013 report stating fourth-grade students were found to be "less fidgety and more on-task when they had recess."

CISD Superintendent Dr. Don Stockton said via email that recess time is determined by campus administrators to "both meet the needs of their student population and comply with state laws."

Stockton said a committee was formed to address the duration of recess, and in the spring semester, all elementary campuses had recess extended to a minimum of 20 minutes. To take it a step further, Stockton confirmed that all district elementary campuses will have a minimum of 30 minutes for recess starting in fall 2017.

In comparison, Magnolia ISD Communications Director Denise Meyers said kindergarten through fifth-graders have recess for 20 minutes. Willis ISD Communications Director Jamie Fails said recess in the district ranges from 10-30 minutes, with 20 minutes being the average.

South of The Woodlands, Houston ISD implemented 30-minute districtwide recesses in 2012.

On a national scale, according to an April 2017 Boston Globe article, a group of parents in Medway also lobbied their district to approve an extra 10 minutes at recess for their elementary schoolchildren. These students now spend 25 minutes a day outside for recess.

Daily said she was "relieved" to hear the district made the decision to extended recess to 30 minutes. Even the addition of five minutes to recess in the spring semester has shown a noticeable and positive difference in her child.

Clarke said she received feedback from parents from other district schools who shared her and Daily's concerns. She is "thrilled" children will have the unstructured time they deserve.

"I appreciated their (parents') diligence with researching recess times," CISD board president Melanie Bush said of the decision. "I also appreciate the district administration's willingness to review what the ladies presented and to work with the campuses and parents to make the best decisions for the students."
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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All-Conference WEC teams The All-Conference teams for the War Eagle Conference have been announced with multiple MMCRU and South OBrien volleyball players making...

Crane signs off, for now I miss my ol' buddy, sportscaster Keith Crane on the sidelines. I miss his friendly smile, his dedication to his...
Chennai, June 7: Super Star Rajinikanth's upcoming Tamil gangster drama "Kaala" shot his part in the Mumbai schedule. "Rajini sir has completed his portion and is expected to return to Chennai this week. He shot non-stop over the last two weeks. The rest of the team will shoot for another week," a source from the film's unit told.



In the second schedule, the film will be shot in a specially constructed Dharavi set in Chennai. "Rajani Sri has acted in a slum Yard. Originally, the plan was to shoot in real Dharavi, but we realised it would be impossible. Hence, an exhaustive set was built in Chennai to shoot major portion of the film," the source added. Being directed by Pa. Ranjith, the film also stars Nana Patekar, Huma Qureshi, Anjali Patil, Samuthirakani and Pankaj Tripathi.Last year, Ranjit and Rajinikanth were supported for the second time "Kabali". Dhanush is producing this movie and it is rumored that he is playing a guest role in this movie.
BNM anunta concurs pentru postul vacant de expert principal, pe durata determinata, responsabil de elaborarea/actualizarea cerintelor metodologice de reglementare a procesului de raportare la BNM
Statistics show that motorists cited by the South Dakota Highway Patrol are driving at faster speeds since lawmakers increased the maximum highway speed limit.

Lawmakers increased the speed limit to 80 mph (nearly 130 kilometers) in April 2015.

An analysis of state data by the Argus Leader showed that prior to the increase, motorists ticketed in 75 mph zones were driving 86 mph on average. In the nearly two years since the increase, the average speed ticketed in 80 mph zones increased to 88 mph.

Statistics also showed that there was a 70 percent increase in the number of motorists cited for driving 100 mph or more since the new speed limit was implemented.

Supporters of the increasing the speed limit argued that doing so would legalize speeds people were already driving. But the group Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety said the findings only confirm safety advocates warnings that higher speed limits would encourage faster driving.

Higher limits, even higher speeds, said Catherine Chase, the groups vice president of governmental affairs. This is a race to the graveyard because survivability in high-speed crashes goes down.

The data also showed that the Highway Patrol has become harsher since the new speed limit was implemented. An analysis of the number of tickets issued in the two years before and two years after the speed limit increase showed a nearly 45 percent hike in tickets issued.

We always stress safe driving habits and that includes driving the speed limit, said Tony Mangan, a spokesman for the Department of Public Safety. Drivers have always exceeded the speed limit, this is nothing new. We will continue to enforce the speed limits just as we are now.
The Kentucky Supreme Court in Hollaway v. Direct General Ins. Co. Mississippi Inc., 497 S.W. 3d 733 (Ky. 2016), recently affirmed summary judgment that was granted in favor of the insurance company, finding that the plaintiff did not present a viable bad faith claim under Kentuckys Unfair Claim Settlement Practices Act. There are three elements to a third party bad faith claim under Kentuckys Unfair Settlement Practices Act: first, the claimant must establish that the insurance company was obligated to pay the claim under its policy; second, the plaintiff must establish that the insurer lacked a reasonable basis in law or fact for denying the claims; and third, the plaintiff must establish that the insurer either knew there was no reasonable basis for denying the claim or that the insurer acted with reckless disregard for whether such a claim existed.

This case involved a low speed automobile accident in a private parking lot. The plaintiff was riding as a passenger in a vehicle that she owned. There were conflicting accounts regarding the cause of the accident. The accident was minor, as evidenced by the fact that no airbag deployment occurred in the collision and the plaintiffs vehicle sustained only $463.62 in property damage to a fender. Both vehicles were drivable and the parties never called the police to investigate the accident or the scene. Plaintiff alleged that she injured her back and hip in the accident, which forced her to seek extensive physical therapy. Plaintiff also claimed that she lost her job because she could not perform her job responsibilities due to her injury.

The driver of the other vehicle was insured by Direct General, with minimum liability limits of $25,000 per person. Direct General investigated and settled the property damage claim involving the vehicles. Plaintiff also demanded $125,000 in compensation for her bodily injuries. After providing documentation of her medical records and lost wages, Direct General offered $5,000 to settle, which was rejected. Thereafter, plaintiff filed suit against the other driver alleging negligence, sought underinsured motorist (UIM) benefits from her own insurer, and brought a third party bad faith claim against Direct General under Kentuckys Unfair Claims Settlement Practice Act (KUCSPA). Plaintiffs theory against Direct General was that Direct General failed to reasonably evaluate, investigate and negotiate a settlement of her bodily injury claim. The trial Court granted summary judgement in favor of Direct General. The trial Court found that a legitimate dispute existed regarding who was liable for the accident and the nature and extent of the injuries that were caused by the accident. The Court held that Direct General could not have acted in bad faith as a matter of law because liability and causation were legitimately disputed by Direct General. The trial Courts ruling was affirmed by the Kentucky Court of Appeals.

The Kentucky Supreme Court affirmed summary judgment. The Court found that the third element in the cause of action for third party bad faith required evidence that the insurance companys conduct was outrageous, or was because of its reckless indifference to the rights of others. Plaintiff had failed to show that type of malevolent intent on the insurers part. Plaintiff offered no proof of intentional misconduct, but rather merely suggested that the process was a matter of interpretation, which was better suited for determination by a jury than on summary prejudgment.

Theres nothing novel about the Kentucky Supreme Courts findings in Hollaway except that it demonstrates that occasionally plaintiffs are actually required to meet their burden of proof at the summary judgment stage in bad faith cases, and failure to do so results in dismissal. All too often trial judges are reluctant to grant summary judgment in bad faith cases and are more likely to agree with the approach advocated by the plaintiff that a jury should make the determination regarding the facts and the circumstances surrounding the claim disposition.
AKRON, Ohio -- Keep Akron Beautiful gave Akron good scores on the amount of graffiti, litter and illegal signs marring the cityscape.

The team of community, business and government representatives conducted its annual Community Appearance Index on June 2 to visually assess the overall appearance of the city. The visual analysis using a scoring system with choices ranging from one to four.

A score of "1" indicates the area contains minimal to no litter, while a score of "4" means the area is extremely littered. The Litter Index for the city of Akron rated a score of 1.29.

The Temporary Illegal Signage Index rated a 1.46, reflecting an average of fewer than five signs illegally placed on public land in any one ward.

The Graffiti Index rated a 1.09. A graffiti rating of 2 would indicate one to two small tags per ward, no larger than 6 feet by 6 feet, that could be cleaned up by one to two people.

All 10 wards scored an average number less than 2. Ward 1 and Ward 6 had the lowest average amount of litter.

Residential areas were more littered than commercial, industrial, educational and recreational uses this year. The surveyed educational and commercial areas in Akron appeared to be the most litter-free.

This year's survey team included Keep Akron Beautiful staff member Cindy Pantea, Keep Akron Beautiful Emeritus Board Member Sue Kruder, community volunteer Anne Hubiak, City of Akron Sanitation employees Dan Dempsey and Tad Fryberger and Keep Akron Beautiful intern Johanna Barnowski.

Keep Akron Beautiful staff and community volunteers have removed more than 20 tons of litter from public spaces in the city since the beginning of the year.

"The Community Appearance Index statistics is not only a reflection of the work of those affiliated with our agency, including staff, volunteers and community service volunteers, but proves that working to eliminate litter helps slow trash accumulation and make people think twice about purposeful littering," Keep Akron Beautiful CEO Jacqui Flaherty-Ricchiuti said in a news release.

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AKRON, Ohio -- An Akron man accused of stabbing and shooting a store clerk owner during a May robbery was arrested, police say.

Police arrested Reuben Jovone Woodruff, 22, about 5:15 a.m. Wednesday. He faces charges of aggravated robbery and felonious assault in Akron Municipal Court. He is scheduled for arraignment at 9 a.m. Thursday.

The robbery happened about midnight May 17 at Pioneer Market on Pioneer Street near Sprague Street, Akron police Lt. Rick Edwards said.

Woodruff walked into the store with a knife, demanded money from the owner and stabbed him in the back, Edwards said.

The owner grabbed a handgun to protect himself, but Woodruff took the gun from him and shot him in the neck before running out of the store.

He was taken to Akron City Hospital with serious injuries. His current condition is unknown.

Police received tips which led to the arrest of Woodruff, police said. He is being held in Summit County Jail.

If you'd like to comment on this story, visit Wednesday's crime and courts comments section.

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CUYAHOGA FALLS, Ohio -- Want an update on the Gorge Dam removal project?

The city will host "Gorge Dam, What's Next, A Public Meeting" on Tuesday, June 27, 6:30-8:30 p.m. at the Cuyahoga Falls Natatorium, 2345 Fourth St.

Akron, Cuyahoga Falls, Summit Metro Parks and environmental groups want the dam brought down for several reasons.

Allowing the Cuyahoga River to flow freely would open routes for migratory fish, reduce algae accumulation and restore oxygen, which all contribute to the river's ability to naturally clean itself. And the health of the river is directly related to the overall health of the Great Lakes.

Moreover, the dam straddles the border of the Falls and Akron, and its removal would support more water recreation, boosting tourism for both cities.

Although it is unclear where the $70 million cost will come from, officials have said they are determined to see the project happen.

"Gorge Dam, What's Next, A Public Meeting" will feature speakers who will discuss the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, its history, its benefits and its role in the Gorge Dam removal. A cultural resource specialist from Summit Metro Parks will present stories concerning the history of the Gorge.

The public will get an update on the status of the dam removal and learn about summer events that feature issues related to the project. Presenters will be available during the social hour that follows the program.

The Gorge Dam is located in Gorge Metro Park, 160 Front St. in Cuyahoga Falls. Visit the website for more information.

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AKRON, Ohio -- A 1-year-old boy suffered an opioid overdose Tuesday night, just two days after another 1-year-old died from a suspected overdose.

The incident was reported about 8 p.m. when Akron police officers were called to Akron Children's Hospital to investigate a report that a child overdosed, Lt. Rick Edwards said.

The boy survived and is expected to recover, Edwards said.

Police have not determined whether the child came into contact with heroin, fentanyl or some other combination of the power drugs.

The mother found her son outside their home on Raymond Street near Vernon Odom Boulevard. He acted strange and lost his balance as he walked, Edwards said.

The mother took him to the hospital after he went in and out of consciousness.

Hospital staff gave the boy a shot of naxolone, which can counteract the effects of an opioid overdose. The child and his 7-year-old and 5-year-old sisters were placed in the care of Summit County Children's Services, Edwards said.

No charges have been filed in the incident which remains under investigation.

Tuesday's incident marks the second time in days that a child has overdosed after coming into contact with opioids. The 1-year-old died Monday after he overdosed Thursday at his home on Gale Street.

The boy's mother ran away from the home after the overdose, police said. She was later arrested on an unrelated warrant out of Portage County.

Charges have not been filed against the mother in connection with the incident.

On March 6, a 2-year-old child likely ingested or came into contact with an opioid before he overdosed, police said.

On March 14, a 6-year-old girl became dizzy and appeared to have a seizure while she was in the shower at a house on Popham Street near Winston Street, police said.

The children survived, police said.

If you'd like to comment on this story, visit Wednesday's crime and courts comments section.

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To report this story, the Tribune gathered more than 100 million electronic property tax records, including data on assessments, sales and tax bills. The data covered tax years 2003 through 2015.

The newspaper used the data to conduct sales ratio studies, which assessing officers around the world use to evaluate the accuracy and fairness of their valuations.

The steps for the studies are straightforward. Sales ratio studies are done by dividing the assessors estimated market value of properties that have sold by the sales price. The sale must have occurred within one year after the mass appraisal.

Showing our work The Tribune conducted 13 years of sales ratio studies for Cook County, following industry standards. Read the full analysis

The newspaper first queried state property tax transfer data for all sales of residential properties between 2003 and 2015. Residential properties include single-family homes, condominiums and apartment buildings with fewer than seven units. Sales must be reported to the Illinois Department of Revenue because state and local governments levy a tax on property transfers.

The newspaper then eliminated transactions where the seller did not advertise that the property was for sale and sales between relatives or other related parties, limiting the list to whats known as arms-length sales. Foreclosures, auction sales, judicial sales and short sales also were tossed out.

Data obtained from the assessors office included the market value and assessed value of each segment of a property. For example, each property has a land segment and a building, or improvement, segment. Properties can also have garages, additions, etc.

To determine the total value the assessors office used to assess each property, the newspaper summed those segments into one value, accounting along the way for any special exemptions, such as the home improvement exemption.

The assessment data were then joined with the arms-length sales data using Property Identification Numbers, or PINs. Each property in the county, including condo units, has a unique PIN, similar to a Social Security number.

Because assessments estimate prices as of Jan. 1 of a given year, the assessors data were matched to sales that took place within the same tax year.

If the ratio of the assessors estimated market value to the actual sales price is above 1, it indicates that the mass appraisal model overvalued a property, while a result below 1 means the property was undervalued.

For example, if the assessor estimated a value of $200,000 for a home that sold that same year for $300,000, the ratio would be about 0.7. A house valued at $300,000 that sold for $200,000 would have a ratio of 1.5.

The results of any mass appraisal model are never perfect. So sales ratio studies also include measures of fairness and accuracy.

One of the most important statistics produced in the studies is called the coefficient of dispersion, or COD. The COD measures the distribution of the ratios relative to the median and produces a score. A COD score over 15 means there is a large amount of variation, which indicates a high degree of random error in the assessments, or what assessors refer to as horizontal inequities.

Two other important measures used by assessing offices  price-related differential, or PRD, and price-related bias, or PRB  focus on vertical inequities in a mass appraisal. Both tests look at whether differences between ratios are correlated with differences in price. For example, the PRB measures the percentage by which ratios fall or rise as prices increase or decrease.

If higher-priced homes are undervalued while lower-priced homes are overvalued, the assessments are said to have a high degree of regressivity.

Before running the statistics, the newspaper trimmed outliers  ratios that were extremely high or low  to ensure they did not skew the results.

In Cook County, properties are reassessed every three years, depending on where in the county a home is located. To be as fair as possible, the Tribune cited only the results of sales ratio studies based on calendar years in which triennial reassessments took place.

The Tribune also examined how results differed if condominiums were excluded from the sales ratio studies.

The assessor uses computer-based regression models to value single-family homes and small apartment buildings. But a former county official has testified that condominiums were valued by tracking sales prices within an individual building and prorating the predicted value of other units.

The Tribunes analysis was reviewed by three assessment experts who provided feedback and suggestions on how to improve it. Richard Almy served as executive director of the International Association of Assessing Officers, a professional organization that sets assessment standards, between 1982 and 1990, and later served as an assessment consultant and expert witness. Peter Davis, the ratio study supervisor for the Kansas Department of Revenue, helped write sales ratio study standards for the IAAO. Robert Denne is an assessment consultant and former director of research and technical services at the IAAO.

I would say the Tribune conducted a quite rigorous study, following all of the principles and standards of the IAAO, said Almy, now retired.

The Tribune also examined disparities in the system by analyzing effective tax rates, or the percentage of a homes value that the owner pays in taxes. To do this, the newspaper compared property tax bills to sales data between 2009 and 2015.

Because the effective tax rate should be about the same for everyone in a single taxing district, calculating and comparing the rates for communities within Chicago was straightforward. The city is the largest single taxing district in the county.

To fairly compare effective tax rates across the county, which encompasses numerous taxing districts, the Tribune used the tiny fraction of property tax bills that funds Cook County government and the Forest Preserves of Cook County. Those are the only taxing districts that cover the entire county.

jgrotto@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @Jason Grotto
AKRON, Ohio -- Investigators are searching for an Akron woman who is accused of biting off the tip of another woman's finger during a fight in the city's Sherbondy Hill neighborhood.

Dateika Jackson, 36, is charged with felonious assault in the Monday incident on Bellevue Avenue near Diagonal Road, police said. Jackson is not in custody but a warrant has been issued for her arrest.

A 35-year-old woman told police she came home from her boyfriend's house just before midnight and found Jackson in her driveway. The woman's boyfriend is Jackson's ex-boyfriend, police said.

Jackson attacked the woman and bit the tip of her finger off during the fight, police said.

The woman drove herself to Cleveland Clinic Akron General. Her injuries were not life-threatening, police said.

Anyone with information on Jackson's whereabouts is asked to contact the Akron Police Department's detective bureau at 330-375-2490.

If you'd like to comment on this story, visit Tuesday's crime and courts comments section.

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CLEVELAND, Ohio - Sears Holdings announced Tuesday that it plans to close its Elyria store and auto center.

This was part of Sears larger announcement to close 66 more stores, in addition to the 180 already announced, as part of an effort to bring Sears and Kmart back to profitability.



The company also plans to close two Kmart stores in Streetsboro and Wooster. Three other Sears stores in Columbus and Franklin are also on the list of closures.



The company released a list internally on Tuesday of the new closings, according to Business Insider, which include 17 Sears stores, 49 Kmart stores, and seven auto centers. Most of the stores will close by September.

"We can confirm that we are making the difficult, but necessary decision to close the Kmart store at 1799 Portage Road in Wooster and the Sears store at Midway Mall in Elyria," said Howard Riefs, a Sears spokesman.



The stores will close to the public in early September. Kmart will begin a liquidation sale on June 15 and Sears on June 16.



"We have been strategically and aggressively evaluating our store space and productivity, and have accelerated the closing of unprofitable stores as previously announced. We often hear from our members who are disappointed when we close a store, but our Shop Your Way membership platform, websites and mobile apps allow us to maintain these valued relationships long after a store closes its doors," Riefs said.

"As a result, we hope to retain a portion of the sales previously associated with these stores by maintaining our relationships with the members who shopped this location."

Sears merged with Kmart in 2004. With nearly 250 locations closing in 2017, Sears will operate a total of 1,200 stores, which is down from 2,000 just five years ago.



It is unknown at this time how many jobs will be affected. The financial troubles of the Illinois-based company has deepened dramatically in recent months.



Here is a list of the stores closing, as obtained by Business Insider.
Northeast Ohio's farmers market season looks strong and well-stocked this year. Despite some closings, new markets have opened. A hefty crop of around 80 sites continue to keep us in touch with the farmers around us.

If you want to raise a glass to that, now you can do it right at a market.

Get a recipe for Goat Cheese Bouquet Phyllo cups

Get a recipe for a Lemon Lavender Gin Cocktail

Get a recipe for Braised Chicken with Spring Greens

Wine, the fruit of the vine, makes its debut this year. Ohio legislators passed a law in 2016 allowing permit-holding markets to let local wineries sell one-ounce samples. They can sell whole bottles, too, but only for customers to take home.

Wineries and consumers at farmers markets in Tremont and Shaker Square have welcomed the idea so far. For some markets, it's an extra draw as competition increases from farm subscription programs and even grocery stores. Seeing the demand for local food, supermarkets are increasingly making their own connections with local farms, offering their corn, tomatoes and winter squash.

It's not the same, says Jim Votava, manager of the Tremont Farmers Market.

"We're not just selling food," he says. "Farmers markets are grassroots efforts. They're really about community, especially in food deserts, places with limited access to fresh food.

They're also gathering places, the building blocks of neighborhoods."

Donita Anderson, executive director of North Union Farmers Market, said she sees the increase of local foods in supermarkets as a shared goal.

"I think it's good grocery stores are coming to the plate. We're an agricultural state yet this wasn't happening 15 years ago. It only strengthens the local economy."

Anderson is taking her market count down by two, closing the North Union Farmers Markets at Public Square in Cleveland, and folding some of those vendors into the Thursday Playhouse Square market. Resources from the Cleveland Clinic market in Beachwood will go into the Sunday Legacy Village market in Lyndhurst.

She called the changes a consolidation due to the need for increased accessibility, among other reasons.

Also gone are Twinsburg, Cleveland Clinic in Bath, Sharon Center, Brimfield, City of Brooklyn and Garfield Church in South Euclid.

Folks from some of those sites said not enough people were coming. Or, they didn't have the staff to keep it going at the right times. Or, they couldn't find enough farmers.

Among the brand new markets keeping the count fairly even are Hambden Township, and Geauga Park District's West Woods. Hattie's Food Hub in Akron, which trains folks with disabilities, has a monthly shop. The Old Brooklyn neighborhood of Cleveland will see its first full season. Countryside Conservancy's Highland Square Market has a new home, and Frostville Market in Olmsted Falls will extend itself a couple days a week from its museum home to Great Northern Mall.

Since we've always included Local Roots in Wooster, a farmers' cooperative retail store, we now add the all-local Ohio City Provisions on Cleveland's near West Side. OCP sells goods fulltime from several Wayne County farms, including the eggs, chickens, pigs and cattle grown by the store's co-owner.

Pretty big forces continue the inclusiveness of markets. Produce Perks is back, open to everyone with a food-subsidy Ohio Direction Card. This extension of the Farm Bill through the U.S. Department of Agriculture, augmented by local foundations, gives poverty level consumers a daily opportunity to buy up to $10 worth of fruit, vegetables and herbs at a farmers market and receive twice the volume of their purchase.

It helps the poor, but it also helps farmers, who, occasionally, are among the poor.

Amanda Osborne, who runs the program here for Ohio State University Extension of Cuyahoga County, says Produce Perks has increased 15-20 percent a year since 2014 to a total of $100,000 distributed.

Farmers markets bring us farm-fresh fare, potent local commerce and a helping of food justice. It happens when the hand of the customer shakes the hand of the farmer who works the soil around us, connecting us all.
Foreign Minister of Armenia Edward Nalbandian strictly condemned the terror attacks on Irans Parliament and Imam Khomeinis mausoleum, the MFA said on Facebook.

June 7, 2017, 14:59 Armenia condemns Iran terror attack

STEPANAKERT, JUNE 7 , ARTSAKHPRESS: We strictly condemn the attacks carried out on Irans Parliament and Imam Khomeinis mausoleum. We express our solidarity to the people of Iran, the Foreign Minister said.

Islamic State terrorist group members stormed into the Iranian parliament in the morning of June 7. The gunmen opened gunfire inside the building. According to preliminary reports 7 people were killed. Unofficial reports say there are hostages inside the building.
Ankara will continue to develop ties with Qatar, said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as News.am informs, reported RIA Novosti news agency of Russia.

June 7, 2017, 17:58 Erdogan: Turkey will continue to develop ties with Qatar

STEPANAKERT, JUNE 7 , ARTSAKHPRESS: He noted that Ankara does not consider the decision to impose sanctions on Qatar to be right. In his words, this situation is not beneficial to anyone, considering the need for solidarity and cooperation in the region.

Also, Erdogan supported the respective position of Qatar, and added that Turkey will make every effort to resolve the situation as quickly as possible through dialogue.

Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the UAE had announced that they broke diplomatic ties with Qatar, condemning Doha of supporting terrorist organizations and destabilizing the situation in the Middle East.

Later, the authorities of Libya, Yemen, Maldives, Mauritius, and Mauritania also informed that they were severing relations with Qatar.
ANTHONY KAYBING

BOUGAINVILLE president Dr John Momis says his government is encouraging a culture of accountability from ministers and parliamentarians down through the public service.

We must develop a culture that promotes excellence, rewards success and penalises those who do the wrong thing, Dr Momis said.

I can no longer tolerate stories of corruption and fraud and I intend to take action to convene an inquiry to investigate the many allegations that have been raised.

The president also made it clear that people found to have done wrong, no matter how senior, will suffer the full weight of the law.
Bauer's Intelligent Transportation, the operator of shuttle buses that companies use to pick up and drop off employees, received a permit for testing autonomous vehicles from the California Department of Motor Vehicles.

As of Friday, Bauer's was one of 31 companies with permits from the DMV, and it's an unusual addition to the list. Since California began doling out permits in 2014, the permits have gone to automakers like Ford and Tesla as well as technology companies including Alphabet , Apple and Baidu and ride-hailing leader Uber.

Box , Twitter and Zynga are among the companies that have used Bauer's Wi-Fi equipped shuttle buses to transport employees.

Alphabet subsidiary Waymo has been piloting self-driving cars for the past few years, and BuzzFeed reported last week that the Google parent also started testing a self-driving truck. Uber created a self-driving car program in 2015, and it became active in truck testing last year through its acquisition of Otto.

Bauer's, based in San Francisco, doesn't have any cars or drivers listed under its permit yet, the DMV said in an e-mail. Bauer's did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In addition to operating corporate buses, Bauer's also transports people for special events.

Vehicles that companies test on public roads under the DMV permit must have a way for a human driver to take control when necessary, and companies are required to file reports about those instances of disengagement.
When Chieh Huang started the household goods and grocery e-tailer Boxed out of his garage in Edison, New Jersey, in 2013, lofty workplace benefits were hardly on his mind. "When we started this business, I wanted to sell bulk goods to people all around the country," he says. "Social change through toilet paper was not on the agenda." Perhaps not, but these days Boxed  a venture-backed company  is getting as much notice for the generous fringe benefits it offers to its more than 200 employees as for the company's smart business strategy. Beginning in 2015, Huang began footing the bill for his employees' children to go to college and a year later offered to pay up to $20,000 for employees' weddings. While funding these major life events has certainly garnered Boxed its share of headlines (including ours), it also speaks to the thornier issue of how companies are attempting to attract and keep the best workers. At a time when the war for talent is especially fierce, being able to offer more than a fair salary and two weeks' vacation is crucial. "After leading my first company, [gaming start-up Astro Ape], I realized that it doesn't matter how powerful or big an organization is. If all of its people walked out one day, that organization is worth zero the next day," says Huang, who practiced corporate law at Proskauer Rose before getting the itch to start his own company. "That was a huge epiphany for me, and it made me realize that I'm only as good as the people I lead." More from iCONIC:

20-somethings would take less pay if they had these 5 job perks

This guy is keeping Elon Musk's employees healthy  and raking in $30 million a year

The one risk never to take when starting a business: $50-million-a-year restaurant mogul Since its launch four years ago, Boxed has been growing robustly with a simple concept: Give shoppers the convenience and price savings of buying everyday items in bulk (think brick-and-mortar wholesale clubs, like Costco or BJ's) and allow them to do it from an app on their smartphone and without an annual membership fee. The company addresses several demographics with this approach, including millennials that don't have the time or patience to wend their way through a giant warehouse club or the transportation to get there. In fact, roughly 80 percent of Boxed customers are between the ages of 25 and 44, according to the company. The other group that's turning out to be Boxed fans are shoppers in rural areas that don't have a Costco or any other warehouse format nearby. Four fulfillment centers (Union, New Jersey, Dallas, Atlanta and Las Vegas) handle orders from shoppers throughout the United States. Last year Boxed  backed with $132 million of venture capital from firms such as DST Global and GGV Capital  rang up sales of $100 million, double what it did in 2015. Part of its success has been in curation: Boxed offers about 1,500 items on its site, compared with around 4,000 at a typical Costco. Huang says the average order is $100 and contains about 10 items, so most qualify for the free shipping that starts with a $50 order.

Funding life-altering events

The idea to pay for his employees' kids to go to college came about after Huang visited the Atlanta fulfillment center in 2015. He discovered that only about two of the 20 or so workers there had their own cars. The rest had a long walk just to get to public transportation to come to work. He was determined to do something to remedy the situation, and "the most obvious answer was to get everyone a car," Huang recalls. "But I wanted something that was going to be more long-lasting and really empower upward mobility. In my life, that was my education." Huang contributes a portion of his salary to a nonprofit foundation and writes the checks for those tuition bills from there. Though he won't say exactly how much he's spent, he does say he's paid for a handful of his employees' kids so far.

Boxed offers the convenience and price savings of buying everyday items in bulk from an app on your smartphone, but without an annual membership fee. Source: Boxed

The wedding payments came about by chance as well, Huang says. An employee in the company's fulfillment center in New Jersey was working a second job to pay for both his mother's medical bills and his own wedding. When he realized he wasn't going to be able to save up fast enough to do both, he broke down crying at work and went home early. "This is a very stoic guy," Huang says. "So when I found out he had left, I called him that night and he told me what happened. He was working seven days a week, so I wasn't going to say to him 'work harder.' We stepped in, and we paid for the wedding." That was last spring. Today the company has a policy where it will reimburse any full-time employee for their wedding expenses up to $20,000. Again, Huang won't reveal how many weddings the company has paid for, but does say the average age of his employees is right in the middle of when most couples decide to marry. Despite this corporate largesse, Huang is quick to point out that he's quite aware that he's not running a charity. "Every company has to decide what they want to focus on, and for us it's paying for these life-altering events for our employees," he says. "It's not the cheapest program, but then, we don't look like a typical start-up. " Huang says there are no beer kegs, Ping Pong tables or free lunches every day of the week. "We're frugal, and we use our money to fund what we think are really impactful and meaningful things," he says, noting that fewer than 10 full-time employees have voluntarily left the company since it started.

Humble beginnings
PACIFIC MEDIA CENTRE

PAPUA New Guineas Greens Party president and founder of PNG Women in Politics, Dorothy Tekwie, has called on voters in this months general election to support leaders who support womens representation in parliament.

Ms Tekwie said the Equality and Participation Act had been passed in 2011 but never implemented  not even for the 2017 national general election.

We are calling on the women of Papua New Guinea to ask their candidates are you going to push and support this initiative for women to be elected, nominated or appointed to Parliament for this election, Ms Tekwie said.
Obama spoke to coders and entrepreneurs at Apple 's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose, California, in a conversation with Lisa Jackson, Apple's vice president of environment, policy and social initiatives. The former first lady, accomplished lawyer and humanitarian touched on the business implications of excluding women  who are often heads of household spending  from decision-making.

Michelle Obama was asked on Tuesday to "preach" about the role of women and tech  and she delivered.

It's something that Apple is trying to address. The company donates to the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, National Center for Women & Information Technology and the National Society of Black Engineers, according to its latest shareholder proxy statement.

Thirty-two percent of Apple's employees worldwide are women, while 22 percent of employees are underrepresented minorities, according to Apple's website . The industry as a whole also struggles with hiring underrepresented groups: In a StackOverflow survey of 64,000 developers this year, 88.6 percent were male and 74.5 percent were white.

"Who are you marketing to? Who do you think is going to use these apps? If women aren't at the table, you're going to miss my dollar. Because you don't really know me," Obama said, according to clips of the talk posted on social media.

Obama said that looking at hiring workers in their 20s and 30s is too late. An advocate for women's education, Obama argued that changes must be made to the educational system, especially by college-age people who can be role models for the "next generation."

"That's when I look to the fellas around the room and say, 'Are you ready? Are you ready to share your spot at the table?' Then make room," Obama said.

She said her husband, former President Barack Obama, took the duty of role-modeling very seriously when managing his staff.

"Barack, he knew more, he worked harder; if there was something that had to be done, he was going to do it faster, stronger," Michelle said. "He was always modeling for his team. .... We always had trouble with people who managed up. They were good in front of us, but you hear about how they treated interns or their own staff. When we felt that energy, we eliminated it."

Michelle Obama said that building a trustworthy, diverse staff is not only important for politicians  it's also key for entrepreneurs.

"If somebody is up here pretending they got here on their own, they're lying," she said. "Make sure that communication is open for the people on your team. You have to surround yourself with people who reflect your values. You have to be really true to them and honest with yourself on whether we're living those values. You have to be that person even when no one's looking."

Watch: Apple bets on services
Nearly 200 countries signed up for the landmark Paris accord in 2015 to fight climate change. Former President Obama has been a major proponent of the agreement.

"[Trump's decision] has had a galvanizing effect. At this conference, we have seen a new commitment to Paris and a real sense of determination  not only by federal but state governments and the private sector," Adnan Amin, director-general for the International Renewable Energy Agency, told CNBC.

The decision of President Donald Trump to pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement was top of mind at the conference. The vast majority attempted to shrug off Trump's announcement while emphasizing the importance of the longer term goal of investing in energy sources that are meant to leave a lighter footprint on the planet.

That's at least the message coming from government ministers and business leaders who gathered in Beijing for a three-day clean energy forum. The annual Clean Energy Ministerial Meeting, initiated by members of Barack Obama's administration seven years ago, is being hosted by China this year.

The future of clean energy is bright  with or without the U.S. leading the way.

Protesters carry signs during the Peoples Climate March at the White House in Washington, U.S., April 29, 2017.

The deep divide over the U.S. role was evident in the American representatives in attendance. U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry arrived for the event after stopping in Tokyo, where he insisted America would not back down from its role as a leader on climate issues. Perry has been an advocate for the fossil fuels industries.

In contrast, California Gov. Jerry Brown, a fierce critic of Trump's decision, argued that the threat of climate change could be more dangerous than the fascism the world saw during World War II.

Canadian Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr told CNBC he believed states such as California would likely pick up the mantle for clean energy investment and other environmental matters in the U.S. Carr also praised China's efforts to become a leader in clean energy.

"I'm particularly happy to be here in China and to see just how much investment the Chinese government is devoted to clean technologies and renewable sources of energy," he said.

Beijing reiterated its commitment to the Paris accord after Washington pulled out last week. China is one the biggest investors in renewable energy solutions. Its policies, however, have had a spotty record. Despite more than a decade of investing in solar and wind, the country still relies heavily on coal and is the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases.

Perry has called on China to step in and take a larger role on climate matters. Clean energy supporters such as Amin of IRENA expressed hope Perry will continue to see the benefits of nurturing a clean energy industry back home, including in Texas  Perry's home state.

"Texas is the biggest wind state in the U.S. and what Texas has been able to achieve with renewables is remarkable and I hope [Perry] brings that leadership to the U.S. in terms of [its] clean energy sector," Amin said.

Russia, which has struggled to tap its clean energy potential, also believes America's role in the fight for climate change is still evolving.

"Maybe tomorrow, [the U.S. Energy Secretary] will say another policy  [have] another change in their policy," Anton Inyutsyn, Russian deputy energy minister, told CNBC.

Inyutsyn also weighed in on the outlook of Russia's traditional energy source: oil. He dismissed concerns that Russia might not be committed to coordinated production cuts with OPEC nations.

"As you know, we [made] this decision and will try to keep it during one more period," he said, referring to a recent multi-month renewal of the OPEC agreement. "After that, we will have a meeting and discuss this."
Sears Holdings is closing 66 more stores in its drive to bring its Sears and Kmart stores back to profitability, a source close to the chain said Tuesday.

The closing will include 49 Kmart stores and 17 Sears stores, with most closing by September. The new closures expand the list of 180 shutdowns the embattled U.S. retailer announced earlier this year. News of the latest round of closures was first reported by Business Insider.

Sears Holdings, the parent company of Sears and Kmart, had no immediate comment on closings.

More from USA Today:

Sears is closing 30 more stores -- is yours on the list?

Sears and Kmart might not have enough money to stock their shelves

Report: Trump profited from kids cancer charity

The financial woes of the Illinois-based company whose name has been a trusted retailing icon for generations of Americans have deepened dramatically in recent months.

In January, Sears Holdings said it would close 150 underperforming stores, including 108 Kmart locations. The financial survival move, coming in the wake of even earlier shutdowns, also included the sale of the company's Craftsman tool brand to Stanley Black & Decker for roughly $900 million.

Just two months later, the company stunned investors with a Securities and Exchange Commission disclosure that said Sears Holdings had "substantial doubt" about its ability to continue operations unless it could increase its borrowing and tap cash from assets. The announcement sent the company's shares down 12.3 percent.
Southeast Asia's largest economy could enjoy as much as $200 billion in future investment following a credit ratings upgrade by S&P Global Ratings, Indonesia's Minister of National Development Planning Bambang Brodjonegoro told CNBC on Wednesday.

"Now that we have this investment grade rating, I believe there's more than $100 billion or $200 billion in potential investment, not only in government bonds but also stocks and corporate bonds."

Out of the three leading rating agencies, S&P was the last to deem Indonesia's sovereign ratings as investment grade. The firm had long denied Jakarta the coveted status amid concerns over weak government revenue collection but in a decision last month, S&P finally changed its tune, citing reduced fiscal risks. Countries with higher ratings typically enjoy cheaper borrowing costs.

"During my days as finance minister, I remember when we visited some investors, they always asked when we would be getting investment grade from S&P," Brodjonegoro said on the sidelines of the Nomura Investment Forum in Singapore.
Tesla is "definitely" on track to begin Model 3 production next month, CEO Elon Musk said Tuesday.

Tesla will also begin letting customers customize their orders, but initially will only offer a choice of color and wheel size. Musk said Tesla will add more options as production ramps up.

Musk delivered his remarks at the company's annual meeting of shareholders in Mountain View, Calif., on Tuesday.

The car will initially come with a single motor, and Musk said the company hopes to offer a dual-motor version "by late this year, but more likely next year."

Musk said there is a long waiting list for the cars, estimating more than a year.

The CEO also reiterated that the company plans to reveal its electric semi truck in September, and estimated that the company will be able to produce the trucks at scale in two years.
Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May addresses supporters at a campaign event in Slough in south-east England on June 6, 2017.

The markets appear to be in a risk-off mood this week, ahead of a trio of key risk events due to take place on "Super Thursday."

First up, voters in the U.K. will head to the polls on June 8. While U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May's party is expected to emerge victorious, some opinion polls have suggested the Conservatives could lose their parliamentary majority.

Stateside, former FBI Director James Comey will testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee in a highly-anticipated public hearing. Questions over whether U.S. President Donald Trump tried to influence a probe into former national security advisor Michael Flynn are expected to surface. Comey was fired from his position at the FBI by U.S. President Donald Trump last month.

Also in the mix are the European Central Bank's meeting on Thursday and uncertainties in the oil markets after Arab nations, including Saudi Arabia, cut diplomatic ties with Qatar.
President Donald Trump reportedly asked his top intelligence official in March to get former FBI chief James Comey to ease off on a probe into fired national security advisor Mike Flynn, the Washington Post reported Tuesday, citing officials familiar with the version of events Coats told associates.

Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats and CIA Chief Mike Pompeo were asked by Trump to stay behind following a briefing in the White House, the report said. Trump then complained about Comey's handling of the FBI probe into whether Trump's campaign coordinated with Russia during the 2016 race, the report said.

Coats reportedly opted not to become involved because he believed it would be inappropriate, the report said, citing sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

A spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment on whether Trump asked Coats to become involved in the FBI investigation, according to the Washington Post, but did say "Director Coats does not discuss his private conversations with the president. However, he has never felt pressured by the president or anyone else in the administration to influence any intelligence matters or ongoing investigations."

A spokesman for Pompeo, declined to comment to the Post, and the White House pointed to outside lawyers for the newspaper.

For more on the alleged interaction between the president and the top intelligence official, see the story in The Washington Post.
The application is now open for the Excelsior Scholarship, a program that grants free tuition to students attending New York's public colleges and universities.

To be eligible for the scholarship this fall, students first must complete separate applications for federal aid and the state's Tuition Assistance Program. Only then will they be able to receive support through the Excelsior Scholarship.

The deadline for applications is Friday, July 21. The application can be found at hesc.ny.gov/excelsior.

If accepted, those who receive the free tuition benefit must meet several criteria. They must enroll for 30 credits in an academic year, including summer and winter sessions, and they must be on track to complete their two-year or four-year studies on time.

For the first year of the initiative, students whose families earn no more than $100,000 annually will be eligible for awards. Once it's fully phased in over the next three years, students whose families earn up to $125,000 a year will qualify for the aid.

The state estimates that a majority of full-time State University of New York or City University of New York students  about 52 percent  will be able to attend two-year or four-year schools tuition-free once the program is fully implemented.

"With the launch of the first-in-the-nation Excelsior Scholarship program, the dream of a college education and a better life is now within reach for all New Yorkers," Gov. Andrew Cuomo said in a statment.

"A college degree has become a necessity to succeed in the modern economy, and this program is the ticket to greater opportunity and will help build the stronger, smarter workforce New York needs to compete in the global economy."

Tuition-free college was one of Cuomo's signature 2017-18 budget proposals. He unveiled the plan at an event in January with U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who was the runner-up for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination.

The concept received a warm reception from voters, but private colleges raised concerns about how it would impact the non-public institutions. Wells College President Jonathan Gibralter floated the idea of allowing private colleges to participate in the Excelsior Scholarship program.

Ultimately, the final budget kept Cuomo's proposal largely intact. But state legislators did secure some concessions, including a requirement that students who receive the scholarship must remain in New York after graduation for a time equal to the duration of the award.

If they receive the scholarship for four years during their undergraduate studies, they must live and work in New York for four years after commencement. If they don't, the scholarship will become a student loan they must pay back to the state.

Dr. Guillermo Linares, acting president of the New York State Higher Education Services Corporation, said the aid program is a "sound investment" by the state.

"Studies have found that states that make higher education a priority have smarter and more diverse talent pools and greater economic opportunities," he said.
U.S. technology companies like Facebook and Google should still keep trying to get into China despite censorship and other challenges because the rewards could be big, the head of a trade body told CNBC on Wednesday.

Many American technology firms have struggled in China. Facebook and Google are both banned under the censorship regime in the world's second-largest economy.

Gary Shapiro, president and CEO of the Consumer Technology Association, which represents 2,200 firms, made the comments as the annual Consumer Electronics Show Asia kicked off. CES is held in Las Vegas every year and showcases the latest gadgets and technology. But the organization also holds an event in Asia, which is now in its third year.

"There are challenges  there is still major censorship that goes on here. But if you can get into the market, if you could get the partner, if you can understand the rather vague and ambiguous market, you have a huge market of 1.4 billion people and a lot of them are middle and upper class," Shapiro told CNBC.

Some U.S. technology firms have publicly said China is not a market they are focusing all their efforts on in the short-term. Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, told CNBC in May that China was "off the table for the next couple of years." Yet despite the challenges, there are definitely rewards.

"It is tough to get in this market, but it's worth it," Shapiro said.

The CTA head discussed the relationship between the U.S. and Chinese governments and said there is a "much better relationship" than anyone thought there would be after the anti-Chinese rhetoric during last year's election campaign. Then-candidate Donald Trump had threatened to brand China as a currency manipulator, but his administration has since backed away from that label.
Alphabet executive chairman Eric Schmidt told shareholders Wednesday that the company's 2015 restructuring out of its Google roots into a holding company was inspired by a visit long ago with billionaire investor Warren Buffett.

Schmidt also predicted that the updated structure will allow the company to "bring revolutionary benefits to billions of people."

Schmidt and Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page were impressed by the success of Buffett, CEO and chair of Berkshire Hathaway , especially given the modesty of its headquarters.

"The scale of the success of his model" impressed the three Googlers, especially given that Berkshire Hathaway's executive offices were "on just one floor, the 14th floor of a building in Omaha," Schmidt said during the company's annual meeting in Mountain View, CA.

The trio decided they should mimic Buffett's principles, including "the independence of the CEO" and "a strong brand" for the parent company.

While many have likened Alphabet's structure to that of Berkshire Hathaway, Schmidt's comments drew a direct line between the Oracle of Omaha, the world's third-richest person, and what he called "the genesis of Alphabet" nearly two years ago.

Schmidt and other Alphabet executives, including chief legal officer David Drummond, also noted that Alphabet's current executive offices take up only half a floor, making them even leaner than Berkshire Hathaway's.

The new Alphabet structure separated Google's core business -- selling digital advertising -- from its more experimental long-term businesses like investing (GV), internet access (Access), home automation (Nest) and health technology (Verily and Calico), which it calls Other Bets.

The change was needed to help speed the company's ability to innovate in new markets, Schmidt said, quoting from a letter by Brin and Page arguing that true innovation was 'revolutionary, not evolutionary.'

According to Schmidt, Alphabet's mission goes beyond Google's original goal of organizing all the world's information.

"With this structure, with this innovation, we can bring revolutionary benefits to billions of people globally," said Schmidt, who served as Google's CEO from 2001 to 2011.

Later, Schmidt also drew a small laugh when he conceded just how complex some new Google technologies are, including machine learning and artificial intelligence.

They are "hard for me to understand, and I have a Ph.D." in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley, Schmidt admitted.

Earlier, shareholder proposals urging Alphabet to generate annual reports on a series of corporate issues, including equal gender pay, philanthropic giving and political lobbying, were voted down.

Page and Brin control the vast majority of shareholder voting power thanks to a multi-class share structure Google implemented when it went public in 2004 and revised a decade later.

Alphabet is now the second-most valuable company in the world, with a market cap of $682 billion. Wall Street analysts expect its sales to rise 19 percent this year to $108 billion.
A system glitch at the Bank of the Philippine Islands that led to thousands of pesos of unauthorized transactions has been resolved, the bank said on Thursday.

"Access to our electronic channels (Mobile app and Online Banking) has been restored. We have rectified the mis-postings related to the internal systems problem, which has been resolved," it said in a statement.

The fourth largest bank by assets in the Philippines said a day earlier it encountered a system glitch that led to money being wrongly transferred in and out of accounts.

In a statement posted on the bank's Twitter account on Wednesday, the Bank of the Philippine Islands said it has identified the root cause and has temporarily closed all electronic channels to resolve the issue. It did not specify the problem.

BPI statement on Twitter.

The "internal system error" led to thousands of pesos of unauthorized transactions for BPI, according to local media reports. But the bank's president and chief executive, Cezar Consing, said the problem was not caused by hacking.

"I apologize very earnestly and very sincerely to our clients who had been adversely affected by this... This is a data processing glitch. I have to emphasize: this is not a hack at all. This is an internal issue, and so what we have to do is we had to take our systems down this morning," he told local television ANC.

Shares of BPI dipped 1.9 percent on Wednesday morning but ended the session 1.2 percent higher. On Thursday, the lender's shares were up around 1 percent by 10:00 HK/SIN.

Singapore's sovereign fund GIC and Philippine conglomerate Ayala Corp own stakes in BPI.
Billionaire best friends Warren Buffett and Bill Gates can't get enough of each other. They love the same books. They have the same definition of success. And, last month, at Berkshire Hathaway's annual shareholders weekend in Omaha, Nebraska, the two took a little field trip to Berkshire-owned "mega-store" Nebraska Furniture Mart. In Gates' own words, they "tried out some lounge chairs, played with remote-controlled mattresses and somehow managed to get lost" in the cavernous store. They also discussed passion, leadership and philanthropy (yes, really) and reflected on the history of their friendship.

David Paul Morris/Bloomberg | Getty Images

"We didn't know why were meeting each other until we met each other," said Gates, holding up a photo of him and Buffett sitting on a couch together in 1991. "But the domain of trying to understand how the world works and what was going on, we both found each other's way of looking at that so fascinating that they had to tear us apart, and we became good old friends as of that day." And friends don't let friends test-drive mattresses alone. "My real vocational goal was to be a mattress tester," Buffett told Gates. "I thought that would be a terrific job. I never got that, but they did name a mattress after me: 'the Warren.'" The two men kicked back on 'the Warren' under an ad that bears an image of the lounging CEO and the words, "Sleep soundly. You've made a wise investment." "Now this is the way to spend your time!" said Buffett, reclining. "I wouldn't fool around with computers when I could be in this position."

The massive store they're visiting, founded in 1937 by immigrant Rose Blumpkin, is an appropriate backdrop for talking about success. Blumpkin launched the business with a $500 investment from her brother and sold it to Buffett in a handshake deal in 1983. The CEO was reportedly so impressed with "Mrs. B" and her company that he purchased it without an audit. Blumkin was 90 at the time, and, Buffett said, she continued to work to the age of 103. "Being successful at almost anything means having a passion for it," said Buffett. "If you see somebody with even reasonable intelligence and a terrific passion for what they do and who can get people around them to march, even when those people can't see over the top of the next hill, things are gonna happen." Gates applied those musings to his career transition from tech to philanthropy.

Being successful at almost anything means having a passion for it. Warren Buffett Berkshire Hathaway CEO
The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note sat higher at around 2.1755 percent at 2:21 p.m. ET, while the yield on the 30-year Treasury bond was slightly up at 2.8366 percent. Bond yields move inversely to prices.

U.S. government debt prices were slightly off on Wednesday, as investors prepare themselves for more data releases ahead of an important election in the U.K. and a meeting by the European Central Bank (ECB).

Investors appear to be taking a breather Wednesday, ahead of a slew of events set to take place later this week.

On Thursday, British citizens will head to the polling stations to vote in the nation's general election, with investors currently eyeing the latest polls and moves in sterling for any indications on what the result might be.

Ahead of this, political parties are in their final stretch of campaigning on Wednesday, with each group hoping to secure a significant number of parliamentary seats in the election.

In the U.S., the former FBI director James Comey is expected to testify on Thursday in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee, marking his first public comment since being dismissed by the U.S. president.

The Senate Intelligence Committee released Comey's full written testimony Wednesday afternoon, at which time the major U.S. stock indexes traded back near session highs.

Thursday will also mark the European Central Bank's latest monetary policy meeting, where investors will be examining President Mario Draghi's rhetoric, when it comes to the future of ECB policy.
UKIP leader Paul Nuttall (R) and former leader Nigel Farage MEP arrive in Stoke-On-Trent for a public meeting on February 6, 2017 in Stoke, England. Christopher Furlong | Getty Images

Despite being located in a neighboring county to London, trains from the capital to the seaside town of Clacton-on-Sea leave only once per hour. The town, with its sandcastles and slot machines, appears innocently provincial to those unacquainted with U.K. politics. But, its parliamentary constituency of Clacton made history in 2014 for being the first to elect a member of the pro-Brexit U.K. Independence Party (UKIP) to a seat in the House of Commons. UKIP has  rightly or wrongly  been compared to the Tea Party in the U.S. and its most notable member is former leader Nigel Farage. Having arguably achieved its endgame after the Brexit vote last June, UKIP's remarkable trajectory from single-issue pressure group to bona fide political movement representing the economically disenfranchised has lost its sparkle. The Financial Times' poll of polls currently places the party at a meager 4 percent ahead of the General Election on Thursday, peaking at just under 20 percent a year ago.

Clacton Pier in the town of Clacton-on-Sea, England. Justina Crabtree

Some say that UKIP is in the midst of an identity crisis. Danielle Haralambous of the Economist Intelligence Unit told CNBC via telephone that UKIP "hasn't been successful in broadening out," citing the party's failure to win over voters in by-elections earlier this year as evidence for this. Why vote for a party whose job is done? UKIP justified its existence to CNBC via e-mail by repeating its metaphor that it is "vital to keep the government's feet to the fire" ahead of challenging Brexit negotiations. In its 2017 election manifesto, the party touts traditional populist fodder of reducing taxes for lower and middle income citizens, as well as corporate tax. It also advocates withdrawing the U.K. from its global position by, for example, decoupling from the Paris climate change accord and not intervening in the Middle East. Other key tenets of UKIP's stance include banning women from wearing the burqa and niqab in public, reducing net migration in the U.K. to zero and declaring June 23  the date of last year's EU referendum  U.K. independence day.

Former UKIP leader Nigel Farage walks along Clacton Pier with Aaron Hammond (L), UKIP candidate for Harwich and Paul Oakley (R), candidate for Clacton on June 2, 2017 in Clacton-on-Sea, England. Carl Court | Getty Images

"UKIP believes in localism" the party proclaims in its manifesto, and this, it appears, is integral to winning a larger share of the vote come Thursday. But locals that CNBC spoke to in Clacton-on-Sea said that they were voting Conservative. These voters explained the electoral success of Douglas Carswell  the politician who was voted to represent the constituency first for the Conservatives, then for UKIP, and finally as an independent post-Brexit  as being successful because he was "very good for the local area." They said that Paul Oakley, the constituency's new UKIP candidate, had not yet contributed. Carswell is not standing this time around, telling the BBC after UKIP's dismal performance in local elections in May that he was the party's "first and last member of parliament."

The campaign headquarters of Clacton's Conservative candidate, Giles Watling. Justina Crabtree

The Conservative campaign team in Clacton, representing candidate and local Giles Watling, told CNBC that the area's support for leaving the EU was largely due to hoped-for economic benefits. One such policy Watling is putting forward is slashing travel time to London through improved infrastructure, an idea that could promote the area as being commuter-friendly and bring about economic rejuvenation. The potential to bring prosperity is particularly resonant as within the constituency of Clacton lies Jaywick, an area which the government has deemed the most deprived in England. UKIP's manifesto pushes the economic benefits of leaving the EU, describing the move as a "win-win situation for U.K. trade." It boasts that "countries are already queuing up to make trade deals with Britain," including the U.S. Oakley, when questioned by CNBC via telephone on his party's outlying goals, said that beyond Brexit negotiations, implementing a proportional representation voting system and abolishing the House of Lords were on the party's hit list.

UKIP leader Paul Nuttall speaks during a campaign event in London, England, on June 6, 2017. Adrian Dennis | AFP | Getty Images
Two top U.S. intelligence officials denied Wednesday that they had ever felt "pressured" to intervene in a federal investigation.

However, neither Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats nor NSA Director Mike Rogers would comment specifically to a Senate committee about whether anyone in the White House "asked" them to influence a probe.

It comes a day before former FBI Director James Comey will speak publicly for the first time on Thursday about the events that led to his firing last month. Comey was ousted as he was overseeing an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and links between the Trump campaign and Russia.

The former FBI chief's remarks have potentially serious ramifications, as he may say whether he felt Trump tried to interfere with the FBI investigation. He also could cast light on why the president fired him.

The two men were pressed by Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida to clarify: "Are you prepared to say you've never been asked?"

They said they stuck to statements they made moments earlier in the Senate hearing when questioned by Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia.

"In the three-plus years that I have been the director of the National Security Agency, to the best of my recollection, I have never been directed to do anything I believed to be illegal, immoral, unethical or inappropriate," Rogers told the Senate Intelligence Committee. "And to the best of my recollection  I do not recall ever feeling pressured to do so. "

Coats made a similar blanket denial: "In my time of service, which is interacting with the president of the United States or anybody in his administration, I have never been pressured  I have never felt pressured  to intervene or interfere in any way with shaping intelligence in a political way or in relation to an ongoing investigation."

Neither official would speak specifically about media reports that Trump asked them to publicly say that evidence showed that Trump's campaign did not collude with Russia. Coats called it "inappropriate" to talk about his conversation with Trump.

Coats also would not comment specifically about The Washington Post report that Coats told associates that Trump asked him if he could persuade former FBI Director James Comey to ease off a probe into former national security advisor Michael Flynn, who was fired for lying to members of the administration about his links to Moscow.

Asked repeatedly later in the hearing by independent Sen. Angus King of Maine about his legal justification for not addressing his conversation with Trump, Coats said, "I'm not sure I have a legal basis."

Both Coats and Rogers said they will answer questions about their conversations with Trump only if it is in a closed setting and the president does not invoke executive privilege and try to block them from doing so.

This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.
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Vice President-elect Mike Pence gets into an elevator as he arrives at Trump Tower, November 15, 2016, in New York City. Getty Images

For now, hopes of Pence moving up to the Oval Office  whether those hopes are held by Republicans or Democrats  are mostly wishful thinking. There's no sign President Trump wants to step down  in fact, his gut instinct, and that of his chief strategist Steve Bannon, is always to fight. He is allowing Comey to provide testimony instead of trying to block the former FBI director by citing executive privilege, an option that he had. As president, Trump also had the power to fire Comey, for any reason. It was an outcome many Democrats had been pushing for  before it was Trump doing it. Comey told the Senate he believes that he was fired because of the Russia investigation. He named his pick for a new FBI director on Wednesday morning. And inquiries into Trump's 2016 campaign's dealings with Russia are at an early stage, making it unlikely that he would be impeached any time soon, even if Democrats won enough House seats next year to control the chamber and provide the majority needed for impeachment.

People are definitely talking impeachment. They're saying it would be better to get Trump out of the way. Pence is very much like Trump on issues about business and very different in terms of being able to get things done in Washington. Sam Stovall chief investment strategist at CFRA Research

The part of Trumpism that Pence would likely keep  tax cuts, and a push for deregulation that includes repeal of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law and the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare  is the part most closely associated with the post-election stock market rally for which Trump's agenda deserves at least some of the credit.

ETFs in month since Comey firing ETF Ticker 1-month return SPDR S&P 500 SPY 1.65 percent SPDR Dow DIA 0.90 percent Fidelity Nasdaq Comp. ONEQ 3.19 percent iShares Russell 2000 IWM (-0.32 percent)

Source: Google Finance

In Congress, Tea Party caucus member Pence voted against Dodd-Frank and also against the bank and auto bailouts that were another big part of the response by both President George W. Bush and his successor, President Barack Obama, to the 2008 financial crisis. He voted for legislation favored by very conservative skeptics of easy money to audit the Federal Reserve; for a bankruptcy-reform bill favored by credit card companies that made it harder for consumers to discharge debt; and against efforts to let homeowners reduce their mortgage principal through bankruptcy proceedings. And he voted against Obamacare and pushed to repeal it dozens of times. As governor, though, Indiana accepted the law's Medicaid expansion, which Trump wants to defund.

That kind of voting record is consistent with the advisors Pence has surrounded himself with, said Jared Bernstein, top economic advisor to Vice President Joe Biden from 2009 to 2011 and now a senior fellow at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. Pence chose libertarian economist Mark Calabria of the Cato Institute for Bernstein's old job. "I think of Vice President Pence as being for standard-issue conservative economic policies, including tax cuts in the spirit of Ryan/Trump, smaller government, spending cuts everywhere, including entitlements, except defense, " Bernstein said. "On health care, however, he was one of a minority of [GOP] governors who took the ACA Medicaid expansion in his state, so that cuts against type a bit." He did, however, implement stricter eligibility standards as well as a requirement that Medicaid-expansion recipients, who make no more than 138 percent of the poverty line threshold, contribute to Health Savings Accounts.

The part of Trumpism that Pence would most likely abandon is Trump's skepticism about free trade, the part of the President's doctrine that economists had considered most likely to cause an economic slowdown or even a recession, said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics. Pence voted in favor of every major trade deal put before him, including the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA. Those votes were consistent with Indiana's economy, which is heavily dependent on auto-parts manufacturing, including parts exported to auto-assembly plants in Mexico. "If you look at Indiana's economy, it makes sense that Pence would develop a pro-trade stance," Zandi said. "Slightly more than half of the state's metro areas have exports accounting for more than 10 percent of gross metro product. Moreover, Indiana's automotive industry, which helped power the state's strong recovery after the Great Recession, relies on a seamless North American supply chain, provided for under NAFTA. Therefore, I assume that he would hesitate to create any NAFTA-related uncertainty, based on his experience in Indiana."

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Former FBI Director James Comey will testify Thursday that he understood President Donald Trump to be asking him to "drop" the probe into former national security advisor Michael Flynn when they spoke in February, according to a detailed opening statement posted by the Senate Intelligence Committee.

"[Trump] then said, 'I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go,'" Comey will say of an Oval Office meeting in February, confirming an account first reported in The New York Times.

Comey will say that he interpreted the president's comment as a request that the FBI "drop any investigation of Flynn in connection with false statements about his conversations with the Russian ambassador in December." Comey will testify, "I did not say I would 'let this go.'"

However, the former FBI chief "did not understand the president to be talking about the broader investigation into Russia or possible links to his campaign."

Comey's testimony, based largely on written records he made after one-on-one conversations with Trump from January to April, casts light on Trump's behavior with the former FBI director and the president's possible motives for firing Comey. Trump abruptly ousted Comey last month amid an FBI probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible ties between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.



Trump's outside counsel, Marc Kasowitz, said in a statement that the president feels "completely and totally vindicated" and "is eager to continue to move forward with his agenda." And Kasowitz highlighted that Comey says he told Trump that the president was not personally under investigation.

Click here for the full testimony.
To make sense of Intuit's move, Cramer delved into its business to see what keeps the stock ticking higher.

"Look, I'm not complaining. I've been a big fan of Intuit and its terrific CEO, Brad Smith, for a long time," Cramer said. "But if you believe that the Trump administration can pass some kind of major tax reform bill, something that could simplify the tax code dramatically, then Intuit's one of the last stocks that should be roaring here. This is an anti-Trump stock. Yet it keeps going higher."

Intuit's stock has rallied almost 25 percent year to date, with TurboTax taking huge market share from competitors. Since Tax Day , shares of Intuit have climbed over 20 basis points.

So the " Mad Money " host turned to Intuit , the parent company of TurboTax and QuickBooks, tax-filing and accounting software programs beloved by both individuals and small businesses.

In such a strong market , Jim Cramer finds it fruitful to single out the big winners, the stocks that, rather than being lifted by the market's strength, are actually driving it.

The California-based company has three main businesses. The first and main arm is the consumer segment that produces the tax preparation program TurboTax, along with personal finance platforms like Mint.

The second segment is Intuit's small business ecosystem, which produces software like QuickBooks to streamline accounting, payroll and payments solutions. The third and smallest branch makes tax software for professional accountants.

With unemployment relatively low, the historic correlation between people having jobs and people filing their taxes means more business for tax preparation companies like Intuit.

"But the stuff I've just mentioned could just as easily apply to H&R Block , the biggest bricks-and-mortar tax preparation firm in America," Cramer said.

And while H&R Block's stock is up year to date, Intuit has all but trumped its leading competitor by embracing the future, the internet, and the cloud, Cramer said.

"Unlike their top rival, Intuit focuses on online tax filings. They don't have any of the pesky, expensive brick-and-mortar locations  consider it the Amazon of tax returns  and they're the No. 1 player in the tax software space, with a massive market share of around 65 percent," Cramer said.

Intuit has also ushered customers of QuickBooks, which is in the process of moving to the cloud, into a service subscription model, a Wall Street favorite because of the recurring revenues it produces.

"Not only does this give Intuit a more predictable revenue stream, it also gives them many more opportunities to cross-sell their customers on other products," the "Mad Money" host said.

But the most mystifying thing about Intuit's business is how the stock has rallied despite President Donald Trump's plans for tax reform, which include a one-page outline and promises to cut the number of tax brackets, eliminate various deductions and repeal the alternative minimum tax.

"I don't care whether you see this plan as the triumph of free market economics or a ridiculous giveaway to rich people that could explode the deficit," Cramer said. "What matters here is that Trump's bare-bones tax plan would absolutely make it simpler and easier to file your taxes  and a simpler tax code would be very bad news for Intuit, because more people could just do the paperwork themselves without any help from their software."

Intuit's stock did take a hit on the day the plan was announced, but it has since bounced back, a trajectory that Cramer attributed to skepticism about whether Washington will be able to pass tax reform.

And with Congress up in arms about the federal budget, the debt ceiling, and a slew of other issues including Obamacare, Cramer does not expect much legislation to pass anytime soon.

"While many skeptics thought that Trump's tax plan would spell disaster for the tax preparation firms, the dysfunction in Washington has turned out to be a huge gift for Intuit," the "Mad Money" host said. "And besides, it's become very clear that this company is about so much more than tax prep, with its small business software business that is just embracing the cloud and growing like a weed. Even if we do somehow get some major tax reform, I bet Intuit's stock can go higher still, which is why I'd be a buyer of Intuit's stock, INTU, on any weakness."

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Christopher A. Wray is President Donald Trump's "least controversial appointment" to date, CNBC's Jim Cramer said Wednesday.

Cramer spoke after the president announced on Twitter that he will nominate the former Justice Department official and lawyer as FBI director.

@realDonaldTrump: I will be nominating Christopher A. Wray, a man of impeccable credentials, to be the new Director of the FBI. Details to follow.

Wray was assistant attorney general in charge of the Criminal Division from 2003 to 2005.

He led the federal investigation of Enron and represented New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie in the Bridgegate scandal.

He is a "heavyweight," Cramer said on "Squawk on the Street." "This is a seasoned guy. ... He's been at it for a long time."

Trump's announcement came a day before axed FBI Director James Comey appears before the Senate Intelligence Committee. He will likely be asked whether the president tried to get him to back off a probe into former national security advisor Michael Flynn.
One Riverside, the first newly constructed condo tower in central Philadelphia in seven years, is seen from the Schuylkill River Park dog park, May 8, 2017.

Peter Fader, a professor of marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, has long yearned for the city life. For 20 years, though, he and his wife, Mina, have deferred that dream, living in a Philadelphia suburb to raise their two children in a 3,500-square-foot home.

That will change this month, when the couple  with the children grown and gone  moves into a new luxury high-rise in the heart of Philadelphia. They will have expansive 11th-floor views, an easy walk to the shops, restaurants and cultural attractions of downtown and a car-free commute to work.

The Faders are like many other empty-nesters in their 50s and 60s, as well as young professionals, helping fuel a boom in multifamily housing in the country's big cities. The growth has been so strong, for so long, that some leading economists have started warning about overdevelopment, worried that flattening prices could leave builders struggling to pay their debts.

More from New York Times:

Santander rescues troubled rival in test of Europe's new rules

Facebook's role in European elections under scrutiny

After Reality Winner's arrest, media asks: Did 'Intercept' expose a source?

The Federal Reserve in February expressed "growing concern" about commercial property, including large apartment buildings, in cities like New York, Boston and San Francisco. An index of national commercial property prices from Green Street Advisors, a real estate research company, has gained sharply since the recession although has largely stalled since late 2016.

But developers do not appear to be pulling back, no matter the warnings, believing that there are many more people like the Faders. In a sign that the supply of housing will continue to swell in coming months, the number of building permits, a forward-looking indicator, rose 5.7 percent in April compared with a year earlier, the Census Bureau said.

"It's exploding," said Ron Caplan, the president of PMC Property Group, a Philadelphia-based developer of rental properties in markets including Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Columbia, S.C., referring to the growth in demand for urban residential rentals.

Mr. Caplan said that his company's experience was at odds with the fears about overbuilding.

"So far the development that we've done has been embraced by a continuing larger population," he said. "We have found that the buildings continue to fill up."

In Baltimore, PMC just finished work on a downtown apartment building that has been leased at the quickest rate Mr. Caplan has seen since starting the company in 1981. He expects the property to be fully leased in six months, about twice as fast as is typical.

In Columbia, the company is now leasing the Palmetto Compress, a former cotton warehouse, after creating 200 apartments for the local student population. With two months' leasing to go before the start of the new school year, 90 percent of the building is leased, Mr. Caplan said.

He attributed the surging demand to the increasing livability of downtown areas that were once rife with crime and poverty but that have become more appealing with the influx of new residents who are educated, professional and often wealthy.

"What they have discovered is that it's a lot more fun being social than it is going home at the end of the day, closing the door and watching television," Mr. Caplan said.

In Seattle, Lake Union Partners, a local developer, has built seven rental-apartment houses since 2012 for a total investment of about $200 million, with a vacancy rate of 4 percent, said Joe Ferguson, the company's principal.

Mr. Ferguson said that the market was being driven by vigorous hiring by major employers, including Amazon and Microsoft, and by employees' increasing willingness to move to previously marginal areas like Pioneer Square, Seattle's oldest neighborhood. The employers include Weyerhaeuser, a lumber company, which has responded to the influx of young adults by moving from a suburban location about 40 minutes south of downtown Seattle to a new building in Pioneer Square.

"They are doing this because they are having to compete for a lot of the same talent as the tech companies and other major employers who are recruiting at the same time," he said. "They want to offer something that's attractive to their future employees."

In the Milwaukee area, some baby boomers are moving into the downtown area from the suburbs, encouraged by suburban housing prices that have finally recovered from the 2008-9 crash, said Barry Mandel, the president of Mandel Group, a developer of multifamily buildings. Some of the boomers are buying condos while others are opting to rent city properties and preserve the capital from the sale of their houses.

Other older clients are driving the construction of urban enclaves, or "nodes," within suburban developments, where suburban amenities like shops, restaurants and religious institutions are available within walking distance of people's homes, Mr. Mandel said.

The "nodes" are in strong demand from buyers in their 40s and older, Mr. Mandel said, noting that one such development was 100 percent leased before construction ended about 18 months ago, while demand in another community was unexpectedly strong.

While suburbanites may welcome the opportunity to sell their lawn mowers or donate clothing to charity when moving to city apartments, there are limits to their zeal for downsizing, said Carl Dranoff, the developer of Philadelphia's One Riverside building, where the Faders are moving.

The 82 apartments originally planned for One Riverside, a 22-story building, have been reduced to 68, the result of combining some units for buyers who wanted more space after years in the suburbs, Mr. Dranoff said. By the official opening on May 2, 80 percent of the building  the first newly constructed condo tower in central Philadelphia for seven years  had been sold.

The building, offering marble counters, private balconies, and river views, sells 1,000- to 1,100-square-foot apartments for $1.5 million to $2 million, Mr. Dranoff said. A 2,500-square-foot unit costs from $2.5 million to $2.8 million.

While such prices are beyond the reach of most buyers, they are contributing to a citywide erosion in affordability, and mirror the trend in other big cities, said Rick Sauer, the executive director of the Philadelphia Association of Community Development Corporations, which advocates affordable housing, among other causes.

"There is a larger impact on the overall cost of housing in the city," Mr. Sauer said. "While there's new housing stock being created on the high end in particular to respond to the demand, over all what you are seeing is that housing costs in the city are going up very significantly."

At One Riverside, the Faders recognized that the building met many of their long-term goals for city living and jumped at the chance to buy.

"It's the last place we're ever going to buy  we're here for keeps," Professor Fader said. "We are all in on the condo because the city has so much to offer."
President Donald Trump reacts as he walks with the President of the European Council Donald Tusk (not pictured) after a meeting in Brussels, Belgium, May 25, 2017.

European member states have been criticized by Trump for not respecting financial targets to NATO's budget.

"EU progress on this front in recent months has focused on establishing an EU defense fund and aiming to centralize procurement strategy. A possible future defense union would go further  it could necessitate a joint, centralized defense industrial strategy, sharing of member state 'strategic' defense assets, and perhaps even a level of autonomy from NATO," Aarti Shankar, political analyst at Open Europe, told CNBC via email.

Since the U.K.'s Brexit decision, the European Union has intensified talks on how to move forward and tackle the growing anti-EU feeling. In a white paper last March, the EU outlined several options for its future, four out of five included stronger defense integration.

The European Union is set to unveil proposals Wednesday for a new European defense union, and analysts believe that it won't affect funding for NATO and wouldn't complicate President Donald Trump 's call for increased contributions from European nations.

At a leaders' summit at the end of May, Trump said 23 out of 28 members were being unfair towards U.S. taxpayers.

"Over the last eight years, the United States spent more on defense than all NATO countries combined. If all NATO members had spent just 2 percent of GDP on defense last year, we would have had another $119 billion for our collective defense," Trump said.

The defense union proposal could include a common European Counter-terrorism Agency, for example, to improve cooperation between police and judicial authorities on terrorism-related issues. It could also include a common fund to spend on defense. But, it is not yet known how much funding the troubled euro economies would have to spare to support a European defense union.

"It is highly unlikely that there would be fewer funds available to NATO. NATO does not have its own forces, it is 'merely' a structure to integrate and coordinate national forces," Daniel Gros, director of the Brussels-based think tank CEPS, told CNBC via email.

"It is also highly unlikely that any EU defense union structure would not be the disposal of NATO should they be needed either for the defense of Europe, or for missions somewhere else in the world," he added.

As a result, Europe's defense union might just avert any collapse with Trump's strategy.

Contributions to NATO have been a controversial issue between the US and its NATO allies.

Jens Stoltenberg, secretary general of NATO, has supported Trump's comments that members need to respect the 2 percent of GDP commitment. However, he has also supported the idea of a European defense union as long as it does not compete with NATO.

"I would like to once again underline that stronger European defense is something I welcome," Stoltenberg told European lawmakers a few weeks ago.

"As long as we make sure or the European Union makes sure that what the EU does is complementary to NATO, not competing with NATO," he pointed out.

Stoltenberg added that European leaders have told him that "strengthening European defense is about more defense spending, it's about more exercises, it's about developing new capabilities, it's about more cooperation, but it's not about establishing a European army, it's not about establishing new command structures which are duplicating NATO command structures."

European federalists, however, dream of a European army. The controversial German finance minister has been a long supporter of such initiative. However, in the face of growing anti-EU sentiment, even Wolfgang Schaeuble has suggested recently that European integration will have to take place at a slower pace.

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The pan-European Stoxx 600 pared all of its gains to close marginally lower on Wednesday with sectors mixed and major bourses in negative territory.



Oil prices slumped during afternoon deals with Brent trading at $48.41 a barrel shortly after the European close, down more than 3 percent after a surprise increase in stockpiles of crude oil in the United States.



European banking stocks led the gains on Wednesday after Santander agreed to buy Banco Popular for one euro. The Spanish lender announced plans to raise 7 billion euros ($7.9 billion) to prop up the troubled Banco Popular. While shares ended under pressure, Santander's chairman told a news conference the takeover would be "good for Spain and good for Europe."



Spain's economy minister, Luis de Guindos said in a statement, "It's a good outcome for the bank, given the situation it had arrived at in recent weeks, as it implies maximum protection for depositors and continuity of the bank's operations."



Chemical stocks were among the worst performing on Wednesday as shares of Covestro slipped over 4.6 percent after Bayer said it had made substantial progress in reducing its shareholding of the German plastic maker.

French multinational Vivendi signed an agreement to purchase its majority stake in the Havas Group on Wednesday. The stock jumped over 2 percent on the news.



Meanwhile, in the U.S., the Dow Jones industrial average and broader S&P 500 both continued little changed ahead of Britain's general election, the European Central Bank policy meeting and former FBI Director James Comey's testimony on Thursday.
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Germany is to blame for the fact that Greece is still waiting for creditors to deliver on their debt relief promises, a former Greek finance minister told CNBC on Wednesday. More than half-way through its third bailout program, Greece still doesn't have a clue about how its sovereign debt will be restructured. Debt relief measures could have been spelled out at a meeting last month, but the upcoming elections in Germany are proving to be an obstacle, according to many market watchers. "We seem to be caught between competing demands and priorities from the IMF (International Monetary Fund) on one side and Germany on the other," George Papaconstantinou, former finance minister of Greece said. He explained that if Germany would have agreed at a meeting last month to define debt relief for Greece this would have allowed the IMF to join the bailout and give some cash to Greece.

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"Neither of the two sides made the necessary steps to meet somewhere in the middle, Germany has an election in September so (Finance Minister) Wolfgang Schaeuble didn't want to say it clearly, that yes there would some kind of debt relief," Papaconstantinou said. Germany has told its electorate that the IMF would be part of the 86 billion euro ($96.8 billion) bailout program to Greece. Though IMF money is more expensive for Greece, the enrolment of the Fund gives more credibility to the reforms demanded by creditors. At the same time, there's a widespread belief among German taxpayers that they have given too much money to Athens and giving it debt relief would be accentuating that problem. An IMF official told CNBC at the end of May that the impasse on Greek debt could easily be overcome with a phone call between Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel and the IMF's Managing Director Christine Lagarde. Meanwhile, Papaconstantinou told CNBC that he foresees an agreement in principle in which the IMF joins the program but only disburses money in the summer of 2018 when the German elections are out of the way and debt measures have been outlined. Christine Lagarde, managing director of the IMF, offered a compromise earlier this week in which the IMF would stay on board in the bailout, as Germany wants, but not disburse until debt relief measures are clarified. European creditors, the IMF and Greece are scheduled to hold fresh talks on Greece's debt next week at a meeting in Luxembourg. Until a solution is found, the Greek economy will be the weakest link.

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It doesn't seem to make sense. Why are tech high-flyers surging when economic growth expectations are faltering?

Goldman Sachs chief U.S. equity strategist David Kostin explained to CNBC why he expects the FANG stock rally to continue even in a sluggish economic environment.

"A modest growth environment means that growth is still relatively scarce. So the growth stocks  [where] tech is a prominent area, are likely to continue to do well and outperform," Kostin said Tuesday on CNBC's "Squawk on the Street." "Basically you want to be in tech and particularly where there is secular growth. And there is a group of stocks where you have revenue growth that is double digit, and that's still relatively rare."

FANG stocks, an acronym created by CNBC's Jim Cramer, are crushing the market this year with Facebook up 33 percent, Amazon up 34 percent, Netflix up 33 percent and Google parent Alphabet up 26 percent through Tuesday versus the 8.5 percent return.

"You have a group of stocks that are going to grow 10, 15, 20 percent, in terms of revenues ... where they trade at 3, 4, 5 times enterprise value to sales. That's the sweet spot that we look for," the strategist said. FANG stocks "can continue to move higher."

Slow economic growth, which leads to the growth scarcity situation boosting technology stocks may last awhile.



The May jobs number came in sharply below expectations on Friday and U.S. economy grew at its slowest pace in three years during the first quarter. In addition, the time line for President Donald Trump's economic agenda keeps getting delayed.

Kostin said he expects a modest growth environment during the rest of this year. And he predicted Trump's tax reform and infrastructure spending plans will likely be pushed out to 2018.

Counterintuitively, the strategist said if economic growth does improve, it will be negative for technology growth stocks.



"The big issue would be if you have economic growth accelerate, because in an economic acceleration environment, you want to be more value, more cyclicals as opposed to secular growth," he said.



Kostin's investing playbook is similar to billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller's classic investment strategy of buying high-flying growth stocks during low growth economic environments.



Druckenmiller is chief executive officer of the Duquesne Family Office and the former lead portfolio manager for George Soros. The billionaire's hedge fund has generated annualized returns of 30 percent during his investment career.



"(I'm) long this high-beta, high-growth stuff, companies that are investing in their businesses. Stuff that I think will do very well with low nominal growth," Druckenmiller said at The New York Times DealBook conference in November 2015.



He also clarified why stronger economies are bad for equities in a 1988 Barron's interview.



"The best environment for stocks is a very dull, slow economy that the Federal Reserve is trying to get going," Druckenmiller said. "Once an economy reaches a certain level of acceleration, not only is the Fed no longer with you, but three bad things start to happen."



The investor noted how in stronger growth economies the Federal Reserve takes liquidity out of the markets. In addition, he said companies build inventory for products and increase capital expenditures, which further diverts funds out of financial assets.
"Clearly, the school has had a huge impact on American and global business practices. There are more Fortune 500 CEOS with MBAs from Harvard than from Wharton, Stanford, and European business school INSEAD combined."

Still, McDonald lays a lot at the feet of one business school, saying, "The Harvard Business School became (and remains) so intoxicated with its importance that it blithely assumed away one of the most important questions it could ask, which was whether the capitalist system it was uniquely positioned to help improve was designed properly for the long term. Today, in 2016, with economic inequality at a hundred-year high and meaningful progress on climate change and other social and environmental issues embarrassingly paltry, the answer to that question is obvious. It is not."

McDonald isn't the first to criticize HBS, and if you're an institution that produces once-in-a-generation examples of awful leadership every few years, you should rethink your approacheven if most HBS alumni do not lead the nation into catastrophic wars. Using the family analogy, the fact that Billy is president of the bank does not negate the time Jeff ate a guy he met at the park.

But HBS isn't responsible for every broken thing in the economy and our business culture. McDonald's book falls into a tendency we have to attribute everything we wish were different in society to a single person or institution. It's like finding out you have a tumor, then blaming all your shortcomings on the tumor. Societally, we give the tumor a name: "If only Donald Trump/Hillary Clinton/Harvard Business School weren't here, everything would be better."

One person or institution is never the root of all evil, but believing so is a lot easier than accepting responsibility.

Income inequality doesn't exist because administrators and professors at one school became beholden to corporate benefactors and abdicated their role as educators and thinkers. That may have happenedMcDonald makes a convincing case that it didbut that's not why incomes have stagnated for middle- and working-class families while CEO pay has skyrocketed. As McDonald himself argues, HBS doesn't typically drive changes in businessit justifies change after it occurs.

Inaction on income inequality and "other social and environmental issues" isn't the fault of HBS. The school may be as insidious and damaging as McDonald argues it is, but the real tumor isn't one MBA program.

The real tumor is the way you and I and everyone we know have bought into the idea that worth is the same thing as wealth, and that we have no responsibility to one another.

Income inequality wasn't forced on us. The huge disparages we see in wealth between the top 1% and the rest of us are the result of specific government policies enacted (at least in the United States) by politicians from both parties.

How have we responded?

Usually by reelecting the same politiciansor not voting at all.

Harvard Business School didn't create the extremely unequal economy we live in or pollute our natural spaces. To the extent that it played a roleand I believe it didit was a role the rest of us allowed the school and its alumni to play.

It is always easier to point the finger at a person or institution and say, "You thereif only you were gone, things would be better."

But as my daughter once told me, when you point the finger at someone else there are four fingers pointing back at you. The Golden Passport makes a solid argument that one finger should be pointed at Harvard Business Schoolbut we shouldn't forget where the other four fingers are pointed.

Commentary by Dustin McKissen, the founder and CEO of McKissen + Company, a strategy, marketing, and public relations firm based in St. Charles, Missouri. The firm does consulting work analyzing how politics effects the business climate for clients in the U.S., Europe, and Latin America. McKissen was named one of LinkedIn's "Top Voices" in 2015 and 2016. He holds a Bachelors degree in Public Policy, and a Masters degree in Public Administration and is currently pursuing a PhD in Organizational and Industrial Psychology. Follow him on Twitter @DMcKissen.

For more insight from CNBC contributors, follow @CNBCOpinion on Twitter.


Credit Suisse shared with its clients the firm's best current stock picks. This is our "one-stop shop for the research team's best ideas. Every U.S. and Canadian research analyst identifies and ranks up to three top stock picks," Arbin Sherchan wrote in a report Wednesday. The analysts are "highlighting only high conviction ideas." Each pick is based on a six- to 12-month time horizon and represents a "snapshot" of the analysts' thinking. Here are five companies that made Credit Suisse's recommended list and their price targets. 1) BlackRock (BLK) Credit Suisse analyst Craig Siegenthaler has a $527 price target for BlackRock , representing 27 percent upside from Tuesday's close. "BLK owns the largest ETF manager in the world in iShares, which is large across all key product segments and in most geographies. We view ETF and passive as high growth segments, and we believe BLK's iShares business will capitalize on the secular trends." 2) JPMorgan Chase (JPM) Credit Suisse analyst Susan Katzke has a $99 price target for JPMorgan Chase , representing 19 percent upside from Tuesday' close. "Best in class executionincluding organic revenue growth through investment in the bank's well-integrated, market share leading financial services businesses, coupled with a willingness to tightly manage expenses, and optimize capital should drive better than average earnings growth and returns on equity for JPMorgan." 3) Celgene (CELG) Credit Suisse analyst Alethia Young has a $148 price target for Celgene , representing 27 percent upside from Tuesday's close. "We believe that CELG looks cheap relative to its growth after reviewing current and pipeline products. We see more upside on base business products than consensus and guidance. We like Celgene's pipeline that consists of internal and external candidates that leads us to believe it is best in class." 4) Microsoft (MSFT) Credit Suisse analyst Michael Nemeroff has a $80 price target for Microsoft , representing 10 percent upside from Tuesday's close. "Our outperform thesis on MSFT is centered on what we view as significant earnings power potential over the next few years, which could be unlocked from (1) strong commercial cloud growth and (2) higher cloud gross margins due to economies of scale, ultimately leading to accelerating gross profit dollar growth." 5) Lam Research (LRCX) Credit Suisse analyst Farhan Ahmad has a $201 price target for Lam Research , representing 25 percent upside from Tuesday's close. "We believe that street is missing the growth and cash return potential and is mispricing LRCX. LRCX is a margin protected way to play the big data growth. The company is benefiting from the 3D NAND [flash memory] transition and is well poised to benefit from the cyclical recovery in memory in 2017."

JP Morgan Chase World Headquarters on Park Avenue in New York. Timothy A. Clark | AFP | Getty Images
Creating a campus-like workplace to spur employee innovation can be a challenge in an urban environment like Singapore, but the model can be adapted, according to Microsoft 's director of real-estate strategy, William Lee.

That's an approach Singapore wealth fund GIC is taking, COO Goh Kok Huat said at the Urban Land Institute Asia Pacific Summit in Singapore on Wednesday.

GIC, which manages Singapore's reserves, does not reveal its portfolio size, but the amount has been reported to exceed $100 billion.

Speaking on the sidelines of the conference on Tuesday, Lee noted that there's a "dichotomy of thought" at Microsoft about how to create a workplace that encourages interaction and creativity.

"Half the leaders believe that the campus needs to be much more open to the community for the company to survive for the next 50-100 years," he said. "There's another thought where tech companies have a lot of intellectual property and therefore, to protect that, you can't have a free-flowing campus. A lot of the Microsoft campuses have a strong balance of both."

But in an urban environment like Singapore's, where land is scarce, the buildings become tall and "elevator-centric," he noted.

"It's not the type of culture you want to create," he said. "You want to create a culture that's much more enhancing, where people are able to talk on the way to the office, on the way to the meetings. So the tall buildings and the elevators, socially you're supposed to be pretty silent."

That can interrupt the flow of conversations, Lee noted.

Research shows that workplace culture can affect employees' willingness to take risks and can foster a more collaborative environment  a vibrant ecosystem allows people with similar mindsets to discuss ideas and help each other.

Creating such cultures has been an aim for cities looking to become "innovation hubs," which attract both talent and investment.

It's become a key focus for Singapore's government, which last year committed 19 billion Singapore dollars ($13.76 billion) to support research and development over the next five years.

Last year, a joint study from Cornell University, INSEAD and the World Intellectual Property Organization ranked Singapore as the sixth most innovative country in the world, behind the U.K. and the U.S.

Lee said that in urban areas, Microsoft has worked to spur more conversation by taking steps including "puncturing" floors to put in stairs, although he noted that beyond four stories, it doesn't help much.

"People don't want to walk beyond four stories," he said, adding that he expected that, eventually, older buildings would be redeveloped to offer larger "floor plates" so fewer levels would be required.

GIC's Goh noted that his fund has been incorporating some ideas about workspace innovation.

"Will the corner office allow conversation to flow as freely?" he asked. "We moved from closed offices to open offices awhile back after I'd seen some of [our] Australian partners' space."

He noted that most organizations use specialist groups.

"So technology people are investing in technology and real estate people are investing in real estate and very often it's hard to make people share what they see in the marketplace," Goh said.

"If they don't talk, the information doesn't flow and if the information doesn't flow, you end up optimizing the respective bits rather than the sum of the parts," he said. "So today, we have put in place processes, put in place the ability for people to talk."

CNBC's Saheli Roy Choudhury contributed to this report.

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Scott Pruitt, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), speaks as U.S. President Donald Trump, left, listens during an announcement in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Thursday, June 1, 2017.

One strand of coalition-building emerged in the 1970s in the western states, where a so-called Sagebrush rebellion erupted among ranchers, miners, and other larger property owners upset over new environmental restrictions. Aspiring Republican politicians rode these issues into legislative takeovers in states like Colorado in 1976, by drawing support not just from rural but also from suburban voters.

Once new federal agencies stepped in as the environment's defender, however, this regime itself became a political foil for new anti-statist coalitions between suburban and rural voters.

For starters, it helps to recall where the strongest environmental support came from in the 1960s and 1970s, during the great bipartisan build-out of America's environmental laws and agencies: those regions where urbanizing and industrializing had gone the furthest, across the cities of the coasts and the Great Lakes and especially in their suburbs. A new political language of "the environment" was born along urban edges; it interwove homeowner concerns about pollution and developer intrusions that state and local governments had failed to address.

So how has the current Republican anti-environmentalism come so far so fast? Why this extreme Republican animus toward the environmental state?

It's ironic that today's Republicans see America's environmental state as such a liability, given that Republican presidents had such a big hand in constructing it. In the early 20th century Teddy Roosevelt pushed a federal system of parks, forests, and monuments. In 1970, it was Richard Nixon who created the Environmental Protection Agency and signed many foundational laws. Even during the last Republican administration of George W. Bush, longtime EPA employees have told me there was considerable if often tacit support by party leaders.

Trump's electoral victory has changed much of that. As part of Steve Bannon's agenda for the "deconstruction of the administrative state," Trump's appointees are sharpening their axes for environmental agencies and science. Besides the Paris agreement, they've targeted Obama's climate policies , and the EPA's budget , which they've proposed to cut by 31 percent.

A year ago, the US was making notable progress on some of our toughest environmental problems. Grassroots mobilizations and other forms of pressure helped nudge America's political leadership to halt pipelines and craft new policies on climate change, fracking, and toxics. The rest of the world, even China, was coalescing around a commitment to curb greenhouse gases, and the Paris accord had been signed into force.

That screeching sound you heard last week was the sound of President Donald Trump making a U-turn on the environment, pulling the United States out of the Paris climate accord . What a difference a year and an election have made.

This perfect storm of anti-environmental conservatism now seems poised to strike against our environmental agencies and laws with a destructive force never before seen in our modern era. In response, environmental groups ... need to find new ways and means of mobilizing against it, and fast.

Among the victors was a 34-old Republican lawyer named Anne Gorsuch representing Jefferson County, on Denver's edge, who railed against regional planning as well as federal regulatory "overreach." When reelected, Gorsuch attracted sufficient attention for former California governor Reagan to bring her in as advisor to his own conservative campaign for the presidency.

The other strand of early anti-environmentalism ran through the South, where traditional Democratic dominance was in flux. Democrats like then-Georgia governor Jimmy Carter embraced environmental causes. Some Republicans did as well. When college professor Newt Gingrich ran for Congress starting in 1972 in a West Georgia district extending into Atlanta's suburbs, it made sense that he did so both as a Republican and an environmentalist.

But Gingrich kept losing until he noticed that rural lifelong Democrats rejecting his candidacy turned out repeatedly for a John Bircher Democrat running in a neighboring district who publicly questioned the constitutionality of both the EPA and national parks. Taking the cue, Gingrich won his first of many Congressional races in 1978 by dialing down his environmental rhetoric and cozying up to local industries that had run afoul of the new agencies and laws.

The Reagan administration takes a swing at environmental agencies and regulation

Riding these political tides to the White House, the early Reagan administration undertook a frontal assault on environmental agencies and regulation much like what we are now seeing. Gorsuch stepped into the EPA's helm, hatching plans to cut its budget and personnel by half. Her Colorado colleague over at the Interior Department, James Watt, sought a similar devolution of control over federal lands; OSHA and FDA were also targeted.

But for these Republican anti-environmentalists, the power of the Presidency was not enough. A Democratic Congress, still bolstered by the party's Southern bloc, stood in the way. Democratic committee chairs geared up for Congressional hearings that spotlighted the ensuing consequences and corruption at agencies under fire. The hue and cry then raised, and courtroom battles the Administration then lost, turned out to be much more than it had bargained for. Within two years, Gorsuch and Watt had resigned and restoration of federal environmental agencies was underway. A seminal Supreme Court decision in 1984, Chevron, Inc. vs NRDC, required judicial deference to environmental and other agencies' interpretation of statutes, confirming their authority to regulate.

As moderate Republicans took over, federal environmental budgets and operations were restored, but the grounds were also being laid for a next war on the environmental state. The Heritage Foundation, established in the 1970s, enjoyed a heyday as an idea factory for tugging the administration to the right, and new think tanks established in the mid-1980s like the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy came to nourish a special hostility toward the climate issue. In the South, as well, enterprising Republicans such as Gingrich successfully moved to convert white Democratic voters to their party.

How a more diverse and more urban environmental movement helped Republicans

Racial and geographic realignments over the 1980s and '90s favored the anti-environmental Republicanism Gingrich now sought. Better-off black Americans moved to suburbs of their own, as civil rights groups spearheaded a new movement for "environmental justice." White environmental groups gained bases in well-off older suburbs as well far-flung newer ones, but energy concerns inclined them to identify with a gentrifying downtown and the "walkability" espoused by a New Urbanism. At the same time, black majority districts were also being created to bring racial equity to Georgia's Congressional delegations, starting with the 5th district, which was won in 1986 by John Lewis. Black representatives became the state's foremost supporters of environmental causes in Congress.

This shift in Georgia environmentalism, fortified by redistricting, served Gingrich and the Georgia Republican Party extraordinarily well. With environmental causes coded in these ways, down-playing or opposing them shored up electoral support among rural as well as many suburban whites, especially the working class. Through gerrymandering Republicans worked to pack more blacks into fewer of Georgia's Congressional districts, making most other districts whiter.

The Republican takeover of Congress in 1994 commenced a second war on the federal environmental state. Gingrich's Contract with America, which helped Republicans win, embodied the new stealth strategy of attack. The contract said nary a word about any environmental issue; instead, it called for all manner of restraints on "regulation." Yet its proposalsfor instance, requiring government compensation for regulation-related declines in property value--would have hand-cuffed agencies like the EPA, as environmental groups began pointing out. Anti-environmental Republicans' initiatives in Congress faced a formidable barrier in the White House: Democrat Bill Clinton, veto pen in hand.

However limited its successes, the contract augured where anti-environmental thinking and strategizing would be headed in subsequent decades. The goal was not just to prevent new environmental laws but to stymy agency initiatives based on older statutes, through assertions of congressional power.

Meanwhile, anti-environmental conservatives got busy in other ways. New think tanks blossomed especially around climate and energy policy. Beyond the biblical literalism of allied evangelicals, newly sophisticated ways of attacking environmental sciences arose that appealed to doubt and uncertainty, coins of the scientific realm itself. Their public outreachwas especially impressive. From talk radio to Fox News to Breitbart, alternative public spheres coalesced as echo chambers, where climate science could be regularly parried and parodied and conservative precepts about government overreach perpetually reinforced.

Trump's 2016 victory was a testimony their successes. This time around, a stealth anti-environmentalism was no longer necessary; he unapologetically denied climate change and despised the EPA. Capitalizing on post-recession bitterness, he not only won the South and Mountain West, he became the first Republican in a generation to win several northeastern and Midwestern states, where environmentalism had long been strong.

The third war against the federal environmental state has begun

The anti-environmental Republicans now in charge enjoy advantages over their predecessors of 1981 and 1994 that seem veritably monumental. Their party controls both the presidency and both houses of Congress. Well-seasoned conservative think tanks have staffed the transition and "beachhead" teams; they've imported ready-made plans for the first year's budget and personnel cuts. A host of bills making their way through Congress seek to end individual regulations and the EPA itself, even to reverse the Chevron decision. And with the ascension of Anne Gorsuch's own son, Neil Gorsuch, to the Supreme Court, they may now enjoy a courtroom edge.

That strategy entailed a canny grasp of a political weakness in our environmental state which its supporters (myself included) have been slower to recognize or address. Internal agency deliberations have preoccupied environmental groups as well as many of the thousands who have come to work in our many environmental professions, swallowing up most attention and energy. Certainly there was a need to counter business influences on rule-making.

But this orientation, along with our sense of environmental progress, have come to rest too exclusively on proceedings inside the executive branch. They have raised a specter of technocracy, of a rule by experts and allied elites that anti-environmental conservatives have effectively exploited. In the process, supporters of environment protection have been thoroughly outflanked.

Environmental groups need to find new ways of mobilizing -- and fast

This perfect storm of anti-environmental conservatism now seems poised to strike against our environmental agencies and laws with a destructive force never before seen in our modern era. In response, environmental groups, hitherto quiescent environmental professionals, and more  all Americans who care about the health of our country and our planet  need to find new ways and means of mobilizing against it, and fast.

Success against earlier assaults offers cues for today's opposition. As our Republican Congress is unlikely to wield the hearings and subpeonas that brought down Gorsuch and Watt, others must step in. Journalists, environmentalists, former and current agency officials, any and everyone with a story to tell, need to get word out about the coming cuts, corruption, and their fallout, making the most of all tools at hand, from marches to digital and social media.

The skepticism that today's conservatives have been able to stir about science is especially worrisome, for it strikes at the heart of how modern environmental regulation works. Scientific understanding and data offer our best window into environmental conditions and problems; without them, our environmental statutes would have little direction, and the resulting policies no teeth. Swelling efforts to save government data as well as to "March for Science" have opened important new avenues for activism, distinctive to our own time.

What also needs to be made clear is that in the realms of environment and health, science's importance is hardly just for scientists alone. It also serves those places and people whose conditions it studies, and ideally, whose problems it illuminates not just for experts and policy-makers but for all. Science, we'd do well to argue, is not some elitist conspiracy, but vital to environmental democracy.

The fight for the environment still needs to be carried into agency hearings and courtrooms; for that, the big environmental groups are getting ready. But additional battle lines must be opened in town halls and in local electoral politics. After all, decades of smaller victories there have now positioned Republicans to make good on Trump's anti-environmental campaign promises.

Any roadmap toward a more pro-environment Congress must begin not so much in the cities  already heavily Democratic  as in our suburbs, where modern environmentalism itself was born. Though they are now widely derided and written off in environmental circles, suburbs have emerged as the great swing zones of American politics, even as many are surprisingly prone to green retrofits. Districts like Georgia's 6th, once held by Newt Gingrich and currently conducting a special election, offer a first, best hope for electing a Congress that will rebuff the Trump anti-environmental agenda.

Challenges to that agenda will stand a better chance if they can also stoke the embers of an older pro-environment Republicanism that continue to glow. Despite lock-step messaging from their leaders, media, and big donors, conservative constituencies such as hunters still support protecting public lands, and around half of all Republicans do worry about climate change.

Those of us who would defend our nation's environmental defenses, a vital yet under-appreciated legacy of the last half-century, need to examine the recent successes of anti-environmental conservatism and learn. Only a similarly determined, broad, and long-term quest for electoral influence will enable pro-environmental politicians to push back. Then, in the hopefully not too distant future, we'll be able to repair the damage that has only just begun.

Commentary by Vox contributor Christopher Sellers, a professor of history at Stony Brook University, a fellow at the Wilson Center, and on the steering committee of the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI). He is the author of Crabgrass Crucible: Suburban Nature and the Rise of Environmentalism in 20th-Century America, and forthcoming books on the history of environmental politics in Atlanta, Texas, and Mexico.

For more insight from CNBC contributors, follow @CNBCopinion on Twitter.
AUBURN HIGH SCHOOL

Reagan Graney, a senior at Auburn High School, has been named the 2017 recipient of the Ruth and Charles B. Goldman Memorial Scholarship. She receives $1,000 toward her first year of college studies.

Graney, daughter of Michelle and Joseph Graney, plans to matriculate this fall at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., to study history and politics.

The scholarship, named in memory of two lifelong Auburnians who died a decade ago, is designated for graduating seniors at AHS who have demonstrated a significant interest in the public affairs of the community, the nation and/or the world. This is the 10th year of the award.

Graney, a high honor roll student for four years who will finish third in senior class rank, was recognized for her initiative, creativity and extensive volunteer commitment for more than two years at Cape Haven, a nonprofit organization in Marcellus that provides housing and support services to the homeless and people with disabilities.

The agencys executive director, Mary McLaughlin, in a letter of recommendation, said: "I've worked with about two thousand high school students as a former teacher and guidance counselor. Reagan is the most mature, responsible, self-organized and self-directed student I've ever encountered."

Graney also served during her senior year as editor-in-chief of The Lake Ave Times, the student newspaper at AHS.

The Goldman scholarship, which is awarded annually, is funded by family members and friends of Ruth and Charles Goldman. The scholarship has been presented since 2007.

COLGATE UNIVERSITY

Zachary Weaver, of Auburn, is now a graduate of Colgate University in the Class of 2017. Weaver majored in astronomy-physics. Weaver, a graduate of Auburn High School, received a Bachelor of Arts degree Magna Cum Laude at Colgate's 196th Commencement, May 21.

FINGER LAKES COMMUNITY COLLEGE

Dean's List

 Brenton Allen, of Sterling

 Stacey Church, of Auburn

 Tiffany Crawford, of Port Byron

 Makenzie Frizzell, of Jordan

 Ryan Haskins, of Cato

 Stephanie Helzer, of Auburn

 Kira Hoffman, of Auburn

 James Pritchard, of Jordan

 Nicholas Slobodiak, of Weedsport

 Travis Summerville, of Cato

GROVE CITY COLLEGE

Micah Quigley, a political science major at Grove City College, has been named to the dean's list with high distinction for the spring 2017 semester. Micah is a 2014 graduate of Tyburn Academy and is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Michael Quigley (June) from Auburn.

MANSFIELD UNIVERSITY

Kieran Hermann, of Auburn, has been named to the Mansfield University President's List for the spring 2017 semester. To be named to the President's List, a student must attend the university full-time and attain at least a 4.0 QPA for the semester.

NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY

Dean's List

 Karl Adams, of Auburn, majoring in business administration.

 Samantha Walawender, of Auburn, majoring in economics.

MANSFIELD UNIVERSITY

Kieran Hermann, of Auburn, has been named to the spring 2017 dean's list at Mansfield University.

SOUTHERN CAYUGA SCHOOL DISTRICT

Eighteen students from the Southern Cayuga school district were awarded the Elizabeth and Howard Lacey scholarships for the 2017-18 academic year. The awards were officially announced the evening of Monday June 5 at a reception held at the Aurora Inn honoring the 18 student winners and their parents.

The annual awards are given to students from the towns of Scipio, Venice, Ledyard and Genoa who have demonstrated academic excellence and active involvement within their community.

Students selected for the Elizabeth and Howard Lacey 2017 18 scholarships and the institutions that they attend or will be attending include:

 Stefanie Bennett, Ithaca College

 Jessica Farkas, St. Bonaventure University

 Larissa Furness, SUNY Cortland

 Monica Groth, Wellesley College

 Conor Hastings, Le Moyne College

 Emily Kopp, Wellesley College

 Olivia Lounsbury, Chapman University

 Tanner Marshall, Seattle University

 Lauryn Mattoon, Rochester Institute of Technology

 Erin Morrissey, Wells College

 Molly Murphy, Le Moyne College

 Shannon ONeil, Rensselaer Polytechnic University

 Hannah Roman, Cornell University

 Caleb Roman, St. Michael's College

 Matt Signor, SUNY Geneseo

 Adriane Torea, William Smith College

 Sarah Van De Valk, Le Moyne College

 Sara Welter, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

The Elizabeth and Howard Lacey Scholarships were established and funded by the non-profit Kilkea Foundation. The scholarships are awarded to deserving students residing in the towns of Scipio, Venice, Ledyard and Genoa who are seeking entry to or currently enrolled in college, university and professional institutions. Demonstrated academic distinction as well as extracurricular activities and community service are the criteria set by the Foundation for evaluating all applicants.
Dan Coats, the nation's top intelligence official, will appear before Congress on Wednesday just a day after it was reported that President Donald Trump may have personally asked him to try to quash the FBI's investigation of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

The Washington Post reported that Coats, Trump's director of national intelligence, told associates in March that the president asked him to intervene with FBI Director James Comey to get the FBI to cool its investigation of Flynn's alleged ties to Russia.

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Coats' spokesman, however, on Tuesday night told NBC News that Coats "has never felt pressured by the president or anyone else in the administration to influence any intelligence matters or ongoing investigations."

The spokesman, Brian Hale, gave no further details, saying, "Director Coats does not discuss his private conversations with the president."

But Coats is likely to be questioned extensively about the report on Wednesday morning, when he is scheduled to join acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

It's not clear how much of Coats' take on the report will become public, however. The first part of the hearing  which was called to review the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the law used to authorize surveillance of Americans  will be open, but the hearing is scheduled to move into a closed session afterward.

Flynn resigned Feb. 13, following reports that he misled Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations with Russia's ambassador to the United States.

The Washington Post reported that on March 22, Coats was among several other officials at a briefing for Trump at the White House. As the briefing ended, the president asked everyone to leave except for Coats and CIA Director Mike Pompeo, according to The Post.

It was then that Trump started complaining about the Flynn investigation, The Post reported, citing officials familiar with the account that Coats gave to his associates.

NBC News reported last month that Comey wrote internal memos expressly saying Trump had tried to intervene directly with him, as well, to stall the investigation.

If the new report is true, "this is obstruction of justice," said Rep. Ted Lieu, D-California, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee and a former Air Force prosecutor.

Trump appears to have been "endeavoring to influence an investigation," Lieu said in an interview Tuesday night on MSNBC's "All In With Chris Hayes." "We've seen so much evidence of this.

"I don't know why people tiptoe around this, say it looks like it or could be," Lieu added. "It is obstruction of justice."
Former FBI Director James Comey's detailed notes on his multiple conversations with President Donald Trump raise the question of whether those exchanges rise to the level of obstruction of justice.

If so, it would be a difficult charge to bring against Trump, according to Columbia University law professor John Coffee.

"It's generally believed that you cannot indict a sitting president because that would paralyze the government," said Coffee. "And because impeachment is the constitutional procedure created to remove a president."

Any formal charge of obstruction against Trump would rest heavily on the exact wording of any exchange with intelligence or law enforcement officials, he said. Short of impeachment, it's unlikely such an obstruction charge would be brought directly against Trump by the current Justice Department, said Coffee.

"Any U.S. Attorney who brings an indictment can be overruled by the Attorney General  even if the case is meritorious," he said.

At issue is whether Trump's comments to Comey represent part of an effort to thwart several probes into whether Russia interfered in the 2016 election that swept Trump into office.

On Wednesday, the Senate Intelligence Committee posted Comey's opening statement for a scheduled Thursday hearing on Trump's firing of the FBI chief on May 9. In that prepared testimony, Comey said Trump asked him to back off on bureau's investigation of former national security adviser Michael Flynn as part of the its probe into his Russian ties.

Comey said Trump told him at a Jan. 27 dinner that: "I need loyalty. I expect loyalty."

Trump's outside counsel, Marc Kasowitz, highlighted that Comey says he told Trump that the president was not personally under investigation. In a statement, the attorney said that the president feels "completely and totally vindicated" and "is eager to continue to move forward with his agenda."

Senate investigators are also looking into reports of a wider White House effort to interfere with probes into the administration's ties to Russia.

At a Senate hearing Wednesday, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and National Security Agency Director Adm. Mike Rogers issued blanket statements that they had never felt "pressured" to influence an investigation. But they repeatedly declined to comment specifically about media reports that Trump asked them to publicly say that evidence showed that Trump's campaign did not collude with Russia.

Coats also would not speak specifically about a Washington Post report that Coats told associates that Trump asked him if he could persuade Comey to ease off the Flynn probe.

The evidence of obstruction goes beyond any single comment from Trump, said Gerald Lefcourt, a white-collar defense lawyer based in New York. Trump not only talked to Comey about the probe, he also reportedly asked two top intelligence officials to push back against it and told Russian diplomats in the Oval Office that firing Comey relieved "great pressure."

"If you put it all together, it's clear that he was trying to do everything in his power to stop the FBI investigation of Flynn," Lefcourt said.

Lefcourt said the evidence is likely enough for an obstruction of justice case to go to a jury and "way more than enough for impeachment purposes."

Impeachment of a U.S. president requires a majority vote in the House of Representatives on specific articles of impeachment, a set of charges similar to an indictment. Those charges are then heard in a Senate trial overseen by the chief justice of the Supreme Court. Removal of a president requires a two-thirds vote majority in the Senate.

But such a vote by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, so far, appears highly unlikely.

Democratic leaders have said any talk of impeachment should be tabled until the completion of multiple ongoing investigations into Trump's dealings with Russia

But Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, who said he plans to begin drafting articles of impeachment, has said that Trump's firing of Comey on May 9 amounted to obstruction of justice.

"The facts are simple and indisputable," Green said Tuesday in a statement. "The president fired the FBI director because the director was investigating the president's campaign connections to Russian interference in the presidential election."

Trump has already demonstrated his willingness to fire Justice Department officials who defy his wishes. On Jan. 30, Trump dismissed former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates after she instructed the department not to defend the president's executive order calling for a travel ban on several people from predominantly Muslim countries.

In March, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions abruptly demanded the resignations of 46 federal prosecutors, including Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, who said he had been asked to stay on in November by then President-elect Donald Trump.

There have been only a handful of instances in U.S. history of top Justice Department officials publicly breaking with the White House.

The most famous example was in 1973, when then-Attorney General Elliot Richardson and his deputy resigned rather than obey President Richard Nixon's order to fire a special prosecutor investigating the Watergate scandal.

The incident, which became known as the "Saturday Night Massacre," was a public relations disaster and is seen as a turning point in Nixon's administration.

Reuters contributed to this report.
It can be hard to keep up with everything that has unfolded since President Donald Trump abruptly fired former FBI Director James Comey nearly a month ago, but with Comey's first public comments since then, here's a timeline:

July 5, 2016: Comey recommends that the Justice Department not charge Hillary Clinton, the eventual Democratic presidential nominee, for her handling of classified information at the State Department. Republicans express outrage at Comey.

Oct. 28: In a letter to Congress just days before the Nov. 8 presidential election, Comey says the FBI uncovered new emails that could be related to the Clinton investigation. Democrats express outrage at Comey.

Nov. 6: Comey says the FBI is not changing its conclusion on Clinton.

Jan. 6: Comey briefs Trump on the Russian effort to influence the 2016 election. Comey tells Trump he is not personally under FBI investigation and begins to document his conversations with Trump immediately after they take place, according to his prepared statement for Thursday's hearing released by the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Jan. 27: Trump and Comey have a one-on-one dinner seven days after the president is sworn in, at which Comey gets the impression that the president wants to "create some sort of patronage relationship." Comey will testify that Trump said, "I need loyalty, I expect loyalty." Comey says he promised only "honest loyalty."

Feb. 14: In an Oval Office meeting, Comey believes Trump asks him to "drop" an investigation into former national security advisor Michael Flynn. (Flynn was fired for lying to Vice President Mike Pence about his links to Moscow.) Comey does not make that pledge and does not believe Trump was requesting that he drop the FBI's broader Russia investigation.

March 20: Comey publicly confirms what has been reported for months: "The FBI, as part of our counterintelligence mission, is investigating the Russian government's efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. And that includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government, and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia's efforts."

March 22: Trump asks Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats if he could intervene with Comey and get him to ease off Flynn, according to The Washington Post. Coats tells other officials about the exchange and says what Trump suggested would be inappropriate, according to the newspaper.

March 30: Trump calls Comey and describes the Russia probe as a "cloud" over his administration, according to Comey. Trump asks Comey to "get that fact out" that the president is not personally under investigation.

April 11: Trump calls Comey and again asks for him to "get out" that the president is not personally under investigation, according to Comey, who adds that this is the last time he talked to Trump before the president fired him.

May 3: During a routine oversight hearing before the Senate, Comey is questioned about the timing of his announcement prior to Election Day that the FBI has come across another batch of Clinton emails. He says it makes him "mildly nauseous to think that we might have had some impact on the election" but adds, "I would make the same decision."

May 9: Trump abruptly fires Comey. The White House quickly claims that the president ousted Comey because of a Justice Department criticism of his job performance.

May 10: In an Oval Office meeting, Trump tells top Russian diplomats that Comey "was crazy, a real nut job," according to the Times. Trump adds: "I faced great pressure because of Russia. That's taken off."

May 11: Trump directly contradicts his own staff from two days earlier, telling NBC News that he would have fired Comey "regardless" of what the Justice Department said. Trump adds that he was considering "this Russia thing" when he ousted the FBI director. Trump also claims that Comey told him three separate times that he was not personally under investigation.

May 17: Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appoints former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel to oversee the Russia probe.

May 19: Comey agrees to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

June 5: After the Senate hearing date is announced, the White House says Trump will not use executive privilege to try to block Comey's testimony.

June 6: Asked if he has a message for Comey, Trump says, "I wish him luck."

June 7: DNI Coats does not comment in an open Senate hearing about his specific conversations with Trump, but says he never felt "pressured" to influence an investigation. Comey's prepared statement for the next day's hearing is released. Trump's lawyers says the president feels "vindicated" by the testimony.

June 8: Comey testifies before the Senate committee, saying The White House's criticism of the FBI "were lies plain and simple." The hearing is part of the panel's probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election and any links between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.
Sen. John McCain saw shades of dystopia during a hearing Wednesday.

The Arizona Republican said that Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats' refusal to go into detail about a conversation already reported in The Washington Post "shows what kind of an Orwellian existence that we live in."

"I mean, it's detailed, as you know from reading the story, when you met, what you discussed, et cetera, et cetera . And yet, here in a public hearing before the American people, we can't talk about what was described in detail in this morning's Washington Post," McCain asked at the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing.

In the late 1940s, British author George Orwell wrote "1984," in which people use a government-issued language called " newspeak " that's designed to limit freedom of thought.

The Post reported that Coats told associates that Trump asked him whether he could persuade former FBI Director James Comey to ease off an investigation into the former national security advisor. The advisor, Michael Flynn, was fired for lying about his links to Moscow.
While concerns about the global economy continue to plague investors, Paris-based OECD has forecast that the global economy is on course for its fastest growth in close to six years but has warned that countries need to strive to do better.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development has predicted that the global economy is set to grow 3.5 percent in 2017, followed by an increase to 3.6 percent in 2018 as confidence is increasing and investment and trade are picking up from low levels.

"It's a little more optimistic than last year," Catherine Mann, chief economist at OECD told CNBC Wednesday.

"What we've seen is some cyclical uptick across the board, in terms of consumption, investment and labor market performance.

However, she added that more progress needs to be made in order to ensure sustainable growth forecasts.

"We don't think that we can be assured that those kinds of improvements are going to be durable. We have not seen real wage growth, we have not seen improvements in productivity growth, and until we get those two things in place we don't think we have a sustainable recovery going forward.
President Donald Trump ripped Democrats for opposing Republican efforts in Congress to repeal and replace much of Obamacare, accusing the party of wrecking health care in the United States.

"The Democrats are destroying health care in this country," Trump said in Cincinnati, Ohio, a day after the state's largest Obamacare insurer said it would exit that market next year.

"We're having no help: it's only obstruction from the Democrats."

"We have no help, we will get no votes. If we gave you the greatest plan in the history of the world, we would have no Democratic vote," Trump said.

"It's all going to be Republicans or bust."

Trump's remarks came as GOP leaders in the Senate moved toward potentially introducing health-care legislation that could significantly undo a number of Obamacare provisions.

Democrats in the House voted uniformly against the GOP's health-care bill last month, which passed the House by just a single "yes" vote. All Democrats in the Senate are expected to oppose that bill or a similar one that would greatly change the nation's health-care law.

"The Republicans are working very, very hard on getting a great health-care plan," Trump said. "I can tell you the Democrats are really in our way."

The president spoke in front of the Air Force One jet after landing in Cincinnati, where he met with two people he described as "victims of the Obamacare catastrophe created by congressional Democrats."

Tweet

"They've had their lives completely upended by the disaster known as Obamacare," Trump said.

"Across America, premiums are skyrocketing, insurers are fleeing, and the American people are paying much more for much worse coverage," Trump said. "The coverage is horrendous."

"Ever since the law's provisions took effect, premiums have exploded by an average of 86 percent in Ohio, and 75 percent in Kentucky," Trump said, referring to the state just next door to Cincinnati.

"Obamacare is in a death spiral, and the problems will only get worse if Congress fails to act," the president said. "Obamacare is dead. I've been saying it for a long time."

Trump mentioned Tuesday's news that big insurer Anthem would effectively exit Ohio's Obamacare market next year. Anthem had cited continued "volatility" in the individual health plan market.
We humans are easily distracted by our games, phones and mates. And automotive engineers, computer interaction designers and, yes, lawyers, wonder if the self-driving cars they are working on will ever really be able to count on us in an emergency.

Johnny Luu, a spokesman for Google's self-driving car effort, now called Waymo , disputed the account, but said behavior like an employee rummaging in the back seat for his laptop while the car was moving and other "egregious" acts contributed to shutting down the experiment.

"We saw stuff that made us a little nervous," Chris Urmson, a roboticist who was then head of the project, said at the time. He later mentioned in a blog post that the company had spotted a number of "silly" actions, including the driver turning around while the car was moving.

The company made the decision after giving self-driving cars to Google employees for their work commutes and recording what the passengers did while the autonomous system did the driving. In-car cameras recorded employees climbing into the back seat, climbing out of an open car window, and even smooching while the car was in motion, according to two former Google engineers.

Three years ago, Google 's self-driving car project abruptly shifted from designing a vehicle that would drive autonomously most of the time while occasionally requiring human oversight, to a slow-speed robot without a brake pedal, accelerator or steering wheel. In other words, human driving was no longer permitted.

But many automotive technologists are skeptical that the so-called handoff from machine to human can be counted on, because of the challenge of quickly bringing a distracted human back into control of a rapidly moving vehicle.

To outline a development path to complete autonomy, the automotive industry has established five levels of human-to-machine control, ranging from manual driving  Level 0  up through complete autonomy, Level 5. In the middle, Level 3 is an approach in which the artificial intelligence driving the car may ask humans to take over in an emergency.

Engineers say they believe that cars will be intelligent enough to do all the driving, somewhere between five years and a decade from now, depending on whom you ask. But until then, what passes for autonomous driving will be a delicate ballet between human and machine: Humans may be required to take the wheel at a moment's notice when the computer can't decide what to do.

"Do you really want last-minute handoffs?" said Stefan Heck, chief executive of Nauto , a start-up based in Palo Alto, Calif., that has developed a system that simultaneously observes both the driver and the outside environment and provides alerts and safety information. "There is a really good debate going on over whether it will be possible to solve the handoff problem."

Nauto's data shows that a "driver distraction event" occurs, on average, every four miles. Mr. Heck said there was evidence that the inattention of human drivers was a factor in half of the approximately 40,000 traffic fatalities in the United States last year.

Last month, a group of scientists at Stanford University presented research showing that most drivers required more than five seconds to regain control of a car when  while playing a game on a smartphone  they were abruptly required to return their attention to driving.

Another group of Stanford researchers published research in the journal Science Robotics in December that highlighted a more subtle problem. Taking back control of a car is a very different experience at a high speed than at a low one, and adapting to the feel of the steering took a significant amount of time even when the test subjects were prepared for the handoff.

"There is a motor-learning process if I haven't been controlling the vehicle and I have to take control," said J. Christian Gerdes, a Stanford University mechanical engineering professor who was one of the authors of the study.

The handoff challenge is compounded by what is known as "over-trust" by automotive engineers.

Over-trust was what Google observed when it saw its engineers not paying attention during commutes with prototype self-driving cars. Driver inattention was implied in a recent National Highway Traffic Safety Administration investigation that absolved the Tesla from blame in a 2016 Florida accident in which a Model S sedan drove under a tractor-trailer rig, killing the driver.

Solving the over-trust issue is a key to autonomous vehicles in the Level 3 category, where the computer hands off to humans.

The first commercial vehicle to offer Level 3 autonomy is expected to be released next month by Audi. A version of its luxury A8 model will be able to drive in stop-and-go freeway traffic up to 37 miles an hour while allowing drivers to pursue other tasks. The vehicle reportedly will notify drivers in emergencies, giving them eight to 10 seconds to intervene.

Despite these limited advances, many automotive technologists remain uncertain about whether technology will ever be able to operate smoothly with a human driver who may be reading email or playing World of Warcraft.

"I believe that Level 3 autonomous driving is unsolvable," said John Leonard, a mechanical engineering professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has collected detailed examples of driving situations that are currently impossible for state-of-the-art autonomous driving systems. "The notion that a human can be a reliable backup is a fallacy."

More from The New York Times:

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Yet, despite widespread skepticism, the automotive industry is spending heavily on artificial intelligence technologies designed to make cars safer before they are fully autonomous. The idea is that self-driving technology (warning lights, emergency braking) can help humans be safer drivers.

Gill Pratt, a roboticist who heads an ambitious Toyota research effort in Silicon Valley; Ann Arbor, Mich.; and Cambridge, Mass.; said he did not see the automation ratings  one through five  as a straight line of technical progress.

Instead, he said, he saw the ratings as different ways of addressing the same car-safety question, regardless of who or what is in control.

Unlike many in the industry who say that advances in machine learning will soon make self-driving cars safer than those driven by humans, Mr. Pratt has pushed for less futuristic "guardian" technologies that could be added to a car the same way that anti-lock brakes, stability control, blind-spot warning lights and other features have become common.

One possible new feature being designed by the Toyota Research Institute is adding the ability to stop not just when a pedestrian is detected, but also to swerve to avoid an accident, he said.

Toyota is also working on technologies that will assist human drivers in remaining vigilant when they are required to oversee an autonomous driving system for long stretches of time. There is already a rich literature that explores the challenges of keeping airplane pilots vigilant; Toyota researchers say they will be able to develop techniques to maintain human driver attention.

Mr. Pratt said Toyota has not given up on the challenge of Level 3 driving. But to make a safe Level 3 car, he said, it may be necessary to develop technologies that see risks as much as 15 seconds in the future.

Still, over-trust will be a tough challenge to overcome. "Imagine if the autopilot disengages once in 10,000 miles," he said. "You will be very tempted to over-trust the system. Then when it does mess up, you will be unprepared."

And if all those issues do get resolved, there is one more question: Will people really use self-driving cars?

Last September, researchers at the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute published results of a survey reporting that for 62 percent of Americans, an increase in productivity as a result of self-driving cars was unlikely.

The researchers found that 23 percent of Americans would refuse to drive in autonomous cars and 36 percent would be so nervous that they would not take their eyes off the road. An additional 3 percent said they would be too motion-sick to take advantage of the cars.

"Also of importance is the fact that current trips in light-duty vehicles average only about 19 minutes, a rather short duration for sustained productive activity or invigorating sleep," the researchers concluded.
Santander's takeover of struggling Spanish banking peer Banco Popular has elements reminiscent of the takeover of Britain's failing HBOS by fellow U.K. bank Lloyds in 2009, according to the chief of a leading U.K. fund manager.

Without knowing the full facts, it looks as though Santander might have been lent on by the European Central Bank (ECB) to carry out the rescue mission, suggested Martin Gilbert, chief executive officer (CEO) of Aberdeen Asset Management, talking on CNBC's Squawk Box on Wednesday.

"It smacks a bit of the Bank of Scotland (HBOS) / Lloyds where you never know how much pressure is put on the biggest bank in Spain by the central bank so I'd be surprised if they had agreed to it under duress but that will come out," he said.

The ECB announced in a statement on Wednesday that the "significant deterioration of the liquidity situation of the bank in recent days led to a determination that the entity would have, in the near future, been unable to pay its debts or other liabilities as they fell due."
"Banco Popular was the one exception to the successful tidy up of the Spanish banking system. And that's why this news on Banco Popular I think was inevitable. It's been under pressure," he opined.

Santander is set to launch a rights issue to raise 7 billion euros ($7.89 billion) to support the buyout and the subsequent shoring up of its junior peer's balance sheet as part of the 7.9 billion euros Santander is setting aside to cover the target's non-performing assets. Shares of Santander slipped 2.5 percent as European markets opened on Wednesday.

"The significant deterioration of the liquidity situation of the bank in recent days led to a determination that the entity would have, in the near future, been unable to pay its debts or other liabilities as they fell due," announced the ECB in statement Wednesday morning, adding that its Single Resolution Board (SRB) had undertaken a resolution scheme which included the Santander acquisition of Banco Popular for the nominal sum of one euro ($1.13).

Spain's Banco Popular is facing a cash crunch and is likely to fail, declared the European Central Bank (ECB) on Wednesday, which also announced that the embattled lender will be acquired by its larger peer, Banco Santander , as part of its rescue plan.

This development is a good start for Banco Popular, given the situation it got to in recent weeks, said Luis de Guindos, Spain's minister of economy, industry and competitiveness in a statement on Wednesday, as it involves maximum protection to depositors and the continuity of activity.

"The operation is carried out without the use of public resources and, therefore, does not lead to an eventual contagion between sovereign and banking risk, as it happened in the past. The current situation is very different from that of 2012, given the good health of the whole financial sector and the Spanish economy in general. This gives the best circumstances to provide the most appropriate and effective solutions under European authority, with the ultimate goal of preserving the stability of the financial system," he said in the statement.

Management at Banco Popular had declined the funding support that had been offered to it in 2012 and instead opted for a series of piecemeal share sales which Parker said had proven ineffective.

"That has been clearly a failure," said the long-term financier, adding that he hoped a potential comparison with the troublesome buyout of HBOS by Lloyds Bank in the U.K. was wrong given the strength of Santander's management.

"A lot hinges on how much of the bad debt are they taking on and I'm assuming that that is actually going to be parceled off into a bad bank and therefore Santander will end up with the viable retail and banking operations," Parker observed.

Without knowing the full facts, it looks as though Santander might have been lent on by the ECB to carry out the rescue mission, suggested Martin Gilbert, chief executive officer (CEO) of Aberdeen Asset Management, talking on CNBC on Wednesday.

"It smacks a bit of the Bank of Scotland (HBOS) / Lloyds where you never know how much pressure is put on the biggest bank in Spain by the central bank. So I'd be surprised if they had agreed to it under duress but that will come out," he said.

"It will be interesting to see how dilutive this deal is for existing shareholders," he added.
Connecting with your best ideas, creativity and wisdom requires pulling away from all the connectivity, says Arianna Huffington, media mogul and self-made millionaire.

"My best piece of advice is to make sure that entrepreneurs connect with their own wisdom and creativity, and that's becoming harder and harder because we are so addicted to technology," Huffington says, speaking to CNBC at the iConic conference in New York City Wednesday.

"Seventy percent of people sleep with their phones by their beds; we are constantly engaging in notifications, social media, texts, emails. And yet the most creative moments come when we put all that aside. That's why sometimes people's best ideas come in the shower. So as an entrepreneur, make time for that reflection, ability to connect with your best ideas, and not to be constantly distracted."
Twitter erupted after the release of former FBI Director James Comey's prepared remarks about his interactions with President Donald Trump.

Comey will not face the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence until Thursday at 10 a.m. EDT, but the publication Wednesday of his planned statement sparked an internet firestorm that was swift  and mostly partisan.

Ana Navarro, Republican strategist and political contributor for CNN, ABC and Telemundo tweeted, "Comey opening statement for tmrw's hrng , reads like a Tom Clancy novel. Buckle-up America. Ride about to get bumpy."

Sahil Kapur, a reporter for Bloomberg, shared Sen. John McCain's response, tweeting,

" McCAIN reacts to Comey's written testimony. 'Just as I suspected... I think there's going to be many shoes to drop before this one is over."'

Ted Lieu, a Democrat representing California's 33rd congressional district, praised Comey's statement. "In our Republic, there is one and only one loyalty oath: to the Constitution of the United States. Pleased Comey followed that principle."

Preet Bharara, a federal prosecutor who was fired by Trump in March, condemned the president's alleged actions that Comey laid out in his remarks. He tweeted, "Obstruction aside, it's NEVER ok for a POTUS privately to ask an FBI Director to drop a criminal investigation. Extraordinary, wrong & dumb."

The Republican National Committee responded to the release with a touch of humor. "Trying to find something of substance in Comey's opening statement like"

Editor-in-chief of the conservative news outlet the Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro, argued Comey's testimony proved Trump's innocence. "If all of this makes you think Trump collided with Russia on 2016 campaign, you're nuts."

Dinesh D'Souza, conservative filmmaker and author, highlighted parts of Comey's testimony where he confirmed that Trump is not personally being investigated by the FBI. " If @realDonaldTrump was not under investigation--as Comey now admits--how could Trump "obstruct" an inquiry that didn't even exist?"
Cayuga County Conservatives, Democrats and Republicans have announced their preliminary endorsements for this year's upcoming Cayuga County Legislature and Auburn City Council elections.

So far, the county Legislature races are looking mostly uncontested.

Three legislative districts have two candidates each to choose from: Districts 4, 11 and 13. The District 4 seat, representing the town of Brutus, is on the ballot this year due to former Legislator Mark Farrell's resignation last year. Farrell had been re-elected in 2015, and following his leave, the Legislature appointed Weedsport resident Grant Kyle, an independent, in September.

The Cayuga County Democratic Committee said it endorses Kyle for this upcoming election. The Cayuga County Republican Committee and the Cayuga County Conservative Committee said they have endorsed Christopher Petrus. Petrus has run for the District 4 seat twice and lost both times to Farrell.

The winner in November will fill out the final two years of the term, with the seat going up for election again in 2019.

Representing most of Auburn's downtown, District 13 will also likely have a contested race. Republicans and Conservatives have endorsed incumbent Legislator Tim Lattimore, who has served two terms so far. Lattimore also served on Auburn City Council from 1988 to 1991 and as mayor from 2003 to 2007. Democrats have endorsed former Auburn Enlarged City School District teacher Bob Nodzo for the seat.

Republican Legislator Terry Baxter will not be seeking re-election for the District 9 seat, which covers the towns of Summerhill, Sempronius, Moravia and Niles. Summerhill Town Supervisor Charles Ripley is stepping up to the plate, and has received the Republican endorsement. Democrats and Conservatives do not yet have endorsements for this district.

Democratic Legislator Frank Reginelli will also be retiring from government. He represented the city of Auburn in the District 11 seat. Democrats have endorsed former director of Cayuga County Health and Human Services Elane Daly. The Republicans have endorsed Michael Leasch and the Conservatives haven't endorsed anyone yet.

The following districts are so far uncontested, too. Incumbent Legislator Tucker Whitman has been endorsed again by Republicans for District 1, covering the towns of Sterling and Victory. Incumbent Legislator Ben Vitale, covering District 3's towns of Montezuma, Throop and Mentz, is endorsed again by Democrats. Incumbent Legislator Paul Pinckney has been endorsed by the Republicans, representing District 5's town of Aurelius and Fleming. Democrats also endorsed current Cayuga County Legislature Chair Keith Batman for another term representing District 7, which covers the towns of Springport, Scipio and Ledyard. Finally, Democrats have again endorsed incumbent Legislator Ryan Foley, who represents Auburn in District 15.

Jeff Herrick, chair of the Cayuga County Republican Committee, said there may be endorsements forthcoming for District 3 and 7, but that it does not appear there will be endorsements for 15. Ian Phillips, chair of the Cayuga County Democratic Committee, said that so far there are no endorsements for Districts 1, 5 and 9. Greg Rigby, chair of the Cayuga County Conservative Committee, said that party is still seeking qualified candidates to endorse for Districts 3, 5, 7, 9, 11 and 15.

Meanwhile, two spots on the Auburn City Council will be contested. Democrats have endorsed incumbents Debby McCormick and Terry Cuddy, who were both first elected in 2013. Republicans and Conservatives have endorsed John Camardo, who served on the council for a term before losing a re-election bid in 2015. Republicans have endorsed a second candidate for council, too, newcomer Adam Miller.

Also up on this year's ballot is the Cayuga County treasurer position. Jim Orman, who currently holds the seat, has been endorsed again by Republicans and Conservatives. Phillips said it is unlikely Democrats will endorse someone for that position.

Endorsed candidates can start collecting signatures for their petitions to run for office on June 6, and need to have a minimum of 5 percent of the party's enrollment in that district to make the November ballot. Candidates running independent of a party may begin on July 11, and must collect a minimum of 5 percent of the number of local votes in the 2014 gubernatorial race. The Cayuga County Board of Elections must receive those petitions between July 10 and 13 for party candidates and between Aug. 15 and 22 for independent candidates.

Registered individuals may contest petitions up to three days after they are filed. Designations must be accepted for party-affiliated and independent candidates by July 17 and Aug. 25, respectively. The board of elections will then publish the final list of candidates on its website, http://www.cayugacounty.us/County-Government/Board-of-Elections.
North Korea fired what appeared to be several land-to-ship missiles off its east coast on Thursday, South Korea's military said, the latest in a fast-paced series of missile tests defying world pressure to rein in its weapons program.

The launches come less than a week after the United Nations Security Council passed fresh sanctions on the reclusive state, which said it would continued to pursue its nuclear and missile program without delay.

The warship-killing cruise missiles were launched Thursday morning from the North Korean coastal city of Wonsan and flew about 200km, South Korea's Office of Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in has been briefed on the latest launch, the military said, declining to give further details.

"North Korea launched multiple projectiles that appear to be short-range land-to-ship cruise missiles today morning off east coast from the region of Wonsan," the office said in a statement, adding that Seoul and Washington were analysing the launches for further information.

Thursday's launch is the fourth missile test by North Korea since Moon took office on May 10 pledging to engage in dialogue with Pyongyang, saying sanctions and pressure alone have failed to resolve the growing threat from the North's advancing nuclear and missile program.

South Korea said on Wednesday it will hold off on installing remaining components of a controversial US anti-missile defense system until it completes an assessment of the system's impact on the environment.

Under third-generation leader Kim Jong-un, North Korea has been conducting such tests at an unprecedented pace in an effort to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of hitting the mainland United States.

In the three earlier launches, North Korea tested different kinds of ballistic missiles, two medium-to-long range missiles as well as a short-range Scud class weapon.

The launches of the apparent anti-ship missiles on Thursday follow Kim's order to develop North Korea's own ballistic missile that precisely strikes targets such as enemy vessels, reported in its state media late last month.

The isolated country, which has conducted dozens of missile tests and tested two nuclear bombs since the beginning of 2016 in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions, says the program is necessary to counter US aggression.
Adidas ' CEO told CNBC on Wednesday that terror attacks in Europe are taking a toll on consumers on the continent.

Kasper Rorsted said that while his company has outperformed in the retail sector and has managed to buck the overall downward trend, Adidas' current numbers are reflective of European consumer concern.

Uncertainty over this week's U.K. election, the British exit from the European Union and the upcoming German vote is also weighing on consumers.

"You are seeing fairly conservative consumer sentiment which is also impacting the overall consumer spending," Rorsted told CNBC.

"We're not really seeing any optimism flowing through, and the recent terrorist attacks are clearly setting a mark on consumers."

The recent decline in German-American relations after mutual recriminations between President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel is another headwind.

Still, the CEO stressed the importance of Europe's connection to the United States.

"I think most Europeans feel emotionally very connected to the U.S.," Rorsted said. "I think emotionally it's a very difficult period of time."

He said Germany-based Adidas is focusing on the positives. "We're a global company. We've created 13,000 jobs in the U.S., which we have today." He says the key, though, is figuring out how  as a business  to operate in these two potentially separate environments.
The leader of the U.S. government's leading patent agency, Michelle Lee, has unexpectedly resigned from her post, according to multiple sources familiar with her plans.

Lee, a former lawyer for Google , took over the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office during the Obama administration, and many in the tech industry  which publicly supported her work  believed that President Donald Trump would renominate her to the critical government post.

But Lee instead informed the Commerce Department that she would be stepping down from the position. A spokesman for the agency did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment, nor did the White House. It is unclear if Lee is leaving government entirely or headed to another position.

More from Recode:

Still, it could amount to a major blow for the tech industry. In April, a series of companies and their lobbying organizations  including Amazon , Facebook , Google, Samsung, and others  publicly defended Lee's tenure and asked Trump to renominate her for the agency.

"This is a critical time for the USPTO," they wrote. "Patent quality, which had unfortunately been neglected for too long, is finally being recognized as critical to the strength and success of our patent system. We have been very pleased with the leadership of Director Lee, who has been committed to making sure that the USPTO creates the maximum economic benefit for American inventors and businesses."

Lee also had her supporters in Congress  including California Rep. Darrell Issa, who previously said he had heard from the president that Lee would keep her job. In recent months, though, sources said that the Trump administration had started interviewing other potential candidates for the position.

By Tony Romm, Recode.net.

CNBC's parent NBCUniversal is an investor in Recode's parent Vox, and the companies have a content-sharing arrangement.
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There have been no marches against the Republican bill to repeal and replace Obamacare here. No raucous town halls. There was only one protest rally anywhere in the region. Photographs captured a solitary woman holding a sign. In an area that stands to lose a lot of health coverage under the GOP's American Health Care Act, the silence does not equal endorsement. It is a sign, instead, of disappointment setting in among a group of conservative voters who only months ago were bubbling with hope for Donald Trump's health care plan. The uninsured rate here in this rural swath of southeastern Kentucky has plummeted faster under the Affordable Care Act than any other area in the country. I visited the area last winter and talked to Obamacare enrollees who voted for Trump. They expected the president to repeal the law and replace it with something much better. "That man has a head for business," one enrollee told me. "He will absolutely do his best to change things." More from Vox:

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Like expensive bank bailouts? You'll love Republicans' Financial CHOICE Act. I went back this spring just after the House passed the AHCA, the bill to repeal and replace Obamacare that would cause 23 million fewer Americans to have health coverage, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates. The optimism was gone. Resignation had replaced it. "You know, thinking about it, I'm not even sure what I expected. I just thought it would miraculously work out wonderful for everybody," Bobbi Smith, a 62-year-old Obamacare enrollee who voted for Trump, says. "So I guess maybe I didn't put enough thought into what I would expect from a health care act." The souring on the Republican bill in a deep-red area of the country reflects the AHCA's profound unpopularity nationwide. But the lack of protest also shows the strength of partisanship in the United States, which could prove a protective shield for Republican legislators in the 2018 midterms. In southeastern Kentucky, the Obamacare enrollees I interviewed were disappointed  but they also weren't mad that their Congress member, Hal Rogers, voted to pass it. They talked about all the other good things he had done for the area in his decades of service. They gave him the benefit of the doubt, expecting that he must have cast his vote to improve the economy or solve a budget issue. This includes Kathy Oller, an Obamacare enrollment worker who supported Trump in the 2016 election. She feels let down by the Republican health care plan  "If they take the expanded Medicaid away, it really, really is gonna kill Kentuckians because they won't have health insurance," she says  and she's already seeing other ways that Trump health policies are hurting Kentucky. Obamacare sign-ups, she said, were slower this year, as people in Kentucky were confused about whether the health care law still existed. But Oller doesn't regret her vote for Trump  "I don't have regrets," she says plainly  and she trusts that Rogers, whom she has also voted for, knows what he's doing. She gets most her news from his weekly emails to constituents; she cites his arguments for why the law needs to be repealed. This sentiment felt ubiquitous in Corbin. Obamacare enrollees I interviewed didn't like the Republican plan, but they still trusted the Republican Party to do the right thing on health care. They felt like they had picked a side, and now they were going to stick with it.

"It won't be good for anybody": the Republican health care plan would hit Kentucky especially hard.

Perhaps no one stands to lose out more under the AHCA than the people who live in southeastern Kentucky. In 2013, 20.4 percent of Kentuckians lacked health insurance. Now just 7.8 percent do. More Kentucky residents report having a regular source of health care, and fewer say they have skipped needed medical attention because of the cost. The AHCA would reverse many of those gains. The bill the House passed would end the Medicaid expansion, a program responsible for three-quarters of Kentucky's coverage gains. It would reform the individual market in ways that would hurt southeastern Kentucky too. It would allow insurers to charge older enrollees significantly higher premiums, a practice limited under current law. This would hit Kentucky especially hard: 31 percent of Obamacare enrollees there are over 55  well above the 20 percent national average. You could see how all these changes would play out with someone like 62-year-old Clifford Hoskins. He's retired and was recently diagnosed with black lung disease, the product of a three-decade career in the coal mines. Hoskins signed up for Medicaid in early 2016 but recently transitioned to marketplace coverage when disability checks bumped up his income. He pays a $232 monthly premium for his plan, and receives a subsidy of about $700 from the federal government to cover the rest of the cost. Hoskins liked his Medicaid plan, which paid for an ankle surgery last year. He likes his new marketplace coverage too. He takes at least four medications regularly to treat his black lung disease, some kidney issues, and depression. He describes his Medicaid plan as "the best insurance I ever had in my life." Under the AHCA, analysts estimate Hoskins's premium would rise 24 percent as insurers would be able to charge someone his age a higher amount. His subsidy, meanwhile, would drop from $700 each month to $333. Those two changes alone would more than triple his out-of-pocket premium, from $232 each month under Obamacare to $822 each month under the Republican plan. "It's going to at least take half, if not all, of my Social Security," Hoskins says. "If I had to pay the full amount, that would not be good. That would put you back in poverty." There would be other changes at play too. Kentucky could waive out of Obamacare's essential health benefits package, allowing insurers to cover fewer benefits. This would only lower premiums slightly, analysts say, and could be risky for someone like Hoskins. An insurance plan, for example, may decide to stop some of his prescription medications. Hoskins had been reading a lot about the bill the House passed. He mostly reads things on the internet, starting at the AOL homepage, ever since he canceled his cable service a few months ago to save money. He doesn't like what he's seen. "From what I've read on it, it's not going to be good for anybody," he says. This all got him frustrated. He didn't vote in the 2016 election  he was still in the hospital recovering from ankle surgery. There were certainly parts of the Trump agenda he liked, such as the president's immigration policy. "I've not got anything again the wall," Hoskins says. "I've got nothing against protecting our borders." But he says he'd be a one-issue voter when the next election rolls around if Republicans repeal the Affordable Care Act. "If they do away with this, there are going to be a lot of changes to my voting," he says. "This is my biggest issue right now." To Hoskins, this was common sense: Of course votes would shift if Congress voted to end health insurance for millions of Americans. He predicted that Rogers's vote to repeal Obamacare "probably changed every working person's opinion [who is] on the Affordable Care Act." Actually, it didn't. Most Obamacare enrollees I talked to didn't like the Republican bill, but they didn't think it would change their votes either.

"Maybe it's a trade-off for all the stuff he's done": how partisanship protects Republican legislators

Kentucky's Fifth Congressional District runs through the heart of Appalachian Kentucky. It is the fourth-most-Republican district in the entire country, according to the Cook Political Report's Partisan Voter Index. The district first voted Rogers into office in 1981, and has reelected him 18 times since. The last Democrat to run against him, in 2014, got 22 percent of the vote. The places that benefited the most from Obamacare also tend to be some of the places with the most partisan voting records. If you zoom in on the 10 congressional districts that saw the biggest declines in uninsured rates, you will see eight are considered safe seats in the 2018 midterms. None are competitive enough for the Cook Political Report to rank them as toss-ups. Political tribalism has become a major force in American politics  and is alive and well in the Kentucky Fifth. Voting Republican is just part of what it means to live in that area of the country. "Like my dad told me, this is a Republican county," Hoskins says when I ask why he registered with the party. Rogers's office declined my request for an interview  but the Congress member felt like a constant presence during my trip to Kentucky. The local highway is named after him, and so is the water park. People like Oller relied on his emails to constituents to get information about Obamacare. "This is Hal Rogers; he just puts it simple," she says, when I asked her how Obamacare was going in her state. "Kentuckians have to choose between paying for health insurance and putting groceries on the table." Nearly all Obamacare enrollees expected Rogers to stick around. They weren't mad about it either. Despite opposing his vote for the AHCA  and having an intensely personal stake in the matter  they felt he's served the district well. Michael Martin, a 47-year-old Obamacare enrollee, says he thought of Rep. Rogers's AHCA vote as "a trade-off for all the other stuff he's done. He's brought jobs in. One of the places where I worked was one of the places he brought in." Martin likes his Obamacare coverage. He used to have a federal contracting job but is currently unemployed. He pays $77 each month and gets a $341 monthly subsidy from the government. He's currently in treatment for thyroid cancer, which was diagnosed when he was on the Medicaid expansion about a year ago. He had a bypass surgery a few years ago, when he had insurance at work, and worries about that being categorized as a preexisting condition. Martin has kept up with the health care debate. When we met in mid-May, he told me he was waiting for the new CBO number that would come out the next week. What he saw online made him think the new bill would be a raw deal for him. "I saw a chart on the internet that showed the estimates of how much a person with preexisting cancer or cardiac problems would have to pay," he says. "I fall into those categories. If you add them together, I'm like a double risk. The number was really up there, the premium." Martin wouldn't tell me whom he voted for in the 2016 election; the people I met generally seemed more reticent to talk about which candidate they favored during this trip. But he did say he'd supported Rogers in the past and was currently puzzling over his Congress member's vote. He wasn't necessarily mad, more confused. I asked him whether he thought Rogers had the best interests of Kentuckians at heart. "He's gotta know, right?" Martin responded. "Well, he's gotta know, but I can't see the reasoning why he voted 'yes,' you know?" Bobbi Smith hadn't followed the health care debate as closely. She pays $330 each month for her Obamacare plan and gets a $447 subsidy from the government. She's happy with her insurance, which worked well when she was diagnosed with breast cancer last January. Smith didn't like the idea that AHCA could raise her premiums just because she's older. "The higher premium for older people is generally a gripe," she says. "And for people with preexisting conditions, that's terrible. [It would] be really hard for them." But Smith started kicking around the idea a bit more, and began to come around to the Republican plan. "You can't buy insurance for anything else that's already damaged either, if you think of it that way," she says. "You can't wreck your car, then go buy insurance. ... It would be wonderful if they could just be insurance at the same price as everybody else..." She paused for a moment, and then says, "I don't see that being feasible." Smith didn't like the changes we talked about in the Republican plan  but she wasn't especially worried about them either. She understood that her premium might go up and her subsidy could go down. But she felt like she had picked a side in America's political debate, and for now, she is going to stick with it. "We choose which party we place our values with," she says. "We're supposed to trust them to do for us, you know, what our party stands for."

Republicans' vote for an unpopular bill will test the limits of partisanship

Partisanship is the best predictor of what people think of the Affordable Care Act, even better than whether someone has benefited from the law. "Partisanship trumps personal experience," says Mollyann Brodie, who runs the Kaiser Family Foundation's monthly tracking poll. "Your party affiliation tells me whether you think you were helped or hurt by Obamacare, even if you don't have individual insurance." The recent uptick in support for Obamacare doesn't reflect Republicans suddenly reconsidering their opinions. Brodie says that when you dig into the numbers, Republicans are just as opposed to Obamacare as they have been for years. Instead, you see Democrats who were lukewarm supporters suddenly becoming more fervent proponents. But partisanship also has limits. Conventional wisdom has suggested that Trump's core supporters would stick with him through thick and thin. FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver suggests that has become less true ever since the American Health Care Act passed. The ranks of voters who "strongly support" the president has dropped consistently since mid-May. Silver's argument rang true in Corbin. The voters who were willing to defend Hal Rogers were less willing to give Trump the same deference. They voted for change, for the candidate who promised to support a health care plan that covers everybody. They felt let down. "It doesn't look like Trump's going to listen to us," Oller told me over eggs at Cracker Barrel on a rainy Thursday morning. "I kind of figured he would listen. He would listen to everybody and try to work it out. But he's got too many other fish to fry now."

The politics of repeal are, ironically, most dangerous for Republicans who represent districts with fewer Obamacare enrollees
U.S. intelligence officials testifying before the Senate on Wednesday declined to answer repeated questions by Intelligence Committee members about media reports of their interactions with President Donald Trump.

At issue are reports that Trump asked them personally to in some way intervene in the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 elections. But neither Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats nor NSA Director Admiral Michael Rogers would say anything about what Trump told them.

Asked by Maine independent Sen. Angus King why he would not answer a direct question about the alleged Trump conversation, Rogers said simply, "I feel it is inappropriate, Senator."

King, frustrated, fired back: "What you feel isn't relevant, Admiral."

Similarly, Coats said: "I do not believe it is appropriate for me" to comment on what the president said. Pressed by King for the legal basis for his refusal, Coats said: "I'm not sure I have a legal basis. But I am more than willing to sit before this committee during its investigative process in a closed session and answer your questions."

So why wouldn't the intel leaders talk to the Senate Intelligence committee today?

A senior government official explained to CNBC Wednesday that the officials were in a tricky situation.

There were two logical possibilities, the official said: first, that the media reports are true and Trump did say something that could be construed as inappropriate. The second is that the media reports are simply false.

Making it clear that he would not indicate which scenario was the real one, the official said that in both cases the intelligence officials had reason to stay quiet today.

If the allegations about Trump are true, he said: "The officials testifying today felt that it was not appropriate in an open setting to be discussing confidential discussions with the president, even though executive privilege was not asserted." That indicates, as Coats suggested, that the officials might reply with more candor in a closed, or classified, Senate session.

If the allegations about Trump are not true, the official said the intelligence leaders would still have had a reason to be quiet: "There are a number of times, especially in the intelligence area where officials do not want to deny something even though it didn't occur because they don't want to be in a position of setting a precedent," the official said. That is, officials worry if they deny an accusation this time, they may be forced to deny others in the future, robbing them of the ability to simply not comment in the future.

"I think everybody understands it's an uncomfortable situation," the senior government official said. "But both the officials testifying today, trying to do a good job, and the Senators trying to do a good job will sometimes find that they are at cross purposes."

All this raises the question of what comes next. It is possible that the Senate committee will simply issue a subpoena to demand the answers. In that case, the White House would have to make a decision: Should Trump assert executive privilege over the conversations, or let his intelligence community testify openly about their conversations with him?

For today, at least, the White House didn't have to make that decision. But it could be coming soon.
Banking analyst Dick Bove, frustrated by a government that he believes has exercised socialist-style control of the banking system, believes it's finally time for big Wall Street institutions to consider breaking up.

The vice president of equity research at Rafferty Capital Markets long has been a proponent of the big banks, arguing that they keep the U.S. competitive globally.

However, he recently has been worried that investors were misunderstanding what was happening with banks and were buying them earlier this year without considering longer-term ramifications  particularly a government hostile to big institutions and economic trends not favorable to financials.

With the less-than-welcoming environment, Bove thinks the Wall Street titans themselves need to rethink the future.

"The time to consider breaking up these companies is here," Bove wrote in a note to clients. "The time for the industry to develop a vision is here. The time to continue to be buried in government by agencies that lean toward socialism and not capitalism and democracy is not likely to end. Banks must take control of their destiny if their stocks are going to do well."

Recent developments have helped fuel the sentiment.

A Michigan lawsuit alleging that the Federal Housing Finance Agency is unconstitutional could endanger Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two agencies that backstop mortgages on the secondary market. The FHFA oversees the two government-sponsored enterprises. If successful, the suit would throw the existence of Fannie and Freddie into question and get the government out of the mortgage finance business.

In a related matter, Bove pointed to a Moelis & Co. report showing the government made just shy of $100 million from Fannie and Freddie since the financial crisis, a development he interprets as further evidence to fuel the government's desire to nationalize the mortgage market.
President Donald Trump is bringing "reality to the situation" in the Middle East by backing a Saudi-led coalition's tough stance against neighboring Qatar, said Sadad al-Husseini, a former executive at Saudi Arabia's state oil company.

Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and other Muslim-majority nations cut diplomatic ties with Qatar on Monday, alleging the small Gulf monarchy supports terrorism. In a series of tweets Tuesday, Trump took partial credit and expressed support for the anti-Qatar alliance's actions, suggesting his tough remarks during a visit to Saudi Arabia two weeks ago spurred them on.

The tweets contradicted statements from White House officials and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who did not publicly take sides, sought to ease tensions and encouraged the parties to hold talks.

@realDonaldTrump: During my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology. Leaders pointed to Qatar - look!

@realDonaldTrump: So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off. They said they would take a hard line on funding...

@realDonaldTrump: ...extremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism!

But Husseini, who now runs consultancy Husseini Energy, on Wednesday said Trump had focused attention on the risk posed to the Middle East energy industry by a lack of security and stability.

"This kind of situation is a way to maybe give Qatar a wake-up call that they need to work with the rest of the Gulf states to stabilize the region to try to undermine all the terror that's going on across the whole Middle East," the former Saudi Aramco executive vice president told CNBC's "Squawk on the Street."

There is substantial evidence that lax oversight has allowed terror financing to flourish within Qatar. Leaders in Doha also have supported al-Qaeda's Syria affiliate, the Al-Nusra Front, in its bid to unseat Syrian President Bashar Assad. Qatar also backs the Palestinian political and militant group Hamas and the international Islamist movement the Muslim Brotherhood, which Saudi Arabia and Egypt oppose.

But Saudi Arabia has also been accused of destabilizing the region through its intervention in Yemen's civil war, which has exacted a heavy civilian death toll.
Continuing the White House's "infrastructure week," President Donald Trump took his pitch for rebuilding America to the very people that elected him on Wednesday.

With the Ohio River as his backdrop, Trump marketed his plans as a crucial step to rebuilding a crumbling U.S infrastructure system.

"It's time to recapture our legacy as a nation of builders," Trump said. "And to create new lanes of travel, commerce and discovery."

More from NBC News:

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Trump floats idea of a 'solar' border wall  and proposals are already on the table

Brainy translation tools mean language barriers are falling fast

The future, he predicted, was going to be "beautiful and the future's going to be bright."

"Together we will fix it," the president promised corporations and citizens gathered on the banks of the Ohio. "We will create the first class infrastructure our country and our people deserve."

Trump also pushed another legislative priority: repealing and replacing Obamacare.

Obamacare, Trump said, is "crashing. It's dead, it's in a death spiral."

He blamed Democrats for obstructing the long promised Republican repeal and replace of the Democrats' signature healthcare law, calling them "obstructionists" and lamenting the lack of bipartisanship on "every single thing."

Hours earlier, Adm. Michael Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency, and Daniel Coats, the director of national intelligence, refused during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Wednesday to confirm or deny allegations that Trump asked them to interfere in the FBI's probe into Moscow's interference in the 2016 elections.

Trump also surprised some White House staff and Hill lawmakers alike Wednesday by tweeting news that Chris Wray, a former DOJ assistant attorney general and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's personal attorney during the "Bridgegate" scandal, to replace ousted FBI Director James Comey.

One White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told NBC News "most of us learned about it from the tweet."

Asked soon after the president's tweet if there would be a public announcement to come, Principle Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told NBC News "the president just did it," referring to the tweet.

The White House released an official announcement on Wednesday afternoon.

The nature of Trump's tweets have come under scrutiny of late, with Press Secretary Sean Spicer telling reporters Tuesday that the president's tweets should be taken as "official statements."

Wednesday's "infrastructure week" stop on the Ohio River dovetailed with a push Monday from the White House to privatize Air Traffic Control, separating the entity from the Federal Aviation Administration and making it a non-government non-profit.

"We will work directly with state and local governments to give them the freedom and flexibility they need to revitalize our nation's infrastructure," he said.

Trump, who is often touted by his vice president as a "builder," will stress his campaign promises to rebuild America on Thursday when he meets with state and local leaders to discuss the need for an increased focus on roads and bridges.

That same day, Comey will testify on Capitol Hill.

As Trump wrapped his infrastructure push, Comey's prepared remarks went live online.

Some supporters in Cincinnati, however, scoff at the focus on Comey's testimony and continued media coverage of probes into whether there was improper communication between Trump officials and Russia during the 2016 campaign.

Alex Adams, 19, agreed, discarding "this fake Russian story that there was collusion" and said he was "ticked off" by attempts to discredit Trump's powered-by-the-people win.

Randy Chrisman told NBC News on Wednesday he's "disappointed" that there are "so many distractions" from the Trump is trying to do.

Trump's tweeting can sometimes do more harm than good, some supporters say.

"Sometimes it would be good if he said less, maybe, on Twitter," Chrisman said. "But that's what he chooses to do."

The concern for Chrisman and supporters like him, however, remained squarely on infrastructure.

"You know, we've built some really good things but keeping up with it and keeping the maintenance of it - some of its really hurt the system," he said, anxious to hear what Trump would propose.

Watch: Anthem exits Obamacare exchange in Ohio
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The White House proposal to overhaul the U.S. food stamp program  and the deep cuts it would make to benefits for the poorest households  has sparked public outrage on both sides of the aisle. But there's another change tucked into the proposal that businesses say caught them off guard  and could wind up costing them more than $2 billion. That provision is a new fee that the White House wants to charge retailers that accept food stamps, which is now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The Office of Management and Budget said the fee would be assessed when stores sign up and would require renewal after five years. The budget office said the amount would depend on the size and type of retailer, but the president's budget estimates that the fee would generate $2.4 billion in revenue over the next decade.

A woman pays for her groceries using a food stamp program at a supermarket in West New York, N.J., Monday, Jan. 12, 2015. Seth Wenig | AP

An OMB official described the fee as "modest" and "reasonable," emphasizing that some large retailers redeem a billion dollars or more in food stamp benefits each year. "Although a small number of stores may choose to leave the program rather than pay the fee, we do not expect that this will affect access to authorized stores," the official said. The proposal surprised the grocery industry, which is already fighting to block the controversial border adjustment tax on Capitol Hill. That measure would lower the cost of exports but raise the price of imports and has been widely opposed by chain retailers. Trump's food stamp fee, however, would fall squarely on supermarkets.

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Grocers oppose the "flawed policy of imposing fees on food retailers in order to reduce the cost of the federal government's nutrition assistance benefits to the most needy in our society," said Leslie G. Sarasin, president of the Food Marketing Institute, which represents the industry.

Changes hit congressional opposition

Beyond the new fee, the Trump administration is proposing $191 billion in cuts over the next decade to the food stamp program. The U.S. budget office said the reductions would come from tightening the work requirement to qualify for the benefits, but said the details would be left up to individual states. The administration also expects states to make up some of the lost funding. The existing system "is a formula for waste and growth rates and costs that are simply unsustainable," budget director Mick Mulvaney said during testimony on Capitol Hill last month. "The total spending should not go down. Or if it does, it goes down because of efficiencies and not because of reductions." But the proposed changes are already running into obstacles on Capitol Hill  even among Republicans. Rep. Michael Conaway of Texas and Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, the chairmen of the House and Senate agriculture committees, have signaled they would fight the measure. "We need to take a look at our nutrition assistance programs to ensure that they are helping the most vulnerable in our society," they said in a statement.

Implementing cuts to that extent are going to have stark consequences for retailers, especially in low-income communities. Brian Lang director of healthy food access, The Food Trust
Watergate made Richard Nixon the only U.S. president forced to resign. On Wednesday, ex-intelligence chief James Clapper said that scandal "pales" in comparison to the one involving Russian interference in the 2016 election.

It's impossible to know whether this scandal will force President Donald Trump from office prematurely. But it is possible, after fresh testimony from key government figures, to compare some of the new evidence with what drove Nixon from office.

The 1972 Watergate break-in triggered two years of investigations by the media, Congress and a special prosecutor. For most of that time, Nixon retained support among fellow Republicans.

But that changed after the Supreme Court rejected Nixon's claim of executive privilege and ordered him to surrender tape recordings of Oval Office conversations on June 23, 1972. On Aug. 5, 1974, the White House released them.

The tapes showed Nixon directing his chief of staff to halt the FBI investigation of the Watergate break-in. They agreed to do so through CIA officials, who would tell the FBI chief the probe could harm national security.

"They should call the FBI in and say  'Don't go any further in this case,' period," Nixon said.



That "smoking gun" tape, documenting his personal involvement in a cover-up, destroyed his Republican support. He announced his resignation three days later.

There are no known tapes of Trump's conversations, although the president has hinted at the possibility. But fired FBI Director James Comey, in prepared testimony for his appearance Thursday before the Senate Intelligence Committee, quotes from his contemporaneous notes about them.

Comey detailed encounters in which the president expressed concern about the FBI probe of Trump campaign associates and Russian interference in the election. At a "strange" White House dinner on Jan. 27, Comey wrote, the president asked if he wanted to remain at the FBI even though he had twice earlier told Trump he did.

"My instincts told me that the one-on-one setting, and the pretense of that this was our first discussion of my position, meant the dinner was, at least in part, an effort to have me ask for my job and create some sort of patronage relationship," Comey wrote.

After Comey invoked the importance of FBI independence, he recalled, the president said, "I need loyalty."

On Feb. 14, Comey said, the president instructed other officials to leave an Oval Office meeting so they could be alone.

"I want to talk about Mike Flynn," Comey quoted Trump as saying about FBI's interest in his former national security adviser's dealings with Russian officials. "I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go."

Comey wrote that he didn't tell FBI investigators of the request so as "not to infect" their work, and later asked Attorney General Jeff Sessions "to prevent any future direct communication between the president and me."

On March 30, he said, the president requested that Comey "lift the cloud" over his administration and disclose publicly that Trump was not under investigation. On April 11, he said, Trump called to follow up, noting: "I've been very loyal to you."

In May, Trump fired him.

Comey's testimony calls the president's conduct "inappropriate." And he describes a more direct request to curb an FBI investigation than ever emerged about Nixon.

He does not, however, assert that any of this represents criminal obstruction of justice  a legal question turning on Trump's intent, among other factors. The president has publicly denied attempting to stop the investigation.

But political reaction turns on how disclosures appear to the public and their representatives.

Even as he released those damning recordings, Nixon maintained he "insisted on a full investigation" once he had "all the facts." It didn't help. Republican leaders refused to keep defending him against an impeachment drive led by Democrats.

Trump's Republican support has remained strong. But Senate testimony on Wednesday from two other senior national security officials added new strains.

Before the same committee Comey will face on Thursday, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and Director of the National Security Agency Adm. Mike Rogers offered carefully worded responses to news reports that Trump sought their help in tamping down the investigation.

Coats said he hadn't been "pressured"; Rogers said he hadn't been "directed." Neither would say whether Trump had asked them for help, saying the White House might yet assert executive privilege over their conversations.

In one sign of Republican impatience, Sen. John McCain called their refusal to answer "Orwellian." In another, Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr said he expected answers in a closed session, if not publicly.

Public opinion will shape how Congress reacts to the evidence. In a Quinnipiac Poll on Wednesday, just 34 percent of Americans approved of Trump's job performance; 60 percent, including 1 in 5 Republicans, said the president had acted illegally or unethically involving Russia.

Asked whether they think Trump will serve his entire four-year term, 54 percent responded yes, 40 percent no.
"Medicaid provides essential benefits to many middle-class people who are paying or have paid their fair share towards a safety net that should remain in place for everyone who needs help."

These Medicaid recipients worked for many years and paid taxes to help create our safety net of social programs that the Trump administration wants to gut. Most never expected that they would need Medicaid. But they have become Medicaid beneficiaries because their medical expenses and needs for assistance cost more than their retirement or disability income. Many exhausted their retirement savings before they turned to Medicaid.

If the administration and Congress slash Medicaid's federal funding, the states will be forced to pit the needs of the elderly and disabled against the needs of children and non-disabled adults. These groups, too, are covered by Medicaid for only short periods of their lives.

Children make up half of all enrollees in Medicaid but their health care needs are cheap. They account for only a fifth of all Medicaid spending. Dozens of evaluations show the benefits of their Medicaid use far exceed costs. It is simply a smart investment  a paying forward  so when these kids are adults, they will be productive American taxpayers.

Over the course of their lives, most Americans are not permanent members of one group or another. Most of us are likely to be both "givers" and "takers" at some point in our lives  and bad things sometimes happen to good people through no fault of their own.

In contrast to Budget Director Mulvaney and many Congressional Republicans, most Americans understand this because they know a former taxpayer who now receives government benefits. We have an ailing parent or grandparent or Uncle Jim or know a neighbor who was injured on the job or became pregnant while uninsured  all of whom depend on Medicaid to help cover their health care costs.

Medicaid provides essential benefits to many middle-class people who are paying or have paid their fair share towards a safety net that should remain in place for everyone who needs help. Politicians like Mulvaney, who want to slash Medicaid, are the real takers.

Commentary by Katherine Swartz, professor of health policy and economics at Harvard University's T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She is also author of the book Reinsuring Health: Why More Middle-Class People Are Uninsured and What Government Can Do from the Russell Sage Foundation.

For more insight from CNBC contributors, follow @CNBCopinion onTwitter.
Another U.K. General Election is upon us, and while it came quicker than expected, a lot has changed in two years  both politically and digitally. Since 2015's election, the U.K. has seen a prime minister step down and another take their place, political parties thrown into turmoil, a vote to leave the European Union and tensions rise between the four countries that make up the U.K.

A newspaper stand shows a copy of today's Evening Standard, with the front page story relating to British Prime Minister Theresa May's call for a snap general election on June 8, in central London on April 18, 2017. DANIEL SORABJI | AFP | Getty Images

While this election initially expected to see the Conservatives win outright, latest polls indicate this majority is becoming less predictable, therefore last-minute events could have some influence in swaying undecided voters. One sector that has a degree of influence in politics is that of the media. In previous elections, it's not uncommon for some national newspapers to endorse a party or to hold a particular view. However, in the age of social media and "on the move" mobile news  how influential are newspapers when it comes to political party endorsements? "Circulation of print papers has declined in most of Western industrialized countries, but I wouldn't infer from that a decline in influence," said Dr. Marco Bastos, lecturer in media and communications at City, University of London, in an email to CNBC. Bastos gave two reasons for this: one, not all sectors of the news industry have been equally impacted by the drop in print ad revenues, and second, that newspapers' influence is a result of their "structural coupling to the public opinion, a process that surely benefits from broad circulation but that's not restricted to it." Digital, meanwhile, has greatly advanced in the past decade but at 2015's U.K. election, it appeared online technology had yet to show its full wrath of influence. According to a 2015 survey of 3,019 people by Panelbase, 62 percent saw TV as being the most influential in informing people about the election, compared to the 17 percent for websites, and 7 percent or less for Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms. Meanwhile, newspapers had 24 percent influence in informing readers about the election and helping them form opinions on parties, with The Daily Mail being the most influential of those listed, followed by The Guardian and The Times. "It is true that Conservative voters tend to buy the Mail and the Telegraph, and the Mirror's voters are overwhelmingly Labour party supporters. However, the agenda setting impact of the news media is significant; they may not directly influence your vote, but they certainly set the agenda about what's being talked about," said Tom Felle, lecturer in journalism at City, University of London, to CNBC via email.

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'It's The Sun Wot Won It'

How society consumes political news may be showing a greater shift towards digital, yet newspaper political endorsements have still been closely watched  even up until the 2015 election, with one newspaper frequently analyzed. On April 11 1992, just after the U.K. voted in the 1992 election,  which saw Conservatives secure victory  popular British tabloid The Sun published the headline "It's The Sun Wot Won It". The headline itself referred to The Sun's level of influence in the election's outcome and whether it shaped readers' views, because of its political coverage. Pollsters and analysts were shocked by the Conservatives' win, as many had forecasted a win by Labour or expected a hung parliament, according to the BBC. In following elections, The Sun went back and forth on which candidate it would support for each election, with future election outcomes reflecting The Sun's endorsement. The headline is often cited by academics and newspapers in relation to how influential  or not  the press is with election results.

The rise of digital

According to 2011-2016 data provided by Euromonitor International, circulation of U.K. newspapers  both daily and non-daily  has declined consistently over the course of the six years, correlating with a decline in print ad-spending. In 2011, circulation of daily newspapers in the UK came in at 13.9 million, while in 2016, it was at 10.8 million. Meanwhile, ad spending in TV, radio and online have all increased since 2011 according to the data, highlighting the media and the reader's shift towards digital consumption.

A couple using smartphones on the London Underground. Josephine Dooher | Moment Mobile | Getty Images

Yet does this mean media firms should shift their political endorsements more towards online? "There is no question that digital and social media is an important part of editorial strategies for media organizations, but political endorsements are to a certain extent uncharted territory for news organizations online, they could backfire with negative sentiment on social media," said Felle, adding that he believed news groups would probably "tread carefully" in this field. Bastos meanwhile noted that while the demographics of print readership may vary to that of online, firms who hold a certain editorial stance on politics are likely to be expected to push this subject matter out on a number of its distribution platforms.

Engaging the public going forward

With elections highlighting the melting pot of political views found within a country, a role that news groups can take on - when engaging the public - is to inform citizens of each party's proposals, and analyze what the benefits, disadvantages and facts are of each party's manifesto, to generate debate and discussion. When it comes to endorsing a certain party, a newspaper is at risk of potentially alienating readers who don't stand by the views given, Felle said. Meanwhile, both lecturers saw that an unexpected political endorsement by a newspaper would be seen as a way of standing out to the public. For instance in 2016, USA Today  who despite not taking sides in presidential elections during its 34-year history  said that candidate Donald Trump was "unfit for the presidency".

A newsagent reads the last ever print edition of The Independent On Sunday outside his shop in Soho on March 20, 2016 in London, England. Chris Ratcliffe | Getty Images News | Getty Images
President Trump tweeted this morning: "I will be nominating Christopher A. Wray, a man of impeccable credentials, to be the new Director of the FBI." During the George W. Bush administration, Wray oversaw the Enron Task Force.

Dan Coats, the top U.S. intelligence official, appears before the Senate Intelligence Committee today after it was reported President Donald Trump may have personally asked him to try to quash the FBI's investigation of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. (NBC News)

The day after a February meeting at which Trump allegedly asked then-FBI director James Comey to end an investigation of Flynn, Comey reportedly told Attorney General Jeff Sessions he didn't want to meet alone with the president again. (NY Times)

Comey's testimony tomorrow in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee is one of the most highly anticipated hearings in recent memory. But Comey's words are unlikely to surprise special counsel Robert Mueller, whose team has been in contact with the fired FBI director. (Politico)

As the White House braces for Comey's testimony, the relationship between Trump and Sessions has reportedly become so tense since Sessions recused himself from the Russian investigation that the attorney general at one point recently suggested he could resign. (ABC News)

President Trump today will unveil details of his plan to improve the nation's infrastructure, including inland waterways, during an afternoon speech in Cincinnati. (Dayton Daily News)

Senior administration officials told CNBC the Commerce Department will release its first report on "streamlining permitting and reducing regulatory burdens for domestic manufacturing" early next week.

Health insurer Anthem (ANTM) plans to effectively exit its Obamacare individual plan business in Ohio, leaving potentially 18 counties in the state with no insurer selling plans in 2018. (CNBC)

Attackers raided Iran's parliament and set off a suicide bomb at the Mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini in Tehran today, killing up to seven people in a twin assault at the heart of the Islamic Republic. ISIS claimed responsibility. (Reuters)

Less than a week after the London terror attack, British citizens vote tomorrow in the nation's general election, with investors watching the latest polls and moves in the currency markets for any indications on the outcome. (The Telegraph)

Spain's Banco Popular is facing a cash crunch and is likely to fail, declared the European Central Bank, which also announced the embattled lender will be acquired by Banco Santander as part of its rescue plan. (CNBC)

Uber fires more than 20 workers, including some senior employees, after an internal investigation into workplace culture and sexual harassment claims. The inquiry sparked by allegations in a blog post earlier this year by a former Uber engineer. (CNBC)

Speaking at Tesla's annual shareholders meeting, CEO Elon Musk said the electric automaker is "definitely" on track to begin production on the less expensive Model 3 sedan next month. He also dropped hints on the Model Y crossover and a semi-truck. (CNBC)

Pinterest, which develops visual search technology and allows users to save images on its website, raised $150 million from existing investors in its latest round of funding valuing the company at $12.3 billion. (Reuters)
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The situation in Washington has become more serious than during the Watergate scandal, and investigators must get to the bottom of ties between the Trump administration and Russia, the former director of U.S. national intelligence said Wednesday. In a speech to Australia's National Press Club, James Clapper said allegations that President Donald Trump shared intelligence with Moscow were "very problematic" and that the Watergate scandal, which led to President Richard Nixon's resignation in 1974, "pales" in comparison. "I lived through Watergate. I was on active duty then as a young officer in the Air Force, and it was a scary time. But it was against the backdrop of all the post-Vietnam trauma, which seemed, at least in my memory, amplified the crisis in our system with Watergate."

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The Watergate scandal encompassed the U.S. government's involvement in a range of illegal activities under the Nixon administration, including a burglary at the Democratic National Committee's Watergate headquarters. "I have to say though that I think when you compare the two, Watergate pales, really, in my view, compared to what we're confronting now." Clapper's comments in Canberra came a day before former FBI chief James Comey is to testify to the Senate Intelligence Committee as part of its investigation into whether Trump's campaign team colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election. Comey had been leading the FBI's investigation before he was abruptly fired by Trump last month. Critics say the dismissal was due to Comey's refusal to comply with Trump's request to stop an investigation into his advisers.

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Chinese multinational telecoms firm ZTE aims to become a top tier smartphone seller across the globe "very soon," fighting against giants such as Apple and Samsung.

The smartphone maker, which has struggled to convince consumers with its brand, has adopted a twofold strategy to stir up competition in the market. Lixin Cheng, CEO of ZTE Mobile Devices, told CNBC that the brand is focused on innovation and in hearing and delivering what consumers want.

"We are now focused on different strategic markets, China, North America, Europe, Asia Pacific  We are confident we will be in the top tier smartphone venders in the world  Now that we are moving from (4G) to 5G, which requires a lot of investment, technology and innovation, that is ZTE 's strength," Lixin Cheng said on the sidelines of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) Asia, in Shanghai.
In both scenarios, you need to have an endpoint that everybody can live with, so in that way they're the same. But there are two crucial differences when you go from one domain to the next. First, you need to understand the institutional context. If you've done real estate deals and branding deals your whole life, as President Trump has, you're not going to be an effective negotiator if you don't really understand domestic or international context.

CNBC: So negotiating in business is the same as negotiating an agreement with another country? That's one of the things that people criticize President Trump for believing.

Negotiation isn't about dollars and cents or emotions or deal terms. When you come down to it, negotiation is about human interaction. The question we're always trying to answer is, How do I engage with other human beings to achieve a better outcome and better agreements? And it doesn't matter whether we're negotiating a business deal, an arms deal or a family conflict. At the core, it's the same.

Malhotra has taught thousands of business owners, executives and sales professionals how to be better negotiators and has consulted on scores of business deals and conflicts between governments. Malhotra recently revealed to CNBC some top negotiating strategies, the important role that empathy plays and why President Trump is probably not the master negotiator he believes himself to be.

Ultimatums, threats and escalating rhetoric might have worked for President Donald Trump in the rough-and-tumble world of high-end real estate. But it's not a very effective strategy for the leader of the free world, or anyone else involved in negotiating a business deal, job offer or even a relationship. We recently spoke with Deepak Malhotra, the Eli Goldston professor of business administration at Harvard Business School and author of Negotiating the Impossible: How to Break Deadlocks and Resolve Ugly Conflicts (without Money or Muscle) .

The second point is more subtle but no less important. With a typical business negotiation, the image is that you walk into a room and there is a pile of money on the table. Your job is to figure out how much money is there and then try to structure a deal so that you get as much of that money for yourself as possible. But that model is not a good one if you're walking into a really complex negotiation. In that environment, the image you should have is, How do I get to the one deal that everyone can live with? Thinking of it that way forces you to rely on a different set of principles and tactics.

CNBC: Let's talk about some of those. You write a lot in your book about the power of empathy. Can you explain the role it plays in negotiating?

In a negotiation, your goal is to try to understand how other people are looking at the situation. What's driving them? What happens to them if this deal falls apart? This is the element of empathy, and it's not to be confused with sympathy. Sympathy is saying that you feel bad for the other side. Empathy is the ability to take the perspective of the other party. The better you do this, the better you are able to navigate the negotiation in such a way as to achieve the outcome you want. It lets you address the concerns and constraints of the other side.

Without empathy, you can't be an effective negotiator. It's the desire to understand how other people see a situation.

CNBC: Do most people understand how to use empathy during a negotiation?

Most people do have empathy, but what I've found is that it is missing in precisely the situations where it's needed most, like when we're dealing with people who we see as aggressive or unreasonable. In those situations empathy pays the biggest dividends. That's why I always caution clients not to assume bad intentions, incompetence or irrationality by the other side in a negotiation. Don't assume starting out that this person is evil or crazy. Rather, ask yourself: How does this person see the world? If you can understand the story this person tells himself or herself, then you have more ways of dealing with them.

CNBC: But isn't this another way of telling someone in a negotiation to be nice?

Empathy isn't really related to being nice. The reason you need to be more empathetic as a negotiator is that it gives you more options to solve the problem. You don't even have to be nice to be empathetic.

CNBC: You say process is important in a negotiation, too. How so?

When people negotiate, they often focus too exclusively on the substance. These are the terms of the deal and the offers and counteroffers. And, of course, this is crucial. But really effective negotiators are also focused on the process. Process is what gets us from where we are today to the endpoint.

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I advise all of my students and clients to get into the habit of negotiating process before substance. Imagine you've been negotiating a deal and it's been going on for nine months and you think you're at the end. You have a couple of concessions saved up in your back pocket precisely for a day like today and you throw those out there hoping that this will seal the deal. And the person on the other side says this is great, but let me talk to my boss and see what she thinks about it. You had no idea there was anyone else that needed to be involved. That's an example of the kind of problems you can run into when you don't focus enough on process before you dive into substance.



CNBC: So what should you do instead?

Negotiate the process. For example, ask the other side, 'How long does it take an organization like yours to make a decision like this?' 'Who else needs to be on board?' 'What are some factors that might speed things up or slow down the process?' The more you focus on process up front, the less likely you are to make substance mistakes later on.

CNBC: Do you see process missing in the negotiations of President Trump?

We saw this during the first round of the health-care negotiations. They not only mismanaged the process, I don't think they gave enough thought to having a process strategy in the first place. It was too ad hoc. Everything from the amount of time they gave themselves to get it done, to who was going to manage the process, to when the president would or would not get involved  none of this seemed to be part of a coherent strategy. It was as if there was a new plan or approach every day. It's not something I would ever advise a client of mine to do, especially when the stakes are so high and the negotiation is so complex.



CNBC: Are there other aspects of President Trump's negotiating skills that you view as lacking?

What strikes me is how little preparation there seems to be for the negotiations he walks into. I don't know whether that's from a lack of humility, or that he doesn't like reading, or that he thinks the problems he confronts are simpler than they really are. You want someone who is going to try to understand the situation and have a strategy rather than thinking they can wing it.

The one thing I always stress with my students and clients is that as much as you might trust your intuition and gut instinct, these aren't a substitute for careful analysis or planning when the stakes are high. It's one thing when you're negotiating a real estate deal and the parameters are limited in number. It's quite another when you're representing the United States in complex, high-stakes relationships. I think the president owes it to people to be a little more prepared.

 By Susan Caminiti, special to CNBC.com
Christopher A. Wray, President Donald Trump's pick to succeed James Comey as FBI director, led the federal investigation of Enron and represented Gov. Chris Christie in the Bridgegate scandal.

In a tweet Wednesday morning, Trump said Wray had "impeccable credentials."

Trump tweet: I will be nominating Christopher A. Wray, a man of impeccable credentials, to be the new Director of the FBI. Details to follow.

Wray was nominated by President George W. Bush as assistant attorney general in charge of the Criminal Division, according to the Justice Department. He held that job from 2003 to 2005.

Wray, a Yale Law School graduate, served on the President's Corporate Fraud Task Force and oversaw the Enron Task Force and other major fraud investigations, according to the Washington law firm King & Spaulding, where he is a litigation partner.

The FBI says the Enron probe was the "largest and most complex white-collar investigation" in the agency's history.

Wray specializes in white collar law and internal investigations, according to the Justice Department site. He represented the New Jersey governor in the scandal surrounding the closing of lanes on the George Washington Bridge in 2013 as a way to attack political opponents. Christie was never charged but two of his allies were convicted.
The inventor of a shirt that contains 14 sensors and can track bodily movements in virtual reality (VR) is betting on so-called smart clothing to take off.



Japanese firm Xenoma has created a product known as the "e-skin" which links to smartphones via Bluetooth. When a smartphone powers a VR headset such as the Samsung GearVR, the e-skin can be recognized and is able to mirror a person's motion within the VR experience.

Currently, body tracking in VR is very difficult because it requires cameras and sensors dotted around a room to accurately track motion.

"We can do the motion input for virtual reality, usually people use a camera but in our case we don't need a camera," Ichiro Amimori, CEO of Xenoma, told CNBC in a TV interview on Wednesday at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) Asia, in Shanghai.

Currently, Xenoma is selling a $5,000 version of the e-skin that is aimed at developers to create apps on Microsoft's Windows and Google's Android operating systems. This will allow the apps to work on Samsung's GearVR and also Google's Daydream VR headsets.

While the price is high, Amimori is hoping to put a consumer version of the product on sale via a crowdfunding platform like Kickstarter which will be "cheaper than $500," he said.
"What we aim to give the customer is those capabilities, but in a way that allows them to meet their exact needs."

"When you think about data, it's got to be computed, stored, analyzed, secured; you want value from the insight that you get. What we aim to give the customer is those capabilities, but in a way that allows them to meet their exact needs," says Peter Ryan, Head of Sales, HPE.

This is best achieved when the product, being sold as a solution in the market, is part of a larger ecosystem.

"If you think of IoT or data analytics, it's about bringing together other software solutions on HPE's hardware to provide a service in the market. This is probably the biggest pivot they are making," says Olan Kenneally, Managing Director, Communications, Media & Technology, Accenture.

Aruba, a HPE company, used this layered approach to provide a seamless digital experience for fans at San Francisco's Levi's Stadium during Super Bowl 50. Data collection began the moment they connected their devices to the stadium's free Wi-Fi. Push notifications made them aware of the stadium's online merchandise store. Through the network they were even directed to their seats where, if desired, they could order a snack. Underpinning all this was HPE's IT infrastructure.

"Imagine yourself at the stadium and you want to order popcorn. The stadium knows where you are through location services and it automatically gets delivered to your seat. What HPE can do is work with our customers to enable that experience, and in the backend we provide all the IT, infrastructure and capabilities to enable that," says Ana Pinczuk, Senior Vice President, HPE Pointnext Services.

Where does HPE go from here?
Clifton Park, NY>>An interactive art show at Shenendehowa High School turned ugly when the artists request to make comments on the art piece depicting President Donald Trump in actual poses drew lewd scrawled obscenities and drawings from students.

The May 25 student art show was an extension of a request made by students to High School Principal Don Flynt in 2016. At that time the students asked that they be allowed to hold an art show that was student-run and student-driven outside of the schools art department.

Flynt agreed believing it was a way to get the students more connected to the school. Three shows were held last year with no problems. However, at this springs installation one artist put up a large collage made up of a series of tightly shot images of Trump. The installation included a note that students make comments. A container of felt markers was placed nearby.

Within minutes of its opening the piece had collected drawings and comments, several of which were profane, explicit obscenities. Photos were taken of the before and after artwork and have been distributed across social media.

Flynt checked on the show shortly after its opening and quickly had the piece removed. He spoke to the students and the artist and thought that was the end of it. However, someone contacted a major network news organization early this week and the issue made national news on the Fox News Channel Tuesday morning.

In response to the expanding notoriety Flynt has sent a letter home to the parents of high school students. In it he explained what had happened, the actions that were taken, the districts policy on use of profane language and how it is not condoned.

It is important to note that the artwork and the sign are not a violation of the code of conduct, he wrote. If the graffiti said positive things, it wouldnt be a violation. What is against our code of conduct is the use of language or gestures, or actions that are obscene, profane, perverse, overtly sexual, lewd, lascivious, indecent, vulgar or abusive. Inappropriate and profane language is not condoned and we hope that in the future matters like these are reported to my office immediately and it will be addressed.

District spokeswoman Kelly DeFeciani said she has handled calls from across the country today as well as requests from local news media. The districts interactive Q&A section of its website, Grapevine, has seen an ever growing list of comments and district responses.

DeFeciani said Flynts letter, which is included here, will be the districts comment on the issue.
The Auburn Fire Department will host a St. Baldrick's head-shaving event beginning at 11:30 a.m. Sunday, June 11, at the Knights of Columbus in Auburn.

The goal for this year's event is to raise $50,000 for the St. Baldrick's Foundation, "to support the Foundations mission to fund research that will take childhood back from cancer," according to a press release.

More than 70 local volunteers have signed up to have their heads shaved this year. The head shaving will begin right at 11:30 a.m. and continue until 1:30 p.m.

For more information, visit the Auburn Firefighters at Knights of Columbus St. Baldricks event page at stbaldricks.org.
Endeavour Silver, headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, has added to its silver mining capabilities in Mexico.

Canadian-based Endeavour Silver has expanded its mining reach in Zacatecas, Mexico, by acquiring properties in the Calicanto and Veta Grande regions.

In a June 6 announcement, Endeavour Silver reports it purchased for $400,000 in U.S. funds the Calicanto property from Arian Silver Corp. The property covers five known silver-gold-lead-zinc veins spanning more than 185 acres.

SS Central America reveals thousands of new findings, celebrating the house organ: Another column in the June 19 Coin World expounds on some intriguing half dollar varieties.

The Calicanto property is close to Endeavours El Compas Mine and La Plata processing plant.

According to Endeavour, the Calicanto veins were discovered around 1600 and supported small-scale, high-grade production off and on for 350 years. The mines were historically developed down to approximately 150 meters depth by seven old shallow shafts, and they were closed in the mid 1950s, according to Endeavour officials. The upper mine workings are still open but the lower mine workings are now flooded.

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Endeavour also announced that it had purchased for $500,000 the Veta Grande properties from IMPACT Silver Corp. The property covers more than 375 acres over six known silver-gold-lead-zinc veins plus nearly 35 acres of surface lands covering the dormant Santa Gabriela 200-tons-per-day processing plant and tailings facility.

The properties are located in the vicinity of one of the largest veins in the Zacatecas district, the Veta Grande vein, and cover the Nueva Granada splays to the Veta Grande vein and several other subparallel veins, according to Endeavour. The properties saw historic, small scale, high-grade production as shown by old mine workings and dumps. Access to the old workings is limited and many are now flooded, but historic sampling of dumps and trenches returned values up to 1,070 gpt [grams per ton] silver with significant lead and zinc values.

For more information, visit the Endeavour Silver website.
A 1652 Willow Tree shilling with salt water damage brought $28,200 on March 29, an improvement on the $11,162.50 it sold for less than two years ago.

Before the first U.S. coins were struck for widespread circulation at the Philadelphia Mint in 1793, a wide variety of coins circulated in America including a mix of foreign coins and Colonial and Confederation issues. The broad label of Colonial issues encompasses multiple major types, and most peoples introduction to this area comes through A Guide Book of United States Coins  the Red Book  which lists major varieties. Specialists have gone into exhaustive detail in each of these areas, and the coins arent always pretty. Here are three that were offered by Stacks Bowers Galleries at the Whitman Baltimore Expo that show that these historically important issues dont have to be attractive to be very expensive.

Here's one of three ugly Colonial rarities we profile in this weeks Market Analysis:

The Lot:

1652 Willow Tree shilling, Fine Details, Saltwater Damage

The Price:

$28,200

The Story:

The Willow Tree silver coins of Massachusetts were struck with the first of three distinct tree types found among these early silver pieces, with the Willow Tree type followed by the Oak Tree type from 1660 to 1667 and the Pine Tree type from 1667 to 1682. Though the Massachusetts silver coins were struck over a three-decade period, nearly all carry the date 1652.

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All Willow Tree shillings are expensive and the example offered at Stacks Bowers March 29 Baltimore Sale was graded Fine Details, Salt Water Damage by Numismatic Guaranty Corp. It was recovered from the shipwreck of the HBMS Feversham, a 32-gun British frigate stationed in North American waters that went down in 1711 as it traveled from New York City toward Canada.

SS Central America reveals thousands of new findings, plus celebrating the house organ: Another column in the June 19 Coin World expounds on some intriguing half dollar varieties.

The ships contents provide a case study in the coins that circulated in New York at the time, which included all three types of Massachusetts silver issues. This coin sold for $28,200, more than double the $11,162.50 it realized when offered as part of the Donald Groves Partrick auction in 2015.
Randy'L He-dow Teton, center, the model for the obverse of the Sacagawea dollar, poses during the coin design's unveiling in 1999 with First Lady Hillary Clinton, left, and sculptor Glenna Goodacre, who created the coin design.

News release from the Blue Ridge Numismatic Association:

The Blue Ridge Numismatic Association coin show will be held August 17 to 20 at the Dalton, Ga., Convention Center.

SS Central America reveals thousands of new findings, celebrating the house organ: Another column in the June 19 Coin World details what a house organ is, and expounds on some intriguing half dollar varieties.

We are pleased to announce that at this year's show, we will have as a guest speaker, Randy'L He-dow Teton, the female model for the Sacajawea coin design. Randy'L is the only living person and Native American woman on U.S. currency.

Randy'L is a member of the Shoshone-Bannock tribe and grew up on the Fort Hall Reservation in Idaho. She is a graduate of the University of New Mexico with a Bachelors in Fine Arts. She believes her role as the model for the Sacajawea coin has added a vitality to preserving the culture and traditions of indigenous people and their unique heritage.

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Randy'L will be available for a Meet and Greet time on Friday, the 18th as well as sharing a presentation on her experiences as a model, on August 19th, Saturday morning with our adults and also at 1:00 pm on Saturday as part of the Young Numismatists Program.

Our Young Numismatist program will allow students to participate in a variety of [activities] to deepen their experience and encourage various learning styles. As part of the study of this coin and the historically significant woman featured on it, we will be having an essay contest for all YN members who are 7th through 12th grades. Please write a 3-page essay, double spaced, explaining who Sacajawea was and what her role was in the Lewis and Clark Expedition and why she is a person of historical significance. All essays should be submitted to Liz Coggan at the following email address: liz@jjteaparty.com. Additionally, there will be a contest for who can dress in the best cultural, native American, or explorer outfit. Plan to come to the show on Saturday dressed as either Sacagawea or one of the explorers, Lewis or Clark. Winners will be announced and prizes awarded on Saturday of the YN program for both the essay and outfits.

Independent Coin Graders has agreed to encapsulate some Sacajawea dollars for us which Randy'L has agreed to autograph. We will be giving one to each of the children who attend.

If you happen to be in the Georgia area traveling, or live in a nearby state, we hope you will plan to join us for this historically significant event. It promises to be a wonderful learning opportunity for all, as well as a fun time, so please plan to attend. For more details on the BRNA coin show hours of operation, please visit the BRNA website (www.brna.org) or contact Ron Blackman, Bourse Chairman, at rblackman@cfl.rr.com.
This is the IRS calling. If you don't pay us $300 by the end of the day, we'll come over there and kick you out of your house and send you to jail. So, what credit card do you want to use to pay this?

I'm sorry, what's that? What do you mean, you're "not falling for this"? This is the IRS. We can have you killed. Oh, your neighbor explained to you that this is a scam phone call, and that the IRS doesn't call people, and they certainly don't ask for personal information? And you believe that? You do? Well, good for you. That was just a test. We call old people all the time just to make sure they know about the latest phone scams.

Did I say I was from the IRS? I was just kidding. I'm really here to say you've won an all-expenses-paid trip to beautiful Orlando, Florida, home of some of the finest timeshare condos ever built! Why not live in luxury for only a few dollars a  what's that? Your neighbor told you about this one, too? So you already knew that part of the "prize" was that you'd have to go visit the timeshare and listen to a high-pressure salesman for a few hours, who would twist your arm until you signed an agreement? Good for you. You sure are well-informed for an old person.

What I'm really calling about is the Police Retirement Fund. What kind of deadbeat, low-life, unpatriotic person wouldn't want to contribute to the Police Retirement Fund? Oh  your husband was a police officer and you know that the taxpayers already pay for his retirement? And that people only contribute to this because they think it really goes to the police? You really are on top of things.

Did I say I was calling from the Police Retirement Fund? I meant to say I'm calling to fix your computer. Does it seem slow and cranky? It's been infected by a virus and if you'll just give me your Social Security number and a credit card number, I can fix that over the phone for a few hundred dollars. First, stand on one leg and turn around backwards  wait, you've heard that one, too? You must get a lot of phone calls.

I'm basically calling you because you're old and according to my boss, old people will fall for anything. By the way, this is your bank calling, and there's been a problem with your online account. Can you please give me your login name and password to get things started? No dice, huh?

Whoops, did I say I was calling from your bank? I meant to say I'm your grandson Billy. And I'm in, ah, Greece. Yeah, that's right, Greece, and I've lost my passport and my wallet. I can't get a hold of my parents. Can you please wire me a few thousand dollars? They'll pay you back as soon as I get home. What's that? They live next door and their lights are on? No, don't bother to go over there, I must have dialed the wrong number. I'll call them again.

Did I say I was your grandson? I meant to say we're conducting a survey. First question: If a stranger were to call you up just as you were sitting down to eat dinner with your family, what number would you be, on a scale of 1 to 10? Number 1 is "very happy" and 10 is "ecstatic."

No, there is no "minus 300." But what if that stranger were to tell you that you'd won the lottery? You'd like that, wouldn't you? Wait, don't hang up! You've won a set of free knives! Did I say knives? I meant I'm a debt collector, and you owe us $3,648.15 and if we don't get it today  was that a click?

Rats. Dial the next one, robot.
Magpie Supply was one of the three companies that won the annual Go Code Colorado pitch competition. The company, which shows historic farmers market prices to farmers to help them find new markets, won $25,000, as well as a trip to the AT&T Foundry and a opportunity to pitch at Techstars and Boomtown.Like all Go Code Colorado participants, Magpie Supply harnessed the power of public data. In this case, the company mapped prices farmers were able to charge at farmers markets throughout Colorado. The company also plans to develop a feature to help small farmers combat the cost of transporting goods.This idea is a spin-off from a business concept I worked on last year with a Go Code Colorado team, explains Daniel Ritchie of Magpie Supply. Our team has worked hard to identify the real needs and concerns for Colorado farmers to develop a truly valuable tool to get more produce to market.Magpie wasnt the only winner at the competition this year. Judges selected three of the 10 finalists to win a $25,000 contract with the state. The other two winners were Drip, from Colorado Springs, and Hud Buddy, from Fort Collins. Drip is a tool that helps with water analysis, including well and water quality information and Hud Buddy allows for simplified noise analysis for HUD residential developments.I continue to be impressed by the creativity and collaboration of the Go Code Colorado teams, says Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams. Teams continue to show the value of public data if we can get it into the hands of innovative and entrepreneurial people who have a different perspective on how to use it.
Overview:

There are 84 parliamentary constituencies in the South East. At dissolution the Conservatives held 79 (including the Speaker), Labour four, and the Greens one.

At this point its surely getting difficult for the Tories to squeeze much more out of this region after a very solid result in 2015. Absent a crushing landslide only two of Labours four seats seem likely to be in reach.

In 2005 Labour held 17 seats in the South East, and rebuilding their strength here will be essential if theyre to form another majority government (especially without their traditional Scottish strength). As is they could probably only hope to double their representation here on a good night this time around.

Sticking to an unexpected rule of three, the Liberal Democrats also only have two seats where they could possibly be in contention on current polling. They currently hold none, down from four in 2010.

Method:

Welcome back to our series on the election battlegrounds! As in 2015, well be taking a region-by-region look at the seats which could change hands and offering our suggested lists of target seats for each party.

These lists arent predictions of gains: rather, theyre just seats which we think could be competitive. They might be official party targets, have a small majority, or be subject to other factors which could leave them open to change.

Amongst the resources well be using to steer us through these murky waters are Electoral Calculus, UK Polling Report, Number Cruncher Politics, and Election Polling, whilst all Leave vote share estimations are from Chris Hanrettys very helpful constituency-by-constituency charts. Were also keeping an eye on the work of many other pollsters, psephologists, and analysts, some of whom our assistant editor has collated onto a Twitter list.

Battleground Rating: 3/10

Targets by party:

(NB These are our own suggestions of potential attack seats for each party  including those officially designated as targets and others where the incumbent has a relatively small majority, or local factors are at play which may open the seat to change.)

Conservatives:

Hove: Mike Weatherly won this for the Tories by 1,868 votes in 2010 but wasnt able to hand it on to his successor, and Labour regained it by just 1,236 votes two years ago. Its a strongly Remain seat but if UKIPs 3,000 voters from last time break to the Conservatives as they seem to be doing nationally then this will be a competitive race. Electoral Calculus predict a Labour hold by the eye-watering margin of 51 per cent to 49 for the Tory challenger.

Southampton Test: Labours Alan Whitehead had a majority of under 2,500 in 2010, although he extended it to 3,800 in 2015. This seat is estimated to be marginally Remain, unlike pro-Leave Itchen, but nonetheless UKIP took over 5,500 votes here last time which could end up deciding the contest  although so too may the Greens 2,500 voters, as neither party is standing this time. Electoral Calculus only gives the Conservatives a four-in-ten chance.

Labour:

Brighton Kemptown: Simon Kirby took this seat for the Tories in 2010 by 1,300 votes before seeing his majority cut to an ultra-marginal 700 two years ago. The battle may hinge on where the minor parties votes go: if Jeremy Corbyn is putting the squeeze on smaller left-wing parties the Greens 3,200 voters could put Labour over the line, unless Kirby successfully balances them with enough of UKIPs 4,500. As is Electoral Calculus tips a Tory hold, with a four-in-ten chance of a Labour upset.

Southampton Itchen: After John Denham held him off by just 192 votes in 2010, Royston Smith won this seat with a majority of 2,316 at the last election. Its a strongly Leave seat, and as a Brexiteer Smith will be hoping to reinforce his majority with a healthy chunk of UKIPs 6,000 2015 votes. The Greens and Lib Dems took just over 3,000 between them, so this seat will likely move farther away from Labour this time. Electoral Calculus predicts another Conservative hold.

Liberal Democrats:

Eastbourne: This seat is unusual in that the Tories actually managed to lose it to the Lib Dems in 2010, even whilst making gains across the country. Caroline Ansell took it back two years ago with a very slender majority of just 733, so on paper this should be a top target for Tim Farrons troops. Unfortunately for them, however, this seat is estimated to have gone 58 per cent Leave, and as a Brexiteer Ansell should be able to woo enough of the 6,139 constituents who voted UKIP last time to see her home safe. Electoral Calculus gives her better than four-in-five odds of holding.

Lewes: Unlike neighbouring Eastbourne, this constituency had a much stronger Lib Dem pedigree, having been held by Norman Baker from 1997 until the 2015 election. Another possible point in the partys favour is that Maria Caulfield, the first-term incumbent defending a majority of just over 1,000, backed Brexit despite the seat being estimated to have narrowly voted Remain. However once again the vote dynamics look to favour the Conservatives: UKIP took 5,500 votes last time, and theres no evidence that the Lib Dems are squeezing either Labour or the Greens to compensate for the consolidation of the right-wing vote. Electoral Calculus predicts a comfortable Tory hold with 77 per cent probability.
Rebecca Lowe Coulson was Parliamentary Candidate for the City of Durham at the 2015 General Election.

In its our principles section, the Conservative Party manifesto states that we know that our responsibility to one another is greater than the rights we hold as individuals. The assuredness of this claim is pointed up by the use of we know that, yet, in last weeks ConservativeHome survey, when readers were asked how much they agreed with it, the average score among party members was only 5.56 out of 10. This seems unsurprising  the statement is jarring on several levels.

My first criticism relates to the statements comparative nature. Surely, these two things  our responsibility to one another, and the rights we hold as individuals  are deeply intertwined. We feel a responsibility to one another not least because we recognise our shared humanity. We feel we should treat others as we want to be treated ourselves; we feel we deserve  and should, therefore, afford others  equally fair treatment regardless of social characteristics, such as race or gender. In other words, our belief in one anothers rights informs our belief in those rights correlative duties. Feelings of this kind drove the emergence of the human rights movement in the twentieth century.

For some, human rights are underpinned by a natural morality  external to the laws we establish in our societies  which should be respected because it is objectively right. For some, such a focus on human rights is necessary in the pragmatic sense of there being right ways for us to behave towards one another, if our society is to flourish, or simply to function. And for yet others, it is an inevitable consequence of accepted traditions  inherent in those laws we have established over time. On any of these views, the manifesto statement is flawed because it underplays the essential role the recognition of rights plays in informing our responsibilities to one another.

My second criticism comes from the awareness that we have responsibilities to one another aside from those correlated with our rights. Sure, the acknowledgement of certain fundamental rights is generally taken to be central to the upkeep of the common good in a society  property rights, for instance, or the right to a fair trial. But whilst those rights inform the most important of our responsibilities, we also have other responsibilities that do not seem to be claimable by others as a matter of right. These are responsibilities we accept not because others are entitled to their fulfilment, but perhaps because we are charitable, or decent.

Our full set of responsibilities to one another is not greater than the subset directly correlated with our fundamental rights, however  in any sense except perhaps for one of mere numerousness. And if numerousness were the correct interpretation of the manifesto line, then it would seem, at best, banal. But, more seriously, the human rights movement has been significantly impeded by its diluting attempt to shoehorn everything of import into a human rights context. To ignore the way in which rights inform the most important subset of our responsibilities would be an excessive (and similarly all or nothing) response to that unhelpful approach  to the extent that the manifesto could be seen as making the opposite mistake.

A more standard interpretation of the manifesto line, however, would be to take it to imply that the collective is of greater importance than the individual. That would fit with the paragraphs preceding it, which repudiate the cult of selfish individualism, and restate a belief in the good that government can do. This could be Theresa May, again, rejecting the caricature of the nasty party. It could be a sign that Jeremy Corbyn has helped to shift our political narrative to the left.

But what might all of this tell us about why May wrote the sentence? (And by May, you can read Nick Timothy, if you like. Or the Conservative Party, if you really, really like.) As with the manifestos other controversial turning points, we have two main options: the sentence was included for the sake of the good, or for expediency.

On the first reading, the manifesto writer believes in what she is writing, and is, therefore, taking the opportunity to say it, regardless of any resultant cost  either because she thinks its right, or because its what she thinks the country needs. On the second, the line has been included because the writer thinks theres political gain to be won from it  either for her party or herself.

Its unlikely May will have another comparable chance to win a legacy election: no matter how successfully she commandeers Brexit, dissatisfaction will grow, because we have so many differing demands from it. Its also unlikely that  as with Corbyn  she will ever have such an opportunity to steer her partys focus: it is totally dependent on her leadership at this moment. Winning a smaller majority on a substantial personal mandate might be attractive to someone wanting to change a party from within.

So, what would that kind of change mean for the Conservative Party? Well, its worth remembering the partys relationship with paternalism. The example were usually given, in relation to May, is the policies of Joseph Chamberlain, but the party has a long tradition of One Nation politics, as Ive written about here before. That tradition may seem at odds with the 1980s-onwards emphasis on the market and the cult of the individual, but if  like me  you see conservatism as non-ideological and situational, then you recognise that that was simply the partys responsive approach at the time (as with other previous periods seen to exemplify classic liberalism). An increasingly paternalistic style of politics was clear throughout the Cameron years, anyway.

None of this, of course, can prove what motivated the rights and responsibilities line. But it might explain how the Conservative Party can be accepting of divergent practices and seemingly contradictory standpoints. Indeed, a closer look at the ConservativeHome survey reveals a pretty balanced spread of opinion regarding the line:

Analyses of conservatism aside, however, these are difficult times for those of us on the libertarian  or classic liberal  side of British politics, who have, recently, taken the Conservative Party to be our natural electoral home. Many such voters have seen a focus on the individual over the collective as central to the form of conservatism that has been essential to the securing of greater rights, across the world  rights that are important not only for the individuals who hold them, but also for the common good.

Does the Conservative Party still offer that electoral home for us? Yes. But, increasingly, thats largely because of the lack of alternative liberal options.
Vodafone and LG UPlus have jointly announced a new partner market agreement covering South Korea, marking the first strategic partnership by LG Uplus with a global telecoms company.





Under the new partnership, which commenced in April 2017, Vodafone will leverage its global reach and expertise to support the consumer and enterprise operations of LG Uplus in South Korea. As part of the agreement, Vodafone will share best practices with LG Uplus across all areas of its business, including network strategy and development, with the aim of helping LG Uplus to improve its customer base management capabilities.







Vodafone and LG Uplus will additionally cooperate to enable the delivery of unified communications and enterprise services to multinational companies with a presence in South Korea and internationally.





LG Uplus is focused on providing services comprising mobile, B2B solutions and TPS (triple play service, with broadband, VoIP and IPTV), and at the end of the first quarter of 2017 served approximately 12.6 million mobile subscribers and 3.67 million broadband customers.





Vodafone Group is a global telco with mobile operations in 26 countries, partners with mobile networks in a further 49 countries and fixed broadband operations in 17 markets. At the end of March, Vodafone Group had 515.7 million mobile customers and 17.9 million fixed broadband customers, including India and all of the customers for its joint ventures and associate companies.





In April this year, Vodafone and Proximus of Belgium the renewal of their strategic partnership covering Belgium and Luxembourg for a further five years, building on a relationship that began in 2003. The agreement is designed to enable the companies to offer joint products and services across their networks for consumer and enterprise customers.








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ALEXANDRIA, Ontario  On Monday, June 05, 2017 at 7:20 p.m. the Stormont Dundas and Glengarry (SD&G) Detachment of the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP), responded to the hospital in Alexandria where occupants of a white Honda Odyssey had dropped off a male suffering from a life threatening physical injury and then fled the area.

The victim, identified as 29 year old, Khanh NGUYEN, of Ottawa, was pronounced deceased shortly thereafter.

At approximately 7:45 p.m., police observed the suspect vehicle travelling southbound on County Road #34 in South Glengarry Township where the two male occupants were arrested and taken into custody.

Facing charges of Second Degree Murder and Production of a Schedule II Substance (Cannabis Marihuana)is 61 year old, Tri Minh HOANG of Montreal, Quebec. Previous release indicated this male was a 57 year old male from Montreal.

Additionally, 29 year old, Anh Quang NGUYEN of Ottawa is charged with Accessory After The Fact To Murder and Production of a Schedule II Substance (Cannabis Marihuana).

Both accused men were remanded into custody and will next appear on June 8, 2017 at the Ontario Court of Justice, Cornwall.

SD&G OPP Crime Unit are seeking any witnesses with information on this homicide and will be continuing with the investigation, under the direction of Detective Inspector Dan Nadeau of the OPP Criminal Investigation Branch (CIB).

Police are asking anyone with information to contact Detective Constable Daniel ROY at the SD&G detachment at 613-534-2223 during business hours or 24/7 at 1-888-310-1122.

If you wish to provide information anonymously you can call Seaway Valley Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477). You can also submit your information online at www.crimestopperssdm.com. Crime Stoppers does not subscribe to call display and you will remain anonymous. Being anonymous, you will not testify in court and your information may lead to a cash reward of up to $2,000.00
Keep your mind sharp by participating in the Northern Arizona University Summer Seminar Series. The series of talks will cover a wide range of topics including current events, science and arts. Attendance is free but donations are accepted to help offset the cost of the program.

The series kicks off Thursday, June 8, and continues each Thursday, from 5:30- 7 p.m., through Aug. 10, on the NAU South Campus, SBS West building, 19 W. McConnell Dr., room 200. Parking is free at lot P61 (in front of SBS West) after 4:30 p.m. for this event.

NAU Summer Seminar Series schedule:

June 8: Turkey and the AK Party Era, by Brian Silverstein, Director, Arizona Center of Turkish Studies, UofA

June 15: What do the Movies tell us about our Race Relations, by Frederick Gooding, Jr., Assistant Professor, Ethnic Studies, NAU

June 22: Europe has No Statue of Liberty: The EUs Response to Syrian Refugees, by Paul Lenze, Jr., Sr. Lecturer, PIA, NAU

June 29: Civil Religion and the 2016 Presidential Election, by Ben Krueger, Lecturer, Communication Studies, NAU

July 6: Science and Politics of Policy: How Can Expert Scientists Regain the Public Trust, by Rod Parnell, Professor of Earth Sciences and Environmental Sustainability, NAU

July 13: A Galaxy of Worlds: Hunting for Earths with Lowell Observatorys Discovery Channel Telescope, by Jeff Hall, Director and CEO, Lowell Observatory

July 20: The Art of Conducting, Daniel OBryant, Director of Orchestras, NAU

July 27: Russia in the World: Actions, Motivations and Consequences, by Gretchen Gee, Sr. Lecturer, PIA and Model United Nations Club Advisor, NAU

Aug. 3: An Ethnographic Case Study of Rising Middle-Age Mortality in the US, by Michelle Parsons, Assistant Professor, Anthropology, NAU

Aug. 10: The Mapping of Islamist Ideologies: Where do ISIS and Al Qaeda Fall, by Faten Ghosn, Associate Professor of International Relations, UofA

Aug. 17: From Campus Free Speech to Ideological Holy War and - Perhaps - Back Again, by Jim Manley, Goldwater Institute, Phoenix

Sunday afternoon concert at San Francisco de Asis

The Flagstaff Symphony Guild will host an afternoon of classical music at San Francisco de Asis Catholic Church atop McMillan Mesa. Andrea Graves, Jeannette Moore and other members of the FSOs Ponderosa Players will perform, and Flagstaff favorite Charly Spining will play the organ. After the 4 p.m. concert, guests can enjoy wine and appetizers in the church vestibule.

Tickets are $20 and can be obtained at the door, or by calling Symphony Guild President Connie McDonald at 774-1424. This "Prelude concert is a major fundraiser for the Flagstaff Symphony.
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After six days from the launch of the NASA-funded website Backyard Worlds: Planet 9, four users alerted the science team in this project about a curious moving object near the solar system. However, after comprehensive studies from the telescope, researchers confirmed the existence of the moving celestial object and identified it as a cold brown dwarf.

Main Goal Of NASA's Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 Project

Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 is a NASA-funded space exploration program for interested public volunteers. The main objective of this program is for researchers to hunt down any unknown celestial objects in the interstellar space between the Sun and the closest star, Proxima Centauri.

In this project, anyone could participate with a computer and an internet connection and explore space. The whole observation is conducted by the flip through images taken by NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) spacecraft. From these images, Backyard Worlds volunteers are able to detect a celestial object if it will reach close enough to Earth.

However, the detection is made after comparing the older image of the same spot with latest one, where this moving object will appear as a jump in the image. According to American Museum of Natural History, there are more than 38,000 moving objects are detected and tagged from this digital flipbooks for further investigation and identification purpose. So far, volunteers have classified more than four million flipbooks.

Detection Of A Brown Dwarf Near The Solar System

A few days after the debut of Backyard Worlds website on Feb. 15, Bob Fletcher, a science teacher in Tasmania, identified a very faint object moving across the WISE images. Apart from Bob, three other citizen scientists from Russia, Serbia, and the United States have also detected this moving object.

Later research team initialized their investigation from which they identified it as a brown dwarf, which was previously unidentified, as it obscured from the picture. Jackie Faherty, a senior scientist and one of Backyard World's researchers called the new found brown dwarf, WISEAJ110125.95+540052.8.

This is approximately 111 light-years away and just a few hundred degrees warmer than Jupiter. Now, all four members of the discovery have participated as the co-authors in this project related paper published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

According to NASA, there are lots of unknown brown dwarfs spread throughout the Milky Way galaxy. They also said that these are a substellar objects, with mass ranges between a gas-giant like Jupiter and the lightest stars.

Due to low mass, they cannot sustain energy from nuclear fusion like other stars. However, these are at least hot enough to glow in the infrared range of the light spectrum.





See Now: What Republicans Don't Want You To Know About Obamacare
Grand Canyon Youth is partnering with the Verde River Institute to bring more youth to Arizona rivers. The nonprofit organization has helped students, ages 10 to 19, from around the country learn about wildlife, rivers, ecology and team building through its programs on the Colorado and San Juan Rivers and trips to the Grand Canyon.

This year the organization added the Verde River as part of a pilot program with the Verde River Institute and Kinsey Inquiry and Discovery School, said GCY Executive Director Emma Wharton. Staff from GCY worked with fifth-grade teachers from Kinsey and VRI Executive Director Doug Von Gausig to create a day trip down the river that would incorporate what students were learning in the classroom about ecology and watersheds and give them a sense of curiosity about the world around them.

Wharton, who traveled on the first trip with about 10 Kinsey fifth graders, said the kids had a blast. This is also the first time that GCY has had a program for fifth graders.

They were just so thrilled and excited to be out there, she said.

Guides from VRI were able to teach the students about the water cycle, flood cycle, microclimates, flora and fauna, and the history and recovery of the river. A total of 60 fifth grade students from Kinsey made the trip, Wharton said. The students were split up into six groups and each group was on the river for about a day. Each student had a hard-shelled kayak that they paddled along a two-mile section of the river from the TAPCO river access point to Tuzigoot National Monument access point.

FJA ON THE SAN JUAN

The new Verde River trip is just one of many programs that GCY offers schools. Another popular trip is the six-day trip down the San Juan River that sixth graders from Flagstaff Junior Academy took this spring.

It was an amazing, fun experience, said Liam Staudenger, a student at FJA. We learned about the river, history and life skills, like cooking.

Each group of 19 to 20 students had to do a different chore each day, he said. Some were in charge of setting up the latrine, others were in charge of cooking, another group was in charge of clean up and a fourth in charge of the science experiment for the day. Students are also expected to help paddle their raft during the trip.

Staudenger said he liked cooking the best. Depending on the day, dinner consisted of hamburgers and mac and cheese, pasta, salad and other munchies. Staudenger said he helps out with the cooking at home sometimes, but cooking on the river was a unique experience.

Its surprising what kind of meals you can cook on the river, he said.

Another favorite part of the trip for Staudenger was checking out the fossils on the underside of a rock ledge.

Its a good learning experience, said Sophie Nughton, another FJA sixth grader. There were so many great people on the trip.

Making it over Government Rapids was a real teambuilding exercise, she said. The whole boat had to work together.

Nughton also enjoyed cooking on the river, especially making the cheese and mac, which has more cheese than macaroni, and a kind of smores cobbler that the river guides taught the students how to make.

The science projects on the trip include learning about the wildlife, hiking trails, collecting bugs and studying the flow and history of the river.

Tony Cola, a FJA sixth grade math/science teacher and a river guide for GCY, said before the FJA students went on the trip they completed about 12 hours of community service work and did some exhaustive fundraising in order to cover the cost of the trip. Students also studied things like the water cycle, how to calculate cubic feet per second of water flow and other science and math based items before taking the trip.

Wharton said GCY tries to keep the cost of the trips down for students and schools by fundraising. The organization usually covers about 51 percent of the total cost of the trip and offers about $30,000 in financial aid to schools and students to make sure that any student that wants to make the trip can do so. Schools also contribute through tax credit donations that are collected through the school year.

We dont want the cost to be a barrier, she said.

All of GCYs programs are open to all schools and students. The organization also brings in speakers to high schools to talk about careers in the outdoors and its looking at other programs to get students in the outdoors, such as backpacking and climbing trips and outdoor first aid.

Were committed to get all youth on the river, Wharton said.

The ultimate goals of GCY are to create future stewards of public lands, get kids outside, develop kids' grit and resiliency and their sense of curiosity, Wharton said. GCY hopes that by providing students with these types of opportunities that theyll learn to love and value the environment and want to protect it.
WASHINGTON (AP)  The White House insists that plans for President Donald Trump's border wall are on track despite resistance from Congress. What it's not saying is how it envisions the wall these days.

Trump's promise to build a "big beautiful wall" and have Mexico pay for it was a campaign rallying cry. It conjured images of an imposing structure spanning the 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers) of America's southern border, too tall and strong for foreigners to dare cross illegally.

But since Trump took office, his top aides have made clear that's not on their drawing boards. It won't be "from sea to shining sea," Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly told lawmakers.

So how long will it be? And how much of it will be a thick new wall as opposed to patching up existing fences and other measures? The answers aren't clear.

A look at what is known about the state of the wall.

___

WHAT CANDIDATE TRUMP SAID ABOUT THE WALL

From the start of his campaign, Trump said building a wall at the Mexican border and having Mexico pay for it was a priority. His campaign website said his administration would "begin working on an impenetrable physical wall on the southern border on day one."

Trump never specified exactly what he wanted, but his words suggested a wall stretching from Brownsville, Texas, on the eastern end of the border, to San Diego at the western end.

At times he suggested the wall would be at least 30 feet (9 meters) high, even promising to add an extra 10 feet (3 meters) after former Mexican President Vicente Fox used an expletive to say that Mexico wouldn't pay for the program.

___

WHAT THE ADMINISTRATION SAYS ABOUT THE WALL NOW

Days after taking office on Jan. 20, Trump signed an executive order calling for a "physical wall along the southern border." But the order didn't include specific details or say how it would be funded or how much it might cost.

In recent months, leaders of the departments that will have the biggest roles in whatever is built have hedged their boss' campaign comments.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke acknowledged in March some of the complications a border-long wall would face. He said physical and geographic challenges would make building a wall "complex in some areas," including along parts of the Rio Grande and in a remote and mountainous national park in Texas.

Officials from the Homeland Security Department, which is overseeing bids for the wall, have said repeatedly they don't know yet the length of the wall the administration will ultimately want to build or how much it will cost.

Kelly has said the administration wants to start by building at least 74 miles (119 kilometers) of wall in Texas and near San Diego, though 14 miles (23 kilometers) of that construction would be a replacement for fencing that's been in place for years.

He has said new construction will be planned for areas where border officials say it's most needed. He told a Senate budget panel last month that some of the new construction may be a see-through fence, similar to barriers built by the Bush and Obama administrations.

___

PAYING FOR THE WALL

Mexican officials have flatly rejected paying for the wall. U.S. lawmakers haven't been enthusiastic about paying for it either.

Trump's request for $2.6 billion to start the work on an unspecified stretch of border wall was swiftly denied as Congress approved a spending package to keep the government running through the end of the current budget year in September.

Instead lawmakers approved $772 million for border security, including the upkeep and planned replacement of old stretches of border fencing, some built almost two decades ago. Still, the administration promoted this as major progress toward building the wall.

Trump's first full budget request, which would fund the government for the 2018 budget year, asks for $1.6 billion to pay for roughly 60 miles (95 kilometers) of new wall along two stretches of the border in South Texas and 14 miles (23 kilometers) of wall to replace fencing near San Diego.

It's unclear whether Congress will approve that request. Democrats and some Republicans have questioned the need for new barriers as arrests of people caught sneaking across the border fall to record lows.

___

CURRENT CONSTRUCTION

There is a flurry of construction going on at the Mexican border. To the naked eye, it looks like Trump's wall is underway. But it's not.

The fencing being built along brief stretches of border in Sunland Park, New Mexico, and Naco, Arizona, is part of a long-planned effort to replace old chain-link fencing that in some cases is decades old.

Later this summer, construction is expected to start on prototypes of new kinds of walls, both see-through and solid, in San Diego. The Homeland Security Department has enough money in its current budget to pay for the prototypes, but nothing more.

The government is expected to pick companies to build the prototypes next month.
Channel programs News

WestconGroup CEO: Synnex Deal Will Unlock Public Cloud Capabilities For North American Partners

Michael Novinson

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WestconGroup CEO Dolph Westerbos said the Synnex acquisition will provide Westcon-Comstor's U.S. partners with better access to public cloud, storage and enterprise computing capabilities.

The Tarrytown, N.Y.-based distributor recently launched a relationship with Amazon Web Services in Canada, Westerbos said, but doesn't have a relationship with Microsoft Azure or AWS in the United States.

"Every one of the Westcon-Comstor partners we deal with today needs help moving to the cloud, and needs tie-ups with the likes of Azure and AWS," Westerbos told CRN. "But we don't have that same relationship in North America with Azure."

[Related: Synnex Partners: Buying Westcon Americas Will Unlock Cisco Goldmine, Support For Global Firms]

But that will all change when Synnex's $830 million purchase of Westcon Americas closes next quarter. Westcon-Comstor partners in Canada will now have a choice between going with AWS or Microsoft, Westerbos said, while Microsoft will become a key enabler for Synnex's customers in the U.S.

"In North America, it's been kind of a slower boat," Westerbos said. "This is where Synnex already has some great capabilities, so I think it will accelerate it in that regard."

Synnex's strength on both the enterprise storage and compute side should also be appealing to Westcon Americas customers, Westerbos said, particularly as it relates to the distributor's strong relationships with Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Dell and Lenovo.

"Although we don't play in that [enterprise computing] space, many of our customers, however, still have requirements for those kinds of solutions," Westerbos said. "They would have, in the past, had to go to different partners, and now they could conceivably go to one."

Little overlap exists among the key markets, customers and technologies of Synnex and Westcon-Comstor, Westerbos said. For that reason, Westerbos said the deal will focus more on leveraging revenue through upsell and cross-sell opportunities rather than taking out costs through a tough internal integration effort.

"We really think this will accelerate growth way more than we could have separately and independent of one another," Westerbos said. "This is going to change the distribution landscape quite significantly here in North America."

Synnex's partners, meanwhile, will benefit from Westcon-Comstor's phenomenal footprint in unified communications, security and networking, Westerbos said, as well as the distributor's tight relationship with Cisco.

"This is, of course, a path for Synnex to go up the stack," Westerbos said. "It's a path they've been on already in a number of relationships that they've had. This just accelerates that."

Synnex is the only North American broadline distributor not currently carrying Cisco, while 32 percent  or nearly $700 million  of Westcon's Americas revenue comes from Cisco.

"Those have not been strengths for Synnex in the past," Westerbos said.

But Westerbos said Synnex's legacy partner base should be appealing to Cisco given the distributor's formidable cloud business and robust public sector business split equally across the federal government and SLED (state, local and education) markets.

"For a company like Cisco, that's very appealing," Westerbos said. "There's a lot of opportunity there."

Many of Westcon-Comstor's other vendor partners will also benefit from gaining access to Synnex's base of commercial and SMB partners. Westerbos said endpoint security solutions from Palo Alto Networks and much of Symantec's product portfolio are targeted toward Synnex's core market segment.

For the Synnex acquisition to be successful, Westerbos said Westcon-Comstor must grow revenue and maintain seamless transactions for global vendor partners like AT&T, IBM and Verizon.

Bringing Westcon-Comstor's capability in value and specialty distribution together with the strength and breadth of Synnex's line card should create tremendous opportunities to leverage new and additional sources of revenue, Westerbos said.

"All of our messaging is around growth," Westerbos said. "Are we growing our existing partner vendors faster than we have done in the past, both on the Westcon side and on the Synnex side? That's our key metric."
Data center News

HPE CEO Whitman: Businesses Will 'Live or Die' Based On How They Adapt To A World In Which 'Everything Computes'

Steven Burke

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Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman Tuesday told several thousand customers that businesses will "live or die" based on how they adapt to a world in which everything is connected and "everything computes."

"We see this emerging world as one where everything computes and, in that world, your business will live or die based on technology," said Whitman in a keynote address at the HPE Discover conference. "We see it over and over again: outstanding business outcomes occur when you combine the right mix of breakthrough innovations with the right experience at the right time. A world where everything computes comes with tremendous opportunities and challenges."

[Related: CRN Exclusive: HPE's Whitman On New Products, Dell EMC's 'Old Technology' Bet, Cisco's UCS-VCE Data Center Dilemma And Her Future Plans]

Conquering those real world challenges and helping customers capture the opportunities that come in an "everything computes" world is at the heart of HPE's strategy to make hybrid IT simple, power the intelligent edge and provide the services expertise to "make it all happen," said Whitman.

HPE unveiled a blizzard of technology breakthroughs at HPE Discover 2017 aimed at helping customers build more secure and dynamic infrastructure and drive better business outcomes in an "everything computes" world. These included a new Gen10 server platform billed as the world's most secure industry standard server; robust updates to the company's Synergy composable infrastructure, which is accelerating private cloud adoption; a new Aruba 8400 core switch that partners are calling a Cisco Catalyst "killer;" a new Aruba Internet of Things asset tracking solution for the intelligent edge; and new HPE Edgeline Services Platform to help partners manage and control industrial connected systems and networks.

The key to making hybrid IT simple is helping customers make decisions on which applications run off premises, on premises or at the edge, said Whitman. Just as important, said Whitman, is HPE's mission to help customers stretch beyond the data center to deliver transformative experiences for their customers at the intelligent edge.

"In this new world autonomous systems will make data-driven decisions that improve profits, save lives and enhance the world in which we live," said Whitman. "This is so important because according to (market researcher) IDC 43 percent of IoT (Internet of Things) data will be analyzed at the edge."

HPE's "trusted advisor" Pointnext services organization- which was launched three months ago  is developing new services aimed at providing customers the ability to "turn data into insight and insight into action" to drive better business outcomes, said Whitman.

To drive home the power of the HPE strategy, Whitman pointed to cloud workplace provider Smartsheet's decision to move from a public cloud platform for its highly regarded software-as-a-service offering to an on-premises HPE private cloud and Merck, a $40 billion pharmaceutical company, which also embraced an HPE hybrid platform.

Clark Golestani, president of the emerging business and global CIO for Merck told HPE Discover attendees that his company did a comprehensive analysis of the public cloud versus hybrid IT and selected HPE hybrid IT. "With regulatory constraints, privacy and also cost  which is very important for us  it really drove us to a converged (HPE) infrastructure solution on premise," he said.

More importantly than even regulatory and privacy issues were the operational issues associated with public cloud versus an HPE hybrid IT solution, said Golestani. "The idea that we could be down for a day is unacceptable," he said.

"The idea that we would not deliver medicines potentially around the globe to patients that require that is something that we just can't conceive of," said Golestani. "So putting it in the cloud really is not an option for us. We need to be up all the time every day."

The flexibility with the HPE hybrid IT infrastructure and "tremendous cost savings"  which ultimately drives more Merck R&D  was critical in the decision adopt an HPE hybrid IT solution, said Golestani.

As for Smartsheet, Whitman said the company's cloud based business model was becoming "increasingly expensive" when it turned to HPE for help. The company wrestled with the "sheer complexity" of the migration to the private cloud and the funding to make the switch, said Whitman.

With the HPE partnership, Smartsheet installs, configures and tests the HPE infrastructure but only begins paying for it once it is "poised to become revenue generating," said Whitman. "In my view that is the perfect example of the right mix of innovation meeting the right experience," she said.

Whitman said HPE's commitment to being "services led and outcome focused" is driving partnerships with a growing ecosystem of the largest system integrators from all over the world.

HPE, for example, has teamed with Wipro, one of the top India-based system integrators to provide a flexible capacity consumption model that provides customers public cloud economics in a managed private cloud offering.

Abidali Neemuchwala, CEO and executive director of Wipro, the $7.7 billion system integrator giant, with a 175,000 strong workforce, told Discover attendees that the digital transformation impacting all industries is profound. He said the HPE partnership has been critical in helping Wipro deliver transformative hybrid IT-intelligent edge breakthroughs for customers.

Wipro's own digital transformation is also helping it deliver next generation "everything computes" solutions for its customers, said Neemuchwala, "With cloud, cognitive, AI and analytics, banks are becoming branchless, cars are becoming driverless, manufacturing is becoming digital and smart and IT services is becoming people-less," he said. "So it is a huge transformation. The way we are enabling it is by not only helping customers transform but also transforming Wipro itself."

Wipro's focus is on "simplification" with an eye towards the elimination of business processes, tasks, applications and hardware that can be eliminated, said Neemuchwala. "What can not be eliminated then gets hyper-automated," he said.

Wipro's HOLMES artificial intelligence platform is used to deliver that hyper-automation with cognitive technology, said Neemuchwala. Over the last year, Wipro has been able to hyper-automate the work of about 12,000 people who have been re-deployed to other activities and deliver more productivity to customers.

"What we can't hyper-automate we believe will move to crowdsourcing," he said. Wipro now owns one of the world's largest crowdsourcing platform which is being re-engineered for enterprise crowdsourcing, said Neemuchwala.

Neemuchwala said the partnership with HPE has allowed Wipro to provide speed and agility to customers like RSA, one of Britain's oldest insurance companies. Leveraging the HPE technology stack, Wipro enabled RSA to launch new insurance products faster, he said.

Wipro has also leveraged the HPE stack to deliver new IoT services to RSA, while at the same time reducing the company's IT real estate by about 50 percent, with a 25 percent IT cost savings, said Neemuchwala.

Wipro has also leveraged the HPE technology stack to drive an improved passenger experience with intelligent edge HPE technology at Toronto's Pearson International Airport, said Neemuchwala, while at the same time driving higher per-passenger revenue for the airport. "It is a complete hybrid IT  intelligent edge solution," Neemuchwala.

Finally, Wipro is providing the hybrid IT infrastructure that has allowed a brass lock and metal key company to transform to a smartphone based system, said Neemuchwala. "This is about opening, millions of times a day, locks and keys all over the world," he said. "In partnership with HPE, we have enabled them to provide a very reliable and secure hybrid cloud on the boundaryless data center Wipro platform."

Worth Davis, vice president and chief technology officer for Computex Technology Solutions, No. 124 on the CRN SP500, said he was impressed by the sheer amount of breakthrough technology at Discover. "A lot of times when we go to these shows, the vendors are not really bringing anything new to market," he said. "Here at Discover, we have Gen10, the Synergy portfolio, and a focus on security on the server side. When you go on the show floor, there are dozens of great technologies. It is not one piece of technology and a lot of PowerPoints. This is the most innovation relevant to enterprise IT that I have seen in a long while."
Storage News

Datto CEO Previews New Products, Tools To Help MSPs Reach SMBs

Joseph F. Kovar

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Datto CEO Austin McChord, with the help of a few Datto engineers, used his Tuesday keynote presentation at DattoCon to offer a look at what the company has planned for its MSP partners.

Those plans include a move to give MSPs a virtual desktop infrastructure that will help them provide services to the hundreds of thousands of small businesses they may not be able to reach now, as well as a new managed power strip to help them reboot servers and desktops without sending a technician to customer sites.

McChord presented the look forward, as well as several new products now just coming to market, at DattoCon, which is being held this week in Denver. Datto said about 1,000 MSPs are at the conference.

[Related: Datto Welcomes MSPs To DattoCon With Major Enhancements To Its Data Protection Technology]

Datto, celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, has nine data centers worldwide storing 320 TBs of customer data on its own cloud, and is working with over 6,400 MSPs managing over 150,000 active deployments, McChord said

The company has led the market with several of what McChord called "industry firsts" for data protection including screenshot verification, local and cloud integration, hybrid virtualization, time-based retention, all-flash backup and disaster recovery appliances, and ransomware detection.

"All of this has been driven by a decade of innovation," he said.

Datto's goal is to build the best MSP solutions available, and make them simple, McChord said. "That is what drives your business and enables us to grow," he said.

McChord showed that Datto listens to its partners and makes the kind of changes they need, which has led the company to enjoy its current growth, said Dave Seibert, CIO at IT Innovators, and Irvine, Calif.-based MSP and Datto channel partner.

"A lot of what was announced at DattoCon was what the channel wanted," Seibert told CRN. "A lot of vendors, especially those who are enterprise-focused, don't make changes based on what their SMB customers and partners tell them."

McChord used part of his keynote to show how Datto is expanding that decade of innovation with new offerings expected to be released later this year.

The offering that drew the largest applause from the MSP attendees was Datto Desktop, a new project the company hopes will lead to technology that will let MSPs bring virtual desktop infrastructure to their smallest small business customers.

Datto Desktop is targeted at companies with fewer than 10 users and maybe one or two servers and no policies, a business McChord said is often overlooked. "It's almost impossible for an MSP to go after these really tiny businesses," he said.

Datto hopes to give MSPs the technology to build high-performance virtual desktops out of thin clients that MSPs could deploy at customer sites while managing them remotely, McChord said.

While those thin clients might be something as simple as a Raspberry Pi low-cost basic board-based computer, Datto Desktop uses RDP for KVM to give it the power to run YouTube videos, he said.

Datto Desktop will include the thin client, cloud-based virtualization, and remote management, he said.

Datto engineers demonstrated Datto Desktop by showing quick remote configuration and deployment, along with the ability of the thin client to be unplugged and rebooted back to their original state.

It is indeed difficult to manage very small businesses as an MSP, but the market potential is huge, said Peter Xenakis, business development manager at ITS, a Ronkonkoma, N.Y.-based MSP and Datto channel partner.

Small businesses with under 10 people are budget-constrained, but they already understand the advantage of virtual desktop infrastructure, Xenakis told CRN. For MSPs, deploying a virtual desktop infrastructure will cut back significantly on money-wasting trips to the customer, he said.

"The acceptance of VDI depends on how it is presented," he said. "Datto's demonstration of Datto Desktop was right on. The company figuratively blew a box up, and it came back up quickly. And Austin said he wants the user experience to be the same as customer's desktops are now."

Datto's introduction of the Datto Desktop is the "ultimate teaser," Siebert said. "This is something everybody is trying to do, but VDI still remains a small market," he said. "It's like flying cars. Everybody has wanted flying cars for years, but we don't have them yet. The opportunity for this in the education market is huge, and Datto's demo of the technology was effective."

McChord also drew applause from MSPs with the introduction of a prototype of the Data Managed Power device, a new managed power strip that would allow MSPs to turn off and reboot client devices remotely. "Yes, you just applauded for a power strip," he said. "That's how you know you're in the MSP industry."

Xenakis was one of those applauding. "We have clients with firewalls that sometimes go down," he said. "A managed PDU is important. APC has had them for some time, but they are very expensive and focused on the enterprise."

McChord also discussed the product roadmap for the company's Datto Networking Appliance, or DNA. The DNA, which was introduced early a year ago, is an appliance designed to protect data in transit between customers' data centers and MSPs' clouds. Among its most unique capabilities is a built-in modem that connects to a Verizon 4G LTE network to form a wireless backup in case internet access is lost.

McChord said the DNA in the third quarter of 2017 would receive such new capabilities as VLAN tagging and rules; one-to-one and one-to-many NAT (network address translation); geo IP filtering; quality of service for fast synchronizations in failover situations; and Datto device firewall settings.

In the fourth quarter, McChord said to expect DNA to include outbound NAT rules, open integration, custom DDNS (dynamic domain name system), and SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) voice proxy.

Also coming to Datto and its MSPs later this year is the SaaS Protection Nodes, McChord said. SaaS Protection Nodes are new appliances based on the new Intel Skylark processor and Intel Optane high-performance memory-based flash storage technology and will act as an on-premises cloud for protection Office 365 data for customers such as financial institutions who need to know the physical location of their data.

The SaaS Protection Nodes will be able to be run in MSP colocation centers or in customer data centers to provide data protection based on customers' own policies, he said. "This is a true enterprise-grade piece of equipment," he said.

Datto's moves over the years beyond data protection to such areas as networking, security, and even managed power strips show that the company is moving into the back office of its MSPs' customers, Seibert said.

"I can see those solution sets growing," he said. "And I can see it all being managed through the Datto Portal. These are individual devices now. But the Datto Portal is gold. It can manage all the devices and services. That's a big value-add. And add on top of that the fact that the Datto Portal is already integrated with the ConnectWise platform, and will be integrated soon with Kaseya platform."
The long, awkward silence is always the first sign that a previously over-confident hacker realizes he's suddenly become the victim. It happens every time.

The malicious hacker had been firing his ion cannon at my network address trying to overwhelm my home computer and internet connection. I had sent him an email the day before letting him know that I knew who he was, what he did for a living (he was a budding wedding photographer), his name (Rick), and that he was newly married to a beautiful girl. Thats enough to frighten off most hackers, but sometimes, like Rick, they persist.

On his private, Tor-protected instant messaging channel, Rick was telling his buddies that he was getting ready to launch an even bigger distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack against me. He had been using a child-like hacker tool, but now he was thinking of paying a professional hacking service to attack me.

DDoS attacks, where hundreds to hundreds of thousands of otherwise innocent computers and devices can be directed to attack one targeted victim, can be devastatingly hard to stop  not just for me, but for anyone, nearly any company. The sustained flood of malicious network traffic consisting of billions of unwanted digital bits can knock all but the biggest and richest companies (think Google) off the internet. Once they start, the victim (in this case, me) can be kicked off the internet for several days.

I broke into his messaging channel and told him to knock it off. The hesitancy in his reply let me know that I had caught him off guard. He responded by calling me several unprintable names and accused me of being someone already a member of his hacker forum. When I replied that I wasn't, he renewed his taunting and said I would regret breaking into his private forum. I politely asked him to quit trying to attack me because I had to real work to get done.

The next night around the same time, I could tell by the sluggishness of my internet connectivity that the threatened DDoS attack was starting to happen. If I didnt do something soon I was going to be out of commission for days. So, out of pure frustration of having to meet a work deadline, I hacked into his computer.

I had identified the computer and software he was using (this is known as fingerprinting in the hacker world), and I knew he was using an outdated firewall to protect it. One of my favorite hacker techniques is to break into computers and companies using the very software and devices they think will protect them. So, using a known vulnerability in that firewall, I broke into his computer, modified a file, and left a new script behind. I then connected to him on his messaging channel and told him to check out my work.

My work was a file that would have reformatted his computers hard drive and destroy everything on it if he rebooted his computer. I had remarked the fatal lines out of my script so that it was currently harmless. But I could have removed literally three characters (i.e., rem) and rendered the previously harmless script quite deadly, at least to his computer.

The DDoS attack stopped immediately. The obviously humbled remote hacker came back online to the chat channel and incredulously asked, Man, how did you do that? Finally, he was talking like a normal human with all the false swagger gone. I replied, Rick, theres a lot of hackers who are better than you. Stop your malicious hacking and use your skills to do good. Spend more time with your new hot wife. One day you may mess with the wrong guy or agency. This is your wake-up call.

With that, I dropped the chat channel and started to get to work on my day job. Its not the first time that I had to do a little offensive hacking to get another hacker to leave me alone, and Im certainly not the only one with the skills to do so. In fact, the best, smartest hackers I know are the good guys and girls, not the malicious creeps who plague our digital lives. Im a 30-year computer security veteran, always out fighting the good fight, along with tens of thousands of others just like me. Our adversaries are, on average, less smart than we are.

This is not to say that all malicious hackers are dumb. Thats not the case. Its just that the vast majority arent overly bright; they are average. In a given year, Ill see maybe one or two smart hackers do things that no one else has ever done before. But most malevolent hackers I come across arent brilliant or creative. They simply use tools, techniques and services that other smarter hackers previously created. Far from being the mythic hackers that Hollywood celebrates, most are regular, run-of-mill rubes who couldnt code an emoji icon.

If you want to meet a really smart hacker, talk to a cybersecurity defender. They have to be experts in their technology and able to figure out how to stop all the threats that are trying to take it down. They are the hidden Henry Fords and Einsteins of our digital society. While the media is portraying rogue hackers as the smarter element, the defenders are tightening the net and helping to stop and arrest more of them than ever.

Right now hacking is almost risk-free

Like the Tommy Gun-toting bank robbers of the early 1900s, hackers today are very successful. The riches of our digital society have been accumulating faster than the needed protections. And the chances of being caught, much less arrested, for cybercrime were nearly zero. A hacker could steal millions of dollars with almost no risk.

Rob a real bank and the chances are youll get less than $8,000 and you'll probably be arrested (55 percent of bank robbers were identified and arrested in 2014, the latest year for which FBI statistics are available) and go to jail for years. The negative risk/reward ratio contributes to there being fewer than 4,000 U.S. bank robberies each year.

Contrast that with cybercrime. The FBI says it receives over 22,000 cybercrime complaint reports each month, and there are likely many more crimes being committed. The average reported loss is almost $6,500, and from over 269,000 criminal complaints, only 1,500 cases were referred to law enforcement. Although the FBIs most recent annual reports didnt include conviction rates, its 2010 report, with a similar number of complaints and referred cases, resulted in just six convictions. That's one jailed cyber criminal for every 50,635 victims, and these are just the cases reported to the FBI.

Steal a million dollars online and youll enjoy your newfound wealth with almost no worry. The difficulty of collecting legal evidence of the crime, jurisdiction issues (Russia and China are not going to respect United States search warrants and arrest requests anytime soon), and law enforcements cybercrime enforcement abilities make it a low-risk venture. And, as I said before, you don't have to be smart to be a successful hacker. Any kid or crime syndicate can do it. All you need to know is a few tricks of the trade.

The secret of hacking

The secret to hacking is there is no secret. Hacking is like any other trade, like a plumber or electrician, once you learn a few tools and techniques, the rest is just practice and perseverance. Most hackers find missing software patches, misconfigurations, vulnerabilities, or social engineer the victim. If it works once, it works a thousand times. Its so easy and works so regularly that most professional penetration testers (i.e., people paid to do legal hacking) quit after a few years because they no longer find it challenging.

In my 30 years of professional penetration testing, Ive hacked into every single company Ive been hired to legally break into in three hours or less. That includes every bank, government agency, hospital and type of business. I barely got out of high school, and I flunked out of an easy college with a 0.62 grade average. Lets just say Im no Rhodes scholar.

On a scale of one to ten, with ten being the best, Im maybe a six or seven, and I can break into nearly anything. Ive worked with hackers that Ive thought were tens, and they almost universally think of themselves as average. They can list off the people they think are tens. And so on. This is to say that a lot of people can hack into anything they want to. Theres no official count of hackers in the world, but the number is easily in the upper tens of thousands. Luckily, most of them are on the good side.

The people who hack the hackers

The people who fight hackers and their malware creations cover the gambit of computer security jobs, including penetration testers, fixers, policy makers, educators, product developers, security reviewers, writers, cryptographers, privacy advocates, securers, threat modelers, and other computer security wonks in all fields.

Here are some of the interesting computer security defenders I cover in my latest book, Hacking the Hackers:

Brian Krebs

Krebs is a long-time investigative journalist who is famous for bringing down some of the webs most notorious criminal gangs. He routinely identifies previously anonymous malicious hackers by name, often leading to their arrest. Krebs learned to speak and read Russian so he could track and report on Russian cybercrime companies and syndicates. He is so successful that hackers routinely try to have him arrested by SWAT teams by sending drugs, fake currency and false hostage reports. His best-selling book Spam Nation was a takedown of the Russian spam industry and revealed that sometimes our own legitimate industries are intentionally allowing more cybercrime to occur because it benefits them financially. Anything Brian Krebs writes is worth reading.

Bruce Schneier

As the creator of multiple trusted encryption ciphers, Schneier is considered the father of modern computer cryptography. He is the top industry luminary in the computer security field and regularly speaks to Congress and to the biggest media outlets. Today, Schneier is mostly concerned with human issues behind computer security failures. I consider reading anything Schneier writes a mandatory part of any computer security education.

Dr. Dorothy Denning

Professor emeritus at the Naval Postgraduate School, Denning was an early computer security pioneer, creating seminal works on computer encryption, intrusion detection, cyberwarfare and access control. She invented the Lattice security model, which underlies many modern access control models. She was concerned about (and writing about) cyberwarfare before there was cyberwarfare.

Kevin Mitnick

The worlds most famous hacker, once prevented from even using a phone, Mitnick has long been out of prison and gone legit. Today, he is the CEO of his own computer security defense company and regularly writes about the threats of social engineering and privacy invasions. Many former malicious hackers cant be trusted, but Mitnick is an exception.

Michael Howard

Howard, and friends, created a secure software programming method known as the Security Development Lifecycle (SDL), which is now used by hundreds of companies around the world to decrease the number of bugs in their software that can be exploited by hackers. Most early SDL critics now use it after years of seeing how well it worked.

Joanna Rutkowska

Polish computer security expert, Joanna Rutkowska, gained fame for releasing the details of her Blue Pill attack, which revealed a hacker method so ingenious and difficult to stop or detect that defenders are still happy that hackers arent using it yet. She decided she couldnt trust any of the publicly available operating systems to be secure enough, so she created her own reasonable secure OS called QubesOS. The worlds most talented spies and privacy advocates use her operating system.

Lance Spitzner

Spitzner is considered the father of the modern honeypot. A honeypot is any fake computer asset (e.g., computer, router, printer, etc.) that exists solely to detect malicious hacking activity. Honeypots are considered one of the best defenses any company can deploy for early warning detection. Today, Spitzner works for SANS, one of the worlds most trusted computer security organizations, teaching companies how to successfully respond quickly to malicious computer breaches.

Cormac Herley

Herley is a computer security researcher whose craving for data is turning the computer security industry on its ear. Using real data, he is disproving long-held security dogma, such as the effectiveness of long and complex passwords. Herley proved that using long, complex and frequently changed passwords is not only not helpful, it is likely causing more problems than it solves. His research and conclusions are so revolutionary that it is likely going to be ten years before we see the majority of his recommendations being implemented.

Michael Dubinsky

The constantly attacked state of Israel is known worldwide for turning out very good computer security software. Dubinsky, an Israeli, is a senior product developer for a product that is known for detecting the previously undetectable. His product detects sneaky, otherwise hidden, hackers going after a companys crown jewels  and it is getting better faster than the attackers.

These smart defenders are part of a massive army of white hat hackers who are making it harder and harder to maliciously hack each year. A critical mass is starting to build and within the next decade online cybercriminals will likely to become as rare as traditional bank robbers. They will still exist, but there will be far fewer of them and they will be far more likely to be identified and prosecuted.
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STAMFORD  A dozen Fairfield County companies, led by Charter Communications, earned spots on the 2017 Fortune 500 list released Wednesday.

Ranked by their revenues in their latest fiscal years, the companies headquartered in Connecticuts southwestern corner accounted for two-thirds of the states contingent in the new standings.

Some $29 billion in revenues last year powered Stamford-based Charter to the No. 96 position. The company multiplied its reach to about 50 million homes and businesses with the 2016 acquisition of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks for about $65 billion.

As we move past the anniversary of the close of our transactions, Charters integration and operational strategy continues to be successful, Charter officials said in a statement. With Spectrum pricing and packaging nearly fully deployed including minimum broadband speeds of 60 to 100 mbps, customers across the country continue to respond favorably to our value proposition.

Charter now employs about 92,000, with plans to hire about 20,000 during the next four years. Based at 400 Atlantic St. in downtown Stamford, Charter has ranked 17 years on the Fortune 500.

Health insurance giant Aetna, which last week announced it planned to relocate its Hartford headquarters out of the state, led Connecticut companies with a No. 43 ranking, driven by about $63 billion in revenues. Farmington-based United Technologies followed at No. 50 and Bloomfield-based health insurer Cigna placed at No. 70.

Xerox stands as Norwalks highest-ranked company this year, at No. 162, with revenues of about $17 billion.

Synchrony Financial represents Connecticuts sole newcomer this year to the list, at No. 185. Its revenues totaled about $15 billion.

The Stamford-based consumer financial-services firm operated as part of GE before it spun off as its own publicly traded company in 2014. President and CEO Margaret Keane described the ranking as a proud milestone for the company that reflected its progress since its spin-off.

We have the knowledge, expertise and drive to make a difference for our partners and our customers every day, helping them grow their business and increase loyalty, Keane said. Our technology and data-driven expertise continues to differentiate us from our peers, positioning us to further deepen our partnerships through innovative digital solutions and strong data and analytics capabilities.

Synchrony also comprises one of 32 on the list that have a woman as CEO. The total of women-led companies on the list represents a record, but those firms account for only about 6 percent of the total.

Transportation and logistics firm XPO Logistics led Greenwich companies, at No. 191, with about $14.6 billion in revenues.

Chemicals company Praxair led Danbury companies, taking the No. 275 spot. Its revenues totaled about $10.5 billion last year. Praxair and Munich, Germany-based Linde announced last week they had agreed to merge into a new holding company.

Fairfield Countys representatives on the list also included three other Norwalk companies: Priceline Group, at No. 268, Frontier Communications, at No. 313, and EMCOR Group at No. 360; Greenwichs W.R. Berkley, at No. 354; Stamfords Harman International Industries, at No. 386, and United Rentals, at No. 452; and Westports Terex, at No. 445.

Bridgeport, the states most populous city, does not have any companies in this years rankings.

Bentonville, Ark.-based Walmart ranked No. 1, with about $486 billion in revenues. Berkshire Hathaway, Apple, Exxon Mobil, and McKesson rounded out the top five.

This years list marks the 63rd edition. The 2017 Fortune 500 companies cumulatively represent two-thirds of U.S. GDP, with $12 trillion in revenues, $890 billion in profits and $19 trillion in market value, according to Fortune. Together, they employ about 28.2 million people worldwide.

pschott@scni.com; 203-964-2236; Twitter: @paulschott
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SHELTON  The menu at MCK Gourmet looks like many others, featuring brief descriptions of its paninis, wraps and salad choices. Yet right in the middle are words that hint that this is not your average eatery: Daily hot lunch specials (featuring international flavors).

A recent hot lunch? Bangladeshi chicken curry.

To have one particular menu to us is boring, said owner Kashia Diaz Cave, who is from Trinidad and Tobago. We have so much to offer. We want to showcase our culinary skills and allow people to taste the flavors of the world.

Cave opened MCK Gourmet in March at 6 Research Drive. The MCK in the cafes name is an acronym for My City Kitchen, her Meriden-based nonprofit. Through My City Kitchen, Cave, who lived in Meriden for over a decade before moving to Seymour this year, teaches kids between the ages of 6 and 17 how to cook.

The idea for the nonprofit, which was started in 2009, was born out of Caves effort to carry on a cultural tradition of teaching her two sons how to cook her homelands cuisine. She said in Trinidad and Tobago children are taught early how to cook and fend for themselves.

I wanted to pass that on to my children, said Cave, who attended the Connecticut Culinary Institute and The Italian Culinary Institute for Foreigners in Italy.

Her sons liked to cook so much that they invited friends over to learn, as well, which delighted parents, who asked Cave why she didnt turn her pastime into a business.

Cave, a former paraprofessional in the Meriden school system, said My City Kitchen, which taught its classes in the Meriden Public Library, has been a hit and the nonprofit is now building its own kitchen space.

Opening the Shelton business is a fulfillment of another goal for Cave. Its part of our business plan to launch a cafe to showcase what it is we have to offer, she said. At MCK Gourmet, Cave also exclusively sells Enotre, an Italian extra virgin olive oil, to help fund her nonprofit.

She said she plans to launch cooking classes for both children and adults in the Shelton space in July.

Samantha Maloney, a former classmate of Caves in culinary school, hopes to teach some of those classes. We have a lot were hoping to do with this space, she said.

Maloney is just one of several people Cave has met along her culinary travels who she now employs at the Shelton business. Baby Alim, 24, who began volunteering with Caves nonprofit in high school, also now works at the cafe and will soon take over My City Kitchen so Cave can focus on the cafe full-time.

Alim, who is from Bangladesh and is the source of the chicken curry recipe, said Cave is the type of person who spends her time trying to help others. Shes an amazing woman and I want to get to be just like her one day, Alim said.

Maloney also praised Caves commitment to her employees, noting that she allows her staff to show off their culinary abilities often. Employees take turns picking a lunch special and cooking that days meal  hence Alims chance to share her Bangladeshi dish.

(Cave) wants us all to excel, Maloney said.

MCK Gourmet can be reached at 475-269-2984. The business is open Monday through Thursday from 7:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. and Fridays from 7:30 a.m. until 1:30 p.m.

ktorres@hearstmediact.com; 203-330-6227
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WASHINGTON  Connecticuts Democratic senators are hopeful that Christopher Wray, President Donald Trumps new nominee for FBI director, is closer to meeting their specifications for the position: a prosecutor with deep law-enforcement experience, not a career politician.

Chris Wray seems to have very impressive credentials, including experience in prosecutions, said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee will participate in Wrays confirmation hearing. I will be asking tough questions about his ability to prevent intrusion into his agency. He has to be able to withstand pressure that may amount to political interference.

Blumenthal spoke as news of former FBI director James Comeys testimony upcoming Thursday before the Senate Intelligence Committee spread through Washington.

Comey is expected to tell senators how Trump asked him if he wanted to keep his job as FBI director, demanded loyalty and requested Comey drop the investigation of ex-National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.

If confirmed, Wray, 50, would replace Comey. He also would take the position for which former Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman was once the front runner.

Democratic senators, including Blumenthal and his Connecticut colleague, Chris Murphy, were cool to Lieberman. In a time when the FBI is in a crucible because of Trump, a career politician was not right for the job, they reasoned.

Ive heard a lot of good things about Christopher Wray, but, of course, Im going to do a thorough review of his record before making any decisions, Murphy said.

Wray has bachelors and law degrees from Yale. He has solid Republican credentials, having served as a law clerk for appeals court Judge Michael Luttig, who is much revered in conservative legal circles.

Wray also headed the all-important criminal division of the Justice Department under former President George W. Bush. He oversaw the departments prosecution of Enron, the Texas energy trading firm that resulted in convictions for securities fraud and insider trading.

Wray also was an assistant U.S. attorney in Georgia. He currently is a partner at the Atlanta-based firm King & Spalding, and was New Jersey Gov. Chris Christies lawyer in the scandal involving an alleged politically motivated closure of lanes leading onto the George Washington Bridge. Christie was never charged in the case.

Blumenthal was loathe to even mention Liebermans name when asked to compare and contrast the veteran former senator to Wray.

I am not comparing Chris Wray to anyone else whose name was put forward, expect to say he has experience that would be invaluable as the future FBI director, Blunenthal said.

dan@hearstdc.com
Contributed / Contributed

People and Animals Working in Spirit (P.A.W.S.), Griffin Hospitals Pet Therapy Program, will host a meet-and-greet with the Connecticut Emergency Animal Response Service (EARS) from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, June 17 in the hospital parking lot, 130 Division St., Derby.

EARS is a team of volunteer first responders trained for rapid-response to all-hazard animal emergencies within Connecticut. The organization focuses on disaster response, emergency transport, technical rescue and training pet owners how to respond to an emergency.
HARTFORD  The debate over recreational marijuana for adults raged in the House for 90 minutes Tuesday afternoon into the evening, before it was pulled from a stage-managed debate.

Democratic House leaders allowed proponents the time to bring the issue to public discussion, as a possible first step toward joining the eight other states and the District of Columbia that allow adults to possess and smoke the flowers of the plant.

Coincidentally, a floor debate could increase the chances of the issue possibly becoming a long-shot part of the budget when the special session is called sometime before the end of the regular session at midnight Wednesday. Legalization is estimated to bring in $180 million in tax revenue by the second year of the biennial budget.

The bipartisan discussion brought together lawmakers from both the left and the Libertarian right in favor of the bill, which died earlier in the session in the Judiciary Committee and would have failed in the House, Democratic leaders said.

Rep. Juan Candelaria, D-New Haven, said the legalization would result in an overall savings for law enforcement, and a way to put many illegal drug dealers out of business. It will not be eliminated, but it will be reduced drastically, he said. I know its farfetched for us to pass this measure tonight, but this discussion should have happened three or four years ago. If we do nothing at all, we will continue to subsidize the drug dealers of our state.

Critics of the bill including Rep. Pam Staneski, R-Milford, said legalized cannabis would send the wrong message to children.

But Rep. Melissa Ziobron, R-East Haddam, a proponent of the bill, dispelled that argument. I do not believe marijuana is a gateway for opioid addiction, she aid. I believe alcohol is that gateway. The fact of the matter is that no one has died from the use of marijuana alone. This is about personal liberty. This is about a policy for our constituents.

kdixon@ctpost.com; Twitter: @KenDixonCT
MILFORD  Two men were arrested at the Connecticut Post Mall Tuesday following reports of the use of fraudulent credit cards at several stores.

Milford police investigated and it led to the arrest of Keyshaun Clark, 19, and Paul Latham, 21, according to a press release from Milford police.

Both men are New York residents, Clark from Jamaica and Latham from Queens.

Clark and Latham had multiple credit cards in their possession when police located them. Though the cards had their individuals names on them, the magnetic strips on the cards possessed information from other people, according to the press release.

The two face multiple charges, according to the press release.

Clark was charged with seven counts of credit card theft, criminal attempt of credit card theft, two counts of illegal use of credit cards and sixth-degree larceny.

And Clark also faces several conspiracy charges.

He was charged with seven counts of conspiracy to commit credit card theft, forth-degree conspiracy to commit criminal attempt of larceny, two counts of conspiracy to commit illegal use of credit cards and sixth-degree conspiracy to commit larceny.

Latham was charged with forth- and sixth-degree larceny, two counts of illegal use of credit cards, six counts of credit card theft and forth-degree criminal attempt at larceny.

And Latham faces a couple of conspiracy charges as well.

He was charged with six counts of forth-degree conspiracy to commit larceny and two counts of conspiracy to commit illegal use of credit cards.
Mention the name Bill Cosby and half the room will fondly remember the entertaining Dr. Huxtable on The Cosby Show, or even those tasty Jell-O Pudding Pops commercials. The other half will condemn Cosby as an accused rapist. Which is the real Bill Cosby? We may never know. What matters is the perception others have of him, based on what they have heard, read, seen or personally experienced.

Reputation is formed in the minds of the people we influence; they form judgments and perceptions of us based on their own understanding of who we are, what weve done, or what we stand for. Is this right? Thats debatable. But reputation is real in the minds of the people who perceive it. For instance, if I perceive you to be arrogant, out-of-touch with your customers and elusive, I may not want to buy your products, endorse your company brand or recommend your company to my friends. Even if your product and company are solid, if the consumers perception of you is negative or damaged, sales of your product and company can suffer.

Related: 6 Tools for Monitoring Your Online Reputation

Remember when United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz faced social media backlash for his perceived callous and insensitive response to a passenger forcibly removed from a flight because of overbooking? The act itself was damaging, but it was the CEOs behavior that is said to have fueled the deluge of anger, helping Uniteds stock drop $1.4 billion. It didn't help that apologies from United and its CEO Oscar Munoz were deemed tone deaf and insensitive by many on social media, Fortune reported.

In 2007, when it was revealed that Whole Foods CEO John Mackey used a pseudonym to contribute more than 1,100 entries on Yahoo Finances bulletin board campaigning for his companys stock and occasionally blasting a rival, fans of the Whole Foods brand began questioning the companys value if the CEO modeled such disingenuous behavior.

What happens when reputation is damaged?

When Uber CEO Travis Kalanicks argument with an Uber driver over fare prices was filmed and shared across the web, Kalanick felt the wrath of reputation damage: His online popularity and customers endorsement of his product (Uber) suffered from his negative behavior. The hashtag #boycottuber started spreading across social media channels. Consumers equated his negative and hurtful behavior with his company and protested.

When trust is fractured, followers will often distance themselves as quickly as advertisers dropped Bill OReilly on Fox. They want to move away from the brand and negative reputation so they are not associated with the individual or company and what has happened that they perceive to be hurtful.

Social media and social networking seem to fuel this distancing behavior. When our friends, colleagues, clients and influencers perceive a brand to be damaged or toxic, we rally behind the people we believe we can trust, and therefore will also want to distance ourselves from what they tell us is bad.

Related: This Company Accidentally Deleted Its Clients' Data. Here's How It Won Them Back.

Can you rehab your image after a scandal?

There are daily examples (e.g. Billy Bush, Tiger Woods, Kathy Griffin) in Hollywood and the business community where individuals make careless or thoughtless mistakes and find themselves with a damaged reputation. There are also examples of individuals who have successfully repaired and rehabilitated their brands.

Remember Martha Stewart? Stewart served five months in prison, five months under house arrest and two years of probation following a conviction for insider trading, only to emerge to reclaim her publishing and product empire. She maintained her innocence and never apologized for doing wrong. Why, then, did her audience not fully abandon her? In my opinion, Stewart had built a relatable brand that had enough positive context to override negative behavior. Consumers felt they knew her; she shared insights to help make them better wives, mothers and hostesses. In a sense, her audiences valued her recipes and decorating tips more than they cared how she operated her business. Her home decorating and cooking show suffered in ratings, and her name was downplayed somewhat on magazine covers, but her appeal and credibility helped her entice a $353-million sale of her company in 2015. Audiences -- primarily women -- wanted to see her prevail.

Related: Why Your Startup Needs to Protect Its Online Reputation From Day One

How and when should you respond?

To make the offense go away quickly, many people react by:

Issuing an insincere or forced apology

Overcompensating in either a negative or positive way

Donating money to an organization thta has a stellar reputation (assuming this will cleanse their own brand)

Creating a diversion

Hiding from view (hoping it all passes over)

In fact, there is no one-size-fits-all response to a reputation crisis. Reputation management professionals will counsel clients to consider the impact of the offense, timing of the response, goals/needs of the target audience, personal values and other external factors. Hopefully, they will also discuss whether the offense indicates a larger issue or condition that requires attention (e.g. rehab or counseling) as well.

Related: 3 Ways to Turn a Startup's Bad Professional Review Around

Timing matters.

When addressing a reputation crisis, responding quickly is not always the ideal response. In the case of Kalanick, he quickly tried to explain the situation, issued a blog expressing his regret over the incident and committed to improving his skills as a leader. Soon, he began showing a more contrite and relatable version of himself, appealing to followers who would understand that everyone makes mistakes, including him. Online audiences were skeptical, since his apology still appeared to be crafted and insincere. Over time, audiences will decide which is the true Kalanick -- the one who yelled at an Uber driver, or the human being who made a mistake.

In Munozs case, his quick response seemed to negatively reinforce his position that the incident was the passengers fault, and his condoning of the policy that permitted overbooking landed him in front of Congress to explain. In his case, responding quickly, the way he did, proved detrimental.

In some situations, Ill advise my clients to adopt a wait-and-see approach. For instance, if they are being criticized in the media for taking a stance on a personal issue they feel passionate about, I might advise they wait to see if their online tribes and followers rally to their defense. Having others vouch for your integrity, instead of reacting to defend your own name, can rehabilitate a damaged brand more effectively. Similarly, it might help to see if the swell of passion around what you said or did is, in fact, fleeting. By responding in a bold and public way, you might incite a negative story when the issue was dying down.

Related: How to Create a Polished CEO Presence Worthy of Mark Zuckerberg Without Hiring a Staff

Make your apology count.

The way you address or confront the incident matters a great deal. Issuing a sterile and formal apology through a family spokesperson or representative is not nearly as effective as when the offending individual looks his or her audience in the eyes and genuinely owns responsibility for what happened.

When Kathy Griffin addressed the outrage over the photograph of her holding a replica of a decapitated Donald Trump head, she did so in what appeared to be a rehearsed and scripted apology video. While her goal likely was to show authentic and relatable regret and apology (she didnt wear makeup in the apology video), her body language and choice of words made the message appear insincere, fueling further outrage.

An apology needs to be specific, sincere and repeated to make an impact. In business, legal limitations can make this challenging: boards of directors and other stakeholders have input into how we quickly and publicly accountability and apologies for mistakes or wrongdoings can be issued. This can slow down the reputation rehab process significantly.

When faced with a reputation crisis where they need to accept responsibility, I advise clients to apologize for their behavior and demonstrate confidence in their ability to make things right and overcome the negative impact of the challenge. It is important to avoid projecting arrogance at all costs. Instead, communicate a strong desire to regain trust and a willingness to do better in the future. Mistakes happen. While we cant change the past, we can promise to get help if we need it (e.g. rehab, counseling, advice), we can work to make things right and avoid repeating the offending behavior. Only when the last part is completed over time will trust be rebuilt. If your audiences see that you are getting help, are making amends, showing contrition (if warranted) and surrounding yourself with safeguards to avoid repeating the behavior, they will entertain believing in you again. The proof is in the actions.

Related:

Does Your Reputation Need Rehab?

How to Build Your Online Reputation

What First-Time Presidents and Entrepreneurs Have in Common



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The issue: Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, to his credit, has been pushing throughout his tenure for creation of a lockbox for transportation funds, a secure, inviolable depository as envisioned by the legislature in 1984, when it set up the states Special Transportation Fund. Legislators declared at the time  Democrat William A. ONeill was governor  their intention was to provide a dedicated fund for the financing of investment in the states transportation system and to cover the cost of operating the Department of Transportation and all the services it provides. Money for that fund comes from the proceeds of motor fuels tax, a tax on oil companies and a half-percent from the sales tax. The pile of money in the fund, though, has always proved too tempting to legislators and governors looking to borrow from Peter. Creating a true lockbox, though, requires a constitutional amendment.

Whats new: It is one refreshing note from the sandbox of Hartford, that the squabbling could ease for a moment and the House Tuesday, in bipartisan fashion, approved a resolution that would put a constitutional amendment vote on for a lockbox on the November ballot. Passage in November would ensure that money raised for transportation purposes can be spent only for transportation.
BRIDGEPORT - A local man who suffered a black eye and spent two days in jail was awarded $323,000 by a jury Wednesday on his police brutality claim.

The six-member jury deliberated for about seven hour over two days before finding that four city police officers had used excessive force when they arrested 31-year-old Anibal Diaz on May 26, 2013.

We asked the jury to send a message to the city of Bridgeport, and they did, said Diazs lawyer, Chris DeMarco. You just dont treat people this way, its very simple.

City Attorney R. Christopher Meyer called the award excessive and said his office plans to file a motion to reduce the verdict as well as other post-trial motions.

The jury awarded the plaintiff an exorbitant amount of money despite the fact that the plaintiff was coming at a police officer in an aggressive and threatening manner while swearing and disregarding the clear police commands, Meyer said.

He said a gun was found at the scene. Out of fear, reasonable force was used, Meyer added.

During the week-long trial before Superior Court Judge Michael Kamp, DeMarco said he presented evidence that Diaz, his brother and a cousin were sitting on the front porch of their Laurel Avenue home drinking beer at about 10:30 p.m. when officers Paul Cari, Matthew Goncalves, Omar Jimenez and Christopher Zaleta pulled up in front of the house.

DeMarco said the officers, who were responding to a call of two men with a gun, drew their guns as they got out of their cars and demanded that Diaz and the other two men not move.

He said without provocation, the officers Tased Diaz and then grabbed him. At one point one of the officers hit Diaz in the left eye, DeMarco said.

Diaz was subsequently charged with two counts of assault on a police officer, interfering with police and breach of peace. DeMarco said his client was held in jail for two days before he was able to post the bond.

Diazs criminal case attorney, Thomas Cocco, said the case sat in the Golden Hill Street courthouse for 18 months before a state prosecutor on the eve of trial dropped the charges against Diaz.

Mr. Diaz suffered emotional distress as a result of being charged, DeMarco said.
Frank Lloyd Wright's Cooke House in Virginia is unique for a number of reasons, one being that it wasn't built until two weeks after Wright's death in 1959.

According to toptenrealestatedeals.com, Andrew and Maude Cooke had been asking Wright to design their dream home since 1951. Finally in 1957, Wright sent them completed plans that would be put in motion two years later.
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STORY LINK GBP to AUD Exchange Rate Tumbles on Impressive Australian Growth Data

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Despite investors generally confident in a majority win for the Conservative party in Thursdays UK general election, uncertainty remains and this has allowed the Australian Dollar to easily push the Pound down this week.Due to strong Australian data and an optimistic RBA, the GBP/AUD exchange rate had fallen from around 1.7322 to a low of 1.7068 by Wednesday. This was the pairs lowest level since April.The Pounds losses have been limited this week as investors continue to bet that the Conservative party will win a comfortable majority in Thursdays UK general election.A Conservative majority would be Pound positive, as investors expect a strong public mandate to help give the government more breathing room in Brexit negotiations over the next two years.However, despite this confidence polls continue to have highly varied results. Some show the Conservatives with a strong 11-point lead over the opposition Labour party, while others have them just one point ahead.In the event the polls projecting a tighter race are the more accurate ones, this could lead to a hung parliament  an event in which no party has won enough seats to form a majority government.The possibility of this outcome has risen in recent weeks as the Conservatives polling figures drop and Labours popularity rises. In a race that previously had very little uncertainty, the sudden rise of a Pound-negative possibility has prevented Sterling from holding its ground over the last week.A major part of GBP/AUDs drops has been a surge in Australian Dollar demand however.Wednesday saw the publication of Australias Q1 Gross Domestic Product (GDP) results, which beat expectations, even amid some concerns that they could print a surprise contraction.Analysts forecast Australian growth would slow to 0.2% quarter-on-quarter and to 1.5% year-on-year. The figures came in at 0.3 and 1.7% respectively, impressing traders.This also meant Australia had recorded 103 successive quarters of growth  a new global record.The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) stated earlier in the week that even with quarterly variations, the bank still forecasts Australian growth to reach just above 3% over the next two years or so.However, some analysts remain concerned that underlying weakness could persist following the slowdown in Q1. Some analysts have also argued that the RBA may not want to tighten Australian monetary policy until 2019.Overall though, the Australian Dollar has enjoyed one of its best weeks in a while due to this growth news.The Pound to Australian Dollar exchange rate could change course on Thursday though, following the results of the UK general election. A big Conservative majority would see GBP/AUD rise, while the pair could extend its lows in the event of a hung parliament.

International Money Transfer? Ask our resident FX expert a money transfer question or try John's new, free, no-obligation personal service! ,where he helps every step of the way, ensuring you get the best exchange rates on your currency requirements.

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Nearly 80 PA people have been charged for Jan. 6 riot. Three are dead.

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The Pony Express only ran for a single year before telegraph lines and transcontinental railroads made it obsolete, but the ideals it representsthe rugged American spirit and the pioneering fortitude that tamed the Wild Westhave ingrained it into American culture.

From April 1860 until October of 1861, the Pony Express route brought letters from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California in just 10 days, an impressive feat in its time. Crossing the prairies, the vast deserts and snowy mountain peaks of the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada mountain range, young men carried the mail across the western half of the United States. This week, the Pony Express rides again.

Its called the Pony Express Re-Ride, and it ran through Jefferson County on Tuesday afternoon as it snaked across the western United States. Starting in St. Joseph on Monday and making its way to Sacramento on June 15, riders entered Nebraska in Steele City, making their way to Rock Creek Station by early afternoon on their way through the state.

Riders carried a mochila, a leather pouch that was swapped between riders, full of about 1,000 letters, which cost $5 to send on the 10-day journey. Pony Express re-rides have been happening since 1981, 35 years longer than the original Pony Express. The re-rides attract riders from across the country.

Kayden Grammers horse Magic crested the ridge overlooking Rock Creek Station at about 2:15 p.m. on Tuesday. His dad, Travis Grammer and younger brother, Tanner, followed behind. The skies were turning gray as they galloped toward the log and stone buildings at Rock Creekwhere Wild Bill Hickok famously shot David McCanles and his associates in 1861.

Kara Riggle, 21, was waiting for them.

Kayden swapped the mochila onto Riggles horse and signed it just before her horse cantered up the hill, past the deep ruts left by the prairie schooners of homesteaders more than 150 years ago.

Shed only be riding about two and a half miles before swapping the mochila with the next rider, but its not about the distance she rode, she said, its about tradition.

Im fourth generation Pony Express rider, Riggle said. I followed my dad along since I was about five years old.

There are about 700 riders waiting along the trail, said Dean Atkin, president of the National Pony Express Association, who was at Rock Creek to watch the hand-off. A regular rider along the route himself, Atkin said hes ridden in Kansas and once in Wyoming, even though he lives in Tooele, Utah.

The trek stretches between eight states, he said, mirroring the original route as closely as possible. Most riders only travel about two to four miles each, Atkin said, though Nevada riders often travel eight to ten miles due to the inaccessibility to the trail.

Angela Smith brought a summer class of kids from Rosemont Daycare in Lincoln down to Rock Creek Station. The kids were excited about the horses and the hiking theyd be doing after watching the swap, but it was really about the learning experience that brought them down Tuesday.

Were studying Nebraska history this summer, Smith said. We really wanted to come to see this reenactment, its a great way to learn about Nebraska 150.

Atkin has been traveling with the riders since it left St. Joseph on Monday and plans to stay with it until Sacramento. While the ride itself is a lot of fun, he said, his biggest joy is seeing the crowds of history enthusiasts.

People like Smith and her class are exactly the people he likes to see on the trail.

Its like a piece of candy in a Brussels sprout, Atkin said. You get them in with action and horses and theyll stay for the history. Its that candy that gets them in.
Ronnie Corbett, pictured, died aged 85 last year. He will be remembered today at a Westminster Abbey thanksgiving service

Fourteen months after his death, aged 85, Ronnie Corbett will be remembered at a Westminster Abbey service of thanksgiving today.

Will four candles be lit? At the Abbey service for his co-star, Ronnie Barker, who died in 2005, aged 76, reference was made to their famous joke in which customer Barker tries to buy fork handles from shopkeeper Corbett, who thinks he has said four candles.

When (if?) John Cleese, 77, has his Abbey thanksgiving service, will they reprise his dead parrot sketch?

Former royal butler Paul Burrell, 59, is to share his inner demons on a Channel 5 celebrity counselling show, In Therapy.

Burrell, married recently to lawyer Graham Cooper, says he still feels Dianas presence and suppressed my sexuality while in palace service.

Oh dear, hasnt Paul delighted us enough?

Helicopter Harry And The Copter Kids features Harrys pilot girlfriend, Carlita - based on Harrys real companion US actress Meghan Markle, pictured

Prince Harry is immortalised in a new American childrens book as a superhero who uses hidden rotors in his hands to fly.

Helicopter Harry And The Copter Kids, by Jon W Faust, also features Harrys pilot girlfriend, Carlita, who is based on Harrys real companion, US actress Meghan Markle.

Faust says: Carlita was created several years prior to Prince Harry meeting Meghan Markle.

Neither was he influenced by the ex-Duchess of Yorks successful Budgie The Little Helicopter series, I am sure.

Character actor Peter Sallis, who died on Friday aged 96, was told by the Queen in 2007, when he collected his OBE, that she liked his show, Last Of The Summer Wine.

HM, he mentioned afterwards, also said that she had enjoyed Waiting For Godot  the absurdist play by Samuel Beckett.

A palace source says: The monarch almost certainly meant Waiting For God, the TV sitcom about an old folks home.

The title of an upcoming, laudatory film documentary about preening Left-wing Labour MP Dennis Skinner, 85, The Nature Of The Beast, salutes his nickname, The Beast Of Bolsover.

But this was updated in 1994 to The Beast Of Legover by the News Of The World when they revealed how hed separated from the mother of his three children, Mary, and had set up home with his US-born researcher, Lois Blasenheim, now 70.

It is said 18,000 was raised by crowd-funding to make this film. Couldnt more have been raised NOT to make it?

Meerkat-like Newsnight presenter Evan Davis, 55, who says the BBC ignores complaints about political bias, remains a favourite with Corporation chiefs.

Sadly he has failed to revive the fortunes of the easy-to-ignore show, which once had over a million viewers but just 606,000 when he succeeded Jeremy Mad Dog Paxman in 2014.

Now its likely to be below 500,000,

David Camerons ex-director of strategy, Steve Hilton, 47, blames Theresa May for the London terror attack and demands her resignation.

Apparently Cameron referred to Hilton  who padded around No 10 in his bare feet, as befits a guru  as his little Hungarian fascist.
The Kmart store in Sheridan, Wyoming, will close in early September, the second big retailer to leave town this year, a parent company spokesman confirmed Wednesday.

The store on the southeast corner of Exit 20 on Interstate 90 will begin its liquidation sale June 15, Howard Riefs, a spokesman for Sears Holdings, wrote in an email.

We have been strategically and aggressively evaluating our store space and productivity, and have accelerated the closing of unprofitable stores as previously announced, Riefs said.

The Sheridan store is among a list of 49 Kmart stores, 16 Sears stores and seven auto centers nationwide identified by Business Insider Tuesday for closure. The 72 new closures are in addition to the 180 store closures nationwide announced earlier this year for the company.

For Sheridan, a two-hour drive from Billings on the northern edge of Wyoming, the loss of Kmart adds to the pain of J.C. Penneys March announcement that its closing its downtown store.

Both retailers, in separate announcements, blamed sluggish holiday sales and struggles to compete with rising online retail.

Sears, which bought out Kmart in 2005, has been particularly aggressive in shuttering stores. Last year, the company closed its 47-year-old store at 2424 Central Ave. in Billings. A Sears store still operates in Billings in West Park Promenade.

This latest round of closures will bring the number of Sears, Kmart and auto center stores to 1,200 nationwide, down from 2,073 five years ago, according to Business Insider.

Riefs declined to release the number of jobs that will be cut in Sheridan. Eligible employees will receive severance and can apply for open positions in other stores, he said.

Hoffman Estates, Illinois-based Sears reported a $244 million profit for the first three months of the year. Total revenue was down about 17 percent year-over-year to $4.3 billion, largely because of previous store closures, the company reported in an earnings statement.
A mother-of-two has revealed how her long-awaited family holiday was ruined when she was bumped off an overbooked flight at the last minute.

Teacher Iona Delgado, 42, had been due to fly from Cardiff to Alicante with her husband Andres, 43, and their two children, Luis, 10, and Cristina, nine, for the half-term break on 28 May.

But when the family arrived to check-in with Spanish no-frills airline Vueling, they were told one of them would not be able to travel as there were not enough seats.

After being placed on stand-by, Mrs Delgado was eventually told at the gate that she could not board, leaving her husband and children to fly on to Spain without her.

In an exclusive interview with FEMAIL, Mrs Delgado said: 'I was bawling my eyes out, the kids were bawling their eyes out and I had to wave them off and they got on the plane.'

In another blow, her child's suitcase was unloaded from the flight instead of her own - leaving her alone at the airport with just 'jelly shoes and a fidget spinner'.

Distraught: Iona Delgado, 42, said her holiday was 'ruined' by Vueling. Pictured, Iona with her husband Andres and their children, Luis, 10, and Cristina, nine, after she arrived in Alicante

The mother-of-two, who lives in Pencoed, near Bridgend, Wales, was later put on a flight to Amsterdam where she stayed the night before flying to Alicante the following day.

Posting on Facebook, Mrs Delgado wrote: 'Thanks to your overbooking policy, my family holiday that has been booked for six months and I've been looking forward to for the best part of a year and a half, has been ruined.'

The mother-of-two has now spoken out in the hope of warning other passengers - and saving them from a similar situation.

Speaking from the resort in Alicante, Mrs Delgado explained how her family had booked the trip to spend time with her husband's family, who live in Spain, splashing out some 790 on the return flights.

It was only when the family arrived at Cardiff Airport that they were made aware there might be a problem with their journey, Mrs Delgado claimed.

'We turned up at the airport, we weren't the last ones, we left plenty of time, and they said: "Only three of you will be flying today. Only three of you can go. There are only enough seats for three of you".'

Bumped off: Iona, pictured in Alicante with her family this week, was told at the gate that she could not board the plane and would instead be flown to spend the night in Amsterdam

Outraged: The teacher and mother-of-two took to Facebook to blast Vueling, revealing how she was left without any of her belongings after staff removed the wrong suitcase

The airline had initially selected Mr Delgado to be moved from the flight but as the hire car and insurance in Alicante was under his name, the couple decided Mrs Delgado would be placed on the standby list instead.

Mrs Delgado was told that if another passenger did not turn up she would be able to take their seat, otherwise she would be forced to take a later flight to Amsterdam before transferring to Alicante the following day as there were no flights leaving from Cardiff.

'I was in absolute floods of tears,' she said. 'The kids were really upset. There were a few other people who were in the same position. There was a lady there by herself who really didn't know what was going on.'

I was in absolute just floods of tears. The kids were really upset. There were a few other people who were in the same position. There was a lady there by herself who really didn't know what was going on Iona Delgado

She added: 'Even the pilot was stood there and he looked really sorry.'

When she found out she would not be flying, Mrs Delgado was taken to retrieve her suitcase ahead of the flight to Amsterdam.

But Mrs Delgado claims she was given her daughter's luggage instead.

Posting on Facebook, she wrote: 'The wrong suitcase was marked, leaving me with jelly shoes size 1, lots of kids' summer clothes and a fidget spinner.'

Armed with her daughter's suitcase, Mrs Delgado boarded the KLM flight to Amsterdam, arriving around the same time her family was touching down in Spain.

There, Mrs Delgado claimed she was greeted by a member of staff who had not been made aware of the situation, as the Vueling staff had promised, and tried to send her and the other bumped passengers - including an elderly woman - to a hotel 60 miles away before eventually finding rooms closer to the airport.

Meanwhile her husband and children were in Spain, uncertain of when she would be arriving. Mrs Delgado said: 'They were wanting to ring mum, they were asking if I was alright, they wanted to buy me a present.'

Speaking out: Mrs Delgado hopes by sharing her experience she will be able to save other passengers from being put through a similar ordeal by Vueling. File image

A similar problem greeted Mrs Delgado when she finally touched down in Alicante on the afternoon of 29 May, some 24 hours after her original flight landed.

She claimed she had been told by Vueling staff that there would be a credit card pre-loaded with her compensation money ready to be collected at the airport, however this was not the case.

The airline also reportedly did not organise a transfer to take Mrs Delgado from the airport to the resort, some 1.5 hours drive away.

She said she later phoned a customer service representative to ask whether Vueling will cover the cost of her 120 euro (105) taxi fare and the money she spent on essentials for her overnight stay. In response she was told to submit receipts for consideration.

Speaking from the beach, Mrs Delgado said: 'I could spend time taking photos of receipts and emailing but they have already wasted enough of my holiday already.'

Her hope is that by drawing attention to the issue, Mrs Delgado could help discourage the airline from treating others in a similar fashion.

She added: 'Maybe they would think twice about doing it to someone else in the future.'

Vueling claimed it has since paid Mrs Delgado 250 euros compensation for the flight and 150 euros for her expenses. The airline explained this is the maximum coverage it offers, although Mrs Delgado's expenses totalled 180 euros.

A representative for Vueling said: 'We always want to ensure that customers travelling with Vueling have an enjoyable experience.

'We take customer complaints very seriously and our customer services team is currently looking into the matter at hand.'
A mother-of-three from the Sunshine Coast who took a top spot at the 'Oscars of the cookbook world' has shared the simple recipe for pulled pork burgers that helped get her there.

Kim McCosker, 47, is known for her 4 Ingredients cookbook and took out the title of Best Selling Author/Brand at the 2017 Gourmand World Cookbook Awards.

'I felt like a small fish in a large pond but I won the award against seven other short-listed authors from around the world, including Jamie Oliver and Dr Deepak Chopra, which is incredibly exciting,' she told FEMAIL.

Kim McCosker (right) is the author of the book 4 Ingredients cookbook and took out top honours at the 'Oscars of the cookbook world' for her book The Easiest Slow Cooker Ever

Her book The Easiest Slow Cooker Ever is the book that helped her take away the prestigious award, and Ms McCosker said her pulled pork recipe was one of her favourites.

'The pulled pork is perfect for this time of year now that we are getting into the colder months. I cannot urge you enough to start pulling pork!' she said.

The pork shoulder is one of her secret weapons in the kitchen but she warns that to cook it into 'heavenly succulence' takes time.

Ms McCosker and her team were the only Australian finalists and is privileged and proud to have won.

'It's impressive because we're from a small country where there is small market. It was really surprising to win but fantastic too,' she said.

She beat Jamie Oliver's 'Superfood Family Classics' and Dr Deepak Chopra's 'Radical Beauty'.

'The pulled pork is perfect for this time of year now that we get into the colder months. I cannot urge you enough to start pulling pork,' she said

Pulled Pork Burgers INGREDIENTS 2kg boneless pork shoulder, remove the outer layer of fat and discard 2/3 cup apple cider vinegar 1 - 1.5 cups Vintage Smokehouse BBQ Sauce (it's a McCormick's brand) METHOD 1. Place the pork into the slot cooker and add the ACV. 2. Cover and cook on LOW for 8 hours. 3. Drain 95% of the liquid, and using two forks, shred the meat, pulling it apart (it reminds me of fairy-floss that's how easily it shreds) 4. Stir the BBQ sauce through the meat. 5. Pile it onto freshly baked Tiger rolls with your family's favourite coleslaw. RECIPE EXTRACT: From The Easiest Slow Cooker Book Ever Advertisement

'The experience was amazing and the category we were in was one of the biggest categories.'

Every year the awards honour the best food and wine books as well as food television. A different region is picked from around the world to host the event and this year the Yantai, China's burgeoning wine region, was chosen.

The category she won in is scrutinised by the food world because the minimum requirement to even be considered is sales of three million books.

'We were the only self published author amongst them which is hard to do let alone with a publisher,' she explained.

Although Ms McCosker felt like a small fish in a large pond she won the award against seven other short-listed authors

Ms McCosker beat Jamie Oliver for the revered award

'I believe success can be linked to if you write with love and good intention - I believe food is a language that binds us all. I'm very passionate about food, it spreads peace and love and joy'.

Ms McCosker says that her book that won the award, Easiest Slow Cooker Book Ever, is designed to keep up with our busy lifestyles.

'You can throw a few ingredients together in the morning and start it cooking then you can go about your day, pick up the kids from school and then come home and take it out of the oven'.

Although this cookbook has a few more ingredients than the 4 Ingredients recipes she says so many homes already have access to most of the ingredients.

Ms McCosker says that her book that won the award, Easiest Slow Cooker Book Ever, is designed to keep up with our busy lifestyles

'It's so easy which is why people have responded so positively. The whole world is busy which is why this cook book helps with your day to day,' she explained.

The book that started it all was Ms McCosker's self-funded book titled 4 Ingredients. From the success of this book she was able to start her own publishing house with the same name.

'I put the books at the bottom of my pram and took my two sons with me as I took my books door to door. I sold 200 at the beginning.

'I had no distribution plan and no money for PR and marketing. From humble beginnings 4 Ingredients sprung'.

The book that started it all was Ms McCosker's self-funded book titled 4 Ingredients

She now has one of Australia's fastest-growing digital footprints and her books are sold in 26 countries and printed in six languages.

'I now have a publishing house and have written 30 books in ten years. I just had a good idea - the difference between dreams and reality is action'.

This all being said, Ms McCosker says that she doesn't take any of her success for granted and she still works hard for her sales, possibly even harder.

'I have a good conversation with my social community - if you take the time to ask what might help your audience create meals, they'll tell you. Invite them to be a part of it. I try to include as many people as i can in the discussion'.
The rise of clean eating has been a boon for health stores, as consumers clamour to snap up formerly niche items like chia seeds and dried fruits.

But though newly virtuous shoppers now flock to Holland & Barrett to stock up on health foods, a TV investigation has found they could just as easily pick up the same items at their local supermarket - and sometimes for less than half the price.

Supershoppers has suggested customers are over-paying for supplements from the specialist store, pointing to a pot of 100 Omega 3 fish oil capsules that cost 10.99 at Holland & Barrett, and a tub of 90 at Asda that cost just 3.50.

Holland & Barrett has become extremely popular with shoppers on a quest to keep themselves healthy and fit

Omega-3 fish oil at Holland & Barrett is 10.99 for 100 capsules, which taken three times a day as advised could add up to a spend of 120 a year. Asda's Omega-3 tablets are 3.50 for 90, and the packet recommends taking one per day, at an annual cost of 14.19

The Channel 4 show explores consumer spending habits, as well as examining the bargains and offers that retailers display to assess whether they really do represent good value for money.

On Tuesday's show Anna Richardson compared products at Holland & Barrett to the same or similar versions at leading supermarkets like ASDA, Sainsbury's and Morrisons.

She found omega-3 fish oil capsules available at ASDA for significantly less than at Holland & Barrett - despite the fact there is no difference in the ingredients.

The team also rounded up chia seeds, effervescent vitamin C tablets and dried apricots from supermarkets at lower prices than at the health store.

Holland & Barrett has said that because it is the manufacturer it can 'cut out the middle man' to keep prices low - but they also recommend higher doses of many supplements - driving up customers' spend.

THE SUPERSHOPPERS PRICE COMPARISON... Holland & Barrett Omega-3 Fish Oil capsules 1,000mg, 10.99 for 100 The instructions also say to take three a day - which takes the cost of a year's supply to 120. Holland & Barrett Chia Seeds 200g, 4.49 (reduced from 5.99) Holland & Barrett Vitamin C Effervescent tablets: 2.79 for 20 Holland & Barrett Dried Apricots, 400g: 6.99 (3.49 on a buy one get one free offer) ASDA Omega-3 Fish Oil capsules 1,000mg, 3.50 for 90 The instructions say to take just one capsule a day, bringing the cost of an annual supply to 14.19 Sainsbury's Chia Seeds 100g, 1 Buying two bags to get the same amount of seeds was still significantly cheaper at Sainsbury's Sainsbury's Vitamin C Effervescent tablets: 1 for 20 Morrisons Dried Apricots, 500g: 2.98 Advertisement

They advise taking three times as many Omega-3 fish oils - which could under their recommendation cost up to 120 a year - twice as many B Vitamins, and three times as much Evening Primrose Oil per day as leading supermarkets, according to Supershoppers.

There is nothing wrong with Holland & Barrett's recommended doses - supplements all fall under the category of food - not medicine - when it comes to regulation.

Neal Patel who works for the Royal Pharmaceutical Society explained: 'Supplements are regulated the same way as food industry, products dont have to have accurate doses in the same way medicine does.

'With food supplements its about making sure we take a dose that is safe, but were not actually taking a dose to treat a particular condition.

'There may be a high range or low range but as long as the manufacturer is within that, it is safe.'

Anna Richardson and Andu Osho looks at consumer shopping habits and how retailers price their products to lure people in

A spokesperson for Holland & Barrett defended the price difference, and insisted that their products are of higher quality than those found on supermarket shelves.

'As a specialist provider, all of our products are manufactured to the highest quality and there are many cases in which the standards of our supplements far exceed supermarket versions, such as our Vitamin E supplements which are produced from natural sources while many supermarket versions are actually synthetic,' they said in a statement.

'Our promotions ensure customers can regularly access our high-quality supplements at low prices, while benefiting from advice given by our trained associates who hold the equivalent of an A-level in nutrition.'

Supershoppers airs Tuesdays on Channel 4 at 8.30pm
Do you have a penchant for a bad boy?

The frisson of excitement that comes with dating an unpredictable charmer isn't worth the inevitable heartache that comes along with it, according to sex and relationships expert Tracey Cox.

She points out that so-called 'nice guys' are actually better in bed than their roguish counterparts - and research backs up her claim that the man who is kind to his mum and volunteers in his spare time will out-perform the hot barista who never calls before 11pm.

Here, Tracey tells Femail why women would be wise to opt for 'nice' over 'bad', and why your libido - as well as your friends, family and bank balance - will thank you for it.

Relationship expert Tracey Cox has revealed the reasons why women are no longer going for men who play hard to get

Finally  research reveals what most sane women already know: nice guys get laid more often than bad boys.

A recent UK study found people who help others are more desirable to the opposite sex, have more sexual partners and more frequent sex.

The study, published in the British Journal of Psychology, asked 800 people about their personality type and their sexual history to see if there was a correlation between the two.

Exploding the 'treat them mean, keep them keen' myth, researchers found selfish people scored poorly when it came to love and sex.

People who are altruistic - likely to do things like charity work, give blood, help others  had much more success with both sex and love.

'Bad' people are fabulous if you're looking for a holiday romance or quick sex fling, or want to try out a totally 'out there' sex fantasy without being judged for it.

But who in their right mind would actively seek out a 'bad boy' (the clue's in the name) for a serious relationship unless you have desperately low self-esteem, a 'victim' mentality, or some serious issues going on?

Tracey says that 'nice guys' will be there for you through thick and thin where as 'bad guys' will bolt when things get tough

Here's just a few reasons why nice men are both nicer and sexier  and always have been.

Nice men like sex just as much as bad boys

Just because he's nice, doesn't mean he's a saint.

A US study of 500 college students found people who were rated as 'nice' had more marital sex, long-term relationship sex AND casual sex.

Asked to answer if they'd give all or part of a lottery win to charity, those who said yes had much more sex than those who said they'd keep it themselves.

Nice doesn't mean weak

The stereotype that nice equals weak is false.

Studies show nice people are not necessarily less assertive or competitive than 'difficult' people.

Psychologists define nice people as those who score high on a personality trait called agreeableness - your over-riding concern is having happy, positive relationships with other people.

Studies show agreeable people stay married longer, are more intimate in their marriages, have better relationships with their kids and - not surprisingly - are more satisfied with their lives overall.

Case closed for any female who has even a hint of intelligence and self-esteem.

Nice guys aren't boring

Don't mistake drama for love. Rollercoaster highs and lows aren't passion, they're a sign of incompatibility.

Calm is good.

Look at how it ended for poor old Cathy with Heathcliff.

Nice men are confident - not cocky

There's a huge difference.

Arrogant men consider themselves better than you and treat you accordingly.

Nice men are liked because they're nice, so their confidence gets built for all the right reasons.

Most importantly Tracey says that a good guy will make you feel great

Think Obama and Trump: strong but understated is a hell of a lot sexier than brash and show off.

Nice men aren't just funny, they find you funny as well

Research did (sadly) prove that men find women who find them funny more attractive than funny women.

This reeks of self-doubt to me  and likely any other woman who's cracked a joke and had their partner laugh appreciatively.

The nicer the guy, the more comfortable he is with women being 'better' than him - and the more fun you'll have together.

Nice men are available

The very definition of a nice guy is that he's not duplicitous and is emotionally available: if he says he's single, he is single.

When bad guys say, 'There's no-one special', they're not lying.

Their wife/girlfriend/girls they see whenever they fancy a bit aren't treated like they're special in the slightest.

Why would you want to add your name to the list?

Nice men stick around when the going gets tough

Bad men don't like commitment and that doesn't just mean shying away from 'serious' relationships (you dare to ask if they want to do something tomorrow) or marriage and kids, it means not being able to commit to anything at all.

Like pick you up from work when you're too sick to catch the tube or actually turn up when you've organized for him to meet your girlfriends, or be your plus one at that all-important wedding of an ex.

Nice guys don't ask for endless favours

Like loaning them cash, letting them crash 'for a night' without paying rent, borrowing your car, your credit card, your suitcase  anything at all that's of value.

Nice men aren't usually in a horrible financial mess and 'between' jobs. Bad guys are rarely in any other situation.

They also frequently have drug or alcohol problems, draining both your bank account, patience and sanity.

Nice men make you feel great

They're where they're supposed to be, ring when they say they will, don't let you down when you need them and are gloriously reliable and predictable.

Bad men are the opposite.

They're never where they say they'd be, they're never on time and they never deliver no matter how many times they say they'll change.

This leaves you feeling jumpy, irritable and sleep deprived.

You get spots, put on or lose weight (whichever isn't helpful), have permanent bad hair days, pick up anything that's going around and start to annoy friends and family by letting someone get to you like this.

Work colleagues start to lose respect when you stop pulling your weight  again - after the third up-all-night argument or fitful sleep waiting for a phone call that never comes.

Your mum's worried sick and your friends have all but given up on you.

Even the hot sex loses its appeal when you develop the (inevitable) symptom of an STI or are so tired and fed up with the guy you can't muster up the energy.

It's around now that it occurs to you that this man isn't an adventurous, world-travelling sex god who sticks his nose up at authority. He's actually a self-obsessed, narcissistic idiot who can't hold down a job or a relationship.

Aren't I glad I never did go for the bad boy  and am about to marry one of the nicest men on the planet!

Find new additions to Tracey's product range at lovehoney.com
Mummy blogger Constance Hall has announced she is making a foray into fashion - launching her own range of skirts for women with 'mumtums'.

The popular blogger made the announcement on Tuesday - the same day fellow blogger Sophie Cachia, known as The Young Mummy, launched her own online clothing store.

'Biggest announcement in a long time Queeeeeens!!!!' Constance wrote on Facebook.

Mummy blogger Constance Hall has announced she is launching her own range of skirts for women with 'mumtums' (she is pictured in the first skirt she created)

'I find it really hard to buy clothes that fit my weird little body,' the mummy blogger previously said

'Remember like a year ago when I posted a pic of me in a skirt that I actually made coz I was sick of thin waste bands giving me a tire of tummy in all my tops????

'And you were all like "I want one!!!!"

'Well it's literally taken me this long to get my s**t together but this Thurs I am launching the range of#mumtum skirts!!! Here is a sneak peak of me looking borderline whimsical/lost in the forest!!!!! So freaking excited!!! Stay tuned this Thurs!!!'

The skirt in question was one she created in September 2016.

'I find it really hard to buy clothes that fit my weird little body. So I made the ultimate anti muffin top skirt and I'm pretty much only wearing midriffs from now on,' she wrote at the time.

'I made the ultimate anti muffin top skirt and I'm pretty much only wearing midriffs from now,' she wrote alongside this image on Instagram

Constance (pictured) isn't the only mummy blogger to make a foray into fashion - with popular blogger The Young Mummy also announcing her own clothing store

She later had a sample skirt sent to her and declared 'I love it!... It covers up the right spots and brings out the right spots!'

Constance isn't the only blogger who is turning their hand to fashion.

On the same day she made her announcement, fellow blogger Sophie Cachia, 26, from Melbourne - who goes by the name The Young Mummy - announced she had launched her own online clothing store.

'The idea behind CACHIA stems from my mix'n'match bold fashion choices, as well as it being the epitome of my chaotic and (at times) very random lifestyle,' Ms Cachia posted on the new 'About' section of her website.

The Young Mummy blogger, Sophie Cachia (pictured), has launched an online clothing store

'The idea behind CACHIA stems from my mix'n'match bold fashion choices, as well as it being the epitome of my chaotic and (at times) very random lifestyle,' Ms Cachia posted

The 26-year-old from Melbourne is famous for her no-holds-barred approach to motherhood - she shares every aspect of her life

The new site (pictured) will offer both women's and children's clothing

'CACHIA will simply be random products that I love,' she added.

At present, Ms Cachia is retailing a simple statement T-shirt, with the phrase: '#beYOU'.

The tee is currently selling for AUD $59, following feedback from her followers after it was initially priced at $69.

'After releasing to our members already this morning, we're taking on board the feedback - both good & bad - and have reduced the price for you,' Ms Cachia wrote on Tuesday evening.

'That's how much I listen,' she added.

'CACHIA will simply be random products that I love,' Ms Cachia posted (pictured with her husband, Jaryd)

In January, Ms Cachia live-streamed her labour on the Internet (pictured with her son)

The CACHIA Instagram page has already picked up close to 40,000 followers inside 12 hours, with plenty of her followers taking to social media to comment on the blogger's new venture

The blogger also shared that a kids range, Bobby + Floss, named after her two children Bobby and Florence, will come soon:

'The Bobby + Floss brand will sit under our gigantic-super-sick umbrella that CACHIA is. This kids range is especially designed and curated for your delightful (and at times not so) little beings,' she wrote.

The CACHIA Instagram page has already picked up close to 40,000 followers inside 12 hours, with plenty of her followers taking to social media to comment on the blogger's new venture.

'This is your dream no one else's. You should be proud of yourself! I admire your determination,' one person posted.

Another commented, however, that she was disappointed that the debut T-shirt is only being sold up to a size AU 16.

'This is your dream no one else's. You should be proud of yourself! I admire your determination,' one person posted

Another commented, however, that they were disappointed that the debut T-shirt is only being sold up to a size AU 16

Pictured: The Young Mummy streaming her labour

Ms Cachia is famously no-holds-barred and open in her approach to blogging and sharing aspects of her life.

At the beginning of this year, she made headlines for live-streaming her labour with baby Florence.

'CACHIA is just another way I'm opening my life to people who have supported me for so long,' she posted on the CACHIA site.

For more information about CACHIA, click here.
When Victoria Beckham snapped herself using a treadmill desk long before anyone else, she seemingly did wonders for the idea of walking while you work.

The unique desks, which retail at between 2,000 to 3,000, let employees stroll miles while distracted by their email inbox and are being hailed as the latest way to combat the sedentary nature of a desk job.

Across the pond in the US, fitness fans are fully embracing the concept, with Hearst editor and star of So Cosmo reality show Joanna Coles posting frequently about her beloved office equipment.

Scroll down for video

Front runner! Victoria Beckham was one of the first celebrities to walk - in towering heels - while she walked - and now the trend for treadmill desks are taking off

Joanna Coles, Hearst editor and So Cosmo reality star regularly posts images of herself 'multi-tasking' on social media, usually wearing designer clothes

The hot-shot editor can't hide her love of her machine and usually graces it wearing gravity-defying shoes

Walk this way: Coles doesn't compromise on her footwear when she's striding forth on her treadmill desk

Last year, the high-flying New York-based editor posted a picture of herself on social media walking and working while wearing black heels and a designer dress ahead of Fashion Week in the Big Apple.

She captioned the image: 'Party in the back of my new @givenchyofficial dress... Prepping for #NYFW #realeditorslife'.

Another similar post reads: 'Back to school... Trying out new moves and my new @ysl shoes on my treadmill...'

While Posh has thus far posted just one snap of herself on her office treadmill, she was clearly impressed by the experience.

The 43-year-old pop star-turned-designer wrote: 'Every office should have one of these, work out and work at the same time!! Genius!! X vb.'

Fashion designers and magazines are fast installing the new desks and best-selling authors, often working in their own homes, are also loving them.

A machine like Coles costs around 3,000 with some 50,000 desks sold last year in the US

British novelist Carys Bray, who penned bestseller A Song for Issey, has spoken of her love for hers, saying she produces her best work 'at a treadmill desk in my lounge.'

British supplier Treadmill Desk Store says sales of the health-focused equipment are thriving - especially with forward-thinking companies who want to increase happiness in the workplace - as more people take them seriously.

John Thurgood, of the company, explains: 'At first some people think the machines are an April Fool's joke or a torture device that involves running.

Authors, including Skye Gray (her desk pictured above) and Carys Bray, are also snapping up the unique office equipment in a bid to exercise while typing

'However, as soon as they learn it is a piece of office furniture where you can take a gentle stroll whilst working their view changes.'

Thurgood says around 50,000 of the machines, which start from around 2,000, have been sold in the US while several hundred are now happily installed in offices and homes in the UK.

The benefits are obvious, he adds: 'I walk around 140,000 steps per week now and log more steps on desk days than at the weekend!

'The biggest impact on my health is that I no longer have the lower back ache that seemed to arrive with middle age.'
The Duke of Cambridge arrived in Belgium today to pay solemn tribute to soldiers from Ireland's unionist and nationalist army divisions who fought side-by-side in the First World War.

Prince William joined Ireland's outgoing head of state, Taoiseach Enda Kenny and Princess Astrid of Belgium at the centenary commemoration of the Battle of Messines in Flanders.

The successful Allied offensive on June 7 1917 was the first occasion the 36th Ulster and 16th Irish divisions fought together on the front line.

The two divisions predominantly comprised men who were on opposing sides of the great political upheaval back in Ireland around whether the country should be granted self-governance from Westminster.

Prince William during the commemoration of the centenary of the battle of Messines ridge, at the Island of Ireland Peace Park in Mesen, Belgium

Prince William lays a poppy flower wreath in honour of fallen soldiers from Ireland

A gift for George and Charlotte! Princess Astrid of Belgium gives William presents for George and Charlotte

Prince William looked animated as he chatted to schoolchildren following the ceremony

Former Stormont first minister Arlene Foster is also among invited dignitaries at the joint UK and Irish event in Belgium.

The commemoration will focus on the Island of Ireland Peace Park at Messines.

The park was built in 1998 - the year of the historic Good Friday peace agreement - to mark the sacrifice of all those Irishmen who fought and died in the war.

Mr Kenny and the Duke will later visit nearby Wytschaete Cemetery, where many of those who died now rest.

Prince William and The Taoiseach Enda Kenny pictured laying a flower wreath during the closing ceremony of the commemoration of the centenary of the battle of Messines ridgeCentenary of the Battle of Messines Ridge

Prince William watched on as a group of youngsters took part in the centenary commemoration of the Battle of Messines in Flanders

The park was built in 1998 - the year of the historic Good Friday peace agreement - to mark the sacrifice of all those Irishmen who fought and died in the war

Prince William studies a military medal during the closing ceremony of the commemoration of the centenary of the battle

The Duke of Cambridge meets the Grand Secretary of the Orange Order Reverend Mervyn Gibon following a ceremony at the Island of Ireland Peace Park in Messines

The royal was joined by Princess Astrid of Belgium and Ireland's outgoing Taoiseach Enda Kenny

The trio walk through the Island Of Ireland Peace Park, which was built in 1998 - the year of the historic Good Friday peace agreement

Prince William joined Princess Astrid of Belgium, who looked solemn at the event

Prince William, Belgium's Princess Astrid and Ireland's Prime Minister Enda Kenny attended Commemorations of Battle of Messines Ridge

The group of royals and leaders were smartly dressed as they paid their respects

The Duke of Cambridge arrived in Belgium today to pay solemn tribute to soldiers from Ireland's unionist and nationalist army divisions who fought side-by-side in the First World War

The village of Wytschaete was captured by the 36th and 16th during the Battle of Messines.

A new memorial erected at the entrance of the cemetery last week depicts a scene that many believe encapsulates the legacy of the day Irish Protestant and Catholic soldiers fought together - the attempted battlefield rescue of fatally wounded 56-year-old nationalist Home Rule MP Willie Redmond by a young unionist private, John Meeke.

Major Redmond's brother John was the leader of the constitutional nationalist Home Rule movement.

An animated William catches up with the Governor General of New Zealand, Dame Patsy Reddy

Dignitaries are remembering those who took part in the successful Allied offensive on June 7 1917, the first occasion the 36th Ulster and 16th Irish divisions fought together in the front line

William will later visit the cemetery where many of the fallen are buried, along with Ireland's Enda Kenny

Members of the Redmond family are due to attend Wednesday's commemorations in Belgium.

The capture of Messines Ridge was a key objective of the Allied Forces ahead of their mid-summer 1917 offensive on German lines between the nearby town of Ypres and the small village of Passchendaele - a battle that has since become synonymous with the horrors of trench warfare.

The Allies sustained around 10,000 casualties during the Battle of Messines, the Germans around 25,000.

The Duke and Enda Kenny enjoyed a conversation with Princess Astrid, who is the younger sister of King Philippe of Belgium

William was joined by Ireland's outgoing Taoiseach Enda Kenny (right) who is on his last overseas trip before stepping down later this month

William remembers fallen soldiers who fought in the battle of Messines Ridge in 1917, 100 years ago today

Between them the 36th and 16th lost around 2,500 killed, injured or missing.

The two divisions fought together only twice in the First World War.

The second came in a heavy defeat, two months after Messines, during an ill-fated offensive at nearby Langemark in the first weeks of the Battle of Passchendaele.

The commemoration in Belgium is set to be Mr Kenny's last overseas engagement as Taoiseach ahead of him stepping down from the role later this month.
The first transgender model to ever grace the cover of Paris Vogue has opened up about her iconic photo shootand she's still struggling to put into words the impact of the momentous occasion.

Valentina Sampaio, 20, posed for the French magazine's March edition, marking a historic moment for the fashion industry. The cover was a high point in the Brazilian beauty's still burgeoning career, and she's barely catching her breath.

'Things have happened so fast, I've barely had time to process and think about what all this means,' she told BuzzFeed News. 'I've realized a dream of such size I really can't describe it.'

Pioneering: Valentina Sampaio, 20, posed for Vogue Paris' March edition, becoming the first transgender model to ever grace the cover of the magazine

When Sampaio's cover came out, editor-in-chief Emmanelle Alt wrote a rousing editorial to go with the photo shoot.

'Only when a transgender person poses on the front cover of a fashion magazine and it is no longer necessary to write an editorial on the subject will we know that the battle is won,' she wrote.

Sampaio, who grew up in Aquiraz on Brazil's northeast coast, deemed her cover one step in the larger fight for representation of transgender people in fashion.

'The world has taken huge steps for transgender people in recent years,' she said. 'My cover is another small step  an important step that shows we have the force to be Vogue cover girls.'

The Brazilian model, whom Vogue described as a 'femme fatale', felt accepted by her community and family while growing up.

'People in my hometown always treated me normally. I have always been a girl and I've never felt any different. And that's what I transmitted to people,' she said.

Milestone: The cover was a high point in the Brazilian beauty's career, and she's barely catching her breath. 'I've realized a dream of such size I really can't describe it,' she said

'I have always been a girl and I've never felt any different': The Brazilian model, whom Vogue described as a 'femme fatale', felt accepted by her community and family while growing up

But Sampaio, who first hoped to become a stylist before she started working as a model, faced hurdles early in her career.

One clothing brand, which she declined to name, fired her from her first modelling job in 2014, telling her they were a conservative company whose customers wouldn't respond well to a transgender model.

'It was a really difficult moment. It was like I was wrong to be in that place, like I didn't belong there. But my reaction was just to get out of that situation,' she said.

Alt acknowledged these struggles in Vogue when Sampaio's cover first came out, writing: 'Valentina is on the cover of Vogue this month, not just for her looks or her sparkling personality, but because despite herself she embodies an age-old, arduous struggle to be recognized and not to be perceived as something Other, a gender exile.'

History: Sampaio, who grew up in Aquiraz on Brazil's northeast coast, deemed her cover one step in the larger fight for representation of transgender people in fashion

Career: Prior to posing for Vogue, she walked in Sao Paulo Fashion Week, and appeared on the covers of Elle Brazil and LOfficiel Brazil

Statement: 'There needs to be more education about accepting people for who they are in Brazilwhich is such a huge and diverse country,' the model said

Sampaio soldiered on and her modelling career blossomed. Prior to posing for Vogue, she walked in Sao Paulo Fashion Week, and appeared on the covers of Elle Brazil and LOfficiel Brazil.

Despite her pioneering moment, the Vogue Paris cover came out as Brazil faced a spike in anti-LGBT killings. Last year, 144 transgender people were murdered, according to tracking website Rede Transmore than twice the 57 murders recorded in 2008.

Sampaio has called for more education about transgender people. Last month, Brazil's Ministry Of Education took a step in the opposite direction by stripping the national curriculum of all references to 'gender identity' and 'sexual orientation'.

In March, a video of a transgender woman being beaten to death surfaced as LGBT groups raised the alarm about the sickening attack. The killing occurred about 20 miles away from Sampaio's hometown, in her home state of Ceara.

'This needs to stop being news,' she said about the shocking assault. 'Being transgender is a natural thing. There needs to be more education about accepting people for who they are in Brazilwhich is such a huge and diverse country.'
As a heels girl for years I tottered across university cobbles in platforms, got stuck in cracks in the pavement in kitten heels or ran for buses in stilettoes.

When I worked in an office, I wore them every day. I have the chiropodist bills to prove it. Then, two years ago, I left to be a freelance writer working from home.

At first I tried to keep up standards. But the truth is there is no call for L.K. Bennett patent nude platforms when you are sitting at a desk in the spare room, so out came the plimsolls, loafers, ballet pumps and trainers and all my work shoes languished in shoebags at the bottom of the wardrobe.

When I gave up my heels, I found a passion for earrings. Not discreet little pearl studs but serious, collar-grazing sparklers (Above: Joan Collins)

What a liberation it has been. The calluses, corns and blisters that had scarred my feet have faded. The spasms and cramps in my shins have stopped.

I am not alone in my disenchantment with heels. The fashion editors on the front rows  once all wearing sky-scraping Manolo Blahniks  now trot between catwalk shows in Chloe clogs, Gucci shearling slippers and even Nike trainers.

To avoid looking like Pat Butcher in her EastEnders heyday the trick is to keep everything else  hair, make-up, neckline  minimal (Above: Helen Mirren and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley wearing large earrings)

If I ever find myself missing the pinching pain of heels, well, the earrings are not without their suffer-to-be-beautiful agonies

But if my feet are no longer quite in glass slippers, then at least my ears are worthy of any fairy-tale ball. For when I gave up my heels, I found a passion for earrings. Not discreet little pearl studs but serious, collar-grazing sparklers.

To avoid looking like Pat Butcher in her EastEnders heyday the trick is to keep everything else  hair, make-up, neckline  minimal. I take my inspiration from women such as the formidable American editor Diana Vreeland who held readers of Harpers Bazaar and Vogue in thrall from the Thirties to the Seventies with her flat shoes, and ear danglers.

She wore lavish, brilliantly coloured pendant earrings  always paste, never real gems  so long and dangling they trailed her collar-bone.

Think, too, of the 95-year-old New York socialite and fashionista Iris Apfel. She has made jewellery her signature and takes a dim view of heels. Those big platforms and insanely high heels. They look like an orthopaedists delight, she has said. I dont see anything beautiful about them.

Then there is the cosmetics empress Helena Rubinstein, who, the New Yorker magazine reported in the Twenties, had perfected the art of wearing all her jewellery at once.

52, bimbaylola. com

Left: 58, jcrew.com Right: 65, jcrew.com

15, marksand spencer

She had a favourite pair of emerald cabochon clips and sat for her portrait in hanging clusters of pearls.

The British society photographer Cecil Beaton told Rubinstein he had never seen such a collection of jewels. She clicked her teeth and shrugged: Only rubbish. Much more in Paris.

My earring collection is relatively modest in comparison. A blue beaded pair from Portobello Market; paste pearls and false sapphires from a charity shop; resin daisies inherited from a friend; a glossy Marni black and bronze pair from The Outnet discount website; a pair of chandeliers in gold and coloured glass, a present at my last birthday.

If I ever find myself missing the pinching pain of heels, well, the earrings are not without their suffer-to-be-beautiful agonies. They may look glorious, but, my goodness, the relief when I unclip them at the end of the evening. More than equal to the former pleasure of kicking off a pair of painful heels.
She might despise herself for saying it, but one woman admits she bitterly resents having to care for her mentally-ill brother - and says she has lived with the dark secret her whole adult life

All my adult life I have lived with a dark secret. My friends know I have a younger sister: we are very close, look ridiculously alike, and spend lots of time together. But I rarely tell anyone of our older brother. Or that he has schizophrenia.

Im not ashamed or embarrassed, but its a complex issue and, although this sounds harsh, sometimes life is just easier if I pretend he isnt there.

Last summer, though, I got the phone call Id long been dreading. Ross, now 54, was acting crazy so his friends had taken him to hospital: but hed walked out, and now he was missing. My knee-jerk reaction was, shamefully: what do you expect me to do about it? We barely know each other any more. Why is this suddenly my problem?

Louise Atkinson, pictured above, says all of her adult life she has lived with a dark secret

But the uncomfortable truth about having a disabled or troubled sibling is that when your parents are no longer around, ultimately, the buck stops with you. Whereas Id do anything for my three teenage children, the sibling bond is different. I felt a strong moral obligation to help, but I struggle to shake off the bitterness linked to the schizophrenia trashing my teenage years.

It is so sad, because I have such happy early childhood memories. Hes just 15 months older than me, and we formed a united front of games and giggles after Helen arrived when I was two. Dad was a technical editor for a large oil firm and Mum made wedding cakes. We were cherished and neighbours fondly referred to us as the perfect family.

Ross was a sweet and gentle boy, startlingly artistic and musical. He could sketch portraits with photographic accuracy and sailed through his piano and clarinet exams.

The madness struck when he was 16. Suddenly Ross was charging up and down stairs all night and festering in a sheetless bed (his choice) all day. Hed scribble meaningful symbols over his bedroom walls. Every family meal became an angry debate as Ross ranted that he was the second Messiah.

Her friends knew she had a younger sister but she rarely told anybody about her older brother Ross who has schizophrenia (above left with Louise as children)

He was diagnosed with depression, stress, then ultimately paranoid schizophrenia, a psychotic illness causing hallucinations, delusions and muddled thoughts. It affects about one in 100 people and usually strikes between the ages of 15 and 30. It is treatable, but there is no cure.

Devastated, my parents struggled to maintain some semblance of normality. But, effectively, my childhood ended when, aged 15, I found my amazingly strong mother sobbing helplessly at the kitchen sink. She was beaten.

Over the next few years, Ross spent periods in hospital. When home, we tip-toed around him. Mum encouraged him to continue his studies or get a job, but it was futile. It was impossible to maintain a relationship with a brother who couldnt watch TV without seeing hidden messages.

WHO KNEW? Around 280,000 people in the uk are being treated for schizophrenia by the NHS Advertisement

I was 21 and in my final year of university when Mum got a rare form of bladder cancer. She was only 52 when she died. We were all completely heartbroken. Numb, I went back to finish my degree, then took off to India for a year. Helen moved away to university herself.

Dad was left to cope with Ross alone. He was a proud man who didnt believe in asking for help, but he struggled. On more than one occasion, Dad returned home to find the front door wide open, the TV blaring and Ross gone. Eventually the police would call, from hundreds of miles away, to say they had picked him up. Usually barefoot and dishevelled.

He was never violent or threatening  the whole thing was as terrifying for him as it was for us. But with schizophrenia you never know whats going to happen next.

It was a relief when Ross became involved with a Hare Krishna community and, 18 years ago, moved to Berlin. The simple, monastic life turned out to be perfect for him. He was supported, took his medication and, on the rare occasions I was able to track him down by phone he seemed happy. Meanwhile, Helen and I both married, settled in the Cotswolds, had three children each and made new friends. People rarely asked if there was another sibling.

Last summer Louise (left) got the phone call she'd long been dreading. Ross, now 54 (pictured as a child), was acting crazy so his friends had taken him to hospital: but hed walked out, and now he was missing

Louise says 'I felt a strong moral obligation to help, but I struggle to shake off the bitterness linked to the schizophrenia trashing my teenage years'

But a cloud hung over us always. Our cousin Peter was also diagnosed with schizophrenia about ten years after Ross. This double strike in one family means theres a high chance of an inherited link; its so hard not to dwell on the possibility of this evil genetic lottery falling on one of our feisty, funny children.

Then Dad died of bowel cancer in 2007 and Helen and I knew the noose was tightening for us. Ross flew back for Dads funeral and stayed with us for a few days in turn. We tidied him up, kitted him out in new clothes and packed him off back to the airport with a huge sigh of relief.

But living in denial made the shock of responsibility, when it did come, all the more sickening. With Ross missing and vulnerable in Germany last summer, I hit the phones. Despite my best journalistic endeavour, I was bamboozled by red tape and dead ends.

It turned out Ross had been living illegally with no passport (too paranoid to fill in the renewal forms wed sent years before) or health insurance.

After three weeks of sleepless nights, we discovered Ross was alive when a hospital in Germany called to ask who would be paying the 12,000 bill hed racked up. He was clearly ill and very confused. His German friends said they could no longer manage him, and without documents or insurance, the British Embassy in Berlin wanted him shipped back to the UK.

So I lay awake night after night, my heart racing, trying to work out what to do. For weeks I barely saw or interacted with my kids. My husband took on the role of counsellor and I found myself measuring my friends by those who got it and those who didnt (unfair considering many of them didnt know I had a brother in the first place).

Ross (above) was a sweet and gentle boy, startlingly artistic and musical. He could sketch portraits with photographic accuracy and sailed through his piano and clarinet exams. The madness struck when he was 16

L-R: Sandy Atkinson, Louise Atkinson, Tricia Atkinson, Ross Atkinson, Helen Atkinson Taken when Louise was 21 and Ross 22

My sister and I care deeply for Ross, but we were absolutely united in the fact that we couldnt be his carers. We werent prepared to risk him unwittingly souring our childrens teen memories as he had ours.

We know its not his fault  it is schizophrenia that makes our brother behave this way  but it is so hard to be sympathetic when any chaos and confusion always emanates from him.

Eventually, I managed to find a supervised hostel for Ross to live near us. We picked him up at the airport and settled him in with a bike, an electronic keyboard, and a new pair of spectacles.

The hostel was an oasis of calm for him and over the next few weeks we started to see flashes of the clever, funny brother we remembered. I grew accustomed to a life peppered with tricky interruptions  the health services and benefits agencies were a minefield.

one day Ross called out of the blue to tell me how much he loved his new home and, to my astonishment, to say thank you. I crumbled into tears. For a moment, I allowed myself to believe things would be OK.

After three weeks of sleepless nights, we discovered Ross (left) was alive when a hospital in Germany called to ask who would be paying the 12,000 bill hed racked up. He was clearly ill and very confused

Louise says: 'Despite everything this terrible illness has thrown at our family, I did discover one surprise: that making my brother happy  even just for a while  is one of the best feelings in the world'

But schizophrenia doesnt work like that. Inevitably, the psychosis returned. Last October, Ross was taken to hospital while doctors battled to find a cocktail of medication that would allow him to function, but which didnt crush the creativity he craved.

Its an impossible tightrope walk. He is in hospital again now, more crazy than ever, and the hostel say theyre just not equipped to have him back. Its just like the old days when we were teenagers and his disease was at its most florid. Hes angry, incoherent, bitter and delusional.

In my unwelcome role as his next of kin Ive had to sanction a section order on two separate occasions so the doctors can continue to work with him even if he doesnt want them to. Its a gut-wrenching responsibility and has left our relationship brittle.

The NHS mental health services  so often criticised  have been amazingly supportive, both to me and to Ross, and Ive learned if you can work out ways to share the weight of responsibility in situations like this it is possible to tackle the stress and the fear. If youre very lucky, you might even find a little space in your heart for love and compassion.

Despite everything this terrible illness has thrown at our family, I did discover one surprise: that making my brother happy  even just for a while  is one of the best feelings in the world.
Global hip-hop duo Flobots to perform

Wednesday, June 21, 8 p.m. Tickets for the all-ages show are $15.

From the beginning, Flobots sound defied categorization. Weaving conscious hip-hop lyrics and classical viola solos over live instrumentation, their anthems captured attention from all directions.

When Flobots first catapulted onto the global scene in 2008 with their platinum single Handlebars it was the fastest charting song debut by a new artist in 10 years. Released during the frenzy of that years election, the bands call to envision another America resonated with a generation experiencing a sense of profound political and social awakening.

In a span of months, Flobots went from playing at local clubs to selling out tours internationally, performing on late-night television, signing a major label record deal, and receiving constant rotation on alternative radio.

Every Time I Die tops triple metal bill

With Knocked Loose and Hollow Earth, Monday, Oct. 16, 8 p.m. Tickets for the all-ages show are $18 in advance and $20 at the door.

The whole winter, the temperature was in the low teens. Utterly freezing, says Every Time I Dies frontman Keith Buckley regarding the months that yielded their eighth full-length album. Such is the price you pay for living in Buffalo, New York. Granted, the weather seems like a rather mundane topic for the normally acerbic and irreverent vocalist, but even the most acid-tongued hardcore band must have their sociable side, right? But Buckley and his cohorts Jordan Buckley (guitar), Andy Williams (guitar), Daniel Davison (drums), and Steve Micciche (bass) arent so hard up for pathos at this point that theyre grumbling about the temperature outside. If anything, "Low Teens" is their most poignant and impassioned album in a career full of sardonic illuminations and pit-inciting fervor. Epitaph Records is proud to release the album on Sept. 23.

Change may be a welcome element to Every Time I Dies creative process when it comes to studio personnel, but family crises and rotating band members can be debilitating developments. The pressure drop that yielded "Low Teens" could have crippled a lesser band, but Every Time I Die weathered the winter to deliver their strongest offering to date because of, not in spite of, these hardships and roadblocks.

Knocked Loose opens up the pit with a brutal sound that falls between hardcore punk and metalcore. Led by screaming frontman Bryan Garris, the Kentucky quintet is also composed of guitarists Isaac Hale and Cole Crutchfield, bassist Kevin Otten and drummer Dylan Isaacs.
Two teenage boys have penned a controversial note telling their female peers to 'value education' and stop distracting male students by dressing provocatively, sparking a heated debate over their high school's dress code.

The memo was posted in the hallways at Breton High School in rural Alberta, Canada, and told female students not to dress like a 'THOT', an offensive acronym that stands for 'That Ho Over There', according to Urban Dictionary.

'When you wear little to no clothing and dress provocatively because its "too hot out" or because you think its "attractive," you are putting boys at risk of having a distracting working environment and saying, "your clothing is more important than their education," the note begins.

Say what? Two teenage boys warned their female peers to 'value the male education' and 'dress conservatively' instead of 'like a THOT'

'Instead of dressing like a THOT, value the male education and dress conservatively.'

Breton is a small village in Alberta that is made up of about 600 people, and, unsurprisingly, parents and students are very upset about the use of the acronym 'THOT'.

While some believe the strongly worded letter is sexist, others argue that the boys were just being brutally honest.

One parent told Global News that the message was written by two male students in response to another note that argued sending girls home to change their clothes negatively affects their education.

The first note, which was posted on a bathroom mirror and shared in a Snapchat post, reads: 'When you interrupt a girls school day to force her to change her clothes, or send her home because her shorts are too short or her bra straps are too visible, you are telling her that making sure boys have a "distraction free" environment is more important than her education.

'Instead of shaming girls for their bodies teach boys that girls are not sexual objects.'

Meaning: According to Urban Dictionary, the acronym stands for 'That Ho Over There'

Dress code controversy: The memo was posted in the hallways at Breton High School in Alberta, Canada

Per the school's dress code, which is described in the 2016-2017 student handbook, shorts and skirts must exceed the length of arms and fingers and the inseam to shorts must be the minimum of one hand hand length.

Cleavage and navels must be covered; straps for shirts must be three fingers wide, and bra straps and boxers cannot be exposed.

Anyone who does not follow dress code will be required to change his or her clothing or be sent home.

'The conversation that is happening is around the dress code,' Breton High School Principal Lara Jollymore wrote in a letter sent home to parents concerning the boys' note.

Jollymore explained that that some female students feel they should wear whatever clothes they want because women should not be objectified by their male peers because it is wrong.

Hitting back? The note was allegedly in response to a memo hanging in a bathroom, which stated that female students should be allowed to wear what they want

She went on to say that the 'gentlemen have responded by posting their opinions about how the school is a professional learning environment, and that ladies should respect that by wearing clothes that meet the dress code'.

However, she added that the use of the 'inappropriate acronym' in the boys' note would be addressed, and students were being reminded to remain respectful when sharing their opinions.

Jollymore shot down rumors that staff members had anything to do with the note, insisting that 'the opinions expressed are solely those of students', and she also noted that the school will still be enforcing the dress code.

Reprucussions: According to the school's 2016-2017 handbook, anyone who does not follow dress code (pictured) will be required to change his or her clothing or be sent home

Virgin Radio Edmonton shared a photo of the boys' note on Facebook on Monday, asking people to weigh-in.

Unsurprisingly, the online debate was just as heated as the one going on in the school.

'Stop worrying so damn much about other people and mind your business,' Leslie Dickson commented. 'Get your education and stop stressing about someone wearing a tank top for f**k sake. If you can't concentrate because someone is in a short skirt, that's your problem, not hers. Reality is going to be difficult.'

While Amanda Sharp argued: 'The real world has dress codes. Doesn't matter if it's +30 or -30, you're expected to abide by it. Might as well learn now you little snowflakes...or do you plan to protest when your workplace tries to tell you what's appropriate and what's not?'
Three quarters of cancer patients will survive for at least ten years after diagnosis within the next decade, experts predict.

They have hailed 'fantastic changes in survival rates' in recent years which are set to accelerate even further.

This is down to new techniques to diagnose cancer which are enabling many more tumours to be detected at an early stage, when they can be removed.

At the same time, revolutionary procedures and drugs mean that patients whose cancers were once deemed terminal are now expected to live for ten or 20 years.

Leading researchers told the world's largest cancer conference that by 2027, three quarters of patients in the UK and US could expect to live for at least a decade.

Currently, half of patients diagnosed with cancer in the UK can expect to live for at least ten years and survival rates are similar in the US.

Positive changes in survival rates are down to new techniques to diagnose cancer which are enabling many more tumours to be detected at an early stage, experts say

But Dr David Graham, of the Levine Cancer Institute in Charlotte, North Carolina, and fellow of the American Society for Clinical Oncology, said there was 'great promise' for improvements.

He said that 'within the next decade,' 75 per cent of cancer patients in the UK and US could expect to live at least ten years.

This is the survival time at which doctors and researchers consider patients to be cured of the illness.

'We are already seeing fantastic changes in survival rates already. We've seen that even in the last decade.' he said.

'There are a number of cancers already that have become chronic, manageable diseases.'

Breakthroughs for terminal patients

Dr Graham said that recent breakthroughs were enabling patients with apparently terminal cancer to live for five years  and many are expected to survive much longer.

These include immunotherapy - a drug which teaches the body's immune system to fight tumours - which has been hailed as a 'new era' in cancer treatment.

SURVIVAL RATES OF CANCER A major analysis by Cancer Research UK in 2014 found that 49.8 per cent of patients diagnosed with cancer can expect to live at least ten years. But survival rates vary hugely between the types of cancer and the stage at which it is diagnosed. For breast cancer, which is usually detected early, 78 per cent of patients can expect to live for ten years or more. But this falls to just 5 per cent for lung cancer and less than 1 per cent for pancreatic which are both usually detected late. Researchers believe that new diagnosis techniques will enable many more patients to be diagnosed at an early stage, when tumours are small and can be removed by surgery. Earlier this week scientists unveiled results from a revolutionary blood test that can diagnose cancer up to ten years before symptoms appear. The 'liquid biopsy' test involves analysing the DNA from tiny fragments of tumour which circulate in the blood. Advertisement

This treatment is proving particularly effective for lung cancer, skin cancer and kidney cancer which just five years ago were considered incurable.

'We can be extremely hopeful'

Dr Richard Schilsky, senior vice president and chief medical officer at the American Society for Clinical Oncology also predicted three quarters of patients would be outliving their cancers within the next ten years.

'A combination of better screening, earlier diagnosis and more effective therapy are contributing to slow but steady improvements in cancer therapy.

'We can be extremely hopeful that we've come very far and the pace of progress is accelerating.

'As we improve our diagnostic strategies, we can pick up cancers at an earlier and earlier stage.

'The majority of cancer patients are cured.

'It's still the majority of metastatic patients (cancer which has spread) who aren't cured at the present time but we're continuing to make progress even in those cases.'

The target survival rate

Dr Aine McCarthy, senior science information officer at Cancer Research UK, said the charity's ambition was for 75 per cent of cancer patients to live for at least ten years by 2034.

'We can only do this by working together to prevent cancer, diagnose it earlier and develop better, kinder treatments.'

Eluned Hughes, Head of Public Health and Information at Breast Cancer Now, said: 'Thanks to research, more people are surviving breast cancer than ever before.

'Our ambition is that by 2050 everyone who develops breast cancer will live.'
Drugs are scoring big wins against common cancers, setting new standards for how to treat many prostate, breast and lung tumors.

There's even a 'uni-drug' that may fight many forms of the disease.

What's striking: The drugs are beneficial in some cases for more than a year, much longer than the few months many new drugs provide.

Here are highlights from the world's largest cancer meeting, the American Society of Clinical Oncology conference in Chicago.

PROSTATE CANCER

Janssen Biotech's Zytiga improved survival and delayed cancer growth for 18 months when added to standard care in a study of 1,200 men with advanced prostate cancer. The drug is approved to treat tumors that are resistant to hormone therapy; this study tested it as initial treatment.

The study was stopped early because men on Zytiga were living longer - 66 percent were alive after three years versus 49 percent of a comparison group not given the drug. Zytiga also delayed the time until cancer worsened - 33 months versus 15 months for the others.

Zytiga improved survival and delayed cancer growth for 18 months when added to standard care in a study of 1,200 men with advanced prostate cancer

In a second study of 1,900 men newly diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer, adding Zytiga to usual treatment also improved survival: 83 percent were alive at three years versus 76 percent of men not given the drug. Zytiga also cut the chance of relapse and serious bone problems.

Zytiga caused more side effects, including high blood pressure, but the benefits outweigh them, doctors said.

The results will change practice 'pretty much overnight,' said Dr. Richard Schilsky, chief medical officer for the group hosting the conference. Most men with prostate cancer that has spread will be eligible for Zytiga - about 25,000 each year in U.S. and more in other countries where more cases are found at a late stage, he said. Zytiga costs about $10,000 a month in the U.S.

LUNG CANCER

Roche's Alecensa stopped cancer growth for 15 months longer than Pfizer's Xalkori did in a study of 303 people with advanced lung cancer and a mutation in a gene called ALK.

About 5 percent of lung cancer patients - 12,500 in the U.S. each year - have an ALK mutation, especially younger people and nonsmokers who get the disease.

Alecensa stopped cancer growth for 15 months longer than Pfizer's Xalkori did in a study of 303 people with advanced lung cancer and a mutation in a gene called ALK

Alecensa kept cancer from worsening for 26 months versus 11 months for Xalkori. It also penetrates the brain better: only 9 percent of those on it had their lung cancer spread to the brain during the first year of treatment versus 41 percent of those on Xalkori. Serious side effects and deaths were less common with Alecensa.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved it in December 2015 for ALK-related lung cancers that worsened despite trying Xalkori. The new study tested it as initial treatment and is aimed at getting full approval for that.

Xalkori is around $10,000 a month and Alecensa, about $12,500.

BREAST CANCER

For the first time, a new type of drug called a PARP inhibitor showed promise in a major study of women with inherited BRCA gene mutations that raise their risk of developing breast cancer.

PARP inhibitors keep cancer cells from fixing problems in their DNA, and some are approved now for some ovarian cancers.

The study tested AstraZeneca's Lynparza in 302 women with cancers that had spread beyond the breast and were not the type that respond to the drug Herceptin.

Half were 'triple negative,' meaning they are not helped by Herceptin or drugs that block the two main hormones that fuel breast cancer's growth.

Lynparza modestly delayed the time until cancer worsened - 7 months versus 4 months for women given one of three commonly used chemotherapies

All had previously tried chemotherapy and some had tried hormone blockers.

Lynparza modestly delayed the time until cancer worsened - 7 months versus 4 months for women given one of three commonly used chemotherapies.

Lynparza's main side effects were nausea, fatigue and blood count problems, but serious problems were less common than with chemo.

It's too soon to know whether Lynparza improves survival. It costs about $13,000 a month.

A UNI-DRUG?

Loxo Oncology Inc.'s larotrectinib is aimed at many types of cancer with a certain gene abnormality, and in children as well as adults - a first on both counts.

The gene problem occurs in less than 1 percent of cancers, so a big question is how these rare gene problems would be found unless widespread tumor-gene testing becomes more common than it is now.

In a study of 50 patients with 17 different kinds of cancer, 76 percent - an unusually high number - responded to treatment and their disease has not worsened.

Side effects include fatigue and mild dizziness.

The company will seek FDA approval based on these results.

Last month, the FDA said Merck's immune therapy drug Ketruda could be used for any pediatric or adult cancer with certain gene features, but larotrectinib would be the first drug developed from scratch with this approach.
Deaths from liver cancer have doubled since the mid-1980s, new figures reveal.

The disease is now the fifth-leading cause of cancer death in men, and eighth among women.

This is far higher than a generation ago - and experts at the American Cancer Society warn the rate is set to continue escalating until at least 2030.

Despite improvements in liver cancer survival in recent decades, only one in five patients survives five years after diagnosis.

One of the biggest drivers behind the rocketing rates is the high rate of hepatitis C infection among baby boomers - those born from 1945 to 1962.

The report comes just over a week after the death of rock legend Gregg Allman to liver cancer at the age of just 69 years old, 10 years after he was diagnosed with hepatitis C.

The disease is now the fifth-leading cause of death in men, and eighth among women. Experts at the American Cancer Society warn the rate is set to continue escalating until at least 2030

The American Cancer Society report comes after rock legend Gregg Allman, a baby boomer, died from liver cancer at 69. He was diagnosed in 2008, a year after his hepatitis C diagnosis

Allman's story offers a glimpse into the experience of many battling liver cancer today.

The musician, who was married to Cher, was vocal about his health woes, revealing in 2007 that he was exhausted and sleeping up to 11 hours a day due to his hep C.

A year later he was diagnosed with liver cancer, and received a liver transplant in 2010.

However, the immune-suppressing drugs required before a transplant caused him to pick up pneumonia, which meant he needed surgery on his lungs.

GREGG ALLMAN DIED OF LIVER CANCER AT 69 AFTER HEPATITIS C DIAGNOSIS The report comes just a week after the death of rock legend Greg Allman to liver cancer at the age of just 69 years old, 10 years after he was diagnosed with hepatitis C. Allman's story offers a glimpse into the experience of many battling liver cancer today. The musician, who was married to Cher, was vocal about his health woes, revealing in 2007 that he was exhausted and sleeping up to 11 hours a day due to his hep C. A year later he was diagnosed with liver cancer, and received a liver transplant in 2010. However, the immune-suppressing drugs required before a transplant caused him to pick up pneumonia, which meant he needed surgery on his lungs. In the years later he battled with weakening organs and his vulnerability to common infections like the flu and pneumonia. This was driven by his surgeries, his hepatitis C, his liver cancer, and also his weariness after taking a significant amount of drugs and alcohol in his hey-day. On May 27, 2017, Allman passed away. Advertisement

In the years later he battled with weakening organs and his vulnerability to common infections like the flu and pneumonia. This was driven by his surgeries, his hepatitis C, his liver cancer, and also his weariness after taking a significant amount of drugs and alcohol in his hey-day.

On May 27, 2017, Allman passed away.

The new report by the ACS warns the baby boomer's taste for alcohol, cigarettes and drugs is a key factor that has driven the surge in liver cancer rates, as well as higher obesity and diabetes rates.

Among this age group, HCV prevalence is approximately 2.6 percent, a rate times greater than that of other adults.

Alcohol increases liver cancer risk by about 10 percent per drink per day, and tobacco use increases liver cancer risk by approximately 50 percent.

Liver cancer can be difficult to spot since symptoms tend not to arise until the late stages.

And since most of the liver is covered by the right rib cage, it can be difficult to feel for a prominent enlarged tumor until it is very big.

Unless you have high risk factors, such as obesity, smoking, or a hepatitis diagnosis, it is unlikely you will be routinely screened for the disease.

Symptoms include:

Weight loss (without trying)

Loss of appetite

Feeling very full after a small meal

Nausea or vomiting

An enlarged liver, felt as a mass under the ribs on the right side

An enlarged spleen, felt as a mass under the ribs on the left side

Pain in the abdomen or near the right shoulder blade

Swelling or fluid build-up in the abdomen

Itching

Yellowing of the skin and eyes (jaundice)

The five-year relative survival rate for people with localized liver cancer - i.e. it has not spread - is about 31 percent, according to the American Cancer Society.

For regional stage liver cancer - when it has spread to nearby organs and the lymph nodes, denoting stage 3 - the five-year survival rate is about 11 percent.

For distant stage liver cancer - when it reaches far-away organs equating to stage 4 - the five-year survival rates is about 3 percent.

The new ACS report also identifies substantial disparity in liver cancer death rates by race, ranging from 5.5 per 100,000 in non-Hispanic whites to 11.9 per 100,000 in American Indians/Alaska Natives.

There are also wide disparities by state, with the lowest death rates in North Dakota (3.8 per 100,000), and the highest in the District of Columbia (9.6 per 100,000).

The report says the wide racial and state disparities in liver cancer mortality reflect differences in the prevalence of major risk factors and, to some extent, inequalities in access to high-quality care.

However, the authors insist that most liver cancer diagnoses are preventable.

Strategies, they say, could include improvements in hepatitis B vaccination, screening and treatment of hepatitis C, maintaining a healthy body weight, access to high-quality diabetes care, prevention of excessive alcohol drinking, and tobacco control.
Feeding an egg each day to children helps healthy growth in babies, a study has found.

The often messy ritual of feeding a baby a daily runny egg has fallen out of favour in the UK.

But the latest independent research by Washington University suggests eating an egg a day prevents babies becoming stunted or underweight.

It has another beneficial effect too in that babies fed them were found to eat less sugary food.

Babies fed a daily egg between the ages of 6-9 months also had higher levels of important nutrients such as vitamin B12 in their blood

Babies fed a daily egg between the ages of 6-9 months also had higher levels of important nutrients such as vitamin B12 in their blood, compared to those who were not regularly eating eggs.

The most recent NHS baby feeding survey found that around 73 per cent of babies ate less than one egg a week at the age of eight months in the UK.

In contrast, babies were eating fruit (81 per cent), vegetables, (80 per cent), and breakfast cereals (80 per cent) and dairy products (68 per cent) at least once a day.

Dr Lora Ianotti conducted a study where children aged 6-9 months were split into two groups  one of 83 children in which families were supplied with free eggs, who were visited each week and reminded to comply with the study, and another group of 80 with no intervention.

Health visitors quizzed the families, in Ecquador, each week on what the children had been eating. They were also tested for levels of nutrients including Vitamin B12.

The number of underweight children was reduced by 74 percent and cases of stunting by 47 per cent in the group given eggs.

Children who had the higher intake of eggs were also reported as less likely to be eating sugar-sweetened foods.

The most recent NHS baby feeding survey found that around 73 per cent of babies ate less than one egg a week at the age of eight months in the UK

Dr Lora Ianotti said: Eggs can be affordable and easily accessible.

They are also a good source of nutrients for growth and development in young children.

We were surprised by just how effective this intervention proved to be.

She added: Our study carefully monitored allergic reactions to eggs, yet no incidents were observed or reported by caregivers during the weekly home visits.

Eggs seem to be a viable and recommended source of nutrition for children in developing countries.

The study, Eggs in Complementary Feeding and Growth, was published online June 6 in the journal Pediatrics.

Last year a year long review by a panel of Government scientists has concluded that the risks of contracting salmonella from UK eggs is now very low.

It states that pregnant women, the elderly and toddlers can safely enjoy eggs with runny yolks as long as they have British Lion kitemark on their shell.
Six years ago Sally Barnes faced a stark choice: have her left leg amputated or try a challenging and unusual cancer treatment.

The 68-year-old retired housekeeper had suffered from skin cancer for almost 20 years.

The melanomas always appeared in the same place  on her left leg just below the knee  and, over the course of two decades, she'd had at least 10 operations to remove them.

On some occasions, she'd had a chunk the 'size of half an apple' taken out her leg to remove the cancer.

The result was that her leg was a mess, covered in craters where the melanomas had been cut out, scars from skin grafts taken from other parts of her legs and buttocks, and she had a skin flap, a bit like a 'chicken breast', over the affected area.

She was unable to wear a skirt or dress, instead choosing trousers so that no-one could see the damage to her leg.

Sally Barnes, a 68-year-old retired housekeeper, had suffered from skin cancer for almost 20 years before she was offered a pioneering but grueling form of chemotherapy

However, doctors at London's Royal Marsden Hospital were now concerned because the cancer was back, this time growing behind the skin flap, and there was little more of the leg they could remove.

'They asked me if I wanted to try a treatment called Isolated Limb Perfusion,' recalls Sally, from Horsham, West Sussex, who is married to Robert and has two sons and four grandchildren.

'With my leg the way it was, I knew I didn't really have a choice. The leg will only take so many bits being taken out of it. So I agreed.

'I knew it was quite a gruelling treatment and the nurses advised I didn't look it up on the internet, so I didn't and decided to place my trust in the hands of the medical team.

'They told me there was a possibility I might lose my leg during the procedure but I wasn't daunted about having it. I didn't have any choice.'

What is the procedure?

The extraordinary treatment involves treating just the leg with a cocktail of anti-cancer drugs at doses the rest of the body would be unable to withstand.

WHAT IS ISOLATED LIMB PERFUSION? Isolated Limb Perfusion involves treating just the affected leg with a cocktail of anti-cancer drugs at doses the rest of the body would be unable to withstand. Carried out under general anaesthetic, the blood supply to the leg is cut off from the rest of the body by tying a tourniquet at the top of the limb. Tubes are then fed into the limb's main artery and vein to create a circuit for the blood to flow around, and the leg is put on a heart-lung by-pass machine to oxygenate the blood. Doses of chemotherapy much higher than could be tolerated by the major organs of the body and the protein Tumour Necrosis Factor (TNF) (which kills cancer cells and interacts with the chemotherapy to make it more effective) are then circulated in the blood around the limb for about an hour. Once the treatment is finished, the blood is rinsed with saline to make sure there are no drugs left in the system, the tourniquet is removed and blood supply to the rest of the body restored. The treatment requires a large team of doctors and other specialists as well as, nurses and theatre staff and takes four hours in total to carry out. It is available at just two centres in the UK  in London (at The Royal Marsden which does around 25 procedures a year) and Glasgow - although it is more widely used in mainland Europe. Advertisement

It is available at just two centres in the UK  in London (at The Royal Marsden which does around 25 procedures a year) and Glasgow - although it is more widely used in mainland Europe.

Carried out under general anaesthetic, the blood supply to the leg is cut off from the rest of the body by tying a tourniquet at the top of the limb.

Tubes are then fed into the limb's main artery and vein to create a circuit for the blood to flow around, and the leg is put on a heart-lung by-pass machine to oxygenate the blood.

Doses of chemotherapy much higher than could be tolerated by the major organs of the body and the protein Tumour Necrosis Factor (TNF) (which kills cancer cells and interacts with the chemotherapy to make it more effective) are then circulated in the blood around the limb for about an hour.

Once the treatment is finished, the blood is rinsed with saline to make sure there are no drugs left in the system, the tourniquet is removed and blood supply to the rest of the body restored.

The treatment requires a large team of doctors and other specialists as well as, nurses and theatre staff and takes four hours in total to carry out.

Did it have any effects on Sally?

After having the treatment in 2011, Sally was in intensive care for a day and hospital for a week.

'I was a bit tired, felt very sick and my knee was very painful but they gave me morphine for that. It really wasn't too bad,' says Sally.

'I had to keep my leg up for a few days, and after a while my toenails fell out and the skin on the bottom of my foot came off completely. It was like parchment.

'It wasn't raw underneath but very shiny so I had to be careful in the shower that I didn't slip. Everything grew back later and now you wouldn't notice the difference.'

She was unable to wear a skirt or dress before the treatment due to the craters on her legs where the melanomas had been cut out. But since undergoing the procedure at the Royal Marsden Hospital in 2011, she has had just two melanomas removed

'The treatment can be very effective'

According to Andrew Hayes, a consultant cancer surgeon at the hospital, the treatment can be very effective at treating skin cancer on the legs and arms that is spreading. It can also be used to treat sarcomas (tumours that can arise anywhere on the body but most commonly on the leg).

'When melanoma on the legs and arms starts to spread, for one in ten patients, lesions appear in outbursts gradually higher and higher up the leg  a pattern known as in-transit disease  before the cancer makes its way commonly to the lymph nodes,' he explains.

'Cutting out or lasering the cancerous lesions is the first treatment option.

I knew it was quite a gruelling treatment and the nurses advised I didn't look it up on the internet, so I didn't and decided to place my trust in the hands of the medical team Sally Barnes, 68

'However, if many lesions appear  patients can have as many as 100 on a single leg  or they are large (between one and three centimetres) we can perform a procedure called Isolated Limb Perfusion.

'The treatment can be very effective at treating this form of cancer, preventing the need for on-going chemotherapy or the limb to be amputated.

'For 50 per cent of patients, the treatment controls the cancer in the leg for a year, and for another 30 per cent, five years or more.

'It is also much more effective than traditional chemotherapy; in up to 70 per cent of these patients the cancer does not regrow in the leg, compared with only 15 per cent who are given traditional chemotherapy.'

More research is underway

Doctors at the Marsden are carrying out research into Isolated Limb Perfusion, which was first used in the 1950s, to see if there are ways of refining the technique or using it in different ways.

The extraordinary treatment involved treating just her leg with a cocktail of anti-cancer drugs at doses the rest of the body would be unable to withstand

Laboratory studies on rats have revealed that by adding the smallpox virus to the cocktail of anti-cancer drugs (which attacks the cancer cells, unmasks them to the body's immune system and makes chemotherapy more effective), it makes the treatment even more effective  and may even be able to treat cancer elsewhere in the body.

What has research found?

Mr Hayes says: 'We found that adding the virus to the perfusion of drugs increased the effectiveness of the treatment by 50 per cent.

THE DEADLIEST SKIN CANCER: MELANOMA Tanning outdoors and in tanning beds can lead to contracting skin cancer, including melanoma. Melanoma can appear anywhere on the body, but they most commonly appear on the back, legs, arms and face and even underneath a nail. Though less common, they often spread to other organs in the body, making them more deadly. The most common sign is the appearance of a new mole or a change in an existing mole. A helpful way to tell the difference between a normal mole and a melanoma is the ABCDE checklist: Asymmetrical  melanomas have two very different halves and are an irregular shape

Border  melanomas have a notched or ragged border

Colors  melanomas will be a mix of two or more colors

Diameter  melanomas are often larger than 6mm (1/4 inch) in diameter

Enlargement or elevation  a mole that changes size over time is more likely to be a melanoma Advertisement

'It is already known that viruses can help to fight cancer but there are two problems with them; if you give them into the vein they are eaten up by the body's liver and spleen and don't get to the tumour, and if they are injected directly into the tumour, it is difficult to get a high enough concentration to make them effective.

'However, if you give a virus through isolated limb perfusion along with TNF, it increases the concentration five-fold and also protects the virus from being eaten up by the liver and spleen.

'However, what we are really interested to find out is whether, when the tourniquet is removed, the anti-cancer effects of the virus will be seen elsewhere in the body.

'We hope that the combination of virus and the isolated limb perfusion will prime the immune system to attack cancers in any part of the body.'

Anecdotal evidence from skin cancer patients given the treatment at the hospital has revealed that, in a small number of patients, cancer has gone into remission elsewhere in the body after having Isolated Limb Perfusion.

However, more research needs to be done before this can be used as a new approach to treating cancer.

Its impact on Sally's life

For Sally, the treatment has had a massive impact on her life.

In the six years since she had the treatment, she has had just one or two small melanomas removed. Before the treatment, they were being removed every few months.

'I go for check-ups every six months but it has made a massive difference to my life. I have had six years to live again,' says Sally.

'It was the best thing I have had done. The skin flap is still there, my leg is a mess and I've had a swollen foot since the treatment, but I wear trousers and wider fitting shoes and have been able to see my grandchildren grow up. All the negative things are a small price to pay for still being here.'
Yoga improves the quality of life for women with breast cancer, research shows.

Two studies presented at a major US cancer conference showed that regular yoga reduced pain and fatigue.

Researchers believe yoga lowers the stress hormone cortisol which makes patients more relaxed and better able to cope with side effects.

It also helps them sleep, meaning they are less exhausted  one of the worst side effects from cancer and its treatment.

Researchers believe yoga lowers the stress hormone cortisol which makes patients more relaxed and better able to cope with side effects

What was the first study?

The first study was carried out by the University of Rochester in New York and involved 321 patients, the majority of whom had breast cancer.

Half practised yoga for 75 minutes, twice a week and the remainder carried on with the normal lifestyles.

After four weeks the women who did yoga were better able to sleep and had significantly lower levels of fatigue.

'We recommend that doctors prescribe yoga'

Dr Po-Ju Lin, from the University of Rochester Medical Centre in New York said: 'We recommend that doctors prescribe this low-risk, low-cost treatment to all cancer patients with cancer-related fatigue.

'We would like them to prescribe gentle hatha yoga (a type of yoga) but they need to refer to appropriate yoga instructors who have experience of working with cancer patients.'

Two studies presented at a major US cancer conference showed that regular yoga reduced pain and fatigue in breast cancer patients

What was the second study?

A second trial by the Tata Memorial Centre in Mumbai, India is looking into whether yoga can improve breast cancer patients' survival odds.

YOGA CAN RELIEVE BACK PAIN Yoga can help relieve the agony of back pain, a major review of medical evidence found in January. The practice, which includes stretching and breathing exercises, is an effective way to improve mobility and ease the chronic discomfort, University of Maryland experts said. They found yoga was twice as likely to improve the condition than simply doing back exercises  and also improved overall physical quality of life. Lower back pain affects four in five people at some point in their lifetime. Most cases are caused by lifting a heavy object badly or bending awkwardly, and in most instances will go away within a few weeks. Advertisement

It involves 850 women undergoing treatment for breast cancer of whom half are doing yoga every day.

The first results have shown yoga significantly reduced their pain and tiredness and helped them go about their daily lives.

Women doing yoga also reported being in a better mood and being more active.

'Yoga could help alleviate side-effects'

Baroness Delyth Morgan, Chief Executive at Breast Cancer Now, said: 'This intriguing research suggests that yoga could help alleviate some of the very difficult side-effects following breast cancer treatment, such as pain, fatigue and sleep deprivation.

'These side-effects can have a hugely detrimental impact on patients' quality of life and yoga is a low-risk widely-available activity that could help women manage and overcome them.

'We now look forward to further research that can shed light on exactly which elements of yoga may be of benefit to women living with and beyond breast cancer.'

Dr Nita Nair, the lead researcher of the trial in Mumbai said yoga was a 'discipline which encourages healthy mind and body practises.'

She said it should be used as a 'complimentary therapy' for cancer around the world.
A medical marijuana dispensary has made a cannabis-infused pizza for patients who don't want to smoke the drug.

The six-inch pie, which costs $38, was designed by Ermont Inc, a large marijuana business in Quincy, on the outskirts of Boston.

It is topped with a potent tomato sauce, infused with 125mg of THC distillate, which is the psychoactive compound in marijuana. That is the equivalent to a quarter of a joint, or 12 doses of medical edibles.

According to Ermont, it has already proved a huge success, with around 200 pizzas in the first three weeks.

Only those holding a medical marijuana ID can purchase the personal-sized cheese dish.

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Ermont Inc, a medical marijuana dispensary in Quincy, Massachusetts, has created a weed-infused cheese pizza for $38. The pizzas are personal-sized and come frozen

CANNABIS DOSING Every cannabis plant has different levels of cannabinoids, which is the active ingredient in marijuana. The psychoactive compound in cannabinoids is THC which gives users their 'high'. There are several different methods to consume cannabis and each vary in THC level. In theory, the greater the THC count will lead to a greater high. Here are the different starting doses for each method: Flower (Joint) - 120mg - 250mg Edible - a single dose is usually 10mg Full-extract oil - very potent but doses depend on the patient Hemp CBD extract - one dose is 10mg Butane Hash Oil (BHO) - single drop 37.5mg Advertisement

Customers are limited in buying two of the frozen pies at a time and if they want toppings, they'll have to add their own.

Ermont Inc came up with the idea because although the company has a range of marijuana edibles, they wanted to offer meals that patients could eat without lots of sugar.

Director of Operations Seth Yaffe said to the Boston Herald: 'I think people at first are kind of blown away that it is one of the better frozen pizzas that they have had, and the fact that its medicated is pretty exciting for them.

'We found that infusing the tomato sauce gave us a really good consistent pizza in terms of not only flavor, but ... a consistent dose, which is important for our patients.'

The success of the pizza is leading Ermont Inc to explore other options for cannabis-infused meals.

Currently, the business is expanding its menu to include peach cobbler, jalapeno cornbread, vegan mayonnaise, olive oil and mac and cheese.

The nonprofit company opened its doors at the end of 2016 and grows marijuana on site, making all of its cannabis products there.

Ermont Inc serves an estimated 3,700 patients in the area, according to the Patriot Ledger.

There are around 19,000 people in Massachusetts who are legally allowed to purchase medical marijuana.

Massachusetts initially legalized medical marijuana in 2012 and extended the law to cover recreational use in 2016.

The pizza's high comes from the tomato sauce, infused with 125 mg of THC distillate, which is the psychoactive compound in marijuana

Determining the dosing in cannabis is difficult because every plant has different levels of cannabinoids, the active ingredient in the plant.

Different methods of marijuana consumption will have higher levels of THC and therefore are more potent.

A single dose of edibles is normally around 10mg while a full joint of marijuana is around 120mg to 250mg.

Cannabis oil normally has the highest levels of THC per dose. Full-extract medical cannabis is considered the most potent form and can be used to treat cancer patients.

Experts recommend that people who are trying cannabis for the first time to start off small and gradually work to larger quantities based off the body's reaction.

Both medical and recreational use of marijuana are also legal in Colorado, Washington, Alaska, Oregon, Nevada, California and Maine.

Restricted for medical use only are: Montana, North Dakota, Arizona, New Mexico, Arkansas, Louisiana, Florida, Illinois, Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, District of Columbia, Vermont, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Delaware and Hawaii.

As legalization of cannabis becomes prevalent across the United States, experts are adamant that there needs to be more research on its benefits and dangers.

The company sold around 200 pizzas in a three-week span. The business wanted to offer meals infused with THC instead of just edibles. They are working on making mac and cheese (right)

A new study by researchers in Chicago confirmed that small doses of medical marijuana does help relieve stress.

However, any more than a couple of puffs has the opposite effect.

The experts split participants into groups and gave them each a batch of THC capsules - one equivalent to a couple of puffs, one equivalent to half a joint, and one a placebo.

They found that very low doses lessened anxiety and jitters when faced with a public-speaking task.

However, a stronger dose - enough to trigger a mild high - increased anxiety levels.

The researchers said it is one of the most rigorous investigations into the widely accepted - but untested - idea that THC relieves stress, and at what level.
If caught early, prostate cancer is one of the most treatable cancers with high survival rates.

However, research has shown that black men are twice as likely to die from prostate cancer than white men.

New research has investigated why this disparity exists and found the two groups of men view treatment plans differently.

Blacks were more likely to think their cancer was not aggressive and were more likely to worry about the treatment's cost and side effects than their white counterparts.

New research points to a clue on why black men are twice as likely to die from prostate cancer than white men. Blacks are less likely to think their cancer is aggressive and are more worried about the cost than their white counterparts

WHAT IS PROSTATE CANCER? Prostate cancer usually develops slowly and often produces no signs for many years. The prostate is a small gland in the pelvis that is only in men. It helps to produce semen. Symptoms tend to appear when the gland becomes so large that it affects the tube that carries urine to the penis. This may cause an increased need to urinate, straining while urinating or feeling the bladder is not empty. The risk increases with age and those with family members who have suffered. Advertisement

The study on racial disparities in prostate cancer treatment was conducted by the University of North Carolina Lineberger.

Researchers suggest black men are less likely to receive aggressive treatment because they are more worried about the cost and how the medicine will impact their daily life.

Other key finds were that black men were more concerned with recovery time and treatment time compared to white men.

The study looked at 1,171 men who were newly diagnosed with prostate cancer across North Carolina.

There were 304 black men and 866 white men, with varying economic backgrounds.

Lead author Dr Ronald C. Chen, of the university's cancer center, said his main concern was that 50 percent of black men in the study didn't think their cancer was very aggressive.

However, Dr Chen said, this was absolutely wrong.

In comparison, only 24 percent of white men said their cancer was not very aggressive when it was.

The five-year survival rate for men with prostate cancer is 99 percent and the 15-year survival rate is 96 percent.

But these statistics only apply to men who receive treatment.

Non-white men are less likely to have surgery to treat their prostate cancer, according to a 2010 study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

The study's author said the most concerning aspect of the research was that 50 percent of black men in the study didn't think their cancer was very aggressive. Pictured: A chart of study participants' answers

THE PROS AND CONS OF THE PSA TEST There is no single test for prostate cancer. Commonly used tests are the Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA), a physical examination of your prostate or a biopsy. It measures a man's antigen levels and can detect early prostate cancer - but it is not foolproof. PSA levels can be elevated when cancer isn't present or not elevated when cancer does exist. Higher PSA levels can also be caused by other conditions, like inflammation of the prostate or enlarged prostate. A diagnosis of prostate cancer can provoke anxiety and confusion. Treatment is not always necessary and the test can pick up slow-growing cancers that may never cause symptoms or reduce life expectancy. Prostate cancer treatment can have side effects, including urinary incontinence, erectile dysfunction or bowel complications. Source: Prostate Cancer UK Advertisement

Prostate cancer is the third most common cancer type, with 161,000 cases diagnosed yearly in the United States.

Numerous studies show it disproportionately affects black men in both incidence and in death.

Blacks have a 74 percent higher risk than whites in developing the disease.

Although being at a significantly higher risk for the disease, only 33 percent of black men over the age of 50 reported having a prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening.

The American Cancer Society recommends that men at an average risk should have a PSA screening when they turn 50 but recommend black men get this test done at 45 years old.

The organization drops the age down to 40 if the man has a family history of prostate cancer.

In April, US Preventive Services Task Force changed its policy on routine prostate cancer screening.

New draft guidelines say the agency does not have any specific advice on the topic.

Instead, men should decide for themselves the best course of action after talking with their doctor.

Still, black men are less likely than white men to be provided the option of having a PSA test.

They are also less likely to be told of the uncertainty of testing.

To screen for prostate cancer, an urologist feels the rectum to check the size of the prostate.

They then carry out a blood test to check their levels of PSA.

PSA screenings measure a man's antigen levels and can detect early signs of cancer.

The benefits of the current, painful test are controversial as it frequently produces inaccurate results that prompt men to have unnecessary surgery, putting them at-risk of urinary incontinence or erectile dysfunction.

Some prostate cancers are so slow-growing they do not necessarily require medical attention, therefore a highly accurate test that determines the need for treatment would likely be welcomed.

A new prostate screening blood test called IsoPSA could significantly reduce the rate of unnecessary biopsies by almost 50 percent.

Results, published in the journal European Urology in May, reveal that IsoPSA was significantly superior at discriminating between prostate cancer and benign conditions, and identifying patients with a severe form of the disease.
Judged on share price alone, BA's bank holiday IT meltdown has done only limited damage.

Indeed, holders of stock in the International Airlines Group, which owns BA, have had a terrific run over the last 12 months with shares more than doubling in value.

The disruption at Heathrow was severe, with some 479 flights cancelled on May 27 and a further 193 on the following day.

The numbers tell only a limited part of the story.

Delayed: The disruption at Heathrow was severe, with some 479 flights cancelled on May 27 and a further 193 on the following day

Far more serious for BA over the longer haul were images of bank-holiday heartbreak beamed across the globe, damage to a premium reputation and the breakdown of communications.

In true airline tradition, the chief executive  Alex Cruz of BA or Willie Walsh of IAG  might have been expected to be a highly visible presence as things went wrong, filled with remorse, regret and promises of compensation.

Instead, neither were anywhere to be seen.

Walsh acknowledges that the carrier didn't get the communications right but insists that while the incident 'damaged' BA it hasn't destroyed the company and the brand remains resilient.

That is partly due to its domination at Heathrow where it holds 55 per cent of the flight slots, and premium passengers have few other choices if they use London.

It is worth noting, for instance, that the introduction of a Club Europe cabin on domestic flights meant an extra 70,000 premium paying customers over the last month.

Similarly, Iberia (also part of IAG) is confident enough to ape BA with a Premium Economy cabin on flights to Chicago, New York and Bogota. IAG remains at the forefront of providing posh travel for those willing to pay.

A technical picture of the IT chaos at the heart of the May events is now starting to emerge. The greatest damage was the result of bungled efforts to bring up the power again after a surge.

The reconnection caused an uncontrolled and uncommanded systems breakdown. We have to take BA at its word that none of this has anything to do with IT staff cuts.

A greater cost than compensating passengers should be investment in more durable and up to date cyber-proof systems and fail-safe backup power.

It is no comfort to BA passengers that there have been similar, if not worse, problems at Delta and Southwest Airlines in the US.

Walsh should make it a priority to rip out those legacy systems and replace them and to ensure a new secure back-up system away from Heathrow.

If this means a big investment outlay, not budgeted for, it must surely be money well spent for the long-term future of the airline.

It is interesting to note that as the crisis has lingered, it is IAG boss Walsh, rather than the BA chief executive Cruz, who is taking the lead role.

That is the least that all stakeholders could expect, irrespective of whether the events are considered operational.

It is in the nature of these things that the person in charge is eventually ejected from office and Cruz ought to do the honourable thing and clear the decks for a new executive who better understands BA's rich heritage.

As for Walsh, he is promising an 'independent' inquiry which will be released.

That is not good enough. The regulator, the CAA, should have been onto this immediately. Its website assures us that its 'enforcement role is to protect consumers and the public' and if necessary seek prosecutions. The silence is deafening.

Online strains

The surge of Amazon and Google shares to $1,000 shows the benefit of patience when it comes to investing in tech.

So maybe online white goods retailer AO World deserves more time as it seeks to conquer Europe and the globe.

Investors, however, can only take so much punishment.

The failure of Ocado to deliver on its global strategy, in a meaningful way, has been deeply disappointing and now it has UK activist Crystal Amber snapping at its heels by building a 5 per cent stake.

Watch out.

Yahoo riches

HIGH pay is a big issue in the UK as evidenced by the Tory manifesto. But 'greed is good' in Britain is nothing compared to what goes on in America.

Silicon Valley whizz Marissa Mayer, 42, who was chief executive of Yahoo in a turbulent time filled with missteps, has collected a cool quarter of a billion dollars in rewards.

Nice work if you can get it.
Banks have pledged to improve the way they treat families who help vulnerable relatives with their money as soaring numbers of people take charge of a loved one's affairs.

Applications for lasting power of attorney  a vital document that allows someone to make financial decisions on your behalf  has hit a record 591,000 a year.

More families are realising you need this in place well before it's needed  or face chaos down the line.

Experts are now saying that every adult should set up power of attorney as soon as possible, almost regardless of their age.

Applications for lasting power of attorney  a vital document that allows someone to make financial decisions on your behalf  has hit a record 591,000 a year

In the UK, someone is diagnosed with dementia every three minutes, while more than 100,000 people are affected by strokes each year.

If these people have not appointed someone to look after their finances before they lose the ability to do so, families face a lengthy, and often costly, battle for permission via the Court of Protection.

Power of attorney is also vital if you suffer a debilitating accident or fall seriously ill.

Around 2.5 million people in the UK have appointed an attorney, with 156,000 joining them each month  double the number three years ago. Banks last week launched a code of conduct to support them.

As part of our Looking After Your Legacy campaign, Money Mail has repeatedly highlighted how banks frequently let down these customers.

Staff often didn't understand how power of attorney worked or what it entitled someone to do.

Under new guidelines from trade body the British Bankers' Association (BBA), staff will be trained to support customers to minimise stress.

Specialist teams will be set up to deal with complex paperwork, and banks have promised to stop requesting the same documents again and again.

They will also remove restrictions that prevent power of attorney customers banking online or by phone.

When customers ask how to register their power of attorney document, they will be given clear and simple instructions.

Banks will also investigate how they might let families appoint someone temporarily to look after their finances in an emergency.

So far, eight banks have signed up, including Lloyds Banking Group, Barclays, HSBC, Nationwide, NatWest and Santander. The changes should be in place by next May.

Martin Lewis, of Money Saving Expert, says: 'Power of attorney is just as important as making a will, if not more.

In the UK, someone is diagnosed with dementia every three minutes

'This is about what will happen to your money when you are alive. If you don't have one, your family may not be able to access your finances to pay for your care.

'The system isn't perfect. But dementia can come on suddenly. If you have a stroke or accident, you can lose your mental capacity in a day. So it's vital you are prepared.'

There are two types of lasting power of attorney: one for health and welfare and a second for financial affairs. To set one up, you must be over 18 and of sound mind.

First, choose someone you trust to act on your behalf  you can nominate more than one person.

Then visit gov.uk, print forms from the Office of the Public Guardian website or call 0300 456 0300. You give information including your name, address and date of birth, and details of those you appoint.

You can add extra instructions, such as how you prefer to invest.

You need to register the document with the Office of the Public Guardian before it can be used. The fee was reduced from 110 to 82 in April.

You can specify if you want your attorney to be able to act on your behalf straight away, or only after you lose mental capacity.

In Scotland, you can choose between a continuing power of attorney for financial matters, a welfare power of attorney for medical decisions, or a joint document. There is a 75 submission fee.

Once you have the attorney document, you need to register it with financial companies. They should then treat the attorney as if they were the original customer.

It's vital to fill in the forms correctly, as even the simplest of mistakes can invalidate the document. You may wish to use a solicitor or financial planning expert, especially if your affairs are complicated.

The good news is that the Government has introduced clearer forms and reduced wait times to less than 40 days on average.

Justine Clowes, chair of Solicitors for the Elderly, says: 'Without a power of attorney in place, many families find major decisions about their spouse, child or parent are left to the court  so it's absolutely essential that all adults, regardless of age, health or circumstance, consider setting one up.'

To help you protect your legacy, Money Mail editor Dan Hyde has produced a guide explaining everything you need to know about power of attorney and writing a will. To order your free copy, published in partnership with Key Retirement, call 0800 531 6029 or write to FREEPOST KEY GROUP with your name, address and phone number. Or click here.

v.bischoff@dailymail.co.uk
Catastrophe bonds - insurance taken out by insurers - are a multi-billion-pound business

Every year about one million earthquakes and 90 hurricanes are recorded worldwide.

For families affected, these can be devastating. And for insurers, financially crippling.

When Hurricane Katrina hit the U.S. more than a decade ago, it was estimated to have cost insurance companies 62billion.

Hurricane Sandy, which followed seven years later, cost them 15.5billion when it hit several states, including New York.

So it is no wonder that, just as an individual takes out home, car or health insurance to protect against the unexpected, insurers also take out cover.

These policies, known as catastrophe bonds, are a multi-billion-pound business.

The insurer pays investors in the bond a premium  just as you would for car or home cover. Then cash in the bond is used to foot the bill should the worst happen.

As with any insurance, the higher the risk, the more expensive the premium for the insurer. Typically, these policies pay an income of between 2 per cent and 8 per cent a year.

When you think the average savings account pays less than 1 per cent, this seems an attractive return.

But to get it you are backing something that is high risk.

Catastrophe bonds have only been around since the mid-Nineties, but are today issued by many of the world's biggest insurers including Lloyds, Swiss Re and AIG.

They are most common in the U.S., where there is a strong insurance market and natural disasters are more frequent.

They are even issued by government catastrophe schemes such as the California Earthquake Authority and big organisations, such as U.S. rail operator Amtrak.

Simon Vuille, co-manager of the Lombard Odier CAT Bond fund, says the bonds are unique as their price and payouts are linked to the weather  and unaffected by stock market crashes or political crises.

They are also popular as the interest they pay usually climbs if the base rate rises, he says.

Downtown New Orleans is submerged in the wake of Hurricane Katrina which hit the U.S. more than a decade ago. It was estimated to have cost insurance companies 62bn

The less risk of the catastrophe the lower the return

Each catastrophe bond issued is very specific. For example, in Mr Vuille's fund, there is a holding for insurance against an event such as the 1926 Great Miami Hurricane, which devastated Florida and much of the Caribbean.

In today's money, the damage caused would cost insurers more than 115billion.

Because such an event happens only about every 200 years, the bond pays just 3 per cent.

Because such an event happens only about every 200 years, the bond pays just 3%

Another example is insurance against earthquakes in California. The payout, at 2 per cent, is even lower as a large earthquake only occurs in the Golden State approximately once a century.

An earthquake is also likely to cost insurers less than a flood or storm, meaning the risk is lower, as it is not standard on home insurance policies.

A more unusual holding in Mr Vuille's fund is protection against mortality. 'This would be triggered if there were an extreme number of deaths in a specific country in one year, in the hundreds of thousands, and a life insurer would have to pay out on those deaths,' he says.

'Typically, what would cause this is a catastrophe such as a tsunami or, more likely, a pandemic.'

Specific things that must happen before bonds pay out

Each of the 94 bonds Mr Vuille invests in has specific criteria that must be met before it will pay out to the insurer.

The risk is that if the worst case scenario does happen, the money in the bond will be used to cover the insurer's costs.

This means the fund manager could lose all of the money he holds in that bond, which could hit the fund's return and value of your savings.

Dr John Seo, co-founder of Fermat Capital Management, which manages the GAM Star Cat Bond fund, says: 'The biggest risk in any typical year is that there is another Great Miami Hurricane.

The risk is that if the worst case scenario does happen, the money in the bond will be used to cover the insurer's costs

'Such an event could see catastrophe bond funds lose around 25 per cent of their value.'

Mr Vuille says, however, that the default rate on the bonds he's held in the past has been very low  the last default followed the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan. The average payout of the bonds in his fund is 4.5 per cent.

His Lombard Odier CAT Bond fund is down 0.2 per cent over the past year, while the GAM Star Cat Bond fund is up 2.8 per cent in the same period, turning 10,000 into 12,800 and yields in the region of 4.1 per cent.

Nathan Sweeney, manager of the Architas Diversified Real Assets fund, has been investing more cash in catastrophe bonds ahead of the General Election.

He has 3 per cent of his 183million fund in the CATCo Reinsurance Opportunities fund, which has returned 26.5 per cent in a year, turning 10,000 into 12,650.

Mr Sweeney says: 'If there are no major disasters then the returns on offer from catastrophe bonds are very attractive.'

However, Juliet Schooling Latter, from Chelsea Financial Services, warns: 'These funds often pay a very high income, which is attractive. But with that high yield comes high risk, so catastrophe bonds are not for everyone.'

And James de Bunsen, manager of the Henderson Alternative Strategies Trust fund, says: 'I don't think catastrophe bonds pay enough for the risk you take.'
Payday: Countryside Properties boss Graham Cherry

Two brothers have sold nearly 36million of shares in the housebuilding company set up by their father six decades ago.

Richard and Graham Cherry offloaded a total of just over 11million shares in Countryside Properties for 325p each.

But they still own around 15.5million Countryside shares worth nearly 50million at last nights closing price of 318.6p.

Essex-based Countryside, which specialises in housebuilding and regeneration, was founded by Alan Cherry in 1958.

A well-known industry figure, he remained chairman until his death aged 76 in 2010.

Graham Cherry, 57, joined the company as a graduate trainee in 1980 and was appointed to the board in 1984, and runs the housebuilding arm of the business.

Richard Cherry, 56, also joined as a graduate trainee in 1982 and was appointed to the board in 1986.

In April this year, he announced plans to step down as chief executive of the urban regeneration arm of the business and retire.

The brothers sold nearly 3.3million shares each when the company returned to the stock market in February last year.

The sale would have earned them a total of around 15million at the float price of 225p.
Chelsea boots and floral flip flops have driven sales at British brand Joules, which said profits would be ahead of expectations.

The upmarket fashion retailer, known for its printed wellies, reported a 19.6 per cent rise in overall sales to 156million, as international shoppers continued to fall for its British charm.

Retail sales leapt around 19.4 per cent higher in the year to May 28, while wholesale revenues rose 20.3 per cent thanks to strong demand in the UK and the US.

Joules reported a 19.6% rise in overall sales to 156m, as international shoppers continued to fall for its British charm

Joules has received a boost from the Brexit-vote-hit pound, which has sent international shoppers flocking to its website.

This season's success stories include coral-coloured garments, along with its collection of embroidered tops.

Shares rose 5.2 per cent or 15p to 301p.

Colin Porter, chief executive, said: 'The appeal and strength of the Joules brand continues to resonate with our loyal and growing customer base.

'This confidence is supported by the growth in our customer base and our exciting new store opening plans, as well as a robust autumn/winter wholesale order-book both in the UK and internationally.'

Popular with middle-class families, Joules was founded in the 1980s as an equestrian-style range sold at country shows.

It eventually branched onto the High Street, becoming known for its 'time-off' countryside fashion with pops of colour.'

The brand now has 108 stores across airports, railway stations and 'at-home' holiday destinations such as Southwold in Suffolk. Over the next year it said it would open another ten to 12 shops.

Its entry to the junior market last may May saw founder Tom Joule pocket 40million as he trimmed his 80 per cent stake to below 50 per cent.

Driving sales in the US has been key to its growth, where it is stocked in department stores including Von Maur and Nordstrom.
Hedge fund Crystal Amber has put aside a 100million fighting fund in a bid to overhaul Ocado.

The British activist investor, which already has a 9million holding in the online supermarket, claims the firm failed to live up to its growth potential.

Boss Richard Bernstein confirmed the company had bought more shares in Ocado on Monday and added that it was prepared to go up to 5 per cent if necessary.

War chest: Hedge fund Crystal Amber has put aside a 100million fighting fund in a bid to overhaul Ocado

The move would give Crystal Amber, which has a reputation for triggering takeovers, a 100million stake and allow it to exert its influence as it would be one of the five biggest shareholders.

Yesterday, Bernstein, 54, continued his tirade against Ocado by accusing it of talking 'nonsense' over its refusal to give the name, or value, of its first overseas deal.

This partnership, which Ocado dubbed an 'exciting step in the evolution of its business' was first announced on Sunday  but drew a mixed reaction from investors amid concerns it wasn't quite the deal first hoped for.

Under the terms of the deal, the unnamed retailer will use Ocado's software but not its automated warehouse technology.

Little is known about the European partner, beyond the fact it is a regional retailer rather than a national seller  another blow to investors who feel the deal fails to go far enough.

Tensions between Crystal Amber and Ocado grew after the retailer failed to invite the fund to visit its new distribution warehouse in Andover.

Shareholders were invited to look around the 240,000 square foot building on Monday, but the invitation was not extended to Crystal Amber.

It is understood that Ocado had restricted the visit to senior shareholders and was not aware Crystal Amber had a holding in the company when invitations were first sent.
Genel Energy has been hit by a major shareholder rebellion

Troubled Genel Energy has been hit by a major shareholder rebellion.

The oil firm's board was forced to defend its chief executive Murat Ozgul, 43, after around 30 per cent of the vote at yesterday's annual meeting went against his re-election.

And newly appointed non-executive director Umit Tolga Bilgin, 41  head of a firm that owns 15 per cent of Genel  had to step down after failing to win shareholders' backing.

Investors also protested against Ozgul's 1.5million pay package for 2016, a year when the company's losses widened to nearly 1billion.

This week co-founders Tony Hayward and Nat Rothschild have left the company, following years of disappointing results from its key Taq Taq field in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Finance chief Ben Monaghan is leaving at the end of the month. Board members Chakib Sbiti and Simon Lockett have also resigned.
Chinese Australians have coined a new Mandarin word to affectionately describe Straya in their daily chats.

TuAo () has been widely used by Chinese-Australians in social media platforms such as We Chat and a number of Australian Chinese-language media when referring to the nation in their mother tongue.

Jessie Lin, a student from Macquarie University and a former Fujian province resident said TuAo was a cute nickname coined by long-term Chinese residents in Australia for the nation.

Chinese Australians have coined a new Mandarin word to affectionately describe Straya

She said the word had been around for the last four to five years, but had only gain popularity in the last two.

'TuAo is a combination of two words,' Ms Lin told Daily Mail Australia.

'Tu means rural, while Ao means Australia,'she said.

'It's a good word and only used by Chinese nationals who have resided in Australia for a long time,' Ms Lin, who has been living in Sydney for the past nine years, said.

But not all were in agreement with Ms Lin's views.

One former Beijing resident who now resides in Australia as a permanent resident says the term TuAo was not an endearing one.

'I feel it refers to how close you are to nature in Australia', Annie Zhang told the ABC.

Ms Zhang said term also made reference to the 'coarse' Australian accent, and the country's lack of development in urban design and mobile payment technology.

The word is used by Chinese migrants residing in Australia on platforms such as WeChat

Chinese living overseas have coined different endearing names for the countries that are in

'China is so grandiose, whereas in Australia there aren't as many magnificent tall buildings,' she said.

University of Technology Sydney Chinese studies professor Feng Chongyi said the term was commonly used among youngsters but not the older generations.

What is TuAo TuAo is a Mandarin word which combines the terms for rural and Australia. The phrase, used in social media app WeChat, was coined by Chinese Australians to describe Australia among themselves Tu means 'Rural' while Ao means 'Australia' Advertisement

'For them, [the term] is also loaded with some political meaning to show their own nationalism - to compare the Chinese modernisation to Australia, which they call a large village.'

A former Chinese professor from Curtin University, Wai Ling Yeung, says Chinese people living overseas have coined different sorts of endearing names for the countries they are currently residing in.

In Britain, it was FuGuo - which meant a decadent country or a coded term in reference to UK's attitudes towards homosexuality.

While the US is referred to online as MeiDi by Chinese citizens - which meant the 'American empire' and interpreted as laid-back, modest and unassuming.


Wealthy former Goldman Sachs executive Phil Murphy is set to face off against Governor Chris Christies lieutenant governor Kim Guadagno in the race for New Jersey governor.

Murphy, who was an Obama administration ambassador, defeated five rivals in one of only two statewide races in the country.

Guadagno has served as Christies lieutenant governor - the first in state history - since winning election in 2009. Guadagno racked up key endorsements and won the party line in the states GOP hotbeds in Monmouth and Ocean counties.

Phil Murphy talks to supporters during a Democratic primary election watch party at the Robert Treat Hotel, Tuesday, June 6, after his win

New Jersey Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno speaks during a Republican gubernatorial primary debate in Newark in May

They will face off November 7 in one of only two governor's races this year, along with Virginia, with Democrats hopeful their promised anti-Trump agenda and voter registration advantage will propel them to victory and jump-start a 2018 congressional comeback.

The election comes as various Trump administration scandals swamp headlines, spurring Murphy to lash out at the Republican president and wedging Guadagno between an unpopular White House and a governor of whom most voters disapprove.

Phil Murphy speaks to supporters during a Democratic primary election watch party at the Robert Treat Hotel, Tuesday at in Newark

A State Trooper, left, holds the curtain open for Republican gubernatorial candidate and New Jersey Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno after she voted in the state's primary election at the Church of the Precious Blood Parish Center

The two immediately took aim at each other after winning, continuing campaign attacks that have marked the first statewide primary election since President Donald Trump took office.

'Four more years of Christie-style politics won't make New Jersey the state where we draw the line against Donald Trump, but we will,' Murphy said. 'We are better than Donald Trump, and we are better than Chris Christie.'

Murphy, a former Obama administration ambassador to Germany who poured more than $20 million into the contest, tied Guadagno to Christie during his victory speech in Newark and reiterated a promise to oppose Trump.

Guadagno, twice elected on the ticket with Christie, has gone to great lengths to try to highlight their differences.

Democratic Gubernatorial candidate Phil Murphy exits the voting booth with his son Sam, 13, after voting in the state's primary

In fact, in her first TV campaign ad, she didn't even mention she was lieutenant governor.

In January, she said she would not be voting for Trump, but then backtracked and said she would do whatever needed to be done to work with the president if it benefited New Jersey, according to USA Today.

In her victory speech Tuesday, she contrasted herself with the term-limited governor without mentioning his name and then slammed Murphy's Goldman Sachs career, as his five primary opponents had done.

'I'm running for governor based on my values, based on my record, based on my principles,' she said. 'My principles are Main Street principles.'

Democrats are favored in the general election, in part because of an 800,000-voter registration advantage and because of political headwinds stemming from Christie's and Trump's unpopularity.

As Joe Piscopo, actor, comedian and radio host, looks on New Jersey Republican Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno celebrates at her primary election night event

Christie remained neutral during the campaign but said Tuesday that he voted for Guadagno, his top deputy since they were elected in 2009.

He has said he would campaign if asked, but it's unclear whether his assistance would help or hurt, since about three-quarters of voters disapprove of his job performance.

The race to take the New Jersey governor's office back from a Republican comes as Democrats nationally weigh whether distancing themselves from Wall Street will help them counter Trump and his populist Republican allies.

Lt. Governor Kim Guadagno greets supporters prior to voting during the primary gubernatorial election at the Church of The Precious Blood parish center

Murphy contributed to the state's powerful county political machines, drawing harsh attacks from his opponents that he was trying to buy their support, while giving him the lead position on ballots across the state's 21 counties.

His opponents repeatedly brought up his time at Goldman Sachs. They compared him to members of Trump's administration who also worked there and to former Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine, another Goldman Sachs alumnus who, like Murphy, donated to local Democratic parties.

Phil Murphy, right, poses for a selfie with a supporter after speaking during a Democratic primary election watch party at the Robert Treat Hotel

Sharyn Kingston, 25, of Freehold, said she was wary of Murphy's 'Goldman Sachs connections' but voted for him because he's best suited for the job and can win the election.

'I'm not an Occupy Wall Street type, but I am afraid of big money in politics, and he made it look like he was trying to buy the nomination,' the legal secretary said.

John Parilla, 75, an immigration lawyer from Alpine, voted for Guadagno and said he likes the range of experience she brings to the job. He said he doesn't see her as a Christie clone but does see similarities between Murphy and Corzine.

Poll worker Audrey Ginsberg places an 'I Voted' sticker on Gov. Chris Christie at the Brookside Emergency Services Building during the primary election - he said he voted for Guadagno

Gov. Chris Christie walks with his wife Mary Pat Christie after the two cast their votes at the Brookside Emergency Services Building during the primary election

Gov. Chris Christie comes out of the voting booth with son, Patrick after casting his vote at the Brookside Emergency Services Building

Democratic Gubernatorial candidate Phil Murphy speaks with the media after voting in the state's primary election at the Fairview Elementary School in Middletown

Guadagno defeated Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli, Nutley Commissioner Steve Rogers, Ocean County landscape business owner and actor Joseph 'Rudy' Rullo and Atlantic County engineer Hirsh Singh.

Murphy faced challenges from former Teaneck firefighter Bill Brennan, one-time Clinton administration Treasury official Jim Johnson, state Sen. Ray Lesniak, Assemblyman John Wisniewski and Tenafly Councilman Mark Zinna.

In Virginia, the only other state electing a governor this year, most of the attention has focused on the close Democratic primary between Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam and former congressman Tom Perriello.

Former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie is favored to win the GOP primary in Virginia over Trump's former state campaign chairman Corey Stewart.

Poll station administrator Leticia Velez, right, watches as a voter enters the booth at City Hall, during primary voting for New Jersey gubernatorial candidates

Local voters arrive at a City Hall polling station to vote in the primary for New Jersey gubernatorial candidates, Tuesday in Hoboken

A supporter of Phil Murphy reacts as he mentions union workers during a Democratic primary election watch party at the Robert Treat Hotel

Former Newark Mayor Sharpe James wears a flier supporting Phil Murphy during a Democratic primary election watch party at the Robert Treat Hotel
A classical musician is worried about damage to her hand after she says United Airlines barred her centuries-old violin from a flight and 'attacked' her.

The violinist, Yennifer Correia, 33, is worried that the scuffle with the airline supervisor has injured her hand, and hence her ability to play her instrument, after the staffer allegedly tried to grab her violin.

Correia was trying to bring the instrument, made in Italy sometime in the late 1700s, on board a flight from Houston to St. Louis on Tuesday when she would begin rehearsals with the Missouri Symphony Orchestra.

Professional violinist Yennifer Correia may sue after getting into what she says is a physical scuffle with a United staffer who wouldn't let her board a plane with her precious violin

Correia said the supervisor told her she would have to stow the violin in the cargo hold and pay $50. The violist said she tried to explain to her that the instrument, worth tens of thousands of dollars and essential to her career, couldn't leave her side.

'She was rude from the beginning saying "these are the rules. All you can take with you are some personal items on the plane. And the instrument is too big and it's not going to fit,"' Correia told Click2Houston.

The confrontation escalated and Correia said that the woman was trying to grab the sticker off her luggage, which had her name on it.

Correia was flying from Houston to St. Louis to begin rehearsals with the Missouri Symphony Orchestra

'She proceeded to throw herself on top of my suitcase. So she could take the rest of the sticker from my suitcase. At this point, we're both struggling - pulling the suitcase - and I'm trying to get her not to take the sticker from me,' she said.

Correia had a discount fare that, according to rules posted on United's website, doesn't let passengers stow luggage in the overhead bin, although an exception is allowed for 'small' musical instruments.

The United staffer apparently did not feel the violin was small enough.

The violinist says the supervisor 'attacked' her and now she will go to a hand surgeon to see if her hand was damaged in the scuffle

Her attorney, Philip MacNaughton, says that normally airlines allow violins are on board so it's unclear why this wasn't the case this time.

Chicago-based United has refunded Correia's airfare, discussed the matter with its Houston employees and has 'reached out to Ms. Correia to gain a better understanding of what occurred and to offer assistance,' spokesman Charles Hobart said.

'We're disappointed anytime a customer has an experience that does not live up to his or her expectation,' he said.

Correia will have her hands examined next week by a Houston surgeon, MacNaughton told The Associated Press.

While the Venezuelan-born Correia's hands show no immediate bruising or redness, 'we're all holding our breath,' MacNaughton said. 'We think the odds of injury are low, but the stakes are career-killing.'

'You don't grab a surgeon's hands, a pitcher's hands or a professional violinist's hands,' he added, calling the dispute 'a physical attack.'

'She knows she has to stand up to United and say you can't treat professional musicians this way. I don't understand why airlines, especially United, can't simply deal with an issue and not turn it into a confrontation.'

Musicians long have complained that airlines frequently require that instruments they rely on for their livelihoods be checked and be entrusted to baggage handlers, with the result that they often are damaged or lost.

'These instruments cost, at her level, tens of thousands of dollars,' MacNaughton said. 'You're making a living with an instrument that costs twice as much as your car - probably the most expensive thing you own. Airlines can't safely transport it.'

United's grappling with the issue even went lyrical. After Canadian musician Dave Carroll had a guitar smashed during a flight in 2009, he wrote a song and book about it, calling both 'United Breaks Guitars.'

Carroll's online video of his song was so popular - and so damaging to United - that it has become a business case study of how social media can harm a company's image.

More recently, Florida State University graduate student asked for public help in January in replacing a cello she claimed was smashed on a United flight. In June of last year, violinist Yura Lee reported being kicked off a United flight for attempting to stow her instrument below seats.

United's customer service took another hit in April, when 69-year-old David Dao was injured by Chicago airport security officers who were called to remove him from an overbooked United Express plane - a confrontation captured on cellphone video that went viral. United later apologized and reached an undisclosed settlement with him.
Donald Trump's attorney general suggested he could quit after the president 'lashed out' at him, it was reported Tuesday night.

Jeff Sessions made the suggestion amid 'friction' with the president, ABC News reported.

The network said Trump had repeatedly attacked the country's most senior prosecutor in private meetings over his decision to recuse himself from any aspect of the Russia investigation in March.

Trump is reportedly still angry about Sessions' decision, which at the time was widely reported to have been made against the president's own wishes.

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Threat to quit: An angry and fixated Trump has lashed out repeatedly at Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from the Russia probe - and now the attorney general is threatening to quit, according to sources

Trump is reportedly still angry about Sessions' decision, which at the time was widely reported to have been made against the president's own wishes

Trump only heard about Sessions' decision moments before he publicly announced it and he now blames the expansion of the Russia investigation on his recusal, ABC reported.

The outlet said it had been told by 'multiple sources' that Sessions' 'recusal is one of the top disappointments of his presidency' and that he is 'fixated' on it.

The report that Sessions has threatened to resign comes days before James Comey, the fired FBI director, is due to give evidence about his removal and the Russian investigation.

Another recent report claimed Comey told the attorney general in February that he didn't want to be left alone with the president.

Comey approached Sessions just one day after Trump asked Comey in a private meeting, to end the FBI's investigation into his former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, officials told The New York Times.

Former FBI Director James Comey told Attorney General Jeff Sessions in February that he didn't want to be left alone with President Donald Trump, according to reports

Comey allegedly approached Sessions just one day after the president asked the then-FBI director to end the investigation into his former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn

The then-FBI Director did not tell Sessions of the president's request, he only said private meetings between the FBI director and the president were 'inappropriate', according to the Times.

He believed Sessions should protect the FBI from White House influence.

Sources told the outlet that Sessions could not guarantee the president wouldn't try to have another private conversation with Comey.

The Washington Post also reported Tuesday that Trump approached Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats in March, and told him to make the FBI back down from investigating Flynn's ties with Russia.

An anonymous source told the paper that Trump stopped Coats after a meeting on March 22, less than a week after Coats was confirmed and just two days after Comey confirmed the FBI was investigating collusion between Trump's campaign team and Russians.

Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats told colleagues Trump asked him to interfere in the FBI's Russia probe in a private March 22 meeting, sources say

According to the source, CIA Director Mike Pompeo was also present for the conversation.

Coats is set to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee Wednesday, the day before Comey's testimony. Coats is expected to be questioned about his interactions with Trump.

Though he conferred with his colleagues about the president's request, he decided against doing what the president asked because it would be inappropriate, the source said.

Sean Spicer would not say Tuesday whether the president has confidence in Sessions.

Spicer told reporters that he has 'not had a discussion' with the president on the topic.

He said: 'If I haven't had a discussion with him about a subject, I tend not to speak about it.'

Comey, who was fired by Trump on May 9, is expected to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee Thursday to give evidence about his removal and the Russian investigation

Sessions recused himself from investigations into Russia meddling in the 2016 presidential election and possible ties between Moscow and Trump's campaign after he failed to disclose a conversation with Russia's ambassador to the United States during his confirmation hearing

Sessions' 'recusal is one of the top disappointments of his presidency' and Trump is 'fixated' on it, according to ABC

Sessions recused himself from investigations into Russia meddling in the 2016 presidential election and possible ties between Moscow and Trump's campaign.

That was after he failed to disclose a conversation with Russia's ambassador to the United States during his confirmation hearing.

The New York Times reported that the president has 'grown sour' on Sessions, partially because he blames the recusal for the eventual appointment of former FBI Director Robert Mueller as Special Counsel for the investigation.

Trump has also criticized the Justice Department on Twitter in recent days.

The president said on Monday that his Justice Department sent a 'watered down travel ban' to the Supreme Court.

'The Justice Dept. should have stayed with the original Travel Ban, not the watered down, politically correct version they submitted to S.C.' he wrote.

He added: 'The Justice Dept. should ask for an expedited hearing of the watered down Travel Ban before the Supreme Court - & seek much tougher version!'

Walter Dellinger, who was the acting solicitor general under former President Bill Clinton told the Times: 'I believe it is unprecedented for a president to publicly chastise his own Justice Department.'
The decaying remains of a small girl who went missing two years ago have been found in a garage in Belleville, Illinois.

She was found after her mother told Centreville police they would find her daughter, who died aged seven in 2015, in a vacant home in southern Illinois.

After contacting the unnamed homeowner, investigators entered the garage to find a girl wrapped in blankets, it has been reported.

The body was so decomposed that detectives could not even determine its gender, coroner Calvin Dye Sr told the St Louis Post Dispatch.

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The decaying remains of a small girl who went missing two years ago have been found in a garage in Belleville, Illinois

Police are still not sure whether her death was a result of homicide but Sergeant DeMarius Thomas Sr said they believe she was killed in Belleville and dumped in the garage.

Police say the girl's mother moved to Las Vegas to escape her husband Jason Quate (pictured)

Police say the girl's mother moved to Belleville two years ago but later fled to Las Vegas to escape her husband Jason Quate, who allegedly forced her into prostitution.

Quate was today arrested and charged with 'sex trafficking of an adult' and 'accepting or receiving earnings of a prostitute'.

The authorities are yet to arrest or charge anyone with the death of the child.

Illinois State Police, assisting in the investigation, say they are not aware of reports of missing children who match the description of the young girl found in Belleville. The results of an autopsy will be available later this week.

Las Vegas police said a suspect was taken into custody Tuesday on unrelated charges.

It is unclear whether the woman was being questioned by police or had been taken into custody.

She was found after her mother told Centreville police they would find her daughter, who died aged seven in 2015, in a vacant home

A forensic anthropologist will try to determine the child's gender and race, and police are trying to determine how the child died, Dye said.

He said investigators were trying to piece together the case, adding: 'Everything's real sketchy.'

Neighbors of the small, frame home with boarded-up windows told the Belleville News-Democrat the house has been vacant for more than two years.

Property records show the home was last sold for $25,500 in 2005. The man listed as its owner, Marcus Acoff, declined comment when reached by the AP, saying he did not want to interfere in the investigation.
Denali National Park mountaineering ranger Frank Preston was gearing up to rescue a mountain climber sick on North America's tallest mountain when a second call came in early Monday morning.

A man descending Denali had slipped into a crevasse on Kahlitna Glacier. The man was conscious but badly hurt. Fellow climbers lowered a rope, but the force of his fall pushed him through constricted spaces just inches wide.

'The walls of the crevasse were pretty smooth ice, so not a lot of friction,' Preston said. 'When he fell, in there, he had enough speed and force that he was able to slide down through skinnier places than we could squeeze people down there.'

Slovakian mountain climber Martin Takac fell down a crevasse on Denali, North America's highest mountain, on Monday

It took rescuers 15 hours to pull Takac out of the narrow crevasse on Kahlitna Glacier. Above, the Glazier in 2016

Takac spokeabout the dangerous of climbing Denali in a Facebook post last month

It was a rescue scenario Preston had not trained for, but 15 hours later, rangers and volunteer mountaineers succeeded. Lowered into a crevasse too narrow to turn their heads, rescuers opened a hole wide enough to pull out Martin Takac, 38, of Trmava, Slovakia.

'There was a lot of manual labor just chipping away at that ice to make a 6-inch wide crack into a 12-inch-wide crack,' Preston said.

The rescue, he said, was, 'Not for the claustrophobic.'

Takac was flown to Fairbanks Memorial Hospital in critical condition with suspected trauma injuries and severe hypothermia. Also flown off the mountain Monday was Michael Metzler, 23, of Carnation, Washington, the solo climber who fell ill.

Takac had been part of a larger party, Preston said, and apparently reached the 20,310-foot summit of Denali a day or two earlier. He was descending with one other climber when he fell into the glacier at 7,800 feet. Takac's partner summoned guides nearby, who called rangers.

Takac (left and right in photos from Facebook) was taken to Fairbanks Memorial Hospital in critical condition with suspected trauma and severe hypothermia

Preston and another mountaineering ranger, Chris Erickson, reached the glacier at 4am. It was light enough to see without headlamps, Preston said. The helicopter pilot took off for Kahiltna Base Camp at 7,200 feet and returned with another ranger and two volunteer mountaineers with climbing or medical expertise who assist with rescues.

The crevasse was just 3 feet wide at the surface and narrowed as rescuers descended, Preston said.

'For every few feet you went down, it constricted another few inches, or even more in places,' Preston said.

Rescuers worked in shifts, mostly one at a time, lowered by a rope and pulley system down the crevasse, planning ahead where they would widen an opening to Takac. Preston described it as a chimney of ice.

'They couldn't turn their head. They couldn't turn their hips. They couldn't move their foot,' Preston said. 'Once you were pointed in one direction with your face or with your feet, you could not move without coming out of the crevasse.'

The helicopter pilot flew the solo climber, Metzler, to an ambulance at Talkeetna. Bad weather kept the helicopter on the ground for a few hours. When conditions improved Monday afternoon, the pilot flew back to the crevasse with more three more rescuers and a pneumatic hammer-chisel loaned by the Talkeetna Volunteer Fire Department.

Rescuers reached Takac shortly after noon. He had remained conscious throughout the rescue. It took another three hours to free him, Preston said.

Low snow on the lower glacier of Denali has left open crevasses that are hard to detect, the park service said.

Takac's rescue was the second from a Denali crevasse this year of a person not roped to others. A climber fell May 26 a bit lower on the mountain.

As of Monday, the park service had registered 1,084 mountaineers to climb Denali this year, and 527 were on the mountain. The agency said 386 climbers had completed their climbs, and 122 people had reached the top.
A retired US Navy commander has admitted lying about his relationship with a shady contractor who plied him with dinners, hotel stays and prostitutes.

As part of a deal with federal prosecutors, David Kapaun pleaded guilty to fraud and false statements in federal court in Honolulu, Hawaii, involving his relationship with Leonard Francis, known by the nickname 'Fat Leonard'.

The contractor was described by prosecutors as 'the center of a colossal bribery and fraud scandal'.

Dave Kapaun, pictured in 2001 (left), admitted fraud and making false statements about his association with crooked contractor 'Fat Leonard'

Kapaun told the court that he omitted any mention of Francis from a security clearance update form because he knew 'I did have a past association with him that was unfavorable.'

He also didn't disclose receiving dinners, hotel stays and prostitutes from Francis, said his defense attorney, Victor Bakke.

Leonard Francis, known by the nickname 'Fat Leonard', has admitted bribing navy officials with cash, prostitutes and other gifts

Francis has acknowledged bribing Navy officials with cash, prostitutes and other gifts in exchange for classified information to help his company, Singapore-based Glenn Defense Marine Asia.

The company provided services such as trash and sewage removal, food, water, security and fuel to U.S. Navy ships, according to prosecutors. He's awaiting sentencing.

'He played a minor role in the overall scheme that was conducted by Fat Leonard,' Bakke said of Kapaun.

'He's remorseful. He realizes he should have used better judgment. But just like the number of other Naval officers that are involved in this case, he was seduced by this guy.'

Twenty-one current and former Navy officials have been charged so far in the scandal. Kapaun is the 11th to plead guilty.

The allegations prompted Kapaun to resign earlier this year from his civilian position as deputy chief of staff for US Special Operations Command Pacific.

Kapaun could face up to five years in federal prison when he's sentenced on Sept. 11. The terms of his plea agreement will require Kapaun to pay $50,000 restitution and a $25,000 fine, Bakke said.

Kapaun retired and was honorably discharged in 2008 after a 25-year Navy career, Bakke said.

"Even though he's retired, they could pull him back to active duty and court-martial him if they wanted to," Bakke said.
Sunrise host David Koch was left visibly stunned after learning ASIO and the AFP have little to no direct involvement with Victorian authorities in deciding whether criminal terror suspects should be granted parole.

In a fiery conversation with Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews two days after Somali-born ISIS fanatic Yacqub Khayre launched an attack in Melbourne, Koch probed as to why the violent refugee had been allowed parole given his terror background.

'My initial reaction is, I would have presumed they are involved now. It stuns me that they are only giving advice,' Koch told Mr Andrews.

It comes as Judge Peter Couzens, Chair of the Victorian Adult Parole Board, told 3AW Radio his board did not know Khayre was on a terror 'watch list', and would not have granted him parole if they had been afforded that information.

'Are you embarrassed with your parole board?' Sunrise host David Koch slammed Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews after it was revealed the Melbourne siege gunman was granted parole

Mr Andrews said the AFP and ASIO needed to be able to work closer with Victorian authorities in determining whether criminal terror suspects are granted parole

'We need them to not provide advice, to not provide commentary, instead be directly involved as a decision-maker,' Mr Andrews admitted.

But the answer was not enough for Koch, who asked: 'Are you embarrassed with your parole board?'

Mr Andrews went on to defend the state of the parole system in Victoria, which he praised as 'without a doubt the toughest system in Australia'.

'We have half the number of people out on parole compared to just a few years ago. We have made substantial changes to toughen this up,' he said.

He conceded there needed to be a 'shift' in how authorities approached the 'national issue' of terrorism, which he said was 'in our backyards'.

'I think the state government and Commonwealth government have to work together closely,' he said, adding that he would be taking the proposal to the COAG meeting with the prime minister and other premiers in Hobart on Friday.

On Monday afternoon, Somali-born refugee Yacqub Khayre killed an innocent apartment clerk and held an escort hostage during a bloody siege in Melbourne. Questions have since risen over why the criminal was granted parole in November last year

At 5.40pm, some 20 minutes before he died, the gunman called up a TV newsroom to claim: 'This is for IS, this is for al-Qaeda' (Specialist counter terrorism police are pictured)

It was revealed that Khayre (pictured aged 7, left, and 12, right) was known to counter terrorism police

On Monday afternoon, 29-year-old Yacqub Khayre, still wearing a GPS ankle bracelet as part of ongoing parole conditions for a violent home invasion, held a sex worker hostage and killed an innocent apartment worker in Melbourne's affluent south-east.

The ice-addicted refugee was shot dead by police officers after he opened fire with a sawn-off shotgun in the foyer of 'The Buckingham' serviced apartments in Brighton.

Questions have since been risen about the state of the parole system in Victoria after it was revealed he had a history of violent crime and was known to counter terrorism police after he was charged and acquitted over a suicide attack plan in 2009.
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The heartbroken wife of slain policeman Brett Forte paid an emotional tribute to her husband at his funeral service after he was shot dead in the line of duty last week.

Susan Forte thanked the Queensland community and her 'police family' for their support and said her husband would have 'loved all the attention' as thousands gathered for his funeral on Wednesday.

'He was a fantastic husband to me and father of our children,' the grieving wife said as she fought back tears. 'You were my hero and my soulmate and I will love you forever.'

She also affectionately recalled how his 'inappropriate comments' would always make her laugh.

The heartbroken wife of slain policeman Brett Forte has paid an emotional tribute to her husband at his funeral service after he was shot dead in the line of duty last week. Above, Susan Forte and son Brodie are seen touching the casket

Senior Constable Brett Forte's children (second right to left) Sam, Emma and Brodie place a teddy bear and other items on his casket during his funeral service in Toowoomba on Wednesday

Susan Forte thanked the Queensland community and her 'police family' for their support and said her husband would have 'loved all the attention'

Senior Constable Brett Forte's casket is seen ahead his funeral service on Wednesday. The casket features a surfer riding a wave

Senior Constable Brett Forte's emotional wife Susan is pictured standing next to her daughter Emma during the service

Snr Const Forte's stepdaughter Emma also paid an emotional tribute, describing him as her 'guardian angel'.

'To the world you were one person, but to our family you were the world,' she said.

She described how her stepfather taught her what it means to be a real dad: 'Anyone can be a father, but it takes a real man to be a dad,' she said, before adding: 'RIP my guardian angel. Fly high.'

Later, the senior constable's children were seen gathering around his casket, which featured an image of a surfer riding a wave.

Thousands of mourners bid farewell to slain policeman Brett Forte at his funeral service after he was shot dead in a roadside ambush

Senior Constable Brett Forte's wife Susan hugs her daughter during his funeral. They both paid tribute to the slain policeman

Uniformed police officers are seen gathering in Toowoomba ahead of Wednesday's service as they prepared to farewell their colleague

Senior Constable Forte was murdered on May 29 near Gatton in Queensland's Lockyer Valley during a dramatic police pursuit

A police officer is seen comforting one of his colleagues during the emotional service in Toowoomba on Wednesday

Police chaplain Reverend Jeff Baillis told those who gathered Snr Const Forte was a loving family man who had been taken far too soon.

'From the youngest to the oldest, from around the state and across the nation we have come together as one to mourn the loss of a man who lost his life to an act of pure evil,' Reverend Baillis said.

Around 5,000 friends, colleagues and family members flocked to Toowoomba's Clive Berghofer Recreational Centre for the funeral.

Thousands of police and emergency service workers attended the service, with the local community centre full to capacity and thousands more outside watching on a big screen.

Snr Const Forte's grieving wife Susan is seen leaving the emotional service on Wednesday. Police chaplain Reverend Jeff Baillis told those that gathered Snr Const Forte was a loving family man who had been taken far too soon

Police officers and the public are pictured forming a guard of honour as the casket of Senior Constable Brett Forte passes by

Officers are seen carrying Snr Const Forte's casket from the service after he was shot dead in Queensland last week

Senior Constable Brett Forte's family, wife Susan hugging son Brodie, and parents Heather and Stuart watch as his casket is being put in a hearse after his funeral

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and Police Commissioner Ian Stewart laid wreaths as the service began before both paid tribute to the slain officer.

The commissioner also announced that Snr Const Forte had been awarded the Queensland Police Valour Award, which was presented to his wife.

The popular officer's stepdaughter and his sons Brodie and Sam then laid a white teddy bear on his coffin.

High-profile politicians including One Nation leader Pauline Hanson and Immigration Minister Peter Dutton were also among the mourners.

Toowoomba Mayor Paul Antonio praised Snr Const Forte's family for their strength ahead of the funeral. Pictured, the slain policeman's casket

An officer is seen clearing his nose as he farewells his slain colleague after he was murdered west of Brisbane last week

The emotional farewell included a Guard of Honour and a motorcade escorted by police motorcycles. Dozens of officers are seen gathering outside the service

Representatives of police agencies from across the globe, including New York and New Zealand, were in attendance

There was a sea of dark blue outside the service as scores of police watched the proceedings on a large screen

Representatives of police agencies from across the globe, including New York and New Zealand, also attended.

Chaplain Rev. Jeff Baills welcomed guests before the emotional tributes from the slain policeman's wife and stepdaughter.

A photograph tribute was then shown, as Green Day's hit song Time of Your Life echoed through the auditorium.

After the service, thousands gathered to form a guard of honour for nearly a kilometre outside the venue, a demonstration of the esteem and affection with which he was regarded by his local community.

Scores of uniformed police (pictured) were seen arriving for the service just after 10am on Wednesday morning

After the service the thousands gathered formed a guard of honour for nearly a kilometre outside the venue (pictured)

The service a demonstrated the esteem and affection with which Snr Const was regarded by his local community

'Brett leaves a far-reaching legacy on the Queensland Police Service, and the communities he served,' Commissioner Stewart said

Around 70 motorcycle police then led the funeral procession past the mourners, towards a private burial service with Brett's close friends and family.

'Brett leaves a far-reaching legacy on the Queensland Police Service, and the communities he served,' Commissioner Stewart said.

'While the life he lead was full, it was cut far too short.'

Toowoomba Mayor Paul Antonio praised Snr Const Forte's family for their strength ahead of the service.

'They understand the situation. I think they understand the risks that each and every one of them who served would have taken on a daily basis,' he told Channel Nine.

'And they're coping wonderfully. They are good people.'

A photograph tribute was shown to the thousands of mourners, featuring Green Day's hit song, Time of Your Life

A sign at the funeral service announced that the auditorium was full shortly before 11am on Wednesday

There was a sea of dark blue outside the Clive Berghofer Recreational Centre as scores of police watched the proceedings

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk is seen shaking hands with police commissioner Ian Stewart ahead of the service

The funeral was held at the Clive Berghofer Recreation Centre in Toowoomba to pay tribute to Senior Constable Brett Forte

The emotional farewell of the hero policeman finished a Guard of Honour and a motorcade escorted by police motorcycles. Pictured, thousands of mourners inside the auditorium

On Tuesday, Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, said it would be 'a very sad occasion'.

'But also an opportunity for the whole Toowoomba community to pay their respects for a man who gave so much,' she said.

The 41-year-old husband and father was murdered in the line of duty by career criminal Rick Maddison during a wild police chase west of Brisbane on May 29.

Maddison went on the run after murdering the Snr Const, firing shots at a police helicopter before retreating to a nearby property.

Four streets were placed in lockdown and specialist units moved in, as terrified residents listened to the echo of gunshots through the night.

Maddison was shot in the chest and died after a 21-hour siege.

A string of high-profile politicians including One Nation leader Pauline Hanson (pictured) were among the mourners

Governor of Queensland His Excellency the Honourable Paul de Jersey AC (left) shakes hands with Queensland Police Commissioner Ian Stewart

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton is seen arriving at the service to farewell slain policeman senior constable Brett Forte

The funeral service was attended by thousands of mourners who paid tribute to Senior Constable Brett Forte, who was killed while on duty

Chaplain Rev. Jeff Baills welcomed guests before a tribute from the slain policeman's wife and a series of Bible readings

Mourners are seen arriving at the service on Wednesday morning to farewell the hero policeman, shot dead in the line of duty

Two serving police officers are seen embracing ahead of the emotional service on Wednesday morning

He had a violent criminal history which included charges of torture and deprivation of liberty as well as convictions for assault.

He had been accused of torturing and holding a woman against her will in September 2008, and was also wanted by police in relation to multiple domestic violence and weapons offences.

Almost a decade ago he he had been charged with torture, deprivation of liberty, assault occasioning bodily harm, causing willful damage, stealing, dangerous operation of a motor vehicle and common assault.

It has been revealed that a funeral will not be held for the killer.

Emotional scenes at the service, which was attended by thousands of mourners bidding farewell to the hero policeman

Snr Const Forte leaves behind his police officer wife Susan (pictured together on their wedding day) and three young children

Among the mourners was Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, who said it will be 'a very sad occasion' on Tuesday

The 41-year-old father and husband was shot dead in the line of duty by career criminal Rick Maddison (pictured) on May 29

Slain policeman Brett Forte (pictured) funeral service was attended by thousands on Wednesday morning

Around 5,000 friends, colleagues and family members have gathered at Toowoomba's Clive Berghofer Recreational Centre. Pictured, Snr Const Forte and his wife Susan

Snr Const Forte was shot dead with an automatic rifle last Monday in Queensland's Lockyer Valley
Have you ever flushed something down the toilet, blocked it and had to call a plumber in an embarrassing emergency?

Chris Murphy, Precision Plumbing and Drainage in the Northern Territory has revealed to the NT News the most unusual items he has found stuck down toilets.

The plumber, who owns his business in Darwin, specialises in bathroom renovations, but frequently gets calls to clear blocked loos.

A Darwin plumber has revealed the most unusual things he has found blocking toilets including sex toys, chain mail butcher's gloves and even a soggy pet cat (stock image)

'Dirty undies are a big one, especially in primary schools,' Mr Murphy told NT News.

'A lot of kids are too embarrassed to admit theyve (had an accident) so they flush their underwear down the toilet and clog it all up.'

Mr Murphy said some people called to book them but are so embarrassed after the incident, that they never call again.

'Tampons, pads, condoms, makeup wipes  just dont flush it.'

The owner of Precision Plumbing and Drainage said people are often so embarrassed about what is blocking their toilets, that he never hears from them again (stock image)

He said the company also gets calls to unblock toilets late at night in pubs on a Saturday, after shot glasses or scotch glasses have been found blocking the drains.

Other surprising items Mr Murphy has found blocking toilet drains include dirty nappies, chain mail butcher's gloves and sex toys.

On one occasion, he even had to fish a very wet and soggy cat from a toilet.

He has warned people against flushing anything and everything down the toilet just in an effort to get rid of it.
Troubled former NRL player Anthony Watts is due to be sentenced for the assault of an elderly man in northern NSW last year.

The ex-North Queensland and Cronulla player, who has endured a problematic off-field life since his professional career ended in 2012, is due to face a magistrate in Tweed Heads Local Court on Wednesday.

Watts was charged with common assault and dangerous driving after the incident in November last year where he allegedly waved a gun and assaulted 73-year-old William Ernest Woodford outside a business.

Former NRL bad boy Anthony Watts will be sentenced for the assault of an elderly man in northern New South Wales last year

The ex-North Queensland Cowboy allegedly waved a gun and assaulted the 73-year-old outside a business

The ex-North Queensland and Cronulla player is due to face a magistrate in Tweed Heads Local Court on Wednesday

The 30-year-old then drove away and allegedly failed to stop when his car was spotted about two hours after the alleged assault.

After a short pursuit by police, Watts was arrested.

In January, Watts' lawyer Campbell MacCallum claimed his client was suffering from a mental illness at the time of the alleged offence and raised concerns about the care the former utility was receiving in a NSW correctional centre.

Watts has been in and out of jail for a string of offences including repeatedly punching his ex-girlfriend, Shannon Kiss, in the back of the head.

He was also charged with assault after attending his father's funeral in July 2012 and was arrested over a bikie brawl in June 2013.

In August this year Watts assaulted a man at a Gold Coast wedding.

Watts was accused of assaulting his girlfriend at the celebration before the bridesmaid's husband tried to break up the fight when Watts allegedly turned on him, fracturing several of his ribs and causing serious facial cuts.

In 2015 Watts was rushed to hospital with a suspected drug overdose.

The 30-year-old allegedly drove away and failed to stop when his car was spotted about two hours after the alleged assault
The president of outlaw motorcycle gang Hells Angels has escaped without punishment after his accountant 'fell on his sword' and took the blame for tax discrepancies.

Angelo Pandeli, 46, fronted court at the Downing Centre on Tuesday accused of tax fraud after he allegedly failed to lodge tax returns for the 2014-2015 financial year.

Mr Pandeli was also accused of ignoring a notice from the Australian Tax Office to submit a detailed income statement, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.

Angelo Pandeli, 46, (centre) was cleared of tax fraud when he fronted court at the Downing Centre on Tuesday

Mr Pandeli, from Pyrmont in Sydney, pleaded guilty on Tuesday but was cleared of the charges when his lawyer Warwick Korn submitted an affidavit from his accountant who took the blame for the tax irregularities.

His accountant said he lodged a tax return for Mr Pandeli but his software failed to alert him when it was not sent properly.

There was an outstanding payment of $3,600 which stemmed from interest earned from money the ATO refunded to Mr Pandeli, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.

Magistrate Jennifer Atkinson recorded no conviction or penalty noting Mr Pandeli had 'a reasonable belief to trust the tax agent'.

'The accountant has certainly fallen on his sword,' she said.

Mr Pandeli's charges were part of Operation Morpheus; the largest multi-agency operation against outlaw motorcycle gangs like Hells Angels in Australia's history (senior Hells Angels member arrested in July 2012 pictured)

Mr Pandeli's tax fraud charges were part of Operation Morpheus; the largest multi-agency operation against outlaw motorcycle gangs in Australia's history.

Operation Morpheus is a national initiative designed to crackdown on organised crime, including outlaw motorcycle gangs.

The operation is a joint taskforce of officers from all states and territories together with the Australian Crime Commission, the Australian Federal Police, Border Force and the Australian Taxation Office and more.

Hells Angels bikies wait outside during the funeral for Melbourne crime figure Macchour Chaouk at Preston Mosque on August 16, 2010 in Melbourne

The operation cracked down on tax evasion and in 2015  2016, the operation targeted 668 taxpayers and prosecuted 35 people for non-lodgement, culminating in $55,000 in fines.

The taskforce charged 1,588 bikies with 3,840 charges ranging from drug crimes, firearm offences and violent crimes by May 2016.

Officers seized a light plane, almost 300kg of drugs and $3.6 million in cash from members of Australia's outlaw bikie gangs as part of the operation in just one year.
A Virgin passenger who allegedly wrote a threatening note on a sick bag and left it in the toilet of a flight from Sydney has been released on bail.

The 30-year-old man was arrested on the tarmac after Virgin flight VA1174 touched down and passengers were evacuated on Tuesday morning.

He is accused of writing a one-word note on the bag, which suggested possible danger on board.

A Virgin passenger who allegedly left a threatening note on a sick bag and left it in the toilet of a flight from Sydney has been released on bail

The doors of the plane were 'ripped off' from the outside by authorities and passengers were told to leave their luggage and jump

Passengers on the flight were told by crew members to leave their luggage and jump about 1.2m from the exits when the plane landed.

The man was later charged with sending a document threatening death or grievous bodily harm and giving false information.

Charges laid against the man demonstrate how seriously authorities take security concerns, police said.

The 30-year-old man was arrested on the tarmac after Virgin flight VA1174 touched down and passengers were evacuated on Tuesday morning

A man has been charged after th Virgin flight from Sydney landed at Albury airport (above)

'What this is showing is we do take things very seriously,' a police spokeswoman said.

'At the end of the day he caused a lot of angst and frightened a lot of people.'

The charged passenger was said to be calm throughout the flight. He read a novel and went to the bathroom once.

Local police congratulated cabin crew and passengers for the swift evacuation.

A passenger on the 8.05am Virgin flight said all passengers on the flight were evacuated when the plane landed

'The plane landed at 9.35am and within five minutes we had the plane and the occupants secure and safe,' Albury commander Superintendent Evan Quarmby said.

'All of the occupants of the aeroplane were evacuated safely, very efficiently and should all be congratulated on the assistance they've given to police.'

The man was released on bail and will appear in Albury Local Court on July 4.
The Qatari government says recent troubles with its Gulf neighbors - who have broken off relations over alleged Iran ties and connections with terror groups - were spurred by a fake news report planted by Russia.

On May 23 hackers planted a news report on its Qatar News Agency that attributed fake quotes to the country's leader that appeared sympathetic to Iran and Israel, both Qatar and US officials claim.

The 'fake report' also questioned whether Donald Trump was cut out for the presidency. The hack is believed by FBI to have originated in Russia, US officials told CNN.

That raises questions over recent tweets by president Trump, who boasted Tuesday that his meeting with Middle East heads in Saudi Arabia had led to the diplomatic breaks.

He said that 'all reference was pointing to Qatar' as a source of funding for 'extremism'.

Donald Trump (seen with Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud in Riyadh) claimed he was behind several gulf states pulling away from Qatar after claims that it supported Iran and terrorism - but now US officials believe those claims sprang from a Russian hack

Trump and Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani meet in Riyadh in May. US officials say that the hacks may be intended to cause divisions between the US and its allies. Qatar has one of the largest US army bases in the region, with 11,000 US personnel stationed there

The president weighed in on Twitter amid the diplomatic standoff, after the Saudi-led bloc of Arab nations cut off diplomatic relations with Qatar.

'During my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology. Leaders pointed to Qatar - look!' he wrote in a pair of tweets, referencing his trip to Riyadh on his first international trip as president.

'So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off. They said they would take a hard line on funding extremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar.

'Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism!' he concluded.

US officials said that a team of investigators was sent to Doha, the Qatari capital, to look into the placement of the controversial report.

They believe that Russia hacked the country - which houses one of the US's largest military bases in the region, with 11,000 personnel - in an attempt to cause rifts between the US and its allies.

Trump tweeted about his 'victory' on Tuesday, adding that 'all reference was pointing to Qatar' when Middle East states said they would 'take a hard line on funding terrorism'

But an FBI team says claims that Iran supports Iran and terrorism came from a hack on its state media on May 23, attributing false claims to the country's leader

Trump meets King of Bahrain Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa at the US - Gulf Summit in Saudi Arabia. The president claimed he was instrumental in the gulf neighbors' split

Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman al-Thani echoed those thoughts.

'Whatever has been thrown as an accusation is all based on misinformation and we think that the entire crisis being based on misinformation,' he told CNN.

'Because it was started based on fabricated news, being wedged and being inserted in our national news agency which was hacked and proved by the FBI.'

Sheikh Saif Bin Ahmed Al-Thani, director of the Qatari Government Communications Office, said that the UK's National Crime Agency was also assisting the investigation.

It's not known whether the hacks have been traced to either Russian criminal organizations or to the Russian security services that were blamed for the US election hacks.

The FBI and the CIA both declined to make an official comment.

The diplomatic move Monday threw Qatar into crisis.

As well as being a US ally, the tiny nation has strong relations with Iran, which backs Hezbollah and other terror groups.

It backs rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar-al Assad, it has backed the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, and it pumps funding into Al Jazeera, which has angered neighboring regimes at times.

'We certainly would encourage the parties to sit down together and address these differences,' Rex Tillerson said Monday, the New York Times reported.

The decision to part ways with Qatar was announced by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates.

Yemen, Libya's eastern-based government and the Maldives joined in later - opening up one of the worst rifts in years.

It was revealed on Monday that one of the tipping points for Qatari-Gulf Arab relations could have been a ransom Qatar officials paid earlier this year.

A ransom of up to $1billion paid by Qatar to Iranian and Al Qaeda-linked forces in Syria to release kidnapped members of the country's royal family may have been a trigger behind the effort to cut off Doha.

Early reports are that the Saudis, who led the split from Qatar were emboldened by Trump's visit to Riyadh, which occurred days before the tough diplomatic action. Trump is seen with al-Saud and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi at the Riyadh meeting

President Donald Trump (L) and Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud during a signing ceremony at the Saudi Royal Court in Riyadh

Qatar paid the ransom to al-Qaeda affiliate fighting in Syria and Iranian security officials, a person involved in ransom negotiations said in April.

The incident was sparked when the group was kidnapped December 16, 2015 from a desert camp for falcon hunters in southern Iraq.

A person involved in the ransom negotiations said in April that 11 of the captives were members of Qatar's Al Thani ruling family.

As the fallout continued Tuesday, Qatar's state-of-the-art Hamad International was virtually deserted, as many of the nations had blocked air travel to the oil rich country.

Trump called for united efforts against Islamic extremism during a speech on his trip last month.

The US air base in Qatar is critical to military efforts battling ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and to the overall security posture.
Born into a family where politics has long been a topic of conversation, 27-year-old Charlie Smillie now seeks to be a politician in his own right.

Smillie, the son of Montana Sen. Margie MacDonald, D-Billings, and John Smillie, executive director of the Western Organization of Resource Councils, joined the Billings City Council Ward 1 race last week. Hell be opposed by incumbent Mike Yakawich.

"Politics has always been something in our household for sure," he said. "It's something I got an education in a lot earlier than most folks."

Smillie, an unmarried 2008 Billings West High School graduate, returned to Billings two years ago after completing his resource conservation studies at the University of Montana and working in other communities to become field director for the Montana Wilderness Association.

Ive discovered in my hometown a wellspring of creativity, innovation and inviting energy, he said in a news release. That energy compels me to seek this opportunity to serve.

Another reason to enter the race, he said, was the attitude some council members exhibited during a March meeting in which Artspace advocates asked the council for $500,000 to help leverage construction of a $10 million live/work facility. One council member called young artists and musicians "beatniks," and the council expressed doubts the city should be responsible for "subsidizing" artists. By consensus, council members turned down the request.

At that meeting, it felt like the mood in the room was not one of possibility, Smillie said. I felt like it was time to step up and serve the community and share some of the passion that I feel.

Smillie said Billings needs leaders that embrace our momentum as a model for sustainable, place-based economic growth. He said hell fight for affordable housing, renewable energy and quality-of-life improvements to help make Billings a world-class community in which to start a family or a business. That also means assuring were a safe, open and affirming place.

Diversity makes for a stronger community, he said, uplifting the less fortunate alongside the prosperous.

During the campaign, Smillie said he plans to knock on every door in Ward 1 at least three times.

I want to have conversations with people about what their vision for the community is, he said.

He said he met Yakawich for the first time this week.

I have heard nothing but good things about the work he has put into the neighborhood task forces. By all accounts hes a great guy, Smillie said. What differentiates me is a different energy and different possibilities. While we probably share a lot of values, we probably have different core values built into the future of Billings.

The Ward 1 race is to date the only competitive contest among the five City Council seats to be decided by voters this fall. Single candidates have declared their candidacy in each of the other four races. Council members serve four-year terms and are limited to two consecutive terms.

The citys primary election is set for Sept. 12, with the general election Nov. 7. The deadline to file for a City Council or mayoral race is June 19.
A police dog dropout has found a job more suitable to his 'sociable' nature.

Gavel the German shepherd participated in a police dog academy training program at Queensland Government house last year.

But trainers deemed the playful pooch too friendly for the frontline.

Gavel the German shepherd was deemed too friendly for the frontline

Gavel's new duties include welcoming tour groups and attending functions with the Governor Paul de Jersey (pictured left with Gavel)

Because Gavel had become so popular among staff, they decided to give him at job at Government House greeting visitors.

He was named Queensland's first official vice-regal dog in February.

His duties include welcoming tour groups and attending functions with Governor Paul de Jersey.

He even has time to squeeze in cuddles with staff, much to their enjoyment.

Gavel had become a 'valued and much-loved' part of Government House, a spokesperson for the Office of the Governor told The Sydney Morning Herald.

'Gavel on occasions sits in on briefings with the Governor,' he said.

'Gavel has also demonstrated his capacity to uphold the ceremonial importance of his role at State of Origin time.'

Because Gavel had become so popular among staff, they decided to give him at job at Government house greeting visitors
Supermarkets are pulling tins of Brazilian corned beef from their shelves amid allegations of farmers using slave labour.

Waitrose is taking the own label product out of stores while it investigates the claims.

The company at the centre of the scandal, JBS, also supplies Lidl and the Co-op, which have launched inquiries.

Supermarkets are pulling tins of Brazilian corned beef from their shelves amid allegations of farmers using slave labour

It is also a supplier to Sainsburys and Princes, however both firms insist their businesses are conducted in line with ethical and global standards.

Separately, the NHS has launched an investigation after it emerged that JBS supplied hospitals with corned beef from Brazil through a subsidiary.

In 2013 and 2016, JBS firm paid 2m for cattle reared on a farm in the northern state of Para where prosecutors claim workers were effectively being treated as slaves.

Prosecutors say federal police officers discovered men forced to live in inhumane and degrading conditions with no shelter and no toilets or drinking water.

Prosecutors believe the workers were in debt bondage, with payments for food and protective equipment illegally deducted from their wages.

The farm owner, Antonio Jose Junqueira Vilela Filho, (correct) has previously been fined 119m reais (29m) for deforesting an area of rainforest roughly equivalent to the size of central London.

JBS, which is one of the worlds biggest meat processors, said it stopped buying cattle from the farm following the raids in 2016.

The firm said the farm involved had not appeared on a blacklist of farms using slave labour drawn up by the Brazilian government.

The company at the centre of the scandal, JBS, also supplies Lidl and the Co-op, which have launched inquiries

Antonio Carlos de Mello Rosa, who heads the International Labour Organisations anti-slavery work in Brazil, criticised JBS for hiding behind the government blacklist, saying companies had a responsibility to police their own supply chains.

He told the Guardian, which reported the allegations: Any economic sector has to do their own self-regulation as well as using the blacklist to check whether slave labour is taking place in their supply chain.

More than 13,000 workers have been rescued from modern-day slavery on cattle farms in Brazil since 1995.

Waitrose said: While we have found no such concerns in our own supply chain and have recent audits, including April 2017, we are taking these allegations seriously so have stopped sourcing any of our corned beef from there while we investigate fully.

Lidl and the Co-op also said they were conducting internal supply chain investigations. Sainsburys and Princes said their business was conducted in line with ethical and global standards.

JBS said: As soon as JBS became aware of irregularities in the  farms operations in 2016, all livestock purchases from the Junqueira family were immediately stopped.

JBS does not buy cattle from any farms which have any association with slave labour, as listed by the Brazilian government and updates all of the information contained in  the ministry of labour black list of slave labour on a daily basis.
Dozens of volunteers banded together to spruce up the National World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday as veterans marked the 73rd anniversary of D-Day.

The second annual service project, which was sponsored by veteran advocacy group Got Your 6, proved to be a way for volunteers to honor those who served the country.

More than 100 veteran and civilian volunteers were photographed helping to clean, paint benches and chains, pick up leaves and spread mulch around the memorial.

'It's all about honoring the service of D-Day veterans, but also strengthening our community of Washington, D.C. through service and support,' Bill Rausch, executive director of the veteran advocacy group Got Your 6, told WTOP.

Dozens of volunteers (above) banded together to spruce up the National World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday as veterans marked the 73rd anniversary of D-Day

The second annual service project, which was sponsored by veteran advocacy group Got Your 6, proved to be a way for volunteers to honor those who served the country.

More than 100 veteran and civilian volunteers were photographed helping to clean, paint benches and chains, pick up leaves and spread mulch around the memorial

'It's a huge day of honor and remembrance. D-Day was truly the turning part of the war.'

Allied forces landed on beaches in Normandy, France on June 6, 1944 establishing a foothold in Europe.

It also began the campaign to defeat Adolf Hitler's army to put a stop to Nazi Germany.

D-Day was the largest amphibious military assault in world history, as 160,000 American, British and Canadian troops invaded with 5,000 ships and 13,000 air crafts.

Bill Rausch, executive director of the veteran advocacy group Got Your 6, said: 'It's all about honoring the service of D-Day veterans, but also strengthening our community of Washington, D.C. through service and support'

Rep. Mark Takano (above), who sits on the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs, attended the event on Tuesday and praised the group Got Your 6 for their efforts

A ceremony (above) was held at the memorial on Tuesday where veterans from World War II placed wreaths at the Atlantic Arch in memory of the soldiers who lost their lives during the massive invasion

Retired U.S. Army Colonel Jim Riffe, 95, stands and salutes during a ceremony marking the 73rd anniversary of D-Day on Tuesday

At the time, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower called the operation a battle in which, 'we will accept nothing less than full victory.'

More than 9,000 allied soldiers were killed or wounded during the operation.

'We're certainly standing on the shoulders of those who came before us,' said Rausch, who is an Iraq War veteran.

Rep. Mark Takano, who sits on the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs, attended the event on Tuesday and praised the group Got Your 6 for their efforts.

World War II veterans Geraldine Corn (L), 95, and Eli Linden, 94, visit before the start of a ceremony marking the 73rd anniversary of D-Day at the World War II Memorial on the National Mall on Tuesday

Retired Air Force Colonel Arnald Gabriel conducts the D-Day Memorial Wind Band during a ceremony marking the 73rd anniversary of D-Day in Washington, D.C.

The Democrat from California said the United States was 'completely mobilized as a nation' during World War II.

'All sectors of our society and economy were unified behind an effort,' he added.

A ceremony was held at the memorial on Tuesday where veterans from World War II placed wreaths at the Atlantic Arch in memory of the soldiers who lost their lives during the massive invasion.
Brett Holeman, 43, was fired from his position within the Freehold Regional High School District over several allegations

A high school psychologist in New Jersey has been fired after allegedly calling a student's ex-girlfriend a 'slut', yelling at students, threatening the principal and labeling staff members as 'f***ing b*****s' and 'mentally ill,' among other charges filed by the school district.

Brett Holeman, 43, was fired from his position within the Freehold Regional High School District over several allegations, according to an arbitrator's decision in May following a tenure hearing.

According to tenure charges, an investigation in the spring of 2016 revealed a 'a trail of lies, willful deceit, manipulation and frightening conduct' by Holeman, who had served the Freehold Regional High School District since 2004 and holds a doctorate in psychology, the Asbury Park Press reported.

District administrators said that Holeman spoke with a male student that was upset over breaking-up with his girlfriend and allegedly told the boy that his ex was a 'slut'.

Holeman allegedly recommended that the student read a profanity-filled self-help book titled 'F*** Feelings: One Shrink's Practical Advice for Managing All Life's Impossible Problems'.

He also allegedly told the student that he would 'f*** 40 girls' once in college. The psychologist denied those allegations.

Among the other charges against him, Holeman was accused of 'soliciting' students for his private counseling by using the private administration lists of students who were withdrawing from school, the newspaper reported.

The former Freehold High School (file above) psychologist allegedly called a student's ex-girlfriend a 'slut', yelled at students, and labeled staff members as 'f***ing b*****s' and 'mentally ill.' He denied those allegations, but still lost his position

He denied using school facilities or work time for his private practice, while also denying that he took money from current district students.

Holeman did however admit to using the school email for his private business, according to the arbitrator's decision.

In addition, Freehold Regional Education Association President Deborah Gates-Kane testified that she witnessed him threatening Freehold High School Principal Linda Jewell.

Gates-Kane said that Holeman warned Jewell and said, 'You better sleep with one eye open.' He denied that accusation.

Administrators at the high school said they went through his email and found that he discussed confidential student information with his wife and a former student, the newspaper reported.

According to the arbitrator's decision, Superintendent Charles Sampson stated that Holeman, who earned $93,329 yearly, does not respect authority and 'exhibits narcissism in the extreme.'

Holeman argued that he was never provided an adequate opportunity to respond to the allegations against him or speak with his colleagues or administrators about the several issues raise.

He said the investigation failed to find additional witnesses or corroborate statements, the newspaper reported.

Holeman said Jewell, the principal, relied on 'uncorroborated, non-supported, hearsay by unproduced witnesses.'

Arbitrator Stephen J. Rosen ruled in the district's favor and agreed that Holeman should not be reinstated to his position as psychologist for the district.
The taxpayer-backed bank ruined by disgraced former boss Fred 'the Shred' Goodwin has shelled out 1billion to keep him out of court.

Royal Bank of Scotland has been fighting a lengthy legal action with shareholders that was set for a public showdown this month.

It would have seen Mr Goodwin take the stand in a civil trial  finally forcing him to account for his actions in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis.

The taxpayer-backed bank ruined by disgraced former boss Fred 'the Shred' Goodwin (pictured) has shelled out 1billion to keep him out of court

But the investors taking on RBS have now agreed to a last-minute 200million settlement, bringing the case to an abrupt end. It takes the lender's total bill to 1billion, including 100million of legal fees and an earlier 700million settlement with other investors.

Last night campaigners slammed RBS's behaviour, accusing it of using customers' money to buy Mr Goodwin's silence.

'This is a real tragedy for the public interest, because some of the stuff which would have come out was going to keep everyone enthralled for weeks,' said Neil Mitchell, a businessman and outspoken critic of RBS who has previously fought  and lost  a separate legal action against it.

'It's disgusting that they've managed to keep it private.'

Mr Goodwin ran RBS from 2001 until 2008, and earned his nickname through making ruthless efficiency cuts.

A string of reckless decisions during his time at the helm took the bank to the brink of disaster  and helped bring the world economy to its knees.

Royal Bank of Scotland has been fighting a lengthy legal action with shareholders that was set for a public showdown this month

Only a 46billion state bailout prevented the lender from going bust, and RBS has lost 58billion since this cash was pumped in. In April, Chancellor Philip Hammond admitted taxpayers were unlikely to get their money back. Mr Goodwin lost his job and knighthood over the scandal but still draws a pension worth 342,500 a year.

The court case itself centred on 12billion that RBS raised from the markets to help it stay afloat in 2008 at the height of the financial crisis. This rescue plan failed to save it from near-collapse, and the Government stepped in later that year.

Investors who handed over their savings for the doomed fund- raising drive claim that they were misled over the financial health of RBS. They launched a legal action to try to recover their losses, triggering growing fears at RBS that it would lead to embarrassing revelations about the lender's past.

Five separate groups representing thousands of shareholders and scores of City institutions took on the bank. RBS managed to convince four of the five to settle for around 700million, but the RBS Shareholders Action Group held out for a better offer.

A court case was due to start last week but it was unexpectedly postponed after RBS doubled the offer to 200million. The settlement appears to have been accepted although a hardcore group of up to 4,500 investors are holding out for more and were attempting to force the trial to go ahead.

A court case was due to start last week but it was unexpectedly postponed after RBS doubled the offer to 200million

They claimed to have raised the necessary 7million needed in legal fees and this morning meet the judge in the case for an update.

It is possible the dissenters will try to persuade the judge that the case should continue. But they would need proof the 7million is available, as well as the authority to instruct the solicitors acting on the action group's behalf  and it is not clear that either of these will be forthcoming.

RBS denies wrongdoing over the 2008 rights issue and says its former bosses did not act illegally.

Both the bank and the Shareholders Action Group declined to comment yesterday.
A New Jersey woman irritated about how slow the line was moving at a Sears store unleashed a racist tirade against a Latino family and an Asian cashier.

The woman was caught on videotape in a New Brunswick Sears on Sunday yelling angrily at the family and the cashier for holding up the line.

'Send them back to their own f***ing country!' she yells before storming off to find a manager. 'You got an Indian waiting on a Indian, that's what it is,' she says though reportedly the family that was the target of her rage was Latino, reported New Jersey 101.5.

Scroll down for video

The unidentified woman, above, is seen unleashing a racist tirade at a Latino family in line at Sears

'They're not Indian,' someone says.

'I don't know what the hell they are!' the woman snaps.

The cashier himself says nothing throughout the tirade.

No one asks the woman to stop her racist rant or leave.

The woman stalked over to a manager to complain but the manager apparently did not ask her to leave

'Lets drain the swamp! Hurry up!' says a man who was with the woman.

'Nobody intervened to actually address her hateful comments,' said Simoni Lovano, 27, who recorded the rant and posted it on YouTube. He added that not only did his family immigrate from Sicily but that every person in the line besides the woman appeared to be an immigrant, as did the employees.

Lovano said that the woman also asked the family if they had green cards.

He also said he was one of the ones who didn't speak up.

'You got an Indian waiting on a Indian, that's what it is,' says the woman of the cashier, above

'I feel guilty as well that I didnt speak up. I was so angry I was almost shaking and it was very hard for me to say something,' he told the outlet.

He said oddly one of the Latina customers who was being attacked actually turned to him and apologized, as if the scene were her fault.

'Nobody really defended her on the hateful comments. She actually felt she was the one at fault,' he said. 'That is the saddest part of all.'

Lovano said on Facebook he monetized the YouTube video of the rant and plans to donate any proceeds to an immigrant social justice group.

'Nobody intervened to actually address her hateful comments,' said Simoni Lovano who took video of the incident

'We have to name and publicly shame them. So glad you spoke out and got this on video,' a friend commented on his wall.

On May 26, two Good Samaritans were stabbed to death after confronting self-proclaimed white supremacist Jeremy Christian, who was ranting at two young women whom he thought were Muslim on the MAX train in Portland.
A high-profile defamation trial between Hollywood actor Rebel Wilson and magazine publisher Bauer Media is entering its final stage.

The three-week trial between the Pitch Perfect star and the publisher of Woman's Day, Australian Women's Weekly, NW and OK magazine has heard extensive evidence from the star herself, her agents, her family and fellow Australian actor Hugh Sheridan.

Bauer Media journalists Caroline Overington and Shari Nementzik, who wrote stories Wilson claims damaged her career by painting her as a serial liar, have also given evidence during the trial.

Pitch Perfect star Rebel Wilson's defamation suit against Bauer Media will come to an end on Wednesday

On Wednesday, Bauer's defence lawyer Georgina Schoff QC is expected to give her closing address to the jury.

It will follow days of evidence in which Ms Overington claimed Wilson lied directly to her about her real name, age and childhood, and in which Ms Nementzik claimed her article about the 'REAL Rebel' was not intended to be in any way harmful.

Wilson, 37, says her movie career was seriously damaged following the publication of eight Bauer articles in May 2015 after an anonymous source claimed the star had added a touch of 'fantasy' to her background in order to 'make it in Hollywood'.

Wilson says she has never lied to journalists about her birth name, Melanie Bownds, said she was younger than her real age, or made up 'pork pies' about her childhood.

She says she was sacked from two DreamWorks animations and couldn't get a lead role in Hollywood for a year and a half following the articles' publication.

Ms Wilson filed for defamation following a series of articles she claims lost her two roles in animated films and left her unable to get a lead role in Hollywood for a year and a half
A New Zealand man has been sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for trafficking over $1 million worth of methamphetamine on a ferry.

Stephen Hames Harland pleaded guilty to possession of a class-A drug after being stopped by armed police on Picton wharf with a kilogram of meth in September, 2015.

Harland, who described the situation as 'humiliating,' was handed a Nike bag and shoe box full of the drug by Rebels Motorcycle Club member Daryn Bruce Catley, who was sentenced to nine years jail last week.

Stephen Hames Harland (pictured) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for trafficking over $1 million worth of methamphetamine

Harland was given the drugs by Rebels Motorcycle Club member Daryn Bruce Catley, who was sentenced to nine years jail last week

Harland attempted to drive a rental car with the drugs from Auckland to Christchurch via ferry at 8:30pm on September 14, 2015, after receiving the shipment from Catley the night before.

He drove off the boat at around midnight at Picton wharf where police, working under Operation Tea, arrested him.

Along with the 1.15kg of methamphetamine, police also found nearly $3000 in cash and three mobile phones.

Police then raided Catley's house in Christchurch, believed to be a Rebels Motorcycle club room.

Among the items seized were a small amount of meth, a sawn-off rifle and bikie paraphernalia.

Police raided several homes under Catley's name, seizing over $150,000 of cash and 12.5kg of ice

Another home under Catley's name was also raided, where police found a further 12.5kg of methamphetamine and over $150,000 in cash.

Justice John Fogarty described Harland as 'simply a courier' and that the bikie group 'are not your normal associates.'

'There is a very good prospect on your release that you will never offend again.'

Harland was allowed to hug and talk to his family before being led away.

'If I was ever put in this position again I would take the appropriate steps to find out what was in my possession and why it was in my possession,' Harland said.
One of the three London Bridge terrorists Rachid Redouane beat his British wide and locked her indoors in a bid to turn her into a traditional Muslim wife.

The Irish-based murderer punched, slapped and kicked the mother of his child Charisse O'Leary and refused to let her out of their house if he caught her smoking or drinking alcohol.

Redouane, who was part of the barbaric trio who killed seven people on London Bridge and Borough Market, tried to get his wife to wear a hijab and eat halal food, but she refused saying she was a Western woman.

Charisse O'Leary (pictured, right), the wife of terrorist Rachid Redouane (left) was among 12 people arrested in Barking yesterday

A friend of the Charisse told the Mirror she would try and arrange to meet up with the 38-year-old, but was regularly told she could not come.

'It would either be, "he's slapped me in the middle of the street today" or "he's kicked me" or "he will not let me out the house",' she said.

'She was scared, really scared. It was harsh domestic violence.'

Her terrorist former husband was a failed asylum seeker who slipped back into the UK after changing his name and marrying Charisse in Dublin.

The Moroccan pastry chef, 30, was refused asylum in 2009, when he was using the name Rachid Elkhdar.

Three years later, calling himself Redouane, he married London-born Charisse OLeary.

Soon after their wedding in Dublin, he is said to have returned to Morocco while his 33-year-old wife went back to London.

In 2014, he applied for an Irish visa through his marriage to an EU citizen, Sky News said. A year later, he was granted an EU card, allowing him to live in the UK  and commit mass murder.

O'Leary was among those arrested at this tower block in London in the wake of the terror attack

An Irish security source described Redouane, who was not previously known to the security services, as having extensive immigration history related to the UK. The Home Office declined to comment last night and a number of important questions remained unanswered.

It was not clear when the jihadi first arrived in the UK, whether he was deported back to Morocco after his asylum application was rejected in 2009 and how he managed to slip back into the UK under a different name.

Miss OLeary, who has a 20-month-old daughter Amina but split from Redouane about three months ago, could not be reached for comment.

She was released without charge on Monday, 36 hours after being arrested in connection with the terror attacks which culminated in her husband being shot dead by police.
Notorious hate preacher Anjem Choudary could be released by the end of next year, having served less than half of his sentence, it has emerged.

Choudary was jailed last September for five-and-a-half years after he was convicted of inviting support for a proscribed organisation while he lived on taxpayer handouts.

Due to the time he spent on remand awaiting sentence  almost five months  Choudary could be back spreading hate as soon as December 2018 and no later than the end of January 2019.

Notorious hate preacher Anjem Choudary could be released by the end of next year, having served less than half of his sentence, it has emerged

The revelation could be problematic for the security services, who have disclosed they are currently handling 500 active investigations.

The extremist, who founded the group al-Muhajiroun, is believed to have inspired the 7/7 bombers and has been linked to the Westminster attacker Khalid Masood.

It is also thought that Choudary aided 110 British jihadists to travel to Syria in order to fight for Islamic State.

Despite being known to spread hate, Choudary was given a platform to speak by the BBC and controversially appeared on Newsnight in 2013.

Choudary was jailed last September for five-and-a-half years after he was convicted of inviting support for a proscribed organisation while he lived on taxpayer handouts

Then, he refused to condemn Michael Adebolajo after he killed fusilier Lee Rigby.

Hannah Stuart, author of Islamist Terrorism, a definitive analysis of UK attacks and offences, said his release would be a 'massive headache'.

She told The Telegraph: 'When Theresa May talks about longer sentences for terrorists, she will have had in mind extremists like Choudary who are accused of such offences as disseminating terrorist material and glorifying terrorism.'

Despite his ideas spawning a generation of home-grown terrorists and enraging the British public, Choudary had previously thwarted authorities by managing to stay on the right side of the law.

But a pledge of allegiance posted online provided a turning point for police who swooped to arrest British-born Choudary and his deputy Mohammed Mizanur Rahman.

Rahman, who was described as a 'hothead' by the judge, was also given a sentence of five years and six months.

The judge said both men were 'dangerous' and had shown no remorse for what they had done.

The judge described Choudary (left) as 'calculating' and Rahman (right) as a 'hothead'

Their trial heard Choudary swore an oath of allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in an East London pub after the so-called 'caliphate' was declared in the Middle East.

He and his deputy then pressed upon Muslims their supposed obligation to 'make hijrah', meaning to travel to ISIS-occupied lands, the court heard.

Choudary rose to notoriety as the mouthpiece of Omar Bakri Mohammed - a Syrian extremist who founded the banned extremist group al-Muhajiroun (ALM).

Choudary courted publicity by voicing controversial views on Sharia law, while building up a following of thousands through social media, demonstrations and lectures around the world.

In one speech in March 2013, Choudary, from Ilford, north-east London, set out his ambitions for the Muslim faith to 'dominate the whole world'.

Choudary pictured with an image of Buckingham Palace imagined as a mosque

He said: 'Next time when your child is at school and the teacher says, "What do you want when you grow up? What is your ambition?", they should say,"To dominate the whole world by Islam, including Britain - that is my ambition".'

His supporters included Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale, the murderers of Fusilier Lee Rigby, and suspected ISIS executioner Siddhartha Dhar.

Shortly after the announcement of the caliphate, Choudary held a meeting with his closest aides at a curry house in Mile End Road in east London to discuss it.

Before accepting it was legitimate, he also consulted his 'spiritual guide', Bakri Mohammed, currently in jail in Lebanon, and Mohammed Fachry, the head of ALM in Indonesia.

On July 7, 2014, the trio's names appeared alongside Rahman's on the oath posted on the internet, which stated the Muhajiroun had 'affirmed' the legitimacy of the 'proclaimed Islamic Caliphate State'.

Choudary, pictured in a file photo, smiled as his sentence was announced today

The defendants followed up by posting on YouTube a series of lectures on the caliphate, which Choudary promoted to more than 32,000 Twitter followers.

The married father-of-five denied encouraging his followers to back the terror group and insisted the oath had been made without his knowledge.

He said of the pledge: 'It is completely unnecessary. For the rest of the Muslims it is obedience from the heart.'

Despite protesting his innocence, he continued to express extreme views, refusing to denounce the execution of journalist James Foley by so-called Jihadi John, aka Mohammed Emwazi, in Syria in 2014.

He told the jury: 'If you took an objective view, there are circumstances where someone could be punished.'

Following the convictions, Commander Dean Haydon, head of Scotland Yard's counter-terrorism command, said: 'These men have stayed just within the law for many years.

Choudary's conviction was welcomed by leading British Muslims, who condemned his 'evil' and 'hateful' views. He is pictured at the Holiday Inn in Chingford

'But there is no-one within the counter-terrorism world that has any doubts of the influence that they have had, the hate they have spread and the people that they have encouraged to join terrorist organisations.'

Commander Haydon added: 'Over and over again we have seen people on trial for the most serious offences who have attended lectures or speeches given by these men.

'The oath of allegiance was a turning point for the police - at last we had the evidence that they had stepped over the line and we could prove they supported Isis.'

Choudary's conviction was also welcomed by leading British Muslims, who condemned his 'evil' and 'hateful' views.
Horrifying footage has emerged of the moment a knife-wielding man attempts to slash another person after a deadly mass brawl broke out in a public park.

Heavily tattooed James 'Pitbull' Alderton, 22, has been charged with the murder of a father who was reportedly trying to protect his son during the wild melee.

Charlie Larter, 46, was killed and his 18-year-old son Zack was critically injured in a stabbing frenzy in Murwillumbah, northern New South Wales, on Tuesday.

Police confirmed Alderton, who did not apply for bail in Tweed Heads Local Court on Wednesday, had only recently been released from jail and was on parole.

He was also charged with two counts of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.

Horrifying footage has emerged of the moment a knife-wielding man attempts to slash another person after a deadly mass brawl broke out in a public park

Heavily tattooed James 'Pitbull' Alderton, 22, has been charged with the murder of a father who reportedly died trying to protect his teenage son. Paramedics are pictured on scene performing CPR on victim at park in Mulliwumbah, northern NSW

Detective Inspector Brendon Cullen said Alderton knew at least one of the victims but refused to comment on speculation the brawl was drug-related.

'The motive and the cause behind what happened yesterday is something which we'll be focusing our investigations on today and going forward,' he told reporters in Tweed Heads on Wednesday.

Det Insp Cullen said despite the Murwillumbah police station being unmanned at the time of the attack, police had been on the scene within three minutes of being called.

He also denied such brawls were a frequent concern for residents of the town.

'There is no concern for crime in Murwillumbah. I'm assuring the people of Murwillumbah that they have a police presence there which is serving their community well,' he said.

Charlie Larter, 46, was stabbed to death on his birthday while trying to protect his son after a deadly mass brawl broke out in a public park

Emergency services raced to the scene at Knox Park about 12.30pm and arrived to find a vicious brawl involving up to 30 people had broken out

In mobile phone footage from the scene, a woman can be heard screaming: 'Get over here now, hurry up. My husband can't breathe!'

Mr Larter was taken to Tweed Heads Hospital but later died.

It was his birthday, according to his sister who posted on social media.

'Well your last words to me this morning were I love you and mine to you -I love you. Way too young to die on your birthday RIP little brother,' Cathy Larter wrote on Tuesday.

Mr Larter's 18-year-old son Zack was stabbed in the chest and taken to Gold Coast University Hospital in a critical condition.

After undergoing emergency treatment on Tuesday evening he is now listed as being in a serious but stable condition, a hospital spokeswoman told AAP on Wednesday.

A third stabbing victim, a family friend of the Larter's aged 29, suffered minor injuries during the attack, police said.

The 22-year-old was arrested near the scene and charged with murder, two counts of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm and larceny on Tuesday night.

The accused man will face Tweed Heads Local Court later on Wednesday.

Video captured at the scene shows the injured lying on the ground while they are assisted by paramedics and witnesses at the scene
Donald Trump told America's top intelligence official to make the FBI back down from investigating ex-National Security Advisor Michael Flynn's ties with Russia, insiders claim.

Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats told his colleagues that Trump cornered him after a meeting in March and asked him to intervene in the case, sources told The Washington Post.

Coats is to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday, and is expected to be grilled on his interactions with Trump.

'Interference': Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats (left) told colleagues Trump told him to interfere in the FBI's Russia probe in a private March 22 meeting, sources say

Probing: Then-FBI director James Comey had announced the prove two days earlier. Coats confided in colleagues but decided interfering would be improper, the sources claimed

Speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the information, the source said Trump grabbed Coats after a meeting on March 22.

That was less than a week after Coats' confirmation, and two days after then-FBI director James Comey confirmed to Congress that the bureau was investigating whether Trump's team had met with Russia.

CIA director Mike Pompeo was also present for the encounter, the source said.

After the meeting, Coats conferred with his colleagues but decided against doing as the president asked, deciding it would inappropriate, they said.

Trump has already been accused of telling officials to deny the existence of evidence of collusion between Russia and his election campaign.

But this claim - like another made by Comey himself - suggests that he directly tried to influence the course of the investigation.

Brian P Hale, a spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), said in a statement: 'Director Coats does not discuss his private conversations with the President.

'However, he has never felt pressured by the President or anyone else in the Administration to influence any intelligence matters or ongoing investigations.'

A spokesman for Pompeo declined to comment to the Washington Post, while the White House referred the query to outside lawyers, who have not responded.

The accusations of meddling in the investigation emerged on the same day that it was claimed Comey had attempted to get Attorney General Jeff Sessions to back him up against Trump.

Last month it emerged that Trump had told Comey in February to end the Flynn probe. That claim came in a memo written by Comey after the meeting.

Two days after that, Comey approached Sessions and said he didn't want to be left alone with the president again, sources told The New York Times.

Investigated: The prove is examining whether ex-national security advisor Michael Flynn (left) had improper business with Russia. He resigned after it emerged he had met with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak (right) before Trump's confirmation

Comey didn't elaborate on why he was perturbed, current and former law enforcement officials said, but said Sessions should protect the FBI from being leaned on by the White House.

Sessions told Comey that he could not guarantee Trump wouldn't try to corner him alone again, the sources said.

Comey met privately twice with Barack Obama, suggesting that he was far less comfortable with Trump than with the previous president.

Like Coats, Comey will be questioned by the Senate Intelligence Committee this week: He is scheduled to make his appearance on Thursday.

Also on Tuesday it emerged that Sessions has told Trump he might quit after the president reportedly ranted at him over the continuing probe.

Trump 'lashed out' at the attorney general repeatedly at his decision to recuse himself, ABC News reported.

The president, who only heard of Sessions' decision moments before it was announced, blames that for the growth of the probe.

That has led to 'friction' between the two, sources said, culminating in Sessions' suggestion that he could step down.

Justice Department spokesperson Sarah Isgur Flores declined to comment.
A rapist who broke into a Melbourne woman's home at 2am and taunted her during a terrifying 45-minute sexual assault should have been deported to New Zealand four years ago.

In 2013, Carl Stafford had his deportation order overturned, despite having accumulated 400 convictions in 30 years. A tribunal ruling found 'the Australian community' had let him down, the Herald Sun reported.

On Wednesday, he was jailed for a maximum of ten years after he pleaded guilty to three counts of rape and one charge of aggravated burglary following the 2015 crime.

Carl Stafford (pictured) was jailed for a maximum of ten years over a 2015 rape - four years after an appeals tribunal overturned his deportation order

He had previously claimed his actions were consensual.

The woman in her 50s was asleep when Stafford broke into her St Kilda home about 2am on August 31.

'You lay on top of her and placed your hand on the top of her mouth and told her to be quiet,' Victorian County Court Judge David Brooke said.

Stafford then used his hand to touch her genitals.

When he got up to close the blinds in her bedroom, he told the woman: 'Do you know your neighbours, because they're going to see you having sex in your room'.

He then forced the terrified woman to perform a sex act on him.

The man broke into a Melbourne woman's home at 2am, and taunted her during a 45-minute sexual assault. He told her: 'I know you live by yourself, I have been watching you'

'The complainant was so upset she was almost hyperventilating,' Judge Brooke said.

After allowing the woman to use the bathroom, he continued to taunt her by saying: 'I know you live by yourself, I have been watching you.'

After 45 minutes the woman managed to run outside and flag down a passing car.

The police arrived just as Stafford was leaving.

During his police interview, Stafford denied breaking into the home and raping the woman, and said the woman's identification of him as her attacker 'was obviously a mistake'.

Stafford, who was using drugs at the time and suffers from schizophrenia, also told police he did not remember what happened and claimed he had been 'set up'.

Wednesday's conviction adds to Stafford's extensive rap sheet. By 2013 the man had 400 convictions recorded

Judge Brooke said Stafford had attacked 'a vulnerable, single woman in circumstances where she was entitled to feel safe'.

It is one of Stafford's most serious offences. His prior rap sheet is mostly one of theft and burglary, though he was also charged after slashing a man on a Melbourne tram in 2003.

Information considered in the tribunal hearing to overturn his deportation order revealed Stafford had boarded a tram and begun swearing at another commuter, before kicking him in the face.

When the other man moved away, Stafford 'produced a knife and slashed a passenger twice across his face'.

The man was allegedly left with scars on his face from the incident.
Former FBI Director James Comey told the attorney general he did not want to be left alone with President Donald Trump, according to a new report.

It came a day after Trump asked Comey, in a private meeting, to end the FBI's investigation into his former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, officials told to The New York Times.

Comey is reported to have told Attorney General Jeff Sessions he thought private meetings between the FBI director and president were 'inappropriate'.

He also said he believed Sessions should protect the FBI from White House influence.

Former FBI Director James Comey (left) told the attorney general he did not want to be left alone with President Donald Trump (right)

Comey is reported to have told Attorney General Jeff Sessions (pictured) he thought private meetings between the FBI director and president were 'inappropriate'

Comey is expected to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee over his removal and the investigation into possible Russian collusion during the 2016 presidential election

Sources told the outlet that Sessions could not guarantee the president would not try to have another private conversation with Comey.

The former FBI director, who was fired by Trump on May 9, will testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday.

Comey is expected to give evidence about his removal and the investigation into possible Russian collusion during the 2016 presidential campaign.

The Washington Post also reported Tuesday that Trump approached Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats in March, and told him to make the FBI back down from investigating Flynn's ties with Russia.

An anonymous source said Trump stopped Coats after a meeting on March 22, just two days after Comey confirmed the FBI was investigating collusion between Trump's campaign team and Russians.

Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats told colleagues Trump asked him to interfere in the FBI's Russia probe in a private March 22 meeting, sources say

According to the source, CIA Director Mike Pompeo was also present for the conversation.

Coats is set to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee Wednesday, the day before Comey's testimony. Coats is expected to be questioned about his interactions with Trump.

Though he conferred with his colleagues about the president's request, he decided against doing what the president asked because it would be inappropriate, the source said.

Ahead of the testimonies of Coats and Comey, it has been reported that Sessions suggested he could quit after Trump 'lashed out' at him.

Sessions made the suggestion amid 'friction' with the president, ABC News reported.

The network said Trump had repeatedly attacked the country's most senior prosecutor in private meetings over his decision to recuse himself from any aspect of the Russia investigation in March.

Threat to quit: An angry and fixated Trump has lashed out repeatedly at Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from the Russia probe - and now the attorney general is threatening to quit, sources say

Trump is reportedly still angry about Sessions' decision, which at the time was widely reported to have been made against the president's own wishes

Trump is reportedly still angry about Sessions' decision, which at the time was widely reported to have been made against the president's own wishes.

Trump only heard about Sessions' decision moments before he publicly announced it and he now blames the expansion of the Russia investigation on his recusal, ABC reported.

The outlet said it had been told by 'multiple sources' that Sessions' 'recusal is one of the top disappointments of his presidency' and that he is 'fixated' on it.

Sean Spicer earlier would not say whether the president has confidence in Sessions.

Spicer told reporters that he has 'not had a discussion' with the president on the topic.

He said: 'If I haven't had a discussion with him about a subject, I tend not to speak about it.'

Sessions recused himself from investigations into Russia meddling in the 2016 presidential election and possible ties between Moscow and Trump's campaign after he failed to disclose a conversation with Russia's ambassador to the United States during his confirmation hearing

Sessions' 'recusal is one of the top disappointments of his presidency' and Trump is 'fixated' on it, according to ABC. The two are pictured together in March

Sessions recused himself from investigations into Russia meddling in the 2016 presidential election and possible ties between Moscow and Trump's campaign.

That was after he failed to disclose a conversation with Russia's ambassador to the United States during his confirmation hearing.

The New York Times reported that the president has 'grown sour' on Sessions, partially because he blames the recusal for the eventual appointment of former FBI Director Robert Mueller as Special Counsel for the investigation.

Trump has also criticized the Justice Department on Twitter in recent days.

The president said on Monday that his Justice Department sent a 'watered down travel ban' to the Supreme Court.

'The Justice Dept. should have stayed with the original Travel Ban, not the watered down, politically correct version they submitted to S.C.' he wrote.

He added: 'The Justice Dept. should ask for an expedited hearing of the watered down Travel Ban before the Supreme Court - & seek much tougher version!'

Walter Dellinger, who was the acting solicitor general under former President Bill Clinton told the Times: 'I believe it is unprecedented for a president to publicly chastise his own Justice Department.'
Virgin Airlines staff have been praised for jumping to action during a fake bomb scare on a flight from Sydney to Albury on Tuesday morning.

The incident saw all 42 passengers off the plane and on the tarmac and the man responsible detained by police in less than five minutes.

It's in stark contrast to a terrorist threat on a Malaysia Airlines flight last week, reports Perth Now, which saw passengers stay on the plane for 90 minutes after a man threatened to blow it up.

Virgin Airlines staff evacuated 42 passengers from a flight from Sydney to Albury and had a man arrested (pictured) within five minutes of landing after a fake bomb threat was found in the bathroom of the plane

The Virgin flight was just 15 minutes to landing when a note with the word 'BOM' [sic] scribbled on it was found in the bathroom.

By the time the plane hit the tarmac, security and police were at the scene waiting for the already-identified perpetrator to get off.

Passengers were told to 'leave your luggage - get out and run run run', and evacuated the plane by jumping 1.2metres from the door to the tarmac.

A witness said the man responsible  wearing a red jumper and red hat - jumped out of the plane with the rest of the passengers, but he was tackled by police and handcuffed immediately.

The 30-year-old man from Sydney was then charged with sending a document threatening death or grievous bodily harm and providing false information about danger to property and persons.

Though there was no bomb on the plane, aviation consultant and former pilot Trevor Jensen said the Virgin pilot made the right choice in choosing to evacuate as he did.

Police later checked the plane but found there was no explosive device on board (pictured)

'The probability was pretty high that there was not going to be anything untoward on board. Notes like that are pretty silly,' he told Perth Now.

'But I think the pilot made a pretty good decision. He's got to look after passenger safety.'

In contrast, passengers sat terrified on a tarmac for 90 minutes with a man who had earlier threatened to 'blow up this f***ing plane' last Wednesday.

Manodh Marks allegedly claimed to have a bomb as he rushed towards the cockpit door of flight MH128, just minutes after take-off at 11.11pm.

The 25-year-old trainee chef, who is in Australia on a student visa, was arrested early on Thursday and charged with threatening to blow up the aircraft and all on board.

Others on the plane used their body weight to force him to the ground, where they tied him up with a seatbelt and held him on the floor of the plane.

In contrast, passengers on a Malaysia Airlines flight last week were forced to spend 90 minutes on the plane after a man (pictured on ground) tried to storm the cockpit and threatened to blow up the plane

Passengers later criticised police for forcing them to wait anxiously on the tarmac for more than an hour before being evacuated.

Marks was eventually charged with attempting to enter the cockpit and threatening to detonate an explosive device.

For Mr Jensen, leaving the plane on the tarmac for an extended period of time without evacuating was an unacceptable response - especially considering specially trained officers were present.

'What we had were AFP officers fluffing around like overpaid security guards,' he said.

'It makes you wonder  do we have the right people at our airports?'
Qantas frequent flyers will see a dramatic drop in their points following the government's new cap on credit card transaction fees.

Beginning on July 1 credit card interchange transaction fees  which is charged to merchants when a customer uses their credit card - will drop from 1.7 percent for premium cards to just .8 percent.

The decrease is intended to prevent stores and companies from overcharging customers, but customer should expect it to curtail the number of points earned for each $1 spent, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.

The overall loss to customers across the country is six billion points or $100 million.

Qantas frequent flyer earners will see a drop in their points following the government's new cap on credit card fees, which will see customers across Australia lose $100million worth of points (stock image)

Beginning on July 1 credit card interchange transaction fees  which is charged to merchants when a customer uses their credit card - will drop from 1.7 percent for premium cards to just .8 percent (stock image)

An estimated two million Qantas frequent flyer cards will earn less points  working out to almost 48,000 Qantas return flights to Europe, Bessie Hassan, a spokeswoman for Finder, told the publication.

This applies to return flights with a value of $2,000.

'While the everyday consumer may not know what an interchange fee actually is, the implications of the Reserve Bank changes will be huge for rewards credit card holders,' she says.

If a customer spends an average of $18,987 on their Qantas credit card they will lose anywhere from $81 to $242 dollars or 4,979 points, according to SMH.

Qantas points are worth around 1.7 cents each.

Customers shopping with Citi Qantas Signature Visa, Westpac Altitude Qantas Black or a NAB Qantas Rewards Platinum Card will lose 4,747 points if they spend an average of $18,987.

ANZ Frequent Flyer Platinum card holders will take the biggest hit with more than 14,000 points lost annually.

In response, Qantas launched its Premier Mastercard, issued by Citi.

The credit card will earn frequent flyer members a rate of up to two points per dollar spent.

The decrease is intended to prevent stores and companies from overcharging customers, but customer should expect it to curtail the number of points earned for each $1 spent (stock image)

While the number of reward points that frequent flyers can earn on their credit card spend will drop, there are still numerous ways members can build up their points balance, a Qantas spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia.

'We have over 270 partners in the program which allows Qantas Frequent Flyers to earn on a range of activities from grocery shopping to something as simple as walking, via Qantas Assure.'

Qantas Assure is an insurance and wellness program, which can earn frequent flyer members points for walking a certain number of steps or completing an exercise program.

'Qantas Frequent Flyers who take out a Qantas Assure health insurance policy and use the Qantas Assure App to count their steps could earn up to 70,000 Qantas Points in the first year  enough to fly from Sydney to London,' the airline said in a press release.

'Each year depending on the level of cover, members can earn up to 15,000 Qantas Points through the App for staying active, in addition to the points they can already earn from other activities like shopping, flying and using their credit card.'
A Sydney surf club is mourning the shocking loss of Australian nurse Kristy Boden - a 'fearless and compassionate lifesaver' who died during the London terror attacks.

Ms Boden, 28, is one of two Australians confirmed dead following the terrorist attack on London Bridge on Saturday.

The family of Ms Boden revealed she died after she ran towards danger in a bid to save other victim's lives.

Members of the Tamarama Surf Life Saving Club took to Facebook on Wednesday to share their heartbreak.

'Our club members are in shock to learn that one of our much loved lifesavers - has lost her life after the London Bridge attack,' the club posted.

'Kirsty Boden was a fearless, compassionate, much-loved lifesaver at Tamarama and the club and community is deeply shaken by this tragic loss. Our thoughts are with her family at this time.'

The club said it will hold a memorial event soon and details will be emailed to members.

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Tamarama Surf Life Saving Club, in east Sydney, is mourning the shocking loss of Australian nurse Kristy Boden (right), 28, who died during the London terror attacks

Ms Boden (pictured) was a 'fearless, compassionate, much-loved lifesaver at Tamarama and the club and community is deeply shaken by this tragic loss,' the club wrote on Facebook

Australian nanny Sara Zelenak (pictured) is believed to be one of two Australians confirmed dead

The second Australian believed to have been killed during the terror attacks is Sara Zelenak, a 21-year-old Brisbane woman, who was separated from her friend on London Bridge when the violence began, Sky News reports.

Of the seven confirmed deaths, five have now been named, including Miss Boden and Miss Zelenak.

The other three victims were revealed as Londoner James McMullan, 32, Canadian tourist Christine Archibald, 30, and French waiter Alexandre Pigeard, 27.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has reached out to the families of both of the Australians killed - a sickening rampage his foreign minister has described as savage beyond belief.

The prime minister has also spoken with the family of Ms Zelenak, who was on London Bridge after becoming separated from a friend when the rampage began.

Her family were bracing for the worst after appealing for information about the 21-year-old nanny in a Facebook post shared hundreds of times on Monday, saying she usually rang her mother daily.

TERROR VICTIMS Killed: Kirsty Boden, 28, from Loxton, Australia .

James McMullan, 32, from Hackney, east London.

Christine Archibald, 30, from British Columbia, Canada.

Alexandre Pigeard, 27, from Normandy, France. Missing: Sara Zelenak, 21, from Brisbane, Australia.

Xavier Thomas, from Loire-Atlantique, France.

Ignacio Echeverria, 39, from Las Rozas, Spain.

Sebastien Belanger, from Angers, France. Advertisement

'I am a father ... Kirsty or Sara could be one of my kids, it could be one of your kids,' Mr Turnbull told 3AW's Neil Mitchell on Wednesday.

'This is heart-rending, this is the last thing anybody expects to happen to their children when they are in London.'

Ms Bishop says the families are on their way to London and have asked for privacy.

'You can understand what a harrowing time they are going through,' she told Sydney's 2GB radio.

'The two beautiful young women enjoying a night out in London. I have to say, the savagery of these attacks is just beyond belief.'

In a statement earlier on Wednesday, Ms Bishop said: 'The Australian Government is deeply saddened to confirm that two Australians have been killed in the London terrorist attack.

'We continue to work with the United Kingdom authorities who have asked that we await official confirmation of the identities of the victims, and for the families to be officially notified, before we release their names.'

Prince Harry paid tribute to the victims of the terror attack during a speech to launch the Invictus Games in Sydney on Wednesday.

'I would also like to start by sending my thoughts to those affected by Saturday's attack in London Bridge,' he said.

'Australians form an important and vibrant part of the fabric of life in London and we are reminded of that in good times and bad.

'And our hearts go out to the victims, their friends and families.'

Kirsty Boden (pictured), from Loxton, in South Australia, was killed by knife-wielding terrorists as she ran to help victims of Saturday night's London terror attack

Sara Zelenak (pictured), from Queensland, was last seen on London Bridge after being caught in Saturday night's terror attack

Ms Boden's relatives said she was 'loved and adored by her family, friends and boyfriend,' while her colleagues at Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital in central London, where she worked as a senior staff nurse in theatre recovery, described her as 'one in a million.'

'As she ran towards danger, in an effort to help people on the bridge, Kirsty sadly lost her life,' her family said in a statement on Tuesday.

'We are so proud of Kirsty's brave actions which demonstrate how selfless, caring and heroic she was, not only on that night, but throughout her life.'

They added: 'She was the most outgoing, kind and generous person who loved to help people.

'Helping people was what she loved to do in her job as a nurse and in her daily life.'

'Kirsty  we love you and we will miss you dearly.'

Dame Eileen Sills, the chief nurse at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, also paid tribute to Ms Boden, who she described as an 'outstanding' nurse.

'As the Chief Nurse at Guy's and St Thomas' I cannot put into words how sad I am that we have lost one of our own,' she said.

'Kirsty was an outstanding nurse and a hugely valued member of the staff team in Theatre Recovery, described by her colleagues as 'one in a million' who always went the extra mile for the patients in her care.

'Our thoughts are with her family, her loved ones and our staff who have lost a dear friend and colleague.'

Members of the Loxton State Emergency Service said she always 'lit up the room with your adorable smile and gorgeous laugh.'

'You are a true everyday hero, putting the needs of those injured before yourself,' they said on Facebook.

Ms Boden, 28, is being remembered remembered by her family as being 'brave' in her final moments as she went to the aid of one of the injured of the London terror attack

Immanuel College principal Kevin Richardson said the former student was a boarder and a star swimmer, who always wanted to travel.

'She was a very caring person. One of those kids who basically had a great passion for life and wanted to live every moment,' he told ABC radio.

Former schoolmate, Donshae Kaesler said Ms Boden was 'always so bubbly at school'. She added: 'You will be sadly missed.'

South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill also offered his condolences to Ms Boden's family.

In a statement, he said: 'This is a tragedy which will touch all South Australians.

'Kirsty's death brings the horror of terrorism closer to home for all of us. We all know someone who lives in the United Kingdom.

'We all know someone who could have been innocently wandering through London last weekend. It's the random nature of this heinous crime which makes it so hard to fathom.

'As a state, we mourn for Kirsty, we send our love to her family and we stand in solidarity with the people of Loxton as they grapple with this awful news.'

In a press conference on Wednesday morning, he said Ms Boden's murder as an 'unspeakable act of evil.'

He said: 'Kirsty Boden was a beautiful young woman from Loxton who left South Australia to explore the world using her talents as a nurse to care for others.

'She died doing just that, trying to help others. It is just so cruel, so wrong for someone so compassionate to be taken from us by such an unspeakable act of evil.'

Colleagues of Ms Boden at Guys' and St Thomas' NHS Federation Trust have paid tribute to 'an outstanding nurse and a hugely valued member of the staff'

A keen traveller when not at work, a haunting post from Ms Boden on her online travel blog read: 'At risk of sounding cliche, life is short and we should all use the time we have wisely.'

The 28-year-old nurse (pictured) travelled to Kiev, Ukraine, for Eurovision this year

He added: 'Like so many South Australians, she wanted to explore the world, moving to London where she lived for the past three years.

'It seems so cruel that her adventure should end in this way.

'To Kirsty's family, your pain must be unbearable but I want you to know that you are in our thoughts and our prayers.

'The South Australia community shares your heartbreak and offers its support to you at this awful time.'

Just days before her death, Ms Boden had written her blog post on her travels around Europe.

'At risk of sounding cliche, life is short and we should all use the time we have wisely,' she wrote.

Ms Boden moved to the UK shortly after graduating from Flinders University in Adelaide.

She began working in the healthcare sector a few years later and in her free time, she loved to travel  and documenting visits to Germany, Bulgaria, Switzerland and more on her blog.

Ms Boden recently made her way to Kiev, Ukraine, to attend the Eurovision Song Contest  where she supported her homeland by wearing a T-shirt bearing the Australian flag.

The 28-year-old nurse was reportedly attacked by the knife-wielding terrorists while coming to the aid of another injured person. A keen traveller, she is pictured here outside famed music pub The Cavern in Liverpool, UK

'I'm just your average dreamer, with a full time job and a constant longing to go where I haven't been,' she wrote.

'I have big travel dreams but I am realistic. I recognise that I might not go everywhere but I should definitely go everywhere I can, and so should you!'

Meanwhile, Ms Zelenak's mother Julie Wallace travelled to London on Tuesday to search for her missing daughter.

She revealed how her daughter, who had worked as a nanny in London since March, avoided the horror on Westminster Bridge earlier this year and was very nearly caught up in the Manchester suicide bombing, Ms Wallace revealed.

'Horror, complete horror. And the one with the policeman being stabbed about three months ago, she was there the day before in the exact spot,' Ms Wallace told radio station 97.3FM on Tuesday.

Ms Zelenak (pictured) has not been seen since Saturday night when she was caught up in the London Bridge terror attack

Mark Wallace (left) the stepfather of Ms Zelenak (right) said he has called every hospital in London in a desperate attempt to find the 21-year-old

On Tuesday, family and friends of Ms Zelenak were seen visiting the family home of the 21-year-old in Brisbane

She also revealed her daughter had tickets to the ill-fated Ariana Grande concert in Manchester where a terrorist set off a bomb, killing 22, but end up not going.

Ms Zelenak was meant to be working on Saturday night, but a last-minute change of plans meant she was out with a friend on London Bridge.

Ms Wallace said she last spoke to her daughter at 4.42pm on Friday, Brisbane time.

She said her daughter had expressed her excitement about her upcoming trip with her mother and stepfather to France at the end of this month.

Ms Zelanak's stepfather Mark Wallace said he was distraught after calling every hospital in London trying to find her  to no avail.

Ms Zelenak's aunt, Tara (pictured), speaking to reporters on Tuesday outside her niece's family home in Brisbane

Family and friends, some carrying flowers, were at the family home of Ms Zelenak as they waited for news about her whereabouts

Ms Zelenak's friend Pri Goncalves was the last person to see her  but the pair became separated when they panicked and ran for their lives after a van began plowing into people on London Bridge.

The pair had been leaving London Grind, a trendy restaurant moments from the scene of the attack, and were looking for a bar to go to when the chaos began.

When she looked back and saw her friend wasn't with her, she called Sara at 10.09pm  a minute after police received the first emergency call reporting the attack.

She tried again a couple of minutes later, again at 10.16pm and 10.17pm but received no answer.

She said Ms Zelenak hasn't been online to check her messages on Whatsapp since 10.03pm, shortly before the attack began.

The pair, both au pairs working in Herne Hill in south London, had met on the train.

That evening, they were out celebrating Ms Zelenak's new job in Westminster and had met at London Bridge station before going to dinner.

Four Australians including Ms Boden and Ms Zelenak are believed to have been caught up in the attack. Seven people have been confirmed dead in the attack, while 48 were injured

Four Australians were caught up in the attack in total, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has said.

They included Candice Hedge who is recovering in hospital after undergoing surgery after being stabbed in her neck.

Darwin electrician Andrew Morrison has travelled back to Australia after receiving stitches after he was knifed in the neck.

The three terrorists behind the attacks have been named as Rachid Redouane, Khuram Butt and Youssef Zaghba.

All three were shot dead by police within eight minutes of the first emergency call.
A popular high school teacher has pleaded guilty to having sex with two of his students after grooming one by sending her explicit photos on Facebook.

Kurt Majoor, 25, admitted to having sex with the two female students while working as a PE teacher at Corrimal High School, in the Wollongong region.

One of the girls, aged 17, claimed Majoor had sex with her in isolated sand dunes one morning in February, before dropping her off a few streets away from school.

Kurt Majoor, 25, has pleaded guilty to having sex with two of his students while working as a teacher at Corrimal High School in Wollonging, NSW

Police said Majoor developed a friendship with the girl online, and sent her photos of his penis and sexually explicit messages via social media in the days before the pair had sex, Fairfax reported.

The sexual incident was reported to police a day later and he was arrested in his home, which he shares with his parents, the following day.

Majoor was charged with sexual intercourse with a child between 16 and 18 under special care and refused bail.

As prosecutors waited for a brief of evidence to be served, a second student came forward claiming Majoor had sexual intercourse with her in November last year.

Majoor's lawyer William Whitby had earlier indicated his client would challenge the charges, but on Wednesday morning he entered two guilty pleas on behalf of the disgraced teacher, Fairfax reported.

Majoor was not present in court, appearing via video link from Silverwater jail in western Sydney.

He will be sentenced at a later date.
The cost of food in Australia is 'crazy' when compared to grocery bills in other countries, Coles managing director John Durkan said on Wednesday.

Speaking at a Westfarmers Limited meeting, Mr Durkan told analysts there is 'already an overpriced grocery market' in Australia, according to The Age.

'I've been saying that for nine years,' he said.

'I still look at products here that are made overseas and they are crazy prices.'

Because of the high prices, Mr Durkan said he expects Coles' own discount brand to excel.

Food in Australia is 'overpriced' when compared to grocery bills in other countries, Coles managing director John Durkan said on Wednesday (stock image)

Food in the U.S. is 24.85 percent cheaper than Australia, followed by the UK with 12.25 percent, according to comparethemarket.com.au.

In Singapore food is 18.52 percent below ours, and France is cheaper by 9.67 percent.

The managing director's comments come after Aldi was crowned the cheapest supermarket in Australia above rivals Coles and Woolworths in the latest CHOICE supermarket price survey.

The survey found consumers can save nearly $80 a shop by switching from leading brands to a basket of Aldi budget products.

The survey compares the average cost of 33 popular products at Coles, Woolworths and Aldi across 110 Australian supermarkets, including Nutri-grain, OMO laundry detergent, Tim Tam, Coca Cola, Dairy Farmers Milk and five fresh fruit and vegetables.

Speaking at a Westfarmers Limited meeting, Mr Durkan told analysts he has believed for nine years that food prices are 'crazy' (stock image)

The managing director's comments come after Aldi was crowned the cheapest supermarket in Australia above rivals Coles and Woolworths in the latest CHOICE supermarket price survey (stock image)

Coles was named the most expensive grocer of leading brands ($170.54) only marginally ahead of Woolworths ($168.74).

However consumers were found to be paying only $91.76 for a similar basket of Aldi budget brands.

'Although the big supermarkets make a lot of very loud claims about value, it's clear Aldi is Australia's cheapest supermarket and it is forcing the big two to compete on price,' CHOICE spokesman Tom Godfrey said on Tuesday.

Non-Aldi states such as Tasmania and the Northern Territory are serving up some of the most expensive leading brand baskets, but in South Australia and Western Australia, Aldi's push is helping to deliver the cheapest leading brand prices at around $168 in those states, Mr Godfrey said.

'It is clear when you look at the prices across the baskets, that Aldi is the price leader and those states with Aldis are keen to have cheaper leading brand prices,' Mr Godfrey told AAP.

Despite its cheaper prices, the German retailer is lagging behind Coles and Woolworths when it comes to stocking leading brand items and products with some Australian ingredients (stock image)

He said shoppers have become more cautious in recent years of how much they are spending on groceries amid rising consumer prices.

'There is no doubt that family budgets are under a great deal of pressure,' he said, adding it is little surprise that price is the deciding factor in what to buy and where to shop.

Despite its cheaper prices, the German retailer is lagging behind Coles and Woolworths when it comes to stocking leading brand items and products with some Australian ingredients.

The nationwide study found of the 28 food items in the basket, Coles supermarket brand basket had 22 containing at least some Australian ingredients, Woolworths had 21, while Aldi only had 17.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Coles for comment.
A group of Sydney women have stormed out of an evangelical conference after being left flabbergasted when a speaker told them cutting their hair short goes against what's written in the Bible.

Carmelina Read, a speaker and committee member at the Equip 2017 conference, suggested it's ungodly for women to have their hair short like Hollywood actress Kristen Stewart.

In her speech about male leadership, Ms Read showed a picture of the actress with a 'fierce' new buzz cut which has been hailed by many as a sign of female liberation.

Carmelina Read (pictured) said that women wearing their long hair is in line with God's 'good design'

Ms Read said that having long hair was in line's with God's good design and delight as the length made it easier for people to differentiate between a man and a women.

Close to 3000 women were in attendance when the comments were made, according to the ABC.

Her remarks prompted some women to leave the venue in a fit of rage.

The advice was presented in the context of a difficult passage of scripture that teaches that the head of woman is man, just as the head of man is Christ, reports Christian website Eternity News.



A conference delegate who did not want to be named said she felt unease with the 'complementarian' theology being taught, as it advocates that men should hold leadership roles in marriage and church life while women can't be more than mere helpers.

But what really irked the unnamed delegate was the labeling of a women's role as a 'helper' in the workplace.

But one commentator, Jen Wright, told the ABC that Ms Read's comments have been misunderstood.

'She did not say that short hair is wrong, but used it as an example of some ways some people choose to feel empowered by feeling more masculine.

'[Ms Read] was on about celebrating us as women.

'All the speakers and presenters humbly and thoroughly worked through difficult issues and passages to present the conference on Saturday and I thank God for their preparation, humility and wisdom.'
Schapelle Corby is enjoying her newfound freedom and Instagram stardom, posting a set of photographs capturing her time outside in Australia's 'crisp, clean air'.

The convicted drug smuggler, who has already amassed close to 200,000 followers on the social media platform, appears to be enjoying a road trip across Queensland.

She posted six images on social media, writing: 'Out & About, Australia is so beautiful. Crisp, clean air. (Swipe) #australia #discoverqueensland #freedom.'

The photographs show Corby enjoying barefoot walks on a beach, buying fresh produce and posing in front of farmyard animals in green fields.

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Schapelle Corby is enjoying her newfound freedom and Instagram stardom

The 39-year-old is believed to be taking a road trip across Queensland, and posted a set of photographs to her popular Instagram account documenting her travel

'Out & About, Australia is so beautiful. Crisp, clean air,' Schapelle captioned her images

Since her return from Bali ten days ago, Corby has become a prolific Instagram uploader, catching the attention of both haters and supporters.

'I'm glad your freedom has finally come around. Enjoy that wind on your back, sand on your feet and home in your heart,' one supporter wrote on her latest post.

'Looking absolutely beautiful Schapelle. Loving you are back in Australia with your wonderful family,' added another.

Corby also posted a cheerful video to her Instagram story, which disappears after 24 hours, showing her blissfully running towards the ocean before playing with sand.

The 39-year-old's previous post was a tribute to one of her dogs she was forced to leave behind in Bali when she was deported back to Australia.

The convicted drug smuggler already has close to 200,000 followers on Instagram

The picturesque images show Corby enjoying barefoot walks on a beach, buying fresh produce and posing in front of farmyard animals in endless fields

Schapelle Corby (pictured) has posted a tribute to one her dogs May that she was forced to leave behind in Bali when she was deported back to Australia

She posted a photograph to her Instagram account early on Tuesday morning that showed her holding her dog, May, up to the camera, while wearing a red bra strap as a headband to keep her long hair off her face.

In the post Corby wrote: 'Miss little Ms May. When May was five weeks old her and two of her brothers got the dreaded Canine Parvo Virus.'

'It's such a contagious disease, Bali vets that we contacted turned us away. Sadly, despite all efforts to save them her brothers didn't make it.

'May survived after we found an online Parvo recipe. The parvo has stunted May's growth, she's so small and still has all her baby teeth even though she's two years old. #mayssospecial #brastrapsarethebestheadbands.'

Canine parvo virus (CPV) is a highly contagious viral illness that affects dogs and can manifest in either intestinal form leading to vomiting, diarrhea, weight loss, and lack of appetite or in cardiac form, which attacks the heart muscle and often leads to death.

Her first-ever Instagram post was a picture of her two dogs captioned with: 'Going to miss these two. My puppies #Luna&May'. Pictured right is Luna, who contracted canine parvo virus which Schapelle said caused her growth to be stunted

Corby also uploaded a photo of her taking a selfie (left) with her brother Michael (centre) and her sister Mercedes (right) in Bali before she left. She captioned it with: 'Minutes before leaving home on my way for deportation 27.5.2017'

Corby's followers commented on her choice of headband describing it a 'great idea' and Corby replied to one saying 'You gotta try it if you haven't already. The best!'

Corby also posted a video of the moment she was escorted from the parole office in Bali into a waiting car and then to the airport in Denpasar, which appears to have been filmed by her sister Mercedes.

Corby is heard saying goodbye and thanking people as the footage shows her leaving the office and walking out to the car past police and the waiting media.

As she gets into the car she is heard exclaiming 'Oh, that was easy!' before thanking her driver.

He sister Mercedes is then heard saying 'That was nice, oh you just cover yourself' before the camera shows Corby, her head and face obscured by a scarf, holding her handbag up to the window.

''The police are doing a good job, they're doing a really good job,' Mercedes is heard saying.

She then says to her sister 'Just keep your head down.

Schapelle Corby is seen in the immigration holding area before boarding her flight to Brisbane on May 27, the night she was deported back to Australia

Corby also posted a photo of herself taking a selfie with both her siblings, brother Michael and sister Mercedes, before they left Bali.

In the photo, Corby is on the left holding out her iPhone in a blue case, while her brother Michael is in the middle smiling and her sister Mercedes is on the right.

She captioned it: 'Minutes before leaving home on my way for deportation 27.5.2017. Couldn't have done this without you. Sibling love, Merc, Michael, Me. I'm the youngest of us 3 and I'm 39 #been1weekalready #clawhandselfie.

Corby also made headlines this week after she donated her parole book to charity run by Adam Whittington, the mastermind behind the botched 60 Minutes child abduction in Lebanon.

Mr Whittington launched Project Rescue Children (PRC), an organisation that sets up undercover operations to expose child sex traffickers, on the Gold Coast on Friday.

Corby also made headlines this week after she donated her parole book (pictured) to charity run by Adam Whittington, the mastermind behind the botched 60 Minutes child abduction in Lebanon
Former first lady Michelle Obama revealed during a candid conversation that her husband wore the same tuxedo for all eight years of his presidency during state dinners.

The mother-of-two shared the enlightening tidbit during her appearance at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose, California on Tuesday.

The 53-year-old Chicago native noted how she was photographed and scrutinized year in and year out for the dresses and accessories she sported for state dinners as they were highly publicized events.

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Former first lady Michelle Obama revealed during a candid conversation at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (above) Tuesday that her husband wore the same tuxedo for all eight years of his presidency

Obama noted how she was photographed and scrutinized year in and year out for the dresses and accessories she sported for state dinners. Above left the couple is pictured at the state dinner in November 2009 and right at the May 2010 event

But she said the former president easily got away with wearing the same outfit every year to state dinners. Above left the couple is pictured at the state dinner in January 2011 and right at the June 2011 event

But she said the former president easily got away with wearing the same outfit every year to state dinners.

'This is the unfair thing  you talk about Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers  no matter what we do, he puts on that same tux,' she said.

'Now, people take pictures of the shoes I wear, the bracelets, the necklace  they didn't comment that for eight years he wore the same tux, same shoes.'

She continued, 'And he was proud of it too. He's like, 'Mmm, I'm ready. I'm ready in 10 minutes. How long did it take you?' I'm like, 'Get out of here.' '

Obama said: 'This is the unfair thing  you talk about Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers  no matter what we do, he puts on that same tux.' Above left the couple is pictured at the state dinner in October 2011 and right at the March 2012 event

She added: 'Now, people take pictures of the shoes I wear, the bracelets, the necklace  they didn't comment that for eight years he wore the same tux, same shoes.' Above left the couple is pictured at the state dinner in February 2014 and right at the September 2015 event

The Harvard Law School graduate also shared the story behind the viral photo of her adjusting his bow tie just before they welcomed Chinese President Xi Jinping and wife Peng Liyuan during a state visit in September 2015 to the White House.

She recalled that while waiting to greet the Chinese president and his wife at the North Portico of the White House, they were being photographed by 'about 100 press people'.

'So we're standing there waiting for the cars to roll in  and I was bored,' she admitted.

'So I sort of thought, let me make sure my husband looks good.'

Obama also shared the story behind the viral photo (above) of her adjusting his bow tie just before the September 2015 state dinner. She said she was 'bored' while waiting for cars to roll in and 'thought, let me make sure my husband looks good'

The former first lady said that her husband was proud of wearing the same tuxedo every year during his presidency. Above left the couple is pictured at the state dinner in March 2016 and right at the event in October 2016

During the private Q-and-A session with Lisa Jackson, Apple's vice president of environment, policy and social initiatives, the former first lady also discussed several issues, including diversity in tech, STEM education, innovation and leadership.

'We (in the U.S.) have been teaching math and science the same way for too long,' Obama said. 'How do we get them to loves these topics at (ages) 10 and 11?'

She said that the absence of girls and women in the so-called STEM fields has a deleterious affect on the tech industry.

'I'm very passionate about girls education, and we still have a long way to go on equality and access,' Obama stated.

'We have to teach young girls they are smart and can compete.'
A Brisbane woman has been confirmed dead following Saturday night's terrorist attack on London Bridge.

Sara Zelenak, 21, was separated from her friend on London Bridge when the violence began.

Her mother, who had flown to London to find her daughter, shared a post to the woman's Facebook on Wednesday to tell followers her body had been found.

'Sara Zelenak is confirmed dead, they found her body and has DNA tests confirmed. Thank you for all the overwhelming love and support from everyone,' she wrote.

Sara Zelenak (pictured), has been confirmed as killed in Saturday night's terrorist attack on London Bridge

Her mother, Julie Wallace, confirmed the devastating news in a Facebook post on Wednesday

Ms Zelenak's mother Julie Wallace travelled to London on Tuesday to search for her missing daughter.

She revealed Sara, who had worked as a nanny in London since March, avoided the horror on Westminster Bridge earlier this year and was very nearly caught up in the Manchester suicide bombing.

'Horror, complete horror. And the one with the policeman being stabbed about three months ago, she was there the day before in the exact spot,' Ms Wallace told radio station 97.3FM on Tuesday.

She also revealed her daughter had tickets to the ill-fated Ariana Grande concert in Manchester where a terrorist set off a bomb, killing 22, but end up not going.

Ms Zelenak was meant to be working on Saturday night, but a last-minute change of plans meant she was out with a friend on London Bridge.

Mark Wallace (left) the stepfather of Ms Zelenak (right) said he had called every hospital in London in a desperate attempt to find the 21-year-old

The Australian nanny had been missing since the terrorist attack on Saturday night, which killed eight

Ms Wallace said she last spoke to her daughter at 4.42pm on Friday, Brisbane time.

TERROR VICTIMS Killed: Kirsty Boden, 28, from Loxton, Australia.

James McMullan, 32, from Hackney, east London.

Christine Archibald, 30, from British Columbia, Canada.

Alexandre Pigeard, 27, from Normandy, France.

Sara Zelenak, 21, from Brisbane, Australia. Missing: Xavier Thomas, from Loire-Atlantique, France.

Ignacio Echeverria, 39, from Las Rozas, Spain.

Sebastien Belanger, from Angers, France. Advertisement

She said her daughter had expressed her excitement about her upcoming trip with her mother and stepfather to France at the end of this month.

Ms Zelanak's stepfather Mark Wallace said he was distraught after calling every hospital in London trying to find her  to no avail.

Ms Zelenak's friend Pri Goncalves was the last person to see her  but the pair became separated when they panicked and ran for their lives after a van began plowing into people on London Bridge.

The pair had been leaving London Grind, a trendy restaurant moments from the scene of the attack, and were looking for a bar to go to when the chaos began.

When she looked back and saw her friend wasn't with her, she called Sara at 10.09pm  a minute after police received the first emergency call reporting the attack.

She tried again a couple of minutes later, again at 10.16pm and 10.17pm but received no answer.

She said Ms Zelenak hasn't been online to check her messages on Whatsapp since 10.03pm, shortly before the attack began.

Ms Zelenak's mother flew to London in a desperate bid to find her daughter (pictured) who she had not heard from since the attack

On Tuesday, family and friends of Ms Zelenak were seen visiting the family home of the 21-year-old in Brisbane

Ms Zelenak's aunt, Tara (pictured), speaking to reporters on Tuesday outside her niece's family home in Brisbane

Family and friends, some carrying flowers, were at the family home of Ms Zelenak as they waited for news about her whereabouts

The pair, both au pairs working in Herne Hill in south London, had met on the train.

That evening, they were out celebrating Ms Zelenak's new job in Westminster and had met at London Bridge station before going to dinner.

Of the eight confirmed deaths from the attack, five have now been named, including Miss Boden and Miss Zelenak.

The other three victims were revealed as Londoner James McMullan, 32, Canadian tourist Christine Archibald, 30, and French waiter Alexandre Pigeard, 27.

The heartbroken family of Ms Boden revealed she died after she ran towards danger in a bid to save lives.

Kirsty Boden (pictured), from Loxton, in South Australia, was killed by knife-wielding terrorists as she ran to help victims of Saturday night's London terror attack

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has reached out to the families of both of the Australians killed in a sickening rampage his foreign minister has described as savage beyond belief.

The prime minister earlier spoke with the family of Ms Zelenak, who was on London Bridge after becoming separated from a friend when the rampage began.

Her family were bracing for the worst after appealing for information about the 21-year-old nanny in a Facebook post shared hundreds of times on Monday, saying she usually rang her mother daily.

'I am a father ... Kirsty or Sara could be one of my kids, it could be one of your kids,' Mr Turnbull told 3AW's Neil Mitchell on Wednesday.

'This is heart-rending, this is the last thing anybody expects to happen to their children when they are in London.'

Ms Bishop says the families are on their way to London and have asked for privacy.

Ms Boden, 28, is being remembered remembered by her family as being 'brave' in her final moments as she went to the aid of one of the injured of the London terror attack

'You can understand what a harrowing time they are going through,' she told Sydney's 2GB radio.

'The two beautiful young women enjoying a night out in London. I have to say, the savagery of these attacks is just beyond belief.'

In a statement earlier on Wednesday, Ms Bishop said: 'The Australian Government is deeply saddened to confirm that two Australians have been killed in the London terrorist attack.

'We continue to work with the United Kingdom authorities who have asked that we await official confirmation of the identities of the victims, and for the families to be officially notified, before we release their names.'

Prince Harry paid tribute to the victims of the terror attack during a speech to launch the Invictus Games in Sydney on Wednesday.

'I would also like to start by sending my thoughts to those affected by Saturday's attack in London Bridge,' he said.

'Australians form an important and vibrant part of the fabric of life in London and we are reminded of that in good times and bad.

'And our hearts go out to the victims, their friends and families.'

Colleagues of Ms Boden at Guys' and St Thomas' NHS Federation Trust have paid tribute to 'an outstanding nurse and a hugely valued member of the staff'

Ms Boden's relatives said she was 'loved and adored by her family, friends and boyfriend,' while her colleagues at Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital in central London, where she worked as a senior staff nurse in theatre recovery, described her as 'one in a million.'

'As she ran towards danger, in an effort to help people on the bridge, Kirsty sadly lost her life,' her family said in a statement on Tuesday.

'We are so proud of Kirsty's brave actions which demonstrate how selfless, caring and heroic she was, not only on that night, but throughout her life.'

They added: 'She was the most outgoing, kind and generous person who loved to help people.

'Helping people was what she loved to do in her job as a nurse and in her daily life.'

'Kirsty  we love you and we will miss you dearly.'

A keen traveller when not at work, a haunting post from Ms Boden on her online travel blog read: 'At risk of sounding cliche, life is short and we should all use the time we have wisely.'

The 28-year-old nurse (pictured) travelled to Kiev, Ukraine, for Eurovision this year

Dame Eileen Sills, the chief nurse at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, also paid tribute to Ms Boden, who she described as an 'outstanding' nurse.

'As the Chief Nurse at Guy's and St Thomas' I cannot put into words how sad I am that we have lost one of our own,' she said.

'Kirsty was an outstanding nurse and a hugely valued member of the staff team in Theatre Recovery, described by her colleagues as 'one in a million' who always went the extra mile for the patients in her care.

'Our thoughts are with her family, her loved ones and our staff who have lost a dear friend and colleague.'

Members of the Loxton State Emergency Service said she always 'lit up the room with your adorable smile and gorgeous laugh.'

'You are a true everyday hero, putting the needs of those injured before yourself,' they said on Facebook.

Immanuel College principal Kevin Richardson said the former student was a boarder and a star swimmer, who always wanted to travel.

'She was a very caring person. One of those kids who basically had a great passion for life and wanted to live every moment,' he told ABC radio.

Former schoolmate, Donshae Kaesler said Ms Boden was 'always so bubbly at school'. She added: 'You will be sadly missed.'

Ms Boden was working in London as a theatre recovery nurse at Guy's Hospital

The 28-year-old nurse was reportedly attacked by the knife-wielding terrorists while coming to the aid of another injured person. A keen traveller, she is pictured here outside famed music pub The Cavern in Liverpool, UK

South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill also offered his condolences to Ms Boden's family.

In a statement, he said: 'This is a tragedy which will touch all South Australians.

'Kirsty's death brings the horror of terrorism closer to home for all of us. We all know someone who lives in the United Kingdom.

'We all know someone who could have been innocently wandering through London last weekend. It's the random nature of this heinous crime which makes it so hard to fathom.

'As a state, we mourn for Kirsty, we send our love to her family and we stand in solidarity with the people of Loxton as they grapple with this awful news.'

In a press conference on Wednesday morning, he said Ms Boden's murder as an 'unspeakable act of evil.'

He said: 'Kirsty Boden was a beautiful young woman from Loxton who left South Australia to explore the world using her talents as a nurse to care for others.

'She died doing just that, trying to help others. It is just so cruel, so wrong for someone so compassionate to be taken from us by such an unspeakable act of evil.'

Four Australians including Ms Boden and Ms Zelenak are believed to have been caught up in the attack. Eight people have been confirmed dead in the attack, while 48 were injured

He added: 'Like so many South Australians, she wanted to explore the world, moving to London where she lived for the past three years.

'It seems so cruel that her adventure should end in this way.

'To Kirsty's family, your pain must be unbearable but I want you to know that you are in our thoughts and our prayers.

'The South Australia community shares your heartbreak and offers its support to you at this awful time.'

Just days before her death, Ms Boden had written her blog post on her travels around Europe.

'At risk of sounding cliche, life is short and we should all use the time we have wisely,' she wrote.

Ms Boden moved to the UK shortly after graduating from Flinders University in Adelaide.

She began working in the healthcare sector a few years later and in her free time, she loved to travel  and documenting visits to Germany, Bulgaria, Switzerland and more on her blog.

Ms Boden recently made her way to Kiev, Ukraine, to attend the Eurovision Song Contest  where she supported her homeland by wearing a T-shirt bearing the Australian flag.

'I'm just your average dreamer, with a full time job and a constant longing to go where I haven't been,' she wrote.

'I have big travel dreams but I am realistic. I recognise that I might not go everywhere but I should definitely go everywhere I can, and so should you!'

Four Australians were caught up in the attack in total, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has said.

They included Candice Hedge who is recovering in hospital after undergoing surgery after being stabbed in her neck.

Darwin electrician Andrew Morrison has travelled back to Australia after receiving stitches after he was knifed in the neck.

The three terrorists behind the attacks have been named as Rachid Redouane, Khuram Butt and Youssef Zaghba.

All three were shot dead by police within eight minutes of the first emergency call.
Up to 5,000 mourners bid farewell to slain policeman Brett Forte in an emotional service on Wednesday, but there will be no funeral for the senior constable's killer.

The 41-year-old father was murdered in the line of duty by career criminal Rick Maddison during a wild police chase west of Brisbane on May 29.

Maddison was later shot in the chest by police and died following a near 24-hour siege.

His close friend has revealed a funeral will not be held for the cop killer, who was the 'black sheep' among his Toowoomba-based family.

Up to 5,000 mourners bid farewell to slain policeman Brett Forte in an emotional service on Wednesday, but there will be no funeral for the senior constable's killer

The heartbroken wife the slain policeman Susan and son Brodie are seen touching the casket

Thousands of mourners bid farewell to slain policeman Brett Forte at his funeral service after he was shot dead in a roadside ambush

The 41-year-old father and husband was shot dead in the line of duty by career criminal Rick Maddison (pictured) on May 29. The killer's family will not be holding a funeral

'They aren't having one for Rick, I was informed today. It's very sad we couldn't say goodbye,' the friend told Daily Mail Australia.

The friend said he wasn't given details as to why the family won't be holding a service.

'I don't know the reason, his mother asked me to respect the family's wishes so that's what I'll be doing,' he said.

The friend said he watched Snr Const Forte's funeral on television on Wednesday morning, describing it as a 'very sad day.'

Senior Constable Brett Forte's family, wife Susan hugging son Brodie, and parents Heather and Stuart watch as his casket is being put in a hearse after his funeral

Officers are seen carrying Snr Const Forte's casket from the service after he was shot dead last week

Police officers and the public form a guard of honour as the casket of Senior Constable Brett Forte passes by

There was a sea of dark blue outside the service as scores of police watched the proceedings on a large screen

Thousands watched the service on a large screen outside the auditorium on Wednesday

Thousands of Snr Const Forte's friends, colleagues and family farewelled the popular officer at Toowoomba's Clive Berghofer Recreational Centre on Wednesday.

Scores of police and emergency service workers attended the service, with the local community centre full to capacity and thousands more outside watching on a big screen.

High-profile politicians including One Nation leader Pauline Hanson and Immigration Minister Peter Dutton were among the mourners.

Representatives of police agencies from across the globe, including New York and New Zealand, also attended.

Susan Forte thanked the Queensland community and her 'police family' for their support and said her husband would have 'loved all the attention'

Senior Constable Brett Forte's emotional wife Susan is pictured standing next to her daughter Emma during the service

A string of high-profile politicians including One Nation leader Pauline Hanson (pictured) were among the mourners

Police and guests grieve outside the Clive Berghofer Recreational Centre during the funeral

Chaplain Rev. Jeff Baills welcomed guests before emotional tributes from the slain policeman's wife and stepdaughter.

'He was a fantastic husband to me and father of our children,' Snr Const Forte's wife Susan said as she fought back tears.

'You were my hero and my soulmate and I will love you forever.'

Snr Const Forte's stepdaughter, Emma, also paid an emotional tribute, describing him as her 'guardian angel'.

'To the world you were one person, but to our family you were the world,' she said.

The father and husband was honoured during the service with a Queensland Police Valour Award for his bravery in the line of duty.

The emotional farewell of the hero policeman finished with a Guard of Honour and a motorcade escorted by police motorcycles

The father and husband was honoured during the service with a Queensland Police Valour Award for his bravery in the line of duty

Uniformed police officers are seen gathering in Toowoomba ahead of Wednesday's service as they prepared to farewell their colleague

Senior Constable Brett Forte's children (second right to left) Sam, Emma and Brodie place a teddy bear and other items on his casket during his funeral service

After murdering Snr Const Forte, Maddison went on the run, firing shots at a police helicopter before retreating to a nearby property deep in Queensland's Lockyer Valley.

Four streets were placed in lockdown and specialist units moved in, as terrified residents listened to the echo of gunshots through the night.

Maddison was shot dead, bringing an end to a terrifying a 21-hour siege.

Local Peter Hills, whose daughter, five, and wife were both behind the police line, said he felt 'utter relief' knowing the gun-crazy man had been killed.

Snr Const Forte's grieving wife Susan is seen leaving the emotional service on Wednesday

A fellow officer is seen wiping a tear from her eye during the emotional service

Chaplain Rev. Jeff Baills welcomed guests before emotional tributes from the slain policeman's wife and stepdaughter

After murdering Snr Const Forte, Maddison went on the run, firing shots at a police helicopter

A police officer is seen comforting one of his colleagues during the emotional service in Toowoomba on Wednesday

'Justice is done. I'm happy about it. I will not lose any sleep at all over it tonight, I'll sleep really good,' he told Daily Mail Australia following Maddison's death.

The killer had a violent criminal history which included charges of torture and deprivation of liberty as well as convictions for assault.

He had been accused of torturing and holding a woman against her will in September 2008, and was also wanted by police in relation to multiple domestic violence and weapons offences.

Almost a decade ago he he had been charged with torture, deprivation of liberty, assault occasioning bodily harm, causing willful damage, stealing, dangerous operation of a motor vehicle and common assault.
A medical examiner has ruled that a man's death as a homicide after he was pinned to the ground and choked to death outside of a Denny's in Texas.

Johnny Hernandez, 24, was declared brain dead from injuries suffered during the altercation and was taken off life support in a Houston hospital a week ago.

The young father was allegedly beaten, pinned to the ground and choked after getting into a confrontation with Terry Thompson, the husband of a sheriff's deputy, outside the Denny's restaurant in Sheldon in Harris County, Texas on May 28.

The Harris County Medical Examiner ruled that the 24-year-old man's death was a homicide after concluding in his autopsy that he died from lack of oxygen to the brain caused by strangulation and chest compression.

Harrowing cellphone footage of the incident was shot by a witness to the deadly confrontation and released by Hernandez's family, the Houston Chronicle reported.

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Footage shot by a witness shows the moment Terry Thompson - the husband of a Texas sheriff's deputy - pinned Johnny Hernandez to the ground outside a Denny's on May 28

The footage shows Thompson, 48, lying on top of Hernandez while he has him in a choke hold.

Thompson's wife Shauna, who is a Harris County Sheriff's deputy, was next to him and appeared to be holding the victim's arm down with her knee.

The horrifying video shows Hernandez helplessly kicking his legs and he can be heard gurgling as he is pinned down by his neck.

Lawyers for the victim's family say the footage only captured the final part of the ordeal and the deputy's daughter tried to block the witness from filming.

The witness came forward with the footage after learning that Hernandez had died from his injuries.

No one has been charged in relation to Hernandez's death. The deputy involved in the altercation has been placed on "administrative duty indefinitely,' according to KPRC.

Hernandez, a 24-year-old father, was taken off life support last week after he was allegedly pinned to the ground and choked after getting into a confrontation outside the Denny's

The footage shows Thompson lying on top of Hernandez while he has him in a choke hold. His wife Shauna, who is a Harris County Sheriff's deputy, was next to him and appeared to be holding the victim's arm down with her knee

The victim's lawyers have accused the sheriff's office of trying to cover up the death because Thompson is married to one of their own.

Witnesses previously said Hernandez was drunk when he went outside the Denny's to urinate.

Thompson had just pulled into the parking lost with his children and confronted Hernandez. Thompson's wife, who was off duty at the time, had arrived to the restaurant in a separate vehicle to meet her family.

According to the witnesses, Hernandez threw the first punch, but was quickly brought to the ground by Thompson and held there.

Hernandez's wife says Thompson punched her husband in the head 'endlessly' while a Denny's worker who was on shift said he saw him choking him.

Hernandez died in hospital on May 31 from brain injuries he suffered in the fight. On Tuesday an autopsy found that he died from lack of oxygen to the brain caused by strangulation and chest compression

Surveillance footage taken inside the restaurant vaguely shows Hernandez being thrown to the ground and held down by Thompson who was wearing an orange shirt

The female sheriff's deputy was not initially present but arrived to find her husband restraining him.

Investigators say she called for backup and helped her husband restrain the man.

When she realized Hernandez wasn't breathing, she began CPR and called for an ambulance.

Hernandez was taken to the hospital and was put on life support. He was pronounced dead on Wednesday.

Surveillance footage taken inside the restaurant vaguely shows him being thrown to the ground and held down by Thompson who was wearing an orange shirt.

Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said Friday that he has asked for the assistance of the Texas Rangers and the Department of Justice in investigating Hernandezs death.

Lawyers for Hernandez have demanded an external investigation take place.
Paramedia Jared Evans, 32, was arrested and charged with misdemeanor sexual assault for allegedly inappropriately touching a woman, 19, while she was having a seizure

A Sacramento, California paramedic has been charged with sexual assault after allegedly fondling a young woman while she was having a seizure in the back of his ambulance.

According to court documents, Jared Evans, 32, a two-year veteran of the Sacramento Fire Department, is accused of inappropriately touching an immobilized 19-year-old woman while they were in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, reports KCRA.

A paramedic intern who was on duty with Evans and witnessed what happened reported the incident to a supervisor on April 16.

The incident took place several weeks prior, on April 1.

On that day, Evans is said to have stuck his hands down the unnamed teen's shirt, then pulled her right breast out of her bra. The court documents allege that he did this while she was strapped to a gurney and 'completely unresponsive to pain and verbal commands, she was out.'

He then allegedly returned the breast to its original position and told an intern, 'Sorry man, I had to.'

When the teen was questioned by police, she said that although her eyes were closed and she was completely immobilized, she was able to hear and feel what happened.

The court documents state that she heard Evans say that she had large breasts and could feel it when he placed his hand down her shirt and pulled out her breast.

A Sacramento Fire Department paramedic intern who was on duty with Evans reported the incident. Court documents show that Evans denied having touched the woman's breast

The woman noted that she was unable to see the person who fondled her breast, though.

The court documents accuse Evans of having touched the woman, without her consent, 'for the specific purpose of sexual arousal, sexual gratification or sexual abuse,' as opposed to being for reasons of medical care.

When questioned by police on April 28, Evans reportedly denied both commenting on the size of the woman's breasts and touching them.

When approached by FOX40, the paramedic intern said that he reported what happened because 'it was the right thing to do,' but added that he thought that Evans 'deserves a fair trial.'

'When these allegations were brought to the attention of fire administration, we immediately notified the office of public safety and accountability and requested a full law enforcement investigation,' Sacramento Fire Chief Walt White said during a press conference.

Evans turned himself in to authorities on Monday after an arrest warrant was issued. He was charged with one count of misdemeanor sexual battery, according to the Sacramento Fire Department, and released on $3,000 bail.

He has been on paid administration leave since April 21 and is scheduled to appear in court on September 26, according to the Sacramento Bee.
The devout Christian man who shoved a lemon meringue pie into the face of Qantas boss Alan Joyce last month in a protest against gay marriage has appeared in court.

Tony Overheu, 67, was slapped with a lifetime ban by the national carrier after the stunt at a business breakfast at Perth's Hyatt Regency hotel on May 9.

He left a room of more than 500 people aghast when he strolled up to Mr Joyce after waiting backstage and shoved the $25.95 pie in his face as he delivered a speech.

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Devout Christian Tony Overheu, 67, faced a Perth court after shoving a meringue pie in the face of Qantas boss Alan Joyce

Overheu shocked a room of over 500 people when he performed the stunt in a protest against gay marriage

Overheu, who faces charges of assault, damaging property, trespass and giving false details to police, appeared briefly in court but did not have to enter a plea.

The former farmer was protesting against corporate support for same-sex marriage, and later apologised to Mr Joyce.

'My family are outraged, my wife is at my throat. I didn't understand that I'd breached the state's criminal code ... so clearly I regret that,' he told 6PR radio.

Overheu faces charges of assault, damaging property, trespass and giving false details to police

Mr Joyce was unforgiving, saying Qantas had a role to play in being part of public debate on a range of issues

My family are outraged, my wife is at my throat,' Overheu said, defending his actions because he 'didn't know' he was breaking the law

But the airline's chief executive was unforgiving, saying Qantas had a role to play in being part of public debate on a range of issues.

'My intention is to send a message that this type of behaviour isn't acceptable and that I will have every intention of pressing charges,' Mr Joyce said at the time.

The Qantas ban means Overheu will no longer be able to fly with its budget airline Jetstar or its alliance partners, including Cathay Pacific and Emirates.

Overheu did not speak to reporters outside court on Wednesday although he had earlier paused to be photographed. He will next face court on July 7.

He appeared briefly in a Perth court on Wednesday but did not have to enter a plea
Jurors in the trial of a Minnesota police officer who fatally shot a black motorist last year as the incident was being streamed live on Facebook were shown gruesome autopsy photos of the five bullet wounds suffered by Philando Castile on Wednesday - two of which pierced his heart.

Jurors saw graphic autopsy photos as Dr. Andrew Baker, chief medical examiner for Hennepin County, talked about Castile's fatal injuries.

Castile was hit by five of seven bullets fired by St. Anthony police officer Jeronimo Yanez, Baker said.

Two of them caused severe damage as they tore through Castile's heart, he said.

'Either one of those wounds by itself would have been fatal, and I don't believe there's anything the surgeons could have done differently,' Baker said.

Also on Wednesday, an expert on police use of force testified that Yanez acted unreasonably and that the officer had no reason to believe that Castile was a threat.

Jeffrey Noble went through squad car video while testifying Wednesday in Yanez's trial.

Yanez is charged with manslaughter in the death of Castile.

St. Anthony police officer Jeronimo Yanez (seen above in this May 30, 2017, file photo) is charged with second-degree manslaughter in the death of Philando Castile during a traffic stop in the St. Paul suburb of Falcon Heights in July 2016

Castile (pictured), 32, told Yanez that he was carrying a gun moments before he was fatally shot

The shooting gained attention when Castile's girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds (seen above arriving in a St. Paul court on Tuesday), began livestreaming its aftermath on Facebook

Yanez, who is Latino, shot Castile during a traffic stop after the 32-year-old elementary school cafeteria worker told him he was carrying a gun.

Noble told jurors that Yanez's actions were 'objectively unreasonable' as he reviewed video that shows Yanez approaching Castile's car, then firing inside.

'There is absolutely no reason to believe that Mr. Castile was some kind of threat,' he said.

The shooting gained attention when Castile's girlfriend began livestreaming its aftermath on Facebook.

Reynolds told a court she broadcast the moment her boyfriend was shot dead by a police officer during a traffic stop because she feared for her own life

An expert on police use of force testified on Wednesday that Yanez acted unreasonably when he shot Castile (seen above)

Castile was hit by five of seven bullets fired by Yanez, a medical examiner said. Two of them caused severe damage as they tore through Castile's heart

Defense attorneys say the officer had to act quickly to protect himself.

Paulsen noted that just five seconds elapsed from the time that Castile said he had a firearm and when Yanez opened fire.

Noble called it a short amount of time, and said Yanez should have taken different actions, such as ordering Castile to put his hands on the steering wheel.

A toxicologist undercut one aspect of the officer's defense by testifying that there's no way to tell when Castile last smoked marijuana or whether he was still intoxicated during the deadly encounter.

Reynolds and her four-year-old daughter were in the car (above) on July 6 when Castile, 32, was pulled over

The emotional former partner cried as squad car video, her Facebook video and still images of Castile were shown in court. Reynolds is seen above during a protest of the fatal shooting in St. Paul on July 7, 2016

The autopsy results included blood levels of THC, the compound in marijuana that produces its high.

Defense attorneys have argued that Castile was to blame for the shooting because he had been smoking marijuana, was stoned that night and failed to obey the officer's instructions.

Kristin Engebretsen, a toxicologist at Regions Hospital in St. Paul, said the effects of marijuana and how long it stays in a user's system vary.

However, she also acknowledged that marijuana's effects can include impaired judgment and an inability to follow directions.

Earlier Wednesday, Lindsey Garfield, a lab supervisor for the state's Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, testified about the trajectory of bullets fired into Castile's car.

One landed in the center armrest, 1 or 2 inches from where Castile's girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, was sitting.

The other went into the back seat, where Reynolds' then-4-year-old daughter was seated.

Yanez, 29, is also charged with two counts of intentional discharge of a firearm for endangering the two passengers.

Reynolds testified Wednesday that she broadcast the moment her boyfriend was shot dead because she feared for her own life.

The emotional former partner cried as squad car video, her Facebook video and still images of Castile were shown in court.

Asked why she took out her phone and began filming after Castile was shot, Reynolds said she wanted to make sure if she died: 'people would know the truth.'

'Because I know that the people are not protected against the police,' she said.

'I wanted to make sure if I died in front of my daughter that people would know the truth.'
Eleven middle school students were sent to the hospital after taking Xanax pills.

Students, some as young as 11, headed into the nurse's office at McFadden Intermediate School in Santa Ana, California on Monday, reported KFOR.

'Someone brought some pills to school and shared them with others and they were lethargic, tired, and out of it,' Deidra Powell, spokesperson for the Santa Ana Unified School District, told the outlet.

The students began to come into the office with symptoms over the course of three hours and were taken to either CHOC Childrens Hospital and or to South Coast Global Medical Center.

Eleven students at McFadden Intermediate School, above, were hospitalized Monday after taking Xanax pills

The students were nine girls and two boys, ages 11 to 14, according to CNN.

The first student, a female, arrived at the nurse's station about 9am.

'A student became very, very tired, very, very sleepy  to the point where one of our teachers noticed, sent her to the office,' Powell told KTLA.

'I saw one girl, she was acting all weird and dizzy,' student Frank Cruz told the OC Register.

Other students told the outlet that some of the affected students were stumbling.

The Xanax pills (not seen above) were said to make the children lethargic, sleepy, and 'out of it'

The current health status of all the children is unclear, but many were back at school the next day, said the outlet.

The school called the affected children's parents and then sent a message to all parents about the incident.

Powell said the youngsters weren't aware that what they'd taken was a powerful anti-anxiety prescription drug.

The school is investigating where the pills came from. It also said it would provide drug prevention training to the students in question.

At least one parent was concerned it might happen again.

'If theyre selling or distributing drugs at school, how can we be comfortable?' Margarita Arreola said to the OC Register.

In March, 16 eighth graders were hospitalized after two students brought the drug to Chaparral Middle School in Alamogordo, New Mexico and passed it around, according to Fox News.
Donald Trump's FBI and Russian controversies are worse than Watergate, America's former top spy says.

James Clapper compared the U.S. President unfavourably with another Republican, Richard Nixon, who in August 1974 became the first and, to date, only commander-in-chief to resign.

The retired 76-year-old intelligence and military veteran said President Trump's firing of FBI director James Comey in May and his close Russian links made him worse than Tricky Dicky.

'Watergate pales really, in my view, compared to what we're confronting now,' he told Australia's National Press Club in Canberra on Wednesday.

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Retired U.S. director of National Intelligence says Donald Trump is worse than Watergate

Retired U.S. director of National Intelligence told reporters in Canberra Donald Trump was worse than Richard Nixon

'The Republican President's sharing of sensitive intelligence with the Russians and compromising its source reflected either ignorance or disrespect.

Either is very problematic, said Mr Clapper, who retired as the director of national intelligence in January.

'Certainly, the whole episode with the firing of Jim Comey ... apart from the egregious inexcusable manner in which it was conducted, reflects complete disregard for the independence and autonomy of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.'

He also took a swipe at the 45th President of the United States for comparing the U.S. intelligence community to Nazi Germany, believing he and his team were extremely paranoid about their probe into Russian interference casting doubt on the legitimacy of the election.

Richard Nixon in August 1974 became the first, and to date, only U.S. president to resign

The Richard Nixon Library noted that he did not fire J. Edgar Hoover as FBI director

The former top spy said Donald Trump's firing of FBI director James Comey (pictured) in May made him worse than Richard Nixon at the height of Watergate

'Which, if course, our assessment did.'

Mr Clapper was at a loss to explain the Trump administration's 'solicitousness' of the Russians, saying it was crucial for both the US and the world to get to the bottom of the relationship.

Russia was not a friend and it, and its leader Vladimir Putin, were diametrically opposed to Western democracies.

Mr Clapper, who served under Barack Obama, revealed Mr Trump asked him directly to publicly refute the infamous dossier into his Russian ties, but 'I couldn't and wouldn't do'.

The former director of U.S. intelligence is disturbed at Donald Trump's close links with Russian President Vladimir Putin

'Is there a smoking gun with all the smoke? I don't know the answer to that.'

Mr Clapper could not say how long the 'assaults' could continue without doing irrevocable damage.

There was already a fairly high-level of angst and exasperation internationally.

But he urged Australia to 'keep on keeping on' and make decisions based on its national interest.

'Prime Minister Turnbull has found the balance between being very tactful with our president but at the same time not compromising Australia's interests and its sovereignty,' he said.

The long-serving intelligence chief said America's issues with Russia were similar to Australia's with China, and urged careful engagement.

'Australia should engage China but with both caution and confidence - eyes wide open, weighing its strategic and economic interests, never forgetting the importance of its democratic institutions and values.'
An outspoken farmer who campaigns against halal certification has slammed major supermarkets for promoting the holy month of Ramadan.

Kirralie Smith, from the New South Wales mid-north coast, posted a photo of a sign at a Coles store which read: 'Happy Ramadan.'

Ms Smith, who mistakenly thought she had shared a photo from inside a Woolworths supermarket, took to Twitter to voice her controversial opinion.

'Woolworths promoting Ramadan - also known as the month of jihad. Making a buck from promoting a barbaric, cruel & oppressive ideology,' she captioned the photo.

Kirralie Smith, from the New South Wales mid-north coast, posted a photo of a sign at a Coles store which read: 'Happy Ramadan'

Ms Smith (pictured) is an outspoken farmer who campaigns against halal certification

Ms Smith, who mistakenly thought she had shared a photo from inside a Woolworths supermarket, took to Twitter to voice her controversial opinion

Ms Smith apologised after one of her followers pointed out that the photo was in fact taken at a Coles store, though she stood by her comments.

Woolworths, which has similar signs at its supermarkets, responded with its own tweet defending the promotion.

'Whilst this isn't a Woolworths store, we're proud to support a range of cultures and religious events for customers including Ramadan,' the tweet read.

Ms Smith hit back and maintained her stance, telling Woolworths the signs promote oppression.

'I made the correction and said it was Coles and noted that Woolworths also promotes Ramadan. Proud to promote Islam = oppression & violence,' she wrote.

Ms Smith apologised after one of her followers pointed out that the photo was in fact taken at a Coles store

Ms Smith, who ran as a Senate candidate with the right-wing Australian Liberty Alliance last year, recently joined Liberal defector Cory Bernardi's Australian Conservatives party

Coles also responded on social media to address the controversy.

'We celebrate many different religious festivals at Coles such as Christmas, Hanukkah, Orthodox Easter, Diwali and Ramadan as we always aim to represent the communities we serve,' the supermarket wrote on Twitter.

Ms Smith's comments were met with a wave of criticism on social media, though some agreed with her opinion.

'You are ridiculous! The Muslim religion and Ramadan are not too dissimilar to Christianity and Lent,' one noted.

Another wrote: 'Keep religion out of our grocery stores - especially an ideology that is associated with 1400 years of slavery, brutality and violence.'

Ms Smith, who ran as a Senate candidate with the right-wing Australian Liberty Alliance last year, recently joined Liberal defector Cory Bernardi's Australian Conservatives party.

As a member of the anti-Islam Q Society, she made headlines for making a series of videos in 2015 suggesting halal certification had funded extremist activity

Woolworths, which has similar signs at its supermarkets, responded with its own tweet defending the promotion

Ms Smith's comments were met with a wave of criticism on social media (pictured)

Others agreed took to Twitter to support Ms Smith's controversial opinion (above)

As a member of the anti-Islam Q Society, she made headlines for making a series of videos in 2015 suggesting halal certification had funded extremist activity.

She argues that most halal-certified foods are not clearly labelled and consumers could be unwittingly supporting Islam.

Her comments angered Mohamed El-Mouelhy, the president of the Halal Certification Authority, who sued the Q Society for defamation.

The case was settled by the Supreme Court with the organisation, its board members and Ms Smith making an apology.
Talk about a Memorial Day weekend to remember.

A firework with a short fuse and a truck full of guys made for one explosive car ride in Norfolk, Virginia one night during the long holiday weekend.

'My friends on Memorial Day weekend were having a good time and had a firework blow up way too fast in the truck,' the poster wrote in the ViralHog video's description.

In the 30-second clip, a smiling young man  seated directly behind the driver  can be seen lighting a firework inside a moving truck, as John Mellencamp's 'Jack & Diane' plays on the stereo.

As he's lighting the fuse, his friends tell him to roll down the window and 'hurry the f*** up.'

'Just f****** light it, bro, and throw it down,' an off-camera voice says.

Unfortunately, either the man with the lighter is too slow or the firework has a dangerously short fuse, because the firework starts to go off inside the truck's cabin.

A man sets off a firework inside a moving truck as his friends tell him to 'hurry the f*** up'

The firework goes off faster than expected, filling the truck with sparks and smoke

Despite several F-bombs being slung around as the firework flares up multiple times, astonishingly nobody in the car panics too much  least of all the driver, who continues to drive down the road despite being engulfed in smoke.

Eventually, one of the truck doors can be heard opening and closing, presumably to allow the firework-starter to chuck the thing out onto the road.

As the smoke starts to clear, one of the guys in the truck can be heard saying, 'F***, it blew up right on me,' before the clip ends.
Even though he's out of the White House, former president Barack Obama is still keeping his 'bromance' with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau alive.

Obama managed to squeeze in sometime to catch a bite to eat with Trudeau on Tuesday while he was in Montreal for a speaking engagement organized by the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal.

'Tonight in Montreal, @BarackObama and @JustinTrudeau discussed their shared commitment to developing the next generation of leaders,' the Obama Foundation tweeted alongside a photo of the two friends sitting down at a dinner table inside Liverpool House.

Forever friends: Even though he's out of the White House, former president Barack Obama is still keeping his 'bromance' with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau alive. Obama shared a meal with Trudeau while in Montreal on Tuesday (above)

Good times: The former president managed to squeeze in sometime to catch a bite to eat with Trudeau at Liverpool House. The two politicians both shared photos of their outing to Twitter

The 45-year-old politician also shared a similar photo of the pair inside the eatery and tweeted, 'How do we get young leaders to take action in their communities? Thanks @BarackObama for your visit & insights tonight in my hometown.'

Crowds waited for hours to get a glimpse of Trudeau and Obama leaving Liverpool House, which is located in Montreal's Little Burgundy neighborhood, Global News reported.

A video capturing the moment when the two world leaders exited the eatery shows the crowd erupting in cheers as they both smiled ear-to-ear and waived.

For a moment, Trudeau appears to be shocked at the large number of people who gathered to see them outside of Liverpool House.

Farewell for now: A video capturing the moment when the two world leaders exited the eatery shows the crowd erupting in cheers as they both smiled

'Til next time: As Obama heads to his waiting SUV, he pauses for a moment before turning around to give his old pal a friendly and long hug goodbye, as they both seemingly realized it's unclear when they'll meet again

As Obama heads to his waiting SUV, he pauses for a moment before turning around to give his old pal a friendly and long hug goodbye, as they both seemingly realized it's unclear when they'll meet again.

The Prime Minister idles for a few moments after their hug to say a few final words to the 55-year-old former president as the crowd is still cheering for them both.

Obama gets into his SUV and pulls away while Trudeau stands by and waives before departing with his security guards.

It's unclear what the two friends ate while having their private dinner, but a description on the restaurant's website describes it as having 'seaside cottage charm and bustling oyster counter (with) sexy old world wines, and crazy fresh market food'.

Trudeau did not attend Obama's half-hour speech at the city's Palais des congres, where he addressed the Paris Accord and delivered an extended, vicious coded critique of his successor Donald Trump.

Heavily guarded: The Liverpool House was reportedly closed so Trudeau and Obama could enjoy a private dinner at the eatery which describes itself as having 'seaside cottage charm and bustling oyster counter (with) sexy old world wines, and crazy fresh market food'

'Obviously I'm disappointed with the current American administration decision to put out of Paris,' Obama said.

'We're going to have to act with more urgency. I'm looking forward to the United States being a leader and not just on the sidelines going forward.'

Obama drew laughter with a thinly veiled kick at the Trump administration's famous embrace of 'alternative facts,' saying that America in the less than 20 weeks since he left office has suddenly devolved into a place 'where we don't just have disagreements based on our opinions, but now people are just disagreeing on facts.'

'And we're in an environment where we are only accepting information that fits our opinions, instead of basing our opinions on the facts that we receive. And evidence and reason and logic.

Earlier: The former president (above) delivered a speech earlier in the day at the convention center for the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal

Obama claimed that in an age when some world leaders are willing to 'violate our principals because of fear and uncertainty,' progress  measured by the work of multinational coalitions and institutions' can't continue.

'We have to sustain our alliances. We have to help other countries with their own development,' he said, without explicitly mentioning Trump's 'America First' philosophy.

The alternative, Obama suggested, would see anti-democratic forces swooping in to fill the voids left by globalist cooperation.

He said the result could be 'intolerance and tribalism and organizing ourselves along ethnic lines.'
A man has approached a toddler and allegedly tried to pick him up in a central Sydney park after a spate of suspected child abduction attempts across the city.

A father was watching his 19-month-old son play on equipment in Tumbalong Park, Darling Harbour about 12.45pm on Tuesday when the man approached.

The father intervened and the man left the playground with two younger men.

Police are investigating a spate of suspected child abduction attempts across Sydney

Police released a CCTV image of a man they would like to speak with on Wednesday, describing him as Middle Eastern or Mediterranean in appearance and aged about 65.

The man is shown wearing a grey and black striped jumper, dark pants and sneakers.

The incident follows four suspected abduction attempts across Sydney over the past two weeks.

A man picked up a 15-month-old boy from the Macquarie Street Mall in Liverpool on May 25.

The boy's mother chased the man and screamed which prompted him to drop the child, police said.

He has been described as also Mediterranean or Middle Eastern in appearance, about 45-years-old and wearing a black woollen long-sleeved jacket.

A father was watching his 19-month-old son play on equipment in Tumbalong Park (pictured), Darling Harbour about 12.45pm on Tuesday when the man approached

A five-year-old girl screamed after she was indecently assaulted by a man of Indian appearance in Wentworth Park (pictured), Glebe in Sydney's inner west on May 27

Two days later, a five-year-old girl screamed after she was indecently assaulted by a man of Indian appearance in Glebe in Sydney's inner west.

The girl's mother contacted police who launched a hunt for the man, but couldn't find him.

A three-year-old was targeted in a Leichhardt park by a man who took her by the hand before her mother screamed for him to stop on May 30.

The alleged attacker in the Glebe and Leichhardt incidents was described as being of Indian appearance, about 170cm tall, wearing a white t-shirt and grey tracksuit pants.

Detectives launched a search in Summer Hill shortly after for a man who pulled a knife as he approached an 11-year-old girl and tried to grab her.

The girl escaped the man and ran to her school to report the incident.

Police have confirmed they are investigating if some of the incidents are linked and have urged anyone with information to come forward.

Detectives launched a search on June 1 for a man who pulled a knife as he approached an 11-year-old girl and tried to grab her on Bartlett Street, Summer Hill (pictured)
A teenager has been hailed a hero after she chased a burglar over a fence before pinning him down until police arrived.

'My (parents) think I'm Xena. They think I'm bloody amazing,' Teal Smith, 18, told 9 News.

Ms Smith was returning to her home in Spearwood, Perth, with her parents at about 6.30pm on Saturday when she heard someone in her backyard.

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Ms Smith (pictured) was returning to her home in Spearwood, Perth, with her parents at about 6.30pm on Saturday when she heard someone in her backyard

When she got into the backyard Ms Smith (pictured) spotted a man wearing a balaclava, and didn't think twice before chasing him

When she got into the backyard Ms Smith spotted a man wearing a balaclava, and didn't think twice before chasing him.

She jumped over her neighbour's fence to try and stop him.

Before jumping another fence she went around to the side of the property, where she bumped into the burglar.

'I ended up bumping into him and falling to the floor,' Ms Smith said.

She pinned the man down and waited for her family.

Her dad helped her hold the offender down until police arrived.

A 42-year-old Perth man was arrested and charged with two counts of aggravated burglary.

He is expected to front court on Wednesday.

A WA Police spokeswoman said while Ms Smith's effort was gallant, they did not encourage the public to chase criminals.
This is the moment a hammer-wielding Algerian student attacked police officers at Paris's Notre Dame Cathedral.

The shocking footage shows Farid Ikken, 40, emerging from a crowd of tourists on Tuesday afternoon and swinging his weapon at three police officers.

He takes one of the officers to the ground while shouting 'This is for Syria' before police draw their weapons and shoot two bullets at him.

Ikken, who was carrying kitchen knives, a hammer and other unsophisticated weapons, was injured in the attack and was taken to hospital.

Anti-terrorist police who later raided Ikken's flat in the Paris suburb of Cergy-Pontoise found a video of him pledging his allegiance to Islamic State.

French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said the attacker cried 'it's for Syria' as he went after officers patrolling an esplanade in front of the famous landmark which was put on lockdown and was being guarded by soldiers overnight.

This is the shocking moment an Algerian student attacked police officers with a hammer outside Paris's Notre Dame Cathedral. The shocking footage shows Farid Ikken, 40, emerging from a crowd of tourists on Tuesday afternoon and swinging his weapon at officers

He takes one of the officers to the ground while shouting 'This is for Syria' before police draw their weapons and shoot two bullets at him. Ikken, who was carrying kitchen knives, a hammer and other unsophisticated weapons, was injured in the attack and was taken to hospital

Paris prosecutors opened a counter-terrorism investigation soon after the attack after Ikken said he was an 'ISIS soldier of caliphate', according to a probe source

VIDEO: Notre Dame hammer attack caught on tape. pic.twitter.com/7PW2CgRS9m  Breaking News (@BreakingNLive) June 7, 2017

After Ikken was shot, he is said to have claimed to be a soldier of Islamic State.

He had no criminal record, but had regularly expressed his interest in jihad on the Internet, and had covered terrorism while working for various news outlets in his native Algeria.

Describing his work at the Bejaia-today site, Ikken wrote on his Linkedin profile: 'I headed up a small team composed of two permanent journalists, two freelancers and a translator for two years.

'My main task was to ensure that the content of our website was updated continuously, and to edit material sent by correspondents or written by journalists.'

He added: 'The processing of press releases, the call to civil protection services, hospitals, public institutions and institutions, the translation of Arabic and English content and the correction of texts were also part of my duties.

'I also assisted in the writing of news articles and the editorial regularly.'

Just yesterday ISIS released a statement said to be from what it called its Commander of The Believers in France to the crossed (Christians) French people.

It read: 'O' people of France, demand of your government to stop its campaign against the Islamic State, if not, we will conduct operations of invasion and horror as you have lived in the cities of Paris and Nice.

'May peace be upon those who follow the guided message.

'Soldiers of the Islamic State in France.'

A man was shot by police after he attacked an officer with a hammer outside Paris's Notre Dame Cathedral

The officer responded with two gunshots, which injured the assailant, who was carrying kitchen knives, a hammer and other unsophisticated weapons. Paris prosecutors opened a counterterrorism investigation soon after the attack

The officer responded with two gunshots, which injured the assailant and dozens of other officers were quick to respond to the incident

At least one person on the scene said on Twitter that he was inside the church and could hear sirens outside. He later said that officials were not letting anyone in or out of the cathedral

About 900 people inside the church were told to sit down and put their hands up as police investigated the attack

Ikken had studied at Stockholm university, and is thought to have married a Swedish woman during his time there.

He is currently enrolled as a doctoral student specialising in communication at Metz university, in eastern France.

Arnaud Mercier, his current PhD supervisor, told France's LCI news channel: 'From what I know of his personality, though we haven't been in contact for a while, this leaves me completely stupefied.

'He was very dedicated, he acknowledged the values of democracy, he believed very much in journalistic ideals.'

Referring to the current period of Ramadan, when Muslims fast, Mr Mercier said: 'He didn't have a beard, or observe Ramadan.

'The only thing I noticed is that he didn't drink alcohol, but there are many Muslims who don't drink and they're not dangerous jihadists.'

French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb confirmed that Ikken shouted 'This is for Syria!' as he struck the police officer.

Collomb said on Tuesday Ikken 'was in hospital', but had no further details of his condition, adding that the injured attacker seemed to have acted alone.

Police officers and soldiers seal off the access to Notre Dame cathedral after a man attacked officers with a hammer while patrolling the esplanade in front of the famous landmark, in Paris, France

French police lined the streets outside Notre Dame Cathedral as officials investigated the attack

Forensic experts and police officers investigate the crime scene after a man attacked officers with a hammer on the esplanade of the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, France

One officer suffered a cut on the chin, but was otherwise unhurt, and Ikken was shot in the chest, according to one source.

Footage seen on social media showed the assailant lying on the ground after being shot.

Police had earlier said they were dealing with an incident in the courtyard outside the world-famous tourist site amid reports of panic and gunshots in the area.

Officials warned people to stay away from the area after saying there was an 'incident' at the popular tourist destination which was locked down with 900 people inside.

By 5.30pm local time, an hour after the attack, people inside the cathedral were being let out of the cathedral.

Following the attack, a large numbers of police cars filled the area on the Ile de Cite island in the River Seine in the center of Paris.

France remains on high alert after a series of deadly terror attacks in recent years.

In April, traffic officer Xavier Jugele was shot dead while on duty on the Champs Elysees just days before the French presidential election.

Police officers in helmets and vests who were carrying guns surrounded the area on Tuesday

Officials carrying police dogs arrived at the scene shortly after 4.30pm local time on Tuesday

An hour after the attacks, police allowed those who were trapped in the church to leave

Officials wearing full gear stood under a closed souvenir shop near the Notre Dame Cathedral

ISIS claimed the killing by 39-year-old Karim Cheurfi, who was shot dead by police in a gun battle. Two other officers were injured in the attack.

A month earlier a convicted criminal with links to radical Islam shouted 'I am here to die for Allah, there will be deaths' seconds before he was shot dead during an attack at Paris Orly airport.

Again ISIS claimed responsibility for the slaying, which was carried out by a jihadist with a prior terrorist conviction. He was killed by police on the scene.

The 39-year-old, named locally as career criminal Ziyed Ben Belgacem, was killed after wrestling a soldier's gun from her and fleeing into a McDonald's.

He sent a text message to his brother and father stating 'I shot the police', shortly before he was killed.

It followed the shooting in February of a man outside the Louvre museum in the heart of Paris after he attempted to storm the historic art gallery.

On July 14 last year amid Bastille Day celebrations in the Riviera city of Nice, a large truck was driven into a festive crowd killing 86 people.

The police department tweeted about the operation on Tuesday afternoon but did not provide any details. A police official would not provide further information

Police boats were patrolling the river near the Notre Dame Cathedral after the incident on Tuesday

The driver was shot dead. ISIS extremists claimed responsibility for the attack.

Just 12 days later two ISIS fanatics stormed into a church in Normandy and slit the throat of a priest as he was celebrating mass.

A month earlier, two French police officers were murdered in their Paris home in front of their three-year-old son.

Again ISIS claimed responsibility for the slaying, which was carried out by a jihadist with a prior terrorist conviction. He was killed by police on the scene.

The killings came after a massacre in the French capital in November 2015 in which ISIS militants went on the rampage murdering 130 people.

They used machine guns to slaughter revellers at the Bataclan music hall and in bars and restaurants in some of the city's most popular night spots. A suicide bomber also targeted to Stade de France stadium.

The atrocity led to the declaration of a state of emergency in France.

In January the same year, two brothers killed 11 people inside the Paris building where the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo is headquartered in what ISIS claimed was retaliation for the publication of cartoons about the Prophet Muhammad.

More were killed subsequently in attacks on a kosher market in eastern Paris and on police. There were 17 victims in all, including two police officers. The attackers are killed.
The Islamic Council of Victoria has questioned whether the deadly attack at the hands of ISIS fanatic Yacqub Khayre was an act of terror.

The ice-addicted gunman was shot dead along with innocent receptionist Kai Hao, in a bloody siege for which the militant group claimed responsibility.

Despite police labelling it a suspected terror attack, the state's peak Muslim body warned against inflaming tensions and branded the gunman 'confused.'

The Islamic Council of Victoria has questioned whether the deadly attack at the hands of Yacqub Khayre (pictured) was an act of terror

The coroner remove a body from the aparment in Brighton where the shooting unfolded

The council said while the gunman's motives are up for debate, it was clear he had a long criminal record and trail of violence.

'We understand that the police are investigating this as a potential terrorist attack but note that the perpetrator himself appeared to be confused as to who he was acting on behalf, claiming allegiance to both ISIS and AlQaeda, known enemies.'

'Whether this act was inspired by an evil warped ideology or was in fact the actions of a deranged violent individual, this does not change the reality that a horrendous crime was committed in which an innocent person was killed, a woman was held hostage, and police officers' lives were put at risk.'

They warned against provoking tensions with the Muslim and Somali community's, which could fuel further attacks.

'What we must avoid is sensationalising or somehow attributing unwarranted significance to these criminals because it exacerbates prevailing fears and tensions and potentially encourages copycat behaviour.'

'We would also like to express our support to the Somali community who will be unfairly vilified because of the actions of this one man. They have made, and continue to make, an invaluable contribution to Victorian society.'

Kai 'Nick' Hao, 36 was at his post in the foyer of The Buckingham serviced apartments at 408 Bay Street in Brighton, Melbourne, when the terrorist burst in

The state's peak Muslim body warned against inflaming tensions and branded the gunman 'confused'

Police search the home of Yacqub Khayre at Roxburgh Park, Melbourne

The Islamic Council of Victoria warned against inflaming tensions and branded the gunman 'confused.'

A review into Khayre's prison and parole management has been ordered as the government revealed up to 22 Victorians a year are undergoing anti-radicalisation programs.

The state's Corrections Minister Gayle Tierney repeatedly refused to answer questions in parliament about Khayre because she has ordered the review.

But she did reveal the Islamic Council of Victoria is currently working with up to 22 people undertaking anti-radicalisation programs.

'In the last state budget there was an allocation of $6.385 million over four years for anti-radicalisation programs, ' Ms Tierney told the Legislative Council on Tuesday.

'The Islamic Council of Victoria is contracted to deliver the program and is currently working with up to 22 prisoners and people in the community each year.'
Qatari nationals have been banned from flying on Qantas airliners to and from Dubai after the UAE cut ties with Qatar.

Middle Eastern countries including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates have stopped all land, sea and air contact with Qatar on Monday because they believe the tiny Gulf state is supporting terrorism.

Qatar denies having any links to terrorism but that hasn't stopped the travel ban with Australia's most well-loved airline.

Qatari nationals have been banned from flying on Qantas airliners (pictured) to and from Dubai after the UAE cut ties with Qatar

Qantas International Chief Executive Gareth Evans spoke to reporters during a meeting in Mexico about what the ban would mean.

'UAE have banned Qatari nationals from transiting through UAE so we're looking to see if that affects any passengers,' he said.

'If it does, we will offer them (route) alternatives,' he said.

Prior to the complete overhaul on Monday Qatari nationals had been allowed to change planes in Dubai's International airport, but now that leniency has been revoked.

Emirates, which is a codeshare partner for Qantas and flies to and from Dubai, has yet to formally announce how the new rules will impact passengers.

'UAE have banned Qatari nationals from transiting through UAE so we're looking to see if that affects any passengers,' Qantas said

In a statement, Emirates said the last flight from Dubai to Doha left at 2.30am on June 6. The last flight in the other direction was at 3.50am.

'All customers booked on Emirates' flights to and from Doha will be provided with alternative options, including full refunds on unused tickets and rebooking to the nearest alternate Emirates destinations,' the airline said.

A visa check tool on the Emirates website provided by the International Air Transport Association said a Qatari passport holder would be refused transit in Dubai.

Emirates has assured its customers that no other flights will be altered unless they involve Qatar.

In a statement, Emirates said the last flight from Dubai to Doha (pictured) left at 2.30am on June 6. The last flight in the other direction was at 3.50am

The decision comes after a ransom of up to $1 billion was reportedly paid by Qatar to Iranian and Al Qaeda-linked forces in Syria to release kidnapped members of the country's royal family.

The hefty ransom reportedly secured the release of 26 members of a falconry party, which included some members of Qatar's royal family, who were kidnapped by jihadis while hunting in southern Iraq in December 2015.

Saudi Arabia, Egypt, United Arab Emirates and Bahrain cut diplomatic relations with Qatar on Monday over alleged support for Islamists and Iran in a coordinated move.

Yemen, Libya's eastern-based government and the Maldives joined in later - opening up one of the worst rifts in years.

It is the biggest diplomatic crisis in the Persian Gulf region since the 1991 US-led war against Iraq pits several nations against Qatar, which is home to some 10,000 American troops and a major US military base.
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A Second World War veteran who was captured by the Japanese, brutally tortured and forced to help build the bridge over the River Kwai has died aged 101.

Engineer Fred Seiker was captured and held in a prisoner of war camp in Thailand in 1942, and was subjected to horrific abuse.

He was one of more than 180,000 forced labourers made to build the Burma Railway which was started 75 years ago.

The construction of the infamous railway line saw 16,000 Allied servicemen, including 7,000 British troops, and 100,000 Asian labourers worked to death.

Mr Seiker was once tied to a tree with barbed wire by Japanese guards for stealing a tin of fruit, while on another occasion he was tied to the ground with barbed wire while one guard pumped water into his body via a hose and another jumped on his stomach.

World War Two veteran Fred Seiker, pictured left, and right in 1946, who helped build the infamous Burma Railway, has died aged 101 at his home in Worcester. He was subjected to horrendous abuse while in a prisoner of war camp in Thailand for three years, after being captured in 1942. Torture he endured included being tied to the ground with barbed wire while a guard poured water into his mouth via a hose and another guard jumped on his stomach

Mr Seiker was one of hundreds of thousands of Japanese prisoners forced to work on building the railway, pictured, in horrendous conditions. More than 16,000 Allied servicemen died during construction, including 7,000 British troops, while 100,000 Asian labourers were also worked to death

His work included building the bridge over the River Kwai, pictured, which he said was built using a rope and pulley system that saw hundreds of men pull ropes 'day in, day out, from dawn til dusk, unrelenting'. He described the conditions building the railway as 'Hell on wheels'

Mr Seiker said he suffered 'nightmares for life' after finally escaping the camp in 1945 when the guards left following the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. After finally returning to Holland in 1946, he moved to the UK in the same year and later wrote a book on his harrowing experiences called 'Lest We Forget'. He is pictured here in tears at a memorial to those who served and were killed in Burma at Alrewas in Staffordshire

Mr Seiker survived to tell the tale and later wrote a book, called 'Lest We Forget', about his experiences which received worldwide critical acclaim.

The work even received backing from Chinese ambassador Liu Xiaoming and was published in Mandarin.

Mr Seiker died peacefully at his home in Worcester on June 1.

His wife of 45 years, Elizabeth, said tributes had been pouring in from across the world.

She said: 'People from Japan, Thailand, Holland, France and China have emailed messages after hearing the news.

'He will be well known in the county, through the book, and he also gave a lecture to Kings School pupils, and to organisations, about what happened. We are very proud of him.'

Mr Seiker was born in Rotterdam in 1915, and followed his father, Frederick, into engineering, serving in the Dutch Merchant Navy when the war broke out.

He was on the Indonesian island of Java when the Japanese invaded in 1942 and taken prisoner along with 18,000 other Dutchmen.

He was forced to spend the next year building the railway. Describing the conditions PoWs endured, Mr Seiker wrote in his book it was 'hell on wheels.'

Mr Seiker, pictured, was born in Rotterdam in 1915, and followed his father, Frederick, into engineering, serving in the Dutch Merchant Navy when the war broke out. He was on the Indonesian island of Java when the Japanese invaded in 1942 and taken prisoner along with 18,000 other Dutchmen

He described the building of the railway, pictured, as a 'no-win situation', with teams of labourers forced to complete arduous tasks with little let up. Mr Seiker said if teams were running behind schedule they would stay until the day's work was completed no matter the conditions and guards would administer 'random beatings' as punishment for the delays

Writing about the brutal conditions on the railway, pictured, he said: 'Death becomes acceptable as a routine. Words cannot describe the horror of the dying - and the living'

The Burma Railway ran for 258 miles and was built to allow the Japanese Empire to more easily support its forces fighting the Allies in the country, now known as Myanmar

After the end the war, 111 Japanese military officials were tried for war crimesbecause of their brutalization of POWs during the construction of the railway, with 32 of these sentenced to death.

THE RAILWAY MAN The harrowing history of the construction of the Burma Railway was turned into a feature film The Railway Man in 2013. It follows real life British officer Eric Lomax, who was captured in Singapore and forced to work on the railway line. After being horrifically raped and tortured for building a radio, he is eventually freed. Mr Lomax eventually returned to Japan to confront his torturer after suffering from the psychological effects of the abuse. He is left with the choice as to whether to take revenge or 'let go of a lifetime of bitterness and hate'. Advertisement

Writing for the Second World War Experience Centre, he said the Kwai Bridge was built using a rope and pulley system to move wood into place.

He said: 'Piles [of wood] were hauled into position beneath the ram and we began pile driving, on the command of a guard standing on the riverbank shouting through a megaphone the required rhythm at which he decided that piling should take place.

'You pulled in unison, you let go in unison. "Ichi, ni, san, si, ichi, ni, san, si", on and on and on. Hour after hour after hour. Day in, day out. From dawn to dusk, unrelenting.'

In one terrifying passage of his book, he remembers how Japanese guards left the men to die when cholera broke out in camp.

Those who were not afflicted were forced to burn the remains of their fallen comrades.

He wrote: 'Death becomes acceptable as a routine. Words cannot describe the horror of the dying - and the living.'

His ordeal eventually ended when their guards had left a few days after American airmen dropped the first of the two atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagaski.

Recalling the moment he escaped in an interview before his death, he said: 'I just stood there, tears running down my face, being free again.'

The Dutch government recognised his contribution as a war hero, when he was later awarded a medal of service.

In January 2014, Mr Seiker made headlines around the world when he wrote to the Chinese ambassador saying Japan's refusal to acknowledge its aggressive past posed a serious threat to world peace.

A week later, the embassy's press attache was dispatched to Worcester.

Not only did he bring a lengthy response from the ambassador, but he wanted permission to publish the correspondence in the Chinese media.

Mr Seiker's book, Lest We Forget, has been sold around the world and even published in Mandarin for the Chinese market. His wife of 45 years, Elizabeth, said tributes had been pouring in from across the world. She said: 'People from Japan, Thailand, Holland, France and China have emailed messages after hearing the news.' She added his family was 'very proud of his achievements'

The book contains illustrations of torture carried out by the Japanese, including being tied to a tree with barbed wire, left and right. His ordeal eventually ended when their guards had left a few days after American airmen dropped the first of the two atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagaski. Recalling the moment he escaped in an interview before his death, he said: 'I just stood there, tears running down my face, being free again'

Part of the railway line was removed and taken to the National Memorial Arboretum at Alrewas, Staffordshire. Pictured here are veterans George Worsnop of Sheffield and Ronald Hitchell of Birkenhead paying tribute to fallen comrades at a service in 2005

By the end of the fortnight, Mr Seiker had been interviewed by two Chinese newspapers and a film crew was preparing a documentary about his experiences.

Speaking on his 100th birthday in 2015, he said: 'Reaching 100 years is not a very important thing these days but in my particular case it is a miracle that I'm here.

'As a prisoner of war I never would have imagined I'd reach my 100th birthday. I have had a lot of ups and downs in my life.'

In accordance to his wishes, no funeral will be held for Mr Seiker and his body will be donated to medical research.
A pregnant mother expecting her second child was shot dead by a trio of robbers as she returned home from a doctor's appointment.

Kera Teel, who was seven months pregnant, was in a car with her mother when two men walked up to the vehicle and opened fire.

Her unborn daughter, who she and husband Andrew had decided to name Kyndal Jae, was delivered at hospital but died as a result of the attack.

Kera Teel, pictured with husband Andrew and the couple's one-year-old daughter, who was not in the car during the attack

Teel, 19, died from multiple gunshot wounds on Tuesday morning. She is pictured a few days before the fatal attack with her daughter and husband who both survive her

Teel, 19, died from multiple gunshot wounds on Tuesday morning.

Her husband, Andrew Teel, told KBMT: 'She was the happiest most full of life person I've ever met. She was a great mother and wife and loyal friend. She wasn't just my wife she was my best friend.'

The victim's mother, Mindy Morris, told 12News: 'I held her in my arms I said Kera, Kera please baby.'

'She kept saying no, please, please don't, no. And I jerked her back and he opened the door and shot at her twice.'

Kera Teel was seven months pregnant when she died in the attack as she returned from a hospital appointment on Tuesday

The distraught mother continued: 'If they wanted anything I would have given it to them except my baby.'

The Beaumont Police Department in Texas said Teel was taken to the Christus St Elizabeth Hospital, where the baby was delivered.

Police spokeswoman Haley Morrow told KBMT: 'These were completely innocent victims, and so were really sad about the loss of life out here.'

She said there was another aggravated robbery nearby, during which shots were fire, and officers are investigating whether that and other attacks are linked to the killing.

Officer Morrow said it is being treated as a capital murder case.

A statement released by police said: 'There are over 118,000 citizens in the City of Beaumont, someone knows these suspects.

'Do the right thing; help bring closure to this family, and justice to the people who committed this senseless act of violence.'

A GoFundMe page set up to support the family has already raised more than $5,000.
Staff at the electorate office of NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian were spooked by a security scare after a package containing a 'suspicious substance' was left nearby.

Police and paramedics arrived at the building in Naremburn, on Sydney's north shore, while the Premier was welcoming Prince Harry to Sydney at Circular Quay.

Emergency crew - in full protective gear and gas masks - responded to the security alert at 12.30pm and examined the envelope on Wednesday.

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Emergency crew - in full protective gear and gas masks - responded to the security alert at 12.30pm and examined the envelope

Emergency crews flocked to Gladys Berejiklian's (pictured) NSW office as she was welcoming Prince Harry (right) to Sydney

Police and paramedics arrived at the building on 280 Willoughby Rd in Naremburn, on Sydney's north shore

It was then deemed non-hazardous and police left the scene around 2pm, 7news reports.

The road was also closed for over an hour as paramedics assessed Premier Berejiklian's staff.

The Premier was out of the office greeting Prince Harry in the pouring rain for the official countdown to the Invictus Games.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted the Premier's office for comment.

It was then deemed non-hazardous and police left the scene around 2pm on Wednesday
A zookeeper mauled by a tiger died of traumatic injuries, a coroner has said.

Carnivore keeper Rosa King, 34, died at Hamerton Zoo Park, Cambridgeshire, on May 29 in what was described as a 'freak accident' by the zoo.

However, a jury is set to have the final say on whether anyone is to blame for her death.

Emergency services initially described Rosa's death as 'non suspicious' but did later launch an investigation in conjunction with Huntingdonshire District Council, which is responsible for the zoo's licence.

Colleagues of the 33-year-old (shown feeding one of the tigers) desperately tried to save her by distracting the big cat with chunks of meat, witnesses said.

Miss King's mother said her daughter 'loved the job' and 'would not have done anything else'

A Cambridgeshire Police spokesman said officers were called to reports of a serious incident and that a tiger had entered an enclosure with a keeper.

Senior coroner David Heming extended his sympathies to her parents, Peter and Andrea, and members of her wider family as he opened and adjourned an inquest hearing at Cambridgeshire Coroner's Court in Huntingdon on Wednesday.

The court was told that Ms King's body was formally identified to police at 3pm by her employer, Andrew Swales, who had known her for 15 years.

Officers appeared to remove evidence from the scene of the incident for processing

A police officer was seen wheeling a large case away from the zoo to his van earlier today

A post-mortem examination recorded the medical cause of death as traumatic injuries.

'There's an ongoing investigation into the circumstances of how the tiger came into direct contact with Rosa,' Mr Heming said. 'This investigation will take some time to complete.

'Given that this was a workplace incident, this will necessitate a jury inquest.'

The six-minute hearing, which was not attended by Ms King's family, was adjourned until November 23 for a pre-inquest review.

The owners of a zoo where a tiger mauled a female keeper to death were warned about safety failings over the past decade. Police have now said they are investigating

Ms King is pictured with two of the Cambridgeshire wildlife park's four tigers on World Tiger Day last year

'If the investigation is completed prior to that date the inquest may be brought forward,' said Mr Heming.

Zoo bosses have said that the tiger will not be put down and that this decision was 'fully supported' by the family of Ms King.

Since Ms Kings' death it has been revealed that the zoo was warned about safety procedures

Following her death, Ms King's family said she 'lived and breathed a vocation that meant the world to her'.

Since Ms Kings' death it has been revealed that the zoo was warned about safety procedures.

Inspectors had highlighted problems with ageing safety barriers and a damaged fence, and ordered the zoo to amend its escape protocols as long ago as 2007.

Following a further inspection six years later, the park had still failed to implement suggested changes, including overhauling risk assessments and 'safe working practices'.

The report authors recommended that the owners to conduct a 'wholesale review of the risk assessments'.

In 2012, inspectors ordered the renewal of ageing safety barriers and a damaged perimeter fence within three months, and said the escape protocol 'should be amended' to categorise animals of varying risks.

Ms King is understood to have been savaged in the Tiger Falls enclosure, which opened last year for its two rare Malayan tigers Cicip and Sahaja.

Zoos are regulated by local authorities across the UK, with no central government database of facilities.

Government appointed vets conduct inspections every three to four years, with annual follow-ups supposed to be undertaken by the local authority.

However, records indicate Hamerton has not been inspected in any capacity since August 2015.
A pregnant woman was killed after her six-year-old son accidentally put her car in gear and crushed her.

Shannon MacLeod, who was eight-months pregnant, was rushed to hospital after the tragedy in Steilacoom, Washington but died on the way there.

Her child, however, was saved after an emergency C-section - and has been named Joseph.

Now Nathan MacLeod, one of the 35-year-old's seven children, has started a fundraising page to pay for his mom's funeral.

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Shannon MacLeod (pictured above, second from right, with her family) tragically died when her six-year-old son accidentally put her minivan into gear and crushed her

Shannon's son, Nathan, said his mom 'always' put family first and 'loved her kids more than anything'. Above, Shannon

He told Komo News: 'We're just trying to keep us all together that's all.

'I know my mom would want that the most because family is so important to her. Family was the number 1 thing.

'No matter what, it was always family first.'

The disaster comes just seven months after the family lost everything in a fire.

Nathan (pictured left with his mom) has started a GoFundMe page in the hope of raising $10,000 for his mom's funeral

Shannon had six children when she died, but a seventh - baby Joseph - was rescued from her womb in an emergency C-section operation

Writing on his GoFundMe page - which has already raised nearly $5,000 of its $10,000 target - Nathan said the family needed 'all the help and support' it could get after the death of Shannon.

'My mom loved her kids more then anything,' he said.

'Shannon Nichole Macleod was the best thing to ever happen in my life. She gave birth to me at the young age of 15.

'All she cared about was her kids. Did everything to take care of them no matter what.'

MORE: Doctors performed emergency C-section & saved baby. Family says his name is Joseph. #komonews pic.twitter.com/LJNl9G110l  Kristen Drew (@KDrewKOMO) June 6, 2017

Steilacoom town administrator Paul Loveless said Shannon's minivan was parked across the road from Sunnyside Beach Park when it began rolling backwards, pinning her underneath.

Her son Joseph weighs only five pounds and is an uncertain condition.

Writing on the GoFundMe page, Tiffy Samuels said: 'Keeping your family in my prayers So sorry for this terrible accident. So devastating and the poor baby doesn't understand .... Lord touch each of you.'

Shauna Keatts, donating $25, wrote: 'I am so sorry for the loss of your mother. May the good lord heal you. Take good care of you siblings as your mother will be watching you from above and guarding her babies. She is your angel now.'
An apprentice chef is set to appeal his 40-year prison sentence for stabbing a Sydney businessman more than 20 times after sexually assaulting him.

A jury took only three hours in March 2015 to find Daniel Jack Kelsall, then 22, guilty of stabbing Morgan Huxley, 20, in an act later described by a judge as the 'most chilling case of murder'.

Kelsall was found to have stalked Mr Huxley, who was a marine engineer, as he returned to his unlocked Neutral Bay unit before stabbing him in the torso, neck and head as he lay in his bed.

Justice Robert Allan Hulme sentenced Kelsall to 40 years in prison, with a non-parole period of 30 years.

But Kelsall will appear in in court on Thursday, two years after his legal team signalled their intent to appeal, according to The Daily Telegraph.

Apprentice chef Daniel Jack Kelsall (pictured), 24, is set to appeal his 40-year prison sentence for stabbing a Sydney businessman more than 20 times after sexually assaulting him

A jury took only three-hours in March 2015 to find Daniel Jack Kelsall, then 22, guilty of stabbing Morgan Huxley (pictured), 20

A notice of appeal was formally lodged on June 1 and will be heard in the Court of Criminal Appeal.

Over the course of a two week trial in 2015, the jury heard how Mr Huxley had been discovered by his flatmate lying in a pool of blood.

Justice Hulme described Kelsall as 'disturbed' and his actions as 'utterly senseless'.

'This is a most chilling case of murder, whether the offender killed for the thrill of it or as a result of a fantasy or obsession, I'm unable to say,' Justice Hulme said.

Kelsall (pictured) was found to have stalked Mr Huxley as he returned to his unlocked Neutral Bay unit before stabbing him in the torso, neck and head as he lay in his bed

Kelsall's satchel (pictured) which was found by police with Mr Huxley's blood on it

Kelsall had finished work as a kitchenhand at the Sydney Cooking School on September 8, 2013 when he spotted Mr Huxley.

He was captured on CCTV wearing chef pants and running up from behind Mr Huxley as he left a pub, The Daily Telegraph reported.

Kelsall told the court he was invited into the 20-year-old's apartment before an intruder struck Mr Huxley over the head.

'It looked like this other person and Mr Huxley were fighting. I then got out of there  I stood up and ran out,' he told the NSW Supreme Court.

However police found Mr Huxley's blood on Kelsall's satchel, as well as the murderer's blood on his victim's penis.
Police searching for a French tourist who went missing after the London Bridge terror attack have discovered his body in the River Thames.

Xavier Thomas, 45, today emerged as the eighth victim killed in Saturday's atrocity, after he was thrown into the river by the terrorists' van.

Mr Thomas was walking south along the bridge with his girlfriend Christine Delcros, who was left seriously injured in the attack, when a van ploughed into pedestrians.

Khuram Butt, Rachid Redouane and Youssef Zaghba then left the van armed with knives and went on a stabbing spree, killing 8 and injuring 48.

Immediately after the attack, police river boats combed the area for victims and possible attackers, but did not spot Mr Thomas in the water.

Officers were quick to confirm that there were seven people killed, with no mention of Mr Thomas  despite him being reported missing by worried family members.

Xavier Thomas, 45, died after he was thrown into the River Thames by the terrorists' van. He was with his girlfriend, Christine Delcros (pictured), when the attack happened

Police searching for Mr Thomas, who went missing after the London Bridge terror attack, have discovered his body in the River Thames; four miles from where he fell

It was only when it became evident that he had not been taken to one of the five hospitals along with the dead and injured that detectives appealed for information about him and more searches took place on the River Thames.

Today, Metropolitan Police revealed they had discovered his body near Limehouse - four miles downstream from London Bridge and four days after the attack.

Scotland Yard are still yet to officially name any of the dead, with relatives themselves revealing their loved ones had been killed.

The lack of information given to families by police has sparked criticism from the foreign ministries of Australia, France and Spain, while one of the victims workplaces even stepped in to hire private detectives to look for him.

Today, police refused to say why they had not identified the victims sooner, only saying there are a number of varying factors as to why the dead had still not been formally named.

A spokesman added the force was liaising with the families and hope to formally confirm the victims as soon as we can.

Floral tributes dedicated to the victims are left at the scene of Saturday night's rampage

Mr Thomas, 45, was walking south on the bridge with his girlfriend when a van (pictured) ploughed into pedestrians, before three knife-wielding terrorists went on a stabbing spree

Detectives appealed for information about him after he was reported missing and searches took place on the River Thames

Post-it notes containing tributes are left near London Bridge, where eight people lost their lives and nearly 50 were injured

An official statement about Mr Thomas read: 'Detectives were appealing for information about Xavier Thomas, 45, a French national who had not been seen since the night of the terrorist attack on London Bridge.

'On Tuesday, June 6 at approximately 7.44pm the body of a man was recovered from the river, near Limehouse, by specialist officers from the Marine Police Unit.

The eight terror victims killed in London Bridge attack Christine Archibald, 30, from British Columbia, Canada James McMullan, 32, from Hackney, east London Alexandre Pigeard, 27, from Normandy, France Kirsty Boden, 28, from Loxton, Australia Ignacio Echeverria, 39, from Las Rozas, Spain Sara Zelenak, 21, from Brisbane, Australia Sebastien Belanger, 36, from Angers, France Xavier Thomas, 45, from Loire-Atlantique, France Advertisement

'Formal identification has not yet taken place, however Mr. Thomas' next of kin have been informed of this development.'

It's understood that Miss Delcros, who is seriously injured, is in a stable condition after undergoing an operation.

On Sunday Miss Delcros' sister Nathalie Cros Brohan wrote online: 'We are on our way to London, my sister Christine Delcros and her boyfriend Xavier Thomas have been victims of #londonattack #LondonBridge.'

'My sister is seriously injured and hospitalised. I appeal to all those who have news of Xavier Thomas that is missing ... he is not one of the 4 French found. We are terribly worried.'

Meanwhile, the seven other London Bridge attack victims who were killed have been named.

The family of Ignacio Echeverria, from Las Rozas in Spain, revealed that he was killed in the massacre after he used his skateboard as a weapon against a knife-wielding jihadi as he tried to save a woman from being attacked.

The 39-year-old, who lived in Poplar, east London, was reported missing after he was last seen on Saturday night lying on the pavement near London Bridge.

His family were angry with the British authorities' lack of information and his employers hired a private detective to investigate.

But today, relative and journalist Isabel Duran confirmed he had died and that he was 'in heaven with his inseparable skateboard'.

Also killed in the attack were Australian nanny Sara Zelenak, 21, French chef Sebastien Belanger, 36, his fellow countryman and friend Alexandre Pigeard, 27, nurse Kirsty Boden, 28, from Australia, British business owner James McMullan, 32, from Hackney and Canadian tourist Christine Archibald, 30, died after being hit by a van.

Mr Echeverria's parents arrived in London yesterday to formally identify their son's body. DNA samples were required as well as his fingerprints.

His relative and journalist Isabel Duran tweeted: 'Ignacio Echeverria attacked the terrorists to try to save a woman. He is in heaven with his inseparable skateboard #heroeespanol'

The Spanish Foreign minister, Alfonso Dastis, has criticised British authorities for not acting quickly enough to identify the victims.

Fernando Vergara, the brother-in-law of Mr Echverria said: 'Families of the victims of LB attacks feel mistreated by lack of information leading to unnecessary agony. 63 hrs still no news.'

The mother of Australian nanny Sara Zelenak, from Brisbane, today confirmed her daughter had died on Facebook.

Ignacio Echeverria, from Las Rozas in Spain was reported missing after he was last seen on Saturday night lying on the pavement near London Bridge. A relative today confirmed he was among the dead

A skateboard emblazoned with messages dedicated to Ignacio Echeverria, who was making his way back from a skate park when he was killed in the terror attack

But today, relative and journalist Isabel Duran confirmed he had died and that he was 'in heaven with his inseparable skateboard'

The mother of Australian nanny Sara Zelenak (pictured) today confirmed her daughter had died on Facebook

The mother of Australian nanny Sara Zelenak, from Brisbane, today confirmed her daughter had died on Facebook.

Julie Wallace wrote: 'Sara Zelenak is confirmed dead, they found her body and has DNA tests confirmed. Thank you for all the overwhelming love and support from everyone.'

She usually called her mother everyday from London where she worked as a nanny.

But she hadn't answered her phone or responded to texts since she got separated from her friends the moment chaos broke out in central London.

Her best friend Sam Hetherington wrote a touching tribute on Facebook.

She said: 'Our beautiful Sara Zelenak. The closest friend to Bea and I since we were in year 7. You bought so much joy into our lives, to me an Bea for so long and also to Mum and Dad, who took you under their wing like no other. I can't believe we don't get to grow old together.

'Just Thursday I messaged you and you told me everything will always work out. You would be so overwhelmed by the love from everyone and probably be very salty from the dorky pictures we have together that are all over the world hahaha. Rest easy wherever you are, I hope there is lots of KFC and hot boys with you.'

Missing Frenchman Sebastien Belanger was also confirmed dead today, in the aftermath of the terror attack

French chef Sebastien Belanger, 36, killed by terrorists after watching football in a pub

Today, his girlfriend, Gerda Bennet changed her social media profile picture to one of her and Mr Belanger and wrote: 'My love'

Missing Frenchman Sebastien Belanger was also confirmed dead today.

His girlfriend, Gerda Bennet, who was in Malta at the time of the attack, returned to London and posted appeals to find him on Facebook.

An appeal page, called Help Us Find Sebastien Belanger was created.

French media reported that the 36-year-old was in Boro Bistro when the terrorists struck and that he was a friend of Alexandre Pigeard, who was also killed.

He was out with Mr Pigeard and other friends watching the Champions League final between Juventus and Real Madrid at The Barrowboy & Banker, before moving on to the wine bar.

His personal Facebook page states that he has worked at Blueprint Cafe, near Tower Bridge, and Coq D'Argent, in Bank. He had lived in London for seven years.

Today, Miss Bennet changed her social media profile picture to one of her and Mr Belanger and wrote: 'My love.'

Victims of the London Bridge massacre

By Anthony Joseph for MailOnline

All eight victims who were killed in Saturday night's attack on London Bridge have now been named by their families.

Christine Archibald, 30, from British Columbia, Canada

On Monday, it was revealed that Canadian Christine Archibald, 30, had died in her fiance's arms after being struck by a speeding van.

Ms Archibald worker at a homeless shelter, would have had 'no understanding of the callous cruelty that caused her death', her family have said.

She was the first victim of the atrocity in London Bridge on Saturday night to be named. The attack killed seven people and critically injured 21 others.

It is believed she was one of those hit by a hired van which attackers swerved on and off the pavement on Saturday night, ploughing into pedestrians.

The first victim of the London Bridge terror attack was named as Canadian Christine Archibald. Friends asked well-wishers to volunteer for a good cause in tribute to her

Ms Archibald, who worked at homeless shelter, died in the arms of her fiance Tyler Ferguson

The 30-year-old moved from her native British Columbia to live in Europe with her fiance

Ms Archibald's fiance, Tyler Ferguson, held her in his arms as she died, his sister revealed on Sunday.

Mr Ferguson's sister wrote on Facebook: 'Last night in London, my baby brother, lost the love of his life on the London Bridge.

'In a split second his entire life was ripped away from him. Hearing his painful sobs on the phone while he's alone trying to deal with this tears me apart.

'I have no words. If you know Tyler, please be there for him now, and later when what happened sinks in, he's going to need us all.'

Ms Archibald, a worker in a homeless shelter, moved from her native British Columbia to live in Europe with her fiance.

Her devastated family said: 'We grieve the loss of our beautiful, loving daughter and sister. She had room in her heart for everyone and believed strongly that every person was to be valued and respected.

'She lived this belief working in a shelter for the homeless until she moved to Europe to be with her fiance. She would have had no understanding of the callous cruelty that caused her death.

'Please honor her by making your community a better place. Volunteer your time and labor or donate to a homeless shelter. Tell them Chrissy sent you.'

James McMullan, 32, from Hackney, east London

James McMullan, 32, was enjoying a night out with school friends to celebrate the launch of a new 1million business when he was caught in the attack

James McMullan, 32, was enjoying a night out with school friends to celebrate the launch of a new 1million business when he was caught in the attack.

British victim, James, was working on a web-based business to 'revolutionise education', according to his father, Simon.

The 61-year-old vowed to work on his 'exceptional' son's business.

He said: 'At this point in time the subject is too raw. I'm just going to try to keep the business that he was doing alive. He was working on it for two years.'

Mr McMullan added: 'He was on the verge of signing his first contract, a $1.5 million deal.

'It will radically change the face of education - I am going to continue his work. My son really was an exceptional man.'

His sister Melissa, right, fought back tears as she confirmed her brother's death on Sky News in an emotional statement

His younger sister Melissa fought back tears as she paid moving tribute to him and issued a heartfelt plea for people to oppose the terrorists.

Miss McMullan, 30, said: 'While our pain will never diminish, it is important for us all to carry on with our lives in direct opposition to those who would try to destroy us and remember their hatred is the refuge of small-minded individuals and will only bring more.

'This is not a course we will follow, despite our loss.'

Those killed in Saturday's attack have not yet been formally identified, but Miss McMullan said her brother's bank card had been found on one of the bodies.

He is believed to be the only British victim to have died.

Mr McMullan, from Hackney, was with old school friends at the Barrowboy and Banker pub when he stepped outside, moments before the terrorists crashed their van and began stabbing people indiscriminately.

His sister said it had been his first night out in months as he had been working round-the-clock as he prepared to launch a new e-learning business.

His younger sister Melissa fought back tears as she paid moving tribute to him and issued a heartfelt plea for people to oppose the terrorists

She praised her 'generous and caring' brother, saying: 'Words will never be able to match his essence. There will only ever be one James.

'Nowhere else will you find such humour and unique personality in someone who put friends and family above all else. He was an inspiration.'

She said her family wanted to thank the emergency services, adding: 'They did their utmost to serve and protect the population of London from these deranged and deluded individuals.'

Melissa McMullan wrote an emotional tribute to her brother on her Instagram account on Monday night

In an emotional tribute, Melissa posted a picture of James dressed up as a washing machine.

She wrote: 'This was my big brother. It's the photo that best describe James. Anyone at bestival that year would have seen a washing machine wondering round. He was generous, kind and overwhelmingly knowledgeable.

'We would always to struggle to keep up with the 10 difference conversations he was clearly trying to have with you but he was so passionate about all 10 you couldn't help but smile and nod.

'Everything he did was for his family and friends. He was always there to support everyone in their personal issues or business ventures.

'If there was an event he was there, in the front of the queue or crowd cheering you on.

'He was an incredible person. Words cannot come close to how much we loved him as a family. '

Kirsty Boden, 28, from Loxton, Australia

Kirsty Boden, 28, from Loxton, in South Australia, was attacked by the knife-wielding terrorists while coming to the aid of another injured person

Kirsty Boden, 28, from Loxton, in South Australia, was attacked by the knife-wielding terrorists while coming to the aid of other injured people.

Her family have paid tribute to her, saying: 'As she ran towards danger, in an effort to help people on the bridge, Kirsty sadly lost her life.

'We are so proud of Kirsty's brave actions, which demonstrate how selfless, caring and heroic she was, not only on that night, but throughout all of her life.'

Kirsty Boden (pictured), from Loxton, in South Australia, is the fourth confirmed victim of the weekend's London terror attack

Graduating from Flinders University in 2009, Ms Boden moved to the UK and began working as a health professional a few years later.

But when not at work Ms Boden often travelled, detailing trips to Liverpool, Germany, Bulgaria Switzerland and Lithuania through her blog.

And now a haunting post on Ms Boden's blog documenting her European travels has been revealed, saying: 'At risk of sounding cliche, life is short and we should all use the time we have wisely.'

Graduating from Flinders University in 2009, Ms Boden moved to the UK and began working as a health professional a few years later

Ms Boden often travelled, detailing trips to Liverpool, Germany, Bulgaria Switzerland and Lithuania through her blog

Recently she also journeyed to Kiev, in Ukraine, to attend Eurovision - supporting her home nation by wearing an Australian flag T-shirt.

'I'm just your average dreamer, with a full time job and a constant longing to go where I haven't been,' Ms Boden wrote on her blog.

'I have big travel dreams but I am realistic.

'She ran towards danger to help others. We are so proud of her': Family of fourth London Bridge terror victim's emotional tribute to their selfless, caring hero Kirsty Boden, 28, from Loxton, in South Australia, was attacked by the knife-wielding terrorists while coming to the aid of another injured person. Her family have paid tribute to her, saying: 'As she ran towards danger, in an effort to help people on the bridge, Kirsty sadly lost her life. 'We are so proud of Kirsty's brave actions, which demonstrate how selfless, caring and heroic she was, not only on that night, but throughout all of her life.' Advertisement

'I recognise that I might not go everywhere but I should definitely go everywhere I can, and so should you!'

The Department of Foreign Affairs in Australia confirmed they are providing her family with assistance.

'We're putting in place all the appropriate measures to provide support for the families that were associated with this particular notification,' South Australian premier Jay Weatherill said today.

'It's a matter for DFAT to confirm the matter and to identify the particular Australian citizen we are gravely concerned about.'

Responding to news, Danny Mortimer, chief executive of NHS Employers, said:

'We are devastated to hear the NHS has lost one of its own. Our thoughts go out to everyone who knew Kirsty Boden, a nurse who worked at Guy's Hospital in London, now confirmed as one of Saturday's victims.

'It is truly humbling that bright, hard-working people like Kirsty were brave enough to run towards danger in aid of victims lying helpless on the bridge following such a barbaric attack.

'Together with the other emergency services, NHS staff have responded swiftly and with the professionalism for which they are renowned to a major incident and are providing the treatment, care and support that is needed.

'It shows once again that the high esteem in which the health service is held by the public is well placed.'

Alexandre Pigeard, 27, from Normandy, France

Frenchman Alexandre Pigeard, 27, from Colleville-Montgomery, in Normandy, was killed at the Boro Bistro restaurant where he worked

Alexandre Pigeard was a waiter at the Boro Bistro, by the River Thames and was stabbed in the neck in front of friends.

Manager Vincent Le Berre, from Brittany, described the terrifying moment where one of the terrorists jumped on to the roof of the bar to launch his attack.

He told the Telegramme news outlet that: 'One of the attackers got on to the roof of the bar and jumped on the parasol on the terrace, wounding one of my colleagues.

'He immediately attacked a client who was killed. I managed to escape, but my friend Alexandre did not have a chance. He was stabbed in the neck with a knife.'

He was originally from Caen, and had completed his schooling at the Herouville-Saint-Clair high school.

He was a huge fan of electronic music collective, and organised gigs for Cargo, the Caen music venue, and the Nordik Impakt electronic music festival.

Mr Pigeard had been living in London for two and a half years, after moving from Colleville-Montgomery, a small town nestled on the banks of the River Orne between Caen and Ouistreham.

Frederic Loinard, the town's mayor, said: 'Alexander was from our town' and hugely liked and respected.

Sebastien Belanger, 36, from Angers, France

Missing Frenchman Sebastien Belanger was also confirmed dead today

His girlfriend, Gerda Bennet, who was in Malta at the time of the attack, returned to London and posted appeals to find him on Facebook

Missing Frenchman Sebastien Belanger was also confirmed dead today.

His girlfriend, Gerda Bennet, who was in Malta at the time of the attack, returned to London and posted appeals to find him on Facebook.

An appeal page, called Help Us Find Sebastien Belanger was created.

French media reported that the 36-year-old was in Boro Bistro when the terrorists struck and that he was a friend of Alexandre Pigeard, who was killed.

He was out with Mr Pigeard and other friends watching the Champions League final between Juventus and Real Madrid at The Barrowboy & Banker, before moving on to the wine bar.

His personal Facebook page states that he has worked at Blueprint Cafe, near Tower Bridge, and Coq D'Argent, in Bank. He had lived in London for seven years.

Today, Miss Bennet changed her social media profile picture to one of her and Mr Belanger and wrote: 'My love.'

Girlfriend, Gerda Bennett said Sebastien was 'exactly at the place where the attack happened' and had not heard from him

She wrote: 'I still have no news. Please if anyone has seen him or knows anything contact me'

Sara Zelenak, 21, from Brisbane, Australia

Australian Sara Zelenak (pictured) usually called her mother everyday from London where she worked as a nanny

The mother of Australian nanny Sara Zelenak, from Brisbane, today confirmed her daughter had died on Facebook.

Julie Wallace wrote: 'Sara Zelenak is confirmed dead, they found her body and has DNA tests confirmed. Thank you for all the overwhelming love and support from everyone.'

She usually called her mother everyday from London where she worked as a nanny.

But she hadn't answered her phone or responded to texts since she got separated from her friends the moment chaos broke out in central London.

Her best friend Sam Hetherington wrote a touching tribute on Facebook.

She said: 'Our beautiful Sara Zelenak. The closest friend to Bea and I since we were in year 7. You bought so much joy into our lives, to me an Bea for so long and also to Mum and Dad, who took you under their wing like no other. I can't believe we don't get to grow old together.

'Just Thursday I messaged you and you told me everything will always work out. You would be so overwhelmed by the love from everyone and probably be very salty from the dorky pictures we have together that are all over the world hahaha. Rest easy wherever you are, I hope there is lots of KFC and hot boys with you.'

Ignacio Echeverria, 39, from Las Rozas, Spain

The family of Ignacio Echeverria, from Las Rozas in Spain, revealed that he was killed in the massacre after he used his skateboard as a weapon against a knife-wielding jihadi as he tried to save a woman from being attacked

The family of Ignacio Echeverria, from Las Rozas in Spain, revealed that he was killed in the massacre after he used his skateboard as a weapon against a knife-wielding jihadi as he tried to save a woman from being attacked.

The 39-year-old, who lived in Poplar, east London, was reported missing after he was last seen on Saturday night lying on the pavement near London Bridge.

His family were angry with the British authorities' lack of information and his employers hired a private detective to investigate.

But today, relative and journalist Isabel Duran confirmed he had died and that he was 'in heaven with his inseparable skateboard'.

Also killed in the attack were Australian nanny Sara Zelenak, 21, French chef Sebastien Belanger, 36, his fellow countryman and friend Alexandre Pigeard, 27, nurse Kirsty Boden, 28, from Australia, British business owner James McMullan, 32, from Hackney and Canadian tourist Christine Archibald, 30, died after being hit by a van.

Mr Echeverria's parents arrived in London yesterday to formally identify their son's body. DNA samples were required as well as his fingerprints.

His relative and journalist Isabel Duran tweeted: 'Ignacio Echeverria attacked the terrorists to try to save a woman. He is in heaven with his inseparable skateboard #heroeespanol'

The Spanish Foreign minister, Alfonso Dastis, has criticised British authorities for not acting quickly enough to identify the victims.

Fernando Vergara, the brother-in-law of Mr Echverria said: 'Families of the victims of LB attacks feel mistreated by lack of information leading to unnecessary agony. 63 hrs still no news.'

Xavier Thomas, 45, from Loire-Atlantique, France

On Wednesday, the Metropolitan Police revealed that they discovered his body near Limehouse - four miles from London Bridge

Xavier Thomas, 45, was named as the eighth victim killed in the atrocity at the weekend, after he was thrown into the river by the terrorists' van.

Mr Thomas was walking south on the bridge with his girlfriend Christine Delcros when a van ploughed into pedestrians, before three knife-wielding terrorists went on a stabbing spree.

Miss Delcros is seriously injured in hospital and has undergone an operation.

Detectives appealed for information about him after he was reported missing and searches took place on the River Thames.

On Wednesday, the Metropolitan Police revealed that they discovered his body near Limehouse - four miles from London Bridge.

An official statement about Mr Thomas read: 'Detectives were appealing for information about Xavier Thomas, 45, a French national who had not been seen since the night of the terrorist attack on London Bridge.

'On Tuesday, June 6 at approximately 7.44pm the body of a man was recovered from the river, near Limehouse, by specialist officers from the Marine Police Unit.

'Formal identification has not yet taken place, however Mr. Thomas' next of kin have been informed of this development.'

It's understood that Miss Delcros, who is seriously injured, is in a stable condition after undergoing an operation.

On Sunday Miss Delcros' sister Nathalie Cros Brohan wrote online: 'We are on our way to London, my sister Christine Delcros and her boyfriend Xavier Thomas have been victims of #londonattack #LondonBridge.'

'My sister is seriously injured and hospitalised. I appeal to all those who have news of Xavier Thomas that is missing ... he is not one of the 4 French found. We are terribly worried.'
The ex-wife of one of the London Bridge terrorists has said she is 'deeply shocked, saddened and numbed' by his actions.

Charisse O'Leary, the estranged wife of Moroccan-born Rachid Redouane, spoke today for the first time since the atrocity in which eight died and 48 were injured.

In a statement, she said: 'My thoughts and efforts now are with trying to bring up my daughter with the knowledge that someday I will have to try and explain to her why her father did what he did.'

O'Leary married Redouane - who has previously claimed to be both Libyan and Moroccan - after he failed to get asylum to live in the UK. They later had a daughter, who is now one year old.

Couple: Charisse O'Leary marries Rachid Redouane in Ireland in 2012 , months after they met, and in a country with a growing reputation as a 'backdoor' to Britain

Wedding day: O'Leary in her wedding dress after her husband was refused asylum in the UK

Charisse O'Leary (pictured, right), met Rachid Redouane (left) while she was in a long term relationship and married him months later

After they married in 2012 Redouane moved back to Morocco and this social media photo shows his wife posing outside an ISIS cafe in Casablanca. There is absolutely no suggestion that Ms O'Leary has any links to terrorism and is likely to have been poking fun at its name

Ms O'Leary released a statement saying she was thinking of all those murdered and injured and their families.

She revealed she had split from the killer six months ago and only saw him so he could spend time with their daughter.

She added: 'I wish to make it absolutely clear, so there can be no doubt, I condemn his actions and do not support the beliefs he held that led to him committing this atrocity.'

Today it was revealed that Redouane was allowed to stay in Britain after he embarked on an affair with O'Leary and married her in Dublin months later.

Full statement of killer Rachid Redouane's ex-wife Charisse O'Leary "My heartfelt thoughts go out to all those murdered or injured in the events of 3rd June 2017. I am deeply shocked, saddened and numbed by the actions of my ex partner who has killed and injured so many innocent people. Since discovering that it was Rachid that was responsible I have shed many tears for the people caught up in this horrific incident. Rachid and I have been separated for six months. We have a beautiful young daughter, that for the last six months has been our only bond and reason for contact. My thoughts and efforts now are with trying to bring up my daughter with the knowledge that someday I will have to try and explain to her why her father did what he did. I wish to make it absolutely clear, so there can be no doubt, I condemn his actions and do not support the beliefs he held that led to him committing this atrocity." Advertisement

Redouane was refused asylum in 2009, when he was using the name Rachid Elkhdar, yet managed to stay in Britain despite being arrested in Scotland attempting to travel to Northern Ireland by ferry on a fake passport.

Months after meeting Ms O'Leary in 2012, while she was in a nine-year relationship with an upholsterer, they flew to Dublin and married at a register office in the Irish capital.

Friends said Ms O'Leary, 38, eventually 'hated' her husband whom she accused of beating and bullying her after they moved in together.

They split up around nine months ago after they moved to her native east London and she refused to convert to Islam and would not let him impose his faith on their toddler daughter Amina.

Shortly after their wedding in Dublin, Rachid is said to have returned to Morocco while his 33-year-old wife went back to London

She visited him in north Africa and said on Facebook that Casablanca was one of her favourite place - but it appears he hid his true violent and controlling nature until he had secure the right to live in the UK through her.

Despite living apart the Irish authorities insisted their marriage was a genuine one and not to 'secure residency in this jurisdiction', a source told The Times.

But an inquiry has now been launched to establish if Redouane duped his wife and wed her for immigration reasons.

Supportive: The terrorist's now estranged wife sought help online to get her husband a visa and confirmed they would marry in Ireland despite her living in the UK

Redouane lived in Rathmines, an upmarket area of Dublin, before he moved to Britain with his wife around nine months ago

Dublin security sources fear foreign-born jihadis are targeting young women to marry in the Republic because once they have settled there they can travel freely to the UK.

Dozens of 'sleeper' jihadis may already be in Ireland after marrying. And 50 more are on the radar of police.

Ireland was 'backdoor' to Britain for Moroccan London Bridge terrorist In 2011 Ireland adopted an EU directive that allows citizens from outside the EU to travel freely between Britain and Ireland if they marry an EU citizen. A common travel area exists between Ireland and the UK meaning that there are no passport checks. There are growing concerns that the rule is allowing terrorists into Britain via Ireland. A security source told the Irish Mirror: 'Their main aim is to get a GNIB or FAM (EU identity card). Once they have that they can move freely to the UK. 'They often have an address in Ireland which they do not use but it takes the suspicion off them when they are living in Britain as Ireland is official their country of residence. 'They are calling them 'backdoor terrorists' or sleepers and that's a fair description'. Advertisement

In 2014, he applied for an Irish visa through his marriage to an EU citizen and a year later, he was granted an EU card, allowing him to live in the UK  and commit mass murder.

Charisse O'Leary fell pregnant as soon as they moved to the Irish capital together in 2015, MailOnline can reveal.

Ms O'Leary's ex-partner of nine years Phillip Nowles, 46, said Redouane began a relationship with his future wife while they were still together in 2012, according to The Times.

Within a few months they had split and she became engaged to him but chose to marry in Ireland.

He said she was an 'outgoing girl, a great conversationalist who liked to have a drink' but it was only after she married the jihadi that he tried to make her convert to Islam and 'control' her.

He told The Times: 'She met him while we were together, I could see she had changed. She was unhappy with me in that last year.

'They broke up this year, she was fed up with his controlling behaviour he wanted their girl to become like him. To dress in Muslim clothes and believe in his ways'.

Ms O'Leary was arrested in the aftermath of the attack but has been released without charge and had 'no idea' about his plans, friends say. She is in a safe house with her daughter Amina, one.

Friends said Ms O'Leary 'hated' her husband whom she accused of beating and bullying her during their turbulent months together as he tried and failed to impose hardline Islam on her and their daughter

A friend of the killer's estranged wife told The Sun Charisse had said: 'He was always really selfish and I gave up so much for him. I was never going to convert and become a Muslim. There's no way I was going to do that.

'I just didn't agree with what he wanted. He didn't want Amina to eat pork or go to dance classes and I wasn't having that.

'He didn't want her watching things on TV either in case it made her 'gay'.'

In recent social media posts, Ms O'Leary had complained that Redouane had not been visiting their daughter enough.

Friends confirmed that Rachid and Charisse previously lived in Dagenham, east London before splitting up when Rachid became a 'bit weird' after they arrived in the UK.

One former colleague at an Essex care home said: 'There's no way she'd have been involved [in terror]. She hated him in the end.

'He was a horrible person. She didn't say what happened but it seemed to me like it was domestic violence.'

The carer added: 'She smokes, she drinks. She wouldn't have converted to Islam. She dressed normally, in Western clothes.'

Friends said she travelled to Ireland around three years ago after he moved to the Rathmines area in the south of the city when his visa ran out.

They said Redouane tried to convert her to Islam but she refused and they had a 'volatile' relationship. He returned to Britain about nine months ago.

In 2015 she asked for advice from fellow immigration applicants to keep the killer in Britain because he had a family in this country.

Charisse O'Leary gave details on social media of how she and her 30-year-old husband were trying to apply to extend his stay in the UK via the backdoor by making an application in Ireland - after she claimed he had previously been in the UK illegally.

In recent social media posts, his estranged wife had complained that Redouane had not been visiting their daughter enough and friends said they hoped he drowned swimming - she had moved to a housing unit for vulnerable mothers

Witnesses said Ms O'Leary shouted 'don't shoot' as she was dragged out sobbing. She is said to have 'hated' her estranged husband

GardaI clash with UK police on terrorist's 'Irish ID card' Gardai and British police are at odds over whether Rachid Redouane was carrying an ID card linking him to Ireland when he carried out the London Bridge atrocity. British police on Monday named Rachid Redouane, a 30-year-old from Barking in east London who claimed to be Moroccan and Libyan, as one of the three attackers shot dead during the knife and van attack. Irish security sources say it is their information that Redouane, who married his English wife in Ireland in 2012, was not found with an Irish ID. Information, originating from the UK, suggested that the suspect was found with an Irish ID card, with some reports suggesting it was a Garda National Immigration Bureau (GNIB) card. Security sources in Ireland also say that Redouane was known to police in the UK for immigration issues and was 'being observed' by police at one stage. Gardai say Redouane was arrested in 2009 in Scotland, and held for several days, after attempting to travel to Northern Ireland by ferry. He was found in possession of a fake passport in this instance, sources say. Redouane was refused asylum in Britain earlier in 2009 but was able to remain there after being granted a '4 EU FAM' residence card following his marriage to English woman Charisse O'Leary in Ireland in 2012. A '4 EU FAM' card grants a non-European Economic Area family member permission to stay in the EU. Ireland's Common Travel Area with Britain allows the freedom of movement of people within the two islands as well as the right to reside, work and access public services. It hopes to maintain the bilateral system, which predates its EU membership, after Britain leaves the bloc. A senior source said: 'Redouane was on the UK radar. He was arrested at least once, attempting to board a boat from Scotland to Ireland in 2009. ...It is not believed he had a GNIB ID card on him when he died. But the UK were able to establish he has been in Ireland and got married here.' Advertisement

Members of a Facebook group called 'SS RIGHTS, EEA FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT, Family its a Human right!!' discussed the process of sending forms back and gave advice on the documents to send to the Home Office.

On July 1, 2015, she wrote on the group that she was asking for advice on filling out an FP application form to stay in Britain.

The FP form is an application for a foreigner to stay in the UK if they have a family life in this country, with a partner, parent or dependent child or on the basis of your private life in the UK.

Writing as Charisse Ann O'leary she told how she was 22 weeks pregnant and arrived in Dublin on February 1, 2015.

She said: 'Started on fp application form. Like a bag of nerves. If my husband was refused on the grounds of previous immigration history being in the UK illegally. Would I appeal it or do new application?'

In another comment she added: 'We haven't lied. We been here since 1st of February and i'm working full time since 12th of February. But now 22 weeks pregnant fell soon as arrived in Dublin. Really want to be home before baby arrives.'

An Irish security source described Redouane, who was not previously known to the security services, as having 'extensive immigration history related to the UK'. The Home Office declined to comment last night and a number of important questions remained unanswered.

Today it emerged that he punched, slapped and kicked the mother of his child Charisse O'Leary and refused to let her out of their house if he caught her smoking or drinking alcohol.

Redouane, who was part of the barbaric trio who killed seven people on London Bridge and Borough Market, tried to get his wife to wear a hijab and eat halal food, but she refused saying she was a Western woman.

A friend of the Charisse told the Mirror she would try and arrange to meet up with the 38-year-old, but was regularly told she could not come.

'It would either be, 'he's slapped me in the middle of the street today' or 'he's kicked me' or 'he will not let me out the house',' she said.

'She was scared, really scared. It was harsh domestic violence.'

Terrorists: Khuram Butt, Rachid Redouane and Youssef Zaghba massacred seven people in a rampage which started on London Bridge on Saturday night

The trio began their killing spree just after 10pm when they ploughed into pedestrians in a white van on London Bridge

One of Gabriele Sciotto's photographs showed the face of the dying terrorist, wearing an Arsenal football shirt and combat trousers, just a few metres in front of him

Police teams could be seen analysing the rental van which ploughed into pedestrians on Saturday evening

It was not clear when the jihadi first arrived in the UK, whether he was deported back to Morocco after his asylum application was rejected in 2009 and how he managed to slip back into the UK under a different name.

8 London Bridge terror attack victims Kirsty Boden, 28, from Loxton, Australia

James McMullan, 32, from Hackney, east London

Christine Archibald, 30, from British Columbia, Canada

Alexandre Pigeard, 27, from Normandy, France

Sara Zelenak, 21, from Brisbane, Australia

Sebastien Belanger, 36, from Angers, France

Ignacio Echeverria, 39, from Las Rozas, Spain

Xavier Thomas, 45, from Loire-Atlantique, France Advertisement

Miss O'Leary, who has a 20-month-old daughter Amina but split from Redouane about three months ago, could not be reached for comment last night. She was released without charge on Monday, 36 hours after being arrested in connection with the terror attacks which culminated in her husband being shot dead by police. Last night there were further disturbing revelations about Redouane and his life in the UK.

Like his fellow London Bridge attacker Khuram Butt, he was a follower of hate preacher Anjem Choudary's banned Islamist extremist group al-Muhajiroun, Sky News reported.

Sources in Dublin revealed he was arrested for immigration offences in 2009  the year he was refused asylum in the UK  while trying to board a boat from Scotland to Northern Ireland and was held for a number of days. It is believed he was questioned about fake passports.

It was also claimed that UK police had arrested him previously, possibly for immigration-related offences.

Scotland Yard said on Monday that Redouane had not been on the terror radar in the past.

Last night a bakery boss who employed Redouane said the pastry chef had been looking for a better life in the UK, only for extremist Muslims to brainwash him. Rajan Sehdev, 44, owner of Dylan's Bakery in Willesden, North West London, said Redouane was suffering from depression after splitting from his wife.

Redouane had already lived in the UK for nearly a decade when in August 2011 he joined the bakery, where he met Miss O'Leary.

'It wasn't a marriage of convenience,' Mr Sehdev said. 'The Rachid I knew is the complete opposite to the individual involved in the events of Saturday night.

'He wasn't opinionated, political or ever discussed religion. He never showed any extreme views.

'It seems he came back a couple of years ago and moved east [to Barking] where he met these friends and associates, like Khuram Butt and Anjem Choudary. He was naive and they manipulated him... brainwashed him. He had lost his own way in life and maybe thought they gave him a purpose  instead they poisoned him with their ideology.'
The mother of the receptionist murdered by ISIS-inspired gunman Yacqub Khayre says she doesn't know how she will go on without him.

Kai' Nick' Hao was at his post in the foyer of The Buckingham serviced apartments in Brighton, Melbourne, when the terrorist burst in and shot him dead.

The 63-year-old mother, who asked not to be named, said her son supported her and her wheelchair-bound husband.

Kai' Nick' Hao (pictured at his wedding) was at his post in the foyer of The Buckingham serviced apartments in Brighton, Melbourne , when a terrorist burst in and shot him dead

'I feel like my world has ended. I cant describe how sad I feel right now,' she told reporters at a press conference on Wednesday through an interpreter.

'When I sent my son to Australia, I was happy to see him go to a new country but now I have to take him back to China in a box.

'I truly dont know how I will go on from now.'

Mr Hao got married less than three weeks ago and had a young son after he moved to Australia from China in 2002 and studied at Monash University.

His 63-year-old mother sobbed as she 'felt like her world had ended' and she didn't know how she would go on without him

Mr Hao got married less than three weeks ago (wedding pictured) and had a young son after he moved to Australia from China in 2002 and studied at Monash University

His mother said the family was planning a huge wedding banquet back in China at the end of August.

'But now I have to go back with his remains instead,' she said.

She said she was informed of her son's death at 3am the morning after and hadn't been able to sleep or eat the past two days.

'They have been the saddest and darkest of our lives,' she said.

The Chinese woman broke down as she expressed her anger and hatred towards 29-year-old Solami-born refugee Khayre for taking her son.

'I cant tell you how much hatred I feel toward the terrorist who did this to my son. I hate that terrorist that tore my family apart and now my son is gone,' she said.

'All he has ever worked for in the past decade is gone with him. We have nothing left.'

Mr Hao was gunned down with a sawn-off shotgun blast so loud neighbours reported the sound to police as an explosion

He was killed when ISIS-inspired gunman Yacqub Khayre (pictured) burst in and shot him with a sawn-off shotgun

The heartbroken mother joined many others in questioning why Khayre was out n parole when he killed Mr Hao and wounded three police officers.

'If he didnt hurt my son, he would have hurt someone else and that would be another family in grief right now,' she said.

'That is why he shouldnt be let back into the community.'

Khayre was released from jail seven months ago after serving most of a more than five year sentence for a violent home invasion in 2011.

Mr Hao's parents came to Australia last year to be with him in their old age and planned to apply for residency, but now don't know their future.

'My son's gone, my hope is gone, I am helpless. I don't know what to do in Australia,' she sobbed.

Well-wishers placed bunches of flowers and sympathy cards at the gate of the serviced apartments at 408 Bay Street in Brighton

'Condolences to the wife and baby of the man killed in our neighbourhood. It could have been any of us. We feel your sadness,' one read

She recalled how her son would take her and his partially paralysed father to visit attractions in Melbourne and once refused her help in pushing his father's wheelchair up Sovereign Hill.

'He said to me: "Mum, I've brought you to Australia so I could be a son to you, to look after you and Dad. So you could have break and a bit of a rest",' she said.

Mr Hao's father and wife were with his mother at the conference but did not speak to media.

Well-wishers placed bunches of flowers and sympathy cards at the gate of the serviced apartments at 408 Bay Street in Brighton.

'Condolences to the wife and baby of the man killed in our neighbourhood. It could have been any of us. We feel your sadness,' one read.

A man lays a bunch of flowers by the gate of the apartment complex where Mr Hao died

He appeared overcome with emotion after laying the flowers down beside many others

Another included a photo of Mr Hao competing in a charity fun run.

You may be gone from our own sight. Your face may become blurred years later in our memory... but your soul will remain with us,' words with it read.

'A beautiful soul that is never forgotten.'

Two policemen who were first on the scene were seen reading the cards when they returned to the apartments on Wednesday.

Mr Hao was gunned down with a sawn-off shotgun blast so loud neighbours reported the sound to police as an explosion.

Police remove a body from the apartment in Brighton after a deadly two-hour siege that left two men, an Australian national working as a clerk and an ISIS-inspired gunman, dead

Khayre, 29, strolled past Mr Hao's lifeless body up to an apartment in the two-storey complex where a 36-year-old Colombian prostitute (pictured after being rescued) waited for him

Khayre strolled past Mr Hao's lifeless body up to an apartment in the two-storey complex where a 36-year-old Colombian prostitute waited for him.

The Somali-born gunman, who ordered the escort posing as a client, tied her up and held her hostage during a two-hour standoff with police.

Soon after he cut off the ankle monitor he was wearing while on parole for a violent home invasion he was released from prison over just seven months earlier.

At 5.41pm he called Seven News and told chief of staff Nicole Bland 'this is for IS, this is for Al Qaeda' while a woman screamed in the background.

Mr Hao worked at The Buckingham serviced apartments at 408 Bay Street in Brighton

Then just before 6pm he burst back into the foyer and wounded three police officers before he was shot dead at the scene.

Questions have since risen over why Khayre, who was also was acquitted of planning a suicide attack against Sydney's Holsworthy army barracks, wasn't just deported back to Somalia after his home invasion sentence.

Police believe he planned his hostage-taking ruse to ambush police using terrifying tactics taken from a vile ISIS propaganda magazine.

The latest issue of the Islamic State's Rumiya magazine, released in May, encourages terrorists to 'lure' hostages and 'keep victims restrained' to maximise publicity.

Junior jihadi: Khayre is pictured as a child growing up in Australia (left, aged 7, right, aged 12)

The latest version of the Islamic State's Rumiya (pictured) magazine, released in May, encourages terrorists to 'lure' hostages and 'keep victims alive and restrained'

'In order for the operation to gain publicity and more effectively plant terror into the hearts of the disbelievers, one can keep some of his victims alive and restrained, making for a more lengthy and drawn-out hostage scenario,' the magazine reads.

'One may then notify the authorities, explaining to them that he is a soldier of the Islamic State and informing them of what he has just done.'

The jihadi magazine's instructions bear a chilling resemblance to the chain of events that unfolded on Monday night. Previous editions of the magazine contain manuals on how best to carry out lone wolf attacks.

Khayre, 29, was shot dead by heavily armed tactical command officers (pictured) after he opened fire on waiting police with a sawn-off shotgun

In 1991, at the age of just three, Khayre and his family fled war-torn Somalia, arriving in Australia to live with his uncle and grandfather.

Growing up in Gladstone Park, north Melbourne, he was reportedly a good student at school until his grandfather died in Year 12 and he fell in with the 'wrong crowd'.

From there he began committing petty crime and stole his uncle's car in 2006.

In 2007, he was charged with armed robbery after holding up passengers on a Melbourne train, leaving one man with knife wounds.

The bomb squad was sent in to inspect Khayre's rented hotel room on Tuesday morning in the aftermath of the bloody two-hour siege

A bomb squad member suits up before entering the serviced apartment blocks to search for any explosives

He was among five men charged with planning a terrorist attack on the Holsworthy army barracks.

The group were alleged to have planned to break into the secure base and kill as many army personnel as possible. Khayre was one of only two to be cleared.

That came despite him allegedly travelling to Somalia in 2009 or 2010, where he may have attended 'weapons and military' and visited a cleric to gain 'holy approval' to carry out the attack.

The other three men involved in the terrorist plot, all friends from the notorious '8 Blacks' Islamic prayer centre, are serving out 18-year sentences behind bars.

Mr Hao was killed in the foyer of this serviced apartment block, The Buckingham

It offers one and two bedroom apartments like this for $130 to $230 a night

The bedroom of one of the serviced apartments where an ISIS-inspired gunman held a young woman hostage for two hours before he was shot dead

After being acquitted of terror charges, Khayre was jailed for three years for carrying out a drug-affected home invasion in Melbourne's north in 2011.

Terrifying detail in court papers revealed Khayre charged at a woman inside, punching her in the face, her stomach, her back and her shoulders.

The commotion woke up her father, a former Turkish police officer of 25 years. He copped a head-butt and a punch to the face from the future terrorist.

But it wasn't long before the father and his daughter had wrestled him to the ground and called the police.

Khayre was sentenced to more than five years jail with a minimum of three years in October 2012, and was released on parole seven months ago.

Khayre was earlier found guilty of scores of offences since 2007 - including possessing a firearm, burglaries and stabbing a commuter twice in the leg after demanding he hand over his wallet.

A DECADE OF YACQUB KHAYRE'S CRIMES 2007 APRIL: The teenager was sentenced to two years' detention in a youth justice centre for somewhere between 42 and 45 offences. Charges including multiple burglaries and thefts, assault, providing a false name and address, drug possession, car theft and unlicensed driving at dangerous speeds. JUNE: While still incarcerated he was sentenced for attempted armed robbery and intentionally causing injury after stabbing a man on a train twice in the leg, demanding the victim's money and phone. 2008 FEBRUARY: Released on an adjourned undertaking on single charges of burglary and theft. 2010 DECEMBER: After a six-month trial and 16 months in custody, Khayre was cleared by a jury over his alleged role in planning the 2009 Holsworthy army barracks terror plot in western Sydney. Wissam Mahmoud Fattal, Saney Edow Aweys, Nayev el Sayed were jailed in 2011 for a maximum of 18 years for planning a terrorist act to kill as many people as possible in a mass shooting at the army base. 2011 NOVEMBER: Sentenced to time served (112 days in jail) for the possession of a firearm and ammunition without a licence, car theft, failure to answer bail, giving a false name and handling stolen goods. 2012 APRIL: A drug-affected and armed Khayre breaks into a Melbourne family's home. He is confronted by a woman, whom he strikes repeatedly in the face, back, shoulder and stomach in a bid to escape. Khayre is eventually subdued by the woman's father, a former policeman. He pleads guilty to five charges including aggravated burglary and is sentenced to five-and-a-half years, with a minimum of three. 2016 DECEMBER: Khayre is released on parole. 2017 JUNE: Still on parole, Khayre shoots an apartment clerk dead and takes a female escort hostage in a Brighton apartment building. After about two hours, he storms out of the apartment, firing at police before he is killed in a hail of bullets. Source: Australasian Legal Information Institute, Corrections Victoria and Victoria Police Advertisement

Despite being well known to counter terrorism police, he was deemed a low-risk of offending and released on parole - before committing the attack in Melbourne.

'He is someone that was known to us as having a long criminal history. A whole range of offending going back many years,' Commissioner Ashton said.

'Most recently he has done some prison time in relation to reckless and intentionally causing injury, and intentionally causing injury, and whilst in prison, he was processed as well for an arson whilst in the corrections system.'

How the terrifying siege in Melbourne unfolded over almost two hours

'Ultimately, he has been qualified for parole, received parole and was on parole at the time of this offence.'

'The early advice from the Department of Corrections was that he was compliant with parole and hadn't presented any issues in relation to his conduct whilst on parole leading up to yesterday.'

Investigators were seen holding a paper bag of evidence found inside the Melbourne apartment where the bloody siege took place with the words: 'Hard covered book with Arabic writing (in cloth bag) on desk in living room' scrawled on it.

Police also executed a search warrant at a home in Roxborough Park, where Khayre lived with his mother and two teenage brothers, on Tuesday morning.

'Hard covered book with Arabic writing (in cloth bag) on desk in living room': Investigators were seen holding a paper bag of evidence found inside the Melbourne apartment where the siege took place

Police also descended on a home in Roxborough Park where Khayre is believed to have lived with his mother and two teenage brothers (pictured seizing bag of evidence)

'We are going to be at that location for some time conducting inquiries there,' Commissioner Ashton said.

'There is a full forensic effort being done. This is now a coronial investigation, being done by the Homicide Squad, with oversight from Professional Standards Command.

'There will be extensive work required at 408 Bay Street today.

'We will have a lot of police down there today, knocking on doors, talking to people, for witness accounts and also with reassuring the community down there.'
North Korea has slammed President Donald Trump for pulling out of the Paris climate agreement.

A Foreign Ministry spokesman described Trump's decision as 'the height of egotism' on Tuesday and said it was an example of the United States 'seeking only their own well-being'.

'Global warming is one of the gravest challenges that humankind is facing today', the official told the state-run KCNA news agency on Tuesday.

Kim Jong Un (left) has slammed President Donald Trump's (right) decision to leave the Paris Agreement. A North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman described Trump's move as 'the height of egotism' on Tuesday and said it was an example of the United States 'seeking only their own well-being'

'The "America First Policy" advocated by Trump led to the withdrawal from the Paris Agreement', the official said.

The official added: 'This is the height of egoism and moral vacuum seeking only their own well-being even at the cost of the entire planet and, at the same time, a short-sighted and silly decision ignorant of the fact that the protection of the global environment is in their own interests.'

The spokesman said that Trump's move was a 'selfish act' that has 'grave consequences for the international efforts to protect the environment'.

Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement last week drew criticism from governments around the world.

The president argued that the climate agreement has disadvantaged the United States and benefited other countries, leaving American businesses and taxpayers to absorb the costs.

The United States is one of just three countries that are not part of the Paris Agreement climate pact.

It is joined by Syria and Nicaragua, although the latter's reluctance is based on the government's belief that the agreement's commitments are not strong enough.

North Korea's Foreign Ministry spokesman said that Trump's decision is 'inviting strong denunciation and criticism from world-wide'.

The spokesman went on to say Trump's decision to pull out of the climate deal could cause 'great danger' to other policies as well, including the 'U.S. attitude' toward the nuclear missile crisis in the Korean peninsula. Pictured above, the scene of the intermediate-range ballistic missile Pukguksong-2's launch test in North Korea

'Global warming is one of the gravest challenges the humankind is facing today and the Paris Agreement that called for nationally determined contribution to the reduction of GHG emission is the outcome of decades long efforts to mitigate it,' the statement said.

The spokesman went on to say Trump's decision to pull out of the climate deal could cause 'great danger' to other policies as well, including the 'U.S. attitude' toward the nuclear missile crisis in the Korean peninsula.

'The hostile policy of the U.S. against the DPRK has grown so unreasonable and reckless today that they are even coercing other countries to sacrifice their relations with the DPRK under the pretext of ensuring the U.S security,' the statement said.

It continued: 'It is high time the world stopped pondering over the dangerous ideological trend which is surfacing in the U.S. with the emergence of the Trump administration, but raised alarm and stayed highly vigilant about it.

'Whoever chooses to blindly follow the Trump administration overpowered by its bravado should be fully aware that the judgment of history shall take them all as one.'

Meanwhile, South Korea suspended any further deployment of a controversial US missile defence system until an environmental impact assessment ordered by new President Moon Jae-In is finished, his office said Wednesday.

Meanwhile, South Korea suspended any further deployment of a controversial US missile defence system until an environmental impact assessment ordered by new President Moon Jae-In is finished, his office said Wednesday. Pictured above, people participate in a protest against the advanced US missile defense system in Seoul on Saturday

Seoul agreed last year under Moon's ousted predecessor Park Geun-Hye to deploy the powerful missile intercept system to guard against threats from nuclear-armed North Korea despite angry opposition from Beijing, which views it as a threat to its own military capabilities.

Two missile launchers have been deployed in the southern county of Seongju, where hundreds of residents have staged fierce protests over what they see as potential environmental hazards posed by the batteries used in the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system.

There is "no need to withdraw" the two launchers that have already been deployed, a senior official at the South's presidential office told reporters.

However, "additional deployment (of THAAD) should be carried out only after the environmental impact assessment is over," the official added.

"We do not view the deployment process as urgent enough to bypass the whole environmental impact assessment," he said.

The deployment freeze comes two days after Moon ordered a "proper" probe into the potential environmental impact of the missile batteries in a bid to win greater public support for the project.

Four more launchers arrived recently in the South and are currently being stored at a US army base in the country, which plays host to some 28,500 US troops as a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War.
Zahid Mirza's car crashed on the southbound carriageway between junctions 4A and 5 near Coleshill, Warwickshire, on January 15, but his body was only found three weeks later

Police took three weeks to find the body of a driver who abandoned his car on the M6 and then drowned in a marsh.

Zahid Mirza's car crashed on the southbound carriageway of the M6 between junctions 4A and 5 near Coleshill, Warwickshire, on January 15.

His body was found, three weeks later, on inaccessible waste ground next to the motorway on February 6.

Despite a catalogue of errors from West Midlands Police they were cleared of any blame by a coroner.

West Midlands Police began their search for Mr Mirza after a Polish lorry driver saw him jumping off the motorway around 6am on January 15.

An inquest heard officers did not climb over the motorway barriers to search for him because the bank was too steep and the terrain deemed too dangerous.

Officers who used thermal imaging to search for Mr Mirza by helicopter failed to spot him despite the technology picking up heat from four parts of his partially-submerged body.

Police should also have carried out a second, more thorough search in daylight and with police dogs but it never happened.

Sgt Christopher Todd, Standards and Training Officer with National Police Air Service, said he had been asked to look at the footage and write a report for the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

He said the air crew had been hampered on the day by very poor weather.

He also said the helicopter was operating close to power cables and near to Birmingham Airport, which added to the 'significant pressures.'

He said: 'I have looked at the footage with the benefit of hindsight.

'There was one image that may have warranted further investigation, but I can understand why it was not singled it out for further investigation.'

Mr Mirza was described as a funny and intelligent man, a close brother and a son who devoted much of his recent years to caring for his mother

The three key failures by police during hunt for missing motorist 1) Officers did not climb over the motorway barriers to search for him because the bank was too steep and the terrain deemed too dangerous. 2) Officers who used thermal imaging to search for Mr Mirza by helicopter failed to spot him despite the technology picking up heat from four parts of his partially-submerged body. 3) Police should also have carried out a second, more thorough search in daylight and with police dogs but it never happened. Advertisement

Mr Mirza's family first heard about the incident when his brother received a call from a recovery company to say they were planning to crush the car registered in his name.

Officers only returned to resume the search when family members reported him missing.

Police eventually found Mr Mirza after spending an intensive two day search for him.

Mr Mirza's brother, Shahid, said: 'I spoke to him on the actual evening. We were speaking at about 11.30pm and it was very cold - sub-zero. He seemed to be his normal chipper self.

'He was out in town somewhere and I was in London. I tried to call him again at 12.30am but did not get through.

'My brother had a tendency to off the radar and do his own thing. On the fourth or fifth day we kept trying to ring him but could not get through.

'I thought maybe he had gone to Ibiza, or wherever. After ten days I started to think it was out of character.

'The gravity of what was happening started to hit when the car was going to be crushed by the recovery company. That was the tipping point and was when we rang the police.'

Recording a verdict of accidental death, Birmingham coroner Louise Hunt said there was no criticism of officers.

Mr Mirza crashed between junctions 4A and 5 on the M6 but his body was not found for three weeks

West Midlands Police said its professional standards department would now refer its handling of the investigation to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), as is usual in such circumstances.

When asked for a comment by MailOnline, a spokesman initially said it was a matter for Staffordshire Police.

Forensic pathologist Dr Nicholas Hunt said Mr Mirza drowned and there was 'nothing inconsistent' with him having been dead since the day he was last seen.

He said hypothermia may have contributed to his disorientation and Mr Mirza was likely to have been over the drink-drive limit.

Police initially believed he had crashed his Mazda on the motorway as it was a write-off for insurance purposes.

But Sergeant Andrew Salt, a collision investigator with West Midlands Police, said an investigation found no evidence of a collision and he had 'no idea' why it had been abandoned.

Mr Mirza was described as a funny and intelligent man, a close brother and a son who devoted much of his recent years to caring for his mother.
Hawaii has passed a law that will document sea level rises and set strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The bill, signed by Governor David Ige on Tuesday, aligns the state's goals with those of the Paris climate accord.

Ige said Hawaii is the first state to enact legislation implementing part of the Paris Agreement.

The news comes four days after President Donald Trump withdrew the US from the 2015 pact.

Hawaii has passed a law that will document sea level rises and set strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The bill, signed by Governor David Ige (seated) on Tuesday, aligns the state's goals with those of the Paris climate accord

Governor Ige (seated) said Hawaii is the first state to enact legislation implementing parts of the Paris Agreement

'Together, we can directly contribute to the global agenda of achieving a more resilient and sustainable island Earth,' Governor Ige (pictured, holding the bill) said

At a news conference, Ige said the islands are seeing the impacts of climate change first-hand, including tides getting higher, biodiversity shrinking, coral bleaching and coastlines eroding.

At least a dozen states including Hawaii have signed pledges to continue reducing fossil-fuel emissions despite Trump's decision.

Ige also signed a bill Tuesday to reduce carbon emissions in the agriculture sector.

In a statement, Ige said the state of Hawaii is 'committed to environmental stewardship' and is looking 'forward to working with other states to fight global climate change'.

'Together, we can directly contribute to the global agenda of achieving a more resilient and sustainable island Earth,' he said.

'The Hawaii State Legislature understands the importance of taking action, and I applaud its work this session to ensure that we continue to deliver the island Earth that we want to leave to our children.'

At a news conference, Ige (pictured) said the islands are seeing the impacts of climate change first-hand, including tides getting higher, biodiversity shrinking, coral bleaching and coastlines eroding

At least a dozen states including Hawaii (Ige pictured at Tuesday's bill signing) have signed pledges to continue reducing fossil-fuel emissions despite Trump's decision

Trump announced on Thursday (pictured above) that he would withdraw America from the 2015 pact because the country was bearing too much of the financial burden

Senator J Kalani English, the senate majority leader, who introduced SB 559, said the state law will give lawmakers a 'legal basis to continue adaption and mitigation strategies' for the state, 'despite the Federal government's withdrawal from the treaty'.

Additionally, Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell and representatives for Hawaii Island Mayor Harry Kim, Maui Mayor Alan Arakawa, and Kauai Mayor Bernard Carvalho all signed a statement declaring their commitment to supporting the Paris Agreement.

Last week, several state governors and more than 1,400 mayors across the US pledged to uphold the guidelines set forth in the Paris Accord.
Lawyers have sent a letter to President Donald Trump demanding he unblock certain Twitter users because the practice violates the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

Trump's @realDonaldTrump account recently blocked a number of accounts that replied to his tweets with commentary that criticized, mocked or disagreed with his actions.

Twitter users are unable to see or respond to tweets from accounts that block them.

The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University in New York said in its letter that the blocking suppressed speech in a public forum protected by the Constitution.

The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University has written a letter to President Trump demanding that he unblocks Twitter users, including Holly O'Reilly, who tweeted a gif of Trump with Pope Francis (pictured above)

The letter claims that Trump has violated the First Amendment rights of the users he has blocked because his account on Twitter represents a 'public forum'

The letter said Trump or his aides blocked the accounts @AynRandPaulRyan and @joepabike, belonging to songwriter Holly O'Reilly and professional cyclist and author Joseph M. Papp, respectively.

O'Reilly was blocked on May 28 after posting a brief animated clip of Pope Francis appearing uncomfortable during a meeting with Trump with a caption, 'this is pretty much how the whole world sees you,' the letter said.

Papp learned he was blocked on June 4 after responding to a Trump tweet by labeling the president a '#fake leader.'

Comedy writer Nick Jack Pappas, tweeting from the account @Pappiness, was also blocked by the president.

Though only two users are named in the letter, others - including Amanda Guinzburg, pictured above - have tweeted about being banned by the president

In the letter, addressed to the president as well as the White House counsel, press secretary and director of social media, Trump's Twitter account is compared to 'open city council meetings'. Pictured above, an excerpt from the letter

He claimed he was blocked for tweeting: 'Trump is right. The government should protect the people. That's why the courts are protecting us from him.'

Another user, the writer Amanda Guinzburg (@Guinz), celebrated being blocked by Trump. Asked what she had tweeted at the president to be blocked, she replied: 'mostly facts'.

Alex Abdo, the Knight First Amendment Institute's senior staff attorney, likened Twitter to a modern form of town hall meeting or public comment periods for government agency proposals, both venues where American law requires even-handed treatment of speech.

The institutes letter explains that Trump's blocking of users 'violates the First Amendment', adding: 'When the government makes a space available to the public at large for the purpose of expressive activity, it creates a public forum from which it may not constitutionally exclude individuals on the basis of viewpoint.'

Cyclist Joe Papp one of the two tweeters named in the letter. He claimed he was blocked by Trump for calling the president a '#fake leader'. Above, he attacks Trump after his blocking

Eric Goldman, a Santa Clara University law professor who focuses on internet law, said that previous cases involving politicians blocking users on Facebook supported the Knight Institute's position.

If the institute should sue, Trump could claim his @realDonaldTrump account is for personal use and separate from his official duties as president, Goldman said. But he called that defense 'laughable.'

Trump also has a presidential @POTUS Twitter account. The Knight Institute said its arguments would apply with 'equal force' to both accounts.

Trump's Twitter use has drawn intense media attention for his unvarnished commentary about his agenda and attacks on critics.

Trump also has a presidential @POTUS Twitter account, and the Knight Institute said its arguments would apply with 'equal force' to that account as well. Above, another Twitter user blocked by Trump

In another excerpt from the letter, the institute writes that the users were blocked from viewing Trump's account because they had 'disagreed with or ridiculed' him

His tweets are often retweeted tens of thousands of times, and can shape the news cycle.

Legal experts have said his tweets may directly affect policy.

A chain of postings about his travel ban may hamper his administration's defense in courts.

The accounts are just two of several that have been blocked by Trump or his aides, Abdo said.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment. Twitter Inc said it had no comment.
A ten-year-old orangutan has been returned to the rainforests of West Borneo after six years in rehabilitation.

Mimi was brought to the International Animal Rescue (IAR) rehabilitation centre in Ketapang, Indonesia, in May 2011 after being confiscated from illegal pet traders along with another baby called Momo.

Tragically, their mothers had been killed and the infants were waiting to be sold to animal traffickers and smuggled out of Indonesia.

Ten-year-old Mimi has been returned to the rainforests of West Borneo after spending six years in rehabilitation

Mimi (left in 2011) was brought to the International Animal Rescue (IAR) rehabilitation centre in Ketapang, Indonesia, in May 2011 after being confiscated from illegal pet traders along with another baby called Momo (right)

Their mothers had been killed and the infants were kept in appalling conditions (pictured above) while waiting to be sold to animal traffickers and smuggled out of Indonesia

Mimi and Momo were being kept in appalling conditions at the back of a house, in a tiny cage overlooking a sewer in the town of Sintang.

They were both suffering from severe malnutrition and Mimi was nearly hairless.

The orangutans clung constantly to each other and screamed whenever they were pulled apart.

But the pair quickly adapted to their new surroundings at IAR's centre as workers looked after them.

In 2013, Momo suddenly died from an infection, leaving Mimi without her closest friend.

In 2013, Momo suddenly died from an infection, leaving Mimi without her closest friend as she continued to rehabilitate

Eventually Mimi was moved to a pre-release island where her behaviour was monitored to assess her progress before being finally deemed ready for release into the Bukit Baka Bukit Raya National Park. The journey from IAR's rehabilitation centre to the National Park took more than 40 hours by car

The team continued their journey by boat for an hour and a half and then trekked for six hours through the thick forest of the park

International Animal Rescue carry Mimi through Bukit Baka Bukit Raya National Park ahead of her release

Eventually Mimi was moved to a pre-release island where her behaviour was monitored to assess her progress before being finally deemed ready for release into the Bukit Baka Bukit Raya National Park.

The journey from IAR's rehabilitation centre to the National Park took more than 40 hours by car before the team continued their journey by boat for an hour and a half and then trekked for six hours through the thick forest of the park.

Within minutes of being released, Mimi immediately started to climb nearby trees and began foraging.

The team continue to monitor Mimi's progress in the wild and are tasked with monitoring the orangutan's movements, activities, and the types of food that she eats.

Within minutes of being released, Mimi immediately started to climb nearby trees and began foraging

The team continue to monitor Mimi's progress in the wild and are tasked with monitoring the orangutan's movements, activities, and the types of food that she eats

Dr Adi Irawan, Operational Manager of IAR Indonesia, said: 'The orangutan monitoring team do an outstanding job

This is done to ensure the orangutans are truly able to survive in the real forest.

Dr Adi Irawan, Operational Manager of IAR Indonesia, said: 'The orangutan monitoring team do an outstanding job.

'The team members live in a camp in the forest, waking early in the morning and only returning to the lodge when the sun has gone down.

'They follow the orangutans for almost 14 hours a day and we're very pleased to see their passion and concern for the survival of the orangutans.

'We believe their presence will ensure that the released orangutans survive and live as nature intended.'
A man disguised himself in a burka in order to lure an 11-year-old boy whom he then raped and strangled to death, according to police in Abu Dhabi.

The accused was aware that the boy would not accompany him if he knew he was a man, the Gulf News reported.

The suspect, a Pakistani immigrant to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, is said to be known to the family of the victim, whose father is Pakistani and mother is Russian.

In disguise: A suspect in the rape and murder of an 11-year-old boy appears in a photograph released by Abu Dhabi police. The Pakistani immigrant is accused of donning a burka in order to fool the boy into following him, knowing he would not follow a man

He is accused of raping the boy and strangling him to death with a rope after picking him up from Ramadan prayers at a mosque.

Azan Majid Janjua was reported missing last week after failing to come home from the mosque.

He was later found by air-conditioning technicians on the roof of the building where he lived.

He was reportedly found partially unclothed with his Quran lying beside him.

Lured to his death: Azan Majid Janjua

The suspect was arrested within 48 hours of the discovery of the body, police said, after forensic evidence linked him to the crime.

They declined to give any further details about the suspect or the evidence incriminating him.

The murdered boy's father, Dr Majid Janjua, 38, told the local news site that his son was not in the habit of going off with strangers.

Scene of the crime: Azan was found dead on the rooftop of the building where he lived, half-naked and with his Quran lying beside him

Happier times: Azan lived in the Gulf state with his father, a Pakistani doctor

'He never went outside without our permission,' said Dr Janjua. 'It is fate; Allah's decision. We have to accept it.'

The boy's mother is understood not to live in the Gulf state but was visiting at the time of the incident, which took place in the first week of the Islamic holy month Ramadan.

It is fate; Allah's decision. We have to accept it.

Dr Janjua revealed that his son was enthusiastic about his religion and had been in high spirits on the day he was killed.

'He woke up early and had suhour with us. We went for Fajr prayers at the masjid and he was in a very happy state of mind,' he said.

If found guilty, the accused man could face death by firing squad, which is a possible sentence for those convicted of murder and rape in the United Arab Emirates.

However, death sentences are rarely handed down, and those that are handed down are often commuted to life in prison.
A choir sang Elvis Presley classic 'Can't help falling in love' as a mother and son who were murdered in their own home were laid to rest in the same coffin at an emotional funeral service today.

Tracey Wilkinson and her 13-year-old son Pierce, nicknamed 'Pippin', from Stourbridge, West Midlands were killed on March 30 in an attack which left husband and father Peter, 47, seriously injured.

Daughter Lydia Wilkinson, 18, who was away at Bristol University at the time, read out a poignant eulogy to her mother and brother at the service where family and friends said their final farewells.

Mr Wilkinson and his daughter paid tribute to their lost loved ones and on a card wrote 'We love you so much, you will forever be in our heart and souls. You're so beautiful, fly high. Until we meet again, love forever.'

Mourners gathered at St Mary's Church in Oldswinford, West Midlands, today for the funeral of Tracey Wilkinson, 50, and her son Pierce, 13

The mother and son, pictured, were murdered in their own home in Stourbridge earlier this year after a stabbing attack

Father Peter Wilkinson, left, 47, survived being stabbed six times during the same attack, and attended the service with daughter Lydia, 18, left, who paid an emotional tribute to her mother and brother

Mourners were left in tears listening to Miss Wilkinson pay tribute to her mother and brother.

They said she talked about how close the family had been and had regularly gathered to watch films together.

Miss Wilkinson said her brother and mother had been 'as close as a mother and son could be and shared a true bond of love that could never be broken.'

She told more than 300 mourners how her 'gorgeous' mother, a champion ballroom dancer, had 'a beautiful soul' and was her 'best friend'.

Miss Wilkinson said: 'My mum was gorgeous, not only in terms of looks and fashion but she had a beautiful soul. She was an inspiration.'

The pair would go shopping as her mother had a sharp eye for fashion and had been jokingly once told 'you could make a sack look like a Dior gown'.

The student added: 'I still cannot believe my closest friend has been taken from me.'

Of her little brother, whom she affectionately called 'Pippin', she recalled his 'infectious' laugh and said: 'He was simply the best brother I could ask for.'

She remembered him as a film buff enjoying Carry On, Star Wars and Lord of the Rings movies and recalled how his intelligence made her think 'he was destined to be an engineer'.

Miss Wilkinson added: 'He was a wonderful friend and I still fail to believe he has left me.'

In a heart-wrenching tribute, she said: 'He'll always be my baby brother, and I'll never forget the fantastic times we had together. I'm so proud of my happy family. My dad and I will miss them for the rest of our lives.'

Miss Wilkinson and her father were comforted by the vicar, pictured, at the service, which Mr Wilkinson previously said he wanted to be 'uplifting'

Rev Stephen Agnew called on those gathered to remember two 'wonderful' people, 'rather than allow the memories to be tarnished by the horror of what ended their lives.

'Love will ultimately triumph, even though there are times when that seems a very long way from where we are.'

Dozens of pupils in uniform from Redhill School, which Pierce attended, were led by their teachers into the church past eight greyhounds from the Retired Greyhound Trust where the family adopted their pair from.

The ceremony at St Mary's Church opened with a performance by the Kidderminster Male Choir followed by a rendition of Elvis Presley's Can't Help Falling in Love.

Pierce's favourite song, Hooked on a Feeling by Blue Suede, was then played as family and friends left the church.

Another tribute left to Pierce from his grandmother said: 'To my golden boy missed every day. Love you lots and love you more every day.'

Sisters tribute to her gorgeous mother with a beautiful soul and fantastic baby brother who was destined to be an engineer Lydia Wilkinson, 18, gave a moving eulogy to her mother and brother at their funeral today. She said: 'My mum was gorgeous, not only in terms of looks and fashion but she had a beautiful soul. She was an inspiration. 'My mother had a sharp eye for fashion and she was once told she could make a sack look like a Dior gown. 'I still cannot believe my closest friend has been taken from me.' On her brother Pierce, whom she called Pippin, she said: 'He was simply the best brother I could ask for. 'He was a film buff who enjoyed Carry On, Star Wars and Lord of the Rings movies and he was so intelligent he was destined to be an engineer. 'He was a wonderful friend and I still fail to believe he has left me. 'He'll always be my baby brother, and I'll never forget the fantastic times we had together. I'm so proud of my happy family. My dad and I will miss them for the rest of our lives.' Advertisement

Miss Wilkinson wore a blue-and-white striped summer dress - the colours of the family's home team West Bromwich Albion - as her mum and brother were laid to rest.

One mourner said: "Lydia and Peter have been each other's rocks through all of this. The funeral service was simply beautiful."

Roy Wiffen, who had know Mrs Wilkinson and her husband for 20 years, said the mother and son had died in a 'callous and cowardly act'.

He said: 'We all know why we're here, we all know that we shouldn't be here and would not be here but for a callous and cowardly act.

'We're missing two wonderful people taken from us far too soon. Tracey, in the prime of her life, and Pierce just beginning his.

'It won't bring them back, it won't make things better, but, for now, we wait for justice.'

Family and friends were seen carrying the coffins, pictured, into the church shortly before 11am this morning

Family and friends arrived at the church to be greeted by eight greyhounds from the Retired Greyhound Trust, where the Wilkinsons adopted a pair from

Police closed the road for the hearses and mini buses which transported close relatives to the church down an extremely narrow road.

Following the fifty minute service, teachers hugged students overwhelmed with emotion as they exited the church behind family and friends.

A group of five; who are friends of the family; said: 'It was an incredibly good service and very emotional. How Lydia said what she did was amazing and extremely moving.

'The whole service just showed what a lovely family they were and especially close, they had always done everything together.'

Some guests were aware that a shared coffin for the mother and son had been arranged but others were surprised.

A friend of the family added: 'I thought that was a really lovely touch and a true testament to their love for one another.'

The order of service, pictured, featured pictures of the pair while the funeral featured some of their favourite music

Church official Richard Hall said: 'It ran very smoothly and was packed.

'I thought it was a lovely touch with the school being here, they behaved impeccably which I let the head teacher know.

'Lydia spoke very well, calm and collectedly. She held her emotions in really well when speaking about her mother and brother respectively.

'She talked about the things they used to do together like watch films. You could gather from that what a lovely and close family they were.'

It comes after Mr Wilkinson, who survived six stab wounds, said he wanted the pair to have an 'uplifting funeral'.

Speaking earlier this year he said: 'Pierce was taken so young so it is not a celebration.

'They would have wanted people to be thinking of them, not necessarily mourning them.

'Black is not compulsory. Just because we want the funeral to be uplifting and not a dark ceremony.'

The ceremony at St Mary's Church opened with a performance by the Kidderminster Male Choir followed by a rendition of Elvis Presley's Can't Help Falling in Love

Flowers, right, with messages of sympathy were also left at the service, paying tribute to Mrs Wilkinson, left, and her son

Mr Wilkinson, managing director at safety barrier firm Hill & Smith, also previously admitted he was struggling to come to terms with the loss but added his daughter had provided 'invaluable support'.

He said: 'I'm existing. I still get very emotional about it. Day to day I am getting through to hopefully a brighter place in the future.

'She [Lydia] has been a massive support. She is very strong. She was told to expect the worst so finding out I was going to live was an uplifting point for her.'

Aaron Barley, 23 and of no fixed address, has admitted to attempting to murder Peter.

He is also charged with the murders of Pierce and Tracey, but is yet to enter a plea.

Barley has been remanded in custody until a further hearing on July 19. His trial is expected to begin before a High Court judge on October 3.
A 21-year-old man who was charged with recklessly destroying the gravestones of 68 deceased people, including babies, may avoid jail entirely.

Nassem Raad and an accomplice desecrated the tombstones at Rockwood Cemetery, west of Sydney, in 2015 and caused $50,250 worth of damage.

Despite being found guilty while fiercely maintaining his innocence, Mr Raad may serve his sentence under strict supervision in the community, Nine News reports.

Nassem Raad (pictured) was found guilty of destroying 68 grave sites at a Sydney cemetary

Photos of the tombstones Mr Raad and his accomplice destroyed showed them toppled over and smashed (pictured)

Mr Raad destroyed headstones and smashed crosses and candles while on his needless path of destruction at the sprawling necropolis.

Of the 68 headstones he and his friend destroyed, most were from the the Greek and Ukranian sections, and many were babies.

Photos of the damage show elaborate tombstones toppled over and ornaments smashed across dozens of grave sites.

A caretaker at the time said Greek Orthodox Christians who visited relative's graves every day were 'deeply distressed' by the damage.

Mr Raad destroyed headstones and smashed crosses and candles while on his needless path of destruction at the sprawling necropolis

Many of the tombstones that were destroyed at Rockwood Cemetery belonged to babies

The man told Nine News reporters outside court: 'I didn't do anything.'

Magistrate Eve Wynhausen told the court Mr Raad had shown 'no remorse' and continues to deny causing any of the damage.

The prosecution expressed a desire to have Mr Raad pay the thousands of dollars back to Rockwood Cemetery, but the man - who is a tree lopper - has little means of quickly paying off the debt.

An intensive corrections order assessment will take place to determine if Mr Raad should spend time in jail.

The matter will return to court for sentencing on July 19.
Residents in north-central China have been left shocked after seeing what they thought was a floating city.

A 25-second clip shows a transparent shape of tall buildings in the sky with clear structures.

The scene appeared following a hailstorm on June 6 in Wuzhong City.

Footage emerged showing a reflection of distant building in the sky in north-central China

WHAT IS A FATA MORGANA? A Fata Morgana is a type of mirage that distort distance objects, and can be can be seen on land or sea. It's caused when the sun heats up the atmosphere above the land or oceans, which creates a gradient of temperatures. The air close to the surface is relatively cool and above that are layers of warmer air. When light hits a boundary between two layers of the atmosphere that are different temperatures  and as a result different densities  it bends and travels at a different angle. Our brain assumes that light travels in a straight paths , so when it bends, we think the object is where it would be if the light's path runs straight. Advertisement

According to Pear, the video was taken in Wuzhong city, Ningxia autonomous region.

Web users quickly identified the scene as mirage, or Fata Morgana, an optical phenomenon in which a displaced object is reflected in the sky, land or sea.

Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region Meteorological Bureau recorded a rainfall of over 100mm and issued a hailstorm warning signal in the afternoon on June 6.

Residents were shocked to see the scene in the sky.

It is not known where the reflected buildings are from.

There is no official statement from the meteorological bureau confirming the cause of the scene.

Earlier this year, blurry images of skyscrapers appeared from the clouds in southern China and local meteorological experts claimed it was caused by radiation fog.

Mirage? The footage was shot after a heavy hailstorm in the area, creating an optical illusion

Li Dongyang, the deputy director of Yueyang Meteorological Bureau, told Xinhua that the fog occurs when the ground cools, causing the moisture in the air to condense.

In 2015, a floating city was spotted in southeastern China. Meteorologist explained it as a sign of Fata Morgana.

However, a Youtube channel Paranormal Crucible speculated it was caused by 'Project Blue Beam' test, a test by Nasa to develop holographic image.
There was no forensic evidence to link Fernando Paulino with the brutal murder of his ex-wife in Melbourne because he allegedly planned it that way.

The defence argues there are gaping holes in the case against Paulino, 55, who is accused of murdering his 49-year-old former wife Teresa Mancuso in 2013.

The flight attendant was found stabbed to death in the garage of her parents' Reservoir home on July 15, 2013.

The defence argues there are gaping holes in the case against Paulino, 55, (pictured) who is accused of murdering his 49-year-old former wife Teresa Mancuso in 2013

There is no forensic evidence tying Paulino to his ex-wife's murder, but that's because he made sure there was none, the prosecution says.

'He was hardly going to be sitting around in blood-stained clothing,' prosecutor Andrew Tinney SC told the jury in his closing address in the Victorian Supreme Court on Wednesday.

'The absence of any forensic evidence linking him to the crime is completely unsurprising.

'This was a well-planned murder.'

There is no forensic evidence tying Paulino to his ex-wife's (pictured) murder, but that's because he made sure there was none, the prosecution says

Mr Tinney said the prosecution case was a strong one, even if it was circumstantial.

Various witnesses, including the couple's two sons, have given evidence about how Paulino repeatedly threatened Ms Mancuso's life, stalked her, insulted her and made nuisance phone calls in the lead-up to her death.

With family court proceedings under way, he also became increasingly angry she would benefit from the sale of their matrimonial home and two factories.

'The accused hated her with an absolute passion,' Mr Tinney said.

Paulino had told at least two people he wanted to make his ex-wife 'suffer' and had threatened to kill her in graphic fashion, the prosecutor said.

'It's a picture of a vindictive, hateful, vengeful man who was driven by his powerful feelings of hatred to carry out this terrible crime.'

When police told Paulino his wife had died, he did not ask how, the court heard.

The flight attendant (pictured right) was stabbed at least 16 times in the chest, abdomen and back, and suffered blunt force trauma to the head

The flight attendant was stabbed at least 16 times in the chest, abdomen and back, and suffered blunt force trauma to the head.

'The accused didn't ask any direct question at all about what happened to her - 'how did she pass away?',' Mr Tinney said.

'He had no need to ask police what happened to Teresa because he knew.'

Counsel for Paulino, Dermot Dann QC, said the case against his client was not a strong one.

'There are just too many missing pieces of the puzzle,' he said in his closing address.

'His position is, he had nothing to do with Teresa's death.'

Mr Dann will continue his closing before Justice Kevin Bell on Thursday.
Keir Starmer was left scrambling today after he hailed legislation to help security services track terror suspects - only to be told Jeremy Corbyn failed to vote for it.

The shadow Brexit secretary struggled as he was grilled about Labour's support for cracking down on violent extremists in the wake of the attacks on London and Manchester.

Sir Keir, who has heavily criticised the veteran left-wing leader in the past, argued on ITV's Good Morning Britain that the party had been in favour of the Investigatory Powers Bill last year.

The legislation boosted the ability of the intelligence agencies to track communications between suspected terrorists.

Presenters Susanna Reid and Piers Morgan repeatedly challenged Sir Keir over whether Mr Corbyn had voted for the Investigatory Powers Bill

The shadow Brexit secretary struggled today as he was grilled about Labour's previous support for cracking down on violent extremists in the wake of the attacks on London and Manchester

'Last year, we had the Investigatory Powers Bill, which was a bill bringing together all the powers of the security intelligence services in terms of surveillance and everything that they do,' he said.

'I led the Labour Party on that. And we supported that bill.'

But presenters Susanna Reid and Piers Morgan repeatedly challenged him over whether Mr Corbyn had taken part in the Commons division.

Sir Keir said Labour had imposed a three-line whip on the vote - meaning that all of its MPs were obliged to back the bill.

'As far as I know, Jeremy voted. Certainly the Labour Party had a three line whip on it, and I led for that on it and we worked with the Prime Minister,' he said.

Still seeking an answer, Reid said: 'Youd want to know if your leader had voted for it though wouldnt you?'

Sir Keir replied: 'He was the leader of the party who imposed a three line whip on it.'

she had received confirmation that Mr Corbyn had not voted.

'According to my brief, Jeremy Corbyn was absent from the vote,' she said.

Sir Keir said: 'Well I mean I dont know. You know better than I do. I havent gone through the voting lists.'

Reid told him: 'It's not massively encouraging is it? The one thing you cited as evidence of Jeremy Corbyn actually promoting anything which might toughen terror laws was actually a thing he couldnt be bothered to turn up and vote for.'

LABOUR OPPOSES MAY'S VOW TO GET TOUGHER ON TERROR Labour today vowed to oppose Theresa May's bid to toughen Britain's terror defences by easing human rights laws. The PM has also pledged to impose tougher restrictions on would-be jihadis who are known to pose a threat but cannot be prosecuted. Her plans include doubling maximum detention periods to 28 days, while she also wants universities to do more to flush out potential terrorists. But shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer made clear that Labour would not back such moves - accusing the PM of trying to distract from questions over the handling of intelligence about the London and Manchester attackers. Mrs May has said she wants changes to make it easier for the authorities to deport foreign terrorist suspects, and to look at the possibility of longer sentences for terrorism offences and restrictions on suspects' freedom of movement even where there is not enough evidence to prosecute them in court. She was the Home Secretary who finally managed to deport radical cleric Abu Qatada to Jordan after more than a decade of wrangling over whether fears over his alleged terror connections trumped his human rights. Advertisement

The shadow Brexit secretary tried to shrug of the row, saying that he represented the Labour Party position.

But Morgan broke in: 'The one example, Keir Starmer, that you chose to illustrate him not voting against terror legislation, actually it turned out he didn't vote in favour of terror legislation. So you get our point that we do not feel very comforted by this.

He added: 'Jeremy hasnt supported any terrorism legislation ever by the look of it.'

Labour claimed Mr Corbyn had another engagement at the time of the vote and was 'paired' off with a Tory MP. The bill passed by 444 votes to 69.

International Development Secretary Priti Patel said: 'Kier Starmer has unwittingly highlighted what Labour are desperate to hide: Jeremy Corbyn's record of undermining the safety and security of Britain.

'Corbyn has boasted about voting against every piece of anti-terrorist legislation in the past thirty years, he has sided with Britain's enemies and he has shared platforms with speakers who espouse hatred and views that have no place in our society.

'The first duty of a Prime Minister is to keep the country safe and act in the national interest, it's simply not good enough to refuse to give the police the powers they need or to go missing in action like his shadow home secretary Diane Abbott.'

The bruising exchanges came as Labour vowed to oppose Theresa May's bid to toughen Britain's terror defences by easing human rights laws.

The PM has also pledged to impose tougher restrictions on would-be jihadis who are known to pose a threat but cannot be prosecuted.

Her plans include doubling maximum detention periods to 28 days, while she also wants universities to do more to flush out potential terrorists.

But Sir Keir Starmer made clear thatLabour would not back such moves - accusing the PM of trying to distract from questions over the handling of intelligence about the London and Manchester attackers.

Mrs May has said she wants changes to make it easier for the authorities to deport foreign terrorist suspects, and to look at the possibility of longer sentences for terrorism offences and restrictions on suspects' freedom of movement even where there is not enough evidence to prosecute them in court.

She was the Home Secretary who finally managed to deport radical cleric Abu Qatada to Jordan after more than a decade of wrangling over whether fears over his alleged terror connections trumped his human rights.

'If human rights laws stop us from doing that, then we will change those laws,' she told LBC radio. 'And the reason for that is - as I say - enough is enough.

'I think people recognise, as the threat has evolved, that things need to change in our response.'

Piers Morgan told Sir Keir: 'Jeremy hasnt supported any terrorism legislation ever by the look of it.'

Jeremy Corbyn did not turn up to the vote on the Investigatory Powers Bill, despite Labour imposing a three line whip to support it. The party claimed he had another engagement last year and was 'paired' with another MP

The PM, pictured in Norwich today, has pledged to impose tougher restrictions on would-be jihadis who are known to pose a threat but cannot be prosecuted

CORBYN'S SHAMEFUL RECORD OF OPPOSING TERRORISM LAWS 1984 Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act - Outlawed terrorist groups in Northern Ireland. 1985 Updating the Prevention of Terrorism Act 1974 - Empowered police to question suspects travelling between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. 1989 Elected Authorities (Northern Ireland) Act 1989 - Obliges election candidates in Northern Ireland to renounce terrorism. 1989 Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act - Outlawed support for IRA. 1989 Security Service Act - Gave a formal legal basis to the Security Service for the first time. 1991 Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) - Enhances powers for police to search sites for weapons. 1996 Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act - Restricted possession of suspect items. 1998 Criminal Justice (Terrorism and Conspiracy) Act - Toughened sentences for being a member of terror group in the wake of the Omagh bombing. 2000 Terrorism Act - Gave police stronger powers including stop and search. 2001 The Terrorism Act 2000 (Proscribed Organisations) (Amendment) Order - Statutory instrument banning Al Qaeda. 2001 Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act - Introduced indefinite detention without charge for suspects who cannot be deported, after 9/11. 2005 Prevention of Terrorism Act - Created control orders for terror suspects. 2006 Terrorism Act - Outlawed 'glorification' of terror after 7/7 attack. 2008 Counter-Terrorism Act - Restricted information about Armed Forces. 2011 Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Act - Replaced control orders with looser TPIMS. 2013 Justice and Security Act - Secret court hearings on matters of national security. 2014 Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act - Granted police emergency access to phone and internet records. Advertisement

Senior British Army officer warns that Jeremy Corbyn has been 'too tolerant' of extremism in a devastating eve of election attack on the Labour leader

Colonel Tim Collins has torn into Jeremy Corbyn's record on extremism

A senior British officer celebrated as a hero in the Iraq War today accused Jeremy Corbyn of being 'too tolerant' of extremism.

Colonel Tim Collins, famed for his rousing eve-of-battle speech to his men in 2003, has torn into the Labour leader over his record on terrorism on the eve of the election.

In a devastating assessment, he Mr Corbyn 'anti-colonialist impulses' have led him to act as a 'dangerous loudspeaker for many terrorist and extremist groups' masquerading as political movements.

He attacked Mr Corbyn for attempting to link the UK's 'war on terror' with attacks on the streets of Britain in a controversial speech in the wake of the Manchester terror attack.

And Colonel Collins accused the Labour leader of giving 'succour and encouragement' to the IRA during their decades long bombing and shooting campaign.

His intervention comes after Theresa May vowed a fresh crackdown on terrorism in the wake of the three attacks on Britain. The PM promised to tear up human rights laws if that is what it takes to keep Britain safe.

In a piece written for the The Daily Mail, Colonel Collins said: 'Theresa May is right.

'The UK has been far too tolerant of Islamist extremism - and we need look no further than Jeremy Corbyn for proof of this.

'The Labour leader was dangerously wrong when he stated that the UKs foreign interventions, many of which I served in, are the cause of home-grown terror.

'They are merely an excuse, utilised cunningly by hardened Islamist recruiters who were in the UK long before they began and will remain long after.

'But then Corbyns anti-colonialist impulses have long led him to act as a dangerous loudspeaker for many terrorist and extremist groups masquerading as political movements, from the IRA, to the Palestinian militants Hamas and the PLO, to the Eygpt-grown Muslim Brotherhood.'

He said that Britain must learn the lessons from The Troubles in Northern Ireland if it is to defeat ISIS and 'confront the conveyor belt of terror'.

Colonel Tim Collins said the Labour leader had given 'succour and encouragement' to the IRA

And he said that community policing by officers who can spot the early warning signs of radicalisation is crucial to stamping out the threat.

This should be twinned with recruiting informants who can act as the eyes and ears of the authorities within communities, he added.

But he warned that in his many decades as an MP, Mr Corbyn has encouraged extremists by feeding them excuses.

He wrote: 'In the meantime, let us not forget that Jeremy Corbyn gave succour and encouragement to the IRA during their armed campaign, which included obliterating the centre of Manchester with a one-tonne bomb in 1996.

'He has form for supporting subversive causes.

'Since he is already repeating the Muslim Brotherhood mantra that it is the UK foreign policy that is at fault rather that this murderous ideology, how soon will we have to wait before he publicly endorses them?

'As Britain heads to the polls, we have to face the facts: it was not well-meaning sympathisers that brought Sinn Fein to the negotiating table, it was the IRAs near destruction, by police Special Branch.

'And that is the answer to Islamist extremists too.'

His intervention comes just hours before Britain goes to the polls in what Mrs May has descries as the most important election in her lifetime.

Concerns over terrorism and security have come to the forefront in the dramatic closing stages of the campaign after Britain was hit by three deadly terror attacks in a matter of months.
Nicola Sturgeon dropped a bombshell on the election campaign last night when she claimed Labour's Scottish leader secretly told her they should back a second independence referendum after Brexit.

The shock revelation was furiously denied by Kezia Dugdale who accused Scotland's First Minister of lying.

But it will fuel fears that if the Tories do not win a majority tomorrow then Jeremy Corbyn could sign off on a second referendum as part of a deal with the SNP.

The pair clashed as they went head to head in a televised leaders debate on the Scottish channel STV last night.

Nicola Sturgeon , pictured in the debate last night, claimed Kezia Dugdale said she would drop her opposition to a second Scottish independence vote after Brexit

Miss Sturgeon made the bombshell revelation in a televised leaders debate aired last night

Turning to Miss Dugdale, Miss Sturgeon said: 'You and I spoke the day after the EU referendum and you told me then that you thought the change with Brexit meant that Labour should stop opposing a referendum.

'Now you have changed you mind but why should everybody else in Scotland?'

The Scottish Labour leader later hit out at the claim on Twitter accusing the SNP leader of lying.

She wrote: 'Any suggestion that I ever said to Sturgeon that I'd change Labour's position on #indyref2 is a categoric lie + shows how desperate she is.'

The Scottish Labour leader hit back at the claim and accused Scotland's First Minister of lying in a tweet sent after the televised leaders debate which was screened last night

But the comments were seized upon by Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson.

She asked Miss Sturgeon: 'Did you just tell people you had a private conversation with Kez Dugdale last June where she said she was going to drop Labour's opposition to independence?'

The SNP leader replied: 'She said that she thought Brexit changed everything and she didn't think Labour could any longer go on opposing a second independence referendum.'

Miss Dugdale later insisted it was 'nonsense' to suggest she would do anything other than fight for Scotland to remain within the UK.

She said: 'We did speak on the phone after the European Union referendum result to share how devastated we were about it because of the damage it was going to do to Scotland's economy and to future jobs.

The shock remarks were seized upon by Ruth Davidson, who has campaigned against another independence referendum and wants to protect the union of the United Kingdom

The four leaders repeatedly clashed over a second independence referendum during the 90 minute debate aired just 36 hours before the nation goes to the polls in the General Election

'The idea that I would do anything other than protect the United Kingdom and fight for us to remain within the UK is absolute nonsense.'

Labour has been hit by chaos over whether it would oppose a second independence referendum.

Mr Corbyn has said another vote would be 'absolutely fine' - although he later furiously backtracked and insisted he does not want another one.

His initial comment put him at odds with Miss Dugdale who has made her opposition to another referendum the centerpiece of her campaign north of the border.

Scotland voted to stay in the United Kingdom in 2014 in a referendum described by the SNP at the time as a once in a lifetime vote.

But they have said that Brexit gives them a fresh cause to break up the union of the UK.

Last night's revelation will fuel fears that if Mr Corbyn is propped up in government by the SNP he would approve their request for another vote.
All three of Britain's main political parties have pulled their campaign adverts from YouTube after the clips were promoted alongside videos of Islamic extremists.

The Tories, Labour and Liberal Democrats all confirmed the move after their adverts were filmed playing before videos of hardline preachers and clerics on the social media site.

Among them are a Saudi cleric called Khaled al-Rashed who appears to call for Allah to 'eliminate' no-Muslims, as well as an ISIS supporter.

But despite the three parties claiming they had suspended campaign ads, one for a Lib Dem candidate appeared before an al-Rashed video when MailOnline researched it this morning.

All three of Britain's main political parties have pulled their campaign adverts from YouTube after the clips were promoted alongside videos of Islamic extremists (pictured)

Among them are a Saudi cleric called Khaled al-Rashed (pictured) who appears to call for Allah to 'eliminate' no-Muslims

All three of Britain's main political parties have pulled their campaign adverts from YouTube after the clips were promoted alongside videos of Islamic extremists

It comes after another election advert featuring Tim Farron, the Lib Dem leader, was pictured above an ISIS supporter's YouTube account, according to The Times.

The profile has since been removed, but by then the user had already posted 2,000 videos of pro-jihadist content.

A Labour party spokesman said: 'As with other political parties during this election, The Labour Party advertises via YouTube to voters across the country.

'The Labour party has made every effort to ensure our content is not served onto inappropriate or offensive content on YouTube.

'We will be raising this issue with YouTube and have paused all adverts until we are satisfied Google have taken steps to make sure this does not happen again.'

The Lib Dems have also confirmed to MailOnline that they have suspended adverts with YouTube.

A spokesman for the party said: 'YouTube has taken responsibility for this error. Like all political parties we advertise online to reach our supporters.

'We place strict exclusion instructions on the kind of content that we wish to advertise alongside.'

Conservative party chairman Patrick McLoughlin is said to have written to Google to ask why adverts featuring Theresa May had appeared next to inappropriate content, while a spokesman for the Conservatives said: 'We have suspended our campaign advertising on YouTube indefinitely until we receive suitable assurances that this will not happen again.'

Companies including Mastercard, Marriott hotels, Etihad Airways and Deliveroo have already suspended advertising with YouTube after their clips were also found on an ISIS supporter's channel.

One election advert featuring Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrat leader, was pictured above an Islamic State supporter's YouTube account

The Tories, Labour and Lib Dems confirmed the move after their adverts were filmed playing before videos of hardline preachers and clerics on the social media site

Last night Labour's Yvette Cooper told the Times: 'What the hell are Google doing?

'They need to remove these dangerous extremists from YouTube immediately.'

A spokesman from YouTube said: 'We never want terrorists to have a voice, or spread extremist material on our services and we take our role in tackling extremism online very seriously.

'We employ thousands of people and invest hundreds of millions of pounds to fight abuse on our platform, in partnership with government, law enforcement and NGOs.

'We are working urgently to further improve how we deal with content that violates our policies and the law. These are complicated and challenging problems, but we are committed to doing better and being part of a lasting solution.

'Weve been conducting an extensive review of our advertising policies - and in recent weeks have made significant changes that give brands more control over where their ads appear.

'While no system will be 100% perfect, we believe these steps will further safeguard our advertisers brands and we will continue to improve our controls over time.'
Saudi Arabia has censored an advert featuring a white woman in a swimsuit by Photoshopping a beach ball over her because the photo breaks the country's strict Sharia laws about women covering their skin in public.

A photo circulating on social media shows a man and three children, all wearing black t-shirts, playing in a swimming pool with a Winnie the Pooh beach ball in the corner.

But the original version, made to advertise pools made by US company Intex, shows a woman lounging by the edge of the pool instead of the inflatable ball.

Everyone in the pool is wearing bathing suits in the unedited version of the photo.

Saudi Arabia has censored an advert featuring a white woman in a swimsuit by Photoshopping a beach ball over her

The original version, made to advertise pools made by US company Intex, shows a woman lounging by the edge of the pool

The photo was changed by Saudi hardware retailer Saco, who have edited other ads to publicise their Ramadan sale. The women appear to have been edited out completely in other adverts.

Women in Saudi Arabia, which is governed by strict Sharia law and has previously come under fire for its gender segregation laws, are required to cover up their face and body when they are out in public.

Human Rights groups were outraged when Saudi Arabia was elected to the UN women's rights commission in April.

It became one of 45 nations on a panel 'promoting women's rights, documenting the reality of women's lives throughout the world, and shaping global standards on gender equality and the empowerment of women'.

Saudi Arabia not only has a state policy of gender segregation but also requires every woman to have 'a male guardian who makes all critical decisions on her behalf,' said Hillel Neuer, director of UN Watch.

The photo was changed by Saudi hardware retailer Saco, who have edited other ads to publicise their Ramadan sale

The women appear to have been edited out completely in other adverts

He added: 'Saudi Arabia also bans women from driving cars... Electing Saudi Arabia to protect women's rights is like making an arsonist into the town fire chief... It's absurd.'

Rothna Begum, a women's rights researcher at HRW, told the Independent the decision to re-elect the nation was 'shocking'.

She pointed out that women cannot drive - or even apply for a driving licence - in the Muslim country.

Only last week, an activist who was detained for 73 days for openly defying Saudi Arabia's female driving ban was arrested again.

Loujain al-Hathloul, 27, was arrested on June 4 at King Fahd International Airport in Dammam, Saudi Arabia, though authorities have not revealed why she was taken into custody.

Hathloul has been denied access to a lawyer or her family, human rights group Amnesty International said.

Last week, Loujain al-Hathloul, an activist who was detained for 73 days for openly defying Saudi Arabia 's female driving ban was arrested again

Women in Saudi Arabia, which is governed by strict Sharia law, are required to cover up their face and body when they are out in public (file photo)

She is expected to be taken to Riyadh later on Tuesday, where she will be interrogated by prosecutors, according to BBC.

Amnesty International has called for her immediate release, saying her 'continuous harassment' was 'absurd and unjustifiable'.

'It appears she is being targeted once again because of her peaceful work as a human rights defender speaking out for women's rights,' Amnesty International's Samah Hadid said.
A Russian businessman buried alive in a Moscow graveyard called his brother to beg him to pay his debt and get him freed.

Khikmet Salaev, 41, was kidnapped following a financial dispute over an alleged 30 million rouble (410,000) debt, according to Russian media.

He was then dragged to the edge of Lyubertsy cemetery and buried alive - face down - but allowed to keep his mobile phone.

Buried alive: Russian businessman Khikmet Salaev, left, was kidnapped and buried in a 'grave' until his brother Ismail, right, rescued him

From beneath the ground, covered in soil, he managed to phone his 36-year-old brother Ismail 'literally from his grave', reported Moskovsky Komsomolets.

His brother was reported to have paid 1.2 million roubles towards the debt (16,430), and also handed over his BMW 535 car to Khikmet's 'business partners'.

Only after this did the kidnappers give the location of the grave, enabling Ismail to dig his brother out.

Grave ordeal: The hole where Salaev was buried for a terrifying four hours before he managed to phone his brother, who came and dug him out

The man was buried for four hours, it was reported.

Ismail rushed the businessman to hospital where he was found to have suffered several broken ribs from being dragged to the grave by his captors.

The Russian media has warned of a return to the gangsterism of the 1990s in the roller coaster years after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

No horsing around: Businessman Salaev is understood to have fallen into trouble over a 410,000 debt to business associates

Scene of the crime: The Moscow cemetery where Salaev was buried alive, as seen on Russian TV
Wreckage of a Burmese military plane which disappeared on Wednesday with 120 people on board has been found in the ocean.

Pieces of the aircraft were found floating in the Andaman Sea hours after it vanished from radar while travelling from the southern city of Myeik to Yangon.

More than a dozen children were believed to be among the passengers on the plane, which included dozens of soldiers and their relatives.

The commander in chief's office said 106 passengers were on board with 14 crew.

The wreckage of a Burmese military plane which disappeared while flying from Myeik to Yangon has been found in the ocean 100 miles from the city of Dawei

The plane, which was carrying 120 people including more than a dozen children, was a Chinese-made Y-8F-200 (file image)

'Now they have found pieces of the damaged plane in the sea 136 miles (218 km) away from Dawei city,' said Naing Lin Zaw, a tourism official in Myeik.

Navy vessels are continuing to search the area for survivors.

The commander in chief's office said the plane lost contact at about 1:35 pm (07:05 GMT) off Myanmar's southern coast.

Four naval ships and two air force planes were sent to search for the plane, which was flying at an altitude of more than 18,000 feet (5,486 metres).

It is monsoon season in Myanmar but there were no reports of bad weather at the time the plane went missing.

The plane was a Y-8F-200 four-engine turboprop, a Chinese-made model still commonly used by Myanmar's military for transporting cargo.

The army said it was delivered in March last year and had logged 809 flying hours.

The former military junta bought many of the aircraft from Myanmar's giant neighbour during their 50 years of isolated rule, when they were squeezed by Western sanctions.

A former executive at the aviation ministry said many of the aircraft in Myanmar's fleet were old and decrepit.

'Myanmar air force has very bad safety performance,' he said, asking to remain nameless.

Myanmar's military fleet has a chequered recent history of plane crashes.

All five crew died when an air force plane burst into flames soon after taking off from the capital Naypyidaw in February last year.

Three army officers were killed in June when their Mi-2 helicopter crashed into a hillside and burst into flames in south-central Bago.

A military source said the plane, which was carrying relatives of servicemen to the capital (pictured) likely suffered a technical fault

A surge in demand for air travel as Myanmar opens up has stretched the impoverished country's aviation infrastructure, in particular in remote airports.

Commercial jets have also suffered frequent incidents.

The worst in recent years was in 2012 when an Air Bagan jet crash-landed in thick fog and burst into flames short of the runway at Heho airport, killing one passenger and a motorcyclist on the ground.

Ships and planes have been scrambled to search for the plane, which was flying over the Andaman Sea when it went missing, the statement added.

An airport source said the plane was carrying 105 passengers and 11 crew when it took off.

The passengers were believed to mainly be family members of military men based in the coastal region.

'We think it was a technical failure. Weather is fine there,' the source told AFP, asking not to be named, adding there was no news of the plane so far.
Sir Nicholas Wall (pictured), a former top judge, was founded hanged in his room in a care home

A former leading family judge killed himself in a care home after he 'lost the will to live' following his dementia diagnosis, an inquest heard.

Sir Nicholas Wall was found hanged in his room at Emily Jackson House care home in Sevenoaks, Kent, on February 17.

The 71-year-old suffered for several years from a rare neurological disease called fronto temporal lobe dementia that had only recently been diagnosed.

Before his diagnosis he was president of the Family Division but had to retire on health grounds in December 2012.

An inquest at the Archbishop's Palace in Maidstone heard he had lost hope of ever getting better and had pushed his loved ones away amid his belief death was imminent.

Two letters were found following the discovery of Sir Nicholas's body by a nurse who noticed he was not in bed during a routine check just before 2am.

Acting Detective Sergeant Robert Grieve, of Kent Police, said one letter addressed to Sir Nicholas's wife Lady Wall stated he believed any hope of returning home had gone.

Mr Grieve told the inquest: 'Sir Wall said he had lost the will to live and he will not get better and that Lady Wall had a life to live.

'He said his time is over, it's nobody's fault and he respects what she has done for him.'

The 71-year-old suffered for several years from a rare neurological disease called fronto temporal lobe dementia that had only recently been diagnosed

In another letter, written before he was diagnosed, the Cambridge graduate said he had 'no hope for the future'.

It added that he valued the help and support of his family but he believed his condition would deteriorate and he would lose his memory.

The last known sighting of Sir Nicholas was the night before his body was discovered when a nurse visited his room with a cup of tea and his medication.

The nurse told police that during that visit, Sir Nicholas made a joke to her about being late and smiled, and that she later left him as he read a book, Mr Grieve told the inquest.

His cause of death was recorded as suspension, with a secondary cause listed as fronto temporal dementia.

There was no signs of a disturbance and the death was declared non-suspicious, Mr Grieve said.

FRONTO TEMPERAL LOBE DEMENTIA Sir Nicholas had fronto-temporal dementia, also known as Pick's disease Fronto-temporal dementia, also known as Pick's disease, affects the parts of the brain that control behaviour, emotions and language. The symptoms - including impulsivity, loss of inhibitions and irrationality - usually develop gradually and get increasingly worse over a number of years. The early symptoms can vary between different people with the condition, depending on which part of the brain is affected. Many people will initially have either behavioural or language problems. As the condition progresses, most people experience problems in both of these areas, as well as additional physical problems and thinking difficulties. Eventually, the condition spreads to affect most brain functions. Pick's disease is a significant cause of dementia in younger people, mainly between the age of 45 and 65. Advertisement

Fronto-temporal dementia, also known as Pick's disease, affects the parts of the brain that control behaviour, emotions and language.

It affects part of the brain connected to control behaviour and emotions plus the understanding of words.

Recording a conclusion of suicide, north west Kent senior coroner Roger Hatch said it was clear from the discovery of the note that it was Sir Nicholas's intention to take his own life.

The Family Law Bar Association (FLBA), said following his death that Sir Nicholas had 'continued to struggle with ill health' since his retirement in 2012.

He was described as 'a compassionate judge who thought and cared deeply about the outcome of his cases'.

Sir Nicholas was called to the Bar in 1969 and appointed Queen's Counsel in 1988. He became a recorder in 1990 and then a judge of the High Court Family Division in April 1993.

Sir Nicholas worked at the Employment Appeal Tribunal and then the Administrative Court before being promoted to the Court of Appeal in January 2004.

In 2011, he said a 'live-in lovers' law would protect women in long-term relationships from losing their home and income in a break-up with their partner.

He also said couples should be allowed to divorce without having to blame one or the other, adding he could 'see no good arguments against no-fault divorce'.

Lady Wall declined to comment following the inquest.

In a statement following his death, Sir Nicholas's relatives said: 'Sir Nicholas took his own life having suffered for several years from a rare neurological disease called fronto temporal lobe dementia that had only recently been diagnosed.'

A death notice published in The Times newspaper was accompanied by a moving verse from Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem Tithonus.

For confidential support call the Samaritans on 116123, visit a local Samaritans branch or see www.samaritans.org for details.
This is the bizarre moment an extremely calm man dragged a three-foot snake out of a gas pump in Georgia.

In the video, the man can be seen wandering up to the pump and sticking his hand - wrapped in a shirt - inside as shocked onlookers scream in fear.

But Brandon Radke, the man of the hour at the Cowboys Shell Gas Station in Cedartown, continues to coolly pull the reptile out of its strange hiding place.

After spending a short while yanking the snake out and cajoling it with the gas nozzle, he eventually succeeds - and proceeds to walk off with the animal nonchalantly.

Cool customer Brandon Radke can be seen searching around inside the pump (left) before getting hold of it and yanking it out (right)

In true heroic fashion, he told WSBTV what he did was 'no big deal'.

He added: 'Once you grab behind the head it can't really reach around and get you.

'I love snakes.'

Customers at the station, which is on Highway 278, said they were baffled by what Radke did.

Brandon Radke, who wrapped a shirt around his hand in case he was bitten, then walked off to the woods to free the snake

One, Pete Gault, said he would 'have a heart attack' if he'd stumbled upon the critter, which is thought to be a non-venomous rat snake.

Radke later revealed he had wrapped the shirt around his arm just in case the snake tried to bite him.

He added that he used the nozzle to the turn the creature around, making it easier to grab it from behind its head.
A dispute about repairs to an old Ford station wagon allegedly led to the murder of a Victorian man whose body has never been found.

Christopher Trotter is on trial in the Supreme Court, having pleaded not guilty to 46-year-old Keith Foggin's murder.

The prosecution alleges Trotter murdered Mr Foggin, then disposed of his body at an unknown location, after a dispute over repairs he was doing to Mr Foggin's 1979 XD Ford station wagon.

The last time Foggin was seen was at Trotter's motor repairs workshop in Bacchus Marsh on September 24, 2015, when he arrived to collect the car to take it to Queensland, Crown prosecutor Daryl Brown said.

The prosecution alleges Trotter murdered Mr Foggin, (pictured) then disposed of his body at an unknown location, after a dispute over repairs he was doing to Mr Foggin's 1979 XD Ford station wagon

His phones and bank account have not been used since.

Mr Brown said in the lead-up to his disappearance, Mr Foggin complained he had paid thousands of dollars for repairs but had never seen his car in Trotter's workshop since delivering it there.

Trotter allegedly always had an excuse about why Foggin couldn't see or collect it.

Mr Foggin told family and friends he was determined to get his station wagon back to drive it on a trip to Queensland, Mr Brown said.

He had told them if he didn't get it this time, he would call the police or 'smack the accused in the mouth'.

When he had not been in contact for days, Mr Foggin's daughter reported him missing.

Trotter was interviewed and told police there had been no animosity between him and Mr Foggin.

He admitted later to police he was in no position to give the car to Foggin as it was in pieces across his workshop.

Mr Brown alleged that when Trotter was forced to come clean and tell Foggin his car was not ready to take to Queensland, after stringing him along for months, it caused a confrontation between them.

The prosecution alleges Trotter murdered Mr Foggin, then disposed of his body at an unknown location, after a dispute over repairs he was doing to Mr Foggin's 1979 XD Ford station wagon (not pictured)

He said Trotter lost his temper and lashed out with the intention to kill or seriously injure Mr Foggin.

However, defence barrister Neill Hutton denied his client was involved in Mr Foggin's death or disappearance.

He questioned whether Mr Foggin was really dead given there was no body or crime scene, or just keeping his distance from friends and relatives.

If he had indeed been killed, he suggested someone else may have been involved.

Mr Hutton also questioned whether a car which had been bought for $500 was a motive to kill.

'We're not talking about a show car,' he said.
A third man has been arrested over the murder of a Chinese man at a makeshift Buddhist temple after he was allegedly shot while playing peacemaker in an argument between two Asian groups.

Ying Luo, 31, has been charged over the alleged shooting of Qin Wu, 37, at the 'temple' which is known to double as a meeting point for drug dealers in Sydney's west, according to The Daily Telegraph.

Police allege Mr Wu was killed on February 1 while trying to intervene in an argument between his friend and two other men who have also been charged.

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A third man has been arrested for the murder of Qin Wu (pictured) at a makeshift Buddhist temple after he was allegedly shot while playing peacemaker in an argument between two Asian groups

Dramatic bodycam footage has captured the moment a suspect was arrested in a raid for the murder of Mr Wu

Luo - who was already in jail on drugs charges - is accused of running out of the Guildford temple during gunfire before returning and shooting himself in the leg with a handgun.

He was arrested on Wednesday morning after investigations and charged with one count of murder and one of attempted murder and was refused bail.

Ian Fan, 45, and Jaiyu Liu, 35, were arrested on Monday and also charged.

Dramatic bodycam footage captured the moment heavily armed police raided Fan's Croydon flat to make one of the arrests.

'Get on the ground. Get your hands behind your back,' officers are heard screaming at the half-dressed suspect repeatedly in video footage of the raid

Ian Fan, 45, charged in relation to the murder of Mr Wu is led away by police on Monday

'Get on the ground. Get your hands behind your back,' officers are heard screaming at the half-dressed suspect repeatedly in video footage of the raid.

He is later seen handcuffed and being escorted into custody by police, dressed in a a pair of shorts and a black shirt.

Detective Sergeant Justin Moynihan said investigations in the circumstances surrounding Mr Wu's murder are continuing.

'We are alleging that Qin was shot when he intervened during an argument between his friend and the men charged today,' Det Sgt Moynihan said.

The three men arrested over Mr Wu's death have both been charged with one count of murder and attempted murder

The Sydney 'temple' - and alleged drug dealing hotspot - has been linked to two brutal murders in the past three years

Forensic evidence indicated another person may have been shot in the gunfire, but despite searching hospitals across Sydney police did not find Mr Luo.

The Guildford house was also the scene of an unrelated murder three years ago, NSW Police have confirmed.

In 2014, Zhen Fang fatally stabbed Ting Huang, 25, whose decomposing body was found wrapped in a doona in a car boot near Rookwood cemetery in Lidcombe.

Fang, 38, was sentenced in March to at least 14 years behind bars for the frenzied knife attack.

The Guildford house (above) was also the scene of an unrelated murder three years ago

Mr Wu was killed at a makeshift Buddhist temple in Sydney's southwest on February 1
A builder was taken to hospital after being impaled by a bar in southern China.

The two-metre-long (6.6ft) steel bar fell into his right eye while he was working at a house under renovation.

Video uploaded on June 4, shows firefighters clipping the bar before sending the man to the hospital.

The builder was carried by other workers after being impaled by a two-metre-long rod in China

According to Pear, the incident took place at a construction site where villagers were rebuilding homes on June 3.

It is reported to be in Lingao county, China's Hainan Province.

Footage shows a long steel bar, measured at around two-metres-long (6.6ft), stuck into one of the worker's right eye.

Other workers can be seen positioning the injured man and one of them holding the bar at the stairs.

The bar is thick as a little finger.

Firefighters arrived and shorten the rod by a power cutter (left). The injured man was carried on to the ambulance shortly after (right)

The man was sent to hospital but it is unknown if he suffered any long-lasting damages

Local firefighters arrived on the scene and shortened the bar using a power cutter.

They asked the others not to look at it while cutting the rod.

The man, who has not been identified, was taken away by paramedics afterwards.

It is unclear whether the incident has left any permanent damage to the man's eye.
Mohammed Sadiq, 81, from Cardiff, faces 15 counts of sex offences

An imam has been accused of 15 counts of sexual offences after a primary school pupil claimed he abused her every day she visited his mosque.

Mohammed Sadiq, 81, who taught at the Madina Mosque in Cardiff, for more than three decades, denies the charges at Cardiff Crown Court.

The allegations against him involve four victims who were allegedly indecently and sexually assaulted during 1996 and 2006.

Giving evidence on day two of the trial, the second alleged victim told the court: 'I was embarrassed and scared and felt like it was only happening to me.'

The woman, who is the subject of counts five, six and seven on the indictment, was part way through her primary school education at the time.

In an interview conducted in June last year, she told police she used to go to Sadiq's mosque every day after school.

She said: 'The teacher would touch me inappropriately.'

The alleged victim said there were between 20 and 30 boys and girls in her class, with the youngest aged five.

She explained Sadiq was the only adult in the room and the class was 'not very controlled', with children running around.

The woman told the jury the teacher would call children to sit at his desk and read passages from the Koran in Arabic to him.

Pictured: The Madina Mosque in Cardiff, Wales, where Sadiq taught for over 30 years

But she added: 'I don't think he really paid any attention to our reading.'

She said she would sit at his desk for up to an hour at a time and the defendant would put his hand down her top.

The complainant said: 'The first time, I did not expect it to happen, but it just did. After that, he would call my name to read and I knew it was going to happen at some point, because it happened every day.'

She added: 'He was quite forceful - he would squeeze the area and it was quite painful.

'I used to carry on with what I was doing and wait for it to be over. I was young and didn't know how to react.'

Pictured: Sadiq outside Cardiff Crown Court, where he faces eight counts of indecent assault and seven of sexual assault

She said she felt unable to tell anyone what was going on. She told the jury: 'I never really said anything to anyone at the time because I was unsure what was going on at that age, but it just felt wrong.

'I didn't know how to explain it to anybody. It is difficult to go to your family and say this is happening. I thought if I said something to someone, they might think I was weird.'

Sadiq from Cardiff denies eight counts of indecent assault and seven of sexual assault.

The allegations involve four complainants and relate to the period between 1996 and 2006.

The trial continues.
Coco Johnsen, pictured with Maher, believes he made the comment for 'shock value'

The former girlfriend of HBO host Bill Maher - who prompted outrage when he used the expression house n***** last week - has suggested he used racial slurs while with her, it is claimed.

Coco Johnsen, who dated the 61-year-old for around 18 months, claimed he used the word for 'shock value', and did not expect the backlash he has received.

She did not explicitly say he had used the word around her, instead telling TMZ that people using the word should use 'other vocabulary'.

When their relationship ended in 2004, Johnsen filed a lawsuit alleging that he broke promises to marry her, shook her at a party and used 'degrading' racial language.

The case was thrown out by a Superior Court judge in 2005.

Johnsen told TMZ: 'I just think that anyone who uses the n-word is very insensitive, just use another word next time, I'm sure that he's learned his lesson.

'Maybe a little sensitivity training at the NAACP could do some use.'

Asked if Maher had used the word around her, she simply said: 'I've heard the word many times.'

Johnsen defended Maher against charges of racism, saying she felt he used the word for 'shock value'.

Johnsen said: 'I wouldn't say he's racist, I just think he's using the word like a comedian would use, for some shock value and I don't think that he believed he would get the backlash that he has gotten'

When pressed if it was from Maher, she said: 'I don't want to say exactly from where, but I've heard it many times and I think anyone that uses that word, you need to use other vocabulary.

'It's so condescending and sad that someone so intelligent could stoop to that level.'

But she defended him against charges of racism, saying she felt he used the word for 'shock value'.

Johnsen said: 'I wouldn't say he's racist, I just think he's using the word like a comedian would use, for some shock value and I don't think that he believed he would get the backlash that he has gotten.'

HBO revealed the Emmy-award winning host of their longest-running late-night program is going nowhere, despite days of social media outrage and calls for the network to fire him.

His upcoming comedy tour will also go ahead as planned, with none of the venues making the decision to pull out, TMZ has reported.

Staff at the 'majority' of venues are reported to have told TMZ they were either not aware of the televised incident - or were looking into it.

Bill Maher will continue to host his 'Real Time' show and go on tour despite using a racial slur on air last week (above in February at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party)

Maher's upcoming comedy tour will go ahead as planned, with none of the venues making the decision to pull out, TMZ has reported

Maher will be back on set this Friday for the normally scheduled taping of 'Real Time', an HBO executive confirmed to DailyMail.com.

The outspoken 61-year-old has not yet commented on the network's decision to keep him on, having done his best to keep a low profile in the wake of the incident.

Chance the Rapper was one of the first to comment on the situation, writing on Twitter early Saturday: 'Please @HBO Do Not Air Another Episode Of Real Time With Bill Maher.'

It is not all good news though, as Maher has already lost one of his scheduled guests for the program on Friday.

The host's good friend, comedian-turned-politician Al Franken, announced on Monday that he will not be appearing on the show.

'Senator Franken believes that what Bill Maher said was inappropriate and offensive, which is why he made the decision not to appear on the next episode of 'Real Time,'' said Franken's office in a statement on Monday.

'He was glad to see Bill, who the Senator considers to be a good friend, apologize and express sincere regret for his comment.'

Pejorative: The popular host of the long-running late-night program outraged many when he used the phrase 'house n*****' on his most recent episode last Friday (above last Friday on 'Real Time' with Senator Ben Sasse)

Response: 'Please @HBO Do Not Air Another Episode Of Real Time With Bill Maher,' wrote Chance the Rapper (above)

TMZ was the first to report that Maher would be returning to work on Friday.

HBO has decided however to remove the racial slur from the episode so that it will not seen in any subsequent airings, with the phrase coming just minutes into the program.

It happened during Maher's sit-down interview that appears at the top of each episode, and last Friday that one-on-one was with Republican Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska.

The men argued a bit and chatted as is standard custom, but then things took a turn following a rather innocuous comment.

At one point during their exchange, Senator Sasse invited Maher back to his home state by saying: 'We'd love to have you work in the fields with us.'

Maher immediately fired back: 'Work in the fields? Senator, I'm a house n*****.'

The backlash was quick, with many in disbelief that Maher would utter such a pejorative term in the middle of his show.

In the studio, there were a few laughs but mostly groans from the audience, while Senator Sasse appeared incredibly uncomfortable.

'No, it's a joke,' explained Maher, which did little to change the mood.

Twitter meanwhile erupted as many began to attack Maher and the network, just four days after social media users launched what looked to be a successful campaign to have comedian Kathy Griffin fired from CNN.

Senator Sasse was the first to apologize for the exchange once the fallout began over the weekend, releasing a statement via a Twitter thread on his personal account.

'Am walking off a redeye from LAX. 3 reflections on @billmaher 1. I'm a 1st Amendment absolutist. Comedians get latitude to cross hard lines,' began Senator Sasse.

'But free speech comes with a responsibility to speak up when folks use that word. Me just cringing last night wasn't good enough.'

Senator Sasse went on to say: 'Here's what I wish I'd been quick enough to say in the moment: 'Hold up, why would you think it's OK to use that word?''

He then closed out by stating: 'The history of the n-word is an attack on universal human dignity. It's therefore an attack on the American Creed. Don't use it.'

Coulda. woulda, shoulda: In a Twitter thread on Saturday, Senator Ben Sasse wrote: ''Here's what I wish I'd been quick enough to say in the moment: 'Hold up, why would you think it's OK to use that word?''

Leading the pack: Deray Mckesson was one of the first to comment on the situation, writing on Friday: 'But really, @BillMaher has got to go. There are no explanations that make this acceptable'

Next up was HBO, who released a more formal statement soon after Senator Sasse's tweet storm.

'Bill Maher's comment last night was completely inexcusable and tasteless,' read the statement.

'We are removing his deeply offensive comment from any subsequent airings of the show.'

The network did not initially remove that portion of the interview, with the first repeat episode of the program last Friday still containing the slur when it aired at midnight.

Last, but not least, was Maher.

'Friday nights are always my worst night of sleep because I'm up reflecting on the things I should or shouldn't have said on my live show,' said Maher.

'Last night was a particularly long night as I regret the word I used in the banter of a live moment. The word was offensive and I regret saying it and am very sorry.'

Activist Deray Mckesson presented his argument for why HBO should fire Maher in a series of tweets on Saturday.

'There is no circumstance in which Bill Maher, as a rich wt man, would ever be implicated in the word like he pretends to be. He knows this,' wrote Mckkesson.

He followed that tweet up by stating: 'Bill Maher would like us to believe that his use of the n-word is in joking solidarity. But w/ whom? He was talking about us, not w/ us.'

He was also one of the first to comment on the situation, writing on Friday: 'But really, @BillMaher has got to go. There are no explanations that make this acceptable.'

The odd couple: 'The word was offensive and I regret saying it and am very sorry,' said Maher in a statement apologizing on Saturday (Maher and Milo Yiannopoulos)

The decision to keep Maher is a bit less complicated than the one CNN had to make with Griffin, or Fox News had to make back in April after Bill O'Reilly's sexual harassment scandal.

Since HBO is funded by paid subscribers, there is no threat of advertisers boycotting Maher's show like they had done with O'Reilly and could have done with Griffin on the network's New Year's Eve broadcast.

Maher of course is no stranger to controversy, and frequently targets Republicans, conservatives and Catholics on his program.

He is also one of the few hosts to welcome a diverse group of political guests on each week.

One of those guests earlier this year was Milo Yiannopoulos in another episode that gained headlines.

The former Breitbart writer used his platform om the show to launch into a a five-minute rant against transgender people, saying that he did not want them in the bathroom with little girls.

He then attacked the intelligence of the panel and one of the guest's, at which point the normally docile and calm Larry Wilmore told the bejeweled Brit: 'Go f*** yourself.'

Many expressed their outrage at that time too on social media, wondering why Maher let Yiannopoulos on the show.
Pro Corbyn activists unfurled a giant poster showing Theresa May with star of David earrings which has been slammed as 'anti-Semitic' by critics.

The 100 foot banner shows the Prime Minister's face with the earrings - which symbolise the Jewish faith.

A picture of Mrs May's face is surrounded by words attacking the Conservatives, including a reference to the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which paved the way for establishment of the Jewish state of Israel.

Labour activists Nima Matserson and Matt Viney hung the poster up on the railings of the Bear Pit in Bristol yesterday morning - just two days before country goes to the polls in the General Election.

But it was condemned as 'nasty, bigoted and misguided' and sparked complaints.

The two men have been suspended form the Labour Party and the banner has been removed.

Nima Masterson and Matt Viney unfurled the giant poster in Bristol yesterday. Mr Masterson pictured left) insisted it was not meant to be anti-Semitic but intended as a criticism of the PM's foreign policy on Israel

A Jewish woman, who did not want to be named, told the Bristol Post that the poster made her 'sick'.

She said she had challenged the two men, Nima Matserson and Matt Viney, who put it up.

She said: 'It's huge, the size of a bus.

'I know it's a political banner, and I know it's anti-Theresa May, but why include the Star of David?

'I think it's anti-Semitic. I'm stunned that we, as a society, have gone back to this. I can't believe stuff I haven't heard of, or seen since I was a child is now happening again.

'It makes me sick.'

She added: 'I'm shocked. I just think it isn't healthy in the current climate where terrorists are promoting hatred.'

Gideon Falter, chairman of Campaign Against Antisemitism said: 'The poster uses the emblem of the Jewish religion in a way that can be interpreted to infer that Theresa May is under the control of Jews, which draws on antisemitic conspiracy myths.

'Of course those responsible for the poster may say that they meant nothing of that nature and intended only to criticise Israel.

'If that is the case then they should have found a less offensive way of doing so.

The anti Theresa May poster has been taken down after complaints it was anti-Semitic

The two activists Nima Matserson and Matt Viney punched the air as they showed off their bus-sized poster in Bristol yesterday morning

'It is outrageous that the banner was allowed to be put up and we are pleased that those behind it have recognised that it should be removed.'

Mr Masterson, one of the organisers who put up the banner, insisted it was not intended to be anti-Semitic.

He said the star of David earrings were included as a criticsm of Mrs May's policy on Israel.

He told the newspaper: 'It's not meant to be that at all. It's a tiny element of the whole banner.

'What we are doing with that symbol  it's an earring  is a reference to Theresa May's Government's relationship with Israel.

'It is a critique of her foreign policy, rather than against religion.

'I'm definitely not an anti-Semite. I have Jewish friends, and my half brother and sister are Jewish.

'This is about foreign policy.'

Mr Masterson was criticised for the poster, which was branded 'nasty, bigoted and misguided'

The banner has now been taken down by the protesters after it sparked a storm of controversy.

It bore a giant image of Mrs May in the earrings surrounded by words spelling out their criticisms of her - including claims she has been behind 'NHS cuts', 'arming despots' and 'causing ISIS'.

In contrast it has a big picture of Mr Corbyn opposite her along with an appeal for Britons to vote for Labour on June 8.

Mr Masterson took to Facebook to again deny that the poster was anti-Semitic  but he sparked a storm of criticism.

Richard Beach, a Jewish Labour Party member, said he was 'horrified' while Stephanie Munden posted: 'Of course it's anti-Semitic. Nasty, bigoted and misguided idiocy.'

Ariane Todes posted: 'Of course it is. Even if you claim to be criticising Tory foreign policy why only Israel? As for the old I'm definitely not an anti-Semite. I have Jewish friends, and my half brother and sister are Jewish' argument, either self-deceiving or stupid. Bad times...'

And Leanne Cohen write: 'Very anti-Semitic I know what you are. Shame on you. How dare you?'

A Labour Party spokesperson said: 'The Labour Party takes all allegations of anti-Semitic behaviour seriously.'
President Donald Trump called Qatar's emir Wednesday and offered his services as a mediator in a damaging feud between the emirate and its Gulf neighbors.

Trump's call to Qatari ruler Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, a key US ally, came a day after he accused the country of funding terror.

'The president offered to help the parties resolve their differences, including through a meeting at the White House if necessary,' Trump's office said after the call.

A Qatari official said Trump in the call had 'expressed readiness to find a solution to the diplomatic crisis in the Gulf, and stressed his keenness that the Gulf remains stable.'

President Donald Trump called Qatar's emir Wednesday and offered his services as a mediator in a damaging feud between the emirate and its Gulf neighbors. Trump (R) is seen shaking hands with Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani, in the Saudi capital Riyadh on May 21

Trump dove into the conflict yesterday in a series of tweets that accused Qatar of sponsoring terror

Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE and Bahrain announced on Monday they were cutting diplomatic ties and closing air, sea and land links with Qatar, giving Qataris within their borders two weeks to leave.

The four countries have suspended all flights to and from Qatar, pulled their ambassadors from Doha and ordered Qatari diplomats to leave.

Riyadh and its allies accuse Qatar of supporting extremist groups and of serving the interests of regional arch-rival Iran, claims Doha has strongly rejected.

It said Wednesday that a preliminary investigation had determined its state news agency was hacked.

An article that quoted Emir Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani as defending regional terror groups was not authorized by the Qatari government, it said.

'The Ministry said the investigation team confirmed that the piracy process had used high techniques and innovative methods by exploiting an electronic gap on the website of the Qatar News Agency,' the country's foreign ministry said in a statement.

US officials believe Russia was behind the fake news story - a charge it has denied.

The dispute between Qatar and its neighbors has sparked the worst diplomatic crisis in the Arab world in years and raised fears it will cause further instability in an already-volatile region.

Trump dove into the conflict yesterday in a series of tweets that accused Qatar of sponsoring terror.

'During my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology. Leaders pointed to Qatar  look!' he said.

An hour and a half later he said, 'So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off. They said they would take a hard line on funding...extremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism!'

He seemed to shift gears on Tuesday on his call.

'The President emphasized the importance of all countries in the region working together to prevent the financing of terrorist organizations and stop the promotion of extremist ideology,' the White House statement says.

The measures taken by Gulf countries against Qatar have seen dozens of flights cancelled and huge problems for Qatar Airways

The United Arab Emirates' state minister for foreign affairs Anwar Gargash on Wednesday accused Qatar of being 'the main champion of extremism and terrorism in the region'.

But he also said measures taken against Qatar this week by Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other Arab nations were not aimed at seeking new leadership in Doha.

'This is not about regime change -- this is about change of policy, change of approach,' Gargash told AFP in Dubai.

Kuwait is leading efforts to find a mediated solution.

Its emir, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, on Wednesday arrived in Doha, where he was received by his Qatari counterpart, Kuwait's official KUNA news agency said.

Earlier on Wednesday, he met Dubai's ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum and other senior UAE officials in Dubai, after talks the day before with King Salman in Saudi Arabia.

The Kuwaiti ruler played a pivotal role in mediating a compromise in a 2014 diplomatic dispute between Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Gulf states.

The United States, France and Russia have called for dialogue while Turkey has defended Qatar and said it would further 'develop' ties with Doha.

Saudi's King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud (R) and Kuwait's Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah arrive for a meeting in the Red Sea city of Jeddah on June 6, 2017

Turkey's parliament on Wednesday approved deploying troops to a Turkish base in Qatar under a previously agreed plan, in a move seen as a sign of support for Doha.

Trump waded into the dispute on Tuesday, but seemed to only muddy the waters. After first appearing to back the Saudi-led measures against Qatar on Twitter, he called for unity among Gulf Arab states.

Trump's Tuesday tweet -- in which he said 'all reference was pointing to Qatar' as a financer of extremism -- was especially surprising given Qatar's role as host of the largest US airbase in the Middle East.

Al-Udeid, located in the Qatari desert, is home to some 10,000 US troops and is a crucial hub in the fight against Islamic State group extremists in Syria and Iraq.

German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel accused the US president of fanning conflict in the Middle East and risking a 'new spiral in arms sales' with his remarks.

'Such a 'Trumpification' of relations in a region already susceptible to crises is particularly dangerous,' Gabriel said.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said Gulf countries still saw Qatar as a 'brother state'.

'But you have to be able to tell your friend or your brother when they are doing the right thing and when they are doing the wrong thing,' Jubeir said in a joint press conference with Gabriel.

Qatar hosts the largest US airbase in the region, which is crucial to the fight against Islamic State group jihadists

Qatar has said it is open to talks to end the crisis but has also accused its neighbors of impinging on its sovereignty.

In a sign of the potential risks to Qatar's economy, S&P Global Ratings cut Qatar's credit rating by one notch to AA- and put it on watch for further downgrades.

'There are numerous uncertainties regarding Qatar's response, the extent to which these measures will be imposed, and their longevity,' said the ratings agency.

Qatar has an independent streak that has often angered its neighbours, attracting criticism for hosting the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, and supporting Islamist rebels in Syria.

Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies may have felt emboldened to move against Qatar by Trump's visit last month to Riyadh, which saw the president clearly align US interests with the kingdom and lash out at Iran.

Riyadh has itself faced accusations of tolerating or even supporting extremists, in particular after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.

Of the 19 hijackers of planes used in the attacks, 15 came from Saudi Arabia, also the birthplace of Al-Qaeda founder and attack mastermind Osama bin Laden.
An autistic four-year-old was beaten, starved and kept in a closet by his mother and her boyfriend, it has been alleged.

Maloyd Gaines was so malnourished when his mother took him to hospital on March 22 doctors feared he would not survive.

The boy was 'sickly' thin, had black, swollen toes and clumps of his hair had been pulled out.

His mother Megan Schug and her boyfriend Issac 'Mike' Miller were charged with abusing him at their squalid home in Battle Creek, Michigan.

Megan Schug, 23, (pictured with two of her four children) is charged with abusing her four-year-old son Maloyd Gaines

Prosecutors say Schug and her boyfriend Issac 'Mike' Miller, 35, kept Maloyd in a closet and deprived him of food for up to two days at a time

Video courtesy of WWMT

He survived his injuries and his now being cared for by relatives.

Prosecutors say Schug and Miller tormented Maloyd by making him fight with his half-siblings who tore clumps out of his hair.

They say Miller, who is the father to two of Schug's four children, singled him out.

On Tuesday, the boy's mother wept in court as prosecutors described the condition her son was in when he was rescued.

She took him to hospital because he was having trouble staying awake and was not eating, they said.

Once doctors examined him, they say the abuse was clear and he was taken out of their care.

'He was very thin to the point he was very sickly. He had abrasions and cuts and rashes all over his body.

'His toes were blackened and swollen and his hands also were swollen,' Michael Zaleski, a Child Protection Services case worker who was called to the hospital, told the trial which was attended by The Detroit Free Press.

When Zaleski visited the home that night, he found there was no furniture except from a small couch, TV and TV stand and human waste littered the floors.

Once in custody, Maloyd's mother allegedly admitted locking him in a closet, sometimes overnight, for punishment.

When social workers visited the pair's home in Battle Creek, Michigan (above), it was bare except from a TV stand, TV and couch. They found human waste on the ground

Schug's mother Misty (left) wept after her arrest in March. The woman's sister Morgan (right) said she knew her nephew was being beaten

She told them she carried out the abuse at Miller's request because she was scared he would hurt her if she didn't.

'At nighttime, they would lock him in the closet and sometime in the morning open the closet,' Detective Ray Strunk said.

Schug said her boyfriend dictated the abuse and claims she went along with it because she was afraid of him

They deprived him from food for a day or two at a time and beat him with wooden slates when he refused to hold a crate as another form of punishment, the detective claimed.

Schug told police that despite her son's filthy condition, she was not allowed to bathe him unless Miller was present which she claimed was seldom.

Her only apparent attempt to treat him was to rub petroleum jelly on his wounds, the policeman said.

Miller and Schug are both charged with second degree child abuse. Neither has yet entered a plea and prosecutors intend to raise the charges to reflect the severity of the alleged abuse pending further witness testimony.

After her arrest in March, Schug's relatives tearfully told local media outlets that they feared for his well-being and had tried to remove him from the couple's care but were denied.

'I asked my sister, can I take my nephew, she said no. I knew he was being beat up by Mike,' Morgan Schug told WWMT.

She claimed to have seen him beating the boy with a switch. It's not clear whether she reported her concerns to police.

Schug will return to court on June 29. Miller's preliminary hearing is scheduled for June 15.

Their other children were also removed from their care.
Russian officials have angrily rejected allegations that Russian hackers breached Qatar's state news agency and planted a fake story that led to a split between Qatar and other Arab nations.

Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for President Vladimir Putin, today dismissed yesterday's CNN report containing the claim as 'yet another fake, another lie.'

Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Egypt and Yemen cut diplomatic ties with the tiny Gulf state, accusing Qatar of harboring extremists and backing Saudi Arabia's regional rival, Iran. Qatar has denied the allegations.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also dismissed CNN's report yesterday, saying it 'further undermined its reputation as an independent and objective media outlet.'

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, right, welcomes Minister of Foreign Affairs of Spain, Alfonso Dastis Quecedo prior to their meeting in Moscow, Russia

Denial: Vladimir Putin's spokesman has denied that Russia hacked the Qatari state news agency to create a rift between Arab nations

'CNN and some other media sit and wait for any kind of scandal ... to automatically and without any evidence blame it on Russia or Russian hackers,' he said at a news conference following his talks with Spanish Foreign Minister Alfonso Dastis.

Tensions between Qatar and Saudi Arabia - a Middle East heavyweight - bubbled to the surface two weeks ago when Qatar said its state-run news agency and its Twitter account were hacked to publish a fake story claiming the emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, had called Iran 'a regional and Islamic power that cannot be ignored.'

State-linked media in the region ignored Qatar's denial and continued to report the comments.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt blocked access to Al Jazeera and launched an aggressive campaign accusing Qatar of supporting terrorist groups like al-Qaida and the Islamic State, destabilizing the region and stabbing its allies in the back.

US president Donald Trump had suggested in tweets that he was responsible for the Arab nations cutting ties with Qatar

Putin had a telephone conversation with the emir of Qatar yesterday, urging dialogue.

Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said the allegations of Russian hacking weren't discussed.

Lavrov emphasized that 'it's important to settle any differences at a negotiating table to ease concerns that emerged and pool efforts in the fight against the main regional threat, terrorism.'

Andrei Krutskhikh, the Russian president's special envoy for cybersecurity, told the Interfax news agency that the CNN report contains 'zero evidence' that the Russian government was behind the news story.

Vladimir Dzhabarov, deputy chairman of the foreign affairs committee at the upper chamber of parliament, today dismissed the accusations as 'an attempt to push the US against Russia as key players in the Middle East.'

'The world has gone crazy,' Dzhabarov said. 'Whatever happens, there is a Russian trace there, the trace of Russian hackers.'
What the f**k is going on?

Sorry if my language offends.

Actually, Im not sorry at all.

WHAT THE F**K IS GOING ON?

Even before he'd been officially named we learned that one of the three London terrorists, Khuram Butt, had appeared on national TV last year in a documentary called The Jihadists Next Door.

Oh, and he was seen on camera by millions of Channel 4 viewers, unfurling an ISIS flag.

What worries me is that the woman most likely to win the election, Theresa May, has proven herself to be a disastrous defender of our national security, writes Piers Morgan

London Bridge ringleader Khuram Butt and another man who went on to become an Islamic State executioner were not the only two spouting extremist views on The Jihadis Next Door

I couldnt believe what I was watching.

What more could this despicable radicalised scumbag have done to signal his intentions to commit harm on this country?

He literally raised the ultimate warning flag of the most dangerous terror group the world has ever known.

Yet it transpires that there WAS one more obvious clue he could have given.

For today, we discover that another of his evil cohorts, Youssef Zaghba, informed authorities: Im going to be a terrorist!

Yes, he actually told them that.

Im not making this up.

Zaghba was stopped at Bologna Airport in Italy in March last year as he attempted to travel to Istanbul on a way one ticket that would lead him to Syria.

Asked about his intentions he replied: Im going to be a terrorist.

Concerned by his response, and his agitated manner, security staff immediately called police and he was blocked from flying.

ISIS propaganda videos were found on his phone and an investigation was launched.

But the Italians decided there was insufficient evidence to charge him.

He was given back his phone and passport and allowed to go on his merry little jihadist way.

Now its been reported that Italian intelligence officers sent a file on Zaghba to our own British security services.

They also listed him as a suspected foreign fighter on international databases including the EU-wide Schengen Information System that has details of wanted or missing people.

Yet our authorities did nothing to stop him from entering Britain so he could carry out mass murder.

Just as they did nothing to check out Butt and his jihadist pals once that documentary aired on Channel 4 last year.

Shockingly, it emerged today that neither the police nor MI5 made any formal request for footage from the makers of The Jihadis Next Door.

Terrorists: Khuram Butt, Rachid Redouane and Youssef Zaghba massacred seven people in a rampage which started on London Bridge on Saturday night

Police operated a cordon on the north side of London Bridge the day after Saturday's attack

Imagine that for a moment?

The people charged with our protection apparently had zero interest in seeing if there was anything suspicious or actionable on any of the many tens of hours of unused material from a documentary that specifically followed jihadis living in our midst.

Khuram Butt didnt just flaunt his ISIS sympathies on TV for all to see.

He was also reported several times for extremist behaviour by concerned members of the public.

A neighbour in East London called a police hotline after he tried to convert her son to Islam and when she confronted Butt in a local park, he said he was ready to do, in the name of Allah, what needs to be done, including killing my own mother.

Nobody called her back.

And he was reported to police and MI5 last July after threatening Dr Usama Hasan, of the anti-extremist think-tank Quilliam.

Butt was later arrested over the incident, but let off with a caution.

Kharum Butt verbally and physically assaulted me, Dr Hasan said. Its one thing when someone from the public reports an individual as a violent extremist, but when experts who are involved in deradicalising jihadists report them, a caution is not enough.

You think??????

The third London terrorist, pastry chef Rachid Redouane, was denied asylum in Britain in 2009, but sneaked in from Ireland, exposing yet another massive loophole in our already severely castigated immigration system.

There are said to be at least 23,000 other suspected jihadis like this hideous trio roaming Britain at the moment, many of them in London.

It is a terrifying thought.

There are many people and organisations that must be held accountable for the abject failure to deal with this crisis.

These include our intelligence agencies and law enforcement chiefs who should have picked up these killers, moderate Muslims and Imams who havent done nearly enough to root out the extremists; and internet giants like Facebook and Google who continue to allow them to spew their lethal filth online.

It also includes our elected officials.

When I interviewed London Mayor Sadiq Khan for Good Morning Britain yesterday, he didnt seem to have a clue about the movement of any of the jihadist suspects.

In particular, he didnt know where the 200 or so fighters known to have returned from Syria to London might be lurking or what they were doing.

Mr Khan, who keeps assuring us London is the safest city on earth, even as more bodies are being found in the river Thames four days after the latest attack, is very quick to abuse US President Donald Trump and call for HIM to be banned from Britain.

Yet he doesnt appear anywhere near as keen to ensure battle-scarred ISIS operatives are banned from coming in.

Sadiq Khan keeps assuring us London is the safest city on earth, even as more bodies are being found in the river Thames four days after the latest attack, writes Piers Morgan

Trump may not be everyones cup of tea, but I can promise you one thing: if he does come to the UK, he is not going to use vans to run over British citizens, chop them to pieces with knives, or blow them up as they leave pop concerts.

Then theres Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and his team.

Let me be very clear: I wouldnt trust Corbyn to keep this country remotely safe. His record in voting against all new terror legislation, his nauseating sucking up to terror groups in the past, and his openly stated refusal to ever use our nuclear deterrent if he ever had to, all make him a walking defence liability of epic proportions.

But as we head to election day tomorrow, most polls suggest Corbyn has less chance of becoming Prime Minister than me.

What worries me far more is that the woman most likely to win the election, Theresa May, has proven herself to be a disastrous defender of our national security.

First as Home Secretary and more recently as Prime Minister.

She is the one who slashed our police force by 20,000, thus directly harming our ability to gather vital intelligence on the ground from the communities where these jihadists live. Stop crying wolf! she arrogantly declared when they warned of dire consequences. Now the real wolves are at our door wreaking destruction.

She is the one who decimated our armed police numbers by over 1,500, thus removing from the front line of our defences the kind of brilliant expert rapid-response marksmen we saw in action last Saturday night.

She is the one who abandoned control orders that might have kept some kind of observational lid on these monsters.

She is the one who has now had three massive ISIS terror attacks happen on her brief watch as our nations leader.

She is the one now wanting us to believe that there is nobody better suited to deal with this clear and present danger than her.

How on earth could we have let this guy or possibly more through the net, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson demanded to know yesterday, about Kharum Butt. What happened?

Well, Ill tell you what happened, Foreign Secretary.

You and your government dropped the ball so badly that a whole load of your citizens got murdered and maimed.

Thats what happened.

And the person ultimately responsible for these failures was your boss.

She can now spout all the tough terror talk she likes, but I wouldnt trust Theresa May to protect me from an angry wasp, let alone an ISIS jihadi.
An Ohio woman was arrested on Monday after allegedly duct taping her 11-year-old son to a metal chair and then leaving him alone at home to go swimming with her six-year-old daughter.

Police found 32-year-old Susan Malysa swimming at the Boardman YMCA and arrested her on the spot, charging her with child endangerment.

She appeared in court the next day and tried to explain herself to the judge, before he stopped her - saying the hearing was not the time. She then post $10,000 bail. Her kids are now in the care of relatives.

Scroll down for video

Susan Malysa, 32 (pictured in court on Tuesday), was arrested on Monday for allegedly duct taping her 11-year-old son to a metal chair and then leaving him alone so she could take her six-year-old daughter swimming

Malysa (center) told her mother that the previous night her son (right) smeared feces on the walls and on stuffed animals

It was the boy's grandmother who found him tied up to the metal chair in the home's basement.

The unnamed grandmother told police that she grew worried for her grandson after she called her daughter and asked to take him to lunch. Malysa refused and then said she was going swimming, but that her son was not coming along.

The grandmother drove over to the family's home just after 11:30am and found the boy tied up to a metal chair in the basement, his legs taped to the chair, his hands taped together and his mouth shut with another piece of tape.

The worried grandmother found her grandson tied up to a metal chair in the basement after she called to ask to take him to lunch and Malysa refused

The tape was wrapped so tightly that the grandmother didn't cut him free, instead waiting for police to arrive so that they could do it safely.

When the duct tape was taken off, police discovered dark bruises on the boy's face and neck and rushed him to Akron Children's Hospital.

Video courtesy of WFMJ

The boy reportedly had not been tied up for long, but police say he was cold and shaking.

'He does appear to be okay. He has been released. He's in the care of relatives,' Detective-Sergeant Hillman said.

Malysa (pictured) was released on Tuesday after posting $10,000 bond and has been ordered to stay away from both of her children

Immediately after finding the boy, police went to the YMCA in Boardman where they found his mother swimming with her younger daughter.

She was taken into custody on the spot and charged with child endangering.

The boy's grandmother told police that her daughter told her the boy smeared feces on the walls and on stuffed animals the previous night.

It's unclear if duct-taping her son to the chair was a form of punishment.

The grandmother said that the boy has behavioral issues, but is in the boy scouts and appears to be an otherwise 'perfect child'. She said he often lies about what happens to him and may have caused the bruises on his face if he was upset.

The grandmother began to suspect that her daughter was abusing the boy when she tried to hire a counselor to help her grandson and her daughter refused to let the boy talk to the counselor alone.

A police report notes a previous report from April 2016 alleging that the child told a school counselor a woman had hit him with a hammer to discipline him.

The case was investigated and the child was put in the care of another relative for awhile, but Malysa was never charged. Police plan to reinvestigate the claims.

Malysa is due back in court next week.

According to Facebook, Malysa appears to be separated from her husband.
Youssef Zaghba's name was on the The Schengen Information System, a cross-European alert system

The police, MI5 and the UK border force missed at least 18 clear chances to tackle the three London Bridge jihadists raising even more serious questions about their ability to stop violent extremists.

MailOnline can reveal there were several opportunities to stop more than one of the terrorists getting into Britain in the first place - but the authorities failed to intervene.

Mastermind Khuram Butt was deemed a 'low priority' despite an aborted attempt to wage holy war in Syria, links to several notorious extremists and an appearance on national TV where he unfurled an ISIS-style flag in public.

Friends and worried parents say they reported him to the anti-terror hotline at least three times for extremist behaviour and trying to radicalise children.

The youngest attacker Youssef Zaghba, 22, was waved through at Stansted Airport in January despite Italian police flagging him as a potential terrorist on a Europe-wide warning system designed to alert passport control.

Terrorists: Khuram Butt, Rachid Redouane and Youssef Zaghba massacred seven people in a rampage which started on London Bridge on Saturday night - but the authorities misses many chances to disrupt them

Butt and his fellow murderers were shot dead inside Borough Market (pictured) and wore fake suicide vests as they ran down people with a white van and then stabbed and slashed people on Saturday night

His own mother even asked police in his native Italy to keep him in custody after he tried to fly to Syria and told officers: 'I'm going to be a terrorist'.

And failed asylum seeker Rachid Redouane, 30, was not deported after ten years in the UK despite being caught with a fake passport and living illegally under a false name.

He then married a British woman in Ireland and used it as a 'backdoor' to return to the UK and carry out the devastating attack on Saturday, killing eight and maiming 48 by ramming crowds with a rented van and slashing people with knives.

Their attack, the third in three months in Britain claiming 34 lives, has revealed a series of incredible blunders by the authorities before they unleashed mass murder.

Here are the chances they missed:

The ringleader: Khuram Butt

Khuram Butt was known to the police and MI5 but was considered a lower priority than other extremists

1. Khuram Butt publicly abused moderate Muslims who spoke out against the murder of Lee Rigby in 2013. Mohammed Shafiq, chief executive of anti-extremism group the Ramadhan Foundation, said Butt called him a 'Murtad' - traitor in Arabic - when he confronted Anjem Choudary about supporting terrorism days after the attack in Woolwich.

2. In 2015 he talked of abandoning his pregnant wife Zahrah to wage holy war in Syria but relatives talked him out of it.

3. In the same year a friend called the anti-terror hotline over his extremist behaviour and his obsession with YouTube rants by hate preachers.

He said: 'He was not arrested and was allowed to keep his passport. I did my bit, I know a lot of other people did their bit, but the authorities did not do their bit.'

4. A mother was alarmed at him bribing schoolchildren with sweets and money in the local park to listen to him speak. Others said he was going door-to-door trying to approach youngsters. She also made a call to the anti-terror hotline was made.

5. In 2016 he appeared on the Channel 4 film The Jihadis Next Door and was filmed unfurling an ISIS-type flag in Regent's Park before rowing with police called by frightened members of the public.

6. Four months later - in May 2016 - he secured a job on the Tube and had access to tunnels under Parliament with no problems.

7. He worked at Ummah Fitness in Ilford with Sajeel Shahid, 41, a member of the banned al-Muhajiroun network who was accused of helping train the 7/7 bomb ringleader Mohammed Siddique Khan.

8. His mother Fahmida Saif, 60, said she had repeatedly warned her son off 'getting involved with religious fanatics' as details emerged of his key role in hate preacher Anjem Choudary's London terror group.

9. Last year was reported to police last year for violent extremism and in July 2016 he physically and verbally abused crowds at an Eid festival.

Dr Usama Hasan, of the anti-extremist think-tank Quilliam, revealed he reported Butt to police and MI5.

He was screaming at 'everyone' including children enjoying fairground rides at a Muslim funfair in east London on July 6 last year.

He said: 'He was an al-Muhajiroun type guy, the network of Anjem Choudary and when I reported it to police I said I was pretty sure he was from that network. I said in my opinion he was a threat to national security because he was violent. He had no respect for anyone'.

10. Butt was arrested in January but was let off with a caution.

The Italian jihadi: Youssef Zaghba

11. In March 2016 the 22-year-old Italian-Moroccan had been arrested as he tried to travel to Syria from Italy on a one-way ticket and told the police: 'I'm going to be a terrorist.'

12. After the incident his mother Valeria Collina said her son was 'closely followed' in Italy and she herself had asked police to take him into custody.

13. Zaghba was briefly stopped at Stansted Airport when flying into the UK from Bologna in January this year. Border staff in the UK would automatically have been alerted about the danger he posed when he presented his passport.

Youssef Zaghba tried to flee Italy for Syria and his own mother tried to shop him to the authorities as dangerous

The terrorist's name was on the The Schengen Information System - a red flag warning system informing other European nations if criminals are trying to enter their country.

An insider told The Sun: 'Details of Zaghba's detention in Bologna in March 2016 were inserted into the Schengen Information System.

'This was consulted by British authorities when Zaghba landed in Stansted in January on a flight back to the UK from Bologna.'

14. His mother Valeria says that UK paid no attention to him while he was in Britain and claims he was only fully radicalised while living in London this year after meeting Butt

The asylum seeker: Rachid Redouane

The bodies of the two other men, including Redouane, believed to be on the right, lie in the road in Borough Market after being gunned down

15. The Moroccan-born pastry chef Rachid Redouane lived in the UK for up to ten years after claiming asylum under the name Rachid Elkhdar and claimed to be six years younger than he really was. In 2009 his application was refused but he remained in the UK illegally.

16. Months later he was arrested in Scotland, and held for several days, after attempting to travel to Northern Ireland by ferry. He was found in possession of a fake passport in this instance. Again, he was not deported.

17. After marrying Briton Charisse O'Leary in Ireland he is allowed to return to Britain. His former boss in a north London bakery says he was a known associate of extremists like Anjem Choudary  and was 'brainwashed' - but was not even on MI5's radar

18. Irish detectives are attempting to trace whether Khuram Butt, had spent any time in Dublin, including with Redouane, after Shaykh Dr Umar Al-Qadri, imam of the Islamic Centre of Ireland, said he thought he recognised the killer's face.
A family from Indiana are having to make a heart-wrenching decision as to whether to end switch off the life support machine of their 17-month-old boy who has been declared brain dead.

Major Maxie's brain function was severely impaired after he was found to have stopped breathing when he was placed incorrectly into his car seat.

Doctors at Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis believe the little boy was without oxygen to his brain for at least half an hour after a state approved care giver did not properly fasten him into his car seat.

Somehow, the seat belt ended up choking the youngster and he was unable to breathe.

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17-month-old Major Maxie was declare d brain-dead days after he was improperly fastened in a car seat by a state-approved caregiver

Maxie's family said the little boy has not shown any signs of brain activity and they're hoping his organs can be used for transplant

'He was an awesome little guy, always happy, put joy in everybody's heart,' Jackie Smith, Maxie's grandmother, said to Fox59.

'My sister don't deserve this, he don't deserve this, my nephew don't deserve this,' Ashley Smallwood, Maxie's aunt, said.

Before the incident, the young boy had already been placed in two foster homes, but he was recently returned to his mother and enjoyed supervised visitations with his father.

It was last Wednesday when the boy was being taken to spend time with his father, that tragedy struck.

After being placed into his car seat, the caregiver, a counselor from Lifeline Youth and Family Services told the boy that she had a surprise for him.

She got out of the car and walked around to the boy's seat at the back where she found him slumped over.

When the caregiver arrived at the child's father's home, she opened the door and found him slumped over in the car seat and not breathing

Major was not breathing and his father performed CPR on him until he was rushed to hospital.

Doctors there stated he was without oxygen to the brain for 30 minutes.

Maxie's family said the little boy has not shown any signs of brain activity and they're hoping his organs can be used for transplant.

An investigation has been launched into exactly what happened.

'First and foremost this is a tragedy, second is our prayers go out to that family and everybody involved,' Mark Terrell, CEO of Lifeline Youth and Family Services, said.

'The issue right now is again is to determine what happened and so that it never happens again,' Terrell said.

The caregiver who strapped little Maxie into his seat has been suspended with pay.
The nation's top intelligence officials came under withering questioning Wednesday from senators who are demanding they reveal their conversations with President Trump and whether he asked them to roll back the FBI's Russia investigation.

'I'm not interested in repeating myself sir, and I don't mean that in a contentious way,' said NSA Director Mike Rogers, after getting pressed repeatedly by Maine Senator Angus King about whether the president asked him to dial back the FBI probe.

'Well I do mean it in a contentious way!' shot back King (I-Maine). 'I don't understand why you're not answering our question,' he said during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing.

Senators wanted to know whether Trump asked top intelligence officials to intervene with the FBI, which is probing Russian election interference and contacts with Trump campaign officials and associates.

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National Intelligence Director Dan Coats speaks during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, on Capitol Hill, Wednesday, June 7, 2017

'Is there an invocation by the president of the united states of executive privilege?' King demanded to know.

The answer wasn't entirely clear.

'I asked did the White House intend to invoke executive privilege associated with any interactions between myself and the president of the United States,' Admiral Rogers responded.

'To be honest I didn't get a definitive answer and both myself and the [Director of National Intelligence] are still talking to the White House general counsel,' he said.

Rogers testified that hd didn't 'feel it is appropriate' to divulge his conversations with President Trump.

NSA director Mike Rogers said emphatically that he had 'never been directed to do anything I believe to be illegal, immoral, unethical or inappropriate'

'What you feel isn't relevant, admiral,' responded King, as the exchange grew testy.

'You are inappropriately refusing to answer these questions today,' he scolded Rogers.

'What's the basis for your refusal to answer these questions today?' King asked Director of National Intelligence Dan Coates.

'I do not believe it's appropriate for me to get into it ...' King tried to answer.

'I'm not satisfied with I do not believe it is appropriate or I do not feel I should answer. I want to understand a legal basis,' said King.

Executive privilege is a claim a president can assert to protect private advice he gets  but it is not inviolate, and a court can rule on its limitations.

Pressed by a series of senators from both parties, Rogers said he didn't want to talk about 'classified' information, and Coats said he didn't walk to talk in a public setting  but would in a private setting.

From left, National Intelligence Director Dan Coats, National Security Agency director Adm. Michael Rogers and acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, arrive for the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, on Capitol Hill, Wednesday, June 7, 2017, in Washington. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

'Are you prepared to say that you've never been asked by the president or the White House to influence an ongoing investigation?' asked Florida Sen. Marco Rubio at one point.

'I am not asking for classified information. I am asking whether or not you have ever been asked by anyone to influence an ongoing investigation?' he said.

At another point, New Mexico Democratic Senator Martin Heinrich ripped acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe for refusing to get into his conversations with FBI Director James Comey, following reports Trump had asked Comey for his 'loyalty' and asked him to back off the FBI's Russia probe.

'So you're not invoking executive privilege and obviously it's not classified, this is the oversight committee, why would it not be appropriate for you to share that conversation with us?' Heinrich asked.

'If any of this is true it would be an appalling and improper use of our intelligence professionals' said Virginia Senator Mark Warner

Sen. Angus King (I-ME) demanded to know the legal basis why the witnesses weren't disclosing their conversations with President Trump

'I think your unwillingness to answer a very simple question speaks volumes,' Heinrich told Coats after the DNI chief once again refused to reveal his conversation with the president.

Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) said it was 'Orwellian' that Coats wasn't able to describe a conversation involving him that was reported in the Washington Post, citing it as being classified.

Earlier, Coats said he was never 'pressured' into intervening in the FBI's Russia probe  although he refused to deny a media report the President Trump had asked him to weigh in on the matter.

'I have never been pressured. I have never felt pressure to intervene or interfere in any way with shaping intelligence in a political way or in relationship to an ongoing investigation,' Coats said at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Wednesday.

Rogers said emphatically that he had 'never been directed to do anything I believe to be illegal, immoral, unethical or inappropriate'  pushing back on the same report that described a conversation the two men had with President Trump following fired FBI director James Comey's confirmation that the agency was probing Trump campaign Russia contacts.

At a closely-watched hearing Wednesday, Panel vice chair Mark Warner (D-Va.) immediately referenced reports that President Trump had tried to intervene with top intelligence officials to try to pull back the FBI's Russia probe.

Warner said it was 'so jarring to hear recent reports of White House officials  perhaps even the president himself  attempting to interfere and enlist our intelligence committee leaders in any attempt to undermine the ongoing investigation.'

He asked Coats about the report. Coats didn't deny the reporting, but said he didn't want to talk about it in public, at a hearing aired live on cable networks.

'I do not feel it's appropriate for me to in a public session in which confidential conversations between the president and myself I don't believe it's appropriate for me to address that in a public session,' Coats said.

'Interference': Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats (left) told colleagues Trump told him to interfere in the FBI's Russia probe in a private March 22 meeting, sources say

'We are in a public session here and I do not feel that it's appropriate for me to address confidential information'  implying that he could share more in a separate closed setting.

Warner, the top Democrat on the panel, was clearly not satisfied with the answer he got. 'You may not have felt pressure, but if he is even asking, to me that is a very relevant piece of information,' Warner said.

Pressed later in the hearing by panel member Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who Trump invited to the White House for dinner the night before the hearing, neither man would respond to a question about whether they were 'asked' to intervene with the FBI.

'Are you prepared to say that you've never been asked by the president or the White House to influence an ongoing investigation?' said Rubio.

'I hate to keep repeating this but I'm going to do it,' Coats responded. 'I'm willing to come to before the committee and tell you what I know and what I don't know. What I'm not willing to do is to share what I think is confidential information that ought to be protected in an open hearing. And so I'm not prepared to answer your question today.'

Rubio, a Russia hawk who lost the nomination to Trump but then backed him, wasn't satisfied. 'I am not asking for classified information. I am asking whether or not you have ever been asked by anyone to influence an ongoing investigation?'

'I understand but I am just not going to go down that road in a public forum,' responded Coats, refusing to state whether he had been asked to interfere with the probe.

Four top security officials lined up to testify on Capitol Hill Wednesday at a hearing that will probe Russian election interference and set the table for fired FBI Director James Comey's high-stakes testimony tomorrow.

The Senate Intelligence Committee is holding the first of two explosive hearings it lined up this week on Russian interference in the presidential election.

'I do not feel it's appropriate for me to in a public session in which confidential conversations between the president and myself I don't believe it's appropriate for me to address that in a public session,' Coats said

'If any of this is true it would be an appalling and improper use of our intelligence professionals' and 'could erode the public's trust in our intelligence institutions,' Warner said.

The public airing is the first since an explosive report that President Trump asked two top intelligence heads to help squelch a probe into his fired national security advisor Mike Flynn.

Coats, NSA head Mike Rogers, acting FBI director Andrew McCabe and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein all testified Wednesday morning.

Rogers was equally emphatic when asked about getting any Trump pressure.

'To the best of my recollection, I have never been directed to do anything I believe to be illegal, immoral, unethical or inappropriate. And to the best of my recollection during that same period of service, I do not recall every feeling pressured to do so,' he said.

'I'm not going to talk about theoreticals and I'm not going to discuss the specifics of any interaction or conversations ... that I may or may not have had with the president of the United States,' Rogers said.

Former FBI Director James Comey delivers testimony on Thursday for the first time since Trump fired him  and since revelations that Comey kept notes of his encounters with the president where two talked about the Russia probe.

The administration officials are being hauled before the committee to talk about Russian meddling in the election - but Trump's ham-handed canning of Comey will be a front and center matter.

Trump told America's top intelligence official to intervene in order to push the FBI back off on its investigation of ex-National Security Advisor Michael Flynn's ties with Russia, sources told The Washington Post.

Probing: Then-FBI director James Comey had announced the prove two days earlier. Coats confided in colleagues but decided interfering would be improper, the sources claimed

Coats told his colleagues that Trump cornered him after a March 22 meeting in March and asked him to intervene in the case, according to the report.

According to the account, Trump pulled Coats and CIA Director Mike Pompeo aside after a meeting with other officials. He then started complaining about the investigation and Comey's handling of the matter before asking the men to intervene, officials told the paper.

Coats, a former Indiana senator and U.S. ambassador to Germany, is expected to be grilled on his interactions with Trump. He previously served on the intelligence panel, so members are likely to give weight to his version of events.

The incident occurred was less than a week after Coats' confirmation, and two days after then-FBI director James Comey confirmed to Congress that the bureau was investigating whether Trump's team had met with Russia.

After the meeting, Coats conferred with his colleagues but decided against doing as the president asked, deciding it would inappropriate, they said.

Trump has already been accused of telling officials to deny the existence of evidence of collusion between Russia and his election campaign.

The accusations of meddling in the investigation emerged on the same day that it was claimed Comey had attempted to get Attorney General Jeff Sessions to back him up against Trump.

Last month it emerged that Trump had told Comey in February to end the Flynn probe. That claim came in a memo written by Comey after the meeting.

Two days after that, Comey approached Sessions and said he didn't want to be left alone with the president again, sources told The New York Times.
A wheelchair bound woman is suing United Airlines claiming that she has lost the use of her arm when staff dropped her during a layover in Texas.

Erica Fulton, who has degenerative spinal condition, says two employees, working for a third party contractor on behalf of the airline, were helping her transfer from her wheelchair to her seat on a plane at at Houston's Bush Airport when they let go, according to her lawsuit.

'He kept saying, 'Don't worry, I got you.' And I put my trust in him,' Fulton, 54, told KPRC. 'But I saw the look of panic in his face when he knew he was going to drop me and it was terrifying.'

Erica Fulton s suing United Airlines over claims she was badly injured when staff dropped her during a layover in Texas

Fulton claims that United (stock image) have not responded to her claims about her injury

Fulton says she felt 'horrible pain' after she landed hard on her right shoulder and was taken to hospital where she underwent surgery.

Doctors installed a metal plate in her shoulder but Fulton claims she has totally lost the use of her arm.

'When you lose use of your legs you need your arms,' she said. 'They never returned any of my calls and left me no recourse but to hire an attorney.'

She says she has lost her independence after the injury and has been forced to hire nurses to stay with her 20 hours every day.

'I was very independent before and now I can't live alone. They really took my independence away from me,' she said.

Fulton says she felt 'horrible pain' after she landed hard on her right shoulder and was taken to hospital where she underwent surgery (pictured is bruising around her shoulder after the incident)

She adds that during the Tampa to Texas the 'flight from hell', United also dropped and crushed her $23,000 customized wheelchair which was left unrecognizable (pictured)

She adds that during the Tampa to Texas the 'flight from hell', United also dropped and crushed her $23,000 customized wheelchair which was left unrecognizable.

The airline has since paid for all the repairs to the wheelchair and apologized to Fulton for the incident.

But she says she has had no response regarding claims for medical expenses.

Fulton has since filed a lawsuit in Harris County demanding compensation for her injuries, pain and suffering.

The lawsuit is the latest PR disaster for the beleaguered airline who were forced to issue an apology in April when 69-year-old doctor, David Dao, was injured by Chicago airport security officers who were called to remove him from an overbooked United Express plane.

Fulton (pictured) has since filed a lawsuit in Harris County demanding compensation for her injuries, pain and suffering

The confrontation captured on cellphone video that went viral. United later apologized and reached an undisclosed settlement with him.

And just yesterday, classical musician Yennifer Correia, 33, complained she was injured during a confrontation with a United Airlines member of staff.

Correia, is worried that the scuffle with the airline supervisor has injured her hand, and hence her ability to play her instrument, after the staffer allegedly tried to grab her violin.

Correia was trying to bring the instrument, made in Italy sometime in the late 1700s, on board a flight from Houston to St. Louis on Tuesday when she would begin rehearsals with the Missouri Symphony Orchestra.

Chicago-based United has refunded Correia's airfare, discussed the matter with its Houston employees and has 'reached out to Ms. Correia to gain a better understanding of what occurred and to offer assistance,' spokesman Charles Hobart said.
A mystery 'SOS' sign created using rocks on the remote Western Australia coast had authorities baffled sparking a search, but a stranded yachtie has owned up to the call for help.

The international sign for help located in the Swift Bay area, north east coast of Western Australia, was spotted from a passing plane at the end of May.

The sign sparked a Kalumburu police search and garnered international media headlines as authorities sought after a potential missing person to no avail.

The 'S.O.S' sign created by a man and a woman stranded after they left their yacht in the Swift Bay area in north east Western Australia

The two are believed to have made it to shore and were left stranded in Swift Bay (pictured)

On Wednesday, Kalumburu police believe a man named Robert claimed he made the sign after his yacht capsized back in 2013, according to WA Today.

Police explained Robert and a woman companion were on the yacht when it became unsafe on the Swift Bay waters.

They abandoned the yacht into a smaller vessel, but were terrifyingly set upon by crocodiles.

Robert and his companion made it to shore safely and in an attempt to seek help made the 'SOS' sign, which has remained in tact for nearly four years.

The man and woman were attacked by crocodiles when in the smaller life boat but were able to make it to shore and create the SOS sign

The pair were rescued when a passing boat picked them up a few days later.

Robert is believed to be on a boat in the Mediterranean, according to his brother.

'There's really not enough detail yet so we're waiting for them to hit dry land,' police District Superintendent Allan Adam told the publication.

'We're pretty sure it's them, but we need to confirm all the bona fides and make sure of it.'
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Chilling pictures taken of London Bridge pubs show the eerie aftermath of the horrific terror attack.

The haunting images from The Bunch of Grapes on St Thomas Street and The Mudlark in Borough Market show scattered chairs, broken glass and half-finished pints which have been left untouched for four days.

Rubbish is strewn on the floor and furniture was left overturned as revellers ran for their lives from rampaging jihadis.

Terrorists Khuram Butt, Yousef Zaghba and Rachid Redouane mowed down pedestrians on London Bridge, crashed their van and went on a stabbing spree before being shot dead by armed officers.

They killed eight people and injured dozens in eight minutes of terror on the streets of the British capital.

Chilling pictures taken inside London Bridge pub, The Bunch of Grapes, show the eerie aftermath of the horrific terror attack. Half-empty glasses and bottles have been left at the bar

Debris from Saturday's attack in Borough Market, London, remain in the street. Rubbish is strewn on the floor and furniture was left overturned as revellers ran for their lives from rampaging jihadis

Pictured is the mess at The Bunch of Grapes pub in Saint Thomas Street, London, opposite Borough Market. A half-drunk pint of beer and half-empty bottle of Coke can be seen on a table

Staff at the Bunch of Grapes pub clear furniture and signs out of the building following the terror attack on Saturday

Men and women at Bunch of Grapes are seen loading up a truck with furniture, signs and other items after the terror attack

A woman carried a chair out of the Bunch of Grapes pub in London Bridge today following the attack on Saturday

The haunting images from The Bunch of Grapes (pictured) on St Thomas Street and The Mudlark in Borough Market show scattered chairs, broken glass and half-finished pints which have been left untouched for four days

A glass of white wine and a pint of lager were left abandoned on outside tables at the Mudlark Pub in Borough Market

Business began to re-open today, as their owners began to put back together the trail of destruction that was left by the attack.

Marco Vasconcelos, a barman at Giuseppe's Italian restaurant on King's Head Yard, added: 'People were having their main course and we found the meals today as they were left on Saturday night.

'When we heard someone had been stabbed we thought it might be a fight but then we saw all the police and some guy heard shots and we closed everything. Then police came in and said we had to leave. Some customers were very upset.

'The way police told us to leave was very forceful. Everything was just left as it was, there was no time for anything, it was crazy. It's affected so many tourists as well, I think.'

Lorenzo Terrero, manager of the Luncheonette on Southwark Street, said: 'The first I knew of anything was seeing lots of police cars coming down the straight.

'Then someone next door called the police as he saw someone being stabbed. Then lots more police cars came.

Fifteen people have been arrested in connection with the incident, but 13 have since been released without charge. Pictured is the inside of The Bunch of Grapes

London officials said a large part of the outer cordon of the crime scene had reopened. Borough Market, a popular gathering place, remains closed as more evidence is gathered. Pictured are toppled chairs and tables at Borough Market

On the day after the attack armed police and forensic officers were seen scouring the scene at London Bridge and Borough Market, where three terrorists left a trail of death and destruction when they went on a van and knife rampage. Pictured is the eerie aftermath inside The Bunch of Grapes

Police comb through the Borough Market area today following Saturday's terror attack in the capital

Police could be seen talking and looking at parts of the street in Borough Market after Saturday's terror attack

Pictures show the state of the pub before it was evacuated on the night of the terror attack on London Bridge

Police officers guard a closed entrance of the Borough Market in the London Bridge area this afternoon

Metropolitan Police officers stand on duty outside The Mudlark Pub, near to an entrance to Borough Market in London

A couple of drinks left abandoned in the garden of the Mudlark Pub which is still shut since the terror attack on Saturday

'Loads of people were running down the street, everything was crazy. Then 15 minutes after I heard guns inside Borough Market. We took the customers downstairs and then the police came in and told us we had to 'go go go'. We then ran down the street away from London Bridge.

'The door was open to the shop and everything was on, even the cooker so I had to come back on Sunday to turn everything off. Police had sealed the shop. It's very frightening.'

Antonio Costa, a chef at the luncheonette, added: 'We have been closed for a few days and had to throw away lots of things and lost a lot of money but we will carry on.

'The restaurant was full at the time and busy. We closed the doors and went downstairs and then police ordered us to leave down the road. It was very frightening. But we are in a big city and it's happening in France, Belgium, Germany and we know it can happen.'

London officials said a large part of the outer cordon of the crime scene had reopened. Borough Market, a popular gathering place, remains closed as more evidence is gathered. Pictured are toppled chairs and tables at Borough Market.

Police officers were seen laying flowers at the scene of the horrific attack this afternoon.

The George Pub on Borough High Street remains closed after the shocking terror attack on Saturday

A dustpun and brush sits abandoned next to a bottle of Lucozade at The Old Thameside Inn at Pickfords Wharf today

The Number 1 bar near London Bridge train station remains closed this afternoon following Saturday's terror attack

People walk past The George pub on Borough High Street which is still shut today following Saturday's atrocity

A police cordon remains around Borough Market today following the terror attack at the weekend in London

People work in an area cordoned off by police among the debris from Saturday's attack in Borough Market

Officials in London said a large part of the outer cordon of the crime scene had reopened in Borough this afternoon

On the day after the attack armed police and forensic officers were seen scouring the scene at London Bridge and Borough Market, where three terrorists left a trail of death and destruction when they went on a van and knife rampage.

The attackers, who were wearing fake suicide vests, mowed down up to 20 pedestrians as they careered across London Bridge in an 'S shape' at 50mph before abandoning the vehicle at nearby Borough Market, where they began 'randomly stabbing' revellers packed into busy bars and pubs.

Fifteen people have been arrested in connection with the incident, but 13 have since been released without charge.

The latest arrest was a 30-year-old man, who was detained in connection with the massacre in the early hours of this morning after Counter-terrorism officers raided a property in Ilford, east London

The man has been arrested over terror offences and has been taken into custody at a south London police station.

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said: 'Detectives investigating the London Bridge terror attack have carried out a search warrant at an address in east London in the early hours of Wednesday, June 7.

A woman weeps as she looks over the flowers that have been laid on London Bridge for the victim's of Saturday night's brutal attack

Two others generous citizens come to crouch down next to her to check if she is okay, as she is overcome with emotion

A third woman then comes to her aid furthere and gives her consolitory hug as they stand over the floral tributes on London Bridge

Another woman lays a floral tribute on London Bridge in memory of the eight people who were killed in the attack

'Officers from the Met's Counter Terrorism Command, supported by officers from the Territorial Support Group, entered the address in Ilford at around 1.30am.

'A 30-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of terrorist acts (contrary to section 5 Terrorism Act 2006) and has been taken into custody at a south London police station under the Terrorism Act 2000. A search of the address is ongoing.'

Meanwhile,Muslim leaders have pledged to 'root out' the 'menace' of extremism as they launched an action plan to tackle radicalisation within their communities.

Around 100 imams gathered near London Bridge to condemn the recent terrorist atrocities in both the capital and Manchester.

They were joined by other faith leaders including those from Jewish and Christian communities as they walked a short distance from outside the Shard to what has now become a makeshift memorial at the bridge following the weekend's carnage.

Many of those taking part held aloft pieces of paper with the slogans 'We stand with London' and 'Not in our name' and carried single red roses.

A man is seen here holding up a placard with London's iconic Tower Bridge on it, saying '#ISIS will lose. #Love will win', during a gathering today

Representatives of the Muslim community stand around flowers layed in an area just south of London Bridge as they came to pay their repects

A large crowd gathered opposite The Barrowboy And Banker pub, close to where the van carrying the terrorist trio Youssef Zaghba, Khuram Shazad Butt and Rachid Redouane crashed.

They murdered eight people and injured 48 others in their rampage around London Bridge and Borough Market on Saturday night.

Muslim scholar Aneesa Hussain told those present: 'Today we make it clear that terrorists and extremists are not following the path to paradise.

'We clarify that the funeral prayer of such barbaric individuals is not to be performed, nor they be buried among the Muslims.

'We stand here also to reiterate our commitment to peace, bridge-building and British values, and to continue to play our role in rooting out this menace from our communities and the wider society.'

Echoing the words of Prime Minister Theresa May, she said: 'Enough is indeed enough' as a four-point plan to combat extremist ideology was announced.

Muslims in Britain can be confident in their identity and that their religion is compatible with the values held dear within the UK, the plan states.

A Muslim man gives a speech during the emotional ceremony, as people around him hold up posters with slogans on and prepare to lay flowers

This man looks visibly emotional as he lays two red roses close to the site where three terrorists killed eight people and injured dozens of others

Notions that Muslims should work to establish and support a so-called Islamic State and that it is a betrayal to help British authorities are 'wrong', the plan adds, and will continue to be challenged within mosques and educational institutions as 'divisive narratives'.

Leaders have also vowed to improve cross-community engagement by showing there are no no-go areas when it comes to places of worship.

Part of the plan echoes further the words of Mrs May in the wake of recent attacks, that the internet should not give 'safe spaces' to extremists, and said it remains a challenge to prevent online grooming of young people.

Imam Qari Asim said before the gathering: "My message to any wannabe extremist is that by taking part in terror you are not committing a martyrdom, you are following a suicidal cause, and you're bringing disrepute to your family members and the whole of the community."

The spokesman for the British Muslim Forum and imam of the Leeds Makkah mosque added: "And more importantly you are not a martyr, you are a criminal and it's as simple as that."

Debris remains in the street following Saturday's attack in Borough Market, which is a popular gathering place in the capital

Borough Market remains closed after Saturday's terror attack, with Southwark Cathedral visible in the background

Containers sit outside The Old Thameside Inn on the South Bank on Clink Street which remains closed this afternoon

The area of Borough Market is eerily quiet compared to its normal bustling self, following Saturday's terror attack

The Number 1 bar remains closed this afternoon after the terror attack on Saturday which left eight people dead

A police cordon remains around Borough Market following the terror attacks in which 48 people were injured

Imams and members of the Muslim community arrive to lay flowers near the scene of the London Bridge terrorist attack

Police direct people around Borough Market in South London following the terror attack on Saturday night

Police speak to members of the public as the cordon remains around Borough Market following the terror attack

A group of police stand next to a cordon which remains around Borough Market near London Bridge train station

Yesterday, a A 27-year-old man was arrested in the Barking area in connection with the atrocity.

It came after police confirmed they raided a home in Ilford in the early hours.

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police told MailOnline that yesterday's raid was at a different address to today's operation and that nobody had been detained.

And also reports in Ireland emerged that a man had been detained in Limerick last night over the attack.

A map shows how terror attack unfolded. The attackers were shot dead within eight minutes of the first emergency phone call

London Bridge and Borough Market this afternoon as police arrive at the scene to lay flower and mark their respect

Pictured are police officers laying flowers at the scene of the terror attack at London Bridge today. A number of police officers were injured on Saturday

Metropolitan Police men and women line up to lay flowers at London Bridge this afternoon after Saturday's horrific attack. In the backdrop is The Barrow and Banker pub where the terrorists crashed their van after mowing down around 20 people

Two policewomen are pictured holding flowers at the scene of the London Bridge terror attack, which killed eight people

On the day after the attack armed police and forensic officers were seen scouring the scene at London Bridge and Borough Market, where three terrorists left a trail of death and destruction when they went on a van and knife rampage. Today they were seen laying flowers at the scene

A Metropolitan Police officer wipes a tear from her face as members of the force stand at London Bridge to pay their respects

A Morrocan national was arrested in Limerick on Monday after ID documents found at his home were in the name of one of the London attackers - Rachid Redouane.

He was being questioned at a garda station in the city by detectives attached to the Garda National Immigration Bureau (GNIB) on suspicion of using forged documents, according to the Limerick Leader. He was later released without charge.

On Monday, Scotland Yard announced that all 12 people arrested on Sunday by officers in east London investigating Saturday's massacre have been released without charge.
The Islamic Council of Victoria has said Muslim youth should be provided with taxpayer-funded 'safe spaces' where they can make 'inflammatory' and 'frank' comments.

In a submission to a parliamentary inquiry into freedom of religion, Islamic leaders have demanded government funding for anti-terrorism and anti-extremism should be used to create the religious sanctuaries.

'To create safe spaces urgently needed by Muslim youth to meet and talk about a range of issues in emotional terms, where they can be frank and even use words, which in a public space would sound inflammatory,' the submission reads.

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The Islamic Council of Victoria has demanded taxpayer money be diverted from anti-terrorism and anti-extremism programs to fund 'safe spaces' for Muslim youth

In a submission to a parliamentary inquiry into freedom of religion, Islamic leaders have demanded government funding for anti-terrorism and anti-extremism should be used to create the religious sanctuaries

'That they cannot express irony, humour, anger or joy in words and facial expressions that would make them a target for 'surveillance' is a cause for despondency leading to mental health issues among many.'

The Council also points out the inability for Muslim adherents to safely practice their religion without feeling subject to surveillance is a 'human rights issue'.

'There are human rights issues which restrict Muslim's in Victoria and nationally to enjoy the same human right to freedom of religion or belief that other Australians currently enjoy,' it said.

The submission calls on the government to advocate higher research and programs to address the rise of other non-Muslim extremism in Australia such as far-right groups.

The Council also points out the inability for Muslim adherents to safely practice their religion without feeling subject to surveillance is a 'human rights issue'

The submission calls on the government to advocate higher research and programs to address the rise of other non-Muslim extremism in Australia such as far-right groups

Following Melbourne's deadly siege on Monday which killed one innocent man, Victoria's state government will discuss radical new anti-terrorism measures, the Herald Sun reports.

The ice-addicted gunman was shot dead along with innocent receptionist Kai Hao, 36, in a bloody siege for which the militant group claimed responsibility.

Despite police labelling it a suspected terror attack, the state's peak Muslim body warned against inflaming tensions and branded the gunman 'confused.'

The council said while there are debates over the gunman's motive, it was clear had a long criminal record and a trail of violence.

'We understand that the police are investigating this as a potential terrorist attack but note that the perpetrator himself appeared to be confused as to who he was acting on behalf, claiming allegiance to both ISIS and AlQaeda, known enemies.'

The Islamic Council of Victoria has questioned whether the deadly attack at the hands of Yacqub Khayre (pictured) was an act of terror

The coroner remove a body from the aparment in Brighton where the shooting unfolded

'Whether this act was inspired by an evil warped ideology or was in fact the actions of a deranged violent individual, this does not change the reality that a horrendous crime was committed in which an innocent person was killed, a woman was held hostage, and police officers' lives were put at risk.'

They warned against provoking tensions with the Muslim and Somali community's, which could promote further attacks.

'What we must avoid is sensationalising or somehow attributing unwarranted significance to these criminals because it exacerbates prevailing fears and tensions and potentially encourages copycat behaviour.'

'We would also like to express our support to the Somali community who will be unfairly vilified because of the actions of this one man. They have made, and continue to make, an invaluable contribution to Victorian society.'

Kai 'Nick' Hao, 36 was at his post in the foyer of The Buckingham serviced apartments at 408 Bay Street in Brighton, Melbourne, when the terrorist burst in

The state's peak Muslim body warned against inflaming tensions and branded the gunman 'confused'

Police search the home of Yacqub Khayre at Roxburgh Park, Melbourne

A review into Khayre's prison and parole management has been ordered as the government revealed up to 22 Victorians a year are undergoing anti-radicalisation programs.

The state's Corrections Minister Gayle Tierney repeatedly refused to answer questions in parliament about Khayre because she has ordered the review.

But she did reveal the Islamic Council of Victoria is currently working with up to 22 people undertaking anti-radicalisation programs.

'In the last state budget there was an allocation of $6.385 million over four years for anti-radicalisation programs, ' Ms Tierney told the Legislative Council on Tuesday.

'The Islamic Council of Victoria is contracted to deliver the program and is currently working with up to 22 prisoners and people in the community each year.'
Driver charged: Leonid Beker, an Uber driver from San Francisco, has been arrested and charged with sexually battering a female passenger in May

Police in California have arrested an Uber driver who was accused of sexually battering a female passenger last month.

The Moraga Police Department said in a statement on Tuesday that 42-year-old Leonid Beker was taken into custody in his hometown of San Francisco on suspicion of sexual battery.

The alleged attack took place at around 1am on May 26 as Beker was driving the woman from Oakland to Moraga to visit friends.

The victim told police that before they reached her destination in Moraga, Beker stopped the car on Camino Ricardo, climbed into the back seat with the customer, pinned her down and sexually battered her for 10 minutes.

She was able to have the presence of mind to take some action to distract her attacker and make him stop, Moraga Police Chief John King told ABC7.

Sex attack: Police say Beker was driving a woman from Oakland to Moraga when he pulled over, climbed in the backseat and proceeded to sexually batter her for 10 minutes

Video courtesy KRON 4

After the attack, the woman was dropped off at her friends house, where she called police to report the assault, according toEast Bay Times.

Officers were able to identify Beker with the help of the victim and recently installed traffic cameras in Moraga. The San Francisco Police Department Special Victims Unit assisted with his capture.

On June 2, Beker was booked into the Contra Costa County jail in Martinez for felony sexual battery. He was later released after posting bail.

In a statement, an Uber spokesperson called the allegations against Beker 'deeply troubling' and said the driver has been removed from the ride-sharing service. The 42-year-old had no prior complaints from passengers.

According to a Linkedin profile associated with Leonid Beker, the San Francisco resident had worked as a software engineer with a music-making app.

Based on information posted on the networking site, Beker is an immigrant from the Ukraine who graduated from Kiev State University in 2003 with a Bachelor's degree in business and finance.
A suspicious letter allegedly containing white powder was delivered to the Queen's official Scottish residence today.

Roads outside the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh were sealed off as four fire engines and two support units headed the popular tourist destination.

Paramedics and police officers also responded to the alert at about 12pm, but a royal spokesman confirmed the Queen is in residence at Buckingham Palace.

Roads outside the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh were sealed off as four fire engines and two support units headed the popular tourist destination

Paramedics and police officers also responded to the alert at about 12pm, but a royal spokesman confirmed the Queen is in residence at Buckingham Palace

A Police Scotland spokesman said: 'We can confirm that the suspicious letter that was delivered to the Palace of Holyroodhouse on Wednesday, June 7 has been analysed and found not to pose any risk to the public.

'An investigation is now underway to identify the sender and establish the full circumstances surrounding this incident.'

A Holyroodhouse spokesman said the site remained open while the incident unfolded. Tourists were said to be still walking around the grounds and sat in a cafe.

Last month a letter containing white powder was sent to the Scottish National Party headquarters near Holyrood, with similar packages with fertiliser sent to two MSPs.
A retired US Navy commander in Hawaii charged in a growing corruption scandal has pleaded guilty to lying about his relationship with a Malaysian defense contractor known by the nickname 'Fat Leonard'.

On Tuesday in Honolulu, David Kapaun entered the plea to a count of fraud and false statements involving his relationship with Leonard Glenn Francis, who prosecutors describe as 'the center of a colossal bribery and fraud scandal'.

Kapaun said in court that he omitted Francis from a security clearance update form because he knew 'I did have a past association with him that was unfavorable'.

He also didn't disclose receiving dinners, hotel stays and prostitutes from Francis, said his defense attorney, Victor Bakke.

David Kapaun, right, seen with Singaporean military officers at a 2001 reception. Kapaun has pleaded guilty to fraud for lying about his relationship with defense contractor 'Fat Leonard'

Leonard Glenn Francis, known as 'Fat Leonard' for his girth, has acknowledged bribing Navy officials with cash, prostitutes and other gifts to help his company win defense contracts

Francis, known as 'Fat Leonard' for his girth, has acknowledged bribing Navy officials with cash, prostitutes and other gifts in exchange for classified information to help his company, Singapore-based Glenn Defense Marine Asia.

'Fat Leonard' has admitted to scamming the Navy and is being held pending sentencing

The company provided services such as trash and sewage removal, food, water, security and fuel to US Navy ships, according to prosecutors. He's awaiting sentencing.

'He played a minor role in the overall scheme that was conducted by Fat Leonard,' Bakke said of Kapaun.

'He's remorseful. He realizes he should have used better judgment. But just like the number of other Naval officers that are involved in this case, he was seduced by this guy.'

Twenty-seven current and former Navy officials have been charged so far in the scandal. Kapaun is the 11th to plead guilty.

The allegations prompted Kapaun to resign earlier this year from his civilian position as deputy chief of staff for US Special Operations Command Pacific.

Fat Leonard's company provided services such as trash and sewage removal, food, water, security and fuel to US Navy ships. The USS Nimitz (pictured) is one ship it serviced

Kapaun could face up to five years in federal prison when he's sentenced on September 11.

The terms of his plea agreement will require Kapaun to pay $50,000 restitution and a $25,000 fine, Bakke said.

Kapaun retired and was honorably discharged in 2008 after a 25-year Navy career, Bakke said.

'Even though he's retired, they could pull him back to active duty and court-martial him if they wanted to,' Bakke said.

'Fat Leonard' is being held in San Diego while he awaits sentencing, and has admitted to scamming the Navy out of $35million, though investigators suspect the total may have been much larger.

His firm did business with the Navy for 25 years.
Riot squad officers will be handed military-style assault rifles to patrol Sydney's streets in the wake of a series of terror attacks across Europe.

Up to 100 police officers will be handed semi-automatic Colt M4 Carbine weapons to use in the event of a 'probable' terrorist attack.

The provision of the US military's weapon of choice is expected to be announced on Thursday when the initial government response to the Coroner's report on the Lindt Siege goes to cabinet, The Daily Telegraph reported.

Riot squad officers will be handed military-style assault rifles to patrol Sydney's streets in the wake of a series of terror attacks across Europe

Up to 100 police officers will be handed semi-automatic Colt M4 Carbine (pictured) weapons to use in the event of a 'probable' terrorist attack

A need for shoot-to-kill legislation for police is also expected to be announced.

Police Commissioner Mick Fuller is reportedly pressuring the government for members of the Public Order and Riot Squad to be armed with the assault rifle following a series of terror attacks in Europe - including last weekend's London Bridge attacks.

'The NSW Police Force has identified an appropriate firearm and advice has been forwarded to government,' Mr Fuller told The Daily Telegraph.

'In this increasingly dangerous and rapidly changing environment, I recognise the need to adapt our response model to be able to dispatch tactical police from multiple locations across Sydney.'

Mr Fuller said fully armed officers proactively patrol Sydney's streets instead of waiting to be called from their base.

'All NSW first responders are armed, unlike in the UK where they rely on rapid response teams,' he said.

More than 11,000 police officers have completed specialised training to tackle terror related incidents such as the Lindt Siege. Pictured: Police officers patrol the front of Parliament House in Canberra

More than 11,000 police officers have completed specialised training to tackle terror related incidents such as the Lindt Siege, the newspaper reported.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian said community safety is her 'absolute priority' after the Police Association called for the issue of longarm weapons.

'I am committed to giving police the equipment they need to do their jobs, and keep people safe,' she said.

The M4 Carbine has been described by Colt as a reliable lightweight weapon with 'potent firepower capability'.

Australia's terror threat level remains at 'probable' - indicating individuals or groups have the intention and capability to perform an attack.
Dr Martin Royle will not be struck off after he wrote himself fake prescriptions for pills

A senior NHS doctor has kept his job after he forged prescriptions to feed an addiction to painkillers, following a disciplinary hearing.

Consultant cardiologist Martin Royle, 45, faced being struck off when he was handed a suspended jail term for writing fake prescriptions in the names of family and colleagues so he could obtain drugs.

He was sacked from his job at Whiston Hospital in Liverpool after he carried out invasive cardiogram procedures on patients without proper training.

The 45-year-old was also caught conducting private work at a clinic when he was on call at the hospital.

Last month, the panel at the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service in Manchester agreed to hold Royle's entire misconduct hearing behind closed doors - citing privacy rules over the 'physical or mental health' of a doctor.

The panel has now issued a heavily redacted document saying Royle would be allowed to carry on working subject to supervision.

The panel - chaired by another doctor - also said Royle posed 'no risk' to patients although the conditions ban him from prescribing drugs to himself and family. He can only prescribe or administer drugs to patients under supervision from a senior colleague.

Royle is currently working at Ysbyty Gwynedd hospital in Bangor, North Wales and a review will be held over his supervision in a year.

Investigations began in 2014 after Royle wrote a prescription for the medication in September 2013 in the name of a colleague without their knowledge. The incident was reported and it emerged another eleven prescriptions had been forged, all in the name of family members, friends and colleagues - with the documents certified unwittingly by fellow medical staff.

Royle, from Allerton, Liverpool, later reportedly wrote a letter of apology to the St Helens and Knowsley NHS Trust admitting what he had done, citing his addiction to pain-killing drugs as one of the reasons for his behaviour.

Last year at Liverpool Crown Court he admitted eight charges of making a false prescription for a scheduled drug and three charges of dishonestly making a false representation to make gain for himself. He was sentenced to four months' imprisonment, suspended for two years and was also ordered to pay 6,405 in costs.

Whiston Hospital, Liverpool, where Roylewas sacked after he carried out invasive cardiogram procedures on patients without proper training

Whilst working for St Helens and Knowsley Teaching Hospitals, Royle featured in a leaflet saying: 'Trust in Us' hailing him as a 'welcome addition to the highly skilled team.'

But despite agreeing not to undertake Trans-Oesophageal Echocardiograms following a complaint from a patient, he carried out further similar procedures on five other patients. He was sacked in February 2014.

In the redacted statement MPTS panel chairman Edward Doyle said: 'Dr Royle had written the fraudulent prescriptions using details of colleagues, family members and friends who were unaware of his actions.

'On a number of occasions Dr Royle had asked junior colleagues to sign fraudulent prescriptions. The Tribunal regarded this as a serious abuse of his professional position. The Tribunal has concluded that public confidence in the profession would be severely affected by knowledge of the convictions and the matters which led to them.

Ysbyty Gwynedd, the hospital in Bangot, North Wales, where Royle is currently working

'There are no conditions which could adequately address the convictions; however, the Tribunal concluded that the root cause of the matters which gave rise to your convictions was XXX. The Tribunal is aware that since these matters arose in 2012 and 2013 there has been no repetition of your actions.. The Tribunal has concluded that XXX patients will not be put at risk.

'The Tribunal has therefore determined that the risk of repetition is low.'

He added: 'You have engaged and cooperated with the criminal proceedings and regulatory process and the Tribunal accepted that you will continue responding positively to conditions.

'Indeed you have indicated your willingness to do so. The Tribunal bore in mind that enabling a competent clinician to continue in safe practice, wherever possible, is in the public interest.

'In all the circumstances the Tribunal has determined that placing conditions on your registration is a proportionate and appropriate sanction which would adequately protect patient safety and uphold the wider public interest. '

During the hearing behind closed doors, Royle's lawyers said the doctor had been under a 'huge amount of pressure in relation to personal matters' and said he was an 'excellent clinician.'
Two-year-old boy Jeremiah Regis-Ngawah died from peritonitis - the inflammation of a thin tissue layer inside the abdomen

A thug who beat children to 'toughen them up' has admitted murdering his partner's two-year-old son by repeatedly punching him in the stomach.

Chevase Sanchez McGregor, 30, battered Jeremiah Regis-Ngawah who died from peritonitis - inflammation of a thin tissue layer inside the abdomen.

McGregor admitted murder when he appeared at Birmingham Crown Court today. The boy's mother, Sindyann Laverne Regis, 26, had already admitted allowing his death at an earlier hearing.

Now, police have released further CCTV footage of McGregor as he flew into a violent rage in the living room of a relative's house months before Jeremiah's death.

Shocking footage shows him ripping off his shirt and viciously shoving a family member.

McGregor even collapses to the floor at one point in apparent frustration. After lying motionless for two minutes, he then storms out of the room before returning wearing a hoodie, which he also tears off during the argument.

An elderly woman appears to try and calm down the thug as he storms topless around the property shouting and lifting up furniture.

Police described the footage as a 'trivial family row' but said it helped officers build a picture of the man who went on to murder the youngster in November that year.

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Chevase Sanchez McGregor (left), 30, admitted murder today. The boy's mother, Sindyann Laverne Regis (right), 26, had already admitted allowing his death at an earlier hearing

Police have released further CCTV footage after the court case of McGregor flying into a rage just months before he killed Jeremiah

After lying motionless for two minutes, he then storms out of the room before returning wearing a hoodie, which he also tears off during the argument

Police explained that the video helped them to piece together a picture of the thug, who went on to kill a child

When Jeremiah died in November 2016, he was also found to have suffered a various injuries including a fractured skull and ribs, injuries to his arms and legs and a bite mark to his chest.

Jeremiah, described as a 'little smiler', had suffered at McGregor's hands since he renewed a relationship with his mother in 2016, after she moved to Wolverhampton from London.

The court heard McGregor used violence to 'toughen children up' and used his fists, a belt and a rod to hit Jeremiah and three other youngsters he had contact with.

On the day of his death, Jeremiah was rushed to hospital, after collapsing at his home in the Wednesfield area of the West Midlands city on November 20, 2016.

His mother knocked on neighbours' doors at the flats where she lived claiming her son was unwell and had been sick.

McGregor shoves a family member during the row, and even lay on the floor in apparent frustration at one point

In the shocking CCTV footage, McGregor rips off his shirt during the angry confrontation in the living room of a relative's home

In one part of the video, an elderly woman appears to try to calm the situation, as McGregor even picks up furniture in his rage

An ambulance was called and McGregor went to hospital with Jeremiah claiming to be his step-father, with Regis following later.

Despite frantic efforts by medical staff, Jeremiah was pronounced dead shortly after arriving at hospital.

Doctors who examined the toddler became suspicious of the injuries and other marks covering his body and police were called.

Jeremiah's mother and partner were arrested and later charged in connection with his death.

A post mortem revealed Jeremiah died from peritonitis as a result of blunt force trauma to his abdomen.

Detective Inspector Warren Hines, of West Midlands Police, said: 'The death of one so young is always tragic, but it's horrifying to think of the amount of violence and suffering this child must have endured in the hands of someone he should have been able to trust.

'McGregor was a controlling, manipulative and violent individual. He believed in chastising children physically and used a belt, a rod and his fists to cause the terrible injuries to Jeremiah. We believe the fatal assault was inflicted a couple of days before and Jeremiah was left in agony until he succumbed to peritonitis.

Jeremiah collapsed at his home on this road in Wednesfield in the West Midlands last year

'Evidence shows that Jeremiah had defensive wounds to his hands and arms, which shows he tried to shield himself from the beatings. Evidence shows McGregor was prone to bouts of extreme loss of temper.

'Sindyann must have known what was happening, we have been told Jeremiah whimpered when McGregor was around and yet she allowed him sole charge and discipline of the toddler. Parents are duty bound to care for children and to nurture them into adulthood.

'The home should be a sanctuary of safety, reassurance and happiness, not a place where they are brutalised and beaten. Jeremiah must have spent his short life absolutely terrified.'

Both will be sentenced at a later date.
Nick Clooney gushed over his newborn grandchildren as he revealed how he was introduced to the pair by their famous parents on Skype within hours of their birth.

Praising his human rights lawyer daughter-in-law Amal as a 'super woman', Nick, 83, told Fox 19 Now: 'They're gorgeous. The babies are beautiful, of course. She is beautiful.'

Amal and George Clooney welcomed twins Ella and Alexander in the 8,000-a-night Kensington Wing of London's Chelsea and Westminster Hospital on Tuesday.

They dialed in George's father and mother Nina shortly afterwards.

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George Clooney's parents Nick and Nina met their newest grandchildren over Skype within hours of their birth on Tuesday

'Nina swears they have Georges nose. I dont know what that means. She says it's the little boy, that sounds like a grandmother to me ' Nick gushed, adding that both babies had their father's dark hair.

While Amal was doing 'terrifically well', he joked that George may have self-medicated to deal with the momentous occasion.

She was telling us last week that she is as big as a house. Of course, for her, thats a very small house. Nick Clooney of daughter-in-law Amal

'She is just amazing. She was guiding the narration, this is two hours after the babies were born, and she was in charge of the conversation. She was just great.

'George, well, his eyes were glazed so Im not sure that he was sober. Well figure that out. That was a joke!'

Days before giving birth, Nick said 39-year-old Amal joked to he and Nina about being 'as big as a house'.

'Of course, for her, thats a very small house. But shes great.'

While Amal's mother Baria was present for the birth and remains in London, Nick and Nina, who still live Lexington, Kentucky, will wait for an invitation to meet their new grandchildren in person.

George and his human rights lawyer wife Amal welcomed twins Alexander and Ella in London on Tuesday. They are pictured in Paris in February (right)

Nick gushed over his daughter-in-law. The pair are pictured in February in Barcelona (left) and with his son in 2011 (right)

'They have enough on their plate to have some visiting grandparents coming in to London. So well leave that one entirely up to them,' he said.

Amal's sister, Tala Alamuddin, also welcomed the twins with an Instagram post where she shared an image quoting the Indigo Girls.

'Multiply life by the power of two or more', the image reads.

Alamuddin captioned the image by writing: 'Doubling down #poweroftwo #emPOWERed #rockstars #TOTALLYtwinning #gotheextra2miles #indigogirls #80sladiesrock #wisewordswednesdays #TALAgram #TOTALLYdoubled #TALA #TotallyTALA #getinspired #WOMENspired #riserockrepeat'.

George, 56, and Amal, 39, announced the happy news via a statement through their spokesman on Tuesday.

'This morning Amal and George welcomed Ella and Alexander Clooney into their lives.

'Ella, Alexander and Amal are all healthy, happy and doing fine.

'George is sedated and should recover in a few days,' it said lightheartedly.

Welcome to the family: Amal's sister, Tala Alamuddin, also welcomed the twins with an Instagram post (above) where she shared an image quoting the Indigo Girls

'Super woman': Amal (pictured at the UN Headquarters in New York City on March 9) is said to be recovering 'terrifically well'

The couple married in Venice in 2014. Nick said he knew immediately Amal, who is admired globally for her international human rights work, was the one who would change his famously single son's bachelor lifestyle.

The couple (pictured in October when Amal showed just the slightest hint of a bump) announced the news on Tuesday

'Nina and I both had different moments where we weren't sure it would ever happen.

'By golly, when we met Amal, we got that figured out in a hurry. Just as I, George married up. I did and so did he.'

After the twins' birth on Tuesday, Amal's mother Baria who was present for it, said: 'It was a beautiful delivery.

'Everything went well, the babies are beautiful and doing well.'

Her father Ramzi, who was in Beirut at the time, said: 'Everything is perfect. They will be great parents.'

Nick, who has enjoyed a successful news career as a television anchor and journalist, spoke at the couple's wedding in Venice in 2014.

There, he said beautifully: 'George got down on one basketball-battered knee and asked the savvy Amal to marry him. And if you think thats crazy, Amal said yes.'

He went on: 'In their tidal wave of generosity, Amal and George present us with one more gift: hope. No, its more than hope. It is belief that in this place and at this moment, love is alive and well.'



Nick spoke at the couple's 2014 Venice wedding. He is pictured (third left) on a boat with his wife Nina (back, second right) and son as they made their way to the ceremony
A Polish man dubbed the 'Vampire of Bytow', who once admitted to killing as many as 60 women, could be released from prison later this year.

Leszek Pekalski, 51, was accused of killing 17 women from 1984 to 1992. He was convicted in 1996 murdering a 17-year-old girl in June 1992, but the court said it lacked sufficient evidence to convict him of the others.

He was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the crime in 1996, and later this month a court will decide if he will be a free man or if he will spend the rest of his life in a psychiatric ward for extremely dangerous criminals.

The convicted murderer, who has spent his prison sentence in a psychiatric ward, appeared in court in Gdansk, Poland, on Tuesday ahead of the upcoming ruling.

Leszek Pekalski, 51, was accused of killing 17 women from 1984 to 1992. He was convicted in 1996 murdering a 17-year-old girl in June 1992, but the court said it lacked sufficient evidence to convict him of the others

He was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the crime, and later this month a court will decide if he will be a free man or if he will spend the rest of his life in a psychiatric ward for extremely dangerous criminals

Dressed in a green shirt and matching pants, Pekalski covered his face with a black hat and his handcuffs hands as he made his court appearance.

The court hearing comes 21 years after Pekalski was convicted of killing a 17-year-old girl and sentenced to 25 years.

By the end of the year, he'll have served the 25 year sentence, as he was first imprisoned in 1992.

The Provincial Court in the northern city of Slupsk issued the verdict in the case after an eight-month trial.

Pekalski is recognized by the Polish media as one of the deadliest serial killers in Poland.

He was first sentenced to two years in prison in 1992 for raping a 40-year-old woman, and was later accused on 20 crimes, including 17 murders.

The convicted murderer appeared in court in Gdansk, Poland, on Tuesday ahead of the upcoming ruling

Prosecutors accused Pekalski of strangling, knifing, bludgeoning or kicking his victims to death and then raping them.

Like the notorious OJ Simpson trial DNA evidence was crucial for the prosecutors' case, but it was revealed that police mishandled hair strands during the investigation and they lost evidential value.

During the investigation, Pekalski admitted to 60 killings, but later changed his testimony, saying police had forced him to confess by plying him with food and alcohol.

At the opening of his trial in April, Pekalski admitted killing 14 women, then later pleaded innocent.

The court ordered Pekalski to serve his prison term in a psychiatric institution.

Dressed in a green shirt and matching pants, Pekalski covered his face with a black hat and his handcuffs hands as he made his court appearance

'I'm a gullible man, and I was easily persuaded by what the officers had told me,' Pekalski reportedly told the judge at the time. 'I'm mentally weak, and if somebody pushes me, I break down. Then I admit to things I have never done.

'I have never killed anyone. I'm so scared. The prosecutor threatened that the victims' families or the public would kill me if I'm acquitted or get a mild sentence.

'He yelled at me and told me to confess everything.'

After hearing from psychiatric experts and reviewing observation documents, a regional court will decide June 19 if Pekalski will go free.

The judge interviewed six experts and Pekalski himself in a closed-door meeting.

If the court decides to further imprison Pekalsi, he would be put into the Center for the Prevention of dangerous behavior in Gostynin, which currently holds just over 30 other people.

The ruling would show that Pekalski needed therapy, and that he showed signs of impairments or personality disorders.
Extremist Islamic group Hizb ut-Tahrir could soon be listed as a terrorist organisation under a law reform following its inflammatory comments Muslims weren't to blame for Melbourne's deadly siege.

Attorney-General George Brandis is pushing for the radical group to be categorised under terrorism in an overhaul of the Commonwealth Criminal Code, claiming the bar was set too high for Australian organisations to be labelled as terrorist.

Senator Brandis said: 'I think there is an argument that the threshold for proscribing organisations as terrorist organisations is too high at the moment,' The Australian reports.

Extremist Islamic group Hizb ut-Tahrir spokesman Uthman Badar (pictured) has claimed Melbourne's ISIS attack was not terrorism

Attorney-General George Brandis (pictured) is pushing for the radical group to be categorised under terrorism in an overhaul of the Commonwealth Criminal Code

'Which is why I've instructed the preparation of amendments to the Commonwealth Criminal Code to lower the threshold at which organisations can be listed as terrorist organisations,' he also told 2GB radio.

Hizb ut-Tahrir operates in 40 nations, including Australia and the United Kingdom.

But it is banned in Germany, The Netherlands, Russia and Muslim-majority nations including Bangladesh, Turkey, Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Uzbekistan.

The Muslim body said Western leaders should be held accountable for the ISIS attack in Melbourne which killed the gunman and another man.

Hizb ut-Tahir's controversial spokesman Uthman Badar said the authorities had been too quick to judge the attack as a terrorist incident, despite the man calling a TV newsroom to say he was acting on behalf of two Islamist networks.

The Melbourne attacker, Yacqub Khayre, was also previously accused, and acquitted, of an al-Shabaab terror plot to attack a Sydney army barracks.

But that did not deter Uthman Badar from slamming Malcolm Turnbull and other Western leaders for the attack that left an innocent man dead and three police officers injured.

The Muslim body said Western leaders should be held accountable for the ISIS attack in Melbourne which killed the gunman and another man.

Senator Brandis said: 'I think there is an argument that the threshold for proscribing organisations as terrorist organisations is too high at the moment,' The Australian reports

Yacqub Khayre (pictured) was killed by police after he shot dead a man and took a woman hostage in the Melbourne suburb of Brighton on Monday

'Authorities have been quick to judge it 'terrorism' within hours of the incident, much before any proper clarity of facts or details was even possible,' Mr Badar said in a Facebook post.

'As for the previous terrorism case (attacker Yacqub Khayre) was charged in, he was acquitted. Despite all this, it's being treated as a terrorism case. How much more politicised can this stuff become?'

Mr Badar also claimed the attacker would have been declared 'mentally unstable', not a terrorist, if they were 'some Anglo person'.

He continued: 'Increased violence and insecurity around the world, which concerns us all, results primarily from the brutally exploitative terror (''polices'') western powers export abroad.

'It is western leaders who should be first held responsible, for whose crimes more and more innocent people are paying a heavy price.'

Mr Badar accused the media and politicians of 'alarmist sensationalism' and said Muslims should not be bullied 'from upholding the just word of truth'.

The Melbourne attacker, Yacqub Khayre, was also previously accused, and acquitted, of an al-Shabaab terror pot to attack a Sydney army barracks

Armed police are seen at the scene of the Melbourne siege on Monday night

'The fact of the matter is that *if* this is politically-motivated violence, then it's motivated by the elephant in the room that the politicians and media alike evade: western foreign policy in the Muslim world - what we might accurately call secular liberal terror or western state terror,' Mr Badar wrote.

'And if it's not politically-motivated violence, then its being wrapped up as terrorism is part of the problem.

'The alarmist sensationalist with which such attacks are treated by media and politicians creates more fear and terror than the attacks themselves.'

Mr Badar also accused Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull of 'exploiting the attack, as usual, to ram through further 'counter-terrorism' measures'.
Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris has revealed just how unpopular the former Health Secretary is at Westminster, admitting this will 'not be a good thing' for the West Suffolk MP. Mr Hancock, who has been thrown out of the Tory Parliamentary Party for going 10,000 miles away from his constituency to appear on the ITV show, got covered in slime, cockroaches and spiders last night. H e was also picked by the public to endure a second Bushtucker trial tonight, called Tentacles of Terror. And in a hint that his colleagues at Westminster have played their part, Mr Heaton-Harris said: 'I know the format of the show. There's a lot of people in the House of Commons & House of Lords who've downloaded a certain app [I'm a Celeb] so they can vote'. He added that he believed that "hundreds" of MPs and peers have downloaded it. Mr Hancock received an icy reception from his fellow campmates when he arrived yesterday - with Boy George threatening to walk out and Chris Moyles asking 'what about his constituents?' ITV newsreader Charlene White also gave him a grilling about his motives and Mike Tindall said: 'All I heard him say was bulls**t bulls**t bulls**t!!'. The former Health Secretary tried to reassure the camp that 'Rishi's great, he'll be fine' and 'stability' has been restored in politics when they grilled him on his reasons for entering the jungle. Campmate Charlene White told him: 'We've had stability for all of five minutes Matt'. As Hancock prepares for his second Bucktucker trial tonight, crew are reportedly holding a backstage sweepstake including taking bets on how many trials he will have to endure, according to the Sun .
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Motorists have slammed traffic wardens for slapping parking tickets on cars left inside a police cordon set up in the wake of the London Bridge terror attack.

Pictures from within Borough Market show several cars with a 130 fine notice on them, while wardens were also seen circling around them this afternoon.

A number of business owners were said to have been forced to shoo away wardens as they tried to get restaurants and bars within the cordon back up and running.

Police began removing the cordon bit by bit in the early hours of this morning, with motorists claiming they were told to pick up their cars from 8am.

But according to one driver, vehicles were already being ticketed minutes later.

Motorists have slammed traffic wardens for slapping parking tickets on cars left inside a police cordon set up in the wake of the London Bridge terror attack

Pictures from within Borough Market show several cars with a 130 fine notice on them, while wardens were also seen circling around them this afternoon

One driver said he received an email from the Met Police at 8am telling him he could come and collect his car, but claimed that by 8.05am vehicles in the area were already being ticketed

A number of business owners were said to have been forced to shoo away wardens as they tried to get restaurants and bars within the cordon back up and running

He said he received an email from the Metropolitan Police at 8am telling him he could come and collect his car, but claimed that by 8.05am vehicles were being slapped with fines.

Massimo Ricciardi, 47, manager of Giuseppe's restaurant on Borough High Street, said his boss was almost given a ticket.

He told The Sun: 'It's unbelievable - the car was there since Saturday. He could not come because nobody can come inside, how could he have moved the car?

'This morning he could not come because he lives far away. The mind of some people they are not compassionate. Come on.

TfL APOLOGISES FOR 'INSENSITIVE MISTAKE' 'We unreservedly apologise for our insensitive mistake. 'These fines should never have been issued and will all be immediately cancelled.' Advertisement

'I explained to her [the traffic warden] that the car was there since Saturday and he could not move it. It was lucky the key was here otherwise he would have got the fine.'

Transport for London has since said it will write off the fines, which could have stretched to 130.

A spokesman said: 'We unreservedly apologise for our insensitive mistake.

'These fines should never have been issued and will all be immediately cancelled.'

It is understood there will be wardens in the area for the rest of the week but no cars that have been parked within the police cordon will be fined.

Another car which was ticketed after being parked behind the police cordon following Saturday's terror attack in London Bridge and Borough Market

Hundreds of cars have been left in the same spot since police set up a cordon following Saturday's terror attack in London Bridge and Borough Market

Transport for London has since apologised and said it will write off the parking fines issued because it was 'insensitive'

Hundreds of cars have been left in the same spot since police set up a cordon following Saturday's terror attack in London Bridge and Borough Market.

Eight people were killed and 48 injured when knife-wielding terrorists Khuram Butt, Rachid Redouane and Youssef Zaghba went on a killing spree.

Meanwhile,Muslim leaders have pledged to 'root out' the 'menace' of extremism as they launched an action plan to tackle radicalisation within their communities.

Around 100 imams gathered near London Bridge to condemn the recent terrorist atrocities in both the capital and Manchester.

They were joined by other faith leaders including those from Jewish and Christian communities as they walked a short distance from outside the Shard to what has now become a makeshift memorial at the bridge following the weekend's carnage.

Many of those taking part held aloft pieces of paper with the slogans 'We stand with London' and 'Not in our name' and carried single red roses.

A man is seen here holding up a placard with London's iconic Tower Bridge on it, saying '#ISIS will lose. #Love will win', during a gathering today

Representatives of the Muslim community stand around flowers layed in an area just south of London Bridge as they came to pay their repects

A large crowd gathered opposite The Barrowboy And Banker pub, close to where the van carrying the terrorist trio Youssef Zaghba, Khuram Shazad Butt and Rachid Redouane crashed.

They murdered eight people and injured 48 others in their rampage around London Bridge and Borough Market on Saturday night.

Muslim scholar Aneesa Hussain told those present: 'Today we make it clear that terrorists and extremists are not following the path to paradise.

'We clarify that the funeral prayer of such barbaric individuals is not to be performed, nor they be buried among the Muslims.

'We stand here also to reiterate our commitment to peace, bridge-building and British values, and to continue to play our role in rooting out this menace from our communities and the wider society.'

Echoing the words of Prime Minister Theresa May, she said: 'Enough is indeed enough' as a four-point plan to combat extremist ideology was announced.

Muslims in Britain can be confident in their identity and that their religion is compatible with the values held dear within the UK, the plan states.

A Muslim man gives a speech during the emotional ceremony, as people around him hold up posters with slogans on and prepare to lay flowers

This man looks visibly emotional as he lays two red roses close to the site where three terrorists killed eight people and injured dozens of others

Notions that Muslims should work to establish and support a so-called Islamic State and that it is a betrayal to help British authorities are 'wrong', the plan adds, and will continue to be challenged within mosques and educational institutions as 'divisive narratives'.

Leaders have also vowed to improve cross-community engagement by showing there are no no-go areas when it comes to places of worship.

Part of the plan echoes further the words of Mrs May in the wake of recent attacks, that the internet should not give 'safe spaces' to extremists, and said it remains a challenge to prevent online grooming of young people.

Imam Qari Asim said ahead of the gathering: "My message to any wannabe extremist is that by taking part in terror you are not committing a martyrdom, you are following a suicidal cause, and you're bringing disrepute to your family members and the whole of the community."

The spokesman for the British Muslim Forum and imam of the Leeds Makkah mosque added: "And more importantly you are not a martyr, you are a criminal and it's as simple as that."

A woman weeps as she looks over the flowers that have been laid on London Bridge for the victim's of Saturday night's brutal attack

Two others generous citizens come to crouch down next to her to check if she is okay, as she is overcome with emotion

Another woman lays a floral tribute on London Bridge in memory of the eight people who were killed in the attack

Cheers! Resilient Londoners are back drinking as Borough Market pubs open for business just four days after extremists killed eight in terror attack

By Anthony Joseph, Thomas Burrows and Gareth Davies

Resilient Londoners have returned to the bars and restaurants just four days after the venues were plunged into terror when Islamic extremists killed eight and injured dozens more.

Popular drinking venues such as the Bunch Of Grapes, on St Thomas Street - which one of many that was evacuated when three terrorists ploughed into innocent civilians on London Bridge before launching a knife rampage - reopened for business after Saturday night's horrors.

And residents wasted no time after the cordon was lifted to get back to having fun, as they were pictured sipping pints in the bustling central London area.

Popular drinking venues such as the Bunch Of Grapes (pictured) reopened for business after Saturday night's horrors

Residents wasted no time after the cordon was lifted to get back to having fun, as they were pictured sipping pints in the bustling central London area.

As the drizzle dropped into their pints, the capital city's workers refused to be put off by Saturday night's massacre

Two men enjoy a pint at the bunch of grapes as order begins to slowly be restored to the central London area that was hit by devastation

As the drizzle dropped into their pints, the capital city's workers refused to be put off by Saturday night's massacre.

Patrick Gurden came down from Hitchin because he and his friend thought it was right to show solidarity.

They arrived in London at 6.30pm and headed straight for the scene of Saturday night's terror.

He told MailOnline: 'People and things like that shouldn't stop you coming out and having a drink.

'We just thought it was important to come and show a bit of strength.

'It's the right thing to do.'

The images are in stark contrast to chilling pictures taken earlier of pubs, showing the eerie aftermath of the horrific terror attack.

The haunting images from The Bunch of Grapes and The Mudlark, in Borough Market, show scattered chairs, broken glass and half-finished pints which have been left untouched for four days.

Rubbish is strewn on the floor and furniture was left overturned as revellers ran for their lives from rampaging jihadis.

Terrorists Khuram Butt, Yousef Zaghba and Rachid Redouane mowed down pedestrians on London Bridge, crashed their van and went on a stabbing spree before being shot dead by armed officers.

They killed eight people and injured dozens in eight minutes of terror on the streets of the British capital.

Chilling pictures taken inside London Bridge pub, The Bunch of Grapes, show the eerie aftermath of the horrific terror attack. Half-empty glasses and bottles have been left at the bar

Debris from Saturday's attack in Borough Market, London, remain in the street. Rubbish is strewn on the floor and furniture was left overturned as revellers ran for their lives from rampaging jihadis

Pictured is the mess at The Bunch of Grapes pub in Saint Thomas Street, London, opposite Borough Market. A half-drunk pint of beer and half-empty bottle of Coke can be seen on a table

Staff at the Bunch of Grapes pub clear furniture and signs out of the building following the terror attack on Saturday

Men and women at Bunch of Grapes are seen loading up a truck with furniture, signs and other items after the terror attack

A woman carried a chair out of the Bunch of Grapes pub in London Bridge today following the attack on Saturday

The haunting images from The Bunch of Grapes (pictured) on St Thomas Street and The Mudlark in Borough Market show scattered chairs, broken glass and half-finished pints which have been left untouched for four days

A glass of white wine and a pint of lager were left abandoned on outside tables at the Mudlark Pub in Borough Market

Business began to re-open today, as their owners began to put back together the trail of destruction that was left by the attack.

Marco Vasconcelos, a barman at Giuseppe's Italian restaurant on King's Head Yard, added: 'People were having their main course and we found the meals today as they were left on Saturday night.

'When we heard someone had been stabbed we thought it might be a fight but then we saw all the police and some guy heard shots and we closed everything. Then police came in and said we had to leave. Some customers were very upset.

'The way police told us to leave was very forceful. Everything was just left as it was, there was no time for anything, it was crazy. It's affected so many tourists as well, I think.'

Lorenzo Terrero, manager of the Luncheonette on Southwark Street, said: 'The first I knew of anything was seeing lots of police cars coming down the straight.

'Then someone next door called the police as he saw someone being stabbed. Then lots more police cars came.

Fifteen people have been arrested in connection with the incident, but 13 have since been released without charge. Pictured is the inside of The Bunch of Grapes

London officials said a large part of the outer cordon of the crime scene had reopened. Borough Market, a popular gathering place, remains closed as more evidence is gathered. Pictured are toppled chairs and tables at Borough Market

On the day after the attack armed police and forensic officers were seen scouring the scene at London Bridge and Borough Market, where three terrorists left a trail of death and destruction when they went on a van and knife rampage. Pictured is the eerie aftermath inside The Bunch of Grapes

Police comb through the Borough Market area today following Saturday's terror attack in the capital

Police could be seen talking and looking at parts of the street in Borough Market after Saturday's terror attack

Pictures show the state of the pub before it was evacuated on the night of the terror attack on London Bridge

Police officers guard a closed entrance of the Borough Market in the London Bridge area this afternoon

Metropolitan Police officers stand on duty outside The Mudlark Pub, near to an entrance to Borough Market in London

A couple of drinks left abandoned in the garden of the Mudlark Pub which is still shut since the terror attack on Saturday

'Loads of people were running down the street, everything was crazy. Then 15 minutes after I heard guns inside Borough Market. We took the customers downstairs and then the police came in and told us we had to 'go go go'. We then ran down the street away from London Bridge.

'The door was open to the shop and everything was on, even the cooker so I had to come back on Sunday to turn everything off. Police had sealed the shop. It's very frightening.'

Antonio Costa, a chef at the luncheonette, added: 'We have been closed for a few days and had to throw away lots of things and lost a lot of money but we will carry on.

'The restaurant was full at the time and busy. We closed the doors and went downstairs and then police ordered us to leave down the road. It was very frightening. But we are in a big city and it's happening in France, Belgium, Germany and we know it can happen.'

London officials said a large part of the outer cordon of the crime scene had reopened. Borough Market, a popular gathering place, remains closed as more evidence is gathered. Pictured are toppled chairs and tables at Borough Market.

Police officers were seen laying flowers at the scene of the horrific attack this afternoon.

The George Pub on Borough High Street remains closed after the shocking terror attack on Saturday

A dustpun and brush sits abandoned next to a bottle of Lucozade at The Old Thameside Inn at Pickfords Wharf today

The Number 1 bar near London Bridge train station remains closed this afternoon following Saturday's terror attack

People walk past The George pub on Borough High Street which is still shut today following Saturday's atrocity

A police cordon remains around Borough Market today following the terror attack at the weekend in London

People work in an area cordoned off by police among the debris from Saturday's attack in Borough Market

Officials in London said a large part of the outer cordon of the crime scene had reopened in Borough this afternoon

On the day after the attack armed police and forensic officers were seen scouring the scene at London Bridge and Borough Market, where three terrorists left a trail of death and destruction when they went on a van and knife rampage.

The attackers, who were wearing fake suicide vests, mowed down up to 20 pedestrians as they careered across London Bridge in an 'S shape' at 50mph before abandoning the vehicle at nearby Borough Market, where they began 'randomly stabbing' revellers packed into busy bars and pubs.

Fifteen people have been arrested in connection with the incident, but 13 have since been released without charge.

The latest arrest was a 30-year-old man, who was detained in connection with the massacre in the early hours of this morning after Counter-terrorism officers raided a property in Ilford, east London

The man has been arrested over terror offences and has been taken into custody at a south London police station.

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said: 'Detectives investigating the London Bridge terror attack have carried out a search warrant at an address in east London in the early hours of Wednesday, June 7.

Debris remains in the street following Saturday's attack in Borough Market, which is a popular gathering place in the capital

Borough Market remains closed after Saturday's terror attack, with Southwark Cathedral visible in the background

Containers sit outside The Old Thameside Inn on the South Bank on Clink Street which remains closed this afternoon

The area of Borough Market is eerily quiet compared to its normal bustling self, following Saturday's terror attack

The Number 1 bar remains closed this afternoon after the terror attack on Saturday which left eight people dead

A police cordon remains around Borough Market following the terror attacks in which 48 people were injured

Imams and members of the Muslim community arrive to lay flowers near the scene of the London Bridge terrorist attack

Police direct people around Borough Market in South London following the terror attack on Saturday night

Police speak to members of the public as the cordon remains around Borough Market following the terror attack

A group of police stand next to a cordon which remains around Borough Market near London Bridge train station

Yesterday, a A 27-year-old man was arrested in the Barking area in connection with the atrocity.

It came after police confirmed they raided a home in Ilford in the early hours.

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police told MailOnline that yesterday's raid was at a different address to today's operation and that nobody had been detained.

'Officers from the Met's Counter Terrorism Command, supported by officers from the Territorial Support Group, entered the address in Ilford at around 1.30am,' they said.

'A 30-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of terrorist acts (contrary to section 5 Terrorism Act 2006) and has been taken into custody at a south London police station under the Terrorism Act 2000. A search of the address is ongoing.'

And also reports in Ireland emerged that a man had been detained in Limerick last night over the attack.

A map shows how terror attack unfolded. The attackers were shot dead within eight minutes of the first emergency phone call

London Bridge and Borough Market this afternoon as police arrive at the scene to lay flower and mark their respect

Pictured are police officers laying flowers at the scene of the terror attack at London Bridge today. A number of police officers were injured on Saturday

Metropolitan Police men and women line up to lay flowers at London Bridge this afternoon after Saturday's horrific attack. In the backdrop is The Barrow and Banker pub where the terrorists crashed their van after mowing down around 20 people

Two policewomen are pictured holding flowers at the scene of the London Bridge terror attack, which killed eight people

On the day after the attack armed police and forensic officers were seen scouring the scene at London Bridge and Borough Market, where three terrorists left a trail of death and destruction when they went on a van and knife rampage. Today they were seen laying flowers at the scene

A Metropolitan Police officer wipes a tear from her face as members of the force stand at London Bridge to pay their respects

A Morrocan national was arrested in Limerick on Monday after ID documents found at his home were in the name of one of the London attackers - Rachid Redouane.

He was being questioned at a garda station in the city by detectives attached to the Garda National Immigration Bureau (GNIB) on suspicion of using forged documents, according to the Limerick Leader. He was later released without charge.

On Monday, Scotland Yard announced that all 12 people arrested on Sunday by officers in east London investigating Saturday's massacre have been released without charge.

Molotov cocktails hidden in a bottle of 5 WINE: Huge haul of petrol bombs found in the back of the van used by London Bridge terrorists

By Richard Spillett

Chilling pictures show police officers removing petrol bombs from the back of the van used by the London Bridge terrorists.

At least four wine bottles with paper 'fuses' wrapped around their necks were taken from the Hertz hire van which crashed outside a pub on the south side of the bridge on Saturday night.

Forensics officers also lined up 14 jerry cans like those sold at petrol stations, leading to fears the trio planned to use makeshift bombs to further increase the death toll.

Khuram Butt, Rachid Redouane and Youssef Zaghba drove the van across the bridge on Saturday night, weaving on and off the pavement to kill as many pedestrians as they could.

They then jumped out of the vehicle and attacked members of the public in and around bars in Borough Market before all three were shot dead by armed police.

Police found 14 jerry cans like those used to store petrol in the back of the van used to carry out the London Bridge terror attack, prompting fears the death toll could have been higher

At least four Molotov cocktails - made from 5 bottles of Lidl wine - were also pictured on the ground beside the van as police examined the scene earlier this week

The Hertz hire van was left where the terrorists crashed it, at railings outside a pub on the south side of London Bridge

Their attack following a call by ISIS for its followers to use improvised weapons to carry out low-tech attacks on Western targets.

It is not known why the trio did not use the apparent weapons, but it is possible they thought their attack would last longer and intended to return to the van.

ISIS has claimed responsibility for the atrocity, although some have suggested they are trying to gain notoriety from the attack rather than having been directly involved.

Police and MI5 are attempting to confront an 'unprecedented' threat, with 500 active investigations involving 3,000 individuals, and 20,000 former 'subjects of interest'.

Eighteen plots have been foiled since 2013, including five in two months after the Westminster attack.

Xavier Thomas, 45, today emerged as the eighth victim killed in the atrocity at the weekend, after he was thrown into the river by the terrorists' van.

The terrorists used the van and knives, but may have been planning an even worse atrocity

Police forensic experts were seen examining the vehicle as they investigate the atrocity

The trio, who had been radicalised in east London, were pictured during their killing spree

Also killed in the attack were Australian nanny Sara Zelenak, 21, French chef Sebastien Belanger, 36, his fellow countryman and friend Alexandre Pigeard, 27, nurse Kirsty Boden, 28, from Australia, British business owner James McMullan, 32, from Hackney and Canadian tourist Christine Archibald, 30, died after being hit by a van.

The family of Ignacio Echeverria, from Las Rozas in Spain, today revealed that he was killed in the massacre after he used his skateboard as a weapon against a knife-wielding jihadi as he tried to save a woman from being attacked.

Controversy over the UK's counter-terror efforts spread to border security after claims emerged that one of the perpetrators was let into the country despite being on a security watch list.

Youssef Zaghba is said to have told Italian police 'I'm going to be a terrorist' when he was stopped trying to travel to Syria last year.

Prosecutors in Italy say there was not enough evidence to arrest or charge the 22-year-old when he was intercepted at Bologna airport.

Investigators scoured the scene this week as they prepare a detailed report of how the terrorists carried out their rampage

The belongings of those who were hit by or jumped out of the way of the van were left alongside paramedics' equipment

Forensics experts were seen gathering evidence at the bar area below where the van crashed on Saturday night

The vehicle was taken away by police this week as police continue to piece together what happened on Saturday night

Unconfirmed reports suggest he was placed on the Schengen Information System (SIS II), a vast database of alerts about individuals and objects of interest to EU law enforcement agencies.

It contains information on thousands of people wanted under the European Arrest Warrant, as well as suspected foreign fighters.

Alerts are made available in the UK through the Police National Computer and to Border Force officers at immigration controls.

Authorities are facing pressure to detail whether an alert was flagged about Zaghba when he came into the UK and whether he was stopped at the border.

The Home Office has not commented as there is an ongoing police investigation, while Scotland Yard has said Zaghba, who lived in east London, was not a police or MI5 subject of interest.

Evidence tents were set up on the bridge on Sunday as Met Police forensics experts collected evidence for reports

Detectives are still appealing for information from any members of the public who knew the attackers or saw what happened

Detectives walked across the bridge gathering any evidence which could aid the investigation before it was reopened

Scotland Yard today announced that, during the time its Casualty Bureau was operational, it handled over 3,500 calls

Questions over the extent to which the terror gang were known to security services have been mounting since it was revealed another of the attackers, Khuram Shazad Butt, 27, had been investigated in 2015.

Scotland Yard has confirmed that Butt was known to police and MI5 but said there was 'no intelligence to suggest that this attack was being planned' and the probe 'had been prioritised accordingly'.

The revelation meant perpetrators in all three of the terrorist outrages to hit the UK this year had been on the radar at some point.

Zaghba, Pakistan-born British citizen Butt and Rachid Redouane, 30, who claimed to be Moroccan-Libyan, launched a rampage around London Bridge and Borough Market on Saturday night.

Police have said Redouane was not known to security services. Butt and Redouane both lived in Barking, east London.
The chance of an average American being struck by lighting is about 1 in 960,000, but a businessman from upstate New York has earned the dubious distinction of beating those overwhelming odds while sitting at his office desk.

Nick Gemayel, 33, says he is just 'happy to be alive' after his freak encounter with a bolt of lightning inside his auto repair shop in Rochester earlier this week.

Speaking to the local station WHEC-TV from the hospital, Gemayel says he was sitting in his office at Rochester AutoWerks in the 500 block of West Broad Street when severe thunderstorms rolled across the area.

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Not-so-lucky strike: Nick Gemayel, pictured with his wife and two young children, on Monday survived getting hit by lightning. The freak incident took place during a thunderstorm

Just another day at the office: Gemayel was sitting at his office desk at Rochester AutoWerks Monday when he saw a bright flash of light from the office's light switch

Sitting at his computer (pictured), Gemayel heard a loud crack and then the lights went out

The married father-of-two says he suddenly saw a bright flash of light from the office's light switch, heard the loudest crack he's ever heard in his life and then the lights went out, plunging the entire office into darkness.

The garage's manager, Ryan Davis, was standing outside the shop door when he saw the bolt strike the sidewalk in front of the building. He wasn't injured.

Gemayel says it was 30 minutes before he realized his left hand, adorned with his wedding band, was blistering from getting hit by the bolt that arced through the light switch.

'My muscles started contracting and tensing. And I begun to get very foggy thinking. I started to feel very strange,' he told the station.

Firefighters who responded to the scene urged Gemayel to seek medical treatment. The businessman heeded their advice and went to Highland Hospital, where doctors diagnosed him with Rhabdomyolysis - a breakdown of muscle tissue that releases a damaging protein into the blood that, if left untreated, could damage the kidneys.

It was 30 minutes before Gemayel realized his left hand was blistering. He then went to a hospital, where doctors diagnosed him with a breakdown of muscle tissue

The lightning strike caused significant damage to Gemayel's auto repair shop, frying electrical wiring

The lightning strike also knocked out business phones and computers

Gemayel was treated and released Tuesday after being ordered by doctors to stay hydrated and rest.

The lightning strike caused significant damage to the man's auto repair shop, knocking out its phone router, computers and phones, and scorching electrical wires. Fortunately for Gemayel, his business was insured.

He plans to return to work after enjoying a few days off, but he says it might be awhile before he touches a light switch.

'I think I should probably go play the lottery,' he quipped.
London's Metropolitan Police have formally confirmed that 21-year-old Sara Zelenak is one of the eight people who were killed during the terror attack.

A statement from the Australian nanny's family, released by the police, said they and her friends were 'devastated' to learn of her tragic death.

'We are deeply saddened at the tragic loss of our beautiful daughter and sister of Harrison and Scott,' they said.

'We would like to thank our friends and family who are helping us through this very difficult time.

Brisbane-born Miss Zelenak, who had been working in the UK, was separated from her friend on London Bridge when the violence began.

Sara Zelenak (pictured), has been confirmed as killed in Saturday night's terrorist attack on London Bridge

Her mother, Julie Wallace, confirmed the devastating news in a Facebook post on Wednesday

Her mother, who had flown to London to find her daughter, shared a post to the woman's Facebook on Wednesday to tell followers her body had been found.

'Sara Zelenak is confirmed dead, they found her body and has DNA tests confirmed. Thank you for all the overwhelming love and support from everyone,' she wrote.

Ms Zelenak's mother Julie Wallace travelled to London on Tuesday to search for her missing daughter.

She revealed Sara, who had worked as a nanny in London since March, avoided the horror on Westminster Bridge earlier this year and was very nearly caught up in the Manchester suicide bombing.

'Horror, complete horror. And the one with the policeman being stabbed about three months ago, she was there the day before in the exact spot,' Ms Wallace told radio station 97.3FM on Tuesday.

She also revealed her daughter had tickets to the ill-fated Ariana Grande concert in Manchester where a terrorist set off a bomb, killing 22, but end up not going.

Ms Zelenak was meant to be working on Saturday night, but a last-minute change of plans meant she was out with a friend on London Bridge.

Mark Wallace (left) the stepfather of Ms Zelenak (right) said he had called every hospital in London in a desperate attempt to find the 21-year-old

The Australian nanny had been missing since the terrorist attack on Saturday night, which killed eight

Ms Wallace said she last spoke to her daughter at 4.42pm on Friday, Brisbane time.

TERROR VICTIMS Killed: Kirsty Boden, 28, from Loxton, Australia.

James McMullan, 32, from Hackney, east London.

Christine Archibald, 30, from British Columbia, Canada.

Alexandre Pigeard, 27, from Normandy, France.

Sara Zelenak, 21, from Brisbane, Australia. Missing: Xavier Thomas, from Loire-Atlantique, France.

Ignacio Echeverria, 39, from Las Rozas, Spain.

Sebastien Belanger, from Angers, France. Advertisement

She said her daughter had expressed her excitement about her upcoming trip with her mother and stepfather to France at the end of this month.

Ms Zelanak's stepfather Mark Wallace said he was distraught after calling every hospital in London trying to find her  to no avail.

Ms Zelenak's friend Pri Goncalves was the last person to see her  but the pair became separated when they panicked and ran for their lives after a van began plowing into people on London Bridge.

The pair had been leaving London Grind, a trendy restaurant moments from the scene of the attack, and were looking for a bar to go to when the chaos began.

When she looked back and saw her friend wasn't with her, she called Sara at 10.09pm  a minute after police received the first emergency call reporting the attack.

She tried again a couple of minutes later, again at 10.16pm and 10.17pm but received no answer.

She said Ms Zelenak hasn't been online to check her messages on Whatsapp since 10.03pm, shortly before the attack began.

Ms Zelenak's mother flew to London in a desperate bid to find her daughter (pictured) who she had not heard from since the attack

On Tuesday, family and friends of Ms Zelenak were seen visiting the family home of the 21-year-old in Brisbane

Ms Zelenak's aunt, Tara (pictured), speaking to reporters on Tuesday outside her niece's family home in Brisbane

Family and friends, some carrying flowers, were at the family home of Ms Zelenak as they waited for news about her whereabouts

The pair, both au pairs working in Herne Hill in south London, had met on the train.

That evening, they were out celebrating Ms Zelenak's new job in Westminster and had met at London Bridge station before going to dinner.

Of the eight confirmed deaths from the attack, five have now been named, including Miss Boden and Miss Zelenak.

The other three victims were revealed as Londoner James McMullan, 32, Canadian tourist Christine Archibald, 30, and French waiter Alexandre Pigeard, 27.

The heartbroken family of Ms Boden revealed she died after she ran towards danger in a bid to save lives.

Kirsty Boden (pictured), from Loxton, in South Australia, was killed by knife-wielding terrorists as she ran to help victims of Saturday night's London terror attack

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has reached out to the families of both of the Australians killed in a sickening rampage his foreign minister has described as savage beyond belief.

The prime minister earlier spoke with the family of Ms Zelenak, who was on London Bridge after becoming separated from a friend when the rampage began.

Her family were bracing for the worst after appealing for information about the 21-year-old nanny in a Facebook post shared hundreds of times on Monday, saying she usually rang her mother daily.

'I am a father ... Kirsty or Sara could be one of my kids, it could be one of your kids,' Mr Turnbull told 3AW's Neil Mitchell on Wednesday.

'This is heart-rending, this is the last thing anybody expects to happen to their children when they are in London.'

Ms Bishop says the families are on their way to London and have asked for privacy.

Ms Boden, 28, is being remembered remembered by her family as being 'brave' in her final moments as she went to the aid of one of the injured of the London terror attack

'You can understand what a harrowing time they are going through,' she told Sydney's 2GB radio.

'The two beautiful young women enjoying a night out in London. I have to say, the savagery of these attacks is just beyond belief.'

In a statement earlier on Wednesday, Ms Bishop said: 'The Australian Government is deeply saddened to confirm that two Australians have been killed in the London terrorist attack.

'We continue to work with the United Kingdom authorities who have asked that we await official confirmation of the identities of the victims, and for the families to be officially notified, before we release their names.'

Prince Harry paid tribute to the victims of the terror attack during a speech to launch the Invictus Games in Sydney on Wednesday.

'I would also like to start by sending my thoughts to those affected by Saturday's attack in London Bridge,' he said.

'Australians form an important and vibrant part of the fabric of life in London and we are reminded of that in good times and bad.

'And our hearts go out to the victims, their friends and families.'

Colleagues of Ms Boden at Guys' and St Thomas' NHS Federation Trust have paid tribute to 'an outstanding nurse and a hugely valued member of the staff'

Ms Boden's relatives said she was 'loved and adored by her family, friends and boyfriend,' while her colleagues at Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital in central London, where she worked as a senior staff nurse in theatre recovery, described her as 'one in a million.'

'As she ran towards danger, in an effort to help people on the bridge, Kirsty sadly lost her life,' her family said in a statement on Tuesday.

'We are so proud of Kirsty's brave actions which demonstrate how selfless, caring and heroic she was, not only on that night, but throughout her life.'

They added: 'She was the most outgoing, kind and generous person who loved to help people.

'Helping people was what she loved to do in her job as a nurse and in her daily life.'

'Kirsty  we love you and we will miss you dearly.'

A keen traveller when not at work, a haunting post from Ms Boden on her online travel blog read: 'At risk of sounding cliche, life is short and we should all use the time we have wisely.'

The 28-year-old nurse (pictured) travelled to Kiev, Ukraine, for Eurovision this year

Dame Eileen Sills, the chief nurse at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, also paid tribute to Ms Boden, who she described as an 'outstanding' nurse.

'As the Chief Nurse at Guy's and St Thomas' I cannot put into words how sad I am that we have lost one of our own,' she said.

'Kirsty was an outstanding nurse and a hugely valued member of the staff team in Theatre Recovery, described by her colleagues as 'one in a million' who always went the extra mile for the patients in her care.

'Our thoughts are with her family, her loved ones and our staff who have lost a dear friend and colleague.'

Members of the Loxton State Emergency Service said she always 'lit up the room with your adorable smile and gorgeous laugh.'

'You are a true everyday hero, putting the needs of those injured before yourself,' they said on Facebook.

Immanuel College principal Kevin Richardson said the former student was a boarder and a star swimmer, who always wanted to travel.

'She was a very caring person. One of those kids who basically had a great passion for life and wanted to live every moment,' he told ABC radio.

Former schoolmate, Donshae Kaesler said Ms Boden was 'always so bubbly at school'. She added: 'You will be sadly missed.'

Ms Boden was working in London as a theatre recovery nurse at Guy's Hospital

The 28-year-old nurse was reportedly attacked by the knife-wielding terrorists while coming to the aid of another injured person. A keen traveller, she is pictured here outside famed music pub The Cavern in Liverpool, UK

South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill also offered his condolences to Ms Boden's family.

In a statement, he said: 'This is a tragedy which will touch all South Australians.

'Kirsty's death brings the horror of terrorism closer to home for all of us. We all know someone who lives in the United Kingdom.

'We all know someone who could have been innocently wandering through London last weekend. It's the random nature of this heinous crime which makes it so hard to fathom.

'As a state, we mourn for Kirsty, we send our love to her family and we stand in solidarity with the people of Loxton as they grapple with this awful news.'

In a press conference on Wednesday morning, he said Ms Boden's murder as an 'unspeakable act of evil.'

He said: 'Kirsty Boden was a beautiful young woman from Loxton who left South Australia to explore the world using her talents as a nurse to care for others.

'She died doing just that, trying to help others. It is just so cruel, so wrong for someone so compassionate to be taken from us by such an unspeakable act of evil.'

Four Australians including Ms Boden and Ms Zelenak are believed to have been caught up in the attack. Eight people have been confirmed dead in the attack, while 48 were injured

He added: 'Like so many South Australians, she wanted to explore the world, moving to London where she lived for the past three years.

'It seems so cruel that her adventure should end in this way.

'To Kirsty's family, your pain must be unbearable but I want you to know that you are in our thoughts and our prayers.

'The South Australia community shares your heartbreak and offers its support to you at this awful time.'

Just days before her death, Ms Boden had written her blog post on her travels around Europe.

'At risk of sounding cliche, life is short and we should all use the time we have wisely,' she wrote.

Ms Boden moved to the UK shortly after graduating from Flinders University in Adelaide.

She began working in the healthcare sector a few years later and in her free time, she loved to travel  and documenting visits to Germany, Bulgaria, Switzerland and more on her blog.

Ms Boden recently made her way to Kiev, Ukraine, to attend the Eurovision Song Contest  where she supported her homeland by wearing a T-shirt bearing the Australian flag.

'I'm just your average dreamer, with a full time job and a constant longing to go where I haven't been,' she wrote.

'I have big travel dreams but I am realistic. I recognise that I might not go everywhere but I should definitely go everywhere I can, and so should you!'

Four Australians were caught up in the attack in total, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has said.

They included Candice Hedge who is recovering in hospital after undergoing surgery after being stabbed in her neck.

Darwin electrician Andrew Morrison has travelled back to Australia after receiving stitches after he was knifed in the neck.

The three terrorists behind the attacks have been named as Rachid Redouane, Khuram Butt and Youssef Zaghba.

All three were shot dead by police within eight minutes of the first emergency call.
Law enforcement agencies have warned the government that jihadists and their children returning from fighting in the Middle East have a slim chance of being reformed.

There are up to 65 children of Australian jihadists living in the Middle East as their fathers fight in Syrian and Iraqi battlefields, an Australian Federal Police led brief has revealed.

Their return would likely see them continue to fight on Australian soil, while their children would also pose a threat to national security if they were to return, sources said.

Law enforcement agencies have warned the government jihadists and their children returning from fighting in the Middle East have a slim chance of being reformed. Pictured: The youngest son of Khaled Sharrouf poses with the the body of a man hanging from a metal cross

Bilal Khazal (pictured) returned from Afghanistan before being convicted for collecting and making documents facilitating a terrorist act

The internal brief's findings comes after the Turnbull government said the children of homegrown jihadist fighters should be considered as 'victims' with a chance of reformation.

However law enforcement agencies stated reintegrating these children would be unlikely, The Daily Telegraph reported.

Many of the children are over 14 and are considered 'significantly' difficult to reform as they have been bred to hate the West and to turn to 'violent extremist ideology'.

Counter-terrorism police - including ASIO - said almost all 30 Australians who travelled to fight for al-Qaeda in the 1990s and early 2000s planned attacks in their cities of Sydney and Melbourne after they returned.

Among them is listed al-Qaeda member Bilal Khazal, who returned from Afghanistan before being convicted for collecting and making documents facilitating a terrorist act, the newspaper reported.

'It's not like an addiction, it is a battle of beliefs and you are not going to change people's minds easily,' a senior counter terrorist officer told News Corp.

Some families have pledged allegiance to Australia while formally requesting to return, despite their fathers taking part on the battlefield.

Justice Minister Michael Keenan described children as 'victims' of their parents' 'bad behaviour', which includes the children of notorious Australian terrorist Khaled Sharrouf (right)

Justice Minister Michael Keenan described children as 'victims' of their parents' 'bad behaviour', which includes the children of notorious Australian terrorist Khaled Sharrouf.

Sharrouf rose to infamy after posting 'iconic' images of his seven-year-old son holding a severed enemy head in Syria that disgusted the world.

Last month his son was seen posing in a suicide vest and being asked how to murder non-Muslim Australians, according to The Daily Telegraph.

Meanwhile calls to the counter terrorism hotline have quadrupled in the past two years.
A young boy's rediscovered diary may be the missing link to finally solving Australia's biggest kidnapping mystery, the 1966 disappearance of the Beaumont children.

Andrew McIntyre often went diving with his father Allan 'Max' McIntyre and Anthony Alan Munro, a family friend and convicted paedophile, at Glenelg Beach, Adelaide.

Throughout his adventures along the coast, the now 63-year-old and another child kept a diary of events. They called it the 'salvage and exploration club'.

Munro, a former scout leader, will face court in August to be sentenced over child sexual offences against boys dating back to 1965 - including Andrew McIntyre.

And now, more than five decades on from the day Jane, Arnna and Grant Beaumont disappeared, that book could be key to finding the 'blond man' witnesses described who has been long sought after, The Age reports.

A young boy's diary may be the missing link to finally solving Australia's biggest kidnapping mystery, the 1966 disappearance of the three Beaumont children (pictured)

The diary of Andrew McIntyre links convicted paedophile Anthony Munro (pictured) to being at Glenelg Beach, Adelaide, where the three siblings were last seen, at the time they vanished

Andrew McIntyre (left) often went diving with his father Allan 'Max' McIntyre (centre) and also Munro along the South Australian coastline (Also pictured is Andrew's sisters Ruth and Clare)

On Australia Day 1966, the Beaumont siblings caught the bus to Glenelg Beach, one of their regularly haunts throughout the summer months.

Jane, nine, Arnna, seven and Grant, four, were meant to return home at 2.30pm that day, but it wasn't until some five hours later that their worried parents called police.

A major manhunt and one of the nation's biggest ever police investigations followed.

Witnesses told police the children were playing with a tall, blond man aged within his 30s that day - a description that matches Munro's appearance at the time.

When providing information to police about the disappearance of the Beaumont's, Andrew McIntyre said he believed his father and Munro were involved.

'The day the Beaumont children disappeared was a shocking day in history that stands out in my memory very clearly,' the statement read, according to The Age.

Witnesses told police the children were playing with a tall, blond man aged within his 30s that day - a description that matches Munro's appearance at the time

'I believe Tony and Max (pictured) were involved in the disappearance of the Beaumont children,' a statement made by Andrew McIntyre to police reportedly read

Jane (right), nine, Arnna (left), seven and Grant (centre), four, were meant to return home at 2.30pm on Australia Day, 1966 - they haven't been seen since

'I believe Tony and Max were involved in the disappearance of the Beaumont children.'

Jailed in 1990 for sexually abusing a child, he later moved to Cambodia, in south-east Asia, where he ran a 'lady boy' bar.

Munro returned to Australia last year and was questioned over the disappearance of the three Beaumont siblings.

Police found no evidence that he was responsible and his lawyer similarly denied it.

According to the diary, the day the Beaumont children vanished Andrew McIntyre was meant to go diving with his father and Munro, but was later told to stay home.

When the pair arrived home both reportedly looked downcast, with Andrew McIntyre claiming his father had his head in his hands and said: 's**t, s**t, s**t'.

He also claims that when they returned home, sand and blood was in Munro's car.

Andrew McIntyre (right) and his sister Ruth Collins (left) both believe their father and Munro were involved in the disappearance of the Beaumont children

The now 72-year-old Munro (pictured) was back in the news on Wednesday, facing Magistrate's Court in Adelaide over two more child abuse convictions

Talking outside Munro's court appearance on Wednesday, Andrew McIntyre (pictured) was unforgiving, saying: 'Tony Munro will get what he deserves'

Mr McIntyre's sister Ruth Collins has backed his claims, having previously said Munro and her father had a role in the mystery kidnapping.

She claimed that when Munro and Allan 'Max' McIntyre returned from the beach, her father's shirt was covered in blood and the three body's were in Munro's boot.

But Stephen Ey, the lawyer for Munro, slammed these claims as 'fanciful ravings'.

'Max' McIntyre, now in his late 80s, was investigated over the Beaumont's kidnapping after his daughter voiced her claims, but he has always denied any involvement.

Previously, during an interview with investigative journalist Bryan Littlely, he too pointed the finger towards his former mate Munro.

The now 72-year-old Munro was back in the news on Wednesday, facing Adelaide's Magistrate's Court over two more child abuse convictions.

He begged for mercy from the magistrate, but outside court Andrew McIntyre was unforgiving, saying: 'Tony Munro will get what he deserves'.
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These photos capture the gnarled remains of a Nazi turret peppered in an Allied Forces attack during the Second World War.

Incredibly, there is still a shell lodged in its armour almost 80 years after Adolf Hitler used the coastal town of St Malo it to defend Nazi-occupied France from attack on the Atlantic coast.

During intense fighting between August and September 1944, the historic walled city was almost totally destroyed by American shelling as well as British naval gunfire.

The jagged holes and fist-sized dents which pockmark the turret act as a very real reminder of the US aerial and naval bombardment which finally forced the Nazis to surrender the coast that year 1944.

Such was the damage that it took 12 years - from 1948 to 1960 - to fully rebuild.

St Malo became vital to Germany's defence along the Atlantic coast after it successfully occupied France in June 1940.

Stunning photos capture the gnarled remains of a Nazi turret peppered in a British attack during the Second World War

Incredibly, there is still a shell lodged in its armour almost 80 years after Adolf Hitler invaded and conquered France in 1940

Until an Allied Forces bombardment which forced the Nazis to surrender, Hitler used the coastal town of St Malo (pictured in 1944) to defend Nazi-occupied France from attack on the Atlantic coast

The jagged holes and fist-sized dents which pockmark the turret act as a very real reminder of the US aerial and naval bombardment

Two years after Nazi soldiers marched through the Arc de Triomphe following the surrender of Paris, Hitler ordered the construction of defensive fortresses from Norway to the French coast.

The dictator wanted his Atlantic Wall' to consist of 15,000 bombproof concrete structures guarded by 300,000 soldiers within just 14 months, according to WWII expert and writer Kathryn Lang-Slattery.

Although much of his demands lay unfinished, by June 1944 Fortress St Malo was said to be one of the best defended installations along the Atlantic coast.

It was to be undone after the US army, led by General Patton, fought their way across Normandy to final reach St Malo in August 1944.

Brutal aerial and naval bombardment of the Nazi stronghold softened its defences enough for a ground assault until Colonel von Aulock, the commander of Fortress St Malo, finally surrendered on August 17.

Today the site, on a hill called Cite d'Ale, acts as a memorial of both the attack Nazi-occupied France.

Smoke rises above the German 'festung' - or fortress of St Malo - after it was bombed by US Air Force in August 1944

The streets of St Malo (pictured) lay in ruins in 1944, just four years after Nazi soldiers marched through the Arc de Triomphe following the surrender of Paris

Hitler wanted his Atlantic Wall', of which St Malo was one of the best defended, to consist of 15,000 bombproof concrete structures guarded by 300,000 soldiers within 14 months of France's surrender

Much of Hitler's demands lay unfinished, by June 1944 Fortress St Malo was said to be one of the best defended installations along the Atlantic coast. Pictured: US infantrymen use anti-tank gun at German positions in St Malo

St Malo was finally wrestled from the Nazis after the US army, led by General Patton, fought its way across Normandy to final reach St Malo in August 1944

Brutal aerial and naval bombardment of the Nazi stronghold of St Malo (pictured from above) softened its defences

'The tour of the bunker these days includes only a small portion of the original complex as much of it remains dangerous for visitors,' Lang-Slattery says on her website.

The tiny subterranean rooms underneath the turret are said to give an idea of how claustrophobic it must have been to live underground as a Nazi soldier.

Each room also contained artifacts including maps, furniture, assorted military equipment and personal effects.

The impact of glancing blows can still be seen with tunnel-like trenches ripped out of the turret's imposing exterior.

Now the macabre reminder of WW2's fierce fighting is being reclaimed by nature with grass slowly edging up the firing position and out of the concrete.

It is not known how many soldiers would have died in the shelling of St Malo, but the intensity of the attack would have made survival unlikely.

Amazingly the German position was not completely destroyed in the onslaught and remains standing 73 years after the savage siege of St Malo.

Colonel von Aulock, the commander of Fortress St Malo, finally surrendered the coastal town (pictured today) on August 17

Today the site, on a hill called Cite d'Ale, acts as a memorial of both the attack Nazi-occupied France. Pictured: St Malo today

The emplacement sat over the harbour of the Brittany town which was almost completely flattened after D-Day.

Through a combination of aerial bombardment, American artillery and The Royal Naval the beautiful city was almost completely destroyed.

Approximately only 180 buildings remained of the 865 in the beautiful walled city after the German's surrendered.
Terrified residents thought they were witnessing a terrorist attack when a moped gang wielding a shotgun and knives went to war with on their streets.

Onlookers on the estate in Camden, north London, said they heard 'five bangs' as one of the passengers fired off shots.

A film captured by a witness shows the moped driver and his armed passenger fighting with their rivals before fleeing the scene when the police arrive.

Terrified residents thought they were witnessing a terrorist attack when a moped gang wielding a shotgun and knives went to war on their streets

The crew - armed with long poles - can be seen running away when sirens are heard, and the mopeds speed off.

The Metropolitan Police confirmed they are investigating reports of gun shots and they discovered a man with stab wounds at the scene, just before midnight.

It comes after police chiefs vowed to crack down on moped gangs following a surge in young thieves on bikes carrying out up to 30 robberies an hour.

Residents fear last night's incident signals a dark new twist in the tactics employed by the moped gangs in London's Bourne Estate.

The 56-year-old man who filmed the incident, said: 'I heard about five loud bangs and I thought they might be car backfiring.

'I looked over the balcony and saw two motorcycles with passengers armed with shotguns and knives.

'There was a gang of youngish people chasing them also carrying improvised weapons.

'Suddenly one of the motorcycle passengers opened fire with shotgun. As far as I know no one was hit.

'Then he reloaded.

Pictured: The gangs go to war on the streets of the estate in Camden, north London

'I was greatly shocked and thought this might be a terror attack so I took out my phone and began filming.

'I was in a state of shock.

'I think the moped attack gang problem has become much worse recently.

'To see and hear a shotgun fired directly near me was shocking, especially in the light of recent terrorist attacks.'

Police confirmed they were called to the Grays Inn Road area at around 11.40pm on Tuesday, 6 June to reports of gun shots.

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said armed officers attended.

He added: 'At this stage there has been no evidence of a discharge of a firearm found, but officers did find a male (no further details at this stage) suffering a stab wound.

Pictured: The moped gang fleed the scene when they heard the police car sirens

'London Ambulance Service are in attendance and officers await an update on his condition.

'Any investigation into the circumstances of the incident is ongoing.

'There have been no arrests and enquiries continue.

'Any witnesses, or anyone with any information, can contact police via 101, or via Twitter @MetCC.'

In May, police revealed thieves on scooters and pedal bikes are committing up to 50,000 offences a year as part of the alarming new crimewave.

Gangs of youths are using stolen scooters, mopeds, motorcycles and bikes to commit tens of thousands of snatch offences across London, detectives said.

Officers said they were targeting 500 offenders behind the crime spree - with suspects moving between using stolen mopeds and pedal cycles to snatch phones.
For a moment, let's just pretend that as the United States exits the Paris Climate Accord, the coal economy is going to come rushing back.

And while we're at it, let's welcome back the telegraphers, lithographers and scriveners.

What happened to those jobs of the previous century was not a function of government overreach, but the inevitable change in markets and technology. Those now-extinct professions became that way precisely because of the free-market system which we hold so dear. Technology and innovation came along and rendered those jobs obsolete. We bet that was little comfort to those whose entire work had been wiped out by, say, the telephone.

The point is that the lament was momentary but the progress endured.

So, too, we might imagine with coal.

The Billings Gazette Editorial Board has discussed coal plenty on these pages. Today, it's time to make the truly American case for remaining in the Paris agreement, along with most of the rest of the world. The decision to remain should be seen as an issue that reaches far beyond a discussion of energy.

We now join a rogue's gallery of countries which do not participate in Paris, including Syria, Iraq, Yemen and North Korea. That alone should give us pause. Are those the countries with whom we want to be associated?

Keep in mind that participation in Paris not mandatory, and the terms, if we had truly believed needed changing could have been negotiated.

And yet we continue to debate climate change and the human impact as part of that.

Looking around in Montana, we can see something is changing. Our forests are burning up and the Yellowstone River last year ran shallow, hot and stressed.

We owe it to the next generation of Montanans to leave the state at least as good --if not better -- than when we inherited from our parents and grandparents. That means we have an obligation to do our part when it comes to climate change.

Exiting Paris means much more to America than simply pulling out of a deal we don't like, or curbing carbon emissions.

Exiting Paris is an abdication of our long-standing and proud leadership role in the world.

As a superpower, if we don't commit to change, why should other countries? If America -- the greatest country on earth -- exits then surely others cannot be blamed for doing whatever they want. Meanwhile the global temperatures will continue to increase.

The changes to Paris indeed may only work to effect 0.2 degrees Celsius of change. But that 0.2 degrees Celsius is part of a larger 2 degrees that will be captured as part of worldwide carbon reduction. That translates to nearly four degrees Fahrenheit. Point-two degrees doesn't sound like much, but four degrees is a much bigger deal, especially when we're talking about melting ice caps, flooding and the world burning up.

Whether it's World War II, a humanitarian aid after a disaster, or fighting against terrorism, America hasn't just asked the question: Is something a good deal for us? Instead, it's framed its decisions on whether we had an obligation to use our power and status for the benefit of the entire globe.

President Donald J. Trump has railed against the Paris provisions in which we've given money to other countries. But of the nearly $3 billion that is committed to aid, only $1 billion has been spent. Of that money, $1 billion went to other poorer countries to help them develop cleaner energy so that by improving their conditions they could do it without terrible pollution.

Speaking of that, we continue to hear Republicans cheer because exiting Paris will mean a coal renaissance. But ask most coal industry experts and they'll tell you what continues to kill coal is natural gas, which has a much smaller carbon footprint. Coal is also impacted by a host of other newer technologies, some less reliable, like solar and wind.

The economic viability of large-scale "clean coal" technology hasn't quite panned out, either. Looking through the pages of just The Billings Gazette, you can see decades of reporting about clean coal technology or techniques to make it better, but innovations have lagged far behind the hopeful talk.

As much as conservatives love to tout the benefits and strengths of a free market, they must also be chagrined because that is exactly what has happened to coal. The free market has determined that coal cannot currently compete with other cheaper forms of energy nor can innovation be done cheap enough to make it economically viable.

What's equally shocking is that those same conservatives can't get on board with Paris.

Many business leaders have been shocked by Trump's exit, despite calls from some Republicans to stay in. That's because businesses know that thriving and prospering is difficult in a times of uncertainly and catastrophe.

Paris was important because it set standards and goals, and those gave the U.S. some modicum of certainty about the future. That, in turn, led to some stability. In other words, businesses could plan, budget and predict.

The exit has thrown the situation back into disarray. Who knows what the worldwide impact on American businesses will be?

For those who point out that other developing nations like India or China have it easier than we do in the climate agreement, go take a deep breath in one of India's hyperpolluted cities and then breath ours in Montana. And don't forget, China is ahead of meeting its goals set out by Paris.

The best kind of leadership the United States can display is the quiet strength of doing something for the right reasons, not just the profitable ones.
A sixth-grader teacher from Texas has been arrested and charged with methamphetamine possession after police officers found her sleeping in her car.

Stephanie Alfano, 49, of Marlin, was taken into custody last Thursday and resigned from her position with Groesbeck Independent School District after bonding out of jail the next day.

According to the Temple Police Department, officers spotted Alfano sleeping inside a white 2005 Nissan Sentra parked near 29th Street and Adams Avenue at around 11.30pm.

Breaking bad: Stephanie Alfano, a Texas teacher pictured left in a profile picture on her school's website and right in her mugshot, has been charged with meth possession

The married mother-of-four from Marlin, Texas, was picked up by police after officers found her sleeping in her car

The woman seemed to be under the influence of a substance, police said, which led them to ask Alfano's permission to search her car, according to reporting by Temple Daily Telegraph.

The teacher agreed to the search, which turned up less than one gram of what looked like crystal methamphetamine inside her purse.

Alfano told the officers that she was returning from the Belton High School commencement ceremony, which had wrapped up at 10pm, according to a schedule posted on the schools website.

The woman, who is married and has four children, was booked into the Bell County Jail on a charge of possession of a penalty group 1 controlled substance.

When police searched Alfano's Nissan sedan, they say they found less than a gram of crystal meth in her purse

Until June 2, Alfano had taught sixth grade at the Groesbeck Independent School District. The photo on the right shows her on 'Pajama Day' at work

She was freed after posting $25,000 bond on Friday. If convicted of the felony count, Alfano could face up to two years in state jail and a fine of up to $10,000.

Alfano's profile page on the Groesbeck ISD site, which has not been removed as of Wednesday morning, states that she graduated from University of Southern Mississippi with a Bachelor's degree in English and a minor in psychology.

The online biography also reveals that Alfano is married and has twin college-age daughters, one son who is a freshman in high school and another who attends middle school.
The 'broken and shattered' family of a missing Sydney woman believe she must be dead because she would never abandon her two daughters.

Katherine Ackling-Bryen was upset and distressed as she dropped her two children, one of them wearing pyjamas, off at school on February 19, 2016.

She drove home, went shopping, left a bag of new clothes for the two girl in the lounge room of her home in St Marys, and prepared a slow-cooked meal.

The 'broken and shattered' family of missing Sydney woman Katherine Ackling-Bryen (pictured) believe she must be dead because she would never abandon her two daughters

Then she vanished, with only a quit hand made by her mother and a black backpack all that was missing from her house.

The 37-year-old was not heard from since despite more than a year of searching by police and her heartbroken family.

'I just cannot accept that Katherine would have walked away from her two girls... those girls were her life,' husband Michael Bryen told a NSW coronial inquest on Wednesday.

'If she was alive I believe she would have made some sort of contact.'

Mr Bryen reported the 37-year-old missing after she failed to pick up their two daughters from Oxley Park Public School that afternoon.

The 37-year-old was upset and distressed as she dropped her two children, one of them wearing pyjamas, off at school on February 19, 2016

Her husband Michael Bryen (L) and mother Sue Reeve (R) told a NSW coronial inquest they believe she killed herself

The court heard Ms Ackling-Bryen had suffered from anxiety and depression, and in 2013 she had an acute psychotic episode.

She'd had a stillborn baby in 2006 before her other children were born in 2007 and 2010.

About two months before she disappeared Ms Ackling-Bryen had a miscarriage. She stopped taking her medication during and after the pregnancy.

In an emotional statement, Ms Ackling-Bryen's mother Sue Reeve said she was 'broken and shattered by her loss'.

'There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more painful than anything that bleeds,' she said.

The court heard Ms Ackling-Bryen had suffered from anxiety and depression, and in 2013 she had an acute psychotic episode

Ms Reeve said her daughter was admitted to the Pialla mental health unit at Nepean Hospital in January 2013 and promised a follow up after she was released.

'She was never contacted by anyone. How can they promise sick and vulnerable people help and not follow through?' she said.

'I believe Katherine was let down and neglected by the system that should have given her help. Sick people cannot help themselves.'

On the day she vanished in early 2016 Ms Ackling-Bryen was upset and distressed because one of her daughters had soiled her clothes the previous night.

She had decided to keep the girl at home but had a last-minute change of mind and dropped the girl at school in her pyjamas.

The girls noticed their mother had tears in her eyes as she dropped them off.

CCTV footage shows Ms Ackling-Bryen at St Marys Shopping Village about midday, but police have been unable to find any other trace of her

Ms Reeve criticised the school for not contacting Mr Bryen when his wife dropped one of their daughters at school in pyjamas - a first for the family.

NSW deputy coroner Harriet Grahame said it seemed to be an 'extraordinary situation', although the court heard it was not uncommon for other students to be provided uniforms.

Mrs Reeve said her daughter was a devoted mother, wife and daughter, and her birth was the 'most wonderful' day of her life.

'She was a delightful, happy and calm baby and toddler. I did not know our lives would have a before and after... I live in the after,' she said.

Mr Bryen said, like Ms Ackling-Bryen's mother, he eventually accepted his wife must have committed suicide because their daughters were 'her life'.

The coroner indicated she would find Katherine was deceased when she handed down her formal findings on Friday

He searched Blue Mountains walking tracks in vain trying to find her, saying there were too many spots where someone who wanted to end their life 'could drop off and nobody would ever know'.

'Given what I'd seen in her mental breakdown before and her ability to function normally, I don't believe there's been foul play,' he said.

'She was such a loving, caring soul. She understood me like no other; we could share anything.'

CCTV footage shows Ms Ackling-Bryen at St Marys Shopping Village about midday, but police have been unable to find any other trace of her.

Ms Grahame indicated she would find Katherine was deceased when she handed down her formal findings on Friday.

Readers seeking support and information about suicide prevention can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14. Suicide Call Back Service 1300 659 467.
The family of toddler Hemi Goodwin-Burke who was killed by babysitter 'predator' Matthew Ireland after he was repeatedly kicked and punched feel they 'failed' their son.

Shane Burke and Kerri-Ann Goodwin watched as former friend and their son's babysitter Matthew Ireland received eight-and-a-half years for manslaughter in Mackay Supreme Court on Monday.

The court heard Ireland drunkenly beat 18-month-old Hemi over a two-hour period while babysitting him in March 2015.

With Mr Ireland, 31, eligible for parole in just two years because of time already served, the family feel they and the justice system let their son down.

But 18-month-old Hemi Goodwin-Burke's (pictured) family, already incensed Ireland was not being tried for murder, screamed out as the 31-year-old was handed a parole eligibility date of March 2019

Mr Burke (left) said the family was still fighting to get information about what really happened to his son

'We failed. As much as people say we suffered, we [also] failed. And that's hard for me to keep saying, because I was not there to protect Hemi,' Ms Goodwin told The Advertiser.

'And now the State, the Crown, have failed him again.'

The family were enraged throughout the trial that Ireland was not being tried for murder, after prosecutors and police downgraded the charge to manslaughter.

Mr Bourke claimed they had not been given adequate information about what really happened to Hemi throughout the trial, he told the publication.

Matthew James Ireland (pictured) holding toddler Hemi Goodwin-Burke

Following the decision, Ms Goodwin and Mr Burke are going to attempt to appeal and have already started a petition to the Queensland Attorney-General.

Ms Goodwin said more can be done in our justice system to make sure taking a child's life is not just a 'slapped wrist'.

The family were also upset that they were not allowed to wear T-shirts with a picture of Hemi in court after the judge ruled against the action.

'If we have to sit there and look at the predator he should be able to sit there and look at the victim,' Mr Bourke said.

During the trial, Hemi Goodwin-Burke's family screamed out as the 31-year-old was handed a parole eligibility date of March 2019.

The family of a slain Queensland toddler erupted in court - condemning his killer, judge and prosecutors - as his babysitter was told he could walk from prison in less than two years

'You're a f***ing murderer,' a man shouted from the public gallery.

Ireland has been in custody since the savage attack, meaning he will have served four years of his sentence when he is eligible for release.

The court heard Ireland drunkenly beat Hemi over a two-hour period while babysitting him in March 2015.

The infant's body was covered in 78 separate bruises from being kicked and punched repeatedly.

The court heard Ireland drunkenly beat Hemi over a two-hour period while babysitting him in March 2015 (pictured Hemi's parents Kerri-Ann Goodwin and Shane Burke)

Ireland told police Hemi hit his head on the side of the bathtub after he violently jerked the child's leg out from under him.

He originally lied to investigators that Hemi had suffered a seizure and tried to blame the injuries on the boy's three-year-old sister.

Hemi's mother Kerri-Ann Goodwin fought back tears in court as she apologised for letting her son's killer into their lives.

She had been in Brisbane receiving medical treatment for a back injury and trusted Ireland to take care of her children.

Parents Kerri-Ann Goodwin and Shane Burke outside the Mackay Supreme Court in Brisbane (pictured wearing their shirts labelled 'Justice for Hemi')

'I let this person into our home, a place that should have been a safe haven,' Ms Goodwin said.

'I trusted him, I thought he was a friend. I'm sorry Hemi.'

Hemi's family had planned to wear t-shirts bearing the toddler's face during the sentencing but were ordered by Justice Duncan McMeekin not to bring them into the court.

As Ireland was led away a handful of people in the public gallery whipped open jackets to reveal the shirts blazing 'Justice for Hemi'.

'This is my grandson right here and this is a word none of you people know how to use,' grandmother Lyn Burke yelled.

Hemi's mother Kerri-Ann Goodwin fought back tears in court as she apologised for letting her son's killer into their lives

'It's called justice and you should all ashamed of yourself.

'Imagine if this was your child or grandson, imagine, please imagine it because it's hell on earth.'

Outside court, Ms Goodwin and father Shane Burke said they would be seeking to appeal to get justice for their son.

'We as Hemi's parents have let him down,' Mr Burke said.

'The Crown has let Hemi down by allowing an early plea to a lesser charge of manslaughter,' his parents said

'We've got to live with that for the rest of our days.

'The Crown has let Hemi down by allowing an early plea to a lesser charge of manslaughter.'

Ireland was originally charged with Hemi's murder but pleaded guilty to the downgraded charge of manslaughter in March this year.

Mr Burke said the family was still fighting to get information about what really happened to his son.

'We've been left out of the loop the whole time,' he said

'If they wanted to downgrade the charge they should have shown us why.

'They've left us in the dark.'
Michael McAlpine was given a suspended sentence after his tweets to MP Anna Soubry

A Twitter troll who said a female Tory MP should be 'Jo Coxed' because she was delighted by Zac Goldsmith's by-election defeat was let off with a suspended jail sentence.

Michael McAlpine, 25, said Anna Soubry, 60, should 'have a heat [sic] attack' after she described Goldsmith's loss as 'sensational.'

The MP for Broxtowe, Nottinghamshire, corrected his spelling mistake and called him a 'sad, cowardly troll'.

But the 25-year-old continued, sending a public tweet at 7.41am on December 2, saying: 'Someone jo cox Anna sourby [sic] please'.

He then tweeted Ms Soubry: 'lol get jo coxed you old bint' two minutes after the first.

Ms Soubry had earlier that same week received an unrelated phone call making threats and referencing Jo Cox.

Mrs Cox, 41, was shot and stabbed to death during the EU referendum campaign last year.

Far-right extremist Thomas Mair, was jailed for life for her murder just over a week before McAlpine sent his tweets.

Ms Soubry had supported the Remain campaign, like Mrs Cox.

McAlpine, who attended Westminster Magistrates' Court with his mother, admitted two charges of sending menacing messages.

Anna Soubry, MP for Broxtowe, reviewed her personal and staff security after the tweets were sent to her

Prosecutor James Caldwell said: 'The victim in this matter is Anna Soubry a serving Member of Parliament.

'On 2nd December 2016 at 7am in the morning she was looking at her Twitter feed and came across sent to her from the profile MikeM9131 which said 'Anna Soubry have a heat attack'.

'She had received such threats on a regular basis and decided to respond to this one tweeting 'take it that wasn't a spelling mistake'.

'The defendant then sent an all person tweet stating 'Someone jo cox Anna sourby please'.

'This is a clear reference, we say to the MP murdered in June last year.

'Ms Soubry then received directly a tweet back stating 'lol get jo coxed you old bint',' said Mr Caldwell.

McAlpine, who calls himself 'centre-right' sent the first Tweet at 7:40am after he became annoyed at Ms Soubry's online response to Zac Goldsmith's loss to Liberal Democrat Sarah Olney.

'On the 2nd he had been annoyed that Zac Goldsmith had lost a recent by-election,' said Mr Caldwell.

'He supported Zac Goldsmith and Ms Soubry had been unsympathetic online towards Mr Goldsmith which had annoyed the defendant.'

Mr Caldwell said the tweets had a 'big effect' on Ms Soubry as her offices had received a 'wholly unrelated phone call making 'similar threats related to Jo Cox.'

Although McAlpine was quick to delete his messages, Ms Soubry saved them and shared them before he got rid of them, allowing him to be convicted

John Wombell, 58, who called Ms Soubry's constituency office and told her she should be 'Jo Cox'd', was jailed for eight weeks in April.

In a witness statement about the tweets Ms Soubry said: 'I could not believe it, the murder was still fresh to all of us, I took this to be a threat to my life.

'It unnerved me so much, I was upset and it frightened me.'

Ms Soubry said the threats against her had made her review her personal security and that of her staff.

Her statement continued: 'I have been threatened now twice in a week, both make reference to murdered MP Jo Cox, it really frightened me, my family and my staff.'

McAlpine was 'easily' tracked as his Twitter profile pic matched the police search database.

He was interviewed by police and made full admissions, said he regretted it and wanted to apologise to Ms Soubry, who he knew was a politician but knew little else about.

He told officers he liked to go on the internet 'to get a rise out of people' and be offensive and he had Ms Soubry's response to his first Tweet made him 'angry'.

McAlpine, who says he does not have extreme views, 'knew he had done wrong' and deleted both the tweets within minutes of posting them, the court heard.

Liberal Democrat Sarah Olney, above with party leader Tim Farron, took the seat in a by-election Zac Goldsmith called over Heathrow

His previous convictions include a nine-month referral order for possessing an offensive weapon, as a youth, and a reprimand for common assault in 2005.

The court heard McAlpine had been trolling people online 'for years' and police spoke to him at the time of his arrest about other tweets he had sent.

McAlpine, who works nights preparing food for major supermarkets and used to work at the Hilton Hotel, still lives at home with his mum and 28-year-old brother.

Stuart McDonald, defending, said McAlpine accepted had sent the 'horrible' and 'idiotic' Tweet after taking 'umbrage to the result of a failed election of Zac Goldsmith, a politician he admires'.

Mr McDonald said McAlpine sent the messages within two minutes of each other and deleted them within 20 minutes.

Jo Cox, left, was murdered in June last year, and far-right extremist Thomas Mair, right, was jailed for life for the crime

He said McAlpine, who works part time on the night shift in a warehouse in Bromley-by-Bow, had no idea she had received the threatening call earlier that week.

The court heard he has a history of mild learning disabilities and does not have any issues with drugs or alcohol

Sentencing McAlpine to 10 weeks jail suspended for 12 months District Judge Richard Blake told him said: 'You have pleaded guilty to making menacing Tweets to an MP, threatening that person with immediate violence.

'You alluded in the message to the death of Jo Cox.

'Ms Soubry is a female MP, to make a threat of that nature to somebody in public office, somebody in the same office as the person that has been murdered, the reference to Jo Cox, I find those very aggravating features.

'We live in an unprecedented age of freedom of speech and expression, with that comes responsibility on us all.

'There are many forms of social media where we can communicate and express our views to the whole world.

'That does not mean that when you do that you some how put yourself outside the justice of criminal law, outside responsibility fro what you do and the actions you do.

'These offences are serious, they were a threat of harm to a person, you abused the name and memory of somebody who was tragically killed when performing there duties as a public servant by repeating that person's name to another Member of Parliament, another public servant.

'You made a threat or suggestion that they should be the victim of a violent crime.'

McAlpine was also ordered to complete 200 hours of unpaid work with 150 costs and to pay 500 compensation to Ms Soubry.

'This is not the price of the fear you put her in but a recognition of what you did,' he said.

'It is up to Ms Soubry what she chooses to do with that money when it is paid.'

Before allowing McAlpine to walk free from court the judge added: 'Reflect on what I have said, get on with your life, do not engage in this sort of behaviour again or there is only one place you will go.'

McAlpine, of Bethnal Green, east London, admitted two counts of sending messages that were menacing in character on 2 December 2016.
Courtney Craig (pictured), 29, died on May 26 after he was accidentally shot with a semi-automatic handgun by his girlfriend's four-year-old son

The mother of a four-year-old boy is facing potential child endangerment charges after her son accidentally shot her boyfriend dead after getting hold of a gun.

Courtney Craig, 29, died on May 26 after he was shot shortly after 5:30pm. Craig and a group of friends were together at a house in West Helena, Arkansas, when the boy somehow grabbed a gun and pulled the trigger.

The four-year-old's mom, Yasmeen Brown, explained to KIRO she did not know there were guns in the house when she took her son to the home - which is her brother's - to see her boyfriend.

'If I would have known the gun was around, I would have never brought him over here,' she said.

'I mean I can't prevent what happens at other people's house. When it first happened everybody here was shocked.

'The first thing we said was we had to go get some help.'

The young mom was questioned, but not arrested. She is under investigation for possible failure to protect and endangerment of a minor charges, according to KIRO.

Police Chief James Smith explained the shooting took place after the boy found a loaded semi-automatic handgun outside the house.

The four-year-old's mom, Yasmeen Brown (pictured), explained she did not know there were guns in the house when she took her son to the home

The shooting took place under this carport at Brown's brother's house, according to police

After Craig was shot, three men - Nicholas Harvey, Marvin Speed, and Antwon Speed - drove him to a nearby hospital.

Chief Smith said they have since been charged, Harvey with possession of a firearm and tampering with evidence, Marvin Speed with tampering with evidence and possession of firearms, and Antwon Speed with tampering with evidence.

Smith told KIRO they allegedly attempted to hide the gun used by the four-year-old in the fatal accident.

'They were scared the police was going to lock them up, so they started moving things around that they didnt need to at the time,' Smith said.

The four-year-old is currently in the custody of a family member.
Video footage has caught a mother and a young girl throwing stones at a resting hippopotamus at a zoo in Xi'an, central China.

An onlooker filmed the moment the adult gave stones to the girl so that she could hit the vulnerable mammal before leaving the enclosure.

The zoo have said they are aware of the incident which took place yesterday and gave the pair a verbal warning.

The woman in a hat and the girl can be seen throwing stones at a hippo in a zoo in China

The girl picked up stones from the bush and threw it to the hippo resting in the water

'I missed it!' the girl yelled as the stone fell into the water and later, the woman threw it again

Video emerged online yesterday showing the animal abuse taking place in Xi'an, China's Shaanxi province.

It was confirmed to be Qinling Wildlife Park by members of staff at the centre.

Ms Gao, an onlooker who took the video, explained to New Beijing Post that an adult woman picked up rubble beneath a tree and passed it to a young girl.

Ms Gao guessed the pair is of mother-daughter relationship.

The young girl can be seen throwing stones at the hippopotamus which was facing away from her.

'I missed it!' said the girl.

The woman, in a dress and wearing a hat, then follows.

'She hit the hippo but it didn't move. The hippo just blinked once,' said Ms Gao, in the interview.

'The woman in pink top and a boy wearing a cap join later as well,' she added.

They left as the mammal did not respond.

Ms Gao, a passer-by visitor, said the boy and the woman in pink top also threw objects to it

The group left and was given a verbal warning by on-duty staff at Qinling Wildlife Park

A zoo worker told the reporter that such behaviour is strictly prohibited.

'Other on-duty staff told them to not throw stones,' he said.

Qinling Wildlife Park had sent an animal keeper to inspect the mammal and no significant wound could be found.

The park stated that there were warning signs put up telling visitors to not throw food or objects to animals.

The Hippopotamus has a decreasing population over the past 10 years. It is listed as vulnerable in the red list of International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Illegal hunting and habitat loss are the primary threats to the mammal.
Actress Kate Mara, of Megan Leavey and House of Cards fame, added a little star power to a rally in front of the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington Wednesday.

Mara, who works alongside the Humane Society of the United States, was urging Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to put animal welfare records back online, which were purged in February, before the new secretary was confirmed.

'I'm here because I hope we can convince the USDA to restore animal welfare records, without further delay,' she told DailyMail.com. 'We've been trying for a little while now, so we thought we might as well show up at their doorstep and maybe that would make a difference faster.'

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Kate Mara, known in D.C. for her role as Zoe Barnes on House of Cards, returned to the capital city today with a message for the White House and the Department of Agriculture

Kata Mara, doing work for the Humane Society of the United States, stands in front of the Department of Agriculture after a press conference pushing back on the agency's decision to remove government data on animal welfare from its website

Rep. Martha McSally, R-Ariz. (left) joined House of Cards and Megan Leavey actress Kate Mara (right) in front of the Department of Agriculture in Washington on Wednesday to press the agency to put animal welfare records back online

Actress Kate Mara is flanked by animal rights activists in Washington as they press Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to reverse course and make records documenting animal facilities public again

Actress Kate Mara (center) stands alongside Rep. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., (left) and other activists on the National Mall Wednesday

The records keep track of entities like puppy mills, zoos, circuses, roadside operations and animal research facilities, and publicly expose those who have violated the Animal Welfare Act and the Horse Protection Act.

While activists have pointed fingers at the Trump White House, Mara kept her criticism of the president minimal, just referencing the White House once.

'We want it done immediately and we won't stand silent and we won't relent until the White House and the Department of Agriculture do the right thing,' she said at the presser.

When DailyMail.com asked the actress her thoughts on Trump, she demurred.

'None that I'd like to discuss right now,' she said, pivoting to the time she spent on House of Cards, which is racking up a lot of comparisons this season to Trump's rise to power.

Mara, of course, visited D.C. to promote the show's first season.

As for who's responsible for removing the records, that question is more complicated.

Actress Kate Mara poses in front of the Department of Agriculture after talking to reporters about trying to get animal abuse data back online

According to the Washington Post, former Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack had been informed by his senior staff that the agency division responsible for enforcing the two acts in question, the Animal Welfare Act and the Horse Protection Act, recommended pulling the records and instead making them available to people who file Freedom of Information Act requests.

Vilsack, however, didn't sign off on it.

'There was not enough time for us to properly vet the recommendation, and I was concerned about transparency,' he explained.

Then, three weeks into the Trump administration they vanished, before current Secretary of Agriculture Perdue took charge.

An ongoing lawsuit between the government and the owners of a Tennessee Walking Horse, who were exposed for a violation, may also be to blame.

The USDA has said in statements that a review of the website 'has been ongoing, and the agency is striving to balance the need for transparency with rules protecting individual privacy.'

The statement made clear the review started before the advent of the Trump administration.

Arizona Republican Rep. Martha McSally, who appeared alongside Mara at Wednesday's event, said she wasn't going to assign blame.

'I don't want to make assumptions on intent,' she told DailyMail.com. 'I just saw the result and sprung into action.'

McSally, one of only 10 Republicans of over 100 lawmakers to sign a letter to Perdue, urging him to bring the records back, said she didn't think of it as a partisan issue.

She said she had a 'fairly easy' time getting at least some GOP support.

'I was shocked, honestly, when I saw this information come down,' she said.

McSally was joined at the press conference by her across-the-aisle partner on this issue, Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., who also chairs the Congressional Bike Caucus.

'People wouldn't show up just to listen to members of Congress,' Blumenauer said, acknowledging the actress among them. 'But we'll take help anywhere we can get.'

'It is outrageous that fundamental information that has been collected at taxpayer expense is no longer going to be widely available,' he huffed.
This is the moment deputies rescued two jet skiers who spent the night lost in a saltwater marsh, before they discovered one of them had two open warrants and arrested him.

Florida men Wayne Hasher, 29, and Robert Roomsburg, 32, were spotted by a Volusia County Sheriff's Office helicopter search team around 7.30am on Monday in the Flagler Beach area.

The two men had decided to do some exploring on Sunday at around 4.30pm, and taken to the inland waterways on a shared jet-ski.

Friends became increasingly concerned when they failed to return, and reported the pair missing around 9.30pm.

Florida men Wayne Hasher (left) and Robert Roomsburg (right) went missing on Sunday night after going out on a jet ski in the inland marshes of Flagler Beach, Florida

The two men spent 14 hours overnight lost in the marsh, until a sheriff's search crew spotted them. Roomsburg is seen waving and signalling to the search helicopter

Deputies spent the whole night searching for the men after they were reported missing around 9.30pm on Sunday. A deputy is seen making visual contact after the sun rises

Deputies spent the entire night searching, but failed to find the two men huddled together on the jet-ski until the sun rose Monday morning.

Spotting the helicopter, Roomsburg is seen on video standing up on the small water craft and waving his hands.

Wearing a life-jacket, Roomsburg grins and gives the deputies the thumbs-up as they circle the stranded men and direct a sheriff's airboat to the castaways.

Hasher, meanwhile, hunches bare-chested on the jet ski, clutching his stomach and turning his head away from the helicopter.

Roomsburg grins and gives the deputies the thumbs-up as Hasher hunches bare-chested on the jet ski, clutching his stomach and turning his head away from the helicopter

Hasher (left) and Roomsburg (right) react to their discovery by rescue teams. Cops said the men were ok except for exposure and a stingray barb in one of their feet.

The two castaways are rescued by a sheriff's airboat after spending nearly 14 hours lost

As the deputies maneuver their airboat up to the jet ski, Roomsburg enthusiastically hops aboard the rescue craft, while Hasher moves slowly, bending over to whisper in Roomsburg's ear once they are both aboard.

Hasher was found to have two open warrants on theft charges, and was arrested

The two men were uninjured except for exposure to the elements and a stingray barb in one of their feet, police said.

When deputies ran a warrant check on the rescued castaways, the reason for Hasher's mixed reaction to the rescue became evident.

Cops discovered he had two open warrants for theft, and arrested him. He is being held pending $5,000 bail.

Hasher has an extensive arrest record on theft and methamphetamine charges, court records show.

'This is a good reminder to keep safety in mind when you're out on the water this summer,' the sheriff's office said in a statement.

'Make a plan and bring all the supplies and equipment you might need.'
A psychologist working for the German Red Cross has been stabbed to death by a Syrian man at a counseling centre for refugees in the western state of Saarland.

The charity said the attack took place on Wednesday in the state capital, Saarbruecken.

The 27-year-old Syrian attacked the Red Cross psychologist following an argument, German news agency dpa reported. The suspect, who wasn't identified, was arrested shortly after the attack.

A Red Cross psychologist has been killed by a Syrian refugee (file photo)

The 30-year-old psychologist had been working for the Red Cross since 2014, helping people who had experienced trauma begin lives.

The shocking incident comes after an attack on Sunday that saw a five-year-old child stabbed to death by an Afghan national at a refugee shelter in southeastern Germany.

The 41-year-old assailant also injured the child's mother, a Russian national, and a six-year-old child at the scene was treated for shock and taken to hospital.

The attack was apparently sparked by a dispute between asylum seekers at the centre.

Germany has seen an influx of around 1 million refugees since 2015, with emigrants from war-torn Syria and Afghanistan leading the numbers.



And tensions have arisen between some refugees and some native Germans. According to the country's Interior Ministry, as reported in the Independent, there were an average 10 attacks every day on refugees in 2016.

Vigilant gangs have been formed by groups of far-right-wingers in a number of German towns, while there were reports of mass sexual assault by refugees on women at a New Year's Eve event in Cologne in 2015.
It was a birthing miracle she didn't see coming.

Proud mum Chrissy Corbitt welcomed a 13 pound, five-ounce baby girl - almost twice the average weight of a baby girl - at the Orange Park Medical Center in Florida.

Chrissy likened the size of her baby Carleigh to a toddler's and has already bought her outfits meant for a nine-month-old.

'When the doctor was pulling her out of me I just start hearing them all laughing and excited in the operating room,' Chrissy told ABC News.

'They were throwing out numbers and when they showed her to me and said 13.5, I couldnt believe it.

'It looked like they pulled a toddler out of my belly. Shes so big.'

Carleigh was so big and heavy that doctors were expecting the proud mum to give birth to twins

The mom-of four gave birth on May 15, a week earlier than her baby was supposed to arrive

Chrissy Corbitt welcomed Carleigh, pictured, a 13 pound, five-ounce baby girl at the Orange Park Medical Center in Florida

Chrissy - who called on Debbye Benson of Sweet Smiles photography to document this momentous occasion - gave birth to her fourth child on May 15.

Doctors performed the C-section and were equally as shocked when they pulled Carleigh out.

Her husband Larry, who was eagerly awaiting the delivery, recalled: 'It was so funny because she had a C-section so all the blankets were over her so you couldnt see what was going on.

'The baby was so heavy they were expecting Chrissy to deliver twins.

'The doctor said, "Oh my gosh, shes going to be 15-pounds." I remember the doctor saying, "I dont think this baby is going to end. Are there two of them?"

'Her cheeks were so chunky and she was just so fat. She was so gorgeous, of course.'

Carleigh's dad Larry said: 'I remember the doctor saying, "I dont think this baby is going to end. Are there two of them?"'

But Carleigh could have even been much heavier. She arrived a week earlier than her due date, ABC reported, which means that had she arrived in time she would have weighed 14 pounds - the same weight as the heaviest baby born in the United States this year.

'It was crazy. Chrissy wasnt gaining any weight for the past three weeks of her pregnancy. It was just Carleigh gaining weight,' Corbitt said.

While this would have proven a challenge to any mother, giving birth to Carleigh may not have been her biggest hurdle.

Twenty-seven percent of her body was covered in wounds after a fire ravaged her kitchen. The mother-of-four was also anemic while pregnant must still managed to push through the delivery without complications.

Larry said of his wife and new born baby: 'Theyre both doing great now, my wife is a trooper for everything shes gone through.'
Jamie Lee Meadows, 30, donned a mask so his parents wouldn't recognize him when he broke into their Adger home

An Alabama man, 30, forced his adoptive parents to the floor at gunpoint and stole their prescription medication in an armed home invasion robbery.

Jamie Lee Meadows, 30, donned a mask so his parents wouldn't recognize him when he broke into their Adger home with friends Roy Scott Jones, 28, of Adger; and Jamie Christopher Cowherd, 30, of Hueytown.

Marlene, 61, and Harold Meadows, 65, had been asleep in bed when the three men forced their way into the property at 4.30am on May 19.

Cops say the masked trio forced the terrified couple to the floor at gunpoint before they stole guns, jewelry and the medication.

Meadows didn't speak during the robbery for fear his parents might hear him, police added.

The three men fled the scene but police were able to track them down after Cowherd was caught on a convenience store cameras using the victims' credit card, Al.com reports.

Police then learned that both he and Meadows had been stopped together by local cops on outstanding warrants. They were both arrested in connection with the robbery.

Jefferson County Sheriff's Chief Deputy Randy Christian said Meadows told them in his police interview that the other two suspects had forced him to show them where his parents lives but said he never took place in the robbery.

But investigators argued that Meadows had been the brains behind the robbery, and had enlisted the help of Cowherd and Jones.

Investigators say Meadows enlisted the help of Roy Scott Jones (left) 28, of Adger; and Jamie Christopher Cowherd, (right) 30, of Hueytown

Marlene, 61, and Harold Meadows, 65, had been asleep in bed in their Florida home (pictured) when the three men forced their way in into the property at 4.30am on May 19

Meadows later admitted to taking part in the crime.

Meadows is charged with first-degree burglary, first-degree robbery, first-degree theft of property and third-degree theft of property. He is in the Jefferson County Jail with bond set at $285,000.

Jones is charged with first-degree burglary, first-degree robbery, second-degree assault, first degree theft of property, second-degree theft of property and fraudulent use of a credit card. Police are still hunting for the suspect.

Cowherd is charged with first-degree burglary, first-degree robbery, second-degree assault, first-degree theft of property and second-degree theft of property. He is the Tuscaloosa County Jail on unrelated charges. He will be transferred to Jefferson County upon his release.

'It's kind of hard to accept that someone could do this to good folks that had taken him in. I guess that's what drugs will do to your mind,'' Christian said. ' At least I hope that's the case. Our detectives ave worked hard on this case along with the Metro Area Crime Center and did an outstanding job of wrapping it up quickly.'
Forget the one child policy, China is now home to the one dog policy.

The city of Qingdao has joined several other major Chinese cities in putting a cap on the number of dogs a household is allowed to have.

There is also a ban on around 40 different kinds of strong dogs including Tibetan Mastiffs.

A black Tibetan dog lies on the floor in China (File photo)

The Tibetan Mastiff is one of 40 breeds banned by the new rules in Qingdao (File photo)

Qingdao has issued new 'dog management regulations' that will be fully implemented on June 8, the Beijing News reports.

Households are limited to one dog and are required to register their pet and pay a 400 yuan (45) service fee for keep of the animal.

Owners are required to vaccinate their dogs and provide an immunization registration card.

For those breaching the rules, they will have to pay a fine of 2,000 yuan (227).

Qingdao isn't the first city to have introduced a one dog policy (File photo)

They say there are increasing cases of incidents with dogs in which people have become hurt

The city's authorities have also produced a list of banned 'strong' dogs which includes the Tibetan Mastiff breed.

According to Qingdao City's Public Security Bureau, an increasing number of people are having dogs. They claim it is getting out of control.

They say there are increasing cases of incidents with dogs in which people have become hurt.

The security bureau said the 400 yuan per dog raised would go towards the running of animal shelters and services for canines in the city.

Qingdao isn't the first city to have introduced a one dog policy. Beijing implemented the rule in 2006 after a rabies infestation.

Beijing's government also restricted dangerous dogs. It called on dog owners to 'create a harmonious society and be a civilised dog raiser.'
A couple and their 14-year-son were shot dead by a lodger who later killed himself in Indiana, police believe.

The bodies of Danny G. Newlin, 58, Kelley Kay Newlin, 41, and teenager Austin Newlin, were found after a shooting on Sunday.

Their remains were found in a home in Washington County, where they had been living with Richard Lee Burton Jr.

The bodies of Danny G. Newlin, 58, Kelley Kay Newlin, 41, and teenager Austin Newlin, were found after a shooting on Sunday

The corpses were found in the 5800 block of South Beck's Mill Road in Washington County

Video courtesy of WDRB

Police have described him as 'armed and dangerous'.

Brian Snider, owner of Mud Madness - where the family had a camping trailer - told Wave 3: 'They enjoyed life. Anybody that enjoyed life that much didnt deserve to have theirs taken.'

He said he was stunned that Burton was suspected of the killing, but said Mr Newlin had recently asked him to find a new home.

Snider recalled: 'He said that Richie was working a job and going to move out on his own, and the kind of fellow Dan was, he wasn't going to put him out until he had the money and resources to make it.'

Monroe County Coroner has ruled that Burton died as a result of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

The corpses were found in the 5800 block of South Beck's Mill Road in Washington County.

The body of Richard Lee Burton was found shortly after the killings, police have revealed. he is believed to have died from a self inflicted gunshot wound

One body was found by sheriff's deputies conducting a welfare check on the home, which is located around 14 miles from Salem, on Sunday at around 4:30pm.

They had been asked to visit after receiving a phone call from a concerned person.

The deputy then called for backup, and when they arrived and entered the home another two bodies were discovered. It is not known how long the family had been dead.

Before Burton's death, Indiana State Police said: 'Information received during the initial investigation reveals Richard Lee Burton Jr could be involved in the deaths or could know something about the deaths of the three deceased victims inside of the home.'
A notorious paedophile who raped an 11-year-old girl is back on the streets because bungling bureaucrats messed up the paperwork.

The vicious predator known only as 'JR' was due to be released last month after serving more than nine years in jail for the 2007 rape of his stepdaughter.

He stole the girl from her bed and raped her as payback to her mother, who reported him to police for breaching a domestic violence order.

A notorious paedophile who raped an 11-year-old girl is back on the streets because bungling bureaucrats messed up the paperwork

At the time he had just finished parole for stabbing his former de-facto partner in the spine with a screwdriver, leaving her seriously disabled.

The Northern Territory Government applied to the Supreme Court for a special order to keep him locked up in cottages at the edge of his Darwin jail, where serious sex offenders are held after they finish their sentence.

But the request wasn't valid because authorities had mistakenly added an unrelated eight-month assault conviction to his sentence, according to Sky News.

The judge ordered the the assault sentence to be served concurrently, meaning he should have been released in October.

The vicious predator known only as 'JR' was due to be released last month after serving more than nine years in jail for the 2007 rape of his stepdaughter

As a result of the mix-up, JR was immediately released and the government's application dismissed as applications can only be made before end of sentence.

He is now walking free despite the judge who sentenced him saying he qualified as a serious sex offender who would likely be a continued risk when released.

NT Attorney General Natasha Fyles said JR was put under a strict supervision order preventing him from going near open places where there would be children or schools.

However, she acknowledged these conditions were nothing compared to he being held in cottages still on the grounds of Darwin Correctional Centre.

NT Attorney General Natasha Fyles said JR was put under a strict supervision order preventing him from going near open places where there would be children or schools

Ms Fyles said she ordered a review of all cases where a prisoner was given multiple sentences to make sure they were calculated correctly.

'The public can have confidence going forward that people are being held in incarceration for the right period of time as sentenced by the court,' she said.

There were fears JR could seek compensation for being held in jail for too long, according to Sky News.
A man has been charged with second-degree murder after a 24-year-old massage therapist was found dead not long after a scheduled appointment at his address.

Livingston Parish Sheriff's Office said Christopher Landry, 25, was being held after the death of Kayla Ann Denham, of Baton Rouge.

Sheriff Jason Ard explained that Kayla had agreed to meet Landry at 5am at a house in a block along Dunn Road, Denham Springs, where Landry had recently moved.

'Friends and family became worried after she failed to return home and calls to her cellphone went unanswered,' Ard said, according to The Advocate.

Kayla Ann Denham, of Baton Rouge, was found dead after attending a 5am appointment in Denham Springs

Christopher Landry, 25, has been charged with second-degree murder after he arranged a massage appointment with her

Kayla's family said she was a 'wonderful' woman and that they were in shock at her death

Kayla's boyfriend initially raised the alarm after she did not show up following her appointment

Kayla's boyfriend, who was given the address and time for her appointment, raised the alarm on Monday after he called her cell but got no answer.

At about 5pm, he spotted Kayla's car parked in the woods and called police.

Her body was found in a barn near the home where she had agreed to meet her client.

Landry is said to be co-operating with police, but Ard said there were still 'a lot of questions that need to be answered'.

Kayla's cousin Michelle Guglielmo Gilliam said her family is 'in shock' about the loss of a 'beloved daughter, granddaughter, sister, cousin and friend'.

She added: 'Kayla was a wonderful young woman who always shared a beautiful smile on her face and love in her heart. Please know we love you so much and our hearts are breaking with loss.'
Vladimir Putin criticized Hillary Clinton for making extreme statements against Russia during the election.

The Russian President said that the former Democratic candidate abused the Russian issue by comparing him to Hitler.

He said that she was sacrificing intergovernmental relations for short term gain and that it was a bad idea.

Speaking last year before the election, Putin said that the American people were going to elect the one who deserves it.

SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO

Vladimir Putin criticized Hillary Clinton for making extreme statements against Russia during the election. The Russian President said that the former Democratic candidate abused the Russian issue by comparing him to Hitler

Putin and Oliver Stone are pictured together in an image from the upcoming Showtime documentary, The Putin Interviews

In a series of interviews he also revealed that he admired former President Ronald Reagan for getting home to his family every day by 6pm.

Putin said that he has taken tips from Fidel Castro in the past - on how to avoid being assassinated.

The Putin Interviews between the Russian leader and director Oliver Stone, which will be screened on Showtime, were shot between summer 2015 and February this year and give an extraordinary insight into one of the most powerful men in the world.

In one scene the two men enjoy a screening of the anti-war satire Dr Strangelove together, the first time Putin has seen it.

In the documentary Putin casts Russia as the victim of decades of US interference in its affairs.

He accuses America of helping terrorists during the Chechen Wars, which he cites as the main reason for the deterioration in relations between Washington and the Kremlin.

Putin says that Clinton comparing him to Hitler is nothing new to us.

He says: We are personally acquainted, she's a very dynamic woman.

We could also make such comparisons but due to the level of our political culture we try to abstain from extreme statements.

During an election campaign unfortunately it has become a fashion in the United States to speculate to even abuse the Russian issue so to speak.

Afterwards they tell us it was just an election campaign...afterwards we're going to shake hands with you. But sacrificing intergovernmental relations as part of current political process is a great mistake, I believe.

Putin said that Russia was ready to work with whoever gets elected in America.

He had a warning for the next President that the force of the United States bureaucracy is very great, something that Donald Trump is discovering.

Later episodes are expected to reveal Putins views on Trump as they were filmed more recently.

Putin, who lives a scheduled life and works out every day, sees it as a great achievement that Reagan was able to stop work at 6 p.m. each day and watch TV with his wife

In the interviews Putin describes former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who was granted asylum by Russia after fleeing the US, as a courageous man, more probably, even foolhardy.

Surprisingly Putin reveals that he admired Reagan and says he was a happy man, very well organized.

Putin, who lives a scheduled life and works out every day, sees it as a great achievement that Reagan was able to stop work at 6 p.m. each day and watch TV with his wife.

When Stone brings up personal security Putin says that he spoke to Castro about assassination plots: Putin has survived at least five while Castro lived through around 50.

Putin said: Castro said: 'Do you know why I'm still alive? Because I was the one to deal with my security personally.

Putin tells Stone that his security officers are performing quite successfully and that he trusts them completely.

The Russian tells Stone a chilling and cryptic Russian proverb: 'They say that those who are destined to be hanged are not going to drown'.

The interview is being show at a point when relations between Russia and the US are at an all time low.

US intelligence agencies believe that Russian hackers stole Democratic party emails and leaked them to Wikileaks to try and win Donald Trump the US election.

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has said that Russia poses an existential threat to the United States.

But with wry smile Putin says in the film: Unlike many partners of ours we never interference in the domestic affairs of other countries

In the film Putin accuses America of having an imperialist mentality.

He says that the West went back on a pledge they made after the fall of the Berlin Wall that the Eastern border of NATO would stop at Germanys Eastern border.

Putin claims that NATO is a mere instrument of foreign policy for the US, it has no allies, only vassals.

In the interviews Putin describes former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who was granted asylum by Russia after fleeing the US, as a courageous man, more probably, even foolhardy.

He jokes that Russia is better than the US at surveillance because Russia does not have the capabilities of America, suggesting they have to rely more on their wits.

WIth a laugh he says that if Russia has as much technology as America we would be just as bad as the United States. He also says that 'I don't have anything against them (America) spying on us'.

But his comments on social issues are the most jarring.

During one of their conversations Stone talks about Putin being so rational and asks him: Do you ever lose it? Ever had a bad day.

Putin says: I'm not a woman so I don't have bad days. I'm not trying to insult anyone. That's just the nature of things.

Trying to understand his reasoning Stone says: A woman tends to be more emotional, you don't want to have emotion cut in and impair your reason?

Putin says: There are certain natural cycles which men probably have as well, just less manifested. We're all human beings, it's normal. But you should never lose control.

Russia has faced international outrage about its anti-gay laws and much of the LGBT community lives underground as prejudice runs deep in the country.

As the Russian leader Putin says it is his duty to uphold traditional values and that he opposed gay marriage because it will not produce any children.

Asked by Stone if gay people could adopt, Putin said: I cannot say our society welcomes that, quite frankly.

Stone asked: If you're taking a shower on a submarine with a man and you know he's gay, do they have a problem with that?

Putin said: Well I'd prefer not to go into the shower with him. Why provoke him?

With a laugh he added: You know I'm a Judo master and a SAMBO master as well!

The documentary starts screening on Showtime on Monday June 12 and continues for an hour each night until June 15.

'I am not a woman, so I don't have bad days,' the Moscow man told Stone while giving the award-winning director a tour of the Kremlin's gilded throne room

Putin also claimed he never has bad days because he 'is not a woman.

'I am not a woman, so I don't have bad days,' the Moscow man told Stone while giving the award-winning director a tour of the Kremlin's gilded throne room.

'I am not trying to insult anyone. That's just the nature of things. There are certain natural cycles.'

Stone also quizzed Putin about Russia's controversial stance towards its LGBT community, asking whether the president would 'take a shower in a submarine next to a gay man'.

'Well, I prefer not to go to the shower with him. Why provoke him? But you know, I'm a judo master,' Putin said, according to Bloomberg.

It comes after a snippet of the interviews, which were filmed over two years, was released last week. It showed Putin driving while Stone was in the passenger seat asking question - via a translator sat in the backseat.

The Putin Interviews premieres next Monday, June 12, on Showtime at 9PM.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is getting a $140 million donation from a former student.

Officials at the elite school said Wednesday that the donation comes from an alumnus who wants to remain anonymous.

The gift is an unrestricted donation, meaning it can be used in any way to support MIT's research and education mission.

MIT said Wednesday that it will receive a $140 million donation, but the research university said it wont disclose the benefactors identity at the person's request

MIT President L. Rafael Reif said donations of this type are 'the vital fuel that helps big ideas take off.'

'This remarkable gift will magnify our strength in education, research, and innovation and help foster transformative discoveries, inventions, and solutions to conquer new frontiers and build a better world.

'We are honored by the expression of confidence this donor has shown in MIT's capacity for impact, and we are grateful for this visionary support.

A statement from the donor says he feels 'blessed to be able to give back to the institute so other students can experience what I did.'

The $140 million gift is somewhat unique because there are no restrictions on how the money can be spent . Pictured, the newest building at MIT designed by architect Frank Gehry

No one has ever made it through life without someone else's help. As a past recipient of MIT's generous financial aid, I benefited tremendously from the opportunity to pursue my MIT education and am extremely appreciative of all the ways that MIT has shaped me, the donor said.

I am also inspired by MIT's vision in tackling global challenges, and I trust its leadership to take bold steps to make the world a better place. I hope this gift inspires others to give back to MIT and to pay it forward to the society that we all share.

The $140 million commitment announced today will strengthen MIT's ability to ensure that every undergraduate who has earned admission to the Institute can enroll, regardless of family financial circumstances.

MIT announced the donation as it enters the second year of the public phase of an ambitious $5 billion fund-raising campaign, The Institute admitted its first students in 1865 and continues with the mission to advance knowledge and educate students in sci & tech

The gift appears to be the largest to MIT since alumnus and billionaire real estate mogul Samuel Tak Lee gave $118 million in 2015.

In the past, major benefactors have included tech entrepreneur Kenan Sahin, who gave $100 million in 1999, and David Koch  better known as one of the Koch brothers  who donated $100 million in 2007.

In 2016, unrestricted funds in the Institute's general budget covered 20 percent of MIT's undergraduate scholarships and financial aid, and this amount has been budgeted to increase significantly in 2017 and 2018.

MIT is one of five colleges and universities in the United States that provide all undergraduate financial aid based on need and that meet the full determined need of every admitted undergraduate student.

Additionally, unrestricted funding allows MITs academic departments to attract and retain the most talented graduate students and faculty.

School officials say they have received $3.4 billion in donations as part of a $5 billion fundraising campaign with gifts coming from more than 87,000 alumni and friends.

MIT is located in Cambridge and enrolls more than 11,000 students.
A manhunt is underway for a businessman and his son who vanished after being found guilty of running an 80 million money laundering operation.

Bhadresh Shah, 49, branded a 'disgrace' by his own defence barrister - and his son Abhishek Shah, 24, helped siphon profits for organised crime gangs around the country from their hub at the Chandani Bazaar in Wembley, northwest London.

The judge said Bhadresh Shah posed as a pious Hindu and was well-respected in the community but was laundering millions of pounds and pressurising his family and 'gullible' businessmen to take part in his scheme.

Bhadresh Shah, 49, (left) was jailed for 12 years while his son Abhishek Shah, 24 (right) was jailed for nine years

The pair ran their 80million money laundering operation from the Chandani Bazaar in Ealing Road, Wembley

Police found ten false company stamps used to create legitimate business documents at the Bazar in Ealing Road which were linked to at least 10m in transfers.

Cash was also laundered through three legitimate money service bureaus, who were duped with false invoices from multiple companies using the same cut-and-paste templates.

Bhadresh and Abhishek were found guilty of money laundering offences following a trial at Southwark Crown Court last month but the pair were not in the dock to hear the verdicts.

They attended the first week of the trial but fled while on bail and remain at large.

Bhadresh was given a 12-year sentence in his absence, after he was branded a 'disgrace' by his defence barrister Leonard Smith QC, while Abhishek was jailed for nine years

Bhadresh's wife Falguni Shah, 45, was jailed for four years.

Bhadresh Shah was also convicted of possessing of mephedrone and ketamine with intent to supply.

Bhadresh's wife Falguni Shah (right), 45, along with Dipak Doshi, 57, and Dinesh Parmar (left), 35, was found guilty of helping to launder millions of pounds

Bhadresh (left) and Abhishek (right), pictured arriving at Southwark Crown Court, siphoned profits for organised crime gangs around the country from their hub in Wembley

Adrian Keeling, QC, prosecuting, said up to 80m in sterling and other denominations was funnelled through the three front companies and the unsuspecting money transfer companies in less than three years.

Judge Andrew Goymer said: 'The amounts of money that were laundered through those companies are quite staggering.

'There's no doubt in my mind that this money has come predominantly from the sale of controlled drugs.

'Two of the defendants, Bhadresh and Abhishek Shah, have deliberately absconded.

'I'm not able to deal with them for the breach of bail - that will have to await the future until such time as they are apprehended and brought back before this court.'

The pair stood trial with Falguni Shah, along with Dipak Doshi, 57, and Dinesh Parmar, 35, who were found guilty of helping to launder millions of pounds between September 2011 and April 2014.

Parmar and Doshi were each jailed for five years for one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering.

Bhadresh's wife Falguni Shah, 45, (pictured left with Bhadresh arriving at court), was jailed for four years

Bhadresh and Abhishek were found guilty of money laundering offences following a trial at Southwark Crown Court last month but the pair were not in the dock to hear the verdicts

Bhadresh, Abhishek and Falguni Shah, all from Wembley and Doshi and Parmar, of the same address, denied but were convicted of one count of conspiracy to transfer criminal property.

Bhadresh Shah is described as Asian, about 5ft 10ins, of heavy build, with dark hair, brown eyes, glasses and a thin moustache.

Abhishek Shah is described as Asian, about 6ft, of large build, with dark hair, brown eyes and glasses.

They have links to Wembley and India.

The Metropolitan Police has asked for anyone with information about their whereabouts to contact police on 101 or call Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.
One of the London Bridge terrorists was a member of a jihadi group responsible for radicalising a boy who planned to behead a police officer on Anzac Day, 2015.

Kharum Butt, one of the three knife-wielding men who killed seven people at London Bridge and Borough Market - including Australians Sara Zelenak and Kirsty Boden - has been linked to terrorist organisation al-Muhajiroun.

The group was founded in the 1990s by Anjem Choudary, a British preacher who was jailed in 2015 for encouraging support of Islamic State.

But before he was sent to prison for five-and-a-half years, Choudary reportedly spoke to the then 14-year-old boy who planned the beheading at a 2015 Anzac Day parade through Melbourne, the Canberra Times reports.

One of the London Bridge terrorists was a member of a jihadi group that was responsible for radicalising a boy who planned a beheading during an Anzac Day march in Melbourne in 2015

Kharum Butt (left), one of the three knife-wielding men who killed seven people at London Bridge and Borough Market, has been linked to terrorist organisation al-Muhajiroun, started by jailed terror preacher Anjem Choudary (right). The Australian teenager also spoke to Choudary

Australian nanny Sara Zelenak (pictured), 21, was killed in the London Bridge attack

The terror plot was detected by police only weeks before Anzac Day, after noticing his increasing radical activity and thousands of messages about the beheading plot.

Alexandra Bain, assistant professor at St Thomas University, cited during submission for sentencing that he had also spoken with Choudary.

According to another witness at the trial, the boy 'had been radicalised to an extent that he had seen in no other intervention'.

In October 2015, he was sentenced to life in jail, with a minimum of five years behind bars.

Prior to his planned Anzac Day attack, the teenage boy had also reportedly regularly spoken to Abu Haleema, another 'radical preacher' growing in popularity in Australia.

Haleema had also featured alongside London Bridge attacker Butt and other alleged members of al-Muhajiroun in a TV documentary called 'The Jihadis Next Door'.

Prior to his planned Anzac Day attack, the teenage boy had also reportedly regularly spoken to Abu Haleema (pictured), another 'radical preacher' with links to London Bridge attacker Butt

Seven people died in the weekends terrorist attack at London Bridge and Borough Market

The teenage boy's links to the London Bridge terrorists come just weeks after it was revealed there are so many terror threats in Australia, not all can be prevented

That documentary showed Haleema laughing at a video of an ISIS beheading.

When the boy was arrested, messages on his phone to Haleema were found as well as tweets to him and other extremists warning them when he had been arrested.

The teenage boy's links to the London Bridge terrorists come just weeks after it was revealed there are so many terror threats in Australia, not all can be prevented.

It has also emerged that ASIO, Australia's top spy agency, has more than 400 investigations into Islamic State groups currently ongoing - an 'unprecedented' level that's the most in history.

'We cannot provide complete assurance that all terrorist attacks affecting Australia and Australians will be identified and prevented,' ASIO boss, Duncan Lewis said.

In more bad news about the increasing state of terror, the Australian Federal Police believes any Islamic State fighters returning from Syria will continue the fight here.

ASIO, Australia's top spy agency, has more than 400 investigations into Islamic State groups currently ongoing - an 'unprecedented' level that means not all can definitely be prevented (Pictured is Australian member of ISIS Khaled Sharrouf with his children)

The Australian Federal Police also believes any Islamic State fighters returning from Syria will continue the fight here and their children will likely also be radicalised (Pictured is Sharrouf's son)

According to the Daily Telegraph, the chances of jihadist fighters or their children being reformed was a 'significant challenge'.

'It is naive it really is and they may return and it might not happen immediately but it might happen two, three, four years later,' a counter terrorist officer said.

'It's not like an addiction, it is a battle of beliefs and you are not going to change people's minds easily.'

ISIS fighter Khaled Sharrouf has previously caused outrage after taking photos of his young sons holding the heads of beheaded fighters and posing in suicide vests.

This week's 'ISIS-inspired' Melbourne attack Yacqub Khayre reportedly also made an overseas trip where he attended a camp with 'weapons and military' training.
The hammer-wielding terrorist who attacked police outside the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris was handed an award by the European Union for complaining about racism against migrants.

Farid Ikken, 40, emerged from a crowd of tourists on Tuesday afternoon and swinging his weapon at three police officers.

The Algerian took one of the officers to the ground while shouting 'this is for Syria' before police drew their weapons and shot two bullets at him.

Ikken, who was carrying kitchen knives, a hammer and other unsophisticated weapons, was injured in the attack and was taken to hospital.

Now it has emerged that he had worked as a reporter in Sweden - and received the EU's 'National Journalist Prize Against Discrimination'.

This is the shocking moment an Algerian student attacked police officers with a hammer outside Paris's Notre Dame Cathedral. The shocking footage shows Farid Ikken, 40, emerging from a crowd of tourists on Tuesday afternoon and swinging his weapon at officers

Paris prosecutors opened a counter-terrorism investigation soon after the attack after Ikken said he was an 'ISIS soldier of caliphate', according to a probe source

He takes one of the officers to the ground while shouting 'This is for Syria' before police draw their weapons and shoot two bullets at him. Ikken, who was carrying kitchen knives, a hammer and other unsophisticated weapons, was injured in the attack and was taken to hospital

He was given the accolade by officials in Brussels after writing an article about asylum seekers 'who are not entitled to medical care and who are therefore forced to seek shelter'.

It also included details of 'healthcare staff and others who still provide healthcare to asylum seekers' in defiance of rules prohibiting them to do so.

After winning the prize in 2009, Ikken said: 'it has been gratifying that attention has been paid to such important topics as discrimination and diversity.'

Following yesterday's attack anti-terrorist police who raided Ikken's flat in the Paris suburb of Cergy-Pontoise found a video of him pledging his allegiance to Islamic State.

A man was shot by police after he attacked an officer with a hammer outside Paris's Notre Dame Cathedral

French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said the attacker cried 'it's for Syria' as he went after officers patrolling an esplanade in front of the famous landmark which was put on lockdown and was being guarded by soldiers overnight.

After Ikken was shot, he is said to have claimed to be a soldier of Islamic State.

VIDEO: Notre Dame hammer attack caught on tape. pic.twitter.com/7PW2CgRS9m  Breaking News (@BreakingNLive) June 7, 2017

He had no criminal record, but had regularly expressed his interest in jihad on the Internet, and had covered terrorism while working for various news outlets in his native Algeria.

Describing his work at the Bejaia-today site, Ikken wrote on his Linkedin profile: 'I headed up a small team composed of two permanent journalists, two freelancers and a translator for two years.

The officer responded with two gunshots, which injured the assailant, who was carrying kitchen knives, a hammer and other unsophisticated weapons. Paris prosecutors opened a counterterrorism investigation soon after the attack

The officer responded with two gunshots, which injured the assailant and dozens of other officers were quick to respond to the incident

At least one person on the scene said on Twitter that he was inside the church and could hear sirens outside. He later said that officials were not letting anyone in or out of the cathedral

'My main task was to ensure that the content of our website was updated continuously, and to edit material sent by correspondents or written by journalists.'

He added: 'The processing of press releases, the call to civil protection services, hospitals, public institutions and institutions, the translation of Arabic and English content and the correction of texts were also part of my duties.

'I also assisted in the writing of news articles and the editorial regularly.'

Yesterday ISIS released a statement said to be from what it called its Commander of The Believers in France to the crossed (Christians) French people.

About 900 people inside the church were told to sit down and put their hands up as police investigated the attack

It read: 'O' people of France, demand of your government to stop its campaign against the Islamic State, if not, we will conduct operations of invasion and horror as you have lived in the cities of Paris and Nice.

'May peace be upon those who follow the guided message.

'Soldiers of the Islamic State in France.'

Ikken had studied at Stockholm university, and is thought to have married a Swedish woman during his time there.

He is currently enrolled as a doctoral student specialising in communication at Metz university, in eastern France.

Arnaud Mercier, his current PhD supervisor, told France's LCI news channel: 'From what I know of his personality, though we haven't been in contact for a while, this leaves me completely stupefied.

'He was very dedicated, he acknowledged the values of democracy, he believed very much in journalistic ideals.'

Referring to the current period of Ramadan when Muslims fast, Mr Mercier said: 'He didn't have a beard, or observe Ramadan.

'The only thing I noticed is that he didn't drink alcohol, but there are many Muslims who don't drink and they're not dangerous jihadists.'

French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb confirmed that Ikken shouted 'this is for Syria' as he struck the police officer.

Collomb said on Tuesday Ikken 'was in hospital' but had no further details of his condition - adding that the injured attacker seemed to have acted alone.

Police officers and soldiers seal off the access to Notre Dame cathedral after a man attacked officers with a hammer while patrolling the esplanade in front of the famous landmark, in Paris, France

French police lined the streets outside Notre Dame Cathedral as officials investigated the attack

Forensic experts and police officers investigate the crime scene after a man attacked officers with a hammer on the esplanade of the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, France

One officer suffered 'a cut on the chin' but was otherwise unhurt, and Ikken was shot in the chest, according to one source.

Footage seen on social media showed the assailant lying on the ground after being shot.

Police had earlier said they were dealing with an incident in the courtyard outside the world-famous tourist site amid reports of panic and gunshots in the area.

Officials warned people to stay away from the area after saying there was an 'incident' at the popular tourist destination which was locked down with 900 people inside.

By 5.30pm local time, an hour after the attack, people inside the cathedral were being let out of the building.

Following the attack, a large number of police cars filled the area on the Ile de Cite island in the River Seine in the center of Paris.

France remains on high alert after a series of deadly terror attacks in recent years.

In April, traffic officer Xavier Jugele was shot dead while on duty on the Champs Elysees just days before the French presidential election.

Police officers in helmets and vests who were carrying guns surrounded the area on Tuesday

Officials carrying police dogs arrived at the scene shortly after 4.30pm local time on Tuesday

An hour after the attacks, police allowed those who were trapped in the church to leave

Officials wearing full gear stood under a closed souvenir shop near the Notre Dame Cathedral

ISIS claimed the killing by 39-year-old Karim Cheurfi who was shot dead by police in a gun battle. Two other officers were injured in the attack.

A month earlier a convicted criminal with links to radical Islam shouted 'I am here to die for Allah, there will be deaths' seconds before he was shot dead during an attack at Paris Orly airport.

Again ISIS claimed responsibility for the slaying, which was carried out by a jihadist with a prior terrorist conviction. He was killed by police on the scene.

The 39-year-old, named locally as career criminal Ziyed Ben Belgacem, was killed after wrestling a soldier's gun from her and fleeing into a McDonald's.

He sent a text message to his brother and father stating 'I shot the police' shortly before he was killed.

It followed the shooting in February of a man outside the Louvre museum in the heart of Paris after he attempted to storm the historic art gallery.

On July 14 last year amid Bastille Day celebrations in the Riviera city of Nice, a large truck was driven into a festive crowd killing 86 people.

The police department tweeted about the operation on Tuesday afternoon but did not provide any details. A police official would not provide further information

Police boats were patrolling the river near the Notre Dame Cathedral after the incident on Tuesday

The driver was shot dead. ISIS extremists claimed responsibility for the attack.

Just 12 days later two ISIS fanatics stormed into a church in Normandy and slit the throat of a priest as he was celebrating mass.

A month earlier, two French police officers were murdered in their Paris home in front of their three-year-old son.

Again ISIS claimed responsibility for the slaying, which was carried out by a jihadist with a prior terrorist conviction. He was killed by police on the scene.

The killings came after a massacre in the French capital in November 2015 in which ISIS militants went on the rampage murdering 130 people.

They used machine guns to slaughter revellers at the Bataclan music hall and in bars and restaurants in some of the city's most popular night spots. A suicide bomber also targeted to Stade de France stadium.

The atrocity led to the declaration of a state of emergency in France.

In January the same year, two brothers killed 11 people inside the Paris building where the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo is headquartered in what ISIS claimed was retaliation for the publication of cartoons about the Prophet Muhammad.

More were killed subsequently in attacks on a kosher market in eastern Paris and on police. There were 17 victims in all, including two police officers. The attackers are killed.
With nearly 25 percent of the state in a moderate drought, cattle ranchers are selling more livestock.

As a result, Kist Livestock Auction is seeing from 1,000 to 1,300 more heads going to sale than usual for this time of year, according to Matt Lachenmeier, a fieldman at the Mandan business.

The drought conditions, coupled with a depleted hay supply from the tough winter, have left ranchers without feed and with little hope for a good hay crop this summer.

The conditions are pretty severe in much of the state, said Julie Ellingson, executive vice president of the North Dakota Stockmens Association. Hay crops look to be poor, or, in some cases, no crop.

Cattle being auctioned are from a widespread area and other sales barns in the state are seeing similar increases, according to Lachenmeier.

According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, the state has had less-than-average precipitation during the past three months, with portions of central and south-central North Dakota receiving only 25 percent and 50 percent of normal precipitation during this period. Spring so far has been the seventh driest on record in Bismarck.

If we do not get some rain soon, the conditions will deteriorate fast, said Bruce Schmidt, North Dakota State University Extension Agent in Burleigh County.

Adnan Akyuz, a state climatologist, predicts the dry conditions will persist throughout the summer.

Lachenmeier said many of the cattle coming to market are older cows, cows who did not get pregnant with a calf, as well as heifers which ranchers had planned to keep and breed.

Theyre trying to save grass for their best cow-calf pairs, said Lachenmeier, who said smaller operators have been bringing in 10 to 15 animals. The larger ones have been selling off about 50 head or even as many as 100 head.

Wet conditions in the past few years have allowed ranchers to build their herds, running more cattle on less acres. Now, thats really taking a toll, Lachenmeier said.

Its hard to find extra grass, he said.

Ranchers may need to drive 200 to 300 miles to get hay, which is cost prohibitive. Others may choose to haul their cattle to pastures in another state, if they can find land to rent. Ellingson said some are getting creative and feeding their animals on a dry lot rather than turning them out to pasture.

Its pretty much down to where they have to sell, Lachenmeier said.

Fortunately, except for those choosing to sell off cows and their calves as a pair, ranchers can still get good prices for their stock.

The weigh-up cow market has been really good, Lachenmeier said. The same is true for the the feeder cattle market.

An 800- to 900-pound heifer at Kist has been bringing $1,200.

Cow-calf pairs on the other hand are going for $300 to $600 less than they were several months ago. They started selling for about $2,600 in the spring and have gradually crept down to the $1,700 to $1,900 range, Lachenmeier said.

If we had been at all-time (price) lows on top of the drought, that wouldve been disastrous, he said. All thats suffering now are the good young pairs.

Lachenmeier said Kist had about 300 sellers at its last sale. With the temperature rising through June and July, he expects the sales continue through the summer, possibly all the way until calf sale season in the fall. In fact, Kist, as well as the sale barn in Aberdeen, S.D., have added a second weekly sale to keep up with the above normal demand.

We could get an inch of rain today, but it would just put a Band-Aid on it, he said. It would take quite a bit of rain to get out of this  Its a sad deal, but it is what it is.

Towns such as Medina, Gackle and Selfridge received some rain over the weekend and a couple towns to the west saw storms Monday but moisture has been spotty.

"Hopefully, theres more where that came from, Ellingson said.
Amber Turnage, a 39-year-old Mississippi teacher, has been arrested on six counts of sexual battery after videos of her having sex with and performing other sexual acts on a 17-year-old student emerged on social media

A 39-year-old teacher has been arrested on six counts of sexual battery after videos of her having intercourse with and performing other sexual acts on a 17-year-old student emerged.

Amber Turnage, a former biology teacher at Provine High School in Jackson, Mississippi, was arrested on May 18.

Turnage - a married mother-of-five - allegedly carried on the relationship with the 17-year-old student, who has not been named, from December 2016 until April 27 this year.

She has since been indicted by a grand jury on six counts of sexual battery.

Warren Martin, the teenager's attorney, said last month the affair was uncovered after other students reported videos of Turnage and the 17-year-old was being shared across social media.

Martin then said, according to Mississippi News Now, the teacher gave his client store credit cards, gift cards and cash during the relationship in an attempt to keep him quiet.

'My client was entrapped by a sexual scam,' the lawyer claimed.

Amber Turnage, a former biology teacher at Provine High School in Jackson, Mississippi, was arrested on May 18

Turnage had been a teacher at Provine High School (pictured) since 2015, before she was fired over the alleged sexual relationship

'This teacher saw him, preyed upon him and when she realized he was close to revealing her criminality, she sought efforts to conceal it by offering my client cash payments.'

Turnage's husband of almost 16 years, Keith, has since said he is 'nearly divorced'. The couple's anniversary is June 9.

Turnage was fired by the Jackson Public School District following an investigation into the matter, which also led to the charges against her.

The 39-year-old teacher joined Provine High School in 2015.
Sentencing has begun for an evil grandmother who tortured her eight-year-old granddaughter to death.

Helen Ford was convicted of first degree murder in March for her granddaughter Gizzell Ford's 2013 death.

The 55-year-old's sentencing hearing began in Chicago on Wednesday.

As she was convicted earlier this year, a judge told Ford: 'This murder was torture. That child suffered a slow and agonizing death.

'That little body looked like it had been pulverized from head to toe... Her treatment (of Gizzell) was evil.'

On Wednesday, she entered the courtroom with a cane in one hand. No cameras were allowed in for the proceedings.

A judge denied her lawyer's request for a new trial and dismissed her appeal to reconsider her first-degree murder conviction.

Helen Ford (left in her 2013 mugshot) will be sentenced on Wednesday for the murder of her eight-year-old granddaughter Gizzell (right) who she tortured to death in Chicago

Around a dozen people were in court to support her. She waved and smiled at them as she made her frail entry, The Chicago Sun Times reported from court.

Her lawyers questioned the medical examiner's ruling that Gizzell died from strangulation.

A video monitor was wheeled in as part of the proceedings, presumably to show the jury footage of some of the torture which Helen and her son sickeningly recorded.

Gizzell's father Andre Ford was also charged with her murder but died in prison awaiting trial. He suffered a congenital degenerative disease

A clerk from Gizzell's school testified for the state. They described the child as intelligent and ambitious.

Gizell was living with her grandmother and her father Andre for eight months when she died.

Andre was a convicted felon and had a chronic degenerative disease.

The pair tortured her by pulling clumps of her hair out and beating her. When paramedics forced their way into the home after receiving reports of a girl who was not breathing, they found Gizzell lying face down on a bloody pillow wearing just a pair of ripped green underwear.

A gaping wound at the back of her head was infested with maggots and the cause of death was given as strangulation. She had ligature marks on her hands and legs and traces of semen were also found on her body.

Andre was charged with murder along with his mother but he died in police custody in 2014.

Helen tried to explain away the abuse before her conviction, telling a court through her lawyer that she was overwhelmed by having to care for both her son and granddaughter.

Gizzell chronicled the torture in heartbreaking diary entries.

Once happy descriptions of herself as 'smart, courageous and beautiful' turned self-loathing when she went to live with the evil pair.

'I hate this life. I really think that I'm a jerk,' she wrote in one entry shortly before her death.

The pair's depraved abuse was carried out at the West Chicago apartment where they lived with Gizzell for eight months (above)

She described being made to squat for hours and wrote innocently: 'I know if I be good and do everything I'm told I won't have to do punishments.'

Her depraved abusers tied her to her father's bed for days on end, depriving her of food and drink and punishing her for trying to take water from the toilet bowl.

Helen constantly threatened violence with a belt she wore around her neck.

When Gizzell was found, she weighed just 70lbs. During Helen's trial, the girl's siblings and cousins testified that they had watched her forcing a sock into Gizzell's mouth while making her stand on one foot with her arms out.

Gizzell, eight, was emaciated and every inch of her had been beaten by the time authorities got to her

Her monstrous father filmed her doing squats, speaking from behind the camera to call her 'defiant. Relatives said that Gizzell tried to take her own life by jumping out of the window of their home but was stopped by Helen.

After her death, The Chicago Tribune revealed that social workers visited the West Chicago home where she eventually perished a month before her murder.

The child had been sent to live there when her mother was declared homeless. She is now suing social services for putting her daughter at risk of harm.

When paramedics were called to their home in July 2013, Helen tried to stop them from coming in.

It's not clear who initially reported the emergency but someone had phoned 911 to report a child having difficulty breathing.

Upon their arrival, Helen Ford said Gizzell had been having one of her 'fits' but had recovered.

The EMTs pushed their way in and found the child lying lifeless, tied next to her father's bed. Andre was lying on the bed in his underwear and holding a laptop.

Blood was found on the pillow next to Gizzell and had been splattered across a TV which was switched on.

The paramedics said she had likely been dead for some time.
A television reporter who was fired after she was caught on camera unleashing a foul-mouthed tirade against a police officer claims she has received thousands of 'deeply disturbing sexual and violent' threats.

Colleen Campbell, 28, was filmed outside Philadelphia's Helium Comedy Club calling a cop a 'f***ing piece of s***' and attempting to spit on a man on Sunday night.

The 28-year-old, who was heard in the video bragging she worked at PHL17, said in a statement Wednesday the person in the video is not her, while alleging she may have been drugged during the night.

'I am ashamed and embarrassed by my actions. They were profane, inappropriate, and offensive.

Scroll down for video

Colleen Campbell, 28, was filmed calling a cop a 'f***ing piece of s**t' and trying to spit on another man after she was kicked out of Philadelphia's Helium Comedy Club on Sunday night

Campbell (pictured) now says she is receiving thousands of 'deeply disturbing sexual and violent' threats over the incident

'I would like to apologize to the Philadelphia police officer who bore the brunt of my outburst, the entire Philadelphia Police Department for their patience, my former employers and coworkers whom I have let down, and my fellow patrons at Helium Comedy Club whose night out I might have disrupted.'

Campbell then went on in the statement to claim she may have been drugged, saying the night was 'hazy'.

'I know my limits when it comes to drinking... My actions on that video are not the result of a handful of drinks spaced out over a couple of hours,' the statement read.

'I believe I may have been unknowingly drugged at some point that night.

'I did not receive medical testing while in custody because, as I recall, I was advised by personnel at the police station that such testing would delay the process of my being released.'

She closed the statement by asking for a chance to directly apologize to the police officer she verbally abused in the video.

The 28-year-old (pictured during her graduation) apologized again in a statement for her behavior caught in the video

She also suggested she may have been drugged, saying: 'I know my limits when it comes to drinking... My actions on that video are not the result of a handful of drinks spaced out over a couple of hours'

Campbell's family spokesman, Philadelphia lawyer Wayne Pollock, then said in the statement the 28-year-old is 'recovering in a secure, undisclosed location' - before going on to detail the threats she has received.

'From the time the video was made public, Ms. Campbell has been the recipient of thousands of lewd and threatening phone calls, texts, messages, and emails ranging from angry, profane, and defamatory insults to deeply disturbing sexual and violent threats,' he said in the statement.

Campbell's family spokesman, Philadelphia lawyer Wayne Pollock (pictured), then said in the statement the 28-year-old is 'recovering in a secure, undisclosed location'

'Ms. Campbell and her family are still sorting out the events of that night. Their highest priority is the health and well-being of Ms. Campbell.'

The attorney then added: 'Ms. Campbell and her family are in the process of reaching out to the Philadelphia Police Department in the hopes that the Philadelphia police officer in the video will allow Ms. Campbell to apologize to him personally.'

The statements come after Campbell, who worked mostly in news production but occasionally went on air as a reporter, was filmed being escorted out of the club for disrupting a show featuring comedian Craig Robinson with her loud whispering.

She allegedly then got into a fight with bar staff on the way out before the video started.

When she was outside, New York City comic Wil Sylvince started recording the 28-year-old's rant.

'You guys are f***ing dictators... You're f***ing c**ksuckers,' Campbell was filmed telling the police officer outside. I did not do s**t, I stood there and laughed like the rest of the audience like I should. I did not disrupt anybody.'

Campbell (left in her mugshot and right on TV) was charged with resisting arrest, criminal mischief and disorderly conduct. She was fired from her job at news station PHL17 soon after

Campbell, who had bragged in the video that she worked at a f***ing news station', was fired from her job at PHL17 soon after the footage emerged

The officer, who remained incredibly calm, told Campbell and another man she was with to walk away.

'Or what? Or what, mother f***er? Lick my a**hole,' Campbell told him. 'How about that? F***ing piece of s**t. That's why nobody likes f***ing police in this f***ing town.'

The cop proceeded to place Campbell in handcuffs after she appeared to spit in the face of a man standing outside the club. She bizarrely took off her shoe and told the man to smell it.

'What's that called? What's that called? Assault? Show me videotape,' Campbell said after she was handcuffed. 'You can't. That's why everybody hates you guys! You can't prove it! You f***ing piece of s***.'

She was then heard telling the officer to stop tasering her, despite him insisting he was only putting handcuffs on her.

She was charged with resisting arrest, criminal mischief and disorderly conduct.

The cop proceeded to place Campbell in handcuffs after she appeared to spit in the face of a man standing outside the club. She bizarrely took off her shoe and told the man to smell it
Jake Wallis Simons Associate Global Editor and Ross Kempsell for MailOnline

A campaign group that described ISIS executioner Jihadi John as a 'beautiful young man' has praised Jeremy Corbyn's 'compassionate' response to terror saying that people showing signs of extremism 'are genuinely vulnerable' and 'need support services'.

A spokesman for Cage  a group which has been called 'apologists for terror' by Boris Johnson  said the Labour leader provided an 'alternative' to current thinking on fighting terror.

He then slammed the government's Prevent strategy because 'there's a police element to it, there is an intelligence element to it' when what is really needed is 'support'.

In an interview with LBC, Ibrahim Mahmoud said: 'I think the language helped from Corbyn. I think that's the biggest contribution that he made to the debate in recent years.

Jeremy Corbyn, pictured on the campaign trail in Watford today, was praised as having a compassionate response to terrorism by the controversial campaign group Cage

'There's been an alternative He has definitely introduced into the debate that there are concerns regarding escalation of foreign intervention.

'Also the idea were need to have a compassionate approach. Some of these people are genuinely vulnerable. They need support services.

'The Prevent strategy as it is at the moment, there is a police element to it, there is an intelligence element to it What we need is more support, some real safeguarding.'

A Labour spokesperson told MailOnline: 'Jeremy has been very clear that he blames terrorists for terrorism and no one else, and that as Prime Minister he will do whatever it takes to keep our people safe.

The spokesperson added: 'He's also been clear that the current 'war on terror' is not working and we need a new approach.'

Cage's comments will add to pressure on the beleaguered Labour leader who is battling to retain credibility after giving a speech blaming 'British foreign policy' for the Manchester terror attack.

Mr Corbyn said: 'Many experts, including professionals in our intelligence and security services, pointed out the connections between wars that we've been involved in or supported.'

Cage research director Asim Qureshi, pictured during a controversial press conference in 2015 when he described Jihadi John as a 'beautiful young man'

Some of Cage's leading figures have been accused of sympathising with terrorists in the past.

Philip Hammond suggested Cage bore a 'huge burden of responsibility' for the actions of terrorists such as Jihadi John and Lord Carlile, a former independent reviewer of anti-terror legislation, said 'Cage is an organisation with a warped view. No sensible person should be funding it.'

Mr Mahmoud told MailOnline that his organisation was not endorsing any political party but felt that Corbyn's anti-terror policy was worthy of praise.

A Cage spokesman said: 'Cage do not endorse any political party and our role is to hold power to account where there is abuse of law and due process.

'Cage welcomes all evidence based proposals that serve the interests of public safety and security.

'Prevent is not one of these proposals as it is neither evidence based nor is it about safeguarding. Safeguarding should not be politicised and should always be about the safety and wellbeing of vulnerable members of our society.'
A 26-year-old mother who admitted to suffocating her two young children has been sentenced to 45 years in prison.

Sonya Spoon apologized for her actions in court on Wednesday as the sentence was handed down.

'It wasn't my initial intent and I didn't do it maliciously,' the Maryland woman said. 'I deeply regret my actions.'

She was arrested on September 7, 2014, after admitting to police at the scene that she suffocated her children Ayden Spoon, one, and Kayla Thompson, three.

Sonya Spoon (left) was sentenced to 45 years in prison on Wednesday for murdering her three-year-old daughter Kayla (center) and one-year-old son Ayden (right)

Paramedics were called to the home of Spoon's parents at 6209 Forest Road in Prince George's County, where she had been living with Ayden and Kayla, to treat two unconscious children at around 2am on September 7, 2014.

Paivi Spoon, the children's grandmother, found Ayden and Kayla unconscious with plastic bags and duct tape around their heads, police said.

Spoon suffocated her two young kids by wrapping their heads in plastic bags and then sealing them in with duct tape

The pair were both taken to Children's National Medical Center in Washington, where they died a few hours later.

Six days before the murders, Spoon, then 24, had been taken in for an emergency psychiatric evaluation after her mother called police and told them her daughter had threatened to kill herself and Kayla.

Following the evaluation, Spoon was released and allowed back home with her two children.

Court records show Spoon was involved in a lengthy custody battle with Lester Thompson, the father of her eldest child.

Records filed in Calvert County show Spoon demanded a paternity test in February which showed Thompson was the biological father.

Court records also show Spoon refused to sign a custody agreement in May 2014 and then was then granted primary custody.

Thompson was ordered to pay child support and was told he could spend time with his daughter for a handful of days each month.

He wrote on Facebook: 'Going to pick up my daughter today and I am so happy to spend some time with her.'

Court records show Spoon (left) was involved in a lengthy custody battle with Lester Thompson, the father of her eldest child (pictured right). Her attorney said that she feared she would lose custody of her daughter

A bio Spoon put on the internet a few years ago, in which she detailed her 'fiance Lester' and says 'I love my kids'

According to her Twitter profile, Spoon was adopted from Russia and brought to the United States when she was three-years-old.

She posted several photos of her children on the social networking site who she called 'my world.'

Her last post on August 20, 2014, was a photo of her with Kayla which she titled 'My love'.

Neighbors in Chesapeake Beach said that Spoon had moved in with her parents recently and they said they have seen young children around the house.

Spoon pleaded guilty to killing her two kids in March.

During the sentencing phase of the trial, a doctor testified on Spoon's behalf, saying she suffered a traumatic train injury and had severe depression brought on by the custody battle over Kayla.

In his sentencing, Prince George's Count Circuit Court Judge Lawrence V. Hill said 'that's not a defense or excuse for what happened that day'.
The jilted boyfriend of London Bridge terrorist Rachid Redouane's wife has told how she dumped him by text message to begin her new life with the jihadi.

Phillip Nowell said he had been separated from girlfriend Charisse O'Leary for a few months when she began secretly seeing Moroccan mass murderer Redouane.

Within just 12 weeks of ending the relationship, Charisse, 38, married Redouane, 30, one of three men who murdered eight people in Saturday night's Borough Market atrocity.

Phillip said he was stunned to be dumped by text and even more surprised when he learned she had so quickly wed in Dublin, Ireland.

Phillip Nowell said he had been separated from Charisse O'Leary for a few months when she began secretly seeing London Bridge terrorist Rachid Redouane

Charisse O'Leary (pictured, right), met Rachid Redouane (left) while she was in a long term relationship and married him months later

Phillip (pictured with Charisse) said he was stunned to be dumped by text and even more surprised when he learned she had so quickly wed in Dublin, Ireland

Charisse O'Leary and Mr Nowell are pictured together on holiday in Lanzarote in 2010, two years before they would break up over text

Charisse O'Leary, pictured at a friend's 50th birthday party in London (shown right), dumped Mr Nowell after more than nine years together

The upholsterer, 46, from Manchester, said Redouane may have taken advantage of lonely Charisse, who was vulnerable after ending their nine year relationship.

He suggested Redouane, who was denied asylum in the UK in 2009, may have spotted an opportunity to expose a loophole in the immigration laws to get a visa.

Speaking exclusively to MailOnline, Phillip claimed that Redouane may have flattered newly-single Charisse, eight years his senior, and seduced her.

'She was not the impulsive type and the Charisse I knew would not rush into things,' he said.

'I don't know what was going on in her mind at the time, but she might have been lonely having just come out of a long relationship with me. I was shocked and upset when it ended. She may have been the same.

'I never met or spoke to her husband but he just doesn't seem to be the type of man she would go for. I don't know how they met or how he got her to marry so quickly.'

Couple: Charisse O'Leary marries Rachid Redouane in Ireland in 2012 , months after they met, and in a country with a growing reputation as a 'backdoor' to Britain

Wedding day: Charisse in her wedding dress after her husband was refused asylum in the UK

Phillip Nowell's father Ken (centre) with Charisse O'Leary and Charisse's mother Rose in a bowling alley in Southend

Friends said Ms O'Leary 'hated' her husband whom she accused of beating and bullying her during their turbulent months together as he tried and failed to impose hardline Islam on her and their daughter

Speaking exclusively to MailOnline, Phillip suggested that Redouane may have flattered the newly-single Charisse, eight years his senior, and seduced her

Charisse, from Dagenham, east London, had been living with Phillip in Manchester and taken out a joint mortgage on a 90,000 home.

But in January 2012, Charisse suddenly announced she was missing her family and moved back to live her mother. She quit her job working in a care home to return to a council tower block in Dagenham.

Seven months later Phillip received a curt text message telling him it was over.

Full statement of killer Rachid Redouane's ex-wife Charisse O'Leary "My heartfelt thoughts go out to all those murdered or injured in the events of 3rd June 2017. I am deeply shocked, saddened and numbed by the actions of my ex partner who has killed and injured so many innocent people. Since discovering that it was Rachid that was responsible I have shed many tears for the people caught up in this horrific incident. Rachid and I have been separated for six months. We have a beautiful young daughter, that for the last six months has been our only bond and reason for contact. My thoughts and efforts now are with trying to bring up my daughter with the knowledge that someday I will have to try and explain to her why her father did what he did. I wish to make it absolutely clear, so there can be no doubt, I condemn his actions and do not support the beliefs he held that led to him committing this atrocity." Advertisement

'To be honest it was a bit of a shock and a bit brutal to see my relationship ended by a text message,' Phillip told MailOnline.

'I knew Charisse had not been happy in our last year together and she wanted to be back with her family, but it was still a shock to get the message saying it was over.

'She just said it was not working and was ending it.'

Just three months later Charisse wed Redouane in Dublin in November 2012.

They had a traditional Islamic wedding followed by a civil ceremony at a register office and lived in the Rathmines area of the city. Charisse's mother Rosemarie Head was one of the witnesses.

'I expect Charisse has some family over there but we never went there. But when I learned she had got married in Dublin I was surprised.'

'In all the time I was with Charisse we did not go to Ireland, then I heard she had made two or three trips there,' he said.

'I find it a bit suspicious but I don't know all that went on. When I heard she had married a Moroccan I was more than surprised as he was not her type at all.'

The marriage allowed Redouane to continue living in the UK.

In 2009 he had been refused leave to remain in the UK while using the name Rachid Elkhdar.

After the marriage he was able to apply for an Irish visa in a new name and in 2015 was granted an EU card which gained him entry to the UK.

Sources in Dublin revealed that the same year his asylum application was turned down he was arrested for immigration offences while trying to board a boat from Scotland to Northern Ireland and questioned about a fake passport.

After they married in 2012 Redouane moved back to Morocco and this social media photo shows his wife posing outside an ISIS cafe in Casablanca. There is absolutely no suggestion that Ms O'Leary has any links to terrorism and is likely to have been poking fun at its name

Redouane lived in Rathmines, an upmarket area of Dublin, before he moved to Britain with his wife around nine months ago

Supportive: The terrorist's now estranged wife sought help online to get her husband a visa and confirmed they would marry in Ireland despite her living in the UK

Shortly after their wedding in Dublin, Redouane moved back to his native Morocco for 17 months before returning to Dublin while his 33-year-old wife went back to London.

Ireland was 'backdoor' to Britain for Moroccan London Bridge terrorist In 2011 Ireland adopted an EU directive that allows citizens from outside the EU to travel freely between Britain and Ireland if they marry an EU citizen. A common travel area exists between Ireland and the UK meaning that there are no passport checks. There are growing concerns that the rule is allowing terrorists into Britain via Ireland. A security source told the Irish Mirror: 'Their main aim is to get a GNIB or FAM (EU identity card). Once they have that they can move freely to the UK. 'They often have an address in Ireland which they do not use but it takes the suspicion off them when they are living in Britain as Ireland is official their country of residence. 'They are calling them 'backdoor terrorists' or sleepers and that's a fair description'. Advertisement

She visited him in north Africa and said on Facebook that Casablanca was one of her favourite places - but it appears he hid his true violent and controlling nature until he had secured the right to live in the UK through her.

The couple, who have a 20-month-old daughter Amina, split in January when he tried to force her to convert to Islam and impose his strict beliefs on their young daughter Amina.

She also complained that he tried to stop his daughter from being enrolled in dance classes or watching TV in case it made her 'gay'.

Friends said Ms O'Leary, 38, eventually 'hated' her husband whom she accused of beating and bullying her after they moved in together with Redouane growing increasingly radicalised in the company of Khuram Butt and Youseff Zaghba.

The trio carried out the Saturday night attack that claimed the lives of eight people and injured almost 50. All three were shot dead by police before they could carry out further killings.

Charisse has said she is 'deeply shocked, saddened and numbed' by his actions, adding: 'My thoughts and efforts now are with trying to bring up my daughter with the knowledge that someday I will have to try and explain to her why her father did what he did.'

Despite splitting with Charisse in the summer of 2012 Phillip kept in contact with members of her family, in particular her mum Rosemary Head.

The trio began their killing spree just after 10pm when they ploughed into pedestrians in a white van on London Bridge

He described his ex as someone who liked to enjoy herself and unlikely to follow a Muslim's rejection of alcohol.

He said: 'Charisse liked her lager and when she would go out to the pub there was no getting her back until she was ready. She smoked and she enjoyed a drink and was fun to be with.

'I am not really surprised that she did not fit in with the Muslim ways. It doesn't sound like her.'

Charisse was arrested by anti terror cops during a raid on her flat in Dagenham. She was later released without charge.
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Resilient Londoners have returned to the bars and restaurants just four days after the venues were plunged into terror when Islamic extremists killed eight and injured dozens more.

Popular drinking venues such as the Bunch Of Grapes, on St Thomas Street - which one of many that was evacuated when three terrorists ploughed into innocent civilians on London Bridge before launching a knife rampage - reopened for business after Saturday night's horrors.

And residents wasted no time after the cordon was lifted to get back to having fun, as they were pictured sipping pints in the bustling central London area.

Popular drinking venues such as the Bunch Of Grapes (pictured) reopened for business after Saturday night's horrors

These three friends raise a glass to the solidarity of the British spirit as they ventured back into the heart of Saturday's terrorist attack

Four friends also make a toast as they headed back into the pub for the first time since the police cordon was lifted earlier today

Residents wasted no time after the cordon was lifted to get back to having fun, as they were pictured sipping pints in the bustling central London area

People started drinking at The Bunch of Grapes as soon as they finished work and appeared to be in good spirits

As the drizzle dropped into their pints, the capital city's workers refused to be put off by Saturday night's massacre.

Patrick Gurden came down from Hitchin because he and his friend thought it was right to show solidarity.

They arrived in London at 6.30pm and headed straight for the scene of Saturday night's terror.

He told MailOnline: 'People and things like that shouldn't stop you coming out and having a drink.

'We just thought it was important to come and show a bit of strength.

'It's the right thing to do.'

City workers Angus Reid, Tom Burn and Mike Yorke meet regularly to have a beer after work and were determined to head to their favourite pub - Katzenjammers.

The German-themed bar is still within a heavily-guarded police cordon with experts analysing contents of forensic tents.

In an act of solidarity, the trio headed to the next nearest boozer - the Bunch of Grapes.

Drinkers headed out into the city after finishing work and headed straight for the scene of Saturday night's terror

Londoners enjoying a drink at the Bunch of Grapes as it re-opened for business earlier today

One customer waits at the bar, while other customers are seen inside, with a fairly sizable number of people stood inside

Tom told MailOnline: 'We were hoping Tibet back in there to show a bit of solidarity, but unfortunately it was still in closed, so we thought why not, we'll come in here.

'The mood in the city has been pretty subdued, a little sombre and noticeably quieter.

'But then you come here - it's busy, people are drinking, having a good time. It's the right message to send.'

The city worker was in Dublin on a stag do when the news filtered through, but two of his friends were caught up in the terror - covered under a table in Katzenjammers.

Tom added: 'I text them asking if they were okay and they messages straight back to say they were fine, under a table, but fine.

'And the tightest bloke in the group had just bought a round of steins for 69.'

The trio said if they had to find humour in the situation, otherwise the terrorists will have won.

Angus pointed at another positive - the reaction of the emergency services.

The common consensus was that the acts of Khuram Butt, Rachid Redouane and Youssef Zaghba would not reduce push London inside its shell.

Many drinkers agreed that returning to the epicentre of the tragedy was the best way of London showing its solidarity in the face of evil

'It was such a strong effort. Eight minutes and all of the terrorists were goners.

'For only one innocent guy to be hit by bullets in that situation too is quite incredible.'

All three said the acts of Khuram Butt, Rachid Redouane and Youssef Zaghba would not reduce push London inside its shell.

Mike said: 'My mum asked me if I was scared to go out.

'I told her I wasn't really. When you consider the population and the size of London it's amazing it doesn't happen more often.

'But you can't lock yourself away and say you're not going to carry on with it. That's how they win. And that's now at to live your life.'

Two friends sitting in the upstairs bar, who asked not to be named, sipped pints of lager and browsed the menu for burgers while discussing business plans.

One told MailOnline: 'That's all these savages want to do is cause as much chaos and disruption as possible, so the sooner we get back to reality the better I think.

'You just have to make the best of a bad situation and get on with it.

'I think it's a good thing people are getting back into their normal lives.

As the drizzle dropped into their pints, the capital city's workers refused to be put off by Saturday night's massacre

Two men enjoy a pint at the bunch of grapes as order begins to slowly be restored to the central London area that was hit by devastation

'You have to hope that you'd react in the right manner if something like that happened, but you just never know.

'You don't want to run away from it. And that's the same now in the days after.'

Another man drinking in the bar said he has had to change his appearance every time there is a terror attack in the UK to avoid being mistaken for a potential terrorist.

He said the amount of police on public transport and on the capital's streets has increased massively and that it puts him on edge.

'I shave my beard down every time because I can actually see people staring at me - it's really bad.

'I was in hospital with a huge backpack after the Manchester attack and I had a beard and it's really noticeable.

'It puts me really on edge and I shouldn't really have to do it, but that's the reality.'

The punter said his girlfriend had called him in tears in the night of the attack, and that he didn't know how to react.

'What am I meant to say to her? That it won't happen again?

'It will, sadly, but it's how we react.'

The images are in stark contrast to chilling pictures taken earlier of pubs, showing the eerie aftermath of the horrific terror attack.

The haunting images from The Bunch of Grapes and The Mudlark, in Borough Market, show scattered chairs, broken glass and half-finished pints which have been left untouched for four days.

Chilling pictures taken inside London Bridge pub, The Bunch of Grapes, show the eerie aftermath of the horrific terror attack. Half-empty glasses and bottles have been left at the bar

Debris from Saturday's attack in Borough Market, London, remain in the street. Rubbish is strewn on the floor and furniture was left overturned as revellers ran for their lives from rampaging jihadis

Pictured is the mess at The Bunch of Grapes pub in Saint Thomas Street, London, opposite Borough Market. A half-drunk pint of beer and half-empty bottle of Coke can be seen on a table

Staff at the Bunch of Grapes pub clear furniture and signs out of the building following the terror attack on Saturday

Men and women at Bunch of Grapes are seen loading up a truck with furniture, signs and other items after the terror attack

A woman carried a chair out of the Bunch of Grapes pub in London Bridge today following the attack on Saturday

The haunting images from The Bunch of Grapes (pictured) on St Thomas Street and The Mudlark in Borough Market show scattered chairs, broken glass and half-finished pints which have been left untouched for four days

A glass of white wine and a pint of lager were left abandoned on outside tables at the Mudlark Pub in Borough Market

Rubbish is strewn on the floor and furniture was left overturned as revellers ran for their lives from rampaging jihadis.

Terrorists Khuram Butt, Yousef Zaghba and Rachid Redouane mowed down pedestrians on London Bridge, crashed their van and went on a stabbing spree before being shot dead by armed officers.

They killed eight people and injured dozens in eight minutes of terror on the streets of the British capital.

Business began to re-open today, as their owners began to put back together the trail of destruction that was left by the attack.

Marco Vasconcelos, a barman at Giuseppe's Italian restaurant on King's Head Yard, added: 'People were having their main course and we found the meals today as they were left on Saturday night.

'When we heard someone had been stabbed we thought it might be a fight but then we saw all the police and some guy heard shots and we closed everything. Then police came in and said we had to leave. Some customers were very upset.

'The way police told us to leave was very forceful. Everything was just left as it was, there was no time for anything, it was crazy. It's affected so many tourists as well, I think.'

Lorenzo Terrero, manager of the Luncheonette on Southwark Street, said: 'The first I knew of anything was seeing lots of police cars coming down the straight.

'Then someone next door called the police as he saw someone being stabbed. Then lots more police cars came.

Fifteen people have been arrested in connection with the incident, but 13 have since been released without charge. Pictured is the inside of The Bunch of Grapes

London officials said a large part of the outer cordon of the crime scene had reopened. Borough Market, a popular gathering place, remains closed as more evidence is gathered. Pictured are toppled chairs and tables at Borough Market

On the day after the attack armed police and forensic officers were seen scouring the scene at London Bridge and Borough Market, where three terrorists left a trail of death and destruction when they went on a van and knife rampage. Pictured is the eerie aftermath inside The Bunch of Grapes

Police comb through the Borough Market area today following Saturday's terror attack in the capital

Police could be seen talking and looking at parts of the street in Borough Market after Saturday's terror attack

Pictures show the state of the pub before it was evacuated on the night of the terror attack on London Bridge

Police officers guard a closed entrance of the Borough Market in the London Bridge area this afternoon

Metropolitan Police officers stand on duty outside The Mudlark Pub, near to an entrance to Borough Market in London

A couple of drinks left abandoned in the garden of the Mudlark Pub which is still shut since the terror attack on Saturday

'Loads of people were running down the street, everything was crazy. Then 15 minutes after I heard guns inside Borough Market. We took the customers downstairs and then the police came in and told us we had to 'go go go'. We then ran down the street away from London Bridge.

'The door was open to the shop and everything was on, even the cooker so I had to come back on Sunday to turn everything off. Police had sealed the shop. It's very frightening.'

Antonio Costa, a chef at the luncheonette, added: 'We have been closed for a few days and had to throw away lots of things and lost a lot of money but we will carry on.

'The restaurant was full at the time and busy. We closed the doors and went downstairs and then police ordered us to leave down the road. It was very frightening. But we are in a big city and it's happening in France, Belgium, Germany and we know it can happen.'

London officials said a large part of the outer cordon of the crime scene had reopened. Borough Market, a popular gathering place, remains closed as more evidence is gathered. Pictured are toppled chairs and tables at Borough Market.

Police officers were seen laying flowers at the scene of the horrific attack this afternoon.

The George Pub on Borough High Street remains closed after the shocking terror attack on Saturday

A dustpun and brush sits abandoned next to a bottle of Lucozade at The Old Thameside Inn at Pickfords Wharf today

The Number 1 bar near London Bridge train station remains closed this afternoon following Saturday's terror attack

People walk past The George pub on Borough High Street which is still shut today following Saturday's atrocity

A police cordon remains around Borough Market today following the terror attack at the weekend in London

People work in an area cordoned off by police among the debris from Saturday's attack in Borough Market

Officials in London said a large part of the outer cordon of the crime scene had reopened in Borough this afternoon

On the day after the attack armed police and forensic officers were seen scouring the scene at London Bridge and Borough Market, where three terrorists left a trail of death and destruction when they went on a van and knife rampage.

The attackers, who were wearing fake suicide vests, mowed down up to 20 pedestrians as they careered across London Bridge in an 'S shape' at 50mph before abandoning the vehicle at nearby Borough Market, where they began 'randomly stabbing' revellers packed into busy bars and pubs.

Fifteen people have been arrested in connection with the incident, but 13 have since been released without charge.

The latest arrest was a 30-year-old man, who was detained in connection with the massacre in the early hours of this morning after Counter-terrorism officers raided a property in Ilford, east London

The man has been arrested over terror offences and has been taken into custody at a south London police station.

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said: 'Detectives investigating the London Bridge terror attack have carried out a search warrant at an address in east London in the early hours of Wednesday, June 7.

A woman weeps as she looks over the flowers that have been laid on London Bridge for the victim's of Saturday night's brutal attack

Two others generous citizens come to crouch down next to her to check if she is okay, as she is overcome with emotion

A third woman then comes to her aid furthere and gives her consolitory hug as they stand over the floral tributes on London Bridge

Another woman lays a floral tribute on London Bridge in memory of the eight people who were killed in the attack

'Officers from the Met's Counter Terrorism Command, supported by officers from the Territorial Support Group, entered the address in Ilford at around 1.30am.

'A 30-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of terrorist acts (contrary to section 5 Terrorism Act 2006) and has been taken into custody at a south London police station under the Terrorism Act 2000. A search of the address is ongoing.'

Meanwhile,Muslim leaders have pledged to 'root out' the 'menace' of extremism as they launched an action plan to tackle radicalisation within their communities.

Around 100 imams gathered near London Bridge to condemn the recent terrorist atrocities in both the capital and Manchester.

They were joined by other faith leaders including those from Jewish and Christian communities as they walked a short distance from outside the Shard to what has now become a makeshift memorial at the bridge following the weekend's carnage.

Many of those taking part held aloft pieces of paper with the slogans 'We stand with London' and 'Not in our name' and carried single red roses.

A man is seen here holding up a placard with London's iconic Tower Bridge on it, saying '#ISIS will lose. #Love will win', during a gathering today

Representatives of the Muslim community stand around flowers layed in an area just south of London Bridge as they came to pay their repects

A large crowd gathered opposite The Barrowboy And Banker pub, close to where the van carrying the terrorist trio Youssef Zaghba, Khuram Shazad Butt and Rachid Redouane crashed.

They murdered eight people and injured 48 others in their rampage around London Bridge and Borough Market on Saturday night.

Muslim scholar Aneesa Hussain told those present: 'Today we make it clear that terrorists and extremists are not following the path to paradise.

'We clarify that the funeral prayer of such barbaric individuals is not to be performed, nor they be buried among the Muslims.

'We stand here also to reiterate our commitment to peace, bridge-building and British values, and to continue to play our role in rooting out this menace from our communities and the wider society.'

Echoing the words of Prime Minister Theresa May, she said: 'Enough is indeed enough' as a four-point plan to combat extremist ideology was announced.

Muslims in Britain can be confident in their identity and that their religion is compatible with the values held dear within the UK, the plan states.

A Muslim man gives a speech during the emotional ceremony, as people around him hold up posters with slogans on and prepare to lay flowers

This man looks visibly emotional as he lays two red roses close to the site where three terrorists killed eight people and injured dozens of others

Notions that Muslims should work to establish and support a so-called Islamic State and that it is a betrayal to help British authorities are 'wrong', the plan adds, and will continue to be challenged within mosques and educational institutions as 'divisive narratives'.

Leaders have also vowed to improve cross-community engagement by showing there are no no-go areas when it comes to places of worship.

Part of the plan echoes further the words of Mrs May in the wake of recent attacks, that the internet should not give 'safe spaces' to extremists, and said it remains a challenge to prevent online grooming of young people.

Imam Qari Asim said before the gathering: "My message to any wannabe extremist is that by taking part in terror you are not committing a martyrdom, you are following a suicidal cause, and you're bringing disrepute to your family members and the whole of the community."

The spokesman for the British Muslim Forum and imam of the Leeds Makkah mosque added: "And more importantly you are not a martyr, you are a criminal and it's as simple as that."

Debris remains in the street following Saturday's attack in Borough Market, which is a popular gathering place in the capital

Borough Market remains closed after Saturday's terror attack, with Southwark Cathedral visible in the background

Containers sit outside The Old Thameside Inn on the South Bank on Clink Street which remains closed this afternoon

The area of Borough Market is eerily quiet compared to its normal bustling self, following Saturday's terror attack

The Number 1 bar remains closed this afternoon after the terror attack on Saturday which left eight people dead

A police cordon remains around Borough Market following the terror attacks in which 48 people were injured

Imams and members of the Muslim community arrive to lay flowers near the scene of the London Bridge terrorist attack

Police direct people around Borough Market in South London following the terror attack on Saturday night

Police speak to members of the public as the cordon remains around Borough Market following the terror attack

A group of police stand next to a cordon which remains around Borough Market near London Bridge train station

Yesterday, a A 27-year-old man was arrested in the Barking area in connection with the atrocity.

It came after police confirmed they raided a home in Ilford in the early hours.

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police told MailOnline that yesterday's raid was at a different address to today's operation and that nobody had been detained.

And also reports in Ireland emerged that a man had been detained in Limerick last night over the attack.

A map shows how terror attack unfolded. The attackers were shot dead within eight minutes of the first emergency phone call

London Bridge and Borough Market this afternoon as police arrive at the scene to lay flower and mark their respect

Pictured are police officers laying flowers at the scene of the terror attack at London Bridge today. A number of police officers were injured on Saturday

Metropolitan Police men and women line up to lay flowers at London Bridge this afternoon after Saturday's horrific attack. In the backdrop is The Barrow and Banker pub where the terrorists crashed their van after mowing down around 20 people

Two policewomen are pictured holding flowers at the scene of the London Bridge terror attack, which killed eight people

On the day after the attack armed police and forensic officers were seen scouring the scene at London Bridge and Borough Market, where three terrorists left a trail of death and destruction when they went on a van and knife rampage. Today they were seen laying flowers at the scene

A Metropolitan Police officer wipes a tear from her face as members of the force stand at London Bridge to pay their respects

More police officers arrive to lay flowers at London Bridge. On Monday, Scotland Yard announced that all 12 people arrested on Sunday by officers in east London investigating Saturday's massacre have been released without charge

A Morrocan national was arrested in Limerick on Monday after ID documents found at his home were in the name of one of the London attackers - Rachid Redouane.

He was being questioned at a garda station in the city by detectives attached to the Garda National Immigration Bureau (GNIB) on suspicion of using forged documents, according to the Limerick Leader. He was later released without charge.

On Monday, Scotland Yard announced that all 12 people arrested on Sunday by officers in east London investigating Saturday's massacre have been released without charge.
A Chipotle Mexican Grill in Pennsylvania was raided on Wednesday afternoon as part of an undercover drug string.

The franchise, located in Radnor, had been under surveillance after undercover officers made a number of covert purchases over a 'significant period of time'.

Four employees were arrested after police conducted a 'buy bust' and purchased marijuana from a worker in the parking area of the strip mall eatery.

A Chipotle Mexican Grill in Radnor, Pennsylvania (pictured), was raided on Wednesday afternoon following an undercover drug string with four employees arrested

The location was under surveillance after undercover officers had made a number of undercover purchases over a 'significant period of time'. One arrested employee had a half-pound of marijuana on his person (pictured)

Police say that a toilet tank in the restroom was found stuffed with drug paraphernalia (pictured), although it is unclear if there were drugs inside.

According to police, the arrested employee from the parking lot had a half-pound of marijuana on his person.

Two face felony charges while two others face misdemeanor charges, police said.

A police K-9 also found drug traces in a restaurant restroom.

Police say that a toilet tank was found stuffed with drug paraphernalia, although it is unclear if there were drugs inside, reported CBS Philly.

This is the fourth Radnor Township establishment to be shut down due to drug sales in the past few years, according to police Superintendent William Colarulo.

A McDonald's employee was caught selling crack, a Seasons Pizza was found to be selling marijuana and two Estia Taverna bartenders were discovered selling cocaine.

The Chipotle was also shut down on Wednesday after health inspectors arrived and allegedly found filthy conditions in the kitchen in a separate investigation from the drug bust, reported ABC 6.

Police will keep the eatery closed until inspectors can say it meets public health standards. Meanwhile, inspectors reportedly told staff to throw all the food away as a precaution.

Two of the arrested employees face felony charges while two others face misdemeanor charges, police said (Pictured, marijuana recovered at the Chipotle in Radnor, Pennsylvania)

In a separate investigation from the drug bust, health inspectors arrived and allegedly found filthy conditions in the kitchen in a separate investigation to the drug bust (pictured)

The news comes just a day after Papa John's employees were arrested on suspicion of selling cocaine out of a store in Washington.

Five people were detained in Sammamish, near Seattle, on Tuesdat after a six-month investigation by the King County Sheriff's Office and local police department.

Sammamish police were tipped off about the pizza chain's employees selling cocaine in the parking lot in December, according to the sheriff's office.

A King's County spokeswoman said that customers would ask for 'extra olives' to signal that they wanted drug.

Mark Crumpacker, the chief of marketing and developing for Chipotle, made headlines last summer when he was swept up in a massive drug bust in Manhattan.

Prosecutors said Crumpacker had being caught on a wire ordering cocaine to be delivered 13 times to his $2.5million apartment on West 13th Street in New York and spent $3,000 on the recreational drug.

In early January, the top executive pleaded guilty to the drug charges filed against him in exchange for having the case dismissed if he agreed to attend a substance abuse treatment program and keep out of trouble for a year.
Britain's largest pro-Israel event this year has been scrapped amid fears of another London terror attack.

Organisers had sold 1,000 tickets for A Night to Honour Israel which sees Christians and Jews come together each year for a night of celebration and music.

But they have been forced to cancel the event on the orders of security experts in both the US and UK in the wake of this week's terror attack on London Bridge and last month's Manchester bombing.

It was set to be held in Westminster - a 'short distance' from Saturday night's attack and the same area where 52-year-old jihadist Khalid Masood mowed down dozens of pedestrians in March.

Organisers had sold 1,000 tickets for A Night to Honour Israel - but they have been forced to cancel it. Last year's event in London is pictured

The event was due to take place on June 22nd at a venue in Westminster which was yet to be announced. Pictured is Colonel Richard Kemp, who was due to speak this year, addressing the crowd last year

It was due to be held in the same area where jihadist Khalid Masood mowed down dozens of pedestrians in an attack on Westminster Bridge in March

In a statement posted online, devastated organisers Christian United for Israel said: 'Having assessed the current situation and received independent advice we have taken the difficult decision to postpone the event.

'Islamic extremists have called for the specific targeting of Christians and Jews during the month of Ramadan, during which our event was set to take place.'

The group added that it was cancelling the event 'with wisdom and not fear' for the 'protection' of attendees from two faiths which are facing a terror threat.

It said: 'We are determined that the impact of Islamic extremism will not win.

'The roots of the threat currently facing this nation is the same that Israel has faced for years.

'Our standing with Israel against radical Islam is crucial at this time, as is standing with our country as it comes to terms with its impact.'

The group said it was cancelling the event 'with wisdom and not fear' for the 'protection' of attendees from two faiths which are facing a terror threat. Pictured is last year's evening

Customers who had booked tickets for A Night to Honour Israel have been offered a full refund

The organisers were given advice following last month's Manchester bombing. Pictured are survivors being helped by police on the night of the attack at the end of May

Security experts also took Saturday night's attack on London Bridge into account. Pictured are police patrolling following the tragedy in which eight people lost their lives

The event was due to take place on June 22nd at a venue in Westminster which was yet to be announced.

But a pro-Palestinian event organised by the Friends of Al-Aqsa is still set to go ahead at the Queen Elizabeth II Centre in Westminster next month.

Customers who had booked tickets for A Night to Honour Israel have been offered a full refund.

Confirmed speakers included Texan megachurch pastor John Hagee, journalist Melanie Phillips and CUFI executive director Des Starritt.

Military veteran Colonel Richard Kemp - who served in the British Army for almost 30 years - was also due to address the event.

Earlier today police announced an eighth victim had been killed in Saturday night's attack after finding the body of a French tourist in the River Thames.

Xavier Thomas, 45, died after he was thrown into the River Thames by the terrorists' van. He was with his girlfriend, Christine Delcros (pictured), when the attack happened

Police searching for Mr Thomas, who went missing after the London Bridge terror attack, have discovered his body in the River Thames - four miles from where he fell

Xavier Thomas, 45, was thrown into the river by the terrorists' van while walking south along the bridge with his girlfriend Christine Delcros, who was left seriously injured.

London Bridge victims Christine Archibald, 30, from Canada James McMullan, 32, from east London Alexandre Pigeard, 27, from France Kirsty Boden, 28, from Australia Ignacio Echeverria, 39, from Spain Sara Zelenak, 21, from Australia Sebastien Belanger, 36, from France Xavier Thomas, 45, from France Advertisement

Khuram Butt, Rachid Redouane and Youssef Zaghba then left the van armed with knives and went on a stabbing spree, killing 8 and injuring 48.

Immediately after the attack, police river boats combed the area for victims and possible attackers, but did not spot Mr Thomas in the water.

Officers were quick to confirm that there were seven people killed, with no mention of Mr Thomas  despite him being reported missing by worried family members.

It was only when it became evident that he had not been taken to one of the five hospitals along with the dead and injured that detectives appealed for information about him and more searches took place on the River Thames.

Today, Metropolitan Police revealed they had discovered his body near Limehouse - four miles downstream from London Bridge and four days after the attack.

Scotland Yard are still yet to officially name any of the dead, with relatives themselves revealing their loved ones had been killed.

The lack of information given to families by police has sparked criticism from the foreign ministries of Australia, France and Spain, while one of the victims workplaces even stepped in to hire private detectives to look for him.

Today, police refused to say why they had not identified the victims sooner, only saying there are a number of varying factors as to why the dead had still not been formally named.

A spokesman added the force was liaising with the families and hope to formally confirm the victims as soon as we can.
Jeremy Corbyn wants the country to entrust him with the keys to Number 10  but his own MPs have said he is not up to the job of Prime Minister.

Labour grandee Alan Johnson has complained of his 'risible leadership' while another MP described him as a 'f***ing disaster'.

Many of his own frontenchers have demanded he step down - including his shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer, shadow defence secretary Nia Griffith and the newly appointed shadow home secretary Lyn Brown.

The veteran left-winger faced a massive revolt from his own MPs last year who were determined to get rid of what they complained was a hopeless leader.

Corbyn, pictured today in Watford, has toured the country urging Britons to make him PM

More than 50 of his frontbenchers resigned en masse in a determined attempt to dislodge Mr Corbyn.

And he overwhelmingly lost a vote of no confidence among his MPs by a staggering 172 to 40 votes.

But while Mr Corbyn clung on to his top job in Labour after a bruising summer re-election campaign against Owen Smith, his MPs told of their despair at his woeful leadership.

And many of the party's big beasts who have experienced political life in government queued up to call for him to go.

Mr Johnson, the former home secretary and MP for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessl, described it as 'risible'.

The Labour leader, pictured in Watford today, has been criticsed by many of his own MPs

Labour grandee Alan Johnson, the former home secretary, has previously described Mr Corbyn's leadership as 'risible' and accused him of making 'meaningless platitudes'

In a letter to Hull constituency members last June, he wrote: 'Jeremy Corbyn has neither the ability, nor I believe the desire, to lead our party into government.

'We in the Parliamentary Party have observed at first hand his woeful performances in the Commons, his inability to take responsibility, demonstrate leadership or give the slightest indication that he is capable of moving beyond meaningless platitudes.

'Anti-austerity is a slogan not a policy.

'To beat the Tories we need something more than Jeremy's conviction that the support he has amongst the membership, particularly those who joined to get him elected, will somehow translate to the public at large.'

Dame Margaret Beckett, who was acting Labour leader before Tony Blair was elected, said she was a 'moron' for nominating Mr Corbyn for the leadership.

She choked back tears as she told an intervieewer that Mr Corbyn was tearing apart the 'Labour family' through his leadership.

She said: 'This is the worst job in politics - being leader of the Labour party as leader of the opposition. I completely understand the pressures are horrendous and can make enormous difficulties that are hard to overcome.

Labour former culture secretary Dame Tessa Jowell last year described Mr Corbyn's leadership as a 'complete shambles' and called for him to stand down

'But when you assume leadership you have to understand that the interests of those you lead come before your own. And in those interests I'm afraid he must stand aside.'

Labour former culture secretary Baroness Tessa Jowell also hit out at Mr Corbyn's leadership.

Speaking last year she said: 'It is a complete shambles and it is a statement of the obvious that Jeremy has got to stand down and allow a new leader to rebuild the party.'

She said Labour had been plunged into its 'worst crisis' in her 45 years as a member of the party under the left-winger's leadership.

Labour's John Woodcock is a longtime critic of Jeremy Corbyn who he has described as a 'f***ing disaster'

Former Labour frontbencher John Wodcock described the Labour leader as a 'f***ing disaster' after a session of Prime Minister Questions in March year.

In a tweet he later deleted he wrote: 'F***ing disaster. Worse [sic] week for Cameron since he came in and that stupid f***ing list makes us into a laughing stock,' he posted, before quickly deleting it.'

And he hit tore into Mr Corbyn again last month when he announced he would defend his seat of Barrow and Furness.

He told his constituents: 'I will not countenance ever voting to make Jeremy Corbyn Britain's Prime Minister. I realise that Jeremy has been elected and then re-elected as the leader of my party, but my first duty is to you, my constituents.

'Jeremy's opposition to the Trident renewal programme is lifelong and is well-known.

'But more than that, I cannot countenance endorsing him for a role which I think even he, although he may say differently in front of the cameras, does not think he is fit to carry out.'

During the election campaign Labour MPs who have been critical of their leader have refrained from hitting out at him publicly.

Britain will go to the polls tomorrow morning to decide who will become Britain's next Prime Minister.
Local officials from four governmental boards grappling with whether or not to support renewal of Bismarcks Renaissance Zone program gathered Wednesday to discuss the issue.

Once the zone is allowed to expire no new Renaissance Zone, which provides income and property tax incentives to encourage downtown revitalization, can ever be created in the city unless the Legislature were to change state law to allow it.

Its a tough decision, said school board member Karl Lembke. Its a good successful program. If not carried forward, the city loses that tool.

Another school board member, Rick Geloff, said he needs time to digest the information and talk to constituents.

City Planner Daniel Nairn will present a request for a letter of support from the Bismarck School Board at 5:15 p.m. June 26 in the Tom Baker Room of the City/County Building.

Planners will be before the Bismarck Park Board June 15 and Burleigh County Commission June 19. Whether or not public comment is taken on the issue at these meetings is up to each entity.

During the legislative session, state lawmakers passed a law saying cities wishing to use tax incentive programs must get letters of support from the other taxing entities  county government, school board and park board.

July 31 marks the end of a 15-month extension granted to the program by the North Dakota Department of Commerce to allow for the legislative clarification and the letters of support are needed to continue the program another five years.

Park Board President Wayne Munson said one question he would like to have answered is what it costs the average taxpayer in Bismarck in order to have Renaissance Zone  whether thats a 1 percent difference or a 10 percent difference.

That would help me make a decision, he said.

Burleigh County Commissioner Jerry Woodcox said hes in favor of continuing the Renaissance Zone but would like input from business owners operating outside the district.

He indicated the feedback hes received, in the form of emails, has been split 90-10, leaning negatively. He expects, at this time, the county commissioners are split 3-2 against the program's renewal.

To me, its an unfair advantage and thats my hangup on it, said Burleigh County Commissioner Jim Peluso, whose qualms are related to the Renaissance Zones overlap with the Tax Increment Financing district.

TIF works by setting a base of property value for property within the district. The tax collections from that base value continue to go to the various governmental bodies but any increase in tax collections from property value increases goes to fund public infrastructure and economic development projects.

Even though the two programs are separate and a developer cant dip into both, the property tax-funded entities wont see the benefit of their Renaissance Zone investments on projects that overlap with TIF until 2026 because revenue from the increase in property value from Renaissance Zone goes into the TIF fund.

Money from the TIF district contributes more than $2 million annually to the TIF fund. Of that, almost $372,000 comes from past Renaissance Zone projects.

Im thinking the Renaissance Zone needs to be renewed and negotiate the other things later, Burleigh County Commissioner Kathleen Jones said.

She told the Bismarck City Commission shed like to discuss bringing up the base taxable value to 2010 levels as well as the possibility of pushing up the end date if possible.

Nine years  that can be a tremendous cost to the county, Jones said. Maybe we can negotiate a little bit.

Following the meeting, the Bismarck-Mandan Development Association Board of Directors voted to support renewal of the Renaissance Zone.

Allowing the program to expire and trying to get the laws changed allowing a new zone if needed later would be climbing a large mountain," according to BMDA board member Kevin Strege.

Scott Meske, president of the Bismarck-Mandan Chamber of Commerce Board, said not having a Renaissance Zone in Bismarck while other cities do, "puts Bismarck at a extreme disadvantage," in competing for development and talent attraction.
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Incredible footage has been released showing the breathtaking and historic climb Alex Honnold made completely rope-free up Yosemite's famed El Capitan mountain.

Honnold scaled the 3,000-ft vertical ascent - which is higher than the world's tallest sky scraper Burj Khalifa - in just under four hours, on Saturday.

Now, National Geographic has released a stunning video showing just a segment of the 31-year-old's climb.

The short clip, which is from National Geographic's upcoming documentary about his life, shows Honnold slowly inching his way up the mountain.

The climber is almost constantly looking up at the massive task left ahead of him in the video, however he does glance down at times.

Honnold is also seen maneuvering his leg to fit it into what appears to be a small crevice to give himself a foothold to climb further up the mountain.

Scroll down for video

After completing the climb, Honnold explained how he had been wanting to reach the top of El Capitan for almost a decade.

He said he first dreamed of making it all the way rope-free in 2009, adding: 'each year I would show up and it would seem just much too daunting'.

But then two years ago, he took on the challenge and began working towards it.

He said he rehearsed the route many times while climbing with protective gear and memorized each hole he had to grab and the way to position his body until he felt comfortable enough to attempt the 'free solo' climb.

The video was released after details of his incredible climb were revealed over the weekend.

The 31-year-old, who camped over the night before in the Californian national park, began his climb at 5:32am PDT on Saturday, with little more than the clothes on his back, and a small bag of chalk for his hands.

Alex Honnold has made history as the first to ascend Yosemite's famed El Capitan mountain completely rope-free (pictured atop the California mountain after completing the incredible climb)

Honnold scaled the 3,000-ft El Capitan along the Freerider route (pictured) in just under four hours on Saturday

One false move, would have sent the daredevil plummeting to his death.

At exactly 9:28am, Honnold hoisted himself up over the lip onto the summit which was no more than a few feet across - making him the first person in history to climb El Capitan without a rope.

The historic achievement will no doubt be the highlight of the upcoming National Geographic feature film and magazine article based on Honnold's life.

'This is the 'moon landing' of free soloing,' said Tommy Caldwell, who made became the first to ascend of the Dawn Wall in 2015 with just a back up rope for safety in what is known as free climbing.

Free solo climbing, which Honnold is famed for, uses no rope whatsoever.

Suffice to say, it is extremely dangerous.

The only two climbers who ever even contemplated tackling a free solo of El Capitan, are both dead. Michael Reardon, a free soloist, drowned in 2007 after being swept from a ledge below a sea cliff in Ireland, while Dean Potter, died in a base jumping accident in Yosemite in 2015.

Honnold is pictured during another treacherous solo climb up the challenging El Sendero Luminoso route in 2014

The professional climber scaled the impressive Mexican rock face in just under three hours

The only two climbers who ever even contemplated tackling a free solo of El Capitan (pictured) are both dead

Most free soloists never considered such a death-defying feat. Even John Bachar, one of the pioneers of the sport in the 1970s who died aged 52 during a free solo climb, knew better than to attempt El Capitan.

But Honnold has a history of achieving the impossible.

In 2014, he became the first person to free climb the challenging El Sendero Luminoso route.

The Shining Path climb, as its known, reaches 2,500 feet at its highest point and is widely recognized as one of the most difficult climbs in the world. But the professional climber scaled the impressive Mexican rock face in just under three hours.

Honnold is also the only known person to have climbed the Yosemite Triple crown - three of the park's most famous peaks - without a rope.

But El Capitan posed a whole new challenge for him.

The climbing route he used, known as Freerider, took him up a vertical drop including two areas of rock polished smooth over the millennia by receding glaciers.

'It's like walking up glass,' Honnold said.

Alex is the only person in the world to have successfully free-soloed this dangerous route in Mexico, back in 2014

While it takes incredible climbing skill to overcome such a terrifying feat, the California native - who lives out of his van and drives the country so he can climb almost year-round - said the greatest challenge is overcoming one's fear.

'With free-soloing, obviously I know that I'm in danger, but feeling fearful while I'm up there is not helping me in any way,' he said. 'It's only hindering my performance, so I just set it aside and leave it be.'

Honnold spent more than a year training for the climb at locations across the globe, from China to Morocco, as well as around the US.

'Years ago, when I first mentally mapped out what it would mean to free solo Freerider, there were half a dozen of pitches where I was like, 'Oh that's a scary move and that's a really scary sequence, and that little slab, and that traverse,' Honnold said. 'But in the years since, I've pushed my comfort zone and made it bigger and bigger until these objectives that seemed totally crazy eventually fell within the realm of the possible.'

All that hard work came to a head this weekend when finally conquered the mountain, captured by a team of filmmakers for National Geographic, as the crowning moment of Solo.
Authorities say the grave of an eight-year-old Ohio boy who killed himself after his mother says he was bullied at school was opened to remove a computer tablet sought by investigators.

The Hamilton County Coroner's Office says Gabriel Taye's grave was opened Wednesday to remove the tablet for the county prosecutor's office.

The coroner's office says the body couldn't be re-examined, but wouldn't comment further.

The family's attorneys say the mother buried the tablet with him 'to make sure he had something to play with in heaven.'

The attorneys say she learned her son was bullied after seeing an email a Cincinnati police detective wrote describing the scene outside a boys' bathroom where the attorneys say he was knocked unconscious.

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Authorities say the grave of Gabriel Taye (above), an eight-year-old Ohio boy who killed himself after his mother says he was bullied at school, was opened to remove a computer tablet sought by investigators.

The Hamilton County Coroner's Office says Gabriel Taye's grave was opened Wednesday to remove the tablet for the county prosecutor's office. His mother, Cornelia Reynolds (left), buried the tablet with him 'to make sure he had something to play with in heaven'

He hanged himself days later at his home in January.

Cincinnati school officials released the disturbing surveillance video last month which reveals how a January 24 locker room assault left the child unconscious two days before he hanged himself.

The video, shot from a hallway camera at Carson Elementary School shows the eight-year-old being pulled to the ground by another student in a bathroom and left lying for over five minutes while other boys 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.

Cincinnati school officials debated whether or not to release the video.

Gabriel (above) committed suicide by hanging himself with a necktie in his bedroom in January. The coroner has urged police to treat this incident 'as a homicide until proven otherwise'

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.

'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.'

After viewing the video, a coroner has reopened an investigation into Gabriel's suicide.

The coroner has urged police to treat this incident 'as a homicide until proven otherwise.'
Donald Trump's White House sent a diplomatic pouch full of Schadenfreude to Tehran on Wednesday following an ISIS terror attack that killed 12 and wounded 35 at Iran's parliament and a shrine to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

'We grieve and pray for the innocent victims of the terrorist attacks in Iran, and for the Iranian people, who are going through such challenging times,' the president said in a statement.

And then the hammer blow: 'We underscore that states that sponsor terrorism risk falling victim to the evil they promote.'

Aaron Sagui, a spokesman for Israel's embassy in Washington, quoted that last sentence and tweeted: 'Exactly.'

YOU REAP WHAT YOU SOW: Donald Trump let his sarcasm fly on Wednesday, lecturing Iran's leaders after an ISIS attack by saying they back terrorists themselves

YEAH, YOU: Trump's unusually pointed statement followed a kinder sentence about praying for the Iranian people

The spokesman for Israel's embassy in Washington, D.C. tweeted: 'Exactly.'

The State Department condemned the deadly twin attacks, with spokeswoman Heather Nauert saying 'the depravity of terrorism has no place in a peaceful, civilized world.'

Official American statements of solidarity with the victims are notable because of the deep distrust between the U.S. and Iran. The two countries don't maintain diplomatic relations and the Trump administration has emphasized the need to counter Iran's influence.

The distrust of Iran was evident on Wednesday when shortly after the condemnation, Republicans and Democrats in Congress acted in a procedural vote to move forward on a new set of sanctions. The strong bipartisan vote was 92-7.

The bill would impose mandatory sanctions on people involved in Iran's ballistic missile program and anyone who does business with them. The measure also would apply terrorism sanctions to the country's Revolutionary Guards and enforce an arms embargo.

A few senators pleaded for a delay until next week in the previously scheduled vote in light of the attacks in Iran.

ISIS claimed its first ever terror attack in Iran on Wednesday after fighters stormed parliament and attacked a shrine to Ayatollah Khomeini (pictured, images released by the terror group claiming to show a fighter inside parliament)

Security forces stood guard as women and children were evacuated from the windows of the lower floors to rescuers below. Four jihadi fighters got into parliament through the visitor door while disguised as women in burkas before filming part of their rampage inside, including the body of a government worker

'Let us tell the people of Iran that while we have serious disagreements with them on a number of issues, that today when they are mourning, when they are dealing with the shock of a terrorist attack, today is not the day to go forward with this piece of legislation,' said Vermont's independent liberal senator Bernie Sanders.

Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy also pushed for a delay, but Republicans and Democrats pressed ahead.

The bill is a 'carefully crafted response to Iran's ongoing aggression in the Middle East," said Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey.

Iranian authorities have arrested five suspects. The country's Revolutionary Guards blamed Saudi Arabia for the attack, saying: 'This terrorist attack happened only a week after the meeting between the U.S. President Donald Trump and the Saudi backward leaders who support terrorists.'

'The fact that Islamic State has claimed responsibility proves that they [Saudi Arabia] were involved in the brutal attack.'

Police said they shot the second suicide attacker dead before he could detonate his device (body of dead attacker pictured)

Two suicide bombers targeted a shrine to Ayatollah Khomeini, with one detonating an explosive (pictured)

Security surrounded parliament as one jihadi blew himself up inside parliament while another three were shot dead

Saudi Arabia's foreign minister denied the claims and, like the U.S., condemned the attack.

ISIS earlier said fighters armed with AK47s and pistols stormed parliament through the civilian entrance while disguising themselves as women by wearing burkas, shooting security guards before detonating a suicide bomb, killing at least five and wounding 25.

Meanwhile two more suicide bombers attacked a shrine to Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of modern-day Iran, as another suicide device was detonated, killing at least two and injuring another 10.

The Guards' accusation dramatically escalates already-strained tensions on the Arabian Peninsula, coming after Saudi Arabia led a group of six nations in cutting ties with Qatar, saying the country supported 'Iranian terrorist groups'.
Krystina Joy Rivera, 27, is pictured above after she was arrested by Pinellas County Sheriff's deputies in Florida on Tuesday morning

A 27-year-old Florida woman headed to her ex-boyfriends house Tuesday hoping for a night of passion, but instead found him in bed with another woman and allegedly attacked her romantic rival.

Krystina Joy Rivera, of Clearwater, was arrested on Tuesday morning and charged with felony burglary with assault or battery.

According to an arrest affidavit, Rivera, who is a single mother-of-two, had been texting her former flame Ronald Koch about her desire to have sex with him.

The document, obtained by The Smoking Gun, states that Koch did not acknowledge Rivera's booty call offer.

Undeterred, Rivera left her home in Clearwater in the middle of the night and drove the short distance to Koch's home in nearby St Petersburg, arriving at around 5am.

The affidavit alleges that Rivera then barged in through the front door of the residence on 53rd Avenue North, made her way into the bedroom and found Koch in bed with his new girlfriend, Julie Thomas.

Police said that the scorned woman, without saying a word, approached the lounging lovers and repeatedly punched Thomas in the face, leaving her bloodied and injured.

When interviewed by officers, Rivera denied assaulting Thomas and claimed that she was invited to come over to Koch's home.

Scorned woman: Rivera (left and right), 27, has been charged with felony burglary with an assault or battery for allegedly beating up a woman whom she found in her ex-boyfriend's bed

Unwelcome guest: Police say Rivera had been texting her ex-boyfriend about wanting to have sex with him, then went over to his house on 53rd Avenue North in St Petersburg (pictured)

Rivera was ordered held in jail pending her bond hearing on June 13 and barred from making any contact with Koch or Thomas.

Her past criminal record includes several convictions for marijuana possession, DUI, theft, public urination and probation violation.
The attorney who is representing the slew of women who have accused Bill Cosby of sexual assault was kicked out of court after her cell phone rang during the proceeding.

Gloria Allred's phone made noise Wednesday afternoon as a Cosby defense lawyer questioned chief accuser Andrea Constand.

Allred immediately left the courtroom and was allowed back in after a break.

The 75-year-old attorney said she was baffled because she thought the phone was turned off. She was seen asking people outside the courtroom to help her make sure it was.

Booted: Celebrity attorney Gloria Allred was escorted out of Montgomery County Court on Wednesday after her cell phone rang during the trial

Bill Cosby accuser Andrea Constand arrives at the Montgomery County Courthouse on the third day of Cosby's sexual assault trial June 7

Court officials said Allred was complying with rules that require phones be put away. If she hadn't, she would've been ejected.

The famed attorney has represented the dozens of women involved in the accusations against Cosby, including the woman who testified on the first day of trial - Kelly Johnson.

Allred has been known to have worked on high-profile cases and has represented Anthony Weiner.

A reporter for a Philadelphia TV station was also barred from covering the trial after court officials say he was seen texting from the courtroom in violation of the rules.

This afternoon, a police officer reportedly frightened Cosby, who almost fell over while leaving the court, after the cop bellowed 'Put your cell phones away!'

Montgomery County Judge Steven T. O'Neill, who is presiding over the case, has tried to keep the media frenzy from influencing the case - having sequestered the jury, and banning cameras in the courtroom.
Police officers in Fresno, California managed to take down a gang member early Wednesday following a lengthy shootout with the man, who was armed with three guns and over 100 rounds of ammunition.

Police Chief Jerry Dyer said at a news conference on Wednesday morning that officers were called to the home a little after 3:30am when a neighbor reported hearing gunfire reports the Fresno Bee.

Other neighbors reported that the man, a 21-year-old member of the Bulldog gang whose name has not yet been released, told them that it was 'time to end it all.'

Topuigh day: Members of the Fresno Police Department killed a man following a shootout early Wednesday (scene after the shooting above)

Breakdown: A 21-year-old gang member, who has not yet been identified, was armed with three guns and over 100 rounds of ammunition (police comfort a family member above)

Investigating: Police were alerted to the scene when a neighbor called to report hearing gunshots, with other saying the suspect told them it was 'time to end it all'

Once police arrived on the scene, they began to evacuate the neighbors while surrounding the suspect in his backyard according to Chief Dyer.

Then, at around 4:45am, the man tried to rush from his backyard to the street, and when police blocked him he began firing off rounds.

'I can stand here before you today and say every indication we have is that (the fatal shooting) was justified for our officers. Theyre very fortunate that were not killed today,' said Dyer.

On Wednesday morning, one member of the police department was seen comforting a family member of the suspect, who broke down in tears upon learning the news.

The suspect fired at the officers with a rifle and also had a handgun on him when police searched his body.

A shed in the backyard contained an additional gun and more ammunition.
Teenagers who regularly smoke cannabis are 26 times more likely to turn to other drugs by the age of 21.

The study of the lives of more than 5,000 teenagers produced the first resounding evidence that cannabis is a gateway to cocaine, amphetamines, hallucinogens and heroin.

It also discovered that teenage cannabis smokers are 37 times more likely to be hooked on nicotine and three times more likely to be problem drinkers than non-users of the drug.

The findings from Bristol University provide authoritative support for those warning against the liberalisation of drugs laws.

Teenage cannabis smokers are 37 times more likely to be hooked on nicotine and three times more likely to be problem drinkers than non-users of the drug (stock photo)

Medical researchers have argued for years that cannabis is far from harmless and instead carries serious mental health risks.

Dr Michelle Taylor, who led the study, said: It has been argued that cannabis acts as a gateway to other drug use. However, historically the evidence has been inconsistent.

The most important findings from this study are that one in five adolescents follow a pattern of occasional or regular cannabis use and that those individuals are more likely to be tobacco dependent, have harmful levels of alcohol consumption or use other illicit drugs in early adulthood.

Our study does not support or refute arguments for altering the legal status of cannabis use.

'This study and others do, however, lend support to public health strategies and interventions that aim to reduce cannabis exposure in young people.

The Bristol evidence was gathered from a long-term survey of the lives of young people around the city, the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children.

The survey, which was published in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, examined 5,315 teenagers between the ages of 13 and 18. One in five used cannabis.

Dr Tom Freeman of Kings College London said: This is a high quality study using a large UK cohort followed from birth. It provides further evidence that early exposure to cannabis is associated with subsequent use of other drugs.

The study of the lives of more than 5,000 teenagers produced the first resounding evidence that cannabis is a gateway to cocaine (pictured), amphetamines, hallucinogens and heroin (stock photo)

Ian Hamilton, who is a mental health researcher at York University, said: It adds to evidence that cannabis acts as a gateway to nicotine dependence, as the majority of people using cannabis in the UK combine tobacco with cannabis when they roll a joint.

This habit represents one of the greatest health risks to the greatest number of young people who use cannabis.

It suggests that adolescent cannabis use serves as a gateway to a harmful relationship with drugs as an adult.

The report said: After taking account of other influential factors, those who used cannabis in their teens were at greater risk of problematic substance misuse by the age of 21.

Teens who regularly used cannabis were 37 times more likely to be nicotine dependent and three times more likely to have a harmful drinking pattern than non-users by the time they were 21. And they were 26 times more likely to use other illicit drugs.

Both those who used cannabis occasionally early in adolescence and those who started using it much later during the teenage years had a heightened risk of nicotine dependence, harmful drinking, and other illicit drug use.

'And the more cannabis they used the greater was the likelihood of nicotine dependence by the age of 21.
Never has the case been stronger than now for Britain to take back control of its borders.

After the terrorist attacks in London and Manchester, both Government and security services are having to reconsider the nature of the threat and how to defend us against such killers.

At the centre of the argument are the EUs freedom of movement laws which means that people can move freely between member states.

Unfortunately, this means that convicted criminals from other EU nations can travel to Britain. As a result of this flawed system, two of the terrorists who killed eight people during Saturdays attacks around London Bridge were allowed into the country.

From left: London Bridge killers Khuram Shazad Butt, Rachid Redouane and Youssef Zaghba

Ringleader Khuram Butt was reported to police last year for violent extremism, but was only cautioned

One, Youssef Zaghba, an Italian citizen came to the UK in January. Although we have been told by sources in Italy that a prosecutor said that officials in Italy warned their British counterparts about the risk he posed, British staff say there was no such file.

Regardless, if the Italians are right, why on earth did they not prosecute this dangerous man, rather than merely putting his details on the so-called Schengen Information system? This, according to Brussels is a highly efficient system that allows EU countries to be alerted to anyone who is wanted by the police or who has gone missing.

It must be said, though, that nothing was done to stop Zaghba leaving Italy and coming to kill innocent people in Britain.

In any case, experience sadly tells us that a criminal conviction  even one for murder  is not sufficient grounds for barring the entry of someone to a fellow EU country. Also, most worryingly, intelligence reports that raise concerns about an individual, such as an unexplained trip to Syria or warnings of links to terrorists, would not justify even a temporary ban.

Salman Abedi killed 22 people when he detonated a suicide bomb at the Manchester Arena

Another impediment to peoples safety is the European Court of Justice.

For even if UK authorities can justify barring the entry of a foreigner, they are hampered the Luxembourg-based court. Controversially, it has ruled that our authorities must inform anyone who has been denied entry of the reasons behind their decision - even if this endangers national security.

It is no surprise that former Interpol chief Ronald Noble once described these EU rules as the equivalent to hanging a sign welcoming terrorists. In addition to Zaghba, another of the London Bridge terrorists also arrived in Britain after having exploited EU rules.

Moroccan-born Rachid Redouane had been refused asylum in the UK but then moved to Ireland, where he married a British woman and duly obtained an EU permit which allowed him to be in the UK.

A key factor behind these cross-Europe security lapses is, I believe, the decision of Germanys Angela Merkel to throw open her countrys borders to refugees from Syria. Some estimates suggest that as a result, as many as 5,000 Islamic extremists may have slipped into the EU. But the main culprit in this sorry saga remains the EUs cherished freedom of movement that takes away the right of countries to exclude those they do not want inside their borders.

The trio began their killing spree just after 10pm when they ploughed into pedestrians in a white van on London Bridge

As long as this exists, we will be at risk  and our police and intelligence services will continue having to monitor an increasing number of foreigners suspected of having criminal or terrorist links. Obviously, this imposes huge strains on their resources  and increases the risk that people such as the London Bridge killers slip into the UK.

After all, in an EU of 28 countries, the system is only as strong as its weakest link. An example of how bad this can be is that eight EU members are on Interpols top ten list of nations reporting lost or stolen passports  none of them screens passports at their borders properly, leaving would-be terrorists free to enter.

That is why it is right for Theresa May to speak so powerfully of her determination to get the best deal on matters of security for the UK as we leave the EU. She has made it clear that one of her red lines is to take back control of our borders. This alone will give our security forces much greater control of those it wishes to exclude from our shores.

There are lessons to be learnt from other countries border security systems which use biometric data such as fingerprints and eye retina scans. As we begin negotiations to leave the EU, and in the aftermath of terrorist murders, we will finally have the chance to take back control of our borders.
From left: London Bridge killers Khuram Shazad Butt, Rachid Redouane and Youssef Zaghba

A fresh borders row erupted last night after it emerged that EU rules meant Britain could not have stopped one of the London Bridge killers coming into the country.

Youssef Zaghba, 22, was flagged on an international watchlist by the Italian authorities, who also told MI6 that he had tried to travel to Syria.

A Brussels diktat stating that EU citizens can only be turned away if there is a genuine, present and serious threat meant border guards could not stop him entering the UK at least twice after being put on the watchlist.

Just over a year after the Islamist was placed under round-the-clock surveillance by Italian counter-terror officers, he was part of the gang that murdered eight in a van and knife rampage around London Bridge on Saturday night.

Former justice minister Dominic Raab, a Conservative candidate, said: Perverse EU rules stop us from barring terrorists and extremists unless they pose a serious and present danger. Even then they have to be given reasons. The rules are crazy.

As it emerged that there are more than 100 other Italians on the watchlist living in the UK, Zaghbas mother also expressed disbelief that her son was not put under surveillance by British police.

Valeria Collina told the Daily Mail how her son was questioned by Italian police when he visited her in Bologna.

Youssef Zaghba was one of three jihadis who slaughtered eight people in central London

Speaking from her apartment on the outskirts of Bologna, the 68-year-old said: The Italian police were following him around everywhere, but in Britain, nothing, I cannot understand why.

When he came to Italy to visit me the police would be waiting on the tarmac at the steps of the plane. They would talk to him and even escort him back to the house to see what he was up to. But Youssef never mentioned anything like that happening in England.

Over the last decade, British officials have turned away 11,000 EU nationals.

Yet at the same time, 200,000 non-EU nationals have been refused entry to the UK. This is despite 75 per cent of the 330million visitors to the UK since 2006 being from within the EU.

Under UK law, a person from outside the EU can be stopped from entering the country on the grounds that their presence here is not conducive to the public good.

The Italian mother of Zaghba has told of her shame at his actions on London Bridge

However, Brussels rules state that EU citizens can only be blocked if they meet the higher threshold that they represent a genuine, present and serious threat.

Concerns were also raised about flaws in the much-vaunted EU-wide database.

Zaghba was placed on the Second Generation Schengen Information System, known as SIS II, which has details of 855,000 wanted or missing people.The system issues alerts about the most dangerous fugitives as well as suspected jihadists returning from Syria and Iraq.

The Italian police acted after Zaghba told the authorities, Im going to be a terrorist, when he was reportedly stopped trying to travel to Syria in March 2016.

Jihadist propaganda, including beheading videos and an IS flag, was discovered on his phone but a court decided there was insufficient evidence to prosecute him.

When he arrived at Stansted Airport in Essex a month later, he was allowed into the country despite the database flagging him up as a criminal.

Zaghba, who lived in Ilford, East London, was also questioned at the airport in January 2017  but was let in under EU freedom of movement rules.

Labour candidate Yvette Cooper, chairman of the Commons home affairs select committee in the last Parliament, said: There are serious questions for the Home Office.

Italys anti-terror prosecutor Franco Roberti said the authorities sent an intelligence file to MI6 after Zaghba first travelled to the UK. Chief of police Franco Gabrielli told a press conference yesterday: On London our conscience is clean, the records will prove it.

Italian security sources revealed that Britain is home to at least 100 other Italians who have been flagged as posing a potential terrorist risk on the SIS II database.

Counter-terror agencies in the UK are already under intense scrutiny after it was revealed Zaghbas fellow killers Khuram Butt, 27, and Rachid Redouane, 30, were also known to security services.

Zaghba's mother Valeria had returned to this house in the countryside near Bologna after her marriage to his father, Mohammed, fell apart

Zaghba was born in Morocco and raised as a Muslim, but his views became more extreme after his parents separated and his mother moved back to Italy.

His Moroccan father Mohammed Zaghba is said to have forced him to recite verses from the Koran.

But it was only when Zaghba moved to East London in 2015 that his mother became concerned about his behaviour.

Mrs Collina said: I blame the internet for his radicalisation. It started in Morocco with videos he was watching and then on the internet in London.

The Home Office has not commented as there is an ongoing police probe, while Scotland Yard has said Zaghba was not a police or MI5 subject of interest.

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: Why we have to take back control of our borders

Never has the case been stronger than now for Britain to take back control of its borders.

After the terrorist attacks in London and Manchester, both Government and security services are having to reconsider the nature of the threat and how to defend us against such killers.

At the centre of the argument are the EUs freedom of movement laws which means that people can move freely between member states.

Unfortunately, this means that convicted criminals from other EU nations can travel to Britain. As a result of this flawed system, two of the terrorists who killed eight people during Saturdays attacks around London Bridge were allowed into the country.

From left: London Bridge killers Khuram Shazad Butt, Rachid Redouane and Youssef Zaghba

One, Youssef Zaghba, an Italian citizen came to the UK in January. Although we have been told by sources in Italy that a prosecutor said that officials in Italy warned their British counterparts about the risk he posed, British staff say there was no such file.

Regardless, if the Italians are right, why on earth did they not prosecute this dangerous man, rather than merely putting his details on the so-called Schengen Information system? This, according to Brussels is a highly efficient system that allows EU countries to be alerted to anyone who is wanted by the police or who has gone missing.

It must be said, though, that nothing was done to stop Zaghba leaving Italy and coming to kill innocent people in Britain.

In any case, experience sadly tells us that a criminal conviction  even one for murder  is not sufficient grounds for barring the entry of someone to a fellow EU country.Also, most worryingly, intelligence reports that raise concerns about an individual, such as an unexplained trip to Syria or warnings of links to terrorists, would not justify even a temporary ban.

Salman Abedi killed 22 people when he detonated a suicide bomb at the Manchester Arena

Another impediment to peoples safety is the European Court of Justice.

For even if UK authorities can justify barring the entry of a foreigner, they are hampered the Luxembourg-based court. Controversially, it has ruled that our authorities must inform anyone who has been denied entry of the reasons behind their decision - even if this endangers national security.

It is no surprise that former Interpol chief Ronald Noble once described these EU rules as the equivalent to hanging a sign welcoming terrorists. In addition to Zaghba, another of the London Bridge terrorists also arrived in Britain after having exploited EU rules.

Moroccan-born Rachid Redouane had been refused asylum in the UK but then moved to Ireland, where he married a British woman and duly obtained an EU permit which allowed him to be in the UK.

A key factor behind these cross-Europe security lapses is, I believe, the decision of Germanys Angela Merkel to throw open her countrys borders to refugees from Syria. Some estimates suggest that as a result, as many as 5,000 Islamic extremists may have slipped into the EU. But the main culprit in this sorry saga remains the EUs cherished freedom of movement that takes away the right of countries to exclude those they do not want inside their borders.

The trio began their killing spree just after 10pm when they ploughed into pedestrians in a white van on London Bridge

As long as this exists, we will be at risk  and our police and intelligence services will continue having to monitor an increasing number of foreigners suspected of having criminal or terrorist links. Obviously, this imposes huge strains on their resources  and increases the risk that people such as the London Bridge killers slip into the UK.

After all, in an EU of 28 countries, the system is only as strong as its weakest link. An example of how bad this can be is that eight EU members are on Interpols top ten list of nations reporting lost or stolen passports  none of them screens passports at their borders properly, leaving would-be terrorists free to enter.

That is why it is right for Theresa May to speak so powerfully of her determination to get the best deal on matters of security for the UK as we leave the EU. She has made it clear that one of her red lines is to take back control of our borders. This alone will give our security forces much greater control of those it wishes to exclude from our shores.

There are lessons to be learnt from other countries border security systems which use biometric data such as fingerprints and eye retina scans. As we begin negotiations to leave the EU, and in the aftermath of terrorist murders, we will finally have the chance to take back control of our borders.
A young mother, a wife waiting for her husband to come home and a group of tourists could have been victims of Yacqub Khayre's rampage at a Melbourne apartment complex if his plan had been carried out.

ISIS-inspired gunman Khayre stormed The Buckingham serviced apartments in Brighton on Monday afternoon, shooting receptionist Kai 'Nick' Hao dead before taking a sex worker hostage and injuring three police officers in a standoff.

But the death toll from the terror attack could have been much worse, authorities have revealed to The Herald Sun.

Khayre, 29, was eager to collect more hostages during the two-hour standoff with police and knocked on numerous apartment doors looking for people, a police source said.

'He went knocking on doors looking for other hostages,' the source told the publication.

'It is very lucky they all had the good sense not to answer, otherwise it could have been so much worse.'

A young mother, a wife waiting for her husband to come home and a group of tourists could have been victims of Yacqub Khayre's (pictured) rampage in Melbourne if his plan had been carried out

Khayre, 29, was eager to collect more hostages during the two-hour standoff with police and knocked on numerous apartment (pictured) doors looking for more people

Nick Hao (pictured), 36, was killed while he worked as a receptionist in the foyer of serviced apartments in Brighton, Melbourne

A man leaves flowers at the entrance to the Buckingham apartments

Among those apartment residents who barricaded themselves inside their rooms were a woman who was waiting on her husband to come back from the shops, tourists visiting from overseas and a woman with a small child.

It comes after it was revealed the 29-year-old Somali-born refugee had been recommended for government-funded deradicalisation programs but was rejected, according to The Age.

The Australian Federal Police received a submission for Khayre in 2011 which outlined his extremist views but it was dismissed for unknown reasons, the publication reported.

A AFP spokesperson told The Age they had not received such a request.

Khayre has an extensive criminal history dating back to his teenage years and could have easily obtained the sawn-off shotgun he used during Monday's attack from his connections, sources told The Herald Sun.

The 29-year-old had been working for a Middle-Eastern crime family while serving time in prison for attacking a woman and her father during an ice-fuelled burglary in 2012.

Khayre shot and killed apartment complex receptionist Kai 'Nick' Hao, 36, on Monday with a shotgun blast so loud neighbours reported hearing an explosion to police.

He would later fire the weapon at police officers as he stormed toward them.

Mr Hao, a Chinese-born Australian, had a young child and got married only 15 days ago.

Khayre strolled past Mr Hao's lifeless body up to an apartment in the two-storey complex where a 36-year-old Colombian prostitute waited for him.

The gunman, who ordered the escort posing as a client, tied her up and held her hostage during a two-hour standoff with police.

Soon after he cut off the ankle monitor he was wearing while on parole for a violent home invasion he was released from prison over just seven months earlier.

At 5.41pm he called Seven News and told chief of staff Nicole Bland 'this is for IS, this is for Al Qaeda' while a woman screamed in the background.

Khayre, 29, strolled past Mr Hao's lifeless body up to an apartment in the two-storey complex where a 36-year-old Colombian prostitute (pictured after being rescued) waited for him

Mr Hao worked at The Buckingham serviced apartments at 408 Bay Street in Brighton

Police remove a body from the apartment in Brighton after a deadly two-hour siege that left two men, an Australian national working as a clerk and an ISIS-inspired gunman, dead

Then just before 6pm he burst back into the foyer and wounded three police officers before he was shot dead at the scene.

Questions have since risen over why Khayre, who was also was acquitted of planning a suicide attack against Sydney's Holsworthy army barracks, wasn't just deported back to Somalia after his home invasion sentence.

Police believe he planned his hostage-taking ruse to ambush police using terrifying tactics taken from a vile ISIS propaganda magazine.

In 1991, at the age of just three, Khayre and his family fled war-torn Somalia, arriving in Australia to live with his uncle and grandfather.

Growing up in Gladstone Park, north Melbourne, he was reportedly a good student at school until his grandfather died in Year 12 and he fell in with the 'wrong crowd'.

From there he began committing petty crime and stole his uncle's car in 2006.

Junior jihadi: Khayre is pictured as a child growing up in Australia (left, aged 7, right, aged 12)

Khayre, 29, was shot dead by heavily armed tactical command officers (pictured) after he opened fire on waiting police with a sawn-off shotgun

In 2007, he was charged with armed robbery after holding up passengers on a Melbourne train, leaving one man with knife wounds.

He was among five men charged with planning a terrorist attack on the Holsworthy army barracks.

The group were alleged to have planned to break into the secure base and kill as many army personnel as possible. Khayre was one of only two to be cleared.

That came despite him allegedly travelling to Somalia in 2009 or 2010, where he may have attended 'weapons and military' and visited a cleric to gain 'holy approval' to carry out the attack.

The other three men involved in the terrorist plot, all friends from the notorious '8 Blacks' Islamic prayer centre, are serving out 18-year sentences behind bars.

The bomb squad was sent in to inspect Khayre's rented hotel room on Tuesday morning in the aftermath of the bloody two-hour siege

A bomb squad member suits up before entering the serviced apartment blocks to search for any explosives

Mr Hao was killed in the foyer of this serviced apartment block, The Buckingham

A DECADE OF YACQUB KHAYRE'S CRIMES 2007 APRIL: The teenager was sentenced to two years' detention in a youth justice centre for somewhere between 42 and 45 offences. Charges including multiple burglaries and thefts, assault, providing a false name and address, drug possession, car theft and unlicensed driving at dangerous speeds. JUNE: While still incarcerated he was sentenced for attempted armed robbery and intentionally causing injury after stabbing a man on a train twice in the leg, demanding the victim's money and phone. 2008 FEBRUARY: Released on an adjourned undertaking on single charges of burglary and theft. 2010 DECEMBER: After a six-month trial and 16 months in custody, Khayre was cleared by a jury over his alleged role in planning the 2009 Holsworthy army barracks terror plot in western Sydney. Wissam Mahmoud Fattal, Saney Edow Aweys, Nayev el Sayed were jailed in 2011 for a maximum of 18 years for planning a terrorist act to kill as many people as possible in a mass shooting at the army base. 2011 NOVEMBER: Sentenced to time served (112 days in jail) for the possession of a firearm and ammunition without a licence, car theft, failure to answer bail, giving a false name and handling stolen goods. 2012 APRIL: A drug-affected and armed Khayre breaks into a Melbourne family's home. He is confronted by a woman, whom he strikes repeatedly in the face, back, shoulder and stomach in a bid to escape. Khayre is eventually subdued by the woman's father, a former policeman. He pleads guilty to five charges including aggravated burglary and is sentenced to five-and-a-half years, with a minimum of three. 2016 DECEMBER: Khayre is released on parole. 2017 JUNE: Still on parole, Khayre shoots an apartment clerk dead and takes a female escort hostage in a Brighton apartment building. After about two hours, he storms out of the apartment, firing at police before he is killed in a hail of bullets. Source: Australasian Legal Information Institute, Corrections Victoria and Victoria Police Advertisement

After being acquitted of terror charges, Khayre was jailed for three years for carrying out a drug-affected home invasion in Melbourne's north in 2011.

Terrifying detail in court papers revealed Khayre charged at a woman inside, punching her in the face, her stomach, her back and her shoulders.

The commotion woke up her father, a former Turkish police officer of 25 years. He copped a head-butt and a punch to the face from the future terrorist.

But it wasn't long before the father and his daughter had wrestled him to the ground and called the police.

Khayre was sentenced to more than five years jail with a minimum of three years in October 2012, and was released on parole seven months ago.

Khayre was earlier found guilty of scores of offences since 2007 - including possessing a firearm, burglaries and stabbing a commuter twice in the leg after demanding he hand over his wallet.

Despite being well known to counter terrorism police, he was deemed a low-risk of offending and released on parole - before committing the attack in Melbourne.

'He is someone that was known to us as having a long criminal history. A whole range of offending going back many years,' Commissioner Ashton said.

'Most recently he has done some prison time in relation to reckless and intentionally causing injury, and intentionally causing injury, and whilst in prison, he was processed as well for an arson whilst in the corrections system.'

'Hard covered book with Arabic writing (in cloth bag) on desk in living room': Investigators were seen holding a paper bag of evidence found inside the Melbourne apartment where the siege took place
The USNS City of Bismarck was rolled out of the hangar where she was assembled on Tuesday.

In a major milestone, the ship is being moved to a dry dock where she will be floated today.

The ship was 91 percent complete for her christening, which was held in the Austal USA shipyard hanger on Saturday. Mayor Mike Seminary spoke at the christening and her sponsor, former Rep. Jane Harman of California, did the honors.

The Bismarck delegation consisted of Seminary, his wife, Deb, and their daughter, Morgan, Commissioner Nancy Guy and her husband, Greg Stites, and Bob Wefald, chairman of the USNS City of Bismarck Committee, and his wife, Susan.

The City of Bismarck will be owned by the U.S. Navy and operated by the Military Sealift Command through a civilian merchant marine crew of up to 24 people. No homeport has yet been assigned. The ship is expected to be turned over to the Navy later this year.
A 12-year-old girl is among seven people charged with drug and property offences in a police raids on the Gold Coast.

Police allege cash, ice, cannabis and MDMA were found during a search of a home in Helensvale at 7.30am on Wednesday.

A 52-year-old man and a 32-year-old woman both from Helensvale and a 27-year-old Jimbomba man are due to appear at the Southport Magistrates Court on Thursday.

Police lead a suspect outside a home on the Gold Coast after raiding a property

A 12-year-old girl is among seven people charged with drug and property offences in the police sting

A 17-year-old man and two women, aged 19 and 20, all from Helensvale are expected to appear at the Southport Magistrates Court on July 12.

A 12-year-old Helensvale girl has been charged with one count each of possessing dangerous drug and possession of property suspected having been used in the commission of a drug offence.

Footage from the scene shows sniffer dogs outside the property as police lead the accused outside the home.

The accused are facing a raft of charges and will face court in the next week.

More to come.

Police allege cash, ice, cannabis and MDMA were found during a search of a home in Helensvale
Orange is the new uniform: Reality Winner is being held in Lincoln County jail as she awaits arraignment in federal court Thursday

The parents of alleged NSA leaker Reality Winner told DailyMail.com Wednesday that they wanted her to receive a fair trial and not be judged in the court of public opinion as they revealed that she was already helping prison inmates by teaching yoga.

Billie Winner-Davis and her stepfather, Gary Davis, spoke inside their daughter's humble home in Augusta, Georgia on Wednesday as they anxiously awaited the outcome of her hearing on Thursday, where a federal judge will decide whether she will be held or freed on bail ahead of her trial.

She was arrested at the property on Saturday on federal espionage charges after she allegedly leaked a report on Russian hacking to a news website.

Winner-Davis took a call from Reality at Lincoln County Jail during the interview and said that her daughter was urging her mother to stay strong.

The 25-year-old is being held in general population, the parents said, but that she wasn't afraid for her safety - although it was becoming uncomfortable for her as people realized who she was.

'I don't think she's afraid,' her mother said.

'She said that everyone there is so nice and that the staff are wonderful. She's finding ways to work out and do yoga, and teach yoga because that's her passion.'

Davis said: 'She's been able to call a couple of times a day but it comes up with another name. I think the inmates who aren't using their call time are giving her the opportunity.

She's said, 'All these women are in here for assault but they are all really, really nice.' One woman is a meth addict and she's been trying to teach her yoga to help her relax.'

He parents said she had never been in any trouble with authorities  bar one food fight she once organized in middle school  and do not believe that she has done what she was accused of.

Speaking out: Billie-Jean Davis, Reality Winner's mother, and her stepfather Gary Davis, tell DailyMail.com they fear their daughter is a pawn

At her home: Reality Winner's mother and stepfather are in Augusta to support their daughter, who is in a local jail awaiting arraignment Thursday

Fascination with religion: Reality Winner's home has a framed version of one of the Muslim religions' principal prayers, the Ayat al-Kursi

Faith: The Arabic-speaking linguist attended her local Episcopal church and had brought home a Palm Sunday cross before Easter. She also had a small statue of Ganesh, the Hindu elephant-headed god

Pride: Reality Winner kept mementos of her time in the United States Air Force including a picture of her time at linguistics school

Patriotic duty: Gary Davis, Reality's stepfather, 'I want to talk about Reality and remind folks that she is a veteran who served her country for six years in the United States Air Force. 'She did it with distinction.'

Bernie Sanders-supporting Reality Winner served as a linguist in the US Air Force since 2013 and spoke Pashto, Farsi and Dari. Pictured here in uniform with her mother Billie

SOLVED: THE MYSTERY OF REALITY WINNER'S UNUSUAL NAME Reality Winner's stepfather, Gary Davis, addressed her unusual name during an interview with DailyMail.com on Wednesday  and said that it had been bestowed on her by her late father, Ronald Winner. 'It's tough to see the vitriol and savagery from people who don't know who she is and don't know anything about it other than what they see in the government's filing or some story on her. 'They make assumptions because her name is something odd, that she's a crackpot,' Mr Davis said. 'It's not the case  her Dad named her. Reality is the youngest of all of our children.' Reality Winner has an older sister, Brittany, from her mother's first marriage to Ronald Winner. She also has a half-sister, Sarah-Nicole Winner, from her late father's first marriage and three step-siblings , Cole, Lyndee and Ross Davis, from her stepfather's first marriage. Mr Davis said that Reality's father had the honor of naming his second daughter. 'He always wanted to have a "Real Winner" so he named her Reality Leigh Winner. 'It's just a beautiful name. The plan was to call her Leigh because Reality is kind of a strange name but everyone who knew her just loved the name Reality and it stuck with her. 'I forget sometimes that she has ever been called Leigh  she's always been Reality.' Davis said that she goes by her full name, Reality, which caused a few problems when she went to set up social media accounts. 'Facebook would not let her use Reality until she contacted the administration of Facebook and sent them a copy of her driver's license before they allowed her. 'Then they got that straightened out. 'Some people try to pronounce it as something else  but it's Reality, that's all it is.' Advertisement

They questioned the methods with which the government had released information about the allegations against their daughter.

'Nothing matches for me at this point,' her mother said. 'She's not in the Russian world, so why would she go looking for something and how would she know to look for something?

'None of that matches to me. She's smart  would she really do something that would be so obvious?'

Her mother said that Reality would not talk about the details of her job but was well aware of the protocols surrounding security at the NSA following the Edward Snowden leaks.

Mr Davis questioned the wording of the government's affidavit and suggested that it was misleading.

'It mentions that she had emailed The Intercept. She had emailed The Intercept to request a transcript of a podcast that had to do with climate change,' he said.

'Her second email to The Intercept was a follow-up, to find out what the status of her request [for the podcast] was. They are alleging that somehow this is connected and it's just not.'

Winner had also held a meeting with a U.S. representative for her district to talk about climate change and the North Dakota pipeline.

Davis added: 'What has been put out by the government isn't the complete story and it's serving the government's interests and what they are alleging.

'We just want all the facts to be brought forth and presented to the public and an unbiased jury.'

Reality Winner's small home reflects the interests of the 25-year-old Air Force veteran.

She often rose at 5am to workout at a local cross-fit gym, one friend told DailyMail.com today, and was in training for an upcoming weightlifting competition.

One room of the small home lay almost empty for her yoga practice  apart from a rug which had been a gift from a store owner in Ellicott City, Maryland where she would spend time with him practicing her Arabic language skills in conversation.

Several sets of prayer beads and a book on peace were also in the room.

On one wall there is a framed version of the first 'surah' in the Koran, known as the Ayat al-Kursi, and often used by Muslims during prayers.

Comrades: Reality Winner was photographed at the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center with other students and instructors

Happy time: Reality Winner's enjoyment of her time in uniform was evident in the photographs she kept as souvenirs

Pride: Gary Davis said that as well as her qualifications she received a commendation for her linguistics work which directly led to the elimination and capture of hundreds of enemy combatants

Devotion to Arabic: When she was in Maryland, Reality Winner spent time with an Arabic-speaking storekeeper practicing the language and he gave her this rug as a keepsake. It is now in the room she had used for yoga

Athletic: Reality Winner often rose at 5am to workout at a local cross-fit gym, one friend told DailyMail.com today, and was in training for an upcoming weightlifting competition. She competed in a 2015 half-marathon

She was not a Muslim and in fact attended a local Episcopalian church - reflected in a crucifix on another wall, and a Palm Sunday cross.

Other religions are also represented, with a statue of Ganesh, the Hindu elephant-headed God.

Beatles albums decorated one wall and her parents said she was a super-fan of rock band, AFI.

A guitar case lay against one wall  her mother said she had taught herself to play.

An Olympic workout bar also lay on the floor. She was devoted to fitness and outside of her government contractor job, she worked as a yoga and spinning instructor.

And on the walls are memories of her time in uniform.

She received a commendation for her linguistics work which directly led to the elimination and capture of hundreds of enemy combatants, her stepfather said.

Hope for peace: The book on her floor was a copy of the work of the Japanese martial artist Morihei Ueshiba

Still doing yoga: Billie-Jean Davis said with pride that her daughter was doing yoga with inmates at the jail despite being from a radically different background

Winner's social media reveals she was a Bernie Sanders supporter who regularly tweeted her disapproval of the Trump administration

'She's gone above and beyond to serve this nation. That's really what I want to tell people who brand her as a traitor - they don't know her and all the great things she has done. She hasn't been convicted.

'This young lady signed up, put her life on the line, wanted to deploy to Afghanistan and serve but because she was a linguist, she didn't get to deploy.

'She contributed directly to the fight for the War on Terror and to the safety of Americans at home and her brothers and sisters on the front lines. She is a veteran of the United States Air Force and I want everybody to remember that.

'Everyone who knows her, loves her.'

Her stepfather had a message for people who had prejudged her. 'I want to talk about Reality and remind folks that she is a veteran who served her country for six years in the United States Air Force.

'She did it with distinction. She has never been in trouble. She did serve and she put her life on the line, she offered to give her full measure for this country and the job that she did was important.

'For her to be disparaged as a veteran, insults every veteran out there who has done their patriotic duty.

'The most important thing is that she gets a fair hearing, due process and not be convicted in the court of public opinion.

'She needs to have her day in court and a jury of her peers will determine if she has done anything wrong and at that point she will do whatever is required of her to do.'

Her mother added: 'We just ask that people not judge her, that we let all of the facts and the truth come out before people make up their minds. She hasn't been convicted of anything as of this point.'

THE ANTI-TRUMP SAYINGS OF COMRADE REALITY WINNER The alleged leaker used social media to make her views of the president clear - raising questions over exactly how she gained Top Secret clearance. Her postings included: She also posted a signed picture of CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, thanking her for her service Advertisement

WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT HOW SHE MIGHT HAVE BEEN CAUGHT

A series of 'tracking dots' that were inadvertently published by The Intercept on leaked documents could have led to the arrest of the NSA contractor.

Now, blog Errata Security has revealed how a series of nearly-invisible yellow dots that appeared at the top of the leaked pages would have allowed security services to track the leaker down with ease.

The leaked documents seemed to show Russia carried out cyber attacks on companies which produce software used during elections.

According to analysis carried out in 2015 by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, almost every modern printer secretly adds 'tracking dots' to every document.

The dots appear in a grid at the top of the first page and bottom of the last page, with some spaces filled in and others left blank.

Blog Errata Security revealed how a series of nearly-invisible yellow dots at the top of the pages which appeared on The Intercept allowed the leaker to be traced

The dots (made easier to see by inverting colors on the documents) are added by virtually every modern printer to the top and bottom of every document they print

The dots form a grid with some squares colored in and others blank. When flipped upside down and fed into special software, this reveals when the page was printed, along with the model and serial number of the printer

Once investigators had this information, it would have been a simple job of checking with the NSA where printer 29535218 was kept and who was using it at 6.20 on May 9

Once flipped upside down, that pattern can be fed into software which reads it.

The software will then tell the user the exact date and time the document was printed, as well as the model and serial number of the printer it came from.

In the case of the NSA documents, that was a printer with model number 54, serial number 29535218, and the document was printed on May 9, 2017, at 6:20, Errata writes.

Because the NSA almost certainly keeps a record of all its printer serial numbers, it would have been a simple job to track the machine to Georgia.

All agents would then have to do is check who was using the printer at 6.20 on May 9 - information the NSA almost certainly keeps on record.

According to the criminal complaint, agents identified Winner after ascertaining that six people had printed the leaked information.

Once those six people had been identified, agents checked the email accounts of those staff members and saw that Winner was the only one who had emailed an outside news source.

When confronted, the report says she admitted leaking the information.

'Exceptional law enforcement efforts allowed us quickly to identify and arrest the defendant,' the arrest document said.

Winner is the first person to be charged over leaking confidential documents after President Trump vowed a crackdown on informants.

'Winner is a contractor with Pluribus International Corporation assigned to a U.S. government agency facility in Georgia,' according to a government criminal complaint.

'She has been employed at the facility since on or about February 13, and has held a Top Secret clearance during that time.

'On or about May 9, Winner printed and improperly removed classified intelligence reporting, which contained classified national defense information from an intelligence community agency, and unlawfully retained it.'

'Approximately a few days later, Winner unlawfully transmitted by mail the intelligence reporting to an online news outlet,' according to the release.
This is the moment the London Bridge terrorists were caught on CCTV laughing and hugging as they spoke together less than a week before their van and knife rampage.

Khuram Butt, 27, Rachid Redouane, 30, and Youssef Zaghba, 22, met outside an all-Muslim gym in Ilford at ten minutes past midnight on Monday, May 29.

The clandestine meeting was five days before the trio mounted a van and knife attack on drinkers that killed eight people and injured dozens before they were shot dead by police.

Shocking: This is the moment the London Bridge terrorists were caught on CCTV days before their van and knife rampage killed eight and maimed 48

The London Bridge terrorists were spotted laughing and hugging as they spoke together less than a week before their knife rampage. Pictured: Khuram Butt, 27 and Rachid Redouane, 30

They met outside a Muslim gym in Ilford at ten minutes past midnight on Monday, May 29. Pictured: Youssef Zaghba, 22

Footage obtained by The Times showed the three terrorists talking outside the Ummah Fitness Centre, where Butt had a job.

The film taken just after midnight on Monday May 29 showed how Redouane placed his mobile phone on a nearby pile of building materials, before the group moved out of camera for around 10 minutes.

Redouans actions suggest they were concerned that they could have been monitored by the security services and took steps to ensure that their conversation was not overheard.

At the end of the meeting the three extremists return to view in the CCTV clip and Redouan retrieved the mobile that he had left behind.

He then unrolled his trousers grinning, as Zaghba hugged Butt, in the clip obtained by the Times.

It is understood the footage is now being examined by police as part of their investigation into the three men.

The CCTV ended as Zaghba and Redouane walk away and Butt went back to work at the gym  over the period of Ramadan it is open until 3am and is used as a space to conduct evening prayers.

Khuram Butt, 27, worked at Ummah Fitness in Ilford with Sajeel Shahid, 41, a member of Anjem Choudary's al-Muhajiroun network who was accused of helping train the 7/7 bomb ringleader Mohammed Siddique Khan.

Yet Butt was deemed a 'low priority' by police and MI5 despite his links to Choudary, Europe's most notorious hate preacher.

The father-of-two, 27, was probed two years before his murderous rampage but officials downgraded the investigation because they did not suspect he was planning an attack.

The London Bridge attacker himself became a supporter and trusted lieutenant of Choudary and he helped run high-octane mixed martial arts classes and he used the gym to approach young people for radicalisation, according to The Times.

He was also a friend of masked murderer Siddhartha Dhar, dubbed 'Jihadi Sid', who was dubbed the new Jihadi John when he appeared in an gruesome ISIS execution film after fleeing to Syria.

Butt worked at Ummah Fitness in Ilford, left, with Sajeel Shahid, 41, right, a member of Anjem Choudary's al-Muhajiroun network who was accused of helping train the 7/7 bomb ringleader. It was closed today

Shahid was named as a terror suspect in a court in New York in 2004 by former terrorist turned informant Mohammed Junaid Babar.

Babar told the court Shahid went to Pakistan in 2003 to meet an Al Qaeda leader and form the camp, but was later expelled from the country in 2005 after being detained for three months.

Dramatic footage of the London Bridge terrorists carrying out their attack and being shot dead by police also emerged overnight.

The footage shows the three fanatics stabbing a passer-by outside the Wheatsheaf pub at the entrance to Borough Market just before police cars arrive at speed.

Initially Butt, 27, Redouane, 30, and Zaghba, 22, are seen walking calmly down the street on the CCTV.

But they had already murdered eight people and injured dozens after crashing their car on London Bridge and leaping out armed with knives.

The men try to enter the pub but find the doors are blocked by staff, who are sheltering dozens of drinkers. They spot a man in a dark shirt and light trousers crossing the road, and the trio begin their assault.

The first attacker, thought to be Zaghba, can be seen plunging a knife into the victims torso before he is joined by his two accomplices who also leap on the man.

The police car arrives a few seconds later and at least three officers jump out of the vehicle while it is still moving. The jihadis try to flee the scene but the footage shows officers immediately opening fire.

The terrifying CCTV begins with the three attackers trying to enter The Wheatsheaf pub in Borough Market but people inside barricade the door so the killers prowl outside

A pedestrian walks into the area clearly not understanding the danger he faced and the youngest jihadi Youssef Zaghba spots him and runs at him

Zaghba launched himself at the innocent man and is then seen repeatedly plunging his knife into the upper body of the victim

His fellow attackers then run towards the man and chase him up the street as he tries to run away from danger

The car continues edging forward as one officer runs towards Butt, who can be identified by his Arsenal shirt. Butt tries to lunge at him with his knife before being shot down. The other two officers target Zaghba and Redouane.

Redouane is shot and falls on to the floor alongside one of the other officers, who gets back on to his feet before kicking the terrorist to ensure he is dead. At this point the victim gets to his feet and staggers away, 12 seconds after being stabbed.

It is not known who the man was or how badly he was injured. Shortly after he flees the scene, another squad car arrived with three more officers. They are quickly joined by two others, who together fired 50 rounds of bullets to kill the terrorists. All three terrorists were killed six seconds after the armed police arrived.

Counter-terror police investigating the attack arrested three men in Ilford, East London, late last night. Two of the men, aged 27 and 29, were held on suspicion of the preparation of terrorist acts. The third, aged 33, was arrested on drugs allegations.

It was claimed last night that Butt was on police bail after his house was raided by officers earlier this year.

The raid was launched by Metropolitan Police during an active counterterrorism investigation, the Times reported.

Police have recovered the body of the eighth victim of the attack from the Thames. Xavier Thomas, 45, is thought to have been knocked into the river when he was struck by the killers van. He was visiting London from France with his girlfriend, who was seriously injured.

Seconds later an armed unit speeds into the market and they all jump out of the patrol car as the three killer jump on their victim - people drinking outside at the top of the image are shown throwing chairs and pint glasses at them

Ringleader Khuram Butt, who is wearing an Arsenal away shirt, leaves the attack and runs at armed police swinging his knife and trying to kick them

All three men are then hit with up to 50 bullets and are left dead on the ground - with officers kicking them to check they are dead

One of Gabriele Sciotto's photographs showed the face of the dying terrorist, wearing an Arsenal football shirt and combat trousers, just a few metres in front of him

The trio began their killing spree just after 10pm when they ploughed into pedestrians in a white van on London Bridge

The bodies of the two other men, Redouaneand Zaghba, lie in the road in Borough market after being gunned down

This was five days before the trio mounted a van and knife attack on drinkers that killed eight people and injured dozens before they were shot dead by police. File photo of the police cordon on Saturday
An 82-year-old man died after a fight outside a pub with an elderly man he had been friends with for 30 years.

The long-time mates had been sharing a beer at Queensland's Bernborough Tavern before a scuffle broke out in the pub's carpark on Wednesday afternoon.

The 82-year-old is thought to have 'thrown a few punches' before his 72-year-old friend pushed him to ground, The Brisbane Times reported.

An 82-year-old man died after a fight outside a pub with an elderly man he had been friends with for 30 years

The older man suffered serious head injuries as a result of the fall and died at the scene.

The pair had been friends for over three decades, according to Channel Nine.

It is believed the man who died was the aggressor.

A police spokesperson said investigations are continuing.

'Initial investigations indicate about 2pm, in the carpark of a licenced premises... the man has fallen over during an argument with another elderly man,' the spokesperson said.

The long-time mates had been sharing a beer at Queensland's Bernborough Tavern before a scuffle broke out in the pub's carpark on Wednesday afternoon
North Korea fired what appeared to be multiple land-to-ship missiles off its east coast on Thursday morning, South Korea's military said.

In total four cruise missiles were fired from the North Korean coastal city of Wonsan, Gangwon Province, a US defense official told CNN.

The missiles flew around 124 miles, South Korean officials said. Wonsan is 113 miles from the South Korean capital of Seoul.

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North Korea fired four land-to-sea cruise missiles from its east coast into the Sea of Japan on Thursday morning (pictured left and right: one of the missiles being fired in NK footage)

The missiles were launched from the coastal city of Wonsan and flew for 124 miles; the red circle shows a 124-mile radius around Wonsan

The US official said that the missiles were not capable of posing a long-range threat.

The launch is the latest in a fast-paced series of missile tests defying world pressure and threats of more sanctions.

In fact, it is the fourth missile test by the North since South Korean President Moon-Jae-in took office on May 10 pledging to engage in dialogue with Pyongyang.

And they come less than a week after the UN Security Council passed fresh sanctions on North Korea, which said it would continue to pursue its nuclear and weapons program without delay.

The sanctions extend an existing travel ban and asset freeze on high-level North Korean officials and state entities that deal with the weapons program.

The details were confirmed in a statement by South Korea's Office of Joint Chiefs of Staff; the Japanese government also confirmed the launches.

Footage shows the massive launchers being lined up and fired in Wonsan, along with previous launches by the country

South Korean President Moon has been briefed on the latest launch, the country's military said, declining to give further details.

Under third-generation leader Kim Jong Un, North Korea has been conducting such tests at an unprecedented pace in an effort to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of hitting the mainland United States.

North Korean state media has not yet reported the launches.

The launch comes a day after South Korea halted deployment of a US anti-missile system, which has caused friction with China.

Beijing, which views the system as a security threat, has stopped Chinese tourists from visiting South Korea and punished China-based South Korean businesses.
Archaeologists have discovered the world's oldest Homo sapiens fossils, alongside stone tools and animal bones at Jebel Irhoud, Morocco.

The fossils date back to 300,000 years ago, and are 100,000 years older than any other Homo sapiens fossil discovered.

The findings push back the origins of our species, and show that by about 300,000 years ago, important changes in our biology and behaviour had taken place across most of Africa.

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Archaeologists have discovered the world's oldest Homo sapiens fossils, alongside stone tools and animal bones at Jebel Irhoud, Morocco

THE OLDEST HUMAN FOSSILS The team of researchers discovered skulls, teeth and long bones from at least five individuals. To date the fossils, the team used a thermoluminescence dating method on heated flints found in the same deposits. These flints yielded an age of around 300,000 years ago. The team also recalculated the age of a lower jaw found at Jebel Irhoud in the 1960s. While the jaw had previously been dated to 160,000 years ago, the new, and more precise dating measure showed that it was also 300,000 years old. Advertisement

An international research team, led by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany and the National Institute for Archaeology and Heritage in Rabat, Morocco uncovered the fossil bones of Homo sapiens along with stone tools and animal bones.

The discoveries reveal a complex evolutionary history of mankind that likely involved the entire African continent.

Previously, the oldest Homo sapiens fossils were known from the site of Omo Kibish in Ethiopia, dated to 195,000 years ago.

And until now, most researchers believed that all humans living today descended from a population that lived in East Africa around this time.

Professor Jean-Jacques Hublin, who led the study, said: 'We used to think that there was a cradle of mankind 200,000 years ago in east Africa, but our new data reveal that Homo sapiens spread across the entire African continent around 300,000 years ago.

'Long before the out-of-Africa dispersal of Homo sapiens, there was dispersal within Africa.'

Jebel Irhous has been known since the 1960s for its human fossils, and the latest discovery brings the total number of remains to 22.

The team of researchers discovered skulls, teeth and long bones from at least five individuals - two adults, and three children.

Designers have used the fossils to recreate what they think the first Homo sapiens across Africa looked like 300,000 years ago

Professor Jean-Jacques Hublin, paleoanthropologist, director of the department of the human evolution at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, poses for a photograph after a press conference held in Paris, France to announce the findings

Professor Jean-Jacques Hublin with Abdelouahed Ben-Ncer of the National Institute of Archaeology and Heritage Sciences in Morocco posing with the casting of a skull of Homo Sapiens

They were unable to determine the sex of the individuals, as no pelvic bones were found.

To date the fossils, the team used a thermoluminescence dating method on heated flints found in the same deposits.

GAZELLE AND ZEBRA WITH AN OSTRICH EGG ON THE SIDE: WHAT THE FIRST HUMANS ATE Teresa Steele, a paleoanthropologist at the University of California, Davis, who analyzed animal fossils at Jebel Irhoud, said plenty of gazelle meat, with the occasional wildebeest, zebra and other game and perhaps the seasonal ostrich egg was the diet of the time. Steele sifted through hundreds of fossil bones and shells, identifying 472 of them to species as well as recording cut marks and breaks indicating which ones had been food for humans. Most of the animal bones came from gazelles. Among the other remains, Steele also identified hartebeests, wildebeests, zebras, buffalos, porcupines, hares, tortoises, freshwater molluscs, snakes and ostrich egg shells. Small game was a small percentage of the remains. "It really seemed like people were fond of hunting," she said. Cuts and breaks on long bones indicate that humans broke them open, likely to eat the marrow, she said. Leopard, hyena and other predators' fossils were among the finds, but Steele found little evidence that the nonhuman predators had gnawed on the gazelle and other prey. Advertisement

These flints yielded an age of around 300,000 years ago.

Dr Daniel Richter, who also worked on the study, said: 'Well dated sites of this age are exceptionally rare in Africa, but we were fortunate that so many of the Jebel Irhoud flint artefacts had been heated in the past.

An international research team, led by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany and the National Institute for Archaeology and Heritage in Rabat, Morocco uncovered the fossil bones of Homo sapiens along with stone tools and animal bones

'This allowed us to apply thermoluminescence dating methods on the flint artefacts and establish a consistent chronology for the new hominin fossils and the layers above them.'

HOW CAN THEY TELL THE FOSSILS BELONG TO HOMO SAPIENS? The skulls of modern humans are characterised by features that distinguish us from our ancestors, including a small and slender face, and globular braincase. The fossils from Jebel Irhoud displayed a modern-looking face and teeth, but a slightly larger braincase. The researchers used computer scans and statistical analysis based on hundreds of 3D measurement to show that the facial shape of the fossils was almost indistinguishable from that of modern humans living today. Comparison of the skulls of a Jebel Irhoud human (left) and a modern human (right) And the fossils only differ from modern skulls in the shape of the braincase. Dr Philipp Gunz, who also worked on the study, said: 'The inner shape of the braincase reflects the shape of the brain. 'Our findings suggest that modern human facial morphology was established early on in the history of our species, and that brain shape, and possibly brain function, evolved within the Homo sapiens lineage.' Advertisement

The team also recalculated the age of a lower jaw found at Jebel Irhoud in the 1960s.

While the jaw had previously been dated to 160,000 years ago, the new, and more precise dating measure showed that it was also 300,000 years old.

Dr Richter said: 'We employed state of the art dating methods and adopted the most conservative approaches to accurately determine the age of Irhoud.'

The researchers used computer scans and statistical analysis based on hundreds of 3D measurement to show that the facial shape of the fossils was almost indistinguishable from that of modern humans living today

DID MAN ORIGINATE IN MOROCCO? The earliest Homo sapiens fossils are found across the entire African continent: Jebel Irhoud, Morocco (300,000 years), Florisbad, South Africa (260,000 years), and Omo Kibish, Ethiopia (195,000 years). This indicates a complex evolutionary history of our species, possibly involving the whole African continent. Speaking during a press briefing, Professor Hublin said: 'It's possible there's a centre of origin somewhere, but to date, we don't have any way to find where this is. 'The big question is  did this happen in one place in Africa? We don't think this was the case.' Advertisement

The skulls of modern humans are characterised by features that distinguish us from our ancestors, including a small and slender face, and globular braincase.

The fossils from Jebel Irhoud displayed a modern-looking face and teeth, but a slightly larger braincase.

The researchers used computer scans and statistical analysis based on hundreds of 3D measurement to show that the facial shape of the fossils was almost indistinguishable from that of modern humans living today.

And the fossils only differ from modern skulls in the shape of the braincase.

Dr Philipp Gunz, who also worked on the study, said: 'The inner shape of the braincase reflects the shape of the brain.

'Our findings suggest that modern human facial morphology was established early on in the history of our species, and that brain shape, and possibly brain function, evolved within the Homo sapiens lineage.'

Recent studies have compared DNA from Neanderthals and Denisovans to the DNA of modern humans, revealing differences in genes affecting the brain and nervous system.

The researchers say that evolutionary shape changes of the braincase are therefore likely related to a series of genetic changes affecting brain connectivity, organization and development that distinguish Homo sapiens from our extinct ancestors and relatives.

Dr Abdelouahed Ben-Ncer, who worked on the study, said: 'North Africa has long been neglected in the debates surrounding the origin of our species. The spectacular discoveries from Jebel Irhoud (pictured) demonstrate the tight connections of the Maghreb with the rest of the African continent at the time of Homo sapiens' emergence'

Excavators are pictured working in March 2007 on the remaining deposits the Jebel Irhoud site in Morocco where the oldest known fossils of human species have been unearthed

The earliest Homo sapiens fossils are found across the entire African continent: Jebel Irhoud, Morocco (300,000 years), Florisbad, South Africa (260,000 years), and Omo Kibish, Ethiopia (195,000 years). This indicates a complex evolutionary history of our species, possibly involving the whole African continent

The structure and age of the fossils from Jebel Irhoud also suggests that part of a skull from Florisbad, South Africa, was an early representative of Homo sapiens.

This means that the earliest Homo sapiens fossils are found across the entire African continent: Jebel Irhoud, Morocco (300,000 years), Florisbad, South Africa (260,000 years), and Omo Kibish, Ethiopia (195,000 years).

Professor Jean-Jacques Hublin (pictured), who led the study, said: 'We used to think that there was a cradle of mankind 200,000 years ago in east Africa, but our new data reveal that Homo sapiens spread across the entire African continent around 300 thousand years ago'

Designers have created this full-size sculpture of what they believe the first Homo sapiens looked like

This indicates a complex evolutionary history of our species, possibly involving the whole African continent.

Speaking during a press briefing, Professor Hublin said: 'It's possible there's a centre of origin somewhere, but to date, we don't have any way to find where this is.

'The big question is  did this happen in one place in Africa? We don't think this was the case.'

WAS THE ORIGIN OF MAN MULTI-REGIONAL? One theory on the origin of man suggests that modern humans developed in multiple regions around the world. The theory claims that groups of a pre-human ancestor made their way out of Africa and spread across parts of Europe and the Middle East. From here the species developed into modern humans in several places at once. According to the multi-regional theory, different races arose in different regions as a result of natural selection as these populations evolved into modern humans. The argument is supported by fossil evidence of early and pre-human ancestors found across Europe and the Middle East over the past 100 years. But some scientists question whether these bones belonged to true pre-human ancestors or just early humans that had travelled from Africa. Advertisement

The researchers tried to extract DNA from the samples to compare it to modern humans, but failed.

Professor Hublin said: 'We tried to extract DNA from the bones, but today there is none because it is too old and too hot.

'It's a problem in Africa that we don't have ancient DNA.

'There is little hope unless we find an exceptional site where bones are buried at a stable temperature that we could have ancient DNA.'

The team also recalculated the age of a lower jaw found at Jebel Irhoud in the 1960s. While the jaw had previously been dated to 160,000 years ago, the new, and more precise dating measure showed that it was also 300,000 years old

A range of stone tools made from flint were also discovered at the site, dating back to the Middle Stone Age

Dr Abdelouahed Ben-Ncer, who also worked on the study, said: 'North Africa has long been neglected in the debates surrounding the origin of our species.

'The spectacular discoveries from Jebel Irhoud demonstrate the tight connections of the Maghreb with the rest of the African continent at the time of Homo sapiens' emergence.'

The Homo sapiens fossils were found in deposits that also contained animal bones  principally gazelles.

Cuts and breaks on long bones indicate that humans broke them open, likely to eat the marrow, according to the researchers.

The findings from Jebel Irhoud shed new light on the evolution of Homo sapiens, and indicate that our species evolved much earlier than previously thought

Dr Shannon McPherron, who also worked on the study, said: 'They primarily hunted gazelle, but also wildebeests, zebras, and even different types of lions.

'That faunal spectrum paints a picture of wetter conditions than today, a landscape that is mainly open but with some clumps of trees.

'The site itself is in a hill, and in the time of occupation, would have been a cave that provided shelter for these individuals.

'This was a place where people were passing through the landscape and taking shelter there while on the search for subsistence.'

The earliest remains of Homo sapiens were discovered by researchers in Jebel Irhoud, an area where researchers previously found remains in the 1960s

Stone tools made from flint were also discovered at the site, dating back to the Middle Stone Age.

Dr McPherron said: 'The stone artefacts from Jebel Irhoud look very similar to ones from deposits of similar age in east Africa and in southern Africa.

'It is likely that the technological innovations of the Middle Stone Age in Africa are linked to the emergence of Homo sapiens.'

The findings from Jebel Irhoud shed new light on the evolution of Homo sapiens, and indicate that our species evolved much earlier than previously thought.
A terrifying animation released by Nasa shows all of the asteroids near Earth being tracked by the agency.

It was created using data from Nasa's asteroid-hunting Near-Earth Object Wide-field Survey Explorer (Neowise) mission, which launched in 2009.

The Neowise craft has now released its latest batch of data, including the locations of 97 previously unknown celestial objects found in the last year.

Ten of the newly discovered objects have been classified as potentially hazardous asteroids, based on their size and their orbits.

The animation comes after Czech scientists warned this week that Earth may be threatened by a newly discovered branch of a stream of meteoroids.

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This Nasa animation reveals all of the asteroids and comets near Earth detected by the agency's asteroid-hunting Near-Earth Object Wide-field Survey Explorer (Neowise) mission between January 2014 and February 2017 (credit: Nasa/JPL)

WHAT IS THE NEOWISE MISSION? Originally called the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (Wise), the spacecraft was launched in December 2009. It was placed in hibernation in 2011 after its primary astrophysics mission was completed. In September 2013, it was reactivated, renamed Neowise, and assigned a new mission: To assist Nasa's efforts to identify the population of potentially hazardous near-Earth objects. Neowise is also characterising more distant populations of asteroids and comets to provide information about their sizes and compositions. Advertisement

This newly discovered branch - an offset from the Taurid meteoroid stream, which was known to scientists - drastically increases the risk that Earth will be hit by a meteorite or asteroid.

Researchers from the Czech Academy of Sciences say that, while most of the debris in the branch is small and harmless, it includes two asteroids with diameters of between 200 and 300 meters (650-1000 ft).

These asteroids are not themselves on course to hit Earth, but their presence suggests there may be other dangerous large asteroids hidden undetected within the stream.

Projects like Nasa's Neowise are therefore vital to detecting any incoming threats as these meteoroids cross Earth's path around the sun each year.

Of the 97 celestial objects discovered by Neowise in the past year, 28 were near-Earth objects, 64 were main belt asteroids and five were comets.

The spacecraft has now characterised a total of 693 near-Earth objects since the mission was re-started in December 2013. Of these, 114 are new.

Near-Earth objects (NEOs) are comets and asteroids that have been nudged by the gravitational attraction of the planets in our solar system into orbits that allow them to enter Earth's neighbourhood.

'Neowise is not only discovering previously uncharted asteroids and comets, but it is providing excellent data on many of those already in our catalogue,' said Dr Amy Mainzer, Neowise principal investigator from Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Orbits of previous near-miss asteroids 2005 UR and 2015 TX24 (thick dashed lines) in comparison with selected Taurids from a new branch (thin lines of various colours) discovered by Czech researchers. Projects like Nasa's Neowise are vital to detecting asteroid threats

'It is also proving to be an invaluable tool in the refining and perfecting of techniques for near-Earth object discovery and characterisation by a space-based infrared observatory.'

More than 2.6 million infrared images of the sky were collected in the third year of operations by Neowise.

These data are combined with the Year 1 and 2 Neowise data into a single archive that contains approximately 7.7 million sets of images and a database of more than 57.7 billion source detections extracted from those images.

The Neowise images also contain glimpses of rare objects, like comet 'C/2010 L5 Wise'.

Neowise uses infrared imaging to detect and characterise asteroids and comets. In this screen grab from the new data animation, the orbits of Mercury, Venus and Mars are shown in blue, while Earth's orbit is shown in teal. The sun is shown as the star in the centre of the image

In the new animation, green circles represent near-Earth objects, while grey dots represent all other asteroids, which are mostly in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Yellow squares in the animation show the location of comets

WHAT HAS NEOWISE FOUND? The Neowise craft has now released its latest batch of data, including the locations of 97 previously unknown celestial objects found in the last year. Of those, 28 were near-Earth objects, 64 were main belt asteroids and five were comets. Ten of the objects discovered by Neowise in the past year have been classified as potentially hazardous asteroids, based on their size and their orbits. The spacecraft has now characterised a total of 693 near-Earth objects since the mission was re-started in December 2013. Of these, 114 are new. Near-Earth objects (NEOs) are comets and asteroids that have been nudged by the gravitational attraction of the planets in our solar system into orbits that allow them to enter Earth's neighbourhood. Advertisement

A new comet modelling technique called tail-fitting showed that this particular comet experienced a brief outburst as it swept through the inner-solar system.

'Comets that have abrupt outbursts are not commonly found, but this may be due more to the sudden nature of the activity rather than their inherent rarity,' said Emily Kramer, a Nasa Postdoctoral Program Fellow at JPL and lead author of paper on the Neowise study.

'It is great for astronomers to view and collect cometary data when they find an outburst, but since the activity is so short-lived, we may simply miss them most of the time.'

The tail-fitting technique identifies the size and quantity of dust particles in the vicinity of the comet, and when they were ejected from the comet's nucleus, revealing the history of the comet's activity.

With tail-fitting, future all-sky surveys may be able to find and collect data on more cometary outburst activity when it happens.

The Neowise spacecraft (artist's impression pictured) has now characterised a total of 693 near-Earth objects since the mission was re-started in December 2013. Of these, 114 are new

A paper detailing the tail-fitting technique and other results of the study was published in the March 20 volume of the Astrophysical Journal.

Originally called the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (Wise), the spacecraft was launched in December 2009.

It was placed in hibernation in 2011 after its primary astrophysics mission was completed.

In September 2013, it was reactivated, renamed Neowise, and assigned a new mission: To assist Nasa's efforts to identify the population of potentially hazardous near-Earth objects.

Neowise is also characterising more distant populations of asteroids and comets to provide information about their sizes and compositions.
In whats been hailed as the jackpot of gravitational lenses, the Hubble Space Telescope has captured breathtaking images of some of the brightest infrared galaxies in the universe.

The objects pictured are in the midst of rapid star birth, causing them to glow with the luminosity of up to 100 trillion suns, according to NASA.

With the gravity of other massive galaxies acting as natural magnifying lenses, Hubble spotted six distorted galaxies that scientists say existed between 8 billion and 11.5 billion years ago, offering new clues on the universes past.

In whats been hailed as the jackpot of gravitational lenses, the Hubble Space Telescope has captured breathtaking images of some of the brightest infrared galaxies in the universe. Scientists say the six distorted galaxies existed between 8 billion and 11.5 billion years ago

GRAVITATIONAL LENSING, EXPLAINED Gravitational lensing occurs when a massive galaxy or cluster of galaxies bends the light emitted from a more distant galaxy. This forms a highly magnified, though much distorted image. This is because massive objects bend the spacetime around them, making light travel in a different path. It was first proposed by Einstein in his theory of General Relativity. Advertisement

We have hit the jackpot of gravitational lenses, said lead researcher James Lowenthal of Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts.

These ultra-luminous, massive, starburst galaxies are very rare. Gravitational lensing magnifies them so that you can see small details that otherwise are unimaginable.

We can see features as small as about 100 light-years or less across. We want to understand whats powering these monsters, and gravitational lensing allows us to study them in greater detail.

According to NASA, these galaxies are so bright as a result of runaway star formation.

Each are thought to be creating over 10,000 new stars each year, lighting them up to a brightness equal to 10 trillion to 100 trillion suns.

This, the experts say, took place during the height of the universes star formation, over 8 billion years ago.

There are so many unknowns about star and galaxy formation, Lowenthal explained.

We need to understand the extreme cases, such as these galaxies, as well as the average cases, like our Milky Way, in order to have a complete story about how galaxy and star formation happen.

While gravitational lensing helped to spot the galaxies, it also caused distortions in their appearance, the researcher explains.

As a result, they have distinct exotic patterns, including rings and arcs.

And, collisions between large galaxies may also have played a role in their misshapen forms.

According to NASA, these galaxies are so bright as a result of runaway star formation. Each are thought to be creating over 10,000 new stars each year, lighting them up to a brightness equal to 10 trillion to 100 trillion suns

While gravitational lensing helped to spot the galaxies, it also caused distortions in their appearance, the researcher explains. As a result, they have distinct exotic patterns, including rings and arcs

We need to understand the nature and scale of those lensing effects to interpret properly what were seeing in the distant, early universe, Lowenthal said.

This applies not only to the brightest infrared galaxies, but probably to most or maybe even all distant galaxies.

While the ancient galaxies are forming stars at a rate 5,000 to 10,000 times higher than the Milky Way, theyre only using the same amount of gas contained in our own galaxy, according to NASA.

So, scientists are now wondering whats driving this unusual pace.

Weve known for two decades that some of the most luminous galaxies in the universe are very dusty and massive, and theyre undergoing bursts of star formation, Lowenthal said.

While the ancient galaxies are forming stars at a rate 5,000 to 10,000 times higher than the Milky Way, theyre only using the same amount of gas contained in our own galaxy, according to NASA. Now, scientists are wondering whats driving this unusual pace

But theyve been very hard to study because the dust makes them practically impossible to observe in visible light.

Theyre also very rare: they dont appear in any of Hubbles deep-field surveys.

They are in random parts of the sky that nobodys looked at before in detail. Thats why finding that they are gravitationally lensed is so important.

The researchers say the galaxies may be distantly related to ultra-luminous infrared galaxies.

ULIRGS are dust-cocooned, starburst galaxies which form stars when two spiral galaxies merge.

But, the simulations suggest the timing is off for such a phenomenon.

The researchers also suspect the star-formation could be the result of a flux of incoming gas.

The researchers say the galaxies may be distantly related to ultra-luminous infrared galaxies. They also suspect the star-formation could be the result of a flux of incoming gas

The sky is covered with all kinds of galaxies, including those that shine in far-infrared light, Lowenthal said. What were seeing here is the tip of the iceberg: the very brightest of all

The early universe was denser, so maybe gas is raining down on the galaxies, or they are fed by some sort of channel or conduit, which we have not figured out yet, Lowenthal said.

This is what theoreticians struggle with: How do you get all the gas into a galaxy fast enough to make it happen?

To find out more, the researchers will use Hubble along with the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii to separate the background galaxies from those in the foreground.

And, with future telescopes such as the James Webb Space Telescope, they say they will one day be able to measure the speed of the stars to calculate the galaxies mass.

The sky is covered with all kinds of galaxies, including those that shine in far-infrared light, Lowenthal said.

What were seeing here is the tip of the iceberg: the very brightest of all.
China is making 'preliminary' preparations to send a man to the moon, the latest goal in China's ambitious lunar exploration programme.

State media cited a senior space official as saying that it will 'not take long' for China's manned mission to the moon to get official approval and funding.

Though no time frame was given, a government official said last year that China wants to put astronauts on the moon by 2036.

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Since 2009, China has been upping its work in space exploration. This image shows China's Tianzhou-1 cargo spacecraft preparing for launch in Wenchang, Hainan province, on 17 April 2017. It successfully docked with the country's Tiangong-2 space laboratory on 22 April

CHINA'S PLANS FOR SPACE EXPLORATION Since 2009, China has been upping its work in space exploration in a number of stages. Each stage has been given a name to refer to the mission plans. Stage 1 'Around': Yinghuo-1 was launched in 2009 with the aim of bringing back samples however it was left stranded in orbit and disintegrated. Stage 2 'Landing': Yinghuo-2 is expected to launch in 2020 to collect data on Mars Stage 3 'Circular': A rover will be sent to Mars to carry out exploration Advertisement

The comment was the first confirmation that China intended to fund and run a manned lunar programme.

This week's statement on Beijing's mission was made by Yang Liwei, deputy director general of China Manned Space Agency and China's first man in space.

The report, published Tuesday state news agency Xinhua said late on Tuesday gave no other details, but such a trip could still be many years off.

China in 2003 became the third country to put a man in space with its own rocket after the former Soviet Union and the United States.

It has touted its plans for moon exploration and in late 2013 completed the first lunar 'soft landing' since 1976 with the Chang'e-3 craft and its Jade Rabbit rover.

The country also plans to land the first probe ever on the dark side of the moon in 2018, another milestone.

Advancing China's space programme is a priority for Beijing, with President Xi Jinping calling for the country to establish itself as a space power.

China insists its programme is for peaceful purposes, but the U.S. Defense Department has claimed China is pursuing activities aimed to prevent adversaries from using space-based assets in a crisis.

In April it was revealed that China is talking with the European Space Agency about collaborating on a human settlement on the moon. Pictured is an artist's illustration released by the ESA last year

CHINA'S 'LUNAR PALACE' Last month, in preparation for its 2036 manned lunar mission with the ESA, China created a 'Lunar Palace' on Earth to simulate living in isolated conditions on the moon. Four students from the astronautics research university Beihang entered the 160-square-metre (1,720-square-foot) cabin, dubbed the 'Yuegong-1'. Two men and two women, staying for an initial 60 days, are currently testing how a life-support system works in a moon-like environment. After this period they will be relieved by another group of four who will stay 200 days, before returning for an additional 105. The Lunar Palace is the world's third bioregenerative life-support base, and the first developed in China. Human waste will be treated with a bio-fermentation process, and experimental crops and vegetables grown with the help of food and waste byproducts. Advertisement

Apart from its civilian ambitions, Beijing has tested anti-satellite missiles, and the U.S. Congress has banned Nasa from engaging in cooperation with its Chinese counterpart due to security concerns.

China's space budget is still only about one-tenth of the United States' outlays, officials have said.

According to Chinese state media, China spends about $2 billion (1.5 billion) a year on its space programme, though details are vague.

It was announced in April that China is talking with the European Space Agency about collaborating on a human settlement on the moon.

The secretary general for China's space agency, Tian Yulong, disclosed the talks in Chinese state media.

China plans to establish a village on the moon with Europe's help by 2036. Last month, in a step toward that goal, the nation created a 'Lunar Palace' (pictured) on Earth to simulate living in isolated conditions on the moon

The country also plans to land the first probe ever on the dark side of the moon in 2018, another milestone (file image)

The ESA has previously described its 'Moon Village' as a potential international launching pad for future missions to Mars.

Further details on what the collaboration could entail were not revealed.

Last month, in preparation for the mission, China created a 'Lunar Palace' on Earth to simulate living in isolated conditions on the moon.

Four students from the astronautics research university Beihang entered the 160-square-metre (1,720-square-foot) cabin, dubbed the 'Yuegong-1'.

Two men and two women, staying for an initial 60 days, are currently testing how a life-support system works in a moon-like environment.

After this period they will be relieved by another group of four who will stay 200 days, before returning for an additional 105.
Unlike its fluffy ancestors, Tyrannosaurus rex lost all its feathers because it was too warm.

According to controversial new fossil evidence, the dinosaur instead had scaly skin, much like a reptile.

Researchers believe T-rex may have lost its feathers due to its large size and because it no longer needed insulation.

The study seems to rescue the giant lizard's reputation as a fearsome killer with a rough-and-tough hide - although not all scientists are convinced.

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Researchers studied skin patches of the neck, pelvis and tail of a T. rex (pictured) from the Houston Museum of Natural Science, as well as samples from four other members of the extended tyrannosaurid family

WHAT DID THEY FIND? The team concluded that 'extensive feather coverings' in tyrannosaurids - which lived much earlier - were already lost in the common forefather of T. rex and its cousins about the time the Late Cretaceous began. The data provides 'compelling evidence' of an entirely scaly covering for T. rex, the team wrote in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters. This suggested, in turn, 'that most (if not all) large-bodied tyrannosaurids were scaly and, if partly feathered, these were limited to the dorsum (back),' they wrote. The study begged the question of why - after T. Rex's ancestors evolved feathers from an even more ancient scaly forebear - the giant tyrannosaurs reverted back to scales. Paleontologists believe the first birds appeared 150 million years ago and were descendants of small feathered dinosaurs. Advertisement

For the new study, an international team of scientists led by the University of New England tracked down museum samples of skin from T. rex and several of its cousins in the tyrannosaurid family, and compiled a database of fossilised hide impressions.

These included skin patches of the neck, pelvis and tail of a T. rex found in Baker, Montana which is now at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, as well as samples from four other members of the extended tyrannosaurid family.

That group roamed the planet during the Late Cretaceous, which extended from 99 million to 65.5 million years ago, when an asteroid slammed into Earth and wiped out all land-dwelling dinos.

The team concluded that 'extensive feather coverings' in tyrannosaurids - which lived much earlier - were already lost in the common forefather of T. rex and its cousins about the time the Late Cretaceous began.

The data provides 'compelling evidence' of an entirely scaly covering for T. rex, the team wrote in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.

'Our discovery of fossilised scaly skin similar to that of modern reptiles on the bodies of a wide variety of tyrannosaur species (including T. rex)... paints a more traditional scaly-skinned picture of these huge predators,' they wrote in a press summary.

The data provides 'compelling evidence' of an entirely scaly covering for T. rex (pictured), the team wrote in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters

NOT EVERYONE IS CONVINCED Some researchers say they are not convinced by the results of the study. Dr Steve Brusatte of the University of Edinburgh told the BBC he wouldn't be surprised if T. rex lost because it was a large animal. 'But I don't think we can assume that T. rex lacked feathers just because some fossil skeletons have skin impressions that are scaly,' he added. 'It takes inconceivable good luck to preserve feathers in fossils. Just because we don't see them doesn't mean they weren't there. So I don't think we need to throw out the image of a big fluffy T. rex quite yet.' Advertisement

This suggested, in turn, 'that most (if not all) large-bodied tyrannosaurids were scaly and, if partly feathered, these were limited to the dorsum (back),' they wrote.

The study begged the question of why - after T. Rex's ancestors evolved feathers from an even more ancient scaly forebear - the giant tyrannosaurs reverted back to scales.

Palaeontologists believe the first birds appeared 150 million years ago and were descendants of small feathered dinosaurs.

Researchers studied skin patches of the neck, pelvis and tail of a T. rex found in Baker, Montana which is now at the Houston Museum of Natural Science

The first dino feathers were simple hollow shafts, which evolved over time into something resembling their modern shape, engineered for flight.

Some researchers say they are not convinced by the results of the study.

Dr Steve Brusatte of the University of Edinburgh told the BBC he wouldn't be surprised if T. rex lost because it was a large animal.

'But I don't think we can assume that T. rex lacked feathers just because some fossil skeletons have skin impressions that are scaly,' he added.

'It takes inconceivable good luck to preserve feathers in fossils. Just because we don't see them doesn't mean they weren't there. So I don't think we need to throw out the image of a big fluffy T. rex quite yet.'
One of the first structures  a light blue house with dark blue and red trim  in Bismarck in the 1880s will soon be filled with 36 elementary school students.

Maggie Barth is the director of a new nonprofit, nonsectarian school scheduled to open this fall. It's called the Innovation School, and Barth says it will offer a novel way of teaching students.

The new school will serve Bismarck and Mandan students in grades K-5. Barth said she hopes to expand each year to eventually serve students through eighth grade.

"Its an awesome old building, Barth said of the two-story structure, 613 N. Third St., which was constructed in 1889 and was previously a hair salon and most recently a daycare.

"My whole life I really wanted to be a teacher, and, when I got to college, I changed my major and got my degree in business," said Barth, who attended the University of Mary and grew up in Beulah.

She graduated from college in 2003 and most recently worked as a recruiter for United Blood Services in Bismarck. She then had children and decided to stay at home with them.

When her children started attending Grimsrud Elementary School, she became involved there, writing art grants and taking over a robotics club. She also learned computer programming and began teaching it to classroom instructors.

Barth, whose children are in second and fourth grade, said she has enjoyed her children's teachers, but learned that the rigid schedule at the school wasn't working.

I kept feeling like I want to see more change, and theres nothing I can do from my position," Barth said. In the fall, her children will attend her new school.

The quest to open a new place for students to learn began two years ago, when she began researching other private schools across the country and visited private schools in California and Colorado. A woman in Colorado who started an experimental school several years ago is helping Barth start hers.

Barth has also been in discussion with the North Dakota Department of Public Instruction officials, regarding the requirements to open a non-public school. The school has not yet been approved, according to a spokesman for DPI, and Barth said she is waiting on some compliance measures, including inspection by the state fire marshal.

In the fall, Barth began researching locations for the new school with a commercial realtor.

"We looked at several different options, and this one is just the best fit, she said of the building, which is centrally located near downtown Bismarck and near to the public library.

"The space itself is really unique, said Barth, adding that the owner, Loran Galpin, of Galpin Co., has been helpful in designing the space.

"When we did our research, it was the only the building in that entire area," said Galpin, who purchased the building in the early 1980s. An old photograph shows the building sitting alone along with the Former Governor's Mansion in a field covered in snow.

Though the inside of the home has since been renovated, the carriage stone still sits out front.

The old outside Victorian charm is one of a few like it in the community," said Galpin, who is excited for the new school, because his granddaughter went to a similar school in Breckenridge, Colo., and, by sixth grade, she was speaking fluent Spanish and started French.

"These innovative schools  I told Maggie  to have one in our own community, Im just thrilled," he said. "It will be fun to see those smiling little faces inside this facility.

Barth held informational meetings with parents this spring, and seven students have applied. Annual tuition is $9,000. The school will cap at 36 students, and Barth said she's committed to keeping the class sizes small, with about a 12:1 student-teacher ratio.

Students at Barth's school will learn similar content that is taught in public schools. The students will be assessed through "process-based learning," which will focus on individualized education. Recess will be held outside the building, and, every Wednesday afternoon, the students will have music, gym and art classes.

We actually want to change the way people look at education .... We want students to direct their own learning, said Barth, adding that she and her three teachers will emphasize student engagement.

"Its really transformational when you see it in action, and I just really thought, were ready for this. Bismarck, Mandan is ready for this," she said.

For more information on the Innovation School, visit www.theinnovationschool.us/.
It might seem like an idea taken straight out of science fiction, but a 'space nation' could soon become a reality.

The ambitious plans, first announced last year, were hatched by an international group of scientists and are backed by a Russian billionaire.

The floating nation, dubbed 'Asgardia', is set to take its first step into space later this year with the launch of its maiden data satellite.

The satellite will test the concept of long-term data storage in orbit around Earth.

It could pave the way for off-planet data and tax havens floating in space.

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It might seem like an idea taken straight out of science fiction, but a nation of people living in space could soon become a reality. The ambitious plans, first announced last year, were hatched by an international group of scientists. Artist's impression pictured

FIRST SPACE NATION Asgardia will be the first 'space nation'. The name comes from the city of the skies ruled by Odin from Valhalla in Norse mythology. It is described as 'a fully-fledged and independent nation, and a future member of the United Nations'. The Asgardia Project Team is made up of experts from around the globe. The project team is being led by Dr Igor Ashurbeyli, a Russian scientist and founder of the Aerospace International Research Center (AIRC) in Vienna. By creating a new space nation, the experts behind the project hope to develop future space technology free from the restrictions of state control. Alongside its announcement, Asgardia opened up applications for virtual citizenship via its website, and so far almost half a million people have pledged their allegiance. The first Asgardia satellite will launch in September this year. One of Asgardia's first projects will be the creation of a protective shield to protect humankind from space debris, including asteroids. Advertisement

The launch represents the beginning of the team's bizarre attempt to form an independent country outside of the legal and physical bounds of our planet.

The nano-satellite will piggy back on a re-supply trip to the ISS in September according to a recent US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) filing.

'The primary payload is a solid state device hard drive,' Asgardia said in the application.

'The drive is loaded on the ground with data, and the data is updated once in orbit.

'A file is returned that verifies successful data transmission.'

The nano-satellite will measure just 4 by 4 by 8 inches (10 by 10 by 20 cm) - roughly the size of a loaf of bread - and weigh about 5 pounds (2.3 kg).

It will come loaded with two particle detectors, mounted internally and externally, to test technologies that are key to the group's goals.

'From this data we can map the solar flux, and determine the radiation dosing that the internal electronics are receiving,' the application said.

The organisation is set to reveal further details about the satellite's launch at a press event in Hong Kong on June 13.

The team, led by Dr Igor Ashurbeyli, billionaire and founder of the Aerospace International Research Center, unveiled the bizarre plans at a press conference in Paris last October.

Founder and chief financial backer Igor Ashurbeyli said at the time that he believed the space-bound private 'country' could 'offer an independent platform free from the constraint of a land-based country's laws.'

The project aims to create a new framework for ownership and nationhood in space by creating a completely new nation, according to the project leaders.

Alongside its announcement, Asgardia opened up applications for virtual citizenship via its website, and so far almost half a million people have pledged their allegiance.

The launch of the first Asgardia satellite is planned for September, and the scientists hope the project will develop from there. When it is launched, the satellite will enter a low-earth orbit and test the concept of long-term data storage in orbit around Earth

The team is led by Dr Igor Ashurbeyli, pictured, founder of the Aerospace International Research Center

Asgardia promised citizenship to the first 100,000 who signed up, and said that those who do will not lose their Earth-bound nationality.

One of the early developments planned by the team will be the creation of a state-of-the-art protective shield for all humankind.

This will protect the world from cosmic threats, both man-made and natural, to life on earth.

This includes space debris, solar flares and asteroid collisions, the researchers say.

There are estimated to be more than 20,000 traceable objects of man-made space junk, including old spacecraft, upper-stage rockets and final stage vehicles in near-Earth orbits.

Natural objects in space also pose a threat to life on the planet.

For example, the Chelyabinsk meteorite, which crashed over a major Russian town in 2013, injured 1,100 people and damaged 4,000 buildings.

'The project's concept comprises three parts  philosophical, legal and scientific/technological,' said Dr Ashurbeyli.

'Asgardia is a fully-fledged and independent nation, and a future member of the United Nations - with all the attributes this status entails.'

When the project was first announced in October, people could sign up to become a citizen on the Asgardia project website. Asgardia's website allowed the first 100,000 people to register to become citizens of the new space nation, and received half a million applications in total

The name comes from the city of the skies ruled by Odin from Valhalla in Norse mythology. Asgard is also the name of a fictional realm and its capital city within the Marvel Comics universe The Norse city of Asgard, from the film Thor is pictured

SPACE JUNK There are estimated to be more than 20,000 traceable objects of man-made space junk, including old spacecraft, upper-stage rockets and final stage vehicles in near-Earth orbits. Natural objects in space also pose a threat to life on the planet. For example. the impact of the Chelyabinsk meteorite which crashed over a major Russian town in 2013, injuring 1,100 people and damaging 4,000 buildings. Advertisement

'The essence of Asgardia is Peace in Space, and the prevention of Earth's conflicts being transferred into space,' Dr Ashurbeyli said.

The space nation, like the satellite set for launch this year, will remain at a low-Earth orbit.

'As low-Earth orbit becomes more accessible, what's often called the 'democratisation' of space, a pathway is opening up to new ideas and approaches from a rich diversity of participants,' said Professor David Alexander, Director of the Rice Space Institute at Rice University, Houston, Texas.
There's nothing worse than dropping your iPhone, only to discover that the screen has cracked.

But Apple customers could soon have more choices of where to get their phone fixed, as the firm looks to reduce long wait times for iPhone repairs at its retail stores.

By the end of 2017, Apple will put its machines for mending cracked iPhone glass in about 400 authorized third-party repair centres in 25 countries, including the US, UK and China.

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There's nothing worse than dropping your iPhone, only to discover that the screen has cracked. But Apple customers could soon have more choices of where to get their phone fixed, as the firm looks to reduce long wait times for iPhone repairs at its retail stores

WHICH COUNTRIES WILL GET MACHINES? The initial rollout aims to put machines in 200, or about four percent, of Apple's 4,800 authorized service providers worldwide over the next few months. The company plans to double that figure by the end of the year. A few machines already are operating at third-party repair centres in Miami, the Bay Area, London, Shanghai and Singapore. Shops in some countries where Apple has no retail presence will also be early recipients, including locations in Colombia, Norway and South Korea. MailOnline has contacted Apple for a full list of countries. Advertisement

Fixing cracked screens may seem like a small job, but it's a multi-billion-dollar global business.

Apple had previously restricted use of its so-called Horizon Machine to its nearly 500 retail stores and mail-in repair centers; and it has guarded its design closely.

The change also comes as eight US states have launched 'right to repair' bills aimed at prying open the tightly controlled repair networks of Apple and other high-tech manufacturers.

Apple said legislative pressure was not a factor in its decision to share its technology, and until now, Apple had never formally acknowledged the Horizon Machine's existence.

The initial rollout aims to put machines in 200, or about four percent, of Apple's 4,800 authorized service providers worldwide over the next few months.

The company plans to double that figure by the end of the year.

'We've been on a quest to expand our reach,' said Brian Naumann, senior director of service operations at Apple.

He said repair wait times have grown at some of the company's busiest retail stores.

Apple had previously restricted use of its so-called Horizon Machine to its nearly 500 retail stores and mail-in repair centers; and it has guarded its design closely

A few machines already are operating at third-party repair centres in Miami, the Bay Area, London, Shanghai and Singapore.

Shops in some countries where Apple has no retail presence will also be early recipients, including locations in Colombia, Norway and South Korea.

MailOnline has contacted Apple for a full list of countries.

Apple would not say how much its partners are paying for the equipment.

At the moment, Apple customers can get their devices fixed at non-authorized shops without voiding their warranties as long as the technician caused no damage.

The Horizon Machine is needed to remedy the trickiest mishaps, such as when the fingerprint sensor attached to the back of the glass gets damaged when a phone is dropped

THE HORIZON MACHINE At the moment, Apple customers can get their devices fixed at non-authorized shops without voiding their warranties as long as the technician caused no damage. But the Horizon Machine is needed to remedy the trickiest mishaps, such as when the fingerprint sensor attached to the back of the glass gets damaged when a phone is dropped. For security, only Apple's fix-it machine can tell the iPhone's processor, its silicon brain, to recognize a replacement sensor. Advertisement

But the Horizon Machine is needed to remedy the trickiest mishaps, such as when the fingerprint sensor attached to the back of the glass gets damaged when a phone is dropped.

For security, only Apple's fix-it machine can tell the iPhone's processor, its silicon brain, to recognize a replacement sensor.

Apple has sold more than 1 billion iPhones worldwide, many to customers who don't live near an Apple Store or an authorized third-party repair center.

For fixes, many have turned to mom-and-pop shops and independent technicians that now dominate the trade.

Research firm IBISWorld estimates the global cell phone repair business generates about $4 billion (3 billion) in revenue per year.

For security, only Apple's fix-it machine can tell the iPhone's processor, its silicon brain, to recognize a replacement sensor

Many of these entrepreneurs do good work, but others don't.

All use copycat parts because Apple, like other major manufacturers, doesn't supply original parts or repair manuals to anyone but authorized service partners.

Big companies defend this arrangement as the only way they can guarantee high-quality repair work and keep hackers away from the proprietary software that makes their products tick.

Consumer advocates, however, say their aim is to wring outsized profits from repairs.

Apple got into the screen-fixing business just three years ago with the introduction of the iPhone 5. Up until then, customers whose phones were out of warranty paid a 'repair' fee, but Apple simply replaced the entire phone

New York, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Illinois, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas and Wyoming have introduced legislation looking to aid small shops and do-it-yourself tinkerers.

These proposed measures would require manufacturers to supply repair manuals, diagnostic tools and authentic replacement parts at fair prices to independent technicians and the general public.

Apple, heavy equipment manufacturer Caterpillar Inc and medical device maker Medtronic Plc have lobbied against New York's bill.

Apple says its screen-fixing process aims to make the display look like it just came out of the box

In Nebraska, Apple sent its state and local lobbying chief Steve Kester to visit the Republican lawmaker sponsoring that state's measure.

'Apple is telling me this is a bad thing because you're going to have a mecca for hackers in Nebraska,' State Sen. Lydia Brasch said of Kester's February visit.

Apple hasn't commented on the bills, but a trade group it belongs to contends the Nebraska measure would force the company to divulge how it secures sensitive data on the iPhone.

'Think about how much of our personal lives are in this device,' said Mike Lanigan, head engineer for Apple's service efforts.

A few machines already are operating at third-party repair centres in Miami, the Bay Area, London, Shanghai and Singapore

SCREEN REPAIR IS A LUCRATIVE BUSINESS Fixing cracked screens may seem like a small job, but it's a multi-billion-dollar global business. Apple doesn't break out repair revenue in its financial statements. But analysts estimate it at $1 billion (770 million) to $2 billion (1.55 billion) annually for all products. As Apple's screen mending has matured, its prices have dropped to $129 to $149 (100 to 115), depending on screen size, from $229 (177). That's competitive with many independent shops for newer iPhones. Advertisement

Apple got into the screen-fixing business just three years ago with the introduction of the iPhone 5.

Up until then, customers whose phones were out of warranty paid a 'repair' fee, but Apple simply replaced the entire phone.

Lanigan said customers have been requesting repair service since shortly after the introduction of the iPhone in 2007, but the company waited until it could perfect the process.

'We view the service aspect of this as all part of the overall Apple experience,' Lanigan said.

Apple doesn't break out repair revenue in its financial statements.

Analysts estimate it at $1 billion (770 million) to $2 billion (1.55 billion) annually for all products.

As Apple's screen mending has matured, its prices have dropped to $129 to $149 (100 to 115), depending on screen size, from $229 (177).

That's competitive with many independent shops for newer iPhones.

Apple says its process aims to make the display look like it just came out of the box.

'We design for a customer experience that exceeds anything our competitors try to do,' said Mr Naumann, Apple's service chief.

'We endeavor to make it right at the same standard as when the customer bought the product.'
They are cute, furry animals with adorable big eyes  perhaps most famously appearing in the cartoon film Madagascar.

But now the mouse lemur  the worlds smallest primate  could help revolutionise research into human disease.

Scientists are hoping they will replace mice, rats and even fruit flies who have for years been used in animal tests in areas ranging from cancer, Alzheimers disease and strokes.

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Scientists are hoping mouse lemurs will replace mice, rats and even fruit flies who have for years been used in animal tests in areas ranging from cancer, Alzheimers disease and strokes. Mouse lemurs are small, just twice the size of a mouse, reproduce rapidly, breed prodigiously and are inexpensive to feed.

MOUSE LEMURS There are more than 20 species of mouse lemurs and several have only been identified in recent years. On average, they are between 2.25 inches (six centimetres) and 4.75 inches (12 centimetres) in length with tails as long as their body. They weigh between one ounce (28 grams) and four ounces (113 grams). Like all lemurs, mouse lemurs inhabit the island of Madagascar off the east coast of Africa. They are forest dwellers that live in female-dominated groups of up to 15 animals. They spend most of their time in trees, and can move nimbly from branch to branch and tree to tree. Advertisement

Researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine in California say that the mouse lemur is far more similar in its biology to humans.

Ageing lemurs even develop a form of dementia that resembles that found in Alzheimers patients.

The mouse lemurs  unlike some larger lemurs which are endangered - are as common as rats in Madagascar where they live in their tens of millions.

Dr Mark Krasnow said that mice, rats, fruit flies and worms, all of which are used in medical research are routinely fail to mimic human anatomy.

He said: I think mouse lemurs have great potential for our understanding of primate biology, behaviour and conservation, in the same way that fruit flies and mice over the last 30 or 40 years have transformed our understanding of developmental biology and many other areas of biology and medicine.

Some of the most fascinating and important questions that need to be answered are primate-specific.

' For those, we really need something besides humans to complement the work that has been done in fruit flies and mice.

Dr Krasnow began searching for an alternative animal research subject in 2009 while researching lung disease.

Mouse lemurs are small, just twice the size of a mouse, reproduce rapidly, breed prodigiously and are inexpensive to feed.

And because they are primates they are halfway between humans than mice.

They are cute, furry animals with adorable big eyes  perhaps most famously appearing in the cartoon film Madagascar (pictured). But now the mouse lemur  the worlds smallest primate  could help revolutionise research into human disease

Dr Megan Albertelli, who worked on the project said of the lemurs: I saw that they were promising models for Alzheimers disease.

Alzeimers is a condition that is hard to model in other animal species, so that was very exciting.

Lemurs also have distinctive personalities which can range from aggressive to docile.

Dr Krasnow and his team will publish their research on mouse lemurs later this week in the scientific journal Genetics.

The Latin word lemures means ghost. The people of Madagascar associated these primates with spirits because they are active at night and, perhaps, because of their eerie large eyes.

'Mouse lemurs aren't test tubes with tails but intelligent animals who feel pain, just like humans and other primates do  although fundamental species differences mean their bodies react differently from ours', Dr. Julia Baines, Science Policy Adviser at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) told MailOnline.

'It beggars belief that any scientist should still be looking to animal experiments for answers in an era of humane and relevant human-derived models, computer-based technology, and advanced scanning and imaging techniques', she said.
A bacterial pathogen is destroying olive trees in southern Italy, and local Italian authorities are doing little to contain the disease.

The pathogen - for which there is no cure - most likely arrived from the Americas and requires the uprooting of infected trees to prevent it from spreading.

But protestors and a local public prosecutor in the southern Italian town of Puglia are trying to block the felling of ancient olive trees, and have even opened a criminal investigation into whether researchers caused the infection themselves.

Olive trees infected by the bacteria 'Xylella fastidiosa' in Gallipoli in the Puglia region of Italy. The pathogen causes Olive Quick Decline Syndrome (OQDS), a disease which causes withering and desiccation (extreme dryness) of terminal shoots, which then expand to the rest of the canopy, causing the tree to collapse and die

According to Nature News, last year Italian authorities failed to track the olive tree infection, caused by a bacterium called Xylella fastidiosa.

It hadn't been seen in Europe until 2013, when it was found in Puglia, Italy.

Researchers found that the pathogen causes Olive Quick Decline Syndrome (OQDS), a disease which causes withering and desiccation (extreme dryness) of terminal shoots, which then expand to the rest of the canopy, causing the tree to collapse and die.

WHAT IS OLIVE QUICK DECLINE SYNDROME? Olive Quick Decline Syndrome is a disease caused by a bacterium called Xylella fastidiosa. The bacterium invades and multiplies within the plants xylem vessels, which transport water and nutrients from roots to shoots and leaves. The bacteria block these vessels, impairing water uptake in the plants. The disease causes withering and desiccation (extreme dryness) of terminal shoots, which then expand to the rest of canopy, causing the tree to collapse and die. Plants contain vessels called Xylem, which transport water and nutrients from roots to shoots and leaves. Xylella fastidiosa bacteria block these vessels, impairing water uptake in the plants, causing withering and desiccation (extreme dryness) of leaves Source: Italy's National Research Council Advertisement

Italian authorities didn't follow the disease containment plan agreed to with the European Commission, and an audit published by the Commission includes the failures of the local governments, who began monitoring the infection too late and delayed removing infected trees.

Two years ago in the town of Oria in southern Italy, task forces in charge of uprooting infected olive trees encountered difficulties when protestors chained themselves to ancient trees

In most of 2016, laboratories in Italy analyzed almost no Xylella samples.

The European Commission is concerned that the pathogen X.fastidiosa pauca - the subspecies that causes OQDS - will spread throughout Europe, threatening its olive industry as whole.

Monitoring programmes coordinated by the Commission have identified other subspecies of Xylella in other EU countries, and in May, a devastating subspecies of the pathogen, X.fastidiosa fastidiosa, which causes Pierce's disease and regularly wipes out vineyards in California, was found in Mallorca, Spain.

While the spread of the infection was contained there, researchers worry that other undiscovered subspecies could infect other crops.

Two years ago in the town of Oria in southern Italy, task forces in charge of uprooting infected olive trees encountered difficulties when protestors chained themselves to ancient trees.

Map of Xyllella fastidiosa bacteria worldwide. Countries in orange show where the bacterium is present, and countries in purple where the bacterium is transient. It shows the spread of the bacterium species, but not specific subspecies

The challenges in Oria began in 2015 when military-police general Giuseppe Silletti began containment measures which included cutting down healthy trees around infected ones.

Following EU regulations, he drew a map of infected areas, including a 20-kilometers 'buffer zone' around the area where trees were mostly healthy, but needed to be monitored.

A scanning electron micrograph of Xylella fastidiosa bacteria in the xylem vessel of an infected sweet orange leaf. The bacteria block these vessels, impairing water uptake in plants, causing withering and desiccation (extreme dryness) of leaves

However, protestors and Puglia's publig prosecutor hampered his team's efforts by suspending the felling of trees, and Silletti resigned in December of 2015 because his plans were being blocked.

The prosecutor finally lifted the felling ban when the European Commission threatened to report the Italian government to the European Court of Justice.

While Puglia's regional governor has since appointed a new task force to tackle the problem, its goals and composition haven't been made public.

The disease causes withering and desiccation (extreme dryness) of terminal shoots, which then expand to the rest of canopy, causing the tree to collapse and die. Pictured is a dried branch of olive tree, partly infected by Xyella fastidiosa, in Caprarica in Italy's Puglia region

Some protestors don't believe that the pathogen is causing the infection, and some sent a new complaint to the prosecutor in May saying that researchers ignored other potential causes of infection such as a fungus, even though this has already been ruled out by the European Commission.

Despite these setbacks, researchers in Puglia have identified two types of olive tree that are mostly resistant to the disease, and the Commission suggested that they could be planted in infected areas to replace dead trees.

However, developing full resistant trees could take time - a decade or more.

The Xylella fastidiosa pathogen - for which there is no cure - most likely arrived from the Americas and requires the uprooting of infected trees to prevent it from spreading

Different subspecies of the pathogen have been seen in countries across the EU, and more may be found.

Genes flow 'relatively easily' between the different species, says Dr Rodrigo Almeida, who studies Xylella at the University of California, Berkeley.

This gene flow could result in even more pathogenic version of the infection.
DARPA has unveiled a system that transforms its unmanned aerial systems (UAS) into warfare machines capable of conducting different missions without human intervention.

Prior to the announcement, the compact drones were only able to carry a single-function payload, which limited their abilities to one specific task in the field.

Now, a new effort, called Converged Collaborative Elements for RF Task Operations (CONCERTO), has provided the UAS with a flexible RF architecture that uses shared hardware  allowing the devices to swap missions mid-flight.

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DARPA has unveiled a system that transforms its unmanned aerial systems (UAS) into warfare machines capable of conducting different missions without human intervention

DARPA DRONES The effort, called Converged Collaborative Elements for RF Task Operations (CONCERTO), has provided the UAS with a flexible RF architecture that uses shared hardware  allowing the devices to swap missions mid-flight. It focuses on supporting communications, radar, and EW systems with a flexible RF architecture that uses shared common hardware, enabling multifunction systems that meet the low-SWaP requirements of compact UAS. Advertisement

To develop the new system, DARPA awarded two contacts to BAE Systems, totaling $5.4 million, which will work on the technology that is set to equip compact UAS with the ability to conduct multiple mission tasks with single, multifunction payloads that can adapt to changing battlefield situations and mission needs in real time.

'This agility is particularly important in denied environments, where multiple mission functions are typically needed to penetrate defenses and remain operational,' said Randall Lapierre, technology development manager at BAE Systems.

'By enabling small platform systems to share core components, we're helping them become more agile and stay on station longer.'

CONCERTO focuses on supporting communications, radar and EW systems with a flexible RF architecture that uses shared common hardware, enabling multifunction systems that meet the low-SWaP requirements of compact UAS.

The new systems will have the ability to swap between intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance.

It focuses on supporting communications, radar, and EW systems with a flexible RF architecture that uses shared common hardware, enabling multifunction systems that meet the low-SWaP requirements of compact UAS

In addition to command and control, networking and combat operations support missions  all without physical payload changes.

For part of the program, DARPA has plans to maximize the RF capabilities of the hardware (i.e., bandwidth, frequency, distance, and field of view) to ensure that all missions can be accomplished from the same components.

BAE Systems is also developing a flexible, virtual RF processing engine that can be reconfigured to quickly support diverse and simultaneous operating modes.

'As processing technologies become increasingly diverse, our virtualization technology can provide adaptability and scalability to a variety of platforms,' DARPA said in the release.
Lake Erie has swelled to near-record high levels, and experts warn its likely to remain several inches above the long-term average for months to come.

After unusually high precipitation over the Great Lakes, Lake Erie rose seven inches by the end of last month, and Lake Ontario climbed by a staggering 12.

After receiving 150 percent of its normal rainfall, Lake Erie now sits at a current level of 573.69 feet  just inches shy of the all-time record set in 1986, at 574.3 feet.

After unusually high precipitation over the Great Lakes, Lake Erie rose seven inches by the end of last month, and Lake Ontario climbed by a staggering 12. Lake Erie now sits at a current level of 573.69 feet

RAISING THE BRIDGES In the US, many river communities are responding to climate change by raising or replacing bridges that suddenly seem too low to stay safely above water. The reconstructed bridges range from multi-lane structures that handle heavy traffic loads to small rural spans traversed by country school buses and farmers shuttling between their fields. A cursory check by the AP in a handful of states found at least 20 locations where bridges have been raised or construction will begin soon. FEMA is now finalizing a rule that states that floods 'are expected to be more frequent and more severe over the next century due in part to the projected effects of climate change.' Source: Associated Press Advertisement

Over the last month, all of the Great Lakes have risen several inches after recent bouts of heavy rain and snow, Cleveland.com reports.

But for some, the effects have been especially dramatic.

Lake Erie is now 20 inches above the June average, and 9 inches above the average for the week.

Precipitation totals since last Friday ranged from about 0.4 to 0.8 inches across the basin, with highest amounts over the Lake Erie and Lake Ontario Basins, the US Army Corps of Engineers, Detroit District, wrote on Friday.

By the end of May, Lakes Erie and Ontario had received over 150% and 180% of normal total May Precipitation, respectively.

Temperatures over the past week have ranged from 2 below to 4 above normal for this time of year.

The current forecast calls for 0.5 to 2 inches of precipitation, with highest amounts of Lake Huron and the Lake Ontario Basin.

Lake Erie has swelled to near-record high levels, and experts warn its likely to remain several inches above the long-term average for months to come. Lake Erie is now 20 inches above the June average, and 9 inches above the average for the week

Lake Erie and Ontario typically begin their seasonal decline around this time, bringing water levels down lower.

By the end of June, the researchers expect Lakes Erie and Ontario to drop to 1 and 3 inches lower than their startling levels from the start of the month.

But, theyll still likely remain inches above the long-term average.

At the beginning of June, Lake Erie was only about 7 inches away from the historical record.

Over the last month, all of the Great Lakes have risen several inches after recent bouts of heavy rain and snow, Cleveland.com reports. But for some, the effects have been especially dramatic

'All lakes are at higher levels than one month ago,' the US Army Corps of Engineers wrote on Friday. While Lakes Erie and Ontario are expected to drop to 1 and 3 inches over the course of the month, Lakes Superior, Michigan-Huron, and St. Clair are forecast to rise 3,2, and 1 inch

And, levels in Lake Ontario are hitting some of the highest points since 1918, according to Cleveland.com.

As for the other Great Lakes, water levels are expected to rise, rather than drop down.

'All lakes are at higher levels than one month ago,' the US Army Corps of Engineers wrote on Friday.

And, the forecast continued, Over the next 30 days, Lakes Superior, Michigan-Huron, and St. Clair are forecast to rise 3,2, and 1 inch respectively.
Although the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 was one of the biggest blunders in smartphone history, the South Korean firm believes it will stand up to Apple's 10th anniversary iPhone 8.

A new report has revealed that Samsung is set to launch its Galaxy Note 8 in late August - months before the iOS handset hits the market.

Rumors surrounding the Note 8 first came to light in April, which had suggested that the Android could have significantly smaller bezels, an infinity screen and dual cameras.

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A new report has revealed that Samsung is set to launch its Galaxy Note 8 (pictured is Galaxy Note 7) in late August - months before Apple's 10th anniversary iPhone 8

NOTE 8 RUMORS Rumors surrounding the Note 8 first came to light in April, which had suggested that the Android could have significantly smaller bezels, an infinity screen and dual cameras. Sources have said its design will mirror that of the Galaxy S8. Sources have suggested that the Note 8 will have an Infinity display, which has an 18.5-to-9 width-to-length ratio. Advertisement

Samsung has traditionally released a Note device shortly after each of its smartphones.

It is likely the new gadget will be a variant of the Note range, which traditionally offers smartphones and tablets with large screens and a stylus.

And it seems the firm is banking on the Galaxy Note 8 to keep it in the race as Apple gears up to release its highly anticipated iPhone 8.

The latest report regarding the Android smartphone was revealed by The Korea Herald and picked up by BGR, which noted that the Note 8s design is set to mirror that of the Galaxy S8.

Sources have suggested that the Note 8 is set to include the Infinity display, which has an 18.5-to-9 width-to-length ratio.

A separate report had claimed that the Note 8 was being tested on Android 7.1.1 (Nougat), rather than a beta version of the upcoming.

FIRST GLIMPSE OF THE NOTE 8? A nine second video was uploaded to Weibo, China's leading social media site in May. It was later posted on Twitter by the leaker @mmddj_china. If the video is to be believed, the new Note 8 would have a 6.3 inch screen which would reach to each edge of the device. This bezel-less design is similar to the Infinity Display featured on the Galaxy S8 and S8+ released earlier this year. A similar design is rumored for the next flagship iPhone. The screen dimensions shown would make the Note 8 0.6 inches larger than its predecessor. It would also be 0.1 inches larger than the S8 + which would make it the largest flagship smartphone ever released by Samsung. Other rumors suggest it will have a fingerprint scanner on the front as well as a dual camera on the rear. Advertisement

The latest report regarding the Android smartphone has suggested that the Note 8 is set to mirror that of the Galaxy S8 (pictured). Sources said Note 8 is set to include the Infinity display, which has an 18.5-to-9 width-to-length ratio that was first released in April with the S8 model

This news has suggested that the smartphone will launch before the new OS, dubbed 'O', is released - which is set to be released in the fall.

Another rumor had surfaced last month, which was a nice second video claiming to be the first glimpse of the Note 8.

The clip was first uploaded to Weibo, China's leading social media site.

It was later posted on Twitter by the leaker @mmddj_china with the simple question 'Note 8?'.

Another rumor had surfaced last month, which was a nice second video claiming to be the first glimpse of the Note 8. The clip was first uploaded to Weibo, China's leading social media site

If the video is to be believed, the new Note 8 would have a 6.3 inch (16 centimeter) screen which would reach to each edge of the device.

This bezel-less design is similar to the Infinity Display featured on the Galaxy S8 and S8+ released earlier this year.

A similar design is rumoured for the next flagship iPhone.

The screen dimensions shown would make the Note 8 0.6 inches (1.5 centimeters) larger than its predecessor.

It would also be 0.1 inches (0.25 centimeters) larger than the S8 + which would make it the largest flagship smartphone ever released by Samsung.

Other rumors suggest it will have a fingerprint scanner on the front as well as a dual camera on the rear.

If the video is to be believed, the new Note 8 would have a 6.3 inch screen (left) which would reach to each edge of the device. The screen dimensions shown (right) would make the Note 8 0.6 inches (1.5 centimeters) larger than its predecessor

In April, Samsung dropped a huge hint on the follow-up to its exploding Galaxy Note 7 series.

A Samsung spokesperson has said to expect a 'new flagship smartphone' before the end of the year.

A new device could hit shelves in the second half of 2017 once hype around its new Galaxy S8 and S8+ smartphones has settled down.

This bezel-less design (left) is similar to the Infinity Display featured on the Galaxy S8 and S8+ released earlier this year. The screen (right) would also be 0.1 inches (0.25 centimeters) larger than the S8 + which would make it the largest flagship smartphone ever released by Samsung

Samsung was forced to scrap its Galaxy Note 7 range last year after repeated reports from users that they were catching fire.

Airliners banned the devices over safety fears and the company had to recall three million handsets.

Samsung launched a vast inquiry into the issue that is expected to cost the company an estimate $5.3 billion (4.3 billion)

Samsung was forced to scrap its Galaxy Note 7 (pictured) range last year after repeated reports from users that they were catching fire (stock image)

Airliners banned the devices over safety fears due to overheating batteries led to the devices catching fire (pictured). Samsung had to recall three million handsets

It later claimed a battery fault in the Galaxy Note 7 was to blame.

Last week it was announced that the South Korean firm will begin to sell refurbished versions of its its ill-fated Galaxy Note 7, as well as plans to rebrand it.

Pictures of the new handset leaked online revealed what it will look like and, unsurprisingly, it's exactly the same.

WHAT'S INSIDE YOUR PHONE? The hazardous ingredients of mobile phones have long been kept under wraps by manufacturers who are tight lipped about the recipes they use for their high-tech components. Cobalt is also used in rechargable batteries found in many laptops, mobile phones and electric vehicles. HeathyStuff.org sampled 36 different mobile phones to see what lurks behind the sleek smartphone covers. The phones were completely disassembled and interior and exterior components were sampled by X-ray Fluorescence spectrometry - a process which determines the chemical composition of a material. Each phone reportedly had either lead, bromine, mercury, cadmium, chlorine, or some combination of those chemicals. These hazardous substances can pollute throughout a product's life cycle, including when the minerals are extracted; when they are processed; during phone manufacturing; and at the end of the phone's useful life. The average smartphone contains up to 62 different types of metals and many are rare-earth metals. Advertisement

The only difference, according to the images sent to Droidholic, are a large R stamped onto the back of the handset.

A recent report has revealed that the South Korean firm has renamed the smartphone 'Galaxy Note FE', which stands for 'Fandom Edition', in a bid to 'minimize the refurbished phone image'.

Samsung's senior official, Lee Myung-bak, has also chimed in to give more details regarding the Note 7 FE's price and release date.

Pictures of the refurbished Galaxy Note 7 handset had recently leaked online revealed what it will look like and, unsurprisingly, it's exactly the same. The handset is believed to come with a smaller 3,200 mAh battery

'The Galaxy Note 7 Ripper Phone is most likely to launch in Korea at the end of June,' he explained.

The term 'ripper' is used in Korea to signify a refurbished phone.

The handset is said to boast the same look as the original, but with a smaller 3,200 mAh battery  it is also speculated to cost 30 per cent less than the Galaxy Note 7.

The refurbished Galaxy Note FE is set to hit the South Korean market by the end of June.

And Samsung plans to release 30,000 units at launch.
Bella Thorne, 19, was spotted heading for lunch with older sibling Dani, 24, on Tuesday, where the twosome made themselves laugh by twerking.

The two were trailed by a couple of male companions as they made their way to a Sherman Oaks, California, eatery.

The hilarious outing comes as Bella's failed holiday romance with Scott Disick who accompanied her to the Cannes Film Festival before the sex addict got cosy with NINE other women.

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Scott who? A very happy Bella Thorne twerked in the street in LA on Tuesday as she picked up some lunch... after Disick romance turned sour

Double trouble: Her older sister Dani also got into the spirit of things as she broke into dance along with her

Looking like she didn't have a are in the world, the actress rocked pink flat soles, and tight leather leggings with a biker cap as danced while holding her lunch and a drink in her hand.

Her loose-fitting white hoodie bore the definitely-not-targeted-at-Scott-Disick question: 'Why you so obsessed with me?'

Her 24-year-old DJ sister meanwhile wore a much more colorful ensemble, featuring rainbow colored furry slides, black Puma sweats and am over-sized tie-dye hoodie.

Her hood was pulled up, put her two-tone pink and green hair peeked out on either side.

You put your left leg in... Bella threw one leg in the air like she just don't care, as she clutched her healthy juice

She's got moves: Bella's bag swung wildly as she threw some shapes in her bright pink trainers

All eyes on her: She danced up against a wall as she made her friends chuckle

Surfing USA! Bella looked as though she was riding the waves as she danced along the street

While Bella opted for regular specs, her zany sis rocked a novelty pair of over-sized cyan cat-eye shades.

In what may be a historic first, neither sister had their tongues out.

Dani used to be something of an actress herself, appearing in commercials and TV episodes in her childhood and teen years.

Comfy casuals: While Bella wore an Obsession sweatshirt, her sister opted for a colourful sweater and matching rainbow sliders

Colorful: Her 24-year-old DJ sister meanwhile wore a much more colorful ensemble, featuring rainbow colored furry slides, black Puma sweats and am over-sized tie-dye hoodie

Style: The 19-year-old rocked pick flat soles, and tight leather leggings with a biker cap

Not him, obviously: Her loose-fitting white hoodie bore the definitely-not-targeted-at-Scott-Disick question: 'Why you so obsessed with me?'

In tow: The siblings were trailed by a couple of male companions as they made their way to a Sherman Oaks eatery

Done with this dude: Disick, on the right, has not been seen with Bella lately after getting cosy with nine girls in a week in Cannes

However now she is more seriously into her music; she revealed on Instagram this week she and boyfriend Dylan Jetson will be playing at this years Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas.

Bella meanwhile appears to have reunited proper with ex Greg Sulkin, after her embarrassing one day romance with Scott Disick.

The Blended was the first of eight women the Lord was pictured canoodling with in as many days.
She divorced actor Laurence Fox in May last year, but Billie Piper has been putting it firmly behind her with new beau Johnny Lloyd.

Though marriage seemed to be the word on everyone's lips on Tuesday night, as Billie Piper was seen sporting a huge ring on her left hand when she attended the Glamour Women Of The Year Awards in London.

Taking the plunge, the former Doctor Who's assistant teased her sensational curves in a daring fitted dress, yet caused a significant distraction with her accessories.

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'It was a sparkler': Billie Piper sparked engagement speculation when she wore a ring on her left hand to the Glamour Women Of The Year Awards 2017 in London, on Tuesday evening

The Secret Diary Of A Call Girl star looked every inch of glamour when she styled the floor length frock, decorated with an intricate leafy print in black and white.

It was noteworthy that The Secret Diary Of A Call Girl star was keeping her accessories other wise to a minimum.

With her black clutch in hand, her fingers were noticeably manicured to perfection and the ring took centre stage.

She's got style! The actress teased her ample assets in the plunging neckline of her frock

Eye-catching! The huge rock took centre stage of her outfit, glittering in the spotlight

When Billie graced the stage to collect the Theatre award, the new item was quite the eye-popper.

Sources inside the event told MailOnline: 'She was wearing a huge rock on her ring finger. It was a real sparkler!'

MailOnline has contacted Billie Piper's representative for comment on the matter.

The speculation comes one year after Billie split from fellow actor Laurence Fox in May last year and just months after she began covering the 'FOX' inking on her engagement finger.

Accessories! The Secret Diary Of A Call Girl star carried a small black clutch to the event

Smiling! But what got tongues wagging was the huge ring on her left hand sparking engagement speculation

Strike a pose! Billie was pleased to scoop the Shiseido Group Theatre Award prize at the event

Giddy: Billie pulled some hilarious facial expressions as she was guided around the venue by her publicist

After the divorce, Billie began masking the letters on her finger with make-up. And now she has taken the step of having the letters blacked out.

The couple were married in December 2007 in a romantic ceremony in West Sussex.

The former flames raise their two children Winston James, age eight, and Eugene Pip, aged four, but after eight years of marriage the pair parted ways.

Billie has since appeared to have found love with the Tribes frontman Johnny Lloyd who she has been dating for just under a year.

The couple have been spotted enjoying a string of romantic dates across the capital.

Giggly: Billie looked pretty pleased with herself as she picked up the Shiseido Group Theatre Actress award, standing next to Lily James - (right)

Double trouble: The pair appeared in very high spirits as they posed together for a snap after Lily presented Billie with her award

Look what she won! Lily and Billie larked around with the award in hand

What you got in there? Billie was carrying a heap of goodie bags as she left the venue, once again flashing that rock

Where's your brolly? Billie grimaced as she walked against the elements with all of her bags in hand

Downpour: She was guided out of the venue by a pal and shielded from the rain
Even when she's dressed down for a flight, Alessandra Ambrosio can't shake her air of unmistakable supermodel glamour.

The 35-year-old Victoria's Secret Angel had bundled herself into a large grey sweater with its sleeves rolled to the elbow, tying a denim jacket at her waist.

She'd slid herself into a pair of pine green cargo trousers and nude flats and was slinging along what appeared to be a pale pink pillow in the crook of her right arm.

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Once a model: Even when she's dressed down for a flight, Alessandra Ambrosio can't shake her air of unmistakable supermodel glamour

The Erechim native had added a dash of glitz by way of a glistening necklace, earrings and a bracelet that rested alongside the watch she'd got at her left wrist.

At another point that day, Alessandra - who'd been photographed in Madrid last week - held a disposable coffee cup that appeared to be from Caffe Nero.

Alessandra's been engaged since 2008 to RE/DONE founder Jamie Mazur, by whom she's got a five-year-old son called Noah and an eight-year-old daughter called Anja.

Equipped: She'd slid herself into a pair of pine green cargo trousers and nude flats and was slinging along what appeared to be a pale pink pillow in the crook of her right arm; on the right is her publicist Milan Blagojevic

Giving an interview to The Edit last year, she conceded: 'Your body will never go back to exactly what it was before pregnancy, whatever people tell you. It cant.'

Meanwhile, 'I think I have a better body now than before I had kids. Its partly because I work out, whereas before I didnt, but also to do with the shape  it just looks more formed now and I feel better about it than I did.'

She did recall that 'after having Anja I only had three months to lose all the weight [before doing the 2008 Victorias Secret show] and I was on this 1200-calorie-a-day meal-delivery service that I hated. I couldnt do that again.'

Refreshing herself: As the day went on, Alessandra was also photographed outdoors in London, toting along a disposable coffee cup that appeared as though it were from Caffe Nero

Motherhood has, indeed, shifted her view of modeling in that 'I used to be 100% comfortable on lingerie shoots - then I had a child, and it was more of a mental shift than anything else. Somehow it felt a bit weirder to be in lingerie once I was a mum.'

She recalled that 'I did that cover for Maxim last year [naked but for a strategically placed newspaper],' but 'you dont see anything,' Alessandra noted.

'When my daughter saw it, she asked: "Mummy, why do you have no clothes on?" And I said: "Mummy actually has a G-string on - its just so small you cant see it."'
A 42-year-old Bismarck hiker was found dead in West Yellowstone on Tuesday morning.

Montana authorities had been searching since Sunday night for Mike Petersen, who failed to show up at a designated rendezvous point, according to a press release from the Gallatin County Sheriff's Office.

The cause of death has not yet been determined. Capt. Jason Jarrett said it had the "markings of a drowning," since Petersen was found in a river that he would have needed to cross on his hike.

Petersen was hiking in the Beaver Creek area, which he had visited several times in the past four months, and had considerable backcountry experience, according to the sheriff's office. He also had survival equipment and the ability to signal for help.

His body was recovered by Gallatin County Search and Rescue with the help of a K-9 dog. Authorities also searched for Petersen with helicopters.
It's been a rough few weeks since she released her memoir.

And Caitlyn Jenner, 67, looked like she is starting to feel the stress of her strained relationships as she stepped out in Malibu on Tuesday.

The reality star, who is rumored to have had a falling out with daughters Kendall and Kylie, looked downcast in a white lace-up sweater and blue jeans.

Isolated: Caitlyn Jenner, 67, looked like she is starting to feel the stress of her strained relationships as she stepped out in Malibu on Tuesday

She paired the demure ensemble with a pair of slip on sandals with a small heel that was covered by the slightly flared jeans.

Caitlyn, who went by Bruce before transitioning in 2015, hasn't been seen with the rest of her family lately and spends much of her time in Malibu.

Since releasing her memoir The Secrets Of My Life last month, there has been a family rift thanks to her claims about her 23 year marriage to Kris Jenner - the mother of Kendall and her younger sister Kylie.

And while Kris and her elder daughters have been left reeling from the book, an insider has told E! News that Kendall's relationship with her father has also become 'very strained.'

Keeping things simple: She paired her demure ensemble with a pair of slip on sandals with a small heel that was covered by the slightly flared jeans

The source reveals that the 21-year-old supermodel 'rarely speaks' to her father, explaining:

'Kendall is loyal to Kris [Jenner] and has very little to do with her dad. The more time that has passed, the more she feels Caitlyn has let her down with the things she has said and with her actions.'

Meanwhile Kendall's sister Kylie, 19, is reportedly still in contact with Caitlyn but according to the source she feels stuck in the middle of her warring parents.

Things are tense: Kendall is reportedly not speaking to her father, but Kylie, 19, is reportedly still in contact with Caitlyn and feels stuck in the middle of her warring parents

World weighing her down? Caitlyn looked a bit stressed and downcast as she made her way back to her car in Malibu amidst claims of a strained relationship with the rest of her family

'Kylie has really made an effort not to take sides and to be supportive of Caitlyn,' claims the source. 'She really wants to have a relationship with her dad, but Caitlyn has hurt Kris tremendously and it's made it very difficult.'

The sisters are said to miss their previously close relationship with their father, who was known as Bruce before her gender transition in 2015.

The rest of the family have made it clear they are not speaking to Caitlyn at the moment and are all very hurt by the memoir.

In fact, Kim Kardashian has spoken out about her relationship with her former step-father.

It's war: Both Kris and Kim are no longer speaking to Caitlyn because of the claims she made about her 23 year marriage to Kris

When asked by Watch What Happens Live host Andy Cohen last week if there's a chance her mum would ever speak to Caitlyn again, Kim, 36, responded: 'Zero. Not one. No, I would say two percent. And those are Kendall and Kylie. That's their percentage. All fair, I think.'

And it's not just Kris and Caitlyn who aren't speaking. Kim, too, hasn't been in touch.

Caitlyn, during her book tour in Australia, acknowledged the rift, saying: 'I really haven't talked to (Kim) in a long time.'
She's the US-based model currently in Australia on a whirlwind home visit.

And Natalie Roser is reminiscing about warmer times as she braces the winter weather, sharing a throwback snap of her in a bikini on Wednesday.

The 27-year-old shared the photo as she travels to her boyfriend Harley Bonner's hometown of Melbourne.

She's a wild one! Natalie Roser shows off her perfect curves in leopard print bikini

The bikini photo appears to have been taken during Natalie's visit to the Maldives with model friends Brooke Hogan and Madeline Relph last month.

In the picture the blonde wears a skimpy leopard print bikini which shows off her ample cleavage and slender frame.

Hands running through her golden locks, Natalie closes her eyes as she enjoys the tropical sun.

Long distance love! Natalie, who is dating Melbourne-based actor Harley Bonner (R), lamented that she felt like a 'lovesick teenager' in an Instagram post last week

Reminiscing about the much warmer weather, the model captioned the photo on Wednesday: 'Dreaming of paradise, flying to Melbourne.'

It's possible the visit to Melbourne will see Natalie reunited with her actor beau Harley, who she started dating in January.

The Neighbours star is based in the city, which is also where the soap series is filmed.

Will they meet up? It's possible the visit to Melbourne will see Natalie reunited with her actor beau Harley, who she started dating in January

Racy in lace! Natalie Roser has returned to her home country of Australia this month to shoot a lingerie commercial for Bras N Things

The revealing snap comes after Natalie shared behind-the-scenes photos from her lingerie commercial with Bras N Things.

The blonde bombshell wore a blue lace push-up bra and matching knickers.

In a behind-the-scenes snap, she playfully posed with the crew, including make-up artists, stylists and the photographer.

Getting ready! Natalie also shared a black and white photo of herself to her Instagram Story, wearing a semi-sheer lingerie set

Making her move: Natalie moved to the United States earlier this year to further her modelling career. She previously lived in Sydney

'Family photo,' she captioned her Instagram Story.

Natalie also shared a black and white photo of herself to her Instagram Story, wearing a semi-sheer lingerie set.

Accessorising with a white robe, the blonde pulled a cheeky smile in the social media snap.
After months of speculation, the Bachelor's Noni Janur confirmed reports she was dating The Bachelorette hunk Samuel Johnston in February.

And the reality stars appear to be going strong, evident from a picture posted on their Instagram dates from a dinner date last week.

Sam, 28, shared a loved-up snap with his 'girlfriend', to which Noni affectionately called him 'lover boy' in the comments with a love-heart emoji.

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'Lover boy': Former Bachelor star Noni Janur dotes over Bachelorette boyfriend Samuel Johnston as he shares snap from recent dinner date

The couple were spotted seductively feeding each other while wearing blindfolds at Sydney's Bar Machiavelli to celebrate the DVD release of 50 Shades Darker.

The duo, who had previously claimed they were 'just friends', were seen kissing during a romantic beach date at Bondi Beach in February.

Balinese beauty Noni was spotted sunbathing while her male model boyfriend tenderly held her in his arms for a smooch.

Spotted! The couple, who had previously claimed they were just friends, were seen kissing during a romantic beach date at Bondi Beach in February

On Valentine's Day, smitten Sam took to his Instagram Stories with a sweet tribute to his ladylove after she sent him a bunch of red roses.

Noni confirmed her relationship with Sam when she shared a paparazzi photo of the pair kissing - first published by Daily Mail Australia - to her Instagram in February.

Noni wrote about her once-secret romance: 'Little did I know I was on the wrong show. But maybe I came out the winner after all...In this weird, crazy world somehow I got to meet you. Happy Valentine's Day @samuelrjohnston'.

Lovebirds: Samuel and Noni made the most of a 50 Shades Darker themed dinner this month at Sydney hot spot Bar Machiavelli

Her announcement came after Samuel refused to confirm the identity of the 'mystery woman' he had begun dating shortly after filming The Bachelorette.

Despite only confirming the news on Valentine's Day, Noni and Sam were rumoured to have been dating for several months prior.

While they regularly like each other's posts on social media, the recent couple snap is the first photo to be placed on their public profiles since February.
As a very human-looking android on HBO's sci-fi series Westworld, Thandie Newton spent much of the time naked.

And in an interview with Oprah Winfrey for Variety's Actors On Actors series, the British actress spoke about how she'd embraced the nudity required and in fact, found it liberating.

'It felt like having that fourth baby because it was a moment of such intense self-affirmation, not for me Thandie, but female power,' said Newton, 44, who gave birth to her third child just weeks before filming started.

Revealing: Thandie Newton spoke about how she felt liberated by the nudity required for her Westworld character in an interview with Oprah Winfrey for Variety's Actors On Actors series

The mother-of-three, who is married to The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel screenwriter Ol Parker, said she has never felt that way about a part before.

'It's ironic that I was standing there stark naked for a lot of it because I felt more in control than I've ever done because I said yes to this,' she explained. 'I said yes, I will stand here with nothing on and I will speak these words.'

She went on: 'I was so committed to this character's trajectory. I felt it had secrets for how we need to survive as a humanity which is to fight for the truth.'

Tough role: 'It's ironic that I was standing there stark naked for a lot of it because I felt more in control than I've ever done because I said yes to this,' the British actress explained

Female power: Newton, 44, is a mother-of-three and married to British screenwriter Ol Parker. She likened the experience of working on Westworld as akin to having a fourth baby

Newton and Winfrey, who worked together on the 1998 movie Beloved, are featured on one of three special covers of Variety that promote the latest in their Actors On Actors specials.

Also featured are Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor, who of course starred together in 2001's Moulin Rouge.

In the piece, Kidman, 49, talks about transitioning from the big screen tot he small screen and the success of her HBO series Big Little Lies.

'A decade ago, there wasn't enough work, right? Because it was just very much film, and then you would go to television as another resort,' Kidman stated. 'But now, it's all mixed in together, and you have exquisite performances and storytelling in many different mediums. I love that.'

Shared their tales: Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor, who starred together in 2001's Moulin Rouge, are also featured on one of three special Actors On Actors Variety covers

Meanwhile, McGregor, who recently made his directorial debut with American Pastoral, spoke about how hard it was to spend 18 months of his life on creating a film that nobody went to the cinema to see.

'People are going to see event movies and horror films. I think now because we've got such access to movies, in our living rooms, in our homes, or wherever we are  our phones, with our children's generation. We put all this time and effort into making these beautiful movies that our kids are going to watch on their iPhone,' the Scottish star, 46, said.

'So maybe that changed my thinking a little bit about it as well, that maybe having it seen in a cinema isn't the be-all and end-all anymore,' he added.

Learning experience: McGregor spoke about his disappointment that few people went to the cinema to see his directorial debut American Pastoral. a movie he's very proud of

Another major Hollywood actress who recently transitioned to a high profile role on television is Michelle Pfeiffer.

And the 59-year-old, who starred as Ruth Madoff opposite Robert De Niro in HBO's The Wizard Of Lies, sat down with Sarah Jessica Parker to talk about the opportunities opening up for female artists on the small screen.

The former Sex &The City star returned to HBO was producer and star of the dark comedy Divorce and agreed with Pfeiffer that television offers a perfect medium for women who want to work while raising their children.
She married British photographer Lee Henderson in 2003.

And on KIIS FM's Kyle And Jackie O Show on Wednesday, Jackie 'O' Henderson interviewed her husband about the moment he realised he wanted to marry her.

The 42-year-old was left mortified when Lee said he could only remember when he had second thoughts on if he was 'doing the right thing marrying this girl'.

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Lovebirds: On KIIS FM's Kyle And Jackie O Show on Wednesday, Jackie 'O' Henderson interviewed her husband Lee about the moment he realised he wanted to marry her

Host Kyle Sandilands initially asked Lee about the moment he realised Jackie wanted to marry him.

'God, I have no idea,' he replied.

Jackie continued to prod her husband: 'Did you have a moment with me when you looked at me and thought, "I'm going to marry that girl?"'

Humiliated: The 42-year-old was left mortified when Lee said he could only remember when he had second thoughts on if he was 'doing the right thing marrying this girl'

'No, but I distinctly remember having a moment where I thought, "Am I doing the right thing marrying this girl?"' he responded.

'Why? What did I do?' laughed Jackie in shock.

'There was a time we were in the park with some friends having a picnic and somebody suggested having a game of touch rugby,' he reflected.

'No, but I distinctly remember having a moment where I thought, "Am I doing the right thing marrying this girl?"' he responded

'You picked up the ball and ran with it and I thought, "Do I want those genes?" he added with laughter.

'I was so competitive Kyle, I looked ridiculous,' Jackie offered to her co-host.

'I'd never played rugby in my life,' she admitted.

'You picked up the ball and ran with it and I thought, "Do I want those genes?" he added with laughter

Her husband continued with his observation of his then-future wife and said 'it wasn't just the competitiveness' that had him question their future.

'It was the complete lack of coordination and this vicious under-bite!' he declared.

'It was just a friendly game of touch in the park with a few people, and Jackie was handing people off and pushing them out of the way,' he added.

'It was just a friendly game of touch in the park with a few people, and Jackie was handing people off and pushing them out of the way,' he added

Jackie shared she knew Lee was 'the one' when they visited Paddy's Markets in Sydney to shop for groceries and he 'picked up a bunch of basil and smelled it'.

'That was the moment,' she gushed. 'I can't explain why.'

'You're easily pleased,' Lee responded with a laugh.

'I hope Kitty's pickier than you,' he added, in reference to their six-year-old daughter.
Actor Hugh Jackman celebrated his 21-year wedding anniversary with wife Deborra-Lee Furness in April.

And the Wolverine star, 48, has now revealed the secret behind his long-lasting relationship to the Australian actress, 61.

Hugh told People he meditates regularly with his wife to keep their romance strong.

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'It's a lovely Sunday-morning thing': Hugh Jackman credits meditation for his successful 21-year marriage to wife Deborra-Lee Furness in interview with People

Hugh and Deborra-Lee, who share a 13 year age difference, married in 1996 after meeting on-set of TV series Correlli in 1995.

When asked what has kept their bond thrive over the years, Hugh said: 'Meditation!'

Wife Deborra-Lee added: 'We meditate together. And sometimes we have friends over to do it, too. It's a lovely Sunday-morning thing. Everyone comes over, and then we have breakfast.'

The pair also told the publication their 'sense of humour' also keeps their loved-up interactions interesting.

'We meditate together. And sometimes we have friends over to do it, too': Deborra-Lee and Hugh claim meditation has made their romantic bond stronger over the years

The X-Men star regularly dotes over his wife, having posted a loving tribute to her on Instagram earlier this year to mark their wedding anniversary.

'To the love of my life. 21 glorious years. I love you with all my heart,' he wrote alongside a photo of the couple.

In April last year, the couple celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary with a romantic holiday to St Barts.

At the time, Hugh also shared a rare photo from their wedding day on Instagram.

'To the love of my life. 21 glorious years. I love you with all my heart': Hugh Jackman celebrated his 21-year wedding anniversary with wife Deborra-Lee in April

Happily ever after! In April last year, the couple celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary with a romantic holiday to St Barts

Wedding bells! At the time, Hugh shared a rare photo from their wedding day on Instagram

In the black-and-white snap, a younger Hugh smiles next to his blushing bride who wears a low cut white dress and pearls.

Speaking on The Ellen DeGeneres Show last year, Hugh said: 'She's the greatest thing that ever happened to me and it gets better and better.'

The Wolverine actor also credited his wife with supporting him throughout his career, even before he found success in Hollywood.

Hugh previously quipped his slogan in life is: 'Happy wife, happy life.'

Love at first sight? Hugh and Deborra-Lee, who share a 13 year age difference, married in 1996 after meeting on-set of TV series Correlli the previous year

Early days: The Wolverine actor also credited his wife with supporting him throughout his career, even before he found success in Hollywood

Happy Valentines! Speaking on The Ellen DeGeneres Show last year, Hugh said: 'She's the greatest thing that ever happened to me and it gets better and better'
Merrick Watts and Tim 'Rosso' Ross were a popular radio duo, achieving an impressive following during their prime.

So it came as a shock in 2009 to hear the pair had split, and were going their separate ways.

But as they reunited in the Triple M studio on Tuesday, for the first time in seven years, fans took to Twitter urging the station to 'please make it permanent'.

Comeback? Fans urge Triple M to bring back radio duo Merrick Watts (left), 43, and Tim 'Rosso' Ross (right), 46, after the pair reunited in the studio for the first time in seven YEARS on Tuesday

'Please make it permanent': One social media user took to Twitter, urging Triple Me to make the duo a regular act

'It was awesome to hear @MerrickWatts & Rosso on air together,' one social media user posted, alongside the hash-tag #makeitpermanent.

Another followed suit with: 'Please make it permanent...oh my that would make thousands of drivers commutes home far more enjoyable'.

While one Twitter user simply stated: 'Was bl**dy hilarious'.

Vocal: 'It was awesome to hear @MerrickWatts & Rosso on air together,' another posted to Twitter, alongside the hash-tag #makeitpermanent

Quality banter: While one Twitter user simply stated: 'Was bl**dy hilarious'

Chance encounter: The comments were in relation to Tuesday's Triple M afternoon radio segment, that saw Merrick and Rosso reunite in the studio, for the first time in seven years

The comments were in relation to Tuesday's Triple M afternoon radio segment, that saw Merrick and Rosso reunite in the studio, for the first time in seven years.

Merrick, 43, and Rosso, 46, were an instant hit on the airwaves on Triple J, before jumping ship to Nova in 2001.

All appeared to be going swimmingly until 2009, when the pair announced their shock split.

Shock split: Merrick and Rosso were an instant hit on the airwaves on Triple J, before jumping ship to Nova in 2001. All appeared to be going swimmingly until 2009, when the pair announced their shock split

'As much as it pains me to leave, it's time for me to do something different,' Rosso said at the time.

Denying the decision was due to a rift, Merrick added: 'This has nothing to do with Rosso and I not liking each other. 'No fights, there's no carry-on, there's nothing like that.'

And in 2012, Merrick opened up once again about the shock split in an interview with The Daily Telegraph: 'I wouldn't say we have a hostile relationship.

Announcement: 'As much as it pains me to leave, it's time for me to do something different,' Rosso said at the time

'We went in different directions. We got new jobs, had families. We just lead different lives,' the father-of-two continued.

Regardless of their reasoning for the split, Merrick and Rosso appeared to get on like a house on fire, on Tuesday's radio segment.

The pair happily reminisced, taking a trip down memory lane of their days as prime-time radio hosts.

Memory lane: Regardless of their reasoning for the split, Merrick and Rosso appeared to get on like a house on fire, on Tuesday's radio segment. The pair took a trip down memory lane of their days as prime-time radio hosts

Regrets: The segment comes after Merrick revealed he regrets his 'poor behaviour' during the height of his fame at Nova 96.9. The star admitted he acted like a 'douchebag' and 'upset people that (he) worked with' for a period of time

The segment comes after Merrick revealed he regrets his 'poor behaviour' during the height of his fame at Nova 96.9.

Merrick admitted he acted like a 'douchebag' and 'upset people that (he) worked with' for a period of time.

He told the You've Gotta Start Somewhere podcast that he's a better person today and has learned from his past mistakes.

When asked by presenter Rachel Corbett if he had any regrets, Merrick did not hesitate to discuss his own personal failings.

Reflection: He told the You've Gotta Start Somewhere podcast that he's a better person today and has learned from his past mistakes: 'I regret the poor behaviour that I displayed in parts of my radio career, in what is now the middle of my career'

'I regret the poor behaviour that I displayed in parts of my radio career, in what is now the middle of my career,' he began.

'When I was at Nova and Rosso and I were number one and everything was flying, it was always parties and drinks and it was crazy.

'It was a great time and there was a lot of money and there was a lot of attention and there was a lot of fame. And I was a douchebag.

Lessons: 'But I don't regret that because I think it's helped get to this point now where I know that that was bad and not living like that now. So that's a life lesson for me,' Merrick said

'But I don't regret that because I think it's helped get to this point now where I know that that was bad and not living like that now. So that's a life lesson for me.'

Merrick continued: 'I regret specifically some of the times that I hurt people or upset people that I worked with because that's not me.

'And for some reason I fell into that and I became that for a very short period of time, but long enough that I regret it,' he concluded.
Mischa Barton set tongues wagging after being spotted getting cosy with a handsome hunk in Los Angeles, earlier this week.

And Daily Mail Australia can exclusively reveal that the former OC actress' new beau is Melbourne model James Abercrombie.

The pair have been spending dating for the last few weeks after meeting at a party in Los Angeles.

Mischa's new squeeze! Daily Mail Australia can exclusively reveal that Mischa Barton's new boyfriend is Melbourne model James Abercrombie; the son of former Victorian Liberal Party treasurer Andrew Abercrombie, who last year was reported to be worth $574m

No stranger to the finer things in life, James is the son of former Victorian Liberal Party treasurer Andrew Abercrombie, who this year was reported to be worth $574m according to the AFR Rich List.

The dark-haired stud's Melbourne-based agency Bucknall Management/ FRM Model Management confirmed the pair's new-found relationship this Wednesday.

'James is currently dating well known actress Mischa Barton,' FRM Model Management director Stephen Bucknall (who discovered the budding male model) confirmed.

Cosy couple: The pair were spotted strolling hand-in-hand while taking Mischa's dogs for a walk in West Hollywood last week

'James is currently dating well known actress Mischa Barton': The dark-haired model's agency Bucknall Management/ FRM Model Management confirmed the pair's new-found relationship this Wednesday

They're an item! Mischa enjoyed a night on the town with her new beau James in Cannes late last month

'He was recently on a ski trip to Aspen, after which he headed to Los Angeles- where we are currently making appointments for him to seek representation.

'James met Mischa at a party in Los Angeles just on a month ago. They then headed off on a small trip to France,' the agency revealed.

'He is now back in Los Angeles and they are spending a lot of time together.'

A ritzy existence: Instagram snaps published to James' page depict a glimpse of his high-flying lifestyle

Just another ski holiday? One photo shared to his Instagram page depicts an army of expensive wine bottles lined up in the snow

Instagram snaps published to James' page depict a glimpse of his high-flying lifestyle, with images of his private jet in Cannes, luxury yacht in Italy and his Aspen holiday digs.

He also hinted at his new romance with Mischa last week by sharing a photo of himself getting up close and personal with the controversial starlet as they posed in front of a yacht at the Grand Prix F1 de Monaco.

Once a politician, James' father Andrew is one of Australia's richest businessman and chairman of successful company FlexiGroup.

No stranger to the red carpet! James attended the John Wayne Cancer Institute Auxiliary's annual Odyssey Ball in LA in March this year with pal Jill Janger

Elite family: Once a politician, James' father Andrew is one of Australia's richest businessman and chairman of successful company FlexiGroup

Andrew and his wife Shadda are the proud owners of two mansions in Victoria - one in the wealthy suburb of Toorak purchased for $14m in 2007, as well as a holiday home in the exclusive resort town of Portsea, which is currently on the market for $5m.

They also own an apartment inside the swanky Alto Villas building in Mt Buller, a luxury resort village in eastern Victoria.

The Abercrombie family made headlines last year when thieves stole more than $1m worth of jewels from their lavish Melbourne home.

Palatial residence: James' father Andrew and wife Shadda own a towering Toorak, Melbourne mansion

Home away from home! They are also the proud owners a holiday home in Portsea, Melbourne

Among the stolen items were watches, rings, earrings and a distinctive aqua marine bangle of 'significant' sentimental value to Andrew.

Earlier that day Andrew and Shadda had left for a holiday in Greece.

The thieves found a safe in the master bedroom of the home hauled it out in a wheelie bin, and loaded it into a blue Holden station wagon and fled.

For sale: The sprawling Portsea property is currently on the market for $5m

Stolen jewels: The Abercrombie family made headlines last year when thieves stole more than $1m worth of jewels from their lavish Melbourne home

Last month, DailyMail.com revealed that Mischa had been granted an extension to restraining orders against two former boyfriends, who she believes are trying to sell an explicit sex tape of her.

The footage was being touted to online porn companies, with a number of industry giants still considering the offer.

At the start of the year, the former child star had also endured a highly publicised 'meltdown', which saw two of her neighbours call emergency services after she allegedly threatened to kill herself.
She's a pro at striking a pose on the runway.

But Heidi Klum, 44, took to the streets of New York City to model a large yellow ball gown reminiscent of Belle's iconic dress in Beauty and the Beast.

The model, wore the large gown in the streets of New York, perhaps inadvertently celebrating the release of the film, which came out Tuesday as well.

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Tale as old as time: Heidi Klum, 44, took to the streets of New York City to model a large yellow ball gown reminiscent of Belle's iconic dress in Beauty and the Beast

The strapless gown featured layers and layers of ruffles at it enveloped her thin frame.

Heidi appeared to be having fun on the shoot, but didn't appear to have her makeup or hair done for the occasion.

Her blonde tresses were pulled back into a messy high ponytail and her skin appeared flawless with very little makeup needed.

In a few of the photos, she took her hair down and let it flow in the breeze.

Show-stopping: The supermodel channeled Belle in the large yellow ballgown

Creating chaos: The model was posted right in the middle of a busy NYC street, but traffic had clearly been blocked off for the shoot

In the zone: She looked happy as she ran through the streets of NYC for the photoshoot on Tuesday

Mane attraction: Heidi appeared to be having fun on the shoot, but didn't appear to have her makeup or hair done for the occasion

The model was posted right in the middle of a busy NYC street, but traffic had clearly been blocked off for the shoot.

She gazed seductively at the camera as she wore a tweed jacket over the fancy dress for some of the shots.

The timeless beauty was doing the shoot along with Tim Gunn for the upcoming season of Project Runway

New York minute! She captured the NYC vibe as she was photographed getting out of a cab

Walk it out: She gazed seductively at the camera as she wore a tweed jacket over the fancy dress for some of the shots

Carried away! She carried her ballgown in her hands as she navigated her way down the pavement

Handful! The bombshell sported a pair of metallic silver strappy heels as she walked through the Big Apple

The cartoon version: The smash-hit animated classic from 1991

She later changed into a different outfit for the shoot, sporting an entirely different look in jeans and a crop top.

The white crop top was totally see-through with the mom-of-four showing off her nipples sans bra.

She added a pop of vibrant color to the outfit with a long fuchsia trench coat that came all the way down to her ankles.

At 44 years old, the gorgeous German model proves age is nothing but a number as she shows off her washboard abs peeking out below the white crop top.

Pretty in pink! She later changed into a different outfit for the shoot, sporting an entirely different look in jeans and a crop top

Sky high! Heidi was sporting high-waisted light jeans that came up over her belly button

Pink to make 'em wink: Heidi worked an eye-catching pink trench for the shoot

Heidi was sporting red sky high heels beneath the high-waisted light jeans that came up over her belly button.

She posed with Project Runway host Tim Gunn for a series of promotional shots.

The longtime team looked comfortable together as they held hands and crossed a busy New York crosswalk for the various photos.

They're a team! She posed with Project Runway host Tim Gunn for a series of promotional shots

Helping hand! The two held each other's hands while posing on the rain splattered crossing

Multiple options: They also took a photo holding a mannequin together as a symbol for the fashion-oriented show

They also took a photo holding a mannequin together as a symbol for the fashion-oriented show.

In another shot, the pair posed beside a wardrobe on wheels full of clothing covered in plastic.

That wasn't even the beginning of Heidi's busy day as she later underwent another wardrobe change into a sexy gold mini dress for a book signing later in the day.

Good friends: The two looked happy as they held hands during the fun shoot

In another shot, the pair posed beside a wardrobe on wheels full of clothing covered in plastic

The gorgeous entrepreneur was in the West Village at Bookmarc to attend the signing of her latest book Heidi Klum by Rankin.

She wore her long blonde hair down in waves around her shoulders and parted it down the center.

Always the timeless beauty, she wore just the right amount of makeup to highlight her gorgeous features.

The gorgeous entrepreneur was in the West Village at Bookmarc later to attend the signing of her latest book Heidi Klum by Rankin.

Golden girl! She wore her long blonde hair down in waves around her shoulders and parted it down the center

Keeping her modesty: She jokinly covered up the parts of her body that are naked in the artistic spread

Heidi posed alongside Rankin to celebrate the new book

She paired the stunning gold dress with matching gold heels with bows along the front.

The dress featured a metallic look with long sleeves and a collar that came right up around Heidi's neck.

Showing off her endless pins, the mini dress allowed her to showcase her famous assets.

She later showed off her cheeky side inside the store as she covered her nipple on the cover of the book with her hand, smiling mischievously at the camera.

The famous model and photographer embraced at the event

Proud: She held up another silhouette photo during the signing

Fun with her book cover: She later showed off her cheeky side inside the store as she covered her nipple on the cover of the book with her hand, smiling mischievously at the camera
An Australian version of Mob Wives is set to hit TV screens, centred around the women of some of the country's most notorious mafia members, past and present.

Roberta Williams, the wife of the late Carl Williams, a convicted murderer and drug trafficker, is set to star as one of the leading ladies.

Appearing on Monday's KIIS FM Hughesy and Kate Show, the 48-year-old insisted she's 'not trying to glorify the underworld' stating: 'We're just girls hanging out.'

'We're just girls hanging out': Wife of the late Carl Williams, Roberta, 48, insisted to KIIS FM's Hughesy and Kate, that she's 'not trying to glorify the underworld' ahead of her debut in reality series Mob Wives

'We're not trying to glorify the underworld with the show, so I just want to clarify that,' Roberta told co-hosts Dave Hughes and Kate Langbroek.

'We're not there to promote gang life, the underworld, criminality, anything like that. We're just some girls hanging out together, like-minded individuals,' she continued.

'I served my time of incarceration. It's not for the money. It's more about if we can change the mindset of young girls out there. There's no rewards in the end (for crime).

'Like-minded individuals': 'We're not there to promote gang life, the underworld, criminality, anything like that. We're just some girls hanging out together, like-minded individuals,' she continued

Changing the mindset: 'I served my time of incarceration. It's not for the money. It's more about if we can change the mindset of young girls out there. There's no rewards in the end (for crime),' Roberta said

'They will see the harsh reality of crime. Bringing up kids without their dads around, visiting prisons every week isn't a fun game,' she added.

When quizzed by Dave, 46, on whether she had to take breaks between filming, to attend to criminal business, Roberta laughed off the suggestion.

'Come on! It's been a long time ago. There's no business. Australia has to see me out there with my little boy that has autism, getting him ready for school, the struggles of day-to-day life.'

Former love: Roberta is the wife of the late Carl Williams (pictured), a convicted murderer and drug trafficker

Headlines: Carl was sentenced to life imprisonment for ordering the murders of three people, and conspiracy to commit a fourth. In April 2010, Carl was beaten to death at Barwon Prison in Victoria, by inmate Matthew Charles Johnson

Insisting she's a changed woman, Roberta told Kate: 'It's my life. My boy's (Giuseppe, whom she shares with Robert Carpenter) got a disability. Today I was just sitting at my computer, sending an email to Kmart. We're donating 30 bicycles to my little boy's autism school because they need new ones.'

Despite claiming that Mob Wives is centred around a group of girls hanging out together, Roberta did state that not all has been smooth sailing between her co-stars.

'I don't see myself getting along very well with her,' she said of Raquael Villani, the 39-year-old daughter of Melbourne underworld figure Pasquale Villani.

Co-stars: Roberta stars alongside Raquael Villani, the 39-year-old daughter of Melbourne underworld figure Pasquale Villani

Mob Wives will feature Roberta, Raquael, socialite Lisa Candido, 39, Stefani Samac, the 21-year-old daughter of convicted drug smuggler Tomislav Samac, Analya Diaz, the ex-girlfriend of Roberta Williams' son Tye Stephens and Leyla Yavuz, 36, the on-off girlfriend of former Kings Cross kingpin Bill Bayeh.

Roberta became a household name after her late husband, convicted murderer and drug trafficker Carl Williams' life, was turned into the first Underbelly series in 2008.

The series saw the transformation of Carl Williams from a harmless driver into one of Australia's most notorious drug kingpins.

Family ties: Carl married Roberta, a convicted drug trafficker, and share a daughter together, Dhakota, born in March 2001

Carl was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2007 for ordering the murders of three people, and conspiracy to commit a fourth.

In April 2010, Carl was beaten to death at Barwon Prison in Victoria, by inmate Matthew Charles Johnson.

Carl married Roberta, a convicted drug trafficker, and share a daughter together, Dhakota, born in March 2001.

Roberta served her own six-month jail term for trafficking $100,000 worth of ecstasy in 2004.
North Dakota's economy has remained resilient since commodity prices fell by half two years ago, and the shortage of workers has remained the biggest challenge to our employers. The Williston Basin Petroleum Conference and the newly unveiled North Dakota Petroleum Council ad campaign highlighted the immense workforce needs and opportunities in the Bakken, a situation shared across North Dakota.

When our economy hit the downturn, our employment rate barely budged, rising from a low of 2.6 percent in October 2014 to a high of 3.2 percent in April 2016. Compare that figure to the nation's highest unemployment rate of 10 percent after the 2008 recession. It is clear that our labor force is tapped in North Dakota and it is the greatest challenge to our continued economic growth. We can only grow the workforce by keeping our own young adults and through attracting new, largely young adults to our state. To accomplish either, we must be intentional and strategic in many of our public investments and efforts.

This includes our education system at the primary, secondary and post-secondary levels. To achieve our best prospects, a strong basis in science, technology and math is needed. This holds true whatever a student pursues from the trades to PhD. programs. The best jobs of the future will be in the advanced trades and in engineering/computer science fields. Farming and ranching will become even more precision-oriented, depending on technology to increase production and competitiveness. All require strong STEM programs.

North Dakota is doing many things right. We have expanded advanced placement courses in our high schools and, despite budget cuts, our higher education programs in engineering and computer science are effective and answering much of the private sector's needs. However, theres more we can do to expand access to STEM education, and modify how such education is delivered.

First, small school systems need to develop their abilities to deliver STEM education. Small student and faculty sizes make it a challenge to develop specialized programs, whether it be advanced placement courses or trade and technical programs. They will need to work among themselves, with larger districts and with the state for solutions. The drone camp for students put on by public and private leaders in Tioga is a shining example of a creative way to capture students' imaginations with the jobs of the future. Through collaboration among school districts, we can provide students with many new experiences, such as robotics, the arts and more.

We need pathways to degrees that fall outside the traditional campus and semester models. Our technical schools, Bismarck State College and North Dakota State College of Science at the forefront, have done a great job creating programs geared to new jobs. Now we need pathways to career advancement, where white- and blue-collar workers can advance their knowledge continuously at all levels of education, including associate, bachelor and graduate degrees, as well as non-degree and certificate tracks.

We need to blend technical education into the liberal arts. Skills learned next to a liberal arts education open new pathways that can solve society's challenge of college graduates not holding the skills needed for a job. For instance, journalism students can benefit immensely from training in intermediate programming and graphic design.

The continued development of our workforce and North Dakota's competitive edge depends on these programs. I am proud to be a North Dakotan who is a part of the oil and gas industry. It is clear that the Bakken will continue to grow, adding as many as 50,000-70,000 more oil and gas jobs in the coming decades. The eastern and central regions of the state will likewise continue to grow. We need these solutions to educate and train our own children and attract new families to our state.

North Dakota has a reputation for raising citizens with strong work ethic and character. We must commit to providing them with the education needed for the world's faster-changing and more-technical careers.
It has been described as the most important and influential rock and roll album ever recorded.

Winning four Grammys and selling millions of copies worldwide, the Beatles iconic Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band was received to almost unanimous acclaim.

Unanimous, that is, bar one lone voice  American music critic Richard Goldstein.

Fifty years on from his damning appraisal for the New York Times  in which he infamously labelled the album an undistinguished collection of work  the 73-year-old reviewer has apologised for his remarks, blaming faulty speakers.

He said: Yes, I have changed my mind; I think all critics should revisit their opinions periodically, and my view of this album has changed.

Richard Goldstein has apologised for his remarks about Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - 50 years on

I now see it as immensely important in the history of pop music, a prophetic work released six years before the word postmodernism was even coined, and a major statement of psychedelic values.

[But] my speakers werent working properly, so I missed a lot of the stereo effects.

I was a rock purist as a young man, quite rigid in my loyalties. I wanted the Beatles to go back to their roots, and in retrospect I think that made me more conservative than the Beatles were. As Bob Dylan once wrote, I was so much older then, Im younger than that now.

Goldsteins backtracking comes on the anniversary of Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Bands release, and in the week it has once again reached the top of the UK charts.

The third best-selling British studio album of all-time, the seminal 1967 record was an instant hit with fans on both sides of the pond.

An important work of British psychedelia, it incorporated a range of stylistic influences, including vaudeville, circus, music hall, pop, rock and Indian classical music.

Billed as the first art rock concept LP, it was an immediate commercial success, spending 27 weeks at the top of the UK albums chart and 15 weeks at number one Stateside.

The third best-selling British studio album of all-time, the seminal 1967 record was an instant hit with fans on both sides of the pond

In 2003 Rolling Stone magazine ranked it number one in its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, and it has sold over 34 million copies globally.

However, Goldstein was not a fan.

Comparing the album to a spoiled and over-attended child, and he blasted it for being over-produced.

His negative review of Sgt. Pepper led to hundreds of irate fans sending hate mail, whilst he was publicly labelled a fascist by one radical student.

Last night he added: Over the years, a number of rock critics have agreed with my original opinion, but at the time I was alone.

One critic in the 60s, Kenneth Tynan, called the album a decisive moment in the history of Western civilization, and I was the subject of hundreds of angry letters sent to my editor at The New York Times.

The whole thing struck me as bizarre, and it still does, but being a young man with an all-too-strong ego, I set out to defend myself.

'At this point, I think the debate over the albums merits is the greatest homage to it.

Apparently Paul McCartney still remembers my negative review. Its a bit like King Solomon objecting to a pan of the Bible.

'Theres no truth about a musical worktheres only a consensus. So I think Paul should be satisfied with that.
There was drama aplenty on Tuesday's installment of Love Island when Jessica deliberately chose to upset Montana by picking her partner Dom to couple up with.

And Kady McDermott, a fan favourite contestant from last year's series, was up in arms about the sneaky move as she watched the scenes unfold from the comfort of her sofa.

The petite brunette took umbrage to Jess' sneaky decision, revealing she was firmly on team Montana.

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Controversial contestant: On Tuesday's installment of Love Island, viewers saw the fallout from Jessica deliberately choosing to upset Montana by stealing her partner Dom to couple up with

Speaking to The Sun Online, Kady declared: 'She was a d*** saying shes going to take Dom to piss Montana off... She didnt have to be a b***h about it.

'Its like she loved having the power and she was like, "Oh Im going to do it to piss Montana off". I dont like that.'

Jessica chose to pick Dom after it was unveiled Montana had been seeing her ex-boyfriend at the same time as her.

No girl code! Kady McDermott, a fan favourite contestant from last year's series, was up in arms about the sneaky move

Oh my! Montana and Dom spent an entire day locking lips in secret - but he was also tempted by flirty brunette Jess

Kady weighed in on the excitement as the drama unfolded, giving her opinion on the new batch of contestants.

'I didn't know marcel was in the blazing squad?', she joked, as the confident music producer name dropped his former band for the hundredth time.

'Has camilla lost her voice or something? She seems sweet I want her to talk more! #LoveIsland', she said of quiet but sweet contestant Camilla.

Watching from her bed: Kady weighed in on the excitement as the drama unfolded, giving her opinion on the new batch of contestants

Monday night's launch show saw Jessica, who was introduced as a bombshell who was forced to split up one couple, realise Montana was once texting the same boy as her on the outside world - leading to widespread suspicions she was preparing to exact revenge.

When the five couples were paired together on the launch night, sexy Jessica was soon introduced in a shock move leading to Montana's fears she was after her man - confirmed on Tuesday night's episode.

She referenced their shared romantic history as she said: 'I just think its extra awkward because we already have history of going for the same guys', after which Jessica made the predictable decision to nab Dom.

Twitter reaction: 'I didn't know marcel was in the blazing squad?', she joked, as the confident music producer name dropped his former band for the hundredth time

Show of support: After poor Harley was pied by Amber, Kady showed her support for him

Montana then received a message reading: 'Montana, you are now single. In a few days everyone except Jessica and Dom will have the chance to recouple. The Islander not chosen in that recoupling will be dumped from the Island. #alltoplayfor #getgrafting'.

In the midst of her fears she then grew more candid about her opinion of Jessica: 'I just think if youre going to do that, fair enough I know shes in a really tricky situation, she has to pick someone, it is really difficult...

'But me and Dom are the only couple that actually like each other. Come on, if I had to steal someone, I would not go ahead and just do that. Point blank. I think thats really mean.'

Close: Dom and Montana cosied up on the episode (above), before he embarked on a steamy date with his new partner Jessica

Fuming: Monday night's launch show saw Jessica, who was introduced as a bombshell who was forced to split up one couple, realise Montana was once texting the same boy as her - leading to widespread suspicions she was preparing to exact revenge

Oh dear... When the five couples were paired together on the launch night, sexy Jessica was soon introduced in a shock move leading to Montana's fears she was after her man - confirmed on Tuesday night's episode

Trying and ultimately failing to diffuse the situation, Jessica spoke to Montana about her choice: 'Honestly babe, I feel bad doing it. I played with it all morning in my head and I literally had to go right if I was here yesterday, who would I have stepped forward for?'

Responding to the words, she said: 'Yeah I know but Dom did say dont pick me, because he was happy with me'.

Jessica went on: 'I know but it was down to my choice. I cant choose someone else and be inauthentic, because its gonna happen. Were all playing a game. I am sorry, no hard feelings.'

Hurtful: 'But me and Dom are the only couple that actually like each other. Come on, if I had to steal someone, I would not go ahead and just do that. Point blank. I think thats really mean.'

Chilling out: Trying and ultimately failing to diffuse the situation, Jessica spoke to Montana about her choice: 'Honestly babe, I feel bad doing it. I played with it all morning in my head and I literally had to go right if I was here yesterday, who would I have stepped forward for?'

Jessica later took to the Beach Hut to voice her feelings: 'Montana hates my guts doesnt she. Literally hates them. But Id make the same decision again.'

Montana meanwhile also headed to the shack as she said: 'They need to now spend some quality time together. Well, not quality, Id say five minutes tops. And then hopefully Dom will be like: "Do you know what, I want to go back to my steak at home." And then Ill be there. On the sofa. On my own.'

Seizing her opportunity at sweet revenge, when the day's task was a snogging challenge, Montana was quick to get steamy with Dom, later saying: 'I felt a bit awkward at first. Thats a bit bitchy of me. Then I was like nah, she didnt care about my feelings so'.

Whoops: Jessica later took to the Beach Hut to voice her feelings: 'Montana hates my guts doesnt she. Literally hates them. But Id make the same decision again'

Date time! Adding further to her woes, Jessica then received a text reading: 'Jessica, you and Dom are about to go on a date. #firstdatenerves #oneonone'

Over the moon: Undoubtedly to Montana's chagrin, Dom said of the date: 'Im buzzing to go on a date with Jessica. Give us a chance to get to know each other'

Away from the regimented kisses in the challenge, the couple later started kissing in secret throughout the day - despite his pairing with Jessica. She then warned her former partner: 'If you share a bed with Jess, which I think you probably should, but if someone new comes in youve got to be prepared for me to do the same.'

Adding further to her woes, Jessica then received a text reading: 'Jessica, you and Dom are about to go on a date. #firstdatenerves #oneonone'.

Undoubtedly to Montana's chagrin, Dom said of the date: 'Im buzzing to go on a date with Jessica. Give us a chance to get to know each other.

'On a level without anyone else around. Well see how she really feels, because obviously shes picked the person shes most attracted to. At the moment my head and my heart are saying Montana. 24 hours in this place is like a lifetime, so well just see.'

Up close: 'On a level without anyone else around. Well see how she really feels, because obviously shes picked the person shes most attracted to. At the moment my head and my heart are saying Montana. 24 hours in this place is like a lifetime, so well just see'

Having a ball: Dom appeared particularly enamored with the buxom brunette during their dinner

Close:Jessica was equally eager for alone time with her co-star: 'Do you know what, Im so excited to go on a first date. Im actually really excited for it to be with Dom'

Jessica was equally eager for alone time with her co-star: 'Do you know what, Im so excited to go on a first date. Im actually really excited for it to be with Dom, because I feel like in the villa hes putting on a certain persona or hes coming across a certain way. Remove him from the group, and Ill see what hes like.'

Fuming Jessica later bared her heart as she said: 'She has effectively stolen my goods. Shes gone to my home and shes taken my prize possession. I think I should trust Dom but for some reason Im like youre lying.

While Dom promised he could be trusted he soon showed his true colours as he said: 'That date was a game changer', having told Jessica: 'You do look ridiculously beautiful tonight.

Not cool: While Dom promised he could be trusted he soon showed his true colours as he said: 'That date was a game changer', having told Jessica: 'You do look ridiculously beautiful tonight'

Cheeky! Enraged Montana took Jessica aside to say: 'I just thought the way you went about it was really sneaky. The fact that he was even an option. I would have preferred for you to say I dont know who Im going to be pick, Dom is in the running.

'We make a great couple... A power couple. This is the best first date Ive ever had to be fair. Ive really enjoyed it. Im looking forward to seeing where it goes.'

Enraged Montana took Jessica aside to say: 'I just thought the way you went about it was really sneaky. The fact that he was even an option. I would have preferred for you to say I dont know who Im going to be pick, Dom is in the running.

'It sets us off on the wrong foot. Especially with our history. I think that was really rogue for you to go for the one guy that was like dont pick me.'

Love Island is on ITV2 this evening at 9pm.

Pucker up! Meanwhile things got steamy between the other contestants as they enjoyed a game of spin the bottle by the pool

Onto the next! During the game, Jessica was seen smooching Harley

My turn: Elsewhere Kem (centre) set his sights on Amber, enlisting Olivia and Marcel for advice
She launched her fashion and lifestyle company Draper James in 2015.

And two years later, Reese Witherspoon celebrated the new NET-A-PORTER X Draper James collection - with her mini me daughter Ava Phillippe.

Reese, 41, and Ava, 17, dressed in pieces from the collection for the Beverly Hills event on Tuesday.

Beautiful ladies: Reese Witherspoon celebrated the new NET-A-PORTER X Draper James collection - with her mini me daughter Ava Phillippe

Reese, who welcomed Ava in 1999 with ex-husband Ryan Phillippe, looked pretty as a picture in her patterned frock.

The Legally Blonde actress chose a navy, white and yellow floral pattered number; the look is the $550 NET-A-PORTER X Draper James Embroidered Magnolia dress.

Reese styled her flirty frock with neutral bow tie heels and hoop earrings.

The mother of three, who just reached 10 million followers on Instagram, wore her blonde tresses in waves, opting for a deep side part.

Wow: Reese, 41, dressed in pieces from the collection for the Beverly Hills event on Tuesday

Playful: The Legally Blonde actress chose the navy, white and yellow floral pattered frock - the $550 NET-A-PORTER X Draper James Embroidered Magnolia dress

Shining star: The mother of three, who just reached 10 million followers on Instagram, wore her blonde tresses in waves, opting for a deep side part

Her daughter Ava cut a stylish figure in a blue and white version of the Dolly Check Maxi Dress from the collection, which is only available on the website in red for $450.

The teenager sported similarly styled locks as Reese with just a hint of makeup, revealing her natural beauty.

Camila Alves, wife of Mathew McConaughey, stunned in a pretty floral dress from the line.

Looking like the belle of the ball: Her daughter Ava cut a stylish figure in a blue and white version of the Dolly Check Maxi Dress from the collection

Her mini me! The teenager sported similarly styled locks as Reese with just a hint of makeup, revealing her natural beauty

What a beauty: Camila Alves, wife of Mathew McConaughey, stunned in a pretty floral dress from the line

The $360 dress highlighted the Camila's fit figure as well as gave a peek at her toned legs.

Jennifer Garner arrived to the bash in a colorful summer dress from the line.

The former Alias star, 45, wowed in the NET-A-Porter X Draper James Pineapple halter dress, which retails for $400.

Fun: Camila finished off the floral look with lace up heels and a thin belt; pictured with Reese

Having a bit of fun: The $360 dress highlighted the star's fit figure as well as gave a peek at her toned legs; pictured with Reese

Ready for summer: Jennifer Garner arrived to the bash in a colorful summer dress from the line; with Camila and Reese

Glowing: The former Alias star wowed in the NET-A-Porter X Draper James Pineapple halter dress, which retails for $400; with Lucy Yeomans and Reese

What a natural beauty: Jennifer wore the pineapple emblazoned frock with black strappy heels and delicate jewelry

Flawless: The mother of three styled her locks in loose waves, adding pink lip liner to her pout

Molly Sims chose the same dress as Ava, opting for the red version.

The former model, who welcomed her third child Grey in January, paired the maxi dress with gladiator sandals, bangles and reflective sunglasses.

She styled her blonde locks sleek and center parted.

Rachel Zoe arrived to the event looking stylish, although not in designs by Draper James.

The star chose a seventies inspired dress with a suede jacket layered on top.

Glowing: Molly Sims chose the same dress as Ava, opting for the red version

Incredible: The former model, who welcomed her third child Grey in January, paired the maxi dress with gladiator sandals, bangles and reflective sunglasses

Model looks: She styled her blonde locks sleek and center parted; with Camila

Strike a pose: Molly kept her makeup to a minimum; with Lucy

Chic: Rachel Zoe arrived to the event looking stylish, although not in designs by Draper James

Smiles all around: The star chose a seventies inspired dress with a suede jacket layered on top

Ali Larter embraced her boho side in an eyelet dress, which featured flared sleeves and sheer elements.

The beauty, who co-starred with Reese in the 2001 film Legally Blonde, kept her makeup and hair casual.

Late night TV host Chelsea Handler opted to forgo Draper James designs and rocked a patterned black and white dress with booties.

Keeping it carefree: Ali Larter embraced her boho side in the eyelet dress, which featured flared sleeves and sheer elements

Edgy: Late night TV host Chelsea Handler opted to forgo Draper James designs

Beaming: She rocked a patterend black and white dress with booties

Looking good ladies: Reese later posed with Molly and friends at the Beverly Hills bash

Camera ready: The Golden Globe winner commanded attention in pastel pineapple print midi dress from the collection which teased at her slender pins as she posed for a number of snaps

Reese's pieces: The terrific twosome were wearing dresses from the actress' label

Good golly Miss Molly: Sims appeared to be wearing a dress made from a tablecloth

Reese founded her clothing and lifestyle company Draper James in 2015; she opened her flagship store in Nashville, Tennessee in October of that same year.

The movie star opened two more locations - one in Dallas, Texas and a second in Lexington, Kentucky.

Draper James is a nod to her Southern roots and upbringing; Reese was born in New Orleans, Louisiana and raised in Tennessee.

In May, Reese announced on Instagram that Draper James is now available in 15 Nordstrom department stores across the US as well as nordstrom.com.

Reese is mom to three kids: Ava and Deacon, 13, with ex husband Ryan Phillippe and four-year-old Tennessee with husband Jim Toth.

Beauties: Reese and Jennifer led the A list attendees in the floral ensembles

Model behaviour: Molly Sims and Camilla Alves put on a colourful display

Pretty ladies: Reese and Ava looked lovely in their colorful looks

Enjoying her day: Camila appeared to be having a great time at the bash, with Reese sharing it to Snapchat

Pucker up: The ladies blew kisses to the camera on her Snapchat

Staying close: Reese held tight to flowers as she enjoyed her time at the outdoor bash

Good friends: The star posted a snap of Ali as she enjoyed her time at the launch party

Summertime fun: Molly posed with a fan in her hand, in the same pattern as Camila's dress

Reese, Molly and Camila posed for a picture in front of the pool as well during the event

Views: Reese showed off her bowtie heels and red nail polish for a shoe selfie with friends

Wuite the refresher: The event had Southern inspired drinks for the attendees
He's been married to wife Sylvie for 23 years.

And it appears Larry Emdur was left to his own devices in their home on Tuesday, when he attempted to whip up a 'bachelor life' dinner for one.

The 52-year-old created a 'Chinese-Italian fusion' dish and posted it to his Instagram in an hilarious challenge to My Kitchen Rules judges Manu Feildel and Pete Evans.

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'Sang Choy Bow-lognaise': Larry Emdur created a 'Chinese-Italian fusion' dish and posted it to his Instagram on Tuesday

On a wood cutting board, The Morning Show co-host presented a meal comprised of two lettuce leaves filled with bolognaise and grated cheese on top.

'Sang Choy Bow-lognaise, my Chinese-Italian fusion,' he described the photo.

'Bite Me M.K.R!' he continued in reference to the cooking reality show, tagging its judges and celebrity chefs Manu Feildel and Pete Evans.

'Bite Me M.K.R!' He challenged My Kitchen Rules judges Manu Feildel and Pete Evans. He is pictured here with Aussie chef Curtis Stone

Cooking up: The 52-year-old was left to his own devices in his and Sylvie's home on Tuesday when he attempted to whip up a 'bachelor life' dinner for one

'It's so good I might open a restaurant called Papa's Golden Dragon,' he raved and added the hashtags '#bachelorlife', '#survivor' and '#comehomesylvie'.

Friends and fans of the popular television presenter rushed to the snap's comments section to leave their observations on the interesting dish.

'Looks good mate!' remarked pop star Guy Sebastian.

'It's so good I might open a restaurant called Papa's Golden Dragon,' he raved and added the hashtags '#bachelorlife', '#survivor' and '#comehomesylvie'

'Those chefs have nothing on you, Larry Emdur! Nice one,' added a supporter.

'That looks like a 10/10 for a tasty low carb dinner,' noted another.

Meanwhile others weren't so kind, with one Instagram user writing:

'What a bloody mess @larryemdur' while another remarked 'Oh gosh. I think even my dog would turn this down'.

The veteran media personality has two children with wife Sylvie, son Jye and daughter Tia.
In recent weeks Michelle Marsh, 31, has been teasing the identity of her new boyfriend - who had been named in the media as Adam Medwick.

And the Married At First Sight star appeared very much in love with her firefighter beau at Perth Airport on Sunday.

The couple were bidding a fond farewell to Michelle's twin sister Sharon Marsh, who jetted to Melbourne to be with 'TV husband' Nick Furphy.

Tatt-ta for now! MAFS' Michelle Marsh (second left), 31, and new inked-up beau Adam Medwick, bid farewell to her twin sister Sharon Marsh (second right), at Perth Airport on Sunday

Michelle showed off her penchant for style at the airport terminal.

A blush-hued top highlighted her delicate decolletage and she tucked the blouse into a pair of black shorts that revealed her toned legs.

Black ankle boots and a neutral clutch coordinated nicely.

Her blonde locks falling effortlessly, Michelle sported a minimal makeup palette, allowing her natural beauty to shine through.

Effortlessly chic: Michelle showed off her penchant for style. A blush-hued top highlighted her delicate decolletage, tucked into a pair of black shorts that revealed her toned legs

Picture of content: Embracing new boyfriend Adam, the reality star appeared very much in love

The reality star embraced new beau Adam, who cut a casual figure for the outing.

The firefighter and father-of-one donned a white T-shirt that revealed his heavily tattooed arm.

Adam teamed the look with black slim-fitting jeans and coordinating sneakers.

The newly-debuted couple bid a fond farewell to Michelle's twin sister Sharon Marsh, who was heading to Melbourne to move in with her 'TV husband' Nick Furphy, 29.

Low-key: Adam, a firefighter and father-of-one, donned a white T-shirt that revealed his heavily tattooed arm, teamed with black jeans and coordinating sneakers

Sharon showed off her slender frame in a black tank top, tucked into skinny leg jeans.

A red plaid button-up shirt was tied around her hips with black Converse trainers and a fringed shoulder bag finishing off the look.

The business owner's blonde locks were styled straight, framing a minimally made-up complexion.

The sighting proves that all is going swimmingly between Sharon and Nick.

In May this year, the smitten couple revealed their plans to have children and legally wed within a year.

Whirlwind romance: The newly-debuted couple bid a fond farewell to Michelle's twin sister Sharon Marsh, who was heading to Melbourne to move in with her 'TV husband' Nick Furphy (pictured), 29

Expanding the brood: The reality star couple told OK! magazine in May this year, that they would like 'two or three' children, with the Perth-born beauty hoping for twins

The reality star couple told OK! magazine they would like 'two or three' children, with the Perth-born beauty hoping for twins.

'I hope I have twins,' Sharon gushed to the publication.

Content with how their whirlwind romance is progressing, Sharon revealed she wants to tie the knot 'soon'.

'If it all goes well I'd probably give it a year,' Nick added.

Meanwhile, things appear to be going just as smoothly for Michelle and Adam.

Michelle told Perth Now last month: 'He is just everything that I would want in a man.

Loved-up: Meanwhile, things appear to be going just as smoothly for Michelle and Adam. Michelle told Perth Now last month: 'He is just everything that I would want in a man'

'He's extremely complimentary, thoughtful, he's kind, he's the man, he wants to look after me, he makes me feel safe,' she continued.

Previously, Michelle had been sharing several photos of Adam, showing only parts of his face or body.

In late April, Michelle posted two loved-up snaps with a very tattooed man at the beach, both of which are now believed to be photos of her new man Adam.

'My days are better because of this one,' she captioned one photo of the couple kissing, posed in mid May.
She's the outspoken Real Housewives Of Sydney star who is known for her controversial comments.

And Lisa Oldfield was at it again as she took to Instagram On Wednesday to request someone to warm her pearls.

The 41-year-old uploaded a picture of herself holding a string of giant pearls with the caption: 'At the risk of sounding utterly bourgeois and a t**t is there such thing as a pearl warmer?'

Making headlines! Lisa Oldfield took to Instagram On Wednesday to request someone to warm her pearls

'Nothing worse': The 41-year-old uploaded a picture of herself holding a string of giant pearls with the caption: 'At the risk of sounding utterly bourgeois and a t**t is there such thing as a pearl warmer?'

'Nothing worse than putting cold pearls on a winter day,' she added with the hashtags #firstworldproblems #iamtwat.

Several of her followers suggested she try a hairdryer or to put them in her pants.

The wife of David Oldfield is no strange to obscure posts.

Lisa recently shared an offensive meme about people's annoying behaviour on Facebook.

'Is anything she does ever tasteful? ' Lisa recently upset fans on after sharing a bizarre Instagram post about waterboarding

Her post referred to the waterboarding torture method used at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, which upset some of her fans.

The meme read: 'Your fate if you add me to your stupid Facebook groups or send me unsolicited game requests. Get f**ked'.

While the post attracted several 'likes', one of Lisa's Instagram followers wrote angrily: 'Truly? This is distasteful.'

Another fan replied: 'Is anything she does ever tasteful?'

Lisa told Daily Mail Australia she has asked people to stop adding her to Facebook groups that don't align with her own values in the past.

For example, she is an advocate of marriage equality - but Facebook friends have tried to add her to groups supporting Margaret Court.

Annoyed at the volume of requests, she said 'I was at the end of my tether, venting my frustration. They can stop following me on Instagram.'

She said the frequent group requests also distracts from her charity work.

Drama! Lisa's personal life, in particular her marriage to former One Nation politician David Oldfield, has been the focus of The Real Housewives Of Sydney

Lisa's personal life, in particular her marriage to former One Nation politician has been the focus of The Real Housewives Of Sydney.

The pair recently underwent 'couples therapy' on The Kyle And Jackie O Show and David was accused of 'emotionally cheating' with the nanny.

'I'm aware that David is deluded and thinks the nanny has a thing for him,' said Lisa, but her husband said her remarks were 'complete rubbish'.
She is a proud New Yorker and even prouder women's advocate.

And Amy Schumer combined the two as she was seen stepping out at the New York Women In Film And Television Designing Women Awards Gala on Tuesday.

The 35-year-old actress dazzled in a white gown that revealed her figure as she took to the podium for a speech.

Proud: Amy Schumer, 35, was seen stepping out at the New York Women In Film And Television Designing Women Awards Gala on Tuesday

The Snatched star looked absolutely ravishing in her form fitting dress that left little to the imagination.

As she mesmerized the crowd, Amy looked to be in great shape with her toned arms waving about to emphasize her speech.

She kept her signature blonde locks pulled back in a tight ponytail as she wore minimal make-up and let her natural beauty shine.

The star recently broke up with her boyfriend of 18 months, Ben Hanisch.

Vision in white: The actress dazzled in a white gown as she took to the podium for a speech

Stunner: The Snatched star looked absolutely ravishing in her form fitting dress that left little to the imagination

Talking pints: As she mesmerized the crowd, Amy looked to be in great shape with her toned arms waving about to emphasize her speech

The actress' rep told People that the duo 'ended their relationship after thoughtful consideration and remain friends.'

Amy and Ben, a Chicago based furniture designer, started dating in November 2015; they met on a dating app, according to the magazine.

She previously called her relationship 'just really easy,' during her interview with InStyle.

Born this way: She kept her signature blonde locks pulled back in a tight ponytail as she wore minimal make-up and let her natural beauty shine

Here's looking at you: Amy kept the crowd in stitches with her signature brand of comedy

Though things didn't work out between the duo Amy previously described Ben as the quintessential 'nice guy', calling him the 'perfect man for her' because he wasn't phased by her celebrity status.

Meanwhile, Rosario Dawson was also in attendance at the Women Awards Gala.

The 38-year-old star stunned in a strapless black gown that featured chic flowers embroidered across the top panel.

Star studded: Meanwhile, Rosario Dawson, 38, was also in attendance at the Designing Women Awards Gala

Modelesque: The star stunned in a strapless black gown that featured chic flowers embroidered across the top panel
They embarked on their worldwide tour last month to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Joshua Tree.

And Australian U2 fans have voiced their displeasure on social media, circulating a petition after being snubbed by the Irish rock band for the second time this year.

Announcing on Tuesday they had added more dates to their celebratory tour, Australia was left out in the cold, with the band instead opting to add concerts in Mexico and South America, as well as repeat shows in some US cities.

'I'm royally p**sed!' Australian U2 fans go into MELTDOWN after the Irish rock band snubs Down Under AGAIN while adding second US dates to their Joshua Tree tour

U2 fans were quick to jump on social media and voice their displeasure, with even overseas supporters joining the chorus of complaints.

'Not even from Australia but I'm royally p**sed at @u2. Classy,' one person tweeted.

Another fan tried to stay optimistic, remarking: 'Stoked that dates have been announced for @u2 in South America. Just hoping news abt Australia & NZ is coming too [sic].'

They've been waiting! It's been a long break between songs, with the last time the band toured Australia was in 2010

Not pleased: U2 fans were quick to jump on social media and voice their displeasure, with even overseas supporters joining the chorus of complaints

What about us? While some fans held out hopes they would be included eventually, others voiced their displeasure online

Meanwhile some outraged fans have begun circulating an online petition to U2 and their Australian promoters Live Nation, demanding they schedule dates here.

It's been a long break between songs, with the last time the band toured Australia was in 2010.

In January, U2 announced it will play in American cities and Europe to celebrate the album's 30th anniversary.

Taking matters into their own hands: Some outraged fans have begun circulating an online petition to U2 and their Australian promoters Live Nation, demanding they schedule dates here.

The band will be play the iconic album, which contains hits such as Where the Streets Have No Name, in its entirety each night.

U2 previously revealed they had decided to tour again because history was repeating itself.

'It seems like we have come full circle from when The Joshua Tree songs were originally written, with global upheaval, extreme right wing politics and some fundamental human rights at risk,' said lead guitarist The Edge.
They're one of the hottest electronic dance duos, who know how to get the crowd going.

But on Wednesday, Peking Duk left fans repulsed while taking part in the 'Cockroach Pipe Challenge' live on the Kyle and Jackie O show.

Australian music producer Reuben Styles squirmed after his bandmate Adam Hyde blew a cockroach into his mouth while KIIS FM radio host Jackie 'O' Henderson could be heard screaming in disgust.

Repulsed: Jackie 'O' Henderson was left screaming in disgust after Peking Duk took part in the 'Cockroach Pipe Challenge' on Wednesday's edition of the Kyle and Jackie O show

'Oh my God, this cockroach is hanging there in the middle,' Jackie said during the stomach-turning challenge.

'It's going towards Reuben, Reuben it's in your mouth! Oh my God! I've never seen a man jump so far.'

Jackie's equally as horrified co-host Kyle Sandilands was watching the madness live via video in London.

Ready, set, gross! 'Oh my God, this cockroach is hanging there in the middle,' Jackie said as the duo kicked off the stomach-turning challenge

Getting closer: Within seconds Adam blew harder than Reuben, causing the cockroach to inch closer to his mouth

'He copped it in the mouth!' Reuben jokingly collapsed to the floor after Adam blew the insect into his mouth

'He copped it in the mouth!' the shock jock said.

Earlier, Reuben and Adam were hesitant about doing the challenge, which sees two people trying to blow a cockroach into the other's mouth by blowing into a clear tube.

'That is a big cockroach man... Jesus that thing has been fed steroids,' Adam said as Reuben let out a big yelp.

Yuck: 'Oh my God! I've never seen a man jump so far,' said Jackie

Watching from abroad: Kyle watched the madness live from London

Jackie then explained the rules: 'You guys have to put your mouths on either end of the pipe and blow.

The pair eventually got down to business and within second, Reuben jokingly collapsed to the floor after Adam blew the insect into his mouth.

The video was instantly viewed and shared by hundreds of fans on social media.

'Everything is fake': Music stars Peking Duk said social media is deceptive, with '90% of people's Instagram feed nothing... of what they're actually doing in real life'

Last week, the pair slammed social media stars, claiming everything we see online is 'fake.'

Speaking with The Daily Telegraph Reuben claimed that: 'People often do things just so they can post on social media.'

Meanwhile, fellow Peking Duk star Adam insisted that: 'If you look at 90 per cent of people's Instagram feed, nothing is of what they're actually doing'.

Globetrotters: Peking Duk frequently post travel photos from across the world

The musicians also revealed that the idea of online trickery inspired their latest track, Fake Magic, with the video clip shot in Los Angeles.

However, the stars did confess that they find themselves tempted to portray their best selves online on occasion.

Well-traveled: The pair pictured in Queenstown, New Zealand

The duo's Instagram account features curated images of the pair as they jet set around the world, with pictures taken on the streets of London, rooftops of New York and ski fields of Canada.

The funnymen also frequently share comedic snaps of themselves with their 60,000 followers.

In one post the shaggy-haired stars joked that they are the parents of Game of Thrones character Jon Snow.

'You know nothing Jon Snow!' In addition to travel photos, the duo share humorous snaps

But despite their branded social media image, Peking Duk insist they love the simple things, with their new single a testament to focusing on 'actual beauty'.

The ARIA Award winners will play at Sydney's Ministry of Sound event on June 10.

The duo will also play Byron Bay's upcoming Splendour In The Grass festival next month.
She plays Senior Constable Katrina Chapman on Home and Away.

And Pia Miller was spotted filming dramatic scenes for the long-running soap on Tuesday, which involved her popular character being kidnapped.

The 33-year-old was on set at Palm Beach with on-screen love interest Jake Ryan, who is new to the series, guest actor Mirko Grillini and veteran star Ray Meagher.

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Tense: Pia Miller was spotted filming dramatic scenes for the long-running soap on Tuesday, which involved her popular character being kidnapped

The stunning actress was seen out of her police uniform and dressed down in a white track jacket, orange singlet and ripped jeans.

She wore her hair back in a messy ponytail and her face was made up with a natural makeup palette.

Her character appeared to wrestle with her kidnapper, played by Mirko Grillini, who was last seen on the series back in 2010 named 'Killer' in a similarly sinister role.

Dramatic: The 33-year-old was on set at Palm Beach with on-screen love interest Jake Ryan, who is new to the series, guest actor Mirko Grillini and veteran star Ray Meagher

Casual: The stunning actress was seen out of her police uniform and dressed down in a white track jacket, orange singlet and ripped jeans

In character: She plays Senior Constable Katrina Chapman on Home and Away

Subdued: She wore her hair back in a messy ponytail and her face was made up with a natural makeup palette

His unshaven character sternly grabbed Pia and lead her towards a police car parked next to a bright yellow dinghy.

The twosome were then seen in a tense argument, with the kidnapper holding Pia against the small boat and pointing his finger in her face.

He then physically pulled her into the passenger seat of the police car, with what appeared to be an injured police officer laid out on the ground next to them.

Severe: The twosome were then seen in a tense argument, with the kidnapper holding Pia against the small boat and pointing his finger in her face

Shocking: Her character appeared to wrestle with her kidnapper, played by Mirko Grillini, who was last seen on the series back in 2010 named 'Killer' in a similarly sinister role

Rough: His unshaven character sternly grabbed Pia and lead her towards a police car parked next to a bright yellow dinghy

Violent: He then physically pulled her into the passenger seat of the police car, with what appeared to be a slain police officer injured out on the ground next to them

At one dramatic point the kidnapper looked to drag the unconscious or dead cop out of his seat as he motioned for Pia's character to get inside the car.

Dressed in a grey hoodie, black suede jacket and dark blue jeans, the actor emphatically picked up the lifeless body as Pia's character watched on in horror.

She was then seen in the arms of Jake Ryan's character, who recently joined the series.

Harsh: The kidnapper holds onto Pia Miller's character Kat Chapman's arm as he leads her into the police car, with the apparently slain cop laid out on the ground

Vicious: The actress's character Kat Chapman, a kidnapped police officer, is forced into the car by her kidnapper

Physical: At one dramatic point the kidnapper looked to drag the unconscious or dead cop out of his seat as he motioned for Pia's character to get inside the car

Heated: Dressed in a grey hoodie, black suede jacket and dark blue jeans, the actor emphatically picked up the lifeless body as Pia's character watched on in horror

The actress's on-screen love interest up until recently has been the character Martin 'Ash' Ashford, but Jake's character is her new flame on the show.

The attractive pair were seen filming their first scenes together back in March, where they were spotted looking close.

The Melbourne-born hunk, 33, was captured running around the Palm Beach set looking for Pia's kidnapped character, whose whereabouts were unknown.

Getting along: She was then seen in the arms of Jake Ryan's character, who recently joined the series

Switching up: The actress's on-screen love interest up until recently has been the character Martin 'Ash' Ashford, but Jake's character is her new flame on the show

Chemistry: The attractive pair were seen filming their first scenes together back in March, where they were spotted looking close

Dressed down: Pia donned a black bomber jacket to ward off the Sydney winter chill

Dressed in a black singlet, fitted denim shirt, black pants and sneakers, the toned actor ran through bushland towards his new on-screen love.

Jake's list of film credits include Baz Luhrman's The Great Gatsby and recent Australian mini-series Wolf Creek.

The real-life father of four was seen preparing for his scenes with the show's hair and makeup team, before sprinting towards the drama at the police car.

Veteran: Longtime series regular Ray Meagher, who plays Alf Stewart, was seen on-set

Grooming: The real-life father of four was seen preparing for his scenes with the show's hair and makeup team, before sprinting towards the drama at the police car

Sprint: The Melbourne-born hunk, 33, was captured running around the Palm Beach set looking for Pia's kidnapped character, whose whereabouts were unknown

On the move: Dressed in a black singlet, fitted denim shirt, black pants and sneakers, the toned actor ran through bushland towards his new on-screen love

Acclaimed: Jake's list of film credits include Baz Luhrman's The Great Gatsby and recent Australian mini-series Wolf Creek

Hunk: The strapping actor sported an unshaven look and tattoos for his role
She was supposed to be the star of the show.

But that did not stop Reese Witherspoon from playing the dutiful servant role by fanning her friend Camila Alves at a Draper James party in Beverly Hills on Tuesday.

The Brazilian model looked in seventh heaven as the Legally Blonde star kept her cool with the aid of a small fan.

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Must be a big fan: Camilla Alves got wafted down by Reese Witherspoon at her Draper James party in Beverly Hills on Tuesday

The professional clothehorse was certainly in the finest of form, and looked great as she cantered around the grassy area beside a swimming pool in a tasteful blue floral dress.

And, in a perfect fashion moment, the design was the perfect match for the fan used by the aspiring fashion mogul to cool down Camila.

Of course it all makes sense when one takes into account the fact the South American catwalk favourite was adorned in a dress from the Walk The Line favourite's label.

What a fan-tastic coincidence: The fine filly was adorned in a dress from the Walk The Line favourite's label

Lovely threesome: The dynamic duo were joined at the pool by Molly Sims

Braless Brazilian: The catwalk cutie seemed to have decided against wearing underwear

The dynamic duo became a threesome on two separate occasions, once when they posed with Ben Affleck's ex Jennifer Garner, and again when they cosied up to Molly Sims.

The Latina lovely's mingling with the stars is certainly a stunning success story.

For Mrs Matthew McConaughey revealed in 2013 she worked as a maid when she first came to the States at the age of 19, and that she could barely speak English at the time.

Garner-ing attention: The pair were then accosted by Ben Affleck's ex Jennifer

Reese's pieces: The terrific twosome were wearing dresses from the actress' label

Good golly Miss Molly: Sims appeared to be wearing a dress made from a tablecloth

A match maid in heaven: Mrs Matthew McConaughey previously revealed she worked as a domestic worker when she first came to the States at the age of 19

She said: 'My father always told me, "Before you become a queen you have to learn how to take care of your own things."

'So I knew how to do all of it, but I had never really done it on a daily basis. So I was cleaning houses and I started working restaurants.'

Camila grew up in a farming family in Belo Horizonte in Brazil, and at the age of 15 visited her aunt in California and decided she was not going back.

After years of hard work she started a career on modelling and has never looked back.

Beautiful ladies: Reese Witherspoon celebrated the new NET-A-PORTER X Draper James collection - with her mini me daughter Ava Phillippe

Camera ready: The Golden Globe winner commanded attention in pastel pineapple print midi dress from the collection which teased at her slender pins as she posed for a number of snaps

Pretty as a pineapple! Jennifer Garner, 45, was back to her old style tricks as she celebrated the new NET-A-PORTER X Draper James collection in Los Angeles on Tuesday night

Beauties: Reese and Jennifer led the A list attendees in the floral ensembles

Model behaviour: Molly Sims and Camilla Alves put on a colourful display

Blondes unite! The duo looked summer-ready in their ensembles

Fashion pack: The women put on a chic display as they posed for snaps at the event
She's the busty New Zealand glamour model, not shy in flaunting her ample curves.

And Playboy Playmate Amy Lee Summers left VERY little to the imagination during a photo shoot in Malibu, California, on Tuesday.

The buxom blonde revealed her generous bust and pert derriere in the skimpiest of bikinis.

Busting out! Playboy Playmate Amy Lee Summers, flaunted her ample assets in the skimpiest of bikinis, for a steamy beach photo shoot in Malibu, California, on Tuesday

Amy Lee flaunted her ample cleavage in a bandeau-style red bikini, that almost strained to contain her assets.

The lack of fabric also drew attention to her incredibly taut torso.

G-string briefs in a coordinating fabric highlighted her toned legs and pert derriere.

Posing up a storm: Running one hand playfully through her long tresses, the buxom blonde looked every inch the beach babe

Racy: The hairdresser flaunted her ample cleavage in a bandeau-style red bikini, that almost strained to contain her assets

Cheeky! G-string briefs in a coordinating fabric highlighted Amy Lee's toned legs and pert derriere

Running one hand playfully through her long blonde tresses, Amy Lee looked every inch the beach babe.

Opting for a glamorous makeup palette, the hairdresser showed off a bronzed complexion, defined brows, a false set of lashes, defined cheekbones and a coating of soft pink lipstick over her plump pout.

Looking to promote a water brand, Amy Lee held onto a bottle as she performed a series of suggestive poses.

A curvaceous blonde originally from New Zealand, Amy Lee found international success after appearing in lad's mag Playboy.

Childhood: Amy Lee previously told the publication that she grew up obsessed with Barbies and got into glamour modelling after high school

Glamorous: Opting for a glamorous makeup palette, Amy Lee showed off a bronzed complexion, defined brows, a false set of lashes, defined cheekbones and a coating of soft pink lipstick over her plump pout

Thirsty work! Looking to promote a water brand, the starlet held onto a bottle as she performed a series of suggestive poses

Success: A curvaceous blonde originally from New Zealand, Amy Lee found international success after appearing in lad's mag Playboy

She previously told the publication that she grew up obsessed with Barbies and got into glamour modelling after high school.

'I love everything about fashion and beauty, and I think that's why I wanted to become a model,' Amy Lee said.

The starlet also said she counts Holly Madison as one of her idols and is no stranger to posing naked.

'Honestly, I'm comfortable posing nude. It makes me feel so feminine  not to mention sexy,' she said.

Passionate: 'I love everything about fashion and beauty, and I think that's why I wanted to become a model,' Amy Lee said
He was the first hip-hop act to top the Billboard Charts in 1990 with Ice Ice Baby.

And over 25 years later, Vanilla Ice is touring the world with the 'I Love The 90s' tour, which stops in Melbourne on Wednesday.

The 49-year-old was spotted looking fresh faced as he touched down at Melbourne Airport with fellow concert headliners Salt-N-Pepa.

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Frozen in time! Vanilla Ice was spotted looking fresh faced as he touched down at Melbourne Airport with fellow concert headliners Salt-N-Pepa

The Dallas-born rapper, actor and TV personality looked fit and healthy as he walked through the terminal with his carry-on luggage.

He wore a comfortable navy blue sweat suit, fitted hat, dark sunglasses and white high-top sneakers.

Vanilla Ice, real name Robert Matthew Van Winkle, was later seen sitting on the kerb as he waited with a friend for a ride.

Looking youthful: Vanilla Ice is travelling the world with the 'I Love The 90s' concert tour, which stops in Melbourne on Wednesday

Feeling fresh! The Dallas-born rapper, actor and TV personality looked fit and healthy as he walked through the terminal with his carry-on luggage

Just hanging out! Vanilla Ice, real name Robert Matthew Van Winkle, was later seen sitting on the kerb as he waited with a friend for a ride

Vanilla Ice was joined by fellow headliners Cheryl 'Salt' James, 51, Sandra 'Pepa' Denton, 52, as well as Dede 'DJ Spinderella' Roper, 45.

The pioneering rap trio looked a little tired as they stepped off their flight, with Salt and Spinderella offering faint smiles as they waited for their luggage.

They were all dressed casually in a mix of T-shirts, hoodies, leggings and jeans.

Star-studded: Vanilla Ice was joined by headliners Cheryl 'Salt' James, Sandra 'Pepa' Denton (pictured) and Deidra 'DJ Spinderella' Roper

Dressed down: They were all dressed casually in a mix of T-shirts, hoodies, leggings and jeans

Jetlag? The pioneering rap trio looked a little tired as they stepped off their flight, with Salt (pictured) and Spinderella offering faint smiles as they waited for their luggage

Legendary: Salt-N-Pepa (DJ Spinderella pictured) are joined by boy band Color Me Badd and rappers Coolio, Tone Loc and Young MC for the tour

The two acts will be joined on stage by boy band Color Me Badd and rappers Coolio, Tone Loc and Young MC.

The tour kicked off in New Zealand on June 3 and has already made stops in Auckland, Christchurch and Adelaide.

Wednesday night is Melbourne's turn to host the line-up of '90s acts, with dates in Sydney, Brisbane, Darwin and Perth coming up.
Amber Heard originally debuted her edgier, rock-chick hair colour in April.

And it appears that the actress has returned to her eccentric bubblegum pink locks after reapplying the colour after the dye job faded.

The usually blonde star, 31, took to Instagram on Tuesday to flaunt her bright tresses while showing off a wine-stained chair from a party with her Aquaman co-stars on the Gold Coast.

Rose-coloured locks! Amber Heard flaunted her freshly dyed pink hair after laughing off wine mishap during an Aquaman cast party on the Gold Coast on Tuesday

Amber debuted her new pink locks two months ago in Hollywood after she attended the star-studded Unite For Harmony gala.

Over the past few weeks, her hair had noticeably started losing its pink hues.

Her 305k followers clearly liked that the colour had returned, with one writing: 'Loving the pink hair Amber!'

Back to blonde: Over the past few weeks Amber's hair had noticeably begun losing its pink hues, with her locks appearing fresh only eight hours before her pink reveal

Another added: 'Your hair is still pink? How fabulous.'

The Hollywood actress used the post to show fans her humorous side, as she laughed off discovering her white chairs had become stained with wine from the party the night before.

'When you have one glass of red wine and the chair drinks most of it,' she captioned a snap in which she could be seen cleaning up the mess.

Blonde ambition: Amber is usually known for her luscious blonde locks

'Thank you to my Aussie cast/crew for such a fun night out of singing and dancing. It will be forever stained in my memory...but hopefully not these chairs.'

Her fans couldn't help but make a connection between the wine stains and her new hair: 'It seems like your hair drank some too' and 'look at the bright side, the chair matches your hair now!'

The Texas-native appeared makeup-free while clutching a cleaning sponge and displaying a helpless expression alongside the stained furniture.
She is known for her red carpet gaffes at the Oscars and Golden Globes.

But Sunrise's Edwina Bartholomew looked as enthusiastic as ever while trying to get an interview with Prince Harry in Sydney on Wednesday.

The 33-year-old journalist was caught in the media scrum during a rain-soaked event while desperately trying to get the royal's attention.

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Did she get an interview? Sunrise's Edwina Bartholomew got caught in the media scrum trying to speak to Prince Harry during a rain-soaked event in Sydney on Wednesday

Putting on a brave face despite the admittedly miserable weather, Edwina wrapped up in a stylish camel coat.

She styled her blonde hair in a chic updo, and her sparkly new engagement ring was visible on her finger.

Edwina smiled with her Sunrise microphone in hand as she was caught between photographers and other members of the press pack.

Taking it in her stride! Edwina, 33, smiled with her Sunrise microphone in hand as she was caught between photographers and other members of the press pack

It remains to be seen if Edwina managed to interview Harry, as the handsome Prince is known to favour talking with fans over reporters.

Earlier that day, Edwina tried to get Harry's attention by setting up shop outside Admiralty House with war widow Daphne Dunn.

During his last visit to Australia in 2015, the Prince had promised to get a beer with the 97-year-old when he was next in the country.

Man of the people! It remains to be seen if Edwina managed to interview Harry (pictured), as the handsome Prince is known to favour talking with fans over reporters

'Well, Hazza... we are ready and waiting': Earlier that day, Edwina tried to get Harry's attention by setting up shop outside Admiralty House with war widow Daphne Dunn

'Prince Harry offered to buy 97-year-old Daphne a beer last time he was here. Well, Hazza... we are ready and waiting outside Admiralty House,' Edwina wrote on Instagram.

Edwina has certainly had her fair share of memorable moments while interviewing high-profile celebrities at red carpet events.

At last year's AACTA Awards, Edwina forgot to properly introduce herself to actor Mel Gibson, leading to some on-air confusion.

Whoops! Edwina is known for her memorable moments while interviewing celebrities at red carpet events - including an awkward encounter with Mel Gibson at the AACTA Awards

That's awkward! The Channel Seven personality was also notably snubbed by actor Geoffrey Rush during the same ceremony

The Lethal Weapon star, 61, looked a little perplexed as he asked repeatedly who Edwina was.

The Channel Seven personality was also notably snubbed by Geoffrey Rush during the same ceremony.

But ever the professional, Edwina took it in her stride and waved Geoffrey goodbye as he abruptly walked off camera.
With radio stars Hamish Blake and Andy Lee making a return to TV, speculation is mounting on who will step into their drive-time radio slot later this year.

And despite Carrie Bickmore being tipped by The Australian as the 'favourite' to replace the funny duo, another radio rival has surpassed her as the 'odds favourite'.

Online bookmaker Sportsbet listed Carrie as a 'real contender', but the real front-runners are Nova's Ryan 'Fitzy' Fitzgerald and Michael 'Wippa' Wipfli..

Will they jump ship? Nova's Fitzy And Wippa are Sportsbet's favourite to replace Hit Network's Hamish And Andy

Fitzy and Wippa were top of the betting with odds of $2.50, while Carrie trailed behind at $4.

For Fitzy and Wippa to attempt to replace Hamish And Andy, the duo would need to move radio stations, leaving behind their six-year stint with Nova.

Sportsbet's Will Byrne said: 'It's a mammoth task to try bring the same charisma to the airwaves that Hamish & Andy have but if anyone can come close to replicating their magic it would be Fitzy & Wippa so they're rightful favourites.'

As Carrie is already employed by Southern Cross Austereo as part of her Hit Network's Carrie & Tommy 3pm time slot, her move to the slot appears more likely.

Fan favourites! Fitzy and Wippa were top of the betting odds to replace Hamish And Andy at $2.50, while Carrie trailed behind at $4 on Sportsbet, as of Wednesday afternoon

Soon to be driving you home? According to The Australian, The Project's Carrie Bickmore (pictured) is the current favouite to replace Hamish and Andy in their coveted radio slot

The 36-year-old and her co-host Tommy Little, 32, are reportedly the current favourites to replace Hamish And Andy.

Carrie, who kicked off her media career in the radio industry, returned to her roots in February to co-host the Hit Network's Carrie & Tommy in the 3pm time slot.

The TV personality would be quite the coup for the radio network, who are said to be looking for a name big enough to match the popularity of Hamish and Andy.

A turn at the comedians' national drivetime slot would likely mean a hefty pay cheque for Carrie, as Hamish and Andy's multi-million dollar salaries made them some of the highest paid stars in the industry.

Returning to television: Andy Lee (left) and Hamish Blake (right) are leaving a vacant radio slot

Familiar face: Carrie (left) recently returned to her radio roots, co-hosting Hit Network's Carrie & Tommy at 3pm with comedian Tommy Little (right)

Hamish and Andy, who debuted their new Channel Nine TV series True Story on Monday, are leaving big shoes to fill.

Their radio show currently airs on 43 stations and attracts a national weekly audience of 2.5million.

Carrie is a favourite with Australian audiences, having won the coveted Gold Logie in 2015 and being nominated for the award several times.

Before taking on her best known role as host of Network Ten's The Project, the mother-of-two cut her teeth working in radio in Perth.

Gold star: Logie-winning presenter Carrie (pictured with co-host Waleed Aly) continues to be popular with TV audiences thanks to her role on The Project

She was a radio newsreader in 1999 before making the leap to the small screen.

She then rose to national prominence when she joined talk show Rove Live in 2006, presenting her own segment 'Carrie @ The News Desk'

Hamish and Andy were also regular guests on the program at the time.
Tyler Henry is the celebrity medium who helps Hollywood's biggest stars connect with loved ones who have passed away.

And on Wednesday, the 21-year-old appeared on Today Extra with Sonia Kruger and David Campbell, discussing details from the psychic readings he holds with his A-list clients.

Speaking from Los Angeles, Tyler told the Australian morning show that he brought pop star Mel B to tears after connecting with her late grandfather.

Crossing over: On Wednesday, celebrity medium Tyler Henry appeared on Today Extra via satellite from Los Angeles to discuss his psychic readings with celebrities including Mel B

'She left that experience with her weight lifted,' Tyler said of his session with the star, which will air on the upcoming season of his program, Hollywood Medium.

Tyler also stated that during the reading he was able to reveal 'personal information that Mel B had never discussed publicly about some family matters.'

Mel, who recently underwent a high-profile split from husband Stephen Belafonte, is just one in a long line of celebrities to sit down with Tyler.

Moved to tears: Mel B was able to connect with her grandfather during her reading with Tyler

The psychic also held a reading with Bobby Brown, the ex-husband of Whitney Houston and father of the late Bobbi Kristina Brown.

During the psychic reading, both of the women, who died in tragic circumstances, were able to connect with Tyler.

Bobbi Kristina came through with 'very specific validations of childhood memories,' while Whitney communicated medical details about her death.

Tragic: Bobby broke down as Tyler discussed his late ex-wife Whitney Houston and late daughter Bobbi Kristina

According to Tyler, the experience helped Bobby 'more than any therapist ever had.'

In clips from the session, which will screen on the new season, Bobby can be seen with tears streaming down his face.

Tyler has also held readings with stars such as Khloe Kardashian and Eva Longoria, and the second season of Hollywood Medium is set to air on E!

Another A-list client: Eva Longoria sat down with the young medium
It's every broadcaster's worst nightmare.

But Lorraine Kelly, 57, managed to awkwardly laugh off the moment the studio suffered a power cut as she chatted to Nick Knowles on Wednesday's episode of her show.

Deep in chatter with the DIY SOS star, the two looked surprised as they studio plunged into darkness - leaving Lorraine to joke if Nick could 'get in his builders' to correct the situation.

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Left in the dark! Lorraine Kelly, 57, managed to awkwardly laugh off the moment the studio suffered a power cut as she chatted to Nick Knowles on Wednesday's episode of her show

The interview started off just like any other with the Scottish presenter speaking to Nick about his upcoming projects.

All of a sudden the lights in the studio started flickering before they were met with complete darkness.

After looking around in shock, Lorraine used her quick wit as she hilariously asked Nick: 'Can you get your builders in to fix that?'

The pair continued to engage the awkward situation by giggling - before the lights switched back on.

Light out: Deep in chatter with the DIY SOS star, the two looked surprised as they studio plunged into darkness - leaving Lorraine to joke if Nick could 'get in his builders' to correct the situation

A bright start: The interview began just like any other with the Scottish presenter speaking to Nick about his upcoming projects

Dimming down: All of a sudden the lights in the studio started flickering before they were met with complete darkness

'I don't know what happened there! That was really strange, that was the effect of you,' Lorraine attempted to explain it.

Nick also got in on the jokes, stating: 'I think that was Piers Morgan leaving the building.'

The lighting mishap was also noted by viewers who took to social media with the following tweets: 'Aww lights out @ITVLorraine @reallorraine.'

Making light of the situation: Nick looked surprised before laughing it off

'Can you get your builders to fix that?' Lorraine used her quick wit to address the moment

Light-hearted: Nick also got in on the jokes, stating: 'I think that was Piers Morgan leaving the building'

'Lights went out on Lorraine': The lighting mishap was also noted by viewers who addressed it on social media

'What happened he he the lights went out on lorraine' and 'the lights went on- shame it wasn't the sound.'

Lorraine was in a more livelier demeanour compared to Tuesday's episode where she broke down in tears over devastating footage of the memorial service for Eilidh MacLeod - one of the Manchester terror attack victims.

The popular TV host was overwhelmed with emotion as the upsetting clip from her native Scotland played out.

'It breaks your heart,' Lorraine relayed more than once as she looked visibly upset - before the show dramatically cut to a quick competition segment.

Emotional: Lorraine was in a more livelier demeanour compared to Tuesday's episode where she broke down in tears over devastating footage of the memorial service for Eilidh MacLeod - one of the Manchester terror attack victims
It was one of the most eagerly-awaited engagements in Bachelor history.

So when Tim Robards proposed to longtime girlfriend Anna Heinrich last month, fans were understandably surprised.

The handsome chiropractor told The Daily Telegraph on Wednesday his partner also didn't see the proposal coming.

'She had no idea, which was nice': The Bachelor's Tim Robards (right) told The Daily Telegraph on Wednesday his fiancee Anna Heinrich (left) was not expecting him to propose last month

He explained: 'She had no idea, which was nice.'

The reality TV couple were sailing on a boat in Kimberley, WA when Tim asked Anna to marry him.

And while he was 'overwhelmed' by the public support after announcing the news, Tim says he was glad to have proposed privately.

Smooth sailing! The reality TV couple were sailing on a boat in Kimberley, WA when Tim asked his longtime girlfriend Anna, 'Will you marry me?'

'It was nice we were able to just do it somewhere really quiet and on our own and enjoy that moment,' he said.

Meanwhile, Tim said the couple aren't rushing to get married and plan to be engaged for at least a year before walking down the aisle.

It is rumoured they will tie the knot at The Residences Centennial Park.

Keeping fans waiting! Tim said the couple aren't rushing to get married and plan to be engaged for at least a year before walking down the aisle
It was the first reality show of it's kind when it hit screens in 1999.

And 18 years on, it has been reported that Big Brother doesn't have the same pulling power as it once had since switching from it's original broadcaster Channel 4 to Channel 5 as viewing figures have fallen by half.

The reality stalwart moved network in 2011 with an audience of 2.6million on launch night but this year's series kicked-off with a meager 1.3million in comparison, according to the Daily Star.

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Falling: It has been reported that Big Brother doesn't have the same pulling power as it once had since switching from it's original broadcaster Channel 4 to Channel 5 as viewing figures have fallen by half - fronted by Rylan Clarke and Emma Willis (pictured)

Starting on Monday, the latest season of the reality favourite faced a stream of competition in the form of Coronation Street's special and the launch of ITV2's Love Island with it's start time of 8:30pm.

While reality fans switched over to Love Island thirty minutes after the start of Big Brother, the Channel 5 show still managed to narrowly beat it's rival - which started at 9pm - in it's rating, bring in 6.6% of the British audience compared to Love Island's 6.5%.

The explosive two-hour opening - which saw viewers introduced to housemates Lotan Carter and Ex On The Beach's Chanelle McCleary - saw it's audience reach 3million during the broadcast while Love Island peaked at 2.1million.

MailOnline have contacted a Channel 5 spokesperson for comment.

Delight: The reports come as Caroline Flack delightfully revealed Love Island's audience increased by 40%

New housemates: The reality stalwart moved network in 2011 with an audience of 2.6million on launch night but this year's series - which saw viewers introduced to housemates Lotan Carter (L) and Ex On The Beach's Chanelle McCleary - kicked-off with a meager 1.3million in comparison, according to the Daily Star

Broadcasting at similar times and days, the dueling reality shows have forced 180,000 fans to only watch half of each show to get their fill of both.

The reports come as Caroline Flack delightfully revealed Love Island's audience increased by 40%.

Taking to social media, the ITV host excitedly shared: 'Well done team love island! Ratings up 40% on last year. Wow. Thanks for tuning in guys. Can't wait for tonight.'

Originally, the show brought in 400,000 in its season opener two years ago, but its winning formula is proving to be a success with the ratings trebling in size.

'Wow': Taking to social media, the ITV host excitedly shared: 'Well done team love island! Ratings up 40% on last year. Wow. Thanks for tuning in guys. Can't wait for tonight.'

The good news for Love Island comes after it was revealed two hunky men - 22-year-old Chris and Essex boy Jonny - join the villa on Wednesday night, in a bid to find true love.

The new series has already got off to a flying start, with a love triangle causing ructions between the housemates on the very first day.

However the arrival of the boys will no doubt lead to serious drama among this year's bevy of beauties, as both are self-professed heart-breakers, implying several shake-ups between the couples lie ahead.

New kids in town: Love Island is only set to hot up on Wednesday, as two new handsome hunks - 22-year-old Chris (L) and Essex boy Jonny (R) - join the villa, in a bid to find true love

Next up: However the arrival of the boys will no doubt lead to serious drama among this year's bevy of beauties, as both are self-professed heart-breakers, implying several shake-ups between the couples lie ahead

The first day in the stunning Majorca villa has already seen its fair share of drama, with the arrival of buxom brunette Jessica - who was given the chance to steal a man of her choice from this year's girls Montana, Amber, Camilla, Chloe and Olivia.

However, things are only set to get more fractious between this year's contestants with the arrival of two new hunks on Wednesday night - Chris and Jonny.

Impressively ripped Chris, 22, hails from Gloucestershire, and admits he is heading to the villa to find a girl 'well-suited' to him, after a string of fleeting romances.

Meanwhile Essex boy Jonny, who works as a business director, is set to be a wild and womanising member of the villa.

Heart-breaker: Impressively ripped Chris, 22, hails from Gloucestershire, and admits he is heading to the villa to find a girl 'well-suited' to him, after a string of fleeting romances

However, the bearded hunk admits he is most excited about meeting new people in the villa, as he is sick of the people in his home town who follow the same 'mould' - perhaps hinting executive assistant Chloe will not be the one to catch his eye.

After such a long relationship in his 20s however, Jonny went on to explain that he embarked on the show for the experience, rather than to find to love.

Proving his heart-breaker status, he said of what he was looking for on the show: 'Im more doing it for the experience, but Im open to anything that comes from it.

'Looks wise, Im not that fussy. Im just there for a fun time. Im not going to shun someone because theyre not my ideal type. But I don't like mouthy girls.'
He exclusively told MailOnline that it was important for him to embrace his wife's Uzbek culture as they tied the knot over the weekend.

And Duncan Bannatyne, 68, and his stunning wife Nigora Whitehorn, 37, continued to gush about their big day in the face of cruel trolls who have taken aim of their age gap since they started dating two years ago.

Speaking live from Portugal on This Morning on Wednesday, the smitten newlyweds reiterated the message that they were having the last laugh - while also talking about their desire to have children together.

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'We're really happy': Duncan Bannatyne, 68, and his wife Nigora Whitehorn, 37, gushed about their wedding day in the face of cruel trolls who have taken aim of their age gap since they started dating two years ago

Speaking in reference to their first appearance on This Morning two years ago, which unleashed critics on social media, Duncan proved the cat had got the cream as he responded: 'We just wish those people lots of love and happiness. They need it.'

Nigora continued: 'We dont pay attention to it. Were really happy. It's their loss and they can sit back and be jealous. Im happy with the man with I love. Look at him!'

The couple also talked about starting a family together. Duncan has six children with his ex Joanna McCue while Nigora has a daughter Gabrielle.

'Of course we want children together!,' Nigora proclaimed before continuing: 'Weve been too busy for wedding. So now well be planning the future family. I would like to have at least 2 boys.

Lasting love: Speaking live from Portugal on This Morning on Wednesday, the smitten newlyweds reiterated the message that they were having the last laugh

'Ofcourse we want children!' They also talked about their desire to start a family together

'I cant wait to be a dad again,' Duncan added to the conversation, before the stunning brunette relayed the reason why she wants to expand her family with Duncan:

'Hes an amazing father. I'm proud of how he is with my daughter. She adores Duncan and couldnt ask for better step father.

'Hes going to be an amazing father to my future children.'

Their wedding was a special occasion for the two with Duncan wearing a colourful traditional dress and made his wedding speech in Nigora's native language for the Uzbek part of their celebrations.

Talking to MailOnline, Duncan said it was important to him to embrace his love's culture as they celebrated their special day, which occurred on Sunday in Portugal, a day after their beach ceremony.

'We just wish those people lots of love and happiness. They need it': Duncan spoke in reference to their first appearance on This Morning two years ago, which unleashed critics on social media

'We're planning our future': The couple also talked about starting a family together. Duncan has six children with his ex Joanna McCue while Nigora has a daughter Gabrielle

'I was so proud that he made his wedding speech in my native language': Duncan wore traditional clothing for the Uzbek part of his wedding to Nigora

He told MailOnline: 'My new Uzbek family are generous, caring, giving people and I am proud to be part of what is to me a wonderful new world. It was amazing to embrace Nigoras culture as part of our wedding'

He said: 'My new Uzbek family are generous, caring, giving people and I am proud to be part of what is to me a wonderful new world. It was amazing to embrace Nigoras culture as part of our wedding.'

And Nigora said that she couldn't believe the lengths the star went to in order to make her feel happy on their big day.

Uzbekistan is a Central Asian nation and former Soviet republic and Nigora said: 'I was so proud that Duncan made his wedding speech in my native language.

'This was such a loving, romantic thing to do as its a very difficult language to learn. If it is possible it made me love him even more.'

'I am proud to be part of this wonderful new world': Dragon's Den star Duncan gushed over 'soulmate' Nigora as he shared more snaps from their Portugal beach wedding on Saturday

Multi-millionaire Duncan Bannatyne has shared some stunning pictures from his wedding including some from their intimate beach ceremony in Portugal on Saturday.

He said he was thrilled with how the day went, as he gushed about his 'perfect' bride.

'It was a perfect family wedding and I was overwhelmed by how beautiful Nigora looked. Our wedding was filled with love, laughter and happiness.

Kilty pleasure: Ever the true Scotsman, Duncan - who was marking his third trip down the aisle - donned a tartan kilt swish three button tuxedo jacket and red bow-tie

'My new Uzbek family are generous, caring, giving people and I am proud to be part of what is to me a wonderful new world. I feel very blessed and look forward to our life together as husband and wife.'

Nigora, 37, also said: 'I am so happy to have married my love, best friend and soul mate.

'It was the most wonderful weekend and sharing it with our families and friends made it complete. I am so proud to be Mrs Duncan Bannatyne.'

Beautiful: The two looked madly in love as they said 'I do' among friends and family

The two looked madly in love as they said 'I do' among friends and family who took to Twitter to share the touching snaps.

Ever the true Scotsman, Duncan - who was marking his third trip down the aisle - donned a tartan kilt swish three button tuxedo jacket and red bow-tie.

Nigora looked stunning in a lowing white gown.

The entrepreneur shared recently the exciting week he had coming up.

He tweeted ahead of the ceremony: 'Our large families arriving in Portugal today, getting married Saturday, Uzbek party Sunday, UK Election Wed. What an exciting week'

Best Wishes to Left-handed Scottish Businessman @DuncanBannatyne & wife Nigora. A h-uile la sona dhuibh s gun la idir dona dhuibh!  pic.twitter.com/qbik0ozIsE  Left-handers Int'l. (@LefthandersIntl) June 3, 2017

He tweeted: 'Our large families arriving in Portugal today, getting married Saturday, Uzbek party Sunday, UK Election Wed. What an exciting week.'

A source close to Duncans family said: It is going to be a big wedding. His six children will all be there.

But one person very unlikely to attend is his second wife, Joanne McCue, whom the tycoon  worth a cool 175 million  labelled a gold-digger after their 2013 divorce. He split from first wife Gail Brodie in 1994.

Nigora was living in a 200,000 terrace house in Bedfordshire with her teenage daughter before she met the mogul.

The father-of-six met Nigora in 2011 after splitting from his second wife, Joanna McCue.

Duncan proposed last year while the pair were holidaying in Monaco.

He popped the question with an enormous pear-shaped ring that features a giant diamond surrounded by a small cluster of diamonds.

Duncan, who has a 175 million fortune suggested he would float his gym and spa empire for 300million.

Since falling for each other, the couple have never been shy about very public displays of affection.

Fantastic wedding on the beach with @DuncanBannatyne pic.twitter.com/hmAU8EaPvQ  Andy Reid MBE (@andyreid2506) June 3, 2017




Her life appears to be a never-ending holiday.

And Louise Thompson looked on cloud nine as she showed off her stunning figure in a skimpy sky-blue bikini on Wednesday.

The Made In Chelsea star looked incredible in her tiny two-piece as she partied by the pool with her pals in Mykonos, Greece.

Another skimpy look!Louise Thompson looked on cloud nine as she showed off her stunning figure in a sky-blue bikini on Wednesday during a pool day in Mykonos, Greece

Louise flaunted her tanned and gym-honed curves in yet another skimpy set of swimwear.

The brunette beaut rocked a pretty blue bikini with a skimpy halter-neck cut.

The low-slung bottoms showed off Louise's abs, while the on-trend thong style also perfectly flaunted her pert posterior.

Peachy! The low-slung bottoms showed off Louise's abs, while the on-trend thong style also perfectly flaunted her pert posterior

This is the life! The Made In Chelsea star looked incredible in her tiny two-piece as she partied by the pool with her pals

The reality star was joined by a group of pals as they soaked up the Greek sunshine.

Louise continued to send her fans wild with envy as she took to Instagram to share another bikini-clad picture from her holiday on Wednesday.

The Made In Chelsea star, 27, showed off her physique in the sizzling snap.

Making waves! Louise continued to send her fans wild with envy as she took to Instagram to share another bikini-clad picture on Wednesday

Boasting an impressive tan, she showed off her shapely thighs in the high-cut black swimsuit.

Leaning back against the sun's rays, she left her brunette locks in loose beach waves and wore a pair of oversized shades.

And framing the picturesque blue backdrop perfectly, she captioned the snap: 'Swim sea sky #GirlGangInMykonos #mykonos #greekisland #poolgoals'.

Holiday time again! Louise, 27, sent pulses racing in a skimpy white bikini over the weekend, which showed off her enviable frame

Just days ago the reality star sent pulses racing in a skimpy white bikini which showed off her topped up bronzed glow as she made her way down the white stairs in the scorching heat.

The bikini showed off her toned abs and lean legs to perfection and she accessorised with a striking silver body chain.

Louise sported centre parted locks and a pair of shades as she strutted down the steps in matching embellished white shoes.

Clearly in high spirits in the picture, the reality star captioned the snap: 'Happy place, happy crowd  fallen in love with #mykonos GR next up --> meeting the #GirlGangInMykonos for a @calzedonia store visit.'

And Louise wasn't done there, as she took to the social media platform to upload an image of her posing in a pristine blue infinity pool.

'Morning dip in Mykonos': In another, the Made In Chelsea star stood at a side angle in the infinity pool and raised one arm - allowing her impeccably chiselled abs to take prominence

Criticism: This comes after her boyfriend Ryan Libbey, 26, was slammed by his Instagram followers, for sharing an image of himself as part of his tribute to the London Bridge terror attack victims

With the ocean behind her, the beauty stood at a side angle and raised one arm - allowing her impeccably chiselled abs to take prominence.

Her tiny bikini just about managed to contain her modesty as she executed the steamy pose by placing one leg in front of the other.

'Morning dip in Mykonos! These views. Can't wait for a fun trip exploring the island with the @calzedonia girls!' she titled the saucy snap.

This comes after her beau Ryan apologised after being slammed by his Instagram followers for sharing an image of himself, with clothing brands tagged, as part of his tribute to the London Bridge terror attack victims.

The hunk, 26, shared a photo on Instagram on Sunday, the day after seven people were killed in London Bridge, of himself posing in the sunshine.

While he included a heartfelt message alongside the image, Ryan was criticised by his followers for choosing to share a photo of himself, and including tags which are used to advertise brands in the photo.

Seven people were killed and nearly 50 injured on Saturday night after three men drove a van into a crowd on London Bridge and set upon people in a crazed knife rampage.

On Sunday night Ryan shared his tribute, with the personal trainer's photo showing him posing on a street, with info on where his sunglasses, shirt, trousers and shoes could be bought. The tags were later removed by the star.

Alongside his photo, Ryan wrote: 'My thoughts and prayers go out to all those affected by the attacks on our capital last night.'

Promotional: While he included a heartfelt message alongside the image, Ryan was criticised for choosing to share a photo of himself, and including tags used to advertise brands

Not impressed: Despite his words, many followers chose to focus on his choice of image

'These acts of terror are disgusting and I can't comprehend how any human out there has the capability to cause such damage, upset and pain to a nation, a city, a person, a family, a child, to a beautiful world. We should all stand together, show strength and look after one another.'

'Hold those closest to you a little closer and stay safe.'

Despite his words, many followers chose to focus on his choice of image, with one follower ellie_smurf questioning in the comments: 'How can you write a post like this yet still advertise brands that are probs paying you to tag their products.'

Hitting back: Ryan replied, stating: 'this is not a sponsored post' but the commenter said: 'Just think these things can be done in a more tactful way'

Ryan replied, stating: 'this is not a sponsored post. I'm quite simply showing my gratitude to those brands who have been kind enough to gift. The essence and point of this post is to offer my condolences to those suffering. So rather than come at me for tagging a brand, focus on keeping yourself and your loved ones safe.'

But ellie pointed out: 'I can focus on my safety and appreciate the content of the message posted without appreciating the photo and the brands tagged in it... Just think these things can be done in a more tactful way.'

Another commenter agreed, writing: 'So your reaction is to post a picture of yourself? You ok?'

Thoughtless: Another commenter agreed, writing: 'So your reaction is to post a picture of yourself? You ok?'

In his corner: Some came out in defence of the reality star with the madeinchelsea_uk account writing: 'Well said Ryan'

Ryan replied again, telling the follower to 'shut the f**k up. Another one who has missed my point entirely.'

Some came out in defence of the reality star with the madeinchelsea_uk account writing: 'Well said Ryan Sad others choose to focus on your photo rather than your words and your heartfelt message.'

bex_hughes_life_must_carry_on also defended Ryan, writing: 'All those saying they notice the photo blah blah blah . I see a picture of a man in deep thought see the facial expressions. Lovely sentiment and its especially important because this is his turf. So he is probably v.upset about whats happend himself. Not everyone is about self promotional benefits you know.!!! [sic]'

On his side: : bex_hughes_life_must_carry_on also defended Ryan, writing: 'I see a picture of a man in deep thought see the facial expressions'

'Lovely': His girlfriend Louise Thompson also showed her support, writing simply in a comment: 'lovely words bub'

Ryan thanked the fan for their words, replying: 'thankyou so much for saying that. So pleased that someone is speaking some sense and being nice, and what's more not trying to find fault in a picture I've posted during this sensitive time. I was trying to be nothing but sensitive, yet so many have misinterpreted and tainted this post now.'

His girlfriend Louise Thompson also showed her support, writing simply in a comment: 'lovely words bub.'

After receiving a stream of negative comments, the reality star uploaded a video on his Instagram page on Monday afternoon apologising for his choice of photo, and admitting he has 'to learn from this.'

'I just wanted to apologise formally and officially for what was a clumsy post on my Instagram over the weekend,' Ryan said in the video. 'I really didn't mean to cause upset or offence. It was a clumsy choice of photo from myself and I shouldn't have tagged any brand in that photo.'

'The words that I wrote, I do mean them,' he went on. 'It was supposed to be a genuine and heartfelt message. I just wanted to reach out and offer my condolences to everyone in London who's been affected by what's been a terrible event.'

'I got it wrong this time and I am sorry. I've got to learn from this, I'm still getting used to being in the public eye and it's not easy.'

Ryan's post comes just two weeks after his girlfriend and MIC co-star Louise was slammed for sharing a bikini Instagram hours after the Manchester terror attack left 22 people dead.

Apology: Ryan's post comes just two weeks after his girlfriend and MIC co-star Louise Thompson was slammed for sharing a bikini Instagram hours after the Manchester terror attack left 22 people dead

The star issued a public apology for offending her social media followers, but was back to doing what she does best - plugging swimwear brands online- as she uploaded more shots from her holiday in Isla de Holbox,Mexico, just two days later.

The Edinburgh University graduate insisted 'news hadn't travelled' when she shared the original image while drinking a margarita and wearing a bikini.

Despite Louise's apology for 'ignorance' and 'being offensive', her personal trainer boyfriend Ryan continued to post images in his swimwear - with a beachside image coming just seven minutes after his girlfriend's lament-filled post.

Apology: The ,Made In Chelsea star, 27, was forced to issue a public apology for offending her social media followers by posting a bikini snap in the wake of the Manchester terror attack

At least 22 people, including an eight-year-old girl, were left dead and more than 119 injured after a suicide bomber targeted gig-goers at a packed Ariana Grande gig in Manchester Arena.

As families continued to hunt for lost relatives while others mourn the dead, celebrities swarmed social media to extend their sympathies to all involved, with many sharing images centered around Manchester.

In the midst of the social media tributes, Louise shared one of her now-trademark bikini images - much to the chagrin of fans, with users penning: 'Couldn't think to pay tribute given the current events?

'Vile, self-absorbed narcissistic creature. Get your head out of your own a**ehole.... Do you see beauty in anything else but yourself? Just for one day could you have not posted such a shallow post.'

Not heard? Despite the news seemingly just arriving at Louise's door, Ryan continued to share images of himself on the beach

Six hours after she posted the image, Louise shared a shot posted by many - depicting a black and white line drawing of a stick-woman holding a heart-shaped balloon with the word Manchester etched across.

She added a caption on the image reading: 'I am very sad to hear of the devastating news back home ! I'm sorry to have offended anyone with my last picture...

'I didn't mean to be so ignorant - I know it doesn't mean much but the news hadn't travelled. Anyway this isn't about me, but the bigger picture...

'Sending lots of love and prayers to the victims families as they are the ones hurting. Please may this cruelty stop, nothing is being achieved. We must put an end to terrorism.'

Despite the news seemingly just arriving at Louise's door, Ryan continued to share images of himself - this time posing topless while promoting the fitness retreat they are visiting while adding a caption: 'I fit right into this island life ~ Louise I'm staying'.

Still going strong: Louise and Ryan began dating last summer, just months after the brunette split from long-term ex Alik Alfus in May

Prior to her apology, Louise was once again sending her followers wild with envy as she holidayed with Ryan inMexico, posting an array of bikini snaps on her Instagram account.

The star can be seen holding a cocktail aloft while posing in a neon trimmed two-piece, looking a deep shade of mahogany. She posted: 'When in Mexico.... drink frozen margharitas on tap also, how sick is this swimsuit with a tan @misspap'.

Another snap saw the lovebirds cosying up on the steps of their hotel, with the brunette flashing her enviable abs in a white bikini.

She captioned the snap: 'airway to HEAVEN. aka our room at @casalastortugas this has to be one of the coolest hotels I've ever seen multicoloured buildings, beautiful tapestries, balconies, mezzanines, hammocks, shell lamps, and every room is different!'

'I also had the most beautiful bikini left on my bed to wear from the boutique shop this is a honeymooners dream.'

Louise and Ryan began dating last summer, just months after the brunette split from long-term ex Alik Alfus in May.

Speaking to OK! earlier this year, the reality star admitted she had kept her relationship with Ryan a secret at first in order to avoid judgment - with the pair staying in separate hotels while they filmed in the South of France last year.

She explained: The production team found out I had a secret boyfriend while we were over there and were pretty annoyed at me! But they said theyd forgive me if I got Ryan to join the show.

Happy: Louise then responded by paying tribute to her boyfriend in one final post - captioning a post of her smiling off camera: 'When you're with the right person it shines right through you'

Admitting she had wanted to avoid inevitable backlash for embarking on a romance so soon after Alik, she continued: 'We actually kept our relationship to ourselves for about five months.

I didnt want people judging me for moving on so quickly after Alik. Ryan didnt even come to my house for the first five months because I didnt know how my brother Sam would react.

The pair have put on a united front ever since, and are now known for their selection of holiday photos and fitness videos on their Instagram pages.

Yet, their activities online have not come without scrutiny - after Louise's brother Sam exposed their methods of capturing such idyllic snaps.

Taking to Snapchat in January, the blond MIC star shared a snap of the couple posing in the pool - flanked with professional photographers and a full lighting team to capture the winning shot.

Sam, who is currently dating co-star Tiffany Watson, has since embarked on a number of parodies of his sibling - slipping into several of her bikinis and mocking her sexy poses on his own page.
She's a Hollywood star and the lead in what's being hailed as a classic adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's My Cousin Rachel.

But actress Rachel Weisz showed her coy side as she batted away compliments on her natural beauty from TV host Lorraine Kelly on Wednesday.

'Oh stop, Ive been through an hour hair and make-up!' Rachel, 47, protested. 'I dont wake up looking like this.'

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'I don't wake up looking like this!' Rachel Weisz dismisses that she is a natural beauty and insists 'I'm not married to James Bond, I'm married to Daniel Craig'

Turning to her co-star, who was also being interviewed, Sam Claflin, she said: 'Sam has seen me first thing in the morning  he can vouch for that!'

Lorraine also asked her about red carpet events, part and parcel of being a film star.

'We get to tell stories and pretend to be other people [as actors]. But dressing up and going to red carpets is a fantasy as well. Its make believe. To stay normal you need to know its pretend,' she theorised.

Lorraine mentioned to the actress - who is married to Daniel Craig - that she happens to have James Bond as a husband.

Bashful: Rachel Weisz showed her coy side as she batted away compliments on her natural beauty from TV host Lorraine Kelly on Wednesday

Coy: 'Oh stop, Ive been through an hour hair and make-up!' Rachel, 47, protested. 'I dont wake up looking like this'

'No, Im married to Daniel Craig. Only Daniel,' Rachel laughed. 'I'm not married to James Bond  you can't get a ring on his finger. Were really into normal life.'

Sam, 30, spoke about My Cousin Rachel: 'The ambiguity of the script is what I loved. My character [Philip] is a naive young man. The beautiful thing is that you usually see a boy turning into a man.

'But for him, he believes hes a man - but then he becomes a boy when Rachel walks into life. She calls him a little puppy dog.'

Sam also spoke of the pressures that men face, as well as women, in the spotlight.

Superstar lifestyle: Lorraine also asked her about red carpet events, part and parcel of being a film star

Undercover hubby: Lorraine mentioned to the actress - who is married to Daniel Craig - that she happens to have James Bond as a husband

Not just women: Sam also spoke of the pressures that men face, as well as women, in the spotlight

'Men definitely have pressure, especially in todays society with social media and TV commercials. Of course men feel pressure and insecurity and feel the need to be Chris Hemsworth. I want to be him but I'm not willing to go through all the work,' he said.

New father Sam spoke of his first child, who he welcomed in 2015.

'Its the first time Ive put someone before myself. Having a child creates another level for yourself, you are less selfish. You have to drop whatever happens and be there.'

My Cousin Rachel premiere's on Wednesday night in London and is released on Friday June 9.

Leading roles: Rachel and Sam star in what's being hailed as a classic adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's My Cousin Rachel

Gone with the wind: Rachel battled with the elements as she left the Lorraine studios
She's been caught up in an online war with her ex's former flame.

But Stephanie Davis wasn't letting it faze her as she arrived into London on Wednesday afternoon looking sensational.

Nonplussed, the actress, 24, stepped out in London's Euston station in a tight black top, semi-sheer and shimmering in the afternoon light.

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'Pity u honey!' Defiant Stephanie Davis steps out revealing a little too much in racy top... after accusing Jeremy McConnell's ex-girlfriend of using her 'name for fame'

No worries: Nonplussed by the online drama, Stephanie looked fantastic as she arrived in London's Euston station on Wednesday afternoon

In town to appear on the new season of Big Brother's Bit On The Side, her top only accentuated the fact that she wasn't wearing a bra underneath.

She also wore a light flowing black jacket and skinny white jeans, cut out at various points to show her bronzed pins.

The jeans featured a leather lattice effect over the cut-out areas.

She finished the look with nude heels and a black necklace, and carried a black leather bag over her shoulder.

Hitting back: Stephanie Davis has now taken it upon herself to lash out at her boyfriend and father of her child Jeremy McConnell's ex-girlfriend for using her 'name for fame' after she recently branded their relationship 'toxic'

Grand arrival: In town to appear on the new season of Big Brother's Bit On The Side, she strutted her stuff in a tight black top, semi-sheer and shimmering in the afternoon light. This only accentuated the fact that she wasn't wearing a bra underneath

She also sported a new dark blonde hair style, clearly planning on debuting it on Wednesday night's show.

The television personality has joined the team as a regular reporter for the show this summer, and so appeared to be happy as the parts of her life seem to be slotting into place.

She took it upon herself to lash out at her boyfriend and father of her child Jeremy McConnell's ex-girlfriend for using her 'name for fame' after she recently branded their relationship 'toxic'.

New look: She also sported a new dark blonde hair style, clearly planning on debuting it on Wednesday night's show

Hot to trot: She finished the look with nude heels and a black necklace, and carried a black leather bag over her shoulder

The former Hollyoaks actress could not be held back after she found out the Irish hunk's former flame Savannah Kemplay, who he dated on and off for two years, had been bad mouthing her.

Taking to her Twitter account on Tuesday, Stephanie posted, in a series of tweets: 'Hi chick, @MissKemplay can I ask who u are? I got told u were fame hungry and would take any show as it comes, but seriously commenting on my life...

'Darling, u wanna give that big head a wobble. Please stop using my name for fame. Pity u honey. Love Steph x. (sic)'

Stepping out: The television personality has joined the team as a regular reporter for the show this summer

Finally happy: After learning that he was indeed Caben's father, Jeremy decided to give things another go with Stephanie and the pair now live as a family at her home in Liverpool

Savannah - who starred on Beauty School Cop Out in 2013, alongside Jeremy and Scarlett Moffatt - had claimed her ex was only being amicable with Stephanie so that he could see their four-month-old son Caben-Albi.

She told Closer magazine: 'Jeremy's trapped in a toxic relationship because of a child. I don't know if his feelings for Steph are genuine - or whether he's keeping her sweet so he can be in Caben's life.

'Steph got pregnant after knowing a guy for three months. She makes everyone feel sorry for her, but it's Jeremy I feel sorry for.'

Stephanie and Jeremy - who met in the Celebrity Big Brother house in January 2016 - have had a very public relationship, which has had its ups, downs, highs and lows.

Since leaving their time inside the CBB house - during which Stephanie had a boyfriend on the outside world and consequently cheated on with Jeremy on national TV - their relationship had been plagued with blazing rows until they finally called it quits in May last year.

Up and down: Stephanie and Jeremy - who met in the Celebrity Big Brother house in January 2016 - have had a very public relationship, which has had its highs and lows

The dust's settled: After learning that he was indeed Caben's father, Jeremy decided to give things another go with Stephanie and the pair now live as a family at her home in Liverpool

The brunette soap star then found out she was pregnant, but Jeremy refused to believe the baby belonged to him and didn't want to have anything to do with her.

The reality TV star reached out to the actress a few weeks after Caben was born and she later agreed to have a paternity test conducted.

After learning that he was indeed Caben's father, Jeremy decided to give things another go with Stephanie and the pair now live as a family at her home in Liverpool.

However, even in recent weeks, the drama continued, with Stephanie suffering a panic attack, Jeremy attended court on assault charges and an array of are they/aren't they speculation running rife through the headlines.

Meanwhile, Savannah is trying her hand at more TV fame, and will appear on the seventh season of Ex On The Beach.
Salma Hayek put in a traffic stopping appearance in New York on Wednesday.

The 50-year-old actress stunned in a colorful outfit as she arrived at the Good Morning America studios.

Salma teamed a figure-hugging orange midi skirt with a white blouse as she prepared for her TV appearance.

Stopping traffic: Salma Hayek stunned as she headed to Good Morning America in Times Square on Wednesday

The 30 Rock star's top featured lace detail on the sleeves and she added some inches to her petite frame in platform heels.

Salma's look was complete with some orange-red lipstick and stylish sunglasses.

The Mexican born beauty is starring in comedy Beatriz at Dinner alongside Chloe Sevigny and John Lithgow.

The movie, out on June 9, tells the story of a Mexican immigrant Beatriz (Hayek) who has built a career as a massage therapist in Los Angeles.

Beatriz ends up spending an evening at a longtime clients Orange County mansion after her car breaks down.

Standing out: The 50-year-old star teamed a white blouse with orange midi skirt and heels

Camera ready: The curvy beauty sported orange red lipstick to complement the stylish look

Meanwhile Salma thinks George and Amal Clooney's twins couldn't be in 'better hands'.

The actress - who has daughter Valentina, nine, with husband Francois-Henri Pinault - insists she has 'no advice' to give her From Dusk Til Dawn co-star and his wife after they welcomed twins Alexander and Ella into the world on Tuesday.

She told People: 'I have no advice because his wife is Lebanese like me and I know his mother-in-law and his sister-in-law and I know those kids cannot be in better hands.'
Ann Widdecombe has slammed Amanda Holden for her daring ensembles and has called for her to be fired from Britain's Got Talent.

The former Tory politician, 69, was left shocked after the TV star appeared on the competition show's semi-finals last week in a 'state of undress' - preaching to show bosses to give her the boot.

Letting rip in her Daily Express column, Ann couldn't understand why Amanda, 46, was allowed to 'descend the show into sleaze and sexualisation' two hours before watershed and cringed at the thought of children trying to 'emulate her.'

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She wants her SACKED! Amanda Holden's risque ensembles were not taken well by Ann Widdecombe - who has now called for her to be fired

Amanda shocked with her barely-there dress, in particular a risque Julien Macdonald dress which was slashed at the navel and labelled totally inappropriate and compared to a strippers outfit by viewers.

And Ann also took offence as she wrote for the publication: 'Britains Got Talent, which airs at 7.30pm, nearly two hours before the watershed, is a family show, full of fun and innocence from Pudsey the dog to magicians to shadow acts to singing grandads.

'Then along comes Amanda Holden looking like an actress from an X-rated movie.

'ITV bosses will not be doing their job if they do not warn her under pain of being sacked.'

'Sleaze and sexualisation': The former Tory politician, 69, was left shocked after the TV star appeared on the competition show's semi-finals last week in a 'state of undress'

Bold display: Amanda shocked with her barely-there dress, in particular a risque Julien Macdonald dress which was slashed at the navel and labelled totally inappropriate and compared to a strippers outfit by viewers

'It's a family show!' Ann took offence with the outfit and compared Amanda's racy look to an 'x-rated actress'

Concerned about what she had witnessed, Ann continued: 'Children do not need to see such exposure paraded as glamour and something to emulate.'

Speaking ahead of her racy BGT appearances, Amanda told The Sun her aim was to raise eyebrows with her style choices.

'I cant wait to wear my dresses. They are very flattering, very feminine and a few are what you would expect.

Concerned about what she had witnessed, Ann continued: 'Children do not need to see such exposure paraded as glamour and something to emulate'

'My dresses are very flattering': Speaking ahead of her racy BGT appearances, Amanda told The Sun her aim was to raise eyebrows with her style choices

Ann - who is a former Strictly Come Dancing contestant, defiantly continued: 'ITV bosses will not be doing their job if they do not warn her under pain of being sacked'

'Will people be complaining to Ofcom? I hope so. I havent done my job if they arent!'

And Amanda's wishes certainly came true, with viewers flocking to the watchdog to raise concerns.

Taking to Twitter during the show, viewers were shocked by the racy ensemble, with one posting: 'Does Amanda Holden know this is a family show and doesn't need to dress like a stripper #BGT.

'Will she be down to her undies by finale?' Taking to Twitter during the show, viewers were shocked by the racy ensemble

Racy style: Amanda has a history of shocking with her scantily clad dress - Pictured last year on Britain's Got Talent

Another said she would be down to mini nipple tassels by the final - put em away love, it's a family show, while one social media user asked: Is it Amanda's birthday? She's dressed in that festive suit

Another said: I think David speaks on behalf of all of us about Amanda's dress.' And one added: 'Wow, wonder if Amanda will be down to her undies by the final?! #nexttonothing #familyshow #inappropriate.

An Ofcom spokesman added: We will assess these complaints before deciding whether or not to investigate.
She shot to infamy as the wife of the late convicted murderer, drug trafficker, and mobster Carl Williams.

And now Roberta Williams is ready to parlay her notoriety into a media career, after filming a pilot for a Mob Wives-style TV series with other criminal WAGs.

But the 48-year-old told The Daily Telegraph she has noble intentions with the show, and hopes to educate young women about the dangers of the underworld.

Educational? Carl Williams' widow Roberta (pictured) says her upcoming Mob Wives-style reality TV show will educate young women about the dangers of the underworld

'We are showing women that there is more to life than being with someone that is in and out of prison,' explained Roberta, who previously spent six months in jail herself for trafficking $100,000 worth of ecstasy.

'I've learnt the hard way and I hope to teach girls that there is no life in that,' she continued.

Speaking to Hughesy and Kate on Monday, the mother-of-five also insisted she's 'not trying to glorify the underworld', saying: 'We're just girls hanging out.'

'We are showing women that there is more to life than being with someone that is in and out of prison,' explained the widow

Jailbird! The 48-year-old previously spent six months in jail herself for trafficking $100,000 worth of ecstasy

'We're not trying to glorify the underworld with the show, so I just want to clarify that,' Roberta told co-hosts Dave Hughes and Kate Langbroek.

'We're not there to promote gang life, the underworld, criminality, anything like that. We're just some girls hanging out together, like-minded individuals,' she continued.

'I served my time of incarceration. It's not for the money, it's more about if we can change the mindset of young girls out there.'

Crime: Roberta shot to infamy as the wife of the late convicted murderer, drug trafficker, and mobster Carl Williams

She continued: 'There's no rewards in the end (for crime).'

'They will see the harsh reality of crime. Bringing up kids without their dads around, visiting prisons every week isn't a fun game,' she added.

Mob Wives will also star Raquael Villani, socialite Lisa Candido, Stefani Samac, Analya Diaz, and Leyla Yavuz.
Salma Hayek was on the promotional trail on Wednesday stopping off at several studios in New York.

The 50-year-old actress - who is promoting her new movie Beatriz At Dinner was pictured at the Build Series studio and joined by her co-stars John Lithgow and Connie Britton.

Salma looked gorgeous as ever in a black and white dress with strappy heels as she posed at the event.

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Monochrome maven: Salma Hayek looked gorgeous as she posed at the Build Series studios in New York on Wednesday

Salma donned a black and white frock as she posed alongside costars Connie Britton, 50 and John Lithgow, 71

The brunette beauty wore her glossy locks loose and she finished the look with a pop off red lipstick

Earlier in the day the star put in a traffic stopping appearance as she arrived at the Good Morning America studios.

Salma teamed a figure-hugging orange midi skirt with a white blouse as she prepared for her TV appearance.

Showing it off: Earlier in the day the star put in a traffic stopping appearance as she arrived at the Good Morning America studios

The duo star opposite each other in the comedy Beatriz At Dinner which is out on Friday

Stopping traffic: Salma stunned as she headed to Good Morning America in Times Square earlier in the day

The 30 Rock star's top featured lace detail on the sleeves and she added some inches to her petite frame in platform heels.

Salma's look was complete with some orange-red lipstick and stylish sunglasses.

The Mexican born beauty is starring in comedy Beatriz at Dinner alongside Connie, John and Chloe Sevigny.

The movie, out on June 9, tells the story of a Mexican immigrant Beatriz (Hayek) who has built a career as a massage therapist in Los Angeles.

Beatriz ends up spending an evening at a longtime clients Orange County mansion after her car breaks down.

Standing out: The 50-year-old star teamed a white blouse with orange midi skirt and heels

Camera ready: The curvy beauty sported orange red lipstick to complement the stylish look

Meanwhile Salma thinks George and Amal Clooney's twins couldn't be in 'better hands'.

The actress - who has daughter Valentina, nine, with husband Francois-Henri Pinault - insists she has 'no advice' to give her From Dusk Til Dawn co-star and his wife after they welcomed twins Alexander and Ella into the world on Tuesday.

She told People: 'I have no advice because his wife is Lebanese like me and I know his mother-in-law and his sister-in-law and I know those kids cannot be in better hands.'

Ode to Prince: Salma opted to wear a Prince T-shirt that she showed off by opening her blazer

Promo trail: The Mexican born beauty is starring in comedy Beatriz at Dinner alongside Chloe Sevigny and John Lithgow

She later changed, yet again, to attend the TimesTalks: The Allegory Of "Beatriz At Dinner" event at New School's Tischman Auditorium.

She opted for a chic look with a tight leather skirt and black T-shirt with the word Prince embroidered on it.

The stunning brunette added a hint of sophistication with a pin stripped blazer over top.

Media day! She was part of the TimesTalks: The Allegory Of "Beatriz At Dinner" event at New School's Tischman Auditorium to promote the project

Cool cat! She opted for a chic look with a tight leather skirt and black T-shirt with the word Prince embroidered on it

Great group: Posing with her co-star John Lithgow and director Miguel Arteta

The actress took to the stage alongside John Lithgow and moderator Logan Hill to talk about the project.

She wore her dark hair down in a straight style with it parted down the center.

The Fools Rush In star completed the look with multi-colored pumps.

The actress took to the stage alongside John Lithgow and moderator Logan Hill to talk about the project

Fierce! She looked like she had something impactful to say as she raised her fist

Another chic look: Salma was later spotted in a pair of gorgeous white statement heels as she continued her night
She usually favours a more sombre colour palette.

But Victoria Beckham was mixing things up on Wednesday when she stepped out in a vibrant orange ensemble in New York City, daring to be different in her colourful attire.

The fashion designer, 43, caught the eye in a bright tangerine blouse, worn tucked into a coordinating midi skirt.

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Neon brights: Victoria Beckham was mixing things up on Wednesday when she stepped out in a vibrant orange ensemble in New York City, daring to be different in her colourful attire

She looked super chic in her neon brights, with her pleated skirt a slightly different shade than the shirt.

Victoria's baggy attire was given a feminine twist thanks to a stylish pair of burgundy heels.

She shielded her eyes behind a pair of large sunglasses and styled her brunette bob in loose waves.

Eye-catching: The fashion designer, 43, caught the eye in a bright tangerine blouse, worn tucked into a coordinating midi skirt

Fancy footwear: Victoria's baggy attire was given a feminine twist thanks to a stylish pair of burgundy heels

Natural look: She shielded her eyes behind a pair of large sunglasses and styled her brunette bob in loose waves

The star has been in New York to preview her new fashion collection, excitedly sharing some of the imagery for her next season on social media.

She tweeted: 'Excited to be in New York to preview my ready-to-wear collection! x VB'.

Victoria seemed to have spent no more than a weekend at home in London before resuming work on her global fashion empire, on Monday.

Minimal touches: The former Spice Girl accessorised with a gold chain and matching watch

Chic: The fashionista carried a burgundy bag under one arm and flashed a look at her monogrammed phone case

New collection: The star has been in New York to preview her new fashion collection, excitedly sharing some of the imagery for her next season on social media

The family - including all four children Brooklyn, Romeo, Cruz and Harper - are only just back from a fun-packed safari holiday.

Along with husband David, Victoria spent quality time with her brood during their half term holidays from school, but the children did not escape the world of education because their visit included plenty of sight-seeing and culture.

With the exception of five-year-old Harper, each member of the family has been keeping their fanbase up to date with fascinating pictures of wildlife.

She tweeted: 'Excited to be in New York to preview my ready-to-wear collection! x VB'

Hard at work: Victoria seemed to have spent no more than a weekend at home in London before resuming work on her global fashion empire, on Monday

'Mummy's little lion cub': Victoria shared a heartwarming snap of five-year-old Harper cuddling up to her during their family holiday in Africa

Of course, their Instagram updates have not been without a collection of precious family moments, shot largely by aspiring photographer Brooklyn.

As the eldest of the Beckham brood, the 18-year-old has focused on bonding time with dad David.

He is even becoming increasingly more look his father in the looks department, if their latest selfies are anything to go by.

Like father, like son: David Beckham shared some sweet snaps of himself on an exotic getaway with his children in Africa on Thursday
She entered the Big Brother house with her 24-year-old daughter Charlotte Keys.

But Mandy Logworth, 51, has no qualms about confessing that she made a sex tape with Charlotte's father - and even brags that she put on a 'great performance'.

In scenes set to air on Wednesday night, Ellie Young and Dreamboys dancer Lotan Carter also share a steamy kiss in the hot tub, before cuddling under the covers.

Racy: Mandy Logworth, 51, has no qualms about confessing that she made a sex tape with Charlotte's father - and even brags that she put on a 'great performance' on Big Brother's Tuesday night episode

Mandy's sex tape confession came out during a task in which housemates are asked to match the salacious headline to the person.

Mandy's correct headline is 'sex tape shocker'.

She reveals: 'Charlotte's father and I did a sex tape and then we split up and moved on to different partners!'

Speaking candidly to her fellow, estate agent Mandy says: 'Charlotte's father's partner moved in so he thought what can I do with this [tape]?

'So he put it inside the dog's kennel.'

X-rated: Speaking candidly to her fellow, estate agent Mandy says: 'Charlotte's father's partner moved in so he thought what can I do with this [tape]? 'So he put it inside the dog's kennel'

Awkward! Mandy confessed to the X-rated act in front of her 24-year-old daughter Charlotte Keys

Oh dear: Mandy's sex tape confession came out during a task in which housemates are asked to match the salacious headline to the person. Mandy's correct headline is 'sex tape shocker'

The divorcee then reveals that the X-rated video mysteriously went missing after a decorator was brought it to renovate the kennel.

Mandy says her own niece later admitted that the tape was 'doing the rounds' in her hometown.

Not one to be easily embarrassed, the mother boasts to her shocked housemates: 'I was seven stone six lbs and put on a great performance.'

'It's fine by me,' she adds as the group erupts with outraged laughter.

Cheeky! Ellie Young and Dreamboys dancer Lotan Carter also share a steamy kiss in bed

Taking her man: The Ibiza Weekender kissed Lotan after a day of flirting with him

In the diary room, Mandy confirms who she has her eye on. 'A toss up between Lotan and Kieran,' she divulges.

'Tom's a cutie as well, perfectly formed. Where's the one my age? I feel like the mum!'

Elsewhere in the house, Ellie and Lotan's relationship starts to blossom early in the day, as Lotan starts a pillow fight with her, asking: 'Did that excite you?'

And in the evening, Ellie goes in for the kiss with Lotan as they chill in the hot tub.

Ellie reveals to Mandy that she likes Lotan and feels: 'He can do better than me, he's stunning!'

Intimate: 'I just want someone to like me for just been me,' she says, grinning at Lotan

Nice: Lotan reassures by responding: 'You're a walking f***ing festival! The reason I like you is because you make me smile

Reassurance: He adds: 'You make me want to be happy... a lot' as Ellie leaves his bed

She then joins Lotan in the smoking area and declares: 'You get good looking girls!'

He replies: 'People assume I'm arrogant! Looks don't mean jack to me for starters  I'm not saying you're not beautiful because you are, your eyes are re-donk-culous!'

In the kitchen, Kayleigh reveals to Lotan that Ellie fancies him.

He says that he wouldn't 'bang' Ellie, but he does 'like her', adding: 'I turn women f**king crazy! The best advice for her is to stay away from me.'

But ignoring the Lothario's advice, Ellie heads into Lotan's bed, where the pair share a hug and kiss.

'I just want someone to like me for just been me,' she says, grinning at Lotan.

Candid: Ellie reveals to Mandy that she likes Lotan and feels: 'He can do better than me, he's stunning!'

Getting closer: Ellei wrapped an arm around the dancer as they got steamy in the hot tub

Passionate: She bit his ear as he screeched with outrage in front of the other housemates

Lotan reassures by responding: 'You're a walking f***ing festival! The reason I like you is because you make me smile. You make me want to be happy... a lot.'

Meanwhile, earlier that day, People's Housemate Tom, splits the housemates into citizens - meaning Kieran, Mandy, Joe, Kayleigh, Imran, Ellie, Deborah get to wake up to comfort in Rose Cottage.

Meanwhile the exiles Chanelle, Arthur, Charlotte, Lotan, Rebecca, Raph, Hannah, Sukhvinder are living in dingy Thorn Cottage.

Sukhvinder tells Imran 'there are people I don't like'

Later Tom is called to the Intelligence Centre to implement three new house rules that will apply to the exiles.

Getting a bit tactile: Lotan held Ellie's hand as they had an intense chat outside

The look of love: Ellie could not stop herself gazing at the topless hunk

The first rule is that the exiles are having a private conversation they must disclose what they are talking about if asked by a citizen.

Also, all beverages for citizens must be made by the exiles and exiles must bow every time a citizen enters a room, it is revealed.

During a chat with Imran, Sukhvinder says: 'I'm allergic to people! The whole thing is so surreal. I don't want to lose who I am I don't want to come in here and turn into a sheep.'

During the headline task, Imran's correct headline is 'benefits backlash'.

He explains: 'As you know, I was married at a young age and have been working my ass off. I'm sick of people making excuses. I've had to travel all over the country to find work.

'Get up off your a** and find some work!' he declares, as the housemates cheer.

Belting it out: The 24-year-old reality star pulled her sexiest moves as she slipped into a pair of skin-tight black leggings and a spaghetti strap top while shaking her derriere to the delight and encouragement of her co-stars

Cheeky! Chanelle McCleary did not let her fury stop her having a good time as she threw herself into an active twerking session while wailing alongside fellow second-hand citizens Sukhvinder, Rebecca, Raph, Hannah, Arthur, Charlotte and Lotan

Imran thinks his housemates are 'good people', but Sukhvinder disagrees, 'not everybody is good'.

In the bathroom, Arthur and Imran later have a disagreement, during which Arthur tells Imran: 'My view on benefits is that you should take whatever you can. At the end of the day, if you got it you've got to flaunt it. There's a system so play it.'

Imran shoots back: 'How can we progress if we just think about ourselves? We have to help each other.'

Arthur thinks 'it's jealousy'. Imran says: 'It's not about jealousy, it's humanity. You think it's OK to exploit the Welfare State? I disagree with that.'

Grinding: Chanelle was keen to show off her curves in her leggings and vest combo

Giggling away: Chanelle and her fellow housemates were sent away by the People's Housemate Tom Barber in the latest shock twist by the Big Brother bosses

Elsewhere in the headline task, Chanelle explains she was 'called ugly all through school'.

Earlier on the sofas, she had admitted that she recently had a Brazilian bum lift, has filler in her lips and has tried Botox twice.

Raph's correct headline is 'can't beat a cheat'. He reveals: 'I dated three girls in high school and each time I dated a girl, I cheated on her with a guy to explore what it felt like to be with a guynothing I can say to justify it.'

The housemates are left open-mouthed at the shocking confession.

Tom is in the diary room, Big Brother explains that he will be receiving more information from the public and will be given the opportunity to change his decision about which housemates are citizens and exiles
She plays the lead character, who happens to be her namesake, in the new adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's classic.

And actress Rachel Weisz was certainly the centre of attention on Wednesday night as she dazzled at the London premiere of her new film My Cousin Rachel.

The 47-year-old looked truly stunning in a glittering tulle gown, adorned with silver flowers all over, as she paraded the red carpet alongside her co-stars.

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Leading lady: actress Rachel Weisz was certainly the centre of attention on Wednesday night as she dazzled at the London premiere of her new film My Cousin Rachel

The About A Boy star certainly stole the show at the star-studded event in her Gothic-inspired gown of black tulle.

Cutting into a sweetheart neckline to leave her delicate decolletage on show, the frock's bodice then tightly hugged her slim frame, before it expanded out into a stunning full skirt.

Making the look even more striking, the dress was then adorned with glittering silver flowers all over - which glinted in the light as she effortlessly posed on the carpet.

Gorgeous: The About A Boy star certainly stole the show at the star-studded event in her Gothic-inspired gown of black tulle

All eyes on me: The frock then expanded out into a stunning full skirt, which swept the floor as she paraded the carpet

Dazzling: Making the look even more striking, the dress was then adorned with glittering silver flowers all over - which glinted in the light as she effortlessly posed

Simplicity is key: Keeping all eyes on her ensemble, The Mummy star carried her essentials in a minimal black clutch

Glittering: She accessorised with nothing but a delicate silver bangle

Keeping all eyes on her ensemble, The Mummy star carried her essentials in a minimal black clutch, and accessorised with nothing but a delicate silver bangle.

Styling her hair into soft waves and adding a smoky eye and dark red lip, Rachel, who is married to James Bond star Daniel Craig, proved her natural beauty and radiant complexion as she beamed for cameras.

The brunette was joined by co-star Sam Claflin at the event, who cosied up to his wife Laura Haddock on the carpet.

Gorgeous: She styled her hair into loose, soft waves

Stunning: Adding a smoky eye and dark red lip Rachel, who is married to James Bond star Daniel Craig, proved her natural beauty as she beamed for cameras

Star of the show: Rachel commanded attention as she made her radiant arrival

What a pair: The brunette was joined by co-star Sam Claflin at the event, who cosied up to his wife Laura Haddock on the carpet

Suited and booted: The Hunger Games star looked typically slick and suave in a clean-cut black suit and crisp white shirt as he posed happily beside his wife of four years

Stunning: The dress pulled into stylish vintage buttons and sleek long sleeves at the top, skimming her slender frame all the way to its peplum middle

The Hunger Games star looked typically slick and suave in a clean-cut black suit and crisp white shirt as he posed happily beside his wife of four years.

Meanwhile the actress, 31, opted for a Victoriana-inspired gown, in homage to the film, formed of a structured jacket and bold ruffled skirt.

The dress pulled into stylish vintage buttons and sleek long sleeves at the top, skimming her slender frame all the way to its peplum middle.

However, the frock then packed more of a punch when the waist detailing met a chunky frilled skirt of cream tulle, similar to that of a ballerina's tutu.

Angelic: However, the frock then packed more of a punch when the waist detailing met a chunky frilled skirt of cream tulle, similar to that of a ballerina's tutu

Matching: Keeping co-ordinated from head to toe, the Honest star teamed her outfit with matching cream court shoes

Radiant: She finished her look with glowing, dewy make-up and a pale pink lip

Sweet: Laura, who married Sam four years ago, stood proudly beside her husband on the carpet, ahead of his big night

Helping hand: Sam sweetly helped her with her accessories as they made their way across the carpet

Say cheese! The couple could not stop beaming as they posed

Keeping co-ordinated from head to toe, the Honest star teamed her outfit with matching cream court shoes and a dewy make-up look as she stood proudly beside her husband on the carpet.



Rachel and Sam are the stars of the new adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's classic novel My Cousin Rachel.

The mystery-romance, written in 1951, follows young Englishman Phillip (Claflin), who plots revenge on his cousin Rachel, who he believes killed his guardian.

However after inviting her to stay with him in Cornwall, his feeling towards her soon become confused, after he is captivated by her mystery and beauty.

Taking the lead: Sam later posed with co-star Rachel on the carpet

Lead roles: The duo are the stars of the new Roger Michell adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's classic novel My Cousin Rachel

Dramatic: The mystery-romance, written in 1951, follows young Englishman Phillip (Claflin), who plots revenge on his cousin Rachel, who he believes killed his guardian

Enchanting: However after inviting her to stay with him in Cornwall, his feeling towards her soon become confused, after he is captivated by her mystery and beauty

Good chemistry: Rachel and Sam had appeared on Lorraine earlier on Wednesday, in order to discuss their upcoming project

The film, which also stars Iain Glen and Holliday Granger, is directed by Roger Michell of Notting Hill fame, and is set for release on Friday.

Stars Rachel and Sam had appeared on Lorraine earlier on Wednesday, in order to discuss their upcoming project.

Addressing what drew him to the role, 30-year-old Sam explained to host Lorraine Kelly: 'The ambiguity of the script is what I loved. My character [Philip] is a naive young man. The beautiful thing is that you usually see a boy turning into a man.

Mysterious: Addressing what drew him to the role, 30-year-old Sam explained to host Lorraine Kelly: 'The ambiguity of the script is what I loved'

Glitz and glamour: Rachel then chimed in that getting to take on roles foreign to her own personality is what she loves most about acting

Smile! The film, which also stars Iain Glen and Holliday Granger (both right), is directed by Roger Michell of Notting Hill fame, and is set for release on Friday

Having a ball: The cast proved their good chemistry as they joked in front of cameras

'But for him, he believes hes a man - but then he becomes a boy when Rachel walks into life. She calls him a little puppy dog.'

Rachel then chimed in that getting to take on roles foreign to her own personality is what she loves most about acting.

She explained: 'We get to tell stories and pretend to be other people. But dressing up and going to red carpets is a fantasy as well.

Glamour girl: Also present at the premiere was co-star Holliday Grainger, who appears in the flick as Louise Kendall

Raunchy: The 29-year-old put on a saucier display than her co-stars in a cropped black gown of semi-sheer mesh and soft chiffon

'Its make believe. To stay normal you need to know its pretend.'

Also present at the premiere was co-star Holliday Grainger, who appears in the flick as Louise Kendall.

The 29-year-old put on a saucier display than her co-stars in a cropped black gown of semi-sheer mesh and soft chiffon.

Flash of skin: Remaining demure with a high choker neckline and knee-length hem, the frock then upped the sex appeal with its racy sheer material

Chic: Cinching in at her petite waist, the outfit then skimmed Holliday's svelte legs with a tight-fitting skirt, which was sported beneath a gorgeous chiffon layer

Close: She later joined Rachel at the photo call, whose hand she tightly clasped

Good connection: The pair shared a joke on the carpet, proving their chemistry both on and off screen

Remaining demure with a high choker neckline and knee-length hem, the frock then upped the sex appeal with its racy sheer material - which teased at her braless figure and smooth skin underneath.

Cinching in at her petite waist, the outfit then skimmed Holliday's svelte legs with a tight-fitting skirt, which was sported beneath a gorgeous chiffon top layer to soften the look.

Adding height to her frame with black patent court shoes and styling her fiery red locks into a loose up-do, the Mancunian exuded effortless glamour as she fiercely posed for cameras.

Slinky: Meanwhile Poppy Lee Friar, who plays Mary Pascoe in the flick, made an equally stunning arrival in a black silk midi

Classically chic: The 22-year-old slipped her slender figure into the frock, which pulled into thin spaghetti straps and plunged at the chest to tease at her delicate cleavage

Youthful: The beauty pulled her hair to one side in order to leave her glowing skin on display as she beamed

Finishing touch: Softly skimming her figure, the elegant dress then cut off at her knee to leave some of her slim legs on show - which she lengthened further with patent court shoes

Let's hear it for the boys: Director Roger Michell (L) was casually cool in a traditional blazer and jeans, while actor Iain Glen (R) ditched a tie for the occasion

Adorable: Meanwhile young star Austin Taylor looked very confident for his tender age in his traditional suit and leather loafer combo

Meanwhile Poppy Lee Friar, who plays Mary Pascoe in the flick, made an equally stunning arrival in a black silk midi dress.

The 22-year-old slipped her slender figure into the frock, which pulled into thin spaghetti straps and plunged at the chest to tease at her delicate cleavage.

Softly skimming her figure all the way down, the elegant dress then cut off at her knee to leave some of her slim legs on show - which she lengthened further with patent court shoes.
Lea Michele looked fresh faced as she touched down in Canada this week.

The Glee beauty was spotted arriving in Toronto looking casual but gorgeous with no makeup on.

The 30-year-old actress was wearing cropped jeans and a white tank with long coat as she made her way through the arrivals terminal.

Welcome to Canada! Lea Michele looked fresh faced as she touched down in Toronto on Tuesday

She wore her long locks up in a ponytail and sported black loafers.

Seemingly travelling light Lea wheeled her own luggage as she headed out of the airport building.

While in town Lea will be promoting her new sitcom The Mayor at the upcoming CTV Upfronts.

Lea co-stars opposite Brandon Micheal Hall in the show which centers on Courtney Rose (Hall), a struggling hip-hop artist who runs for mayor to promote his mixtape -and wins.

Lea plays Valentina in the comedy which premieres this fall on ABC.

Keeping it casual: The 30-year-old actress was wearing cropped jeans and a white tank with long coat as she made her way through the arrivals terminal

Meanwhile Lea was reduced to tears after meeting Celine Dion at the Billboard Music Awards in Las Vegas last month.

The actress was seated alongside a star-studded list of musicians for the ceremony at the T-Mobile Arena - but her personal highlight of the evening was getting to meet Celine, who she subsequently described as her 'idol'.

Alongside a black-and-white photograph of them two of them, Lea wrote on Instagram: 'Tonight was the best night of my life. What an honor to introduce my idol @celinedion at the @bbmas and meet her after.. she is an kind as she is talented. (sic)'

This April saw the release of Places, which is Lea's sophomore solo studio album, following up her 2014 debut solo studio album entitled Louder.

It's rumored the album's closer Hey You concerns Michele's boyfriend and Glee co-star Cory Monteith, who died in 2013 of heroin- and alcohol-induced toxicity.

While in town Lea will be promoting her new show The Mayor at the upcoming CTV Upfronts
Her roles in the adaptation of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations and 16th-century drama The Borgias have seen her cover up in an array of elaborate gowns.

But Holliday Grainger was keen to show off her figure on Wednesday, as she put on a saucy display at the My Cousin Rachel premiere in London.

The 29-year-old upped the sex appeal by going braless in a raunchy semi-sheer dress, as she paraded the carpet alongside her co-stars.

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Mesh-merising! Holliday Grainger put on a saucy display at the My Cousin Rachel premiere in London on Wednesday

Holliday was confident to flaunt her killer body in a cropped black gown, of both semi-sheer mesh and chiffon.

While the dress remained demure with a high choker neckline and knee-length hem, it was formed of a racy sheer material - which teased at her braless figure and plenty of smooth skin underneath.

Adorned with only a few soft frills on each side, the bodice gave a glimpse of her ample bust and slender frame beneath, as the see-through material skimmed her torso.

Raunchy: The 29-year-old upped the sex appeal by going braless in a raunchy semi-sheer dress, as she paraded the carpet alongside her co-stars

Cheeky flash: While the dress remained demure with a high choker neckline and knee-length hem, it was formed of a racy sheer material - which teased at her braless figure beneath

Cinching in at her petite waist, the outfit then skimmed her svelte legs with a tight-fitting skirt, which was sported beneath a gorgeous chiffon layer on top to soften the look.

Adding height to her already leggy figure, the redhead tied her look together with towering black court shoes as she happily greeted fans on the carpet.

Styling her fiery red locks into a loose up-do and adding a sultry smoky eye and nude lip, the Mancunian exuded effortless glamour as she fiercely posed for cameras.

Chic: Cinching in at her petite waist, the outfit then skimmed her svelte legs with a tight-fitting skirt, which was sported beneath a gorgeous chiffon layer on top

Statuesque: Adding height to her already leggy figure, the redhead tied her look together with towering black court shoes as she happily greeted fans on the carpet

Glam girls:Holliday joins Rachel Weisz (L) in this new flick however - who certainly stole the show at the event as the film's leading lady

The beauty commanded attention on the carpet - as one of the hottest up and coming actresses of the moment.

After a smattering of British TV appearances, Holliday rose to higher prominence when she played Estella in Mike Newell's 2012 version of Great Expectations, before going on to star in Disney's Cinderella alongside Lily James.

Holliday joins Rachel Weisz in this new flick however - who certainly stole the show at the event as the film's leading lady.

The 47-year-old looked truly stunning in a glittering tulle gown, adorned with silver flowers all over, as she paraded the red carpet alongside her co-stars.

Leading lady: The 47-year-old looked truly stunning in a glittering tulle gown, adorned with silver flowers all over

The About A Boy star certainly stole the show at the star-studded event in her Gothic-inspired gown of black tulle.

Cutting into a sweetheart neckline to leave her delicate decolletage on show, the frock's bodice then tightly hugged her slim frame, before it expanded out into a stunning full skirt.

Making the look even more striking, the dress was then adorned with glittering silver flowers all over - which glinted in the light as she effortlessly posed on the carpet.

Gorgeous: The About A Boy star certainly stole the show at the star-studded event in her Gothic-inspired gown of black tulle

All eyes on me: The frock then expanded out into a stunning full skirt, which swept the floor as she paraded the carpet

Dazzling: Making the look even more striking, the dress was then adorned with glittering silver flowers all over - which glinted in the light as she effortlessly posed

Simplicity is key: Keeping all eyes on her ensemble, The Mummy star carried her essentials in a minimal black clutch

Glittering: She accessorised with nothing but a delicate silver bangle

Keeping all eyes on her ensemble, The Mummy star carried her essentials in a minimal black clutch, and accessorised with nothing but a delicate silver bangle.

Styling her hair into soft waves and adding a smoky eye and dark red lip, Rachel, who is married to James Bond star Daniel Craig, proved her natural beauty and radiant complexion as she beamed for cameras.

The brunette was joined by co-star Sam Claflin at the event, who cosied up to his wife Laura Haddock on the carpet.

Gorgeous: She styled her hair into loose, soft waves

Stunning: Adding a smoky eye and dark red lip Rachel, who is married to James Bond star Daniel Craig, proved her natural beauty as she beamed for cameras

Star of the show: Rachel commanded attention as she made her radiant arrival

What a pair: The brunette was joined by co-star Sam Claflin at the event, who cosied up to his wife Laura Haddock on the carpet

Suited and booted: The Hunger Games star looked typically slick and suave in a clean-cut black suit and crisp white shirt as he posed happily beside his wife of four years

Stunning: The dress pulled into stylish vintage buttons and sleek long sleeves at the top, skimming her slender frame all the way to its peplum middle

The Hunger Games star looked typically slick and suave in a clean-cut black suit and crisp white shirt as he posed happily beside his wife of four years.

Meanwhile the actress, 31, opted for a Victoriana-inspired gown, in homage to the film, formed of a structured jacket and bold ruffled skirt.

The dress pulled into stylish vintage buttons and sleek long sleeves at the top, skimming her slender frame all the way to its peplum middle.

However, the frock then packed more of a punch when the waist detailing met a chunky frilled skirt of cream tulle, similar to that of a ballerina's tutu.

Angelic: However, the frock then packed more of a punch when the waist detailing met a chunky frilled skirt of cream tulle, similar to that of a ballerina's tutu

Matching: Keeping co-ordinated from head to toe, the Honest star teamed her outfit with matching cream court shoes

Radiant: She finished her look with glowing, dewy make-up and a pale pink lip

Sweet: Laura, who married Sam four years ago, stood proudly beside her husband on the carpet, ahead of his big night

Helping hand: Sam sweetly helped her with her accessories as they made their way across the carpet

Say cheese! The couple could not stop beaming as they posed

Keeping co-ordinated from head to toe, the Honest star teamed her outfit with matching cream court shoes and a dewy make-up look as she stood proudly beside her husband on the carpet.



Rachel and Sam are the stars of the new adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's classic novel My Cousin Rachel.

The mystery-romance, written in 1951, follows young Englishman Phillip (Claflin), who plots revenge on his cousin Rachel, who he believes killed his guardian.

However after inviting her to stay with him in Cornwall, his feeling towards her soon become confused, after he is captivated by her mystery and beauty.

Taking the lead: Sam later posed with co-star Rachel on the carpet

Lead roles: The duo are the stars of the new Roger Michell adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's classic novel My Cousin Rachel

Dramatic: The mystery-romance, written in 1951, follows young Englishman Phillip (Claflin), who plots revenge on his cousin Rachel, who he believes killed his guardian

Enchanting: However after inviting her to stay with him in Cornwall, his feeling towards her soon become confused, after he is captivated by her mystery and beauty

Good chemistry: Rachel and Sam had appeared on Lorraine earlier on Wednesday, in order to discuss their upcoming project

The film, which also stars Iain Glen and Holliday Granger, is directed by Roger Michell of Notting Hill fame, and is set for release on Friday.

Stars Rachel and Sam had appeared on Lorraine earlier on Wednesday, in order to discuss their upcoming project.

Addressing what drew him to the role, 30-year-old Sam explained to host Lorraine Kelly: 'The ambiguity of the script is what I loved. My character [Philip] is a naive young man. The beautiful thing is that you usually see a boy turning into a man.

Mysterious: Addressing what drew him to the role, 30-year-old Sam explained to host Lorraine Kelly: 'The ambiguity of the script is what I loved'

Glitz and glamour: Rachel then chimed in that getting to take on roles foreign to her own personality is what she loves most about acting

Smile! The film, which also stars Iain Glen and Holliday Granger (both right), is directed by Roger Michell of Notting Hill fame, and is set for release on Friday

Having a ball: The cast proved their good chemistry as they joked in front of cameras

'But for him, he believes hes a man - but then he becomes a boy when Rachel walks into life. She calls him a little puppy dog.'

Rachel then chimed in that getting to take on roles foreign to her own personality is what she loves most about acting.

She explained: 'We get to tell stories and pretend to be other people. But dressing up and going to red carpets is a fantasy as well.

'Its make believe. To stay normal you need to know its pretend.'

Slinky: Meanwhile Poppy Lee Friar, who plays Mary Pascoe in the flick, made an equally stunning arrival in a black silk midi

Classically chic: The 22-year-old slipped her slender figure into the frock, which pulled into thin spaghetti straps and plunged at the chest to tease at her delicate cleavage

Youthful: The beauty pulled her hair to one side in order to leave her glowing skin on display as she beamed

Finishing touch: Softly skimming her figure, the elegant dress then cut off at her knee to leave some of her slim legs on show - which she lengthened further with patent court shoes

Let's hear it for the boys: Director Roger Michell (L) was casually cool in a traditional blazer and jeans, while actor Iain Glen (R) ditched a tie for the occasion

Adorable: Meanwhile young star Austin Taylor looked very confident for his tender age in his traditional suit and leather loafer combo

Meanwhile Poppy Lee Friar, who plays Mary Pascoe in the flick, made an equally stunning arrival in a black silk midi dress.

The 22-year-old slipped her slender figure into the frock, which pulled into thin spaghetti straps and plunged at the chest to tease at her delicate cleavage.

Softly skimming her figure all the way down, the elegant dress then cut off at her knee to leave some of her slim legs on show - which she lengthened further with patent court shoes.
She flew the British flag at the CFDA Fashion Awards in New York City on Tuesday evening.

But it was a notably low-key Suki Waterhouse who was reunited with rumoured boyfriend Diego Luna in downtown Manhattan the following day.

The actress and model, 25, opted for an understated black top and patterned monochrome dress as she made a rare appearance with the 37-year old in the Big Apple.

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Understated: It was a notably low-key Suki Waterhouse who ventured out with boyfriend Diego Luna in New York City on Wednesday

A casual leather jacket added to the look, while on-trend suede boots and heavily tinted sunglasses rounded things off.

Seemingly in high spirits, Suki beamed as she made her way across the sidewalk with Diego, who mirrored her relaxed ensemble by sporting skinny jeans and battered trainers as they passed the time with a male friend.

Two days previously she caught the eye in a fitted dress embroidered with a distinctive birds and skull pattern as she made an entrance at the CFDA Fashion Awards.

Low key look: The actress and model opted for an understated black top and patterned monochrome dress for her latest appearance in the Big Apple.

Finishing touches: A casual leather jacket added to the look, while on-trend suede boots and heavily tinted sunglasses rounded things off

Anything she can do: Diego mirrored her relaxed ensemble by sporting skinny jeans and battered trainers

But while Suki shot to fame as the face of Burberry, she is now carving out an alternative career as an actress.

To date she has made an appearance in Pride And Prejudice And Zombies, Love, Rosie and Insurgent.

More recently the British star, who previously dated Bradley Cooper, has been filming on the set of new thriller Assassination Nation.

Plenty to talk about: The pair chatted to a male friend as they strolled through Manhattan on Wednesday

Upbeat: Seemingly in high spirits, Suki beamed as she made her way across the sidewalk with Diego

Nineties diva: The stunner wore the ensemble to the World Oceans Day Eve with Project 0 in honor of the La Mer Wave Walk in Support of Project 0

Living it up: She looked straight out of the Nineties in the funky look

Striking: Two days previously Suki caught the eye in a fitted dress embroidered with a distinctive birds and skull pattern as she made an entrance at the CFDA fashion Awards

She will take on an American accent in the movie, which also stars Bella Thorne, Maude Aptow, Bill Skarsgard and Joel McHale.

Suki has been romantically linked with Rogue One: A Star Wars Story actor Diego since January, after the pair were spotted looking close during a trip to Mexico in January.

The young starlet was reportedly dating Game of Thrones actor Richard Madden, however her recent appearances with Diego suggested she's already moved on.

MailOnline has contacted Suki's representatives for further comment.
Bob Saget has found love with travel blogger Kelly Rizzo.

'She's a remarkable person and she's really talented,' the 61-year-old Fuller House actor told Closer Weekly about his blossoming romance with the 38-year-old Chicago native. 'I'm happier today, and I'm the youngest 61-year-old I know!'

The Philadelphia-born comic told the publication he 'didn't think [he'd] have a relationship again' prior to meeting Rizzo.

Happy couple: Bob Saget, 61, opened up in a new interview on his romance with girlfriend Kelly Rizzo, 38. The two were snapped at an event at NYC's Madison Square Garden March 28

'I was kind of in that 'Just work, make people happy and take care of your kids until they're 90' mindset,' said Saget, who's also spent time behind the camera directing films such as 2007's Farce of the Penguins and 1998's Dirty Work.

Saget and ex-wife Sherri Kramer Saget ended their 15-year union in 1997. He said their three daughters - Lara, 27, Aubrey, 27, and Jennifer, 24 - are joyous over his new romantic relationship.

'My daughters love her!' Saget told the publication, adding that Rizzo's 'got her own website and streaming series called Eat Travel Rock.'

Happy couple: The duo first met in 2015, according to Rizzo, who moved to LA from Chicago to be with the Full House star

Wish upon a star: The couple celebrated Saget's 61st birthday in May with a trip to Disneyland

Good chemistry: The veteran funnyman and his love looked to be having a nice time prior to taking a flight last month

Rizzo, who has more than 41,000 Instagram followers, opened up about her romance with the TV veteran in a February chat with Michigan Avenue.

'Bob and I met through a mutual friend in early 2015. I don't really see him as Danny Tanner,' she said, referencing Saget's Full House persona. 'To me he's just Bobby, my love.'

Last month, she took to Instagram to wish the America's Funniest Home Videos star a happy birthday, calling him 'the man who keeps [her] laughing, keeps [her] on my toes (literally) and keeps [her] feeling like the luckiest girl in the world.'
She made it into MasterChef's coveted top 24 chefs.

And Nicole Stevenson's aspirations for greatness doesn't end in the kitchen with the 24-year-old telling OK! Magazine she plans to use her cooking ability for good.

The medical secretary from Ipswich, Queensland, plans to create a recipe book for gastric sleeve surgery patients once the show wraps up.

Cooking up some good! MasterChef's fitness fanatic contestant Nicole Stevenson plans to create recipe book for gastric sleeve surgery patients

Nicole told the publication she thought up the plan through her work as a medical secretary for the past half decade.

'I worked at a weight-loss surgery for five years and came up with an idea to create a cookbook, with the advice of a nutritionist, to help those who have just had gastric sleeve surgery,' she explained.

The bubbly blonde is a self-confessed fitness fanatic who hopes to use her cooking skills to get others to be more healthy.

Making plans: Nicole told the publication she thought up the plan through her work as a medical secretary for the past half decade

'I know food is what I want to do and no matter what, I'll follow my passion,' Nicole said.

Growing up in a close family, Nicole learnt cooking from her Dutch Oma and mother.

The blonde's favourite cuisines to cook include Vietnamese, Mexican and Italian dishes.

Wants to inspire others: The bubbly blonde is a self-confessed fitness fanatic who hopes to use her cooking skills to get others to be more healthy

Loves exercise! Outside of the kitchen she is a fitness fanatic, completing a solo trek in Nepal aged 21

Outside of the kitchen she is a fitness fanatic, completing a solo trek in Nepal aged 21.

Meanwhile, competition on MasterChef is heating up, with the green team facing an elimination challenge on Thursday night.

The group had struggled to create a feast of appetizing vegetable-only meals for meat eaters on Wednesday night's episode.
They are the loved-up Adelaide couple on popular Channel Seven's home renovation series, House Rules.

And according to OK! Magazine, Harry, 32, and Kate, 28, are keen to tie the knot very soon.

The South Australian duo told the publication: 'If we were ever going to get married it would be soon, hopefully.'

'It would be soon, hopefully!' House Rules couple Harry and Kate reveal plans for a non-traditional wedding after trying for baby number two in interview with OK! Magazine on Thursday

'Having gone through the House Rules experience, funnily enough, has been really good for us and I think if we were ever going to get married it would be soon, hopefully,' Kate said.

Already proud parents to two-year-old son Xavier, the pair have expressed their desire to have another child.

'First thing that we'd like to do [is] baby number two... We're definitely hoping to have a little brother or sister for Xavier soon,' Kate said.

'I'll be wearing a jumpsuit and I don't even know if it'll be white': The loved-up reality stars also hinted to a non-traditional wedding, as Kate revealed she WON'T wear a dress

The reality stars hinted at a non-traditional wedding.

Kate, who claims she looks like model Jennifer Hawkins, said: 'I'll be wearing a jumpsuit and I don't even know if it'll be white.'

However, the wedding will likely be a few years off, as they've expressed their wish for a bigger family first.

'First thing that we'd like to do [is] baby number two': The loved-up parents admitted they'd like to have more kids before tying the knot

Meanwhile, Kate revealed previously to news.com.au that she could have died during labour with her first child.

The brunette explained that she had been diagnosed with pre-eclampsia and was induced at 37 weeks at Adelaide's Flinders Medical Centre.

Suffering from high blood pressure, a low platelet count and with kidney issues, Kate said she was given anti-seizure medication to cope.

Scary labour! Kate could have died during labour with her first child, Xavier, as she had high blood pressure, a low platelet count and kidney issues, forcing her to have an emergency cesarean

Reality stars: The pair joined the renovation series after they maxed out their mortgage, owing $473,000 on their 'half a house' property with no money left to renovate

Kate was then rushed into the theatre for an emergency cesarean with their child soon delivered safely at 2.45 kgs.

The pair joined the series after they maxed out their mortgage, owing $473,000 on their 'half a house' property with no money left to renovate.

They bought for $550,000 after the block was subdivided and split in half, leaving them to live in just bedrooms and a garage.

Out now! Read more about Harry and Kate's relationship, marriage plans and baby news in the latest issue of OK! Magazine




A displaced Syrian child, who fled the area surrounding the Islamic State group stronghold of Raqa, is photographed at a temporary camp in the village of Ain Issa

Secret dates, dead-drops and "bullet-free" maths lessons: these are just some of the ways residents of the Islamic State group's Syrian bastion Raqa resisted years of jihadist rule.

IS has been ruling Raqa with an iron fist since 2014, imposing its draconian interpretation of Islamic law on the northern city's 300,000-strong population.

But as a US-backed offensive broke into an eastern district of Raqa on Tuesday, residents have been telling AFP how they spent years quietly resisting jihadist orders.

Sami, 24, met 22-year-old Rima six years ago, when Syria's uprising broke out with anti-government protests across the country.

"We used to meet up, talk in the street, sit together in public spaces," Sami told AFP, using a pseudonym to protect himself as he was speaking from Raqa.

But when IS took over, everything changed.

Raqa and Tabqa in northern Syria

The group deployed its hisba (religious police) units across Raqa to enforce dress codes and a ban on interactions between unmarried people of opposite sexes.

Sami and Rima were forced to take their relationship underground.

"We started being afraid of IS's patrols, so we tried everything. We wrote notes to each other that would be delivered by young kids," he said.

With satellites and private internet connections banned, Sami used IS-run internet cafes to send Rima electronic messages, which she could only read hours later when she visited a similar cafe.

The system was a romantic take on the system of dead-drops typically used for covert communication among spies.

- 'I wanted to die' -

Sometimes, the couple even took the risk of arranging public rendezvous to steal furtive glances of each other.

"She would tell me, for example, that she was leaving the house at a certain time. We'd agree to meet at a shop," Sami recalled.

Rima would enter the store in the full black face veil mandated by IS, but Sami always recognised her.

A member of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces photographed in the town of Tabqa, about 55 kilometres (35 miles) west of Raqa on April 30, 2017

"I would come in and we'd talk a little bit before a Daesh guy would come in and ruin everything," he said, using the Arabic acronym for IS.

One morning, their luck ran out. As Sami watched helplessly from a distance, hisba officers detained Rima in the street because "her clothes were not up to par".

"I was so angry and I began crying, but she was signaling to me not to approach them. I wanted to die at the time."

Rima's parents said they would give their blessing for her to marry Sami only if they fled Raqa together, but financial difficulties have kept him in the northern city.

Thousands of people have poured out of Raqa as US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces edged closer to the city limits.

- 'Ticking time bombs' -

When IS overran Raqa, it also seized control of one of its most valuable resources: its schools.

As it has done in other cities, IS replaced the traditional curriculum, including classes on physics and chemistry, with religious courses and its own macabre twist on arithmetics.

"Studying maths became about counting rifles, pistols, explosives, and car bombs," said a former public school teacher in the city on condition of anonymity.

The IS group has been ruling Raqa with an iron fist since 2014

One subject taught children how to carry out suicide attacks and boasted about the "virgins" with which the attacker could be rewarded.

"These courses turn students into ticking time bombs," said the teacher, who refused to work in the IS-run institutions.

Parents, too, stopped sending their kids to school, fearing they would be brainwashed.

Instead, they reached out to former teachers, asking if they could hold secret tutoring sessions at home on biology, English and bullet-free arithmetics.

Teachers would arrive at a student's home at an agreed-upon time for private or small group sessions, but instructors would avoid full-sized classes to stay under the radar.

"The teachers who are doing this live in constant fear. But we feel like we have a duty to society and to a child's right to a violence-free education," the former teacher told AFP.

One father has reached out to a close friend and teacher, asking if he could tutor his sons, seven and nine.

"It's scary for us to think that our kids could start thinking like Daesh -- talking about takfir (radical Islam) or slaves or virgins," the parent told AFP.

"This is destroying an entire generation."
John Numbi was relieved of his post as police chief in Democratic Republic of Congo in June 2010 after the murder of rights activist Floribert Chebeya

Democratic Republic of Congo's former police chief John Numbi, believed by regime critics to be the prime suspect in the murder of a key rights activist, has been made a national hero.

Numbi, who holds the rank of general, is one of eight senior police officers named as "national heroes" by President Joseph Kabila in a May 16 ruling seen online on Tuesday.

He was relieved of his post after the 2010 killing of Floribert Chebeya, founder of the rights movement Voice of the Voiceless, who was found dead in his car on June 2, a day after he was driven to police headquarters in Kinshasa following a summons from the police chief.

Chebeya's driver, Fidele Bazana, went missing without a trace, and in the absence of a body the judiciary concluded that he had also been murdered.

Numbi denies having any appointment with Chebeya on that day and has only once appeared in court, as a witness.

In 2011, a military court sentenced a senior police officer to death and jailed a police captain for life over the murder, but four years later, the death sentence was commuted to 15 years jail and the captain acquitted after an appeal.

"It's authentic, it's an official decree," a staff member working at the official government gazette told AFP in reference to the document posted online.

"It is a huge disappointment. This decision proves that the assassination of Floribert Chebeya and Fidele Bazana really was a crime perpetrated by the state," Rostin Manketa, executive director of Voice of the Voiceless, told AFP.

Kabila "knows that John Numbi's name has been cited in this affair from the beginning... we never would've expected this," he added.

Over the years, Chebeya became highly critical of the regime of Kabila, who was propelled into office in 2001 by Kinshasa politicians after his father Laurent-Desire Kabila was assassinated while the country was at war.

In September 2016, Washington placed Numbi on a blacklist of undesirable persons, describing him as "an influential advisor to President Kabila".

During a ceremony in Paris on June 2 to mark the seventh anniversary of Chebeya's murder and Bazana's suspected murder, their families said they remained hopeful that the truth would emerge.
Lyft says it will begin testing autonomous ridesharing with technology startup nuTonomy

Uber rival Lyft said Tuesday it would begin testing autonomous ridesharing in Boston under a partnership with the technology startup nuTonomy.

Under the partnership, nuTonomy and Lyft will collaborate to gain insights into "all aspects of ensuring a passenger's comfort and safety" in self-driving vehicles, a joint statement said.

Lyft's move follows a similar effort by Uber, which has been using autonomous vehicles in a test program in some US cities.

"At Lyft, we imagine a world where car ownership is optional and cities are designed for people instead of cars," said Lyft co-founder and chief executive Logan Green.

"Partnering with nuTonomy is an important step towards making this vision a reality. The nuTonomy team is one of the first movers in autonomous vehicle development, and we look forward to working with them to bring their autonomous vehicles to the Lyft network."

The testing will take place in sections of Boston where nuTonomy has been testing its self-driving electric cars since the beginning of the year.

The vehicles operate with an engineer from nuTonomy, a software firm created by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

NuTonomy also plans to launch a self-driving on-demand service in Singapore in 2018.

"By combining forces with Lyft in the US, well be positioned to build the best passenger experience for self-driving cars," said Karl Iagnemma, CEO and co-founder of nuTonomy.

"Both companies care immensely about solving urban transportation issues and the future of our cities, and we look forward to working with Lyft as we continue to improve our autonomous vehicle software system."
Lieutenant-General Balla Keita, seen in 2015, said Congo should "commit itself to improving without delay the standard of its unit" or else a "decision should be made to repatriate and replace the Congolese battalion," according to the memo dated May 12

The UN force commander in the Central African Republic is calling for hundreds of peacekeepers from Congo Republic to be sent home for sexual abuse, fuel trafficking and poor discipline, according to a confidential memo released Tuesday.

Lieutenant-General Balla Keita said Congo should "commit itself to improving without delay the standard of its unit" or else a "decision should be made to repatriate and replace the Congolese battalion," according to the memo dated May 12.

The document was released by the Code Blue Campaign of non-governmental organizations, which seeks to expose cases of sexual abuse and exploitation in UN peacekeeping.

UN peacekeeping spokeswoman Ismini Palla confirmed that an assessment of the Congolese contingent of the MINUSCA force in the Central African Republic had been carried out.

"Results of this evaluation have been shared with the member-state and we are following up on options," she said.

"UN Peacekeeping is committed to the highest standards of performance and conduct," she added. "We will spare no action in order to meet this goal."

Last year, 120 of the 750 Congolese troops were repatriated following allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation (SEA), involving at least 7 victims, six of whom were children, the report said.

"The battalion is notorious for SEA misconducts, fuel trafficking and poor discipline," Keita wrote in the memo, adding that he had sent "six blame letters" to the battalion commander already this year.

The peacekeepers from Congo are deployed in Berberati, the country's third-largest city.

"The situation has deteriorated to the point that the battalion is no longer trustable because of poor leadership, lack of discipline, and operational deficiencies," Keita wrote.

The United Nations has 10,000 troops and 2,000 people serving in its MINUSCA force in Central African Republic, which descended into bloody sectarian fighting after the 2013 overthrow of leader Francois Bozize.
Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman al-Thani told CNN that the FBI has confirmed the hack and the planting of fake news

US intelligence officials believe Russian hackers planted a false news story that led Saudi Arabia and several allies to sever relations with Qatar, prompting a diplomatic crisis, CNN reported Tuesday.

FBI experts visited Qatar in late May to analyze an alleged cyber breach that saw the hackers place the fake story with Qatar's state news agency, the US broadcaster said.

Saudi Arabia then cited the false item as part of its reason for instituting a diplomatic and economic blockade against Qatar, the report said.

Qatar's government said the May 23 news report attributed false remarks to the emirate's ruler that appeared friendly to Iran and Israel, and questioned whether US President Donald Trump would last in office, according to CNN.

Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman al-Thani told the broadcaster that the FBI has confirmed the hack and the planting of fake news.

"Whatever has been thrown as an accusation is all based on misinformation and we think that the entire crisis is being based on misinformation," he told CNN.

"It was started based on fabricated news, being wedged and being inserted in our national news agency, which was hacked and proved by the FBI," he added.

If accurate, the allegations would indicate Russian efforts to undermine US foreign policy, building on US intelligence concerns that Russian hackers attempted to influence last year's presidential election, won by Trump. The Kremlin denies meddling.

Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain announced Monday they were severing diplomatic relations and closing air, sea and land links with Qatar.

They accused the tiny Gulf state of harboring extremist groups and suggested Qatari support for the agenda of Saudi Arabia's regional archrival Iran. Qatar has strenuously denied the allegations.

Although Qatar hosts the largest American military airbase in the Middle East, Trump threw his weight behind the Saudi-led effort to isolate the emirate in a surprise move on Tuesday.

He suggested Qatar was funding extremism.

"So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off," he tweeted in reference to his trip to Riyadh last month.

"They said they would take a hard line on funding... extremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism!"

The CNN report quoted the Qatari government communications office as saying it was working with the FBI and Britain's National Crime Agency on an ongoing hacking investigation.
Syria's Kurds are now receiving direct US military support, and hold large swathes of the Kurdish-majority parts of the country they call "Rojava"

Syria's Kurds were once a marginalised minority, but now they are leading the charge for the Islamic State group's Raqa bastion and hoping to cement their gains in the war.

The surprise turnaround in their fortunes is the result of several factors, including the Syrian regime's decision to focus attention elsewhere and a key alliance with Washington against IS.

They are now receiving direct US military support, and hold large swathes of the Kurdish-majority parts of Syria they call "Rojava".

But Kurdish gains remain vulnerable, experts say, because their alliance with Washington could prove fragile and they face the wrath of neighbouring Turkey.

The Kurds are an ethnic group with their own language scattered across Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria, where they made up around 15 percent of the pre-war population.

When Syria's conflict began with anti-government demonstrations in March 2011, Kurdish leaders largely kept out of the nascent uprising.

That angered the opposition, but contributed to a Syrian government decision in mid-2012 to withdraw most of its forces from Kurdish-majority regions and focus attention elsewhere.

The Kurds began building semi-autonomous institutions in three "cantons" in north and northeast Syria, and revived their long-suppressed culture.

Their leadership's "decision to calibrate its political ambitions more locally, below the threshold of regime change" and its "non-adversarial modus vivendi" with the regime set the stage for its growing power, said Sam Heller, a Syria expert at The Century Foundation think-tank.

"The Kurds are betting that the capture of Raqa will give them long-lasting international support to build Rojava," added Fabrice Balanche, a Syria expert at The Washington Institute think-tank.

- Key US ally against IS -

The powerful Kurdish Democratic Party (PYD) and its armed wing, the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), became the effective government and security force in Kurdish-majority areas.

The YPG initially focused on local security and preventing Kurdish areas from being drawn into the conflict between rebels and the government.

But that role shifted with the emergence of IS, which in 2014 declared a "caliphate" in territory it had seized in Syria and Iraq.

With its "competent, unitary command" and "generally reliable hostility to jihadists", the YPG established itself as the ground force of choice for the US-led coalition fighting IS in Syria, Heller said.

Together they won a series of hard-fought battles against IS, including the key recapture of the flashpoint town of Kobane in early 2015.

Syria's government has held off criticising the Kurds, but the YPG's rising profile has not been universally welcomed.

The battle for Raqa

Some among Syria's opposition have never forgiven the Kurds for failing to back the uprising, and their expansion into Arab-dominated areas in northern Syria has stoked existing ethnic tensions.

Neighbouring Turkey, meanwhile, has been infuriated by the growing power of the Kurds in northern Syria.

It calls the YPG an affiliate of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which Turkey deems a "terrorist group", and in August 2016 launched an operation inside northern Syria against IS and Kurdish fighters.

In October 2015, the Syrian Democratic Forces was formed, an alliance of Kurdish forces and Arab fighters created to tamp down tensions over the YPG's rising power.

But the alliance "remains squarely under YPG command and wholly reliant upon the PKK-trained Kurdish fighters who form its backbone", according to the International Crisis Group (ICG) think-tank.

- Risks to Kurdish gains -

With the SDF's creation, Washington stepped up military support, though it said it was channelling equipment to the Arab component of the alliance.

And in November 2016, the alliance announced an operation to recapture Raqa city, IS's most important remaining Syrian bastion.

Ankara remains fiercely hostile to the SDF, and had hoped to convince US President Donald Trump's administration to find an alternative force to capture Raqa, an Arab-majority city and major symbolic prize.

But on May 9, Washington instead announced that it would begin directly arming the YPG, provoking Turkish fury.

A fighter from the Kurdish female Women's Protection Units stands while carrying a rifle behind her shoulder during a training exercise

And on Tuesday the SDF said it launched a final assault on Raqa and that its fighters had entered the city.

Experts say there are significant threats to the gains made by Syrian Kurds, chief among them conflict with Turkey.

"For now, the US role in supporting the YPG provides some degree of protection," said Noah Bonsey, a senior ICG analyst.

"But we can't assume it's permanent, it may not even last much longer than the immediate campaign," he told AFP.

Other challenges include the possibility that the Syrian government will seek to reestablish control over Kurdish-majority areas, and tensions within Kurdish-held territory over the PYD's political dominance.

The Kurdish leadership is "going to have to show a capacity for some real strategic compromises, in which it would be giving up some of its ambitions to protect much of what it's already accomplished," said Bonsey.

"If it's able to make compromises with external actors as well as do more to address internal pressures... I think it can protect much of what's achieved."
Apple's HomePod smart speaker enters a market segment dominated by Amazon and Google, but is being touted as a high-quality music device

Apple's new HomePod speaker may be music to the ears of its loyal fans, but how much it can crank up volume in the smart speaker market remains to be heard.

Apple unveiled its long-awaited HomePod at its annual developers conference taking place this week in the heart of Silicon Valley, enticing lovers of its products with a high-end offering in a market dominated by lower-priced devices from Amazon and Google .

Analysts are yet to be convinced that HomePod will rock the smart speaker market the way iPhones came to rule the smartphone world and iPods dominated MP3 players.

"If we are comparing this to Apple's past successes, it doesn't fit that model," said analyst Rob Enderle of Enderle Group.

"This product is much more of a me-too offering."

There was no overwhelming differentiation in HomePod, according to the analyst. But he saw a big negative -- it is more expensive.

HomePod, infused with machine smarts by Siri digital assistant, will be priced at $349 when it begins shipping in December in the United States, Australia and Britain.

HomePod will take on Amazon Echo and Google Home, which have momentum in the arena of voice-controlled speakers capable of controlling smart appliances, fetching content from the internet and more.

Amazon sells Echo devices for $179, and smaller "Dot" versions for $50. Google sells Home for $180, promoting the smart speakers with discounts.

- HomePod's tune -

Apple played up the rich speaker quality of HomePod, and synched it with the company's music service that boasts 27 million subscribers.

Apple vice president Phil Schiller said the company's Siri team tuned the virtual assistant as a "musicologist" that learns the tastes of listeners and gets songs from the internet cloud.

The speaker has the "power to rock the house," according to Schiller, and the aim is to make HomePod a voice-commanded assistant for news, messages, weather, traffic, home controls and more.

"Apple's base should like it, because they are committed to the ecosystem," Enderle said of HomePod.

"If you are paying the extra money because Apple is requiring you to do so to access your stuff, that is the Apple tax and it is the kind of thing that people don't like."

HomePod combined elements of Echo and Sonos smart speakers, known for rich sound quality, according to Reticle Research principal analyst Ross Rubin.

Apple lovers already tend to be "premium product buyers," and may not flinch at paying more for what they believe is a superior quality product, said Gartner analyst Brian Blau.

- Just a glimpse -

Apple senior vice Phil Schiller speaks during the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference in San Jose, California on June 5

Blau suspected Apple only gave a glimpse at its vision for HomePod, noting its potential to be a command center for smart houses and to mesh with iPhones, iPads, online services and more.

"We have to imagine there is going to be more there," Blau said.

"Is it going to be an Echo killer? A Google Home killer? We are going to have to wait and see.

Apple be saving some insights into HomePod for later this year when it is expected to unveil a tenth-anniversary edition of the iPhone.

Since HomePod will not hit the market until December, it is unlikely to catch much of the year-end holiday shopping wave and post big sales this year, according to Blau.

"I think, over time, they are going to do just fine in this category but it is going to take a while," the analyst said.

"I don't think it will be the next iPhone," Blau said of HomePod, "but, Apple could gain share and be a leader."

In a blog post Technalysis Research founder Bob O'Donnell depicted Apple's latest product news as an affirmation that the company has not fallen behind competitors and is working to take advantage of potentially exciting new technologies.

But O'Donnell also expressed skepticism on Apple's ability to dominate this new segment.

"Yes, some songs may sound pleasing, but for true audiophiles who actually want to hear what the artist and producer intended, Apple's positioning of the HomePod as super high-quality speaker is going to be a very tough sell," O'Donnell said in a blog post.
Rights group have criticised Ankara's vast post-coup crackdown, saying it has extended well beyond suspects and targeted opponents of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan

The head of Amnesty International in Turkey was arrested Tuesday over suspected links to the movement of cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom Ankara blames for last year's failed coup, the human rights organisation said.

Police arrested lawyer Taner Kilic along with 22 others in the western city of Izmir, all on suspicion of ties to the US-based Muslim cleric's movement, according to a statement on Amnesty's website.

"We are calling on the Turkish authorities to immediately release Taner Kilic along with the other 22 lawyers, and drop all charges against them," Amnesty International's secretary general Salil Shetty said.

"Taner Kilic has a long and distinguished record of defending exactly the kind of freedoms that the Turkish authorities are now intent on trampling," he said.

The arrests proved how "arbitrary" Ankara's post-coup crackdown had become, Shetty added.

The organisation said it did not believe Kilic's arrest was connected to his work for Amnesty International, which he has directed in the country since 2014.

The Turkish government claims Gulen ordered the July 15 attempt to oust President Recep Tayyip Erdogan from power.

Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania since 1999, denies the charges.

Over 100,000 people have been sacked or suspended from the public sector under a state of emergency imposed a few days after foiled putsch and renewed three times.

Rights group have previously criticised the vast crackdown, saying it has extended well beyond the coup suspects and targeted opponents of President Erdogan.
Tourists walk on Hollywood Boulevard after local media reported that Los Angeles tourism figures were down 16 percent in the first quarter of this year, in what they have dubbed the "Trump Slump"

American tourism companies are seeing early signs that US President Donald Trump's still-young administration is hitting foreign visits and fear "destination USA" could suffer further in the years to come.

Travel industry executives in particular expressed anguish over Trump's proposed travel ban on visitors from seven predominately Muslim countries, an issue the US president raised anew this week in the wake of the London attacks.

"When you hear words like 'travel ban' it puts a big chill" on business, James Murren, chief executive of MGM Resorts said Tuesday during a panel discussion at a travel industry conference hosted by New York University.

Industry insiders also see Trump's tough "America first" talk as hostile to potential visitors.

"We need to address the Trump administration and its policies," said Roger Dow, president of the US Travel Association in a news conference. "Many might be saying, 'I'm wondering if the US even welcomes us anymore."

Early figures suggest travel to the United States from all international markets is running about flat in 2017 compared with the year-ago period, said Marriott chief executive Arne Sorenson, adding that outcome is "not bad" considering the strong dollar.

But the data also suggest declines of about 20 percent in visitors from the Middle East and Mexico, which Trump has harshly criticized.

Sorenson, a critic of the travel ban, fears the US market will suffer in the next three to five years even as global travel continues to grow.

"The US share will decline because we'll see more and more people go to Europe and other destinations where the reception seems to be warmer," Sorenson said.

Jonathan Tisch, chief executive of Loews Hotel & Co., said one of Loews' hotels in Miami has had groups cancel because they had attendees from a travel ban country.

Tisch also said Emirates airline has cut flights to some US cities and warned the US risked another "lost decade" of foreign visitors much as a visa crackdown and other policies after 9/11 led to the loss of billions of dollars in revenues from overseas travelers.

- Growth engine -

Internationally known US tourist destinations include an array of spectacular national parks in the western part of the United States, amusement parks such as the Disney World in Orlando, and major cities like New York and Los Angeles, which are embedded in global popular culture from Hollywood movies and television.

International leisure travelers comprised 19.5 percent of the nearly $1 trillion US travel market in 2016, well below domestic leisure travelers which accounted for 50 percent of the total, according to a report by IBISWorld.

But growth is expected to be faster among international travelers in the years to come, in line with rising global income, particularly in countries in Asia and South America.

IBISWorld projected that the number of domestic trips taken by Americans is expected to grow at an annualized rate of 2.3 percent through 2021, half the rate of inbound international visitors over the same period.

"We're experiencing a global tourism boom," MGM's Murren told AFP in an interview. "Over the next 20-25 years tourism across borders is going to increase and the US should be a leader there."

"The goals of having a stronger border and greater safety and that goal of driving international tourism are not excluding goals," Murren added. "They should work hand in hand."

Tourism industry executives cautioned that there are other drags on foreign travel besides Trump, especially the strong dollar.

Steve Haggerty, a global head of capital strategy, franchising and select service at Hyatt, said the industry mood was cautious, but he attributed that to anxiety about the economic cycle rather than politics.

"There's an underlying reservation about the duration of this cycle, knowing this is a cyclical business," he told AFP. Nobody knows what will change the cycle "and if the drop will be gradual or dramatic."
James Clapper, the US director of national intelligence under Barack Obama, told the ABC he sees some similarities between China's efforts and what Moscow attempted in his own country.

Australia must be alert to foreign government interference in its democratic systems, former top US intelligence official James Clapper warned Wednesday, after China was accused of meddling in the country's politics.

Canberra has ordered an inquiry into espionage laws and foreign government activities after a media investigation this week into large political donations by two Chinese billionaires with reported links to China's Communist Party.

The probe, by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Fairfax Media, said intelligence agencies had major concerns that Beijing was interfering in Australian institutions and using the political donations system to gain access.

Clapper, the US director of national intelligence under Barack Obama, told the ABC he sees some similarities between China's efforts and what Moscow attempted in his own country.

"They are seeking ways to influence using many techniques; diplomatic, economic, military that they haven't done before," he said.

"It's focused here, it's focused regionally and focused globally."

Russia has been accused of meddling in the US election last year, and of possible collusion with the campaign of Donald Trump.

Clapper said the challenge both Washington and Canberra faced was "the potential jeopardy to the very fundamental underpinnings of our political system".

The Australian media investigation showed that property developers Huang Xiangmo and Chau Chak Wing, or their associates, had donated around AUS$6.7 million ($5 million) to political parties over a decade.

Both reportedly have connections to China's ruling Communist Party.

China's foreign ministry on Tuesday called the reports "totally groundless", but Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was concerned enough to order a review of espionage laws and legislation around the activities of foreign governments.

"The sovereignty of Australia, the sovereignty of our democratic processes, free from foreign interference, is a matter of the highest concern," he said.

While regulated, political donations from foreign interests remain legal in Australia, unlike the United States, which is something Clapper suggested should be looked at.

"It's hard for me to rationalise why that is a good thing to do, why that has a salutary benefit of allowing foreign donations to influence potentially our politics," said Clapper, who is a visiting professor at the Australian National University.
Defence Secretary Delfin Lorenzana admitted at the start of the conflict that security forces were taken by surprise when dozens of gunmen appeared on the streets of Marawi following a failed raid to capture one of their leaders.

With bomb-proof tunnels, anti-tank weapons hidden in mosques, human shields and a "mastery" of the terrain, Islamist militants holed up in a southern Philippine city are proving a far tougher opponent than military chiefs expected.

Two weeks after gunmen waving black flags of the Islamic State (IS) group rampaged through the Muslim city of Marawi, initial assertions from authorities that the conflict would be over in days have given way to warnings of a protracted battle.

"The advantage of the (enemy) is their mastery of the terrain. They know where even the smallest alleys lead to and they are free to go around," Major Rowan Rimas, an operations officer for the marines, told reporters in Marawi this week.

"They know where the government forces are coming from and where they are taking cover. They have snipers and their positions are well-defended."

Defence Secretary Delfin Lorenzana admitted at the start of the conflict that security forces were taken by surprise when dozens of gunmen appeared on the streets of Marawi following a failed raid to capture one of their leaders.

The gunmen have the added insurance of about 2,000 trapped civilians serving as virtual human shields, along with the priest and more than a dozen civilians kidnapped at the start of the crisis.

They emerged from homes in Marawi, the biggest Islamic city in the mainly Catholic Philippines with 200,000 residents, and went on a rampage that included taking a Catholic priest hostage, opening up two jails and destroying many buildings.

Lorenzana and military leaders have since said they unexpectedly interrupted plans by the militants to take over Marawi in a spectacular event to show that IS had arrived in the Philippines and was intent on carving out a local territory.

They initially estimated there were about 100 gunmen but later said there were as many as 500, supplemented by foreign fighters including from Chechnya, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

The fighters have also had a surprisingly large arsenal of military hardware, including rocket-propelled grenades and a so-far inexhaustible amount of ammunition for high-powered assault rifles.

Authorities said two brothers from Marawi surnamed Maute were key leaders in the battle, giving the militants a crucial home-ground advantage that has allowed them to withstand a relentless air campaign of bombs and rocket strikes.

Philippine military protocol called for mosques and Islamic schools known as madrassas to be spared from air strikes and artillery, a limitation exploited by the gunmen.

The roughly 10 percent of Marawi held by the militants has many tunnels and basements that can withstand 500-pound (227-kilo) bombs, military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Jo-ar Herrera told AFP on Monday.

"Even mosques here have tunnels," Herrera said, adding the fighters were using them to escape the bombing as well as to store high-powered weapons.

"These are all part of the dynamics of the battlefield that makes it more difficult for us."

- Complex, extensive operation -

Herrera said Philippine military protocol called for mosques and Islamic schools known as madrassas to be spared from air strikes and artillery, a limitation exploited by the gunmen.

Residents built reinforced bunkers and tunnels underneath their houses after a 1970 Muslim uprising led to large parts of the city being burnt, Norodin Alonto Lucman, a senior Marawi politician, told AFP.

Adding to concerns that the militants were running a far more complex and extensive operation than authorities initially believed was the discovery on Monday in a house the gunmen had been using of 52.2 million pesos ($1.05 million) in cash.

The Mautes are in partnership with Isnilon Hapilon, the target of the initial raid whom the military regards as the IS "amir", or its top leader in the Philippines. Military chiefs said they believed he was still in Marawi.

Adding to concerns that the militants were running a far more complex and extensive operation than authorities initially believed was the discovery on Monday in a house the gunmen had been using of 52.2 million pesos ($1.05 million) in cash.

The gunmen have the added insurance of about 2,000 trapped civilians serving as virtual human shields, along with the priest and more than a dozen civilians kidnapped at the start of the crisis.

President Rodrigo Duterte imposed martial law across the entire southern region of Mindanao, home to 20 million people, within hours of the crisis erupting in a bid to quickly crush what he said was the fast-rising threat from IS.

He set a target late last week of Tuesday to clear the city of the militants.

As that deadline passed, Duterte issued typically aggressive rhetoric to soldiers.

"I am ordering you to crush our enemy," he said in a speech to troops in the south,

"When I say crush them, you have to destroy everything, including lives."

But a quick military victory looks increasingly unlikely.

Lorenzana, who saw his own 10-day target pass on the weekend, said battles in recent years with Islamist militants in the south typically led to them running away but that this time they were showing far more resolve.

"Normally in this kind of conflict the local fighters will just scamper away and maybe hide in the mountains," he said while on a visit to Marawi on the weekend.

"But surprisingly this group has just holed up there and are just waiting to fight it out, maybe to the last."
(FILES) This file photo taken on March 18, 2017 shows residents of Seongju county protesting against the US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system nearby

South Korea will suspend any further deployment of a controversial US missile defence system until an environmental impact assessment ordered by new President Moon Jae-In is finished, his office said Wednesday.

Seoul agreed under Moon's ousted predecessor Park Geun-Hye last year to deploy the powerful missile intercept system to guard against threats from nuclear-armed North Korea despite angry opposition from Beijing, which views it as a threat to its own military capabilities.

Two missile launchers have been deployed in the southern county of Seongju, where hundreds of residents have staged fierce protests over what they see as potential environmental hazards posed by the batteries used in the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system.

There is "no need to withdraw" the two launchers that have already been deployed, a senior official at the South's presidential office told reporters.

However, "additional deployment (of THAAD) should be carried out only after the environmental impact assessment is over," the official added.

"We do not view the deployment process as urgent enough to bypass the whole environmental impact assessment," he said.

The deployment freeze comes two days after Moon ordered a "proper" probe into the potential environmental impact of the missile batteries in a bid to win greater public support for the project.

Pentagon spokesman Commander Gary Ross said the US trusts South Korea's official stance that the THAAD deployment was an alliance decision and would not be reversed.

"We will continue to work closely with the (Republic of Korea) government throughout this process," he said.

Four more launchers recently arrived in the South and are currently being stored at a US army base in the country, which plays host to some 28,500 US troops as a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War.

The South's army came under fire this week after Moon -- who voiced ambivalence about THAAD on the campaign trail -- accused it of withholding key information about the system's progress.

Top military brass who briefed Moon's national security adviser last month deliberately withheld information about the arrival of the four new launchers, according to Moon's office.

A senior defence ministry official was removed from his position over the incident.

Defence Minister Han Min-Koo -- appointed by Park and widely expected to be replaced soon -- admitted the presence of the new launchers only when pressed by Moon in a phone conversation last week.

The South's military cited a confidentiality agreement with the US military as a reason to hide the critical information from the South's new commander-in-chief, according to a probe into senior army officials.

China -- the South's biggest trading partner -- has in recent months taken a series of measures against South Korean businesses seen as economic retaliation for THAAD.

Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said on Wednesday that Beijing was following South Korea's domestic debate over THAAD.

"China's position is very clear," she said during a regular press briefing. "No matter what happens, we are firmly opposed to the deployment of the THAAD system by the US in the Republic of Korea."
Visitors pray in front of portraits of victims of the 2014 South Korea Sewol ferry disaster at a memorial altar in Seoul on May 25, 2017

The daughter of the South Korean tycoon blamed for the 2014 Sewol ferry disaster arrived in Seoul Wednesday to face questioning over her own role in the affair, after being extradited from France.

Yoo Som-Na was detained in Paris in May 2014 and has been wanted in South Korea on suspicion of embezzling millions of dollars from subsidiaries of her family's company, Chonghaejin Marine Co.

South Korean authorities believe the alleged embezzlement contributed to safety defects which led to the April 2014 sinking that claimed the lives of 304 people, most of them high school children.

Yoo denied the "outrageous" allegations after arriving at the Incheon Prosecutors' Office for questioning.

"I've never embezzled anything from the company," she told reporters, adding that the only money she had ever taken was "the pay I received for my service".

Yoo, her wrists handcuffed in front of her and covered with a black cloth for privacy, wept when asked about the disaster.

"I cannot help crying whenever I think about the victims... no words can possibly console the relatives," she said.

Yoo, 51, was detained for 13 months in France but released in the middle of 2015.

But in June last year, the then-Prime Minister Manuel Valls signed a decree for her extradition. Yoo appealed the decision but it was upheld.

Her father Yoo Byung-Eun was the target of a massive manhunt in South Korea after he refused to respond to a summons following the ferry disaster.

The tycoon, who in addition to his substantial business interests also ran a religious group, was found dead in a plum orchard two months after the accident.

A post-mortem on his badly decomposed body failed to determine the cause of death.

Yoo is the first person to be returned to South Korea by France since an extradition treaty between the two countries took effect in 2008.

She will face questioning about suspected financial irregularities related to a company effectively owned by her father, which operated the ill-fated Sewol ferry.

The overloaded 6,825-tonne vessel was carrying 476 people when it capsized off the southern coast of South Korea.

Most of the victims were Danwon High School students on an excursion. The sinking and botched rescue efforts dealt a crushing blow to now-ousted president Park Geun-Hye.

Investigations concluded the disaster was the result of numerous human factors, including an illegal redesign, an overloaded cargo bay and inexperienced crew.
The relatives separated by the conflict, which ended more than 60 years ago, are the most emotional manifestation of the division of the Korean peninsula

A senior North Korean official on Wednesday ruled out any more reunions for families separated decades ago by war unless a group of citizens from the reclusive state are returned by South Korea.

The North says the group of 12 were kidnapped while the South says they defected voluntarily. Pyongyang also wants a 13th citizen repatriated.

The families separated by the Korean War, which ended more than 60 years ago, are the most emotional manifestation of the division of the peninsula.

With no direct contact between North and South, not even telephone links, many have no idea whether their parents, siblings or children are still alive.

A series of highly charged meetings were held in recent years, when ties across the Demilitarised Zone were warmer, enabling around 4,000 of those in the South to see their relatives for the first time in decades.

But the last such reunion was in 2015 before inter-Korean relations were frozen amid North Korea's drive for nuclear weapons.

Ruling and opposition parties in the South agreed earlier this week to seek a new reunion in August to mark the anniversary of the end of the Second World War.

But Kim Yong-Chol, of the North's Committee for the Peaceful Unification of Korea, poured cold water on the proposal Wednesday.

"At the moment another issue is more important and more urgent," he told AFP in Pyongyang, saying that the 12 workers who defected from a restaurant in China were "being detained by force in South Korea", along with Kim Ryon-Hui, a dressmaker who says she wants to go back to the North.

"They should be returned immediately."

The father of Ri Ji-Ye, one of the 12, he said, "died with his eyes open and cursing the conservative elements who have detained his daughter".

"Unless Kim Ryon-Hui and 12 other women workers are returned immediately there can never be any kind of humanitarian cooperation. And this is our principled stand."

Pyongyang is accused of widespread human rights abuses, including by a United Nations inquiry, and campaign groups say defectors who are returned to the North face severe punishment.

Around 60,000 members of divided families members are still alive in the South, but they are dying off rapidly without ever enjoying reunions.

Hopes of a renewed reunion programme were raised by the election last month of left-leaning President Moon Jae-In, who favours engagement with Pyongyang and has proposed offering reunions for all divided family members in exchange for humanitarian aid for the North such as hospital construction.

Moon's own family was divided when his parents fled the North, and he and his mother were themselves participants in a reunion in 2004, when they met his aunt.

"I can relate to the refugees' pain better than anyone else," he said on the campaign trail.

- Protective custody -

North Korea is accused of widespread human rights abuses, including by a United Nations inquiry, and campaign groups say defectors who are returned to the North face severe punishment

The 12 waitresses at a North Korean state-run restaurant in the Chinese city of Ningbo defected to the South in April 2016, making headlines as the largest group defection in years.

While Seoul said they fled voluntarily, Pyongyang claimed they were kidnapped by South Koreas National Intelligence Service and has waged a vocal campaign through its state media for their return.

The waitresses were released from Seoul government custody last August but have never made public appearances.

Citing government sources, South Korean media have said the women -- mostly in their early 20s -- have enrolled in universities but remain under strict government protection provided to high-profile defectors.

For all North Korean defectors, life in the South begins with intensive NIS interrogation that can last for months and is aimed at weeding out spies.

They are then sent to a resettlement centre for three months' training, after which they are free to start new lives in South Korean society.

Arguing that the high-profile nature of the restaurant workers' case made them unusually vulnerable, the NIS had announced that they would remain in protective custody rather than being sent to the centre.

Officially Kim's committee is Pyongyang's equivalent of the Unification Ministry in Seoul, and is responsible for relations with the South.

Moon's election would have no bearing on ties across the DMZ, Kim said.

"The issue of relationship between the North and the South is not determined by who has become the president of the South and what kind of policies he has," he told AFP.
A Japanese radical has been arrested more than 45 years on the run following the killing of a police officer.

Masaaki Osaka, 67, allegedly clubbed 21-year-old officer Tsuneo Nakamura with a metal pipe and set him fire with Molotov cocktail during violent street protests in Tokyo.

Osaka, once a high-ranking member of the Japan Revolutionary Communist League, disappeared after the attack in November 1971.

Masaaki Osaka (centre), once a high-ranking member of the Japan Revolutionary Communist League, arrives at Tokyo's Haneda airport after more than four decades on the run

A Tokyo Metropolitan Police spokesman confirmed Osaka's arrest on Wednesday, but declined to give more details.

He was protesting the 1971 Okinawa Reversion Agreement between Japan and the US when the officer was killed.

He disappeared shortly after the attack in November 1971

The agreement saw the US relinquish its control of the Okinawa Prefecture, which was under US jurisdiction following the end of World War Two.

Local media said Osaka - who was arrested in the city of Hiroshima last month and then brought back to Tokyo on Wednesday - was identified by DNA following a raid on a building used by a radical group.

He was initially arrested on suspicion of obstructing police, according to investigators.

He had declined to comment since being taken into custody, police have said.

Osaka was able to stay hidden for so long thanks to the help of sympathetic associates, reports said.

Images of a bespectacled Osaka with short graying hair contrasted sharply with the young man pictured in black-and-white wanted poster photos from the early seventies.

The killing happened at a time when large street protests were happening in major cities around the world as anti-establishment groups clashed with authorities, sometimes violently.
Qatar's Emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani attends the 71st session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York on September 20, 2016

Moscow on Wednesday dismissed allegations that Russian hackers helped spark the diplomatic crisis around Qatar, after CNN reported that US officials believed they planted a false news story.

"We're getting tired of reacting to unsubstantiated banalities," Andrei Krutskikh, a Kremlin advisor on cybersecurity, told the Interfax news agency.

"Whatever happens it is hackers. It's a stale claim and as ever there is zero evidence, and conclusions are drawn before the incident is even investigated," he said.

CNN reported on Tuesday that US intelligence officials believe Russian hackers planted a false news story that led Saudi Arabia and several allies to sever relations with Qatar.

FBI experts visited Qatar in late May to analyse an alleged cyber breach that saw the hackers place the fake story with Qatar's state news agency, the US broadcaster said.

The report included comments from the emirate's ruler which seemed friendly to Israel and Iran and cast doubt on how long US President Donald Trump would remain in office.

Saudi Arabia then cited the false item as part of its reason for instituting a diplomatic and economic blockade against Qatar, the report said.

Russian hackers are currently at the centre of international attention after allegations the Kremlin launched cyberattacks aimed at swaying the US presidential vote last year.

Moscow has repeatedly denied it was behind hacking attacks against the US and a raft of other alleged cyber breaches abroad.
Cows are revered in the Hindu scriptures as the 'mother' of civilisation and many worshippers equate the slaughter of cows or eating beef as blasphemy

Indian buffalo meat exports plunged more than 10 percent in April, new trade figures show, with traders blaming a campaign to protect cows for undermining its position as one of the world's top beef suppliers.

Buffalo meat shipments dropped 11.4 percent in April, data released this week showed, denting profits for a $4.8 billion export industry that has been hit by a sustained crackdown on abattoirs and traders.

India does not export beef from cows, which are considered sacred by Hindus and whose slaughter is banned in many states. But it is the world's largest exporter of buffalo meat, which is also classified as beef.

Buffalo meat businesses have however been caught up in a renewed drive to prevent cow slaughter. Hindu hardliners have long alleged that abattoirs -- largely run by Muslims -- cover up the slaughter of cows and pass the meat off as buffalo.

Businesses in Uttar Pradesh, the top meat-producing state, have been hit with inspections and closures.

The crackdown -- spearheaded by the state's Hindu-rightwing government -- swept up not just unlicensed butchers but major exporters, who were forced to stop taking orders and cancel shipments as their businesses were shut.

"India has been the largest exporter of meat but after this drop it's quite possible that it has lost that place," Fauzan Alavi, spokesman for the All India Meat and Livestock Exporters Association, told AFP.

"Crackdowns have added to the cost and that makes it less attractive to buyers."

Traders are bracing for further pain. The national government led by the Hindu-rightwing Bharatiya Janata Party imposed a nationwide ban on the sale of cattle -- including both cows and buffalo -- last month.

The blanket prohibition caused outcry and has already been challenged, with a court in southern India temporarily staying the ban.

But it is expected to further curb exports. The All India Meat Exporters Association is calling for the ban to be lifted or at least amended to exclude buffalo.

"We're all hit. International buyers aren't placing orders and we aren't placing orders because we don't know if we will have the meat supply to deliver," said DB Sabharwal, the association head, whose own company has seen a nearly 40 percent drop in sales in recent weeks.

The slaughter of cows is illegal in many Indian states, with some imposing life sentences for transgressions.

Rumours of cow slaughter can also spur communal violence between hardline Hindus and India's sizeable Muslim population, who dominate the abattoir industry.

Violence against Muslims and Dalits -- lower-caste Hindus who also eat meat -- accused of killing the holy beasts has risen in recent months.

Two Muslims were beaten to death last month on suspicion of stealing cows while another was killed by vigilantes for transporting dairy cattle by road in April.
Hong Kong does not recognise gay marriage and only decriminalised homosexuality in 1991

Major international finance institutions in Hong Kong made a landmark intervention Wednesday in the case of a gay couple struggling to get their rights recognised by the city's courts.

The 12 businesses -- including Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse -- say they want to submit evidence to a hearing at the Court of Appeal next week in the case of a British woman refused a spousal visa because she is in a same-sex partnership.

Law firm Davis Polk and Wardwell, representing the companies, said their clients had intervened "to assist the court by giving a more rounded picture of the issues".

"They all seek to attract and hire top talent from around the world in line with their diversity policies," the statement added.

Hong Kong does not recognise gay marriage and only decriminalised homosexuality in 1991.

Its immigration law does not explicitly rule out gay couples, but states that only the "spouse" of a person permitted to work in the territory may apply for a dependant visa.

Known to the court only as "QT", the woman at the centre of the case came to Hong Kong in 2011 after she entered into a civil partnership with a woman known as "SS" in Britain.

SS was moving to Hong Kong for a new job.

But QT was denied a dependant visa and was given instead a visitor visa, which does not allow her to work.

She lost a legal challenge in March last year.

Despite the emergence of some LGBT-supporting initiatives in Hong Kong, conservative groups regularly hit back at the promotion of what they claim is an anti-family agenda.

The government has also been criticised by rights campaigners for a lack of anti-discrimination laws and little progress towards marriage equality.

QT's lawyer Michael Vidler said her legal team welcomed the unprecedented intervention by the companies, which he said aimed to highlight the practical effect of government policy on major employers.

"It is a landmark move by a substantial proportion of an industry which provides the backbone for Hong Kong's economic success," he said.

The court now has to decide whether to accept the submissions.

Even if it refuses, Vidler said the application was "historic".

Anti-gay campaigners criticised HSBC for displaying rainbow painted lions outside its office

"It provides a concrete example of major businesses leading by example in unequivocally standing up for LGBT rights in Hong Kong," he told AFP.

A Taiwan court ruled in favour of gay marriage last month, galvanising campaigners in the region.

But on the same day in Hong Kong, 27,000 people, including five lawmakers, submitted a petition to the government requesting it appeal a recent court decision to grant welfare benefits to a gay civil servant and his husband.

When HSBC -- which is not on the list of court interveners -- displayed a pair of rainbow-painted lions outside its office in Hong Kong in December to show of support for the city's LGBT community, anti-gay campaigners slammed it as "disgusting".
An incident in which a live donkey was tossed into a tiger pit in China has sparked outrage on social media

Visitors to a Chinese zoo got ringside seats to a shocking live feeding after a group of investors tossed a live donkey into a tiger pit.

Apparent videos of the incident, which took place Monday at a wild animal park in the eastern province of Jiangsu, provoked an outraged response on social media, with many questioning how the men could engage in such an inhumane act.

In response, the zoo issued a statement on its official Weibo social media account Monday, saying that the incident resulted from a court case with another company, which had enraged investors.

The dispute, which has gone on for two years, has made it difficult for the company to carry on its regular business, the statement said.

The investors, it added, have not seen any profit in two years, making them very "dissatisfied."

So dissatisfied that they snatched a "donkey and a sheep" to feed to the tigers.

The authenticity of the video, which has gone viral online, could not be independently verified.

The footage circulating online shows men wearing plastic rain ponchos and pushing the donkey off the back of a truck and into a moat.

A tiger jumps in the water, hops on the donkey's back and sinks its teeth into the prey's neck.

A second tiger joins the fray, taking swipes at the donkey with its paw from the edge of the water before diving in. The prey brays as onlookers gasp in horror.

Almost 30 minutes later, the donkey is dead.

"We're not allowed to sell it, and we cannot continue raising it," one investor told Hongxing News, adding "we might as well feed it to the tigers."

In its statement, the safari park pleaded for the court to "settle the dispute as soon as possible," ominously noting that "otherwise, investors will resolve it through other means or channels."
From L-R: Detained Indonesian militants Leonard Hutajulu, Hadi Gusti Yanda, Gigih Rahmat Dewa, Tarmiji, Trio Syafrido, and Eka Saputra attend a hearing at the East Jakarta court on June 7, 2017

Six Indonesian militants were jailed Wednesday for harbouring two Uighurs who entered the country to fight with extremists linked to the Islamic State (IS) group, but were cleared of plotting to fire a rocket at Singapore.

The militants were detained last year after authorities foiled the alleged IS-linked plot to shoot a rocket at an upmarket waterfront district of Singapore from the nearby Indonesian island of Batam. This charge was not proven in court.

Instead, the extremists were convicted of harbouring the Uighurs -- members of a mostly Muslim Chinese minority who complain of persecution in their homeland of Xinjiang -- on Batam and hiding information about them.

Gigih Rahmat Dewa, the group's leader, was jailed for four years while the five others were each given a three-year jail term.

"The defendants have acted in an organised way and have deliberately aided terrorists," presiding judge Tarigan Muda Limbong told the West Jakarta district court.

The alleged plot to fire a rocket at Singapore's Marina Bay district was foiled in August last year. Authorities said the detained militants had hatched the plan with a leading Indonesian militant fighting with IS, who is accused of being behind a series of plots.

It was not clear how advanced the plan was and analysts had expressed scepticism about the militants' capacity to carry it out.

One of the Uighurs was arrested on the outskirts of Jakarta after making contact with local IS-linked militants.

It is unclear what happened to the second Uighur but he was believed to have been among several who entered Indonesia and tried to join an IS-linked group called Mujahideen of Eastern Indonesia on the central island of Sulawesi.

Indonesian militants fighting with IS in Syria are believed to have plotted with extremist networks back home to send Uighurs in Southeast Asia to Indonesia to join up with the Sulawesi group, which has almost been wiped out following a major offensive by security forces.

The world's most populous Muslim-majority country has long struggled with Islamic militancy. It has suffered a string of attacks in the past 15 years, including the 2002 Bali bombings that killed more than 200 people.

A crackdown had weakened the most dangerous networks but IS has proved a potent new rallying cry for radicals.
US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley vowed to defend Israel at the world body

US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley hailed a "new day" for Israel at the global body Wednesday as she held talks with Israeli leaders in Jerusalem.

Speaking ahead of a meeting with President Reuven Rivlin, Haley vowed to defend Israel at the United Nations.

"I have never taken kindly to bullies, and the UN has bullied Israel for a very long time," she said, according to Rivlin's office. "We are not going to let that happen anymore.

"It is a new day for Israel in the United Nations," she added.

Asked about Haley's remarks, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters "it would be interesting to see what parts of the UN she is referring to".

"For the secretary-general's part, he has spoken out clearly that Israel should be treated as any other member-state in this organisation, with the same rights and responsibilities."

Rivlin thanked Haley for her protection of Israel, saying it marked a "new era".

"Israel is no longer alone at the UN. Israel is no longer the UN's punching bag," he said.

In an earlier meeting, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also welcomed Haley's tough stance, according to his office.

He said US President Donald Trump and Haley "have changed the discourse" at the UN.

"Thank you for all your help and standing up for Israel," he added.

Trump came to power promising to lead the most pro-Israel US government in history, and Haley has been a stout defender of the country since her appointment.

On Tuesday in Geneva, Haley urged the United Nations Human Rights Council to reduce criticism of Israel and urged the body to throw out abusive regimes.

US concerns about the UN rights body predate Trump's election, and Washington has long denounced an agenda item dedicated exclusively to criticising Israel.

It has also raised concerns about a nomination process that has seen authoritarian governments elected to one of the 47 rotating seats.

Israel is the only country with a dedicated rights council agenda item, known as Item 7.

Israel and its allies have denounced the council for allowing majority-Muslim states to spearhead resolutions at every session denouncing abuses against the Palestinians.

Referencing her speech, the first by an American UN ambassador to the Geneva-based council since its creation in 2006, Haley said on Wednesday she had put pressure on the body.

"Hopefully it will be a new day at the Human Rights Council when it comes to Israel," she said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov holds talks with his Spanish counterpart in Moscow, on June 7, 2017

Moscow on Wednesday condemned a US-led coalition strike on pro-regime fighters in Syria as an "act of aggression" that targeted the most effective forces battling "terrorists" in the war-torn country.

"It was an act of aggression which breaches the territorial sovereignty of Syria and intentionally or not targeted those forces that are the most effective in fighting the terrorists on the ground," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.

The US-led coalition on Tuesday said it had destroyed a unit of pro-regime forces in Syria as they advanced near an area where coalition commandos have been training and advising rebels.

A group of about 60 pro-regime soldiers moved into the area with a tank, artillery, anti-aircraft weapons and armed technical vehicles, the coalition said in a statement. They posed a threat to the coalition forces at At-Tanf Garrison near the border with Jordan and Iraq, it added.

The assault marks the second time in less than a month that coalition forces have attacked pro-regime fighters as they headed toward the garrison inside a supposed "deconfliction zone" claimed by the US.

Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov told news agencies that "as far as we understand" the pro-regime forces hit on Wednesday "posed no military threat" to coalition troops.

Ryabkov accused the US of trying to impose its plan for Syria by force as Russia, Iran and Turkey are pushing a separate attempt to shore up their own "de-escalation zones" around the country.

Russia is flying a bombing campaign in Syria in support of leader Bashar al-Assad, while the US is heading a coalition mainly targeting IS.
Pakistan's Wahab Riaz bowls during his side's Champions Trophy match against India at Edgbaston on June 4, 2017

Pakistan paceman Wahab Riaz took to Twitter on Wednesday to apologise for his lacklustre showing against arch-rivals India in the Champions Trophy, saying he had "let down his nation".

The 31-year-old left-arm quick was smashed for 87 runs in just 8.4 wicketless overs when the Asian giants met in their Champions Trophy opener at Birmingham's Edgbaston ground on Sunday.

Title-holders India won by the huge margin of 124 runs in a tournament featuring the world's top eight one-day international sides.

As well as repeatedly bowling too short and too wide, Wahab, a veteran of 79 ODIs, was unable to complete his allocation of overs after suffering an ankle injury while falling over in his delivery stride and was unable to bat in the match.

Wahab, who has now been ruled out of the rest of the tournament, tweeted Wednesday: "My performance has let down my nation n team.

"I tried my best but it was not good enough. I'm heart broken as well."

Pakistan's performance was widely castigated, with former captain Shahid Afridi singling out Wahab for criticism.

"Wahab Riaz was once the spearhead of this bowling attack but his performance was a major let down on such an important occasion," Afridi wrote in a column for the ICC website.

Pakistan now have to beat South Africa, the world's top-ranked ODI side, in their second Group B match at Edgbaston on Wednesday if they are to have any chance of qualifying for the semi-finals.

Rumman Raes, a fellow left-arm fast bowler, has been summoned as a replacement for Wahab but Junaid Khan is set to take his place against the Proteas.
India has a poor history of tackling sexual abuse in homes and other residential care facilities, with rights groups accusing authorities of failing to swiftly bring offenders to justice

Indian police said Wednesday they have arrested one of three men accused of gang-raping a woman and tossing her baby from a moving autorickshaw, killing the infant.

Police released sketches of the three men -- including the autorickshaw driver -- late Tuesday after registering a case of murder and gang-rape following the alleged attack last month in Gurgaon, on the outskirts of New Delhi.

"We have made one arrest, yes. As far as the two others are concerned, a team is after them and we will arrest them very soon," Gurgaon's commissioner of police Sandeep Khirwar told AFP.

In her complaint to police, the woman said she got into the autorickshaw with her nine-month-old daughter around midnight on May 29 to go to her parents' home in Gurgaon in northern Haryana state.

There were two men already in the rickshaw who started to harass her as soon as she got in and the three sexually assaulted her for several hours before dumping her by a roadside, according to her complaint.

After being released from her ordeal the woman went back to look for her baby, who had died of head injuries, and took her to hospital on the subway, Khirwar said.

India has a gruesome record on rape, with the capital New Delhi alone registering 2,199 rape cases in 2015 -- an average of six a day, according to most recent official figures.

Nearly 40,000 rape cases are reported every year but the real number is thought to be much higher, with victims wary of how their complaints will be dealt with or the social stigma attached to sex crimes.

India strengthened its laws on sexual violence after the fatal gang rape of a Delhi student in 2012 caused global outrage, but attacks on women are still widespread.
Christopher Wray (L), US President Donald Trump's choice to head the FBI, is seen here in a 2004 picture with former attorney general John Ashcroft (C) and former US attorney Patrick Fitzgerald (R)

President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that he is tapping former Justice Department official Christopher Wray to serve as his new FBI director, on the eve of critical testimony by his ousted predecessor.

Wray, a partner at King & Spalding law firm in Washington and Atlanta, served as assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department's Criminal Division from 2003 to 2005, working closely with the FBI.

"I will be nominating Christopher A. Wray, a man of impeccable credentials, to be the new Director of the FBI. Details to follow," Trump wrote on Twitter.

At King & Spalding, the Yale Law School graduate chairs a unit representing entities and individuals in white collar criminal and regulatory enforcement issues, civil litigation and internal corporate investigations, according to the law firm's website.

At the Justice Department, he helped handle corporate fraud scandals, served on president George W. Bush's Corporate Fraud Task Force and oversaw major fraud investigations including that of energy giant Enron.

He also helped coordinate the agency's response to the September 11, 2001 attacks.

The announcement came just one day before sacked FBI director James Comey gives highly-anticipated testimony on Russia's interference in the 2016 US elections and possible collusion with Trump's campaign.

Comey is expected to dispute Trump's claim that the then-FBI chief told him multiple times that he was not under investigation, CNN reported, citing sources familiar with Comey's thinking.

That potential bombshell testimony -- in which Comey also may address whether Trump urged him to halt or ease up on an investigation into former national security advisor Michael Flynn and his ties to Russia -- takes place before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Adding to the drama, a top secret NSA report leaked this week examines repeated attempts by hackers from Russian military intelligence to break into US voting systems before last year's presidential election.

Keen to crack down on leaks, the Trump administration quickly announced the arrest of 25-year-old intelligence contractor Reality Winner on charges she violated the espionage act.

No definitive evidence of collusion between Trump's campaign and Russia has yet come to light.

But the allegations have drawn comparison to the 1970s Watergate scandal that brought down president Richard Nixon.
Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir described Qatar as a 'brother state' during a visit to Germany

Saudi Arabia's top diplomat said Wednesday that Qatar is a "brother state" and that punitive steps against the emirate were a well-intentioned effort to stop its support for Islamic extremism.

Speaking in Berlin, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir also said efforts would be made to resolve the conflict within the Gulf Cooperation Council.

"We see Qatar as a brother state, as a partner," he told a joint press conference with German counterpart Sigmar Gabriel, according to the German simultaneous translation.

"But you have to be able to tell your friend or your brother when they are doing the right thing and when they are doing the wrong thing."

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain are among seven states that have cut diplomatic ties and many major transport links with Qatar, a gas-rich emirate on the Saudi border.

The Arab states accuse Qatar of supporting extremism, a charge Doha firmly denies.

Jubeir said that "for many years Qatar has taken steps to support certain organisations".

"This has been condemned in the past, but unfortunately we have not received appropriate cooperation on this and that's why these measures have now been taken."

He added that "we have taken these steps in the interest of Qatar... and in the interest of security and stability in the region".

"And we hope that our brother Qatar will now take the right steps in order to end this crisis."

Qatar has forged regional alliances independently of its fellow GCC states, drawing accusations from Saudi Arabia and its allies of serving Iranian interests.

Gabriel said Germany "worried about the possible consequences and a growing escalation" after the "very tough" measures taken against Qatar.

Berlin's main concern was to "de-escalate the conflict" and rebuild Gulf regional cooperation, saying that "we need this cooperation in the anti-Islamic State coalition".
Indian workers assemble firecrackers at a workshop on the outskirts of Ahmedabad on October 25, 2012

The death toll from an explosion at a firecracker factory in central India has risen to 25, an official said Thursday, after five workers succumbed to their injures overnight.

Emergency workers removed at least 20 charred bodies from the mangled structure Tuesday after a fire hit gunpowder stocks triggering a blast at the workshop in Balaghat district of Madhya Pradesh state.

"Three more workers are in a serious condition, while five succumbed to their injuries," Balaghat government official Bharat Yadav told AFP.

Yadav said seven others were being treated in hospital.

Authorities are investigating the cause of the incident and have charged the factory owner with criminally negligent manslaughter, but have not yet been able to arrest him.

Workplace accidents are common in India, where poor safety standards and lax enforcement of regulations have led to horrific deaths.

An explosion set off by a blaze at a firecracker factory in Tamil Nadu left 20 workers dead in October.

Five workers were killed in a similar incident in northern Uttar Pradesh state in November.
Christopher Wray, seen here in 2004, is US President Donald Trump's choice to succeed James Comey as head of the FBI

President Donald Trump tapped respected lawyer Christopher Wray to be his new FBI director Wednesday, on the eve of potentially explosive testimony on alleged Russian election interference by the agency's ousted chief James Comey.

The former federal prosecutor was nominated to fill the post left vacant one month ago by Comey, who is set to be grilled by lawmakers Thursday over allegations the president sought to interfere with the FBI's Russia probe before sacking him.

"I will be nominating Christopher A. Wray, a man of impeccable credentials, to be the new Director of the FBI. Details to follow," Trump tweeted.

Wray served as assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department's criminal division under president George W. Bush, from 2003 to 2005, working closely with the FBI.

He will have limited power to influence the agency's Russia investigation, which was placed in the hands of an independent prosecutor -- former FBI director Robert Mueller -- following Comey's dismissal.

Trump's announcement was timed a day ahead of Comey's highly-anticipated testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee on the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US elections and possible collusion with Trump's campaign.

Comey is expected to dispute Trump's claim that the then-FBI chief told him multiple times that he was not under investigation, CNN reported, citing sources familiar with Comey's thinking.

But Comey will also be pressed over reports, citing private notes he wrote, that in three meetings and phone calls in January and February, Trump urged him to halt or ease up on the Russia probe's focus on his former national security advisor Michael Flynn.

In addition, media reports say he pressured several top officials, including Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, to intervene in the investigation on Flynn's behalf.

Coats is one of three officials coming under the spotlight in hearings taking place Wednesday, along with National Security Agency head Mike Rogers and interim FBI Director Andrew McCabe.

In a statement late Tuesday, a spokesman for Coats said he "has never felt pressured by the president or anyone else in the administration to influence any intelligence matters or ongoing investigations."

- Fears of politicization -

No definitive evidence of collusion between Trump's campaign and Russia has yet come to light, and there have not been any formal accusations that Trump sought to obstruct the investigation.

But the allegations have drawn comparison to the 1970s Watergate scandal, in which president Richard Nixon, facing possible impeachment over obstruction of justice charges, was forced to resign.

If his nomination is approved by the Senate, Wray will take hold of an agency generally dismayed at Trump's treatment of Comey and concerned about the possible politicization of the Russia investigation.

The FBI Agents Association had urged Trump to nominate someone who has worked in their ranks.

Wray will also be partnered with Attorney General Jeff Sessions in carrying out Trump's call for a crackdown on violent crime and immigration, and taking a hard line against people who leak classified information.

On Monday the Justice Department announced the arrest of 25-year-old intelligence contractor Reality Winner on charges she violated the espionage act by leaking a top secret report from the National Security Agency on Russian election meddling.

- Represented Trump ally -

Since leaving the Justice Department, Wray has worked on mostly white collar civil and criminal cases as a partner at King & Spalding law firm in Washington and Atlanta.

He most notably represented New Jersey Governor and Trump ally Chris Christie in the 2013 scandal over the closure of a key bridge to hurt Christie's political rivals.

At King & Spalding, the Yale Law School graduate chairs a unit representing entities and individuals in white collar criminal and regulatory enforcement issues, civil litigation and internal corporate investigations, according to the law firm's website.

At the Justice Department, he helped handle corporate fraud scandals, served on Bush's Corporate Fraud Task Force and oversaw major fraud investigations including that of energy giant Enron.

He also helped coordinate the agency's response to the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Turkey has close ties with Qatar including in the energy sector, but also maintains good relations with other Gulf countries

Turkey's parliament on Wednesday approved deploying troops to a Turkish base in Qatar amid a widening crisis between Doha and its rivals in the Gulf.

The move is seen as a sign of Turkish support to Qatar after Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain, among other states, cut diplomatic ties and major transport links with the gas-rich emirate.

The agreement does not contain any specific number of troops to be stationed in the base, or when.

Turkish ambassador to Qatar Ahmet Demirok told AFP last year the base would eventually be home to up to 3,000 troops or possibly more "depending on the needs".

Turkey has close ties with Qatar including in the energy sector, but also maintains good relations with other Gulf countries.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was careful not to criticise Riyadh, stood on Tuesday in defence of Qatar and said he intends to "develop" ties with the embattled Gulf state hit by sanctions from Saudi Arabia and its allies.
A Palestinian woman holding her national flag takes cover from tear gas fired by Israeli security forces during clashes in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh on February 6, 2015

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's spokesman said Wednesday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's vow to build across the occupied West Bank was a "challenge" to Donald Trump's efforts to restart peace talks.

Netanyahu told Israeli settlers Tuesday he would keep building across the West Bank, while Israeli authorities also advanced plans for some 1,500 settlement homes in the Palestinian territory.

The US president has called on Netanyahu to hold back on settlement building as he seeks ways to relaunch peace efforts with the Palestinians, but the Israeli leader also faces political pressure from the powerful settler movement.

Nabil Abu Rudeina, spokesman for Abbas, said in a statement that Netanyahu's speech and the new building plans "represent a challenge to the American administration."

"It is a challenge to (Trump's) efforts to create an appropriate atmosphere for a serious political process, and a blatant challenge to the international community as a whole," the statement added.

The homes advanced on Wednesday include those for the first new official settlement in some 25 years, the Peace Now NGO said.

Plans for a further 1,000 homes could be advanced on Wednesday, the NGO said.

Settlements in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem are illegal under international law and are seen as one of the greatest obstacles to peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

Netanyahu has said he still supports a two-state solution, but peace advocates allege his actions show otherwise.

Abu Rudeina added that the Israeli leader's statements "make it clear to the international community yet again that Israel is still putting up obstacles and destroying the chances of resuming the peace process."
Eight people have died in a ferocious storm that pummelled South Africa's west coast

A ferocious storm killed eight people as it pummelled South Africa's west coast on Wednesday, forcing the closure of Cape Town harbour, triggering flash floods and causing extensive damage, authorities said.

The weather system which struck on Tuesday has damaged buildings, felled trees, left 46,000 homes without electricity and caused travel chaos as flights and rail services were hit by gale-force winds and flooding.

Three people were killed in the Eden District municipality, an area popular with tourists east of Cape Town, while four others died in a fire sparked by lightning, said James Brent-Styan, spokesman for the Western Cape regional government.

One other person was killed when a building collapsed.

The South African Weather Service warned that strong gale force winds were expected over the Western Cape and western parts of the Northern Cape region until Thursday. Waves of up to 12 metres high are expected to lash the Cape peninsula until Friday.

"Heavy rain and flash flooding are expected (across) the western parts of the Western Cape... on Wednesday into Thursday morning," the weather service added.

The severe weather, dubbed "the cape storm" and thought to be one of the worst for 30 years, has left dozens of people in shantytowns around Cape Town homeless -- as well as forcing schools and universities to close.

The Khayelitsha township, a vast encampment of tightly-packed shacks just outside Cape Town, was reported to be totally deserted except for a handful of children and suffered severe flooding. Elsewhere in the region high winds fanned forest fires, causing damage to homes and property.

The extreme weather follows one of the worst droughts for 100 years that has gripped the region and led to crippling water shortages.
President Patrice Talon is not ill after he did not attend a west African summit June 4 or a cabinet meeting May 31

Benin's foreign minister on Wednesday worked to reassure the nation that President Patrice Talon was healthy, despite mounting speculation about the cause of his week-long stay in France.

"He is staying in Paris and he is taking advantage of his stay to do a health check," Aurelien Agbenonci told AFP.

Talon's absence has been a hot topic in the tiny West African nation for several days. On Tuesday, Agbenonci denied that 59-year-old Talon was ill.

"The president of the republic did not leave Cotonou hastily, he is not ill and is well," Agbenonci said.

According to other sources speaking on condition of anonymity, Talon should return to Benin "before the end of the week".

Talon did not appear at the latest Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) summit held in Liberia on June 4 or at a cabinet meeting of his senior ministers on May 31.

His last official visit was in late May in India where he attended the annual meeting of the African Development Bank (AfDB).
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem described the U.S. border with Mexico as a war zone last year when she sent dozens of state National Guard troops there. Noem said theyd be on the front lines of stopping drug smugglers and human traffickers. But newly released records from the National Guard show that in their two-month deployment, the South Dakota troops didnt seize any drugs and sometimes went days without encountering any migrants at all. Noem justified the deployment and a widely criticized private donation to fund as a state emergency because of drugs making their way across the southern border to South Dakota. But the records cast doubt on whether the deployment was effective in addressing that.
The defendant has waived her right to a jury trial, meaning her fate will be decided by a judge

A 20-year-old woman went on trial in the US state of Massachusetts on Tuesday, accused of persuading her teenage boyfriend to kill himself, in a case that could break new legal ground.

Michelle Carter is charged with involuntary manslaughter and has waived her right to a jury trial, meaning her fate will be decided by a judge. She faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

Conrad Roy, 18, was found dead from carbon monoxide poisoning in his pickup truck in a parking lot in July 2014.

The prosecution contends that Carter and Roy exchanged hundreds of text messages in which Carter urged him to follow through on his plan to kill himself.

"By her wanton and reckless conduct, she committed a felony," assistant district attorney Maryclare Flynn told the court in Taunton, south of Boston. "She put him in the car that night. She listened to him as he died."

"When are you going to do it? Stop ignoring the question," added the prosecutor, reading from one of Carter's alleged text messages. "Just do it babe," the defendant allegedly wrote in another.

The prosecution says Carter helped Roy devise the plan to use carbon monoxide poisoning, encouraged him to conceal it from his parents, lie to his mother and select a secluded parking lot.

The defendant was a "very needy person" with few friends who used Roy as a "pawn" to get attention from girls at high school, the prosecutor argued.

"She has to be the grieving girlfriend to get the sympathy and the attention that she believes she deserves," Flynn said.

While legal experts say Carter may have encouraged him to take his own life, they have questioned whether it is enough to secure a conviction under involuntary manslaughter.

The northeastern state of Massachusetts, unlike other US states, has no law against encouraging someone to commit suicide.

"This is a suicide case," defense lawyer Joseph Cataldo told the court. "It is not a homicide."

Roy had been on a path to suicide "for years," he said. Carter urged him to seek professional help and suffered from her own mental health frailties, he added.

The defense also sought to minimize Carter's role in her boyfriend's life, saying the pair were in a "long-term texting relationship" and had met in person only a handful of times.

Carter is being tried in a juvenile court. In the months after Roy's death, she reportedly raised hundreds of dollars for mental health awareness.
The force will have its headquarters in Mali, but will be under a separate command from the UN peacekeeping force MINUSMA

France has asked the UN Security Council to authorise the deployment of a five-nation African military force to fight jihadists and criminality in the Sahel region, with a vote expected as early as next week.

What are the origins of the force composed of troops from Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger, and why is it needed?

- Why now? -

Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger -- the so-called "G5 Sahel" countries just south of the Sahara -- first raised the idea of a regional force in November 2015 in Chad's capital, N'Djamena.

The idea then went quiet but was resurrected in the light of the deteriorating security situation in Mali, and following mounting incidents of jihadist violence in neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger.

In January, those three countries decided to create a joint security force on their mutual border, followed by Sahel heads of state announcing the "immediate" creation of a troop corps from all five countries in February.

The UN resolution tabled by France quickly followed after new President Emmanuel Macron reconfirmed his nation's commitment to fighting terrorism in the Sahel on a visit to Mali last month.

France carried out a military intervention in Mali in 2013 to drive out jihadist groups, some of which were linked to Al-Qaeda, who had seized key cities in the country's north.

Although the Islamists have been largely ousted from the north, jihadist groups continue to mount attacks on domestic and foreign forces in violence that has also engulfed parts of central Mali.

New French President Emmanuel Macron reconfirmed his nation's commitment to fighting terrorism in the Sahel on a visit to Mali last month

Spillover attacks in Burkina Faso and Niger are causing increasing alarm.

- What is the force's mandate? -

The draft resolution would authorise the deployment of the force of up to 5,000 military, police and civilian personnel for an initial period of 12 months, though Sahel leaders have expressed ambitions for a 10,000-strong force.

The force will operate in border areas and work to "create a secure environment by eradicating the actions of the terrorist armed groups and other organised criminal groups," the UN draft said.

UN Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Jean-Pierre Lacroix said on a visit to Mali in May that a phased rollout was envisaged for border regions of the country's centre, an area that has seen an uptick in attacks once concentrated in the restive north.

- What about the existing foreign forces in Mali? -

The force will have its headquarters in Mali, but will be under a separate command from the UN peacekeeping force MINUSMA, which has been deployed in the country since 2013.

It is also separate to but a complement for the work of France's own 4,000-strong military presence in the region, known as Barkhane.

Lacroix has insisted on clearly defined roles for the three different deployments which will now be operating in Mali.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for "close cooperation" between any G5 force and Barkhane. It could offer "improved operational environment for MINUSMA," which has suffered funding shortfalls and the deaths of dozens of peacekeepers, he said.

However he urged nations to "maintain their contributions to the (UN) mission", a possible reference to Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad whose troops already make up a third of the manpower of the MINUSMA force.

- How will the Sahel force be funded? -

France will include a request to Guterres to propose ways the UN can support the Sahel force through logistical and financial means.

The European Union has already promised 50 million euros of support, with diplomatic chief Federica Mogherini citing stability of the Sahel region as "crucial not only for Africa but also for Europe."

"We have the men and the will, what we need now is the financial resources to back us up," Niger's foreign minister Ibrahim Yacouba said on Tuesday.
President Donald Trump's pick for FBI chief, Christopher Wray, served in president George W. Bush's Justice Department

Tapped by Donald Trump as the new head of the FBI, Christopher Wray is a high-flying criminal lawyer who represented Trump ally Chris Christie in a New Jersey political scandal and once worked under fired FBI director James Comey.

If confirmed by the Senate to a 10-year term as the bureau's director, Wray will succeed Comey who was abruptly sacked by the US president one month ago.

His first challenge will be to reassure the more than 30,000 employees of the FBI of his commitment to their independence -- and second to convince the wider public that the century-old institution will stand up, if need be, to the White House.

In announcing his choice early Wednesday, Trump touted the former federal prosecutor as "a man of impeccable credentials."

"It is a great honor to be selected by the president to return to the Department of Justice as Director of the FBI," Wray said in a White House statement announcing the pick.

"I look forward to serving the American people with integrity as the leader of what I know firsthand to be an extraordinary group of men and women who have dedicated their careers to protecting this country."

Trump's pick of Wray -- now a Washington-based criminal defense lawyer -- came as a surprise: he did not figure on the initial shortlist of candidates, including several Republican heavyweights, being considered for the key role.

From a political standpoint, Wray is an uncontroversial pick -- avoiding any suggestion that Trump is seeking to exert control over the FBI, in the wake of his bombshell dismissal of Comey, and allegations he sought to interfere with the FBI's Russia probe.

In any event, Wray will have limited power to influence the agency's Russia investigation, which was placed in the hands of an independent prosecutor -- former FBI director Robert Mueller -- following Comey's dismissal.

- Wray, Comey go way back -

Matthew Miller, a former Justice Department spokesman, described him as "probably the best choice from the WH short list."

Christopher Wray is seen here standing behind James Comey, the fired FBI director, in a 2004 picture, when they both worked at the Justice Department

"His record in the Bush DOJ deserves scrutiny, but he's a serious, respectable pick," Miller tweeted.

From 2003 to 2005, under president George W. Bush, Wray served as assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department's criminal division working closely with the FBI.

During his time in the Justice Department, he worked directly under Comey's orders, and is believed to have provided him with key support during one his toughest showdowns, in 2004.

At the time, Comey was acting attorney general due to the illness of his boss John Ashcroft.

At Ashcroft's bedside, Bush's presidential counsel, Alberto Gonzales, was trying to persuade him to reauthorize a controversial warrantless eavesdropping program.

Comey -- who was against extending the program -- at one point offered to resign in protest. Wray had assured him of his loyalty amid the standoff.

At the Justice Department, Wray helped handle corporate fraud scandals, served on Bush's task force on corporate fraud and oversaw major fraud investigations including that of energy giant Enron.

He also played a key role in coordinating the agency's response to the September 11, 2001 attacks.

- Represented Christie -

Since leaving the Justice Department, Wray has specialized in white collar civil and criminal cases as a partner at King & Spalding law firm in Washington and Atlanta.

He most notably represented Christie, the New Jersey governor, in the 2013 scandal over the closure of a key bridge intended to hurt Christie's political rivals.

At King & Spalding, the Yale Law School graduate chairs a unit specializing in white collar criminal and regulatory enforcement issues, civil litigation and internal corporate investigations, according to the law firm's website.

He was born in New York in 1967 into a family of lawyers, and graduated in 1992 from Yale, where he was executive editor of the Yale Law Journal.
Iraqi Kurds largely support the idea of an independent state, but a yes vote would only be the start of a contentious project that would face major internal and external challenges

Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region will hold a historic referendum on statehood in September, its presidency said Wednesday, despite opposition to independence from Baghdad and possibly beyond.

The decision to set the date for September 25 was made at a meeting attended by Kurdish leader Massud Barzani and representatives of the region's political parties, the presidency said in a statement.

"It will be on that day when the people of the Kurdistan region, as well as those living in the disputed areas, will cast their votes on whether they accept independence," it declared.

Often described as the world's largest stateless people after being denied their own country in the wake of World War I, Kurds are spread between Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey.

The referendum sets the stage for what may be Iraq's first major crisis after the end of the operation to recapture Mosul from jihadists, which temporarily united rival Iraqi federal and Kurdish forces that will still be deployed in close proximity in the north.

Iraqi Kurds largely support the idea of an independent state, but a yes vote would only be the start of a contentious project that would face major internal and external challenges.

The region is made up of three provinces that are run by an autonomous regional government and protected by their own security services, providing the basis for a potential state.

The decision to hold a statehood referendum was made at a meeting attended by Kurdish leader Massud Barzani, seen in April 2017, and representatives of the region's political parties, it said

But there are major political and economic obstacles to Iraqi Kurdish independence.

The presidency statement said in Kurdish the referendum would include "areas of Kurdistan outside the administration of the region", which were termed "disputed areas" in English.

This refers to swathes of northern territory that are claimed by both Kurdistan and Baghdad, including the key oil-rich province of Kirkuk.

Opposition in Baghdad to Iraqi Kurdistan becoming independent would become even greater if the region tried to take disputed territory along with it.

Iraqi Kurdistan, like the rest of the country, depends almost entirely on revenue from crude sales to provide government funds.

Kurdistan exports most of its oil via a pipeline leading to the Turkish port of Ceyhan, but also overland through Turkey by tanker truck.

- Potential external opposition -

Potential opposition from Turkey could thus pose a major economic as well as political challenge to Iraqi Kurdish independence.

Turkey has a large Kurdish minority with which the government has been engaged in a multi-decade armed conflict, and Ankara would almost certainly fear that Iraqi Kurdish independence could fuel increased calls for a similar move within its territory.

Iran and Syria -- which also have large Kurdish populations -- may have similar concerns.

But due to how Iraqi Kurdistan exports oil, Turkey potentially has both an effective veto over independence in general, and a ready means to apply huge pressure to the fledgling state's economy if it did split from Iraq.

Iraqi Kurds dressed in traditional clothing dance on stage during the opening of the Middle East Tourism Expo in Arbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, on May 4, 2017

Given the poor state of relations between Ankara and Baghdad, Iraq is likely to oppose part of its territory being turned into a state that Turkey could easily influence.

Internally, Iraqi Kurdistan has been hit hard by low oil prices to the point that it has stopped paying some government employees for extended periods.

And while the concept of Kurdish independence has broad appeal, Iraqi Kurds are deeply divided politically, which could lead to paralysis in a new state.

The regional presidency's statement said that "the political parties... agreed to resolve some of the outstanding political and economic issues prior to the date of the referendum".

Nechirvan Barzani, the region's prime minister and its leader Massud's nephew, had previously said the Kurds would address the issue of independence with Baghdad after the conclusion of the operation to retake Mosul from the Islamic State group.

Both Iraqi Kurdish and federal forces have taken part in the Mosul operation, which gave a fleeting common purpose to various rival factions in Iraq, but which is now nearing its end.

The referendum could raise tensions in the Mosul area -- which includes disputed territory -- at a time when both federal and Kurdish forces are deployed close to each other.

This is especially the case west of the city, where territory recaptured by pro-government paramilitary fighters abuts areas held by Kurdish forces, with whom they have clashed elsewhere.
S&P noted that the group of states which have cut off ties "provides 15 percent of Qatar's imports, potentially causing substantial shortages of key materials, including those used for construction projects, and food"

S&P Global Ratings on Wednesday cut Qatar's credit rating by one notch to AA- and put it on watch for further downgrades after Gulf Arab states severed ties.

"We believe this will exacerbate Qatar's external vulnerabilities and could put pressure on economic growth and fiscal metrics," the ratings agency said.

Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE and Bahrain announced on Monday they were cutting diplomatic ties and closing air, sea and land links with Qatar.

Riyadh and its allies accuse Qatar of supporting extremist groups and of serving the interests of regional arch-rival Iran, claims Doha has strongly rejected.

"At this stage, we note that there are numerous uncertainties regarding Qatar's response, the extent to which these measures will be imposed, and their longevity," said S&P Global Ratings.

It noted a considerable increase in nonresident deposits in Qatari banks, and an increase in their lending to the government to fund infrastructure projects.

"In our opinion recent events have the potential to destabilise these nonresident deposits and provoke an outflow," said S&P Global Ratings.

It said Qatar may need to tap its sovereign wealth fund and central bank reserves to offset a major outflow of funds, and considers foreign financing of the economy to be at an elevated risk.

S&P Global Ratings also noted that the group of states which have cut off ties "provides 15 percent of Qatar's imports, potentially causing substantial shortages of key materials, including those used for construction projects, and food."

It warned it could further lower Qatar's rating "if additional or more severe restrictions from either Saudi Arabia and the group of states, or from additional trade partners, are announced."

The dispute has sparked the worst diplomatic crisis in the Arab world in years and raised fears it will cause further instability in an already-volatile region.

The AA- rating is in the middle of the investment grade in the credit rating scale, and means a borrower has a very strong capacity to repay its debts.

Credit ratings affect what borrowers may expect to pay when they raise funds by issuing bonds to investors.
A picture taken on March 17, 2017, at the site of a reported airstrike on a mosque in the village of Al-Jineh in Aleppo province, shows Syrian civil defence volunteers, or White Helmets, conducting rescue operations and digging through rubble

The Pentagon denied Wednesday that large numbers of civilians were killed in a March strike by a Syrian mosque, acknowledging only one possible civilian death at an adjoining religious compound.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has claimed that the March 16 strike in the village of opposition-held Al-Jineh in northern Aleppo killed 49 people -- most of them civilians.

But an investigation led by Brigadier General Paul Bontrager found that about two dozen men attending an Al-Qaeda meeting were killed in the strike, with several others wounded.

"Sadly, we did assess that there was likely one civilian casualty," Bontrager said, noting he was "unsure" whether the person survived.

The general said the probe looked at media reports that indicated a large number of civilian deaths, but investigators did not uncover evidence to support those claims.

"We are not aware of large numbers of civilians being treated in hospitals after the strike," he said.

"We are confident this was a meeting of Al-Qaeda members and leaders."

The strike, conducted by F-15 warplanes and Reaper drones, completely destroyed a building next to a small mosque, which investigators now recognize was a madrassa -- or Islamic religious school -- that was still under construction.

The review found that the strike's targeting officers were not made aware that the complex under construction had a general religious purpose, Bontrager said.

"The failure to identify the religious nature (of the building) is a preventable error," he said, adding, "there should have been more questions asked."

While no one was found to be negligent in approving the strike, Bontrager said officers should have better interrogated each other about whether they should hit the structure.

"Any madrassa or any other structure at all, if it's being used for military purpose, can be struck, can be a legal target to strike," he said, "it simply has to go through a different legal authority."

The investigation also found an "overarching problem" of incomplete information flow in the "target engagement" cell, Bontrager said.

"Though the investigation identified some critical information gap that contributed to misinformation and an overall lack of understanding of the situation, we ultimately struck a blow against Al-Qaeda," he said.

Syria's conflict erupted in March 2011 with widespread protests against the regime, but it has since morphed into a multi-front war that has left 320,000 people dead.

The US military has said coalition air strikes in Iraq and Syria had "unintentionally" killed 484 civilians, but observers say the number is far higher.
Leader of South Africa's largest opposition party Democratic Alliance (DA) Helen Zille addresses a campaign rally in Johannesburg on May 3, 2014

South Africa's main opposition, the Democratic Alliance, suspended on Wednesday its former leader Helen Zille over a controversial tweet in which she praised some aspects of colonialism.

The feisty leader who is now the premier of the Western Cape province sparked a firestorm when she made the offending comment in March.

She wrote: "For those claiming legacy of colonialism was ONLY negative, think of our independent judiciary, transport infrastructure, piped water."

The party said the suspension was "decided by an overwhelming majority" and that sanction would remain until a disciplinary hearing was finalised.

"The suspension is effective immediately," said a statement.

The tweet caused furore among South Africans and within DA ranks, as the group is still struggling to shed its image as a "white" party.

The DA'S top executive said Zille's action had damaged the party.

"There is no question that Ms Zille's original tweets and subsequent justifications have damaged our standing in the public mind."

The party went on to say that Zille had "refused to take the appropriate action necessary to resolve this unfortunate and damaging matter."

On Saturday, DA leader Mmusi Maimane announced Zille's suspension, before backtracking to say a final decision would be made after she was given the chance to defend herself.

A date for the hearing has been set for June 9.

Zille who has a large twitter following is no stranger to controversial tweets.

Zille, 66, is credited with growing support for the DA among black people, whose votes helped it take control of key cities, including the capital Pretoria and Johannesburg, from the ruling African National Congress (ANC) after the local government elections last year.

South Africa, which was colonised by both the Dutch and British, remains deeply divided more than 20 years after the end of white-minority apartheid rule. The DA bills itself as an non-racial and equal opportunity party.
French paleoanthropologist Jean-Jacques Hublin poses with the casting of a Homo Sapiens skull discovered in Morocco. The human species roamed Africa 300,000 years ago, according to new research that pushes back human origins by 100,000 years.

An "obsession" with the lower jaw of a long-dead human, unearthed in the 1960s at a prehistoric Moroccan campsite, led palaeoanthropologist Jean-Jacques Hublin to the discovery of a lifetime.

After decades of work to identify the jawbone's owner, Hublin was able to announce Wednesday that it belonged to the earliest known member of our species.

His efforts revealed that Homo sapiens is 100,000 years older than previously assumed -- ageing our species by a whole third and dislodging East Africa as the cradle of humankind.

It was in 1961 that mining activity at the site called Jebel Irhoud, not far from Marrakesh, first brought an ancient human skull to the surface, followed by more fragments over subsequent years of excavation.

Initially, the pieces were dated to about 40,000 years ago, later pushed back to 160,000 years ago.

At the time, the notion that humans originated in Africa did not exist, so the remains were not in the running for Homo sapiens status.

Some hypothesised the remains belonged to a type of African Neanderthal -- the species then considered to have been the forerunner of modern humans.

Others proposed it was a kind of Neanderthal-human hybrid, yet others an archaic group of far-flung human relatives.

"I was never convinced by these ideas," said Hublin.

As a young researcher, he recalled, a colleague confided him with the study of a mandible, or lower jaw, from the fossil trove.

The "mystery of Jebel Irhoud" became the subject of his first-ever scientific publication on human fossils, in 1981, and a career "obsession," Hublin told journalists ahead of Wednesday's unveiling.

- Great reward -

"The reason why we were so interested in the site... (is that) we had a mozaic of morphological features that did not make much sense," he said.

The specimens displayed a combination of physical traits, particularly the face, that closely resembled those of modern, living human beings, and other "more primitive" aspects such as a flatter, elongated skull.

Hublin said he visited the site several times in the 1980s and 1990s seeking to resume research, "but that was a difficult project to undertake mostly because the place became a sort of quarry."

Finally, in 2004, Hublin and a team could start cleaning the site and preparing it for archaeological excavation.

Soon they started adding to the fossil fragment collection -- now known to have belonged to five early Homo sapiens.

They also collected stone tool artefacts which had been burnt in the humans' cooking pit.

These could be dated with a special technique called thermoluminescence, which measures exposure to radiation generated by heat.

"Very early in the process we realised that the site was much older than anything anyone could imagine," said Hublin.

"We were rewarded beyond our expectations!"
US President Donald Trump (R) shakes hands with Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani, during a bilateral meeting at a hotel in the Saudi capital Riyadh

President Donald Trump spoke to Qatar's emir on Wednesday, offering US mediation in a crisis that has split Washington's allies and pushed regional powers toward confrontation.

"The President offered to help the parties resolve their differences, including through a meeting at the White House if necessary," the White House said.

Trump spoke to Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani as Qatar faces an economic and diplomatic blockade from Gulf states led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Qatar's neighbors are angry at Doha's backing for jihadist groups, its willingness to engage with Iran, and its patronage of Al Jazeera, which often criticizes Gulf governments.

The call came a day after Trump appeared to back Saudi Arabia strong-arming the emirate, which is home to 10,000 US troops.

Qatar confirmed the call, saying Trump "expressed readiness to find a solution to the diplomatic crisis in the Gulf, and stressed his keenness that the Gulf remains stable."

Trump aides also stressed the need for Qatar and "all countries in the region working together to prevent the financing of terrorist organizations and stop the promotion of extremist ideology."

As speculation swirled that Saudi Arabia could attempt to overthrow the Qatari government, Turkey's parliament agreed to deploy troops to the emirate in its defense.
"There's an unspoken rule in the professional musician world: never let an airline stow your instrument," said violinist Yennier Correia

A violinist accused United Airlines of rough treatment after she refused to check her fragile 18th century instrument as luggage, another potential black mark to the US carrier after an infamous passenger dragging incident.

Yennifer Correia was traveling Sunday from Houston, Texas to a music rehearsal in Columbia, Missouri, when ticket agents told her that she could not carry her circa late-1700s Italian violin onboard the plane, Correia's attorney Phil MacNaughton told AFP on Wednesday.

The 33-year-old Venezuelan-born musician offered to pay any fees and asked for options that would allow her to travel with her violin, but a United supervisor tried to wrestle away the instrument leading to a brief tussle, MacNaughton said.

"There's an unspoken rule in the professional musician world: never let an airline stow your instrument," the Houston-based attorney said, pointing to a US aviation regulation that requires airlines to accommodate small musical instruments as carry-ons onboard flights.

United Airlines did not return a request for comment.

The allegations threatened the carrier's attempts to recover from a public relations fiasco in April, in which a 69-year-old doctor was dragged off an overbooked flight.

In that case, the carrier settled with David Dao for an undisclosed sum, and promised a set of operational changes to improve customer service.

MacNaughton posted a letter about the incident on Facebook, and is asking anyone with video footage of the incident to come forward.

He has also filed notice with the airline and the city of Houston, which operates the airport, to preserve any evidence of the incident -- a common first step before a lawsuit is filed.
Khuram Shahzad Butt, a 27-year-old British national born in Pakistan who died in a hail of police bullets Saturday night, was a tall, lanky, straggly bearded young man of few words -- a brainwashed follower of al-Muhajiroun, a loose grouping of British extremists supportive of ISIS linked to a large number of terrorist plots involving UK nationals.

CNN's Sandi Sidhu met him several times while reporting on the group in the United Kingdom between 2014 and 2016. He went by the name "Abz" or "Abu Zaitun" and seldom spoke during meetings. He was content to leave the task of proselytizing to louder, older members of the group, according to Sidhu.

Butt, who lived in Barking in east London, appeared several times in a 2016 Channel 4 documentary called "The Jihadis Next Door," which profiled a group of individuals linked to al-Muhajiroun in the United Kingdom. At one point in the documentary, he can be seen helping unfurl a black banner in Regent's Park. The flag was different in form to the one most commonly used by ISIS. A friend of Butt's identified him to CNN as appearing in the documentary. Neighbors living beside the residence raided by police in Barking also identified Butt from a still frame in the documentary.

Another of the men featured in the documentary was Abu Rumaysah, a British man some have speculated was a masked militant in a January 2016 ISIS execution video. Rumaysah rented out bouncy castles in east London, before traveling to Syria in autumn 2014 after skipping bail. He had been arrested on suspicion of encouraging terrorism and being a member of al-Muhajiroun.

Sidhu observed Butt and Rumayah standing together at al-Muhajiroun protests in 2014. She recalled that Butt seemed particularly close to Abu Rumaysah. Butt helped Abu Rumayash take pictures and film protests organized by the group.

At the time of the attack, Butt worked as a receptionist at a fitness center in Ilford, a friend from the gym told CNN. The gym is described as a mixed martial arts gym on its website. Butt told the friend he had stopped attending al-Muhajiroun meetings some time ago.

The friend said Butt told him his wife had given birth several months ago.

Al-Muhajiroun has been linked to half of all terror plots by British nationals in the United Kingdom and overseas over the last two decades, according to research published in 2015 by Raffaello Pantucci, a terrorism analyst at the Royal United Services Institute. Several followers of the group joined ISIS in Syria including Abu Rumaysah and Abu Rahin Aziz, a Luton resident killed in a US drone strike in Raqqa, Syria, in July 2015.

Al-Muhajiroun's longtime UK leader Anjem Choudary was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison in 2016 for calling on Muslims in the United Kingdom to support ISIS.

In the years after 9/11 the group operated under a variety of guises including Shariah4UK and Muslims against Crusades. Plots involving the group's followers include an attack on a Tel Aviv nightclub in 2003, an al Qaeda orchestrated plot to bomb the United Kingdom with fertilizer bombs in 2004, a plot to bomb a territorial army center in Luton in 2012 and the murder of British soldier Lee Rigby in east London in 2013.

More recently, Brusthom Ziamani, a south London teenager brainwashed by al-Mujahiroun, was convicted in 2015 of plotting to behead a British soldier.

CNN's Sandi Sidhu contributed to this report.
National Security Agency contractor Reality Winner is accused of leaking secret documents to a news organization

It was a major scoop for The Intercept -- documents suggesting a concerted Russian effort to hack US election systems -- but the online news site is drawing fire in media circles following the arrest of the alleged source of the leak.

The Intercept, the investigative arm of the First Look Media organization created by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, is being criticized for sharing information which may have led to the arrest this week of National Security Agency contractor Reality Leigh Winner.

Winner, 25, was arrested and accused of mailing classified NSA documents to "a news outlet," according to the US Justice Department, which said an investigation showed she had printed and shared the investigative report.

Did the news organization unwittingly provide clues to the government that led authorities to Winner? Some media analysts say the journalists were careless at best.

Some of the harshest criticism came from Washington Post reporter Barton Gellman, who called the case a "catastrophic failure of source protection" and argued that The Intercept "made egregious mistakes that doomed its source."

"It handed USG (US government) a color copy of original doc & told a clearance-holding contractor the doc was mailed from Augusta. Where source lived," tweeted Gellman, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner who was part of a team reporting from documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

Jake Swearingen, a technology writer for New York Magazine, said Winner made her own missteps by printing the documents in a way that could be tracked and mailing them to The Intercept.

But Swearingen added that The Intercept may have sealed Winner's fate by showing the document to a government official as part of an effort to verify its authenticity.

"It's quite reasonable for The Intercept to seek confirmation," Swearingen wrote. "But revealing the Augusta, Georgia, postmark to the third-party source clearly helped the government build its case."

The Intercept said in a statement the NSA document "was provided to us completely anonymously" and added that "we have no knowledge of the identity of the person who provided us with the document."

The news organization, which is headed by investigative reporter Glenn Greenwald, who was part of the team that first published the Snowden documents, cautioned against drawing any conclusions from FBI assertions on how it tracked Winner.

"Winner faces allegations that have not been proven. The same is true of the FBIs claims about how it came to arrest Winner," the statement said.

- Connecting the dots -

An undated social media picture of Reality Leigh Winner, who is accused of giving top-secret documents to a news organization

Robert Graham of Errata Security said Winner may have been tracked by nearly invisible dots from the printer used that can determine who used the machine.

"Because the NSA logs all printing jobs on its printers, it can use this to match up precisely who printed the document," Graham said in a blog post.

"When they print things out, they includes these invisible dots, so documents can be tracked," Graham wrote, calling it "a violation of our (constitutional) rights."

Dan Gillmor, an Arizona State University journalism professor who blogs about media, said the case calls for more scrutiny.

"Hoping @theintercept will do a thorough self-examination of its source protection, or lack of it -- and make results loudly public."

Some were less charitable.

John Kiriakou, a former CIA analyst who went to jail after leaking information on US torture and waterboarding, tweeted "@theintercept should be ashamed of itself. (Reporter) Matthew Cole burns yet another source. It makes your entire organization untrustworthy."

WikiLeaks, the organization which is a conduit for secret documents, said it was offering a $10,000 reward "for information leading to the public exposure & termination of this 'reporter.'"

Others said the focusing on the role of the news organization distracts from the more question of whether the leak related to an important public issue.

Snowden, who has been given asylum in Russia and is also facing prosecution for divulging secret documents, said it is inappropriate to use the Espionage Act to prosecute "whistleblowers" who reveal important news to media.

"The prosecution of any journalistic source without due consideration by the jury as to the harm or benefit of the journalistic activity is a fundamental threat to the free press," Snowden said in a blog post.

Dan Kennedy, a Northeastern University journalism professor, said most sources of leaked information understand they will eventually face consequences.

Winner "does have an argument to make that what she did was in the public interest, but I don't know if she can convince a jury of that," Kennedy said.
US President Donald Trump, pictured speaking in Cincinnati, Ohio, on June 7, 2017, expressed his condolences to Iran for the recent terror attacks but warned of the dangers that come with "sponsoring" terrorism

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday expressed sympathy for the victims of a terror attack in Iran that killed 13 people, but issued a barbed warning that the country was reaping what it sowed.

Gunmen and suicide bombers, acting almost simultaneously, attacked Iran's parliament and a shrine to the revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini in the first attacks in the country claimed by the so-called Islamic State group.

"We grieve and pray for the innocent victims of the terrorist attacks in Iran, and for the Iranian people, who are going through such challenging times," Trump said in a brief statement.

"We underscore that states that sponsor terrorism risk falling victim to the evil they promote."

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif blasted Trump's comments.

"Repugnant WH statement & Senate sanctions as Iranians counter terror backed by US clients," he said in a tweet, referring to moves by US lawmakers to slap new sanctions on Tehran.

"Iranian people reject such US claims of friendship."

Earlier, US State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said that "the depravity of terrorism has no place in a peaceful, civilized world."

"We express our condolences to the victims and their families, and send our thoughts and prayers to the people of Iran," she added.

Trump has long accused Iran of backing terrorism. During last year's presidential campaign, he suggested that one of his top priorities was to dismantle the "disastrous" 2015 deal aimed at preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons in exchange for the lifting of sanctions.

As president, he has maintained his criticism of Iran -- during a visit to Israel last month Trump said Tehran now feels "emboldened" by the nuclear accord -- but has not tampered with the agreement.

A United Nations watchdog group confirmed in June that Iran was adhering to the deal.

Even as Washington expressed its condolences over the terror strike, the US Senate advanced legislation Wednesday that would impose new sanctions on Iran, partly for what the bill described as the Iranian regime's "support for acts of international terrorism."

Lawmakers voted 92 to 7 to clear a procedural hurdle, setting up a later vote on final passage.

But Republicans and Democrats alike said they are eager to add an amendment that would slap fresh sanctions on Russia in response to US intelligence conclusions that the Kremlin conducted or approved cyberattacks on US targets in an effort to sway the presidential election.

"In the last eight months, what price has Russia paid for attacking American democracy? Hardly any at all," Republican Senator John McCain said.

"We need a strong Russia sanctions amendment. We need it now."

Senate Democrat Dianne Feinstein said it was "the wrong time" to pass fresh sanctions on Iran.

"The country has just suffered from two significant terrorist attacks after electing a moderate government with 57 percent of the vote," she said. "We need to give Iran the opportunity to recover and set a new course."
Late rock 'n' roll legend Chuck Berry, shown here in Uruguay in 2013, projects a youthful spirit on his final album, a posthumous work that is being released Friday

Chuck Berry defined rock 'n' roll as he gave voice to feel-good 1950s baby-boomer culture. For his swan song, he is reliving that same youthful spirit -- and tidying up some loose ends.

The rock pioneer died in March just as he was planning an unlikely comeback; in October, for his 90th birthday, Berry had announced he was releasing a new album.

Entitled simply "Chuck," the album comes out Friday and marks the first studio recordings by Berry since 1979, with the 10 songs fine-tuned for release since his death.

Returning after three decades in which musical tastes have shifted in manifold ways, Berry stays true to his classic sound -- tightly structured tunes rooted in the blues, with a touch of country and the electrifying energy that he called rock 'n' roll.

On "Chuck," Berry signs off as forever young. His world at age 90 was the same one that embraced him in the 1950s -- a lifestyle of driving fast cars, partying mischievously and checking out women.

The album kicks off with quintessential Berry, his verses alternating with frolicking yet brassy-toned guitar riffs, on "Wonderful Woman."

In the song, Berry remains transfixed -- who knows for how many years -- by a woman with "big beautiful eyes" and "long, brown wavy hair" who showed up at his concert -- in the second row, he recalls.

On the album's first single, "Big Boys," Berry remembers trying to befriend cool older schoolmates, with his enthusiastic guitar complemented by one of rock's premier axe-men, Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine.

- A woman for Johnny B. Goode -

Berry recorded the album around St. Louis, where he lived his whole life, with his son and grandson and other artists who accompanied him for two decades in gigs at the Blueberry Hill club.

Berry dedicated "Chuck" to his wife of 68 years, Themetta Suggs. But he also appeared to want to close some of the musical stories he started.

Berry -- who is honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame -- died of natural causes on March 18, 2017

Berry revisits 1958's "Johnny B. Goode" -- a song so famous that it represents rock 'n' roll to potential extraterrestrials on the Voyager spacecraft -- with the new "Lady B. Goode."

Nearly 60 years later, Berry has turned his classic song into a diptych. "Lady B. Goode" brings the perspective of "the little teen queen" who fell in love with someone who sounds an awfully lot like Johnny B. Goode -- a humble country boy who finds fame with his guitar.

Berry, opening with a hard-driving R&B guitar riff similar to "Johnny B. Goode," sings of her: "She followed him around where he would play his guitar / Till he got so popular they made him a star."

"Then she could only see him on a TV screen / And hoped someday that he'd come back to New Orleans," he sings.

- Back to the Caribbean -

Berry also revisits old territory on "Jamaica Moon," a remake of his "Havana Moon" whose commercial flop in 1956 had irritated him.

For his second take of the song, Berry again imagines himself as a Caribbean boy waiting on a dock for an American girl who promised to return.

But this time, a bouncy guitar brings a touch of reggae as Berry sings in patois, "Me still alone, me sip on de rum."

The original "Havana Moon" -- acoustic with a Latin flavor -- faded as Fidel Castro's revolution soured Americans' romance with Cuba, although the song was revived as a cover by Carlos Santana.

"Jamaica Moon" also echoes a lyric in another defining rock song, the famously indecipherable "Louie Louie."

Berry's sound goes most contemporary on "Dutchman" as he switches to spoken-word over his blues guitar, telling the story of a dog who enters the bar and explains he was once a musician whose "music was considered superb."

"He didn't make the Hall of Fame, but it bought him shrimp, rice and beans."

Berry, in real life, was one of the first inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
BEIJING (AP) - With President Donald Trump pulling the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord, China and California signed an agreement Tuesday to work together on reducing emissions, as the state's governor warned that "disaster still looms" without urgent action.

Gov. Jerry Brown told The Associated Press at an international clean energy conference in Beijing that Trump's decision to pull the U.S. out of the Paris agreement will ultimately prove only a temporary setback.

For now, he said, China, European countries and individual U.S. states will fill the gap left by the federal government's move to abdicate leadership on the issue.

California Gov. Jerry Brown attends the Clean Energy Ministerial International Forum on Electric Vehicle Pilot Cities and Industrial Development, at a hotel in Beijing, Tuesday, June 6, 2017. Brown predicts that President Donald Trump's decision to pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord will prove temporary because of the urgency of the issue. He told The Associated Press on the sidelines of a clean energy conference in Beijing on Tuesday that China, Europe and U.S. state governors will for now fill the gap left by the federal government's move to abdicate leadership on the issue. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

"Nobody can stay on the sidelines. We can't afford any dropouts in the tremendous human challenge to make the transition to a sustainable future," Brown said. "Disaster still looms and we've got to make the turn."

Brown later held a closed-door meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, during which the two pledged to expand trade between California and China with an emphasis on so-called green technologies that could help address climate change, Brown said. Trump's announcement last week that he wants to pull out of the Paris accord did not come up, according to the governor.

"Xi spoke in very positive terms," Brown told reporters after the meeting. "I don't think there's any desire to get into verbal battles with President Trump."

Trump's decision drew heavy criticism within the U.S. and internationally, including in China, which swiftly recommitted itself to the agreement forged with the administration of former U.S. President Barack Obama. Trump argued that the Paris agreement favors emerging economies such as China's and India's at the expense of U.S. workers.

Tuesday's agreement between California and China's Ministry of Science and Technology effectively sidestepped Trump's move, bringing about alignment on an issue of rising global importance between the world's second-largest economy - China - and California, whose economy is the largest of any U.S. state and the sixth largest in the world.

Brown signed similar collaboration agreements over the past several days with leaders in two Chinese provinces, Jiangsu and Sichuan.

Like the Paris accord, the deals are all nonbinding. They call for investments in low-carbon energy sources, cooperation on climate research and the commercialization of cleaner technologies. The agreements do not establish new emission reduction goals.

The U.S. has long been a major player in the clean energy arena, driving innovations in electric cars, renewable power and other sectors of the industry. California, with some of the strictest climate controls in the nation, has been at the forefront of the sector.

China in recent years overtook the U.S. as the world leader in renewable power development. But it has also struggled to integrate its sprawling wind and solar facilities into an electricity grid still dominated by coal-fueled power plants.

At the same time, Chinese leaders face growing public pressure at home to reduce the health-damaging smog that blankets many urban areas.

China is by far the world's largest user of coal, which accounts for almost two-thirds of its energy use and has made it the No. 1 emitter of climate-changing greenhouse gases.

Communist Party leaders pledged that greenhouse gas emissions will peak no later than 2030 under the Paris pact, and start to fall after then. They have canceled the planned construction of more than 100 new coal-fired power plants and plan to invest at least $360 billion in green-energy projects by the end of the decade. The nation's consumption of coal fell in 2016 for a third consecutive year, but rebounded slightly in 2017.

It could meet its 2030 target a decade early.

Trump Energy Secretary Rick Perry also is attending this week's energy meeting in Beijing. Observers say delegates from other countries will be listening closely to the former Texas governor to gauge how Trump administration policies will shape global energy trends.

During a Tuesday forum devoted to capturing carbon dioxide emitted from coal plants and other large industrial sources, Perry said his agency was pursuing an "all of the above" strategy that includes research intended to spur innovation for coal, nuclear, renewables and other fuels. He left the event without taking questions.

Perry is from a state that is known for its oil production but that has also had significant renewables development. Texas has some of the largest wind farms in the country and a fast-expanding solar sector.

Such U.S. advances in renewables won't simply disappear under Trump, said David Sandalow, a former undersecretary of energy in the Obama administration now at Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy. Too many companies and states are heavily invested in the sector for that to happen, he said.

But a lack of government support for clean energy will cost the U.S. jobs, Sandalow added, with cuts to research programs that Trump has proposed being a sign of what's to come.

"It's backward looking and it's going to hurt the U.S.," he said. "The contrast with what's happening in China could not be more stark."

Interviewed Tuesday morning on American cable channel MSNBC, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt touted U.S. emissions reductions over past years and said that despite withdrawing from the Paris accord, the Trump administration would continue to engage others, particularly developing nations, on the effort.

"We have a strong, strong approach to reducing emissions. We have nothing to be apologetic about," Pruitt said. "America is not going to be disengaged, we are going to maintain engagement."

Trump is a strong advocate of boosting U.S. fossil fuel industries, in particular coal mining. Cheap natural gas and tighter pollution restrictions toppled coal from its dominant position in the U.S. power sector during Obama's tenure. Experts say it's unlikely to regain that position anytime soon, regardless of what Trump does.

Without mentioning Trump by name, Brown told attendees at a forum on electric vehicles that "there are still people in powerful places who are resisting reality."

Later, when asked by the AP what could prompt the U.S. to return to the forefront of climate change efforts, Brown replied, "Science, facts, the world, the marketplace."

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AP Diplomatic Writer Matthew Lee contributed to this report from Washington, D.C.

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Follow Matthew Brown on Twitter at twitter.com/matthewbrownap

California Gov. Jerry Brown, left, exchanges memorandum of understanding with China's Science and Technology Minister Wan Gang after the Clean Technology signing ceremony at a hotel in Beijing, Tuesday, June 6, 2017. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

California Gov. Jerry Brown speaks during the Clean Energy Ministerial International Forum on Electric Vehicle Pilot Cities and Industrial Development at a hotel in Beijing, Tuesday, June 6, 2017. Brown predicts that President Donald Trump's decision to pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord will prove temporary because of the urgency of the issue. He told The Associated Press on the sidelines of a clean energy conference in Beijing on Tuesday that China, Europe and U.S. state governors will for now fill the gap left by the federal government's move to abdicate leadership on the issue. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

California Gov. Jerry Brown, left, shakes hands with China's Science and Technology Minister Wan Gang after signing a memorandum of understanding of Clean Technology at a hotel in Beijing, Tuesday, June 6, 2017. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

California Gov. Jerry Brown, left, chats with China's Science and Technology Minister Wan Gang as they attend the Clean Energy Ministerial International Forum on Electric Vehicle Pilot Cities and Industrial Development, at a hotel in Beijing, Tuesday, June 6, 2017. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

California Gov. Jerry Brown waves to photographers as he arrives for the Clean Energy Ministerial International Forum on Electric Vehicle Pilot Cities and Industrial Development, at a hotel in Beijing, Tuesday, June 6, 2017. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

California Gov. Jerry Brown, left, shakes hands with China's Minister of Science and Technology Wan Gang after the signing a memorandum of understanding of Clean Technology at a hotel in Beijing, Tuesday, June 6, 2017. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Latest on the Trump administration and the Russia investigation (all times local):

3:30 p.m.

The chairman of the Senate intelligence committee says it sought business records from former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn to try to track his whereabouts as they relate to the panel's investigation into Russia's meddling in the 2016 election.

FILE - In this Feb. 1, 2017, photo, then - National Security Adviser Michael Flynn speaks during the daily news briefing at the White House, in Washington. Senate Democrats are pressing the businessman President Donald Trump nominated to be ambassador to Japan for answers about the vetting of former national security adviser Michael Flynn, according to congressional aides. William F. Hagerty served as director of presidential appointments for Trump's transition team(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., says the panel issued a subpoena for Flynn's business records to see if his travel, expense and phone records would "give us insight as to where he was."

Burr says the committee sought Flynn's business records because it got turned down on its earlier request for a broader array of personal information and documents related to Flynn's contacts with Russia. Flynn turned over about 600 pages of documents to the committee on Tuesday.

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3 p.m.

Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn has turned over about 600 pages of documents to a Senate committee investigating Russia's meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

That's according to a congressional aide who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the committee's work. The aide said the Senate intelligence committee's investigators received the documents Tuesday afternoon and are reviewing the information.

Flynn had previously invoked his Fifth Amendment protection from self-incrimination in rebuffing an earlier subpoena from the committee. After the panel narrowed the scope of that subpoena and issued additional ones for records from two of his businesses, Flynn agreed last week to turn over some documents.

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2:25 p.m.

At least one Republican senator is dismissing the notion of President Donald Trump colluding with the Russians with a criticism of the president's dealings with his administration.

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina has assailed Trump in the past and ran against him for the GOP presidential nomination. Graham was asked on Tuesday whether he was concerned about the testimony from ousted FBI Director James Comey in Thursday's congressional hearing.

Graham said: "I don't believe Trump colluded with the Russians because I don't think he colludes with his own staff. So I'm not worried about that."

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2 p.m.

Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly indicated on Tuesday that President Donald Trump's son-in-law and top adviser Jared Kushner and his communications with Russia are part of a wide-ranging probe by the Justice Department's special counsel.

Kelly defended Kushner at a Senate hearing amid reports that he attempted to establish a "back-channel" communication between Russia and Trump's presidential transition team. Under Democratic questioning, Kelly said such back-channels are common and one must assume that Kushner is "a great American."

But he also indicated that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is investigating the matter.

Under questioning from Democrats, Kelly said: "I think there are numerous investigations that are looking into this. I think it's part of the Bob Mueller investigation, and I think there's a number of congressional committees looking into it."

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11:15 a.m.

Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly is defending top White House adviser Jared Kushner amid reports that Kushner attempted to establish a "back-channel" communication between Russia and Donald Trump's presidential transition team.

Under Democratic questioning, Kelly said "we have to make the assumption - and I will - that Jared Kushner is a great American." He said back-channel talks have been common in U.S. diplomacy.

Still, Kelly noted the matter is under investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller as part of his probe into contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Kelly told Montana Sen. Jon Tester that "It's part of the Bob Mueller investigation," and the subject of congressional probes.

Tester said he believes the conduct of the president's son-in-law is "unacceptable" and asked Kelly "to find out what the hell is going on."

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7:00 a.m.

The Kremlin has denied claims from a U.S. government intelligence report that Russian hackers attacked at least one U.S. voting software supplier before last year's presidential election.

The classified National Security Agency report, which was published online on Monday by The Intercept, said Russian military intelligence agency GRU attacked the software company and sent spear-phishing emails to local election officials around October and November.

The report did not say whether the hacking had any effect on election results.

Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for President Vladimir Putin, denied the allegations Tuesday, saying that the Kremlin did not see "any evidence to prove this information is true." He said Moscow categorically denies "the possibility" of the Russian government being behind it.

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3:15 a.m.

Russian hackers attacked at least one U.S. voting software supplier days before last year's presidential election, according to a government intelligence report leaked Monday that suggests election-related hacking penetrated further into U.S. voting systems than previously known..

The classified National Security Agency report, which was published online by The Intercept, does not say whether the hacking had any effect on election results. But it says Russian military intelligence attacked a U.S. voting software company and sent spear-phishing emails to more than 100 local election officials at the end of October or beginning of November.

U.S. intelligence agencies declined to comment.

However, the Justice Department announced Monday it had charged a government contractor in Georgia with leaking a classified report containing "Top Secret level" information to an online news organization. The report the contractor allegedly leaked is dated May 5, the same date as the document The Intercept posted online.
MOSCOW (AP) - The Russian military said it scrambled a fighter jet Tuesday to intercept and escort a U.S. strategic bomber flying over the Baltic alongside the Russian border.

Russia's Defense Ministry said Russian radars spotted an aircraft flying along the border and a Su-27 fighter took off to intercept it. It said the Russian pilot identified the plane as a U.S. B-52 bomber and escorted it at a safe distance until it flew further away from the Russian border.

U.S. Lt. Col. David Faggard, a spokesman for U.S. Forces Europe, said the B-52 was conducting a routine mission in international airspace over the Baltic when it was intercepted by the Russian fighter. Such intercepts happen routinely, Faggard said.

The bomber, normally based in Barksdale, Louisiana, is currently stationed at RAF Fairford in Britain in support of NATO exercises.

The B-52 had its transponders on and would have been identifiable to air traffic controllers at the time of the encounter, Faggard said.

In a separate incident, a Russian MiG-31 fighter jet was dispatched Tuesday to intercept a Norwegian maritime surveillance aircraft flying over the Barents Sea near the Russian border, the Russian Defense Ministry said.

Both Russia and NATO routinely scramble their fighters to intercept each other's planes flying over international waters.

In September, a Russian fighter jet flew within 10 feet (3 meters) of a U.S. Navy surveillance aircraft, in what American officials called an unsafe intercept over the Black Sea. In another dramatic incident last year, Russian jets buzzed over the USS Donald Cook in the Baltic Sea, coming within 30 feet of the American warship.

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Frank Jordans and David Rising in Berlin contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Donald Trump's sons are defending their father's attack against London's mayor over his handling of the recent extremist attack.

In an interview with ABC's "Good Morning America," Donald Trump Jr. said London's Mayor Sadiq Khan "should do something to fix the problem rather than just sit there and pretend there isn't one."

Trump's middle son, Eric Trump said, "This has become the new norm. And it's not right. And we, as a society, especially as Americans, better do something about it."

President Donald Trump's sons Eric Trump, left, and Donald Trump Jr., executive vice presidents of The Trump Organization, chat with guests during an event Monday, June 5, 2017, in New York. The Trump Organization is launching a new mid-market hotel chain called "American Idea." (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)

Trump criticized Khan on Twitter Monday for his handling of the attack, calling his efforts to calm the public a "pathetic excuse."

A spokesman said the mayor is focused on "working with the police, the emergency services and the government to keep London safe."
TORONTO (AP) - Canada's foreign minister says the country must spend more on its military now that the U.S. is questioning its role of global leadership.

Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland told Parliament on Tuesday that relying on the "the U.S. security umbrella would make us a client state."

Freeland says Canadians will always be grateful for the outsized role the U.S. has played in the world and Canada will seek to persuade Washington that its continued leadership is in the interest of the U.S. and the free world.

She didn't mention President Donald Trump by name.

She also reiterated Canada's disappointment in Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement and says it is more important than ever for Canada to plot its own course in the world.
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - France circulated a U.N. Security Council resolution Tuesday that would authorize military action by five countries in Africa's vast Sahel region against extremist groups.

Presidents of the five countries - Niger, Mali, Chad, Burkina Faso and Mauritania - agreed in February to set up a joint force. Initially, it is expected to comprise up to 5,000 military, civilian and police personnel, with headquarters in Mali.

France's U.N. ambassador, Francois Delattre, told reporters that the African Union and the presidents of the five nations asked the Security Council to authorize the force. Council experts are expected to start discussing the draft Wednesday and it could be put to a vote next week.

"We cannot afford to let the Sahel region become a new safe haven for terrorists from across the world," Delattre said. "The terrorist threat in the Sahel region threatens not only the region itself but ... international peace and security."

The draft resolution strongly condemns the activities of "terrorist organizations" in Mali and the wider Sahel. It also notes serious challenges posed by transnational organized crime in the region, "including arms and drug trafficking, the smuggling of migrants, trafficking in persons, and its increasing links, in some cases, with terrorism."

It would authorize deployment of the force for a year, with a mandate to "combat terrorism, drug trafficking and trafficking in persons," contribute to restoring state authority and helping the return of displaced people and refugees, and facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid.

The draft would authorize the force "to use all necessary means to implement its mandate," while underlining "the primary responsibility of the G5 Sahel states to protect civilians."

The proposed resolution welcomes the European Union's decision to provide 50 million euros to support the force and urges other countries and organizations "to provide adequate logistical, operational and financial support."

It urges the force to coordinate and exchange information with France's Operation Barkhane, which has about 4,000 soldiers fighting extremists in Mali, Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso and Mauritania, and the more than 12,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping force in Mali.

Most of the West African extremist groups being fought by France trace their origins to al-Qaida's North Africa branch. But there are also extremists linked to the Islamic State group and Boko Haram.
DETROIT (AP) - Tesla Inc. was riding high as it hosted its annual shareholders' meeting Tuesday.

The automaker's shares are trading at record levels, and it has surpassed General Motors and Ford in market value. It's about to introduce its first mass-market electric car, the Model 3 sedan, as well as a line of solar panels that look like roof tiles.

CEO Elon Musk is also enticing fans with new vehicles, including a semi-truck it plans to show this fall and the Model Y SUV, which he said will go on sale in 2019.

FILE - In this April 30, 2015, file photo, Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk unveils the company's newest products, in Hawthorne, Calif. Tesla Inc. is riding high as it hosts its annual shareholders' meeting Tuesday, June 6, 2017. Its shares are trading at record levels, and it has surpassed General Motors and Ford in market value. But the company is not without its challenges. (AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu, File)

But the company is not without its challenges. Or, as Musk put it at the hour-long meeting, "Tesla's like a drama magnet."

Here are three issues Musk addressed at the meeting.

CORPORATE STRUCTURE: Shareholders voted Tuesday to continue electing Tesla's board members to three-year terms, rejecting a proposal to elect them annually.

A group of Connecticut pension funds had called for annual elections, saying it would improve accountability. They also say conflicts of interest "plague" Tesla's board. Musk's brother, Kimbal, is a board member. Tesla's lead independent director, Antonio Gracias, also serves on the board of Musk's rocket company, SpaceX, and is the CEO of a private equity fund backed by Musk.

But shareholders sided with Tesla, which says its mission requires long-term strategic planning and three-year terms ensure that board members aren't distracted by short-term returns. Official results of the vote will be released within a few days, the company said.

MODEL 3: The Model 3 is Tesla's first non-luxury sedan, with a starting price around $35,000. Production is on track to start next month, Musk said. Tesla is aiming to make 5,000 Model 3 sedans per week by the end of this year and 10,000 per week in 2018.

Tesla hasn't said how many people have put down $1,000 refundable deposits for the Model 3, but Musk said Tuesday people who put down a deposit now won't get a car until the end of 2018, indicating it could be close to 500,000.

Whether Tesla can meet its production goals is an open question. The company's vehicles have often faced delays getting to market. Its last new vehicle, the Model X SUV, was delayed nearly 18 months. Musk says the Model 3 is much simpler to make, but 14-year-old Tesla has no experience producing and selling vehicles in high volumes. Tesla made just 84,000 cars last year. Bigger rivals like GM, Volkswagen and Toyota routinely sell more than 10 million per year.

"It's crazy hard to make cars," Musk said Tuesday. "There's 10,000 unique items, and it only moves as fast as the slowest item."

Even if the Model 3 is on time, servicing all those vehicles will still be a challenge. Model S and Model X owners are already worried about having to share Tesla's Supercharger stations with an influx of new cars. And while Tesla is promising to increase its network of stores and service centers by 30 percent this year, it began 2017 with just 250 service centers worldwide. That leaves many potential owners miles from a service center.

Musk says a new fleet of mobile service trucks will be deployed to help customers who are far from service centers. Tesla also plans to double its global high-speed charging points to 10,000 by the end of this year and increase them by another 50 percent to 100 percent in 2018.

COMPETITION: Until now, Tesla has owned the market for fully-electric vehicles that can go 200 miles or more on a charge. But that's changing. GM beat Tesla to the mass market with the Chevrolet Bolt, a $36,000 car that goes 238 miles per charge. Audi plans to introduce an electric SUV with 300 miles of range next year; Ford will have one by 2020. Volkswagen plans more than 30 electric vehicles by 2025.

Automotive competitors like Mercedes and Volvo - not to mention tech companies like Google and Uber - can also match Tesla's efforts to develop self-driving vehicles. And they have deeper pockets. Tesla has had only two profitable quarters in its seven years as a public company.

Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas, who has a $305 price target on Tesla's stock, says investors need to consider whether Tesla should continue to operate as a stand-alone market disruptor or if it should merge with a bigger entity, like Apple.

But Musk gave no hint that Tesla is worried about competition or is planning a merger. He said Tesla, which is based in Palo Alto, California, is actively considering three other plant sites and could ultimately build 10 or 20 assembly plants to meet demand. At least one of those will be built by 2019 to manufacture the Model Y, he said, because Tesla's current plant in California is "bursting at the seams."

Tesla shares rose more than 1.5 percent to close at $352.85 Tuesday.
WASHINGTON TOWNSHIP, N.J. (AP) - Authorities say a woman has fatally shot a New Jersey Transit bus driver in a parking lot and then killed herself.

Prosecutors in Gloucester (GLAH'-stur) County say the shooting happened Tuesday afternoon in the parking lot of a bus depot in Washington Township.

They say 44-year-old Woodbury resident Piacenta Jackson shot 45-year-old Sicklerville resident Ryon Reynolds. They say Jackson then shot and killed herself in nearby Mantua Township.

The bus depot was shut down, but buses continued to operate.

Investigators haven't said what the relationship was between Jackson and Reynolds. But his aunt, Rose Reynolds, tells NJ.com that he and Jackson had dated but he had broken off the relationship.
CINCINNATI (AP) - President Donald Trump promised Wednesday to create a "first-class" system of roads, bridges and waterways by using $200 billion in public funds to generate $1 trillion in investment to pay for construction projects that most public officials agree are badly needed and long overdue.

"America must have the best, fastest and most reliable infrastructure anywhere in the world," Trump said, pushing his infrastructure plan in middle America as Washington geared up for Thursday's appearance before Congress by fired FBI Director James Comey.

"We will fix it," said Trump, standing along the Ohio River. "We will create the first-class infrastructure our country and our people deserve."

President Donald Trump speaks about healthcare at Cincinnati Municipal Lunken Airport in Cincinnati, Ohio, Wednesday, June 7, 2017. Shown are PlayCare co-owner Rays Whalen, left, and CSS Distribution Group President Dan Withrow and their families. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

In the speech, the president also pressed the Senate to send him a health care bill, criticized congressional Democrats as "obstructionists" and revisited his controversial decision to pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement.

Trump said that as he campaigned across the country last year, people often asked him why the U.S. was spending money to rebuild other countries when the roads and bridges they travel on needed rebuilding, too.

Trump declared the days of spending on other nations are over: "It's time to rebuild our country" and to "put America first," he said.

While infrastructure initially was seen as an area where Republican and Democrats could work together, Democrats have balked at Trump's plan for financing improvements, arguing it would result in taxpayer-funded profits for corporations with the cost offloaded on consumers.

Before the speech, Trump met aboard Air Force One with a pair of families the White House said are "victims" of the Obama-era health care law that the president and congressional Republicans want to repeal and replace.

Trump said the families - one from Ohio and another from Kentucky - are going through "turmoil" along with millions of other consumers who are facing rising premiums and limited choices for health coverage under the 2010 law.

"Now it's time for the Senate to act and save Americans from this catastrophic event because Obamacare is dead," Trump said. "Obamacare was one of the biggest broken promises in the history of politics. Remember 'you can keep your doctor, you can keep your plan?' Didn't work out that way."

The Republican-controlled House has passed a health care bill that no Democrats supported. Senate Republicans are working on their own version.

Trump also raised his announcement last week that he was pulling the U.S. out of what he dismissively referred to as the "so-called" Paris climate accord. Trump has said the pact that nearly 200 nations agreed to in 2015 was unfair to the United States.

Trump said as long as he is president "we will never have outside forces telling us what to do and how to do it."

The White House has yet to outline specifics of the infrastructure plan, which it hopes to achieve largely through public-private partnerships. It has proposed funding improvements with $200 billion in public funds over nine years that would theoretically leverage $1 trillion worth of construction.

Trump's speech came the day before Comey's highly anticipated testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday as the White House faced fresh allegations about possible efforts by the president to influence the investigation into potential ties between his campaign and Russia.

Trump has denied the allegations and called the Russia story "fake news."

In a tweet early Wednesday, Trump announced Christopher Wray as his pick to succeed Comey as FBI director. Wray is a former Justice Department official who was New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's personal lawyer during the George Washington Bridge lane-closing investigation.

U.S. inland waterways are critical routes for transporting agricultural products, but officials say they've grown old and run down.

The White House has billed this week as "infrastructure week" and planned a series of events, beginning with Trump's push Monday to privatize the nation's air traffic control system, separating it from the Federal Aviation Administration. That idea, which isn't new, quickly drew bipartisan opposition.

Trump also planned to discuss infrastructure spending with governors and mayors at the White House on Thursday.

Mike Toohey, president of the Waterways Council Inc, an inland waterways infrastructure advocacy group, said he was pleased to see the president addressing what he called the "silent r" of the transportation system - rivers. Far more attention is usually paid to roadways, railways and runways, he said.

Still, he said the industry is concerned about Trump's recent budget proposal, which he said could result in higher costs for the commercial users that finance the waterways' upkeep.

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Associated Press writer Darlene Superville in Washington contributed to this report.

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Follow Colvin on Twitter https://twitter.com/colvinj

House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wis., center, and Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, right, listen to President Donald Trump, left, speak during Trump's meeting with House and Senate Leadership in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, June 6, 2017. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

President Donald Trump speaks about healthcare at Cincinnati Municipal Lunken Airport in Cincinnati, Ohio, Wednesday, June 7, 2017. PlayCare co-owner Rays Whalen, left, and CSS Distribution Group President Dan Withrow and their families(AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

President Donald Trump speaks during a rally at the Rivertowne Marina, Wednesday, June 7, 2017, in Cincinnati. Trump is using the Ohio River as the backdrop for a speech about upgrading roads, bridges and waterways, but before talking about overhauling aging infrastructure, he urged the Senate to follow the House and vote on a bill to overhaul the health care system.(AP Photo/John Minchillo)

President Donald Trump waves to the crowd after speaking during a rally at the Rivertowne Marina, Wednesday, June 7, 2017, in Cincinnati. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)
WASHINGTON (AP) - Lawmakers verbally sparred with top intelligence chiefs on Wednesday after they staunchly refused to answer questions about conversations they had with President Donald Trump regarding probes into Russian activities during the election.

Members of the Senate intelligence committee wanted to know about news reports claiming Trump had asked Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and Adm. Mike Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency, to publicly state that there was no evidence of collusion between Moscow and the Trump campaign.

Trump has consistently pushed back against suggestions that his campaign coordinated with Russia and says the investigations into the matter are a hoax.

From left, Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, National Intelligence Director Dan Coats, and National Security Agency Director Adm. Michael Rogers are seated during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, on Capitol Hill, Wednesday, June 7, 2017, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

"In the three-plus years that I have been the director of the National Security Agency, to the best of my recollection, I have never been directed to do anything I believe to be illegal, immoral, unethical or inappropriate," Rogers told the committee. "And to the best of my recollection, during that same period of service, I do not recall ever feeling pressured to do so."

Coats, who was confirmed as Trump's national intelligence director in mid-March, said: "In interacting with the president of the United States or anybody in his administration, I have never been pressured.

"I've never felt pressure to intervene or interfere in any way and shape - with shaping intelligence in a political way, or in relationship to an ongoing investigation."

Those answers didn't satisfy the senators. Even mild-spoken Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, got testy. He demanded to know what legal basis justified Coats' refusal to answer questions.

"I'm not sure I have a legal basis, but I am more than willing to sit before this committee ... in a closed session and answer your questions," Coats said.

With the frustrated lawmakers gearing up for Thursday's long-awaited testimony from ousted FBI Director James Comey, the committee on Wednesday afternoon took the unusual step of releasing the written statement Comey plans to deliver.

In it, Comey details a series of interactions with Trump that made him uneasy and appear to show the president disregarding the FBI's traditional independence from the White House.

Comey said he was taken aback by specific requests, including one during a private Oval Office meeting in February where he said Trump asked him to end a probe into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. Trump complained that the probe had created a "cloud" over his presidency.

During Wednesday's hearing, which was about the reauthorization of a federal foreign intelligence collection law, Democrats and Republicans pressed Coats, Rogers and also acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

The senators said they were puzzled as to why McCabe would not answer questions about conversations he had with Comey regarding the former FBI director's meetings with the president.

McCabe said it would be inappropriate to discuss issues that might end up being part of the special counsel's investigation into Russian activities during the election.

"I have to be particularly careful about not stepping into the special counsel's lane," McCabe said.

At the close of the hearing, the Republican committee chairman, Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, said that executive branch officials have the option of briefing the committee or congressional leaders in a classified setting.

"At no time should you be in a position where you come to Congress with no answer," Burr told the witnesses. "The requirements of our oversight responsibilities and your agencies deserve it." After the hearing, Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the committee, lamented that the witnesses could have laid to rest questions about what the president told them about the Russia probe, but they chose not to answer.

To refuse to answer the questions in a public hearing "just won't be enough," Warner said. "The American public deserves to know what the president of the United States did and what he asked of the leaders of our intelligence community."

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said it's standard practice for executive branch officials, such as the ones who testified, to decline to discuss conversations with the president.

She said the White House had not yet received any follow-up requests regarding the testimony of Coats or Rogers. "If it receives one, it will do its best to work with the committee to accommodate the request to the fullest extent possible consistent with these interests," she said.

From left, acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, testify before a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, on Capitol Hill, Wednesday, June 7, 2017, in Washington. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

National Security Agency Director Adm. Michael Rogers appears before a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, on Capitol Hill, Wednesday, June 7, 2017, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., left, confers with Chairman Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., as the panel questions top national security chiefs about the gathering of intelligence on foreign agents, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, June 7, 2017. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
HANOI, Vietnam (AP) - Vietnam agreed to give Czech citizens visa exemptions for up to 15 days to boost tourism between the two countries.

The agreement was reached in talks between Czech President Milos Zeman and his Vietnamese counterpart Tran Dai Quang in Hanoi on Wednesday.

Zeman told reporters that the two presidents also agreed to launch direct air service between Vietnam's southern commercial hub of Ho Chi Minh City and Prague. It's unclear when the service would be launched.

Czech Justice Minister Robert Pelikan, center, shakes hands with Vietnam's Minister of Public Security To Lam, right after signing an agreement on transferring convicted criminals as Czech President Milos Zeman claps his hands, rear, in Hanoi, Vietnam, Wednesday, June 7, 2017. Zeman is on a two-day visit to the Southeast Asian country to boost trade and tourist ties between the two countries. (AP Photo/Tran Van Minh)

Last year, Vietnam unilaterally gave visa waivers of up to 15 days for nationals from Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Spain. Earlier visa exemptions were given to Scandinavian countries, Russia, Japan and South Korea.

Zeman said he was accompanied by 68 Czech businesspeople on his two-day visit to Vietnam where seven deals including a $20 million beach resort project were signed.

Vietnam has seen 10 million foreign arrivals last year, up 26 percent from the previous year.
SANDY, Utah (AP) - After hearing screams and pounding at her front door, Kathy Peterson found a hysterical woman and three young girls cowering, one of the girls covered in blood. She heard gunshots nearby in the middle class Salt Lake City suburb of Sandy as she opened the door and brought them inside to safety.

"He's killing everybody and he's trying to kill us," the terrified woman told Peterson through tears.

Just outside the home, police said Wednesday, Jeremy Patterson had shot and killed Memorez Rackley and her six-year-old son and critically injured her 9-year-old son.

Crime scene investigators begin their work as Sandy police investigate a fatal shooting in a Salt Lake City suburb that left several people dead with another two injured, Tuesday, June 6, 2017, in Sandy, Utah. The shooting in a middle-class neighborhood in Sandy was reported to police as a domestic dispute, said Police Sgt. Jason Nielsen. (Scott G Winterton/The Deseret News via AP)

The shooting came three days after Rackley called in a harassment report to police Saturday morning and asked them to tell Patterson to stop contacting her, said Sandy police Sgt. Jason Nielsen. He declined to say what the outcome of that conversation was, or detail the nature of the harassment.

Authorities said the two were or had been in some sort of relationship and that the killings they described as targeted happened Tuesday afternoon just after Rackley picked her boys up from elementary school.

Rackley was walking about six blocks from the school when she flagged down a driver - the same woman who showed up at Peterson's door.

The unidentified female driver picked up Rackley and her boys but her car was then rammed by a pickup truck driven by Patterson, who got out and opened fire. Also shot and injured was the driver's daughter, said Sandy police Sgt. Jason Nielsen. Patterson then killed himself.

The extent and nature of Rackley and Patterson's relationship and the motive for the shooting remained unclear Wednesday as detectives probed leads, Nielsen said.

Rackley was married to another man but Nielsen did not provide more details. Patterson was not the father of her children, he said.

Rackley family spokesman Jeff White said he didn't know the exact nature of the relationship between Rackley and Patterson. He declined to elaborate on the state of the Rackley's marriage but said "they both loved each other very much and they were husband and wife."

Rackley's husband is doing as well as can be expected for someone dealing with the loss of the mother of his children as well as his youngest child, with another son fighting for his life, said White, who has been a family friend for 30 years.

"She was an amazing mother, she's beloved by all her friends and family ... just totally adored by the whole community," White said about Rackley.

Nielsen said investigators are still trying to determine if the woman who picked up the family just happened to see them or knew them.

Peterson said the woman who showed up at her door said she was driving her two daughters and another girl home from the same elementary school when Rackley flagged her down asking for help.

After getting the woman and children inside, Peterson said she said a prayer and gave the girls teddy bears until paramedics arrived to take the mother and her daughter to the hospital. The girl was shot in the leg and was hospitalized Wednesday stable condition, Nielsen said.

The suspect lived in the nearby suburb of Draper, where neighbor Patricia Briennieson described him as a muscular man who looked like a body builder and had a mixed-martial arts sticker on the back window of his pickup truck.

Court records did not show previous criminal charges or requests for protective orders filed against Patterson.

In the quiet neighborhood with winding roads and homes nestled near mountains, the shooting happened on the day before the last day of school.

On Wednesday at the Brookwood Elementary School attended by the children who were shot, teachers tried to keep the final day before summer as normal and festive as possible.

But there was a significant police presence and a sign fashioned out of blue and red plastic cups on the school's outside fence offering love for the boy in critical condition.

The injured boy was a 5th grader and missed his graduation Wednesday - so the students, teachers and parents read his name aloud and gave him a standing ovation, said classmate Chloee Walker.

Counselors were at the school to help students and parents deal with the aftermath of the shooting.

Toni Linsenmeyer said Rackley and her husband had been separated but that both attended all of their 6-year-old son's soccer games in the spring.

Linsenmeyer's daughter was in the boy's school class and played on the soccer team, which was coached by Rackley's husband.

"It breaks my heart," Linsenmeyer said.

Ava Linsenmeyer, 5, drops off balloons to a memorial for the victims of a fatal shooting Wednesday, June 7, 2017, in Sandy, Utah. Utah investigators and residents of a middle-class Salt Lake City suburb were trying Wednesday to understand what led a man to open fire on a woman and children inside a car leaving the woman and one of her sons dead, another son in critical condition and a girl injured. The suspect was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at the scene in a quiet neighborhood of the city of Sandy. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

People leave items at a memorial for the victims of a fatal shooting Wednesday, June 7, 2017, in Sandy, Utah. Utah investigators and residents of a middle-class Salt Lake City suburb were trying Wednesday to understand what led a man to open fire on a woman and children inside a car leaving the woman and one of her sons dead, another son in critical condition and a girl injured. The suspect was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at the scene in a quiet neighborhood of the city of Sandy. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

Kathy Peterson speaks to reporters at her home Wednesday, June 7, 2017, in Sandy, Utah. After hearing screams and pounding at her front door, Peterson found a hysterical woman and three young girls cowering, one of the girls covered in blood. After getting the woman and children inside, Peterson said she said a prayer and gave the girls teddy bears until paramedics arrived to take the mother and her daughter to the hospital. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

Jodie Ferguson leaves flowers at a small memorial for the victims of a fatal shooting Wednesday, June 7, 2017, in Sandy, Utah. Utah investigators and stunned residents of a middle-class Salt Lake City suburb are trying to understand what led a man to open fire on a woman and children inside a car, leaving the woman, a boy and the man himself dead and two other children injured. Police went out to the area in Sandy, Utah, after getting a 911 call Tuesday afternoon about a domestic disturbance, said police Sgt. Jason Nielsen. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

Resident Colby Corbett and his 8-year-old son Anthony speaks with reporters following a shooting Tuesday, June 6, 2017, in Sandy, Utah. A man opened fire on a woman and children inside a car in the street of a Salt Lake City suburb Tuesday afternoon, leaving the woman, a boy and the man dead and two other children injured, police said. Corbett was in his backyard waiting for his son to walk home from school when he heard 20 to 30 gunshots within a few seconds. "I was panicking bad," Corbett said. "I thought it was like a gun battle." Corbett said he was relieved when his son arrived soon after, coming from the school and in the opposite direction of the gunfire. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

Police Sgt. Jason Nielsen, center, speaks with reporters following a fatal shooting Tuesday, June 6, 2017, in Sandy, Utah. A man opened fire on a woman and children inside a car in the street of a Salt Lake City suburb Tuesday afternoon, leaving the woman, a boy and the man dead and two other children injured, police said. The shooting outside a home in a middle-class neighborhood in Sandy was reported to police as a domestic dispute, said Nielsen. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

A man reacts as he talks to a Sandy police officer after a fatal shooting in the Salt Lake City suburb that left several people dead with another two injured, Tuesday, June 6, 2017, in Sandy, Utah. The shooting in a middle-class neighborhood in Sandy was reported to police as a domestic dispute, said Police Sgt. Jason Nielsen. (Scott G Winterton/The Deseret News via AP)

Kathy Peterson speaks to reporters at her home Wednesday, June 7, 2017, in Sandy, Utah. After hearing screams and pounding at her front door, Peterson found a hysterical woman and three young girls cowering, one of the girls covered in blood. After getting the woman and children inside, Peterson said she said a prayer and gave the girls teddy bears until paramedics arrived to take the mother and her daughter to the hospital. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

Brielle Hollie, 11, carries flowers to a memorial for the victims of a fatal shooting Wednesday, June 7, 2017, in Sandy, Utah. Utah investigators and residents of a middle-class Salt Lake City suburb were trying Wednesday to understand what led a man to open fire on a woman and children inside a car leaving the woman and one of her sons dead, another son in critical condition and a girl injured. The suspect was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at the scene in a quiet neighborhood of the city of Sandy. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)
DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) - The European Union has slapped new security screening on imports from Bangladesh, a move that is likely to make it costlier for businesses in the South Asian country to sell products to EU nations.

Just over half of Bangladeshi exports go to the European bloc, accounting for $18.68 billion in revenues during the last fiscal year. Those shipments, by air or sea, will now have to be screened by bomb-detecting dogs and devices.

Bangladesh has none of these facilities, so cargo will have to be routed through a third country where security screening is possible.

FILE - This Feb. 2, 2005, file photo shows Bangladeshi workers at a textile factory on the outskirts of Dhaka, Bangladesh. The European Union has slapped new security screening on imports from Bangladesh Wednesday, June 7, 2017, a move that is likely to make it costlier for businesses in the South Asian country to sell products to EU nations. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup, File)

The move makes Bangladesh the 13th country designated as "-high risk" for EU commerce. It was unexpected, according to Bangladeshi government officials, who said they were given no explanation when informed Monday of the change. The EU ambassador's office in Dhaka did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Last year, Britain, Germany and Australia banned direct cargo shipments from Dhaka's international airport, citing its poor security system.

The country has suffered a string of deadly attacks in recent years claimed by extremists targeting perceived enemies of Islam, including bloggers, rights activists, atheists, religious minorities and foreigners. The government has blamed the attacks on home-grown extremists bent on re-establishing Islamic rule in the secular nation.

The government has offered little comment about the EU move. But Civil Aviation and Tourism Minister Rashed Khan Menon criticized Brussels for delivering the news as a surprise, and said the government would work quickly to establish an adequate screening mechanism in the country. But getting everything in place could take months.

Business leaders are worried about the possible delays in screening, when they are already scrambling to fulfill large orders on short notice despite frequent power outages that shut operations down.

Some air shipments from Bangladesh are already being routed through Dubai, Istanbul or Doha for screening, and some sea shipments are going through Colombo or Singapore.

"Fresh screening will take at least 10 days, at a time when we struggle to ship goods timely for many reasons," said Mir Mobasher Ali, who exports about $50 million in garments to Europe and Canada every year. "We need to count extra amount for the screening in a third country. That's disastrous for us."

Siddiqur Rahman, president of the Bangladesh Garments Manufacturers and Exporters' Association, representing 70 percent of the textiles industry, also described the move as "disastrous." During fiscal 2015-16, the garment industry exported $17.15 billion in goods to the EU - 60 percent of the industry's exports.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) - A top Emirati diplomat said Wednesday "there's nothing to negotiate" with Qatar over a growing diplomatic dispute about the energy-rich nation's alleged funding of terror groups, signaling Arab countries now isolating it have no plans to back down.

Speaking in a rare interview, Emirati Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash told The Associated Press that Qatar has "chosen to ride the tiger of extremism and terrorism" and now needed to pay the price, despite Qatar long denying the allegation.

Gargash said Qatar "definitely" should expel members of Hamas, stop its support of terror groups "with al-Qaida DNA" around the world and rein in the many media outlets it funds, chief among them the Doha-based satellite news network Al-Jazeera.

Anwar Gargash, UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs talks to The Associated Press about relations with Qatar in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Wednesday, June 9, 2017. (AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili)

While applauding a Kuwaiti effort to mediate the crisis, Gargash said Emirati and Saudi officials planned to concede nothing to Qatar, home to some 10,000 American troops at a major U.S. military base and the host of the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

Their "fingerprints are all over the place" in terror funding, Gargash said. "Enough is enough."

Qatari officials declined to immediately comment on Gargash's comments. Its foreign minister has struck a defiant tone in interviews, even after worried residents emptied grocery stores in its capital of Doha as Saudi Arabia has blocked trucks carrying food from entering the country.

Its flag carrier Qatar Airways now flies increasingly over Iran and Turkey after being blocked elsewhere in the Middle East. Emirati officials also shut down the airline's offices in the UAE on Wednesday. Al-Jazeera offices also have been shut down by authorities in Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Meanwhile, Turkey's parliament approved sending troops to an existing Turkish base in Qatar as a sign of support.

The international agency Standard and Poors announced Wednesday that it lowered its rating on Qatar's long-term debt to AA-minus because of the country's dispute with its neighbors. S&P said those countries' severing of diplomatic and business links "will exacerbate Qatar's external vulnerabilities and could put pressure on economic growth and fiscal" stability.

Speaking to the AP from a Foreign Ministry office in Dubai, Gargash listed a number of terror groups he alleged Qatar had funded, including al-Qaida's branches in Syria and Somalia, militants in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula and other group's with "al-Qaida-type organizations" in Libya. He offered no documents to support his claim, but Western officials long have accused Qatar's government of allowing or even encouraging funding of some Sunni extremists.

Gargash particularly pointed out the tens of millions of dollars paid to Shiite militias and others to free dozens of Qatari ruling family members and others in Iraq after 16 months in captivity.

Asked for specifics about what Arab nations wanted from Qatar, Gargash said expelling members of Hamas and other groups like the Muslim Brotherhood from Qatar was important. Gaza's Islamic Hamas rulers, a major recipient of Qatari aid, have called Saudi Arabia's call for Qatar to cut ties with the Palestinian militant group "regrettable" and said it contradicts traditional Arab support for the Palestinian cause.

In Germany, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said he wants to see a response from Qatar to the Arab countries' demands "soon."

Both al-Jubeir and Gargash in their comments suggested their complaints about Qatar go back years, likely implying that their grievances are focused on the policies of Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani. Sheikh Hamad became emir through a palace coup in 1995 and expanded his nation's presence on the international scene through negotiating hostage releases, briefly flirting with diplomatic ties to Israel, hosting a Taliban office and creating Al-Jazeera.

Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, his son, became Qatar's ruling emir in 2013, but Sheikh Hamad still looms large in the tight, insular world of Qatari ruling family politics.

U.S. President Donald Trump, who tweeted Tuesday about Qatar funding extremists, called Sheikh Tamim on Wednesday and offered to host leaders at the White House to resolve the crisis.

Qatar faced a similar crisis in 2014 that saw multiple Arab nations pull their ambassadors from the country. That crisis ended eight months later, but the roots of it are clearly seen in the latest dispute. Kuwait's emir, trying to mediate this latest crisis, flew to Dubai on Wednesday and met with Emirati leaders.

An outspoken Emirati ruling family member, the writer and political analyst Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi, even raised the prospect of Qatar's leadership changing.

"Qataris are questioning whether this is going to end up in seeing a change in leadership itself in Qatar," Al Qassemi told the AP in his office in Sharjah, near Dubai. "So it is a very serious issue. Again, this is Qataris speaking to international media wondering whether this is possible at all."

The Gulf countries have ordered their citizens out of Qatar and gave Qataris abroad 14 days to return home. The countries also said they would eject Qatar's diplomats.

"Doha now is completely isolated," Al Qassemi said. "Doha now needs to take serious steps very rapidly to placate not only their neighbors but also their allies around the world."

His comments took on further strength as the UAE's Justice Ministry warned social media users that they can face three to 15 years in prison time and fines starting from 500,000 dirhams ($136,000) for offering sympathy for Qatar. The ministry quoted UAE Attorney General Hamad Saif al-Shamsi on social media making the warning, saying it came over Qatar's "hostile and reckless policy."

While liberal compared to much of the Middle East, the UAE has tough cybercrime and slander laws under which people can be arrested, imprisoned and deported for taking photographs without the consent of those shown.

The crisis began in part over what the Qataris described as a false news report planted during a hack of its state-run news agency in late May. Russia denied Wednesday it hacked the agency after a CNN report quoted anonymous U.S. officials saying they suspected Russian hackers. FBI agents are assisting Qatar in its investigation, said Meshal bin Hamad Al Thani, Qatar's ambassador to the U.S.

The UAE did not hack the Qatari news agency, Gargash said. However, he did acknowledge the authenticity of recently leaked emails from Emirati Ambassador Yousef al-Otaiba in Washington, which several media outlets described as including criticism of Qatar.

"That hack showed the UAE's real concerns and that what we really say in our private emails is what we say publicly," Gargash said.

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Associated Press writers Geir Moulson in Berlin, Karin Laub in Amman, Jordan, Josh Lederman in Washington and Fay Abuelgasim contributed to this report.

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Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellap. His work can be found at http://apne.ws/2galNpz.

Anwar Gargash, UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs talks to The Associated Press about relations with Qatar in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Wednesday, June 9, 2017. (AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili)
PARIS (AP) - The Algerian doctoral student suspected of attacking police officers in front of Notre Dame Cathedral - with cries of "This is for Syria!" and a hammer - was identified Wednesday by a relative and a friend as an ex-journalist who firmly believed in democratic values and showed no signs of radicalization.

The Paris prosecutor's office said a search of a residence linked to the suspect in the suburb of Cergy-Pontoise uncovered a declaration of allegiance to the Islamic State group. A nephew in Algeria, lawyer Sofiane Ikken, said he was mystified by the finding because his uncle, Farid Ikken, had previously expressed disdain for the extremist group.

"I really can't understand it or believe it," the nephew said in a telephone interview. "We couldn't believe that Farid committed such an act. Everyone is calling me to say, 'We can't believe it. It's not the person we knew.'"

In this image taken from video of CCTV footage provided to AP on the condition that its source not be revealed a man, centre, leaps into the air and strikes a French policeman, with a hammer outside Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris on Tuesday June 6, 2017. A French government spokesman says that the man who attacked police officers patrolling in front of Notre Dame Cathedral, crying out "This is for Syria!," was a student working on his doctoral thesis who showed no signs of radicalization. (CCTV via Mobile Phone via AP)

The assault was the latest act of violence targeting security forces at high-profile sites in France, which remains under a state of emergency after a string of Islamic extremist attacks.

French government spokesman Christophe Castaner told RTL radio that police quickly classified Tuesday's hammer attack as a "terrorist act" because of "the words he said." The assailant yelled "This is for Syria" while trying to strike officers patrolling outside Notre Dame, Interior Minister Gerard Collomb has said.

One officer was injured slightly, police said Tuesday.

Surveillance video provided Wednesday to The Associated Press showed a man lunging at officers on the plaza outside the iconic cathedral, then being shot. The attacker remained hospitalized with gunshot wounds.

A student identity card showed he was from Algeria and 40 years old.

University of Lorraine President Pierre Mutzenhardt told France Bleu radio that the suspect was enrolled as a student at the school in eastern France, where he had been working since 2014 on a thesis about North African media.

"There'd been no difficulties with him. Nothing strange had been detected," Mutzenhardt said.

His thesis director, Arnaud Mercier, told broadcaster BFM that the alleged attacker spoke Swedish, Arabic and French and that his resume stated he had worked as a journalist in Sweden and Algeria.

"He was someone who believed a lot in democratic ideals, the expression of free thinking, in journalism," Mercier said on BFM. "Nothing, absolutely nothing, foretold that one day he'd be a jihadi who'd want to kill a policeman in the name of I don't know what cause."

Neither the university president nor the thesis adviser mentioned the suspect by name.

Algerian journalist Kamal Ouhnia, a friend who said he previously worked alongside Ikken on reporting assignments, described him as a bon vivant and a lover of fine wine.

"I don't believe at all that he was radicalized," he said in a phone interview. "I'm more inclined to think that he has suffered a nervous breakdown."

The nephew said that after studying journalism in Sweden, Ikken was hired by a firm in Oslo, Norway, that sent him to Paris to work. He returned to Algeria in 2011, opening a PR agency, establishing an online newsletter and working as a journalist, before moving back to France for doctoral studies.

Ikken's family is not religious, according to the nephew. When they last spoke three weeks ago, the nephew said he sensed his uncle was feeling "a little bit alone." He said they discussed Syria in the past and that Ikken was "sensitive about the massacres" there, but gave no indications of having been radicalized.

The attack came as newly elected French President Emmanuel Macron is making good on a campaign promise to beef up counterterrorism efforts by creating a new unit to improve intelligence-sharing.

It will be based at the presidential Elysee palace, operate 24 hours a day and act directly under the president's authority. The unit will focus on French citizens who joined the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq.

The presidency says the counterterrorism unit also will identify strategies to counter propaganda aimed at promoting radicalization and instructions for carrying out attacks.

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Aomar Ouali in Algiers, Algeria, and Lori Hinnant, Elaine Ganley and Sylvie Corbet in Paris contributed. The story has been corrected to remove reference to the attacker being shot to death.

Police officers seal off the access to Notre Dame cathedral, seen in the background, after a man attacked officers with a hammer outside the famous landmark, in Paris, France, Tuesday, June 6, 2017. The Paris prosecutor's office said the investigation was opened Tuesday soon after the attack. The attacker was shot and wounded in the incident in one of France's most popular tourist areas. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

Police officers and soldiers seal off the access to Notre Dame cathedral after a man attacked officers with a hammer while patrolling the esplanade in front of the famous landmark, in Paris, France, Tuesday, June 6, 2017. Paris prosecutors have opened a counterterrorism investigation after an unidentified assailant attacked police with a hammer outside Notre Dame Cathedral. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

In this image provided by Nancy Soderberg, people inside Notre Dame cathedral sit with their hands in the air, after an attack on police in Paris, Tuesday, June 6, 2017. Paris prosecutors have opened a counterterrorism investigation after an unidentified assailant attacked police with a hammer outside Notre Dame Cathedral. French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb says the attacker cried "it's for Syria" as he went after officers patrolling an esplanade in front of the famous landmark. (Nancy Soderberg via AP)

Forensic experts and police officers investigate the crime scene after a man attacked officers with a hammer on the esplanade of the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, France, Tuesday, June 6, 2017. French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb says the attacker cried "it's for Syria" as he went after officers patrolling an esplanade in front of the famous landmark. (AP Photo/Matthieu Alexandre)

Police officers seal off the access to Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, France, Tuesday, June 6, 2017. Paris police say an unidentified assailant has attacked a police officer near the Notre Dame Cathedral, and the officer then shot and wounded the attacker. (AP Photo/Matthieu Alexandre)
MADRID (AP) - Spain's Banco Santander is paying 1 euro to take over troubled rival Banco Popular, in a deal that showcases Europe's new system to rescue failing banks without burdening taxpayers or stressing markets.

Santander said Wednesday it will take over all the shares in Banco Popular, which had lost more than half their value since last week as concerns grew about the lender's financial health. It will raise around 7 billion euros ($7.9 billion) in a share issue to strengthen Banco Popular's balance sheet.

The takeover was conducted in an auction sanctioned by European authorities after the main banking regulator in the eurozone, the European Central Bank, said Tuesday that it believed Popular was "failing or likely to fail."

People walk past a Banco Santander office in Barcelona, Spain, Wednesday, June 7, 2017. Spain's Banco Santander has acquired Banco Popular, the troubled lender that lost more than half of its shares value over the past week. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

It was the first time the ECB had pulled the plug on a bank since it was given new powers aimed at preventing the rescue of banks from overwhelming government finances, as they did during the eurozone's debt crisis.

European leaders agreed to move banking supervision to the EU level - so-called "banking union" - due to concerns that national regulators were too slow to flag problems at their home banks. The ECB took over supervisory responsibility on in November 2014.

Madrid-based Popular has been struggling with 7.9 billion euros ($ 8.9 billion) in non-performing assets, including 7.2 billion euros ($8.1 billion) in real estate.

As confidence waned in Popular, shares in the bank fell about 38 percent last week and another 20 percent this week, to 0.32 euros per share before regulators halted trading in its shares ahead of Wednesday's market opening. Popular had 305,152 shareholders as of the end of March.

The sale is "in the public interest as it protects all depositors of Banco Popular and ensures financial stability," said the European agency that manages failing banks in the 19-country eurozone, of which Spain is a member.

The Spanish government had previously ruled out bailing the bank with taxpayers' money. On Wednesday, Economy minister Luis de Guindos said the sale was "a good outcome" given the shortfall of the lender over the past weeks. The takeover "ensures the maximum protection for depositors and the continuity of the bank's activity," said De Guindos.

With the takeover, Santander becomes the largest Spanish bank by lending and deposits, reaching 17 million customers.

The investment also covers Popular's assets in Portugal, bringing Santander's total customers in the neighboring country to 4 million.

"The combination of Santander and Popular strengthens the Group's geographic diversification at a time of improving economic conditions in both Spain and Portugal," said Santander Chair Ana Botin.

Santander said that the deal would not materially affect the Santander's financial health and that it expected to generate returns on its investment of 13-14 percent in 2020.

Santander's shares fell 3 percent in early trading and then recovered to stand 0.4 percent lower at 5.77 euros.

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David McHugh in Frankfurt, Germany, contributed to this report.

A construction worker works outside a Banco Popular's branch office in Madrid, Wednesday, June 7, 2017. Spain's Banco Santander has acquired Banco Popular, the troubled lender that lost more than half of its shares value over the past week. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
A Florida woman pleaded guilty and was sent to prison Wednesday for threatening a man whose 6-year-old son was killed in the 2012 mass shooting at a Connecticut school, which she contended was a hoax.

Senior U.S. District Judge James Cohn sentenced Lucy Richards, 57, to five months in prison, followed by five months of home detention. She pleaded guilty to interstate transmission of a threat to injure in communications with Lenny Pozner, the father of Noah Pozner, who died in the Sandy Hook school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.

Cohn called Richards' actions toward Pozner 'disturbing' and said no one should cite a conspiracy theory or belief in a hoax in the deaths of 20 children and six adults that occurred at the school.

An undated photo provided by the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office shows Lucy Richards of Brandon, Fla. Richards has pleaded guilty to threatening a man whose 6-year-old son was killed in the 2012 mass shooting at a Connecticut school, which she believed was a hoax. A federal judge sentenced 57-year-old Lucy Richards on Wednesday, June 7, 2017, to five months in prison, followed by five months of home detention.(Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office/South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP)

'I'm sure he wishes this was false and he could embrace Noah, hear Noah's heartbeat and hear Noah say "I love you, Dad",' Cohn told Richards. 'Your words were cruel and insensitive. This is reality and there is no fiction. There are no alternative facts.'

Investigators say Richards made four voicemail and email threats to Pozner on Jan. 10, 2016, after viewing internet sites claiming the shooting was a hoax aimed at curtailing Americans' Second Amendment gun ownership rights. The messages said things such as 'You gonna die, death is coming to you real soon' and 'LOOK BEHIND YOU IT IS DEATH'.

Richards, seated in a wheelchair at the hearing, has significant mental health problems including agoraphobia - fear of leaving one's house - obsessive compulsive disorder and anxiety disorder, court documents show. But Cohn said he did not think mental illness triggered Richards' actions.

'You have the absolute right to think and believe as you so desire,' the judge said. 'You do not have the right to transmit threats to another.'

In a statement before she was sentenced, Richards apologized and said she could not account for her actions against Pozner that day.

'I don't know where my heart and head were that day, but they were not in the right place,' she said. 'It was the worst mistake of my life and I am truly sorry.'

Others linked to the Sandy Hook massacre have reported harassment by conspiracy theorists who insist the tragedy never occurred.

Last year, Mr Pozner and his wife Veronique alleged they had been harassed by James Tracy, a professor at Florida Atlantic University - whom they claim demanded proof that their child existed.

A separate 'fake news' story last year saw a man fire an assault rifle inside a Washington, D.C., pizzeria after going there to investigate unfounded claims it harbored a child sex abuse ring.

And Richards' public defender Robert Berube said he had gotten calls from around the United States from people who think Sandy Hook was a hoax.

'There were many people who told me it never took place,' he said.

In addition to the prison time and home arrest, Richards will serve three years on probation and is barred from accessing a list of conspiracy theory websites.

She had initially been scheduled to plead guilty in March but did not show up in court, leading to her arrest April 1 and time in jail since then. Those two months already served will count toward her five-month prison sentence.
LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) - Nigeria, West Africa's economic and military powerhouse, is adrift as President Muhammadu Buhari has been in London for medical treatment for a month as of Wednesday, worrying many that his undisclosed health problems have left Africa's most populous country without strong direction.

The president's prolonged absence has created "a vacuum," said Dapo Alaba Sobowale, the head of a small IT company in Lagos' sprawling Computer Village, where small shops and vendors line the streets selling mobile phones and computer gadgets.

"A lot of people are relying on him," Sobowale said. He said he isn't bothered about who, exactly, is sitting in office. "I'm bothered about the person being there making the right choices," he said.

Buhari, 74, went on medical leave to the United Kingdom on May 7 for unspecified health problems. He had already been in London for nearly seven weeks earlier this year for treatment. He looked thin and frail when he returned to Nigeria, where he later missed three consecutive weekly Cabinet meetings. On his return, he said he'd never been as sick in his life.

Government officials and Buhari's family have sought to reassure Nigerians who have expressed their worry about his absence on social media under hashtags like #WhereIsBuhari and #MissingPresident.

On Tuesday, Aisha Buhari, the president's wife, said her husband is "recuperating fast" after she returned to Nigeria from visiting him in London. "He thanks Nigerians for their constant prayers for his health & steadfastness in the face of challenges," she tweeted.

Buhari's long absences this year have raised questions over whether the former military leader from northern Nigeria will be able to complete his four-year term that is up in 2019 and kicked off speculation over who might succeed him.

This is especially important in Nigeria because an unwritten agreement maintains the presidency should alternate between the Muslim-majority north and Christian-dominated south. Nigeria's 170 million people are almost evenly divided between Christians and Muslims.

Buhari was elected in 2015 after defeating incumbent Goodluck Jonathan, a southerner, on campaign promises to battle corruption and crack down on Boko Haram extremists in the nation's northeast. Buhari's administration, which marked two years in office on May 29, has a mixed track record of fulfilling those promises, analysts say.

Although the military has dislodged Boko Haram from areas where it had declared a caliphate, Nigeria's homegrown Islamic extremists continue to carry out suicide bombings and attacks. A rail-thin Buhari welcomed 82 Chibok schoolgirls who were released by Boko Haram in May after three years in captivity and then he flew to London that night.

This is not the first time Nigeria has experienced an ailing, absent president. In 2010 President Umaru Yar'Adua died after being out of the country for medical treatment for several months.

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, now acting president, is credited for bringing some momentum back to the government by easing tensions in the insecure, oil-producing Niger Delta and pledging to tackle an economy battered by the fall in global oil prices.

"There was an element of fatigue when it came to Buhari," said Malte Liewerscheidt, senior Africa analyst for risk management firm Verisk Maplecroft. "He wasn't acting on the big macroeconomic issues."

However, if Osinbajo, who comes from Lagos in the south, were to take over for Buhari and stand for election in 2019, the move could be seen by northerners as threatening the power-sharing balance and potentially prompt unwelcome political unrest, observers say.

Buhari's absence has highlighted the sense that his government is unable to get this powerful oil-producing nation back on track, critics say.

"It looks like we are rudderless," said Dr. Jay Osi Samuels of the Alliance for New Nigeria, a group of professionals registering as a new political party. "Right now it seems like (politicians) have lost the idea of how to move the country forward."

In Computer Village, mobile phone shop owner Williams Akah and a few customers said the majority of people in Lagos are struggling with Nigeria's recent economic downturn, especially when it comes to finding decent work in this megacity.

Akah doesn't know exactly what's wrong with Buhari, but he said he's keeping track of what happens to him: "I'm worried about him - he's the Number One citizen."

___

Mahr's reporting in Nigeria was supported by the International Reporting Project.
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) - Six Islamic militants accused by Indonesian police of plotting to fire a rocket at downtown Singapore from a nearby island were sentenced to prison on Wednesday on charges of harboring and training extremists.

Judge Tarigan Mudalimbong said there wasn't enough evidence to prove the rocket plot.

Instead, the court found the men guilty of violating Indonesia's anti-terrorism law by hiding two Chinese Uighurs (pronounced WEE-gurs), who were trying to join an extremist group in Poso on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, and by setting up a jihadi training camp.

Suspected militants attend their sentencing hearing at East Jakarta District Court in Jakarta, Indonesia, Wednesday, June 7, 2017. The men who Indonesian police accused of plotting to fire a rocket at downtown Singapore from a nearby island have been sentenced to prison ranging from three to four years for harboring other extremists. (AP Photo/Achmad Ibrahim)

The group's leader, 32-year-old Gigih Rahmad Dewa, was sentenced to four years in prison and the other men were each sentenced to three years.

Mudalimbong said the defendants' actions were an "inexcusable attack on society."

The six men were arrested last year on Batam island, about 25 kilometers (15 miles) southeast of Singapore.

Police said instant messaging chats between them and Bahrun Naim, an Indonesian fighting with the Islamic State group in Syria, indicated they wanted to fire a rocket at the predominantly Chinese city-state. But police failed to establish the plan was more than talk.

Naim has been linked to numerous plots and attacks in Indonesia, including a May 24 double suicide bombing in Jakarta that killed three police officers and the two bombers.

Mudalimbong said the six men had pledged allegiance to Islamic State group leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and set up a jihadi training camp in Batam in an attempt to expand their extremist group, which was known as Katibah Gonggong Rebus.

Police were tipped to the whereabouts of the militants on Batam by another Chinese Uighur who had been arrested on suspicion of plotting to attack Jakarta's minority Christian governor and minority Shiite Muslims.
SALEM, Ind. (AP) - Authorities say a couple and their teenage son whose bodies were found in their southern Indiana home were shot to death.

Police have said they believe a man who was living with the family committed the slayings.

State Police say the Washington County coroner identified the victims as 58-year-old Danny G. Newlin; 41-year-old Kelley Kay Newlin; and 14-year-old Austin Newlin.

Richard Lee Burton Jr., who Indiana State Police believe killed three people at a house he shared with the victims in rural southern Indiana, is shown in this driver's license photo released by the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles. The bodies of two males and one female were found Sunday, June 4, 2017, in a home near Salem, Indiana, they shared with Burton. State Police said a body found Monday in a pickup truck near Bloomington, Indiana, is believed to be that of Burton, 47. Autopsies are scheduled for Tuesday on the three victims and the man who's believed to be Burton. (Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles via AP)

Their bodies were found Sunday in their home near Salem, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) northwest of Louisville, Kentucky.

The preliminary cause of death for all three is gunshot wounds.

Monroe County Coroner Joani Shields said Tuesday that the suspect, 47-year-old Richard Lee Burton Jr., also died and that his death has been preliminarily ruled as suicide by gunshot wound. Burton's body was found Monday in a truck near Bloomington.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - Police in Tennessee say a toddler apparently shot a 7-year-old cousin to death at an apartment.

Nashville police said in a news release that Harmony Warfield died at a hospital after being shot Tuesday.

The statement says four other relatives were inside the apartment, including her 29-year-old aunt and other children ages 14, 11 and 2. The children were in the kitchen area when a shot was heard, and the 14-year-old reported the 2-year-old was holding a pistol. Youth Services detectives believe the shooting was accidental.

No charges were immediately filed and it wasn't known how the toddler got the weapon. The gun wasn't recovered, and police were seeking a friend of the aunt to determine what he knows about the gun. The statement said the man was outside the apartment, went inside to see what happened and fled the area.

Metropolitan Nashville Police officer Joel Bontrager told The Tennessean (http://tnne.ws/2sD1gMZ ) that calls for young children being shot are rare.

"It's almost always an accident," he said. "It's always avoidable."

Another aunt, Dumonique Batey, 21, said Harmony was "an angel" and a "sweet, helpful child."

"She loved reading and she smiled all day, every day," said Batey, who wasn't at the apartment at the time the girl was shot.

Neighbor Tamika Rucker said Harmony would often take turns riding her 4-year-old son's bicycle or come to her for a hug or a treat. She said he couldn't understand how a toddler could manage to lift a gun and pull the trigger.

"It hurts," Rucker said. "It's not easy being a mother. Watch your kids because stuff happens so fast."
BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) - Bulgaria's foreign minister said Wednesday her country will finally complete reforms to its judicial system by the end of 2018 in order to end a decade of EU monitoring - "which can't go on forever."

During a visit to Romania, Foreign Minister Ekaterina Zaharieva said Bulgaria is committed to fulfilling 17 recommendations to reach "an irreversible result" with reforms.

The EU is still monitoring the two countries' progress on judicial reform and fighting corruption under the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism implemented when Romania and Bulgaria joined the bloc in 2007.

Bulgaria's Foreign Minister Ekaterina Zaharieva adjusts her headphones in Bucharest, Romania, Wednesday, June 7, 2017. Bulgaria's foreign minister says her country will finally complete reforms to its judicial system by the end of 2018 in order to end a decade of EU monitoring - "which can't go on forever." (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

Bulgaria takes over the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU in January 2018. Neighboring Romania begins its six-month presidency in January 2019.

Neither country is yet part of the visa-free Schengen travel zone, but both hope to join the association shortly. Zaharieva insisted both Bulgaria and Romania had "fulfilled the technical criteria," and should be allowed in.

"Bulgaria and Romania joining Schengen is a security problem for all of Europe. ... We hope that the political decision taken in the European Parliament and Council, to become reality as soon as possible," she said.

Romanian Foreign Minister Teodor Melescanu said there would be a meeting of the foreign ministers of Romania, Bulgaria and Greece this month in a move to improve regional cooperation.
NEW YORK (AP) - Madeleine Albright, the former secretary of state, is worried about democracy.

Albright's next book, "Fascism," is a warning that democratic governments are "fragile" and the United States under President Donald Trump is enduring its own crisis.

"Fascism" is part of a two-book deal with HarperCollins and will come out April 2018, the publisher told The Associated Press on Wednesday. Her second book, not yet titled, will be a memoir about her years since leaving the State Department in 2001. Albright, who served under President Bill Clinton, has written the memoirs "Prague Winter" and "Madam Secretary."

FILE - In this Oct. 6, 2016, file photo, former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright speaks during a memorial service for former Israel Prime Minister Shimon Peres at Adas Israel Congregation in Washington. Albright's next book, "Fascism," is a warning that democratic governments are "fragile" and that the U.S. under President Trump is enduring its own crisis. "Fascism" is part of a two-book deal with HarperCollins and will come out April 2018. (AP Photo/Zach Gibson, File)

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who served under President George W. Bush, recently published "Democracy." Rice's book examines self-government worldwide and urges the U.S. to be a leader in advocating for freedom and human rights.
NORRISTOWN, Pa. (AP) - The Latest on the sexual assault case against Bill Cosby (all times local):

5:50 p.m.

Testimony has wrapped up for the third day of Bill Cosby's sexual assault trial outside Philadelphia.

Bill Cosby arrives for his sexual assault trial at the Montgomery County Courthouse in Norristown, Pa., Wednesday, June 7, 2017. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

The bulk of Wednesday's session was taken up by the defense's cross-examination of primary accuser Andrea Constand. She says Cosby fondled her breasts and genitals after drugging her at his suburban Philadelphia home in January 2004.

Cosby's lawyers scoured Constand's police statements for inconsistencies and her phone records for evidence she'd continued to interact with him.

Constand's mother, Gianna, also testified. She told jurors her daughter had nightmares in the months after the alleged assault but that she wouldn't divulge what happened for about a year.

Gianna Constand said she received several phone calls from Cosby, including one in which he shared lewd details of his encounter with Andrea Constand and apologized.

___

5:40 p.m.

Jurors in Bill Cosby's sexual assault trial are hearing about telephone conversations in which he told the mother of his chief accuser that he'd fondled her daughter's breasts and genitals after giving her pills.

Andrea Constand's mother testified Wednesday about the calls. She also listened as a prosecutor played a recording she made of one call in which Cosby talks about a plan to pay for Constand's education.

Gianna Constand says she bought a phone recorder in hopes of catching Cosby confessing to harming her daughter at his suburban Philadelphia home.

Gianna Constand says she missed a chance to record the call in which Cosby shared lewd details of the January 2004 encounter. She says he also apologized.

That call came three days after Andrea Constand went to police.

___

4 p.m.

Lawyer Gloria Allred has caused a stir during Bill Cosby's sexual assault trial, because her cellphone rang.

Allred's phone made noise Wednesday afternoon as a Cosby defense lawyer questioned chief accuser Andrea Constand. Allred immediately left the courtroom and was allowed back in after a break.

The 75-year-old attorney says she was baffled because she thought the phone was turned off. She asked people outside the courtroom to help her make sure it was.

Court officials say Allred was complying with rules that require phones be put away. If she hadn't, she would've been ejected.

A reporter for a Philadelphia TV station was barred from covering the trial after court officials say he was seen texting from the courtroom in violation of the rules.

___

3:15 p.m.

Bill Cosby's primary accuser says she was returning his messages when she called him numerous times after he allegedly drugged and violated her.

Prosecutors on Wednesday said phone records show a consistent pattern of Andrea Constand checking her voicemail and then calling Cosby in the two months after the January 2004 encounter.

Constand says she'd always return Cosby's calls to her Temple University-issued cellphone because he was a powerful trustee there and she was director of women's basketball operations.

The revelation came as Constand ended her testimony in the case. She was on the stand for seven hours.

Cosby lawyers say Constand called Cosby 53 times after the alleged assault.

Constand said the calls pertained only to Temple women's basketball and stopped once she left the university.

___

11:25 a.m.

Bill Cosby's chief accuser is denying any prior romance between them as she's questioned by one of Cosby's lawyers in his sex assault case in suburban Philadelphia.

Los Angeles lawyer Angela Agrusa has spent a painstaking hour going over Andrea Constand's old phone records.

She hopes to show Constand changed her mind about the date of the alleged 2004 assault after reviewing them.

But Constand says she never got the records from Temple University for the work-issued phone.

Constand has said she felt her friendship with Cosby was important to the school's athletics department.

She managed the women's basketball team at Temple while he was a high-profile trustee.

Agrusa has suggested that Constand once enjoyed a romantic dinner by the fire at Cosby's home before the alleged assault. Constand says the mood was friendly and the room light enough to eat.

___

9 a.m.

Bill Cosby arrived for the third day of his sexual assault trial accompanied by one of his co-stars from his 1970s movie run.

Actress Sheila Frazier was on Cosby's arm Wednesday as he headed into court. Cosby and Frazier were on screen together in the 1978 comedy "California Suite," which also starred Jane Fonda and Alan Alda.

Frazier was accompanied by her husband, John Atchison, a celebrity hairstylist whose client roster includes Cosby and his wife, Camille.

Frazier is best-known for her starring role in the 1972 cult blaxploitation film, "Super Fly."

As his trial opened, Cosby was supported by another co-star, Keshia Knight-Pulliam, who played the youngest daughter, Rudy, on "The Cosby Show."

___

8:40 a.m.

Bill Cosby has arrived at a suburban Philadelphia courthouse for the third day of his sexual assault trial.

The chief accuser of the 79-year-old actor is expected to return to the witness stand Wednesday. Andrea Constand emerged from 12 years of silence Tuesday to testify.

Constand has testified about how her professional relationship with the Temple University trustee evolved into a friendship.

She says Cosby became more flirtatious and suggestive over time, once grabbing her thigh and later attempting to unbutton her pants. She says she made it clear she didn't welcome the behavior. She says she shot down the actor's casual advances before she found herself paralyzed and unable to fight him off the night she took pills he said were herbal supplements.

Cosby could spend the rest of his life in prison if convicted.

The defense says the relationship with Constand was consensual.

___

12:10 a.m.

Bill Cosby's chief accuser says she shot down the actor's casual advances twice before she found herself paralyzed and unable to fight him off the night she took pills he said were herbal supplements.

Andrea Constand emerged from 12 years of silence Tuesday to testify at Cosby's sexual assault trial. She will return to the witness stand Wednesday.

Constand has told jurors how her professional relationship with the Temple University trustee evolved into a friendship.

She says Cosby became more flirtatious and suggestive over time, once grabbing her thigh and later attempting to unbutton her pants. She says she made it clear she didn't welcome the behavior.

The 79-year-old Cosby could spend the rest of his life in prison if convicted.

The defense says the relationship with Constand was consensual.

___

For more on Cosby, including trial updates, historical photos, videos and an audio series exploring the case, visit: www.apnews.com/tag/CosbyonTrial

Andrea Constand arrives during Bill Cosby's sexual assault trial at the Montgomery County Courthouse in Norristown, Pa., Wednesday, June 7, 2017. Cosby is accused of drugging and sexually assaulting Constand at his home outside Philadelphia in 2004 (Mark Makela/Pool Photo via AP)

Andrea Constand arrives during Bill Cosby's sexual assault trial at the Montgomery County Courthouse in Norristown, Pa., Wednesday, June 7, 2017. Cosby is accused of drugging and sexually assaulting Constand at his home outside Philadelphia in 2004 (Mark Makela/Pool Photo via AP)

Defense lawyer Brian McMonagle laughs outside the courtroom at Bill Cosby's sexual assault trial at the Montgomery County Courthouse on Wednesday, June 7, 2017, in Norristown, Pa. (Mark Makela/Pool Photo via AP)
JOHANNESBURG (AP) - South Africa's ruling party says it is worried about a loss of support in the growing, urban middle class of one of Africa's biggest economies because of scandals surrounding President Jacob Zuma.

Gwede Mantashe, secretary general of the African National Congress, told foreign media on Wednesday that the party must work to engage the middle class and "make them understand us."

Mantashe says South Africa's middle class benefited from freedoms at the end of white minority rule in 1994. But he says it does not give unconditional support to the ANC, the main anti-apartheid movement before taking power.

FILE -- In this photo taken Monday, May 1, 2017, South African President Jacob Zuma attends a May Day rally in Bloemfontein, South Africa, where he was jeered by labor unionists and his speech was cancelled. South Africa's ruling party says it is worried about a loss of support in the growing, urban middle class of one of Africa's biggest economies because of scandals surrounding Zuma. (AP Photo/Khothatso Mokone, File)

The ANC lost several major metropolitan areas to the political opposition in last year's elections, which capitalized on discontent with Zuma and perceptions that top levels of the government are corrupt.
ATHENS, Greece (AP) - Colombian organized crime rings were behind a string of heists involving costly medical diagnostic equipment stolen from hospitals in Greece and another 11 European countries, Greek authorities said Wednesday.

Police said three suspects are being sought in Colombia in connection with four thefts in Greece last month.

Four out of about a dozen pieces of equipment, most of it used in colonoscopies and gastroscopies and worth more than half a million euros ($560,000), were recovered in Colombia with the cooperation of local authorities.

There were similar thefts in the past four years in France, Germany, Italy, Austria, the Netherlands, Spain, Poland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Croatia and the Czech Republic, said Major-General Christos Papazafeiris, head of security police for the greater Athens region.

Papazafeiris said the culprits were "mobile, organized groups of South Americans, mainly Colombians, whose members, acting on orders from Colombian cartels, visited several European countries as tourists."

He said gang members scouted out hospitals, often posing as patients, before carrying out the thefts. Stolen equipment was mailed to Colombia, and Greek authorities are in the process of organizing the return of their machines.

Greece's state health system has been hit hard by deep spending cuts imposed under the country's international bailout program.
 The Post Prints Fareed Zakarias Fake News on Iran | Main | Award-Winning Swedish Journalist Carries Out Terrorist Attack 

June 07, 2017

USA Today Coverage of 1967 War Blurs Important Truths



USA Todays 50 years after Six-Day War, Israel-Palestinian borders are still fuzzy? (June 5, 2017) omitted important information about the occupation? of territories seized by Israel during the 1967 war and the anti-Jewish violence that preceded it.

The report, by journalist and writer Noga Tarnopolsky, provides readers with some key details missing in media coverage elsewhere. For example, the article correctly noted that the Green Line,? the armistice line that followed the Arab-initiated 1948 War against the Jewish state, is temporary? and that final borders [were] to be worked out in the future.? By contrast, other major media outlets, such as The Washington Post, have incorrectly implied that the Green Line? is a recognized and established border (see, for example The Washington Posts Troubling Trend Towards Israel,? CAMERA, June 5, 2017).

However, USA Today fails to inform readers as to why final borders werent worked out: Palestinian and Arab rejection of peace with and recognition of the Jewish state, even at the cost of creating a Palestinian one.

As CAMERA has noted, the U.S. and Israel have extended numerous offers for a Palestinian state, in 2000 at Camp David, 2001 at Taba and 2008 among other instances. Palestinian leaders, refusing to so much as submit a counteroffer, refused each of them.

Indeed, as foreign affairs analyst Clifford May pointed out in a Washington Times commentary, shortly after Israel seized the West Bank and the Gaza Strip during the 1967, from Jordan and Egypt respectively, it extended offers to return these territoriesboth of which had been occupied by these Arab nations since the 1948 War. Arab leaders spurned these offers at the subsequent Khartoum conferencea fact that USA Today omits (The Six-Day War and the 50-year occupation,? June 7, 2017).

As May succinctly put it, the 1967 war and the motive behind it?genocide of the Jews and the destruction of Israelcaused the occupationnot the other way around.?

USA Today has previously failed to note Palestinian rejectionism, as CAMERA has highlighted (see, for example USA Today Omits Israeli Peace Offers While Covering Peace Push,? May 26, 2017). However, the omission of this pertinent information in a more than 1,500-word article on the occupation? is stark. Particularly given that considerable portions of USA Todays report focus on eastern Jerusalemand the rejected 2008 offer would have given Palestinians a state with its capital there.

Elsewhere, the paper omits crucial context, claiming: Israel does not treat East and West Jerusalem equally when it comes to spending on infrastructure. The western side gets the lion's share of improvements.? However, this too omits Arab responsibility. As CAMERA has pointed out (The New York Times, the Newspaper of Broken Record,? Oct. 18, 2015), Arab neighborhoods in eastern Jerusalem often build illegally, without permits, creating infrastructure problems. Additionally, many Arab-dominated areas of eastern Jerusalem refuse to pay taxes or take advantage of their ability to vote in municipal elections; hindering their ability to address such issues.



Posted by SD at June 7, 2017 02:32 PM

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PARIS (AP) - Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen has expressed regret over U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate agreement.

Before meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris, Loekke Rasmussen said "it is crucial that we now stand tall, maintain our commitments and deliver on the promises we have given. We need an ambitious implementation of the agreement."

Loekke Rasmussen said the meeting would also focus on security and European issues.

France's President Emmanuel Macron, left, and Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, arrive to deliver a speech, prior to a meeting, at the Elysee Palace, in Paris, Wednesday, June 7, 2017. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

He reiterated his condolences to the British people following the attack on London Bridge and Borough Market and called for unity in Europe to fight "evil dark forces."
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Latest on President Donald Trump (all times local):

7:30 p.m.

President Donald Trump has told the crown prince of Abu Dhabi that maintaining "a united Gulf Cooperation Council" is important for promoting regional stability.

President Donald Trump walks toward the South Lawn of the White House to board the Marine One helicopter, Wednesday, June 7, 2017, in Washington, on his way to Cincinnati, Ohio. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

The White House says Trump called Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan on Wednesday to discuss the importance of implementing counterterrorism agreements reached during his trip last month to Saudi Arabia, which includes cutting off financing of extremist groups.

Bahrain, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia have cut diplomatic ties to Qatar, accusing it of backing extremist groups.

Trump offered Wednesday to personally broker a resolution to the Persian Gulf's escalating diplomatic crisis, as both he and Qatar's leader looked past his pointed suggestion only a day earlier that the tiny gas-rich nation enables terrorism.

___

1:45 p.m.

President Donald Trump says it's time for the U.S. to start investing more to improve the country's aging infrastructure.

Trump says in a speech in Cincinnati that as he campaigned across the country, voters often asked him why the U.S. was investing so much in other countries when infrastructure here is crumbling.

He says, "it's time to rebuild our country" and "to put America first."

Trump is also talking up his controversial decision to pull the U.S. out of what he dismissively referred to as the "so-called" Paris climate accord.

Trump says "we will never have outside forces telling us what to do and how to do it" while he's president.

Trump is speaking at a marina overlooking the Ohio River.

___

1:35 p.m.

President Donald Trump says it will likely only be Republicans pushing for legislation to replace former President Obama's signature health care law.

After landing in Cincinnati, Trump complained about Democrats' reluctance to support a House plan that experts say will leave millions more uninsured. Trump says, "it's only obstruction from Democrats" and says, "It's all going to be Republicans or bust."

Trump met briefly with family business owners impacted by rising health insurance premiums.

Trump says the families have "had their lives completely upended by the disaster known as Obamacare." He claims the problems "will only get worse if Congress fails to act."

Trump is also pushing efforts to repair the nation's crumbling infrastructure while in Cincinnati.

___

1 p.m.

President Donald Trump says the United States must have the best, fastest and most reliable infrastructure in the world.

Trump is in Cincinnati to talk about a specific piece of his infrastructure plan: inland waterways and the need to repair aging levees, dams, locks and ports.

In excerpts of his remarks released by the White House, Trump is expected to say that inland waterways are critical to commerce, but currently depend on a dilapidated system.

He says that's why he's pushing a plan to pay for infrastructure improvements with $200 billion in tax breaks that he hopes will leverage $1 trillion worth of construction over time.

Trump says an $8.7 billion maintenance backlog for waterways is only getting worse.

__

12:40 p.m.

President Donald Trump has arrived in Cincinnati to discuss health care and his infrastructure plan.

The president is expected to meet first with people described by the White House as "victims" of the Obama-era health law that Trump and congressional Republicans want to repeal.

Trump has been highlighting increasing premiums and insurance company pull-outs from the law's exchanges as he pushes a GOP replacement plan.

The president also plans a speech on his push to spur infrastructure investments using public-private partnerships.

___

11:55 a.m.

A White House official says President Donald Trump plans to give a speech next week to address worker training programs.

An assistant to the president, Reed Cordish, says the speech will touch on issues such as apprenticeships and community colleges to develop workers' skills in order to increase hiring and job growth. Trump is slated to deliver the speech at the Labor Department on Wednesday, June 14.

At a panel hosted by the Business Roundtable on Wednesday, Cordish said the problem wasn't a lack of government funding for worker training but ineffective programs. He declined to give policy specifics about the speech, except to say that "administrative" steps would be involved and that the president's daughter Ivanka Trump would be part of the initiative.

___

10:25 a.m.

President Donald Trump is defending his tweeting habit despite complaints from some Republicans that the president's practice can be a distraction.

That's the word from Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin of New York who says Trump raised the issue unprompted at a White House dinner Tuesday night with several GOP senators and House members.

Zeldin told reporters that Trump upheld his tweeting.

Zeldin said Wednesday that the president "definitely believes that the tweets are an important, valuable tool to be able to get out his message over and through mediums when there might be another narrative that's out there that might be a different perspective than what he's trying to get out."

Zeldin says Trump "wasn't like on his heels defensive, but he was talking about it being valuable."

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3:15 a.m.

President Donald Trump will discuss his plans for a $1 trillion overhaul of the nation's crumbling roads, bridges and waterways during a speech in Ohio Wednesday.

The president will deliver remarks at the Rivertowne Marina in Cincinnati. He's expected to press efforts to repair the nation's aging levees, dams, locks and ports, as well as his larger infrastructure aims.

The speech comes as the White House tries to push past a series of distractions and focus on Trump's legislative agenda.

The White House has yet to detail specifics of the plan, but hopes to finance improvements using public-private partnerships.
EVANSTON, Ill. (AP) - A replica of an Assyrian statue destroyed by Islamic State militants in Iraq in 2014 will soar over tourists in London's Trafalgar Square beginning in March, courtesy of a vision from American artist Michael Rakowitz.

The 15-foot high statue of an lamassu - a human-headed winged bull - reflects the "mass migration that's happened out of Iraq and Syria in the past few years," and is a "kind of placeholder for those lives that can't be reconstructed and for those people who have not yet found refuge," Rakowitz said in an interview at his Evanston, Illinois, studio.

His sculpture is a continuation of "The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist" series, a decade-long recreation of nearly 700 of the over 7,000 archaeological artifacts still missing after being looted, stolen or declared missing from the National Museum of Iraq. It's a project Rakowitz predicts will outlive him and his studio, as thousands of artifacts are still missing and more are being lost every day in archaeological sites throughout Iraq and Syria.

FILE - In this March 21, 2017 file photo, artist Michael Rakowitz poses at the National Gallery in London next to his winning design entitled "The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist." A 15-foot high lamassu statue, a replica of an Assyrian winged-bull destroyed by Islamic State militants in Iraq in 2014, will soar over the tourists in London's Trafalgar Square beginning in March. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant, File)

Using databases from the University of Chicago and Interpol to get exact dimensions of missing works, he and his team work with recycled Middle Eastern food packaging and Arabic newspapers to create versions of the original pieces.

Rakowitz, one of two winners of the Fourth Plinth competition that grants winning artists the right to exhibit a contemporary art work in Trafalgar Square for about 18 months, says he hopes his lamassu sculpture will draw attention to some of the staggering human and cultural costs of ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Syria.

London's Fourth Plinth was erected in Trafalgar Square 1841 in for a never-completed equestrian statue. Since 1999, it has been occupied by a series of modern artworks.

Rakowitz felt fate intervened as he was putting together his submission.

"When the City of London sent out its prompt inviting me to propose something, it said that the plinth itself measured 14 feet in length and I was simultaneously doing research on the lamassu that had been destroyed by ISIS in Nineveh and that was exactly 14 feet. So, it seemed as though that is what had to go there," said Rakowitz, a professor of art at Northwestern University.

His latter-day lamassu will be created out of between 3,000 and 4,000 pressed empty Iraqi date syrup cans, highlighting the once-thriving Iraqi date industry that's been decimated by decades of war.

Lost art works, along with the cultures they represent, are a life-long obsession for the 43-year-old grandson of Iraqi Jewish emigres. Generations of Rakowitz's family embraced their cultural identity even after being forced to flee Baghdad in the 1940s. Being an Iraqi Jew was presented to Rakowitz as "something normal, but (also) something that had tragically disappeared."

Rakowitz felt as if his "entire art history had collapsed," after hearing that the Taliban destroyed Afghanistan's Buddhas of Bamiyan in 2001. That sense of loss was further compounded two years later when watching video of the looting of Baghdad's Museum of Iraq.

"It didn't matter if you were for the war or against the war," he said. "This was something that everyone could agree upon was unacceptable and tragic and it was a problem for all humanity, not just for Iraq."

Claire Davies, the Metropolitan Museum's assistant curator for modern and contemporary art from the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey, said Rakowitz's work connects the destruction "to what is happening outside of that space and to the people around that work of art."

Rakowitz's replica pieces have been acquired by major museums from around the world, including the British Museum, Davies said. The Metropolitan Museum currently has nine pieces from "The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist." His work has also been widely exhibited in the Middle East.
DETROIT (AP) - Ford Motor Co. will operate its Kentucky SUV plant for an extra week this summer to meet demand for the Ford Escape and Lincoln MKC.

Ford's North American plants normally have a two-week shutdown in July, but the Louisville Assembly Plant will take only one week. It will build more than 8,500 vehicles during that extra week.

U.S. sales of the Escape were up 3 percent through May, while MKC sales were up 10 percent. Overall industry sales are down 2 percent, according to Autodata Corp.

Ford says the rest of its North American assembly plants will have a two-week shutdown.

Some of Ford's North American parts plants also will take one week instead of two, including metal stamping plants in Chicago and Michigan and an engine plant in Mexico.
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - The financial counselor will see you now.

Many people hit with a terrifying medical diagnosis like cancer also have to deal with another worry: whether the care will bankrupt them.

Insurance that covers less and soaring treatment costs can swamp patients with piles of unexpected bills. To help ease money worries, hospitals and other care providers are increasingly using counselors to guide patients and, in some cases, arrange for financial help.

Margie Barton, a financial counselor at the IU Health Melvin and Bren Simon Cancer Center, is photographed in the lobby of the hospital, Wednesday, June 7, 2017, in Indianapolis. Barton helps to explain how health benefits works once patients arrive at the hospital. Shrinking insurance coverage and soaring treatment costs can swamp patients with piles of unexpected bills. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings)

Financial counselors can tell patients about help they didn't know existed or coax them into accepting assistance they might be reluctant to request on their own. But they also work for the hospital or medical group doing the billing, so patients should seek a second opinion before making a big financial decision.

HOW DO COUNSELORS HELP?

There's no set formula for what they do. They might start by reviewing a patient's health insurance or checking if some other coverage can help pay bills, like a worker's compensation or auto policy for people who have been in an accident. They also can give cost estimates for care based on the coverage or alert patients if their insurer wants to approve a treatment before it happens.

"Many patients rely on us to explain how their health benefits work," said Margie Barton, a financial counselor at the IU Health Melvin and Bren Simon Cancer Center in Indianapolis. "They are preoccupied with just getting well again."

Counselors may suggest how to get financial help or assist with the paperwork. They can tell someone if they are eligible for a hospital charity program or connect them to a free drug supply or discounts from the manufacturer. They may also find charities to cover expenses like groceries or arrange transportation to medical appointments.

"Many times people don't even realize what's available until they are sick and they need it," said Richard Gundling, a senior vice president with the Healthcare Financial Management Association, which represents finance officials at hospitals and other medical settings.

WHO GETS THIS HELP?

A hospital may refer anyone seeking expensive care to a financial counselor. That frequently includes cancer patients and also neurology or rheumatology patients.

Counselors review every patient's treatment plan at Barton's cancer center, which sees hundreds of patients every week. Five years ago, only about half the plans were reviewed.

Barton says about 80 percent of the people they review will need some help with a significant expense. That percentage has climbed dramatically in the last few years.

Some chemotherapy regimens can cost $20,000 per dose, and it's common for annual deductibles - the amount a patient pays before coverage starts - to climb as high as $6,000.

That can hit cancer patients especially hard because this expense generally resets at the start of the year, so someone in the middle of treatment may have to meet the deductible more than once over the course of treatment.

CAN YOU TRUST THE COUNSELORS?

They can offer many resources for help, and they understand what patients are going through.

But patients should still seek a second opinion before making a major financial decision like signing up for a loan or a payment plan, said Caitlin Donovan, a spokeswoman for the Patient Advocate Foundation, which helps patients deal with medical bills and problems accessing care.

Patients need to make sure the amount they owe is correct and that a lower total cannot be negotiated. Sometimes, a discount can be bargained in return for one payment in full. They also should make sure that terms are manageable and they don't qualify for additional help.

Many nonprofit agencies are available to help with billing issues. Patients also can hire billing advocates, but they will take a fee or a portion of any money saved as payment, Donovan said.

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Follow Tom Murphy on Twitter: @thpmurphy

Financial information brochures are displayed on the desk of Margie Barton as she works, Wednesday, June 7, 2017, in Indianapolis. Barton is a a financial counselor at the IU Health Melvin and Bren Simon Cancer Center. Shrinking insurance coverage and soaring treatment costs can swamp patients with piles of unexpected bills. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings)
MONTREAL (AP) - Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is tweeting his thanks to former U.S. President Barack Obama after the two shared a private dinner at a Montreal restaurant.

Trudeau posted a picture of the pair talking in the eatery, with the caption "How do we get young leaders to take action in their communities? Thanks BarackObama for your visit & insights tonight in my hometown."

A crowd cheered the two leaders as they left.

Former President Barack Obama speaks at the convention center in Montreal, Quebec, Tuesday, June 6, 2017. (Paul Chaisson/The Canadian Press via AP)

Last year, Obama hosted Trudeau for a state dinner at the White House, the first for Canada since 1997.

Obama spoke to the Montreal Board of Trade Tuesday and decried what he called the lack of American leadership on climate change, a swipe at new President Donald Trump's administration.

FILE - In this Nov. 19, 2015 file photo, President Barack Obama listens as Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks during a bilateral meeting in Manila, Philippines. Trudeau is tweeting his thanks to former U.S. President Barack Obama after the two shared a private dinner at a Montreal restaurant, Tuesday, June 6, 2017. Trudeau posted a picture of the pair talking in the eatery, with the caption ``How do we get young leaders to take action in their communities? Thanks BarackObama for your visit & insights tonight in my hometown.'' (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)

Former President Barak Obama waves to the crowd following a speech before the Montreal Board of Trade in Montreal, Quebec, Tuesday, June 6, 2017. (Paul Chaisson/The Canadian Press via AP)

Former President Barak Obama speaks during a question and answer with Sophie Brochu at the convention center in Montreal, Quebec, Tuesday, June 6, 2017. (Paul Chaisson/The Canadian Press via AP)

Former President Barack Obama speaks at the convention center in Montreal, Quebec, Tuesday, June 6, 2017. (Paul Chaisson/The Canadian Press via AP)

Former President Barak Obama speaks during a question and answer with Sophie Brochu at the convention center in Montreal, Quebec, Tuesday, June 6, 2017. (Paul Chaisson/The Canadian Press via AP)
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Donald Trump on Wednesday offered solace to the victims of the twin terrorist attacks in Iran while suggesting Tehran bears some culpability, saying "states that sponsor terrorism risk falling victim to the evil they promote."

Hours after conciliatory comments from his State Department, the president said in a one-paragraph statement that the United States grieves and prays for the innocent victims of the assault against Iran's Parliament and the shrine of Iran's revolutionary leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, that killed at least 12 people. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility.

Trump added his broadside against Iran, which the U.S. has designated as a state sponsor of terrorism since 1984.

Police patrol outside Iran's parliament building after an assault by several attackers that was claimed by the Islamic State group, in Tehran, Iran, Wednesday, June 7, 2017. Gunmen and suicide bombers attacked Iran's parliament and the shrine of its revolutionary leader, killing at least 12 people, wounding dozens and igniting an hours-long siege at the legislature that ended with four attackers dead. It marked the first time the Sunni extremists have taken responsibility for an assault in Shiite-majority Iran. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

"We underscore that states that sponsor terrorism risk falling victim to the evil they promote," he said.

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert had said the U.S. is sending thoughts and prayers to the Iranian people following the attacks.

"The depravity of terrorism has no place in a peaceful, civilized world," said Nauert, who said the U.S. is expressing condolences to the victims and their families.

The U.S. statement of solidarity with the attack's victims is notable because of the deep distrust between the U.S. and Iran. The two countries don't maintain diplomatic relations, and the Trump administration has emphasized the need to counter Iran's influence.

The distrust of Iran was evident on Wednesday when shortly after the condemnation, Republicans and Democrats in Congress acted in a procedural vote to move forward on a new set of sanctions on Iran, including on its elite Revolutionary Guards. The strong bipartisan vote was 92-7.

The bill would impose mandatory sanctions on people involved in Iran's ballistic missile program and anyone who does business with them. The measure also would apply terrorism sanctions to the country's Revolutionary Guards and enforce an arms embargo.

A few senators pleaded for a delay until next week of the previously scheduled vote in light of the attacks in Iran.

"Let us tell the people of Iran that while we have serious disagreements with them on a number of issues, that today when they are mourning, when they are dealing with the shock of a terrorist attack, today is not the day to go forward with this piece of legislation," Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said.

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., also pushed for a delay, but Republicans and Democrats pressed ahead.

The bill is a "carefully crafted response to Iran's ongoing aggression in the Middle East," Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., said.

Last month, the Foreign Relations Committee backed the measure despite concerns from former Secretary of State John Kerry and several Democrats that it could nonetheless lead to the unraveling of the nuclear accord negotiated by the Obama administration.

Kerry cautioned lawmakers to "tread carefully" in pushing ahead with new sanctions against Iran in the wake of President Hassan Rouhani's re-election to another four-year term. Rouhani is a political moderate who scored a resounding victory over a hard-line opponent.

Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, the committee's Republican chairman and one of the bill's sponsors, said he recently reviewed top-secret intelligence that detailed Tehran's support for terrorism and other destabilizing actions.

"It is astounding what Iran continues to do around the world," said Corker, urging his colleagues to confront the threat Tehran poses.

In exchange for Iran rolling back its nuclear program, the U.S. and other world powers agreed to suspend wide-ranging oil, trade and financial sanctions that had choked the Iranian economy. As part of the July 2015 multinational accord, Iran also regained access to frozen assets held abroad.

Israel and congressional Republicans have long assailed the agreement as a windfall to Iran. They've argued the deal only delayed Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons and failed to allow the kind of inspections of its atomic sites that would guarantee Tehran was not cheating. Lifting economic sanctions saved Iran's economy, GOP lawmakers added, and allowed the country to funnel more money to terrorist groups.

Yet the nuclear deal remains in place despite Trump's pledge during the presidential campaign to discard or renegotiate the pact. Instead, the State Department took a key step last week toward preserving the pact by issuing a waiver to keep the sanctions from snapping back into place. And the Trump administration notified Congress last month that Iran is complying with the terms of the agreement.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said that as the Iran legislation moves forward, lawmakers will have an opportunity to offer amendments that would authorize new sanctions on Russia.
CINCINNATI (AP) - Nine white jurors and three black jurors were seated Wednesday in Cincinnati for the murder retrial of a fired white police officer in the 2015 death of a black unarmed motorist, averting the possibility it would need to be moved.

Judge Leslie Ghiz said jury selection in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court was "practically painless," after concerns over the effects of intense attention to the case of Ray Tensing, 27, the former University of Cincinnati officer whose first trial ended with a hung jury last fall. Both sides had asked for a change of venue, but Ghiz wanted to try to keep the case in Cincinnati.

She is in an ongoing legal battle with news organizations, including The Associated Press, over her restrictions on coverage.

Jurors will hear opening statements Thursday, followed by testimony from the first witnesses in a trial expected to last about two weeks.

Attorneys settled on the final panel Wednesday morning, in the fourth day of weeding out jurors with admitted or suspected biases and conflicts.

Tensing's first jury of six white men, four white women and two black women was unable to reach a unanimous decision in November. For his second trial, the jury includes a black man, two black women, two white men and seven white women.

He is also charged with voluntary manslaughter.

The retrial jurors traveled in a chartered bus to the Mount Auburn neighborhood where Tensing shot Sam DuBose, 43. The former officer, who testified in his own defense during his first trial, said he feared for his life when DuBose tried to drive away from a traffic stop. He's expected to take the stand again.

Jurors spent about 10 minutes at the scene as police cars blocked off streets.

Ghiz told jurors that viewing the scene shouldn't be considered evidence, but was intended "to help you understand the evidence as it is presented in the courtroom."

DuBose's sister, Terina DuBose-Allen, wept as she said she and other family members have been unable to attend court during the past few days because of a family tragedy. She didn't want to publicly disclose details.

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Associated Press writer Dan Sewell in Cincinnati contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Donald Trump offered Wednesday to personally broker a resolution to the Persian Gulf's escalating diplomatic crisis, as both he and Qatar looked past his pointed suggestion only a day earlier that the tiny gas-rich nation enables terrorism.

In a phone call with Qatar's ruling emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Trump said he wanted to help Qatar and its Arab neighbors resolve the row that has upended any sense of Gulf unity, suggesting a possible White House summit among leaders. Though Trump again said countries must eliminate funding streams for terror groups, the White House said he focused on the need for the region's various U.S. allies to stick together.

Blockaded by its neighbors by land and sea, Qatar is eager for Trump's help. Qatar's U.S. ambassador, Meshal bin Hamad Al Thani, told The Associated Press his country is counting on Washington to persuade Saudi Arabia and others to back down.

FILE - In this May 21, 2017, file photo, President Donald Trump, right, holds a bilateral meeting with Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. President Donald Trump offered June 7 to personally broker a resolution to the Persian Gulf's escalating diplomatic crisis, as both he and Qatar looked past his pointed suggestion only a day earlier that the tiny gas-rich nation enables terrorism. In a phone call with Al Thani, Trump said he wanted to help Qatar and its Arab neighbors resolve the row that has upended any sense of Gulf unity, suggesting a possible White House summit among leaders. Though Trump again said countries must eliminate funding streams for terror groups, the White House said he focused on the need for the region's various U.S. allies to stick together. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

"We have great confidence in the president's ability to calm this crisis and to resolve it," Al Thani said in an interview.

Trump's bid to fashion himself as a neutral arbiter among Arab governments departed from his stance only a day earlier, when he left little doubt about where he felt the fault rested. In a tweetstorm, Trump said Mideast leaders he'd met with last month had all "pointed to Qatar" as the source of terrorist financing, waxing optimistically that the isolation of the kingdom might be "the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism."

Bahrain, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates joined the Saudis earlier this week in cutting diplomatic ties to Qatar, accusing it of backing groups from al-Qaida and Hamas to the Muslim Brotherhood that threaten the region's other governments. Qatar vehemently denies such support. Al Thani, the ambassador, insisted his country had no idea why Qatar's neighbors were picking a fight.

Qatar received no notice from the other Arab countries before ties were cut, he said, calling it "a surprise and a shock to us, this act of aggression." He said normal life in Qatar is "not affected" by the blockage, insisting the tiny country maintains sufficient access to other air and sea routes to secure food for its people.

Trump also called Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, the capital of the U.A.E., Wednesday. On the call, he reiterated "the importance of maintaining a united Gulf Cooperation Council to promote regional stability, but never at the expense of eliminating funding for radical extremism or defeating terrorism," the White House said in a statement.

Trump's broadside Tuesday against Qatar, which plays a major role in U.S. military efforts in the Mideast, arrived as an early-morning shock to U.S. officials. They then sought to clean up the president's comments by stressing U.S.-Qatari cooperation remained intact and crediting the country with working hard to stem funding and support for extremists.

That was enough, it seemed, to persuade Qatar the U.S. wasn't abandoning its strategic partner.

"We don't see that he's pointing fingers at Qatar," Al Thani said. "Our relationship with the U.S. speaks for itself."

Countries across the globe re increasingly faced with the same conundrum: How much credence to give to the president's Twitter musings when they deviate sharply from U.S. policy?

Emirati officials said they perceived Trump's tweets as a sign Qatar shouldn't count on America taking its side despite U.S. having some 10,000 troops based in the country's al-Udeid Air Base.

But in Germany, Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin Schaefer pointed out that Trump's words differed substantially from those of State Department and Pentagon officials.

"I can indeed see differences in some 140 character comments by the American president," Schaefer said. "But what the position of the United States of America... is something I can't really say."

Both Qatar and the U.S. sought to show the rift wasn't affecting military cooperation. They cited no change to the status of al-Udeid Air Base. And a State Department official said an approved but pending sale of F-15 fighter planes to Qatar hasn't been affected.

The call with Qatar's emir showed Trump trying to personally involve himself in resolving the conflict. A day earlier, Trump discussed the crisis with King Salman of Saudi Arabia, which is leading the anti-Qatar campaign.

Other countries also are offering to intervene, and it's not clear if Trump will end up as the primary mediator. Kuwait's emir flew to the UAE on Wednesday to discuss the crisis, while Qatari ally Turkey voiced willingness to play a role.

A White House summit seemed an unlikely possibility. The potential for a coup makes it unlikely the Qatari emir would travel so far from home, especially as its adversaries hint that regime change would be welcome.

In the interview, Al Thani confirmed the FBI is helping Qatar investigate a hack of its state-run news agency last month that may have been a catalyst for the crisis. The Saudis and others have cited an article in which a top Qatari official seemed to pay tribute to Iran as a major regional power; the Qataris say the comments were fabricated as part of the hack.

Al Thani also denied any Qatari involvement in a separate hack of emails belonging to the UAE's Washington ambassador, which have surfaced at various news agencies this week.

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This story has been corrected to reflect in 2nd paragraph the spelling of emir's name as Tamim, instead of Tamin.

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Reach Josh Lederman on Twitter at http://twitter.com/joshledermanAP
LONDON (AP) - British author Naomi Alderman has won the international Women's Prize for Fiction with gender role-reversal thriller "The Power."

Alderman, a prize-winning novelist and online games designer, was awarded the 30,000 pound ($39,000) prize at a ceremony in London Wednesday for her novel, in which girls and women suddenly discover they have the power to electrocute people at will.

Television executive Tessa Ross, who chaired the judging panel, praised Alderman's "brilliantly imagined dystopia - her big ideas and her fantastic imagination."

Alderman beat five other finalists: Canada's Madeleine Thien, U.S. writer C.E. Morgan, Britain's Linda Grant, Nigeria's Ayobami Adebayo and Britain's Gwendoline Riley.

Founded in 1996, the prestigious prize is open to female English-language writers from around the world. It is officially named the Baileys Women's Prize after its cream-liqueur sponsor.
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) - U.S. and Jamaican authorities have apprehended another suspect in an alleged multimillion-dollar lottery scam targeting dozens of Americans.

Gregory Gooden, one of four fugitives still being sought in the case, was arrested earlier this week in the Jamaican capital of Kingston, North Dakota U.S. Attorney Chris Myers announced Wednesday. Gooden will not get a court-appointed attorney or enter a plea until being extradited to the U.S. to face charges - a process that dragged on for months with others of the accused in the case.

A total of 15 people are charged with conspiracy, wire fraud, mail fraud and money laundering. Nine Jamaican nationals and a U.S. citizen who have pleaded not guilty are scheduled for trial July 17 in federal court in North Dakota. Three other suspects remain fugitives and are believed to be in Jamaica, and another is in custody in the Caribbean nation awaiting extradition.

Authorities allege the scam bilked at least 90 mostly elderly Americans out of more than $5.7 million. The case is being tried in North Dakota because the investigation began in the state more than five years ago.

The suspects are accused of calling victims, persuading them to send money, and wiring the money to bank accounts in Jamaica. Authorities have dubbed the case "Operation Hard Copy," a reference to lists of prospective victims' contact information used by scammers.

Among those awaiting trial this summer is Lavrick Willocks, who authorities allege was the mastermind of the scam. Sanjay Williams, who authorities say was a cohort of Willock's in Jamaica and ran a separate scam, was convicted by a U.S. jury in 2015 and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

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Follow Blake Nicholson on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/
HOUSTON (AP) - Judges on a federal appeals court said Wednesday that they were concerned a Mississippi woman had been jailed for 96 days without seeing a judge or having a chance to make bail.

A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments in Houston in the case of Jessica Jauch, who is appealing a lower court's decision to throw out a lawsuit she had filed against Choctaw County and the local sheriff over her incarceration.

Jauch, 34, was jailed after being indicted for selling drugs, even though a police video showed she committed no crime. She wasn't cleared until she finally got a lawyer who persuaded a prosecutor to watch the video and drop the charge. Jauch was arrested in April 2012, but wasn't arraigned and brought before a judge until July 2012, when she was finally given a bond.

FILE - This undated file photo released by the Oktibbeha County Sheriff's Office in Mississippi shows Jessica Jauch. Federal appeals court judges in Houston, Wednesday, June 7, 2017, expressed concern that Jauch, of Mississippi, was jailed for 96 days without seeing a judge. She's appealing a lower court's decision to dismiss her lawsuit against Choctaw County and its sheriff over her 2012 incarceration. Jauch was cleared of a drug charge after a police video showed she had committed no crime. (Oktibbeha County Sheriff's Office via AP, File)

Victor Fleitas, Jauch's attorney, told the judges his client's lengthy detention without being allowed to see a judge violated her fundamental liberties, including the right to due process.

Every sheriff's office knows if they arrest somebody, "that person must be taken before a court," Fleitas said. "You may not unilaterally decide to hold them in your lock up for an indefinite time."

Danny Griffith, an attorney for Choctaw County and Sheriff Cloyd Halford, blamed Jauch's long incarceration in part on Mississippi state policies under which many circuit courts in rural parts of the state are in session only twice a year. Jauch's arrest came at a time when the Choctaw County's court was not in session, and she had to wait until it reconvened.

Griffith said the problem of infrequent county court hearings needs to be fixed at the state level, but also argued in court filings that Jauch's constitutional rights were not violated and that she "received the maximum protection afforded under Mississippi Law."

"We're all trying really, really hard to make it better in Mississippi," he said.

However some of the appeals court judges did not appear to be convinced.

Judge Catharina Haynes called Jauch's prolonged incarceration "worrisome."

"Your arguments show me why Choctaw County is such a mess," Haynes said.

Judge Gregg Costa said that under Mississippi law, someone who is indicted needs to be arraigned within 30 days, and that Jauch should have been arraigned within such a timeframe. Griffith said he disagreed.

"A person can be held forever?" Costa asked. "What limit is there?"

Haynes also questioned whether Halford, the sheriff, had done enough to let the local judge know about Jauch's case so that a hearing could have been held sooner.

"Mississippi has an odd procedure that results in a lot of people being denied their constitutional rights," Haynes said.

The three-judge panel was expected to issue a ruling at a later date.

Jauch is appealing the dismissal of her lawsuit by U.S. District Judge Sharion Aycock in the Northern District of Mississippi, who ruled that because Jauch had been indicted, she had no right to a quick hearing.

In Mississippi, such hearings typically result in a judge setting bail and appointing a lawyer. Civil liberties advocates have questioned Aycock's ruling, saying Jauch's case points to problems with judicial procedure, bail and the appointment of public defenders in Mississippi.

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Follow Juan A. Lozano on Twitter at www.twitter.com/juanlozano70
HOUSTON (AP) - A Texas district attorney wants a grand jury to review the death of a man who was restrained by an off-duty sheriff's deputy and her husband during a late-night confrontation outside of a Houston-area restaurant.

Prosecutors said Wednesday that the Harris County district attorney's office plans to present the case to the jury this week. Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said her office is committed to a "fair, evidence-based process."

John Hernandez died three days after the May 28 confrontation with Harris County deputy Shauna Thompson and her husband, Terry.

A medical examiner ruled that the 24-year-old Hernandez died of lack of oxygen to the brain caused by strangulation and chest compression. Thompson has been placed on administrative leave.

A bystander recorded cellphone video of the incident.
MEXICO CITY (AP) - Authorities say a fourth suspect has been arrested in connection with the April 14 murder of a journalist in the Mexican state of Baja California Sur.

The state attorney's office said in a statement Wednesday that there was enough evidence to implicate the man identified only as "Luis" in the murder of Maximino Rodriguez.

State and federal authorities said last week they had arrested three other men suspected in Rodriguez's murder. Rodriguez covered the police beat for local online portal Colectivo Pericu. Investigators said they had established that he was killed because of his work.

Also, Wednesday journalists marched in the streets of Culiacan, the capital of western Sinaloa state, demanding progress in the case of Javier Valdez, a well-known journalist killed on May 15.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - Tennessee campaign finance officials have imposed a nearly $465,000 fine on a former lawmaker who was expelled from the General Assembly last year amid a series of sexual harassment allegations.

The Tennessean reports (http://tnne.ws/2sEsral ) that it's the largest fine ever imposed by the Tennessee Registry of Election Finance.

Jeremy Durham was drummed out of the state House in September amid allegations that earned him the nickname "Pants Candy" by women working at the Capitol.

A state audit alleged hundreds of campaign finance violations that included spending money from his re-election account on personal expenses and using campaign funds to loan money to a GOP ally, a professional gambler and his wife.

Durham did not attend Wednesday's meeting. His attorney, Peter Strianse, urged the panel to not to assess any penalties.

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Information from: The Tennessean, http://www.tennessean.com
Illinois annual budget deficit will top $6billion for the fiscal year ending on June 30, according to forecasts from a new budget review.

The budget forecast released on Wednesday in the state capital of Springfield comes as Democrats controlling the legislature battle Republican Governor Bruce Rauner in a years-long stalemate.

'Illinois is imploding,' said Republican State Rep. David McSweeney, who requested the budget review from the Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability.

Republican Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner (pictured) refuses to raise taxes, and the Democratic-majority legislature refuses to pass spending cuts. The state hasn't passed a new budget in three years, the longest any state in the country has gone without a new budget

He says Rauner should call daily legislative sessions until there's a resolution.

The state has now gone three years without passing a budget, after failing to meet the May 31 deadline last week.

Democrats, who control the Illinois legislature, refuse to make deep budget cuts, while Rauner refuses to raise taxes substantially, leading to the deadlock that has deepened the crisis.

The state has now gone without a new budget passing longer than any other state in the country.

'Illinois is imploding,' said Republican State Rep. David McSweeney (pictured). The state will end its fiscal year June 30 more than $6.2billion in the red, a new report says

The bipartisan commission's report says that the state will end its fiscal year June 30 more than $6.2billion in the red. Last year that number was a $3.8billion deficit.

The commission says with no action a year from now, the deficit will be nearly $8billion.

Illinois has $130billion in unfunded pension liabilities.

In April, Standard & Poors downgraded the state's credit rating to one notch above 'junk' status.
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - North Carolina Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper is pushing Republican state legislators to immediately redraw General Assembly districts, now that the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed that nearly 30 House and Senate maps are illegal racial gerrymanders.

Cooper on Wednesday called for a special session - to begin Thursday afternoon and run simultaneously with the current General Assembly work session - to get new maps drawn. The new governor, who has been embroiled in a power struggle with Republicans controlling the legislature since before he even took office, said if Republicans fail to draw and approve maps soon, a lower federal court will.

"We can unrig this part of the system now," he told reporters. "Let's act quickly to restore the trust of the people and take a first important step toward fair elections."

However, lawmakers are not obligated to draw maps as he requests and could end the session as soon as they gavel it in. GOP leaders portrayed the governor's action, revealed in a hastily called news conference by Cooper, as theater designed to distract them from performing current work, like passing a two-year state budget.

"This is a clear political stunt meant to deter lawmakers from our work on raising teacher pay, providing relief to the communities affected by Hurricane Matthew and putting money back into the pockets of middle-class families," state Sen. Ralph Hise and Rep. David Lewis said in a release.

But Cooper said it's time new boundaries are drawn because the General Assembly has been operating under illegal district lines since 2011. The nation's highest court this week upheld a lower court ruling throwing out 28 legislative districts. That lower court could decide special elections should be held this fall, using new boundaries.

Cooper said the current districts are the reason North Carolina has seen a hard-right agenda implemented for most of this decade. Cooper cited Republican-approved laws cutting income and corporate tax rates dramatically, creating taxpayer funded grants for students to attend private schools and blocking local gay-rights ordinances through House Bill 2.

"The extreme and damaging laws that they enacted were passed under the dark cloud of a racial gerrymander, Cooper said, adding "the very existence of this legislature is and has been unconstitutional for five years."

The redistricting case ultimately will be returned to a three-judge panel, which late last year ordered that lawmakers redraw maps in early 2017 and prepare for special elections in the fall, a year before the next regularly scheduled election cycle ended in November 2018.

But the U.S. Supreme Court blocked that order, and on Monday vacated it, saying the federal judges had failed to evaluate properly whether moving up the schedule was warranted. Lawyers for the voters who sued over the districts believe there's enough time for the judges to reaffirm a 2017 election schedule and late Tuesday asked the Supreme Court to accelerate returning the case to the judges.

Cooper, a former North Carolina attorney general, argued that state law gives legislators only two weeks to act before the judges could step in and draw new lines. His written proclamation, issued late Wednesday, directed the session last two weeks or until new maps are approved.

Republicans, however, counter that state law says the window can be longer, and any clock wouldn't start until the lower court sends them a new order to redraw the maps.

There also are questions about whether setting a time to adjourn the "extra session" is valid.

"The end date in the proclamation has no legal effect," said Gerry Cohen, a retired longtime staff attorney at the General Assembly. Cooper spokesman Ford Porter wrote by email late Wednesday that setting the time period for the session "was a practical decision" reflecting the 14-day window.
CAMDEN, N.J. (AP) - A New Jersey couple was convicted Tuesday of bringing a Kenyan woman to the United States and exploiting her for domestic labor in their home.

Federal prosecutors say 53-year-old Michael Wood and his 45-year-old wife, Mary, recruited the woman in Kenya to care for their four minor children. In August 2005, they say Michael Wood gave the woman his adult daughter's British passport and directed her to memorize the information and pretend to be the daughter.

Upon entering the United States, Michael Wood represented the woman as his daughter.

Once in New Jersey, the Mullica Hill couple forced the woman to clean the house, do the laundry, cook and care for the children. She had to be on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week and was paid $200 a month. Evidence at trial revealed that the defendants would have been required to pay her about $5,200 a month under U.S. labor laws.

To conceal the woman from authorities, the defendants didn't allow her to leave the house except to walk the children to school. They also told her not to talk to anyone outside of the house or family, authorities said.

In June 2006, Mary Wood's sister and other family members moved the woman to their homes, where they continued to harbor her and exploit her domestic labor, authorities said. The woman managed to leave in 2011, prompting the federal investigation.

A jury on Tuesday found Michael and Mary Wood guilty of alien harboring for financial gain and conspiracy. Mary Wood also was convicted of fraudulently obtaining naturalization as a United States citizen, but she was acquitted of making false statements in connection with the investigation.

They are due to be sentenced Sept. 7. Michael Wood faces up to 10 years in prison, while his wife could get up to 20 years.

Six other defendants, including members of Mary Wood's family, have pleaded guilty to charges in Pennsylvania related to their roles in the scheme.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Latest on developments in Washington on Iran. (all times local):

4:10 p.m.

President Donald Trump is suggesting that Iran bears some culpability for attacks in its capital that killed at least 12 people.

Police officers control the scene, around of shrine of late Iranian revolutionary founder Ayatollah Khomeini, after an assault by several attackers in Tehran, just outside Tehran, Iran, Wednesday, June 7, 2017. Suicide bombers and gunmen stormed into Iran's parliament and targeted the shrine of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini on Wednesday, killing a security guard and wounding several other people in rare twin attacks, with the siege at the legislature still underway. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

Trump says in a statement that "states that sponsor terrorism risk falling victim to the evil they promote."

But Trump also says the U.S. grieves and prays for innocent victims and for the Iranian people. He says the Iranian people are "going through such challenging times."

Trump's comments are much harsher than the initial reaction from his administration. Trump's State Department had issued a statement earlier Wednesday extending condolences and condemning the attack while saying terrorism had no place in the civilized world. That initial statement did not include Trump's allegation that Iran sponsors terrorism.

The U.S. has designated Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism since 1984.

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2:25 p.m.

The Senate has cleared the way for action on bipartisan legislation that would authorize President Donald Trump to impose new sanctions on Iran.

The procedural vote to move forward was 92-7 on Wednesday.

The bill would impose mandatory sanctions on people involved in Iran's ballistic missile program and anyone who does business with them. The measure also would apply terrorism sanctions to the country's Revolutionary Guards and enforce an arms embargo.

Several senators had sought a delay in the vote until next week after the twin deadly attacks against Iran's parliament and the shrine of Iran's revolutionary leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini that killed at least 12 people. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility.

Republicans and some Democrats went ahead with the previously scheduled vote.

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12:35 p.m.

The United States is condemning what it calls "terrorist attacks" in the Iranian capital of Tehran.

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert says the U.S. is sending thoughts and prayers to the Iranian people following attacks that struck Iran's parliament and the mausoleum of its modern founder. Nauert says the U.S. is expressing condolences to the victims and their families.

Nauert says that "the depravity of terrorism has no place in a peaceful, civilized world."

The U.S. statement of solidarity with the attack's victims is notable because of the deep distrust between the U.S. and Iran. The two countries don't maintain diplomatic relations and the Trump administration has emphasized the need to counter Iran's influence.

The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) - A New York City taxi tycoon has been charged with failing to pay millions in state taxes, authorities announced Wednesday

Evgeny Freidman was being held in the Albany County Jail on $500,000 bail. Also known as Gene Friedman, he was arraigned in an Albany court Monday on tax fraud and grand larceny charges.

State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said the 46-year-old dubbed the "Taxi King" didn't pay more than $5 million in taxes he owed.

Officials say the taxes are from 50-cent Metropolitan Transportation Authority surcharges between 2012 and 2015.

"The 'Taxi King' built his empire by stealing from New Yorkers - pocketing money that should instead have been invested in our transportation system," said Schneiderman, a Democrat.

Nonie Manion, the state's acting commissioner of taxation and finance, said the cab drivers collected the proper fare but Freidman illegally manipulated tax filings.

A lawyer for Freidman, Patrick Egan, said Freidman denies all the charges.

Freidman owns hundreds of the New York City-issued medallions that allow yellow cabs to operate.

But the growth of ride-hailing apps like Uber and Lyft has sent the value of a medallion plummeting, from a high of $1.3 million in 2013 to less than $250,000 in 2017.

Freidman has faced mounting legal troubles as he has struggled to maintain his business.

An investigation by the attorney general's labor bureau over payment of drivers resulted in a 2013 settlement for $1.2 million and a 2016 consent order requiring Freidman and four of his medallion management agencies to pay over $275,000 in damages and fines.

A bankruptcy judge ordered him to surrender 46 of his taxis last year.
NEW ROCHELLE, N.Y. (AP) - A suburban New York man has been accused of suffocating his 7-year-old daughter, whose mother is an NBC vice president.

Police officers were called to a home in New Rochelle on Tuesday on a report of a man bleeding. They say they found Neil White with wounds on his wrists and found Gabrielle White dead in her bed.

The cause of the girl's death hasn't been determined. But police say they believe she was asphyxiated.

Neil White has been arraigned on a murder charge. He's in custody and can't be reached for comment.

Gabrielle was a second-grader at William B. Ward Elementary School.

The Journal News says her mother is Michelle Hord-White, an NBCUniversal talent acquisition vice president.

The mother's family said Wednesday it's "broken and devastated" Gabrielle is gone.

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This story has been corrected to show the girl's name was Gabrielle, not Gabriele.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Fired FBI Director James Comey will testify under oath Thursday that President Donald Trump repeatedly pressed him for his "loyalty" and directly pushed him to "lift the cloud" of investigation shadowing his White House by declaring publicly the president was not the target of the probe into his campaign's Russia ties.

Comey's detailed and vivid recollections of his one-on-one conversations with Trump were revealed in seven pages of prepared testimony released Wednesday, the day before his much-anticipated appearance before the Senate intelligence committee.

His remarks paint a picture of an FBI director so disconcerted by his interactions with the president that he began keeping written memos of their private discussions. He'll tell lawmakers he believed the president was trying to create a "patronage relationship" with him and describe in detail an Oval Office meeting in which Trump urged him not to investigate ousted National Security Adviser Michael Flynn's contacts with Russian officials.

FILE - In this March 20, 2017, file photo, then-FBI Director James Comey pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, before the House Intelligence Committee hearing on allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Comey will testify that President Donald Trump sought his "loyalty" and asked what could be done to "lift the cloud" of investigation shadowing his White House, according to prepared remarks released ahead of his appearance on Capitol Hill on June 8, 2017.(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

But the ex-FBI director also will validate Trump's assertion that he was not personally a target of the federal counterintelligence investigation into possible campaign collusion with Russia. Comey says he did offer the president that "assurance," but resisted Trump's appeals to make that information public.

"The FBI and the Department of Justice had been reluctant to make public statements that we did not have an open case on President Trump for a number of reasons, most importantly because it would create a duty to correct, should that change," Comey says in the prepared remarks.

Trump's personal lawyer said Trump was cheered by the testimony.

"The president is pleased that Mr. Comey has finally publicly confirmed his private reports that the president was not under investigation in any Russian probe," attorney Mark Kasowitz said in a statement. "The president feels completely and totally vindicated. He is eager to continue to move forward with his agenda."

Comey has not spoken publicly since he was abruptly fired by Trump on May 9. His dismissal, four years into a 10-year term, fueled claims Trump's ultimate aim was to quash the investigation and obstruct justice, potentially a federal crime or an impeachable offense. Some legal experts said Comey's account could bolster such a case.

Ryan Goodman, a professor at New York University School of Law, said Trump's efforts to protect Flynn provide "strong evidence" of obstruction of justice. However, Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, said that while Trump's dealings with Comey were inappropriate, "We do not indict people for being boorish or clueless."

Comey's statement came hours after two top intelligence officials told lawmakers they never felt "pressured" to do anything inappropriate by the president. But Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and Adm. Mike Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency, angered members of the Senate intelligence committee by staunchly refusing to answer questions about conversations they had with Trump.

The ex-FBI director's testimony recounts his conversations with the apparent precision of a veteran lawman. Comey notes he had nine one-on-one interactions with Trump over a four-month stretch, compared to two private conversations with President Barack Obama between September 2013 and the end of 2016. He also says he did not keep written memos of his interactions with Obama.

The first meeting with Trump after the inauguration occurred on Jan. 27, during a private dinner at the White House that Comey came to view as an attempt by the president to "create some sort of patronage relationship."

According to Comey, Trump asked if he wanted to remain as FBI director and declared: "I need loyalty. I expect loyalty." Comey says he replied that he could offer his honesty, and that when Trump said he wanted "honest loyalty," Comey paused and said, "You will get that from me."

Comey also describes at length a Feb. 14 meeting in the Oval Office in which he believed Trump asked him to back off an investigation into Flynn.

"He then said, 'I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go,'" Comey says, according to the prepared remarks. He said he believed the president was talking only about Flynn, not about the broader Russia probe.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said she was unsure if the president read Comey's testimony after its release. Asked whether the president stood by earlier assertions that he had neither sought Comey's loyalty nor asked for the Flynn investigation to be dropped, she said: "I can't imagine the president not standing by his own statement."

Earlier Wednesday, Trump announced that he planned to nominate Christopher Wray, a former Justice Department official, as Comey's successor.

Trump allies have raised questions about Comey's credibility ahead of his testimony, noting that the FBI had to correct some of his remarks from his last appearance on Capitol Hill. They've also questioned why Comey did not raise his concerns about Trump publicly or resign.

Comey's prepared testimony does not full answer that question, though he does say he asked Attorney General Jeff Sessions to help prevent him having any direct communication with the president in the future.

Trump has repeatedly cast the Russia investigation as a "hoax" and denied having any improper ties to Moscow. According to Comey, Trump was acutely aware of the political toll of the investigation, complaining that the probe had left a "cloud" that was "impairing his ability to act on behalf of the country."

In a phone call on March 30, Comey says the president asked him what could be done to "lift the cloud." He says Trump also volunteered that "he had nothing to do with Russia, had not been involved with hookers in Russia, and had always assumed he was being recorded when in Russia" - referencing an unverified intelligence dossier detailing compromising information Moscow had allegedly collected on Trump.

The White House initially said Trump fired Comey on the recommendation of the Justice Department, citing as justification a memo from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein that criticized Comey's handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation. But Trump later said he was thinking of "this Russia thing" when he fired Comey and would have dismissed him without the Justice Department's input.

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Annotated testimony:

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3860401-Os-Jcomey-060817.html

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AP writers Mark Sherman and Sam Hananel contributed to this report.

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Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC and Eric Tucker at http://twitter.com/etuckerAP

FILE - In this Feb. 25, 2016, file photo, then-FBI Director James Comey, testifies before a House Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Subcommittee budget hearing about the Federal Bureau of Investigation's FY 2017 budget, on Capitol Hill in Washington. Comey will testify that President Donald Trump sought his "loyalty" and asked what could be done to "lift the cloud" of investigation shadowing his White House, according to prepared remarks released ahead of his appearance on Capitol Hill on June 8, 2017. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

FILE - In this May 3, 2017, file photo, then-FBI Director James Comey testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, before the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing: "Oversight of the Federal Bureau of Investigation." Comey will testify that President Donald Trump sought his "loyalty" and asked what could be done to "lift the cloud" of investigation shadowing his White House, according to prepared remarks released ahead of his appearance on Capitol Hill on June 8, 2017. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) - Assurances to an incoming president that he was not under federal investigation. A president's unprecedented request for loyalty from an FBI director. A "very concerning" request from the president to end an investigation into a devoted presidential appointee. Lawmakers hungry for answers and frustrated by the reticence of national security executives to provide them.

It's been a month of extraordinary drama since President Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, rife with leaked details of private memos detailing awkward interactions with the president and the rare appointment of a special counsel to alleviate concerns of White House interference in an ongoing investigation.

A day before Comey's much-anticipated testimony before the Senate intelligence committee, the former FBI director's prepared remarks were officially released, bringing into public view new details in the Trump-Comey saga.

Here's how we got to this point, and here are some things to expect from the most anticipated congressional hearing in recent memory:

THE BACKSTORY:

The testimony, Comey's first public comments since his May 9 firing, unfolds against the extraordinary backdrop of an FBI investigation that has shadowed the Trump White House from the outset and threatens to cripple its agenda.

At the time he was fired, Comey had been overseeing the investigation into possible coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign for months.

The White House's stated reasons for firing Comey were contradicted by the president himself, raising questions about whether Trump had fired Comey to derail the Russia investigation.

The White House initially said Trump was acting on the recommendation of Justice Department leaders, citing as justification a memo from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein that lambasted Comey's handling of the Hillary Clinton email server investigation. But Trump gave a different explanation when he said in an NBC News interview that he had already decided to dismiss Comey and was thinking of "this Russia thing" when he did so.

Trump's actions and justifications presented the possibility that Trump's intention was to obstruct justice.

COMEY'S TESTIMONY

Comey, a skilled raconteur who generally tilts in favor of openness, is well-accustomed to the spotlight and in particular to sensational congressional hearings, including one 10 years ago in which he revealed a dramatic hospital room clash with Bush administration officials.

Thursday's testimony before the Senate intelligence committee is expected to be his most dramatic yet.

The official release of Comey's remarks on Wednesday afternoon came shortly after the conclusion of testimony from Comey's former national security peers who refused to answer senators' questions about their own interactions with Trump. There have been reports that the president tried to pressure NSA Director Mike Rogers and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats to publicly push back on the investigation.

The former director's prepared remarks answered many of the looming questions:

-Did the president ask Comey for his loyalty? Yes. "I didn't move, speak or change my facial expression in any way during the awkward silence that followed," Comey said in his written testimony.

-Did the president ask Comey to stop investigating his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn? Yes. "I had understood the president to be requesting that we drop any investigation of Flynn in connection with false statements about his conversations with the Russian ambassador in December," Comey said.

-How often did Trump and Comey communicate with each other before he was fired? Nine times, Comey said. "Three in person and six on the phone."

-After one of these encounters, did Comey actually tell Attorney General Jeff Sessions that he did not want to meet with the president alone again? Yes. "I took the opportunity to implore the Attorney General to prevent any future direct communication between the President and me," Comey said.

But Republicans are likely to press Comey on why he did not raise his concerns about Trump publicly or resign. Some may attempt to divert attention from Comey's remarks about Trump by focusing on two issues they've repeatedly seized on: leaks and revealing the names of Americans in intelligence reports.

ANY LIMITS?

The White House said Monday it would not invoke executive privilege over Comey's upcoming testimony - officials predicted it would look bad otherwise.

Comey, who is used to not answering lawmakers' questions about ongoing investigations, is not likely to say anything Thursday that could interfere with, or undercut, the ongoing federal investigation into Russia ties. That investigation is being led by Comey's predecessor, Robert Mueller.

Mueller was appointed by the Justice Department last month as special counsel in charge of the investigation. The two former FBI directors are known to have warm feelings and respect for each other. A Comey associate has said he obtained Mueller's permission to testify.

On Tuesday, Trump was asked what his message for Comey would be. He said, "I wish him luck."

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Follow Eric Tucker on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/etuckerAP
BIRMINGHAM, England (AP) - Pakistan revived its Champions Trophy ambitions by beating South Africa by 19 runs in Group B on Wednesday in the latest rain-affected match in the tournament.

Having restricted the South Africans to 219-8 after losing the toss, Pakistan was 119-3 after 27 overs and ahead of the par score under the Duckworth-Lewis-Stern scoring system when rain stopped play at Edgbaston.

No more play was possible in the day-night contest, which was shaping up to be the most thrilling of the seven group-stage matches so far. Two of them have been washouts.

Pakistan's Babar Azam, right, and Pakistan's Mohammad Hafeez touch gloves during the ICC Champions Trophy match between Pakistan and South Africa at Edgbaston in Birmingham, England, Wednesday, June 7, 2017. (AP Photo/Rui Vieira)

The result threw the group wide open, with India, Pakistan and South Africa all on two points. India plays its match in hand against Sri Lanka at The Oval on Thursday, and each team will then have one more match left.

South Africa, the world's top-ranked ODI team, may need to beat defending champion India to advance to the semifinals after being stifled by a Pakistan side that showed much more energy and enthusiasm than the one beaten by 124 runs by India on Sunday.

David Miller (75 not out) was the only South Africa batsman to reach a half-century as the Proteas got tied up by some consistent bowling by Pakistan, initially by spinners Imad Wasim and Mohammad Hafeez and then paceman Hasan Ali.

When captain AB de Villiers departed first ball for the first time in 212 ODI innings, South Africa had plunged from 40-0 to 61-3 with Imad and Hafeez accounting for the wickets.

Hasan took the next three wickets - including two in successive balls to remove JP Duminy (8) and Wayne Parnell (0) - and took catches to see off Chris Morris (28) and Kagiso Rabada (26) in an inspired display that got even better when he conceded just six runs off the final over.

Hasan finished with figures of 3-24. South Africa's powerful battling lineup only hit 12 boundaries in total, with Miller striking four of them (three sixes and one four) in his 104-ball knock.

Pakistan's fast start to the reply was slowed when fast bowler Morne Morkel collected two wickets in three balls - ODI debutant Fakhar Zaman (31) and Azhar Ali (9) - to leave the score 41-2.

Hafeez and Babar Azam negotiated their way through 10 tough overs, going 20 balls without scoring at one stage, before unloading to get Pakistan back on track.

Hafeez fell for 26, with Morkel again the wicket-taker early in his second spell, but Babar and Shoaib Malik were looking good on 31 and 16, respectively, when the rain arrived.

Edgbaston was virtually empty when the umpires brought an end to the match.

Pakistan players celebrate after Pakistan's Hasan Ali, left, bowled South Africa's JP Duminy caught Pakistan's Babar Azam for 8 runs during the ICC Champions Trophy match between Pakistan and South Africa at Edgbaston in Birmingham, England, Wednesday, June 7, 2017. (AP Photo/Rui Vieira)

Pakistan's Hasan Ali, left, celebrates after bowling South Africa's JP Duminy, right, caught Pakistan's Babar Azam for 8 runs during the ICC Champions Trophy match between Pakistan and South Africa at Edgbaston in Birmingham, England, Wednesday, June 7, 2017. (AP Photo/Rui Vieira)

South Africa's David Miller celebrates 50 runs during the ICC Champions Trophy match between Pakistan and South Africa at Edgbaston in Birmingham, England, Wednesday, June 7, 2017. (AP Photo/Rui Vieira)
NEW YORK (AP) - Irish War Cry is back on the Triple Crown trail as the 7-2 favorite for the Belmont Stakes.

The colt claimed that status after expected favorite Classic Empire was forced out Wednesday because of an abscess in his right front hoof.

No one was more surprised at the turn of events than trainer Graham Motion. He left his base in Fair Hill, Maryland, early in the day and by the time he arrived in New York, his colt was the favorite in the 12-horse field for Saturday's race.

Race Caller Larry Collins, left, announces Irish War Cry will start in the 7th post position during the post position draw of the 149th Belmont Stakes horse race, Wednesday, June 7, 2017, in New York. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

"It's just very odd," he said after the draw at Rockefeller Plaza. "This goes to show how quickly things can go wrong. It just takes a little thing like a foot abscess. They're animals, and things can go wrong at any time."

Classic Empire was coming off a runner-up finish in the Preakness on May 20 after being fourth in the Kentucky Derby.

He had been training well up to the Belmont before trainer Mark Casse found the abscess on Wednesday. It's a recurrence of the problem that bothered Classic Empire after his loss in the Holy Bull in February.

"He's such a tough horse, he doesn't really let you know until it's really painful to him," Casse said. "If he hadn't, he would have run in the race and probably not run as well, and then have it flare up. I'm looking toward it as a bright spot, that he showed it three days out and not the day after."

Casse said Classic Empire will be pointed toward the Haskell Invitational this summer.

The Belmont was already without the Kentucky Derby (Always Dreaming) and Preakness (Cloud Computing) winners. The wide-open field features a mix of horses that ran in one or both of those races and others new to the Triple Crown series.

"I don't think there's a horse in here you'd be surprised if they won," Motion said. "It's a great betting race from that point of view."

Irish War Cry drew the No. 7 post under jockey Rajiv Maragh.

The colt finished a disappointing 10th in the Kentucky Derby and skipped the Preakness. Motion is hoping Irish War Cry will bounce back the way he did from a similarly puzzling seventh-place result in the Fountain of Youth to win the Wood Memorial in April.

"I felt he needed to be here," Motion said.

So did 86-year-old owner Isabelle de Tomaso, who has her first Belmont starter since she started owning thoroughbreds in 2003. Her father, Amory Haskell, was the first president and chairman of the Monmouth Park Jockey Club and for whom the $1 million Haskell Invitational is named.

"She's very good, she never questions what I do," Motion said. "She's the greatest owner to train for."

Japan-based Epicharis is the 4-1 second choice, followed by Lookin At Lee at 5-1.

Epicharis is eligible for a $1 million bonus from the New York Racing Association if he wins the Belmont. He finished second by a nose in the UAE Derby.

Lookin At Lee will be the only horse to run in all three legs of the Triple Crown. He finished second in the Derby and fourth in the Preakness.

The Belmont field in post position order with jockeys and odds: Twisted Tom, Javier Castellano, 20-1; Tapwrit, Jose Ortiz, 6-1; Gormley, Victor Espinoza, 8-1; J Boys Echo, Robby Albarado, 15-1; Hollywood Handsome, Florent Geroux, 30-1; Lookin At Lee, Irad Ortiz Jr., 5-1; Irish War Cry, Maragh, 7-2; Senior Investment, Channing Hill, 12-1; Meantime, Mike Smith, 15-1; Multiplier, Joel Rosario, 15-1; Espicharis, Christophe Lemaire, 4-1; and Patch, John Velazquez, 12-1.
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) - A Connecticut prosecutor has agreed to a new trial for a man whose conviction for a 1991 murder was recently put in doubt by DNA testing.

Hartford State's Attorney Gail Hardy said Wednesday that a motion for a new trial by Alfred Swinton's lawyers should be granted. A judge is scheduled to rule Thursday on the motion and decide whether to set bail for Swinton.

Swinton was convicted of murder in 2001 in the killing of Carla Terry in Hartford a decade earlier. He was sentenced to 60 years in prison.

Recent DNA testing ruled him out as the source of bite marks on Terry's body, and a forensic dentist recanted trial testimony that Swinton's teeth matched the marks.

Swinton was investigated, but not charged, in four other 1990s killings. He has said he never killed anyone.
FRESNO, Calif. (AP) - The Latest on a Central California man shot and killed by police (all times local):

3:15 p.m.

Police say a suspected gang member shot and killed by police in California had fired dozens of rounds, many striking a home full of children.

Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer said Wednesday that officers arrived and quickly escorted six children and four adults to safety as the man fired dozens of rounds from the backyard.

Officers killed 21-year-old Salvadro Lopez who lived in a shed behind the home.

Dyer said Lopez had expressed a desire to die, possibly take officers with him. Officers heard some bullets whizzing past them.

The chief said a woman in the home called police fearing everyone inside would be killed. Another woman inside said she was the man's godmother.

It comes a day after a suspected robbery in another Fresno neighborhood left three dead.

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8 a.m.

Central California police say a suspected gang member was shot and killed after he fired a least 75 rounds at officers with a high-powered rifle.

The Fresno Bee reports (http://bit.ly/2sSOuth) that the incident occurred in Fresno early Wednesday. No police officers or civilians were hit or injured.

Police Chief Jerry Dyer said the man, who he described as a 21-year-old gang member, didn't appear to be targeting anyone. His name was not released.

Police recovered between 75 and 100 casings at the scene.

Dyer described the shooting as an isolated incident.

The violence comes nearly two months after another Fresno random shooting.

Authorities say three white men were killed April 18 in a racially motivated attack. Prosecutors have charged Kori Ali Muhammad, who's black, in the attacks and with killing a fourth white man.

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Information from: The Fresno Bee, http://www.fresnobee.com
DENVER (AP) - In a step toward possible sainthood, the remains of a former slave have been moved to a Catholic cathedral in Denver, where people lined up Wednesday to honor her and pray for her help.

Many touched the glass covering of a wooden chest holding the exhumed skull and other bones of Julia Greeley, a domestic worker known for her charity work and evangelism until her death in 1918.

Others placed rosary beads on top of the chest, snapped photos and held up their children so they could view the sacred remains.

This 1916 photo provided by the Archdiocese of Denver shows Julia Greeley with Marjorie Ann Urquhart in McDonough Park in Denver. Greeley, a former slave, is being considered for possible sainthood. In a step toward possible sainthood, the remains of Greeley were moved to a Catholic cathedral in Denver. People lined up Wednesday, June 7, 2017, to honor her and pray for her help at the cathedral. (Archdiocese of Denver via AP)

After the viewing, the chest was screwed shut, sealed with gold wax and moved to a prominent spot next to the altar at the Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception.

The remains were exhumed last month from a grave in a suburban Denver cemetery and moved to the cathedral - a typical step at the beginning of the sainthood process, archdiocesan spokeswoman Karna Swanson said.

Greeley is one of four people that U.S. bishops voted to allow to be investigated for possible sainthood at their fall meeting. She joins four other African Americans placed into consideration in recent years. She is also the first person to be interred in the Denver cathedral since it opened in 1912

"Not a bishop, not a priest, but a lay woman," Auxiliary Bishop Jorge H. Rodriguez-Novelo noted during the ceremony Wednesday that came 99 years to the day after Greeley died on her way to Mass.

The archdiocese is gathering testimony and documentation about Greeley's life as part of the first stage of the sainthood process. It will send a report to the Vatican, which will then decide whether to investigate Greeley's virtues.

After that, church officials would look at whether any miracles could be attributed to Greeley, who was known for providing wood, coal and other supplies for people in need. She did the work at night to remain anonymous and to avoid embarrassment for those receiving the help.

Greeley sometimes sent children to knock on the doors of those who needed help then run away, said Mary Leisring, president of the Julia Greeley Guild, which helps promote her story.

Greeley was born into slavery in Hannibal, Missouri, sometime between 1833 and 1848. As a child she lost an eye after the slave owner accidentally struck her with a whip while beating her mother.

Greeley routinely visited every fire station in the city to spread her faith because she wanted to make sure the firefighters were prepared to meet God should they die on the job.

She did her charitable work on foot despite suffering from extensive arthritis, which was confirmed by Christine Pink of Metropolitan State University, a forensic anthropologist who supervised the exhumation of her bones.

The initial screening of Greeley by the archdiocese is expected to be completed next year.

"Whether she is an official saint or not she's already a saint to me," Leisring said.
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Monaco's Prince Albert II, a life-long environmental campaigner, has a message for President Donald Trump after his withdrawal from the Paris climate accord: Listen "a little more carefully" to scientists and scientific evidence on the impact of climate change.

The ruler of the tiny city-state on the Mediterranean Sea told reporters Wednesday that if he met the U.S. leader he would also tell him to "look at the tremendous implications that go along with having the U.S. withdraw from the Paris agreement."

Albert, son of the late Prince Rainier and American actress Grace Kelly, said that while Trump's withdrawal "is catastrophic," the reaction from U.S. mayors, governors and many in the corporate world has been "wonderful."

"So I think there'll be a tremendous movement to ... keep the fight against climate change alive around the world and in this country," he said.

Albert noted that it will be at least three years before the United States can withdraw from the Paris agreement, which aims to reduce carbon emissions and keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) compared with pre-industrial times.

"So there might still be hope," he said. "I think everybody's crossing their fingers for that - that there might be a reversal of that decision."

Even without the United States, the global movement to combat climate change remains strong, Albert said.

"We're not doing this just for ourselves, not for now, but for future generations, and I think that should resonate in most people's minds and hearts," he said.

Albert spoke at the first-ever U.N. conference on oceans and announced that Monaco Explorations will send the transoceanic exploration vessel Yersin on a three-year trip starting in July with scientific teams to conduct research in nine remote locations. The 250-foot ship with six laboratories has technology to prevent any waste entering the sea or the atmosphere.

Monaco faces the sea, Albert said, and that's why its rulers have always worked to protect the oceans.

"More than anything else, they are suffering from our ignorance and our indifference," he said.
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AP) - A Cabinet minister in the Dominican Republic will remain in custody as he faces charges in a corruption case involving the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht.

Supreme Court Justice Francisco Ortega ruled Wednesday that Industry and Commerce Minister Tamistocles Montas will be held for at least six months of "preventive detention" as authorities investigate allegations that Odebrecht paid bribes to secure government construction contracts.

The judge said seven others will also be held but that three legislators suspected of involvement cannot be detained because of parliamentary immunity. Two former officials got house arrest for health reasons.

Executives of Odebrecht told U.S. prosecutors that the company paid $92 million in bribes to Dominican officials since 2001 to secure government contracts.

Montas says he did not sign the contracts and has denied any wrongdoing.

___

This story has been corrected to show the Cabinet minister will be at least six months.
Dane Maxwell.JPG

Dane Maxwell will be sworn in as the newest mayor of Pascagoula after defeating challengers Independent Lazaro Rovira and Democrat Jenafer Gurley. (Tyler Carter/tcarter@al.com)

PASCAGOULA, Miss. -- With all wards reporting, Dane Maxwell defeated Democratic challenger Jenafer Gurley and Independent challenger Lazaro Rovira to become the next Mayor of the City of Pascagoula.

Maxwell garnered 2263 votes (77 percent) of the vote -- Rovira 493 (16 percent) and Gurley with 186 votes (7 percent). Maxwell is replacing Mayor Jim Blevins after he decided not to seek reelection.

"I believe the percentage shows that the people clearly wanted new leadership and that's what we are going to provide them with," Maxwell said. "I have always been pro business and pro resident and I am going to continue that."

Maxwell says he is going to open the door for new business in order to bring more jobs to the city.

"We are going to reward the residents who have been here and have struggled through this difficult time and then, we are going to bring in new businesses," he said. "We are already working on several projects. Things are going to start moving quick and will be in a positive direction."

In other Pascagoula races, Democrat Willie C. Jones defeated Independent Harold Payne 117-91 to become the newest councilman in Ward 1, replacing Marvin Pickett, Sr.

In Ward 2, longtime councilman and incumbent Democrat Freddy Jackson was defeated by Republican George Wolverton Sr. 176-166.

Republican Matt Parker won the Ward 4 councilman seat in the May 2 primary. Republican Incumbent Scott Tipton retains his seat in Ward 5.

Republican Jennifer Colmer defeated Republican incumbent Brenda Simkins in the May 2 general election to become the new councilwoman at-large.

In Ward 3, Republican Stephen Burrow defeated Independent challenger Marcel Kinnard 460-194.

Whether Burrow and Colmer will be allowed to serve is a decision that will ultimately be decided by the Mississippi State Ethics Commission after they ruled a conflict of interest exists because of their ties to the Jackson County Utility Authority.

Burrow, however, says he will take the Ward 3 council seat on July 3 despite the ethics commission decision.

"Before 7 p.m. tonight, my hope was to win the Ward 3 seat and now that I have done so thanks to the voters, I plan to take that seat when the new administration is sworn in no matter what," Burrow said, "I will take office. If that means I need to leave my law firm and move some things around, I will do it. I will take office."

Newly elected candidates will be sworn in on July 5.
All eight people murdered in the London Bridge terror attack have now been identified.

Christine Archibald (Family handout issued via Canadian Government/PA)

She died in her fiances arms after being struck by the speeding van on London Bridge.

Her family said she would have had no understanding of the callous cruelty that caused her death.

James McMullan

Melissa McMullan described her brother as an inspiration adding: While our pain will never diminish, it is important for us all to carry on with our lives in direct opposition to those who wish to destroy us, and remember that hatred is the refuge of small-minded individuals and will only breed more.

She said that police told her they were unable to formally identify him until the coroners report is released.

Brittany news outlet Le Telegramme reported an account from Boro Bistro manager Vincent Le Berre, who told how his colleague, Mr Pigeard, was attacked by a terrorist in the bar near Borough Market on Saturday night.

I managed to escape him, but my friend Alexandre did not have that chance. He was hit in the neck with a knife, he said.

Mr Pigeard was said to be from Caen, in Normandy, but had been living in London for more than two years.

Sebastien Belanger was last seen drinking at the Boro Bistro near Borough Market

He was drinking at the Boro Bistro near Borough Market when the area came under attack.

Originally from Angers, western France, Mr Belanger had lived in London for several years and reportedly worked at the Coq dArgent restaurant in the City.

The BBC said the chefs aunt had confirmed his body was identified by his mother and brother on Wednesday.

His friend Damien Lecomte, 34, told the Press Association on Monday: He is the very definition of a friend  always here to help you, to listen to you, whatever he can do to help you, he is going to be there.

Kirsty Boden

Relatives said the 28-year-old was loved and adored by her family, friends and boyfriend, while colleagues at Guys and St Thomas Hospital in central London described her as one in a million.

As she ran towards danger, in an effort to help people on the bridge, Kirsty sadly lost her life, her family said in a statement. We are so proud of Kirstys brave actions which demonstrate how selfless, caring and heroic she was.

Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull told Melbourne Radio 3AW Ms Boden was killed by cowardly, vicious terrorists.

Victim in #LondonBridge terror attack named as Sara Zelenak, 21, an Australian national https://t.co/1NlTe0RuuF pic.twitter.com/PtorlaUwlG  Metropolitan Police (@metpoliceuk) June 7, 2017

The Metropolitan Police confirmed the au pair, who lived and worked in London, was among the dead.

Her family said in a statement: We are deeply saddened at the tragic loss of our beautiful daughter and sister of Harrison and Scott.

Sharing a video of his daughter online, her father Mark Wallace wrote: I really miss that funny little laugh.

Friend Elle Bishop said on Facebook: I find solace in the fact that the hate that saw you taken from us, you have never felt inside, making you a remarkable young woman.

A Spanish flag flies at half mast for the victims of the London attack, in Madrid, Spain

The Spanish foreign ministry confirmed the death on Wednesday, saying: The exemplary attitude of Ignacio Echeverria during the attacks is, for everybody, a model of solidarity.

His father, Joaquin Echeverria, said British authorities had previously not shared any information with them, but his sons employer, HSBC, had provided the services of a private detective to help with their search.

On Wednesday, journalist and relative Isabel Duran wrote on Twitter: Ignacio Echeverria attacked the terrorists to try to save a woman. He is in heaven with his inseparable skateboard.

Xavier Thomas is a French national

The French couple, who were visiting London for the weekend, were walking south over London Bridge around the time the attack started, according to police.

Ms Delcros was seriously injured when she was struck by the van, while witnesses accounts suggest Mr Thomas, 45, was thrown into the Thames by the impact, Scotland Yard said.

The body was recovered near Limehouse in east London, downstream of London Bridge.

Mr Thomass next of kin have been informed.
US President Donald Trump has told Saudi Arabias King Salman that a united Gulf Cooperation Council is critical to defeating terrorism and promoting regional stability.

It is a change in tone for the president who had appeared to side with Saudi Arabia and other countries against Qatar in a series of tweets on Tuesday that seemed to endorse the accusation that Qatar funds terrorist groups.

He also sought to cast the anti-Qatar action led by the Saudis and the United Arab Emirates as the result of his trip last month to Riyadh, where he pressed leaders from dozens of Arab and Muslim governments, including Qatars emir, to combat extremism.

Mr Trump said he had told the kings, presidents and prime ministers that funding Radical Ideology cant be tolerated, and Leaders pointed to Qatar  look!

They said they would take a hard line on funding extremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism! Mr Trump said on Twitter, claiming his visit to Saudi Arabia was already paying off.

Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud with Kuwait's Emir Sheikh Jaber al-Ahmad al-Sabah (Saudi Press Agency via AP)

Later, he appeared to take a more measured tone during a call with King Salman. Mr Trump told King Salman that a united Gulf Cooperation Council is critical to defeating terrorism and promoting regional stability, according to a White House readout of the conversation.

The council includes Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Oman and Kuwait.

The presidents sharp critique of Qatar pulled the US directly into a conflict that American diplomats had wanted the bickering parties to resolve among themselves. The US was not planning a major mediation role, a State Department official said, pointing to offers from Turkey and Kuwait to intervene in what is emerging as the worst diplomatic crisis in the Persian Gulf in decades.

Donald Trump with Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani (Evan Vucci/AP)

The fracas pits Qatar  the worlds biggest producer of liquefied natural gas  against Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain. Those countries on Monday severed diplomatic ties with Qatar, leading to suspended flights and regional ports closed to Qatari ships as anxious residents started stockpiling food.

Qatars neighbours have long accused the country of tolerating or even encouraging support for extremist groups, including al Qaidas Syria branch  all of which Qatar denies.

But its independent foreign policy has led to various tensions with its neighbours. The regions Sunni states bristle at Qatars less hostile position toward Shiite Iran and object to its backing groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, whose ideology challenges the system of hereditary rule in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and elsewhere.
Gunmen and suicide bombers have attacked Irans parliament and the shrine of its revolutionary leader, killing at least 12 people and leaving dozens more injured.

The Islamic State group has said it was behind the attacks, marking the first time the Sunni extremists have taken responsibility for an assault in Shiite-majority Iran.

The attacks began when assailants armed with Kalashnikov rifles stormed the parliament building, starting a three-hour siege during which one of the attackers blew himself up inside while a session was in progress.

An armed man stands in a window of the parliament building in Tehran

Deputy interior minister Mohammad Hossein Zolfaghari told Irans state TV the apparently male attackers wore womens attire. All four attackers were killed during the violence.

The IS groups Aamaq news agency released a 24-second video purportedly shot inside the parliament building during the siege. The video, circulated online, shows a gunman and a lifeless body of a man lying on the ground next to a desk.

A voice on the video praises God and says in Arabic: Do you think we will leave? We will remain, God willing. Another voice repeats the same words. The two appeared to be parroting a slogan used by IS spokesman Abu Mohammad al-Adnani, who was killed in Syria last year.

Police officers take position around Iran's parliament building

The militants are at war with Iranian-backed forces in Syria and Iraq, and view Shiites as apostates.

Witnesses reported seeing several police snipers on the rooftops of buildings around the parliament, while attackers were said to be shooting from the fourth floor of the parliament down at people in the streets below.

Police helicopters circled over the parliament building and all mobile phone lines from inside were disconnected. Politicians and reporters were ordered to remain in place inside the chamber during the siege.

The shrine of Ayatollah Khomeini just outside Tehran, Iran (Hasan Sarbakhshian/AP)

Parliament speaker Ali Larijani called the attack a cowardly act, and added: Iran is an active and effective pillar in the fight against terrorists and they want to damage it.

Soon after the parliament attack, a suicide bomber and other assailants targeted the shrine of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini located just outside the capital.

Khomeini, who died in 1989, is a towering figure in Iran. He led the 1979 Islamic revolution that toppled the Western-backed shah and became Irans first supreme leader.

Mizan Online, an Iranian state-run news website, said 12 people were killed and 42 injured in the two attacks.
English rider Davey Lambert has died after being injured in a crash during the Isle of Man TT.

The 48-year-old Gateshead rider suffered multiple injuries when his Kawasaki machine crashed on the third lap of the opening Superbike race at Greeba Castle on Sunday.

Lambert, who had raced on the Isle of Man since 2014, was treated at the scene before being airlifted to Nobles Hospital. He was later transferred to Aintree University Hospital in Liverpool, where he died on Tuesday evening.

Davey Lambert died at Aintree University Hospital (Peter Byrne/PA)

Sad to wake up to the news about Davey Lambert. Hopefully everyone has a safe TT today.  Glenn Irwin (@GIrwinRacing) June 7, 2017

A statement on Lamberts Facebook page read: With a heavy heart it saddens us to have to break the news that Davey lost his fight at 19.50pm this evening surrounded by his family and close friends.

He went out of this world in exactly the way he would have wanted, doing what he loved. He was a big man with an even bigger heart who will be sorely missed by so many. As a family we would like to thank everyone for their kind words and support.

We would like to thank all of the amazing doctors and nurses who tried so hard to save Daveys life at the scene, Nobles Hospital and Aintree University Hospital. We know you did everything you possibly could to help him and for that we are eternally grateful. Ride Fast Lambo.

In a statement the race organisers said: ACU Events Ltd wishes to pass on their deepest sympathy to his partner Tracey, his family and friends.
A major joint UK-Irish ceremony has begun in Belgium to mark the centenary of a First World War battle where unionist and nationalist soldiers from Ireland fought side by side in the trenches.

The Duke of Cambridge and Irish premier Enda Kenny have arrived at the Island of Ireland Peace Park in Messines in Flanders, to commemorate the first day of the week-long battle.

William and the Taoiseach have been joined by Princess Astrid of Belgium and Lord Dunlop, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Northern Ireland Office to honour the soldiers who fought in the battle.

Today The Duke of Cambridge is visiting Belgium to attend commemorations marking the centenary of the Battle of Messines Ridge. pic.twitter.com/vr29zsjti9  The Prince and Princess of Wales (@KensingtonRoyal) June 7, 2017

They laid wreaths at the foot of the Round Tower memorial, before meeting invited guests including descendants of those who fought at the Battle.

The successful Allied offensive on June 7 1917 was the first occasion the 36th Ulster and 16th Irish divisions fought together on the front line.

The two divisions predominantly comprised men who were on opposing sides of the great political upheaval back in Ireland around whether the country should be granted self-governance from Westminster.

The Duke of Cambridge, Princess Astrid of Belgium and Taoiseach Enda Kenny arrive for the ceremony (Niall Carson/PA)

Former Stormont first minister Arlene Foster is also attending the shared event.

The commemoration focuses on the Island of Ireland Peace Park at Messines. The park was built in 1998  the year of the historic Good Friday peace agreement  to mark the sacrifice of all those Irishmen who fought and died in the war.

As part of the commemoration, William and Mr Kenny will also visit nearby Wytschaete Cemetery, where many of those who died now rest.

A cross dedicated to 16th Irish Division at Wytschaete Cemetery (David Young/PA)

The village of Wytschaete was captured by the 36th and 16th during the Battle of Messines.

A new memorial erected at the entrance of the cemetery last week depicts a scene that many believe encapsulates the legacy of the day Irish Protestant and Catholic soldiers fought together  the attempted battlefield rescue of fatally wounded 56-year-old nationalist Home Rule MP Willie Redmond by a young unionist private, John Meeke.

The ceremony took place at the Island of Ireland Peace Park in Messines (Niall Carson/PA)

Major Redmonds brother John was the leader of the constitutional nationalist Home Rule movement.

The Duke and Mr Kenny will pay their respects at the 16th Irish Division Memorial Cross in a private ceremony before meeting family members of servicemen buried in the cemetery.

William and Enda Kenny lay wreaths during the ceremony (Niall Carson/PA)

The capture of Messines Ridge was a key objective of the Allied Forces ahead of their mid-summer 1917 offensive on German lines between the nearby town of Ypres and the small village of Passchendaele  a battle that has since become synonymous with the horrors of trench warfare.

The Allies sustained around 10,000 casualties during the Battle of Messines, the Germans around 25,000. Between them the 36th and 16th lost around 2,500 killed, injured or missing.

The two divisions fought together only twice in the First World War. The second came in a heavy defeat, two months after Messines, during an ill-fated offensive at nearby Langemark in the first weeks of the Battle of Passchendaele.

The commemoration in Belgium is Mr Kennys last overseas engagement as Taoiseach before he steps down from the role later this month.
Here is a full guide to General Election night 2017  the key moments to look out for and when and where to see them.

What to watch

A Labour MP being filmed during his victory speech (Barry Batchelor/PA)

David Dimbleby will be leading the coverage on BBC One and the BBC News Channel as the polls close, from 9.55pm to 7am on Thursday. This will be his 10th time at the helm of the BBCs coverage, joined by graphics whizz Jeremy Vine and reporters Emily Maitlis and Mishal Husain.

Huw Edwards will then take over until 10am on Friday, joined by Andrew Neil at 1pm. Neil will host the rest of the coverage on BBC Two until 4.30pm.

Tom Bradby will steer ITVs coverage through the night, starting at 9.55pm. He will be joined by the channels Political Editor Robert Peston, former Labour MP and Strictly Come Dancing star Ed Balls and Evening Standard Editor and former Chancellor George Osborne.

Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid will take over with a special edition of Good Morning Britain from 6am-9.25am, after which an extended ITV news will run until 2pm.

Channel 4 is mixing comment with comedy for its alternative election night. From 9.45pm the stars of Gogglebox will be giving their views on the election, followed by news heavyweights Jeremy Paxman and Cathy Newman co-hosting with David Mitchell and Richard Osman.

The programme promises to combine serious coverage mixed with light relief until 6am.

#GE2017 prep in full swing - scaffolding going up in front of Parliament! I'll be here on the night with @adamboultonSKY at the results hub pic.twitter.com/aIMOTFN4MF  Sophy Ridge (@SophyRidgeSky) June 3, 2017

Veteran news editor Adam Boulton partners with Sophy Ridge to lead the election charge on Sky News, beginning at 9pm. They will be supported by live coverage from 300 constituencies.

Skys results night will extend to Snapchat from 10pm with rolling coverage on the picture and video sharing platform.

First indication of results

The 2010 exit poll result was projected onto Big Ben's tower (Tim Ireland/PA)

The result of a joint BBC, ITV and Sky exit poll will be released at 10pm  as soon as polling stations close.

The survey will be taken from 144 polling stations across Britain, asking voters at these stations to mark a mock ballot paper to show how they have voted.

Similar exit polls have correctly predicted who would take the keys to Number 10 in the last five elections, and in 2005 and 2010 came extremely close to predicting the exact number of seats.

Results to watch for

Results to watch for as election night progresses.

The three Sunderland constituencies  traditionally first to declare  should be in. All are safe Labour seats and all three should return women MPs, meaning that by this point in the night the House of Commons should be 100% female.

Nuneaton: The first marginal seat to declare. Marcus Jones (Con) is defending a majority of 4,882 and Labour needs a 5.4% swing to win.

Constituency profile: Wrexham

Darlington: If the Tories win here in Labours heartland of north-east England, they are on course for a very good night.

Wrexham: The first chance for the Tories to gain a seat from Labour in Wales.

Bury North, Peterborough and Thurrock: Three Tory marginals are due to declare  all are key Labour targets.

Clwyd South: Can the Tories surge in Wales and grab this seat from Labour?

Hastings & Rye: The seat of Home Secretary Amber Rudd, which would fall to Labour on a 4.8% swing.

Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn will be hoping to retain Islington North (PA)

Islington North: Jeremy Corbyns result should see him safely returned by a big margin.

Vale of Clwyd and Warwickshire North: Two chances for Labour to make gains from the Conservatives.

Ynys Mon: A close three-way fight between Labour (who are defending the seat), Plaid Cymru and the Conservatives

(PA graphic)

Dunbartonshire East: The Liberal Democrats are hoping to take this seat back from the SNP.

Ealing Central & Acton and Hampstead & Kilburn: Two marginal seats that could offer the Tories their first chance of gaining from Labour in London.

Exeter: Can Ben Bradshaw cling on to one of Labours few remaining seats in the South West?

Moray: Might the SNPs depute leader Angus Robertson be defeated by the Conservatives?

Westmorland & Lonsdale: Tim Farrons seat is due to declare. The Lib Dem leader would lose to the Tories on a 9.3% swing.

Sedgefield was the seat of former PM Tony Blair (Owen Humphreys/PA)

Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale & Tweeddale: The Tories only seat in Scotland is being challenged by the SNP.

Enfield North, Ilford North and Westminster North: More Labour London seats at risk from a swing to the Conservatives.

Sedgefield: Tony Blairs former seat would fall to the Conservatives on an 8.9% swing.

Birmingham Northfield, Newcastle-under-Lyme and Walsall North: Three key West Midlands Labour seats at risk from a Tory surge.

Carshalton & Wallington and Southport: Two Lib Dem seats fancied by the Tories.

Gower: The seat with smallest majority in the country (just 27 in 2015), which Labour is hoping to take back from the Conservatives.

Richmond Park and Twickenham: Can Zac Goldsmith (Con) and Vince Cable (Lib Dem) win back their respective former seats?

Theresa May will need to wait til the early hours to learn her fate in Maidenhead (PA)

Blackpool South and Wolverhampton South West: Two more Labour marginals eyed by the Tories.

Maidenhead: Theresa Mays seat is expected to declare around now.

Sheffield Hallam: Lib Dem former deputy PM Nick Clegg could lose his seat on a swing of 2.2% to Labour.

Boston & Skegness: Ukip leader Paul Nuttall is hoping to win this seat from the Conservatives.

Bristol West: Can the Greens oust Labour and claim their second ever MP?

Brentford & Isleworth, City of Chester and Wirral West: Three of Labours most marginal seats  all are being challenged by the Tories.

Fermanagh & South Tyrone: Sinn Fein is hoping to win back the seat from the UUP.

Halifax: Theresa May launched the Tories manifesto here  but can Labour hold on?

Berwickshire, Roxburgh & Selkirk: The Conservatives are hoping to snap up this SNP marginal.

Hove: Can the Tories seize one of Labours few remaining seats in south-east England?

Brighton Pavilion: Caroline Lucas is defending the Greens only seat.

Derby North: On paper, Labours best chance of a gain from the Tories, who are defending a majority of just 41.

Derbyshire North East and Lancaster & Fleetwood: Two late chances for Tory gains from Labour.

Morley & Outwood: Labour is hoping to win back the seat of the former shadow chancellor Ed Balls.

Thanet South: Tory marginal being defended by Craig Mackinlay, who has been charged with allegedly overspending in the 2015 general election.

(PA graphic)

After a lull during the morning, the final seats should be declared just before lunchtime  Berwick-upon-Tweed, Blyth Valley and Wansbeck.
Heres what happened on the campaign trail today.

Good day

Today's @EveningStandard on eve of election reports the chaos engulfing Labour & sets out why we think people should vote Conservative pic.twitter.com/v8HskjXPlC  George Osborne (@George_Osborne) June 7, 2017

For the Conservatives with the news that The London Evening Standard has backed the party in the General Election.

The paper said Theresa May was the only person in this election with the policies, party and people capable of leading this country.

Bad day

For Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow, who chased the leaders of the main parties around the UK but didnt manage to secure an interview with Jeremy Corbyn. The chase included visiting Aberdeen, Colwyn Bay and Birmingham.

Quote of the day

Ruth Davidson

Ive thought an awful lot of things about Nicola Sturgeon in the past few years but I never thought she was a clype. Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson accuses Nicola Sturgeon of being a snitch for sharing details of a conversation with Kezia Dugdale about support for another Scottish referendum.

View from the voters

As she visited one stall, butchers on another booed and shouted "vote Labour" pic.twitter.com/mxdhc2BHHH  Sam Lister (@sam_lister_) June 7, 2017

As Theresa May began her last day of campaigning at Smithfield Market she was booed by some of the stall holders, with one shouting: Vote Labour!.

Picture of the day

Kezia Dugdale

Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale shows Labour is over its bacon sandwich phobia, serving up a tray of breakfast sandwiches at the Eric Liddell Centre Edinburgh.

Tweet of the day

The lawnmower story has a happy ending...#VoteLabour2017 pic.twitter.com/zCX4XFXe3x  Ed Miliband (@Ed_Miliband) June 7, 2017

Bit more of a close up to show. He really did mow the lawn @mark4thorne pic.twitter.com/zYncz7KKRr  Jane nightingale (@mjnightingale63) May 2, 2017

Ed Miliband proved that small gestures can make the difference as he shared a photo of himself with a woman holding a Labour poster. Miliband mowed her lawn for her at the start of the campaign.

Poll of polls

Poll of polls with 1 day to go

Polls remain unchanged from yesterday, with the Tories taking 44%, Labour 37% and the Lib Dems 8%.
ZAGREB, June 6 (Reuters) - Croatian liberals turned down a coalition with the ruling conservative HDZ party on Tuesday, increasing the likelihood of snap polls in less than a year.

"After a long discussion on the (party) presidency, it was clear that the party would split," Ivan Vrdoljak, the head of the Croatian People's Party (HNS), told reporters. "I did not want to let it happen, so eventually I proposed that we do not enter the HDZ-led government which was accepted."

Vrdoljak, who held talks with Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic, who also heads the HDZ, on a potential coalition, said he would resign as party leader.

"I had sincere intentions to drag Croatia out of (political)turmoil but splitting the party would be too high a price," Vrdoljak said.

Croatia is now a step closer to snap polls as all other key parliamentary parties also voiced unwillingness to join the HDZ-led government.

Plenkovic now seems to depend on a possible support of a few independent deputies together with representatives of national minorities, but it would likely make a rather thin and unstable majority.

The HDZ and its previous coalition partner, the centre-right Most ("Bridge") party, split in late April after Most supported the opposition in a no-confidence motion against Finance Minister Zdravko Maric, which he survived by one vote.

A second snap election after the one held last September, also after a split between the HDZ and the Most, would delay economic reforms needed to improve the investment environment and growth prospects in one of the European Union's weakest economies.

Plenkovic must propose four new ministers to parliament to replace those from Most. A vote on those appointments will be a clear test of whether he has secured enough parliamentary support unless he opts for early elections beforehand.

Plenkovic said on Tuesday his party favoured political stability but was ready to face snap polls.

In recent nationwide municipal polls the HDZ was the most successful party and according to a recent opinion poll it has support of 34 percent of voters ahead of the Social Democrats with 25 percent. (Reporting by Igor Ilic; Editing by Bill Trott)
By Eyanir Chinea

CARACAS, June 6 (Reuters) - Venezuelan opposition leaders on Tuesday accused security forces of assaulting and robbing demonstrators who participate in protests against President Nicolas Maduro.

Two videos distributed over social networks appear to show police and troops taking protesters' possessions during rallies on Monday, spurring outrage among many Venezuelans who already complain of excessive use of force during the two months of protests.

Opposition legislators on Tuesday filed a complaint with the state prosecutors' office against the police and the National Guard in relation to the alleged robberies.

Reuters could not independently verify the content of the videos. The Information Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

"(Interior Minister) Nestor Reverol gives them license to steal," said legislator Juan Matheus, adding that the complaint includes accusations of cruel and inhumane treatment.

One video shows four police officers surrounding a woman who is reeling from the effects of tear gas, with one of the officers pulling what appears to be a watch from her wrist.

In another, troops take a protester's helmet and handbag before boarding motorcycles.

The government says it is fighting opposition "terrorist cells" trying to overthrow Maduro.

They say the effort is similar to a 2002 coup that briefly ousted late socialist leader Hugo Chavez, noting that protesters routinely disrupt traffic and damage public property while mounting barricades of burning debris.

Legislators said during Tuesday's congressional session that they had registered 16 attacks against journalists on Monday alone, with some 300 during the two months of protest. Ruling Socialist Party legislators did not attend the congressional session.

Francisco Zambrano, a journalist with website Runrun.es which is critical of the government, said in a telephone interview that troops had blocked his way when he attempted to run from a cloud of tear gas fired to disperse demonstrators.

"I identified myself as a journalist, but they still opened my bag, threw my things to the ground and searched my pockets," said Zambrano. "I thought it was a regular procedure until they took out my cell phone and one of them kept it."

Information Minister Ernesto Villegas, asked on Monday about an incident involving troops throwing a television camera off a highway, said the National Guard as an institution was being unfairly held responsible for actions by individuals.

"I know and have worked with men and women of the National Guard, who are honorable and are out there risking their lives. They have also been the victim of aggression," he said during a televised interview.

The protests have left some 65 people dead and thousands injured.

The government is preparing an election at the end of July for a constituent assembly that will have the power to rewrite the constitution and potential dissolve state institutions.

Maduro's critics call it a power grab meant to keep him power indefinitely. (Additional reporting by Andreina Aponte, Corina Pons and Deisy Buitrago; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
OSLO, June 7 (Reuters) - Norwegian oil services firms have reached a wage deal with two trade unions, the companies and the unions said on Wednesday, in a year when these unions are not allowed to go on strike.

The deal was made with the two largest unions, Industri Energi and Safe, which agreed a pay rise of 7,166 crowns ($846.78) and of 1 crown per hour on night shifts, with effect from June 1.

A number of oil services firms operate off Norway, including Solstad, Farstad and Havila, serving oil companies such as Statoil, Eni and Lundin Petroleum.

In separate talks, the Lederne union representing 150 workers in the oil sector did not reach a deal with oil companies and talks will now go to a state-appointed mediator.

Lederne has the right to strike this year and if they don't agree it could potentially hit Norwegian oil production from midnight on Friday.

($1 = 8.4626 Norwegian crowns) (Reporting by Ole Petter Skonnord; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
GAUTIER, Mississippi -- There were only three contested races in Gautier Tuesday night, with incumbents taking two of those races, but by relatively slim margins.

In the councilman at-large race, incumbent Republican Mary Martin held off Independent Eloise Fairley, 574-540, to earn another term.

Fellow incumbent Republican Charles "Rusty" Anderson will also serve another term after defeating Democrat Billy Raysell Booth, 188-143.

In the Ward 1 race, Republican Cameron George handily defeated Democrat Paul Ceasar, 183-49, and will succeed Johnny Jones on the city council.

Phil Torjusen had already been elected the new Mayor of Gautier after defeating incumbent Gordon Gollott in the Republican primary, while Richard "DJ" Jackson won in a Democratic runoff to succeed outgoing Ward 2 city councilman Hurley Ray Guillotte.

Ward 3 councilman Casey Vaughan and Ward 5 councilman Adam Colledge were unopposed.
By Aluisio Alves and Lisandra Paraguassu

SAO PAULO/BRASILIA, June 7 (Reuters) - The Brazilian government has ordered state-controlled lender Caixa Economica Federal to stop providing financing to a family of billionaires who accused President Michel Temer of working to obstruct a corruption probe, people familiar with the decision said on Tuesday.

According to two of the people, The Temer administration ordered management at Caixa not to refinance existing credit lines to J&F Investimentos SA, a holding company controlled by Brazil's Batista family. Members of the Batista family offered prosecutors proof last month that Temer allegedly worked to obstruct a major corruption probe.

One of the unnamed sources, who is a senior Temer government official, said under the condition of anonymity that ordering Caixa to stop doing business with J&F was in retaliation for accusations that Joesley Batista, a family member and then J&F's chairman, made against Temer.

Joesley Batista secretly taped a conversation in which Temer appeared to condone bribing a potential witness. J&F controls JBS SA, the world's No. 1 meatpacker, and several companies in the fashion, dairy, pulp and banking industries. Caixa is J&F's largest creditor with outstanding loans worth 9.7 billion reais ($3 billion), a third person said.

Caixa has set aside extra capital to reclassify some of the loans to J&F, after deeming them riskier than before, the same person said. The extra provisioning came after Caixa asserted control of unspecified collateral put forth by J&F for a merger financing loan it took two years ago, the person added.

The situation underscores the discretionary way in which state lenders are run in Brazil, and how borrowers are exposed to retaliation if they fall out of grace with the government. Caixa was used as a policy tool by Temer's predecessor, Dilma Rousseff, sparking heavy loan losses because of reckless lending and risk-taking decisions.

Caixa said it made extra provisions related to J&F, but did not elaborate on the reasons for the move. J&F declined to comment.

Temer's office said in an emailed statement to Reuters that "state banks take actions based exclusively on technical criteria," noting that "decisions based on other criteria than that count with no authorization from the president's office."

Brazil's Federal Supreme Court released plea bargain testimony on May 19 accusing Temer and his two predecessors of receiving bribes, the most damaging development yet in the nation's biggest ever corruption probe.

SURPRISING MOVE

At the core of the decision to restrict Caixa's business with J&F is a 2.7 billion-real loan that the Batista family took late in 2015 to buy a controlling stake in apparel and fashion branding firm Alpargatas SA, the people said.

Losing Caixa as a key creditor means the Batistas will have to resort to other lenders or sell assets to raise cash for a heavy repayment calendar over the next year. One of the people said that companies controlled by J&F, excluding JBS, have about 14 billion reais of debt maturing over the next 12 months.

Analysts including JPMorgan Securities's Natalia Corfield have said that recent political and economic turmoil in Brazil risks slowing Caixa's efforts to reduce defaults and provisions.

Caixa's surprising move also set off warning signs among other banks that are also lenders to J&F, one of the people said. By winning control of more guarantees, Caixa raced ahead of other lenders and has a smaller chance of undertaking loan losses if J&F defaults, the same person added.

In a statement, J&F said it "does maintain long-term relationships with financial institutions," refraining from commenting further.

J&F, which stands for the initials of Joesley's parents Jose and Flora, agreed to pay a record-setting 10.3 billion-real fine for engaging in bribery, graft and other crimes. Joesley Batista's plea deal has sent shockwaves across Brazil's political and business establishments, and risks accelerating Temer's ouster from office, analysts said.

Most of the fine J&F will pay, or the equivalent of 8 billion reais, will be divided among Caixa, Brazil's development bank BNDES, a state-controlled severance fund known as FGTS as well as two pension funds for employees of state-controlled companies.

Reuters reported on May 22 that BNDES decided not to extend any new loans to JBS or J&F Investimentos until they signed a leniency agreement with federal prosecutors.

Pension funds and state-run banks invested in or extended loans to J&F companies in return for bribes paid by the Batista brothers, according to plea deal testimony.

($1 = 3.2826 reais) (Writing and additional reporting by Guillermo Parra-Bernal; Editing by Daniel Flynn and Andrew Hay)
BAGHDAD, June 7 (Reuters) - The U.S.-backed campaign to capture Raqqa, Islamic State's de-facto capital in Syria, will accelerate, the U.S. envoy to the international coalition fighting the militants told reporters in Baghdad.

The U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces said on Tuesday it had launched an operation to capture Raqqa, in an assault that overlaps with the final stages of the U.S.-backed attack to recapture the Iraqi city of Mosul.

"So similar to Mosul," Islamic State's capital in Iraq, "the Raqqa campaign is underway. These are critical elements in the ultimate defeat of Daesh but this will be a long term effort," Brett McGurk said, referring to Islamic State.

"They are down to their last neighborhood in Mosul and they already lost part of Raqqa, and the Raqqa campaign from here will only accelerate." (Reporting by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
PARIS, June 7 (Reuters) - France said on Wednesday that two of its citizens were among the seven people killed when militants drove a van into revellers and then went on a stabbing spree in central London on Saturday.

The foreign ministry said in a statement that a third French national was still missing and that four were gravely injured.

Le Parisien daily newspaper named the dead man as 36-year-old Sebastian Belanger.

London police said late on Tuesday that they feared a French tourist, 45-year-old Xavier Thomas, had been thrown into the River Thames by the attackers' van and drowned. His girlfriend was seriously injured in the collision. (Reporting by Richard Lough; editing by John Irish)
By Geert De Clercq

PARIS, June 7 (Reuters) - French nuclear regulator ASN is set to give safety clearance for the nuclear reactor vessel being built for French utility EDF at its Flamanville site, Le Figaro newspaper said on Wednesday.

The newspaper said the regulator had provided EDF with elements of a preliminary report that indicate the equipment meets the safety conditions for the reactor to start normally.

EDF's shares closed up 2.2 percent at 9.518 euros.

The company declined to comment on the report.

An ASN spokeswoman said the investigation was continuing and that the ASN had not taken a decision.

She said a provisional ruling would be issued this summer, followed by a final decision in September.

Non-approval would have meant billions of euros in extra costs for EDF and jeopardised its planned takeover of nuclear engineering group Areva's reactor business.

ASN has been examining weak spots in the reactor's lid and base since the discovery in 2015 of an anomaly in carbon concentrations in the steel used.

Excess carbon can make the steel brittle and more prone to fracturing when exposed to shocks or quick temperature changes. The ASN had warned these flaws could potentially be serious.

A source familiar with the ASN's investigation said the probe would probably show that the weak spots did not represent a major risk of cracking or explosion as they are not in the areas that are under the heaviest stress.

"I think the conclusion (of the ASN's report) will be positive, although it may also contain a demand for more intense surveillance," the source said, adding that the ASN might require more tests during the reactor's routine major inspections each decade.

Le Figaro said that the ASN might require additional controls in the reactor's first years of operation.

Several sources familiar with the situation said the ASN had not yet finalised its technical report on the Flamanville reactor, which is due at the end of June.

Once ready, the report will be reviewed by EDF, reactor maker Areva and a group of independent experts who will then issue a non-binding recommendation.

Based on this, the ASN is expected to publish a provisional ruling, which will be available for public consultation for at least a month. Because of the summer break, that process is expected to last until September.

The ASN is then likely to take a few more weeks to review the outcome of the consultation before it issues a final ruling in September or early October, experts say. (Reporting by Geert de Clercq; Editing by Dale Hudson, Greg Mahlich)
BERLIN, June 7 (Reuters) - German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel expressed alarm about the sudden escalation of tensions in the Gulf after Saudi Arabia and other states abruptly broke off ties with Qatar, warning of the dangers of "Trumpification" of relations in the region.

"I am extremely concerned about the dramatic escalation of the situation and the consequences for the entire region," Gabriel told Germany's Handelsblatt newspaper in an interview published on Wednesday.

Gabriel, who is due to meet Saudi Arabia's foreign minister on Wednesday, said he was surprised by the intensity of the tensions erupting in the Gulf region.

"Such a Trumpification of relations with one another is particularly dangerous in a region that is already rife with crises," he told the newspaper, in an apparent reference to what critics say is the increasingly divisive rhetoric seen since the election of U.S. President Donald Trump last year.

"Qatar is apparently to be more or less completely isolated and existentially targeted," he said, adding: "A further escalation serves no one. The Middle East is a political and military powder keg."

Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain severed their ties with Qatar on Monday, accusing it of supporting terrorism and Iran, opening the worst rift in years among some of the most powerful states in the Arab world.

The three Gulf states announced the closure of transport ties with Qatar and gave Qatari visitors and residents two weeks to leave their countries. Qatar was also expelled from a Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen.

Gabriel, a longtime critic of German arms sales, also criticised Trump's recent large U.S. weapons sales to other countries in the Gulf.

"The latest gigantic arms sales of the American president with the Gulf monarchies increase the risk of a new arms race spiral," he told the newspaper. "That is totally the wrong policy, and certainly not the policy of Germany."

Trump sealed a $110 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia on his maiden foreign trip in May. (Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Adrian Croft)
By Elias Ntungwe Ngalame

BUEA, Cameroon, June 7 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Cameroons plan to more than double cocoa production by 2020, moving the country up the global ranks of producers and improving incomes for its farmers, is under increasing threat from extreme weather, according to the state support company for growers.

Heavy rains have slowed expected output and rattled farmers, with many switching to food crop production to make a more reliable living.

"The rains have been so severe in recent times, coming even when least expected, generating production worries for both farmers and the government," said Jerome Mvondo, director-general of the Cameroon Cocoa Development Corporation, at an event in Buea, the capital of the countrys Southwest region and its main cocoa-producing zone.

Cameroon is the world's fifth biggest cocoa grower behind the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria and Indonesia. According to government statistics, the crop accounts for about half the countrys exports of basic products such as food, timber, fish and minerals.

Cocoa sales contribute about 250 billion CFA francs ($426 million) to state coffers each year.

In 2012, Cameroon's government announced plans to increase cocoa production from around 225,000 tonnes annually to 600,000 tonnes by 2020.

But that goal is now threatened by erratic and prolonged rains, especially in the Southwest region. In the last 2015-2016 season, production was around 269,000 tonnes, Mvondo said.

Plans to plant an additional 100,000 hectares (247,000 acres) of new cocoa trees each year have fallen short, with the area under cultivation having grown by just 2,500-3,500 hectares since 2014, Mvondo said.

'THE RAINS COME IN ANY ORDER'

Farmers say they used to worry that rain during the harvest would delay the drying of their cocoa beans, but now rains often take them by surprise at the heart of the dry season, when the cocoa plants flower and produce buds.

"The rains now come in any order, making it difficult for us to plant new crops, spray cocoa pods with pesticides against diseases and dry the cocoa bean naturally. This has really reduced our output and income," said Ajasco Nzeme, a cocoa farmer from Tombel, in Cameroon's Southwest region.

"I am almost giving up cocoa farming. I had planned on expanding my cocoa farm by four hectares by 2018, but with the disturbing rains it is not worth the trouble," said Nzeme, who grows 16 hectares (40 acres) of the crop.

Rains have been coming as early as February rather than at the more common beginning of April, causing buds to fall off the cocoa trees and the pods to blacken.

"The farmers are even refusing free pesticides offered by the government for fear it will be washed away by the rains as soon as it is applied," Mvondo said.

Besides killing cocoa flowers and young pods, the unusual rain can affect the quality of the crop that is harvested, and force farmers to smoke-dry beans instead of drying them in the open air, farmers said.

Many farmers say they also face increasing difficulty getting their harvest to market on mostly earthen roads.

Andrew Ngomnkalle, a 59-year-old cocoa farmer in Tombel, said his yield had dwindled from 60 bags per acre in 2014 to 35 bags in 2016.

"I have been a cocoa farmer all my life but have never witnessed such confusion in the pattern of rainfall," he said.

HARVEST LOSSES, LOWER PRICES

Changing weather is also making cocoa more susceptible to pests and disease, said Zachee Nzohngandembou, executive officer of the Centre for the Environment and Rural Transformation, a nongovernmental organisation in Limbe that works with local farmers.

Losses from diseases and pests claimed between 30 and 40 percent of Cameroons harvest in the 2014-15 season, according to the National Cocoa and Coffee Board, which regulates cocoa and coffee production.

The farmers situation has been made worse over the past year by a slump of more than one third in the prices paid for the beans by exporters, following a downward trend in prices on the international market.

According to government data, a kilo of beans fetches about 900-960 FCA francs ($1.50 to $1.65) in production areas, down from 1,600 francs in 2012-13.

In some remote areas, particularly in the Southwest region, prices can be as low as 700 francs.

Many farmers in Cameroon say they are deserting cocoa production for other cash and food crops.

"We have no choice than to concentrate on cash crops like plantains and cocoyam to be able to feed our families," said Nzeme.

Experts agree that worsening climate variability has become a major bottleneck faced by cocoa producers worldwide.

Global production decreased by 217,000 tonnes in the 2015-2016 season, to just over 4 million tonnes, a decline of 5 percent from the previous season, according to a November 2016 report by the International Cocoa Organization.

In Africa, production is estimated to have fallen over the same period by 124,000 tonnes - almost 4 percent - to 2.9 million tonnes, with the drop attributed mostly to adverse weather conditions and an outbreak of black pod disease.

Nevertheless, the government says it still hopes to boost cocoa production by giving farmers better meteorological information so that they can make more informed decisions on when to plant and harvest.

Henry Eyebe Ayisi, Cameroons minister of agriculture, said the government is partnering with non-governmental organisations such as the Global Centre for Compliance, Hazards and Disaster Management to help farmers better understand climate threats.

A new programme will send monthly text messages to help growers better plan their farming activities in the face of changing weather conditions, Eyebe said.

(Reporting by Elias Ntungwe Ngalame; editing by James Baer and Laurie Goering :; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, climate change, resilience, women's rights, trafficking and property rights. Visit http://news.trust.org/climate)
By Robin Emmott and Gabriela Baczynska

BRUSSELS, June 7 (Reuters) - The European Union's executive threw its support on Wednesday behind Franco-German plans to integrate Europe's militaries and defence industries, offering money and coordination to build up depleted forces heavily reliant on the United States.

Spurred by Britain's decision to leave the European Union, Brussels has seized on deeper military ties proposed last year by France and Germany to show its citizens the bloc is still relevant and can provide security in the face of Islamist militant attacks and a resurgent Russia.

"Defence and security is one of the fields through which we can re-launch the European Union," EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini told a news conferences.

Failings in Europe's bombing campaign in Libya in 2011, when the United States had to step in with refuelling planes, and Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea have reignited EU defence plans that date back to the 1950s but have remained elusive.

Britain had long blocked EU defence integration, fearing a European armed force wearing the same uniforms.

"This is not about creating an EU army," European Commission Vice-President Jyrki Katainen told reporters. "NATO does not have a NATO army," he said, stressing that Western military alliances are formed by national forces working together.

Although the European Union has more than a dozen military missions abroad, the world's biggest trading bloc has never been able to match its economic might with broad defensive power, preferring to rely on the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.

The EU is not seeking to compete with NATO, Mogherini said.

But U.S. President Donald Trump's sharp criticism of European allies for low defence spending and his refusal to fully back the alliance publicly has added to concerns that without the United States and Britain, the European Union is vulnerable to a host of threats, from cyber to militant attacks.

A year since proposals on an "European Defence Union" from Paris and Berlin, the European Commission said it was willing to provide money from the EU's common budget for the first time for defence research.

The Commission said it would also create a fund to reverse billions of euros in defence cuts to let governments club together to develop and buy new helicopters and planes to lower costs, also opening the door to new drones, cyber warfare systems and other hi-tech gear.

5.5 BLN EURO FUND?

While the amounts of money depend on EU governments' willingness to collaborate, the Commission said it would put forward at least 1.5 billion euros ($1.69 billion) a year from the bloc's budget for the research and purchase of assets.

That could generate some 5.5 billion euros a year after 2020 for research and development if enough governments come forward with funds, EU officials said, stressing that national governments would remain the owners of all equipment.

German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen welcomed the plan. "It is ambitious and shows how far we have gone over the last 12 months in establishing a defence and security union," she said in a statement, calling for more such steps.

Defence research spending in the EU has fallen by a third, or more than 20 billion euros, since 2006, and while the European Union spends about half as much as the United States on researching and producing weapons, it only has about 15 percent of the assets that Washington can deploy on the battlefield.

EU governments champion national companies, often leading to duplication and wasted funds, according to EU data. In 80 percent of cases, governments award defence contracts to their own firms rather than use European consortiums.

The European Union's defence fund idea, which still needs to be approved by governments and the European Parliament, is part of an emerging network of proposals that EU leaders are set to consider at a summit in Brussels on June 22-23.

The European Union is setting up a military headquarters for training missions abroad. It wants to make it easier to use its EU battlegroups that have never been deployed, and plans to set up a system to better identify weaknesses in equipment.

Paris also wants to set up a system in which coalitions of willing EU countries come together to carry out and pay for military missions together, rather than leaving future peacekeeping operations to bigger countries such as France.

The European Defence Agency, the agency that helps EU governments develop their military capabilities, has also proposed a smaller fund made up of EU states' public money, the so-called Cooperative Financial Mechanism, or CFM.

That would aim to work on smaller, collaborative projects. ($1 = 0.8885 euros) (Editing by Adrian Croft)
By Neil Jerome Morales

MARAWI CITY, Philippines, June 7 (Reuters) - Islamist militants locked in an urban battle with troops in the southern Philippines had planned to carve out an enclave of their own, officials said on Wednesday after the emergence of a video showing their leaders in a secret strategy meeting.

The footage, found on a mobile phone as government forces closed in on the fighters in Marawi City, showed a group of men in a room discussing how they would take hostages from a school, seal off roads and capture a highway into the lakeside town.

"There was indeed a bigger plan and it was supposed to wreak more havoc," military spokesman Restituto Padilla told a news conference after the video became public.

The battle for Marawi has raised concern that Islamic State, on a back foot in Syria and Iraq, is building a regional base on the Philippine island of Mindanao that could pose a threat to neighbouring Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore too.

Officials have said that, among the several hundred militants who seized the town on May 23, there were about 40 foreigners from Indonesia and Malaysia but also fighters from India, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Chechnya.

The strike on Marawi City suggested to many that pro-Islamic State outfits wanted to establish the town as a Southeast Asian `wilayat - or governorate - for the radical group, a view reinforced by the video footage.

The military has said that the fighters are increasingly penned in around a built-up area of the town, and troops have been clearing houses that the militants had defended with snipers for the past two weeks.

Philippine senators said members of the upper house were last week shown the video of the militants making their plans, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters from the Philippines military.

The men pored over a map and one, identified by a subtitle as 'Abdullah', pointed to three locations and discussed options for attack.

"We can jailbreak ... we can go inside schools ... we can take hostages," he said in a mix of regional languages and English. "But we need to seize a highway so people will be scared."

Seated at a table among them was Isnilon Hapilon, leader of the Abu Sayyaf group who was proclaimed by Islamic State last year as its "emir" of Southeast Asia. The U.S. State Department has offered a bounty of up to $5 million for his arrest.

Hapilon has formed an alliance with the Maute group, a tactically smart, social-media savvy outfit, and at least two other factions that have lined up behind the ultra-radical Islamic State.

"It was clear that these terrorists, the Maute group, their end goal is to make Marawi ... independent, or to separate from the republic," Senator JV Ejercito told Reuters.

"With a plan like this, this is already rebellion and a threat to national security, so declaration of martial law is justified," he said, referring to the martial law declared by President Rodrigo Duterte across Mindanao when the siege began.

The Associated Press first reported on the video on Tuesday. Armed forces Chief of Staff General Eduaro Ano told the agency that the images showed an intention to dismember "a portion of the Philippine territory by occupying the whole of Marawi City and establishing their own Islamic state or government".

'NOT A RELIGIOUS WAR'

The fighters prepared for a long siege, stockpiling arms and food in tunnels, basements, mosques and madrasas, or Islamic religious schools, military officials say. The Philippines is largely Christian, but Marawi City is overwhelmingly Muslim.

Progress in the military campaign has been slow because hundreds of civilians are still trapped or being held hostage, some as human shields, the military said.

A Catholic priest and about a dozen of his parishioners were taken on the first day of the battle by militants who burst into the town's cathedral and set it alight.

Military spokesman Padilla appealed to social media users not to circulate material - such as video images of the militants destroying religious statues and pulling down a cross inside a church - that may fan religious tension.

"Let us not buy into the plan of these terror groups to inflame the feelings of our other religions," he said. "This is not a religious war."

A four-hour ceasefire to evacuate residents trapped in the town was interrupted by gunfire on Sunday, leaving some 500 to 600 inside with dwindling supplies of food and water.

Officials say that 1,545 civilians have been rescued.

The latest numbers for militants killed in the battle is 134, along with 39 security personnel. The authorities have put the civilian death toll at between 20 and 38. (Additional reporting by Karen Lema in MANILA; Writing by John Chalmers; Editing by Robert Birsel and Clarence Fernandez)
SINGAPORE/DUBAI, June 7 (Reuters) - Abu Dhabi port authorities have eased restrictions on oil tankers going to and from Qatar, according to industry sources and shipping circulars seen by Reuters on Wednesday.

Abu Dhabi Petroleum Ports Authority issued a new circular on Wednesday removing previous restrictions on non-Qatar owned, flagged or operated vessels sailing to and from Qatar.

This effectively allows direct trade between the two ports and co-loading of crude cargoes, a Singapore-based shipbroker said.

A Middle East-based industry source said there had been no official notification on halting the co-loading of crude cargoes.

The ban on vessels carrying the Qatari flag and vessels owned or operated by Qatar is still in place, according to the circular.

But given there are few Qatari-flagged or owned vessels, this is unlikely to have as big an impact on the market as the previous circular, the shipbroker added.

Reuters reported on Wednesday two very large crude carriers (VLCCs), which can each carry up to 2 million barrels of oil, loaded Abu Dhabi grades on Wednesday, despite having taken Qatari crude in an earlier leg of the voyage.

On Monday, Saudi Arabia's Ports Authority told shipping agents not to accept vessels flying the Qatari flag or ships owned by Qatari companies or individuals, it said on its Twitter account, adding that Qatari goods would be barred from unloading in Saudi ports.

On Wednesday, Saudi's Ras Tanura oil port issued a notice stressing the restrictions issued earlier by the Saudi Ports Authority, according to a copy seen by Reuters.

On Monday, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain severed ties including all air, land and sea transport links with Qatar, accusing it of supporting terrorism. Doha denies the accusation. (Reporting by Jessica Jaganathan, Roslan Khasawneh in Singapore, Rania El Gamal in Dubai and Reem Shamseddine in Khobar; Editing by Dale Hudson)
BERLIN, June 7 (Reuters) - German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel on Wednesday urged all sides to avoid further escalating the crisis gripping the Gulf, warning that disagreements among Gulf states could weaken the U.S.-led coalition's fight against Islamic State.

"We all - and that is also the view of my Saudi counterpart - are interested in avoiding any further escalation, because the region is already facing great tensions and challenges," Gabriel said after a meeting with Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir.

Gabriel told reoprters it was imperative that all members of the coalition fighting Islamic State banned any government or private financing of terrorist organisations.

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain on Monday said they would sever all ties with Qatar, accusing it of supporting terrorism and Iran.

Asked about the policies of U.S. President Donald Trump in the Middle East, Gabriel said Germany did not support a policy of "pure confrontation" against Iran. (Reporting by Andrea Shalal)
By Gulsen Solaker and Tom Finn

ANKARA/DOHA, June 7 (Reuters) - Turkey brought forward troop deployment to Qatar on Wednesday and pledged to provide crucial food and water supplies to the Gulf Arab country facing a worsening rift with its powerful Middle Eastern neighbours.

In the deepest split between Arab states for decades, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain severed relations with Qatar on Monday and closed their airspace to commercial flights, saying it was funding militant groups.

Qatar vehemently denies the accusations.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has said isolating Qatar would not resolve any problems. Erdogan, who has long tried to play the role of a regional power broker, said Ankara would do everything in its power to help end the regional crisis.

Lawmakers from Erdogan's ruling AK Party and the nationalist opposition MHP were the main backers of the bill that allows troops to be deployed to Turkey's base in Qatar, but the main opposition CHP party said the timing sent the wrong message.

"With these agreements, Turkey is making a choice and by standing by Qatar it is taking on the other countries. This is a wrong policy," CHP deputy head and lawmaker Ozturk Yilmaz said. "How will you be a mediator if you are taking sides?" he said.

Turkey has maintained good relations with Qatar as well as several of its Gulf Arab neighbours. Turkey and Qatar have both provided support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and backed rebels fighting to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The Turkish parliament has also endorsed an accord between the two countries on military training cooperation. Both bills were drawn up before the spat erupted. The fast-tracking of the legislation has weighed on the Turkish lira.

FOOD AND WATER

Turkey's main exporters' body said it was ready to meet food and water supply demands from Qatar, after a Qatari official said Doha was in talks with Iran and Turkey to ensure trade disruptions did not create shortages.

Grain traders said Qatar appears to have a comfortable immediate supply of wheat.

"Qatar recently purchased about 20,000 tonnes of Russian milling wheat which according to my calculations has just arrived in past days or will arrive in coming days," one European grain trader said.

The president of Qatar's Chamber of Commerce was quoted on Wednesday by local media as saying Qatar had enough food stored in strategic reserves to last for a year.

"There will be no shortage of food and other products as more than 95 percent of imports from Qatar arrive by air and sea," Qatari Sheikh Khalifa bin Jassim al-Thani said.

Turkey set up a military base in Qatar, its first such installation in the Middle East, as part of an agreement signed in 2014. In 2016, Ahmet Davutoglu, then Turkish prime minister, visited the base where 150 personnel are already stationed, the Turkish daily Hurriyet reported.

In an interview with Reuters in late 2015, Ahmet Demirok, Turkey's ambassador to Qatar at the time, said 3,000 ground troops would eventually be deployed at the base, which was primarily to serve as a venue for joint training exercises.

The text of the draft bill, which includes the agreement between Qatar and Turkey on the base, shows the cooperation will be primarily about the modernisation of Qatar's military, as well as widening cooperation in training and war exercises.

The bill did not specify how many troops would go nor when. (Additional reporting by Nevzat Devranoglu and Mike Hogan in Hamburg; Writing by Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by David Dolan and Louise Ireland)
ASHGABAT, June 7 (Reuters) - Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has ordered his government to scrap the gas-rich Central Asian nation's generous system of utility subsidies, state media reported on Wednesday, possibly indicating the government faces financial pressure.

For 24 years, households in the former Soviet republic of 5.5 million people have been entitled to free supplies of electricity, water and gas for cooking and heating, although they have been rationed in recent years.

Until 2014, car owners also received 120 litres of free gasoline a month, prompting some to keep their parked cars' engines running while they did their shopping.

According to Turkmen state news agency TDH, Berdymukhamedov called the subsidy system inefficient at a government meeting this week, and said that from now on assistance should only be provided based on actual need.

The subsidies became one of the hallmarks of the mostly Muslim nation's economic and political system.

Its first president Saparmurat Niyazov referred to his time in office as the Golden Age and Berdymukhamedov's first term was referred to in local media as the Era of Might and Happiness.

Turkmenistan's exports of natural gas have dwindled since Russia, once the main buyer of the fuel, halted purchases in January 2016. Last December, another buyer, Iran, accused Ashgabat of cutting supplies because of a dispute over payments.

That has left Turkmenistan with just one buyer for its gas, China, which is importing about 35-40 billion metres of gas a year.

The International Monetary Fund forecasts Turkmenistan's state budget to be in deficit - of 0.7 percent of gross domestic product - for the third year in a row in 2017 before returning to surplus next year.

Government revenue is seen at 12.4 percent of GDP this year, down from 17.9 percent in 2014 when gas exports were near their peak. (Reporting by Marat Gurt; Writing by Olzhas Auyezov; Editing by Ken Ferris)
CAIRO, June 7 (Reuters) - The Muslim Brotherhood rejected what is said were false accusations of terrorism by Saudi Arabia, the world's oldest Islamist movement said on Wednesday in its first reaction to the Gulf crisis.

In statement on its website, the group called on the oil-rich Gulf kingdom to cease its support for Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and to not listen to the rulers of the United Arab Emirates whom it called corrupt and oppressive. (Reporting by Mostafa Hashem; Writing by Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Giles Elgood)
By Robert Muller

CINOVEC, Czech Republic, June 7 (Reuters) - Mining for lithium could start in the Czech Republic in two years, exploiting Europe's largest resource of the metal that is used in batteries for electric vehicles and home power storage.

The deposits lie around Cinovec, a village with a tradition of mining since the 14th century and situated near the border with Germany, the industrial powerhouse at the heart of Europe's bid to build electric cars and develop battery technology.

The resource, a term used for a deposit whose extent has yet to be proven by exploration, could amount to 1.3 million tonnes, or about 3 percent of the global lithium stock, according to the Czech Geological Survey.

That would rank the Czech Republic behind Chile, China, Argentina, Australia and other nations with bigger lithium reserves. But surging global demand and hungry European industry are sparking international interest in the Czech deposits.

Australia's European Metals, which bought exploration rights around Cinovec in 2012 and wants to start mining by 2019, said the resource could yield 20,800 tonnes a year of lithium carbonate, the processed ore that is sold to customers.

Global demand is expected to rise three-fold to 535,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent by 2025 from 2015, due to the boom in electric cars and electricity storage that has added to demand from making mobile phone batteries, Deutsche Bank said.

European Metals has dug exploratory shafts and plans to spend $393 million to develop the site near Cinovec, a village surrounded by forests and meadows and showing scars of surface mining for lignite that once employed many people in the area. The region now has the Czech Republic's highest jobless rate.

"The permitting process is going along as it should be, everything is happening in an orderly fashion," European Metals Managing Director Keith Coughlan told Reuters.

The company has signed a memorandum on supply of lithium ore to HE3DA, a Czech startup battery producer.

"HE3DA can be one of the biggest consumers," HE3DA chief executive and founder Jan Prochazka told Reuters.

LOCAL SUPPORT

There are also other potential clients nearby. Daimler , owner of Mercedes-Benz, began construction in May of its second factory for lithium batteries, worth about 500 million euros, in Kamenz, a German town 90 km (56 miles) from Cinovec.

Tesla Motors Inc. has also announced plans to build another "Gigafactory" for batteries, possibly in Europe, to match its plant in Nevada, the United States.

European Metals still has steps to take before it can develop the mining site at Cinovec. It has to apply for permits from the State Mining Administration (SMA), a process that could last more than a year, an SMA spokesman said.

It also needs approval from the Environment Ministry, which would consider any objections from nearby municipalities, although local communities have indicated they support the plan.

"It would be a contribution to our town," said Mayor Petr Pipal of Dubi, the municipality that includes Cinovec.

Other companies are also showing interest in the resource.

Cinovecka Deponie, a unit of privately-owned Czech investment group RSJ, won permits to extract lithium from tailings left around Cinovec from past tin mining. It did not offer further details when contacted by Reuters.

Albright Stonebridge Group, co-chaired by former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, made enquiries to the regional authorities about possible lithium extraction, Czech media reported. The group did not respond to Reuters queries.

One challenge for miners is that ore around Cinovec contains relatively small amounts of lithium. Jaromir Stary, an expert at the Czech Geological Survey, said it contains four times less lithium in its ore than at the Greenbushes mine in Australia.

But European Metals is undeterred. Its pre-feasibility study in April estimated costs at $3,483 per tonne of lithium carbonate, a level it said would ensure it could turn a profit.

It said the magnetic-sensitive nature of Cinovec's ore makes processing cheaper than other types.

Spot battery grade 99.5 percent lithium carbonate in China <AM-995C-LTCB>, where most lithium batteries are manufactured, now trades around 140,000 yuan ($20,575.53) per tonne, after a peak of about 171,000 yuan last year.

(Editing by Edmund Blair)
By Ingrid Melander

PARIS, June 7 (Reuters) - New French President Emmanuel Macron must tread carefully with labour reforms and should not view his election or forecasts of a win in parliamentary elections this month as a blank cheque to push them through, the head of the FO union said on Wednesday.

Macron's government outlined plans on Tuesday for far-reaching labour reforms to be adopted by the end of the summer, including a controversial cap on dismissal awards and allowing workplace referendums.

Macron has made loosening job market regulations a priority to try to reduce high unemployment, but attempts by previous governments to reform labour laws, most recently last year, have run into sometimes violent protests.

"Right now, people are saying 'He's just been elected president, let's give him a chance' (in Sunday's parliamentary elections)," Jean-Claude Mailly, leader of France's third biggest union, said in an interview with Reuters and a group of European newspapers.

"But there's real anger in France," he said.

Macron beat far-right National Front leader Marine Le Pen in the May 7 presidential election run-off and opinion polls say his party is on course to win a commanding majority in this month's parliamentary election.

But Mailly urged Macron to remember that less than one in four voters backed him in the first round of the presidential election.

"Many voted to block the National Front and not necessarily for his proposals, he must take that into account," he said.

This applied particularly, Mailly said, to Macron's pro-business labour reform plans, which will be fast-tracked through use of executive decrees after talks with unions.

PROTEST RALLIES

Mailly said unions could call for protest rallies in September if they were unhappy with the talks with the government.

"Everybody says, and that's true, that he (Macron) is a seducer and a charmer, but I'm not fooled by that," he said.

Mailly, whose union was at the forefront of protests last year against the previous government's less far-reaching labour reforms, said he was open to discussion but warned that unions had strict demands.

One red line is on Macron's goal to cap unfair dismissal compensation awards. The government's argument is that employers need a more predictable framework on the time and cost of disputed dismissals and will be less reluctant to recruit if they have that.

"If the cap is low and judges cannot break away from it then it's unacceptable. All unions agree on this," said Mailly.

"If the cap is high and there is a margin of manoeuvre for the judge, we're willing to talk about it."

Other red lines for the FO are plans to allow workplace referenda, which Mailly said would not be acceptable if they are meant to bypass unions.

He also said that working documents leaked by daily Liberation, according to which each company could set up its own criteria for firing people were a no-go. The government said this was not an official document.

The head of the CGT, France's second-largest union, Philippe Martinez said on Monday there would be protests to put pressure on the government. Laurent Berger of CFDT -- France's largest, pro-reform union -- told CNews TV on Wednesday that the government should work to avoid a series of leaks on the reform. (Reporting by Ingrid Melander; Editing by Adrian Croft)
By Anna Pujol-Mazzini

LONDON, June 7 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - A Kenyan man's acquittal for having sex with a 13-year-old because she seemed willing was named on Wednesday as the world's worst court decision for women's rights in the past year.

It beat off tough competition from Europe - where an Italian woman did not scream loud enough to prove her rape - and an Asian ruling that restricted birth control to Philippine women.

The Gender Justice Uncovered Awards recognise court decisions that affect the rights of women and girls around the world, in both good and bad ways.

The Kenyan judge in the most egregious case ruled that if only the age of victims was taken into account, "young girls would freely engage in sex and then opt to report to the police whenever they disagree with their boyfriends."

According to court documents summing up the April 2016 judgment, age is immaterial if a girl acts beyond her years.

"Where the child behaves like an adult and willingly sneaks into men's houses for purposes of having sex, the court ought to treat such a child as a grown up who knows what she is doing."

The awards cover all aspects of gender equality, including those related to sexual and reproductive rights, violence, and discrimination. Cases under consideration came from as far afield as Uruguay and Chad, with all continents represented.

"In every country, political systems, traditions, and religious beliefs inform the decisions of judges, who have the power to affect women and girls' rights, for better or for worse," Blakeley Decktor - a lawyer at women's rights organisation Women's Link, which gives out the awards - told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"The public has sent a clear message that they will not tolerate courts all over the world discriminating against women and girls and failing to protect their rights," she said.

A Spanish court which ruled that the law should treat men and women differently - citing domestic violence, pension and divorce cases - was praised as the best decision.

Many of the rulings, which were nominated by members of the public, related to sexual assault cases.

In March, a survey of laws in 73 countries found rapists could avoid punishment if they married their victim in at least nine jurisdictions, including Bahrain, Iraq, Philippines, Tajikistan and Tunisia. [http://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-rape-lawmaking-idUSKBN16D01C ]

United Nations data suggests a third of women worldwide have suffered sexual or physical violence, and one in 10 girls have been raped or sexually assaulted. (Reporting by Anna Pujol-Mazzini @annapmzn, Editing by Lyndsay Griffiths. 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)
GENEVA, June 7 (Reuters) - An outbreak of hepatitis A has spread over the past year among gay men in Europe, the United States and Chile, and upcoming gay pride events and a vaccine shortage could worsen the situation, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday.

The WHO said in a disease outbreak statement that any country noticing an unusual increase in cases among men who have sex with other men should report it to the WHO.

It said the rise in cases was "of particular concern from a public health perspective because of the current limited availability of hepatitis A vaccine worldwide", and most of the affected countries had routinely recommended vaccination for gay men.

The disease is rarely fatal but some patients may develop severe symptoms lasting several months. The virus is mainly spread by ingesting food or water contaminated by the faeces of an infected person, but for gay men the main risk is sexual transmission, particularly oral-anal sexual contact.

The WHO said up to 2 million international guests were expected to attend the LGBT World Pride Festival in Madrid between 23 June and 2 July, with "moderate to high" risk of person-to-person sexual transmission of hepatitis A.

"In Spain, Hepatitis A cases reported in 2017 are almost eight times higher than the average number of cases reported during the same period between the years 2012 and 2016. Most cases are men with ages between 15 to 45 years old, and MSM (men who have sex with men) are the most affected group," it said.

People attending the Madrid festival should seek advice from healthcare providers on hepatitis A vaccination before travelling, and should take preventive measures while in Madrid to reduce the risk of infection, it said. (Reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)
KADUNA, Nigeria, June 7 (Reuters) - A northern Nigerian state's governor on Wednesday ordered the arrest of activists for demanding the eviction of eastern Igbo people, amid rising tensions between ethnic groups that hark back to the country's Biafra civil war.

Secessionist feeling has simmered in Nigeria's east since the Biafra separatist rebellion, a mainly Christian Igbo movement, tipped the country into a civil war from 1967 to 1970 that killed an estimated 1 million people.

Since 2015, those sentiments have heightened, spurred by a lack of economic development and fears of Islamic encroachment, often blamed on the government of Muslim President Muhammadu Buhari. That has in turn sparked ill will towards secessionists, especially from northern Muslims.

"All Igbos currently residing in any part of northern Nigeria are hereby served notice to relocate within three months and all northerners residing in the East are advised likewise," a spokesman for a movement called the Northern Youth Groups said on Tuesday in the northern city of Kaduna.

He called for "sustained, coordinated campaigns" to remove Igbo people from the region.

The Northern Youth Groups coalition is made up of organisations who claim to promote the interests of the region.

The widespread slaughter 51 years ago of Igbos living in Nigeria's north helped spur the Biafran secession from 1967-70, which led to war against Nigeria's central government and a famine in which millions died.

Kaduna Governor Nasir El-Rufai on Tuesday ordered the arrest of the signatories to the Northern Youth Group statement, condemning their "inciting" and "hate speech."

The Kaduna government "assures every resident of our state that their constitutional and human rights to live peacefully and own property wherever they choose is sacrosanct," a spokesman for El-Rufai said in a statement.

Nigeria has in recent years seen a rise in other ethno-religious conflicts, particularly deadly clashes between Muslim herders and Christian farmers, partly over land use, in the region known as the Middle Belt. (Reporting by Garba Muhammad in Kaduna and Anamesere Igboeroteonwu in Onitsha; Editing by Louise Ireland)
Cash donations of Rs. 50,000 each were given to 84 mosques in Colombo yesterday under a programme by the Colombo Municipal Council to assist places of worship in the city. Minister of Law and Order and Southern Development Sagala Rathnayaka, State Minister A. H. M. Fowzie and Rosy Senanayake participated at the ceremony. Pix by Pradeep Pathirana
The Monetary Board, with the concurrence of the finance minister, has promoted Assistant Governor K.D. Ranasinghe to the post of Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) with effect from April 30, 2017.

Ranasinghe has nearly 31 years of experience in the Central Bank especially in the areas of economic and price stability and other agency functions carried out by the Central Bank. Prior to the appointment as a Deputy Governor, Ranasinghe held the position of Assistant Governor in-charge of Statistics, International Operations, Domestic Operations, Employees Provident Fund, Human Resources and Facilities Management Departments.

Ranasinghe served as Director of the Economic Research Department of the Central Bank before he was promoted as an Assistant Governor. Ranasinghe served as an Alternate Executive Director for Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Sri Lanka at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Washington D.C., USA during the period from August 2012 to April 2015. Ranasinghe holds an MA in Economics from the Michigan State University, USA and a BA in Economics from the University of Colombo. Ranasinghe has participated in a number of international training programmes in the areas of macroeconomic management, macroeconomic modelling, monetary policy, public finance, debt management, and strategic management during his long career in the Central Bank.

Ranasinghe currently serves as Vice Chairman of the Institute of Bankers of Sri Lanka (IBSL). He also serves as a member of several boards of directors and committees representing the CBSL. He has also served as a member of the board of directors of the Ceylon Electricity Board and HDFC Bank.

Furthermore, Ranasinghe has participated in various national and international fora representing the government and the CBSL. Being a member of the Monetary Policy Committee, Market Operations Committee, Foreign Reserve Management Committee and Investment Committee of the Employees Provident Fund, Ranasinghe has made a significant contribution towards achieving the core objectives of the CBSL.

Ranasinghes research interests are in the areas of public finance, growth and economic and social infrastructure. He has authored articles for South East Asian Central Banks (SEACEN) and the CBSL publications, in the above areas. Ranasinghe has also conducted a large number of presentations at various seminars and conferences on the broader topic of status of the economy.

Prior to joining the Central Bank he was in the Sri Lanka Administrative Service and had also worked as a lecturer at the University

of Colombo.
Washington

U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos told senators during a Tuesday hearing on the federal budget that if states Every Student Succeeds Act plans follow the law, then its her obligation to approve them

In exchanges with Sens. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Chris Murphy, D-Conn., DeVos indicated that her personal views on states plans would not influence her decisions about them. She also declined to engage with Murphys questions at the appropritions subcommittee hearing about where she would draw the line on approval for state school improvement plans. Both lawmakers also are on the Senate education committee, where Alexander is the chairman.

During his question period at the hearing, Alexander (one of ESSAs main architects) asked DeVos whether she would would follow the law, or be tempted to use your own policy ideas in approving or rejecting state plans. DeVos responded, Senator, we will be following the law and approve plans as Congress has intended.

That wasnt quite good enough for Murphy. He repeatedly asked DeVos if she would reject an ESSA plan if she found the school improvement strategies lacking. At one point, he asked her if she would approve a plan in which the improvement strategies for schools would be to repaint the walls. DeVos declined to answer the question directly.

The plans will have to be approved if they follow the law, DeVos told Murphy. Whether I agree with everything in the plans is another question.

So far, 16 states and the District of Columbia have turned in their ESSA plans . The law gives states a good deal of flexibility in making various K-12 policy decisions, and prohibits the education secretary from dictating things like the structure of teacher evaluations and school improvement strategies. Earlier this year, Congress tossed out ESSA accountability regulations written by the Obama adminstration that governed school turnarounds, among other policies.

School improvement strategies under ESSA must cover certain types of schools, including high schools with a graduation rate below 67 percent, the lowest-performing 5 percent of Title I schools, and schools with consistently underperforming subgroups of students. And districts would have control over some school turnarounds, while in other situations, individual schools would decide how to improve their results.

Video: ESSA Explained in 3 Minutes

Follow us on Twitter at @PoliticsK12 .
A booklet on Bhikkhuni Order in Sri Lanka

The Bhikkhuni Order or the Bhikkhuni Sasana was introduced to Sri Lanka by Therani Sanghamitta in the 3rd Century after the Parinibbana of the Buddha. However, this Order ceased to exist by about the 11th Century BCE or about 1,000 years ago following the fall of Anuradhapura to the Chola invaders from India.

Poor response to call for restoration of the Order

There has been a clamour for the restoration of the Bhikkhuni Order in Sri Lanka since about the 1930s. At the initial stages of this popular call by a number of Buddhist Womens organisations in particular, several prominent scholar monks and Buddhist lay leaders like Anagarika Dharmapala and Prof. G.P. Malalasekera expressed their support for it in public.

However, only a few leading religious and lay dignitaries came forward to contribute their share towards translating this noble vision into reality mainly due to the strong opposition that came up from the conservative hierarchy of the Maha Sangha. As a result, the initiative taken by the late Ven. Narawila Dhammaratana Thera to introduce the Upasampada for Bhikkhunis according to the Chinese tradition proved futile.

There are hundreds of young women in our country aspiring to enter the Noble Order of Bhikkhunis...

Sakyaditha comes to the fore

The restoration of Bhikkhuni Order here again became an important subject of discussion once again among the Buddhist public in the country amidst excitement and fanfare triggered by a special convention of the International Sakyaditha Organisation of Buddhist Women held here in 1996. In fact, the theme of the convention was: There is room for restoring the Bhikkhuni Order in Sri Lanka.

Restoration of Bhikkhuni Order at Saranath

Later in the same year (1996) thanks to the bold initiative taken by the late Ven. Mapalagama Vipulasara Maha Thera, ten Dasasilmathas (DSM) including myself from this country got the opportunity to receive the Atthavacika Upasampada (Higher ordination) in conformity with the Attagaru Dhamma  eight disciplinary rules promulgated by the Buddha Himself at the restoration of the Theravada Bhikkhuni Order held on December 8,1996 at Saranath, Varanasi under the auspices of the Sakyaditha organisation.

Misconception about Bhikkhuni Upasampada

I have learnt from time to time from devotees calling at the Arya Khema Meditation Centre that much misinformation relating to the Theravada Bhikkhuni Upasampada conducted in 1996 has gained ground among the people in this country. No wonder this has happened in a situation where have the facts about the event not been effectively made known to the Buddhist public here.

Meanwhile, the misconception that the womankind has no alternative but to wait for the arising of another Buddha for their emancipation because the Theravada Bhikkhunis, as well as the tradition of Theravada Bhikkhuni Upasampada were extinct in the world, had taken root in the mind of a majority of Buddhists here.

I was able to witness the pitiable lot of the Dasa Sil Mathas (DSMs) and the hardship and suffering they were undergoing

Decision to dispel the doubts and misconceptions

It is a fact that the truth is something that invariably comes to light sooner or later and having experienced this universal law personally, I, for the last 20, years was concentrating on treading the path to my own emancipation giving no thought to the necessity to effectively counter or contradict this misconception and misinformation already entrenched in society.

I know from personal knowledge that there are hundreds of young women in our country aspiring to enter the Noble Order of Bhikkhunis, but they hesitate to take the plunge when they realise the difficulties lying ahead mainly for want of state patronage towards this Order. Therefore, I have come to the conclusion that it would be a grave failing on my part- in fact, a great injustice to Samaneri Bhikkhunis currently under our tutelage and the Bhikkhuni generations yet to come  if I neglected my obvious duty to clear misconceptions and misinformation relating to the Bhikkhuni Order prevailing in society and thus clear the way for its flourishing in our country for centuries to come.

Booklet to tell the facts

In the booklet titled: Suppressed and unknown facts about the Theravada Bhikkhuni Order I have now brought out the outcome of my decision.

This booklet is also aimed at dispelling any doubt one may entertain about the validity of the Bhikkhuni Upasampada conducted at the historic ceremony in Saranath in Varanasi in 1996 and sending home the fact that it was conducted strictly in conformity with Bhikkhuni Patimokkha, generally referred to as Attaguru Dhamma consisting of 311 rules of disciple promulgated by the Buddha himself on the monastic propriety and procedure in the Order of Bhikkhunis.

The Bhikkhuni Order with a proud history in this country is destined for extinction in the near future if it fails to receive the patronage of the State.

How come I became a Bhikkhuni?

I decided to carry a brief account in my booklet about how I was led to becoming a Bhikkhuni for the purpose of inspiring and encouraging the women aspiring to enter the Order, but yet felt daunted by the challenges ahead. I wish to recapitulate briefly in this article my journey to Bhikkhunihood which, by the way is explained in some detail in my booklet.

An ordination ceremony conducted by Bhikkhuni Kusuma

Career at Jayawardhanapura University

I got the opportunity to read practically every word on the Tripitaka written in Sinhala and Pali available at the library of the Sri Jayawardhanapura University when I worked there as an Instructress in English for 20 years.

Inspired by Their Gatha

I read with great relish the Theri Gatha translated into English by Pali scholar Mrs. Rhys Davids and I was moved to tears reading it. The realisation that erudite Arahant Bhikkhunis had lived in our country kindled a desire in me to make an attempt at achieving the seemingly daunting goal of becoming a Bhikkhuni.

Research work, Dasa Sil Matha

In 1987 I presented a research work titled Dasa Sil Matha as a thesis for my PhD at the Sri Jayawardhanapura University. In order to collect material for my research work, I had occasion visit practically every monastery across the country. During these visits, I was able to witness the pitiable lot of the Dasa Sil Mathas (DSMs) and the hardship and suffering they were undergoing. Highly moved by their plight, I personally made representations to President J.R. Jayewardene pressing that State patronage be extended to improve the lot of the DSMs. As a direct result of my representations, arrangements were made soon afterwards for DSMs to pursue studies at the Vidyodaya Pirivena at Maligakanda and to set up a separate division for DSMs in the Buddha Sasana Ministry.

State patronage is an imperative

During the reigns of our ancient kings, the Bhikkhunis rendered yeoman service to society thanks to Royal patronage extended to the Bhikkhu-Bhikkhuni Sasana. I should emphasise that the Bhikkhuni Order with a proud history in this country is destined for extinction in the near future if it fails to receive the patronage of the State.

Now that I have finished writing the booklet, I feel a deep sense of fulfillment that I have done my part for the progress and the long survival of Buddha Sasana.

Only goal left to achieve!

Now that I have reached the 88th milestone in the journey of my life, the only objective I have yet to achieve is nothing but a Marga Phala  a final stage to Arahantship. May my booklet be a source of blessing to the thousands of Sri Lankan Theravada Bhikkhunis and Samaneri Bhikkhunis and DSMs leading a monastic life amidst much hardship!

May all beings be well and happy!

This article is compiled by

A. S. Fernando
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has assured that the United Nations office in Sri Lanka stands ready to support the country when implementing programmes to achieve reconciliation and in the process of making Constitutional reforms.

The Secretary General has conveyed this to Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe who called on Mr. Guterres at the United Nations Head Quarters in New York on Monday.

A statement issued by the Prime Ministers Office said the Secretary General has also mentioned that it was the hope of the United Nations to see Sri Lankas success in its endeavours.

Mr. Guterres who warmly welcomed Prime Minister Wickremesinghe, appreciated his presence at the Historic Ocean Conference and recalled the close relationship between Sri Lanka and Portugal.

The Secretary General also mentioned his several visits to the Island as the High Commissioner for Refugees.

Mr. Wickremesinghe acknowledging the pleasantries extended to him, said in reply, that he is committed towards achieving national reconciliation through finding the truth, administration of Justice, providing compensation and acting responsibly to avoid a recurrence.
Associations office bearers: IATA-AASL Immediate Past President Tillak Wickremasinghe, newly elected IATA-AASL President Channe Wijemanne and newly elected IATA-AASL Vice President Rizmi Reyal

George Steuart Travel Ltd Director/Chief Executive Officer Channe Wijemanne was elected as President of the IATA Agents Association of Sri Lanka (IATA-AASL).

He was elected to the post at the 29th annual general meeting (AGM) of the IATA-AASL, which was held recently in Muscat, Oman.

At the event, The Traveller Global (Pvt.) Ltd Chairman/Managing Director Rizmi Reyal was elected as Vice President.

In addition, the following persons were elected to the IATA-AASL Executive Council for the period of 2017/18: Aitken Spence Travels (Pvt.) Ltd General Manager Nishantha Senaveratne, Atlas Lanka (Pvt.) Ltd Managing Director S. Paramanathan, Classic Travels (Pvt.) Ltd Chief Executive Officer Suresh Mendis, Gabo Travels (Pvt.) Ltd Chief Executive Officer Faris Deen, Hayleys Travels & Tours (Pvt.) Ltd General Manager Niranjan Dalpethado, Hemas Travels (Pvt.) Ltd Director/General Manager Riza Ahamat, Himpras Tours (Pvt.) Ltd Managing Director Jude Condrad, Travel 7 (Pvt.) Ltd Chief Executive Officer Trevor Rajaratnam, Lando Travels (Pvt.) Ltd Managing Director M.L.C. Fernando, Skymark Travels (Pvt.) Ltd Managing Partner Rimzi Nazeer, 02nd Chance Travels (Pvt.) Ltd Managing Director Duminda Lowe and Skyways Proprietor Tillak Wickramasinghe as Immediate Past President.

In his address to the gathering of members, Wijemanne thanked all members for the trust placed in him in an era where travel was evolving at a great pace. He pledged to work closely with all industry partners so as to enable all stakeholders to have a greater degree of seamlessness and efficiency in executing their day-to-day work.

IATA-AASL was formed in 1988 as a body to represent the interests of the Sri Lankan travel agencies accredited by the International Air Transport Association. At present, IATA-AASL has a membership of 135.

The AGM was followed by cocktails and a dinner reception at Al Falaj Hotel with the presence of the sponsors Amadeus Lanka (Pvt.) Ltd, Oman Air and Fairfirst Insurance Limited.
SYDNEY REUTERS June 6

Australian police said on Tuesday they were treating a siege in Melbourne as an act of terrorism after a claim by Islamic State that one of its fighters was the gunman responsible. Police on Monday killed in a shootout the man they said had held a woman hostage inside an apartment building in Melbourne. BBC reported shortly before 6pm, he appeared in the foyers of the hotel, firing shots at waiting tactical command officers heavily armed and wearing bullet-proof vests. Three officers were struck by bullet fragments, one in the neck, while Khayre was fatally wounded during an exchange of severe gunfire, ending the two-hour siege. Islamic State said via its news agency, Amaq, that the attack was launched because of Australias membership in a U.S.-led coalition against the militant group.



We are treating it as an act of terrorism, Victoria state police Commissioner Graham Ashton told the Seven television network on Tuesday. We believe this person was there with those sorts of intentions, albeit we dont know whether it was something planned or something spontaneous at this stage.
Providing enough employment opportunities in India with a population of 1.34 billion is not easy. And the fact that half of the population is below the age of 25 and will soon enter the job market will only make matters worse.

In response, the government has come up with initiatives such as Make in India, Skill India and Start-up India to promote employment. But the 201516 Annual Employment and Unemployment Survey found that the labour force participation rate (LFPR) nationally was only 50.3 percent. And the LFPR is much lower for females than for males. The survey shows sluggish employment growth and the growth varied across sectors. While sectors such as IT have seen growth, other sectors such as jewellery, automobile manufacturing and transport have seen a decline in employment in recent years.

In India, agriculture accounts for 46 percent of the workforce, compared to 22 percent in manufacturing and 32 percent in services. Despite various policy initiatives, the manufacturing sector has not been able to create mass employment, unlike in countries such as China. Further, casual and contractual employment is replacing permanent jobs in the manufacturing sector.

In 2016, Indias unemployment rate was 7.97 percent, with rural unemployment at 7.15 percent and urban unemployment at 9.62 percent. In rural areas, unemployment figures are lower due to the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). This act aims to guarantee the right to work by providing at least 100 days of paid employment in a financial year to every household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work. In the Union Budget 201718, the MGNREGA received Rs.480 billion (US $ 7.5 billion). While the act has helped to lower the unemployment rates, it has not been able to tackle disguised unemployment/underemployment. And such programmes focus only on unskilled employment.

To connect job seekers to potential employers, the Labour and Employment Ministry launched the National Career Service portal. The portal is a common platform connecting job-seekers, employers, skill providers, placement organisations and counsellors. In the same month as the National Career Service was launched, Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana  a skill development scheme  was launched by the Skill Development and Entrepreneurship Ministry to help young people learn industry-relevant skills and enable them to secure skilled employment.

While these schemes may increase employability through skill upgrading, one of Indias largest employers of educated youth  the IT sector  has begun laying off employees. Companies like Wipro, Cognizant and Infosys have announced that they will downsize. While there was 8.6 percent growth in the IT sector in the 201617 financial year, jobs only grew by 5 percent, compared with 6 percent in 20152016. This downward trend is predicted to continue, with a 2025 percent reduction in growth in employment in the IT sector over the next three years.

Industry experts blame this on automation, artificial intelligence and stricter visa norms in key markets such as the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. Some companies have announced that they will focus on new technologies such as artificial intelligence, rather than concentrating on low-skilled IT jobs.

But this technological advancement need not impact job creation  India can instead move towards a knowledge-based economy by focusing on high-value manufacturing and enrolment in quality higher education.

Disparity in access to higher education leads to unemployment among the youth. Countries such as South Korea have successfully developed the higher education sector through private participation, while the Singaporean government has launched a programme to establish partnerships between domestic and foreign universities to promote tertiary education. India could learn from these examples.

Moreover, India needs to change its anarchic labour laws which lead to creation of contractual jobs instead of permanent employment. Retail is a labour-intensive sector and foreign investment in retail would create jobs in the both retail and related sectors like apparel manufacturing and logistics. Similarly, allowing foreign investment in sectors like legal and accountancy services will create employment as more foreign firms move to India. Infrastructure investment can also be utilised as an engine of job creation.

Finally, India needs to sign trade agreements conceding to its partners requests to open sectors like insurance, legal services and retail and in return, bargain for easier work visa norms.

With these smarter policies, India can move towards permanent positions in high-value sectors and need not fear technological advancement or unemployment.

(Courtesy East Asia Forum)

(Arpita Mukherjee is Professor and Avantika Kapoor is a Research Assistant at the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, New Delhi. The views expressed herein are the authors own)
The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) the collective voice of the Muslim world stressed the its full solidarity with and support for the Muslim community of Sri Lanka against the apparent rising trend of violence instigated by extremists, which is spreading fear and mistrust among the population.

The OIC Secretary General Dr. Yousef Al-Othaimeen stressed his displeasure over the recent attacks taken place at the Muslim community in Sri Lanka at OIC official website.

The reports of attacks on homes, businesses and mosques are of great concern and deeply regrettable, it said.

While appealing for calm and peaceful relations between the communities, Dr. Al-Othaimeen urged the authorities to enforce the rule of law, investigate the incidents and bring the perpetrators to justice.

He noted that the Muslim community in Sri Lanka has a long standing presence in the country and a tradition of living in peace and harmony with their compatriots and contributing to the cultural and economic life of the country as a whole.
The month of Poson (June) is of special importance to Sri Lankans, particularly those following The Buddhas Teaching. Most of us are aware of the reason why this is so, but let us recapitulate that event that took place more than two thousand five hundred years ago.

Our closest neighbour, India, was a hub of culture during this time and a centre for all kinds of spiritual development. India offered a very stable environment for freedom of thinking and a safe platform for spiritual practise.

Prince Siddhartha, who was also looking for reasons for the unsatisfactory nature of the human condition, left the home environment to retire to the forests in the North of India, now the state of Bihar, where he was unlikely to be disturbed in his quest to reach his goal. He was born in an area, then without borders but now known as Nepal, at the foothills of the Himalayan range of mountains. He went from teacher to teacher, all of whom were renowned to have achieved considerable spiritual development, but soon found that they did not satisfy his aspiration. After six years of severe self-mortification, which was then considered the route to Nirvana, he was so disillusioned about these methods that he gave up looking for more teachers and left to develop his own method of salvation from the vicissitudes of the human condition  deterioration, ageing, illness and death. He found, amongst other things, mindfulness meditation to be one of the most useful techniques to develop his insight, through which he found the knowledge he was looking for. From that time on, we have called him The Buddha, the Enlightened One; not a god, but a human being who achieved something magnificent through sheer effort!

Since the attainment of nibbana of The Buddha, His Teaching (The Dharma) has bee n the guiding light for all those who seek Enlightenment. His Teaching was introduced to this island of Sri Lanka around 250 years after His passing and it is our fortune that it is thriving in its pristine form right up to today.

Historically, Sri Lanka and India have enjoyed a cordial relationship, and this was instrumental in the transference of The Buddha Dharma during the reign of King Dharmasoka of India. At that time, as was usual, our own King, Devanampiya Tissa, was maintaining good relations with Asoka, prompting Asoka to consider sending his emissary with the gift of The Buddhas Teaching. This emissary was none other than his own son, Reverend Mahinda, who had entered the community of monks and had achieved the saintly state of Arahant-hood.

Rev. Mahinda arrived in Sri Lanka with a retinue of six other members of the Sangha community. He caught sight of Tissa, whilst the latter was on a hunting trip with his officials on a day like the Poson full-moon day. As the story goes, Rev. Mahinda called out to Tissa by name, surprising Tissa, who looked in the direction from which the voice came and saw the retinue on top of the Seela Koota rock, on the Missaka mountain in Mihintale, near Anuradhapura(the then capital city). The entourage was invited down and offered hospitality in the traditional way that Sri Lanka is still famous for today.

This visit by Rev. Mahinda led to a large number of devotees, including over five hundred royal and other noble ladies, entering the Sasana  the Sangha community. Soon after, the whole country embraced Buddhism. The majority of Sri Lankans are still Buddhist, with the Buddha Dharma holding a prominent place here, despite a change in demography over the centuries. It is said that The Buddha Dharma will remain in this island for another two thousand years, as was the desire of The Buddha himself. We can only hope that this wish will hold for at least a few hundred years more, so that those who wish to tread The Buddhas path may do so without any limitation.

May all beings be well and happy!
Visiting Foreign Affairs Minister Ravi Karunanayake held talks with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi yesterday, Indian news agencies reported.

The Prime Minister recalled his productive and memorable visit to Sri Lanka on occasion of the International Vesak Day last month. He congratulated Mr Karunanayake on taking over his new responsibility as Foreign Minister.

Prime Minister further conveyed condolences on the loss of lives and destruction caused by the recent floods and landslides in Sri Lanka. He reaffirmed Indias readiness to continue assisting Sri Lanka in this regard.

Foreign Minister Ravi Karunanayake thanked Prime Minister for quick Indian assistance in the aftermath of the floods and landslides. He conveyed the commitment of the Government of Sri Lanka to continue strengthening the close partnership with India.

In their meeting, both Ms Swaraj and Mr Karunanayake deliberated upon a number of key issues besides reviewing the overall bilateral ties, officials said.

Both India and Sri Lanka have been holding a series of meetings in the last few months to resolve the fishermen issue. The issue is known to have figured in the talks.

India has been maintaining that it was looking at getting into the root of the problem and find a permanent solution to the issue.
If the Southern Expressway (E01) has caused any impact on the environment as claimed by Minister Patali Champika Ranawaka, its responsibility should be taken by the minister himself along with President Maithripala Sirisena and Minister Anura Priyadarshana Yapa who headed the Ministry of Environment respectively when the highway was built, the Pivithuru Hela Urumaya (PHU) charged yesterday.

It said it was the responsibility of the Environment Minister to allow the project to continue after approving the Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA).

When the project was implemented, the Environment Minister was President Sirisena. Most of the constructions of the highway were carried out from 2007 to 2010 when Minister Ranawaka was the Environment Minister. Minister Yapa was the Environment Minister when the project was completed in 2011, PHU General Secretary MP Udaya Gammanpila told a news conference.

Therefore, he said the finger which was pointed at them for alleged repercussions of the expressway should be directed at the present government in which all these personnel are a part of.

Categorically rejecting the argument of Minister Ranawaka, the MP said had the expressway acted as a dam and stored water creating floods, the land stretch from the highway towards the coastal areas should not have been severely affected.

The most flood affected areas are the coastal areas. How is this possible if the expressway acted as a dam and how Ratnapura, Ayagama and Deniyaya flooded as there was no expressway in those areas?, he said.

He said the answer to floods was not the termination of highways construction but the construction of highways on pillars in the wet zone.

Though elevated highways cost 20% extra, it wont cause any floods. Therefore, we request the government to construct the Colombo-Kandy Highway on pillars, he said. (Lahiru Pothmulla)
Members from both sides at Bangkoks Eastin Grand Hotel with Thailands Trade Negotiations Department Director General Boonyarit Kalayanamit (11th from left) and Sri Lankas Commerce Department Director General Sonali Wijeratne (seventh from right)

Sri Lanka and Thailand have come to a consensus on a free trade agreement (FTA) to trade goods as the first step towards a comprehensive FTA that will follow in the future, Sri Lankas Industry and Commerce Ministry in a statement said.

This transpired during the Second Subcommittee Meeting on Trade-Related Matters between the high-level trade officials of both countries, in Bangkok. Thailand has proposed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on Strategic Economic Partnership (SEP) with Sri Lanka as a stepping stone towards a fully-fledged FTA.

The MoU is expected to be concluded with an action plan in order to be signed during Thai Deputy Prime Minister Somkid Jatusripitaks visit to Sri Lanka in August 2017. The bilateral meeting was held at Eastin Grand Hotel, Sathorn, Bangkok. The Thai delegation was led by Thailands Trade Negotiations Department Director General Boonyarit Kalayanamit, while the Sri Lanka side was led by Commerce Department Director General Sonali Wijeratne.

While exchanging the views on trade and economic situations of both countries, the two parties expressed their interest to further enhance their trade and achieve the targets set by the leaders of the two countries to reach total trade to US $ 1.5 billion by 2020.

The current annual trade levels between Thailand and Sri Lanka is in the range of US $ 550 million.

To achieve the US $ 1.5 billion trade objective, it was agreed to explore the possibilities of establishing the bilateral FTA and developing the SEP between Thailand and Sri Lanka in identified sectors of mutual interest.
Court: No More Routine Shackling of Criminal Defendants

For better or worse, the presumption of innocence rests in large part on appearances. And the appearance of a defendant in court, shackled "like a bear on a chain," can undermine that presumption. Therefore, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that lower courts may no longer routinely of shackle all pretrial detainees in the courtroom, even if there is no jury present.

Instead, courts will need to make assessments on a case-by-case basis as to whether a defendant must be shackled. So what will that analysis entail? And what will that mean for criminal defendants?

Defendant in Chains

The Ninth Circuit ruled that the Fifth Amendment provides criminal defendants the "right to be free of unwarranted restraints applies whether the proceeding is pretrial, trial, or sentencing, with a jury or without." Previously, courts allowed security services like the Marshals Service to produce all defendants in full restraints for most non-jury proceedings in court. "Full restraints," as defined by the court, means that "a defendant's hands are closely handcuffed together, these handcuffs are connected by chain to another chain running around the defendant's waist, and the defendant's feet are shackled and chained together."

The court was emphatic in its rejection of routine shackling:

We must take seriously how we treat individuals who come into contact with our criminal justice system -- from how our police interact with them on the street to how they appear in the courtroom. How the justice system treats people in these public settings matters for the public's perception, including that of the defendant. Practices like routine shackling and "perp walks" are inconsistent with our constitutional presumption that people who have not been convicted of a crime are innocent until proven otherwise.

Stated Need for Shackling

While many courts, including in this case the Southern District of California, permitted blanket shackling policies in the past, that rule has now changed. Going forward, "if the government seeks to shackle a defendant, it must first justify the infringement with specific security needs as to that particular defendant." In doing so, courts are required to decide "whether the stated need for security outweighs the infringement on a defendant's right."

Supreme Court bans the use of shackles "unless that use is 'justified by an essential state interest' -- such as the interest in courtroom security -- specific to the defendant on trial." When considering a request for shackling, a court may "take into account the factors that courts have traditionally relied on in gauging potential security problems and the risk of escape at trial."

The Ninth Circuit urged that courts "must make an individualized decision that a compelling government purpose would be served and that shackles are the least restrictive means for maintaining security and order in the courtroom," and was clear that courts could not delegate these decisions to law enforcement officers or security personnel.

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From left: Standard Chartered Sri Lanka CEO Jim McCabe, Standard Chartered China Managing Director and Financial Markets Head Wesley Yang and Standard Chartered China Commercial Banking and Transaction Banking Head Sebastian Er speak at the Belt Road Initiative press briefing in Colombo, yesterday

Standard Chartered (StanChart) is well set to become the full financial services provider for Chinas ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which aspires to recreate the ancient Silk Road, connecting China with Asia, Africa, Europe and the Middle East with the aim of achieving mutual development.

According to StanChart China Financial Markets Head Wesley Yang, who is visiting Sri Lanka with a Hong Kong and Chinese media delegation, as part of a South Asia and Southeast Asia BRI roadshow, StanChart has presence in 46 countries in the BRI and therefore, its natural for the bank to spearhead the project as a strategic initiative.

Although government to government deals are at the centre of the BRI through institutions such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), Silk Road Fund, China Exim Bank and China Development Bank, according to Yang, StanChart plays an important role facilitating the BRI globally as well as locally due to their deep understanding of China and the countries which are partners of the initiative.

He said when large Chinese private sector companies are ready to play an active role as the BRI goes forward, StanChart could step in as a trusted banking partner to address the financing needs of these companies, while assisting them with the banks knowledge of legal and tax structures, environmental laws and political sensitivities of the countries on the belt.

Also, StanCharts world-class banking team could help these companies with project and export financing, cash management and foreign exchange hedging, Yang pointed out.

StanChart has already set up a China desk to address issues relating to the BRI and formed executive and working committees to facilitate the initiative locally as well as globally.

According to StanChart Sri Lanka CEO Jim McCabe, Sri Lanka is a crucial partner in the BRI, given its strategic geographical location and its ports. He said in the last few years the relationship between Sri Lanka and China has accelerated.

Its (Chinese presence) obvious when you look at all the big infrastructure projects such as highways, airports, ports, container terminals and so onall these infrastructure projects are either funded by China or built through public-private partnerships with China, McCabe said.

China became Sri Lankas biggest trade partner last year, surpassing India with whom Sri Lanka has a free trade agreement (FTA). Sri Lanka is currently negotiating an FTA with China, which is likely to be signed by early next year. Unveiled in 2013, BRI is Chinas most ambitious endeavour so far, aimed at marking its presence as a different kind of world power, professing a win-win formula for all its partners, largely through trade. Beijing has always been quick to stress that BRI is not a geopolitical tool designed to widen Chinas influence. However, several months back, there was a massive public protest in Sri Lanka against a proposed Chinese industrial zone in Hambantota. The industrial zone is part of a deal the Sri Lankan government has been negotiating with a state-run Chinese company to sell a stake in the Hambantota port on a long-term lease.

As a result, the port sale deal, which was scheduled to have been signed early this year, remains unsigned to this date.

However, McCabe said he remains positive of such issues getting resolved at a government to government level, going forward.

China is not new to Sri Lanka and Sri Lanka is not new to China. They go a long way back. These things get resolved. The activities between the two countries have accelerated in the last 10 years quite significantly. And now with this initiative (BRI), things will accelerate even more, he said.
AFP: Measures taken by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and other nations against Qatar aim to pressure Doha into drastic policy changes, a senior UAE official told AFP yesterday.

This is not about regime change -- this is about change of policy, change of approach, UAE State Minister for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash said in an interview, accusing Qatar of being the main champion of extremism and terrorism in the region

The government of Qatar is in denial. It is trying to describe this as an issue about the independence of their foreign policy, and it is not, Gargash said.

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain are among several states that this week cut diplomatic ties with Qatar, in the worst crisis to hit the Gulf in recent years.

The four states have suspended all flights to and from Doha and given all Qatari citizens two weeks to return home. The Arab states accuse Qatar, a gas-rich emirate at the Saudi border, of supporting extremism.

Qatar has denied the charges.

Led by Kuwait, mediation efforts are now underway to resolve the crisis, which Gargash said was the result of an accumulation over many, many years of subversive Qatari politics and support for extremism and terrorist organisations.

We have now reached a cul-de-sac in terms of trying to convince Qatar to change course, he explained, drawing a parallel to a similar diplomatic crisis in 2014. Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain temporarily pulled their ambassadors from Bahrain in 2014 in a dispute similar to this weeks crisis.

The boycott ended after Qatar agreed to a string of concessions including relocating leaders of Egypts Muslim Brotherhood to Turkey and cooperating with Gulf states on intelligence and security.

Qatar has nonetheless forged regional alliances independently of its fellow Gulf Cooperation Council states, drawing accusation by Saudi Arabia and its allies of serving Iranian interests.
The United Arab Emirates has banned people from publishing expressions of sympathy towards Qatar and will punish offenders with a jail term of up to 15 years, reports said on Wednesday.

The United Arab Emirates, along with several other powerful Arab states, severed diplomatic ties with fellow Gulf state Qatar on Monday over its alleged support for Islamist groups and Iran. Qatar denies the accusations.

President Donald Trump took sides in the deep rift in the Arab world on Tuesday, praising Middle East countries' actions against Qatar, but later spoke by phone with Saudi King Salman and stressed the need for Gulf unity.

'Strict and firm action will be taken against anyone who shows sympathy or any form of bias towards Qatar, or against anyone who objects to the position of the United Arab Emirates, whether it be through the means of social media, or any type of written, visual or verbal form,' Gulf News quoted UAE Attorney-General Hamad Saif al-Shamsi as saying.

On top of a possible jail term, offenders would also be hit with a fine of at least 500,000 dirhams ($136,000, 105,000), the newspaper said, citing a statement to Arabic-language media.

Mauritania on Wednesday joined Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Yemen, Libya's eastern-based government and the Maldives as the latest nation to cut ties with Qatar.

Since the diplomatic row erupted, slogans against and in support of Qatar have been among the top topics discussed on Twitter in Arabic, which is a hugely popular medium of expression in the Arab world, particularly in Saudi Arabia.

Newspapers and television channels in the region have also been engaged in a war of words over Qatar's role.

As the conflict between Qatar and several Middle Eastern countries intensified, Etihad Airways announced on Wednesday that Qatari nationals will not be allowed to board flights to Dubai or Abu Dhabi because the United Arab Emirates has banned them from passing through its airports.

Foreigners living in Qatar with residence visas will no longer be eligible for visas on arrival into the United Arab Emirates, a spokesman for Etihad Airways added.

The United Arab Emirates had already said Qatari nationals would not be allowed to enter the country or cross its points of entry, although the practical effects on airline passengers had been unclear until now.

Qatari nationals will now not be allowed to pass through airports in the UAE even to change planes.

'This ruling applies to all airlines flying into the UAE, including Etihad Airways,' the Abu Dhabi-based airline said.

The transit ban on Qataris is stricter than restrictions on Israeli passport holders who are allowed up to 24 hours to change planes at UAE airports, even though Israel and the United Arab Emirates lack diplomatic relations.

Emirates, which has its hub in Dubai, did not respond to a request for comment. Qantas Airways, a codeshare partner of Emirates, said it would not carry Qatari nationals on its flights to Dubai due to the government restrictions.

A Qatari official has said an ultimatum issued by Saudi Arabia and its allies for the emirate's citizens to leave is a violation of human rights that requires UN intervention.

Ali bin Smaikh al-Marri, chairman of Qatar's national human rights committee, said that the Saudi-led move went far beyond a simple diplomatic dispute and would break up families and disrupt young people's education.(Daily Mail)
1) Nine districts in Madhya Pradesh's Malwa region are on the boil after police firing killed five farmers during protests in Mandsaur. The farmers are more united in this belt since Indore (sabzi mandi) happens to be the commercial capital of the state. The nine districts are Mandsaur, Neemach, Dhar, Khargaoun, Dewas, Indore, Ratlam, Ujjain and Badwani.

2) The unrest had been simmering for over a year now. Since Madhya Pradesh was doing seemingly well in wheat production, the state government encouraged farmers to adopt crop diversification. As a result, many farmers opted for onion production. However, due to bumper production last year, the farmers didn't get the right price for their produce - cost didn't match the input (contrary to PM Narendra Modi's poll promise of higher prices for farmers).

After much pressure, the Shivraj Singh Chouhan-led BJP government in the state last year (for the first time in his tenure) announced Rs 6 per kg as one-time minimum support price (MSP). This has been increased to Rs 8 this year after the protests.

3) After demonetisation, the agricultural sector saw digitisation in a massive way. As a result, farmers got a serious jolt since cash is the primary mode of transaction in the sector.

The state government encouraged farmers to adopt crop diversification. As a result, many farmers opted for onion production. (Credit: Reuters photo)

When they demanded cash payment, the government agreed to pay half their dues at mandis in cash and the remaining via electronic transfer to their bank accounts.

4) While Chouhan was busy with the Narmada Seva Yatra (that ran into almost four months), various groups, including the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh (affiliated to the RSS), started mobilising the farmers. Moreover, the Yogi Adityanath government's decision to waive off farm loans (keeping PM Modi's poll promise) in Uttar Pradesh strengthened calls for a loan waiver in the agrarian states of Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. (The protests in Maharashtra are on despite the Devendra Fadnavis government announcing a Rs 30,000 crore loan-waiver.)

The BJP government has blamed the opposition parties for "instigating" the farmers, who announced an agitation from June 1 in Madhya Pradesh with the following demands:

i) Complete loan waiver.

ii) Cash payment.

The over-production of onion crop just coincided with the agitation. Their procurement remained a big issue as farmers were forced to sell onions at the rate of Rs 1.5/kg while the input cost was Rs 4 to Rs 5.

5) Although the Chouhan government announced short-term measure - MSP for onion and tuar daal - it seemed too little, too late. State intelligence failed to anticipate the unrest and farmers' mobilisation even as the police department remained busy making arrangements for Chouhan's out-of-state visits.

6) Meanwhile, the increasing spate of farmer suicides, especially marginal farmers, added to their angst. Even the chief minister's statements on many occasions didn't go down well with the farmers.

He once categorically said that not all suicides were because of debts. His home minister, Bupendra Singh, in a written reply to a question by a Congress MLA in the Assembly in 2016, said some of the 418 farmers who committed suicide in Chouhans home district Sehore in the last three years took the extreme step because they were possessed by ghosts.

7) Interestingly, agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh last year admitted that the government couldn't ensure 50 per cent profit over the input cost to the farmers (as promised by Modi). He said the government was trying to reduce the input cost, but it's not feasible.

Before coming to power, the BJP had promised to implement the recommendations of the Swaminathan Commission report, but nothing has been done. The MP agriculture minister claimed that of the 200 recommendations in the Swaminathan report, most were accepted, except ensuring 50 per cent profit over the input cost.

Recently, when PM Modi promised to make the income of farmers double by 2022, Chouhan was made the head of the committee that would formulate the guidelines. Farmers in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh are demanding implementation of the Swaminathan Commission report (recommendations) to ensure they get "profitable" prices.

8) Minimum support price, or MSP, is a form of market intervention by the government of India to insure agricultural producers against any sharp fall in farm prices. MSPs are announced at the beginning of the sowing season for certain crops on recommendation by the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) and announced by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) chaired by the prime minister.

Currently, it covers 26 commodities, which include paddy (rice), wheat, pulses, etc. A counterpart of MSP is the market intervention scheme (MIS), under which state governments procure perishable commodities like vegetable items.

9) Demands to increase MSP have remained a big issue for long. Food policy expert Devender Sharma, in a column in DNA, writes that the procurement price of wheat in 1970 was Rs 76 per quintal. In 2015, the MSP for wheat was fixed at Rs 1,450 per quintal - an increase by 19 times in 45 years. Now, compare this with the hike in incomes of various other sections in the same period.

The jump in salaries of government employees (just the basic salary plus DA) in the same period has been 120 to 150 times; the increase in salaries of college/university teachers is 150 to 170 times; of school teachers in the range of 280 to 320 times. What's more, in the 7th Pay Commission, the salary of a chaprasi (peon) has been fixed at Rs 18,000 per month.
At least 12 people were killed and more than 40 wounded on Wednesday morning in a pair of attacks on Iran's two most important symbols: the parliament and the Mausoleum of Iran's founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

The Islamic State, or ISIS, claimed responsiblity for the attacks and released a video of the attack inside the parliament building.

A woman is evacuated during an attack on the Iranian parliament in central Tehran, Iran. (Reuters)

If ISIS' claims are true, this would be the group's first major attack inside the Shia Muslim-majority country, which is one of the powers leading the fight against Islamic State militants in the region.

Iranian police can be seen helping a child escape the besieged parliament building in #Tehran #CNN#Iran #IranParliamentAttack pic.twitter.com/bRJxZHMaLv  Basma El Baz (@BaSsmaEBaz) June 7, 2017

According to media reports, attackers armed with Kalashnikov rifles and dressed as women stormed through the parliament bulding's main entrance in Tehran, killed at least one security guard, and wounded and kidnapped other people.

One of the attackers later blew himself up inside, where a session had been in progress, according to a statement carried by Iran's state TV.

Iran has been an island of safety in a region that experiences some form of terror almost every day. That just changed today and it's sad.  Negar Mortazavi (@NegarMortazavi) June 7, 2017

About five hours after the first reports, Iranian news agencies said four people who had attacked the building were dead and the incident was over.

Iranian lawmakers sit inside the parliament during an attack in central Tehran, Iran. (Reuters)

About the same time, in southern Tehran, two attackers entered the Khomeini mausoleum, a destination for tourists and pilgrims.

One bomber there detonated a suicide vest and another was killed by security forces, Iran state broadcaster Irib reported. Several members of the public, visiting the shrine, were injured.

(Warning: Graphic images)

Iran's intelligence ministry said security forces had arrested another "terrorist team" planning a third attack, without giving further details.

The country's parliament speaker tried to play down the attacks. "Some coward terrorists infiltrated one of the buildings of parliament. They were confronted. It was not a major issue. Our security forces have taken necessary steps," Ali Larijani said in an open session broadcast live by state TV.

In last week alone, #ISIS claimed attacks in:Tehran, Iran (today) London, UK Manila, Philippines Baghdad, Iraq pic.twitter.com/RgzeTCd7rl  Joyce Karam (@Joyce_Karam) June 7, 2017

The Islamic State released a graphic video showing a bloodied man lying on the ground in the Parliament while a gunman in the background shouted, Thank God! Do you think that we are going to leave? We will remain here, God willing.

What explains ISIS' entry into Iran?

The attacks are the first major terrorist violence in Tehran in more than a decade. After the turbulent years of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and the Iran-Iraq wars of 1982, Iran has been a relatively peaceful and stable nation in an increasingly unstable region.

It also marks the ISIS's entry inside Iran. Despite Iran's active involvement in the fight against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, the group had not carried out any attacks in the country, and doesn't enjoy much support in the predominantly Shia nation. However, ISIS has this year released a number of propaganda pieces focused on inciting attacks inside Iran.

The dastardly attack took place in only less than a month after the re-election of President Hassan Rouhani, a moderate and the political spearhead of the Obama-era US-Iran diplomatic thaw.

With the current US president Donald Trump going back on the foreign policy achievements of the former Obama administration, we see a reversal of alignments, and a concerted attempt to ostracise Iran from the Middle Eastern affairs.

Even the move by Saudi Arabia to isolate Qatar was premised on the latter's improving relations with Iran, and supporting militias which have direct or indirect backing from Tehran.
The fact that fading politicians are always desperate for limelight to revive their sagging careers is no secret.

A few minutes of media glare, they hope, would kick-start a flagging career and maybe their party would suddenly recognise their capability.

Mani Shankar Aiyar rushed to Srinagar, seeking to hobnob with the Hurriyat, knowing that even when his party (Congress) was in power, they had refused to bend.

He went knowing well that TV reporters would follow him and record every word he speaks. But as a result, he, like his predecessors, came back empty-handed.

The latest to join the list of publicity-seeking politicians is Prakash Karat of the CPM. His article, in his partys mouthpiece, is based on incorrect information, twisting of facts and half-truths.

His most controversial line was that the Army was toeing the line of the government. I do hope he realises that we are in India, where the Army is a part of the government, but has no role to play in governance.

Does he also realise that the Army and the government work hand-in-hand towards a common goal?

The goal is to normalise the situation in Kashmir at the earliest, to enable the government to push its agenda for peace forward.

I sincerely hope that he does not expect the Indian Army to behave like its Pakistani counterpart, which is at loggerheads with the government.

A tweet by a major general, the director general Inter Services Public Relations (DG ISPR) of Pakistan, had compelled Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif to call a cabinet meeting to defuse the situation. I also hope he realises that the Pakistani Army is independent of government checks and balances, and solely the power which refuses the polity to engage in talks.

Is this the type of army he desires in India, not toeing the government line but being independent?

If so, then I feel he is living in the wrong country.

I have still to understand his logic that throwing stones and petrol bombs as also demanding "azadi" is a political protest.

"Azadi" instigated by Pakistan implies breaking away from India, not any special privileges as a region of the state.

He is possibly the first politician to call locals supporting militants, who attack and seek to kill security and other government personnel, as political protestors.

I wonder if the party philosophy propagates this thought. He mentions excessive force being employed by the Army and the chief supporting Major Leetul Gogoi in the same context. If Gogoi had employed excessive force, the death toll would have been astounding on both sides.

It was to avoid excessive force that Gogoi took that action. How skewed can political thinking become.

Karat has again put his foot in his mouth by commenting that the Army chief taunted protesters to take up arms. This possibly is the only time when he has made a logical comment even without knowing it.

When anyone opens fire, the Army is legally permitted to respond, in the act of self-defence, however, it cannot do so against stone-throwers, hence has been compelled to withdraw from encounters due to the presence of large numbers of locals throwing stones.

The Army does not retaliate to stone-throwers, letting the police and CRPF handle it. His most illogical comment was that the government cannot find a solution employing force, but by political means. 70 years, including governments supported by his party have failed, and now there is a realisation.

In every case, where the nation has been able to broker peace, Punjab, Nagaland and Mizoram, it has been from a position of strength.

The Army creates the environment and the government launches its initiative. 70 years, innumerable opportunities and governments, including those his party supported, failed.

Negotiations can never take place from a position of defeat or being on the back foot. Let us give the present strategy a chance.

I can only hope that our politicians mature and make comments which have a meaning, rather than write only to seek a few minutes of prime time, to boost their sagging careers.
Manslaughter Charges Filed in 'Ghost Ship' Artist Collective Fire

The fire at the Ghost Ship artist collective in Oakland, California during a dance party last December killed 36 individuals. While the families of victims have filed a civil lawsuit for wrongful death against the building owner, the collective's management, party promoter, and even the city, until this week no criminal charges had been filed.

That changed yesterday when the manager of the collective, Derick Alamena, along with his assistant, Max Harris, were arrested. Both will be charged on 36 counts each of involuntary manslaughter as a result of the fire last year. Although authorities did not indicate whether the owner of the warehouse would also be facing criminal charges, the investigation has concluded.

More Details on the Tragedy

The Ghost Ship fire was the deadliest fire the country had seen in over 12 years. Tragically, after the fire began, all attendees of the party became trapped on the second floor. The only other means of escape from the second floor had been blocked prior to the dance party. There were no fire extinguishers, nor did the indoor fire sprinkler system function. Due to the extent of the fire damage, investigators have stated that cause of the fire may never be discovered.

The building itself was not permitted for any of the uses that Alamena and Harris allowed. Primarily, the building was rented to artists as both living and working space. Also, the space was rented for performances, parties, and other creative endeavors. Individuals lived in makeshift living spaces, and RVs that were inside the building. There was one shared bathroom for all the occupants. Electricity, borrowed from a neighboring building, came from extensions cords that ran through a literal hole in the wall.

Can Landlords Be Held Criminally Liable?

Ordinarily landlords will not be held criminally liable when a person is injured or dies due to negligence such as an unsafe condition on their property. However, depending on the facts of the case, a landlord can be held criminally liable if their actions or failures to act were so egregious as to create criminal liability.

When someone dies as a result of the grossly negligent conduct of a landlord, involuntary manslaughter or other criminal negligence type charges may be appropriate.

Related Resources:
High School Drug Search Violated 900 Students' Civil Rights, Lawsuit Claims

A lawsuit against a county sheriff in the state of Georgia alleges that a mass drug search violated the civil rights of 900 high school students. The allegations stem from April of this year, when Worth County Sheriff Jeff Hobby ordered the local high school to be locked down for a drug search.

While conducting the search, in addition to using drug sniffing dogs, each student was subject to a pat down, with many students reporting rather invasive pat down searches. Despite searching every student, making matters worse for the sheriffs, no drugs were even found. Not surprisingly, the school was (less instrusively) searched by local police approximately a month earlier and no drugs were discovered; however, that search apparently was not enough to satisfy Sheriff Hobby. Notably, a similar case to this one settled in 2006 for $6,000 to $12,000 per student and involved approximately 150 students.

Details of the Case

In addition to placing the school on lockdown, students were confined and had their cell phones confiscated during the search. Parents were not notified. No warrant was obtained for the searches. Though, interestingly, the school was told in advance that the sheriff would be conducting a drug sweep after Spring Break. Rather than get a warrant, Sheriff Hobby asserted that the searches were legal as a result of the school administration's permission and presence during the searches. The school denies ever providing the sheriff with permission.

The lawsuit contains rather shocking allegations regarding the invasiveness of the searches many students needlessly suffered. Although the sheriff only had a list of 13 students that they suspected of possessing drugs, and only 3 of those 13 were present at school that day, hundreds of other students were subjected to searches without probable cause.

Can Law Enforcement Search a School With No Warrant?

Yes. School administrators can consent to a search. However searching a school, or school's property (including a student's locker), is different than searching a student's person. Students do not give up their civil rights just by showing up to school, no matter how badly they may not want to be there.

Law enforcement may be able to conduct a search of a student's person without a warrant, but only if there is probable cause. This means that an officer needs to have reasonable suspicion that the particular student to be searched is involved in criminal activity.

Related Resources:
Kyaw Min Swe told Radio Free Asia that police in the Bahan Township district of Yangon initially told them they were not being arrested, but were wanted only for questioning on charges the military filed under Article 66(d) of Myanmar's Telecommunications Law regarding a March 27 satirical article, headlined "Oath of the Nation of Bullets," that lampooned an army-produced propaganda film, "Faithful to the Nation." The Bahan Township Court yesterday denied the journalists bail and ordered them detained until their next hearing, which is scheduled for June 8, reports said. If convicted, the journalists face a maximum sentence of three years in prison and fines.

"We call on Myanmar's government to release Kyaw Min Swe and Ko Kyaw Zwa Naing immediately and to drop the defamation charges against them," said Shawn Crispin, CPJ's senior Southeast Asia representative. "Defamation should never be a criminal matter, and the use of defamation laws to silence journalists harks back to the dark days of military rule, not to the democratic future many hoped Aung San Suu Kyi's elected government would herald."
This blog is looking for wisdom, to have and to share. It is also looking for other rare character traits like good humor, courage, and honor. It is not an easy road, because all of us fall short. But God is love, forgiveness and grace. Those who believe in Him and repent of their sins have the promise of His Holy Spirit to guide us and show us the Way.
The Walkaway tour is in its literary festival phase now, and my next stop is an appearance this Sunday at the Printers Row Lit Fest in Chicago, where I'll be talking Walkaway with the incredible Mary Robinette Kowal at 11:30 (free tickets here).



If you can't make the tour stops and you're interested in getting a signed, personalized copy of Walkaway, you can drop a line to Dark Delicacies, my corner bookstore. I'm stopping in there once a week or so to sign orders and they've got a very efficient mail-order operation.





I'll be back in Chicago later in June, for the American Library Association conference and I'm also coming to Denver Comic-Con, San Diego Comic-Con and Defcon.
Holy cow! A calf in Uttar Pradesh, India was born with a human face, leading some people to worship it as an incarnation of the god Vishnu. Unfortunately, the animal died an hour after birth. From India.com:



Unfortunately, the deformed calf could not survive and died in an hour, but that did not stop the locals from celebrating the birth of the cow with a human face, which they believe is an incarnation of God. They believe the dead calf is the 'Gokaran', 24 incarnations of Lord Vishnu. In fact, the religious believers now plan to build a temple for him.

Raja Bhaiya Mishra, 55, the manager of the cow shelter (where the animal was born), was quoted saying, 'It's a miracle that the calf was born in this shelter. Thousands of people have been here to see it. We will be cremating him in three days, and a temple will be built for him. This avatar has most definitely created a devotion feeling amongst the people.'
How does a clearly fake story about a Russian warplane and a United States Navy destroyer end up as a FoxNews.com story? The NY Times traces it, from its origin on a parody website, to Facebook, to Russian TV, to The Sun (British tabloid), to FoxNews.com.

The Sun at least hinted at problems with the story, calling it a "bizarre propaganda report" and quoting the Pentagon denying that General Gorenc had commented. Another tabloid, The Daily Express, later posted an article suggesting World War III might be at hand.

FoxNews.com soon picked up The Sun's version of the story. Refet Kaplan, the managing editor of FoxNews.com, said the story was considered "not as a serious report on Russia's military capability, but as another example of Russian media hyperbole." That was not set out in the headline or the article, other than an oblique reference to the original as "propaganda."

After The New York Times asked about the article, it was deleted from the FoxNews.com website (archive.org copy).
RICHMOND  Youre a police officer rolling up to a group of young people standing on a street corner. You ask what theyre up to. They say its none of your business. Then they curse at you.

What can you do?

A) Arrest them

B) Nothing

C) Scream obscenities back at them

D) Warn them

The right answer, according to a new online training course on constitutional rights created for Virginia law enforcement officers, is nothing.

To build the optional course, which incorporates graphic-novel style illustrations, videos and audio to re-create real-world scenarios, state officials turned to the so-called father of the U.S. Constitution: Virginias own James Madison.

The left and the right are easy. Its the nuance that challenges law enforcement, Doug Smith, vice president for the Robert H. Smith Center for the Constitution at James Madisons Montpelier, said at a news conference Tuesday. And so often that nuance really resolves itself through constitutional thinking.

Representatives from Montpelier, the historical and educational center at Madisons home in Orange County, joined state leaders Tuesday at the Capitol to announce the launch of the training program, a public-private collaboration believed to be the first of its kind. The program will allow officers and recruits to earn educational credits at law enforcement academies throughout the state.

Officials said the course was designed to improve relationships between the law enforcement community and the citizenry at a time of heightened political protest.

How do you allow for the exercise of a constitutional right but also enforce the laws of the commonwealth? All that stems from the Constitution, said Secretary of Public Safety and Homeland Security Brian J. Moran, who noted that the training course passed muster with the Virginia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

In addition to obscenities and rude gestures, the course, which Smith called a con law class for cops, covers other tricky subjects such as bystanders recording video of police encounters, stopping people for carrying guns, shooting fleeing suspects who can only be stopped with a bullet, drones, and treatment of transgender suspects.

State officials from the Department of Criminal Justice Services and the office of Attorney General Mark. R. Herring partnered with Montpelier to develop the online component, as did local law enforcement officials such as Richmond Commonwealths Attorney Michael N. Herring and former Charlottesville Police Chief Tim Longo.

Covering 24 scenarios through 165 custom illustrations, the course cost roughly $238,000 to produce. Funding for the project came from the multimillion-dollar Medicaid fraud settlement Virginia received from Abbott Pharmaceuticals.

Smith said the entire course takes 10 to 12 hours to complete.

There is a tremendous amount of depth and gravity and intellectual heft to this course, Smith said.

Speaking at the event, Lt. Gov. Ralph S. Northam pointed to the recent fatal shooting of Virginia State Police Special Agent Michael T. Walter in Richmonds Mosby Court as a sign of the threats law enforcement personnel face and the need to build trust through community policing.

We do know we live in a very troubled world right now. We live in troubled communities, said Northam, who appeared at the event one week before he faces former U.S. Rep. Tom Perriello in the June 13 Democratic gubernatorial primary.

Saying he was filling in for Gov. Terry McAuliffe as he introduced Smith at Tuesdays event, Northam seemed to confuse James Madisons Montpelier with a similarly named Virginia institution.

All the way from Harrisonburg, Virginia. James Madison University. Home of the Dukes, Northam said. I was going to say the greatest university in Virginia. But I cant say that. Because I went to VMI. But the governor would certainly say that.

The course is accessible to the public at www.Montpelier.org/DCJS.
A key weakness in malicious software is the "Command and Control" (C&C) system: a central server that the malware-infected systems contact to receive updates and instructions, and to send stolen data. Anti-malware researchers like to reverse engineer malicious code, discover the C&C server's address, and then shut it down or blacklist it from corporate routers.

Turla is an "advanced persistent threat" hacking group based in Russia with a long history of attacking states in ways that advance Russian state interests  suggesting that they are either a part of the Russian espionage system, or contracting to it.

A new analysis by Eset shows that Turla is solving its C&C problems by using Britney Spears' Instagram account as a cut-out for its C&C servers. Turla moves the C&C server around, then hides the current address of the server in encrypted comments left on Britney Spears's image posts. The compromised systems check in with Spears's Instagram whenever they need to know where the C&C server is currently residing.

The extension will look at each photo's comment and will compute a custom hash value. If the hash matches 183, it will then run this regular expression on the comment in order to obtain the path of the bit.ly URL: (?:\\u200d(?:#|@)(\\w) Looking at the photo's comments, there was only one for which the hash matches 183. This comment was posted on February 6, while the original photo was posted in early January. Taking the comment and running it through the regex, you get the following bit.ly URL: http://bit.ly/2kdhuHX Looking a bit more closely at the regular expression, we see it is looking for either @|# or the Unicode character \200d. This character is actually a non-printable character called 'Zero Width Joiner,' normally used to separate emojis. Pasting the actual comment or looking at its source, you can see that this character precedes each character that makes the path of the bit.ly URL: smith2155#2hot make loveid to her, uupss #Hot #X When resolving this shortened link, it leads to static.travelclothes.org/dolR_1ert.php, which was used in the past as a watering hole C&C by the Turla crew.

Turla's watering hole campaign: An updated Firefox extension abusing Instagram

[Jean-Ian Boutin/We Live Security]





You'll never guess where Russian spies are hiding their control servers

[Dan Goodin/Ars Technica]

(via 4 Short Links)
New Delhi: Telecom operator Reliance Communications today rejected credit rating cuts by Moody's and Fitch as the agencies' views apply only on its USD 300 million bonds, which are being serviced regularly.

The company said that in May 2015, it had issued 6.5 per cent coupon bearing USD bonds, maturing in November 2020, for an aggregate amount of USD 300 million.

"These bonds constitute about 4 per cent of the total debt of the company. The bonds have always been serviced regularly on the due dates and are fully current in servicing, as on date. The ratings by Moody's and Fitch apply only to these USD bonds. We respectfully disagree with the recent rating actions by both these agencies, and believe that these rating actions do not reflect the servicing track record of the company," RCom said in a statement.

RCom, in its notice to stock exchanges on May 24, 2017, had said that the company will continue to pay interest on the respective due dates, and the bonds will be repaid on the due date of November 6, 2020.

Rating agencies Fitch and Moody's on Tuesday downgraded credit rating of Reliance Communications for the second time in quick succession on account of its fragile liquidity position and limited ability to pay back debt.

Fitch downgraded RCom to the lowest category with some hope for recovery of principal or interest amount, while Moody's Investors Service downgraded the firm to the second lowest category. Moody's downgraded RCom corporate family rating and senior secured bond rating to Ca from Caa1.

"The outlook is negative," Moody's said in a statement. Credit rating indicates capability of a company to pay back debt. Moody's rate firms in nine categories ranging from Aaa to C. Ca rating indicates that obligations in this category are highly speculative and are likely in, or very near, default, with some prospect of recovery of principal and interest.

Fitch Ratings has downgraded Reliance Communications Limited's (RCom) Long-Term Foreign- and Local- Currency Issuer Default Ratings (IDR) to 'RD' from 'CCC'. It also downgraded the rating on RCom's USD 300 million 6.5 per cent senior secured notes due 2020 to 'C/RR4' from 'CCC/RR4'.

The RD (restricted default) category is too level down from CCC category. The RD indicates that the firm has an uncured payment default on a bond, loan etc but has not entered into bankruptcy liquidation, or other formal winding-up procedure and continues to operate. The C category of Fitch is the lowest in its credit rating and RR4 symbol indicates that average recovery prospects of current principal and related interest is in the range of 31-50 per cent.

"The rating agencies have not given due credit to the advanced stage of the corporate transactions (Aircel merger and Tower sale) which are expected to de-leverage the companys balance sheet by about USD 4 billion i.e. by about 60 per cent within the next few months," RCom said.

As per Moody's, RCom's consolidated debt levels continued to rise through year-end resulting in reported debt to EBITDA ratio of 8.5x. RCom said that the recent positive development of the standstill period agreed by our lenders appears to have been viewed negatively by the rating agencies on certain technical grounds, while in actual fact the same directly addresses their key concerns about the short term liquidity situation.

"It may also be noted that the in the year 2012, the company had redeemed its Foreign Currency Convertible Bonds (FCCBs) aggregating USD 1 billion on the specified due date on maturity, at full redemption value, without a days delay, despite severe volatility in global markets at that time," RCom said.
Detroit: Uber, the world's leading ride-hailing company, has taken two big steps toward repairing its corporate image. It fired 20 employees for a host of harassment problems and hired an Apple marketing executive to rescue its tainted brand.

Those fired for sexual harassment as well as bullying, discrimination and other behaviour that violated company policies included both managers and lower-level workers. Some had retaliated against other employees after they complained about bad conduct, said Bobbie Wilson, a partner at the Perkins Coie law firm, which did the investigation.

Separately, Uber announced Tuesday that it had hired Apple marketing executive Bozoma Saint John, who will be Uber's chief brand officer. She ran global consumer marketing of Apple Music and iTunes. Her task at Uber will be to improve its brand image so people like it as well as they like the company's ride services, an Uber spokeswoman said.

"Boz has a long track record of successfully creating emotional connections between people and the products they love," Uber CEO Travis Kalanick said in a statement.

More action could come next week when a report on Uber's culture by former Attorney General Eric Holder is likely to be made public. He is supposed to make broader recommendations on how to change Uber's culture.

During Uber's ascent to becoming the world's most valuable startup, the San Francisco-based company took Silicon Valley's penchant for sexism, for cutthroat, unapologetic competition and distaste for government regulation and kicked it up several notches.

For a while, this worked well, pushing Uber's valuation to nearly $70 billion. But this year, Uber's aggressive corporate culture and 40-year-old Kalanick's self-admitted need to "fundamentally change and grow up" has caught up with it.

In addition to the sexual harassment allegations, Uber is the target of lawsuits, boycott threats and a federal investigation into claims that it has used a fake version of its app to thwart authorities. It's also been accused of corporate espionage by Waymo, formerly Google's autonomous vehicle arm. Uber's former chief autonomous car researcher took confidential documents from Waymo before his startup firm was purchased by Uber, according to a Waymo lawsuit.

Uber also is searching for a chief operating officer and chief financial officer as it prepares for a possible public stock offering. Uber Technologies Inc. retained Perkins Coie after former engineer Susan Fowler posted a blog in February about sex harassment at the company. Fowler wrote that on her first day at work her boss propositioned her in a series of messages and superiors ignored her complaints.

After the posting, Uber set up a 24-hour hotline to take complaints from employees, and hired Perkins Coie to investigate them. The firm checked into 215 complaints, and 57 remain under investigation. The hotline will remain in operation.

The probe into Fowler's complaints is still underway, and Wilson wouldn't say if any of those fired, or 31 other employees placed in counseling, were involved in that.

Wilson said Uber gave her law firm "unfettered access" to people and documents that were needed for the Fowler investigation.

Problems at Uber are not unusual in the technology industry, given the company's size of more than 14,000 employees, said Wilson, whose firm has done similar work for the biggest tech companies in the nation.
New Delhi: Retirement fund body EPFO has extended the deadline for submitting Aadhaar number to June 30 for its over four crore members. However, the deadline for submission of Aadhaar number would be September 30, 2017 in case of north-east states.

"All field offices are directed to ensure that Aadhaar Number is furnished by the employer in respect of all new members who join the Employees Pension Scheme, 1995 with effect from July 1, 2017 except north east states where it would be applicable from October 1, 2017.

The Employees Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) had set April 30, 2017 as the deadline for submitting Aadhaar number earlier. The EPFO in January made it mandatory for its pensioners and subscribers to submit Aadhaar numbers.

Later the deadline by revised time and again in view of slow progress over Aadhaar number submission by members. The central government contributes 1.16 per cent of the basic wages as subsidy to every member Employees Pension Scheme Account in addition to 8.33 per cent deposited by their employers every month.

Since the government provides subsidy to an EPFO member, it has invoked Section 7 of the Aadhaar (Targetted Delivery of Financial and other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act 2016, for the purpose.

The Section 7 of the Act provides that where government provides subsidy, benefit or service from Consolidated Fund of India, an individual can be asked to undergo authentication, or furnish proof of possession of Aadhaar number. It also provides that where an individual to whom no Aadhaar number has been assigned, such individual can apply for enrolment.
New Delhi: The Cabinet today gave ex-post facto approval to the agreement signed in April between India and Cyprus on merchant shipping, aimed at enhancing cooperation between the two nations for sea trade development.

"The Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has given its ex-post facto approval to the agreement between India and Cyprus on merchant shipping, which was signed in April 2017," the Ministry of Shipping said in a statement.

The agreement in merchant shipping will pave the way for cooperation in eliminating any hindrances which may hamper the development of sea trade between the two nations, it said.

The pact will encourage participation in the transport of goods between the countries and also from third countries. The MoU further seeks to enhance cooperation for employment, improvement of conditions of work and for the welfare of seafarers employed on each other's vessels.
New Delhi: The government today said post the abolition of the FIPB, ministries will have to decide on FDI proposals within 60 days of the application and any rejection will need concurrence of the DIPP.

India had last month scrapped the 25-year old foreign investment advisory body FIPB as it looks to attract more FDI by providing quick approvals under a single-window clearance system.

In an office memorandum, the Finance Ministry said subsequent to the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB), concerned administrative ministries have been alloted the work of granting approval for foreign investment in the specific sector.

The Industry Ministry, in consultation with the administrative ministry, will come out with a detailed guideline for processing of the FDI proposals and ensure a "consistency of treatment and uniformity of approach".

The Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) shall involve the process of inter-ministerial consultation for the examination of FDI proposals, wherever necessary, it said. "The SOP will also recognise that ordinarily FDI applications, including those related to non resident Indian (NRI)/ Export Oriented Unit (EOU), food processing, single brand retail trading and multi brand retail trading proposals, should be decided in 60 days," the office memorandum said.

All pending applications with the FIPB would be transferred to the administrative ministry and oversight of the FIPB portal shall be transferred to the DIPP from the

Department of Economic Affairs (DEA) within four weeks. While FDI approval decisions in majority of the sectors have been relegated to concerned ministry, those relating to private security agencies would be decided by the Home Ministry.

The DEA will clear proposals of financial services which are not regulated by a regulator or where there is more than one regulator or there is a doubt about the regulator. Any FDI proposal in banks will be approved by the Department of Financial Services.

"FDI proposals by NRIs/EoUs requiring approval of the government will be dealt with by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) and the DIPP will continue to be the administrative ministry for this purpose," it said.

Also, application for import of capital goods or machinery shall be handled by the DIPP.

However, applications involving investments from "Countries of Concern", requiring security clearance as per the FEMA guidelines and FDI policy, shall be processed by the Home Ministry.

While the Home Ministry will only process those applications coming via automatic route but requiring security clearances, cases pertaining to approval route sectors requiring security clearance will be processed by the concerned administrative ministry.

Besides, the format of security clearance form has been changed and has been made available on the FIPB portal.

The government has asked applicants to upload the new form failing which application will not be entertained. For FDI application in which there is a doubt about the administrative ministry concerned, the DIPP shall identify the

ministry where the application will be processed, it said, adding that the concerned ministry will have to seek Cabinet nod wherever required.

"The concurrence of DIPP would be mandatory with reference to the FDI applications which are proposed to be rejected by the competent authority or where approval is

proposed by competent authority subject to additional conditions not provided in the FDI policy," it said.

A joint quarterly review meeting will be undertaken by a committee co-chaired by DEA and DIPP Secretary on pendency of proposals with Government. All past and future litigations and liabilities shall be handled by the administrative department and about 4,500 reference and record files currently with the FIPB secretariat will be transferred to concerned ministry.

Currently, about 91-95 per cent of FDI is coming through the automatic route and only 11 sectors, including defence and retail trading, require the government approval for FDI.

Inflow of foreign direct investment into India increased by 9 per cent to USD 43.48 billion in 2016-17.

Foreign investment proposals above Rs 5,000 crore would continue to be cleared by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs. The FIPB was constituted under the Prime Minister's Office following economic liberalisation in the early 1990s.
New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi has asked secretaries to consult Indian envoys across the world to seek their views on ways to boost the tourism sector.

The issue came for discussion during a recent meeting between Modi and secretaries of different ministries.

According to sources, the Prime Minister stated that huge potential exists in the tourism sector here.

"He asked the secretaries to consult Ambassadors and High Commissioners of all the countries and seek suggestions on ways to further boost the sector's growth as it holds huge employment opportunities," they said.

Envoys can also share the details about the movement of foreign and Indian tourists in that respective country.

Foreign tourist arrivals in India has increased by 10.7 per cent with 9.05 lakh people visiting the country in March as compared to 8.17 lakh in the same period last year.

A total of 1.46 lakh tourists arrived on the e-tourist visa in March as compared to 1.16 lakh in March 2016, registering a growth of 25.8 per cent, according to the tourism ministry.

In that month, maximum number of tourists arrived from countries including Bangladesh, the US, the UK, Russia, Malaysia, Canada, Germany, Sri Lanka, China, France, Australia, Japan, Afghanistan, Singapore and Iran.

India has jumped 16 places in the revised World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) rankings to settle at 24th for 2014 and 2015. Earlier, it was ranked 41st and 40th in 2014 and 2015, respectively, as per the global ranking.

The UNWTO is the United Nation's agency managing promotion of responsible, sustainable and universally accessible tourism and its barometer ranks countries in terms of their international tourist arrivals - comprising both foreign tourist arrivals as well as non- resident arrivals.
The exhibition will showcase India's strength in the entire textile and apparel value chain from fibre to fashion.

Chennai: The GST rate of five per cent on the textile sector has seen a lot of "positive response" from the industry, a top Central government official said today. Whether cotton, jute or silk, "we said that the textile sector should have a five per cent GST," A Madhukumar Reddy, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Textiles, told reporters here.

The same rate applied to sale of garments with a value of less than Rs. 1,000, he added. "In terms of items of mass consumption, the GST rate has been limited to 5 per cent and becasue of this the entire industry has welcomed it," he said.

Briefing reporters here about Textiles India 2017, an international exhibition scheduled later this month, Reddy said the rate was 18 per cent for Man Made Fibre (MMF) and even in this segment "there has been no increase".

"On the whole, in the broad sense, there has been lot of positive response from the industry," on the GST rate, he added. K Selvaraju, secretary-general, South India Mills Association, also welcomed the GST rate for the textile sector, calling it an "excellent tax structure."

"It would definitely strengthen our industry since we are predominantly cotton-based. Sustainability and competitiveness will sustain," he said.

The net increase on the common man will be "very negligible," he added. He said a "lot of disparities" have been sorted out by the government ahead of the GST rollout. "In my opinion, for the first time we are having an excellent tax structure," he added.

Earlier, briefing about the Textiles India 2017 event, Reddy said it will be held from June 30-July 2 in Gandhi Nagar, Gujarat, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi slated to inaugurate the international exhibition.

The exhibition will showcase India's strength in the entire textile and apparel value chain from fibre to fashion, he said. Various countries inclding China, the US, Bangladesh and Vietnam among others would participate in the event, he said adding, about 2,500 international and 15,000 domestic buyers were likely to attend the three-day expo.
Anupam Kher shared the poster of the film on Wednesday.

Mumbai: Veteran actor Anupam Kher is set to play Manmohan Singh in the movie based on the book 'The Accidental Prime Minister' written by the former prime minister's media adviser Sanjay Baru.

The 62-year-old actor told PTI that he is essaying the role of Singh in the film to be directed by debutante Vijay Ratnakar Gutte.

National Award-winning filmmaker Hansal Mehta is working on the screenplay.

"Yes, I am writing it," Mehta said.

Anupam Kher took to Twitter on Wednesday and released the first look poster.
Model and actress Flora Saini, who has acted with the likes of Rajinikanth, Vijaykanth, Prabhu, Vidya Balan, Venkatesh and Jagapati Babu, is in a happy space. Her performance in the recently-released Begum Jaan has earned her appreciation and has put her in a great space.

Tracing her journey in films, Flora says, It has been more than 15 years in this industry and I completely love the energy and vibes that Im getting. With the kind of films Im being offered, I am content with my work. When I was in Kolkata during my teenage years, my mother asked me to take part in a pageant organised by a club. I was disinterested and since I was fat, and had zero experience, I couldnt qualify for the next round. I kind of grew up with people saying that I was not pretty. When I started attending these shows, I slowly gained confidence and I began to concentrate more on fitness. Later, I moved to Delhi where I enrolled in an acting course. Thats where it all started.

Her second film in Telugu, Chala Bagundi, fetched her recognition and four years later, she stepped foot into the Tamil industry with Vijaykanths Gajendra. It was great to share screen space with Vijaykanth. Though I had very little chance to interact with him, he was helpful and kind. I wanted to do a lot of Tamil films as the filmmakers write sensible scripts, she explains.

Speaking about the actors she admires in Ktown, Flora says, I am a big fan of Suriya and Jyothika and theyre like film encyclopedia! Id look up to them for every possible reaction. Kamal Haasan, Rajinikanth, Revathy and Prabhu are the other actors I would love to work with. South Indian actors are disciplined and Bollywood people need to learn from them. It is also commendable to see Nadigar Sangam working towards the welfare of the artists. Though my growth in the industry has been slow, many actors who started with me dont work anymore. So, I am kind of happy and content with what I am today, she says, as she bids adieu.
MUMBAI: The striking farmers of Maharashtra received a boost on Wednesday when Bollywood actor Nana Patekar and Marathi film superstar Makarand Anaspure, came out in their support for a loan waiver.

It is unfortunate that the farmers had to resort to a strike to survive. Everyone must support the ongoing struggle of farmers, the actors said.

For the past two years, the actors have been working for the families of farmers who committed suicides through their NGO, NAAM. We were asked about our position on the ongoing farmers strike. NAAM supports the strike. The government may consider dropping farmers, who have other sources of income besides farming, from the list of beneficiaries. But those who solely depend on agriculture, must get a complete waive off, they said.

When asked about allegations of politics in the agitation, Mr Patekar said, Politics has been there for many years. But the support it is getting also means farmers are in a deep crisis.
News / Local

by Patience Amaka

General Overseer of The Synagogue, Church Of All Nations (SCOAN), Prophet T.B. Joshua has been commended for donating the sum of 10 million Naira to the less privileged in the North in the spirit of Ramadan.The donation is part of the humanitarian and philanthropic gestures of The SCOAN's activities towards assisting the less privileged in the society which has been recognised across Nigeria and beyond.According to Ambassador Tanko Aliyu, the donation will go a long way in assisting the less privileged in the society, especially at this crucial period of Ramadan.Ambassador Aliyu said the people of the region are very appreciative of the gesture as it goes to show that Nigerians are one irrespective of religious affiliations.He also called on other well-meaning Nigerians to emulate the philanthropic gestures of Prophet T.B Joshua, who has continued to stand out in assisting Nigerians and non-Nigerians alike.His words: "This donation is coming at a time many Nigerians are experiencing economic difficulties and it will go a long way in assisting them."This is part of the activities expected of well to do individuals in the society, whether Muslims or Christians. If other well-meaning Nigerians emulate the man of God, Prophet T.B Joshua, the less privileged will have a sense of belonging."We are calling on those at the helm of affairs to do something of this nature, by coming to the aid of ordinary people. Let the people not only feel them during elections but at all times."
Washington: According to a recent study, most rape victims experience a state of involuntary paralysis, called tonic immobility.

Tonic immobility was also associated with subsequent posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and severe depression after rape. The findings indicate that for health care follow-up and legal matters, tonic immobility should be assessed in all sexual assault victims.

Tonic immobility in animals is considered an evolutionary adaptive defensive reaction to a predatory attack when resistance is not possible and other resources are not available.

Little is known about tonic immobility in humans, however. To investigate, Anna Moller from the Karolinksa Institutet and the Stockholm South General Hospital in Sweden and her colleagues assessed tonic immobility at the time of assault in 298 women who had visited the Emergency Clinic for Rape Victims in Stockholm within one month of a sexual assault. After 6 months, 189 women were assessed for the development of PTSD and depression.

Of the 298 women, 70% reported significant tonic immobility and 48% reported extreme tonic immobility during the assault. Among the 189 women who completed the 6-month assessment, 38.1% had developed PTSD and 22.2% had developed severe depression.

Tonic immobility was associated with a 2.75-times increased risk of developing PTSD and a 3.42-times increased risk of developing severe depression. Prior trauma and a history of psychiatric treatment were also linked with tonic immobility.

"The present study shows that tonic immobility is more common than earlier described," said Moller. "This information is useful both in legal situations and in the psychoeducation of rape victims. Further, this knowledge can be applied in the education of medical students and law students."

The research is published in Acta Obstetricia et Gynecologica Scandinavica.
Being cheated on hurts. However, a new study claims asking yourself this question after founding out your partner wronged you could be even more damaging.

"What did you do wrong?" researchers claim can significantly impact your physical and mental health, reports the Independent.

Researchers from the University of Nevada, Reno (US) told PsyPost infidelity is one of the most distressing events in life couples face. So they set out to discover how infidelity impacts individuals who have been cheated on. For the study, they surveyed 232 college students who had recently experienced it.

They learned being a victim of infidelity can affect your behaviour, view on cheating and ability to trust. The study concluded self-blame had an indirect effect on health-compromising behaviours through mental health.



People who suffered severe psychological distress generally turned to alcohol or drugs. They were also more that likely to develop eating disorders and engage in risky behaviours.

The study also discovered who blamed the cheating partner seemed less likely to engage in risky behaviour that the ones who blame themselves. The effects were also stronger for women than men.

The participants in the study were in their 20s and the results may differed for older people.
BENGALURU: All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazagham (Amma) faction leader T.T.V. Dhinakaran, who was released on bail on June 1, met former party president and his aunt V.K. Sasikala at the Parappana Agrahara central prison on Monday.

He was accompanied by 10 MLAs and an MP of the party.

They met the jailed party leader in the evening and discussed issues related to the ongoing political developments in Tamil Nadu.Speaking to reporters after meeting Sasikala, Mr Dhinakaran said that it was his top priority to meet the party chief after his release.

From Delhi, I went to Chennai directly after my release. It was my priority to meet the party chief, not as her nephew but as her deputy, to seek her guidance. She has advised me to stay calm for another two months and then start working to strengthen the party. I will stick to her advice, he said.

Mr Dhinakaran was arrested on April 26 for allegedly bribing EC officials to get the partys two-leaves symbol for its faction.
Salem (Tamil Nadu): A 15-year-old girl was allegedly raped by two drivers and a conductor in a bus near in Salem, the police said on Tuesday.

The three men, who allegedly committed the crime on Monday night after halting the private bus at a village, were arrested on Tuesday, they said.

The incident brought back memories of the December 16, 2012 gang-rape in which a 23-year-old woman paramedic was raped in a moving bus in New Delhi.

It came to light after some locals in the village heard the cries of the girl and alerted the police.

According to the police, the girl, after a tiff with her parents, was seen in Salem on Monday.

She later boarded a local bus to a village in the afternoon and was travelling to and fro in the same bus till late night, the police said.

Manivannan and Murugan, who usually take turns to drive the bus, and conductor Perumal pacified the girl and befriended her.

Later, the three men allegedly raped the girl at night.

A senior police official said the three were arrested and were being questioned.

A total of nine sections including those from the IPC, Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, have been invoked against the accused, he told PTI.

The girl was taken to a hospital and produced before the Child Welfare Committee, he said.

The police were on the lookout for another person, stated to be involved in the case, though not part of the sexual assault.

Senior district officials visited the girl and held enquiries, he added.
Hyderabad: NGOs in the south and west zones of Hyderabad facilitate triple talaq for Muslim couples under the guise of family counselling centres. They collect a mediation fee ranging from Rs 35,000 to Rs 50,000 to arrange an instant divorce. On June 6, the city police booked a case against the Siraj Foundation of Humayunanagar, based on a complaint filed by Mohammed Parvez of Bhadurpura, who alleged that he had been duped. The police said that 27-year-old Parvez had married Fareeda Begum two-and-a-half years ago. In his complaint, Parvez said that his wife used to regularly visit her brothers house, which led to quarrels between them. He contacted the Siraj Foundation on January 24, 2017, seeking counselling.

Representatives of the foundation promised to arrange for a khula, a divorce initiated by the wife. As part of the arrangement, Parvez was asked to pay Rs 1.21 lakh to his wife, Rs 35,000 to Ms Siraj Khan of the Foundation, as meditation fee, and an additional Rs 10,000 as expenses. On January 27, members of the Foundation simply asked him to say talaq, talaq, talaq to his wife and then declared the couple divorced.

Fifteen days later, Parvezs wife filed a case of dowry harassment against him. When Parvez asked Siraj Khan to return his money, she asked him to go underground and said that she would handle the police. When he asked his wife why she had filed a case against him despite him having given her money, she said that she had not received the money from Siraj Khan. Finally, he filed a case against the Foundation, alleging cheating and criminal intimidation.

Advocates say that many family counselling centres and foundations indulge in similar practices. Advocate Momin Roshan Zameer says, It is illegal for NGOs to accept money and conduct these kinds of settlements. It is not acceptable under Islamic Law either. DCP (South) V. Satyanarayana says that there are family counselling centres available at police stations as well.

We dont encourage triple talaq or divorce at these centres. We refer their cases to the court, he says. He adds that stern action will be taken against NGOs found accepting money to conduct divorce settlements. Meanwhile, the police, advocates, and activists encourage couples to approach family courts instead of fraudulent counselling centres.
Kochi/Chennai/Jaipur: The Kerala High Court has refused to interfere with the central rule on the sale of cattle in markets, observing that the new rule neither violates the Constitution nor deprives people of their right to eat beef.

The court on Wednesday observed that there is absolutely no ban on slaughtering cattle. There was only a restriction on the sale of cattle and the new rule made it clear that the cattle should not be sold for the purpose of slaughter at animal markets, it said. The rules framed by the Union government did not stop one from selling cattle for slaughter outside the animal market.

The Rajasthan High Court on Wednesday directed the state government to coordinate with the Centre and take necessary steps to declare cow as a national animal.

A single-judge bench of Justice Mahesh Chand Sharma, after passing the verdict, the judge, who retired today, said his verdict on the matter was the voice of his "soul" and that "no crime is more heinous than cow slaughter."

A division bench of the Kerala HC, presided over by Chief Justice Navniti Prasad, was disposing of the public interest litigation filed by Youth Congress general secretary T G Sunil, seeking to quash the notification on restrictions on cattle sale for slaughter.



The state government produced in the court the Madras High Court verdict staying the controversial notification. "Can't the sale and slaughter be done at home or on rooftops," the court asked. The bench also dismissed as withdrawn the PIL challenging the Centre's ban on the sale of cattle for slaughter at animal markets across the country under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (Regulation of Livestock Markets) Rules, 2017.



Meanwhile, a single judge on Wednesday reserved his order on petitions filed by Kozhikode District Meat Workers Association and a meat trader in Kochi challenging the constitutional validity of the rule prohibiting the sale of cattle for slaughter.



The Centre submitted that there was no prohibition on slaughtering and that it had only regulated selling of cattle for slaughter at animal market. The High Court decision came the day after the Madurai bench of Madras High Court stayed the Central rule for a month, holding that the subject concerned is on the Concurrent List and amid of a hail of protests by States, especially Kerala, against the Centre's move to "usurp" States' legislative powers and trample on the federal structure.

Kerala Government on Wednesday decided to convene a meeting of all chief ministers in Thiruvananthapuram to discuss the new central law and well as Centre-State issues. The Cabinet also decided to challenge the Central law either in the High Court or the Supreme Court but the special Cabinet on Thursdaywould decide the forum.

The Government would consult the Opposition on convening the Assembly the entire gamut of issues involved in the Centre's latest moves. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan's Office had criticised the slaughter ban, saying "Cattle slaughter becomes illegal at a time when manslaughter happens in the name of cow".
Bhopal: Six farmers were killed and several others injured in western Madhya Pradeshs Mandsaur on Tuesday when the police opened fire during protests for debt relief and better farm prices.

Soon after the incident, hundreds of irate farmers torched two police stations, eight trucks, an ambulance and two motorbikes at different places in the region ravaged by drought and farm suicides.

The administration rushed extra forces and imposed curfew restrictions in the district headquarters town of Mandsaur, some 350 km from state capital Bhopal.

Internet services were also suspended in areas such as Mandsaur, Ratlam and Ujjain to prevent protestors from fuelling further unrest through inflammatory posts on social media.

Spiralling farm protests in BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh and neighbouring Maharashtra pose a challenge for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has promised to double farmers' incomes over the next five years. Farmers last week started protests in both the states, dumping vegetables and milk on roads.

Ujjain divisional commissioner O M Jha said the police had to open fire to control stone-throwing mobs. Two persons died on the spot and four others succumbed to injuries during treatment.

"Police started firing to disperse the crowd. Farmers were not carrying weapons," said Gajendra Tokas of the Rashtriya Kisan Mazdoor Sangh, which launched a 10-day agitation on June 1.

State home minister Bhupendra Singh denied that the police opened fire, saying that "anti-social" elements in the crowd fired bullets.

On Monday night, demonstrators broke the gates of railway crossing in Mandsaur town and unsuccessfully tried to uproot railway tracks, the police said.

One police sub-inspector lost one of his eyes in stone pelting. Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan convened an emergency meeting of his Cabinet to take stock of the situation. He ordered a judicial probe into the police firing.

He also announced an ex-gratia of Rs 10 lakh to the families of those killed and Rs 1 lakh for those injured.

"The state government is sensitive to farmers demands and stands by them. But, Congress, through conspiracy, tried to fuel violence," the chief minister said.

The violence also sparked a political slugfest. This govt is at war with the farmers of our country, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi tweeted.

Congress leader and MP Jyotiraditya Scindia condemned the police action.

"Chief minister boasts of being a farmers son. Nothing can be worse than farmers being killed by his police," he said.

The chief minister said he has already announced Rs 1,000 crore to procure farmers produces by his government.
New Delhi: With two Hindu Sena activists detained for trying to attack Communist Party of India (Marxist) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury on Wednesday, the party has lashed out at the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), accusing it of stooping low to intimidate the opposition.

"The Polit Bureau strongly condemns the efforts made by two persons claiming allegiance to an RSS outfit to disrupt a press conference being addressed by General Secretary Sitaram Yechury at the end of the two day meeting of the Polit Bureau," the CPI (M) said in a statement.

"This is typical of the RSS methodology of seeking to browbeat and intimidate the opposition. Such tactics will not be allowed to succeed," the statement added.

High drama was witnessed at Yechury's press conference, where two Hindu Sena activists were hauled by the police for heckling and allegedly trying to manhandle him.

The two men entered the premises of the building where the press conference was going on, and tried to barge in chanting slogans against Yechury and also shouted 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' slogans.

#WATCH One of the 2 protesters who tried to manhandle Sitaram Yechury during his press conf. in Delhi, later beaten up;handed over to Police pic.twitter.com/NRUcrljB2W  ANI (@ANI_news) June 7, 2017

However, they were immediately brought down and carted away by the police.

Delhi police detained Upendra Kumar and Pawan Kaul at the Mandir Marg Police Station for protesting against the CPI(M) for their article against the Indian Army.

Meanwhile, Yechury responded to the attack on Twitter.

"We will not be cowed down by any attempts of Sangh's goondagardi to silence us. This is a battle for the soul of India, which we will win."

We will not be cowed down by any attempts of Sangh's goondagardi to silence us. This is a battle for the soul of India, which we will win. https://t.co/FdPmtoq1Ky  Sitaram Yechury (@SitaramYechury) June 7, 2017

During the press conference, which went ahead without any interference, Yechury continued to tear into the Centre over the violence in Mandsaur, Madhya Pradesh, where five protesting farmers were killed in alleged gunfire by security forces.
This is the third infiltration bid foiled by the Army in North Kashmir in the past fortnight. (Representational Image)

Srinagar: Three militants were killed in a fire fight with the Army in Machael sector along the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmirs Kupwara district on Wednesday.

The Army officials in Srinagar said that the trio were part of a heavily armed group of infiltrators which had sneaked into Jammu and Kashmir from PoK overnight but were confronted by Army troops deployed in the frontier region.

The soldiers from the Army 56 Rashtriya Rifles engaged the militants during a cordon-and-search operation launched in Sardari Nad forest area of Macheal after they learnt about the infiltration.

The terrorists hiding in the woods opened fire, triggering an encounter which is still underway. One terrorist has died, so far," said a defence spokesman here. Latest reports from the area said that two more militants have been killed in the encounter raising the toll to three.

Confirming this, the Army sources in Srinagar said, Soon after the terrorists sneaked into Macheal sector they were engaged by own troops and foiled their attempt to escape taking advantage of thick forest cover.

Three terrorists have been gunned down and three weapons recovered during the operation which is still on. The sources said that the identity of the slain men is being ascertained.

The Army also said that this was the third infiltration bid foiled by it along the LoC in Kupwara-Baramulla-Bandipora belt of the Kashmir Valley. On May 26, the Army had claimed killing two members of Pakistan Armys Border Action Team (BAT) in Baramullas Uri sector whereas six militants were gunned down in the same sector a day later.
Earlier, the High Court had backed the Centre's decision, while the state government had opposed the order issued by the Central Environment Ministry in controlling the sale of cattle. (Representational Image)

Kochi: The Kerala High Court on Wednesday declined to put a stay on the ban imposed by the Centre on the sale of cattle for slaughter.

The next hearing in this case is scheduled to be heard on June 28.

Earlier, the High Court had backed the Centre's decision, while the state government had opposed the order issued by the Central Environment Ministry in controlling the sale of cattle.

The High Court observed that there is no ban on cattle slaughter or consuming meat, but the bill only bans large-scale sale of cattle through big markets.

The court gave the statement after considering a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by Youth Congress State Secretary TS Saji.

The court had asked whether the notification has violated the fundamental rights of the citizen or the notification contains any clause that constrains the labour laws, following which the petitioner withdrew his petition.

Earlier, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had said that he will call for a meeting of all the Chief Ministers, asserting that the Union Government does not have the right to issue such an order.

"The Union Government does not have the right to issue this order. This is state's matter and regulations have no legal validity," Vijayan said during a press conference, adding that the legal sanctity of the new amendment lacks constitutional validity.

"There are a number of clauses which are violating the state's basic rights. There are certain norms that the animal marketing committee has to look into. For example, the owner and buyer have to maintain a certificate which is not feasible and thereby we have decided to question the law in the court of law," he added.

He further announced that they will discuss the issue with opposition party leaders and summon a special assembly to discuss the issue.

"Union Governments order not only prevents the killing of animals but also prevents the sale of cattle. It has to be examined that whether Centre has the power to issue this order. Will discuss the issue with opposition party leader and summon a special assembly to discuss the issue," he added.

Drawing a huge backlash from various fractions, Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change Harsh Vardhan ordered that the ministry has notified the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (Regulation of Livestock Markets) Rules, 2017 to ensure that the sale of cattle is not meant for slaughter purposes.

He said the seller and buyer both have to ensure that the cattle is not being bought or sold across the country's livestock markets market for slaughter purposes.

The rules also state that the purchaser shall not sacrifice the animal for any religious purpose or sell it to a person outside the state without permission and must keep in with the state's cattle protection laws.
News / National

by Maxwell Teedzai

AUSTRALIAN AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT (Aus Aid) brought an end to over two decades of non-functionality of Norton Zimbabwe's sewer plant and pollution of Darwendale Dam, which the industrial town has been polluting including the whole area of Manyame River much to the disadvantage of the community members and the environment downstream."Through the Self Project, Norton Town Council (NTC) and Welthungerhilfe (WHH) have rehabilitated the Waste Water Treatment Plant that was polluting our most treasured bodies and I'm made to understand that the Australian AID committed over US$350 000 to all the hardware works with the bulk of the money channelled towards the upgrading of phases one and two of this plant", said the Provincial Administrator for Mashonaland West Province, Cde Cecilia Chitiyo, in an acceptance speech read on her behalf by the Acting District Administrator for Chegutu District, Cde Walter Hwaira at the official commissioning and handing-over of the Self Project activities to the Zimbabwe by the Australian Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Her Excellence, Suzzane Mc Court, who was represented by the Head of Development Cooperation, Christina Landsberg."Firstly, we would want to start by thanking the Government of Zimbabwe for permitting the Australian Government to avail aid to Norton and secondly the Australian Government and WHH, our donor partners, and the fund managers, for continuously monitoring this Self Project for us to embark in this noble community initiative which will see a lot of dignity being restored to our women and children and finally we would want to thank our guiding partners, Environmental Management Agency (EMA), Captains of Industry, National Social Security Agency, (NSSA), school health clubs, Pastors Fraternity and Non-Governmental Organisations, (NGOs) for working with my Council all the way from the start of this invaluable community initiative which has made my town Open Defecation Free (ODF)", said the Mayor of Norton, Her Worship, Councilor Precious Mufahore.The Deputy Mayor of Norton, His Worship Clr Peter Nyamadzawo welcomed this landmark developmental initiative by Australia and said that the support by AUS AID through WHH had mitigated by providing the mobile de-sludging unit arguing that Norton was under attack by open defecation, especially in its public centres.Meanwhile, two state of the art public toilets, which are gender sensitive and inclusive of people living with disabilities and nursing mothers. For the past three decades water in the town has been supplied by Harare, a situation which makes the resource erratically supplied. In the recent past cases of typhoid and dysentery have been reported in the town. Maridale is a new high density settlement in the town which has no sewer systems because of the current limitations in water supply and due to the non-functionality of the sewer reticulation system.The town's Secretary, Mr Kizito has apparently residents to pay up their rates on a monthly basis and desist from vandalising Council facilities a sad development in Norton which is sucking huge sums of money from the financially depressed local authority."As Norton Town Council, we're committed to collecting refuse weekly on all residential and commercial premises, and we also accept any amount of money for rates and are prepared to negotiate with our valued clients' payment plans", said Mr Muhomba while delivering his key note address to launch the town's first Client Service Charter at the same event.The Charter if implemented to the letter is poised to give Norton Council and its residents a new leaf of improved relations. Council-residents relationship has been bitter mainly due to lack of rapport from the local authority as it has no mechanisms yet to interact with residents in information dissemination and feedback."We urge our residents to report all faults, leakages, burst pipes and blockages as soon as they spot them", implored the Town Secretary.In some local authorities a toll free line has been established to cater for emergences that may arise from time to time.The Australian Head of Development, Christina further emphasised the need for sustainability arguing that good corporate governance, transparency and accountability were universal key principles to ensure the sustainability of the sewer treatment plant."We have been working with Zimbabwe since the cholera outbreak in 2008-2009 and we consider access to clean water, access to sanitation and hygiene will ultimately give dignity to people and will contribute immensely to the well being of women and children and a lot of my emphasis goes to institutional strengthening and we should spread word about good governance and we encourage Norton Town Council to manage with the scarce resources", said Christina.She went on to add that developments in sanitation, water, and hygiene would work as a bait to lure donors and investors into Norton."Government should always be a part of this as it is and can I say it, I appreciate handing this (Complete Self Project by the Aus Aid) to you for your safe keeping and maintenance and I hope it contributes to the welfare of your time, thank you and I want to come back in ten years time and still see this place buzzing ", further added Christina.However, the following are among the critical Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) issues that need to be addressed by the Council in addressing Gender Equality in its deliverables. Most of these issues affect women and girls, as well as men and boys. However, in most cases women and girls suffer additional disadvantage on account of their gender. These critical challenges include unemployment, poverty, Gender Based Violence (GBV), discrimination, lack of development in rural areas, lack of access to resources and infrastructure, lack of skills, the impact of HIV and AIDS, lack of delivery of comprehensive, integrated services to women, experiences of women in management positions, impact of Climate Change and less us of renewable energy. It is therefore imperative that in dealing with the above, respective Council departments' deliverables will have to respond to the intricate challenges through their plans, programmes and projects.According to NTC Engineer B Maramba, the entire project commenced in 2014 in Mashonaland West with 10 Local authorities participating. In March 2014 Norton Town Council participated in the structuring of a WASH strategic plan. Eventually a Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) strategic plan was done in consultation with other stakeholders. The strategic plan ran from 2014 to 2018 as with the overall Council strategic planUnder the same project there was a call for proposals in April 2014. The proposals focused on integrated WASH services including water, sanitation and solid waste management including health and hygiene promotion activities. To ensure value for money for available resources the bidding was done through a transparent competitive process between the 10 local authorities. The proposals were for projects valued between US$100,000 to 500,000. Norton Town Council bidded for rehab of sewer reticulation in Maridale, construction of one public toilet in Maridale and rehabilitation of school toilet at Takunda primary school and won the won the bid as follows; Sewer retic US$382,630, Takunda Primary School toilet US$2,597 and Public Tiolets for US$9,772."However sewer reticulation was not possible because of water challenges in Maridale as well as treatment challenges at the treatment plant the main project therefore became rehabilitation of the treatment plant. The sewage treatment plant has therefore under rehabilitation from 2014. Some of the works done included repairs of bio-filters, primary settling tanks, switchboards, flow meters etc. NTC is now achieving secondary treatment at both phase 1 and 2. One public toilet was constructed in 2015 in Maridale and rehab of the toilet at Takunda primary is also complete. One public toilet at Katanga shopping centre is almost complete", said Maramba.Councillors from different political parties are working together as a team in Norton a development which has prompted the promotion of tolerance, peace inclusivity and participation of residents in governance and service delivery of the town.Norton Town Council's engineering department is headed by Engineer B. Maramba, the Housing Director is Mr Mtyambizi while the Medical Director is Dr. Tungamirai Mhaka.
New Delhi: With at least seven killed in a deadly attack on the Iranian parliament, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj spoke to Iran Foreign Minister Dr Mohammad Javad Zarif and offered her condolences.

"In a prescheduled telephone conversation with Foreign Minister of Iran HE Dr Mohammad Javad Zarif, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj condemned Wednesdays terrorist attacks on the institution of democracy and spirituality in Tehran. She offered sincere condolences on loss of innocent lives and expressed solidarity with the people and the government of Iran," read an official statement.

Meanwhile, the Tehran Security Council has convened an emergency meeting after two terror attacks were reported on the Iranian Majlis and Imam Khomeini Mausoleum respectively on Wednesday.

Seven people have reportedly been killed in attack on the Iranian parliament, the Tasnim news agency has reported, quoting sources on the ground.

As per initial local media reports, the gunmen opened their way into the parliament building by shooting at the guards.

According to Tasnim, the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) hostage rescue teams have killed one of the four attackers inside the parliament.

IRNA news agency quoted the Head of Imam Khomeini Mausoleum Public Relations Office Ali Khalili, as saying that one of the armed men detonated himself in front of a bank outside the mausoleum.

An official said the meeting is being held to examine both incidents.
People carry out rescue work near the site of a blast that took place in fire crackers factory at Balaghat, Madhya Pradesh on Wednesday. (Photo: PTI)

Bhopal: At least 27 workers were on Wednesday killed in an explosion at a firecracker factory at Kater, nearly 5 km from district headquarters town of Balaghat, in Madhya Pradesh.

Police sources said the death toll may go up with bodies of victims still being extricated from the blast site.

Fifteen bodies have so far been removed from the area. We could see at least a dozen more in the debris inside the factory, a senior police officer told this newspaper.

The explosion that took place around 3.30 pm was so powerful that even factory walls collapsed under its impact, ADG, G. Janardan said.

According to the police, nearly 50 labourers were working in the factory, built illegally, when the fire broke out.

A woman worker injured in the incident reported the matter to the local police that led the administration to launch the rescue operation.

The powerful explosion threw several bodies 100 m away from the blast site.

Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan ordered a probe and announced an ex-gratia of Rs 2 lakh each to the next kin of the deceased.
A fire tender that was was torched by the farmers during their agitation in Dewas district on Wednesday. (Photo: PTI)

Bhopal/New Delhi: A day after six farmers were killed in police firing in Madhya Pradeshs Mandsaur, violent protests continued there and spread to five more districts on Wednesday.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi discussed the volatile situation in the BJP-ruled state with ministers in Delhi.

The Centre has sought a report from the government and sent 1,100 security personnel to the state since Tuesday night.

Farmers began a 10-day agitation on June 1 for debt relief and better crop prices. Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan appealed for calm and promised to look into the demands of farmers. He announced a compensation of Rs 1 crore for the kin of those killed Tuesday.

Mandsaur district collector Swatantra Kumar Singh and superintendent of police O.P. Tripathy were heckled on Wednesday when the two tried to pacify a group of agitators sitting with the body of one of the police firing victims.

MP farmers to scale up protests

Protesters assaulted policemen and journalists, torched police vehicles, trucks, a petrol station, a warehouse and a factory. Violence was also reported from Ujjain, Dewas, Neemuch, Dhar and Ratlam districts.

Curfew was in force in many parts of Mandsaur for the second day, while mobile phone and internet services remained suspended in the district where hundreds of policemen in riot gear patrolled the streets.

Farmers said they plan to scale up their protests. We will continue our protest until the government accepts our demands, said Sunil Gaur of Rashtriya Kisan Mazdoor Sangh.

A Madhya Pradesh bandh called by the Congress affected some western parts of the state, but petrol stations, markets and other establishments remained open in Bhopal.

Former Congress MP from Mandsaur, Meenakshi Natarajan, was detained when she was on her way to meet the family members of the deceased.

The violence is bad news for the BJP, which swept to power in the state 14 years ago. Ravaged by drought and farm suicides, Madhya Pradesh goes to the polls next year.

Union home ministry officials admitted that the extent of Tuesdays violence reveals that the state administration did not have local Intelligence on mobilisation of farmers and it was not fully prepared to handle the violent agitation. The situation, officials said, is expected to become normal within the next two-three days.

Spiraling farm protests in BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh and neighbouring Maharashtra pose a challenge for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has promised to double farmers' incomes over the next five years.

Meanwhile, Congress party termed as coldblooded murder the killing of MP farmers. It accused the BJP legislators for acting as a curse of death for Indian farmers and slammed it for disallowing party vice-president Rahul Gandhi from meeting the families of the victims.
New Delhi: India and Pakistan--which are set to become members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO)--may have to participate together in anti-terror initiatives of the grouping in what could emerge as a supreme irony, given that India accuses Pakistan of fomenting terrorism.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will leave for Astana, Kazakhstan, for the two-day SCO meet on Thursday and Friday at which the membership of the two south Asian neighbours is likely to be announced. PM Modi is also expected to have a bilateral meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the summit, a meeting that will be keenly watched after India's recent boycott of the One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative and amid China's intransigence on refusing to give the Nuclear Suppliers' Group (NSG) the green signal to admit India as a member.

No bilateral meeting has been scheduled between PM Modi and Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif there although it remains to be seen whether a brief informal impromptu meeting takes place between the two leaders.

The SCO was founded in 2001 and currently has six members, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. With the addition of India and Pakistan, the number of members will become eight. India had applied for SCO membership in 2014.

In a statement on social media, PM Modi said, "I will travel to Astana, Kazakhstan for two days on 8-9 June for the Summit meeting of the SCO). At this meeting, on completion of the process, India will become a full Member of the SCO upon which SCO will represent over 40% of humanity and nearly 20% of global GDP.
TPCC chief N. Uttam Kumar Reddy addresses a press conference at the Gandhi Bhavan on Wednesday. Party senior MLA T. Jeevan Reddy is also seen. (Photo: DC)

Hyderabad: TPCC president N. Uttam Kumar Reddy on Wednesday blamed the wrong policies of NDA government for the ongoing agrarian crisis across the country, including in TS.

Addressing a press conference in the Gandhi Bhavan, Mr Reddy condemned the death of six farmers in police firing in Mandsaur district of Madhya Pradesh and said the victims were demanding higher prices for their crops to recover input costs.

Instead of listening to the farmers demands, the BJP government in MP used force to suppress the agitation, Mr Reddy said, adding that the Central and Madhya Pradesh governments have become too arrogant to listen to poor farmers. They simply followed shoot-to-kill policy to silence the farmers' agitation, he said.

Mr Reddy said that TRS government in the state was a perfect ally of BJP in terms of pursuing anti-farmer policies.

While Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Raos government in Telangana handcuffed and chained chilli farmers of Khammam for demanding remunerative prices, his MP counterpart Shivraj Singh Chouhan went a step ahead and permitted police firing on farmers which claimed six lives, he said.

Mr Reddy promised that the Congress would not only waive crop loans up to Rs 2 lakh, it would also provide bonus on all crops to farmers in addition to the MSP provided by the Centre after coming to power in 2019.

Stating that the agriculture sector was in a total state of neglect, especially in Telangana, Mr Reddy said that thousands of farmers lost their crops due to spurious seeds and fertilisers.

Neither any affected farmer was paid any compensation nor action was taken against the guilty firms, Mr Reddy said. Referring to the Fasal Bima Yojna, introduced by Central government, he said that
Videos and pictures have been circulating on social media of the sale of plastic rice in the city for the last three days, forcing the department to order an inquiry into the issue.

Hyderabad: The civil supplies department on Wednesday rubbished reports that plastic rice was being sold in the state, especially in GHMC limits. It termed these reports as fake and baseless and a creation of social media and urged consumers not to believe in such rumours.

Videos and pictures have been circulating on social media of the sale of plastic rice in the city for the last three days, forcing the department to order an inquiry into the issue.

Commissioner of civil supplies, C.V. Anand, said on Wednesday that preliminary tests of the samples collected from places from where the complaints had been received revealed that there was no plastic material in the rice.

He said that the tests were conducted in the laboratory of the civil supplies corporation, but samples have also been sent to the state food laboratory for more stringent chemical tests and the department will place all the facts before the public once that report is received.

Despite this, he said, the civil supplies department, enforcement officials and vigilance department has been put on high alert, which will conduct raids on rice mills and godowns across the state to collect samples and conduct tests. Mr Anand added that the department has given guidelines to officials and staff through videos on what plastic rice looks like and how to recognise it if it is mixed with genuine rice. Rice millers have also been made aware.

Mr Anand said the tests in the civil supplies laboratory were conducted in the presence of quality control analyser Osman Mohiuddin, general manager Jayadev Singh, and assistant manager (technical) G. Saidulu.

The civil supplies enforcement department collected samples from the mill about which a complaint had been received by the Meerpet police station on Tuesday, and also from the complainant.

Both samples were sent for testing. Physical analysis and D-husk test was first conducted on the samples. The rice was then soaked in water for some time. If the rice was made of plastic it should float on water but no signs of floating were observed. Further, the cooked rice samples became like paste as usually happens when normal rice is cooked. Later, rice balls were made out of the cooked suspect rice and when they hit the floor, they bounced like rubber balls, which is exactly what happened with the normal cooked rice.

Rice from the complainant and normal rice were cooked at the same time and the result was the same in both cases. Rice from the complainant and the rice mill from where the rice was supplied to the dealer were not plastic rice, Mr Anand said.
The drinking water from the citys two main sources  the Krishna and Godavari rivers  have been consistently of a low quality, complain residents of several areas in the city.

Hyderabad: The drinking water from the citys two main sources  the Krishna and Godavari rivers  have been consistently of a low quality, complain residents of several areas in the city. The water has been reported to be yellowish, smelly and containing solid particles, said Mr Raghavendra, a resident of East Kalyanpuri that has been receiving polluted water for months.

There are several families residing in our locality and we are facing severe health issues due to polluted water supply, mainly because of rusted water pipeline. We raised several complaints with Beerappagadda, Uppal Waterworks Department. But there is no response. Due to the rusted pipeline, the water that we get is yellowish brown or red in colour and unfit to be used. We are now purchasing water cans from vendors. This has been the situation for over two years and nothing has been done about the issue. Whenever a complaint has been raised, the ticket is closed as resolved. My recent complaint stated as work is in progress. but not an inch of work has been done. This is the most irresponsible department closing the complaints as resolved without working on it.

Another complainant Mr Mujtaba Ahmed from Bahadurpura added, Drainage water is getting mixed with tap water for the last 3 months. We contacted the Hyderabad waterworks office but the issue has not been resolved. The water board has written to the state government to allocate funds for the new pipeline; the proposal is under consideration, said a senior officer with HMWSSB. In many areas, consumers receive water with turbidity, smell and hardness.
Police found that the baby was born to a minor girl, who was impregnated by her neighbour, a 23-year-old man

Chennai: Residents of Tondiarpet on Tuesday night found the decomposed body of a ten-day-old baby on the roof of a house. A day later, police found that the baby had been born to a minor girl, who was impregnated by her neighbour, a 23-year-old man.

A foul smell emanating from the asbestos roof of one of the houses led one of the residents to the body, police said. The body has since been moved to the Government Stanley Medical College Hospital for autopsy.

Police traced the girl's family who claim innocence in the whole incident. But, preliminary investigations revealed that the girl is a class 11 student at a nearby government school.

The parents maintain that they were not aware that the girl was pregnant. They had taken her to a nearby clinic, where it was not diagnosed either. The parents were of the impression that she had menstrual health problems, an investigating officer said. The girl's father is a casual labourer and the mother a domestic help.

Police said the girl had an abortion and delivered the foetus in the bathroom on May 28. Ravi (23), a truck driver had sexual relationship with the girl and made her pregnant.

Tondiarpet Police have registered a case and arrested the man, Ravi, under the POCSO Act. He has been produced before a court and remanded to judicial custody. Police said that the parents of the girl would be questioned further.
New Delhi: The son finally rises. Coronation of Rahul Gandhi as Congress president, replacing his mother Sonia Gandhi, will take place after the completion of the party's organisational elections in October this year.

There have been demands from various quarters for putting Gandhi at the helm of affairs, especially since the rise of the BJP and the failing health of Mrs Gandhi. And on Tuesday, at the crucial Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting, the schedule for the party's internal elections was ratified.

Election for the post of party president will be held between September 15 and October 15 this year.

Gandhi, who apparently believes in "inner party democracy", will pitch himself as a candidate for the president's post. So far there is no opposition and electing Gandhi to the top post is expected to be a mere formality, a party functionary said.

The CWC is the party's highest decision-making body, and it has the power to appoint the party chief, a decision that can be ratified by Congress members later. But Gandhi is keen that he be elected democratically.

Given Gandhi's track record in electoral politics, a few Congress leaders were sceptical of the transition. However, they remain a minority and in the shadows since an overwhelming section of the Congress wants the dynasty to continue.

Gandhi chaired the last CWC meet in November 2016 since Mrs Gandhi could not attend due to health reasons. During the meeting all CWC members rooted for Gandhi to take over as the party president.

Speculation is rife that with Gandhi taking over, some senior leaders, referred to as the old turks, would give away to the younger generation. The generational shift, in fact, is already visible.

Gandhi's team - which includes Ajay Maken, Randeep Singh Surjewala, Deepender Hooda, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Gaurav Gogoi - is already calling the shots in the organisation. Even the venue for crucial party meetings has shifted from 10 Janpath to Mr Gandhi's residence, 12 Tughlaq Lane.

However, trying to ally the fears of old party loyalists, Gandhi has gone on record to say that he would use the experience of the old and the energy of the young.

During the CWC meet on Tuesday, Gandhi shared his plan to expand his party's influence among professionals, including doctors, teachers and chartered accountants. He will set up a professional cell to focus on these sections. To make inroads into the traders' community, the Congress will also set up a traders' cell.

Mr Gandhi said that the Congress has not been able make inroads into these groups though they were among the opinion makers of our society.

This was the CWC's first meeting after the Congress was washed out in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand in the Assembly elections. It is felt that structural and organisational changes will revive the party.

As mandated by the Election Commission of India, in April this year the Congress agreed to complete its internal elections and re-constituted the central election committee.

Following the president's election, there will be another round to appoint CWC members. The CWC has 25 members, of whom at least 12 are elected by All India Congress Committee (AICC) members. There has been no need to conduct elections to the CWC since 1997.
Six farmers were killed in firing in two incidents in Mandsaur district of Madhya Pradesh on Tuesday as food-growers stepped up their week-long agitation across the states western region, setting fire to trucks and clashing with the police and representatives of the administrative machinery. A panicky state government offered hefty compensation to the family of the deceased, but has persistently refused to look the problem in the face, with Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan accusing the Congress of instigating the farmers.

Underscoring the persistent farm distress, the long-pending demand of farmers has been loan waivers and announcement of a minimum support price that would cover costs plus offer the tiller 50 per cent above input costs, exactly what the BJP had promised in its election manifesto. The demand has arisen due to the collapse in agriculture prices over time.

In Maharashtra, farmers have been on the move and four more have committed suicide since their agitation began on June 1. To buy peace, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis offered small and marginal farmers waiver of loans up to a point by the end of October. But the agitation hasnt been withdrawn as the farmers wait for results. Only about two months ago, Tamil Nadus farmers had camped for a long spell in the nations capital, eventually going back on the strength of assurances. In Uttar Pradesh, the Yogi Adityanath government averted an agitation of agriculturists by announcing some loan waivers. But it is evident that disquiet among farmers is an all-India phenomenon.

A number of studies suggest farmers monthly incomes are around only Rs 2,000 per month, and this includes earnings from sources like NREGA. This appears to be an unsustainable state of affairs. State governments are criticised by many people when they offer relief in the form of loan waivers or reductions on the ground that this would beggar the banking system. But no counter-narratives are offered to alleviate agricultural misery, which affects more than 50 per cent of the countrys population.

Instead of taking steps to come to grips with the problem, top BJP ministers at the Centre and in the affected states are content to say that the Congress should not politicise the issue. But the killing of farmers in firing is an emotive issue and the ruling party would do well to appreciate its meaning and offer some meaningful ad hoc assistance. It just wont do for the BJP and its governments at the Centre and in the states to get worked up over the question of bovine deaths but not be sensitive to farm suicides or farmers killings in firings.
News / National

by Staff reporter

Operations at Forbes Border Post in Mutare will be interrupted in the coming weeks to pave way for the construction of a new road.This comes after the Manicaland Provincial office gave border officials a two-week ultimatum to vacate office buildings.The offices at one of the country's busiest ports of entry are manned by officials from Zimbabwe Revenue Authority and Immigration, with the demolitions likely to cause loss of revenue.But Manicaland provincial road engineer Arnold Mutungwazi insists it will help the flow of traffic and make it easier to implement some of the border management systems."Government position is to rehabilitate the road for 800 metres, the current road that is there is not suitable for a border post," Mutungwazi told the Daily News yesterday.He added that it was important to accelerate the rebuilding of the border post to meet modern standards."We are widening the road in line with international best practise. It's being widened by 14 metres."Each road will have servitude of 70 metres, so the offices are in the road servitude."Mutungwazi said besides road construction, the offices were illegal structures as they had been built outside the city building by-laws.He added that the concerned officials had been advised to seek an alternative from the Mutare Rural District Council (MRDC).He, however, could not be drawn into giving the cost of constructing the road.Efforts to get a comment from the MRDC were fruitless as they kept referring all questions to the Manicaland Provincial Affairs minister Mandiitawepi Chimene.Mutare Mayor Tatenda Nhamarare also said he was not ready to comment on the matter as he was yet to have full details.Zimra spokesperson Canisio Mudzimu had not yet responded to questions sent to him at the time of going to print.Forbes Border Post joins Zimbabwe and its eastern neighbour Mozambique and has become one of the country's busiest entry ports.
The Narendra Modi governments recent notification prohibiting cattle trade at animal markets for slaughter does not explicitly ban beef, but its an effective ban on cattle slaughter with huge social, political and business ramifications. The notification says animal markets would only be able to trade cattle for agricultural purposes such as ploughing and dairy production.

The move has triggered debates across India on vegetarianism, tolerance and also whether the government can tell people what they should or should not eat. It is superficially a populist move aimed at Hindu majority appeasement and a setback to the Muslim-dominated meat industry.

The ban will also impact beef markets around the world. India was the second-largest exporter of beef last year, behind Brazil. India officially exports buffalo meat, but vigilante groups have been claiming cow meat also sneaks into supplies abroad.

Cow slaughter is illegal in almost all states except Kerala, West Bengal and most parts of the Northeast. After the BJP came to power at the Centre in 2014, many observers say there has been a perceptible crackdown on cow slaughter and beef sale.

The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (Regulations of Livestock Markets) Rules, issued on May 23 under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960, override the provisions of the Act itself.

Ever since the environment ministrys new gazette notification made national headlines, there have been questions: Will the rules lead to a blanket ban on beef? Is the central government stepping into a state subject? Will cattle trade come to a grinding halt?

When slaughter of animals for beef per se is not banned under this Act, can the rules be made repugnant to the Act to indirectly ban slaughter of animals for beef? There are no clear answers from the government.

Read: BJP leaders in N-E in damage control mode

Beef is one of the most affordable sources of protein, especially for poor people. Slaughtering animals for food and offering sacrifice in religious places have been a part and parcel of the cultural identity of most communities in the country.

The ban amounted to interfering with the right to practice any profession or to carry on any occupation, trade or business as guaranteed under Article 19(1)(g) of the Constitution.

Further the rules define the term cattle to mean bovine animals, including bulls, bullocks, cows, buffaloes, steers, heifers, calves and camels. As a result, a complete ban has been imposed on the trade of sale or purchase of animals defined as cattle.

The right to choice of food (non-vegetarian or vegetarian) is a part of the right to personal liberty, conscience and privacy. By imposing a ban on the slaughter of animals for food, citizens with a choice to eat the flesh of such animals would be deprived of such food and it violates the right to food, privacy and personal liberty.

The Centre says there is no ban on slaughter or sale of beef as the rules only regulate cattle trade for slaughter through cattle markets. It says the sale of animals for slaughter from farmhouses has not been banned. It says the ban will ensure that beef markets would be healthier and buyers would have greater confidence that they are not eating the beef produced by slaughtering sick animals.

In the words of Supreme Court advocate Vipin Nair, this contention is not correct. He says the rules dampen the federal structure as laws on cattle slaughter are outside the purview of Parliament as it is a state subject in the Constitution. What cannot be done directly cannot be done indirectly. At least one High Court (Madurai bench of Madras HC) has intervened and stayed the rules and a series of litigation is inevitable.

Read: Farmers biggest losers as $5m industry reels

Though prevention of cruelty to animals is on the concurrent list, which gives the Centre powers to make laws regarding it, to segregate only cattle from animals like pigs, chicken, goats from the purview of cruelty to animals violates the basis of equality enshrined in Article 14 of the Constitution, says Mr. Nair.

Referring to the seventh schedule to the Constitution, he says that issues concerning markets, fairs and preservation or protection and improvement of livestock fall within entries 28 and 15 of the state list and thus only the state legislature and not the Centre is empowered to enact laws and frame statutory rules on those subjects.

A state government can still go ahead and make its own law on cattle. It is no wonder that states like Kerala, Karnataka, West Bengal, Meghalaya are up in arms against the Centres encroachment into states powers.

According to national president of All India Association of Jurists, Antony Selvaraj, the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960 was meant to treat animals in a humane manner and to ensure the least painful way of slaughtering them. However, the present rules prevent the sale of cattle at animal markets for the purposes of slaughtering. This goes beyond the stated objective of the parent Act and hence is questionable and unconstitutional. The rules tend to put an end on the slaughtering of not just cows but also other animals defined as cattle under the Act.

If one goes by the timing and the intent, there is a feeling that the BJP is actually quite happy with the Hindu vote consolidation that Muslim hunting might bring about if the rules are enforced in the guise of cattle protection.

But the latest move has the potential to destroy social harmony and the secular fabric of this country. The NDA governments tacit support to cow vigilantism has only encouraged the BJP and its cadres justifying the ban so as to strike at the root of Indias democracy.
One hopes India goes places, and as a nation of 1.25 billion people it certainly deserves to do so. But in this virtually unknown Indians view, the nation also needs to take careful note of the long-term implications of a plan sought to be foisted upon us by China. The Chinese analyse and examine the future for upto 50-100 years, well beyond two future generations and over the horizon. This culture doesnt exist anywhere else.

We begin with Chinas first salvo at the new invitees, even before their arrival, before the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Astana, Kazakhstan, this week  where Prime Minister Narendra Modi will lead the Indian delegation. A clear message to fall in line, even before the party starts! Why? As the old cliche goes, a new arrival is a rival, specially if one happens to be a big gun.

Thus, in a typical blow-hot-blow-cold psychological war, the not-so-suave statement from Beijing stands out: India, Pakistan to become full members of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) at Astana (Kazakhstan) summit. But theres a caveat: keep bilateral issues out of SCO.

In a clear warning, directed more at India than all-weather friend Pakistan, Beijing foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying used a rather cryptic semantic: Hope India and Pakistan strictly follow the charter of SCO and the idea of good neighbourliness to uphold the SCO spirit, improve their relations and inject new impetus to the development of the SCO. Watch the word strictly.

Its a warning. Beijing knows fully well that all-weather friend Islamabad will follow it, so its really a word of caution to India  not to counter Pakistan. This isnt the UN General Assembly, its the SCO! Indeed, an effective pre-empting of all potential situations  putting the onus of future failures, disagreements, dissension, disputes, confrontations within the multilateral SCO squarely on Indian intransigence in (the certain) case of Pakistan raising the K word. Seen another way, it reflects Chinas confidence pertaining to the eruption of the India-Pakistan bilateral dispute, which is bound to spill over to overshadow other matters on the agenda. As in the past.

If Pakistan could repeatedly raise, recite and rant the K word at the annual UN General Assembly ritual every September, why not at SCO? After all, its only a club of six (now eight) nations, 50 per cent (four out of eight) landlocked, with China and Russia as dominant members, with access to the sea! And now add Pakistans 567-nautical mile coastline and Indias 4,104-nautical mile coastline.

To start with the fundamentals: the SCO began in 1996, well after the Soviet Unions collapse, when China, the sole Communist power of substance, felt threatened by the sole capitalist superpower-led West, and decided to take it on.

Understandably, in the ensuing political chaos, social disruption and economic collapse of all 15 new states, born out of the USSRs demise, the hardest hit were landlocked nations of the great Euro-Asian heartland, which suddenly emerged as a political buffer between a shrunken Russia and an aspiring China.

Hence, the Shanghai Five (China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan) was founded on April 26, 1996. With changing times, however, the five became six  with Uzbekistan joining it on June 15, 2001. And there it stood, till it decided to induct India and Pakistan into the group on July 10, 2015.

As both India and Pakistan signed the memorandum of obligation on June 24, 2016 in Tashkent, the decks are being cleared for their induction into SCO. One may recall, coincidentally, 51 years ago, in the same Tashkent of a then-undivided USSR, India and Pakistan signed a peace accord on January 10, 1966, under the watchful eye of then Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin, that came to be known as the Tashkent Declaration.

Unfortunately, it did not bring any glory to the Indian political leadership or their professional advisers, as it ended in failure with New Delhi ceding its own legal, bona fide territories like that of Jammu and Kashmirs Haji Pir pass and a few more areas to Pakistan, thus legalising Pakistans illegal occupation of J&K. The Tashkent Declaration hit the nadir of Indian diplomacy and polity. As things stand, it has to be realised that the SCO essentially began as security and military alliance between six states, four of which are landlocked; one (Russia) with poor access to the sea and a China of a large swathe of remote, difficult, arid land mass and a border that is one of the biggest and gravest challenges to its leaders. There is nothing new to believe its no longer a military-security alliance.

Moreover, one has to remember that all members of the SCO also fall in the list of Chinas targeted members of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). If so, is the SCO then a duplication of the BRI, or vice versa?

If, as Beijing claims, BRI/CPEC is strictly economic in its objectives, so be it. Then where does SCO stand? The key feature and spirit of the SCO is military-cum-security, not economic. Could it then be referred to as a China-led Nato of the Euro-Asian heartland?

If so, it will definitely disrupt Indias strategic calculations. After hundreds of years of land-fixative defence and military thinking and policy due to at least 40 major invasions during past 1,000 years via the wild lands of Indias northwestern gates, New Delhi had just started looking to the sea. One only hopes the SCO will not, once again, drag India in the opposite direction: to what has historically been one of the worlds most turbulent areas.

The SCO may have everything, but it doesnt have access to the Indian Ocean. China made the mistake of building the CPEC road to Gwadar through Indian land. China doesnt want to repeat that error in the SCO.

The make India join plan may have many disadvantages, but in Chinese eyes the advantages far outweigh them. The SCO is no UN, and it will be far easier to make India fall in line by the collective voice, might and will of eight proximate neighbours, under China, than by a resolution passed by remote UN General Assembly of 188 distant countries. Or so it hopes.

One can only wish that India doesnt fall into Chinas El Dorado trap by leaving the operational flexibility of a wide-open ocean, to be entangled in a well-known, difficult landlocked terrain of bloodshed and feud.
The ban on sale of cattle for slaughter to livestock markets, which amounts to a restriction on beef, has come both as a surprise and a provocation for the tribal people of the Northeastern states, where beef is a staple food.

The fact is that in the hills of the Northeastern states, most people eat beef, pork and meat of other animals such as dogs. In fact, the Naga tribals maintain that dog meat has significant medicinal value.

The outrage over the recent notification banning the sale of cattle to slaughter houses was so strong that even BJP leaders from Meghalaya and Nagaland took the lead in opposing the ban. Other political parties also joined the chorus.

A senior minister in the Nagaland government, Mr Imkong Imchen, said, Nagaland is not going to implement this law related to cow slaughter, he added, There is no need for a policy (amounting) to a ban cow slaughter in Nagaland.

The minister of the ruling Naga Peoples Front, which is an ally of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led NDA government at the Centre said, This restriction on sale of cattle for slaughter amounts to a ban on beef-eating, which is a traditional food habit in Nagaland.

The ban on the sale of cattle for slaughter has also sent BJP strategists in the Northeast into a tizzy as they fear that it may block the saffron partys stride in the region where three Christian-dominated states  Nagaland, Mizoram and Meghalaya  are heading for polls next year.

Assam health minister, and BJPs key strategist for the Northeast, Himanta Biswa Sarma says, The only issue here is of cultural diversity in some parts of the country. Within the Northeast too, there is diversity on this issue. For example, in Assam there is a strong feeling that there should be a ban on cow slaughter, but in neighbouring states there are people who eat beef. Comprehending the political implication of the beef ban in Northeastern states, he, while addressing people in Meghalaya, said that there would be no ban on beef-eating in the Northeast.

Bernard N. Marak, a senior BJP leader from Meghalaya who quit the part over the ban, said before resigning, The question of banning beef in our state does not arise as most of BJP leaders in Meghalaya himself eat beef. He went on to say that if BJP is voted to power, we will regulate the prices of beef, which has gone beyond the reach of the common man now.

Nagaland BJP chief Visasolie Lhoungu said, Ban on cow slaughter like the one in Uttar Pradesh wont take effect in Nagaland if our party comes to power next year. The reality here is very different and our central leaders are aware of that.

Mizoram BJP president J.V. Hluna said, There would be no ban on cow slaughter in Mizoram and other states in the region where the majority of people are Christians.
The recent ban on the sale of cattle for slaughter in agricultural markets has led to much debate on the freedom of choice on food and religion. But the biggest implication will be on the multi-million dollar industry dependent on cattle for its existence, including dairy, meat and leather production and trade.

The enviroment and forests ministry had notified the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (Regulation of Livestock Markets) Rules 2017, banning trading in cattle (cows, bull, buffalo and camel) for slaughter at animal markets, sometime last week. The Madras high court has ordered a four-week stay on the ban as of now.

Experts value the cattle trade industry, which includes all three components of dairy, leather and meat, at around $5 million.

There are numerous other byproducts which will also be affected like pharmaceuticals, poultry feed, paintbrush and handicraft industry. Of this, export in both buffalo meat and in leather products have declined in 2016-17 for the second straight year. Exporters say global markets are responsible for the fall in the last two years, but if the environment ministrys new rules arent changed, the slump can be a massive one.

In the entire spectrum, the meat business will be the most affected as 90-95 per cent of cattle is procured from the markets. If the markets dont function, it will have an adverse impact, as 90 per cent of the supply comes from the markets.

The biggest losers will be the farmers as feeding animals is a day-to-day burden. Government statistics show that the average income for marginal and middle-income farmers in India is a little over Rs 1 lakh a year. Of that, if he sells one buffalo for meat, he gets Rs 30,000-35,000, which is a lot of money for him. The second rung to be affected are employees, which are more than 25 lakh.

The ban has been questioned by many state governments and the Opposition parties for infringing on the federal rights of states as well as dictating peoples right to food of their choice.

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee has even threatened to go to court. Kerala and Tamil Nadu, the two major beef-eating states apart from the Northeast, have seen large-scale protests. Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan has even called for a conclave of chief ministers to discuss the issue.

Beef rule fallout

On May 23, the environment ministry put out a notification banning the sale cattle for slaughter to livestock markets across the country.

PROTESTS

Soon after the notification, protests erupted across large parts of states such as Kerala, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal.

On May 31, Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan called a meeting of all chief ministers against the order.

Bernard Marak, a BJP leader from Meghalaya, said all party leaders in the state eat beef and the ban wouldnt be applicable there. A day later, he quit the party.

BEEF FESTS

After the Centres announcement, beef fests were held in Kerala and TN

A video shot during one such beef fest showed Congress workers publicly slaughtering a calf in Kerala. The party suspended 3 workers over the incident.

Right-wing activists severely thrashed a student of IIT-Madras who was involved in a beef fest organised at the campus eariler.

LEGAL HIGHLIGHTS

On May 30, the Madras HC stayed the notification on cattle sale, saying it was against the Consti-tution and the principles of federalism.

On May 31, Kerala HC refused to entertain a PIL against the notification, saying it didnt violate the Constitution. Rajasthan HC, on May 31, asked the Centre to make cow the national animal

CENTRE CAUTIOUS

Amid protests, the Centre explained that it had not banned cow slaughter, but only the sale of cattle to slaughter houses. On June 1, Arun Jaitley faced the media to defend the new rules
With more people adopting these speakers as the primary control centres for these smart homes, Google will have to ensure that such outages should be a rarity.

The US is a country that prefers to move ahead of the world in terms of technology. The Google Home, which is a smart AI-powered speaker, has been widely adopted by families for controlling their smart home appliances. With a strong internet infrastructure, people find it as a necessity instead of a novelty item. Everything gets a tad easier when all you have to say is  Ok Google, turn on the lights. However, what happens to those smart homes if the Assistant develops a snag? Chaos!

From May 31, the Google Home outage began on the basis of complaints posted on Google Home Help Forum. Whenever the Assistant was summoned with the Ok Google or Hey Google phrases, Hmm, something went wrong. Try again in a few seconds, or There was a glitch. Try again in a few seconds. However, the matter was only said to be there on the Home speaker and has been said to be fixed by Google.

Google took to the forum, saying that We hope to have fixed this issue for everyone. If you are still having issues please try rebooting your Google Home by unplugging it from the wall outlet, wait a minute then plugging it back in. Please do let us know if you are still experiencing any error messages after the saying Ok Google or Hey Google. But, Google didnt specify the reason behind the glitch that led to the outage.

While the problem didnt cause widescale mayhem, there were a lot who took to social media and expressed their issues regarding the glitch. With more people adopting these speakers as the primary control centres for these smart homes, Google will have to ensure that such outages should be a rarity.

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Microsoft has stated in a statement that all security features in Windows 10 comply with competition rules, pointing out that despite the antitrust complaint filed by Kaspersky, it's not worried that competition watchdogs would be thinking otherwise.

The software giant has explained that it will be working with security vendors across the across the world to make sure that their products run properly in Windows. The report also explains that it has even planned to meet with Kaspersky officials to discuss their concerns, though the meeting hasn't yet taken place.

Now, Russian security company Kaspersky has filed antitrust complaints against Microsoft with Russia, EU, and Germany's competition watchdogs. The complaints have claimed that the software giant uses its dominant position to push its own antivirus in Windows 10, detrimental to third-party solutions.

Furthermore, Kaspersky also stated that third-party software is often removed when upgrading to new versions of Windows, notifications of expiring licenses are blocked, and the company does not give vendors enough time to test their antivirus products before updating Windows.

It was believed previously that Microsoft and Kaspersky had a meeting late 2016 to address some of the issues that Kaspersky had with Microsofts way of working.

As of now, Kaspersky has not confirmed whether the company is still open negotiations over the Windows 10 anti-virus practices. But it seems Microsoft is on the wagon for another antitrust dispute as it believes no competition rules are violated.

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Apple plans on installing its proprietary machine that is designed to fix cracked iPhone glasses in about 400 authorised third-party repair centres across 25 countries. If this turns out to be true, then iPhone users will no longer have to be waiting in long lines at the official Apple stores to mend their cracked displays.

The first recipients of this initiative are Minneapolis-based Best Buy, the company representative told Reuters. There is another one coming up in an outlet in Sunnyvale, California. The latest move made by Apple occurs after eight US states launched their right to repair bills primarily to open the controlled repair networks on the Cupertino tech-giant.

"We've been on a quest to expand our reach," said Brian Naumann, senior director of service operations at Apple.

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Over the past few weeks, leaks of the highly anticipated 2017 J-series from Samsung have been on the web, teasing various hints of the devices and its specifications. Samsung has finally unveiled its mid-range line-up for 2017, which will keep Samsungs accounts flowing with funds to support the development of its flagship series. We must say  Samsung has done a great job is designing the Galaxy J-series 2017.

The mid-range line-up of Samsungs smartphone portfolio has been the same since 2013, all of them carrying the same design language of the Galaxy S3. For this year, the J-series gets its inspiration from last years Galaxy S7 in terms of design. All three smartphones  the Galaxy J3 2017, Galaxy J5 2017 and Galaxy J7 2017, are made of metal. The rear panel ditches the square lens housing and goes for a Moto G inspired vertical camera housing on all three models.

The J5 and J7 also get a uniquely shaped antenna band on the rear, which is a first on a Samsung device and any other smartphone. These two also get fingerprint sensor mounted on the Home button. The J7 2017 exclusively gets a USB Type-C port, which is a rarity in the mid-range segment. All the three models run Android 7.0 Nougat with Samsungs latest custom TouchWiz UI on top. The three models also see the return of Samsungs coveted AMOLED display on the J-series.

The Galaxy J3 2017 has a 5-inch 1280x720p display. It gets the octa-core Exynos 7570 chipset clocked at 1.4GHz along with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of onboard storage. Theres a 13MP rear camera and a 5MP front camera, powered by a 2400mAh battery. It is priced in Europe at approximately Rs 16,000.

The Galaxy J5 2017 has a slightly bigger 5.2-inch 1980x1080p display. It uses an octa-core Exynos 7870 chipset clocked at 1.6GHz along with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage. Theres a 13MP rear camera and a 5MP front camera, powered by a 3000mAh battery. It is priced in Europe at approximately Rs 20,000.

The flagship of the J-series  the J7 2017, has a 5.5-inch 1980x1080p display powered by the octa-core Exynos 77870 chipset clocked at 1.6GHz. The J7 2017 gets a higher 3GB RAM but the same old 16GB onboard storage from the last years model. However, it has 13MP rear as well as front camera and packs a bigger 3600mAh battery. The phone also gains IP54 certification for splash resistance. This one is priced at Rs 24,700 in Europe.

It will be interesting to see Samsungs pricing strategy for the Indian market when it arrives here sometime later. The competition in India offers similar, if not, better specifications for a much lesser price.

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The group said an altercation between the students ensued and the security guard intervened, along with the school resource officer, a police officer assigned to the school. (Photo: Representational)

Washington: A 15-year-old Muslim girl in the US has accused school security of removing her hijab and handcuffing her after she had an altercation with a fellow student who called her a "terrorist".

The security guard at the Apple Valley High School, Minnesota, has been placed on administrative leave after responding to a fight involving the Muslim student, who accused school security of using excessive force, the Star Tribune reported.

A spokesperson for the Apple Valley area school district said the security guard was on leave pending the completion of an investigation into the fight last Thursday after the 15-year-old sophomore was arrested and removed from the school.

The Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said the student reported that she had been verbally harassed and called a "(expletive) terrorist" by a male student.

The group said an altercation between the students ensued and the security guard intervened, along with the school resource officer, a police officer assigned to the school.

"The security guard focused completely on her. He proceeded to grab her," Jaylani Hussein, executive director of the Minnesota chapter of CAIR, said.

The school resource officer called for backup and about three Apple Valley police officers responded. The girl was taken to the Apple Valley Police Department and questioned and later released.

She later alleged that the school resource officer pulled off her hijab after putting handcuffs on her. "I'm scared for my safety at Apple Valley High School. I feel very threatened," the girl was quoted as saying.

The Apple Valley Police Department said it is investigating the fight and so far there is no indication that any racist language was used during the conflict.

The student was initially suspended following the fight, but later she was allowed to return to the school. The Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR-MN, want the security officer and the police officer investigated for allegedly using excessive force against the female Muslim student.

The organisation said that it has received a dozen complaints from Muslim students at the school who feel unsafe due to the incident and others like it involving the same officer.

"We are concerned about the apparent use of excessive force in this incident and about the suspension of the Muslim student, who appears to have been a victim of bullying," Hussein was quoted as saying by the Pioneer Press.

"We are also concerned about the growing number of Muslim students who report feeling unsafe because of how this incident was handled by the school officers," he said.
The duo were each jailed for five months and ordered to receive three strokes of the cane. (Photo: AP/Representational)

Singapore: Twin brothers from India have been each jailed for five months and ordered to receive three strokes of the cane for attacking a compatriot at a dormitory in Singapore.

Lakshmanan and Raman Pothiyappan, 24, pleaded guilty to one count of causing grievous hurt to their fellow countryman and colleague, Thevvan Velayutham, 41.

The duo were each jailed for five months and ordered to receive three strokes of the cane, The Straits Times reported today.

They committed the offence at a Shaw Road dormitory near Upper Paya Lebar Road on October 29 last year. Deputy Public Prosecutor Soh Weiqi said Thevvan, who is also a construction worker, was sitting in the front porch of the dormitory when the two brothers started punching and kicking him.

Lakshmanan, who had consumed alcohol shortly before the attack, also threw a chair at Thevvan and it struck his head and body. Soh said: "Raman had informed that the victim and Lakshmanan were not on good terms, and that he had joined in the assault to support his brother."

Thevvan later went to Changi General Hospital, where he was found to have injuries, including a broken nose and a fracture near an eye. Soh told District Judge Samuel Chua that the victim has since fully recovered from his injuries.

She urged the judge to sentence the brothers, who were unrepresented, to at least five months' jail with caning. Before handing out the sentence yesterday, Judge Chua told the brothers: "The injuries were severe... Such offences will not be tolerated in Singapore."

For causing grievous hurt, each attacker could have been jailed for up to 10 years and fined or caned.
News / Press Release

by Simbarashe Patrick Nyanhanga

In view of recent online media reports also circulated on social network platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook and twitter National People's Party (NPP) would like to make it clear that is not based on any official release by the party and therefore not a reflection of what happened, is happening nor the official position of the party.NPP internal affairs are not run in the media as the article seems to suggest, all official positions are procedurally processed and media department releases official statements where necessary in the public interest and for information dissemination to our members. As diplomatic and internal processes of engagement of contesting and in dispute parties were being conducted, there was no need to issue a statement till the matter is/was internally finalised and party relevant hierarchical bodies briefed. This has since been done and the official position is as follows:The NPP party was formed with a passionate objective to pursue a democratic course to lead, govern and empower the people of Zimbabwe in accordance with the will of the people and Pan African social democratic ideology which was enshrined right from the founding of Zimbabwe nationalism movements, it's the reason so many men and women fought for our independence and freedom. However it is incumbent that in exercising these freedoms we also exercise the responsibility that comes with them to ensure the objective of freedom is fully realised and that anarchy is not mistaken for freedom. It is in this spirit that top leadership of the party brought together the cadres in dispute to reach an amicable solution and chart the way forward.The passion and ambition of our Bulawayo cadres to participate and lead the party is a great source of pride for the party and as an organisation we encourage diverse opinion as long as the ultimate goal is progress, which is exactly what we now have. As we build the party it's only natural that diversity sometimes will manifest as robust discourse that is as it should be.Contrary to the circulating statements on online media and social networks regarding the matter, the Vice President Honourable Dr Mvundura in the capacity of Acting President led a delegation that mediated the disputes between colleagues and a full inclusive solution penned and mutually co-signed by all parties.We celebrate the milestone of this resolution as the matter was handled not as an imposition from the party hierarchy, but from the common input of the aspirant leadership on the ground.Bulawayo has a rich history that shaped this country and is a pivotal province with great diversity that truly mirrors the diversity of our country. It is therefore quite heartening to have as a party such desire and ambition to participate and lead the transition of the country from this key province.While we deal with internal issues internally, we appreciate we are a public institution and a key player in national politics, thus the media will always wish to report on our activities be there internal or public. In that spirit we encourage the members of the media to verify with the party via our information, press and publicity directorate (details below) before publishing. This works well in mutual quid pro quo of information sharing and avoids being purveyors of falsehoods and mischief by some quarters pursuing their own selfish interests or out to tarnish the image of our party.Simbarashe Patrick NyanhangaInformation, Publicity & Press DirectorCell: +263713322630media@nationalpeoplesparty.netTwitter: @NPPZimbabwe
A US missile defense system called Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, is seen at a golf course in Seongju, South Korea. (Photo: AP)

Seoul: South Korea will suspend any further deployment of a controversial US missile defence system until an environmental impact assessment ordered by new President Moon Jae-In is finished, his office said today.

Seoul agreed last year under Moon's ousted predecessor Park Geun-Hye to deploy the powerful missile intercept system to guard against threats from nuclear-armed North Korea despite angry opposition from Beijing, which views it as a threat to its own military capabilities.

Two missile launchers have been deployed in the southern county of Seongju, where hundreds of residents have staged fierce protests over what they see as potential environmental hazards posed by the batteries used in the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system.

There is "no need to withdraw" the two launchers that have already been deployed, a senior official at the South's presidential office told reporters.

However, "additional deployment (of THAAD) should be carried out only after the environmental impact assessment is over," the official added.

"We do not view the deployment process as urgent enough to bypass the whole environmental impact assessment," he said.

The deployment freeze comes two days after Moon ordered a "proper" probe into the potential environmental impact of the missile batteries in a bid to win greater public support for the project.

Four more launchers arrived recently in the South and are currently being stored at a US army base in the country, which plays host to some 28,500 US troops as a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War.

The South's army came under fire this week after Moon  who voiced ambivalence about THAAD on the campaign trail  accused it of withholding key information about progress on the system.

According to Moon's office, top military brass who briefed Moon's national security adviser last month deliberately withheld information about the arrival of the four new launchers.

A senior defence ministry official was removed from his position over the incident.

Defence Minister Han Min-Koo  appointed by Park and widely expected to be replaced soon -- admitted the presence of the new launchers only when pressed by Moon in a phone conversation last week.

The South's military cited a confidentiality agreement with the US military as a reason to hide the critical information from the South's new commander-in-chief, according to a probe into senior army officials.

China  the South's biggest trading partner  has in recent months taken a series of measures against South Korean businesses seen as economic retaliation for THAAD.
India's Permanent Representative Rajiv K Chander noted at the session that the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of India and that Pakistan remains in illegal occupation of a part of our territory. (Photo: AP/Representational)

Geneva: India at the United Nations 35th session of the Human Rights Council highlighted Pakistan's role in supporting terrorism in Kashmir and called upon the global body for a policy of zero tolerance towards terrorism.

India's Permanent Representative at the United Nations Rajiv K Chander noted at the session that the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of India and that Pakistan remains in illegal occupation of a part of our territory. Therefore, the neutrality of the phrase "Indian-administered Jammu & Kashmir" is artificial.

He furthermore added that Jammu and Kashmir has an elected democratic government that represents all sections of the people unlike the situation in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir.

"The central problem in Jammu & Kashmir is cross-border terrorism, and Pakistan's use of terrorism as an instrument of state policy. This fact needs due recognition by one and all. We firmly believe that a policy of zero tolerance to terrorism is as much an international obligation as it is a commitment to our own people," said the ambassador.

He asserted that a robust independent media and civil society combined with an impartial judiciary act as the sentinels of Indian democracy.

Chander also pointed that India remains unconvinced by the belief in certain quarters that the true promotion and protection of human rights can be achieved only through naming and shaming, particularly in the case of thriving pluralistic societies with deep-rooted democratic traditions and institutions.
The 40-year-old Algerian university student was shot and wounded by police on Tuesday after lunging at the officer in a square full of tourists in front of the famous landmark. (Photo: AP)

Paris: A man who attacked a cop with a hammer outside Notre Dame cathedral in Paris had pledged allegiance to ISIS in a video, it emerged on Wednesday, as his family said they were shocked by his involvement.

The 40-year-old Algerian university student was shot and wounded by police on Tuesday after lunging at the officer in a square full of tourists in front of the famous landmark.

The video in which the man pledges allegiance to ISIS was found by police who searched the student apartment he was renting. During the attack, the man shouted this is for Syria and was also carrying kitchen knives
Dubai: Measures taken by the United Arab Emirates and other nations against Qatar are aimed at pressuring Doha into changing its policies, not at overthrowing its regime, a senior UAE official told on Wednesday.

"This is not about regime change this is about change of policy, change of approach," UAE state minister for foreign affairs Anwar Gargash said in an interview, accusing Qatar of being "the main champion of extremism and terrorism in the region".
As Apple showed off new features for the iPhone and other devices at its developer conference on Monday, the company is grappled with an uncomfortable issue: Many of its existing features are too complicated for many users to figure out.



At last years conference, for example, Apples top software executive, Craig Federighi, demonstrated how users could order food, scribble doodles and send funny images known as stickers in chats on its Messages app. The idea was to make Messages, one of the most popular apps on the iPhone, into an all-purpose tool like Chinas WeChat.



But the process of finding and installing other apps in Messages is so tricky that most users have no idea they can even do it, developers and analysts say.



DoorDash, a food-delivery app that Federighi displayed on stage as a model of the new feature, dropped its Messages app for group orders a few months after releasing it because it drew little interest. While we didnt end up moving forward with it, were excited about other ways were making delivery faster and more efficient, Andy Fang, a founder of DoorDash and the companys chief technology officer, said in a statement.



A similar lack of enthusiasm among users and developers has limited adoption of the iPhones 3-D Touch feature, where a long, hard press on an app sometimes offers additional options such as viewing an email without opening it. And sales of the Apple Watch have been hampered by the steep learning curve it requires of users, who must master pushing, turning and tapping various parts of the watch and a related iPhone app.



Theres just so much stuff, said David de Min, chief executive of Velapp, a startup based in London. They are trying to cram things in. Velapp has just released a video recording app that uses 3-D Touch to help users select the best parts of a video while recording it.



But de Min said that few other developers were using the technology, in part because iPhone users were unaware of it. Its not something you can really see, he said. People dont understand it.

Apple, which declined to comment for this article, makes many updates that are popular with users, from changes to the Siri voice assistant to automatically transcribed voicemail messages.



At this years Apple Worldwide Developer Conference in San Jose, California, the company introduced improved Mac computers and iPads, software updates for all of its hardware and a voice-activated speaker to compete with Amazons Echo and Googles Home.



With Apple adding fewer major features in recent years, customers have been slower to upgrade their devices. App developers are also pausing in what had been a race to embrace Apples latest innovations.



Eliran Sapir, chief executive of Apptopia, an analytics firm, said that new apps were being introduced at half the rate they were a year ago. Apple TV apps are hot, he said, but developers are fleeing Apple Watch. There is no way to monetise the watch whatsoever, he said.



The slow uptake of apps for Messages and 3-D Touch is evident in the numbers. There are 5,000 regular apps and 30,000 sticker apps for Messages, according to Randy Nelson, head of mobile insights at Sensor Tower, an app analytics firm. Only about 3,600 of the 2.5 million apps in the iOS app store promote their compatibility with 3-D Touch.



You get your new iPhone and you dont know that 3-D Touch and apps in Messages even exist, Nelson said. Although stickers account for 97 of the top 100 Messages apps, he said, some users are so confused that they post app reviews like, I downloaded these Disney stickers. How do I use them?



That is not exactly in line with the simple it just works philosophy that Apple built its business on.

Apple is not the only major technology company struggling to find the right balance between constant innovation and ease of use. Facebook has changed course several times in its approach to apps and bots within its Messenger app and regularly battles feature overload in its News Feed. Google, whose search box is a paragon of simplicity, famously retreated from an attempt to tie all of its services together with the unwieldy Google Plus social network.





Keeping it simple



Ben Reubenstein, chief executive of Possible Mobile, which makes apps for companies like JetBlue Airways and Turner, said he would like to see Apple simplify and smooth out some of its current features. He said Messages apps have potential if Apple can figure out how to make it easier for people to find them.



Reubenstein pointed to a feature of Google Photos as an example of the simplicity that people want. He said he backs up his iPhone photos to Google, which uses face recognition to tag people in the images. For Mothers Day, Google made it so easy to create quick movies from those photos that he made three, for his mother, his mother-in-law and his wife.



Chalen Duncan, a graduate student in emerging media at the University of Georgia, was so frustrated by the interface for stickers and apps in Messages that he redesigned it and posted his version online.

At its core, its a discoverability issue, said Duncan, who worked part time on Apples telephone tech-support team during college and hopes to get a design job there in the future. People just dont know the stickers exist.



He said he had to teach his friends how to install and use Messages stickers by sending them multiple screenshots. A lot of people will think its their fault, and its really the designers fault, he said. People want apps to be easy to use.
US President Donald Trump spoke to Saudi Arabia's King Salman and called for a united Gulf Cooperation Council to fight terrorism and promote stability in the region, amid deepening diplomatic crisis in Qatar.



Both the leaders discussed ways to prevent terror financing and eliminate extremism by any country in region, the White House said yesterday.



During the phone call, Trump underscored that a united Gulf Cooperation Council is critical to defeating terrorism and promoting regional stability, the White House said.



The White House statement came a day after Saudi Arabia and three other Arab countries  Egypt, Bahrain and the UAE  cut off diplomatic ties with Qatar.



In a tweet, early morning Trump apparently supported the actions of four Arab countries to cut off diplomatic relationship with Qatar.



The US continues to be in close communication with all the parties to resolve the issues and restore cooperation which is so important to regional security there, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters.



"I think there is note that his message of toughness on terror finance and extremism is being heeded by countries in the region. But the US still wants to see this issue de- escalated and resolved immediately, keeping with the principles that the president laid out in terms of defeating terror financing and extremism," he said.



Spicer said Trump had a very, very constructive conversation with the Emir of Qatar during his visit in Riyadh.



"At that time, he was very heartened by the Emir's commitment to formally join the terrorist financing targeting centre and showing their commitment to this issue," he said.



At a separate briefing, State Department Spokesperson Heather Nauert said the US recognises that Qatar has made some great efforts to try to stop financing of terror groups, including prosecuting suspected financiers, freezing assets, and introducing stringent controls on its banking system there.

"However, let me make this clear: They have made progress, but they still have work to do. More work needs to be done," she said.



"I think our relationship with Qatar is one that's strong. It's one that we continue to cooperate with Qatar and other countries in the region in the fight against terrorism. Secretary of State Rex W Tillerson talked about this today," she added.



"He said every country in the region has their own obligations and they need to live up to terminate their support for terrorism and extremism however it manifests itself anywhere in the world, she said.

Nauert praised Qatar for its role in fight against terrorism.



"The US and its coalition, we're grateful to the Qataris for their longstanding support of our presence there in that nation. They have helped to provide us with an enduring commitment to regional security. The Department of Defense has talked about this," she said.



"We have no plans to change our posture in Qatar and we would encourage all of our partners to try to work together to reduce tensions. That's something that the Secretary spoke to as well," Nauert said in response to a question.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan stood to defend Qatar, saying he intends to "develop" ties with the embattled Gulf state hit by sanction from Saudi Arabia and its allies.



"Let me say at the outset that we do not think the sanctions against Qatar are good," Erdogan said yesterday in a speech in Ankara.



"Turkey will continue and will develop our ties with Qatar, as with all our friends who have supported us in the most difficult moments," he added in reference to last year's failed coup.



Turkey has close ties with Qatar but also has good relations with the other Gulf states, especially Saudi Arabia.



Erdogan was careful not to criticise Riyadh, calling on the member nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council to "resolve their differences through dialogue."



"Efforts to isolate Qatar... will not solve any problem," said Erdogan, praising Doha's "cool-headedness" and "constructive approach".



Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates severed diplomatic ties and transport links with Qatar on Monday, accusing it of supporting extremism.



"Presenting Qatar as a supporter of terrorism is a serious accusation," the Turkish leader said. "I know (Qatar's leaders) well and if that had been the case, I would have been the first head of state to confront them."
Opinion / Columnist

President Robert Mugabe is 93. At that ripe age, he is surprisingly sprite and energetic, although he seems to have lost the touch and the magic that helped him steer the country during very difficult periods.Indeed the spirit appears to be willing but the body is tired  both mentally and physically  as he fails to negotiate situations he would have dealt with easily at his prime.Now the country is facing an uncertain future because of his failure to bring to order his warring lieutenants, who are already thinking of life after him.Like most long-suffering but patriotic Zimbabweans, those in Zanu-PF also want a departure from the status quo and a dawn of a new era characterised by prosperity and equal opportunities, job creation and respect for human rights.It is trite that Zanu-PF's dangerous brinkmanship game has become a threat to the country's peace and the concern to any right-thinking Zimbabwean is Mugabe's inability to not only denounce factionalism, which is now ubiquitous, but punish those fanning it.If this is not a clear indication that the nonagenarian has lost it and is now out of sync with what the country is going through, then Zimbabweans are in for a gnashing of teeth.Zimbabweans are suffering, and this is illustrated by hordes of vendors lining the country's urban streets yet the ministers who are supposed to offer solutions and provide direction are busy lampooning each other in newspapers, spawning chaos.There is no need for those in Zanu-PF, who have no ideological differences but are just tearing each other apart in the blind pursuit of power, dragging the whole country into the mud, to hold the dreams of a nation to ransom and Mugabe, as the principal, has the keys to end this.It is sad that Mugabe misses opportunities such as his address to the ruling party's youths to announce his succession plan by encouraging free debate which is currently an anathema in the crisis-ridden party.Is Mugabe surrounded by liars and greedy individuals to the extent that he does not see that it is his bad policies and not targeted sanctions that are causing untold suffering on the masses, or the nonagenarian is now divorced from the present that anything affecting people is no concern of his.Mugabe, whose long stay in power is largely due to a combination of brutal force, propaganda and manipulation is, of course, cosy in the belief that he is still adored, but honestly, the emperor has no clothes.
Four more ruling AIADMK (Amma) MLAs today called on deputy general secretary TTV Dhinakaran, who is trying to re-assert his position after being released on bail in a bribery case despite facing a revolt by the Chief Minister K Palaniswami camp.



The MLAs' meeting with Dhinakaran raised questions about the future stability of the Palaniswami government which has a slender majority after the rebellion by former chief minister O Panneerselvam.



Dairy Development Minister KT Rajenthra Bhalaji sought to play down the the development, saying the MLAs met with Dhinakaran as he was the party's deputy general secretary.



Some AIADMK (Amma) MLAs, including former ministers V Senthil Balaji and P Palaniappan, had met Dhinakaran yesterday even as some others were spotted with him in Bengaluru on June 5 when he called on jailed party general secretary and his aunt V K Sasikala.



Finance minister D Jayakumar had yesterday said such meetings were 'personal' and would not affect the stability of the Palaniswami government.



Thiruparankundram legislator A K Bose, among the four MLAs who met Dhinakaran today, said the deputy general secretary continued to run the party and none could question him.



A top aide of Dhinakaran claimed that so far 25 MLAs have met him since he came out on bail on June 3 in a case related to alleged attempt to bribe some Election Commission officials to get back the party 'Two-Leaves' symbol.

The AIADMK (Amma) faction has 122 MLAs in the 234-member assembly.



A section of the MLAs has been meeting Dhinakaran during the past few days amid a stand-off between him and the Palaniswami camp.



The ministers had revolted against Dhinakaran and Sasikala in April after he came under the scanner of Delhi police in the alleged bribery case.



With Dhinakaran, who was appointed AIADMK post by Sasikala, going back on his earlier assurance to withdraw from party affairs, the ministers and senior party functionaries on June 5 held a meeting and reiterated their opposition to him.



Dhinakaran, after calling on Sasikala, had mocked at their meeting and questioned their authority to remove office-bearers appointed by the general secretary.



He had also said Sasikala had asked him to wait for two months to see whether the merger of the party, as proposed by the Palaniswami and Panneerselvam camps, materialised.



Bose claimed more MLAs will meet Dhinkaran in the coming days and also extended an invitation to his colleagues in the rival O Panneerselvam-led Puratchi Thalaivi Amma faction to join the Dhinakaran-led camp.



"If the MLAs who are with Panneerselvam return, it will be good for them," he said, adding, "Some of them want to return."



He, however, refused to name any MLA. Bose said Dhinakaran stressed for "unity of all 122 MLAs" in the Amma faction and that he wanted them to serve people.



Bose, accompanied by senior party leader and former Melur (Madurai) MLA S Samy, told reporters that Dhinakaran was running the party and that the ministers had no right to question it.



"None of them has the right to ask Dhinakaran to stay away from the party affairs," he said in an apparent reference to some revolting ministers asking the party deputy chief to stay away from AIADMK's functioning.



"We will remain united. I will also attend a meeting of MLAs convened by Chief Minister K Palaniswami, if invited," Bose added.



Usilampatti MLA P Neethipathi, who also met Dhinakaran today, said there were no different factions in the ruling party and that "the only team is Amma (Jayalalithaa)."



Rajenthra Bhalaji suggested there was nothing wrong in party MLAs meeting a senior office-bearer of the party.

"They have only met the party's deputy general secretary, isn't it? (And) not anybody else. If people have some business with him, they will meet him," he told reporters here.



He also stressed that Sasikala was the party's general secretary, a matter that has been challenged by the Panneerselvam camp before the Election Commission.



Responding to demands from the Puratchi Thalaivi Amma faction that Sasikala and Dhinakaran be removed from the party, Balaji said AIADMK was a "big party where there will be differing views." "All this will come to an end. AIADMK will rise to the occasion whenever there is a problem," he added.
Opinion / Columnist

Nigeria's Former Minister of Aviation, Femi Fani-Kayode, has unleashed another shocking revelation in the unfolding saga surrounding the deadly implosion of a guest house within The Synagogue, Church Of All Nations (SCOAN) in Lagos, Nigeria on September 12th 2014.In a continuation of his expose titled, Murder In The Church', Fani-Kayode reiterated his bold assertions that members of Nigeria's intelligence agencies were responsible for the disaster, adding that this secret was leaked to him by their colleagues in the industry."I will not mention their names but I will tell their story," the vocal politician revealed. "They told me why the operation was carried out, how those involved covered it up and how they attempted to hit T.B. Joshua the second time but failed."According to him, those responsible for the tragedy in Joshua's church were equally behind the fatal helicopter crash in 2012 which led to the untimely demise of Nigeria's former National Security Advisor, General Andrew Azazi and then Kaduna State Governor, Patrick Yakowa."They told me how the operation was conducted by rogue elements in the intelligence agencies without the knowledge of Mr. Eta Ekpeyong, the head of the Department of State Security (DSS) at the time who was totally loyal to Jonathan but with the knowledge and support of a handful of disloyal and ruthless senior operatives from other arms of the intelligence agencies who provided the logistics, hardware, man-power and funding for the operation," he continued.According to Fani-Kayode, "there was a foreign component to the whole affair," a claim he promised to expand on in subsequent write-ups.The ex-Minister added that there was equally "a religious dimension", asserting that "a group of fifth columnists within the security agencies in Jonathan's government had sworn that they would destabilise his government and either kill him or stop him from coming back in 2015 Their view was that the country must not be ruled by a Southerner or a Christian and that Jonathan must be stopped at all costs."So, what was the role of Joshua in such political quagmires? "T.B. Joshua's crime was that he knew too much and that he was secretly exposing their plans to those that cared for Jonathan."Their intention, according to Fani-Kayode, was for the controversial cleric "to be discredited, stopped, kept busy', rubbished or permanently silenced".In the light of these revelations, Fani-Kayode publicly called for the "terrible tragedy" to be "revisited and properly investigated by the security agencies with a view to bringing the real perpetrators, and not their victims and targets, to justice."He additionally called for the general public to "question anything and everything that their government tells them about such events."Insisting that the write-up was not intended to cast aspersions on the work of intelligence agencies, Fani-Kayode noted that there was a "darker side" to the industry with "people that are obsessed with secrecy and haunted by some of the atrocities that they and their friends and associates may have committed in the past".The erudite lawyer promised to reveal further details about the "modus operandi" of those behind the fatal incident at Joshua's church in a subsequent write-up.Ihechukwu Njoku is a freelance Nigerian journalist...The article quoted in this write-up is taken from Femi Fani-Kayode's official website - http://www.femifanikayode.org/t-b-joshua-murder-in-the-church-part-2/
Opinion / Columnist

Zanu-PF today declared in public that it disregards the laws of the land in their pursuit of the narrow power retention agenda. In an article published by the Herald, Zanu-PF declared that government and business are both pooling resources to fund Mugabe's rallies.In an illogical justification of the conduct, Mandi Chimene said government and Zanu-PF had an obligation to share roles because they are both led by Mugabe, this argument reflects that the so-called Minister of Provincial affairs did not take a minute to think before uttering those words.Everyone who knows Chimene might be tempted to dismiss her utterances as a motivation of intoxication by a variant of Indian hemp, she has always been known as the queen of potent substances.When intoxicated individuals are in office no matter their irrationality, their decisions carry the day therefore Chimene's utterances must be taken seriously, Zimbabweans must also act against them.Abuse of public funds is a serious crime which in a normal society must not only warrant prosecution of the culprits. Those responsible must be held accountable through removal from office.The Constitution in Section 308 states the duty of every person responsible for the expenditure of public funds to safeguard the funds and ensure that they are spent only on legally authorised purposes and in legally authorised amounts.The Constitution further dictates that an Act of Parliament be put in place to ensure a speedy detection of breaches of these provisions, the disciplining and punishment of persons responsible for any such breaches and, where appropriate, the recovery of misappropriated funds or property.Chinamasa has been complicit in this regard, he failed to perform due diligence in protecting public funds from abuse, he in fact is the reason why public finances have been misused.On the other hand Civil Service is also involved in the organisation of Zanu-PF rallies against the dictates of section 200 of the constitution."Members of the Civil Service must act in accordance with this Constitution and the law. No member of the Civil Service may obey an order that is manifestly illegal. No member of the Civil Service may, in the exercise of their functions Act in a partisan manner; further the interests of any political party or cause; prejudice the lawful interests of any political party or cause."Without doubt Zanu-PF is getting an unfair advantage through the criminal abuse of state resources and personnel.More importantly revenue has been declining; while government expenditure has been ballooning out of control.The budget deficit is now at 43% a result of corruption, extra-legal budget activities including the financing of Zanu-PF Party activities.A disaster also looms as the budget deficit is being funded through the issuance of toxic Treasury Bills and raiding of RTGS Balances.The Minister of Finance has failed to ensure that Zimbabwe lives within its own means as a result; the government has accumulated a huge domestic debt.This madness must stop; the justice delivery system must deal with the culprits. If it does not happen now any future democratic government must ensure the Zanu-PF criminals are held accountable.Together Another Zimbabwe is Possible.Jacob MafumePDP Spokesperson
T V Mohandas Pai, former Infosys HR head and board member, on Wednesday expressed different views vis a vis co-founder N R Narayana Murthy on senior executives taking a cut in their pay to save lower-grade employees.



Top employees are also working for the organisation and are compensated for their work. They have variable compensation which is reduced on lower enterprise performance. They will also be asked to leave if they do not perform. Most do not have any stock in enterprises which reward them for any past sacrifice on lowering their compensation, nor do they get large dividends like promoters and founders of enterprises, Pai told DH.



He pointed out that even though Murthy and senior people took a cut during his stint, it is not fair to say that all should follow this norm. In this current scenario, most senior people too may be worried about cost cuts impacting them.



Recently, commenting on the issue of layoffs in the IT industry, Murthy pointed out that IT companies can protect the jobs of youngsters if senior executives take pay cuts. I have a feeling that it is possible for us to protect the jobs of youngsters if the senior management people were to make some minor adjustments  adjustment of taking salary cuts, Murthy said last week in an interaction with a media house.



Pai, who is currently serving as Chairman of Aarin Capital Partners also pointed out that there is no truth in massive layoffs in IT sector. What we are witnessing is that those who are not performing are only removed. There is no need to feel panicky under this circumstance as non-performers will go out anyway, he said.



He also pointed out that IT companies are laying off just about 2% to 3% of people who have not performed, in a transparent evaluation, and this is not a big number. It is normal for companies to restructure themselves as the global business numbers are falling. There is no need for government to interfere in this issue as there is a contract between employee and employer before getting into job and IT employees are well paid. Further the industry still has 12% to 15% attrition even during these times", he said.



When asked about the HR policies adopted by companies, Pai said there is no anomaly and they are following time-tested policies. We cant say that IT companies are following arbitrary HR policies. Also, there is no need for trade union in IT sector where there is high attrition, good compensation and plenty of jobs for performers he opined.


Infosys, the second-largest IT services company, on Wednesday said that it is not seeing any pricing cuts in its projects but said that its clients are not reinvesting in new technology areas.



Addressing analysts at the Morgan Stanley India conference, Infosys Chief Operating Officer U B Pravin Rao said that the company is not seeing any unusual pricing pressure.



The rates have remained the same and we have not seen any change in the rate cards and in many cases we have seen rate increases as well, he said.



Rao also pointed out that if there really was an issue with pricing pressure, then it would have reflected more acutely in the margins. Our margins have remained in a narrow band, he said. For fiscal 2018, Infosys has projected operating margins to be in the range of 23% to 25%.



IT services companies in India have been facing margin pressures in the commoditised part of their business, which involves maintaining IT systems or software applications. The core business contributed to 65% of total revenues of Infosys.



He, however, cautioned that some of its clients, despite getting cost benefits have not reinvested in new areas such as digital. What we are seeing is that there is no linearity between cost take-out and reinvestments. In some clients, we see repurposing of spending but there are many clients where we have seen their infrastructure is not ready to invest for newer technologies and they are doing it in a phased manner, he said.



Rao also pointed out that Infosys remains committed to its guidance of 6.5% to 8.5% revenue growth this year even as some clients ask for projects to be carried out at 30% to 40% lower costs than before.



He also said Infosys will continue to focus on increasing local hiring in markets where it has a significant presence as that is the only way it can mitigate any long-term impact that you could have on uncertainty around visa.



"We are going to all the premium colleges, community colleges in and around the US. We started that process this year... We have had the first batch," he said.



Last month, Infosys said it will hire about 10,000 locals in the US over the next two years and set up four technology and innovation hubs there.


Opinion / Columnist

Zimbabwe is currently experiencing political and economic crisis and has been marred with protests in the past year calling for President Mugabe to step down. The opposition having spent years fighting the ruling party, have finally seen the light and a grand coalition appears to be on the horizon. Other opposition parties have formed what they call Coalition of Democrats (CODE) and Morgan Tsvangirai of the MDC is with Democratic Coalition (DECO).If DECO and CODE were to unite Soon they will stand a great chance of winning the 2018 elections.Those opposition parties that are opposing the coalition must be dropped for progress sake. Zanu-PF will manipulate the electoral process if the opposition remain fragmented. Since Zanu-PF controls all levels of power it is going to be difficult to fight it as individuals in 2018 hence the idea of a grand coalition. We need to look at strategies that can make the coalition a success and the major players involved.Mujuru and Tsvangirai pactLast year Joyce Mujuru and Morgan Tsvangirai held a joint opposition rally in Gweru and it was a success. This year they signed a memorandum of understanding to form an opposition coalition. This is good news because Joyce Mujuru knows how Zanu-PF rigs elections. She will be bringing in information and strategy to Tsvangirai who only have a large following but doesn't know Zanu-PF rigs elections. Mujuru also have sympathisers from the army even though they cannot come out in the open and support her but when the time is right the securocrats can help her achieve her goal. Mugabe is old and everyone is preparing for a life after Mugabe hence the infighting in Zanu-PF at the moment. Mujuru can take advantage of the infighting and help Tsvangirai to unsit Mugabe. MDC have been effective in mobilising supporters particularly in urban areas but it has struggled in the rural areas and Mashonaland areas from which the ruling party draws much support. Since Mujuru comes from Mashonaland Central she has supporters who sympathise with her and are also fed up of lies from Zanu-PF. If these two manage to work together and finally agree on who would lead the coalition, success is guaranteed.Tendai Biti and codeThe President of The People's Democratic Party PDP, Hon Tendai Biti joined the Coalition of Democrats which consists of more than 8 opposition political parties. Discussions are still going on as to who will lead the coalition.There are still many questions as to what form the coalition will actually take.CODE has also joined hands withThe National Electoral Reform Agenda (NERA) to form ZINERA.Now there are more than 20 opposition parties working together, which is a good development. They need to finalise on how the group will field it's candidates that will represent the whole alliance or will each party still put forward their own representatives. As for CODE there seem to be no problem in electing a leader unlike DECO where Tsvangirai wants to lead without going for an election.War veteransFor the coalition to be a success leaders should find a way of luring the war veterans on their side since they have been mistreated by Mugabe and Zanu-PF. Again Joyce Mujuru could be helpful in swaying them to her side since she is also a war veteran.She has to act fast before Mugabe entices them with yet another lucrative deal. The war veterans leaders, Chris Mutsvangwa and Douglas Mahiya were fired from government so working against Mugabe will give them hope of reclaiming their positions once the opposition is in power.Can Mugabe survive without the war veterans? It's a topic for another day.Activist groupsWe have activists groups such as OAUS, Tajamuka, This Flag, This Gown and Vendors Association who led mass protests last year and have also formed a coalition against Mugabe. They support the opposition but they need a leader who would make their movement a success. The opposition has some good reasons to be excited if these activists mainly the youths are on their side. Youths make up about 65% of the population so having them on the opposition side is an advantage as they are the most affected by the political and economic crisis in Zimbabwe.Once DECO and CODE amalgamate,we are assured of success in 2018 elections. All the leaders of the opposition parties involved have shown maturity in opposition politics except a few who we think are agents of Zanu-PF. After the MDC dismal performance in 2013, many supporters were disappointed, but the alliance of CODE and DECO could rejuvenate morale and hope of a better Zimbabwe. There are many unresolved issues yet to be decided and if it turns out that they cannot be resolved, the grand coalition will suffer a still birth. After they elect a leader of the Coalition the opposition should map out a clear strategy to tackle issues of voter registration and electoral fraud especially now that they will be using Biometric Voter Registration.Mujuru's commitment will be tested with the extent to which she is prepared to release secrets that may prove useful to the Coalition. The Coalition need to source for resources for campaigning ahead of the 2018 elections. Zanu-PF is a well oiled machine and they will do everything in their power to manipulate the electoral process so the opposition should be on guard. The grand coalition must have an intelligence department that will help fish information from ZEC, Registrar General and the people responsible for elections. Defeating Mugabe should not be difficult in 2018 as he has made many enemies in the last 37 years. Coupled with the intra party fighting of Lacoste and G40 factions, the opposition should use this to its advantage. Mugabe will be 94 in 2018 and with the combination of age and mismanagement, this should make Mugabe easy to defeat.Failure to establish a grand coalition will be catastrophic for Zimbabwe. Leaders should be more concerned on what the coalition can achieve than who will lead the coalition. They should put the interests of the people and country first than their egos. Coalitions have won elections against some of the worst dictators in the world.The mood and optimism among Zimbabweans is high because they all want to unsit the brutal regime of Zanu-PF and Mugabe at all costs. A grand coalition will avoid vote splits and if we work together as opposition fighting one enemy, we will create another Zimbabwe in 2018.Tendai MazengePDP Secretary for Policy, Harare Province tendai.mazenge@gmail.com
The revised state syllabus textbooks are riddled with errors and printing issues, an association of private school managements wrote to Primary and Secondary Education minister Tanveer Sait on Wednesday.



General secretary of Associated Managements of Primary and Secondary Schools in Karnataka (KAMS), Shashi Kumar D said that schools were disappointed with the new textbooks, which were revised by a committee headed by Prof Baragur Ramachandrappa.



In the Class X physical education textbook, Saina Nehwal is spelt correctly in the first paragraph and as Sania in the next. On the same page, Phillipines is spelt as Philipens. According to the textbook, P V Sindhu won a bronze medal in the 2016 Olympics when in fact, she won a silver medal.



The books have plenty of spelling mistakes, in some cases in the first page itself. There are factual errors in the content. Even the quality of the paper is poor, Kumar said.



Printing problems

Besides factual errors and spelling mistakes, the textbooks have several printing problems. In the class VII Kannada textbook, the pages 24 to 57 are blank. In the Class X English textbook, about 20 pages are printed upside down.



Kumar said that such printing errors result in loss in transportation costs for the school and is also a loss for students who have purchased the textbooks.



The committee spent so many months to revise the textbooks, yet there are so many spelling and factual errors. Someone should take responsibility for this, he said. In the letter, the association has sought rectification of errors and replacement of books with printing errors.



He also said that schools have not yet received all the textbooks they had ordered. Most of them have only received 50% to 60 % of their requirement, Kumar said.

DH News Service




The Namma Metros Sampige Road-Yelachenahalli stretch, which will connect south Bengaluru with other parts of the city, is likely to be inaugurated on June 17.



Chief Minister Siddaramaiah had invited President Pranab Mukherjee to inaugurate the stretch. The president will be touring Karnataka on June 17 and 18. He will inaugurate the Metro on June 17, sources in the chief ministers office said.



The Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Ltd (BMRCL) is preparing to celebrate the operation of the entire Phase 1 in a big way.



We have been preparing for the inauguration. Despite many hurdles, the Metro

has reached a major milestone. This will take public transport in the city to a higher level, BMRCL managing director Pradeep Singh Kharola said.



Kharola said BMRCL was ready for commercial operations on Sampige Road-Yelachenahalli stretch. The pending works are minor. We will complete everything within a week, he said.



Commissioner of Railway Safety K A Manoharan is set to give his report on the safety of the stretch in the next two days. BMRCLs work is generally good, he said, adding that no major changes are required.

Dream come true



Namma Metros Phase 1 has been delayed by more than six years due to various reasons, mainly lack of coordination between different agencies and political reasons. Those in the southern parts of the city have been dreaming of riding the Metro ever since the process of land acquisition started.



More importantly, it has been three years since the Yelachenahalli-National College stretch was completed. The delay in completion of the tunnel section between National College and Sampige Road became a major setback to the project.

DH News Service




A 14-year-old student from the city, Nikhiya Shamsher, received The Diana Legacy Award from Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, and Prince Harry, Prince of Wales, at an event held at St James Palace in London.



The award is given by the charity The Diana Award, supported by William and Harry, as a celebration of their mother, Princess Dianas legacy, who believed that youngsters had the power to transform peoples lives.

Nikhiya, a student of Greenwood High, was among the 20 youngsters from across the globe who received the award in May.



Nikhiya runs a registered NGO which works to provide quality education to underprivileged children. When she was 12, Nikhiya launched a Bags, Books and Blessings campaign through which she raised money to provide school supplies for children who could not afford these. In June 2015, Nikhiya also launched an initiative called Yearn to Learn through which she helped set up laboratories in schools which did not have the facility.



e-commerce website

To fund these two initiatives, Nikhiya launched an e-commerce website earlier this year. She has won several accolades for her work, including the Makkala Pratibha Puraskara Prashasthi in 2016, presented by the states department of women and child development.

DH News Service
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Wednesday said the Centres move to ban the sale of cattle for slaughter infringes on the states rights guaranteed under the Constitution.



Speaking after inaugurating the oath-taking ceremony for newly appointed state Youth Congress office-bearers, he said; Cow slaughter comes under the state list...It is my right to decide the food that I want to eat and the cloth that I want to wear. It is unconstitutional to take away this right.



Old cattle are a burden on farmers. At least 10 kg of fodder is required per day to keep each old head of cattle alive. This will adversely affect the farmers finances. The Centres move will badly hit the agriculture sector. The Centre is not aware of these consequences, he said.



Are we not Hindus? Are Muslims and Christians not Hindustanis?...The BJP is trying to mislead people by playing on the emotions of innocent people. It talks of sabka saat, sabka vikas, but it is keeping Muslims, Christians and Dalits away. Youth should never get carried away by Prime Minister Narendra Modis misleading speech, he stated.



KPCC president G Parameshwara warned that the party will not tolerate indiscipline. It will not hesitate to take action against those who indulge in anti-party activities, he added.



Four of the five newly elected vice presidents of the state Youth Congress submitted their resignation letters, protesting the partys decision to allow the swearing-in of new office-bearers despite reports of malpractice in the recently held elections. Rajendra, Sumaya Tabrez, Shivakumar, Kemparaju (all vice presidents) and Umesh Bore Gowda (general secretary) handed over their resignation letters to Indian Youth Congress president Amrinder Singh at the KPCC office, sources in the party said.




The arrest of two Iraqi students at the Kempegowda International Airport with medical drugs worth

Rs 2.17 crore on Saturday has rattled the officials of the Air Intelligence Unit and Customs. They suspect the role of an organised syndicate involving pharma industry in smuggling medical drugs to war-torn Iraq.



The source of money for medical drugs worth more than Rs 2 crore needs to be investigated. Tracking the money trail is important as its a matter of serious concern, said Harshavardhan Umre, Additional Commissioner, Customs, Bengaluru. It will also establish how the pharma outlets in the country sell prescription drugs without prescriptions.



A senior official said that the arrests will also raise several questions  are all foreign students pursuing medical course in India carriers of such drugs? The other question is what if these drugs are being used for some kind of a chemical warfare on foreign soil. This is a sensitive matter with international ramifications, another official said.



We are preparing a report on the list of drugs found in the 11 bags that the two students were trying to smuggle, with its pharmacological classifications. Almost all the drugs seized are prescription drugs, added Umre.



He said that the statements of the two students will be shared with the Central agencies including Intelligence Bureau and Research and Analysis Wing.



The two students  Mostafa Ismael Dawood (27) and Mohammed Razaq Mahdi (27) were apprehended at the Kempegowda International Airport on Saturday. The students together had 11 bags containing medical drugs worth Rs. 2.17 crore that were being smuggled to Iraq, a Customs official said.

DH News Service




The city police are still waiting for a response from the Pakistan High Commission on three of its nationals arrested for illegal stay in the country.



The police had arrested Samira Abdul Rahman (25), along with her cousin Kiran Ghulam Ali (26) and Khasif Shamshuddin (30)  all from Karachi  from Kumaraswamy Layout on May 25. Samira had married

Mohammed Shihaab from Kerala.



The police custody of the three Pakistani nationals and an Indian ended on Wednesday and they were remanded to judicial custody. We will again apply for police custody as we have to interrogate them in the Aadhaar case, said Praveen Sood, commissioner of police, Bengaluru.



Police sources said they had written to the Pakistan High Commission through the Ministry of Home Affairs soon after the arrest. We are surprised as there has been no response from them. Usually, we inform the respective foreign embassies when we arrest their citizens. They in turn contact us and give information about them, said a police source.



Meanwhile, intelligence agencies, including the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), have been collecting details on the case. Their investigation is on a separate track and we are cooperating with them, added another officer.

DH News Service
By Brian Deese and Ronald A. Klain

30 May 2017

(The Washington Post)  With President Trumps decision on U.S. participation in the Paris climate accords expected in the next few days, there has been widespread discussion of the many consequences that climate change will have for us and our children, including extreme weather events, displacement of people, submergence of lands and devastation to our oceans. But one of the most potentially deadly effects has been far less discussed: an increase in the spread of dangerous epidemics and the risk of a global pandemic.

As the Earths climate alters, we are seeing changes in where and how humans live; these changes increase the risk that deadly diseases will emerge and spread more rapidly. While the interactions between climate change and disease are hard to predict with certainty, the scientific linkages are unmistakable. If we fail to integrate planning for the impact of climate change with planning for the prevention and management of pandemic disease, the consequences will be deadly.The link between climate and disease is most often identified through the spread of disease vectors such as mosquitoes. As areas warm, habitats for insects  mosquitoes and deer ticks, for example  expand, exposing new populations to new disease threats. As Maryn McKenna recently explained in the New York Times Magazine, the approximately one degree Celsius increase in average temperatures the planet has experienced is changing the numbers and distribution of the insect intermediaries that carry diseases to people. Most immediately, we could see a larger number of people at risk in the United States from Zika this summer as the Aedes aegypti mosquito moves farther north, complicating the already challenging efforts to constrain the disease.But a second, and less appreciated, interaction between climate change and epidemics occurs when humans and animals are forced to compete for dwindling habitat and resources. The scenario behind Ebolas rise and global threat in 2014 illustrates this point. Climate change destroys habitats and stresses animal populations such as the bats of West Africa, forcing them to hunt for food nearer to humans. Humans, likewise pressed by climate impacts, encroach more closely on animal habitats. While we cannot know that climate change was the cause of the specific interaction between bats and humans that is believed to have launched the Ebola outbreak in Guinea, we will see more of these interactions in the future, and more epidemics as a result.Ebola demonstrates that even localized dislocation of people and animals can create global risk. Climate change is a threat multiplier for much broader dislocation  accelerating the complex factors that drive people from their homes. While in some cases climate-affected dislocation will be planned  as with the climate refugees in Louisiana or on remote Pacific islands such as Kiribati  more often it will occur in large, unplanned migrations that amplify regional instability and crisis. This dynamic can also drive migrations from rural into urban areas, as occurred in Syria, where the 2006-2010 drought killed off 80 percent of the countrys livestock and helped drive more than 1.5 million people into stressed urban centers. The U.S. intelligence communitys bottom-line assessment of the risk is plain: Over 20 years, the net effects of climate change on the patterns of global human movement and statelessness could be dramatic, perhaps unprecedented.We saw Ebola breach the rural-to-urban interface in West Africa; the outcome and extent of the current outbreak of Ebola in Congo remains to be seen. As climate change accelerates the movement of people, the risks of disease formation and transmission will multiply. [more]
Ad blocking is a growing challenge for marketers in Germany  by the end of next year almost a quarter of the population will be using ad blocking software, according to eMarketers first-ever estimates of ad blocking in Germany.





An ad blocking user is someone who installs software on an internet-connected device specifically to prevent the advertising content of a webpage or application from being services and viewed, and using it at least once per month.

Once seen as the preserve of the tech-savvy, early adopters and gamers, ad blocking has now moved into the mainstream and by the end of 2018, eMarketer expects, 30.8% of internet users in Germany-equivalent to 20.3 million people-will be choosing to prevent digital ads from appearing on at least one of their devices.

Unsurprisingly, many ad blocking users hail from younger age groups, with the highest penetration in the 18-24 category currently having the highest rate of ad blockers; 52.1% of internet users in this cohort will block digital ads this year. The second most likely group to block digital advertising is the 25-to-34 age bracket, which has a penetration rate of 40.7%.

By regional standards, consumers in Germany were early adopters of ad blocking, with significant growth taking place in 2012 and 2013. In 2017, eMarketer estimates that of the 18.9 million people who will block ads, the majority (89.6%) will do so on a desktop or laptop PC. Meanwhile, 28.6% will block ads on smartphones. (There is overlap because some users block ads on multiple devices.)

As that smartphone figure suggests, ad blocking on mobile devices has yet to make a major impact in Germany; this is largely because, as in the UK and the US until recently, mobile ad blockers are not as effective as they are on desktops/laptops. This is especially true within apps, where people are spending most of their mobile time.

Consumers in Germany have always been relatively more concerned about potential breaches of privacy and security online than their counterparts in the UK, for example, notes Karin von Abrams, eMarketer principal analyst. A majority find digital ads intrusive and feel they deliver no benefit; in addition, many internet users dislike the fact that advertisers track their online behavior and may make commercial use of that data. On the other hand, internet users understand their favorite sites and apps typically need ad revenue to survive. So, theyre definitely prepared to compromise. For example, more than 80% of smartphone users polled by G+J e|MS last year said they found mobile ads acceptable if those ads werent superimposed on other content, and didnt need to be closed separately.

Methodology

eMarketers forecasts and estimates are based on an analysis of quantitative and qualitative data from research firms, government agencies, media firms and public companies, plus interviews with top executives at publishers, ad buyers and agencies. Data is weighted based on methodology and soundness. Each eMarketer forecast fits within the larger matrix of all its forecasts, with the same assumptions and general framework used to project figures in a wide variety of areas. Regular re-evaluation of available data means the forecasts reflect the latest business developments, technology trends and economic changes.
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Redmond planning director retires

Odle

Rob Odle has retired as Redmond's planning director after serving the community for 16 years, the city said in a press release.

Karen Haluza is expected to become the new planning director, pending city council approval. Haluza is director of community development for Fullerton, California.

The city said under Odle's guidance, the department built relationships that led to increased investment in and around downtown. His team helped transform Redmond into a more urban setting, and worked to streamline zoning codes and improve electronic access.

Mayor John Marchione said Odle helped to create a more vibrant downtown, with light rail arriving in 2024 and a new Overlake Village neighborhood.

Odle worked in Kirkland, Bellevue and Burien, and before that as an educator and anthropologist. He will work in the mayor's office through August on some special projects.




Renovated beach opens along Lake Sammamish

Photo from Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission [enlarge]

The Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission and the Friends of Lake Sammamish State Park last week celebrated a recently finished renovation at Sunset Beach, which is in the Issaquah park.

Accord Contractors of Bellevue contoured the beach and added sand and gravel that are free from the silt and decomposed vegetation that covered the area for decades and made the water murky. An improved drainage system allows the sand to dry out more quickly after a rain.

Accord also installed a sandbox, landscaping, benches, bicycle racks, a seat wall, and a ramp to the water for people with disabilities.

The sandbox has nine bronze sculptures buried under 6 to 12 inches of sand for kids to discover. Olympia bronze artist Eric Holdener created the sculptures, which include a dragonfly, snail, salmon, frog, heron eggs, snake and more.

The project was designed by Lacey-based landscape architect Bob Droll, who also worked with The Watershed Co. on environmental mitigation elements and permitting.

The Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust installed the mitigation elements, which included a new wetland near an adjacent picnic area to compensate for adding sand to a low-functioning wetland during beach renovation.

The project is part of a master plan for Lake Sammamish State Park adopted 10 years ago that added a new boardwalk in 2013. The cost of the beach and boardwalk was about $3 million. About three-quarters of the funding came from grants and the rest from State Park's capital budget.

Future projects for Lake Sammamish State Park involve improvements to the picnic area at Sunset Beach, including new shelters and a paved esplanade connecting Sunset Beach to Tibbets Beach. The master plan also calls for a waterfront activities center and a trails center.




Henry Lewis Eason, 31, was killed when the 2010 Ford Ranger he was driving left the roadway, drove through a fence and struck a tree. On Tuesday, a passing motorist spotted the vehicle off the roadway and reported it to authorities. Eason was found inside his vehicle at 7 p.m. where the crash occurred on Coffee County 114.
For the second time in less than month, history was made at an Enterprise City Council meeting.

Three weeks after former District 1 councilman Bill Cooper was sworn in as mayor, making him the first African-American to hold the city governments highest office, Sonya Wheeler Rich was appointed Tuesday to Coopers former seat, which made her the first African-American woman and the second woman ever to be on the Council.

The announcement of Richs appointment drew a round of applause from the large crowd in attendance.

Its an honor to serve District 1 and Im grateful for this opportunity, and I look forward to working with the district councilmembers and the mayor for the good of Enterprise, she said.

Rich will be sworn in during the June 20 Council meeting. Former mayor Jackie Thompson was the first woman on the City Council.

Rich was nominated by the Council on Tuesday along with Jerrold Whitehurst out of seven applicants within the district. Councilmen Perry Vickers, Eugene Goolsby and Turner Townsend voted for Rich, while Al Miller voted for Whitehurst.

This is a democratic process, and all of them brought many things to the table, Vickers said of the applicants.

Townsend said he was excited to have seven eligible candidates to interview for the seat.

District 1s in good shape. Youve got good people in District 1, he told the audience.

During the Councils work session earlier Tuesday, Townsend said he met with Rich for about three hours last Thursday and felt she separated herself from the other applicants both on paper and in person.

Goolsby said in the work session that he also met with Rich at length and believed her communication skills and background elevated her.

The Rev. Trevor Woolridge, who attended the work session, addressed the Council during Tuesdays regular meeting and asked that Coopers recommendation on his District 1 replacement be given favorable consideration. He said that the discussion during the work session did not give him great pause to think that would happen. He did not mention a specific candidate while addressing the Council; however, during the work session, Miller said he was in favor of Whitehurst and said Cooper knows that district better than anybody here and should have valid input on his successor.

Woolridge added that there were some wonderful candidates for the seat.

Also during Tuesdays meeting, Cooper announced that Meredith Brunson is stepping down as the citys tourism director. Brunson has accepted a position with Dothan Area Convention and Visitors Bureau. Her last day will be June 23. Brunson, an Elba native, began as tourism director in September 2014.

Among action items Tuesday, the Council:

 Awarded the bid for this years storm-pipe lining project to Video Industrial Services Inc., which had the lowest of six bids at $48,065.

 Voted to seek bids on two vehicles for the Parks and Recreation department.

 Appointed Cooper to the Southeast Alabama Gas District Board of Directors to take over former mayor Kenneth Boswells seat.

 Approved a motion to enter an agreement with Colony Veterinarian Hospital regarding the citys animal-adoption process for nonprofit organizations. City Attorney Rainer Cotter said in the agreement, nonprofit animal-rescue groups would be allowed to adopt animals from Colony for $50 apiece, which was considerably less than what they were charged before. A May 4 Ledger article reported that the Troy Animal Rescue Project was charged $165 per adoption.
The Good:

 Monster offroader

 Cabin space and features

 Great engine-gearbox combo The Bad:

 Pricey with options

 As big as a cabin

 Not the best daily driver

The Ford F-150 SVT Raptor broke into the offroading scene in late 2009 as the ultimate high-speed desert runner. While it had a lot less power in its first iteration (starting off with just a 310 hp 5.4-litre V8 from the Expedition), it eventually gained a 411 hp 6.2-litre V8. There is now a new Raptor in town, dropping the SVT moniker, dropping the V8 and even dropping the curb weight, while promising to be the best high-speed offroader ever.

The new Raptor, based on the latest aluminium-bodied F-150, has shed more than 200 kilos over the previous model, while still retaining the wide-fendered, black-trimmed look, complete with orange marker lights and FORD spelled out on the grille. The height has increased by about 50mm, partly due to the upsized custom-engineered Fox shocks and unique BFGoodrich Baja offroad tyres. The bedside graphics have been toned down now, while the bonnet gets some black decals alongside the massive vents. And the bespoke bumpers are thinner, so theres less stuff to damage when youre overdoing it on the dunes.

Inside, its mostly standard F-150 fare, with a black ambience, mostly hard-plastic parts broken up by padded soft-touch areas on the dash and along the upper door panels, which is a massive upgrade from the previous model. There are slivers of optional carbon-fibre on the doors for the sake of it, while the black seats can be had with optional colour accents.

Stepping into the truck is made easy with large side steps. The cabin is overly massive in four-door SuperCrew form. In fact, theres too much space for a vehicle that just seats five. There is a shorter SuperCab version available with tighter rear seats and rear-hinged rear half-doors.

Up front, the seating position can be daunting as you float high above the ground, but cant really see the immediate ground beyond the bonnet. The leather seats in our top-spec tester features subtle orange accents and well-bolstered front seats. The SuperCrews rear legroom is limo-like, while headroom is immense. Theres lots of storage spaces, including door pockets and deep cubbies, as well as a space under the rear seats. The rear seat-bottoms can even flip up so you can have more space for valuable cargo that you dont want to leave in the open bed out back. The floor has washable rubber mats all-round.

The cargo bed out back can carry all the contents of a studio flat, with a built-in bedliner, a soft-opening tailgate with remote locking, and an optional cargo-divider/bed-extender. But our tester was missing Fords optional integrated pull-out step with a grab handle that hides away when not in use. And we city-slickers would prefer a bed-cover option as well, to be able to use the bed as a boot.

In terms of available tech, the Ford F-150 has all its rivals beat. The F-150 can be had with a new 8-inch LCD screen in the gauge cluster which includes apps involving everything from fuel economy to towing tips, and the ability to create a customised home screen for owners to access their most frequently-used apps in one place. Additionally, the new SYNC 3 system with an 8-inch multimedia touchscreen is quick and responsive, for use with the CD/MP3/USB/Bluetooth-capable stereo and automatic climate-control features, among several other functions. Many features can also be run on just voice-control alone, such as changing radio stations or calling phone contacts, although we were always more comfortable with the physical knobs and buttons below the screen and on the cluttered steering wheel.

Further available features include such luxuries as heated/cooled front seats, panoramic sunroof, cabin mood lighting, a 360-degree camera system for an overhead view, automatic steering for parallel-parking, LED headlights and taillights, blind-spot monitoring, LED spotlights on the sideview mirrors, and an LED-lit cargo bed. There is also a row of auxiliary toggle-switches on the ceiling, making it easy to cleanly hook up additional spotlights or fridges and such.

Many lament the fact that Ford has dropped the Raptors V8 in favour of a 3.5-litre turbo V6. Thats because they havent driven the new Raptor. In GCC-spec guise, the motor doesnt seem much more powerful than the old one, with 415 hp at 6000 rpm and 678 Nm of torque at 3750 rpm.

But its the power delivery that makes the difference. A dollop of kick comes from the lowest revs itself, helped along by a ridiculous 10-speed automatic that actually works beautifully when it comes to selecting gears smoothly, even capable of dropping from 10th to 6th directly when needed. Combine that with a lighter curb weight, and the new Raptor feels scary-powerful on city streets, even though our overall 0-100 kph time of 7.4 seconds in May afternoon weather suggests its no quicker than a (relatively smaller) Nissan Patrol LE.

Dont expect to save any fuel though, as we got a figure of 23.6 litres/100 km in a mix of driving conditions, including offroading. Also, V8 lovers will likely detest the new engine note, which sounds like a grunty V6 on acceleration. You also have to get used to the occasional feeling of slurred downshifts, likely happening when the truck is skipping gears as we mentioned earlier.

Sitting high on your pedestal seat while driving the Raptor quickly can feel a bit disconcerting initially, but you get used to it quickly once you get your head around the fact that its not taking up two lanes on the highway. And it does fit in most parking spaces width-wise (but not length-wise, like most full-size pickups). It also just about fits in the underground parking lots at malls, but the flexible antenna will hit those 2.1-metre height restriction signs at the entrance.

The Raptor handles pretty decently, although we feel the older model was a bit more taut in the corners. Maybe its a side-effect of being even more capable on the dunes. Still, the steering is lightly weighted with minimal feedback (and with driver-selectable firmness settings) and the metal paddle-shifters are responsive, while the brakes do their job well enough with progressive pedal feel, so its fairly predictable to drive.

The floatiness in the ride doesnt make the Raptor particularly comfortable though, as it constantly feels bumpy even on smooth pavement, likely due to the offroad tyres. The irony is that is that if you come across a big speed-bump or a deep pothole, the Raptor deals with it smoother than any other 44. And other than some tyre rumble, other noises are reasonably subdued. The turning circle is a bit wide, but it just about makes it around on most U-turns if you plan for it.

Of course, to truly enjoy this truck, you have to take it to the desert and set it free. Due to time constraints, we didnt bother deflating the tyres on our pre-Ramadan run. And interestingly enough, it didnt slow down the Raptor one bit. It just floated over soft sand without any inkling of getting stuck.

On some of the steeper climbs, we had to feed it a bit more power, but it probably wouldnt have needed that extra throttle if we did deflate the 315/70 tyres on those optional 17-inch beadlock wheels.

And on the minor dunes and flatter sandy areas, we could drive it quicker than any other stock 44. The Raptor floats over bumpy terrain, its tail wagging with the sudden intentional steering inputs, adding to the fun. The rear had a tendency to jitter loudly since the bed was unladen, but it did not interrupt the fun in any way.

The Raptor has a long list of electronically-selected driving modes to choose from in its Terrain Management System that will choose two-wheel-drive, four-wheel-drive and all-wheel-drive for you with terrain-specific powertrain calibrations to optimise performance in the chosen driving condition, such as sand, mud or even baja. But we didnt use any of them. We simply selected 4-high using the physical knob, turned off the ESP, and off we went.

Indeed, the Raptor is easily the most capable dune-basher you can buy right now, straight out of the showroom without requiring any modifications. Its rather expensive with all the options ticked liked in our test car, but apparently you can order a stripped-down version for a lot less dough. Wed say stick to the basics.
Researchers from the Irish Software Research Centre at Dundalk Institute of Technology have launched a new medical device cybersecurity company that plans to create 78 jobs over the next four years.

The Lero DkIT spinout company, Nova Leah (www.novaleah.com) has developed an expert cybersecurity risk management software application aimed at global medical device manufacturers and healthcare providers.

Nova Leah, has just opened an office in Boston to serve the North American market. Initial investors include US venture capital company COSIMO Venture Partners and Enterprise Ireland.

We believe that cybersecurity for medical devices will be a significant new market, said Rob Frasca of COSIMO Venture Partners. A first of its kind, we are not aware of any other company worldwide that can provide medical device manufacturers with an automated solution to implement and maintain cybersecurity requirements across medical device product portfolios.

The recent WannaCry ransomware attack on the UKs NHS highlights the importance of cybersecurity in the health sector. Todays medical devices incorporate high levels of software and are connected across networks, online or wirelessly, commented Nova Leah CEO, Anita Finnegan.

As a result, medical device manufacturers are facing two major challenges: ensuring compliance with stricter regulatory measures and minimising the probability of malicious breaches aimed at medical devices and healthcare IT networks.

The new cloud based system, SelectEvidence, which follows a five-year R&D programme at Dundalk Institute of Technology, is designed to guide medical device manufacturers implementing cybersecurity requirements and best practices over the lifetime of device in compliance with US FDA (Food & Drug Administration) recommendations for information security threats and risks during premarket and post market activities.

Anita Finnegan added that data breaches in the US are estimated to be costing healthcare providers $5.6 billion annually. Nova Leah is initially targeting customers in the imaging and electro medical device sectors in the US, a market that is estimated to be worth $155 billion of which connected devices account for approximately $51 billion. It is estimated that there are more than 6,500 medical device manufacturers in the US.

Lero researcher Dr Fergal McCaffery, based at Dundalk Institute of Technology, a non-executive director of the new firm added, SelectEvidence ensures speedier market deployment for devices, reduced compliance costs and fewer market recalls due to data hacks; all of which boost profitability of our target organisations.

One of Nova Leahs first customers is an Irish based device manufacturer, Orreco.

Orreco holds biomarker and other information on elite and professional athletes. Security, compliance and data protection is therefore a priority, commented Fiona Slevin, COO. Using SelectEvidence we were able to design our software platform to global security standards, thus strengthening our confidence in the features designed to optimise security, safety and protection of data.

The launch of this spinout company is further evidence of the quality and global potential of the software research being carried out across the Lero organisation, commented Professor Brian Fitzgerald, director, Lero  the Irish Software Research Centre, which is supported by Science Foundation Ireland. It also emphasises the national asset in terms of medical device research that is based at the Dundalk Institute of Technology.

Dr Joe Healy, Divisional Manager, High Potential Start Up Division, Enterprise Ireland, added, Enterprise Irelands mission is to partner with innovative Irish businesses and entrepreneurs with the drive and ambition to scale in international markets. Enterprise Ireland has worked closely with Dr Anita Finnegan over the past five years and seen first-hand how the college based research and then the start-up company Nova Leah has gone from strength to strength. Enterprise Ireland looks forward to working with Nova Leah to continue to support their growth ambitions as they strengthen their customer base and grow internationally.

Anita Finnegan has over 15 years experience working in regulated environments such as medical devices, automotive and construction. She is an international project leader with ISO/IEC SC62a Joint Working Group 7 and Working Group 4. Nominated by NSAI, she also represents Ireland as the medical device security expert at international standards meetings. Her PhD research provided the basis for Nova Leahs SelectEvidence product.

Dr. Fergal McCaffery is a Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) principal investigator. He is director of the Regulated Software Research Centre (RSRC) in Dundalk Institute of Technology and the medical device software engineering competency area leader in Lero, the Irish Software Research Centre which is supported by SFI.

Lero, the Irish Software Research Centre (www.lero.ie) is a global leader in software research. It combines the best in Irish software talent by bringing together researchers from Dublin City University, Dundalk Institute of Technology, NUI Galway, Maynooth University, Trinity College Dublin, University College Cork, University College Dublin and University of Limerick. It is funded by Science Foundation Ireland as well as by contracts from Irish and international technology corporations.
United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Appellee, v. CLIFTON JACKSON, Defendant-Appellant. 15-2186 Decided: June 06, 2017

PRESENT: DENNIS JACOBS, DEBRA ANN LIVINGSTON, Circuit Judges, LEWIS A. KAPLAN,* District Judge. FOR APPELLANT: DANIEL M. PEREZ, Law Offices of Daniel M. Perez, Newton, NJ. FOR APPELLEE: JOSEPH J. KARASZEWSKI, Assistant United States Attorney, forJames P. Kennedy, Jr., Acting United States Attorney for the Western District of New York, Buffalo, NY.

UPON DUE CONSIDERATION, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED, ADJUDGED AND DECREED that the judgment of the district court be AFFIRMED.

Defendant Clifton Jackson, who was convicted on numerous charges related to the filing of fraudulent tax returns, appeals from the denial of a motion for a new trial pursuant to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 33. We assume the parties' familiarity with the underlying facts, the procedural history, and the issues presented for review.

Jackson was indicted in April 2013 and charged with sixty-six counts of conspiracy to unlawfully use Social Security numbers, conspiracy to defraud the government, submission of false claims, Social Security fraud, theft of government property, and aggravated identify theft. These charges arose out of a 2012 scheme in which Jackson, with the help of three co-conspirators, filed fraudulent tax returns online using the names and Social Security numbers of other people, and then collected the tax refunds in the form of prepaid debit cards. Jackson's three co-conspirators provided internet access, obtained Social Security numbers and other identifying information, received tax refund debit cards in the mail, and withdrew money stored on debit cards. At an eight-day jury trial in January 2015, the government adduced testimony from the three co-conspirators, as well as extensive other evidence. Jackson was found guilty on fifty-eight of the sixty-six counts in the indictment.

On appeal, Jackson relies on the government's failure to disclose impeachment evidence concerning Jackson's co-conspirator DeWayne Vass. Prior to calling Vass as a witness, the government disclosed his criminal history pursuant to its obligations under Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963), and Giglio v. United States, 405 U.S. 150 (1972). That history consisted of three felony drug convictions: two in 2007 (for which he received concurrent sentences of six years and two-and-a-half years, and for which he was released from prison in December 2011) and one in 2004 (for which he received a sentence of one year). During Vass's cross-examination, Jackson's counsel impeached Vass's credibility in a number of ways, including with his criminal history.

What was not disclosed to Jackson was the fact that, while Vass was on pretrial release in June 2014, he had been recorded discussing apparent drug trafficking on an intercepted wiretap in an unrelated criminal investigation. Vass was not arrested or charged as a result of that investigation, which focused on a sprawling drug trafficking conspiracy in the Western District of New York between June 2013 and July 2014.

In June 2015, Jackson filed a Rule 33 motion for a new trial based on the government's failure to disclose Vass's appearance on the wiretap. The government conceded that it should have disclosed the information, but argued that its failure to do so did not warrant a new trial. The district court agreed and denied Jackson's motion, reasoning that the undisclosed evidence would likely not have altered the outcome of the trial because it was cumulative of other impeachment evidence and because guilt was well established.

Under Rule 33, a district court may vacate any judgment and grant a new trial if the interest of justice so requires. Fed. R. Crim. P. 33(a). We review a district court's denial of a Rule 33 motion deferentially and will reverse only for abuse of discretion. United States v. Snype, 441 F.3d 119, 140 (2d Cir. 2006). The trial court has broad discretion to decide Rule 33 motions based upon its evaluation of the proof produced, and its ruling is deferred to on appeal because, having presided over the trial, it is in a better position to decide what effect the newly discovered materials might have had on the jury. United States v. Gambino, 59 F.3d 353, 364 (2d Cir. 1995) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). We identify no abuse of discretion in this case.

A new trial is warranted under Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963),  where (1) the government failed to disclose favorable evidence, and (2)  the evidence it suppressed was material. United States v. Wong, 78 F.3d 73, 79 (2d Cir. 1996) (internal quotation marks omitted). This rule applies to evidence that can be used to impeach a government witness. Giglio, 405 U.S. at 154. However, undisclosed impeachment evidence is not material in the Brady sense when, although possibly useful to the defense, it is not likely to have changed the verdict.  United States v. Persico, 645 F.3d 85, 111 (2d Cir. 2011) (quoting Giglio, 405 U.S. at 154).

[W]here the undisclosed evidence merely furnishes an additional basis on which to challenge a witness whose credibility has already been shown to be questionable or is subject to extensive attack by reason of other evidence, the undisclosed evidence may properly be viewed as cumulative, and hence not material, and not worthy of a new trial.

Id.

The district court did not abuse its discretion by concluding that the undisclosed evidence against Vass was immaterial. Vass's credibility was already undermined by, inter alia, his three prior drug convictions (for which he received substantial sentences), as well as his admitted participation in the instant tax fraud scheme. Inconclusive evidence of Vass's continuing involvement in drug trafficking may have further eroded his character for truthfulness, but only marginally so. Because the impeachment value of the undisclosed evidence was incremental, it was properly viewed as cumulative. See Wong, 78 F.3d at 80 (affirming denial of Rule 33 motion where defense counsel had sufficient ammunition concerning government witness's credibility). Even if the undisclosed evidence were not cumulative, it would nonetheless be immaterial because Jackson's guilt was firmly established by evidence unrelated to Vass, including other co-conspirator testimony describing in detail how Jackson orchestrated and executed the tax fraud scheme. See United States v. Locascio, 6 F.3d 924, 949 (2d Cir. 1993) (new trial not warranted unless evidence would probably lead to an acquittal (internal quotation marks omitted)).

Jackson argues that the undisclosed evidence of Vass's apparent drug trafficking activity, combined with the government's decision not to prosecute him for drug trafficking or to seek the revocation of his pretrial release, is material because it suggests that Vass's testimony was given in exchange for preferential treatment. That argument fails for two reasons. First, because Vass resisted answering the government's questions at trial, the government used Vass's grand jury testimony (with Jackson's consent), testimony that was given before Vass was caught on the wiretap discussing possible drug trafficking. Second, as explained above, even if the jury discounted everything Vass said, other record evidence was more than sufficient to prove Jackson's guilt.

Accordingly, we hereby AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.

FOR THE COURT:

CATHERINE O'HAGAN WOLFE, CLERK

FOOTNOTES

. Vass was also questioned about his prior false statements to investigating agents, government pressure to cooperate, and alleged tax-related misconduct by his cousins.

. Although it is legally irrelevant, the government explained that the nondisclosure was inadvertent and that the unrelated investigation was overseen by different prosecutors.
United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit. MICHAEL JONES, Appellant v. U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION; SECRETARY OF THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION; PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF LABOR & INDUSTRY; OFFICE OF VOCATIONAL REHABILITATION; BUREAU OF BLINDNESS AND VISUAL SERVICES CLD-269 Decided: June 06, 2017

Before: SHWARTZ, NYGAARD, and FISHER, Circuit Judges

OPINION*

Michael Jones appeals pro se from the District Court's February 17, 2017 order denying his post-judgment attack on the settlement agreement reached in his case. For the reasons that follow, we will summarily affirm that order.

I.

In 2014, Jones filed a counseled complaint in the District Court against multiple defendants, seeking review of an arbitration decision issued by a panel convened by the United States Department of Education (DOE) pursuant to the Randolph-Sheppard Act, 20 U.S.C.  107 et seq. In September 2015, the District Judge referred the case to a Magistrate Judge to conduct a settlement conference. In October 2015, the District Judge was informed that the parties had settled the case. As a result, the District Judge dismissed the case with prejudice, stating that the Magistrate Judge shall retain jurisdiction over this matter to enforce the settlement terms. (Dist. Ct. Order entered Oct. 27, 2015.) No party appealed from that dismissal order, and the settlement agreement was signed by the parties in December 2015.

In September 2016, Jones sent a pro se email to the Magistrate Judge, stating that there may be serious challenges with th[e] settlement agreement. (Dist. Ct. docket # 52-1, at 4.) The Magistrate Judge construed the email as a request to revoke the settlement agreement and held a telephone conference with the parties to discuss the issue. During that conference, Jones claimed that he had agreed to the settlement under duress, that he had not received a Braille copy of the agreement before settling (as mentioned in Footnote 1, Jones is blind), and that a defendant had breached the agreement. At the end of the conference, the Magistrate Judge determined that, although Jones may not have received a Braille copy of the settlement agreement, Jones had ample time to confer with his family and three separate attorneys before settling. The Magistrate Judge found that those attorneys, who were all extremely competent, extremely patient, extremely well informed, and advocated vigorously on behalf of Mr. Jones, advised him of his rights and the advisability of entering the agreement which he signed. (Tr. of Telephone Conference held Sept. 30, 2016, at 24.) The Magistrate Judge noted that the agreement includes significant benefits for Mr. Jones, (id.), and found that the defendant in question had complied with the agreement, (see id.). The Magistrate Judge also noted that Jones had previously represented to the defendants that he was entering into the agreement without any duress or undue influence from anyone. (See id. at 23-24.) Immediately after the conference, the Magistrate Judge entered an order denying Jones's request to revoke the settlement as frivolous.

A few weeks later, Jones filed a pro se notice of appeal, seeking our review of the Magistrate Judge's order. We dismissed that appeal in January 2017, explaining that we lacked jurisdiction to review that order because Jones had not appealed to the District Judge in the first instance. (See Jan. 19, 2017 Order entered in C.A. No. 16-4015.) Jones then returned to the District Court and filed a pro se Emergency Motion, effectively asking the District Judge to vacate the settlement and reopen his case. (See Jones's Emergency Mot. 5 (I am asking the court to open this Settlement and reverse it.  I am willing to return the money given to me [as part of the settlement].).) As before, Jones claimed that he had agreed to the settlement under duress, and that he had not been provided with a Braille copy of the agreement. The District Judge treated this new motion as a request for relief from a judgment pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b). On February 17, 2017, the District Judge denied that relief. This timely appeal followed.

II.

We have jurisdiction over this appeal pursuant to 28 U.S.C.  1291. We review the District Judge's denial of relief under Rule 60(b) for abuse of discretion. See Brown v. Phila. Hous. Auth., 350 F.3d 338, 342 (3d Cir. 2003). An abuse of discretion may be found when the district court's decision rests upon a clearly erroneous finding of fact, an errant conclusion of law or an improper application of law to fact. Reform Party of Allegheny Cty. v. Allegheny Cty. Dep't of Elections, 174 F.3d 305, 311 (3d Cir. 1999) (en banc) (internal quotation marks omitted). We may take summary action if this appeal fails to present a substantial question. See 3d Cir. I.O.P. 10.6.

As the District Judge highlighted, the Magistrate Judge held a series of conferences at which he was personally able to observe [Jones] and assess his responsiveness, demeanor, and ability to comprehend the terms of the settlement, and observe the guidance provided to Jones by his attorneys in reaching the settlement. (Dist. Ct. Op. entered Feb. 17, 2017, at 4 (alteration in original) (internal quotation marks omitted).) With the benefit of those observations, and after considering the parties' arguments during the post-settlement telephone conference, the Magistrate Judge found that Jones had not entered into the settlement under duress, and that his attorneys had advised him of his rights and the advisability of entering the [settlement] agreement. (Tr. of Telephone Conference held Sept. 30, 2016, at 24.). The District Judge subsequently relied on those findings in assessing the Rule 60(b) motion, and he concluded that Jones had knowingly and voluntarily entered into the settlement. Jones has not demonstrated that this conclusion was error or that the factual findings undergirding it were clearly erroneous. Accordingly, we cannot conclude that the District Judge abused its discretion in denying Jones relief under Rule 60(b).

Because this appeal does not present a substantial question, we will summarily affirm the District Court's February 17, 2017 order.

FOOTNOTES

. Under this statute, the federal government, in partnership with consenting states, seeks to provide economic opportunities to the blind by granting priority to licensed blind vendors in contracts to operate vending facilities on federal property. New Hampshirev. Ramsey, 366 F.3d 1, 5 (1st Cir. 2004) (emphasis omitted). A blind licensee who is dissatisfied with the operation of a participating state's vendor program may seek a hearing before that state's licensing agency. See id. at 6. The licensee may appeal the outcome of that hearing to a DOE panel, and judicial review of the panel's decision may be sought in federal court. See id. The complaint brought by Jones, who is blind and was a licensee in Pennsylvania's vendor program, revolved around the state licensing agency's failure to award him a particular vending site.

. As part of those benefits, Jones received $365,000 (another $85,000 was awarded to his three attorneys) and an approximately $30,000 debt of his was forgiven.

. Jones does not challenge the District Judge's decision to treat his motion as a request for Rule 60(b) relief, and we see no error in that treatment. See Sawka v. Healtheast, Inc., 989 F.2d 138, 140 (3d Cir. 1993) (explaining that [a]ny time a district [court] enters a judgment, even one dismissing a case by stipulation of the parties, [it] retains, by virtue of Rule 60(b), jurisdiction to entertain a later motion to vacate the judgment on the grounds specified in the rule) (alterations in original) (quoting Halderman ex rel.Halderman v. Pennhurst State Sch. & Hosp., 901 F.2d 311, 320 (3d Cir. 1990)); see also Raab v. City of Ocean City, N.J., 833 F.3d 286, 294 (3d Cir. 2016) (explaining that a district court has jurisdiction to enforce a settlement agreement when its order dismissing the case specifies that jurisdiction over that agreement is being retained) (citing Kokkonen v. Guardian Life Ins. Co. of Am., 511 U.S. 375, 381 (1994)).

. To the extent that Jones claims that the District Judge should have held an evidentiary hearing before ruling, that claim does not entitle Jones to relief here. Jones has not established that an evidentiary hearing was necessary, for the Magistrate Judge had already held a telephone conference to address Jones's concerns about the settlement, and Jones has not specified what evidence he would have presented at the evidentiary hearing. See generally McDowell v. Phila. Hous. Auth., 423 F.3d 233, 238 (3d Cir. 2005) (indicating that a district court has discretion to rule without holding an evidentiary hearing).

PER CURIAM
United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. ANNE MARIE HANKINS, as Primary Shareholder, President and Operations Officer of Emerald Powerline Construction, Inc, Defendant-Appellant. No. 15-30345 Decided: June 06, 2017

Before: M. Margaret McKeown and William A. Fletcher, Circuit Judges, and Jennifer A. Dorsey,* District Judge. COUNSEL John C. Fisher (argued), Eugene, Oregon, for Defendant-Appellant. Amy Potter (argued), Assistant United States Attorney; Kelly A. Zusman, Appellate Chief; Billy J. Williams, United States Attorney; United States Attorney's Office, Eugene, Oregon, for Plaintiff-Appellee.

OPINION

SUMMARY **

Criminal Law

The panel affirmed the district court's denial of Anne Marie Hankins's motion seeking full satisfaction of the restitution judgment entered following her conviction for bank fraud and submitting a false loan application.

The panel held that a defendant may not discharge a restitution judgment based on a private settlement between the victim and the defendant; and that the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act of 1996 permits a district court to redirect restitution payments to the Crime Victims Fund, when a victim later disclaims restitution without making a direct assignment to the Fund.

McKEOWN, Circuit Judge:

In this appeal we resolve two related questions of first impression in our circuit that arise out of the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act of 1996 (MVRA), a statute that requires certain criminal defendants to pay restitution to compensate and assist victims. We first determine whether a defendant may discharge a restitution judgment based on a private settlement between the victim and the defendant. The answer is norestitution is a criminal sentence that cannot be extinguished by a victim's disclaimer of benefits. Relatedly, we decide whether a district court may redirect restitution payments to the federal Crime Victims Fund, 42 U.S.C.  10601 et seq., (the Fund), when a victim later disclaims restitution without making a direct assignment to the Fund. The answer is yesthe statute provides leeway for the court to fashion this practical solution.

Background

The factual background here is not complicated. In 2001, Anne Hankins pled guilty to bank fraud under 18 U.S.C.  1344 after submitting a false loan application for $350,000 to U.S. Bank Special Assets Group (U.S. Bank). The district court sentenced Hankins to thirty days in jail and entered a judgment under the MVRA ordering her to pay U.S. Bank $350,000 in restitution. The restitution, payable in full immediately or, if any unpaid balance remained at the time of Hankins's release from custody, at the maximum installment possible, and not less than $50 per month, was to be deposited with the clerk of the court for transfer to the payee.

In 2002, U.S. Bank assigned its interest in the restitution judgment to Horton & Associates LLC (Horton). In 2011, the district court entered an order substituting Horton as the assigned victim. Although neither the record nor the district court docket explains the time lag between the assignment and the substitution order, the delay is immaterial for our purposes.

From 2002 to 2013, Hankins made sporadic payments: she paid most months, and the payments ranged from $50 to $400. On several occasions between 2011 and 2013, the Treasury Offset Program also garnished funds, taking from Hankins as much as $3,310.22 at a time. By July 2013, Hankins had paid $13,044.30 towards her $350,000 judgmentleaving her with a remaining balance of $336,955.70.

In September 2013, Hankins and Horton purported to settle the outstanding restitution obligation for a mere $5,000. Soon after, Horton filed with the court a notice entitled Full Satisfaction of Judgment. The record reflects that neither the district court, Hankins, nor the government took any action in court in response to Horton's notice, although Hankins stopped making payments.

In April 2015, more than a year and a half after Horton filed its notice, the Treasury Offset Program garnished $21,765 from Hankins to be applied towards her restitution balance. Hankins, likely displeased by this turn of affairs, filed a motion a few weeks later seeking full satisfaction of the restitution judgment. By that time, Hankins had paid only $34,809.30, including the $21,765 garnishment, of the $350,000 judgment.

The district court denied Hankins's motion, reasoning that the MVRA dictates full mandatory restitution to the victim or the victim's assignee. Based on Horton's notice of satisfaction in full of the Restitution Judgment, the district court assumed that Horton no longer wished to receive restitution payments and ordered that the money garnished by the Treasury Offset Program and all of Hankins's future restitution payments be deposited into the Fund. We review de novo the legal basis for the district court's ruling on restitution. United States v. Luis, 765 F.3d 1061, 1065 (9th Cir. 2014).

Analysis

I. THE MVRA FRAMEWORK

We begin with the statutory framework. The MVRA, 18 U.S.C.  3663A3664, mandates restitution to victims of certain offenses, including those committed by fraud or deceit. Id.  3663A(c)(1)(A)(ii). Specifically, a district court, when sentencing a defendant convicted of a qualifying offense, shall order  that the defendant make restitution to the victim of the offense or, if the victim is deceased, to the victim's estate. Id.  3663A(a)(1) (emphasis added). This restitution order is part of a convicted defendant's criminal sentence. The statute permits district courts to order restitution to persons other than the victim of the offense when agreed to by the parties in a plea agreement. Id.  3663A(a)(3).

The restitution order is issued and enforced in accordance with  3664. Id.  3663A(d). Relevant here, [a] victim may at any time assign the victim's interest in restitution payments to the [Fund] without in any way impairing the obligation of the defendant to make such payments, id.  3664(g)(2), and [n]o victim shall be required to participate in any phase of a restitution order, id.  3664(g)(1). When ordering restitution, the court must assign to each victim the full amount of each victim's losses without regard to the defendant's economic situation. Id.  3664(f)(1)(A). And, finally, an order imposing restitution under the MVRA is a final judgment, id.  3664(o), although there are some circumstances under which a district court may alter a final restitution order, see, e.g., id.  3664(j)(2), (o)(1)(2).

II. INVALIDITY OF PRIVATE SETTLEMENT OF RESTITUTION ORDERS UNDER THE MVRA

The first question we consider is the effect of Hankins's settlement with Horton on the district court's restitution order. In Hankins's view, once Horton agreed to a Full Satisfaction of Judgment in exchange for payment of $5,000, she was off the hook in terms of restitution payments. The government disagrees and claims that Hankins's restitution order cannot be modified through private settlement. The government is correct.

Starting with the basics, [a] sentence that imposes an order of restitution is a final judgment, even though it can be corrected or amended in certain limited circumstances. Id.  3664(j)(2), (o)(1)(2). Once a restitution order is imposed, the MVRA leaves the district court with limited options to modify restitution. See United States v. Turner, 312 F.3d 1137, 1143 (9th Cir. 2002). Ultimately, only the courtrather than the victim or the defendantcan impose or modify the defendant's sentence. Neither the victim, nor the victim's assignee, has the authority to settle, release, satisfy, or otherwise modify a restitution judgment. This conclusion follows from the principle that private individuals should not be allowed to thwart the penal goals of the criminal justice system by entering into releases or settlements with wrongdoers. United States v. Bearden, 274 F.3d 1031, 1041 (6th Cir. 2001).

Because restitution is a criminal sentence, its enforcement is distinct from a civil judgment that is left largely in the parties' hands. Private parties cannot simply agree to waive the application of a criminal statute. United States v. Savoie, 985 F.2d 612, 619 (9th Cir. 1993).

We have previously held that restitution is not foreclosed even where a defendant and victim entered into a civil settlement before the defendant was sentenced under the MVRA. United States v. Edwards, 595 F.3d 1004, 1014 (9th Cir. 2010). There, we noted that [c]riminal restitution is mandatory under the MVRA and cannot be waived by a prior civil settlement. Id. Our holding here is a logical extension of the reasoning in Edwards: a victim cannot unilaterally extinguish a defendant's obligation to pay restitution by privately settling that restitution order. See id. This reasoning is all the more powerful here because, unlike in Edwards, Hankins seeks to settle the restitution order itselfa criminal sentence entered following a criminal conviction.

Our conclusion accords with other circuits. The Eighth Circuit has observed that it is clearly correct that a victim and a defendant cannot settle a restitution obligation because allowing otherwise would violate[ ] public policy. United States v. Boal, 534 F.3d 965, 96768 (8th Cir. 2008). This principle is echoed by the Fifth Circuit: [The victim] could not waive the Government's authority to collect restitution, as that bears uniquely on the State's right to administer punishment. United States v. Ridgeway, 489 F.3d 732, 738 (5th Cir. 2007) (discussing the MVRA's predecessor statute, the Victim and Witness Protection Act of 1982 (VWPA)). And the Second and Sixth Circuits agree that a district court cannot reduce or eliminate restitution as a result of a victim's waiver or prior settlement. See United States v. Johnson, 378 F.3d 230, 24445 (2d Cir. 2004); Bearden, 274 F.3d at 1041. Stated differently, the law will not tolerate privately negotiated end runs around the criminal justice system. Savoie, 985 F.2d at 619 (discussing the VWPA).

Importantly, if we adopt the rule that Hankins suggests, there is a serious risk that defendants could coerce victims into settling or that defendants and victims would collude on settlements. Although this risk is less likely in Hankins's case, as the victim was a bank, we are not convinced that other victims, such as victims of sexual assault, see United States v. Palmer, 643 F.3d 1060, 1068 (8th Cir. 2011) (affirming an award of restitution under the MVRA to a victim of commercial sex trafficking), would stand in such a detached bargaining position. In that situation, the power imbalance between the actors may permit the defendant to coerce the victim to accept a nominal settlement. Taking restitution out of the hands of the criminal justice system and leaving it to private parties is not a result contemplated or countenanced by the MVRA.

Finally, the rule of lenity does not help Hankins. Considering the text, structure, history, and purpose of the statute, there is no grievous ambiguity that justifies invoking the rule here. See Muscarello v. United States, 524 U.S. 125, 13839 (1998).

III. DISTRICT COURT'S AUTHORITY TO REDIRECT RESTITUTION PAYMENTS TO THE CRIME VICTIMS FUND

Once the district court determined that the attempted settlement between Hankins and Horton did not modify the restitution order and that Horton, as the victim's assignee, had disclaimed further restitution through its filing of a notice of satisfaction, the district court directed payment of the restitution to the Fund. Hankins argues that this relief went beyond her request to satisfy the judgment and that the district court's decision destroy[s] the contractual arrangement between Hankins and Horton. Hankins's argument is misguided, because any claimed contract does not affect her liability for restitution. So, faced with a situation in which payment of mandatory restitution is continuing and the victim has declared its debt satisfied, the district court dealt with a dilemmawhere does the money go? In Turner, a case that involved the validity of an assignment by a victim, we validated the assignment but noted, What may or may not happen in the future [with the restitution payments] was not before the district court. It ought not be before us. 312 F.3d at 1144. That question is now before us.

Put simply, the district court ordered what makes practical sense within the spirit and confines of the MVRA: it did not modify the sentence itself but redirected payments to the Fund. We conclude that the district court had the flexibility under the MVRA to effect this solution. Three principles derived from the statute support this interpretation: the mandatory nature of restitution, the fact that the payment obligation is not contingent on the victim, and the purpose of restitution.

The MVRA is clear that the award of full restitution is mandatory. Although the victim is the beneficiary of restitution, the victim has only limited rights and may not dictate whether restitution is appropriate or the amount: the court shall order restitution to each victim in the full amount of each victim's losses. 18 U.S.C.  3664(f)(1)(A).

The restitution obligation is a continuous one that does not ebb and flow with the victim's circumstances. The obligation is terminated only by the later of 20 years from the entry of judgment or 20 years after the release from imprisonment of the person ordered to pay restitution and not by any action on the part of the victim. Id.  3613(b). Even when the defendant dies, her estate will be held responsible for any unpaid balance of the restitution amount. Id. And, when calculating restitution, the district court may not consider that the victim is entitled to compensation from insurance or another source. Id.  3664(f)(1)(B). Nothing in the statute provides that the defendant's liability ends with any change in the victim's circumstances. At the same time, a victim is not required to accept restitution, as [n]o victim shall be required to participate in any phase of a restitution order. Id.  3664(g)(1). To reconcile the mandatory nature of restitution with this provision, the statute must admit some flexibility as to where restitution money goes if the victim disclaims participation.

One other section of the MVRA bears analysis. Section 3664(g)(2) allows the victim to at any time assign [its] interest to the Fund without in any way impairing the obligation of the defendant to make such payments. See Turner, 312 F.3d at 1144 (observing that a victim's assignment does not alter the defendant's restitution liability). It makes sense that the statute lays out the rights of the third-party victim since, without an explicit provision, the third party would be left up in the air as to the ability to assign. But this provision does not extend beyond the victim's ability to assign and cannot not be read to constrain the district court's authority to redirect payments.

In Johnson, one of the defendants made the same argument Hankins makes herenamely, that because  3664(g)(2) gives victims authority to assign to the Fund, the statute should be read as cabining the district court's authority. Rejecting that approach, the Second Circuit was clear: We disagree. Although  3664(g)(2) authorizes victims to make such an assignment, it does not preclude the Court from doing so. 378 F.3d at 245 (emphasis added). The statute's silence gives us flexibility to construe the scope of the district court's authority. Indeed, as the Supreme Court counsels, There is a basic difference between filling a gap left by Congress' silence and rewriting the rules that Congress has affirmatively and specifically enacted. Mobil Oil Corp. v. Higgenbotham, 436 U.S. 618, 625 (1978). Here, we are doing the formerfilling a gap in the MVRA.

Finally, allowing the district court to redirect restitution serves the MVRA's compensatory and punitive purposes. See William A. Graham Co. v. Haughey, 646 F.3d 138, 144 (3d Cir. 2011) (noting that federal courts filling statutory gaps must do so with the statute's policy goals in mind). The MVRA's legislative history describes the statute's dual goals as ensur[ing] that  victims  receive the restitution that they are due and that the offender  pays the debt owed to the victim as well as to society. S. Rep. No. 104-179, at 12 (1995) (emphasis added). As we emphasized in United States v. Rich, we have held repeatedly that restitution payments have both compensatory and penal purposes. 603 F.3d 722, 729 (9th Cir. 2010) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted); see also United States v. Green, 722 F.3d 1146, 1150 (9th Cir. 2013) (describing the MVRA as having hybrid purposes). Redirecting the defendant's restitution payments to the Fund supports the MVRA's compensatory goal of supporting crime victims, even if the victims compensated are not the defendant's actual victims. This solution also serves the MVRA's penal purpose of requiring the defendant to pay[ ] the debt owed to  society. S. Rep. No. 104-179, at 12.

Conversely, adopting an interpretation that prohibits the district court from redirecting restitution to the Fund would thwart the goals of the MVRA. Hankins's sentence explicitly directs her to make restitution payments payable to the U.S. District Court Clerk, for transfer to the payee. See 18 U.S.C.  3611 (stating that restitution payments may be directed to the Clerk of the Court). Because Hankins is obligated to continue paying restitution under her sentence, absent redirection, her payments would have nowhere specific to go. The funds would revert at some point to the U.S. Treasury's federal unclaimed property fund and eventually may even escheat to the state. See United States v. Klein, 303 U.S. 276, 28182 (1938) (affirming Pennsylvania's escheat of unclaimed money deposited in the registry of a federal court even though the money had already been transferred to the U.S. Treasury). But, in any event, the funds would accrue without supporting any victims of crime. Surely Congress did not intend this result. See United States v. Webster, 108 F.3d 1156, 1158 (9th Cir. 1997) (opting for the construction that would avoid undesirable results).

We are not persuaded by the two circuits that have determined that a district court cannot redirect restitution. See United States v. Speakman, 594 F.3d 1165, 117576 (10th Cir. 2010); United States v. Pawlinski, 374 F.3d 536, 541 (7th Cir. 2004).

To begin, the court in Speakman sidesteps the MVRA and invents language that permits a victim to dictate whether the defendant will pay restitution at all. When the victim in Speakman declined restitution prior to sentencing, the district court ordered the defendant to pay restitution to the Fund. 594 F.3d at 116869. On appeal, the Tenth Circuit held that the MVRA is expressly made subject to the victim accepting restitution. In other words, construing  3663A and 3664(g)(1) together means that restitution payments under the MVRA are mandated only when the victim accepts them. 594 F.3d at 1177. According to Speakman, ordering restitution when a victim declines it punishes the defendant without in any way compensating the victim and renders the policy supporting the MVRA simply inapplicable. Id. at 117879. This analysis flatly contradicts both the mandatory nature of restitution and the conclusion of multiple circuits that restitution under the MVRA does not rest on the victim's concurrence. Victims cannot control the applicability of a penal statute. See Bearden, 274 F.3d at 1041.

Pawlinski involved a politician who was ordered to pay restitution to defrauded campaign contributors. 374 F.3d at 537. When only a handful of contributors claimed the money, the district court directed the remaining balance to the Fund, although Pawlinski suggested it be restored to his campaign fund. Id. at 538. In contrast to the Second Circuit and our view, the Seventh Circuit deemed the revised sentence illegal and stated that the district court ignore[d] the statutory limits of the MVRA. Id. at 540. The Seventh Circuit read the statute to permit an award to non-victims in only two situations: first, when restitution is imposed pursuant to a plea agreement that directs restitution to non-victims and, second, when the victim assigns its rights to the Fund. Id. at 53940. The Seventh Circuit did not address the practical effect of its holding; it simply said that [w]hat happens to the money would be an issue for the federal and state governments. Id. at 541.

Neither Speakman nor Pawlinski affects our reasoning. We do not view the redirection of restitution as violating the rule that a district court cannot order restitution absent explicit statutory authority. See United States v. Gossi, 608 F.3d 574, 577 (9th Cir. 2010). No one disputes that the district court entered a valid restitution order at the outset. The process of deciding where to send restitution payments already ordered is distinct from the authority to order restitution in the first instance. And we do not interpret the MVRA's silence regarding redirection as a limit on the district court's power to craft a solution that is consistent with the purposes of the MVRA and the Fund and that fosters the compensatory and punitive goals of the statute. See Johnson, 378 F.3d at 245.

In short, Hankins cannot extinguish her restitution sentence through settlement with the victim's assignee, Horton. Once Horton disclaimed further interest in restitution, redirecting restitution to the Fund was within the district court's power.

AFFIRMED.

FOOTNOTES

. This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

. The Bureau of Fiscal Service administers the Treasury Offset Program and reroutes payments, such as federal tax refunds, to collect delinquent debts owed to federal agencies and states. Treasury Offset Program (TOP), Bureau of the Fiscal Serv.: U.S. Dep't of the Treasury, https://fiscal.treasury.gov/fsservices/gov/debtColl/dms/top/debt_top.ht m (last visited Apr. 17, 2017).

. Horton is an inactive limited liability company according to the public record maintained by the Oklahoma Secretary of State. Entity Summary Information, Oklahoma Secretary of State, https://www.sos.ok.gov/corp/corpInformation.aspx?id=3500644719 (last visited Apr. 17, 2017).

. The Fund is separate from the General Fund of the U.S. Government, 42 U.S.C.  10601(a), and administered by the U.S. Department of Justice, id.  10605.

. For example, under  3664(o)(1), a restitution order may be:(1) corrected, if there was clear error in the sentence or the defendant provides substantial assistance to the government;(2) modified, if the sentence is appealed under 18 U.S.C.  3742;(3) amended, if the victim discovers further losses after sentencing; and(4) adjusted, if there is a material change in the defendant's economic circumstances or if the defendant defaults on a restitution obligation.Under  3664(j)(2), a court may reduce the amount of restitution to account for compensatory damages later recovered in a civil proceeding. Finally, under  3664(o)(2), a court may amend a restitution order upon resentencing if the defendant's probation is revoked or if the defendant failed to pay restitution. None of these designated situations is applicable here.

. Under the Guide to Judiciary Policy, after the passage of time unclaimed restitution payments are transferred to the Treasury, either to the Unclaimed Funds or the Forfeitures of Unclaimed Money and Property Fund. 13 Guide to Judiciary Policy  1020.10.30, 1020.30.20 (2013); see also 28 U.S.C.  2042.

Opinion by Judge McKeown
At long last, the most awaited and highly-anticipated foundation from Maybelline New York finally arrives in the Philippines!

Starting this June 2017, Filipinas can now find their fit foundation shade  the Maybelline New York FitMe!

Yesterday was the big launch of FitMe in Manila. Event was held at Sara Black Photography Studio where everyone got their hands and face on the FitMe. A makeup buffet table was set up so everyone can swatch to their hearts delight all the shades available and find their match.

Meanwhile a makeup makeover area was also set up on their other side so guests could try out for themselves the FitMe foundation shade for them. A makeup artist is ready to do you over and answer shade picking questions when it comes to foundation and concealer.

But it did not stop there a video shoot also awaits where we get to declare that you have found your fit!

It was such a fun event and empowering as Maybelline also introduced the 10 Filipino #MakeItHappen Maker ambassadors.

Photographer Sara Black on her Make Imagination Happen story

Celebrity Stylist Kimi Yap on her Make Confidence Happen story

Fashion Designer Rosenthal Tee on her Make Fashion Happen story

Model Maureen Wroblewitz on her Make Bold Happen story

Calligrapher Alexis Ventura on her Make Creativity Happen story

Athlete Denisse Lazaro on her Make Strength Happen story

Education Advocate Arizza Nocum on her Make Change Happen story

Blogger Lissa Kahayon on her Make Ambitious Happen story

Fitness Guru Ida Paras on her Make Determination Happen story

Filmmaker Janina Manipol on her Make Dedication Happen story

Fit Me comes in 10 shades to choose from, Filipinas can finally easily find their FIT. What is even more exciting is that the Fit Me line that were bringing in here offers a MATTE + PORELESS finish, which is suitable for the Filipina skin.

Fit Me is available in 4 different formats  the FitMe! Matte+Poreless Liquid Foundation, the FitMe! Foundation Stick, the FitMe! Pressed Powder, and the FitMe! Concealer. All of them are perfect for oily skin.

With all these four FitMe! formats targeting concerns from tone to texture, while leaving you with a natural finish, theres no need to settle anymore. Find the perfect fit for you only with FitMe! by Maybelline New York.

Products are available in Maybelline counters nationwide and online over at Lazada:(http://www.lazada.com.ph/maybellineonline). For more information about Maybelline, please visit www.facebook.com/MaybellinePhilippines.

So, have you found your fit?

Stay gorgeous everyone!
Hello Beliebers!

Oxygen , a global Filipino brand known for their grunge streetwear style recently launched a collection of licensed merchandise in partnership with Bravado and MCAA Universal , the Justin Beiber collection.

The #OxygenxBeiber is composed of cool graphic tees, pullovers, bomber jacket, caps and hoodies taking inspiration from the pop star himself and his album Purpose.

I was invited to the exclusive VIP shopping party of the #OxygenxBeiber collection at SM Mega Fashion Hall and got the first dibs on some of the most coveted pieces especially by Beliebers!

Heres some of the items I got from that shopping party :





I also got a bomber jacket in red but I have not gotten the chance to wear it yet coz it is freaking hot and humid in Manila lately. I wanted to wear it at the Bloggers United 13 #BU13 but some technical difficulties with the air conditioning in the venue mad me not wear it. We were sweating like crazy in there!

But I was able to wear one of the shirt and short on the event except I have got the chance to take a proper #OOTD coz it was so busy in there and I was the only one manning my booth. But heres a peak taken by people from #BU13 when I went up the stage for SM accessories with other mommy blogger friends Ava Teh and Say Alonzo.

The #OxygenxBeiber collection is now available at all Oxygen stores but hurry up as supply fly really fast.

Stay gorgeous everyone!
CCA students created a selection of bistro tables for Riverbend. The tables are used at the TVFCU stage underneath the Walnut Street Bridge during the festival. CCA students created a selection of bistro tables for Riverbend. The tables are used at the TVFCU stage underneath the Walnut Street Bridge during the festival. CCA students created a selection of bistro tables for Riverbend. The tables are used at the TVFCU stage underneath the Walnut Street Bridge during the festival. CCA students created a selection of bistro tables for Riverbend. The tables are used at the TVFCU stage underneath the Walnut Street Bridge during the festival. CCA students created a selection of bistro tables for Riverbend. The tables are used at the TVFCU stage underneath the Walnut Street Bridge during the festival. Previous Next

Visual art students from Chattanooga High School Center for Creative Arts, in partnership with Tennessee Valley Federal Credit Union, present the 2017 collection of bistro tables featuring original student artwork.

Displayed during the Riverbend festival at the TVFCU stage underneath the Walnut Street Bridge, these tables were created in a variety of artistic styles by both middle and high school students to celebrate all the wonders and natural beauty of the outdoors.

Students designed and executed the original artwork to celebrate their unique visions of aquatic themed paintings.

Please contact CCA if interested in the purchase of a tabletop.



Students interested in CCA audition in one arts major: acting, communications, dance, instrumental music, musical theatre, technical theatre, visual arts, or vocal music. Once admitted, students receive intensive training in their arts majors and experience a rigorous curriculum in fine arts and academic courses. CCA produces more than 70 public performances and exhibits on campus each year.

Although auditions have concluded for the 2017-2018 school year, auditions for 2018-2019 will take place in February of 2018 and are open to all students in Hamilton County. Applications for all magnet schools in Hamilton County are available from November through January each year.

CCA is the only secondary fine arts magnet school in Hamilton County.






Mitch McConnells hunger to give the rich tax breaks is insatiable  and terrible for your health

Mitch McConnell is the GOPs mutant Harry Reid, explains former Reid chief of staff Adam Jentleson.

Harry Reid worked every angle and pulled every lever to give health care to millions, he tweeted. McConnell will do the same to take it away.

The alarms should be sounding everywhere: GOP attempts to downplay Trumpcares chances were a ruse to lower your outrage and the plan to pass a version of the bill the House passed earlier this year after three attempts are continuing full steam.

Senate Republicans Are Closer Than Ever To Repealing Obamacare, warns plugged-in Hill reporters Matt Fuller and Sam Stein. But theyre still kind of far away.

What does that mean? Success for the GOP in their quest to reverse the greatest advancements in our health care system in 50 years in order to give the richest Americans a tax break is a very real possibility, says Greg Sargent, even it it means taking on parents like Natalie Weaver:

Pls RT- Understand the importance of Medicaid to Medically Fragile Kids #AHCA & Medicaid cuts will harm them pic.twitter.com/WoqaszZYgC  Natalie Weaver (@Nataliew1020) June 6, 2017

And this can happen because the calls that stopped Trumpcare the first two times have dried up, reports MoveOns Ben Wikler.

In a soon to be Smithsonian-ed tweetstorm Ben previewed the timeline of how the GOP hopes to sneak this horrendous law through this month while were all Comey-tosed. More importantly, he offers very specific tactics  including what you should do if youre not in a state with swing Republican Senators  that I had never come across before.

Seriously, lets kill this sneak attack on the most vulnerable  this massive transfer of wealth from the poor to the richest  before it leaves tens of million Americans for dead.

Here are resources to use when you make your calls:

Use our toolkit to unleash a tidal wave of pressure on Trumpcare. Target list, phone #'s, facts, graphics. Please RT https://t.co/3XvofXuTE9  Topher Spiro (@TopherSpiro) June 7, 2017

And if you have the time, let the current Administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service know about the GOPs plan to kick 14 million off Medicaid to give the richest 400 Americans a $7 million tax break:

Call for comment: Help us make progress on #healthcare reform efforts to reduce burden& improve choice for Americans https://t.co/CfW3jlfj8x  CMS Administrator (@SeemaCMS) June 9, 2017

If you want even more insight into whats going down on Capitol Hill man Andy Slavitt, who ran Obamacare, Medicaid and Medicare for President Obama:

Like the House bill, this Senate bill will be hell on those with pre-existing conditions, as Topher Spiro  who worked on making Obamacare law in the Senate and is helping to lead the Trumpcare opposition  explains:

What should you do?

First, demand input into the Senates secret health care repeal bill.

Next, Spiro recommends focusing on Senator Dean Heller of Nevada and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia  who both represent stakes that expanded Medicaid and will be decimated by this law.

Share this so the people in these states know just how badly this law will punish the vulnerable many to punish the rich few:

[Image by Gage Skidmore | Flickr]
Amazon on Tuesday introduced a Prime membership priced at US$5.99 monthly for people on government assistance who have a valid Electronic Benefits Transfer card. A Prime membership ordinarily costs $10.99 per month, or $99 per year.

The EBT card is used to disburse funds for a variety of government assistance programs, including Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and the Women, Infants, and Children Nutrition Program (WIC).

Consumers have to qualify for the discount program every 12 months, and may take advantage of it for up to four years. Eligible consumers can sign up for a free 30-day trial.

Amazon is working on ways to expand the program to government assistance recipients who dont use EBT.

Prime offers unlimited fast, free two-day shipping on more than 50 million eligible items. In certain ZIP codes, it also offers free same-day delivery on roughly a million eligible products, and free two-hour delivery on tens of thousands of eligible items.

Prime membership includes access to Prime Video, Prime Music, Prime Reading and Prime Photos, as well as original podcasts, audio series and audiobooks from Audible. Further, members can get a free prerelease Kindle e-book each month, easy access to select Lightning Deals, and discounts on select products.

Walmarts Strategy

Amazons Prime discount appears to be an attempt to attract lower-income customers from Walmart.

Walmart pretty much owns this demographic, noted Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group.

The discounted Prime membership program might work out for Amazon, because cars are expensive luxuries for many EBT card holders, Enderle told the E-Commerce Times. Having the default option delivery along with low prices should provide a stronger alternative to discount stores  and particularly, Walmart.

Walmart has been fighting to retain its customers. The company this spring began offering customers a choice when purchasing eligible online-only items: discounts if they picked them up at its stores; or free two-day shipping without membership requirements.

Walmart recently began paying some store associates to deliver customer packages on their way home from work.

Walmart CEO Doug McMillion earlier this month told shareholders the company was leveraging technology to empower associates and improve the customer experience.

Among those improvements:

Digital endless-aisle shopping in stores;

Automated pickup towers in stores for online orders;

Pickup stations in store parking lots;

Grocery pickup;

Delivery from stores; and Jet Fresh delivery of produce to homes within 1-2 days, available to about half the U.S. population.

Government Pilot Program

The U.S. Department of Agriculture this week named Amazon as one of seven firms selected to participate in a two-year pilot project established under the Obama administration and slated to begin this summer in a number of states.

Amazons participation in the government pilot will be limited to Maryland, New Jersey and New York. The other retailers are FreshDirect in New York; Safeway in Maryland, Oregon and Washington State; ShopRite in Maryland, New Jersey and Pennsylania; Hy-Vee in Iowa; Harts Local Grocers in Rochester, New York; and Dashs Market in Buffalo, New York.

The pilot will test both online ordering and payment.

The USDA plans to roll out the program nationwide at a later date. Retailers with locations in multiple states, such as Amazon, may opt to phase in the program state by state over time.

It looks as though the government trial covers SNAP grocery items with the emphasis on fresh, wholesome food, noted Michael Jude, a research manager at Stratecast/Frost & Sullivan.

Be interesting to see how that actually goes over, he told the E-Commerce Times. I remain skeptical about programs like this.
Comedian John Oliver, incensed over proposed changes to unravel Net neutrality protections for consumers, on Sunday unleashed a torrent of criticism against the Federal Communications Commission and urged viewers to register their protest online. The response led to a digital meltdown on the agencys site that night.

Oliver, host of HBOs Last Week Tonight and a former writer for The Daily Show, targeted a proposal by Ajit Pai, the agencys new chairman, that would loosen Net neutrality regulations. It would allow Internet service providers to abide by market forces and largely self-police their conduct.

Pai last month proposed reversing the Obama administrations decision to regulate ISPs under Title II, saying the move stifled innovation and made it more difficult for companies to invest and modernize.

Domestic broadband investment fell by US$3.6 billion, or 5.6 percent, from 2014 to 2016, he noted.

Oliver, who famously unleashed his viewers on the FCC in 2014, in the run-up to its implementation of Net neutrality rules, launched a blistering new attack on Pai, a former Verizon attorney.

Verizon represents itself as being in favor of an open Internet, Oliver noted, in a video featuringCraig Silliman, EVP for public policy and general counsel.

The FCC just wants to put the regulation of ISPs on a different legal footing, Silliman argues.

Verizons reasoning was analogous to O.J. Simpson asking why you wont let him hold onto one of your Samurai swords, Oliver said.

Come on, Juice, you know why, he quipped.

Access Denied

The FCCs website fell victim to distributed denial of service attacks starting Sunday night, according to David Bray, the agencys chief information officer.

The attacks were deliberate attempts by external actors to bombard the FCC comment system with a high amount of traffic to its external cloud host, he said.

These actors were not attempting to file comments themselves, Bray maintained. Rather they made it difficult for legitimate commenters to access and file with the FCC.

The FCC is working with its commercial partners to address the situation and will monitor events going forward, he said.

The proposed changes have divided the FCC. As a commissioner, Pai sided with the more market-oriented conservatives during the Obama administration.

Pais proposal would undo years of work at the agency, said Commissioner Mignon Clyburn last month, when Pai proposed the changes.

Broadband providers should not be in the drivers seat, determining how you use the Internet, controlling what content you view, or dictating what devices you can use, Clyburn argued.

Open Access

Oliver raised some legitimate concerns, Tim Mulligan, senior analyst at Midia Research, including open competition between incumbent ISPs and new entrants in the digital space, and fair access for smaller Internet search engines, content providers and other companies.

The principal of Net neutrality is a crucial aspect of the digital economy which underpins the ability for new market entrants to compete for digital engagement, he told the E-Commerce Times.

John Oliver is merely helping to bring the issue to the attention of the wider public, Mulligan said. He is helping to demystify the issue, which in a world of increasing consolidation  through operator/media mega mergers such as AT&T-Time Warner  is an important act of awareness raising.

The FCCs latest proposal is an orchestrated march to destroy consumer protections, charged broadband analyst Craig Settles.

Eliminating Net neutrality would give incumbents the ability to neuter free speech, he added.

As far as the relevancy and credibility we give John Oliver, there were millions of people who responded to the call to support Net neutrality three years ago, he told the E-Commerce Times.

The only thing John Oliver does is make a complex issue understandable by the average citizen and issue a reasonable call to action, Settles maintained. Whats important here is the message, not the messenger.

A Verizon spokesperson declined our request to comment for this story.
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Attorney General Herbert H. Slatery III is joining a coalition of 16 state attorneys general in asking President Trump to lead a regulatory reform effort to protect individual rights from regulatory overreach. In a signed letter to President Trump, the coalition, led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, says reforms are necessary to bring the current federal regulatory process under the rule of law.

Federal agencies were created to administer the law. In too many instances they have tried to make law, to legislate, through guidance letters and the like. When steps like these are taken, the voice of the people through their elected representatives is not heard, General Slatery said. And that is a problem, a constitutional problem, which we want the Administration and Congress to address.

The letter states that under both Republican and Democratic Presidents, rules, interpretations, guidance documents, etc., of federal agencies have been treated as law. This creates uncertainty for businesses, communities, and individuals who never know when the next rule or regulation, or new interpretation of an existing rule, will change their legal and financial obligations.

The coalition proposes practical steps to return power to the peoples elected representatives. The attorneys general write that Congress could call on federal agencies to send their rules and rule-like documents for congressional review. Under the proposal, all current regulations would remain in place pending congressional review.

In the letter, the attorneys general identified regulatory overreach as the root cause of virtually all of their past and on-going litigation against the federal government. The suggested reforms would help return lawmaking power to Congress and ensure the judiciary as an independent adjudicator of lawsuits between the federal government and the people.

Along with Tennessee and Texas, the attorneys general of Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, West Virginia, and Wisconsin joined the letter.

View a copy of the letter here.




(File photo: L'Osservatore Romano.)Zimbabwe's Catholic Bishops with Pope Francis during a visit to Rome. (file) - L'Osservatore Romano.

It is still some time to Zimbabwe's 2018 national elections, but the country's Catholic bishops have taken the opportunity to issue a Pentecost Sunday pastoral letter titled, "Elections, Peace and Development" that rejects all forms of violence and coercion.

Under the iron-fisted rule of 93-year-old President Robert Mugabe, the last three elections which have been won by the ruling Zanu-PF party, were stolen according to the opposition.

Many observers say severe intimidation has been part of electioneering in recent national polls with accusations aimed particularly at the government side.

"Reject all forms of violence and coercion: Violence and coercion only serve to discredit our elections. Any use of force takes away the credibility and integrity of the elections.

"People must be able to make free choices according to their own judgement," the letter reads in part, according to Vatican Radio.

All the country's bishops signed the pastoral letter which was released on Pentecost Sunday by the Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops' Conference (ZCBC).

The bishops specifically appeal to the government of President Robert Mugabe to ensure that citizens enjoy their political rights and freedom of expression, Vatican Radio reports.

Mugabe was brought up a Roman Catholic and says he is a believer, but he has often been criticized by the church in the past for his excesses and authoritarian rule which he has hung onto since he became president at the time of independence from Britain in 1980.

Concerned Zimbabweans this week called on the Catholic Church in Zimbabwe to censure Mugabe over blasphemous remarks made his party's youth leader Kudzanai Chipanga, Zim Eye reports.

Chipanga has equated Mugabe to God. "Truly speaking, in heaven there is God and here on earth there is an angel called Robert Gabriel Mugabe. You are representing God here on earth," Chipanga said as Mugabe, his wife Grace and Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa watched.

Political analyst Alois Matongo wrote, "The equating of Robert Gabriel Mugabe to Angel Gabriel by Kudzai Chipanga and Mugabe's silence over this blasphemous speech has set a situation that compels the Catholic Church to crack the whip on their member, Robert Gabriel Mugabe for gross blasphemy."

Matongo said, "Mugabe is a well-known Catholic who has regularly visited the Vatican to attend big papal masses in a very prominent chair on the high table.

"That Mugabe and wife failed to condemn utterances by Chipanga when they got to the podium means they approved the words and are guilty of the highest crime in the Catholic Church (blasphemy) and must be brought to book for it."

Mugabe was once considered the icon of the anticolonial movement after the guerrilla war he led against white-minority rule.

But his clinging to power, hatred of whites and the land nationalization policies that forced many black as well as white people off farms that have led his 14.5 million people into poverty, and often starvation, forcing millions to flee the country, have earned the scorn of many world leaders.

ADHERING TO ZIMBABWE CONSTITUTION

Throughout their letter, the bishops constantly urge political parties, the government and individuals to strictly adhere to and respect the Constitution of Zimbabwe which was overwhelming approved by a referendum vote of May 2013.

On Friday this week, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe was reported by local media to have embarked on nationwide public rallies aimed at rousing support for the ruling ZANU-PF in the 2018 elections. The ZANU-PF party wants incumbent President, Mugabe 93, as its sole presidential candidate.

The Bishops' pastoral letter is an attempt to prepare and steer the nation away from a repeat of the 2008 political and electoral crisis. Zimbabwe's 2008 pre and post-election landscape was very volatile and characterized by wide scale violence most of which was blamed on state institutions and agents.

As a way out of the 2008 crisis, the ZANU-PF and the two MDC political parties settled for a power-sharing Government of National Union (GNU) brokered by the then South African President, Thabo Mbeki in 2009.

With this pastoral letter, the Catholic Bishops want Zimbabweans to respect the Constitution and behave peacefully before, during and after the 2018 general elections.

"As we prepare for 2018, let us respect each other and even mirror in our words and actions the love of God, Father of us all," the bishops said.

"We now have our own Constitution, a great achievement, and it says in one place, 'The State and every person, including the juristic persons, and every institution and agency of government at every level, must promote national unity, peace and stability,'" they noted.
The United Sprint Car Series Outlaw Thunder Tour presented by K&N Filters for winged sprint cars swings back into action with racing in the USCS Southern Thunder Tour regional series Friday.

The USCS drivers headline a first-ever main event at Fort Payne Motor Speedway in Fyffe, Ala., just South of Chattanooga, on Friday night for the tracks USCS Night of Thunder special event. A sweep of the weekends racing action could net one driver as much as $4,600, that includes a $250 bonus to a first-time USCS feature winner.

The USCS Outlaw Thunder Tour winged sprint car drivers will be joined by the some of the tracks own weekly racing divisions that include Crate Late Models 602/Sportsman, A & B-Hobby, Pony, FWD and Bomber Stock Cars.

For info on Fort Payne Motor Speedway please visit their web page at www.fortpaynemotorspeedway.com or call the track at 256.623-7223 and visit their Facebook page.






Well before the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Actwhich came with a requirement for states to create ambitious blueprints to improve student performancespecial education officials were already doing similar work.

This school year marks the third year of the results-driven accountability initiative started by the U.S. Department of Education. And many of the elements of that effort are echoed in ESSA, such as soliticing the views of parents, local and state educators, and other stakeholders, creating ambitious goals for students, and leaving it to state discretion to figure out just what those goals should be and how quickly they should be achieved.

Part of the power of the work has been allowing states to get more narrow and deep in fewer areas, rather than trying to solve every problem, in every way, at the same time, said Rorie Fitzpatrick, the director of the federally funded National Center on Systemic Intervention, which has been providing assistance to states for these results-driven accountability efforts.

Another important part of the project has been encouraging states to carefully assess their approaches, and helping them improve systems so that all children are given effective services, she said.

The goal is not the intervention that you give to one kid, Fitzpatrick explained. Its the system of interventions that you build.

Paying Attention to Results

The Education Department has long been responsible for evaluating how well states were meeting the mandates spelled out in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

The law and its accompanying regulations can be exacting: For example, states have 60 calendar days to evaluate a child once a disability is suspected.

Over time, states have been meeting such procedural compliance provisions of the law.

But when it comes to standards connected to how well students are doing academicallytest scores and graduation rates, to name twothe performance of students with disabilities has been stagnant.

That was the impetus for results-driven accountability: States would still be responsible for meeting the procedural aspects of the federal special education law, but they were also prompted to create a state systemic improvement plan that would focus on improving academic results.

And as part of that plan, each state was required to dig deep into its special education data to identify one area that it believed would really make a difference in the performance of students with disabilities. These areas of focus are called state-identified measurable results.

Most states have chosen some aspect of literacy, math, or graduation rates as their area of focus, although how they have chosen to do that can vary.

For example, Utahs area of focus is the middle school math performance of students with specific learning disabilities or speech and language impairments, two disability categories that cover about 70 percent of the states special education population, said Glenna Gallo, the states director of special education.

It became clear as the state analyzed its data that by the time they reached middle school, students with disabilities didnt have the same access to core math instruction as their typically developing peers, Gallo said. And middle schools have fewer resources to provide targeted assistance in math compared to elementary schools.

Partly, the state is addressing educators expectations about math performance. It was important for us to look at the bigger picture here. What are we saying when we say that something is too difficult, or not worth teaching to special education students, said Gallo, who is also president of the National Association of State Directors of Special Education.

The results-driven accountability effort has allowed states to take a deep look at what they are doing, with federal support, Gallo said.

Rhode Islands effort centers around the performance of black and Hispanic students with learning disabilities who are enrolled in the states urban areas. That need jumped off the page when the state started analyzing its data, said J. David Sienko, the states director of special education.

It became so apparent. African-American and Hispanic students in our urban core were not even showing up on the radar, their performance was so poor, he said.

Rhode Island has launched a very precise, very targeted set of interventions at a handful of schools to start, Sienko said. The state is using a tiered intervention framework to provide these services. That framework includes high-quality education for all students; screening so that teachers can spot children who are struggling; targeted, research-based interventions of increasing intensity; frequent progress monitoring; and data-based decisionmaking.

Rhode Islands Approach

Under the results-driven accountability initiative, Rhode Island has the resources to make sure all those pieces are operating as the developers intended, without deviations that can dilute their effectiveness. Recent national studies of implementation of an educational approach known as response to intervention have shown that schools are embracing that model, but are also struggling to put it in place effectively.

Another important piece of the work is that it has prompted Rhode Island educators to see special educators as partners, rather than compliance enforcers, Sienko said.

I think the special education directors have been perceived as the people who show up when theres something wrong, he said.

Michigan educators decided the states focus would be on early literacy. Steve Goodman, the director of the states multitiered system of supports initiative, said results-driven accountability has helped the state in three ways: Federal officials are looking for state activities that will help students, theyre holding states accountable for their performance, and theyre providing resources to help states in the process.

What has helped is the communication that this is a priority, that this is a big deal, said Goodman, who leads Michigans Integrated Behavior and Learning Support Initiative.

Another important element is that states have been allowedeven encouragedto focus their efforts and start with a small number of schools or districts, said Louis Danielson, a co-director of the National Center on Intensive Intervention, another federally funded center that has been assisting some states with this work.

His center, which has worked directly with schools, has been helping schools use better diagnostic tools, analyze data more effectively, and restructure their schedules so that children getting extra help in reading dont miss important parts of their core instruction.

I think it was smart to permit states to start small, Danielson said, because it allows schools and states to build up their capacity. I think in general, until youve actually done this work, you may have a tendency to underestimate the challenges.




Fourth GrainsConnect Canada terminal to be built in Alberta, Canada

GrainsConnect Canada, a strategic joint venture between GrainCorp and Zen-Noh Grain Corporation, has announced the location of its fourth independent, high throughput grain terminal.

Subject to necessary approvals, GrainsConnect Canada plans to build a terminal in Huxley, 120km northeast of Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

In line with previously announced sites, it will feature a state-of-the-art 35,000 tonne grain terminal with the ability to load 134 rail cars in under 14 hours.

GrainsConnect Canada Huxley will be the first site in the region with a 134-car rail loop, thus increasing efficiency and reliability to growers in the area.

"As we continue to invest in new facilities and deliver a competitive edge to Canadian growers, we are seeing strong support for our network," GrainsConnect Canada president Warren Stow said. "We will have two sites in Saskatchewan and two in Alberta, offering choice and access to one of the most efficient supply chains to the West Coast.

"This is the second site announcement this year and we are excited to invest in regional Canada. There has been strong grower interest in this area for more choice and we are excited to deliver a state of the site facility to the region," Stow added. "As we have seen at the previous sites, at least 50 jobs will be created during construction as well as 12 - 15 full time jobs once completed."

Stow thanked GrainsConnect's rail partner CN and the Alberta Provincial Government for their "enthusiastic support" for the project.

CN will serve the terminal, bringing grain across its network to key export gateways.

"We are pleased that GrainsConnect Canada continues to collaborate with us on efforts that create a wealth of new opportunities for farmers. We believe that innovation and investment are integral to the future of Canada's export grain supply chain," CN's director of sales (Canada), Jay Roberts, said.

Subject to necessary approvals, construction is planned to commence mid-year with an expected completion date of 2019.

- GrainCorp




Bird flu outbreak strikes anew in South Korea

South Korea on Tuesday, June 6, raised the highest bird flu alert as concerned authorities started culling around 120,000 birds on Jeju island, The Korea Herald reported.

Park Sung-soon, an official handling the issue at the Jeju Special Self-Governing Province, told Yonhap News Agency that the culling could continue "well into the night (of June 6), though it remains unclear when it will end", the Herald report said.

Already, some 38,000 chickens and ducks have been killed across the country, including 10,400 on Jeju, since Friday when a suspected outbreak of the highly pathogenic strain H5N8 was reported at a chicken farm on the island. It was the first outbreak in two months in South Korea, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs.

Late last year, South Korea slaughtered more than 30 million poultry to contain its worst outbreak of bird flu (the highly pathogenic H5N6 strain), which hit the country in November. At the time South Korea also raised a bird flu alert at the highest level for the first time.
To build the largest and most complete Amateur Radio community site on the Internet - a "portal" that hams think of as the first place to go for information, to exchange ideas, and be part of whats happening with ham radio on the Internet. eHam.net provides recognition and enjoyment to the people who use, contribute, and build the site. This project involves a management team of volunteers who each take a topic of interest and manage it with passion. The site will stand above all other ham radio sites by employing the latest technology and professional design/programming standards, developed by a team of community programmers who contribute their skills to the effort. The site will be something of which everyone involved can be proud to say they were a part. We welcome your comments. The eHam.net Team, Revision 07/2020.
Micro loans make a big difference

Maldives looks to the sun

Women and farmers will benefit from a program that is reducing poverty by providing small loans in countries such as Haiti, East Timor, Niger and Mali. The EIBs EUR 5 million investment will help attract more financing and let up to 10 microfinance organisations provide loans to more than 300,000 people.

Power generation is a challenge for the Maldives. The island country in south Asia relies heavily on inefficient diesel generators to produce electricity. The nation is one of the most oil-dependent countries in the world. A EUR 45 million loan from the EU bank is helping the country build hybrid systems that use new diesel generators and solar panels to cut fuel costs and carbon emissions. The loan will also help upgrade the energy distribution network on 160 islands. New EIB projects outside the EU in 2016 will generate enough electricity from renewable resources to supply 250,000 households.

Fighting pollution in Mediterranean

Tunisia is reducing pollution by repairing and expanding sewers and rehabilitating four water-treatment plants along the coast. The project is helping the fishing and tourism industries and connecting 60,000 people to the sewer network. The EIB is contributing EUR 70 million to this project. Outside the EU, the banks financing in 2016 will allow 6.7 million people to benefit from better water or sanitation.

Rebuilding after disaster struck

The earthquake that struck large parts of western Ecuador in 2016 destroyed many buildings and left more than 100,000 people without homes. The tourism industry was also hurt. Money for reconstruction is limited in Ecuador because of economic problems, but the EIB gave the country a EUR 162 million loan to rebuild sewer systems, roads and buildings, that will benefit about 1.5 million people. New projects outside the EU in 2016 are expected to save 51 million journey hours every year by improving public transport, roads and other transport infrastructure.

Getting electricity for the first time

Some parts of Senegal have little or no electricity and no meters to measure consumption. A new project will install 1,779 kilometres of power lines and 480,000 electricity meters in areas such as Dakar, Velingara and Dabo. The plan, supported by a EUR 75 million EIB loan, also is bringing electricity to isolated areas in the Casamance region in the south, giving power to 150 villages. EU bank projects in 2016 are expected to connect 1.2 million households to electricity networks.

Mobile connectivity for remote pockets of world

Conflict-torn areas of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo have little access to mobile phone networks. The ability to use a phone and go online improves security, especially for women, and offers better access to banking and health services in remote areas. A new project by Africa Mobile Networks is installing 650 solar-powered mobile phone base stations here and in Cameroon, bringing mobile phone and data services to about 2.6 million rural people in poverty. The program is backed by a EUR 24 million loan from the EU bank. Over the past five years, the EIB has provided more than EUR 6 billion for telecommunications around the world.

A subway for a crowded Indian city

Public transportation is one of the top ways a city can support social and economic development. But when populations grow too quickly, as in Lucknow in northern India, mobility and quality of life are reduced. The EIB offered a EUR 450 million loan to help build the first subway line in Lucknow, a city of three million people that is the capital of Indias most populous state, Uttar Pradesh. The 23-kilometer line will have 22 stations and serve around 300,000 passengers each day. More than a million people outside the EU will benefit from improved transportation last year thanks to EU banks support in 2016.
The annual Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival will soon take place in the city of Manchester, Tenn. Since its inception in 2002, the four-day, multi-stage event has become one of the most popular live music festivals in the country, attracting thousands of attendees. To fully enjoy the varied lineup of performers and musical styles that Bonnaroo has to offer, festivalgoers from all over the country camp out on a 700-acre Middle Tennessee farm, making it their temporary home for four days. As in years past, tens of thousands of music lovers are expected to attend the 2017 Bonnaroo festival, which kicks off Thursday night, and winds down Sunday night.

During the Bonnaroo Festival, the area in and around Manchester sees increased traffic volume as festivalgoers make their way into the festival site. As Manchester prepares to welcome a multitude of visitors, the Tennessee Department of Transportation and Tennessee Highway Patrol are gearing up for the extra traffic expected in the area. TDOT and the THP are working closely with the Manchester Police Department, the Coffee County Sheriffs Department and festival promoters to keep traffic moving on I-24 while also getting Bonnaroo attendees to their destination.

"As in the past, TDOT has again coordinated with our partners at THP and other agencies to make sure that everyone gets safely into and out of the festival site, while keeping through traffic on I-24 moving efficiently during the Bonnaroo Festival, said TDOT Commissioner John Schroer. We are confident that we can successfully minimize traffic delays during the festival period because of our advanced planning.

This year, Bonnaroo will officially open all its gates on Wednesday at 8 p.m. CDT to allow more time for vehicles to enter the campgrounds. State troopers will be on-the-job 24 hours a day, beginning Wednesday evening, patrolling on the ground and by air. Also, drivers should keep in mind that if they need the assistance of a state trooper while traveling anywhere in Tennessee, they can simply dial *THP (*847) from their cell phone. They will be automatically connected to the nearest THP dispatch office and the operator will send a state trooper to their location.

We welcome the visitors that will be attending the Bonnaroo Festival, Colonel Tracy Trott said. The Tennessee Highway Patrol is committed to reducing crashes and saving lives on Tennessee roadways. Our troopers will continue to take a zero tolerance approach as they enforce the laws during this event. We strongly believe that the efforts of THP along with TDOT and our public safety partners are contributing to reducing traffic related incidents and fatalities. Do not drive under the influence of alcohol or drugs, always wear your seatbelt, and do not drive distracted.

During Bonnaroo 2016, troopers logged nearly 6,900 man-hours, worked 13 traffic crashes (one fatal, two injury, and 10 property damage crashes), and wrote 626 citations and issued one warning.

TDOT HELP units will assist with traffic management during the festival and will aid any motorists who require assistance. In addition to having HELP trucks on-site, TDOT and other agencies will be taking the following steps beginning Wednesday, June 7 through Monday, June 12:

Efforts will be concentrated on keeping I-24 traffic flowing.

Exit 111 (SR 55) will be used as the main festival exit. Exits 97, 105, 112 (temporary exit on westbound side only), 117 and 127 are alternate exits if congestion occurs on the interstate.

TDOT maintenance units will be posted throughout the festival region, and maintenance personnel will be on call all weekend.

TDOT will provide variable message signs to warn drivers of delays.

There will be no construction-related lane closures on I-24 near the Bonnaroo festival area between 6 a.m. on Wednesday through 7 p.m. on Monday.

Median crossovers will be guarded to prevent motorists from parking in the crossovers and blocking emergency vehicles.

Festival traffic will be kept in the right lane and/or on the shoulder of the interstate, allowing through traffic to utilize the left travel lane unimpeded.

Emergency vehicles will use county roads that will be kept at low volume.

Bonnaroo promoters issued early news releases to the trucking industry and other sources to alert the traveling public to festival times, location, and alternate routes.

Temporary communication towers are in place to improve emergency communications.

During the festival, motorists should call 511 from any mobile or land line phone for traffic updates or visit the TDOT website at www.tn.gov/tdot where they can also find information on alternate routes. From your desktop or mobile device, get the latest traffic information and live streaming SmartWay traffic cameras at www.TNSmartWay.com/Traffic. TDOT is also on Twitter.

For statewide traffic tweets follow TN511 or for regional traffic information follow Nashville511, Chattanooga511, Memphis511 and Knoxville511.

THP Issued Citations
The Mountain Arts Community Center will offer a free epilepsy awareness workshop led by the Epilepsy Foundation of Southeast Tennessee on Tuesday, June 13 at 6 p.m.



During the workshop, videos will be viewed showing some of the most common types of seizures, epilepsy"myths and truths" will be explored, participants will be instructed on life-saving seizure first-aid techniques, reducing triggers be discussed, and more.



To RSVP, contact the Mountain Arts Community Center at 423-886-1959 or e-mail shawnesseyc@gmail.com.
Cyber crime seems to evolve and innovate as much as the tech industry it seeks to exploit. In recent times, ransomware has become an especially potent tool of cyber criminals looking to exploit compan...
State Rep. Craig Fitzhugh, Democratic leader of the Tennessee House of Representatives, will discuss the Death with Dignity bill he has sponsored in the Legislature at the JFK Club on Tuesday, June 20, at noon.

The club meets at Mt. Vernon restaurant, 3535 Broad St. Those attending can order lunch for $15, which includes the meal and tip.



The legislation, first introduced in 2015, deals with the controversial issue of whether terminally ill patients should decide for themselves to end their lives with the assistance of a doctor. The bill is expected to be debated again when the General Assembly re-convenes in January.



Jane Elmore is president of the JFK Club.
The European Union called on Azerbaijan to release detained opposition leaders and a journalist allegedly abducted in Georgia. Azerbaijan has been recently attracting international attention due to its crackdown on dissenters including investigative journalist Afgan Mukhtarli and opposition politician Gozel Bayramli. The EU commented on this development by saying that a review by Azerbaijan of any and all cases of incarceration related to the exercise of fundamental rights, including the freedom of expression, and immediate release (of) all of those concerned is urgent. The European External Action Service (EEAS) added that such action would be in line with Azerbaijans international commitments. The EU also said that it expects that due process of law is respected, as well as the civil and political rights of citizens and those residing legally in states other than their own.

While the EU did not name any names, the reference is clear to pro-opposition journalist Afghan Mukhtarli who was imprisoned last week on the charges of illegal border crossing and smuggling money after he had returned to his home country following a purported kidnapping. Mr. Mukhtarli lived in a self-imposed exile in neighboring Georgia since 2015 after he had investigated Azerbaijans President Ilham Aliyev, who has been in the office since 2003. Georgia announced that it would investigate the alleged kidnapping, although Tbilisi denies it was involved in the case. Mr. Mukhtarli claims that he was abducted in Tbilisi by Georgian-speaking men who later handed him to Azerbaijani security forces.

According to the Human Rights Watch, Azerbaijan keeps on waging a vicious crackdown on critics, opponents and dissenting voices. The space for independent activism, critical journalism, and opposition political activity has been virtually extinguished by the arrests and convictions of many activists, human rights defenders, and journalists, as well as by laws and regulations restricting the activities of independent groups and their ability to secure funding, Human Rights Watch reports.
Credit demand is finally returning to Croatia after six years of deleveraging, but policymakers and analysts say that a return to pre-crisis levels of lending growth is a long way off, particularly in retail.



Boris Vujcic

The household sector is still very cautious in raising new debt, despite positive labour market trends, says Boris Vujcic, Croatias central bank governor. We are seeing a recovery in lending to the segment, but it will be a slow path. Net new lending to Croatian households rose by more than 1% year on year in March for the first time since 2008, according to central bank data. Meanwhile corporate loan growth, which returned to positive territory last May, slowed slightly after hitting a six-year peak of 3% in December.

Analysts note that these positive indicators have been masked by reductions in the overall loan stock restructuring of bad debts.

Sales of non-performing loans have weighed on the headline figures, says Alen Kovac, head of macro research at Erste Bank Croatia.

NPL ratios have been falling in the country since 2015, when policymakers raised provisioning requirements and introduced new bankruptcy legislation to address the problems caused by large portfolios of legacy bad debts.
Much has been said and written in recent years about the shortcomings of the European Union in the banking sphere, most of it entirely justified. By any measure European authorities have a fairly dismal record when it comes to creating the profitable, competitive banking sectors that member states and their economies urgently need.

One area in which the EU has consistently shown both its value and its teeth, however, is over the question of state aid to banks.

Perhaps the best example of this is Slovenia. In the wake of a banking crisis in 2013, five of the countrys state-owned lenders came under Competition Commission scrutiny. The two smallest were closed, while terms were set for the restructuring and privatization of the rest.

This was no small task. Between them, the three lenders  NLB, NKBM and Abanka  accounted for nearly half of all banking assets in Slovenia. The problems in the sector had been caused by years of bad governance, particularly in relation to lending to state-owned enterprises. Opposition to reform among local policymakers was notoriously stiff.

Yet four years on, great progress has been made. NKBM has already been sold, to US private equity group Apollo Global Management in 2015.
Private-equity buy-outs are not the ideal solution to capital shortages at European banks. But needs must. These deals are on the up, made possible by the grudging acquiescence of the European Central Bank and the appetite of a handful of US distressed-debt investors, principally Apollo, Cerberus and Lone Star.

They are no longer restricted to minor lenders.

The pending central bank sale of Portugals Novo Banco could see Lone Star take a majority stake in a systemically important bank in a medium-sized European economy. In Germany, Apollo is rumoured to be a bidder for Kiel-based HSH Nordbank, an institution with 84 billion of assets.

Aside from the banks desperation for capital, this is a European trend partly because of European Union restrictions on public recapitalizations. HSH Nordbank, Novo Banco and Italian lenders Banca Popolare di Vicenza and Veneto Banca must all find private capital to avoid being wound down under the ECBs bank resolution framework  and they all are possible private-equity targets.

The other fundamental driver is the lack of other private-sector options.
Europe was not prepared for the wars in the Western Balkans in the 1990s. The international response was mainly led by the United States, NATO and the UN. It was not until the early 2000s that the European Union took the leading role in efforts to stabilise the region.

EU and NATOs role for the security of the Western Balkans

Since then, the EU has tackled the question of security and defence in the region with a comprehensive approach. Beyond the political perspective of EU accession, its contribution has included operation Althea, which continues with NATO in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and its largest mission, EULEX, in Kosovo, providing support and training for the police in the country. Security and defence questions are part of the accession negotiations. The Berlin Process has focused on securing borders to manage refugee flows and combat organised crime. The formal EU accession talks cover the integration into foreign security and defence policy in Chapter 31 of the EUs acquis.

The role of NATO in the Western Balkans has evolved considerably since its operations against the Milosevic regime in the 1990s and those in Macedonia in 2001. Albania, Croatia, Slovenia and now also Montenegro, have become NATO members, while other countries in the region, including Serbia, are part of the Partnership for Peace programme. NATO is now seen as a partner and a source for capacity building for governments throughout the Western Balkans. At the same time, NATO troops, still stationed in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo, as one of our contributors argues, are perceived as a guarantors against possible aggression from neighbours, and, as such, a limitation on armament aspirations.

Who should provide security in the Western Balkans?

The main security concerns in the Western Balkans are no longer just about potential escalation among states in the region. Instead, the region is tied into the wider security challenges faced by Europe today. Its geographical position, surrounded by EU and NATO members, ties the region inevitably into many of their concerns, including border security, forced migration, anti-terrorism and Russian influence. However, despite many years of international presence therein, there is no integrated regional security partnership. Security provision for the region is, currently, a patchwork of different international institutions, mainly NATO, EU, OSCE, and the terms of various national agreements.

With the region in a continued state of limbo about EU accession, many have argued, including contributors to this website, that Europe needs to engage and do more. What should this mean for security?

Dont get caught in a New Cold War narrative

NATOs presence is often politicised in a new Cold War narrative, which is particularly supported by pro-Russian political forces. Increased meddling by Russia in different Western Balkans states, and Serbian plans to acquire Russian fighter jets, have been discussed extensively lately. However, although Russian influence cannot be considered a real alternative for the region, it is, nevertheless, a significant de-stabilising factor. Both the EU and NATO should avoid becoming entangled in a political narrative of the West versus Russia.

Support a regional security community

Instead, the EU and NATO should focus on establishing an inclusive, comprehensive security perspective for the region. Such cooperation needs to be led and implemented by the states in the Western Balkans, with the EU and NATO enhancing their capacity. In the long-term, such close collaboration would also provide a strong basis for cooperation after all the states in the region have joined the EU.

Hybrid threats have become a key area in which NATO and the EU collaborate and, in the context of the Western Balkans, this is an increased priority. In the EU-NATO Joint Declaration in 2016, Bosnia and Herzegovina was identified as one of the possible countries in which to start closer cooperation on Capacity Building. In addition, the EUs Global Security Strategy is committed to building resilience in the Western Balkans. This provides an opportunity for states in the region to work together more closely, using this joint EU- NATO initiative, to take the security and cooperation of the region into their own hands.

Address the issue of stabilocracies

The EU has sought to provide stability through a long-term perspective for EU accession. Political and economic reforms were designed to establish democracy and temper the breeding ground for nationalism. However, observers have argued for some time that fear of backsliding into violence has led the EU to focus too much on supporting allegedly stable leaders, rather than on fostering genuine democratic processes. This includes turning a blind eye to corruption and reduced freedom of the press, or supporting unpopular coalition governments for the sake of delivering on EU conditions. More recently, this tendency, combined with a stagnating EU accession process, has weakened the appeal of the EU among parts of the populace of the region. In some extreme cases, because the parties or movements growing out of this resentment use nationalist or pro-Russia rhetoric, the EU is very hesitant to engage with them.

It is important that enhanced EU and NATO cooperation on security and defence in the Western Balkans does not become a continuation of the support for stabilocracies. Stable governments do not always lead to resilient states. Therefore, if the EU wants to promote resilience, it also needs to change its political approach to the Western Balkans. It has to become more politically engaged with differing views on the future of the region, responding to criticism by allowing the freedom of speech fundamental to functioning democracies, instead of appearing to be simply anti-Russian. Only in this way can the EUs objective of doing more be sustainable and counter accusations against it that it is guilty of being patronising and seeking to impose never-ending conditionality.
With a renewed focus on the Delhi-NCR market, Creativeland Asia brings on Manas Lahiri to lead the Delhi-NCR region. He will be responsible for driving the Creativeland culture, new business and overall operations of the Delhi branch.

On Lahiris appointment, Srijib Mallik, Board Member & Chief Operating Officer, Creativeland Asia, who has recently taken on the role of leading Ventureland Asia, the investment company started by Sajan Raj Kurup, Founder & Creative Chairman, Creativeland Asia, said, When we met Manas for the first time a couple of years back, we were smitten by his understanding of the Creativeland Culture and were looking at the right opportunity to bring him in. Led by a passion for creative solutions, he comes with well-rounded experience in Sales & Marketing, Brand Management and Advertising. With this combination, he will accelerate our growth in the Delhi-NCR region while keeping up the sanctity of the Creativeland culture.

On joining Creativeland Asia to lead the Delhi-NCR region, Lahiri said, Creativeland Asia is a brand and a creative culture that has created remarkable work in the last decade. When I met Raj and Srijib for the first time, I was highly impressed with their vision and expansion plans. Delhi-NCR is an exciting market with some amazing brands playing big. Coupled with a great team, Creativeland Asia manages a huge equity here and my job will be to take it to the next level and grow aggressively. Exciting times ahead for us.

With an experience of over 15 years in the industry, Lahiri has worked with brands such as Samsung, Motorola, General Motors, Amazon, Lenovo, Dabur, etc. and agencies like McCann and Ogilvy & Mather in the past. In his last assignment, he was heading Contract Advertising India in Bangalore as Senior Vice President & General Manager.

Commenting on this, Kurup said, I am delighted to have Manas on board. The clincher for him was the fact that he is as passionate about the Creativeland culture as he is about the business of advertising. This strengthens our plans for Delhi-NCR with a new creative leadership announcement to follow soon.

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Bitcoin hit a new high yesterday, however, it corrected following a series of tweets by billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban who questioned the cryptocurrencys valuation and said that bitcoin was in a bubble.

I think it's in a bubble. I just don't know when or how much it corrects. When everyone is bragging about how easy they are making $=bubble, Cuban tweeted.

However, Brian Kelly, CEO and founder of BKCM has a different opinion. He believes that bitcoin is still in the early stages of a multi-year bull run.

"We are in the first years of what is likely to be a multi-year bull market. Of course there will be corrections and even crashes along the way, but bitcoin is here to stay," Kelly said, reports CNBC.

Though Cuban is skeptical of bitcoins valuation, he is positive on the future prospects of the blockchain technology.

I think blockchain is very valuable and will be at the core of most transactions in the future. Healthcare, finance etc all will use it, Cuban tweeted.

Recently, Minneapolis Federal Reserve President Neel Kashkari had also voiced support to the blockchain technology. I think sentiment has shifted in the markets, in the Fed. I would say I think conventional wisdom now is that blockchain and the underlying technology is probably more interesting and has more potential than maybe bitcoin does by itself, he added.

Sean Walsh, a partner at Redwood City Ventures, which invests in bitcoin and blockchain companies is positive on bitcoin because of its limited supply and an exponentially rising demand.

"It may sound like hyperbole, but I simply cannot emphasize enough how mismatched the quantity of whole Bitcoins and the population of potential global buyers is. Bitcoin is available for purchase to 3 Billion Internet-connected adults across every country in the world," Walsh said. "We produce just 1 new Bitcoin each month for 55,000 of these people to fight over."
Local Summer Food Service Program meal sites have opened to children ages 18 and under across the state. The Summer Food Service Program, or SFSP, is funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and administered by the Tennessee Department of Human Services. "The purpose of the summer meal program is to ensure children and teens that have access to free and reduced price meals during the school year also have access to meals during the summer months," officials said. Meal sites are often found at community centers, schools, parks, and other locations throughout communities.



More than 3.6 million meals were served last summer at more than 2,300 meal sites across the state. According to Feeding America, 1 in 4 Tennessee children may be at risk of hunger. There remains a need for eligible SFSP sponsors, especially in rural counties and remote areas. Eligible sponsors include schools, private non-profit organizations, government entities, and non-profit residential camps. Sponsors are reimbursed on a per meal basis for meals served to eligible children and may serve as a sponsor or a site location.



The Summer Food Service Program shows how local, state and federal partners can work together to make a lasting impact on the well-being of Tennessees children, said TDHS Commissioner Danielle W. Barnes. We appreciate the tremendous effort of our SFSP sponsors and their commitment to the program.



The summer program serves as a support for children and families and has become a valuable resource in local communities, officials said.



Specific meal site hours of operation vary. To find out where summer meal locations are in your area, visit https://www.fns.usda.gov/summerfoodrocks, the services directory at www.kidcentraltn.com, or text food to 877-877.



In addition to children 18 and under, a person 19 years of age and older who has a mental or physical disability and participates during the school year in a public or private non-profit school program established for individuals with disabilities, is also eligible to receive meals.



If your organization is interested in sponsoring the SFSP in your community next summer, or becoming a feeding site under an existing sponsor, please contact the Department of Human Services by e-mail at TNSFSP.DHS@tn.gov, or by phone at 615-313-4749.



For more information on the Summer Food Service Program: http://tn.gov/humanservices/topic/learn-about-the-summer-food-service-program or http://www.fns.usda.gov/sfsp/summer-food-service-program-sfsp.
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Texas state Rep. Drew Springer is taking on some of the countrys biggest retailers, pushing for legislation in the special session next month that would close a loophole in tax code that has allowed Lowes Home Centers and other retail chains to cut local property taxes by millions of dollars in other states.

Lowes, Home Depot Inc., Kohls Department Stores, Target and Walmart have sued appraisal districts across the U.S. to have their big-box stores valued as empty buildings, not functioning businesses  labeled the dark store appraisal theory by county property appraisers. North Carolina-based Lowes has successfully used the argument in Michigan and Indiana where major retailers have driven down property values and tax revenue. County property appraisers in Texas fear commercial properties across the state will shed billions of dollars in value if Lowes prevails in a lawsuit against the Bexar County Appraisal District.

The Harris County Appraisal District settled a similar lawsuit with Lowes in November for 18 company stores in the Houston area, said Appraisal District spokesman Jack Barnett.

The legal challenges have the potential to derail the property tax system, said Michael Amezquita, chief appraiser for the Bexar County Appraisal District that serves San Antonio.

A steep drop in commercial property value would have costly implications for tax revenue. The state comptrollers office estimates Texas cities, counties and school districts will lose $2.9 billion if Lowes wins its Bexar County lawsuit and other commercial properties take up the dark store legal argument, potentially leaving homeowners to pick up the property tax burden.

If all the commercial value in Bexar County dropped 50 percent, that means the homeowners going to have to pick up that piece of the pie, said Springer, R-Muenster.

State lawmakers sought to prevent a cataclysmic loss of property value and tax revenue this legislative session. House Bill 27, authored by Springer and backed by Comptroller Glenn Hegar, aimed to limit businesses ability to use the unusual legal strategy when contesting their property values. The bill passed out of two committees but never made it to the House floor for a final vote.

It wouldve been a major step forward, Hegar said in an interview. Now, would it have solved everything? No, but then most pieces of legislation dont ever solve everything.

The bill could get new lease on life after Gov. Greg Abbott called a special legislative session starting July 18 to address property tax reform, the transgender bathroom bill and several other issues that didnt pass during the regular session. Springer said he plans to refile the legislation but could also try to attach it to another bill.

I will take that (Abbotts call) to mean anything that makes tax reform better, Springer said Tuesday.

The original bills focus was narrowed in committee after the Texas Taxpayers and Research Association and other business groups tried to block the bill, arguing that it was too broad and would ensnare other properties that werent used for retail. Dale Craymer, the associations president, said the legal theory hasnt gained enough traction in state courts to merit legislation.

We were skeptical there was an immediate problem that needed to be addressed but what came out of the committee was a reasonable way of addressing that, Craymer said. What was initially introduced went far beyond dark stores and extended to basically almost every type of property. That was inappropriate in our mind.

Retailers including Lowes, Home Depot Inc., Kohls Department Stores, Walmart and Target have sued appraisal districts around Texas to try to bring down their property values. Often, appraisers have settled out-of-court rather than use up their meager budgets on drawn-out court battles.

Lowes is currently suing the Bexar County Appraisal District to cut its property values in half for 10 stores in the San Antonio area, which were valued between $80 and $85 per square foot in 2016. The appraisal district estimates those values would drop to roughly $30 a square foot if Lowes prevails in its lawsuit.

Lowes spokeswoman Karen Cobb said the company is unable to comment on the legislation. The retailer has said its seeking a fair assessment of its properties in the Bexar County lawsuit.

Popp Hutcheson, the Austin-based law firm representing Lowes in the Bexar County lawsuit, met with the comptrollers office and the Texas Taxpayers and Research Association to oppose the bill, arguing it violated the Texas Constitutions equal and uniform clause, said Mark Hutcheson, one of the firms partners.

While Hutcheson declined to comment on the case, he said retailers including Lowes have used the legal theory to lower property values as more shoppers increasingly buy products online. Retailers, who overbuilt large-format stores in the mid-1990s through mid-2000s, are stuck with a glut of big-box properties that no one wants.

Voter Guide: What to know for the midterm election Your guide to the Texas and San Antonio races and candidates on the Nov. 8 ballot.

If you dont have that demand growth driving the real estate market, then youre going to start seeing some falloff on value, Hutcheson said.

Lawmakers on the Texas House Ways & Means Committee limited the bill so it would only apply to retail properties.

We got to a point where the appraisal districts werent happy and the retailers werent happy so we thought we probably found the right spot, Springer, the bills author, said.

The move alienated county appraisers who say the original bill was needed to prevent other commercial property owners from using the same tactic. The original legislation would have required commercial property owners to value their land based on its highest and best use. It also included other provisions appraiser say gave it more teeth.

Once it came back to us and we saw the language, said Brent South, chief appraiser for the Hunt County Appraisal District. We really felt like it no longer was beneficial and helpful to the situation.

South, who also chairs the Texas Association of Appraisal Districts legislative committee, later added, We were happy to see it die.

The tactic has been a lucrative one for Lowes. The home improvement chain managed to cut its Indiana property taxes by $120.8 million, resulting in a $49.9 million jump in taxes for Indianas other residents and businesses, according to a 2015 study commissioned by the Indiana Association of Counties. Taxpayers in Michigan have returned almost $100 million to retailers since 2013 after the Michigan Tax Tribunal handed down several favorable rulings to retailers who used the dark store argument, a 2015 study by the Michigan Association of County Treasurers showed.
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For the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which opened last year on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., architect Sir David Adjaye created a building that was very much designed holistically, with the spaces meant to be understood in relationship with each other and the broader context.

Adjaye, the renowned British architect who has built commercial, residential and civic projects all over the world, took the same approach to Ruby City, the exhibition structure he has designed to house the Linda Pace Foundations 800-piece collection of contemporary art.

Not only is this project close to my heart, it is an immense honor and responsibility, the London-based Adjaye said via email. Linda had such a clear vision for this institution and how it would resonate within its context, and so I am very aware that I am one of many people charged with doing her legacy justice.

Ruby City came to Pace  the artist, collector and philanthropist who died in 2007  in a dream more than a dozen years ago. Her own drawings, she said in a 2005 artist statement, were a way to magnify the images that stand out to me in my dreams. The sketch she made when she woke up is becoming reality and another part of her rich artistic legacy  she also is founder of the internationally recognized arts residency space Artpace.

The Pace Foundation recently broke ground for the building on the citys South side along San Pedro Creek. It is scheduled for completion in late 2018, to coincide with San Antonios Tricentennial, and is set to open in early 2019.

(Linda Pace) called it Ruby City, and it represented her ideal city, Adjaye wrote. My goal was to translate that into a building that could capture the essence of her dream. So it was critical that the building be an inspirational space for artists and the broader community, where they could encounter the collection in an organic and meaningful way.

The $16 million, 14,000-square-foot structure, totally funded by the foundation, is an abstract rectangular form that resembles a cut gem, a ruby, with its angular, faceted roof structure echoing cut-away, cantilevered spaces at the buildings base.

The building has this kind of lightness to it, said Irby Hightower, founding principal of Alamo Architects, the local firm that is working with Adjaye Associates on the Pace project.

What makes a forceful first impression is the color. The structure will be constructed of deep red cast concrete panels, some 8 feet wide and 33 feet tall, infused with glass and mica aggregate so that it will sparkle in the South Texas light.

Oh, yes, it will sparkle, Hightower said. These large panels will be very beautiful.

The building looks complex, but its basically a rectangle, Hightower said.

Its deceiving and very clever, he said. Its forms are pretty radically different from anything else seen in San Antonio. Its not a building meant to be in the background.

Two large windows, or lenses, as Adjaye calls them, will look out on San Pedro Creek, which is in the midst of a $75 million improvement project, and CHRISpark, the adjacent 1-acre, public green space dedicated to Paces late son.

The building, Adjaye wrote, is conceived as a loop  a grand stair off the lobby slowly steps upward and culminates at the second floor at a window overlooking CHRISpark. From here, visitors move through the three gallery spaces, each with a skylight  or lantern  oriented to varying positions that temper and filter the San Antonio light. The last gallery, prior to descending back to the lobby, overlooks the entry plaza and San Pedro Creek.

Inside, Adjaye said, the space will be a journey through a series of three sculpted, vaulted galleries with ceilings reaching 16 feet, which presents a narrative about the collection and captures the spirit of Lindas life and work.

Among the international contemporary art stars who will be represented in the inaugural installation of work from the Pace Foundation collection are British artists Cornelia Parker and Isaac Julien, Kenyan artist Wangechi Mutu and South Korean sculptor Do Ho Suh.

Curated by Pace Foundation trustee Kathryn Kanjo, the exhibition also will feature San Antonio and Texas artists who have participated in the Artpace residency program.

Kanjo said that she and the foundation board were very happy in this moment.

She said it has been almost 12 years since Linda Pace had her Ruby City revelation and made the sketch of a walled, castle-like city, then showed it to Adjaye, whom she had met through London-based film artist Julien.

At the time, Adjaye, who is now 50, was not yet a Sir, an officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. He was working on the design of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver and rising in the world of architecture, building a career whose completed work now includes the Aishti Foundation arts and shopping complex in Beirut, Lebanon; the Skolkovo Moscow School of Management; and the Nobel Peace Centre in Oslo, Norway, as well as private homes for fashion designer Alexander McQueen and actor Ewan McGregor.

She certainly recognized something in him, and they became really close friends, said Kanjo, who is CEO of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. This is very much the building that Linda envisioned and commissioned. She charged David with making a substantial building for San Antonio. Its a strong silhouette. Its not huge, even for an art museum, but it is very distinctive.

Adjaye said he hopes San Antonios reaction to the Pace Foundation structure will be similar to the public response to his African-American museum in the nations capital.

I am passionate about architectures ability to edify and uplift communities, he wrote. The reaction to the (African-American) museum  how meaningful it is to so many people already  is the most wonderful affirmation of the designs capacity to capture the narratives of our times and to offer them back in a way that resonates deeply.

sbennett@express-news.net
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An hour before its 3 p.m. closing time on a beautiful weekday, there wasnt a soul inside Los Magueyes, and the staff already had stacked 60 chairs on 15 tables in the back half of the dining room.

None of these things is a good omen, and I have rules for dead-zone moments like this. 1) Only order tacos that have to be made to order: carne asada, eggs, fajitas. 2) Never order tacos that have stewed all through the morning and into the stagnant air of the afternoon: chicharrones, barbacoa, braised meat of any kind. 3) Reconsider eating here in the first place.

Rules are made to be broken. Or maybe I forgot my own rules. But this is the story of how Los Magueyes created some paradigms of its own.

Tacos: When I saw puerco en chile cascabel on the specials menu, there went the rule about braised meats. Done right, this bright red celebration of flowery-hot peppers and fatty pork is one of my favorites. Los Magueyes understands, with fall-apart pork in Lego-sized pieces still holding onto the Freshman 15 (you know, a little extra fat around the middle). The cascabel braise  sweet and warm with an afterglow like cinnamon  worked its way into every bite ($2.65).

I followed rule No. 1 with a potato and egg taco. But the waitress suggested making it papas rancheras and eggs. And from the rattle and clank coming from the kitchen, I knew it was being scrambled and assembled fresh. With starch, heat, sweetness and substance in a fresh flour tortilla, its one of the best breakfast tacos Ive had in San Antonio ($2).

Barbacoa a la mexicana was also a clear violation of the its-been-cooking-all-day rule, but it was glossy with fat, still as fragrant and tender as cheek meat fresh off the pit, the flavors sharpened with plancha-grilled pico de gallo ($2.75).

I learned a new rule at Los Magueyes: When a taqueria lists beans with every platter on the menu, order a bean and cheese taco, because they know something about the selling power of their beans. Or at least they get enough practice making them for it to count. And it counts at Los Magueyes, with beans that are earthy and smooth as shiny velvet. A no-brainer at $1.50.

That last rule, the one about not eating there in the first place? If Id turned around and walked out of Los Magueyes, wed have all lost our shot at some memorable San Antonio tacos.

Tortillas: Both the thick, soft handmade flour and pliable, shaggy corn tortillas make every taco they touch better.

Salsa: Fresh, medium-hot salsa fresca with lost of cilantro makes a nice, bright wingman for thick jalapeno verde with a low, wicked sting.

Location: 3743 Pleasanton Road, 210-922-2118, no web presence

Rating: Worth a drive

Follow the complete 365 Days of Tacos series at ExpressNews.com/Tacos. Get 365 Days of Tacos sent to your inbox. Sign up here.

msutter@express-news.net

Twitter: @fedmanwalking
AUSTIN  Gov. Greg Abbott took a hard right turn politically Tuesday when he announced he will order the Legislature back for a special session on July 18 to consider a laundry list of conservative Republican issues, from a bathroom bill and property-tax reforms to new abortion restrictions and school choice.

He also handed Sen. Donna Campbell, R-New Braunfels, a big win, including on the agenda her annexation overhaul bill, which died in the last three hours of the regular session after Sen. Jose Menendez, D-San Antonio, successfully filibustered it.

In announcing his decision, which puts him in lockstep with the states most conservative GOP factions, Abbott said lawmakers will first be asked to extend the operations of five state agencies  including the Texas Medical Board that regulates doctors  that are slated to close their doors in coming months because the Legislature failed to pass a bill doing so before their 140-day regular session ended two weeks ago.

Because of their inability or refusal to pass a simple law that would prevent the medical profession from shutting down, Im announcing a special session to complete that unfinished business, Abbott told reporters at the State Capitol. But if Im going to ask taxpayers to foot the bill for a special session, I intend to make it count.

Experts who have followed Texas politics for years said Abbotts decision was clearly a move to reassert his dominance over staunch conservatives in his party.

This was clearly was to take control of situation back from (Lt. Gov.) Dan Patrick and to be clear that hes in charge of the right wing of the (Republican) party in Texas, said Cal Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University.

Rice University political scientist Mark Jones echoed the sentiment: This is a Christmas list of everything the conservative advocacy groups wanted. (Abbott) deftly has boiler-plated his right flank. If Patrick was somehow contemplating any challenge of Abbotts standing with those Republicans, he can forget it.

By some official estimates, a 30-day special session will cost at least $800,000  and could perhaps run more than $1 million, depending on staffing and other expenses. The last special session with a plethora of topics was in 2005, when then-Gov. Rick Perry called one with 22 topics.

Once the bill on the five agencies passes the Senate, Abbott said he will add 19 other items to the agenda. Many are likely to stir controversy, including the bathroom bill that Abbott said at a minimum needs to ensure the privacy of public school students. He reiterated his support for House Bill 2899 that would have overturned local transgender-inclusive policies and prevented any more from being enacted.

Like that bill, which Equality Texas CEO Chuck Smith said would stigmatize and demonize transgender people, many of the others on his agenda list for a special session did not pass the Legislature during its regular meeting.

Though the bathroom bill and others on Abbotts list drew immediate criticism Tuesday from a variety of advocacy groups and others, Abbott was unfazed. Legislators have six weeks to prepare for the special session, and then another 30 days to pass these proposals, the governor said. If they fail, its not for lack of time, it would be because of a lack of will.

Abbott vs. Patrick

House Democrats echoed the sentiment that the governor is trying to appease conservatives who criticized Abbotts performance in the regular session. Im not sure why we need a Governor Abbott when we have a Governor Patrick, tweeted state Rep. Gene Wu, D-Houston.

After providing zero leadership and interest during the regular session, the governor is clearly panicking and trying to shovel as much red meat as he can to his right-wing tea party base, said state Rep. Chris Turner of Grand Prairie, the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus.

In contrast, Patrick, who had pushed for a bathroom bill and property-tax reforms to be included, applauded the announcement as a big and bold special session agenda which solidly reflects the priorities of the people of Texas. Almost every issue he addressed ... passed the Senate during the regular session and I am confident the senators are ready to hit the ground running to move these issues forward, he said.

House Speaker Joe Straus, a more moderate Republican than Patrick who political experts predict will feel even more pressure during a special session, predicted House members will return to the Capitol next month ready to put their constituents and the best interest of the state first. Without mentioning the more controversial agenda items, Straus said the House looks forward to resuming our work on school finance and other challenges facing this state.

In a statement Tuesday, the states largest business organization, the Texas Association of Business, reiterated its opposition to a bathroom bill  even the slimmed-down version that Abbott cited as acceptable to him.

Bad ideas are still bad ideas in a special session, Ann Beeson,executive director of the Center for Public Policy Priorities, a liberal Austin policy watchdog, said summing up the concerns of other groups, as well.

Tourism officials in the states four largest cities  San Antonio, Austin, Dallas and Houston  have warned about the potential for significant adverse economic impact if the bathroom legislation is passed.

A study conducted by Waco-based economist Ray Perryman and commissioned by Visit San Antonio, the former city Convention and Visitors Bureau, found the greater San Antonio area, which includes New Braunfels, could lose almost $412 million in annual spending on restaurants, hotel rooms and attractions, resulting in the elimination of 4,650 jobs.

While the Legislature can look at this issue again in a special session, the reality today is no different than it was last month: There will be a longstanding and significant impact on San Antonio and the state if legislation is passed that positions Texas as being unwelcoming and discriminatory, Casandra Matej, president and CEO of Visit San Antonio, said in a statement. Its absolutely undeniable, and we continue to urge legislators to consider these very real impacts as they make their decisions.

Annexation resurrection

Campbells annexation bill, which would give residents the right to vote on whether they would be annexed, made it through the House and Senate  despite strenuous objections by city and county officials across the state, including San Antonio  before it was dashed by Menendezs filibuster.

The bill went to conference committee to work out differences between the House and Senate versions. The main sticking point were amendments included in the House version that would have created a buffer zone around military installations, giving cities the right to impose zoning and other regulations in those areas but not annex them.

City officials have said the power to impose those regulations is important to control development around the bases, like Camp Bullis in north Bexar County, in order to ensure the missions at the various installations can continue. For example, the military conducts night training at Camp Bullis, so cities want the ability to control light pollution around them.

The fear is if the missions cant continue, the military could move those activities to other locations, which could be a huge blow to local economies. The amendment protecting military installations was taken out of the compromise that came out of the conference committee, prompted Menendezs filibuster.

Tuesday, Menendez said he remained concerned about the bills effect on the military.

My hope is that the new annexation bill takes into account the concerns for our Military missions and the need to protect them from the next round of BRAC (Base Realignment and Closure), he said. I will remain vigilant and will fight to protect our missions and the thousands of jobs that they represent to San Antonio.

San Antonio is in the process of annexing an area along Interstate 10 West, near Camp Bullis. Residents in the area have been among the biggest supporters of Campbells bill.

In a statement Tuesday, San Antonio Assistant City Manager Carlos Contreras said the city will continue to oppose legislation that prevents local elected officials from deciding when and where the City grows, and with another BRAC on the horizon, limits the City's ability to protect our military bases from encroachment.

Campbell reiterated her belief that cities are pushing a false narrative that the military amendment would actually protect the bases.

Keeping annexation law the way it is, she said, is all about cities wanting land anywhere they can get it that provides an increased tax base, revenue base for them.

The senator said she anticipates some changes in the bill during the special session, acknowledging it has to pass both chambers, but said she will work with the House on the new legislation and potentially erase her disappointment after Menendezs filibuster.

I went down with the ship when it was filibustered, Campbell said. We have come back.

Other topics

Among his other topics, Abbott said he wants the Legislature to prohibit union dues from all but police and fire organizations from being deducted from government paychecks in Texas. He also wants to have penalties toughened for mail-voting fraud, to extend the work of a statewide task force studying maternal mortality and wants new caps on the growth of local and state government spending -- through a constitutional amendment, if necessary.

He also wants to prohibit local governments from using taxpayer money to fund Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers, and wants the Legislature to enact anti-abortion insurance reforms in private and government plans. In addition, he would require stricter reporting of complications from abortions.

Citing skyrocketing property taxes, Abbott said he wants the Legislature to pass reform that includes rollback elections to give taxpayers a say in how high their taxes go. Texans need property tax reform now, Abbott said. If we are going to come together and work this summer at taxpayers expense, then let us work on reviving Texas homeowners from out-of-control property taxes.

Staff Writers Vianna Davila and Josh Fechter contributed to this report.

mike.ward@chron.com
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San Antonio is proceeding with a campaign to cut smog-forming emissions in the wake of the Trump Administrations announcement that it plans to delay 2015 ozone rules by a year.

Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt announced late Tuesday the slowdown in the process of determining which cities, counties and metropolitan areas violate the ozone rule. Texas and other states remain locked in a court battle with the EPA after suing over the rule in 2015.

Bexar Countys long-term ozone average is now at 71 parts per billion, a hair above the 70 parts per billion standard, according to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

Faced with uncertainty about the rules future in the wake of the election, the City Council decided to look for solutions here in San Antonio, said Doug Melnick, citys sustainability director.

Council was very clear last year, he said. We need to do something; we need to get ahead.

Ozone, the key component of smog, forms when emissions from power plants, industrial sites, vehicle tailpipes and volatile chemicals like paint react to sunlight. It irritates and damages the lungs and most severely affects people with asthma and other chronic conditions.

The citys Office of Sustainability and Metropolitan Health District are working on a study about the health effects of the areas ozone levels to be released in July, said Melnick and special projects manager Liza Meyer. The study will focus on ozone effects by age, race, neighborhood and socioeconomic level, they said.

I think its important to recognize the equity factor, Meyer said. We want clean air for everybody. Breathing shouldnt be a privilege. Every neighborhood should have access to clean and healthy air.

A study last year by New York University and the American Thoracic Society estimated that ozone in the San Antonio area is to blame for 52 preventable deaths  and 182,000 days of missing work or school  per year.

The city will also hold a series of roundtables with businesses and industry groups. Other than CPS Energy power plants, industrial sources like cement plants and the Toyota plant are some of the largest single emitters of smog-forming pollution in the San Antonio metro area.

Melnick said the city has not, so far, secured any specific new commitments to reduce pollution from any businesses.

Cars and trucks account for another sizable chunk of local emissions. Last year, Bexar County, Leon Valley and San Antonio all passed anti-idling ordinances.

The campaign will also focus on education through blogger meet-ups, neighborhood events, social media postings and print and digital advertising. The Alamo Area Council of Governments has also been trying to promote cleaner commuting with the help of NuRide and VIAs vanpool service.

San Antonio remains the only major city still in compliance with smog rules in Texas, a state that has strongly resisted the 2015 ozone rule.

In a September letter to the EPA, Gov. Greg Abbott named Bexar County along with 20 other urban counties in violation of the rule, but only reluctantly.

The ozone rule should be vacated because it is unlawful as both a constitutional and statutory matter, the letter stated. However, because the ozone rule has not yet been stayed or vacated, I am enclosing the... recommendation.

Pruitt seems sympathetic to those arguments, pledging during his Senate confirmation hearing to take a lighter approach with states when it comes to environmental regulations.

States have made tremendous progress and significant investment cleaning up the air, Pruitt said in a statement Tuesday. We will continue to work with states to ensure they are on a path to compliance.

bgibbons@express-news.net

Twitter: @bgibbs
AUSTIN  Marijuana reform advocates say there was unprecedented, bipartisan support for their efforts in this years legislative session, but it still wasnt enough to change state law.

House Bill 2107, authored by state Rep. Eddie Lucio III, D-Brownsville, would have given safe access to medical cannabis for qualifying patients with certain debilitating medical conditions under strict conditions listed in the bill. Although it earned 77 Democratic and Republican co-authors after its committee hearing, the bill never made it to the House floor for a vote.

We are going to see a lot more families leave the state of Texas over the next 18 months with children who have neurological disorders. They will move to other states where they can get treatment, said Rep. Jason Isaac, a Republican from Dripping Springs and one of the co-authors.

Amy Lou Fawell, a member of Texas Mothers Advocating Medical Marijuana for Autism, or MAMMA, said multiple parents across the state worked tirelessly to change hearts and minds at the Texas Capitol, and were disappointed that the bill wasnt scheduled for a House debate before the deadline.

A lot of the mothers were conservative mothers themselves. We all needed to change our hearts and minds, but when you have a sick kid, it goes a little faster, Fawell said. We were willing to be open about this. Were proud and crushed at the same time because we know historic progress was done at the Capitol.

The bills Senate companion, Senate Bill 269, authored by Sen. Jose Menendez, D-San Antonio, was never even scheduled for a committee hearing.

Current law limited

Texas passed the Compassionate Use Act in 2015, which allows epileptic patients to use cannabidiol with low amounts of THC, the plant component that gives marijuana users a high, only when federally approved drugs fail. But advocates say the program is too limited and that patients with cancer, autism and HIV, to name a few, would benefit from the program as well. The law in place is also flawed, advocates say, because it directs doctors to prescribe the strict CBD:THC ratio, which puts doctors at risk of losing their licenses since the drug is still illegal under federal law. Instead, doctors should recommend its use, not prescribe, say lawmakers who sponsored the legislation.

HB 2107 would have allowed the use of cannabidiol and other derivatives with higher levels of THC as well as marijuana, but only for seriously ill patients with specified illnesses registered with a compassionate-use registry and only when recommended by licensed physicians registered with the Department of Public Safety, as regulated by the proposed changes. Possession of up to 2.5 ounces of marijuana would have been legal for these patients; in some instances, more would have been allowed.

Isaac said the legislations failure shows there is still a lot of work to be done on educating lawmakers about cannabidiol. Because its derived from the marijuana plant, Isaac said, the medical derivative suffers from the same public stigma as the recreational drug.

Its not legalization, its not recreational, its for expanding the Texas Compassionate Use Program to help people with more neurological disorders beyond intractable epilepsy, Isaac said. To help children with autism, to help adults with autism that have found relief in their seizures and their brain activity by taking something thats got a higher level of cannabidiol.

Isaac said some of his constituents already use the drug illegally because the legal option  strong federally approved opioids  put their autistic and epileptic children in a vegetative state, they say.

Fawell said advocates shared with lawmakers the viral video published by Mark Zartler, showing how treatment with vaporized marijuana, while illegal, helped his 17-year-old daughter Kara Zartler, who previously had engaged in self-injurious behavior because of her severe autism.

While the bills didnt pass, Fawell noted that measures allowing for more cannabis use according to patient needs have never come this far and the momentum will be used as a jumping start for 2019.

Decriminalization efforts

Like the medical marijuana measure, a bill that would have decriminalized possession of small amounts of marijuana failed but went further than they had in previous sessions.

House Bill 81, authored by Criminal Jurisprudence Committee chairman Rep. Joe Moody, D-El Paso, would have dramatically reduced criminal penalties for marijuana possession by eliminating any jail time or threat of arrest for possessing an ounce or less of marijuana. The offense would have been punishable with a fine of $250. The offense would not have generated a criminal record, but the drug would still be illegal and law enforcement would still have seized it.

Under the Texas Controlled Substances Act of the Health and Safety Code currently in effect, a person possessing 2 ounces or less of marijuana commits a Class B misdemeanor, punishable by a fine of up to $2,000 and up to six months in jail. In 2015, 61,748 people were arrested for marijuana possession, according to the most recent data from the Texas Department of Public Safety.

HB 81 made it through the committee process and was scheduled for a vote, but lawmakers did not get to it before the midnight deadline in the House.

Heather Fazio, political director for Marijuana Policy Project, said thousands of Texans will be arrested from today until the next legislative session, marked for life with criminal records while wasting resources in the criminal justice system. But, Fazio pointed out, the bill made it to the House calendar this time. Last session, it never made it out of committee.

The stakes are high, Fazio said. Were talking about peoples lives, good government policy and righting the wrong that has been on the books for way too long.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 21 states and the District of Columbia have decriminalized small amounts of marijuana. A total of 29 states, the District of Columbia, Guam and Puerto Rico allow for comprehensive medical marijuana and cannabis programs.

Protecting parental rights

At later stages of the session, Isaac tried to amend language to House Bill 7, a Child Protective Services bill, to protect parental rights if they administered THC products to their child in the childs best interest. However, Rep. Stephanie Klick, R-Fort Worth, author of the 2015 Compassionate Use Act, added an amendment to protect only those parents administering low-THC cannabis valid under current law. The amendment also said Isaacs language would be valid only if HB 2107 passed.

Members read the entire amendment and said, This is about cannabis, this is about legalization, Isaac said. There is still stigmatism by people that create fear and uncertainty when that shouldnt be the case.

In the meantime, Fawell said, supporters will continue to push research efforts during the interim to earn support from as many lawmakers as they can.

After seeing our kids and our families and seeing the Zartler video, how could they not vote for us? How could it not have happened? Fawell wondered.

elutz@express-news.net

@elenamejialutz
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A nationwide group of college and university leaders coming out in support of the Paris climate accord was notable for what it lacked: any representation from Texas universities.

The letter drew more than 180 signatures from public and private higher education leaders in the wake of President Donald Trumps decision to withdraw the U.S. from the international agreement last week. Signatories pledged to continue to support climate action.

Presidents and chancellors from Bar Harbor, Maine, to San Diego said they would remain actively engaged with the international community to keep the U.S. in line with global climate goals, like moving to a clean energy economy.

Officials at some San Antonio-based universities said they didnt learn of the letter until reporters asked about it. Some said they were considering adding their names to it.

Most universities that signed it were clustered on the U.S. coasts, and several states had no college or university president sign onto the letter. Two Texas community colleges near Dallas are signatories, but as of Monday no Texas university president had signed the open letter, titled We Are Still In.

J.B. Bird, a University of Texas at Austin spokesman, said only the systems chancellor or Board of Regents chairman can weigh in on political or controversial matters, if it would appear that the statement represents the university or systems point of view. Foreign policy falls into that category, he said. A University of Texas at San Antonio spokesman did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday.

Texas A&M did not respond to requests for comment.

In a statement, Trinity University spokeswoman Sharon Jones Schweitzer said the university is still assessing whether to sign the petition, evaluating what it means to be on this list or what the commitment means in terms of the Universitys ability to fulfill the intent of the petition. Trinity University is dedicated to a sustainable future, she added.

Denise Doyle, acting president of the University of the Incarnate Word, said that school would review the agreement and sign if it aligned with the university's values.

The Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word are committed to environmental justice and care of the earth. As a sponsored ministry of the Congregation, we follow their lead and also take seriously Pope Francis call for protection of the environment, Doyle said.

Besides academia, about 900 businesses and more than 130 city, state and county government leaders signed the letter, including Mayor Sylvester Turner in Houston. A spokesman for San Antonio Mayor Ivy Taylor said her staff is researching the policy implications of joining them.

The City Council and I made it clear by approving SA Tomorrow and the sustainability element of the plan that clean air, clean water, and a healthy environment are important to San Antonio. I learned not to wait on Washington, D.C. to address our challenges here in San Antonio, so we will continue to work toward meeting our goals, Taylor said in a prepared statement.

Second Nature, a Massachusetts nonprofit, reached out directly to hundreds of universities nationwide, urging them to sign, said Timothy Carter, that groups president. It also opened an online portal for individual institutions to submit signatories without that outreach.

Universities commitments in support of the climate agreement, he said, are critical because they have huge operations, conduct climate research and teach future leaders.

But these institutions, especially public universities, must consider external pressure before their leaders take a position on national issues, higher education consultants say.

I think its rare that a president doesnt consider how (lawmakers) might react to something they say or do, said Teresa Valerio Parrot, a Colorado-based communications consultant who works with public and private universities. A president would also consider faculty, board member and student opinions, she said.

Those pressures didnt stop UT System Chancellor Bill McRaven from coming out against Trumps decision at an event last week sponsored by the Texas Tribune, though he did not sign the letter. A spokeswoman said he was not aware of it until Monday.

And last December, some area universities joined hundreds of others in defending Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a program that protects young undocumented immigrants from deportation. McRaven and Ricardo Romo, the former president of UTSA, signed an open letter to President Trump, who had campaigned on a promise to end the program. So did the presidents of St. Marys University, University of the Incarnate Word and San Antonio College.

lindsay.ellis@chron.com

twitter.com/lindsayaellis

Express-News Staff Writers Janelle Polcyn, Josh Baugh and Silvia Foster-Frau contributed to this report.
The first person to be charged during the Trump administration with leaking classified information to a news organization had gone to high school in Kingsville, a college town on the Texas Gulf coast, served in the Air Force and  even while working as a defense contractor  didnt try to hide her contempt for the new president.

In vulgarity-laced social media posts, Reality Leigh Winner blasted President Donald Trump for his pledge to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, his criminal justice ideas and his promised overhaul of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Winner, 25, is charged with leaking a classified intelligence report detailing how Russia had hacked local voting systems in the United States ahead of the November election.

Before her arrest Saturday, FBI agents raided the red-brick home she rented in Augusta, Georgia, and searched her Nissan Cube, records show. Court records show agents sought permission to search for computers, documents and other evidence, including who she had contacted since she joined the Air Force in January 2013.

Confronted during the search, Winner admitted she leaked the classified intelligence report by printing and mailing it to a reporter, which she knew was not authorized to receive or possess the documents, said an affidavitt backing the criminal complaint charging her with gathering, transmitting or losing defense information.

Winner further acknowledged that she was aware of the contents of the intelligence reporting and that she knew the contents of the reporting could be used to the injury of the United States and to the advantage of a foreign nation, it stated.

The document said investigators had determined she was the source of the leak to the News Outlet on May 9, just four days after it was produced by a U.S. Government Agency. Newspaper accounts have identified the outlet as The Intercept and the agency as the National Security Agency.

The Intercept reported Monday that the document details hacking efforts by Russian military intelligence, specifically the Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate, or GRU, that included a cyber attack against a U.S. voting software supplier and spear-phishing emails to more than 100 local election officials days before the November election.

Bexar County does not use the software supplier and systems here were not compromised, Bexar County Elections Administrator Jacquelyn Callanen said Tuesday, adding, Were free and clear.

The Justice Department announced Winners arrest shortly after The Intercept published its story about the secretive documents online.

Born in Texas in December 1991, she was raised in Kingsville, though her parents lived in San Antonio at one point, public records show.

On Facebook, Winner said she graduated from H.M. King High School in Kingsville, and other school online postings show she was in the Class of 2010.

Winner excelled academically, was into sports, had been a linguist in the Air Force, and speaks the Middle Eastern languages  Farsi, Dari and Pashto, Winners mother, Billie Winner-Davis, told the British newspaper The Guardian.

She held a top-secret security clearance in the Air Force and began working in February for Pluribus International Corp., which was doing work for the NSA in Georgia.

Since news of her arrest broke, many Facebook users have blasted Winner and labeled her a traitor, while others  some claiming not to be liberals  attacked her critics, saying she helped shine light on Russians interference, or attempted interference, in U.S. elections.

As Sara Winners on Twitter, she followed whistleblower Eric Snowden, WikiLeaks and several Twitter accounts associated with the rogue movement among federal agencies. Like Facebook, she used Twitter to occasionally blast President Trump.

The most dangerous entry to this country was the orange fascist we let into the white house, Winner wrote on Feb. 11.

The news also spread quickly in Kingsville, an agricultural community of 25,500 people and home to a U.S. naval air station, a branch of Texas A&M University and a pharmacy school.

Coming from a small town, this is surprising, said Briana Garcia of the arrest. Garcia, who also graduated in 2010 from King High School, said she did not know Winner but knew of her.

The outbursts against Trump were still on Winners Facebook pages on Tuesday but were taken down in the afternoon.

Reached by the Express-News on Tuesday by phone, Winners mother said she did not have time to talk and hung up, twice. She did not respond to later calls or a text message.

Winner-Davis spoke a day earlier to a British newspaper, the Guardian, which reported Tuesday that Winner called her parents at their Kingsville home on Saturday to report she was in custody.

The family rushed to Georgia for Winners initial court appearance Monday. Winner-Davis told the Guardian shed never heard of The Intercept and didnt know why her daughter would have leaked the information.

I never thought this would be something she would do, Winner-Davis said. I mean, she has expressed to me that she is not a fan of Trump  but shes not someone who would go and riot or picket.

The leaked document detailed how Russia had hacked a voting equipment vendor in Florida and also tried to breach local election systems up until the days before the election, according to various newspaper accounts.

In a search warrant affidavit, the FBI expressed concern that Winner had traveled to Belize from May 27 through May 29 and said the trips purpose and activities were unknown.

The intelligence reporting is classified at the Top Secret level, indicating that its unauthorized disclosure could reasonably result in exceptionally grave damage to national security, and is marked as such, the document said.

It said the news organization contacted the government agency on May 30 regarding an upcoming story, told the agency it had a copy of the classified document and provided a copy, apparently in an attempt to verify its authenticity and get comment about its contents.

Both affidavits said an audit by the agency and the contractor found Winner was one of six employees who had printed the intelligence document. The criminal complaint affidavit said she was the only one who had email contact with the News Outlet.

gcontreras@express-news.net
A person of interest in the killing of a 26-year-old transgender woman in a popular downtown area of the River Walk currently is behind bars on different charges, a Police Department spokesman said Tuesday.

There were no obvious signs of trauma on the body of Kenne McFadden, who was found April 9 floating in the San Antonio River near East Commerce and South St. Marys streets.

Police later determined someone had caused her death, Sgt. Jesse Salame said.

Theres a person of interest whos been interviewed, and its just a matter of putting some more details together in the case, Salame said. Police plan on arresting him or charging him at some point.

Salame wouldnt describe any suspected motive for the killing.

He said the man was familiar with McFadden, though the nature of their relationship was unclear.

Police have no evidence at this point that her death had anything to do with her gender identity or race, Salame said, though investigators have not ruled it out.

According to her Facebook page, McFadden identified as a woman in the transgender community, and Salame confirmed she was in the process of transitioning.

If we determine that to be a contributing factor or motive, then well note that appropriately and inform the district attorneys office, which could potentially enhance the punishment for this crime, he said.

Police believe the killing took place somewhere in the River Walk area and have a few theories on how a it might have happened in such a public space.

Its surprising because its one of the more popular areas of the River Walk, Salame said. Its one of the first homicides in  I cant even remember the last one there.

McFadden was a young woman with hope and dreams, merely trying to live as her authentic self, said David Topping, the Texas organizing manager for the Human Rights Campaign.

He called violence against transgender people an epidemic, especially transgender women of color, and said McFadden was the 12th transgender woman to become a homicide victim in the United States so far this year.

And nowhere in America is it more pronounced than in the South. Just this year, we have seen a noticeable increase in the murders of transgender Southern Americans, including a disturbing string of homicides in Louisiana, Topping said via email.

All across the South, legislatures and politicians are undertaking a systematic effort to roll back the rights of transgender people. This political climate and the disturbing cultural forces that lead to these tragedies are inextricably linked. We must stand up against discrimination of any kind, anywhere, Topping added.

cdowns@mysa.com

Twitter: @calebjdowns

Staff Writer Lauren Caruba contributed to this report.
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In February, a group of largely rural Republican state lawmakers, allied in their loathing of a privately funded, high-speed rail proposal that might one day zoom passengers between Houston and Dallas, filed 18 bills in the House and Senate to stop the train in its tracks.

They called the Texas Central Railroad, or TCR, a financial boondoggle destined to scar the countryside. They predicted that Texas taxpayers ultimately would have to bail out the fledgling railroad. Some even said the Japanese-led group was not, legally, a railroad and so could not use the rapacious power of eminent domain to acquire property for its route.

This group of foreign investors is threatening to seize family farms (and) physically divide the state of Texas, said Rep. Leighton Schubert, R-Caldwell, echoing nine of his colleagues.

But when the legislative session ended last week, only two of the anti-rail bills had passed, and TCR officials said their effects would be mainly benign.

Nothing that came out of the Legislature changed the landscape for the project, said Holly Reed, the managing director of TCR. Were pleased and were moving forward.

One of the two measures that will become law, Senate Bill 975, outlines minimum security requirements for the construction and operation of the proposed line. The other, SB 977, prohibits the state from spending money to build or operate a private high-speed rail line in Texas.

These two bills really do reflect the Texas way of doing things, Reed said from her Dallas office. They put safety and fiscal discipline at the forefront.

Reed said TCR planners had always intended for rail stations to have security features that meet or exceed Transportation Security Administration guidelines for passenger trains. And not receiving state funds, Reed said, had been the foundation of the TCR proposal from the beginning because a Republican-dominated Legislature would likely kill any proposed subsidies.

Texas Central, which is trying to raise about $15 billion in private funding and federal loans, will use Japanese bullet train technology to move people 240 miles in about 90 minutes between Texas largest metropolitan areas, which together have about 15 million residents.

Investors will supply roughly a third of the project funds, with the remaining amount in debt, TCR president Tim Keith has said.

Rep. Cecil Bell, R-Magnolia, who authored or co-sponsored several of the anti-rail bills, remains unconvinced that high-speed rail will ever be financially viable in Texas or enjoy a European-level of acceptance in America.

I think it would be a great amusement park ride, said Bell, who admits that he has never ridden high-speed rail nor visited Europe. Ive not spent any time there. Its not high on my list.

One of his bills, which would have required Texas Central to restore its acquired land to its pre-sale condition if the rail project fails, was one of several measures that addressed the eminent domain issue that fuels much of the rural opposition to the project.

Despite the setback, Bell said the common cause of fighting TCR in East Texas has brought together some 31 rural and suburban groups that are growing their political clout and can mobilize in a heartbeat.

Opponents say TCR has been heavy-handed as it negotiates with landowners in counties such as Grimes, Limestone, Ellis and Leon. Not so, say the TCR folks, who boast that theyve gotten signed options from more than half the landowners along the route in Waller and Grimes counties and about 30 percent in the others. In some cases, they said, their countersuits were dropped because negotiations with landowners went better than expected.

We dont currently have any landowner litigation, Reed said this week.

Some opponents still question whether Texas Central, which owns no track or trains, legally qualifies as a railroad, which allows it to condemn land if owners dont agree to sell. In one Harris County case, where the landowner did not respond in court, a judge granted a summary judgment to TCR and declared it a railroad. Other Texas courts have not agreed to the companys requests, and in others TCR has dropped its lawsuits.

Sen. Charles Schwertner, R-Georgetown, who authored several of the anti-rail bills, struck a somewhat conciliatory tone this week as he explained why more of them werent headed to Gov. Greg Abbotts desk.

It was an unusual session, Schwertner said. It may take two or three sessions to get some of the legislation passed, but I also want to acknowledge that the folks with Texas Central have worked with us and know the needs of the legislators.

We wanted more assurance that no state money would ever go to a private high-speed rail project, he said, recalling that he rode a fast train from Belgium to France some 20 years ago. I wanted to protect landowners and taxpayers, and I fully expect that as they move forward there will be a further need for more legislation.

bselcraig@express-news.net
A former staffer for District 1 Councilman Roberto Trevino is alleging that she and other Trevino aides were expected to use City Hall resources and taxpayer-funded office work time for campaign activity.

Desiree Luckey, who served as a council aide for Trevino from January 2015 to June 2016, fired off a series of tweets on Saturday, in which she stated that ethics in politics are paramount, and alleged that she worked for a council member who allowed staff to engage in campaign-related work during regular hours.

Luckey, 26, left Trevinos staff a year ago to begin her studies at Georgetown Law School in Washington, D.C. In an Express-News interview, she talked about her experiences in Trevinos office.

There was tweaking of campaign-related materials, whether it was invites to fundraisers or graphic materials that would be handed out at campaign events, Luckey said. There was the using of city phones to talk to people about fundraising events or campaign-related things during the standard 9-to-5 work hours. There was the use of city computers and printers for campaign materials.

Luckey said the most startling crossing of boundaries between city and campaign work occurred in late 2015, at a Trevino fundraiser hosted by the San Antonio Restaurant Association at Mi Tierra. Luckey said the entire District 1 staff attended.

It was like, Okay, heres my staff and were here and available to communicate with you all as needed, Luckey said. That was a work-day morning and that cut into our actual work time.

Trevino, who is currently facing a runoff challenge from local attorney Michael Montano, said Luckeys accusations are patently false and a distraction from the real issues in the campaign. Luckey has been open about the fact that she supports Montano in the runoff race.

Trevino added: Weve worked hard to separate the work of a campaign and the work of a city staff. We absolutely never compel anybody to do anything they dont want to do. She did volunteer (for the 2015 campaign), along with a couple of other staff members, but weve never made anybody do that.

He said the Mi Tierra gathering happened early in the morning, before work hours, and that the participation of staffers was voluntary.

Trevino said that, as far as he knew, he and Luckey were on good terms when she left her job. But the councilman said she had been dissatisfied with her salary, and subsequently filed open-records requests to find out how much Trevinos other staffers were getting paid.

The issue of council-staff work commingling with campaign activity is an old problem at City Hall. While the City Charter prevents city employees from participating in municipal elections, council aides are classified as contract workers for their council bosses, so they are exempt from such restrictions.

The citys Ethics Code simply states that council staffers may not engage in political activity using city resources or during duty hours.

That can be a gray area, as in the case of a local council staffer who was asked a few years ago  during an election cycle  to take Fridays off from City Hall, so the staffer could use that day to block walk for the council member. Since the council staffers salary stayed the same during that period, it was essentially like having the taxpayers of San Antonio pay for one day a week of campaign work.

Trevino faced accusations earlier this year that he had blurred the lines between council and campaign activity, when Montano pointed to a District 1 newsletter that carried all the elements of a campaign mailer, with Trevino touting his record on key issues. The newsletter also used an interlocking-rings logo almost identical to the logo used by Trevinos campaign.

Jay Podjenski served as Trevinos campaign manager in 2015 and became the councilmans chief of staff in June 2015. Podjenski refuted Luckeys allegations, saying city resources were not used for any campaign purposes and any staff that volunteered for the campaign or any event was just that, volunteering, and it was after hours.

Montano has faced ethical questions of his own, stemming from a 2002 arrest in New Haven, Connecticut, where Montano was then a senior at Yale University. Montano escaped felony charges by entering an accelerated-rehabilitation program, after admitting that he signed absentee-ballot applications in which he falsely attested to witnessing voters signatures.

ggarcia@express-news.net

Twitter: @gilgamesh470
SALEM, Ohio  Precision agriculture and agricultural technology have come a long way in the past five to 10 years.

According to Scott Shearer, chair of Ohio States College of Food, Agriculture and Biological Engineering, there are a lot of technologies that have made money for farmers, but every farm is different.

Yield monitors

The yield monitor itself, although not new technology, allowed farmers to quantify yield differences, said Shearer. (Farmers) always knew there were problems in the field with less yield (in some areas of the field), but they didnt know how much it was costing them, he said.

Randy Campbell, of Minerva, Ohio, said he is impressed with what his yield monitor can do. When he purchased it four years ago, he didnt know it would tell him about the downforce, or soil compaction, caused by his equipment and allow him to make easy adjustments from the cab.

Campbell farms 2,800 acres of corn, soybeans and some hay, and milks around 70 head of Holsteins. He uses his monitor for both planting and harvest season.

In-cab displays and instant feedback has been around for some time now, but, according to John Fulton, associate professor in the College of Food, Agriculture and Biological Engineering, more farmers have been adapting the technology in the last five years.

Autosteer and GPS

More farmers are opting for GPS and autosteer technologies, and most new farm equipment comes equipped with these features. Shearer said autosteer has value in reducing overlap in planting, but it has also enabled farmers to use farming practices they couldnt before, such as strip tilling and banding.

Campbell said he started strip tilling around eight years ago, tilling a strip ahead of the planter and going back to plant into that strip. When you come back and try to follow that path, its hard to replicate, he said. Guidance has made a big difference.

Even with the hillside, it can do adaptive curves, once you set those curves, adds Jim Kiko, who farms 750 acres of corn, beans, wheat and alfalfa, and milks 140 head of Holsteins, in Paris, Ohio.

Its a lot easier to go back and sidedress with straight rows, he said. Before, especially on adaptive curves, we might take a whole row out.

Wes Montgomery, of Washington Court House, Ohio, said his family started using GPS on their farm in 2009. They farm 1,500 acres of corn and beans in Fayette County. We work with GPS a lot, said Montgomery. Its more of a convenience, like autosteer. You are more rested, but youre not getting much of a return off it until you build onto that basic GPS.

Kiko said the investment in GPS is minimal compared to the headache of using manual markers in field rows. We no-till into rye stubble, and (before GPS) we would drive a marker down into that stubble, said Kiko. When we double crop, we couldnt see the marker at all and we couldnt plant at night.

He added its hard to go backward, once you start investing in these technologies.

Automatic section control

Coupled with GPS and autosteer, automatic section control (sometimes referred to as automatic shut off) on planters and sprayers helps reduce and eliminate overlap in fields.

According to Shearer, some producers may see a 6-12 percent saving on inputs when they use it. Large, open, rectangular fields are not going to see as much savings, but those uniquely shaped fields with waterways are more likely to, he said.

Montgomery uses section control on planters and sprayers and said they have been able to reduce overlap by about 10 percent.

Most producers are running bigger machines (these days), said Fulton. With guidance and auto section control, those machines can be more efficient. Producers find themselves spending less time in the fields and theyre not as fatigued, he said. There is a quality of life component as well.

Kiko said, while its costly to update older equipment, if he were to upgrade his planter, he would get one with this technology.

Variable rate fertilizer

Variable rate and soil testing are the least expensive ways to start into precision ag, said Campbell.

However, variable rate technology is not going to pay for everybody, said Shearer. The biggest benefits will be for farmers who have the most disparity in their fields.

With water quality issues being a concern, Montgomery and his family recognized they were getting too much nutrients. Today, his farm uses pretty much all variable rate fertilizer. Variable rate fertilizer pays off pretty good. We arent putting any more fertilizer on the field on average, but we can put more where it is needed in the field, said Montgomery.

Kiko said they are still averaging the same amounts of lime, phosphorus and potassium per acre, but using a mapping and variable rate system, they know they are doing a better job of putting those nutrients where they are needed. I dont know that we are saving money on product, but we are getting more out of it, he said.

Variable rate seeding

Variable rate seeding has also become a popular technique on many farms.

We are finally starting to do some variable rate seeding, said Campbell. In the past couple of years, he used grid sampling to break his fields into zones using historical yield data and soil type to establish those zones.

I load that into the computer and it gives me a prescription to put into the planter and it does it automatically, he said.

As far as cost savings go, Campbell said, corn and beans are two different variable rate animals. With corn, Campbell found using variable rate just reallocated the seed to where it was needed, while he found he needed fewer soybean seeds.

Montgomery said their farm also intensively manages seeding. Variable seeding lowered our average soybean seeding dramatically and we are still seeing good yields.

Smartphones, tablets and apps

While smartphones and tablets are not a new technology, they are finding more favor in the farm world. More and more people are doing business with them, said Fulton.

From monitoring the weather to checking the markets, and even running diagnostics on a piece of equipment, this technology is becoming more user friendly.

On the app side, I dont know if anybody is making money, but collecting information, or smart scouting, is huge, said Fulton.

Big data

Big data is still being fine tuned. Some farmers are still a little skeptical of having all their farm information compiled in a cloud service, while others are unsure how to truly understand and navigate it all.

For the most part, the data that we use is pretty simple, and pretty user friendly, said Kiko. Weve got enough information to know what we need to do in our fields, said Kiko.

Unfortunately, Mother Nature still plays the biggest role in all this, he added. Campbell said he was hesitant to embrace the technology at first, but working with a local co-op made it easier to break down his data and decipher it.

At the end of the day, you got to know your fields, said Campbell. When you are the guy in the fields, you can see what the data is telling you  which makes it easier to manage and break down for yourself.

Software is going to get better and these technologies are going to become more affordable for the small to mid-size farmer as time goes on, said Campbell.

Precision agriculture and new ag technology is not a one-size-fits-all management tool, but the world of agriculture technology is advancing quickly, and it fits more farms than you think.
2 Shot By Police In 'Armed Confrontation' In Montclare: CPD

By Stephen Gossett in News on Jun 7, 2017 2:47PM



Crime scene tape (Photo by LukaTDB via Shutterstock)

A Chicago police officer shot two men late on Tuesday night in Montclare after they opened fire, according to police.

Police were driving near the 2900 block of North Newland Avenue at around 11:54 p.m. on Tuesday when they saw two men in grey sedan shoot in their direction and hit another car, according to police. Officers followed them through an alley where an "armed confrontation" ensued, police said in a preliminary statement. One officer fired shots and hit both men, police said.

The two men were taken to area hospitals. A commander for the Chicago Fire Department told the Tribune that one man listed in critical condition at Loyola University Medical Center; and the second was taken to Stroger Hospital in critical condition. Police said no officers were hurt.

Two weapons were recovered at the scene, according to the police department.

Police noted in a statement that the shooting was the fourth incident since Friday in which officers were fired upon. It was also the third time since that day that a person had been shot by an officer, including a 17-year-old who was fatally shot in Washington Park after allegedly firing at police.

The officers involved have been placed on administrative duties for 30 days, per department policy.
ACLU Is Not At All Happy With Rahm's Reversal On Police Reform

By Stephen Gossett in News on Jun 7, 2017 8:30PM



Getty Images / Photo: Scott Olson

Mayor Rahm Emanuel buried the announcement last Friday afternoon in the end-of-week news dump that his administration had backed away from pushing a consent decree, which would provide court oversight to recommended reforms of the Chicago Police Department. The timing was a sure sign that they knew the development would not be met well by reform advocates. They were right. On Wednesday afternoon, the American Civil Liberties was the most recent group to blast the mayor's decision to instead seek an "independent monitor."

That monitor would be chosen by the City of Chicago and the Department of Justice. Such a monitor would not have the authority to make the Chicago Police Department permit investigation, administer reform timelines, or "dedicate resources to reform" the ACLU argued on Wednesday.

"This proposal is a non-starter for anyone committed to real reform of Chicago's broken system of policing," said Karen Sheley, Director of the ACLU of Illinois Police Practices Project, in a statement. "The City is proposing to sign a set of promises with a DOJ that is hostile to real police reform."

"Worse still, such an agreement could not be enforced by the monitor, by the community or by anyone elsesince it is not planned to be overseen by a federal court," added Sheley.

The administration has not commented about where the recent decision to pull back from a consent decree originated, but it's possible that the mayor's office feels that its hand was forced. Attorney General Jeff Session in April ordered a wide-ranging review of federal agreements, including potential consent decrees. Any chance of the DOJ and the Trump administration agreeing to such a path seemed even more unlikely than it had up to that point. Rahm, in a joint statement with CPD Supt. Eddie Johnson, replied to Sessions' memo saying, "Reform is in our self-interest and that is why Chicago has been, is, and always will be committed to reform."

Still, some hope existed for the possibility of oversight from federal judiciary. The Tribune notes that legal experts maintain the mayor "could still partner with community groups" to set up oversight from a federal judge. And the possibility of a lawsuit aiming to require the administration to negotiate a consent decree exits. An ACLU spokesperson on Wednesday said that no final decision had yet been reached as whether the organization would pursue such litigation.

In the wake of the release of the Laquan McDonald shooting video, the Department of Justice, then under the Obama administration, launched what proved to be a yearlong investigation into the Chicago Police Department. The probe culminated in January, when the Department released its damning report, finding that the Department engaged in a pattern or practice of using forceincluding use of deadly forcethat violated the Fourth Amendment. Advocates have argued that the best way to enforce the DOJ's recommendations is via a court-enforced consent decree.
Chicago Dedicating Massive Mural To Blues Icon Muddy Waters

By Stephen Gossett in Arts & Entertainment on Jun 7, 2017 3:40PM

Chicago hasn't always done the best job of honoring its second-to-none blues legacy, but there's been some progress lately. The latest instance ties into another one of the city's great cultural forms, public art. On Thursday, the city will dedicate a huge new mural downtown to Chicago blues legend Muddy Waters.

Nine stories tall, the mural looms over the corner of State and Washington streets. Created by noted Brazilian street-art figure Eduardo Korba, the bold, multi-color work will be dedicated on Thursday at noon by the City of Chicago and the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events. The Muddy Waters Legacy Band will perform at the free event. The dedication precedes the city's annual Blues Fest, which hits Millennium Park from Friday through Sunday.

In 1943, Waters moved to Chicago, where he was perhaps the most pivotal figure in pioneering the city's iconic electric blues sound. His seminal records include "Hoochie Coochie Man," "I Just Want to Make Love to You" and "I'm Ready."



Related: Chicago Is Finally Getting Its Long-Overdue Blues Museum, Right In The Loop


Prince Harry officially launched the 500-day countdown to the Invictus Games 2018 at Sydney's Admiralty House on Wednesday (07.06.17)

Prince Harry

The 32-year-old royal remained in good spirits, despite being heavily rained on, as he announced the countdown to the international sporting event, which he founded, taking place next year for military veterans who have suffered an injury or illness.

Speaking to the crowd in the Australian city, Harry, who held the first games in 2014, said: "Sport would help these guys and girls fix their lives and reconnect with those around them. The spectacle of sport combined with stories of recovery against the odds would inspire all those who saw it. Lives have been changed in front of my eyes. Amazing men and women proving the impossible is possible. That is exactly what we did when we held the first Invictus Games in 2014."

The flame-haired royal then reflected on the shocking bomb attack in Manchester last month, which killed 22 people and injured over 60, and acknowledged that these were "challenging times" but events like the Invictus Games are positive.

According to ABC.com.au, he said: "We can all benefit from positive and inspiring stories from which to draw strength."

Meanwhile, while Harry is busy in New South Wales, his brother Prince William's sister-in-law Pippa Middleton - the sibling of Duchess Catherine - is in Perth on honeymoon with her husband James Matthews after they got hitched last month.

The Invictus Games will take place in Sydney in October 2018.
Emma Willis thought her appendicitis was just "tummy ache".

Emma Willis (c) ITV This Morning

The 41-year-old television presenter had been planning to treat her husband Matt Willis - with whom she has children Isabelle, seven, Ace, five, and 12-month-old Trixie Grace - to a "surprise birthday trip" to Ibiza, but was forced to cancel it when she was admitted to A&E and had to undergo emergency surgery after suffering from excruciating pains in her stomach.

Speaking on ITV's 'This Morning' on Wednesday (07.06.17), Emma said: "I was about to get on a plane and take my husband away and I thought 'I have a tummy ache, I don't know what's going on I better get myself checked out'.

"So I went into A&E and they said you need surgery. It was really weird. It was appendicitis. They said how gross it was when they got in there they said 'We can't understand how you weren't in more pain.'

"I was like 'I've had three kids, it just felt like a bit of a tummy ache.' It was just one of those things. I always think appendicitis is for young people; for teenagers or kids.

"I was like 'I'm a grown-up, do you get appendicitis when you're a grown-up?' It was just quite random. But they were fantastic, the NHS and Barnet Hospital were just absolutely brilliant."

Last month, 'The Voice UK' host shared a picture on her Instagram account of herself in her medical gown smiling next to her surgeon Marco Venza, shortly after her surgery was complete.

Meanwhile, Emma also slammed rumours that her and musician Matt, 34, are planning on renewing their wedding vows for their 10th anniversary in 2018.

She said: "I had a conversation with a journalist who said it was my 10th wedding anniversary and asked if I would be renewing my wedding vows.

"I said that would be a lovely idea. And then it was all over the press saying we are renewing our vows."

Emma, who is currently busy hosting the latest series of 'Big Brother', will also be seen on screens presenting 'The Voice Kids' which starts this Saturday (10.06.17).
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Although reluctantly, we have to admit it: Turkey is not a safe country to travel. The biggest hazard being that you may never want to leave. Read all about the dangers ahead!

Risk of an overdose of turquoise

With a coastline that spans more than 8,000 kilometers (approximately 5,000 miles), there is an increased risk of ending up at the beach. And those beaches are pristine! And the water is blue. Or worse, turquoise. Turkey has beaches in all colors of blue. Colors that seem to change every day, depending on the weather, but always blue. So, if youre not a big fan of blue  and in particular turquoise  stay away from Turkish beaches. You will be annoyed with the crystal clear water and the paradise beaches. In fact, there are so many beaches, you will be spoiled for choice. Another risk here, the stress of decision making! You cant possibly try them all.

Risk of being immersed in history and culture

Turkey is not all about turquoise beaches and pristine bays. The country has a rich history and plenty of ancient sites to show for that. There are ancient stones everywhere. Of course, a city like Istanbul is a cultural hub. And sites like Ephesus, Pamukkale, Mount Nemrut or Troy are world famous. The country has 16 sites inscribed on the World Heritage List!

But you dont have to visit those sites to be surrounded by history. It is simply everywhere. The smallest villages have ancient Lycian graves, rock tombs or remains of entire cities or civilizations. You will always be surprised at the amount of history that is just waiting for you to discover it. When in fear of having to deal with the beauty of history or culture when on holiday, you might want to reconsider visiting Turkey!

Risk of gaining weight

Beware! Turkish food is delicious! And there is food everywhere. Really Even when you think youve just found the most remote and isolated spot in Turkey, someone will be offering you food or tea. And the problem is, this doesnt just happen to you once. It happens every day. You will spend an entire trip surrounded by food stalls selling delicious (and healthy) street food. You will have to resist countless seaside restaurants serving fresh fish and meze. You will have to refuse complementary fruit plates after your meal or even when enjoying a drink or cocktail on the beach. Oh, and please DO NOT have a Turkish breakfast! It feels like dying and going to heaven. A traditional Turkish breakfast (koy kahvalts) is a feast! It is a table full of food, most of the times organic and it will take hours of whiling away the day enjoying those yummies. In short, the dangers of people serving you the tastiest meals are genuine. If you plan on starving yourself, dont come to Turkey.

Risk of making Turkish friends (for life)

If you are the I do not want to meet any local kind of person, then youre in trouble when visiting Turkey. Locals LOVE foreigners. They will go out of their way to make you happy. They are so welcoming and hospitable that they would not only feed you or even offer you a bed for the night. They might also be genuinely interested in who you are and what you love about Turkey. You might end up being the guest of honor at a wedding or meet the Muhtar (head of the village) for a cup of tea or Turkish coffee.

Another thing, Turkish people love hitchhikers and even people that are not hitchhiking but seem to have a long road ahead. It is almost part of a tradition. Makes sense, if you own a car and someone doesnt, why not stop to take them along if you are going the same way? Of even better, why not drive your temporary guests straight to their destination? After all, thats what being hospitable is all about! Indeed, there is a huge risk in Turkey of bonding with locals and making friends for life.

If you feel uncomfortable making new friends, Turkey is not for you.

Risk of too much contentment

With all the good food, the lovely friendly people, beautiful nature, beaches, and bays and an always present aroma of history and culture, you risk feeling content and happy. Not just for a split second, but the entire time. And that is where the real danger of coming to Turkey lies You may feel so good in Turkey; you never want to leave again. And if you do manage to drag yourself back home, beware, as you may be back sooner than you think!

Its magic!

This article was written by, and is published with, the kind permission of Slow Travel Guide

Click here for more articles about Turkey from Slow Travel Guide

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Featured photograph by John Cavacas
Woodland is all set to expand its overseas presence and enter Canada and South Africa by partnering locals. It has also tied up with a Chinese brand for selling its products at over 5,000 stores in China. The company has offices in Hong Kong, Dubai and Moscow and retail presence in over 50 countries. Woodland is also rolling out a new inner-wear collection."We have plans to enter Canada and South Africa which are very attractive markets and we are looking for right partners for the same," Aero Club MD Harkirat Singh told a news agency. Aero Club owns Woodland brand.The company had recently tied up with a Chinese brand for selling Woodland range of products at over 5,000 stores in China, he said, according to the report.The footwear and apparel brand would roll out inner-wear and leisure wear collection as part of its expansion plans. The company aimed to achieve a turnover of over Rs 1,500 crore by the end of the current fiscal with 15-20 per cent growth."Last fiscal, we clocked turnover of Rs 1,300 crore and this fiscal we expect to cross Rs 1,500 crore on the back of expansion and new product lines," Singh was quoted as saying."We will launch inner-wear and leisure wear collections. This is part of our expansion plans as this was the category which we thought we were missing," Singh said. The collection would comprise products like vests, briefs, trunks, inner T-shirts and shorts. "The new range of our product line will be available at company run 600 stores and about 4,000 multi-brand outlets," he said.Singh said Woodland was also planning to open 40 to 50 company-owned exclusive stores in the current fiscal in the country.

Woodland offers an extensive line of footwear, performance apparel and outdoor gear. The company also sells its products through e-commerce portals like Amazon, Flipkart, etc. "As much as 14 per cent of the total revenue comes from e-commerce web sites," he said, according to the report. (SV)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
Chicago Suburb That Blocked Mosque To Pay $580K To Muslim Group

By Stephen Gossett in News on Jun 7, 2017 5:10PM

In reassuring news for religious liberty, a Chicago suburb will pay $580,000 to a Muslim group after the city's aldermen blocked their attempt to open a mosque, in 2013.

The Department of Justice announced on Tuesday that a settlement had been made after the City of Des Plaines denied a rezoning application that would have allowed the Muslim group The Society of American Bosnians and Herzegovinans to open a mosque in vacant building.

The DOJ had filed a complaint in 2015 that alleged Des Plaines discriminated against the Muslim organization on ground of religion or religious denomination and said the city "departed from its normal practices and procedures" when it denied SABAH its rezoning proposal, by a vote of 5 to 3. The city's refusal also "imposed a substantial burden" on the group's ability to practice its religion and treated the group unfairly compared to nonreligious entities, including a school and a cultural center, the DOJ said on Tuesday.

The settlement resolved the DOJ's complaint and a lawsuit that had been put forth by the Muslim group.

Religious freedom is a fundamental right, and we will not tolerate the unlawful use of zoning or land use restrictions to infringe on that right, said Joel R. Levin, Acting U.S. Attorney of the Northern District of Illinois in a DOJ press release. The U.S. Attorneys Office will continue to safeguard the rights of religious groups to establish houses of worship without fear of discriminatory zoning or land use practices."

The agreement also states that Des Plaines will train employees on the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 and make public its non-discrimination policies.

The $580,000 figure was announced at a press conference that included the Council on American-Islamic Relations and SABAH's attorney, Anthony J. Peraica.

Aldermen had previously argued that the refusal to grant the rezoning request was a public safety and traffic concern and said it would negatively impact manufacturers in the area, according to WGN.
The leading position of China as the main supplier of textiles and apparel to the EU has continued to be eroded in 2016, by the increasingly vigorous entry of other production zones. Undeniably, the main beneficiary of this was the SAARC zone, which has grown slowly but steadily since 2010, according to the European Apparel and Textile Confederation.

Mediterranean countries have experienced the same scenario as China between 2010 and 2015, but import shares have stabilised or even improved in 2016, the European Apparel and Textile Confederation (Euratex) said in its bulletin no. 01/2017.

The Euratex report analyses the 2016 EU external trade for the textile and clothing sector as well as the main EU suppliers and customers, evaluates the weight of regions and sectors in total EU trade and includes detailed tables and graphs for the 33 main EU trade partners.

The leading position of China as the main supplier of textiles and apparel to the EU has continued to be eroded in 2016, by the increasingly vigorous entry of other production zones. Undeniably, the main beneficiary of this was the SAARC zone, which has grown slowly but steadily since 2010, according to the European Apparel and Textile Confederation.#

In 2016, four zonesChina, Mediterranean, SAARC and ASEANaccounted for over 86 per cent of total extra-EU textile and clothing imports. EU-28 imports originating from these groupings primarily related to clothing goods.

In terms of products, China prevailed as the main supplier of woven garments to EU last year. However, Chinas share continued to decline to the benefit of South Asian and Mediterranean countries. Concerning imports of knitted garments, China was overtaken by the SAARC zone, the report said.

Analysing EU-28 exports scenario, the report states that exports struggled to grow in a difficult global economy and faced issues in maintaining market shares, principally in made up articles.

Compared to last year, EU exports shares remained stable for the four main defined country groupings: NAFTA, EFTA, the Mediterranean countries and the group of autonomous countries. These four groups accounted for 58 per cent of extra-EU textile and clothing exports in 2016.

Woven fabrics were the major textiles exported by the EU. The NAFTA zone and the Mediterranean countries were the biggest purchasers of textile goods, while EFTA and NAFTA areas made up the two main buyers of clothing articles. However, in absolute value, there was little growth in EU exports to these EFTA and NAFTA zones. (RKS)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
Messe Frankfurt Trade Fairs India is all set to create worlds largest cushion and display it at Heimtextil India and Ambiente India from June 20, 2017. At 20 feet tall, this textile masterpiece, representing the Fabrics and Embroideries of India is expected to create a world record. The three-day home fashion fair will be held in New Delhi.

The organiser has partnered with Indias Limca record holder Kanika Bawa to create this gigantic installation titled 'CushionKari' which will be curated with fabrics from Indias largest and the most renowned home furnishing brand Ddecor. 'CushionKari' is based on a unique design concept of harmony in nature and the congruence of man and the woman inspired by DaVincis famous portrait. The materials used in the making of the CushionKari represent fabrics of the nation such as - khadi, brocade, morr, mixed embroideries, blend of sustainable textiles such as yarn and fabric waste among others.

"India is recognised for its exquisite home textiles and furnishing fabrics globally and Heimtextil India  with its mix of brands, design trends and home fashion innovations, best represent this on a single platform. With this unique art installation, our aim is to draw attention to the Fabrics of India and its strength in furnishings which is one of the largest export product segments in the country," Raj Manek, executive director and board member of Messe Frankfurt Asia Holding Ltd said.

"Heimtextil India is an important effort by Messe Frankfurt to create a trade show which can showcase Indias capabilities in home textiles and we are proud to partner with this trade fair brand again. When Heimtextil India floated the idea of the worlds largest cushion, the first such installation of its kind in the home decor space, D'Decors association with the endeavour was almost a foregone conclusion. The installation, a tribute to Indian capability, is meant to epitomise prowess, excellence, quality, vision and a capacity to overcome any challenge  all of which are an integral part of DDecors ethos and DNA," said Ajay Arora, managing director, D'decor.

Over 180 companies from India, Bangladesh, China, Korea, Nepal and Thailand will be exhibiting at the fair. (RR)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
Textiles India 2017, to be held in Gandhinagar, Gujarat from June 30-July 2, 2017, would be a global trade event. It is already being termed as the biggest textile event in the history of India. The exhibition, to be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, will showcase Indias strength in textiles and apparel value chain from fibre to fashion.

At the exhibition, manufacturers, exporters and other stakeholders from the textile industry will showcase their products to international buyers, expected from at least 60 countries, Puneet Agarwal, joint secretary, ministry of textiles, told media persons in Bengaluru.

Around 30 countries are likely to display their products at the fair, making it a global trade event. Seven international conferences, 24 round-table conferences, country and state sessions, business to business, business to government and government to government meetings will be held during the three-day exhibition, Agarwal said.

Textiles India 2017, to be held in Gandhinagar, Gujarat from June 30-July 2, 2017, would be a global trade event. It is already being termed as the biggest textile event in the history of India. The exhibition, to be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, will showcase India's strength in textiles and apparel value chain from fibre to fashion.#

There will be round-table conferences, fashion show, and theme pavilions of partner states Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand and Maharashtra with focus on Gujarat, he added.

The three day event will include global conference on the last day with six themes, to be chaired by concerned Union ministers and the valedictory session presided over by the Union finance minister. Over 33 round-tables will be held on issues of concern for the various segments of textiles and handicrafts on the second day i.e., July 1, with prominent international speakers and industry leaders. (RKS)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
HON PM BAINIMARAMA OPENING REMARKS AT A BLUE COMMONWEALTH  HIGH LEVEL ROUNDTABLE AT THE OCEANS CONFERENCE





Your Excellency, the Secretary General of the Commonwealth,Your Excellency the Vice President of the Republic of Seychelles,Distinguished participants from other Commonwealth nations,Ladies and Gentlemen,Bula vinaka and a very good afternoon to you all.The Commonwealth continues to play a leading role in global affairs and Im delighted to be given the opportunity to open this important side event - a high level roundtable on what the Commonwealth can do to support the implementation of SDG14.I particularly welcome the emphasis on maximizing innovation and economic opportunities in the development of blue economies. I made the point when I addressed an event for the ACP countries this morning that many of us are already making great strides in this area.We may be powerless to prevent the degradation of our seas and coastlines by other nations. But for the areas we do control, some of us have already developed policies that are making a difference. And I urge you all to embrace the principle that Fiji has embraced. That no development on land or at sea must take place if there is any risk to the environment whatsoever. It is a central tenet of our Green Growth Framework and national development plans. And  as I said this morning - we are very proud as a nation to have drawn this responsible line in the sand.I also welcome todays emphasis on mobilizing partnerships within the Commonwealth  this unique organisation that binds us all together  and on fairness, equity and the empowerment of women. Because we all know that when women are empowered, they become powerful agents for change, wherever they are in the world and in whatever capacity they are able to direct their talents. They are the backbone of our societies and in many places, are already leading the way to a more sustainable future.No-one knows this more than our distinguished Secretary-General, Patricia Scotland, who hails from a Small Island Developing State in the Caribbean and is a living embodiment of the leadership women can provide with empowerment. More than most, she also knows the challenges we all face in the SIDS countries because of the steady degradation of our oceans and seas. And we certainly look forward to hearing her proposals for the development of a Blue Charter - a set of guiding principles for sustainable, fair and equitable economic development of our oceans based on the Commonwealth Charter. Once again, Baroness Scotland, we thank you for your leadership on this issue and many others.The wonderful thing about the Commonwealth is the strength we all derive from our ability to share our experiences and learn from each other. And we all look forward to hearing about the challenges and successes of developing blue economies from a range of speakers who also embody the diversity of our organisation. From Bangladesh, Barbados, Cyprus, Grenada and Fijis close neighbour and friend, Tonga. As well as representatives of the Commonwealth Foundation and UNCTAD.Welcome to you all and thank you for your own commitment to the great task before us this week, which is, quite simply, to save our oceans before it is too late.Our thanks go to the Government of the Seychelles and the Commonwealth Secretariat as our hosts. And I now have great pleasure to declare this high level roundtable on a Blue Commonwealth open.Vinaka vakalevu, Thank you.
HON PM BAINIMARAMA REMARKS TO PSIDS LEADERS AT BREAKFAST MEEETING ON COP23 UPDATE





Your Excellencies, my fellow Pacific Island leaders,Honourable Ministers and officials,Ladies and Gentlemen,Bula vinaka and a very good morning to you all.I have said all along that Fiji has taken on the role of incoming President of COP23 on behalf of all Pacific islanders, as well as the citizens of vulnerable nations throughout the world. So Im honoured to have the opportunity to give you a progress report on what we are doing to make our leadership of the ongoing UN climate negotiations an unqualified success.I very much see this as a Pacific presidency  an inclusive process in which I ask you all to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Fiji as we give voice to the concerns of our own countries, our own region. And because we are among the most vulnerable to climate change, to also lead the fight on behalf of every vulnerable person on earth.As you all know, the stakes for all of us are extremely high. And especially for our friends from Tuvalu, Kiribati and the Marshall Islands, whose very existence is threatened.It is an absolute imperative for all of us that the Paris Agreement of 2015 is fully implemented. And that we try to persuade the rest of the world to embrace even more ambitious action in the years to come. Because we all know that even the current national contributions to the Paris Agreement are not enough to save us.We are all, quite naturally, bitterly disappointed by the decision of the Trump Administration to abandon the Paris Agreement. Not only because of the loss of American leadership on this issue of critical importance to the whole world. But because it may also encourage other nations to either back away from the commitments they have made or not implement them with the same resolve.But something wonderful is also happening. The American decision is galvanizing opinion around the world in support of decisive climate action. Other nations and blocs like China, the European Union and India are stepping forward to assume the leadership that Donald Trump has abandoned. And within America itself, there is a widespread rebellion against the decision the President has taken. Dozens of state governors and city mayors are banding together with leaders of the private sector, civil society and ordinary citizens to redouble their efforts to meet this challenge. So while the Trump Administration may have abandoned its leadership on climate change, the American people havent.Next week, I will go to California to meet the Democrat Governor Jerry Brown and sign up to the climate action initiative that he is spearheading. I am also in contact with his Republican predecessor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who shares Governor Browns commitment. The point is that on both sides of American politics, we have friends who are standing with us in this struggle. And I am inviting both Governor Brown and the famous Terminator to come to our Pre-COP gathering in Fiji in October, where we hope they will join us in a gesture of solidarity with the vulnerable just before COP23 itself in Bonn the following month.Excellencies, my message to all of you today - my kai vata as we say in Fiji, my Pacific brothers and sisters, is this: As incoming president of COP23, I want you by my side all year at the big events leading up to Bonn in November. This is not just about Frank or about Fiji but every Pacific leader, every Pacific nation, every civil society group, every private sector body, everyone who represents the ordinary men, women and children in the Pacific who look to us for leadership on this issue of critical importance to our collective future.I want your input. I need your input. And I want every Pacific leader beside me as we demand decisive action to protect the security of our people and those in other vulnerable parts of the world.I want to issue a warm personal invitation to you all to come to Suva next month  on July 3 and 4  for our Climate Action Pacific Partnership event. This is where Pacific leaders will join members of civil society and the private sector to hammer out an agenda that we can collectively pursue as the year progresses. And that we can take to our Pre-COP in Nadi in October and to Bonn the following month.We will also be discussing a number of legacy items - programs and projects that can be of lasting benefit to the Pacific after COP23 has ended. And we also seek your input on that. We have the funding to pay for the attendance of all PIDS leaders plus one other official and I appeal to you all to set aside those dates to be with us in Fiji.I also invite every Pacific leader to again join me in Denarau for the Pre-COP on October 17 and 18. This is a critical event a month out from COP itself that will refine our collective position and set the tone for our overall approach in Bonn. As I mentioned, we are also inviting a number of leaders from outside the region to join us in a collective act of solidarity with the Pacific and other vulnerable nations. Again, we have the funding to bring every PSIDS leader plus one official to Nadi.Excellencies, as you all know, COP23  unlike previous COPS  does not include the usual gathering of world leaders. Our prime task is to advance the implementation guidelines for the Paris Agreement - the Rulebook - and lay the groundwork for more decision climate action in the Facilitative Dialogue of 2018.We will not have the usual round of speeches from world leaders because they wont be there. Yet right from the start, Fiji wanted Pacific leaders to be the exception. And we have secured the agreement of our German hosts for you to all to be present in Bonn  the Pacific presenting a united face alongside Fiji as president to remind the global community of whats at stake. And remind it of its obligations to pursue decisive climate action.Again, please set aside November 6 to 17 to be in Bonn as honoured guests and to be with me as COP president as we pursue our collective agenda. I want to use your mana as leaders individually and collectively. As well as the mana of former Pacific leaders who have been at the forefront of the climate struggle over the years and whose experience and wisdom we also want to tap. Again, funding assistance is available through the UNFCCC to enable you to be in Bonn. And I appeal to all of you to come.In the meantime, please use your influence to get your own climate-related stories told. Fiji has set up a dedicated website  cop23.com.fj  to promote our presidency and we are especially keen to get contributions from our Pacific neighbours. Just go to the contact page on our website to begin the process.Excellencies, let me briefly explain how we intend to run the Bonn event from Fijis perspective. It will be very much a team effort  Fijis presidency, not just my own  and I will be relying heavily on the great team we have already assembled  our Chief Negotiator, Ambassador Nazhat Shameem Khan, our Climate Champion, Minister Inia Seruiratu and our Climate Ambassador, Ambassador Deo Saran. Plus a wider team of officials and advisors, most of them Fijian and others with globally acknowledged expertise in climate policy and experience of previous COPs.The way I see the Fijian team operating in Bonn on a day-to-day basis throughout the proceedings is this: Our Climate Negotiator, Ambassador Shameem Khan, will do the detailed negotiations in the plenary sessions. And as President, I will have a roving brief, presiding over the main events and having the ability to intervene at other times. To give encouragement where needed and especially to use my authority and powers of persuasion to iron out any impasse. To keep people focused and hold the show together.At the same time, I seek the assistance of all Pacific leaders to enable me to fulfill an important undertaking that I have made. To bring the two zones in Bonn closer together  the Bula Zone where the formal government-to-government negotiations take place. And the Bonn Zone some distance away, which will be the climate action zone for non-state actors. Whether they be representatives of state or local governments around the world, NGOs, other civil society organisations and interfaith groups, the private sector and ordinary citizens.I want you to join me in spending a great deal of time in this climate action zone, interacting with the various players and ordinary people. We will have a pavilion in which you can base yourselves. And we can take our inclusive Pacific way of doing things  of listening to others and genuinely respecting their views - and transpose it onto the global scene to advance the cause of climate action.In Fijis case, we intend to bring our Bula Spirit to Bonn  to showcase our unique culture and way of life. And we are also harnessing the Talanoa Spirit  a word we share with our Tongan and Samoan neighbours  to promote the concept of dialogue on climate change that is inclusive, respectful, non judgmental and achieves concrete results.I was amazed at the recent Petersberg Climate Dialogue in Berlin how much other delegates reacted positively  even with excitement - to my explanation of the Talanoa Spirit. They began using the term in their own speeches. And I am convinced that the world is receptive to some of our Pacific ways of doing things  of genuine dialogue rather than being prescriptive. Of each nation, each person, gaining a genuine appreciation of the challenges faced by others. And working together in a genuine spirit of cooperation to find solutions to undoubtedly the greatest challenge the world has ever faced.So Excellencies, please join me as we set out on this voyage together. I said in Berlin that we are all in the same canoe. We are all in this together. Climate change spares no-one, not even Donald Trump. We are all affected. We are all at risk. And as a symbol of the challenge we face together and the journey we all need to make, we will be placing a large Fijian ocean-going canoe  a Drua  in the main foyer in Bonn.Amid all the talanoa, there will also be a great deal of Fijian singing and dancing, thanks to the generosity of our German hosts in paying for our cultural branding of COP23. And I would encourage all of you to also bring your own performers, if you can find the means, to give the entire event a wider Pacific stamp.One word of caution. Its going to be very cold in Bonn in November. As I told the European media the other day, dont expect to photograph me without my shirt. But what we lack in terms of the weather, we intend to make up in terms of personal warmth.So, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, lets infuse COP23 with the spirit of Pacific friendliness and hospitality and make it the best COP ever. One that will live forever in the memories of those present and showcase our region and its people to the world.We had a very successful initial session in Bonn last month. Working with the Moroccan Presidency of COP22, we made solid progress on the implementation guidelines and the Facilitative Dialogue. And we agreed that the process should be about confidence building, empowerment and encouragement, not about finger pointing and punishment.But as I have said to my own people, teamwork is paramount if we are to make COP23 a success. Like our world champion, Olympic medal winning Rugby Sevens team, Fiji cannot afford to drop the ball on climate action. The Pacific cannot afford to drop the ball on climate action. We need to work together as a team to persuade the world to get points on the board if we are to ensure our own security and the security of generations of Pacific Islanders to come.Now more than ever, given the Trump Administrations decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, the whole world will be watching. And I look to my fellow Pacific leaders to get into the scrum with me, get that ball out and move it forward. With a team that includes governments, civil society, the private sector and billions of ordinary people around the world, all trying to win one for ourselves and for our planet.Vinaka vakalevu. Thank you.
The Secret Meeting

According to India. com, ''Aishwarya and Sanjay Leela Bhansali had a hush-hush meeting on the sets of Padmavati in Mumbai to discuss the project.''

Love Saga Of Sahir Ludhianvi And Amrita Pritam

There were reports that Bhansali wanted Shahrukh Khan to play Sahir in the film.

Later Abhishek Bachchan Was Also Considered

It is said that Abhishek Bachchan was the second choice to play the role of Sahir in the movie opposite Aishwarya.

Now SRK Might Say 'Yes' To The Movie Since Aishwarya Is Doing It

A source has informed that Shahrukh Khan is the original choice of the movie and with Aishwarya Rai onboard, the actor might say 'yes' to the project. And SLB would soon finalise them for the film.

Why Shahrukh Didn't Take Aishwarya As A Lead In His Films?

When Aish and SRK were working together on Devdas, there were reports that they had signed five films together. But SRK told the makers that he did not want to work with Aish.

When Aishwarya Was Asked About SRK's Decision Of Not Working With Her

Aishwarya had told Simi Grewal, "At a time there was talk about a couple of films we will be working in together.''

No Explanations Were Given To Her

''And then suddenly they were happening with no explanation, whatsoever. I never had the answer to why."

They Never Intended To Explain!

"If people have to explain, they would. If they never did, they never intended to.''

I Will Not Ask Why

''I am not somebody who would go to someone and ask why?''

My Dignity Is Extremely Precious To Me

''For me, my dignity is extremely precious to me and that is something which I hold dear to me."

Why Shahrukh Khan Took This Step

Shahrukh Khan and Aishwarya Rai's cold war started when Salman Khan created ruckus on Chalte Chalte's sets and made it impossible for the shoot to take place.

Did Shahrukh Take Salman's Side?

After that incident, Shahrukh Khan took Salman Khan's side, who was his good friend at that time, and kicked Aishwarya Rai out of the film without any explanation.

When Shahrukh Realised His Mistake

Shahrukh Khan did say sorry to Aishwarya Rai Bachchan for what he did but after 6-7 years.
Exactly a year after she was named an accused in the Rs 2,000 crore ephedrine drugs haul case, a special court declared former Bollywood actress Mamta Kulkarni and her husband Vicky Goswami "proclaimed offenders".

"It is pronounced and declared that the accused Vicky Goswami and Mamta Kulkarni are the proclaimed offenders. The immovable properties belonging to the accused be attached," ordered the Special NDPS (Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances) Court Judge H. M Patwardhan.



Accordingly, the Special Court has issued warrants under Section 82 of the Criminal Procedure Code, against the two prime accused - who are believed to be in Kenya's Mombasa city - in the case which has another eight accused and four absconders.

Police will now be required to submit, within 30 days, a compliance report on the Special Court's order, which comes a month after the Thane Police informed the court that the absconding couple failed to comply with a proclamation order requiring them to appear before the court.

Tuesday's development came nine months after Kulkarni, 45, denied all police allegations against her and claimed she was "innocent" and a "Yogini" (ascetic), in a recorded statement from Kenya.

She also said she had written to External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju, asking them to order an inquiry against the Maharashtra Police for dragging her name into the drugs case.

"I have never engaged in any act contrary to the principles of Indian statutes and am a victim of high-handedness, crude, unprofessional and unethical conspiracy by the officers of the US's Drug Enforcement Administration and the Thane police," she said in her plea to the two Union ministers.

Police said that Kulkarni's name was included in the FIR after the DEA provided evidences of involvement of Moroccan and Colombian drug mafia in the case and how the Goswami-Kulkarni couple attended certain drug smuggling meetings in January-April last year.

In April 2016, the Thane police effected a rich drugs haul from Mumbai, Thane and Solapur of around 18.5 tonnes of ephedrine and 2.5 tonnes of acetic anhydride, valued at more than Rs 2,000 crore, blowing the lid off a major international narcotics racket.

The police have nabbed a total of 10 accused in the case, besides probing another seven wanted accused.

According to the investigations, ephedrine intended was making medicines was allegedly smuggled to a pharma unit, Avon LifeSciences Ltd, Solapur and converted to narcotics, including a popular variety of a party drug.

Kulkarni's alleged involvement in the racket was confirmed by some of the accused in the case.

Those arrested in what is billed as India's biggest drugs haul include Nigerian Sipren Chinassa, who led police to other accused including Manoj Jain, director of BSE-listed Avon Lifesciences Ltd., Punit Shringi, Pradeep Gill, Sagar Powale, Mayur Sukdhare, Dhaneshwar Swamy and Dnyaneshwar Dhimri.

The DEA later joined in the probe and its officials met Thane police officers to get details as Goswami is allegedly wanted in the US.

Incidentally, Goswami and Kulkarni were detained by Kenyan authorities in 2014 on the charge of drug trafficking.

Goswami, 52, was earlier imprisoned for 25 years in the United Arab Emirates in 1997 for trafficking around 11.50 tonnes of Mandrax but was released in November 2012 on grounds of good conduct. With input from IANS.
Actor Anupam Kher is all set to play the role of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in an upcoming film based on the book written by Singh's former media adviser, Sanjay Baru.

bhishek Bachchan's SPECIAL GIFT For Aishwarya Rai Bachchan

Anupam Kher shared the first look poster of the film and captioned it as saying, "Lookingforward to playing the role of Ex PM #ManmohanSinghJi. #TheAccidentalPrimeMinister #Challenging #FamousBlueTurban."

Confirming his involvment in the project, Kher said he found the role challenging. "Acting the role of anyone in contemporary history is extremely challenging, as comparisons are bound to be instant and inevitable."

"But as I have always revelled in challenges, right from my first film Saaransh, I look forward to the experience of portraying PM Manmohan Singh," he told ET.

The screenplay of the film has been written by Hansal Mehta, who directed the national award winning Shahid.
Varun Dhawan Has Signed Two Big Films

A DNA report quoted a source as saying, "Varun has signed two big films - while one is Shoojit Sircar's next, the other one is the sequel to Badlapur and it will be directed by Sriram Raghavan again."

Varun Keen To Do Badlapur 2

The source further added, "Plus, he is in talks with Sriram for another film. Though the actor enjoys his commercial successes like Badrinath Ki Dulhania, he loves to tread the dark, edgy genre and is keen to be part of Badlapur 2 again."

Sequel To Be A Different Story

Yes, you heard it right. One hears that the sequel, though based in Badlapur, will be a completely different story and not related to the first one.

Will The Makers Retain The Original Cast?

As per sources, "While the makers may repeat Nawazuddin Siddiqui, the lead actresses Huma Qureshi and Yami Gautam won't be part of the film. Varun will shoot for both his new films this year."

When Deepika Was Rumoured To Be A Part Of The Film

Initially there were talks about Deepika Padukone replacing Varun Dhawan to play anti-heroine in the film, However producer Dinesh Vijan refuted all those rumours.

At the success party of Irrfan Khan's Hindi Medium, Vijan was quoted saying by IANS, "As soon as Raabta gets released, we will get into the casting of Badlapur 2 and for now I can assure that it will not have any female lead. And as soon as casting of the film gets complete, we will be giving details about it."

Varun-Alia To Reunite For Shiddat?

Meanwhile this morning, buzz is that Varun Dhawan and Alia Bhatt might end up reuniting for the fourth time for Abhishek Varman's Shiddat. As per a Mumbai Mirror report, the film will hit the shooting floors by the end of 2018.
Priyanka Chopra

Priyanka Chopra finally is back in Mumbai and looks damn excited!

GAP Commercial

Priyanka Chopra stars in a commercial for GAP titled Bridging The Gap.

As One!

The commercial is all about being together as one.

Back Home

It's really good to be home and Priyanka looks happy that she's back.

Priyanka Chopra

We hope Priyanka Chopra signs a Bollywood film before she flies to the USA again.

Bollywood & Hollywood

Bollywood is surely missing Priyanka Chopra as she's now focusing only on Hollywood.

All Set To Go

Priyanka Chopra is slowly and steadily making her way into Hollywood.

Boring Baywatch

Her latest film Baywatch didn't do well worldwide and was called "Boring".

More To Go

We're sure her upcoming Hollywood films will do much better!

PeeCee

We guess PeeCee will stay in India for a very short period of time.

All White

Priyanka is seen sporting a crisp white T-shirt and is all happy and smiling.
Courtney Barnett & Kurt Vile Collaborated On An Album And Are Coming To Chicago

By Tankboy in Arts & Entertainment on Jun 7, 2017 3:30PM



Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile, photo by Danny Cohen

Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile are making an album together! Barnett has rocketed to critical and public acclaim with her fiery songs that mix rock fury with loping lyricism. Vile practices a more mannered style of music, edging more into the wandering yet gently psychedelic fields of classic rock. The notion of a collaboration between the two is exciting since we have no idea what a blend of those two talents will end up sounding like, but we can't imagine it won't be enthralling. The album was recorded between tour dates, whenever Barnett and Vile could sneak off to the studio together. Unfortunately we all have to wait until later this year to hear the results of this dream team's work.

On the bright side it was announced this morning that the duo will be touring together in the fall, with 3 shows in Chicago: one at Rockefeller Chapel on Oct. 26, one at Thalia Hall on Oct. 27, and one at The Empty Bottle on Oct. 28. Expect tickets for all of those to sell out in about 0.0003 seconds when they go on sale Friday, June 9 at 10 a.m.

The shows will feature a rotating all-star cast of backing musicians, including Janet Weiss of Sleater-Kinney and Wild Flag, Warpaint's Stella Mozgawa, Rob Laakso of The Violators, and Katie Harkin. In a statement Vile described the touring unit as "a cookin' band and an intercontinental country duo for the ages-minus the country."

The tour is also partnering with Plus 1 so that $1 from every ticket goes to support the ACLU, something we can get behind 100 percent. So you get a good time and you get to feel good about it!

If you need a quick dose of Barnett to tide you over until tickets go on sale, you can hear her on the latest episode of the Slate Culture Gabfest, recorded this week while the podcast visited her homeland of Australia.
The Epic Sets

We recently came across this picture from the sets which featured a ship built in the 18th century-style.

Earlier the makers had issued an official statement that read, "This ambitious film, that brings together Amitabh Bachchan and Aamir Khan for the first time, will begin to shoot aboard two specially constructed, massive ships, that are currently docked by the Maltese seaside. Thugs of Hindostan will begin filming on these ships that have been built for over two months.

That's Aamir For You

Earlier, a picture of Aamir from the sets went viral on the internet where he is seen sporting a nose ring, curly hair and a handlebar moustache. Isn't he looking damn handsome?

When Big B Gave A Glimpse Of Malta

The superstar wrote on his blog, "There is far too much peace and quiet .. make some noise .. a dance beat thumbs it up across the creek at the other facility .. the thump quite familiar. I move in it rhythmically and rest." as he shared a picture of the sunrise from the European city."

Thugs Of Hindostan Isn't Inspired By The Pirates Of The Caribean Sea

While speaking to IANS, Aamir had clarified, "The film is not inspired from any other film. It is an action adventure film but the story is not similar. There are some hundreds of action adventure films.

There is Pirates of the Caribbean, there is Indiana Jones and many others. All these are action adventure films. So the genre of our film is action adventure but the story is different. Even my character in the film is not similar to any other character."

Aamir's Leading Ladies

Thugs Of Hindostan also stars 'Dangal' girl Fatima Sana Shaikh and Katrina Kaif.

While rumours were rife that Aamir recommended Fatima's name to the makers, his wife Kiran Rao while speaking to the media had said, "We don't deal with casting. Aamir, Adi and Victor decided the casting so they must have given it a good thought because it's a big film. There has to be merit or else they wouldn't take risk with such a big film."
Action Prince Dhruva Sarja starrer Bharjari has been in the making for almost two years now. The film faced financial troubles which delayed the proceedings of director Chethan Kumar and team. Except for a couple of songs, shoot has been completed.

The team travelled to Slovenia earlier this week for canning the songs. Dhruva Sarja and Rachita Ram will be featured in the song. Harsha A who has stopped the shooting of Anjaniputra due to unavailability of Puneeth has been roped in to choreograph the songs abroad.

Chethan Kumar and his team will shoot in Slovenia for a week where they will complete the shoot of songs. The post-production work is happening simultaneously in Bangalore and Harikrishna is busy with rerecording for the film.

The makers intend to complete the song shoot and patch work in the next few weeks. Later, the complete focus will move on to post-production work which has already begun. Producer is looking forward to release the film in August.

Dhruva who has stayed with the film despite several hurdles to complete the film, will move to shoot his next film Hayagreeva after the completion of his work for the film. Dhruva and Chethan are very confident of the film's success and are leaving no stone unturned for a better output.

Chethan has gone a step ahead and let go off the opportunity to direct Nikhil Kumarswamy's second film as he wants to concentrate on the post-production work of the film which will keep him busy for next 1 -2 months.

Rachita Ram and Haripriya have been paired opposite Dhruva Sarja. The film has been shot in various locations of Bangalore, North Karnataka and Hyderabad. Shreesha Kuduvalli is the cinematographer and Jo Ni Harsha is the editor.
Prabhas, the Baahubali star has gone on to become a popular face all over India. In fact, Prabhas has also set up a huge fan base of his own in Kerala. And all thanks to Baahubali 2: The Conclusion, which has rightly boosted his star value.

Coming to Mollywood, Dulquer Salmaan is one such young actor, who enjoys a huge fan base within the state. Over the years, with his clinical performances in movie and his charming screen presence, he has gone on to set up a dedicated fan base inside and outside the state of Kerala.

What if Prabhas & Dulquer Salmaan come together? Wouldn't it be really interesting to see them together on screen. Well, now it seems like we would soon get to see them together. Read on to know more about this..
LONDON, July 11, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

eToro ' s Crypto CopyFund offers exposure to Bitcoin, Ethereum, DASH, LiteCoin, Ripple and Ethereum Classic

Investors now able to access all major cryptocurrencies on the online platform

eToro, the global trading and investing social network, is today announcing the launch of its Crypto CopyFund, which offers investors exposure to six of the most popular cryptocurrencies currently available. This comes as eToro sees demand for cryptocurrency trading grow four-fold in just 12 months, as the global market cap of cryptocurrencies reaches over $100bn.

(Logo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/520426/eToro_Logo.jpg )



As well as popular assets Bitcoin and Ethereum - both available individually on the platform - investors will now be able to gain exposure to DASH, LiteCoin, Ripple and Ethereum Classic via the CopyFund.

The portfolio, which is regularly analysed and automatically rebalanced once a month by eToro's investment committee, will offer investors a diversified portfolio weighted according to market cap size.

Yoni Assia, Co-founder and CEO of eToro, said:

"2017 has been a defining year for cryptocurrencies. The global market has now topped $100 billion and the last few months alone have seen an influx of new cryptos entering the space.

"We believe that $100B is a milestone on the way to a Trillion USD market cap, and that a good strategy to capture this growth is by simply investing in the top billion dollar cryptocurrencies on a market cap weighted average.

"As the popularity of the market grows, and more investors are learning about its potential, we want to ensure that our clients have as much access to it as possible. Investing in the top cryptocurrencies is an extremely complex process today, it requires technical, security and risk management knowledge to buy and hold these new digital assets, at eToro we are simplifying this process to a click of a button.

"This CopyFund is the first of its kind globally providing investors access to the world's biggest digital currencies in one innovative portfolio. For those who believe in the technology's potential, this is an opportunity to invest in a straightforward and simple way."

eToro CopyFunds enable you to invest in predefined market strategies whilst taking advantage of the wisdom of the crowd. Top Trader CopyFunds and Market CopyFunds give investors access to the top performing strategies from eToro's global community of investors. They are designed to help investors minimise long-term risk and to promote opportunities for growth by creating diversified investments.

On eToro, users can also trade individual cryptocurrencies, focusing on Bitcoin and Ethereum. Additionally eToro users can copy the trading strategies of cryptocurrency experts, such as Liam Davies, Alex Plesk and Jay Smith who has returned 171% over the last 12 months and is now copied by over $2m on the platform.

eToro now has dozens of CopyFunds available, all with a minimum investment of $5,000.

About eToro

eToro is a leading online trading and investing community. The award-winning platform connects you with a global, growing network of 6 million users, with expertise in everything from short-term trading in Bitcoin to long-term investing in bank stocks. Learn from and copy the best investment strategies and become a leading trader yourself. eToro is the next-generation hub for traders and investors of all shapes and sizes.

Investment products offered by eToro are contracts for differences (CFDs) in currencies, stocks, commodities, indices and exchange traded funds (ETFs). These products carry a high degree of risk and are not suitable for many investors.

If the market moves against you, you may sustain a total loss greater than the funds invested in a specific position. You are responsible for all losses on your account up to the equity in your account.

*All trading involves risk. Only risk capital you're prepared to lose. Past performance is not an indication of future results. Trading history presented is less than 5 years and may not suffice as basis for investment decision. This is not investment advice.

Contacts:

Anne Charlotte Duhaut,

acduhaut@headlandconsultancy.com,

+44(0)20-3805-4862


The global gas cutting machine marketis projected to grow to USD 766 million by 2021, at a CAGR of nearly 1% over the forecast period, according to Technavio's latest report.

This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170619006049/en/

Technavio has published a new report on the global gas cutting machine market from 2017-2021. (Graphic: Business Wire)

In this report, Technavio covers the market outlook and growth prospects of the global gas cutting machine market for 2017-2021. Based on the product type, the market is divided into stationery gas cutting machine and portable gas cutting machine segments.

The gas cutting process is widely used in many industrial applications such as thermal cutting process, due to its ability to cut metals that range from 0.5 mm to 255 mm in thickness. The technique is also cost-effective and provides the flexibility of both manual and mechanical operation, making it popular among end-user industries including automotive, aerospace and defense, and shipbuilding.

Technavio's research study segments the global gas cutting machine market into the following regions:

APAC

EMEA

Americas

Gas cutting machine market in APAC

"APAC occupied over 45% of the gas cutting machine market in 2016 and is expected to grow quickly over the forecast period, driven by the vast number of emerging industries including the automotive, aerospace and defense, and shipbuilding industriessays Gaurav Mohindru, a lead analyst at Technavio for tools and components research.

The impressive performance of light commercial vehicles in APAC is one of the key factors for the dominance of the market segment in the gas cutting market segment. The commercial aviation sector is also performing very well, and Asia is likely to witness double-digit growth in air passenger traffic during the 2015-2023 period, with carrier demand increasing significantly.

This report is available at a USD 1,000 discount for a limited time only: View market snapshot before purchasing

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Gas cutting machine market in EMEA

The automotive and aerospace and defense industries are the key end-user of cutting machines in EMEA. Despite the economic crisis in Europe, the gas cutting market in the region is likely to showcase significant growth due to the benefits that these cutting machines offer. The use of all cutting machines allows the automation of manufacturing processes, thus leading to higher efficiency and lower energy consumption. Therefore, these benefits allow products to be manufactured at lower costs, which enables companies to compete better at the global level. The growing air traffic will also create additional revenue streams for the gas cutting machines market.

Gas cutting machine market in the Americas

"The major end-user industries of the gas cutting machines in the Americas are the automotive, aerospace and defense, electrical equipment, and robotics industries. The stronghold of the automotive industry in the region is a key revenue generator for the marketsays Gaurav.

The use of gas cutting machines is very minimal in this region as manufacturing industries have shifted to alternative technologies to increase the quality of products and to reduce the operational cost in the manufacturing process; thus, the market in this region is expected to grow at a slower rate when compared with the other two regions.

The top vendors in the global gas cutting machine market highlighted in the report are:

ESAB

Hornet Cutting Systems

Koike Aronson

Messer Cutting Systems

NISSAN TANAKA

Browse Related Reports:

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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 constructionunit operations, and engineering tools. 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, resellers, 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/20170619006049/en/

Contacts:

Technavio Research

Jesse Maida

Media Marketing Executive

US: +1 630 333 9501

UK: +44 208 123 1770

www.technavio.com
Regulatory News:

In connection with AP Alternative Assets, L.P.'s ("AAA"; Euronext Amsterdam: AAA) equity investment in Athene Holding Ltd. ("Athene"), AAA, the largest shareholder of Athene, informs its investors that Athene has today filed with the Securities Exchange Commission ("SEC") a registration statement on Form S-8 relating to Athene's employee stock purchase plan. The registration statement is available for free on the SEC's website at www.sec.gov.

This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of any offer to buy any securities, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or jurisdiction.

About AP Alternative Assets, L.P.

AP Alternative Assets, L.P. was established by Apollo Global Management, LLC and its subsidiaries ("Apollo") and is a closed-end limited partnership established under the laws of Guernsey. Apollo is a leading global alternative investment manager with 27 years of experience investing across the capital structure of leveraged companies. AAA is managed by Apollo Alternative Assets, L.P. For more information about AAA, please visit www.apolloalternativeassets.com.

This announcement does not constitute or form part of an offer to sell or solicitation of an offer to purchase or subscribe for securities in the United States or in any other jurisdiction.

This press release contains forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties because they relate to future events and circumstances. Such statements are based on currently available operating, financial and competitive information and are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results and developments to differ materially from the historical experience and expressed or implied expectations of AAA. Undue reliance should not be placed on such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date on which they are made and AAA does not undertake to update its forward-looking statements unless required by law.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170719006362/en/

Contacts:

AP Alternative Assets, L.P.

Gary Stein (New York), +1-212-822-0467


WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - The following are some of the biotech stocks that made their way onto the Day's Gainers & Losers' list of June 6, 2017.



GAINERS



1. Vital Therapies Inc. (VTL)



Gained 28.16% to close Tuesday's (June 6) trading at $3.30.



News: The Company announced the characteristics of early subjects in its pivotal study of ELAD system in severe alcoholic hepatitis.



As of May 9, 2017, 67 subjects were enrolled, out of a total anticipated cohort of at least 150 subjects.



Near-term catalyst:



-- The top line data from a phase III study of ELAD System in subjects with severe alcoholic hepatitis, dubbed VTL-308, are anticipated around mid-2018.



2. Egalet Corporation (EGLT)



Gained 17.02% to close Tuesday's trading at $2.75.



News: One of the largest payers in the United States will provide coverage of ARYMO ER, which was approved by the FDA in January of this year for treatment of chronic pain.



Commenting on the developments, Patrick Shea, chief commercial officer of Egalet said, 'Obtaining coverage of ARYMO ER for over 24 million member lives is an important step in the early phase of our launch and removes a barrier to access to healthcare providers and the patients they treat.'



3. Collegium Pharmaceutical Inc. (COLL)



Gained 10.16% to close Tuesday's trading at $10.30. This is the fourth straight day of gains.



News: No news



The Company currently has one marketed product Xtampza ER, an abuse-deterrent, extended-release, oral formulation of oxycodone approved by the FDA for the management of pain.



Recent event:



On June 1, 2017, one of the largest managed care organizations added Xtampza ER to its Medicare Part D formularies. The news sent COLL stock up nearly 12% that day.



4. Albany Molecular Research Inc. (AMRI)



Gained 8.90% to close Tuesday's trading at $21.53.



News: The Company has signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by affiliates of The Carlyle Group and GTCR LLC for $21.75 per share in cash.



Closing of the transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including, among others, the affirmative vote in favor of the transaction by holders of a majority of AMRI's outstanding common stock and the expiration of the waiting period under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976 and similar laws outside the U.S.



The special meeting of AMRI's stockholders to vote on the transaction is expected to be held in the third quarter of 2017, and, if the transaction is approved, the merger may close shortly thereafter.



5. bluebird bio Inc. (BLUE)



Gained 7.56% to close Tuesday's trading at $98.20.



News: Equity researchers at Wedbush have reiterated Ourperform rating on bluebird, with a price target of $100.



Recent event:



On June 5, 2017, the Company reported promising updated results from its ongoing Phase 1 clinical study of bb2121 in 18 patients with relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma. bb2121 is co-developed by bluebird and Celgene.



LOSERS



1. Aeglea Biotherapeutics Inc. (AGLE)



Lost 15.73% to close Tuesday's trading at $3.59.



News: The Company has priced its public offering of common stock at $4.10 per share.



About 3 million shares of common stock will be sold in the offering, with expected gross proceeds to Aeglea of $12.3 million. The offering is expected to close on June 9, 2017.



2. Celldex Therapeutics Inc. (CLDX)



Lost 12.45% to close Tuesday's trading at $2.39.



News: The Company announced data from Phase 1 portion of its Phase 1/2 dose escalation and cohort expansion study examining the combination of its investigational drug Varlilumab and Bristol-Myers Squibb's Opdivo. But investors are not impressed with the results.



The primary objective of the Phase 1 portion of the study was to evaluate the safety and tolerability of the combination. The Company noted that the combination of Varlilumab and Opdivo does not add toxicity, can turn some 'immune-cold' tumors hot, and may have clinical benefit, including in some patients who are not likely to respond to monotherapy.



The trial advanced to the Phase 2 portion last April, and it includes cohorts in colorectal cancer, ovarian cancer, head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, renal cell carcinoma and glioblastoma. The Phase 2 portion of the study is expected to complete enrollment in early 2018.



3. Corvus Pharmaceuticals Inc. (CRVS)



Lost 9.75% to close Tuesday's trading at $10.00.



News: The Company announced interim safety and efficacy results from renal cell carcinoma and non-small cell lung cancer expansion cohorts in its ongoing Phase 1/1b study evaluating CPI-444 as a single agent and in combination with Roche's Tecentriq. But investors didn't find the results exciting.



The findings suggest that CPI-444, both as a single agent and in combination with Tecentriq may induce tumor regression or disease control in the difficult-to-treat populations, says the Company.



4. Merus N.V. (MRUS)



Lost 7.65% to close Tuesday's trading at $16.79.



News: No news



Recent event:



On May 17, 2017, the Company reported promising results from phase 1/2 study of MCLA-128 in patients with HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer.



Near-term catalysts:



-- An Investigational New Drug application of MCLA-117 for a Phase 1 trial is planned for submission to the FDA during the second half of 2017. -- During the second half of 2017, Merus expects to report topline data from its Part 2 of Phase 1/2 monotherapy trial of MCLA-128 in patients with solid tumors in multiple indications. -- During the second half of 2017, Merus expects to report interim results from its Phase 1 clinical trial evaluating MCLA-117 in patients with AML. -- By the end of 2017, Merus expects to file a CTA (Clinical Trial Assessment) for a planned Phase 1/2 clinical trial of MCLA-158 in patients with colorectal cancer.



5. Vascular Biogenics Ltd. (VBLT)



Lost 7.34% to close Tuesday's trading at $5.05.



News: The Company announced new data from Phase 2 study of VB-111 in patients with recurrent glioblastoma on June 5, 2017.



Commenting on the findings, Yael Cohen, MD, Vice President of Clinical Development at VBL Therapeutics, said, 'We are encouraged by the Phase 2 results in rGBM, which also are consistent with the findings from our trials of VB-111 in ovarian cancer and thyroid cancer. The current data support the design of our ongoing Phase 3 GLOBE study in rGBM.'



The pivotal GLOBE study in rGBM, compares VB-111 in combination with Avastin to Avastin alone. The trial is currently being conducted in the US, Canada and Israel.



Near-term catalysts:



-- The company expects an interim analysis of the GLOBE trial to occur in the third quarter of 2017 -- The top-line results from the GLOBE trial are expected in early 2018.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

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BERLIN (dpa-AFX) - German real estate firm Deutsche Wohnen AG (DWHHF.PK) announced Tuesday the launch of new convertible bond offering of 800 million euros due 2026. The company also announced the repurchase of outstanding 400 million euros convertible bonds due 2021.



In a statement, the company said its management board, with the approval of the supervisory board, has resolved to concurrently launch the issue of 800 million euros convertible bonds with a conversion premium of 40% to 45% above the reference share price and a coupon of 0.10% to 0.60% maturing in January 2026.



Invitation to holders of the outstanding Deutsche Wohnen convertible bonds due in 2021 with an outstanding aggregate nominal amount of 400 million euros, which has current market value of approximately 708 million euros, to make offers to sell to the Company any and all of such bonds via a Reverse Dutch Auction.



According to the company, the transactions takes advantage of the current attractive financing environment and aims to optimize Deutsche Wohnen's capital structure through the early refinancing of the convertible bonds due 2021.



The issue of New Convertible Bonds will enable Deutsche Wohnen to extend its debt maturity profile while proactively reducing the shareholders' dilution risk. The proceeds of the New Convertible Bonds will be used to finance the Convertible Bonds Tender Offer and for general corporate purposes.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

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Innovative Symposium for Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Industries to Take Place in both Europe and U.S. in 2018

NORTH READING, Massachusetts, Dec. 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- TraceLink Inc., the World's Largest Track and Trace Network for connecting the life sciences supply chain and providing real-time information sharing for better patient outcomes, today unveiled FutureLink-a new and innovative annual gathering of commercial and operational executives from the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries who are dedicated to achieving regulatory compliance and shaping the future of digital drug supply with information sharing networks. As the only conference of its kind, FutureLink Munich will occur in June 2018, with FutureLink Chicago taking place in November 2018. Both events will provide a forum for a range of business leaders to foster innovative thinking, discuss actionable insights, and develop strategies that address rapidly approaching compliance deadlines-and the analog-to-digital information-sharing transformation taking place in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries.

Taking place on June 5 - 7, 2018, roughly eight months prior to the February 2019 EU FMD compliance deadline, FutureLink Munich will offer tailored conference experiences for:

Supply chain, compliance, and serialization leaders -who want to participate in focused workshops and develop specific action plans for achieving EU FMD compliance on time; and,

-who want to participate in focused workshops and develop specific action plans for achieving EU FMD compliance on time; and, Sales, marketing, financial, brand, and other commercial executives-seeking to delve into the most beneficial ways to leverage the use of unique serial number identifiers that accompany each prescription drug that moves through the supply chain for the purposes of extracting long-term business value, achieving new operational efficiencies, and improving the quality of medicines delivered to patients.

"The pharmaceutical and healthcare industries are in the midst of a massive transition. New regulations require complex digital connectivity and data exchange between trading partners, and primitive business processes and architectures are barriers to efficiently manage product recalls, returns, inventory, and more," said Shabbir Dahod, president and CEO of TraceLink. "By connecting more than 700 pharmaceutical manufacturers, distributors, hospitals and pharmacies to over 260,000 trading partners on our network, we've digitized the world's prescription drug supply chain, providing companies with the best platform for achieving compliance and transformational business value. At FutureLink, industry decision makers will come together to discuss compliance best practices and strategize about how to take advantage of real-time, collaborative information sharing that enables them to operate more cost effectively and deliver better patient outcomes."

FutureLink Munich: Unique Learning Paths for Executive Leaders with Compliance and Commercial Business Interests

Designed for both commercial and operational executives from the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries, FutureLink will deliver content that is customized for executives with interests in regulatory compliance and commercial initiatives.

Compliance-specific sessions will center on:

Implementation best practices, customer case studies, creating step-by-step execution plans to ensure compliance, practical user group training on TraceLink software applications, and requirements for rapid partner onboarding.

Commercial and value-oriented tracks will explore:

Brand protection, patient safety and financial reconciliation opportunities related to eliminating drug shortages, initiating instant and accurate product recalls, engaging healthcare providers and patients at the point-of-dispense, and more.

Both groups will have the opportunity to experience visionary keynotes, hands-on knowledge sessions, special interest group discussions, and networking with TraceLink partners, with but with content that caters to their specific interests.

Registration for FutureLink Munich is now open. For more information and to reserve a seat, please visit FutureLink Munich.

About TraceLink

TraceLink is the World's Largest Track and Trace Network for connecting the Life Sciences supply chain and eliminating counterfeit prescription drugs from the global marketplace. Leading businesses trust the TraceLink Life Sciences Cloud to deliver complete global connectivity, visibility and traceability of pharmaceuticals from ingredient to patient. A single point and click connection to the Life Sciences Cloud creates a supply chain control tower that delivers the information, insight and collaboration needed to improve performance and reduce risk across global supply, manufacturing and distribution operations. A winner of numerous industry awards including three consecutive years on Deloitte's Technology Fast 500 (ranked number 177 in 2017), the Amazon AWS Global Start-Up Challenge Grand Prize, and the Edison Award for Innovation in Health Management, the Life Sciences Cloud is used by businesses across the globe to meet strategic goals in ensuring global compliance, fighting drug counterfeiting, improving on-time and in-full delivery, protecting product quality and reducing operational cost. For more information on TraceLink and our solutions, visit www.tracelink.com or follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

TraceLink is funded by Goldman Sachs, FirstMark Capital, Volition Capital and F-Prime Capital.




Vekia, a key player in machine learning in the Supply Chain sector, a key figure in French Tech, and Euratechnologies incubatee, has attracted investors for another round. Leading this round have been Serena Capital and Bpifrance, as they join the company's previous investors: Pleiade Venture, CapHorn Invest and Zenium Technology Partners (ZTP), also participating in additional financing.

Vekia, a key player in machine learning in the Supply Chain market and an expert in forecasting demand and supply management, raises 12 million to accelerate its international expansion in the United Kingdom, the United States and China, as well as to boost its technological progress.

This fundraising follows an initial investment of 2.4 million in 2015. "Vekia is entering a crucial phase of its development in France, Europe and internationally. We are recognized as a leader in AI and an expert in forecasting demand and supply management. Today, this success and this acknowledgement allows us to complete a record fundraiser that shows the dynamism of the French technology industry. This new round will help us to realize our founding aim of offering next-generation Supply Chain solutions. This new capital will also give us the means to expand Vekia to Britain, the United States and Asia, while continuing to innovate to be as disruptive as possible," Vekia President Founder, Manuel Davy, and CEO, Dominique Rerat.

Applying Machine Learning to Supply Chain

Vekia is positioning itself in changing Retail market and equips distributors to face the new challenges of the sector and to satisfy ever more demanding consumers. Due to its strong industry knowledge, high technical skills and Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions, Vekia optimizes in-store and warehouse deliveries with an extremely accurate forecasting of demands and sales. This makes it so distributors can effectively respond to consumer purchases without cluttering their stores and warehouses with unnecessary stock.

With this solution, retailers increase turnover and margins, while also saving working capital. By considering transaction history, planned promotions and seasonality through an agile and robust platform, Vekia saves working time while ensuring up to 97% accuracy in its forecasts.

Vekia solutions are adapted to a number of industries, contributing to better margins, while encouraging relocation and reducing pollution and greenhouse gases by lessened transport and production.

Large names on Vekia's client list include Galeries Lafayette, Mr. Bricolage, Goal, Leroy Merlin and the Etam Group.

In terms of Vekia's technological strides, the company boasts 120 man-years in engine construction, due to the work of six dedicated AI scientists.

Global Acceleration and Enhanced Performance

Already positioned in Italy and Poland, Vekia opened a London office in April 2016. The fundraising will allow the startup to accelerate its investments in the UK market. Vekia also intends to continue international expansion by launching US activities by the beginning of 2018 prior to Asia.

Vekia currently employs 60 people and continues to build the team with plans to double the staff size in the next year. During the growth period, Vekia continues to enhance its AI solutions, specifically in Machine Learning, and now offers all its solutions in SaaS mode, to enable new technological advances.

For Anne-Valerie Bach, Partner at Serena Capital: "Vekia, rising star of the French Tech, has very good performance, exponential growth and financial strength. This success is first and foremost due to their great expertise in AI, mastery of complex Supply Chain processes and perfect knowledge of distribution. This startup has the potential to become an iconic success story and we are confident that it will become the world leader in its market in the coming years. We are pleased to provide our experience and support.

About Vekia

Awarded and recognized by international firms including Gartner, Vekia creates and implements the most advanced supply chain management solutions on the market with AI algorithms. Specialized in Retail, Vekia's provisional supply management solutions help distributors and manufacturers to achieve excellence in managing their inventories, with rapid and strong impacts on turnover and margin. Vekia improves every act of inventory management, whether small or large. The most innovative retailers already drive their stocks with Vekia: Galeries Lafayette, Mr. Bricolage, BUT, Leroy Merlin and Etam Group.

For more information: www.vekia.fr

About Serena Capital

www.serenacapital.com

About EuraTechnologies

www.euratechnologies.com/

About Bpifrance

www.bpifrance.fr Twitter: @bpifrance @bpifrancepresse

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170907005056/en/

Contacts:

Press Contact:

Serena Capital

Alexandra Andre, 33 6 13 45 51 35

Head of communication

aandre@serenacapital.com
Grandmother Sentenced To Life In Brutal Murder Of 8-Year-Old Girl

By Stephen Gossett in News on Jun 7, 2017 10:31PM





Helen Ford / Cook County Sheriff

A Chicago grandmother was sentenced to life in prison for the grisly torture death of her 8-year-old granddaughtera crime that sparked widespread outrage when it occurred, in 2013.

Judge Evelyn Clay on Wednesday delivered the sentence against Helen Ford, 55, who had previously been found guilty of murder in the killing.

Gizzell Ford's body was found strangled to death and beaten in 2013 in a filthy home that had been visited by an Illinois Department of Children and Family Services investigator just one month prior to the child's death. Prosecutors said Gizzell was dying from renal failure before she was strangled and killed because Helen and Gizzell's parents did not provide her with food or water, ABC7 reports. Ford, at 275 pounds, had beaten the 70-pound girl for several months prosecutors said, according to reports.

When the girl's body was discovered, she was wearing only a pair of green underwear and maggots had burrowed inside a wound on the back of Ford's head, prosecutors said. She had kept harrowing accounts of her abusive experiences in a diary that was found after her death.

The case brought forth widespread criticism against DCFS. The most recent director of the department, George Sheldon, stepped down one week ago amid controversy following the death of 1-year-old Semaj Crosby, in Joilet Township. He had signed on with the department after Grizzell's death.
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, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

EQT Mid Market to sell its stake in swiss smile, a leading quality dental chain in Switzerland , to Jacobs Holding AG

, to Jacobs Holding AG During EQT Mid Market's investment period, swiss smile has developed its corporate platform, made several add-on acquisitions and strongly increased revenues as well as strengthened the management team

The EQT Mid Market fund ("EQT Mid Market") has entered into an agreement to sell its stake in swiss smile (or the "Company") to Jacobs Holding AG ("JAG").

swiss smile is headquartered in Zurich and was founded in 2002 by the dentists and entrepreneurs Dr. Haleh Abivardi and Dr. Golnar Abivardi. The Company operates eleven clinics in Switzerland, provides a full range of dental care and services, and differentiates itself through astrong brand, high medical standards, convenient opening hours, a modern infrastructure and an outstanding patient experience.In addition, swiss smile has its own cosmetic products range in a joint venture which are distributed internationally.

EQT Mid Market invested in swiss smile in August 2013. The plan was to build and develop its corporate platform, expand the market position and accelerate growth. swiss smile has undergone a significant transformation together with EQT Mid Market through several key initiatives:

- Development of the organizational structure to prepare for further growth

- Acquisition of four dental practices to strengthen the footprint in Switzerland and manifest the already strong position in Zurich

- Opening of two new greenfield practices in Winterthur and Berne

- Strengthening the management team

- Substantial investments in marketing and corporate branding

The growth initiatives have resulted in strong financial performance, with swiss smile nearly doubling revenues in the period from 2012 to 2016.

"Since EQT invested in swiss smile, the market position in Switzerland has been strengthened further through acquisitions and greenfield openings while at the same time accelerating financial growth. The Company has evolved into a strong platform in its service offering to both patients and dentists. swiss smile is well prepared to continue to drive consolidation of the Swiss dental market. The management team has done an impressive job and we look forward to seeing swiss smile develop as part of JAG who have recently invested in the dental sector also in the Nordics and UK," says Vesa Koskinen, Partner at EQT Partners and Investment Advisor to EQT Mid Market.

The parties have agreed not to disclose the financial details of the transaction which is expected to close by the end of June 2017.

Contacts

Vesa Koskinen,

Partner at EQT Partners, Investment Advisor to EQT Mid Market,

+358-9-69624737

EQT Press Office,

+46-8-506-55-334,

press@eqtpartners.com

About EQT

EQT is a leading alternative investments firm with approximately EUR 36 billion in raised capital across 23 funds. EQT funds have portfolio companies in Europe, Asia and the US with total sales of more than EUR 19 billion and approximately 110,000 employees. EQT works with portfolio companies to achieve sustainable growth, operational excellence and market leadership.

More information: www.eqtpartners.com

About swiss smile

swiss smile is a leading quality dental chain in Switzerland. Founded in 2002 by the dentists and entrepreneurs Dr. Haleh Abivardi and Dr. Golnar Abivardi, swiss smile today operates eleven clinics in Switzerland. swiss smile provides a full range of dental care and services and differentiates itself through astrong brand, high medical standards, convenient opening hours, a modern infrastructure and an outstanding patient experience. Both in Switzerland and internationally, swiss smile has won several prizes for its innovative concept, exceptional services and excellent quality.

More information: www.swiss-smile.com

About Jacobs Holding AG

Jacobs Holding is a global professional investment firm based in Zurich and founded in 1994 by entrepreneur Klaus J. Jacobs. Its sole economic beneficiary is the Jacobs Foundation, one of the world's leading charitable foundations dedicated to child and youth development. Jacobs Holding has an established track record of holding its investment for long periods with the aim to successfully compete and become global market leaders in their respective fields. Previous investments include Jacobs Suchard AG and Adecco Group AG, current investments are Barry Callebaut AG, Colosseum Smile and Southern Dental.

More information: www.jacobsag.ch

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

http://news.cision.com/eqt-ab/r/eqt-mid-market-to-sell-its-stake-in-swiss-smile-to-jacobs-holding-ag,c2283073

The following files are available for download:
PUNE, India, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

The report"LiDAR Sensor Automotive Marketby Technology (Mechanical, and Solid State), Application (Semi-Autonomous, and Autonomous), Location (Bumper & Grill, Headlight & Taillight, Roof & Upper Pillar), Image Type (2D, and 3D), Vehicle Type - Global Forecast to 2030", published by MarketsandMarkets', the LiDAR Sensor Automotive Market is expected to grow from an estimated USD 735.0 Million in 2025 to a projected USD 2,557.3 Million by 2030, at a CAGR of 28.32%, during the forecast period.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160303/792302 )



Browse 91 market data tables and 54 figures spread through 164 pages and in-depth TOC on"LiDAR Sensor Automotive Market - Global Forecast to 2030"

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/lidar-sensor-automotive-market-34875060.html

Early buyers will receive 10% customization on this report

The market, by volume, is expected to reach 31,686.1 thousand units by 2030 owing to the technological superiority of LiDAR over other available sensors in the automotive industry, such as RADAR and cameras. Factors such as the rising popularity of semi-autonomous vehicles, government regulations for vehicle safety, and an increase in the adoption of ADAS technology by OEMs are driving the LiDAR Sensor Automotive Market.

Download PDF Brochure: http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownload.asp?id=34875060

The semi-autonomous market is estimated to be the largest market for the LiDAR Sensor Automotive Market, by application

The semi-autonomous segment is estimated to hold the largest market share of the LiDAR Sensor Automotive Market due to factors such as an increase in the demand for driving safety features, the development of cost effective LiDAR solutions, and increasing government regulations.

Make an Inquiry: http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Enquiry_Before_Buying.asp?id=34875060

The 3D segment market is estimated to be the fastest growing market of the LiDAR sensor automotive market, by image type

The 3D segment market is estimated to be the fastest growing market of the LiDAR Sensor Automotive Market, by image type due to the technological advantages over 2D LiDAR and an expected increased use of autonomous vehicle technology in the automotive industry. The accuracy and performance of 3D LiDAR in autonomous vehicles are far superior to conventional solutions such as RADAR and camera.

The European market is estimated to be the largest market in the LiDAR Sensor Automotive Market

The European market is projected to be the largest market in the LiDAR Sensor Automotive Market as the testing of autonomous vehicles has begun in several countries in the region, such as Germany and France. The investment in research and development in the European automotive industry is the largest worldwide, with about 180 automobile facilities across the region. The European LiDAR Sensor Automotive Market is led by the market in Germany owing to the increased demand for technologically advanced features in the country.

The LiDAR Sensor Automotive Market is dominated by a few globally established players such as Delphi Automotive, PLC (U.K.), Continental AG (Germany), ZF Friedrichshafen AG (Germany), Infineon Technologies AG (Germany), Velodyne LiDAR, Inc. (U.S.), Texas Instruments, Inc. (U.S.), Leddartech, Inc. (U.S.), First Sensor AG (Germany), Quanergy Systems, Inc. (U.S.), and Innoviz Technologies, Ltd. (Israel).

Browse related reports:

Automotive RADAR Market by Range Type (Long Range RADAR and Short & Medium Range RADAR), Application (ACC, AEB, FCWS, BSD, and Intelligent Parking Assistance), Frequency (2X-GHz and 7X-GHz), Vehicle Type, and Region - Global Forecast to 2021

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/automotive-radar-market-75536718.html

Semi-Autonomous and Autonomous Vehicles Market by Technology, Components, Powertrain (Conventional Vehicle, Hybrid Vehicle, and Electric Vehicle) and Region - Global Forecast to 2021 & 2030

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/near-autonomous-passenger-car-market-1220.html

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PALO ALTO, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 06/07/17 -- Yubico, the leading provider of authentication and encryption hardware for the modern web, today announced new funding from the company's' first institutional investors. The new investments will further drive the company's mission to create a safer internet for everyone, enabling simple protection for all logins and servers.

A total of $30M has recently been invested in Yubico, in combined secondary and new shares. New investors include New Enterprise Associates (NEA); one of the world's largest and most active global venture capital firms, the Valley Fund; a California based venture capital firm, and Bure; a leading Swedish growth equity firm.

"With nine of the top ten internet companies as YubiKey users, Yubico has built a strong foundation as an innovator of new global authentication standards," said Pete Sonsini, General Partner, NEA. "In a time when software does not offer sufficient protection for online accounts and sensitive data on servers, Yubico's hardware backed keys are proven at scale."

Today, half of the privately held company is owned by the Yubico founders and team, with the remaining evenly split across US and Swedish investors. Existing investors include renowned Silicon Valley profiles: Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, and Ram Shriram, Yubico Chairman and Google founding board member. All Yubico shareholders enjoy common shares and a democratic shareholder agreement; the combined total assets for all investors in the company exceeds $30 billion.

"Since our start in 2007 in Sweden, limited funds of $4M from angel investors helped to form the company into a global security leader, growing organically and with profits, protecting businesses and individuals in 160 countries," said Stina Ehrensvard, CEO and Founder, Yubico. "Funds from new investments will be used to grow our star team across four continents, and for new product development. We are here to unfold simple, distributed and highly scalable trust models for the internet."

The demand for strong, easy-to-use, and cost effective two-factor authentication and encryption hardware has fueled the expansion of the Yubico sales and engineering teams globally.

For more information and to learn more about Yubico and its products, please visit www.yubico.com.

About Yubico

Yubico sets new global standards for simple and secure access to computers, servers, and internet accounts.

The company's core invention, the YubiKey, delivers strong hardware protection, with a simple touch, across any number of IT systems and online services. The YubiHSM, Yubico's ultra-portable hardware security module, protects sensitive data inside standard servers.

Yubico is a leading contributor to the FIDO Universal 2nd Factor open authentication standard, and the company's technology is deployed and loved by 9 of the top 10 internet brands and by millions of users in 160 countries.

Founded in 2007, Yubico is privately held, with offices in Sweden, UK, Germany, USA, Australia, and Singapore.

For more information: www.yubico.com

Media Contact

Ronnie Manning

Director, Public Relations

619.822.2239

Email Contact




CANBERA (dpa-AFX) - The euro dropped against its major rivals in the European session on Wednesday. The euro hit 1.0841 against the Swiss franc, lowest since May 5. This may be compared to a high of 1.0862 hit at 3:00 am ET. The euro slipped to a 5-day low of 1.1211 against the greenback, 6-day low of 0.8691 against the pound and a 3-week low of 122.67 against the yen, from its early highs of 1.1282, 0.8739 and 123.52, respectively. The euro also weakened to a weekly low of 1.5071 against the loonie, new 3-week low of 1.4829 against the aussie and a 1-1/2-month low of 1.5579 against the kiwi, off its previous highs of 1.5175, 1.5030 and 1.5717, respectively. The next possible support for the euro is seen around 1.07 against the franc, 1.10 against the greenback, 0.84 against the pound, 120.00 against the yen, 1.48 against the loonie, 1.45 against the aussie and 1.53 against the kiwi. 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.
DORAL, FL / ACCESSWIRE / June 7, 2017 / Santo Mining Corp. dba PODWERKS (the "Company"), (OTC PINK: SANP) announce today that it has retained the design services of one of the North Eastern Europe top design firms (http://www.onedesign.by). One Design a 100% women owned design firm, with master designers Kate Khotsim Co-Founder & Kristina Karnatsevich Sr. Designer are the rising giants of the design landscape in North Eastern Europe. With countless accolades and collaboration and an impressive portfolio that includes some celebrity residences, fortune 500 offices as well as of some of Eastern Europe's most forward thinking spaces they are a force to reckon with. They have captured the eyes of the international media with their eclectic style and sustainable sensibilities offering a space warmth, richness, and personality. Eurasian design magazine described Belarusian designers Kate and Kristina's work as "the most cerebral, bound to be influential." As Kate and Kristina's brilliance and sophistication spreads throughout the world; Podwerks has been selected as one of their initial American partnership projects.

Kristina Karnatsevich Sr. Designer of One Design said, "Design isn't normally a primary concern in the cannabis industry, but that is something we are going to change. With the numerous PODWERKS co-grow communities and enterprise projects coming on stream we will have many opportunities to redefine the standard spaces used and needed in the cannabis industry. We are happy to partner with Podwerks as they experience steady growth, together we will deliver that eclectic magic and emblematic sense the interiors need in the cannabis industry." (http://www.onedesign.by)

Matthew Arnett, Chief Community Officer, CCO, of PODWERKS added, "With the demand inquirers we are experiencing, especially for our Podwerks enterprise products, Kate and Kristina will have their hands full designing revolutionary spaces for cannabis growers, executive and retailers alike. I believe that the love and passion that Kate and Kristina brings to the table not just helps guarantee our continued exponential growth but ensures our most exciting, growing dreams come true."

About PODWERKS (www.podwerks.com)

PODWERKS is a co-working space for cannabis entrepreneurs in the United States, providing the necessary framework to grow, market, and sell all cannabis related products. Our aim is to create a sustainable and community driven workspace by providing an affordable, scalable and a safe business environment for our tenants. All Podwerks spaces will feature three types of pods:

1-Growing pods o Nursery, Production and Drying

2-Office Space pods o Desk space, Wi-Fi, printers, copy machines, meeting rooms

3-Retail Space pods o Coffee Shop, Hardware Supply Shop, Co-op Shop



PODWERKS spaces will be located in urban designated zones permitting the commercial cultivation, and sales of cannabis related products. Each site will have an average of ten modified steel shipping container pods with an onsite manager overseeing day-to-day operations. Working with local and state agencies, Podwerks container pods will comply with all building code requirements to ensure the safety of our tenants. Community is an essential part to Podwerks mission of Grow for Life. PODWERKS tenants can benefit from a series of social and professional events designed to foster collaboration and create a strong and expansive community. Some of these events will include speaker series, investor panels and local governments outreach, among others.

PODWERKS is a division of Santo Mining Corp, a publically traded company in the Over-the-Counter (OTC) market. It currently trades under the ticker symbol SANP.

Media contacts:

PODWERKS

Mr. Matthew Arnett

844.420.4203

media@podwerks.com

http://www.podwerks.com/

Forward Looking Statements and Disclaimer

Statements made in this press release that express the Company or management's intentions, plans, beliefs, expectations or predictions of future events, are forward-looking statements. The words "believe," "expect," "intend," "estimate," "anticipate," "will" and similar expressions are intended to further identify such forward-looking statements, although not all forward-looking statements contain these identifying words. Those statements are based on many assumptions and are subject to many known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause the Company's actual activities, results or performance to differ materially from those anticipated or projected in such forward-looking statements. The Company cannot guarantee future financial results; levels of activity, performance or achievements and investors should not place undue reliance on the Company's forward-looking statements. No information contained in this press release should be construed as any indication whatsoever of the Company's future financial performance, future revenues or its future stock price. The forward-looking statements contained herein represent the judgment of the Company as of the date of this press release, and the Company expressly disclaims any intent, obligation or undertaking to update or revise such forward-looking statements to reflect any change in the Company's expectations with regard thereto or any change in events, conditions or circumstances on which any such statements are based. No information in this press release should be construed as any indication whatsoever of the Company's future revenues or results of operations.

SOURCE: Santo Mining Corporation
LUXEMBOURG, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

- EUR5m committed by Fondation Espoir for an ambitious FGM/C prevention and care programme to 2020

- 2,200 victims treated to date by 2 doctors hired by the programme

- 650 new cases monthly in two of the most affected regions of Ethiopia

Fondation Espoir, a foundation under the aegis of the Fondation de Luxembourg, is half-way through a ground-breaking five-year programme designed to help eliminate female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) in Ethiopia.

Significant results were delivered in just over two years, in collaboration with UNICEF Ethiopia, to raise awareness and accelerate prevention efforts in the two regions with the highest prevalence of FGM/C, Afar and Somali. The EUR5m budget set aside by Fondation Espoir has already helped in reaching more than 20,000 community members and over 2,200 religious leaders. Furthermore, 18 kebeles (sub-districts) in the Somali region have committed to abandon the practice and 2,200 victims have received care in the last year.

Approximately 65% of girls and women aged 15-49 have been cut, according to the 2016 Ethiopia Demographic and Health Survey (EDHS), this number rises to nearly 98.5% in the Somali region. Prevention work to tackle the practice on the ground is showing results and also girls and women have greater information on the treatment options available. Complications vary and require a thorough medical assessment, as treatments can range from psychological support to surgery in cases with severe complications. The programme financed by Fondation Espoir helped hire two doctors / gynaecologists responding to more than 650 new cases per month in clinics in Afar and Somali. Following the important work of sensitisation conducted on the issue, local health centres see a growing number of victims seeking help to alleviate symptoms and therefore, additional qualified doctors are needed in Afar and Somali to treat patients and train health workers.

Fondation Espoir set up this five-year programme after realising the focus on prevention was greater than on the care of victims and it decided to give both elements equal importance. The objective is to train up to 3,000 health workers by 2020, 650 health workers trained to date, and recruit an additional 4 gynaecologists in the coming months. Fondation Espoir, Fondation de Luxembourg and UNICEF continue to work closely to deliver results on the ground and assess how the programme might be extended beyond 2020 to support the efforts of Ethiopian Government to end FGM/C by 2025.

Fatima, 18, an FGM victim and activist in Erubti in the Afar region, said: "I don't need outside motivation to advocate against FGM, as I am a victim myself. Anyone who has experienced that kind of pain is motivated to act."

Dr Mariame Sylla, a UNICEF Health Specialist in Ethiopia, said. "Treating the consequences of FGM/C is as important as preventing the practice from happening. Effects include severe bleeding, chronic pain, complications with childbirth and even death. Fondation Espoir's support and guidance has been critical to give a voice to girls and women affected by FGM/C and seeking help to lead a normal life."

Dr Wirtgen, Board member of Fondation Espoir, said: "Fondation Espoir's objective remains to help eradicate FGM/C in Afar and Somali, two of the most affected regions and simultaneously offer treatment to victims to alleviate ongoing complications. We believe we can accelerate the pace of change and help the Government of Ethiopia reach its target of ending FGM by 2025. The programme is providing vital access to care to women who will otherwise continue to suffer in silence."

Female genital mutilation: the facts

FGM includes procedures that intentionally alter or cause injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons

More than 200 million girls and women alive today in 30 countries have undergone FGM

FGM is carried out on girls, predominatelybetween infancy and age 15

FGM has no health benefits and can cause severe bleeding, problems urinating, cysts, infections, as well as complications in childbirth and increased risk of newborn deaths

FGM is a violation of the human rights of girls and women

Contacts:

Maitland: Sundeep Tucker/Nathalie Falco/Cebby Bliss

T: +44-(0)-207-379-5151


MIAMI, FL -- (Marketwired) -- 06/07/17 -- Eight Dragons Co. (OTCQB: EDRG) announces today that it has acquired Park Road Solutions, Inc., a Miami based company that specializes in outsourced Chief Technology Officer, Chief Security Officer, and information technology managed services. The acquisition was achieved through a tax-free exchange of common stock between the companies.

We believe that the acquisition will combine Eight Dragons' prospective financial strength with Park Road's industry-specific knowledge and amplify its ability to compete in the executive IT consulting market, which according to data published by CompTIA.org is estimated to grow to $193 billion by 2019, a 12.5% Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR).

"I'm incredibly excited to join the Eight Dragons portfolio," says Jordan Fishman, Park Road Solutions Founder & President "Our businesses are complementary; there's tremendous potential and cross pollination opportunities."

"We are truly pleased to announce our partnership with Jordan Fishman and Park Road Solutions, Inc.," stated Una Taylor, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Eight Dragons. "Park Road Solutions is part of Eight Dragons' launch strategy to build a robust products and services revenue stream covering diverse and dynamic markets. Information services and security markets are central to all businesses. Park Road's unique capabilities and product offerings within the hedge fund industry will also help us establish new relationships with established entrepreneurs who finance and invest in companies that are aligned with our mission."

About Park Road, Inc.

Park Road Solutions, a Miami based company, specializes in outsourced Chief Technology Officer, Chief Security Officer, and information technology managed services. Their experience spans all major verticals including retail, education, finance, and healthcare with core competency and focus on Financial Service Providers such as Hedge Funds and Broker Dealer clients. Park Road Solutions provides unique domain expertise in Financial Regulatory, Compliance, Product Development and Managed IT Services. By utilizing bespoke and turnkey methodologies within its product offering, they ensure every solution is right sized and designed around client needs.

About Eight Dragons Company

Eight Dragons Company (OTCQB: EDRG) is a technology-investment company that invests in and operates companies to support a full-stack development eco-system. Headquartered in Miami, FL and commencing operations in 2017, Eight Dragons seeks to help companies using innovation and vision to address the world's biggest challenges and realize exponential opportunities. For more information on Eight Dragons, please visit our website at www.edrg.com, or follow us on Twitter at @edrgco (both of which are expressly not incorporated into this press release).

Forward-Looking Statements: Except for historical matters contained herein, statements made in this press release are forward-looking statements. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, words such as "may", "will", "to", "plan", "except", "believe", "anticipate", "intend", "could", "would", "estimate", or "continue", or the negative other variations thereof or comparable terminology are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance, or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Also, forward-looking statements represent our management's beliefs and assumptions only as of the date hereof. Except as required by law, we assume no obligation to update these forward-looking statements publicly, or to update the reasons actual results could differ materially for those anticipated in these forward-looking statements, even if new information becomes available in the future. The Company is subject to the risks and uncertainties described in its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the section entitled "Risk Factors" in its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2016 and its Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q.

Contact Information



Company Contact

Martin E. Schmieg

Chief Financial Officer

Eight Dragons Company

Tel. 1 (215) 300-9400

Email. martin.schmieg@edrg.com



For Media and Investor Contact:

Luna Consultant Group

702.333.4886

www.lcginfo.com




DALLAS, TX -- (Marketwired) -- 06/07/17 -- The Chron Organization, Inc. (OTC: CHRO) announced today that the Chairman has sent out a quarterly newsletter including important updates and commentary on recent major developments, milestones, and plans, particularly the Company's SEC filings and revenue generation efforts.

Within this newsletter, which is distributed quarterly from the desk of the Chairman to a listserv comprising over 1,400 subscribers, most of whom are shareholders, Chairman Byron Young provides a State of the Union style update on all activities pertaining to CHRON and its growing portfolio of subsidiaries.

In this quarter's edition, Young covers hot topics such as the company's positive revenue outlook, successful capital raising, ongoing commercial projects nationwide, recent strategic partnerships and acquisitions such as premier energy brokerage & advisory firm, North American Utility Partners (NAUP), the Form-10 filing to become fully reporting to the SEC, and forthcoming plans to file the S-1 and up-list to the OTCQB.

True to the spirit of transparency the Company has declared publicly since Chairman Byron Young and President Alex Rodriguez took over management at the end of 2016, CHRON maintains a website where shareholders can access all of its corporate communications, including press releases and blog updates from the executive management team. To subscribe to the official newsletter and keep up with all relevant correspondences, visit the corporate website at chronorganization.com and enter your preferred email address in the appropriate 'Sign up' bar at the bottom of the home page.

The Chairman's latest quarterly newsletter went out yesterday, June 06, 2017 at 3:30 pm CDT. If you are subscribed to the listserv but for some reason, failed to receive this latest communique, or if you are yet to subscribe, you may read the full updates therein by visiting the CHRON corporate site where the newsletter has also been published as a blog post. To access the blog update directly, simply click here.

The Company strongly encourages all shareholders to sign up to the newsletter to remain apprised of any and all important updates. Again, to subscribe, visit CHRON's official corporate website at chronorganization.com.

ABOUT THE CHRON ORGANIZATION, INC.

The Chron Organization, Inc. (OTC: CHRO), is an entrepreneurial-minded company founded and envisioned by Mr. Byron Young and Mr. Alex Rodriguez. The Company's purpose is to develop a portfolio of highly successful and unique wholly owned businesses by providing incubation, advisory and capital services to the same. CHRON's interests include the smart home services, Internet of Things (IOT) platforms, deregulated energy & energy efficiency offerings. To learn more about CHRON, visit the company's corporate website at www.chronorganization.com.

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This press release may contain forward-looking statements. The words "believe," "expect," "should," "intend," "estimate," "projects," variations of such words and similar expressions identify forward-looking statements, but their absence does not mean that a statement is not a forward-looking statement. These forward-looking statements are based upon the company's current expectations and are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties and assumptions. The company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Among the important factors that could cause actual results to differ significantly from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements are risks that are detailed in the company's filings at www.OTCMarkets.com

INVESTORS & MEDIA CONTACT:

Email: investors@chronorganization.com

Phone: (469) 626-5275

Fax: (469) 626-5101




TORONTO, ON--(Marketwired - June 07, 2017) - Golden Leaf Holdings Ltd. ("GLH" or the "Company") (CSE: GLH) (CSE: GLH.CN) (CNSX: GLH) (OTCQB: GLDFF), a leading cannabis oil solutions company built around recognized brands, is pleased to announce the closing of its previously announced acquisition (the "Acquisition") of a cultivation license and an extraction license in Nevada from NevWa, LLC (doing business as Grassroots) ("NevWa") indirectly, through a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Company. The purchase price for the Acquisition consists of US$2,125,000 payable in cash. In addition, the Company paid expenses relating to the Acquisition of approximately US$112,000.

NevWa's cultivation and extraction license, based out of Sparks, Nevada, allows for the distribution and sale of products across the state of Nevada, including in Las Vegas and Reno. Medical marijuana is currently legal in Nevada, and the state's recreational market is scheduled to launch in July 2017. Nevada's medical market also enables reciprocity for patients, whereby patients from other states can legally use their medical marijuana cards in Nevada, opening the medical market to the state's more than 40 million yearly visitors.

In connection with GLH's strategic acquisition program as previously announced, the closing of the Acquisition is expected to drive financial and shareholder value. It allows the Company to gain first mover advantage by receiving a prized license in Nevada to grow, process and distribute branded marijuana products. In addition, GLH obtains access to a highly sought after Las Vegas market and high volume dispensaries supported by a global tourism hub. The Company expects to leverage distribution in dispensaries and export GLH's brand portfolio of new and existing products to Nevada. Finally, the Company believes it will develop new market penetration to drive further brand equity and awareness of GLH's products.

Don Robinson, CEO of Golden Leaf Holdings, commented, "With the launch of the recreational cannabis market, a thriving tourism industry and the state's reciprocity cannabis law provisions, GLH is well positioned to launch its portfolio of differentiated brands into dispensaries across the state. We believe that Nevada has strong market potential and the opportunity exists to build strong brand loyalty with visitors from around North America who will be introduced to the Company's brands on store shelves."

The Acquisition constitutes a "related party transaction" for the Company under Multilateral Instrument MI 61-101 - Protection of Minority Security Holders in Special Transactions ("MI 61-101"), as Peter Saladino, a director of GLH owns 18.75% of the outstanding membership interests of NevWa and will receive 18.75% of the consideration paid by GLH for the Acquisition, after the deduction of approximately US$1.4 million for investments made in NevWa by other parties. Pursuant to subsections 5.5(a) and 5.7(1)(a) of MI 61-101, the Company is exempt from the requirements under MI 61-101 of having to perform a formal valuation of, and obtaining minority approval of, the Acquisition, as, at the time the Acquisition was agreed to, neither the fair market value of the subject matter of, nor the fair market value of the consideration for, the Acquisition, insofar as it involved "interested parties" (as defined in MI 61-101), exceeded 25% of the Company's market capitalization.

Mr. Saladino abstained from all board meetings relating to the Acquisition and abstained from voting on the resolution of the board of directors of the Company approving the Acquisition.

AC Group Financial Inc. acted as an advisor to the Company in connection with the Acquisition and the three other previously announced acquisitions being undertaken by the Company.

About Golden Leaf Holdings:

Golden Leaf Holdings Ltd. is one of the largest cannabis oil and solution providers in North America. It's a leading cannabis products company in Oregon built around recognized brands. GLH leverages a strong management team with cannabis and food industry experience to complement its expertise in extracting, refining and selling cannabis oil.

Disclaimer: This press release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities legislation. Forward-looking information includes, but is not limited to, statements with respect to the Company's future business operation, expectations of gross sales, the opinions or beliefs of management and future business goals. Generally, forward looking information can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans", "expects" or "does not expect", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", or "believes", or 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 information is subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information, including but not limited to general business, economic and competitive uncertainties, regulatory risks including risks related to the expected timing of the Company's participation in the Adult Use market, market risks, risks inherent in manufacturing operations and other risks of the cannabis industry. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such information 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 information. Forward-looking information is provided herein for the purpose of presenting information about management's current expectations relating to the future and readers are cautioned that such information may not be appropriate for other purpose. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking information, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. This Release does not constitute an offer of securities for sale in the United States, and such securities may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or an exemption from registration.

For further information, please contact:



Investor Relations - U.S.A.

Harrison Phillips

Viridian Capital Advisors, LLC

212-209-3086

hphillips@viridianca.com



Investor Relations - Canada

Paul Searle

Golden Leaf Holdings Ltd.

778-240-7724

psearle@goldenleafholdings.com



Eugene Hill

Chief Financial Officer

Golden Leaf Holdings Ltd.

ghill@goldenleafholdings.com
Writer Liu Zhenyun was the top scorer on Henan province's national college entrance exam in 1978.

Liu Zhenyun, best-seller author [Photo provided to China Daily]

Many other celebrities have also topped the exam over the years.

Li Yanhong from Baidu did well in 1987 when he was among the top examinees in Yangquan city, Shanxi province, and Liu Qiangdong from JD.com shone in 1992 in Suqian city, Jiangsu province.

"The exam offers a window and a new opportunity in life, and I wanted to seize the chance," says Liu Zhenyun, recalling how he quit the army to appear for the examination.

The memory was so intense for him that in 1987 he published his debut novella, Tapu.

It's a story about young people in a village preparing for the examsome succeed and some fail.

The novella was well received and launched his writing career.

Liu Zhenyun worked hard for the exam in his village in Yanjin county in Xinxiang, Henan province.

"I was very good at math. It helped me to score highest marks in my province," he says.

He says that math made him logical and sensitive to details, which are key qualities for storytelling and for writers to see through the mist in their search for the truth.

"Math helps me to deal with the connections between sentences and paragraphs," he says.

Liu Zhenyun is the author of the Mao Dun Literature Prize-winning novel One Sentence Worth Ten Thousand and I Did Not Kill My Husband, both best-sellers with film or TV adaptations.

Speaking about the impact of the exam on his life and writing, he says: "What it gave me was the chance to go to Peking University, which had a far-reaching influence on me, because at the time I was there the literary masters were alive and teaching there."

The university's Chinese literature department at that time had influential scholars from the May Fourth Movement like Wang Yao (1914-89); and founders of modern Chinese linguistics like Wang Li (1900-86); and Wu Zuxiang (1908-94).

"They changed me from the village writer I could have been, giving me a different perspective," says Liu Zhenyun.
LOS ALTOS, CA--(Marketwired - June 07, 2017) - Cloud native communications software leader Metaswitch today announced it has received top honors in three recent mobile industry awards programs. The company's "Complete VoLTE Deployment in Containers" was named "Most Innovative NFV Solution" in the Network Virtualization Europe Awards, announced June 6. Its VoLTE deployment with Canada's Iristel/Ice Wireless was named "Most Innovative VoLTE Launch over IMS" in the IMS World Forum Awards, announced May 23. The Metaswitch Converged Network Message Store (CNMS) was named "Service Provider Mobile - Best Enabling Technology" in ChannelVision's Visionary Spotlight Awards, announced May 19.

"We are extremely pleased that our mobile solutions and real-world deployments have been recognized through these top industry awards," said Ian Maclean, CMO for Metaswitch. "These awards are a testament to the success of our cloud native communications software, the dedication of our engineering and sales teams and the high levels of innovation that we and our customers are bringing to market."

The Awards

The Network Virtualization Awards recognize the latest innovations and developments in the virtualization industry, while exploring the benefits and challenges associated with the commercial deployment of NFV and SDN. The IMS World Forum Awards celebrate greatness in deployment and operational impact as operators strive to streamline their networks. The ceremony recognizes and endorses the latest developments in outstanding product development, game-changing solutions and innovative use cases. The Visionary Spotlight Awards competition was created to highlight both channel and service provider innovation in communications. The awards honor outstanding products, services and deployments across technology categories.

Metaswitch "Complete VoLTE Deployment in Containers" -- Network Virtualization Europe Awards "Most Innovative NFV Solution"

Metaswitch is the first company to deliver a complete Voice over LTE (VoLTE) offering built using cloud native software methodologies that can be deployed in public, private or hybrid cloud environments using lightweight containers. Virtualizing the operating system, rather than at the hardware level with hypervisors, dramatically reduces memory and software overheads, thereby enabling our individual virtualized network functions to instantiate immediately, providing both capacity and redundancy on-demand. Featuring highly automated commercial orchestration, the resulting solution represents millions of dollars in capital and operational cost savings over traditional NFV practices while dramatically increasing overall service agility.

Metaswitch and Iristel -- IMS World Forum's "Most Innovative VoLTE Launch over IMS"

Founded in 1999, Iristel and Ice Wireless, its mobility brand, were the first GSM-based networks in Canada, and the first 3G network among the indigenous people of the far north, who had no prior smartphone access. The companies have spectrum licenses in the Yukon, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut and Northern Quebec -- all rural communities that you can only get to via ice roads, plane, or boat in summer months. The Ice Wireless VoLTE network doubles throughput on the available spectrum, and gives users the ability to make a call and surf the Internet or watch a video simultaneously. The network is used by residents, businesses and schools, enabling levels and types of communications that were previously unavailable, including distance learning, unified communications, telemedicine and others.

Metaswitch Converged Network Message Store (CNMS) -- ChannelVision's Visionary Spotlight Awards "Service Provider Mobile - Best Enabling Technology"

CNMS is a highly scalable, resilient storage solution that provides unified access for multiple messaging services, through open application programming interfaces (API). As the first cloud native platform to provide unified, cloud-based storage of voicemail, chat, text and video messages, operators can use CNMS to enable a new wave of advanced, device-independent messaging services that connect third party businesses, enterprises and consumers. CNMS is available as a standalone platform, or as part of Metaswitch's broad suite of messaging solutions for mobile operators.

About Metaswitch

Metaswitch is the world's leading cloud native communications software company. The company develops commercial and open-source software solutions that are constructively disrupting the way that service providers build, scale, innovate and account for communication services. By working with Metaswitch, visionary service providers are realizing the full economic, operational and technology benefits of becoming cloud-based and software-centric. Metaswitch's award-winning solutions are powering more than 1,000 service providers in today's global, ultra-competitive and rapidly changing communications marketplace. For more information, please visit www.metaswitch.com.

Copyright  2017 Metaswitch Networks. "Metaswitch" and "Metaswitch Networks" are registered trademarks. Brands and products referenced herein are the trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

Press Contact

Wilson Craig

Mindshare PR

+1 408 516 6182

wilson@mindsharepr.com
MONACO CITY, Monaco, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

- Board of KAO Data Campus standardizes on StruxureWare for Data Centers suite at one of London's largest data centre developments

- Integration of PMS, EMS and BMS, together with Asset Management and operations management deciding factors

Schneider Electric, the global specialist in energy management and automation, has today announced the signing of an agreement with KAO Data Campus for the use of its market leading StruxureWare for Data Centers DCIM suite at one of London's largest data centre developments.

Paul Finch, Chief Operating Officer at KAO said, "The software management platform is a key strategic decision - something we have to get right as we expand to meet customer demand in a phased manner across the entire data centre campus. After a hard look at what was available on the market, as well as taking on board the views of our potential customers, KAO has chosen to standardize on the StruxureWare for Data Centers DCIM suite."

Jan Daan Luycks, KAO Chief Executive said, "Outsourcing data centre infrastructure to KAO enables customers to focus on their core competences. At KAO, we want to achieve leadership in delivering state-of-the-art colocation data centre infrastructure. It makes sense for us to turn to a leader in DCIM technology to enable KAO to be responsive, flexible and agile to the requirements of a wide range of colocation customers."

Schneider Electric's data centre management software capability enables power management software (PMS), energy management software (EMS) and building management software (BMS) to be integrated with a DCIM overlay to provide data centre customers with a range of services from IT asset management to power use monitoring and intelligence down to branch circuits. The company's software integration, together with its global footprint and standing in the market were key decision-making factors for KAO.

Tanuja Randery, Schneider Electric UK & Ireland Country President said, "We are delighted to have reached this agreement with KAO Data Campus and look forward to developing our partnership as they mature and grow in London. The use of StruxureWare for Data Centers throughout KAO will help the company to meet its goals for efficiency and reliability, as well as enhancing their customers' experience."

Matthew Baynes, Colocation and Telco Segment Director at Schneider Electric, said "The uniqueness of Schneider Electric's DCIM software suite brings visible cost efficiencies to KAO. Using StruxureWare for Data Centers, KAO have implemented a solution which eliminates integration costs and time, reduces risk, and simplifies commissioning and operations. Importantly, it this will deliver value to KAO customers in the colocation space.

KAO is currently advanced in the construction phase of its DC1 data centre at Kao Data Campus, targeting practical completion in December 2017. At launch, one technology suite capable of delivering 2.2MW with immediate capacity of 442 racks up to 58U will be available. When complete, the KAO Data Campus will comprise four data centres, each with four technology suites, using indirect evaporative cooling for increased efficiency. The 15 acre site is provisioned with a 43,5MVA power supply, and has dark fibre availability.

About Schneider Electric

Schneider Electric is the global specialist in energy management and automation. With revenues of ~25 billion in FY2016, our 144,000 employees serve customers in over 100 countries, helping them to manage their energy and process in ways that are safe, reliable, efficient and sustainable. From the simplest of switches to complex operational systems, our technology, software and services improve the way our customers manage and automate their operations. Our connected technologies reshape industries, transform cities and enrich lives. At Schneider Electric, we call this Life Is On.

About KAO Data

Situated in the London-Stansted-Cambridge technology corridor, KAO Data Campus is a 200m development comprising four 8.8MW data centres, each split into four 2.2MW halls over three floors, to provide a total of around 150,000 sq.ft white space. The facilities are served by a dedicated and redundant 43,5MVA power supply. The technical capability, hyper-connectivity strategy and secure data resilience of KAO Data Campus makes it ideally placed to support a range of enterprise businesses, including financial services, life sciences, defence and the health sector.

www.schneider-electric.com

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Media Contact

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Lavina Dsouza

Tel.: +44-7887-560218

lavina.dsouza@Schneider-electric.com



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FORT LAUDERDALE, FL -- (Marketwired) -- 06/07/17 -- VPR Brands, LP (OTC PINK: VPRB), a market leader specializing in vaporizers and accessories for essential oils, cannabis concentrates, and extracts, will be featuring its products and the company for presentation at the South-East Cannabis Conference and Expo June 9th-11th at the Fort Lauderdale, FL Convention Center. VPR Brands, LP will be showcasing its HoneyStick line of vaporizers, private label program, and offering a sneak peek at the new Aficionado Dab vaporizer set to launch on the 15th of June.

The theme of the event THE CANNABIS WORLD OF TOMORROW will focus on the rapidly expanding cannabis industry and our changing culture as well as the transitions and changes coming in Southeast marijuana policy in 2017 and 2018. The conference includes seminars from top industry leaders, celebrity appearances, and an exhibit hall filled with businesses showcasing industry related products and services.

"We always walk away from these events having met new potential customers and investors and we look forward to showcasing our company and products to a local crowd," says Kevin Frija, CEO of VPR Brands, LP. "Having this type of event right in our backyard speaks volumes for the progressive nature of our industry, it's exciting to see the growth happen right before our eyes, especially with Florida's recent passing of medical cannabis laws and the fact we are a close 4th right behind New York in population size and growing rapidly, this market is going to be an important one for the company."

"I am looking forward to attending the conference and networking with the South East cannabis community. Our distribution in our home state is already strong with some of the best distributor partners in the business and we anticipate the expansion and adaptation of the new medical cannabis laws for Florida and benefitting from its growth," said Dan Hoff, COO of VPR Brands, LP

About SECC Expo:

The Southwest Cannabis Conference & Expo (SWCC) and the Southeast Cannabis Conference and Expo (SECC) series are brought to you by Weedmaps, and several other national sponsors to host the most exciting professional and educational medical cannabis conferences the United States Cannabis industry has ever seen. SWCC & SECC Expo's are electric environments for industry members, entrepreneurs, local leaders, companies, job seekers and curious individuals to come learn about the rapidly expanding cannabis industry and our changing culture. A business-to-business event bringing together experts from the local, regional and national cannabis industry to network and share the latest industry information is an event where individuals interested in the industry can learn more from these industry experts.

About VPR Brands, LP:

VPR Brands is a technology company, whose assets include issued U.S. and Chinese patents for atomization related products including technology for medical marijuana vaporizers and electronic cigarette products and components. The company is also engaged in product development for the vapor or vaping market, including e-liquids. Vaporizers and electronic cigarettes (also known as e-cigarettes) are devices which deliver nicotine and or cannabis through atomization or vaping, and without smoke and other chemical constituents typically found in traditional products. For more information about VPR Brands, please visit the company on the web at www.vprbrands.com and www.vapehoneystick.com

Forward-looking statements:

This news release contains statements that involve expectations, plans or intentions, and other factors discussed from time to time in the company's Securities and Exchange Commission filings. These statements are forward-looking and are subject to risks and uncertainties, so actual results may vary materially. The company cautions readers not to place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date made. The company disclaims any obligation subsequently to revise any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of such statements or to reflect the occurrence of anticipated or unanticipated events.

Contact Information:

VPR Brands, LP

Kevin Frija

CEO

(954) 715-7001

info@vprbrands.com

www.vprbrands.com




MISSISSAUGA, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 06/07/17 -- KP Tissue Inc. ("KPT") (TSX: KPT) will hold its Annual Meeting of Shareholders in Toronto, Ontario, Thursday, June 8, 2017. The meeting will take place in the Gallery Room of the TMX Broadcast Centre, 130 King Street West, Toronto, Ontario, at 2:00 p.m. All interested individuals are cordially invited to participate in this event.

For shareholders, media and other interested parties who are unable to attend the meeting the presentation material will also be available on the web site www.kptissueinc.com.

About KP Tissue Inc.

KP Tissue Inc. (KPT) was created to acquire, and its business is limited to holding, a limited partnership interest in KPLP. For more information visit www.kptissueinc.com.

About Kruger Products L.P.

Kruger Products L.P. is Canada's leading manufacturer of quality tissue products for household, industrial and commercial use. Kruger Products L.P. serves the Canadian consumer market with such well-known brands as Cashmere, Purex, SpongeTowels, Scotties and White Swan. In the U.S., Kruger Products L.P. manufactures the White Cloud brand, as well as many private label products. Kruger Products L.P. has approximately 2,500 employees and operates eight FSC CoC-certified (FSC C104904) production facilities in North America. For more information visit www.krugerproducts.ca.

Source KP Tissue Inc.

Contacts:

INFORMATION:

Francois Paroyan

General Counsel and Corporate Secretary

KP Tissue Inc.

905.812.6936

francois.paroyan@krugerproducts.ca



INVESTORS:

Mike Baldesarra

Director of Investor Relations

KP Tissue Inc.

905.812.6962

IR@KPTissueinc.com




VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 06/07/17 -- Otis Gold Corp. (TSX VENTURE: OOO)(OTC PINK: OGLDF) (the "Company" or "Otis") is pleased to announce the commencement of field work at its Oakley Project ("Oakley"), Cassia County, Idaho. The phase one program consists of geologic mapping and surface sampling at Matrix Creek, an emerging exploration target at Oakley. Prior Otis field work (see Otis news release dated September 18, 2014) at Matrix Creek identified a detachment-related silver-gold system on the west flank of the Albion metamorphic core complex believed to be several miles long. In 2015, 14 rock-chip samples collected and assayed from a large, prominent outcrop, produced an average of 70.4 g/t Ag and 0.55 g/t Au contained within a black matrix breccia believed to be part of a large mineralized detachment system. Preliminary 48-hour bottle-roll results performed by ALS Chemex Labs in Vancouver, B.C., suggest that the gold is up to 82% recoverable and that the silver is up to 93% recoverable.

The current program consists of 1,350 soil and rock-chip samples which are being collected on a 200 metre by 25 metre grid in addition to approximately 40 stream sediment samples. The Company plans to use this information to develop a first phase drill program at Matrix Creek. Additionally, the Company is developing a plan to conduct a broader geophysical program to help better define exploration targets at Blue Hill Creek, Matrix Creek and Cold Creek, and potentially new targets that may require the expansion of the Company's land position. Results of the mapping and sampling program will be released shortly after the program has been completed.

About the Oakley Project

The Oakley Project targets a classic epithermal hot spring-type gold exploration setting with three primary geologic targets: Blue Hill Creek, Matrix Creek and Cold Creek. The Oakley Project contains a NI 43-101 Technical Report (dated August 8, 2016) on the Blue Hill Creek and Matrix Creek targets, which includes an Inferred Resource of 163,000 oz Au in 9.97 million tonnes at a grade of 0.51 g/t Au (see Otis news release dated September 23, 2016). Blue Hill Creek occurs within a north-trending, five-mile-long by one-mile-wide zone of low-sulfidation, hot spring-type gold occurrences along the western margin of the Albion Range metamorphic core complex. Matrix Creek is distinctive from Blue Hill Creek in terms of mineralization, host lithology and structure. Matrix Creek is located southeast and south of Blue Hill Creek and is named because it is characterized by a distinctive carapace of breccia up to 12 metres thick which consists of quartzite fragments separated by black to dark grey matrix of extremely fine-grained quartz and pyrite.

Oakley has district-sized potential for gold and silver mineralization but has received only limited historic drilling. Numerous drill targets have been identified at both Blue Hill Creek and Cold Creek from a CSAMT survey completed in 2008. Historic drilling at both targets confirm the presence of significant thicknesses of bulk-tonnage, epithermal hot-spring-type gold mineralization along strike and at depth of the deposits.

The Qualified Person under National Instrument (NI 43-101) Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects for this News Release is Paul D. Gray, P. Geo, who has reviewed and approved its technical content.

About the Company

Otis is a resource company focused on the acquisition, exploration, and development of precious metal deposits in Idaho, USA. Otis is currently developing its flagship property, the Kilgore Gold Project, located in Clark County, Idaho.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD

"Craig T. Lindsay"

President & CEO

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

This News Release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to sell any 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 "US Securities Act") or any State securities laws, and may not be offered or sold within the United States or to US Persons unless registered under the US Securities Act and applicable State securities laws, or an exemption from such registration is available.

Contacts:

Mr. Tony Perri

Corporate Development

Tel: (604) 424-8100

Email: tony@otisgold.com




LAS VEGAS, NV -- (Marketwired) -- 06/07/17 -- Adama Technologies Corp. (OTC PINK: ADAC) announced today that it has signed two separate Letters of Intent to complete two acquisitions. The first transaction is with EZMart Food Stores, Inc. to acquire two convenience store and travel center locations, one located in Cusseta, Alabama and the other in Holiday, Florida. The two stores combine for more than $17 million in annual sales and the Cusseta location includes more than 18 acres of undeveloped land that can and will be used for future development and additional operational opportunities.

The second acquisition is with Element 99, which is a multi-faceted technology company that offers a variety of user experiences including an entrepreneur growth platform called PRENR. It also offers an augmented reality experience that offers futuristic merchant options within this exciting and fast growing field. Eric Sills, CEO of Adama Technologies commented on the news of these two acquisitions, "This is just an exciting time at Adama Technologies and I want to thank all of the talented people on the Adama team that have been working so hard to complete these two transactions. From the outside looking in, these acquisitions look like very different business operations, but these deals reflect our core strategy as a company and demonstrate our commitment to a diversified and dynamic approach."

The company stated that they plan to complete the acquisition of the first travel center in Cusseta, Alabama on July 1 and the second location in Holiday, Florida by August 15. The Element 99 transaction is scheduled to close this week.

When asked about the diversified strategy and approach Adama Technologies is pursuing, Mr. Sills responded, stating, "We believe that for every technology company that makes it big, there are 100 companies that had ideas and plans that were just as good that just didn't move quickly enough to capitalize on the opportunity in front of them. That is why we are intentionally looking for companies that are proven and historically reliable and then, at the same time, pursuing technology companies that have the ability to transform the world. Alpine Industries is a company that has been in business since 1967, it is a proven performer. These convenience stores are reliable revenue generators. The stability of those operations allow us to pursue a company like Element 99 that could transform the way people interact with the products they buy for years to come. It could change e-commerce as we know it. This diversified approach assures our longevity and still allows us to pursue these exciting technology concepts that can be very, very profitable."

The company stated that additional details on the acquisitions will be made available on their website with even greater details planned to be released in the coming days.

Disclaimer

This release contains forward-looking statements that are based on beliefs of Adama Technologies Corp. management and reflect Adama Technologies Corp.'s current expectations as contemplated under section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and section 21E of the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. When we use in this release the words "estimate," "project," "believe," "anticipate," "intend," "expect," "plan," "predict," "may," "should," "will," "can," the negative of these words, or such other variations thereon, or comparable terminology, are all intended to identify forward looking statements. Such statements reflect the current views of Adama Technologies Corp. with respect to future events based on currently available information and are subject to numerous assumptions, risks and uncertainties, including but not limited to, risks and uncertainties pertaining to development of mining properties, changes in economic conditions and other risks, uncertainties and factors, which may cause the actual results, performance, or achievement expressed or implied by such forward looking statements to differ materially from the forward looking statements. The information contained in this press release is historical in nature, has not been updated, and is current only to the date shown in this press release. This information may no longer be accurate and therefore you should not rely on the information contained in this press release. To the extent permitted by law, Adama Technologies Corp. and its employees, agents and consultants exclude all liability for any loss or damage arising from the use of, or reliance on, any such information, whether or not caused by any negligent act or omission. This press release incorporates by reference the Company's filings with the SEC including 10K, 10Q, 8K reports and other filings. Investors are encouraged to review all filings. There is no assurance Adama Technologies Corp. will identify projects of merit or if it will have sufficient financing to implement its business plan. There is no assurance that the Company's due diligence on the potential acquisition of oil and gas assets will be favorable nor that definitive terms can be negotiated. Information in this release includes representations from the private companies referred to which has not been independently verified by the company. A downturn in oil prices would affect the potential profitability of the proposed acquisition negatively.

Adama Technologies Corp.

1000 N. Green Valley

Suite 380

Henderson, NV 89074

Phone: (866) 859-8697

Website: www.AdamaTechnologies.com




VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 06/07/17 -- Mundoro Capital Inc. (TSX VENTURE: MUN) (www.mundoro.com) ("Mundoro" or the "Company") is pleased to announce the results from drilling at the Borsko Jezero license ("Borsko"). Borsko is one of the four licenses part of the JOGMEC-Mundoro option to earn-in agreement announced in August 2016. Borsko is located directly west of the Serbian state-operated producing mines, RTB Group's Bor copper porphyry mine and the Veliki Krivelj copper-gold porphyry mine, all located in the central portion of the Timok Magmatic Complex ("Timok"). See Figure 1 - Location Map of Borsko Drill Targets.

Teo Dechev, CEO & President of Mundoro commented, "We are strongly encouraged by the alteration and mineralization we have intercepted in the drill core thus far at the Borsko license and that the results to date from the initial drill holes provide support for the project's potential to host a copper-gold epithermal and porphyry system. We are planning, along with our partner JOGMEC, for further drilling at Borsko in the second half of 2017."

Borsko Drill Program

Overview

The Borsko drill program tested the first two of six targets generated by the 2016 field program (Figure 1 - Location of Borsko Drill Targets). For the 2016 field program, Mundoro carried out a soil sampling program over the central portion of the license to follow up on high copper-gold stream sediment anomalies which could not be explained by previous prospecting and rock sampling. The soil sampling results returned significant copper-gold anomalies which remain open to the north and south. Follow-up field work revealed association of some of the soil anomalies with altered dike contacts, discrete quartz stockwork veinlets and fine grained sulphides related to fault-fracture zones. Mundoro conducted ground magnetic and CSAMT surveys, structural analysis and limited trenching over certain soil anomalies.

Geology Interpretation of Borsko License Area

The Borsko license is located in the Timok Magmatic Complex which is one of the most prolific metallogenic domains in the Tethyan Belt. The geologic units in this licence area consist of Upper Cretaceous volcano-sedimentary successions, predominantly andesite and pyroclastics. Generally considered the most prospective geological units, the Phase 1 hornblende porphyry andesite occupies the easternmost boundaries of the Borsko license and dips moderately to southwest under the andesitic flows and interflow breccias and pyroclastic rocks of the second phase.

The H1-2017 drillholes are located approximately 2.5 kilometers west of the Bor group of copper-gold deposits which include high sulphidation epithermal mineralization such as the historical Tilva Rosh deposit which has been mined out and reported to have been intersected in the uppermost 30m meters of the lithocap.

The interpretation of Borsko geology summarized above along with models of known deposits in the district highlights the uppermost part of the lithocap, immediately below the less-altered volcanic sequence, as the prime target for any high-sulphidation copper-gold orebodies of Bor and Cukaru Peki type. Any such massive and/or stockwork sulphide bodies are likely to lie within the footprint of the underlying porphyry copper-gold centre.

The H1-2017 drilling at Borsko shows that an advanced argillic lithocap underlies 550 m of little-altered andesitic volcanic rocks, which were in existence at the time the advanced argillic alteration took place. The lithocap is weakly mineralized but, importantly, the highest copper and gold assay values lie immediately beneath its top, which is the equivalent stratigraphic position of the Bor and Cukaru Peki high-sulphidation copper-gold orebodies with respect to their associated lithocaps.

Hole BJ-07 exits the lithocap at depth and intersects pyrite-bearing propylitic alteration, which is interpreted to be the outer halo of a porphyry copper-gold centre. Additional holes are planned in order to search for high-sulphidation orebodies at the top of the Borsko lithocap.

Target 1 - See Figure 2 - Cross Section of Target 1

-- Drillhole BJ_06, which tested one of the newly generated drill targets at Borsko successfully demonstrated that a potentially mineralised system exists under overlying andesitic flows. This drill hole targeted an interpreted blind system at Target 1. Targeting was based on geophysical data and geological interpretation. The hole was completed at a depth of 821.6 m. -- BJ_07: Based on the visual inspection of BJ_06, Mundoro and JOGMEC determined to extend the drill program to further test Target 1 with a follow up drill hole, BJ_07, up to 1300 m length.

Target 2 - See Figure 3 - Cross Section of Target 2

-- BJ_08: This diamond drill hole was designed to test Target 2 with a planned depth of 700 m. Based on visual inspection of the core, Mundoro and JOGMEC determined to extend the drilling to 1,000 m. Target 2 was based on geophysical data and structural interpretation in relation to surface geochemistry and hydrothermal alteration.

Table 1: Borsko Drill Holes Observations

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Drill Total Dip/ Geological description Hole Depth Azimuth ID ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- BJ_06 821.6m EOH -65/246 - From surface to 585 m, cut through a package of weak but pervasively altered to chlorite- smectite, lacking pyrite andesitic flow and interflow breccias; - At 585 m the drill hole abruptly entered advanced argillic mainly kaolinite lithocap containing disseminated pyrite increasing at depth. - From 625 m to 767 m (142 m) the drill hole entered pervasively silicified andesite volcanics containing semi-massive pyrite, vuggy silica and breccia zones. The breccias are polymictic and relatively late stage. - From 762.6 m to 767 m such breccia contains 4.4m @0.27 g/t Au, 5.46 g/t Ag; including 0.6m @ 0.8 g/t Au, 24.3 g/t Ag and 0.18% Cu. - From 765 m to end of the hole at 821 m, the drill hole transitioned to advanced argillic altered partly brecciated andesitic volcanics containing more dickite with occasional sericite-pyrite and semi-massive pyrite implying increased temperature. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- BJ_07 1301.9 m EOH-85/66 - From surface to 580 m, intersected a package of weak but pervasively altered to chlorite- smectite, lacking pyrite andesitic flow and interflow breccias; - From 580 m to 1132 m (552 m) the drill hole entered advanced argillic quartz-kaolinite lithocap as in drill hole BJ-06. - In the lithocap, quartz-kaolinite-pyrite transitions downwards at around 1100 m to quartz-kaolinite-dickite-pyrophyllite-pyrite implying increased temperature. Pyrite is fine-grained locally sooty (melnikovite) and occurs in disseminated and semi-massive pods rather than veinlet form. - The lithocap is locally overprinted by 1-5 m intervals of cream-colored silicification cut by irregular veinlets and patches of massive pyrite. Vuggy residual quartz and subsidiary alunite are also observed locally. - From 1032 m enargite-pyrite mineralisation is observed in an interval 6.2m containing 0.26 g/t Au, 2.6 g/t Ag, 0.2% Cu including 1.4m with 0.6 g/t Au, 0.23% Cu and 0.7 m with 0.14 g/t Au, 0.6% Cu. - From 1132.5 m to the end of the drill hole at 1302 m, the lithocap is transitional to propylitic alteration in which magnetite is preserved and pyrite contents are much less. The transition zone contains remnant chlorite but lacks epidote that defines the underlying propylitic zone. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- BJ_08 1002 m EOH -75/351 - From surface to 509 m, drilled through alternating andesitic agglomerate and andesite tuff weakly chlorite-smectite altered. - From 509 m to 615 m drill hole continued through sedimentary package of marl and conglomerates layered with andesite tuff. - From 615 m to 682 m, the drill hole intersected unaltered coarse-grained hornblende andesite ('Phase 1 andesite'). - From 682 m to the end of the drill hole 1002 m, the drill hole continued in weakly chlorite-smectite altered hornblende andesite and andesitic breccia with trace of chalcopyrite-pyrite mineralised clasts at 695.5 m and 749.6 m. - At 942.4m the drill hole cut through interval with covellite mineralisation which returned 0.9m @ 0.83 g/t Au and 2.63% Cu. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Table 2: Assay Results of Borsko Drilling

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Drill Hole Total Dip/ From To Interval Cu Au CuEq ID Depth Azimuth (m) (m) (m) (%)(1) (g/t)(2) (%)(3) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 821.6 m BJ_06 EOH -65/246 758.4 767.0 8.6 0.023 0.2 0.17 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Including 764.6 765.2 0.6 0.18 0.78 0.75 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1301.9 BJ_07 m EOH -85/66 607.6 609.0 1.4 0.004 1.03 0.76 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 734.0 738.4 4.4 0.01 0.16 0.13 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 768.3 769.7 1.4 0.008 0.45 0.34 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 771.9 775.0 3.1 0.006 0.24 0.18 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 873.0 875.5 2.5 0.27 0.33 0.51 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- including 875.1 875.5 0.4 0.71 0.65 1.18 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 989.5 992.5 3.0 0.03 0.15 0.14 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1006.0 1013.8 7.8 0.02 0.14 0.12 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1032.0 1050.0 18.0 0.07 0.17 0.19 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- including 1032.0 1035.4 3.4 0.27 0.33 0.51 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1130.0 1132.5 2.5 0.03 0.28 0.23 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- including 1131.8 1132.5 0.7 0.05 0.77 0.61 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1002 m BJ_08 EOH -75/351 625.0 627.0 2.0 0.1 0.007 0.11 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 942.4 943.3 0.9 2.63 0.83 3.24 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Analysis by ICP-AES using 0.5 g aliquot for samples containing less than 1% copper, by AAS for samples containing 1 - 11% copper, and by ICP-AES using 0.1 g aliquot for samples containing greater than 11% copper. 2. Analysis by fire assay with gravimetric finish for samples containing greater than 3 g/t gold, and by fire assay with AAS finish for samples containing less than 3 g/t gold. 3.The copper equivalent (CuEq%) is calculated from the formula CuEq = (%Cu) + ((g/t/AuEq) x (1/31.1035) x ($/ozAu)) / ((22.0462) x ($/lbCu)) 4. The gold equivalent is calculated from the formula AuEq = (g/t/Au)+((%Cu) x (22.0462) x ($/lbCu)) / ((1/31.1035) x ($/ozAu)). 5. All thicknesses from intersections from drill holes are down-hole drilled thicknesses. At this early stage of exploration for a high-sulphidation epithermal and porphyry system at depths typical of the Timok, it is not possible at this time to determine the orientation of the mineralized zones, or to estimate their true thickness.

Next Steps

The Company is preparing a follow up drilling program for the second half of 2017. Based on the data collected in this most recent drill program and the associated analysis and interpretation, the Company and its partner JOGMEC, believe that Borsko has strong potential to host high sulphidation and porphyry style copper-gold mineralisation. Mostly notably, the prospective lithocap horizon discovered through this program is directly analogous with the host horizons at the Bor underground high sulphidation deposits and Cukaru Peki discovery.

JOGMEC-Mundoro Option to Earn-in Agreement

In July 2016, the Company amended its binding interim agreement (the "Interim Agreement") with Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation ("JOGMEC") and granted to JOGMEC an earn-in option on four of Mundoro's exploration licenses: Dubrava, Padina, Zeleznik and Borsko Jezero (the "Timok North Projects") located within the Timok Magmatic Complex in northeastern Serbia. JOGMEC has the option to earn a 51% interest in the Timok North Projects by making US$4 million in expenditures within three years (March 2019) ("Stage One Earn-in"). JOGMEC has completed its commitment to expend US$1 million of this amount by March 2017. Following the Stage One Earn-in, JOGMEC has a right to acquire an additional 24% interest in the Timok North Projects, for a total of 75% interest, by funding the completion of a Feasibility Study (up to US$32 million) by the eighth anniversary of the Interim Agreement (March 2024) ("Stage Two Earn-in"). On completing the Stage Two Earn-In, JOGMEC will have a right, exercisable for a period of 60 days, to purchase an additional 5% interest in the Timok North Projects from Mundoro, for a total of 80% interest.

Qualified Person

Technical information contained in this Press Release has been reviewed and approved by Mr. G. Magaranov, P. Geo., Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101.

QA/QC, Sampling and Analysis

Drillhole orientations were surveyed at approximately 30 m intervals. Company personnel monitored the drilling, with cores delivered daily to the Company's core storage facility in the town of Bor, where it was logged, cut and sampled. Core recovery is recorded as 95-100% in most intervals, with the exception of the more intensely tectonized sections. The samples were collected in accordance with the Company's protocols that are compatible with accepted industry procedures and best practice standards. Most samples through the mineralized intervals were 1 metre in length, up to a maximum 2 metres. In sections of poorly mineralized or unaltered and unmineralised rocks one 2m sample was collected at every 15 meters core. The samples were submitted to ALS Laboratory in Bor, Serbia, for sample preparation and analysis. In addition to the laboratory's internal QA/QC procedures, the Company conducted its own QA/QC with the systematic inclusion of certified reference materials every 20 samples, blank samples every 20 samples and field duplicates at every 25 samples.

On behalf of the Company,

Teo Dechev, Chief Executive Officer, President and Director

About Mundoro Capital Inc.

Mundoro is a Canadian mineral exploration and development public company focused on building value for its shareholders through directly investing in mineral projects that have the ability to generate future returns for shareholders. The Company currently holds a diverse portfolio of projects in two European countries as well as an investment in a producing gold mine in Bulgaria and a feasibility stage gold project in China. The Company holds eight 100% owned projects in Serbia, the four Timok North Projects are in option to JOGMEC, and the four Timok South Projects are being advanced by Mundoro. Mundoro's common shares trade on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol "MUN".

Caution Concerning Forward-Looking Statements

This News Release contains forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking words such as "will", "expect", "intend", "plan", "estimate", "anticipate", "believe" or "continue" or similar words or the negative thereof, and include the following: completion of the earn-in expenditures and options by JOGMEC; and completion of a definitive joint venture agreement by the parties. The material assumptions that were applied in making the forward looking statements in this News Release include expectations as to the mineral potential of the Timok North Properties, the Company's future strategy and business plan and execution of the Company's existing plans. We caution readers of this News Release not to place undue reliance on forward looking statements contained in this News Release, as there can be no assurance that they will occur and they are subject to a number of uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. These factors include general economic and market conditions, exploration results, commodity prices, changes in law, regulatory processes, the status of Mundoro's assets and financial condition, actions of competitors and the ability to implement business strategies and pursue business opportunities. The forward-looking statements contained in this News Release are expressly qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement. The forward-looking statements included in this News Release are made as of the date of this News Release and the Board undertakes no obligation to publicly update such forward-looking statements, except as required by law. Shareholders are cautioned that all forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties and for a more detailed discussion of such risks and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, refer to the Company's filings with the Canadian securities regulators available on www.sedar.com.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Contacts:

Mundoro Capital Inc.

Teo Dechev

CEO, President and Director

+1-604-669-8055

www.mundoro.com




MONTREAL, QUEBEC -- (Marketwired) -- 06/07/17 -- Beaufield Resources Inc. ("Beaufield") (TSX VENTURE: BFD) is pleased to announce the closing of the acquisition of a 100% interest in the 299 hectare Windfall East project (the "Property") from Alto Ventures Ltd. ("Alto") (TSX VENTURE: ATV) (acquisition announced by news release on May 24(th), 2017). The property, strategically located, is adjacent to Osisko Mining's Windfall deposit and on trend from Osisko's new Lynx discovery in Urban-Barry Township, Quebec. Property location is shown on the adjoining map.

At Closing, Beaufield paid $300,000 in cash and issued 2,750,000 Beaufield's shares subject to a four month hold period. Alto retains a 1% Net Smelter Return Royalty ("NSR") on the property with a buyback provision for 0.5% of the NSR by Beaufield for $1 million. Beaufield also assumed and agreed to be bound by an underlying agreement in connection to an additional 2% NSR held by a third party on the Property.

Concurrently with this acquisition, Beaufield subscribed for 2,916,667 shares of Alto for proceeds of $350,000 (the "Private Placement Shares"). This represents approximately 6.8% of the outstanding shares of Alto. The Private Placement Shares are subject to a four month hold period.

Qualified Person

This news release has been prepared by Ronald Stewart, P.Geo., Interim President and CEO of Beaufield and Mathieu Stephens, P.Geo., Vice President of Exploration and Corporate Development for Beaufield, the Qualified Person, as defined by National Instrument 43-101.

About Beaufield:

Beaufield is a mineral exploration company with its exploration activity focused in Quebec and Ontario. Please refer to Beaufield's website to view the company's properties in Urban-Windfall, Eleonore-Opinaca, Troilus and Hemlo. The Corporation is actively exploring, well financed with approximately $7.5 million in working capital, has no debt and has excess work credits on its properties.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) has reviewed or accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this Release.

Contacts:

Ronald Stewart

Interim President and CEO

647.409.0293



Mathieu Stephens

VP Exploration and Corporate Development

613.721.2919

info@beaufield.com

www.beaufield.com



Jason Monaco

Partner at FCCC

416.566.8894

jmonaco@firstcanadiancapital.com

www.firstcanadiancapital.com




Nassau, Bahamas--(Newsfile Corp. - June 7, 2017) - Xtra-Gold Resources Corp. (TSX: XTG) (OTCQB: XTGRF) ("Xtra-Gold" or the "Company"), is pleased to announce that its new custom designed diamond drill rig has arrived at the Kwabeng Mine Camp, in Ghana. The Exploration Team has assembled the rig, and is doing the final preparation for the commencement of test drilling.

The drill rig was designed and contracted by Odyssey Drill Rigs from North Bay, Ontario. The rig is a modular design that is lightweight and versatile. The rig also offers a low environmental impact ("footprint"), which can reach remote and difficult locations within the Company's Kibi Gold Belt.

James Longshore, CEO remarked on site at the Kwabeng Mine Camp: "Xtra-Gold has already discovered its maiden mineral resource, and with this drill rig the Company will test multiple gold targets defined over the last several years, through extensive grassroots exploration. These gold prospects have the potential to add multiple new gold shoots to our current mineral resource."

About Xtra-Gold Resources Corp.

Xtra-Gold is a gold exploration company with a substantial land position in the Kibi Gold Belt. The Kibi Gold Belt, which exhibits many similar geological features to Ghana's main gold belt, the Ashanti Belt, has been the subject of very limited modern exploration activity targeting lode gold deposits as virtually all past gold mining activity and exploration efforts focused on the extensive alluvial gold occurrences in many river valleys throughout the Kibi area.

Xtra-Gold holds 5 Mining Leases totaling approximately 226 sq km (22,600 ha) at the northern extremity of the Kibi Gold Belt. The Company's exploration efforts to date have focused on the Kibi Gold Project located on the Apapam Concession (33.65 sq km), along the eastern flank of the Kibi Gold Belt. The Kibi Gold Project (Zone 2 - Zone 3) maiden mineral resource estimate produced by Xtra-Gold in October 2012 represents first ever NI 43-101 compliant resource estimate generated on a lode gold project within the Kibi Gold Belt. The NI 43-101 Technical Report entitled "Independent Technical Report, Apapam Concession, Kibi Project, Eastern Region, Ghana", prepared by SEMS Explorations and dated October 31, 2012, is filed under the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

Contact Information

For further information please contact:

James Longshore

Chief Executive Officer

416-628-2881

E-mail: info@xtragold.com

Website: www.xtragold.com
"Sometimes an idea just shows up in an elegant yet late way. And no one could imagine that the drama was born out of an almost naive fear of losing contact with others," says Pascal Rambert, director of the French drama, The Beginning of Love.

Poster for the French drama, The Beginning of Love [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

In June 2016, its prequel, The Ending of Love, began to tour China with a brand new Chinese version.

One night that month, the director sat with cast members on one of the terraces at the Nanluogu Lane. And he told others that he was reluctant to be parted from them when the tour ended.

"I think we should keep working together. So, why don't we produce The Beginning of Love afterwards?" the 45-year-old man asks.

The idea came true when they met with each other in Dali, Southwest China's Yunnan province, several months later and began rehearsals at the Dali Art Factory.

From June 2 to June 4, the cast and crew returned to Beijing and performed the 75-minute drama, The Beginning of Love, at the Pengaho Theater.

"I wrote the script in August 2000 in Paris. And the work was based on my life story, thus there was no hiding in it. Everything is real except the car crash at the end of the story. I even did not make any names for the characters, as they can be our names," Rambert says.

"The only thing that I did in my creation was listen to the missing part in my heart and wrote them down. And every each day I was having a silent conversation with my beloved one," the director says, "With all the louvers closed in my room during daylight, I pushed myself hard on writing. What I have been saying is such a special moment, when love is new and we wish it to last forever."
LONDON (dpa-AFX) - British Prime Minister Theresa May has rejected calls to cancel an invitation for US President Donald Trump to make a state visit to the UK, while London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who was criticized by Trump over his comments on the London terrorist attack, said the offer should be scrapped. Theresa May, who earlier said Trump was wrong to criticize Sadiq Khan over his handling of the London Bridge attacks, was asked if the controversial trip would go ahead. She replied positively. But Khan, in an interview with AFP, reiterated his view that the invitation was premature. 'State visits are given to world leaders who have had distinguished service, who have a track record,' according to him. Khan, who is London's first Muslim mayor, pointed out that since many British people disagree with Trump's Muslim ban and his change of the longstanding US policies on refugees, he shouldn't be allowed to make a state visit. British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson defended Khan for 'what he said to reassure people of his city about the presence of armed officers on the streets,' but said he finds no reason to change an invitation that has been accepted by Trump. Nearly two million people have signed an online petition calling for scrapping the invitation, but Trump's visit looks set to go ahead in the Autumn. 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.
IRVINE, CA--(Marketwired - June 07, 2017) - Talonvest Capital, Inc., a boutique self storage and commercial real estate advisor, recently negotiated $37.8 million of construction financing for The William Warren Group and $24.1 million of construction loans for Metro Self Storage. Reflective of the changing market environment, the seven individual loans were funded through four different banking institutions.

The William Warren Group storage developments will consist of approximately 310,000 square feet of climate controlled space on sites in Los Angeles, San Diego, and Orange Counties, CA as well as Scottsdale, AZ. Each Class-A development is in a prime location with good drive-by traffic and excellent visibility. WWG's developments were financed through three separate regional or super-regional banks headquartered in the Midwest, West and Northeastern U.S. All of the loans were structured with four year terms on an interest only basis with limited recourse and extension options. A variety of lending covenants and recourse burn down provisions were the subject of focused negotiation. Tim Hobin, Executive Vice President of William Warren Group, commented, "Talonvest's capital market expertise and construction lending knowledge were instrumental in getting us a loan structure that worked." The Talonvest team involved in the financings included Eric Snyder, Kim Leslie, Jim Davies, Tom Sherlock, and Erich Pryor.

Metro's three construction loans were for developments in Chadds Ford, PA and two Chicago suburbs, Naperville and Addison, IL. The financing for the Class A projects, with a combined 236,000+ rentable square feet, totaled over $24.1 million. Once again, multiple banks were necessary to structure the best possible financing solutions for Metro. An East Coast bank funded the two suburban Chicago properties while a Midwestern based bank financed the Pennsylvania development. Loan structures included four year terms, limited recourse with burn down, heavily negotiated transfer provisions and ongoing loan covenant provisions. Matt Nagel, Chairman of Metro Storage LLC, noted, "The construction lending market has changed significantly over the last year making Talonvest's knowledge and relationships even more valuable for us." The Talonvest team that negotiated and structured the loans for Metro included Kim Leslie, Tom Sherlock, and Jim Davies. Davies, a Principal of Talonvest, added, "Our relationship with Metro spans multiple decades and we are grateful for the trust and confidence these industry leaders place in Talonvest."

About Talonvest Capital, Inc.

Talonvest Capital is a boutique real estate firm providing advisory services to self storage and commercial real estate investors, owners and developers nationally. The principals of the firm have over 80 years of combined experience structuring loans and equity investments for office, industrial, retail, and apartment properties throughout the United States. In addition, they have established a dominant niche position in financing self-storage properties across the country.

Contact:

Amanda Waite

Talonvest Capital, Inc.

Email contact




BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) - The U.S. dollar weakened against other major currencies in the Asian session on Wednesday on news that Donald Trump Jr. released a chain of emails that led to his meeting with a Russian lawyer and indicate the Kremlin's support for President Donald Trump's campaign.



Traders also remain cautious ahead of Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen's Congressional testimony later in the day. Her comments could have a significant impact on the outlook for interest rates ahead of the central bank's monetary policy meeting later this month.



In the Asian trading, the U.S. dollar fell to a 14-month low of 1.1489 against the euro, from yesterday's closing value of 1.1466. The greenback may test support near the 1.16 region.



Against the yen and the Swiss franc, the greenback dropped to 5-day highs of 113.32 and 0.9619 from yesterday's closing quotes of 113.94 and 0.9638, respectively. If the greenback extends its downtrend, it is likely to find support around 111.00 against the yen and 0.95 against the franc.



The greenback edged down to 1.2865 against the pound, from yesterday's closing value of 1.2845. On the downside, 1.30 is seen as the next support level for the greenback.



Looking ahead, U.K. jobs data and Eurozone industrial production, both for May, are to be released later in the day.



In the New York session, U.S. crude oil inventories data is set to be published.



At 10:00 am ET, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen is expected to testify on the Semiannual Monetary Policy Report before the House Financial Services Committee, in Washington DC.



The Bank of Canada will announce its monetary policy decision and monetary policy report followed by a press conference at 10:00 am ET. Economists expect the Central Bank to raise its main policy rate to 0.75 percent from 0.5 percent.



At 2:00 pm ET, U.S. Federal Reserve releases its Beige Book report.



At 2:15 pm ET, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City President Esther George is expected to speak on the economic outlook and the Federal Reserve's balance sheet before an economic forum hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City Denver Branch.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

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Lund, July 18, 2017 - Anoto Group AB (publ) ("Anoto" or the "Company") today announces the successful placement (the "Offering") of approximately SEK 32.5 million of senior unsecured convertible bonds due 2019 (the "Bonds"). The proceeds from the Offering will give the Company the required funds to support future business operations including funds to increase production capacity in Q3 to meet increasing pen demand.



The Bonds carry no coupon, i.e. no interest will be paid, and have a conversion price of SEK 0.13. The Bonds have been issued and will be redeemed at 100% of their principal amount and will, unless previously converted, mature on July 22, 2019. When determining the conversion price, the Board of Directors has considered, inter alia, that no security will be provided in respect of the Bonds, that the convertible loan will be interest free, that no commission have been paid to investors for any subscription commitments and that investors have entered into lock-up undertakings whereby no shares issued upon conversion of the Bonds may be sold for a period of 180 calendar days as from the Settlement Date (as defined below).



Settlement for the Offering will take place on July 21, 2017 (the "Settlement Date").



If all Bonds are converted, the number of shares in the Company will increase by 250,000,000 shares, representing approximately 8.3% of the share capital and votes after dilution.



The Bonds were placed with a limited number of institutional or other professional investors outside the United States in reliance on Regulation S under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and in accordance with applicable securities laws, rules and regulations. Nerthus Investments Ltd. will invest SEK 13 million in Anoto and has been allocated 40% of the Bonds.



The reason for the deviation from the shareholders' preferential rights is to enable the Company in a time efficient way to raise funds to support future business operations of the Anoto group. Anoto has been able to complete the Offering without payment of any commissions for subscription commitments or transaction fees to financial advisors. The subscription price and the terms and conditions of the Bonds have been determined at market terms through negotiations at arm's length between the Company and potential investors.



For further information, please contact:



Joonhee Won, CEO



For more information about Anoto, please visit www.anoto.com or email ir@anoto.com.



Anoto Group AB (publ), Reg. No. 556532-3929, Mobilvagen 10, SE- 223 62 Lund, tel. +46 46 540 12 00



This information is information that Anoto Group AB is obliged to make public pursuant to the EU Market Abuse Regulation. The information was submitted for publication, through the agency of the contact persons set out above, at 20:45 CET on July 18, 2017.



About Anoto



Anoto is a global leader in digital writing and drawing solutions. Its technology enables high-precision pen input on nearly any surface. Anoto is present around the world through a global network of strategic licensing partners that deliver user-friendly writing and drawing solutions for effective collection, transfer and storage of data. Anoto is traded on the Small Cap list of Nasdaq Stockholm under ANOT.



IMPORTANT INFORMATION



NO ACTION HAS BEEN TAKEN BY THE ISSUER OR ANY OF ITS AFFILIATES THAT WOULD PERMIT AN OFFERING OF THE BONDS OR POSSESSION OR DISTRIBUTION OF THIS PRESS RELEASE OR ANY OFFERING OR PUBLICITY MATERIAL RELATING TO THE BONDS IN ANY JURISDICTION WHERE ACTION FOR THAT PURPOSE IS REQUIRED. PERSONS INTO WHOSE POSSESSION THIS PRESS RELEASE COMES ARE REQUIRED BY THE ISSUER TO INFORM THEMSELVES ABOUT, AND TO OBSERVE, ANY SUCH RESTRICTIONS.



THIS PRESS RELEASE IS NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION, DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY IN OR INTO THE UNITED STATES. THIS PRESS RELEASE IS NOT AN OFFER TO SELL SECURITIES OR THE SOLICITATION OF ANY OFFER TO BUY SECURITIES, NOR SHALL THERE BE ANY OFFER OF SECURITIES IN ANY JURISDICTION IN WHICH SUCH OFFER OR SALE WOULD BE UNLAWFUL.



THIS PRESS RELEASE AND THE OFFERING WHEN MADE ARE ONLY ADDRESSED TO, AND DIRECTED IN MEMBER STATES OF THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AREA (THE "EEA") AT PERSONS WHO ARE "QUALIFIED INVESTORS" WITHIN THE MEANING OF ARTICLE 2(1)(E) OF THE PROSPECTUS DIRECTIVE ("QUALIFIED INVESTORS") OR SHAREHOLDERS OF THE COMPANY INVESTING AT LEAST THE MIMIMUM INVESTMENT AMOUNT OF SEK 1,000,000. FOR THESE PURPOSES, THE EXPRESSION "PROSPECTUS DIRECTIVE" MEANS DIRECTIVE 2003/71/EC, AS AMENDED.



IN ADDITION, IN THE UNITED KINGDOM THIS PRESS RELEASE IS BEING DISTRIBUTED ONLY TO, AND IS DIRECTED ONLY AT, QUALIFIED INVESTORS (I) WHO HAVE PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE IN MATTERS RELATING TO INVESTMENTS FALLING WITHIN ARTICLE 19(5) OF THE FINANCIAL SERVICES AND MARKETS ACT 2000 (FINANCIAL PROMOTION) ORDER 2005, AS AMENDED (THE "ORDER") AND QUALIFIED INVESTORS FALLING WITHIN ARTICLE 49(2)(A) TO (D) OF THE ORDER, AND (II) TO WHOM IT MAY OTHERWISE LAWFULLY BE COMMUNICATED (ALL SUCH PERSONS TOGETHER BEING REFERRED TO AS "RELEVANT PERSONS"). THIS PRESS RELEASE MUST NOT BE ACTED ON OR RELIED ON (I) IN THE UNITED KINGDOM, BY PERSONS WHO ARE NOT RELEVANT PERSONS, AND (II) IN ANY MEMBER STATE OF THE EEA OTHER THAN THE UNITED KINGDOM, BY PERSONS WHO ARE NOT QUALIFIED INVESTORS. ANY INVESTMENT OR INVESTMENT ACTIVITY TO WHICH THIS PRESS RELEASE RELATES IS AVAILABLE ONLY TO (A) RELEVANT PERSONS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM AND WILL BE ENGAGED IN ONLY WITH RELEVANT PERSONS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM AND (B) QUALIFIED INVESTORS IN MEMBER STATES OF THE EEA (OTHER THAN THE UNITED KINGDOM).



ANY DECISION TO PURCHASE ANY OF THE BONDS SHOULD ONLY BE MADE ON THE BASIS OF AN INDEPENDENT REVIEW BY A PROSPECTIVE INVESTOR OF THE ISSUER'S PUBLICLY AVAILABLE INFORMATION. THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS PRESS RELEASE IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE IN ITS ENTIRETY WITHOUT NOTICE UP TO THE SETTLEMENT DATE.



EACH PROSPECTIVE INVESTOR SHOULD PROCEED ON THE ASSUMPTION THAT IT MUST BEAR THE ECONOMIC RISK OF AN INVESTMENT IN THE BONDS OR THE ORDINARY SHARES TO BE ISSUED OR TRANSFERRED AND DELIVERED UPON CONVERSION OF THE BONDS AND NOTIONALLY UNDERLYING THE BONDS (TOGETHER WITH THE BONDS, THE "SECURITIES"). THE ISSUER DOES NOT MAKE ANY REPRESENTATION AS TO (I) THE SUITABILITY OF THE SECURITIES FOR ANY PARTICULAR INVESTOR, (II) THE APPROPRIATE ACCOUNTING TREATMENT AND POTENTIAL TAX CONSEQUENCES OF INVESTING IN THE SECURITIES OR (III) THE FUTURE PERFORMANCE OF THE SECURITIES EITHER IN ABSOLUTE TERMS OR RELATIVE TO COMPETING INVESTMENTS. NO PROSPECTUS WILL BE PREPARED OR AVAILABLE IN RELATION TO THE BONDS OR THE ORDINARY SHARES TO BE ISSUED UPON CONVERSION OF THE BONDS.



Attachment:

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EMERYVILLE, CA--(Marketwired - June 07, 2017) - Berkeley Research Group announced today that Janice Jacobs a managing director in the firm, has joined Edward Buthusiem and Katherine Norris in BRG's Healthcare Corporate Compliance and Risk Management (CCRM) practice. Jacobs' extensive provider expertise will bring value and an innovative approach to the practice.

Jacobs has over 30 years of healthcare industry experience, including hospital accounting and auditing, inpatient, outpatient and professional fee coding, compliance and revenue cycle management.

Before joining BRG, Jacobs was a director at a professional services firm, where she developed a regulatory compliance and coding practice. She also was a director in the healthcare compliance and investigations practice of a global management consulting firm, where she worked on engagements at the top academic medical centers in the United States, including Stanford, Duke, Johns Hopkins, Thomas Jefferson and the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Jacobs is a Certified Public Accountant licensed in the State of Pennsylvania, a Certified Professional Coder and a Certified Professional Compliance Officer with the American Academy of Professional Coders (AAPC), a Certified Coding Specialist and an AHIMA-Approved ICD-10 Trainer with the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) and a Radiation Oncology Certified Coder with the American Medical Auditing Company (AMAC).

About Berkeley Research Group, LLC

Berkeley Research Group, LLC (www.thinkbrg.com) is a leading global strategic advisory and expert consulting firm that provides independent advice, data analytics, authoritative studies, expert testimony, investigations, transaction advisory, restructuring services, regulatory and dispute consulting to Fortune 500 corporations, financial institutions, major law firms and regulatory bodies around the world. BRG experts and consultants combine intellectual rigor with practical, real-world experience and an in-depth understanding of industries and markets. Their expertise spans economics and finance, data analytics and statistics, and public policy in many of the major sectors of our economy, including healthcare, banking, information technology, energy, construction and real estate. BRG is headquartered in Emeryville, California, with offices across the United States and in Asia, Australia, Canada, Latin America, the Middle East and the United Kingdom.
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 06/07/17 -- Lithium Americas Corp. ("Lithium Americas" or the "Company") (TSX: LAC)(OTCQX: LACDF) is pleased to announce it has completed the closing of the investment agreement (the "Investment Agreement") with GFL International Co., Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Jiangxi Ganfeng Lithium Co., Ltd. ("Ganfeng Lithium"). Pursuant to the Investment Agreement, Ganfeng Lithium agreed to provide Lithium Americas with an aggregate of approximately US$172 million in financing.

As described in the Company's press releases dated January 17, 2017 and May 10, 2017, in connection with closing of the Investment Agreement, the parties completed the issue and sale of the remaining 63,750,000 common shares at a price of C$0.85 per common share for gross proceeds of approximately C$54 million (US$40 million), executed a credit agreement for a US$125 million credit facility and executed an off-take agreement for the purchase and sale of lithium products. When combined with the 11,250,000 common shares (US$7 million) issued on January 27, 2017 pursuant to an initial equity installment under the Investment Agreement, Ganfeng Lithium now holds 75,000,000 common shares of the Company.

Tom Hodgson, Lithium Americas' CEO, commented: "We welcome Ganfeng Lithium as our largest shareholder. The closing of the Investment Agreement places Lithium Americas in a strong financial position and will allow the Company to now commence construction of the Cauchari-Olaroz lithium project with our joint venture partner SQM, with the objective of becoming the next low cost brine producer of lithium by 2019."

About Ganfeng Lithium

Ganfeng Lithium is the largest integrated lithium producer in in China, with a total capacity of around 30,000 tonnes per annum of lithium carbonate equivalent. Ganfeng Lithium's products include lithium metal, lithium hydroxide, lithium carbonate, lithium fluoride, and lithium chloride. In Australia, Ganfeng Lithium owns a 43.1% interest in the Mount Marion lithium spodumene project with Mineral Resources Ltd. (43.1%) and Neometals Ltd. (13.8%).

Ganfeng Lithium was founded in 2000 and is listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange (SHE: 002460) with a current market capitalization of approximately US$5 billion.

About Lithium Americas

Lithium Americas, together with SQM, is developing the Cauchari-Olaroz lithium project, located in Jujuy, Argentina, through its 50% interest in Minera Exar. In addition, Lithium Americas owns 100% of the Lithium Nevada project (formerly Kings Valley project), and RheoMinerals Inc., a supplier of rheology modifiers for oil-based drilling fluids, coatings, and specialty chemicals.

Forward-looking statements

Statements in this release that are forward-looking information are subject to various risks and uncertainties concerning the specific factors disclosed here and elsewhere in the Company's periodic filings with Canadian securities regulators. Forward-looking information in this news release includes the date upon which the credit agreement becomes effective, which occurs concurrent with first draw-down. When used in this document, the words such as "intent", "target", "expect", "estimated" and "scheduled" and similar expressions represent forward-looking information. Information provided in this document is necessarily summarized and may not contain all available material information.

All such forward-looking information and statements are based on certain assumptions and analyses made by Lithium Americas management in light of their experience and perception of historical trends, current conditions and expected future developments, as well as other factors management believes are appropriate in the circumstances, including in the case of the credit agreement with Ganfeng, the implementation of the agreed security interest structure and satisfaction of other customary conditions to first draw-down. These statements, however, are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking information or statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ from these forward-looking statements include those described under the heading "Risks Factors" in the Lithium Americas' most recently filed MD&A, Annual Information Form and other continuous disclosure filings. The Company does not intend, and expressly disclaims any obligation to, update or revise the forward-looking information contained in this news release, except as required by law. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information or statements.

Contacts:

Lithium Americas Corp.

Investor Relations

778-656-5820

ir@lithiumamericas.com

www.lithiumamericas.com




According to the latest market study released by Technavio, the global traction transformers market is expected to reach USD 108.4 billion by 2021, growing at a CAGR of close to 6%.

This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170607005953/en/

Technavio has published a new report on the global traction transformers market from 2017-2021. (Graphic: Business Wire)

This research report titled 'Global Traction Transformers Market 2017-2021' provides an in-depth analysis of the market in terms of revenue and emerging market trends. This market research report also includes up to date analysis and forecasts for various market segments and all geographical regions.

The global traction transformers market is expected to grow with the large-scale electrification and infrastructural upgrade of railway networks across the globe. Population density in cities is increasing with the migration of people from rural to urban areas. Increasing economic prosperity and a growing middle-class segment, particularly in the developing economies, have resulted in a shortage of mobility options. There has been a shift in focus toward public transport in the developed economies across the world. The growing inclination of the people toward using public transport in order to put a check on emissions and pollution levels has led to the rise in the electrification of railway networks. This has added impetus to the global traction transformers market.

Looking for more information on this market? Request a free sample report

Technavio's sample reports are free of charge and contain multiple sections of the report including the market size and forecast, drivers, challenges, trends, and more.

Technavio's heavy industry research analysts categorize the global traction transformers market into the following segments by type. They are:

Tapped

Tap-changing

Rectifier transformers

Tapped

The tapped transformers segment dominated the global traction transformers market in 2016 with a share of 88.82%. Because of their high-power ratings, these transformers are indispensable in electric and high-speed trains. They are priced relatively higher than rectifiers and tap-changing transformers.

According to Gaurav Mohindru, a lead unit operations research analyst from Technavio, "Growing traffic congestion in the urban areas has turned the focus of the authorities toward improved public transportation. Transport authorities worldwide have recognized the role of light-rail vehicles, monorail, and metro rail in public transport. As a result, many countries are investing either in the renovation of their existing light-rail infrastructure or the construction of new ones

Tap-changing

The tap-changing type of traction transformers accounts for a lower market share than tapped transformers. These are low priced, and therefore generate less revenue compared with other types of traction transformers. There are two types of tap-changing transformers: off-load tap changing transformers and on-load tap changing transformers.

"An increase in the number of EMUs will also create more demand for traction transformers. For instance, environmental pollution from diesel engines has compelled governments in Europe and the Americas to deploy EMUs, as these are more efficient, less noisy, and generate less pollution," says Gaurav.

Rectifier transformers

The rectifier transformers segment accounted for the smallest share of the global traction transformers market. They are special application transformers that contain both diodes and thyristors in the same tank as the main transformers. Rectifier traction transformers operate on DC voltage and are used in trams.

There are various tramway projects in progress across the globe, mainly to address the need for sustainable transport. For instance, in 2017, ALSTOM was awarded its first tramway contract in Taiwan for the second phase of the Kaohsiung tramway project. Similarly, there are other planned tramway projects in countries like Iran, Qatar, Australia, and France. The growing number of tramway projects are expected to provide an impetus to the demand for rectifier transformers during the forecast period.

The top vendors highlighted by Technavio's research analysts in this report are:

ABB

ALSTOM

JST transformateurs

Mitsubishi Electric

Siemens

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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/20170607005953/en/

Contacts:

Technavio Research

Jesse Maida

Media Marketing Executive

US: +1 630 333 9501

UK: +44 208 123 1770

www.technavio.com
Company's high-reliability panels to save lives and money

SolarWorld Americas Inc., the largest U.S. crystalline-silicon solar manufacturer for more than 42 years, is providing 1.2 megawatts of high-performance solar panels to power the world's largest solar-powered, safe-water treatment project. The project's systems will serve more than 250,000 Congolese and Burundian people living in three refugee settlements in Western Tanzania. The high reliability of SolarWorld's solar technology is critical for the long-term success and operation of the installed water-filtration systems.

The project is proceeding under the management of Water Mission and the funding of the Poul Due Jensen Foundation (Grundfos Foundation). SolarWorld is selling its technology at favorable pricing to Water Mission, a main charitable strategic partner of SolarWorld. Water Mission is an engineering nonprofit that designs, builds and implements safe water, sanitation and hygiene solutions for people in developing countries and disaster areas. The Poul Due Jensen Foundation, which funds sustainable, resilient and affordable safe water projects in poor rural communities in developing countries and the world's forgotten refugee camps, is providing $5.3 million to improve health and living standards in the Nyarugusu, Nduta, and Mtendeli refugee settlements.

The project's goal is to pump 100 percent of the water using solar power, with diesel generators as backup. Since 2010, Water Mission has relied on SolarWorld solar panels for projects in some of the world's most remote and harsh conditions in light of their high durability, compared with other panels that have been tested or used on projects.

"In the hundreds of projects that I have worked on, we have never had a service call for a defective SolarWorld panel," says Will Furlong, Water Mission's regional director of Tanzania. "The company provides a level of confidence that's hard to quantify because we wouldn't be able to effectively maintain other unreliable power sources."

An initial shipment of 780 290-watt solar panels headed for Tanzania will produce 226,000 watts of power to provide a continuous supply of safe water to keep children, particularly newborns to 5-year-olds, from getting sick and dying from water-borne diseases, according to Water Mission. Water Mission conservatively estimates that the cost of the entire project will be recovered in about nine years by eliminating operating and maintenance expenses associated with diesel generators. Also, projections indicate that an additional $1.3M will be saved over the next 15 years.

"I believe that the longevity of each panel will surpass the company's 20-year product warranty," Furlong says. "Once the panels are installed, they run continuously at essentially zero cost. Based on the excellent quality and reliability of SolarWorld panels, we can't afford not to use them on our projects because people need safe water to survive. Lives depend on them."

About SolarWorld REAL VALUE: SolarWorld Americas Inc., the largest U.S. crystalline-silicon solar manufacturer for more than 42 years, produces and sells high-tech solar power solutions and, in doing so, contributes to a cleaner energy supply throughout the Americas. The company maintains 430 megawatts of annual capacity to produce solar cells and 550 MW of capacity to manufacture solar modules. The company's brand stands for a proven track record of quality and reliability, and SolarWorld is the only producer whose industrial lineage has outlived its products' 25- and 30-year performance guarantees. SolarWorld upholds high social standards and commits itself to resource- and energy-efficient production. With its program Solar2World, the company supports the expansion of solar power in developing countries in Latin America. Connect with SolarWorld on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and www.solarworld.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170607005403/en/

Contacts:

SolarWorld Americas Inc.

Ben Santarris, 503-693-5189

Head of Corporate Communications

Mobile: 503-927-9858

Ben.Santarris@SolarWorld.com
Following the purchase of additional Syngenta shares, ChemChina's participation in Syngenta has exceeded 98% of Syngenta's share capital.

As a consequence, ChemChina has filed a petition with the Basel Appellate Court to cancel the remaining Syngenta shares that are not held by ChemChina or any of its affiliates. Holders of these Syngenta shares will receive the offer price of USD 465 per Syngenta share following completion of the court proceedings.

In parallel, Syngenta will apply for the de-listing from the SIX Swiss Exchange of its shares, to become effective promptly following completion of the court proceedings.

About Syngenta

Syngenta is a leading agriculture company helping to improve global food security by enabling millions of farmers to make better use of available resources. Through world class science and innovative crop solutions, our 28,000 people in over 90 countries are working to transform how crops are grown. We are committed to rescuing land from degradation, enhancing biodiversity and revitalizing rural communities. To learn more visit www.syngenta.com and www.goodgrowthplan.com. Follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/Syngenta.

Disclaimer

This press release is not an offer to purchase or a solicitation of an offer to sell any securities.

Cautionary statement regarding forward-looking statements

Some of the statements contained in this press release are forward-looking statements. These statements are based on current expectations, assumptions, estimates and projections, and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause results, levels of activity, performance or achievements to be materially different from any forward-looking statements. These statements are generally identified by words or phrases such as "believe", "anticipate", "expect", "intend", "plan", "will", "may", "should", "estimate", "predict", "potential", "continue" or the negative of such terms or other similar expressions. If underlying assumptions prove inaccurate or unknown risks or uncertainties materialize, actual results and the timing of events may differ materially from the results and/or timing discussed in the forward-looking statements, and you should not place undue reliance on these statements. Syngenta disclaims any intent or obligation to update any forward-looking statements as a result of developments occurring after the period covered by this press release or otherwise.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170712006391/en/

Contacts:

Syngenta International AG

Media Office

Tel: +41 61 323 2323

Fax: +41 61 323 2424

www.syngenta.com

or

Media contacts:

Leandro Conti

Switzerland +41 61 323 2323

media.relations@syngenta.com

or

Paul Minehart

USA +1 202 737 8913

or

Analyst/Investor contacts:

Jennifer Gough

Switzerland +41 61 323 5059

USA +1 202 737 6521
NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / June 7, 2017 / Pomerantz LLP is investigating claims on behalf of investors of John Wood Group PLC ("John Wood" or the "Company") (OTC PINK: WDGJF). Such investors are advised to contact Robert S. Willoughby at rswilloughby@pomlaw.com or 888-476-6529, ext. 9980.

The investigation concerns whether John Wood 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 May 23, 2017, in a prospectus concerning the Company's proposed acquisition of Amec Foster Wheeler ("Amec"), John Wood disclosed details of the Company's internal probe into its past dealings with Unaoil, a Monaco-based oil business under criminal investigation by the U.K.'s Serious Fraud Office ("SFO"). John Wood further disclosed that the SFO had requested that Amec produce information related to the agency's investigation into Unaoil.

On this news, John Wood's share price fell $0.38, or 3.93%, to close at $9.30 on May 25, 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
World's leading premium spirits company partners with world's leading premium mezcal brand

Regulatory News:

Pernod Ricard (Paris:RI), through Pernod Ricard USA's New Brand Ventures division, today announces that it has signed an agreement to take a majority stake in Del Maguey Single Village Mezcal, the leading producer of artisanal, hand-crafted mezcals and the number one mezcal brand in the US. The transaction is subject to usual condition precedents and is expected to close within 90 days.

Del Maguey Single Village Mezcal, founded in 1995 by artist and entrepreneur Ron Cooper, features a range of hand-crafted super-premium mezcals from the Oaxaca region of Mexico. Created from a traditional process rooted in Zapotec culture, the "Single Village" name identifies every Del Maguey product by the village in which it is made.

"We partnered with Pernod Ricard because they understand and appreciate our mission of preserving the culture of the Zapotec people and protecting the traditional process of making mezcal," said Ron Cooper. "Through this partnership, our management team will gain increased opportunities to distribute our products to mezcal lovers around the world while also ensuring that the palenqueros or families we work with are able to continue crafting their liquid art for generations to come."

Under the terms of the transaction, the management team of Ron Cooper, Michael Gardner, Steve Olson, and the rest of the Del Maguey team will remain in place. All of Del Maguey's Mexico operations will remain intact as well.

Jeff Agdern, Senior Vice President of Pernod Ricard USA's New Brand Ventures Division said: "Del Maguey Single Village Mezcal is highly respected by consumers and the industry for its brand authenticity and relationships with local farmer producers." This acquisition has also been made possible thanks to Pernod Ricard Mexico teams that provided a deep appreciation of the link between mezcal and the economic vitality of the villages where it is produced.

Alexandre Ricard, Chairman and CEO of Pernod Ricard, commented: "We are very impressed by Del Maguey's successful track record and the high quality of their mezcals. This partnership illustrates our continued strategy of partnering with dynamic entrepreneurs who share our passion for authentic, high-quality crafted premium products and further extends our fantastic portfolio of genuine brands."

Global sales of mezcal rose to a record $80 million in 2015, and U.S. volumes jumped 279% from 2005-2015, according to International Wine Spirits Research.

About Pernod Ricard

Pernod Ricard is the world's n2 in wines and spirits with consolidated Sales of 8,682 million in FY16. Created in 1975 by the merger of Ricard and Pernod, the Group has undergone sustained development, based on both organic growth and acquisitions: Seagram (2001), Allied Domecq (2005) and Vin&Sprit (2008). Pernod Ricard holds one of the most prestigious brand portfolios in the sector: Absolut Vodka, Ricard pastis, Ballantine's, Chivas Regal, Royal Salute and The Glenlivet Scotch whiskies, Jameson Irish whiskey, Martell cognac, Havana Club rum, Beefeater gin and Malibu, Mumm and Perrier- Jouet champagnes, as well Jacob's Creek, Brancott Estate, Campo Viejo and Kenwood wines. Pernod Ricard employs a workforce of 18,500 people and operates through a decentralised organisation, with 6 "Brand Companies" and 85 "Market Companies" established in each key market. Pernod Ricard is strongly committed to a sustainable development policy and encourages responsible consumption. Pernod Ricard's strategy and ambition are based on 3 key values that guide its expansion: entrepreneurial spirit, mutual trust and a strong sense of ethics.Pernod Ricard is listed on Euronext (Ticker: RI; ISIN code: FR0000120693) and is part of the CAC 40 index.

About Pernod Ricard USA

Pernod Ricard USA is the premium spirits and wine company in the U.S., and the largest subsidiary of Paris, France-based Pernod Ricard SA. The company's leading spirits and wines include such prestigious brands as Absolut Vodka, Chivas Regal Scotch Whisky, The Glenlivet Single Malt Scotch Whisky, Jameson Irish Whiskey, Malibu, Kahlua Liqueur, Beefeater Gin, Seagram's Extra Dry Gin, Martell Cognac, Hiram Walker Liqueurs, Pernod, Ricard and Avion Tequila; such superior wines as Jacob's Creek, Kenwood Vineyards and Brancott Estate; and such exquisite champagnes and sparkling wines as Perrier-Jouet Champagne, G.H. Mumm Champagne and Mumm Napa sparkling wines.

Pernod Ricard USA is based in New York, New York, and has roughly 650 employees across the country. Pernod Ricard USA urges all adults to consume its products responsibly and has an active campaign to promote responsible drinking. For more information on this, please visit: www.responsibility.org

About Del Maguey Single Village Mezcal

Founded in 1995 by internationally renowned artist and mezcal visionary Ron Cooper, Del Maguey Single Village Mezcal introduced the world to previously unavailable artisanal mezcal. Through deep cultural relationships with indigenous producers in Oaxaca and Puebla, Mexico, Del Maguey protects and preserves the ancient production processes that have been passed down generationally for hundreds of years. These traditional methods, combined with the diverse micro-climates and terroir of Mexico, give each expression a unique, complex character that celebrates the art of the family producer. Driven by a devotion to the cultures of Mexico, social and environmental responsibility, and family, Del Maguey is committed to providing the world quality, traditionally crafted mezcals, while supporting the communities of Oaxaca and Puebla, through education, technology, access to basic needs and healthy ecosystems.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170607005895/en/

Contacts:

Media contact, Pernod Ricard USA

Amandine Robin, +1 212-824-1712

SVP, Communications CSR

Amandine.robin@pernod-ricard.com

or

Media contact, Del Maguey

Kate Burgess, +1 212-766-4335

Communications liaison

kate@delmaguey.com

or

Media contact, Pernod Ricard

Emmanuel Vouin, +33 (0)1 14 00 44 04

Press Relations Manager

Emmanuel.Vouin@pernod-ricard.com

or

Investor Contact Pernod Ricard

Julia Massies, +33 (0)1 41 00 41 07

VP, Financial Communication Investor Relations

Julia.Massies@pernod-ricard.com
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 06/07/17 -- Aldershot Resources Ltd. ("Aldershot" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE: ALZ) today announced the resignation of Ian Adam as a director of the Company effective as of June 6, 2017. As this leaves the Company with only two directors, it will seek to find a replacement for Mr. Adam immediately.

Disclaimer for Forward-Looking Information:

Certain statements in this release are forward-looking statements which reflect the expectations of management. Forward-looking statements consist of statements that are not purely historical, including any statements regarding beliefs, plans, expectations or intentions regarding the future. Such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results, performance or developments to differ materially from those contained in the statements. No assurance can be given that any of the events anticipated by the forward-looking statements will occur or, if they do occur, what benefits the Company will obtain from them. These forward-looking statements reflect management's current views and are based on certain expectations, estimates and assumptions which may prove to be incorrect.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Contacts:

Jeremy Caddy

President & Chief Executive Officer

Aldershot Resources Ltd.

604-727-7148

jcc4tlx@intergate.ca




LONDON, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Humaniq has launched an office in Silicon Valley, CA.

Humaniq https://humaniq.co/, the Ethereum-based blockchain banking app offering financial inclusion solutions for the unbanked, just opened a new office space in San Francisco, following a successful pre-seed funding campaign that reached nearly 12,000 participants and surpassed $5.2 Million.

(Photo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/520901/Humaniq_SiliconValleyHQ.jpg )



(Logo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/494007/Humaniq_Logo.jpg )



This development will intensify the capacity of Humaniq to accelerate its global social impact by working alongside leading organizations and influencers in San Francisco. Additionally, the move will capacitate world-class technologists in finding solutions to fundamental global issues facing humanity.

"Humaniq's new US HQ in Silicon Valley allows us to be a piece of the powerful technological puzzle that has produced success after success in numerous areas of Industry 4.0.," said Humaniq CEO, Dinis Guarda. "With a footprint in California, Humaniq will be able to share its vision of empowering the unbanked using technology while enlisting unparalleled genius from the vibrant and successful business community."

The office, which opened on May 3, will house a small research and business development team including Senior Advisor Lene Schulze, a thought leader, business developer, and strategist. Lene has worked around the world but been based in San Francisco for the past 13 years where she has advised and accelerated numerous startups' growth through platforms such as SCALEit.us and Nordic Innovation House. She has assisted many large corporations in the digital transformation and other innovation processes through innovation centers she has established for Monitor Deloitte Nordic, 42 Associates and the Danish government in Silicon Valley.

The office will also have the support of Humaniq senior Advisors: veteran technology expert and investor Patrick Chung and the director of Groupe INSEEC San Francisco Ron Morris, an expert in education and innovation who has been developing relationships with industry and academic thought leaders in Europe and the US for over a decade.

"I am excited to welcome and introduce a truly purpose-driven startup, Humaniq to San Francisco" said Lene Schulze, Senior advisor at Humaniq. "There are significant developments in the cryptocurrency and blockchain space happening right here in Silicon Valley that Humaniq will have to stay connected to and not least there are many potential partners who could be crucial in reaching the grand goal of helping 1 billion unbanked".

Headquartered in Luxembourg, with offices in London, Humaniq aims to tap into innovation around the world. Home to globally recognized technology corporations such as Facebook, Apple, Adobe Systems, eBay, Tesla Motors, Intel, and Netflix, the San Francisco Bay Area was a clear choice. San Francisco, in particular, is an ideal home for transformational business start ups with tremendous potential for social impact, making it the perfect ecosystem for Humaniq's US headquarters.

"Given the breadth and might of American brands, products, and proficiency, the U.S. was the clear option as we pursued a home for our first office outside of Europe," said Alex Fork, Founder of Humaniq. "This development gives us an opportunity to be a part of a world-class environment that caters to entrepreneurs and small businesses, and welcomes our mission of social impact and banking the unbanked."

This expansion into the U.S. with a new office signals the continued momentum behind Humaniq as an organization and as a movement in developing banking 4.0 as well as using blockchain for social good. It will also allow Humaniq to demonstrate the potential uses of its technologies, and the significant opportunities of doing so for startups, foundations, and a wide variety of businesses in the Bay Area ecosystem.

Our base is global, national and now regional, which allows our entire organization to benefit from our new presence in San Francisco," said Humaniq Executive Chairman, Dmitry Kaminskiy. "We have a powerful startup undergoing natural development and we look forward to watching Humaniq grow in size and impact.

About Humaniq:

Humaniq is an Ethereum-based blockchain banking app building the next generation model for financial inclusion services. Launched in 2016, Humaniq aims to provide mobile finance to the 2 billion unbanked population through its mobile app that uses biometric authentication to replace traditional methods of ID and security. Humaniq's open source stack and API will be available for startups and other businesses to build services on its core technology, making it easy to adapt their service and plug it into Humaniq's network to reach a huge, untapped audience.

For more information, visit https://humaniq.co/.
Technavio analysts forecast the global self-compacting concrete (SCC) marketto grow at a CAGR of almost 6% 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/20170607006128/en/

Technavio has published a new report on the global self-compacting concrete (SCC) market from 2017-2021. (Graphic: Business Wire)

The research study covers the present scenario and growth prospects of the global self-compacting concrete marketfor 2017-2021. The market is segmented on thetype (power, combination, and viscosity), and geography (APAC, EMEA, and the Americas).

The global SCC market is expected to grow considerably during the forecast period. The growth can be attributed to the lower cost of maintenance, repair and operations, improvement in air quality, and less adverse impact on the environment in repair and construction activities. The safety benefits offered by SCC improved performance, and construction results also contribute to the market growth. It is also a feasible option for small- and medium-scale manufacturing units as it has thin concrete sections, improved durability, high design freedom, fast construction, and easy placing.

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 chemicals and materialsresearch analysts highlight the following three factors that are contributing to the growth of the global self-compacting concrete market:

Growth in construction activities

Increase in demand for SCC in APAC

Recovering construction and housing sectors in Europe

Growth in construction activities

The increase in investment for construction industry across emerging economies is driving the growth of the global cement industry. The global construction industry is expected to grow to nearly USD 12 trillion by 2021. APAC has the world's emerging and growth-leading economies, namely China, India, Japan, Indonesia, and the Philippines. These emerging markets compete in the development of high-quality infrastructure.

Hitesh Bhatia, a lead metals and minerals research analyst at Technavio, says, "The infrastructure in European and North American countries is considered to be of good quality, depicting a proper coordination and planning between the public and private players involved in the development and maintenance of existing and new construction projects. Such factor helps these countries to attract external investors and provide aid for the rehabilitation and reconstruction of existing structures.

Increase in demand for SCC in APAC

Population growth and rapid urbanization, rising disposable incomes, favorable investment policies, and government initiatives to promote industrial growth have sustained the growth of the construction industry in APAC. China, India, Japan, Malaysia, South Korea, and Vietnam are the fastest-growing construction markets in the region. Currently, Japan remains the key market in APAC, followed by India, China, and South Korea where the demand for concrete is growing steadily. The region will sustain its significant market share in future.

"The government is also investing in manufacturing, construction, and power plants in accordance with the changes in social-economic and demographic factors. The established manufacturers in the region are also investing significantly in R&D. These factors are collectively driving the market growth in APAC," adds Hitesh.

Recovering construction and housing sectors in Europe

The construction sector contributes to around 8.7% to the GDP of the EU, with nearly more than three million enterprises and a total workforce of more than 18 million. More than 98% of the construction sector in Europe is composed of small- and medium-sized enterprises. These enterprises produce nearly 79.5% of the construction industry's output. Small enterprises are responsible for more than 52% of the production and employ nearly 70% of the sector's working population.

Top vendors:

BASF

CEMEX

HeidelbergCement

LafargeHolcim

SIKA

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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.

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ANNAPOLIS, MD -- (Marketwired) -- 06/07/17 -- iJET International, Inc., a leading provider of integrated risk management solutions, announced today that the Board of Directors has appointed Benjamin (Ben) Allen as Chief Executive Officer and new Board member. Bruce McIndoe, a founder of iJET, will remain as President and Board member, partnering with Ben to execute on global growth strategies in the years ahead.

"Ben joins us at a perfect time to lead the company, as we are accelerating in the marketplace," said Jim Simmons, Chairman of the Board. iJET has seen significant growth since LLR acquired iJET in December 2013, and continues to be positioned for growth and expansion. Simmons continues, "After an extensive executive search for the next generation of senior leadership for iJET, we found a great match in Ben Allen to continue our success."

Ben brings a wealth of directly relevant experience, most recently serving over the last four years as President of Marsh & McLennan Agency, LLC (MMA), a division of Marsh, Inc., the largest global insurance broker. Prior to this position, Ben served in numerous leadership roles with Kroll, including President & CEO from 2008 through 2010, when it was sold by Marsh & McLennan Companies to a private equity firm. Ben also served as CEO of Ontrack Data International, a public technology company, and continued to lead that organization after it was acquired by Kroll in 2002. His experience leading both large and small companies in the technology, security, and insurance sectors will be an incredibly valuable asset to iJET.

"I'm pleased to be joining iJET at such an exciting time for the company. The company has doubled in size in the last three years, continues to invest in product innovation, and is broadening the range of services that it provides to our clients," said Ben Allen. "Working with Bruce McIndoe, an icon in the industry and founder of the company, reinforces the strong leadership team that will continue to provide strategic direction for the organization."

iJET acquired red24, a leading provider to the financial services markets offering intelligence, security, and response services in December 2016 as part of iJET's global growth strategy. Ben's demonstrated leadership in this market gives him a solid foundation to launch into the next phase of continuing organic growth and acquisition for iJET and red24.

"I have known Ben for some time, and have great respect for him. I am very excited to start the next chapter of iJET's growth and maturity working with Ben," said Bruce McIndoe. "Both of us are fully committed to continuing iJET's role as an innovation leader in the market and ensuring that we help drive value and client success every day."

About iJET International

iJET International delivers intelligence-driven, integrated risk management solutions that enable multinational organizations and our partners' clients to operate globally with confidence. iJET's end-to-end, tailored solutions integrate world-class threat intelligence, innovative technology, and global response services to help organizations and their people avoid threats and mitigate risk.

Founded in 1999, iJET provides Integrated Risk Management solutions that begin and end with intelligence. Our proprietary technology and global network of security, kidnap, product safety, compliance, and geopolitical experts allow us to deliver unmatched intelligence, preparedness and crisis response solutions specifically tailored to our clients -- protecting their people, facilities, supply chains, and information assets around the world.

Headquartered in Annapolis, MD, US, iJET has global operating locations in the Washington DC metro area, London, Cape Town, and Singapore. For more information, visit www.ijet.com.

iJET Media Contacts:



iJET International

Jan Johnson

Email Contact

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MULTIPLY

Ryan Vaughan

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WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - State Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez is headed to the House of Representatives after emerging victorious in a special election to represent California's 34th Congressional District. Gomez defeated fellow Democrat Robert Lee Ahn in the race to fill the seat vacated by former Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-Calif., who resigned to become California Attorney General. Results from the California Secretary of State show that Gomez received 60.1 percent of vote compared to 39.9 percent for Ahn. Gomez overcame Ahn's significant advantage in early voting amid strong support from the district's heavily Latino electorate. The two Democrats faced off after emerging from a crowded primary that put the top two vote-getters in the general election, regardless of party. In remarks at his campaign headquarters, Gomez said the community said 'yes to California values, our progressive values,' adding, 'we are the resistance.' 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.
RICHMOND, Virgina, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --Markel Corporation (NYSE - MKL) today announced the creation of a new insurance division which combines Markel's Wholesale (excess and surplus lines) and Global Insurance (complex, risk-managed accounts) divisions. Bryan Sanders, President of Markel Wholesale, will lead the new division, which will be named Markel Assurance. Britt Glisson, President of Markel Global Insurance, will assist in the transition and after a distinguished 40-year insurance career will be retiring in 2018.

Markel Assurance will have underwriting teams located across the US, and in Bermuda, Dublin, and London. Gross written premium of the combined division is approximately $1.8 billion (USD) and products will originate from three (3) product lines-casualty, professional liability, and property/marine. The underwriting leads for these product lines will report to Robin Russo, Markel Corporation's Chief Underwriting Officer. Markel's other operating (re)insurance divisions are Markel Specialty, Markel International, and Markel Global Reinsurance.

Markel Assurance will operate through a regional structure in the US with 10 offices in six (6) regions serving all major insurance hubs. Other locations for the new division include Bermuda, Dublin, and London.

"This move combines two talented and successful divisions and aligns our structure more closely with both production partners and customers," commented Richard R. Whitt, Co-Chief Executive Officer of Markel. "We are committed to innovation and to making it easier to do business with Markel-establishing this new division accomplishes both of those objectives."

Bryan Sanders added, "I am excited about our new structure and our improved alignment with both wholesalers and select retailers. We will have more resources, more products, and all of the long-term relationships that have brought us this far. We are bringing together a team that is experienced, connected to the market, and infused with an entrepreneurial sense of urgency. Creating this new division will help Markel maintain its leadership position and increase our market presence in both the wholesale and large account retail market place."

The new division is expected to be up and running by January 1, 2018.

About Markel Corporation

Markel Corporation is a diverse financial holding company serving a variety of niche markets. The Company's principal business markets and underwrites specialty insurance products. In each of the Company's businesses, it seeks to provide quality products and excellent customer service so that it can be a market leader. The financial goals of the Company are to earn consistent underwriting and operating profits and superior investment returns to build shareholder value. Visit Markel Corporation on the web at markelcorp.com.

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WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has questioned President Donald Trump's fitness for office following the president's fiery speech during a rally in Phoenix, Arizona. Clapper called the rally 'downright scary and disturbing' in an appearance on CNN early Wednesday and raised concerns about Trump's access to the nation's nuclear arsenal. The former intelligence chief noted he has some understanding of the levers of power that are available to a president if he chooses to exercise them. 'I worry about, frankly, the access to nuclear codes. In a fit of pique, if he decides to do something about Kim Jong Un, there's actually very little to stop him,' Clapper said, referring to the North Korean dictator. 'The whole system is built to ensure rapid response if necessary,' he added. 'So there's very little in the way of controls over exercising a nuclear option, which is pretty damn scary.' Clapper, a frequent Trump critic, questioned the president's motivation and suggested he may be looking for a way out. The comments from Clapper came after Trump used his speech in Phoenix to attack several of his favorite targets, including the media, and even lashed out at some members his own party. 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.
Technavio has announced the top five leading vendors in their recentglobal high strength laminating adhesives market 2017-2021report. This market research report also lists six 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/20170703005285/en/

Technavio has published a new report on the global high strength laminating adhesives market from 2017-2021. (Graphic: Business Wire)

Competitive vendor landscape

According to the market research analysis, the high strength laminating adhesives market is expected to grow at a steady rate during the forecast period. The market comprises of many regional and global vendors who serve end-users such as packaging, industrial, construction, and consumer goods industries. The US and China are the leading markets for high strength laminating adhesives.

"Increasing demand for high strength laminating adhesives is fueled by rapid industrialization and ever-increasing performance standards. In the industrial sector, there has been a considerable shift from the use of traditional fastening systems, such as rivets, welds, and belts, to adhesives for reducing weight and improving efficiency," says Ajay Adikhari, a lead additives, adhesives, and sealantsanalyst from Technavio.

The report also states that the global high strength laminating adhesives market is witnessing technological advances in production capacities and in the enhancement of adhesive and binder properties. Also, manufacturers are focusing on the development of new products that do not emit more VOCs due to the imposition of stringent regulations by various regulatory agencies. They are producing high strength laminating adhesives free of formaldehyde resins to sustain the pressures from environmental lobbies.

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Technaviomarket research analysts identify the following key vendors:

3M

3M operates through five major business segments, namely industrial, safety and graphics, healthcare, electronics and energy, and consumer. It manufactures high strength laminating adhesives for various applications such as automotive applications, coatings, and adhesives. 3M offers the largest portfolio of high strength laminating adhesives for applications across aerospace, construction, electronics, automotive, metalworking, and packaging industries.

Ashland

Ashland provides specialty chemicals and technologies. The company is focusing on acquiring new businesses in high growth areas to enhance its specialty chemicals product portfolio. It offers products for end-use markets such as personal care, pharmaceutical, energy, automotive, food and beverage, construction, and architectural coatings.

H.B. Fuller

H.B. Fuller is a prominent adhesives manufacturer that offers industrial adhesives globally. The company manufactures adhesives, coatings, paints, and various other specialty chemicals in more than 34 countries. The company has a wide product portfolio of engineering adhesives for many industries, such as automobile, construction, energy, transportation, marine, aerospace, metallurgy, and coal power generation.

Henkel

Henkel operates in both consumer and industrial sectors through three business segments: laundry and home care, beauty care, and adhesive technologies. The adhesive technologies segment provides adhesives, sealants, and surface treatments for consumer and industrial users. The company has successfully positioned itself as one of the prominent suppliers of adhesive technologies through R&D and materials management strategy.

The Dow Chemical Company

The Dow Chemical Company offers specialty chemicals, advanced materials, and agricultural products and services. The Dow Chemical Company provides high strength laminating adhesives for enhancing adhesion. The company's high strength laminating adhesives have low environmental impact and are convenient to use. Dow offers a wider range of high strength laminating adhesives, primarily for packaging, and automotive applications.

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WASHINGTON, DC -- (Marketwired) -- 06/07/17 -- National Geographic Society Commits $50 Million of Endowment to Impact Investments

Creation of new impact investment program, managed by CA Capital Management, will accelerate the organization's funding of research, exploration and education, inspiring solutions for the global good

WASHINGTON, DC -- Jun 7, 2017 -- The National Geographic Society today announced it is dedicating $50 million from its $1.2 billion endowment to impact investments, furthering its commitment to understanding our planet and generating solutions for a healthy, more sustainable future.

"At National Geographic, we are committed to changing the world through science, exploration, education and storytelling," says Gary E. Knell, president and CEO of the National Geographic Society. "We recognized the opportunity to double down on our ability to make an impact -- contributing to a better society not just through the grants we make, but by making investments that deliver both financial and societal returns."

"Nonprofit institutions are increasingly seeking ways to develop and implement an impact investing program that aligns their philanthropic and investment goals," says David Druley, chairman and CEO of Cambridge Associates. "The way in which the National Geographic Society is leveraging its growing endowment to further its mission sets a true example for how institutional investors can create even deeper societal impact on a global scale through endowment investing."

The National Geographic Society is a mission-focused nonprofit organization that invests in bold people and transformative ideas. In the fall of 2015, the Society formalized a joint venture with 21st Century Fox, expanding the organization's reach and impact and increasing its endowment to $1.2 billion.

"By investing in impact, we can further our commitment to pioneering innovation, which has been at the core of National Geographic since our inception in 1888," added Jean Case, chairman of the National Geographic Society Board of Trustees. "Our ability to generate social and financial returns is one more way to help drive research, exploration and education, all geared toward increasing people's understanding of the world."

"We look forward to continuing to work closely with Gary and his team to identify the best impact investment opportunities through diligent manager selection and strategic program implementation to ensure success financially and socially for National Geographic for decades to come," says Kristen Tongberg, outsourced chief investment officer of National Geographic Society and a member of CA Capital Management, Cambridge Associates' outsourced chief investment officer (OCIO) business.

About the National Geographic Society

The National Geographic Society is a leading nonprofit that invests in bold people and transformative ideas in the fields of exploration, scientific research, storytelling and education. Through our grants and programs, we aspire to create a community of change, advancing key insights about our planet and probing some of the most pressing scientific questions of our time while ensuring that the next generation is armed with geographic knowledge and global understanding. Our goal is measurable impact: furthering exploration and educating people around the world to inspire solutions for the greater good. For more information, visit www.nationalgeographic.org.

About Cambridge Associates

Cambridge Associates is a leading global investment firm helping endowments, foundations, pension plans, and private clients maximize their impact on the world by building custom investment portfolios aimed at generating outperformance across all asset classes. CA Capital Management, Cambridge Associates' dedicated OCIO business, provides discretionary outsourcing services to institutions globally, and currently manages more than $20 billion in assets on behalf of more than 80 clients. The firm also provides traditional advisory services and access to research and tools across global asset classes. More than 1,300 employees are located in offices in Arlington, VA; New York; Boston; Dallas; Menlo Park and San Francisco, CA; Toronto; London, UK; Singapore; Sydney; and Beijing. For more information about Cambridge Associates, please visit www.cambridgeassociates.com.

The client mandate referenced in this press release is not representative of all Cambridge Associates clients or advisory services. This press release has been made available for informational purposes only. It is not known whether the client approves or disapproves of Cambridge Associates or the advisory services provided.

CONTACTS:

Claire Gwatkin Jones

National Geographic

202-807-3184

cgjones@ngs.org



Samantha Norquist

Cambridge Associates

617-457-1347

snorquist@cambridgeassociates.com




U.S. President Donald Trump announces to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement, a landmark global pact to fight climate change, during a speech at the White House in Washington D.C., capital of the United States June 1, 2017. [Zhai Haijun/China.org.cn]

On Thursday, President Trump announced his decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement.

Characteristically clumsy, the speech would likely have drawn a chorus of "hurrahs" from anyone toasting the spirit of 2016. In a sense, last year's lingering political hangover is what made his decision equal parts surprising and unsurprising.

Regardless of his many inconsistencies, it's perhaps unsurprising that Trump did something he said he would do. What is surprising is that he decided to do it now.

Since day one, Trump's presidency has existed in a storm of self-imposed scandal, intrigue and general, run-of-the-mill chaos. Already under the intense domestic scrutiny of an ongoing investigation into his campaign's ties to Russia, the president's recent retreat from the Paris agreement has encouraged a wave of international criticism.

As the dust continues to settle, the ultimate implications of his announcement and how his administration will handle the resulting political fallout remain uncertain. If America does back away from its commitments, which country will take their place as the de-facto leader of the global fight against climate change?

According to analysts, it could be China.

Considering the country as the world's single largest emitter of greenhouse gasses, this may come as a bit of a surprise. For China insiders, it's something of an established narrative on the brink of becoming an intended future trend.

In recent years, the country's greenhouse gas emissions have been reduced in line with the country's Paris Climate promises. As part of the agreement, China aimed to cut its carbon intensity by 60 to 65 percent by 2030, compared to its level in 2005.

Writing for the New York Times, Chris Buckley revealed China also pledged that its carbon dioxide emissions would reach their maximum by around 2030. The country hopes to achieve this goal partly by expanding solar, wind, nuclear and other nonfossil energy to about 20 percent of total energy use.

According to the article, Niklas Hohne, a founding partner at the NewClimate Institute, acknowledges, "China is very close to making the turn in its carbon dioxide emissions. It will very likely be before 2030 and, in the very best case, may already have happened."

Add these assertions to the implications of Trump's intended withdrawal from the Paris Accord, and the narrative of China's emergence as a global climate change leader begins to garner real credibility.

Speaking to CNBC, Greenpeace East Asia's senior global policy officer Li Shuo, asserted, "There is no better time for China to further its climate leadership. The country has moved to a cautious leader in the run up to the Paris conference, and now to a country with potential to become a true climate leader in the age of Trump."

According to the same article from CNBC, Ann Carlson, a professor of environmental law at the University of California, Los Angeles, said, "If U.S. policy shifts in favor of fossil fuels as opposed to renewable ones, in the long run China will gain the upper hand in the inevitable global move toward cleaner sources of energy. The withdrawal of the U.S. from the global community opens up more opportunities for China."

It's an interesting proposition, but whether or not the country decides it is ready to directly shoulder the responsibility of leadership of the Paris Climate Accord depends on a number of ideological, economic and political factors.

China has a population of roughly 1.37 billion people, all of which still rely on coal to supply two thirds of their energy needs. China's domestic economic situation is perfectly tailored for a continued reliance on coal as a relatively cheap source of energy for its citizens as they continue to rise out of poverty. As a result, China is perhaps not yet ready to shoulder a direct responsibility for the international climate change initiative, as the country remains committed to first adapting its own internal realities.

However, it's precisely this unique domestic reality that remains the most exciting factor when it comes to the Paris Agreement and the near future. So long as China remains fully committed to reversing climate change, the possibilities for developing and implementing new technologies, which will transform the country's urban, rural and economic landscapes, are unprecedented.

As a developing nation, China's initial commitments to the Paris Accord speak to the country's current developmental realities. Considering Beijing's intended development plans, creating new and more effective domestic regulations in line with the agreement will only prepare and encourage China to become more involved as a global leader in the fight against climate change.

Having previously lived in Beijing working as a journalist and editor, Kyle Calandra is currently based in America reporting on Sino-U.S. Relations as a contributor for China.org.cn.

Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors only, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.
SMYRNA, TN -- (Marketwired) -- 06/07/17 -- Franke, a global leader in the manufacture of luxury sinks and faucets, introduced an array of industry-first new products and concepts at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF) in New York from May 21-24, 2017, all of which offered a vision of tomorrow's kitchen as the heart of the home with the sink as its multi-purpose centerpiece.

At the show, Franke launched the following new products: Pescara, a sleek and contemporary line of sinks and faucets; Absinthe, a collection of faucets defined by graceful contours reminiscent of a liqueur bottle; and StillPure Filtration, a water filtration system that works with the industry's first smart phone app to monitor water usage via Bluetooth technology. The Swiss-based company also spotlighted its award-winning Chef Center, a first-of-its kind innovation that elevates the sink to sous chef, with daily demonstrations by the renowned Chef Billy Parisi; showcased its environmentally-friendly luxury waste disposers, and its highly functional and durable retail faucet line; and unveiled two European concept sinks -- the Crystal and the Cera -- that offered a vision of a New Age of Stainless Steel in which the ubiquitous material is reimagined with overlays of glass and ceramic.

"Franke's history confirms that there is no limit to the ways in which the seemingly simple sink -- and its accompanying faucets and accessories -- can enhance the experience of gathering, entertaining and celebrating with friends and family in the kitchen," said Alexander Zschokke, CEO of Franke Group. "Centuries of tradition have dictated that the heart of the kitchen is the hearth, but that focus has now shifted to the sink. It's where healthy meals are prepped, where people gather, and where clean-up begins and ends."

"Franke believes the sink and faucet should therefore be the essence of form, function, and freedom in the kitchen. This is why we design; this is why we innovate: to bring to the new heart of the kitchen products that make entertaining a true pleasure."

Franke's range of kitchen solutions showcased at ICFF include:

New Products

Pescara Sinks and Faucets combine quality, craftsmanship, performance and innovation. Pescara sinks are available in seven sizes that range from an 18-inch prep sink to a 36-inch single bowl sink; feature 18-gauge Franke stainless steel; tight radius corners; square drain designs; and Franke's patented integral ledge system that incorporates a shelf grid to create a raised surface, making it easier and more comfortable to work at the bowl. Pescara faucets are available in four styles: Pull-Down Faucet (comes in three sizes), a Deck Mount Pot Filler, Wall Mount Pot Filler, and Prep Faucet. Each is visually stunning and easy-to-use. The Pull-Down faucets feature an intuitive switch that allows for altering between full and needle spray; water-saving flow rates between 1.75 - 2.2 gpm; and three finishes: polished chrome, steel or satin nickel. Franke's Pescara sinks and faucets, now available in showrooms nationwide, are sold exclusively at Franke retailers.





Absinthe Faucets blend elegant aesthetics with state-of-the-art technology. Available in six styles -- 1-Hole Faucet with Side Spray, Pull-Down Faucet, Pull-Out Faucet, Wall Mount Pot Filler Faucet, Bar Faucet and Prep Faucet. Franke's Absinthe line features extensive swivel ranges; water-saving flow rates; and four finishes: matte black, polished nickel, satin nickel, or polished chrome finish. Absinthe faucets, available in showrooms nationwide beginning in July, will be sold exclusively at Franke retailers.





StillPure Filtration System filters out limescale, metals, chlorine and more -- providing users with the purest fresh water right from the kitchen faucet. The StillPure Franke Filtration App -- now available for download in app stores for Apple and Android smart phones -- works with the FM100 Monitor (a Bluetooth monitor that easily attaches to the Filtration System) to track how many filtered gallons of water a household consumes and conveniently alerts users when it's time to change the filter. It's the definition of luxury for environmentally responsible consumers, whose water usage alerts are sent directly to their cell phones. Franke's StillPure Filtration System, now available in showrooms nationwide, is sold exclusively at Franke retailers.

Showcased Products

Chef Center: Franke's award-winning Chef Center is an integrated kitchen solution that is changing the way consumers think about sinks. The Chef Center's impeccable Swiss design considers every convenience and accessory the home chef requires while entertaining. Its composting compartment allows for easy removal of food scraps, and the storage compartment serves as a holder for utensils while preparing for a party or ice bucket while the party's on. From prep, to presentation, to party, the Chef Center is more Sous Chef than sink. The Chef Center, now available in showrooms nationwide, is sold exclusively at Franke retailers.





Luxury Waste Disposers: These environmentally-friendly waste management solutions feature superior grind quality and Bio Shield Odor Protection to enhance any kitchen system. The line consists of seven meticulously designed waste disposers, ranging in size from 11 pounds and 1/3 horsepower, to 17 pounds and 1 1/4 horsepower. Franke's new waste disposers grind to septic-system compatible levels of fineness in the fastest possible time, and use less energy. Franke's waste disposers are now available in showrooms across the country.

European Concept Sinks

Crystal Sink, where stainless steel meets glimmering glass, was designed with the purist in mind -- the person with a minimalist aesthetic and an appreciation of elegant simplicity. The Crystal sink is conceptualized in both black and white and sheathed in heat-and-chip resistant glass. Its shimmering translucence naturally draws the eye in its direction, and is destined to become the central focus of a well-appointed kitchen. Follow Franke to learn when the Crystal sink will be available in the United States.





Cera Sink, where stainless steel meets tattooed enamel, is fashioned of Franke's highest-grade stainless and a ceramic coating -- rendering the interior practically immune to wear and tear. The coating is remarkably durable, yet as smooth as glass. And, just because we can, we've added the possibility of tattooing the surface for a look that's both distinctive and fun. Follow Franke to learn when the Cera sink will be available in the United States.

By bringing to the stainless experience new definitions of functionality and beauty, Franke reinforces its status as a leader in kitchen design for tomorrow -- underscoring the importance of the highest quality stainless steel and its benefits to the home chef. For more details on Franke's newest innovations, or to find a showroom near you, visit www.franke.us/ks.

About Franke Group

Franke belongs to the Artemis Group and is a world-leading provider of solutions for residential kitchens and bathrooms, public washrooms, professional foodservice and coffee preparation. The Group operates worldwide and employs around 9,000 people in 40 countries. For more information, visit www.franke.us/ks.

Media Contact:

Laura Stephens

DVL Seigenthaler

laura.stephens@dvlseigenthaler.com






WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Former FBI Director James Comey's prepared statement before the Senate Intelligence Committee appears to confirm some recent reports about his interactions with President Donald Trump, including the president's request for loyalty.



Comey's prepared remarks were released by the committee on Wednesday, a day before his highly-anticipated testimony.



In the statement, Comey notes that Trump told him, 'I need loyalty, I expect loyalty' during a dinner at the White House in January.



'I replied, 'You will always get honesty from me.' [Trump] paused and then said, 'That's what I want, honest loyalty.' I paused, and then said, 'You will get that from me,' Comey says in the statement.



He adds, 'As I wrote in the memo I created immediately after the dinner, it is possible we understood the phrase 'honest loyalty' differently, but I decided it wouldn't be productive to push it further.'



The statement from Comey also seems to confirm reports that Trump wanted him to drop an investigation of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn's contact with Russian officials.



'I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go,' Trump said, according to Comey.



Comey says the request came during a one-on-one conversation with Trump in the Oval Office in February and suggested it was inappropriate for the discussion to occur without the presence of Attorney General Jeff Sessions.



After the meeting, Comey says he took the opportunity to implore Sessions to prevent any future direct communication between himself and the president.



Comey notes in his statement that he told Trump he was not under investigation and said the president repeatedly urged him to make the fact public.



'I did not tell the President that the FBI and the Department of Justice had been reluctant to make public statements that we did not have an open case on President Trump for a number of reasons, most importantly because it would create a duty to correct, should that change,' Comey says.



The former FBI Director also details a phone call with Trump in March during which the president asked what could be done to 'lift the cloud' of the Russia investigation.



'He finished by stressing 'the cloud' that was interfering with his ability to make deals for the country and said he hoped I could find a way to get out that he wasn't being investigated,' Comey says.



He adds, 'I told him I would see what we could do, and that we would do our investigative work well and as quickly as we could.'



Comey was fired last month, adding to the controversy over alleged collusion between Russia and Trump's presidential campaign.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

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VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 06/07/17 -- Axion Ventures Inc. ("Axion" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE: AXV) today announced the launch of its all-new corporate website, www.axionventures.com.

The newly launched corporate website offers visitors quick and easy access to information that provides a comprehensive overview and understanding of the Company and its portfolio holdings. The new website also provides a detailed investor section with access to recent company news and events, financial and stock information and historical SEDAR filings.

In addition, the Company announced today that it has retained LodeRock Advisors Inc. ("LodeRock") for strategic investor relations and capital markets communications services. Under the terms of the Investor Relations agreement, Axion will pay LodeRock a monthly fee of CAD $8,500 for ongoing strategic communication services. Neither LodeRock nor its principals presently have any other direct or indirect interest in Axion securities.

LodeRock Advisors is a group of senior capital markets communications executives who develop and execute communications programs in order to help companies achieve their capital markets objectives and capture the full potential of their public listing. The engagement of LodeRock remains subject to the approval of the TSX Venture Exchange.

About Axion

Axion Ventures is an Investment Issuer with interests in: (i) Axion Games Limited, a private online video games development and publishing company with primary operations in Shanghai, China; (ii) Innovega Inc., a private display technology eyewear and contact lens company with offices in San Diego, California and Bellevue, Washington; (iii) True Axion Games Ltd., a newly formed private video game company with primary operations in Bangkok, Thailand; and (iv) Red Anchor, a private British Virgin Islands company, which owns and operates the HotNow mobile application.

www.axionventures.com

Axion Ventures Inc. is listed on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol (TSX VENTURE: AXV).

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Contacts:

Axion Ventures Inc.

John Todd Bonner

Chief Executive Officer

(604) 687-7767



Investor Relations

Robert Kelly

LodeRock Advisors Inc.

(416) 992-4539

rob.kelly@loderockadvisors.com




Weekly net asset value ("NAV") is calculated as of the close of business on each Tuesday and posted on the following business day. In the event that Tuesday is not a business day, the Company will calculate the close-of-business NAV as of the business day immediately preceding that Tuesday. The end-of-month NAV is calculated as of the close of business on the last day of the month and posted on the following business day. For weeks that include a month-end NAV report, PSH will provide only the month-end NAV and not report the Tuesday NAV. Monthly NAVs are published in accordance with the Decree on Conduct of Business Supervision of Financial Undertakings under the Wft (Besluit Gedragstoezicht financiele ondernemingen Wft).

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - June 7, 2017) - American CuMo Mining Corporation (TSXV: MLY) (OTC Pink: MLYCF) ("CuMoCo" or the "Company") is pleased to provide an update on the Memorandum of Understanding (the "MOU") between the Company, its subsidiaries, Poly Resources LLC ("Poly") and Idaho CuMo Mining Corporation ("Idaho CuMo"), and Millennia Minerals Pte Ltd. (Singapore) ("Millennia") dated February 27, 2017 (see News Release dated February 27, 2017).

The MOU outlined the broad terms of a US$200 million private placement from Millennia to fund early-stage exploration through to pre-feasibility on the Calida Gold project owned by Poly Resources LLC for US$100 million and to provide funding to continue the development of the Company's CuMo Project through to feasibility for US$100 million. The MOU was subject to Millennia's completion of legal, technical, and financial due diligence.

During the process of completing its due diligence, Millennia determined that additional financial structuring was required in connection with its investment. This led to the parties engaging in further negotiations that changed the timing and structure of the investment.

As a result of these negotiations, the parties have agreed in principal that:

Millennia would have the right to acquire up to a 70% equity interest in Poly Resources for US$100 million, which amount would be invested in accordance with the following schedule: (i) US$5 million for a 25% membership interest in Poly Resources on or about June 20, 2017, of which US$1million has already been paid by Millennia, as announced by CuMoCo on March 15, 2017, (ii) US$5 million for an additional 25% membership interest in Poly Resources on or about the later of June 30, 2017 or the date Poly Resources receives all of the required permits for its planned 2017 exploration drilling program, (iii) US$40 million for an additional 10% membership interest in Poly Resources not later than 30 days following receipt of a National Instrument 43-101 compliant resource report on the Calida Project (the "Third Contribution"), and (iv) US$50 million for an additional 10% membership interest in Poly Resources not later than the first anniversary of the Third Contribution;

Millennia would have the right to acquire up to a 20% equity interest in Idaho CuMo for US$100 million, which amount would be invested in accordance with the following schedule: (i) US$10 million for a 2% equity interest in Idaho CuMo not later than June 30, 2017, (ii) US$15 million for an additional 3% equity interest in Idaho CuMo not later than December 31, 2017, (iii) US$25 million for an additional 5% equity interest in Idaho CuMo not later than June 30, 2018, (iv) US$25 million for an additional 5% equity interest in Idaho CuMo not later than December 31, 2018 and (v) US$25 million for an additional 5% equity interest in Idaho CuMo not later than June 30, 2019;

Millennia is to subscribe for eleven million common shares of the Company for an aggregate subscription price of US$3 million, which subscription is to occur concurrently with its US$10 million instalment to be paid to Idaho CuMo Mining Corporation. This subscription for CuMoCo common shares increases Millennia's aggregate investment to a total of US$203 million in staged funding into CuMoCo and CuMoCo's two projects;

Concurrent with each investment by Millennia in Poly Resources or Idaho CuMo, Millennia would receive the right to receive warrants, issuable upon the consummation of a take-over transaction of CuMoCo by an independent third-party, to purchase such number of common shares of CuMoCo as equals the amount of such investment divided by the share price of CuMoCo common shares at the time of such investment (and with an exercise price equal to such share price);

Upon execution of definitive agreements in respect of the transactions contemplated, Millennia would receive the right to receive warrants, issuable upon a determination that the Calida Project was non-viable, to purchase either (i) common shares of CuMoCo, the value of which would be equivalent to the amount of the initial contribution to Poly Resources of US$5 million actually expended at the time of exercise of such warrants, or (ii) Idaho CuMo secured silver stream notes, the value of which would be equivalent to the amount of the initial contribution to Poly Resources of US$5 million actually expended at the time of exercise of such warrants, or alternatively, Millennia would have the right to earn an additional 20% interest in Idaho CuMo by investing another US$100 million;

Millennia would receive the right to receive warrants, issuable upon Millennia's investment of US$10 million in each of Poly Resources and Idaho CuMo, to purchase one percent (1%) of CuMoCo's common shares at an exercise price equal to the trading price of CuMoCo common shares as of the close of trading on the day after CuMoCo's announcement of Millennia's US$10 million investment in each of Poly Resources and Idaho CuMo; and

Millennia would have the right to terminate the definitive agreement governing the foregoing transactions at any time and, not later than the first anniversary of such termination, CuMoCo would be required to purchase within that 365 day period all of the equity interests in Poly Resources and Idaho CuMo for a purchase price equal to the cost thereof plus, if at the time of such termination Millennia had made total investments of at least US$5 million, 20% of the amount of such investments that had been expended by Poly Resources or Idaho CuMo.

Millennia has advised CuMoCo they are satisfied that the risk and control measures included in the legal agreements for the Calida Gold project development are suitable for an early stage exploration project. Millennia has also informed CuMoCo they are still undertaking technical and financial due diligence on the CuMo Project and that they expect to complete the initial investment funding on time as described above, subject to completion of final legal due diligence and regulatory approval.

This financing transaction is subject to receipt of TSX Venture Exchange approval.

About CuMoCo

CuMoCo focuses on advancing its CuMo Project towards feasibility. CuMoCo also intends to advance its newly-acquired Calida Gold project. Management is continuing to build an even stronger foundation from which to move the Company and its projects forward. For more information, please visit www.cumoco.com, www.idahocumo.com and www.cumoproject.com.

For further information, please contact:

American CuMo Mining Corporation

Shaun Dykes, President and Chief Executive Officer

Tel: (604) 689-7902

Email: info@cumoco.com

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Service Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this new release.

Forward-looking information

This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation including, but not limited to, statements that address activities, events or developments that the Company expects or anticipates will or may occur in the future, such as Millennia satisfactorily completing due diligence and Company, Idaho CuMo, Poly and Millennia subsequently entering into a definitive agreement; Millennia completing the aforementioned private placements; the Company's ability to move its CuMo Project to feasibility and production, and to become one of the largest and lowest-cost molybdenum producers in the world as well as a significant producer of copper and silver. Forward-looking information is based on a number of material factors and assumptions, including the result of exploration activities, the completion of Millennia's due diligence and its ability to complete the aforementioned financings, the ability of the Company to raise the financing for a feasibility study and to put the CuMo project into production, that no labour shortages or delays are experienced, that plant and equipment function as specified that the Court will not intervene with the Company's proposed exploration activities at the CuMo Project, and the ability of the Company to obtain all requisite permits and licenses to advance the CuMo Project and eventually bring it into production. Forward-looking information involves known and unknown risks, future events, conditions, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future prediction, projection or forecast expressed or implied by the forward-looking information. Such factors include, among others, the interpretation and actual results of current exploration activities; changes in project parameters as plans continue to be refined; future prices of molybdenum, silver and copper; possible variations in grade or recovery rates; labour disputes and other risks of the mining industry; delays in obtaining governmental approvals or financing, as well as those factors disclosed in the Company's publicly filed documents, including the Company's Management's Discussion and Analysis for the period ended March 31, 2017. 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 information 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 information. Except as required under applicable securities legislation, the Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise forward-looking information.
TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 06/07/17 -- Belo Sun Mining Corp. ("Belo Sun" or the "Company") (TSX: BSX) reports, in accordance with the policies of the Toronto Stock Exchange, that the nominees listed in the management proxy circular dated May 1, 2017 for the 2017 Annual Meeting of shareholders of Belo Sun (the "Meeting") were elected as directors of the Company. Shareholders at the annual meeting also approved the appointment of the Company's auditors and approved the Company's rolling stock option plan. 58.3% of all the issued and outstanding shares of Belo Sun were represented at the Meeting.

Detailed results of the vote for the election of directors held at the Meeting on June 7, 2017 in Toronto, Ontario are set out below.

Election of Directors

The shareholders approved the election as directors of the persons listed below, based on the following vote.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nominee % Votes For % Votes Withheld ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Peter Tagliamonte 84.73% 15.27% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Stan Bharti 82.38% 17.62% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Eaton 84.73% 15.27% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- William Clarke 97.35% 2.65% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Denis Arsenault 97.35% 2.65% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Carol Fries 97.34% 2.66% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bruce Humphrey 98.87% 1.13% ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Shareholders voted 82.35% in favour of the approval of the Company's stock option plan, with 17.65% of shareholders voting against the plan.

Belo Sun's board would like to express its gratitude to its shareholders for their high levels of participation and support.

A short presentation was made at the meeting by President and CEO, Peter Tagliamonte. A copy of this presentation is available on the "Investor" section of the Company's website at www.belosun.com.

About the Company

Belo Sun Mining Corp. is a Canadian-based mineral exploration and development company with a portfolio of gold-focused properties in Brazil. Belo Sun's primary focus is advancing and expanding its 100% owned Volta Grande Gold Project, located in Para State. Belo Sun trades on the TSX under the symbol "BSX". For more information about Belo Sun please visit www.belosun.com.

Caution regarding forward-looking information:

This press release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking information includes, without limitation, statements regarding the election of directors. Forward-looking information is subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information, including risks inherent in the mining industry and risks described in the public disclosure of the Company which is available under the profile of the Company on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and on the Company's website at www.belosun.com. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such information 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 information. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking information, except in accordance with applicable securities laws.

Contacts:

Belo Sun Mining Corp.

Peter Tagliamonte

President and CEO

(416) 309-2137




TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 06/07/17 -- North American Palladium Ltd. ("NAP" or the "Company") (TSX: PDL)(OTC PINK: PALDF) announced today that it has filed a preliminary base shelf prospectus (the "Shelf Prospectus") with the securities regulatory authorities in each of the provinces and territories of Canada (other than Quebec). The filing is part of the Company's ordinary course of business.

The Shelf Prospectus, when made final, will enable NAP to make offerings of up to $75,000,000 of (i) common shares; (ii) senior and subordinated unsecured debt securities, including debt securities convertible or exchangeable into other securities of NAP; (iii) subscription receipts; (iv) warrants; (v) share purchase contracts; and (vi) units comprised of one or more of the foregoing securities, during the 25 month period that the Shelf Prospectus, including any amendments thereto, remains valid. The nature, size and timing of any such financings (if any) will depend, in part, on NAP's assessment of its requirements for funding and general market conditions. Unless otherwise specified in the prospectus supplement relating to a particular offering of securities, the net proceeds from any sale of any securities will be used for general working capital purposes, and for one or more other general corporate purposes including to repay existing or future indebtedness and to finance future growth opportunities. The specific terms of any future offering will be established in a prospectus supplement to the Shelf Prospectus, which supplement will be filed with the applicable Canadian securities regulatory authorities.

A copy of the Shelf Prospectus is available on SEDAR (www.sedar.com) and also may be obtained by contacting the Corporate Secretary of the Company at 1 University Avenue, Suite 402, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5J 2P1, telephone (416) 360-7590.

About North American Palladium

NAP is an established precious metals producer that has been operating its Lac des Iles mine ("LDI") located in Ontario, Canada since 1993. LDI is the world's only mining operation that is a primary producer of palladium, offering investors unique exposure to palladium. The Company's shares trade on the TSX under the symbol PDL and on the OTC Pink under the symbol PALDF.

Cautionary Statement on Forward-Looking Information

Certain information contained in this news release constitutes 'forward-looking statements' or 'forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities laws. All statements other than statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements. The words 'target', 'plan', 'should', 'could', 'estimate', 'guidance', and similar expressions identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements in this news release include, without limitation: information pertaining to the Company's filing of the Shelf Prospectus, regulatory approval of the Shelf Prospectus and any potential future offering(s) of securities pursuant to the Shelf Prospectus (and the use of proceeds therefor). Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risk factors that may cause the actual results to be materially different from those expressed or implied by the forward -looking statements. For more details on these and other risk factors see the Company's most recent Management's Discussion and Analysis report and Annual Information Form on file with Canadian securities regulatory authorities on SEDAR at www.sedar.com under the heading "Risk Factors".

Forward-looking statements are necessarily based upon a number of factors and assumptions that, while considered reasonable by management, are inherently subject to significant business, economic and competitive uncertainties and contingencies. The forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance. The Company disclaims any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, events or otherwise, except as expressly required by law. Readers are cautioned not to put undue reliance on these forward-looking statements.

Contacts:

North American Palladium Ltd.

Investor Relations

416-360-7374

IR@nap.com




Technavio analysts forecast the global synchrophasors marketto grow at an impressive CAGR of almost 15% 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/20170607006440/en/

Technavio has published a new report on the global synchrophasors market from 2017-2021. (Graphic: Business Wire)

The research study covers the present scenario and growth prospects of the global synchrophasorsmarketfor 2017-2021. Technavio presents a detailed picture of the market by way of study, synthesis, and summation of data from multiple sources. The analysts have presented the various facets of the market with a particular focus on identifying the key industry influencers.

Synchronized data has become more and more attractive for power engineers as it provides a wide area snapshot of the grid in real time, which is useful in mitigating blackouts and learning about the behavior of the grid, thus making the grid more reliable. This is one of the major reasons due to which the governments of several nations provide grants to encourage synchrophasor installations.

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 analysts highlight the following three factors that are contributing to the growth of the global synchrophasors market:

Increasing need for reducing grid outages

The aging infrastructure, the rise in population, and an increased demand on power resources have increased the strain on the infrastructure causing power outages. The exhibit below represents the year-over-year analysis of the number of outages in the US between 2009-2016 caused by inclement weather, equipment failure, maintenance shutdown, load-shedding, vandalism, and cyber-attacks.

Thanikachalam Chandrasekaran, a lead smart grid research analyst at Technavio, says, "Power outages not only cause inconvenience to the end-users, but they also lead to revenue loss for the utilities, impede emergency services, and jeopardize national security, as it may compromise the communication systems. Although utilities are trying to adopt and implement smart grid technologies to identify technical snags in the power distribution network faster and promptly restore power, outages do occur, and power services are interrupted

Rise in installed capacity of renewable energy

Fossil fuels remain the principal source of power generation worldwide; however, the use of renewable energy sources are projected to grow rapidly. Energy insecurities have led governments worldwide to focus on the alternate source of power for a sustainable future. The rising concerns of carbon emission from power plants have made the utilities switch to natural gas and renewable sources for electricity generation.

"The demand and supply of electricity are essential in maintaining the stability of the grid. As wind and solar energy sources are intermittent in nature, high reliance on them can undermine the stability of the grid. This situation has compelled grid operators to install technologies, which can increase the power generation from renewables without compromising system reliability," adds Thanikachalam.

Government support to enhance grid reliability

Increasing the grid reliability, enhancing the efficiency, and making the grid secure have been the top priority of the government in the energy sector. This has made the government agencies put in a lot of efforts and had led to numerous collaboration with various industry leaders to accomplish these governmental priorities. Several demonstrations and pilot programs have been executed by various governments across the globe to test new technologies, which can help improve grid reliability.

Top vendors:

ABB

Arbiter Systems

General Electric

Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories

Browse Related Reports:

Global Vehicle to Grid Market 2017-2021

Global Home Energy Management Systems Market 2017-2021

Global Water Quality Monitoring 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 powerenergy storage, and oil and gas. This subscription nets you thousands in savings, while staying connected to Technavio's constant transforming research library, helping you make informed business decisions more efficiently.

About Technavio

Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. The company develops over 2000 pieces of research every year, covering more than 500 technologies across 80 countries. Technavio has about 300 analysts globally who specialize in customized consulting and business research assignments across the latest leading edge technologies.

Technavio analysts employ primary as well as secondary research techniques to ascertain the size and vendor landscape in a range of markets. Analysts obtain information using a combination of bottom-up and top-down approaches, besides using in-house market modeling tools and proprietary databases. They corroborate this data with the data obtained from various market participants and stakeholders across the value chain, including vendors, service providers, distributors, re-sellers, and end-users.

If you are interested in more information, please contact our media team at media@technavio.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170607006440/en/

Contacts:

Technavio Research

Jesse Maida

Media Marketing Executive

US: +1 630-333-9501

UK: +44 208 123 1770

www.technavio.com
TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 07/12/17 -- Dundee Energy Limited (TSX: DEN) ("Dundee Energy" or the "Company") announced today that M. Jaffar Khan has resigned as a director of the Company. The board of directors of Dundee Energy would like to thank Mr. Khan for his contributions to the Company.

ABOUT THE COMPANY

Dundee Energy Limited is a Canadian-based oil and natural gas company with a mandate to create long-term value for its shareholders through the exploration, development, production and marketing of oil and natural gas, and through other high impact energy projects. Dundee Energy holds interests, both directly and indirectly, in the largest accumulation of producing oil and gas assets in Ontario and, through a preferred share investment, in certain exploration and evaluation programs for oil and natural gas offshore Tunisia. Dundee Energy's common shares trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol "DEN".

Contacts:

Dundee Energy Limited

Bruce Sherley

President & CEO

(403) 651-4581

(416) 363-4536 (FAX)

www.dundee-energy.com




Abreos Biosciences, a San Diego, CA-based biotech company, completed a new investment round of undisclosed amount.

Backers included existing investors as well as new investor TLP Investment Partners and its affiliates.

The company will use the funds to continue to expand operations and offerings.

Founded in 2013 by Dr. Bradley Messmer, Ph.D., CEO, Abreos Abreos Biosciences focuses on developing technologies for monitoring antibody therapies in blood as well as point-of-care devices for clinical testing.

The Abreos VeritopeTM technology platform allows for the selective monitoring of therapeutic antibody drugs, whether brand name or biosimilars. By monitoring the levels of these therapies, clinicians can optimize therapeutic dose and timing to help achieve optimal response to these expensive therapies.

To date, tests for therapies in four major clinical areas, including autoimmune disease, oncology, neurology, and cardiology, have been developed. These assays include those for rituximab, vendolizumab, adalimumab, pembrolizumab, obinutuzumab, trastuzumab, ipilumumab, natalizumab, and ocrelizumab.

FinSMEs

07/06/2017
A man checks the debris of his bus at the site of a truck bombing attack in Kabul, Afghanistan, April 21, 2016. The truck bombing near the Afghan Presidential Palace and Defense Ministry building on Tuesday destroyed dozens of civilian houses and affected a lot of people's lives. It also destroyed 54 vehicles parked near the scene of the blast. [Xinhua file photo]

Representatives of more than two dozen countries and organizations attended a peace conference hosted by Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. The meeting was held despite serious reservations over security after a terrible bombing last week killed 150 people in the capital Kabul.

The fact that the meeting was organized according to the schedule shows that Afghanistan and the world community are keen for peace.

Ghani made an impassioned plea to the Taliban to shun senseless violence and join the peace process for a stable and prosperous national future. He also offered to allow them to open a political office in Kabul to pave way for a peace dialogue. According to Ghani, it could be the last chance for the group to become part of the political process.

There was no response from the rebels; however, a rocket was fired that landed in the diplomatic residential area of Kabul, fortunately causing no casualties.

Ghani, in his speech, also targeted Pakistan for allegedly sheltering Taliban and Haqqani network militants whom Afghan leaders have blamed for the lethal Kabul bombing. However, he also hoped to convince Pakistan that a peaceful Afghanistan was in its interests.

There is no gainsaying that the Afghan issue is complex. Part of this is due to the attitude of various parties and stakeholders towards the question of peace. For example, the Afghan leadership is convinced that Pakistan holds the key and it can deliver peace within days by forcing the Taliban to negotiate.

The ground situation hardly supports this stance. Taliban controls nearly a third of country and are more powerful than ever since they were ousted in 2001. Their dependence on Pakistan has decreased considerably, as they have also cultivated ties with other players like Iran and Russia and have gained some vital international credibility.

To expect that Pakistan can force the Taliban to join the peace process is, in fact, asking far too much. Pakistans advisor on foreign affairs Sartaj Aziz has made it clear on a number of occasions that Islamabad has limited leverage to coerce militants. It can urge them, but it cannot dictate to them.

Pakistan also says that certain elements within Afghanistan are against peace and, instead of correcting the domestic situation, they conveniently shift the burden on Pakistan. According to Aziz, the same elements blamed Pakistan for the Kabul attack within hours without any probe.

Afghan leaders have failed to move the Taliban as they have been suing for peace from the position of weakness. Why should the Taliban or any other group join any peace talks when the momentum of the fighting is with them? Afghan forces are capable and have shown a lot of resilience, but they cannot defeat the Taliban in guerilla warfare.

It means that there is an element of stalemate because the Taliban cannot conquer Kabul while Afghan forces cannot go after them in the wild countryside where they rule unchallenged. Indeed, the Taliban have gained the upper hand due to their monopoly over violence.

That could be the reason for the demand to increase U.S. troops in-country. Already, America has about 8,400 troops while NATO has stationed about 5,000 soldiers. Additional troops with the express mandate to carry out combat missions may help to break the current impasse.

Changing the momentum of the fighting may reduce pressure on Afghanistan security forces but it is not certain the Taliban would join the peace talks or their desire for peace would improve the security situation. Let us also remember that Islamic State is active in the border regions of Afghanistan and it would be beneficiary if Taliban were defeated or weakened.

Afghanistan should also review its foreign policy and its attitude towards Pakistan with which it shares a 2400 km-long border. The presence of India in Afghanistan is source of concern for Pakistan. Its security agencies are convinced that India is using Afghan involvement to destabilize it. A number of terrorist attacks in Pakistan were traced back to Afghanistan.

The Afghan leaders should also deliver on the domestic front. They have failed to address the issue of governance, which means improving economy, ending corruption and addressing the problems faced by the common people.

Hence, Afghanistan should not just take back the initiative from the Taliban. Its leaders should take moral responsibility to give a better future to the people.

Sajjad Malik is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit:

http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/SajjadMalik.htm

Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.
CybelAngel, a Paris, France-based Big Data technology cybersecurity startup, secured 3M in funding.

Serena Data Ventures, the Serena Capital fund dedicated to Big Data and AI, made the investment.

The company intends to use the funds to accelerate its international expansion and intensify its R&D efforts to enhance the machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms that process data. In conjunction with the funding, Bertrand Diard, Venture Partner of Serena Data Ventures and co-founder of Talend & Influans, joined CybelAngels Board of Directors.

Led by Erwan Keraudy, CEO, CybelAngel offers an innovative cybersecurity technology to protect companies from document leaks on the Internet. Everyday, the platform detects one billion sensitive documents that are freely accessible online, which can jeopardize a companys R&D projects, its client databases, its commercial strategy or even its IT networks. CybelAngel locates this information as soon as it is made accessible online; then it alert its clients before a hacker or a competitor finds it and takes advantage of it.

CybelAngel currently works with some of the largest European companies, from various industries.

FinSMEs

07/06/2017
In April this year, when Maharashtra Chief Minister, Devendra Fadnavis went on record to say farm loan waiver cannot be a lasting solution to make farmers debt-free. Instead, higher capital investments in agriculture adequately backed by water and power supplies over a long period will bring greater economic stability to small and marginal farmers, Fadnavis said, while interacting with farmers on the programme, Mee Mukhyamantri Boltoy (I am the Chief Minister speaking).

Any crop loan waiver is not a lasting solution. It helps farmers get rid of debt but doesnt increase his repaying capacity when he goes for his next crop loan. Instead of a one-time crop loan waiver, which will certainly give us political mileage, our policies are to free farmers from the vicious cycle of debt, Fadnavis said.

Post-Fadnaviss statement, many, including this writer, had expressed doubts whether the Chief Minister can, ultimately, keep his word or not. Because such was the pressure then from political circles and farmer groups after the newly elected chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath announced a Rs 36,000 crore loan waiver for Uttar Pradesh farmers following a poll promise made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Subsequently, the calls for loan waiver strengthened, agitations began not just in Maharashtra but in other agrarian states like Madhya Pradesh. Logically, in Maharashtra, Fadnavis failed to walk his talk. His caution against the perils of farm loan waiver fell in deaf ears and Fadnavis was forced to follow the Yogi-way by announcing a Rs 30,000 crore loan waiver for Maharashtra farmers. Worse, even this announcement didnt calm the nerves of agitating farmers. Somehow, they arent convinced with the offer and the agitations continue even now.

In Madhya Pradesh, things have worsened to an altogether different level with farmer agitations turning violent, forcing security forces to open fire. At least six farmers have been shot dead and eight others have been injured (read here) in the state in separate incidents. Arguments are still on as to who pulled the trigger that killed the farmers but the fact is that six farmers have lost lives while agitating to press their demands. This doesnt augur well for the Modi government which has put farmers top on its priority list and wants to double farmer income by 2022.

Yogi's UP waiver -- the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP's) election plank and Prime Minister Modis trump card during Uttar Pradesh poll campaign -- is having its ripple effects not just in MP and Maharashtra, but in other states too. Farmers in other agrarian states like Punjab and Tamil Nadu have already raised similar demands. The fact that a Chief Minister like Fadnavis, who dared to speak against the waiver against the party line, had to later bend to the pressure shows the extent of influence Uttar Pradersh waiver claimed across the country. This was precisely what many observers feared will happen post the Yogi governments googly.

Going ahead, this will be too big a problem for states to handle since most of the agrarian states are fiscally constrained. Even Maharashtra, which had to agree to the waiver demand, is struggling to chalk out plan to fulfill its promise. It is unlikely that the state will be able to raise money on its own as the Centre wants.

Take a look at these numbers. According to government data, Maharashtra has a budget of Rs 2.57 lakh crore, of which committed and essential expenditure is Rs 1.77 lakh crore. These are unavoidable payments comprising salaries/pensions of Rs 1.40 lakh crore; state-Centre driven projects in various sectors worth Rs 34,000 crore; loan repayments/ interests of Rs 28,000 crore and allocations to local bodies amounting to Rs 11,000 crore. On the other hand, the states public debt is set to top the Rs 4 lakh crore mark by March 2018, which will mean the government will have to spend a staggering Rs 31,027 crore from its spend plan for 2017-18 to service the debt, The Indian Express reported in March. This means, the Fadnavis government will have to either seek the central aid or find some innovative ways to raise funds such as issuing papers on the lines of the UP government. But, the problem is that raising money issuing bonds will add to the liability of the state balance sheet and further weaken the finances.

Things are not better in Madhya Pradesh either. According to a PTI report in February, every citizen of Madhya Pradesh bore a 'debt' of Rs 13,853 as the state government had a liability of Rs 1.11 lakh crore at the beginning of current fiscal (2016-17). "The debt of the state government increased to Rs 1,11,101.10 crore in March last year from Rs 77,413 crore in March 2014. So the average debt of every citizen of Madhya Pradesh was Rs 13,853 as of March 31, 2016," the report quoted state finance minister Jayant Malaiya as saying.

To cut a long story short, states such as Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh are now feeling the cascading impact of the Yogi Adityanaths Uttar Pradesh loan waiver bonanza and Prime Minister Modis election promise. As this writer has been pointing out for long, the idea of farm loan waiver can have disastrous effect on the credit culture of a large number of people in the particular geography and makes a defaulter even out of an honest borrower. We have plenty of examples from the past. The UPA-sponsored 2008 farm loan waiver is a good case study. Sure, it does work wonders for the moment -- for the politician (who gets political mileage) and the farmer (who experiences temporary relief and a false notion of being in the good books of his lenders).

The same bank manager, who waives the loan, will think twice before sanctioning a loan to the same farmer when he walks into his branch next time since his credit worthiness is now under question. Typically, the political administrations which press the loan waiver button, don't compensate banks in time. The delay inevitably weakens the balance sheets of lenders and the liability remains, at best, unstated. Banks that have high exposure to the farming sector in the state will likely see a spurt in their NPAs or non-performing assets or bad loans almost immediately. In short, a loan waiver is a toxic enough to paralyse the multiple organs of the body in one go.

Given the extent of damage loan waiver promise has done in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, the Modi government must take responsibility and step in immediately to control the damage. This time around, the onus of the loan waiver saga entirely lies on the Modi government, which refreshed the idea in the minds of farmers as a tool to win elections. It needs to find ways to stop what it started during the Uttar Prades -poll campaign. The buck clearly stops at New Delhi.
Anupam Kher is no stranger to political dramas, and has received a Special Mention at the National Film Awards for his portrayal of Uttam Chaudhary in Maine Gandhi Ko Nahin Mara. Now, he is set to play former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh in a film that chronicles his years in office.

The first look of the film has been released, and the most interesting part of it is the figure of a woman clad in a sari in the background, who is presumably Sonia Gandhi. The actor shared it with the caption, "To reinvent yourself as an actor is to challenge yourself."

To reinvent yourself as an actor is to challenge yourself. Looking forward to portraying #DrManmohanSingh in #TheAccidentalPrimeMinister.:) pic.twitter.com/PsVdkpjZWY  Anupam Kher (@AnupamPkher) June 7, 2017

This film is based on the book The Accidental Prime Minister, which is written by Sanjay Baru, who was the former Prime Minister's media advisor. This book is known to be critical of Singh's first term, and it was released around the time of the 2014 General Elections.

Sanjay Baru served as Manmohan Singh's advisor from May 2004 to August 2008. In the book, he says that Singh had been "defanged" by the Congress, and he claims that all key appointments and decisions were taken instead by Sonia Gandhi, the president of the party.

The movie is scheduled to release in December 2018, months before the 2019 General Elections. The first look will be revealed on 7 June 2017. Sunil Bohra, the producer of this film, has said that the film's scale as a political drama will be grander than that of Richard Attenborough's Gandhi, which starred Ben Kingsley.

Directed by debutante Vijay Ratnakar Gutte, the film's screenplay has been written by Aligarh director Hansal Mehta. The music of the film will be composed by Salim-Sulaiman. The film will focus on the inside workings of Manmohan Singh's administration. The rest of the cast is yet to be finalised.

Speaking about the role, Anupam Kher said, "Acting the role of anyone in contemporary history is extremely challenging, as comparisons are bound to be instant and inevitable. But as I have always revelled in challenges, right from my first film Saaransh, I look forward to the experience of portraying PM Manmohan Singh," as reported by The Economic Times.
Mumbai: Information and Broadcasting Minister Venkaiah Naidu on Tuesday said the government is amenable to a majority of Shyam Benegal committee's recommendations and will amend the Cinematograph Act soon.

The government is "in agreement with most of the recommendations of the report and all efforts" would be made by the ministry to "facilitate the amendments", an official statement said quoting Naidu.

The statement, which came after the last leg of consultation with stake-holders on Cinematograph Act in Mumbai, added, "the amendments would be in tune with technical and other realities of film production and modern times".

The Benegal panel was constituted after repeated controversies after the appointment of Pahlaj Nihlani as the CBFC chief by the NDA Government.

The Pahlaj Nihalani-led CBFC has been mired in controversies for cuts issued in films, with filmmakers demanding changes in the way films are certified.

The committee submitted its report in April last year to amend certain sections of the 1952 law.

"The participants were of the opinion that the government should implement the new recommendations of the committee of experts chaired by Shyam Benegal at the earliest," the statement said.

The consultation was also attended by Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, Secretary of Ministry of Information and Broadcasting Ajay Mittal, eminent captains of film industry, representatives of Film Producers Guild, senior government officials and other stake-holders.

The film industry also brought up the issue of higher GST of 28 percent for the sector, but Naidu said that the GST Council has taken this decision and assured to present their case before the council.

On the demand of increasing the number of screens, Naidu said state governments need to ensure single-window clearances and weed out unnecessary rules to simplify the process.

"A simpler and easy process of licensing would encourage not only more people to invest in the sector but would also incentivise many to upgrade the existing old screens to modern new screens and create better viewing experiences for all, which in turn would bring more people to halls and boost revenue," the statement said.

The minister said his ministry has finalised plans of setting up a national centre of excellence in animation, visual effects, gaming and comics at Film City in the financial capital.

The centre will be built on a 25-acre land parcel given by the Maharashtra government to the National Building Construction Company. It will have capacity to accommodate 1,480 students at a time and 60 percent of them will be at the under-graduate level.

The Centre is also setting up a national museum of Indian cinema in the city and it will be inaugurated in July, he said.

Film industry's demand for more screens was also discussed during a meeting on Tuesday, Naidu said, adding that there are many impediments on the issue including urban development policies.

He said the films have international potential and are the most potent medium of spreading India's culture globally.
Rajinikanth has finished filming the Mumbai segment of his next gangster drama Kaala Karikaalan. The Tamil superstar is expected to return to Chennai today, according to www.ibtimes.com. The actor who has kept fans and well-wishers in a bit of a suspense over his political plans, is expected to meet his fans in Chennai soon.

This short break is being seen as a beginning of his political career by some. According to the same IBT report, the actor will use this break to interact with fans before plunging into the presently politically unstable landscape of Tamil Nadu.

The report also states that the official confirmation from Rajinikanth about his political career could be expected in the month of July.

His interactions with the general public will be an important area of interest for the political parties of the state as he holds a premier position in the hearts of Tamilians. The political circuit of the state is eager to know which party Rajinikanth will join.

Rajinikanth will resume shooting for the Chennai schedule of the Pa Ranjith film soon. A set similar to Mumbai's Dharavi area has been erected in Chennai. He was earlier spotted shooting in Wadala, surrounded by a mod of hundreds.

The film is being touted as a sequel to his 2016 gangster drama Kabali. The film has Huma Qureshi and Nana Patekar in significant roles. The film also stars Samuthirakani and Anjali Patil. Kaala Karikaalan will hit the theaters in 2018.
Salman Khan is known to be a regular on The Kapil Sharma Show. Be it Sultan, Bajrangi Bhaijaan or Jai Ho, Khan was seen aggressively promoting his films on the comedy show, frequently. However, it seems the winds have changed. Khan recently shot for the teaser of a special episode called Super Night with Tubelight with Sunil Grover, not Kapil Sharma.

Not just Grover, the special episode also has Ali Asgar, Sugandha Mishra and Sanket Bhosale. The teaser of the show does not feature Grover, but according to Indian Express, he had to miss the promo due to prior commitments, and will be joining the team for the final episode.

The special episode is a two-hour long episode according to a DNA report. What's surprising is that the show will be aired on Sony, the same channel that also airs The Kapil Sharma Show. The report suggests, that from a business point of view, the channel is gradually losing interest in Sharma's show.

Apart from the channel, Bollywood celebrities are also now skeptical of the show, as the TRPs of Sharma's show have been witnessing a plunging dip.

Khan choosing a different show, that too after Grover and Sharma's infamous mid-air scuffle, shows that in this industry, business interests play the biggest role in all equations.

The news of the special episode was shared on Twitter by Sony TV.

Get ready to welcome Laxman Singh Bisht in your town! But before that, meet him very soon in @SupernightWithTubelight on Sony TV. pic.twitter.com/qnnM6lZUq8  Sony TV (@SonyTV) June 4, 2017

The teaser is a thirty second video that features Salman with Asgar, Mishra and Bhosale. Khan promises that the special episode is going to be extremely enjoyable. The date of the final episode has not been mentioned yet. Khan's film, Tubelight, which is directed by Kabir Khan, releases on 25 June.
Animation giant Disney recently came under fire, with Esplanade Pictures filing a lawsuit against them for copyright infringement over the work of Total Recall and Big Trouble in Little China writer Gary L. Goldman.

The lawsuit was filed in March and Goldman has recently issued a statement detailing the plot similarities between Disney's billion dollar blockbuster Zootopia, and his own version of Zootopia.

Goldman claims that he had pitched the idea for his movie to Disney for the first time in 2000 to former Disney executive and Mandeville Films CEO David Hoberman, and then once again in 2009 when he was working closely with Brigham Taylor who, Esplanade is informed and believes, was Walt Disney Pictures' Executive Vice President of Production and Development at the time.

Both the times it is believed that Goldman's idea was heard out but ultimately rejected, with Disney sending him on his way. Disney is then alleged to have started working on its own version of Zootopia  the one that we saw in the theaters on 4 March, 2016  and reproduced a substantially similar story, in alleged violation of Goldman's copyrights.

The lawsuit filed by Esplanade Pictures on behalf of Goldman claims a breach of implied contract, breach of confidence and unfair competition. Disney and its affiliates embrace "a culture that not only accepts the unauthorized copying of others' original material, but encourages it," the lawsuit said. "They did it with Zootopia, too, when they copied Gary L. Goldman's Zootopia."

With Disney's Zootopia grossing more than $1 billion worldwide in theaters, this also puts substantial damages on the line. Esplanade is said to be looking for an injunction as well as monetary damages  with punitive damages to be included as well.

In May 2017 animation powerhouse Disney filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, telling the court that there wasn't enough evidence that proved substantial similarity between the works of Disney and Goldman for the complaint to proceed in court, as reported by Reuters. Disney argued that this is just the latest addition in "a long history of plaintiffs coming out of the woodwork after a motion picture has achieved critical and financial success to claim credit  and proceeds  where none is due."

In Goldman's version of Zootopia, there was a live-action human animator element who creates a "cartoon world of animated anthropomorphic animals called Zootopia". Disney's movie does not include any of the aforementioned live-action elements, however Esplanade claims that it copied dialogue, plot points, characters, themes and even artwork from the animated segment of Goldman's work.

Esplanade's attorney Gary Gans in his opposition statement, goes on to describe in detail the similarities between Disney's Zootopia to that of Goldman's story.

"Both Zootopias involve the story of a small, cute, furry, female, prey animal, who is an outsider to Zootopia. She is dismissed by more dominant animals because of her species, and strives to overcome societal prejudice. She becomes friends with an abrasive predator who lives in Zootopia. The two contrasting protagonists get together and contend with prejudice and preconceived notions of the elite, including a power structure headed by species dominant in a state of nature," Gans added in his opposition statement, to Hollywood Reporter.

A hearing has currently been set for June 26 as we await the verdict on the fate of the second highest grossing ($1 billion) Hollywood movie.
Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi may visit Madhya Pradesh's Mandsaur on Wednesday, where at least five farmers were killed in police firing, said party sources.

Five farmers were killed and several others injured on Tuesday in Mandsaur as police opened fire on the protesting villagers, who indulged in violence and stone-pelting.

Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan ordered a judicial probe into the incident even as Mandsaur city and Piplya Mandi area were put under curfew after the violence.

Chouhan announced a compensation of Rs 1 crore and a job to the next of kin of each of those who were killed, Rs five lakh and free treatment to the injured.

Rashtriya Kisan Mazdoor Sangh Chairman Shivkumar Sharma identified the dead as Bablu Patidar, Sarender Patidar, Kanhaiya, Satyanarayan, and Akhilesh, who is said to be a college student.

Mandsaur collector SK Singh confirmed deaths and said that a magisterial inquiry has been ordered. As tension prevailed, mobile internet services were suspended in Mandsaur, Ratlam and Neemuch districts since morning to check spread of rumours.

With inputs from agencies
There is a general belief growing that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) raids on the houses of NDTV's co-founders Prannoy Roy and Radhika Roy were a direct result of the dismissal of BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra by the news channel's anchor Nidhi Razdan from her show.

On the face of it, though stranger things have happened, it is a bit of a stretch. Patra is not such a heavyweight in the ruling party that within days of him being kicked off the talk show  where he had badmouthed the channel he was on  the national BJP machinery would rise to avenge the 'embarrassment'

If indeed there is evidence of a connect, then that is a dangerous portent. It would lead us to believe that Prime Minister Narendra Modis party is dividing the media into 'them' and 'us'; if you are not with us, you are the enemy  giving credence to anchor Ravish Kumars words that fear walks the streets of Delhi as far as media persons are concerned.

But are we ready to accept that assessment yet? It is a quantum leap of faith or lack of it in the fourth estate's role in our democracy and before we make it a certain, introspection is necessary.

Not just necessary but vital, for if the traditional watchdog is being blindsided we have to ensure that it has no ticks.

So, it makes good sense before the media gets too huff. That we ask ourselves if we havent diluted our own ranks with dross. The label of 'media' is now so loosely used that we have Mr Fix-its, bagmen, third parties, intermediaries, and even agents masquerading as pressmen; using that vague membership to undue advantage, that has nothing to do with journalism.

Add to it paid hacks working in consonance with public relations people  who use every tactic possible to kill, block or rework stories  and we are compelled to admit that some of the rot resides within the media.

With so much decay in our standards over the years, we cannot seek refuge in the traditional harbour of being media. That has become an armour and a shield  a convenient excuse. If we get caught, we immediately link it to a vendetta and an interference in doing our job.

Since I havent read the 28-page indictment against the NDTV bosses, far be it for anyone to second guess their guilt or innocence.

It suffices to say that such raids are unnerving and a scar on the Indian medias psyche. The fact that the press has been incredibly free for 70-odd years gets knotted with each such assault.

One of the reasons why the press (as opposed to the newfangled media) was able to withstand government pressure all these years was that its practitioners were not wealthy. This may sound absurd but their wealth was their craft and their role as keepers of the flame. That relative poverty was a saving grace.

Today, journalists have holdings and investment portfolios and engage in dealings with corporates and individuals and banks and government doles and subsidies. All of which makes them quasi-businessmen looking for business-matches, and not journalists.

In that conversion, it is conceivable that laws will be broken and compromises will be made. It is the nature of the beast. And the happy untouchability we, the media, have bestowed upon ourselves because we are press is not integral to the law. All too often, we feel we are above its considerations.

Even for the sake of argument, if we assume that the Modi brigade is now in a vindictive mode, how does going for the top echelons of media affect him? For one, it makes him a despot and sets the whole estate against him or at least wakes them up to an Orwellian possibility  of big brother intruding on their turf. It also makes the CBI come off like his personal property.

Has Modi become so arrogant and singular that he would actually encourage such a message? On the contrary, he might have actually given NDTV a fresh lease on life  more grist for its mill and a nicely rounded halo of martyrdom.

There is just no win in it for Modi except if we see it through the prism of future suspect  that more selective chastisement will follow.

In which case, as we set up defences, let the media also do some housecleaning and weed out the white ants and weevils from its cupboard.

That act of pest control will make for stronger woodwork.
New Delhi: The Centre on Wednesday directed 2,025 NGOs to validate their foreign contribution designated accounts with banks and inform the same to the home ministry within the next fortnight.

In a circular, the home ministry said all NGOs which were registered under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) should receive donations from abroad in a single designated bank account.

However, it is seen that a number of NGOs have not validated their foreign contribution designated accounts causing problems for the banks to comply with the FCRA provisions that they (banks) report to the central government within 48 hours of such receipt or utilisation of foreign contribution.

"These associations are required to validate their foreign designated accounts and also the utilisation accounts within 15 days and send the details, including the bank branch, code, account number, IFSC etc," joint secretary (foreigners) in the home ministry Mukesh Mittal said.

The home ministry also announced a list of 2,025 NGOs which have not yet validated their FCRA designated accounts.

The Modi government, which has tightened the rules for NGOs, has already cancelled the registration of more than 10,000 organisations in the last three years for allegedly non-filing of annual returns as mandated in the FCRA.

In addition, renewals of more than 1,300 NGOs have been denied or closed in recent past for allegedly violating various provisions of the FCRA.

Recently, the home ministry has asked nearly 6,000 NGOs to open their accounts in banks having core banking facilities and furnish details for real-time access to security agencies in case of any discrepancy.

The move was initiated after it was detected that many NGOs have their bank accounts in cooperative banks or state government owned apex banks or banks which do not have core banking facilities.

In May, the home ministry had directed all FCRA registered NGOs to submit their annual income and expenditure records by 14 June failing which the registration will be cancelled.

The order came after it was found that many NGOs have not filed their annual returns for five years  2010-11 to 2014-15.

In November 2016, the government had directed more than 11,000 NGOs to file applications for renewal of registration by 28 February, 2017.

Of the above, 3,500 NGOs have filed applications for renewal till February 2017. Registration of more than 7,000 NGOs was deemed expired due to non-filing of renewal applications.
Rooftop solar panels gleaming under the sun are a common sight in villages of Zuoquan County. The electricity they generate has been successfully hooked up to the grid at a cost of about RMB 0.98 per watt, so enabling each household to earn an extra income of as much as RMB 7,000 a year. The local government began promoting the photovoltaic industry throughout the county in 2016 in its efforts to alleviate poverty. [Photo/China.org.cn]

"To build a well-off society in an all-round way is a solemn promise to our people. The government must make poverty alleviation the top priority, to ensure that all poor people live in a well-off society and enjoy essential social services by 2020."

 President Xi Jinping

On May 26, 2017, the Chinese government launched the Global Poverty Reduction Online Knowledge Sharing Database at the 2017 China Poverty Reduction International Forum in Beijing. Chinese leaders' strong commitment to eliminating hunger and illiteracy, has certainly helped China's economic and social advancement and deserves much praise.

The newly-formed database is an enlarged part of the Global Poverty Reduction & Inclusive Growth Portal launched jointly by the China Internet Information Center and the International Poverty Reduction Center in May last year.

As China continues to take a more active role in poverty alleviation on the global stage, it is an ideal position to be a close partner with other developing countries and share the lessons it has learned from its own poverty reduction experience.

Undoubtedly, China's experience in reducing poverty can offer useful lessons to other developing countries.

There are still more than 700 million people living in poverty in the world today, a curse for developing and underdeveloped countries. Developing nations such as India and underdeveloped African nations face acute poverty. It's true that despite vast physical and cultural resources, Indian masses, both in rural and urban areas, have been reeling under poverty and unemployment for centuries.

The World Bank has revised its international poverty line norm from $1.25 to $1.90 a day. According to this norm, India has the highest number of people living below poverty line  30 percent of the population.

Thousands of families in India cannot find enough to feed themselves and, in a moment of complete dejection, they commit suicide, often collectively. A total of 48 percent of Indians don't even have access to toilets. Around 65 percent of rural households have no sanitation facility, while the corresponding figure for urban areas is 11 percent. A third of the population in India does not have any electricity connection.

Rural poverty is further compounded by India's enormous health burden; India accounts for more than one quarter of the world's TB cases and deaths. In India, most villages don't possess even a small hospital. Unfortunately, in India's noisy political democracy, politicians are not too interested in intervening.

On the other hand, it is well known that China has recorded tremendous achievements in poverty alleviation. Thanks to thirty-eight years of reform, opening-up and socialist modernization first promoted by Deng Xiaoping, China has lifted over 700 million people out of poverty, accounting for more than 70 percent of the global reduction in poverty and significantly made life better for its 1.3 billion-plus people. This is an unparalleled achievement and truly inspiring.

According to the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020), China, under the leadership of President Xi Jinping, is aiming to eliminate poverty by 2020. A total of 55.64 million Chinese rural residents were lifted out of poverty from 2013 to 2016, and at least another 10 million will shake off poverty by the end of this year, meaning the number of rural Chinese lifted out of poverty in five years will exceed 65 million  roughly the population of a major European country such as Britain, France or Italy.

China's approach to development over the last 40 years has built up the world's second largest economy tipped to overtake the U.S. within the next decade. India's GDP per capita fell behind China around 1990; the latter's economy now is more than five times larger on a per capita basis  $8,260 to $1,718.

China has come up with many innovative and effective practices in targeted poverty alleviation. In the course of realizing the "Two Centenary Goals" and the Chinese Dream of revitalizing the nation, it has focused on safeguarding and improving people's well-being, advancing all social programs, and protecting people's rights to equal participation and development.

President Xi Jinping said at the annual session of the National People's Congress in Beijing on March 8, 2017, "It is the Party's solemn pledge to help all impoverished rural population out of poverty under the current standard and delist all poor counties by 2020."

The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) calculates that China has contributed 76 percent of all global poverty reduction to date. With a truly remarkable track record, China is undoubtedly a world-leader in poverty reduction and improving health outcomes and there is a lot the rest of the world can learn from its experience, including India.

Rabi Sankar Bosu, Secretary of New Horizon Radio Listeners' Club, West Bengal, India

Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors only, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.
On Monday, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) raided the house of NDTV's co-founders Prannoy Roy and Radhika Roy after registering an FIR for causing an alleged loss of Rs 48 crore to ICICI Bank in a loan resettlement in 2009 and concealing from the SEBI and stock exchanges the pledging of shares for the loan.

The Narendra Modi-led BJP government at the Centre has been criticised for a "concerted effort" to target a section of liberal media in the country, in a bid to silence the critics of the government. These are the allegations. In the first statement released by NDTV soon after the raids were conducted, the channel tore into the Centre for conducting a "witch hunt". Dubbing the raids "shocking", NDTV said that the raids were blatant attempt to "undermine democracy and free speech in India."

While NDTV dug in its heels and stood its ground, immense support poured in from various corners. Media houses, eminent media personalities and even political parties backed the channel and the founders and said that the raids were shocking and the attack on freedom of press was condemnable. However, there was a quarter which claimed that the CBI raid was long overdue.

Writing for The New Indian Express, editor for the Tughlak Magazine S Gurumurthy, lauded CBI for the raids and congratulated the Modi government on acting against the channel and their "fraud and deceit". Gurumurthy, in his article, quoted emails from 2008, which were obtained by the Income Tax authorities, which he claims "shows how the Roys and the other directors of NDTV were struggling to camouflage the huge monies received, not knowing how to camouflage the funds before the tax authorities."

Quoting one such email by a Vivek Mehta from PricewaterhouseCoopers, dated 22 May, 2008: "Subject: Press Announcements etc. Dear Pronnoy & all above. Now that we are reaching the conclusion I wanted to remind everybody that all press releases stock exchange releases etc etc both by NDTV & NBCU should be whetted by us. We must ensure that what is stated is that NBCU is subscribing for a sum of & 150 m in NDTV Networks group company Overseas for an effective 26 percent stake. We must not mention that NDTV is receiving the 150 m as dividend or otherwise. If asked a question what will the money be used for??? We need to decide how to answer this question carefully. Thanks Vivek".

Gurumurthy's editorial in The New Indian Express alleges that around 2004, NDTV was languishing with huge cash loss. However, its fortunes soared ever since the UPA government came to power as, the article points out, it received funds through a host of shell companies floated by the channel after 2004.

Incidentally, most of the editorials slammed the government for the raids rather than siding with it. The Wire, in one such editorial says:

"Whichever way one looks at the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) raids conducted on the NDTV offices and the residence of its promoters, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that vendetta has been a guiding motive behind them. This is not the first time that a government has sought to muzzle adversarial media in this crude fashion, threatening the basic constitutional guarantee of free speech upon which our democracy rests.

Likening the situation to that of Emergency in the mid-1970s, the editorial went on to add that the Modi Cabinet is ironically dominated by those leaders and "warriors" who are currently trying the muzzle the freedom of the press.

"Without going into the merits of the CBI case at this stage, some prima facie observations can be made. The CBI FIR, self-admittedly based on a petition of a disgruntled former consultant, alleges that NDTV did not fully repay a loan taken from ICICI Bank, thereby causing a loss of Rs 48 crore to the bank. What is most puzzling is ICICI, a private bank, has lodged no such complaint and NDTV, in its rebuttal to the CBI FIR, has released a letter from ICICI saying all dues were fully paid. The question that then arises is why the CBI is so interested in a deal between a private firm (NDTV) and a private bank (ICICI), especially at a time when about Rs 10 lakh crore of debt remains overdue to public sector banks from a dozen large corporate groups who have worked the system for years and postponed loan repayments. Something is clearly amiss here."

Firstpost's Ajay Kumar argues on similar angles in his article. This piece, however, also mentions the fact that the raid was "vendetta politics", since senior journalist and NDTV anchor Nidhi Razdan asked BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra to leave her show 'Left, Right and Centre', after the minister alleged that the channel always had an agenda against the ruling party.

"The FIR reproduced the complaint verbatim filed by Quantum Securities Ltd. The complaint is dated 28 April 2017, however, date of the registration of the FIR is 2 June, 2017 and there appears to be nothing more in the FIR apart from the complaint and it's annexures. 1 June, 2017 is a day after NDTV's Anchor Nidhi Razdan asked BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra to leave her programme after he accused her channel of having "an agenda" on air."

In his piece, Kumar goes on to say that CBI had no business raiding the premises as "in this present complaint... relate to the Banking Regulation Act, 1949, Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002, Securities and Exchange Board of India Act, 1992, Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999 do not fall within it's ambit. The CBI has limited jurisdiction in terms of the Delhi Police Special Establishment Act, 1946. It can only investigate offences under the IPC and and under laws that have been notified under Section 3 of that that act. Except the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 none of the other charges in the complaint relate to matters which are within the jurisdiction or remit of the CBI."

International media could not overlook the developments either. Calling NDTV "one of the few liberal-leaning media outlets in India", The Guardian said that "India has a vibrant and diverse media environment but the watchdog group Freedom House ranks the countrys press as only "partly free", citing onerous defamation laws and frequent physical threats and intimidation faced by journalists, particularly those who report in regional languages."

BBC, too, reporting on the same issue noted that "Modi's government has also been accused of cold-shouldering news organisations which criticise its policies."
Beijing: Even as China has welcomed India to join the Belt and Road project, it does not need to "beg New Delhi" or agree to its demands, a Chinese daily said on Wednesday.

A commentary by a Global Times reporter said both Japan and India were welcome to join China's ambitious project and they could be an example for the countries which have not joined the initiative.

"We are willing to see the initiative help build up a cooperation platform for countries along the route, but China does not need to beg any countries, Japan and India included, to join the initiative," the commentary by Hu Weijia said.

Last month, New Delhi boycotted China's Belt and Road summit in Beijing, citing its opposition to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) that passes through a part of Kashmir held by Pakistan and claimed by India.

India's absence at the summit was sort of an embarrassment to China even though it called the forum a success.

It is chiefly because of the CPEC that India has reservations over the Belt and Road project. Besides, the CPEC has put a new strain on Sino-Indian ties.

In an another article, the Global Times said India was "over-concerned," about China's intentions and views "bilateral relationship with China through the lens of geopolitics and regards Beijing as a strategic rival.

"China has put forward the Belt and Road initiative to aid regional connectivity. Beijing sincerely hopes that New Delhi can play a part in and benefit from the infrastructure initiative.

"However, New Delhi is over-concerned about Beijing's intentions, and there are even critical voices in India against Modi's China-friendly remarks.

"It is because New Delhi still views the bilateral relationship with China through the lens of geopolitics and regards Beijing as a strategic rival," the article said.

It said every time China reaches out to strengthen cooperation with countries regarded by India as within its sphere of influence, New Delhi "worries the cooperation is deliberately targeting it.

"If New Delhi can understand China's connectivity initiative from the perspective of regional development, this will help enhance mutual trust between the two countries," it said.

The article by Liu Jainxi also said Indian media need not make a fuss over the alleged Indian airspace violation by Chinese military helicopters last week.
Kolkata: The CID has identified over 500 fake doctors practising in government hospitals and private clinics in West Bengal.

A highly-placed official of the agency said that around seven to eight fake institutes were involved in the racket.

"Fake doctors are present in sizable numbers in government and private hospitals all over the state. We have information that around seven to eight fake institutes in the state are involved in the business apart from other such establishments in neighbouring states," the official said.

State Medical Council president Nirmal Maji said that they had a list which would be handed over to the police.

The CID already arrested six fake doctors from various parts of the state including Ajay Tiwary and Naren Pandey who were attached to two renowned private hospitals in the metropolis.

It has also seized a large number of documents comprising fake marksheets, fake records of students of MBBS course after raiding the office of Alternative Medical Council of Calcutta at Barasat in North 24-Parganas district.

During the raid they also seized the soft copy of fake MBBS record of another such doctor Kushinath Halder which was detected in the hard disc of the office.

CID sleuths said that fake certificates and registration numbers were given by those institutes at a hefty price.

Maji said that the fake doctors had links with senior officials of the health department besides political laders and civil and police officers.

"The fake doctors have been practising since the days of the Left Front government. Thier contacts had helped them practice as doctors," he said.

On the insistence of CID, the council had issued a directive to doctors to register themselves afresh, and renew and update their credentials with them.

The medical council also directed hospitals to provide it with names of registered doctors which would help the council screen the list of doctors practising in the state.

The medical council had lodged complaints with the police based on which the arrests were made. The council also appealed to the people to inform it if they suspected anybody to be a fake doctor.

Police sources said that old registration numbers, used by doctors who are not in the profession now or had expired, were being provided to such persons.

Maji said that the state medical council would accept complaints from the people from today.

"If a complaint is found genuine, we will get an FIR lodged," he said adding that the state government was trying to formulate a mechanism to stop the practice.
The Indian Coast Guard Ship Rajdoot on Wednesday rescued seven fishermen from a sinking boat Maheswari. The operation took place about 3 nautical miles off new Mangalore, reports ANI.

Indian Coast Guard Ship Rajdoot rescues 7 fishermen from a sinking boat Maheswari, about 3 nautical miles off new Mangalore. pic.twitter.com/nG4wnrVgE4  ANI (@ANI_news) June 7, 2017

The Coast Guard has conducted multiple rescue operations over the past few days. It rescued six fishermen from the deep sea off Paradip coast in Odisha when Coast Guard ship Rajkiran while patrolling sighted a partially sunken country boat. The ship approached the sunken boat and carried out necessary manoeuvring and rescued all survivors.

It also saved 32 people in three different operations at New Mangalore, Goa and 590 nautical miles off the Mumbai coast. While 27 crew members on board a grounded barge were rescued from south of old Mangalore port on 3 and 4 June, a critically ill lighthouse staff member was rescued from Vengurla Rock Light House on 4 June.

The Coast Guard, which is the nodal agency for search and rescue in Indian Search and Rescue Region, rescued four crew members of a sailing boat, which had got drifted due to engine failure, off Mumbai coast on 3 June.

In the first operation, Coast Guard Karnataka Headquarters received a message from New Mangalore Port Control regarding flooding onboard barge 'Ibis', grounded south of old Mangalore port. The coast guard ship reached near the grounding site at about 6.40 pm

on 3 June and rescued four crew members braving very high waves and inclement weather.

The rescue mission recommenced in the morning and all 27 crew were rescued.

In the second incident, Coast Guard at Goa evacuated a critically ill (suffering chest pain) staff of Light House authorities from Vengurla Rock Light House. The operation was undertaken with first light on 4 June as night operation was not possible from the light house. A Coast Guard helicopter was launched from Goa and the light house staff was safely evacuated to mainland at about 8 am and handed over to light house authorities.

In the third operation, the Coast Guard Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre, Mumbai received a distress alert on 31 May from a sailing boat Lady Thuraya. The position was over 590 miles from Mumbai. Reacting swiftly to the situation, the Coast Guard raised an 'International Safety Net', wherein ships in the vicinity were requested to look for the distress boat. A merchant ship MV Seacor Diamond reached the sailing boat and rescued four members of the crew.

With inputs from PTI.
New Delhi: In a rare move, aviation watchdog DGCA has filed a police complaint against 34 pilots of Jet Airways, IndiGo, SpiceJet and GoAir for allegedly posting "obscene" messages on a WhatsApp group against its officials. Acting on the complaint, Delhi Police on Tuesday questioned 13 pilots.

It is rare for the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) to file police complaint against pilots and in this instance, regulatory officials said some of the messages put out in a WhatsApp group were "really obscene".

DGCA Director General BS Bhullar confirmed that the regulator has filed the complaint against 34 pilots of Jet Airways, IndiGo, SpiceJet and GoAir.

"DGCA has filed complaint (against the pilots) for making obscene remarks against DGCA officials on social media. Any action on that is for the police," Bhullar told PTI.

On whether any disciplinary action would be initiated against the pilots, Bhullar said it was up to the airlines to decide on whether to take action or not. Sources said some of the "obscene messages" on the WhatsApp group were also put out on the social media.

A DGCA official said some pilots from Jet Airways, IndiGo, SpiceJet and GoAir created a WhatsApp group and some content shared on it was "offensive and abusive".

The official also said that unconditional apology has come from the airlines' managements.

Earlier in the day, many of the pilots, including ten from Jet Airways, were questioned at the Lodhi Colony police station in Delhi.

"The pilots have been called in for questioning on the basis of a complaint by the DGCA. They have been called in for an inquiry," a senior police official said.

Thirteen pilots have been questioned, the official added. A Jet Airways spokesperson said that a few of its cockpit crew were called to record their statements by local authorities in response to a complaint and the airline is extending its full cooperation to the authorities.

"The matter is under investigation and we are therefore unable to comment further. Jet Airways will take appropriate measures where necessary, as per the company policy and in compliance with local law," the spokesperson said.

An IndiGo spokesperson said appropriate action would be taken after an internal enquiry into the matter. "We are looking into the charges and extending full cooperation to the DGCA in this matter. Basis the findings of our internal enquiry, we will take appropriate action," he said.

A SpiceJet spokesperson said no pilot of the airline has written any derogatory or obscene message against any DGCA official or made any comments on the draft DGCA CAR. "One of our pilots had just forwarded some WhatsApp messages to a few friends and colleagues," he added.

GoAir said that "only one" of its pilots has been named in the complaint and the issue was "closed" now after the airline filed an unconditional apology along with the other three private carriers.

Last month, the regulator proposed norms that would require notice period of one year for captains and six months for co-pilots who resign from an airline.

This draft Civil Aviation Requirement (CAR) has been opposed by most of the pilots' groupings.

Meanwhile, as many as 10 pilots of the Jet Airways were kept out of flying duties for quoting incorrectly the designation of a senior DGCA official in a communique.

A communication, sent to the aviation watchdog opposing the proposal to increase the notice period for pilots to one year, in which the DGCA official's designation was written incorrectly, had backfired with an 'arbitrary' regulatory action against them, sources had said on Monday.
At least three terrorists were killed in an encounter with security forces on Wednesday morning in Nagaland's Mon district. According to initial reports by ANI, a territorial army officer was also killed during the encounter. The report further added that one AK 56, 2 Chinese AK, 2 grenades, 3 IEDs, 270 AK rounds were recovered from the three killed terrorist.

According to PTI, three cadres of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN-K) and an Assam Rifles (AR) officer were killed in an encounter in Mon district of Nagaland, a defence spokesman said on Wednesday.

Three AR jawans were also injured in the encounter that took place at Lappa in Tizit circle on Tuesday night.

AR personnel raided Lappa at around 11 pm following information that NSCN (K) cadres were moving through that area and an encounter ensued, the spokesman said.

The encounter continued for several hours. Later, bodies of the three militants were found, the spokesman said.

According to CNN-News 18, the terrorists belonged to ULFA (United Liberation Front of Assam). The report further added that one civilian was killed and three army jawans were injured while combating with the terrorists.

DNA reported that the operation is still underway.

Earlier, on 30 May, one person was killed and four others were injured in a bomb blast that took place inside a medical store at Church Road in Dimapur. An eyewitness said that two persons came in a car and lobbed a bomb inside the shop.

Three salesmen and two customers present in the shop were injured after the bomb exploded. One customer called Abdul Rashid was seriously injured.

He died at a private hospital and four others injured in the blast were identified as Bindan Biwas (39), Dilwar Hussian (22), Mithu Biswas (42)and Ihelung Newmai (22).

They were out of danger, the police had said. A police officer said it appeared that a crude bomb was hurled inside the medical store.

An investigation was started to ascertain the motive behind the incident, the police officer said.

With input from agencies
After Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh has now been rocked by farmer unrest. At least six farmers were killed and eight others were critically injured on Tuesday when the police resorted to firing to subdue the protesting farmers in Mandsaur in Madhya Pradesh.

In both Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, the farmers demands are almost similar: they want complete farm loan waiver as a short-term palliative and secondly, institutionalised mechanism for getting better prices for agricultural produce.

Incidentally, both the states are ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP); in Maharashtra, it is an alliance government with Shiv Sena, the latter, however, is a junior partner. It is therefore alarming for the BJP, which also rules at the Centre, to face the farmers wrath as the ruling party has made the ambitious plan to double the farmers income in the next five years.

It is all the more disturbing for the BJP as Madhya Pradesh under Shivraj Singh Chouhans stewardship has been hailed as the biggest success story for agriculture in the recent decades.

Barely a month ago, Ashok Gulati, an eminent agriculture expert, wrote in The Indian Express: "Several of these steps (like farm loan waiver, government purchase of wheat and potatoes and notice to sugar meals for clearing farmer dues, etc) highlight the Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanaths concern for farmers who have been getting a raw deal for years. Should he intend to be in for the long haul, Adityanath would be better off taking a leaf from what we call the Shiv mantra. The mantra derives its name from Shivraj Singh Chauhan, who is in his third term as the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh."

Gulati then goes on to state the achievements of the Shivraj government that created the golden era for agriculture in Madhya Pradesh. He gives the statistics for it: "Madhya Pradeshs agri  gross state domestic product (agri-GSDP) grew at 9.7 percent per annum  the highest ever achieved by any state  between 2005-06 and 2014-15. All-India agri-GDP growth during this period was 3.5 percent.

Why then have things gone so horribly wrong in Madhya Pradesh where farmers are out on the streets in thousands demanding justice? Chouhan has also tried to do what his Maharashtra counterpart attempted a couple of days ago  to break the unity of the farmers by inviting one farmer union group for talks to the exclusion of the other.

Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis conceded the farm loan waiver for the small and marginal farmers in his meeting with a farmers union which in turn announced the withdrawal of the strike. But other farmers unions were enraged at their exclusion from negotiations and vowed to continue the protest.

The same scenario was repeated in Madhya Pradesh when Chouhan called the leaders of one organisation for negotiations, which ended with those leaders calling off the strike, but other union leaders have refused to toe the line until Madhya Pradesh government declares a complete farm loan waiver.

Why has Gulatis golden state of agriculture turned into a farmers graveyard? It is not as if agricultural pot started boiling last week. The official data presents a dismal picture over a longer period. The Madhya Pradesh government also admitted on the floor of the legislature that between 1 July, 2016 and 15 November, 2016, 531 farmers had committed suicide in the state.

The home minister of the Madhya Pradesh government had to also put on record that between 16 November, 2016 and 27 February, 2017, 106 farmers and 181 farm labourers have committed suicide.

The official data for farmer suicide in Maharashtra is starker. The data compiled by the relief and rehabilitation department of the Maharashtra government has admitted that 639 farmers committed suicide in just three months, between 1 January and 31 March of this year. Last year, in 2016, on official count confirmed that at least 3,052 farmers committed suicide in the state.

This is a cause for worry for the BJP as Madhya Pradesh goes for election next year and Maharashtra is due for its next election the year after. No party can hope to win an election in a state by incurring the wrath of the rural community, especially the farmers. By a conservative estimate, more than 50 percent of Indian population are employed  or if you like, underemployed  in agricultural activity. A ruling party cannot afford to ignore their concerns.

What then ails Indian agriculture? And what can the government do to alleviate the conditions?

For quite sometime, the common idea that was held was that agriculture in India faced a crisis because farmers were over-dependent on monsoons in the absence of adequate irrigation facilities. When the monsoon failed or was below normal, the drought condition prevailed and agricultural production took a hit.

So the states which wanted to take care of its farmers, prioritised irrigation facilities. Madhya Pradesh took the lead in this regard. "Between 2009 and 2014, over 1,400 minor irrigation projects were completed in MP, increasing the states irrigated area by 4.8 lakh hectares The irrigated area in MP, thus, increased from 30 percent of the cropped area in 2005-06 to 41.2 percent of such area in 2014-15."

The relatively good monsoon last year added to the bountiful production of food crops. Why is it then that the farmers in Madhya Pradesh are distressed?

The agricultural distress has turned on its head there. Food scarcity is no more the issue in the state. What plagues the farmer there is over-production. The Madhya Pradesh government, in its over enthusiasm, had implemented a policy of 10 percent bonus over and above the Centres minimum support price (MSP) during 2007-08 and 2014-15. It resulted in a glut  Madhya pradeshs share of wheat production rose from 8.6 per cent in 2005-06 to almost 20 per cent in 2014-15.

The state has had to deal with the consequent problem of over-production. The state did not have the wherewithal to store the foodgrains in the warehouses. It did not make economic sense for the state to create additional warehouses to preserve the foodgrains only to rot.

When the state government tried to give away the foodgrains free to the people below the poverty line, the central government raised a red flag saying it would distort the market economy.

The rural distress today is largely on account of the falling prices. Madhya Pradesh today faces a glut in onion production. The MP government has announced the decision to buy onion from farmers at Rs 8 and sell at Rs 2 through the public distribution system. The Shivraj Singh government has also created Rs 1000 crore stabilisation fund to ride over the immediate crisis.

But clearly, these short-term measures have not assuaged the sentiment of the farmers. They are demanding complete bank loan waiver to get back on their feet. Even if the MP government concedes this demand  just as the Maharashtra government has partially done  it would be another short-term palliative.

The writing on the wall is clear: what the agriculture sector today needs are the long term policy measures to shield the farmer from the consequences of both over-production and under-production of agricultural goods. Otherwise, rural distress and farmer suicide would remain the recurring feature of Indian reality.

Also read: Maharashtra farmers strike: A handy tool for Congress and NCP to hide 65 years of self-enrichment
Balaghat: Twenty workers were charred to death and 10 others were injured after a fire broke out in a cracker factory at Bhatan village in the district this afternoon, an official said.

Madhya Pradesh: Death toll in fire that broke out at a fire cracker factory in Balaghat rises to 20 pic.twitter.com/HbRtB7ERtK  ANI (@ANI_news) June 7, 2017

The blaze started around 3 pm in the factory located around 10 kms from the district headquarters in the Kotwali police station limits.

"So far, eight bodies have been recovered from the debris and 10 injured have been rushed to hospitals," district collector Bharat Yadav told PTI.

A couple of people are still feared to be trapped under the debris, he said.

The cracker factory is owned by one Warish Ahmed.

According to Yadav, the victims were the workers of the factory and the incident took place when the work was on.

"What exactly triggered the fire is not yet known. It is possible that someone might have thrown a burning beedi," he said.

The fire has been doused, he said adding the factory was located away from the human settlement.
New Delhi: Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu on Wednesday said the attempts to forge a grand alliance by the opposition parties against the BJP will fail as there is no consensus among them over the issue of leadership.

"The casteist and communal are afraid of (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi and that's why they have started a misinformation campaign against him," the Union Information and Broadcasting Minister told reporters in Delhi.

He said the attempts of the Opposition parties to "mislead" people against the central government will "fail and boomerang".

Taking a dig at the parties for their attempts to forge a grand alliance at the national level to counter the Bharatiya Janata Party, Naidu said, "All these attempts of forging grand alliance or alliance will fail. Nothing is going to happen."

Citing previous attempts of forming a national front against the BJP, Naidu said, "We have seen it in past too. There is no principle, no common programme, no consensus on leadership. Rather being a national front, it became a notional front, united front became a divided front, third front became a distant third front."

"....so that being the case I don't think this effort of grand alliance will succeed," the BJP leader said.

Naidu also wished the opposition parties luck to come together and give BJP the space in Bengal and Kerala.

"I hope the Congress, the Communists and the Trinamool come together so that the BJP can occupy the remaining space in Kolkata and that in Kerala the Communists and the Congress come together so that the space is left for the BJP," he said.

"You cannot have operation in Delhi, operation in Kolkata and separation in Kerala," Naidu added.
Ahmedabad: Social activist Medha Patkar was on Wednesday detained along with dozens of others in Chhota Udaipur district in Gujarat, when they were on their way to join a protest by the Narmada dam-affected people, police said.

The dam-affected people have been protesting at Kevadiya in Narmada district.

According to a police official, the activists, including Patkar, were detained on the Gujarat-Madhya Pradesh border near Kawant town in Chhota Udaipur district.

"A group of people, who were on their way to Chhota Udaipur, were detained at Kavta check-post on Gujarat-Madhya Pradesh border," the police official from Kawant police station said.

Chhota Udaipur in-charge superintendent of police Dharmendra Parmar could not be reached despite repeated attempts, but district collector Vijay Kharadi said the detention was made under a notification issued by the collector under section 144 of CrPC prohibiting unlawful assembly.

"They were detained as per the notification under section 144 of CrPC, which prohibits unlawful assembly or processions in the district," Kharadi said.

Patkar, along with environmental activist Prafulla Samantara and around five dozen activists from Narmada Bachao Andolanan NGO fighting for the rights of tribals affected by dams build across Narmada river were on their way to Kevadiya in Narmada district, where Narmada Dam is located, to express solidarity with several dam displaced tribals from the area.

The tribals have been protesting since the last eleven months against the "poor" facilities provided to them in colonies for the project affected.

Narmada Bachao Andolan, in a statement, said that the detention was "undemocratic" and an "attack on the constitutional rights of people."

"We condemn the attack by the Gujarat government and the intent of police officials, who have been rampant on suppressing the people's voices and their constitutional rights...It is an attack on the constitutional rights of people," it said.

The 'Rally for the Valley' organised by Narmada Bachao Andolan planned to stop by Kevadiya before proceeding to Chimalkhedi in Maharashtra and visit Jeevanshala, a school run by Narmada Navnirmal Abhiyaan.

Over a dozen agitators from Kevadiya were also detained last night by local police.
Gurgaon: Gurgaon police on Tuesday released sketches of the three accused in a case of gangrape of a woman and murder of her infant daughter.

After failing to recover any concrete evidence and clues of the three accused who gang raped the 23-year-old woman and killed her baby daughter on 29 May, Gurgaon police released the sketches of the accused and appealed to the public for their identification.

Since the crime occurred in a moving auto-rickshaw, the police has questioned over 50 auto drivers plying in the IMT, Manesar area and detained some of them for interrogation to ascertain the auto and accused persons.

It has become a challenge for the Gurgaon police to nab the criminals after three back-to-back cases of molestation and gangrape since last month.

The accused left the victim after raping her for four hours. She then went to the spot where they had earlier thrown her nine-month-old daughter and picked her up in the middle of road and went to a hospital.

The doctors declared the infant dead but still she did not believe it and travelled with the dead child to a hospital in Delhi and later returned to MG Road metro station.

Gurgaon police commissioner Sandeep Khirwar admitted that the victim had travelled with her dead child in the metro the day after the incident and police learnt about the crime only after the victim's husband approached them.

"Her husband and Gurgaon police received the victim from MG Road metro station after she returned from hospital in Delhi. Following that, police conducted post-mortem of the infant," Khirwar said.

It has been alleged that as the victim belongs to a poor family, the police tried to suppress her statement.

The police also reportedly did not register an FIR of gangrape initially but later included the charge five days after the incident. The police constituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to nab the culprits. The SIT has taken the victim to all possible locations to identify the crime scene and sequence of events.

The woman and her daughter had left home in Bas Khusla village after an altercation with her husband and neighbours on the night of 29 May.

She was on her way to her parental house at Khandsa village when she was first given a lift in a truck. The truck driver also molested her but as she put up strong resistance, he dropped her off on NH 8.

As the victim was alone, the three accused in the auto offered her a lift and then gang raped her.

The accused also threw her infant daughter from the vehicle to avoid attention after she started crying.
Lahore: Mumbai terror attack mastermind and Jamaat-ud Dawah (JuD) chief Hafiz Saeed and his four aides will have to spend some more time in jail as a Pakistani court on Wednesday reserved its verdict in their detention case.

A division bench headed by justice Abdul Sami Khan reserved the decision after the Punjab government law officer submitted a reply and Saeed's counsel advocate AK Dogar completed his arguments.

According to the Punjab government's reply, Saeed and his aides  Abdullah Ubaid, Malik Zafar Iqbal, Abdul Rehman Abid and Qazi Kashif Hussain were detained on the instruction of the federal government for their alleged involvement in activities prejudicial to peace and security of the country.

The law officer also submitted the report of the judicial review board on the detention of Saeed and his close aides.

AK Dogar argued that the government did not produce the petitioners before the judicial review board prior to expiry of their detention period on 30 April and extended their detention on its own.

He said extending detention period without the mandatory approval of the review board is "illegal".

Dogar further said the government detained the petitioners to "please India and America only".

He said the courts of the country in past had declared detention of the JuD chief illegal as government failed to prove its charges against him. He prayed to the court to set aside the detention of the petitioners for being unconstitutional.

Earlier, the three-member review board headed by justice Ejaz Afzal Khan of the Supreme Court had reserved its verdict on the detention of Saeed.

Saeed last month had appeared before the review board and told it that he had been detained by the Pakistani government in order to "stop him for raising voice for Kashmiris".

The federal interior ministry rejected his arguments and told the board that "Saeed and his four aides have been detained for spreading terrorism in the name of Jihad".

On 30 April, detention of Saeed and his four aides was extended by the Punjab government for another 90 days under Anti-Terrorism Act 1997.

The Punjab government on 30 January had put these five under house arrest in Lahore under the Second Schedule of Anti-Terrorism Act 1997.

The Nawaz government had reportedly taken action against Saeed after the US clearly told Islamabad that in case of not taking action against JuD and Saeed it may face sanctions.

JuD is believed to be the front for the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). The organisation is accused of involvement in militant activities in India and has already been declared as a foreign terrorist organisation by the US in 2014.
Agartala: A joint team of governments of India and Bangladesh has selected a site for establishing a border haat in Dhalai district of Tripura.

"We have agreed to set up a border haat at Kamalpur (Kurmaghat) after conducting an on the spot visit by a joint India-Bangla team," Additional District Magistrate, Dhalai, D K Chakma, said.

Besides location, items to be sold at the proposed border haat and finalisation of vendors were also done in a meeting held on Tuesday in the presence of ADM of Moulavi Bazar of Bangladesh, he said.

"This was the first meeting of border haat management committee and it was very successful. We will meet on regular basis to establish the border haat at the earliest," Chakma said.

However, there was a problem too in setting up the haat at Kamalpur/Kurmaghat as a canal would come on the way if it was set up along the zero line of the international border.

As per guidelines, border haats should come up along the zero line of India-Bangla border.

The industries and commerce department would send an expert to find a solution to the problem, said Chakma, who led the Indian team.

Currently, two border haats are functional in Tripura  one at Kamalasagar in Sepahijala district and another at Srinagar in South Tripura district.

Another border haat at Raghna in North Tripura district is also in the pipeline and its site has been selected.
Washington: The Pentagon has said that tension continues to exist along the disputed portions of India-China border even though the economic relationship between the two countries have improved in recent years. According to Pentagon, China's use of force in territorial disputes has varied widely throughout its history.

"Tensions persist along disputed portions of the Sino-Indian border, where both countries patrol with the armed forces," the Pentagon said in its annual report to the Congress.

In September 2016, an Indian patrol observed that more than 40 Chinese troops had set up a temporary shelter within Indian territory in Arunachal Pradesh, which China also claims as South Tibet, it said.

"The two sides conducted flag-officer level meetings where they agreed to maintain peace, and then withdrew to mutually acceptable positions," the Pentagon said as it listed out other border disputes that China has with neighbouring countries, prominent among them being the East China Sea.

Some disputes led to war, as in border conflicts with India in 1962 and Vietnam in 1979, it said, adding that a contested border with the former Soviet Union during the 1960s raised the possibility of nuclear war.

In more recent cases involving land border disputes, China has sometimes been willing to compromise with and even offer concessions to its neighbours.

"Since 1998, China has settled 11 land-based territorial disputes with six of its neighbours," the Pentagon said.

In recent years, China has adopted a coercive approach to deal with several disputes that continue over maritime features and ownership of potentially rich offshore oil and gas deposits, it added.

The Pentagon said tensions remain with India along the shared 4,057 km border over Arunachal Pradesh, which China asserts is part of Tibet and therefore part of China, and over the Aksai Chin region at the western end of the Tibetan Plateau, despite growing China-India political and economic relations.

"China and India continue to accuse each other of frequent invasions and military build-ups along the disputed territories. In 2013, however, Chinese and Indian officials signed the Border Defence Cooperation Agreement, which supplements existing procedures managing the interaction of forces along the Line of Actual Control," it said.

As per Chinese figures, cumulative Chinese investments into India till September 2016 stood at $4.75 billion while Indian investments into China were $0.689 billion. Indian businesses have a presence in China in sectors such as IT, pharmaceuticals and automobiles.

The Pentagon said China and Japan have overlapping claims to both the continental shelves and the exclusive economic zones in the East China Sea. The East China Sea contains natural gas and oil, though hydrocarbon reserves are difficult to estimate.

Japan maintains that an intermediate line from each country involved should separate the EEZs, while China claims an extended continental shelf beyond the equidistant line to the Okinawa Trench, it said.

Also, the South China Sea plays an important role in security considerations across East Asia because Northeast Asia relies heavily on the flow of oil and commerce through South China Sea shipping lanes, including more than 80 percent of the crude oil to Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.
New Delhi: The government has floodlit 647 kilometres of the borders with Pakistan and Bangladesh to prevent terrorists and immigrants from infiltrating into Indian territory.

The floodlighting of the 647-kilometre-long stretches of the two international borders was completed in last one year, a home ministry official said.

It will help border guarding forces keep strict vigil in the forward areas and check attempts of infiltration by terrorists and illegal immigrants.

Projects worth Rs 5,188 crore were sanctioned by the central government in the last three years of which Rs 2,138 crore has been released for the India-Bangladesh and India-Pakistan border projects.

These include erecting a fence in a 200-km area, constructing 430-kilometre-long border roads, 110 composite border outposts and floodlighting the 647-kilometre-long areas.

"A major push has been given by the government to border infrastructure and developmental works," the official said.

The total length of the India-Pakistan border is 3,323 kilometre, including the Line of Control and the Actual Ground Position Line, while the India-Bangladesh border is 4,096 km long. The India-China border is 3,488 kilometres long.

As regards to the India-China border, out of 27 border roads sanctioned in 2008, the construction of first eight roads was completed during 2014-16, while another nine roads are due to be completed by the end of 2017.

The home ministry has also undertaken a new initiative for the creation of model villages in border areas. More than Rs 92 crore has been released to seven states for development of 41 model villages, including 24 in Jammu and Kashmir.

To facilitate the border trade and passenger movement at land border crossings, the government has been promoting the setting up Integrated Check Posts (ICPs).

The ICP at Raxaul (India-Nepal border) was operationalised in June 2016 and at Jogbani in November. While the cargo terminal at the ICP, Petrapole (India-Bangladesh border) was inaugurated by prime ministers of India and Bangladesh in July 2016, the foundation stone for an ICP at Dawki in Meghalaya (India-Bangladesh border) was laid in January 2017.

In 2009, the central government had approved a proposal to construct additional 509 border outposts (BOPs) along the India-Pakistan and the India-Bangladesh borders at an estimated cost of Rs 1,832 crore.

In 2016, the scope of the project was revised by the Cabinet Committee on Security from 509 BOPs to 422 BOPs.

At present, there are 609 BOPs along the India-Pakistan border and an additional 126 BOPs are to be constructed to reduce the inter-BOP distance to 3.5 km.

There are 802 BOPs along the India-Bangladesh border where the additional 383 BOPs were to be constructed.
On 2 June, a journalist working with Times Now news channel accosted Vishwanath Mahadeshwar, the mayor of Mumbai. Mahadeshwar leads an elected body, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, and represents the popular will of the people of Mumbai. He is a former principal of Raje Sambhaji Vidyalaya and Junior College, Mumbai. Recently, he had voiced his opinion that, "entire Maharashtra should know Marathi".

The journalist was ostensibly following up on this particular statement. Mahadeshwar responded to his aggressive and demeaning statements in crisp Marathi. This exchange then, inadvertently, became the "news". An analysis of the exchange would show the poor and unfortunate standard of English language TV journalism in the India.

After Mahadeshwar made clear his views and why he chose to spoke Marathi, the journalist asked, "You are the mayor of Mumbai, you are the mayor of all the citizens irrespective of their language, irrespective of their religion, irrespective of their caste. Do you think you are the mayor of just the Marathi population of Mumbai?"

Mahadeshwar answered in Marathi that he and his party has nothing against any specific group. Then the journalist continued: "Why is it that you are always speaking in Marathi and enforce it that you have to speak in Marathi despite the fact that you know English." The mayor responded, in Marathi, that his party stands for learning Marathi.

The journalist then paused for a moment before breaking into Marathi and then quickly corrected herself, saying, "learning the language that you are talking about is different and speaking it, even as you know English and despite intentionally doing it... what is the reason behind it?"

Ignoring the journalist, Mahadeshwar reiterated his stance. The journalist then asked, "Is that the stand of the party... that you are supposed to speak only in Marathi and not in Hindi or English?" The mayor replied that the party had no role in it, which is quite a bold and commendable non-partisan statement to make.

The journalist then repeated her earlier arent-you-mayor-of everyone question. To this, the mayor again responded that there is no animosity against any group and that Marathi is the official language of the whole state of Maharashtra. Mumbai happens to be in Maharashtra, whether some people like that or not, he said.

At this point, the journalist pointed out that the leader of the mayor's party, Uddhav Thackrey of Shiv Sena, spoke languages other than Marathi as well. To this, the mayor replied that there is no bar against speaking other languages but for addressing a general audience, he (the mayor) speaks Marathi.

The journalist appeared to be stuck in some kind of question loop, as she then said, "So, despite knowing the fact that... knowing English as a language... why is it that you are still speaking in Marathi?" That is an extraordinary statement to make, especially to the mayor of a city in Maharashtra, a state whose official language is Marathi. The mayor looked visibly insulted at such a question, as anyone with any dignity should be.

The journalist continued, "Why are you still speaking in Marathi when you are a professor, you are a principal of a college, you are well educated, you can speak English fluently... on camera... why is it that the mayor of Mumbai is actually speaking in Marathi?" Braving this direct insult at his own language, the mayor replied that his mother tongue is Marathi; that Mumbai is the capital of Maharashtra; the official language of the state is Marathi; and that people largely know it.

The harangue of the journalist again looped back into questions she had already posed earlier. Mahadeshwar said that it was not compulsory that everyone should speak in Marathi, responding to the journalist's question that does the mayor think that everyone in Mumbai should speak only in Marathi, which is a demand the mayor never made.

Finally, the mayor asked the journalist whether she was asking questions or looking for an argument. Then he asked the million dollar question: Does the journalist have any objection to him speaking in Marathi?

Incredibly, the journalist replied, "You should also speak the language that everybody also understands... for the channel that requires it... you own boss does that". At this point, the mayor, who has had enough of, started to walk off. But not before the insistent journalist asked one final question: "So, you mean to say that every citizen must speak in Marathi?".

The mayor had never claimed or demanded this. To this, Mahadeshwar said, this time in English, "No". I do hope that the journalist understood the meaning of the English word "no". The journalist claimed, "You just said that". The mayor, replies thrice, in English, "No, no, no". The interview then ended.

This episode shows the kind of rot that underlies the standards of journalism and the context in which this rot is only natural. Let us go into the evident fallacies that came through in the journalist's stance. The journalist wanted the mayor to speak other languages (English in this case) because the mayor represents people from all linguistic backgrounds.

This is interesting because the prime minister always speaks in Hindi to non-Hindi populations and also in international forums, like the United Nations, where almost no one understands the language.

I have never seen anyone protest that. If anything, some Indian Union citizens feel very proud that their prime minister goes abroad and speaks to foreigners in a native language that they do not understand. I am yet to see Times Now call out Narendra Modi on why he speaks in Hindi to non-Hindi people. And what is okay for the prime minister should be okay for the mayor of Mumbai.

If anything, the mayor of Mumbai has a far better reason to speak in Marathi. Because he is the mayor of a city in a state that was formed explicitly on the basis of a single language, Marathi. The Samyukta Maharashtra Andolan also foiled plans of the non-Marathi elites of Mumbai (then Bombay) to keep Mumbai out of Maharashtra. We live in times when a journalist in Maharashtra seems to be unaware of all this.

All large non-Hindi states were formed explicitly on the basis of language  Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Gujarat, Punjab, West Bengal, etc. The Indian Union, on the other hand, was not formed on the basis of any single language. The Indian Union does not even have any national language irrespective of the long-standing false propaganda of Hindi chauvinists and Delhi-headquartered ruling parties.

The journalist's questions show how ill-conceived, if not outright false, her allegations are. The fact that the mayor knows English shows that he does not always speak in Marathi but does so in a certain official capacity. In fact, he does briefly speak in English even during the interview. And, in fact, the journalist stands doubly exposed when she tells the mayor as part of another question, "you can speak English fluently".

So, in fact, the journalist does know that he speaks English. Two other questions are actually the most alarming - "So, despite knowing the fact that... knowing English as a language, why is it that you are still speaking in Marathi?" and "Why are you still speaking in Marathi when you are a professor, a principal of a college.. you are well educated, you can speak English fluently... on camera, why is it that the mayor of Mumbai is actually speaking in Marathi?".

Let us all understand the hubris and contempt for the Marathi speaker or for that matter any mother tongue speaker that is contained in these questions. The operative word is "still" which means English, in their ideology, is some higher language than Marathi.

The references to the mayor's education also reinforce the same point  that it is somehow unbecoming of an educated person, a highly educated one at that, to speak his/her mother tongue. This is the class that uses English as a status and education marker and thinks so low of Marathi that it finds being educated and speaking in Marathi incompatible. In another world, in another time, this would be plainly called racism, except that in Mumbai it is perpetrated by people who share the skin colour of the Marathi Manoos.

Mumbai is special. It is special in the way the Marathi speaker is sidelined in its economy, culture and all avenues of upward mobility. Would anyone be able to make this journalist's argument in a Hindi state? In the Constituent Assembly debates discussing the making of the Constitution of India, English-knowing-Hindi-speaking leaders refused to speak in English, in spite of requests and protests from non-Hindi speaking leaders, who mostly did not know Hindi.

This special status of Hindi has continued and those who upheld this double standard then became major champions of Indian nationalism while their subsequent generations have helped create this power architecture, where only Anglo-Hindi rules and is a pre-condition to first class Indian citizenship.

That makes it a class promoting politico-cultural alienation of the poor, the rooted by dint of its grip on key sources of power. Systemic discrimination of this scale is pathological  it is needed by the imperial ideology of a certain class. A very powerful class that has aims to put the plaster of Anglo-Hindi on other mother tongues, aims to induce a kind of inferiority complex among non-Anglo-Hindi speakers and making them second class citizens in their own linguistic homeland.

All this goes under the banner of "cosmopolitanism" while the German identity of Berlin, the English identity of London, the French identity of Paris are not making those cities any less cosmopolitan. This faux cosmopolitanism of the Anglo-Hindi class stands exposed when Times Now and other English TV channels' anchors break into Hindi. Interviews are conducted in Hindi, talk show guests often speak in Hindi and no translation into English is provided, in spite of data that a majority of the non-Hindi population of the Indian Union do not understand Hindi.

It's about time that Mumbai rises up and casts Bombay to where it belongs, the dustbin of history. 'Vladimir Putin speak Russian, M Karunanidhi speaks Tamil, Mahadeshwar speaks Marathi. In this world of homogenisation as part of politico-economic domination, contempt towards mother tongues is often linked with contempt towards the poor and the rooted.
New Delhi: Calcutta High Court judge CS Karnan, evading arrest since 9 May, failed to get relief from the Supreme Court, which refused to hear his plea on Wednesday.

In his plea, he sought a stay on the order sentencing him to a six-month jail term for contempt of court.

Justice Karnan's counsel mentioned the matter before a vacation bench comprising Justice Ashok Bhushan and Justice Deepak Gupta, which refused to interfere with the order directing the West Bengal police to take him into custody.

Advocate Mathews J Nedumpara, representing Karnan, told the bench that the high court judge was entitled to know why he was convicted for contempt of court by a seven-judge bench headed by Chief Justice JS Khehar.

"I am seeking only a stay. I had made a request to the Chief Justice of India (CJI) to take up the matter. Justice Karnan, like other litigants, is entitled to get at least an order from the court," he said.

The detailed verdict of the 9 May order had not been made available till date, he submitted.

The bench, however, said it could not hear the matter as the order was passed by a special bench of seven judges.

"The order was passed by the special bench. We cannot say anything," the bench said, adding, "You ask these questions to the special bench."

To this, Nedumpara said there should be at least a stay on the apex court's order till his plea for recall of the 9 May order was taken up for hearing.

"Nothing has happened in the past one month. You wait for three or four more weeks and go to the special bench. We cannot help you. Whatever will be done will be done by the special bench. We cannot do it," the bench said.

The apex court had earlier refused to list and hear Justice Karnan's plea seeking a recall of the 9 May order after it was held as "not maintainable" by the court registry.

On 12 May, Karnan, whom the West Bengal police is looking for, had moved the apex court for relief, saying neither high courts, nor their judges, were "subordinate" to it.

"The petitioner, a judge of the high court of Calcutta, is not under any disciplinary jurisdiction of either the CJI or the bench of seven judges constituted by the CJI, as in the instant case," the plea said.

He sought a recall of the apex court order awarding him six months' imprisonment, saying he could not be held guilty of contempt of court.

Karnan said the Contempt of Courts Act was a "cathartic jurisprudence which belonged to the Dark Ages, the era of inquisition and torture, distinct from the classical Roman Law which constitutes the foundation of modern jurisprudence".

He also sought a stay on all "further proceedings" pursuant to the 9 May order.
Srinagar: Two militants were gunned down when the Indian Army foiled an infiltration bid in Machil sector of north Kashmir's Kupwara district, an official said on Wednesday.

#FLASH J&K: Total of 2 terrorists killed as Army foils infiltration bid in J&K's Machil sector. pic.twitter.com/ZnVoTjHI3U  ANI (@ANI_news) June 7, 2017

The incident took place late night on Tuesday when troops guarding the Line of Control (LoC) noticed a group of militants trying to infiltrate into the Valley from across the border in Machil sector under the cover of darkness, the army official said.

Troops engaged the heavily-armed militants and killed two of them. Search operations to track down other members of the group were going on, the official said.

This is the third infiltration bid foiled by the Army in north Kashmir in the past fortnight.

On 26 May, two Pakistani Border Action Team (BAT) members who tried to infiltrate into Uri sector to carry out an attack on the soldiers were killed.

Six more militants were killed in the same sector next day when they attempted to sneak into the Valley from across the border.

With inputs from PTI
Srinagar: Authorities on Wednesday suspended mobile internet services in the Kashmir Valley following the death of a youth in a security force firing in the Shopian district.

Mobile internet services, which had been restored during the last four days after remaining suspended for over a fortnight, were suspended again after 20-year-old Adil Farooq Magrey died in the security force firing in Ganawpora village on Tuesday.

Security forces had surrounded a house after specific intelligence input that two militants were hiding in the village on Tuesday evening.

As soon as villagers heard the gunshots, they came out pelting stones at the security personnel to breach the cordon.

Police said tear gas was used to disperse the protesters.

Doctors at the Shopian District Hospital, where Magrey was taken, said he had a bullet injury in the chest and had succumbed on the way to the hospital.

At least 10 other protesters were also injured in the clashes.

Authorities have shut down schools and colleges in Shopian on Wednesday to prevent violence by students.

Heavy deployment of police and paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) has been made in the city here and other district headquarters to maintain law and order.
Srinagar: The separatists on Wednesday gave a call for a strike and peaceful protests in Kashmir on Friday against the killing of a youth during a clash between stone-pelters and security forces in Shopian district on Tuesday. They also called for a march to the house of the deceased student Adil Magray to express solidarity with the bereaved family.

The two factions of Hurriyat Conference and JKLF also asked people to stage protests against the "Indian electronic media" for promoting "prejudice and bias" against Kashmiris and the recent raids conducted by National Investigation Agency aimed at "intimidating and defaming leadership and freedom movement" in the state.

In a joint statement, chairman of hardline Hurriyat Conference Syed Ali Shah Geelani, head of moderate Hurriyat Conference Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and JKLF chief Mohammad Yasin Malik called for peaceful protests after Friday prayers against the killing of Magray.

Magray, a student, was killed during a clash between stone-pelters and security forces who had launched a cordon-and-search operation in a village in Shopian district of south Kashmir last evening to flush out hiding militants.

The operation was obstructed by the local residents who took to streets and indulged in stone-pelting on the forces allowing the holed up militants to flee. "Peaceful protests will also be held against the Indian electronic media's propaganda war against the people of

Kashmir and the prejudices and biases against Kashmiris being promoted by them," the statement said.

"People will also protest the recent illegal NIA raids conducted on pro-freedom activists and traders to intimidate and defame leadership and the freedom movement and to damage the state's economy," the separatists said.
Just when people of the Valley were preparing to break their Ramadan fast, security forces cordoned off Ganavpora village in the restive Shopian district of South Kashmir on Tuesday evening, after receiving information about the presence of two militants in the area.

Amid heavy rains, when the forces tried to carry out a search operation in the area, hundreds of people from several adjoining villages rushed to Ganavpora and started protesting. As tensions grew, protesters started pelting stones, after which the forces were forced to retaliate.

In the ensuing battle, forces opened fire and one of the bullets hit Adil Farooq Magrey, a Class X student, in his abdomen. He was declared brought dead by doctors at the Shopian district hospital.

"He was hit by a bullet in his abdomen and had died before reaching the hospital. We asked the staff to return to duty as there were reports of more injuries," a doctor at Shopian hospital told Firstpost over the phone.

The forces withdrew from the area after residents helped both the holed up militants escape.

"These people (forces) did not allow us to break the fast," said Abdul Rahim Wagey, a resident of Ganavpora village. "It irked the villagers. Then someone called other villagers and people assembled and threw stones at the forces. The forces fired pellets, tear gas and bullets."

The boy, who was reportedly participating in the protests, was killed. At least seven people were injured but only one of them was rushed to Shopian hospital, where he was declared brought dead. At the time of writing this story, his corpse still lay inside the hospital.

In recent months, it has become increasingly difficult for the security forces to carry out cordon and search operations as locals in the volatile South Kashmir throng any possible site of an encounter and clash with them.

Recently, when forces cordoned off a village in Tral, where Hizbul Mujahideen commander Sabzar Bhat was killed, hundreds of people had tried to storm the encounter site but were stopped by the forces much ahead of the site of the gun battle. Four civilians suffered bullet injuries during that encounter, in which two militants were killed.

Early this year, on 28 March, three civilians were killed in Budgam when security forces opened fire on a crowd of protestors, allegedly throwing stones at troops. The protesters were trying to help a holed-up militant escape from the besieged area.

Jammu & Kashmir director general of police, SP Vaid, tried to appeal to the youth to not pay heed to messages on social media, urging them not to come to encounter sites, but it has apparently fallen on deaf ears.

In the recent months, crowds, comprising of women and children, have thronged the encounter sites with more frequency and numbers, leaving security forces with limited options but to withdraw from the areas most of the times as the situation spirals out of control.

The killing of three people in Budgam was followed by the killing of 15-year-old Amir Nazir on 10 March in Pulwama. Police had said he was a part of a stone-pelting mob and was hit by a bullet in the neck.

In most parts of the Valley, the police impose Section 144 to prevent people from coming near the encounter sites. Nasir Ahmad Naqash, district magistrate Baramulla in North Kashmir, which has remained relatively calm in recent months, imposed Section 144 of the CrPC within a radius of three kilometres for 60 days at any counter-insurgency operation site, falling within the jurisdiction of the district.

This practice was earlier followed in every district in South Kashmir but to no avail, bringing the civilian population directly in the line of fire. "When they realised that the militants had escaped, they killed this boy in retaliation. This is how they treat protesters," a resident of Ganavpora village said.
Madhya Pradesh farmers' protest raging in Mandsaur refused to die down on Wednesday even as the authorities imposed a curfew on Tuesday. According to a source reporting from the region, the violence, which was earlier centered around the Pipalya Mandi area of the district, has spilled over to Sitamau village, where enraged protesters have torched a local warehouse and a factory.

Meanwhile, in Pipalya Mandi, which hasbeen the epicentre of the farmers' strike since 1 June, the protesters continued to show their anger: Farmers gheraoed a police chowky. According to sources, the protesters outnumbered the CRPF men, pushing them on to the back foot. Several vehicles were also set on fire.

Farmers's agitation further intensifies in Madhya Pradesh's Mandsaur, 8-10 vehicles set on fire pic.twitter.com/xPe4ZFBlJM  ANI (@ANI_news) June 7, 2017

Meanwhile, the politicking picked up over the farmer protests, as Opposition parties and the ruling BJP traded barbs. As Mandsaur remains on edge, politicians from both BJP and Congress have been denied permission to enter the region. Journalist Rohit Gupta, reporting from Mandsaur told Firstpost that Nand Kumar, BJP MP from Khandwa, was stopped 50 kilometres away from the district while Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi was also denied permission to visit the kin of the farmers who were allegedly killed in CRPF firing. The farmer protests in the district, part of the agitation to demand loan waiver and a hike in Minimum Support Prices, turned violent on Tuesday after five farmers were allegedly shot dead by CRPF men. The protesting farmers kept the bodies of the five farmers killed in the alleged firing at a chowk in Pipalya Mandi, and restricted the flow of traffic. It was after much efforts from the administration that the farmers could be convinced to cremate the bodies of those killed in protests. The protesting farmers were angry at the Rs 1 crore announced as ex-gratia payment, and they said that the government can take double the amount from them but return the lives of their slain family members. Kumar Singh, District Collector of Mandsaur Swatantra was also manhandled by the villagers of Barkheda Panth earlier on Wednesday, when he went to meet the agitating farmers. Meanwhile, political parties were quick to seize upon the issue. While the Congress accused BJP of auctioning the bodies of slain farmers, the BJP said that local Opposition leaders were egging on the farmers to choose violent protests over talks with the government.

Laashon par boli lagayi ja rahi hai,sharm ki baat hai. 5 lakh, 10 lakh, 1 crore ki baat kari: Kamal Nath,Congress MP on Mandsaur incident pic.twitter.com/YBk06RdGRR  ANI (@ANI_news) June 7, 2017

Meanwhile, Opposition leaders said that they will visit Mandsaur to talk to the farmers.

JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav said that he had talked to Gandhi about the issue and both the leaders plan to visit the city on Thursday to speak to the agitating farmers. "Can't recall such a massacre. They are giving the death toll at five or six but I believe many more have been killed," Yadav said.
Mandsaur: Farmers demanding debt relief and better crop prices today "heckled" Mandsaur collector when he tried to pacify them, a day after five persons were killed in violence during their agitation.

Also, former MP from Mandsaur, Meenakshi Natarajan, was detained when she was on her way to meet the family members of the deceased. Farmers in western Madhya Pradesh are protesting since 1 June demanding higher minimum support prices (MSP) for their produce, among others. Five persons were yesterday killed as the farmers' agitation turned violent, prompting the authorities to clamp curfew in the trouble-hit area.

According to eyewitnesses, the protesting farmers had torched vehicles and indulged in stone pelting in Parshvanath area under Pipaliya Mandi police station limits. Curfew remained in force in Pipalya Mandi police station area of the district and Mandsaur town, while prohibitory orders restricting movement under section 144 of CrPC are also imposed in the rest of the district. Farmers in large numbers blocked a road today in Berkheda Panth area, around 18 kilometres from here.

When Mandsaur Collector SK Singh and Superintendent of Police Omprakash Tripathi reached the spot to mollify the protesters, the farmers allegedly manhandled the administrative officer. "When the protesters started misbehaving and pushing the collector, we made way for him to come out safe," Berkheda Panth's sarpanch Dinesh told PTI. Ujjain Range Inspector General of Police V Madhukumar, who is camping in Mandsaur, told PTI over the phone: "I have also come to know that something happened with the collector. But I exactly do not know what happened."

When contacted for his reaction, the collector refused to comment on the incident. Asked if the police will take action against those who misbehaved with him, the district magistrate said, "It was the law-enforcers' job." The IG, meanwhile, said that the mortal remains of the five persons who died yesterday were cremated this morning.

He said the situation in Mandsaur was under control. Meanwhile, former MP and Congress leader Meenakshi Natarajan was stopped and detained at Nahargarh when she was on her way to meet the family members of the deceased. However, other Congress leaders are on their way to Mandsaur to meet the kin of the deceased.

The Madhya Pradesh bandh called by the Congress today affected some western parts of the state, but petrol pumps, markets and other establishments remained open in Bhopal. The district collector had yesterday said the police categorically told him that they did not open fire at the protesters.

After the incident, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, in his tweet, had blamed the opposition party for instigating violence. According to the collector, a magisterial inquiry has been ordered in yesterday's incident. Mobile and Internet services have been suspended in Mandsaur, Ratlam and Neemuch districts to check the spread of rumours.
A Sikh rights group has asked the United Nations to set up a tribunal to investigate alleged crimes committed against the community members during the 1984 Operation Blue Star.

Marking the 33rd year of Operation Blue Star, hundreds of Sikhs rallied outside the United Nations Headquarters on Tuesday, holding placards and raising pro-Khalistan slogans.

The Sikhs For Justice (SFJ) said it has submitted a memorandum to United Nations Assistant Secretary for Human Rights, calling for the setting up of the tribunal.

The memorandum to Andre Gilmour said Operation Blue Star "clearly violated the basic humanitarian law provisions for the protection of the civilian populations and for the protection of cultural objects and places of worship as set out" under the Geneva Conventions.

The operation also constituted an act of aggression, the memo added.

The 'Punjab Independence Rally' outside the United Nations headquarters was organised by Gurdwara Sikh Cultural Society, New York, Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar), Sikh Youth of America and Sikhs For Justice.
New Delhi: The Congress on Wednesday said party Vice President Rahul Gandhi was denied permission by the Madhya Pradesh government to visit Mandsaur where five farmers were reported killed in firing.

"Rahul Gandhi was not given permission by the state government to visit Mandsaur," Congress's Madhya Pradesh unit chief Arun Yadav told IANS over phone.

Congress leaders said Gandhi was to visit Mandsaur to express his solidarity with the families of farmers killed reportedly when the police opened fire.

On Tuesday, at least five farmers were killed and many were injured in the firing when the farmers were staging protests.

Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has ordered a judicial probe into the incident. Mandsaur city and Piplya Mandi area where the farmers were protesting have been put under curfew.

Farmers in Madhya Pradesh have been on strike since June 1, demanding their loans be scrapped and their produce be bought at a fair price.
The Rajasthan Board of Secondary Education (RBSE) will announce the results for the Class X board examination 2017 on Thursday. The candidates can check their grades on the official result website, rajresults.nic.in.

According to News18, the RBSE will declare the Class X results by 4 pm on Thursday.

To track the updates from the Rajasthan board, candidates can visit RBSE's official website, rajeduboard.rajasthan.gov.in.

The notification on the date of declaration of the Class X 2017 results came from RBSE chairman BL Chaudhary. The results will be announced by Rajasthan School Education Minister Vasudev Devnani on 8 June, the chairman told NDTV.

If the students are unable to visit the official websites due to increased web traffic, they can visit alternate result portals like examresults.net and indiaresults.com.

About 10.99 lakh students appeared for the Class X exams which were conducted from 9 to 21 March, 2017.

The RBSE had recently released the results for Class XII 2017 examination for the Arts, Commerce and Science streams on 27 May.

Steps to obtain results:

Log on to the official result website: rajresults.nic.in

Click on the appropriate link for Class X Results 2017.

Enter your roll number and click 'submit'.

Download the result and take a printout for future reference.

As has been observed over the course of the past few weeks, the dates and times of result announcements have been frequently changed. The information above has not been independently verified. However, this article will continue to be updated to reflect official updates as and when they come in.
CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury was roughed up by a member of a right-wing group at a press conference in New Delhi on Wednesday.

One of the two protestors were beaten up and the duo were later handed over to the police. Both were reportedly activists of the Hindu Sena.

#WATCH One of the 2 protesters who tried to manhandle Sitaram Yechury during his press conf. in Delhi, later beaten up;handed over to Police pic.twitter.com/NRUcrljB2W  ANI (@ANI_news) June 7, 2017

Yechury described the attack as an attempt by the Sangh Parivar "to silence the voices of dissent".

We will not be cowed down by any attempts of Sangh's goondagardi to silence us. This is a battle for the soul of India, which we will win. https://t.co/FdPmtoq1Ky  Sitaram Yechury (@SitaramYechury) June 7, 2017

Speaking to Firstpost, Hindu Sena leader Vishnu Gupta said that the attack was in protest against an article written by CPM leader Prakash Karat in the Left party's weekly newspaper People Democracy where he had criticised Army Chief General Bipin Rawat for his comments on the use of a 'human shield' in Kashmir.

"Delhi Police has detained two Hindu Sena activists Upendra Kumar and Pawan Kaul at Mandir Marg police station for protesting against Karat's article against the Indian Army," Gupta said.

With inputs from IANS
Although the India Meteorological Department's (IMD) monsoon forecast for 2017 had some good news in store for a parched nation battling drought and water scarcity, when it said India would receive 98 percent of the annual average rainfall, there is a disconcerting caveat in store: The monsoon's arrival will be delayed by around four days, due to the Cyclone Mora.

The Southwest Monsoon had made landfall on the Kerala coast on 30 May, four days ahead of schedule, and was said to be making rapid progress across the Indian peninsula subsequently. It was supposed to reach Mumbai on 8 June.

However, as mentioned by a report in The Times of India, the rain clouds' advance came to a halt after 2 June, on account of Mora which cooled down sea surface temperatures and reduced convection and cloud cover.

Met department officials said the monsoon would begin progressing in three days' time, after which the advance is expected to be quicker. A senior India Meteorological Department (IMD) official was quoted in the TOI report as saying that the monsoon has covered some more northeastern states on Friday after which it halted.

"Originally, Mora seemed to help the progress of monsoon. But the monsoon current will now take some time to get organised and pick up pace again, which may take three to four days. Convection over Bay of Bengal is expected to increase as sea surface temperatures normalises," the official added.

The monsoon would now make landfall in Goa on Thursday, following which it would reach the financial capital Mumbai around 14 June. Around the same time, it would have also covered large parts of the Indian heartland, including states of Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal, all of which are likely to receive rain by 14 June, said a report on Zee News. It would reach national capital Delhi towards the end of the month, the report added.
Salem: A 15-year-old girl was allegedly raped by two drivers and a conductor in a bus near in Tamil Nadu, the police said on Tuesday.

The three men, who allegedly committed the crime last night after halting the private bus at a village, were arrested, they said.

The incident brought back memories of the 16 December 2012 sensational gangrape in which a 23-year-old woman paramedic was raped in a moving bus in New Delhi.

It came to light after some locals in the village heard the cries of the girl and alerted the police.

According to the police, the girl, after a tiff with her parents, was seen moving about aimlessly on Monday.

She later boarded a local bus to a village in the afternoon and kept travelling to and fro in the same bus till late night, the police said.

Manivannan and Murugan, who usually take turns to drive the bus, and conductor Perumal pacified the girl and befriended her. Later, the three men allegedly raped the girl at night.

A senior police official said the three were arrested and were being questioned. "A total of nine sections including those from the IPC, Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, have been invoked against the accused," he told PTI.

The girl was taken to a hospital and produced before the Child Welfare Committee, he said.

The police were on the lookout for another person, stated to be involved in the case, though not part of the sexual assault.

Senior district officials visited the girl and held enquiries, he added.
The Tripura Board of Secondary Education (TBSE) is expected to declare the results for the Higher Secondary (HS) Class XII Arts and Commerce stream 2017 examination on Wednesday at 9.45 am. The candidates can check their grades on the official results website, tripuraresults.nic.in.

The notification regarding the date of result declaration came on TBSE's official website, tbse.in, on Tuesday, after the results for Madhyamik Class X 2017 were announced.

Once the results are out, if the students are unable to access the official website due to increased web traffic, they can visit alternate result portals like examresults.net and indiaresults.com.

The TBSE declared the results for the HS Class XII Science 2017 examination on 20 May, in order to let students appear for national-level engineering and medical entrance examinations.

This year, 26,366 candidates had appeared for the HS Class XII exam. A total of 22,989 collectively belonged to the Arts and Commerce stream, according to the data in this Hindustan Times report.

The HS Class XII 2017 examination was conducted in various centres from 2 March to 8 April.

Steps to obtain results:

Log on to the official result website, tripuraresults.nic.in.

Click on either of the links provided under 'Higher Secondary Examination (HS +2 Stage), Art/Commerce- Year 2017'.

Enter your roll number and click 'submit' to check your detailed grades.

Download the result and take a printout for future reference.

As has been observed over the course of the past few weeks, the dates and times of result announcements have been frequently changed. The information above has not been independently verified. However, this article will continue to be updated to reflect official updates as and when they come in.
E-cigarettes, often seen as responsible for a decline in cigarette smoking among the youth, are likely to be banned in Maharashtra after perceived health risks from the liquid nicotine were flagged in various studies.

According to a report in The Indian Express, the state health department has directed the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to stop the distribution and use of e-cigarettes.

Electronic cigarettes were first introduced to the market in 2003 and health officials have been tracking usage and studying potential health effects. They have been available in Indian market for almost 10 years now.

Most e-cigarettes contain a battery, a heating device, and a cartridge to hold liquid, which typically contains nicotine, flavourings, and other chemicals. The battery-powered device heats the liquid in the cartridge into an aerosol that the user inhales.

While researchers thought that e-cigarettes can be an effective tool to help those battling cigarette addiction, studies show that they are actually attracting a new population of adolescents who might not otherwise have smoked tobacco products, researchers warned.

Several previous studies have reported that adolescents who start with e-cigarettes are more likely to subsequently smoke traditional cigarettes.

According to researchers, they did not find any evidence that e-cigarettes have caused youth smoking to decline. In fact, combined e-cigarette and cigarette use among adolescents in 2014 was higher than total cigarette use in 2009, they stated.

"The study didn't find any evidence that e-cigarettes are causing youth smoking to decline," added Lauren Dutra, social scientist at RTI International  a not-for-profit research organisation based in North Carolina, US.

For the new study, the team examined survey data from more than 140,000 middle and high school students who completed the CDC's National Youth Tobacco Survey between 2004 and 2014.

Meanwhile, another study revealed that the vapours which are produced after e-liquid flavourings are heated inside e-cigarettes, are toxic. According to a study, reported in the ACS journal Environmental Science and Technology, when e-liquid flavourings are heated inside electronic nicotine-delivery systems, the flavourings break down into toxic compounds at levels that exceed occupational safety standards.

The researchers analysed vapours created from both unflavoured and flavoured e-liquids loaded into three popular types of e-cigarettes.

The results showed that in general, one puff of flavoured vapour contained levels of aldehydes exceeding the safe thresholds for occupational exposure  set by the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists  by factors of 1.5 to 270. Vapours from unflavoured e-liquids contained aldehydes at significantly lower levels.

Another report, published by professors at University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry in the US, have found that these e-cigarettes are as equally damaging to gums and teeth as conventional cigarettes.

Previously, scientists thought that the chemicals found in cigarette smoke were the culprits behind adverse health effects, but a growing body of scientific data, including this study published in the journal Oncotarget, suggests otherwise.

"How much and how often someone is smoking e-cigarettes will determine the extent of damage to the gums and oral cavity," Rahman said.

The study, which exposed 3-D human, non-smoker gum tissue to the vapours of e-cigarettes, also found that the flavouring chemicals play a role in damaging cells in the mouth.

"We learned that the flavourings  some more than others  made the damage to the cells even worse," Fawad Javed from University of Rochester Medical Center added.

"It's important to remember that e-cigarettes contain nicotine, which is known to contribute to gum disease," Javed said.

What makes matters worse is the fact that people are usually unaware that liquid nicotine can be equally addictive.

If the suggested ban on sale in Maharashtra is put in place, the state will become the second in India after Punjab to have outlawed the device. The ban comes in the light of the fact that liquid nicotine is still not a registered drug in India, and therefore its sale and use goes unregulated in market.

With inputs from IANS
New Delhi: The Aam Aadmi Party on Tuesday demanded resignation of Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan over the deaths of five persons in the farmers' agitation in the state.

AAP Madhya Pradesh in-charge Gopal Rai said the incident reflected anti-farmer mentality of the BJP who remembered farmers only during elections.

"They have not been able to fulfil a single poll promise made during the elections," he said.

Five persons were killed on Tuesday as the farmers' agitation turned violent in Mandsaur district, prompting the authorities to clamp curfew in the trouble-hit area.

Some eyewitnesses alleged that the victims suffered bullet wounds, but Mandsaur district authorities denied police fired on the protesters who went on a rampage.
Madurai: Amid the changing power equations in the ruling AIADMK's Amma faction, the rebel Puratchi Thalaivi Amma group on Wednesday said it will not hurt the prospects of the E Palaniswamy government in Tamil Nadu.

"The Palaniswamy-led government will not face a situation where it will lose (power) because of us," Puratchi Thalaivi Amma leader O Panneerselvam said, in what could come as a relief for the beleaguered chief minister.

Panneerselvam's comments come in the midst of MLAs in the Amma faction flocking towards party deputy general secretary TTV Dinakaran, who is trying to re-assert his position after being released on bail in a bribery case despite facing a revolt by the Palaniswamy camp

A top aide of Dinakaran had claimed that so far 25 MLAs have met him since he came out on bail on 3 June in a case related to alleged attempt to bribe some Election Commission officials to get back the party's 'two-leaves' symbol.

The AIADMK (Amma) faction has 122 MLAs in the 234-member Assembly.

Incidentally, Panneerselvam and his supporting MLAs had voted against the Palaniswamy government in a trust vote moved by DMK on 18 February, days after the former had revolted against AIADMK chief VK Sasikala, alleging he was forced to make way for her elevation as chief minister.

Palaniswamy had, however, won the trust vote by a margin of 122-11, with Opposition DMK being evicted following unruly scenes and its allies, Congress and IUML, staging a walkout.
If the issue of cow slaughter and beef eating had made maximum noise in Kerala, it would not have surprised even the staunchest of cow vigilantes. So entrenched is beef in the gastronomic traditions of the state that any attempt to overthrow it will invite a certain mutiny. But this time in Kerala, the 'politics over beef' has myriad hues.

For starters, the Union Government's notification surrounding the sale of cows for slaughter in markets was misunderstood as a blanket ban on the slaughter of cows and eating beef.

Both the Left and the Congress party had played equal roles in this misinformation campaign. While the 200-odd beef festivals went on as planned, things reached a feverish pitch when an over enthusiastic Youth Congress leader went to the extent of publicly slaughtering a calf  ending up behind bars, rejected by his own party.

The BJP certainly had been on the losing side of this vicious campaign and party president Amit Shah's three-day sojourn in Kerala was intended more at placating the anti-party sentiments among the minorities than just galvanising the party's state machinery for the 2019 General Elections.

But here too there is an anomaly. Rather a larger game plan at play. A closer look at what  apart from the usual party meetings  Shah has done in Kerala over the last weekend, could tell the story.

While garlanding a community leader's bust and meeting editors of top Malayalam media houses would be among the normal schedules in any powerful North Indian leader's visit, Shah's attempt at extending the olive branch only to the Church has not gone unnoticed.

Especially, since the BJP president made no attempt to reach out to Muslims, who form the largest minority in the state. If reaching out to minorities was indeed the agenda, there is more to his actions than what meets the eye.

Perhaps never had any BJP president taken out time to meet such a wide collection of Bishops, cutting across all denominations of the church in the state.

From the Syro-Malabar Catholic diocese  the largest denomination of the community in the state to the Jacobites, to the Orthodox, to even the small Knanayas, all sat across a table with Shah, putting across their apprehensions and accepting the assurances from the saffron party at Kochi on Friday evening.

If sources inside the party are to be believed, Shah had specially demanded to rewrite the schedule to accommodate the meeting of the Bishops and there was clearly a reason for it.

"See both the Left Democratic Front (LDF) and the Congress have been spreading only rumours about the notification, instilling fear among the minorities because they know that the BJP's acceptance among them is increasing. So, we had to ensure that we explain to them the reality. The party president's visit was perhaps the best opportunity to send across that message... and among the Christian community heads, we were able to do that,'' MS Kumar, BJP state spokesperson told Firstpost.

Whether 'beef' became a topic of discussion at the meeting with the Bishops is still debatable as both sides stayed tight-lipped about it, deflecting the focus on to various other issues like the price of rubber and release of Father Tom Uzhunnalil, who continues to be an Islamic State hostage in Yemen.

But what set the ball rolling is what the Archbishop Soosapakyam, the custodian of the Latin Church which holds a tremendous amount of influence among the fishing community in the coastal belt of the state, had to say to the media after meeting Shah on Saturday at the state capital.

"This is certainly a new beginning and a new step forward. The discussions gave an opportunity to understand our stands better and make a few corrections wherever needed. We had talked about a number of issues and it was very cordial and positive,'' Soosapakyam told media persons in Thiruvananthapuram.

The words of the Bishop does suggest that a consolidation of the already existing vibes, between the community which holds over 20 percent of the vote share in the state and a party that is desperate to break ground among the community with its 'sabka saath sabka vikas' slogan, has taken place.

Also, if the BJP hopes to make in-roads in Kerala in 2019, many believe it would have to be from the Thiruvananthapuram constituency which had been rumoured to be eyed by the party's Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament (MP) from Karnataka, Rajeev Chandrasekhar.

After all, the BJP had proved its worth in Thiruvananthapuram by putting up a strong fight at the City Corporation polls, where they came a close second in the last local body elections and the Nemom Assembly constituency which is a part of the Lok Sabha seat, had sent the first saffron MLA to the legislature in 2016 in the form of the party's old war horse O Rajagopal.

But for the BJP to win the Lok Sabha seat in Thiruvananthapuram in the immediate future would only remain a distant dream without the Latin Church on their side. History tells us that the incumbent MP Shashi Tharoor was bailed out of a tough situation in 2014 by the crucial votes of the fishing community. It is here that the meeting with the Latin Bishop and his words gather significance.

The saffron party, too, thinks that no major breakthrough in Kerala is possible unless you get a chunk of the Christian vote bank, which accounts for close to 19 percent of the total population in the state.

With Narendra Modi and his promises finding acceptance, at least among a section of them, the party feels that times have changed in Kerala and hence it is crucial for them to consolidate whatever small inroads they have developed with the Christian community in the state.

"Very clearly, the times have changed. Kerala Christians have moved on from a time they would vote only for the Congress and even communists thought of us as political untouchables. That changed a long time ago. Now, the Christian mentality towards the BJP is changing as the party is perceived as one that stands for development. That is what we hope to build on for the future,'' says Alphons Kannanthanam, member, national executive of the BJP and one of the prominent leaders from the Christian community who brokered the deal.

CPM left red-faced

The church warming up to Shah's visit seems to have let the cat among the pigeons in the camps of CPM and the Left more than the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF).

CPM state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan launched a scathing attack on Shah on the sidelines of the party's Polit Bureau meeting in Delhi.

"BJP had tried its best to create communal violence in Kerala over the last few years. But till now, they have not succeeded. Shah's visit to Kerala should be seen in this light only. Shah only wants to create another Gujarat here and reap political dividends,'' Balakrishnan told reporters at the AKG Bhavan in New Delhi.

Political analysts say that the left certainly has more reasons to watch Shah's wooing of the Church cautiously than the Congress-led UDF. This is because the Left itself had been trying hard to woo the Christian vote which had predominantly been with UDF.

While the CPM had been able to break the deadlock at least to an extent in the last decade or so, Shah's 'social engineering', which many feel he had used very successfully for political dividends across the country, might be serious enough to push the Christian vote away from the Left again.

"If you look at the last Assembly elections, it's the CPM's vote which the BJP had eaten into in many places in the state because of the consolidation of the Hindu vote bank to some extent. In spite of that, if the Left could hold is because of the minority vote that eroded from UDF and came into their camp. So, obviously, the CPM does fear now that Shah's social engineering could break this system and they could end up on the losing side. This is precisely why the Left is taken aback at the new bonhomie between the BJP and the church,'' says CR Neelakandan, a well-known political activist in the state.

Muslims miss out

But perhaps what has surprised many political analysts is the fact that Shah has very conveniently given the leaders of the largest minority community in the state a purposeful miss.

The Muslims who form 27 percent of the total population always have a huge say in the electoral outcomes in the state and any clampdown on beef certainly affects the community in equal measure when compared with the Christians.

For the Muslims of Kerala, the present notification not only affects their eating habits but also their profession as many of them own and as well as run slaughter houses, something which seems to have been overlooked by Shah and his party men.

Perhaps the bitter lesson learned at the recently concluded Malappuram byelection, where the BJP candidate remained at the usual third position in spite of promising good beef through well-maintained slaughter houses, still haunts the party.

The Left reiterates that the Malappuram lesson has only made the BJP play more divisive politics.

"If the aim of Shah's visit was to reach out to the minorities regarding beef and other issues, why have they not met Muslim leaders, who are the biggest group in Kerala? So, it is only an attempt to play divisive politics again. They know the Muslims in Kerala won't reciprocate to their overtures so they are trying to woo the next largest group. It is all a part of their social engineering agenda,'' CPM Polit Bureau member MA Baby told Firstpost.
New Delhi: Launching an attack on West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, the BJP on Wednesday accused her party, the Trinamool Congress (TMC), of not accounting for over Rs 24 crore "it spent on political campaigns" in 2013-14.

Union minister Piyush Goyal asked the TMC supremo to "come clean" on the source of the money and took a dig at her saying it was now clear why she was opposed to demonetisation, which was "aimed at curbing black money".

As per the Election Commission's (EC) guidelines, the political parties had to account for their expenses even when they were getting funds from a third party, he said.

Goyal cited a media report which claimed that the Income Tax Department had reportedly sent a notice to TMC.

"While the Union government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi is taking steps to curb black money and corruption and boost transparency, we now know why some parties were so opposed to transparency and demonetisation," the Union power minister told a press conference.

He added that all the political parties in the country should follow the BJP's "example" as far as transparency was concerned.

Goyal also asked the opposition parties not to "politicise" every investigation "under the garb of secularism and freedom of press".

He took a jibe at the opposition parties over their attempts to forge unity saying it looked like a "coalition of the corrupt against a government trying to put an end to corruption".
Tuesday was an important day for the Congress. A lot of issues were discussed in the meeting of the Congress Working Committee (CWC), the highest decision-making body of the party.

Apart from releasing a schedule for the organisational elections which entail election of Congress president by 15 October, the Grand Old Party also criticised the government on a variety of issues like demonetisation and economic growth.

Rahul Gandhi's possible elevation

Party sources told IANS that Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi is likely to be elevated as party chief at the culmination of party's organisatonal polls in October. They said Congress president Sonia Gandhi may step down ahead of Rahul's likely elevation.

The Congress had deferred the organisational elections after Sonia's five-year term as party chief ended in 2015.

Sonia became party chief in 1998 and is the longest-serving party president.

There have been demands from within the party that Rahul, who became its vice-president in 2013, should take over party reigns from his mother Sonia.

But the Congress faced a series of electoral reverses after its debacle in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, in which Rahul was the party's lead campaigner.

Even as the party has faced mounting electoral challenges, its poor electoral run has led to repeated speculation about the timing of Rahul's elevation.

Party sources also told IANS that Rahul's likely elevation will mark a generational change as it prepares for the the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

The likely elevation will be weeks before the Assembly elections in Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat where the Congress faces tough challenge from the BJP.

Sources said the likely elevation at the end of organisational elections will also fit in with Rahul's emphasis on fostering internal democracy in the party. Sonia has also been dealing with some health issues of late.

In her remarks at the CWC meeting, Sonia said the ongoing organisational elections must be completed with utmost speed and sincerity.

According to the election schedule, Congress membership drive has be completed by 15 May and election of presidents of booth committees by 20 August.

Elections of block Congress chiefs, members of district Congress committees and members of pradesh Congress committees has to be concluded by 4 September.

The elections of president, vice-president, treasurer and executive panel of district Congress committees has to be completed by 15 September and that of these posts in the pradesh Congress committees (PCC) by 15 October.

Elections of All India Congress Committee members by the respective PCCs and of the Congress president also has to be concluded by 15 October.

According to the schedule, members of the CWC will be elected by AICC members at the party plenary, for which dates will be decided later.

Sonia Gandhi on presidential elections, party performance

With presidential elections round the corner, Sonia said it was essential that the person who gets elected to the high office protects the Constitution.

"In a few weeks, we will be electing the president and vice president of our republic. In times such as these, it is even more essential that those who occupy this office protect the Constitution," she said, addressing the CWC meeting.

Sonia said that she met the leaders of like-minded parties to find commonly acceptable candidates for these high offices with former prime minister Manmohan Singh, Rahul Gandhi and some other colleagues.

A subgroup of representatives has been constituted to take this forward, she said.

Referring to the next Lok Sabha election, she said, "We are not far from the 2019 election. We must be ready to protect the essence and idea of India, which this government is seeking to extinguish."

She said the recently held Assembly elections hold vital lessons for the party both in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

"With an energised cadre and effective leadership, we were able to defeat a sitting NDA government in Punjab, but in Manipur and Goa we failed to convert our winning numbers into forming a government. This outcome reminds us that the BJP will use their enormous resources and muscle power to steal mandates from us, just as they did in Arunachal Pradesh and earlier in Uttarakhand. We cannot let this happen again," the Congress president said.

Towards this end, Sonia said the party organisation must be strengthened.

"The ongoing organisational elections must be completed with the utmost speed and sincerity. The schedule for organisational elections has been determined and will come up before the CWC for approval," she said.

Demonetisation, economy

Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi said the country's growth has slowed down mainly due to demonetisation and the economy was running on just one engine of public spending, according to PTI.

Sonia talked about the failure of demonetisation, saying it has affected the country's growth.

She highlighted that Singh had predicted a fall in growth due to the note ban announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 8 November last year.

She said the GDP figures proved that the former prime minister's forecast that demonetisation would slow down economic growth was correct.

Singh, in his intervention at the meeting, talked about the decline in the economic growth as depicted in the last quarter GDP numbers.

He said the slowdown was primarily due to demonetisation and expressed serious concern over the situation, particularly the impact of the growth slowdown on job creation.

The former prime minister, an acclaimed economist himself, said the Gross Value Addition (GVA) is the true sub-measure of economic activity and it has experienced a steep and sustained fall.

"Private sector investment has collapsed and the economy is running on just one engine of public spending," he said at the meeting.

Singh said the GVA growth of industry has fallen from 10.7 percent in March 2016 to just 3.8 percent in March 2017, a decline of nearly seven percentage points of growth.

"The most worrisome aspect of all this is the impact on job creation. Jobs have been extremely hard to come by for the youth of the nation," he said.

Sonia in her speech said, "The government's experiments and policies are characterised by poor planning and shoddy implementation. They have been disastrous for our social and economic fabric."

She said demonetisation was touted as a great success, but till today, the government refuses to disclose how much of the demonetised currency in circulation was actually returned to banks.

"It isn't that the Reserve Bank of India has forgotten how to count money; it is that the actual numbers show that the scheme was a disaster," she said.

Sonia also attacked the 'Make in India' campaign saying it failed to create jobs or attract investment and unemployment was rampant in the country.

The former prime minister noted that the construction industry, which is one of the largest employment generators in the country, has suffered contraction.

This, he said, "implies loss of millions of jobs for the nation's workforce".

At the party briefing after the CWC meet, senior spokesperson Ghulam Nabi Azad said the Congress had raised the issue of demonetisation both outside and inside Parliament.

Azad said Singh and former Finance Minister P Chidambaram had said that note ban will have a bad effect on the economy and will affect GDP.

"But the government rejected all our claims and it has to now admit within a year that the GDP has suffered a loss and how much loss the country has to suffer in last three years," said the Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha.

With inputs from agencies
Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu on Wednesday blamed the Congress for instigating farmers in Mandsaur in Madhya Pradesh, where five people were killed in police firing.

The protests were being hijacked by the Congress, Naidu said a day after the violence. Farmers in the area have been protesting since 1 June demanding higher minimum support prices (MSP) for their produce among other things.

"It is a very sad turn of events in a state that is the most peaceful state in India. Congress is trying to politicise farmers' problems after they failed to counter Shivraj Singh Chouhan politically in the state," Naidu said.

He said that Madhya Pradesh was amongst the best performing states on all counts and that Chouhan was one of BJP's best chief ministers.

"Because of his initiatives, 20 percent of farmers in the country are in Madhya Pradesh... he has encouraged them, has got them land and electricity. Because of this, their production has increased. They might not be getting ideal price for their crops and they are protesting against that, sure, and the state government is addressing these issues, but Congress is politicising it," said Naidu.

Naidu, the minister for information and broadcasting as well as urban development, warned the Congress against fuelling violence.

"I saw news reports that farmers have burnt vehicles and destroyed railway tracks. Farmers never resort to this kind of violence. I just want to warn Congress not to fuel violence in the name of farmers. It will boomerang on you. Whatever the condition of farmers across the country is, is because of the long years of neglect of the agricultural sector by you (Congress)," he said.

The minister went on to list pro-farmer initiatives of the BJP-led government at the Centre, including the Pradhan Mantri Bima Fasal Yojana (new crop insurance scheme), the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sichai Yojana (irrigation scheme), the health card plan and the waiving of loans for farmers.

The problems would take some time to solve but the government was committed to addressing them, Naidu said.

"The prime minister has ordered an enquiry and the truth will come out. I ask the Congress why they want an instant solution to farmers' problems in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh when they have no solution for farmers in Congress-ruled Karnataka?"
Panaji: Congress on Wednesday said that the Narendra Modi government should take all the political parties into confidence if it wants to solve the Kashmir issue.

"The Kashmir issue is very sensitive. There is no doubt that Kashmir is part of India. If the prime minister has to resolve the issue then it has to be done with humane angle to it," Congress national spokesman Tom Vadakkan told reporters in Panaji.

Quoting the statements of former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Vadakkan said "pellets are no answer to the violence."

"The Centre has to take all parties into confidence particularly PDP which is the main stakeholder in the region," he said.

The Congress leader said that the union government should keep set aside all its differences with the political Opposition when it comes to tackling sensitive issues.

Vadakkan also adviced Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti to shift her mindset outside the valley.

"The target of PDP is just the Valley. They need to move out...the chief minister should move her mindset outside the Valley. You can't say something in the Valley and talk about nationalism outside the Valley," he said.

The Congress leader while talking about the much discussed surgical operations during last three year rule of Modi government, said the union government has been conducting such operations even during Vajpayee's tenure.

"But it was never called surgical operations. We have not printed posters and put it up in Uttar Pradesh saying we have done this," he said.
Thiruvanathapuram: Amid the row over ban on sale of cattle for slaughter, the Kerala Assembly will meet on 8 June to discuss the issue.

The special one-day session was called to finalise the steps to be taken by government on the decision of the Centre, which the state had termed as an infringement into the state's rights and against federal principles.

Various options, including approaching the Supreme Court and bringing in a law within the ambit of the state, are reportedly under the government's consideration.

CPM-led LDF government in Kerala was the first to oppose the notification, holding that it is an infringement into the states' rights and went against federal principles.

The state had asked the Centre to rollback the notification holding that it would adversely affect the meat and dairy sectors, which employs about five lakh people.

Fifteen lakh heads of cattle are brought to Kerala every year and 2.5 lakh tonnes of meat worth Rs 6,552 crore sold in the state annually.
Lucknow: Arch rivals in Uttar Pradesh, the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party will share a common platform at a rally organised by Lalu Prasad's Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) in Patna, heralding a new phase of politics in the country's cow belt.

SP chief Akhilesh Yadav and BSP president Mayawati have confirmed their participation in the Patna rally on 27 August for which the RJD supremo made a personal call to both of them recently, RJD state unit president Ashok Singh told PTI on Wednesday .

The coming together of SP and BSP leaders on one platform is being seen in the political circles as emergence of a new phase of politics in the state after a dismal show of all anti-BJP parties in the 2014 Lok Sabha and 2017 Assembly polls.

Akhilesh Yadav has already confirmed his participation in the Patna rally.

"I will be present at Lalu Prasads Bihar rally on August 27. If there is any announcement (regarding future alliance) it will me made there", he has said.

The RJD president has also invited leaders like Mamata Banerjee (Trinmool Congress), Naveen Patnaik (Biju Janata Dal), Sharad Pawar (Nationalist Congress Party) and many of them are likely to attend, Singh said. Congress is likely to be represented by its president Sonia Gandhi, Singh said, adding M K Stalin (DMK) has already confirmed his participation.

The effort is to repeat a Bihar-like experiment at the national level with all parties opposed to the BJP coming together, Singh said.

Though BSP is yet to confirm Mayawati's participation in the event, its likelihood gained momentum when she attended a recent lunch hosted by Sonia Gandhi along with leaders of 16 other parties who have been traditionally hostile to each other.

Faced with the worst political scenario with even Mayawati not in a position to get re-elected to the Rajya Sabha when her present term expires in April next year, the RJD president has already announced that he was ready to send her to the Upper House of Parliament to secure her political future.

The coming together of sworn enemies SP and BSP in the politically crucial state of Uttar Pradesh could have a far reaching effect to check the rise of the BJP, say political pundits.

The SP and the BSP together make a formidable alliance with consolidation of Dalit and backward votes which could effectively checkmate BJP.

The BSP won only 19 seats in 2017 Assembly polls, down from 80 in 2012. This is its lowest tally since 1991, when the party won 12 seats. The SP won 47, its lowest tally since the partys inception in 1992.
Mumbai: Building further pressures on major ruling ally Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Shiv Sena stayed away from a state Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, reiterating its demand that the government immediately announce a full waiver of farm loans.

Senior Sena leader and minister Subhash Desai said the decision was taken to highlight the government's "indifference" to the cause of farmers of the state, who are on an indefinite strike for the past one week.

"We met and informed the chief minister that we shall not attend Cabinet meetings till the government announces a waiver of farmers' loans," Desai told media persons.

Playing down the issue, senior BJP finance minister Sudhir Mungantiwar said that the Sena ministers met Fadnavis and took leave of absence.

"They had informed of their intention to keep away from the Cabinet and informed us the reasons for it. Since there were no major issues to be discussed, they were permitted," Mungantiwar said.

The development came amid speculation that Fadnavis was planning to take up the issue of holding mid-term Assembly elections in the state with BJP President Amit Shah, who is coming for a three-day visit to Mumbai next week.

This is first time that Sena has skipped a cabinet meeting, indicating the worsened relations between the two major allies over several issues, the latest being the farmers' strike.

The Shiv Sena and another ally Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatana, have virtually joined the Opposition parties in backing and demanding succour for the striking farmers.

The Sena has been severely critical of the BJP since the strike began on 1 June and has demanded that the government take party President Uddhav Thackeray into confidence and accept all the farmers' demands.
The Election Commission will announce the date of the presidential election on Wednesday.

The announcement is expected to be made by Chief Election Commissioner Naseem Zaidi and the two election commissioners at a press conference in New Delhi.

President Pranab Mukherjee's term expires on 25 July.

The electoral college which elects the president is made up of 4,896 legislators  776 Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha members and 4,120 MLAs.

All MPs have an equal vote value of 708 while that of the MLAs depends on the population of the state.

The presidential polls has a total of 11,04,546 votes with the BJP-led NDA's tally currently standing at about 5.38 lakh votes. NDA has got crucial support of Jagan Mohan Reddy's YSRCP helping it to cross the majority mark.

BJP is also hopeful of getting the support of both the factions of the AIADMK, which is in power in Tamil Nadu and K Chandrashekar Rao's Telugu Desam Party.

Opposition parties are considering to put up a joint candidate for the elections. Recently, leaders of 17 Opposition parties met together at Congress president Sonia Gandhi's residence on 26 May to discuss the probable presidential candidates although they are yet to build consensus.

With inputs from IANS
Chief Election Commissioner Naseem Zaidi announced the dates for the Presidential Election 2017 at a press conference in New Delhi on Wednesday. Zaidi said President Pranab Mukherjee's term will come to an end on 24 July and the last date of nomination for the post is 28 June. If an election is required then it will be held on 17 July, followed by counting on 20 July, he said.

A notification would be issued on 14 June, he said. If there is no consensus between the NDA and the opposition, the number of serious candidates in the fray will be clear by 1 July evening.

Last date for nomination is June 28. If poll needed then it would be on July 17 and counting on July 20: CEC Naseem Zaidi #Presidentialpolls pic.twitter.com/iThFPqJV8N  ANI (@ANI_news) June 7, 2017

The electoral college which elects the president is made up of 4,896 legislators  776 Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha members and 4,120 MLAs.

Zaidi said members of the electoral college  comprising members of the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha and state Assemblies, including Delhi and Puducherry  will be provided special pens to cast their ballot and use of any other pen will render the vote invalid.

The poll announcement has set the ball rolling for the declaration of candidates by the ruling National Democratic Alliance and the opposition parties for the country's highest elected office.

Zaidi said that Lok Sabha secretary-general Anoop Mishra will be the Returning Officer for the presidential poll and ballots will be cast in Parliament House and in the respective state Assemblies.

The counting of votes will take place in the national capital under the supervision of the Returning Officer.

The Chief Election Commissioner said presidential election will take place through secret ballot and political parties "cannot issue any whip" to their respective members of Parliaments or MLAs.

The election is held in accordance with the system of proportional representation by means of a single transferable vote.

Every elector can have as many preferences as the candidates contesting the election and the winner has to secure the required quota of votes to be declared elected  50 percent of the valid votes plus one. Zaidi said a nomination paper has to be backed by at least 50 electors as proposers and at least 50 electors as seconders.

He said Assistant Returning Officers will be appointed in all state capitals, besides Delhi and Puducherry, to ensure smooth logistics for the election.

He said each candidate will be allowed to deploy a representative at the venue of polling.

Zaidi said members of Parliament are expected to vote in Parliament House in Delhi and the MLAs in their respective assemblies but they can vote at another polling station in case of exigency after applying to the poll panel in advance. All parliamentarians have an equal vote value of 708 while that of the MLAs depends on the population of the state.

Responding to a question, Zaidi said the election to 10 Rajya Sabha seats, postponed earlier due to presidential polls and EVM challenge held last week, would now be held after the presidential election.

He said the 10 members would be retiring after the presidential elections and are entitled to vote in the 17 July poll.

When asked whether the 20 AAP MLAs, against whom the Election Commission is hearing a petition seeking their disqualification for allegedly holding offices of profit, can vote in the polls, he said "as on today" they can vote. Originally, the case was against 21 MLAs, but one has resigned.

A total of 13 vacancies in Lok Sabha and state Assemblies will be filled up after the presidential elections, he said.

Incidentally, Zaidi is retiring on 7 July and will not be in office when the results are notified by the commission.

The presidential poll has a total of 11,04,546 votes with the BJP-led NDA's tally currently standing at about 5.38 lakh votes. NDA got the crucial support of Jagan Mohan Reddy's YSRCP, helping it to cross the majority mark.

BJP is also hopeful of getting the support of both factions of the AIADMK, which is in power in Tamil Nadu and K Chandrashekar Rao's Telugu Desam Party.

Opposition parties are considering to put up a joint candidate for the elections. Recently, leaders of 17 Opposition parties met together at Congress president Sonia Gandhi's residence on 26 May to discuss the probable presidential candidates, although they are yet to build consensus.

With inputs from agencies
The talk of Rahul Gandhi succeeding his mother Sonia Gandhi as Congress president has surfaced yet again. The new deadline suggested is October 2017 when the Grand Old Party, as per its schedule, will be completing its organisational elections, state and national.

It should be clarified at the outset that AK Antony, a close confidante of the Gandhi-Nehru family and Congress' Central Working Committee (CWC) member, has gone on the record, saying that there was no connection between completion of organisational polls and Rahul Gandhi's potential elevation to post of Congress president. As per the party's constitution, the CWC could name its party president at a time of its choosing.

The organisational elections have to be completed before the end of 2017. This was to be done by December 2016, but last year the party had sought a one-year extension from the Election Commission.

The announcement of organisational poll schedule has given rise to fresh speculation around Rahul getting ready to take the reins from his mother. However, these rumours have been doing rounds since 2011, when news broke that Sonia had gone abroad for treatment of an undisclosed illness. A number of family loyalists within the party would routinely demand Rahul's elevation, and he, in turn, would make them wait.

Year after year, the media would bring up this issue, both to the Congress quarters and to political observers, even if it remained irrelevant in the minds of the public. All these years, Congress strategists were looking for the right moment to anoint Rahul  thus kicking off his presidency on a high note  but unfortunately for the Congress, things have gone from bad to worse.

Sonia has been Congress president for a record 19 years  since 1998  a distinction which even her famed elders Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi couldn't achieve.

But this time around, Rahul Gandhi could be an idea for the Congress whose time has finally come to officially hold the top slot.

In November, a CWC meeting chaired by Rahul Gandhi in absence of Sonia Gandhi, "strongly" demanded and unanimously passed a resolution, moved by Manmohan Singh and seconded by AK Antony, that in keeping with "heightened desires" of thousands of Congress workers, he should be made party president. Incidentally, it was for the first time that the party not just officially talked about Rahul's anointment as president but also passed a resolution to that effect.

Technically, Rahul should have been named Congress president after passage of CWC resolution but since Sonia, the incumbent party chief, was not present, the resolution couldn't come into effect until she gave her assent for her son to succeed her. The matter has been pending with Sonia ever since.

Since then, three things have changed:



1. Rahul has begun reading the Bhagwad Gita and Upanishads. Although he is reading 2,000-year-old ancient Indian scriptures to take on the mighty political challenge of the RSS and BJP, the fact remains that these scriptures stress on karma of ruler or the leader, who may or may not be a warrior.

After Rahul finishes reading the scriptures, he might be convinced that he should honour the sentiments of his party leaders: That he take up his rightful place at the head of the party, which is his by birth.

2. Congress leaders and workers have now internalised defeat as natural and victory as the exception. Rahul's track record of leading the party to successive defeats in parliamentary, Assembly, municipal and panchayat elections don't disturb them anymore. Last year, Congress lost power in Assam and Kerala, and fared poorly in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu. This year, the party suffered humiliating defeats in Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh, and inexplicably allowed the BJP to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat in Goa and Manipur.

For Rahul Gandhi, it seems nothing succeeds like lack of success. With each Congress defeat, the demand for Rahul's elevation has gained momentum.

Senior party leader PL Punia, a Dalit from Uttar Pradesh who is considered close to Rahul, told media in Patna that organisational elections would be completed soon and would culminate in electing Rahul as party president. "We are preparing for internal elections. Party workers want to see Rahul in a bigger role. Once organisational elections are held in the states, Rahul will be elected president of the party. It all will happen by the end of the year.

3. Sonia is not in best of health. In fact, she has curtailed all her public appearances. She did not go to Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Goa and Manipur, all of which went to the polls three months ago. She did not hold even a single public rally or a workers meet in any of these states. She did not go to Chennai to attend aging DMK chief M Karunanidhi's birthday celebrations, which was attended by most Opposition leaders. Rahul represented Congress in her stead.

Though Sonia recently had some one-on-one meetings with Opposition leaders and even held a luncheon for them at the Parliament House library to give a boost to Opposition unity and field a common opposition candidate to take on ruling BJP-led NDA candidate in upcoming presidential election on 17 July, she isn't as active as she used to be. The ruling NDA has already secured 55 percent votes in presidential election and the Opposition candidate is likely headed for defeat.

Mother Sonia, as Punia described her, may soon handover the baton to son Rahul towards the end of the year. But there's a catch  Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat will go to the polls by end of the year  in all likelihood, Congress will lose those elections.

Would Rahul like to elevate himself to the top post when the party mood is one of all around dejection? No one knows the answer.

But Rahul is reading the Gita. Maybe he'll find an answer there.
Chennai: A section of ruling AIADMK-Amma MLAs on Tuesday called on party deputy general secretary TTV Dinakaran, being opposed by Chief Minister K Palaniswami-led camp, sparking speculations over the government's stability.

However, Finance Minister D Jayakumar, representing the cabinet, asserted there was absolutely "no threat" to the government and dubbed the legislators' meeting with Dhinakaran as "personal".

"There is no threat to the government and it will continue through its tenure till 2021," he told reporters in Chennai.

The MLAs met Dinakaran amid the stand-off between him and the Palaniswami camp, which has revolted against him and jailed party general secretary VK Sasikala and decided to keep them away from the party affairs.

With Dinakaran, appointed by Sasikala, going back on his earlier assurance to withdraw from party affairs, the ministers and senior party functionaries on Monday held a meeting and reiterated their opposition to him.

Dinakaran, however, had mocked at their meeting and questioned their authority to remove office-bearers appointed by general secretary.

"We (Palaniswami government) are having absolute majority and that is not an issue," Jayakumar said answering a question.

He said the legislators' meeting with Dinakaran was at a "personal level," and added "it should not be politicised... A stable regime is on and there is no connection between the government and their meeting (Dinakaran)."

Jayakumar said while the party was being led by a panel of seniors, the government was steered by Chief Minister K Palaniswami.

"All are happy but some have worries, I am not going to say anything about that," he said.

Meanwhile, in a notable mark of assertion of authority, Palaniswami's portrait was featured in the chambers of several state ministers in addition to those of late chief minister Jayalalithaa.

Also, new images of AIADMK founder and late chief minister MG Ramachandran could be seen in the chambers.

When O Panneerselvam was chief minister, only the portraits of Jayalalithaa alone found place in the ministers' chambers.

Earlier in the day, some legislators, including Thanga Tamilselvan, VP Kalairajan and former transport minister V Senthil Balaji, called on Dhinakaran at his residence in Chennai.

Dinkaran had returned to the city on 3 June after obtaining bail in the case related to alleged attempt to bribe EC officials.

He had on Monday met Sasikala in the Bengaluru prison, where she is serving her term in the disproportionate assets case.

Thanga Tamilselvan, a known loyalist of Dhinakaran, said only Sasikala and Dhinakaran were authorised to decide on party matters.

Hitting out at Jayakumar for asking Dhinakaran to stick to his assurance to "keep off" party work, he said "it is Jayakumar's personal view, it is not valid."

Asked if action can be expected against Jayakumar for breach of party discipline, he said, "for sure, that information will come."

Legislators belonging to eight districts met Chief Minister K Palaniswami on Tuesday at the state secretariat.

According to Jayakumar, the meeting was about the issues in constituencies against the backdrop of commencement of Assembly session on 14 June.
Motihari: Yoga guru Baba Ramdev on Wednesday praised the decision of total prohibition by the Nitish Kumar government in Bihar.

"It is a good step," Ramdev told reporters in East Champaran district where he will attend a three-day yoga camp from Thursday.

Ramdev emphasised that popularisation of yoga will help people shun the habit of alcohol consumption.

The yoga guru, whose Patanjali Yogapeeth has emerged as a major business establishment, said his aim is to "force companies selling foreign items in the country do 'sirsashan'

(yoga posture of standing on head)."

He also came down heavily on China flooding Indian markets with cheap products.

On the deaths of farmers in Madhya Pradesh, he empathised with the families of the deceased and stood by the agitating farmers.

Ramdev also said that it is wrong to see yoga from the religious point of view as, "Yoga is not a religion, but an ancient art to remain healthy."
The 2017 United Kingdom general election is scheduled to take place on Thursday. The voters will elect the 650 members who comprise the House of Commons. The election was not due till 2020 but Prime Minister Theresa May called for a snap election after receiving the necessary two-thirds majority in the House of Commons. This move was widely regarded as one which would give her the necessary political capital to execute the UK's exit from the European Union. Let's take a look at what the various major print publications have to say about the elections.

The broadsheets:

The Guardian sees the election as a straight choice between a Labour or a Conservative government. This return of two-party politics is a result of the Brexit vote that ended up shrinking the vote of UKIP and the Liberal Democrats. It also sees this election as unnecessary and says that May (who leads the Conservatives) has called for it to become "the unchallenged interpreter of Brexit". It generally has a poor view of May as it calls her a poor judge of campaign tactics.

The Guardian has many issues with Jeremy Corbyn (leader of the Labour Party) as well but feels that he has had a good campaign. It concludes with endorsing him as much for his good qualities as for its objective of stopping the Conservatives.

The Observer which comes from the same publishing stable as the Guardian has roughly the same view. It calls May as being undeserving of the country's support and that she had called the election on "specious grounds". It finds Corbyn's campaign to be a well-run one but questions his credentials as a leader. It concludes in a cop-out of sorts as it finds neither prime ministerial candidate worthy of the voters' overwhelming support but asks the voters to support the local candidate "most likely to advance a progressive future in Europe and at home, the one who is most likely to oppose Theresa Mays pro-austerity, hard Brexit vision for Britain."

The Financial Times sees the election as being a tight one. Its outlook of May is that of a curiously brittle leader. It doesn't find Corbyn to be ideal either and finds both their leaderships to be equally vague.

The publication portrays the choice as being one of picking the lesser of two evils. Corbyn is seen to be a fringe figure who has spent his entire career in opposition and whose party is unfit for government. It finds May to be a safer bet but warns her to change her management style and to bring in the best and the brightest experts.

The Independent sees a vote for the Conservatives as being one for a hard stance on Brexit. May has been seen to have an assumed mandate on a hard Brexit. It also sees a vote for them as endorsing her as being "the least worst choice for the future". The publication sees Corbyn as having run a good campaign but questions his leadership qualities as exhibited in the opposition.

It does not endorse either candidate but asks the voters to vote for the individual candidates. It does however feel that May should not get a huge majority as it might lead to a hard Brexit.

The tabloids:

The Sun has constantly been on the side of the Conservatives. It finds the choice to be a clear-cut one and the conclusion to be obvious. It finds the party to be "serious, grown-up and honest about Britains problems and the difficult solutions to them." It believes Corbyn's "Marxist manifesto" will destroy the economy which has been painstakingly rebuilt by the Conservatives. It implores voters to vote Conservative.

The Daily Mail asks the voters to unite behind May as it will give her a mandate of her own. This will ensure that she makes a good deal with the European Union which will be reflective of both the needs and desires of the people. It doesn't even mention Corbyn by name and laments the fact that there is no viable Opposition to the Conservatives. It asks the Labour Party to do its job properly as the future of the UK is at stake.

The Daily Express, while sure that May would stroll to victory, reminds its readers that nothing is certain and there is no room for complacency. It asks the voters whose allegiance lies with other parties to rise above political affiliation and vote for "the ultimate goal  a return of sovereignty an control of our own borders".

The Daily Mirror has a radically different take from the other tabloids as despite not finding either candidate perfect, it sees the choice as being a clear one. It found Labour's manifesto as being "a thought-out blueprint for a new Britain" and is feels that a Corbyn-led government is in the best interest of its readers.

In summation:

The outlook for UK seems bleak regardless of who comes to power. Having voted to leave the European Union, the British are now at a pivotal point in history where a strong leader could make all the difference.

Sadly, most papers have come to the same conclusion that neither of the prime ministerial candidates are ideal. The broadsheets while taking a sombre view of the situation, have endorsed candidates largely based along their traditional readership base. Notable exceptions are The Observer and The Independent, who have not endorsed any candidate but have asked the voters to vote on the basis of their local candidate.

The tabloids have been much more decisive as the majority have backed May and asked the voters to give her a majority in order for her to negotiate with the EU from a position of power. The Daily Mirror differs from the others as it just as emphatically recommends Corbyn.

The choice for the UK voters now resembles the one faced by the US voters in the 2016 Presidential Election. They have to choose the better of two evils and regardless of who they vote for, they will not walk out of the voting booth satisfied.
By Bozorgmehr Sharafedin

| LONDON

LONDON Suicide bombers and gunmen attacked the Iranian parliament and the Mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini in Tehran on Wednesday, killing at least 12 people in a twin assault which Iran's Revolutionary Guards blamed on regional rival Saudi Arabia.Islamic State claimed responsibility and released a video purporting to show gunmen inside the parliament building. It also threatened more attacks.The assault took place at a particularly charged time after Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Muslim powers cut ties with Qatar on Monday, accusing it of backing Tehran and militant groups.They were the first claimed by the hardline Sunni militant group inside in the tightly controlled Shi'ite Muslim country, one of the powers leading the fight against IS forces in neighbouring Iraq and Syria.The powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps accused Saudi Arabia of being behind the action, a rare such incident in Iran."This terrorist attack happened only a week after the meeting between the U.S. president (Donald Trump) and the (Saudi) backward leaders who support terrorists. The fact that Islamic State has claimed responsibility proves that they were involved in the brutal attack," a Guards statement said.Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir, speaking in Berlin, said he did not know who was responsible and there was no evidence Saudi extremists were involved. DRESSED AS WOMEN

Attackers dressed as women burst through parliament's main entrance in central Tehran, deputy interior minister Mohammad Hossein Zolfaghari said, according to the Tasnim news agency.One of them detonated a suicide vest in the parliament, he said. About five hours later, Iranian media said four people who had attacked parliament were dead and the incident was over.At least 12 people were killed by the attackers, the head of Iran's emergency department, Pir-Hossein Kolivand, was quoted as saying by state broadcaster IRIB. Some 43 people were wounded."I was inside the parliament when shooting happened. Everyone was shocked and scared. I saw two men shooting randomly," said one journalist at the scene.Soon after the assault on parliament, another bomber detonated a suicide vest near the shrine of the Islamic Republic's revered founder, Ayatollah Khomeini, a few kilometres south of the city, Zolfaghari said.

A second attacker was shot dead, he said. The shrine is a main destination for tourists and religious pilgrims."The terrorists had explosives strapped to them and suddenly started to shoot around," said the shrine's overseeer, Mohammadali Ansari.The Intelligence Ministry said security forces had arrested another "terrorist team" planning a third attack.Television footage showed police helicopters circling over the parliament building, with snipers on its rooftop.The attacks follow several weeks of heightened rhetorical animosity between Riyadh and Tehran.In unusually blunt remarks on May 2, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is Saudi defence minister and a son of King Salman, said he would protect his country from what he called Iranian efforts to dominate the Muslim world.Any struggle for influence between the Sunni Muslim kingdom and the revolutionary Shi'ite theocracy ought to take place "inside Iran, not in Saudi Arabia," he said without elaborating.

The next day Iran accused Saudi Arabia of seeking tension in the region, saying the prince had made "destructive" comments and it was proof that Riyadh supported terrorism. APPEAL FOR UNITY

The attacks could also exacerbate tensions in Iran between newly re-elected President Hassan Rouhani, a pragmatist who positions himself as a reformer, and his rivals among hardline clerics and the powerful Revolutionary Guards.But Rouhani said they would make Iran more united and more determined in the fight against regional terrorism and violence."We will prove once again that we will crush the enemies' plots with more unity and more strength," he said in a statement.In an appeal for unity, Rouhanis chief of staff, Hamid Aboutalebi, took to Twitter to praise the security services.

"Applause to the power and firmness of our revolutionary guards, Basij, police and security forces," he wrote.However, two senior government officials, who asked not to be named, said the attacks might prompt a blame game."They (hardliners) are very angry and will use every opportunity to grow in strength to isolate Rouhani," said one of the officials.The other said it would push Iran toward "a harsher regional policy".Iran's tussle with Saudi Arabia is also being played out in the Yemen war as well as in Syria and Iraq.Islamic State said five of its fighters carried out the twin attacks using assault rifles, grenades, and suicide vests.It also threatened Iran's majority Shi'ite population with more attacks, saying in a statement "the caliphate will not miss a chance to spill their blood".Islamic State has previously lambasted "heretic" Shi'ite Iran for helping the Syrian and Iraqi governments to fight it. A video released by its news agency Amaq included an audio track of a man saying in Arabic: "Oh God, thank you. [Gunshots]. Do you think we will leave? No! We will remain, God willing."Attacks are rare in Tehran and other major cities though two Sunni militant groups, Jaish al-Adl and Jundallah, have been waging a deadly insurgency, mostly in more remote areas, for almost a decade.Iran's Sistan and Baluchestan province, in the southeast on the borders with Pakistan and Afghanistan, is home to the Balouch minority and has long been a hotbed of Sunni insurgents fighting the Shi'ite-led republic.Last year Iranian authorities said they had foiled a plot by Sunni militants to bomb targets in Tehran and other cities during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. (Writing and additional reporting by Parisa Hafezi, Editing by Andrew Heavens and Angus MacSwan)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
By Bozorgmehr Sharafedin

| LONDON

LONDON Suicide bombers and gunmen attacked the Iranian parliament and the Mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini in Tehran on Wednesday, killing at least 12 people in a twin assault which Iran's Revolutionary Guards blamed on regional rival Saudi Arabia.Islamic State claimed responsibility and released a video purporting to show gunmen inside the parliament building.The attacks took place at a particularly charged time after Saudi Arabia and other Sunni powers cut ties with Qatar on Monday, accusing it of backing Tehran and militant groups.They were the first claimed by the hardline Sunni Muslim militant group inside in the tightly controlled Shi'ite Muslim country. Islamic State has regularly threatened Iran, one of the powers leading the fight against the militants forces in neighbouring Iraq and, beyond that, Syria.The powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps accused Saudi Arabia of being behind the action, a rare such incident in Iran."This terrorist attack happened only a week after the meeting between the U.S. president (Donald Trump) and the (Saudi) backward leaders who support terrorists. The fact that Islamic State has claimed responsibility proves that they were involved in the brutal attack," a Guards statement said.Saudi Foreign Minister del Al-Jubeir, speaking in Berlin, said he did not know was responsible and there was no evidence Saudi extremists were involved.The attacks could also exacerbate tensions in Iran between newly re-elected President Hassan Rouhani, a pragmatist, and his rivals among hardline clerics and the Revolutionary Guards.Attackers dressed as women burst through parliament's main entrance in central Tehran, deputy interior minister Mohammad Hossein Zolfaghari said, according to the Tasnim news agency.One of them detonated a suicide vest in the parliament, he said. About five hours after the first reports, Iranian media said four people who had attacked parliament were dead and the incident was over.At least 12 people were killed by the attackers, the head of Iran's emergency department, Pir-Hossein Kolivand, was quoted as saying by state broadcaster IRIB. Some 43 people were wounded."I was inside the parliament when shooting happened. Everyone was shocked and scared. I saw two men shooting randomly," said one journalist at the scene.

Soon after the assault on parliament, another bomber detonated a suicide vest near the shrine of the Islamic Republic's revered founder, Ayatollah Khomeini, a few kilometres south of the city, Zolfaghari said. A second attacker was shot dead, he said. The shrine is a main destination for tourists and religious pilgrims."The terrorists had explosives strapped to them and suddenly entered the shrine and started to shoot around," said the shrine's overseeer, Mohammadali Ansari.The Intelligence Ministry said security forces had arrested another "terrorist team" planning a third attack."I was shopping and suddenly heard shooting," said housewife Maryam Saghari, 36, who lives near parliament. "People started to run away from the area. I was very scared. I don't want to live in fear," she told Reuters by telephone. Television footage showed police helicopters circling over the parliament building, with snipers on its rooftop.

SUNNI INSURGENCY

The raids on two of Irans most highly-protected sites will jolt Rouhani, who positions himself as a reformer, and his political rivals among the hardline clerics and the Revolutionary Guards, who are responsible for national security.In an appeal for unity, Rouhanis chief of staff, Hamid Aboutalebi, took to Twitter to praise the security services."If this attacks had happened in any other city in Europe or in the world, it would have left many casualties. Applause to the power and firmness of our revolutionary guards, Basij, police and security forces," he wrote.Two senior government officials, who asked not to be named, said the blasts might prompt a blame game and exacerbate political in-fighting. "They (hardliners) are very angry and will use every opportunity to grow in strength to isolate Rouhani," said one of the officials.

The other said the attacks, and speculation over who backed them, would push Iran toward "a harsher regional policy".Iran's tussle with Saudi Arabia for regional influence is being played out in the Yemen war as well as in Syria and Iraq.The Intelligence Ministry called on people to be vigilant and report any suspicious movement. Attacks are rare in Tehran and other major cities though two Sunni militant groups, Jaish al-Adl and Jundallah, have been waging a deadly insurgency, mostly in more remote areas, for almost a decade.Iran's Sistan and Baluchestan province, in the southeast on the borders with Pakistan and Afghanistan, is home to the Balouch minority and has long been a hotbed of Sunni insurgents fighting the Shi'ite-led republic.Last year Iranian authorities said they had foiled a plot by Sunni militants to bomb targets in Tehran and other cities during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who is visiting Turkey to discuss the Qatar crisis, told reporters that the attacks will "strengthen the resolve of the Iranian nation against terrorism". Islamic State has lambasted "heretic" Shi'ite Iran for helping the Syrian and Iraqi governments to fight it. The video released by Islamic State's news agency Amaq included an audio track of a man saying in Arabic: "Oh God, thank you. [Gunshots]. Do you think we will leave? No! We will remain, God willing." (Writing and additional reporting by Parisa Hafezi, Editing by Andrew Heavens and Angus MacSwan)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
By David Ljunggren and Leah Schnurr

| OTTAWA

OTTAWA Canada on Wednesday unveiled plans for one of the biggest hikes in military spending in its recent history, acting less than two weeks after U.S. President Donald Trump demanded that NATO members ramp up defense expenditures.Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan, unveiling a 20-year policy review that had been in the works for months, said the armed forces budget would jump by 73 percent to C$32.7 billion ($24.2 billion) in 2026/27 from C$18.9 billion in 2016/17, with the biggest increases coming in later years.The Liberal government made the announcement a day after Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland said Canada would have to play a larger global role as the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump retreated from multilateralism.Sajjan told reporters the policy would result in "a Canada that is strong at home, secure in North America and engaged in the world."Canada and the United States are traditionally close allies but the relationship has become strained under Trump, who was elected on a promise to "put America first."David Perry, defense analyst at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, said he was pleasantly surprised by the spending plans. The center-left Liberals have traditionally been skeptical about major military purchases."They've promised ... to spend money on a lot of needed priorities, most of it on capital investments, which is where I think the real priorities were," Perry said by phone. Sajjan said the boost would take total defense expenditures to 1.4 percent of GDP by 2024/25 from 1.2 percent now. Other estimates put Canada's spending at closer to 1.0 percent.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization members have committed to spend 2 percent of GDP on the military, a target few meet. Trump last month upset NATO leaders by insisting they commit more funds and also by not personally affirming the alliance's mutual defense doctrine.Asked whether he thought Trump would be satisfied, Sajjan said: "This defense policy is for Canada".NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the announcement would "ensure Canada has the armed forces and the key capabilities that the Alliance needs".Ottawa will hold an open competition to buy 88 advanced fighters to replace its fleet of 77 CF-18 planes, more than the 65 new jets the previous Conservative government had planned.

The defense review said the jets would need to operate seamlessly with planes of Canada's allies and estimated the cost at between C$15 billion to C$19 billion.Ottawa said last year it wanted to buy 18 Boeing Corp (BA.N) Super Hornets as an interim measure but has since threatened to scrap the plan unless the U.S. firm drops an anti-dumping challenge against planemaker Bombardier Inc (BBDb.TO).Potential winners include rival jet makers, such as Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N), Dassault Aviation SA (AVMD.PA), Airbus SE (AIR.PA) and Saab AB (SAABb.ST), analysts said.Sajjan declined to comment when asked whether the spending would result in a larger budget deficit than the Liberals are already forecasting.

One major uncertainty is that the Liberals may not be in power in a decade's time. They took office in 2015 and Canadian governments usually last between eight and 10 years.Indeed, when in government, the Conservatives promised in 2008 to boost defense spending to C$30 billion by 2027/28 from C$18 billion in 2008/09. But by end of 2014/15, their last full year in power, the budget had only edged up to C$20.1 billion."It's really really easy to backload promised spending, especially when you're able to backload it into the 2020s," said Kim Richard Nossal, a political studies professor at Queen's University in Kingston who specializes in defense procurement.The Liberal government also confirmed longstanding plans to buy 15 new ships and said the cost would rise to between C$56 billion and C$60 billion. Conservatives had put the cost at C$26.2 billion.The Conservatives said they were skeptical the Liberals would be able to deliver on their promises."We learned that the majority of the funding announced today won't be available until after the next election and the government won't tell us where it is going to come from," said party defense spokesman James Bezan.($1 = 1.3514 Canadian dollars) (Reporting by David Ljunggren and Leah Schnurr; Editing by Denny Thomas and Tom Brown)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Former Unites States president Barack Obama praised US states and cities for maintaining measures against climate change in a fresh jab at his successor's decision to quit the Paris accord.

Addressing a crowd of 6,000 in Montreal on Tuesday, he argued that his administration had been able to show that greener policies were good for economic growth.

"When it comes to the threat of climate change, we have shown that environmental sustainability and economic progress are not contradictory but are complementary," he told the enthusiastic crowd.

"I took great comfort last week in seeing American states and cities and universities and corporations to make it clear that they will keep pushing ahead for the sake of the future generations."

Last week, US president Donald Trump decided to pull out of the Paris climate deal, attracting international condemnation.

A string of state governors, city mayors and powerful companies were quick to pledge to meet greenhouse gas emission targets regardless of Trump's decision.

During Obama's presidency, the United States was one of the 195 countries around the world to sign up to the 2015 agreement.
Paris: French police shot and injured a man who attacked an officer with a hammer outside Paris's Notre Dame cathedral Tuesday, as he shouted "this is for Syria". Police sources said the officer sustained minor neck injuries in the assault, which comes with France on high alert after jihadists killed seven people in London on Saturday.

Documents found on the attacker identified him as a 40-year-old Algerian who was a doctoral student in information science at a university in the east of France. The suspect later claimed to be a "soldier of the caliphate" of the Islamic State group, according to a source close to the investigation.

The policeman's colleague opened fire on the man, hitting him in the chest in panicked scenes around the Gothic cathedral that is one of France's most visited tourist attractions.

The man lay bleeding on the ground as police sealed off the area and searched for possible accomplices. About an hour after the attack he was taken to hospital and police declared the situation to be under control.

Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said the man, who was also carrying kitchen knives, had shouted "this is for Syria" as he lunged at the officer.

Anti-terrorist prosecutors were put in charge of the investigation. A witness told AFP he heard someone "shout very loudly". "Then there was a crowd surge and people panicked. I heard two shots and saw a man lying on the ground in a pool of blood," he said.

The suspect's thesis director at the University of Lorraine, where he had been studying since 2014, said the doctoral student showed "no outward sign of an excessive adherence to Islam." "When I knew him, he had a pro-Western, pro-democratic outlook," Arnaud Mercier, who said he had not heard from the suspect since November, told the French television chain BFMTV.

Notre Dame, which is situated on the banks of the Seine river in the heart of Paris, draws 13 million visitors a year. Over 1,000 people were inside the cathedral at the time of the attack.

Authorities in Paris asked the public to stay away from the area. Pictures on social media showed people sitting in the pews with their hands in the air  apparently at the request of police. Andre Finot, the cathedral's head of communications, later described the situation as calm. "People are talking to each other, praying and continuing their visit," he said.

In September, Notre Dame was the scene of a scare after a car full of gas canisters was found parked nearby. The car was tracked to an all-female terrorist cell, allegedly acting on the orders of Syria-based Islamic State jihadists.

Renewed state of emergency

Tuesday's incident comes three days after extremists used a van and knives to crush to death and kill seven people enjoying a night out in London. One of the victims was French.

France is still under the state of emergency imposed after the November 2015 attacks in Paris, when Islamic State jihadists killed 130 people in a night of carnage at venues across the city.

The last fatal attack in France dates to 20 April, when a policeman was shot dead on Paris's prestigious Champs-Elysees avenue, three days before the first round of the presidential election.

Previous major attacks targeted the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine in January 2015 and in November that year, gunmen and suicide bombers attacked venues around Paris including the Bataclan concert hall, killing 130 people.

Then in July last year, a radicalised Tunisian man drove a lorry at high speed through a Bastille Day fireworks display on the Nice waterfront, massacring 86 people.

Since then there have been a series of smaller attacks, often targeting security forces.
United Nations: President Donald Trump's decision to quit the Paris climate accord will further erode US moral and political leadership in the world, France's ambassador to the United Nations has said.

"America is perceived as being, on this, on the wrong side of history," Ambassador Francois Delattre told reporters on Tuesday.

Trump announced the US exit from the 190-plus nation pact last week, drawing strong criticism from allies in Europe who vowed to turn to China and other countries as partners to implement the 2015 deal.

French President Emmanuel Macron has made a strong pledge to stand by the accord and similar reactions from India and China confirm that the Paris deal is "our common roadmap" to a low-carbon world, Delattre said.

The United States, the world's biggest carbon emitter after China, signed the agreement last year under the previous administration, but Trump has argued that the deal would harm the US economy.

Delattre said Trump's decision "goes beyond climate change policy" and is a "factor in the erosion of the moral and political leadership of the United States."

The decision could be perceived as "the birth certificate of the multipolar world" in which the United States is no longer "the most reliable guarantor of the world order," he added.

Trump's decision to scrap the Paris deal has left him isolated on the world stage and prompted a backlash at home, with several state governors, city mayors and powerful companies already drawing up plans to meet the pact's emission targets  without Washington's backing.

Despite the setback on climate, Delattre expressed hope that the United States will nevertheless remain engaged in global affairs.

"A lasting American withdrawal from world affairs could give rise to a return to old spheres of influence whose dire consequences we are already familiar with," he said.
A senior Emirati official insisted on Wednesday that Gulf Arab states were not seeking regime change in Doha, as tensions built in a bitter feud between Qatar and its neighbours.

The United Arab Emirates' state minister for foreign affairs Anwar Gargash accused Qatar of being "the main champion of extremism and terrorism in the region".

But he also said measures taken against Qatar this week by Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other Arab nations were not aimed at seeking new leadership in Doha.

"This is not about regime change  this is about a change of policy, change of approach," Gargash said.

Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE and Bahrain announced on Monday they were cutting diplomatic ties and closing air, sea and land links with Qatar, giving Qataris within their borders two weeks to leave.

The four countries have suspended all flights to and from Qatar, pulled their ambassadors from Doha and ordered Qatari diplomats to leave.

Riyadh and its allies accuse Qatar of supporting extremist groups and of serving the interests of regional arch-rival Iran, claims Doha has strongly rejected.

The dispute has sparked the worst diplomatic crisis in the Arab world in years and raised fears it will cause further instability in an already volatile region.

Kuwait is leading efforts to find a mediated solution. Its Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad Al-Sabah held talks with Saudi King Salman on Tuesday but there were no immediate signs of progress.

He travelled Wednesday to the United Arab Emirates.

The Kuwaiti ruler played a pivotal role in mediating a compromise in a 2014 diplomatic dispute between Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Gulf states.

The United States, France and Russia have called for dialogue while Turkey has defended Qatar and said it would further "develop" ties with Doha.

In an apparent sign of support, Turkey's Parliament will debate on Wednesday a bill that would allow deploying troops to a Turkish base in Qatar.

US president Donald Trump waded into the dispute on Tuesday but seemed to only muddy the waters. After first appearing to back the Saudi-led measures against Qatar on Twitter, he shifted gears and called for unity among Gulf Arab states.

Trump's Tuesday tweet  in which he said "all reference was pointing to Qatar" as a financier of extremism  was especially surprising given Qatar's role as host of the largest United States airbase in West Asia. Al-Udeid, located in the Qatari desert, is home to some 10,000 United States troops and is a crucial hub in the fight against Islamic State group extremists in Syria and Iraq.

German foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel accused Trump of fanning conflict in West Asia and risking a "new spiral in arms sales" with his remarks.

"Such a 'Trumpification' of relations in a region already susceptible to crises is particularly dangerous," Gabriel said in an interview scheduled to appear on Wednesday.

Saudi foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir told German reporters on Wednesday that Gulf countries still see Qatar as a "brother state".

"But you have to be able to tell your friend or your brother when they are doing the right thing and when they are doing the wrong thing," Jubeir said in a joint press conference with Gabriel.

Qatar has said it is open to talks to end the crisis but has also accused its neighbours of impinging on its sovereignty.

The UAE, meanwhile, warned that anyone showing sympathy with Qatar could face jail time or fines.

The UAE attorney-general said Wednesday that "any participation in conversation or social media or any other means that demonstrates sympathy to Qatar... may face a prison sentence of three to 15 years and a fine of no less than 500,000 dirhams ($136,000)."

The measures taken against Qatar have seen dozens of flights cancelled and huge problems for Qatar Airways, which has been banned from the airspace of Saudi Arabia and other countries.

The severing of land and maritime links have also sparked fears of food shortages in Qatar, which relies heavily on imports.

Qatar has an independent streak that has often angered its neighbours, attracting criticism for hosting the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, and supporting Islamist rebels in Syria.

Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies may have felt emboldened to move against Qatar by Trump's visit in May to Riyadh, which saw the president clearly align United States interests with the kingdom and lash out at Iran.

Riyadh has itself faced accusations of tolerating or even supporting extremists, in particular after the 11 Septembe 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.

Of the 19 hijackers of planes used in the attacks, 15 came from Saudi Arabia, also the birthplace of Al-Qaeda founder and attack mastermind Osama bin Laden.

Meanwhile, the Indian embassy in Doha has issued an advisory for its Indian residents.
Washington: US President Donald Trump has claimed credit for the pressure being placed on Qatar by Gulf neighbours who accuse it of supporting terrorism in the region.

He said his recent visit to Saudi Arabia was "already paying off" and the development might mark the "beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism," BBC reported.

Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE, Yemen, Libya's eastern-based government and the Maldives have all cut diplomatic and other ties with Qatar.

Qatar strongly denies the allegations.

Trump's recent speech in the capital Riyadh, in which he blamed Iran for instability in the West Asia and urged Muslim countries to take the lead in combating radicalisation, is seen as likely to have emboldened Gulf allies to act against Qatar.

"During my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology. Leaders pointed to Qatar - look!" Trump tweeted on Tuesday.

He later tweeted: "So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off. They said they would take a hard line on funding... extremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism!"

Qatar is home to the biggest US military air base in West Asia, with about 8,000 personnel based at al-Udeid.

The official statement from White House spokesman Sean Spicer said the US was in communication with all parties "to resolve issues and restore co-operation".

"The US still wants to see this issue de-escalated and resolved immediately, in keeping with the principles that the president laid out in terms of defeating terror financing and extremism," he said.

In the same week as Mr Trump's Riyadh speech, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE blocked Qatari news sites, including Al Jazeera.

On Monday, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the UAE gave Qatari nationals two weeks to leave, banned their own citizens from travelling to Qatar, and cut all transport links.

Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said on Tuesday that the economic measures should persuade Qatar to change its policies and behave "like a normal country".

Speaking in Paris, he called on Qatar's rulers to end their support for the Muslim Brotherhood, the Palestinian militant group Hamas and what he called "hostile media".

"We believe that common sense and logic and will convince Qatar to take the right steps," he said.

The emir of Kuwait - one of the Gulf countries not involved in the dispute  travelled to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday in an attempt to mediate. He later left after a "brotherly visit" but there was no word on the outcome of the talks.

Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman al-Thani told Al Jazeera that his country would not retaliate but was unhappy with regional rivals "trying to impose their will on Qatar or intervene in its internal affairs".

He told the BBC that Qatar was well prepared to withstand a "blockade", but also complained that the people of Qatar were the victims of "collective punishment" by other countries.

The Foreign Minister said his government had told President Trump during his Middle-East trip that there was no evidence that Qatar was supporting radical Islamists, adding that the claims were based on "fabricated evidence and lies".
Gaza: Hamas expressed shock on Wednesday over Saudi Arabia's demand that Qatar end its support for the Palestinian Islamist movement as tensions flared between Gulf Arab states.

Saudi Arabia and its allies cut off ties with Qatar on Monday after accusing the gas-rich state of supporting extremism across the region.

On Tuesday, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir said that to rebuild relations, Doha must cut its support for "extremist" groups, including Hamas.

He said Qatar-supported Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip, "undermines the Palestinian Authority."

In a statement on its website, Hamas said the party felt "deep regret and disapproval" at the Saudi statement.

"These statements are a shock to our Palestinian people and to our Arab and Islamic nation, which considers the Palestinian cause its central cause," the statement said.

Hamas swept Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006 but remains blacklisted as a terrorist group by the European Union and the United States.

The Islamist movement seized Gaza in a near civil war with forces loyal to Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas in 2007. The two factions have been at loggerheads ever since.

Hamas has fought three wars with Israel since 2008, and the Jewish state enforces a crippling blockade on Gaza.

Qatar has provided tens of millions of dollars for the reconstruction of Gaza since the last conflict with Israel in 2014.
Cairo: As one Arab state after another announced it was severing ties with Qatar, the tiny Gulf monarchy's flagship television channel Al Jazeera did not react like other broadcasters  it updated its news ticker but its presenters said nothing.

It was only when the Qatari foreign ministry released a statement saying it was facing a campaign of lies and fabrications aimed at putting the Gulf Arab state under guardianship that the channel came to life on the topic.

"This has been planned since 2014 but only came out after the Riyadh summit," said Mohamed al-Mosfer, one of the many Qatari analysts the channel had on to comment, referring to a meeting last month attended by US President Donald Trump.

The Arab world's strongest powers cut ties with Qatar on Monday over alleged support for Islamists and Iran.

Saudi Arabia, Egypt, United Arab Emirates and Bahrain coordinated their move, while Yemen, Libya's eastern-based government, and the Maldives joined in later.

Al Jazeera did not focus on the statements and comments coming out of those countries, instead giving air time to the US and Turkish foreign ministers and an adviser to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani  all urging dialogue.

The channel is at the centre of the controversy. Arab rulers accuse Qatar of using its multi-million-dollar franchise as a mouthpiece to attack them.

Local media in the countries that cut ties speculated it would be shut down in an effort by Qatar to appease its angry neighbours, but while journalists working there are rattled by the crisis, they think their station will survive.

"Everybody is shocked at the escalation but no one thinks the channel will close, said one journalist with Al Jazeera English. "It is something the Qataris will not give up."

Later that night Al Jazeera focused on news coming out of Washington indicating Trump wanted to see the Gulf rift healed, as well as Kremlin statements calling for unity in the fight against militancy.

A White House statement saying Trump would work to smooth things over between Arab Gulf states played for over an hour on Al Jazeera screens. Saudi and Emirati channels ignored it.

When a senior Trump administration official told Reuters several of Qatar's actions worried its Gulf neighbours, Al Jazeera disregarded it. Other Gulf channels gave it prominence.

Influence and enemies

The channel cheered on the 2011 Arab Spring revolts, particularly in Egypt, but now faces aggressive competition in its home region, and suspicion from many governments over air time given to Islamist groups in Syria, Libya and elsewhere.

Al Jazeera's spectacular growth took place under former Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani who, unlike other Gulf Arab leaders, backed Middle East protest movements and played mediator in a host of wars.

Under his son and current ruler Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Qatar has toned down its foreign policy.

Founded in 1996 as part of Qatari efforts to turn economic power into political influence, Al Jazeera offered free-wheeling, uncensored debate of a kind rarely seen on Arab televisions.

Its talk shows hosted guests who challenged the wisdom of Arab rulers and adopted the role of supporter of the dispossessed. Reporters broke with a widespread taboo of the Arab news media by interviewing Israeli officials.

Funded by Qatar's royal family, Wadah Khanfar, a Palestinian journalist who was director general of the network between 2006-2011, helped turn the Arab satellite channel into a world network with millions of viewers and more than 20 channels broadcasting in languages including Arabic, English and Swahili.

With Al Jazeera's expansion came unprecedented influence in the Arab world, but also new enemies.

Egypt views Al Jazeera as critical of its government, and the channel has been banned there since 2013. Al Jazeera says it is an independent news service giving a voice to everyone in the region.

Egyptian security forces have arrested several of its reporters and last year a Cairo court recommended the death penalty for two of them, charged in absentia with endangering national security by leaking state secrets to Qatar.

Three others had previously been sentenced to between seven and 10 years in jail on charges including spreading lies to help a "terrorist organization" -- a reference to the banned Muslim Brotherhood  but were later freed.

Saudi Arabia shut down the channel on Monday.

"Al Jazeera condemns the measures taken by Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Culture and Information to close the Al Jazeera Media Network's office and withdraw the operating license," said a spokesman in Qatar.
Doha: A Qatari official has said an ultimatum issued by Saudi Arabia and its allies for the emirate's citizens to leave is a violation of human rights that requires UN intervention.

Ali bin Smaikh al-Marri, chairman of Qatar's national human rights committee, said that the Saudi-led move went far beyond a simple diplomatic dispute and would break up families and disrupt young people's education.

"We have moved from severing diplomatic relations to a comprehensive blockade of international conventions and human rights conventions, not only for Qataris but also for citizens of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries", Marri told a press conference on Tuesday evening.

"Qataris who study in Saudi, the UAE and Bahrain, we've had information that they were requested to leave immediately and they were not allowed to continue their final semester exams", he added.

On Monday, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt gave Qataris 14 days to leave, breaking diplomatic relations with Doha over its alleged support for extremism.

Marri said one infant with Emirati citizenship was banned from leaving the UAE with his Qatari mother when she tried to fly to Doha to visit her family.

He said Bahrain had allegedly asked the daughter of a woman divorced from her Qatari husband for 20 years to leave Manama because she holds Qatari citizenship.

Marri said he would raise his concerns with a team from Amnesty International on Wednesday and would also appeal to UN human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein to intervene.
BEIRUT Lebanese Hezbollah's Al Manar TV on Wednesday broadcast footage it said had been filmed by an Iranian drone showing a U.S. military drone flying over southeast Syria.The grainy film showed what looked like a Predator drone, a type the U.S. military uses for reconnaissance and attack missions, flying high above unidentifiable territory.

A voiceover in Farsi said "this is an American drone". It said it had been identified by an Iranian drone which was monitoring it undetected.

The video's authenticity could not be verified.

The footage emerged as tensions grow between Washington and the military alliance that backs the Syrian government, including Iranian-backed forces such as Hezbollah.The alliance threatened on Wednesday to hit U.S. positions in Syria, in response to a U.S. strike on Tuesday against what Washington said were pro-government forces. (Reporting by John Davison; Editing by Andrew Roche)

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Aiva Dahlby, Chippewa Falls Middle School student, has received a scholarship from the American Association of University Women-Chippewa Falls to attend the Science, Technology, and Engineering Preview (STEPS) summer camp at UW-Stout. STEPS is a 5-day summer camp for girls between sixth and seventh grade. The camp aims to build confidence in young women by structuring their participation in STEM-related activities. AAUW has sponsored a girl each summer for six years.
One of the first signs of the crisis in which four Arab states have cut ties with Qatar came in a phone call from an anxious government adviser to a Reuters journalist early on 24 May.

In the 6.00 a.m. call, he denied Qatar's emir made comments reported by the state-run news agency criticising hostility to Iran, sympathising with three Islamist groups, accusing Saudi Arabia of adopting an extremist ideology that fosters terrorism and suggesting Donald Trump may not last long as U.S. president.

The adviser repeated a statement released hours earlier which said the news agency had been hacked, seeming unaware that Reuters had already reported the denial.

The unusual timing of the call and the adviser's haste to get the message across pointed to Qatar's deep concern about the impact the remarks attributed to the emir could have.

As anger mounted in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Qatar's foreign minister tried to limit the fallout.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani told a news conference that Qatar, host to the biggest U.S. military base in the Middle East, wanted to maintain brotherly ties with its powerful neighbours in a region critical to world energy supplies.

To outside observers, it was unclear whether the Qatar News Agency had indeed been hacked or whether an editor had published remarks which the emir later regretted saying.

But to Qatar's neighbours the question was irrelevant: the comments reflected the broad lines of Qatar's independent-minded foreign policy, which critics say has destabilised the region through its alliance with Islamist armed groups and cordial ties with Iran.

Officials in the Gulf say the comments marked a turning point, prompting Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates to cut relations with Qatar in the biggest diplomatic shock in the region for years.

TROUBLE EVIDENT

For Riyadh, trouble was also evident elsewhere.

Some Qatari-funded anti-Saudi websites had begun reporting on what they said were calls for protests against the kingdom's rulers, stirring memories of the Arab Spring revolutions that toppled the leaders of Egypt, Libya and Tunisia.

"They (Qataris) hired (financed) influential Saudi preachers, religious figures, journalists and academics to incite against Saudi Arabia," one Gulf source told Reuters. "The Saudis had had it with Qatar. The Qataris keep channels open with Iran in various capitals and they campaign against the Egyptian state."

The Saudis had reached a "dead end" with Qatar and decided for the first time in 20 years to take action to damage its neighbour's interests, the source added.

Qatar denies inciting unrest in Saudi Arabia or elsewhere.

Another factor that pushed the four Sunni states over the line, according to Gulf officials, was last month's visit to Saudi Arabia by Trump, who has reversed the policies of predecessor Barack Obama, thrown his weight behind the kingdom and its allies and expressed misgivings about Iran.

No sooner had Trump left Riyadh than the United States' partners in the region moved against Qatar and its young emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, another American ally.

A series of flashpoints across the region in the days following Trump's visit heightened tensions that had been building for months and removed any hope among Qatar's neighbours of peeling it away from Iran and the Islamist groups it has engaged with for years.

Those tensions spilled into the public arena less than 48 hours after the Qatari emir took part in the Riyadh summit attended by Trump which was meant to showcase U.S. support for solidarity of Sunni Muslim nations. The alleged hacking incident came days after Qatar complained it was the target of "an orchestrated barrage" of criticism by unknown parties, in the run-up to Trump's visit.

"After the Tamim speech, things went up an extra notch," a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.

"The catalogue is so wide... It is an accumulation," Anwar Gargash, UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs told Reuters. "It could have happened in March, it could have happened in December. But it was bound to happen. It was something that was ready to explode."

Gargash confirmed there were several major irritants that sped up the process. These included the comments attributed to the emir, UAE accusations that Qatar has undermined the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, and Qatar's handling of a hostage crisis involving 24 members of the ruling elite in which it paid ransom money to Islamist groups in Iraq an Syria.

An annual phone call to mark the start of the holy Islamic month of Ramadan between Tamim and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on 27 May aggravated the situation further. Iran's Shi'ite-led government and Saudi Arabia's Sunni rulers compete for influence in the region and Jean-Marc Rickli, a Geneva-based risk analyst, called that a "diplomatic mistake (which) Saudi Arabia and the UAE jumped on".

Kuwait's emir offered to mediate but when Tamim attended an iftar (fast-breaking) Ramadan meal with him on 30 May, Tamim left early, apparently unwilling to discuss the row, a Kuwaiti newspaper editor regularly briefed by officials told Reuters.

ROLLING MEETINGS

The decision to cut ties with Qatar took shape in a rolling series of meetings over several weeks, said a Gulf Arab source.

But a second source said an important moment came last Saturday when Saudi King Salman and Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, met for iftar in Jeddah. It is likely that Egypt came on board two days later, during a visit to Cairo by the Saudi foreign minister.

At dawn on Monday, those governments and Bahrain made a series of rapid fire announcements, revealing the move's careful orchestration and pre-planning.

A Western diplomat in Doha said the move was "clearly tied" to Trump's visit, suggesting it had emboldened Saudi Arabia and the UAE to act.

"The opportunity presented itself with the Trump visit and Trump's presidency in general," a former U.S. ambassador to Doha told Reuters, suggesting the move had been in the works for two or three months.

"This is well choreographed. Everything came together at the same time.

"U.S. officials were blindsided by Saudi Arabias decision to sever ties with Qatar, current and former U.S. officials told Reuters.

A senior administration official said Washington had no indication at the Riyadh summit that the move was about to happen but on Tuesday morning Trump directly waded into the dispute by praising the Arab powers decisions against Qatar.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE have mainly portrayed the move as a step to combat what they call Qatar's funding for terrorists.

"We want a black-and-white approach to terrorist financing," said Gargash from the UAE Foreign Ministry. "We know the ABCs of dealing with terrorism. One of these ABCs is: You never feed the crocodiles.''

Trump's tweets suggested he agreed with that view: "During my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology. Leaders pointed to Qatar - look!" the president wrote.

The Pentagon, however, mindful of the U.S. military base in Qatar, renewed its praise for Doha after Trumps intervention - showing again how U.S. officials are walking a tightrope as Trumps tweets raise questions about existing policy and the scripted talking points used to explain it.

Reports that Qatari officials paid hundreds of millions of dollars to Iran-backed groups in an April deal to free 26 of its citizens kidnapped in Iraq last year has also been an irritant in relations between Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Qatar denies trying to pay ransom money to secure the release of the hostages, although foreign minister al-Thani said it sent money "to support the authorities in the release of Qatari abductees".
DUBLIN Irish police arrested two people on Tuesday, one of whom was released without charge, in connection with an investigation into one of the three attackers who killed seven people in London at the weekend.Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny said on Monday that one of the attackers, Rachid Redouane, a 30-year-old from Barking in east London, had lived in Ireland for a time but had not attracted police attention.

Irish police said they arrested two men in their 30s under the Theft and Fraud Offences Act. The first, arrested in the southwest county of Limerick, was released without charge. The second was being questioned in Wexford, in Ireland's southeast.

Local media said both men are suspected of using documents and tax and welfare identifiers associated with Redouane who, British police said, claimed to be Moroccan and Libyan.

Irish Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald said the country's police force was in direct contact with British security services over the investigation. Seven people were killed and dozens wounded on Saturday when the three men rammed a van into pedestrians on London Bridge and then stabbed revellers in nearby bars. (Reporting by Padraic Halpin; Editing by Kylie MacLellan and Robin Pomeroy)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
By Bozorgmehr Sharafedin

| LONDON

LONDON Suicide bombers and gunmen attacked the Iranian parliament and Ayatollah Khomeini's mausoleum in Tehran on Wednesday, killing at least 13 people in an unprecedented assault that Iran's Revolutionary Guards blamed on regional rival Saudi Arabia.Islamic State claimed responsibility and threatened more attacks against Iran's majority Shi'ite population, seen by the hardline Sunni militants as heretics.Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif tweeted: "Terror-sponsoring despots threaten to bring the fight to our homeland. Proxies attack what their masters despise most: the seat of democracy." He did not explicitly blame any country but the tweet appeared to refer to comments made by Saudi Arabias deputy crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman al-Saud, in May, saying that that Riyadh would bring "the battle" for regional influence to Iran.Sunni Saudi Arabia denied any involvement in the Tehran attacks, but the assault further fuels tensions between Riyadh and Tehran as they vie for control of the Gulf and influence in the wider Islamic world. It comes days after Riyadh and other Sunni Muslim powers cut ties with Qatar, accusing it of backing Tehran and militant groups.They were the first attacks claimed by Islamic State inside the tightly controlled Shi'ite Muslim country, one of the powers leading the fight against IS forces in nearby Iraq and Syria.The deputy head of Iran's National Security Council, Reza Seifollhai, told state TV late on Wednesday that the attackers were people from Iran who had joined Islamic State. Iranian police said they had arrested five suspects Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said: "These fireworks have no effect on Iran. They will soon be eliminated.""They are too small to affect the will of the Iranian nation and its officials," state TV quoted him saying.The powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps accused Riyadh of being behind the attacks and vowed to seek revenge."This terrorist attack happened only a week after the meeting between the U.S. president (Donald Trump) and the (Saudi) backward leaders who support terrorists. The fact that Islamic State has claimed responsibility proves that they were involved in the brutal attack," a Guards statement said.Trump said in a statement that he prayed for the victims of the attacks but added that "states that sponsor terrorism risk falling victim to the evil they promote." The U.S. State Department and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres both condemned the attacks. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir said he did not know who was responsible for the attacks and said there was no evidence Saudi extremists were involved.

DRESSED AS WOMEN

Attackers dressed as women burst through parliament's main entrance, deputy interior minister Mohammad Hossein Zolfaghari said, according to the Tasnim news agency. One of them detonated a suicide vest, he said. On a video released by the IS news agency Amaq a man purportedly inside the parliament says in Arabic: "Oh God, thank you. [Gunshots]. Do you think we will leave? No! We will remain, God willing."Police helicopters circled over parliament, with snipers on its rooftop. Within five hours, four attackers were dead and the incident was over, Iranian media said."I was inside the parliament when shooting happened. Everyone was shocked and scared. I saw two men shooting randomly," said one journalist at the scene.Soon after the assault on parliament began, a bomber detonated a suicide vest near the shrine of the Islamic Republic's revered founder, Ayatollah Khomeini, a few kilometres south of the city, Zolfaghari said. A second attacker was shot dead, he said. The shrine is a main destination for tourists and religious pilgrims.

"The terrorists had explosives strapped to them and suddenly started to shoot around," said the shrine's overseer, Mohammadali Ansari.By late evening, deputy interior minister Zolfaghari put the death toll at 13, with 43 wounded.The Intelligence Ministry said security forces had arrested another "terrorist team" planning a third attack. The National Security Council's Seifollhai said Iran had foiled 58 similiar attacks, without specifying a time period.REGIONAL ANIMOSITY

The attacks follow several weeks of heightened rhetorical animosity between Riyadh and Tehran.In unusually blunt remarks on May 2, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is Saudi defence minister and a son of King Salman, said he would protect his country from what he called Iranian efforts to dominate the Muslim world.

Any struggle for influence between the Sunni Muslim kingdom and the revolutionary Shi'ite theocracy ought to take place "inside Iran, not in Saudi Arabia," he said without elaborating. The next day Iran accused Saudi Arabia of seeking tension in the region, saying the prince had made "destructive" comments and it was proof that Riyadh supported terrorism. The attacks could also exacerbate tensions in Iran between newly re-elected President Hassan Rouhani, who positions himself as a reformer, and his rivals among hardline clergy and the Revolutionary Guards.But Rouhani said Iran would be more united and more determined in the fight against regional terrorism and violence."We will prove once again that we will crush the enemies' plots with more unity and more strength," he said.In an appeal for unity, Rouhanis chief of staff, Hamid Aboutalebi, took to Twitter to praise the security services."Applause to the power and firmness of our revolutionary guards, Basij (volunteer militia), police and security forces," he wrote.However, two senior government officials, who asked not to be named, said the attacks might prompt a blame game."They (hardliners) are very angry and will use every opportunity to grow in strength to isolate Rouhani," said one. The other said the attacks would push Iran toward "a harsher regional policy".Militant attacks are rare in Tehran and other major cities although two Sunni militant groups, Jaish al-Adl and Jundallah, have been waging a deadly insurgency, mostly in remote areas, for almost a decade. Iran's Sistan and Baluchestan province, in the southeast on the borders with Pakistan and Afghanistan, is home to the Balouch minority and has long been a hotbed of Sunni insurgents fighting the Shi'ite-led republic.Last year Iranian authorities said they had foiled a plot by Sunni militants to bomb targets in Tehran and other cities during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. (Additional reporting by Parisa Hafezi in Ankara, Asma Alsharif in Cairo, Yeganeh Torbati in Washington, Lisa Barrington in Beirut, David Dolan in Istanbul; Writing by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Angus MacSwan and Robin Pomeroy)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
British authorities faced mounting anger on Tuesday after police named the third attacker in the weekend terror assault in London, who Italy had previously flagged as a possible jihadist. Police identified the third attacker as Youssef Zaghba, a 22-year-old Italian national of Moroccan descent, a day after naming his accomplices as Khuram Shazad Butt, 27, a Pakistan-born Briton, and Rachid Redouane, 30, a self-described Moroccan-Libyan dual national.

Zaghba's father, Mohammed Zaghba is Morroccan and his mother, Valeria Collina is Italian. Collina moved back to Italy and took up residence in a Fagnano.

Butt "was known to the police and MI5", the domestic security service, but there was no intelligence to suggest the attack was being planned, the Metropolitan Police said.

He had notably featured in a Channel 4 television documentary titled The Jihadis Next Door and, according to the British media, numerous people alarmed by his views had gone to the authorities.

Zaghba was "not a police or MI5 subject of interest," it added.

But an Italian prosecutor said Zaghba was flagged to Britain as a "possible suspect" back in March 2016. Bologna prosecutor Giuseppe Amato said the warning had been transmitted after Zaghba was intercepted at the city's airport trying to board a plane for Turkey, en route for Syria.

Zaghba was stopped while trying to take a flight to Turkey on his way to Syria, Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported on Tuesday.

According to a detailed report in Los Angeles Times, it was then that Zaghba had told the officer that he wanted to be a terrorist, but he corrected himself. Amato, Italian prosecutor told Radio 24 that Zaghba's computer was confiscated but there was no evidence of a crime. However, images of Islamic State were found on his mobile phone.

After that, Amato said, any time Zaghba was in Italy, he was always tracked by Italian intelligence officers. "We did everything we could have done," he said and added, "But there weren't elements of proof that he was a terrorist. He was someone who was suspicious because of his way of behaving."

According to The Independent, Italian authorities had informed their British counterparts in April 2016 about Zaghbas efforts to join Islamic State.

However, those who know Zaghba up close mentioned that he was like any other person. According to Los Angeles Times, Zaghba was a 'normal' man who would greet his neighbours everyday. 77-year-old Franco Bortolini, Zaghba's upstairs neighbour is quoted as saying, "He was a good boy, just like his mother. I never imagined something like this would happen."

Collina said, "We always kept track of his friends and made sure he didn't fall in with the wrong people. But he had internet and that's where everything comes from." She added that she visited her son in London, and "that neighbourhood did not make me feel comfortable". She said, "I was there and didn't like it. He spent his time with the wrong kind of people."

Collina also said her son used to show her videos of Syria and wanted to go "because it was a place where you could live according to a pure Islam."

Collina said she understood many British imams want to send a strong signal and have said they are not prepared to give her son a Muslim funeral. "I understand that asking to be forgiven means nothing, that's why I promise to dedicate my life to ensuring this does not happen again," she said.

Over the past two years, Italy has expelled 181 people who were suspected of extremist activities but for whom there was insufficient evidence to bring formal charges. Zaghba's Italian citizenship prevented such an expulsion, Italian daily Repubblica reported.

With inputs from agencies
Athens: Former US vice-president Joe Biden stressed the need to address global warming, despite US president Donald Trump's decision to pull out of the Paris climate accord, and voiced confidence that the US can overcome its current introspective phase.

Biden said that it is "overwhelmingly" in the interest of future generations to deal with climate change, "notwithstanding what some of the folks in this administration may think."

Biden said his first report from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, when he took office, identified global warming as the greatest danger to US physical security through population displacement and war.

Speaking at a conference in Athens , Biden said: "The vast majority of the American people do not agree with the decision the president made."

As vice president, Biden supported former president Barack Obama's efforts to take part in the Paris accord and fight the effects of climate change. On Wednesday, he also underscored the key significance for the US of European security and the trans-Atlantic alliance.

"I know at this moment there are questions about what kind of leadership the world can expect from the United States of America, going forward," Biden said.

"But I want to be very clear that there is still in the United States of America a strong bipartisan consensus, especially in the United States Congress, that European security is vital to US security."

"The United States has had moments of turning inwards in the past. But we've always overcome them, just as we will overcome this," he said.

"History has proven that the defense of free nations in Europe has always, always, always, been in America's best interests and is America's fight."

Speaking at the same event, former US National Intelligence director John Negroponte described the Trump administration as still being on a "learning curve."

"We now have a president who has literally no government experience and I'm not sure yet appreciates the difference between governmental work and private sector work," he said.

"The real question we all face, looking at this now from a United States perspective: is just how long is just how long is this learning curve going to be? And in the end, is he really going to learn?" Biden later met with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.
Islamabad: Pakistan's top civilian and military leadership on Wednesday expressed concern over the "deteriorating" security situation in Afghanistan and rejected as "baseless" allegations that it had any hand in last week's bombing in the war-torn country's capital.

The assertion by Pakistan came as Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif chaired a special meeting of the National Security Committee of the Cabinet to review issues of national and regional security.

The forum strongly condemned the recent incident of terrorism in Kabul and resolved to remain steadfast and resolute in support of the Afghan people, according to a statement by the Prime Minister's Office.

"The participants expressed concern on the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan and strongly rejected the baseless allegations on Pakistan in that context," the statement said.

Pakistan had last week also strongly rejected as "baseless" the Afghan allegations that the Taliban-linked militants with the help of Pakistani spy agency ISI carried out the bombing in Kabul that killed at least 150 people.

The Afghan intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security (NDS), had said early findings showed that the Haqqani network with the assistance of the ISI carried out the attack on Tuesday in Kabul.

The meeting on Wednesday highlighted that Pakistan was the only country in the Afghan equation which has achieved clear and measurable success against terrorism despite limited capacity and huge human and economic costs.

"Pakistan has not only remained committed to a peaceful and stable Afghanistan but also worked with all regional and global initiatives to that end. At the same time Pakistan has shown exceptional restraint even when Afghan territory was used for terrorist acts in Pakistan which resulted in massive human losses," the statement said.

It said that Pakistan was fully cognizant of institutional collaboration by elements hostile to Pakistan and will defend itself resolutely against manifest and future threats.

The statement said Pakistan remains committed to continue its ongoing efforts for local, regional and global peace.

The meeting was attended by minister for defence Khawaja Muhammad Asif, minister for finance Muhammad Ishaq Dar, minister for interior Chaudhry Nisar, adviser to the prime minister on foreign affairs Sartaj Aziz, chairman joint chiefs of staff committee General Zubair Mahmood Hayat, chief of army staff general Qamar Javed Bajwa, director general of ISI Lt Gen Naveed Mukhtar and other top senior civil and military officials.
The mother of the Italian-Moroccan jihadi who helped carry out a deadly attack in London last week said on Tuesday that she had tried to keep her son from falling under the sway of Islamic State ideology, but the internet and his "London friends" changed him.

Valeria Khadija Collina, who is Italian and converted to Islam, spoke in an interview with Italy's L'Espresso news magazine about her son, Youssef Zaghba, 22, one of the perpetrators of the 3 June attack.

"When children make mistakes, parents always feel some guilt. But I did my best, and I think he was worn down on the inside," she said. Collina lives near the northern city of Bologna.

"We always kept track of his friends and made sure he didn't fall in with the wrong people. But he had internet and that's where everything comes from," she said.

Collina visited her son in London, and "that neighbourhood did not make me feel comfortable". She said, "I was there and didn't like it. He spent his time with the wrong kind of people."

Collina said she had spoken to Italy's anti-terrorism police last year after her son was prevented from travelling to the Middle East, and that they were the ones who told her on Tuesday that her son had been one of the men who carried out the attack.

Zaghba was stopped at the airport in Bologna in 2016 when he was trying to get to Syria via Turkey, city prosecutor Giuseppe Amato told broadcaster Radio24 on Tuesday.

"A person going to Turkey with a backpack aroused some suspicion, also because he told the agent who checked him that he wanted to go and be a terrorist, then he corrected himself," Amato said.

Collina said her son had been enticed to try to go to Syria by a "fantasy that was transmitted by internet" in which he thought he could "live according to pure Islam", but that he did not mention wanting to fight there.

Investigators confiscated Zaghba's computer but did not have proof of a crime. They returned the device but pointed him out to London as a possible suspect, Amato said.

British police said Zaghba had not been a subject of interest for them or the domestic intelligence agency MI5 before he and two others launched their attack.

Collina said she last spoke to her son two days before the attack and that in retrospect she realises "it was a goodbye call". She also said she agreed with Muslim religious leaders who refused to recite funeral prayers for the attackers. "I understand and agree with their choice, because it is necessary to send a strong political message," Collina said.

Her son and the two other attackers rammed a van into pedestrians on London Bridge, then ran into the Borough Market area, and slit throats and stabbed people indiscriminately before they were shot and killed by police.

Italian media said Zaghba was born in the Moroccan city of Fez in 1995 but had broken off relations with his Moroccan father. He lived in Morocco for much of his life but made short visits to his mother.

He spent a total of 10 days in Italy in the past year and a half, the Bologna prosecutor said.

Collina said she would dedicate her life to fighting Islamic State ideology by "teaching real Islam to people and trying to convince families to fill the void that they might find in their children".
London: British police on Wednesday said a 30-year-old man had been arrested following the London Bridge terror attack which killed seven people and injured 48.

Officers arrested him in the eastern London suburb of Ilford, near Barking, where two of the assailants lived.

The Saturday attack was claimed by the Islamic State and follows the 22 May suicide bombing at the Manchester Arena by Salman Abedi, killing 22 people.

There are now two men in custody while another 12 people held following the attack have since been released.

The assailants drove a van into pedestrians on London Bridge, before descending into the nearby Borough Market where they stabbed people out for the night in the bars and restaurants.

Police have identified the attackers as Youssef Zaghba, a 22-year-old Italian national of Moroccan descent, Khuram Shazad Butt, 27, a Pakistan-born Briton, and Rachid Redouane, 30, a self-described Moroccan-Libyan dual national.
London: A man has been arrested at Heathrow airport as part of the investigation into the deadly suicide bombing in Manchester, British police said Wednesday.

"The 38-year-old was arrested on suspicion of offences contrary to the Terrorism Act and remains in custody."

"The arrest was planned beforehand and there was no direct threat to the airport," the Greater Manchester Police said in a statement.

Police did not immediately confirm when the suspect was detained at Europe's busiest airport, or whether he landed at the airport as part of an extradition procedure.

The arrest comes more than two weeks after the 22 May attack on Manchester Arena at a concert by US pop star Ariana Grande.

The bombing carried out by Salman Abedi killed 22 people, including children, and wounded more than 100 others.

A total of 19 people have been arrested in Britain as part of the terror probe, 12 of whom have been released without charge.

Abedi's father and brother are also in detention in Libya, where authorities say the two brothers were both part of the Islamic State group which claimed responsibility for the deadly attack.

Police are still trying to piece together the bomber's final movements and on Tuesday released photos of a bag within which forensics had "uncovered significant evidence".

They also published images of a white car from which investigators believe Abedi took items to build the bomb.

"Although it is positive that we are making significant progress, we still need you to help us build a picture of exactly what led to this atrocity," police said, appealing for anyone who recognised the car or bag to come forward.
NOUAKCHOTT The West African country of Mauritania, a member of the Arab League, severed ties with Qatar on Tuesday over allegations it "supports terrorists", the state news agency reported.

The Arab world's biggest powers, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, cut diplomatic relations with Qatar on Monday, accusing it of supporting Islamist militants and Iran.

"The state of Qatar has linked its policies ... in support of terrorist organisations and the propagation of extremist ideas", said the statement from the ministry of foreign affairs published in Arabic by the Mauritanian Information Agency. "This has resulted in heavy losses to human life in these Arab countries, in Europe and throughout the world". (Reporting by Kissima Diagana; Writing by Tim Cocks)

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CHIPPEWA FALLS  Local health officials are working with the Wisconsin Department of Health Services to determine the source of a norovirus infection that sickened dozens of people at an event that was being held at the Northern Wisconsin State Fairgrounds in Chippewa Falls.

At least 60 adults and children became sick with gastroenteritis after attending the Special Kids Day event in May. The event was not one that was put on by the fairgrounds.

Nine local health departments are working on the investigation, including ones in Chippewa and Eau Claire counties.

Event organizer Tom Leuck says about 1,000 people from 26 school districts attended the two-day festival. He says people who attended both days have reported getting sick.

Leuck is not sure of the source of the sickness but says hugging and physical contact may have contributed to the spread of the illness.

Special Kids Day is an annual event for children with disabilities that features games, food and music.

According to the state Bureau of Communicable Diseases:

A norovirus can cause diarrhea, vomiting and abdominal cramping, and is the cause of 20 million illnesses in the U.S. every year. Usually symptoms start 12 to 48 hours after a person becomes infected.

The virus is found in the stool or vomit of someone infected with norovirus from the time symptoms start until at least 48 hours after symptoms end, and probably longer. ... It can be spread by eating food or drink that has been contaminated with norovirus as well as touching objects with norovirus on them and then touching your mouth.

The agency adds: People with diarrhea or who are vomiting should not handle food, work in or attend day care centers of schools, or take care of patients in a health care facility until 48 hours after their symptoms are gone.

Norovirus can cause inflammation of the stomach and intestines. Most people recover in a few days, but it can be dangerous for young children or elderly people.
Islamabad: Prime Minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif will attend the 17th Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Kazakhstan's capital Astana, the Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday.

Pakistan will become a full member of the SCO at the Astana summit starting on Thursday, the Ministry said. Islamabad had been a SCO observer since 2005.

On the sidelines of the SCO summit, Sharif will hold a number of bilateral meetings with other participating leaders, Xinhua news agency reported.

SCO, established in 2001, is a regional political, economic and security organisation that includes China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan as full members.

India and Pakistan's SCO accession procedures started in 2015. The two signed the SCO Memorandum of Obligations in June 2016, kickstarting the formal process of joining SCO as full members.
The entire state of Jammu and Kashmir is an "integral part of India" and therefore the neutrality of the term "India-administered Kashmir" is artificial, New Delhi said, after the United Nations human rights chief reiterated his request to India and Pakistan for access to the troubled region, adding that "zero tolerance" to terrorism is an international obligation.

"We have noted the high commissioner's reference to denial of access to, as he described, the 'Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir'. The entire state of Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of India. Pakistan remains in illegal occupation of a part of our territory, India said in an interactive dialogue held at the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) on Thursday.

"Therefore, the neutrality of the phrase 'Indian-administered Jammu & Kashmir' is artificial. Furthermore, the state of Jammu and Kashmir has an elected democratic government that represents all sections of the people unlike the situation in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir," ambassador and permanent representative of India to the UN offices in Geneva, Rajiv Chander, told the HRC.

Zeid Raad al-Hussein, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, in his statement that opened the three-week HRC session in Geneva on Tuesday reiterated his call to India and Pakistan to allow "unconditional access" for his office to the region. He had made the same request to the nuclear-armed neighbours in the last HRC session in March this year.

"Despite repeated high-level requests to India and Pakistan, permission for my staff to have unconditional access to both sides of the Line of Control in India-administered Jammu and Kashmir and Pakistan-administered Kashmir has still not been granted, and we continue to receive reports of increasing violence, civilian casualties, curfews and website blackout," Al-Hussein had said on Tuesday.

Furthermore, India said that the practice of "naming and shaming" countries at the HRC is unhelpful to the cause of promotion of human rights.

"We remain unconvinced by the belief in certain quarters that the true promotion and protection of human rights can be achieved through naming and shaming, particularly in the case of thriving pluralistic societies with deep-rooted democratic traditions and institutions," Chander said.

India said that it has a "robust independent media and civil society combined with an impartial judiciary" that "act as the sentinels of Indian democracy".

For the last two years, the UN human rights chief has been naming countries at the HRC who have not been cooperating or selectively cooperating with his office, including not giving access to their territories, or where there have been rights violations of concern to the UN.

"I am told repeatedly we should not be 'naming and shaming' states. But it's not the naming that shames. The shame comes from the actions themselves, the conduct or violations at issue," he said in his statement, that also mentioned a number of other countries as well including Myanmar, Burundi, Venezuela, Turkey, Egypt and China.

The shame is "self-inflicted", he argued.

India said that it has "benefitted immensely" from its recent Universal Periodic Review that resulted in 250 recommendations from 103 countries, and that the promotion of human rights is "work in progress".

"We firmly believe that a policy of zero tolerance to terrorism is as much an international obligation as it is a commitment to our own people," Chander said.
Reality Leigh Winner, a 25-year-old defence intelligence contractor, was charged with sending a classified report about Russias interference in the 2016 US Presidential Election to the news media by the Justice Department, The New York Times reported on 5 June. She worked for Pluribus International Corporation at a government facility in Georgia and held top security clearance according to The Guardian. This is the first criminal leak case under President Donald Trump.

Time reported that the Justice Department announced the case against Winner a few hours after the national security news outlet The Intercept published the document, a 5 May intelligence report from the National Security Agency (NSA). The Intercept said the report had been submitted anonymously. But shortly after its article was published, the Justice Department said that the FBI had arrested Winner.

An FBI affidavit detailed the identification of Winner as the source, reported CNN. After The Intercept obtained the document, it gave the NSA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence a copy of the document and asked for comment. An examination of this copy revealed that the pages of the report appeared to be folded or creased, "suggesting they had been printed and hand-carried out of a secured space." An internal audit was conducted which found that six people had printed the report, one of which was allegedly Winner. Out of the six, Winner was the only one whose desk computer had email contact with the news outlet.

Winner had also asked for podcast transcripts in the message, according to Business Insider. The report further said that another government contractor had informed the NSA that a reporter had messaged him pictures of the document to confirm whether it was real. The journalist had also said that the documents were mailed from Augusta, Georgia (the city where Winner was employed).

Security expert Rob Graham writing for Errata Security detailed how Winner's printing the document led to her getting caught. "Because the NSA logs all printing jobs on its printers, it can use this to match up precisely who printed the document," he wrote. According to him, the printed documents have nearly invisible yellow dots that help track where any document was printed.

The affidavit also mentioned that Winner had allegedly admitted to printing the report and mailing it to the news outlet during a conversation with an FBI special agent at her home on 3 June.

The New York Times quoted Deputy Attorney-General Rod Rosenstein as saying that Releasing classified material without authorisation threatens our nations security and undermines public faith in government. People who are trusted with classified information and pledge to protect it must be held accountable when they violate that obligation." He further added that exceptional law enforcement efforts had led to the quick identification and arrest the defendant.

Wikileaks blamed The Intercept for Winner's quick arrest as they had handed over the printed documents to the NSA.
By William James and Kylie MacLellan

| NORWICH/LONDON

NORWICH/LONDON On the eve of an election Prime Minister Theresa May returned to her core message that only she can deliver a good Brexit deal, moving on from a heated national debate over security after two deadly Islamist attacks.May unexpectedly called the snap vote seven weeks ago, seeking to increase her working parliamentary majority of 17 seats ahead of the start of negotiations on leaving the European Union.But the campaign has seen unexpected twists - the shrinking of May's poll lead over the opposition Labour Party from over 20 points to a range between one and 12 points, and attacks in Manchester and London that killed 30 people.Pollsters still expect May's Conservatives to win, although talk of a landslide majority of more than 100 seats has faded. The latest poll, by ICM for the Guardian, put her party on 46 percent and Labour on 34.The polls started narrowing after May launched a new policy on care for the elderly that proved unpopular. She backtracked days later, prompting opposition parties to pour scorn on her claim to offer "strong and stable leadership".Then came a suicide bombing at a pop concert in Manchester on May 22 that killed 22 children and adults, and a van and knife attack on London Bridge and in nearby Borough Market that killed eight people on June 3, five days before the election.The attacks threw the campaign spotlight onto security and prompted questions from May's opponents and media about her record overseeing cuts in police numbers during her years as interior minister from 2010 to 2016.But the security issue was not seen as helpful to her main rival, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who has voted against counter-terrorism legislation and expressed reservations in the past about police shoot-to-kill tactics.MAY VS CORBYN

On Wednesday, the eve of the vote, May tried to bring the campaign back to Brexit."When it comes to the election tomorrow, I think the choices and the questions that people need to ask are exactly the same today as they were right at the beginning of the campaign," she told a campaign rally in Norwich, eastern England.

"And the first is a question of who do you trust to actually have the strong and stable leadership that is going to deliver the best deal for Britain in Europe."May has sought to portray Corbyn as the weak leader of a spendthrift party which would crash Britain's $2.5 trillion economy and lead the country to ruin in chaotic Brexit negotiations.Corbyn, a veteran left-winger who unexpectedly won the Labour leadership in 2015 after three decades on the party fringe, has hit back that Conservative fiscal austerity has hurt the poor and increased social inequalities.Labour propose to build a fairer society through policies such as increasing tax for the richest 5 percent, boosting workers' rights, scrapping university tuition fees and investing 250 billion pounds in infrastructure."The choice is quite simple. Five more years of a Tory government, five more years of austerity, five more years of cuts. Or something different," Corbyn told supporters in Colwyn Bay, north Wales, to cheers and applause.For May, the challenge is not only to win but to surpass handsomely the 12-seat majority her Conservative predecessor David Cameron won in 2015.

A narrow victory would undermine her authority both inside her party and at talks with the 27 other EU leaders.Up to five more opinion polls are expected before voting begins at 0600 GMT on Thursday.Britons have until 2100 GMT to vote, and there will be an exit poll as soon as voting ends. The first handful of seat results are expected to be announced by 2300 GMT, with the vast majority of the 650 consituencies due to announce results between 0200 GMT and 0500 GMT on Friday morning.JITTERS

London police were still dealing with the fallout from Saturday night's attack, when three jihadis drove a van into pedestrians on London Bridge before running into narrow streets bustling with nightlife, stabbing and slashing people indiscriminately.

They said they had made 25 arrests for hate crimes since the London Bridge attacks and had stepped up their presence in communities to provide reassurance.With the capital still jittery, police carried out a controlled explosion near the site where a new U.S. embassy is being built in southwest London because of two suspicious vehicles, but later said it had been a false alarm.Police confirmed on Wednesday the Saturday death toll had risen to eight after they found a body in the River Thames. They also made another arrest in east London in connection with the attack.The dead include people from France, Australia, Canada, Spain and Britain. The attack left 48 injured, of whom 29 were still in hospital on Wednesday. Health authorities said 10 were in a critical condition.Security has been increased nationwide and the violence has dominated the final weeks of campaigning.May responded to the attack with a pledge to crack down on Islamist extremism and strengthen police powers."If human rights laws get in the way of doing these things, we will change those laws to make sure we can do them," she said in an interview with the Sun.The head of campaign group Amnesty International said the pledge was outrageous and a gift to autocratic leaders around the world.Two of the three London Bridge attackers, who were all shot dead at the scene by police, had been known to authorities beforehand. Italy said it had flagged Youssef Zaghba as a potential risk after he moved to England last year, while Khuram Butt was known to British security services. (Additional reporting by Kate Holton, William Schomberg and Michael Holden in London, Tom Miles in Geneva, Sarah White in Madrid; Writing by Estelle Shirbon and Alistair Smout; Editing by Andrew Roche)

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Washington: US president Donald Trump spoke to Saudi Arabia's King Salman and called for a united Gulf Cooperation Council to fight terrorism and promote stability in the region, amid deepening diplomatic crisis in Qatar.

Both the leaders discussed ways to prevent terror financing and eliminate extremism by any country in the region, the White House said on Tuesday.

During the phone call, Trump underscored that a United Gulf Cooperation Council is critical to defeating terrorism and promoting regional stability, the White House said.

The White House statement came a day after Saudi Arabia and three other Arab countries  Egypt, Bahrain and the UAE  cut off diplomatic ties with Qatar.

In a tweet, early morning Trump apparently supported the actions of four Arab countries to cut off diplomatic relationship with Qatar.

The US continues to be in close communication with all the parties to resolve the issues and restore cooperation which is so important to regional security there, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters.

"I think there is note that his message of toughness on terror finance and extremism is being heeded by countries in the region. But the US still wants to see this issue de-escalated and resolved immediately, keeping with the principles that the president laid out in terms of defeating terror financing and extremism," he said.

Spicer said Trump had a very constructive conversation with the Emir of Qatar during his visit to Riyadh.

"At that time, he was very heartened by the Emir's commitment to formally join the terrorist financing targeting centre and showing their commitment to this issue," he said.

At a separate briefing, state department spokesperson Heather Nauert said the US recognises that Qatar has made some great efforts to try to stop the financing of terror groups, including prosecuting suspected financiers, freezing assets, and introducing stringent controls on its banking system.

"However, let me make this clear: They have made progress, but they still have work to do. More work needs to be done," she said.

"I think our relationship with Qatar is one that's strong. It's one that we continue to cooperate with Qatar and other countries in the region in the fight against terrorism. Secretary of State Rex W Tillerson talked about this on Wednesday," she added.

"He said every country in the region has their own obligations and they need to live up to terminate their support for terrorism and extremism however it manifests itself anywhere in the world, she said.

Nauert praised Qatar for its role in the fight against terrorism.

"The US and its coalition, we're grateful to the Qataris for their longstanding support of our presence there in that nation. They have helped to provide us with an enduring commitment to regional security. The Department of Defense has talked about this," she said.

"We have no plans to change our posture in Qatar and we would encourage all of our partners to try to work together to reduce tensions. That's something that the Secretary spoke to as well," Nauert said in response to a question.
Amman: Jordan on Tuesday has decided to lower its diplomatic representation in Qatar, the state-run Petra news agency reported.

Jordan has also decided to revoke the license of Al Jazeera channel in the country, Minister of State for Media Affairs and the Government Spokesman Mohammad Momani said on Tuesday.

The decision, which is part of Jordan's strategy to preserve stability in the region, was taken after looking into the reasons of the crises between several Arab states and Qatar, according to Momani. Jordan hopes for overcoming this unfortunate stage, he said.

Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Egypt on Monday had announced that they have cut their diplomatic relations with Doha after a week of tit-for-tat and accusations on "terrorism support".

The announcement by the Saudi-led coalition to severe diplomatic ties with Qatar marks the culmination of a year-long dispute between some Gulf Arab states and Qatar.
Panaji: Rajya Sabha member of parliament Shantaram Naik has asked Union External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj to protect the interests of Indians in Qatar.

"Around 6,50,000 Indians, including 10,000 Goans are living and doing business in Qatar, who according to a report, outnumber native Qataris by almost 2:1 ratio, their interest should be protected," Naik said in an email to Swaraj this week.

Naik said the whole nation is concerned on account of recent Gulf crisis due to Saudiled grouping of Bahrain, Egypt and the UAE, Yemen and surprisingly, Maldives, cutting off diplomatic as well as, civil aviation and shipping ties with Qatar.

Naik further said that a local newspaper published from Goa has reported that "with the uncertain situation in Qatar, a large number of Goans and other Indians began rushing to supermarkets and stores in Doha to stock up on essential of the food supply."

Naik said "India takes over 90 percent of its natural gas import from Qatar. In addition, Qatar is in process of building a domestic airline in India."

"That itself puts India in a unique place. Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, is among the top suppliers of oil to India," Naik said quoting a media report.

In view of a serious situation developing in Qatar, India has to use diplomatic channels in the interest of Indian population there, the MP said.

"The Government of India should not take things for granted, and that, Prime Minister's visits do not necessarily help in such matters," he said.
Moscow: Russian officials on Wednesday denied allegations that Russian hackers breached Qatar's state news agency and planted a fake news story that led to a split between Qatar and the other Arab nations.

Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Egypt and Yemen cut diplomatic ties with the tiny Gulf state, accusing Qatar of harbouring extremists and backing Saudi Arabia's regional rival, Iran. Qatar has denied the allegations.

The Russian president's special envoy for cyber security told the Interfax news agency on Wednesday that Tuesday's CNN report contains "zero evidence" that the Russian government was behind the news story.

Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for President Vladimir Putin, on Wednesday dismissed the report as "yet another lie."

Separately, Vladimir Dzhabarov, deputy chairman of the foreign affairs committee at the upper chamber of parliament, on Wednesday dismissed the accusations as "an attempt to push the US against Russia as key players in the Middle East."

Dzhabarov said the report shows that "the world has gone crazy  whatever happens, there is a Russian trace there, the trace of Russian hackers."

Vladimir Putin on Tuesday spoke by telephone with the ruler of Qatar, urging dialogue to heal split between the Gulf state and other Arab countries.
Washington: US intelligence officials believe Russian hackers planted a false news story that led Saudi Arabia and several allies to sever relations with Qatar, prompting a diplomatic crisis, a media report said.

FBI experts visited Qatar in late May to analyse an alleged cyber breach that saw the hackers place the fake story with Qatar's state news agency, the CNN reported.

Saudi Arabia then cited the false item as part of its reason for instituting a diplomatic and economic blockade against Qatar, the report said.

Qatar's government said the 23 May news report attributed false remarks to the emirate's ruler that appeared friendly to Iran and Israel, and questioned whether US president Donald Trump would last in office, according to CNN Qatari foreign minister Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman al-Thani told the broadcaster that the FBI has confirmed the hack and the planting of fake news.

"Whatever has been thrown as an accusation is all based on misinformation and we think that the entire crisis is being based on misinformation," he told CNN.

"It was started based on fabricated news, being wedged and being inserted in our national news agency, which was hacked and proved by the FBI," he added.

If accurate, the allegations would indicate Russian efforts to undermine US foreign policy, building on US intelligence concerns that Russian hackers attempted to influence last year's presidential election, won by Trump. The Kremlin denies meddling.

Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain announced Monday they were severing diplomatic relations and closing air, sea and land links with Qatar.

They accused the tiny Gulf state of harbouring extremist groups and suggested Qatari support for the agenda of Saudi Arabia's regional archrival Iran. Qatar has strenuously denied the allegations.

Although Qatar hosts the largest American military airbase in the Middle East, Trump threw his weight behind the Saudi-led effort to isolate the emirate in a surprise move yesterday.

He suggested Qatar was funding extremism.

"So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off," he tweeted in reference to his trip to Riyadh last month.

"They said they would take a hard line on funding... extremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism!"

The CNN report quoted the Qatari government communications office as saying it was working with the FBI and Britain's National Crime Agency on an ongoing hacking investigation.
Ankara: President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday that he has disapproved the sanctions imposed on Qatar following the diplomatic stand-off between several Arab countries and Qatar.

"I want to clearly say that we disapprove the sanctions on Qatar", Erdogan was quoted by the state-run Anadolu Agency.

"These developments, coming at a time when we need solidarity and cooperation more than ever, are no good for any country in the region", he noted in a fasting breaking iftar dinner organised by the ruling Justice and Development Party in the capital Ankara.

On the same day, the Turkish president continued his efforts in order to ease tensions after decisions by Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Egypt, Yemen, Libya and Maldives to cut diplomatic ties with Qatar over claims of the latter's "terrorism support".

According to presidential sources, Erdogan has held phone calls with several leaders including Russian president Vladimir Putin, French president Emmanuel Macron, Jordan's king Abdullah II and Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri.

The Prime Minister of Turkey Binali Yildirim said on Monday that Ankara hopes that the countries will create a solution through dialogue and calm. "The Turkish government is continuing its work at every level", he added.
Gregg Irwin will return to court Friday to decide whether he will take a plea deal, after one potential line of defense against a charge of homicide by the intoxicated use of a vehicle was shut down Wednesday.

Irwin, 49, of Boyd is charged in a Sept. 28, 2015, crash that killed 20-year-old Erica M. Strandt. He also faces charges of homicide by negligent operation and second-degree reckless homicide.

Judge Steven Cray on Wednesday agreed with Assistant District Attorney Roy LaBarton Gay that Strandts driving would not be allowed during a trial, which is scheduled to start Monday, June 19.

Defense attorney Harry Hertel argued that Irwin could present what he termed an affirmative defense.

He drives that section of road two to four times a day, Hertel said of the crash site, Highway 29 and 300th Street in the town of Edson. He drove exactly the same as he does normally. Hertel said that includes accelerating when he leaves from a stop sign.

(Strandt) was driving at 81 mph until one second before the crash, Hertel said. This accident wouldnt have happened without that intervening circumstance.

Gay replied that Irwin had a blood alcohol content of 0.156 percent, which is nearly double Wisconsins standard of 0.08 for first time intoxicated driving.

He wasnt sober. He was under the influence. He was impaired that night, Gay said. He added Irwin stopped at a stop sign, and then proceeded onto Highway 29 even though there was a vehicle approaching.

Due to his impairment, Irwin misjudged the speed of the oncoming vehicles.

Its improbable to say he was driving exactly the same, Gay concluded.

Crays voice rose occasionally as he ruled against Hertel.

This trial is about the driving of Mr. Irwin. This trial is not about the driving of the decedent, Cray said.

Citing prior court decisions, he said there will be no discussion or argument during the trial about contributing negligence on Strandts part. There will be no comment on her speeding, he said.

Such evidence, if submitted to the jury, would be prejudiced and would not be relevant, Cray said.

He added: If my order here is violated, (the trial) will probably wind up in a mistrial.

Hertel then asked for another court session so he could talk with Irwin about taking a plea deal.

It looks like the defense is weighing its options, and I certainly want that to happen before the trial, Cray said, before setting the next court session for Friday.

According to the criminal complaint:

Irwin was driving a 2009 Dodge truck and Strandt was driving a 2000 Saturn DL when the vehicles crashed at 8:20 p.m. Irwin said he was northbound on 300th Street when he stopped at a stop sign and crossed Highway 29. He said it was then that he was hit by another vehicle.

Strandt suffered multiple traumatic injuries to her head and torso.

Jennifer Grau, Strandts mother, is also the mother of 17-year-old Jason Grau, who was murdered in February 2010 in Chippewa County. In 2011, Shane Hawkins was sentenced to life in prison for Jason Graus death.
Moscow: Russia scrambled a fighter jet on Tuesday to intercept a nuclear-capable US B-52 strategic bomber it said was flying over the Baltic Sea near its border, in an incident that had echoes of the Cold War.

The appearance of the B-52, a long-range bomber that first went into service in the 1950s, irked Moscow. A Russian foreign ministry official said the plane's appearance in Europe would not help ease tensions between the West and Russia.

A former Russian air force commander called the move "disrespectful." Russian air defence systems detected the US bomber at around 1000 Moscow time as it was flying over neutral waters parallel to the Russian border and sent a Sukhoi Su-27 jet to intercept it, the Russian Defence Ministry said in a statement. "The Russian SU-27 crew, having approached at a safe distance, identified the aircraft as an American B-52 strategic bomber and escorted it" until such time as it changed course and flew away from the border area, the ministry said.

Russia said the SU-27 took off from its Baltic Fleet air defence unit, which is based in the European exclave of Kaliningrad. NATO members such as Britain regularly report scrambling jets to intercept Russian nuclear-capable bombers flying close to their airspace. It is less common for Russia to report using its fighters for the same reason.

In a separate incident, Russia said on a MiG-31 jet fighter had intercepted a Norwegian patrol plane over the Barents Sea. Russia's defence ministry identified the plane as a P-3 Orion anti-submarine aircraft.

The Russian defence ministry complained that the Norwegian plane had flown close to Russia's state border with its transponders switched off. The Norwegian military confirmed the encounter, but said it was "normal".Moscow was more put out by the B-52's appearance.

The state-backed Sputnik news agency cited a foreign ministry official, Mikhail Ulyanov, as saying Moscow believed a number of US B-52s had recently been transferred from their base in Louisiana to Britain to take part in military exercises."The fact that NATO forces are converging near Russia's borders and carrying out military exercises supported by strategic bombers from the USA capable of carrying nuclear weapons hardly helps de-escalate tensions in Europe," Sputnik quoted Ulyanov as saying.US forces are engaged in various exercises with Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and other partner nations as part of the Saber Strike war games.

The United States is also taking part in the annual BALTOPS naval training exercise in the Baltic Sea which runs until 16 June.

Pyotr Deinekin, a former Russian air force commander, was cited by the Interfax news agency as saying that he could not recall the last time a B-52 had flown over the Baltic Sea and that the incident raised troubling questions."Such behaviour does not deserve respect," said Deinekin, who said Russia needed to establish what weaponry the B-52 was carrying.

The B-52 was designed to attack Moscow's most vital targets via the North Pole in the event of a nuclear war when the Soviet Union still existed, Deinekin said. "Strategic bombers should not fly so close to our land borders," he said.
Washington: Homeland Security secretary John Kelly indicated on Tuesday that President Donald Trump's son-in-law and top adviser Jared Kushner and his communications with Russia are part of a wide-ranging probe by the Justice Department's special counsel.

Kelly defended Kushner at a Senate hearing amid reports that he attempted to establish a "back-channel" communication between Russia and Trump's presidential transition team. Under Democratic questioning, Kelly said "we have to make the assumption  and I will  that Jared Kushner is a great American."

Kelly said back-channel talks have been common in US diplomacy, but indicated that the matter is under investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller as part of his probe into contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia. Montana senator Jon Tester, a Democrat, said he believes the conduct of the president's son-in-law is "unacceptable" and raises red flags. Noting that "there's all sorts of stuff going on here," Tester asked Kelly "to find out what the hell is going on."

As Tester persisted, Kelly repeated, "again, I think we have to make the assumption...."

Tester cut him off, asking: "But don't you think we should ensure that that assumption is correct?" "Well sure," Kelly said. "And I think there are numerous investigations that are looking into this. I think it's part of the Bob Mueller investigation, and I think there's a number of congressional committees looking into it."

The exact scope of Mueller's investigation has so far been unclear, but he has broad authority.
The Kremlin said on Wednesday that no preparations were underway yet for a meeting between Russian president Vladimir Putin and United States president Donald Trump.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov made the statement in a conference call with reporters.

The Izvestia newspaper cited Peskov earlier on Wednesday as saying there was still no firm date set for the meeting, which may take place at the time of a G20 meeting in Germany in July.

Peskov told reporters on the same conference call that Moscow considered a decision by European Union ambassadors to extend sanctions which place a raft of restrictions on annexed Crimea illegal, saying it would hurt European producers.

On Sunday, Putin had strongly denied he had any compromising material about Trump in a sometimes combative televised interview broadcast.

"Well, this is just another load of nonsense," Putin said on NBC News. "Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly," when asked whether he had any damaging information on the Republican president.

The remarks were the latest in a series of denials from Moscow that have had little impact so far on a political crisis in the United States over potential links between Russia and Trump's inner circle.
Washington: Top US intelligence officials will be grilled by lawmakers Wednesday about Russia's election interference and possible coordination with Donald Trump's campaign, ahead of a highly-anticipated appearance by sacked FBI director James Comey.

The former Federal Bureau of Investigation chief is expected to dispute Trump's claim that Comey told him multiple times that he was not under investigation, CNN reported, citing sources familiar with Comey's thinking.

That potential bombshell testimony  in which Comey also may address whether Trump urged him to halt or ease up on an investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn and his ties to Russia  comes Thursday before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

But on Wednesday the spotlight will be on three intelligence chiefs  Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, National Security Agency head Mike Rogers and interim FBI Director Andrew McCabe.

Members of the intelligence panel no doubt will question Coats, a former senator, about a Tuesday night The Washington Post report.

Citing US officials, it said Coats had told associates that Trump asked him whether he could intervene with Comey to get the FBI to ease its probe of Flynn.

Coats reportedly discussed that March conversation with other officials and decided that interceding with Comey, as Trump had suggested, would be inappropriate.

Rogers is also known to have had discussions with Trump about the Russia investigations, and top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer said he looked forward to public, unclassified testimony Wednesday from Coats and Rogers.

"Classification shouldn't be used as an excuse not to make things public that the public needs to hear," Schumer told reporters Tuesday.

"And the conversations that the president had with each of them about investigations are not classified in any way."

Adding to the drama, a top secret NSA report leaked to online news outlet The Intercept shows that hackers from Russian military intelligence repeatedly tried to break into US voting systems before last year's presidential election.

Keen to crack down on leaks, the Trump administration quickly announced the arrest of a 25-year-old intelligence contractor on charges she violated the espionage act.

'I wish him luck'

The interactions between Trump and his now-dismissed FBI chief will likely dominate Comey's Senate appearance Thursday.

Observers will be closely watching to see whether the president, whose social media habits have been criticized even by his political allies, decides to respond via Twitter as Comey testifies.

No definitive evidence of collusion between Trump's campaign and Russia has come to light.

But the allegations have drawn comparison to the 1970s Watergate scandal that brought down president Richard Nixon.

Trump, a ratings-obsessed former reality television star, may not appreciate the worldwide attention paid to Comey's public testimony, which is being touted as the height of political drama.

Trump weighed in Tuesday, even as the revelations could spell more bad news for his troubled administration.

"I wish him luck," Trump said of Comey during a White House meeting with Republican congressional leaders.

With Capitol Hill abuzz, at least three Washington bars were set to open their doors before the Thursday hearing's 10 am (1400 GMT) start.

"Don't you like the suspense?" Senate Republican Marco Rubio, who is on the intelligence panel, asked a scrum of reporters.

Comey's testimony will be his first public remarks since Trump abruptly fired him on 9 May.

Comey is said to have written detailed notes about conversations he had with Trump, which reportedly document the president's efforts to scuttle the FBI's Flynn probe.

A direct request from Trump during a February 14 meeting left Comey so unnerved, the The New York Times reported Tuesday, citing current and former officials, that on the following day he told Attorney General Jeff Sessions that he did not want to be left alone again with the president.

Any confirmation that Trump tried to press Comey would open the president to damaging allegations that he attempted to obstruct an ongoing FBI investigation -- which several Democrats have warned would propel the crisis into Watergate-like territory.
By Nidal al-Mughrabi

| GAZA

GAZA Moves by Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other Arab states to isolate Qatar may have serious repercussions for Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement that rules Gaza and has long relied on the Gulf emirate for financial and political support.A powerful Arab group including the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain severed diplomatic ties and imposed a blockade on Qatar on Monday over the natural gas producer's alleged support for Islamist groups and Iran.Hamas officials are tight-lipped about the pressure being put on Qatar, not wishing to draw attention to their own dilemma posed by the worst crisis among Gulf Arab for two decades. But Gaza-based analysts concede the situation is precarious.One potential fallout is a sharp cut in Qatari funding for Hamas, especially if the emirate wants to show the Saudis and others that it takes seriously the charge that it finances militant groups tied to the Muslim Brotherhood, such as Hamas.If financial aid is cut - Qatar has paid out or pledged $1.5 billion since 2012 to help build roads, houses, schools and clinics in impoverished Gaza - it will hurt Gaza's two million people - and could have ramifications for Israel as well. In the past, when Hamas has felt backed into a corner, it has led to conflict. Since 2007, when it seized control of Gaza from the rival Palestinian movement Fatah, Hamas's militant armed wing has fought three wars with Israel, all producing a heavy death toll and severe destruction in Gaza."It will be difficult for Qatar to resume its financial support for Gaza now because of the assault against it," said Adnan Abu Amer, an independent political analyst in Gaza. "The political support to the entire Palestinian cause is going to be affected, not only by Qatar, but in the Gulf in general, and that may leave the Palestinians alone in the face of Israel."Equally, he said, Hamas is unlikely openly to kick up a fuss so as not to compound the pressure Qatar is under.

"Hamas feels it owes Qatar gratitude because of its political and financial support all these years," he said.In a sign that Hamas has been under pressure from Qatar to moderate its positions, the group unveiled a new policy document at an event in Doha last month, distancing itself from the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas was formed in the 1980s as an offshoot of the pan-Arab Brotherhood but has more recently stressed its basis as a Palestinian liberation movement, in part to defuse Egyptian enmity and draw support from wealthy Arab states.Hamas officials would not directly address the threats they face, but were critical of Saudi Arabia for leading the squeeze on Qatar, and in particular about comments by Riyadh's foreign minister calling on Qatar to sever relations with Hamas.

"We in Hamas urge the brothers in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia to stop these statements that hurt the kingdom and hurt its positions towards the cause of our people and their legitimate rights," Hamas said in a statement.Those statements, it added, could spur Israel to "conduct more violations and crimes against our people, our land and our sacred sites and against the blessed Al-Aqsa mosque" in Jerusalem, Islam's third holiest site.EGYPT OPENING?

As well as financial support, Qatar has long hosted exiled Hamas officials, including its former political chief, Khaled Meshaal. Meshaal was recently succeeded by Ismail Haniyeh, who remains in Gaza but is expected to move to Qatar's capital Doha.

Reports in Arab media said Qatar planned to expel several Hamas officials, including Saleh al-Aruri, who is believed to be the leader of Hamas in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and who was previously kicked out of Turkey. But Hamas in Gaza denied any such expulsions had taken place. Meshaal remains in Qatar.In a sign that Hamas is rapidly reassessing what the regional shifts mean, its new leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, is currently in Egypt for meetings. Egypt wants Hamas to cut ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, which Cairo considers a terrorist group, and adopt a more pragmatic regional stance. It is not clear what message Sinwar has taken to Cairo, but analysts believe the aim is to try to keep Egypt on side and show Hamas can be a partner. The question is whether it can work, and whether Hamas can afford to cold-shoulder Qatar."Things are foggy for Hamas now," said Ashraf Abouelhoul, a writer and analyst for Egypt's Al-Ahram newspaper. "The fate of Hamas's leadership in Qatar is also in question. Will they leave Qatar? Where can they go? The Saudi position is very clear: Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood must leave Qatar." Abouelhoul said he believed Hamas needed to distance itself from Qatar, and withdraw its officials from Doha, if it wanted to retain the support of other Gulf states."If Hamas hesitates or acts too late or chooses the Iranian-Qatari camp it will face difficulties on all fronts," he said. "Hamas maybe the biggest loser of what is happening with Qatar." (Additional reporting by Tom Finn in Doha; writing by Luke Baker; editing by Mark Heinrich)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit, 2017, will be held from 8-9 June in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan. The group, which was founded in 2001 in Shanghai comprises China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan as full members. Afghanistan, Belarus, India, Iran, Mongolia and Pakistan have an observer status.

This summit is particularly important for India and Pakistan because they will be formally admitted into the group. Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying hopes that the admission of New Delhi and Islamabad as full members would help improve their bilateral relations.

The SCO was founded with the aim to strengthen relations among member states and promote cooperation in political affairs, economics and trade. China hopes that India and Pakistan will also mend their ties and uphold the spirit of the SCO after becoming members.

However, Chinese experts have said that Beijing won't back any attempts to internationalise the two countries' bilateral disputes. "SCO members will support them and offer help if the two countries need it, rather than internationalise their dispute within the organisation," said Li Wei, an anti-terrorism expert at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations

In the 2015 summit in Ufa in Russia, the group had formally adopted a resolution which started the procedure to admit India and Pakistan into the SCO. Both the countries signed Memorandum of Obligations to join the organisation last year.

With the inclusion of the two countries, SCO will become a regional organisation with the largest coverage involving the biggest population, Hua added.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is also expected to meet Chinese president Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the summit in a bid to stabilise ties. This will be the first time the leaders are meeting since New Delhi abstained from Beijings One Belt One Road (OBOR) forum. The meeting is expected to take place on Friday.

The SCO members are also expected to back China's OBOR initiative "All SCO members are participating in the Belt and Road initiative, and this organisation is the initiative's security guarantee," India Today quoted Wang Yiwei, a scholar at Renmin University, as saying.

China also supports Iran's membership to the SCO security bloc and the subject is expected to be discussed at the summit on Thursday. The SCO refused to initiate Iran's accession last year despite a request from Russia which backs Tehran's bid.

"China highly appraises this. China welcomes and supports Iran's wish to become a formal member of the SCO, said Assistant Chinese Foreign Minister Li Huilai.

Responding to speculations of a meeting between Modi and his Pakistan counterpart Nawaz Sharif, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said, "talks and terror cannot go together". She ruled out the possibility of any meeting between the leaders when they attend the SCO summit.

Sharif, however, is expected to meet other participating leaders, including Russian president Vladimir Putin.

With inputs from agencies
Iranian State media reported on Wednesday that a shootout has taken place within the national Parliament building, and that it is likely hostages have been taken.

The State-run Tasnim news agency said exchange of fire was still underway.

#BREAKING: Reports said some people held hostage in #Iran 's parliament; fire exchanges going on  Tasnim News Agency (@Tasnimnews_EN) June 7, 2017

Two separate semi-official news agencies, Fars and Mehr, also confirmed that a shootout was taking place at the Parliament. "A person entered Iranian Parliament and started shooting at the guards. He shot one of the guards in the leg and ran away," the agencies reported. Reports also said that three people, including two civilians, had been injured. There were mixed reports, with some local news agencies reporting there was a single shooter inside the parliamentary complex, and others saying there were three men armed with rifles and a pistol. The agency further added that the attacker may have been arrested, but didn't confirm the news.

#BreakingNews: Conflicting reports suggest #Iran parliament's attacker arrested; However, some reports have not confirmed his arrest yet  Tasnim News Agency (@Tasnimnews_EN) June 7, 2017

There were also reports trickling in about a subsequent attack inside the tomb of Ayatollah Khomeini.

#BREAKING Armed man inside tomb of Iran's Khomeini, injuries reported: state media  AFP news agency (@AFP) June 7, 2017

With inputs from AFP
Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards on Wednesday vowed revenge for twin attacks by the Islamic State group in Tehran, and said Washington and Riyadh were "involved".

"The Revolutionary Guards have always proven that they will never allow the blood of innocents to be spilled without revenge," they said in a statement.

"This terrorist action, coming one week after the meeting of the president of the United States with the leader of the one of the region's reactionary governments (Saudi Arabia)... shows they are involved in this savage action."

Separately, the deputy chief of the Guards' Intelligence Service, Mohammad Hossein Nejat, told the Fars news agency that the men who attacked the parliament building in Tehran were aged between 20 and 25.

"(They) went to the parliament as visitors. The guards became suspicious of their bags and when they wanted to search them, shooting began and they killed the security guard," he said.

"The US and Saudi regime had ordered their stooges to do this."

He said the men spoke Arabic in the video released by IS from inside the building, but that their nationality was not yet known.

Twelve people were killed and more than 40 injured in the attacks on Tehran's parliament complex and the shrine of revolutionary founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Former FBI. director James Comey plans to testify on Thursday that US President Donald Trump pressurised him on multiple occasions using mild threats about his (Comeys) job and on other occasions demanding obedience, saying I need loyalty. I want loyalty. Trump wanted Comey to make a public announcement that he was not under investigation in connection with the Justice Department inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

James Comey's opening remarks set the stage for an explosive showdown Thursday morning at 10 a.m.

These are the key takeaways:

- Comey confirms that Trump requested his loyalty.

- Comey told Trump in January and March there was no active counter-intelligence case against him.

- Comey says Trump asked him to drop the FBI probe into Michael Flynn (and Comey clarifies in opening remarks that Flynn probe is not - Russia probe and neither did Trump say so)

- Trump asked Comey to "lift the cloud" over him and the Russia investigation.

- Trump asked Comey what he was doing to clear him and to make a public announcement that there's no probe against Trump.

Comey reveals sensational details of six conversations in the statement released on the Senate Intelligence Committees website a full day ahead of the biggest story in Washington since election night.

I need loyalty. I want loyalty, are the words James Comey will testify Trump told him at a dinner in January before Trumps inauguration.

I didnt move, speak, or change my facial expression in any way during the awkward silence that followed. We simply looked at each other in silence. The conversation then moved on, but he returned to the subject near the end of our dinner, the statement reads.

Analyst shops are doing brisk business with the unexpected gold dig: Is this obstruction of justice or not?

"Comey's statement establishes obstruction of justice by Trump. Period.", says Jeffrey Toobin, senior legal analyst for CNN.

Obamas White House ethics lawyer Norm Eisen says Comeys account of his past meetings with President Trump takes Ameirca into Watergate territory.

I think that this now with the additional detail in the Comey memo, this moves us into the same realm as Nixons obstruction, maybe worse. This is the equivalent of the Nixon tapes.

Comey also explains the genesis of his now famous memos. He says he "felt compelled" to document his very first conversation with Trump in a memo, and began typing it out on a laptop in an FBI vehicle outside Trump Tower the moment he left the meeting. "Creating written records immediately after one-on-one conversations with Mr. Trump was my practice from that point forward."

Comey says he recalls nine one-on-one conversations with Trump in four months  three in person and six on the phone.

In comparison, Comey had just two private conversations with President Obama in the three years before Trump.

In the statement, Comey states upfront that every single detail is not here but the relevant information is included.

From the first to the last paragraph, the statement skewers Trump. Sample how it begins:

I first met then-President-Elect Trump on Friday, January 6 in a conference room at Trump gTower in New York. I was there with other Intelligence Community (IC) leaders to brief him and his new national security team on the findings of an IC assessment concerning Russian efforts to interfere in the election. At the conclusion of that briefing, I remained alone with the President- Elect to brief him on some personally sensitive aspects of the information assembled during the assessment.

Straightaway, Comey corners the US President on two counts:

That, yes, Russia interfered, according to US Intelligence officers.

That there was a "personal" angle as well, although unverified.

Throughout the 3000 word letter, Comey relates instances where Trump is attempting to get him to dilute the bureau's investigation into Russia's alleged interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

So, now that Comeys testimony scheduled for Thursday, June 8 is out, whats still to come?

The Senate testimony thats out contains prepared remarks which are the customary opening of any Senate hearing. There will be 19 senators grilling Comey on the contents of this statement already out and getting even more sensational soundbites out of Comey on a Thursday that has taken on Monica Lewinsky-esque excitement.
London: British Prime Minister Theresa May announced get-tough proposals on Tuesday on tackling terrorism, saying she would change human rights laws if she needed to.

May outlined her proposals at an election rally in Slough on what was the penultimate day of canvassing in the British general election campaign.

With Britain still reeling from two attacks in London and one in Manchester, May seemed determined to show voters she will respond to the terror threat if she wins the election Thursday, Xinhua reported.

May said she would look at making it easier for Britain to deport foreign terror suspects.

But controversially, she also outlined increased controls on extremists who the security services think may present a threat to public safety, but where there is not enough evidence to prosecute them.

Following the London Bridge attack on Saturday, May said she aimed to get tough on terror with her "enough is enough" speech.

In Slough on Tuesday, she said her plans would mean longer prison sentences for people convicted of terrorist offences, and making it easier for the authorities to deport foreign terror suspects to their own countries.

"And I mean doing more to restrict the freedom and the movements of terrorist suspects when we have enough evidence to know they present a threat, but not enough evidence to prosecute them in full in court. And if human rights laws stop us from doing it, we will change those laws so we can do it," May added.

The Guardian newspaper commented that May's proposed measures appear to be an attempt at strengthening terrorism prevention and investigation measures rather than a complete return to control orders introduced by the last Labour government which were repeatedly struck down by judges in the British courts.

The publication said May's measures could involve further curfews, restrictions on association with other known extremists, controls on where they can travel and limits on access to communication devices.

Political commentators also said Tuesday that although May's Conservative Party says it will not to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), the party, if re-elected, could begin to try to replace or amend parts of the ECHR after Britain leaves the European Union.

May's proposals, The Guardian said, follow criticism from Labour and other parties about her cuts to policing and approach to tackling terrorism in the Home Office, which she led for six years before becoming prime minister last year.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has accused May of cutting police numbers by 20,000 officers, while London's Labour mayor Sadiq Khan warned the Metropolitan Police has made as many cuts as it can, adding he's worried about the impact of further planned savings in the capital's police budget by the government.

Speaking in London, Khan said the Met had lost 600 million pounds ($775 million) over the last seven years through Conservative government cuts, with a further 400 million pounds ($517 million) in planned cuts to the Met budget. Khan claimed proposed changes to the police funding formula would take the total cuts to 1.7 billion bounds ($2.2 billion).

"All there is left to cut is the bone," said Khan.

Corbyn, addressing a packed rally in Birmingham, defended Labour's election manifesto saying, "It's not a wish-list, it's a programme and we are going to carry it out. I'm determined that every youngster should get a chance to go to university so we will end student fees."
SAT-7 PARS Doubles its Potential Audience as it Launches on New Satellite Contact: Ty Mays,

770-256-8710



EASTON, Md., June 6, 2017 /Christian Newswire/ -- Persian Christian TV-channel SAT-7 PARS is now live on Yahsat, which is one of the most viewed satellite platforms in Iran. Yahsat has attracted an estimated 10 million viewing households in the country.



Photo: Persian Christian TV-channel SAT-7 PARS is now live on Yahsat, which is one of the most viewed satellite platforms in Iran. Yahsat has attracted an estimated 10 million viewing households in the country.



"This has been our dream for several years, as Yahsat is an increasingly popular satellite with Iranians and will enable us to interact with a whole new audience in Iran and other parts of Central Asia," says SAT-7 PARS Senior Manager Panayiotis Keenan.



Increasing SAT-7 PARS' audience

Yahsat has attracted an estimated 10 million TV households in Iran out of the 20 million homes with access to satellite TV, and has rapidly become one of the most prevalent satellites for Farsi speakers.



Yahsat provides a focused, high-power beam specifically on Iran and Afghanistan  one that requires a much smaller, cheaper and less-conspicuous dish than would typically be required for other satellites. Furthermore, because of the quality and variety of Farsi-speaking channels that Yahsat offers, they have established themselves as the increasingly popular choice for families to point their dish at.



The only Christian channel

"By broadcasting on Yahsat, we have a whole new viewership; industry data indicates that it probably doubles the number of potential viewers for SAT-7 PARS in Iran," explained SAT-7 Founder and CEO, Dr. Terence Ascott.



"In addition, there are no other Christian channels on this satellite, and so this is actually quite a unique and special opportunity for us."



Moving to Yahsat will also allow the channel to provide a better-quality picture, and even upgrade to High Definition (HD) in the future. The addition of Yahsat also doubles the number of hours of Farsi SAT-7 PARS can broadcast each day, opening the window for broadcasting many new types of programs.



"At the moment, we are mirroring the same schedule that we have on our channel on the Hotbird satellite, but our eventual plan is to have a different schedule for Yahsat," shares Keenan. The different schedules will allow more choice for the viewers that have the capability to watch SAT-7 PARS on both the Yahsat and Hotbird satellites.



SAT-7 ethos and character

SAT-7 PARS has been broadcasting for 10 years on the Hotbird satellite to a wide audience in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, the rest of the Middle East and also Europe - as well as online to Farsi-speakers living around the world.



SAT-7's positive, politically and culturally sensitive Christian programming has won the trust of many in the region, and this is believed to be the main reason that it could now broadcast on Yahsat. SAT-7 PARS will also contribute to the expanding range of choices for the viewers of Yahsat.



Launched in 1996, with its international headquarters in Cyprus, SAT-7 broadcasts Christian satellite television to an audience of at least 21 million people in the Middle East and North Africa. SAT-7 broadcasts in Arabic, Farsi and Turkish languages on four channels.

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By Julia Edwards Ainsley and Steve Holland

| WASHINGTON

WASHINGTON President Donald Trump on Wednesday selected former U.S. Justice Department official Christopher Wray as FBI director to replace the fired James Comey, who will testify on Thursday on whether Trump pressed him to end a probe into a former national security adviser's contacts with Russia.Wray, who represented New Jersey Governor Chris Christie in the so-called Bridgegate scandal and was assistant attorney general in the Justice Department dealing with corporate fraud and financial markets cases, will need Senate confirmation to take the top job at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.Trump's early-morning Twitter announcement came a day before Comey was set to appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee for eagerly anticipated testimony. Some Democratic lawmakers said the president's timing seemed designed to distract from Comey's testimony and other congressional testimony on Wednesday.In his first public remarks since Trump fired him on May 9, Comey is expected to be questioned about whether the president asked him during an Oval Office meeting to end the FBI's probe into ties between former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn and Russia - part of its investigation into possible collusion between Trump's 2016 election campaign team and Russian officials. "I will be nominating Christopher A. Wray, a man of impeccable credentials, to be the new Director of the FBI. Details to follow," Trump said in a Twitter message."It appears, obviously, that the president is trying to change the topic because we've got two days of hearings here that could be explosive," Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the intelligence panel, Warner told MSNBC. On Wednesday, lawmakers will hear from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, the No. 2 official at the Justice Department who signed a letter recommending Comey's dismissal.

Some lawmakers praised the pick. "Chris Wray is tough, qualified and principled," Republican Senator Ben Sasse, a frequent Trump critic, said in a statement. "I look forward to sitting down with him to discuss both his commitment to our justice system and his vision for restoring public trust." Republican Representative Mike Conaway, who is leading the House of Representatives intelligence committee probe of the Russia matter, told reporters: "It appears from the reading of his biography it's a great choice for FBI director." Conaway said he had received no advance notice of the nomination.'EXTREMELY PROFESSIONAL'

Wray, now in private practice at King & Spalding, served from 2003 to 2005 at the Justice Department under former President George W. Bush as an assistant attorney general in charge of its criminal division, according to his biography on the law firm's website. Trump chose Wray with the goal of "restoring confidence and integrity to the FBI," said a White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity.Wray had an initial interview with the Justice Department on May 24 and met with Trump on May 30, the official said.Wray is a litigation partner at King & Spalding's Washington and Atlanta offices, handling white-collar criminal and regulatory enforcement cases, according to the firm.

He represented Christie in the Bridgegate political scandal that resulted in two of the governor's aides being convicted. Christie, who became a close adviser to Trump during the campaign and whose name was floated as a possible Comey replacement, was never charged."Hes extremely professional, not a guy who seeks out the limelight," said Randy Mastro, who represented Christie's office while Wray represented the governor himself over Bridgegate. Comey's appearance before the Senate Intelligence Committee could be a turning point in a controversy that has rocked Trump's young administration.The White House has said Flynn, who was fired in February, misled Vice President Mike Pence about contacts with Russia's ambassador to the United States before Trump took office in January.In the aftermath of Comey's firing, Rosenstein on May 17 appointed former FBI chief Robert Mueller as a special counsel to investigate the Russia matter. (Additional reporting by Susan Heavey, Susan Cornwell, Richard Cowan, Eric Walsh, Doina Chiacu and Karen Freifeld; Writing by Will Dunham; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh, Alden Bentley and Jeffrey Benkoe)

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By Julia Edwards Ainsley

| WASHINGTON

WASHINGTON President Donald Trump, in a surprise Twitter message early on Wednesday, said he will nominate former assistant U.S. attorney general Christopher Wray to lead the FBI, whose former chief was fired by Trump less than a month ago.James Comey, dismissed as Federal Bureau of Investigation director on May 9, is slated to testify before a Senate panel on Thursday about investigations of possible ties between Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. elections and the Trump campaign.Wray, now in private practice at law firm King & Spalding, worked from 2003 to 2005 at the Justice Department under former Republican President George W. Bush."I will be nominating Christopher A. Wray, a man of impeccable credentials, to be the new Director of the FBI. Details to follow," Trump said in a Twitter message.The U.S. Senate must evaluate and vote on any nomination by Trump of a new FBI leader.

His announcement comes as the Senate Intelligence Committee prepares to hear from top U.S. intelligence officials and Comey regarding the FBI's probe into Russian involvement in the election and fallout from Comey's firing.On Wednesday, lawmakers will hear from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, the No. 2 official at the Justice Department who signed a letter recommending Comey's dismissal. U.S. Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the intelligence committee, said in a series of television interviews that Trump's announcement seemed timed to distract from the two days of potentially explosive hearings.

"It appears the president is trying to change the topic," Warner told MSNBC. The president met last week with candidates for the FBI director post, including Wray, according to White House spokesman Sean Spicer.

Wray works for King & Spalding's Washington and Atlanta offices, handling white-collar criminal and regulatory enforcement cases, according to the firm.While there, he represented Chris Christie in the Bridgegate scandal, in which two of the New Jersey governor's aides were convicted. Christie, who became a close adviser to Trump during the campaign and whose name was floated as a possible Comey replacement, was never charged. At the Justice Department, Wray worked on corporate fraud scandals and cases involving U.S. financial markets, according to his biography on the law firm's website. He represented the government in its fraud case against Enron Corp, the collapsed energy company. (Additional reporting by Susan Heavey and Doina Chiacu; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh, Alden Bentley and Jeffrey Benkoe)

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By Gulsen Solaker and Tom Finn

| ANKARA/DOHA

ANKARA/DOHA Turkey brought forward troop deployment to Qatar on Wednesday and pledged to provide crucial food and water supplies to the Gulf Arab country facing a worsening rift with its powerful Middle Eastern neighbours.In the deepest split between Arab states for decades, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain severed relations with Qatar on Monday and closed their airspace to commercial flights, saying it was funding militant groups.Qatar vehemently denies the accusations. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has said isolating Qatar would not resolve any problems. Erdogan, who has long tried to play the role of a regional power broker, said Ankara would do everything in its power to help end the regional crisis.Lawmakers from Erdogan's ruling AK Party and the nationalist opposition MHP were the main backers of the bill that allows troops to be deployed to Turkey's base in Qatar, but the main opposition CHP party said the timing sent the wrong message."With these agreements, Turkey is making a choice and by standing by Qatar it is taking on the other countries. This is a wrong policy," CHP deputy head and lawmaker Ozturk Yilmaz said. "How will you be a mediator if you are taking sides?" he said.

Turkey has maintained good relations with Qatar as well as several of its Gulf Arab neighbours. Turkey and Qatar have both provided support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and backed rebels fighting to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.The Turkish parliament has also endorsed an accord between the two countries on military training cooperation. Both bills were drawn up before the spat erupted. The fast-tracking of the legislation has weighed on the Turkish lira. FOOD AND WATER

Turkey's main exporters' body said it was ready to meet food and water supply demands from Qatar, after a Qatari official said Doha was in talks with Iran and Turkey to ensure trade disruptions did not create shortages.

Grain traders said Qatar appears to have a comfortable immediate supply of wheat. "Qatar recently purchased about 20,000 tonnes of Russian milling wheat which according to my calculations has just arrived in past days or will arrive in coming days," one European grain trader said. The president of Qatar's Chamber of Commerce was quoted on Wednesday by local media as saying Qatar had enough food stored in strategic reserves to last for a year.

"There will be no shortage of food and other products as more than 95 percent of imports from Qatar arrive by air and sea," Qatari Sheikh Khalifa bin Jassim al-Thani said.Turkey set up a military base in Qatar, its first such installation in the Middle East, as part of an agreement signed in 2014. In 2016, Ahmet Davutoglu, then Turkish prime minister, visited the base where 150 personnel are already stationed, the Turkish daily Hurriyet reported.In an interview with Reuters in late 2015, Ahmet Demirok, Turkey's ambassador to Qatar at the time, said 3,000 ground troops would eventually be deployed at the base, which was primarily to serve as a venue for joint training exercises.The text of the draft bill, which includes the agreement between Qatar and Turkey on the base, shows the cooperation will be primarily about the modernisation of Qatar's military, as well as widening cooperation in training and war exercises.The bill did not specify how many troops would go nor when. (Additional reporting by Nevzat Devranoglu and Mike Hogan in Hamburg; Writing by Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by David Dolan and Louise Ireland)

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WASHINGTON A U.S. military investigator said on Wednesday that a March 16 air strike near Aleppo, Syria was a valid and legal attack on a meeting of al Qaeda fighters and did not kill dozens of civilians as reported by human rights groups.An investigation of the attack on a building in Al-Jina village was able to identify only one person who might have been a civilian who was wounded or possibly killed, Army Brigadier General Paul Bontrager, deputy director for operations for U.S. Central Command, told a Pentagon briefing by telephone. "We considered media reports that indicated a large number of civilians were killed, but our investigation did not uncover evidence to support those claims," said Bontrager, who acknowledged investigators were unable to visit the scene or talk to anybody who was on the ground at the time.The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based war monitor, had said at least 49 people were killed and dozens wounded, which the Pentagon denied at the time.

The group identified the building as a mosque and said it was filled with worshippers. The Pentagon released photos showing the mosque still standing. Bontrager said investigators did not speak to the Observatory but did seriously consider a report by Human Rights Watch.Bontrager said the structure had a religious purpose but was not a mosque. He said the strike was carried out after several days of intelligence indicated that al Qaeda leaders and fighters were planning to meet in the building in Al-Jina, which is in an area controlled by the militant group.

The U.S. was not aware of large numbers of civilians being treated in hospitals after the strike, Bontrager said."We are confident this was a meeting of al Qaeda leaders and members. This was not a meeting of civilians," he said.

The investigation found "the strike complied with operational and legal requirements," Bontrager said.The United States military has said it makes "extraordinary efforts" to avoid civilian deaths in its air strikes in Syria and Iraq, parts of which are controlled by Islamist militants.Bontrager said F-15 Strike Eagle aircraft and an MQ-9 remotely piloted aircraft were involved in the attack, with the F-15 dropping 10 bombs on the building and the drone firing two missiles at a target that emerged outside.He said adjacent structures suffered superficial damage and the investigators could not be sure exactly how many people were killed. Bontrager said that "approximately two dozen men attending an al Qaeda meeting were killed in the strike, with several injured." (Reporting by Phil Stewart and David Alexander; editing by Grant McCool)

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BERLIN About 25,000 military forces from the United States and 23 other countries will take part in a large-scale military exercise called "Saber Guardian" planned in Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania next month.In addition, several U.S. B-1B heavy bombers have arrived in Britain in support of two separate multinational exercises planned in the Baltic region and other parts of Europe this month to improve coordination among partner countries.The U.S. military plans were announced by Stuttgart-based U.S. European Command, which said this year's Saber Guardian exercise - held annually in the Black Sea region since 2013 - was "larger in both scale and scope" than previous exercises.The news could exacerbate tensions that are already running high between Moscow and Washington.Russia scrambled a fighter jet on Tuesday to intercept a nuclear-capable U.S. B-52 strategic bomber it said was flying over the Baltic Sea near its border, in an incident that had echoes of the Cold War.

Washington said the long-range bomber was operating in international airspace.European Command said the Saber Guardian exercise would include an array of live fire exercises, river crossings and a mass casualty exercise and was aimed at drilling "the ability to mass forces at any given time anywhere in Europe"."It is deterrence in action," it said in a release.

The U.S. army said the larger exercise would be preceded by several smaller events - all aimed at shoring up the security and stability of the Black Sea region, where increased Russian submarine activity has sparked concerns.The Saber Guardian exercise rotates through Bulgaria, Romania and Ukraine, with a goal to increase the ability of European and U.S. military forces to operate together in the event of an armed conflict.

It will be the largest of 18 separate Black Sea exercises planned this year, European Command said.The B-1B bombers were deployed from Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota to a UK air base in Fairford to support two separate exercises planned this month, Saber Strike and BALTOPS, according to European Command. It said an undisclosed number of B-1B bombers would join three B-52H bombers that were already in Europe for training.BALTOPS is a recurring multinational exercise that will involve 4,000 shipboard personnel, 50 ships and submarines and more than 50 aircraft. Saber Strike, now in its seventh year, is aimed at improving cooperation among allies and partners while promoting regional stability and security, European Command said. (Reporting by Andrea Shalal Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)

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As the United Kingdom readies itself for its first post-Brexit election on Thursday, there have been frenzied debates about the economy, cuts to the National Health Service, and, in the aftermath of the London Bridge attack, cuts to essential services like the police.

But another key concern has been that historic driving factor behind political debates in the country for years: Immigration. Specifically, proposed shifts in legislation that have left many countries worried about the future mobility of their citizens to the British Isles.

Among the most concerned is India, which is unsurprising, given the history between the two countries that has led to sustained migration of citizens seeking higher education and work in the country that once brutally colonised the subcontinent.

The number of Indians who migrate to the United Kingdom, according to data from the National Office of Statistics, has, for several decades, been around 200,000 per year. Last year saw 248,000 immigrants from India alone and according to the Home Office, 20 percent of all visa requests made in January to March were from India.

Despite continued interest in travelling to the UK, there is a legitimate fear on the part of Indians that Britains already strict immigration policies, which were further tightened following the decision to leave the European Union last year, will verge on the draconian if the Conservative Party manages to win Thursdays elections.

It was a defining point of last years discussions when British Prime Minister Theresa May visited India to strengthen bilateral ties in the wake of the Brexit vote.

Despite demands from the Modi government insisting that May cut the cost of the two-year visitor visa, and lower restrictions on the number of Indian students entering the UK for higher studies, the Tory leader refused to commit to increasing visa numbers without India accepting the return of illegal immigrants from the country.

While the Labour Party has pledged to ensure the development and implementation of fair immigration rules without mentioning specific figures, and the Liberal Democrats have committed to removing limits on overall immigration into the country and not counting students when it comes to statistics, it is, unsurprisingly, the Tory party that has the most stringent proposals.

May has committed to reducing the number of migrants to the tens of thousands, as well as a slew of measures targeting the employers of said migrants, such as a proposed doubling of the immigration skills charge, making firms pay up to 10,000 per non-EU worker.

The prime ministers optimism at the British governments ability to actually put said curbs into place is slightly baffling, given her failure to reduce net migration during the six years she served as home secretary.

But perhaps one shouldnt be surprised given that this is the same May who once thought vans with large signs proclaiming Go home or be arrested driving around areas of London dominated by Indian communities were an appropriate means of encouraging immigrants to pack up and return home.

The proposals by the current ruling party have invited significant criticism from the other parties, with Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron warning that the curbs would hurt the relationship between Britain and India.

India is a key strategic partner for the United Kingdom and the British-Indian community contribute so much to our country. Liberal Democrat immigration policies will therefore seek to maximise the economic, cultural and social benefit of these relationships and welcome immigration as a blessing, not a curse, Farron said in May.

Feasibility aside, many Indian students in the United Kingdom, following the Tory governments decision last year to end the popular two-year further studies visa option, feel that that they are in a precarious position.

According to data from the Home Office, 10,704 Indians migrated to the UK to study by the end of March 2016; that figure currently stands at 11,642.

If it wasnt for that, Id be more than happy to live and work here after I graduate, says Srishti Gupta, a Journalism Masters student at the City University of London (CUL). Im still willing to work here despite the difficulties, but it looks like the new Tory manifesto will never let me, she adds.

Im not planning to live here for the rest of my life, but the sort of career growth you can get here in two years is equivalent to ten back in India, says Aashna Jawal, who also is pursuing her Journalism MA at CUL. But I just dont think it will work with such strict policies for employers.

While Srishti believes that the proposals from the Labour party, especially the promises to not punish the employers of migrants with high fees, she also thinks the present situation is indicative of the country's political lurch towards right-wing policies. Theres definitely that sense post-Brexit, she says.  Britain for the British, that kind of thing.

The visa restrictions wont stop Indian students from coming here, though, adds Aashna. The United Kingdom and its universities have far too much charm for that to happen.

As the country prepares for its most crucial election in years, those with the right to vote are pondering their future, which seems more uncertain than ever before.

The question for Indians is equally uncertain: For how much longer will they be welcome here?

This is the first part of a series on British immigration policy restrictions and changes towards Indian immigrants. The second part will look at the history of past restrictions in the latter half of the 20th century.
The United Kingdom (UK) will vote for a new Parliament and government on Thursday. The voters will elect the 650 members who comprise the House of Commons.

Prime Minister Theresa May stunned the country on 18 April when she announced a snap election, hoping to transform a massive opinion-poll lead into an equally huge majority in the House of Commons, where she holds a slim 17-seat advantage in the 650-member legislature.

But the political ground began to shift under her feet, moving from Brexit  May's strongest card  to domestic policy and her own record on security.

The initial dull campaign underwent a transformation through unexpected missteps, surprise developments and deadly attacks that have pushed national security to the top of the agenda.

As the main contenders battle over who can keep the country safer, here's a look at what the parties have had to say in their campaigns.

Conservatives

After the Saturday attack in the bustling streets of London, the main political parties suspended national campaigning. The election campaign was earlier halted for three days in the wake of the 22 May concert bombing in Manchester, which killed 22 people.

May said that Thursday's election wouldn't be brought to a halt by the latest attack, as "violence can never be allowed to disrupt the democratic process."

She vowed to crackdown on terrorism suspects if she wins the election  "and if our human rights laws stop us from doing it, we will change the laws so we can do it."

May made a strongly pitch that "things need to change" in the fight against international terrorism.

May has said, in one of her recent campaigns, that Britain was facing a new threat from copycat attacks, and "it is time to say 'enough is enough.'" She called for international agreements to curb online extremism, said longer jail sentences might be needed for terrorism offenses and argued that there is "far too much tolerance of extremism in our country."

May urged the voters on Tuesday that they vote with security on their minds, they should ask: "Who can they trust?"

May insisted that her government had "protected the counter-terrorism policing budget," increased the number of armed police officers (after several years when it fell) and funded the intelligence services to hire 1,900 additional staff.

In the wake of Manchester and London Bridge attacks, May on Wednesday promised to change human rights laws if they hamper a crackdown on terror suspects, by potentially seeking opt-outs from the European Convention on Human Rights.

The reason May gave for calling 8 June election 50 days ago, in her words, is that the money which was spent on EU projects till now could deliver "huge benefits" across the UK after its withdrawal, due in 2019.

Speaking in Norwich during a campaign, she said a Labour government would "wreck the economy".

Labour Party

Attacks in Manchester on 22 May and London on Saturday have put the threat from international terrorism at the centre of the campaign for all of the contesting parties.

Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn said the party's chances had been underestimated, as he promised to reverse cuts rolled out under the Conservatives.

"The choice is another five years of a Tory government, underfunding of services all across the UK, including in Scotland, or a Labour government that invests for all, all across Britain," he told supporters in Glasgow.

But emphasising Labour's plan to invest billions on public services, Corbyn said the NHS could not afford "five more years of underfunding, understaffing and privatisation."

He said, "The re-election of a Theresa May government will mean five more years of cuts to the NHS, five more years of increases in waiting times, five more years of more and more people waiting for social care and five more years of austerity."

Corbyn has also said "those who wish to harm our people, divide our communities and attack our democracy will not succeed."

Resuming the election campaign on Sunday evening, Corbyn said, "You cannot protect the public on the cheap."

He has also criticised Conservative cuts to police budgets that saw the number of officers nationwide fall by almost 20,000 between 2010 and 2016  years when May, as home secretary, was in charge of policing. "The police and security services must get the resources they need, not 20,000 police cuts," he said.

Emphasising the need for sufficient budget for security, Corbyn has said, "We won't defeat terrorists by ripping up our basic rights and our democracy," he said.

Corbyn, in one of his campaigns, has promised to give "full authority to the police to use whatever force is necessary to protect and save life." That was an attempt to defuse criticism of his previous opposition to police and military "shoot to kill" policies  controversially used against IRA suspects during the "troubles."

But the veteran anti-nuclear activist has squirmed over whether he would be willing to use Britain's atomic weapons, and there remains a perception that security is not his strength.

What the smaller parties have to say

In Scotland, Scottish National Party (SNP) leader Nicola Sturgeon warned that a vote for Labour risks "handing the keys of No. 10" to May. The pro-independence party is seeking to repeat its 2015 near-sweep of seats in Scotland.

Campaigning in Edinburgh, Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon said re-electing SNP MPs would ensure Scotland retained a "strong voice" in Westminster and deny the Conservatives a "crushing majority".

Meanwhile, Lib Dem leader Tim Farron has urged Labour supporters to "send a message" to May on issues such as Brexit and social care by supporting his party.

Farron said, "The remainder of this campaign must be a collective showing of defiance and pride in our democratic values." The staunchly pro-EU Liberal Democrats hope to scoop up voters opposed to leaving the bloc.

UK Independence Party (UKIP)  instrumental in getting Britain to leave the EU  has pinned its hope to regain a foothold in Parliament, after losing its sole lawmaker before the election.

Visiting Great Yarmouth, UKIP leader Paul Nuttall said only his party could keep the pressure on the next government to deliver a "real Brexit"  with lower immigration, exclusive fishing rights for British trawlers within UK territorial waters and no "divorce bill".

Only the right-wing UKIP, who had no members of Parliament in the 650-seat House of Commons before the election was called, had declined to pause campaigning after the London attack. Nuttall said "I refuse to suspend campaigning because this is precisely what the extremists would want us to do."

Around 50 million Britons are eligible in the UK to vote in the general election on Thursday. As the polls have relentlessly narrowed, critics wonder if the lack of political instinct could cost May dear on 8 June.

With inputs from agencies
London: The British government on Tuesday stood by an invitation to US President Donald Trump, to make a State visit to the UK as London mayor Sadiq Khan  under attack from the White House  said the offer should be scrapped.

"The invitation has been issued and accepted and I see no reason to change that," Foreign Minister Boris Johnson told BBC radio.

Prime Minister Theresa May, asked by The Sun newspaper whether the controversial trip would go ahead, answered "Yes."

But Khan, in an interview with AFP, reiterated his view that the invitation was "premature".

"State visits are given to world leaders who have had distinguished service, who have a track record," he said. "In the circumstances where Donald Trump as president had a Muslim ban, had changed the policies of the US, the longstanding policies around refugees, in the circumstances where many British people disagree with many of Donald Trump's policies, we shouldn't be having a state visit," he said.

Khan said the US and Britain were "close allies" and they should continue to work closely together.

"But one of the things about a special relationship, it's like having a best friend  you stand shoulder-to-shoulder with them in times of adversity, but you call them out when they're wrong, and you tell them when they are wrong. And I think on many, many things, Donald Trump is wrong," he said.

State visits are considered top-level events typically honouring visitors with banquets, speeches to lawmakers and business chiefs and an audience with Queen Elizabeth II.

May made the invitation to Trump just seven days after he took office, a decision that prompted accusations that Britain, its global influence set to be weakened by Brexit, was kowtowing to the new US leader.

By contrast, May's predecessor David Cameron gave the invitation to the-president Barack Obama more than a year into his administration.

More than 1.8 million people have signed an online petition saying Trump should not make the state visit as it "could cause embarrassment" to the monarch.

In other comments, May and Johnson both defended Khan for his reassurances to Londoners after the attacks.

Trump, in a series of tweets, lashed Khan's handling of the Saturday night terror attack, mocking the mayor for telling the public there was "no reason to be alarmed" over armed police on the streets.

The US president then dismissed criticism that he had taken Khan's remarks out of context, accusing Khan of coming up with a "pathetic excuse" to defend himself.

"I think Donald Trump is wrong in what he said about Sadiq Khan in the aftermath of the London Bridge attack," May said at a press conference on the campaign trail ahead of Thursday's election.

Johnson said separately: "He is entirely right to say what he said to reassure people of his city about the presence of armed officers on the streets."
US attorney-general Jeff Sessions offered to hand in his resignation before President Donald Trump's trip abroad, according to several media reports. Politico reports that Sessions offered his resignation because Trump was frustrated at the appointment of a special counsel to look into alleged ties between his campaign and Russia.

Trump reportedly blames Sessions  the attorney-general recused himself with regard to the Russia investigation  for the series of events that led to a special prosecutor being appointed.

Sessions announced he would be recusing himself from the investigation after it was revealed that he did not report a meeting with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the campaign.

A Trump adviser said Sessions was just one of the targets of the US president as his frustration with the Russia investigation boils over. "Hes in a mess and is blaming anyone around him  Sessions, (White House Counsel Don) McGahn, you name it, depending on the day, the Trump advisor said, according to Politico.

The Washington Post reports that Sessions made the offer after weeks of tense private meetings with the disgruntled president and that the moment was brief. However, Trump refused the offer, although he made his displeasure clear to the attorney general.

The New York Times reports on Tuesday that the White House would not confirm that the president still had full confidence in Sessions. I have not had that discussion with him, the press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters.

Trump has repeatedly criticised Sessions' decision to recuse himself from any Russia-related investigation conducted by the justice department to his allies and advisers, terming the decision as 'needless', The New York Times reports.

Tensions between the president and the head of his justice department continue to simmer.

Trump on Monday, derided the revised travel ban and was critical of the justice department's handling of the case. He tweeted that the revised ban was "politically correct" and that the justice department should seek a "much tougher version," The Washington Post reports.
Washington: US president Donald Trump announced Wednesday that he is tapping lawyer and former justice department official Christopher Wray to serve as his new FBI director, on the eve of critical testimony by the intelligence agency chief he ousted.

Wray, a litigation attorney with law firm King & Spalding in Washington and Atlanta, previously served as assistant attorney-general in charge of the justice department's Criminal Division from 2003 to 2005.

"I will be nominating Christopher A Wray, a man of impeccable credentials, to be the new Director of the FBI. Details to follow," Trump wrote on Twitter.

Meanwhile, the US capital will grind to a halt Thursday, glued to computer and television screens as sacked FBI chief James Comey testifies about whether Trump pressured him to halt a probe into an adviser's links to Russia.

Trump, a ratings-obsessed former reality television star, may not appreciate the worldwide attention paid to Comey's public testimony, which is being touted as the Super Bowl of high political drama.

Comey is the star witness in the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation of alleged Russian election meddling last year, with the possible collusion of the Trump campaign. The allegations have drawn comparison to the 1970s Watergate scandal that brought down president Richard Nixon.
Sydney: Watergate pales in comparison to the scandals engulfing Donald Trump and the Russia connection, former top US intelligence official James Clapper said Wednesday ahead of a key Senate hearing in Washington.

Clapper, who has worked in intelligence under every US leader from John F Kennedy to Barack Obama, said his professional instincts had always been loyalty to the president, regardless of which party they come from. But for Trump he is making an exception.

"Now as a private citizen, I am very concerned about the assault on our institutions coming from both an external source  read Russia  and an internal source, the president himself," he said in Australia.

Asked at the National Press Club in Canberra what he thought the critical differences were between Watergate, which brought down Richard Nixon, and Trump's troubles, he replied: "Watergate pales really in my view compared to what we're confronting now."

The US administration is at the centre of an ever- widening probe into Moscow's meddling in last year's election and possible collusion by the Trump team.

Clapper said he was at a loss to know why Trump's team appeared so keen to court Moscow.

"I characterise it as inexplicable. I don't understand that," said the director of national intelligence under Obama.

"It is absolutely crucial for the United States, and for that matter for the world, for this presidency, for the Republicans, for the Democrats and for our nation at large,

that we get to the bottom of this. "Is there a smoking gun with all the smoke? I don't know the answer to that."

Sacked FBI chief James Comey is set to testify Thursday as the star witness in the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation of alleged interference and whether Trump

pressured him to halt a probe into an advisor's links to Russia.

He is expected to dispute the president's claim that he told the former reality television star multiple times that he was not under investigation by the FBI.

"I think it will be very significant to see both what he says and what he is asked about and doesn't respond to," Clapper said of Comey, who he described as "a distinguished

public servant".

Clapper said the "inexcusable manner" in which Comey was dismissed by Trump reflected "complete disregard for the independence and autonomy of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, our premiere law enforcement organisation".

"I worry about these assaults on our institutions." He characterised Moscow's campaign to interfere with the US election as "unprecedented in its directness and

aggressiveness".

"Social media trolls planting false information, orchestrated fake news which many other news outlets picked up and amplified either wittingly or unwittingly," he said.

"And a very sophisticated campaign by the regime-funded propaganda arm, the RT broadcasting arm, against Hillary Clinton and for Donald Trump.
American authorities arrested a 25-year-old federal contractor, Reality Leigh Winner, on Monday on charges of violating the espionage act, and of leaking federal secrets to a news organisation.

What found Winner in the eye of the latest whistleblower scandal was the allegations that she had made copies of a so-called "classified document" published internally, and mailed it out to a media outlet for publication. The top secret US report supposedly shows that hackers from Russian military intelligence tried to repeatedly break into US voting systems before last year's presidential election, raising new alarms about the extent of Moscow's meddling.

Even as the news turned into the newest embarrassment for the National Security Agency (NSA) which has suffered compromises in the past at the hands of various whistleblowers and hacking groups, authorities announced Winner's arrest. Winner had apparently provided a federal report published barely a month ago to The Intercept, an online news portal focused on national security issues, which published a detailed report on a hacking operation tied closely to Moscow's GRU intelligence directorate that targeted private US companies providing voter registration services and equipment to local governments. Winner is now being held at a facility in Lincolnton, Georgia, according to CNN.

Who is Reality Winner?

A yoga instructor, linguist, and an animal lover, Winner was "just another normal person", according to Titus Nichols, her court-appointed attorney, as quoted in a report by CNN.

Before she was charged with leaking government secrets to a reporter, Winner occasionally shared scathing opinions on US President Donald Trump and his policies for the whole world to see. However, the bulk of her posts give glimpses into her life as a fitness enthusiast and an animal lover.

The 25-year-old government contractor has worked since February in Augusta, Georgia, for Pluribus International Corporation, a small-business firm that offers intelligence support, language translation and other services to various government agencies, where she had access to sensitive documents, according to NBC News. She was granted top secret government clearance but the secretive nature of her job didn't stop Winner from speaking freely on politics and other topics on social media accounts accessible to anyone.

She posted on Facebook three months ago that climate change is a more important issue than health care "since not poisoning an entire population seems to be more in line with 'health' care, and not the disease care system that people voted for a soulless ginger orangutan to 'fix'," according to AP. Her Facebook page, has since been suspended, apparently.

Winner remained locked up Tuesday on federal charges that she made copies of classified documents containing top-secret material and mailed them to an online news organisation. She was scheduled to appear before a federal judge on Thursday for a detention hearing.

A look through her Instagram profile, where she used the pseudonym Reezle Winner, reveals that she was a workout buff and enjoyed physical activity.

She usually shared pictures of home-cooked vegan food, her cats, and mostly selfies or her images from the gym.

According to a report in The Washington Times, Winner has served six years in the air force, after which, an AP report says she moved to Georgia early this year.

Born in Texas in December 1991, was raised in Kingsville, a small city in the south of the state. Winner went to the military soon after graduating from high school. She was fluent in Middle East languages, such as Farsi, Dari and Pashto, had served as a linguist in the US Air Force since January 2013, according to The Guardian.

Gary Davis, Winner's stepfather, said she turned down a full college scholarship to join the air force.

As reporters gathered outside Winner's small, red-brick home in a neighborhood dotted with overgrown yards and houses in disrepair, after her arrest, her mother, Billie Winner-Davis told CNN that she was afraid for her daughter. "She's got a good heart. She serves her community, she served her country. She believes in always doing what's right," Billie Winner-Davis said.

"I know my daughter. She's a patriot," Davis said. "She served with distinction in one of the highest classified jobs in the air force."

Winner's mother said she was stunned when her daughter called over the weekend, saying the FBI had come to her home and she was being arrested. Winner asked if her mother and stepfather, who live in Texas, would travel to Georgia to help feed her cat. "Mainly she was concerned about her cat," Winner-Davis said.

On social media, Winner mostly shared glimpses into her life far removed from politics  such as watching Dr Who with her cat and serving her family a vegetarian meal of barbecued jackfruit. Although, since Donald Trump's upset election win, there were several instances when Winner took to the social media to air her political views.

"I just know she cares about her world and taking care of people and animals," Winner-Davis said. "I never termed her as a political activist at all, ever."

But Winner's Facebook page does mention reaching out to senator David Perdue, a Georgia Republican, after Trump nominated Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency, according to AP.

And in an angry reply to a report that Trump said he wasn't hearing complaints about building the Dakota Access oil pipeline, Winner wrote on Facebook: "I'm losing my mind. If you voted for this piece of (expletive), explain this. He's lying."

She reportedly has a Twitter account, @Reezlie, under the name Sara Winners, which her attorney could not confirm was hers. The account follows known whistleblowers like WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden, and had shared content with links to @AnonymousPress and rogue government agency accounts, known as 'alt' accounts. She routinely criticised Trump and sometimes shared popular Trump memes and GIFs.

In the legal case, authorities say Winner admitted to leaking the classified report once government officials traced her as the source.

An affidavit by FBI agent Justin Garrick said the government found out about the leaked documents from the news outlet that received them. He said the agency that housed the report was able to identify only six people  including Winner  who were privy to the report in the NSA's Georgia facility and had access to the document.

A pattern of tiny yellow dots on the leaked documents themselves would also have offered the government a way to track down the alleged leaker, security blog Errata noted late Monday. At the request of the government, recent model color printers automatically leave a unique stamp on the documents they produce.

In a court affidavit filed late Tuesday, the FBI said it searched Winner's home and seized her US passport, two spiral-bound notebooks, two laptops and computer equipment, and a Department of Defense-issued country handbook for Iran.

Investigators said in court records they wanted to search her property for a variety of computer information as well as possible contacts with media outlets as well as any possible contacts with "foreign governments, foreign powers, or agents of foreign powers", search warrant documents state.

The NBC News report states that Winner accepted making copies if the confidential documents and mailing it out to the news organisation.

However, her attorney could not confirm whether she had given a confession. "If there is a confession, the government has not shown it to me. The bigger issue is: Was my client interrogated without her attorney?" Nichols asked, as per CNN.

With inputs from agencies
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Ford Motor Co. will operate its Kentucky SUV plant for an extra week this summer to meet demand for the Ford Escape and Lincoln MKC.

Ford's North American plants normally have a two-week shutdown in July, but the Louisville Assembly Plant will take only one week. It will build more than 8,500 vehicles during that extra week.

U.S. sales of the Escape were up 3 percent through May, while MKC sales were up 10 percent. Overall industry sales are down 2 percent, according to Autodata Corp.

Ford says the rest of its North American assembly plants will have a two-week shutdown.

Some of Ford's North American parts plants also will take one week instead of two, including metal stamping plants in Chicago and Michigan and an engine plant in Mexico.
A man was accused on Wednesday of suffocating his 7-year-old daughter, whose mother is an NBC vice president who separated from him but shared custody with him.

Police officers called to a Westchester County home on Tuesday said they found the man, Neil White, bleeding with wounds on his forearms and the girl, Gabrielle White, dead in her bed. The daughter had been discovered earlier by a baby sitter who had exchanged text messages with the father before the body was found, police said.

The baby sitter, Tonelle Mahon, told WABC-TV that she went to the home, just north of New York City, and didn't see anyone and that the shades were drawn upstairs.

"I went upstairs, and I kept calling, 'Neil? Gabrielle?'" she said in a shaky voice.

She said Neil White came out, bleeding, and told her Gabrielle was "in her room resting."

An autopsy will be performed, but police said they believe the daughter was asphyxiated. New Rochelle police Commissioner Patrick Carroll said he didn't want to speculate about a motive.

The Journal News reported that White's wife, Michelle Hord-White, an NBCUniversal Inc. talent acquisition vice president, had filed for divorce in April, according to county records. It said the couple were living apart and had shared custody of Gabrielle.

According to their 2007 wedding announcement, Neil White was a freelance journalist and the two met in 1992, when he was her brother's resident adviser at the University of Connecticut.

Neil White was arraigned on a murder charge on Wednesday, appearing in a blue hospital gown with his forearms bandaged, the newspaper said. He was held without bail. He couldn't be reached for comment while in custody.

Hord-White and her family said words couldn't sum up "all that Gabrielle meant to us" and "she was our light."

"We are broken and devastated that our sweet little girl is gone but we're thankful that we had seven wonderful years with her," the family said in a statement.

Gabrielle was in second grade at William B. Ward Elementary School, where school district officials said grief counselors were available to help staff members and students cope with her death.

Mayor Noam Bramson said Wednesday was "an exceptionally painful day."

"Our entire community mourns this tragic event," the Democratic mayor said.

___

This story has been corrected to show the girl's name was Gabrielle, not Gabriele.
President Donald Trump says withdrawing from a global climate change agreement will boost the U.S. economy, but existing market forces have had far more of an effect on the fossil fuel industries than climate regulations.

For at least three years now, the coal industry has been reeling from growing competition from natural gas, wind and solar power. Environmental regulations enacted under President Barack Obama haven't helped any but they've played a much smaller role.

Most of those regulations haven't even taken effect.

In March, Trump ordered a review of the Clean Power Plan, which seeks to reduce emissions from coal power plants, and the lifting of a moratorium on the sale of coal mining leases on federal lands.

So far, those moves have spurred a couple of relatively minor coal leases but no coal rush.

Here's a look at the state of the U.S. coal industry:

AN INDUSTRY IN DECLINE

Experts say coal's biggest problem isn't climate change regulations but cheap and abundant natural gas. Gas prices dropped as advances in drilling such as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, greatly increased the amount of gas on the market. For many utilities, that's made gas more attractive than coal.

Meanwhile, companies have gotten more efficient at extracting coal, meaning fewer workers are needed. Mountaintop removal mining, in which hilltops in Appalachia are blasted off with explosives to expose coal seams, is less expensive and more automated than underground mining. So are the massive strip mines developed since the 1970s in Wyoming and Montana.

U.S. coal production fell to 739 million tons last year, the lowest in almost four decades. From 2011 through 2016, the coal mining industry lost about 60,000 jobs, according to preliminary Labor Department data that excludes mine office workers.

Last weekend, Environmental Protection Agency Director Scott Pruitt said Trump's policies had created 50,000 coal jobs, including 7,000 in May alone. In fact, the coal industry nationwide accounted for a total of 51,000 jobs through May, up only about 400 jobs from the month before.

Pruitt's staff pointed to job gains across the overall mining sector  which includes oil and natural gas drilling, metal ore mining and stone quarrying.

Over the last decade, coal's share of the U.S. power market dwindled from more than 50 percent to about 32 percent last year. Gas and renewables both made gains, and hundreds of coal-burning power plants retired or are scheduled to shut down soon.

Utilities "are not going to flip on a dime and say now it's time to start building a whole bunch of coal plants because there's a Trump administration," said Brian Murray, director of environmental economics at Duke University's Nicholas Institute.

None of that appears to have shaken the administration's backing of coal. During a Wednesday meeting with international energy ministers in Beijing, Energy Secretary Rick Perry said devising ways to burn coal more cleanly could stimulate economic growth.

SHOULD THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SUBSIDIZE COAL?

The Obama administration blocked new coal lease sales on federal lands in January 2016 to determine if the government's coal program was shortchanging taxpayers and exacerbating climate change by effectively subsidizing coal.

In some cases, coal companies bought leases for as little as 1 cent per ton. The program is supposed to be competitive but often involves just a single bidder. The royalties these companies pay to the government on each ton of coal mined have remained unchanged since 1976.

Under the moratorium, the Obama administration was considering raising royalty rates as much as 50 percent. Trump has put that idea on hold. Environmentalists last week took the matter to the U.S. District Court of Appeals in Washington D.C. seeking to revive the coal program review.

WESTERN RESERVES

About 40 percent of coal produced in the U.S. comes from federal land in Western states.

Even before the moratorium, many mining companies were going bankrupt and had delayed plans to lease tracts holding 1.5 billion tons of coal.

That's enough fuel to run the nation's coal-fired power plants for two years at current consumption rates.

Lifting the moratorium in March hasn't triggered much new coal leasing. One exception: PacifiCorp seeks to lease 19.8 million tons of federal coal at a mine near a Wyoming coal-fired power plant.

That's about as much coal as all of Wyoming's mines produce every 16 days or so.

The Appalachian region once dominated coal mining but now accounts for less than 25 percent of production.

THE CARBON BALANCE

Burning the coal that was covered by the Obama moratorium would unleash an estimated 3.4 billion tons of carbon dioxide. That's equivalent to a year of emissions from 700 million cars. And it's just a small portion of the federal government's coal reserves.

Environmentalists say keeping that coal in the ground is crucial to the global effort to minimize climate change. But coal's advocates argue climate regulations shouldn't come at the industry's expense.

___

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Fourteen migrant workers from Myanmar appeared Wednesday in a Thai court on criminal defamation charges brought by their employer, which they accused of grueling, illegal working conditions.

The New York-based group Human Rights Watch urged that the defamation case be dropped, saying it was brought in retaliation for the workers reporting labor abuse, including 20-hour work days and underpayment. The defamation charge carries a possible one-year prison term.

Thailand's Department of Labor Protection and Welfare has already ordered the employer, Thammakaset Farm, to pay them a total of 1.7 million baht ($50,000) in compensation and damages, rejecting the workers' claim of about $1.3 million. A court also rejected a lawsuit by the workers alleging forced labor.

Thammakaset Farm, a supplier of poultry to Thai agribusiness giant Betagro, says the workers' allegations defamed it.

Two of the fourteen workers were also charged with theft for taking their timecards to show labor protection officials that they were working illegally long hours. The theft charges carry a possible punishment of up to seven years in prison.

"The Thai government should not allow an employer to criminalize these migrant workers for reporting what they describe as horrendous and unlawful labor conditions," Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. "The charges against these 14 workers should be dropped.

Human Rights Watch said it believes criminal defamation laws "should be abolished because they are an inherently disproportionate response to the need to protect reputations," and are easily abused to intimidate and punish whistleblowers.

"The government is helping to chill the atmosphere for investigations of company supply chains, and is undermining corporate accountability, if it does not protect these 14 migrant workers from retaliation," Adams said.

Nakhon Chompuchat, a lawyer for the workers, said Wednesday's court session was adjourned because some documents were unavailable, and the next hearing is scheduled for July 13.
A plan to sell $21.1 billion worth of Boeing (NYSE:BA)-made F-15 fighter jets to Qatar appears to be moving forward, despite several countries cutting diplomatic ties with the Middle Eastern nation this week.

A State Department official said the diplomatic battle and President Donald Trumps criticism of Qatar, which is under fire for allegedly supporting terrorist groups, has not affected the pending deal to deliver 72 F-15QA multirole fighters, according to Fox News.

In a statement, Boeing said its closely following recent developments.

We have been working closely with the U.S. and Qatari governments on this proposed sale. We continue to expect that an agreement will be signed, Boeing added.

Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations have severed their ties with Qatar, accusing the small oil-rich country of funding terrorism. The disagreement also stems from Qatars support for the Muslim Brotherhood.

So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off. They said they would take a hard line on fundingextremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism! Trump wrote in messages posted to Twitter (NYSE:TWTR).

The Obama administration approved the F-15 sale in November. The agreement, which has yet to be finalized, aimed to improve Qatars defense capabilities.

Boeing would be the primary defense contractor involved in the sale. Other contractors including Lockheed Martin (NYSE:LMT), Elbit Systems (NASDAQ:ESLT) and BAE Systems (OTC:BAESY) would support production of the F-15 Eagle.

Qatar is home to the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East. The military launches operations against ISIS from Al Udeid Air Base, where an estimated 10,000 Americans are deployed. Military officials have said the diplomatic fight wont impact U.S. missions.

Boeing shares rose 0.8% to $188.30 in recent trading.
WASHINGTON (AP)  Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn turned over about 600 pages of documents Tuesday to the Senate intelligence committee as part of its investigation into Russia's meddling in the 2016 presidential election, according to a congressional aide.

The aide said the committee's investigators immediately began reviewing the information to determine the extent of what Flynn provided. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the committee's sensitive work.

Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, confirmed the panel had received documents from Flynn, but declined to characterize the material or say how many pages had been received.

"We can't make any judgment on whether he's fully complied because we've got to review the documents," Warner said.

The documents came as Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly indicated that President Donald Trump's son-in-law and top adviser Jared Kushner and his communications with Russia are part of a wide-ranging probe by the Justice Department's special counsel. Meanwhile, a Democratic lawmaker called on a top Justice Department official to clarify the scope of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.

Flynn had previously invoked his Fifth Amendment protection from self-incrimination in rebuffing an earlier subpoena from the committee. After the panel narrowed the scope of that subpoena and issued additional ones for records from two of his businesses, Flynn agreed to turn over some documents.

On Tuesday, committee chairman Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., said the panel sought Flynn's business records  including travel, expense and phone records  to determine whether those records "would give us insight as to where he was when he was, what reimbursements he received, what expenses he might have had."

Burr said it was still possible Flynn may turn over more records. He noted the committee is still working with Flynn to see if he will agree to be interviewed as part of the panel's probe.

In addition to the Senate panel, Flynn is under investigation by other congressional committees as well the special counsel over his contacts with Russia. Among those contacts under scrutiny is a December meeting between Flynn, Kushner and Sergey Kislyak, Russia's ambassador to the U.S.

On Tuesday, Kelly defended Kushner at a Senate hearing amid reports that he attempted to establish "back-channel" communication between Russia and Trump's presidential transition team.

Kelly said back-channel talks have been common in U.S. diplomacy.

"We have to make the assumption  and I will  that Jared Kushner is a great American," he said.

Pressed by Montana Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat, on whether he believes lawmakers should "ensure that assumption is correct," Kelly described the questions as part of Mueller's scope of inquiry.

"I think there are numerous investigations that are looking into this," Kelly said. "I think it's part of the Bob Mueller investigation, and I think there's a number of congressional committees looking into it."

The full scope of Mueller's investigation into possible ties between Trump's campaign and Russia remains unclear. But it has incorporated a separate criminal investigation  which predated the election  of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, The Associated Press reported last week .

Also Tuesday, a senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee wrote Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to clarify the scope and authority of Mueller's role and asked Rosenstein to ensure the probe is free of political interference.

"It is of paramount importance that Mr. Mueller's investigation proceed unimpeded by any officials who may have a conflict of interest or other ethical bar, or by political interference of any kind," wrote Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y.

Rosenstein acknowledged Friday there's a chance his role in the firing of FBI Director James Comey could become part of the special counsel's investigation. If that happens, he said, he will recuse himself from being Mueller's point of contact on the probe.

"If there's a need from me to recuse, I will," Rosenstein told The AP.

He also said the scope of Mueller's probe is broad and could encompass any number of actions.

___

Associated Press writer Sadie Gurman contributed to this report.
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Comedian Dennis Miller lashed out Theresa May on Wednesday, mocking her for her inability to curb the ongoing fight against terrorism that has plagued the United Kingdom. For Gods sakes, Churchill must be turning over in his grave," Miller said during an interview on FOX Business Network. "How has it gotten this far Theresa May?

May vowed to crack down on terrorism during an address outside Downing Street on Sunday, where she said things need to change, adding that enough is enough.

U.K. officials have admitted that they were aware of Khuram Shazad Butt, one of three terrorists involved in the attack on the London Bridge and nearby Borough Market. The attack killed eight people and injured dozens of others, and officials say they were looking into Khuram Butt's involvement in outlawed radical Islamist group al-Muhajiroun.

Youssef Zaghba, another one of the attackers had been put on a security watch list by Italian authorities, but British police said he was not on their radar prior to the attack.

However, Miller believes people on the watch list need to be targeted immediately

Take the 3000 people on the watch list, put them in a camp and let them earn their way out with an explanation  what their life is, whats happening right here, I mean thats just the simple facts, Miller said.
President Donald Trump's lawyer Marc Kasowitz said Wednesday the president feels "vindicated" following the release of a document detailing former FBI Director James Comeys prepared remarks for his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee Thursday.

The document outlines several meetings Comey had with President Trump, including instances where he assured the president he was not personally the subject of a federal investigation.

"The President is pleased that Mr. Comey has finally publicly confirmed his private reports that the president was not under investigation in any Russian probe. The president feels completely and totally vindicated. He is eager to continue to move forward with his agenda," Kasowitz's statement read.

During one meeting with the president, Comey says without him directly asking the question, I offered that assurance [that he was not the subject of an investigation]. The document recounts instances where the president asked then-FBI director to help publicly confirm that he was not the subject of a federal investigation.

President Trump also reportedly asked Comey in February whether he intended to drop the investigation into former United States National Security Advisor Gen. Michael Flynn, saying: I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go, the document shows. Comey recalls taking the matter, which he believed only referred to accusations against Flynn for conversations with a Russian ambassador and not the Russian probe as a whole, to the FBI's senior leadership, but no one else. He said the FBI leadership team didnt go to Attorney General Jeff Sessions because Sessions would likely be recusing himself from the Russia probe and the FBI decided to keep it very closely held.

Comey alleges that the president told him in January that he needed and expected loyalty and at one point Comey confirmed he could give "honest loyalty." He also made a request to Sessions that he have no future direct communication with Trump, which allegedly went unanswered.

President Trump fired Comey from his position as FBI director on May 9. On Wednesday morning the Trump administration announced a new nominee to take Comey's spot, Christopher Wray.
The United States' top transportation official on Wednesday promoted the Trump administration's proposed privatization of the air traffic control system in the face of criticism from Democratic lawmakers and some Republicans.

"Our air traffic organization must be more nimble," U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao told the Senate Commerce Committee. "A bulky federal government procurement apparatus does not move fast enough to keep pace with new technologies and new demands."

President Donald Trump on Monday unveiled the plan to modernize air traffic control and lower flying costs. Under the proposal, air traffic control would be spun off from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and put under the aegis of a nonprofit entity.

Critics say the plan would hand control of a key asset to special interests and big airlines.

Watch the latest video at video.foxbusiness.com

Senator Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican, said on Wednesday that small airports in his state oppose the plan. He said that after air traffic privatization in the United Kingdom airline passenger fees rose 30 percent. "This is a tough sell," Wicker said.

Senator Jerry Moran, a Kansas Republican, said he remains "skeptical" of the idea of removing Congress from air traffic control oversight and handing it to a 13-member board.

The administration says it would not charge the private entity for the government's air traffic control assets and would bar Congress from reviewing fees charged by the board.

Senator Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, opposes the proposal. "Why give away billions of dollars in government assets to an entity that will be governed in large part by the airlines?" he asked.

Nelson argued "a fundamental breakup of the FAA cannot advance when there are such strong divisions among aviation stakeholders and in Congress. It just won't happen."

Chao denied that the major airlines would control the board and said they would have just two seats on the board.

She also pledged to address rural concerns. One big issue is whether general aviation could face higher costs and access to airspace if a private board takes over.

Executives from United Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines Inc, American Airlines Inc and Southwest Airlines Co, all represented by the Airlines for America lobbying group, praised the Trump plan on Monday.

The FAA spends nearly $10 billion a year on air traffic control funded largely through passenger user fees, and has spent more than $7.5 billion on next-generation air traffic control reforms in recent years.

It is unclear whether privatization would speed the rollout of new systems such as satellite-based aircraft tracking that replaces ground radar dating back to World War Two.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)
The U.S. and Mexico struck a trade deal for sugar, avoiding a potential trade war. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross says that though it wasnt necessary, the administration wanted to get the sugar deal out of the way before moving on to efforts to reform NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement).

This has been a very nettlesome, very aggravating factor for quite some little while and we thought it was a very good idea to try to get it out of the way so that we could get on with the much bigger parts of NAFTA that need changing, Ross told the FOX Business Networks Maria Bartiromo.

Ross responded to U.S. sugar producers calling for more concessions from Mexico.

We basically gave them the vast bulk of everything that they had asked for. Were now down to, in their minds, a technical issue and that is, in the event that the Department of Agriculture forecast of sugar needs are wrong and it turns out that much more needs to be brought in, exactly what are the circumstances under which the Mexican sugar could come in.

Though there are slight changes in price in this deal compared to the 2014 agreement, Ross didnt expect a big change in sugar prices for consumers, telling Bartiromo, I dont think that this deal should result in a great big spike.

According to Ross the deal would benefit U.S. sugar refiners.

The major part is that there will be a much higher percentage of raw sugar available to the United States refiners. Therefore they will be able to do better because they will make what now is roughly a nickel of refining margin rather than it being refined in Mexico.

Ross weighed in on efforts to reform NAFTA, telling Bartiromo, NAFTA is an ancient agreement, its really the first of the big trade agreements that the U.S. made and therefore its a bit obsolete.

Ross listed several of the factors that trade agreement either didnt address or didnt go far enough in dealing with.

It doesnt address the digital economy at all, in fact there really wasnt a digital economy back then. It didnt address very much about services, especially not about financial services and as you know service is part of our economy, both domestically and in terms of exports, have become very, very important. It also didnt talk about natural resources.
Anthony Scaramuccis on-again, off-again job with the Trump White House may soon be on again.

White House officials tell FOX Business that the hedge fund impresario, who last year announced the sale of his investment company SkyBridge Capital to join team Trump, may finally be getting a job with the administration. If the job does emerge, it would be the culmination of months of frustration for Scaramucci, who was a major Trump fundraiser and adviser during the 2016 presidential campaign.

In December, Scaramucci initially saw his aspirations of a senior position materialize with a top post inside the White House Office of Public Liaison. Then, around the time of the presidential inauguration it suddenly evaporated amid controversy surrounding the sale of his company to a Chinese conglomerate, and some of his public comments that rankled senior Trump officials.

Since then Scaramuccis future with the Trump administration has been in limbo; a few weeks ago at the SALT Conference, a popular gathering of hedge fund executives he founded, Scaramucci openly lamented about being passed over by the White House, stating: I didnt expect to be here to be honestI was offered a job by the administration. The job didnt materialize.

But more recently, following further discussions with the White House, a job now appears to be possibly in the works, people inside the administration tell FOX Business. Scaramucci is seriously being considered for a post in the Commerce Department, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. A senior official inside the White House also said he might be considered for an ambassadorship or an ambassador-level post.

We consider him a valuable supporter of the president and were looking at different possible roles, this official said.

Arthur Schwartz, a spokesman for Scaramucci, declined to comment. A White House spokesman had no comment.

In recent weeks, Scaramucci has also been weighing a possible return to the asset management business, people with knowledge of his intentions tell FOX Business. But, he is said to favor going to the White House, these people add.

People with knowledge of the potential appointment said Scaramucci spent at least part of his day Wednesday meeting with administration officials. Its unclear if he met with the president, who departed Washington just before 11 a.m. for a speech in Cincinnati, Ohio to discuss his health care reform package and plans to rebuild Americas infrastructure. But Scaramucci did meet with White House officials including Trump senior adviser Steve Bannon, these people add.

Its unclear when an appointment could be announced, if Scaramucci were to get the job. The sale of the majority stake he held in SkyBridge to the Chinese conglomerate HNA Group for an estimated $100 million is set to close this month. When it was announced in January, the sale raised some eyebrows given Trumps own campaign rhetoric of China as a currency manipulator, and like all major Chinese companies, the countrys Communist Party has a heavy hand in HNAs business model.

If Scaramucci does get the White House position, he would get a favorable tax treatment that business executives receive when they sell assets to join the federal government that would shave tens of millions of dollars off his tax bill for the sale.
Health officials in the Democratic Republic of the Congo said the Ebola outbreak in the African nation has been brought under control as the country has not recorded a new case of the virus in the last 21 days.

At this stage, we can say that the spread of the epidemic has been brought under control and thats thanks to the quality of national and international experts dispatched to the zone, Congolese Health Minister Oly Ilunga Kalenga told Reuters.

Ilunga added that authorities have confirmed four cases of Ebola in the northeastern Bas-Uele province  up from two previously  and that three other cases are considered probable.

While the World Health Organization has not confirmed the health ministers assertion that the virus spread is under control, it noted on Tuesday that WHO and its partners are rapidly and effectively coordinating a response.

WHO and other partner agencies led by the Ministry of Health have secured and set up a base to coordinate their work and end the outbreak as quickly and as safely as possible, WHO stated, noting the difficulties faced by the remoteness of the region and trouble with overland access.

The area of the outbreak, more than 300 miles from the DRC capital of Kinshasa, has very few passable roads and bridges open during this time of the year, so helicopters are required to bring teams and equipment to the town of Likati, where motorcycles take over. Health workers have already built two mobile labs, but a generator in one failed and had to be replaced.

The Congolese health minsters assertions come just over a week after the DRC approved the use of an experimental Ebola vaccine known as rVSV-ZEBOV. But Congolese authorities and WHO are still deciding whether the small number of confirmed Ebola cases in the country warrants the time and logistical complexity of deploying the vaccine to the remote region of the country, formerly called Zaire.

The vaccine was developed during the last major outbreak of the Ebola virus, which began in 2014 in West Africa and caused a global panic. A WHO working group recommended the use of rVSV-ZEBOV in 2015 after a clinical trial in Guinea showed promising results.

There are currently 300,000 doses of the vaccine available after an agreement was reached between international vaccine organization Gavi and Merck, the pharmaceutical company that manufactures rVSV-ZEBOV.

This is the eighth epidemic of Ebola in the DRC since the discovery of the virus in 1976, and comes just three years after an outbreak in West Africa killed more than 11,000 people and created a global panic. It is still unclear how Ebola outbreaks begin, but researchers theorize that it could come from people eating infected pieces of bush meat  the meat of primates and other wild animals sold in local markets  or from bats carrying the virus.

Deploying the vaccine -- along with the laboratories, equipment and personnel needed to administer it -- is estimated to cost around $14 million. That is a hefty price tag for the second-poorest nation in the world. The nation also struggles to contain an ongoing ethnic conflict between the DRCs Tutsi-controlled government under President Joseph Kabila, who refused to leave office at the end of his term last year, and a Hutu rebel group, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda.

Amid militia clashes and numerous violent protests  one in December left more than 50 people dead  the DRC saw more people leave their homes in 2016 than anywhere else in the world. According to the most recent report by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, 992,000 people fled the violence in 2016, compared to 824,000 in Syria, 659,000 in Iraq and 653,000 in Afghanistan.
An Indiana toddler died on Sunday after she caught a bacterial infection she may have got from a tick bite, her family said.

Kenley Ratliff, 2, fell ill a week ago after she contracted an infection believed to be Rocky Mountain spotted fever, transmitted through tick bites, her family told WTHR. They said they went camping just before Ratliff got sick.

Within days, the toddler went from being healthy to battling the infection in the hospital.

"Yes, within less than like five days, Monica Kirby, a family friend, told the news station. "Her little body couldn't handle it."

POWASSAN VIRUS: POTENTIALLY FATAL TICK DISEASE THAT CAN BE TRANSMITTED IN MINUTES REPORTED IN MAINE

At first the toddler tested positive for strep throat, but after she came home she developed a 104-degree fever, Kirby told WTHR. She was hospitalized and spent the last moments of her life breathing through a ventilator. She had "little to no brain activity" when they removed the breathing tubes, the family wrote on a GoFundMe page.

Though doctors are still waiting for test results to give an official diagnosis, pediatricians believe Ratliff caught Rocky Mountain spotted fever, which has been on the rise in the state. There were 40 cases reported in 2016, 10 more than the previous year, the Indiana Health Department stated. The infection could be especially deadly among children.

'DEATH CAP' MUSHROOMS SICKEN 14 IN CALIFORNIA

The Ratliff family said they are telling their story so the tragedy does not happen to other people.

"Now our goal is to spread awareness of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever in hopes of saving other children's lives," they said on the GoFundMe page.

The page, created to help the family pay for medical bills, has raised nearly $5,000 as of Wednesday.
Nearly everyone has those self-conscious quirks through high school and college. You might have to deal with acne, body odor, belly bulge, or other minor disruptions to a perfect body. Even though they may cause some discomfort, would you get plastic surgery to correct these issues? Many young people are getting plastic surgery, and they may not be making the best choice.

The Perfect Graduation Gift?

As millennials are working toward their degrees in college, they live with what they deem inadequacies during these years. Because of busy schedules and responsibilities, they simply cannot research and remedy their issues, whether it be getting to a healthy weight or reducing acne.

Parents see their hard work and often reward their students proudly when they graduate. Recently, however, more parents are rewarding their grads with plastic surgery. Parents often hope that it will give these students a confidence boost before they launch into their careers.

CYCLIC VOMITING SYNDROME: IT'S AS TERRIBLE AS IT SOUNDS

According to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, young people between the ages of 1936 constituted over 17 percent of cosmetic surgeries in 2016.

Several surgeons and doctors in New York and California are attesting to this new trend as well. Dermatologist Whitney Bowe sees many parents giving their graduates CoolSculpting sessions, a procedure meant to sculpt and freeze fat.

For reconstructive surgeon Dara Liotta, rhinoplasty is a popular gift, helping graduates reconstruct their noses. While some young people do actually require the plastic surgery, most are simply seeking a renewed identity before hitting the workforce.

KEEP THE BABY FOOD DIET FOR BABIES

Is Plastic Surgery a Good Idea?

While millennials and their parents might consider plastic surgery a relatively safe procedure, they should realize that it is still surgery. All surgeries come with risk.

Here are just a few risks that anyone considering plastic surgery should understand:

1. Scarring

Most people who get plastic surgery are desiring an improved look, but all surgery causes some scarring. In some cases, other people can plainly see the scarring involved, undermining the reason for the surgery in the first place.

2. Dissatisfaction

While plastic surgeons do have great skill, patients always run the risk of changing their look and not liking the end result. They may have unrealistic expectations about how theyre going to look, although most surgeons will discuss this risk before surgery. Once the patients have undergone cosmetic surgery, they will likely never be able to return to their former look.

3. Reaction to Anesthesia

Occasionally, patients who undergo surgery will not realize that they are allergic to anesthesia. This scenario is quite rare, but it does happen.

In addition, patients with underlying medical conditions, whether known or unknown, will have an increased risk of reacting to the anesthesia. The type of reaction usually depends upon the procedure and the specific underlying condition, but it can include blood clots, heart issues, and seizures.

4. Infection

Another potential risk is infection. Again, risk for infection comes with any surgery, but millennials undergoing cosmetic procedures are opening themselves up to this risk unnecessarily. An infection could result in the surgeon re-opening the incision or some other medical procedure to fight off the bacteria.

Why Young People Should Avoid Plastic Surgery

From a mental and medical standpoint, college grads should avoid plastic surgery. Many times, they can seek other treatments for their cosmetic issues or learn to love the body they have. They need to know that surgery will not necessarily fix any emotional or psychological trauma involved with their perceived physical inadequacies.

SHOULD YOU BE EATING ORGANS?

In fact, several studies in the last few decades show that suicide rates are actually higher in women who have had breast augmentation surgery. Also, people who have issues with self-esteem, anxiety, and depression have a greater chance of dissatisfaction with the results.

Instead of jumping into a cosmetic procedure, parents and grads should consider all the physical and emotional risks involved and make the best decision from there. These young people show beauty as they are already, and they should learn to embrace it.

This article first appeared on AskDrManny.com.
An Indiana toddler was declared brain-dead after a caregiver allegedly strapped him into a car seat improperly, causing the youngster to stop breathing, his family claimed.

Major Maxie's father found his 17-month-old son slumped over in a car seat last Wednesday when a caregiver from Lineline Youth and Family Services dropped him off at his home, Jackie Smith, the grandmother, told Fox 59. The caregiver picked the child up from his mother's house in Noblesville and was dropping the child off with his father for a supervised visit. She reportedly came out of the car and told the father she had a "surpise" for him.

INDIANA TODDLER DIES FROM SUSPECTED TICK BITE INFECTION, FAMILY SAYS

Maxie's father began administering CPR when he realized the toddler wasn't breathing. Paramedics arrived and rushed him to the hospital.

"The doctor stated he was without oxygen to the brain for 30 minutes," Smith told Fox 59.

The Maxie family claimed the caregiver failed to properly fasten the boy in the seat which stopped the flow of oxygen to his lungs. Doctors could not detect any brain activity in him and declared him brain-dead days after the tragic incident, the family said.

The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department and Indiana Department of Child Services told the news station they are investigating the incident.

4 DEAD, DOZENS HOSPITALIZED IN MASSIVE OVERDOSE, GEORGIA AUTHORITIES SAY

Lifeline Youth and Family Services did not immediately answer Fox News' request for a statement. CEO Mark Terrell told Fox 59 that the organization is also investigating the incident.

"First and foremost, this is a tragedy. Second is: Our prayers go out to that family and everybody involved," Terrell told the station. "The issue right now is again is to determine what happened and so that it never happens again."

The caregiver was suspended with pay.

Click here for more from Fox 59.
Ever waste time worrying about how your stomach looks in clothes? One body-positive blogger wants you to stop fretting and instead embrace your visible tummy outline.

In a recent Instagram post, @_selfloveclub_ dished out some excellent advice about throwing out your preconceived notions of whats beautiful when it comes to our bodies.

Cheers to a summer of rocking clothing that give you a visible tummy outline. Cheers to not giving a sh** what people think about your body or the way you dress, she writes, alongside a picture of herself wearing a crop-top and a body-hugging skirt.

The blogger and mental health advocate, who goes by the name of Positive Vibes, uses her Instagram as a platform to encourage followers to embrace all shapes and sizes as beautiful. Shes also spoken out about being bullied and learning to ignore the negative comments.

WOMAN SHARES PHOTO OF HER BLOATED BELLY TO PROVE HOW NORMAL IT IS

Don't let others affect your happiness and self worth. Bellies are cute and worth showing off, she writes in her post.

She goes on to remind people to wear whatever they feel like, no matter what others are telling them. Cheers to embracing what we've been told not to wear because it doesn't flatter our body type.

Many people are applauding the bloggers post, commenting on how inspiring her message is.

Thank you so much for being a motivation for women of every body size. Your posts fill me with joy and confidence that I've been searching, @selenal29 writes.

Another user wrote about her struggle with an eating disorder and how @_selfloveclub_s posts have helped her change her perspective.

FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWS

You have no idea how much I needed thisI am still dealing with some disordered eating and I right now I'm still not really be 100% comfortable with myself but seeing things like this plus other people celebrating their bodies and their health has really helped me & my confidence. and spurred a huge change in my thinking. You are beautiful and I can't thank you enough for this post , @n_wheatley commented.

@_selfloveclub_ ended her post by reminding everyone of an important message: Life is short, enjoy it.
As the media trumpeted news recently of the Congressional Budget Office score on the American Health Care Act, they largely ignored data released by the Department of Health and Human Services outlining the damage done by ObamaCare.

In my home state of North Carolina, average premiums on the individual market have gone up by $422 per month, or more than $5,000 a year, since 2013. Consider the impact on someone with a $50,000 salary. Making matters worse, 95 out of 100 counties in North Carolina have only one carrier  Blue Cross & Blue Shield, and even BCBS seriously considered pulling out last year. Aetna, Humana, and United Healthcare have also pulled out of ObamaCare markets nationwide.

The results in North Carolina are not anomalies. Nationwide, average premiums have gone up by nearly $3,000 under ObamaCare. Quite the opposite from what President Obama promised when he said a typical familys premiums would go down by $2,500.

As far as choices go, last year one third of all counties nationwide had only one insurer offering coverage through ObamaCare. That is nearly 2 million Americans who were only able to pick from one health insurer. And the situation is only getting worse. Recently, Blue Cross announced it will pull out of 32 counties in Kansas and Missouri, potentially leaving 25 of those counties with no coverage in 2018.

These are the facts of what we know has happened thanks to ObamaCare.

Ironically, while the Health and Human Services report is based on facts, the Congressional Budget Office report only provides unsupported conclusions, as it is based on highly questionable predictions.

With best efforts, the CBO report is elusive in its prediction of outcomes. Just take the CBOs word for it. On page 32, the CBO report states: estimates are inherently uncertain because the ways in which federal agencies, states, insurers, employers, individuals, doctors, hospitals, and other affected parties would respond to the changes made by the legislation are all difficult to predict.

The report continues: predicting the overall effects of the myriad ways that states could implement those waivers is especially difficult.

Their caution is well-founded. A review of the CBOs ObamaCare projections reveals how flawed their prediction models on health care have been. Discussions around these predictions include a lot of numbers, acronyms, and technical language, but anyone can see from the CBOs record that their analysis is far from gold.

? The CBO estimated 23 million people would enroll in the ObamaCare exchanges by 2016. The actual number was around 10 million.

? The CBO predicted 4 million people would enroll in an ObamaCare small business program. The actual number is 233,000.

? The CBO claimed the ObamaCare risk corridor program would result in a profit of $8 billion for the government. The program ended up with a multibillion dollar deficit because ObamaCare was never actuarially sound. To ensure this didnt result in a massive taxpayer bailout of big insurance companies, I wrote a letter to HHS last October, co-signed by 45 additional Members of Congress, emphasizing the full commitment of Congress to block any backdoor bailout of ObamaCare losses.

? The CBO projected Medicaid expansion would cost $42 billion. The actual cost was $68 billion.

These facts speak for themselves and beg for a reality check.

While the CBO score is of limited value, their report is clear that the American Health Care Act will reduce premiums and also reduce the deficit by $119 billion.

But setting aside projection models, at the heart of the debate over ObamaCare is a fundamental question regarding the federal governments role in health care. Should the government require every individual to buy health insurance? Of course not, and naturally, when you repeal a mandate to purchase something, fewer folks will ultimately buy it.

The ObamaCare approach - top-down, one-size-fits-all health care for everyone - clearly has not worked. The result has been higher premiums, higher deductibles and fewer choices.

The American Health Care Act approach, on the other hand, gives states flexibility and puts patients back in control of their health care. This will allow Americans to choose the coverage best for them and their family.

The Senate will surely make its changes to the bill, and the House will certainly have our say on those changes, but Republicans are united in our fundamental principles for health care reform. We need to rescue our health care system from the ObamaCare death spiral and establish patient-centered, market-driven solutions to lower costs while protecting those with pre-existing conditions. The American Health Care Act will deliver on these principles.
Editor's note: The following column originally appeared on NewsBusters.org.

Not long after top-secret documents from the National Security Agency made their way onto the Internet news site The Intercept on Monday, the Justice Department arrested NSA contractor Reality Winner.

The 25-year-old Air Force veteran worked on a military base in Georgia, but online she had a long history of being heavily anti-Trump, an apparent social justice warrior, and a supporter of Iran over the U.S. During their evening broadcasts, the Big Three Networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) either played down her political attitudes, or outright ignored them as they reported on what she did.

During his report on NBC Nightly News, Justice Correspondent Pete Williams passed along her familys claim that she wasn't highly political, and anchor Lester Holt claimed her motive is a mystery. But in reality, Winner was anything but silent about her political views.

***Caution, Winner's social media posts contain very strong language***

In a tweet she wrote earlier this year, she smeared Trump, saying: the most dangerous entry to this country was the orange fascist we let into the White House.

She had tweeted profanities targeting Trump, such as #F*ckingWall, #TrumpIsAC**t, and she tweeted the anti-Trump rallying cry of #notmypresident. Winner also was a supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement and had said on Twitter that being white is terrorism.

And in a response to Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, who said We will never use our weapons against anyone, except in self-defense, Winner proclaimed her support for Iran, writing: There are many Americans protesting U.S. govt aggression towards Iran. If our Tangerine in Chief declares war, we stand with you!

The closest Williams came to reporting Winners left-wing ideology was a mention about how on Twitter, she's no fan of Donald Trump, once calling him an orange fascist. But he played a clip of her mother, Billie Winner-Davis defending her daughter. She is a good person. She volunteers, she does whatever she can to make the community and the world better, she told the press.

On the CBS Evening News, Chief White House Correspondent Major Garrett merely brushed over her anti-Trump hatred. Winner, whose social media postings sharply criticized President Trump, faces up to 10 years in prison, he said.

Garrett followed that up with a clip of Winner's stepfather, saying: She's dedicated, you know, to trying to make the world a better place. CBS framed the story as Trump cracking down on government leaks. "Well, President Trump promised to crack down and now a government contractor has been charged with leaking about Russian interference with the U.S. election," bemoaned anchor Scott Pelley with the headline "Leak Crackdown" behind him.

ABCs World News Tonight ignored Winners political leanings all together, but on four different times, they mentioned that she was a veteran. Reality Leigh Winner, an NSA linguist trained in Farsi and Pashto, who received an Air Force commendation medal, described by family as a patriot, reported Justice Correspondent Pierre Thomas.

Winners social media accounts were crawling with her radical political posts, but Thomas couldnt be bothered to report on it. Instead, he was more interested in her workout and yoga videos on Facebook. A young woman into fitness, seen here on Facebook discussing yoga instruction and competing in weightlifting, he noted.

And for the Spanish-language networks, Univision also failed to report Winners radical left-wing ideology. Meanwhile, on Telemundo, they thought it wise to not report on Winner nor the NSA leaks altogether.

Winners political philosophy should have been a major part of the story because it can explain why she leaked classified secrets. But by omitting it from their reports, or playing it down, they falsely painted her as an apolitical person doing it for a just cause when she was likely doing it to hurt Trump. And that makes us all Losers.

Nicholas Fondacaro is a media analyst for NewsBusters and the Media Research Center.
Seventy-five years ago this week, American pilot "Dusty" Kleiss began a near-vertical dive aimed the Japanese aircraft carrier Kaga, 20,000 feet below. Seconds later, the smoldering Kaga was crippled by Dustys perfectly-placed bomb; at that momentalmost six months after the tragedy of Pearl Harbor--the course of World War II began to change. Now, Kleiss has published his memoirs, Never Call Me a Hero, co-written with Timothy and Laura Orr, who reflect here on the Battle of Midway and their collaboration with one the battles decisive participants.

On June 4-7, 1942, two U.S. Navy task forces won an unexpected victory in the waters near Midway Atoll, sinking four Japanese aircraft carriers and turning the tide of the Pacific War. Americas aviators paid a high price for that victory. When the echoes of combat subsided, American forces counted up 189 missing aviators. Lieutenant (junior grade) Norman Jack Kleiss, a dive bomber pilot attached to USS Enterprises Scouting Squadron Six (VS-6), was one of the lucky few to survive. Known as Dusty to his friends, the twenty-six-year-old Kansas pilot had quite a story to tell. He had participated in every air operation launched by his carrier and he had helped sink two aircraft carriers and one cruiser. Dusty was one of the few Battle of Midway veterans to live into the twenty-first-century. Toward the end of his life, he felt the urge to tell his tale in full and leave behind his account for future generations.

For six months before the Battle of Midway, Dusty and his comrades trained relentlessly, preparing for the possibility of war with the Empire of Japan. When the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Dustys squadron was caught in the fray, losing four pilots and six gunners. For the next three months, USS Enterprises air group battled above tiny enemy-held islands: the Marshall Islands, Wake Island, and Marcus Island. These battles were filled with close calls, steep dives over enemy ships, hostile antiaircraft fire, and intimidating Japanese fighter planes.

Dustys greatest challenge came on the morning of June 4, 1942, when his squadron searched for Japanese carriers sailing northwest of Midway Atoll. After an exhaustive five-hour search, at 10:20 A.M., thirty-one dive bombers belonging to Scouting Six and its sister squadron, Bombing Six, dived on the Japanese carriers Kaga and Akagi. Dustys bomb was one of four to strike Kaga that morning, sending it to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean along with 811 of its crew.

On the afternoon of June 4, Dusty accompanied a force of 24 dive bomber crews on a mission to sink another enemy carrier, IJN Hiryu. At 5:00 P.M., Enterprises dive bomber pilots reprised their success, putting five bombs into this carrier. Dusty scored the second hit, which ultimately sent this, the fourth Japanese aircraft carrier in a single day, to the bottom. He flew on two more missions over the next two days, and on June 6, he made another direct hit, this time on the cruiser Mikuma. Dusty was the only American pilot during the Battle of Midway to score three direct hits.

The Battle of Midway was Dustys last battle. After his carrier returned to Pearl Harbor, the Navy sent him home to train dive bomber pilots. In November, the Secretary of the Navy awarded him the Navy Cross for his actions at Midway. Dusty spent another twenty years in the Navy, serving as a member of the Bureau of Aeronautics and a staff officer for the Atlantic Fleet before retiring as a captain in 1962. He lived a full century, leaving this world on April 22, 2016.

In his later years, Dusty often pondered his role in the Battle of Midway. He disliked being called a hero. In his opinion, he only did what he had trained to do, nothing more. However, he hoped that Americans would remember the service rendered by his squadron and the other dive bomber pilots who fought during those dark days in early 1942. Dusty often said his comradesparticularly those who dieddelivered the crucial victory in the Navys hour of need: Each one of them, I know, did their best. Some of them won medals, some of them were not really known at all. But each one of them did it for their country.

When we first met Dusty years ago, he wasnt sure he wanted to share his story with the world. But after much soul-searching, he agreed, saying he owed it to his friendsthose who died in the warto tell their story on their behalf. He insisted that he was no hero himself, but simply a regular person doing the tasks for which he had been trained.

We titled the book Never Call Me a Hero because Dusty wanted to be remembered as an ordinary man, even if he accomplished extraordinary things. He spent the final five years of his life working closely with us, editing chapters and adding stories, making his account personal and reflective. He focused not only on his time in battle, but also on the story of his love with Jean, his girlfriend, whom he married one month after Midway. He told us about the friends he lost, the mistakes he made, and the many successes for which he held enormous pride.

With Dustys book  and on this important historic milestone  we hope readers will remember the sacrifices made by him and the other daring carrier aviators who fought in the Pacific War and appreciate their amazing deeds.
Inside the Beltway, the lions of media and politics have wound themselves to a state of near hysteria over former FBI Director James B. Comeys appearance before the Senate Intelligence Committee Thursday morning. But those expecting explosive political revelations may be disappointed if Comey follows the law and the rules and regulations governing his testimony.

Various Justice Department and FBI officials have said their investigation of possible Russian involvement in our election is ongoing. [Note: to date, no one has produced any evidence that anyone in the Trump administration engaged in any type of collusion with Russian officials. Moreover, former Obama Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson has stated that DHS saw no evidence that hacking by any actor altered the ballot count or any cyber actions that deprived people of voting. So it seems there was no actual interference with the election process.]

But, everyone should understand that as the former head of the FBI, Comey cannot reveal the details of an ongoing investigation. That rule is in place to prevent testimony that might damage an investigation and potential prosecution as well as the reputations of individuals who are being targeted by the government.

All of these exemptions mean that Comey would be committing a serious breach of the rules if he reveals the kind of details about the Russian investigation that the press is apparently hungering for.

That is why, for example, the federal Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. 552, has a huge exemption that allows the government to avoid publicly disclosing any records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes if such disclosure (A) could reasonably be expected to interfere with law enforcement proceedings, (B) would deprive a person of a right to a fair trial or an impartial adjudication, (C) could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy, or would reveal confidential sources or law enforcement techniques and procedures.

All of these exemptions mean that Comey would be committing a serious breach of the rules if he reveals the kind of details about the Russian investigation that the press is apparently hungering for.

The key issue that has the news media salivating over Thursdays hearing is the question of obstruction of justice: Did President Trump violate the law and order James Comey to end the investigation of Michael Flynn?

The New York Times reported on May 16 that Comey had written a memorandum to the file (known in Washington circles as a CYA memo) claiming that in a February meeting in the Oval Office, Trump asked Comey if he could let this go, referring to the Flynn investigation. Comeys written testimony, released on Wednesday, claims that Trump told Comey at a dinner in January that he needs loyalty.

Of course, the problem with the New York Times story is that Comey was asked under oath in a Senate hearing in early May whether any higher ups had asked him to halt his FBI investigation. His answer to Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) was that it had not happened. In fact, Comey said, It would be a big deal to tell the FBI to stop doing something. That had never happened in his experience.

If Comey now suddenly claims that he was asked to stop the investigation, he has a real problem: his new sworn testimony would contradict his previous sworn testimony. That would be difficult to explain away.

Reporters and others are also throwing around the term obstruction of justice without apparently knowing very much about it. The federal code contains 22 different statutes banning various types of behavior considered to be obstruction of justice. They range from attempts to influence jurors to witness tampering.

The only provision that comes even marginally close to the conversation that the New York Times describes is 18 U.S.C. 1503. The second half of this statute prohibits anyone from corruptly, or by threats or force, or by any threatening letter or communication from attempting to influence, obstruct, or impede, the due administration of justice.

While that is very broad language, paraphrasing James Comey when he closed the Clinton email investigation, I dont think any reasonable prosecutor would take this case. While this entire episode may well cause the president political problems, it is quite a stretch, at least at this point, to claim that this constitutes obstruction of justicea crime that is usually accompanied by explicit threats or bribes or by the willful destruction of evidence.

To begin with, it would be the presidents word vs. the FBI directors word on what happened in the Oval Office. Even if true, the president telling Comey he hoped the director could let it go is not an order to drop an investigation. It can be reasonably construed as the president thinking there is no reasonable basis to believe that there had been a violation of the law and therefore no basis for the FBI continuing its investigation. Given the ambiguity of this, any good defense attorney would likely tear the prosecution to shreds. And Comey would have to explain why he changed his story when he was testifying before Congress.

And loyalty? Presidents ask for and should get loyalty from all of their subordinates in the executive branch. A general conversation about the importance of loyalty does not come even close to being an attempt to obstruct or impede the administration of justice.

All this could change if more evidence is produced about what actually happened. But based on what we know now, there does not seem to be enough evidence that a prosecutor could take to court. And Comeys testimony Thursday is unlikely to change that.
The next time your teenager whines that schoolwork is stressing him or her out, mention gaokao. Its a one-word explanation for why China is eating our school lunch.

Gaokao is the three-day period each year when high school seniors in China take exams to see if they will be admitted to university. Put simply, the rest of their lives will be determined by their results.

Students study for months to prepare for the exams, which are taking place this week across China. A poor score, for whatever reason, means the student will probably never be admitted to any of the 2,200 Chinese universities, where some 20 million students are enrolled.

The pressure generated by gaokao is enormous and the consequences are for a lifetime, says Bill Bennett, a former U.S. Secretary of Education who is now chairman of the group Conservative Leaders for Education. Could we learn something from China that might help improve our educational standards? Absolutely.

How big a deal is gaokao? Tens of thousands of neighbors gather around buses ferrying the departing students from their towns and villages to wish them well. To create better conditions for study, police enforce no honking traffic laws. Dancing in village squares, a popular activity in China, is suspended. And residents whose televisions are too loud get warning visits from the authorities.

We know how significant the gaokao is to the students, so we suspended the dancing to show our support, said Jiang Yanping of Hunan province, in an interview with the China Daily newspaper.

Its no secret that Asian societies put a high value on education. In the U.S., 93 percent of the 19 million students who identify themselves as Asian graduate from high school on time, compared with 83 percent of the general population.

Its so much pressure, says Peggy Hsu, a New Yorker who grew up in Taiwan, which has its own gaokao tradition. If you get sick, or dont do well on those tests, youre done. Gaokao relies on memorization. But it doesnt encourage kids to solve problems or think for themselves. In America, you have the SAT and ACT tests, but thats just one factor that schools look at. You might have leadership qualities, or do a lot of out of school activities.

Not to mention that all-important politically correct factor  diversity.

Compare Chinas reverential attitude toward education with the U.S., where many high schools are so dangerous students pass through metal detectors every day. Or in places like Reading, Pa., where, as Fox News reported this week, a lawsuit charged that phantom teachers are paid hundreds of thousands of dollars  not to teach, but to work for the teachers union.

Even worse is the situation on American college campuses, where students seem to think their parents sent them not to get an education, but to protest against President Trump. They riot if a conservative is invited to speak, and throw rocks at police who are trying to protect them.

The lefts priorities are not about education at all, says Bennett. For them, its about civil liberties and civil rights. Its about establishing justice in the schools.

Thats not a winning formula, except for China.
James Comey has no choice.

The former FBI Director must say President Trump did not attempt to obstruct justice. To testify otherwise will put Comey himself in serious legal jeopardy. He would, in effect, be confessing to a crime.

As I explained in a column three weeks ago, the law requires Comey to immediately inform the Department of Justice of any effort to obstruct justice by any person, even the President of the United States. Failure to do so could result in criminal charges under a statute known as misprision of felony (18 USC 4).

You can expect Comey to trash Trump like yesterdays garbage when he testifies before Congress. He will disparage the man who fired him, but he cannot accuse him of obstruction without risking his own potential indictment.

Lets consider the witness. Comey is the guy who managed to mangle the Hillary Clinton email scandal, contort the law beyond all recognition, and usurp the authority of the Attorney General in his de facto dismissal of the case. In the process, he shredded the credibility of the FBI. His ignorance of the law is so conspicuous, he might have a tough time landing a job at a legal aid clinic.

Nonetheless, Democratic lawmakers who loathed Comey a mere seven months ago and suggested he should be unceremoniously removed, will now embrace him like hes their BFF. But thats politics.

Lets examine the law.

Comeys Legal Duty

The law imposes an affirmative duty on federal officials to report knowledge of a felony (here, obstruction) to the appropriate authorities. The language of the statute applies directly to Comeys situation:

Whoever, having knowledge of the actual commission of a felony cognizable by a court of the United States, conceals and does not as soon as possible make known the same to some judge or other person in civil or military authority under the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.

Normally, the statute is used only against those who have a special duty to report a crime, such as government officials like the FBI Director. Active concealment is an element of the crime. For example, suppressing an incriminating memorandum would be concealment because the memo would be evidence of an alleged crime. It is the equivalent of aiding and abetting a criminal act, acting as an accessory after the fact.

Did Comey alert his superiors at the DOJ or give them his memo? We do not know for certain. It is a question he will surely be asked when he testifies before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

But no evidence has been produced thus far to suggest he told anyone other than a few colleagues at the FBI with whom he shared his memorandum memorializing his conversation with President Trump at the White House on February 14th. The words of that memo were leaked to the New York Times only after Comey was fired from his position. Whoever leaked it violated the law.

Importantly, at a congressional hearing three weeks ago, Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, who served under Comey as his second-in-command, testified, There has been no effort to impede our investigation to date. Presumably, that would include the president.

All of which suggests that Comey will now be forced to testify that while he may have thought the presidents language was troubling or uncomfortable, it was too vague, ambiguous or elliptical to rise to the level of obstruction.

If that is Comeys testimony, as it must be, then he committed no crime because he was under no legal duty to report the conversation to anyone.

In essence, his only way out is to clear President Trump of the dubious accusations he tried to obstruct justice.

The Conversation

According to the initial report by the Times, Trump said to his then-Director the following:

I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.

The operative term in those sentences is the repeated use of the word, hope. Hoping or wishing for an outcome is not the same as directing or ordering someone to end an investigation and/or clear a suspect.

It is an aspirational expression --hoping events will turn out well for Michael Flynn who was fired as the presidents National Security Adviser. Its like saying, I hope it doesnt rain tomorrow. It may rain. Hoping it will not is nothing more than a desire or wish.

By contrast, if the president had said, End the investigation and exonerate Flynn or you are fired that might, arguably, constitute obstruction. It is an edict or mandate to stop something.

Bear in mind that terminating the FBI Director is not, by itself, obstruction. As Comey himself admitted in a letter to his colleagues, the president has the constitutional authority to fire him for any reason or no reason at all.

In point of fact, the president has the constitutional right to tell anyone in the executive branch of government what to do and what not to do. Previous presidents have taken an activist role in directing the FBI to investigate certain matters and to refrain from investigating others. That is yet another legal wrinkle which few have considered, but constitutional scholars are well aware.

Obstruction Defined

Obstruction of justice is a specific intent crime. It is an easy accusation to throw around, but exceedingly difficult to prove in a court of law. Courts have interpreted it quite narrowly.

Under 18 USC 1505 and subsequent sections, prosecutors must prove the president corruptly endeavored to influence, obstruct, or impede the due and proper administration of the law.

The key word is corruptly. What does it mean? Another statute, 18 USC 1515(b), defines it as:

Acting with an improper purpose, including making a false or misleading statement, or withholding, concealing, altering, or destroying a document or other information.

The presidents actions do not come close to satisfying the requirements of acting corruptly. No false statements, no withholding or concealing, and no altering or destroying evidence have been alleged by anyone.

In 2005, the Supreme Court further explained corruptly this way: wrongful, immoral, depraved or evil (Arthur Andersen v. U.S.). Okay, not much help, but you get the picture. The presidents actions would have to be sufficiently pernicious as to offend human sensibilities.

Again, hoping that someone can let it go is hardly a wicked or malevolent act as the law requires.

President Trumps specific intent when he uttered those words to Comey can only be known by the man who made the statement, not by the man who heard it. Yes, jurors are often asked to infer intent from the words that were spoken. And Comey will likely be asked to explain how he interpreted the words.

Which brings us full circle to Comeys dilemma. How can he say he thought the president was attempting to obstruct justice without incriminating himself in the crime of misprision of felony? He cannot. Which is precisely why Comey will testify it was not obstruction.

The law has a curious way of presenting predicaments that demand the truth.
Lovers of socialism didn't like my column last week. I wrote that Venezuela's collapse shows the cluelessness of celebrities like Michael Moore, Oliver Stone and Noam Chomsky, who'd praised Venezuela's leader.

Chomsky called me "an utter coward" for mocking him and said he expected "an abject apology."

He won't get one. As Venezuelan-born filmmaker Thor Halvorssen puts it, "Chomsky provided cover for a regime where 11,500 infants died from lack of medical care."

But assigning blame matters less than what should be done now. After the regime collapses, what comes next?

How about trying capitalism?

That's what Erick Brimen suggests. Brimen grew up in Venezuela, then moved to America, where he started NeWAY Capital, a firm dedicated to creating what he calls "prosperity cities," small places that create "the environment for success."

Venezuela desperately needs that. "Last week I helped my mother escape," writes Brimen. "The violence is getting too intense, and, in one of the most agriculturally rich countries in the world, it is ... increasingly difficult to find food."

Capitalists like Brimen aren't just motivated by greed. They want to rescue others from the tragedy of centrally planned economies.

"Living in Venezuela made me realize the traditional approach to politics is too often ineffective," explains Brimen. "If successful countries, like Venezuela and Greece, can be turned into basket cases by demagogues promising things they can't deliver, we have a systemic problem. ... (W)e must find a new approach."

His plan: Because it's usually impossible to convince central planners to give up power, just get them to give up a little bit of power, in one small location at a time, as an experiment.

Similar ideas have been pushed with different names -- free trade zones, empowerment zones, charter cities -- but I like Brimen's term: prosperity cities.

These are small places where government leaves people mostly free to pursue their own interests. Government keeps the peace, protects people's bodies and property, but doesn't impose high taxes or burdensome rules.

Hong Kong is a prosperity city. It was once little more than a rock in the sea near China, but because the island was ruled by the British when Communists took over the rest of China, Hong Kong became a haven for freedom-seeking people.

The British enforced rule of law -- they punished people who stole or killed. But then they did something unusual, something wonderful, something politicians rarely do: They left people alone.

By doing that, the British allowed Chinese entrepreneurs to try new things. Free people created astounding wealth. By the end of the 20th century, Hong Kong had a higher per capita income than Great Britain itself.

So we know what works: rule of law, plus economic freedom. Yet billions remain in poverty because politicians won't allow them that freedom.

In poor countries, bureaucrats micromanage almost everything. Writes Brimen, "Resolving a dispute in Sub-Saharan Africa takes 655 days. It is no surprise Sub-Saharan Africa has remained mired in poverty."

Today Dubai could be called a prosperity city. Dubai is not free in all the ways I would like, but because the Dubai International Financial Centre is mostly free, it became rich in a decade.

Even the Communist Chinese experiment with free zones. "Shenzhen, for example, grew from a small fishing village to a metropolitan area with 16 million people largely because of the creation of a special economic zone."

Now Brimen wants to replicate that. "We target uninhabited areas near major population centers and infrastructure and collaborate with the host government to enact the necessary reforms for economic growth. ... Instead of riots, there would be festivals. Instead of empty supermarkets, there would be feasts."

Puerto Rico could host a prosperity city. Instead of wallowing in debt and begging the mainland for handouts, the people of Puerto Rico would teach the rest of us lessons.

Likewise, the United States could turn Guantanamo Bay into a prosperity city, showing the Cuban people the power of freedom.

If freedom and markets worked well for Hong Kong, and a poor country once called colonial America, then why not liberate the whole world?
It was way back in 1930 when the good people of Neosho, Missouri installed a giant, lighted cross in the Big Spring Park.

The cross, about 60-feet long, was the centerpiece of the towns annual Easter sunrise services. And while the sunrise services ended many years ago, the cross remained.

Click here to join Todds newsletter: a must-read for Conservative Patriots!

For the past 87 years, not a single person in the community complained about the emblem  until last May.

Thats when the town received a letter from an out-of-town group of atheists, agnostics and freethinkers. They demanded the cross be removed from public property.

To continue reading Todd's column from ToddStarnes.com, click here.
Then-FBI Director James Comey asked Attorney General Jeff Sessions to keep him from being alone with President Donald Trump, The New York Times and Associated Press reported Tuesday night.

The Times, which first reported on Comey's request to Sessions, said it came after Trump had asked Comey in February to end an investigation into Trump's first national security adviser, Michael Flynn.

According to the paper, Comey pulled Sessions aside and told him that private interactions between the president and the FBI director were inappropriate. Sessions reportedly responded that he could not guarantee that Trump would not seek out Comey again.

The Times report, which cited current and former law enforcement officials, added that Comey did not specify his issue with Trump in the conversation with Sessions.

Separately, The Washington Post reported Tuesday that Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told associates that Trump had asked him in March if he could intervene with Comey to get the FBI to back off the Flynn angle in its counter-intelligence probe of alleged links between Russian officials and the Trump campaign.

The latest revelations came out days before Comey makes a highly-anticipated appearance before the Senate intelligence committee  and as the White House and its allies craft a strategy aimed at undermining the former FBI Director's credibility. Both White House officials and an outside group that backs Trump plan to hammer Comey in the coming days for misstatements he made about Democrat Hillary Clinton's emails during his last appearance on Capitol Hill.

An ad created by the pro-Trump Great America Alliance -- a nonprofit "issues" group that isn't required to disclose its donors -- casts Comey as a "showboat" who was "consumed with election meddling" instead of focusing on combating terrorism.

The Republican National Committee has been preparing talking points ahead of the hearing, which will be aired live on multiple TV stations. An RNC research email Monday issued a challenge to the lawmakers who will question Comey. There's bipartisan agreement, the email says, that Comey "needs to answer a simple question about his conversations with President Trump: If you were so concerned, why didn't you act on it or notify Congress?"

Comey's testimony before the Senate intelligence committee marks his first public comments since he was abruptly ousted by Trump on May 9. Since then, Trump and Comey allies have traded competing narratives about their interactions. The president asserted that Comey told him three times that he was not personally under investigation, while the former director's associates allege Trump asked Comey to shut down the investigation into Flynn, who was fired as national security adviser because he misled the White House about his ties to Russia.

Democrats have accused Trump of firing Comey to upend the FBI's Russia probe, which focused in large part on whether campaign aides coordinated with Moscow to hack Democratic groups during the election. Days after Comey's firing, the Justice Department appointed a special counsel, former FBI Director Robert Mueller, to oversee the federal investigation.

Despite the mounting legal questions now shadowing the White House, Trump has needled Comey publicly. In a tweet days after the firing, he appeared to warn Comey that he might have recordings of their private discussions, something the White House has neither confirmed nor denied.

White House officials appear eager to keep the president away from television and Twitter Thursday, though those efforts rarely succeed. White House spokesman Sean Spicer said the president plans to attend an infrastructure summit in the morning, then address the Faith and Freedom Coalition's "Road to Majority" conference at 12:30 p.m.

"The president's got a full day on Thursday," Spicer said.

The White House had hoped to set up a "war room" stocked with Trump allies and top-flight lawyers to combat questions about the FBI and congressional investigations into possible ties between the campaign and Russia. However, that effort has largely stalled, both because of a lack of decision-making in the West Wing and concerns among some potential recruits about joining a White House under the cloud of investigation.

Click for more from The New York Times.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.


Voters on Tuesday chose a wealthy former Goldman Sachs executive and Republican Gov. Chris Christie's top deputy to run to replace the unpopular governor.

Democrat Phil Murphy and Republican Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno won in the first statewide primary election since President Donald Trump took office. They will face off Nov. 7 in one of only two governor's races this year, along with Virginia, with Democrats hopeful their promised anti-Trump agenda and voter registration advantage will propel them to victory and jump-start a 2018 congressional comeback.

The election comes as Trump administration developments swamp headlines, spurring Murphy to lash out at the Republican president and wedging Guadagno between an unpopular White House and a governor of whom most voters disapprove.

Murphy is a former Obama administration ambassador to Germany. He poured more than $20 million into the contest and won endorsements from the state's powerful county political machines. Guadagno has served as Christie's top deputy since they were elected in 2009.

The race to take the New Jersey governor's office back from a Republican comes as Democrats nationally weigh whether distancing themselves from Wall Street will help them counter Trump and his populist Republican allies. Murphy blurs the line between establishment and insurgent just as Democrats reckon with whether their best candidates should come from within or outside the traditional party structure.

Christie remained neutral during the campaign but said Tuesday that he voted for Guadagno. He has earlier said that he would campaign if asked, but it's unclear whether his assistance would help or hurt, since about three-quarters of voters disapprove of his job performance

Murphy withstood attacks from five opponents over his time at Goldman Sachs. They compared him to members of Trump's administration who also worked there and former Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine, another Goldman Sachs alumnus who, like Murphy, donated to local Democratic parties.

Sharyn Kingston, 25, of Freehold, said she was wary of Murphy's "Goldman Sachs connections" but voted for him because he's best suited for the job and can win the election.

"I'm not an Occupy Wall Street type, but I am afraid of big money in politics, and he made it look like he was trying to buy the nomination," the legal secretary said.

John Parilla, 75, an immigration lawyer from Alpine, voted for Guadagno and said he likes the range of experience she brings to the job. He said he doesn't see her as a Christie clone but does see similarities between Murphy and Corzine.

Guadagno, who was twice elected on the ticket with the term-limited governor, has gone to great lengths to try to highlight their differences. Christie, who remained neutral during the campaign, said Tuesday that he voted for Guadagno.

"I've worked with her for eight years, and I believe that she's the best person in the Republican primary to represent the party in the fall and to retain the governorship," Christie said.

Guadagno defeated Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli, Nutley Commissioner Steve Rogers, Ocean County landscape business owner and actor Joseph "Rudy" Rullo and Atlantic County engineer Hirsh Singh.

Murphy faced challenges from former Teaneck firefighter Bill Brennan, one-time Clinton administration Treasury official Jim Johnson, state Sen. Ray Lesniak, Assemblyman John Wisniewski and Tenafly Councilman Mark Zinna.

Nancy Dhulipala, 49, of Alpine, works for a nonprofit focused on education for children with disabilities. She said that she voted for Murphy and that Trump had an effect on her decision because she hopes to see Democrats take control at the state level to provide a balance to what's going on in Washington. New Jersey's Legislature already is controlled by Democrats.

Dhulipala said she likes Trump's proposal to revamp the nation's air traffic control system but is "a little nervous" about other things.

"I'm just not very excited about how he pulled out of the (international) environmental accord," she said.

Democrats are favored in the general election, in part because of an 800,000-voter registration advantage and because of political headwinds stemming from Christie's and Trump's unpopularity.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., criticized President Trump on Fox News' "Special Report with Bret Baier" Tuesday night, saying Trump "created the conditions for a special counsel," and advised the president to "listen to your lawyers."

"I have seen no evidence of collusion between President Trump and the Russians, and Ive looked really close," Graham said. "But the reason we have a special counsel is [Trump] suggested through an interview with NBC that the reason he fired [FBI Director James] Comey was because [of] the Russian investigation."

TRUMP SAYS HE WAS GOING TO FIRE COMEY 'REGARDLESS OF RECOMMENDATION

"So, I would just say this, Mr. President, your words matter now," added Graham, addressing Trump rhetorically. "Youre no longer a candidate for office. Youre the President of the United States, and a lot of us want to help you. Help us help you."

Graham also addressed reports of increased friction between Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions stemming from Sessions' decision to recuse himself from overseeing the FBI's investigation into alleged ties between Russia and the Trump campaign.

"Jeff Sessions is a good man, Mr. President," Graham said. "He had to recuse himself. I know youre not a lawyer. There was no way Jeff Sessions could continue to preside over this investigation, given the role he played in the campaign."

"He is a good man, and you need to listen to your lawyers, Mr. President," Graham went on. "Dont get in the way of an investigation that can actually clear you."
Ex-FBI Director James Comey is set to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday and President Trumps rapid-response team is ready to go.

That team largely consists of Trump himself.

The president, who often has been described by top staff members as his own best spokesman, reportedly is considering live-tweeting during Comeys testimony. Further, Trump is set to speak to a group of religious conservatives shortly after the former FBI head begins his grilling on all things Trump and Russia.

Trump fired Comey on May 9, immediately prompting questions from critics on if the firing was motivated by the FBIs investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the U.S. presidential election. Detractors have asserted collusion may have occurred between the Kremlin and Team Trump  a charge Trump has vociferously denied and for which no evidence has been presented.

Trumps surrogates initially said Comey was fired following a recommendation from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, Comeys immediate superior, but Trump cast doubt on that explanation soon after.

He's a showboat, he's grandstander, the FBI has been in turmoil, Trump said of Comey in an interview with NBC. You know that, I know that. Everybody knows that.

Given that disconnect, Trump might be motivated to conduct his own damage control on Thursday. The news that Trump could live-tweet the hearing if he feels the need to respond was reported by The Washington Post on Tuesday, citing two White House sources.

This would be consistent with similar events in the past.

Trump previously had tweeted during then-Director Comeys May 3 testimony, writing under a video clip from the House Intelligence hearing: The NSA and FBI tell Congress that Russia did not influence the electoral process.

The tweet soon became a topic of discussion in the committee room, and Comey pushed back when asked about the accuracy of the tweet. He told lawmakers that despite Trump's claim, It certainly wasnt our intention to say that today, because we dont have any information on that subject and thats not something that was looked at.

During the presidential campaign, Trump also live-tweeted during Democratic debates and the Democratic National Convention. Trump has produced more than 35,000 tweets in the eight years since he joined Twitter  an average of about 11 messages per day.

Trump continues to make news in other ways, traveling the country this week to highlight his infrastructure push and domestic policy agenda.

Trump on Wednesday also announced his pick  over Twitter  to lead the FBI post-Comey: former assistant attorney general Christopher Wray. The news came not only a day ahead of Comeys testimony, but hours before another Senate hearing that included Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe and other top law enforcement and intelligence bosses.

Adding to his counter-programming, Trump is set to give the keynote speech at The Faith & Freedom Coalition on Thursday afternoon, a talk that will likely occur at the same time Comey is being grilled. Comeys testimony is slated to begin at 10 a.m. and the luncheon starts at 11:30 a.m.

In an interview last May on Fox News, Trump explained his personal strategy dealing with attacks -- "I'm a counter-puncher" -- which could signal his approach during what is expected to be a historic and widely watched hearing.

Though the White House has not stood up a so-called "war room" to specifically deal with Russia-related allegations, the president will have some outside help.

Great America Alliance began running the ad Showboat on Wednesday in a spot that questions the record of Comey, a press release from the group said. The ad was set to run on Fox News and CNN.

It's a shame we must devote time and attention to D.C. Insider James Comey, but its important to set the record straight in advance of and during his testimony, Senior Adviser Tomi Lahren said.

The ad highlights previously inaccurate testimony by Comey during the May 3 hearing before concluding: James Comey: just another DC insider only in it for himself.
Members of a congressional committee at a public hearing Wednesday blasted former President Barack Obama and his attorney general for allegedly covering up an investigation into the death of a Border Patrol agent killed as a result of a botched government gun-running project known as Operation Fast and Furious.

The House Oversight Committee also Wednesday released a scathing, nearly 300-page report that found Holders Justice Department tried to hide the facts from the loved ones of slain Border Patrol Brian Terry  seeing his family as more of a nuisance than one deserving straight answers  and slamming Obama's assertion of executive privilege to deny Congress access to records pertaining to Fast and Furious.

[Terrys death] happened on Dec. 14, 2010, and we still dont have all the answers, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, committee chairman, said of Terrys death. Brian Terrys family should not have to wait six years for answers.

Terry died in a gunfight between Border Patrol agents and members of a six-man cartel "rip crew," which regularly patrolled the desert along the U.S.-Mexico border looking for drug dealers to rob. The cartel member suspected of slaying the Border Patrol agent, Heraclio Osorio-Arellanes, was apprehended in April of this year by a joint U.S.-Mexico law enforcement task force.

Terrys death exposed Operation Fast and Furious, a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) operation in which the federal government allowed criminals to buy guns in Phoenix-area shops with the intention of tracking them as they were transported into Mexico. But the agency lost track of more than 1,400 of the 2,000 guns they allowed smugglers to buy. Two of those guns were found at the scene of Terry's killing.

More than five years after Brians murder, the Terry family still wonders about key details of Operation Fast and Furious, the committees report states. The Justice Departments obstruction of Congresss investigation contributed to the Terry familys inability to find answers.

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, testified Wednesday in front of the committee, accusing DOJ and ATF officials of obstructing the investigation and working to silence ATF agents who informed the Senate of Fast and Furious.

The Department of Justice and ATF had no intention of looking for honest answers and being transparent, said Grassley, now chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a staunch supporter of whistleblowers.

In fact, from the onset, bureaucrats employed shameless delay tactics to obstruct the investigation.

One of those silenced ATF agents, John Dodson, testified Wednesday that he remains in a state of purgatory since objecting to Fast and Furious and has been the subject of reprisals and ridicule at the agency.

That decision, the single act of standing up and saying, What we are doing is wrong instantly took my standing from being that of an agent of the government  to an enemy of the state, Dodson said. ATF and DOJ officials implemented an all-out campaign to silence and discredit me Suffice to say, the last six to seven years at ATF have not been the best for me or my career.

Grassley's and Dodson's testimony reinforced findings of the report, which states that the Justice Department knew before Terrys death that the ATF was walking firearms to Mexico and knew the day after the agents death that Fast and Furious guns were involved in the shootout -- despite denying these facts to the media. It goes on to state that the Justice Departments internal investigation focused more on spinning the story to avoid negative media coverage than looking into lapses by either the DOJ or ATF.

Several emails revealed in the report appear to indicate that some Justice Department staffers were working to keep information from political appointees at the department.

I don't want to jinx it but it really is astounding that the plan worked -- so far, former Deputy Attorney General James Cole wrote in an email to Holder, according to the report.

The report also says that Holders Justice Department stonewalled inquiries from Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and deceptively told him that the ATF makes every effort to interdict firearms purchased by straw buyers. The controversial act of straw purchases  where a person who is prohibited from buying firearms uses another person to buy a gun on his or her behalf  has been a popular method that Mexicos drug cartels use to obtain guns.

There are important reasons for not giving Grassley everything he is asking for: it would embolden him in future fights and would 'use up' a lot of the material that we will eventually need to release to (California Rep. Darrell) Issa . . . as the oversight struggle continues, the Office of Legislative Affairs Assistant Attorney General Ron Welch said in an email to DOJ colleagues.
The relationship between President Trump and his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, has become so frayed, Sessions recently suggested that he could resign from his post, multiple media reports said on Tuesday.

Trump reportedly turned down the offer. The reported offer was not a formal one, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Trump has been angry with Sessions-- one of his most vocal and earliest supporters-- ever since Sessions recused himself in March from the investigation into Russia's meddling in the 2016 presidential election and possible connections between Moscow and Trump campaign aides.

Sean Spicer, the top White House spokesman, declined to say Tuesday whether Trump has confidence in Sessions.

"I have not had that discussion with him," Spicer told reporters during a White House briefing, adding: "if I haven't had a discussion with him about a subject, I tend not to speak about it."

Charles Krauthammer, a contributor on Fox News, told Special Report that the last time Spicer said he did not speak to Trump about a member of his administration, then-FBI Director James Comey was fired days later.

This is really bad, Krauthammer said. He went on, If you cant absorb this one issue on which he disagrees and you have to get rid of him, no one is safe (in the White House).

ABC News reported that the frustrations between Trump and Sessions is mutual. The Justice Department declined to comment for the ABC report. FoxNews.com could not immediately confirm reports.

The New York Times, citing unnamed sources, reported that Sessions told Trump that he needed more freedom to do his job successfully and he could resign if that was what Trump wanted.

A source told the paper the conversation occurred right before Trumps overseas trip.

On Monday, Trump took to Twitter to publicly criticize the department's legal strategy in defending his proposed travel ban barring the entry of people from certain Muslim-majority countries.

"The Justice Dept. should have stayed with the original Travel Ban, not the watered down, politically correct version they submitted to S.C.," Trump tweeted Monday, ignoring the fact that he oversees the department and signed the second version of the ban.

"The Justice Dept. should ask for an expedited hearing of the watered down Travel Ban before the Supreme Court - & seek much tougher version!" he added.

Trump has denied any collusion with Russia, deriding the story as a "witch hunt" and "fake news" invented to explain away the Democrats' loss in November.

The New York Times reported Monday that Trump partially blames Sessions' decision to recuse himself from the investigation for the eventual appointment of a special counsel.

The Associated Press contributed to this report
President Trump on Tuesday reportedly suggested that solar panels could offset some of the costs to erect a border wall on the U.S.'s southern border.

Trump made the pitch on Tuesday during a meeting with congressional Republicans, two lawmakers who attended the meeting told The Wall Street Journal.

The details of the plan were still unclear, but the revenue from selling the solar power generated by the panels could help offset some of the construction costs.

I think its innovative, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., told the paper. To authorize it and to appropriate it wouldnt cost as much.

Solar panels and other forms of green energy are popular among those who strongly opposed Trumps decision to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris accord, according to The Wall Street Journal. However, most Democrats have been against Trumps key campaign promise of building a border wall.

Hes been looking at a lot of options and this is a new option that hes been looking at that sounds like its got real promise, House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., said.

Trumps wall hopes to deter the influx of illegal immigration and drug smuggling. Trump had also promised that Mexico would pay for the wall. But after receiving strong pushback from Mexican officials, Trump suggested the U.S. would pay for it upfront and Mexico would pay later.

As of now, Congress has not allocated any money for the construction of the border wall. Cost estimates range past $20 billion, but the White House had been seeking $1.4 billion as a down payment in the recently passed spending bill in order to start the process. Strong pushback from Congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle has left the walls future in doubt.

Trump said he would be willing to revisit getting money for the wall in September.

Click for more from The Wall Street Journal.
Two Democratic congressmen plan to draft articles of impeachment after accusing President Trump of obstruction of justice, despite a large swath of bipartisan lawmakers warning against a rush to judgment.

In a press conference Wednesday, Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, and Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., announced their intention to draft articles of impeachment.

The announcement came hours after four crucial intelligence witnesses testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee and fielded questions regarding the Russia probe and possible Trump campaign collusion, and the day before former FBI Director James Comey gives his long-awaited testimony.

In the spirit of keeping the republic, I have concluded that the president has obstructed justice and in so doing, the remedy for obstruction of justice is impeachment, Green said. The president will not be indicted while he is in office, and while there is some merit in talking about the judicial process, the impeachment process is the one that will bring him before the bar of justice.

Green added: I will file articles of impeachment to impeach President Donald J. Trump for obstruction of justice.

Sherman, who only became vocal on the matter Wednesday, told reporters, Im not going to be deterred.

If this were on the floor today, it would not pass, Sherman said. This is going to be a long process.

Green said that firing former FBI Director James Comey was obstruction of justice.

This will continue to be obstruction of justice regardless of testimony given by Mr. James Comey. This will remain obstruction of justice regardless of the findings of any investigation, he said.

Green first called for the presidents impeachment last month, just days after he fired Comey from leading the FBI, even calling for the process on the House floor.

While a small group of congressional Democrats joined in on Greens efforts, House Vice Democratic Caucus Chairwoman Linda Sanchez, D-Calif., suggested on Wednesday it was too early to begin impeachment.

The sentiment is that folks are waiting to have the process completed, Sanchez told Fox News on Wednesday. A majority of the caucus is of the opinion that we should let the investigation continue to its logical conclusion.

Last month, House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said no one should rush to embrace the most extraordinary remedy for removing a president.

Democratic Sens. Jon Tester of Montana and Claire McCaskill of Missouri both reiterated the importance of getting the facts first.

Thats why the FBI needs to do their job, once you get the facts, then you can make a good decision, Tester said. If you dont have facts, you dont make good decisions.

I dont think its time to talk about anything like that until we see the evidence, McCaskill told Fox News last month.

Other Democratic lawmakers who brought up the option are Reps. John Yarmuth, D-Ky., Mark Pocan, D-Wis., Jared Huffman, D-Calif., and Rep Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, who warned her constituents at a town hall last month that if Trump were successfully impeached, the problems dont go away because then you have a Vice President Pence who becomes President Pence.

Former Democratic Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich told Fox News last month that there was a danger in engaging in compulsive opposition.

Kucinich, who called for the impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney over the decision to go to war in Iraq, told Fox News that this is only an option after exhausting a number of other options.

It is destructive to America to proceed with an impeachment at this stage of the presidency Kucinich, a Fox News contributor, said last month. This is not the first thing you reach for, because when the first big move a party makes is towards impeachment, its very difficult for the American people to conclude that it is anything but a partisan issue.
President Trump on Wednesday said he intends to nominate former assistant attorney general Christopher Wray to be the next FBI director.

Wray, currently a litigation partner at King & Spalding, would replace Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, who took over when James Comey was fired by Trump in May.

I will be nominating Christopher A. Wray, a man of impeccable credentials, to be the new Director of the FBI. Details to follow, Trump tweeted.

The announcement came ahead of a Senate hearing where McCabe, among others, was set to testify. Fired FBI boss James Comey also is set to testify before a Senate committee on Thursday.

Wray will need Senate confirmation to take over the bureau.

"Chris Wray is an extraordinary person, possessing all the gifts necessary to be a great Director of the FBI," Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement. "I congratulate President Trump for choosing a leader of proven skill, independence, and integrity, a man in whom all Americans can have confidence."

Trump met with Wray on May 30, with Wray emerging as a late contender for the FBI job.

Former Sen. Joseph Lieberman had been seen as front-runner for the gig, but Lieberman took himself out of consideration after Trump hired Marc Kasowitz to defend him in any Russia-related investigations. Lieberman is senior counsel for the New York-based Kasowitz Benson Torres LLP.

McCabe was interviewed for the full-time job; however, he was never seen as a serious possibility given his wife's connections to Democratic Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe and his own relationship with Comey. A McAuliffe-linked group donated $500,000 to the Senate campaign of Jill McCabe.

Other candidates for the post included former FBI official Richard McFeely, FBI veteran John Pistole and ex-Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating, who all met with Trump. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Tex., Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., former Justice Department official Alice Fisher and ex-U.S. attorney Michael Garcia were also floated, but each withdrew from consideration.

Wray was nominated as assistant attorney general in charge of the DOJ's criminal division in 2003 and served in that role until 2005. After he left the Justice Department, Wray returned to private practice, focusing on "white collar and internal investigations," according to his DOJ biography.

During his time at DOJ, Wray became known for overseeing the Enron prosecution task force and playing a major role in the department's post-9/11 response.

In private practice, Wray also served as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's lawyer during the "Bridgegate" saga. Christie has been a close confidant of Trump's, but it's unknown if the two discussed the pick.

"I have the utmost confidence in Chris," Christie told NorthJersey.com last week. "He's an outstanding lawyer. He has absolute integrity and honesty, and I think that the president certainly would not be making a mistake if he asked Chris Wray to be FBI director."

Wray as FBI head would be stepping into a maelstrom, with the ongoing Russia investigations swirling overhead, as the bureau also attempts to continue anti-terror operations and finding the sources of persistent government leaks.



Wray graduated from Yale in 1989 and received his law degree in 1992 from Yale Law School, where he served as the executive editor of Yale Law Journal. He joined the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Georgia in 1997 and began working at Main Justice in 2001.

Wray received the Edmund J. Randolph Award, the DOJ's highest award for public service and leadership, when he left the Justice Department in 2005.
Once again, we are debating Donald Trump and the Twitter phenomenon.

But this time, even some of his own aides and advisers are suggesting he tone it down.

Now Ive said all along that the president is right that its an incredibly valuable tool for him to reach his 31 million followers, amplified by endless media coverage. That was true during the campaign and it remains true today. Just ask him: He said yesterday he wouldnt have gotten elected without it (as he put it, ZERO chance of winning WH if he had relied on the Fake News of CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, washpost or nytimes).

Much of the media has always found it unseemlynow the preferred word is unpresidentialthat Trump riffs on social media and strafes various targets, including of course the press.

But in recent days, the president sometimes seems to be hurting his own cause. The New York Times said in a front-page story that Trump may have irretrievably undermined his lawyers efforts to persuade the Supreme Court to uphold his travel ban. The Washington Post said in a front-page story that the presidents tweets could significantly damage his administrations effort to restore the ban.

The stories are referring to such tweets as this one: The Justice Dept. should have stayed with the original Travel Ban, not the watered down, politically correct version they submitted to S.C.

That was rather odd since Trump is ultimately in charge of the DOJ. The department could not have proposed a second travel ban, to replace the one blocked by the courts, without the presidents approval. (And yes, he is now calling the temporary travel restrictions a ban.)

One of the voices is George Conway, who recently withdrew from consideration to run Justices Civil Division. The lawyer, who is married to Kellyanne Conway, wrote that these tweets may make some ppl feel better, but they certainly wont help the solicitor general get five votes in the Supreme Court, which is actually what matters. Sad.

Conway stuck by his position in subsequent tweets but made clear that he supports the president.

Trump invoked the ban last weekend in his first tweet after the terror attack at London Bridge:

We need to be smart, vigilant and tough. We need the courts to give us back our rights. We need the Travel Ban as an extra level of safety!

He also went off on Londons first Muslim mayor, Sadiq Khan:

At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is no reason to be alarmed! Khan had actually said the city was increasing its police presence in the coming days and there was no reason for residents to be alarmed about their future safety.

This prompted another wave of criticism that the president was picking a fight with Londons mayor rather than delivering a unifying message after the attack.

Trump contends that the fake mainstream media are working so hard trying to get me not to use Social Media. Well, no one thinks hes going to stop. But if his tweets stir things up, or complicate a pending legal case, then that is going to draw widespread coverage. These are, after all, not leaks or chatter, but statements directly from the president.

And the week is only halfway over. When James Comey testifies on the Hill tomorrowwhich will be such a huge media event that ABC, CBS and NBC are carrying it liveTrump may not be a bystander.

The Posts Robert Costa sayson Twitter, of coursethat two White House sources tell him Trump does not plan to put down Twitter on Thursday. May live tweet if he feels the need to respond.

I wouldnt bet against that happening.


Turkey has rebuffed a U.S. House of Representatives resolution that condemned attacks against protesters in Washington by bodyguards who were traveling with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, accusing legislators of steps that "distort and politicize" matters.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Huseyin Muftuoglu said in a statement Wednesday that the bipartisan resolution was "against the spirit of alliance and partnership" between Turkey and the United States.

U.S. lawmakers voted 397-0 Tuesday to pass the measure, calling for members of Erdogan's security involved in last month's incident to be brought justice.

Pressure has been mounting on the U.S. President Donald Trump's administration not to let the violence go unpunished.

Turkey has not apologized for the incident and instead protested what it said was "aggressive and unprofessional actions" by American security personnel against Turkish bodyguards.
The Trump administration criticized the Turkish government Wednesday after police in that country detained a prominent human rights lawyer as part of a crackdown on people suspected of links to a U.S.-based cleric accused of masterminding a failed coup.

State Department spokesman Heather Nauert said the U.S. was "deeply concerned" by the arrest of Taner Kilic in at his home in the western Turkish city of Izmir along with 22 other attorneys. Kilic served as the Turkey chairman of Amnesty International, which claimed that his home and office were searched.

ERDOGAN'S BODYGUARDS ACCUSED OF ATTACKING PROTESTERS OUTSIDE TURKISH EMBASSY IN DC

"These detentions, often with little evidence or transparency, are an alarming trend," Nauert said in a statement, later adding "As we have expressed to the Turkish government on numerous occasions, persistent curbs on free speech and other freedoms erode the foundations of democratic society."

Turkish authorities had no immediate comment on the case.

Turkey has launched a widespread crackdown on Fethullah Gulen's followers since the July 15, 2016, coup attempt, arresting some 50,000 people and purging tens of thousands of others from government jobs. Critics say the government is using a state of emergency declared after the attempted coup to clamp down on all opponents.

Amnesty Secretary General Salil Shetty said the lawyers' detention was proof of "how arbitrary" Turkey's crackdown on the Gulen movement has become.



"In the absence of credible and admissible evidence of their involvement in internationally recognized crimes, we are calling on the Turkish authorities to immediately release Taner Kilic along with the other 22 lawyers," said Shetty.

Earlier Wednesday, Turkey rebuffed a U.S. House of Representatives resolution that condemned attacks against protesters in Washington by bodyguards who were traveling with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

U.S. lawmakers voted 397-0 Tuesday to pass the measure, calling for members of Erdogan's security involved in last month's incident to be brought to justice.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Huseyin Muftuoglu said in a statement that the bipartisan resolution was "against the spirit of alliance and partnership" between Turkey and the United States.

Turkey has not apologized for the incident and instead protested what it said was "aggressive and unprofessional actions" by American security personnel against Turkish bodyguards.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Marine Corps veteran Cole Lyle wants to help give his fellow service members a sense of purpose again  one dog at a time.

Over the past few years, Lyle, 27, has devoted much of his time to meeting with lawmakers and testifying before Congress, aiming to change how the Department of Veterans Affairs serves its vets. The result: the House is reconsidering the PAWS Act.

The PAWS Act  or Puppies Assisting Wounded Servicemembers Act of 2017  was reintroduced last month and would implement a pilot program to allow for the VA to provide service dogs to veterans with a mental disability such as post-traumatic stress disorder, a service the government doesnt already provide.

According to the VAs website, service dogs are provided to veterans to do specific tasks for a person that he or she cannot do because of a disability, such as, pick things up, guide a visually-impaired veteran or help someone who has fallen.

But with the rapid rise of suicide and opioid dependency among veterans, its important to change that, Lyle told Fox News.

As a nontraditional treatment, this has no negative effects, Lyle said of service dogs. The veteran community has been absolutely beat up by the opioid epidemic. A lot of veterans have been committing suicide due to exasperating symptoms because of opioids.

Rep. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., a sponsor of the legislation and Navy veteran, said hes seen firsthand how multiple deployments can impact veterans.

As a veteran, I know the toll that it takes on some of these guys who have done three, four, five deployments, DeSantis, 38, said. Thats just not a normal thing to do for a human being, and theres going to be invisible scars that are left by that. Its an important issue to deal with.

Heres a breakdown of the PAWS Act and how it could help veterans.

How would the pilot program work?

Should the PAWS Act be implemented, it would allow for the VA to create a five year pilot program that provides $25,000 grants to an eligible organization providing service dogs to veterans with severe PTSD.

That grant would also cover any travel expenses for the veteran to obtain the dog and a health insurance policy for the dog.

VETERANS USING CREATIVITY OF MUSIC AND ART TO HEAL PTSD

In order for a veteran to be eligible for a service dog, a veteran will be recommended by a VA medical provider or clinical team and deemed an appropriate candidate for the program. That veteran should have undergone traditional therapy that did not alleviate symptoms of PTSD.

To remain eligible in the program, the veteran must continue to meet with a VA medical provider every six months.

A veteran would have to apply for a service dog through an approved organization, Lyle said. The organization must be accredited by either Assistance Dogs International or the Association of Service Dog Providers for Military Veterans, a newly-formed association created to increase the standards of accreditation and alleviate any issues with service industries, such as airline companies.

What is the fiscal impact of the program?

The program allocates $10 million over five years to fund the provision of service dogs for veterans.

Grants are capped at $25,000 per veteran which includes the training of the dog, veterinary care and travel to pick up the service animal.

And many service dog organizations are able to train and provide dogs for a cheaper cost than the $25,000 cap, DeSantis said. An organization in his own district in Florida provides dogs for under $20,000.

If it proves to be effective  and we think it will be and the evidence is out there  but once the VA is able to see that its effective, then I think we will be able to probably redirect more funds to it if thats something theres a need for, DeSantis said.

MILITARY VETERANS SUFFERING FROM PTSD GET BACK ON COURSE WITH GOLF

Long term, providing service dogs to veterans can also save taxpayers money, Lyle said, as veterans will come to rely on the dogs instead of a prescription drug cocktail regime.

To give one of these guys a dog when theyre young like me, I dont take a lot of medications anymore, so the VA wont have to spend money medicating me, Lyle said. So it may seem expensive up front, but really trying to introduce these healthy, holistic approaches to mental health, can save not only a lot of lives, but a lot of money.

DeSantis agreed with Lyle, arguing if a veteran can find help for PTSD through a service dog instead of through a heavy regime of potentially addictive medication, the savings for the taxpayer will be significant.

Obviously it will be good for the veteran, which is more important, but this is also a more effective way to save money and treat a veteran, I think, DeSantis said.

CONGRESS WANTS ANSWERS AS DISABLED VETS' CAREGIVERS SAY VA STRIPPING BENEFITS

The congressman also stressed that the pilot program does not spend any new money but rather redirects funds from the VA bureaucracy.

They spend a lot on bureaucracy  all kinds of things that dont help the veterans, DeSantis said. So its just a straight transfer of money.

Are service dogs an effective treatment?

Lyle said he is consistently helped by his own service dog, Kaya, a three-year-old, social media savvy German Sheperd. From creating space on a crowded metro to waking him up from nightmares, Kaya is a constant presence in Lyles life that mitigates his PTSD symptoms.

Mitigating symptoms in a way that is healthy. Service dogs really force you to do that, he said.

Lyle said that through his activism, he has been approached by many veterans who said his work has saved them from suicide.

ARMY VET COMPLETES CROSS-COUNTRY TREK TO RAISE AWARENESS FOR PTSD AND SUICIDE

The VA does not recognize service dogs as a substitute for effective PTSD treatment, according to its website.

Although people with PTSD who have a service dog for a physical disability or emotional support dog may feel comforted by the animal, there is some chance they may continue to believe that they cannot do certain things on their own, the website states. For example, if the dog keeps strangers from coming too close, the owner will not have a chance to learn that they can handle this situation without the dog.

Becoming dependent on a dog can get in the way of the recovery process for PTSD, it continues. Based on what we know from research, evidence-based treatment provides the best chance of recovery from PTSD.

Lyle pointed out that there is a specific legal distinction between a service dog and an emotional support animal,

A service dog is specifically trained to mitigate specific symptoms and are legally protected under the [Americans with Disabilities Act] whereas emotional support dogs and therapy dogs are not legally protected and are really not trained to do anything more than just provide comfort, he said.

DISABLED TEXAS VETERAN CLAIMS UNIVERSITY KICKED OUT HIS SERVICE DOG

DeSantis also said that the program could help give the government some insight on how to better serve veterans in future years after additional conflict.

If that record is there, then veterans are going to have better care going forward, he said.

Its easier for society to see the veteran who has lost a limb or has some physical complication or physical wound, and everyone instinctively thinks we need to help that individual. Its harder, sometimes, for society to understand theres invisible wounds that comes with being in combat and post-traumatic stress is one of the most significant, DeSantis said.

What has changed from the original legislation?

There have been changes to the PAWS Act since it was first introduced in March 2016  then, too, by DeSantis.

One of those changes, according to Lyle, is making stricter the training standards organizations must comply with in order to receive the grant money from the VA.

VETERANS DIVE WITH SHARKS TO TREAT PTSD

The current bill has also been refined to include pre-9/11 veterans.

Initially we limited the service dogs to post-9/11 veterans because we thought the PTSD problem was most acute with that, DeSantis said. The reason why we did it was because we wanted the bill to be cost-effective, and the bigger the price tag, the harder it is to pass today.

We were able to figure out that limiting it to post-9/11 wasnt necessary, he continued, adding that any veteran who goes through the proper VA treatment could be eligible for a service dog. In some ways its more inclusive, but its also more targeted to get at really those acute cases of veterans who are not being served well by the prevailing orthodoxy of dealing with post-traumatic stress.

Whats next for this bill?

DeSantis predicted that the House Committee of Veterans Affairs will very soon hold a vote on the legislation. After that, it will be presented to the full House for a vote.

There, too, DeSantis predicted that it will pass overwhelmingly. As it stands, the bill has 125 bipartisan cosponsors.

And its that overwhelming bipartisan support that DeSantis hopes will encourage the Senate to fast track the legislation.

The Senate can be cumbersome, but when theres broad agreement, they can move things pretty quickly through unanimous consent, DeSantis said. Thats what were hoping to do: tee it up in the House and just get the bipartisan supporters in the Senate to say we need to move this thing pretty quickly.

DeSantis also said that the VA has really changed its tune and become more receptive to the legislation. He hopes that the VA will be supportive should it pass.
The performance of humans puny brains will be outmatched by computers within just 13 years, billionaire Elon Musk has claimed.

The Tesla and SpaceX founder said that artificial intelligence will beat us at just about everything by 2030.

He made the comments on Twitter, where he was responding to a new study which claims our race will be overtaken by 2060.

Probably closer to 2030 to 2040 in my opinion, he wrote.

According to the terrifying research from boffs at the University of Oxford, its not looking good for us humans.

Machines will be better than us at translating languages by 2024 and writing school essays by 2026, they claimed.

Within ten years computers will be better at driving a truck than us and by 2031 they will be better at selling goods and will put millions of retail workers on the dole queue.

AI will write a bestselling book by 2049 and conduct surgery by 2053, the researchers suggested.

In fact, every single human job will be automated within the next 120 years, according to computer experts the university researchers quizzed.

It's unlikely to trouble the billionaire tech entrepreneur, however.

Musk already has plans to plug our brains into computers.

He recently launched a new neuroscience company which aims to develop cranial computers that can download thoughts and possibly even treat disorders such as epilepsy and depression, the New York Post reported.

Over the years, the 45-year-old has conjured up new ideas for space rockets and electric-cars, proven that they can work efficiently, and then rolled them out for public and private use.

He's even hoping to start a human colony on Mars by 2030.

He's not alone in his estimations for the great computer takeover, either.

Scientists reckon humans are on the brink of a new evolutionary shift  and man as we know it "probably won't survive".

In a terrifying advance, some have warned that computers are so advanced, those developing the complex formulas that make them "tick" aren't even sure how they work.

And because they cannot understand the mechanical brains they have built, they fear that we could lose control of them altogether.

That means they could behave unexpectedly - potentially putting lives at risk.

Take the case of driverless cars, for example where an algorithm might behave differently to normal and cause a crash.
Theres no doubt that conservative commentator Tomi Lahren is a divisive, controversial figure. So it comes as no surprise that Twitter had a field day when they thought Alaska Airlines was trolling her.

Lahren, who previously hosted her own show on The Blaze, apparantly had a pretty bad experience aboard a recent Alaska flight, because she took to Twitter on Sunday evening to label the airline as dysfunctional in a short post.

An Alaska employee named Ryan reached out to Lahren via Twitter in an attempt to understand her complaint. But, in doing so, he referred to her not as not Tomi, but Tami  a moniker she has literally expressed disdain for in the past.

Alaska is claiming that Ryan just made an honest mistake, but Lahrens critics on Twitter arent so sure.

ALASKA FLIGHT ATTENDANT PRAISED FOR SAVING A HUMAN-TRAFFICKING VICTIM

Making matters murkier is the fact that Wale, a rapper who has been signed to Interscope and Roc Nation, has recently gotten into a Twitter feud with Lahren over this exact same issue, reports Uproxx. In Jan. 2017, Lahren tweeted at the rapper after she became aware that he was mistakenly referring to her as Tammy in his song Smile." Wale later replied on Twitter, simply writing, "OK, Tammy."

In any case, Twitter was all too happy to believe that Alaska Airlines knew exactly what it was doing when they sent out that tweet. Dozens of users specifically praised Ryan, too.

And of course someone brought this latest incident to Wales attention, much to the rapper's delight.

FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWS

Lahren has previously worked as a political commentator for One American News Network and TheBlaze.com. She currently works on the communications team of the Great America Alliance.
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A few airlines may have halted flights from the U.S. to Cuba, but if you ask locals in the countrys capital of Havana, they havent noticed a dip in the number of Americans visiting the country  in fact, they insist theyve seen the opposite.

Several Cubans working in the tourism industry told Fox News theyve witnessed a marked increase in the number of Americans visiting the country each month.

But they also openly expressed doubt that the boom would last  with many references to growing concern over changes President Trump may make to the recently relaxed regulations that have allowed more Americans to travel to the island nation steeped in political history.

One guide, who wished to remain unnamed and leads a twice-daily walking tour of Havana in both Spanish and English, said the city has been overwhelmed by tourists in recent months. But he added that the future is uncertain, noting that Cubans followed the American election closely and are eager to see if Trump will make changes to former president Obamas 2014 executive action that eased Americans ability to visit Cuba.

TRAVELING TO CUBA IS EASIER NOW, BUT IT'S NOT HASSLE FREE

In a November 2016 tweet, just days after Fidel Castros death, Trump threatened to terminate the deal Obama set in place.

Currently, American citizens can travel to Cuba under 12 approved categories including family visits, professional research, educational activities and "support for the Cuban people."

Another tour guide also said he is seeing more and more Americans visiting the country.

A lot of Americans [come here], the 29-year-old told Fox News. Every time more. People recommend it to other people. Ive never seen so many Americans before.

The tour guide, who spoke candidly but did not wish to be named, said it has become more lax to travel from the U.S. and enter Cuba  with little regulation at either end of the trip.

Now they have made it easier, he said, comparing May 2017 to when the regulations first eased following Obamas Dec. 2014 order which lifted decades of travel sanctions the U.S. and Cuba. In the beginning they [the U.S. and Cuban officials] asked more questions about Why are you coming? Now its easier.

He noted he was curious to see if Trump would make changes, explaining he reads most of his news from local, state-run Cuban sources, like newspapers, but occasionally has Wi-Fi access and can read unfiltered news from the United States online if he wishes.

WiFi in Havana isnt easy to come by, with locals and tourists alike needing to purchase special WiFi access cards and then find hotspots where service is available. But American news websites all fully load when connectivity is available within Havana.

The tour guide, a Havana native, added that he thinks the tourism industry is growing by word-of-mouth, mainly thanks to recent American visitors who are spreading the word to friends back home after successful trips.

Every time people come they say they know people who want to come.

A third guide who runs an official people-to-people tour  which falls under one of the approved categories for visiting Cuba  was surprised to learn that airlines like Spirit and Frontier have cut their service to Havana.

When asked if shes seen fewer Americans touring around she declared, Its the opposite.

The mother of two recently left her job as a law professor to work for a tour company, explaining the business has been booming.

FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWS

In Cuba, most people are paid similar salaries regardless of the type of work they do. For some professionals, being a tour guide can be a more profitable occupation these days due to the sheer amount of tourists looking for people to take them around.

Its different for us, she said. For this kind of job [in tourism] is very good.

She added she hopes things wont change with any movements Trump may make as, in her eyes, the interest in Cuba is ever-increasing.

In the beginning, people were just coming to Havana. Now, people are going to see other parts of the country too.
The famed Las Vegas Strip will soon have a new addition with the goal of keeping the millions of tourists safe in light of recent terror attack wheres vehicles were used.

The Clark County Commissioners on Tuesday told their staff to start taking bids of the installation of hundreds of bollards on the sidewalk of Las Vegas Boulevard, FOX 5 reported.

Officials so far have identified six key areas on the strip that are highly crowded, and don't have any separation between the street and the pedestrian walkway.

Las Vegas Metro Police said terror groups have printed documents and advertised using cars as weapons of mass destruction.

"In the last 12 months, there have been a total of eight incidents around the world," Assistant Sheriff Todd Fasulo said Tuesday. "All have used vehicles."

The 700 steel posts will be strong enough to stop a flatbed truck traveling at 55 mph, and could be completed as soon as December, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.

This one is really a matter of life or death, Clark County Commission Chairman Steve Sisolak said Tuesday. Were going to have an event, whether its a medical episode or a DUI, where a car could get up onto that sidewalk.

Read more from FOX 5 Las Vegas.

Read more from the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
A man at a Jamaican resort has become an Internet sensation after footage of his incredibly suave waterslide dismount went viral on Twitter.

In the clip, which was first posted to Twitter on June 4 by Morgan Evick, the resort-goer can be seen zooming down a green waterslide into a plunge pool at the bottom. But instead of simply splashing downward upon exiting the slide, the young man skims several feet across the surface of the water until he reaches the edge of the pool, then calmly stands up and walks away.

10-YEAR-OLD BOY THROWN FROM WATERSLIDE AT CALIFORNIA PARK

Thanks in no small part to the mans super-smooth waterslide skills, Evicks post has garnered more than 150,000 likes, 83,000 retweets and over a thousand comments.

But is it real? Evicks video has been called into question, with outlets such as Fox 8 Cleveland wondering if the stunt was too good to be true, and TMZ hypothesizing that a hidden edit would explain the mans surprisingly slick moves.

But the man in the video must have been privvy to these mounting accusations, because he's since revealed to TMZ how he supposedly accomplished the feat.

His name is Rolando Johnson and hes actually a lifeguard at the Pirates Island Waterpark inside the Beaches Resort in Ocho Rios, Jamaica, where the video was shot. According to Johnson, he gets a push at the top of the side, to increase his speed, and then he crosses his legs and sits upright before hitting the water.

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Johnson also explained that it took him two years to learn the stunt, and that most of his fellow lifeguards can do it too. Whats more, he says they often get requests from tourists to perform the trick.

Indeed, a number of other Twitter users have responded to Evick with their own vacation videos from Pirates Island, and other young men can be seen attempting the same trick.

Nevertheless, Evick later tweeted that she will attempt to "find this dude at the resort later and let him know he's Twitter famous."
A Pennsylvania mother bought a firearm the day before she and her two young children were found shot to death in their burning home, authorities said Tuesday.

Officials said they don't believe there was any further danger to the community following the discovery of the bodies of Carola Arnau, 40, her 10-year-old daughter and her 4-year-old son in their Strasburg home.

"I tell people, in my job, some days are worse than others, and this is one of the worst, and certainly one of the darkest," Lancaster County District Attorney Craig Stedman said during a news conference.

Emergency responders were called to the home at about 3:20 a.m. Tuesday and found the bodies of the three in their beds in a bedroom. The family dog also was found dead. Stedman said the fire was believed to have been deliberately set.

A firearm was found on Arnau, who had purchased a gun Monday along with some ammunition which authorities said was accounted for. Stedman said authorities were interested in learning about her mental state from relatives and others.

Arnau's husband, he said, had been at work from 10 p.m. the previous evening "and would have not been present at the time of these offenses." He was cooperating with authorities and Stedman offered his condolences to him.

Stedman said the couple had been going through "somewhat of a bitter divorce" and the situation had been "escalating." Stedman said he wasn't releasing the names of the children because he was concerned their classmates could hear of their deaths in television reports.

"I am so tired of so many absolutely senseless things," Stedman said. "Whatever disputes you have in your life and whatever issues you've got, when you see and learn news about children being murdered  there's just no question that they were murdered  that takes it to a different level," he said.

He said the "only small comfort" is that the children appeared to have been shot in their sleep.

Authorities still must complete a forensic reconstruction of the crime scene amid the arson, autopsies on the three family members and a psychological history of Arnau, Stedman said. They also have to confirm that the gun found with her was the source of the gunshots.

"All indications would be that that was the gun, but I can't tell you that for sure," Stedman said. There was no indication of a note at the scene, he said.

State police Lt. Brandon Daniels said there was no further danger to residents of the borough, located about halfway between Philadelphia and Harrisburg, the Pennsylvania capital.

Ron Rannels, 70, who lives nearby, described the family as "very nice," and recalled seeing the father pulling the two children down the street in a wagon, stopping by his house to pick flowers for their mother.

"I'll tell you it's really tough. They were so nice. ... Everybody got along with them," Rannels told LNP newspaper.
A former Oklahoma bail bondsman accused of traveling to Peru and having sex with underage girls has been sentenced to five years in a U.S. prison.

Robert Earl Pierce, 63, was also ordered to pay a $17,500 fine and he will have to register as a sex offender, The Oklahoman reported.

Court records allege Pierce took 30 trips to Peru from December 2005 to September 2013, when he was found in a hotel room with condoms, Viagra, large bags of candy, 26 U.S. $100 bills, gift books and extra-small women's undergarments.

Pierce pleaded guilty last year to engaging in an illicit sex act with one underage girl in Peru in 2012. Prosecutors on Monday said an investigation revealed three underage victims, two of whom were 15.

"For the rest of my life, I'll bear this shame, this humiliation, this stigma," Pierce told the judge Monday, his voice choked with emotion. "It will never go away I know."

Pierce was shown some leniency after cooperating in the prosecution of his friend, former attorney Michael Dean Billings, who was sentenced to 14 years in prison. Records show the men made trips to Iquitos, a poverty-stricken city in Peru that the FBI says is a known child sex-tourism site.

During the sentencing hearing, Pierce's defense attorney and the prosecutor said his downfall came when his longtime marriage fell apart after he returned from serving with the Oklahoma National Guard during the war in Iraq.

Records show he turned to Billings to be his divorce attorney, and the men began taking trips together. Pierce told the FBI Billings urged him to travel to Peru. Their most frequent destination was Iquitos.

___

Information from: The Oklahoman, http://www.newsok.com
Four underperforming private schools won approval Wednesday to accept more students who receive vouchers under Indiana's school choice program, benefiting from a new law that provides a second chance at avoiding penalties.

The State Board of Education voted 6-2 Wednesday to grant the four waivers. Three of the schools didn't receive enough votes to win approval last month, and the fourth was being considered for the first time.

Indiana has one of the nation's largest programs allowing parents to use taxpayer money to send their children to faith-based or independent schools, with more than 34,000 students in 313 schools receiving vouchers this past school year, according to the state Department of Education.

Under the state's voucher law, private schools that receive state ratings of D or F for three straight years can be barred from accepting new voucher students until school grades improve to C or better two consecutive years. The Republican-dominated Legislature this spring approved allowing the state board to give one-year waivers so private schools can keep accepting new voucher students and additional state funding.

The waivers were granted for Fort Wayne's Lutheran South Unity School and three Indianapolis schools  Central Christian Academy, Turning Point and Trinity Lutheran.

Supporters of granting the waiver said traditional public schools don't face state sanctions until after at least six years of low ratings.

David Sexauer, Central Christian Academy's head of school, said his school wouldn't be seeking the waiver if it were being held to the same standards as public schools.

Board member Steve Yager of Fort Wayne, who joined Gordon Hendry of Indianapolis in voting against the requests, said the voucher-accepting private schools don't have to account for how the state money is spent like public and charter schools must do. Hendry said he's like to see a second year of improvement before allowing the schools to add voucher students.

The board voted 5-3 last month in support of waiver requests from Lutheran South Unity, Central Christian and Turning Point, but six votes were needed for approval.

Board member Vince Bertram of Indianapolis, who was absent from May's meeting, provided that sixth vote Wednesday. Republican state schools Superintendent Jennifer McCormick, who voted against the waivers last month, missed Wednesday's meeting because of illness.
An Alabama man who has been jailed on a murder charge for the last 10 years without a trial could soon learn his fate.

Houston County Circuit Judge Kevin Moulton heard arguments in a case involving Kharon Davis on Tuesday in Dothan. Davis was arrested and charged for the murder of Pete Reaves in June 2007 at an apartment in Dothan, the Dothan Eagle reported.

Davis attorney Thomas Goggans argued his case should be dismissed because he was previously represented by a lawyer with a possible conflict of interest in the case. His previous attorney, Ben Meredith, had a son who was going to testify as a witness for the prosecution. The possible conflict of interest was brought up in 2011 when Judge Moulton took over the case from another judge who was due to retire.

No one should go to court with an attorney who has a conflict of interest in that case. Mr. Davis has a right to a speedy trial," Goggans debated during proceedings in Dothan, Alabama on Tuesday, according to the Dothan Eagle.

PORTLAND STABBING SUSPECT, IN COURTROOM OUTBURST, SAYS VICTIM IS TO BLAME

Alabama Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Gibbs says Davis knew about the possible conflict but continued to let Meredith represent him in the case.

There was no concern with this issue from Davis or the former district attorney, Douglas Valeska. Everyone felt Meredith would do his job in representing Davis, Gibbs said during court proceedings on Tuesday. Everyone is overlooking the fact Meredith was retained by Davis to represent him after the fact. This case should not be dismissed."

MOTIVE A MYSTERY IN UTAH SHOOTING THAT KILLED 3, INCLUDING BOY

During the proceedings on Tuesday, Judge Moulton described a timeline of events.



In the case records a motion for a speedy trial has not been filed, Judge Moulton said. During the first four years you are addressing, there were three attempts to have this case go to trial and eight times total.

The Dothan Eagle reports Moulton will make a decision in the case at a later date.
A book has found its way back to a Connecticut library  more than 50 years overdue.

Staff members at the Noah Webster Library in West Hartford say they don't know who returned the copy of W.O. Mitchell's "Who Has Seen The Wind." The plot centers on a coming-of-age tale of a young man in Saskatchewan, Canada.

The book was returned Monday with a yellow sticky note reading, "Sorry it has taken so long." It originally was due back Sept. 29, 1965.

Library director Martha Church says she doesn't know how much the fine would be for keeping the book so long. The current library fine is 15 cents per day. Church says it used to be 10 cents a day in 1977.

The library doesn't plan to fine the person who returned the book.
Authorities say a couple and their teenage son whose bodies were found in their southern Indiana home were shot to death.

Police have said they believe a man who was living with the family committed the slayings.

State Police say the Washington County coroner identified the victims as 58-year-old Danny G. Newlin; 41-year-old Kelley Kay Newlin; and 14-year-old Austin Newlin.

Their bodies were found Sunday in their home near Salem, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) northwest of Louisville, Kentucky.

The preliminary cause of death for all three is gunshot wounds.

Monroe County Coroner Joani Shields said Tuesday that the suspect, 47-year-old Richard Lee Burton Jr., also died and that his death has been preliminarily ruled as suicide by gunshot wound. Burton's body was found Monday in a truck near Bloomington.
A Florida woman who threatened a man whose son was killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school shooting was sent to prison Wednesday.

Lucy Richards, 57, pleaded guilty to interstate transmission of a threat to injure in communications with Lenny Pozner, father of Noah Pozner, who died in the Newtown, Conn., school shooting.

Investigators say Richards, who believed the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax, left four voicemail and email threats for Pozner in January 2016, after viewing websites that claimed the shooting was a hoax aimed at curtailing Americans Second Amendment gun ownership rights.

NEWTOWN MARKS 4TH ANNIVERSARY OF SANDY HOOK MASSACRE

Senior U.S. District Judge James Cohn, who sentenced Richards to five months in prison, followed by five months of home detention, said Richards actions were disturbing and that no one should cite a conspiracy theory or belief in a hoax in the deaths of 20 children and six adults that occurred at the school.

I dont know where my heart and head were that day, but they were not in the right place, Richards read from a statement before she was sentenced. It was the worst mistake of my life and I am truly sorry.

Richards was also sentenced to three years of probation and is barred from accessing a list of conspiracy theory websites.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A frustrated citizen of Michigan attempted to pay a $270 fine with pennies at Jackson City Hall but was rejected.

Brian McGonegal was issued the fine last year for having trash in his yard, according to MLive. McGonegal claimed he got rid of most of the garbage but was angry after he had to pay $200 to hire workers to remove scrap metal, a job he said only took minutes to complete.

MICHIGAN STATE FOOTBALL PLAYERS CHARGED WITH SEXUAL ASSAULT

McGonegal tried to pay off his debt by making a series of $27 payments with 2,700 pennies. Randy Wrozek, the Jackson city treasurer, rejected the coins and told McGonegal to put them in rolls.

Its not practical, Wrozek told The Associated Press. This guy would come in every time at five minutes to five  we close at five  with a big sack full of change. Were not authorized for overtime down here.

McGonegal said the penny payments are his way of protesting the fine.

This city is so full of themselves about: Well, we have to have everything picture perfect, and its got to look like an ideal little community that were going to make you pay,'" McGonegal told MLive. And I think that attitude is wrong. We are the servants of the city government; the city government is the servant to us.

COMEY TO TESTIFY THAT TRUMP SOUGHT LOYALTY, ASKED TO LIFT RUSSIA CLOUD

McGonegal argued in favor of his unorthodox payment method to the city council on May 16, but Wrozek said the bill would be sent to Jackson County and attached as a lien on McGonegals property.

McGonegal said he is ready to go to court, if needed, and believes the city will watch him closely for now on.

Theyll be on me, McGonegal said. Theyll look for any scrap piece of paper. If they think the paint is weathered just a little too much on my building, theyll be all over me. Like white on rice. Get over yourself.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A former journalist and spurned ex-boyfriend from St. Louis is expected to plead guilty next week to making bomb threats against Jewish Community Centers -- in an alleged cyber-stalking campaign targeting his ex, a court filing stated.

Juan Thompson, 31, is suspected in at least eight bomb threats that targeted Jewish community centers in Michigan, Texas, California and New York. Thompson made the threats to disparage his former girlfriend, federal officials said.

GIRL, 7, ON LIFE SUPPORT AFTER DEADLY ST. LOUIS SHOOTING

The ex-journalist pleaded not guilty during an April 10 court appearance in New York City, according to the Daily News.

Prosecutors suggested in a document sent to U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel that Thompson may plead guilty on June 12, but the charges were not clear, according to Newsday.

POLICE: FRIENDS FILMED MISSOURI MAN DRAGGING KITTEN TO DEATH

The parties respectfully write to confirm the date and time set by the Court for the defendant's guilty plea, the prosecutors stated in the court filing.

Thompsons lawyers have not commented on the filing.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A Virginia man who joined the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq for three months, all the while evading the scrutiny of U.S. intelligence officials, was convicted Wednesday on terrorism charges despite his protestations that he was only there to "check things out."

The jury in U.S. District Court took only four hours to deliberation before convicting Mohamad Khweis, 27, of Alexandria, on all charges. He could potentially face 20 years or more in prison when he is sentenced in October.

Earlier Wednesday, the jury heard closing arguments in which Khweis' lawyers acknowledged that Khweis left his home in Virginia in December 2015 to join the Islamic State group. He even got an official membership card. But they argued those facts don't automatically make him a terrorist.

Khweis took the unusual step of testifying on his own behalf at the trial, telling jurors he just wanted to see for himself what the militant group was like. After a few months, he realized it was not for him.

"He wanted to find out how they could justify some of this stuff," like suicide bombings, said defense attorney John Zwerling, who asserted that there's no evidence his client ever expressed a desire to harm America. "It's not a crime to explore, to try to see some of this information for yourself," he said.

Prosecutors ridiculed the notion that Khweis had himself smuggled across the Syrian border on some sort of curiosity tour. They noted that Khweis expressed a willingness to be a suicide bomber on an official IS intake form.

After the verdict, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Dana Boente said in a statement that "Khweis is not a naive kid who didn't know what he was doing. He ... knew exactly who ISIS was, and was well aware of their thirst for extreme violence. Nonetheless, this did not deter him. Instead, Khweis voluntarily chose to join the ranks of a designated foreign terrorist organization, and that is a federal crime, even if you get scared and decide to leave."

Khweis is one of more than 100 people charged in the U.S. in recent years with helping or trying to help the IS. But most cases involve sting operations. His is among a handful that involves individuals who actually evaded the U.S. intelligence apparatus and reached IS territory.

Khweis lived in the Islamic State territory from December 2015 through March 2016. According to trial testimony, he became intrigued with the Islamic State group in 2015. He told FBI agents who questioned him after his arrest that he was interested in the establishment of a caliphate and wanted to tell his grandchildren he had been a part of it.

He quit his job as a bus driver in the D.C. region and booked a one-way flight to Istanbul, via London and Amsterdam. Once in Turkey, he established social media accounts using the moniker GreenBird, which is associated with martyrdom by the Islamic State group.

Khweis used social media accounts to reach out to people he thought could help smuggle him across the border to Syria, including one person known as the "Mad Mullah."

Finally, in late December, he got the call: He should leave his hotel room and enter a waiting taxi if he wanted to join. He did, and was smuggled across the border. At one point, he received text orders to get out of the car and alternately walk and run across the border territory, taking care to avoid land mines.

He was processed by IS during a short stay in the Syrian city of Raqqa. The processing was formal, with blood tests, intake forms and issuance of an ID card. On these intake forms, he expressed his willingness to serve as a suicide bomber.

During the next three months, he bounced among several safehouses in Syria and Iraq.

Khweis testified that he came to believe he was destined for military service, but he never seemed to gain the trust of IS officials, who suspected he was a spy.

Khweis said he only expressed a willingness to serve as a suicide bomber because he would otherwise be labeled a spy.

Defense lawyers had emphasized that, under the law, Khweis could not be convicted of providing support to terrorists if he were being coerced or acting under duress. His freedom ended once he entered that taxi outside his Turkish hotel room, they said.

"From that point forward, ISIS took control of his life," defense attorney Jessica Carmichael said. "Whatever expectation he had about being able to walk the streets of Raqqa and see what life was like, that wasn't going to happen."

Prosecutors countered that Khweis knew exactly what he was getting himself into.

"It takes a highly dedicated and highly motivated individual to get to the Islamic State," prosecutor Dennis Fitzpatrick said.
A New York man said he's "happy to be alive" after he was struck by lightning while he was sitting in his office on Monday, according to a local report.

Nick Gemayel, the owner of an auto repair shop in Rochester, was sitting in his garage office when a thunderstorm rolled through the area, manager Ryan Davis recounted to WHEC.

"It was just a big bold flash, boom, and then I turned around and went the other way. I didn't want to get any closer," said Davis, who standing outside of the business at the time. Other witnesses also told the news station the lightning hit the sidewalk and traveled inside the building.

DISGRUNTLED MAN DUMPS BED BUGS IN GOVERNMENT OFFICE IN MAINE

Gemayel told the news station that the lightning "wreaked havoc" on the garage and sent the loudest "pop" and "crackle" he'd ever heard.

He said he first realized he was struck by lightning about 30 minutes later, when his muscles began "contracting and tensing" and his mind was "foggy." Doctors later diagnosed him with Rhabdomyolysis, when muscle tissues begin breaking down due to electrical shock, WHEC reported.

TORNADO WON'T STOP CANADIAN MAN FROM MOWING HIS LAWN, VIRAL PHOTO SHOWS

Gemayel was released from the hospital on Tuesday and urged to get some rest. After the incident, he joked that he should try his luck with the lottery.
The man accused of killing two men and injuring a third on a Portland train shouted that the survivor was to blame during a courtroom outburst Wednesday.

As he was leaving Multnomah County Circuit Court, Jeremy Christian said he was not guilty of anything but defending himself against the violent aggression by Micah Fletcher, Fox 12 Oregon reported.

Fletcher was stabbed along with Ricky John Best, 53, and Myrddin Namkai Meche, 23  who both died  when they tried to intervene as Christian yelled hate speech at two female passengers, police said.

Christian shoved Fletcher during the incident, then pulled out a knife that he concealed in his right hand, prosecutor Ryan Lufkin wrote in court papers. Fletcher pushed Christian back, and he stumbled. Christian asked Fletcher to "Hit me again!" as Fletcher kept telling him to get off the train.

Fletcher was seated in the courtroom Wednesday amidst a heavy police presence.

KNIVES, BRASS KNUCKLES AND AXES CONFISCATED AT PORTLAND PROTESTS

In his first court appearance, Christian shouted "Free speech or die, Portland. This is America, get out if you don't like free speech."

A pro-Trump free speech rally in Portland on Sunday resulted in violent clashes as several hundred people were drawn to a plaza near City Hall following the May 26 attack.

The rally was met across the street by hundreds of counter-protesters organized by immigrant rights, religious and labor groups. They said they wanted to make a stand against hate and racism.

Rally organizer Joey Gibson held a moment of silence for the two men who were stabbed to death and pleaded with the crowd to refrain from violence. He later told them that goal is to wake up the liberty movement. "It's OK to be a conservative in Portland," he said.

PORTLAND MAN FATALLY STABBED ON TRAIN REMEMBERED AS HERO

Trump had denounced the killings as unacceptable while saluting the three victims for "standing up to hate and intolerance."

Police arrested 14 people in the clashes while seizing an arsenal of deadly weaponry, including clubs, knives, bricks and what looked like spears.

While police did not say which group, specifically, supplied the cache of weapons, law enforcement clad in riot gear had to shield themselves from rocks and other projectiles thrown by anti-Trump protesters, according to local news outlets.

Click for more from Fox 12 Oregon.


The case of Adnan Syed -- a convicted killer and the star of the first season of the podcast Serial  will return to court on Thursday as Maryland state attorneys appeal an order granting Syed a new trial.

Last June, a Maryland judge overturned Syed's conviction and ordered a new trial on the grounds that Syed's original trial team did not raise questions about cellphone tower evidence. The state attorney general's office filed an appeal in early August as Syed's attorneys continue pushing for a new trial.

After the hearing in the state capital of Annapolis the court will issue its written ruling at a later date.

The written ruling by the Maryland Court of Special Appeals could then be appealed to the Court of Appeals, the state's highest court.

Syed was convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend and fellow high school classmate, Hae Min Lee, in 2000 and sentenced to life in prison.

His case became the subject of Serial podcast  the most downloaded podcast of all time  and the investigation into his claims of innocence led to a hearing in which his attorneys questioned the evidence brought forth in his trial.

Syed remains in prison and will not be present at Thursdays hearing. When he was first granted a new trial last summer, his lawyers pushed for his release on bail  arguing that the appeals process could take years and that Syed is a good candidate for release pending a new trial. Syeds request for bail was denied in December.
There appears to be some move activity around the Confederate monument in Forest Park by city of St. Louis workers. Koran Addo tells FOX 2 that fencing is going up around the monument.

This is the first step in removing the monument. Engineers will need to figure out the best way to take the monument down. This could take weeks to complete.

The Confederate monument was placed in the park in 1914 by the Daughters of the Confederacy. About two year ago, then-mayor Francis Slay created a committee to discuss how to remove the monument.

The committee estimated it would cost a little over $100,000 for removal or deconstruction.

Last month, Mayor Lyda Krewson was briefed on the options of what to do with the monument.



In a statement, she said, "I know this is an emotionally-charged issue for people on both sides. But this monument is hurtful to so many people and I believe it should come down."

Read more from FOX 2.
An armed robbery suspect fleeing the scene of the crime jumped aboard a commuter bus on Wednesday and then engaged in a firefight with police before he was shot dead. A police officer and a civilian were both seriously wounded.

The bus was surrounded by police after the suspect tried to use it to get away from the scene of an armed robbery at a shopping center in Dundalk about 2:50 p.m., Baltimore County Police Department spokeswoman Officer Jennifer Peach said at a news conference.

Peach said the man had robbed two people at gunpoint and that he fired shots from the bus at officers, who shot back.

Video that police confirmed was of the shootout showed a man shooting from the front and rear doors of the bus.

The suspect fled the bus, collapsed and died at the scene, the department said in a statement. He has not yet been identified, and police have not released his race. The officer, who was shot in her leg, was taken to a Baltimore hospital in serious condition. The wounded civilian, also a woman, was in serious condition at another hospital, police said.

The bus had working surveillance cameras, and police officers' body camera footage also was being reviewed, police said in a statement.
A terminally ill cancer patient has been arrested and charged with attempted murder after he traveled to the San Francisco Bay Area to kill three doctors who had treated him, authorities said Tuesday.

Yue Chen, who also planned to kill himself, was angry the doctors had treated him like a "laboratory monkey," according to a suicide note found by police, the Mercury News reported.

The 58-year-old's family reported him missing on May 31 and responding officers found evidence of the plot at his Visalia home. They then alerted the doctors and Bay Area officials.

Chen failed to find any of the doctors, got lost and may have been on his way back home when he was arrested in San Jose later that day by the California Highway Patrol, the Palo Alto Police Department said.

The names of the hospitals were redacted in the police report, but prosecutors said one of the doctors worked at UCSF Medical Center. Another UCSF physician and at least one Stanford Health Care doctor also were targeted, the report said.

Officials found two loaded handguns in his car as well as maps with directions to the doctors' homes.

After his arrest, Chen told detectives he believes he was being used for research purposes.

"They only hurt me," Chen reportedly told detectives. "They hurt me both hospitals. They really screw my life, or the doctors lie to me. Hospitals, they all cover for each other."

Chen was charged in Santa Clara County with three felony counts of premeditated attempted murder.
A Texas teacher who was suspended after presenting a student with a mock most likely to become a terrorist award has been fired.

We have concluded our investigation and the teacher responsible is no longer employed by the district, the Houston-area Channelview Independent School District said in a statement Wednesday.

'KILL SOME JEWS' TWEET GETS TEXAS PRE-SCHOOL TEACHER FIRED

The seventh-grade teacher, who has not been named by the school district, handed the award to Lizeth Villanueva, 13, a day after the deadly terrorist attack at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England.

Villanueva said a group of teachers were giving out the awards as a joke, as part of a mock ceremony ahead of summer vacation.

BALTIMORE TEACHER FIRED AFTER CALLING BLACK STUDENTS THE N-WORD

Other certificates students received included most likely to become homeless in Guatemala, most likely to cry for every little thing and most likely to blend in with white people.
Assurances to an incoming president that he was not under federal investigation. A president's unprecedented request for loyalty from an FBI director. A "very concerning" request from the president to end an investigation into a devoted presidential appointee. Lawmakers hungry for answers and frustrated by the reticence of national security executives to provide them.

It's been a month of extraordinary drama since President Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, rife with leaked details of private memos detailing awkward interactions with the president and the rare appointment of a special counsel to alleviate concerns of White House interference in an ongoing investigation.

A day before Comey's much-anticipated testimony before the Senate intelligence committee, the former FBI director's prepared remarks were officially released, bringing into public view new details in the Trump-Comey saga.

Here's how we got to this point, and here are some things to expect from the most anticipated congressional hearing in recent memory:

THE BACKSTORY:

The testimony, Comey's first public comments since his May 9 firing, unfolds against the extraordinary backdrop of an FBI investigation that has shadowed the Trump White House from the outset and threatens to cripple its agenda.

At the time he was fired, Comey had been overseeing the investigation into possible coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign for months.

The White House's stated reasons for firing Comey were contradicted by the president himself, raising questions about whether Trump had fired Comey to derail the Russia investigation.

The White House initially said Trump was acting on the recommendation of Justice Department leaders, citing as justification a memo from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein that lambasted Comey's handling of the Hillary Clinton email server investigation. But Trump gave a different explanation when he said in an NBC News interview that he had already decided to dismiss Comey and was thinking of "this Russia thing" when he did so.

Trump's actions and justifications presented the possibility that Trump's intention was to obstruct justice.

COMEY'S TESTIMONY

Comey, a skilled raconteur who generally tilts in favor of openness, is well-accustomed to the spotlight and in particular to sensational congressional hearings, including one 10 years ago in which he revealed a dramatic hospital room clash with Bush administration officials.

Thursday's testimony before the Senate intelligence committee is expected to be his most dramatic yet.

The official release of Comey's remarks on Wednesday afternoon came shortly after the conclusion of testimony from Comey's former national security peers who refused to answer senators' questions about their own interactions with Trump. There have been reports that the president tried to pressure NSA Director Mike Rogers and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats to publicly push back on the investigation.

The former director's prepared remarks answered many of the looming questions:

Did the president ask Comey for his loyalty? Yes. "I didn't move, speak or change my facial expression in any way during the awkward silence that followed," Comey said in his written testimony.

Did the president ask Comey to stop investigating his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn? Yes. "I had understood the president to be requesting that we drop any investigation of Flynn in connection with false statements about his conversations with the Russian ambassador in December," Comey said.

How often did Trump and Comey communicate with each other before he was fired? Nine times, Comey said. "Three in person and six on the phone."

After one of these encounters, did Comey actually tell Attorney General Jeff Sessions that he did not want to meet with the president alone again? Yes. "I took the opportunity to implore the Attorney General to prevent any future direct communication between the President and me," Comey said.

But Republicans are likely to press Comey on why he did not raise his concerns about Trump publicly or resign. Some may attempt to divert attention from Comey's remarks about Trump by focusing on two issues they've repeatedly seized on: leaks and revealing the names of Americans in intelligence reports.

ANY LIMITS?

The White House said Monday it would not invoke executive privilege over Comey's upcoming testimony  officials predicted it would look bad otherwise.

Comey, who is used to not answering lawmakers' questions about ongoing investigations, is not likely to say anything Thursday that could interfere with, or undercut, the ongoing federal investigation into Russia ties. That investigation is being led by Robert Mueller, Comey's predecessor.

Mueller was appointed as a special counsel by the department last month. The two former FBI directors are known to have warm feelings and respect for each other. A Comey associate has said he obtained Mueller's permission to testify.

On Tuesday, Trump was asked what his message for Comey would be. He said, "I wish him luck."

___

Follow Eric Tucker on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/etuckerAP
Utah authorities on Wednesday were investigating why a man opened fire at a car in a Salt Lake City suburb in a brazen shooting that left a woman, a young boy and the gunman dead, and two other children injured.



The shooting unfolded Tuesday in Sandy, a suburb about 20 miles southeast of Salt Lake City.

Preceding this event, what appears to have took place is a good Samaritan saw a female with two juveniles, stopped to help them, to transport them out of the area, Sgt. Jason Nielsen, of the Sandy City Police Department, told Fox 13. During that time the suspect actually rammed the good Samaritans vehicle, bringing it to a stop in the roadway.

UTAH BOY PLEDGES ALLEGIANCE TO FLAG WHEN NO ONES LOOKING

After the car had come to a stop, the suspect started firing, police said.

Police found the gunman, a woman and a boy dead, and a boy and girl injured from gunshot wounds. Police have not released their identities or ages. The good Samaritan survived.

The injured boy was hospitalized in critical condition. The girl shot was hospitalized in stable condition.

It is not clear if the gunman shot himself or if someone else involved in the dispute had a gun. Investigators were trying to determine how the suspect was linked to the woman and children.

The shooting unfolded half a mile away from the Brookwood Elementary School, which went on lockdown for about an hour.

It is unclear if any children still at the school witnessed the shooting or heard gunshots, Jeff Haney, spokesman for the Canyons School District, said.

UTAH OFFICIAL NAMED ACTING HEAD OF US FISH AND WILDLIFE

The school district has not said if the children affected by the incident were students at Brookwood.

Colby Corbett, a Sandy citizen, was at his home waiting for his son, Anthony, 8, to return from school when he heard 20 to 30 gunshots within a few seconds.

I was panicking bad, Corbett said. I thought it like a gun battle.

Corbett said he was relieved when Anthony arrived home from the opposite direction of the gunfire. Anthony said he was not worried because he thought the gunshots were fireworks.

Click for more from Fox 13.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Jan C. Scruggs volunteered to go to Vietnam just after graduating high school. As a young 19-year old infantryman, he served with the 199th Light Infantry Brigade of the U.S. Army. He was wounded and witnessed the aftermath of a mortar accident that left 12 people dead, an event that profoundly impacted him. When Scruggs left Vietnam, he figured hed left the war and Vietnam behind.

After the war, he came home and studied psychology at American University. His experience led him to examine the effects of war on the psyche. Ironically, he credits his wounds with his ability to attend college, where he earned both a bachelors and masters degrees. He researched post-traumatic stress disorder  a condition he believes he probably had.

He has said that the creation of the Wall grew more out of his study of psychology, healing, and PTSD than of any incident in the war. All of this came from the work he did in graduate school where he became an authority on post-traumatic stress disorder. He published a number of articles and even testified before the Senate.

So the theory behind this memorial was that the individualsveterans, their families, and people who had difficulties stemming from the warwould have a place to go to make peace with a tragic event from the past.

In 1979, Scruggs conceived the idea of building the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., as a tribute to all who served during one of the longest wars in American history. He felt a memorial would serve as a healing device for a different kind of woundthat inflicted on our national psyche by the long and controversial conflict.

He asked his boss at the Department of Labor for a week off to hatch his project and start planning what would become one of the most recognizable monuments in the country. He recalled his boss giving him permission, saying, Everyone needs a mental health day.

Soon, Scruggs quit his job to focus full time on the memorial, and he and his wife lived on her salary from an administrative job with Paralyzed Veterans of America. It had only been four years since the last troops left Vietnam, and the nation was in no mood to discuss a war that had torn it apart.

AIR FORCE HONOR GUARD RESPECTS THOSE WHO MADE THE ULTIMATE SACRIFICE

The country was going to forget the Vietnam War, theres no doubt about that, Scruggs said. It was a bad memory for the nation in many ways.

As the nation wrestled with the wars aftermath, Scruggs became the head of a team of young, impassioned veterans and their allies who got legislation and $8.4 million in funding to build the memorial. The Wall was more of a calling, It needed to be done, he said.

To find a design for the memorial, in 1981 he launched what he says was the largest architectural competition in history. More than 1,400 submissions poured into the anonymous panel of judges. When the time came to display the entries, Scruggs had to rent a hangar at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. The winning submission was from 21-year-old Yale undergrad Maya Ying Lin. Her design was simple and unconventional  a black wall engraved with the names of more than 58,000 Americans killed in the war.

BATTLE OF MIDWAY DIVE BOMBER PILOT: 'NEVER CALL ME A HERO'

In 1982, a black granite memorial with more than 58,000 names stretched over 70 panels took its place among the landmarks of Washington, D.C. It reminded all who visited that, as the inscription puts it, Our nation honors the courage, sacrifice, and devotion to duty and country of its Vietnam veterans.

The message and the design borne from criteria that specifically forbade political statements was simple: These are the service members, the sons and daughters, the old and (mostly) young, who have given everything for the nations greater good.

Jan Scruggs had a dream, and from day one of the unveiling of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, a nation long tormented by an unpopular war began a miraculous process of remembrance, healing, and honoring those who served and died.

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At least four people including three police officers were killed Tuesday in an hours-long prison shootout involving inmates and security forces in a northern Mexican border state, authorities said.

Loud, sustained bursts of gunfire could be heard from just outside the gates of the lockup in Ciudad Victoria, the capital of Tamaulipas state. Heavily armed security forces stood guard.

Sporadic shooting continued Wednesday and at least six people were reported injured.

A state police officer who emerged from the prison with scratches on his face and did not give his name said inmates were armed with automatic rifles.

2 DEAD, 13 INJURED IN MEXICO PRISON RIOT

State security spokesman Alberto Rodriguez said in an interview with Milenio TV that three state police officers and one unidentified person were killed and six others were wounded.

The wounded were also officers, said an official with the state prosecutor's office who was not authorized to make public statements and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Government photos from a helicopter overflight showed what appeared to be white smoke rising from one building. Authorities closed nearby roads, and surrounding areas were under an evacuation alert.

AT LEAST 52 INMATES DEAD AFTER RIOT, FIRE AT MEXICO PRISON

Relatives of prisoners said the violence apparently broke out due to a conflict between local inmates and others who were recently transferred from a prison in the border city of Nuevo Laredo.

Uprisings are relatively common at Mexican prisons, where inmates often exercise de facto control of their own environments.

Tamaulipas, a Gulf coast state bordering Texas, has seen high levels of violence in recent years as rival drug gangs and factions battle for control.
The Paris climate agreement still has a chance despite the "temporary absence of American leadership," Barack Obama said Tuesday, adding that he was cheered that U.S. states, cities, corporations and others have decided to carry on with the Paris commitments.

The former U.S. president made the remarks in a speech to the Montreal Chamber of Commerce and got a round of applause from the business crowd for mentioning the Paris accord.

President Donald Trump announced last week he would pull the U.S. out of the Paris agreement. Trump argues the climate agreement has disadvantaged the U.S. and benefited other countries, leaving American businesses and taxpayers to absorb the costs.

"Obviously I'm disappointed with the current American administration decision to put out of Paris," Obama said. "We're going to have to act with more urgency. I'm looking forward to the United States being a leader and not just on the sidelines going forward."

Obama said many jobs have been created in clean industries over the last decade. "For all those jobs that were lost in coal, many multiples of jobs were gained in the solar industry but those didn't get advertised," he said.

He said costs of clean energy have become comparable to "dirty" energy and that has changed the economics of investment in industry.

"All that work that we did is now embedded by decisions by companies around America and around the world," he said. "It's not as if Walmart is now going to suddenly reverse itself. They are going to continue to build on the clean energy they've invested in because it's going to save them money."

Obama said he is hugely invested in dealing with climate change because he has daughters and he will at some point have some granddaughters.

"This won't likely affect me as much as it will affect them," he said. "If we don't act now then it is going to be that much more difficult for the next generation to deal with the warming of the planet."

Obama did not mention Trump by name in his speech and in a question and answer session afterward. But the former president said that while such instincts of retrenchment are understandable and tempting, they must be avoided.

"History also shows there is a better way," he said. "Canada shows, the United States, Europe, Japan show it is possible for us to overcome our fears and to reach across our divides."
ISIS claimed responsibility for a pair of Wednesday attacks in Tehran in which suicide bombers and teams of gunmen stormed Iran's parliament and the nearby shrine of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, killing at least 12 and injuring dozens of others.

This is the first attack orchestrated by ISIS in the Islamic Republic, SITE Intel Group reported. It wasn't initially clear if the death count, reported by state broadcaster IRIB, included the attackers.

In a rare and stunning move, ISIS released video from inside the parliament building while the attack was under way. The video, circulated online, shows a gunman and a bloody, lifeless body of a man lying on the ground next to a desk. A voice on the video praises God and says in Arabic: "Do you think we will leave? We will remain, God willing." Another voice repeats the same words. The two appeared to be parroting a slogan used by IS spokesman Abu Mohammad al-Adnani, who was killed in Syria last year.

The parliament assault ended Wednesday morning with all four attackers there being killed.

"Iranian nation moves on, today the fumbling with firecrackers in #Tehran, won't affect the will of our nation," Ayatollah Kahmenei wrote in a tweet.

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said "the depravity of terrorism has no place in a peaceful, civilized world."

One of the terrorists blew himself up inside the parliament building, where a session had been in progress, according to a statement carried by Iran state TV. It quoted lawmaker Elias Hazrati as saying the attackers were armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles.

An Associated Press reporter saw several police snipers on the rooftops of buildings around parliament. Shops in the area were shuttered, and gunfire could be heard. Witnesses said the attackers were shooting from the fourth floor of the parliament building down at people in the streets below.

"I was passing by one of the streets. I thought that children were playing with fireworks, but I realized people are hiding and lying down on the streets," Ebrahim Ghanimi, who was around the parliament building when the assailants stormed in, told The Associated Press. "With the help of a taxi driver, I reached a nearby alley."

Police helicopters circled over the parliament building and all mobile phone lines from inside were disconnected. The semi-official ISNA news agency said all entrance and exit gates at parliament were closed and that lawmakers and reporters were ordered to remain in place inside the chamber.

State TV reported four attackers were involved in the parliament attack.

Iran's official state broadcaster said a security guard was killed and four people wounded in the shrine attack. It said one of the attackers at the shrine was killed by security guards and that a woman was arrested. It described the shrine attackers as "terrorists" and said one carried out a suicide bombing, without providing further details.

In addition to being lethal, the attack on the shrine of Khomeini is symbolically stunning. As Iran's first Supreme Leader, Khomeini is a towering figure in the country and was its revolutionary leader in the 1979 ouster of the shah.

The Associated Press contributed to this report
Iran vowed quick revenge after ISIS suicide bombers and gunmen stormed parliament and the mausoleum of the countrys revered spiritual leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, killing 13 people and injuring 41.

That revenge is likely to be swift and brutal based on the response to past terror attacks in the country, and wont be tempered by the fact that all five attackers were killed by security forces. And it might not even be entirely aimed at preventing future terrorist attacks.

Irans Powerful Revolutionary Guard stopped short of directly blaming Saudi involvement but called it meaningful that the attacks took place a week after President Donald Trump traveled to Riyadh. The Guard statement said that Saudi Arabia constantly supports takfiri terrorists and the Islamic States claim of responsibility for the Tehran attacks reveals [Saudi Arabias] hand in this barbaric action.

IRAN ATTACK: ISIS CLAIMS RESPONSIBILITY FIR PAIR OF ASSAULTS IN TEHRAN

Iran is not limiting its focus to external threats. Iranian human rights campaigners say hardline politicians and news outlets close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have already begun placing blame for the Tehran attacks on reformist and centrist officials who have been critical of Irans security forces.

And they fear that the attack will be used as an excuse to further muzzle speech.

These terrible events should not undermine the mandate to improve civil and political rights that the Iranian people handed President Hassan Rouhani in the recent election, said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI). Despite the threat Iran is facing, the Iranian authorities should not use the attacks as an excuse to further crackdown on civil society.

While it was the first attack the Islamic State carried out in Tehran, its not the first time Iran has criticized the Saudis for terror attacks by other groups. Predominantly Shiite Iran has been dealing with a Sunni resistance movement in the Baluchestan and Sistan provinces along the border shared with Pakistan and Afghanistan. The area has been a warzone for years, with thousands of Iranian troops killed in clashes with Sunni terrorists as well as smugglers transporting heroin through Iran and Turkey to Europe.

For example, a few years ago Iran executed 16 Sunni insurgents after 14 Iranian border guards were killed in a clash. Its unclear whether the Sunnis were rounded up or already in custody, but reports said they were not believed to be connected to the border attack.

More recently, Iran executed 10 Sunni prisoners  it calls them Takfiri-Salafist  held on terror charges despite claims they were innocent. The Norway-based group Iran Human Rights claimed their confessions were forced.

Many if not all of these prisoners were subjected to unfair trials and sentenced to death based on confessions extracted under torture, IHRs spokesman, Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, told the Guardian newspaper last year.

Iranian human rights campaigners are worried the ISIS attack is going to lead to yet another crackdown.

Whenever the Iranian state has perceived external threats, the CHRI said in a statement to Fox News, the intelligence establishment has seized the opportunity to further infringe upon the civil rights of the Iranian people.
A Colombian garbage collector gathered more than 20,000 discarded books and created a free library in the countrys capital.

Jose Alberto Gutierrez of Bogota started collecting the tossed books 20 years ago, according to the BBC. Leo Tolstoys classic, Anna Karenina, was the first book Gutierrez saved from destruction.

I realized that people were throwing books away in the rubbish, Gutierrez told the BBC. I started to rescue them.

VENEZUELA CRISIS FORCES WOMEN TO SELL SEX IN COLOMBIA, FUELS SLAVERY RISK

Gutierrez, who has been dubbed the Lord of the Books, would gather the disposed books and bring them to families who could not afford them. After some time, his collection started to grow and overfill his home, which was converted into a free library.

Some of the books are transported to the poverty-stricken areas of Bogota or regions with no libraries.

The more books we give away, the more come to us, he said.

COLOMBIAN POLICE DROP REWARD LEAFLETS FOR DRUG LORD

The dustbin man has also been supplying books to former soldiers of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia or FARC. Some of the rebels have expressed interest in studying a career as they prepare to reenter society after last year's peace deal.

Gutierrez himself plans to return to school and prepare for a leavers exam, a standardized test administered during the last two years of high school. Gutierrez was unable to take the exams when he was younger.
Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen has expressed regret over U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate agreement.

Before meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris, Loekke Rasmussen said "it is crucial that we now stand tall, maintain our commitments and deliver on the promises we have given. We need an ambitious implementation of the agreement."

Loekke Rasmussen said the meeting would also focus on security and European issues.

He reiterated his condolences to the British people following the attack on London Bridge and Borough Market and called for unity in Europe to fight "evil dark forces."
Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden stressed the need Wednesday to address global warming, despite President Donald Trump's decision to pull out of the Paris climate accord, and voiced confidence that the U.S. can overcome its current introspective phase.

Biden said that it is "overwhelmingly" in the interest of future generations to deal with climate change, "notwithstanding what some of the folks in this administration may think."

Biden said his first report from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, when he took office, identified global warming as the greatest danger to U.S. physical security  through population displacement and war.

Speaking at a conference in Athens , Biden said: "The vast majority of the American people do not agree with the decision the president made."

As vice president Biden, supported former President Barack Obama's efforts to take part in the Paris accord and fight the effects of climate change.

On Wednesday, he also underscored the key significance for the U.S. of European security and the trans-Atlantic alliance.

"I know at this moment there are questions about what kind of leadership the world can expect from the United States of America, going forward," Biden said. "But I want to be very clear that there is still in the United States of America a strong bipartisan consensus, especially in the United States Congress, that European security is vital to U.S. security."

"The United States has had moments of turning inwards in the past. But we've always overcome them, just as we will overcome this," he said.

"History has proven that the defense of free nations in Europe has always, always, always, been in America's best interests and is America's fight."

Speaking at the same event, former U.S. Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte described the Trump administration as still being on a "learning curve."

"We now have a president who has literally no government experience and I'm not sure yet appreciates the difference between governmental work and private sector work," he said. "The real question we all face, looking at this now from a United States perspective: is just how long is just how long is this learning curve going to be? And in the end, is he really going to learn?"

Biden met later Wednesday with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.
The Latest on the attack on London Bridge and Borough Market (all times local):

7:15 p.m.

Relatives of London Bridge attacker Khuram Butt say they are "shocked and appalled" by his actions.

Butt, 27, was one of three men who killed eight people and injured dozens in the Saturday night attacks on and near London Bridge.

"As a family we are shocked and appalled by the actions of Khuram and his associates," his family said in a statement on Wednesday. "Our heartfelt thoughts and prayers are with the victims and families at this time. Now, more than ever, we need to work together to stop the actions of the mindless few who claim to be acting in the name of Islam."

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6:35 p.m.

London police say they carried out a controlled explosion as they investigated two unattended vehicles near the new U.S. embassy, but say the incident is now over and is "not terrorism-related."

The Metropolitan Police says an area near the building was cordoned off as officers investigated the vehicles in Vauxhall.

American diplomats have not yet moved into the new building on the south side of the River Thames.

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4:15 p.m.

The former wife of one of the London Bridge attackers says she is "deeply shocked, saddened and numbed" by her ex-partner's actions.

Charisse O'Leary issued a statement on Wednesday saying she and 30-year-old Moroccan pastry chef Rachid Redouane had a daughter together and split up about six months ago.

O'Leary condemned Redouane's role in the attacks that "killed and injured so many innocent people" and says she did not support his beliefs.

She said: "My thoughts and efforts now are with trying to bring up my daughter with the knowledge that someday I will have to try and explain to her why her father did what he did."

Police shot and killed Redouane and two accomplices during Saturday night's rampage.

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3:30 p.m.

The siblings of a 39-year-old banker say their brother was one of the eight people killed in the London attacks.

Ignacio Echeverria was last seen lying on the ground near London Bridge after he confronted the assailants with a skateboard. His sister Isabel wrote on Facebook Wednesday: "My brother Ignacio tried to stop some terrorists and lost his life trying to save others."

Echeverria's elder brother Joaquin has told the AP that a diplomatic process had begun for relatives to see the victim's body and to eventually take him back to Spain.

Echeverria was originally from Spain and worked in the British capital as a financial risks analyst for HSBC.

Earlier Wednesday, Spain had urged British authorities to speed up the identification of the dead and wounded in the London Bridge attacks to spare families more suffering. Spain's government says it is "deeply saddened" after receiving confirmation by British authorities that Echeverria was among the victims.

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12:40 p.m.

The Italian mother of a London Bridge attacker says her son was always very hard on himself, never measuring up to his own rigid expectations, and had become radicalized in the last year while living in London.

Valeria Collina, a Muslim convert, says her son Youssef Zaghba had wanted to go to Syria to start a family  not to fight  since he had believed that he could find "pure Islam" there.

She told reporters on Wednesday that he had changed in the last year. She says: "When I went to England, he was a bit more rigid, but not so much. But from his face, from his look, I could tell there had been a radicalization, as they say. And this happened in England."

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12:05 p.m.

The Italian mother of one of the London Bridge attackers says what her son did was "horrible" and that she will work to educate young people about the true meaning of Islam. Valeria Collina, a Muslim convert, told reporters on Wednesday that she had told Italian airport authorities to detain her son, Youseff Zagba, after he was stopped March 15, 2016 on his way to Turkey with a one-way ticket.

Speaking of the attack, Collina said: "It is a horrible thing, something that should not happen. It shouldn't have happened and it should not happen again."

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11:45 a.m.

Spain urged British authorities to speed up the identification of the dead and wounded in the London Bridge attacks to spare more suffering to the relatives who have been looking for a 39-year-old Spanish banker.

Ignacio Echeverria, who worked in the British capital as a financial risks analyst for HSBC, was last seen lying on the floor near London Bridge after he confronted assailants with a skateboard.

Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido said Wednesday during an interview with Spanish public radio that he found it strange that the identification was taking so long. He said: "Especially during a terrorist attack, the victims and their relatives have to be well taken care of."

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11:40 a.m.

French President Emmanuel Macron says a third French victim has been identified among those killed in the stabbing and van attacks in London.

Speaking in Paris, Macron said France was informed of the news on Wednesday morning.

He did not name the third victim. He said eight other French citizens were injured in the attacks.

He added: "We are paying a heavy cost in these attacks."

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11:35 a.m.

Italy's police chief says his force has its "documents and conscience clear" after authorities flagged one of the London Bridge attackers in the European-wide intelligence-sharing system after he was stopped in 2016 en route to Turkey with a one-way ticket.

Franco Gabrielli also says Italy understands how British authorities might have allowed Youssef Zaghba to slip through the cracks. Zaghb, an Italian-Moroccan, was one of three Islamic extremists who killed eight people and wounded dozens in truck and knife attacks near London Bridge last week.

Gabrielli said: "We have our documents and conscious clear, but because we are also responsible people, we can understand the concern, the suffering and the difficulty of those who are called to manage complicated situations."

Gabrielli spoke to reporters Wednesday on the Sicilian island of Lampedusa, where police chiefs from nine European Union countries were meeting to discuss migration and terrorism issues. Britain did not participate.

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11:00 a.m.

Police searching for a French man who has been missing since the London Bridge attack say they have recovered a body from the River Thames.

The Metropolitan Police says the body was found Tuesday downstream from the bridge. The force says formal identification has not yet taken place, but Xavier Thomas' next of kin have been informed.

If confirmed, Thomas would be the eighth person killed in the vehicle and knife attack. Almost 50 were injured.

Thomas, 45, was walking with his girlfriend over the bridge when the attack began on Saturday night.

Police said earlier that witness accounts suggested Thomas might have been thrown into the river.

Thomas' girlfriend was struck and seriously injured by the van.

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6:30 a.m.

Relatives of Australian Sara Zelenak have confirmed she was killed in the London attacks over the weekend.

The 21-year-old worked as a nanny in London and had previously been described as missing after the attacks Saturday night.

Her aunt, Tara, says Zelenak's mother Julie Wallace broke down when she learned of her daughter's death while traveling to Britain.

Tara posted on Facebook: "Even though there was limbo for days, there was still a bit of hope."

Seven people were killed and dozens wounded in the attacks by three assailants near London Bridge. Another Australian who died, nurse Kirsty Boden, was said to have been trying to help other victims when she was killed.

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4 a.m.

A former U.S. intelligence official has offered his nation's condolences to three Australians killed in attacks in London and Melbourne, Australia.

Two Australians were among the seven killed in a van and knife attacks on and on Saturday. A Chinese-born Australian was killed by a gunman who was shot dead by police in what authorities described as a terrorist incident in Melbourne on Monday.

Former U.S. Director of National Intelligence Jim Clapper said in a speech to Australia's National Press Club: "Unfortunately, on a serious note, I am compelled to acknowledge the tragic loss of two Australian citizens in the mindless, heinous terrorist attack in London."

He added: "On behalf of the United States, I want to offer heartfelt condolences and prayers and similar thoughts go out to the family of the man killed in Melbourne."

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3 a.m.

Prince Harry has spoken in praise of Australians living in London after two of them were confirmed to have been killed in the van and knife attacks there over the weekend.

Harry said: "Australians form an important and vibrant part of the fabric of life in London and we are reminded of that in good times and bad." He said his heart went out to the victims, their friends and families.

Authorities have said Australian nurse Kirsty Boden was trying to help other victims when she was killed in the attacks Saturday night on London Bridge and in Borough Market. The identity of the second Australian among the seven dead has not been released.

Harry was in Sydney on Wednesday to launch the 2018 Invictus Games. He created the sporting competition for injured and sick servicemen and women after his two tours of duty in Afghanistan.
Family members of the London attackers are speaking out days after the three men carried out a deadly rampage at London Bridge and Borough Market over the weekend.

Charisse O'Leary, the former wife of Rachid Redouane, condemned the deadly attacks in a statement on Wednesday and said she did not support Redouane's beliefs.

"My thoughts and efforts now are with trying to bring up my daughter with the knowledge that someday I will have to try and explain to her why her father did what he did," O'Leary said.

O'Leary was married to Redouane, 30, and had a daughter together. She siad the two separated six months ago. Redouane is also known as Rachid Elkhdar.

Valeria Collina, the mother of 22-year-old Youssef Zaghba, also told reporters that her son was always hard on himself because he never measured up his expectation. But in the last year, she noticed Zaghba was different.

"When I went to England, he was a bit more rigid, but not so much. But from his face, from his look, I could tell there had been a radicalization, as they say. And this happened in England," Collina said.

Zaghba was an Italian national of Moroccan descent who was reportedly working in a London restaurant. Italian authorities said Zaghba had been stopped and questioned in Italy but had not been charged with any crime. Collina also said she told authorities at an Italian airport to detain her son on March 15, 2016, before he boarded a one-way flight to Turkey. Italian officials said suspicions about him had been shared with British authorities.

Collina, a Muslim convert herself, added that Zaghba thought he could find pure Islam" in Syria and looked to start a family, not to fight. The mother condemned her son's actions, calling them "horrible" and vowing to use her voice to educate young people about the true meaning of Islam.

BODY PULLED FROM THAMES IS 8TH VICTIM

"It is a horrible thing, something that should not happen. It shouldn't have happened and it should not happen again," Collina said.

Redouane, Zaghba and Khurum Butt, 27, charged a van into a crowd on the London Bridge before jumping out and slashing people with knives in Borough Market on Saturday. All three men were shot dead.

A 30-year-old man was also arrested in east London in connection to the attack, police said early Wednesday. Two people are now in custody on suspicion of violating the Terrorism Act. They have not been identified or charged. All others who had been arrested have been released without facing charges.

BOSTON COLLEGE STUDENT USED BELT TO HELP SAVE LONDON MAN'S LIFE

British Prime Minister Theresa May called for a tougher counter-terrorism laws in the country, even if it requires altering human rights protections, after two deadly terror incidents that have left dozens of people dead and wounded. Seven people were killed and 50 others were injured on Saturday.

Reaction to the rampage has dominated each of the UK candidate's campaigns before Thursday's general election. Opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and others criticized May for cutting police numbers by roughly 20,000 during her tenure as home secretary.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The siblings of a 39-year-old banker say their brother was one of the eight people killed in the London attacks.

Ignacio Echeverria, originally from Spain, was last seen lying on the ground near London Bridge after he confronted the assailants with a skateboard.

"Ignacio did not survive the moment of the attack. Thank you to all who loved and cared for him. We know that we are not the only ones who are sad," wrote his sister Ani on Facebook.

Echeverria's elder brother Joaquin has told the AP that a diplomatic process had begun for relatives to see the victim's body and to eventually take him back to Spain.

According to Spanish newspaper El Pais, the identification of the body was possible thanks to a DNA test after repeated fingerprint tests were inconclusive.

Echeverria worked in the British capital as a financial risks analyst for HSBC.

LONDON BRIDGE ATTACK HERO AMONG 4 STILL MISSING AMID RELATIVES' AGONY

He was last seen confronting one of the terrorists as he was stabbing a female victim.

They saw him lying on the floor on the sidewalk after defending someone with his skateboard, his father wrote on Facebook on Sunday.

Spain's government said in a statement it was "deeply saddened" after receiving confirmation by British authorities that Echeverria was among the victims.

The AP contributed to this report.
A young boy stopped police in Manchester, England, on Wednesday with a special reason: to give them chocolate and thank-you notes for being "superhero" officers after the terror attack there.

The notes to Greater Manchester Police read: Thank you for protecting everyone from danger and for being a real superhero to us all. They were signed by Ben, age 11, Amy-Leigh, age 14, and Charlotte, age 4.

Ben hand-delivered the notes, according to police.

The act of kindness came after a suicide bomber killed 22 people and wounded more than 100 others at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester on May 22. The police have 1,000 people working on the case and have put 13 men in custody since the attack. Security has remained high at major events across England throughout the past week.

NEW PHOTOS IN HUNT FOR MANCHESTER BOMB CLUES

The Greater Manchester Police of Manchester North posted a picture of the notes and coins on Facebook, with their own note that said thank you for brightening up our day. The GMP said Ben approached police constables working outside the Town Hall and handed them the envelopes before running off.

The post has already racked up more than 22,000 reactions and 5,000 comments applauding both the children and their parents.

BRITISH OFFICIALS MISSED WARNING SIGNS BEFORE LONDON BRIDGE ATTACK

Support for the Manchester Police is trending across social media, from videos of an officer dancing with children at the One Love Manchester benefit gig, to photos of officers hugging fans and posing for pictures, the Manchester Evening News reported.

Photos also show police bringing flowers and showing their support at memorials and services following the terrorist attacks that took place Saturday night.
A Burmese military plane with more than 100 passengers on board vanished on Wednesday prompting a frantic search, a military spokesman said.

The Chinese-made Y-8 aircraft vanished about 1:35 p.m. local time in the southern part of the country near Yangon, Gen. Myat Min Oo said.

The plane was carrying 90 passengers  mostly families of military personnel  and 14 crew members, according to Gen. Myat Min Oo.

"The military plane went missing and lost contact after it took off from Myeik, and now the military has started a sea and air search with naval ships and military aircraft and is preparing for rescue operations," he said. The aircraft was bound for Yangon.

Myeik, also known as Mergui, is a city in southeastern Myanmar on the Andaman coast. Much of the plane's route would have been over the Andaman Sea.

SYRIAN REFUGEES 'WANT TO GO HOME,' HALEY SAYS

The general said it was raining at the time, but not heavily.

The military bought the plane in 2016, Reuters reported. Officials said it was carrying more than 2 tons of supplies and had logged more than 800 flying hours.

SRI LANKA FLASH FLOODS FORCE 500,000 FROM THEIR HOMES

The flight took off from Myeik at 1:06 p.m. and lost contact at 1:35 p.m., when it was last seen on radar about 20 miles to the west of Dawei, formerly known as Tavoy, according to an announcement posted on the Facebook page of the commander of the military, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing.

"Four naval ships and two military aircraft have been searching for the plane since 2:00 p.m. up until now," the announcement said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
North Korea launched several projectiles believed to be short-range surface-to-ship cruise missiles from its east coast Thursday, according to South Korea's military.

"North Korea fired multiple unidentified projectiles, assumed to be surface-to-ship missiles, this morning from the vicinity of Wonsan, Gangwon Province," the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said, according to the Yonhap News Agency.

The JCS said the South Korean military has beefed up surveillance and vigilance against the possibility of additional provocations, maintaining full preparedness. The statement said the launches were immediately reported to South Korean President Moon Jae-in but gave no further details.

The missiles fired Thursday traveled around 120 miles, according to the South Korean military. The latest provocation came less than a week after United Nations Security Council passed a new resolution expanding sanctions against the country as punishment for its missile tests.

North Korea conducted ballistic missile tests over three consecutive weekends in May going back to Mother's Day, but last weekend there were no launches.

The remote country is on pace to break its record setting 2016 missile test-launch record.

The latest missile tests come as South Korea suspended its use of the American-based missile defense system THAAD.

SOUTH KOREA PUTS THAAD DEPLOYMENT ON HOLD

The Terminal High-Altitude Defense System (THAAD) has already been in operation in southeastern South Korea, with two launchers and radar. The system typically has six launchers  four of which are in in South Korea, but have yet to be installed.

South Koreas new President, Moon Jae-in, said his office was not briefed on the arrival of four new launchers and ordered an investigation. He also demanded an environmental assessment on the deployment site, saying the countrys Defense Ministry might be attempting to avoid an environmental inspection there.

"Each launch by the DPRK further demonstrates the rationale and necessity of the US-ROK alliance agreement to deploy THAAD," State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said. "The deployment of THAAD battery to the Korean Peninsula will improve US-ROK joint missile defense posture and enhance our defensive capabilities"

Rep. Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, called South Korea's decision "a blow to our national security interests."

Smith added that South Korea is "not sure of the U.S. commitment because of Trump's 'America First.'"

"We need to stand as a counter balance for other countries and this is a bad sign," Smith said.

"I have not seen North Korea back down," he added. "If they get nuclear capable missiles, they will threaten and hold sway without being deterred."

On May 14, North Korea premiered a powerful new midrange missile that it said could carry a heavy nuclear warhead. Experts at the time said that rocket flew higher and for a longer time than any other missile previously tested by North Korea, and that it could one day reach targets as far away as Hawaii and Alaska.

There are about 28,500 U.S. troops in South Korea as deterrence against potential aggression from North Korea.

Fox News' Lucas Tomlinson, Jennifer Griffin, Chad Pergram, and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
A hammer-wielding man who attacked a police officer at the world-famous Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group, Paris investigators said Wednesday.

The unnamed suspect, a 40-year-old man from Algeria, made the declaration of allegiance in a video authorities found in his apartment, France 24 reported.

Officials are classifying Tuesday's attack as a "terrorist act" because of "the words he said," French government spokesman Christopher Castaner told RTL radio on Wednesday. The unidentified man cried out "This is for Syria!" before he lunged at officers in front of the Paris monument on Tuesday. He was also carrying two kitchen knives and "other unsophisticated weapons" with him at the time.

NOTRE DAME HAMMER ATTACK SUSPECT YELLED 'THIS IS FOR SYRIA'; TERROR INVESTIGATION LAUNCHED

New surveillance video released to the Associated Press showed the assailant swinging his hammer at several officers before a wounded policeman shot him. Both men were hospitalized.

The suspect was a former journalist who had been working doctoral thesis since 2014 at the University of Lorraine, college president Pierre Mutzenhardt told France Bleu radio. The university received no indication that the attacker was an ISIS fighter.

"There'd been no difficulties with him. Nothing strange had been detected," Mutzenhardt said.

His thesis director, Arnaud Mercier, also agreed there was no signs, telling broadcaster BFM that the suspect spoke Swedish, Arabic and French and that his resume mentioned that he had worked as a journalist in Sweden and Algeria, including North African media.

"He was someone who believed a lot in democratic ideals, the expression of free thinking, in journalism," Mercier said on BFM. "Nothing, absolutely nothing, foretold that one day he'd be a jihadi who'd want to kill a policeman in the name of I don't know what cause."

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the hammer attack, but Paris prosecutors opened a counterterrorism investigation shortly after the incident.

TIMELINE OF RECENT TERROR ATTACKS AGAINST THE WEST

Paris has been under high security after a string of Islamic extremist attacks in recent years. In February, a man attacked soldiers outside a shopping mall near the Louvre. He was heard yelling "Allahu Akbar" before soldiers shot and injured him. Another attacker opened fire on a police van on Paris' Champs Elysees in April, killing one and seriously wounding two others. Police shot and killed the attacker in that situation.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has tweeted his thanks to former U.S. President Barack Obama after the two shared a private dinner at a Montreal restaurant.

Trudeau posted a picture of the pair talking in the eatery, with the caption "How do we get young leaders to take action in their communities? Thanks BarackObama for your visit & insights tonight in my hometown."

A crowd cheered the two leaders as they left the restaurant Tuesday night.

"A nice opportunity to share one my favorite hometown restaurants with an old friend, and talk about the state of the world," Trudeau said Wednesday.

Last year, Obama hosted Trudeau for a state dinner at the White House, the first for Canada since 1997.

Obama spoke to the Montreal Board of Trade Tuesday and decried what he called the lack of American leadership on climate change, a swipe at new President Donald Trump's administration.
When Hamas released a new political document last month, the terrorist group announced it at a press conference at the Sheraton Grand Doha in Qatar, less than an hours drive across town from U.S. Central Command forward headquarters at Al Udeid Airbase.

Nearby is the Taliban Embassy that was briefly set up to facilitate negotiations with the Obama administration, though Qatar still pays for the delegation to live there. Minutes away is the sprawling Al Jazeera TV headquarters, where one of its longest running programs is hosted by a spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has condoned homicide bombings against Israel. During the Iraq War, Central Command claimed U.S. troops came under fire from an Al Jazeera office in Baghdad.

AS GULF STATES CUT TIES WITH QATAR, TRUMP TEAM DEBATES MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD TERROR DESIGNATION

The close proximity of groups that advocate or support violence is no coincidence. Qatar, a country the size of New Jersey and whose 2.6 million residents enjoy the highest per-capita income in the world, has played a dangerous diplomatic game during the war on terror.

Qatar, nominally an American ally, regularly aids in the whitewashing of terrorist organizations, said Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in a recent op-ed.

According to experts like Schanzer, Qatar is a terrorist ATM. Qatar has given Hamas at least $1.4 billion, part of which the terror group has reportedly vowed to spend on new terror tunnels. In April, details were finalized with an Al Qaeda affiliate to pay a $1 billion ransom to win release of a Qatari royal family hunting party that had been captured in Southern Iraq.

The Obama administrations terrorism-finance officials said last year that Qatar has demonstrated a lack of political will to effectively enforce their combating terrorist financing laws. Treasury officials have said that designated terrorist financiers are operating openly and notoriously in the country.

KUWAITI EMIR SEEKS TO MEDIATE QATAR RIFT

A recent report by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies was unable to find a single specific instance of Qatar charging, convicting, and jailing a U.S. or U.N.-designated individual. In short, the FDD said terrorists roam free in Qatar. When President Obama released prisoners accused of terrorism from Guantanamo Bay, they ended up in Qatar.

Nevertheless, the country has been an important ally in the war on terror, and a financier of global business. Since 2014, the U.S. has flown thousands of bombing missions by B1Bs, B-52s and others based at Qatars Al Udeid Air Base against the Islamic State. When pressed on Tuesday about a tweet by President Trump pointing at radical ideology in Qatar, the Pentagon stood by the Qataris for their longstanding support.

We have no plans to change our posture in Qatar, said Major Adrian J.T. Rankine-Galloway, a Pentagon spokesman.

The country is the worlds biggest producer of liquefied natural gas. Through its $335 billion sovereign wealth fund, it owns stakes in multinational companies like Volkswagen and Barclays as well as extensive U.S. real estate holdings.

Qatars support of the Muslim Brotherhood is especially controversial because there is little agreement over whether to designate the group a Foreign Terrorist Organization, similar to Hamas. As Fox News has reported, Qatar has funneled money into influential Washington think-tanks that have resisted calls for giving the Brotherhood an FTO designation.

Thats after years of Obama administration refusal to criticize the groups alleged ties to terrorist groups like Hamas, Al Qaeda or ISIS. When asked in an interview with Fox News in 2011 if the Brotherhood was a threat to the United States, Obama said they are well organized and there are strains of their ideology that are anti-U.S. but did not call them a threat. In a response to a 2013 petition to call the group a terrorist organization, the White House pushed back.

HAMAS DENIES QATAR TO EXPEL LEADERS, BUT SAYS SOME TO MOVE

We have not seen credible evidence that the Muslim Brotherhood has renounced its decades-long commitment to non-violence, the White House said in a statement.

But experts told Fox News that there are branches of the Brotherhood that, upon further examination, are very likely to show direct support for terrorist operations in places like Egypt and Yemen.

The groups Washington advocates say that the Muslim Brotherhood is a mainstream non-violent political organization, albeit one that advocates Sharia law. The Brotherhood's English-language website describes Sharia as "the basis for controlling the affairs of state and society. As former Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently put it, the Brotherhoods actions in Egypt put a lie to the claim it is a moderate force.

Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi intended to become a dictator, an authoritarian, Gates told Fox News, And the Muslim Brotherhood established an authoritarian government in Egypt. And it didn't take very long until they also changed the constitution to embrace Sharia Law.

The leader of the military-backed counter coup told Fox News in 2015 that this was indeed a pivotal moment for revealing the Brotherhoods true intentions.

From a religious point of view, how you can kill your own fellow citizens, your own people, your own community  just for the sake of political leadership? said Egyptian President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi, The Egyptians people feel that the Brotherhood turned their lives into a living hell.

When the United Arab Emirates designated the Brotherhood a terror organization in 2014, it shocked the Obama administration by including two groups considered mainstream here in the United States: the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Muslim American Society (MAS). Both have ties to the Brotherhood, but the MAS was created by it.

Our threshold is quite low when we talk about extremism, said UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan. We cannot accept incitement or funding. For many countries, the definition of terror is that you have to carry a weapon or terrorize people. For us, its far beyond that. We cannot tolerate even the smallest amount of terrorism.

Fox News' Brainroom contributed to this report.
South Korea has suspended the rollout of the U.S. missile defense system designed to respond to threats from North Korea, officials announced Wednesday, in a move seen as a setback for the Trump administration.

The Terminal High-Altitude Defense System (THAAD) has already been in operation in southeastern South Korea, with two launchers and radar. The system typically has six launchers  four of which are in in South Korea, but have yet to be installed.

S. KOREA'S NEXT LEADER TO ENGAGE NORTH KOREA, RECONSIDER THAAD

South Koreas new President, Moon Jae-in, said his office was not briefed on the arrival of four new launchers and ordered an investigation. He also demanded an environmental assessment on the deployment site, saying the countrys Defense Ministry might be attempting to avoid an environmental inspection there.

Trump administration officials have said they aimed to complete the rollout by the end of this year. However, analysts say the environmental test would make it more difficult to achieve that goal.

The State Department referred inquiries about the situation to the South Korean government.

MCMASTER SAYS U.S. WILL PAY FOR THAAD ANTI-MISSILE SYSTEM IN SOUTH KOREA

The United States and South Korea have worked closely together on Alliance issues and we look forward to continuing our close coordination following the Moon administration, a State Department official told Fox News.

THAADs six launchers are using on a rotation  so the delay of the additional four launchers would lead to the already-deployed two launchers being overused, an analyst told The Associated Press, but noted it wouldnt cause any serious trouble in THAADs operations.

It was a campaign pledge of Moons to review the THAAD system as a whole but its unclear if he will move forward with that pledge.

Fox News Jennifer Griffin, Rich Edson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Its the last day of campaigning before parliamentary elections in the UK and Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May seems confident of victory.

But in these unpredictable political times, Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn is putting up a fight.

Theresa May looks as if shes going to win a decent majority, Spectator magazine editor Fraser Nelson told Fox News. But no one can be quite sure.

One wild card: Terror.

Three terror attacks in some three months in the UK, including the deadly attacks in London over the weekend, have put May on the defensive.

MANCHESTER BOMBING CHANGING STAKES IN UK ELECTION

She is calling for new strict anti-terror measures adding, if our human rights laws stop us, well change those laws so we can do it.

Left-wing politician Corbyn, who some have compared to Democratic/Socialist Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, struck back, criticizing May for cutting police numbers.

The way you deal with the threat to democracy, Corbyn said, is not by reducing democracy  its by dealing with the threat.

And then there's the reason the prime minister called this so-called "snap election:" To give her a stronger hand in Brussels when she's negotiating Britain's exit from the European Union, or "Brexit."

Her shaky campaign performance is raising doubts.

CORBYN TRYING TO SHED REBEL IMAGE TO WIN UK ELECTION

She positioned herself as strong and stable, Nelson told Fox News. But her behavior is not consistent with that description.

President Trump has even become a factor in this campaign. Tweets from Trump knocking comments from London Mayor Saddiq Khan following the terror attacks caused controversy among Corbyn and other Labour figures.

May refrained from firing back at Trump, analysts say, because she needs the U.S. after the UK's EU departure.

Nelson said a win by Corbyns Labour party would mean the U.S. would be minus-1 ally.

At a time when U.S. relations with Europe are shaky, the White House is no doubt hoping Mays Conservative Party will make it through.
British Prime Minister Theresa May was battling to hold on to a narrowing lead as U.K. voters weighed terror, Brexit and immigration in an election that once seemed like a landslide for the incumbent.

Late polls show a tightening race between May and her lead opponent, Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, in a general election that will determine how the U.K. negotiates its exit from the European Union and how it handles attacks from radical Muslims, among other things. But surveys showed May carrying a lead of as much as 8 points, and had her on pace to keep a 50-seat majority in Parliament.

The 60-year-old May, who took over as prime minister last year after David Cameron stepped down following the Brexit referendum result, had what many saw as an insurmountable lead over her political rivals, a lead that could actually widen her current majority in the House of Commons.

Then came the Manchester bombing on May 22 and the London Bridge van and stabbing attacks on June 3. The Manchester attack left at least 22 dead and some 119 injured, while at least 8 were killed and more than 50 injured in the assault at London Bridge.

Corbyn quickly jumped on the opportunity to remind voters of what May did when she was Camerons home secretary, or top law officer: She oversaw cuts to the police department of some 20,000 local officers. Suddenly the 68-year-old socialist appeared within striking distance of No. 10 Downing St.

One recent poll shows May with a relatively small 6 percent lead over Corbyn -- though British political observers warn the polls are often wrong about outcomes.

"The opinion polls are tightening but the opinion polls in Britain are a bit unreliable," said Mark Garnett, a politics professor at Lancaster University.

"How people intend to vote is very different from how they will actually vote," Garnett told Fox News Wednesday. "Corbyn immediately went on the offensive and said this is largely due to the fact that police numbers have been curbed. May was home secretary in charge of the police before she became prime minister. The whole narrative [of the campaign] has suddenly become cuts to the police."

Corbyn, widely written off at the start of the campaign, has drawn thousands of people to upbeat rallies and energized young voters with his plans to boost public spending after years of Conservative austerity.

"They underestimated us, didn't they?" Corbyn told supporters in Glasgow on Wednesday. "They underestimated the good sense of ordinary people, ordinary people all over Britain."

An election that had appeared to be a referendum on Mays ability to negotiate a good Brexit deal had become a referendum on her ability to keep Britons safe. She may yet win, but prospects of her building or even retaining her majority in Parliament have dimmed dramatically.

"People have been questioning whether Theresa May symbolizes stable and strong leadership," said Michael Geary, professor of European studies at Maastricht University in the Netherlands.

"Jeremy Corbyn over the last few days has been rising in a kind of Bernie Sanders way amongst the young and those on the left," Geary told Fox News.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Voters will head to the polls on Thursday to vote in the United Kingdom's snap general election. Below are some key points about the election and its major players.

What is a snap election?

"Snap election" refers to an election that's held early. U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May called for such an election in April.

British prime ministers used to have the power to call elections at will, but the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act, passed in 2011, makes things more complicated. Under the act, national elections are held every five years, in May.

The prime minister, however, can call an early election if two-thirds of lawmakers support it. The House of Commons voted 522-13 in favor of an early general election in April.

Why is a snap election being held?

May called a snap election in hope of increasing the Conservative majority in Parliament, saying that would strengthen Britain's hand in European Union exit negotiations.

The Conservative Party holds 330 of 650 seats in the House of Commons. The Labour Party, led by Jeremy Corbyn, holds 229 seats.

MAY WIN NO LONGER A SURE BET AFTER TERROR ATTACKS

What time do polls open and close?

They will be open from 7 a.m. (2 a.m. ET) to 10 p.m. (5 p.m. ET) on Thursday.

Who can vote in a general election?

People can vote if they are registered voters, at least 18 years old and have "British, Irish, or qualifying Commonwealth" citizenship, according to the Electoral Commission.

A number of groups are unable to vote in the election - among them members of the House of Lords, E.U. citizens residing in the U.K. and "anyone other than British, Irish and qualifying Commonwealth citizens," according to the Electoral Commission.

Convicted people "detained in pursuance of their sentences" as well as people found guilty in the last 5 years "of corrupt or illegal practices in connection with an election" cannot vote either, the commision says.

What do I need to know about the election, as well as the race between May and Corbyn?

The election was expected to be dominated by Brexit, but after the recent deadly attacks in Manchester and London which killed 29 people, it has become a battle over security.

The attacks have raised awkward questions about May's record. She's been criticized by opponents for slashing the police force by 20,000 officers when she was interior minister between 2010 and 2016. May was also responsible for security services that failed to keep tabs on Khuram Butt, one of three men who went on a vehicle-and-knife rampage around London Bridge on Saturday.

Before the attacks, the polls were narrowing. May's campaigning style was criticized as stiff and lackluster, and some Conservative policy proposals got a hostile reception, including a plan to make pensioners pay for more of their care.

Corbyn, meanwhile, emerged as a British Bernie Sanders, energizing a youthful base with his unflashy style and proposals to increase government spending after seven years of austerity. Corbyn is a veteran socialist who has opposed British military interventions and tougher anti-terrorism laws for decades.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Mexico on Tuesday conceded to U.S. demands for changes in the terms of Mexican access to the lucrative U.S. sugar market, striking a deal with Washington that will likely lift prices of the sweetener to U.S. food processors and consumers.

Sugar producers in the United States refused to endorse the agreement in principle between the two governments after pushing for even more concessions from Mexico, raising the possibility that the deal could collapse.

The agreement in principle between U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo aims to resolve a long-standing trade dispute between the two countries.

MEXICO CANCELS SUGAR EXPORT PERMITS TO THE US IN DISPUTE OVER SHIPMENT PACE

Without it, the United States could have reimposed steep import duties on its southern neighbor and risked the prospect of a retaliation from Mexico just as the two countries and Canada prepare to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement this year.

Under the deal, Mexico would sharply reduce the share of refined sugar it exports to the United States and increase raw sugar exports.

"We have gotten the Mexican side to agree to nearly every request made by U.S. industry to address flaws in the current system and ensure fair treatment of American sugar growers and refiners," Ross told a news conference.

TRUMP PRESIDENCY SHIFTING POLITICAL FORCES IN MEXICO  TOWARD THE LEFT

Still, Ross said the U.S. sugar producers had told him that they could not accept the deal in its current form, but he hoped that they would agree to some changes in a final drafting of the agreement in the next several days.

He did not elaborate on what action the Commerce Department would take if there were no final agreement with the U.S. producers. It was unclear if Ross would impose the settlement if U.S. producers did not sign onto it.

The agreement lifts the minimum prices for Mexican imports, which will likely be passed on by U.S. sugar refiners to food companies and beverage and confectionary producers and ultimately to consumers.

SUGAR BOUNCES BACK ON HOPES FOR END TO U.S.-MEXICO TRADE DISPUTE

A trade group that represents a coalition of U.S. sugar buyers and other firms that are critics of the U.S. program said the deal favored the interests of U.S. sugar producers, and estimated the cost to the consumers in higher prices for food, drinks and confectionary at around $1 billion.

"Today's announcement is a bad deal for hardworking Americans, and exemplifies the worst form of crony capitalism," the U.S. Coalition for Sugar Reform said in a statement.

The negotiations were an attempt to settle an anti-dumping and anti-subsidy case brought by a coalition of cane and beet farming groups and ASR Group, the maker of Domino Sugar that is owned by the politically well-connected Fanjul family of Florida.

While the limits on refined sugar from Mexico at 30 percent were significantly below the previous 53 percent limit, these groups had initially pushed for a 15 percent limit.

Sources on both sides of the border had said on Monday that the U.S. sugar industry had added new demands outside of the terms agreed on earlier yesterday by the two governments.

The American Sugar Alliance said it objected to the new deal because Mexico would still be able to ship in refined sugar to meet additional U.S. demand above quota. The alliance wants the U.S. Department of Agriculture to have the final say on the type of sugar to be imported.

The agreement, if finalized, was expected to avert potential retaliation from Mexico on imports of U.S. high-fructose corn syrup which had worried corn growers and refiners.
The Syrian government's allies will strike at American positions inside Syria if it crosses any "red lines," Hezbollah warned on Wednesday.

The Lebanese militant group, a close ally to the Syrian government, issued the threat via its military media arm  one day after American forces bombed pro-government forces in eastern Syria.

The Pentagon said Tuesday the pro-government forces were infringing on a "de-confliction" zone established to protect U.S.-backed local opposition forces, who are engaged in fighting the Islamic State group.

On its TV station al-Manar, Hezbollah broadcast footage it said was of an Iranian drone tailing an American one over eastern Syria. It said the video was proof the Syrian government's backers could strike American units at will.

Iran is a key backer of Hezbollah and the Syrian government, and is deeply involved in the Syrian civil war.

Hezbollah's military media said it was only "self-restraint" keeping pro-government forces from attacking American units.

Also Wednesday, a U.S. official said the fight for Raqqa, the Islamic State group's de facto capital, will "only accelerate" as the militants lose their grip on Iraq's Mosul.

Brett McGurk, the U.S. envoy for the global coalition against IS, said the U.S. and its local allies, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, were prepared for a protracted fight for the northern Syrian city. He spoke at a press conference in Baghdad.

The jihadist group is locked in twin battles for its key strongholds, Raqqa and Mosul. The SDF launched its attack on Raqqa on Tuesday and have already captured a neighborhood on the city's eastern end. Iraqi forces have been battling IS in Mosul since October.

McGurk said the fight for Raqqa will be a "difficult and very long-term battle."

Elsewhere in Syria, activists said at least nine civilians traveling in a van in eastern rural Deir el-Zour were killed in an airstrike, suspected to be by the U.S.-led international coalition battling IS.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the airstrike around sunset near al-Quria village hit the van, killing 13. Omar Abu Leila, an activist from Deir el-Zour, said nine people were confirmed killed.

Such discrepancies in casualty figures is common in the immediate aftermath of such attacks, which are increasing as the campaign against IS intensifies.
fter Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's electoral victory Saturday, what's next for the Islamic Republic?

Here's some things to watch for:

HARD-LINERS' REACTION

Those backing Ebrahim Raisi will accept the results. However, hard-liners within Iran's judiciary and security services will continue to pressure Rouhani in different ways. Even before the vote, hard-line elements routinely detained dual nationals, likely seeking concessions from the West. Artists, journalists, models and others have been targeted in crackdowns on expression. Hard-liners probably will challenge Rouhani in the country's parliament, especially over social issues or any measure that appears to be accepting or promoting Western culture. The paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, which answers to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, will continue to launch ballistic missiles and have close encounters with U.S. Navy vessels in the Persian Gulf.

THE ECONOMY

The nuclear deal with world powers allowed Iran to start selling its crude oil everywhere and the country quickly re-entered Europe and other key markets. However, their re-entry comes as global crude prices remain stuck around $50 a barrel, about half the price when major sanctions began to bite. Airbus and Boeing Co. have signed multi-billion-dollar deals with Iran since the accord as well. Iran was also reconnected to the international banking system. Even so, many other international firms remain hesitant to re-enter the Iranian market for fear of changing political winds that may usher in new sanctions, jeopardizing their profits and any nascent ventures.

RELATIONS WITH THE U.S.

Donald Trump long threatened to renegotiate the nuclear deal while on the campaign trail. His administration said it put Iran "on notice" in February after issuing a series of sanctions following ballistic missile tests. But since then, Trump's administration has taken a key step toward preserving the accord. Rouhani's win may ease some of the tensions between the two nations, as a hard-line victory could have further imperiled the deal. It's unlikely relations will ever be as warm as they were between former President Barack Obama and Rouhani, as the two even once shared a telephone call amid the nuclear negotiations, the highest-level direct communication since the 1979 U.S. Embassy hostage crisis in Tehran.

RELATIONS WITH SAUDI ARABIA

Trump's visit to Saudi Arabia on Saturday is not going unnoticed by Iran. The Sunni kingdom and Shiite power Iran haven't had diplomatic relations since early 2016. That's when Saudi Arabia executed a prominent Shiite cleric and protesters in Iran attacked two of the kingdom's diplomatic posts. Saudi Arabia immediately cut diplomatic ties and other Sunni Arab countries in the Gulf have taken a harder line on Iran since. Many of those countries worry about Iran's regional intentions. Iran backs Syrian President Bashar Assad, supports Shiite militias battling the Islamic State group in Iraq and has aided Shiite rebels, known as Houthis, holding Yemen's capital. Iran and Saudi Arabia have held talks on allowing Iranians to attend the annual hajj pilgrimage in the Sunni kingdom, required of all able-bodied Muslims once in their lives. However, tensions remain.

THE SUPREME LEADER

Khamenei, 77, is only the second supreme leader in Iran's history. There have been concerns about his health over the last few years. He underwent prostate surgery in 2014. Iran's president is one of three members on a temporary council that takes over the supreme leader's duties should his post become vacant until a successor is named by the panel known as the Assembly of Experts. Rouhani and Raisi both sit in that assembly.
Virginia farmers have an incentive to donate excess product to nonprofit food banks thanks to the Food Crop Donation Tax Credit.

Approved by the Virginia General Assembly during the 2016 Session, farmers who donate edible food crops to a nonprofit food bank can receive up to a 30 percent tax credit for their donation.

Increasing healthy food access for all Virginians helps strengthen our communities and our economy, said Commissioner Sandy Adams. Local growers are often faced with more product than they can sell and food banks need more fresh options. We encourage Virginia farmers to take advantage of this tax credit. Its a win-win for everyone.

Sourcing food locally can help the agricultural industry, said Leslie Van Horn, executive director of the Federation of Virginia Food Banks, which represents seven regional food banks in Virginia and more than 2,000 nonprofit food pantries and feeding programs. It reduces food waste and helps give incentives to growers and producers to donate their bounty, but most importantly, it gives food insecure individuals across the Commonwealth access to food they need to thrive and prosper.

Virginia farmers may apply for a tax credit equal to 30 percent of the fair market value of food crops such as grains, fruits, nuts and vegetables up to a maximum of $5,000 per farmer for a taxable year. If a farmer does not owe enough Virginia income tax to use the full amount of the credit in one taxable year, the farmer can carry over the credits to the next five succeeding taxable years or until the total amount of the tax credit has been used, whichever is sooner.

The Food Crop Donation Tax Credit cannot exceed $250,000 annually for all qualifying taxpayers. If more than $250,000 of credits is requested for the year, a farmer may receive less than the full amount of the tax credit for which he or she applied.

For the 2017 tax year, farmers who wish to participate should submit a Virginia Department of Taxation Food Crop Donation Tax Credit application, Form FCD-1, by Feb. 1, 2018. More information about the Food Crop Donation Tax Credit is available on the Virginia Department of Taxations website at tax.virginia.gov/food-crop-donation-tax-credit-guidelines.
After months of public debate, official decisions and heated controversy, Charlottesvilles City Council on Monday voted to rename Lee Park as Emancipation Park and Jackson Park as Justice Park.

The council vote on the matter was preceded by a testy public comment period during which several left-wing activists were removed from the council chambers for interrupting their ideological counterparts.

In recent weeks, tensions have simmered following series of protests and public confrontations between ideologues who have been at loggerheads over the recommendations from last years Blue Ribbon Commission on Race, Memorials and Public Spaces.

The commission recommended renaming the parks in response to its charge to study whether the city should move the citys statues of Confederate Gens. Robert E. Lee and Thomas Stonewall Jackson.

The commission ultimately recommended, among other actions, either moving the statues to McIntire Park or transforming them in their respective namesake parks.

Rick Turner, the former president of the Albemarle-Charlottesville NAACP, said Monday that the statues are a symbol of white supremacy and terror.

Our historical memory leaves us disabled and spiritually empty, he said about the so-called Lost Cause narrative that some say is promoted through most Confederate statues and monuments.

Alluding to the recent arrests of activist Veronica Fitzhugh and attorney Jeff Fogel, a Democratic candidate for Charlottesville commonwealths attorney, independent City Council candidate Nikuyah Walker said other underlying community issues are being exposed by the rancor around the statues.

Walker said the two were arrested by multiple police officers at their homes after the incidents in which they were accused of the crimes. She said the nature of those arrests likely reflect to a slight degree how minority suspects are treated by police.

The reason the statues have brought up the concerns, and all of the trauma that its bringing up, is because of issues like this, she said. If we dont fix those, well never have peace in the community.

It takes something like the statue to unearth all of these feelings, emotions and wrongdoings, she added.

Both Fitzhugh and Fogel were charged with misdemeanors following rapidly mobilized protests in recent weeks against local blogger Jason Kessler as he met with fellow right-wing activists in the downtown area.

Fogel was charged with simple assault after one of Kesslers friends alleged that Fogel lightly pushed him with an open hand. Fitzhugh has been charged with misdemeanor assault for shouting at Kessler to leave the Downtown Mall.

After Kessler and John Heyden were interrupted repeatedly, which resulted in a brief suspension of Mondays council meeting and police officers escorting left-wing agitators out of the room, Kessler accused Councilors Wes Bellamy and Kristin Szakos of colluding with anti-fascist activists.

Kessler alleged those activists across the country have advocated for violence against police officers and overthrowing the government.

You dont give a damn about white people, Kessler said. You people are implementing policies which are displacing us in our home countries, and we will not be allowed to survive.

You dont even recognize our right to exist, he said.

Mason Pickett, a city resident, said he doesnt support the right- or left-wing activists, calling them irresponsible and extreme. He also asked, however, why the councilors havent condemned the left-wing activists for their confrontational tactics in recent weeks.

This groups irresponsible and dangerous tactics will ultimately result in the serious injury or death of someone if it does not stop this pack-like behavior immediately, Pickett said about Showing Up for Racial Justice, a group that has been responsible for initiating the public encounters with Kessler and his colleagues in recent weeks.

Councilor Kathy Galvin did not condemn a particular group, but also warned of potential violence that could result if the political confrontations continue.

She said that she has seen hate coming from both sides.

Weve got to sit down and listen to each other, she said. If we cant do that, we will devolve into some of the worst kind of violence that weve all seen before in human history.

Following the chants and interruptions that preceded Kesslers comments, Karenne Wood, a descendant of the Monacan tribe, said she felt embarrassed by everything Ive seen tonight.

Currently a Fluvanna County resident, Wood said there are economic and historic reasons why more Native Americans dont live in the city. Regardless, she said, we arent filled with hatred.

We have been a welcoming people for a very long time.

Wood said she appreciated that the city would be considering naming Lee Park after the Monacan tribe that once lived throughout the Charlottesville area.

Of the more than 2,600 name suggestions that were submitted to the city in an online survey, approximately 2,200 of them included Lee or Jackson.

Drawing from suggestions that were reviewed by the citys Parks and Recreation Advisory Board and the Historic Resources Committee, the following names were presented to the council as top appropriate suggestions:

For Lee Park: Monacan Park, Sally Hemings Park, Vinegar Hill Park, Unity Park, Freedom Park, Library Park and Market Street Park.

For Jackson Park: Court Square/Courthouse Park, Sally Hemings Park, 13th Amendment Park, Freedom Park, McKee Park, Unity Park and Justice Park.
The contingent of the Ku Klux Klan that has applied to hold a July rally in Charlottesville is reportedly led by an FBI informant who has been charged in the stabbing of another Klan member.

In December, authorities in North Carolina arrested Chris Barker, the self-identified leader, or imperial wizard, of the Loyal White Knights of the KKK, based in Pelham, North Carolina. That same group has applied to hold a rally on the steps of the Charlottesville Circuit Court on July 8, as first reported by The Daily Progress on Monday.

The rally, which it is estimated will have 100 attendees, has been denounced by city officials and criticized by both left- and right-wing groups.

According to The News & Observer in Raleigh, Barker was one of two men charged in the assault of Richard Dillon, an Indiana man and Klan member who stumbled into the Caswell County Sheriffs Office with multiple stab wounds to the upper chest on Dec. 3, following a Klan meeting at Barkers Yanceyville, North Carolina, home.

Dillon told officers that during the meeting, hed gotten into a fight with Barker and William Ernest Hagen, a California-based Klan leader. Barkers arrest came just before a Klan parade in Roxboro, North Carolina, billed as a celebration of Donald Trumps presidential victory; Hagens came immediately after the parade.

Deputies charged Hagen with felony assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, while Barker was charged with felony aiding and abetting assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill. Barker, who has claimed he was not involved in the fight, was released on a $75,000 bond while his case is pending, The News & Observer reported.

Barker also made headlines in 2015 when it was revealed that hed informed on another Klan member to the FBI. According to the Times Union in Albany, New York, Barker wore a wire and secretly recorded a conversation with Glendon Scott Crawford, a Klan member who was trying to gain support for his mobile death ray, which hed hoped to use on Muslims.

The recording was played during the second day of Crawfords trial for terrorism-related charges in federal court; Crawford was ultimately found guilty and given a 30-year sentence last December.

Barkers checkered history was noted by Jason Kessler, the right-wing blogger and founder of Unity and Security for America. Six days after Barkers Klan group submitted its application, Kessler submitted his own application for an assembly in Lee Park, set to run from 12 to 5 p.m. Aug. 12.

In an email, Kessler called Barker an FBI informant and multiple felon and claimed that he was being paid by left-wing groups to discredit legitimate conservatives.

Someone is trying to discredit my rally by bringing in this jackass, Kessler wrote.

Kessler was one of more than 100 people who gathered in Lee Park on May 13 for a torch-lit rally led by white nationalist Richard Spencer and others in response to the citys decision to rename the park and remove the statue of General Robert E. Lee. That rally was condemned by city officials, including Charlottesville Mayor Mike Signer, who said the event as either profoundly ignorant or was designed to instill fear in our minority populations in a way that hearkens back to the days of the KKK.

Spencer told The Washington Post that he did not plan to attend the July 8 rally in a text message and said that the "KKK is not my scene."

When asked about Julys planned KKK rally, Signer asked city residents to refrain from engaging with the ridiculous sideshow.

Opinion/Editorial: Answer hate with peaceful counter-protest In what feels like being transported to another time in history, a Ku Klux Klan group is planning to demonstrate at the Charlottesville courthouse in response to attention over the city's Confederate statues controversy and a torch-light rally held in May.

This rump, out-of-state arm of a totally discredited organization will succeed in their aim of division and publicity only if folks take their putrid bait, Signer said in an email. I encourage everyone in Cville to ignore this ridiculous sideshow and to focus instead on celebrating the values of diversity and tolerance that make us a World-Class City.

In response to the May 13 rally, hundreds of area citizens assembled in Lee Park the following night for a candlelit counter-protest led by groups such as Showing Up for Racial Justice Charlottesville. While largely peaceful, three people were arrested in the final minutes of the event, including Kessler, who was charged with misdemeanor disorderly conduct.

City Councilor Wes Bellamy, who spoke at the counter-protest, said in a text message that it was absolutely imperative that we dont stoop to the levels of hate groups like the KKK.

People are upset, and understandably so. I too am infuriated, he said. But I also know they want us to fall for their trick of getting angry, acting with pure emotion and getting locked up while they stand to the side and watch us while saying theyre having a peaceful protest.

When asked about the planned Klan rally, Pam Starsia of SURJ said that several community organizations are discussing options for a protest.

I dont expect anyone to sit on the sidelines for this, Starsia said. Everyone is obviously angry that the Klan feels comfortable coming to Charlottesville like this.

When asked about the likelihood of the Klans permit application being approved, city spokeswoman Miriam Dickler said that the permitting process mostly dealt with logistical issues, and less with the individuals or the organization or the content of the speech.

She added that the potential for protests would be taken into account by the city. A spokesman for city police further stated that the department was aware of the planned rally and has been working on plans to ensure the safety of everyone present at the event.

If the rally takes place, it will be the first significant sighting of the KKK in Central Virginia since 2014, when a branch of the Klan appeared in Waynesboro and Staunton to cover vehicles and line doorways with pamphlets calling for people to Save Our Land [and] Join The Klan. The material gave a North Carolina phone number and an address in Pelham, North Carolina.
George W. Proffitt Jr., 77, of Falmouth passed away peacefully Monday, June 5, 2017 with his wife of 48 years by his side.

George was born and raised in Louisa County and has lived in Falmouth for the past 46 years. He was an avid automobile enthusiast and was in the automobile industry for more than 50 years.

Survivors include his wife, Georgianna Bagby Proffitt; two sons Gregory Wesley Proffitt and Richard Bagby Proffitt and wife Stephanie; five grandchildren Kaitlyn, Thomas, Rylan, Evan and Will Proffitt; and numerous nieces and nephews.

The family will receive friends from 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday, June 8, 2017 at Covenant Funeral Service, Fredericksburg.

A service will be held at 11 a.m. Friday, June 9 at the funeral home chapel. Interment will follow in Laurel Hill Memorial Park.

Online guest book at covenantfuneralservice.com.
Crows Nest proved Mildes leadership

Paul Mildes service as Stafford Countys Aquia District supervisor demonstrates his fitness to serve the Virginia House of Delegates 28th District.

Mildes biggest goal as supervisor was to preserve the environmentally sensitive Crows Nest peninsula. Campaign promises are easily made; he produced results. He coordinated the effort to secure federal, state and nonprofit funding to purchase and preserve part the land at Crows Nest. Milde followed up by supporting establishment of local programs that encourage preservation of the remaining portions of the peninsula.

Lets be clear: Other people came before Mildeincluding former Aquia Supervisor Kandy Hilliard and Save Crows Nest founder Cecilia Kirkmanand helped generate support to preserve it. It was Milde who orchestrated and implemented the protections for the land, which is now the Crows Nest Natural Area Preserve, characterized as one of the states highest land conservation achievements by the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation.

I want my representative in Richmond to be equally tenacious in fighting for needed change.

During his tenure as Aquia supervisor, Milde has also provided excellent constituent service.

I once watched him speak at a church picnic. Despite the summer heat and his obvious discomfort, clad in a business suit, he passionately spoke on the value of volunteer service, staying afterward to meet and greet everyone.

I dont always agree with Milde, but he can get things done and he listens. I will vote for Milde in the June 13 primary.

Debrarae Karnes

Stafford
Reeves would uphold conservative values in statewide office

Jill Vogel received the lowest pro-family score out of every Republican legislator in the Virginia Senate.

It is no wonder why other Republican female legislators in the General Assembly endorsed Bryce Reeves for lieutenant governor of Virginia.

The Family Foundation recently released its legislative report card for 20162017. Scores reflect how each person voted on traditional, conservative values. Reeves earned a 100 percent while Jill Vogel received an 81 percent.

We need leadership that we can trust to cast the tie-breaking vote. How can we trust Vogel when she has proven that she does not stand for conservative values?

The Virginia Senate barely holds a Republican majority, and we cannot risk having a lieutenant governor who is weak on conservative principles and will vote with Democrats, supporting their liberal policies.

Reeves has consistently defended our religious liberties and has fought to safeguard rights of the unborn. He has never backed down or taken the easy way out. Vogel has repeatedly compromised when it comes to protecting our conservative values, and has allowed liberals to further their harmful agenda. This behavior cannot be rewarded.

Virginia needs a leader who will uphold our beliefs and be our voice in Richmond. Reeves is that leader. He stands up to liberals unapologetically, instead of giving in to their radical ideas.

We have a moral responsibility to elect a representative who we hold confidence in. Thats why I am voting Bryce Reeves for lieutenant governor on June 13, and asking for you to do the same.

Andrew Pullen

Palmyra
Reagan conservative in the 28th District is Bob Thomas

Conservative voters in the Virginia House of Delegates 28th District race are faced with a challenge as who best to select in the June 13 Republican primary.

With the retirement of House Speaker Bill Howell, several are claiming the mantle of the true conservative. I believe we would be best served by looking at the words of President Ronald Reagan. The quote that comes to mind is: There is no limit to the amount of good you can do if you dont care who gets the credit.

That describes one candidate: Bob Thomas.

Watching Bob as a member of the Stafford Board of Supervisors, a clear picture has developed. He is a solid conservative fighting for lower taxes, sensible spending and smaller government.

His way of achieving these goals is to work with others. Rather than attempting to garner attention for himself, he has brought people together to reach these goals. Thomas has been less concerned with getting fame. He is concerned with getting results for the community. One can fight for your values without creating animosity and acrimony. Bob is one who unites.

Thomas has built a record of success, understanding that legislating is a team endeavor. I cannot think of a single instance when he got into a feud or a long-term fight.

Bob Thomas is the right choice to send to Richmondcommitted to his core values and beliefs, measured in his actions, and able to bring people together to accomplish important tasks. We need someone with his abilities in Richmond.

Ryan Barry

Stafford
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Vague statements on organic farmings beneficial environmental effects have seen Arla Foods Ltd forced to pull an advert for its organic milk range so as not to mislead the public.

The advert for Arla Foods organic farm milk included the lines good for the land and helping support a more sustainable future.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ruled that Arla Foods had failed to substantiate the claim that organic milk production had an overall positive effect on the environment, taking into account its full lifecycle, which is how the public would interpret the advert.

See also: Buoyant livestock entries for dairy farming show

Arla Foods argued that the ethos of organic farming revolved around taking great care to look after the land and it was, therefore, good for the land that it was being farmed organically.

Leading organic group the Soil Association, whose standards Arla Foods submitted to the ASA to back up its claims, has called out the company on its rather vague claims.

Chief executive Martin Sawyer said: Soil Association Certification did not advise Arla Foods directly on the wording in this case and as the ruling shows, it is really important to work with us and the ASA on all claims and statements.

While saying farming is good for the land is rather vague, organic farming does have clear benefits beyond other systems.

NFU slams baffling ruling

However the NFU has accused the ASA of not being consistent. Chairman of the NFU dairy board, Michael Oakes, said the ruling was baffling, adding: It seems to be based on a very narrow reading of the rules.

This is doubly frustrating when, in the past, we believe the ASA has given a wide degree of latitude to other advertisers peddling anti-farming extreme views.

He said all farmers, be they organic or not, would be vexed at the ASAs decision.

Arla Foods said it is disappointed by the ASAs decision, but will not run the advert again.
Lenovo has launched a wide range of its Think line of product in India. These include ThinkPad X1 Carbon, ThinkPad X1 Yoga, ThinkPad X270, ThinkPad Yoga 370, ThinkPad L470, ThinkPad T470, ThinkPad T470s, ThinkVision X1, ThinkVision P27h and ThinkVision T24i.

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon will be available for 1,23,000 INR and ThinkPad X1 Yoga will cost at 1,45,500 INR. Lenovo ThinkPad X270 will be priced at 89,600 INR and ThinkPad Yoga 370 will be made available at Rs 96,000. Customers will get Lenovo ThinkVision X1 for 45,000 INR and ThinkVision P27h for 36,000 INR.

ThinkPad X1 Carbon comes with 14 inch IPS ThinkVision X1 display and is powered by Intels Skylake processors. It also has a fingerprint scanner and a face recoginition infrared shooter.

ThinkPad X1 Yoga includes a 14 inch full HD IPs LCD display and an option 14 inch Quad HD Samsung OLED display. This is the first convertible 14 inch device which weighs 1.27 kgs.

ThinkPad X270 is a light weight laptop with 1.27 kg and offers you up to 21 hours of battery life in a single charge.

ThinkPad Yoga 370 comes with 2 in 1 flips and 360 degree hinge which offers you laptop to tablet mode. Lenovo highlights its battery backup as a major strength.

ThinkPad 470s also has a two displays including full HD and WQHD display. It weighs 1.32 grams and is rated to deliver up to whole day battery backup.

ThinkVision X1 is an ultraslim 4K2K desktop which packs a built in Full HD camera. It also employs a USB Type-C port, dual-array microphone and stereo speakers.

Commenting on the launch, Rahul Agarwal, Managing Director & CEO, Lenovo India said, The Think brand in essence has continuously and constantly redefined the boundaries of business PCs. These machines have always been synonymous with toughness, reliability and performance. Over the years, with changing business needs and increased need for mobility as well as security, these machines have evolved to provide a more rounded offering without losing their core value proposition. With the new Intel processor coupled with our legendary Think product attributes, this latest range is equipped to meet the critical and evolving business requirements.
Story Highlights 78% confident they can maintain their lifestyle throughout retirement

Up from 69% confident in August 2014

Percentage worried about running out of money in retirement down to 36%

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- More than three in four U.S. investors (78%) are confident they will be able to maintain the lifestyle they want throughout their retirement, a nine-percentage-point bump from August 2014.

More Investors Confident About Living Well in Retirement How confident are you that you will have enough money to maintain the lifestyle you want throughout your retirement -- highly confident, somewhat confident, not too confident or not confident at all? Highly confident Somewhat confident Not too confident Not confident at all % % % % February 2017 31 47 15 7 August 2014 26 43 21 10 Wells Fargo/Gallup

The hike in investors' optimism about retirement finances in the 2017 first-quarter Wells Fargo/Gallup Investor and Retirement Optimism Index survey likely fed off growing optimism about the investment climate in the U.S., with the index reaching its highest level since 2000. The survey interviews U.S. investors with $10,000 or more invested in stocks, bonds or mutual funds.

Investors who are already retired are more likely to be confident about their ability to maintain their retirement lifestyle (87%) than are nonretired investors (74%). Among the factors likely creating the disparity: Individuals who are confident they have enough money to retire are more likely to be able to do so than those who lack that confidence. Additionally, those who have already retired benefit from the hindsight of not seeing their standard of living get worse, likely boosting their continued confidence.

Along similar lines, 85% of those with investments of at least $100,000 are confident in their ability to maintain their lifestyle, compared with 68% of those with investments totaling less than $100,000. The 17-point confidence gap between the two groups is down slightly from 25 points in August 2014, driven by a particularly large jump in confidence among those with less than $100,000 in investments.

Investors' increased optimism about their retirement finances mirrors the results of a Gallup poll conducted in April that included noninvestors as well as investors. That poll found an increase in the percentage of nonretirees who think they will have enough money to live comfortably when they retire.

Fewer Investors Worried About Outliving Retirement Savings

A separate question in the current investor survey finds that 36% of investors say they are worried they will outlive their retirement savings -- a 10-point drop from the 46% who said they were worried in August 2014. Among those who are worried, 5% say they are "very" worried and 31% say "somewhat" worried.

Worries Recede About Running Out of Money in Retirement How worried are you that you will outlive your retirement savings in retirement -- very worried, somewhat worried, not too worried or not worried at all? Very worried Somewhat worried Not too worried Not worried at all % % % % February 2017 5 31 35 28 August 2014 12 34 30 24 Wells Fargo/Gallup

Retired investors are less likely than nonretired investors to say they're worried they will outlive their retirement savings (27% and 40%, respectively). Along the same lines, those with investments of at least $100,000 are less worried (30%) than those with less than $100,000 in investments (45%).

Bottom Line

More than three in four U.S. investors are confident that they will be able to afford the kind of lifestyle they want throughout their retirement. Confidence climbs even higher among those who have amassed $100,000 or more in investments.

The increased confidence coincides with growing optimism among U.S. investors about the national economy and, to a lesser extent, their personal finances. The stock market's continuing ascent to record-breaking heights this year has been a major source of increased optimism for investors, many of whom have seen their net worth grow stronger as a result.

These circumstances have helped boost the percentage of investors who are confident that they'll have sufficient financial resources to maintain the lifestyle they want throughout their retirement -- and that they'll not run out of money during their golden years. In August 2014, 46% felt they were on solid enough financial ground to not worry about running out of money in retirement and to be confident they could maintain their lifestyle. Now, a majority of investors (56%) find themselves in that enviable position.
You can bet this years Belmont Stakes from Oklahoma in the comfort of your own home at any one of a number of top international Internet racebooks, none of which will ever require you to provide a social security number.

You can also swing on over to one of three state horse racing venues sure to be simulcasting the Belmont Stakes. Bring your smartphone, tablet or laptop to start betting online.

Fair Meadows - Tulsa - Reservations are accepted for the Triple Crown Races, Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes and Belmont Stakes, as well as the Breeders' Cup.

Fair Meadows features 20 big screen TVs and some great dining.

The race tracks wont be the only establishments featuring Belmont Stakes viewing parties.

Riverwind is the Oklahoma City areas premier casino and they are yet another great place to watch the Race for the Carnations!

And you could actually win there by losing your Belmont Stakes bet.

Submit your losing off-track betting tickets from the Belmont Stakes and you could turn your losing tickets into cash!

Bookmaker TWINSPIRES.COM 8 Percent Cash Back No Cash Back Up to $300 Free Cash Signup Bonus $100 Signup Bonus In Business Since 1986 Taking Bets Online Less Than 10 years Does Not Require Social Security # Must Provide Social Security # Encourages Tax Declaration of Winnings Reports Tax Info to Government Offers Betting on Hundreds More Events Limited to Horse Betting Betting on Over 50 Race Tracks Betting on Over 50 Race Tracks
A Pinch of Salt: The election is over, I think, so what now?
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.
Article

Protecting the worlds oceans  an important goal of Germanys climate diplomacy

The worlds oceans are vital to our survival. They regulate the global climate and are a source of food and income for billions of people. Only a very small part of the seas enjoys legal protection, however. Our diplomats are working in New York right now to change this state of affairs.
Acer India, CAIT and Tally Solutions launches BizGuru: a one-stop solution for small businesses News oi -Chandrika It is infused with many features that will meet the business requirements and customer expectations with the GST roll-out.

Acer India along with Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) and Tally Solutions, today announced the launch of "BizGuru", a one-stop plug and play business solution for all accounting and GST compliance needs.

BizGuru arrives with PCs from Acer and pre-installed Tally.ERP 9, which is a widely used business software in India. Notably, Acer's GST customized range of computers are well compatible with Tally's software, Tally.ERP 9. One of the biggest challenges for the small business and traders these days is to understand the enormity of GST and adopt real-time implementation of it.

So there was a need for a comprehensive IT solution that would enable smooth implementation of GST and will help businesses in digital transformation. This why the newly introduced BizGuru will help all small businesses and traders across India who still use manual methods of accounting.

Praveen Khandelwal, General Secretary, CAIT said, "BizGuru is infused with a wide range of features that will meet the business requirements and customer expectations with the GST roll-out."

"We are excited to bring in an exclusive GST Solution, BizGuru, along with CAIT and Tally to offer a unique Plug and play solution to the customer. We are committed towards providing innovations that will help all businesses to expeditiously become accustomed to GST requirements, thus enabling them to focus on their core business and accelerate their growth journey in this digital era," said Mr. Harish Kohli, President and Managing Director, Acer India on the occasion.

Mr. Tejas Goenka, Executive Director, Tally Solutions added, "We are happy to have come together with CAIT & Acer to deliver Biz Guru, a complete and affordable plug and play solution which will help the trader community automate their business and comply with GST. Pre-installed Tally which accountants are well versed with means that there are no hassles for the business owner and even if they want to learn an otherwise easy solution, we will extend support there too."

In addition to this, Tally's education arm will also provide a certification programme to train the traders on the solution.

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Blue color variant of Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus spotted online News oi -Chandrika The new color variant of the smartphones will be released in the US initially.

Samsung's Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus fall in the category of most anticipated smartphones of 2017. At the launch, the flagship devices were available in 5 different colors, which are Midnight Black, Orchid Grey, Arctic Silver, Maple Gold, and Coral Blue.

A few days back, Samsung's web page revealed that the company plans to three more color variants for the Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus. As per the information, the new color options for Galaxy S8 are Ice Lake Blue, Smoked Purple Grey, and Quicksand Gold, while the S8 Plus will be offered in Smoked Purple Grey and Quicksand Gold. The company's decision to introduce new color variants is probably due to give tough competition to upcoming iPhone 8.

Now, well-known mobile reporter Evan Blass has posted a picture containing the Samsung Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus in Blue color. The tweet was first spotted by AndroidHeadlines. According to him, the new color variant of the smartphones will be released in the US pretty soon. It is still unclear if they will make their way to other markets as well.

As you can see from the render, the color of the devices look similar to Coral Blue, but a shade darker. Whether it can be called Ice Look Blue is a matter of debate.

This is not the first time that the images of Blue Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus have emerged online. Back in March, we got to see alleged renders of the smartphones in the Blue color.

However, the latest leak offers a better view to the devices.Thanks to the good picture quality, we can clearly see the rear part of the Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus.

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COLUMBUS  The Platte County Food Pantry is well-stocked for the summer thanks to an annual donation drive.

Tuesday's Can Care-A-Van brought in 60,375 pounds of nonperishable food, all of which goes to the local pantry.

A steady stream of people dropped off donations of food and cash during the event held in the parking lot of the old Ernst building at 2112 23rd St. The food drive, organized by 10/11 News, is in its 30th year.

It started in 1988 as a program to help those in need and today is held in numerous communities across the state to raise donations for food pantries.

Ken Siemek, chief meteorologist at the Lincoln news station and a Columbus native, was on hand to help take donations. He said the community has always been supportive of the event.

Weve gotten more than 4.5 million pounds of food over the years. Probably 1.5 to 2 million has come from Columbus, he said.

The longevity of the program is a good news/bad news situation, Siemek said.

On one hand, the Can Care-A-Van brings out the best in communities that embrace a neighbor-helping-neighbor attitude of giving.

On the other hand, Siemek said the program wasn't intended to run as long as it has.

When we started this in the late 1980s, the hope was that we wouldnt be doing this for very long because we would help those who needed it. The bad news is 30 years later we still have a great need for helping those who are less fortunate, he said.

The Can Care-A-Van has stopped in more than 100 Nebraska communities since it started. Some cities, like Columbus, host a donation drive each year.

Last year, 76,000 pounds of food were collected locally.

There are 13 stops on this year's Can Care-A-Van where news station personalities make an appearance and another six satellite sites.

Sam Butler, promotions producer with 10/11, said she has been blown away by the giving spirit in Columbus.

Last year was my first year helping with Can Care-A-Van and it was here in Columbus. Im so glad it was because this community is really amazing in how it comes together and really supports the food pantry and supports its community in general, she said.
New leak reveals vertically stacked rear dual camera setup on Samsung Galaxy Note 8 News oi -Chandrika The phablet is expected to launch at the IFA 2017 trade show which will start on September 1st in Berlin.

Every week, we get to see multiple leaks centering the Samsung Galaxy Note 8. The interest towards the device is growing exponentially every day.

Last week, a report from Netherlands suggested that the Galaxy Note 8 would sport an edge-to-edge infinity display just like the Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus. It also claimed that the phablet would be running on Android 7.1.1 Nougat. Now, a Twitter user with the handle @PoyocoTech has posted an image claimed to be of the Samsung Galaxy Note 8. The device in the render is in Silver color.

Confirming with the last week's report, the latest render also shows the phablet featuring the bezel-less Infinity display. Besides this, you can see that the alleged Galaxy Note 8 doesn't have a fingerprint scanner on its back. This means that Samsung has finally figured out a way to embed the biometric reader underneath the display.

The rear part of the device holds dual cameras arranged in a vertical housing. The camera module is slightly protruded. The phablet's bottom part reveals the 3.5mm audio jack.

In addition to this, the Twitter user says that the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 will come with stereo speakers "tuned" by AKG, and the Bixby button will have texture to it. The Stylus Pen will vibrate and can be located by using the Find My Mobile app. Well, it sounds intriguing.

Having said that, we should keep in mind that these rumors have no evidence to back them up. So you should take them with a pinch of salt.

Via

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Nokia 6, Nokia 5, Nokia 3 price details are out ahead of June 13 release News oi -Abhinaya Prabhu Nokia Android smartphones to be priced competitively in the country.

HMD India has sent out media invites for an event to be held on June 13 in India. At this event, the Nokia Android smartphones - Nokia 6, Nokia 5 and Nokia 3 will be released in the country.

With just a week left for the release of these Nokia phones in India, there seems to be an idea of how much these smartphones might cost. According to a NokiaPowerUser report, these smartphones from HMD will be priced competitively in the country. The report adds that the Nokia Android smartphones might be priced in the mid-range category, making them affordable for the buyers.

As per the information, the Nokia 3 will be priced around Rs. 9,000 and the Nokia 5 will be priced somewhere around Rs. 12,000. The Nokia 6 is likely to be priced around Rs. 15,000 or Rs. 16,000. These price details seem to be much better when comparing the same with that of the European market pricing.

Nokia 6 The Nokia 6 is the high-end model launched by HMD so far. The device flaunts a 5.5-inch FHD 1080p IPS LCD display. Under its hood, there is an octa-core Snapdragon 430 processor teamed up with 3GB/4GB RAM and 32GB/64GB storage capacity that can be further expanded up to 128GB. The imaging department comprises of a 16MP main snapper with PDAF and an 8MP front facer. The other aspects include a fingerprint sensor, 4G LTE, Android 7.1.1 Nougat and a 3000mAh battery. Check out our first impressions of the Nokia 6 smartphone from here. Nokia 5 The Nokia 5 bestows a 5.2-inch HD 720p IPS LCD display. The hardware aspects comprise of an octa-core Snapdragon 430 SoC, 2GB RAM and 16GB storage capacity expandable up to 128GB. The other aspects of the Nokia 5 include a 13MP rear snapper, an 8MP selfie camera, 4G LTE, a 3000mAh battery, NFC, and OTG support. Like the Nokia 6, this one also runs on Android 7.1.1 Nougat. Nokia 3 The Nokia 3 adorns a 5-inch HD 720p IPS LCD display. The smartphone employs a quad-core MediaTek MT6737 processor under its hood with 2GB RAM and 16GB storage as seen on the Nokia 5. The storage can be expanded up to 128GB and the imaging aspects of this entry-level smartphone features an 8MP main snapper and an 8MP selfie shooter. The 4G LTE phone comes with Android 7.0 Nougat OS, OTG support and a 2650mAh battery. Here is our Nokia 3 first impression.

Best Mobiles in India
Overall, dont let the bhoot mislead you, nothing bhootiya about this story. Had the makers tried to push the envelope, the idea could have been outstanding for a bhootiya comedy.
COLUMBUS  Bonds were set Wednesday for three men and two women jailed on drug charges following a police raid of a residence the five shared at 1059 24th Ave.

Platte County Court Judge Frank Skorupa set bonds ranging from $10,000 to $50,000, 10 percent allowed for release, for the five defendants during brief hearings held via videolink from the Platte County Detention Facility.

Four of the defendants were arrested inside the residence Tuesday morning, and the fifth was apprehended near his vehicle parked outside.

The drug raid was conducted by Columbus Police officers and SNARE Drug Task Force members from the Nebraska State Patrol and sheriff's offices from Platte and Colfax counties.

The defendants had not been formally charged by the Platte County Attorneys Office as of Wednesday morning.

Officers raided the home to seize illegal drugs and related items using a warrant obtained after a Monday drug transaction involving an undercover informant at the residence.

Jason Bender, 43, was arrested for meth possession. His bond was set at $10,000 and he was set for a June 21 felony first appearance. His wife, who was also inside the residence, was not arrested in the raid.

Bender is the defendant accused of selling meth to an informant equipped with a video and audio recording device on Monday.

He admitted the meth residue and a glass bong and pipe seized in the couples bedroom belonged to him, Columbus Police Investigator Jeremy Zywiec wrote in his probable cause arrest statement.

Joshua Ertzner, 33, was also arrested for possession of meth. His bond was set at $50,000 and he was scheduled for a June 21 felony first appearance hearing.

Brittney Rohlfs, 33, was jailed for possession of a controlled substance. Her bond is $10,000 and she was set for a June 27 first appearance.

Terri Rohloff, 25, was arrested for possession of a controlled substance and her bond was set at $10,000. She was scheduled for a June 28 first appearance.

Lee Hicks, 37, was arrested for possession of a controlled substance and his bond was set at $10,000. He is slated for a June 27 first appearance.
Coalition Strikes at Pro-Regime Forces in Syria Deconfliction Zone

From a Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release

SOUTHWEST ASIA, June 6, 2017  Coalition forces destroyed additional pro-Syrian regime forces that advanced inside the well-established deconfliction zone in southern Syria today.

Despite previous warnings, pro-regime forces entered the agreed-upon deconfliction zone with a tank, artillery, anti-aircraft weapons, armed technical vehicles and more than 60 soldiers posing a threat to coalition and partner forces based at the At Tanf Garrison.

Warnings Issued

The coalition issued several warnings via the deconfliction line before destroying two artillery pieces and an anti-aircraft weapon and damaging a tank, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials said.

On May 18, the coalition conducted a strike against pro-Syrian regime forces that had advanced a significant distance into the deconfliction zone, threatening the coalition forces at At Tanf, officials noted.

Coalition forces have been operating in the At Tanf area for many months, they added, training and advising vetted Syrian partner forces engaged in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

"The coalition does not seek to fight Syrian regime or pro-regime forces, but remains ready to defend themselves if pro-regime forces refuse to vacate the deconfliction zone," officials said in a statement. "The coalition calls on all parties in southern Syria to focus their efforts on the defeat of ISIS, which is our common enemy and the greatest threat to regional and worldwide peace and security."

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China denies that military choppers violated India airspace

People's Daily Online

(People's Daily Online) 11:17, June 06, 2017

China's Foreign Ministry on June 5 dismissed reports claiming that Chinese military helicopters had violated India's airspace, saying that the Chinese military was just carrying out regular border patrols.

Reports from India claimed that two Chinese helicopters had been seen hovering over the "Barahoti sector" of the China-India boundary, violating India's airspace.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told reporters at a routine press briefing that Chinese border troops conducted regular patrols in relevant areas, and urged India to work with China through relevant border-related mechanisms to maintain peace and tranquility along the border area.

China's defense ministry offered a similar response the same day, denying the accuracy of the reports.

During his visit to Russia last weekend, Indian Prime Minister Modi reiterated that, despite border issues between India and China, not a single bullet has been fired in the past 40 years.

Hua said on Monday that she noted and welcomed the PM's positive remarks.

"China and India are exploring a solution through the mechanism of special representatives meeting to discuss the boundary question, while also taking measures to uphold peace and tranquility in the border area," Hua added.

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Trump: Arab leaders pointed to Qatar for 'radical ideology'

Iran Press TV

Tue Jun 6, 2017 3:14PM

US President Donald Trump says that leaders of Saudi Arabia and its regional allies had warned him that Qatar was funding "radical ideology" after he demanded they stop financing militant groups.

Trump made the comments on Tuesday after Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, and several other countries cut off diplomatic ties with Qatar on Monday over allegations that Doha is sponsoring terrorism and destabilizing the region.

"During my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology. Leaders pointed to Qatar - look!," Trump tweeted, appearing to back Saudi Arabia and its allies in the diplomatic crisis.

Qatar vehemently denies the accusations that it supports extremist groups, calling them baseless. Qatar's Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani told Al Jazeera on Monday that the growing tensions were the result of fabrications in Saudi- and Emirati-controlled media.

The split among the Arab states erupted last month after Trump visited Saudi Arabia where he accused Iran of "destabilizing interventions" in Arab lands.

Saudi Arabia was the first stop on Trump's first international trip on May 20. No other US president has made the kingdom their first foreign visit.

A promise to receive $110 billion worth of weapons from Trump appears to have emboldened the Saudis to adopt a more hawkish regional diplomacy.

The US president also met with Qatar's Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani during his visit to Riyadh. "We are friends, we've been friends now for a long time, haven't we?" Trump asked at the meeting. "Our relationship is extremely good."

The rift between Qatar and its Arab neighbors has plunged the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) into a diplomatic crisis.

Late last month, Qatar's state-run news agency released comments attributed to the Qatari emir in which he described Iran as a force for stability and accused the Saudis of promoting extremism.

Faced with the backlash, the Qatari government was quick to claim that hackers had broken into the QNA website and published the "fake news."

Afterwards, Saudi Arabia and the UAE blocked access to Qatari media, including Al Jazeera, and Egypt accused the international news channel of "inciting terrorism" and "fabricating news."

Doha has long faced criticism from its Arab neighbors over its support for Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood.

Back in 2014, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE withdrew their ambassadors from Qatar in protest at what they called Doha's "interference in their internal affairs."

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NATO Chief: 'Have to be Strong' in Response to Russia But Dialogue Important

By Jela de Franceschi June 06, 2017

The head of NATO says members of the alliance are united in their stance toward Russia in a way they have not been for many years.

Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Monday in an interview with VOA's Serbian Service that NATO is committed to stepping up its defense while at the same time continuing dialogue with Russia.

"The dual track approach, meaning we have to be strong, we have to deliver credible deterrence and defense, that is the reason we are implementing the biggest reinforcement of our collective defense now as a response to what Russia did in Ukraine," Stoltenberg said. "It's not an easy dialogue, but that's exactly why the dialogue is important."

The approach is a modern version of the Cold War NATO "dual-track" decision that linked deployments of U.S. long-range theater nuclear forces to proposals for negotiations with Moscow over Soviet forces in Eastern Europe.

In recent months, NATO's defense has been in focus with the arrival of U.S. President Donald Trump and his calls for other nations to increase their defense budgets.

To the dismay of many NATO allies, Trump did not mention American support for Article 5 of the alliance's founding treaty, which calls for common defense, when he addressed a summit of NATO heads of state in Brussels last month.

But Stoltenberg said members of the Trump administration, including the president, have voiced support for NATO on numerous occasions.

"President Trump has expressed on different meetings and in a press conference with me at the White House in April that he is committed to NATO," Stoltenberg said.

He added that the commitment is not only in words, but in actions.

"The budget proposal that the administration put forward just a week ago has a 40-percent increase of funding for U.S. military presence in Europe. More troops, more exercises, more investment in infrastructure, equipment supplies. All of that underlines and shows U.S. commitment to NATO."

It is up to the U.S. Congress to work out in a long process how much of Trump's budget proposal turns into actual spending, but Trump has made it clear he wants to boost defense funding.

Regarding Trump's call to allies to do more in the fight against terrorism, Stoltenberg said the alliance has been already playing a vital role in counterterrorism.

"You have to remember that our biggest military effort ever is our presence in Afghanistan. The reason why we are in Afghanistan is to prevent the country from becoming once again a safe haven for international terrorists," he said. "We decided as part of a broader action plan against terrorism to join the international coalition to defeat ISIL. That's sends a strong political signal, but also provides a platform for more and better cooperation and coordination with the efforts of the coalition."

Stoltenberg said terrorist attacks such as the recent ones in London and Manchester are no longer solely a policing issue for Europe.

"We need a comprehensive approach. We need, of course, the police, law enforcement, civilian intelligence. But we also need to step up further our political and ideological fight against this violent ideology and this kind of extremism. We need to also address some of the instability, which is motivating and supporting the types of attacks we are seeing in our own streets."

NATO has established a special division to enhance intelligence-sharing among allies to better fight terrorism emanating from the Middle East and elsewhere.

Alliance member Turkey has seen a number of terrorist attacks, and Stoltenberg noted no other NATO ally has suffered more than Turkey. There was also a failed coup there last year, but Stoltenberg expressed that those security concerns do not give Turkish leaders the ability to do whatever they want.

"Turkey has the right to defend itself against terrorist attacks, to prosecute also those there who are behind the foiled coup attempt. But at the same time, this has to be done based on the rule of law and our democratic values, and I have stated that clearly in my meetings in Ankara," he said.

Turkey's crackdown on the opposition and the press has strained ties with a number of NATO nations. But it remains an important player in challenges the alliance is facing.

"Turkey is a key ally not least because of its geostrategic location -- bordering Syria and Iraq, bordering Russia in the Black Sea -- and Turkey is key to the way Europe is handling the migrant crisis. NATO is present with its naval ships in the Aegean Sea, helping to stem the flow of migrants and that would not have been possible without the cooperation of Turkey and Greece, which are part of NATO," said Stoltenberg.

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VP Pence Commits to NATO's Article 5 in Montenegro Accession Speech

By Milena Djurdjic June 06, 2017

Nearly two weeks after President Donald Trump blindsided National Security advisers in Brussels by failing to stick to a White House speech reaffirming U.S. commitments to NATO's Article 5, Vice President Mike Pence on Monday took the stage alongside Montenegro's head of state to do exactly that.

Addressing an Atlantic Council awards ceremony at Washington's Ritz Carlton hotel Monday evening  held just hours after Montenegro's formal NATO accession ceremony at the State Department  Pence, fresh from private White House meetings with Montenegrin Prime Minister Dusko Markovic, vowed "unwavering commitment" to Article 5.

"Make no mistake ... we will meet our obligations to our people to provide for the collective defense of all of our allies," Pence was quoted as saying in Politico coverage of the event. "An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us."

Article 5 defined

NATO's Article 5 defines an attack on any NATO member as an attack on all NATO members. The clause has only been triggered once, following the attacks on 9/11.

"As we look to the future, we cannot only look inward," Pence said. "NATO's open door must always remain so  NATO is as important today as it was at its founding nearly 70 years ago."

Montenegro became NATO's 29th member of NATO and been praised by the United States for joining the Western military alliance, despite Russian obstruction that included a failed attempt to overthrow the pro-Western government in October 2016.

Russia even warned of retaliation against Montenegro's "hostile course" and condemned the small Balkan country's "anti-Russian hysteria" during the State Department ceremony marking the accession.

"Allow me to rephrase on this historic day the words of [NASA astronaut] Neil Armstrong," Markovic announced to the awards ceremony, vowing national readiness to assume membership responsibilities. "This is a small day for the United States and its allies, but a great day for Montenegro."

'NATO has never been more important'

Senator John McCain, (R-Ariz.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, called NATO's first enlargement in eight years a significant step toward greater trans-Atlantic integration at a pivotal time.

"Given the increasingly complex challenges we face on both sides of the Atlantic, NATO has never been more important," McCain said in a prepared statement issued on his website. "In the face of renewed Russian aggression, increasingly frequent terror attacks, and looming cybersecurity threats, the trans-Atlantic alliance must stand together. We welcome the assistance of Montenegro as the 29th NATO member state in combating these threats."

In an interview with VOA's Serbian Service, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that "NATO will stand together with Montenegro against any kind of pressure and outside interference."

"We have seen many reports about more Russian interference in the Western Balkans; we saw the failed coup attempt in Montenegro last year," he said. "For me, this just highlights the importance of building strong security and defense institutions and strengthening resilience."

Regional stability

Montenegro's NATO membership, he added, will guarantee the Balkan country's independence and contribute to regional stability.

"Montenegro is important not least because of its location in the Western Balkans," Stoltenberg said. "NATO has a history there; we helped to end two ethnic wars. We see many challenges in the Western Balkans and we would like to work with Montenegro to address those challenges."

Stoltenberg said that Montenegro, together with other allies, can help other neighboring countries in the region, such as aspiring NATO members Bosnia and Macedonia.

NATO has only a partnership with Serbia, with whose new president, Aleksandar Vucic, Stoltenberg claims "regular contact."

This report originated in VOA's Serbian Service.

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US Might Quit UN Rights Body if No Reforms

By Lisa Schlein June 06, 2017

Nikki Haley, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, has warned that the Trump Administration might pull out of the Human Rights Council if the U.N. body does not undertake necessary reforms.

In a tough "take no prisoners" speech at the opening of the council's three-week session, Haley put the group on notice that it should mend its ways.

"As you know, the United States is looking carefully at this council and our participation in it. We see some areas for significant strengthening," she said.

Haley is the 29th U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and the first to address the U.N. Human Rights Council. Her tough, unequivocal message was not lost on the 47-member Council.

She criticized the human rights forum for what she perceived to be a double standard applied to Israel. By way of example, she noted that the Council had never adopted a resolution condemning Venezuela for its serious human rights violations.

"And, yet it adopted five biased resolutions in March against a single country, Israel. It is essential that this council address its chronic anti-Israel bias if it is to have any credibility," she said.

Handling of Israel

The United States and Israel are allies. Washington has long argued that the council unfairly focuses on Israel's alleged violations of human rights, including its treatment of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Even critics of Israel's policies on the Occupied Palestinian Territories have acknowledged that Israel was being unfairly singled out for special attention at the council.

They note that grave and systematic human rights abuses in all other countries, such as North Korea, Syria, Eritrea, Iran, Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi are examined under the same item 4 on the agenda. Israel, however, is dealt with under its own special item 7.

At the same time, critics blame the United States for this situation. Because President George W. Bush boycotted the council for three years, they argue that Washington had "lost its seat at the table" and therefore was not able to use its influence to prevent item 7 from becoming part of the council agenda.

The U.S. rejoined the Council in 2009 under Barack Obama's Administration.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra-ad al-Hussein did not engage in this debate. In his opening remarks to the council Tuesday, however, he called for "the end of the occupation."

He said "the Palestinians deserve freedom, as all peoples do. They deserve to bring up their children safe in their homes, on their land, exercising their rights in their state, free from this long and bitter occupation."

At the same time, he noted that "the Israelis also deserve freedom, for they have long had their state, but they, too, have suffered grievously."

Zeid added that "Israelis, too, need to be free from this violence, from any existential threat posed to them."

Venezuela's place on council questioned

U.S. Ambassador Haley said membership of the council was an area open to reform, noting that Venezuela, a country with a poor human rights record, was a member of the council  a situation she found untenable.

She said the council must address this issue. If Venezuela could not make improvements in its human rights record, she said "it should voluntarily step down from its seat on the Human Rights Council until it can get its own house in order."

She said "being a member of the Council is a privilege, and no country who is a human rights violator should be allowed a seat at the table."

John Fisher, Geneva Director of Human Rights Watch agreed that the council could benefit from reform.

"While no State's human rights record is perfect," he said in a statement, "any steps that improve membership standards would strengthen the Human Rights Council and enhance its ability to tackle human rights abuses worldwide."

ACLU director calls out US

Another view of Haley's remarks at the council was uttered by Jamil Dakwar, director of the American Civil Liberties Union, who said it was hard to take the ambassador's support for human rights seriously "in light of Trump administration actions like the Muslim ban and immigration crackdowns."

He said the U.S. must get its own house in order and make human rights at home a priority, "then it can begin to credibly demand the same of other countries abroad."

Haley reserved some of her harshest observations regarding the worsening human rights situation in Venezuela for a side event hosted by the U.S. Mission later in the day on human rights and democracy in Venezuela.

She lambasted the government of Nicolas Maduro for starving and repressing its citizens. She accused the government of "conducting a campaign of violence and intimidation against unarmed demonstrators, businesses, civil society, and freely elected political opposition."

She noted that since April, more than 60 people demonstrating against the government have been killed, more than 1,000 have been injured and nearly 3,000 have been detained, including over 300 civilians charged with criminality in military courts.

Maduro regime 'desperate'

She said that President Maduro had begun the process of withdrawing from the Organization of American States, "turning his back on the principles of democracy and self-determination in the Inter-American Democratic Charter."

She called the deteriorating situation in Venezuela "an economic, political and humanitarian crisis that demands the world's attention."

The U.S. Ambassador said the Maduro regime "was desperate to hide its abuses from the world" and implied that its efforts were meeting with some success in Geneva at the Human Rights Council.

"Here, at the world's preeminent human rights organization, Venezuela is a member in good standing," she said. "And it uses that membership to block any meaningful discussion of its human rights violations."

Haley said the council has no excuses.

"It cannot consider itself the world's leading human rights organization and continue to ignore the violations and abuses that are occurring in Venezuela," she said.

Venezuelan Reaction

Haley's comments alternately antagonized Maduro's supporters and buoyed his rivals.

Rafael Ramirez, Venezuela's ambassador to the U.N., said the United States shares responsibility for the "suffering in our country because it encourages and stimulates the most violent groups and interferes in our internal affairs." Ramirez accused the United States of crafting "a calculated and committed strategy against our country."

But opposition lawmakers welcomed Haley's demand for Venezuela to restore protection of its people's human rights or else lose its spot on the Security Council.

Juan Requesens, who serves in the opposition-led National Assembly, appealed to the international community for support  including through sanctions against rights violators.

Venezuela needs "solidarity among nations, too, and support from the entire international community," Requesens said, "because this nation is dying of hunger and is resisting a repressive regime."

VOA Spanish Service correspondent Alvaro Algarra contributed to this report from Caracas, Venezuela.

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Moscow says CNN report of hacking Qatar's QNA has no proof

Iran Press TV

Wed Jun 7, 2017 4:17PM

Russia has rejected a CNN report that claims Russian hackers were behind a false news story on Qatar's state news agency that led Saudi Arabia and its allies to cut ties with the kingdom.

Andrei Krutskikh, a Kremlin advisor on cybersecurity, said on Wednesday, "We're getting tired of reacting to unsubstantiated banalities."

"Whatever happens it is hackers. It's a stale claim and as ever there is zero evidence, and conclusions are drawn before the incident is even investigated," he added.

CNN reported Wednesday that intelligence gathered by the FBI indicates that Russian hackers were behind the cyber attack on the Qatar News Agency (QNA) that was first reported by the Qatari government two weeks ago.

The FBI recently sent a team of investigators to Doha to help the Qatari government investigate the alleged hacking incident, according to the news network, citing US and Qatari officials.

The item published late last month included comments attributed to Qatar's Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, where he described Iran as a force for stability and accused the Saudis of promoting extremism.

Afterwards, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates blocked access to Qatari media, including Al Jazeera, and Egypt accused the international news channel of "inciting terrorism" and "fabricating news."

Later, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, the Maldives, the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius, and Yemen's former government broke off relations with Qatar and blocked connecting routes with the country. Riyadh and its allies accused Doha of backing "terrorist" organizations, and intervening in the affairs of other Arab states.

US intelligence agencies have previously accused Russia of similar cyber-hacking to influence the 2016 US presidential election. Moscow categorically denied the allegations.

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CNN: U.S. Investigators Believe Russian Hackers Contributed To Arab Rift With Qatar

RFE/RL June 07, 2017

CNN has reported that U.S. investigators believe Russian hackers planted a false news story that was a factor in the decisions by several Arab countries to sever ties with Qatar.

The Kremlin contended that the CNN report was "a lie."

The CNN report late on June 6 cited unidentified U.S. officials it said had been briefed on a probe by investigators sent to Qatar to help its government look into a hacking incident that produced the fake story.

Saudi Arabia and a handful of other Sunni-ruled states have cut ties with Qatar since June 5, saying its policies have supported the funding of terrorism as well as "extremist" organizations and Iranian-backed Shi'ite rebel groups.

According to CNN, Qatar's government says the May 23 report issued by the state news agency attributed false remarks to Qatar's ruler that appeared friendly to Iran and Israel.

CNN quoted U.S. officials as saying that intelligence gathered by U.S. security agencies indicated that Russian hackers were behind the intrusion.

The CNN report said it was not clear whether the hackers suspected in the Qatar incident were linked to Russian organizations such as the GRU military intelligence agency, which has been accused of being behind cyberattacks aimed at influencing the U.S. presidential election last year.

But the network quoted U.S. officials as saying the hackers' goal appeared to be to cause rifts among the United States and its allies.

Russia dismissed the CNN report, saying there was "no evidence" of Russian involvement.

"I will say immediately that this is the latest fake, the latest lie," President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said.

"We're getting tired of reacting to unsubstantiated banalities," the Interfax news agency quoted Andrei Krutskikh, a Kremlin adviser on cybersecurity, as saying. "Whatever happens it is hackers. It's a stale claim and as ever there is zero evidence, and conclusions are drawn before the incident is even investigated."

U.S. President Donald Trump sent mixed messages on the issue on June 6. He initially appeared to hail the move by Saudi Arabia and other Arab states, saying that the moves targeting Qatar showed his advice on a visit to Riyadh last month was "already paying off" as the Arab states were taking a "hard line" against the financing of terrorism.

The White House seemed to take a different tone after Trump spoke by telephone with Saudi Arabia's ruler, King Salman. A White House statement said that Trump underscored that "a united Gulf Cooperation Council" -- a regional group that includes Qatar -- is "critical to defeating terrorism and promoting regional stability."

With reporting by CNN and AFP

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/qatar-us-investigators- russian-hackers-arab-rift/28533379.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 Calls For Arab Unity After Seeming To Back Split With Qatar

RFE/RL June 07, 2017

U.S. President Donald Trump has appeared to change course, urging Saudi King Salman to work for Arab unity after having appeared to side with the Saudis and other Arab states in a dispute with Qatar.

Trump started out the day hailing the kingdom's move with several other Arab states to isolate Qatar on June 5 by cutting off diplomatic and trade relations, saying the boycott showed his advice to Riyadh on a visit last month was "already paying off" as the Arab states were taking a "hard line" against the financing of terrorism.

Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and other states which cut off Qatar say Doha's policies have supported the funding of terrorism as well as "extremist" groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Shi'ite rebel groups fomenting unrest in the region that are backed by Iran.

But Trump in his evening conversation with Salman on June 6 argued against isolating Doha, saying that reestablishing unity on the Gulf Cooperation Council, where Qatar is a member, will be "critical to defeating terrorism and promoting regional stability."

Besides Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the Gulf Council includes the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, which have sided with the Saudis in the dispute, as well as Oman and Kuwait, which did not join the boycott of Qatar.

The White House said Trump and Salman also discussed how to prevent the financing of terrorist organizations and eliminate "the promotion of extremism by any nation in the region."

A State Department official told AP earlier in the day that despite the presence of 8,000 U.S. troops in Qatar, Washington wouldn't try to mediate the dispute because it is better for countries in the region to resolve the conflict among themselves. The official noted that both Kuwait and Turkey have offered to mediate.

The U.S. State Department said Qatar had already made progress in closing avenues for financing for terrorist groups within its borders, but has more work to do.

Saudi Arabia's foreign minister said on June 6 that Qatar needed to take several steps, including ending its support of the Palestinian militant group Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, to restore ties with the Arab states.

"We've decided to take steps to make clear that enough is enough," Adel al-Jubeir told journalists in Paris. He said the "fairly large cost" on Qatar's economy from the cutoff of food supplies, air traffic and other trade would convince it to change its policies.

With reporting by AP, AFP, dpa, and Reuters

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/trump-calls-arab-unity- seeming-back-split-qatar-saudi-king-salman- gulf-cooperation-council/28532786.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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China willing to cooperate in peaceful space exploration: Xi

People's Daily Online

(Xinhua) 13:02, June 06, 2017

BEIJING, June 6 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping has sent a letter of congratulations to the Global Space Exploration Conference, which opened Tuesday in Beijing.

In his letter, Xi said China is willing to enhance cooperation with the international community in peaceful space exploration and development.

Hailing the achievements made in space exploration in the 20th century, Xi said progress in space science and technology will benefit people around the world in the future.

China has attached great importance to space exploration as well as innovation in space science and technology, the president said, noting that the country wants to use these achievements to create a better future for mankind.

He also expressed hope that the ongoing conference will promote space science development and international exchanges and cooperation.

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Beijing Slams Pentagon's 'Irresponsible' Report on Chinese Military Plans

Sputnik News

18:26 07.06.2017(updated 18:28 07.06.2017)

China has expressed its criticism of the US Defense Department's annual report on Chinese military and security developments, as it disregards facts and contains groundless statements, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said Wednesday.

BEIJING (Sputnik)  On Tuesday, the US Defense Department said in a report to the nation's Congress that China would likely seek to build more military bases in countries with which Beijing has longstanding partnerships. The report also suggested that China's first domestically designed and built aircraft carrier would likely reach initial operational capability by 2020.

In addition, the Defense Department noted that Beijing continued to use "low-intensity coercion" in disputes related to the East and South China Seas.

"The Chinese side has drawn attention to report on the Chinese armed forces, published by the US side. This report does not consider the facts, it contains irresponsible expressions with regard to the Chinese military building, the protection of the state's sovereignty and security interests. The Chinese side expresses decisive protest in this regard," Hua said at a briefing.

China and the United States strongly disagree with one another on the subject of the US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system's deployment in South Korea. Beijing believes that the US move breaches the regional balance of power and undermines Chinese security interests. On the other hand, Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, the commander of the United States Forces Korea (USFK), said that the THAAD system would only be used to counter the North Korean threat.

 Sputnik

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New Ramjet Engine Enhances Combat Ability of China's Stealthy J-20

Sputnik News

04:30 07.06.2017(updated 05:29 07.06.2017)

China has successfully tested its solid-fuel variable flow ramjet engine in two recent airspace experiments, a breakthrough in the engine research fields which could enhance real combat ability of China's stealth aircraft including the J20 jet fighters, according to military experts.

A research team from No. 4 research institute affiliated with the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation revealed on May 31 that the team has successfully conducted two flight tests with the solid-fuel variable flow ramjet engine. The team said the new ramjet engine is ready for further engineering application, paving the way for China's next generations of hypersonic missiles, the Science and Technology Daily reported on Thursday.

According to the report, the solid-fuel ramjet engine is a member of the ramjet engine family, which has the advantage of low cost, high power, and high controllability with compact size. And it is hardly accessible in the world as it demands sophisticated and highly difficult research on technology.

The new engine, can remarkably increase the firing range and mobility for air-to-air missiles and antiship missiles equipped with China's stealth aircraft including the J20 jet fighters, Song Zhongping, a military expert who used to serve in the PLA Rocket Force, told the Global Times.

The engine will enable the J20 fighters to fire from greater range and the missiles to fly faster at a hypersonic speed, which will increase their combat ability, Song said.

The research institute has established a special research team to work on the project since 2000, and in recent years, the research institute has conducted eight flight tests with the new ramjet engines.

It is a milestone in the field of engine research, which has been a bottleneck for China for quite a while, Li Jie, a Beijing-based military expert, told the Global Times on Monday.

Once the engine achieves miniaturization, it will very likely enable China's air-to-air missiles to strike targets up to 300 kilometers at a speed faster than Mach 5, Song estimated, adding that the engine can be applied to China's latest missiles including PL12 missiles.

A lot of research needs to be done in the future to achieve that. For example, China should also conduct research on building up a super range detection network to support such a long-range strike, and the precision guiding system should be capable of processing information at super high speeds, Wang Ya'nan, chief editor of the Aerospace Knowledge magazine, told the Global Times.

At present, such an engine will be mainly used on missiles, as for the manned aircraft, there is still a long way to go, since the thrust of such engines are still not enough for that, Song said.

Cruise missiles and experimental aircraft including drones can also adopt such technology to realize high-speed travel within the atmosphere, Wang added.

This article was authored by Deng Xiaoci and first appeared in the Global Times.

 Sputnik

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Germany to Pull Out of Incirlik Base After Failure of Last Ditch Crisis Talks

Sputnik News

18:44 06.06.2017(updated 18:55 06.06.2017)

Germany's impending exit from Turkey's Incirlik air base is the latest in a string of disputes which have soured relations between the two countries.

Germany is set to pull its troops out of the Incirlik air base in Turkey after Ankara failed to grant German lawmakers the right to visit Bundeswehr troops stationed there.

The German cabinet is due to approve the decision on Wednesday, after a meeting between Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel and his Turkish counterpart Mevlet Cavosuglu failed to find a resolution to the dispute.

"Turkey has made clear that, for domestic reasons, it cannot approve visits of all lawmakers. I regret that, but Turkey must understand that for domestic political reasons, we must transfer German soldiers out of Incirlik," Gabriel told a press briefing on Monday.

Cavosuglu told the press conference that German lawmakers are allowed to visit the NATO base at Konya, but still can't go to Incirlik, which is mainly used by the Turkish and US air forces.

"At the moment, there aren't the conditions for a visit to Incirlik," the Turkish Foreign Minister said.

Prior to the crisis talks, Cavosuglu had called Germany's approach to relations with Turkey "troubling," and said Ankara might reconsider its ban on visitation if Berlin changes its stance.

"It is not possible to open the Incirlik base for a visit, but we might reconsider the decision in the future if we see 'positive steps' from Germany," Cavosuglu said, the Daily Sabah reported.

The conflict over German access to the base re-ignited last month after a group of German lawmakers were refused permission to visit troops at Incirlik, which is home to some 260 German soldiers as well as Tornado jets and aircraft tankers.

The German military arrived at Incirlik in January 2016 after the Bundestag approved non-combat roles for German aircraft and service personnel in US-led anti-Daesh operations. These include reconnaissance missions and refueling for coalition aircraft.

German Bundestag deputies attempted to visit soldiers at Incirlik on May 15, but were refused permission. Ankara's refusal was retaliation at Germany's decision in early May to grant asylum to 414 Turkish soldiers, diplomats, judges and government employees who sought refuge in Germany following last July's failed military coup.

It is the second time that the Turkish government has punished Germany by refusing access to Incirlik, following an incident in June 2016 when Bundestag deputies were denied entry after they passed a resolution recognizing the 1915 Armenian Genocide.

In the aftermath of the latest aborted visit, Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen visited Jordan's Al Azraq air base, and commented on her "positive" impression about the base as an alternative to Incirlik.

On Monday, von der Leyen said that the Bundeswehr has received approval about the transfer from King Abdullah of Jordan and is "ready" to move troops and around 10,000 tons of equipment.

"Of course, this means a pause in our flight missions in the fight against Daesh," the Minister said, adding that the tankers should be ready to fly again in two to three weeks, and the Tornados in two to three months.

In September 2016, the German defense ministry budgeted for the investment of 58 million ($65 million) in military infrastructure at Incirlik, including 26 million on an airfield for German Tornado reconnaissance aircraft and 30 million on a Luftwaffe command post.

According to the German news website Heise, the 58 million has already been disbursed to the Turkish government and Turkish construction companies, which contributed to Berlin's reluctance to leave the base.

Nevertheless, there is cross-party support for the decision to leave Incirlik.

"This is not a decision against Turkey, this is rather more a decision for our constitution and our soldiers," SPD party chairman in the Bundestag, Thomass Opperman, said last week.

"I regret Turkey's decision, especially since it contradicts NATO values. The Federal Government cannot allow the Turkish attitude to deprive it of its rights. The transfer from Incirlik is therefore logical," CDU chairman in the Bundestag Franz Josef Jung stated on Monday.

On Monday, Gabriel told Germany's Tagesthemen television news program that the Incirlik issue is dwarfed by even bigger problems in the relationship between Berlin and Ankara, which is in a "difficult phase."

He referred to several ongoing disputes with Turkey. These include the imprisonment of German-Turkish journalist Deniz Yucel, the election campaigning by Turkish politicians in Germany and their comparisons of today's government with that of Nazi Germany.

"Incirlik is rather one of the smaller problems we have at the moment," Gabriel said.

"Parliament must have the opportunity to visit the army without there being a great fuss  and if that does not happen, we have to leave."

German commentator Severin Wieland called the impending departure from Incirlik "the right signal."

"What is routine elsewhere  the visit of German deputies to the Bundeswehr  has become so politically charged by Ankara in recent months that there is no other way out," Wieland wrote in Spiegel Online.

"In the end, this was also about the self-esteem of the German parliament, which makes decisions about the deployment of its army and therefore also has to get information on the ground about how German soldiers are used abroad. If the German government had not withdrawn the Luftwaffe unit and Tornadoes, it would be an embarrassment to the concept of the Bundeswehr as a parliamentary army."

 Sputnik

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Berlin Approves Withdrawal of German Troops From Incirlik Airbase in Turkey

Sputnik News

12:54 07.06.2017(updated 15:30 07.06.2017)

The German cabinet has approved a decision to withdraw troops from the Incirlik airbase in Turkey.

Germany will relocate some 260 servicemen and six Tornado jets (used for reconnaissance in Syria) as well as a refuelling aircraft to Jordan after Berlin and Ankara have failed to resolve a long-simmering stalemate residing in the Turkish side blocking German lawmakers from visiting the base.

The relocation to the Jordanian Azraq base will take some two or three months after the German parliament approves the step.

Germany deployed its military in Turkey after the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris to participate in the anti-Daesh campaign led by the United States. Berlin's activities included reconnaissance missions and refueling for coalition aircraft.

However, political differences such as Berlin's disapproval of Ankara's stern reaction to the failed July 2016 coup attempt and banning Turkish politicians from campaigning on German soil ahead of the constitution referendum strained relations between the sides.

"Incirlik is a good airbase for the fight against Daesh, but we cannot accept not being able to visit our soldiers," German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen said as quoted by Deutsche Welle.

On Monday, von der Leyen said that the Bundeswehr has received approval about the transfer from King Abdullah of Jordan and is "ready" to move troops and around 10,000 tons of equipment.

The conflict over German access to the base re-ignited last month after a group of German lawmakers were refused permission to visit troops at Incirlik.

 Sputnik

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Attacks On Iranian Parliament, Khomeini Shrine Leave 12 Dead

RFE/RL June 07, 2017

At least 12 people have been killed and dozens injured in twin attacks in Tehran on the Iranian parliament and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's shrine.

The attacks, which drew worldwide condemnation including from the United States, were claimed by the extremist group Islamic State (IS), which released a video purporting to show gunmen inside the parliament building.

It is the first time the Sunni militant organization has claimed responsibility for an attack in tightly controlled Shi'ite-majority Iran.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called the attacks mere "firecrackers" that would have no effect on the Iranian people.

President Hassan Rohani said the attacks would make Iran more united.

"Today's terrorist attacks in Tehran will make the Islamic Republic of Iran more determined in the fight against regional terrorism, extremism, and violence," Rohani said in a statement published on the ISNA news agency.

"Iran's message as always is that terrorism is a global problem, and unity to fight extremism, violence, and terrorism with regional and international cooperation is the most important need of today's world," Rohani said in a statement.

Iran's powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) accused the United States and Saudi Arabia of being behind the action and vowed revenge.

"This terrorist attack occurred only a week after the meeting between the U.S. president and the [Saudi] backward leaders who support terrorists. The fact that Islamic State has claimed responsibility proves that they were involved in the barbaric attack," an IRGC statement said, adding that the "spilled blood of the innocent will not remain unavenged."

Separately, the deputy chief of the IRGC's Intelligence Service, Mohammad Hossein Nejat, told the Fars news agency that the men who attacked the parliament building in Tehran were aged between 20 and 25.

"[They] went to the parliament as visitors. The guards became suspicious of their bags and when they wanted to search them, shooting began and they killed the security guard," he said. "The U.S. and Saudi regimes had ordered their stooges to do this."

The head of Iran's emergency department, Pir Hossein Kolivand, said 43 people were also wounded in the attacks. It is not clear whether the attackers were included in the death toll.

Islamic State has regularly threatened Iran, one of the countries involved in the fight against the militants' forces in neighboring Iraq and in Syria.

The attacks occurred after Saudi Arabia and other Sunni powers cut ties with Qatar on June 5, accusing it of backing Tehran and militant groups.

The attacks began midmorning, when officials said assailants dressed as women and armed with Kalashnikov rifles entered the parliament building through the main entrance.

"One of them was shot dead and another one detonated his suicide vest," Deputy Interior Minister Mohammad Hossein Zolfaghari said, according to the semiofficial Tasnim news agency.

After an hourslong siege that ended with four attackers dead, Iranian media reported that the assault on the parliament building was over.

There were earlier reports of a hostage situation.

The situation was also calm at Khomeini's mausoleum in southern Tehran, which had been targeted by a suicide bomber and other assailants.

"After the attack in the mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini, five suspects were arrested by the police.  They are under investigation," Tehran police chief Hossein Sajedinia was quoted as saying by ISNA news agency.

One assailant detonated a suicide vest, another was killed by security forces, and the rest of the attackers were arrested, Tehran Governor Hossein Hashemi was quoted as saying by state broadcaster IRIB.

The two attacks occurred at about the same time and appeared to be coordinated, reports said.

Iran's Intelligence Ministry said the attacks were carried out by "terrorist groups."

"Members of a third group were arrested before being able to carry out any attack," state TV quoted the ministry as also saying.

The speaker of Iran's parliament, Ali Larijani, said the "coward terrorists...were seriously confronted," according to the state-run IRNA news agency.

"This is a minor issue but reveals that the terrorists pursue troublemaking," Larijani added.

The attacks come less than a month after Rohani, a relative moderate in a country where ultimate power is held by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, convincingly won a second term in a May 19 election.

The attacks drew international condemnation, including from the United States.

The State Department said in a statement that the United States condemns the incident and said that "terrorism has no place in a peaceful, civilized world."

Eliot Engel, the senior Democrat on the House of Representatives' Foreign Affairs Committee, condemned the attacks, saying in a statement that "terrorism can never be tolerated, no matter where it takes place."

"America's quarrel is not with the people of Iran but with the Iranian regime," Engel said, adding that he hopes Iranian leaders "understand the cost that they are inflicting on other countries as a sponsor of terrorism."

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the attack and voiced hope that "those responsible for this unjustifiable violence will be swiftly brought to justice," UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters.

"This is obviously a very sad day again," EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said. "For us, any time when there's a terrorist attack anywhere in the world, this is something we follow closely."

European Parliament President Antonio Tajani wrote on Twitter: "I stand in solidarity with the President of [the] Iranian Parliament and the Iranian people."

Iran's allies Syria and Russia also condemned the attacks, with the Kremlin saying "the continuation of a series of terror attacks again underlines the need for coordinated actions in the fight against terror and IS."

France's Foreign Ministry also "strongly condemned" the attacks, while German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said "once again unscrupulous criminals have dragged many innocent people to their death."

With reporting by Reuters, AP, AFP, and Tasnim

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/iran-parliament- shooting/28533003.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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Russian fighter jet intercepts US strategic bomber: Ministry

Iran Press TV

Tue Jun 6, 2017 12:21PM

Russia says one of its warplanes has intercepted an American bomber near the Russian airspace.

"The crew of the Russian Su-27, in approaching the aerial object at a safe distance, identified it as a US B-52 strategic bomber and escorted it," said the Russian Defense Ministry in a statement on Tuesday.

It went on to say that the snatch had occurred over the natural waters of the Baltic Sea as the bomber had been flying along the Russian border on Tuesday at 0700 GMT, adding that the fighter jet, which was part of the Russian Navy's Baltic Fleet air defense patrol, had headed back to its airfield nest following the operation.

According to the statement, Russia's air defense had dispatched the warplane on Tuesday morning after the detection of the huge bomber. The Su-27 then shadowed the American aircraft until it left the airspace, the ministry's statement added.

The Boeing B-52 Stratofortress is a long-range nuclear-capable, subsonic, jet-powered bomber, a number of which were deployed to Britain in support of joint exercises with NATO allies and partners due to be conducted across Europe this month.

The Russian Defense Ministry also said in a later statement that it had dispatched a MiG-31 fighter jet to intercept a Norwegian anti-submarine P-3 Orion aircraft, which had been flying along Russia's border over the Barents Sea. It added that the Norwegian patrolling plane had turned off its transponder during the flight.

The interceptions come amid Russia's increasing concerns over NATO's continued string of so-called training drills near the Russian border.

The military alliance is currently carrying out one of the largest exercises since January in Romania, along with another drill due to be conducted in Estonia.

NATO claims the mounting exercises are necessary to boost confidence among its member states in Eastern Europe and the Baltic region in the face of an alleged Russian "threat."

The Kremlin has repeatedly censured what it perceives as mounting anti-Russia hysteria and Russophobia in Europe and calls NATO's military buildup at its doorstep a threat to its national security.

Furthermore, Moscow accuses NATO of fearmongering to justify larger defense expenditure by its member states.

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To the editor:

I was upset about what Kathy Griffin did and dont condone anyone doing such a thing even if you dont like a president. The killing of a president is nothing to laugh about.

Donald Trump said that his family, especially son Barron and his wife, were upset about it. Really. For some reason, Trump thought that mocking a disabled man, telling his base to beat the crap out of a demonstrator and bragging that he could grab any woman because he was a star was just fine in front of his wife and children. I dont think so. Its pure hypocrisy. Im sure they didnt like this also but that was OK with Trump.

If I were his son or daughter, I wouldnt had liked my father dwelling on the birther issue about President Obama which smacked of nothing but racism. Also disrespecting the Muslim religion over his travel ban, pushing aside a NATO prime minister, his lies over his tweets and his unhealthy friendship with a country that really hates us and cant be trusted  Russia. Also over his budget that will make deep cuts in safety net programs that include Medicaid for the poor, the Childrens Health Insurance Program and Social Securitys disability program, as well as the assistance for needy families program, and all over building a wall.

My so-called friends commented to me about what Griffin did, but I remember when effigies of Barack Obama were hung from trees and he and his wife were compared to monkeys. My friends said nothing about how bad that was. Im sure Obamas daughters and wife didnt like that, either. But that was OK, right?

Trump said he was getting out of the Paris climate agreement because the world was laughing at us. Well, Mr. President, the world has been laughing at us since Day One. The G7 might as well be the G6 because the world cant count on us anymore to stand up and look after other NATO countries.

ROBERT HAYDEN

Blairs
MARTINSVILLE  Officials from the College of Henricopolis School of Medicine feel the Tobacco Commission's $800,000 grant shouldn't have to be repaid. Instead, they feel the commission should consider that money as an investment in the project, an operation that has changed direction once again.

The medical school will start as a premedical academy, according to college president Dr. Noel Boaz and prospective dean Dr. Scott Obenshain.

The decision was made Saturday, during a work session for the Integrative Centers for Science and Medicine board and the board of trustees. Boaz and Obenshain also spoke to the Martinsville Bulletin about the issue Friday, during a board meeting held at the ICSM offices in Martinsville.

That Friday meeting was open to the public and was attended by ICSM Secretary Tim Wolf, as well as area residents Ural Harris and Victoria Esarey. Smith Chaney, chairman of the medical schools renaissance campaign, joined the meeting via conference call. No one from Martinsville City Council or city staff was in attendance.

On Saturday, board members settled on a target date of June 2018 for the pre-med academy to open. The State Council for Higher Education in Virginia granted approval in 2016 for the pre-med academy to run, as its not a course for credit. Basically, its a tutorial, designed to help students prepare to take the MCAT or Medical College Admission Test.

Obenshain sees the academy as something designed to help those people who may have finished college without taking the necessary courses they would need to get into medical school, or people who do not yet feel confident taking the exams necessary to enter medical school.

These people need support and background and additional educational help, Obenshain said, which can be provided by a premedical academy.

As an Albuquerque resident, Obenshain said, he is familiar with similar academies in New Mexico. Such academies get students prepared to not only take the courses and have a better understanding of what the courses would be, but also prepare them for taking the medical college admissions test (MCAT) and give them some experience, he said.

The academy potentially would offer programs lasting six months or longer, he added.

A change in plans

The biggest change comes in who would be targeted as potential students. Previously, the concept was to recruit students nationally, as well as those coming out of Patrick Henry Community Colleges medical classes and get them to spend time at Henricopolis before transferring to Old Dominion or Virginia Commonwealth University.

After the meetings this weekend, that focus has officially changed. Now the program will be aimed at Native American students. The reason is that Boaz and Obenshain feel there is a need nationally for such a program and that it will be easier to secure funding.

We need to look at a national funding source, Boaz said. We have looked at local and regional funding sources.

Boaz said the school would work with tribal colleges and community colleges to offer long-distance learning opportunities. With the first class or pilot program, he would look to have between 25 to 40 students.

While the school would be marketed toward Native American students, it would also be open for other applicants. Typically, grant-funded programs like this have some type of quota, promising that a certain percentage of the class will be specifically Native American, in order to be considered for funding. Boaz said the school doesnt have a set number.

A similar program is in place at the University of New Mexico, Obenshain said, in the form of a pre-law academy that prepares Native American students for law school. According to the information the Bulletin obtained from the school, the Pre-Law Summer Institute for American Indians and Alaska Natives, a total of 36 students are accepted per year for the two-month program. That program, in turn, feeds into the universitys law school. By the end of 2016, 100 students, both Indian and non-Indian, had earned an Indian Law Certificate from going through the program. The schools report states more than 250 Native Americans went through the program and then graduated from the UNM School of Law.

The University of New Mexico also has a Center for Native American Health. Founded in 2013, the facility is there to encourage students, through training and technical assistance, to find local solutions to public health problems, as well as developing new ways of providing public health assistance in the Native American tribes. In an area that has partnerships with 23 tribes, 28 students graduated in the Centers spring semester in May. That includes 12 undergraduates and 16 graduate students. The majority of the undergraduates finished with nursing degrees, while the graduate students mainly finished with a doctoral degree in physical therapy or pharmacy.

Virginia has significantly fewer tribes. Combined, there are the Patawomeck, the Nottoway, the Cheroenhaka, Monacan, Nansemond, Upper Mattaponi, Rappahannock, Chickahominy and Eastern Chickahominy tribes. Those are the state-recognized tribes. Throughout the commonwealth, only two counties have higher than 2 percent of the population claiming to be Native American. Those are Charles City County with 8.3 percent and King William County, with 2.6 percent. Roanoke is the closest city or county to Martinsville with a significant Native American population, which stands at 0.2 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

As for pre-med programs, two already exist within an hours drive of Martinsville. There is the pre-health program at Wake Forest University, where students can choose between 11 different course tracks, preparing students for nursing, physical therapy, general medicine or others and there is the pre-professional program at Averett University, which prepares students to enter general medicine, pharmacy, physical therapy, nursing, dentistry or veterinary medicine programs. The Bulletin was unable to get numbers for how many students are enrolled in those programs by presstime.

Paying back the grant

There is also the question of how the $800,000 owed to the Virginia Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission will be paid back. Dr. Boaz doesnt feel the money should returned, as it was an investment.

We do not think it makes any sense whatsoever to pay $800,000 back to the Tobacco Commission, especially on an accelerated program, Boaz said. They have no right, and they have no reason to do that. And I told them that in Appomattox. There was no one else there (from Martinsville) except me. They invited me, and then they didnt want to let me speak, but I spoke anyway.

On Dec. 19, 2014, the city of Martinsville, along with Dr. Boaz, signed a performance agreement to receive an $800,000 Tobacco Region Opportunity Fund (TROF) grant from the commission. The grant was filed and the commission approved that money by July 2015. The city was listed as the grantee and accepted responsibility, in case the benchmarks were not met. That money was turned over to Dr. Boaz, for use in getting the medical school operational.

The 36-month grant required that by 18-month mark, 25 percent of the medical colleges staff would be hired. In this case, that means 30 full-time equivalent employees. It also required that the college generate $1.5 million in capital investment by the end of that period, which was January of this year. The college failed to meet those goals and so the Tobacco Commission held an appeal hearing in Richmond, where Boaz requested a two-year extension.

The extension was granted, but last month, the Tobacco Commission met in Appomattox and voted to clawback (require the return of) the grant. According to Del. Danny Marshall of the Tobacco Commission, the reason the grant must be returned to the Tobacco Commission is because after the January meeting in Richmond, CHSM changed from a for-profit to a non-profit model.

Because the Tobacco Commissions goal is to increase the tax base in communities, Marshall said at the time, the Tobacco Commission does not give grants to non-profits. That is backed up by a look at the groups who received funding over the last two years from the commission.

Marshall added that had the original CHSM proposal been for a non-profit, the $800,000 TROF grant would never have been given to Martinsville in the first place.

On Friday, Boaz characterized Marshalls explanation as absolutely incorrect.

The Attorney General of Virginia, Mr. (Mark) Herring, made a decision with (former Tobacco Commission Deputy Director) Ned Stephenson at Ned Stephensons request about whether this would be an eligible grant going to both the non-profit ICSM and the for-profit partner, CHSM, Boaz said Friday. It came to both from a direct decision by the Attorney General to Mr. Stephenson. Mr. Stephenson knew that, we talked about it at length, and then he retired.

Chris Piper, the Tobacco Commissions new Deputy Director, either is not aware of that, or didnt make it known, or wasnt able to research it adequately, Boaz said.

The problem is that setup as Boaz described it no longer exists. Originally, the medical school was set up as a three-part structure. The first is the actual school of medicine, which was incorporated in Virginia as a for-profit or benefit corporation. It was owned by a holding corporation set up in Delaware. This was the part that the 21 investors actually owned stock in. Third was the Integrative Centers for Science and Medicine, a nonprofit clinic in Martinsville thats currently not taking on patients.

All of that has now merged into one entity, run through ICSM. The for-profit school was dissolved and the shares of stock owned by investors of the holding company were purchased by ICSM.

While the commission approved the original form, it included both a for-profit and non-profit component. Now that those have merged, there is no record in the performance agreement about the grant being allowed for a non-profit entity. There are also no mention in the agreement, which the Bulletin obtained a copy of, involving any type of discussion involving the attorney general or anything indicating that once the agreement had been signed, the company, in this case the medical school, could change business plans. In fact, commission officials have said that changes, such as a move from for-profit to non-profit status, would have to be reviewed. Speaking to the Bulletin in May, Marshall said the commission didnt receive any type of new plan or proposal from Dr. Boaz during the meeting in Appomattox or beforehand.

Another option

Boaz feels the nonprofit issue could be addressed, to the point that the medical schools property would be taxed. In Section 4 of the 2014 performance agreement, the portion labeled as Obligations Regarding Taxable Assets, it says if the company is exempt from the payment of property taxes on certain assets by state law, the company shall not be entitled to receive or keep any portion of the grant allocated to its investment in those certain assets.

Boaz said that even though the company is currently a nonprofit, he would be willing to see that tax-exempt status lifted on all property, to meet the performance agreement requirements. State officials with the Department of Taxation could not tell the Bulletin on Friday if it was possible to file as a certified 5013 nonprofit in the state and still pay taxes on property. Boaz argued that the state or federal governments dont determine if the property is taxable. That decision, he said, is up to Martinsville Commissioner of the Revenue Ruth Easley.

We dont disagree that we need to have at least that much taxable income coming to the city to meet the requirements of the grant, Boaz said. But we did not sign on for paying an $800,000 check to the Tobacco Commission, for whatever purposes they may have. We also do not see why it was inexplicably accelerated. We had until January 2018. What happened? Why was that changed? Theres no basis for saying this change in (non-profit) status had anything to do with it.

We are not financiers, Boaz added, so CHSM cannot simply write a check to the city of Martinsville for $800,000. From his perspective, he said, the $800,000 grant was start-up money for CHSM, and we did exactly with that money what we were supposed to do. It started this medical school project. We are where we are because of it, and we are extremely close to making this work. I dont think a lot of people understand that.

According to Boaz's testimony before the commission in January, the money was split into two parts. One portion went toward renovations of the medical college building. The other portion went toward operations, including staffing of the Integrative Centers for Science and Medicine, while it was open.

Boaz said he couldnt pay the $800,000 and didnt want the city too either.

We cant sit here and write a check for $800,000, and we dont think its wise for Martinsville to simply roll over and accept that, Boaz said. This is a political decision, in my opinion. Its very clearly a political decision. I dont know what the Tobacco Commission wants to do with that $800,000, but I will bet you its not for Southside Virginia. I bet you its a geographical political decision.

If the city of Martinsville does not return the $800,000 TROF grant to the Tobacco Commission, the groups members and staff previously told the Bulletin a freeze could be put on Martinsville. That means it would no longer offer Tobacco Commission grants to the city until the grant is re-paid. In earlier interviews, Marshall gave examples of previous incidents where this happened with Danville.

Boaz also said hes disappointed that in his opinion, city council members havent supported the project more.

We dont have one member of the city council calling us or saying, at least, We support it, Boaz said. Thats a message we heard loud and clear today [when no council members showed up]. And thats not good. This is a bump in the road, but I dont even consider it a major bump in the road. We can work something out with the city to make this happen. But the city has to tell us, do they want this thing here or not?

City council members have said they want to hear from Dr. Boaz, to discuss repayment of the grant funding and the project in general. They also wanted to talk with the tobacco commission about potentially exchanging this project for another one on paper, so the money wouldnt have to be returned. Commission officials rejected that idea, saying that any new project would have to be vetted just like the rest. As far as a meeting goes between the council and Dr. Boaz, as of Friday, nothing had been scheduled.

Should the city return the money, Boaz said, he would expect the Tobacco Commission to return the funds to Martinsville once CHSM is operational and has met the goals of the original contract.

We know we can do it, Boaz said. I cannot emphasize that enough. We know its possible. Its not only possible, it is important that we do it. It should happen, and it will happen.
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - Jun 6, 2017) - Senator Minerals Inc. (TSX VENTURE:SNR)(OTC PINK:SNRAF)(FRANKFURT:T1KA) ("Senator" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that the Company has entered into a standstill agreement with Gunnar Minerals Corp. ("Gunnar Minerals") pursuant to which Gunnar Minerals has agreed that the Company will have the exclusive right to acquire a controlling interest in the Carter Lake Uranium Project. The standstill allows the Company to continue to move forward with due diligence on the project with a view to completing the acquisition in the near term.

The Carter Lake Uranium Project is located in the southwestern corner of the Athabasca Basin, Saskatchewan. The project covers approximately 1113 hectares on the Carter Lake Corridor, an exploration zone adjacent to the prolific Patterson Lake Corridor, which hosts two of the most significant uranium deposits in the basin: Nexgen's Arrow Deposit and Fission's Patterson Lake South Deposit. The project lies near the eastern edge of the Clearwater Domain, approximately 21 kilometres northeast of the Patterson Lake property, which has a reported resource estimate of total of 2,011,000 tonnes of 1.83% U3O8 containing 81,111,000 pounds of U3O8 including the R780E High Grade Zone estimated to contain 45,079,000 pounds U3O8 at 18.22% U3O81 and inferred mineral resources are estimated to total 785,000 tonnes at 1.57% U3O8 containing 27,157,000 pounds of U3O8 including the R780E High Grade Zone estimated to contain 13,898,000 pounds U3O8 at 25.06% U3O81. (Fission Uranium Corp. PEA September 14, 2015). NexGen Energy Ltd. has reported (March 31, 2017) that the Arrow Deposit's Mineral Resource comprises an indicated mineral resource of 179.5 M lbs of U3O8 within 1.18M tonnes grading 6.88% U3O8, and an inferred mineral resource of 122.1 M lbs of U3O8 contained within 4.25 M tonnes grading 1.30% U3O8.

The Carter Lake Uranium Project, which borders Purepoint/Cameco/AREVA's Hook Lake Project to the east, has basement depths estimated at between 400-500 metres, within the general discovery range of the McArthur River mine. The principal exploration target at Carter Lake is approximately 4.7 kilometres of subsurface conductive anomalies, identified in a 2006 MegaTEM survey and a 2008 VTEM survey, both completed by ESO Uranium Corp. The anomalies are interpreted as a conductive horizon, at or above the unconformity and which may be indicative of hydrothermal enrichment.

For further information concerning the Company's proposed acquisition of the Carter Lake Uranium Project, readers are encouraged to review the Company's news releases of April 24th and 25th, and May 29th. Completion of the acquisition remains subject to due diligence and negotiation of definitive documentation. Readers are cautioned that there can be no assurance that the acquisition will be completed in a timely fashion or at all.

Peter Born, P.Geo., a Qualified Person, has reviewed and approved the disclosure of technical information within this news release.

Tim Fernback

President & CEO

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Statements in this release that are forward-looking information are subject to various risks and uncertainties concerning the specific factors disclosed here. Information provided in this document is necessarily summarized and may not contain all available material information. All such forward-looking information and statements are based on certain assumptions and analyses made by management in light of their experience and perception of historical trends, current conditions and expected future developments, as well as other factors management believes are appropriate in the circumstances. These statements, however, are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking information or statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ from these forward-looking statements include those described under the heading "Risks Factors" in the Company's most recently filed MD&A. The Company does not intend, and expressly disclaims any obligation to, update or revise the forward-looking information contained in this news release, except as required by law. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information or statements.
TSX Venture Exchange Symbol: AAL

VANCOUVER, June 7, 2017 /CNW/ - Advantage Lithium Corp. (the "Company" or "Advantage Lithium") (TSX Venture: AAL) (OTCQX: AVLIF) is pleased to provide this update on the successful start to its exploration drilling program on the Cauchari JV property located in Jujuy Province, Argentina.

Highlights:

The first hole of the Cauchari drilling program CAU07R is located in the NW property block, where there are no previous drill holes.

Hole CAU07R achieved its initial objective of installing cased steel lining, cemented in place to 95m through alluvial gravels, to provide hole stability for deeper drilling. The drill rig has mobilized to the second drill site and will return once drilling there is completed.

Down-the-hole geophysical response in CAU07R suggests brine conditions begin at a depth of 60-70m. Sampling and testing of the fluid in the hole will be conducted once the drill rig returns to CAU07R and at that time we will have information on the chemical composition of the fluid 1 .

. The rig has commenced drilling at the second site (CAU10R), in the SE property block. Once drilling of CAU10R is complete to full depth, drilling of CAU07R will resume to its final target depth when sampling and assaying of the aquifers below the alluvial fan can be completed.

Said President & CEO Mr. David Sidoo: "We are pleased with how the drill program is progressing. The drilling and casing process at the initial drill hole was complicated and the successful outcome is a testament to the excellent team we have working in Argentina. The results from the geophysical survey are very encouraging and a positive first step. I look forward to results of the upcoming chemical analyses. The rig is now drilling ahead in the SE portion of the property where we have the inferred resource in place. All in all we are progressing as planned."

Drill Program Objectives

Consisting of an initial phase of five deep rotary drill holes supported by a follow-up phase of 12 diamond drill holes, the objective of the 2017 work program is to significantly expand the project's current resource base which comprises an inferred resource estimated at 230 million cubic metres of brine at 380 mg/l Li and 3,700 mg/l K representing in situ contained content of 470,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) and 1.62 million tonnes of potash (KCL)2.

The 2017 work program will be focused on two exploration target blocks:

The North-West (NW) block (where there is no previous drilling) testing the lateral and depth extent of sediments hosting brine aquifers known to occur on neighbouring properties; The South-East (SE) block with the goal of expanding the depth and lateral extent of the existing resource and upgrading the resource classification.

Initial drilling in the NW target area commenced with the first hole CAU07R targeted to reach the base of the salt lake sediments after completion of the pre-collar hole through the overlying gravel cover.

_________________________________ 1 The reader is cautioned that the interpretation of brine is based on indirect geophysical methods and there is no guarantee that brine would contain lithium at an economic concentration. 2 Independent Technical report, December 2016, Brooker et. al.

Drilling Progress NW Block

Following mobilisation of drill contractor and company crews in late April, the first hole CAU07R was collared on May 6th in the NW target area (see map location, Figure 1). The objective of this exploration hole is to test the lithium brine content of salt lake sediments below the overlying Archibarca alluvial gravels.

The pre-collar (pilot) hole through the gravels was completed on May 8th to a depth of 130m followed by reaming in stages to 12, 17, 19, and finally 20 inch hole diameters completed by May 31st. Steel casing was installed and cemented to 95m by June 4th to provide hole stability and environmental protection of the brackish water present in the overlying alluvial gravels. Subsequently, the hole will be deepened to test the interpreted brine bearing sediments.

While the cement seal in CAU07R thoroughly cures, the drill rig has moved to the SE exploration block where the second rotary hole (CAU10R) was collared on June 5th.

Results from in-hole geophysical profiling, using basic down-the-hole Resistivity and Self Potential instruments indicates that this first rotary hole CAU07R passed into salt water (brine) conditions at approximately 60-70m. Sampling has not yet been completed to confirm lithium concentrations and the chemical characteristics of the brine. This information will become available once the drill rig returns to the CAU07R site and completes drilling to the base of the salt lake sediments.

Once the hole has been drilled to the target depth, it will be constructed as a well, with intervals of screen (filters) and steel lining installed. Cleaning (development) of the well will be undertaken, followed by sampling .A down-hole pump and will be installed in the hole to allow pump testing with measurement of flow rates and other physical characteristics.

SE Block Drilling

The four rotary holes to be drilled in the SE block do not require installation and cementing of a deep pre-collar, as these holes are located on the salt lake and no surficial gravels occur in this area. Consequently holes in the SE block will be drilled without any time waiting for cement curing, which reduces their overall drilling time.

The technical information in this news release has reviewed and approved on behalf of the company by Murray Brooker, MAIG, RPGEO, a "Qualified Person" as defined in NI 43-101.

About Advantage Lithium Corp.

Advantage Lithium Corp. is a resource company specializing in the strategic acquisition, exploration and development of lithium properties and is headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia. The common shares of the company are listed on the TSX Venture Exchange (TSX-V:AAL), and the company is also traded on the OTCQX Best Market in the U.S. (OTCQX: AVLIF). The company has acquired a 100% interest in five projects in Argentina and up to a 75% interest in a sixth, called Cauchari. Cauchari is located just 20 km south of Orocobre's flagship Olaroz Lithium Facility. The Company is also earning an interest from Nevada Sunrise Gold Corp., in a portfolio of five lithium brine projects in the Clayton and Lida Valley regions of Nevada, USA, including 70% in Clayton NE.

Further information about the Company can be found at www.advantagelithium.com.

ADVANTAGE LITHIUM CORP.

Per: "David Sidoo"

David Sidoo, President

Tel: 604.343.3760 | Fax: 604.683.1585

Email: info@advantagelithium.com

Cautionary Statement:

Certain information contained in this press release constitutes "forward-looking information", within the meaning of Canadian legislation. Generally, these forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "is expected", "intends", or "has the potential to". Forward looking statements contained in this press release may include statements regarding the future operating or financial performance of Advantage that involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties which may not prove to be accurate. Actual results and outcomes may differ materially from what is expressed or forecasted in these forward-looking statements. Such statements are qualified in their entirety by the inherent risks and uncertainties surrounding future expectations. The forward-looking statements included in this press release are made as of the date of this press release and the Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as expressly required by applicable securities legislation.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

SOURCE Advantage Lithium Corp.
Two historically defined mineralization zones, Barani and Keniegoulou, will be retested and incorporated into the company's broader understanding of Farabantourou's geology.



The third prospect, Barani East, contains a resource of 69,900 oz Au (cut-off grade, 0.5 g/t Au). This mineralization occurs in an eastward steeply dipping (55 to 60), tabular body, ranging in width of 4.5m to 15m with a NNE strike. The average grades vary between 2.22 to 2.29 g/t Au with tonnage of 652,080 and 317,021 for the indicated and inferred categories, respectively.

Approximately 5,000m of drilling to begin in June of this year on these three targets and completed by year-end.

DD (m) RC (m) PROSPECT Barani-East 430 1000 Barani 490 1000 Keniegoulou 500 1000 twinning 600 -

June 7, 2017 - Desert Gold Ventures Inc. (TSXV: DAU) (FSE: QXR2) (OTC Pink: DAUGF) ("Desert Gold" or "the Company") is please to provide the following update regarding its planned exploration program at its Farabantourou prospect in Western Mali.The Farabantourou exploration permit lies approximately 40 km south and 50 km north of the world-class gold mines of Sadiola and Loulo (Fig.1), respectively. These mines are situated on second order splays off the regional North-South trending Senegal-Mali Fault Zone ("SMFZ"), which the Farabantourou tenement straddles. The present geological interpretation within Farabantourou is that there is a hydrothermal alteration at a contact between two dominant lithologies, namely, sedimentary siliciclastic lithologies to the west and volcano-sedimentary units to the east; the contact is thought to form part of the SMFZ, trending NNW.Below is the meterage apportioned to each prospect for this year's exploration program:Figure 1. Regional locality plan showing the Farabantourou permit in relation to other mines, Western Mali.To view an enhanced version of Figure 1, please visit:http://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/4954/27255_desertgoldx2x1.jpgDrilling will be conducted in two phases. Approximately 2,000 meters of diamond core drilling is planned for the first phase, starting June 2017, to be completed before the start of the wet season. The second phase of drilling will comprise approximately 3000 meters using a RC rig, which will resume at the start of the dry season, early November 2017. Table 1 summarizes the approximate drilling apportioned to the three prospects. The focus of the drilling is on the three significantly mineralized zones (prospects) in the northeastern part of the property (Fig. 2), namely Barani, Barani East and Keniegoulou.Figure 2. Past exploration summary plan including the location of the various prospects within the Farabantourou permit.To view an enhanced version of Figure 2, please visit:http://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/4954/27255_desertgoldx3x1.jpgAt the Barani East prospect, a resource of 69.9 koz gold (cut-off grade, 0.5 g/t Au) was estimated by Minxcon Consulting (cf. Table 2 and Fig. 3). This mineralization occurs in an eastward steeply dipping (55 to 60), tabular body ranging in width of 4.5m to 15m with a NNE strike. The average grades vary between 2.22 to 2.29 g/t Au for the indicated and inferred categories, respectively.Table 2. Barani East mineral resource statement made by Minxcon Consulting, November 2015. This resource statement was made in compliance with the specifications set out by the Canadian Code for reporting of resources and reserves as prescribed in the National Instrument 43-101.To view an enhanced version of Table 2, please visit:http://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/4954/27255_desertgoldx4x1.jpgAt the other two prospects, Barani and Keniegoulou, significant gold intersections were made in previous RC drill programs (cf. Figs 4 & 5). The company will use the diamond drill rig at both prospects to twin some of the previous RC drill holes in addition to exploratory core drilling to better evaluate the geology and the controls to the mineralized zones intersected. Twin holes will be drilled to a greater depth than the originals given our hypothesis that gold mineralization continues at depth.At Barani East mineralization remains open ended at depth and possibly on strike, to the north and south. The deepest intersect of mineralization at Barani-East was made at a depth of 120m, whilst the deepest end-of-hole reached 190m terminating within oxidized material, suggesting the oxidation zone may extend beyond 200m. The drilling program for Barani-East will probe those extensions to the mineralization down dip at depth and along the strike both to the north and to the south.Figure 3. The Locality plan of past and the planned diamond boreholes at the Barani East prospect.To view an enhanced version of Figure 3, please visit:http://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/4954/27255_desertgoldx5x1.jpgThe Barani prospect shows a North-South mineralized envelope, approximately 1600 meters in strike length, delineated from RC drill intersects. The mineralized zone appears to be a sub-vertical tabular body with pinch and swell characteristics, varying in thickness between 7m and 5m, on average 6m. The initial drill program will focus on evaluating the geology, particularly recognizing the controls to the mineralization. The follow up infill RC drilling will be used to improve data density towards the estimation of resources planned for Q1 2018. The planned DD holes are marked by red diamonds below.Figure 4. Locality plan of the Barani prospect showing past RC drill positions, the envelope of mineralization and the future diamond drill program excluding the holes to be twinned.To view an enhanced version of Figure 4, please visit:http://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/4954/27255_desertgoldx6x1.jpgCross sections views of Barani historical RC holes and planned diamond core holes (Marked in red):To view an enhanced version of this graphic [Cross sections views of Barani historical RC holes and planned diamond core holes (Marked in red)], please visit:http://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/4954/27255_desertgoldx7x1.jpgAt Keniegoulou (Fig. 5) the mineralization delineated from the past RC drill intersects show two sub-parallel zones at 400 meters and 350 meters in strike lengths, oriented in a NNW direction. The Keniegoulou mineralization is seemingly in sub-vertical tabular bodies, varying in thickness from 10m to 5m, on average 5m. Core drilling will focus on providing further insight on the geology and the controls to the mineralization. The follow up RC drilling will contribute to an improvement in data density, needed to estimate the resources, planned for Q1 2018.

Figure 5. Locality plan of the Keniegoulou prospect showing the envelope of mineralization from past RC drill intersects and the planned diamond drill program, excluding the holes to be twinned.



To view an enhanced version of Figure 5, please visit:

http://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/4954/27255_desertgoldx8x1.jpg



Desert Gold's President Jared Scharf commented, "We are very excited to begin this program. Farabantourou is a great prospect hosting several mineralized areas that we are undertaking to expand and get a better understanding of structurally speaking. The three mineralized zones being explored this year are orogenic, and considering their relative proximity we believe it is worth testing the thesis that they are part of a larger continuous system. We've just scratched the surface here. The deepest intersect is only at 120m at Barani East for example. Structural measurements are key to gaining a better understanding of these ore bodies. The most effective way of doing this is through diamond core drilling. The commencement and completion of this program are major steps forward towards our ultimate goal of profitable commercial mining."



This note was reviewed by Dr. Luc Antoine who is a director of the Company and is registered as a Member of the Geological Society of South Africa (MGSSA 967397). He has the necessary experience relevant to the style of mineralization and types of deposits under consideration and to the activity that he is undertaking to qualify as a Qualified Person as defined in the National Instrument 43-101.





ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD



"Jared Scharf"

Jared Scharf, President & Director





+1 (858) 247-8195





For further information please visit www.SEDAR.com under the company's profile.



This news release contains forward-looking statements respecting the Company's ability to successfully complete the Offering. These forward-looking statements entail various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those reflected in these forward-looking statements. Such statements are based on current expectations, are subject to a number of uncertainties and risks, and actual results may differ materially from those contained in such statements, including the inability of the Company to successfully complete the Offering. These uncertainties and risks include, but are not limited to, the strength of the capital markets, the price of gold; operational, funding, and liquidity risks; the degree to which mineral resource estimates are reflective of actual mineral resources; and the degree to which factors which would make a mineral deposit commercially viable are present; the risks and hazards associated with mining operations. Risks and uncertainties about the Company's business are more fully discussed in the company's disclosure materials filed with the securities regulatory authorities in Canada and available at www.sedar.com and readers are urged to read these materials. The Company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement or to update the reasons why actual results could differ from such statements unless required by law.



Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its regulation services provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy the securities described herein in the United States. The securities described herein have not been and will not be registered under the united states securities act of 1933, as amended, and may not be offered or sold in the united states or to the account or benefit of a U.S. person absent an exemption from the registration requirements of such act.


VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - Jun 7, 2017) - Lithium Americas Corp. ("Lithium Americas" or the "Company") (TSX:LAC)(OTCQX:LACDF) is pleased to announce it has completed the closing of the investment agreement (the "Investment Agreement") with GFL International Co., Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Jiangxi Ganfeng Lithium Co., Ltd. ("Ganfeng Lithium"). Pursuant to the Investment Agreement, Ganfeng Lithium agreed to provide Lithium Americas with an aggregate of approximately US$172 million in financing.

As described in the Company's press releases dated January 17, 2017 and May 10, 2017, in connection with closing of the Investment Agreement, the parties completed the issue and sale of the remaining 63,750,000 common shares at a price of C$0.85 per common share for gross proceeds of approximately C$54 million (US$40 million), executed a credit agreement for a US$125 million credit facility and executed an off-take agreement for the purchase and sale of lithium products. When combined with the 11,250,000 common shares (US$7 million) issued on January 27, 2017 pursuant to an initial equity installment under the Investment Agreement, Ganfeng Lithium now holds 75,000,000 common shares of the Company.

Tom Hodgson, Lithium Americas' CEO, commented: "We welcome Ganfeng Lithium as our largest shareholder. The closing of the Investment Agreement places Lithium Americas in a strong financial position and will allow the Company to now commence construction of the Cauchari-Olaroz lithium project with our joint venture partner SQM, with the objective of becoming the next low cost brine producer of lithium by 2019."

About Ganfeng Lithium

Ganfeng Lithium is the largest integrated lithium producer in in China, with a total capacity of around 30,000 tonnes per annum of lithium carbonate equivalent. Ganfeng Lithium's products include lithium metal, lithium hydroxide, lithium carbonate, lithium fluoride, and lithium chloride. In Australia, Ganfeng Lithium owns a 43.1% interest in the Mount Marion lithium spodumene project with Mineral Resources Ltd. (43.1%) and Neometals Ltd. (13.8%).

Ganfeng Lithium was founded in 2000 and is listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange (SHE: 002460) with a current market capitalization of approximately US$5 billion.

About Lithium Americas

Lithium Americas, together with SQM, is developing the Cauchari-Olaroz lithium project, located in Jujuy, Argentina, through its 50% interest in Minera Exar. In addition, Lithium Americas owns 100% of the Lithium Nevada project (formerly Kings Valley project), and RheoMinerals Inc., a supplier of rheology modifiers for oil-based drilling fluids, coatings, and specialty chemicals.

Forward-looking statements

Statements in this release that are forward-looking information are subject to various risks and uncertainties concerning the specific factors disclosed here and elsewhere in the Company's periodic filings with Canadian securities regulators. Forward-looking information in this news release includes the date upon which the credit agreement becomes effective, which occurs concurrent with first draw-down. When used in this document, the words such as "intent", "target", "expect", "estimated" and "scheduled" and similar expressions represent forward-looking information. Information provided in this document is necessarily summarized and may not contain all available material information.

All such forward-looking information and statements are based on certain assumptions and analyses made by Lithium Americas management in light of their experience and perception of historical trends, current conditions and expected future developments, as well as other factors management believes are appropriate in the circumstances, including in the case of the credit agreement with Ganfeng, the implementation of the agreed security interest structure and satisfaction of other customary conditions to first draw-down. These statements, however, are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking information or statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ from these forward-looking statements include those described under the heading "Risks Factors" in the Lithium Americas' most recently filed MD&A, Annual Information Form and other continuous disclosure filings. The Company does not intend, and expressly disclaims any obligation to, update or revise the forward-looking information contained in this news release, except as required by law. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information or statements.
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey has declared the opioid epidemic a public health emergency, an effort to stem the states spiraling death toll from overdoses of prescription painkillers and heroin. The Republican governors declaration follows similar announcements in at least five other states: Alaska, Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts and Virginia.Coming on the heels of a state health department report showing that an average of more than two Arizonans died every day last year from opioid overdoses  a 74 percent increase since 2012  the declaration allows Ducey to require hospitals, doctors and other health care providers to more frequently update state officials on overdose deaths and hospital admissions.Under the declaration, the state also will expand distribution of the overdose-reversal drug naloxone to law enforcement statewide, targeting communities with recent clusters of overdose deaths.The declaration allows the department to draw down a $500,000 public-health emergency fund to pay for training and supplies needed to sharpen the states overdose rescue efforts, as well as increase availability of treatment.As in other states, Arizona lawmakers already have enacted a variety of measures to combat the opioid crisis, including restrictions on opioid painkiller prescribing, increased surveillance of opioid prescriptions, and expanded access to addiction treatment.
When Chokwe Antar Lumumba won the Democratic primary for mayor of Jackson, Miss., last month, he was described as a "left radical" and a "radical activist" -- and that was by leftist publications like In These Times andPeople in Jackson say such labels are overstated."I've not seen any evidence of the radical side," says former Mayor Kane Ditto. "I've not heard any proposals that I thought were not in the mainstream."Nonetheless, Lumumba -- who won Tuesday's general election -- has made it clear he intends to take the city in a liberal direction. He ran on a program of inclusive growth, and his mayoralty may offer striking evidence of a nationwide trend: strongly progressive policies being pushed in big cities, even in deep red states."He is a pretty progressive-minded person," says Councilman De'Keither Stamps.In strongly Democratic Jackson, there was no doubt Lumumba would be elected once he won the primary. On Tuesday, he garnered 93 percent of the vote.His performance in the primary had been stronger than expected. He avoided a runoff by taking 55 percent of the vote, easily coming out on top of a large field that included state Sen. John Hohrn and Hinds County Supervisor Robert Graham.By contrast, incumbent Mayor Tony Yarber, who has been embroiled in sexual harassment lawsuits, took just 5 percent of the vote.Yarber had defeated Lumumba in a special election in 2014, which was held to replace Lumumba's father, also named Chokwe. The senior Lumumba died just eight months after taking office. At the time, Yarber benefited from support from the business community. But the city clearly soured on him during his tenure."A lot of people looked and said we should have gone with Lumumba last time because the incumbent is terrible," says Bill Dilday, a political strategist in Jackson.The first Mayor Lumumba had, in fact, a radical past . He was a leader in organizations that favored a separate African-American homeland within the U.S. or promoted other ideas for black self-determination."The father was a radical activist at one time," says Dilday. "Some people have never taken that label off of him. They've also put it on his son just because of that name. Those of us who've known him for a long time see him as squeaky clean."The younger Lumumba said his parents inculcated him with social-justice values."They felt that giving us the movement was as important as giving us food, shelter, water and education," he told the, an African-American newspaper, earlier this year.Lumumba, who is 34, has worked as a defense attorney. He is likely to follow some of his father's policies, such as holding "people's assemblies" to solicit input for city programs as well as creation of a fund to promote black-owned businesses. One of the complaints against Yarber is that contracting on his watch has been too cozy."For years, citizens have complained that they haven't had the opportunity to sit at the table and be part of the bidding process," says Debra Ellis, a spokeswoman for the Lumumba campaign. "Whether you're black, white, female, male, it doesn't matter. He wants to include all businesses and not just a small group of individuals."Lumumba's most important task will be trying to improve the city's finances. Due to shortfalls and employee furloughs, city offices have been closed many days over the past couple of years."The first order of business for the new mayor is to get the basics right," says Ditto. "We have not had a comprehensive approach to basic city issues like infrastructure and policing and neighborhoods."Paying for potholes and police will cost money. Lumumba wants to do it by securitizing future proceeds from a 1-cent sales tax hike approved by voters in 2014, in effect collecting a bigger lump sum up front. He has talked more vaguely about other potential revenue increases.The new mayor will seek to increase the city's tax base over time by improving infrastructure and encouraging business development, but he'll be at pains to ensure that any economic gains are widely shared."People don't want to be another Detroit, or anything like that," says Councilman Stamps. "But we have to navigate those waters in an equitable way. People want to be involved in the prosperity of the community they live in."Among the immediate beneficiaries of Lumumba's election will be city workers. A public employee union was among his top donors, and he's talked not only about ending furloughs but offering raises."He believes in moving away from what has been a national trend -- not only in city government but state government -- of privatizing out a lot of government services," says Brenda Scott, president of the Mississippi Alliance of State Employees, which has a collective bargaining agreement with the city. "He's going to be looking at ways our city employees can perform a lot of duties."Lumumba's ideas may or may not be fairly described as radical, but he'll certainly favor an activist-government approach."We know exactly what we're going to get if we stay on the traditional course of government," says Councilman Stamps, "especially in Mississippi."
City leaders on Tuesday saw much of Gov. Greg Abbott's call for a special session as part of a continuing attack on Austin that rose from angry rhetoric about the left-leaning city to an all-out "war on cities," as Austin Mayor Steve Adler put it Tuesday.Abbott's announcement will have state lawmakers return to the Capitol on July 18 to create laws that could take control of how the city levies property taxes and annexes land out of the hands of City Hall while scrapping local ordinances Abbott sees as government overreach."I admit to being a little dumbfounded when I heard what sounded to me like a call for a war against cities; a fight against individual liberties exposed at the ballot box," Adler said. "Instead of looking at a future ... the governor's special call looks to the past."The governor, who signed a bill last month banning so-called sanctuary cities in response to Travis County Sheriff Sally Hernandez's new policy on immigrant detention requests, has made it a habit in recent months to bash Austin. On Monday night in Belton, he announced he had prevented the Austin liberals' efforts to "Californiaize the Lone Star State.""As you leave Austin and start heading north, you start feeling different," Abbott told the audience at a dinner hosted by the Bell County Republican Party. "Once you cross the Travis County line, it starts smelling different. And you know what that fragrance is? Freedom. It's the smell of freedom that does not exist in Austin, Texas."Adler said that Abbott's comments gave him pause, noting that Austin is ahead of the state."The air in Austin is pretty sweet with an unemployment rate that is a point lower than the state, a lower violent crime rate than the state, with the highest rates of patents and venture capital in the state," Adler said. "And the air is sweet with tacos."City leaders and staffers who had breathed a sigh of relief when the regular legislative session ended May 29 with no property tax reform bill or annexation bills passed can now resume biting their fingernails. Abbott named those two among his 20 items to be considered in the special session.If previously floated bills on those issues re-emerge, voters would gain more power over property tax rates and annexations.The property tax roll-back Senate Bill 2 would require an election if a municipality opts to raise property taxes more than 5 percent. Opponents of the bill in urban centers have said that it would jeopardize their ability to fund public safety agencies."Despite the fact that this is a notably safe, prosperous and fiscally sound community, the leaders of state government appear determined to create a crisis that will make it harder for us to meet the needs of our residents and our workforce," Travis County Judge Sarah Eckhardt said Tuesday in a news release. "While we are saddened, we are not surprised, and we will continue to take steps to ensure that the will and the values of Travis County residents are respected and the needs of our community are met."An annexation bill will likely resemble Senate Bill 715, authored by Sen. Donna Campbell, R-New Braunfels. It requires a city to get a majority vote of residents in areas marked for annexation to add that land to the city's limits. Under current law, a city can each year annex up to 10 percent of its incorporated land from its extra territorial jurisdiction.Many city leaders from across the state oppose putting the annexations in the hands of voters because it will lead to people benefiting from being near an urban area without contributing to the tax base."So many of the things listed here are attacks on Austin, not just in the traditional Austin-bashing sense, but on cities generally because we pose a threat in the long term," Council Member Greg Casar said.Ordinances like Austin's gender-neutral bathroom ordinance, tree ordinance and law allowing only hands-free cellphone use while driving could be up for the chopping block.Abbott wants the statewide ban on texting while driving to override Austin's hands-free ordinance, which prevents cellphone use of nearly all forms while driving, except when stopped.Going to the state ban would continue to disallow sending messages while driving, whether through a text messaging platform or other app, but it would allow people to interact with their phone if operating a GPS or music program. And talking on the phone could resume while behind the wheel.Another of Abbott's items would prevent cities from regulating what property owners do with trees on their private land. Austin's ordinance requires builders to work around large "heritage" trees.A bathroom ban could also affect a city ordinance that requires gender-neutral signs to be placed on single-occupant restrooms at businesses.Council Member Jimmy Flannigan called Abbott's apparent attack on Austin through a special session a "joke.""When you are a scapegoat for many, many years, it is a joke," Flannigan said. "The idea that one of the most successful cities in the nation is treated as a failure is a laughing stock."
Description

GIS 7 June 2017 : It is important to ensure that the prison plays a positive role in the lives of detainees so as to ensure that they are able to reintegrate society after their release, said the President of the Republic, Dr Ameenah Gurib-Fakim, this morning on the occasion of the celebration of Mothers Day at the Women Prison in Beau Bassin.

She pointed out that detainees should take advantage of the different courses that are offered in prison and acquire skills and pursue further studies. In line with the rehabilitation programme of the Prison Service, several activities and courses are organised for the benefit of detainees. They include: beauty care, pastry, handicraft, vocational courses, sports, painting, and yoga.

For his part, the Commissioner of Prisons, Mr Vinod Appadoo, underlined that Mothers Day is an important day for parents and children. This celebration is an opportunity for incarcerated women and their children to celebrate with a worship service and a family meal together. It is a special time that helps keep families connected at a time when separation can be particularly difficult, he stated.

To that end, several changes have been brought at the Women Prison in a bid to enhance conditions of women detainees. Hence provision has been made for a Mother & Baby Unit and a Self-Care Unit at the Women Prison. All babies stay with their mothers in the Mother & Baby Unit within a conducive environment. Pregnant women and nursing mothers who are in prison are also provided with special facilities, said Mr Appadoo.

The Commissioner of Prisons recalled that the President of the Republic of Mauritius visited the Open Prison for Women on 28 December 2016. In the context of the 25th anniversary of Mauritius to the accession of Republic and 49th anniversary of independence on 12th March 2017, the President of the Republic, acting in accordance with the advice of the Commission on the Prerogative on Mercy, granted a special remission to all convicted detainees. Those detainees who were in prison for the first time benefitted two months remission whereas those who were in prison for more than one time benefitted only one month, he added.

Women Prison

The Women Prison has a population of around 100 detainees including 32 remand detainees and 31 foreigners. Three babies at the Women Prison stay with their mothers in the Mother & Baby Unit within a conducive environment.
The unified government in Washington, D.C., is a rich source of coverage and running commentary by journalists, policy analysts, cable pundits and late-night TV comedians. Search for the phrase What Trump means for  and Google returns an even 132 million results, including clues and speculation about the potential impacts on state and local government. If past patterns persist, there will be a temptation in some quarters to mimic the work of the new White House Office of American Innovation  whatever that becomes.Alternatively, we could do something else and look left to the geographically and alphabetically challenged state of Washington. Same namesake, strikingly different politics, and with a tendency to push forward in its DNA.This other Washington has been my home for 25 years. It is a place where interesting things happen in the public and private sector, sometimes playing against each other. This is an idea-rich environment  ideas that can be helpful in thinking through the complex issues at the intersections of public disclosure and transparency on one hand, and automation, immigration and the world of work on the other.Legislatively, the 2017 session saw changes to the public disclosure law in exempting inventory and security information about the states IT infrastructure, helping local governments improve the management of electronic records, and introducing new fees for electronic copies of public records. In addition to that trifecta, the Legislature also ordered a feasibility study for the creation of a statewide open records portal.Some study. Some pilot. Some do.Put former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in the latter category. He bankrolled the creation of USAFacts , a portal to visualize government revenue and spending, showing where money comes from and where it goes. Designed by Seattle-based Artefact, the civic data tool is elegant and simple, providing a comprehensive summary of financial performance of government programs in a way that is friendly to mobile users and familiar to users of Form 10-K thats required for financial reporting by corporations.Ballmers former boss, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, thinks that if corporations are improving their financial performance by automating work once done by humans, then they should pay a robot tax. Gates recently toldthat taxing companies use of robots could do a number of useful things: slow the near-term spread of automation and subsidize jobs that are uniquely well suited for people to do like caregiving and working with kids in schools. Gates, a longtime optimist about technologys role in society, says government cannot rely on business to produce positive social outcomes by itself and will need to take an active role in ensuring the protected jobs will be directed to workers who need them the most.Immigration plays an important role in a complex labor market, and brings with it challenges of its own. Seattle is also home to a new immigration tech startup called Boundless (See related story.) . Co-founded by a former Obama tech policy adviser and an ex-Amazon executive, Boundless is a digital tool for navigating what its founders call the opaque, intimidating and high-stakes immigration process. With $3.5 million in early funding, Boundless is taking on the tangly issues related to family unity under federal immigration laws by helping U.S. citizens and resident aliens apply for visas for their foreign-born spouses.Finally on the work front, an early experiment in holacracy at the Washington state government technology agency is now the subject of a formal Harvard study, complete with a control group to measure the impact of peer-to-peer self-management on getting things done. The formal results are expected later this year and could help make public service attractive to workers who would otherwise not consider it.There is an old bit of legislative language in Washington state about imagining the future and then building it. That is still going on here in large measure. And it warrants the occasional look to the West Coast even if your mental map defaults to the east.
California has released information about schools before in various forms  a dashboard , a database of performance scores, a grading system  but now all of that is rolled into a publicly available app, known as CA Schools.The app, announced Monday, can be downloaded from Apples App Store or Google Play and provides information about schools based on GPS and location data.Searching for a school reveals its demographics, test scores, dashboard profile page, even directions to the location.The data is pulled from the states school directory.The Department of Education developed the app in-house to catalog 10,000 public schools and some private or charter institutions.Never before have we put so much school information literally in the hands of our students, parents, and community members and made the information so accessible and user-friendly, state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson wrote in a press release. Home buyers can check out schools in their prospective neighborhoods.Searches can be shared through email or text message.Update: June 6, 2017 10:32 a.m. - This article has been updated to include links to the app and the app's name.
By combining cellphone and GPS navigation data, one startup thinks it can offer road traffic counts to government faster and cheaper.StreetLight Data, one of the companies featured on the Gov Tech 100 list this year, has launched a new feature on its platform that can give users an Average Annual Daily Traffic (AADT) count using data the company gets from mobile sources. AADT is a metric that planners and other government officials use when assessing development.And its often collected in a far more manual way, according to StreetLight Data. Simply pulling data from online, then, could save time and money associated with tasking people to count cars.New mobile device-based approaches are poised to change the way we have collected traffic counts for the past 50-60 years, said Shawn Turner, senior research engineer for the Texas Transportation Institute, in a press release . Soon, one- or two-day manual traffic counts may be as obsolete as hand-cranked car windows and bench seats.The company also believes it can offer far more comprehensive data to build the counts  a full year of travel data on a given road, as opposed to a local count performed over a couple of days.According to a blog post from Laura Schewel, the founder and CEO of StreetLight Data, the company tested its algorithm against an AADT data set from the Virginia Department of Transportation and found that it was reliable on highways as well as smaller roads, so long as the AADT was above 400.The company is hosting a webinar on June 16 to discuss how it approached building the metric.
(TNS) -- The Quantico Innovation Center is launching a startup technology competition called the QuIC Innovation Challenge. Applications are being accepted now through July 15.Selected companies will receive no-cost collaborative space or office space, a value of about $3,000, as well as free QuIC membership and program fees for six months.The QuICs incubation program will be available to the selected companies and includes mentorship and advisory assignments, networking opportunities, seminars and workshops and the chance to participate in a pitch event with a panel made up of government agency representatives, funding sources and commercial stakeholders.As we strive to cultivate technology innovations in the region, this competition allows us to attract entrepreneurs, while offsetting the costs of our programmatic services, said Michael Tentnowski, executive director of the QuIC.The challenge is focused on emerging technology companies developing innovations in cybersecurity, big data analytics, cloud services and other national security solutions.An applicant must be an established business entity with the Virginia State Corporate Commission. Also, applicants must have at least a preliminary business plan. Women-, minority- and veteran-owned businesses are especially encouraged to apply.The application and other details are available at quictech.net
Los Angeles i-Teams Indices of Neighborhood Change and Displacement Pressure

Urban Displacement Project Los Angeles Map of Neighborhood Change

Portlands Susceptibility to Gentrification Model

Seattle Displacement Risk Analysis

Bostons Displacement-Risk Map

Urban Displacement Project San Francisco Bay Area Displacement Risk Analysis

The Association for Neighborhood and Housing Developments Displacement Alert Project Map

Limitations

This story was originally published by Data-Smart City Solutions.Gentrificationdemographic and physical changes in neighborhoods that bring in wealthier residents, greater investment, and more developmenthas become a buzzword in urban planning. As traditionally low-income neighborhoods across the U.S. gentrify, social justice advocates have become increasingly concerned about displacement, the dislocation of low-income residents due to prohibitive prices. As a result, policymakers and urban planners have begun to consider strategies to combat the byproducts of gentrification in recently-developed or developing neighborhoods, such as providing low-cost amenities and rent controlled or low-income housing.The first step in addressing gentrification is understanding where it has happened and where it is likely to happen in the future. A number of cities have found mapping to be a powerful tool for observing gentrification trends, allowing them to intervene before low-income residents are seriously affected. Cities have created maps using data mostly from public sources both to better understand historical trends in gentrification and displacement and predict the next areas where low-income residents are likely to lose their homes. While each model is unique, all display methodologies that are applicable across cities. For a factor by factor overview of models in seven U.S. cities, seeEstablished in the summer of 2015, with support from Bloomberg Philanthropies, Mayor Eric Garcettis Los Angeles Innovation Team (i-team) sought to understand changing neighborhoods and prevent the displacement of businesses and residents.In order to gain a preliminary understanding of those neighborhoods in need of intervention, the i-team set out to map gentrification and assess its potential effects across Los Angeles. In 2016, the city published the Los Angeles Index of Neighborhood Change, a map that allows users to explore the degree to which zip codes in Los Angeles experienced gentrification between 2000 and 2014. Using publicly-available data, pulled primarily from Census and American Community Survey (ACS) databases, the city calculated index scores for each zip code based on six demographic measures indicative of gentrification, including changes in income, education, race, rent, and household size.This index serves as an exploratory tool, providing residents and municipal employees alike with an accessible platform for information on gentrification. The visualization empowers users to conduct their own analyses in order to understand geospatial trends in gentrification that can inform interventions.The i-team also created the Los Angeles Index of Displacement Pressure, which repurposed much of the data from the neighborhood change project in addition to information from ESRI Community Analyst in order to predict neighborhoods where displacement was likely to occur. The mapping effort combined factors that have been historically indicative of displacement, such as transportation investment, percent of rent-burdened households, and availability of affordable housing. After weighting each factor based on its predictive power, the i-team assigned and mapped risk scores for every neighborhood.By specifically identifying neighborhoods at risk of displacing residents, this model provides a more prescriptive roadmap than the neighborhood change map. While maps of historical change detail trends that residents and policymakers may be able to extrapolate into the future, displacement risk maps directly forecast the future, guiding interventions. Moreover, these maps furnish residents with a view into the future of their neighborhoods, providing a political call to action in neighborhoods likely to displace residents.The city then combined these two indices into a single interactive tool, which, paired with city administrative data, has enabled the Los Angeles i-team to more effectively select locations for its projects. For example, the i-team used the indices to assist with site selection for its Rent Stabilization Ordinance (RSO) outreach campaign, a marketing and awareness initiative to help tenants and landlords better understand and access city resources that can help longtime residents stay in their homes during periods of rising prices. Using the citys mapping tools, the i-team selected a number of transit shelters, bus stops, subway stations, and city facilities where representatives would offer guidance to residents. Moreover, the i-team identified a number of neighborhoods with concentrated RSO units for direct outreach, issuing guidebooks and door hangers to residents doorsteps. Other projects, including the Secondary Unit Prototyping project an initiative to build prototypes of legal second units on sites with single-family homesand the Civic Youth projectwhich teaches LA youth ages 16-21 skills to become civic leadersalso relied on the indices for site selection.The Urban Displacement Project, an initiative of UCLA and University of California, Berkeley, in conjunction with the State of Californias Air Resources Board (ARB), also pursued a project in 2016 to track neighborhood change in Los Angeles. Using Census data, Geolytics neighborhood change database, and LAs open data, their study sought to map trends in gentrification as well as upscalingchanges in economic and demographic characteristics in all Census tractsfrom 1990-2013. While the gentrification analysis focused on indicators like changes in rental markets, racial and ethnic composition, and economic health of low-income tracts, the upscaling analysis looked at factors like household income and education for all tracts. The resulting map categorizes neighborhoods based on four categories: gentrified 1990-2000 only, gentrified 2000-2013 only, gentrified both decades, and did not gentrify.Unlike the map created by LAs i-team, the Urban Displacement Projects initiative draws its own insights from the data, providing additional narrative context. The study found that areas around transit stations were moving towards upscaling more so than other neighborhoods, that populations in these areas were becoming whiter, more educated, and wealthier, and that rents were increasing. These areas also lost disadvantaged populations, including residents with less than a high school diploma and low-income households. By offering its own analysis of LAs gentrification data, the Urban Displacement Projects map is more accessible to residents, providing citizens with direct insights into the factors that may cause displacement in their neighborhoods, while still offering a useful GIS tool to policymakers. Creating its first maps of gentrification in 2013, Portland was one of the first U.S. cities to use data visualizations in order to better understand neighborhood change and displacement. For the first of three mapping layers, the citys Bureau of Planning and Sustainability (BPS) used mostly publicly-available Census and ACS data on housing tenure and price changes, income level, educational attainment, and racial/ethnic population changes in order to assess gentrification risk in each Census tract. BPS then added second and third layers that used data on current and planned public investment, as well as information on proximity to transit, respectively.Based on this data, BPS assigned neighborhoods to one of six categories: susceptible to gentrification, early gentrification with little demographic change, early gentrification with demographic change, dynamic gentrification, late-stage gentrification, and continued loss.This categorization was meant to be both descriptive and loosely predictive; BPS intent was to develop a metric for starting policy analysis of the citys neighborhoods that would motivate follow-up in neighborhoods in need. The accompanying report calls for data drilldowns in neighborhoods identified by the typology as at risk of gentrification. While the map allows policymakers to more easily visualize those areas requiring intervention, governments need to gather more detailed data on a neighborhoods demographic profile, housing vulnerability, and commercial activity and ownership in order to more effectively plan the next steps. In 2015, Portland did just this with its N/NE Neighborhood Housing Plan. After using the citys map of neighborhood change to identify North and Northeast Portland as areas experiencing significant gentrification and displacement pressure, the Portland Housing Bureau (PHB) organized community forums and outreach efforts in an effort to better understand the types of housing assistance that would be most helpful. Based on seven months of community engagement, the city developed a five-year plan for addressing the consequences of gentrification in the area, providing grants and loans for home repairs and mortgages, creating new affordable homes, and acquiring more land to be used for permanent affordable housing. As a part of its 2015 Growth and Equity Analysis, Seattles Department of Planning & Development (DPD) analyzed displacement risk across the city. Similarly to Portlands model, Seattles project layered neighborhood information on three factors: vulnerability of residents to rent increases and discrimination, proximity to amenities, and development capacity based on zoning rules. In order to measure these factors, DPD used public data primarily from the Census and ACS. The vulnerability category included data on education levels, demographics, and housing cost burden; the amenities category measured proximity to transit, core businesses, and civic infrastructure; and the development capacity category looked at zoning rules and median rent. Based on this data, Seattle assigned and mapped risk scores to each city neighborhood.Seattles project is unique in that it paired displacement risk data with an access to opportunity index, which identifies the level of economic opportunity in each neighborhood based on public data on education, access to jobs, transit availability, presence of civic infrastructure, and proximity to health facilities and healthy food. Combining displacement and opportunity ratings, Seattle categorized neighborhoods in four strata: high displacement risk/low access to opportunity, high displacement risk/high access to opportunity, low displacement risk/low access to opportunity, and low displacement risk/high access to opportunity.Seattles project drew its own insights from the mapping effort. DPDs report notes that displacement risk is greatest in neighborhoods of color and that the determinants of social, physical, and economic well-being are not equitably distributed.The analysis also includes more policy guidance than any other mapping initiative. DPD conducted a policy impact assessment for each of four potential courses of action: continuing current trends, guiding growth to urban centers, guiding growth to urban villages near light rail, and guiding growth to urban villages near transit. The city assigned estimates of housing and job growth to each possible strategy, then compared those estimates against each neighborhoods rating for displacement risk and access to opportunity. While not issuing any direct prescriptions, the report concludes that guiding growth to urban centers would likely cause the least displacement.Because many cities have experienced similar challenges with gentrification and displacement, one citys map can provide other cities with opportunities for replication. The City of Bostons Department of Neighborhood Development took advantage of this opportunity, designing its 2017 Displacement-Risk Map based on Seattles Displacement Risk Analysis and Portlands Susceptibility to Gentrification Model. Like both Seattle and Portlands models, Bostons analysis used mostly Census and ACS data on three factors indicative of displacement risk: vulnerability of renters including race, poverty, housing cost burden, and education; proximity to amenities like rapid transit, core businesses, and high income areas; and market changes such as decreases in affordable housing, rent appreciation, and commercial development.According to Amelia Najjar, Research and Development Analyst in Bostons Department of Neighborhood Development and one of the creators of the citys displacement map, Seattles project was the starting point. We had Boston employees speaking with Seattle employees and asked Seattle to us send their data, indicators and methodology. Boston mimicked Seattles approach of designing a map that tracked displacement risk, rather than historical neighborhood change, used parts of Seattles weighting scheme, and then made changes based on what made sense for Boston, said Najjar. Bostons project illustrates the possibility for replication across gentrification and displacement mapping projects, even between communities with drastic geographic and demographic differences.However, Boston took a unique multi-layer approach to creating its final map of displacement risk. The city first completed a tier 1 analysis that identified neighborhoods where more than 95 percent of housing units are deed restricted affordable housing. The model deemed these neighborhoods not at-risk of displacement, and removed them before beginning the tier 2 analysis, which layered the other three factors. The Department of Neighborhood Development assigned each indicator a weight based on historical correlation with displacement, layered them all in GIS, then produced a final risk score for each Census tract in the city.By integrating these two tiers into its mapping effort, Boston was able to produce a more accurate picture of displacement risk. Before introducing the Tier 1 analysis, designers noticed that a number of block groups that consisted almost entirely of public housing units were appearing as at high risk of displacement. While such a neighborhoodwhich may have many low-income residents and sit near a transit linemight initially appear prone to displacement, existing availability of affordable housing can mitigate displacement risk. With information on affordable housing, the city can identify those neighborhoods where interventions are already succeeding in preventing the dislocation of low-income residents, and those where intervention is most needed.A 2015 study of the San Francisco Bay Area by the Urban Displacement Project sought to map displacement risk, provide analysis of trends, and offer potential policy solutions. The study drew primarily from Census and ACS data on housing, demographics, employment, transportation, land use, and policy as well as datasets on home sales from DataQuick and employment density from NETS. By pairing this government data with mobility data on low-income residents, the Urban Displacement Project produced a map that characterizes neighborhoods based on four levels of gentrification: not losing low-income housing, at risk of gentrification or displacement, undergoing displacement, and advanced gentrification.From this information, the Urban Displacement Project concluded that 48 percent of Census tracts and 53 percent of low-income households lived in neighborhoods at risk of or already experiencing displacement or gentrification pressures. These effects were not isolated to low-income neighborhoods, but rather many high-income neighborhoods that housed low-income households were also losing their low-income population. Moreover, transit investment, loss of market-rate affordable housing units, and spikes in housing prices were all identified as red flags for low-income housing displacement.However, the study also found that the relationship between gentrification and displacement is more complicated than most might assume. In some cases, gentrification precedes displacement, but in others the relationship works in the opposite direction or the two are not correlated at all. Improved mobility, neighborhood revitalization, and other amenities can benefit locals if they bring in additional job and low-income housing opportunities. The study points to neighborhoods like San Franciscos Chinatown, East Palo Alto, and Marin County as examples of neighborhoods that have avoided displacement through subsidized housing, tenant protections, and strong community organizing.In providing analysis around displacement in the Bay Area, this study is more directive than traditional displacement risk maps. The map not only directs residents and policymakers to areas in need of intervention, but also identifies interventions that have been effective, providing an ostensible roadmap for creating economic growth in neighborhoods without displacing low-income residents.Providing the most fine-grained analysis of displacement risk, the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development (ANHD) created the Displacement Alert Project Map ( or Dap.Map), which assesses displacement risk building-by-building in New York City. The analysis uses publicly-available data on 96,000 New York buildings and assigns each a risk score based on three factors: loss of rent-regulated units, rate of tenant turnover, and price the building sold for. After standardizing each factor on a scale of 100, ANHD added the three and assigned each building a combined risk score from 0 to 300, then displayed each score on an interactive map. Using these factors, ANHD hopes to target the direct causes of displacement: higher prices based on speculative behavior and an influx of new residents. Armed with this easily-accessible information, residents, community groups, and the local government have the capacity to target displacement on a building-by-building level, expose abusive landlords, and fight back against the loss of affordable housing units.Importantly, displacement risk maps use proxies to estimate displacement trends and are therefore inexact measures of displacement. These tools use mobility datainformation on changes in the demographic makeup in neighborhoodsas a proxy for displacement. If a neighborhood loses a portion of its low-income residents, the study will therefore assume that they moved due to displacement pressures. As a result, displacement risk maps may misinterpret economic mobilitylow-income residents earning more and becoming mid- or high-income earnersas displacement.Yet, cities can use data on general demographic trends in order to improve the accuracy of their displacement risk assessments. In their study of San Francisco, researchers from the Urban Displacement Project noted that in the Bay Area, Census tracts low-income population had grown overall. As a result, the study could fairly conclude that in neighborhoods experiencing losses in low-income households and stable population, low-income residents were likely moving out rather than earning more. While inexact, maps of displacement pressure remain useful guides for beginning to understand what factors cause displacement and how to mitigate harmful effects on low-income residents.Neighborhood change and displacement risk maps are both useful resources for gaining an initial picture of housing trends, potential effects on low-income residents, and possible solutions. Once policymakers have identified areas where low-income residents appear to be at risk of losing their homes, they may organize street-level engagement campaigns like Portlands N/NE Housing Plan in order to better understand the problems facing those neighborhoods. By then pairing data from gentrification tools with detailed resident-level knowledge from personal engagement, policymakers can better develop solutions tailored to individual neighborhoods.
Eighteen months ago, the Texas Tribune and ProPublica asked the federal government for some documents.At the time, we were investigating what will happen the next time a massive hurricane hits Houston, and because the city is home to a massive oil refining complex, we knew a big oil spill was one likely consequence.Its happened before: During Hurricane Katrina, rushing water caused one refinerys oil tank to rupture, sending oil into more than 1,700 homes a mile away. And the Houston area has many schools and neighborhoods that are less than a mile from large refineries and oil storage terminals.For months, The Texas Tribune and ProPublica tried in vain to get specific information about what could happen if any of the thousands of massive oil tanks along the Houston Ship Channel sprung a leak during a hurricane; whether companies that owned the tanks were prepared; and whether nearby communities understood the risk. Our last hope, we were told, were documents called Facility Response Plans that big facilities must submit to the Environmental Protection Agency.So we asked for the plans submitted by more than a dozen oil refineries and storage terminals that sit along a 50-mile waterway known as the Houston Ship Channel.That was in January 2016. The documents finally arrived late last month, but they shed little new light on our original questions.Ever since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, it's becoming increasingly difficult to get any information about the risks of an accident happening along the Houston Ship Channel. That was apparent as we fought to get these documents.A month after our initial open records request, we got a call from EPA lawyers. They said the documents were voluminous and, before releasing them to us, the agency would have to consult with the Department of Homeland Security because of potential sensitive information in the plans.That agency is basically the place where public information requests go to die.There was a way to potentially avoid this, or at least speed it up, the EPA said: Narrow the scope of your request. Ask only for a portion of the plan known as vulnerability analysis.That seemed reasonable. According to federal law, those documents address the potential effects (i.e. to human health, property, or the environment) of an oil discharge on nearby water intakes, schools, residential areas, businesses, and other places. So we agreed to tweak our request.Thank you, we will continue to process your request, the EPA wrote in an email in February 2016.A month later, the agency called again with more news: They were ready to provide us with one facilitys vulnerability analysis, for Shell Oils refinery in Deer Park. All the other documents would have to go through the agency where public information requests go to die.Still, getting Shells document was great news: The refinery is one of the largest in the country, with a crude oil capacity of 14 million gallons. Then the document arrived. It was two pages long and 13 years old  from 2003.The main detail in those two pages: Oil that spills from the refinery could travel as much as 15 miles away in the event of a spill, depending on weather conditions and the time of day.When we asked the company for more details, a spokesman told us they updated their Facility Response Plan in 2012. We stilldont know why the EPA only producedthe 2003 version.The company also sent us some other portions of the plan  even though the EPA had insisted thatany other portion could have sensitive information that could impact national security.The additional documents noted that Shell had installed new firewalls around its tanks to protect them from damage. They added that an oil spill might affect the heavy concentration of industrial companies near the refinery, as well as adjoining bayous, waterways, bays and wetlands that are environmentally sensitive areas.More than a year would pass before the EPA gave us any more vulnerability analyses. When they finally arrived on May 23, they were equally underwhelming.The Stolthaven Houston Terminal stores chemicals, petroleum products and vegetable oils in 188 tanks right by the ship channel. Its analysis is one page long, and is simply a list of features near the terminal that might be affected by an oil spill, including water intakes, schools, medical facilities, residential areas, and businesses.The document continues: Identified vulnerabilities are listed in SECTION 6. A giant black box follows, where information had been redacted.The Texas Tribune and ProPublica called a number listed on the companys web site as media relations for its U.S. branch. A reporter was connected to someone from the human resources department, and after asking for more information related to the vulnerability analysis, was told, the answers probably no.At first glance, the documents for a transfer facility operated by Chevron looked more promising: four pages long. However, each page looked like this:This is a page from a document that Chevron submitted to the federal government. It's supposed to detail how an oil spill at Chevron's facility in Galena Park might impact the surrounding area. Environmental Protection AgencyA Chevron spokesman said that the company submitted a "complete" report. "The EPA may have redacted the report for security reasons, but any questions about this should be directed to the EPA," he said.The documents from a Petrobras Refinery in Pasadena contained a few more details, but nothing that could not have been gleaned from searching for the facility on Google Maps. It notes that two elementary schools and one high school are less than a mile from the facility, and that residential populations begin within a quarter mile ... and continue outward.The document continues, any evacuation efforts for these areas will be coordinated with the local emergency assistance agencies. Those same words and phrases appear in many other vulnerability analyses that the EPA provided.The EPA didnt respond to requests for an interview, either. But officials there have made presentations about how to prepare these documents correctly, and some of the PowerPoints are online. According to those presentations , using generic verbiage in these documents could be violating the law. So could leaving out the analysis of potential effects on schools and residential areas. Both of those issues appear in many of the documents The Texas Tribune and ProPublica received.In short, as hurricane season begins  and nearly two years after we first started trying to truly understand the risks of what could happen in Houston  we havent found out much.All we know is that, as we reported previously, thousands of cylindrical storage tanks carrying the worlds largest concentration of oil, gases and chemicals line the Houston Ship Channel. If a hurricane were to hit at the right angle, more than 25 feet of water could be sent up the channel. If even one of those tanks ruptured because of the rushing floodwaters, areas that are home to hundreds of thousands of people could be affected.Any other details  what companies are prepared for, what the government is doing to monitor them, and specific things that residents can do to protect themselves and their property nearby  probably wont be publicly available until its too late.
(TNS) -- Boston commuters may soon be able to take a self-driving Lyft around the waterfront, thanks to a new partnership between the ride-hail giant and the Boston-based startup nuTonomy.We will be bringing the first autonomous vehicles to the Lyft network, said Logan Green, chief executive of Lyft. Were planning for future stages of this that could lead to thousands of nuTonomy cars on the Lyft platform."The companies said they have been working with Boston officials, and Lyft said the service would not launch without explicit approval from regulators.The Lyft trips will abide by Boston and Massachusetts regulations, which include requiring a safety driver who can take over control at any moment.If approved, in a few months, Lyft customers will be able to take rides in nuTonomys self-driving electric Renault hatchbacks, the companies said.Spokespeople for the companies said the rides will be limited to a portion of the Seaport where nuTonomy is already allowed to test its self-driving cars. The company has three cars right now.Everybodys moving toward getting these autonomous cars ready, nuTonomy chief executive Karl Iagnemma said. Its more than just the car, youve got to have the car, and youve got to have that network.The goal of the Seaport trips, the companies said, will be to better understand how passengers interact with driverless cars, what their concerns are, and the best way to show that the car is safe.Green and Iagnemma would not say exactly how the rides will work, but said there will be another version of the Lyft app inside the car to communicate.The goal of our work together is to understand the user experience, of a user hailing an autonomous vehicle, Green said.The partnership does not include any financial arrangement.NuTonomy also tests in Singapore, and was the first company to offer a self-driving taxi service under a pilot program in partnership with Grab, a ride-for-hire company popular in Asia. That pilot service picks up and drops off passengers in a designated part of Singapore in entirely autonomous taxis.Those rides also include a safety driver and a company engineer who are monitoring and ready to take over the car if necessary. The company said it plans to launch a complete taxi service in Singapore next year.NuTonomy has been testing its autonomous electric Renault hatchbacks in Boston's Seaport since the beginning of the year, graduating from a lightly trafficked industrial park to busy streets near the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center and office and condo towers.Massachusetts has had a process in place for approving self-driving car tests since Gov. Charlie Baker signed an executive order last year, but officials are still grappling with how to regulate companies that want to transport passengers. Two other companies have approached the state about autonomous vehicle tests that include transporting passengers.I will confess that is something I did not consider when the (executive) order came to us, said Katherine Fitcher, who is leading MassDOTs AV efforts, at an autonomous vehicle task force meeting last month.
developing a comprehensive measure of vitality

Building permits (open data)

Business operator & customer perceptions (intercept survey)

Business revenue (Office of Finance)

Commercial real estate data (Costar)

Median household income (Census)

Number & type of businesses (open data)

Parking meter revenue (Department of Transportation)

Driving, walking, & biking traffic volumes (open data)

Pavement condition index (open data)

Speeding vehicles (open data)

Transit ridership (Metro)

Travel mode to Great Street (intercept survey)

Travel mode split (open data/Fehr & Peers)

Pedestrian and bike rider observations (open data)

Vehicle travel speed (open data)

Neighborhood perceptions (intercept survey)

Streetscape elements (Fehr & Peers)

MyLA311 service requests (open data)

CalEnviroScreen 2.0 data (GeoHub/CalEnviroScreen)

Environmental quality of life (open data)

Obesity rates (County Public Health)

Physical activity rates (County Public Health)

Collisions (open data)

Crime statistics (open data)

Female, youth & elderly presence (intercept surveys)

Safety perceptions (intercept survey)

Streetlight availability (open data)

Measurable + accessible street-level insights

Measurable

Accessible

Looking Forward: DATA in action

Neighborhood main streets, or corridors, are at the heart of daily urban life, connecting us to the local businesses, resources, and people that form our communities. To understand how main streets affect community vitality and how city investments impact these streets, Los Angeles forged a novel benchmarking analysis to quantify their baseline vitality using indicators such as economic activity, neighborhood character, and public safety. This analysis will allow for more informed planning investments and community engagement in the most active corridors in Los Angeles. The benchmarking analysis is the data-driven component of Great Streets , a multi-faceted community investment program that empowers communities to transform their main streets into meaningful public spaces, improving overall community well-being. signed the Executive Directive on Great Streets champion for data-driven, citywide improvements, , a Garcetti Eric Mayor as his first order of business in 2013. The order called for a coordinated investment strategy to support neighborhood activity and provide economic revitalization through meaningful and cost-effective city service solutions that benefit businesses and community members living and working on each Great Street. Great Streets are designated corridors in each of Los Angeless 15 council districts that were selected for a series of substantial city investments and serve as pilots for a holistic approach to neighborhood empowerment through community engagement, new investments, and tailored programming for local businesses.A major evaluation challenge in such an initiative is creating a robust baseline to measure success. Hurdles include defining metrics, gathering the appropriate data, and ensuring a comprehensive view of all aspects of vitality. Great Streets facilitated the development of new physical investments such as protected bike lanes and high-visibility crosswalks and Internet of Things investments like solar-powered Soofa benches with charging ports and Wi-Fi-enabled JC Decaux bus shelters with USB charging ports, LED lights, and real-time arrival info for Metro and city buses. It can be challenging to measure the overall impact of physical investments, as they can have immediate effect on mobility and economic activity but their long-term impact on a communitys well-being is harder to pinpoint. To address this challenge, the Great Streets team working within Mayor Garcettis office undertook a rigorous benchmarking analysis that included data from over two dozen sources including open data and surveys."Key to the success of this effort was building partnerships with data owners and managers, who not only could provide the raw information, but could help us understand its context and what stories it would tell us about our communities, said Great Streets Senior Program Manager Carter Rubin, who was instrumental in leading the analysis. For instance, communities that had a large number of requests for pothole repairs might have a disproportionate amount of street problems  or they might have an engaged community that knows 311 can be a great tool for quickly responding to quality-of-life issues."To develop a baseline vitality report for each Great Street, the Great Streets program took on the formidable task of quantifying the vitality of the 15 corridors by incorporating the goals from Mayor Garcettis Executive Order: increased economic activity; improved access and mobility; enhanced neighborhood character; greater community engagement; improved environmental resilience; safer and more secure communities; and improved public health.The citys possession of precise, location-based data for each corridor made these reports possible. The vitality analysis included 2013 and 2014 data from 27 different sources including the citys open data portal and GeoHub , city departments, and intercept or in-person surveys with community residents and business owners. With help from consulting firm Fehr & Peers, Great Streets developed benchmarking reports that describe baseline conditions on the first 15 Great Streets.The team aggregated the following datasets to build each streets profile in the six focus areas:The majority of the data used for the Great Streets profiles, including the intercept surveys conducted by Fehr and Peers , can be found on the Los Angeles open data channels.This benchmarking is novel for two reasons: first, it leverages open data, geospatial analysis, and community surveys to build a more comprehensive community vitality report, an essential set of metrics that help track quality-of-life improvements. Secondly, the project aggregates and presents data in accessible reports to spur community action at all levels.Emphasizing transparency and accessibility, the 15 comprehensive reports transcend conventional neighborhood summaries by zooming in to the street level to produce insights on city investments such as mobility improvements on these streets. On Reseda Boulevard, the Great Streets team installed a high-visibility crosswalk, protected bike lanes, new street furniture, and a new sidewalk pattern. Since completing the project two years ago, the Great Streets team has been collecting data to determine the enduring impact of these additions by comparing the vitality report this year to the baseline analysis. This evaluation will help determine future investments based on the success on Reseda Boulevard and other Great Streets.An essential part of the project was ensuring that the reports would be easy to use and engage with. Great Streets staff chose metrics that were accessible and most likely to increase community engagement in the program. The reports are thus framed to appeal to a diverse community of stakeholders, including advocates, businesses, and residents looking to glean insights about their street. As an example, data on environmental resiliencesuch as the percentage of adults who walk at least 150 minutes per week, which is 37 percent in Los Angeles (see below)could help pinpoint low-activity areas and determine root causes, especially when combined with in-person surveys on mobility. Community members could then, for instance, advocate for improved sidewalk quality or forge a community walking group.Corridor locations are available on the GeoHub , the citys map-based platform developed under the leadership of Chief Data Officer Lilian Coral, and residents are encouraged to explore the data to empower their communities. With this data, Angelenos can quickly find, compare, and explore their communitys Great Street to see how much revenue their corridor generated between 2013 and 2014 to create comparisons with other corridors, identify their Great Streets strengths, and make a plan for how to tackle their streets challenges.This street vitality data is not just sitting on a shelf  it's informing Great Streets' core programs and projects to address community well-being. For instance, economic data feeds into the outreach for the Great Streets Great Business program, which helps small business owners understand the economic dynamics of their corridor. The Great Streets business program is a $4 million small business loan fund that helps local businesses thrive; this program leverages the baseline analysis to provide crucial insights to local business owners looking to open a new location or better understand their customers travel patterns and tap opportunities to increase business.Researchers, data enthusiasts, entrepreneurs, and advocates are likewise eager and able to use the benchmarking data to identify gaps and opportunities for civic engagement. Recently, a design group comprised of UCLA students studying computer science, design, and urban planning hosted a Design Jam where groups analyzed the Great Streets survey data and pitched city innovations and improvements that fill gaps identified in the results. Representatives from Great Streets and Mayor Garcettis Data Team were in attendance to provide feedback and encouragement as the students explored ways to improve mobility and livability.While public spaces, proximity to public transportation, and well-lit streets are intrinsically linked to community well-being, we seldom connect these factors in a comprehensive way to our experience on the streets where we live and work. Including built environment factors in the benchmarking project encourages community members to weigh in on future infrastructure and meaningful city service improvements in their neighborhoods. This data-driven benchmarking is empowering Angelenos to transform the backbone of the citys neighborhoodsstreets where we live, work, learn, and co-create on a daily basisinto a fountain of insights for the city of the future.
(TNS) -- Two weeks before President Donald Trump rejected the Paris climate accord, Texas largest power company bought a big solar project that could serve almost 57,000 homes.The solar buy in West Texas is a first for Vistra Energy Corp., which used to be known as Energy Future Holdings and still relies on coal plants for half its generation capacity. Its retailing unit, TXU Energy, is now promoting Free Nights and Solar Days.I want to be very clear that this was largely driven out of demand from our retail side, Vistra CEO Curt Morgan said about the purchase.Even in Texas, where oil and gas dominate, there's a growing appetite for renewable energy. Recent examples include General Motors in Arlington, Facebook in Fort Worth and hundreds of 7-Eleven stores throughout the state.Trumps decision is unlikely to change that momentum, but there are concerns about the potential fallout. His decision on Paris created a backlash abroad and resistance within the U.S. In the past, foreign leaders warned of a carbon tax on U.S. goods if he walked away.If the fight over Paris deepens, Texas risks being on the wrong side of the divide. That could make it harder to attract businesses and newcomers, and to capitalize on a growing global market for clean energy.Texas has an impressive record in the field. It was a pioneer in fracking and wind power, and has its own electric grid. More than any state, it has the expertise and technology to compete for clean energy business, said Michael Webber, deputy director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin."We should be leading on these demands to reduce carbon," Webber said in an interview. "Because the world will want to buy more wind, solar and natural gas, which we can sell in abundance  and make ourselves very rich in the process."Some key Texas leaders, including U.S. senators and a member of the Texas Railroad Commission, hailed Trumps move. But many others around the country said theyd continue to work toward the Paris goals. Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings was among more than 200 mayors who pledged to honor the climate commitments.Exxon Mobil, Google and Apple are among the corporations that support the pact. Disneys Bob Iger and Teslas Elon Musk resigned from a presidential advisory board in protest. One news report said Trump had sparked a CEO revolt , and General Electrics top executive issued a call to action.Climate change is real, GE's Jeff Immelt wrote on Twitter. Industry must now lead and not depend on government.Texas, best known for oil and gas, is easily the largest producer in the U.S. But it's also the leader in wind power, with three times the capacity of the next-closest state. And solar is coming on fast. Wind and solar employed 36,000 Texans in early 2016.Last year, wind power accounted for 15 percent of the energy used on ERCOT, the grid that powers most of Texas and the Dallas area. Winds share of the market has roughly doubled since 2010 while coal plants lost over 10 percentage points.Generation from natural gas grew strongly, overtaking coal, and the cleaner-burning fuel has cut emissions significantly. Natural gas and renewables, including wind, provided 59 percent of ERCOT power last year, compared with 49 percent for the country. Texas also had a smaller share from coal than the U.S.Trump justified leaving the Paris accord, in part because it would preserve jobs in the coal industry. But clean energy employs more nationwide and has been growing fast  up 25 percent in solar and up 32 percent in wind in the latest year.In early 2016, solar and wind power accounted for 475,000 U.S. jobs, nearly three times more than coal, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.The cost of wind and solar power has been falling steadily, making it easier for consumers and corporations to demand it.Last month, Facebook opened a Fort Worth data center powered entirely by wind. In Arlington, the giant GM assembly plant is planning to get all its electricity from renewable sources by next year. In April, 7-Eleven signed an eight-year deal with TXU Energy to use only wind power in 425 stores in Texas.Young customers care about sustainability and environmental impacts, said 7-Eleven's Ben Tison. "Theyre paying attention to what companies are doing.And that isn't going to change. In December, ERCOT made a long-term assessment of the electric market. In every economic scenario, it projected solar generation would grow and older coal and natural gas plants would be retired.Within 15 years, solar installations will increase over 20-fold, the report said. That makes the opposition to Paris even more confounding.Its sort of crazy, UTs Webber said. As a state, were on the right track. I don't know why we are arguing against out our own economic interests.
Macbeth may not be the bloodiest of Shakespeares tragedies  the body count is staggering in such works as King Lear and Titus Andronicus, for instance  but it is likely the most blood-infused of his plays.

It is also one of the great Bards very best works, a landmark lesson in the corrosive effects of ambition and pride.

Those who go to see Gamut Theatre Groups free production of Macbeth in Harrisburgs Reservoir Park between now and June 17 are likely to be seeing red in their dreams later on.

Macbeth, set in 16th century Scotland, features an array of bloody deaths, including those of kings and nobles, but Shakespeare cleverly weaves in riffs on the notion of blood and destiny as well. As red-handed Macbeth notes just after murdering his own king in bed, Will all great Neptunes ocean wash this blood clear from my hand?

Another of the more famous scenes in the play comes when Lady Macbeth, fresh from doing murder and close to losing her mind, cant seem to wash imaginary blood from her own hands. Out, damned spot, she whimpers. Out, I say.

So powerful is the impact of Macbeth that even some people in the theater historically have been a little afraid of it. The tragedy has a reputation for being cursed, and some theater folks adhere to the tradition of never naming it, referring to it simply as the Scottish play.

By whatever name, Gamuts production of Macbeth marks its 24th annual Free Shakespeare in the Park event, which each year offers a lavish production of one of the Bards masterworks with a cast that includes professional actors and talented local amateurs. The free shows are offered Wednesday through Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. in the parks bandshell.

Patrons are encouraged to bring their own chairs, blankets and snacks. Insect repellant is also not a bad idea.

This year, guests are encouraged to bring along canned goods, which Gamut will donate to Harrisburgs Bethesda Mission.

The large cast of Macbeth features Thomas Weaver in the title role, with talented Tara Herweg-Mann as Lady Macbeth. Also on stage are Sean Adams as Macduff, Michael James Kacey as Duncan and Andrew Nyberg as Banquo.

Amber Mann, Gabriella DeCarli and Francesca Amendolia have the cool roles as the three witches, whose double-edged prophecies around a boiling cauldron get the whole bloody business started.

Comedies

Those looking for lighter stage fare can turn either to Open Stage of Harrisburg or Oyster Mill Playhouse in East Pennsboro Township, where comedy is the order of the day.

Oyster Mill launches Social Security tonight through June 18 while Open Stages already-running production of Eugene ONeills Ah, Wilderness! continues through June 25.

Social Security, by Hollywood screenwriter Andrew Bergman, is a silver-haired romantic comedy about trendy Manhattan art gallery owners Barbara and David, whose domestic tranquility is suddenly shattered by the arrival of Barbaras eccentric mother, Sophie. Sophie is soon engaged in an unexpected relationship with an elderly artist who offers to paint her portrait.

Social Security was modest Broadway success, running for 388 performances between 1986 and 1987. Oyster Mills production, directed by Patrice Whitson, features Susan Wray Danowitz, Craig Stouffer, Spurgeon Davis, Melissa Hurwitz, EK Weitzel and Charles Smitty Smith.

The fare is less farcical at Open Stage, where famed playwright ONeill's only well-known comedy offers a sweet-natured portrait of a small Connecticut town set on the Fourth of July in 1906. He is better known for darker dramas of American life like the Pulitzer Prize-winning Long Days Journey into Night.

The two-act Ah, Wilderness! focuses on the Miller family, particularly the coming-of-age challenges faced by 16-year-old Richard Miller. The show premiered on Broadway in 1933 and has enjoyed a long history as a staple of regional theater.

The original cast featured none other than legendary songwriter George M. Cohan as Nat Miller, the same role later taken by Will Rogers in the plays first touring production. The role of Richard Miller was filled on Broadway by Elisha Cook Jr., whom some of you may remember as the twitchy hitman Wilmer in The Maltese Falcon.

Cancellation

Little Theatre of Mechanicsburg is going through a period of disruption, with the sudden cancellation of two plays.

The community theater initially announced that the comedy The Impossible Years (June 9-25), would be staged as the current seasons sixth show, then canceled that production and replaced it with a planned production of Love Letters, an epistolary romance that can be staged quickly without much need for rehearsal.

Now theater officials have announced that Love Letters has also been bagged, according to an announcement on the theaters new website at www.ltmpa.com. They offered no further explanation.

LTMs bumpy 66th season is now scheduled to resume in July with the musical revue Tintypes.
In a flurry of legislative approvals June 2, Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval added his signature to Assembly Bill 471 , which formally stands up the Office of Cyber Defense Coordination within the Department of Public Safety. The move makes Nevada one of the latest states trying to shape its cybersecurity destiny with an office meant to coordinate and respond to the myriad threats circulating the Internet.The governors signature on the bill followed a unanimous vote in the Senate and a nearly unanimous vote in the House, with 40 yea votes and two abstentions. Like many similarly focused agencies in surrounding states, the Nevada cybersecurity office is part of a larger effort to identify and negate threats posed to the state government and citizen data.As I said in my State of the State address, there are now five battlefields in our constant fight for safety and security: land, sea, air, space and cyberspace, Sandoval said in a press release . Im proud to create Nevadas first Cyber Defense Center, which will be tasked with detecting, preventing and responding to attacks. We must remain vigilant and stay ahead of those who seek to steal our private information and endanger our resources.In his January 2017 State of the State address , Sandoval put an emphasis on making the state a business powerhouse, pointing to areas like technology, innovation and renewable energy as key to the mission. His approval of the cybersecurity legislation seems in keeping with this spirit.Under the terms of the recently enacted law, the office would be required to host periodic reviews of state agency systems and identify shortcomings, while proposing standards and guidelines for future mitigation. The office would also be charged with agency performance auditing and the development of training and education programs for state personnel. The law also outlines the appointment of a cybersecurity response team by the yet-to-be-named office administrator.The consolidation of cybersecurity assets to a central office is not an unusual move at this stage in the IT game. Though the forms of the organizations differ in their authority and structure, the general premise behind them remains the same: protecting state systems and constituent data.In 2015, New Jersey launched its version of the cybersecurity command center, the New Jersey Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Cell under Gov. Chris Christie. Similarly, Washington states Office of Cybersecurity was created by lawmakers in 2015 to address threats to state networks and the critical infrastructure.Georgia, in mid-2015, also took steps to outline a cybercentric organization with the creation of the State Government System Review Board , under the direction of the CIO.Nevadas neighboring states have also been very proactive in the cybersecurity arena. Californias Cybersecurity Integration Center , located within the Office of Emergency Services, was established by Gov. Jerry Brown in August of 2015. In March 2017, Idaho lawmakers approves a $90 million deal for the construction of the Cybercore Integration Center on the Idaho National Laboratory campus. The facility will serve as a cybersecurity research, education and training facility.In the state of Oregon, legislation in the Senate proposes the consolidation of cybersecurity powers under the state CIO, as well as establishing the Oregon Cybersecurity Center of Excellence and the Oregon Cybersecurity Fund.
(TNS) -- Oakland police officers tend to speak less respectfully to black people than to white people during traffic stops, using language in these everyday interactions that can erode community faith in the police, according to a first-of-its-kind study of body-camera footage released Monday by Stanford researchers.An analysis of 981 traffic stops made by 245 Oakland officers in April 2014 found that officers were more apt to use terms of respect such as "sir," "ma'am," "please" and "thank you" when dealing with white motorists when compared to black ones. They apologized to white people more frequently for having to stop them, and expressed concern, telling them to "drive safe."After stopping black people, officers more often used terms deemed to be disrespectful, calling them by their first names, "bro" or "my man," and instructing them to keep their hands on the wheel, the study found."We found that the officers on average spoke fairly respectfully to people -- it was just that they spoke even more respectfully to white community members than they did to black community members," said Jennifer Eberhardt, a Stanford professor who co-authored the study. "No matter how we looked at the data, there was a race gap there."The study found that officers spoke more respectfully and more formally to older people. But the racial disparities persisted even after researchers took into consideration the severity of the infraction and the location and outcome of the stop. The race of the officer making the stop "did not contribute a significant effect," the study said.Oakland police officials did not respond to requests for comment on the findings, but indicated they may discuss the report in detail in the near future. The city cooperated in the study, which was part of an ongoing collaboration between the Police Department and Eberhardt, an expert on racial profiling.The rise of police wearing body cameras has been embraced by both officers and police watchdogs as a way to collect evidence about confrontations that may come into dispute. But in the past, the footage has generally shed light on critical incidents like shootings, instead of offering a window into everyday interactions.The Stanford researchers said their work showed that the videos could be tapped as a "rich source of data" and, in turn, become a training tool."The reason we chose to look at respect in particular is because we know from other research on procedural justice that respect is important to people," Eberhardt said. "You build trust with the community one interaction at a time. We were interested in looking at these more common everyday interactions that everybody was having, rather than these high-profile cases where you're trying to adjudicate who was right or wrong."The researchers used a two-step process to dig into 183 hours of footage.First, they had human participants look at transcripts of a sampling of officer "utterances," as well as what drivers said immediately beforehand, and rate the police communication in terms of respect. They then analyzed what about each utterance was judged to be respectful, and developed a computer program that applied the model to the rest of the footage.For example, an utterance such as, "Sorry to stop you. My name is Officer (Redacted) with the Police Department" ranked higher in respect than, "All right, my man. Do me a favor. Just keep your hands on the steering wheel real quick."The study found that white people were 57 percent more likely to hear an officer say something judged to be highly respectful, while black people were 61 percent more likely to hear an officer say something judged to be extremely disrespectful.George Holland Sr., president of the Oakland chapter of the NAACP, said the study validated much of what he has heard from community members."People in certain communities tell each other that you better be wearing a white shirt and a tie so you'll get better treatment," he said. "Most of us learn at a very early age that the police are our enemy. It shouldn't ever be that way."Eberhardt cautioned that the findings do not prove bias or wrongdoing in individual cases or on the part of individual officers."Our main point is that there are language disparities here that can be driven by a number of different factors and they can emerge even when officers don't hold any racial animus against blacks or any awareness that there are these differences in language use," she said.A previous study led by Eberhardt, published last year, found that Oakland officers were four times as likely to search African American men as white men during a traffic or pedestrian stop.There have been previous indications, though, that Oakland's adoption of body cameras starting in late 2010 has improved policing in the city, including a big drop in the number of use-of-force complaints made against officers.While an officer's treatment of a person during a traffic stop may seem small in the scheme of things, Alicia Garza, an Oakland activist who co-founded Black Lives Matter, said it's important to see the interactions "as examples of larger patterns that have real tangible outcomes for people's lives.""In a traffic stop, if an officer is kind, courteous and discreet, that traffic stop is less likely to result in a loss of life," she said. "Oftentimes when we talk about race and racism, we talk about individualized actions between people. But what Dr. Eberhardt's study is really pointing to is the ways people's individualized actions point to a systemic set of practices that has impacts on people's lives."
A man arrives at the airport in a foreign country. He communicates with American Sign Language, but can still ask the customs agent where baggage claim is. When he gets in a taxi, he can tell the driver where he wants to go. Because both spaces are outfitted with KinTrans, the traveler can talk to non-signers in their own language.Thats what plays out in a video from Dallas-based startup KinTrans  a technology that allows people who use sign language to communicate with those who dont. It uses a 3-D camera to track a signers hand and body movements. It can then translate those words into English or Arabic (although more languages are to come). KinTrans can also translate spoken words into American Sign Language or Arabic Union Sign Language, and an on-screen avatar will sign the words. The techs creators report the device already recognizes signs correctly about 98 percent of the time.The two-way translator frees the hearing-impaired from depending on interpreters, enabling them to communicate freely, easily and independently with anyone. The companys mission is to support 13 million deaf people in North America in the next three years.
Eddie Jordan has tipped Mercedes to quit formula one after the 2018 season.

A former team owner and boss, British broadcaster Jordan has become known as something of a paddock oracle, successfully predicting multiple developments including Michael Schumacher's comeback.

And now he thinks Mercedes is close to quitting the sport it dominated between 2014 and last year.

When asked if he thinks Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel will switch to the German marque next year, Jordan told Auto Bild: "No.

"He has everything he needs at Ferrari. And also because Mercedes will probably pull the plug at the end of 2018," the Irishman added.

"I think they will go for the titles this and next year and then the board of directors in Stuttgart will decide to sell the team and stay only as an engine maker.

"I would do the same," Jordan explained, "because Mercedes have won everything and can only get worse from now. So it's better to go back to their old core business in formula one, which is developing and delivering high tech engines."

And that, Jordan insists, is one of the factors Vettel will consider when deciding to ink a new Ferrari contract for 2018 and beyond.

"If Vettel suspects this, it really makes no sense for him to leave Ferrari," he said.

(GMM)
The Cumberland County Historical Society will host a free public event from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, June 14, to open up a community conversation on preservation.

Pre-registration is required by logging onto www.eventbrite.com/e/carlisle-community-conversation-about-preservation-tickets-34519791626. The free event is part of the 2017 Pennsylvania Statewide Conference on Heritage.

Carlisle will host the three-day conference next Wednesday through Friday, June 16, that will explore issues related to historic preservation, architectural conservation, downtown revitalization and community planning.

The conference has an entry fee and consists of walking tours, workshops, bus tours and education sessions held at the Historical Society building on 21 N. Pitt St., the Carlisle Theatre and buildings on the Dickinson College campus.

Local residents can register online at paheritageconference.org for the conference, which will highlight the importance of community and place-making in historic preservation.
Dear Editor:

It seems clear from your May 27 story ("Rothman: Redistricting always political") that State Rep. Greg Rothman is not really grasping the message his constituents are sending to all political representatives in Pennsylvania. So, let me paraphrase their message so few can miss it.

"This is our Commonwealth. You work for us. We do not want you to have this role. Give it back to us."

The only appropriate answer for current public servants like Rothman and would-be public servants like me is that we understand and will do all we can to return this authority to the public as quickly as possible. There is no ethical response that includes an implication that the public will be "political" too.

Pennsylvania is one of the worst states for gerrymandering. This is an effort to avoid the authority of the voters. Pennsylvania voters see this clearly and have a preferred redistricting fix sponsored in the General Assembly. Public servants in both chambers should make the implementation of this fix their highest priority.

Alan Howe

Carlisle
Dear Editor:

I read the article on the Ashland Cemetery dispute with disbelief. It is inconceivable that a cemetery owner could treat a grieving family with such disrespect, even threatening to ban a father from visiting his sons grave.

At issue is the Capozzi familys right to grieve their child, Vinny, in their own way. The family decorates his grave with seasonal items and American flags. In a WHTM interview, Mr. Ewing said, I have no idea how all that stuff on that thing would help anybody grieve. Mr. Ewing believes the decorations are disrespectful to the veterans buried there, and that they pose a danger to mowers.

I believe the men who fought for freedom would uphold a familys right to decorate their childs grave as they see fit. If the decorations pose a threat to mowers, they should stay outside the perimeter of the Capozzi plot and the family could tend it.

When Vinny was too ill to go to school, I was his in-home teacher during the last two years of his life. Vinny was a radiant soul, full of life and love, and even as he lost the ability to talk, eat, and use his arms and legs, he remained positive and joyful.

When I drive by the cemetery and see the decorations on Vinnys grave, Im happy to know that Vinny continues to be loved and celebrated. Ive placed decorations there, too, and it helps me feel close to him. I can only imagine how his family feels.

According to the Ewing Brothers website, Mr. Ewing is honored to serve the greater Carlisle community with the same traditional values, compassion, and integrity that his family has represented since 1853. I hope that this compassion will be extended to the Capozzi family as they express their love and grief for their child.

Dee Dombach

Lower Frankford Township
The team equipped two Google Street View vehicles with the fast-response Aclima Ei measurement and data acquisition platform and repeatedly sampled every street in a 30-km 2 area of Oakland, CA, over the course of a year, developing the largest urban air quality data set of its type. The resulting maps of annual daytime NO, NO 2 , and black carbon at 30 m-scale revealed stable, persistent pollution patterns with surprisingly sharp small-scale variability attributable to local sources, up to 58 within individual city blocks. A paper on their work is published in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology .

Engineering researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and colleagues have demonstrated a measurement approach to for urban air pollution mapping at 45 orders of magnitude greater spatial precision than possible with current central-site ambient monitoring.

Since local variation in air quality profoundly impacts public health and environmental equity, our results have important implications for how air pollution is measured and managed. If validated elsewhere, this readily scalable measurement approach could address major air quality data gaps worldwide. Apte et al.

The research team was led by Cockrell School of Engineering assistant professor Joshua Apte in partnership with the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), Google and Aclima, a San Francisco-based company that delivers environmental intelligence through sensor networks. The study included co-authors from the University of Washington, University of British Columbia, Utrecht University, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Aclima and EDF.

Air pollution is a major global risk factor for illness and death, and the air pollution that people are breathing can be, at times, far worse than what official air quality monitors report. Most large urban areas have only one air quality monitor for every 100 to 200 square miles. In comparison, the mobile approach outlined in the paper and led by researchers at UT Austin, maps air pollution every 100 feet, or at about four to five locations along a single city block.

Air pollution varies very finely in space, and we cant capture that variation with other existing measurement techniques. Using our approach and analysis techniques, we can now visualize air pollution with incredible detail. This kind of information could transform our understanding of the sources and impacts of air pollution. Joshua Apte

The Aclima Ei platform provides data management, quality control, and visualization functions, facilitating extensive, routine measurements. The study used fast-response (1 Hz) laboratory-grade analyzers: a photo-acoustic extinctiometer for BC; chemiluminescence for NO; and cavity-attenuation phase-shift spectroscopy for NO 2 . The inlet system was designed to minimize self-sampling and particle sampling losses.

The studys approach was designed to be cost-effective and easily replicated. Driving more than 14,000 miles, the Google cars collected 3 million measurements of nitric oxide, nitrogen dioxide and black carbon pollutants in Oakland.

The team developed a set of data reduction algorithms to convert the data set of 3 million instantaneous observations into estimates of median annual weekday concentrations for individual 30-m road segments.

In many locations, the teams Google cars measured air pollution levels that were several times higher than at Oaklands official monitors. In their analysis, the researchers also identified many recurring hotspots where pollution on a single block was consistently much higher than elsewhere in a neighborhood. These pollution hotspots included the port, busy intersections, restaurants, warehouses, industrial plants and vehicle dealerships.

What surprised us is that there are consistently locations that can be as much as six times more polluted on one end of the block than on the other. Among other things, this demonstrates that people are getting disproportionate exposures of unhealthy air at some locations. Kyle Messier, a UT Austin postdoc and a co-author

This project is the latest phase of a partnership between EDF and Google, who have been working together since 2012 to map and measure a growing list of health and environmental risks, including hidden leaks from local natural gas systems.

In the future, Apte hopes this mobile air quality monitoring approach expands to other major cities to help formulate a hyper-local map of air pollution in the United States that could help people make more informed decisions.

You could use this information when youre picking a school for your kids. Is there a school with a playground that might have better air quality because your kid has asthma? This hyper-local information about consistent air quality can be really useful for people, especially those who are vulnerable because of age or health condition. Joshua S. Apte

Funding for the study was provided by the Environmental Defense Fund.

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Boschs radar road signature is made up of billions of individual reflection points. These are formed everywhere that radar signals hitfor example, on crash barriers or road signsand reproduce the course a road takes. Automated vehicles can use the map to determine their exact location in a lane down to a few centimeters.

Bosch and the Dutch map and traffic information provider TomTom have developed a radar localization layer for high-resolution maps for automated drivinga first. Up to now, video data has been used for this purpose.

The advantage of Boschs radar road signature is its robustness: unlike maps that rely exclusively on video data for vehicle localization, the radar road signature also works reliably at night and in conditions of poor visibility. Moreover, the Bosch radar road signature only transmits five kilobytes of data to a cloud per kilometerthis data volume is twice as high when using a video map. Bosch expects the first vehicles using the technology by 2020 at the latest in Europe and the US.

The two companies have been working intensively on the radar road signature and its integration into TomToms high-resolution overall map since the beginning of their collaboration in July 2015.

Bosch is a global market leader in the field of radar sensors with 77 GHz technology and detection ranges of up to 250 meters. By comparison, video sensors only have a maximum detection range of 150 meters. The main challenge was finding a way to adapt existing radar sensors for this task.

When used in a driver assistance system such as automatic emergency braking systems or adaptive cruise control (ACC), the sensors detect moving objects. But in order to generate the radar road signature, they also need to be able to detect static objects, which meant that existing radar sensors had to be modified. The next generation of Bosch radar sensors will be able to provide the data required for the radar road signature.

High-resolution maps are essential for automated driving and provide information that goes beyond the area that sensors are able to monitor. Unlike maps for todays navigation devices, they are made up of a number of overlapping layers:

Localization layer: An automated vehicle can determine its position in a lane by using a localization layer comprising the Bosch radar road signature plus an additional video localization map. It compares information about objects that it has received via its surround sensors using the corresponding information from the localization layer. In this way, the vehicle can determine its relative position to these objects.

Planning layer: The planning layer is used to calculate individual maneuvers during automated driving (trajectory planning). The planning layer also contains information about the course of the road, traffic signs and speed limits, as well as bends and gradients. An automated vehicle can use the planning layer, for example, to decide when it should change lanes.

Dynamic layer: Information about any rapidly changing traffic situations such as traffic jams, construction work and hazards, or available parking spaces is saved in the dynamic layer.

Each of these layers of a high-resolution map for automated driving need to be regularly updatedthe dynamic layer even in real time.

We currently expect that we will need fleets for freeways in Europe, North America, and Asia Pacific that each consist of around one million vehicles in order to keep our high-resolution map up to date. Bosch board of management member Dr. Dirk Hoheisel

Current data for each of the layers will be generated by the vehicles on-board sensors while they are driving. Communication boxes such as Boschs Connectivity Control Unit will transmit the radar sensors data from the vehicles to the manufacturers cloud and then on to the Bosch IoT Cloud. Bosch will use this to create the radar road signature, which is compatible with all conventional map formats. TomToms responsibilities will include integrating the radar road signature in the overall map and distributing it.
Finance Ministry asks Ministries to decide on FDI proposals within 60 Days

Published: June 7, 2017

The finance Ministry has asked all those ministries tasked with clearing foreign direct investment proposals in the 12 sectors that require governments nod to take a decision on such proposals within 60 days. Last month, the Cabinet abolished the Foreign Investment and Promotion Board (FIPB), which was the authority for clearing foreign direct investment (FDI) proposals for a period of 25 years.

A timeline of 4 weeks has been fixed for the transfer of all pending applications with the FIPB to the respective administrative ministries.

Salient Highlights

Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) would come up with standard operating procedures to process FDI proposals in consultation with the administrative ministries. This will be helpful in ensuring consistency of treatment and uniformity of approach.

A panel led by the secretaries of the department of economic affairs (DEA) and the department of industrial policy and promotion (DIPP) will be conducting a quarterly review on the pending proposals.

Ordinary FDI applications pertaining to non-resident Indian (NRI)/export-oriented unit (EOU), food processing, single-brand retail trading and multi-brand retail trading proposals need to be decided in 60 days.

FDI proposals by NRIs/EoUs requiring approval of the government will be dealt by the DIPP. DIPP will be the administrative ministry for this purpose. In addition, the DIPP will handle the applications related to imports of capital goods or machinery.

Applications involving investments from countries of concern which require security clearance under to the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) will be cleared by the Home Ministry. In addition, applications pertaining to private security agencies would be decided by the home ministry.

The Department of Economic Affairs (DEA) will be the authority to clear the proposals of financial services not under a regulator, or where there is more than one regulator or there is a doubt about the regulator.

If the FDI proposals lacks clarity on the administrative department, then the DIPP will help in identifying the ministry.

FDI proposal with respect to banks will be approved by the Department of Financial Services.

Foreign investment proposals above Rs 5,000 crore will be cleared by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA).

FDI Approving Authorities after FIPB Abolition

Mining: Ministry of Mines

Defence: Department of production, Ministry of Defence

Small arms: Ministry of Home Affairs.

Broadcasting & Print Media: Ministry of Information and broadcasting

Print Media: Ministry of Information and broadcasting

Civil Aviation: Ministry of Civil aviation

Satellites: Department of Space

Telecom: Department of Telecommunications (DoT), Ministry of Communications.

Trading (Single brand and food products retail trading): Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP), Ministry of Commerce and Industry

Financial Services not regulated by a regulator or where there is more than one regulator or in respect of which there is a doubt about the regulator: Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance.

Banking (Private & Public): Department of Financial services, Ministry of Finance.

Pharmaceuticals: Department of Pharmaceuticals, Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilisers

Month: Current Affairs - June, 2017

Topics: Business  DIPP  Economy  Foreign Direct Investment (FDI)  Ministry of Finance

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It will be my honor and my privilege Thursday to be able to sit and talk for a little while with Lisa Lucas. Lucas, 37, is the first woman and the first African American to serve as executive director of the National Book Foundation, a post she assumed in 2016.

Lucas will speak at the Friends of the Greensboro Public Library annual luncheon.

She previously was publisher of Guernica, an arts and politics magazine. She has also worked with the Tribeca Film Festival and the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago.

The National Book Foundation is responsible for the National Book Awards.

Shes a passionate evangelist for reading and envisions a day when the National Book Awards command the same attention as the Oscars or the Emmys.

People who like movies watch the Oscars, she says. Why dont we celebrate books in the same way?

Why not?

Anyway, if theres something youd for me to ask her Thursday, let me know. I might be able to squeeze in a few reader questions, time permitting.
One of the more compelling college enrollment stories is playing out at the University of Missouris flagship campus in Columbia. From the Chronicle (emphasis mine):

This fall the University of Missouri at Columbia will welcome its smallest freshman class in nearly two decades. As of this month, just 4,009 first-time freshmen had made enrollment deposits, a decline of 35 percent from the 2015 class of 6,191 students.

The precipitous drop is striking for a public flagship with a prominent national brand, one that has seen enrollment grow almost every year since the turn of the century.

In 2015 the student population reached a record high of 35,448. Come August, Mizzou plans to enroll about 30,700 students over all. Seven of its residence halls will be closed temporarily.

As this very excellent Chronicle story points out (and Im sorry its behind a paywall, boo) the primary reason given for the enrollment drop is the campus unrest in 2015, which got plenty of local and national coverage. Heres a handy timeline if you forgot the particulars.

This series of racially charged incidents and the student reactions to them led to the resignations of both the university and university system leaders. It also warned off three groups of students: African American students, who arent sure Missouri is a good fit; students from rural areas, who, according to the Chronicle are often critical of the universitys response to the protesters (which I take to mean they oppose the protesters); and out-of-state students, who have plenty of other choices anyway.

Meanwhile, the state of Missouri is in the middle of a demographic dip that means the number of high school graduates is declining.

Neighboring Illinois, which supplies about 20 percent of Mizzous freshman class, is going through a similar population downturn. Not only are fewer Illinois students choosing the University of Missouri, Illinois is trying to cherrypick students from Missouri.

International students are staying away (though that probably has more to do with developments in D.C. than in Columbia). A member of the universitys governing board told the Chronicle that the university had gotten lazy about recruiting students. And an enrollment management consultant suggests that Missouris issue isnt the image its trying to repair but rather the reality of what happened on campus in 2015.

There are a lot of moving parts to this perfect storm of a story. Most are unique to the University of Missouri because they happened there.

But theres one part of the story that seems university and should give folks in North Carolina pause:

As state budget cuts (in Missouri) have piled up over the past 15 to 20 years, the university has relied on enrollment growth to prop up its finances, said (John) Gahl, the engineering professor. He serves as chair of the Faculty Councils fiscal-affairs committee.

He said Mizzou couldnt fill the entire state-funding gap with additional tuition revenue, as many other universities have done, because a Missouri law prevents public-university tuition from rising faster than the Consumer Price Index. So Mizzous leaders tried a different approach: "The concept was that we were going to beat this by just growing, growing, and growing."

It obviously isn't working at the University of Missouri, where they'll lay off more than 80 employees before classes resume in the fall.

A similar dynamic could play out in North Carolina. Assuming the final state budget comes together like I think it will, the legislature will give to the UNC schools with one hand (itll fully fund enrollment growth, as usual) but take away with the other (through the so-called flex cut, as usual). As long as UNC schools add students each year, everythings copacetic, more or less. The moment that stops, things get kinda ugly because schools get enrollment growth money only if enrollment, you know, grows.

North Carolina is probably OK, high school graduate-wise, for the next couple of years. But in 2019, a peak starts to slide down into a valley. If the WICHE projections I linked to hold up, North Carolina will see a net loss over three years of about 9,600 high school grads  roughly the combined freshman classes at UNC-Chapel Hill and N.C. State, plus another 1,200 students. It's not an insignificant number, in other words.

Some flagship state universities have bucked their in-state demographic trends and soothed their revenue worries by bringing in undergrads from other states. But North Carolina cant make that play, thanks to the 18 percent cap on out-of-state enrollment.

UNC schools arent battling an image problem like the University of Missouri is. But they soon will have to face a reality problem of having fewer new high school graduates to recruit. Unlike student protests that pop up with no warning, enrollment is one issue they should see coming well in advance.

Want to make sure you see these blog posts? Like me on Facebook, and follow me on Twitter.

Have something to say? Email me at john.newsom@greensboro.com.
India signs Agreement to provide $318 million Line of Credit to Sri Lanka

Published: June 7, 2017

India has signed an agreement with Sri Lanka to provide USD 318 million as line of credit for developing Sri Lankas railway sector. The agreement was signed between Sri Lankas Ministry of Finance and Mass media, and Managing Director of Indias Export Import Bank in Colombo.

Background

In 2015, during the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Sri Lanka he had declared a line of credit of USD 318 million for the development of Sri Lankas railway sector. That visit of Prime Minister Modi was the first standalone bilateral visit by an Indian prime minister since 1987.

The line of credit comes at the backdrop of increasing Chinese presence in the Indian Ocean nation. China has made significant investments in Sri Lanka mainly in developing ports. Though China claims the investments are part of its Belt and Road Initiative that aims to link it with Europe and Africa via the Indian Ocean, the ports have the potential to be used as a base for its naval operations.

At present, Indian development assistance to Sri Lanka primarily focuses on improvement of infrastructure, livelihood development, education, healthcare, and capacity building. India continues to be a major developmental partner for Sri Lanka for nearly 40 years.

So far India has provided four lines of credit to Sri Lanka for developing its railway sector that totally amounted to USD 966 million. Sri Lanka has made used of these credit facilities to improve the southern and northern railway lines as well as for procuring the rolling stocks for the Sri Lanka Railways.

In addition, over the years Indian foreign direct investment in Sri Lanka has also increased rapidly.







Month: Current Affairs - June, 2017

Topics: External Assistance  India-International Affairs  India-Sri Lanka  International  Lines of Credit

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GREENSBORO  Moaning can be heard in the background of the first of the two 911 calls released by Guilford Metro 911 on Wednesday in connection to an early Sunday homicide.

The caller tells the dispatcher that the victim, Kate-Lynn Simmons, 18, of 4710 Melvina Road, was shot "in the the stomach and leg" outside Building E at Northwind Apartments, 1373 Lees Chapel Road.

"The bottom of her body is bleeding," the female caller tells the dispatcher with a shaken voice.

Simmons was awake during the call, according to the caller, but was "turning pale."

Both calls to Guilford Metro 911 were made by females but it is unknown whether it was the same person. Both callers tell dispatchers that they think Simmons may have been "grazed" by the gunshots.

In the second call, a female says she was awaken by the gunshots.

Police are not sure what led to Simmons being shot around 1:20 a.m. They say she wasn't attending a party, and she was with others in the breezeway of a building at the time of the shooting.

Simmons was transported by Guilford County EMS to Moses Cone Hospital where she died.

Greensboro/Guilford County Crime Stoppers is offering a $2,000 reward for information leading to an arrest in the killing. Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 336-373-1000.
RUTHERFORDTON  A juror who was arrested during the trial of a North Carolina minister charged with beating a gay congregant made a mistake by taking unauthorized documents to court and was not trying to influence the outcome of the trial, his son said Wednesday.

The jury was in its second day of deliberations Tuesday in the trial of Brooke Covington, 58, a longtime minister at Word of Faith Fellowship in Spindale, North Carolina, when juror Perry Shade Jr., 71, was charged with contempt.

A retrial has been scheduled for the two-week court term beginning July 17. The case was part of an ongoing, two-year investigation into abuse of Word of Faith Fellowship congregants by church leaders by The Associated Press.

Throughout the trial, Judge Gary Gavenus warned jurors not to do their own research.

Gavenus declared a mistrial and sentenced Shade to 30 days in jail and $500 fine.

Shade's son, Chris Shade, said in messages to The Associated Press on Wednesday that his father isn't affiliated with the church. He said his father likes to do research and "just made a mistake."

Asked Wednesday if his office will investigative Shade's actions, District Attorney Ted Bell said he couldn't comment due to a gag order.

Gavenus issued an order that prevents the attorneys, witnesses and jurors from discussing the case. Any violation could result in contempt charges. The documents Shade brought to court were filed under seal and not open to the public.

The judge said some of the material Shade shared with other jurors was outdated case law related to the state's kidnapping statute.

It's not clear what else Shade brought, or whether he was leaning toward conviction or acquittal.

One juror reached by phone Wednesday told AP he was under court order not to discuss the case. Numerous others did not respond to messages.

Shade retired about a decade ago from the PPG Industries facility in Shelby, where he worked as a supervisor. His wife of 51 years died in March.

Shade said during jury selection that he had once been represented by Covington's defense lawyer, David Teddy, though he didn't elaborate. Prosecutors and Teddy allowed Shade to be on the jury.

Covington was the first of five people to face trial on charges of assaulting and kidnapping Matthew Fenner. She faces two years in prison if convicted. Each defendant is being tried separately.

Fenner, 23, said he was leaving a prayer service Jan. 27, 2013, when nearly two dozen people surrounded him in the sanctuary. He said they slapped, punched, choked and blasted him  a church practice that involves intense screaming  for two hours as they tried to expel his "homosexual demons."

As part of the AP's investigation, reporters interviewed 43 former church members about abuse inside the church, including four who said they witnessed Fenner's assault.

Shade was the second person jailed Tuesday during the trial.

Chad Metcalf, 35, who had a court hearing Tuesday for an unrelated traffic violation, was charged with harassing a juror, which Shade reported to the judge before his own arrest. Metcalf's mother told AP her son is not affiliated with Word of Faith Fellowship and was probably joking if he made a comment to the jurors that they should reach a verdict.

Questions remain about how Shade was able to get the documents in the jury room. The AP covered the proceedings. Shade didn't openly carry the documents when he entered the jury room Tuesday morning or after a lunch break.
Today I want to give it up to a handful of brave Syrian activists who lead a campaign called Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently. Matthew Heineman, a graduate of Greenwichs Brunswick School, tells their story in his breathtaking documentary feature City of Ghosts (release date July 14) which was just honored at the Greenwich International Film Festival. (Disclaimer: I am a juror for the festival but I did not vote in this category.)

I did not see the film until Sunday afternoon during the festival, although I did read The New Yorker article that inspired it (Telling The Truth About ISIS and Raqqa, November 2015, by David Remnick)  along with The Atlantic Monthly article that explained ISIS so well (What ISIS Really Wants, March 2015, by Graeme Wood).

So, Raqqa: Imagine a graceful, vibrant Syrian city of 200,000 people tucked along the northeast bank of the Euphrates River. A city that dates from antiquity, with relics from the Babylonian, Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine eras. On quiet nights, one could stroll to the Qalat Jabr, an 11th century fort, or the Raqqa Bridge, where you could watch the city lights glitter and blink. Imagine weddings that lasted for days, children running through the main square, endless green parks and long summer nights with Middle Eastern music floating through the air. This was Raqqa.

In 2013 Raqqa was overtaken by ISIS, which later declared it the capital of their self-described caliphate. Soon the parks had human heads impaled atop historic gates. People have been dismembered, beaten and crucified for supposed crimes against the Islamic State. Shia mosques and Christian churches were leveled.

Except for the Sunni group's digital recruiters and propaganda teams, use of the Internet, cell phones and satellite dishes have been banned. ISIS has worked hard to cut the city off from the rest of the world.

But a few Raqqa-born men worked hard to tell the story. Working from inside Syria and from exile abroad, they committed to exposing the horrific transformation of their homeland. There is no past to their trauma; they live in it all the time, risking their lives to get the story out. Using tools that only the modern world can provide, they take photos and video on smuggled iPhones and hidden cameras to share the truth of Raqqa. These men, Abdel Aziz al-Hamza as their spokesman, have seen families and friends publicly executed for their work. They watched an anguished father call out to fathers everywhere to please watch "your sons," delivering that painful warning moments before he was killed by ISIS, who posted a video of the act online.

I spoke briefly to Matthew Heineman after I saw the film Sunday, but he spent most of his time talking to students and aspiring filmmakers, encouraging them to follow their dreams. He called himself an unapologetic jock who somewhat randomly became interested in film after college and has not looked back. He has been called the next Steven Spielberg and is a walking inspiration to kids in Greenwich and beyond.

One of the things I found most striking about Matthews film was that after all the abuse, all the atrocities, the people he interviewed are not looking for revenge or to flatten ISIS. If you flatten ISIS something else will spring up to replace it, one character remarks in the film. What they want is an end to the agony in Syria. They want a system that will sustain their precious homeland.

So ultimately a film of horror and hate is really a film about love, strength and the need to return home. Raqqa is now largely in ruins. Since 2014, it has been hit by airstrikes from the Syrian government, Russia and the U.S.-led coalition. A long-awaited ground offensive to retake the city by U.S.-backed Kurdish and Arab militias seems imminent. It may take months, perhaps years (see: Afghanistan, America's longest war, still going strong after 16 years.) And even if the end game seems likely for the ISIS caliphate, the odious ideology behind it continues to inspire horrors like last weekend's attack in London.

So, please send up a wish and hope for Raqqa. Our world is so small now, too small to look away here in Greenwich. Matthew's film makes that clear.

Greenwich resident Claire Tisne Haft is a former publishing and film executive, raising her family in Greenwich while working on a freelance basis on books and films.
East Missouri Action Agency will be distributing 50 window air conditioners to low-income individuals and families and elderly Ameren Missouri customers throughout the utilitys service area in coming days.

Its all possible because of Ameren Missouri's Air Conditioner Giveaway Program, explained Cathy Poole, EMAA community services director. "Today we had 50 window air conditioners delivered to EMAA  25 to our Cape Girardeau office and 25 to our office here in Park Hills. We really appreciate the generosity shown each year by Ameren Missouri in providing these air conditioners."

The air conditioners are ENERGY STAR-certified units that meet the strict energy efficiency guidelines set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Energy. They cost approximately 75 cents per day to operate. Eligible recipients will be selected by East Missouri Action Agency which uses certain age and medical circumstances to determine qualification for air-conditioners. However, utility assistance this summer is based also on income eligibility.

Ameren SEMO Division Director Russell Burger, who was present for the delivery in Park Hills, said, "This means that the needy have an opportunity to get some free air conditioners sponsored by Ameren Missouri. We've been doing this for a number of years and I think we've given away 400 this year in the Southeast Missouri Division.

"Ameren Missouri is committed to providing safe and reliable energy to our 1.2 million customers in communities throughout our state. As part of our mission to power the quality of life, we also connect with communities through a variety of education and outreach programs  such as East Missouri Action Agency  which distributes hundreds of air conditioners we are donating today to customers in need. We're fortunate to have EMAA as a dedicated and proven partner leading this initiative.

"Over the years, we have formed a productive partnership that aims to keep people cool and safe during the hot summer months. We also appreciate EMAA's endorsement of many of our customer service programs, such as our budget billing program, which help neighbors maintain an affordable monthly utility bill. We are proud to support EMAA which does an outstanding job distributing these air conditioners to those in need."

People who have electric utility service through Ameren Missouri that are interested in receiving a free air conditioner are encouraged to contact their local EMAA office to see if they meet the qualifications to take advantage of the program. Call the Park Hills Office at 573-431-5191 for more information.
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Three of the parliamentary candidates hoping to be elected in Grimsby in tomorrows general election clashed as they were grilled by members of the public at a fiery hustings debate last night.

Just two days before voters head to the polls to have their say in the snap general election almost 100 locals packed out Grimsby Minster to quiz the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat candidates bidding to represent the people of Grimsby in the next parliament.

Labours Melanie Onn, elected as Great Grimsbys MP in 2015, joined Tory candidate Jo Gideon and Lib Dem candidate Steve Beasant for 90 minutes of intense questioning, which covered tackling terrorism, Brexit, education, the NHS and the local economy. Both Mike Hookem, Ukip, and Christina McGilligan-Fell, independent, were invited but did not attend.

Chaired by Right Reverend David Court and organised by Churches Together in North East Lincolnshire, a host of pre-selected questions were put to the candidates, who had to think on their feet to come up with answers capable of winning over a few extra votes. As reported, a recent Grimsby Telegraph poll showed how Labour and the Conservatives are neck and neck heading in to tomorrows election.

(Image: Rick Byrne)

The potentially defining hustings last night, kicked off with a question on the safety of citizens, In the wake of recent terrorist attacks in Manchester, where 22 people sadly died on May 22, and at London Bridge on Saturday night, where seven people were killed. Neil Holmes asked if civil liberties are more important than peoples lives.

Steve Beasant urged the importance of understanding how terrorists work, and accused the current Conservative government of giving in to terrorism. Peoples lives are much more important than liberties, he said.

Melanie Onn meanwhile attacked the Tories Prevent anti-terrorism policy, saying she doesnt think it is working. She said: Its a shame that the Prime Minister had six years in charge of the home office and has done little to tackle companies streaming radical online messages.

Ms Gideon admitted that Prevent has its flaws.

The topic of discussion swiftly moved on to Brexit, when the candidates where asked whether they would prefer a soft or hard Brexit. Ms Onn explained how the most important thing for Grimsby is that nothing is done to undermine the trade and seafood industries. They are the lifeblood of our local economy. People cant be put out of work, she said.

(Image: Rick Byrne)

In response, Ms Gideon said the choice is between a leader who will pursue a strong Brexit, in Theresa May, or Jeremy Corbyn, who would achieve no Brexit. Mr Beasant voiced how he feels a so-called hard Brexit would be disastrous for our area, and said we need to be in the single market.

Talking about the strength of the three party leaders, Ms Onn was accused of abandoning Mr Corbyn by Ms Gideon. As reported, she was one of 170 Labour MPs to sign up to an unsuccessful vote of no confidence in Mr Corbyn last year.

Mr Beasant says Mrs May has been flip flopping around in recent weeks, highlighting her instability. Surprisingly, he moved on to attack his own party leader, Tim Farron, by saying that at present, he doesnt think either party chief offers strong leadership.

A nurse of 22 years, who described the current crisis facing the NHS as the worst I have ever known it, explained how austerity isnt working for the public sector and sought assurance from each candidate on the level of NHS funding. All three candidates pledged to campaign for more NHS funding if elected and Ms Onn urged caution of stealth privatisation and said the wealthiest should pay more to ensure the future of services. She also alluded to the 27 million funding gap at Grimsby hospital.

In one of a handful of feisty exchanges between Ms Onn and Ms Gideon, the Labour candidate attacked the Tories winter fuel tax policy saying that due to austerity people in Grimsby will lose out.

A teaching assistant urged the politicians to campaign for more funding for our regions schools to ensure that standards rise. Mr Beasant spoke of his disgust at headteachers needing to collect money at school gates to pay teachers wages, and said that more should be done to ensure kids get the very best deal.

Ms Onn voiced concerns over how schools in our area are set to lose out on an average of 650 per pupil over the course of the next parliament.

This means the education will be of a lesser quality for children in our communities, she said.

And speaking about opportunities for young people in Grimsby, Ms Gideon pledged to concentrate on buffering education locally to provide more jobs.

(Image: Rick Byrne)

She said: Its down to having a strong economy married up with the right education and new opportunities in the area.

In a closing statement, the Conservative candidate pledged to do so much for a town that has been neglected in recent years if elected, whilst Ms Onn vowed to continue my good work over the last two years and accused the Conservatives of doing precious little for Grimsby.

Mr Beasant explained how he Is a caring politician and spoke of his desire to stand up for those who cant stand up for themselves.
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In typical OnePlus fashion, the company has been slowly teasing different aspects of the upcoming smartphone before its official announcement, which is set for June 20. Meanwhile, an earlier leak points to a June 22 release date for Amazon India.

Today we get an idea of what the OnePlus 5 could cost in Finland and/or most of Europe. A post made on the OnePlus forums points to a contest for an annual music festival taking place in Finland. The grand prize is a OnePlus 5 device and two three-day VIP passes to the event. The contest was posted on Facebook this morning. But wait, the official rules of this contest reveal more.

Usually, when a company posts a contest of this kind, they are required to include the value of the prizes for various purposes. The total value listed for the prize is 948. Assuming the aforementioned prize of a OnePlus 5 and two VIP tickets to the festival is the total amount of this prize, and each VIP ticket is 199, algebra says the remaining value is 550. This is the supposed retail value of the OnePlus 5.





This means that the OnePlus 5 could be more expensive than the 3T, which currently carries a price tag of 439 on OnePlus Finnish site. The OnePlus 3T is also listed in the US with a price of $439. Which could also mean the OnePlus 5 is soaring well past USD 500.

The OnePlus 5 will feature the latest Snapdragon 835 CPU from Qualcomm and will feature either 6GB or 8GB of RAM. A dual-camera setup is also expected, and gathering from the teased camera sample, this should be an excellent camera for low-light photography.

If the OnePlus 5 is $/ 110 more than the OnePlus 3T, will you still buy one?

Thanks for sending this in, Henning!

Source | Source 2 (Translated)| Source 3 (Facebook)
The OnePlus 5 will be announced on June 20 globally, we found out yesterday. That event will be followed by local introductions in China on June 21 and India on June 22. While the date of the unveiling for India got out earlier today, we now also know when you should expect to be able to buy a unit in the subcontinent.

It turns out that the OnePlus 5 will go on sale on the same day - June 22, that is. The announcement is at 2 PM and sales will start at 4:30 PM. This information comes from Amazon India, which will be the exclusive retail partner for the handset over there.

The company already has a teaser landing page up for the OnePlus 5 (which looks like the image you can see above), and digging through its source code results in some very interesting information being outed. Namely, that the phone will come with 8GB of RAM, to go with the Snapdragon 835 chipset that's been revealed by the Chinese company's CEO to be in. Many rumors have mentioned this memory capacity, and now it's sort of confirmed - though not officially, yet. That said, expect there to be a cheaper 6GB model offered as well.

The OnePlus 5 will look a lot like the iPhone 7 Plus, at least on its back. It's expected to have a front-mounted fingerprint scanner, and its overall footprint should be smaller than that of its predecessor, the OnePlus 3T.

Source | Via
The Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 - which was launched in the US back in March this year carrying a price tag of $599.99 - has officially dropped to under $500 in the country. A quick look at the company's US website reveals the device is currently going for $499.99.

The South Korean tech giant is offering the $100 discount on both silver and black color variants of the tablet. Other third-party retailers like Best Buy and B&H are also offering similar discount. BuyDig is also offering a freebie in the form of a 7,800mAh battery.

It's also worth mentioning that those planning to purchase the silver model can save some more dollars by purchasing the unit from Amazon, which has it listed for $491.22. For more information, head to the Source links below.

Source (Amazon * Samsung * Best Buy * B&H * BuyDig) | Via
Investigation on bad results of the Bac - Reforestation of the littoral - Electricity 24/24 for all in 22 months ? - The Lottery of Haiti wants to draw inspiration from the Dominicans - Project of professional insertion of the disabled - The Leogane...




Haiti - Politics : Minimum wage, trade unions observe a 6-day truce





Fignole Saint Cyr, the Secretary General of the "Centrale Autonome des Travailleurs Haitiens" (CATH) confirmed that the unions of the outsourcing had decided to grant an one-week truce starting on Monday, June 5, to give a chance to negotiations with the patronnat and the Government.



He pointed out that if the demands, notably an adjustment to the minimum wage of 300 Gdes per day and social enefits (food, transport, insurance, etc....) were not met, the mobilization and the means of pressures will resume on Monday 12 June.



On Monday, the first working session between the Senate Social Commissioners, the employers, the trade union and representatives of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor, Minister Roosevelt Bellevue and the Director of Social Affairs, Rudy Herivaux, ended in cacophony and confusion and no concrete decision has come out.



For its part, the organization "Konbit AYisyen pou Lojman Altenatif" (KAYLA) denounces the repression of the workers during the demonstrations and calls for a general mobilization against the the cost of living and unemployment...



See also :

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-21143-haiti-politics-famni-lavalas-supports-workersdemands.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-21110-haiti-news-zapping.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-21091-haiti-news-zapping.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-21081-haiti-news-zapping.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-21054-haiti-political-the-economic-forum-worried-about-the-negative-effect-of-the-demonstrations.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-21046-haiti-news-zapping.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-21036-haiti-news-zapping.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-20989-haiti-flash-workers-forced-to-take-the-street-companies-close.html



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - Politics : Moise opens the International Summit Haiti Tech Summit





uesday, at the Royal Decameron Hotel, President Jovenel Moise accompanied his wife Martine proceeded to the official opening of the 2-day summit on technology "Haiti Tech Summit" held until June 7 and attended by nearly 500 participants, 100 speakers, including the most popular Tech startups in the world like : Uber, AirBnB, Google etc...



Front a panel of Haitian and foreign guests, the Head of State, convinced that technology can help Haiti's development, decalred "My administration wants to get the country out of the vicious circle of the informal and the small resourcefulness for its survival. The objectives are clear. We are fighting for the modernization of the economy by giving priority to the development of 4 sectors, strategic pillars : agriculture, energy, construction: buildings and public works, and services in particular tourism," stressing the need for Haiti to become an example of transformation of the economy through digital. He believes that technology can not be the prerogative of a few but must be within the reach of all, without exclusion, by well-targeted investments.



The Head of State also announced the continuation of an initiative of the previous government, to launch the new incubator center for technological innovation https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-16527-icihaiti-politic-towards-the-establishment-of-the-technological-innovation-incubator-centre.html . Stating that this incubator will have a rapid laboratory prototype. Its mandate will be to foster an environment conducive to the creation of start-ups, which will showcase technology for commercial purposes.



After the opening of the Summit, Moise met with the organizers around various programs related to the technology and the sustainable development of Haiti.



See also :

https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-21109-icihaiti-technology-haiti-tech-summit-2017.html

https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-20908-icihaiti-flash-first-edition-of-haiti-tech-summit.html

https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-16527-icihaiti-politic-towards-the-establishment-of-the-technological-innovation-incubator-centre.html



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - Environment : 1,2 million euros for an innovative project





Tuesday, the Ministry of the Environment, the Office of the National Authorizing Officer and the European Union launched an innovative project in the commune of Leogane to reduce the vulnerability of the local population to the disruptions caused by climate change.



Named "Solutions to Climate Disruption in the Carrefour/Leogane Watershed", this project, financed to the tune of 1.2 million and implemented by Caritas Switzerland and the association "Concertation et Action pour le Developpement", is derived directly from the Support Program to the consideration of climate change in national development of Haiti (AP3C) and the Global Alliance initiative against climate change (AMCC), both supported by the European Union.



This project targets 10,000 urban families and 2,500 rural families. It combines several activities aimed at changing certain practices of the population which often exploit its environment in an irrational manner, becoming more vulnerable to the consequences of climate change because of this degradation.



Among the actions planned include : of activities to disseminate of energy-efficient cooking techniques based on bagasse pellets to limit the use of charcoal, reforestation of communal sections via levies for environmental services, the improvement of agricultural production techniques, the use of coal powder, also called "biochar", and the encouragement of agroforestry practices.



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - News : Zapping...





Increased insecurity in PAP

Tuesday, the resurgence of insecurity in the capital was at the center of an important meeting of the Superior Council of the National Police (CSPN). Jack Guy Lafontant, President of the CSPN, and Michel Ange Gedeon, the Director General of the National Police of Haiti (PNH), say that the release of some notorious bandits by the justice would be the source of many cases of insecurity. The Prime Minister calls on the population to be vigilant and to work with the police in order to put the bandits out of harm's way.



Temporary halting of evictions of Haitians

Monday, the Head of the Consular Mission in the Dominican Republic, Jean Tholbert Alexis, at the head of a delegation, visited the Higuey City Prosecutor, Edwin Encarnacion and the Dominican State Counsel in the East Zone Lic. Jose Polanco to solicit the cessation of the forced evictions of Haitians living in the localities of Mata Mosquito, Haiti Chiquito and Bavaro, who occupy and illegally cultivate land. The temporary stop was granted pending further investigation.



$700,000 for indirect elections

Leopold Berlanger, President of the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) is ready to organize the indirect elections of the members of the municipal and departmental assemblies, the members of the departmental councils and the inter-departmental council. He said he was waiting for the inauguration of local elected officials before publishing the electoral calendar. $700,000 will be required for the organization of this ballot. This amount will be drawn from the budget allocated to the November 2016 elections. The timetable should be available within 10 days. The electoral law stipulates that indirect elections will begin 15 days after the installation of local elected representatives.



Environment : Inclusion of People with Disabilities

As part of World Environment Day, the Office of the Secretary of State for the Integration of People with Disabilities encourages the inclusion of people with disabilities in all initiatives aimed at protecting the environment. Indeed, disability does not relieve anyone of its civic responsibility, its duty to contribute to the common good.



Haiti's Environment Month

Pierre Simon Georges, Minister of the Environment, announces that as part of World Environment Day (June 5th) trhe mont of June in Haiti, he was declared "Environment Month" around the annual theme of "Bringing people closer to nature" face the extreme degradation of the environment in Haiti, Minister Georges believes that interventions in all the priority areas are priority: drainage of rivers, reinforcement of watersheds, construction of retention walls, reforestation of mountains and sanitation of streets.



National Child Day

In the presence of First Lady Martine Moise, the UNICEF Representative, the Director of the Institute of Social Welfare and Research (IBESR), of representatives of international organizations, including Plan International, the National Day of the Child was launched in Port-au-Prince under the theme "Pwoteje m toutan, se dwa m se devwa nou tout !" A series of activities will be organized throughout the week in the departments and communities in which Plan International Haiti intervenes. A moment for us to remind the various actors and stakeholders of the cause that children must be protected at all times and in all places.



HL/ HaitiLibre


















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Nicolas Feuillatte blames global volume dip on poor UK performance

By Lisa Riley

Nicolas Feuillatte has reported a 4% dip in global volume sales driven by the general UK market decline for Champagne.

The French producer said volume had dropped to 10.4 million bottles in 2016.

It posted sales worth 202 million euros and a net operating profit of 20 million euros for the year - a result the board considered to be an excellent performance given the challenging landscape and continued economic fragility.

It said the "marked decline" in UK Champagne sales was solely responsible" for the brands overall volume decline, with Nicolas Feuillatte maintaining its position as market leader in France, with volume sales of 6.3 million bottles - largely in line with 2015, together with an increase in turnover, it said.

In other key markets, notably mainland Europe, US and Asia, the brand had progressed or remained stable, it said, adding it had sold more than 4.1 million bottles outside France in 2016 boosted by entries into new countries, including Brazil, China, Paraguay and Uruguay.

The overall performance underlined the financial stability of Nicolas Feuillatte, said marketing & communications manager, Olivier Legrand, adding the objectives for 2017 were to continue to focus on strengthening the brand, international expansion and increasing brand value.

Although it is a challenging time for the Champagne market as a whole, we are pleased with the progress made in 2016 for the Nicolas Feuillatte brand, he said.

The brand had enjoyed a very positive response to its new positioning and the advertising campaign launched last year, he added.

This year we are continuing to build on this momentum with bold communication activities such as organising the first ever multi-sensory Champagne tasting in virtual reality, which will target key opinion leaders and consumers.

Nicolas Feuillatte, which claims to be the third largest Champagne brand in UK retail; the number one best-selling Champagne brand in France and third overall in the world, set on a new course in wine tourism at the end of April with the opening of a visitor centre, with the aim of turning every visitor into a brand ambassador.
Tim Atkin MW: Why wine and food pairing is not an art

By Tim Atkin

At the height of her fame as a Strictly Come Dancing and Celebrity Fit Club contestant, ex-Tory MP Ann Widdecombe was asked to write a book about how to lose weight. Her response was that were she to produce such a work, it would be very short. So short indeed that it would contain just two simple injunctions: eat less and exercise more.

The so-called art of food and wine matching could be similarly distilled.

A Widdecombe-esque take on the subject might run to half a dozen rules: acidity with acidity, sweetness with sweetness, spice with softness (or a little residual sugar), salt and protein both reduce our perception of tannins, think local and, finally, treat tricky ingredients like artichokes and chocolate with caution. Otherwise, pretty much anything goes.

For all that, food and wine matching is something that lots of people worry about, fearful of committing an embarrassing solecism. What would you serve this with? is right up there with Is this worth anything? and How long should I keep it? in the list of questions consumers habitually ask wine experts. It also explains, at least in part, the enduring popularity of Saturday Kitchen on TV. People want advice, however inane or generic it may be.

I suspect that this is a relatively new phenomenon. As a teenager, I dont remember my parents fussing about whether to serve Mateus Rose or Corrida with that nights shepherds pie or fish fingers. They opened what was to hand. Their example must have rubbed off on me, give or take the branded wines. If I invite people round for dinner, I just pull a few corks and put the bottles on the table. Try one and, if you dont like it, reach for another.

Very few food and wine combinations are actively horrid  and those that are can mostly be eliminated by common sense  or truly wonderful. Most are just fine, whatever sommeliers might wish you to believe.

Food or wine first?

What, then, are we to make of The Wine Dine Dictionary (20, Granta Books) by Victoria Moore, which claims to be the first book of its kind? This is only partly true. Sure enough, the Widdecombe bit  shared with every article or book ever written on the subject  comes as early as page 20. Its elegantly couched  Moore is one of the best wine writers of her generation  but not new.

The original take on the subject is to divide the book into two halves. The first starts with the ingredients (or dish), the second with the grape variety (or wine style). Inevitably, this involves a degree of repetition. Goulash is brilliant with Carmenere (page 101), while Moores favourite match with Carmenere is goulash (page 217). But this does reflect the way people think about food and wine. Some start with the former, others with the latter. So its your choice: Abalone to Zander, or Aglianico to Zinfandel. Or both.

Of the two, its the wine half that works best for me, partly because Moore is on familiar territory, but also because it contains some evocative quotations from winemakers. I can almost hear Alvaro Palacios describing Garnacha as the most musical, poetical, the most delirious Mediterranean grape, his hands turning like moths around a candle. Inevitably, some of the entries leave you wanting more, but thats in the nature of books that cover a lot of ground at a gallop. The general reader, not the expert, is Moores target audience.

The book also contains 30 recipes  nothing original there either  but breaks new ground with interesting entries from leading producers about what they like to eat with their own wines. These are often enlightening. Nigel Greening of Felton Road likes Japanese noodles with cream and black truffle with his Block 5 Pinot Noir; for Olive Hamilton Russell of Hamilton Russell Vineyards, the grape works best with mushroom risotto.

And what of the recommendations themselves? Most of them strike me as sensible and open ended enough not to be prescriptive. Who could disagree that partridge goes well with Pommard, a Rioja, a wine from the Languedoc, a Montepulciano or a country Syrah? And yet they also take something away from the pleasure of serendipity, of discovering (as I once did) that the best match with a chocolate brownie was a stout. To be fair to Moore, she mentions Cabernet Franc and strawberries as a favourite, unexpected marriage.

The Wine Dine Dictionary has its weaknesses, but these are more to do with the subject matter itself than the writing or the layout, both of which are impressive. As long as they dont take it too seriously  its a guide rather than a set of ex cathedra pronouncements  then wine and food lovers will find much to enjoy and agree with here.

More to the point, it might just inspire the general reader to think about what they eat and drink, reducing some of the stigma around alcohol consumption in the process. Not in a way that makes them worry about looking stupid, but in a spirit of discovery, as what Moore herself calls guidelines, not rules; suggestions, not shouldnts and shoulds. I suspect even Anne Widdecombe would drink to that.
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(HedgeCo.Net) Robert W. Murray allegedly purchased Fitbit call options just minutes before a fake tender offer that he orchestrated was filed on the SECs EDGAR system purporting that a company named ABM Capital LTD sought to acquire Fitbits outstanding shares at a substantial premium. Fitbits stock price temporarily spiked when the tender offer became publicly available on Nov. 10, 2016, and Murray sold all of his options for a profit of approximately $3,100.

The SEC alleges that Murray created an email account under the name of someone he found on the internet, and the email account was used to gain access to the EDGAR system. Murray then allegedly listed that person as the CFO of ABM Capital and used a business address associated with that person in the fake filing. The SEC also alleges that Murray attempted to conceal his identity and actual location at the time of the filing after conducting research into prior SEC cases that highlighted the IP addresses the false filers used to submit forms on EDGAR. According to the SECs complaint, it appeared as though the system was being accessed from a different state by using an IP address registered to a company located in Napa, California.

As alleged in our complaint, Murray used deceptive techniques in a concerted effort to evade detection, but we were able to connect the dots quickly and hold him accountable, said Stephanie Avakian, Acting Director of the SEC Enforcement Division.

In a parallel action, the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Southern District of New York today announced criminal charges against Murray.
EVA on Tuesday published the results of a survey of the values and attitudes of Finns, indicating that 4574 per cent of the public have a negative opinion of the elites, immigration and market economy.

The Finnish attitudinal climate provides a fertile breeding ground for both nativistic and egalitarian populism, concludes a report by the Finnish Business and Policy Forum (EVA) .

Finnish populism is founded fundamentally on two factors, according to EVA: scepticism about globalisation, which is perceived primarily as a reason for the loss of jobs and national decision-making powers, and opposition to the elites, who are widely believed to only protect their own interests.

Populist attitudes can also be divided into two main groups, one of which is rooted in opposition to immigration and the other in opposition to income inequality and market economy.

Curbing immigration is the number-one priority for nativistic populists, writes Ilkka Haavisto, the research director at EVA. They believe immigration is already excessive and do not consider it justified to increase [immigration] due to economic or humanitarian reasons.

Right-wing populists believe a change is necessary: strong leaders are required to help the nation to re-discover its identity and restore social order and discipline, he adds.

EVA reminds that egalitarian attitudes are just as prevalent as nativistic ones in Finland. Egalitarian populists, it says, are inclined to blame social and economic inequalities for the problems of the country and argue that such inequalities are a consequence of a neo-liberal system that seeks to promote globalisation and market-based activities.

The most important aspect is opposition to economic inequality, tells Haavisto. [Egalitarian populists] consider the economy a zero-sum game, where someones gain is someone elses loss.

The survey found that education is the single most important factor associated with populist attitudes or lack thereof, with people with tertiary qualifications being the least likely and people with no post-primary qualifications the most likely to have populist attitudes.

Haavisto also draws attention to a somewhat surprising discovery: 1825-year-old respondents were the least likely to be drawn to populist rhetoric.

This is surprising in the sense that younger age groups are believed to have been vulnerable to populist influences as they are less committed than their seniors to use representative democracy to have an impact on the society, he explains.

25% of Finns ready to vote ultra-nationalists

EVAs survey also measured support for three hypothetical populist parties.

The survey found that up to a quarter of the public would be prepared to vote for an ultra-nationalist party campaigning on promises including shutting down the borders, favouring native-born job applicants over immigrant ones, and abandoning the euro and possibly also the European Union.

Such a campaign platform won support especially among voters of the Finns Party, according to EVA.

As many as 79 per cent of them indicated that they would likely vote for such a party, while practically no one ruled out the possibility of doing so, says Haavisto.

Fewer than one in ten (7%) respondents contrastively indicated their readiness to vote for a left-wing populist party promising to raise taxes for high-income earners, pursue unilateral disarmament and restrict the movement of capital. A radical green agenda that would ban private vehicles, prohibit factory farming and accept negative economic growth, in turn, appealed to 11 per cent of respondents.

The results can be interpreted as an indication that there is demand for more radical alternatives in the political spectrum of Finland, argues EVA.

The Finns Party, in particular, seems to be under pressure to re-focus its policies in a more pointed and populist direction, given how much support the nativistic populist platform received, views Haavisto.

Aleksi Teivainen  HT

Photo: Heikki Saukkomaa  Lehtikuva
A father-of-three broke a man's foot in an unprovoked attack in a well-known Dublin bar.

Paul Murphy (51) wrongly believed the man had hit him first when he turned and struck him.

The victim suffered a black eye and broke a bone in his foot, a court heard.

Murphy, of Blackditch Road, Ballyfermot, pleaded guilty to assault causing harm to Martin Creghan.

Adjourning the case, Judge Michael Walsh said he would consider imposing a community service order if Murphy paid the victim 4,000 in compensation.

Dublin District Court heard the incident happened at The George on South Great George's Street on March 16 last.

Murphy hit Mr Creghan from behind and the victim suffered a fractured metatarsal in his right foot.

"I fell over and whatever way I fell over, I twisted my foot and in the process it broke," he said.

Nasty

Mr Creghan's foot was in a plaster cast for six weeks but although he recovered doctors said he would have an increased risk of arthritis in the foot.

Mr Creghan worked devising formats for TV and had missed out on a pitch with Sky as he had been unable to travel.

This had a "massive knock-on effect" for his business, he said.

Murphy, who did "not go out often", had been chatting with people in the smoking area when someone hit him from behind, the court was told.

Another person wrongly identified Mr Creghan as having hit him. "He is from a time when, when one gets hit, one hits back," his barrister said.

He apologised and recognised he was wrong to hit Mr Creghan. Judge Walsh said it was a "totally nasty and unprovoked assault" on someone who was going about his business.

Murphy had worked as a taxi driver but had an accident and was no longer employed.

His marriage broke down in difficult circumstances, the court heard.
Authorities have not yet established how and when Redouane originally entered Ireland, and believe he made several return trips to pass UK immigration checks

Gardai are attempting to determine how a Moroccan national working here came into possession of a Personal Public Service (PPS) number registered to one of the London Bridge attackers.

Detectives from the Garda National Immigration Bureau (GNIB) arrested the man on Monday evening, after receiving intelligence that he had documents linked to 30-year-old Rachid Redouane.

Contact

The Herald has learned that the Moroccan man was working as a waiter in Limerick and was using a PPS number previously linked to Redouane.

However, following initial inquiries, gardai do not believe the man came into direct contact with the terrorist.

He was held at Roxboro Garda Station in Limerick city for several hours, but was eventually released without charge.

Detectives are in the process of establishing if the documents containing Redouane's information are authentic or if they were forged.

A file is now being prepared for the DPP.

"A man was arrested on the evening of June 5, 2017, for offences under the Theft and Fraud Offences Act 2001 and was detained under Section 4 of Criminal Justice Act 1994," a garda spokeswoman said.

A senior source said last night that the arrested man was not suspected of being directly associated with the London terror attacker.

"This does not appear to be terror-related and the individual who was arrested may have been unaware until now of who the documentation he was using belonged to," a source told the Herald.

"Documents bearing a PPS number linked to Redouane were found and were used for employment rather than for anything more sinister.

"At this stage gardai have nothing to suggest that he was ever even in direct contact with Redouane."

Redouane (30) was a pastry chef who was first recorded as being in Dublin in 2012, along with his wife Charisse O'Leary (38), who is originally from the UK.

Security sources have said the terror attacker lived at an apartment block in Rathmines, south Dublin, with Ms O'Leary.

They were there on and off over a period of four years.

Redouane and Ms O'Leary married in Ireland on November 7, 2012, before moving to the UK.

They returned in 2016, before leaving again in March of that year, records show.

Authorities have not yet established how and when Redouane originally entered Ireland, and believe he made several return trips to pass UK immigration checks.
Teresa McDonagh died when she was mauled by two dogs

An animal behaviour expert who previously warned of an imminent fatal dog attack has urged a re-think on Ireland's attitude towards canine pets.

Nanci Creedon warned in 2015 it was "a miracle" there had not been a fatal dog attack here like in the US or UK.

Now - in the wake of the death of Teresa McDonagh in Co Galway on Sunday - Ms Creedon has called for the Government to implement an action plan to help prevent future tragedies.

This includes creating a special National Dog Bite Prevention Association, introducing dog awareness sessions in schools and creating a theory test for anyone applying for a dog licence.

Ms Creedon said it was "a miracle" Ireland had avoided a fatal incident for so long.

"We were just very, very lucky we didn't have a fatal attack before now," she said.

Ms Creedon urged that the debate over dog bite prevention be "respectful and kind" in light of the attack in Galway.

Ms McDonagh (63) died when she was mauled by two Bullmastiff dogs at a property she was visiting in Moycullen.

Shocked

She was pronounced dead at the scene after suffering horrific injuries. The two dogs were shot.

Last year, Paola Sahovic (22) was attacked by a pet Staffordshire dog. The incident, in Mitchelstown, Co Cork, saw seven gardai required to get the dog off the shocked woman.

She survived despite suffering severe injuries to her arm.

Over the past three years, serious dog attacks have also occurred in Dublin, Limerick and Tipperary.

The breeds involved have included collies, Akitas (similar to a Husky) and Bull Terriers.

In both the UK and US, the numbers dying or being maimed in such attacks have spiralled in recent years.

Twenty-three people have been mauled to death in the UK since 2005.

In Ireland, An Post said an average of two of its postal delivery workers are bitten by dogs each week.

There were 38 attacks on Irish postmen between January 1 and April 28, 2015.

Ms Creedon argued that the problem has been a total transformation in dog treatment in Ireland over the past 20 years.

"Up until the past 15 years or so, we had a lot less contact with dogs - they were out roaming and this meant they had a lot more socialisation and mental stimulation," she said.

"We are now taking better care by keeping dogs secure, but we're expecting dogs to just understand how to fit into our lifestyles without us understanding the dog, their needs and their communication."

Ms Creedon urged parents to educate their children about not approaching or hugging dogs, especially strange dogs they come across, as it can be interpreted by the dog as a threat.
Paddy Cosgrave is to bring one of his Web Summit conferences back to Ireland.

Dublin is the next venue for MoneyConf, the company's financial technology conference currently held in Madrid.

"We're returning to Dublin," said a spokesman for Cosgrave.

"Brexit is transforming Dublin as a financial centre. It's in this moment that we're moving MoneyConf, which is already one of the world's leading financial services and fintech conferences, to our hometown of Dublin."

The event is considerably smaller than other conferences held by the company, with 1,000 attendees. However, it is attended by global companies such as Goldman Sachs, Visa and Alipay.

The return to Dublin also marks a thawing in the relationship between Mr Cosgrave and Irish authorities.
The main radial bus corridors through the city centre would run between fixed terminuses, for example Dublin Airport to Rathgar, or Crumlin to Artane

Some direct bus services to the city centre could be scrapped under plans to introduce high-frequency corridors across the capital.

Passengers could be forced to change from one bus to another under proposals from the National Transport Authority (NTA) to improve services for 400,000 daily commuters.

Although less convenient, it would result in faster trips.

If implemented, services would be provided every three to six minutes on high-frequency corridors across the city, with local services to specific destinations every 15 minutes.

The main radial bus corridors through the city centre would run between fixed terminuses, for example Dublin Airport to Rathgar, or Crumlin to Artane.

Different routes would use the corridors, but branch out to serve local areas.

Suburban feeder routes could also be developed.

These include Dunboyne to Blanchardstown, where instead of one bus service operating to Blanchardstown and another from Dunboyne to the city centre, commuters would all travel to Blanchardstown and then switch to a high-frequency corridor to the city centre.

In other cases, orbital routes would be developed to improve connectivity between the high-frequency corridors and local areas.

Fast

The NTA has launched a public consultation into the plans, called the Dublin Area Bus Network Redesign Choices Report, stressing that no decisions have been made.

US transport consultant Jarrett Walker, who is working with the NTA, said increased passenger numbers would follow if high-frequency corridors, with fast, reliable and connected services, were developed.

The "pay-offs" for increased frequencies were "high".

"People are attracted to Luas because it's one or two lines and you know what to do. It's impossible to do this with buses," he said.

"The big question is can we ask people to change buses more if you produce a network which is more frequent and gets you to where you want to go quicker?"

The plan, which is part of the Bus Connects project, could be implemented from late 2018, and is not dependent on capital funding to improve bus corridors.

The NTA says the "overwhelming majority" of passengers will benefit.

Dublin Bus said an excellent bus network was of "strategic importance" to the city. Details can be found at busconnects.ie.
Two Irish students died in a bathroom at their rented accommodation after a fire, a Belgian court has heard.

Dace Zarina (22) and Sara Gibadlo (19) died when a blaze ripped through the building in Leuven where they shared a top-floor room in January 2014.

The prosecutor asked the court to impose a one-year jail term on a director of the Irish College in Leuven in connection with the fatal fire.

Smoked

Ms Zarina, from Longford and Ms Gibadlo, from Galway, were students at Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology and were on a work placement at the Leuven Institute.

At a court hearing in Belgium yesterday, Malachy Vallely, a director of the Leuven Institute for Ireland in Europe, and an Irish student Shane Bracken (22) were named as defendants.

Mr Bracken, who was charged with involuntary death due to a lack of caution, said he had gone to bed after a night out. He told police he had smoked in his room but could not remember if he had done so that night.

Lawyers for the Gibadlo family said Mr Bracken's cigarette was the only explanation for the cause of the fire.

The prosecutor said Mr Vallely was a "slum landlord" who used his apartment to earn money by renting it back to the institute and that fire safety measures were "completely lacking".

Lawyers for both Mr Vallely, and the Irish College, denied either party should be blamed for the deaths and said Vallely was not a "slum landlord".

Two lawyers suggested the victims may have died because they were unable to respond quickly enough to an alarm, as they had consumed alcohol.

Louise McCormack, an Irish student sleeping in an adjacent room, alerted the two women when the blaze started in the early hours. She ran back to her room and escaped through her window onto the roof.

The bodies of Ms Zarina and Ms Gibadlo were found in the bathroom. Their bedroom window was too high for them to escape through. Eight other students escaped.

The court was told there was no smoke alarm in the top-floor bedroom in which the two students died. There were two fire extinguishers but one was empty and the other was 10 years old.

The court adjourned until September 5 when a verdict will be given.
Smyth County, Virginia, authorities are searching a remote area for a missing Tazewell County man.

Authorities have been looking for Gary Shannon Earp of Tazewell County since Sunday, according to Smyth County Sheriff Chip Shuler.

On Sunday, officers from the Smyth County Sheriffs Office and the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries began working the missing person case in the Clinch Mountain Wildlife Management Area.

Concerned citizens reported that a Toyota pickup truck was located at a gate near the top of the mountain in the management area. Shuler said the vehicle was running but no one was around. A conservation officer responded and called for a Sheriffs Office K-9. A search was then initiated, and officers worked to identify the vehicles owner, he added.

Shuler said officers learned the vehicle belonged to Gary Shannon Earp.

Earps family was contacted, and they advised officers that they had not heard from him since the evening of June 1.

It is believed that Mr. Earps welfare could be in jeopardy due to medical conditions, said Shuler.

On Tuesday afternoon, Shuler said he had just returned from the search area and had nothing new to report. A Virginia State Police helicopter was preparing to fly the area, he said.

The 25,477-acre Clinch Mountain Wildlife Management Area is the second largest such site in Virginia. It occupies parts of Smyth, Washington, Russell and Tazewell counties.

Anyone with information is asked to contact the Smyth County Sheriffs Office at 276-783-7204.
BRISTOL, Tenn.  City Council unanimously approved a $106 million balanced budget on second reading Tuesday that will take effect July 1.

The spending plan, which is an increase of just over $7 million above the current years budget, does not raise property taxes, solid waste fees, or water and sewer rates.

It also includes a 3 percent cost of living raise for city employees, which includes a 2.5 percent merit increase for employees who meet performance expectations.

Bristol Tennessees school system will receive a $2 million increase over the current budget, which brings it to nearly $45 million.
A video surfaced Sunday night of CNN essentially scripting an entire scene of Muslims in alleged solidarity with London. However, once one watches the video, we see that it is not at all what it seems.Police and reporters alike cordon off a section of the street, move the group of people into the frame  just like the set of a movie  and the begin the broadcast.Multiple reports on social media actually showed the very same group being brought across town and used in different scenes which suggested coordination with other media outlets.As the video and the reports on social media began to go viral, CNN was bombarded with complaints from viewers calling them out for their overtly fake news.However, CNN responded in utter denial.Read more at WATCH: CNN Clearly Exposed Staging a Fake Scene to Propagandize Viewers
BRISTOL, Tenn.  Even as kids across the Mountain Empire trade in their backpacks for beach towels and sunscreen at the pool, theres an increased chance of getting an infection in the water.

Outbreaks of a parasitic infection linked to public swimming pools and water playgrounds are increasingly being reported, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Its called Cryptosporidium, or Crypto for short, and can spread when something like pool water is swallowed and has been in direct contact with the feces of a sick person, the CDC said.

A mouthful of water that is contaminated with Crypto can make a healthy person sick for up to three weeks and cause symptoms including loose diarrhea, cramping, nausea and vomiting.

If youre not feeling well or are sick, do not go swimming, said Dr. Ben Scharfstein, trauma doctor at Bristol Regional Medical Center. Also if you have just eaten, it can be best to wait 15 minutes before getting into the water to swim and allow your body to digest the food as well.

Standard levels of chlorine and other disinfectants will kill most germs within minutes. But with Crypto, the CDC said its extremely hard to kill at standard levels of pool disinfectants. The CDC recommends closing an impacted pool and treating water with high levels of chlorine.

Locally, Haynesfield Pool on Sleepy Hollow Road in Bristol, Tennessee, is one of many public pools across the Mountain Empire where kids of all ages will take a dive and splash around.

Terry Napier, parks and recreation director for the city of Bristol, Tennessee, said that Crypto has been a concern for many years, but his staff have protocols in place to fight the sickness.

For us, its all about water quality, Napier said. Whenever we have any type of fecal issue or sickness, we remove it and will raise the chlorine levels to a certain number to fight it off.

Most Crypto cases happen in private or non-staff pools and no cases have been reported in the city of Bristol, but Napier said its crucial to remain vigilant and to use common sense.

If you have diarrhea or any illness, open cuts, sores  you should still refrain from using public pools, Napier said. Shower before you get in also, because you have dirt on you, too.

Napiers staff also has their own test kit that is tested multiple times during the summer months, and once per week, water samples are taken to a third-party company for testing also.

All we can do is get the scoops out and get the debris, Napier said. Water quality is really our best defense, and our lifeguards are also trained to be alert for anything thats in the water.

Across the state line in Virginia, officials with the Virginia Department of Health said there has been a rise in the number of Cryptosporidium cases in recent years across the entire state.

In 2014, 152 cases were reported, according to VDH officials. Thats an increase compared to 144 cases reported in 2013, and is also a 22 percent increase from a five-year average of 124.

There is some good news for Virginia residents  the rate for Crypto in Virginia continues to be lower than the national average. From 2005 to 2012, the mean rate, 2.9 per 100,000 residents, was more than twice the mean rate for Virginia at 1.3 per 100,000 residents, the report stated.

In Tennessee, no cases have been reported so far this year, but state health officials told the Bristol Herald Courier that they will continue to monitor the situation throughout the summer. Officials did not provide the Herald Courier with mean rates of Crypto in Tennessee.

Napier said they want to provide an enjoyable time, but also want everyone to be cautious.

We will be open until the kids go back to school, Napier said. We want the general public to use common sense and dont do things that dont make sense, like getting in a swimming pool if youre sick. If you have any type of illness, the best advice is definitely to stay home.
The Mexican peso is a barometer of Trumps economic threat, and right now its really strong



The election of Donald Trump turned the Mexican peso into a symbolicand hypersensitiveindicator of the threat the new US president posed to the interconnected global economy.



The value of the Mexican currency plummeted to a record low the day after the vote and in the following months continued to tumble with every Trump tweet about his plans for a border wall and import taxes.



But the pesos current level now suggests Trump is much less dangerous than foreign exchange markets had anticipated; it has recovered to pre-Trumpian levels, and then some.



On June 6, the peso got a new boost after US and Mexican officials avoided a bitter trade dispute on sugar through an agreement. The currency traded as low as 18.24 pesos per dollar the day of the announcementdown from a high of nearly 22 pesos per dollar in January and more than 18.50 the day after the US election.



The peso had already rallied on June 5 after Mexicos ruling party narrowly defeated its leftist opponent in a keystone state election. (Another Trump-induced fear is that his antagonistic rhetoric towards Mexico will fuel support for a populist politician who wants to run for president in 2018, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.)



As the peso strengthens, Trumps popularity has moved in the opposite direction. Polls put the presidents disapproval ratings at roughly 56%, up from around 41% on inauguration day....

Who's afraid of the Big Bad Trump?More: https://qz.com/1000089/the-mexican-...-strong/?utm_source&google_editors_picks=true
Nearly 80 PA people have been charged for Jan. 6 riot. Three are dead.
SWEET HOME  Levitt D. Horner graduated from Sweet Home High School in 1918, part of the high school's fourth graduating class.

Ninety-nine years later, his great-great-granddaughter, Kenzi Adams, is getting ready to carry on that legacy.

Kenzi is one of two Sweet Home seniors who will become their family's fourth generation of Sweet Home High graduates following the ceremony this Friday. The other is Kristen Adams  no relation  whose great-grandfather, James E. Stock, became her family's first Sweet Home graduate in 1937.

The two say they're proud to be part of families with such deep community roots. While neither can guarantee they'll bequeath a fifth generation to the Huskies, both say they'll always consider Sweet Home their hometown.

"It's great because you get this sense of community," Kristen said.

Kristen's graduate history moves from great-grandfather James Stock to grandfather Ted Stock, who graduated in 1965, to mom Katherine "Katie" (Stock) Adams, who graduated in 1990.

Kenzi's Sweet Home High history actually skipped a generation. Levitt Horner and his wife, Frances, had just one child, daughter Helen, who graduated from high school in Triangle Lake.

The family did move back to Sweet Home eventually, however, and grandson David Horner, who had been adopted by his grandparents, became a Sweet Home High graduate in 1965. After that came Kenzi's mother, Kristin Adams, part of the Sweet Home High class of 1988, and then her three older siblings in recent years.

Both the school and the town have undergone major changes since Levitt's day, or even since James Stock's.

Sweet Home's population hovered around 200 souls when Levitt's parents came to town in 1893. Farming and timber were its economic mainstays; town historian Mona Waibel notes a water-powered sawmill was established by the Lowell Ames family, the area's first permanent settlers. The first passenger train didn't roll through town until 1931, and Main Street wasn't paved until the 1940s.

The first schoolhouse had been built in 1874, Waibel wrote, nine years before the town itself was incorporated. By Levitt's time, however, Sweet Home High School was marking its eighth year (built on three acres in 1910 at a cost of $4,000, Waibel found).

Making it all the way through graduation wasn't common in Levitt's day. Just three students graduated in Sweet Home's first class, in 1915. In contrast, on June 9, Kenzi and Kristen will graduate with about 140 others in the class of 2017, and the town's population is up to about 9,000.

Levitt continued to pursue education even after graduation. He went to Oregon Normal School, what is now Western Oregon University, and pursued a teaching degree. Later, he received his administrative certification from the University of Oregon. He was an administrator for a time at Triangle Lake, but by Ted Stock's time the family had returned to Sweet Home, where Levitt was teaching U.S. history.

Levitt and Frances would end up raising their grandchild, David Horner, who went into the Army after graduation. He thought about following his grandparents into education, even earning a degree in history at his father's alma mater in Monmouth (by then the Oregon College of Education).

But instead of going into teaching, he pursued a number of other interests, the family said: millwork, farming, business, even a stint as an auctioneer.

Daughter Kristin took the reverse path: She went first to Cotti College in Missouri and finished a health care administration degree at Oregon State University after graduating from Sweet Home, but then steered back to education 15 years ago. She's currently college access adviser at Sweet Home High.

The Stocks, too, pursued various careers. James Stock worked in the timber industry following graduation, but then joined the Army after the attack on Pearl Harbor, eventually going through Officer Candidate School and teaching military tactics in New York. He worked for Santiam Lumber after that, and bought his own sawmill in Sweet Home in 1948.

Ted followed the education track at first, going so far as to get a master's degree in education from the University of Oregon, but then he, too, went into the timber business, running Clear Lumber Co. until 1990. He bought a mill in Toledo in 1998, Western Cascade Industries, which son Ross still runs.

Daughter Katherine dual-enrolled in the University of Oregon and Northwest Christian College in Eugene after graduation. She now teaches Title I classes at Foster Elementary School in Sweet Home but, being married to a soldier (another Mike Adams, not to be confused with Kristin's husband, Mike Adams), her residences varied widely before the family moved back to town, Kristen said.

Sometimes it isn't easy growing up in a town where everyone knows not only your name, but your parents' names, your grandparents' names and pretty much everything else about your family history, both girls said.

"You can't get away with anything in this town," Kristen said wryly. "Someone will call your parents if they see you driving out of town."

Both girls also carry a family resemblance. Kenzi hears, "Are you a Horner?" and Kristen: "Are you a Stock?"

It was that way for their predecessors, too. Ted Stock knew both of Kenzi's grandfathers and went to school with a grandmother, too; Kristin's mother.

And if that grandmother had happened to be in the room, he said, "She could tell you everything about me. That's kind of what you get, being four generations into the deal."

In the generations since Levitt and James, Sweet Home has had to find its place in the world after the boom years of the logging industry.

The town's population skyrocketed in the mid-'60s during the construction years for Green Peter and Foster dams, but dropped in the 1980s as environmental protections, especially for the spotted owl, reduced its status as a timber community. Since then, Sweet Home has worked hard to showcase its recreational opportunities and its potential for quiet living near larger communities.

Kristen and Kenzi are still working on their own futures, too. Kenzi plans to enroll at Linn-Benton Community College in the fall, and "honestly, that's all I got," she said wryly.

Kristen knows she plans to double-major in Spanish and business at the University of Oregon. "I know I want to do something in language. That's just always been my passion," she said.

Kristen said she won't rule out Sweet Home as her eventual stopping place, but it's not high on her radar at the moment. Kenzi is more open to the idea.

"I personally believe I'm going to be coming back," Kenzi said. She's graduating with classmates she's known since before kindergarten and said she's enjoyed growing up with family around and being able to see them every day.

"If I could have that for my kids," she said, "I would really like that."
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Wednesdays shootings in Teheran are being linked to the United States solid backing of Irans regional adversaries. They come in a certain historical context. From the end of World War II to the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the US became the anchor power in West Asia. It came to balance the predominant Shia and Sunni nations of the region, with both the Shah of Iran and the King of Saudi Arabia as allies.

The overthrow of the Shah changed all that. It made Iran the visceral enemy in Americas eyes. The populist revolt in Iran was led by a radical clergy and this in turn triggered Islamist energies across West and South Asia. In a sense the world is still paying for that seminal moment in 1979.

Since the revolution, Washington has found it difficult to talk to much less collaborate with Tehran. Tehran hasnt helped. It has pursued a nuclear weapons programme illegally, even while being a member of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. It has exported its radical ideas to militants targeting Israel  the Hamas  and to Yemen and Syria. Even platforms such as the Non-Aligned Movement  Iran hosted the summit in 2012  have been exploited to abuse the US.

A breakthrough was made when US President Barack Obama offered Iran an agreement predicated on Iran capping its nuclear weapons programme or, realistically, significantly delaying it. More important, it gave the US and Iran the opportunity to have a semi-normal relationship.

While Obamas West Asia policy was all over the place, the tentative handshake with Iran was an achievement. It left his successor with the chance to strengthen ties with the Saudis and the Sunni Arab powers as well have a line open to the Iranians. While unlikely to be as ambitious as American dominance in the pre-1979 period, this expanded US options in the arc of terror extending from Afghanistan to Syria and in the war against the Islamic State (IS).

Obamas successor Donald Trump had different ideas. His close advisers instead sought an entente cordiale with Russia. Trumps early calculation was he could reject Iran and make up for the absent space by aligning with Russia, bringing Moscows firepower to the conflict against IS.

This plan proved a non-starter. Trumps Russia outreach is dead in the water. On the other hand, as the US presidents recent speech in Riyadh showed, he has placed himself squarely in the Sunni corner. While claiming the US was divorced from the sectarian struggles of the region, he repeatedly attacked Iran and did what he could to please his friends in Riyadh. They responded with a large military purchase.

In the normal course, a good equation between the US and Saudi Arabia would have gladdened Pakistan. However, Trumps position on Islamabads role in the Afghan crisis is not obvious. His national security adviser has said all the right things but the big political statement on Afghanistan is awaited. This is crucial for Iran, which is now going to be an even more determined spoiler in Afghanistan.

Iran began in the 1980s by backing Afghan Shias. Mercenaries descended from that engagement have been deployed in Syria and among Hamas. In the 1990s, Iran began supporting Farsi speakers in Afghanistan, not limited to Shias, as the civil war between Farsi and Pashto speakers intensified. Post-9/11, Iran gradually aided Sunni Pashtun commanders of the Taliban in the name of Islam and against US occupation.

Simultaneously, Iran-Pakistan tensions have risen along the border the two countries share. This is partially a result of Sunni supremacists in Pakistan targeting Shias and partially a consequence of Iranian Balochi rebels being sheltered in Pakistan, including, Iran suspects, by American agents.

What will this lead to? In an unlikely extreme, the Pakistan-Iran frontier in the Balochistan region could became a Sunni-Shia fault-line. More immediately, Afghanistan could become a busier theatre for Iranian intervention. Iran could target Pakistani assets, in case the Trump-Saudi-Rawalpindi alliance is renewed  or it could compete with Pakistan for assets, in case Trump cuts off Islamabad.

This is not Indias war. Yet, New Delhi can make tactical gains if it retains diplomatic flexibility.

Ashok Malik is distinguished fellow, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi

The views expressed are personal
Hrithik Roshan will play Super 30 founder Anand Kumar in the biopic on the mathematician. The film will be directed by Vikas Bahl.

Confirming this, film producer Preeti Sinha told HT that Hrithik has given his nod to play the lead character. We hope to start shooting of the film soon, may be by the end of the year. At present, Hrithik is on a family vacation. He is expected after June 15. We will prepare a plan after discussion, she said.

According to sources, Hrithik was impressed with the storyline based on powerful real-life story, which has also come out in books published in English, Hindi and other languages.

The female lead opposite Hrithik is not decided yet. The script of the film is basically on Anand Kumar and his Super 30 students. We will accordingly choose the female cast, said Preeti.

Sanjeev Duta of Page 3, Life in Metro, Gangester, Heeropanthi and Burfi fame has done the script writing after thorough research. He had also visited Patna along with Bahl and other members and interacted with Super 30 students as well as Anand Kuamrs family and friends.

Earlier, there were several names, including that of Shahid Kapoor and Ajay Devgan, floating around for the biopic, likely to be named Super 30.

Super 30 is a pioneering initiative of Anand Kumar, launched in 2002 to nurture talented students from underprivileged sections of the society for entrance to IIT. He drew inspiration from his own struggle due to poverty, which prevented him from going to Cambridge University for higher studies.

In the 15 year journey, over 400 Super 30 students  mostly from underprivileged sections of the society - have made it to the IIT. In Super 30, Anand provides free mentoring to 30 students selected through a screening process, who stay with him for nearly a year. He meets the expenses through the evening classes he runs for other students at a modest fee.

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She may not be from the film industry but Kriti Sanon says she has learnt to deal with rumours surrounding her personal life.

Kriti, who has been linked with her Raabta co-star Sushant Singh Rajput, says people forget that actors are also human beings.

Link-up rumours dont bother me. It is part and parcel of the industry and I know it. I think people sort of forget that apart from being actors, we are human beings who have a normal life. We have our families and friends and go out with them. Whatever is happening my family knows about it.

Sushant Singh and Kriti Sanon during a promotional event of their new Hindi film Raabta in Kolkata. (PTI)

I have started laughing on things. I now enjoy the innovation of the stories which come everyday, it is like a daily soap, Kriti told PTI.

The actor says whatever is written about her equation with her co-stars, it does not change the bond they share.

It doesnt affect my personal equation with my co-stars. I dont think I will stop going on a drive or dinner with people I like.

Three films old Kriti says she has understood the pros and cons of being blunt and is now more cautious about her choice of words.

As a celebrity you are judged. But now I am getting used to being judged all the time. When I came to the industry, I was blunt. Now, I have realised I probably cant do that. Every word a celebrity speaks can be misconstrued and judged. Subconsciously, I have become a little more cautious but I still cant be a fake, she says.

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A bank robbery was reported Tuesday evening at the Chase Bank branch at 75 E. Grant St. in Lebanon.

According to Lebanon Police Department Sgt. Klint Sheets, a man whose identity remains unknown entered the bank shortly before its 6 p.m. closing. He presented a note to a teller requesting money, received an undisclosed amount and left. No weapon was seen, Sheets said, and no bank employees were injured during the incident.

Police cleared the bank and canvassed the neighborhoods and area, but did not find the suspect. He was described as approximately 5-foot-6 and 250 lbs., with brown hair, brown eyes, sideburns and a soul patch. He was wearing gray shoes, black shorts with a red stripe, an olive-green coat with a white stripe and a white fedora.

An Oregon State Police trooper assisted in the search, Sheets said, and the Linn County Sheriff's Office was advised of the situation.

The robbery remains under investigation. More information will be provided when available.
Its happening more and more often now with Bollywood films  just before a films release, theres a lawsuit, because someone has a problem with something in the film.

Director Dinesh Vijans film Raabta was accused of plagiarism by the makers of the Telugu film Magadheera a few weeks before its June 9 release. Other recent films that got caught in a legal tangle just days before their release are Behen Hogi Teri (police complaint filed over the lead characters Lord Shiva get-up); Guest Iin London (sued for allegedly being an unauthorised sequel); and Jolly LLB 2 (accused of mocking lawyers).

Bollywood filmmakers strongly voice their objection to this growing practice. I see Bollywood and the southern film industries as one industry, and Ive directed films before, and Ive never copied anything, says Vijan. These things dont need to go to court. I had offered a screening of Raabta for the makers of Magadheera, but they didnt see it. [The issue] couldve been dealt with a month earlier had they watched the film. A lawsuit does create panic and itd be very silly if I say that it doesnt bother me.

A still from the Akshay Kumar-starrer Jolly LLB 2.

Jolly LLB 2, starring Akshay Kumar in the titular role, was accused of mocking the Indian judicial system and a legal notice was sent to the films producers just a few days before the release. In an earlier interview, Akshay said, I wonder how each time a film is made, some legal controversy crops up just five days before its release. How come no one thinks of filing a case a few months before?

Rajkummar Rao, the lead actor of Behen Hogi Teri, appeals to everyone to watch a film before jumping to the conclusion that it hurts religious sentiments. Its very unfortunate when something like this happens. We never intend to hurt anyones sentiments or create a controversy while making a film, says Rajkummar. The films poster showed him dressed as Shiva; but that was because the films character is someone who dresses up as the deity at religious gatherings. The poster angered some people so much that they went to the police and an arrest warrant was issued against the films makers.

The actor says, Watch the whole film first and see it in the right context and then decide. Luckily, we have a really good judicial system in place to take care of such things.

After spending so much time in Lucknow for #BareillyKiBarfi, m back in the city for #BehenHogiTeri. Thank u Lucknow 4 so much love & warmth. pic.twitter.com/DpTCmw8ody  Rajkummar Rao (@RajkummarRao) December 10, 2016

Its all a ploy to cash in on the panic of filmmakers, says director Madhur Bhandarkar. Some people turn up at the last moment to try their luck, says Bhandarkar. Ive faced a lot of trouble with my films and it mostly happens when the film is generating a lot of buzz. They know that producers and directors would go into panic mode and might agree to come to some settlement to avoid negative publicity.

On the subject of negative publicity just before a films release, trade analyst Atul Mohan says that it sometimes does a film good. Theres an element of curiosity, since people want to see whats in the film, he says, adding, Once a film is certified, I dont think anyone has the right to claim that something is wrong. When people come [with a lawsuit] 20 days before a films release, its mental trauma for the makers, who must then get past this problem. This is just mental harassment.

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It looks like the monumental temple standing imposingly at the Acropolis in Athens. But this replica in central Germany is not built with marble, but books that have been or remain banned.

The Parthenon of Books is the main showpiece at this years Documenta  the cult contemporary art show held once every five years in the university town of Kassel. The work by Argentine artist Marta Minujin is a plea against all forms of censorship.

Minujin, 74, a pop art icon in South America, has described it as the most political of her works. In fact, the Parthenon of Books stands at the same site where, in 1933, Nazis set in flames books by Jewish or Marxist writers.

The Parthenon of Books, a full-scale replica of the temple on the Acropolis, is made up with some 1,00,000 copies of banned books donated from the public, as well as publishers and institutions. (AFP/John Macdougall)

Fast forward eight decades and there is a team of volunteers wearing hard hats gathering at the foot of a crane, preparing to lift more books onto the installation.

In a few minutes, a copy of The First Circle by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn would find its place on one of the 46 columns formed by metal grills which are in turn covered with books.

The Russian writers novel joins bestsellers including The Bible, The Satanic Verses, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Little Prince. In all, 100,000 copies of 170 titles will cover the columns, each individually wrapped in a plastic bag to shield it from the capricious German weather.

People pause in front of "The Parthenon of Books" . (AFP/John Macdougall)

The work has exactly the same dimensions as the Parthenon  70 metres (230 feet) in length, 31 metres in breadth and 10 metres in height, one of Documentas curators, Pierre Bal-Blanc, said.

The Frenchman said the art installation at Friedrichsplatz also has a slightly slanted orientation which gives a more impressive presence, because you get a side view of it rather than a frontal view.

Art historian Florian Gassner, who helped establish a list of banned books used for "The Parthenon of Books". (AFP/John Macdougall)

170 titles, 100,000 books

The showpieces reference to ancient Greece is not pure chance. This years edition of Documenta, which attracted 905,000 people in 2012, is taking place simultaneously in another city  Athens.

A volunteer uses a mobile lift to hang books on "The Parthenon of Books". (AFP/John Macdougall)

Since April 8, the Greek capital with its underground emerging art scene has been busy with the exhibitions, concerts, films and performances linked to Documenta.

And from June 10, the show, known for rejecting commercialism in favour of the quirky and groundbreaking, returns to its birth place, Kassel, where it will feature works from 160 artists until September 17.

Preparations for the Parthenon of Books began last year, when Minujin launched an appeal to collect up to 100,000 books.

A volunteer walks past columns of books forming "The Parthenon of Books". (AFP/John Macdougall)

Nineteen students at Kassel University had also helped to draw up an inventory of banned books, listing some 70,000 that span the Protestant Reformation 500 years ago to apartheid South Africa, said art historian Florian Gassner.

The process of picking which titles would be featured was at times complicated. In communist East Germany, there wasnt a list of banned books drawn up by the authorities, said Gassner. What happened was that at the moment when a writer wanted to get his work published, suddenly there was no more paper for the job, he said.

Finally, Minujin and the Documenta team shortlisted 170 titles.

Handed out

But what is perhaps Germanys most controversial work, banned in several countries, will not figure on the Parthenon  Adolf Hitlers Mein Kampf.

Documenta 14 takes place from April 8 to July 16 in Athens, and from June 10 to September 17 in Kassel, Germany. (AFP/John Macdougall)

The book outlines Hitlers ideology that formed the basis for Nazism, but, like pornographic works, has been deliberately left out of the exhibition. Meanwhile, some art experts have also decried the key showpiece of this years Documenta as a copy of a work that already exists.

In fact, some 34 years ago, after the fall of the Argentine junta, Minujin had already set up a similar installation of books to condemn censorship imposed by the military dictatorship.

In Kassel, Minujin will keep collecting copies of the banned titles until Documenta closes its doors.

Books sit in a crate before being fixed onto "The Parthenon of Books". (AFP/John Macdougall)

After that, the books will be redistributed to the public.

The Parthenon of Books is a monumental project but an immaterial one, said Bal-Blanc. It will disappear just as quickly as it has appeared.

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Three people were killed and eight others injured on Wednesday morning when a vehicle lost control and fell into a gorge near Seraghat in Almora district.

Sources said the vehicle did not have permission to ply passengers. .

Gaurav Kumar (21), Ajay Kumar (21) and Lachuli Devi (70), who died in the accident, were heading to Pithoragarh, police said. Six seriously injured victims were taken to a hospital, while the remaining two were provided medication at the nearest primary health centre.

According to the district administration, the vehicle with 11 passengers was on its way from Haldwani (Nainital) to Berinag (Pithoragarh) via Almora when it rolled down into the nearly 80 metre deep gorge. The vehicle was badly damaged in the accident. Locals called up the 108 emergency service and alerted the administration and the police.

A State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) team from Almora reached the accident spot, rescued the injured and retrieved the bodies.

Whether or not the vehicle had permission is a matter of probe that will be done in later stages by the regional transport office. Right now, our objective is to provide medical support to victims. Six people are admitted to the Almora base hospital. The bodies will be handed out to the families after autopsy, Almora district magistrate Savin Bansal told Hindustan Times over the phone.

Senior Superintendent of Police Renuka Devi said the three seriously injured were taken to a hospital.

Governor KK Paul expressed grief at the loss of lives in the accident. Paul expressed concern over the frequent accidents on the states roads.

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You may soon be paid for unscheduled power cuts at your home if lieutenant governor Anil Baijal approves the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) governments proposal to penalise distribution companies.

Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal is scheduled to discuss the matter with Baijal today during their regular Wednesday meeting at 5pm.

Last year, the AAP governments decision to penalise discoms for unscheduled power cuts was struck down by the Delhi High Court as the L-Gs prior approval had not been sought.

The CM will discuss this matter with the L-G to clear any doubts he may have. He has also directed power department officials to prepare the proposal again and send it to the L-G today itself, deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia said.

Policy details

According to the compensation policy on power outages that was struck down by the high court, a penalty of Rs 50 per hour per consumer was to be levied for the first two hours followed by Rs 100 for every subsequent hour.

The fine amount was proposed to be adjusted in the consumers monthly bills.

The policy stated that if any consumer approached the Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC) after 90 days with a complaint that he or she had not received his compensation, DERC would have to ensure payment to all consumers affected by that power cut.

Measures to curb outages

With many parts of the city facing power cuts in the summer heat, the CM took a review meeting on Tuesday with the power minister, chief secretary and officials of the power department after which he issued a series of directives.

Kejriwal ordered authorities to submit a report to him on outages every day and also increase the capacity of discoms call centres for satisfactory disposal of peoples complaints.

In his direction to the chief secretary, Kejriwal said power distribution companies should send messages to consumers in affected areas if they resort to unscheduled power cuts.

Sisodia said the chief secretary will ensure that discoms list the scheduled power cuts on their websites so that people can know about it in advance.

He said that it is the responsibility of all three discoms  Tata Power Delhi Distribution Limited (TPDDL), BSES Rajdhani and BSES Yamuna  to provide power to Delhiites 24x7.

The CM has sought a daily report on outages at 11am, the deputy chief minister also said.

He added that the government is fully prepared to meet even a demand of 7,500MW. In some areas, transformers had tripped because of excessive heat and high demand, that is why outages occurred in the last two days, Sisodia said.

He said that Kejriwal directed that hoardings be put up across the city with helpline numbers of the three discoms.

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Delhi Police have provided Y-category security cover to suspended Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader and former Delhi minister Kapil Mishra after assessing his threat perception.

As per the security protocol, Mishra has been provided two personal security officers (PSOs), who will remain with him round-the-clock. Besides this, four constables led by a security supervisor have been deployed at his home.

The rebel AAP MLA said he did not make any formal request for security cover. The police might have done an interval review of the security situation based on their intelligence input. I came to know about the deployment only when the guards reported for duty, Mishra told HT.

Sources said that the decision to provide security to Mishra was done following an internal assessment the police department carried out keeping in mind the previous attacks and threats on Mishra.

Last month, Ankit Bhardwaj, an alleged AAP supporter, attacked Mishra at his home in north Delhis Civil Lines, where he sat on a satyagraha after levelling graft charges against Chief Minister Arvind Kajriwal. A week ago, Mishra was roughed up by party legislators and was dragged out of the Delhi Assembly by marshals during a special session.

Mishra later claimed that he was attacked on the orders of deputy CM Manish Sisodia. He even filed a police complaint in which he accused Sisodia of allegedly instigating MLAs Madan Lal, Jarnail Singh and Amanatullah Khan for attacking him inside the Assembly with the sole intention to kill him.

A senior security departmental officials said that one of the PSOs will be armed with INSAS rifle, while the other will carry a pistol. As per the Union home ministrys guidelines, categories of security covers are divided into four tiers: Z-plus (highest level), Z, Y and X.

Y-category security cover is mainly provided to judges of Supreme Court, high court, ministers, speakers of state assemblies and even to a civilian on the recommendations of courts and states, depending on the threat perception to the person.

Mishra automatically got Y-category security cover when he became a minister in Delhi government. However, the security was withdrawn when he was suspended by the party. His threat perception was reviewed following intelligence inputs we received about possible attacks on him, said an officer, adding that 11 security personnel have been deployed in Mishras security cover.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Wednesday defended deputy chief minister Manish Sisodias direction for action against Directorate of Information and Publicity (DIP) director Jayadev Sarangi.

Sisodia had on Monday written to chief secretary MM Kutty asking him to initiate proceedings against Sarangi for dereliction of duty, and replace him with an officer who can perform as he was not been able to deliver on works assigned to the officer.

In his direction, Sisodia cited three instances over the past few days when Sarangi failed to implement his direction, including the order to organise a Facebook Live with traders on GST on June 1 or June 2.

However, sources in the information directorate, which is headed by Sisodia, said the departments decision to deny holding Facebook Live was far more technical than what was being described by the government.

According to sources, the denial was backed by sound procedural technicalities, as they are averse of another situation that could lead to controversy and a possible inquiry as in the case of Talk To AK programme last year, which is under CBI scanner now.

If the Facebook Live required only a mobile camera and internet connection, why was a detailed plan made last year for the Talk To AK programme and why was an agency required to implement it? Any Facebook Live of any government functionary needs to be properly advertised. That advertisement needs to be done as per the procedure, a source said.

Facebook Live does not require any open tender. However, advertisement on Facebook for such programme requires tender as there is no prescribed rates for advertisement on social media, an official said, adding that the chief secretary was looking into the matter and the views of the department will be put forth as and when required.

Meanwhile, former AAP minister Kapil Mishra alleged Sarangi was being targetted by the AAP government as it was he who, in the line of duty, had issued notice to AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal for recovery of R 97 crore from the ruling party.

While phone calls and SMS to Sarangi did not yield any response, Delhi labour minister and AAP (Delhi) convener Gopal Rai defended the decision saying the minister was well within his rights to order action if the officers do not follow valid instructions intentionally.

The Delhi government is not unique. Its functioning is similar to that of other governments, be it in the states or Centre. All governments have department of information and publicity to disseminate information. If a DIP officer is intentionally not ready to do even a FB Live, that too on an issue like GST, then the minister is entitled to take appropriate action, Rai told reporters.
A Delhi court on Wednesday granted bail to three men, who were accused of gang-raping a 23-year-old US woman in a five-star hotel near Connaught Place in April last year.

While granting bail to the accused  tourist guide Aniruddha Singh, driver Om Prakash and cleaner Maqsood Khan  the court observed that since the alleged victim is in the US, there is no threat of the accused influencing her.

The fourth accused, hotel staffer Vivek, was granted bail earlier.

The court also pulled up the lawyers of the victim and the accused for their way of handling the case.

Police had earlier informed the court that as per the report of a forensic laboratory in Hyderabad, videos of the alleged gang rape could not be retrieved from the hotels CCTV and cellphone of the main accused, who had allegedly recorded the act.

During the previous hearing, the victims lawyer had moved an application seeking to send the CCTV footage to a foreign laboratory for further investigation.

On Wednesday, Additional Sessions Judge Anu Grover Baliga asked the victims counsel about the technology and foreign laboratory that he was referring to in his application. The counsel submitted that he does not have the technical know-how to suggest a laboratory or technology that will have to be used. The judge rebuked the counsel for putting in an application without researching.

You said there is technology available abroad (to retrieve the footage), but now you say you dont know about what technology that is, and which laboratory has it, the judge said.

The court also pulled up the lawyer of one of the accused for submitting in the previous hearing that even if something were to be recorded in the external memory card of a phone, an analysis of the internal memory card will be sufficient to retrieve it.

You tried to mislead the court, (in the last hearing) you had said that whatever goes to external memory card goes through internal memory card. But it is not so. You should have googled it up, and found out the facts before making such submissions. It is possible to store things in external card directly, which cannot be retrieved by mere analysis of internal memory card, the judge said.

The crime was reported in October, and an FIR was registered on December 3. After the woman came to Delhi and recorded her statement, the four men were called in for questioning and arrested.

The woman had alleged that the guide, who befriended her while showing her tourist spots in India, entered her room in the hotel with his friends to discuss the following days itinerary.

They allegedly offered the woman water mixed with sedatives and raped her. She accused them of raping her the next day too and threatening her with dire consequences if the matter was reported. The suspects allegedly made a video, which they threatened to make public.

The police have charge-sheeted the accused persons for the offences punishable under IPC Sections 323 (punishment for voluntarily causing hurt), 328 (causing hurt by means of poison, etc, with intent to commit an offence), 376D (gang rape), 377 (unnatural offences), 506 (punishment for criminal intimidation) and 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention).

The court will now hear the victims plea on July 4.

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The Uttar Pradesh government has decided to use the National Security Act (NSA)  a law primarily enacted to deal with the defence of the country, Indias relations with foreign powers, and the security of India  to deal with instances of cow slaughter and smuggling. Equating crimes like this as a threat to national security is really taking things too far. The Uttar Pradesh DGP has permitted preventive detention of a suspected person for three months without bail in matters of cow slaughter and smuggling. This despite the fact that the state already has a law that makes cow smuggling and slaughter offences punishable with seven years in jail and a fine of Rs 10,000.

This move by the Uttar Pradesh government is not only scary but also disproportionate. Enacted in 1980, the NSA has draconian provisions which permit the government to detain a citizen on presumption alone without any recourse to challenge the detention order. Preventive detention envisaged under the NSA is different from ordinary detention under normal laws, i.e. the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC). Under the IPC and the CrPC, persons are arrested for having committed acts violative of the law. But under preventive detention, persons are arrested to prevent them from doing whatever the government does not wish them to do.

The use of the NSA in this context shows the lengths the UP police is willing to go to enforce cow smuggling laws. While the BJP has enacted cow protection laws in several states  Madhya Pradesh was the first state to use the stringent provisions of the NSA against its citizens. Last year, the Dewas district administration slapped the National Security Act (NSA) against Anwar Mev, an office-bearer of the BJP who was expelled from the party after meat alleged to be beef was found from his house. He was arrested and sent to Ujjain Jail.But a question that is often asked is if the NSA puts irrational curbs on rights of citizens, why is it not struck down by courts? Because the states takes the plea that prevention detentions are necessary to avoid potential public order situations.While state governments continue to enact laws and rules for cow protection, there is a rising fear that new measures by government towards cow protection could be used to harass the minority community.
Students, who want to go for a skill-based undergraduate course, can head to Delhi University and pick from six Bachelor of Vocational courses being offered by different colleges.

The BVoc Programme being offered at Kalindi College, Ramanujan College and Jesus and Mary College, will have multiple entry and exit points. It means the student can leave the course at the end of first year and second year with a diploma degree and an advance diploma degree respectively.

Those who complete the course will get a Degree. Students can come back to complete the course even if they leave after the first or second year. This gives students a lot of flexibility in case they want to take a break from studies and work, said Nikhil Rajput, nodal officer for the courses at Ramanujan College.

Students from all streams can apply for the course. Applicants have to fill the central registration form and admission will be done based on cutoffs. The courses were introduced at DU last year, but the admission happened in September as the approval had come late.

At Jesus and Mary College there are two courses available  Retail Management and IT, and Health Care Management. At Kalindi College, students can opt for Printing Technology or Web Designing. Similarly, at Ramanujan College, there are two BVoc courses  Banking Operations and Software Development.

The course has 40% general education components and 60% skill education components. So, the students get to know the academics of the subject as well as the industry requirements and practical applications, said Sunita Narain, nodal officer for the courses at Jesus and Mary college.

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Rajput said the course provides a judicious mix of skills relating to a profession and appropriate content of general education, so that students are work-ready at each exit point of the programme.

It also integrates NSQF (national skill qualification framework) within the undergraduate level of higher education in order to enhance employability of the graduates and meet industry requirement, he said.

Students doing software development can become junior software developers, web developers, data associates and software developers depending on when they exit the course, said Rajput.

Narain said students can become floor managers, duty managers, customer relation executives and also work at non-clinical positions in hospitals after doing retail management and IT, and health care management courses.

These courses have been developed by the UGC as per NSQF of Ministry of Skill Development emphasizing on skill-based education in consultation with National Skills Development Corporation.

Jesus and Mary College

B.Voc Retail Management and IT -47 seats

B.Voc Health Care Management -49 seats

Kalindi College

B.Voc Printing Technology -50 seats

B.Voc Web Designing -50 seats

Ramanujan College

B.Voc Banking Operations -50 seats

B.Voc Software Development -50 seats

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The Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) proposes to offer engineering and management courses, an initiative the University Grants Commission is said to be considering.

If approved, the university will take students for these subjects from 2018.

The New Delhi-based premier institution, established in 1969, is known for its arts and humanities subjects. JNU wants to expand its programme to engineering and management, for which officials submitted a proposal and made a presentation to the countrys university regulator, UGC.

The government-run university cant start new courses without the UGCs clearance as these involve fresh or enhanced funding to hire faculty, build infrastructure, and other miscellaneous and recurring expenses.

Sources said a decision will be taken soon and communicated to the university.

The university is likely to start with a bachelor in engineering programme. The management course is still being worked out.

All the central universities, including JNU, have submitted plans for the next year  All proposals will be studied before a decision, a senior human resource development ministry official said.

JNU won the annual Visitors Award for best university in 2017, which was instituted by the government three years ago to encourage healthy competition among central universities.

More than 7,000 students study in the universitys graduate, postgraduate and PhD programmes.

JNU has schools of social sciences, international relations, arts and aesthetics, environment science among others.

Academics apart, the university has been in the limelight since last February when three of its students were charged with sedition and arrested after a campus event in which anti-national slogans were allegedly heard.
No flight of fancy this. Its real and there for sure as the Lucknow plays host to the first National Drone Competition later this month.

To be held on June 19, the event is being organised by Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur alumni with the support of engineering graduates of other institutions.

More than 100 drone enthusiasts from across the country will be in Lucknow to take part in the unique event, which aims to provide them with hands-on experience on how to fly a drone/unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and guide them to make a career in the field.

We are conducting a summer UAV/drone training programme from June 12 to 18 in Lucknow where students will have an option to fly their own aircraft or use our drones. They can then participate in the competition and win the prize money worth Rs 40,000, said Vikram Singh Meena, a 2016 IIT-K graduate and presently CEO and founder of TechEagle Innovations.

The training will be held at Ansal Institute of Technology and Management here. We are offering four kinds of drone training. Students from any school or college can participate in the programme, he said.

So far we have conducted more than 50 free-of-cost seminars in Uttar Pradesh to spread drone technical skills among students. We have trained over 1,000 students in drone skills country-wide, said Vikram.

Earlier, TechEagle had collaborated with TechKriti-IIT-Kanpur in 2016 and 2017 to organize workshops on TriCopter Drone and Flying Wing UAV in which enthusiasts for foreign countries participated.

In December 2016, our start-up conducted a TriCopter Drone workshop at IIT-Bombay. More than 170 participants learned about drones and UAVs. With Kshitij-IIT-Kharagpur, TechEagle organized a Drone Simulation Flying event, which was the major highlight of the workshop, he said.

TechEagle has even trained a 12-year-old and a 65-year-old. There is no age limit, he said.

Besides manufacturing drones, Vikrams startup educates students. We have a team to build palm-size to four-metre (wing span) UAVs. We use advanced composite materials like carbon fiber, glass fiber etc to build UAVs and drones, he said.

Highlights The organisers have asked participants to fly drones below 200 feet as mentioned in the draft of Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). Navniet Sekera, the inspector general of police in-charge of the 1090 Women Powerline said, Drone flying rules are not very clear yet. The Act has to be changed as drone is a new phenomenon. But organisers should ensure that they do not fly in strategic locations like around Vidhan Sabha, airport, etc. SSP Lucknow Deepak Kumar, If they are flying drones at a relatively low height and it is not conflicting with radio signals, there should not be much of a problem. The intention should be to promote scientific temper among students and not to create any panic among people.

The technocrat added: We are building UAVs for researchers and companies (for mapping, delivery, surveillance) etc. He said the drone industry was new but had a lot of career opportunities worldwide.

Vikram has participated in various national and international competitions like Aero Design in Texas, USA.

He said a drone-trainees prospects are bright as drones are used in journalism, filming, aerial photography, shipping, delivery of goods, disaster management, search and rescue, healthcare, mapping, military operations and wildlife monitoring/poaching.

These days it is also used in law enforcement, border patrollling, building construction, storm tracking/forecasting and as fun and hobby. We want to provide practical and technical skills to the countrys youth, he said.

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In a relief to students, the Orissa high court on Wednesday directed the CBSE to re-evaluate answer scripts of those who moved the court alleging discrepancies in the class 12 results.

A single judge bench of Biswanath Rath also suggested the aggrieved students to apply for re-evaluation of their answer sheets by 2pm on Thursday and asked the CBSE to publish their results by June 10.

Earlier in the day, the students and their parents launched a hunger strike in front of the CBSEs regional office in Bhubaneswar.

We welcome the high court judgment. The parents association will move the court tomorrow seeking justice for all the students who have been victim of the CBSEs discrepancies, said Sudarsan Das, one of the parents who was on hunger strike.

The strike will continue till fulfillment of their demands, the agitators said.

Besides demanding a CBI probe into the alleged fiasco in publication of results, the agitators also demanded re-evaluation of the answer scripts of those who had applied for rechecking of their answer sheets.

One of the girl students who was on hunger strike fainted at the venue due to dehydration. The police rescued the girl and rushed her to the Capital Hospital for treatment.

On Tuesday, a male student had attempted self-immolation in front of the CBSEs regional office in Bhubaneswar. He was, however, rescued by police and parents.

Meanwhile, a delegation of NSUI met Odisha Governor SC Jamir and submitted a memorandum highlighting the alleged discrepancies in the CBSEs Class 12 results.

The governor assured to look into the matter, NSUI Odisha unit president Itish Pradhan said.
From climate change to methods of studying the humanities and game theory to tourism promotion in conflict zones, universities in the UK have tied up with counterparts in India for 57 projects worth a total of over 1.6 million, under the UK India Education Research Initiative (UKIERI), allaying fears of cuts on research funds and partnerships.

After Brexit, the UKs decision last year to exit the European Union, the Indian academic and student communities were concerned that partnerships might be affected.

Post-Brexit, Indian students cannot even intern after their study in the UK. Tough measures like this have worried students about the interests of the British government in encouraging studies and research there, says Urvashi Malik, founder and MD of education consultancy firm College Core Education.

But UIKERI, the largest bilateral research partnership between India and the UK, has remained unaffected  and academics are taking that as a positive sign of things to come. So far, UKIERI has supported over 1,000 partnerships between the UK and India, benefitting 35,000 academics since 2006.

The announcement that there will be 57 collaborations this year helps clear the air, says S Parasuraman, director of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS). This is the third phase of projects announced under UKIERI. It has been very useful in producing quality work in different fields, he adds.

TISS, for instance, is partnering with School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) of the University of London on a project establishing a UK-India research methods node to promote research training and collaboration in the social sciences and humanities. Elsewhere, the School of Hospitality & Tourism Management of Jammu University is partnering with the University of West London to examine how tourism can be a development tool for communities in a conflict region.

A partnership of this kind is beneficial for the students, faculty and institutions in many ways, says director Parikshat Singh Manhas. There will be student exchanges involved. From my own experience of being part of such exchanges, I can say that learning increases manifold.

Still the biggest partner

Though UK gave way to the US as the education destination for Indians decades ago, and is now in third place, behind Canada, as far as research partnerships are concerned, ties between the two remain the strongest.

There is no other country with a partnership that is nearly as significant, and the UK has spent over 35 million since 2006 on UKIERI alone, says education consultant Malik. The exposure helps students build a network that gives them a headstart in their career, adds Surajit Borkotokey, head of the department of mathematics and chairperson of the Centre for Computer Studies at Dibrugarh University, which is partnering with Queens University, Belfast, on a project on game theory. Such opportunities are also a great boost of confidence for Indian students.

Our students are not exposed to many advanced and sophisticated methods of research as found in the top universities of countries like the UK, says Borkotokey. A visit to a university like Belfast makes them aware of what to even aspire to. And when students from these universities come to India, working with them enables an exchange of ideas with a much wider group.

Myths and reality

I believe part of the concern about Brexit is misplaced, says Sriram Venkatachalam, assistant professor in the department of ocean engineering at IIT-Madras, who will be working with City University, London, on a project on climate change

Academic consultant Karan Gupta however points out that though UKIERI being unaffected is a positive sign, the major concerns remain unaddressed.

The number of students who wish to study in the UK has been steadily declining over the past few years. A majority of students wish to work in the UK after they complete their education and the UK in general has made it extremely hard for international students to find employment there, he says. Brexit has only added to the perception that a British education will not help you find a job abroad and will land you back home instead.

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Harish Sethi, owner of a Gurgaon company, had no clue what was in store for him when he ordered a product online and even paid for it in advance. The product never landed up at his address and the Indonesian company from which he had ordered it online seemed to have vanished.

The 45-year-old ordered two printheads online from the Indonesian company named Oeminkjetinks, read the FIR filed in the case. He made several enquiries with the company regarding the products quality, cost and discounts, if any. The printheads, after all, were worth US $22,00 (approx 1.40 lakh). Satisfied with their prompt email responses, Harish finally made the payment in December, 2016.

But as soon as the money was transferred, the company stopped replying.

A few days later, the companys official website (www.oeminkjetinks.com) shut down and their email address could not be found, Sethi mentioned in the complaint.

I am the proprietor of Misa Industrial Products, Gurgaon and we have been dealing in a wide range of products for years. I have ordered and received hundreds of products from different companies in China, Hong Kong and other countries. Ordering from this Indonesian company didnt seem any different, Sethi told HT.

He said that he had been interacting with Mohammed Lakumba about the product over the last few days and ordered two printheads after being assured of their quality and prompt delivery.

Lakumba answered my questions regarding the product and as the printheads, here, were available at much cheaper rates, I ordered two from Oeminkjetinks, Harish said.

HT has a copy of the invoice of the product, the payment confirmation and the conversations with the Indonesian company.

On realising that he was duped, Sethi contacted the Indian embassy in Indonesia and the Indonesian embassy in India, but got no relief. Both the embassies said that they couldnt help and he should register a case with the Indonesian police, said Sethi.

Bereft of any options, he complained to the Gurgaon police in January this year.

Babulal, station house officer, New Colony police station, said the complaint was forwarded to the IT cell and cyber crime branch, which deals with online fraud, for necessary action.

Read I Gurgaon: Online banking fraud racket busted, six arrested

When we receive such complaints, we send it to the IT cell. The complaint is verified there and only once it is confirmed that the allegation by the complainant is genuine that we are asked to file the FIR, the SHO said.

An FIR was finally registered on Monday against unknown persons under IPC section 420 (cheating) and 66D of the IT Act (cheating by personation by using computer resource).

The police said they were investigating the matter.

I have nowhere to go. My money is lost, a dejected Sethi said.
Gurgaon: In a major breakthrough in the brutal Manesar gang rape case, the Gurgaon police has apprehended two accused and identified their other accomplice. The three accused allegedly raped a 19-year-old woman and smothered her nine-month old daughter to death on the night of May 29.

The breakthrough came when one of the accused allegedly confessed his crime to the sarpanch of Bas Kusla village in Manesar, where the three accused live on rent.

Yogendra and Amit are in police custody, while Jaikesh is still absconding. The three accused belong to Runsi village in Bulandshahar district of Uttar Pradesh and are in the age group of 19-20 years.

Sarpanch Ajit Chauhan after hearing about the incident, called assistant commissioner of police Dharamvir Singh who is in charge of the Special Investigation Team constituted by the Gurgaon police to look into the case. The police came within 15 minutes and the accused admitted that he had committed the heinous crime along with his two friends, Chauhan said.

One of the accused who had gone with Yogender to confess the alleged crime managed to give a slip to the police team that was called by the village elders.

Gurgaon police commissioner Sandeep Khirwar said Yogender was arrested from the village and was taken to Manesar Industrial police station in sector 7. The crime teams used every resource to get information and a very sustained investigation was carried out. This has become possible because of the intelligence inputs, said Khirwar.

Amit was arrested near Sirhaul border on Wednesday late evening, said Manish Sehgal, Gurgaon police spokesman. A police team is hunting for Jaikesh in Bulandshahr, UP, said Sehgal.

Yogender told the sarpanch that they had picked up the woman near Bas Kusla village. After buying food worth Rs180 from a hotel in Manesar they went up to Kherki Daula toll plaza and took a turn back to Manesar and raped the woman at an empty plot in sector 8.

The three had taken up a room in the village on rent and when they told us about the incident, I immediately called the police Chauhan said.

On May 29, the three accused had given a lift to the victim and her daughter in their four-wheeler Tata Magic vehicle and instead of dropping her to her parents place in Khandsa village, Gurgaon, they took turns to rape her at a vacant plot in Manesar. During the incident, the accused allegedly smothered the victims daughter as she was crying. Police said that she died of asphyxia.

Bas Kusla village is in the heart of industrial township of Manesar. It has a native population of around 5,000, while almost 50,000 migrant workers live here on rent.

Jeetu Pradhan, a resident of the village, said that such a crime has never happened here in the past.

The gang rape of the 19-year-old woman and the murder of her infant child took place on May 29 night. The police had on May 30 registered a case of death due to negligence. On June 3, a case of gang rape under section 376 D of IPC was added to the FIR.
Union ministry of health has written to civil aviation ministry, asking it to ensure tobacco shops at any airports are not located near smoking rooms.

They have also been asked to ensure that shops selling tobacco products prominently display the signage sale of tobacco products to a person below the age of eighteen years is a punishable offence.

The Cigarettes and other Tobacco Products (Prohibition of Advertisement and Regulation of Trade and Commerce, Production, Supply and Distribution) Act, 2003(COTPA, 2003), was introduced in 2004 with an aim to discourage the use of consumption of tobacco products.

It has been observed that the provisions of COTPA, 2003 and the enabling rules are being violated at the Airports, by shops selling cigarettes and other tobacco products. These shops in contravention of the provisions of COTPA, display tobacco advertisements and are located just outside the smoking room or in food courts, thus facilitating tobacco use and also enticing non-smokers especially children to these shops and to the smoking room, says an excerpt from the letter.

The letter further says that in certain airports, tobacco products are also sold from shops selling souvenir, food articles, books, and comics etc., thus enabling easy access to non-smokers especially children to these shops and tobacco products. These shops also do not display the warning sign.

Yes we wrote last month to the civil aviation ministry because if the guidelines are not followed then it means these are running illegally as they tend to promote smoking. We are hoping for a positive response, said a senior health ministry official.

They should also not sell non tobacco products as these help in attracting non-smokers, especially children. Our aim is to discourage use of tobacco products as it a major health hazard.

The ministry last month had also issued a notification against serving hookahs in dinning areas in restaurants and hotels.

Tobacco related diseases kills about 2500 Indians each day, and more than 10 lakh Indians annually.

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George and Amal Clooney, one of the most glamorous power couples in the world, on Tuesday announced they had become parents at last, to twins.

This morning Amal and George welcomed Ella and Alexander Clooney into their lives, said a publicist for the 56-year-old star of Gravity and Oceans 11.

Ella, Alexander and Amal are all healthy, happy and doing fine, added publicist Stan Rosenfield, joking that George is sedated and should recover in a few days.

Amals parents, who are Lebanese, told AFP they were elated by the news and that everything had gone smoothly.

We are over the moon, said Amals mother Baria, speaking from London where she was in hospital with her daughter. It was a beautiful delivery. The babies are beautiful and are doing well.

Twitter overflowed with positivity and well-wishers. Here are some of the reactions:

Welcome to the world, Ella and Alexander Clooney. Congratulations, George and Amal, or as Im now calling you, Oceans Four.  Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) June 6, 2017

CONGRATULATIONS! Human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, a pioneer for refugees, and her husband George are parents of twins Ella and Alexander.  Anne Frank Center (@AnneFrankCenter) June 6, 2017

George Clooney's wife gave birth to twins. In related news, I am no longer the galaxy's most handsome father of twins  Darth Vader (@DepressedDarth) June 6, 2017

George Clooney had twins! Only nine more until hes got a full crew to take down Andy Garcia!  Stephen Colbert (@StephenAtHome) June 7, 2017

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Actor Halle Berry took to social media to poke fun at pregnancy rumours, and implied that she was bloated after having a big meal.

The 50-year-old Oscar winner, who has two children, wore a form-fitting silver sequinned dress and matching heels to the Butterfly Ball here on Saturday. She was also photographed posing with her hands over her stomach as if cradling her bump.

The actor took to Instagram to address the rumours, reports mirror.co.uk.

She posted: Can a girl have some steak and fries?

Can a girl have some steak and fries??  A post shared by Halle Berry (@halleberry) on Jun 5, 2017 at 9:48am PDT

Her representative had also denied the speculation earlier.

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After 17 years of starting the pre-production, Terry Gilliam has finally wrapped the principal photography of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the movie inspired by Miguel De Cervantes literary classic Don Quixote is shot on location across Spain and Portugal.

The movie tells the story of a deluded old man, convinced he is the famed horse-riding hero and who mistakes an advertising executive for his trusty squire, Sancho Panza.

Previously, unsuccessful attempts to make the film saw names such as Johnny Depp, Ewan McGregor, Robert Duvall, Jack OConnell and John Hurt attached.

However, the movie now stars Adam Driver, Jonathan Pryce, Stellan Skarsgard and Olga Kurylenko. Don Quixote is a dreamer, an idealist and a romantic, determined not to accept the limitations of reality, marching on regardless of setbacks, as we have done. Weve been at it so long that the idea of actually finishing shooting this clandestine film, is pretty surreal. Any sensible person would have given up years ago but sometimes pig-headed dreamers win in the end, so thank you to all of the ill paid fantasists and believers who have joined to make this longstanding dream a reality, shared Gilliam.

In Cannes, just a year after the project was first unveiled to the market, French sales banner Alfama labeled the film illegal with its CEO Paulo Branco saying that Gilliam had been working behind his back and that he - actually - owned rights to the film.

The films producers also issued a statement regarding this issue, saying that the claims were preposterous and that they had been forced to sue him in four countries. Senor Branco is tilting at windmills. He has no rights whatsoever in Don Quixote, they added.

According to the release announcing the production wrap, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote is being produced by Gerardo Herrero, Mariela Besuievsky, Amy Gilliam, Tornasol Films, Kinology, Recorded Picture Company, Entre Chien et Loup and Ukbar Filmes in association with Alacran Pictures, and with the participation of TVE, Movistar +, Eurimages and Wallimage. Kinology is handling worldwide sales.

Amazon Studios has acquired distribution rights for the US, Canada and the U.K., and Telemunchen for Germany and Austria.
Hundreds of farmers have decided to sit on an indefinite strike in Rajasthans Pratapgarh district from next week, the third BJP-ruled state after Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh to be rocked by crop protests after a drought year.

Farmers under the banner of Kisan Sangharsh Samiti have given a week-long ultimatum to the state government to meet their demands of better crop prices, agricultural pensions and loan waivers.

They are also upset over cheque payments since the government withdrew high-value banknotes during the demonetization exercise last year, and warn that the protests will spread across the state if not attended to.

Local farm leaders under the banner of Bhartiya Kisan Sangh (BKS) say the protests are a spillover of similar demonstrations in neighbouring Madhya Pradesh where anger is mounting following the death of five farmers in police firing on Tuesday.

Pratapgarh borders Madhya Pradesh and the mandi is located 20 km from Mandsaur, so the agitation in MP has spilled over to Pratapgarh. Many local farmers have relatives in Mandsaur, an official of Pratapgarh Krishi Upaj Mandi, who did not wish to be named, told HT.

The snowballing farm protests are a challenge for the BJP and especially Prime Minister Narendra Modi who has made the sector a focus and promised to double agricultural incomes by 2022. Angry farmers from food-bowl states say they cannot afford to sell produce at below-par prices and want the administration to create a safety net.

The farmers say any protest will crimp supplies of milk and vegetables, a claim the administration dismisses. The farmers  including dairy producing ones -- have demanded hiking milk prices, minimum support prices (MSP) of vegetables by 50%, electricity connections and loan waiver and cash payment for their produce.

Former MLA and All India Kisan Sabha state president Pemaram has said farmers in Rajasthan will also launch a statewide agitation if the government fails to meet their demands. Problem of farmers in Rajasthan are same as that of farmers in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. We also want higher prices for milk, hike in MSP and loan waiver. Farmers will submit memorandum to district collectors today (on Wednesday) and the state government should take our ultimatum seriously, Pemaram told HT.

A group of farmers had also spilled milk in large quantities and dumped vegetables on the streets. A hunger strike was called off after assurances from the district magistrate but the farmers submitted a memorandum to the government and said the strike and protests would continue.

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An army officer and three militants were killed in an encounter in Nagaland, the force said on Wednesday.

The encounter on Tuesday night at Tijit near Lappa of Mon district, nearly 340 km north of the state capital Kohima also left three soldiers injured.

The officer killed in the encounter was identified as David Manlum. Unconfirmed reports said a civilian was also killed but the army refused to confirm.

The militants were believed to be from the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Khaplang) and the United Liberation Front of Asom (Independent).

The incident took place around 10pm. Based on information about movement of terrorists, the officer and his team went to the area when they were ambushed and an encounter ensued, defence spokesperson Col Chiranjeet Konwer told HT over phone from Kohima.

The encounter is over and combing operations are underway, Konwer said.

Operatives from the NSCN-K have carried out in several attacks on security forces in the past. Suspected rebels from the group ambushed and killed eight Assam Rifles jawans close to the Myanmar border in Nagalands Mon district two years ago.

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Everybody loves street momos, but not lawyer and BJP legislator Ramesh Arora of Jammu and Kashmir. He wants the dumplings dumped for good, saying they contain the carcinogenic monosodium glutamate or Ajinomoto.

The member of the legislative council has been campaigning for a ban against the cheap street food, invented arguably in Nepal. The succulent savoury is so popular in India that junior minister in the prime ministers office, Jitendra Singh, was seen relishing momos at a recent function.

Momos have been found to be the root cause of several life-threatening diseases, including cancer of the intestine, Arora said on Wednesday.

He has been speaking at public functions for the past five months, seeking a ban on the sale of momos at least in his state.

His food activism is not limited to the dumplings. The lawmaker is an avowed crusader against cancer-causing Chinese cuisine laced with monosodium glutamate, sold under the brand name Ajinomoto, a chemical flavour enhancer.

Ajinomoto, a kind of salt, causes serious diseases, including cancer. It is responsible for converting a minor headache into migraine, he said.

He listed the ill-effects. The salt induces the pancreas to excrete extra drops of insulin, causing imbalance in the body, and prompts people to overeat as it triggers hunger.

Besides memory loss, regular consumption for two to three years causes cancer of the stomach. They are found to be more harmful than alcohol and psychotropic drugs, he said.

He met health minister Bali Bhagat recently to persuade him to prohibit the sale of momos and Chinese street food.

Arora isnt against food prepared hygienically and without harmful ingredients.

His hostility is towards momos  steamed and fried  in slums across Jammu that are supplied to the regions 10 districts. He takes pleasure in the fact that his campaign has crimped momo sales in Jammu by 35%.

Junk food has already taken a toll on our children. There is a need to awaken the people, he said.

The debate over monosodium glutamates safety is long and chequered.

The Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Cancer Research Institute concluded after a study in 2007 that Ajinomoto causes stomach cancer. The WHO declared it unsafe in 2004.

But only eight of the 26 countries that use the item extensively have banned it. The US Food and Drug Administration says monosodium glutamate is generally safe.

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The Centres notification banning cattle trade for slaughter has led to resignations of BJP leaders in Meghalaya and triggered discontent in other northeastern states, but the partys state unit chiefs claim the issue wont affect their expansion plans in the region.

Manipur chief minister N Biren Singh had already told mediapersons on Monday that the states first BJP-led government wont implement any notification which would violate peoples food habits.

The BJP is in power in Assam, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh, and plans to expand further into Mizoram, Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura  states where assembly elections are due next year.

BJP national president Amit Shah is expected to visit Arunachal Pradesh next week as part of the saffron partys northeast expansion plan.

The Centres notification has led to controversy in Meghalaya, Nagaland and Mizoram, which have a dominant Christian population and consumption of beef is common.

It may have some impact now, but by the time elections are held, it will become insignificant. The Congress government here is spreading lies on the issue and we need to educate the public that the notification wont hurt their food habits, JV Hluna, the BJPs Mizoram unit chief, told HT.

In the past week, BJPs two district unit presidents in Garo Hills region of Meghalaya quit after their plan to organise a beef-rice beer party to mark the three years of Narendra Modis government was turned down by the leadership.

We welcome the resignations. Theres nothing to worry about and this talk of a blanket ban on consumption of beef, due to the restrictions, is fabricated, said Shibun Lyngdoh, the Meghalaya president of the party.

According to the Meghalaya animal husbandry department, a total of 88,313 cattle (41,469 brought from outside the state) were slaughtered in 2015-2016. During the same period, 1,558 buffaloes  all reared within the state were slaughtered.

Except Assam, where maximum penalty for butchering cattle (except for those with a fit for slaughter certificate) is 6 months in jail and Rs1000 in fine, there is no ban on slaughter of cattle in the other states in northeast.

The beef/buffalo market in the northeast isnt very organised or regulated. There is some concern about availability of beef for consumption due to smuggling of cattle to Bangladesh.

Nagaland state unit president V Lhoungu termed the latest controversy as a non issue as the Naga Peoples Front-led state government (of which BJP is a minor partner) has already made it clear that the notification wont be implemented in the state.

What someone eats inside their homes is an individual issue. The BJP is not concerned with it. Importantly, it is for the states to decide whether they want those restrictions and it is unlikely to get implemented in our state, said Arunachal Pradesh BJP chief Tapir Gao.

The partys Assam unit chief Ranjeet Kumar Das told HT that the notification was unlikely to have any impact on the BJP in the state.

Tripura unit vice-president Subal Bhowmik urged the Left Front government to implement the Centres notification as it would help curb smuggling of cattle to Bangladesh.

On Monday, Manipur chief minister N Biren Singh had told media persons that the states first BJP-led government wont implement any notification which would violate peoples food habits.

(With inputs from Priyanka Deb Barman in Agartala and Sobhapati Samom in Imphal)

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Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi is expected to visit violence-hit Mandsaur where five farmers were killed allegedly in police firing on Thursday.

Accompanied by Janata Dal (United) leader Sharad Yadav and Congress general secretary Kamal Nath, Gandhi will first go to Udaipur in Rajasthan from where he will try to reach Mandsaur by road to express solidarity with the victims families.

Gandhi was on Wednesday denied permission by the Madhya Pradesh government to visit the region and it is unlikely that the administration will allow him to proceed to the troubled area. We will not allow any outsider in Mandsaur, said district collector Swantanter Kumar Singh when asked about Gandhis visit. The area is under curfew.

Will be in #Mandsaur tomorrow to meet the families of farmers who lost their lives in the police firing yesterday  Office of RG (@OfficeOfRG) June 7, 2017

The Congress refuted reports that Gandhi was visiting Mandsaur to join farmers protest.

Canards and rumours were spread that Rahul Gandhi wanted to go there to participate in the protests. There was never any such plan, Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi told reporters.

He attacked the BJP for the five farmers deaths and also questioned PM Narendra Modis silence on the issue. However, the party stopped short of demanding chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhans resignation.

BJP has almost been acting like a curse of death for farmers. Distressed farmers are viewed by heartless BJP as fodder. On the one hand farmers are toiling and on the other, the BJP is killing the sons of the soil, he said.

The Opposition has also decided to a call a meeting of different farmers organisations in a bid to unite them and put pressure on the BJP government to waive off crop loans and fix the MSP at 50% profit margin.
The Communist Party of India (Marxist) appears headed for a new face-off on Wednesday between its Kerala and Bengal units over an old issue: To be or not to be with the Congress.

The Kerala unit of the party is learnt to be reluctant to allow the Bengal lobby to take the help of Congress, a foe in the southern state, in the Rajya Sabha elections.

While the Congress leadership has informally agreed to support Sitaram Yechurys candidature, many within the CPI(M) have objected to a third term for Yechury, citing a party rule that bars any member from getting a third term in the Upper House.

Politburo sources said the decision on the Rajya Sabha polls will be taken on Wednesday.

The Bengal unit has recommended only Yechurys name as the candidate, but the CPI(M) general secretary has indicated that he will be bound by the partys rules.

Kerala general-secretary and politburo member Kodiyari Balakrishnan has indicated that they dont want any pact with the Congress, when he issued a statement a few days before the politburo meeting.

If Yechury is stopped from contesting, the Congress may not support the CPI(M) and the seat will go to arch rival Mamata Banerjees Trinamool Congress.

Six seats from West Bengal, including that of Yechury, are up for election in July.

As things stand today, Trinamool Congress is sure to win five seats and the CPI(M) can retain its slot, provided the Congress supports the communists.

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Caught in an internal squabble, the CPI(M) brass deferred a decision on nominating general secretary Sitaram Yechury for Rajya Sabha poll.

After the biennial election schedule is announced, well take an appropriate decision, he said. Party sources added that even as the Kerala lobby is upset over an unprecedented third term for Yechury, the matter is still open.

In the upcoming poll, the Congress is ready to support Yechurys candidature from West Bengal. In the politburo meeting here on Wednesday, Kerala unit raised red flag to sending Yechury to Rajya Sabha with Congress support. The Bengal leaders quashed the resistance and argued that even during the UPA-era, the CPI(M) had backed the Congress. The Bengal leaders added that without Yechury, they will lose a seat to Trinamool.

The partys dogmatic section is also opposed to its leaders candidature as there is a rule that no one can contest after two terms. But a politburo member said, It is a general rule. There can always be exceptions. The Kerala and Andhra Pradesh units are also supporting Yechurys candidature.

The issue will now be resolved in the next meeting of the Central Committee where the Bengal leaders hope to have more voice.

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Was Ravindra Yadav drunk when he shot his son and injured another?

This question has rocked Bhagalpur district in Bihar, a dry state where consumption or possession of alcohol is punishable with jail for up to 10 years.

Yadavs younger son Chhotu, who escaped the alleged attack with injuries, told HT that his father was inebriated when he shot his elder brother dead.

But the police say the crime was motivated by a dispute over property, and there was no proof that Ravindra was drunk or addicted to alcohol. Ravindra, a former village head of Maheshi in Bhagalpur district, is absconding.

Sub-inspector Gagan Kumar Sudhakar of Sulatnganj police station said, According to the family members of the accused, there was a family dispute over property. The accused wanted to have his say while his sons were opposing the deal, he said.

Senior superintendent of police, Bhagalpur, Manoj Kumar, also confirmed the family dispute theory due to property.

But others say the police are trying to divert attention from the alcohol connection because the force is tasked to ensure Bihar remains a dry state since it went for total prohibition on April 5, 2016. Consumption and trade of alcohol in the state reflects on the efficiency of the police, making them liable for action.

The Bihar Prohibition and Excise Act, 2016, provides for stringent penal action against the accused as well as the police in case of deaths arising due to hooch tragedy.

Chhotu said his father was ticked off by the continued resistance of his sons to his consuming liquor on a regular basis, despite the prohibition in Bihar. Chhotu is undergoing treatment at the Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College Hospital (JLNMCH), Bhagalpur, and is reported to be out of danger.

The youngest brother, Pandav Yadav also echoed his brother on Ravindras drinking habit and the resultant tension at home.

This isnt the first time such a dispute over alcoholism has occurred in Bihar.

On Monday, a 45-year-old man died after reportedly consuming spurious liquor in Araria district, 320 kms north-east of Patna. Locals claimed the deceased was reeking of alcohol and died soon after consuming it, police, however, said it was a case of poisoning due to personal enmity.

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In 2007, police fired on farmers resisting the expropriation of their land in Nandigram, a rural area in the East Midanpore district of West Bengal.

The main confrontation took place in Sonachura, where locals had assembled to resist the government. They organised yagnas and read out passages from religious texts to keep up morale.

After police broke through makeshift blockades installed by the protesters, fourteen people were killed and over 70 were wounded. Local residents told the Calcutta press that armed CPI(M) cadres accompanied the police and helped attack villagers.

Governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi said in a statement to the media that the news of the violence filled him with cold horror.

The day after the attack, a division bench of Calcutta high court head by chief justice SS Nijjar ordered a CBI investigation into the incident. Intellectuals erupted in protest on the streets of Kolkata with many known to sympathise with the Left severely criticising the government.

Nandigram became a symbol. The violence contributed to the end of the Lefts 34-year rule in 2011.

It all started because Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, then the chief minister, had made a deal with the Indonesian Salim Group to build a chemical factory.

There were early warnings that the Left Front ignored. Violent protest was already developing in Singur, and several party leaders were wary about the Salim Groups past complicity with anti-Communist violence in Indonesia. Bhattacharjee pushed ahead anyway, desperate for private investment to generate new jobs.

On January 2, 2007, the Haldia Development Authority issued a preliminary notice that it wanted to acquire 14,500 acres over 27 mouzas. On January 3, more than 1,000 people gathered to protest. The government took no heed and went ahead with its plans.
Tensions run high in Madhya Pradeshs Mandsaur a day after five farmers were killed in police firing

The government struggled to tamp down tensions on Wednesday in Madhya Pradeshs Mandsaur district a day after police firing killed five farmers during protests in an incident that has snowballed into a nationwide political storm. Tensions ran high in the town of Pipalia as shops and markets remained closed and internet services suspended, with scores of police personnel patrolling the streets. Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi is likely to visit the spot today. Curfew has been imposed across the district. Angry farmers have said they will not cremate the five bodies unless chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan visited the district, and have called for a strike supported by the opposition Congress.

Read the story here.

Apathy, heavy losses: Why farmers in Madhya Pradesh are on warpath against Shivraj Singh Chouhan govt

About one-tenth of the farmer suicides in the past 16 years in Madhya Pradesh took place in a year, between February 2016 and 2017, telling a distressing story about farm despair in the state where agriculture growth had clocked 20% since 2014-15. Chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has celebrated farm sector success claiming five national Krishi Karman awards, ignoring farmers crying hoarse over poor remunerative price for their crop and increasing stranglehold of commission agents. The situation is bad in the Malwa-Nimad region, which comprises 15 districts, including Mandsaur, where five farmers reportedly died in police firing on Tuesday. Farmers are angry because the government neither made arrangements to procure the crop on time nor intervened to ensure a reasonable price.

Read the story here.

Army Major, three militants killed in Nagaland encounter

An army officer and three militants were killed in an encounter in Nagaland, the force said on Wednesday. The encounter on Tuesday night at Tijit near Lappa of Mon district, nearly 340 km north of the state capital Kohima also left three soldiers injured. Unconfirmed reports said a civilian had been killed but the army refused to confirm. The militants were believed to be from the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Khaplang) and the United Liberation Front of Asom (Independent).

Read the story here.

Govt abandons goal of training 500 million people in new skills by 2022

The government has abandoned its goal of training 500 million people in new skills by 2022, in a clear shift in strategy. Skill development ministry officials, at a press conference in New Delhi on Tuesday, also refused to spell out a new number that the Union government and its 22 departments and ministries will chase. We dont want to chase any number. Whether it is 150 million by the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) and 350 million by ministries  we are delinking it, not attaching any number, said Rajesh Aggarwal, director-general of training and a joint secretary in the skills ministry. Skill development minister Rajiv Pratap Rudy agreed. It will be demand driven than supply driven, he said.

Read the story here.

Arun Jaitley on a four-day visit to Paris, to sign OECD tax pact

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is in Paris on a four-day visit during which he will address foreign investors and sign the OECD pact that aims to check cross border tax evasion by MNCs. The Union Cabinet had last month approved signing of the multilateral convention of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. The convention aims to tackle base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) which is resorted to by MNCs through tax planning strategies by exploiting gaps and mismatches in tax rules. Jaitley will deliver the keynote address at the OECD meeting today and participate in a panel discussion on Stocktaking on Globalisation. He will also call on the French ministers of economy and defence during his visit.

Russian hackers planted false news story that led to Qatar crisis: Report

US intelligence officials believe Russian hackers planted a false news story that led Saudi Arabia and several allies to sever relations with Qatar, prompting a diplomatic crisis, CNN reported on Tuesday. FBI experts visited Qatar in late May to analyse an alleged cyber breach that saw the hackers place the fake story with Qatars state news agency. Saudi Arabia then cited the false item as part of its reason for instituting a diplomatic and economic blockade against Qatar. Qatars government said the May 23 news report attributed false remarks to the emirates ruler that appeared friendly to Iran and Israel, and questioned whether US President Donald Trump would last in office, according to CNNs report.

Read the story here.

US military praises Qatar as Trump tweet applauds Arab nations for severing ties

The Pentagon on Tuesday renewed praise of Qatar for hosting a vital US air base and for its enduring commitment to regional security, sticking to a message of reassurance even as President Donald Trump, via Twitter, applauded a decision by Arab powers to cut ties to the Gulf ally. It was the latest example of the tightrope that US officials are walking as Trumps tweets raise questions about existing US policy and the carefully scripted talking points used to explain it. In the case of Qatar, the stakes are high. More than 11,000 US and coalition forces are deployed to or assigned to al Udeid Air Base, from which more than 100 aircraft operate.

Read the story here.

Trade, immigration, desi politicians: The India angle to UKs Brexit elections

The focus of Thursdays mid-term election in the United Kingdom is supposed to be Brexit  the decision to leave the European Union  but it connects with India and the 1.5 million-strong Indian community here at various levels. The shape that Brexit takes under the new government is of much interest to nearly 800 Indian companies that use United Kingdom as their base to operate across the European Union and beyond. The UKs membership of the EU gives them several benefits that they may lose; some have already postponed expansion and other plans, or partly relocated in the EU. India is one of the key markets that Britain hopes will compensate for the loss of access to the European Single Market after Brexit.

Read the story here.

Champions Trophy: Pakistan face South Africa challenge in must-win match

Embarrassed by India in their opening match, Pakistan will strive to stay alive in the competition as they take on a confident South Africa in a must-win Group A ICC Champions Trophy match in Birmingham today. The two teams are approaching the encounter with contrasting results in their tournament openers. Pakistan received a severe 124-run hammering from India while South Africa outclassed Sri Lanka by 96 runs.
A militant, seen at the funeral of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Sabzar Bhat who was killed in an encounter in Tral, surrendered at a police station in Handwara in Jammu and Kashmir, police said on Wednesday.

Video clips of the militant, Danish Ahmed, a resident of Kulangam in Handwara, were shot during the funeral in Tral and circulated across social media. He was seen wearing a battle pouch with a grenade.

Police said that during investigation, they found that Danish was a student of BSc (third year) at Doon PG College of Agriculture Science and Technology in Dehradun.

Found to be involved in a few stone-pelting incidents at Handwara in 2016, Danish was picked up by police but let off later after counselling.

Police from Handwara and the armys 21 Rashtriya Rifles got in touch with his parents and asked them to counsel their son to surrender. Danish later surrendered before police and the army in Handwara.

On being questioned, he revealed that he was in touch with militants of south Kashmir region on social media, and it was on their instigation that he decided to become a militant.

He said he was tasked by Hizbul Mujahideen commanders to lead some local youth in north Kashmir to militancy as in south Kashmir.

However, after spending a few days with the militants, police said he realised the futility of joining the militant ranks.

A case under the Arms Act has been registered in Handwara, and investigation is on.

Danishs case is being considered under the Jammu and Kashmir Surrendered Militants Rehabilitation Policy.

The HM however said that Danish was not affiliated with the outfit.

In an e-mailed statement to KNS news agency, Hizb spokesperson Saleem Hashmi, quoting the outfit vice chief Saif-ul-llah Khalid, said that the claims made by police were not true.He said that the Danish had no links with Hizbul and that such acts should be seen as tactics of Indian agencies.
Indias first female combat aircraft pilots are likely to fly the supersonic Sukhoi-30 jets after they complete the last leg of their training in September, Indian Air Force officials told Hindustan Times.

The three women are currently training on British Hawk advanced jet trainers at an IAF facility at Kalaikunda in West Bengal. Bhawana Kanth, Mohana Singh and Avani Chaturvedi were commissioned as flying officers in the IAF last June.

There are varied options but we are working on plans to assign the women fighter pilots to fly Su-30 fighter planes initially. Its a new generation, twin-seater aircraft, a senior officer familiar with the plan said.

The women volunteered for the fighter stream after the government ended a rigid gender-based combat exclusion policy in October 2015.

The women are part of a batch of 40 flying officers training on Hawks at the Kalaikunda air force station. The batch was supposed to be assigned to fighter squadrons in June itself but the plan has been delayed by three months due to training backlog and weather-related issues. Such delays are not unusual.

Former IAF chief Arup Raha, during whose tenure the fighter stream was thrown open to women, endorsed the plan to let the women begin with flying Su-30 fighter jets. I would prefer that the women go to a Su-30 squadron. Its one of the most modern fighters in the IAF fleet and we also have the jets in large numbers. Its a frontline plane and the women will learn to handle the systems faster, Air Chief Marshal Raha (retd) told HT.

He headed the IAF for three years before retiring on December 31, 2016.

The IAF has contracted 272 Su-30 MKI fighter planes, out of which nearly 240 have been delivered. The remaining are likely to be inducted over the next three years.

The women fighter pilots could be stationed together considering there are only three of them in the IAF. In the initial stages, the pressure could be high. Its good to have company. They can learn from each other, Raha added.

IAF sources said the performance of the women during their training matched that of their male colleagues. However, no female trainee has opted for the fighter stream after the three women.

The IAF has advised women trainees to put off motherhood for at least four years after they are commissioned as fighter pilots so that their flying schedule is not disrupted.
In Bihar, the threat of confinement in jail appears to work wonders on those walking out of a wedding!

On Tuesday, it took the threat of police case and jail to convince a whimsical groom in Bhojpur district of south central Bihar to agree to go ahead with a wedding he had all but called of on what the brides side thought was a flimsy excuse.

The wedding rituals were performed at the brides native village, late night on Tuesday, a full 24 hours after the originally appointed hour, on Monday night, following my intervention, confirmed Dinanath Singh, station house officer (SHO) of Agiaon Bazar police station In Bhojpur.

Police identified the reluctant groom as Anil Kumar, 25, son of Veeru Singh of Sanya village under Piro police station of Bhojpur, who was slated to wed Gita Kumari, 22, daughter of Rampravesh Singh of Akarhi village under Agiaon Bazar police station, about 85 km west of state capital, Patna.

The wedding party had reached Akharhi for the Monday night wedding. The dwar puja ceremony, at which the groom and other members of party were ceremonially received, was a grand affair and it was time of the vistors to enjoy an afternoon of dance and frolic.

Police said the trouble started when some members of the baraat party started misbehaving with the women dancers commissioned by the brides side to entertain them. Some youth climbed on to the stage and allegedly started getting familiar with the dancers, locally referred to as baijis.

When matters started going out of hand, the people from the brides side tried to restrain the effervescent baraatis. To this, the groom and some of his friends to a strong objection and a scuffle between the two sides ensued.

Thereafter, the groom, angry over what he claimed was his humiliation, decided to call off the wedding and returned to his native village, along with other members of the wedding party, ignoring the entreaties of the brides family.

The SHO said the brides side brought the matter to the Agian Bazar police station on Monday night and by the time the police reached Akharhi, the wedding party had already left. Then, on Tuesday morning,he called people from both sides to sort out their differences but the groom remained adamant he wont marry.

After much convincing, the groom agreed but onlyon the condition that the wedding rituals would be performed either at a temple or on police station premises. But the brides insisted it had to happen at the 'marwa' (a special platform) prepared for the occasion as to perform the rituals at any other place would be inauspicious.

When nothing else worked, I warned the groom that the brides side was all set to register an FIR against him and he ought to be prepared for a stint in jail. It was then that the groom agreed to have the wedding rituals at the brides place, the SHO told HT.

The groom had since returned to his village, Sanya, along with his bride, he confirmed.

In a similar, though not identical case last month, a Bhojpur man, Arjuna Dubey, wed Riya Kumari, a girl he knew for five years, only after she filed an FIR at the Ara womens police station, accusing him of raping her on the promise of marriage. The wedding took place at the Aaranya Devi temple at Ara in Bhojpur.
A Communist Party of India legislator in Kerala is in trouble with her party after photographs of her daughters wedding showed the bride covered in gold jewellery triggered criticism.

MLA Gita Gopis daughters wedding drew allegations of hypocrisy against the CPI, which has backed the Left governments austerity measures.

A CPI leader, Mullakara Ratnakaran, had during the last assembly session urged the chief minister to find a way to stop extravagant weddings, such as the one organised by Gopi.

One might think she is the daughter of a rich trader or a millionaire. However she is the daughter of a CPI legislator. We can only be shocked, activist and political commentator KM Shahjehan wrote on social media.

He was referring to photos of Gopis daughter, who is seen wearing glittering bangles almost up to the elbow on both hands and with several heavy necklaces around her neck.

Look, Communists have outweighed business magnates in gold, said another activist while debating the gala wedding on social media.

The marriage was held in Sree Krishna temple in Guruvayoor on Sunday and many ministers and legislators attended it.

Gopi is a two-time MLA.

Which mother wouldnt do this for her daughter? I did only my duty as the mother, Gopi said as the issue gathered traction.

She said she purchased 50 sovereigns for the wedding and the rest were gifted by her relatives and friends.

However her political opponents pointed to her 2016 assembly election affidavit in which she had declared total assets of Rs 58 lakh.

There are certain norms for party workers and leaders on such occasions and the MLA should have been cautious on this. We have asked the partys Thirssur district committee to conduct an inquiry, a senior party leader said admitting that the wedding invited enough embarrassment to the party.
Unidentified assailants hurled petrol bomb at the Trivandrum district committee office of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Wednesday.

The attack took place around 9.15 p.m.

According to reports, a few chairs that were laid on the portico of the office were damaged.

Kerala: Petrol bomb thrown at BJP Thiruvananthapuram district committee office.No injuries pic.twitter.com/FrpETtvsKR  ANI (@ANI_news) June 7, 2017

However, no casualty or injury has been reported so far.

Meanwhile, the police have launched a probe into the matter.

The BJP has called for a strike on Thursday Trivandrum district in view of the incident.

Launching a scathing attack on theCommunist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)) for the alleged attacks on the BJP workers in Kerala, party president Amit Shah had said that the more leftist violence is unleashed upon the saffron party workers in the state, the more the Lotus will blossom here.

Shah said it had been noticed that violence against BJP and Sangh Parivar members goes up whenever the Left parties comt to power. After the Left government came to power in Kerala, 13 BJP, RSS workers have been killed.
At least 23 people were killed after an explosion in a firecracker factory in Balaghat, about 440km southeast of Bhopal, on Wednesday.

The blast sparked a blaze around 3pm, which firefighters tamed in two hours.

Superintendent of police Amit Sanghi told HT that 23 people died in the fire incident at the Barsa fire cracker factory in Khari village. He said the incident took place around 3pm after which senior officials from police and district administration reached the spot.

Bodies were fished out from the rubble of the fallen structure and the injured were sent to the hospital. Eight severely injured people were sent to Nagpur for treatment, while two other injured are being treated a local hospital here, he said.

Additional director general of police G Janardan said the explosion in Katera village was so powerful that the factory walls collapsed.

District collector Bharat Yadav said more workers could be still inside the gutted factory.

Dozens of employees managed to escape unhurt. An inquiry was ordered to know exactly what triggered the explosion, Yadav said.

Chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan announced on Wednesday compensation of Rs 2 lakh for the families of the victims who died in the fire. The state government would also bear the medical expenses of the injured.

Explosion and fire in firecracker factories, as well as other manufacturing units, are common in India because of inadequate safety measures and regulations that are breached with impunity.

The biggest accident was the explosion at Om Sakthi Fireworks Industries factory in Sivakasi, Tamil Nadu, in September 2012. At least 40 people were killed and more than 70 injured. The factory did not have a valid licence.

Despite the disasters and the great amount of attention to the dangerous working conditions, factories largely remain unsafe.

A massive fire at a government-run fuel and grain depot in Madhya Pradesh killed 13 people in April. Later that month, five workers were burned to death in Jaipur after tonnes of molten rubber leaked at a tyre unit.

In the southern city of Hyderabad, six workers were burnt alive at an air conditioning manufacturing plant in February.

(WIth inputs from agencies)
At least five farmers were killed and several injured in Madhya Pradeshs Mandsaur district when police fired on protesters demanding better prices in the drought-ravaged region that recorded a farm suicide every five hours in 2016-17.

Below is a detailed account of how the violence escalated

June 1: The agitation starts and farmers stop vehicles carrying milk, vegetables. At some places, protesters pour the milk on roads and throw away the vegetables. This goes on for the next four days.

June 5: Farmers head to Pipliyamandi and forcibly close traders shops. A few traders resist and their shops are vandalised. After a majority of protesting farmers leave, traders allegedly catch hold of the remaining few and thrash them. One of the farmers suffers a head injury and is sent to a hospital in Udaipur in Rajasthan. Farmers allegedly burn down the houses of traders in retaliation.

June 6: Farmers find out traders are at Pipliyamandi police station to lodge a complaint against them. The farmers head to the police station and demand the traders be handed over to them. The police refuse and CRPF is called in. Agitated, farmers allegedly start throwing stones. The forces retaliate and shots are fired at the farmers.

Five farmers are killed in two separate incidents. State home minister Bhupendra Singh says, There were two incidents at Pipalia. In one of the incidents police had to fire in self-defence when a mob gheraoed the police station. In the other incident, the police fired when there was firing from the mob.

Following the farmer deaths, protesters torch trucks and other vehicles on the Neemuch-Mhow highway. Police keep their distance and the frenzied mob sets more than a dozen vehicles on fire.

June 7: Farmers start a chakka-jam (blockade) on the highway at Barkheda with body of one of the slain farmers, Abhishekh Patidar. They heckle and manhandle Mandsaur district collector Swatantra Kumar Singh when he approaches them to complete Patidars last rites and ensure peace.

The protesters perform Patidars last rites, but continue the highway blockade during which vehicles are torched again. Among the vehicles set on fire is a multi-axle vehicle transporting new motorbikes.

Protesters also torch a small factory in the area owned by one of the traders they suspected of having beaten farmers two days ago.

The police arrive at the arson site nearly an hour later. The protesters make a run for villages nearby and police do not give chase.

Some protesters also heckle journalists covering the unrest.

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The farmers intensified protests across Madhya Pradesh on Wednesday despite chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhans appeals for peace after police firing killed five of the protesters in Mandsaur who were on the warpath for better crop prices and loan waiver.

The farmers heckled Mandsaur district collector Swatantra Kumar Singh, forcing him to retreat from the blockade site on Mhow-Neemuch highway at Barkhedapath, located about 20 km from Mandsaur town.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi called an emergency meeting on Wednesday as the BJP government in Madhya Pradesh scrambled to contain the snowballing farmer protests in Mandsaur. Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi will visit the area on Thursday.

Political leaders exchanged barbs with the Congress blaming the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government of neglecting farmers issues and the ruling BJP accusing the opposition party of fueling protests.

The Centre said it had sent 1,100 anti-riots police personnel to Mandsaur and would send five additional battalions of paramilitary force to Madhya Pradesh. Five battalions are already deployed.

Here are the highlights of how the protest unfolded on Wednesday:

8. 20pm: Rahul Gandhi tweets that he is visiting Mandasaur on Thursday, hours after Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi slammed rumours that the Congress vice-president participating in the ongoing farmers protest.

7.30pm: The Central government will send five additional battalions of paramilitary force to Madhya Pradesh. Five battalions are already deployed.

6.30pm: Agitation by farmers in Mandsaur district has affected train services in Rajasthan. Several trains have been diverted or cancelled, North-West Railways spokesperson said.

6.09pm: Rajasthan Congress chief Sachin Pilot accuses the BJP-ruled states of being insensitive towards farmers and suppressing their voice.

6.08pm: The Punjab Congress demands the resignation of Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan over the death of five farmers in Mandsaur.

6.05pm: Centre sends 1,100 anti-riots police personnel to Mandsaur where five were killed in violence during a protest by farmers.

5.42pm: The chief minister announced the government will launch a debt resolution scheme to lessen the pressure of loan defaulters.

5.32pm: The government will purchase summer moong dal for Rs 5,225 per quintal and tuar and urad Dal moong for 5,050 per quintal between June 10 and 30, the chief minister has announced.

5.30pm: CM Chouhan said his government is creating price stabilisation fund for Rs 1000 crore. It will help farmers get the exact cost of their products.

5.22pm: Chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan says his government has taken many big decisions in the interests of farmers. We are with the farmers in their times of sorrow.

5.15pm: M Deuskar, the Madhya Pradesh inspector general (law and order), said violence reported in Ujjain, Dewas, Mandsaur, Neemuch and Sehore. curfew imposed only in Mandsaur and Piplia Mandi.

4.45pm: Farmers in MPs Sehore district vandalise vehicles demanding loan waiver and better procurement prices.

#WATCH: Farmers in MP's Sehore vandalize vehicles & block roads as a part of protest for demanding loan waiver and better procurement prices pic.twitter.com/3ruS44j6fR  ANI (@ANI_news) June 7, 2017

4.30pm: Madhya Pradesh Human Rights Commission has taken cognizance of the farmers death, sought explanation from senior officers on the incident.

4.20pm: Amid farmers protest in Madhya Pradesh, Union agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh has called off a cabinet briefing and a scheduled press conference in New Delhi.

4.18pm: Farmers were seeking loan waivers and right price, but BJP killed them by bullets. This is the sad reality of Mandsaur, says Congress leader Abhishek Singhvi.

4.15pm: Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi questions the BJP government, says it has insulted the farmers of India.

4.10pm: Meanwhile in Maharashtra, Shiv Sena leaders get head tonsured as a mark of support to protesting farmers in Beed.

Shiv Sena leaders in Beed get head tonsured as a mark of support to protesting farmers. (ANI)

3.48pm: Police bolster security arrangements around the Bhopal border to stop farmers from marching to the state capital.

3.45pm: Protests are spreading to neighbouring Dewas district. Farmers pelt stones at police station and torch vehicles parked inside the premises.

In Neemuch district, farm protests force police to fire tear-gas shells as locals try to set police station ablaze.

In capital Bhopal, farmers protest, burn effigy of chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and damage vehicles.



3.35pm: Amid farmers protest in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, RBI governor Urjit Patel said farm loan waiver is a path that needs to be tread carefully.

Patel said the risk of going down the slippery path of waiver could dissipate the important gains that the states made in fiscal rectitude over the last 2/3 years.

3.32pm: Madhya Pradesh home ministry writes to Union home ministry asking for additional forces in Neemuch, Mandsaur, Dewas and Ujjain where farmers are on the warpath, news agency ANI reported.

3.31pm: I am a farmer and understand your problems. You can be assured your government implement all things, CM Chouhan said in a tweet.

3.30pm: CM Chouhan urged people to not pay attention to rumours, saying he is constantly in touch with officials.

                        ShivrajSingh Chouhan (@ChouhanShivraj) June 7, 2017

3.28pm: Chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan appeals for peace in Mandsaur in a fresh series of tweets.

3:10pm: The government is committed to the welfare of farmers, but those elements trying to disturb the law and order situation in the state will be dealt with sternly, says Chitnis.

3:07pm: The MP government will encourage farmers to go for crop insurance, but it will be made optional from now on, says minister Chitnis.

3:05pm: MP government has already started procuring onions at Rs 8 per kg. Around 4,500 quintals have been procured across the state, says minister Archana Chitnis.

3:03pm: MP government will provide support price for moong and tur. Support price of Rs 5,025 per quintal for moong and Rs 5,050 per quintal for tur will be provided to the farmers, says Archana Chitnis.

3:01pm: Madhya Pradesh minister Archana Chitnis said farmers would be provided 50% cash and the rest through RTGS (real time gross settlement)) when they sell their produce at the krishi mandis.

2:55pm: A senior police officer said what unnerved them was the statement of collector Swatantra Kumar Singh that no order was given to police to start firing, and the rapid politicisation of the issue.

2:52pm: On the ground, situation is tense but no fresh incidents of violence. We are doing our best to control the situation, and taking action wherever necessary, said inspector general of police Madhukumar.

2:50pm: State BJP spokesman Rajneesh Agarwal defends government and maintains that the Congresss plans of provoking farmers would come to a naught, pointing to the central-governments Krishi Karman award that Madhya Pradesh won five times in a row and the states annual agricultural growth of about 20%.

2:46pm: External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj, home minister Rajnath Singh, finance minister Arun Jaitley and road transport minister Nitin Gadkari attend PM Modis emergency meet.

2:45pm: Prime Minister Narendra Modi holds emergency meet with top ministers over Mandsaur protests, takes stock of situation.

2:42pm: Krishi Cabinet has approved Rs 1000 crore for Krishi Mulya Sthirikaran Kosh, says MP minister Archana Chitnis.

2:40pm: Madhya Pradesh minister Archana Chitnis says government will start Krishi Rin Samadhan Yojana, where interest rate on loans will be lesser, will help defaulting farmers take credit.

Will start Krishi Rin Samadhan Yojana, whr interest rate on loans will be lesser;will help defaulting farmers to tk credit: A Chitnis,MP min pic.twitter.com/jihMtJQOCt  ANI (@ANI_news) 7 June 2017

2:35pm: We have been asked not to take on the farmers because our bosses feel it will only complicate the situation. So we are deliberately reaching the spot late to prevent a direct confrontation, said an officer on duty who not willing to be named.

2:30pm: I express grief over this incident. I express condolence to the deceased farmers families. Shivraj is capable of tackling the problem of these farmers, Raman Singh tells the media in Raipur.

2:27pm: This is a sad event, and as chief minister Shivraj Singh has said, there is political influence in it. The innocent farmers are being used for political motive, says Raman Singh.

2:25pm: Eyewitnesses say police mute during arson and violence. Police arrived an hour after the collector was manhandled. Off the record, officers say they are spooked by rapid politicisation of the incident and protests.

2:20pm: Chhattisgarh CM Raman Singh says innocent farmers are being used for political motives.

2:15pm: This is a Congress conspiracy. They are fuelling violence. Shivraj Singh Chouhan has focussed on agriculture: BJP general secretary Kailash Vijayavargiya.

2:10pm: Police arrive in Mandsaur, hours after vehicles were torched. Most suspects have left the place and escaped into nearby villages. Police standing by.

2:05pm: Angry farmers set ablaze a small factory owned by one of the traders who had beaten the farmers.

2:01pm: The last rites of a farmer who died in police firing on Tuesday, Abhishek Patidar, has been performed.

1:58pm: PM (Narendra Modi) has ordered an inquiry and the truth will come out. I ask the Congress why they want instant solution to farmers problems in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh when they have no solution for farmers in Congress-ruled Karnataka? asks Venkaiah Naidu.

1:57pm: Vehicles parked at a police station in Devass Hatpipalya set on fire, during farmers agitation in Madhya Pradesh, reports ANI.

1:55pm: I just want to warn the Congress not to fuel violence in the name of farmers. It will boomerang on you. Whatever the condition of farmers across the country is because of the long years of neglect of the agricultural sector by you (Congress), says Venkaiah Naidu.

1:54pm: They (farmers) might not be getting ideal price for their crops and they are protesting against that, sure, and the state government is addressing these issues, Congress is politicising it, Venkaiah Naidu tells PTI.

1:53pm:  20% of farmers in the country are in MP... he (Chouhan) has encouraged them, has got them land and electricity. Because of this, their production has increased, says Venkaiah Naidu.

1:52pm: Madhya Pradesh is among the best performing states on all counts and Chouhan is one of the BJPs best chief ministers, says Venkaiah Naidu.

1:51pm: It is a very sad turn of events in a state that is the most peaceful state in India. Congress is trying to politicise farmers problems after they failed to counter Shivraj Singh Chouhan politically in the state, Naidu tells PTI.

1:50pm: Union minister M Venkaiah Naidu blames Congress for instigating farmers in Mandsaur

1.46pm: Kamal Nath demands proper investigation into injustice with farmers in Mandsaur.

Laashon par boli lagayi ja rahi hai,sharm ki baat hai. 5 lakh, 10 lakh, 1 crore ki baat kari: Kamal Nath,Congress MP on Mandsaur incident pic.twitter.com/YBk06RdGRR  ANI (@ANI_news) 7 June 2017

1:45pm: Congress leader Kamal Nath says CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan must resign. At the end, it is his responsibility, and it would be unjustified if shifted on any police officer.

1:32pm: Met Rahul ji today, we are planning to go there (Mandsaur, MP). We will go together if we do, Sharad Yadav of JD (U)

1:28pm: Cant recall such a massacre, they are giving death figures as 5,6 but I believe there are more, says Sharad Yadav of the Janata Dal (United), reports ANI.

1:27pm: Inspector general of police in Ujjain V Madhukumar told HT, In response to the message that Rahul Gandhi wants to land at Neemuch, we have communicated that the airstrip is not operational.

1:24pm: Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi to visit violence-hit Mandsaur on Thursday, party sources told HT in Delhi.

1:21pm: Chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan was so pained by the death of five farmers that he didnt eat on Tuesday evening, says BJP. We almost forced him to eat at least one chapati. We should do justice to this son of farmer also, said BJP vice-president Prabhat Jha.

Violence has erupted in Mandsaur again on Wednesday, a day after five farmers were killed in police firing. (HT PHOTO)

1:17pm: Congress is playing with blood and corpses of farmers , says BJP national vice-president Prabhat Jha.

1:15pm: Rahul Gandhi can reach Mandsaur any moment, says Congress. Wrong info being spread that he would participate in farmers agitation, state party leader Mohan Prakash tells ANI

1:13pm: Is this how Shivraj Chouhan Govt responds to farmers demands? A demand for a fair price is met with death, tweets the Congress party.

1:10pm: Shivraj ji has done a lot of work for farmers, in the agriculture sector. Mandsaur incident is unfortunate, says Chhattisgarh chief minister Raman Singh

1:07pm: Leader of Opposition Ajay Singh and state Congress president Arun Yadav have been denied permission to visit Mandsaur . No clarity on when Rahul Gandhi will visit the spot.

1:03pm: Farmers fighting for their rights have died and the government is blaming the opposition. What can be more shameful than this, tweets senior Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia.

   ,            ,      ! pic.twitter.com/xbDZ0IUJIX  Jyotiraditya Scindia (@JM_Scindia) June 6, 2017

1:01pm: Internet services being suspended in neighbouring districts of Ratlam, Neemuch, and Ujjain until further notice, ANI reports

12:55pm: Funerals of the five deceased farmers in Mandsaur on Tuesday havent occurred yet. Farmers have demanded that chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan visit the spot.

12:50pm: Unidentified people torch 8-10 vehicles in Mandsaur, news agency ANI reports. This is the second straight day of violence after similar burnings on Tuesday.

12:20pm: Protesting farmers heckle Mandsaur district collector Swatantra Kumar Singh and tore his shirt around when he tries to talk to them .

12:10pm: Farmer protesters are sitting with the body of one of the slain farmers, Abhishek Patidar, on the Mhow-Neemuch highway, demanding a government response

12:00pm: Police killed our children, who had gone in support of our just demands. We want action against them, said a farmer in Pipliyamandi.

11:45pm: Farmers demand the government immediately hand over compensation of Rs 1 crore each to the kin of the five dead farmers. We want the money now. We will not believe in the assurances of the government till we have the cheque in our hand, said a protester.

(With agency inputs)
The killing of five farmers in police firing in Madhya Pradesh is bad news for chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, 14 years after the Bhararitya Janata Party (BJP) swept to power. The state goes to polls next year and analysts and political commentators feel the current turmoil might turn the farming community against the ruling party.

The BJP is keeping up a brave face for the moment, saying the crisis will pass. This was completely Congress sponsored violence. In such a situation the Congress will not gain anything politically. The state government has fulfilled almost every demand of the farmers in the past over 10 years, insisted former MP and veteran BJP leader Kailash Sarang.

But many others disagree. Congress has really benefited in the short term, but it remains to be seen if it would be able to cash in on the situation in the long run, said political commentator Girijashankar.

In a state where farmers account for a sizable chunk of the 50 million electorate, the political ramifications of the farmer deaths could be huge. A nervous state government initially attempted to deny the complicity of the police after news broke that farmers agitating for better crop prices had been fired on in Mandsaur on Tuesday. Through the day, chief minister Chouhan and home minister Bhupendra Singh went on record to say, Police didnt fire at the farmers.

By evening however, the tone and tenor of party leaders had turned defensive. The home minister admitted that the police personnel fired in at the crowd in self-defence. The government also increased the compensation to the families of the deceased farmers from Rs 5 lakh to Rs 1 crore, the largest ex-gratia payment in Madhya Pradesh so far.

Farmers torch trucks at Mhow-Neemuch Highway in Mandsaur district of Madhya Pradesh on Wednesday. (PTI Photo)

Many, including those even in the administration, are blaming the chief minister. First, he had reportedly refused to acknowledge the agitation when it began on June 1, and then dubbed the protesters as anti-social elements after the demonstrations turned violent.

Rather than engaging with the farmers, the chief minister is also accused of seeking to divide them by ignoring their leaders such as Shivkumar Sharma and Anil Yadav. Instead, he struck a bargain with the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh (BKS), a farmer body associated with the Rashritya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). The BKS immediately announced its withdrawal from the agitation on Sunday evening, further angering the farmers across western Madhya Pradesh.

To make matters worse, state BJP president Nandkumar Singh Chauhan said the farmers affiliated with the BKS would felicitate the CM for defusing the agitation by marginally raising the procurement prices for onions and lentils. The statement alienated the farmers more, even forcing the BKS to distance itself from the planned felicitation.

A state of farmers

The tragic events in Mandsaur have given fresh ammunition for another round of political slug fest.

Congress, the principal opposition party in the state, is trying to seize the opportunity and punch holes in the state governments claim of successfully turning around the agrarian economy.

Accusing the government of betraying the farmers, Congress spokesman Bhupendra Gupta said chief minister Chouhan spoke of farmers welfare all these years but did precious little. Gupta has also been quick to add that the Congress was a real well-wisher of the farmers.

The party is hoping that following the Mandsaur violence, the perception would grow that economic benefits have bypassed the farmers.

State BJP spokesman Rajneesh Agarwal, however, defended the state government and maintained that Congress plans would come to a naught, pointing to the Central-governments Krishi Karman award that Madhya Pradesh won five times in a row and the states annual agricultural growth of about 20%. These figures, he said, spoke of the prosperity of farmers in Madhya Pradesh.

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Five persons were killed as the farmers agitation in Mandsaur district of Madhya Pradesh turned violent on Tuesday. Farmers in the state are protesting since June 1 over various demands including higher minimum support prices. The following is a list of protests by farmers across India in the past few years.

January 18, 2017

Two farmers died in West Bengals Bhangar as farmers opposed construction of a power grid substation to transmit power between West Bengal and a part of Bihar.

October 1, 2016

Five people died and as many as 40 were injured after police opened fire on a protest in Chirudih village near Hazaribagh in Jharkhand. The villagers protested the acquisition of land by NTPC for their coal mines.

August 30, 2016

Two farmers lost their lives and 40 were injured in clashes between villagers and police in Jharkhands Ramgarh district. The villagers were protesting over a power plant for which they stand to lose their homes, when violence broke out in Gola, 53 km from Ranchi.

November 13, 2012

A farmer died in police firing at Sangli-Pachwamail road in Sangli district of Maharashtra after an agitation against higher sugarcane prices turned violent.

May 8, 2011

Two Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) personnel and a farmer were killed when farmers agitating against land acquisition for the Yamuna Expressway turned violent at Bhatta Parsaul village, 25 km from Greater Noida.

August 9, 2011

Four farmers died in Maval on the Mumabi-Pune expressway when police opened fire to quell an agitation by villagers who gathered to protest the laying of a pipeline from Pavana Dam to Pimpri Chinchwad.

October 10, 2011

Four jute farmers were killed and eight others injured when police opened fire to quell a group of cultivators who blocked National Highway 52 to protest minimum support price of their products near Dalgaon in Darrang district of Assam.

August 15, 2010

Two persons were killed in police firing on farmers who held demonstrations for nearly three weeks at Tappal, 60 km from Aligarh, demanding compensation at the rate paid to Noida and Greater Noida farmers.

July 17, 2010

Two farmers were killed and dozens injured when police opened fire and resorted to lathi charge to quell angry agitators protesting the establishment of a 2,640 MW thermal power project in Andhra Pradesh

August 13, 2008

Four persons were killed and 50 injured, including 15 policemen, in police firing and clashes after the farmers agitation near Greater Noida Development Authority office turned violent The farmers were demanding enhanced compensation for their land acquired in 2003 and 2005 by the Uttar Pradesh government on the lines of those acquired in 2008.

March 14, 2007

Police fired at protesting farmers and locals, killing 14 and injuring more than 70 in Nandigram in West Bengal. It is believed that armed CPI(M) cadres accompanied police and joined the assault.
A farmers agitation demanding loan waivers and higher crop prices in Madhya Pradesh spread to large parts of the state on Wednesday with protesters torching vehicles, targeting police stations and attacking government officials.

The flare-up occurred a day after five farmers were killed in police firing in Mandsaur, where district collector Swatantra Kumar Singh was heckled and assaulted on Wednesday when he was trying to pacify farmers blocking a highway.

As the BJP-ruled state grappled to contain the situation, the Centre rushed five battalions of paramilitary forces to Madhya Pradesh. Six battalions were sent on Tuesday to assist police.

The farmers uprising in Madhya Pradesh, as well as neighbouring Maharashtra over similar demands, poses a big challenge for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who stormed to power three year ago with the promise of freeing farmers of a cycle of debts.

Farmers in Rajasthan, another BJP-ruled state, also announced a strike from next week over the same demands even as the partys ally in Maharashtra, Shiv Sena, skipped a cabinet meeting called by chief minister Devendra Fadnavis over the farmers issue.

Information and broadcasting minister M Venkaiah Naidu, however, accused the Congress of instigating the violence in Mandsaur.

Congress is trying to give it a political twist. I only want to tell them not to politicise the issue...because it will boomerang on you, Naidu said in Delhi

Congress activists protest during a 'Madhya Pradesh bandh' in Bhopal. (PTI Photo)

The MP government also denied permission to Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi to visit curfew-bound Mandsaur on Wednesday. The party said Gandhi is likely to reach the district on Thursday accompanied by general secretary Kamal Nath and Janata Dal (United) leader Sharad Yadav.

Rattled by the widespread protests, the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government said it was working on a crop-loan settlement scheme to waive interests of a section of around 6 lakh farmers, 30% of the states farming community.

We are working on a formula. This is not a loan-waiver scheme but interest is likely to be waived. We would come out with details later, minister Archana Chitnis said after attending a meeting chaired by chief minister Chouhan.

The Centre also rushed 1,100 anti-riot police personnel to Mandsaur to help restore peace in the district. Around 600 personnel of the Rapid Action Force, a specialised anti-riot force, had already reached the area to assist the local administration, a home ministry official said.

Officials said in Bhopal the violence spread to several districts during a statewide shutdown called by several farmers bodies and backed by the Congress.

Protesters torched several buses and other vehicles on the Bhopal-Indore highway, halting traffic for hours in Dewas. Eye-witnesses said passengers, crying for help, ran to agriculture fields for safety.

Protesters pelted stones at police stations in the district and set a police outpost on fire. They also burnt down several vehicles including seven buses and a state-owned medical van.

In Neemuch, police fired tear gas shells to quell protesting farmers who tried to set the local police station on fire while in Dhar, farmers pelted stones on police.

In Ujjain district, clashes were reported between protesters and police. Sources said three police personnel were injured in the clashes. In Khargone district, police caned agitating farmers, who damaged nearly a dozen vehicles and ransacked properties.

In Bhopals Misrod area, farmers tried to burn the effigy of the chief minister but were stopped by police.

A toll tax plaza at Mandsaurs Pipliayamandi was ransacked. Several vehicles, a warehouse and a factory were also set on fire.

A policeman was also assaulted in Mandsaur while a bank building, a petrol pump and several shops were set on fire. A vehicle of a former MLA was also set on fire.

Police lathicharge commuters on the Mhow-Neemuch highway in Mandsaur. (Mujeeb Faruqui/HT Photo)

It is the police who killed our children who had gone in support of our demands, said a farmer in Pipliyamandi, demanding action against the policemen.

The farmers killed on Tuesday were cremated at their respective villages in Mandsaur on Wednesday.

The four-lane Neemuch-Mhow highway, that connects the entire Malwa region, was deserted between Mandsaur and Neemuch, a 50 km stretch.

All roads to the district were sealed and internet services in Mandsaur and surrounding districts remained suspended.

The farmers said the government should immediately hand over the compensation of Rs 1 crore each to the kin of the dead, announced by the chief minister. They also demanded that the slain farmers be declared as martyrs.

We want the money now. We will not believe in the assurances of the government till we have the cheque in our hand, said a protester.

Madhya Pradesh is cited as one of the biggest agriculture success stories in India in recent times but successive droughts have played havoc for farmers dependent on rains for their crops.

From last February to mid-February this year, at least 1,982 farmers and farm labourers committed suicide in MP, data from the National Crime Records Bureau show. Most of the deaths are attributed to the farmers inability to pay of debts taken from private money-lenders in high rates of interest.

(With agency inputs)
India is considering mercy killing as a method of controlling the population of wild animals for the first time. The proposal is part of a draft of a new government plan that focuses on wildlife conservation.

Even as traditional habitats and migration routes for wild animals are deteriorating, the National Wildlife Action Plan says that the population of some wild animals, such as nilgai, are increasing. With numbers that are unsustainable for their diminished ecosystems, some animals  including, the report says, nilgai, elephants, and rhesus monkeys  have undertaken new forms of crop raiding.

These changes in environment and behaviour are leading to a rise in conflict, often violent, between humans and animals.

The Action Plan, which provides a roadmap on wildlife conservation from this year to 2031, mentions a variety of potential solutions. It suggests studying how to devise human land-use practices that would reduce the number of conflicts, and it recommends constituting a workforce within state forest departments that would be devoted to addressing conflicts as they occur.

The plan also recommends the scientific management of wildlife populations and refers to the need to define and identify the relevant procedures for mercy killing.

This language is meant to signal need to establish a practical and legally binding protocol on the subject of mercy killing and euthanasia of wild animals based on the advice of a committee of experts drawn from the wildlife and the veterinary sciences, said a senior official at the environment ministry.

While euthanasia denotes only the killing of animals that are already terminally ill, mercy killing involves killing animals for reasons of space, lack of proper centres, resources and personnel, according to the draft of the policy.

Last year, the environment ministry designated nilgai, wild boars, and rhesus monkeys as vermin in three states. This is the classification given to animals like rats and crows that allows for limited periods of culling under the 1972 Wildlife Protection Act.

Mercy killing is common in a variety of places around the world. Bison in Yellowstone National Park in the United States, badgers in the United Kingdom, kangaroos in Australia, and elephants in South Africa are all culled in order to maintain a healthy and safe population size.

In the western countries culling is done keeping in mind only the scientific management, said one wildlife conservationist. In India, apart from scientific management, we also have to keep in mind the socio-cultural aspect.

In India, the religious sentiments associated with some wild animals make it challenging for the government to support the mercy killing of those species. Lord Ganeshas association with elephants and the reverence of Hanuman as the monkey-god are cases in which there are no easy answers.

Some wildlife conservationists are also sceptical of mercy killing. These debates over mercy killing, euthanasia and culling are not meaningful unless they are discussed with reference to our current legislation, said Belinda Wright, executive director at the Wildlife Protection Society of India. I think the Wildlife Protection Act sets out eminently sensible rules on this issue and any new policies we have should be in accordance with these.

Mercy killing is just one part of the plans larger mission to improve the conservation of wildlife. We tried to stress on two important aspects of conservation: preservation of genetic diversity and sustainable utilisation of species and ecosystems, said JC Kala, chairman of the committee that drafted the plan.

They have a direct bearing on our scientific advancements and support to millions of rural communities.

This iteration of the National Wildlife Action Plan is the third since 1983, and it is the first one to discuss taking conservation beyond the boundaries of protected areas into the larger landscapes in which animals live.

Concepts like tiger landscapes and elephant landscapes are gradually emerging, said one of the members of the committee. Conservation and management of species at the landscape level would help maintain and enhance genetic exchanges between metapopulations (groups of the same species living in different places).

As the area of animal habitats shrinks, according to the report, animal populations may need to be moved in order to survive.

Climate change would render wildlife habitats unsuitable for many plants and animals in the future, said Kala. But these species wont be able to shift to more suitable places because of human settlements in between. Here comes the concept of human-assisted wildlife migration and anticipatory planting in which we propose to relocate some species to more suitable places, which could be created to prevent them from going extinct.

Climate change and human settlements are not the only things threatening animal environments. Invasive alien species are taking a heavy toll on protected areas and their native populations. The problem has become so acute that Indian conservationists are now speaking about a national policy on alien species being a new focus for the future.

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Three militants were gunned down at Machil sector as the army foiled an infiltration bid near the Line of Control (LoC) in north Kashmirs Kupwara.

The incident took place late last night when troops guarding the Line of Control (LoC) noticed a group of militants trying to infiltrate into the Valley from across the border in Machil sector under the cover of darkness, an army official said.

Troops engaged the heavily-armed militants who tried to escape by taking advantage of the thick forest cover. Three militants, who are still to be unidentified, were killed.

Search operations to track down other members of the group were going on, the official said.

This is the third infiltration bid foiled by the army in north Kashmir in the past fortnight.

On May 26, two Pakistani Border Action Team (BAT) members who tried to infiltrate into Uri sector to carry out an attack on the soldiers were killed.

Six more militants were killed in the same sector next day when they attempted to sneak into the Valley from across the border.

The search operation is on.

(With inputs from PTI)
The nephew of Samajwadi Party leader Abu Asim Azmi and three more men were arrested in Mumbai and the national capital for allegedly running an international drug racket, police said on Wednesday.

The Delhi Police special cell, which ran the operation from Sunday to Tuesday, seized 5kg of the party drug MDMA, also known as ICE, worth Rs 40 crore in the Capital.

The seized drug was to be smuggled to the US and UK in parcels of different clients of a courier company in Delhi, said Sanjeev Kumar Yadav, deputy commissioner of police (special cell).

The 43-year-old Aslam was caught in a luxury hotel in Mumbais Santa Cruz on Tuesday. He allegedly ran the cartel from the hotel room.

Aslam is a key accomplice of kingpin Kailash Rajput and looks after the network in India. Till 2008, Aslam worked as a cargo officer in a Dubai-based company. He returned and worked in another company in Goa till 2013, Yadav said.

Aslam, a Class 12 dropout, later opened a restaurant in Goa and allegedly came in contact with drug peddlers, who were Rajputs accomplices. He was introduced to Rajput by their common contact, Hanif Bhai, police said.

When Rajput was arrested by Mumbai police three years ago, Aslam helped him during the trial and became his close partner, police said.

Rajput jumped bail and fled India, and is running the syndicate from Dubai now. He is said to be a key player in narco-terrorism against India and close to fugitive Mumbai ganglord Dawood Ibrahim.

Rajput sent drugs from Dubai and Aslam distributed these to their contacts in France, Germany, UK, Spain, USA and even West Asian countries through couriers, an officer said.

Aslam was busted when sleuths arrested a delivery boy named Avdhesh on Sunday with a backpack containing around 5kg of premium quality contraband at the Mahipalpur office of courier company Prefer Logistic Pvt Ltd in southwest Delhi.

Avdhesh, aged 26, allegedly told police he was lured into the illegal trade by his employer Amit Aggarwal and manager Chandan Rai. He was offered around Rs 33,000 for each kg of drug ferried point to point.

He wanted to become rich overnight and agreed, police said.

The 40-year-old Aggarwal disclosed that Aslam had sent the consignment to him from Mumbai.

MDMA, short for methylenedioxymethamphetamine, is popular among youngsters, especially in rave parties in Delhi, Mumbai, Goa and other cities.

Aslams uncle Abu Asim Azmi is the Mumbai unit president of the Samajwadi Party. He was in the news this May for taking over the management of Islamic International School (IIS), founded and run by controversial Islamic televangelist Zakir Naik.
The election for Indias 14th President, if necessary, will be held on July 17, the Election Commission announced on Wednesday, setting the stage for another electoral battle between the Narendra Modi-led NDA and the Opposition.

Incumbent President Pranab Mukherjee completes his five-year term on July 24.

The Congress-led Opposition parties have already formed a panel to pick their presidential candidate even as it wants the government to propose a suitable name. The NDA leadership is, however, mum on possible names from its side. Sources said the BJP will consult allies and announce its candidate after the EC declares the schedule of the poll.

The electoral college to pick a President comprises of all elected MPs and MLAs. Each vote also has a weightage or value depending on the size of the population he or she represents.

Here is the schedule released by the Election Commission June 14: Date for issuing notification

Date for issuing notification June 28: Last date for filing nomination

Last date for filing nomination June 29: Date for scrutiny of nomination

Date for scrutiny of nomination July 1: Last date for withdrawal of nomination

Last date for withdrawal of nomination July 17: Election, if necessary

Election, if necessary July 20: Counting of votes, if necessary

MPs have the highest value  708  for each vote, while the value of an MLAs vote depends on the population of the state.

The good show in Uttar Pradesh, which has 83,824 votes in the presidential election, has brightened the BJPs prospects to push its own candidate in the presidential poll.

In the past, the NDA has seen a split in its ranks when it came to voting for a new President. In 2007, the BJPs trusted ally Shiv Seva had supported the Congress-backed Pratibha Patil, a Maratha.

The last presidential polls, too, had witnessed a dramatic fight when former Lok Sabha Speaker PA Sangma left his party to contest as a common candidate of the BJD, AIADMK and the NDA.

This year, too, political pundits expect a tough contest in the presidential polls.

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Calcutta high court judge CS Karnan, evading arrest since May 9, on Wednesday failed to get relief from the Supreme Court, which refused to hear his plea seeking a stay on its order awarding him a six-month jail term for contempt of court.

Justice Karnans counsel mentioned the matter before a vacation bench comprising Justices Ashok Bhushan and Deepak Gupta, which refused to interfere with the order directing the West Bengal police to take him into custody.

Advocate Mathews J Nedumpara, representing Justice Karnan, told the bench that the high court judge was entitled to know why he was convicted for contempt of court by a seven-judge bench headed by Chief Justice JS Khehar.

I am seeking only a stay. I had made a request to the CJI to take up the matter. Justice Karnan, like other litigants, is entitled to get at least an order from the court, he said.

The detailed verdict of the May 9 order had not been made available till date, he submitted.

The bench, however, said it could not hear the matter as the order was passed by a special bench of seven judges.

The order was passed by the special bench. We cannot say anything, the bench said, adding, You ask these questions to the special bench.

To this, Nedumpara said there should be at least a stay on the apex courts order till his plea for recall of the May 9 order was taken up for hearing.

Nothing has happened in the past one month. You wait for three or four more weeks and go to the special bench. We cannot help you. Whatever will be done will be done by the special bench. We cannot do it, the bench said.

The apex court had earlier refused to list and hear Justice Karnans plea seeking a recall of the May 9 order after it was held as not maintainable by the court registry.

On May 12, Justice Karnan, whom the West Bengal police is looking for, had moved the apex court for relief, saying neither high courts, nor their judges, were subordinate to it.

The petitioner, a judge of the High Court of Calcutta, is not under any disciplinary jurisdiction of either the CJI or the bench of seven judges constituted by the CJI, as in the instant case, the plea said.

He sought a recall of the apex court order awarding him six months imprisonment, saying he could not be held guilty of contempt of court.

Justice Karnan said the Contempt of Courts Act was a cathartic jurisprudence which belonged to the Dark Ages, the era of inquisition and torture, distinct from the classical Roman Law which constitutes the foundation of modern jurisprudence.

He also sought a stay on all further proceedings pursuant to the May 9 order.
The Supreme Court agreed on Wednesday to hear a petition challenging the governments decision not to extend the term of a panel appointed to supervise the functioning of the Medical Council of India (MCI).

Senior advocate Amarendra Sharan and Amit Kumar told a bench headed by Justice Ashok Bhushan the government did not issue a fresh notification to renew the term of the panel  called the Oversight Committee (OC) -- that ended on May 15.

The bench will take up the petition on June 12.

While making scathing remarks against the MCI, the top court appointed the OC in May last year to check alleged corruption in the body which regulates medical studies in India. The three-member OC, led by headed by former chief justice RM Lodha, was also tasked with suggesting ways to improve standards of medical education.

When the committee started functioning, the MCI had inspected 109 new colleges that had applied for admitting medical students in 2016. The council allowed only 17 colleges.

But the OC reviewed the MCIs decision and permitted 34 more colleges to take students. This set the panel on a collision course with the MCI.

However, the government overruled the panel and banned the 32 colleges from admitting students for two years.

One of the most preferred career choices in India, the standard of medical education has deteriorated over the years, according to a parliamentary panel report last year. It said medical graduates lack competence in performing basic healthcare tasks like normal deliveries.

A section of private colleges allegedly hire doctors on rent to pose as full-time faculty members and fill beds with healthy people to pass government inspections. There are 460 medical colleges in the country, 202 of them government-run.

According to the petitioner  Sankalp Charitable Trust  the SC had told the government the OC will continue to function till the Centre puts in place an appropriate mechanism to regulate medical colleges.

The petitioner referred to a recent government order declining permission to the medical colleges despite the OCs clearance to them. It called the action illegal, jeopardising the future of thousands of students who are admitted in the colleges.

The term of OC could have been curtailed by the Centre even within one year, had it brought about an appropriate mechanism as mandated by this court, the petitioner said.

A separate petition was also filed against the government order refusing permission to the 32 colleges. Some of the colleges have moved the top court, which will hear them on June 12.

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This week at the Clean Energy Ministerial, a series of high-level meetings being held in Beijing that brings together countries that are investing significantly in research and development for the clean energy transition, the US withdrawal from the Paris agreement loomed but delegates from other countries including India powered ahead with various initiatives towards a carbon-free energy systems.

We are not only taking the lead, our country has contributed in terms of money as well, Harsh Vardhan, Indias science and technology minister, who is heading the Indian delegation at the 8th edition of the conference. In the future, we will take it to its logical successful conclusion.

The minister was speaking on the sidelines of the second meeting of the Mission Innovation on Smart Grids on Tuesday that India leads along with China and Italy.

The initial push for the initiative came from India, which has invested heavily in transforming our national grid into a smart grid. It is one of the prerequisites for ensuring that power from renewables sources is integrated into the larger power system.

The Mission Innovation movement, one of the leaders was our own Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Harsh Vardhan, said. The MI initiative is a platform for countries to share knowledge, resources and encourage to develop smart grids in their countries.

This word Mission Innovation was coined by Modi at the first meeting in Paris in 2015. Initially, 20 countries signed on and now 23 countries are part of the initiative.

India has set itself an ambitious target of building solar power capacity of 175 GW of clean energy. We hope to have 40% of energy from non-fossil sources by 2030, the minister said, adding, We are marching ahead in that direction.

According to experts at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an international policy think tank, China is likely to meet its target for carbon dioxide emissions peaking many years in advance.

It is not a competition, all of us have to participate, do it together, Harsh Vardhan said, we have to put our best foot forward.

It is our dharma, he added emphasising that it is a spiritual thing for Indians and is part of our DNA, to protect nature.

The minister also highlighted collaborations with developed countries and noted that Indias efforts in this space have been recognised the world over.

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IAS officers keen to go on central deputation for a posting in the union government will have to wait for their turn as the Bihar government, facing a severe shortage of the secretary/principal secretary ranks, is in no mood to let them go.

Rather, the state government has sent a request to the ministry of personnel to return the services of 18 senior IAS officers in the secretary and principal secretary ranks, to their home state, owing to the shortage it is facing. They are from 1989 to 2001 batches.

We have sent the request for their return last week and hoping for a positive response from the union government. The request has been made in view of the shortage of officers at the senior level in the state cadre, said, D S Gangwar, principal secretary, general administration department.

Incidentally, Gangwar, a 1989 batch officer, himself figures on the list of officers in line for central deputation but has to wait for his turn because of the shortage.

As per figures cited by Bihars general administration department, the sanctioned strength of IAS officers in the state is 340. As against this, the actual availability in the state is 190, including officers promoted from state administrative service to all India service.

In addition, 41 officers are on central deputation, while five officers on deputation to other states.

However, Jitendra Singh, minister of state for personnel, public grievances and pensions, had made a written submission in the Lok sabha in March this year, stating, that at 128, Bihar had the highest IAS vacancies among all states. .

This shortfall is stated to be the reason why some officers have been given responsibility of three to four departments in the state secretariat. At the field level, the scenario is better given the increase in allotment of officers from the UPSC to state in recent years, facilitating the posting of young officers as SDOs and DDCs.

Under the service rules, an officer having completed nine years of service in state cadre can apply for central deputation for five years and again apply for union posting after having served in state cadre for another three years.

As such, the governments reluctance to release officers for central deputation has become a sore point for many.

We understand there is crisis. But delaying the central deputation requests of officers is not a good practice as it impedes their career growth. Besides, the state too suffers in terms of experience an officer brings to the state from central deputation , said a senior IAS officer, seeking anonymity.

He said the all India services had been structured in such a way as to enable officers to gain administrative and policy making experience during their stint in central posting and apply the same during their service in the home cadre.

Even the union government benefits from central posting as officers from various states take their experience of state affairs to policy making at the centre, he added.

While hoping the return from central deputation of their colleagues would clear their way for a central stint, some officers pointed out that the shortage of senior officers in Bihar has been aggravated in last few years because some officers had overstayed their central stint.

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The China-dominated Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) will have India and Pakistan as its full members when the security bloc holds its annual summit in Kazak capital Astana from Thursday.

It will be the first time that the two South Asian neighbours will be part of a group that seeks security and military cooperation among member countries. It also comes at a time when the already tense ties between the two sides are in a free fall.

The first day of the summit coincides with a hearing at the International Court of Justice where the two countries are battling it out over the death sentence awarded to Indian citizen Kulbhushan Jadhav by a Pakistani military court.

Founded in Shanghai in 1996, the Eurasian alliance has China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan as its members.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Pakistan counterpart Nawaz Sharif will be in Astana on both days of the summit but chances of a meeting between the two are bleak.

Unlike several regional groupings, SCO is touted as a security alliance, a sort of counter to the US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. But the trust deficit with Pakistan could be a factor in Indias engagement in the forum.

Counter-terrorism is one of the biggest concerns for the grouping that was ostensibly formed to fight threats posed by radical Islam and drug trafficking from neighbouring Afghanistan.

The SCO has an anti-terrorist structure in place with a brief to analyse intelligence inputs about terror outfits, their presence and finances and also conduct counter-terrorism exercises.

The SCO also provides for military cooperation.

There are many who argue that the alliance provides a rare opportunity for the militaries of Pakistan and India to come together under the SCO framework.

The Pakistan army is the driver of Islamabads India policy, which often leads to New Delhi blaming it for scuttling attempts by the two governments to improve ties.

Counter-terrorism is a common objective of the countries in the region. India has been a victim of cross-border terrorism. So addressing the issue has remained a core objective, an Indian official said.

Some of the Central Asian members have on earlier occasions expressed reservations about India-Pakistan issues playing up at the SCO.

Their concerns are not unfounded. Tension between the two neighbours is hampering the economic integration of another regional grouping, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation.

India is actively working on strengthening ties with Central Asia. Of late, Pakistan, too, is doing the same. Indias ties with Eurasian region are centuries old and they are independent of what others are doing, the official said.

For Russia, India would add heft to the grouping and check SCO from becoming a China-dominated alliance. At the same time, India will be concerned about Chinas ambitious One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative getting an SCO branding. The project that aims to new Silk Route linking Asia, Africa and Europe through a web of road, rail and port networks found a mention in the joint statement of the grouping.

India has stayed away from OBOR as the centrepiece of the plan, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, passes through Pakistan-Occupied-Kashmir, which New Delhi says challenges its sovereignty by lending legitimacy to Pakistans claim over the territory.

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Sri Lankan foreign minister Ravi Karunanayake on Wednesday defended his countrys participation in the One Belt One Road (OBOR), a signature project of Chinese president Xi Jingping, and said India hadnt raised any objection in this regard.

India has voiced sovereignty and financial concerns about the project, which has the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor as its key element.

Karunanayake  who is in India on a two-day visit  met Prime Minister Narendra Modi, external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj and national security advisor Ajit Doval.

Faced with a volley of questions, Karunanayake said India and Sri Lanka had held discussions on the project, which would revive ancient shipping routes that have existed for thousands of years.

Yes, there have been discussions. We dont want to take the decision in isolation. It is a collective area, and we are a small country. Our foreign policy is (to be) friends with all (and) enemies with none, he said.

In response to another question, the minister said popular Tamil actor Rajinikanth was welcome to visit Sri Lanka anytime he wanted. In March, the movie star decided against attending an event in Sri Lanka after facing criticism from regional groups such as the Viduthalai Chriuthaigal Katchi and the Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam.

Karunanayake  answering another query  said the Sri Lankan government has released 42 fishing boats belonging to Tamil Nadu fishermen from its custody, and are in talks to release another 100. Fishermen from the two countries frequently stray across their maritime borders.

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In wake of the ongoing Gulf crisis, the Indian Embassy in Qatar on Wednesday issued an advisory and assured that the political developments are not something which should worry Indian citizens in Doha.

In the advisory, the Indian citizens living in Doha have been assured that the embassy is monitoring the situation closely and is in touch with the Qatar authorities to ensure safety of the Indian nationals living there.

The Qatari authorities have conveyed that they will take all necessary steps to ensure that normal life, including supplies of food items, is not affected, stated the advisory.

With the cancellation of several flights, the embassy has also requested the citizens to contact their travel providers for advice on modification to their travel arrangement and also to remain alerts for further developments.

Indian nationals have also been advised to update themselves and not believe in rumours.

Recently, six Arab countries including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, as well as the Western-recognised governments of Yemen and Libya, abruptly cut diplomatic ties with Qatar, after accusing it of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamist political movement that allegedly supports pro-Iran militias, and funding terror activities.

The Middle Eastern countries were later joined by the Indian Ocean island nation of The Maldives.

Earlier, a Saudi press agency statement said the move was necessary because of grave violations being committed by the authorities in Doha over the past years in secret and public, including giving shelter to various terrorist groups, some of them backed by Iran.

Qatar has maintained its diplomatic clout in part by being the home of US Central Command and the U.Ss largest air base in the region and hosting branches of prestigious Western universities.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj spoke to Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif on Wednesday and condemned the terrorist attacks on the institution of democracy and spirituality in Tehran.

The external affairs ministry said that in a pre-scheduled telephone conversation, the minister offered sincere condolences on loss of innocent lives and expressed solidarity with the people and the government of Iran.

Suicide bombers and gunmen attacked Irans parliament and the Mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini in Tehran on Wednesday morning, killing at least 12 people in a twin assault at the heart of the Islamic Republic, Iranian officials and media said.

Islamic State claimed responsibility and released a video purporting to show gunmen inside the parliament building and one body, apparently dead, on the floor.

Iranian policemen evacuate a child from the parliament building in Tehran on June 7, 2017 during an attack on the complex. (AFP)

The rare attacks were the first claimed by the hardline Sunni Muslim militant group inside in the tightly controlled Shiite Muslim country. Islamic State has regularly threatened Iran, one of the powers leading the fight against the militants forces in neighbouring Iraq and, beyond that, Syria.

Several countries condemned the attacks and extended their support to Iran.

Russia

Russian President Vladimir Putin offered his condolences after the attacks. In a message released by the Kremlin after Wednesdays attacks, Putin said Russia resolutely condemns the violence.

Putin said the attacks underscore the need for deeper international cooperation to fight terrorism and confirmed Moscows willingness to aid Iran.

Pakistan

Pakistan condemned the Islamic State-claimed terror attacks on Irans parliament and the shrine of its revolutionary leader in Tehran and said it stands in solidarity with people of the neighbouring country.

We offer our deep condolences to the people of Iran, the government, and the bereaved families and pray for the speedy recovery of those injured, it said.

France

Frances foreign ministry released a statement strongly condemning the attacks. We strongly condemn the attacks that targeted the Iranian parliament and the Imam Khomenei mausoleum in Tehran, the foreign ministry said in a statement.

It said its embassy was monitoring the situation and passed on its condolences to the families of the victims.

Qatar

Qatars foreign ministry condemned attacks in the Iranian capital, according to a statement on its official website.

The State of Qatar has condemned and denounced the two attacks which took place in the Iranian capital Tehran and left many people killed and injured, it said.

United Arab Emirates

The UAE also condemned the twin attacks claimed by the Islamic State.

Our position on terrorism is very clear ... Any terrorist attack in any country, in any capital, directed at innocent people is something that the UAE abhors and the UAE condemns, state minister for foreign affairs Anwar Gargash told AFP.

Germany

Germany on Wednesday condemned in the strongest terms the twin attacks that killed 12 people in Iran.

Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said once again, unscrupulous criminals have killed many innocent people.

I condemn in the strongest terms the attacks in the Iranian parliament building and the tomb of the revolutionary leader (Ayatollah Ruhollah) Khomeini, he said in a statement.
The government struggled to tamp down tensions on Wednesday in Madhya Pradeshs Mandsaur district a day after police firing killed five farmers during protests in an incident that has snowballed into a nationwide political storm.

Tensions ran high in the town of Pipalia as shops and markets remained closed and internet services suspended, with scores of police personnel patrolling the streets. Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi is likely to visit the spot on Wednesday. Curfew is clamped across the district.

Angry farmers have said they will not cremate the five bodies unless chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan visited the district, and have called for a strike supported by the opposition Congress. Many farmers have blocked the Neemuch-Mahu highway with the body of one deceased farmer.

Last night police caned farmers who gathered at the mortuary. However, they allowed the bodies to be taken away in the wee hours. But we continue to stick to our demand that until and unless the CM visits the district, the cremation will not take place, said Patidar Samaj, Neemuch president Mahesh Patidar. All five farmers were from the Patidar community, a traditional vote base of the ruling BJP.

Official sources said Chouhan didnt plan to visit the district. State BJP president Nandkumar Singh was trying to persuade the farmers to allow the cremation.

It has been confirmed by the party that Rahul Gandhi will visit Mandsaur but we are yet to know about the timing, said KK Mishra, chief spokesperson state Congress.

Villagers stage a chakka jam on Mhow-Neemuch highway with the body of Abhishek Patidar. (Mujeeb Faruqui/HT Photo)

The firing on Tuesday came during raucous protests to demand better crop prices in the drought-ravaged region that saw one farmer suicide every five hours in the past two years.

The situation is bad in the Malwa-Nimad region, which comprises 15 districts, including Mandsaur where a second year of bumper onion crops found no buyers, forcing the government to announce belated a price of Rs 8 per kilogram.

Farmers are angry because the government neither made arrangements to procure the crop on time nor intervened to ensure a reasonable price. They dumped onions on roads as prices of the vegetables plummeted to as low as Re 1 to Rs 2 per kg in certain markets, especially in the Malwa region, last year. This year too, farmers had to sell their winter crop  tomato and potato  at throwaway prices, bearing heavy loss.

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People of a north Mizoram district blocked a highway that is seen as the states lifeline after the government decided to transfer out the only surgeon in the region.

Zothansanga Zadeng was the sole surgeon for some 85,000 people in northern Mizorams Kolasib district, which is located on the border of Assam and Manipur.

The state government angered various NGOs in the district when Zadeng was transferred a few days ago to Serchhip district in central-eastern Mizoram. The resentment was particularly pronounced since Serchhip is chief minister Lal Thanhawlas home turf.

NGOs, including those of students, women and transporters, asked the government to either post another surgeon or let Zadeng stay in order to serve patients at the district hospital in Kolasib town, 83km north of state capital Aizawl.

A joint action committee (JAC) of the NGOs began indefinite blockade of NH-54 to pressure the government into revoking Zadengs transfer order. What has angered them is the surgeon was transferred without another doctor being posted in his place, Manghaka, an activist, told HT from Kolasib.

The 850 km NH-54 from Assams Silchar to Tuipang in Siaha district is considered Mizorams lifeline

Kolasib deputy commissioner T Arun could not be reached, but district officials said the NGOs have held the surgeon back and were in no mood to let him go.

States health minister Lal Thanzara, the chief ministers younger brother, admitted the state has a shortage of doctors. The problem will be solved soon after the state public service commission completes the process of recruiting 26 doctors soon, he said.

The 1,472.12 sq km Kolasib district has seven hospitals, six of which are government-run. The armys Counter-Insurgency and Jungle Warfare School in the district has a medical facility too.

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The prey is running amok in predator turf of Rajaji tiger reserve, costing the management time and money.

Forest officials are saddled with a unique problem of villagers from the national parks fringes abandoning livestock  infirm and old cattle  in the jungle reserved for tigers and leopards.

These stray cattle have turned almost feral and wont leave their old-age home in the Haridwar forest division of Uttarakhand, no matter what. Foresters try to shoo them away. They come back. Sometimes the animals are corralled and the villagers are informed, but nobody wants to accept the sterile cows and impotent oxen.

The bovines are a real big problem for us. Most of our time is wasted in catching them and taking them to villagers. But no one takes them, park director Sanatan Sonkar said on Wednesday.

But when a leopard kills any of these cows or oxen, a villager invariably turns up at the forest office for compensation. A leopard killed a cow last month and it became a big issue. Several activists came to me seeking action. But what can we do when villagers leave their cattle in the forest? Sonkar said.

Chief wildlife warden Digvijay Singh Khati said theres no provision to pay ex gratia for livestock killed by predators inside protected areas. But forest divisions are paying hefty compensation  Rs 15,000 for each animal  to the so-called owners.

Its a fact that villagers dont claim their abandoned cattle unless they get eaten by big cats, said Rajeev Mehta, the former wildlife warden of Rajaji.

Park authorities caught about 50 head of unclaimed cattle since May. But it was a wasted effort.

The foresters left them outside the park and the herd mooed its way back to the forest that now runs the risk of overgrazing, which is a hazard for the ecosystem, especially during the summer dry spell.

Aditya Sharma, a member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, offered a solution. The government should ask authorities to maintain strictly a cattle register to identify owners of abandoned animals, he said.

Most Indian villagers eke a living out of small landholdings and the milk provided by cattle. But oxen and cows, worshipped by many Hindus, are seldom given away for slaughter. They are rather abandoned. Cattle foraging for food are a common sight in the streets of cities and towns.

Governments of most states have banned cow slaughter and beef. And the Centre too prohibits the sale of cattle for slaughter in animal markets.

Its difficult for a farmer to feed unproductive livestock. Besides, stricter norms for transporting cows have left people with little option but to leave the animals to their fate, said Bishen Singh of Raiwala in the Haridwar division.

Gender discrimination plays its part in the dairy economy of farmers and the overall religious beliefs.

Sharma of the animal charity said shelters and many religious sects are ready take abandoned cows  but not bullocks and buffaloes.

Bulls are generally useless as artificial insemination is a cheaper and better reproductive medium, said Rakesh Negi, the states chief veterinary officer. Hence they are abandoned. Cows are kept till they are fertile.

The threat from the cattle invasion in Rajaji is graver than it appears. The cattle have become easy pickings for leopards, active in the western sector of the 820 square km park that straddles three districts from the foothills near the holy towns of Haridwar and Risikesh to the Himalayan heights of Pauri Garhwal.

The west covers 570 square km and has just two tigresses. Leopards rule the roost here. Conservationists fear if they grow a taste for cattle, which are not their natural prey, they will try to attack livestock in villages and come in direct conflict with humans.

Park authorities have another reason to worry. They are planning to bring five tigers, including two males, to repopulate the area. If these tigers prey on the cattle, the risk of multiplies manifold.

Conflicts are already high and rising. At least 10 people were killed in 20 leopard attacks reported in the Motichur-Raiwala area since 2014.

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Five killed in firing during farmers protest in Mandsaur, Oppn attacks Madhya Pradesh govt

At least five farmers were killed and several injured in Madhya Pradeshs Mandsaur district on Tuesday when police fired on protesters demanding better prices in the drought-ravaged region that recorded a farmer suicide every five hours in 2016-17. Angry farmers ransacked and set ablaze a police outpost after the firing as the administration clamped curfew on Pipalia town, the epicentre of violence, rushed extra forces and withdrew internet services to tamp down on social media rumours fanning violence. Throughout the day, the BJP government denied any police firing and confirmed the five deaths in the evening.

Read the story here

Mandsaur violence: Chouhan blames Congress, announces Rs 1 cr each for victims kin

Facing criticism over the killing of farmers in Madhya Pradesh, chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Tuesday appealed for peace even as he accused the opposition Congress of instigating violence during a protest in Mandsaur district. He ordered a judicial probe into the killings and announced an aid of Rs 1 crore each to the victims families. But the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party came down heavily on the BJP-led state government.

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Sonia Gandhi attacks Modi govt: Divisive agenda has undone progress, there is stagnation

Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Tuesday set the tone for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, asking party workers to get ready to protect the essence and idea of India and warned that the BJP-led government was now shifting its 2014 manifesto promises. Addressing a meeting of the Congress Working Committee, Gandhi expressed concern over an increase in lynch mobs and claimed there is a brazen campaign to strait-jacket the whole country into a regressive and narrow-minded world-view.

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Its as if life has been flipped on its head: Qatar crisis is impacting millions of people

The political storm surrounding Qatar is impacting life in one of the worlds biggest natural gas producers and travel hubs that relies on food imports. Millions of people have already been affected, with many Arab residents in Qatar unsure of their fate. Panicked residents rushed to grocery stores to stock up on essential food items as hundreds of trucks transporting food and construction materials were stopped from entering Qatar from Saudi Arabia. Qatar, a mostly desert nation that juts off Saudi Arabias eastern coast, imports more than 40% of its food needs through its only land border with Saudi Arabia.

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Outside Notre Dame in Paris, cops shoot attacker who shouted this is for Syria

French police shot and injured a man who attacked an officer with a hammer outside Pariss Notre Dame cathedral on Tuesday, while shouting this is for Syria. Police sources said the officer sustained only minor neck injuries in the assault, which comes with France on high alert after jihadists killed seven people in London on Saturday. The suspect later claimed to be a soldier of the caliphate of the Islamic State group, according to a source close to the investigation.

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Russia scrambles Sukhoi jet fighter to intercept US bomber over Baltics

Russia scrambled a Sukhoi Su-27 fighter jet on Tuesday to intercept a US B-52 strategic bomber which it said was flying close to its border over the Baltic Sea, Russias Defence Ministry said. Russian air defence systems detected the bomber at around 1000 Moscow time as it was flying over neutral waters parallel to the Russian border. The Russian SU-27 crew, having approached at a safe distance, identified the aircraft as an American B-52 strategic bomber and escorted it until such time as it changed course and flew away from the border area, the ministry said.

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Yogi Adityanath govt to name Mughalsarai railway station after RSS ideologue Upadhayay

The Yogi Adityanath cabinet in Uttar Pradesh decided on Tuesday to rename Mughalsarai railway station near Varanasi after RSS ideologue Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya. A meeting of state cabinet gave its approval for the renaming of the station. Cabinet minister Siddharth Nath Singh said the state government would send a proposal to Union railway ministry to change the name of the railway station.

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Veteran politician Sher Bahadur Deuba elected Nepal PM for fourth time

Veteran politician Sher Bahadur Deuba was on Tuesday elected Nepals Prime Minister for the fourth time with the support of nearly two-thirds of the members of the 593-strong Parliament. The 70-year-old Nepali Congress president returned to the top post 12 years after he was removed by then king Gyanendra Shah. Deuba was the sole candidate in the election, which became necessary after Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda quit the post of Prime Minister last month under a power-sharing deal with Deubas Nepali Congress, the largest party in Parliament.

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Indian flights take Pakistan, Iran route to reach Qatar after airspace curbs in Gulf

Passengers flying on Indian carriers to Qatar will face increased travel hours as airlines have been forced to take longer routes over Pakistan and Iran, amid airspace curbs in the Gulf region. Jet Airways, Air India Express and IndiGo are now operating flights to Qatars capital Doha through Pakistan and Iran airspace following restrictions imposed by the UAE.

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How Virender Sehwag had a demoralising effect on Ravichandran Ashwin

Indias premier off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin has revealed the demoralising effect he has had while bowling at former opener Virender Sehwag. Sehwag was never complicated. He had a demoralising effect on me actually, Ashwin said during a chat show. There was an incident in Dambulla, where every ball that I bowled, first ball I bowled outside off stump, Sehwag cut me. Next ball I bowled on off stump, he cuts me. Next ball I bowled on middle stump, he cuts me. The next ball I bowl on leg stump, he again cuts me. So I said what the hell is happening. So I just bowled a ball fuller, Sehwag stepped out and slugged me out for a six, Ashwin said.

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The debate over cow and the benefits it offers has got a fresh twist with a Rajasthan minister claiming that the milk of the indigenous breeds of the bovines has properties to cure cancer, and high blood pressure among other diseases.

The source of -amino acids in indigenous cows milk, which is also found in mothers milk, is extremely beneficial in preventing cancer, curing high blood pressure, helping in digestion, and also for diabetes patients, Prabhu Lal Saini, Rajathan minister for agriculture and animal husbandry, has said.

The minister further said that the time has come for people to give up on foreign-bred Jersey and Holstein cows and once again turn to the indigenous breeds.

The minister was speaking at the inauguration ceremony of Olita Dairy Farm and Breed Development and Research Centre in Sikar on Monday, as per an official release.

Saini is the latest in a series of high profile people who have made statements on cow and the miraculous medicinal properties of cow milk, dung, and urine.

Last week, in his last judgment where he suggested the Centre to declare cow as national animal, Justice (retd) Mahesh Chand Sharma of the Rajasthan high court said that consumption of cow milk prevents cancer from entering the blood cells.

In February this year, BL Ahuja, a professor of physics at Mohanlal Sukhadia University in Udaipur, claimed that cow urine was capable of curing cancer, AIDS, and a bunch of other diseases.

These three are not the only ones who have found virtues in the cow, an animal considered sacred in Hinduism.

In January this year, Vasudev Devnani, the minister for education and panchayati raj in the state, said that cow was the only animal on planet that inhales and exhales oxygen.

Another public figure, senior Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh leader Indresh Kumar had recently said that cow urine was a medicine. He said that 90% of people in the world are dependent upon cow milk and cow dung, and that cow milk has been considered synonymous with medicine and treatment in every religion.
Politicians are busy blaming each other for low prices of garlic as farmers suffer.

The Congress and farmer organisations are blaming the BJP-led Rajasthan government for failing to ensure due prices to farmers in Kota region while the ruling party is blaming the Congress for doing nothing for garlic growers when the party was in power.

Hadauti region is known as the garlic bowl of Rajasthan and produces around 90% of the garlic in the state. After a profitable crop last year, the area under garlic production had doubled this year.

This year a bumper crop led to a crash in garlic prices and snowballed into a political issue.

According to agriculture department figures, from 66,500 hectares in 2016, the area under garlic production increased to 1.38 lakh hectares this year. Last year, around 3.94 lakh metric tonnes of garlic was produced in Hadauti region, which went up to 7.87 lakh metric tonnes this year. The average price of garlic is between 1,500 and 2,500 per quintal this year which was around 5000-10,000 per quintal last year.

The BJP government has spent crores on the Global Rajasthan Agritech Meet (GRAM) Kota event last month, but has failed to provide due garlic prices to the farmers, said former Congress minister Shanti Dhariwal.

Congressmen  led by Pradesh Congress general secretary Pankaj Mehta, Pradesh Congress Committee secretary Naimuddin Guddu and Youth Congress president (Kota-Bundi parliamentary constituency) Bhanu Pratap Singh  and Youth Congress workers took out a demonstration in Kota on Wednesday to demand that the state government buy garlic from farmers under Market Intervention Scheme (MIS) to ensure minimum prices.

Mehta said that a farmer in Kota recently died of cardiac arrest following low garlic prices, so the administration should provide compensation to the family.

Meanwhile, farmer organisations of Kota region, including Hadauti Kisan Union (HKU), Bharatiya Kisan Sangh and Kisan Sabha have also echoed similar demands.

HKU leaders Kundan Cheeta, Dashrath Kumar and others burned garlic at the fruit and vegetable mandi on Monday demanding that the government purchase garlic under MIS Scheme.

Dashrath Kumar, general secretary of HKU said that garlic farmers are likely to face a loss of 300 crore in Kota division if garlic prices continue to be low.

BJP MP from Kota Om Birla and Ladpura MLA Bhawani Singh Rajawat have apprised chief minister Vasundhara Raje of the issue during a meeting on Tuesday in Jaipur.

Birla, however, lamented that the Congress has done nothing for garlic growers during its regime when garlic prices went as low as 5 per kilogram in 2012. I have met Union commerce minister over demand for increasing export of garlic. I am also making efforts to establish a garlic export zone in Kota and establish garlic processing unit to ensure due prices to farmers.
Bharatiya Kisan Sangh (BKS) a peasants wing of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is gearing up for a showdown with the government. The organisation will hold an indefinite dharna from June 15 at all the divisional headquarters against the governments anti-farmer policies.

Members of the organisation alleged that the governments apathetic attitude towards the problems of farmers is compelling the newer generations to give up agriculture. It is not a good sign for the nation and the economy, Ram Kumar Nagar, BKS state coordinator said.

The oppressive and anti-farmer policies of the government have made farmers beggars, BKS vice-president said. Suicide by hundreds of farmers because of debt and other economic burdens reflect the poor state of agriculture, added Rathore.

BKS Ajmer district head Rameshwar Prasad Sharma, alleged that induction of genetically modified (GM) mustard seeds in the state will adversely affect the farmers both in terms of income and production. Farmers in mustard growing areas will be pushed into the vicious cycle of debt, Sharma said.

Narayan Sewak, Udaipur district secretary of BKS told HT that their protest will continue until the demands are met by the government.

The members of the organisation alleged that farmers are not getting even the minimum support price for their produce. In Nagaur and Bikaner, only 1.5% of the Moong production was purchased by the government in these areas at MSP, said Raghuvir Singh Shekhawat a senior functionary of the organisation.

The organisation has put forth six demands: Call a special session of Vidhan Sabha to debate farmers issues; amend electricity policy to give farm connections; give up induction of GM mustard seeds; improve irrigation facilities; give a bonus on milk production and fix MSP of crops 50% over the cost price.
An elderly woman, along with womens rights activists, camped outside her C-Scheme area home in Jaipur to protest for allegedly being thrown out of the house by her stepsons.

The sprawling mansion was locked during the day with only guards seen inside. The stepsons had reportedly left.

Ranju Bhandari (64) married Sagarmal Bhandari in 2005 and lived in his home. In 2013, Sagarmal died of swine flu. Ranju said that after his death, Sagarmals two sons from his previous marriage started harassing her and pressurising her to leave the house.

When Ranju returned from Japan on May 24 after visiting her brother, her stepsons allegedly refused to let her enter the house. They did not open the door. Instead, they made me sit in a car and kept driving around the city for three hours, asking me to take two crore rupees, a flat or a car, but to leave their house, she said.

Ranju said that her stepsons tried to get her to sign two documents, which she refused. For 15 days, the woman has been trying to unsuccessfully enter the house.

The police, she said, registered a FIR three days later and only after the intervention of a minister.

Asha Bothra of Meera Sansthan, an organisation working for womens security and issues, said the police have said that they will take action once they have heard both the sides. First, they should ensure that she is allowed to enter the house and then hear both the sides. This is also a violation of The Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act, she said.

The two stepsons could not be reached on phone despite repeated attempts.

The police, however, said that its not within their jurisdiction to break open locks. We have lodged a case and are investigating the matter. The woman should write a complaint to the sub-divisional magistrate on this matter as it requires judicial action, said Bala Ram, SHO of Ashok Nagar police station.

Ranju said that she had also visited the SDM but to no avail.

Birdi Chand Gangwal, the SDM (south), said that does not remember much about the case as the woman visited him around eight days ago.
JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. (AP)  Conservationists are worried an elk-feeding operation near a Wyoming river is allowing a deadly wildlife disease to spread.

Conservationists filed a lawsuit Monday against the Bridger-Teton National Forests decision to allow the state to gather the animals at the Alkali Feedground by giving them elk hay, the Jackson Hole News & Guide reported.

The conservationists claim if just one elk with chronic wasting disease comes to the feed ground, it would likely result in its transmission to the National Elk Refuge and the Jackson Elk Herd.

Bridger-Teton officials declined comment on the lawsuit Monday.

Groups suing include the Sierra Club, the Western Watersheds Project, Wyoming Wildlife Advocates and the Gallatin Wildlife Association.

At issue is 91 acres of feeding ground butted up against the Gros Ventre Wilderness. Its the farthest downstream of three elk feed grounds in the Gros Ventre drainage and the nearest to the Elk Refuge.When the Bridger-Teton reauthorized the Wyoming Game and Fish Departments use of the feed ground in 2015, forest officials recommended that the state phase out feeding at Alkali Creek Feedground and elsewhere. But the Bridger-Tetons decision didnt require a cessation of feeding or set a timetable for doing so.

Past lawsuits targeting elk feeding in northwest Wyoming have failed to stop the wildlife management practice thats been entrenched in the region for a century.

We have chronic wasting disease expanding in Wyoming at more than 3 million acres a year, said Lloyd Dorsey, Sierra Clubs Wyoming conservation director. The fact is that elk feed grounds promulgate diseases and the CWD endemic area is only about 20 miles east of the Alkali Creek Feedground.
From this year Bengal, a land of violent student politics, will hold students council elections without any political flavour. The chief minister has approved a blueprint for student election reforms designed to make the campuses free from violence by introducing a model where contestants cannot display any flags, or festoon of any political party, or its affiliate.

The chief features of the plan consists of appointing a teacher of the college as a president to oversee the general secretary of the student council, and placing the funds of the student body under the custodianship of another teacher who will be the treasurer.

Read: The vote is back: Will student elections draw Mumbai youth into politics?

Each class can elect a single representative, instead of the current practice of having a couple. Usually they belong to rival camps, and clashes frequently erupt between them.

Several prominent politicians of Bengal such as former chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee have come up from the ranks of student leaders. (HT Photo)

The move follows widespread violence in Bengal campuses over the past few years. Bombs rain freely and clashes frequently erupt in colleges across the state with the ruling party student unit being in the dock in most instances.

State education minister and Trinamool Congress secretary general, Partha Chatterjee, said that though temporarily the election of class representatives will continue, in the near future the government will do away with this practice. A system where students directly elect the office bearers of the council as in Jadavpur University (JU) of Kolkata and Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU of Delhi, will be introduced.

We have decided to limit the number of elected class representative to one per class or per department. This will eliminate interference of political parties in students election, Chatterjee said.

Read: Poll vault: student union elections are all about promises and bonding

The post of treasurer would also be mandatorily go to a teacher. Students wont handle funds that often triggers clashes between students, the education minister added.

The violence in Bengal campuses over the past few years embarrassed chief minister Mamata Banerjee. (HT Photo)

Incidentally, a number of prominent politicians of Bengal such as Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee (former chief minister), Md Salim, (CPI-M politburo member and Lok Sabha MP), Biman Bose (CPI-M politburo member and Left Front chairman) Subrata Mukherjee (senior most minister in Mamata Banerjees cabinet) and Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi (former union minister) rose from the arena of student politics.

In the current system in most colleges and universities throughout the country, students elect the class representatives (CR), who, in turn, select office bearers such as president, vice-president, general secretary, assistant general secretary, assistant secretary and treasurer, from the elected CRs.

Read: Now, code of conduct for students election

In order to be eligible to contest, a student has to be present in a minimum of 60% of the classes. If anyone is convicted, or charged with criminal offence he, or she, cannot contest the polls.

No student can become general secretary for more than once.

Opposition parties described the move as a farce and alleged that such reforms will be fruitless unless students are able to contest without threats from ruling Trinamool Congress.

Since 2011, there had not been elections in most colleges and universities in West Bengal. Students who are not trusted by Trinamool leaders are threatened if they file nominations. Unless the unions are democratically and freely elected, all reforms will be farce, said the Bengal unit president of Student Federation of India, Madhuja Sen Roy.

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When Food Safety and Drug Administration (FSDA) and the police teams raided the house in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, where an illegal blood supply racket was exposed, they were surprised to know how blood taken from donors was stored and supplied to potential buyers.

Arif had his own measure Self-styled pathologist Arif took blood from donors without any equipment to measure how much of it was being taken out. The usual measure is 350 ml that makes one unit, but Arifs measure was different. As a result, the blood units in each bag had different measures. The team sent six blood bags to the PGI and other blood components to Balrampur Hospital to check whether these units were screened for infection or were transfused to patients without the mandatory screening for infections such as HIV and Hepatitis.

Instead of a specially designed fridge to display and maintain temperature, a normal one was used to store blood.

Self-styled pathologist Arif took blood from donors without any equipment to measure how much of it was being taken out. The usual measure is 350 ml that makes one unit, but Arifs measure was different.

The donation of blood is stopped when the equipment (blood collection monitor) indicates that 350 ml has been taken out, but Arif only relied on his eyes and brain for the correct measure. As a result, the blood units in each bag had different measures.

The team has sent six blood bags to the PGI and other blood components to Balrampur Hospital to check whether these units were screened for infection or were transfused to patients without the mandatory screening for infections such as HIV and Hepatitis.

Officials said there were chances that none of the blood units stored here were fit enough for human use as blood collection, storage is done in an infection-free environment, but the room where this was done was actually a kitchen of the rented house.

Read more: Blood racket busted in Lucknow, top hospitals role suspected

After donation, blood is stored at around 4 degrees Celsius and plasma cells are stored at even lower temperatures in fridges specially designed to display and maintain temperature, said drug inspector Rama Shanker.

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Sarvantara, a village in Bahraich district of Uttar Pradesh, was in the dark even after 69 years of Independence.

With no electricity network in this Dalit-dominated hamlet, the villagers had to walk distances to nearby electrified villages or the block and tehsil headquarters to charge their cell phones, what to speak of lighting and fans.

But not any longer. On Tuesday evening, they were finally plugged into light with Oorja, a London based social enterprise, launching its 8 kw solar mini grid in the remote Sarvantara village located 46 km north of the Bahraich district headquarters and 159 km from Lucknow, the state capital.

The installation of the smart DC solar mini-grid that became operational from June 6 will provide affordable lighting, fan and mobile charging to 100 households comprising around 1100 members, Clementine Chambon, chief technology officer and Oorja co-founder with Amit Saraogi, the CEO, told HT over the phone.

The renewable energy, she claimed, will also power pumps to provide irrigation services to farmers, providing significant cost savings over diesel-powered pumps.

Read more:24x7 power supply in UP by 2018: UP CM

The happiness of the villagers knew no bounds as soon as bulbs at their residences got illuminated at the click of a switch for the first time ever.

A large number of men, women and children gathered around the launch site. The first thing they did was rush to plug in their cell phones for charging.

Munna Lal, the village pradhan, said Sarvantara village did not get electricity even after nearly seven decades of Independence though some power infrastructure was recently created in the village. Today is a very special day for us. Now, we have electricity to fulfill our basic energy requirements like lighting, fan, and mobile charging, he said elatedly.

The plant is made up of 4 kw residential solar panel provided on rooftops in the village and 4 kw solar for irrigation pumps. The households have been provided highly efficient LED bulbs, mobile chargers and fans with the provision for plugging of additional appliances within the next two months.

The basic tariff, as decided mutually between the company and the villagers who together will own, operate and maintain the system, has been fixed at Rs 130 per month for four bulbs, a mobile charging point. The tariff will increase with the addition of more appliances, Chambon said.

The Rs 20 lakh installation in Sarvantara, according to her, is Oorjas first mini-grid. It is intended as a pilot to test an innovative hybrid energy storage solution, provided by Balance of Storage Systems AG, a German technology provider.

We also plan installation of hybrid biomass/solar mini-grid that will use agricultural waste and solar PV to provide reliable AC power to business in UP and other states in the time to come, she revealed.

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Three men abducted a widow from her house in Uttar Pradeshs Unnao district on Tuesday night, and gang-raped her in a moving car. She was found unconscious near her village the next morning.

The woman  who is in her early forties  lives in Purwa. Her late husbands brothers are in the liquor trade.

Police said it all began when the culprits looted a liquor outlet belonging to one of the brothers around 9 pm that night. They held him and his helper at gunpoint, and called up the widow from his cellphone. Identifying themselves as excise officials, they asked her to step out of the house because they would have to search the premises.

The woman did as she was told, only to be whisked away. Even as the village headman informed the police, spurring them to seal all the exits of the village, the three gang-raped the woman in the car over the next few hours.

The woman has filed a complaint, and a search has been launched for the three culprits. Unnao superintendent of police Neha Pandey said they are scanning CCTV footage from a petrol pump where the three halted for refuelling after abducting the woman.
An 11-year-old boy from Andheri diagnosed with a fatal heart condition underwent a heart transplant surgery on Wednesday after the organ was flown in from Indore.

The donor was a 35-year old man, who was declared brain dead at Bombay Hospital in Indore after he met with a road accident. His five-month pregnant wife and mother gave their consent for the organ donation. Teams from Muskaan Trust and Indore Society for Organ Donation had counselled the family to ask them to donate the organs. The heart was transported to Mumbai in a commercial flight early Wednesday morning.

The boy, who received the heart, was diagnosed with dilated cardiomyopathy, a condition in which the heart becomes enlarged. He has been wait listed for a heart transplant for over a month. Dr Anvay Mulay, head of cardiac transplant team, Fortis Hospital, Mulund, where the surgery took place, said, We have successfully concluded the surgery on our little recipient. He has been moved to the PICU and will be under close observation. I am happy that the two mothers donated the heart and saved a child.

While this was the second paediatric heart transplant of the year, there are four more children who are wait-listed at Fortis Hospital. Last year, five paediatric transplants were performed in the city.

Madhavi Vishwakarma, a nine-year-old Goregaon resident who was also diagnosed with dilated cardiomyopathy was youngest in the state to undergo heart transplant surgery on February 1, 2017. It is really difficult to get organ donations for paediatric cases as compared to adult cases given the sentimental value, said a doctor from the hospital.
Sahara chief Subrata Roy who had missed a hearing recently owing to poor health, assured the special SEBI court that he would attend all the hearings henceforth.

After missing the hearing, Roy had submitted a medical certificate but Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) questioned its authenticity.

The court hence asked the doctor who signed the certificate to remain present at court to explain and ascertain if the certificate was authentic.

When the case came up for hearing on Wednesday, the doctor arrived at court and explained that Roy was too unwell to travel. The issue escalated when SEBI counsel Poornima Advani claimed that the certificate produced by the doctor was concocted. She added that as per the call data record of the security personnel assigned to Roy, he was travelling when the doctor claimed to have examined him at his residence.

Defence lawyers Abad Ponda and Ashok Sarogi refuted Advanis claims and said that Roy could not have been travelling at that time because he was so ill that he could not step out of house.

But the court asked Roys lawyers to ensure his presence at all the hearings to which they agreed.

The SEBI also submitted a draft of the charges against Sahara India Real Estate Corporation and its directors including Roy. It alleged that the company opened Optionally Fully Convertible Debentures (OFCD) of the company to the public as private placement without stating correct facts in the prospectus.

The board claimed that due to misrepresentation, investors were lured to invest in the company. It also alleged that the company failed to comply with the rules and regulations and to provide information when the board sought it.

Meanwhile, Roy and other directors also moved a discharge plea before the court. Roy was not allowed to move the plea in the previous hearing as he was not present during it. However, on Tuesday, the lawyers approached the Bombay high in the evening and sought intervention. The court allowed their plea and asked them to approach the SEBI court again.

The court is likely to hear their case next week.

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Maharashtras child rights panel will take suo-moto (on its own) cognisance of the case against a Mumbai school trustee for allegedly raping a three-year-old student. On Tuesday, parents said the school had ignored complaints made by the childs mother before she approached the police. Parents also said the school did not have CCTV cameras in the premises, although it is now mandatory.

On May 18, the girls mother filed a rape case under section 376 (2) of the Indian Penal Code and sections of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act against a 57-year-old founder-trustee of an international school and a nursery teacher for allegedly raping the child on the school premises. The Maharashtra State Commission of Protection of Child Rights (MSCPCR) decided to look into the police investigation of the case, after reading media reports on Tuesday.

Since the survivor is a child, we will intervene in this matter. It is our responsibility to ensure her rights are not trampled upon said an official from the commission. The parents and the school management will be called for hearings at the commissions office in Worli.

According to the police, the incident took place late last year. The teacher took the girl to the trustees room, where he sexually assaulted her, the police said. According to allegations in the FIR, earlier this year, the girls mother noticed a change in her daughters behaviour and began questioning her. The girl then told the mother about the assault, the police said.

Read more: Mumbai school trustee booked for raping 3-year-old: What we know about the case

The FIR also mentions the accused sexually assaulted another three-year-old boy. The boys parents have been contacted by the police to verify the allegation.

One of the parents told Hindustan Times that the complainant, in a meeting with other parents on Saturday, told them that she had approached the school in April, but it did not respond to her complaints. The parent said she spoke to the school administrator, who was at that time accompanying Cass 12 students on a trip abroad, but did not get a favourable response. Her attempts at reaching the trustees wife were not successful, the parent said.

The school principal was unavailable for comment on Tuesday despite repeated calls and messages. On Monday, the principal said the school is cooperating with the police, The allegations are untrue. The complaint was lodged by the parent. We are giving the cops whatever they want.

Educators and teachers across Mumbai schools are shocked by the allegations and highlighted the need for better awareness on handling child sexual abuse complaints, and sensitising students about differentiating between a good and bad touch.

If a child complains about sexual abuse it should not be ignored, instead teachers need to be equipped to deal with the complaints, said Father Francis Swamy, principal of the St Marys School (ICSE) Mazgaon and joint secretary of the Archdiocesan Board of Education, which runs 150-odd schools in Mumbai. In 2015, ABE had created a child protection policy, which had rules for teachers and other staff members. Schools are also required to set up child monitoring committees to protect students and teachers

Swamy urged schools to have open discussions on sexual abuse. Instead of shying away, schools need to discuss news reports with their teachers and parents. They need to be ready with an action plan in case of such incidents.

Read more: Trustee of prominent Mumbai school booked for raping 3-year-old student
The Shiv Sena-led civic bodys proposal to return to a builder an 8,209 square metre plot reserved for a hospital kicked up controversy on Wednesday.

The Sena administration tabled a proposal to return the Bhandup plot to a builder after a Bombay high court order of 2014. But BJP corporators walked out of the civic improvements committee meeting, claiming a nexus between the Sena and the builder. The BJP corporators wanted the proposal to be withdrawn, but Sena chairman Anant Nar insisted that doing so would amount to contempt of court by the civic body.

Mulund corporator and BJP group leader Manoj Kotak said the plot is worth Rs500 crore.

According to the proposal, the BMC has to handover the plot to the builder, in return for the an amenity space of 18,765 square metres it got received from the builder. The HC had said the builder was entitled to the compensation.

But BJP corporators insisted the land had been reserved to build a super-speciality hospital, but the BMC was not serious about this. They said the eastern suburbs was in need of a hospital, and that the BMC should have fought harder to retain the land, perhaps approached the Supreme Court instead of agreeing to hand over the plot.

Ujjwala Modak, BJP corporator and improvements committee member said, There should be an inquiry into the law department, which did not represent the BMCs side appropriately. The eastern suburbs needs a civic hospital and we cannot just let go of this land. We made it very clear to Sena the proposal needs to be withdrawn or we will object to it.

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The Bombay high court on Wednesday refused to de-freeze two bank accounts of scam-hit Adarsh cooperative housing society.

Justice Anil Menon refused to interfere with the special CBI courts order rejecting the societys plea for de-freezing the accounts. This was after he observed that some money from the accounts was invested in a nationalised bank and that the society was operating another bank account.

The society approached high court after the special CBI court turned down its plea to de-freeze the accounts on September 16, 2015. Its lawyer had earlier claimed that the money lying in the two accounts  amounting to Rs1.47 crore  had nothing to do with the offences allegedly committed by members of the society. He added that the money was collected after the CBI registered an FIR in the case.

The society also said that since the CBI has completed its investigation and filed the charge sheet, there was no use to continue the freeze on the accounts.

But CBI counsel Hitendra Venegaonkar claimed that the money in those accounts were part of benami transactions.

Apart from this, Justice Menon also took into consideration that the CBI had offered to clear payment of the societys statutory dues out of the money from the accounts but the society had rejected the offer.

On January 29, 2011, the CBI registered an FIR and booked 13 people including former Maharashtra chief minister Ashok Chavan. Meanwhile, the Enforcement Directorate registered a separate case against some of the accused for alleged money laundering.

One day later, the CBI instructed the State Bank of India to not allow anyone to use the two accounts.
A man posing as an assistant manager at the engineering and infrastructure giant Larsen & Toubro Limited (L&T) allegedly duped a 22-year-old engineering student from Andheri (West) of Rs20,000 on the pretext of giving him a job.

The youth, who filed an FIR with DN Nagar police on June 3, said he received an email from career@larsentourbro.com at 9.27 pm on June 1 and the subject read employees of company.

It said the company was looking to hire an assistant manager. The email had a PDF file with the terms & conditions and the salary they offered. It also had attached an online form for job application.

The police said the email mentioned that all applicants must give their passport size photo, PAN card photo copy and resume with the form. He was also asked to pay application fee, interview process fee, maintenance and courier fee totaling to Rs7,150. The deadline for application was mentioned as 2 pm on June 2.

READ: Hacking, obscene emails, card fraud: Maharashtra has 14.59-cr plan to keep you safe from these

The victim paid the money through Paytm as the account details were given in the email, the police said. After making the payment, he called the alleged imposter, whose phone number was mentioned in the email. The fraudster confirmed that he had got the job in Mumbai and will have to pay another Rs13,000 through Paytm, but this time into another account. The student agreed and made the payment.

But after this, the accused disconnected his phone.

On not receiving any official confirmation, the student called L&Ts toll free number and he was told that the company never sends such emails and never asks job aspirants to pay money.

He rushed to DN Nagar police station and filed an FIR under sections 419 (impersonation) and 420 (cheating) of IPC and 66D (impersonation using computer resource) of the IT Act.

A police official said, Thecomplainant was negligent. Why didnt he first call the company and check the authenticity of the email? He didnt even meet the imposter before sending the money. Everything happened over email and phone.

CLARIFICATION ISSUED BY L&T

It has been brought to our attention that certain unscrupulous elements are sending out false emails purporting to be from Larsen & Toubro Limited. The emails ask the recipient to appear for a face-to-face interview for a job opening with L&T and to deposit a certain amount as a refundable interview security in a designated bank account. The emails are falsely stated to be from officials of the HR Department of L&T. L&T has not sent out any such emails. Please note that L&T, as a policy, does not collect any money as a pre-employment requirement. A fraudulent email may mention the bank account number of an individual or the account details would be given upon calling up on the number mentioned in the fraudulent mail. In any case the bank account would not be in the name of Larsen & Toubro Ltd.

Bizman cheated of 32 lakh

Rupendar Arora, a 65-year-old businessman in Khar, was allegedly duped of Rs32 lakh on the pretext of investing in a New York-based start-up company with promise of hefty returns.

The agents contacted Arora in June 2015 and met with him at his office. He said in the FIR they lured him by saying his returns will be three to six times his investment in six months. They insisted that the money be paid as soon as possible. In August 2015, Arora transferred $50,000 (Rs32 lakh) to their New York account.

Arora said, They lured me saying other renowned companies from India have invested their money in the start-up. In March 2016, they informed Arora that the company had shut down, all investors lost their money and so did he. Arora said, I think they are lying and there was no such start-up.
ELKO  Looking for unique graduation gifts? Visit the Northeastern Nevada Museum this week and check out Artist of the Month Suzy Musils bead woven jewelry.

A reception for Musil is set for 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday in the museums gift shop, where she will discuss and demonstrate her beadwork with visitors. Admission to the gift shop is free.

Musil uses a variety to beads for her work, including seed beads and peyote bezel, to create original necklaces, bracelets, broaches, ribbons and pins.

I work one bead at a time, said Musil of seed beads. Theyre very small beads, ranging from 1 millimeter to 4 millimeter.

A lot of my work is building something that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Musil, who has a bachelors degree in textile science, was invited by a friend to go to the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show about 10 years ago.

Basically, I saw the bright, sparkly things and decided I had to do something with them, Musil remembered.

Her pieces are a one-of-a-kind design and are inspired by hiking in the mountains, watching sunsets, or something she sees on TV, Musil explained.

Im not following any written instructions to create them, Musil said, adding that the more intricate pieces can take up to 50-60 hours, with simpler pieces about 5-10 hours. She also utilizes brick stitch, peyote stitch and bead crochet in her work.

While her work may seem complex and elaborate, Musil finds her beadwork a welcome change from working with computers all day.

This is such a good outlet for me, Musil said. Its cerebral and nebulousit gives me creativity and completion.

Musil, who lives in Minden, has sold her work at the Brewery Arts Center in Carson City, and just happened to find the museum when her and her husband were driving through Elko on a Sunday about two years ago.

I thought ooh, that looks nice, and pursued it from there, Musil said.

In addition to the museum and Brewery Arts Center, Musil also shows her work though her Facebook page and her blog, Thunderpaws Threads, and is looking forward to the day she can concentrate on her beadwork full-time and enter shows.

Once the day job is up, I have ideas that are show-worthy, but havent had the time to execute them yet.

For information, visit Musils blog at szmusil.wordpress.com, find her on Facebook or call her at 775-392-3190.
As the farmers strike continued on the sixth day, chief minister Devendra Fadnavis on Tuesday alleged there were political motives behind the protests.

Fadnavis said he had information that political workers and not farmers were involved in the recent violent incidents such as shutting the agricultural markets and blocking supply of essential commodities to cities across Maharashtra.

As the farmers outfits are planning to intensify their agitation, the state government issued prohibitory orders in Pune, Nashik and Kolhapur districts  where protests are most intense  to ban the assembly of five or more people.

Mumbai, however, remains unaffected.

Farmers outfits in Maharashtra have been protesting since June 1, demanding a farm loan waiver and protection from falling prices of agricultural commodities.

On Saturday, Fadnavis declared a Rs30,000 crore farm loan waiver for 31 lakh farmers, to come into effect from October 31. But a section of farmers outfits is not happy and want loans of all 1.34 crore farmers in the state to be written off. The demand is supported by Opposition parties and the BJPs main ally, the Shiv Sena. Significantly, two influential farmers outfits, the late Sharad Joshi-founded Shetkari Sanghatana and MP Raju Shetti-led Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatana, have decided to jump into the agitation. Shetti is an ally of the BJP. A 21-member core committee of prominent farmers leaders in the state has been formed, which will be meeting on June 8 in Nashik to decide on a future course of the agitation.

Anticipating trouble and in the backdrop of the violence in neighbouring MP on a same issue, the state governments orders that prohibit five or more people from assembling at a spot will remain in effect till June 16 in Pune, June 17 in Kolhapur and June 19 in Nashik.

In Mumbai, the vegetable markets received regular supply and prices stablised on Tuesday. The rates of tomato dipped to Rs40 a dozen, while cauliflower was priced at Rs 60 a kilogram. Fruits like chikoo dipped to Rs40 a dozen from Rs120 a dozen when the strike was at its peak on Friday.

In a significant development, NCP chief Sharad Pawar called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi apparently to seek his attention to the farmers agitation in Maharashtra. According to reports, Modi told Pawar that Fadnavis would take a call on loan waiver.

Significantly, state governments hopes to get any assistance from the Centre to write off farmers loans suffered a setback as union urban development minister M Venkaiah Naidu, who was in Mumbai on Tuesday, categorically ruled out any loan waiver package or aid by the Centre to the state for the purpose. Uttar Pradesh, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh have announced loan waivers on their own and Maharashtra will have to follow the same, Naidu told reporters.

In the backdrop of the agitations, Fadnavis met BJPs ministers late on Tuesday. The meeting was held to review the BJPs recently undertaken farmer outreach campaign Shivar Samwad (Dialogue with Farmers) across nearly 43,000 villages in Maharashtra, at his official residence Varsha. The review comes ahead of party president Amit Shahs visit to Maharashtra as a part of his all India 95-day campaign tour to review organisational strengths of the BJP across all states, on June 16, 17 and 18.

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For more than a week, the farmers agitation in Maharashtra has grabbed the national headlines. Farmers are rarely a topic of discussion in a city like Mumbai, except when the media reports their suicides. However, the agitation affected the supply of vegetables, fruits and milk to the cities. Prices of these essential commodities spiralled at several places, which made the agitation a prominent subject of discussion.

For the past few months, the issue of farm loan waiver is being put forth by the farmers outfits, Opposition parties and even Shiv Sena, which is part of the Central and the state governments.

The agitation was started by a few groups of farmers from Ahmednagar district, who called for a strike from June 1, to seek attention of the government to their demands. The government managed to take the fizz out of this agitation, as it invited their representatives for talks and promised certain decisions  including [Rs30,000 crore] farm loan waiver for small and marginal farmers. Some of the representatives called off the agitation, while others chose to continue. The split in the farmers outfits meant the agitation lost its momentum.

However, it is far from over.

On one hand, the Opposition and the Shiv Sena have supported the agitation, on the other, two prominent farmers outfits, Shetkari Sanghatana (founded by renowned farmers leader late Sharad Joshi) and Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatana, led by MP Raju Shetti, have now joined hands. The two organisations have significant following, which means their agitations will have a deeper impact.

Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis insisted the farmers were happy with the promise made by him and remarked the government will talk to real farmers and not those who are using farmers for political gains. His target is the Congress-NCP combine.

But it is not just the Opposition, Fadnavis may have to blame all political parties for the same. The issue of farm loan waiver has been raised by all political parties at one point or the other. Todays ruling party was also not an exception.

Fadnavis is right when he says one farm loan waiver cant solve the problem of the farmers and a permanent solution is needed.

The farmers want water to grow multiple crops, low interest loans, minimum assured income through protection against price fluctuations and crop insurance so they get adequate compensation in case of a crop failure owing to natural calamity.

The traders who sell seeds and fertilisers and those who buy their produce exploit them. Often, these traders are hand in glove with politicians and local officials. Public sector banks have thousands of crores defaulted by industrialists, but they are not keen to give loans to farmers. Cooperative bank network is a better option for farmers in several parts, but it is flawed.

Unfortunately, the political parties never reach a consensus to address these issues either because of short term political gains or vested interests.

As the farmers outfits organised Maharashtra bandh on Monday, there was a significant development. Influential farmers leaders are now coming together. The outfits have reconstituted their state-level core committee by including prominent farmers leaders such as Shetti, Raghunanthdada Patil, Vijay Jawandhia, Girdhar Patil and independent legislator Bachchu Kadu. These leaders will now meet and chalk out a strategy to stage a sustained agitation to force the government to accept their demands.

This is not exactly a desirable development from the governments viewpoint. Still, this could be a turning point. These leaders understand the exact problems of the farmers and CAN give valuable inputs for a long-term solution.

Lets hope both the sides work out something which becomes an effective solution on farmers problems.

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After the founder and trustee of a prominent Andheri school, and a nursery teacher, were booked for allegedly raping a three-year-old student, experts came up with a list of guidelines for people whose children have complained of assault. Meanwhile, two brave Mumbai children fought off a man who undressed them and tried to molest them.

While Egyptian Eman Ahmed moved her lower limbs for the first time since she suffered a stroke two-and-a-half-years ago, a boy who lives on Mumbais streets fulfilled his dream of attending school a year ago, recently securing 83% in Class 8.

1. Eman Ahmed healing 3 times faster than planned can open bottle, play with ball

Egyptian Eman Ahmed can now open a water bottle, play with a ball and talk to her doctors. Sharing a video of the former worlds heaviest woman, doctors of Burjeel Hospital said she was continuing her streak of miraculous recovery and healing three times faster than they planned.

2. Boy who lives on street attends worlds only signal school in Mumbai, scores 83% in Class 8

Mohan Kale, 18, a boy who lived on the street would often peep through the windows of a local school. Teachers reprimanded him, thinking he was looking at female students. However, he just wanted to study.

3. Maharashtra farmers strike: Prices of vegetables come down in Mumbai

On the seventh day of the farmers strike in Maharashtra, the prices of vegetables seem to have reduced, compared to prices over the past three days, which were steep owing to short supply.

4. Mumbai school rape: Experts tell you what the next step should be if your child complains of abuse

The 57-year-old founder and trustee of a prominent Andheri school, and a nursery teacher, were booked for allegedly raping a three-year-old student. While the principal refused to comment, he said the school was cooperating with the police. As the news makes headlines, Dr Sagar Mundada, psychiatrist, tells you what you can do if your child complains of abuse:

5. Heres how 2 Mumbai children fought off man who undressed them, asked them to sit on his lap

Two minors fought off a man who started undressing them on the pretext of teaching them how to box and tackle molesters. Bhandup police arrested the 25-year-old accused from his residence. One of the minors is his 11-year-old niece.
The 57-year-old founder and trustee of a prominent Andheri school, and a nursery teacher, were booked for allegedly raping a three-year-old student. While the principal refused to comment, he said the school was cooperating with the police. As the news makes headlines, Dr Sagar Mundada, psychiatrist, tells you what you can do if your child complains of abuse:

1. Make sure your child is comfortable. Listen to what he or she has to say. Body language plays a crucial role here. Emphasise that you trust your child. Do not overreact, you may frighten your child, who will then stop talking. Wait until you child has narrated the whole incident and then respond.

2. Keep talking to your child, dont let the importance of the issue fade. You should approach a professional, such as a child or adolescent psychiatrist, or counsellors who can help you.

3. Asking the police to file a complaint is a necessary legal step. Ensure that the cops register a case under the relevant sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 (POCSO).

4. What signs should you watch out for if you suspect your child is being abused? Mundada says parents should look out for sudden changes in childs behaviour. Fear of socialisation, nightmares, bed-wetting and not wanting to go to school are common signs of abuse. A physical examination of the child is required. Check for bruises, injuries or scratches.

5. Be your childs friend. Parents should talk to their kids regularly and discuss a range of topics besides academics. A good rapport between the child and his parents is important. It is necessary to create an environment in which the child feels comfortable enough to tell his parents about incidents of abuse. Children need to be taught the difference between good and bad touch. They should be cautioned that certain parts of their bodies should not be touched by anyone, even a relative.
The Bombay high court directed the Maharashtra Criminal Investigation Department (CID) to probe allegations about officers of the state police were involved in a human trafficking nexus.

A division bench led by Justice Ranjit More was hearing a plea filed by a New Delhi-based lawyer, who alleged that Pune police officers were involved in a human trafficking racket and two of the victims rescued from Nepal last year had named these officers in their complaint.

The plea also claimed these officers were asked to investigate the case and that the victims, who were taken to a state-run home, had gone missing.

The state, however, informed the HC on Wednesday that one of the victims was traced and efforts were on to locate the other one.

During the last hearing, the court had appointed senior counsel Mihir Desai as the amicus curiae to assist the court in the matter. On Wednesday, Desai told the court that he had interviewed one of the victims that prima facie the allegations made in the petition appeared to be true.

He suggested it would be proper if an independent agency like the state CID or the CBI probes the case.

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The Bombay high court on Wednesday directed minister of state for home Ranjit Patil be impleaded as a party in a public interest litigation (PIL) alleging that he misused his office to protect an unauthorised food court in the Bandra Kurla Complex in the city.

A division bench of Justices RM Sawant and AS Gadkari noted the plea made personal allegations against the minister and it would be fair to grant him a hearing.

The bench was hearing a plea filed by activist Pravin Wategaonkar, alleging Patil had stayed the demolition of illegal portions of a food court in BKC even though the Maharashtra Regional Town Planning Act does not have any provisions for granting such stay.

The plea stated the said eatery is managed by the kin of a principal secretary serving in the Maharashtra government and Patil misused his power to stay the demolition.

As per the plea, MMRDA had leased the space in BKC to Spice and Grains overseas for a food court. The development authority, however, found the company had carried out unauthorised construction in May last year. It issued a demolition notice.

The company then allegedly approached Patil in August 2016, requesting that the demolition order be stayed and Patil granted the stay immediately, the plea reads.

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As the farmers agitation for a loan waiver and minimum price guarantee for their produce entered its seventh day, actors Nana Patekar and Makrand Anaspure lent their support to the strike.

Speaking at a press conference organised by the NAAM Foundation  a social outfit started by the two actors in 2015 to help distressed farmers and the families of farmers who had committed suicide  Patekar said it was unfortunate that Maharashtras farmers had to resort to strikes to survive.

Patekar said the state should bail out farmers suffering from financial burdens and those who need loan waivers. He also warned against the political exploitation of farmers and urged leaders of all political parties to find a solution to the increasing incidents of farmer suicides.

Patekar has shown his solidarity with the states farmers earlier too. He set up NAAM Foundation to support farmers after constant bouts of drought led to the agrarian crisis.

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Farmers in Maharashtra will continue their strike for the seventh day in a row. Their demands? A complete loan waiver and minimum support prices for their produce. The agitation, initially meant as a week-long stir, started on June 1. A 21-member core committee will meet in Nashik tomorrow to decide what farmers next step should be.

Farmers groups are planning to stage mute protests in a few districts on Wednesday, as a taunt to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Maharashtra government, which has been deaf to their demands so far. A few groups have demanded that the state legislature hold a special session to hammer out a bailout package for the farmers.

The supply of vegetables, which had taken a hit over the past few days, leading to increased prices, has now started steadily increasing in markets at Nashik, Pune and Navi Mumbai. Rates have reduced, say relieved consumers.

The Maharashtra government has issued orders in Pune, Nashik and Kolhapur banning the assembly of five or more people after a similar stir in Mandasur district in Madhya Pradesh resulted in violence on Tuesday. Shots were fired during a farmers protest, killing five people and injuring a dozen more. The states prohibitory orders will remain in effect till June 16 in Pune, June 17 in Kolhapur and June 19 in Nashik.

BJP ministers held a late-night meeting at chief minister Devendra Fadnavis official residence, Varsha, to discuss the impact of their Shivar Samvad initiative  a four-day programme to reach out to farmers in Maharashtra. The move comes ahead of a cabinet meeting on Wednesday morning and BJP president Amit Shaha visit to the state on June 16.

Meanwhile, tensions between warring allies, the BJP and the Shiv Sena, have escalated over the farmers agitation. The Shiv Sena has supported farmers protests, bitterly criticising the Devendra Fadnavis-led government, of which it is a part, over its farm policies. Shiv Sena ministers are likely to corner the government over this issue during the cabinet meeting.

The Shiv Sena lashed out at the state government again on Wednesday over the Fadnavis remarks that he would only talk to real farmers. Fadnavis termed protesting farmers political figures. In an editorial in the partys mouthpiece, Saamana, the Sena said, We have a suggestion. Only real farmers in the state government should talk to farmers leaders. Do you have even one real farmer in your cabinet? Dont simply talk about farmers welfare.

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As the farmers strike in the state continued on the seventh day, BJP ally Shiv Sena boycotted a cabinet meeting called by chief minister Devendra Fadnavis on Wednesday. The party, instead, sought a clarification from Fadnavis over the farm loan waiver issue.

The Sena is irked the chief minister did not consult its leadership before announcing a waiver of Rs30,000 crore for small farmers by October 31. The party wants to be an equal partner in governance, but claims Fadnavis is not taking it into confidence on all issues.

Senior Sena minister Subhash Desai said his party fully supports the farmers strike. We will not attend cabinet meeting until the chief minister clears the governments stand on the issue. The BJP has not discussed anything with us about the farm loan waiver, Desai, who is heading industries department, told reporters.

Sena leaders even met the CM to make their stand clear before boycotting the meeting. The BJP, however, sought to play down the incident.

The Senas aggressive stand came a day after Fadnavis warned that the government had information that political parties were involved in the violent incidents that occurred during the June 5 Maharashtra Bandh called by farmers outfits. The Sena had taken part in the bandh along with other parties.

Senior BJP leader and finance minister Sudhir Mungantiwar, however, maintained Sena ministers had sought prior permission from Fadnavis to not attend the cabinet meeting. It was not a boycott. As there werent any important proposal to discuss, the CM granted permission, Mungantiwar told the media. Sena ministers, however, insisted they had boycotted the meeting. Desai said the Sena was ready to resolve the impasse and support the BJP much like they did while passing the Goods and Services Tax bill, but only if the government discusses the farm loan issue with Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray also.

Farmers have gone on strike since June 1 in several districts of the state. Following protests started by various farmers groups especially in western and central Maharashtra, Fadnavis held talks with the representatives of these groups on Saturday and promised to waive off loans of small and marginal farmers with land holding up to five acres. The decision is expected to benefit 31 lakh farmers who have not been able to access crop loans for past 4-5 years. The Maharashtra government is likely to end up spending about Rs 30,000 crore to write off these loans. Fadnavis also announced that he would set up a committee of government officials which will have representatives of the farmers to work out details of the loan waiver.

On the other hand, the top brass of the BJP in the state is contemplating whether the party should opt for mid-term assembly polls in the state to end its reliance on the troublesome Sena. A section within the partys senior leaders has suggested elections towards the end of the year after the farm loan waiver comes into effect.

Meanwhile, a 21-member core committee comprising all prominent farmers leaders in Maharashtra and agricultural experts will be meeting in Nashik on Thursday to chalk out future course of the agitation. The committee, which was recently reconstituted after split among farmers outfits, is likely to come out plans to intensify the agitation.

In a related development, Swabhimani Paksha chief and Kolhapur MP Raju Shetti, another ally of the BJP, has decided to take the agitation at national level by calling a meeting of all farmers outfits in Delhi on June 16. Shetti said time has come to remind the BJP government its promises to the farmers.

Also, in a bid to start the process of loan waiver for the farmers, the state government constituted a sub-committee headed by Chandrakant Dalvi, Pune divisional commissioner, to collect information regarding loans taken by the farmers from commercial and district central cooperative (DCC) banks.

Read

Maharashtra farmers strike: Actor Nana Patekar supports demand for loan waiver

Maharashtra farmers strike: Prices of vegetables come down in Mumbai

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The Air Intelligence Unit of the Mumbai Customs on Wednesday arrested a person for allegedly trying to smuggle three kilograms of gold worth Rs 95 lakh, officials said.

The passenger, identified as Vipul Nathubhai, a resident of Surat in Gujarat, who arrived from Dubai, was intercepted on suspicion, an official said.

Examination of his baggage resulted in the recovery of 27 gold bars of 10 tolas each, collectively weighing 3.132 kgs and valued at Rs 95 lakh, the official said.

The gold was wrapped with black coloured adhesive tape and were kept in a Jim Beam liquor tin box purchased in a duty free shop, he said.

According to the official, Vipul is into the business of diamonds brokerage in Surat and acted as a carrier to smuggle the gold for monetary consideration.
ELKO  Warm temperatures and sunny skies are greeting the miners who came to town for the annual Elko Mining Expo.

Large equipment and other exhibits started to appear Tuesday at the Elko Convention Center and will continue to arrive throughout the day Wednesday. According to the National Weather Service, Elko is predicted to be sunny with highs in the 80s and 90s today and Thursday and in the 70s Friday.

Exhibit booths open to the public Thursday. The Wednesday night reception at the Red Lion is sold out.

This is the second year the Elko Convention and Visitors Authority will use the Elko Conference Center for the show and all the indoor spaces are full, said ECVA Events Coordinator Kandiss Fallowfield.

The Expo has many returning vendors and the businesses come from all over the United States and other countries, including Australia, Germany, New Zealand and Canada.

The vendors are continually being creative with what they want to have in their booths, Fallowfield said. You know, different ways they can attract people to their spaces, so theres going to be some fun things going on in peoples booths this year.

The Expo opens to the public 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday and 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Friday.

Fallowfield reminds people that Country Under the Stars is Thursday.

This is the third year the concert has coincided with the Expo. It is presented by the Boys and Girls Club of Elko and Sandvik Mining and Rock Technologies.

Gates open at 5 p.m. and the show begins at 6:30 p.m. at the Elko County Fairgrounds. Tickets start at $34.
The Shiv Senas move to boycott the Maharashtra cabinet meeting on Wednesday could be the proverbial last straw for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

This is the first time that the party has boycotted a meeting since its ministers joined the Fadnavis-led government. Earlier, Shiv Sena ministers would walk out of meetings in protest against certain issues.

After the Mumbai civic polls and the more recent GST logjam, a faction within the BJP had advised the party to opt for early polls or even snap polls by December. They hope to be rid of the Shiv Senas constant muscle flexing. On May 10, HT had first reported that BJP was considering holding early polls.

However, chief minister Devendra Fadnavis has not been keen on the idea so far. He has maintained that his government will complete its full five-year term.

Finance minister Sudhir Mungantiwar also chose to downplay the Shiv Senas boycott. Shiv Sena ministers met the chief minister and sought his permission to not attend the meeting. They gave us the reason for their absence and so their actions cant be called a boycott, he said.

However, in light of recent events, party president Amit Shah is likely to discuss the internal split in the BJP over the Shiv Senas actions when he visits Maharashtra on June 16.

This will be on the agenda. We need a solution to the Shiv Senas constant pressure tactics and criticism, which leaves us vulnerable. Our internal surveys state that we can come to power on our own. We will wait until the presidential polls and then take a calculated decision, said a BJP minister.

Until the presidential elections in July, the political pot boiler in the state between BJP and the Sena will continue. The BJP will have to give in to the Shiv Senas pressure tactics until the elections, so the partys ministers support its presidential candidate.

Some indication of where the BJP is heading is likely to come on Thursday, when Union home minister Rajnath Singh holds a state party meeting in Mumbai on the occasion of the Modi government completing three years.

The BJP will also have to analyse how the ongoing farmers strike impacts the partys image and electoral fortunes.

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The Shiv Sena  the ruling party in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC)  on Wednesday, rejected a proposal to change the land use of 33 hectares at Aarey Milk Colony for a Metro 3 car shed, despite the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) backing the proposal. It was also rejected by the Sena-led improvements committee in the BMC without any discussion. This has happened in the backdrop of tussle between the two parties at state level. Environment activists have also been opposing the car shed construction at Aarey Colony, one of the last green spaces in Mumbai.

Civic officials, however, said the states plan can still go ahead with its plans without an approval from the BMC because the government had approached the civic body only for a say on the issue.

The improvements committee had recently visited the spot at Aarey. The BMC had earlier also told the state that any change in the land-use in the Development Plan (DP) 1991 will require a no-objection certificate from the Sena-led civic body. The area has been marked as a no-development zone in the Development Plan 1991, which is currently being followed to develop the city. Prakash Gangadhare, BJP corporator and improvements committee member, said, Building a Metro is important to meet the travel needs of the city and to reduce pollution. The Sena did not even let us discuss the proposal in the committee before rejecting it.

The Sena also did not take up the proposal to grant land at Andheri to build a Metro sub-station, which the BJP corporators objected to on Wednesday. The party has made its objection to the Metro car shed obvious on every occasion after its fallout with the BJP.

In December 2016, the state urban development had issued a notification for a change in land use of the 33 hectares for the car shed, allied facilities and a commercial zone and invited suggestions/objections for this.

Officials said the states urban development department had issued the notification inviting suggestions/objections under section 37 (1) AA of the Maharashtra Regional Town Planning (MRTP) Act, for an urgent sanction where it only requires a say from the stakeholders. This means the state can still go ahead with building a car shed with or without the corporations approval.

The DP 2034, however, marks Aarey as a no-development zone with 33 hectares reserved for the metro car-shed. As member of a planning committee that heard citizen objections on DP 2034, the Sena had opposed the car shed.

A civic official from BMC said, Since the objections were invited during the election code of conduct, we could not approach the committee. State had only asked for BMCs say on the issue. They can still go ahead with the change is use.

It is to be noted that the construction of a metro car-shed has been vociferously opposed by citizens to prevent the felling of more than 2,000 trees.

Anant Nar, improvements committee chairman and Sena corporator said he had asked corporators for their views before rejecting the proposal. The green zone at Aarey is important for Mumbai. We have to work to preserve it, Nar said.

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The Shiv Sena boycotted the state cabinet meeting called by chief minister Devendra Fadnavis on Monday. Reason: The party is unhappy with its allys refusal to clarify the governments stance on farm loan waivers.

We will not attend the cabinet meeting until the governments stand on the issue is clarified. We want to be informed about loan waivers in advance. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has not discussed anything with us, senior Shiv Sena minister Subhash Desai told reporters.

Meanwhile, BJP minister Sudhir Mungantiwar insisted that the party did not boycott the meeting, but sought the chief ministers permission to not attend it. As there were no important matters to discuss, Fadnavis accepted their request, he added.

It has been seven days since farmers across Maharashtra went on strike. During this time, the Shiv Sena has bitterly criticised the government and supported farmers demanded for a complete loan waiver. Shiv Sena leaders have also participated in the strike.

Fadnavis announced that the loans of small and marginal farmers would be waived by October 31. He said it would cost the government Rs30,000 crore to waive the loans of 31 lakh farmers who are not supported by the institutionalised credited system and cannot get fresh loans from banks.

The Swabhimani Paksha, headed by farmers leader Raju Shetti, is also supporting the farmers demands.

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The Ghatkopar police recently arrested a spare parts dealer and his employee for allegedly stealing at least 10 bikes from the city.

The dealer was identified as Haider Khan and his employee as Javed Shaikh, 24. Khan, whose office is on CST Road at Kurla, allegedly hired Shaikh to steal bikes, said Venkat Patil, senior inspector, Ghatkopar police station. The area is one of the largest hubs for vehicle spare parts.

Investigations revealed that Shaikh had been involved in lifting at least 10 motorcycles from Ghatkopar, Dharavi, Tilak Nagar and Dindoshi.

Khan and Shaikh would allegedly cannibalise the stolen bikes and sell the spare parts. Acting on a tip-off, we picked up Shaikh from Govandi where he lives. His arrest led us to Khan, said Patil

Shaikh ensured that the motorcycles were stolen from different parts of the city. As per the requirement of spare parts, the motorcycle of a particular make was identified and stolen.

Shaikh used to earn between Rs10,000 and Rs15,000 based on the condition of the motorcycle.

The two men have been handed over to Tilak Nagar police station from where three motorcycles were stolen, said Patil. The police were investigating if more people were involved in the case. The men have been booked under Section 279 of the Indian Penal Code.
After the abolition of Maharashtra Common Entrance Test (MH-CET) for medical admissions, the state boards Higher Secondary Certificate is losing popularity among engineering and medical aspirants, said city schools. Earlier, students from national school boards, such as CBSE and ICSE, used to switch to state board after class 10 as MH-CET was based on the HSC syllabus. But the trend is changing now.

A majority among the citys high scorers in the class 10 CBSE and ICSE exams are sticking to their own board for class 11 and 12.

Since last year, only NEET (National Eligibility and Entrance Test) is considered for medical admissions, while engineering is based on MH-CET and JEE (Joint Entrance Examination). I will continue my studies in science stream from my school itself; they have a good faculty, said Harshika Jain, who scored 95% in CBSE, class 10 from Ryan International School, Kandivili.

Now, most students prefer CBSE over ISC, said colleges because the syllabi for both the competitive exams is largely based on it. We see an increase in applications for CBSE class 11 and 12. Many students from ICSE are also approaching us for admissions, said says Suman Samarth, headmistress of RN Podar School,Santacruz.

She added, Mumbai students used to switch to junior colleges because they wanted to experience college life. But such cases are reducing these days as Mumbai seems to be following in Delhis footsteps.

On the other hand, students are interested in pursuing integrated courses, which prepare them for cracking various entrance exams from class 11. I am planning to join integrated course through Pace Junior Science College and focus more on JEE entrances, says Aryan Khurana 99%, CBSE, Delhi Public School,Nerul

According to Deepshikha Srivastava, principal of Rajhans Vidyalaya, Andheri, students who want to appear for MH-CET, join the state board for the similar syllabus. Mehek Dedhia, who scored 97.2% in ICSE 10th from Lilavatibai Podar High School, Santacruz, said that she prefers HSC board. I will opt for science stream and study in HSC as I feel it will give me more time for extra-curricular activities and help me focus more on competitive exams, she said.

Sobo college forced us to opt for maths

Seven students of a south Mumbai college complained to the states education department on Wednesday that the institute forced them to opt for maths in class 12. They are among the 299 students, who were pulled up by the state board for appearing for mathematics in HSC exam, even after studying easy maths in class 10.

I wanted to study psychology but the college enrolled me for maths. Teachers were rude when I said I dont want maths, said one of the students in the email sent to the board.

We dont let science students take up psychology in class 11. It is only offered only if they cant cope with maths, said the college principal
The Noida campus of Dr Abdul Kalam Technical University (AKTU) closed its registration for the two-day Mega Job Fair on Wednesday afternoon after 16,400 students registered for the event.

The university administration will organise the job fair on June 9 and 10 in its Noida campus in C-22 at Sector 62 where a total of 73 companies will be offering jobs to students. It has been estimated by university officials that a total of 500-600 jobs will be on offer for two days.

We stopped the registration of applicants on Wednesday afternoon by which time 16,400 students had registered for the event. We have received an overwhelming response in the past few days as both companies and applicants have increased. All the applicants are from AKTU-affiliated colleges who graduated in 2016 or have appeared for their final exams in 2017, said Dr Sanjeev Sharma, advisor, Noida centre, AKTU.

Titled Mega Job Fair, the two-day event is an initiative of AKTU vice chancellor Dr Vinay Pathak. There are more than 900 colleges associated with AKTU across the state of which 168 are located in Ghaziabad and Gautam Budh Nagar.

According to university officials, out of the 16,400 applicants, 8,700 are from colleges based in Ghaziabad, Gautam Budh Nagar, Meerut and Bulandshahr. Students of BTech branches, MCA and MBA have registered for the event.

The fair will begin from 8am on June 9. The first batch consists of 7,000 applicants. Students must bring their curriculum vitae. The dress code is formals, said Sharma.

To discuss the management of the event, a meeting was held in the Noida campus on Wednesday, which was attended by more than 60 training placement officers of AKTU-affiliated colleges.

The officers have been designated the task of management of the fair and to ensure that visiting companies dignitaries do not face any difficulty. However, under no circumstance are they supposed to talk to or assist any of the applicants. They will not favour their or any other colleges applicants, said Sharma.

The 73 companies that will visit the fair include names such as HCL, NIIT, India Mart, Just Dial, Tech Mahindra, Bhilwara industries, UFlex and Anix Systems.

Registrations for HCL have gone above 9,000 and it is arguably the most sought-after company in the fair. However, other companies such as GSS are also offering decent package of Rs5 lakh per annum, said Sharma.

Companies representatives said they have vacancies for trainee/fresher positions for BTech, MBA and MCA students.

We are looking for vacancies in our IT infrastructure division and will interview applicants from BTech background, said Kuldeep Singh Rawat, human resources, HCL.

We are looking for management trainees for our back-end operations in the Noida office. MBA candidates will be preferred and we have 18-20 vacancies, said Amit Mishra, head of business management, Anix Systems Private Limited.

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Indias opposition parties are very busy.

As the Narendra Modi government celebrated its third anniversary, Congress president Sonia Gandhi hosted a lunch for opposition leaders. Seventeen parties  including those at war with each other like the Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party in Uttar Pradesh, and Trinamool and Left in West Bengal  agreed to coordinate inside and outside parliament, strategise for the presidential elections together, and work towards a common front in 2019.

Over the past week, these efforts shifted south. Rahul Gandhi, Nitish Kumar  who missed Sonias lunch, Omar Abdullah, Sitaram Yechury and others travelled to Chennai to greet Muthuvel Karunanidhi on his birthday. Rahul and the other UP ka ladka, Akhilesh Yadav, also spoke at a rally in Guntur. Lalu Prasad has called a mega opposition rally in Patna in August.

What has triggered so much action?

The opposition unity efforts come not because of sudden affection for each other  but pure and simple desperation and the instinct for survival. Three years after his election, Narendra Modi remains Indias most popular leader by a long stretch. The UP win has consolidated this. Demonetisation made him a leader of the poor. The opposition has recognised that Modi is no ordinary politician; if he stays on in power, the rules of Indian politics may get entirely rewritten; and individually, they do not have the strength, resources, nationwide reach and capacity to take him on.

But if this impulse for opposition unity is obvious, what are its prospects?

On paper, if all opposition parties come together, they have arithmetic on their side for 2019. Do remember that Modi still has less than 50% vote share in key battleground states. The Bihar Mahagathbandhan model has the strength of numbers in other settings. For instance, if Akhilesh, Mayawati and Congress unite in UP, and carve out a Jatav-Yadav-Muslim unity, BJP is in trouble.

But politics is not just arithmetic.

In an increasingly presidential-type contest, the electorate wants to know who the leader is much before the elections. The opposition parties may share a cup of tea, but to get any of them to accept another leader as the pre-eminent face before elections will be a challenge. Will everyone accept Rahul Gandhi? Will Rahul  or even Mamata accept a Nitish? It does not help them that none of them can mount a challenge to Modi nationally at the moment.

A faceless opposition will be no match to Modi.

Two, besides the visible desperation, the opposition has not been able to articulate what is their common platform. Modi won on a mix of hope and resentment. The opposition is confused. It does not want to play up the secular-communal debate for fear of losing Hindu votes; it does not have a cogent economic message despite the jobs crisis. The electorate may not be satisfied with only a remove Modi message.

The era when votes of one party are easily transferable to another is long gone. Each citizen often thinks independently. Arithmetic on paper will neither translate on the ground as smoothly nor is it adequate. Amid all the action, the opposition needs to do some hard reflection.

prashant.jha1@hindustantimes.com

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With the cross-border firing between India and a Pakistani making the headlines, some of the hotter heads in both countries have begun to argue, especially on social media, for an escalation of hostilities. The implication is that a limited war would somehow be decisive, by teaching the other side a lesson, and making it behave. But is a limited war possible?

The answer is proverbial - it is possible but the probability is very low. At the outset two fundamental points must be made.

First, nuclear weapon-armed states cannot fight a full-scale conventional war of annihilation or even absolute defeat of the adversary. However, below the nuclear threshold space exists for a limited war - limited in time, space and aims.

Second, a war is waged to achieve political aims. A war of retribution is a war without an aim.

The nature of war has undergone a change in the last two decades. What we face today is a Hybrid War which is a complex hybrid of conventional, asymmetric, information, political, diplomatic and economic warfare. It is fought as a continuum without timelines and fought simultaneously over the entire multi-dimensional spectrum of conflict.

India is already engaged in a Hybrid War with Pakistan. However, over the last 15 years we have remained well below the threshold of a limited war. Kargil,1999, was a classic limited war initiated by Pakistan. India also restricted its aim to restoration of status quo and won a victory both militarily and diplomatically. India planned a limited war as a reaction to the terrorist attack on Parliament on December 13, 2001, but could not go to war due to a combination of international pressure, political dithering, lethargic mobilisation and an unsure military.

Due to primordial religious emotions, the deprivation of Jammu and Kashmir in 1947 and its dismemberment in 1971, Pakistan considers India as an enemy state and its political aim is to seize Jammu and Kashmir and achieve international parity with India. It has an unambiguous National Security Strategy to wage a Hybrid War backed by military, political and public consensus. Essential features of its strategy are: wage a deniable fourth generation warfare (4GW) in Jammu and Kashmir and hinterland of India; avoid a limited war and if it is forced upon it, stalemate India with conventional capability, irrational nuclear brinkmanship, and actual use of tactical nuclear weapons if required.

Indias political aim in relation to Pakistan is simple - prevent it from interfering in its internal affairs through a Hybrid War and if it does so, maintain good relations. To achieve its political aim Indias strategic options are: contain the 4GW being waged by Pakistan; surgical strikes in POK/Pakistan; wage a counter 4GW in Pakistan; and wage a proactive limited war to compel Pakistan to stop a 4GW in India.

Pakistan has the capacity to respond in a quid pro quo manner to all Indian threats/actions below a limited war while continuing to wage 4GW in Jammu and Kashmir. Given its military limitations, it is disadvantageous for it to initiate a war. Thus the onus is on India, either to accept status quo or to force compliance through a limited war. And this is the scenario - a limited war with a nuclear backdrop - that worries the world most. Will a limited war be cost-effective and decisive enough to force compliance on Pakistan? That the Indian government including the present one has not exercised this option despite the 1,000 cuts, answers this question.

Can a major change in the strategic situation force the Indian government to initiate a limited war? The casus belli could be a 26/11 type of terrorist attack or the situation in Jammu and Kashmir going completely out of hand. Since terrorism is calibrated by the ISI it is unlikely to repeat 26/11 and doomsday predictions notwithstanding, despite the intifada the situation in Jammu and Kashmir is militarily well under control. Can charged political and public emotions force the governments hand? In my view the present political leadership while exploiting and manipulating public emotions, is smart enough not to fall prey to them.

Since the probability of a limited war is very low, let me paint a hypothetical scenario. The year is 2022. Indian economy has grown at 8-10 per cent. Major national security reforms have been undertaken. Armed Forces have been restructured and reorganised, and a clear technological military edge over Pakistan has been established. Situation in Jammu and Kashmir is under control but Pakistan continues to bleed us with 1,000 cuts. International environment is in favour of war on terrorism .

India has decided to adopt a strategy of compellence against Pakistan through a proactive limited war. The political aim is to compel Pakistan to peace on own terms. Essentials of likely politico military strategy: the war will be initiated as a pre-emptive strategic offensive; maximum territory will be captured in POK for permanent retention; a belt of 20 kilometre relative to tactical objectives will be captured across the IB for post war negotiations; maximum damage will be caused to Pakistans war waging potential particularly its Air Force, Navy and mechanised forces; maximum damage will be caused to Pakistans economic potential; all objectives will be achieved in 10 days, however, prolonged operations may be undertaken in POK; Armed Forces must be prepared for use of Tactical Nuclear Weapons by the enemy.

Until the conditions for this hypothetical scenario are created it may be prudent to continue with strategic restraint.

Lt Gen H S Panag, PVSM,AVSM (Retired), is a former Army commander, Northern Command and Central Command

The views expressed are personal
The All India Sikh Students Federation on Tuesday carried out a march in the wake of 33rd anniversary of Operation Bluestar.

Students took to the streets and denounced the operation, which three decades ago caused major unrest in Punjab.

Students also carried placards reading Never forget 6 June 1984.

Tight security arrangements have been made in several parts of Punjab, including Amritsar in wake of the anniversary.

As many as 15 companies of paramilitary forces, including the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) and Rapid Action Force (RAF) were deployed in different parts of the state after several radical outfits announced that they would observe the anniversary of the military operation.

Operation Bluestar refers to the operation mounted by the Indian Army on June 3, 1984 to flush out Sikh extremists holed up within the Golden Temple in Amritsar.
Even though Chandigarh was hoping to bag the cleanest city in India title under the Swachh Survekshan - 2017, the municipal corporation (MC) did precious little to tidy up even its most popular markets. The HT team visited some of these shopping hubs, only to find them wearing an air of neglect. The iconic Sector 17, once considered the heartbeat of the city, looks grimy and unkempt even though its a stones throw away from the MC office. The Sector 22 market, the first to come up in the city, and its Sector 35 cousin, the youngest kid on the block, are in a better state of cleanliness than Sector 17, but they have their own set of problems.

What is more upsetting is the visible rise in the tribe of litter bugs. Chandigarhians, once known for their strong civic sense, seem to have lost it if the number of wrappers strewn around these markets was any indication. Market associations attribute the dip in ranking to both the municipal body as well as lack of civil sense.

THE HEARTBEAT

The Sector 17 Plaza presents a dismal picture with garbage piled up along the pavement and parking lots. A pile of garbage greets visitors at the entry to the Sector 17 Plaza from the parking lot situated just 50 metres from the MC building. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) councillors, soon after making a clean sweep of the MC elections, had promised to take forward the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan and make Chandigarh beautiful and squeaky clean. But the condition of the Sector 17 market belies their claim.

The area around the bridge market seems to be part of some dusty town in the interiors of India with piles of wrappers, leftovers, and even construction material.

Given that the plaza receives a healthy footfall of around 10,000 to 20,000 people on any given day, there arent enough bins in the market. The ones that do exist are generally overflowing with garbage.

The governor of Punjab and Haryana and UT administrator VP Singh Badnore had taken a strong note of poor cleanliness in Sector 17 earlier this year but to no avail. Shopkeepers claim that less than half the number of sweepers deputed for the plaza actually report for duty.

Littering by visitors, they grouse, is a growing problem. Santosh, 45, a visitor from Mohali, says she often sees people throwing garbage right next to the bins. Civic sense, she adds, has to come from within.

The areas near the Neelam Theatre, the bank square, and the entrance to the deputy commissioners office can arguably be considered among the least clean spots in the Sector 17 market. The pavement towards the left of the English Book Shop is a close second with piles of garbage bags.

However, the main centre of the plaza near the fountain appears cleaner than before.

THE FOOD JUNCTION

The Sector 35 C market has over the years emerged as a favourite hangout of the foodies. Dotted with some of the biggest franchises and other local restaurants that are crowd-pullers, the market has managed to maintain a certain standard of cleanliness.

But while the sector seems to be relatively clean on the face, a look at its backyard tells a different story. While most of the restaurants are careful to keep the frontage spanking clean, the service road at the back is downright filthy with piles of garbage and leftovers.

Besides, the market also lacks adequate number of dustbins.

Sheaba Koachar, a housewife, cautioned, Even though it is one of the cleaner markets, I feel more dustbins should be placed here. A lot of people travelling to hill stations stop by at this market, we shouldnt let our image be sullied for want of cleanliness.

The furniture market in Sector 34 went without a broom for a fortnight in May when sanitation workers struck work. (HT Photo)

FOR FURNITURE

A visit to Sector 34 furniture market is all you need to find out why Chandigarh slipped from the second rank in 2016 to the 11th in 2017. When this correspondent visited the market on May 31, she was told that no one had cleaned it for the last 15 days. It was evident from the piles of garbage strewn all around.

We saw at least 20 heaps in just one block of this small market. It was impossible to pass by the overflowing bins placed by MC, which emitted a foul smell.

There is nothing spick and span about the market with shopkeepers encroaching upon the corridors. Sofas, chairs and tables are placed haphazardly everywhere making it difficult to wend your way through the market.

Hazara Singh, president of the Market Committee Association, Sector 34, blamed the inefficient MC for the grimy state of the market. The sweepers have not cleaned the market for several days now. They are on strike. For weeks, nobody has come to empty the dustbins placed inside the market. The stench makes it difficult for us to even sit inside our shops.

The corridors of the neighbouring general market of Sector 34 were comparatively clean but the parking areas had plenty of filth. While shopkeepers had taken care to sweep the areas around their premises, it seemed the public spaces hadnt seen a broom for a long time.

The Sector 22 Shastri market in a relatively clean avatar. (HT Photo)

FLEA MARKET

The Sector 22 Shastri market is a big hit with people looking for bargains. From clothes, shoes and accessories to groceries and furnishings, the market has something for everyone.

No wonder it sees hundreds of shoppers every day. But despite being overcrowded, the market looks cleaner than the Sector 34 market.

Although we didnt see them in action, the market is infested with rodents, which do their damage at night. The main issue faced by the sector is of encroachment. While corridors have been taken over by shopkeepers, the parking areas are occupied by vendors. It makes parking a chaotic affair, and there is hardly any place left for the free movement of people inside the market.
June 6

Ronix Cespedes, 38, of Elko was arrested on the 100 block of South Fourth Street for three counts of use or possession of drug paraphernalia. Bail: $1,920



Brennan D. Bowen, 19, of Spring Creek was arrested on Lamoille Canyon Road for DUI. Bail: $1,140



Taryn J. Davis, 20, of Tucson, Arizona was arrested on Lamoille Canyon Road for minor in possession of alcoholic beverage. Bail: $355



Kevin P. Lytle, 62, was arrested at 821 Water St. on a warrant for failure to appear after bail on a felony crime.



Linda C. Rivera, 38, of Elko was arrested at the Elko County Jail for failure to prevent truancy after notice, and two counts of contributing to delinquency or negligence of a minor. No bail listed.



William Rivera, 43, of Elko was arrested at the Elko County Jail for contributing to the delinquency or negligence of a minor. No bail listed.



Christopher D. Theordore, 56, of Coburg, Oregon was arrested on a fugitive felon warrant from other state. No bail listed.



Derek R. Wyatt, 33, of Elko was arrested at the Elko County Jail for two counts of grand larceny of a gun, violation of probation or condition of suspended sentence, and burglary while possession of gun or deadly weapon. Bail: $90,000



Uriah K. Valley, 38, of Battle Mountain was arrested at 1600 Mountain City Highway for possession of a controlled substance and use or possessing of drug paraphernalia. Bail: $5,640
The state government has asked all its officers and other staff not to appear before a court of law in casual dresses.

The decision was taken in response to the scathing comment made by Jharkhand high court recently when chief secretary Rajbala Verma appeared in person draped in a colourful printed saree.

Of late, the high court has come across many instances when senior government officers appeared before the court in casual dress, undermining the majesty of law. It not only pulled up the officers concerned, but also asked the advocate general to communicate the courts observations to the government for necessary action so that officers maintain proper dress code while they are in court.

The personnel administrative reforms and Rajbhasha department has issued the order banning its officers and other employees from appearing in a court of law without formals. The order stated that government employees should not appear in court in casual dresses under any circumstance.

Departments secretary Nidhi Khare said, The order is nothing but a reminder to all concerned to follow the appropriate dress code while they attend court or office. All officers are well aware about the dress code as they have already been trained on this aspect.

Khare pointed out, Government employees are expected to appear in court in modest manner as they happen to be one of the parties in the case. They should not opt for flashy dresses and should maintain decorum.

Earlier, advocate general Binod Poddar asked the government to instruct its employees to maintain proper dress code while appearing in the court. Poddar stated that it was found that some government officers appeared in court wearing casual dresses including T-shirts, jeans and goggles, which was highly objectionable and uncalled for. He added that officers should also be instructed not to sit crossed legs in court rooms.

A division bench of the high court last year had pulled up food and public distribution secretary Vinay Choubey after he appeared in person wearing a colourful printed half sleeved shirt. The bench raised serious objection over the officers attire and warned him to follow the courts dress code.

The instances of officers flouting dress code had not only been observed in court rooms but in government offices too. Reportedly, an IAS officer earned the chief ministers wrath recently when the former appeared before the latter wearing a red T-shirt. A former Jharkhand chief minister had reprimanded an IAS officer when he went to receive him at Ranchis airport in casual dress.

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A Muslim man was assaulted by an angry mob for allegedly trying to take beef to an Iftar party at Barbadda village in Jharkhands Dhanbad district on Tuesday morning.

The victim  identified as 35-year-old Ainul Ansari  has been admitted to the Patliputra Medical College Hospital, where he is recovering.

Police said Ansari, a resident of Murahdih, was headed to Barbadda village on a scooter when 20 people waylaid him at Loharbarba. Even as they were assaulting him, somebody informed the police.

A team led by Barbadda police station officer-in-charge Dinesh Kumar reached the scene soon afterwards, and rescued Ansari. The irate mob insisted that we search the victims scooter. We did so, and recovered meat  probably beef  from its storage compartment, said Kumar.

Ansaris wife, Sahida Begum, denied the allegation. We planned to hold an Iftar party at our house on Tuesday evening. Ansari was bringing mutton for the event, but the villagers mistook it for beef, she said.

A sample of the meat has been sent to a Ranchi laboratory for identification.

The villagers have accused Ansari of trading in beef for the last three months. They claim that he purchases the banned meat from Wasseypur in Dhanbad and sells it in the area, a police officer said.

The residents of Murahdih, however, narrate a different tale. Something like this has never happened before. We source our mutton for Iftar parties from Dhanbad because it is cheaply available there. But theres a lot of fear now. How are we  poor village folk  supposed to celebrate the festival in such circumstances? asked one of them.

Though tension prevails in the area, no complaint has been filed so far. Neither Ansari nor the villagers who assaulted him have turned up to lodge an FIR, said Kumar.

This incident comes amid reports of self-declared cow-protection groups running riot across the country since the BJPs ascent to power three years ago. In 2015, a group of villagers had attacked the house of a Muslim  Mohammad Akhlaq  at Bisara village in Uttar Pradesh, and beat him to death on allegations of slaughtering a stolen calf.
Emilia Clarke says she is optimistic about the future of her Game of Thrones character Daenerys Targaryen.

The actor spoke about her character in an interview to Belfast Telegraph.

She said: Right now, Im sort of feeling -- with her -- optimistic. Shell probably need some help, though. Ill definitely be disappointed if she doesnt make it.

Game Of Thrones, which is based on novels by George R.R. Martin, and tells the stories of several royal houses and their quest to claim the Iron Throne.

Clarkes character was last seen sailing towards Westeros with an aim to battle for the Iron Throne.

Talking about her determination to become a fair ruler, Clarke said: I think that there was always that idea that she would know where she was going to, but the reality is frightening.

Rain?! One is not amused.... now where are ones waterproof dragons when one needs them. #thiswigneedsalilmorecrownsandalillesswaterproofplasticheadgear #goodthingthiskweenknowshowtoposeintheraineh?  A post shared by @emilia_clarke on Oct 7, 2016 at 10:29am PDT

I mean, I always believed that Dany had the highest of hopes for what kind of impact she could leave on this world. She is continuously reaching for purest level of rulership -- is that a word? I just made it up.

The seventh season of the show will debut on July 16 in the US and will premiere in India on Star World and Star World HD on July 18.

Follow @htshowbiz for more
Anti-Muslim crimes in the British capital have increased fivefold since the London Bridge terror attack, Mayor Sadiq Khan said Wednesday, warning that police would take a zero-tolerance approach.

Provisional statistics for 6 June show a 40 percent increase in racist incidents, compared to the daily average this year, and a fivefold increase in the number of Islamophobic incidents, the mayors office said in a statement.

It said 54 racist incidents were recorded on Tuesday, compared to a daily average of 38 so far in 2017.

Twenty of them were anti-Muslim incidents, well above the 2017 daily average of 3.5.

This is the highest daily level of Islamophobic incidents in 2017 to date, the statement said, adding it was higher than levels reached after the November 2015 attacks in Paris, in which 130 people were killed.

On his Facebook page, Khan called on Londoners to pull together, and send a clear message around the world that our city will never be divided by these hideous individuals who seek to harm us and destroy our way of life.

He also warned that just as the police will do everything possible to root out extremism from our city, so we will take a zero-tolerance approach to hate crime.

Londons Metropolitan Police said it had made 25 arrests for hate crime offences since Saturday, when eight people were killed by three Islamist extremists in the city centre.

Officers had also been in touch with places of worship to encourage them to report hate crimes and to reassure those who congregate there that the police will take these crimes seriously, said Dave Stringer, head of the forces community engagement unit.

He said police were seeing year-on-year increases in all areas of hate crime, in part due to a greater willingness of victims to come forward despite overall such crimes being under-reported.

However, we also know world events can also contribute to a rise in hate crime, Stringer said.

In Saturday evenings attack, the assailants mowed down people on London Bridge before going on a stabbing spree in nearby Borough Market wearing fake suicide vests.

The three attackers, Khuram Butt, Rachid Redouane and Youssef Zaghba, were then killed by police.

The Islamic State group later claimed responsibility.
London police said on Wednesday they had recovered a body from the River Thames in their search for Xavier Thomas, a 45-year-old French national missing in the citys weekend terror attack.

Formal identification has not yet taken place, however Mr Thomas next of kin have been informed of this development, police said in a statement.

The body was found late on Tuesday near Londons former dockyards in Limehouse, about two kilometres (1.2 miles) downstream from London Bridge, where Saturdays attack began.

Thomas has not been seen since the night of the attack.

If the body is identified as being him, he would be an eighth victim.

The current death toll stands at seven people after three assailants wearing fake suicide vests mowed down pedestrians on London Bridge and launched a stabbing spree in bars in nearby Borough Market.

Police had issued an appeal for information about Thomas on Tuesday, saying he and his girlfriend were walking south over London Bridge towards Borough Market at around the time the attack started.

The two were visiting London for the weekend.

Witness accounts suggest that it is possible that Xavier was struck by the van that resulted in him being thrown into the River Thames, police said in Tuesdays statement.

His girlfriend was seriously injured on the bridge when she was hit by the vehicle.
China is making preliminary preparations to send a man to the moon, state media cited a senior space official as saying, the latest goal in Chinas ambitious lunar exploration programme.

China in 2003 became the third country to put a man in space with its own rocket after the former Soviet Union and the United States.

It has touted its plans for moon exploration and in late 2013 completed the first lunar soft landing since 1976 with the Change-3 craft and its Jade Rabbit rover.

The country also plans to land the first probe ever on the dark side of the moon in 2018, another milestone.

Yang Liwei, deputy director general of China Manned Space Agency and Chinas first man in space, said it will not take long for the manned mission to the moon to get official approval and funding, state news agency Xinhua said late on Tuesday.

The report gave no other details, but such a trip could still be many years off.

A government official said last year that China wants to put astronauts on the moon by 2036, in what state media said was the countrys first confirmation of a manned lunar exploration programme.

Advancing Chinas space programme is a priority for Beijing, with President Xi Jinping calling for the country to establish itself as a space power.

China insists its programme is for peaceful purposes, but the US Defence Department has highlighted Chinas increasing space capabilities, saying it is pursuing activities aimed to prevent adversaries from using space-based assets in a crisis.

Apart from its civilian ambitions, Beijing has tested anti-satellite missiles, and the US Congress has banned NASA from engaging in cooperation with its Chinese counterpart due to security concerns.

Chinas space budget is still only about one-tenth of the United States outlays, officials have said. According to Chinese state media, China spends about $2 billion a year on its space programme, though details are vague.
Chinas construction of a military outpost in Djibouti is just the first of what will likely be an ongoing expansion in friendly foreign ports around the world to support distant deployments, a new Pentagon report concludes, predicting that Pakistan may be another potential location.

The annual assessment of Chinas military might also notes that while China has not seized much new land to create more man-made islands, it has substantially built up the reefs with extended runways and other military facilities. And it has increased patrols and law enforcement to protect them.

The Djibouti base construction is near Camp Lemonnier, the US base in the Horn of Africa nation. But American military leaders have said they dont see it as a threat that will interfere with US operations there.

China most likely will seek to establish additional military bases in countries with which it has a longstanding friendly relationship and similar strategic interests, such as Pakistan, and in which there is a precedent for hosting foreign militaries, the Pentagon report said.

This initiative, along with regular naval vessel visits to foreign ports, both reflects and amplifies Chinas growing influence, extending the reach of its armed forces.

The military expansion ties into a broader Chinese initiative to build a new Silk Road of ports, railways and roads to expand trade across an arc of countries through Asia, Africa and Europe. And countries including Pakistan and Afghanistan welcome it as a path out of poverty.

But India and others would be unhappy with additional Chinese development in Pakistan, particularly anything linked to the military.

China has cited anti-piracy patrolling as one of the reasons for developing what it calls a naval logistics centre in Djibouti. Construction began in February 2016. Beijing has said the facility will help the army and navy participate in United Nations peacekeeping operations and provide humanitarian assistance.

But the expanded presence around the world would align with Chinas growing economic interests and would help it project military power further from its borders.

The report cautioned, however, that Chinas efforts to build more bases may be constrained by the willingness of countries to support the presence of Chinas Peoples Liberation Army in one of their ports.

Unlike previous reports, the new assessment doesnt document a lot of new island creation by China in the East and China Seas. Last years report said China had reclaimed 3,200 acres of land in the southeastern South China Sea.

Instead, the new report focuses on the military build-up on the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.

It said that as of late last year, China was building 24 fighter-sized hangars, fixed-weapons positions, barracks, administration buildings, and communication facilities on each of the three largest outposts -- Fiery Cross, Subi and Mischief Reefs. Each has runways that are at least 8,800 feet long.

Once complete, the report said China will be able to house up to three regiments of fighters in the Spratly Islands.

China has also built up infrastructure on the four smaller outposts, including land-based guns and communications facilities.

The report added that, China has used coercive tactics, such as the use of law enforcement vessels and its maritime militia, to enforce maritime claims and advance its interests in ways that are calculated to fall below the threshold of provoking conflict.
Veteran politician Sher Bahadur Deuba was sworn in as Nepals new prime minister on Wednesday and formed a small cabinet with seven members.

President Bidya Devi Bhandari administered the oath of office and secrecy to Deuba, 70, during a function at the Presidents Office. This will be his fourth stint in the top post.

He chose seven ministers - three each from the Nepali Congress and CPN-Maoist Centre and one from the Nepal Loktantrik Forum.

Gopal Man Shrestha of the Nepali Congress was appointed deputy prime minister and minister for education. Gyanendra Bahadur Karki and Farmullah Mansoor were appointed as finance minister and labour minister respectively.

Krishna Bahadur Mahara of CPN-Maoist Centre was appointed deputy prime minister and foreign minister. CPN-MC leader Janardan Sharma was appointed home minister and Prabhu Sah was appointed as a minister without portfolio.

Nepal Loktantrik Forum chairman Bijay Kumar Gachhadar was appointed deputy prime minister and minister for federal affairs and local development.

Deuba, also president of the Nepali Congress, returned to power on Tuesday, 12 years after he was unceremoniously removed by then King Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah.

He received 388 votes during voting in the 593-member Parliament. A total of 558 lawmakers voted in the prime ministerial election, with Deuba being the lone candidate.

Former premier Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachandas CPN-MC, the Rastriya Prajatantra Party, Rastriya Janata Party-Nepal, Sanghiya Samajbadi Forum-Nepal, Nepal Loktantrik Forum and CPN-Samyukta voted for Deuba.

The RJP-N, which has 25 seats in Parliament, voted for Deuba after reaching a three-point deal under which the new government will address the partys demand for amending the Constitution.
Christopher A Wray, a former federal prosecutor and criminal defence lawyer, is US President Donald Trumps pick to head the Federal Bureau of Investigation, filling a position that fell vacant after James Comey was dismissed and ending a search marked by high-profile drop-outs.

I will be nominating Christopher A. Wray, a man of impeccable credentials, to be the new Director of the FBI. Details to follow, Trump tweeted on Wednesday, a day before Comeys open testimony on Capitol Hill.

The announcement also came a day after reports surfaced of fresh turmoil at the justice department, which oversees the FBI. Attorney general Jeff Sessions is understood to have offered to resign last month, days before Trump undertook his first foreign visit as president.

Though Trump didnt accept it, he delivered the department a public rebuke in a tweet, saying his travel ban should not have been watered down. The White House has ducked questions about Trumps confidence in Sessions.

Wray, who went to Yale, started as an assistant US attorney in Atlanta and went on to join the justice departments leadership team as a senior aide to deputy attorney general and then led the criminal division from 2003 to 2005.

A criminal defence lawyer based in Washington DC, Wrays recent celebrity stemmed largely from spearheading the defence of New Jersey governor Chris Christie against allegations that his administration engineered a traffic jam to spite a political rival.

His nomination, which will have to be confirmed by the Senate, will end a high-profile search conducted in the full glare of TV lights and was marked by many of top names taking themselves off the table on their own, shrinking the field.

John Cornyn, a senior Republican senator from Texas who is also the co-founder and co-chair of the India Caucus, was an early favourite but recused himself, as did Joe Lieberman, a former Senator and vice presidential nominee.
The German government decided on Wednesday to withdraw its troops from Turkeys Incirlik base near the Syrian border after last-ditch talks with Ankara failed to resolve an escalating row.

Germany plans to move the 280 troops but has stressed it wants to minimise any disruption to the US-led coalition operation against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, of which it is part.

The cabinet backed the withdrawal of troops from the base in southern Turkey following Ankaras refusal to allow German lawmakers access to its soldiers there.

The military personnel along with Tornado surveillance jets and other hardware will be moved to Jordans Azraq base instead, defence minister Ursula von der Leyen said.

Chancellor Angela Merkel sought to play down the dispute, saying she views this issue as a very localised one.

With the decision made to move troops out of Turkey, Berlin can now concentrate on other points in its negotiations with Ankara, she added.

File photo of German defence minister Ursula von der Leyen chatting with soldiers during a visit to the German Armed Forces Bundeswehr at Incirlik airbase in Turkey in January 2016. (Reuters)

The German troops stationed in Incirlik fly surveillance missions over Syria and refuelling flights for partner nations battling the IS.

But the deployment became a bone of contention after Ankara repeatedly refused to allow German lawmakers to visit the base. Ankara first denied German parliamentarians the right to travel to the site for several months last year, angered by a Bundestag vote to recognise the Ottoman Empires World War I-era massacre of Armenians as genocide.

A fresh row over lawmakers visits to the air base erupted last month.

This time, Ankara was protesting the fact that Berlin offered political asylum to Turkish nationals accused of complicity in the attempted coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in July 2016.

German foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel travelled to Turkey on Monday to hold last-ditch talks with his counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu, but failed to sway Ankara.

After the talks, Cavusoglu repeated that we would not like to see members of FETO take shelter in friendly country Germany, referring to a movement led by US-based Muslim preacher Fethullah Gulen, whom Ankara accuses of orchestrating the failed coup.

Berlin has argued it cannot deploy its soldiers in places which lawmakers are unable to visit, given that all military missions are mandated by parliament.

Von der Leyen said that Azraq in Jordan would be a new base for Germanys troops.

Transfer will disrupt air refuelling missions

The transfer will disrupt its air refuelling missions for two or three weeks, while Tornado surveillance flights will cease for two to three months, she said.

I will therefore immediately speak with the Americans (who lead) the international coalition against terror, on how the gaps can be filled so that there is no negative impact, she said, adding that following that, we will draw up our time schedule.

The transfer will not require a new mandate from the German Parliament, as the current one specifies the deployment site as the airspace over Syria and its neighbouring countries, but does not specify the base, von der Leyen said.

Ties between the NATO allies have been strained since the failed coup in Turkey, and tensions have worsened over multiple issues including a referendum campaign to expand Erdogans powers.

Relations plunged further after Turkey imprisoned Deniz Yucel, a German-Turkish journalist with Germanys Die Welt daily, on terror charges earlier this year.
June 5

Brenton Baszler, 31, of Springfield, Oregon was arrested for failure to appear after bail of a felony crime, Nevada Criminal justice Information System deteainer, and failure to appear after bail on a misdemeanor. Bail: $22,390

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Misheala M. Brozovich, 24, of Spring Creek was arrested on Lamoille Highway for DUI, open alcohol container in vehicle, and failure to maintain lane or improper lane change. Bail: $1,610



Kenneth P. Cook, 32, of Elko was arrested on North Fifth Street and Spruce Road for driving with a suspended license. Bail: $355



Tammy R. Hillyer, 49, of Elko was arrested on Fifth and Railroad St. on a warrant for failure to appear after bail on a misdemeanor and license plate improperly displayed.



John G. Richards Jr.,31, of Elko was arrested at the Elko County Jail for taking or possessing vehicle without owners consent. Bail: $2,500



Shain Shurts, 46,of Murray, Utah was arrested at 2065 Idaho St. for Nevada Criminal Justice Information System Detainer, possession of a controlled substance, and possession of a controlled substance by documented prisoner. Bail: $13,000



Tennille Whitaker, 40, of Deeth was arrested on eight counts of sexual conduct between certain employees of school or volunteers and pupil. Bail: $160,000
The United Arab Emirates has banned people from publishing expressions of sympathy towards Qatar and will punish offenders with a jail term of up to 15 years, the UAE-based newspaper Gulf News and pan-Arab channel Al-Arabiya reported on Wednesday.

The United Arab Emirates, along with several other powerful Arab states, severed diplomatic ties with fellow Gulf state Qatar on Monday over its alleged support for Islamist groups and Iran. Qatar denies the accusations.

Strict and firm action will be taken against anyone who shows sympathy or any form of bias towards Qatar, or against anyone who objects to the position of the United Arab Emirates, whether it be through the means of social media, or any type of written, visual or verbal form, Gulf News quoted UAE Attorney-General Hamad Saif al-Shamsi as saying.

On top of a possible jail term, offenders would also be hit with a fine of at least 500,000 dirhams, the newspaper said, citing a statement to Arabic-language media.

Qatar says it was facing a campaign of lies and fabrications aimed at putting the Gulf Arab state under guardianship, after Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt cut ties with it.

The campaign of incitement is based on lies that had reached the level of complete fabrications, the Qatari foreign ministry said.

It added that, as a member of the Gulf Cooperation Council, it was committed to its charter, respected the sovereignty of other states and did not interfere in their affairs.
The Syrian governments allies will strike at American positions inside Syria if it crosses any red lines, Hezbollah warned on Wednesday.

The Lebanese militant group, a close ally to the Syrian government, issued the threat via its military media arm  one day after American forces bombed pro-government forces in eastern Syria.

The Pentagon said Tuesday the pro-government forces were infringing on a de-confliction zone established to protect U.S.-backed local opposition forces, who are engaged in fighting the Islamic State group.

On its TV station al-Manar, Hezbollah broadcast footage it said was of an Iranian drone tailing an American one over eastern Syria. It said the video was proof the Syrian governments backers could strike American units at will.

Iran is a key backer of Hezbollah and the Syrian government, and is deeply involved in the Syrian civil war.

Hezbollahs military media said it was only self-restraint keeping pro-government forces from attacking American units.

Also Wednesday, a U.S. official said the fight for Raqqa, the Islamic State groups de facto capital, will only accelerate as the militants lose their grip on Iraqs Mosul.

Brett McGurk, the U.S. envoy for the global coalition against IS, said the U.S. and its local allies, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, were prepared for a protracted fight for the northern Syrian city. He spoke at a press conference in Baghdad.

The jihadist group is locked in twin battles for its key strongholds, Raqqa and Mosul. The SDF launched its attack on Raqqa on Tuesday and have already captured a neighborhood on the citys eastern end. Iraqi forces have been battling IS in Mosul since October.

McGurk said the fight for Raqqa will be a difficult and very long-term battle.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation will not become a platform for India and Pakistan to internationalise their disputes, Chinese experts have said, amid concerns that the twos inclusion could hit the Eurasian blocs cooperation.

India and Pakistan are set to become full members of the China-led organisation for political, economic and military cooperation at the end of a two-day summit beginning on June 8 in Astana, Kazakhstan.

...the SCO is not a place for India and Pakistan to quarrel, but a platform for members to settle their disputes, Lin Minwang from the Institute of International Studies of Fudan University told Chinese state media.

Experts here have feared that the unity and work of the group could be hit if the two countries begin squabbling over Kashmir and terrorism.

India and Pakistan are accusing each other of supporting terrorism, and this is generally based on their domestic political agenda and dispute. SCO members will support them and offer help if the two countries need it, rather than internationalise their dispute within the organisation, Li Wei from the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR) told the state-run tabloid, Global Times.

Pakistans efforts to internationalise the Kashmir issue, however, cannot be ruled out especially now that it is part of a group led and mentored by China, its all-weather ally and benefactor.

It remains to be seen how India will handle the eventuality.

With the new admissions, SCOs reach will now cover large parts of south Asia. The groups current members are China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.

Member states of the SCO are accelerating legal processes. Everything is going on smoothly. Now, the SCO will complete the first membership expansion since its establishment. It will become regional organisation with largest coverage involving the biggest population in the world, Hua Chunying, Chinese foreign ministrys spokesperson, said last week.

Chinese diplomats say with India and Pakistan on board, the SCO will cover three-fifths of the Eurasian continent with nearly half the worlds population. It will make the regional organisation the biggest in terms of area and population and further improve its potential for cooperation and representation.

The accession of India and Pakistan will add to the SCOs international reputation and allow the bloc to better coordinate the positions of its member states on various issues, so as to enhance their cooperation, Askar Nursha, a researcher of Kazakhstans Institute of World Economy and Politics said.

Counterterrorism is one avenue where experts see gains. SCO members stage biennial military exercises Peace Mission since 2003 to deal with the threat of terrorism, separatism and religious extremism, people.cn reported. The latest, Peace Mission 2016, was held in Kyrgyzstan in September 2016.

Li spoke about the Shanghai Spirit trumping the hostility between India and China and giving the two countries a platform to resolve disputes.

The Shanghai Spirit as the founding values of the SCO, features mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality, consultation, respect for cultural diversity and pursuit of common development, official news agency, Xinhua, said in a commentary.

Besides the new memberships, there will be sharp focus at the summit on the possible meetings between Prime Minister Narendra Modi with President Xi Jinping and between Modi and Pakistan Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif.
Irans elite Revolutionary Guards on Wednesday vowed revenge for twin attacks by the Islamic State group in Tehran, and said Washington and Riyadh were involved.

The Revolutionary Guards have always proven that they will never allow the blood of innocents to be spilt without revenge, they said in a statement.

This terrorist action, coming one week after the meeting of the president of the United States with the leader of the one of the regions reactionary governments (Saudi Arabia)... shows they are involved in this savage action.

Separately, the deputy chief of the Guards Intelligence Service, Mohammad Hossein Nejat, told the Fars news agency that the men who attacked the parliament building in Tehran were aged between 20 and 25.

(They) went to the parliament as visitors. The guards became suspicious of their bags and when they wanted to search them, shooting began and they killed the security guard, he said.

The US and Saudi regime had ordered their stooges to do this.

He said the men spoke Arabic in the video released by IS from inside the building, but that their nationality was not yet known.

Twelve people were killed and more than 40 injured in the attacks on Tehrans parliament complex and the shrine of revolutionary founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Islamic State said in a statement on Wednesday that five of its fighters were responsible for a raid on Irans parliament and the shrine of Ayatollah Khomeini, using assault rifles, grenades, and suicide vests, and killing and injuring almost 60 people before dying.

The Sunni militant group also threatened Irans majority Shiite population with more attacks, saying the caliphate will not miss a chance to spill their blood until Sharia law is implemented.

Islamic State has often urged its fighters to attack Iranian targets and lambasted heretic Shiite Iran for helping the Syrian and Iraqi governments battle Islamic State, which considers Shiites to be infidels

In recent years, Tehran has been heavily involved in conflicts in Syria and Iraq against the Islamic State, but had remained untouched by IS violence around the world. Iran has also battled Saudi-backed Sunni groups in both countries.

Irans powerful Revolutionary Guard indirectly blamed Saudi Arabia for the attacks. A statement issued Wednesday evening stopped short of alleging direct Saudi involvement but called it meaningful that the attacks followed Trumps visit to Saudi Arabia, where he strongly asserted Washingtons support for Riyadh.

The statement said Saudi Arabia constantly supports terrorists including the Islamic State group, adding that the IS claim of responsibility reveals (Saudi Arabias) hand in this barbaric action.

The spilled blood of the innocent will not remain unavenged, the Revolutionary Guard statement said.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the countrys supreme leader, used the attacks to defend Tehrans involvement in wars abroad. He told a group of students that if Iran had not resisted, it would have faced even more troubles.

The Iranian nation will go forward, he added.

The violence began in midmorning when assailants with Kalashnikov rifles and explosives stormed the parliament complex where a legislative session had been in progress. The siege lasted for hours, and one of the attackers blew himself up inside, according to Irans state TV.

Images circulating in Iranian media showed gunmen held rifles near the windows of the complex. One showed a toddler being handed through a first-floor window to safety outside as an armed man looks on.

The IS groups Aamaq news agency released a 24-second video purportedly shot inside the complex, showing a bloody, lifeless body on the floor next to a desk.
British police carried out a controlled explosion Wednesday near the construction site for the new US embassy building in London after being called to a report of two unattended vehicles.

The Metropolitan Police later announced that the incident had ended and was not related to terrorism.

An AFP photographer at the scene reported seeing a dark-coloured car and a red van, both with their front windows smashed, outside the Nine Elms site near the south bank of the River Thames.

Police were called at 4:38 pm (1538 GMT) on Wednesday, June 7 to Ponton Road, Wandsworth... to a report of two unattended vehicles, police said in a statement.

Specialist officers are at the scene and cordons have been put in place. London Ambulance Service and the London Fire Brigade are also in attendance.

A controlled explosion was carried out at around 5:37pm.

The police later issued a further message on Twitter, saying: The incident in #PontonRoad #Wandsworth has been stood down. This was not terrorism related.

The US embassy is due to move from Grosvenor Square in Mayfair to the new cubic building later this year.

British police and security forces are on heightened alert following two terror attacks in recent weeks, in London on Saturday and in the northern English city of Manchester on May 22.
The uncle of the Pakistani-origin ringleader of the London Bridge terror attack in the United Kingdom that killed seven people has condemned the horrific massacre, saying he was ashamed of his nephew.

Breaking down in tears, Nasir Dar said he felt like the victims were his family, British media reports said. Dar blasted his 27-year-old nephew, Khuram Butt, over his involvement in the sickening terror attack and said he could not understand why he slaughtered seven innocent people.

Denouncing Butts extremist ideologies, Dar said: No religion of the world allows to do this shameful, brutal action.

Butt was one of three terrorists who drove a van through pedestrians on London Bridge before getting out of the vehicle and launching a knife attack in Borough Market on Saturday.

He said his extremist nephew had only visited Pakistan twice, but that he had noticed a change in the young man.

He said: When he came he was wearing shalwar kameez (a traditional outfit), he started offering prayers. (He was) very punctual in prayers and he had a beard also. Before that these symptoms were not found in him.

Butt was gunned down by police just minutes into the massacre on Saturday night, with the bodies of fellow jihadis Rachid Redouane and Youssef Zaghba also seen dead on the pavement after being hit with a hail of bullets.

Officers in plain clothesbelieved to be from Pakistans Inter Service Intelligence agency (ISI)have already raided Khuram Butts family restaurant in Pakistan.

Butt is believed to have been born in the Jhelum area. His father, Saif, is believed to have owned a furniture shop in Jhelum before emigrating to the UK in 1988 with his family.

Jhelum lies in a part of Pakistan where many members of the British-Pakistani community originally hail from. The nearby city of Mirpur, in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, is known as Little England due to its large British-Pakistani community.
A Sikh rights group has asked the UN to set up a tribunal to investigate alleged crimes committed against the community members during the 1984 Operation Bluestar.

Marking the 33rd year of Operation Bluestar, hundreds of Sikhs rallied outside the UN Headquarters on Tuesday holding placards and raising pro-Khalistan slogans.

The Sikhs For Justice (SFJ) said it has submitted a memorandum to UN assistant secretary for Human Rights calling for the setting up of the tribunal.

The memorandum to Andre Gilmour said Operation Bluestar clearly violated the basic humanitarian law provisions for the protection of the civilian populations and for the protection of cultural objects and places of worship as set out under the Geneva Conventions.

The operation also constituted an act of aggression, the memo added.

The Punjab Independence Rally outside the UN headquarters was organised by Gurdwara Sikh Cultural Society, New York, Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar), Sikh Youth of America and Sikhs For Justice.
Pakistans top civilian and military leadership on Wednesday expressed concern over the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan and rejected as baseless allegations that it had any hand in last weeks bombing in the war-torn countrys capital.

The assertion by Pakistan came as Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif chaired a special meeting of the National Security Committee of the Cabinet to review issues of national and regional security.

The forum strongly condemned the recent incident of terrorism in Kabul and resolved to remain steadfast and resolute in support of the Afghan people, according to a statement by the Prime Ministers Office.

The participants expressed concern on the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan and strongly rejected the baseless allegations on Pakistan in that context, the statement said.

Pakistan had last week also strongly rejected as baseless the Afghan allegations that the Taliban-linked militants with the help of Pakistani spy agency ISI carried out the bombing in Kabul that killed at least 150 people.

The Afghan intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security (NDS), had said early findings showed that the Haqqani network with the assistance of the ISI carried out the attack yesterday in Kabul.

The meeting today highlighted that Pakistan was the only country in the Afghan equation which has achieved clear and measurable success against terrorism despite limited capacity and huge human and economic costs.

Pakistan has not only remained committed to a peaceful and stable Afghanistan but also worked with all regional and global initiatives to that end. At the same time Pakistan has shown exceptional restraint even when Afghan territory was used for terrorist acts in Pakistan which resulted in massive human losses, the statement said.

It said that Pakistan was fully cognizant of institutional collaboration by elements hostile to Pakistan and will defend itself resolutely against manifest and future threats.

The statement said Pakistan remains committed to continue its ongoing efforts for local, regional and global peace.

The meeting was attended by Minister for Defence Khawaja Muhammad Asif, Minister for Finance Muhammad Ishaq Dar, Minister for Interior Chaudhry Nisar, Adviser to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee General Zubair Mahmood Hayat, Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa, Director General ISI Lt Gen Naveed Mukhtar and other top senior civil and military officials.
US intelligence officials believe Russian hackers planted a false news story that led Saudi Arabia and several allies to sever relations with Qatar, prompting a diplomatic crisis, CNN reported on Tuesday.

FBI experts visited Qatar in late May to analyse an alleged cyber breach that saw the hackers place the fake story with Qatars state news agency, the US broadcaster said.

Saudi Arabia then cited the false item as part of its reason for instituting a diplomatic and economic blockade against Qatar, the report said.

Qatars government said the May 23 news report attributed false remarks to the emirates ruler that appeared friendly to Iran and Israel, and questioned whether US President Donald Trump would last in office, according to CNN.

Qatari foreign minister Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman al-Thani told the broadcaster that the FBI has confirmed the hack and the planting of fake news.

Whatever has been thrown as an accusation is all based on misinformation and we think that the entire crisis is being based on misinformation, he told CNN.

It was started based on fabricated news, being wedged and being inserted in our national news agency, which was hacked and proved by the FBI, he added.

If accurate, the allegations would indicate Russian efforts to undermine US foreign policy, building on US intelligence concerns that Russian hackers attempted to influence last years presidential election, won by Trump. The Kremlin denies meddling.

Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain announced Monday they were severing diplomatic relations and closing air, sea and land links with Qatar.

They accused the tiny Gulf state of harbouring extremist groups and suggested Qatari support for the agenda of Saudi Arabias regional archrival Iran. Qatar has strenuously denied the allegations.

Although Qatar hosts the largest American military airbase in the Middle East, Trump threw his weight behind the Saudi-led effort to isolate the emirate in a surprise move on Tuesday.

He suggested Qatar was funding extremism.

So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off, he tweeted in reference to his trip to Riyadh last month.

They said they would take a hard line on funding... extremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism!

The CNN report quoted the Qatari government communications office as saying it was working with the FBI and Britains National Crime Agency on an ongoing hacking investigation.
ELKO  A teacher at Wells Elementary School was arrested Monday afternoon on charges of engaging in sexual activity with high school students at Wells Combined School.

Tennille Whitaker, 40, has been charged with eight counts of sexual conduct with a pupil. According to Elko County Undersheriff Ron Supp, there are two alleged victims between the ages of 16 and 18 who were high school students at the time the contact occurred.

Whitaker has been working with the school district full time for 11 years. She was released from jail Tuesday afternoon on $160,000 bail.

Elko County School District Superintendent Jeff Zander said keeping students safe is the districts highest priority.

The teacher has been placed on administrative leave with pay pending full investigation and were fully cooperating with the sheriffs office to facilitate the investigation, he said. The Elko County School District takes this very seriously and we have policies in place to prohibit this type of conduct. As I stated earlier, the safety of our students is the highest priority.

The school district plans to keep Whitaker on paid administrate leave to prevent her from trying to return to work before the investigation is complete.

The alleged incidents occurred over a two-year span, with some incidents occurring on school grounds. The Elko County Sheriffs Department began investigating the allegations in October of last year after receiving a tip from a concerned parent who noticed Whitaker was behind closed classroom doors with a student and thought it was inappropriate.

The school district began conducting its own investigation in February, speaking to teachers and faculty at Wells Combined School. Students who were interviewed for the investigation claimed they were unaware of any sexual activity between Whitaker and students.

Even though she had not yet been charged, the school district issued a written warning to Whitaker that reinforced the districts policy regarding professional boundaries between staff and students.

Both the sheriffs and the school districts investigations met with resistance.

Nobody was really willing to testify or give a statement that said yes, this happened, Zander said.

Supp said the investigation is ongoing and wanted to encourage anyone with more information to reach out.

At this point in the investigation we have two students that have been involved but we think there are possibly more, he said. The investigation is still ongoing so we would ask anybody that has any further information on any possible victims or anybody that has any information to contact our detective division at our sheriffs office.

Because it was difficult to get witnesses to come forward the sheriffs department had to gather a lot of information on its own.

According the school district, there was no information shared between the sheriffs department and the district.

Supp said the investigation was somewhat unconventional.

We did some unconventional investigation. We did a lot of surveillance and some things like that and we were able to gather a lot of information that led us to circle around and we finally got down to the arrest yesterday.

In light of the arrest, the school district may reexamine its social media policy. It is unclear if Whitaker made contact with students on social media and there are already rules in place prohibiting contact between students and teachers on social media, but Zander said it may be time to update the guidelines.

A lot of these particular issues that were dealing with have to do with social networking and relationship-building from a social networking side of things, he said. We have a policy in place to try to expressly prohibit those conversations taking place that create personal relationships ... we will probably bring this policy back to the board of trustees to expand that policy somewhat.

While the school district works to create more stringent guidelines regulating student-teacher interaction, the sheriffs department is still looking to get people to come forward regarding any inappropriate interaction Whitaker may have had with students.

Supp said even small pieces of information can help turn a case.

If there are any other witnesses or any other victims or anything out there, regardless of how small or how big it is, wed ask them to call us, he said.
Saudi Arabia plans to execute 14 citizens, all Shias, after a grossly unfair trial linked to political protests, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday.

Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia, which has one of the highest rates of executions in the world, has witnessed protests and clashes with police in its mainly Shiite eastern province since 2011.

Court documents obtained by the two human rights groups showed that a total of 38 defendants, including the 14 sentenced to death, were convicted of charges linked to demonstrations in the eastern province 2011 and 2012.

Most had been held in pretrial detention for more than two years, many of them in solitary confinement, the groups said.

The rise in death sentences against Saudi Arabian Shiites is alarming and suggests that the authorities are using the death penalty to settle scores and crush dissent under the guise of combating terrorism and maintaining national security, said Sarah Leah Whitson of Human Rights Watch.

Amnesty Internationals Lynn Maalouf said the death sentences, handed down in 2016 and upheld last month, were based on coerced confessions that were later retracted.

Maalouf said the verdicts were based on sham court proceedings ... that brazenly flout international fair trial standards and should be overturned.

Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia has executed 36 people this year.

Authorities in the kingdom have accused protesters of terrorism aimed at destabilising the country.

Saudi Arabia also uses the term to describe drug traffickers and extremists loyal to the ISIS, who have executed a number of attacks on Shiites.
Irans semi-official Tasnim news agency says the siege at parliament is over and that four attackers have been killed.

Gunmen and suicide bombers attacked parliament and the shrine of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini on Wednesday, killing at least two security guards and wounding more than 40 people.

The Islamic State group claimed both attacks.

PHOTOS: Shootings, suicide bombings rock Iranian Parliament and Khomeini Shrine

The Sunni extremist group is at war with Iranian-backed groups in Syria and Iran and views Irans Shia majority as apostates deserving of death.

The attack on parliament, which was in session at the time, lasted more than three hours. Police surrounded the building and gunfire could be heard from outside.

Iranian media says several attackers, including suicide bombers, took part in the assaults on both sites, with the all the 4 attackers being killed by the forces. Lawmakers were in session at the time of the attack, and have been ordered to remain in place.

Here are the live updates:

6.15pm:

5.30pm: Irans foreign minister Javad Zarif condemns Tehran attacks, says terrorism is global issue: Press TV

5.01pm: Intelligence minister says foiled third attack, Reuters.

4.39pm:

Amaq Releases Video Taken by IS Fighter Inside Iranian Parliament https://t.co/YSZWLXpC05  SITE Intel Group (@siteintelgroup) June 7, 2017

4.33pm: 12 killed, 39 wounded in Tehran attacks: Emergency chief

4.15pm: Russia condemns Iran attacks, urges coordination against Islamic State: Reuters

4.09pm: All terrorists at Irans Parliament killed, situation returns to normal, local media reports

4.03pm:

#BREAKING#Iran shooting

Body of terrorist killed by security forces inside Parliament building pic.twitter.com/Fv8s7ZczTf  Mehr News Agency (@MehrnewsCom) June 7, 2017

3.53pm: Suspects arrested following terrorist attack at Imam Khomeinis mausoleum being interrogated: Press TV.

3:49pm: Two terrorists still at the parliament, local media reports.

3:43pm: Husbands and daughter of two female MPs reportedly taken hostage by terrorists: Mehr News Agency reports.

3:41pm: Deputy interior minister says attackers are now surrounded in the parliament building: Tasnim News Agency. One of the attackers was shot dead in the parliament, one detonated a suicide vest.

3:40pm: Irans deputy interior minister says attackers dressed as women entered the parliament from main gate: Tasnim News Agency

3:37pm: Assailants had received special training to commit acts of terror, Iran MP tells local media.

3:35pm: No disruption in air travel despite terrorist attacks, airport official tells Tasnim News Agency.

3:24pm:

Footage reportedly shows terrorists firing shots from #IranParliament building pic.twitter.com/jEOM66UrVc  Press TV (@PressTV) June 7, 2017

3:20pm: Iran is a close friend of Pakistan and we strongly condemn the terrorist attack, Pakistan former foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi tells state media.

3:10pm: This is a minor issue but reveals that the terrorists pursue troublemaking, says parliament speaker: State media.

3:05pm: 8 grenades, 10 magazines, a bottle filled with pink fluid were being carried by a neutralised terrorist at mausoleum, local media reports.

3:02pm: Parliament speaker Ali Larijani says terrorist shooting inside parliament a minor incident; security forces are fully capable of handling the cowardly attackers: Mehr News Agency.

3:00pm: Lawmakers were in session at the time of the parliament attack, and have been ordered to remain in place, says Iranian media.

2:56pm: One terrorist blows himself up in Parliament: State media quoting official

2:42pm: Head of anti-terrorism department in the Iranian intelligence ministry says they have foiled another terrorist plot and have arrested a terrorist team, state broadcaster IRIB reported.

2:40pm: Islamic State claims responsibility for attack at Iranian parliament, the groups state news agency AMAQ said.

2:30pm: Iran intelligence ministry says one bomber shot dead before detonating vest, another blows self up at Imams mausoleum: State TV.

2:20pm: Second suicide bombing at Iran shrine: State TV

2:15pm:

The pics below show one of attackers killed by #Iran's #IRGC forces in nearby areas at Imam #Khomeini mausoleum in southern #Tehran pic.twitter.com/ketQhqeVMT  Tasnim News Agency (@Tasnimnews_EN) June 7, 2017

2:10pm: Explosion heard at parliament building; gunmen were carrying explosive vest: State media.

2:08pm: Tehran governor says one attacker killed by security, one blew herself up, others arrested. One gardener killed by gunmen: Mehr News Agency.

2:04pm: Suicide bombing at Iran parliament complex: State TV

2:00pm: Tehran security council starts emergency meeting, says local news agency.

1:57pm: Irans intelligence ministry says twin attacks in Tehran carried out by terrorist groups: State TV

1:55pm: Unconfirmed reports say seven people killed in parliament shooting spree: Tasnim news agency.

1:54pm: Tasnim news agency said there were unconfirmed reports that the attackers had taken four hostages inside the parliament building.

1:50pm: Two attackers arrested in surrounding areas of Khomeini mausoleum, Tasnim News Agency says.

Map of Iran showing the two locations - the parliament complex and a mausoleum - where attacks are underway. (AFP Photo)

1:45pm: I was inside the parliament when shooting happened. Everyone was shocked and scared. I saw two men shooting randomly, a journalist at the scene, who asked not to be named, told Reuters.

1:43pm: The scene outside the Parliament

1:40pm: Three attackers killed in Imam Khomeini shrine, says state media.

1:35pm:

#BREAKING#Iran shooting

Body of suicide bomber in Imam Khomeini shrine. 2nd suicide attacker with 6 grenades reportedly shot dead by police pic.twitter.com/IWEswxNw5c  Mehr News Agency (@MehrnewsCom) June 7, 2017

1:33pm: At least one hostage now confirmed in attack on parliament, Iran News Now reports.

1:29pm: Parliaments cultural and public relations director general Mahdi Kiaie says security forces and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps controlling the situation.

1:25pm: State TV says traffic ban enforced in streets near Parliament building in Tehran.

Injured guard being taken towards the ambulance outside Iran parliament. (Twitter/State media)

1:21pm: Conditions in parliament under control, says official: State media

1:20pm: One attacker of Iran Parliament arrested, reports state news agency IRNA.

1:19pm: One of the gunmen trapped inside as parliament is under siege by security forces, says state media.

1:17pm:

People gather outside Iran Parliament in central Tehran after the shooting incident #tehranshooting pic.twitter.com/OGZ90zchZS  Press TV (@PressTV) June 7, 2017

1:15pm: Irans interior minister Rahmani Fazli issues an order to hold an extraordinary security session in Tehran to investigate the shooting incidents at the Parliament and the Mausoleum of Imam Khomeini: Mehr News Agency.

1:11pm: A security guard was killed at the parliament, while a gardener was killed at Khomeinis mausoleum, the ISNA news agency reported.

1:06pm: Suicide bomber in Imam Khomeini shrine was reportedly a woman. She blew up herself outside shrine on western yard, says Mehr News Agency.

1:04pm: Two killed in attacks on Iran parliament, shrine: media reports.

1:04pm:

#BREAKING#Iran shooting

Moment of explosion on western wing outside Imam Khomeini shrine. pic.twitter.com/4U0OCYyEel  Mehr News Agency (@MehrnewsCom) June 7, 2017

1:02pm: Lawmaker Elias Hazrati tells state television three assailants, one with a pistol and two with AK-47 assault rifles, raided parliament.

1:00pm: Four attackers in parliament shooting, 8 people wounded, says Iran state TV.

12:59pm: An armed man entered at the western entrance of the mausoleum and opened fire before blowing himself up with a suicide vest, the sites head of public relations Ali Khalili told the IRNA news agency.

12:57pm: The gunmen entered the parliament building via the north entrance, says state media.

12:55pm: Following the shooting, the pilgrims are locked inside the shrine of Imam Khomeini (RA) in order to maintain security.

12:53pm: Parliament session going on normally, broadcast live on national radio, despite gunmen attack, reports Mehr News Agency.

12:50pm: State TV says one of the attackers has been killed by security guards and a woman was arrested at the shrine following Wednesdays attack.

12:45pm: The ILNA news agency said five people had been injured by shooting at the mausoleum.

12:40pm: News agency ISNA reported one person killed but it was unclear if that meant the suicide bomber.

12:37pm: Four terrorists, including suicide bomber, attack Khomeini shrine, reports Iran state TV.

12: 35pm: News agencies ISNA and Fars said three people had been shot at the parliament, including at least one security guard.

12:30pm: An apparently coordinated attack took place at the mausoleum of Iranian revolutionary founder Ruhollah Khomeini, Fars reported.

12: 15pm: News agency Mehr reported that eight people were injured in the Parliament shooting while one person was killed and five injured at Imam Khomeinis shrine.

12: 10pm: IRIB and Fars said an armed man was inside the mausoleum in southern Tehran, around 20km from the parliament building, with reports of several injuries.

12:00pm: Iranian media says a man has opened fire inside the parliament building, wounding a security guard in an attack that is still underway.
The focus of Thursdays mid-term election in the United Kingdom is supposed to be Brexit  the decision to leave the European Union  but it connects with India and the 1.5 million-strong Indian community here at various levels.

The shape that Brexit takes under the new government is of much interest to nearly 800 Indian companies that use United Kingdom as their base to operate across the European Union and beyond. The UKs membership of the EU gives them several benefits that they may lose; some have already postponed expansion and other plans, or partly relocated in the EU.

The elections India connect is also at the level of bilateral relations.

Prime Minister Theresa May has shown much enthusiasm for a free trade agreement with India after Brexit; her first visit outside the EU after taking over as prime minister was to India.

India is one of the key markets that Britain hopes will compensate for the loss of access to the European Single Market after Brexit. New Delhi remains watchful on this but much ground needs to be covered and a lot will depend on the shape of the new government in London  for example, a majority conservative government or a minority Labour government, which may not have the same vision of Brexit as the former.

The India connect is evident in the manifestos of the three main parties. The Conservative Party is likely to continue the woo-Indian-trade-and-money-but-bear-down-on-Indians line; it has promised new visa curbs likely to hit Indian students, professionals and Indian spouses of UK nationals the most.

The partys manifesto makes no mention of India, unlike the significant references in its 2015 manifesto that was part of former leader David Camerons focus on India. It included reiterating support for Indias bid for permanent representation in the UN Security Council.

The only indirect reference to India in the Conservative manifesto is in relation to trade: We will strengthen our close links with our Commonwealth allies, continuing our mission together to promote democratic values around the world and build on our existing economic relationships to further our common trading interests.

Open and free trade is key to international prosperity, stability and security  it is an essential component of an economy that works for everyone. We believe the UK must seize the unique opportunities it has to forge a new set of trade and investment relationships around the world, building a global, outward-looking Britain, it said.

Labours manifesto also does not mention India  as in the 2015 version  but has committed itself to an independent inquiry into Britains role in the 1984 Operation Blue Star if it comes to power. The issue blew up in January 2014 when declassified files indicated some British help before the operation; the demand is to release other files on Britains role.

The Liberal Democrats Party  the third major mainstream party  also makes no mention about India, but reiterated its commitment to outlaw caste discrimination in Britain, which has sharply divided the Indian community in recent years. The government is currently holding a consultation on the issue.

The India connect with the election is most visible in the efforts by all three parties to woo the British Indian community, which is influential in several constituencies in London and the Midlands. The efforts include visits to temples and gurdwaras, with leaders participating in rituals and dressed in appropriate attire.

The community has traditionally favoured Labour, but has considerably moved to the Tories since the 2010 elections, particularly the young aspirational second and third generation of immigrants who are uneasy with Labours social welfare and other policies.

All the three parties have fielded candidates of Indian origin  Labour 14, Conservative 13 and Liberal Democrats 14. The last parliament had the highest number of Indian-origin MPs in British history  10  with five each from Conservative and Labour.

However, it remains a matter of concern in Indian quarters that most of the 10 MPs have negligible engagement with Indian issues in parliament. The expectation is that they have a better understanding of New Delhis interests and realities in India, but have rarely stood up on its behalf during debates.

The most disappointing occasion from Indias perspective was the January 19 debate on Jammu and Kashmir in the House of Commons, when over 20 MPs came down heavily on Indias record there, but the only Indian-origin MP present and defending New Delhi was Virendra Sharma (Labour).

Sharma faced uneasy moments during a campaign event in Ealing Southall when he was cornered into apologising for alleging that Pakistan sponsored terrorism during the debate. The constituency includes considerable number of voters of Pakistan origin.

The Conservative Party uses images and video footage of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in campaign literature targeted at the Indian community, which is not always appreciated in the community. It also released a slick video with a Hindi song titled Theresa Ke Saath with lyrics seeking votes for May.

The Conservative Party is closer to the influential Hindu-Sikh lobby on outlawing caste discrimination in Britain. As May told Hindustan Times, I recognise the sensitivity on the caste issue; there is a consultation taking place.

There was wording put into the relevant legislation in the House of Lords by Labour and Liberal Democrats working together on that, but I realise how sensitive this issue is. I will look into it carefully when the consultation returns, she added.

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President Donald Trump called Qatars emir Wednesday and offered US help as efforts grew to resolve a damaging feud between the emirate and its Gulf neighbours.

Trumps call to Qatari ruler Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, a key US ally, came as a senior Emirati official told AFP that Gulf Arab states were not seeking regime change in Doha.

The president offered to help the parties resolve their differences, including through a meeting at the White House if necessary, Trumps office said after the call.

A Qatari official said Trump in the call had expressed readiness to find a solution to the diplomatic crisis in the Gulf, and stressed his keenness that the Gulf remains stable.

Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE and Bahrain announced on Monday they were cutting diplomatic ties and closing air, sea and land links with Qatar, giving Qataris within their borders two weeks to leave.

The four countries have suspended all flights to and from Qatar, pulled their ambassadors from Doha and ordered Qatari diplomats to leave.

Riyadh and its allies accuse Qatar of supporting extremist groups and of serving the interests of regional arch-rival Iran, claims Doha has strongly rejected.

The dispute has sparked the worst diplomatic crisis in the Arab world in years and raised fears it will cause further instability in an already-volatile region.

The United Arab Emirates state minister for foreign affairs Anwar Gargash on Wednesday accused Qatar of being the main champion of extremism and terrorism in the region.

Not about regime change

But he also said measures taken against Qatar this week by Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other Arab nations were not aimed at seeking new leadership in Doha.

This is not about regime change -- this is about change of policy, change of approach, Gargash told AFP in Dubai.

Kuwait is leading efforts to find a mediated solution.

Its emir, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, met Dubais ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum and other senior UAE officials in Dubai on Wednesday, after talks the day before with King Salman in Saudi Arabia.

There were reports he was to head to Qatar after the UAE trip.

The Kuwaiti ruler played a pivotal role in mediating a compromise in a 2014 diplomatic dispute between Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Gulf states.

The United States, France and Russia have called for dialogue while Turkey has defended Qatar and said it would further develop ties with Doha.

Turkeys parliament on Wednesday approved deploying troops to a Turkish base in Qatar under a previously agreed plan, in a move seen as a sign of support for Doha.

Trump waded into the dispute on Tuesday, but seemed to only muddy the waters. After first appearing to back the Saudi-led measures against Qatar on Twitter, he shifted gears and called for unity among Gulf Arab states.

Trumps Tuesday tweet -- in which he said all reference was pointing to Qatar as a financer of extremism -- was especially surprising given Qatars role as host of the largest US airbase in the Middle East.

Al-Udeid, located in the Qatari desert, is home to some 10,000 US troops and is a crucial hub in the fight against Islamic State group extremists in Syria and Iraq.

German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel accused the US president of fanning conflict in the Middle East and risking a new spiral in arms sales with his remarks.

Such a Trumpification of relations in a region already susceptible to crises is particularly dangerous, Gabriel said.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said Gulf countries still saw Qatar as a brother state.

But you have to be able to tell your friend or your brother when they are doing the right thing and when they are doing the wrong thing, Jubeir said in a joint press conference with Gabriel.

Ratings downgrade

Qatar has said it is open to talks to end the crisis but has also accused its neighbours of impinging on its sovereignty.

In a sign of the potential risks to Qatars economy, S&P Global Ratings cut Qatars credit rating by one notch to AA- and put it on watch for further downgrades.

There are numerous uncertainties regarding Qatars response,the extent to which these measures will be imposed, and their longevity, said the ratings agency.

Qatar has an independent streak that has often angered its neighbours, attracting criticism for hosting the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, and supporting Islamist rebels in Syria.

Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies may have felt emboldened to move against Qatar by Trumps visit last month to Riyadh, which saw the president clearly align US interests with the kingdom and lash out at Iran.

Riyadh has itself faced accusations of tolerating or even supporting extremists, in particular after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.

Of the 19 hijackers of planes used in the attacks, 15 came from Saudi Arabia, also the birthplace of Al-Qaeda founder and attack mastermind Osama bin Laden.
Turkey threw its support behind Qatar on Wednesday, with officials saying it could fast-track troop deployment and provide crucial food and water supplies to the Gulf Arab country facing isolation from some of the biggest Middle Eastern powers.

In the deepest split between Arab states for decades, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain severed relations with Qatar on Monday and closed their airspace to commercial flights, saying it was funding militant groups.

Qatar vehemently denies the accusations.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said isolating Qatar would not resolve any problems. Erdogan, who has long tried to play the role of a regional power broker, said Ankara would do everything in its power to help end the regional crisis.

Irans foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif is visiting the region to discuss the stand-off.

Lawmakers from Erdogans ruling AK Party and the nationalist opposition MHP on Wednesday proposed bringing forward approval of a draft bill that will allow Turkish troops to be deployed to Turkeys military base in Qatar, party officials told Reuters.

Turkey has maintained good relations with Qatar as well as several of its Gulf Arab neighbours. Turkey and Qatar have both provided support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and backed rebels fighting to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The Turkish parliament was also set to bring forward approval of a draft accord between the two countries on military training cooperation, the officials said.

Both bills, which were drawn up before the spat erupted, are expected to be approved by the Ankara parliament on Wednesday.

Turkeys main exporting industry body said it was ready to meet food and water supply demands from Qatar, after a Qatari official said Doha was in talks with Iran and Turkey to ensure trade disruptions did not create shortages.

Grain traders said Qatar appears to have a comfortable immediate supply of wheat.

Turkey set up a military base in Qatar, its first such installation in the Middle East, as part of an agreement signed in 2014. In 2016, Ahmet Davutoglu, then Turkish prime minister, visited the base where 150 troops are stationed, the Turkish daily Hurriyet reported.

In an interview with Reuters in late 2015, Ahmet Demirok, Turkeys ambassador to Qatar at the time, said 3,000 ground troops would eventually be deployed at the base, which was primarily to serve as a venue for joint training exercises.

The text of the draft bill, which includes the agreement between Qatar and Turkey on the base, shows the cooperation will be primarily about the modernisation of Qatars military institutions, as well as widening cooperation in training and joint war exercises. (Additional reporting by Nevzat Devranoglu and Mike Hogan in Hamburg; Writing by Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by David Dolan and Louise Ireland)
Financial support for jihadists across the Middle East lies at the heart of Arab powers row with neighbouring Qatar, an Emirati minister said on Wednesday, identifying three individuals his government wanted Doha to rein in.

Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain severed diplomatic relations with Qatar in a coordinated move on Monday, accusing it of backing Islamist militants and Iran. Qatar strongly denies supporting terrorism, and on Tuesday called for talks to settle the dispute.

The dispute was also prompted in part by claims that Qatar was trying to undermine neighbouring governments by giving financial support to opposition movements and using its flagship television channel Al Jazeera as a mouthpiece to attack them.

But UAE minister of state for foreign affairs Anwar Gargash told Reuters in an interview that addressing financing for terrorist groups was the prime motive.

This litany of subversive support, infringement, actions is huge but I would say the most serious is the extremists and terrorist angle, he said. I think this is the most serious of all the other catalogues of other infringements.

Gargash also said further moves against Qatar were possible and warned against allowing Shia Muslim power Iran to exploit the unprecedented rift between the mainly Sunni Muslim Gulf Arab states, some of which regard Tehran as a regional arch-rival.

Qatar, a major player in the global gas industry and host to the biggest US military base in the Middle East, has crafted an independently-minded foreign policy, attracting criticism for engaging with groups from Hezbollah to Hamas.

Black and white approach

Global understanding of the small Gulf nations alleged links to those organisations, as well as al-Qaeda and Islamic State, is improving, Gargash said.

He cited comments by world leaders including US President Donald Trump who took to Twitter on Tuesday to implicate Qatar and praise its isolation.

We want a black-and-white approach to terrorist financing, said Gargash. We know the ABCs of dealing with terrorism. One of these ABCs is: you never feed the crocodiles.

At a May summit in Riyadh attended by Trump, the US and Gulf Arab countries signed an agreement to coordinate efforts against the financing of terrorist groups.

Trump urged more than 50 Muslim leaders at the gathering to drive out terrorists from their lands, which Gulf officials say helped embolden the move against Qatar this week.

Gargash said the UAE wanted to see action taken against individuals living openly in Qatar despite being classified as supporters of terrorism by the US and United Nations.

He identified three men who are suspected of providing funds and other support to al-Qaeda in Iraq, Syria and Pakistan, and who the US treasury department says have financed terrorism.

There was no immediate response for a request for comment on that demand from a Qatari official.

Gargash said the scope of Qatars sheltering of extremists has widened since 2014, when concern was largely focused on Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi, a senior Egyptian cleric viewed as the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Gulf states view the Brotherhood, the worlds oldest Islamist movement and long Egypts main opposition group, as a dangerous political enemy.

Now the concern is more serious, much more acute than 2014, he said. It shows how the Qataris have expanded their support but it has become more visible.
All three main parties in Britain have fielded Indian-origin candidates but there is some concern the number of MPs from the community may not increase substantially from the 10 in the last Parliament, mainly because most of them have not been fielded in party strongholds.

Indian-origin candidates were among the first non-whites elected in Britains parliamentary history: Dadabhai Naoroji from Finsbury Central in 1892, followed by Mancherjee Bhownagree (1895) and Shapurji Saklatvala (1922).

But it was only after 1987 that Parliament saw more non-whites being elected. Their number spiked from the 2010 election - from 15 to 27 in 2010 and from 27 to 41 in 2015. The next Parliament is likely to have more than 40 MPs from minority communities, including those of Indian-origin.

The number of Indian-origin candidates has been increasing over the years, though concern remains they are not chosen in retirement seats (constituencies where the party MP is retiring and the next candidate has a strong chance of winning).

On Thursday, Tamanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) and Kuldip Singh Sahota (Telford) are contesting to be the first turban-wearing Sikhs in the House of Commons, while Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham Edgbaston) is hoping to be the first Sikh woman MP.

There were 10 MPs in the last Parliament of Indian origin, five each from Labour and Conservative and they are in the fray again and expected to win. The Labour candidates are Keith Vaz, Lisa Nandy, Virendra Sharma, Valerie Vaz, Seema Malhotra and the Conservative candidates are Priti Patel, Alok Sharma, Shailesh Vara, Rishi Sunak and Suella Fernandes.

Sunder Katwala, director of the think tank British Future, told Hindustan Times that voters from the Indian community want to see EU free movement rules change after Brexit, but were worried about the ratcheting up of anti-immigration rhetoric. They also want to see firm action from all parties on challenging racism and hate crime, he said.

Progress on Indian and British Asian representation in the House of Commons is set to be steady rather than spectacular, after the surge in ethnic minority MPs in 2010 and 2015. The Conservatives may overtake the Labour Party in having more ethnic minority and British Asian MPs, he said.

Key Indian-origin candidates:

Keith Vaz: The most recognised non-white MP first elected in 1987 from Leicester East, from where he has won successive elections. Born in Aden, Vaz, 60, is of Goan origin and counts leading Indian politicians and celebrities among his friends. Bollywood stars Abhishek Bachchan and Sanjay Dutt have campaigned for him. He held the influential position of chair of the Home Affairs Committee until recently and has been in the news for controversies related to his role as an MP and his personal life.

Priti Patel: One of the leading members of the David Cameron government, Patel, 45, joined the Brexit camp before the EU referendum in June 2016. After Theresa May took over as prime minister, Patel was elevated to the cabinet role of international development secretary, the highest position reached by an Indian-origin politician. Feted by the Indian government and by the community, Patel won with a large majority in the 2015 election from Witham. She has come under fire for making tall promises to the Indian and Asian communities on the benefits of Brexit  the struggling Indian restaurant industry was promised a rescue by allowing recruitment of chefs from the subcontinent - but she has gone quiet on what some call Brexit jumla.

Virendra Sharma: A long-time resident of Southall, Sharma, 70, has been MP since 2007, having previously held office in the local council. A former bus conductor, he won with a large margin in 2015, but is expected to win with a slightly reduced majority. Sharma has faced criticism in recent months  reflected in the campaign  for problems facing the constituency. He also faced flak from the Indian community for apologising to voters of Pakistani-origin after alleging in Parliament that Pakistan is a sponsor of terrorism. Hailing from Ludhiana, Sharma is one of the most prominent faces in community events in the UK.

Paul Uppal: Of the Conservative candidates who are not MPs, Uppal has the strongest chance of winning. Uppal, 50, lost the 2015 election from Wolverhampton South West by barely 800 votes to Labours Rob Marris, who has retired. Uppal, a lawyer, was born to Sikh parents who migrated to the UK from east Africa. He won from the constituency in the 2010 election. Active in community affairs, Uppal is the trustee for a large gurdwara in Wolverhampton. His father is a magistrate and wife a lawyer.

Alok Sharma: Elected from Reading West since 2010, Sharma, 49, held the junior portfolio of minister for Asia in the Foreign Office, responsible for matters related to India. As the minister for Asia, Sharma travelled to India and put forth the UKs position in parliamentary debates on sensitive issues such as Kashmir. He led a group of MPs of Indian-origin who campaigned for Britain to remain in the EU before the 2016 referendum. He won the 2015 election by a margin of nearly 7,000 votes over his nearest Labour rival, and is expected to retain his seat.

#UKPoll: List of Indian-origin candidates Political Party: Conservative Name, Constituency Rahoul Bhansali, Brent Central

Brent Central Suella Fernandes, Fareham

Fareham Samir Jassal, Feltham and Heston

Feltham and Heston Ameet Jogia, Brent North

Brent North Resham Kotecha, Coventry North East

Coventry North East Priti Patel, Witham

Witham Reena, Birmingham Hall Green

Birmingham Hall Green Alok Sharma, Reading West

Reading West Meera Sonecha, Leicester South

Leicester South Rishi Sunak, Richmond

Richmond Minesh Talati, Barking

Barking Paul Uppal, Wolverhampton South West

Wolverhampton South West Shailesh Vara, North West Cambridgeshire

North West Cambridgeshire Reena Ranger, Birmingham Hall Green Political Party: Labour Name, Constituency Keith Vaz, Leicester East

Leicester East Virendra Sharma, Ealing Southall

Ealing Southall Neeraj Patil, Putney

Putney Lisa Nandy, Wigan

Wigan Seema Malhotra, Feltham and Heston

Feltham and Heston Valerie Vaz, Walsall South

Walsall South Rohit Dasgupta, East Hampshire

East Hampshire Hitesh Tailor, East Surrey

East Surrey Navin Shah, Harrow East

Harrow East Navendu Mishra, Hazel Grove

Hazel Grove Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi, Slough

Slough Kuldip Singh Sahota, Telford

Telford Manjinder Kang, Tewkesbury

Tewkesbury Preet Kaur Gill, Birmingham Edgbaston Political Party: Liberal Democrats Name, Constituency Joe Naitta, Derby South

Derby South Rabi Martins, Luton North

Luton North Anita Prabhakar, Mansfield

Mansfield Reetendranath Banerji, South Basildon and East Thurrock

South Basildon and East Thurrock Nigel Bakhai, Ealing Southall

Ealing Southall Dave Raval, Hackney South and Shoreditch

Hackney South and Shoreditch Victor Babu, Clwyd West

Clwyd West Isabelle Parasram, Walsall North

Walsall North Gitanjali Gordon, South Shields

South Shields Shweta Kapadia, Arundel and South Downs

Arundel and South Downs Anita Day, Grantham and Stamford

Grantham and Stamford Harrish Bisnauthsing, Leicester South

Leicester South Marisha Ray, Chipping Barnet

Chipping Barnet Parmjit Singh, Birmingham, Perry Barr

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Barry Gardiner and Bob Blackman may not be the most known British MPs in India, but they are known in the Indian community here as Barry-bhai and Bob-bhai  they have been among the most pro-India MPs in Parliament, ever keen to help their constituents.

Both are popular, often attending community, religious and family events.

But this time, community leaders are shaking their heads, fearing a division of votes on Thursday because Gardiner in Brent North (Labour) and Blackman in Harrow East (Conservative) face challenges from popular Indian-origin candidates with strengths of their own at the local level.

Their fate will be keenly watched by the community, apart from that of the Indian-origin candidates fielded by the three main parties.

They always help us, do our work. Blackman was the only MP apart from Virendra Sharma who spoke for India in a January 19 debate in the House of Commons on Jammu and Kashmir. Gardiner is our friend, and also of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a senior community leader told HT.

Gardiner is known to be close to Modi since the latters days as chief minister of Gujarat, and is often seen at events of the Overseas Friends of BJP. He is currently in Labour leader Jeremy Corbyns shadow cabinet responsible for international development.

But Blackman faces Navin Shah (Labour), whose family has been in local politics since 1994. An architect, Shah came to Britain in 1973 and went on to hold several positions in local politics and elsewhere. He is a member of the London assembly.

In Brent North, Gardiner faces Ameet Jogia, the young and enthusiastic Conservative candidate seen as a rising star in the party. His back story of being homeless and rising through the years to become local councillor is well known in the constituency.

Blackman won in the 2015 election with a small margin of 4,757, which increases Shahs prospects. Gardiner won with a relatively larger margin of 10,834 votes, but faces some challenge from Jogia, who articulates the aspirations of the young in the constituency.

Besides holding New Delhis corner during the debate on Jammu and Kashmir, Blackman highlighted the plight of Kashmiri Pandits and alleged human rights violations by Pakistan. He also moved an early day motion, criticising Pakistans plan to declare Gilgit-Baltistan as its fifth province.

After filing the motion, he had told Hindustan Times: One notices that the pro-Pakistan lobby in the UK is extremely effective and they make sure their MPs turn up in their support via all possible parliamentary contributions.

The debate on Jammu and Kashmir was a classic example. It was just me and one other MP speaking in support of India. Hardly anyone speaking on the day spoke of the human rights violations by Pakistan and ignored the series of violations by them over the years, he had said.

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Who should be at the first round of talks in Brussels on June 19 beginning the two-year process to leave the European Union  Theresa May or Jeremy Corbyn? May insists only she has the resoluteness and experience to face down tough EU negotiators.

May has been ridiculing the prospect of Corbyn representing the UK at Brexit talks though the fact is that at the first round it will not be the prime minister, but the Secretary for Exiting the European Union who will face EUs chief negotiator, Michel Barnier.

That secretary, of course, will be appointed by the new prime minister soon after the result of Thursdays election is known. The identity of that secretary will be vital, since both May and Corbyn offer vastly different visions of what shape they want Brexit to take.

Mays vision is dubbed hard Brexit, which means exiting the all-important European Single Market, which is Britains largest trading partner. Corbyn has committed his Labour Party to retaining membership of the market to ensure continued export revenues and benefits to UK business.

Another key difference in the two visions is the future of millions of EU nationals in the UK and British nationals in other countries of the EU. May wants to link the two - guarantee the EU nationals' indefinite stay only if British nationals get similar guarantees, to be agreed in talks.

Corbyn has already announced that under his government, the future of the two groups of migrants will not be linked. He will guarantee the indefinite stay of EU nationals in the UK on his first day in office, even if the future of British nationals in EU is to be decided at a later date.

The future of EU nationals in the UK is of interest to India, since thousands of Goans have opted for Portuguese passports, settling in Swindon, London, Leicester and elsewhere. Portuguese passports make them EU citizens, and there is much uncertainty in the community about the future.

Mays three-member team for Brexit talks includes David Davis, Liam Fox and Boris Johnson. Corbyn unveiled his team at a campaign rally: Keir Starmer, Emily Thornberry and Barry Gardiner (known for his proximity to Prime Minister Narendra Modi since his days as the Gujarat chief minister).

Under Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, any member seeking to leave the EU goes through a two-year process of talks, during which a so-called divorce fee (reflecting financial commitments, in billions of pounds) is negotiated.

If all phases of the exit process are completed on time  many believe this is most unlikely, since the terms of the exit will be closely negotiated and will need to be ratified by the parliaments of 27 EU member-states  Britain will formally leave the EU in mid-2019.

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Was an indentured servant in Jamestown Americas spiritual ancestor of freedom?

The story of Anthony Johnson, one of the first Africans who came to America, has haunted me for more than two decades. Johnson was among dozens of men and women from Angola, in southern Africa, who were brought to the English settlement of Jamestown in the early 1600s. Documentary accounts of the lives of that first generation of African Americans are so sketchy no one knows for certain whether they arrived in the New World as slaves or indentured servants. Johnson is one of the few who left a faint trail in the written historical record. Several fragmentary official documents reveal that he managed, somehow, to gain his freedom, to buy hundreds of acres of land and become a prosperous tobacco grower and to possess indentured servants of his own. The servants included a fellow African whom local courts allowed Johnson to keep in lifelong bondage.

That essentially made Johnson a slaveholder, a hard reality difficult for me as a black man to accept. Even so, he calls to me across the centuries. Like the ancestor Ive discovered who in 1819 scraped together $2,000 to purchase freedom for himself, his wife and two of his children, Johnson was not content to simply endure. As uncomfortable as aspects of his life make me, I claim him as a spiritual ancestor: His story offers proof of Americas multiracial beginnings, intriguing evidence of the possibility of freedom for all before colonial lawmakers began to officially sanction chattel slavery in the late 1600s.

Historians know precious little about the first Africans who were brought to Jamestown. One of the few written sources is an account by John Rolfe, the English entrepreneur who married the Indian princess Pocahontas and who brought to Virginia the strain of milder, sweeter tobacco that would make some colonists rich and eventually give them a reason to want cheap, slave labor. In a letter to the Virginia Company, Rolfe told of 20. and odd Africans who came to Jamestown in August 1619 aboard a Dutch man-of-war. Rolfe made the vessels arrival seem almost accidental. Low on supplies, it stopped to trade for food. George Yeardley, the colonial governor, and Abraham Piersey, the head merchant, traded corn for part of the ships human cargo, but Rolfe said nothing in the report about what happened once the Africans came ashore. Historians have long assumed that they were akin to the white indentured servants they labored beside in the tobacco fields, free to earn their freedom after serving a term of years in exchange for the privilege of having been brought to the colony.

But theres trouble with this version of the Jamestown founding story. Evidence uncovered in European archives reveals that the White Lion, the ship sometimes referred to as the black Mayflower, was an English privateer, not a Dutch man-of-war. Several weeks before arriving 40 miles downriver from Jamestown at Port Comfort, the White Lion and the Treasurer, another English privateer, had seized about 60 slaves from a Portuguese slaver bound for Veracruz. The Treasurer landed in Virginia four days after the White Lion, and it, too, may have left Africans.

The captain of the White Lion claimed hed merely fallen in with the Treasurer, but their partnership was more deliberate and their arrival in Virginia not as accidental as Rolfe made it seem. His vagueness about the number20. and oddwas probably an attempt to avoid entangling the Virginia Company in allegations of piracy.

We know far more about the lives of Yeardley, Piersey and Jamestowns other land-owning gentry than we do about either the whites or blacks whose labor made them wealthy. A few of the white indentured servants were literate, and through their scant writings we hear a faint echo of their voices, pleading to be rescued from their brutal lives. But we know almost nothing about the lives of the Africans sent to the Yeardley and Piersey plantations. Precisely because we know so little, theyve become a kind of Rorschach test, allowing us to make of them what we will. Nowhere is this more evident than in the fundamental question of whether they were indentured servants or slaves.

If the first Africans were indentured, it means they had a chance to become free. Like their white counterparts, they could look forward to obtaining land after completing their terms. This interpretation of the Jamestown founding story offers the hope of redemption to a nation that would later embrace slavery. If, at the beginning, the Africans had been free, the terrible history that followed could be seen as a detourthough one fraught with horrorsbefore America returned to the straight path to fulfill its original promise.

Unfortunately, the sparse records available suggest that America went wrong from the beginning. While blacks and whites did live and work together early on, the Africans were treated like slaves. White indentured servants are almost always listed in early Jamestown records by first and last names, and those listings include ages, dates of arrival and the names of the various ships on which they arrived. This information establishes the length of their servitude. Africans, by contrast, are usually identified in official documents only as Negro woman or Negro man. Few listings for Africans include ship names and dates of arrival, indicating that their terms of service were not considered finite.

Still, a few managed to become free. Some may have been granted their freedom by generous or conscience-stricken owners. Others may have performed some extraordinary service or grown too old to be productive laborers. And some, including Anthony Johnson, may have possessed dogged strength and willed themselves to freedom.

Thanks to Portuguese histories and records, we have a better understanding of the lives Johnson and other early black pilgrims left behind in Angola, enough to know they may have been better equipped to survive in the New World than the original Jamestown colonists. Some may have been soldiers, familiar with European weapons and tactics after theyd been defeated in a Portuguese war of conquest. Some may have been born Catholic, members of an Angolan Christian community established five decades before the founding of Jamestown. Many would have been farmers whod used the hill-and-hoe technique the Indians taught the first colonists. Importantly for their future in Virginia, some may also have known how to grow tobacco.

Several men named Anthony or Antonio appear in the early Jamestown censuses. One, thought to be Anthony Johnson, was brought to the colony in 1621 and sent to Warresquioake, a plantation owned by Edward Bennett. If this is the man whose story has come down to us, then his first piece of good fortune was to survive the Indian massacre of 1622; more than 50 on the plantation did not. His second was the arrival that year of Maria, the woman who would become his helpmeet.

Sometime between 1625 and 1650, Anthony and Mary, as Maria came to be called, obtained their freedom. After his death in 1670, she outlived him by a decade. We know this, but we dont know when Antonio became Anthony and Maria became Mary, just as we dont know when or how they may have adopted the surname Johnson. But we do know that by the mid-1600s Anthony Johnson had claimed 250 acres of land50 acres each for five people hed brought to the colony. About the same time, his son John claimed 450 acres nearby and another son, Richard, claimed 100 acres.

Later, Johnson and his family moved to Virginias Eastern Shore, where he would become involved in a court case that would have far-reaching implications for future generations of black Americans. In 1654 John Casor, another black man, claimed Johnson was holding him unlawfully as a slave. Casor was, he said, an indentured servant who had completed his term.

Johnson denied Casors claim but, after a family conference, decided not to fight it. Casor was freed and went to work for the neighbors who had helped him go to court. A few months later, though, Johnson had second thoughts. He went back to court, asserting that the neighbors had unlawfully taken Casor and were holding him under pretense that the said [John] Casor is a free man. This time, Johnson succeeded. Casor was ordered returned to him and the neighbors ordered to pay legal costs.

Johnsons suit provided one of the earliest legal precedents in Virginia for holding a black person in slavery. Over the next several decades, Virginia would enact laws restricting black rights, until slavery eventually became fully codified into law.

Ironically, the system to which Johnson had given his hard labor and knowne service ultimately betrayed him. After his death, a Virginia court refused to allow his land to pass to his sons. Instead, it ruled that the government could seize the property because Johnson was a Negro and by consequence an alien. The last we know of the Johnson family is the name his grandson gave to his farm in Maryland. He called it Angola.

Ralph Ellison, author of the classic novel Invisible Man, once wrote that you cant choose your family, but you can choose your ancestors. He was speaking of literary ancestors, but he might well have been speaking of Anthony Johnson, a symbolic common ancestor to all black Americans. Johnsons success in gaining his own freedom was heroic, even if the man himself may not have been a hero. In the end, because we can know so little of him, he belongs to some future generation of novelists and epic poets. Hes just too important to be left to the historians.

When I went recently to Jamestown as part of my quest to learn more about Anthony Johnson, I stood on the banks of the James River near a plaque that marks the 1607 landing place of the 102 men and boys who established the settlement. Closing my eyes, I tried to ignore the thrashing of a ferry and a woman calling her children to come up to the nearby museum to look at the skeletons exhumed by archaeologists as part of the Jamestown Rediscovery Project.

For one fleeting instant, I could almost glimpse Anthony Johnson in a small shallop making his way up the James. He was clad in a cast-off shirt and breeches from some even more unfortunate indentured servant who died at sea. Johnson was ragged but unchained. In my minds eye, I watched him fill his lungs with fresh air and stretch to ease muscles cramped from fetid weeks below decks. He looked sternward downriver toward the bay and the distant ocean, the home he would never see again. And then he turned, stout-hearted and resolute, to face the future.

A former writer and editor for the Washington Post, David Nicholson is completing a novel about a museum curator haunted by the ghost of a freed slave.

Originally published in the June 2013 issue of American History. To subscribe, click here.
Corespondenta din Washington Joi, 08 Iunie 2017, 00:07

Cristian Pantazi, Ariana Lazurca  HotNews.ro

Parteneriatul strategic cu SUA e decisiv pentru crearea profilului Romaniei in UE si NATO si e garantia ca Romania nu va reintra in sfera de influenta rusa, a declarat miercuri presedintele Klaus Iohannis intr-un discurs sustinut la Heritage Foundation din Washington. Iohannis a mai spus ca romanii sunt cei mai pro-americani dintre toate popoarele din UE si a subliniat sprijinul SUA pentru lupta anticoruptie si sustinerea statului de drept. Iohannis a militat pentru mentinerea NATO si a relatiei cu SUA drept principal instrument pentru asigurarea securitatii in Europa, o abordare diferita de cea sugerata in ultimele saptamani de unii dintre liderii europeni: "Romania ramane un membru UE credincios relatiei transatlantice, o pozitie care s-ar putea dovedi si mai importanta acum, dupa ce Marea Britanie a decis sa paraseasca UE".

Klaus Iohannis Foto: captura facebook

Seful statului a mai spus ca "avem nevoie de dialog cu Rusia, dar bazat pe o puternica descurajare", lucru care necesita atat unitate in interiorul Uniunii Europene, cat si unitate in relatia dintre UE si SUA. Presedintele a mai adaugat ca un "lucru esential pentru asigurarea securitatii si stabilitatii in Vecinatatea Estica" consta in sprijinul pe care NATO trebuie sa continue sa il arate fata de parteneri precum Ucraina, Georgia si Moldova.

De asemenea, acesta a dat asigurari ca Romania va contribui la dezvoltarea relatiei transatlantice, pe care o considera "pilonul central pentru stabilitatea intregului sistem international".

"Prezenta trupelor americane in Romania, complementara prezentei inaintate a NATO pe Flancul Estic, este, pentru noi, cel mai puternic semnal de sustinere si solidaritate din partea SUA. De aceea, salutam decizia administratiei Trump de a creste in mod substantial finantarea pentru Initiativa Europeana de Reasigurare. Ea reprezinta o investitie foarte avantajoasa in apararea noastra colectiva", a mai spus Iohannis.

Iohannis a participat miercuri, 7 iunie, in a treia zi a vizitei pe care o intreprinde in Statele Unite ale Americii, la dezbaterea cu tema "Dupa 20 de ani: relevanta Parteneriatului Strategic dintre Romania si SUA in actualul context international si de securitate", organizata de Heritage Foundation, unul dintre cele mai influente think-tank-uri conservatoare din SUA. Evenimentul a fost moderat de presedintele organizatiei, domnul Edwin Feulner.

Inregistrarea VIDEO a discursului lui Iohannis si a sesiunii de intrebari:

"Thank you so much, President Feulner,

Ladies and gentlemen,

Dear fellows and friends of the Heritage Foundation,

Dear friends of Romania,

I am delighted to be here in Washington, to share with you my thoughts around this milestone moment for our bilateral relationship: 2017 marks the 20 years' anniversary of the United States-Romanian Strategic Partnership.

One thing is very clear to us and we are proud to say it! The Strategic Partnership between Romania and the United States has been a key factor in shaping my country's strategic profile as a NATO ally and EU member.

And I am happy to share our success story with President Trump on Friday, when we will hold talks at the White House. Our meeting will be important not only on a political level, but it will have a major positive impact on the Romanian public back home, on the vibrant Romanian community in the US, on the business communities in both our countries and on all those who have put longstanding efforts making our relationship more solid.

To further underscore our enduring friendship, I will mention that this 20 years' anniversary comes in our 137th year of diplomatic relations, established in 1880. In addition to this, in 2018, my country is celebrating the centenary of its Great Union, an event which would not have been possible without the President Woodrow Wilson's principled commitment to democracy and national self-determination.

Dear participants,

This Strategic Partnership with the US is and will always be a core pillar of Romania's foreign and security policy.

Its remarkable success is due not only to our two countries' shared vision and political commitment, but, most importantly, to the genuine sympathy and friendship between our two nations. My country is the most pro-American country in the European Union. Over 70% of Romanians, this is what polls show, have positive feelings towards the US, and this is translated into concrete action.

These positive feelings also originate from the consistent support provided by the USA after the fall of the Iron Curtain. This support was enhanced after the Strategic Partnership was launched in 1997. It was a real catalyst for progress and modernization efforts and for Romania's deep democratic, economic and social changes, which resulted in Romania's joining NATO and the European Union.

We have achieved, throughout these 20 years, tangible results and concrete progress to give substance to our Strategic Partnership. Romania stands now as one of America's most reliable NATO ally in Europe, an active and committed partner in the efforts to ensure stability, security and prosperity in the region and beyond.

We face today's geopolitical challenges shoulder to shoulder, we stand together in the battle against terrorism and our soldiers train and fight side by side. We have successfully worked together in areas such as security, defense, law enforcement and the rule of law.

Dear friends,

Security and defense represent a key component of the US-Romanian Strategic Partnership and has brought substantial results. I would like to once again underline the unity of vision between the United States and Romania on virtually all major international security issues.

As a dependable ally, Romania is doing its share. This year we have fulfilled our objective, as you mentioned, Mr. President, assumed under NATO auspices, of allocating 2% of GDP for defense expenditures.

This makes us the first Ally to reach this target in the current US Administration's mandate and the 6th NATO member to do it. I am happy to mention that this was one of the top priorities on my agenda, when I assumed office.

And it was adopted with virtually unanimous political support. We aim to maintain the 2% as a minimum level for at least a decade. It will enable Romania to continue major acquisition programs, expanding the potential of long-term cooperation also with the US defense industry.

At the same time, we are aware that fighting international terrorism is crucial. That is why Romania firmly supports the US in combating this worldwide plague. Romania is engaged in the anti-ISIS coalition. Our country has pledged military trainers and other resources in Iraq, including stabilization and communication support.

We stand together in Afghanistan, where the Romanian troop contingent is the 4th largest among NATO Allies, with almost 700 troops on ground.

My country is also proud to host the first Aegis Ashore missile defense site on its territory - capable of countering ballistic missile threats from outside the Euro-Atlantic area. This is one of the most important political-military projects of our Strategic Partnership.

The site in Deveselu - this is how the place is called - hosting around 200 Navy troops, has become operational last year and was integrated with the NATO Missile Defense System. It is highly important to continue and finalize the European Phased Adaptive Approach and, based on it, the NATO Missile Defense System, since Iran continues its ballistic missile program.

We conduct intensive joint training of US and Romanian forces in some of the best equipped forward facilities on Romanian soil, such as the Mihail Kogalniceanu base, very important for the pre-deployment of US troops and military equipment.

In addition, the recent acquisition of U.S. F-16 fighter jets has increased Romania's capabilities to contribute to the security of our regional allies and it has laid the ground for potential long term cooperation with the U.S. defense industry. Our cooperation extends in critical fields such as cyber-security, intelligence and energy security.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Romania shares the U.S. commitment to transatlantic security, and fully supports endeavors to improve the effectiveness of NATO and strengthen its capabilities to address all current challenges. This can only be done by reinforcing the core pillar of the Alliance, which is collective defense, backed by a robust and credible deterrence.

Thus, we are particularly grateful to our U.S. ally for its strong political support and substantial concrete contribution to projects such as the multinational brigade hosted by Romania, the enhanced maritime presence in the Black Sea or the Combined Joint Enhanced Training Program.

The presence of US troops in Romania, complementary to the NATO's Forward Presence, is, for us, the strongest signal of support and solidarity. That is why we welcome the Trump administration decision to consistently increase funding for the U.S. European Reassurance Initiative. It is a very advantageous investment in our collective defense.

It has enabled Allies, such as Romania, to upgrade and expand their own infrastructure and capabilities, increasing the scope and size of cooperation with our US partners. However, NATO is not just about capabilities - its foundations lie in allied unity, political commitment and strategic vision. The current security situation in Europe is the most challenging in two decades and clearly underscores the need for transatlantic solidarity.

We face threats and challenges on both the Alliance's East and South. They must be addressed in a coordinated and cohesive manner and this is a challenge in itself.

In the East, Russia attempts to carve out its own sphere of influence by force, through the invasion of Georgia, illegal annexation of Crimea and its heavy militarization, aggression in East Ukraine, military posturing on NATOs borders and malign influence from the Balkans to Western Europe.

Against this background, we believe we need dialogue with Russia, but based on a strong deterrence.

Our own approach must be strategic, coherent and coordinated. We need to keep our unity, inside the European Union, but also within the US - EU relations.

The Black Sea area has an important pivotal role for the transatlantic security. NATO's Eastern flank must be treated, in this logic, in a unitary coherent manner and adequately reinforced, from its North to its South, on all main components - land, sea and air.

Romania is acting within NATO, but also together with its strategic partners Poland and Turkey, to keep the region safer. That is why Romania has developed, together with these two countries, a Trilateral format on security issues. Romania is also, together with Poland, the initiator of the Bucharest Format, including all the 9 Allies on the Eastern Flank. This format is relevant for the U.S. interests in NATO, and for the security of the Eastern neighborhood.

NATO must also continue to support its partners, such as Ukraine, Georgia and the Republic of Moldova.

This is essential for ensuring security and stability in the Eastern Neighborhood.

Romania has strongly supported, at the same time, a close NATO-EU cooperation, on the basis of complementarity. There is simply no alternative to the most powerful and successful alliance in history. The EU can bring a significant contribution to capacity building, supporting research and development, to areas such as cyber or energy security. But a more substantial commitment to common defense by European allies must not result in weakening the transatlantic security link.

Romania remains a faithful Atlanticist EU member - a position that may prove even more important now, as the UK has decided to leave the Union. We will continue to work for the further development of the transatlantic relation, which is, in our view the central pillar for the stability of the overall international system. Romania is, thus, ready and able to strengthen its role to this end, as we are dedicated to both the European project and the Strategic Partnership with the United States.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Besides security, our nations need shared prosperity. Let me thus return to our bilateral relations and focus on our economic engine. Trade and investment are crucial dimensions of our Strategic Partnership, with a high potential for development, providing benefits not only for Romania and the US, but for the region as a whole.

Romania will soon rank the 6th EU's largest country after UK will leave the EU, in terms of population. We are strategically positioned at the crossroad of all major commercial and energy routes in the region, a potential gateway to the EU's common economic space, regional hub for Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the Greater Middle East, the Caucasus and Central Asia. Romania has experienced a constant upward economic trend over the last seven years, with positive perspectives ahead. Last year we had the highest economic growth in the European Union.

This growth pattern is anchored in a number of highly competitive economic sectors. Romania is one of the largest vehicle manufacturing bases in Central and Eastern Europe. This includes, of course, the Ford plant in Craiova, a partnership that saw its first iteration in 1935. The IT sector is one of the largest and most dynamic in the EU.

Romania is also the least dependent country in the region on gas imports and can become an energy supplier with our resources in the Black Sea.

Dear friends,

As the final and most important enabler of US-Romanian partnership, one must mention the people-to-people connections. Romanian-American friendship has endured and, indeed, flourished, even during some of the most challenging moments of the 20th Century.

Our almost 1 million strong Romanian-American community inside the United States, be they students, professors or entrepreneurs, are proud of this close relationship and work every day to make it stronger.

On the governmental side, working together on Romania's inclusion in the Visa Waiver Program will further strengthen this bond and help us advance on the path to shared prosperity.

Ladies and gentlemen,

I want to end my intervention by underlining, once again, that Romania is able to act as a hub for advancing our joint transatlantic agenda in the region. We are at a strategic crossroad, at the Black Sea, and we very well understand to act as a security provider in Europe and beyond.

At the same time, the region is counting on the continued US commitment for its security. For us, the US support means security, prosperity, freedom, democracy and, last but not least, the guarantee that Romania will not go back to some Eastern sphere of influence.

Thank you very much and I look forward to your questions!"
BIMM are celebrating their class of 2017 by taking over Dublin 8 this weekend.

BIMM Live will showcase 40 bands and 5 DJs at free shows across 4 venues on Francis St this Friday.

The Tivoli Theatre, The Liberty Belle, Stage 19 and The Jug will host bands from 6pm, with DJs until 1am in the smaller venues. The Tivoli will host the afterparty until 2.30am.

Wristbands that will allow access to all the venues and to the afterparty can be picked up at the entrance of each venue from 5.30pm on show day.

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Acts to look out for at the showcase include Emma Lou and the Agenda, Pine The Pilcrow, Munky, and a DJ set from Wastefellow.

Full details of the lineup can be found here.
The programme will be headlined by the annual Joseph Hassett Yeats Lecture, delivered by noted academic, Bernard ODonoghue.

Professor ODonoghues lecture is entitled 'Yeats - the political mystic' and will examine the political and the occult in the poets work. The lecture will take place at 7pm on Tuesday, 13 June, the anniversary of Yeats birth in 1865. No booking is required.

Further events range from lectures and exhibition tours, plays and performances, to a special pop-up display. The line-up of activities will focus on WB Yeats and James Joyce, and all events will take place at the NLI:

A display of letters to mark WB Yeats birthday and Bloomsday. To mark WB Yeats birthday and Bloomsday the NLI will show a selection of newly acquired letters to Yeats from James Joyce. They are part of an exceptional series discussing Joyces literary work including Exiles, Dubliners and Ulysses and also discussing Yeats work. The letters span almost 24 years of correspondence and illuminate a deep literary friendship. Monday, 12th June  Saturday, 17 June. Admission free. No booking required.

Noramollyannalivialucia: The Muse & Mister Joyce. A one-woman play for voices featuring Nora Barnacle Joyce in her twilight years discussing her life with Joyce, performed by Curlew Theatre Company. Wednesday, 14 June, 7pm. Admission 5. No booking required.

Bloomsday: Joyce at the Opera. A Bloomsday lecture/concert. Professor John McCourt will introduce music that was central to Joyce's life and work. Presented in partnership with the Italian Institute of Culture, the Associazione Triestina Amici della Lirica G. Viozzi and the Trieste Joyce School. Friday, 16th June, 1pm. Admission free. No booking required but places will be allocated on a first come, first served basis.

From Yeats to Heaney: 140 years of Literature at the National Library of Ireland. This public lecture will see Professor Geraldine Higgins and Katherine McSharry (Head of Outreach at the NLI) discuss some of the writers who have been associated with the Library since it was founded. Tuesday, 20 June, 1pm. Admission free. No booking required.

Yeats & the Irish Cultural Revival tour. This special tour of the Librarys Yeats exhibition will explore the poets contribution to the Irish Cultural Revival. Areas of Yeats life that will be discussed include his involvement with the Abbey Theatre, his partnership with Lady Gregory and his promotion of Irish history, culture, art and folktales throughout his life. Tuesday, 20th June, 2pm. Admission free. No booking required.

Speaking about the programme of literary events for June, Head of Outreach at the NLI, Katherine McSharry, said: Literary celebrations take place at the Library throughout the year and are central to our events calendar, but we are delighted to offer our visitors a special programme in June. These events will focus particularly on two of our countrys most important writers: WB Yeats and James Joyce.

We are particularly looking forward to welcoming Bernard ODonoghue to the NLI for the fourth annual Joseph Hassett Yeats Lecture on 13th June, the anniversary of Yeats birth. His insights into the mystical and political sides of Yeatss work are not to be missed. Were also excited to be showcasing some of the recently acquired extraordinary letters from Joyce to Yeats in a pop-up display, offering a special glimpse into their long friendship.

Further information about the NLIs programme of events for June is available at: nli.ie.
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Oil companies across Texas expanded payrolls by about 12,000 jobs in the six months through April as the industry's recovery advances along with the drilling boom in the Permian Basin, according to an index that tracks energy activity in the sate.

The gain pushed the number of oil and gas jobs in the state to about 205,000, up 3 percent from the same period a year ago and the first year over year increase since February 2015, said Karr Ingham, an Amarillo economist who created the Texas Petro Index, which compiles and analyzes a range of data to track the health of the oil industry.

"Texas producers are responding to higher wellhead prices that have resulted from coordinated efforts by OPEC, Russia and others to curtain oil production," Ingham said in a statement.

Texas has become the center of the recovery of the U.S. shale oil industry as prices hover around $50 and better technology and processes allow companies to make money at prices significantly below that level, particularly in the prolific Permian in West Texas.

The Permian accounts for about half of all oil drilling rigs in the country, according to the Houston energy services company Baker Hughes.

The number of rigs in both the Permian and nationally has more than doubled since hitting their low in May 2016, a few months after oil prices hit bottom at just over $26 a barrel. The number of oil and gas rigs across the country rose to 916 last week, up from 404 in May, marking the 20th consecutive increase in the weekly rig count, Baker Hughes said.

Every rig put back into operation creates about 30 jobs, said John Graves, an energy consultant at Graves & Co. in Houston.

Drilling activity continued to expand in April, according to the Petro Index, with the number of drilling permits issued in April rising by one-third to 909, up from 683 permits issued in April 2016.

The Texas Petro Index rose to 164.8 points, up by 4.4 points from the month before.

Still, despite the oil industry's gains, the index is far below its peak of 313.5 in November 2014, just before oil prices plunged.

The state's oil and gas workforce is still a third smaller than it was in December 2014, before drillers began cutting jobs dramatically. At that point, Texas oil producers had about 306,000 employees.

On Tuesday, oil rose 79 cents to settle at $48.19 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Royal Dutch Shell Plc lifted restrictions on exports of a key Nigerian crude oil, 472 days after imposing them following militant attacks. The extra flows alone amount to about 20 percent of the supply OPEC has pledged to cut from world markets.

Europes biggest oil company ended a force majeure of Forcados crude oil shipments at 4 p.m. London time on Tuesday, a spokesman said. The measure, which allows companies to miss contractual obligations, was imposed on Feb. 21 last year. Shipments this month will average about 250,000 barrels a day, according to a loading program obtained by Bloomberg.

Nigeria is adding barrels to the market just as other members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries are trying to remove them in a bid to bolster prices. The producer club said on May 25 that it will keep its collective output restricted by 1.2 million barrels a day until the end of the first quarter next year. As well as Nigeria, flows from Libya are also jumping. Both countries were exempted from the curbs because of domestic conflicts.

The market is already drowning in similar types of crude to the Forcados grade, said Ehsan Ul-Haq, an oil analyst at KBC Advanced Technologies. The return of the grade will only add to that, he said.

The return of Forcados will add more than 10 percent to the countrys output, lifting it toward the 2 million barrels a day mark.

Shells Nigerian unit declared the force majeure after the Niger Delta Avengers, a militant group, attacked the subsea export line. The NDA claimed another attack on the pipeline in June, and then again in early November, part of a spate of sabotage that pushed the countrys production to the lowest in almost three decades last year and cost it billions of dollars.

While the NDA threatened to widen its campaign this January, the hard knocks promised by the group didnt materialize, as the government increasingly put an emphasis on finding a negotiated settlement and resumed suspended payments to ex-militants under an amnesty program.

There is a fragile peace in the Niger Delta that is currently holding and looks as though it is going to last for the foreseeable future, said Manji Cheto, senior vice president at Teneo Intelligence, adding that Nigeria has previously said it will look to increase production to about 2 million barrels a day before making voluntary output curbs.

The loss of Forcados barrels had the single biggest impact on Nigerian oil production out of any grade the country producers. The grade pumped an average of about 200,000 barrels a day in 2015, before the militancy escalated. Its scheduled cargoes for June are the second highest of any Nigerian grade, the loading data show.

While the return of Forcados may be good news for Nigeria, it represents a new headache for OPEC. Production from the groups members rose in May to 32.21 million barrels a day, up 315,000 barrels a day from the previous month, according to a Bloomberg News survey of analysts, oil companies and ship-tracking data. Libya and Nigeria contributed the majority of those gains while the 11 bound by the output caps were fully compliant with their pledges last month, just as they were in April, the survey showed.

Counting Nigeria and Libya, total OPEC oil output remained about 450,000 barrels a day above the target set out in the Nov. 30 production agreement and further extended in last months meeting, putting the group only about 66 percent of the way toward its goal, compared with 90 percent in April, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Since OPEC and 11 other non-members, that collectively pump about 60 percent of the worlds oil, agreed to continue curbing output, prices have actually fallen. Brent crude has dropped from $53.96 a barrel on May 24, the day before the extension was announced in Vienna, to trade at $49.95 a barrel as of 10:40 a.m. London time.
Bashing California is a Texas politician's birthright. The states' respective approaches to economic development are perfect foils for one another; deep-red Texas prides itself on allowing corporations free rein, while blue California is happy to tax and regulate them to the sky.

That's why California is a convenient punch line for Governor Greg Abbott in speeches like the one he made announcing the new special session yesterday, in which he promised to crack down on liberal cities that want local rules on things like ride-hailing and home rentals.

"As your governor, I will not allow Austin, Texas, to California-ize the Lone Star State," Abbott said.

Put aside, for a moment, the irony of a governor who championed states' rights turning around and opposing the desire of local communities to self-govern. Would it really be so bad for Texas to become a little more like California?

For a few years, while California was dogged by a real estate crisis and state budget deficit and Texas' oil boom was just starting to take off, Texas had reason to brag. It backed up its low unemployment rate with Texas-sized business incentives in a baldfaced effort to lure businesses from the Golden State.

But recently, those trends have reversed. The New Yorker traced California's return to economic health back in 2015, after Gov. Jerry Brown balanced the budget and a new tech boom took off. That was before Texas' oil bust, which took much of the wind out of the state's economy, even though it narrowly escaped recession.

And now? Average wages in California, which are already a few dollars an hour higher than in Texas, grew faster than they did in the Lone Star state for most of the past year.

Texas' unemployment rate bumped above California's this past March.

And California's economy grew faster than Texas' in 2016, 2.9 percent to 0.4 percent.

The former editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News  no communist rag  recently sung the praises of California as a destination for investment despite its decision to raise gas taxes, boost the minimum wage, protect undocumented immigrants and discourage fossil fuel use, among many other measures that would never make it to Abbott's desk.

Just this week, the personal finance site Wallethub ranked California as the second best economy in the country, behind only Washington state, which shares many of California's characteristics. Texas comes in at number 20.

This isn't to say that California is perfect. For example, its high housing costs have propelled its real poverty rate  which takes into account cost of living  to the highest level in the country.

But when it comes to economic performance, California matches or exceeds Texas on many important metrics. All things considered, both of them are powerhouses for the American economy. They just had different ways of getting there.
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JOHNSON SPACE CENTER  Vice President Mike Pence affirmed the Trump administration's commitment to the space mission during a visit Wednesday to NASA's Johnson Space Center, where he welcomed a class of astronaut candidates that officials said could include the first to travel to Mars.

"NASA will have the resources and support you need to continue to make history, to push the boundaries of human knowledge and advance American leadership to the boundless frontier of space." Pence said, with the seven male and five female astronaut candidates seated on stage to his right. "Under President Trump the United States will lead in Space again."

Among the astronaut candidates was Loral O'Hara, a Houston native who was raised in Sugar Land, where her parents still reside. A NASA bio describes her as a private pilot and certified emergency medical technician and wilderness first responder.

Gov. Greg Abbott was in the audience as Pence told the gathering that President Donald Trump plans to revive the National Space Commission, which has been dead for 25 years. Pence, who would head the commission, hinted in March that he would announce the council's rebirth "very soon."

The newest class of astronauts, chosen from among 18,000 applicants, could work aboard the International Space Station or travel to the moon or Mars, NASA said in a news release.

Asked during a news conference who would like to be aboard the first Mars mission, every member of the class raised a hand.

O'Hara noted that this class differed from previous ones in that most of the astronaut candidates had experience working in confined and remote places, from submarines to the Arctic region, experience that made them especially qualified for a deep-space mission to the red planet.

The astronaut candidates will train for 10 years before they make a flight into space, NASA spokesman Kelly Humphries said. The first two years will be in boot camp and then they will move to assignments to train for jobs in space.

(Story continues below ...)

Pence did not take questions from the media.

After his remarks, Pence entered a black SUV and headed to the Christopher C. Kraft Jr. Mission Control Center to hear briefings on current human spaceflight operations.

Pence was accompanied by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and U.S. Reps. Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio, chairman of the House Science Committee, and Brian Babin, R-Woodville.

Wearing a blue astronaut jacket presented to him by NASA, Pence stood among banks of control panels at Mission Control as a giant screen beamed an image taken from the International Space Station as it orbited over India.

In a statement issued during the event, Cruz said the Trump administration and Congress had committed to the "manned exploration of space, laying the groundwork for the mission to Mars, and enabling commercial space ventures to flourish..."

"Advancing America's leadership in space is a critical endeavor, and I am excited and optimistic about the work that remains to be done as we work to open up the last frontier."

Upon his arrival at the Johnson Space Center, a member of the press corps yelled to Pence, "Happy Birthday, Mr. Vice President!" Pence turned 58 on Wednesday.
The Chapel of St. Basil  the University of St. Thomas's va-va-va-voom, gold-domed, cross-topped showpiece  was dedicated 20 years ago today. If you know the university at all, you recognize that chapel: It's the building that you notice as you drive past on Alabama Ave.; it's the image on the university's logo.

The chapel's story, and the larger story of St. Thomas's architecture, are important to Houston: They involve Philip Johnson, the architect most responsible for both St. Thomas's campus and downtown Houston's skyline; John and Dominique de Menil, the city's most notable art patrons; the tricky business of branding a Catholic university; and a whole lot of 20th-century architectural fashion.

In honor of the anniversary, I thought it'd be a good time to re-run a story I wrote about all that ten years ago.

Happy birthday, Chapel of St. Basil. All these years later, you're still a bombshell. Lisa Gray



October 3, 2007  Last week the University of St. Thomas dedicated the final work that superstar architect Philip Johnson designed for Houston, the city where he made his name. Compared to other Johnson hits  big deals such as skyscrapers Pennzoil Place, Williams Tower (originally Transco Tower) and NCNB Center (nee RepublicBank)  the Edward P. White Memorial Plaza is a trifle: a 30-foot black slab of granite inscribed with a tilted white cross and set in front of a fountain that proclaims the university's name.

Squeezed between the university's Parking Lot L and a trafficky stretch of Montrose Boulevard, it's less a plaza  a public gathering spot, an enticing place to hang out  than a classy billboard for the university: The Edward P. White Memorial Branding Opportunity.

It's perfect, in its way: exactly what St. Thomas wanted and a fitting final note for the university's long relationship with Johnson. Over the years, both the architect and the university changed radically, but they changed in ways that kept them right for each another.

LIKE MUCH of the mid-century avant-garde, Johnson came to Houston because of art patrons John and Dominique de Menil. In the late '40s, he designed the couple a house that channeled Johnson's mentor, Mies van der Rohe. The light-filled brick box looked nothing like its River Oaks neighbors.

Some years later, St. Thomas approached the Catholic de Menils about funding the university's expansion. At the time, St. Thomas was a tiny university, less than a decade old, with a campus amounting to three old Montrose houses. John de Menil paid Johnson to draw a master plan to guide the campus' growth.

For the quad at the university's center, Johnson drew on the "Academical Village" that Thomas Jefferson designed for the University of Virginia: brick buildings, connected by two-story walkways, surrounding a rectangle of grass.

Johnson himself designed the quad's first three buildings: Welder, Jones and Strake halls. In place of Jefferson's neoclassical columns and Greek temple forms, he called for flat-roofed boxes with sleek black walkways made of steel. The designs' beauty was the quietest kind, minimalism that hinged on perfect proportions and detailing. The buildings whispered.

And they whispered to each other. Architectural historian Stephen Fox suspects it was no accident that the buildings faced each other, not the outside world. In the '50s, Fox notes, Catholics in the Bible Belt often felt besieged. St. Thomas' inward-looking quad was a place where the wagons had been circled  or at least, the academic buildings had been.

THAT WAS one of the last times Johnson whispered. As he landed larger commissions, he tired of the ultra-simple style. His buildings began to look more like sculptures than like boxes.

A decade after drawing St. Thomas' master plan, he almost executed another building for its campus. In 1967, the de Menils asked him to design the Rothko Chapel, intended to house 14 paintings by Mark Rothko. The chapel would have commanded one end of St. Thomas' quad, the spot where Doherty Library now stands.

But that didn't work out. Rothko fought with Johnson, and John de Menil fought with St. Thomas. Eventually, two of Johnson's local followers, Howard Barnstone and Eugene Aubry, produced an artist-mollifying design that closely resembled Johnson's, and the de Menils built that Rothko Chapel near the university, on their own land. The serene building and its paintings became a landmark.

Still, it's easy to imagine Rothko Chapel on the St. Thomas quad. The chapel is built of the same pink brick as the academic buildings, though it's not precisely like Johnson's old Miesian rectangles. Seen from above, the chapel looks not like a box but like a cross  a shape that would have spoken clearly, but not loudly, on the quiet quad.

By 1990, when St. Thomas gave Johnson another chance to design its chapel, his buildings had grown loud. "Less is more," his old mentor Mies proclaimed. But Johnson had long sided with postmodern upstart Robert Venturi, who asserted, "Less is a bore."

Determined never to bore, Johnson appropriated any image, allusion or style that caught his eye. It was said that, though he wasn't original, he excelled in distilling other people's styles and ideas, boiling them down to their essences. He could out-Mies Mies, out-Venturi Venturi.

Transco Tower was the Empire State Building rendered in shiny blue glass. The University of Houston's architecture building, with its funny Greek temple on top, was so closely based on a design of French visionary architect Etienne-Louis Boullee that some called it a rip-off. For AT&T's New York headquarters, Johnson famously topped a glass skyscraper with what looked for all the world like the top of a giant Chippendale bureau  a wink at Venturi.

Those later buildings were "cartoons," as Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin put it, "two-dimensional corporate logos blown up to massive scale." Like good logos, they stuck in your brain, as catchy as pop songs.





KAMIN'S DESCRIPTION fits the chapel that St. Thomas eventually got from Johnson: the va-va-va-voom Chapel of St. Basil. Other architects had conscientiously rendered the rest of the quad in a style that matched Johnson's original buildings, but he seemed delighted to break with his own past. Instead of brick and black steel, he designed the chapel's base in white stucco and topped it with a super-shiny gold dome. It presides over St. Thomas' quad like Marilyn Monroe at a gathering of nuns.

The chapel seems determined to be the life of the party. Its sexy dark entrance looks like a long slit in a woman's skirt. And the ball-shaped dome works quite literally as a logo: Its cross-topped outline looks great on T-shirts.

Just as logo-ready was the tilted glass cross on the chapel's west wall  the shape that Johnson reused on the new black-granite marker. Over on Montrose, that shape shouts that St. Thomas has lost its diffidence and now aims to stake out Catholic turf in a noisy world  or, in the words of its strategic agenda, to "assert our identity, academic brand, and image."

Over the years, Johnson had become precisely the right architect to do that. Accused of stealing other's ideas, he cheerfully stole the tilted cross from himself  a repetition that, like good advertising, strengthens the St. Thomas brand. Accused of designing buildings that are three-dimensional logos, he went one step further and designed... a two-dimensional logo. A sign.

The Edward P. White Memorial Plaza is the ultimate Philip Johnson work  "ultimate" not just because it's among his last, but because after years of distilling other people's ideas, he got around to distilling himself. With this last doodle, he out-Johnsoned Johnson, and made a cartoon of his own cartoon.

Lisa Gray is one of the people who wrangle Gray Matters.



Bookmark Gray Matters. It's more a plaza  a public gathering spot, an enticing place to hang out  than a classy billboard for the Chronicle.


In late 1862, Sam Houston might have sat on the steep steps leading up to the front doors of his home, an odd folly of a structure known in Huntsville as the Steamboat House, and announced to his assembled household that he was freeing his slaves.

Or he might not have.

The only credible source for the event is a published recollection nearly 80 years later of Jeff Hamilton, who at the time would have been a young enslaved man. Given the possibility that Hamilton's memory of that long-ago day might have been iffy at the age of nearly 100 and that Houston's will, probated soon after his death several months later, would still list his several slaves as personal property, it's entirely possible that the private emancipation proclamation never happened.

Even if it had, Houston surely would have foreseen the outcome of the Civil War and the inevitability that his slaves would be set free, in any event. Plus, he would have known that the Texas Constitution, having been hastily revamped upon entry into the Confederacy, expressly forbade the manumission of slaves. So, he might have staged the whole thing to assure his slaves that they would soon be liberated.

In short, we don't know what happened that day, if anything did.

But we do know a good many other things.

We know Houston was conflicted about the concept of slavery. He showed an uncommon kindness to his own slaves, making sure they were provided for and lived in clean quarters. He was quick to voice a low opinion of slaveowners who were cruel taskmasters. He allowed his slaves to keep the wages they made doing odd jobs in town (an unheard of policy then), and he taught some to read, which was against the law in Texas.

But, always a pragmatist, he also understood how inextricably entwined the institution was to the economic infrastructure of the South.

Fredericks Gallery/AP/Getty

And we know that he, when serving as one of the first two senators sent to Washington from the new state of Texas, stood with only one other Southern senator in opposition to the introduction of slavery into new western states.

We know that there is no record in the personal recollections of his former slaves, his acquaintances or his enemies (he had plenty of those) that he ever mistreated his slaves. Only once did he whip one, when a young Hamilton caused Houston's daughter Nanny to fall into a pond during a bit of horseplay. Hamilton always maintained that he deserved it, and it would have taken more than a spanking to dislodge his devotion to the man who had purchased him when he had been 13. Houston had shown up in town while a man was in the process of selling Hamilton, so he could pay for several barrels of whiskey that had already been consumed. When Houston learned that Hamilton, then a child, would become the property of a scoundrel known for mistreating slaves, he outbid him and took Hamilton home, where he became almost a member of the family.

Still, there is no excuse for keeping human beings in bondage.

And it is a sticking point for those of us who admire Sam Houston that he could have been such a vocal proponent of the inherent rights of Native Americans and not raised his voice more adamantly when it came to chattel slavery.

Local news focused last week on a group claiming to be committed to having the iconic statue of Houston in Hermann Park removed, though it turned out to be a hoax instigated by people solely interested in stirring up anger and trouble.

Even so, I would invite anyone who considered joining any such crusade to read one or more of the biographies of the man you might feel opposed to.

Better yet, drive up to Huntsville, and visit the Sam Houston Memorial Museum, the finest repository of all things Houston in existence. Learn about what he stood for and what he stood against. More importantly, learn about the things he did for Texas, for the entire Southwest and for the nation.

He had his faults, the most significant of which would have to be his not taking a stand against the institution which he believed to be morally wrong.

But weigh that fault against his deeds and his sacrifices. Against leading the army that won Texas' independence and later handing the state into the federal union to which he was so dedicated that he refused to take an oath of allegiance to the Confederacy, costing him the governorship of Texas and sending him into virtual exile at the end of his life.

Taking down a statue is a relatively easy task.

It will be significant harder erasing the memory of a man who, more than any other single person, won the state you live in with his actions and, at San Jacinto, with his blood.

Ron Rozelle's newest book, Exiled: The Last Days of Sam Houston, will be published by Texas A&M University Press this November.

Bookmark Gray Matters. Learn about what it stands for and what it stands against.


GALVESTON  Galveston County commissioners have approved a settlement agreement for the $1.75 million purchase of Rollover Pass, advancing plans to close one of Texas's most renowned fishing spots following a long legal battle.

Commissioners unanimously voted to accept the settlement after hearing emotional pleas to keep the pass open from anglers and residents of Gilchrist, the Bolivar Peninsula community adjacent to Rollover Pass.

"Please don't take my livelihood away," pleaded Nancy Bachman, owner of Miss Nancy's Bait Camp at the popular fishing spot.

The owners of the property, the Gulf Coast Rod, Reel and Gun Club Inc., agreed to the settlement last month. But the Gilchrist Community Association has refused to agree to the settlement and is pursuing a case in federal court.

"We did reject the settlement at the mediation," said Ted Vega, association president. Vega said he was ready to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. "We're not done by a long shot."

Winston Cochran, the attorney representing the community association in the federal lawsuit, urged county commissioners to ignore their agreement to take possession of Rollover Pass and turn it over to the Texas General Land Office for closure.

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"You don't have to be bossed around by the state, you don't have to do their bidding," Cochran said.

After the public testimony, commissioners voted 3-2 against an agenda item that would have dropped the eminent-domain lawsuit and kept the pass open. The dissenting commissioners then joined the majority in approving the deal to acquire the property.

County Court-at-Law Judge Barbara Roberts on April 19 ruled that Galveston County could exercise eminent domain to take possession of Rollover Pass. All that remained was a jury trial to set the amount of compensation the county would pay the Rod, Reel and Gun Club. The county commissioners' vote Tuesday will bring an end to legal proceedings in the state courts.

Land Office spokeswoman Brittany Eck said the settlement must be finalized before the agency takes steps to close the pass. Once all the legal procedures are completed, the Land Office will complete the engineering and design and begin procuring contracts for closing the pass, Eck said.

The county sued the club at the behest of the Land Office, which has been trying to close the man-made canal linking the Gulf of Mexico with East Bay since receiving permission from the Legislature in 2009. The state said Rollover Pass was accelerating erosion on the peninsula and dumping sand into the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway that had to constantly be removed at great expense. Land Office studies also determined that closure of the pass would improve the environment.

The Land Office has no authority to use eminent domain to close the pass, but Galveston County does. The county agreed to exercise its eminent-domain right to take Rollover Pass in exchange for the Land Office's promise to build a $6 million fishing pier.

Eck said the final design for the pier will be determined after the pass is closed.

Bachman, who said 87 percent of her business is generated from fisherman at the pass, is depending on the pier to keep her business open: "If they build a pier it would be wonderful."
Channelview Independent School District has parted ways with a teacher who is accused of giving a student a mock award that read, "Most likely to become a terrorist."

"We have concluded our investigation and the teacher responsible is no longer employed by the district," a release from the school district reads.
A majority of Americans report grave suspicions about President Donald Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey and his conduct during investigations of Russia's interference in the 2016 election, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

A 56 percent majority of U.S. adults say Trump is interfering with such investigations rather than cooperating, while 61 percent say Trump fired Comey to protect himself rather than for the good of the country.

Comey also faces serious credibility problems ahead of his highly anticipated Senate testimony Thursday, with 36 percent of Americans saying they trust what he says about Russia and the election "a great deal" or "a good amount," while 55 percent trust him less or not at all. The poll finds substantial skepticism across party lines, evidence that his role investigating the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump has taken a toll.

Trump is seen as even less trustworthy, however, with just over 1 in 5 saying they trust what he says about Russia's role in the 2016 campaign, while just over 7 in 10 trust him less. Fully half of adults say they do not trust what Trump says "at all" on these issues, compared with one-quarter who say the same of Comey. Fully 4 in 10 Americans have doubts about both Comey and Trump's statements on Russia and the election.

The Post-ABC poll was conducted Friday to Sunday, before The Washington Post reported Tuesday that the Director of National Intelligence told associates that Trump asked him if he could intervene with Comey on the FBI's Russia probe to back off its focus on former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

In May, Trump was widely criticized for firing Comey, who was leading a counterintelligence investigation to determine whether associates of Trump may have coordinated with Russia to interfere with last year's presidential election. Trump's shifting explanations for removing Comey provoked questions about his motivations, as did an interview with NBC News where Trump said he made his decision with "the Russian thing" on his mind.

Democrats are nearly united in their suspicions of Trump, with 88 percent saying he fired Comey in May to protect himself and 87 percent saying Trump is trying to interfere with investigations of possible Russian influence in the election.

Political independents, a group that Trump won in last year's election, are also largely critical. By 63 to 20 percent, more independents say Trump fired Comey to protect himself rather than for the good of the country. And by roughly 2 to 1, more independents say Trump is trying to interfere with Russia investigations rather than cooperating with them (58 to 27 percent). More than three-quarters of independents say they trust Trump's statements about Russia "just some" or not at all.

Large majorities of Republicans say Trump fired Comey for the good of the country (71 percent) and that he is cooperating with investigations into Russia's election influence (77 percent). At the same time, roughly 1 in 5 Republicans say Trump fired Comey to protect himself, while about 1 in 6 think he is trying to interfere with investigations, criticisms shared by more than 3 in 10 conservatives.

Trump's trustworthiness also lags among fellow partisans, with less than half of Republicans (45 percent) saying they trust what he says about Russia investigations "a great deal" or "a good amount," while about as many trust him less (48 percent).

Comey's credibility on Russia investigations also has a partisan tinge, with 54 percent of Democrats saying they trust what he says compared with 32 percent of independents and 18 percent of Republicans. Even among Democrats, whose leaders have decried Comey's firing, about 4 in 10 say they trust the former FBI director "just some" or "not at all." Those doubts rise to 59 percent among independents and 76 percent among Republicans, ample skepticism ahead of the former FBI director's testimony this week.

The Post-ABC poll was conducted Friday to Sunday among a random national sample of 527 adults, including users of cellular and landline phones. The margin of sampling error for overall results is plus or minus five percentage points.
Members of President Donald Trump's Cabinet and top White House aides tried to soften his travel ban by calling it a "temporary pause." They said his firing of former FBI Director James Comey was not about the Russia investigation. And this week they used their public comments to attempt to keep the United States out of a messy regional conflict in the Middle East.

But every time, Trump weighed in with a different message that effectively undercut what his aides and Cabinet secretaries appeared to be trying to achieve.

Trump's aides are quickly learning they speak for the president at their own peril.

The president seems to shrug off these incidents, several of which have occurred since he took office, and he has made clear that ultimately only he speaks for his administration, all while rejecting efforts to curtail his use of Twitter.

"The president has always said that Twitter is like owning his own newspaper, except he can't lose money," said former Trump adviser Sam Nunberg. "He'll listen to your advice. He'll listen to suggestions. But the president is not going to be handled."

The challenge for Trump's aides reached an international scale this week. After Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations cut off diplomatic ties with Qatar, over its alleged support for terrorists in the region, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and principal deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders all said on Monday that the United States hoped to help mediate and de-escalate the crisis.

But on Tuesday, in early morning tweets, Trump leaned into the dispute. He lambasted Qatar and voiced support for the Saudi Arabia-led coalition of nations, all the while seemingly ignoring that the United States has long had strategic military ties to Qatar.

"During my recent trip to the Middle East, I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology," Trump wrote. "Leaders pointed to Qatar - look!"

He later tweeted: "So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off. They said they would take a hard line on funding extremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism!"

The tweets sent the administration into a familiar cycle. Officials de-emphasized their significance, arguing they do not signify a shift in policy and claiming that they simply reinforce the statements made by other officials in the government.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Defense Department voiced support and appreciation to Qatar for allowing U.S. troops to remain on a base in their country.

"It's not just undercutting Secretary Tillerson, it's putting at potential risk the relationship between the Defense Department and Qatar, something that is extremely important to the Department of Defense," said John Bellinger, a former legal adviser to the State Department under President George W. Bush. "He has repeatedly necessitated having both secretaries Mattis and Tillerson to quietly reassure allies that the president doesn't really mean these things."

The White House insists that Trump's social-media reach - which tallies more than 31 million on his personal Twitter account alone - is one of the reasons he was elected president in the first place.

"The president is the most effective messenger on his agenda," White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters on Tuesday when asked if the president's tweets were obstructing his own agenda. "The same people who are critiquing his use of it now critiqued it during the election, and it turned out pretty well for him then."

Moments later, faced with a question about Trump's comments on Qatar, Spicer read carefully from a piece of paper to clarify the president's remarks.

"The U.S. still wants to see this issue de-escalated and resolved immediately," he said.

While the White House seeks to play down the contradictory statements from Trump and his aides, the president's critics charge they can have dangerous consequences, particularly in foreign affairs.

"He has said himself he values unpredictability, but what he is is impetuous," said P.J. Crowley, a former assistant secretary of state for public affairs during President Barack Obama's first term. "He gets something in his mind and immediately communicates it without thinking through the broader implications. It's that lack of discipline which has had an enormous and negative impact on perceptions of American leadership."

All of this has put Trump's Cabinet officials on the defense. Mattis has tried to limit his engagement with the media in recent days, declining customary interviews during a trip where he finds himself responding separately to concerns raised by allies about Trump's perspectives and apparent lack of regard for long-standing relationships.

Trump's aides tried to reverse some of the damage done by his tweets this week by accusing the media of obsessing over them. But even that message was overshadowed by a Trump tweet Tuesday.

"The FAKE MSM is working so hard trying to get me not to use Social Media," he said, using an acronym for the mainstream media. "They hate that I can get the honest and unfiltered message out."

The administration's split personality on talking points has not gone unnoticed on Capitol Hill, where there is growing frustration with the lack of coherence from the White House and Trump's penchant for upending the news cycle with his tweets.

"I don't believe Trump colluded with the Russians, because I don't believe he colludes with his own staff," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., quipped, referring to the ongoing investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible collusion with Trump campaign associates.

In some cases, Trump's tweets have only heightened the legal risk facing his administration.

When it comes to the travel ban directed at six Muslim-majority countries that is being held up by federal courts, the president has repeatedly undermined his staff - and his own legal case.

Spicer and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly repeatedly corrected reporters, chiding them for calling it a "ban" - a word that is causing legal headaches for the administration in the courts. But the president continues to use the term.

"People, the lawyers and the courts can call it whatever they want, but I am calling it what we need and what it is, a TRAVEL BAN!" Trump tweeted early Monday morning after the terrorist attack in London over the weekend.

As the Russia investigation continues to expand, Trump has not tread with caution there either.

After he made the decision to fire Comey last month, the White House attempted to present an agreed-upon narrative for how the president reached his decision, with aides leaning heavily on a memo written by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, which criticizes Comey's handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while secretary of state.

But then two days later, Trump said in an interview with NBC's Lester Holt that he had long been planning to fire Comey and was frustrated that the FBI director was so focused on the Russia investigation.

He acknowledged on Twitter that his aides were left in the dark.

"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.

There are signs, however, that some aides are learning to avoid falling into a trap when they can.

On Tuesday, when Spicer was asked whether the president still has confidence in Attorney General Jeff Sessions after a report about tensions between the two, he declined to say.

"I have not had a discussion with him on that question," Spicer said. "If I haven't had a discussion with him on the subject, I tend not to speak about it."
Donald Trump is president of the United States, duly elected last November and sworn into office in January. But he appears oddly and remarkably disconnected from the executive branch over which he exercises power. There is the president, and then there is the rest of the government.

A table of organization of Trump's executive branch would, as always, start with a box at the top representing the president. Beneath it would be a series of boxes - White House staff, Cabinet officers, subcabinet officials and the like. Many of those boxes would be connected by intersecting lines, save for one. No solid line would connect the president to the rest of the government, only a dotted line or no line at all.

That's an overstatement, obviously. The president intersects continually with the rest of the executive branch, on routine and other business. Last month, the White House successfully managed the logistics of a complex foreign trip. There was a process of deliberation and debate involving many advisers that led to the recent decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. This week, Trump is pushing out proposals on infrastructure to provide a sense of forward motion at a time when his legislative initiatives are moving slowly in Congress.

But so much else about this moment paints a different picture of the most unusual administration in modern times. It is the portrait of a president alone, feeling embattled and taking matters into his own hands as much as possible, often apparently against the advice of many of those around him.

Events and reporting in recent days have brought this portrait into high relief, just as Trump's White House braces for testimony from fired former FBI director James B. Comey that could further erode trust in the president and his administration.

Much about what Comey is planning to say Thursday has been reported over a period of weeks through leaks by his friends and associates. All that began shortly after Comey's firing with the revelation that he has a memo about a conversation in which the president offered the hope that the FBI could find a way to back off the investigation of former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who was forced out of office early in the administration but to whom Trump retains some loyalty.

On Wednesday afternoon, the text of Comey's prepared testimony was released by the Senate Intelligence Committee. It confirms what was previously reported but with some new facts, including a provocative quote he attributes to the president, who said to him, "I need loyalty, I expect loyalty."

Comey is smart and shrewd. He knows that the investigation he once oversaw is now in the hands of another former FBI director, Robert Mueller, who will have the ultimate say on what all the evidence proves or doesn't about Russian hacking during the election, possible collusion between the Russians and Trump campaign associates and possible interference into the investigation since then.

The prepared testimony is only the opening act of Comey's appearance Thursday. But based on what it contains, Trump's opponents who were hoping that Comey might attempt to take down the president with a clear accusation of obstruction of justice could be disappointed. Nonetheless, Trump's allies and the president himself will not be pleased.

Trump is a survivor above all, particularly in a he-said-he-said situation. Whether tweeting in real time to contest what Comey says or offering his side of the story in the aftermath, the president is a fighter and a counterpuncher of extraordinary skill and determination. He will not shrink from the moment or slink away.

But even if Comey goes no further Thursday, the power of his words will resonate with more force than the leaked reports or even the prepared testimony. That's the nature of moments like this, when public testimony rises to the level of both great political theater and potentially great legal and political risk. Trump's advisers should be prepared for one of their most difficult days, even if it is far from dispositive in the ongoing investigation.

Still, it's what else that has been learned this week that adds to the picture of a president operating on his own. At one turn after another, there are reports about a president who is at odds with those who serve him, freelancing his views and grievances through tweets and other means of expression and disrupting the ongoing operations of government and diplomacy.

Early in the week, Trump complained on Twitter about his Justice Department's rewriting of his original travel ban just as the administration has asked the Supreme Court to overturn an appellate court ruling striking down the policy. Those tweets potentially damage the government's legal case, but beyond that, they ignore the fact that the president signed the original and the revised order that he now derides.

The New York Times then reported Trump's ongoing dissatisfaction with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whom the president has not forgiven for recusing himself from all things related to Russia, a decision that has led in one step after another to Comey's departure and the appointment of Mueller as special counsel. Sessions, of course, was one of Trump's earliest and most important endorsers and a staunch loyalist throughout the campaign. If one as loyal as Sessions receives no loyalty in return, what will others in the administration think?

In another example of the president being disconnected from his top advisers, Politico's Susan Glasser reported that language reaffirming this nation's commitment to Article 5 of the NATO treaty, a standard of presidential speeches to U.S. allies in Europe, was removed at the last minute from Trump's speech at NATO headquarters last month. The president's senior national security advisers had signed off on the wording, and apparently it was removed without their advance knowledge, according to the report.

In the wake of a decision Monday by Persian Gulf nations to cut off relations with Qatar, an action that has further roiled the Middle East, Trump used Twitter to take credit by tweeting about what he had said and done while in Saudi Arabia on his recent trip. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis offered more careful and reassuring reactions, hoping to contain rather than enlarge the rift.

Also in the past five days, Trump got into a Twitter spat with London Mayor Sadiq Khan in the aftermath of Saturday's terrorist attack. His criticism of the mayor came shortly after he expressed solidarity with the people of Britain over the attack. The feud between Trump and Khan began more than a year ago, but the president's decision to use this moment to revive it brought a shocked reaction and criticism from Britain.

Administration officials dispute suggestions from outsiders that no one around Trump is trying to rein him in from these impulses. He hears plenty of such advice, according to officials. But the president also sees himself badly outnumbered in the national conversation, hearing few public defenders as he monitors cable television and print media.

His tweet storms are his way of responding. But they and other events have led to the image of a president isolated and trusting in few people other than himself - and willing to disrupt anything from long-standing relationships to the orderly operations of government regardless of the consequences to the country or potentially his presidency.
The Trump Administration, like its predecessors, has shown an apparent appetite for the use of force overseas. The mother of all bombs dropped on Syrian troops, saber-rattling toward North Korea, proposed deployments of U.S. forces in 10 or more countries  all of this suggests a growing comfort with the idea of putting our troops in dangerous places.

But the decision to send troops overseas requires clear eyes, hard questions and specific answers. If we are sending our military abroad, our objectives and exit strategies need to be nailed down. Are we engaging in nation- or empire-building? Do we risk being locked into protracted, unending conflicts? Are we inflating the dangers to our national security, as when we falsely asserted that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction?

And when we do intervene, are we avoiding or increasing the suffering of the local people whom were trying to help? No use of force should go forward without reciprocity  that is to say, capable, committed local leaders who fight corruption and try to provide good governance and protect the values we cherish and promote.

The use of force ultimately comes down to the president  or the president and his top advisors  making the decision. Too often this happens without sufficient dialogue, consultation, or robust debate beyond the White House. In particular, the people who have to do the fighting and bear the costs need to have a major voice in the use of force, and the best way to ensure that is with the involvement of the Congress, along with the media, courts, civil society, and even the international community.

There are obviously cases where the president needs flexibility. But if were to put our troops in harms way, he also needs independent advice and to answer tough questions. I dont see any alternative but the strict, robust and sustained involvement of the Congress.

Deciding on the use of force is the most grave and consequential decision government makes. It is of such import that it should not be made by the president alone, but should be shared with the Congress. Presidents should not get broad authority to use force without limit on geography, objectives, or types of forces. The Founding Fathers had it right: the president is commander in chief, Congress has the authority to declare war. Power over the use of force needs to be shared.
Trump administration officials said Tuesday that President Trump was not "taking sides" in the deepening dispute among its key counterterrorism partners in the Persian Gulf, despite a morning of presidential Twitter posts congratulating Saudi Arabia - and himself - for cracking down on Qatar for alleged terrorism financing.

"During my recent trip to the Middle East, I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology," Trump tweeted. "Leaders pointed to Qatar - look!"

"So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off," he continued. "They said they would take a hard line on funding extremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar."

On Monday, several of Qatar's gulf neighbors - Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain - were joined by Egypt and smaller nations in severing diplomatic ties with Qatar, ordering its diplomats and citizens to leave and threatening deeply intertwined regional trade links and air routes.

The eruption appeared motivated by years-long regional disputes rather than any recent disagreement or action. It followed a late-May visit in which Trump, while calling on the Arab and Muslim worlds to unite against the terrorist threat, heaped praise on Saudi Arabia as the regional leader.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, in New Zealand, called for dialogue among the neighbors. At the State Department, spokeswoman Heather Nauert said that "we recognize that Qatar continues to make efforts to stop the financing of terrorist groups, including prosecuting suspected financiers, freezing assets, introducing stringent controls into its banking system. They have made progress . . . but we recognize there is more work to be done."

"Let's move off this social-media thing," Nauert said of numerous questions about Trump's tweets, "because there are a lot of other important things that we need to discuss."

A senior administration official said: "We're not taking sides. If we are taking sides, we are taking the side of unity and cooperation" against terrorism. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive diplomatic issue.

Nauert and the senior official said the United States had been notified of Saudi Arabia's intention to break relations, shortly before it was announced Monday. But "I don't think the U.S. government has perfect clarity on what triggered that," the official said. "We know there have been issues between them."

The Pentagon, whose air operations for the Middle East are headquartered at a massive air base in Qatar where at least 10,000 U.S. service members are stationed, opted for balance and calming words.

"We recognize that there are differing views in the region that have gotten us to this point," it said in a statement. "United States and the Coalition are grateful to the Qataris for their longstanding support of our presence and their enduring commitment to regional security. We have no plans to change our posture in Qatar."

The statement said that restrictions Qatar's gulf neighbors have imposed on Qatari movements in and out of the region "have not impacted our air operations," including missions in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, shook his head in a Capitol hallway when shown Trump's tweets on a reporter's cellphone. "Each of these countries are people that are important to our country," he said. "Our general policy as America has been to work with each of them."

"We do have a base there that we operate out of that's very important," he said of Qatar.

During last month's visit to Saudi Arabia, where he delivered a speech to dozens of leaders from Muslim-majority nations gathered for the occasion, Trump met personally with Qatari emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad al-Thani. "We are friends. We've been friends now for a long time. . . . Our relationship is extremely good," Trump said at the beginning of the closed-door meeting. "One of the things we will discuss is the [Qatari] purchase of lots of beautiful military equipment."

The senior administration official said that Trump addressed U.S. concerns in private with the Qatari leader.

In New Zealand on Tuesday, Tillerson emphasized that all countries in the gulf region "have their own challenges to live up to that commitment to terminate support for terrorism, extremism, however it manifests itself anywhere in the world. And I would say that's true of all the GCC countries; they have their own work to do in that regard."

The GCC is the Gulf Cooperation Council, whose six members - Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar - signed a communique with Trump pledging to continue their joint fight against terrorism. The visit also culminated in what the administration said was $110 billion in arms sales to Saudi Arabia.

Small but influential Qatar has long been at odds with some of its regional neighbors over its support for the Muslim Brotherhood, which is seen by Saudi Arabia and other nations as a threat to the network of ruling monarchs and others across the region.

Qatar, the world's largest exporter of liquefied natural gas, also flexed its political influence by using its energy wealth to become a key patron of groups such as Hamas in the Gaza Strip and, in the mid-1990s, to launch the Al Jazeera media network, which has wide reach through the Arab-speaking world.

U.S. officials who monitor terrorist funding have said that gulf governments have made significant strides in ending official support for terrorist groups, although some money still flows from individuals, primarily in Kuwait and to a lesser extent from Qatar.

Saudi Arabia also has come under scrutiny for indirectly backing militant networks through groups promoting the Saudis' strict Wahhabi interpretation of Islam.

Gerd Nonneman, a professor of international relations at the Doha campus of Georgetown University, one of a number of U.S. universities with branches in the Qatari capital, said the dispute was fueled by "irritation" in Saudi Arabia and the UAE "with Qatar's independence of mind in foreign policy, including its support for the Arab Spring movements."

Qatar's backing for the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist organizations, Nonneman said in an email, has been driven by "a pragmatic calculation that these movements had considerable social traction and would likely become an important part of the post-Arab Spring era." Qatar, he noted, "also refused to join the campaign to fully isolate Iran . . . even while it furiously disagreed with Iran's policies in Syria."

The desire to isolate Iran, in addition to the fight against terrorist groups such as the Islamic State, has brought the Trump administration closer to Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The administration has considered designating the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group, although it was dissuaded from immediate action by other Arab leaders, including King Abdullah in Jordan, one of several countries in which Brotherhood political parties have significant support.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, speaking Tuesday in Paris, mentioned Qatar's support for Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, saying that it "has to choose whether it must move in one direction or the other," according to Reuters.

In the wake of Monday's events, Kuwait took the lead in trying to broker a dialogue. The country's emir, Sabah Ahmed al-Sabah, headed to Saudi Arabia for talks with King Salman.

But there were signs that the feud was dividing the region beyond the gulf. Jordan, a close ally of Saudi Arabia, announced it was downgrading its diplomatic relations with Qatar and canceling the license of the local Al Jazeera office, according to the foreign ministry.

In Turkey, which has tried to mediate the dispute, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned the Saudi-led actions against Qatar. "These developments, coming at a time when we need solidarity and cooperation more than ever, are no good for any country in the region," he said in remarks quoted by the semiofficial Anadolu news agency.

Qatari officials pushed back forcefully at the terrorism accusations and portrayed themselves as victims of a Saudi-led conspiracy. In a letter to U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres, Qatar's U.N. ambassador, Alya Ahmed al-Thani, said her country had been "a target of campaigns of fabricated accusations" and a "hidden agenda to cause harm to our country."

She referred to recently leaked emails allegedly written to the UAE's U.S. ambassador, Yousef al-Otaiba, which appear to show Otaiba trying to garner support in Washington for an anti-Qatar coalition.

---

Fahim reported from Istanbul and Raghavan from Cairo. Mike DeBonis in Washington contributed to this report.
The event Wednesday on an airport tarmac in Cincinnati was just the latest opportunity for the White House to disparage and undercut a law it officially must carry out.

Standing in front of Air Force One along with two small-business owners, President Donald Trump recounted how they "have had their lives completely upended by the disaster known as Obamacare."

One saw her choice of doctors shrink while her premiums and out-of-pocket costs rose, he said. The other has curtailed new investments in his 11-person company to maintain employees' health benefits.

"The coverage is horrendous," the president declared, ticking off insurers' recent decisions to pull out of federal marketplaces in Ohio, Kentucky and elsewhere. "Obamacare is in a total death spiral. The problems will only get worse if Congress fails to act."

Both the gathering and Trump's remarks represent officials' strategy to convince Americans that the collapse of the Affordable Care Act is inevitable and to bolster public and congressional support for a GOP overhaul. Since the day he was inaugurated, Trump has taken steps to erode the ACA, from instructing his deputies to ease up on ACA regulations to curtailing consumer outreach during the final days of 2017 health plan enrollment.

"The best thing politically is to let Obamacare explode," he told The Washington Post in March. On Wednesday, he declared it "dead."

But behind the scenes, the increasing fragility of the law's insurance marketplaces has created an increasingly difficult dilemma for the president's top advisers.

The issue is whether to take any steps to allay the concerns of skittish insurers, some of which are either hiking up rates or pulling out altogether, or let things deteriorate even further - even at the risk of being blamed. The advisers are split, according to several individuals briefed on the deliberations: Vice President Pence and Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney have argued against intervention, while Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price backs providing some federal support if a conservative health-care bill fails to pass this summer.

For the moment, the administration has defaulted to a position of doing little to try to soothe the health insurance industry even as many insurers warn that federal actions -or inaction- could aggravate the situation. Some suggest the White House's relentless naysaying is not reflecting marketplace problems as much as driving them.

"We're in this very strange situation where the agency in charge of stewarding the law is very openly working to undermine that law," said Caitlin Morris, director of affordability initiatives at Families USA, a pro-ACA consumer group.

"Sabotage is the operative word," Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said last month.

The biggest source of industry anxiety right now is the issue of whether the administration and Congress will continue funding cost-sharing subsidies that help 7 million Americans with ACA plans afford deductible and co-pays. House Republicans challenged the legality of the $7 billion in subsidies when Barack Obama was president, and the case is still on appeal.

"Absent that funding, I don't know if we're going to have much participation in the exchange market in 2018," said Tennessee Insurance Commissioner Julie Mix McPeak, a Republican who also serves as president-elect of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

The uncertainty is one of the top reasons insurers have cited when explaining why they are posting higher rates for the next year or withdrawing from markets outright. Two weeks ago, Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina filed a rate increase of 22.9 percent that it said would have been 8.8 percent if the administration had committed to paying cost-sharing subsidies. Last week, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Nebraska announced that it would not offer ACA-compliant bronze and catastrophic plans next year, leaving the state with just one insurer on the exchange there.

And on Tuesday, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield announced it was pulling out of the federal exchange in Ohio, leaving at least 20 out of the state's 88 counties without an insurer.

"We have to take a snapshot in time, which is right now," BCBS North Carolina chief executive Brad Wilson said in an interview. A "lack of action" by the administration, he added, "yields a result we are currently seeing - higher premiums rather than lower premiums."

State insurance commissioners, Democrats and Republicans alike, are searching for ways to help companies cope with the unpredictability so that they stay put for 2018. Their anxiety is especially acute this spring since the administration's drumbeat coincides with the time frame in which insurers must make their decisions.

While the White House tries to prod the Senate into speedy passage of some version of health-care legislation, it simultaneously is using each new revelation about the law's marketplaces - through which more than 12 million Americans signed up for health coverage this year - to amplify its negative message.

Late last month, HHS issued a study finding that average individual market premiums have more than doubled since 2013. Then Friday, a department press release declared, "Today's front page of the Omaha World Herald spells out the latest bad news for Obamacare."

Anthem's withdrawal announcement Tuesday was immediately highlighted, with White House press secretary Sean Spicer saying it would leave "19,000 Ohioans without any options" - though the state said the move would affect 10,500 consumers.

A short time later, HHS spokeswoman Alleigh Marre called the insurer's decision "a stark reminder that Obamacare is collapsing." Less than an hour later, HHS sent a press release touting the request by Minuteman Health in New Hampshire to raise premiums 30 percent next year for its ACA customers.

The vice president has held at least three events since the weekend to spotlight the law's flaws. On Wednesday, he met on Air Force Two with cancer survivor Traci Lewis, a Houston resident who can't see her current doctors under the plan she purchased through the federal exchange.

Administrative actions have been weakening the law for months. Trump signed an executive order within hours of taking office that directed federal agencies to ease regulatory burdens created by the ACA; later, the Internal Revenue Service said it was going to send taxpayers their refunds even if they failed to send proof that they were insured.

Such diminished enforcement, predicted CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield as it filed its rates in Maryland last month, "will have the same impact as repeal" and lead to fewer healthier people enrolling in coverage. "Based on industry and government estimates as well as actuarialjudgment, we have projected that this will cause morbidity to increase by an additional 20 percent," the insurer said.

Washington state's insurance commissioner, Mike Kreidler, a Democrat and former state legislator, called the move "the shot across the bow."

Experts note that many consumers on the independent insurance market - especially those who do not receive federal subsidies - had struggled to find affordable plans long before Trump took office.

Robert Laszewski, president and chief executive of the consulting firm Health Policy and Strategy Associates, said that even the cheapest unsubsidized plan on North Carolina's exchange costs a family of four in Charlotte $1,414 a month, plus a $14,300 annual deductible.

"The question is, was Obamacare unstable in the first place and is Trump in the process of wrecking it?" Laszewski asked. "And the answer is yes."

White House legislative affairs director Marc Short said in an interview that while no final decision has been made on the cost-sharing subsidies, the president "has been clear that in many cases he views this as a bailout to insurers."

Some Republicans are urging caution. Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), who chairs the House Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies, said Monday that the administration should continue to provide the subsidies until a new law is in place and there's been sufficient time for a transition.

"I don't see how you justify making things worse for people in the system, based on some philosophical argument," said Cole, who has talked with officials on both sides of the debate. Cutting off the cost-sharing subsidies "would totally destroy the market."

A recent Washington Post-ABC News poll found that more than three-quarters of Americans think Trump should try to make the existing law work as well as possible. Just 13 percent, by contrast, said the president should try to make it fail as soon as possible.

Though Trump has been vocal in his support for the House GOP's American Health Care Act, which would rewrite key parts of the ACA, his recent tweets have been more difficult to decipher.

In one, he claimed to have suggested "that we add more dollars to Healthcare" in order to make it "the best anywhere," a statement at odds with his administration's budget proposal for big spending cuts.

A health policy expert close to the administration, who asked for anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said the president and his aides were still working out how to proceed.

"There isn't even a strategy that they're failing to follow up on," the expert said. "There just isn't a strategy."

---

The Washington Post's Amy Goldstein contributed to this report.
AUSTIN - Gov. Greg Abbott took a hard right turn politically Tuesday when he announced he will order the Legislature back for a special session on July 18 to consider a laundry list of conservative Republican issues, from a bathroom bill and property-tax reforms to new abortion restrictions and school choice.

In announcing his decision, which puts him in lockstep with the state's most conservative GOP factions, Abbott said lawmakers will first be asked to extend the operations of five state agencies - including the Texas Medical Board that regulates doctors - that are slated to close their doors in coming months because the Legislature failed to pass a bill doing so before their 140-day regular session ended two weeks ago.

"Because of their inability or refusal to pass a simple law that would prevent the medical profession from shutting down, I'm announcing a special session to complete that unfinished business," Abbott told reporters at the Capitol. "But if I'm going to ask taxpayers to foot the bill for a special session, I intend to make it count."

Experts who have followed Texas politics for years said Abbott's decision was clearly a move to reassert his dominance over staunch conservatives in his party.

"This was clearly was to take control of situation back from (Lt. Gov.) Dan Patrick and to be clear that he's in charge of the right wing of the (Republican) party in Texas," said Cal Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University.

Rice University political scientist Mark Jones echoed the sentiment: "This is a Christmas list of everything the conservative advocacy groups wanted. (Abbott) deftly has boiler-plated his right flank. If Patrick was somehow contemplating any challenge of Abbott's standing with those Republicans, he can forget it."

By some official estimates, a 30-day special session will cost at least $800,000 - and could perhaps run more than $1 million, depending on staffing and other expenses. The last special session with a plethora of topics was in 2005, when then-Gov. Rick Perry called one with 22 topics.

Transgender bathroom issue

Once the bill on the five agencies passes the Senate, Abbott said he will add 19 other items to the agenda. Many are likely to stir controversy, including a bathroom bill that Abbott said "at a minimum" needs to ensure the privacy of public school students. He reiterated his support for House Bill 2899 that would have overturned local transgender-inclusive policies and prevented any more from being enacted.

Like that bill, which Equality Texas CEO Chuck Smith said "would stigmatize and demonize transgender people," many others on his list for a special session did not pass the Legislature during its regular meeting.

Though the bathroom bill and others on Abbott's list drew immediate criticism Tuesday from a variety of advocacy groups and others, Abbott was unfazed. "Legislators have six weeks to prepare for the special session, and then another 30 days to pass these proposals," the governor said. "If they fail, it's not for lack of time, it would be because of a lack of will."

House Democrats echoed the sentiment that the governor is trying to appease conservatives who criticized Abbott's performance in the regular session. "I'm not sure why we need a Governor Abbott when we have a Governor Patrick," tweeted state Rep. Gene Wu, D-Houston.

"After providing zero leadership and interest during the regular session, the governor is clearly panicking and trying to shovel as much red meat as he can to his right-wing tea party base," said state Rep. Chris Turner of Grand Prairie, the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus.

In contrast, Patrick, who had pushed for a bathroom bill and property-tax reforms to be included, applauded the announcement as a "big and bold special session agenda which solidly reflects the priorities of the people of Texas. "Almost every issue he addressed ... passed the Senate during the regular session and I am confident the senators are ready to hit the ground running to move these issues forward."

'Bad ideas are still bad ideas'

In a statement Tuesday, the state's largest business organization, the Texas Association of Business, reiterated its opposition to a bathroom bill - even the slimmed-down version that Abbott cited as acceptable to him.

"Bad ideas are still bad ideas in a special session," Ann Beeson, executive director of the Center for Public Policy Priorities, a liberal Austin policy watchdog, said summing up the concerns of other groups, as well.

House Speaker Joe Straus, a more moderate Republican than Patrick who political experts predict will feel even more pressure during a special session, predicted House members "will return to the Capitol next month ready to put their constituents and the best interest of the state first." Without mentioning the more controversial agenda items, Straus said "the House looks forward to resuming our work on school finance and other challenges facing this state."

Among other topics, Abbott said he wants the Legislature to prohibit union dues from all but police and fire organizations from being deducted from government paychecks. He also wants to have penalties toughened for mail-voting fraud, to extend the work of a statewide task force studying maternal mortality and wants new caps on the growth of local and state government spending - through a constitutional amendment, if necessary.

He also wants to prohibit local governments from using taxpayer money to fund Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers, and wants the Legislature to enact anti-abortion insurance reforms in private and government plans. In addition, he would require stricter reporting of complications from abortions.

Citing skyrocketing property taxes, Abbott said he wants reforms that includes rollback elections to give taxpayers a say in how high their taxes go. "If we are going to come together and work this summer at taxpayers' expense, then let us work on reviving Texas homeowners from out-of-control property taxes."

Houston Sen. Paul Bettencourt, the Senate majority leader and a Patrick confidant who authored tax-reform legislation that failed to pass both chambers, said he plans on "tuning up" his bill and refiling it during the special session. "Taxpayers know the truth: property taxes are rising too quickly," he said.

School choice, pay raises

On education issues, Abbott said he wants the Legislature to provide school choice for students with special needs that will allow tax money to go for private schooling, to give public school teachers a $1,000 pay raise, to give administrators more flexibility firing bad teachers, and to empanel a special commission to study school finance reform. He said he wants the teacher pay raise to be approved without raising taxes, by restructuring how schools spend their money.

While those plans have been championed by conservatives, educators' organizations blasted them as an attack on teachers. "After one of the most divisive sessions in recent memory, it's sad to see (Abbott) call lawmakers back to Austin specifically to attack teachers," said Mark Wiggins, a lobbyist for the Association of Texas Professional Educators, an advocacy group.

Concerning local governments, Abbott said he wants the Legislature to prevent cities from too strictly restricting what property owners can do with trees on their private property and from changing development rules midway through construction projects, as well as speeding up the local permitting process. Abbott also said he wants lawmakers to prohibit municipal annexations without a vote of the residents who are affected by the change, and wants to block the enforcement of local texting-while-driving ordinances.

Those proposed changes drew an immediate rebuke from the Texas Municipal League.

"The list of proposed topics for a special session represents an all-out assault on the ability of Texas voters to decide what's best for their communities and their neighborhoods," said Executive Director Bennett Sandlin.
After almost two decades on Texas' death row, convicted killer Chuong Duong Tong is asking a Houston federal judge to intervene in his capital murder conviction in the 1997 death of off-duty Houston police officer at convenience store.

Tong, 40, contends that Harris County prosecutors withheld evidence from the defense during his trial that could have been used to help him fight the charges.

During a hearing Tuesday in federal court, Tong's lawyers called two witnesses in the morning before summoning Tong to the stand.

At that point, Senior U.S. District Judge Nancy Atlas ordered the courtroom sealed - effectively evicting a Chronicle reporter and several others who were not parties in the case from about noon to about 6:30 p.m.

The Chronicle reporter formally objected to the closure and asked to remain under the presumption that court testimony is expected to be presented in public. The judge noted the request and declined it.

The courtroom is set to be opened again Wednesday when the hearing resumes.

Tong was convicted in 1998 in the fatal shooting of Houston police officer Coung Huy "Tony" Trinh, 25, who was working as a clerk in his family's convenience store on Westerland when Tong came in to rob it in 1997, prosecutors contended.

Tong, a Vietnam refugee, had an extensive criminal history, including shooting a Harris County man and his 9-month-old baby and a gang-related bank robbery in the months leading up to the officer's shooting.

Trinh, too, was from Vietnam, having left the country in 1975 at age 4, with his father and mother. He became a citizen in 1983. He graduated from the police academy in 1994 and served more than two years before he was killed.

The court hearing Tuesday came in response to a so-called "habeas corpus" request for the federal court to get involved in the case after Tong had exhausted his appeal in the state courts.

A court document filed Friday notes that "sensitive hearing material" was expected to be presented during the case and would lead to closure of the courtroom. The judge warned again Tuesday morning that portions of the hearing would be closed.

Several Houston detectives, a death penalty opponent, a legal clerk and others lined the hallway while a rotating cast of court officers took turns manning the door, making sure that no one who was not specifically authorized enter.

The hearing began Tuesday morning with testimony from Stephen Gerard Mayeros, who testified in the 1998 capital murder trial that he was in a holding cell with Tong in the Harris County jail when Tong shared information about the case.

Mayeros did not testify Tuesday about what Tong had told him, but court filings state that "Mayeros asked Tong how close he was when he shot Trinh, and Tong responded by touching his finger to Mayeros's forehead and saying 'bang.'"

The filings go on to say, "When Mayeros asked Tong if he felt bad about killing Trinh, Tong replied that he felt terrible and cried himself to sleep, and then laughed."

Mayeros testified Tuesday that he provided evidence to prosecutors after being told that his own criminal case could be handled favorably if he provided evidence.
Harris County took the fight over its controversial bail system to the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday, even as county officials scrambled to plan the imminent release of dozens of misdemeanor defendants held behind bars who cannot afford to post cash bail.

A federal appeals court ruling earlier Tuesday had greenlighted the release of hundreds of poor inmates held in the Harris County Jail on misdemeanor charges ahead of their trials, and Sheriff Ed Gonzalez prepared for the release of as many as 177 people starting Wednesday morning.

But in an emergency filing late Tuesday with the nation's highest court, Harris County asked for another halt to the ruling by Chief U.S. District Judge Lee H. Rosenthal.

The county's request went to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who handles appeals requests from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Thomas can either rule on the matter himself or take it to the full court, according to the county attorney's office.

"In the absence of a stay, the district court's order that Harris County - the third-largest jurisdiction in the nation - immediately release without sufficient surety untold numbers of potentially dangerous arrestees is certain to cause irreparable harm," the county's appeal states.

Two civil rights groups - Texas Fair Defense Project and Civil Rights Corps - and local law firm Susman Godfrey filed the lawsuit last year 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. Similar lawsuits filed on behalf of two other people were merged into the case in August.

An attorney for the inmates, Neal Manne with Susman Godfrey, declined to answer questions about how they would respond to the county's emergency motion, saying they would not argue their case in the media.

The appeal to the Supreme Court came at the end of a whirlwind day for the county in a closely watched case targeting a bail system in which poor people accused of low-level misdemeanors frequently are kept in jail because they can't afford to post cash bail while awaiting trial.

Working out the kinks

On Tuesday morning, a three-judge panel from the 5th Circuit Court determined that Rosenthal's ruling would remain in effect until the case goes to trial. The ruling set in motion the release of up to 177 misdemeanor detainees, who do not have money to pay cash bail and who do not have other restrictions such as mental health evaluations or federal detainers.

The inmates affected by the ruling account for about 2 percent of the total jail population of 8,800, sheriff's officials said.

The county will comply with Rosenthal's order until the U.S. Supreme Court weighs in.

"We know we all have to follow the order of a federal district court," said Robert Soard, the first assistant county attorney. "We're working with both the sheriff and pretrial services, and we're going to try to accomplish that as seamlessly as we can."

The sheriff's office expected to begin releasing qualified inmates early Wednesday.

"It doesn't mean that 177 people will walk out," said Jason Spencer, spokesman for the sheriff. "That would be the absolute highest number. In all likelihood it will be less than that."

About 10 detention officers representing the two jail facilities and the processing center met with command staff Tuesday afternoon for a debriefing on how the release would take place.

Rosenthal's ruling calls for the release on personal bonds for low-level misdemeanor defendants who do not have money to pay cash bail. John Martin, a major with the sheriff's office, said jail staff will meet with inmates and ask about their ability to make bail.

Rosenthal's order also requires new procedures for releasing newly arrested people who don't have the resources to pay cash bond. Rosenthal said officials have 24 hours from the moment of arrest to determine whether a person's ability to post bond.

Spencer said the sheriff and his staff feel ready.

"This is a new process," he said. "We believe we're in a good position. We've already laid the groundwork for it. We're going to have to work out any kinks that arise."

'A cautionary note'

The county had argued that Rosenthal erred in her 193-page ruling earlier this year, which found the county's cash bail system was unconstitutional, and continued to make that argument in its emergency appeal to the Supreme Court Tuesday. That request seeks a new delay for Rosenthal's order.

At the same time, the county will continue appealing the full order, which they argue releases potentially dangerous inmates and eliminates judicial discretion.

Josh Blackman, a civil law expert at South Texas College of Law-Houston who is not involved in the case, said the county must comply with Rosenthal's ruling regardless of an appeal to the Supreme Court.

Blackman and another independent expert - David Coale, a partner with the Dallas law firm Lynn Pinker Cox and Hurst - said the 5th Circuit judges who issued the ruling were a "representative cross-section" of the full court, with two Republican appointees and one Obama appointee.

The judges' decision Tuesday suggests the county may face an uphill battle as the underlying appeal continues, the experts said.

"It's not a guarantee that the county's going to lose, by any means, but it is a cautionary note for the county, that the court may perceive some legal flaws," Coale said.

"It's not saying how they're going to rule on the merits," Blackman said, "but it's a big signal."

Gabrielle Banks contributed to this report.
Are we done with excuses now?

Not on your life - or on your liberty, for that matter.

I've questioned before why Harris County Attorney Vince Ryan, and the commissioners who hold the purse strings, continue to waste millions of taxpayer dollars defending a bail system that a Republican-appointed federal judge has found unconstitutional.

On this one, the county is on the wrong side of justice, as some county officials acknowledge. Yet, Ryan has continued to hire pricey private lawyers to represent criminal court at law judges being sued for jailing people charged with low-level crimes simply because they're poor. And his office has denied appellate counsel to the one judge, Darrell Jordan, who conducts his court constitutionally and supports settling with the civil rights groups suing on behalf of inmates.

Ryan, an elected Democrat, and four Republican members of commissioners court - Steve Radack, Jack Cagle, Jack Morman and County Judge Ed Emmett - have supported appealing the decision even though the county is unlikely to prevail. Only Commissioner Rodney Ellis, a former Democratic state senator, wants to settle the lawsuit and adhere to reforms ordered by U.S. Chief District Judge Lee Rosenthal.

But now another blow to the county's futile efforts: A three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals took time to consider the county's arguments to postpone the immediate fix Rosenthal ordered.

More for you Harris County takes bail suit to U.S. Supreme Court

On Tuesday, the appellate judges denied the county's request, effectively forcing the sheriff to begin releasing misdemeanor defendants whose rights were found to be violated by the current system. Sheriff Ed Gonzalez, who had said he was ready to enforce the order last month as Rosenthal originally intended, immediately took steps to do so Tuesday.

The next step for county officials and judges should have been clear. If one of the most conservative appellate courts in the nation isn't buying your arguments, no one will.

Among the excuses:

Rosenthal's order would "upend" the pretrial bail system in the third-largest jurisdiction in America. Denied.

Rosenthal's order would "interfere" with ongoing and "far-advanced" efforts to improve the bail system. Denied.

Rosenthal's order would "impose" substantial financial costs. Denied.

Rosenthal's order "effectively strips" judges and hearing officers of discretion provided by the Texas Constitution and state law. Denied.

Denied but not deterred! Ryan, the county attorney, charged forth, apparently with the help of pricey appellate counsel who finally earned their keep with a 32-page brief at the ready, submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday afternoon with the speed of a petition for death row reprieve.

In its appeal, sent directly to Justice Clarence Thomas, the county turns up the hyperbole, arguing that without a stay of Rosenthal's "radical" and "startling" ruling, Harris County would be forced to release "untold numbers of potentially dangerous arrestees." It argues that the ruling could pose a "grave risk to public safety," in part because even though Rosenthal tailored it only to misdemeanors, it could, eventually, somewhere down the line, be interpreted more broadly to apply to people charged with felonies.

You have to give them credit for creativity.

Although, I missed the bit of humor tossed into the county's emergency request for a stay, sent in May to the 5th Circuit panel: If a stay were granted, the county asked that the officials being sued not be required to pay bond.

"This is an appeal by Defendants essentially on behalf of the public," the county's motion read, "and there is no reasonable way for the parties to quantify the harm that might accrue to Plaintiffs if any injunction is stayed during the appeal."

I disagree that the motion was filed on behalf of the public. I think most of the public opposes unconstitutional policies and pointless litigation.

But I agree that there's no way to quantify the harm done every time our misdemeanor courts keep a mother away from her children, a father away from his job, a student away from school - not because they're dangerous but because they're poor.

It appears the county isn't done with excuses. And I'm not done with columns.

Sooner or later, Harris County will be forced to follow the law, to set aside the petty considerations that may be fueling this court battle - ego, stubbornness, political alliances, pressure from the bail industry, what have you - and to side with justice.
Harris County Commissioners voted Tuesday to add eight new positions to the county's public defender office to help prevent the routine pre-trial jailing of poor people accused of crimes.

The new hires will help the public defenders office be present at nearly all pre-trial bail hearings starting July 1, ensuring that those accused of crimes understand their rights and helping hearing officers, who set bail, understand whether the accused pose a risk to the public or can be released ahead of trial.

The initiative, the first of its kind in the state, comes as the bail system itself is the target of intense scrutiny. A federal civil rights lawsuit is targeting the cash bail system as unconstitutional because those accused of low-level crimes and without means are jailed while those who can pay get out.

Earlier this year, Chief U.S. District Judge Lee H. Rosenthal issued an injunction against the county's bail practices and ruled that the system likely would be found unconstitutional during a trial. She set a May 15 deadline for the county to begin releasing low-risk inmates with misdemeanor charges who cannot afford bail on personal recognizance bonds.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals court ordered a temporary halt to Rosenthal's order while it considers the case further.

Officials point to the public defender pilot as a step that could help solve what nearly all agree is a problem with the county's justice system. It is a roughly $1 million investment on the county's part.

"Does it solve all of the problems? Of course not." said County Judge Ed Emmett. "But it does show that the county is aware that we don't want anyone in jail that shouldn't be there."

BRAKES ON: Appeals court stops judge's order to change bail system

The vast majority of the roughly 80,000 defendants at these hearings each year do not have legal representation. The county's pilot program means that defendants of limited means charged with a Class B misdemeanor or above will be able to have access to a lawyer when a judge sets bail.

Chief Public Defender Alexander Bunin said the county will conduct a study over the course of the year to identify how many people will be impacted by the pilot program.

"We're going to be representing people that were never represented before," Bunin said. "It really will help the quality of justice here in Harris County."

Of more than 1,100 people who have died in Texas jails in the past decade, most have been pretrial detainees. One of the most widely publicized cases was that of Sandra Bland, who committed suicide in the Waller County Jail three days after she was arrested in 2015 following a traffic stop and a heated argument with a state trooper.

MOVING ON: Harris County Sheriff ready to implement new bail system

In Harris County, 55 people died in pretrial detention from 2009 to 2015, including defendants arrested for misdemeanors such as trespassing and driving while intoxicated. Among them was a man detained after returning his children late to his ex-wife, in violation of a civil court order, the Houston Chronicle found.

Pretrial detainees who are not released are four times as likely to receive a prison sentence, and that prison sentence is likely to be twice as long as ones for those who are not held in jail before their trial, according to the county.
Jose Luis Galicias home would be just another middle-class residence in the northeast of Madrid if it were not for the Picassos. An original sketch of a face accompanied by the words: For Jose Luis Galicia, from his friend Picasso, 26-5-59 adorns one wall. A series of sketches capturing the expression of the Spanish poet Antonio Machado hangs on another. Upstairs in the study, there is a small gallery dedicated to the Cubist master featuring prints, silkscreen prints, etchings and other original drawings that are surrounded by rows of art books.

Painter Jose Luis Galicia in his Madrid studio. Jaime Villanueva

Born in Madrid in 1930, Galicia, 86, is himself an artist and has held over 60 individual exhibitions over the years. But his most famous paintings are undoubtedly the frescos in Madrids Almudena Cathedral.

With a cast-iron pedigree  his father was the painter Francisco Galicia, his uncle, the poet Leon Felipe and his cousin, the bullfighter Carlos Arruza, Galicia was not even remotely fazed when he ran into the Malaga-born genius in 1952.

When the Guernica came up in conversation, I always said that the painting should end up in Spain

Jose Luis Galicia

It was said that he had a very difficult personality, but perhaps because I reminded him of Spain, or because he respected me as a painter, or who knows why, he was always quite sensible and perfectly well-behaved around me, says Galicia. None of the books I've read about him  and I've read a lot  portray him as I remember him. So I have reached the conclusion that when he invited people into his home, he felt obliged to become Picasso  the character. He was acting a part.

Their first encounter took place after the death of the poet Paul Eluard. As a 22-year-old student seeking to establish himself as an artist in Paris, Galicia attended a tribute to the poet organized by a group of intellectuals at the Maison de la Pensee Francaise.

Everyone was gathered in a big room, including Aragon, the Surrealists and members of the Communist Party. And all the paintings that Picasso had given Paul Eluard were on the walls of another room, recalls Galicia. As no one was there, I decided to look around. Then suddenly, Picasso walked in. I approached him and said, You are Pablo Picasso. And he said, Yes and who are you? I told him I was a Spanish painter who had just arrived in Paris. Well, he said, let's have a look at this together.

Picassos Meninas Galicia also tried to convince Picasso to donate his Meninas to the Prado Museum instead of sending them to the Picasso Museum in Barcelona. I mentioned it one afternoon at his home, says Galicia. He fell silent for about a quarter of an hour. Then suddenly he said, No! I think the Prado has enough with Velazquezs Meninas. But Picasso did absolutely want the Guernica installed in the Prado Museum, says Galicia. So why was it taken from the Prado to the Reina Sofia? Galicia believes they should at least put a plaque beside the Guernica that says, "On loan from the Prado Museum."

Galicia recalls that he dared to offer his opinion on Picassos work. At that time, I was quite cheeky and slightly criticized one of the paintings. Then I did it again and again, he says. By the third criticism, he joined in. And when we finished, he said he would like to see my work. He asked if I knew where his studio was and I said yes, that it was in la Rue des Grands Augustins So come and see me tomorrow and bring something of yours to show me, he said.

Galicia went on to visit Picasso on various occasions in the south of France, mainly in La Californie, his mansion in Cannes where he lived with his partner, Jacqueline Roque. Used to sycophants, Galicia was possibly a breath of fresh air and the two would talk for hours. He was very affectionate to me and asked a lot of questions, says Galicia. But we always broke off for his siesta. Come back later and well carry on talking, he would say. Sometimes we would stay up until midnight.

These conversations led Galicia to play an important role in finding a home in Spain for Picassos mural masterpiece, the Guernica. The symbolic painting of the massacre in the Basque town on April 26, 1937, was allowed into the country because, according to Galicia, he convinced Picasso to change the word Republic for public liberties in a clause citing the conditions for the work to be taken to his homeland.

At that time, I was quite cheeky and slightly criticized one of the paintings

Jose Luis Galicia

When the Guernica came up in conversation, I always said that the painting should end up in Spain, says Galicia. But he told me that it belonged to the Spanish Republic, that it had been commissioned for the Spanish Pavilion at the International Paris Exposition. Everyone at that time was convinced that when Franco died, there would be a five or six-month period of transition before the Republic returned. Picasso also believed this, which meant he thought that returning the painting would be easy. Until one day I told him, Pablo, when Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel, there were also enormous problems with the Popes and other artists But who remembers anything about that now? People see the Sistine Chapel, and that's it. I told him he had to put the politics to one side a bit, that politics was time sensitive but the Guernica was timeless.

It would seem that Galicias argument helped to convince Picasso. Pablo called Jacqueline and told her to call Dumas  his lawyer  and tell him to come as soon as he could. I am going to change the words  where it says when there is a Republic, to when there is a Democracy, he said. So I didn't bring the Guernica back. Javier Tussell and the Spanish government did that, but I did convince Picasso to change that clause. If I hadn't, the painting might have remained in New Yorks Modern Art Museum.

English version by Heather Galloway.
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Julio Jimenez does not have much to get excited about in Pasadena politics.

The 24-year-old said young voters like him feel ignored and disconnected. As he has grown up in the working class Houston suburb, he has seen investment in infrastructure pour into the city's wealthier, whiter south side, miles from his home on the industrial north side.

Now, faced with a runoff election between two Anglo mayoral candidates - John Moon Jr. and Jeff Wagner - who do not reflect his background, nor that of the city's burgeoning Hispanic population, Jimenez said he is just "pissed off."

"I wanted to vote for a Hispanic," Jimenez said outside Pasadena City Hall, after casting a vote for Moon.

His disillusionment cuts to a core issue of Saturday's runoff election, which comes as the city appeals a federal voting rights ruling that found the city intentionally discriminated against Hispanic voters with a now-defunct redistricting scheme, pushed by current Mayor Johnny Isbell. That lawsuit reflects the tensions between a white population supporting the old guard in local politics and the new Hispanic-dominant demographic.

In addition to the mayor's race, voters will decide the District A council seat, where Felipe Villarreal and Daniel Vela are vying to represent part of the city's north side.

The mayor's race, however, is taking center stage as it marks a change from Isbell, who has led the city, off and on, for decades and now is term-limited.

"I want to give every candidate the benefit of the doubt," said Cody Ray Wheeler, a councilman who frequently has butted heads with Isbell. "Whoever the next mayor is, I want to work with them."

More Information Mayor Candidate: Jeff Wagner Incumbent: No Age: 53 Occupation: Pasadena city councilman, retired Houston police officer Candidate: John Moon Jr. Incumbent: No Age: 58 Occupation: Commercial real estate agent and former banker District A Council Candidate: Daniel Vela Incumbent: No Age: 52 Occupation: Brazoria County police officer, former Pasadena Volunteer firefighter and retired Lyondell Petroleum technician Candidate: Felipe Villareal Incumbent: No Age: 43 Occupation: Code enforcement officer, Galena Park The candidates Mayor Candidate: John Moon Jr. Incumbent: No Age: 58 Occupation: Commercial real estate agent and former banker Candidate: Jeff Wagner Incumbent: No Age: 53 Occupation: Pasadena city councilman, retired Houston police officer City Council, District A Candidate: Daniel Vela Incumbent: No Age: 52 Occupation: Brazoria County police officer, former Pasadena Volunteer firefighter and retired Lyondell Petroleum technician Candidate: Felipe Villarreal Incumbent: No Age: 43 Occupation: Code enforcement officer, Galena Park See More Collapse

Wheeler ran unopposed for his District E seat during the May 6 election.

The runoff comes amid conflicts over racial tensions and access to the ballot box. Nearly two-thirds of city residents are Hispanic, up from less than one-third in 1990.

Chief U.S. District Judge Lee H. Rosenthal ruled in January that the city intentionally violated the rights of Hispanic voters with a redistricting scheme pushed through three years ago by Isbell. The lawsuit was brought in November 2014 by a handful of Pasadena residents.

Isbell did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

Election monitored

For the May election, which included races for mayor and all eight city council seats, the judge ordered the city to revert to a 2013 election map that uses eight single-member districts, instead of relying on the six single-member and two at-large districts he rule unconstitutional.

In addition, the U.S. Department of Justice sent two observers to monitor the May election. The department did not respond to a question this week about whether the monitors reported any issues with the election.

Wagner, an Isbell ally, got 38 percent of the mayoral vote in a seven-candidate field in May; Moon, his runoff rival, pulled in 18 percent.

Four races were decided last month: incumbent and Isbell ally Bruce Leamon over challenger Steve Halvorson; Phil Cayten beat Larry Peacock for the Wagner's District F seat; incumbent and Isbell ally Cary Bass beat out challengers Oscar Del Toro and Allen Munz for District G; and Thomas Schoenbein, who is supporting Wagner, beat Keith Sargent, April Lance and Brad Hance for District H.

Incumbents Wheeler and District D Councilman Sammy Casados won re-election unopposed. Don Harrison won the District C seat unopposed.

April campaign filings, the latest available, showed Wagner with a clear fundraising edge, reporting $103,680 in contributions, including a $2,500 contribution from Isbell's son, J.J. Isbell. Moon reported $18,570 during the same period.

'People want change'

Moon, a commercial real estate agent and banker who grew up in Pasadena, is positioning himself as the candidate of change, a break from Isbell's legacy.

"People want change," Moon said. "They don't want a continuation of the same, and I believe my opponent is a continuation of the same."

Moon's priorities include developing a multi-year capital improvement plan to spread infrastructure projects across the city, including streets and sidewalks. He wants to implement zero-based-budgeting for city departments to make them justify their spending. And he touts his credentials as chief financial officer of Moody Bank, based in Galveston, to help make shrewder financial decisions for the city.

Wagner did not respond to repeated requests for comment by email or phone. After a Pasadena city council meeting Tuesday, Wagner said he would meet a Houston Chronicle reporter outside, before exiting into a private room and reportedly leaving City Hall.

In campaign literature, Wagner touts his experience as a former Houston police officer and as a city councilman. He is widely seen as the candidate most aligned with Isbell.

Wagner and Moon also differ in their stances on the controversial voting rights lawsuit, which the city is appealing. Moon said he would stop the appeal, while Wagner said he would survey city council before making a decision.

As of Monday, according to the Harris County Clerk's Office, 4,389 people had cast ballots during early voting. About 8,300 votes were cast during the May balloting.

Maintaining status quo

University of Houston political scientist Brandon Rottinghaus said runoffs typically see fewer voters turn out, especially in locales like Pasadena, where residents, who in theory could be energized by conversations about voting rights and demographic change, may not think their views are being represented by their local government.

"I think one of the reasons Wagner did well, he was well-funded and well enough known, and when you have enough passionate people who see the need or the desire to maintain the status quo, that can be an effective rally point, which is exactly what happened," Rottinghaus said.

Demographic change, he said, still could have an impact, but it can come slowly.

"This is the kind of thing that takes multiple cycles, even in a place that's rich in potential," Rottinghaus said.

The runoff also includes a city council race for the northernmost section of the city, District A, where Vela faces Villarreal. Both point to infrastructure issues and lack of investment in their district as their top priorities.

Vela, a retired member of Pasadena Volunteer Fire Department, said he would support increasing pay and benefits for city workers.

"Let's move forward, keep moving forward, doing the right job for the people," he said.

Villarreal, who worked in sales for Blue Bell Creameries and had stints working as a truck driver, and in various law enforcement agencies, said his strength comes from having no prior ties to public office.

"I haven't actually run for anything," Villarreal said. "The only reason I'm running for this now is to help out my community, and to help out the city, especially the north side where we live at. It's been neglected for years."
AUSTIN -- Gov. Greg Abbott's planned special legislative session next month is bad news for Texas lawmakers who were looking forward to attending summer legislative conferences.

The session conflicts with all three of the big ones.

Abbott's announced July 18 start date comes just one day before the American Legislative Exchange Council will convene for its three-day annual meeting in Denver.

So, too, does it overlap the meeting of the Council of State Governments' conference in Biloxi, Miss., and the Aug. 6-9 convention of the National Conference of State Legislatures in Boston.

For years, the summer conventions have been a staple of state-paid travel for Texas legislators to learn about common issues with other states, attend panel discussions and party with lobbyists and colleagues in other states.

Lawmakers have often overlapped them with their personal vacations, which could also be affected by the special session.

On Wednesday, as the registration deadline neared, many lawmakers complained privately that Abbott's timing of a special session will probably mean they will have to stay home this year.

For their part, Abbott aides said the conference dates played no role in selecting the date for the special session.

In a memo issued Tuesday, shortly after Abbott made his announcement, House Administration Committee Chairman Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth, notified House members that the lower chamber would not reimburse for expenses to the conferences while the Legislature is in session.

"If a cancellation fee is incurred, due to cancellation for the special session, the House will reimburse for the cancellation fee with proper documentation," Geren's memo states.

Senate officials could not immediately be reached for comment, but several senators said they had been given similar instructions.

Dozens of Senate and House members attend the conventions annually, some because they are officers in the organizations or because they are speaking on panels, at an average cost that has been calculated in years past as about $2,500, depending on the destination.

By contrast, the cost of a special legislative session has been estimated at well over $800,000 if it runs the full 30 days.
President Donald Trump tried to justify his unilateral decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate deal last week by falsely claiming he was acting on behalf of the people of Pittsburgh.

The city's mayor - the person directly elected by its residents - quickly denounced the Trump's "misguided decision" on the president's favorite medium, Twitter. "I can assure you that we will follow the guidelines of the Paris Agreement for our people, our economy & future," Mayor Bill Peduto wrote.

Within hours, nearly 200 mayors, including Houston's Sylvester Turner, had signed a statement promising to continue the fight against climate change in spite of Trump.

The mayors understand that Trump's reckless decision to abandon the international agreement leaves American cities, states and businesses to fill the void. It is up to them to reduce climate-altering pollution and promote energy efficiency in the absence of the federal government's leadership.

Fortunately, even before last week, Houston was taking big steps to fight global warming. The city, for example, is the nation's largest municipal buyer of renewable energy. By purchasing Texas wind and solar power, it has reduced its heat-trapping pollution by 35 percent over the past decade while reducing its electric bill. The city's goal is to reduce emissions 80 percent from 2007 levels by 2050.

Turner reaffirmed this commitment after Trump bailed on the global pact because he understands Houston is in the cross-hairs of climate change. The low-lying city had more than $45 million in damages from a single storm-driven flooding event in May 2016. Studies have shown that global warming made events like this more frequent.

Forecasts also show that the Texas coast may see more than 2 feet in sea-level rise by the 2050s because of a warming planet and melting ice caps. If the predictions hold, large areas of Galveston and Houston, including oil refineries and chemical plants along the Ship Channel, will be underwater.

Houston's stubborn smog problem is likely to grow worse because of climate change, too. That is because ozone, or smog, forms more quickly at higher temperatures.

For Texas as a whole, a warming climate means fewer crops, increasingly stressed water supplies and bigger, longer, hotter wildfires, among other impacts.

Remarkably, Trump and his advisers ignore this reality.

They instead hold onto a paranoid notion that the climate agreement, which was signed by 195 countries vowing to reduce their own emissions, threatened American jobs.

In an interview following the president's Paris retreat, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said other countries wanted the accord only to undermine the U.S. economy.

"They wanted to hurt us economically, to put us at a disadvantage to competing with them," he told radio host Hugh Hewitt.

The truth is the Trump administration's abrupt withdrawal isolates the United States diplomatically and economically. It drops us into the losers' bracket with Syria and Nicaragua, the only two nations that refused to sign the climate pact. (Even then, Nicaragua wanted a stronger agreement.)

China and Europe, meanwhile, are moving to assume the leadership role that Trump surrendered on clean energy. Unlike the president, they can see the economic possibilities, a global clean energy market worth roughly $1 trillion a year.

That is why so many CEOs, including companies with deep ties to Houston, were urging Trump to stay put. ExxonMobil, for one, advised Trump to remain in the agreement. BP, Dow Chemical and Shell made similar statements.

"Our support for the #ParisAgreement is well known," Shell wrote on Twitter last week, adding that the company would "continue to do our part providing more & cleaner energy."

Shell's statement is encouraging because everyone, especially corporations, will need to do more in the absence of Trump. More businesses should follow the lead of Walmart and Google by pledging to use only renewable energy. Mayors can do the same, running their cities on wind and solar, like Pittsburgh's Peduto vowed to do after the president's unwelcomed shout-out. Cities also can reduce pollution from their transportation systems. All of us can drive cars with greater fuel efficiency and retrofit our buildings to waste less energy while saving money on gas and electric bills.

Although Trump has forfeited moral authority by leaving the world effort to combat climate change, cities, states and companies can continue to reduce our carbon pollution. Like with Pittsburgh, fighting carbon pollution is good for Houston's people, economy and future.

Marston is vice president of clean energy at Environmental Defense Fund. He is based in Austin.
Small businesses. They are the driving force behind our economy, and there is truly nothing small about them.

Just under 98 percent of all businesses in Missouri are small, and there are nearly 20,000 small businesses in southeast and south-central Missouri. Across America, small businesses employ over half of the workforce and create seven out of every 10 new jobs. I have spent the last week meeting with small business owners and hosting public roundtables all across southeast and south-central Missouri  hearing directly from these folks and talking about what can be done to get Washington out of their way.

Over the last eight years, small businesses have been stifled by outrageous taxes and out of control government regulations. I met with one business owner in Cape Girardeau last week who told me about how federal regulations have made it harder for him to do business. He shared that when seeking a bank loan to grow his business, federal regulations made this process more difficult and more expensive, adding to the cost of doing business and slowing down their ability to grow.

Another small business owner from Salem told me that as her small business grew and her bottom line improved, she was taxed at such a high rate, that her business would have been more profitable if she wasnt as successful. With a system that punishes small businesses for growing, how can we expect this vital part of our economy to thrive and hire?

Hearing directly from people who are struggling to get their businesses off the ground or keep them running really hits home. I want nothing more than to see small business owners in our district succeed, which is why Im fighting for policies in Congress that will enable their success. Last Congress, I stopped a 2,000 percent tax increase from devastating owners who were buying equipment for their small businesses. This year, Im rewriting the tax code to reduce the burden for small businesses and am continuing to push for a tax system that is simpler, flatter and fairer.

One of the things I love most about small businesses is how much opportunity they provide, its one of the best ways to live the American dream. At my Small Business Roundtable in Hillsboro, one of the attendees, Tom, told me that he started his welding business after he was laid off from another job. Since he started his own welding business, there hasnt been a day where Tom didnt have something to work on.

But Tom also told me about the dramatic impact Obamacare has had on his business. When Tom started his welding shop, there was a small business group where you could buy affordable insurance, but that went away with Obamacare. Not having that option added a lot of costs to Toms small business. He was extremely grateful to hear that last month, the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation which would allow small businesses to band together to buy insurance plans again. I hope my colleagues in the Senate understand how important this is to folks back home and will vote to send this legislation to President Trumps desk.

Spending time with folks back home is the best way for me to see firsthand what these hardworking small business owners are facing. Our conversations this week will allow me to share their stories with my colleagues in Congress and take action to make Missourians lives easier!

Jason Smith represents Missouris 8th Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives. Contact him at 573-335-0101 or visit https://jasonsmith.house.gov
Weve all heard how certain foods can have specific positive effects on the human body.

I wouldnt begin to dispute that, but I feel like theres more to the story than what were often told, and there are things we can do to assist foods in bestowing their benefits upon us.

To illustrate, allow me to use part of a list of foods and their favorable bodily influences compiled by an online healthy living source and add what I believe can make them especially effective.

 Pineapple burns fat and tones the stomach.

Especially if you jog two miles three times a week, do 50 sit-ups every day and dont sit on the couch almost every night and down a bag of potato chips, four jumbo chocolate chip cookies and two moon pies.

 Lemons alkalize and cleans your liver.

Especially if youre not consuming them along with a fifth of Wild Turkey.

 Limes remove toxins from the body.

Especially if you dont consume large quantities of processed materials and substances (sometimes called foods) laden with sugar and chemicals that put toxins into your body in the first place.

 Apples help prevent depression and reduce anxiety.

Especially if you eat them just after youve won the lottery and dont eat them right after losing your job or spouse.

 Cabbage helps reduce body fat. See pineapple.

 Asian pears help remove radioactive toxins from your body.

Especially when theyre not purchased from a store near Chernobyl, Russia.

 Cherries strengthen the heart and circulatory system.

Especially when you dont smoke two packs of cigarettes every day.

 Blueberries balance blood sugar preventing hypoglycemia.

See pineapple and cabbage.

 Bananas have powerful antiviral properties.

Especially if you wash your hands before eating them if you just ran your hand over a stairway handrail at your local middle school.

 Oranges help sinus and respiratory issues. See cherries.

 Melon hydrates the skin and nails.

Especially if you eat it along with drinking several glasses of water every day instead of chugging mass quantities of soda.

There you have it. Put into practice, these suggestions could well help the listed foods do a better job of working their various healthy wonders in our bodies.

Sure, maybe the suggestions are foolish and Im just a misguided dreamer for even thinking in such a way. But I prefer to think its kind of like where food science meets logic and reality.

Just sayin.

Doug Davison is a writer, photographer and newsroom assistant for the Houston Herald. His columns are posted online at www.houstonherald.com. Email: ddavison@houstonherald.com.
Results from a monthly survey of business supply managers suggest a decline in overall economic conditions for nine Midwest and Plains states.

Of the states in the monthly survey, Missouri had the lowest score  and fell the most in May.

The Mid-America Business Conditions Index report released Thursday says the overall regional economic index dropped to 55.5 in May from 61.4 in April.

Creighton University economist Ernie Goss oversees the survey, and he says the index figures over the past six months point to healthy growth for regional manufacturing and nonmanufacturing through the third quarter of this year.

The survey results are compiled into a collection of indexes ranging from zero to 100. Survey organizers say any score above 50 suggests growth in that factor. A score below that suggests decline.

The Institute for Supply Management, formerly the Purchasing Management Association, began formally surveying its membership in 1931 to gauge business conditions.

The Creighton Economic Forecasting Group uses the same methodology as the national survey to consult supply managers and business leaders. Creighton University economics professor Ernie Goss oversees the report.

STATE-BY STATE RESULTS

Arkansas: Arkansas overall index fell to 58.4 last month from Aprils 61.1. Components of the index were new orders at 57.6, production or sales at 59.8, delivery lead time at 51.0, inventories at 57.5 and employment at 66.3. Arkansas is adding nondurable-goods manufacturing jobs at a healthy pace, Goss said. These gains are more than offsetting losses for durable-goods producers. I expect the state to add jobs and economic activity above the regional and national average for the rest of 2017, he said.

Iowa: The states overall index dropped to 57.5 from 64.7 in April. Index components were new orders at 57.1, production or sales at 59.3, delivery lead time at 50.6, employment at 65.7 and inventories at 57.0. Durable-goods manufacturer, including transportation equipment manufacturers and metal producers, reduced employment, Goss said. But expansions  in sales and jobs  for nondurable-goods manufacturers more than offset declines for heavy manufacturers.

Kansas: The Kansas overall index declined to 53.9 from 56.4 in April. Mays index components were new orders at 53.1, production or sales at 55.1, delivery lead time at 47.0, employment at 61.1 and inventories at 53.0. Transportation equipment producers and farm equipment manufacturers continued to experience slow growth or declines, Goss said. On the other hand, nondurable-goods producers, including food processors, are expanding economic activity and more than offsetting losses for durable-goods producers, he said.

Minnesota: The states overall index slipped to a still strong 58.4 from Aprils 61.2. Index components were new orders at 57.6, production or sales at 59.8, delivery lead time at 51.0, inventories at 57.5 and employment at 66.3. Slight job gains for both durable- and nondurable-goods producers in the state supported Mays solid overall reading, Goss said.

Missouri: The overall index for Missouri plummeted to 51.0 last month from 62.4 in April. Index components were new orders at 50.3, production or sales at 52.2, delivery lead time at 44.6, inventories at 50.2 and employment at 57.9. Economic growth slowed for Missouri manufacturers in May, Goss said.

Nebraska: The states overall index fell to 55.2 in May from 61.0 in April. Index components were new orders at 54.4, production or sales at 56.5, delivery lead time at 48.2, inventories at 54.3 and employment at 62.6. While metal manufacturers and machinery producers experienced slow growth or declines in May, Goss said, nondurable-goods manufacturers, including food processors, reported solid upturns in economic activity.

North Dakota: North Dakotas overall index sank to 53.9 last month from 57.3 in April. Index components were new orders at 53.1, production or sales at 55.1, delivery lead time at 47.0, employment at 61.1 and inventories at 53.0. Energy and machinery equipment manufacturers continue to shed jobs, Goss said. However, gains for nondurable-goods producers in the state more than offset durable-goods losses.

Oklahoma: The states overall index remained above growth neutral for a fifth straight month, although it declined to 54.2 from 61.2 in April. Index components were new orders at 53.5, production or sales at 55.5, delivery lead time at 47.3, inventories at 53.4 and employment at 61.5. Durable-goods manufacturers, except for metal producers and machinery manufacturers, are expanding at a slow pace, Goss said. Nondurable-goods manufacturers, including food processors, are experiencing healthy growth.

South Dakota: The overall index for South Dakota stood at a regional high 61.7 last month but was down from Aprils 68.8, also a regional high. Index components were new orders at 60.8, production or sales at 63.1, delivery lead time at 53.8, inventories at 60.7 and employment at 69.9. Expansions among nondurable-goods manufacturers in the state more than compensated for slight losses for durable-goods producers, Goss said.

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Rascalz Teen Club and Community Center will host an open house from 3 to 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday at its location on Grand Avenue in downtown Houston.

{{tncms-inline alignment=right content=<ul> <li>WHEN: 3-7 pm</li> <li>WHERE: Rascalz, Grand Ave., Houston</li> <li>DETAILS: Free lifetime memberships available.&nbsp;</li> </ul> id=6bd3d3ee-5874-44a3-aa87-57114691b068 style-type=fact title=If You Go type=relcontent width=half}}

Owner Mike Brannan said free lifetime memberships will be available both days.

Rascalz regular business hours will be 6 to 11 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. The club is open to all youth ages 12 to 18.

Brannan said adult activities will be announced soon. For more information, call 417-217-4287.

PDF: Advertisement for Rascalz open house
Summersville resident Sherry Rosenbum recently received the Missouri Department Corrections (MDOC) Directors Award of Valor due to her actions on the job late last year.

State Rep. Robert Ross recently joined with the MDOC to recognize the outstanding efforts of Rosenbum, a Corrections Officer II at the South Central Correction Center (SCCC) in Licking. A special ceremony was held at the Ike Skelton Training Center in Jefferson City, and Ross presented Rosenbum with an official House Resolution in honor of her service to the state. The ceremony took place during Missouri Correctional Employees Week on May 16.

The Directors Award of Valor is given to MDOC staff members who perform outstanding heroic services, particularly in lifesaving or life-threatening situations. On Nov. 14, 2016, Rosenbum called a Code 70 (fire), after discovering smoke coming from a cell. She was joined by other corrections officers who attempted to overcome the smoke, but were forced to turn back.

Rosenbum then entered the cell alone and discovered a prisoner unresponsive on the floor. She then pulled the unconscious inmate from the smoke-filled cell and took him to a secure area where medical staff rendered treatment until he regained consciousness, and afterward made a full recovery.

Rosenbum began her career with the MDOC on May 17, 2004, as a Corrections Officer I at the SCCC and was promoted to her present rank of Corrections Officer II on April 16, 2011.

Sherry Rosenbum was truly heroic that day as she risked her own life to bravely move forward to rescue a life when others were forced to turn back said Ross, R-Yukon. Her dedication and ability to remain calm in stressful situations, combined with her competence in reacting with sound judgment are all attributes that make her an outstanding employee and someone truly deserving of our appreciation.
Eduardo Gomez was 19 when he died at the Battle of Mount Harriet during the Falklands War . It was 2am on June 12, 1982 and Argentina was just two days away from surrendering to Britain. Eduardos mother and eight siblings never knew which day he was sent to the front, or even that he had died at all.

The Argentine Military Cemetery on the Falkland Islands. Reuters

More information Argentina y Reino Unido ponen nombre a decenas de soldados muertos en las islas Malvinas

When it was all over and the soldiers returned to the mainland, Eduardo was simply not there. The family placed dozens of telephone calls to the army, and left their adobe home in Chaco, one of the poorest provinces in Argentina, to go look for him in the hospitals of Buenos Aires.

It was two months before a military official met with them back in their village and told them that Eduardo had died in combat.

In 1991 his sister Norma traveled to the Falkland Islands (known as Las Malvinas in the Spanish-speaking world) and visited the Argentine Military Cemetery, also known as the Darwin cemetery. There, she found out that Eduardo was one of 123 people buried in graves marked only with the inscription: Argentinean soldier known by God alone.

Grave of an unknown soldier at the Argentine Military Cemetery. Reuters

Twenty years after that trip, Norma became the driving force behind an identification process for the bodies buried in the Falklands, which will be carried out by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) beginning on June 19.

Among the 230 graves inside the cemetery, there are 123 that contain the remains of men who got caught up in the disorderly retreat that followed Argentinas military defeat, and whose bodies often ended up in unmarked mass graves scattered throughout the archipelago.

A British colonel named Geoffrey Cardozo exhumed all those bodies and brought them to the military cemetery. He placed names on the tombstones of those he was able to identify, and used the unknown soldier formula for the rest.

Among the graves, there are 123 that contain the remains of men who got caught up in the disorderly retreat

The war ended 35 years ago, but the black marble stones continue to cover those anonymous remains. On June 19, the ICRC will start exhuming the corpses in a bid to identify the young soldiers and bring some redress to their families.

The project will be conducted by 10 experts selected by the ICRC, and four more by Argentina and Britain. The team chief, Laurent Corbaz, was in Buenos Aires before flying to the islands, and held a press conference with foreign media organizations.

Corbaz said that the plan is for the exhumations to conclude in August, and to have positive ID for the samples toward the end of the year.

We will try to identify as many as possible, but we cannot guarantee 100% results because there are more families looking for their loved ones than graves, he added.

International Commitee of the Red Cross press conference in Buenos Aires. EFE

Following identification, the bodies will be newly interred on the same day of the exhumation, inside new coffins, said Lorenzo Caraffi, head of the ICRCs regional delegation.

The samples will be analyzed at a lab operated by the Argentina Forensic Anthropology Team, one of the worlds most prestigious forensics organizations thanks to its work identifying victims of the military dictatorship.

The project had been in the pipeline for years. In 2012, on the 30th anniversary of the conflict, the Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner administration initiated a similar process, but it ran into a wall because Britain wanted authorities from the Falklands to be involved in the negotiations.

Some families also expressed fear that identified bodies would then be taken back to the mainland, leaving the islands without Argentinean remains.

God willing, we will be able to return to the Malvinas with a name for our dead relatives

Talks were resumed when Mauricio Macri became the new president of Argentina. As part of its plan to improve relations with London, the Foreign Ministry issued a release on June 17, 2016 stating that it was allowing the Red Cross to travel to the islands based on the strictly humanitarian nature of this initiative.

Blood samples from relatives were first taken in 2013, and so far there are 95, says Norma Gomez, Eduardos sister. Their mother also donated blood for the project, but she will never see the outcome because she passed away three months ago.

It makes you sad, having to wait so long, adds Norma Gomez. God willing, we will be able to return to the Malvinas with a name for our dead relatives  the same names they had when they left their homes.

English version by Susana Urra.
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Parliamentarians voted overwhelmingly in favour to reaffirm Canadas continued commitment to the Paris climate agreement  except for one Conservative MP.

Cheryl Gallant cast the lone nay in the 277-1 vote on the government motion Tuesday.

The motion to gauge the Houses commitment to implementing the agreement was introduced by Government House Leader Bardish Chagger after the U.S. announced it was pulling out of the landmark climate accord last week.

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Gallant charged that the governments motion to renew Canadas commitment to the Paris agreement and its intention to bring in a carbon tax are not based on fact.

The comment prompted a remark by Environment Minister Catherine McKenna, who was seemingly baffled by Gallants belated critique.

I am a bit confused. The Paris agreement was actually negotiated with 195 countries around the world in 2015, McKenna said.

Gallant did not respond to HuffPost Canadas request for comment before publication.

This is the government wanting to extend hours and then using the time for these pretend public relations exercises. Conservative MP Garnett Genuis

Earlier in the day, Conservative MP Garnett Genuis accused the government of using the Paris agreement as a vehicle to implement a carbon tax, raising taxes for Canadians.

It is not following the effective example we saw under the Harper government, which actually led to reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, Genuis said, calling Chagger's motion a waste of time.

This is the government wanting to extend hours and then using the time for these pretend public relations exercises, which actually do not have a substantive effect on outcomes on the ground.

Genuis voted in favour of the government motion.

What's Happening In Ottawa? Stay on top of the biggest political stories of the day with our newsletter

We have a responsibility to future generations: PM

Canada was one of 195 countries that signed the voluntary landmark climate accord two years ago.

The agreement acknowledges the detrimental effects of climate change, advocating a plan to limit global temperature rise to under 2C before 2100 with plans to reduce emissions around the world.

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On Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau notably spent World Environment Day kayaking in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont. and paddled up to a couple standing on dock to make small talk about the high water level.

We cant walk away from the reality of climate change, and we wont walk away from a global plan that has a realistic chance of fighting it, Trudeau said in a speech the same day reaffirming Canadas commitment to the Paris Accord.

We have a responsibility to future generations, and we will uphold it.

U.S. President Donald Trump announced his countrys withdrawal on Thursday, claiming continued adherence to the accord would bring disadvantages to American workers.

We will be environmentally friendly, but we're not going to put our businesses out of work and we're not going to lose our jobs. We're going to grow; we're going to grow rapidly, he said.

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Of course, Trumps announcement doesnt mean America is formally out of the agreement. Although the accord is non-binding, the process of removing a signatory could take up to four years.

By then, the Trump administration could either be re-elected or replaced with a White House keen on re-joining the landmark climate accord.

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There's a certain assumption that when you pose nude in your younger days, you'd prefer to keep that image embedded forever in the minds of those who saw it.

Throw that assumption out the damn window.

For seven Playboy cover models, at least, there's no time like the present to revisit their former snaps, as they proved in a shoot by Ryan Lowry and Ben Miller for the magazine.

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As chief creative officer Cooper Hefner (oh yes, there's a relation) relays in an Instagram video, it is in fact what he gave his mother for Mother's Day.

Turn up your : We re-created some of our most iconic covers and one our models happened to be @cooperbhefner's mom. Look out for the cover reveal on 6/4. A post shared by Playboy (@playboy) on Jun 3, 2017 at 6:30pm PDT

"In the spirit of celebrating the women whove made Playboy what it is  an exuberant celebration of beauty, sex, and the beauty of sex  we invited seven special Playmates from over the years to come back and recreate their iconic covers. In the process, they remind us that beauty is ageless, sex appeal is timeless and exuberance is eternal," notes the article.

And frankly, we couldn't agree more. Take a look, for example, at Kimberley Conrad Hefner (former wife of Hugh Hefner and mom of Cooper, as well as Marston), in her 1988 cover, and today.

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Conrad Hefner, who was raised partially in West Vancouver, was 26 at the time of her original shoot  she's now 54 and divorced from Hef, but still has fond memories of her time at the Mansion.

"There was a common misconception that I put the kibosh on the partying at the Mansion. It had nothing to do with me. The Playmates still came over, but it was nice to have them call and say, Hi! Im coming up!" she told the publication.

Renee Tenison was the magazine's first African-American Playmate of the Year in 1990.

She was 22-years-old at the time, and is now 49.

Of course, it's somewhat ridiculous it took until that point to have any diversity on the cover, but Tenison remembers a different kind of squabble.

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"When I did Playboy, there was a little bit of controversy because I was the first African-American Playmate of the Year and some women were saying I was being objectified. But I said, Well, if youre pro-choice, shouldnt I have the right to choose what I want to do? .. If you look back, all the big models from Christy Turlington to Naomi Campbell posed nude. I see it as art. Not everybody sees it that way, but thats how I see it," she told the magazine.

Lisa Matthews, billed as the "all-American girl," took on the task in June 1991.

She was 22-years-old at the time (perhaps that's the magic Playboy cover model number?), and is now 48.

Then there's Candace Collins, who has the oldest cover in the bunch.

She was 22 at the time of her December 1979 photo, and is now 60. She started out working at the infamous Playboy Clubs in St. Louis and Chicago, reports Chicago Magazine, and eventually graced two covers and a centrefold.

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With the recent rise in popularity of boudoir photography, it probably should come as no surprise that more and more women (and men) are not only willing to take off their clothes in front of a camera, but clamouring for it.

Cheers to celebrating the human body in all its fine forms.
Ignacio didnt survive the moment of the attack. With that statement, the sister of the Spanish man who has been missing since Saturdays terrorist atrocity in London confirmed via a Facebook post that Ignacio Echeverria is one of the victims of the incident. Born in El Ferrol but having grown up in Madrid, he was 39 years old, and died trying to save a woman who was being stabbed by the attackers.

Ignacio Echeverria.

Thank you to all of you who loved him and took care of him, Ana Echeverria wrote on her Facebook profile, shortly after 4pm on Wednesday. We know that were not the only ones who are sad. We want to see and be with Ignacios body. It seems that until Friday at the earliest we wont be able to be with his body. We want the British government to let us be with him... Thanks [in advance] to the Spanish administrative and political personnel for their help in making this possible.

Echeverria, 39, who worked for HSBC bank, was last seen on the night of the attack in the UK capital. His family says he was returning from a park where he had been skating with friends, when the group witnessed a man stabbing a woman in the area of Borough Market, near London Bridge.

Echeverrias friends said he was the only one among them who stopped to help the woman under attack, and that he faced up to the assailant.

At that point he jumped off his bike and hit the assailant with his skateboard, said a member of his family. The last time his friends saw him, he was lying on the ground after defending the woman with his skateboard. He was brave, getting involved to save the woman.

He had been missing ever since, prompting the Spanish authorities to pressure their UK counterparts into speeding up the identification of the bodies of the people killed in the attack

Echeverrias father had said on Tuesday that the family was highly pessimistic about the chances of his son being found alive.

In the end, the identification of the body was possible thanks to a DNA test, given that fingerprint test was inconclusive. The Spanish ambassador in London was charged with communicating the news to the family.

A total of eight people have now been confirmed to have died in the attacks, which saw three men drive a van into pedestrians on London Bridge, before embarking on a stabbing rampage in the Borough Market area. A total of 48 people were injured, 21 of whom are in a very serious condition.

English version by George Mills & Simon Hunter.
Everyone deserves to be able to paint their nails fun colours. And now, maybe everyone can.

Orly is collaborating with the lifestyle website MuslimGirl to release a line of Muslim-themed nail polish for the month of Ramadan.

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The #HalalPaint collection is part of Orlys Breathable line of polish, which claims to be better for nails than regular polish because it allows air and water to penetrate the polish to the nail itself.

The polish also advertises itself as 13-free, which means its vegan and lacks 13 ingredients many consider harmful that are common in other polishes, like formaldehyde and xylene. Orlys website also states the polishes are halal-certified and do not require a base or top coat.

The halal-certification and breathable qualities in the polish are of course whats notable about this particular line. Muslims are usually unable to wear regular nail polish because it creates a barrier between the nails/skin and water, which prevents Muslims from washing their entire bodies, as is required for prayer ablutions, according to PopSugar.

The fun polish line is filled with playful names for its target audience like Haram-Bae, What the Fatima? and Ig-Noor the Haters, and is designed for a demographic that often gets overlooked when it comes to beauty products.

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This line is important because there are so many girls and young women who aren't represented in mainstream beauty, Muslim Girls chief of staff Azmia Magane wrote on the #HalalPaint website. "They either don't fit that definition or see things about them that are designed without them, instead of for them and by them. This is our way of bridging the gap."

Breathable nail polishes arent exactly new. Inglot launched their line of O2M Breathable Nail Enamels in 2012, and though the company doesnt claim the products as halal-certified, theyve found great success  despite mixed opinions about whether theyre truly water-permeable by Islamic scholars and non-scholars alike.

Canadian retailer Tuesday In Love also sells a line of breathable polishes that have been certified halal by ISNA Canadas halal certification agency. Maya Cosmetics, which launched its nail polish in 2016, is also halal-certified, as is Nailberrys LOxygene line. Nails Inc.s Nailpure line is also breathable, although the company doesnt claim to be halal-certified.

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Orlys own line of breathable polish has been available since 2016, and has been certified by the Islamic Society of the Washington Area, according to Glamour.

Orlys limited edition #HalalPaint polishes are currently available for pre-order online. The entire set is $49 USD.

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Getting food delivered is considered a treat for most people. But for a suburban Toronto couple, it quickly turned into a stomach-turning nightmare after an UberEats driver dropped off one of the nastiest-looking meals we've ever seen.

Anna Kotlikova and Blake Weinzettl, of Etobicoke, Ont., decided to have a couple pizzas delivered from a local Montana's restaurant just down the road on Sunday evening, placing their order through Uber's food delivery service, reports CBC News.

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But when the driver dropped off a big brown bag, almost half an hour after the expected delivery time, they were confronted with an overwhelming smell coming from a couple of half-eaten mouldy sandwiches along with a much fresher looking salad.

Weinzettl shared the photos of the botched order on Twitter.

@UberEATS your uber driver delivered half eaten moldy food (not our order) and played a sick joke on us, customer service was a joke. pic.twitter.com/tYeIyamsqA  808CULT  (@808CULT) June 5, 2017

"Your uber driver delivered half eaten moldy food (not our order) and played a sick joke on us, customer service was a joke," he wrote, directing the tweet to the @UberEATS account.

While waiting on a response from Uber, the couple called Montana's and spoke with the manager, who assured them the correct order had been sent out. The manager also confirmed to CBC News that another customer called to complain that evening with an almost identical experience.

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I just confirmed this happened to another customer with the same driver! How is his account not shut down? This needs to be escalated  808CULT  (@808CULT) June 5, 2017

Weinzettl told HuffPost Canada that Uber has offered him $25 in credit for the inconvenience, and confirmed the mouldy food delivery was "not a mistake"  he was told the driver, who had previously been inactive for two weeks, made three UberEats trips to and from Montana's on Sunday, and on each trip delivered "mixed and matched mouldy old food with at least one item fresh from Montana's."

An Uber spokesperson directed Business Insider to a statement, published on Tuesday, which read: "We are continuing to work with the restaurant and the driver to help understand what may have happened. We have removed this driver's access to UberEats and Uber as we look further into this."

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The company also said the driver had no history of similar complaints, and has held a customer rating of 4.8 out of 5.0.

Weinzettl said an Uber rep told him the driver has been terminated and will never drive for the service again, and that Uber plans to press charges on the driver "to make sure he can never work for another food delivery or cab service again."

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Last Friday, the Italian retailer posted a photo to the social media site of three boys with their arms around each other, captioning the pic, "Sorry ladies. Girls not allowed!"

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And people were pissed.

Sorry ladies. Girls not allowed! #SS17 #Benetton #kids A post shared by United Colors of Benetton (@benetton) on Jun 2, 2017 at 3:00am PDT

"My daughter would love the red top and blue shorts, but since girls are not allowed...," one mom commented. "Gee, Benetton missed the opportunity to double their sales on those clothes, can they spell STUPID?"

"Um, alright. I take my two girls and myself elsewhere. Oh, and my son and husband have decided they're coming with us," said another.

But not everyone understood what all the fuss was about. And one person even noted that this is a common phrase school-aged boys often tend to use.

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"I'm lost because nowhere do I see them saying these are boys shorts or tanks just for boys it simply says 'no girls allowed,' they asserted. "Every boy at some point had a clubhouse, treehouse or a fort with a sign saying 'no girls allowed' so stop whining [and] find something else to be pissed off at."

Nonetheless, Benetton replied to users with an explanation in the comments, Allure reported on Tuesday.

"We're very sorry that our message struck the wrong chord with some of you. We only meant to be playful in this post, and we apologize if we have unintentionally offended anyone," the brand wrote. "We certainly did not intend to be sexist. In fact, we take pride in the fact that United Colors of Benetton has always promoted gender equality, which we firmly believe is necessary for building a better world.

"This is precisely why we launched  in 2015  the Women Empowerment Program, a long-term sustainability program aimed at supporting and empowering women worldwide."

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"We have a history of women and girls being excluded from male-oriented categories and while the caption is likely a joke, society is just not there yet."  Sharon Lamb, psychologist at the University of Massachusetts

Aside from that, the company also released an empowering global campaign for International Women's Day in March 2017, encouraging women to "pledge for half" in order to prove no gender is better than the other. And back in 2013, they featured trans model Lea T alongside fellow model Mario Galla, who wears a prosthetic leg in their campaigns, in an effort to combat prejudice.

All these factors considered, it's probably fair to say this was all a big miscommunication. But Sharon Lamb, a psychologist at the University of Massachusetts told Yahoo Style that in this day and age, brands need to be a lot more careful about their messaging.

The most fun happens alongside friends. #Benetton #FW16 #knitwear #stripes A post shared by United Colors of Benetton (@benetton) on Jan 14, 2017 at 6:03am PST

"We have a history of women and girls being excluded from male-oriented categories and while the caption is likely a joke, society is just not there yet," she told the publication. "Its only a joke if everyone can participate in its humour."

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"The ad seems to be trying to masculinize these boys and make them appear bonded over their gender," she continued. "Its OK to bond over stylish clothing, although we typically dont see boys doing it in ads. That might be why Benetton had to make them bond over gender."

The company has yet to remove the photo or edit the caption.

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dolgachov via Getty Images healthcare, people and medicine concept - close up of women in blank shirts with pink breast cancer awareness ribbon over white background

As the daughter of an Albertan living with metastatic breast cancer (MBC), I am greatly concerned about the long wait times to access new drugs & treatments. My Mom is now four years into her Stage 4 or MBC diagnosis, for which there are no cures. She is dependent upon certain medicines that help to not only extend life but provide a better quality of life. Research in the U.S indicates that only 22% of people diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer will live 5 years or longer.

As time ticks by, my Mom has been waiting over two years to access a promising new drug. She is only sixty years old, mother to three and grandmother to six. In Canada there are significant roadblocks regarding access to treatments which means that she, like so many others, could die while waiting for access to a drug that could give her substantially more time with her family.

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Photo credit : Rachel Boekel Photography

We have repeatedly written, emailed, and even met with officials in our provincial government, including our Minister of Health, Sarah Hoffman. There has been little urgency and certainly no action taken to even begin to recognize this patient group and help them access the medications they so desperately need. Albertans with MBC and their loved ones are finding each other, finding their voice, and coming together to ask for recognition and access to treatments. We are growing weary of begging for help. That's not to say we will stop. We can't. We will just have to beg louder, more publicly, and hope to get some attention and compassion from those who could help, but choose not to.

A report from the Canadian Breast Cancer Network (CBCN), Waiting for Treatment: timely equitable access to drugs for metastatic breast cancer, reveals that on average, Canadian metastatic patients and their families are forced to endure delays of two to four years before they are able to access new treatments. These delays occur at nearly every stage of the approval process, but the greatest waits occur at the provincial level.

Rather than listing new drugs to the formulary in a timely fashion after federal approval, the province puts them under a secondary review process, lasting anywhere from months to a couple of years. We have asked the Alberta government to consider the model recently set by Ontario, where they have eliminated the need to re-review treatments provincially following the review by pCODR. This could potentially reduce wait times at the provincial level.

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For example, still unavailable to Albertans is the promising new drug palbociclib. In 2013 palbociclib was given breakthrough status by the FDA. By the current rate of progress from breakthrough status in the USA to coverage in Alberta, it will be more than four years! How many MBC patients will have died during that time?

MBC is the little talked about, rarely understood, reality of the disease. While people are aware that 1 in 9 Canadian women will face a breast cancer diagnosis in her lifetime, many do not understand that approximately 30% of those women may go on to have their cancer recur as metastatic breast cancer.

Not to mention those who are diagnosed as metastatic from the start. This is not a small group of people with a rare disease. This is a large number of Canadians who need our government's help! Now, I am all too aware that there are many factors at play here. I also know that I want a government willing to fight for those who need their help, and who aren't content to deliver the status quo in health care.

For those living with MBC, timely access to diverse treatment options is critical. As cancer spreads, treatments that previously worked begin to lose effectiveness. As options become increasingly limited, the need for access to a wider variety of treatment options becomes more and more essential for a patient's survival.

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We can do better for people with MBC. It is essential that our Alberta government commit to listing medications in the formulary within 1-3 months after the price has been negotiated, discontinuing the secondary review process to decrease the overall wait time, and finally give the metastatic breast cancer community the respect, compassion and care they deserve.
Do you remember Harry Potter's invisibility cloak? It turns out wizards aren't the only ones who can vanish from sight with a special coat. Marine researchers have discovered shrimp-like crustaceans called hyperiids that can hide in the open using internal nanotechnology to cloak themselves in invisibility. That's just one among many fascinating discoveries to celebrate on World Oceans Day, June 8.

Last summer, scientists confirmed the elusive Greenland shark can live up to 400 years, beating out ancient bowhead whales and rougheye rockfish for the longest documented lifespan of any vertebrate.

Researchers are just starting to learn about the two-metre, scale-free ragfish with cartilage skeleton and flabby flesh found in Alaskan waters, and the faceless fish found in Australian waters, whose eyes, gills and mouth are hidden.

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That we're still discovering new wonders in the oceans is even more reason to protect them. We have a long way to go, though. In early 2016, about three per cent of oceans had formal protection from industrial activities, up from one per cent five years ago. Twenty countries, including Chile, Palau, the U.S. and the U.K., have committed to increasing marine protection.

Last summer's expansion of Hawaii's Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument created the world's largest marine protected area. In October, the Ross Sea -- home to some of the most productive waters in the Antarctic -- was finally declared a marine reserve after a decades-long push.

When a coalition of 24 countries agreed to provide international protection for 1,548,812 square kilometres of the Southern Ocean, the Ross Sea surpassed Papahanaumokuakea as the largest marine reserve. Most impressively, Palau, part of Micronesia in the western Pacific, turned 80 per cent of its waters -- an area the size of California -- into a marine reserve. Britain established the Pitcairn Islands reserve in the South Pacific, a contiguous underwater park nearly the size of Pakistan.

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In 2016, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and then U.S. president Barack Obama issued a joint statement to "substantially surpass" international commitments to reach 10 per cent marine protection, even though Canada has protected less than one per cent so far. Our government is getting started, though. It announced strong protection for globally significant glass sponge reefs near B.C.'s Haida Gwaii earlier this year, ending years of inaction.

Along with increased ocean protection, new technologies are opening up ocean exploration. Researchers are adapting drones to track coastal erosion, map coral reefs, survey penguin populations, assess whale health and even learn about mysterious sea turtle behaviour.

Thanks to a microscope that works underwater, scientists are learning how coral polyps interact and about patterns algae use to take over coral ecosystems.

Some jurisdictions are also getting serious about plastics that are choking seabirds, fish and marine mammals. California and Hawaii banned plastic grocery bags and some countries discourage use through taxation. In the U.S., Congress passed the Microbead-Free Waters Act to phase out tiny plastic microbeads in soaps, facial scrubs, toothpaste and other products by 2018. The United Nations Environment Programme is calling for a worldwide ban on products containing microplastics.

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Protection efforts appear to be paying off. This year, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada down-listed shortfin mako sharks from "threatened" to "special concern". Around the world, anti-finning campaigns have helped decrease shark fin consumption. Endangered manatees made a comeback in the U.S., with Florida seeing a 500 per cent increase in the population, prompting the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to propose reclassifying them from "endangered" to "threatened".

Many whale populations are also rebounding after decades of commercial exploitation. Hunted to near extinction in the early 20th century, North Pacific humpback whales were recently reclassified from "endangered" to "special concern." Biologists estimate their population at 18,000.

Likewise, blue whales in the eastern North Pacific off California are showing signs of recovery, currently numbering about 2,000. Nearly exterminated by commercial whaling fleets before receiving worldwide protection in 1967, blue whales remain one of the rarest marine mammals, numbering between 10,000 and 25,000 worldwide.

Earth's oceans still face many overwhelming challenges and political obstacles, yet the resilience of nature and ecosystems is powerful. If we can rally around actions that protect rich ocean biodiversity, they can continue to provide an endless bounty of wonder and treasure.

Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Senior Communications Specialist Theresa Beer. David Suzuki's latest book isJust Cool It!: The Climate Crisis and What We Can Do(Greystone Books), co-written with Ian Hanington.

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Learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.
Progressive voters in Nova Scotia took a big step toward reclaiming their province with last week's general election.

Of course, the much-preferred option would have been to see the government of Stephen McNeil defeated or reduced to a minority, but cutting his Liberal Party to a razor-thin, one-seat majority will force it to listen more closely to the needs and wants of the people of Nova Scotia. It also means McNeil will have to work with other parties in the Legislature for the people of the province.

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After the ideologically driven and mean-spirited government we've seen from McNeil over the past few years, that is not only a relief, it's a significant victory.

Consider that this is a government that made drastic cuts to health care, picked unneeded and unproductive fights with public-sector unions, slashed education funding, picked nasty fight with the province's teachers and introduced regressive labour laws that attacked collective bargaining rights.

McNeil's refusal to show any support for strikers at the Halifax Chronicle Herald, now on the street for more than 500 days, meant that the province was effectively without its paper of record when voters needed it most.

Still, Nova Scotians knew that the government did not have their best interests at heart, and in every region of the province signaled their displeasure with some key losses for the Liberals.

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In the Halifax area itself, NDP Leader Gary Burrill, who had led the party from the visitors' gallery since winning the leadership last year, unseated the Liberal incumbent in Halifax-Chebucto, while Dartmouth North New Democrat Susan Leblanc took out Community Services Minister Joanne Bernard -- clear signals voters in those ridings wanted a change.

In Cape Breton, the Conservatives were able to play on voters' feelings of neglect from the McNeil government to pick up a number of seats. They, too, took out another high-profile cabinet minister, Energy Minister Michel Samson.

McNeil himself acknowledged that issues such as health care played a role in some of his high-profile losses. He won 27 of 51 seats, two of those seats by a mere 137 votes combined. And there are so many close races that some are going to judicial recounts.

"If you look at potentially some of the issues around some of the decisions our government has made, all of those in their totality impact ridings," McNeil told reporters after the election.

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Regressive governments can be defeated, it just takes time and determination.

Defeating regressive governments takes time, sometimes a lot of time. The Conservatives under Mike Harris and Ernie Eves were in power in Ontario for eight years before they were defeated. The B.C. Liberals just went down after 16 years in power. In Alberta, the NDP ended a Conservative dynasty that had lasted more than 40 years. Stephen Harper spent 10 years vowing to change this country before he was thrown from office.

All of which means that regressive governments can be defeated, it just takes time and determination. The struggle continues, with some very committed and compassionate people leading it.

Across Nova Scotia during this election, for instance, dozens of Unifor volunteers worked throughout the campaign, driven by a desire for a government that respected working people. The campaign was the culmination of activism by many of the same volunteers, and more, to push back against the regressive policies of the McNeil government over the past several years. Unifor also conducted an extensive membership campaign.

In the end, they came within two seats and a handful of votes in some very close contests to deny McNeil his second majority. Having got that close, and with connections they've made with voters, those activists now have the tools in place to effectively stem any attacks by the new government on working people and the services they rely on.

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Over the course of the election, they've spoken to thousands of people on the phone and thousands more in person in their homes or out in the street. They've handed out more than 20,000 leaflets reminding Unifor members of the McNeil record.

All that lays a strong foundation for progressive forces to keep fighting for a fairer and more equitable Nova Scotia, and sets the stage to bring in the government the province needs in the next election.

There is more work to be done, but we are well on our way.

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We can laugh and joke about pre-wedding jitters, but what about pre-baby jitters? While some anxiety over the anticipated life changes are normal, some individuals have bigger concerns and fears around the process of birth and becoming a parent. This can be particularly difficult when the person getting nervous is not the one giving birth!

So what is there to do when dad is shaking in his boots? Or when one parent has done this before and the other hasn't? Some of the solutions are individual and based on the particular fears that a partner has, but some are true for all parents.

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1. Be Prepared

Pre-natal classes are great, but remember they are not all created equal. Classes offered by hospitals can be amazing, or terrible, and there isn't a lot of predictability on which you will get. Taking classes through private companies will often be more accommodating to your schedule, and are more likely to tailor their class to your specific questions. If a partner is particularly nervous, private classes will allow you both to go at your own pace, and can remove the embarrassment factor of being squeamish.

2. What Happens in Hollywood...

Hollywood gets it wrong most of the time and makes it scary to boot. Most births do not look like a remake of either Carrie or The Exorcist but Hollywood might make it seem that way. In fact, avoid all birth videos, including of actual births on YouTube or other sources. They will not reflect your birth, or the relationship you have with each other.

3. Bring in Reinforcements

Doulas are there for both of you! Having a person to reassure, answer questions, and give suggestions can be invaluable in a stressful situation. There are doulas to support every family, every type of birth, every family makeup, and every situation. Find one that you are both comfortable with.

4. Find a 'Dads' Group

Whether it be online or in person, finding a group of people to reach out to is an important part of parenting. If you look for a group before the baby is born, you can support each other leading up to the big day, as well as after.

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Google tends to offer a worst-case-scenario no matter what you put in the search bar.

5. Know Your Limits

Be real and honest with yourself and your partner. If you are nervous because the sight of blood makes you pass out every time, it is important to be honest about that. While many dads are in the room during birth, not all are, and as long as both of you are okay with that, there is nothing wrong with being close by without having a front row seat.

6. Practice Makes Perfect

While you probably can't practice attending births on the regular leading up to your big day, you can practice mindfulness and breathing techniques to control your anxiety. Try speaking with a therapist or doctor about ways to control your nervousness. Yoga, meditation, and other calming techniques can also be a great help.

7. Stay Off Google

Google tends to offer a worst-case-scenario no matter what you put in the search bar. The more you can avoid Google, the calmer you will be.

8. Take a Break

Being nervous in a birthing room is not always the most helpful thing. Stepping out for a few moments to get a cold drink, a coffee, or some fresh air can make a big difference. If taking five minutes alone will help you feel calmer, then take those few minutes.

It is normal to be nervous, the trick is not letting your anxiety intrude on a very exciting day. Arming yourself with as much, or as little, knowledge as you need to find your centre can make the day of birth more exciting than nerve wracking.

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The FARC guerrilla groups transition to civilian life following more than 50 years of armed conflict in Colombia means more than just handing over its weapons. It also means breaking with the past in financial terms.

A Colombian soldier in a former FARC-occupied zone. JAIME SALDARRIAGA (REUTERS)

More information Colombia sigue el rastro de los bienes millonarios de las FARC

Colombian authorities are intensifying efforts to follow the trail of the insurgencys millions of dollars worth of assets, which are stashed within national territory and abroad.

Prosecutors say that the value of seized assets in 2017 is upwards of $100 million, and they have announced an international cooperation plan to locate capital that former combatants are concealing outside Colombia.

Authorities have set up a legal cooperation mechanism with countries in Central America and with the US State Department

In just these first few months of the year we have already managed to seize assets worth 300 billion pesos [around $105 million] and we are making progress on several processes concerning extinction of domain, said Attorney General Nestor Humberto Martinez, alluding to the confiscation of assets linked to illicit activities.

These operations are decisive for the implementation of the accords between the Colombian government and the FARC, because one of the executives decrees, issued in late May, stipulates that any funds raised in this way will be allocated to the victims.

Before August 1, the guerrilla group will have to present the United Nations with an inventory of its possessions. And its more than 900 arms caches will need to be dismantled before September.

The goods and assets included in the inventory will be used toward the material reparation of the victims of the conflict, reads the text.

A village in the Colombian department of Cauca, which suffered greatly from the conflict. EFE

During the war, the FARC accumulated thousands of urban real estate properties, thousands of rural properties, commercial premises, cooperatives, cash, automobiles, said the attorney general, who also warned about the existence of assets abroad.

As a result, authorities have set up a legal cooperation mechanism with countries in Central America and with the US State Department. One recent operation involved the confiscation of $450,000 concealed in a bank in Costa Rica, a sum that Colombian prosecutors attributed to the FARC. Additionally, 3,400 assets have been seized following court orders.

Three serious violations

Meanwhile, Colombias peace process oversight body  the Monitoring and Verification Mechanism  has detected three serious violations of the accords in the last month.

According to a report released on Tuesday, the first incident took place on May 10, when a FARC member allegedly made an attempt to sexually assault two minors in the rural area of Vidri, in the Antioquia department. The High Commissioner for Peace of the Juan Manuel Santos administration said that this incident bears no relation with the weapons handover and that it is a case for the ordinary courts.

The second incident involved shots fired by guerrilla members against an army patrol that entered an area filled with combatants. One of the bullets wounded a military officers left leg. The third incident was an airspace violation by a helicopter that entered the transition area of Cano Indio, in the northern portion of the Santander department.

English version by Susana Urra.
If Theresa May was the strong leader she claims to be, she would have held up her hands and took at least some responsibility for the recent failure of intelligence regarding the Manchester and London Bridge terrorists. Instead she had the audacity to stand in front of the press and declare "enough is enough," despite accusing the very people who acted so bravely of "crying wolf" and "scaremongering" just two years ago when warned that police cuts could risk national security.

But whether she held herself [partly] accountable or not, at the very least, she should have pledged to reverse the ruthless budget cuts that left 20,000 police officers out of work. Instead she chose to discredit all criticism, claim the police are "well funded" and create a new soundbite to add to her ever expanding playlist, "It's not just about resource, it's about the powers people have."

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And for those who dismiss the numbers, lest not forget the sale of arms to Saudi-Arabia, a major funding source for jihadists. According to Home Secretary Amber Rudd "it's good for industry," as she so valiantly declared in the BBC's election debate... as if a valid reason to compromise safety and security.

"The UK hasn't done enough to tackle terrorism." Says May, the women whose job it was to tackle terrorism for six years as the Home Secretary. If she had stood up and said "I haven't done enough to tackle terrorism," maybe she would have lost some support, but at least it would have been a respectable response.

If the terrible events of this week have proven anything, it's that Theresa May has a callus regard for the safety of British citizens. She wants to be the Iron Lady, Thatcher mark II, but if we are to judge her on her record -- which we all should -- it's clear that all she has is an iron heart.

We Must Not Fight Faith, We Must Fight Hate

Over the last few months there has been calls for internment, the arming of all police, and now, regulation of the Internet. What happened to British values? We are a civilized society; it's not the 1940s. We don't live in an Orwell-esque totalitarian state. We don't lock people up because of their beliefs, nor do we arrest them for committing "thought-crimes."

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In the BBC Question Time special it was truly shocking to see Jeremy Corbyn attacked for emphasising how catastrophic nuclear war would be for both the country and planet. In my opinion, any leader of a country that would answer "Yes" to pushing the red button without question -- even if the country was under threat -- is not strong enough to lead.

It's not weak to wish for a peace or step up and make a case for pacifism. It's not weak to open a dialogue with people you don't agree with and attempt to find diplomatic solutions to issues of national security. It is weak, however, to flex your muscles and say "look how big my missiles are." It is weak to threaten EU leaders with compromised crime and security intelligence, and gamble with people's lives, just to prove a point.

And for those reading this who criticise the minority of MPs who voted against the renewal of Trident, just remember, a stockpile of nuclear weapons and dropping bombs on the Middle East may sound like a deterrent, but it's not going to stop a radicalised, British-born idiot from getting in a van and running people over. A properly manned police force might, however...

We Have a Chance to Do Something Differently
The global commitment to international cooperation has seldom been more in doubt.

The feeling of being left behind by globalisation is not just a developing world phenomenon. In the West, people are dissatisfied and political parties are quick to capitalise. Not least, because embracing this trend has led to electoral advantage for some, at least in the short-term.

But this is not a strategy for the future.

No government can deliver positive benefits to its citizens by ignoring the outside world.

Whether we like it or not, Britain's future is inextricably bound up with that of our neighbours.

If sovereignty is defined a country's ability to shape its own future, attempts to "take back control" by turning inwards won't work. Instead we need to focus on extending our diplomatic relations to help shape the international landscape on which the UK's future prosperity depends. We need to take forward control.

Whether it's addressing cyber vulnerabilities in our critical infrastructure (think NHS ransomware!), counter-terrorism, climate action, or responding to the highest levels of displacement on record, the things we care about increasingly rely on international cooperation.

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But policy makers are slow to get the message.

Despite the momentous task ahead rebuilding Britain's foreign policies, the election has been largely fought on highly politicised domestic issues. Even 'Brexit' was most often considered in narrow terms of parties' suitability to lead negotiations. Beyond the (also narrow in focus) international dimension to the appalling and tragic terrorist-related events in Manchester and London, foreign policy has been frequently sidelined.

The opportunity for meaningful discussion over the UK's future role has been missed, with parties appearing to subscribe to the old maxim of "there are no votes in foreign policy".

If you want to find out what a party thinks about the rest of the world, you had to turn to the very back of its manifesto. And hope they had some space left.

The lack of fully formed policies on international issues means voters often have little more than platitudes to work with when trying to determine how parties would answer the big issues of our age:

How will the UK invest in its remaining diplomatic networks post- Brexit?

Will the UK retain its traditional role as a bridge between the US and the EU, and if not what might replace it?

How will the UK maintain its influence at the UN if our allies increasingly see us as unreliable?

Faced with a US administration that consistently undermines the rules-based international system and a Saudi government that is complicit in war crimes, do we have the right alliances in place?

The lack of clarity makes it difficult to make an informed choice and means less accountability once elected.

Parties don't pay much attention to foreign policy...so the media devotes less time to it...so the electorate is less likely to care...so parties don't give much attention to foreign policy. We need to break this vicious cycle of apathy. This cycle is not without exception, but it is the trend.

Policy makers, the media, educators, civil society - we can be part of the solution. By highlighting the ways we all benefit from the international system, we can build a society that cares about our global institutions like the UN in a similar vein to our concern for the NHS. After all, they are both fundamental to our country's well-being .
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I'm on the train up to Stoke-on-Trent to join Team May in the second from last day of this election campaign.

By the time I land for Theresa May's lunchtime rally at a local rugby club she'll have visited a bakery in Lancashire and a farm in North Wales. And by the time millions of people settle down to watch TV tonight, she'll be at her fifth event of the day, in Slough. The May Battle bus will have clocked up over 300 miles, traversing five counties in 12 hours.

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The intensity of campaigning is often directly correlated to the distance a leader - and his or her advisors - feel they need to travel to win over the electorate.

Remember Nick Clegg's Lands End to John O'Groats tour in 2015. Didn't end that well for the Lib Dems did it? They lost 49 seats in that election. And how about David Cameron? He knew the race was tight in 2010 when he embarked on a 36-hour round-the-clock tour of Britain in a desperate bid to win more votes. He was right be anxious. That election gave us the first hung parliament in three decades.

Theresa May hasn't upped the campaigning to that level of intensity, but there has been a seismic shift in her election campaign over the course of the past three weeks, the social care screw-up and u-turn rattling the prime minister and her team.

On the ground, Team May started off with an iron grip. Well ahead in the polls, her adversary apparently useless, this was meant to be a presidential procession back into No 10 for the Tory leader.

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Her cabinet was kept in the bunker - she held just one joint event with her chancellor in the middle of May (of never to be repeated) - and the word 'Conservatives' was dropped from her posters.

The message was simple and the media tightly controlled. May's pitch was only she could offer the "strong and stable" leadership required to deliver Brexit. And as for us? We trailed after her, calling her fixers to request that our name be put on her question list. She started this campaign taking four/five questions from pre-selected journalists - at one event no-one else even bothered to raise their hand because they knew they wouldn't be called.

But in Wrexham - a couple of weeks ago - that all unwound. Under heavy fire over her social care policy, she rewrote a central piece of her manifesto - softening the proposals to make the elderly pay more for care - while insisting "nothing had changed". Michael Crick of Channel 4 called her "weak and wobbly" after that u-turn as the strain of running a one-woman Presidential race began to take its toll. It may not have been a mortal wound, but it has left its mark on her campaign.

Since the social care u-turn and a spike in the polls for Corbyn, the May campaign has felt far less assured and the prime minister has too. Last week, her co-chief of staff Fiona Hill suddenly started appearing at rallies and speeches with her. A clue perhaps that the smooth running of this campaign was hitting bumps in the road.

Since then Theresa May's campaign has been more of a slog to the finish line than a regal march back to No 10.

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It made the whole thing far more interesting. The messaging has changed from Theresa May and her team, to the Conservative party once more. Brexit and the economy is back on the placards - a hint perhaps that her personal brand has become more of a liability than an asset as the campaign progressed.

Our leashes have been loosened too; we're getting to ask lots of questions at Theresa May stump speeches. She is a master at not answering them, and that can be frustrating, but at least we get a change to challenge her and ask tough questions.

But as I follow her up and down the UK, watching her bat off questions with rather evasive answers, I wonder how she must be feeling? Emily Morgan of ITV asked her in South Stoke: are you feeling nervous? The "Maybot" (as the sketch writers call her) insisted she was enjoying the campaign.

It has been quite a journey for us, but what a journey for her too. She called this election, on April 19, from a seemingly unassailable position. She's ending it with Corbyn in striking distance, on the defensive over her record as Home Secretary in the wake of two terror attacks and in a fight for her political life.

The uncomfortable truth is that the more the public have seen of their prime minister, the less they seem to like her, or believe what she says. Of course, she might storm home on Thursday night with a bigger majority - all those trips to Brexit-supporting seats may well pay off. But I can't believe she won't bear some scars from this snap election - with the public, and with her party too.

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Beth Rigby is senior political correspondent for Sky News
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In recent years, young people have struggled to find a voice in politics. It's a vicious circle: fewer young people vote, so the government doesn't bother to listen to our concerns, so young people feel rightly disillusioned and even fewer of us turn out on polling day. It's how the coalition government got away with their outrageous hike in tuition fees, to take just one example. The received wisdom in politics seems to be that it's the grey vote that counts and young people's interests come last.

The Green Party, though, is passionately committed to listening to young people. Students in particular are at the core of the party's policies and higher education is one of our key priorities in the upcoming General Election. We believe in making education accessible for everyone and we firmly reject the marketisation that is rapidly sweeping through the university sector. A degree is about learning and development - it's not a financial transaction.

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So what does this actually mean for the average student? First of all, the Green Party promises to scrap tuition fees and write off student debt. This, we believe, will open the door for many people who want to study at university but are put off by the enormous debt a degree will leave them saddled with. The Greens also plan to reinstate the Education Maintenance Grant, which would support those from the poorest backgrounds to get a degree-level education.

We'll also boost the quality of teaching by improving employment practices at universities. At the moment, many lecturers are on zero-hours or temporary contracts, which makes for a stressful and precarious working environment. We believe that better staffing policy means better teaching. Another Green Party pledge is to improve staff/student ratios at universities to ensure all students have the learning and pastoral support they need.

Recently, the National Student Survey (NSS) has been at the centre of some controversy. Although student boycotts have successfully blocked its use as a measure for raising tuition fees as part of the new Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), at least for now, it still functions as a blunt instrument for ranking universities. The Green Party would scrap the NSS and its culture of 'customer satisfaction', replacing it instead with forms of feedback that allow students to reflect meaningfully on their learning experiences.

Then there's the potentially disastrous impact of Brexit on British universities, many of which rely heavily on EU research funds. As well as fighting against the prospect of a hard Brexit on all fronts, the Green Party pledges to create a UK equivalent of the EU higher education funding that is set to be lost.

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Finally, the Green Party is keen to address student wellbeing, which is currently at disgracefully low levels. Mental health is another top Green priority; we pledge to follow through where the Tories failed in creating parity between physical and mental health provision in the NHS. Our overall higher education policy, meanwhile, addresses many of the root causes of stress and anxiety in students, who are currently burdened with panic-inducing levels of debt and denied the support they need.

It's easy to feel alienated from Westminster and apathetic about parliamentary politics. At the moment we have an unrepresentative electoral system and a government who clearly don't care about young people. But with the support of students and young people from across the UK, the Green Party can begin to change that. Our promise is a voice for everyone, regardless of age or background. So make sure yours is heard on 8 June.
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All of us in Britain are hurting. I hope and expect the full might of British justice will fall on the thugs who conspired in the savage murders in London Bridge and Manchester. But when Theresa May promises to rip up human rights in the name of keeping Britain safe, a chill runs down my spine.

What makes us better than those murderers is the value we place on human dignity. The British rule of law - which stretches back over eight centuries to Magna Carta and runs right up to modern human rights laws - protects each and every one of us from the whim of the powerful elite. Undermining it gives the Government and its agents a free hand to imprison, torture and abuse with impunity.

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We've been down this road before. As a lawyer at Reprieve, I've had a front-row view of just what can go wrong when British politicians scrap Britain's values in the effort to be seen to be doing something about security.

The last time corners were cut it was the Blair government, and MI6, who helped abduct my clients - a Libyan opposition figure and his heavily pregnant wife - and put them on a one-way flight to a Libyan dictator's torture chambers.

It made no difference that Abdul-Hakim Belhaj only opposed Gaddafi, that the West was not his enemy, nor that of his blameless wife. Because of MI6's actions - and the decision in the realpolitik of the day to cosy up to Gaddafi, 'human rights' or basic decency be damned - they were brutalised just the same.

First the CIA snatched the couple. They beat Belhaj and chained him to the wall in a Bangkok black site. Worse still is what they did to his pregnant wife: they bound her, head to foot, to a stretcher, with an eye taped open, and left her like that for the fifteen-hour kidnap flight to Libya. Their first son was born weighing just four pounds. Belhaj spent the next six years in various holes, being tortured repeatedly. He told visiting MI6 officers about the violence, but they turned a blind eye.

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This happened because of MI6's flagrant disrespect for the law. A senior MI6 official, Sir Mark Allen, boasted how his intelligence work had effectively delivered Belhaj and his wife to Gaddafi like so much 'air cargo'. This wasn't just ugly for the couple. MI5's own candid report, written after the abduction, concluded that the abductions of people who were not our enemies had hurt our national security.

Yet the couple hold no grudge. While they are suing Allen, his old supervisor Jack Straw, and the government in court, they have long said they are prepared to let bygones be bygones, and drop their case for a quid, if officials would only admit their mistake and apologise.

To date, the British state has refused. More disturbingly still, they are expected shortly to try to shunt the couple's trial--surely one of the darkest episodes in the entire War on Terror--into secret. The excuse given, as ever, will be national security. Yet the files that exposed the operation were published, for all to read, over five years ago. The real aim is to save MI6, and former Blair officials, from embarrassment. The truth should be aired in public. Seeking to cover it up for decades more makes none of us safer.
This week, Britain once again goes to the polls for a General Election, with perhaps the worst crop of leaders in a generation. Theresa May, despite attempts to portray herself as a "strong and stable" leader has at times seemed like a robot on message, and her attempts to de-Thatcherise the Tory Party have (perhaps obviously) proven controversial. Many within the party do not necessarily believe that "the community" stands above the individual, for instance - and her social care policy debacle hardly helped matters. In normal circumstances, Tory strategists and MPs and members would likely be on the defensive with knives out, but these are no ordinary circumstances. For any in the country, as bad as some of the Conservative campaign has been, that doesn't mean it's been worse than the prospect of a Labour victory under Jeremy Corbyn.

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There are many reasons to dislike Corbyn and his reinvention of the Labour Party: the cult of Momentum, which has called for deselections of MPs who vote against Corbyn (despite the latter being Labour's most rebellious MP in history); the naive belief that hundreds of billions of pounds can be raised by increasing corporation and capital gains taxes when Hollande's attempts to do something similar led to capital flight (a situation which Brexit uncertainty would only exacerbate); the party's commitment to a Land Value Tax which would devastate the housing market; and its pledge to make working people pay for middle-class students' degrees, Mickey Mouse or otherwise. But in my view, all of this pales in comparison to another issue: that of foreign policy. The election of Corbyn, McDonnell, and Abbott to the highest offices of the land would herald a disastrous shift on the international stage, and elevate the ideology of "Stop the War" - one unfit for the political fringes - to the heart of a permanent member of the UN Security Council.

Much has been made of the related issue of Jeremy Corbyn's support for the IRA during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Contrary to recent assertions, there is ample evidence that Corbyn did indeed meet the IRA; attended IRA rallies; and even stood to honour IRA members who were shot dead trying to blow up a police station. Indeed even former IRA-member-turned-informant Sean O'Callaghan has argued that the support of Corbyn and McDonnell (who famously praised the "bombs and bullets" of the IRA) had a positive effect on the group's morale. Nor were either Corbyn or McDonnell actually working for peace, as some have now claimed. Doing so would have also required speaking to Unionists, and certainly not opposing both the Good Friday and Anglo-Irish Agreements.

For many voters, the issue could be seen to be receiving disproportionate attention - most of the material dating as it does from thirty years ago. However, when the entire electorate of Northern Ireland is effectively disenfranchised in General Elections owing to a combination of its unique political landscape and negligible number of seats, it becomes more important to bring these issues to mainland Britain. Moreover, the record of the Labour leadership team on subsequent similar issues is ultimately little better. To begin with, all three of Corbyn, Abbott, and McDonnell opposed proscribing terror groups - including Al-Qaeda, Islamic Jihad, and Lashkar-e-Taiba (which would go on to perpetrate the Mumbai attacks) - in 2001. Of course much has also been made of Corbyn infamously calling Hamas and Hezbollah his "friends". While, to his credit, Corbyn has said he regrets that statement, his "clarification" that it was "inclusive language" remains laughable. Being "inclusive" and trying to negotiate peace does not need to involve inviting terror groups to Parliament - and, again, would also require talking to Israelis and the Israeli government, which Corbyn has not done. Iinstead, he helped peddle the conspiracy theory that Israel was interfering in UK politics during Netanyahu's most recent visit to the UK, and called for Hamas to be de-proscribed in 2009.

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While electing a leader that holds these views would be unlikely to do the UK any favours, the argument could at least be made that simply holding views won't necessarily translate into, for instance, the UK pivoting towards Hamas instead of Israel. The same cannot be said for other stances of Corbyn's team, not least on the issue of Trident. Despite the retention of Trident being official Labour Party policy, you could be forgiven for thinking that it wasn't, or at the very least that there would fast be attempts to change that should Labour win the election (speculation made more credible by Corbyn's continued refusal to back the policy). More importantly, Corbyn still refuses to say whether or not he would ever use the nuclear deterrent, when in order for it to be a deterrent at all, one must at least maintain a posture that - in the last ditch - it would be used. Contrary to snide assertions from some of Corbyn's supporters, people who want to keep Trident and have a leader who would use it in the all-but-unthinkable circumstances where that would be justified do not want to kill millions of people, but instead want the deterrent to be able to prevent the starting and escalation of wars - which it ceases to do if it will never be used.

But perhaps most relevant of all in the foreign policy stage is the Labour leadership team's aversion to any kind of military intervention. Corbyn and Abbott's links to Stop the War Coalition - which blamed France for the Charlie Hebdo attacks and the Paris shootings - are well-known; Corbyn is its former Chair who has since continued to attend fundraisers (even after it blamed France for ISIS attacks on her soil), and Abbott remains a Patron. Indeed, Corbyn himself wrote for StW saying that Britain should not even supply arms to Ukraine to prevent its territorial integrity being compromised. This is perhaps fitting for a man who also doesn't believe that military intervention is appropriate to stop British territory being taken by Argentina in the Falklands; to stop genocide in Kosovo; to end a brutal civil war in Sierra Leone; or to prevent the potential massacre of hundreds of thousands of people by Gadaffi in Libya. Nor does Corbyn attempting to clarify that he supports UN-backed actions inspire confidence, and not simply because Sierra Leone and Libya were both backed as such. As the leader of a permanent member of the UN Security Council, Corbyn would have a veto over backing such actions; when he cannot back the bombing of brutal fascists in Syria - and instead calls for those who fight for ISIS to be allowed back to the UK - there is every reason to believe that it would be exercised at any available opportunity.
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This blog is part of a series from the Women's Budget Group, examining what each party's manifestos mean for women on a range of issues, from Brexit to tax to social care

Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) services are in crisis. On a typical day 155 women and 103 children who are referred to a refuge are turned away because of lack of space. Waiting lists at rape crisis centres currently stand at 5000 people.

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Local specialist services not only provide vital, and in many cases, life-saving support to women who have experienced violence, they also provide expert advice to improve the services provided by statutory health and criminal justice services and challenge myths and stereotypes about violence against women. But they can only do this work if they have sufficient funding. Cuts to local authority budgets, police budgets and NHS budgets have all affected the funding available for VAWG services. Specialist services for Black and minority ethnic (BME) women have been particularly badly hit.

All the main parties have included proposals for additional funding for these services in their manifestos. But how do these add up?

The Labour manifesto promises a Violence Against Women Commissioner who would 'provide stable central funding for women's refuges and rape crisis centres and encourage sharing of best practice between local authorities'.

The Conservatives also promise a Commissioner, but disappointingly only for domestic violence and abuse (rather than all forms of violence against women) to 'stand up for victims and survivors, monitor the response to domestic violence and abuse and to hold the police and the criminal justice system to account'. They promise a review of funding for refuges, but make no commitment on rape crisis centres.

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The Liberal Democrats have promised funding for a national rape crisis helpline 'with increased opening hours and advertisement'. This fills a long-standing hole by funding the only nationwide violence against women helpline that still relies on charity but they make no commitments on funding of local rape crisis centres or refuge provision.

The Green Party manifesto includes a commitment to reversing cuts to abuse support services and to fund BME women-led services to tackle 'honour-based' violence and FGM.

The Women's Equality Party promise to 'rebuild the funding model so that all women and girls who experience male violence and abuse have access to specialist support and advocacy services in their community that are for and led by women, including BAME and disabled women'. They commit to replacing competitive tendering with a model of three year grants and will introduce a statutory duty on government to provide access to services for victims and survivors of violence.

However, none of the manifestos provides any detail on proposed levels of funding, making it impossible to judge whether their various commitments will be sufficient to close the existing funding gap.

At the moment VAWG services receive funding from a patchwork of sources including local authorities, Police and Crime Commissioners, Clinical Commissioning Groups, national government, grants from charitable trusts, and donations. Nationally the Government's Violence Against Women Strategy published in 2016 included 20million a year ring fenced for all VAWG services until 2020. A further 20million over two years for domestic violence services was announced in the 2017 Spring budget. While very welcome this money just isn't sufficient to compensate for the money lost as a result of cuts to local government, health and police budgets.

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Furthermore, the amount of funding received by local service providers from these sources varies across the country. For example, only 12 out of 45 Rape Crisis Centres across England and Wales received funding from Clinical Commissioning Groups. Some received significant funding from their local Police and Crime Commissioner, eight received nothing at all. This patchy local funding leads to a postcode lottery in terms of the services available to women at a local level. The last comprehensive audit published in 2008 exposed huge gaps in the specialist support services available to women and girls up and down the country. The number of women unable to find refuge bed spaces and who are on a waiting list for Rape Crisis support indicates that these gaps still exist and may have got worse.

It is not clear whether any of the parties are proposing to make up for cuts in local funding for existing services, still less ensure that services are available to meet the needs of all women including in parts of the country where there are currently few services. The Government itself admits that violence against women costs society around 40billion a year. Investing in specialist local services makes financial sense as well as being the right thing to do to help women and girls rebuild their lives after violence.
Despite earlier media rhetoric about Corbyn taking politics back to the 70s, Labour seems to have emerged as the vote for hope and change.

Barack Obama said that progress doesn't follow a straight line but that it zigs and zags. Beyond his charm and youthful charisma, Barack Obama's campaign of hope wasn't as much of a deviation from the path trodden by his predecessor as many hoped. The Labour leader has none of the media charm and immediate appeal of Barack Obama. But he has a commitment to principles of human rights and human welfare, and a manifesto that applies these pragmatically. Corbyn is the zag to May's zig.

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One, a staunch and steely conservative, the other, as a friend of mine put it, "a hippy in a suit". Few 'hippies' are as gritty and enduring. Despite accusations of sympathising with violent organisations, the media has failed to dig up any evidence of him ever endorsing violence in any form. When pressed in the most recent BBC debate on whether he would use nuclear weapons if required, he refused to say that he would, apparently showing himself more willing to concede to a political death than to condone the destruction of human life.

The Labour manifesto has a number of proposals that stand out as beacons of optimism, but few more so than the pledge to cut student tuition fees. Politics is a personal thing, and at the time of the 2010 student protests over the tuition fee increase, I saw little connection between the tuition fees debate and my role as director of a student mental health charity. But the evidence is perhaps beginning to point towards a link between the rise in tuition fees and student suicides.

More broadly, we know that there is an association between financial stress, debt and suicide. Deaths by suicide increased following the 2008 recession, particularly amongst young men, with financial struggles cited as being an important contributor. Until recently, we have been unable to identify any link between the rise in tuition fees and student mental health, other than signs that demand for counselling services has increased, which could be explained by there being less stigma associated with accessing support. But we now have some harder data.

Based on the latest figures from 2014 and 2015, UK student suicides have increased considerably since tuition fees were raised to 9000 per year in 2012. In 2014, they were at their highest point in at least 10 years. Analysis by Dr Raymond Kwok of Hong Kong University's Centre for Suicide Research and Prevention indicates that the trend in increasing student suicides is statistically significant even after accounting for the change in student numbers.

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The one region that has not seen an increase in student suicides is Scotland. Unlike the rest of the UK, students in Scotland do not pay any tuition fees. Rates of student suicide in England & Wales and Northern Ireland were higher in 2015 than any time in the previous decade, but in Scotland, they were at their second lowest (and possibly the lowest after adjusting for student numbers). In 2015, Scotland had the lowest student suicide rate of all of the UK.

Does this prove that the rise in tuition fees increased the rate of student suicides? Not necessarily; other factors may explain the rise. But it seems hard to dispute the claim that putting students in debt places a psychological burden on them. Even if many students will never have to repay their student loans, the prospect of leaving university with debts averaging 44,000 is unpleasant. A longitudinal study of 454 British undergraduate students published in 2016 concluded, "Financial difficulties appear to lead to poor mental health in students with the possibility of a vicious cycle occurring."
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Whatever your thoughts on Jeremy Corbyn, his campaign has gone from strength to strength during this election. Whether it's about grime music or his appearances on question time, Corbyn has got the whole country talking. A man who once was only regarded as a rebel back-bencher, has quickly become one of the most popular (and unpopular) politicians in British history.

Somewhat of an urban legend, Corbyn has charmed the people of Great Britain. And here, we take a look at Corbyn's stand out moments since 2015.

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Becoming the leader of the Labour party (Twice!) with the largest mandate in party history.

After strolling into the leadership election with 200/1 odds, Corbyn smashed his more experienced challengers with a whopping 251,417 votes, over three times more than any other candidate. Bagging over 60% of the vote, Corbyn became the 'peoples choice' Labour leader in 2015.

Challenging David Cameron at PMQ's with the questions of the British Public

Corbyn decided to shake up Prime Ministers Questions by presenting David Cameron with the views of the 40,000 members of the British public, and it went down a treat. At the time Jezza said "I thought at my first PMQs, I would do it in a slightly different way... So I sent out an email to thousands of people and asked them what questions they would like to put to the prime minister and I received 40,000 replies." - What a cracking bloke.

That time Donald Trump retweeted a picture of Jeremy Corbyn because someone said it was their grandad who was going to vote for Trump for the first time.

I'll admit, this wasn't anything Corbyn did himself but it was very, very funny.

When he turned up to the British Kebab Awards and told everyone to turn Veggie

A lifelong vegetarian, Corbyn is a solid animal lover. But he won the nations hearts (and probably the profit increases at your local veg shop) when he urged the attendees of the event to eat falafel instead. Corbz has said he turned vegetarian after working on a pig farm as he "got attached to the pigs".

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Adorbz.

When he got his twitter account hacked and called David Cameron a pie. ( I still hope/think/pray it was him)

The day Corbyn's twitter got hacked, social media went into meltdown. Some absolute genius managed to crack Jezz's password and send what was possibly the nicest abuse I have ever seen directed at David Cameron. It was incredible but short lived, as the tweets were soon deleted. They exist only in our memories and memes.

Going for brunch with JME

Grime star JME and Corbyn met up for brunch and discussed music, politics and JME's local vegan Chinese restaurant. Standard.

The two filmed the meeting on snapchat and encouraged young people to get out and vote in the 2017 general election.

When he said the most wholesome thing ever when someone criticized his capabilities as a leader - "I've got lots of stamina; don't worry about that. I cycle every day - it's OK."

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Genuinely just want to cuddle him.

Getting a public endorsement from Danny Devito

Does this even need further detail?

And last but by no means least...
Many of you may or may not be familiar with a series I run asking parents with smalls to write about their thoughts on their children becoming teens. Overridingly, the biggest fear raised time and time again is the impact of social media on children. I have three teens - this fear is real. Heightened also by my own love of social media, I'm only too aware that I need to practise what I preach. That can be hard! Balance is key and so, with that in mind, last weekend myself, alongside Jayne and Sarah from BE Integrative Therapy, held our first event at Forge & Co in Shoreditch, London discussing all things social media and our children.

Photo: author's own

Sarah and Jayne are counsellors. Their expertise is wide but one of their focuses is on children. Sadly, they are only too aware of the negative impact social media can have on this age group. For me, they were the perfect experts to have lead the session. Yes, social media can have a huge negative impact, but, as Sarah and Jayne, recognise, the benefits are huge too.

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Photo: author's own

Social media is a vast topic area with lots of sub-areas such as cyber-bullying, unrealistic image portrayal and addiction. It would be almost impossible to tackle all of these aspects in the short time available so the discussion focused mainly on social media in general and how to keep our children safe through our parenting.

For many who were unable to make the event, I promised a summary. Here below are the main points from the discussion:

1. Social media is not going to go away so the more we stay abreast of the issues and the more informed we are the better. We can't as parents, and shouldn't, hide away from the issues.

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2. There is no need to introduce your children to social media from a young age unless you want to. It is your choice. They will, of course, learn about it through friends, family and other social settings but you can set the limits and the safety elements, as you feel appropriate.

Photo: author's own

3. Communication is key. Keep those lines of communication open through childhood and onward into the teen years. Make it easy for your children to talk to you. Always make the time. Let them be able to come to you if they are concerned. If from a young age they know that they can talk to you without you screaming and shouting they will feel more confident in discussing their concerns and worries.

4. Be careful of your own reactions to a situation they may talk to you about related to social media. If you need to digest what they have told you, let them know that you will come back to them on the subject. Better that, than an explosive immediate reaction. The fact that they have come to you is a huge positive to be praised.

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Photo: author's own

5. It is important to remember, despite the hype of negativity around social media, that the majority of children will be OK. You can't micromanage every situation and it is important that they learn from their mistakes too. We aren't talking about the serious issues here but the small mistakes that are a good eye opener. By learning from their mistakes, this will help them grow into well-rounded, capable, problem-solving adults.

6. From a young age, introduce family time-out situations from screen time. So no phones at dinner. Make this a normality in your household so that as they get older they appreciate the importance of family time and conversation. We are all only too aware of those families in restaurants that are all sat on their phones instead of talking to each other. Let's keep the conversation flowing. This will help feed into point 3 where communication is key.

Photo: author's own

7. Relay your own experiences to your children. If they come to you for advice about a social media issue, impart your advice in a positive way and not a dictating way. So less "stop doing that" and more "have you tried to do this?"

8. Look for the signs also that your child seems out of character. It may be they've witnessed something on their phone that has upset them. Keep chatting. Find the best moments for your child when you feel they may open up, in the car, just before bedtime. Don't ignore. However small it may appear to you it could be a huge issue for them.

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Sarah and Jayne make valid points. By taking the time to keep communication open, most issues shouldn't blow out of proportion or escalate to total disaster. Interestingly, before the session, all of our phones were taken away and we were asked how we felt. After the initial feeling of having lost a limb, it was hugely liberating. I urge you to put that phone down for a few hours. Seriously!

Photo: author's own

I can't thank Sarah and Jayne enough for agreeing to come along and chat at my first event. Huge thanks, also, to all of those who came along. We were overwhelmed by the positive response so have decided to hold another event on the 16th September looking at positive parenting and the picking of battles! Details of tickets for this event can be found here. Would love you to come along and join the chat. Just saying!
U.S. Congress unanimously condemns Erdogan-ordered attack on protesters (video)

The U.S. House of Representatives unanimously adopted House Resolution 354 with a vote of 397-0, which condemns the violence against peaceful protesters outside the Turkish Ambassadors residence on May 16, 2017, and calls for measures to be taken to prevent similar incidents in the future, reported the Armenian Assembly of America (Assembly). H.Res. 354 was spearheaded by House Foreign Affairs Chairman Ed Royce (R-CA), Ranking Member Eliot Engel (D-NY), Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), and Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD), and calls for "the perpetrators to be brought to justice." Steny Hoyer was adamant in his condemnation of the attacks. It should be clear to Turkey and to all nations that we will oppose any attempt to suppress dissent or the freedom of speech. That is why that is in the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Because our founding fathers and, frankly, those who follow western values and, yes, some eastern values believe that free speech is the absolute essential for democracy to succeed and flourish. Our resolution makes it clear, the United States will not tolerate violence against peaceful protesters on our shores and those responsible must face justice." "House Resolution 354 puts Congress firmly on record in clear, unmistakable terms condemning the actions of the Turkish security guards last month. The resolution also demands that Turkey immediately lift diplomatic immunity for all those who assaulted U.S. citizens and law enforcement officers. This resolution also calls for the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Secret Service to review their security procedures and for them to convey to Turkish officials in clear terms the expectations for the behavior of their security teams when they are operating in the U.S.," Chairman Royce said on the House floor. "Passage of this resolution is an appropriate, strong response by this House to these brutal actions by Turkish forces." DC Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton expressed particular concern that the beatings are part of a pattern or repression by President Erdogans bodyguards. A similar incident occurred about a half dozen years ago at the united nations. Same head of state. Same thugs attacking peaceful protesters. Last year, just this past year, there was an attack on journalists outside of the Brookings institute. So if we dont tell them its time to stop when we had the third attack, they will persist, that is for sure. In addition, Rep. John Sarbanes (D-MD) added: "The assault on protesters in Washington, D.C., is entirely consistent with the impulses of an autocratic Turkey. It has unmasked President Erdogan for the bully he is and offers Americans a teachable moment on the character of official Turkey. It reflects a deeply embedded reflex that in the modern era has brought the world, among other things, the unlawful invasion and occupation of Cyprus, the Armenian Genocide, and the violent repression of the Kurdish people." With todays vote, Congress started rolling back Ankaras occupation of Washington, DC, said ANCA Executive Director Aram Hamparian. After far too many years of appeasing Ankara  turning a blind eye to its genocidal horrors, abuses at home, and aggression abroad  the United States, starting with the House of Representatives  today turned an important corner, challenging Turkeys violence and confronting its increasingly anti-American conduct.
WPA Pool via Getty Images

Every democratic election is a choice, to a certain extent, between the bad and the worse. In that sense, it is much like life. There is seldom a perfect option.

And every voter who takes pencil in hand in the privacy of the polling booth will assess the issues, compromise on some and prioritise others.

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In the First Past the Post Westminster election, we also vote for - or against - an individual whose name appears on the ballot. It seems likely that across the UK on Thursday night some big names will lose their seats and be subjected to the kind of ritual humiliation by media that goes with the job of MP these days. Alex Salmond and Angus Robertson may be among them.

I am not a nationalist but I will be voting SNP. More specifically, I will vote for Tommy Sheppard in Edinburgh East. Sheppard seems to be a man who takes an international view, not a narrow nationalist one. But my decision is based on his party's strong pro-EU stance. In the event of a hung Parliament - unlikely though that may be - the SNP would be a voice for staying in the single market, the customs union, for freedom of movement.

But, I have to say, I seem to be a fish that swims against the tide and I am not sure my vote is one the SNP can really take much comfort in. They seem like to fall back, perhaps considerably, from the extraordinary feat of winning almost all the seats in 2015.

The SNP has fought a stalwart campaign but they have not often been inspiring, seeming slightly wrong-footed by the snap election. They have been constantly pushed to talk about indyref2 and not about the importance of our links with Europe. They are the sole EU-friendly option on the ballot paper in most of Scotland. But this policy may not prove successful at the ballot box.

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On the one hand, it may lose them some Nationalist votes. For example, fisherman have spent generations blaming EU fisheries policy for quotas that they feel are unfair. They hope that leaving the EU may mean they can catch more fish. They may be aware also that many of the fish they catch go from the market in Peterhead straight to restaurants in Paris and Berlin and that if things go badly over Brexit, they could rot in lorries as they wait at customs posts. It took Greenland three years to negotiate export of its major asset, fish, to the EU. But they are being assured by the Conservatives that leaving the EU will improve their lot and those arguments may win out. So some Nationalists may switch.

On the other hand, it is unclear what percentage of the many Remain voters who also voted against independence in 2014 will vote for the SNP. The prospect of another independence referendum seems to be frightening the lieges.

It is useless to point out that the proposal is merely to put the independence case to Scottish voters when the terms of Brexit are known. At that point - which may be several years hence due to the unknown nature of the Brexit negotiations - the Scottish people could choose.

Talking to 'Remainer'/ 'No voting' friends, they are alarmed by the prospect of a hard border at the Border. That seems to me at the moment the least of our worries. Brexit is a real and present danger. But the Brexit referendum has alarmed people - it seemed to many that a vindictive vote against all sensible advice carried the day on that, and they fear Indyref2 could carry Scotland into a similar reckless divorce - the kind where the husband tells his lawyer: "Honestly I'd rather you got the money than her. Bill me."

As well as fear, of course, there are real bonds of affection and loyalty for many within that Union, and the recent terror attacks may have made those more precious.

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People would be at liberty to campaign and vote as they wished in another independence referendum. It may never happen. The Brexit deal may be less bad than feared - if Scotland's access to the single market and customs union are protected, if immigration is devolved, there may be no desire for a second independence referendum. In any case, it seems to me that these are arguments for another day.

To me, the Brexit effect is already apparent - EU nationals residing here have been living in stress for a year already. Some are leaving. Sterling has fallen. Food prices are rising. And Brexit hasn't even happened yet - we are still in the EU.
If you have been following EU trade negotiations, such as those with the US known as TTIP or the CETA agreement with Canada, you are probably already be familiar with the acronym "ISDS". It stands for "Investor-State Dispute Settlement" and is arguably one of the most controversial aspects of modern trade negotiations. In the coming months, the fight to rid our trade and investment negotiations of legal privileges for multinationals to sue governments will open on multiple fronts.

Creating a separate judicial system for investors, based not on our own domestic courts but rather opaque arbitration-based tribunals, ISDS has faced overwhelming opposition from the public and civil society, as multinationals have used this tool to challenge public policy decisions and sue governments for often excessive 'future profits'.

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This opposition led to the Commission pulling the plug on ISDS last year. But it was only really a tactical retreat as ISDS was reborn in a new form, and rebranded as ICS, or "Investment Court System". ICS offers more transparent proceedings than ISDS, but it remains essentially private justice for multinationals.

ICS was included in the CETA deal, and this is why I opposed it together with the majority of my Labour colleagues. But this story will not end with CETA: the Commission intends to use ICS as a model for all future EU trade and investment agreements.

Provided that our partners agree to it, ISDS/ICS will become a prominent feature of all of the EU's bilateral relationships - including with the UK once we leave the European Union. Such an agenda is a feature of the Commission's response to concerns about globalisation, published last month. Rather than fundamentally address concerns that the cards are stacked in favour of multinationals, bizarrely the Commission proposes to formalise their privilege through a new multilateral investment court.

This strategy is at best misguided and at worst will provide further anti-EU ammunition for populists on the political extremes. So why pursue it?

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For countries that have mature legal systems, there is simply no need for an additional court in trade and investment deals. Despite many requests, the Commission has failed to provide concrete examples of cases that would have benefitted from a separate chamber in the cases of the TTIP or CETA talks. Therefore, while the argument to oppose ICS is pretty straight forward when it comes to agreements with developed countries, such as the USA, Canada, Japan or Singapore, it is worth considering the case of negotiations with developing countries.

As in some countries where the judiciary does not function well, and may be prone to corruption or undue political influence, there could be concerns that EU investors may not have adequate means to seek redress if they are treated unfairly. Some people argue that while ISDS/ICS is not needed in all trade deals, it may indeed be needed in some.

We will come soon to a test of this argument as EU negotiations are concluding with a number of developing countries, such as Vietnam, Myanmar and China. All these deals would contain investment protection including an ISDS/ICS clauses.

So would having ISDS/ICS in these trade deals actually be a good thing to protect EU companies doing business because the judiciary in these countries cannot be trusted?

In the hope to kick-start this debate, allow me to make three comments:

First, how do we know that a countries' judiciary does not already guarantee the rights of foreign investors? At the very least I would expect the Commission to put forward concrete evidence that EU businesses has been treated unfairly in these countries - something that it refused to do for Canada and the US, despite MEPs requesting it.

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But even if we can demonstrate that there have been problems in the past, the applicable laws and practices concerned can evolve to create a more "investor-friendly" environment, and ISDS/ICS may not be the only solution to fix the problems in Chinese or Vietnamese domestic courts.

Closely linked to this, my second point is that an obvious shortfall of introducing ISDS/ICS is that it would remove an incentive for reforming the judicial system in countries where reform is much needed. If multinationals have their own separate justice, authoritarian regimes can secure foreign direct investment without having to reform justice for everyone. This could have very perverse consequences, and even contradict our commitment to sustainable development and human rights across the globe.

Finally, having ICS is one thing but using it is another. In countries such as China where investors must be co-opted by the regime and are under massive pressure to comply or face retribution, would any business actually go all the way and seek redress against the government at the risk of damaging their relationship? All the evidence suggests not, most EU member states have bilateral investment treaties with China, many including classic ISDS, these clauses are never used for fear of political retribution. Once again, evidence demonstrates that not only is ISDS/ICS is redundant in a changing global economy but new thinking is needed.
Toby Melville / Reuters

So now it's all about human rights. Theresa May has said she wants to look at whether human rights laws "stop us" from dealing with the threat of terrorism.

Widely reported as a willingness to "rip up" human rights laws if deemed necessary to protect us from suicide bombers and knife-wielding attackers, it's an eye-catching intervention.

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But let's take a moment to think this though. What does it really mean? With very little nuance, we're being asked to think of human rights as some kind of blockage to law-enforcement in this country. In the crudest version of this thinking we end up with politicians and commentators denouncing human rights as a "terrorist's charter". Human rights laws are said to "tie the authorities in legal knots", "restricting" their ability to do what's needed.

It can sound seductive. When Mrs May talks about "restricting the freedom and movements of terrorist suspects" some listeners will say they agree.

But what would we be agreeing to? We've been down this road before. Since 9/11, successive UK governments have pushed through a raft of draconian measures. We've had people held in high-security prisons without charge or trial. Then highly-restrictive house-arrest "control orders", again imposed without charge or trial and leading to serious criminal charges if breached. And then "TPiMs" (Terror prevention and investigation measures), another form of house arrest, once again without charge or trial.

The deeply illiberal thread running through all this is without charge or trial. Britain, the country of habeas corpus, has been subjecting people to various forms of detention without publicly producing evidence to justify this denial of liberty. If this were happening in countries like Iran, Zimbabwe or China we would rightly condemn it. Authoritarian governments the world over attempt to justify repressive measures on the grounds of combating "terrorism".

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This is the slippery slope toward greater authoritarianism and greater intolerance. It needs to be resisted. Not only is it wrong on principled grounds (we are all innocent until proven guilty, we all need to be able to challenge claims the authorities make against us), it is in part doing the work of the terrorists for them.

Since the horrors of the Manchester Arena outrage we've heard a lot about how Islamic State and their deluded homicidal followers want to attack our "way of life". It's not just pop music, riverside strolls and recreational drinking that ISIS see as symbols of a supposedly degraded way of life. It's tolerance for other religions and other points of view. It's freedom of speech. It's the rule of law. All the things that help make life tolerable and civilised. All the things that help make our democracy strong and enduring.

Every time we "tear up" part of this fabric of our fundamental freedoms we allow Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and ISIS (and other groups like them) to believe they're making progress. ISIS might be losing territory in their "Caliphate" around Mosul and Raqqa, but they want their followers to believe they're winning battles in London and Paris. That they're successfully tearing our society apart.

After Manchester and the Westminster and London bridge attacks we are as a nation shocked and upset. But we are not "reeling" (as one US newspaper sensationalistically put it at the weekend). Far from it. A defiant optimism has been the hallmark of the country's response to these killers and fanatics.

Yes, there should be serious conversations about our resourcing of the police and the security services. And yes, we need to ensure that our law-enforcement bodies can process potentially life-saving intelligence quickly and efficiently. But human rights are themselves a vital part of that work, not obstacles to it. Human rights safeguards strengthen and protect our communities. And they themselves place important obligations on the Government to properly protect us from harm.

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In all of this there is one very clear point that needs to be made again and again. It's one Theresa May herself made in the wake of the London attack at the weekend. She said the UK's commitment to human rights is one of the cherished values that terrorist seek to destroy. And she affirmed that "our society should continue to function in accordance with our values".
Like Wimbledon, major political campaigns seem to be becoming an annual fixture of British summers. Following the Scottish Independence Referendum in 2014, a general election in 2015 and the Brexit referendum in 2016, we now face another general election in 2017.

In an increasingly volatile world, one thing that we have learned is that there are no foregone conclusions and voters will make the difference. As the transmission of information becomes more seamless and people have greater exposure to non-traditional news and opinion, it becomes harder to predict how they will cast their vote.

This greater voter empowerment, even if it does imply greater political volatility, is a good thing. It demonstrates that democracy works. People are now using their vote to drive political change. Power is returning where it belongs - with the people rather than the political establishment. So, while there may be an element of voter fatigue, I would hope that the taste of power which ordinary voters have been enjoying in recent months will encourage them to turn out in high numbers.

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Both in the US and in France, we have seen what an empowered electorate can achieve. In the US, the election of President Trump was a real political watershed. Trump took on every part of the US political establishment to win the Presidency - the Republican and Democratic parties, the Bush and Clinton dynasties, the traditional media, Wall Street, and even the intelligence services. That is what made his victory so astonishing and at the same time so alarming for the old guard.

In France, the second round of the Presidential elections was contested for the first time not by the traditional political parties, but by two fringe politicians - one the leader of an extremist political party and another a relative political newcomer. Macron's election, in that sense, also broke the mould of French politics.

The elections in the UK are, by contrast, surprisingly conventional. The UK has traditionally been no stranger to political revolution. In fact, it has been a political innovator. Modern parliamentary democracy, a model adopted by many states across the globe, can trace its roots to Britain. The English civil war, which saw the monarchy's power marginalised, pre-dated the political and social revolutions in France and continental Europe by 150 years.

And yet, the general election this week has so far followed the script a lot more closely than the elections we have witnessed in both the US and France. Despite all of the talk of tactical voting and TV debates that included more than half a dozen political parties, the UK general election is boiling down to a traditional two-way fight between the two dominant parties of the last century - the Conservatives and Labour.

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That hasn't stopped it being a fascinating campaign, and the contest looks set to be closer than many had thought at the outset. Commentators who have been so wrong in the past are reluctant to be proved wrong yet again.

When you strip away the rhetoric and the personalities, politics comes down to three essential questions: Firstly, how big will government be relative to the size of the economy? Secondly, how will the cost of government be distributed across the electorate? And finally, what will government money be spent on?

Jeremy Corbyn has made this election interesting. His proposals seek to increase the size of government, probably unsustainably. He wants to change the pattern of government spending as well as radically alter who foots the bill.

However, the one thing that will probably not change at all is what this election was supposedly called for: Brexit. No matter who wins on Thursday, no matter how big or how small their majority, it is unlikely that the prospect for a smooth Brexit will be improved. For that to happen, it would require another political revolution in Europe.
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As the old saying goes, you campaign in poetry, you govern in prose. Voters might be forgiven, during the election of 2017, for thinking that their politicians had been campaigning in blank verse: slogan after slogan and not filling in the gaps on the detail, in this the most important election for a generation.

This has posed a real problem for we journalists and to be honest, I've been grateful for the last six weeks to have had almost no interactions with politicians whatsoever. Sky News were kind enough to supply me with my own set of wheels- the "Lewis Lorry"- #lewislorry (gives a whole new dimension to the idea of a company car) and send me up and down the country, instead talking to the voters about what was making them tick.

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What we wanted to do was more than the typical election tour which virtually every newspaper and broadcaster undertake at election time. I'm pretty sceptical about the value of what you can learn by getting on a train from London at 8am, rocking up somewhere near a train station, vox popping a few unsuspecting punters in a town centre and going home (my producer Zach banned us filming in any shopping centres). With our tour we wanted to do more than that- we wanted to tell a story about that place and what that particular bit of Britain could speak to about what was going on more widely in British politics.

Therefore we didn't just hit the marginal seats, those places with a majority of a thousand or so, but also places which though ostensibly sporting big, whopping majorities, might tell us something about the election. And at the end of it, hopefully, we might, through putting the pieces together, have something coherent to say about the state of Britain in 2017.

And so alongside the Sky supremo top team of producer Zach Brown and cameraman Ed Young, the three of set upon our travels, from Blackpool to Buckingham, from Cardiff to Cambridge, alongside our indefatigable driver Rupe and of course, the real star of the show, the lorry.

Did we succeed? Well after 1,214 miles, rowing in Cambridge, nightclubbing in Newcastle, roller coasting in Blackpool, hiking in Snowdonia- lives, films and scores and scores of chats to voters, we'll let you be the judge. What I would say though is that my perception of this race changed. I quickly realised that so many of the assumptions that we made about voters' motivations in the glistening towers of Westminster were wrong, principal among them, the nature of Brexit as an electoral driving force.

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I first realised, sat in a bingo hall in Hartlepool, after a brief foray calling the numbers, that we'd all been wrong. The assumption had been that Labour voters in the north, many of whom had voted to leave, would not vote for the party this time given its hesitant and unclear stance over the issue. As one lifelong Labour woman, in between dabbing, told me: "Why? It's not the only issue- and we're leaving anyway. You can vote for whoever you like."

It quickly became clear that this election, apparently called on the Brexit prospectus, had already got away from the Prime Minister, that voters had other ideas for what they wanted this election to be about. And that once again, we journalists had misunderstood the contours of the way people think about politics and had underestimated the remaining strength of class solidarity between working class and Labour.

That's not to say that Labour won't lose support in this election, they still might. And in all of my travels I failed to meet a single voter who had said they voted Conservative in 2015 but were switching to Labour this time. Given that Labour need to win millions of those people to win a majority, that seems to me, to still be a long way off.

But I also felt the electoral lava of this election solidify and change as the weeks bore on. When we started, in the south Wales valley town of Merthyr Tydfil, the first place to elect a Labour MP, the anti-Labour feeling was visceral. Jeremy Corbyn was considered weak, useless even, many traditional Labour voters told me they felt disenfranchised and that Theresa May appealed. "Even stronger than Maggie" was a common refrain.

Slowly that began to change. The numbers who waxed lyrical about Mrs. May shrank, the number who expressed surprised enthusiasm for Mr. Corbyn, grew. In particular I could see the core Labour vote in places like Birmingham and the North East solidify and rally behind Mr. Corbyn. I therefore think that the tightening we've seen in the polls is real.

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Now this doesn't mean that Mr. Corbyn will win this election- a solid Tory victory is, still I think, the most likely outcome. But it shows that maybe the old cynics who say campaigns and campaigning doesn't matter are wrong. This one has made a difference, I think. At the very least Jeremy Corbyn has managed to stem the bleeding and Mrs. May has dropped the ball and the three figure landslide looks less likely.

And now, it's election eve. I'm thrilled to say I'll be in the studio on election night for Sky, alongside Adam Boulton, Ed Conway and Jane Secker, sifting through the seats and the data to give our viewers the best results service on TV. We've done lots of rehearsals which I've been darting back to London for between lorry jaunts. It's going to be a fantastically exciting night- I really hope you can join us.

Lewis Goodall is a Political Correspondent at Sky News
As the final week of the UK election descends into yet more name calling and 'fake news', all under the patronage of free speech, one group of people is actively seeking to stop this muddy and ugly form of debate: parents! All over the world they are undermining our precious notion of free speech by actively opposing it.

Imagine the oldest child in a family decides that today is the day to grind their younger sibling down by pointing out that they are an idiot, useless and have no friends. Tame insults compared to some that public figures exchange, but insults which cut deep nonetheless. Tears, door slams and returned barbs are the result, many delivered with a venom and precision our politicians would envy!

Now imagine that the parent steps into this sea of 'free speech' and simply tells the offended party, "Darling, we live in a free society. Free speech is a pillar of our advanced societal structures, so you must allow your elder sibling to speak their mind." Such behaviour on the part of the parent would be far worse than anything the elder sibling had done! Instead, the parent repeats to that sibling, something like the words of Thumper the rabbit in Bambi: "If you can't say anything nice, don't say nothing at all!"

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In a society which proudly uses free speech to justify the combining of childhood spitefulness with adult understanding, we continue to sow intentional division. Division which is not aimed at improving society or speaking the voice of the marginalized but at childish and immature political point scoring. As a society, it's time for us to celebrate the parental example of teaching our children to speak in ways that help us understand the other person and to listen in ways that allow us to be heard.

Clearly, I'm not going to argue we change our free speech laws, but in a maturing society surely 'free' speech should be become 'considered' speech. Speech which considers what it does for the whole of society as well as how it helps move debate. It means speaking our mind with passion and honesty, while at the same time remembering the listener and what will encourage them to engage in the debate even when their opinions differ to ours. But it's not just politicians... As parents, we are often guilty of saying to our children 'say things nicely and listen', only for our children to then see us speaking of people in ways we are quick to challenge in them!

Our society needs changing. Parents and politicians should be modelling to children that free speech is not an excuse to cause hurt. Children who have the self-esteem and self-confidence to listen, think about others and express themselves powerfully, will change the world. They will not need name calling and spiteful statements to make their way in the world!
There are few places as entrenched in spirituality, health and wellness as Bali. As such, few places are more suited to a yoga and meditation retreat. This beautiful Indonesian island has its fair share of luxury havens, but critics seem in agreement as to which one is best.

Bali Floating Leaf is "the premiere retreat center with the best personalized service," according to VOGUE. Conde Nast Traveller considers it one of the "world's best yoga and wellness retreats," and Harper's BAZAAR brands it "the number one choice for luxury oriented, eco-conscious travellers." So what exactly makes Floating Leaf so special?

Since I began travelling last June, one thing I've learnt is that I have an extremely restless mind. The idea of a yoga and meditation retreat sounded like something I would seriously benefit from -- but I'm not flexible and my prior attempts at meditation were exasperating. Are these types of retreats only suited for people who've already mastered the art of holistic wellness? I decided to find out.

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An Ethical & Sustainable Resort

The main thing that sets Floating Leaf apart from other luxury retreats is the sense of community that pervades it. The staff are exclusively Indonesian, and all are provided with decent wages, health insurance (for them and their families), educational opportunities and a retirement fund. You get the sense that the staff love working here: I've stayed at some exceptional resorts since travelling, but never have I experienced service with such genuine smiles.

"Eco" and "ethical" are buzzwords in Bali, but Floating Leaf has put their money where their mouth is. The owners of Floating Leaf, Mikaku and Putu Doliveck, worked hand-in-hand with local villages to ensure that the Balinese heritage and culture would only benefit from the retreat, and local customs are always observed. At its core, Floating Leaf is somewhat of an educational facility, and giving back and community outreach plays large part in forming the retreat's identity.

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Sustainability is literally built into the foundations of the retreat. The rooms are round, preserving building materials; the toiletries biodegradable; the materials recyclable and the food organic. This meticulous approach to sustainability not only reduces the retreat's carbon footprint, but also helps guests feel connected to nature. The partly open-air bathroom is one example of this: having a shower while gazing out at rice fields and feeling the warm Bali breeze on your skin is a memorable experience.

One of the standouts of the retreat facilities is the 17-meter Healing Pool, which is partially made up of salt water and thus requires much less chlorine than customary. There are lotus platforms in the pool for yoga or meditation, and the loungers and water-hammocks are perfect for relaxing after a challenging Pilates session. Which brings me onto the next part...

A Holistic Retreat

Despite its beautiful surroundings and luxuriously tranquil environment, Floating Leaf is first and foremost a retreat. Most guests come specifically to experience a range of holistic healing treatments like yoga, meditation, and various Ayurvedic treatments, and my stay encompassed the Coming Home To Your Body retreat.

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Hosted by two Australian women (Cassie, a yoga teacher, and Jessica, a Physiotherapist and Pilates teacher), the Coming Home To Your Body retreat uses yoga, Pilates, meditation, mindfulness and neuroscience to help guests reconnect to their bodies and feel a sense of inner stillness. This was the part that intrigued me most. It was also the part that I felt most apprehensive about.

My last efforts at meditation had been futile. For one hour my brain danced between pointless concerns and vague stresses; I'd never been more been aware of the incessant whirring of my mind. So it's fair to say that this time the pressure was on -- not something that's conducive to meditation.

But it was different at Floating Leaf. It might have been the setting - a yoga sanctuary on the top floor that provides sweeping views of the Indian Ocean and Mount Agung. Or perhaps it was the calming guidance of Cassie and Jess, which allowed me to relax and, when my mind inevitably ran away with a thought, not worry about it but to focus on my center of breath.

Whatever the difference was, it worked. For the first time ever I managed short bursts of being wholly in the present, a state of consciousness that triggered fleeting feelings of utter contentment. They didn't last long - no more than ten seconds - but the thing with meditation is that once you've experienced it, you know you can get there again. The retreat showed me a mere glimpse of what it can be like when you master the art of the quiet mind. As with anything worth having, it takes time to get there.

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Floating Leaf embodies all that is good about Bali: the beauty, the culture, the nature, the mysticism. The kindness; the going the extra mile, the sincerity. Luxury retreats in Southeast Asia are a dime a dozen, but at Bali Floating Leaf there's a genuine sense of serenity infusing the resort. If you're looking for an ethical retreat, luxurious comfort and heartfelt authenticity, it's doubtful you'll find better.

Selene Nelson is a U.K.-based journalist who is travelling the world and reporting on her experiences in each country she visits.

This article originally appeared on JustLuxe.

Images by Selene Nelson.
There's a lot to be said for Britain's calm, defiant response to the threat of terror. Immediately after the 7/7 bombings in 2005, Londoners clambered aboard the city's buses and underground trains, posting 'We Are Not Afraid' messages on social media. One of the first images I saw following the latest attack was of a man fleeing London Bridge, but being careful not to spill his pint.

But as each terrorist atrocity apparently strengthens our resolve, it also risks numbing us to terrorist outrage. One thing we can't afford to do is regard terrorist attacks as the "new normal" - however depressingly familiar they become.

With the prospect of jihadis returning to Europe after fighting alongside ISIS in Syria or Iraq, the UK's independent reviewer of terrorism legislation has suggested that "Britain is facing a level of threat from Islamic State militants not seen since the IRA bombings of the 1970s".

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I grew up in an era of IRA-related terrorism, when news of murderous and bloody attacks seemed as grimly familiar as they do today. But the threat we currently face, motivated by an Islamic extremist ideology, is of a different magnitude, and unlikely to be resolved by a 'peace process' anytime soon. There is no silver bullet.

However well intentioned, the usual platitudes about these acts of violence having 'nothing to do with Islam' must be resisted. They clearly have something to do with Islam and it's wholly counterproductive when politicians and other commentators pretend otherwise.

An evil ideology that uses scripture to glorify martyrdom and promise salvation through suicide attacks clearly has a noxious influence on the minds of the gullible and pathetic individuals who are driven to murder innocent people in the name of Allah. The vast majority of Muslims will reject this interpretation of Islam, but it is nevertheless an interpretation of Islam being espoused in modern Britain by British Muslims, and we need to recognise that.

Inevitably, after any Jihadist attack, there are those that seek to demonise all Muslims. Anti-Muslim bigotry is an utterly mindless response to terrorism. Ordinary Muslims are as much victims of Islamic violence and depravity as anyone else. If the terrorists divide us they win and we lose. But in the wake of the latest spate of attacks we need unity, but also unflinching honesty in confronting the problem before us.

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The threat we face in Britain, and across Europe, is not just to our physical lives, but also to our way of life. A pernicious mindset that regards religion as the source from which all authority is derived is perhaps a greater threat to our liberal democracy than terrorism will ever be. Governments and civil society must also therefore challenge the theocratic worldview that underpins Islamic terrorism.

An ugly ideology that condones arbitrary violence, the subjugation of women and the supremacy of God's law over secular law is not is not compatible with the British way of life, and people of all faiths and none must unite in rejecting it.

But these views must be challenged, not censored. Anti-terror laws that suppress free speech will only undermine civil liberties and fundamental human rights. Whilst there is a relationship between extremist views and terrorism, they are two different things and policy makers need to be careful about confusing them. Knee-jerk responses to terror attacks born out of a 'something must be done' mentality are unlikely to make us safer.

What should be welcomed, however, is Theresa May's pledge to break down segregated communities. Unfortunately, her words ring hollow in the face of her regressive plan to abolish the 50% cap on faith-based admissions, paving the way for a new wave of religious schools.

Unprecedented levels of migration and our drift away from Christianity means Britain today is characterised by a diversity of creeds and cultures like never before. As long ago as 2011, the former Prime minister David Cameron admitted that the doctrine of state multiculturalism had failed, pointing out that "for too long different cultures have been encouraged to live separate lives".

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Schools are the best chance we have to break down barriers, but this golden opportunity is being squandered by successive Government's dogged attachment to faith-based education. Any strategy to better integrate Britain's diverse population must include a commitment to phase out faith schools. Britain's youngsters should be educated together, not divided by religion and ethnicity. And whether it be found in the state, independent or burgeoning 'illegal' sector, religious indoctrination and exposure of children to Islamist ideology in schools should be considered an abuse of child rights.

A bleary-eyed nostalgia for Britain's Christian past must no longer stand in the way of us carving out modern secular identity, robust enough to see off the Islamist threat.
In a series of low moments for the Labour/Miliband government, this was perhaps the nadir. In 2015 the bright sparks in the party's PR department decided one of the short cuts to electoral success would be to adopt the politics of stigmatisation. This they did in a particularly tepid way when their team mass produced a mug which sported on its side 'Controls on Immigration...I'm voting Labour'.

The tea-supping, xenophobic crank who would be moved such that they were prepared to actually reach into their pockets and shell out for such a commodity - probably existed more in the minds of the young, savvy media high-fliers who had produced the idiotic piece of tat in the first place, rather than the population at large. Nevertheless the angle and approach of the Labour campaign was, from this point on, clear. Labour had decided to delve into the gutter where the politics of spin were absolute, and the facts mattered very little.

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Facts, for example, which might have pointed to how the immigrants from the 10 poorer countries, such as Poland, Estonia and Hungary who had joined the EU in 2004, and who had migrated to Britain in the ten years which followed - actually contributed significantly more to the UK economy than they had taken out in benefits. 5 billion pounds more to be exact.

One might have hoped that the party of 'labour', the traditional bulwark of the working classes, could have summoned the sense of internationalism and solidary required to defend the predominantly poor people entering the country, seeking new work horizons and a better life. And yet, it was not to be. In the event, we were left with the shuffling figure of Ed Miliband, looking uncomfortable and half-baked, as he was compelled to trot out banal attacks of the Tory type, only he was never able to conjure up the professional levels of hatred the way they do - perhaps because his heart simply wasn't in it.

The immigration issue was more than just an unhappy blip, however. In June 2013 the Labour opposition signed up to the austerity economic policy of the Conservative-Liberal coalition, a policy which was to come into effect for the years 2015-16, and operated along almost wistful lines. The only way to deal with the financial crisis was, alas, a sweeping programme of cuts to social services and the public sector. The people who had facilitated the crisis - the bankers, the investors - were to remain largely unmolested by such a political vision, free to go on spinning the wheel of their particular brand of casino capitalism, continuing to reap the vast rewards.

The fear of immigration was an inevitable corollary to such an outlook. Unable to register the source of the crisis in the policies of deregulation which had favoured the unbridled profits of a super cabal of high financiers, both mainstream parties tended to locate the true threat to the economy in the poorer elements at the bottom - be it the immigrants entering the country, or the indigenous benefit claimants whom, it was supposed, were bleeding the system dry.

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And so by 2015 a stagnant political consensus had emerged which was underlain by the same economic policies of austerity. The meaning of Jeremy Corbyn as a political phenomenon lies in this. He shattered that consensus. He won the Labour leadership on an anti-austerity platform. He put forward the ridiculously left wing suggestion that those who had set the basis for the crisis might be made to pay for it. He shifted the political focus and the question of culpability from those at the bottom to those at the top. On the issue of immigration he was explicit; he said we should celebrate the 'enormous contribution to our society' by those people coming to live in the UK from abroad.

He made the arguments for all of this with a gentle and humane persistence which was so out of kilter with the slick soundbite echoed out by the type of professional politician who has all the presence of a computer generated avatar. People began to rally. The years of the New Labour project and 'modernisation', its sly orientation toward big business, its complicity in military mass mayhem in the Middle East, the way the interests of the rich and powerful were so easily condensed in the grinning, ghoulish figure of Tony Blair - these years had left their mark on the political consciousness of a generation, with many younger people tuning out of politics in a haze of apathy and contempt. But now such people began to get involved again. They signed up to the Labour Party in the hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands. An upswell from below, a grassroots mobilisation which quickly saw Labour become the biggest mass party in Europe with a membership of over half a million strong.

Those at the top of the party, who had cultivated lucrative careers during the New Labour period and had fully imbibed the philosophy of the third way, greeted the influx of new members with barely concealed contempt. To them - the new members did not signify a democratic and genuinely popular movement from below, but were rather the mindless playthings of 'Trotskyite' bogymen seeking to infiltrate the party for their own sinister ends.

While prattling on about the importance of democracy, the Labour elite affected a coup against the democratically elected leader, a coup which was thwarted by the hundreds of thousands who rallied to show Corbyn their support. Having brought the party close to collapse by sabotage and calumny, the coup plotters then repaired to a respectable distance in order to make complaints about how Corbyn had failed to 'unite' and 'stabilize' the party and was thus almost certainly 'unelectable'. It was the equivalent of letting off a hand grenade in a greenhouse and then complaining the windows really should have been double-glazed.

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The reaction of the mainstream press was equally visceral. They left no smear unturned. The plant loving pacifist who had spent decades on the back benches campaigning on a consistently anti-racist, anti-war platform was painted in terms of a terrorist sympathiser, an anti-Semite, a sexist, a threat to the national interest - the slanders arrived in the rapid babble of the most ad-hoc and hastily improvised spite. The 'evidence' for them was adduced in feverish and increasingly desperate terms which often bordered on the ludicrous.
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A former East Riding councillor has gone on trial accused of sex offences spanning nearly 35 years.

Arthur Hodgson, 70, faces seven allegations of indecent assault and two of sexual assault.

Mr Hodgson, of Church Lane, Keyingham, denies all the charges.

A Hull Crown Court jury of seven women and five men heard the allegations span from 1979 to 2013.

Two allegations relate to a woman, with the other seven concerning girls who were aged between 11 and 14 at the time.

Opening the case, Megan Rhys, prosecuting, said: "They are, perhaps, not the most serious kind you might have come across from reading the paper or serving on a jury, but it's a course of conduct of unpleasant and indecent touching, the Crown say, in relation to this defendant."

Before the jury was sworn they were read a list of potential prosecution and defence witnesses, and told Mr Hodgson had "some connection" with Humberside Fire Authority, Keyingham Parish Council, and Keyingham Primary School, and had been a ward councillor for the Holderness area at East Riding Council.

Judge David Tremberg told them in his opening remarks: "Each of the four complainants will complain that over the course of the years the defendant has deliberately touched her in an indecent, sexual way.

"The defendant will not dispute touching some of these complainants, but from first to last has always denied he ever touched anybody in a sexual way."

The trial continues and is expected to last about a week.
Foreign Minister of Armenia to participate in the Fifth Paris Peace Forum

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

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Ameriabank: At the Vanguard of Armenia's Banking Sector

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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

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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".

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The statement of the meeting between Prime Minister Pashinyan, President Aliyev, President Macron and President Michel of October 6, 2022

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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
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A great-grandmother has been left furious after getting fined for encroaching a bus lane as she turned into an east Hull store.

Pat Vessey, 69, had gone to Tesco Express in Holderness Road for a bag of humbugs with her husband William, who was driving.

They are among several people who have been threatened with fines by Hull City Council after being snapped driving into the bus lane to gain access to the car park.

They entered the mini supermarket at 8.13am on May 16 to get some mints en route to Doncaster Sheffield Airport.

However, after holidaying for two weeks in Tenerife, the couple were left shocked when they returned home to find Mr Vessey had been given a penalty charge notice by Hull City Council.

"We were shocked because we've never broken the law with regards to driving," Mrs Vessey said. "We did what we thought was right.

"We don't go to that Tesco on a regular basis but we live in the Ganstead area and coming in from there it's a stop off if we need to just pop in for something.

"We did know about this bus lane but we couldn't have done anything else to avoid it.

"It's annoying and it makes me feel angry that they have sent us a fine which we feel is incorrect. Whatever your point of approach, you are always going to be driving in that bus lane."

Hull City Council says "clear signage" is in place advising drivers of bus lane enforcement and in this case, Mr Vessey entered the bus lane too early, therefore breaking the bus lane rules.

(Image: Richard Addison)

The couple have until June 15 to pay the fine of 30 but if they don't, they will have to stump up 60 instead or face being taken to court.

Tesco switched its exits and entrances to the store around in March earlier this year.

Mr and Mrs Vessey still plan to appeal the penalty charge notice and think Tesco needs to re-think its entrance so others don't get caught out.

Mrs Vessey said: "Our feeling is that when Tesco did these alterations to the entrances they should have taken into account with planning where the bus lane would be.

"At some point there is a problem here because they have been allowed to make an entrance on a bus lane.

"I would like to see this bus lane altered or for Tesco's entrance to be altered. I would like it putting right because I think it's silly.

"We know that we're not the only ones who have been caught out and I imagine most people have just paid the fine because they think they've done something wrong.

"We want something changing."

Tesco wants drivers to not stray into the bus lane to gain access to the store, instead advising them to turn left as soon as they reach the entrance.

A spokesman for the supermarket chain said: "We have been in touch with the local authority on behalf of our customers to raise their concerns about the fines issued and to see if there is anything further they can do to help explain and resolve the situation."
Murky Licensing Evident As Spotify Settles After Failure To Obtain Mechanical Licenses

The recent conclusion of Melisa Ferrick and David Lowery's class action lawsuit against Spotify served to highlight the swampy mess that is the world of music licensing today, as well as show that copyright law has done a poor job of adapting to technological advancements in the music industry, writes Mike Masnick of Techdirt.

___________________________

Guest post by Mike Masnick of Techdirt

A year and a half ago we wrote about a lawsuit, filed by musician/songwriter/Techdirt-hater (with a few perhaps surprising exceptions) David Lowery against Spotify, for failing to pay mechanical licenses. As we noted at the time, the more interesting thing to us beyond the lawsuit itself was how it demonstrated what an amazing clusterfuck music licensing is. That's because copyright law has not done a very good job keeping up with the times as technology changes (understatement alert).

Basically, each time a new technology undermines the way licensing worked in the past, Congress ends up duct-taping on some new kind of licensing regime. There are a bunch currently, nearly all of which can be traced back to different technological innovations from the past century and a half. And, then, the internet came along. And it wasn't entirely clear how the licensing regimes of things like radio, television, player pianos, and satellite radio fit into the internet. And, some seem to think the answer is: they ALL apply. At the very least, I don't envy the "licensing" team at the various music tech companies.

In our initial post, we noted that the issue seemed so complex that after talking to half-a-dozen copyright lawyers, no two could agree on what was actually happening with the lawsuit, or even if it was a legitimate case. The underlying issue had to do with mechanical licensing (a type of licensing which, as it's name suggests, goes all the way back to the early days of "mechanical" reproduction of compositions), and we were wondering how it could possibly be that a company as big as Spotify, whose entire story rested on the idea that it had properly negotiated licenses, had somehow failed to properly secure mechanical licenses. And, yet, a few months later, we noted that the Harry Fox Agency, an organization that many companies, including Spotify, Apple and others, use to handle these kinds of licenses, appeared to be scrambling to send out notices of intent (NOIs), which was something that should have happened way earlier.

After Lowery's lawsuit got combined with another similar lawsuit, it's now been announced that Spotify has settled the combined lawsuit and created a $43.4 million fund to pay for the mechanical licenses it failed to obtain properly in the first place. Now, there are still some who argue that mechanical licenses shouldn't even be necessary for a streaming service, but it doesn't appear that anyone has the desire to fight that one out in court, and it's understandable why. Doing so would almost certainly lead to any service making that argument getting slammed by musicians for trying to avoid paying songwriters.

Either way, Spotify has paid its way out of this and I remain baffled by the fact that it hadn't just done the right thing in the first place  though I'm still curious if the real culprit here is the Harry Fox Agency, and if Spotify and HFA have had a long conversation or two about how this all came down. The real lesson in all of this, though, is that music licensing continues to be a complete murky, swampy mess, almost designed to make it that much harder for licensed music services to exist. While Congress dithers with silly ideas about "moving" the Copyright Office, if it wasn't to actually reform copyright laws, it should start by fixing and modernizing the crazy and overly complex licensing regimes.

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New York City Music Scene Grows With A2IM Indie Week and Northside Festival

When CMJ died it left a void in the New York City music industry scene. Thankfully two important industry events, Northside Festival and A2IMs Indie Week, have grown to fill that space.

By Matt Voyno, consultant, strategist and Editor of Beats + Bytes for Nue Agency

Indie Week, organized by the American Association of Independent Music (A2IM), brings together hundreds of record labels, artists and industry people to connect and shape the future of the music industry. In terms of influence and commerce Indies are starting to dominate the music industry eclipsing even the Major labels. Thats partly because Indie record labels are a broad group encompassing everything from brand new labels to established juggernauts (Adele is on an Indie). But within this diverse group there are a lot of the same pain points, strategies, and opportunities for growth. And because music is about the vibe, the music industry operates similarly where face time is key to make real things happen. At A2IMs Indie Week real things happen.

The schedule includes interactive panels, workshops, keynotes and one-on-one discussions. Tim Westergren, co-founder and CEO of Pandora (also a sponsor) is a keynote speaker and various panel topics include connected devices, AR/VR, playlisting, payments and more with plenty of networking time too. This years festival takes place in the LES, a historic hot bed of artistry of all kinds, adding to the vibes. Indie Weeks final event is the Libera Awards bringing together members of the Independent community to celebrate the years biggest Independent success stories as voted on by their peers. This year nominees include Radiohead and Bon Iver amongst other important artists. The night will also feature performances by Twin Peaks, Nick Hakim, Nick Lowe, Ani Difranco.

In addition to Indie Week, New York City gets another flavor of the music industry with Northside Festival. Northside brings its Music and Innovation conferences to Williamsburg and Greenpoint adding even more artists and creatives to the NYC mix. Northside Festival brings a massive influx of bands playing music from countless genres and styles with artists from the DIY to Indie label to Major label worlds. Northside estimates over 350 bands will play in 30 different venues bringing over 100,000 attendees to see the festivities in person.

With Northside Innovation attendees see over 200 speakers, media personalities and content creators during the two day conference. The conversations and collaborations of innovators from the worlds of music, tech, marketing, government, VC, and more help keep the New York City music industry vital and relevant. Attendees get to hear about everything from high level discussions, to actionable business tactics, to emerging technology. As an example on Friday on the Fortune Stage Spotify, SoundCloud and Apple Music executives talk about the effect streaming music is having on broader culture.

There is plenty more to dig into at Northside and just like Indie Week there is a lot of potential for growth. With these two industry events (plus the inaugural NYC Music Month) it feels like the NYC music industry is growing to new heights even after CMJs demise. And with the growth of streaming, live music, and added tax incentives it appears that the New York City music industry is set for another banner year.

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The Pan-European dialogue on Internet governance (EuroDIG) 2017 Tuesday tackled here on public policy issues related to internet governance and the future of digitalization.

Addressing the opening session, Estonian President Kersti Kaljulaid noted that the exponential growth of the use of information technology and the Internet has changed the societies so much.

"The Internet affects our cultures, our economies, the way we think and communicate, the way we govern our states and handle international relations," Kaljulaid noted.

Estonia has managed the balance between security and freedom by providing a network of public and private e-services based on a secure online identity, she added, pledging to develop a digital Europe during Estonia's EU rotating presidency in the second half of 2017.

The visiting Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite said the Internet and digitalization could make the governance more transparent, more competitive and more democratic.

Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg also delivered a speech in the afternoon session on internet governance and cyber security.

Themed "DIGital futures: promises and pitfalls", the two-day conference of EuroDIG 2017 attracted around 650 participants from 40 countries and stakeholder groups as an open platform for informal and inclusive discussions on public policy issues related to Internet Governance, said the organizer.

Source: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-06/07/c_136345245.htm
Turkish Prime Ministers family owns $140 million in foreign assets

by Harut Sassounian Publisher, The California Courier www.TheCaliforniaCourier.com Last week, we disclosed the improper enrichment of Pres. Erdogan of Turkey by receiving a $25 million oil tanker as a gift from an Azeri billionaire. This week, we expose the Prime Minister of Turkey, Binali Yildirim, who turns out to be just as corrupt as his boss! Craig Shaw and Zeynep Sentek revealed in their article posted on the website theblacksea.eu, based on a report by the European Investigative Collaborations (EIC) Malta Files, that the Yildirim family owns shipping and other foreign assets worth $140 million. In 2009, when Yildirim was Minister of Transport and Maritime, he told a gathering of large ship owners in Istanbul: From now on any Turkish businesses owning ships, yachts or sea vessels that flew foreign flags would be treated with suspicion by the government. Yildirim gave the ship owners three months to change the registration of their vessels. Yildirim added, Now they have no excuse. If they insist on not changing to the Turkish flag, we dont see that [they have any] good intentions. The Minister was apparently promoting the creation of a strong, national shipping fleet which would pay taxes to Turkey. Ironically, sitting just a few feet away from Yildirim during the speech was his 30-year-old son Erkam who was the registered owner of at least one general cargo ship called the City, through the familys offshore company in the Netherlands Antilles. This freighter flew not the Turkish flag, but that of the Dutch Caribbean Islands, according to EIC investigators. Since then, EIC reported the Yildirim family owned 11 foreign-flagged ships registered in a network of secretive companies in Malta, the Netherlands, and the Netherlands Antilles -- specifically now Curacao, with more suspected in the Marshall Islands and Panama." In addition, theblacksea.eu revealed that Yildirims son, daughter, uncle and nephews have purchased seven properties in the Netherlands, worth over $2.5 million -- all of which were paid in cash. Yildirim started his career in shipping in 1994 when he managed Istanbul's Fast Ferries Company (IDO), owned by the city. However, he was fired in 2000 over revelations he awarded a contract to manage the ferries canteens to his uncle, Yilmaz Erence, according to Shaw and Sentek. Yilmaz is the same uncle who registered the Turkish company, Tulip Maritime Limited, in Malta in 1998. Yilamzs partners were: Salih Zeki Cakir, a known ship-owner who briefly employed Yildirim, Ahmet Ergun, President Erdogans advisor from his days as Istanbul Mayor, as well as a former MP [Member of Parliament] and high court judge, Abbas Gokce, according to Shaw and Sentek. The Black Sea and EIC reported that six of the 11 ships owned by the Yildirim family  worth between 1.9 million and 33 million Euro -- appear to have been bought without any bank loans. If so, this suggests an enormous cache of funds exists in the Dutch operation, despite on paper being a money-losing business. On June 9, 2016, two weeks after Pres. Erdogan appointed Yildirim as Prime Minister, he acquired four new shipping companies registered in Malta. The director of these companies is Suleyman Vural, Yildirims nephew. Two of these companies, linked to a business in Istanbul, were set up in 2015 by uncle Yilmaz and his son, Rifat Emrah Erence. Yildirims son, Erkam, also owns extensive businesses in the Netherlands, including modest properties and expensive ships, according to Shaw and Sentek. EIC reported that the Yildirim family owns a company called Castillo Real Estate BV, based in Almere, the Netherlands, where houses a dental clinic in a building owned by the son of the Prime Minister. Next door to the dentist are the offices of Castillo Real Estate and Zealand Shipping -- two of the familys major companies. In addition to these two buildings, Castillo owns four properties in the Netherlands: an apartment building in Schoonhoven, two houses in Utrecht, and a shoemakers shop in The Hague. These six properties, valued over 2.16 million Euro, were all paid in cash. A seventh property in Almere was purchased personally by Erkam for Zealand Shipping's manager. The Yildirim familys biggest assets in the Netherlands -- worth $129.8 million -- were established in 2007 by Erkam under the name of Zealand Shipping until 2014, when it was bought by Holland Investments Cooperatif UA, also owned by Erkam. In addition, the Yildirim family owns 30% of Q-Shipping BV based in Barendrecht. The partner in this venture is Abdulvahit Simsek, a Turkish businessman who shares an office with the Yildirims in Istanbul. Q-shipping BV and its subsidiaries manage 20 ships -- none of which sail under a Turkish flag, according to Shaw and Sentek. Until a year ago, New Zealand Shipping owned 10 ships flying the Dutch flag, two of which were sold to a Turkish conglomerate close to the Erdogan government, Kolin Group, according to Shaw and Sentek. They summarize the Foreign Wealth of the Turkish Prime Ministers Family as follows: -- 18 ships (Dutch conglomerates, fully or partly owned) -- 1 ship (Netherlands Antilles company) -- 4 Malta companies -- 7 properties in the Netherlands -- 8 ships in the Netherlands -- 3 ships in Malta -- Total estimated assets: $140 million. Shaw and Sentek conclude their article by noting that after Turkeys constitutional referendum which granted Pres. Erdogan the power to destroy the Prime Ministry in two years, Yildirims tenure at the top is coming to an end. But in the nearly 20 years since he transferred his businesses to his children, they have created a soft cushion for him to land upon when he leaves politics for good!
Virtually all of the new grid capacity being added in the world is renewable or nuclear nowadays. Solar + Wind met 10% of electricity demand in March 2017 in the USA. Hydro electricity from a wet spring season on the West Coast, which alone provided more than 10% of the nation's electricity, as well as biomass and geothermal power, all renewable energy sources combined met 24% of electric demand in March and if we add in the 20% we get from nuclear power, 44% of electricity demand in the USA was met with non-fossil fuel electrons. Norway and New Zealand have been almost entirely on renewable for some time.

Excitingly, both solar and wind are being reinvented and the new forms are typically pitched as replacements by unimaginative developers but they actually expand the market. They are complementary so existing proponents should not fear the - they should grab them. For example, Airborne Wind Energy is the flying of kites and increasingly tethered drones that tap the winds above conventional wind turbines. These winds have four times the power and are much more consistent so the main potential is to go where conventional wind turbines cannot go - up to four times the potential number of sites and potential land area. The drone versions can even rise through zero wind at ground level to tap the strong stuff. See the new IDTechEx report, Airborne Wind Energy 2017-2027 . Solar roads can dynamically charge vehicles off grid and feed local communities off-grid - much more sensible than thinking of them as power station or solar farm replacements. Dynamic charging of vehicles is now advancing rapidly thanks the Qualcomm work in France, KAIST in Korea, TDK in Japan and others.

Edison said, "Make electricity where you need it." Growth of large-scale solar power plants that are located far from the cities has slowed as the transmission infrastructure to move that electricity must be further developed. As such - Installations atop factories, malls and airports are likely to surge sixfold to almost 40 gigawatts by the end of 2020 and 125 gigawatts by 2040. Expect solar roads there too.

Top image: Solar Roadways
Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse Loughrey Get our The Life Cinematic email for free Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

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There havent been many great films made about politics but occasionally, in works such as Being There, All the President's Men and Mr Smith Goes to Washington, filmmakers will produce something so refined that accusations of partisanship are rendered moot. Wag the Dog, while not as acclaimed as the aforementioned masterpieces, undoubtedly deserves to be considered one of the great political satires.

The film, written by David Mamet and directed by Barry Levinson, was inspired by Larry Beinhart's novel entitled American Hero. The books ingenious premise is that the Gulf War was artificially staged as a ploy to get George HW Bush re-elected to a second term. Like a scathing forerunner of Argo, Wag the Dog concerns a Washington spin doctor (Robert De Niro) who hires a Hollywood producer (Dustin Hoffman) to script and choreograph a fake war with Albania in order to distract the electorate from a potentially damaging sex scandal days before a presidential election. Forget Meet the Fockers, this is a collaboration between the two greatest actors of the modern era that is worth seeking out.

The black comedy proved remarkably prescient since it was a released a month before the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke and the subsequent bombing of a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan by the Clinton administration. Incredibly, during filming, the director and two stars had an impromptu meeting with the President at a Washington hotel. Clinton asked De Niro what the film was about but the actor felt too awkward to respond so simply looked over to Levinson. The director was just as reticent to offer details so Hoffman decided to step in, later commenting: I just started to tap dance. I can't even remember what I said.

Both leads received no upfront salary for their work and produce performances as good as youd expect. Hoffman is thought to have based his character on legendary Hollywood producer Robert Evans, although he maintains his own father was the primary model. His producer is intelligent but insecure and feels genuine regret that he will receive no credit for his part in proceedings.

The verbal sparring between the pair is typical of Mamets work and it is a joy to hear such dialogue emanate from the mouths of masters. Filming took just 28 days, during a gap in the production of Levinsons Sphere, and yet this scathing, hilarious satire is the far more accomplished work and ought to be compulsory viewing during election week.
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Its when the rats swarm all over Tom Cruise that you begin to realise that this latest revival of The Mummy was hardly worth untrussing.

The hitch with these rodents is that they appear so soon after a near-identical scene in which Cruise and his colleagues are swarmed over by spiders  and not too long before we see beetles crawling down characters ears.

We also have a flock of deranged birds hurtling through an airplane windscreen. There is only so much pestilence a single movie can take without beginning to feel very repetitive.

Of course, Cruise himself is nothing if not game. You cant help but admire the recklessly energetic, Peter Pan-like way the 54-year-old actor throws himself into stunts, whether theyre high in the air or deep under the water: in cavernous crypts or in the desert.

Recommended Sofia Boutella on breathing new life into The Mummy

His character Nick Morton isnt so different from his Jack Reacher, or Ethan Hunt in the Mission Impossible movies, but he has a bit of Indiana Jones and Lawrence of Arabia thrown in for good measure.

Nick is part of long-range reconnaissance for the US forces. That means he and his buddy Vail (Jake Johnson) try to protect precious antiquities from destruction at the hands of terrorists.

They have a nice sideline in smuggling  or, as they put it, liberating  some of the objects.

Annabelle Wallis is Jenny Halsey, the steely archaeologist with whom he has had a one-night fling and from whom he has stolen a map.

A few explosions in the desert unearth a gigantic tomb where Princess Ahmanet, the Mummy (Sofia Boutella) is buried, who also has a nice sideline  in calligraphy-like tattoos on her skin.

We are given the story of how she was interred alive in flashback. Thousands of years before, she made some infernal pact with Set, the god of darkness, to unleash chaos and woe into the world.

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There is also some confusing information about the crusaders in 1127 getting hold of the precious stone that sits on top of a sacred dagger.

The stone is in a crusader grave that the Crossrail excavations in London have exposed. Nick, being curious and full of mischief, has woken up Ahmanet. If the Mummy manages to reunite the stone and the dagger, there will be more than hell to pay.

The screenplay, by David Koepp, Christopher McQuarrie and Dylan Kussman, is shameless in the way it mixes traditional Mummy movie elements with ideas taken from other horror films. Zombie references abound. On one level, this is also a romantic drama.

Cruises Nick is torn between two women. Theres the evil princess, who has put the curse on him. She is in his head and gives him nightmarish as well as erotic visions  though she also has plans to stab him with the sacred knife. Then, theres Jenny, who appeals to the good (if there is any) in him.

 The Mummy - Trailer 2

An absurdly over-determined plot is further curdled by the presence of Russell Crowe as Dr Henry Jekyll, a bellowing scientist with  we might just have guessed it  a bit of a split personality.

The only surprise here is that other such old favourites from the Universal stable as Dracula, Frankenstein, The Invisible Man and The Wolfman arent thrown into the mix as well  or indeed, Abbott and Costello for good measure.

Cruise tries to keep matters light hearted. Theres lot of banter between him and his pal, Vail. Hes able to wisecrack even when he is naked in the morgue and he still has that wraparound cheesy grin that cinema audiences first saw back in the 1980s, in his brat pack Risky Business days.

You cant help but admire the zest with which he makes small talk with evil spirits he meets in the Ladies restroom, or how he chats to the Mummy at a climactic moment as if theyre students on a date to the high school prom that has gone badly wrong.

The jokiness risks undercutting any tension the filmmakers might have hoped of stoking up. Its dismaying to see an actor of the power and presence of Russell Crowe hamming it up like just any other evil scientist in an overcooked B-movie.

The use of London locations is on the tokenistic side. We get to see a chase in the Natural History Museum, and there are scenes of landmark buildings crumbling as the Mummy wreaks havoc.

The stunts are by far the best element here. Whether its planes being torn apart, Cruise and Wallis driving through the woods with the Mummy in pursuit or the very spectacular finale, the visual effects are first rate.

Whenever the action stops, though, the film becomes derivative and empty headed. Strip away the bandages and there really isnt very much here at all.

The Mummy hits UK cinemas 9 June.
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The UK goes to the polls on 8 June to elect a new Government.

With the race between Labour and the Conservative party looking ever closer, its even more important to use your vote to make sure you have your say in the future of your country.

With that in mind, we asked musicians from all over the UK to send us messages encouraging people to use their vote on 8 June.

Many of them simply call upon anyone who registered to make sure they go to their local polling station - others, like Chloe from INHEAVEN, reminded us of the sacrifices that were made so women could have the right to vote.

These are all the artists who sent us messages:

Sundara Karma

Ryan de la Cruz

INHEAVEN

Two Door Cinema Club

Goldie

Amazons

Glass Animals

Nothing But Thieves

Circa Waves

Matt Maltese

Amy Macdonald

Touts

Dutch Uncles

Charlatans (Tim Burgess)

Denai Moore

Ray BLK

The Hunna

Little Cub

Be Charlotte

Jamie Cullum

Yungen

If youre unsure about anything related to the General Election you can check out this advice from the Electoral Commission, below:

Polling stations will be open 7am until 10pm on polling day (8 June).

To vote at the UK general election you must be registered to vote and:

18 years of age or over on polling day

be a British, Irish or qualifying Commonwealth citizen

be resident at an address in the UK (or a UK citizen living abroad who has been registered to vote in the UK in the last 15 years)

not be legally excluded from voting

The deadline to register to vote was Monday 22 May. It is now too late to register to vote at the UK general election on 8 June.

If you registered to vote before the deadline, your local electoral registration office will contact you to let you know when you are registered or if they have any questions.

WHO AM I VOTING FOR?

The UK is divided into 650 constituencies, each with one Member of Parliament (MP).

You vote for one MP to sit in the UK Parliament in Westminster and represent your constituency.

To vote:

You will receive one ballot paper.

You should mark an X against the one candidate you want to elect to represent your constituency.

If you make a mistake you can ask the polling staff to give you another ballot paper.

When votes are counted, the candidate who receives the most votes is elected as MP for your constituency.

Voters in Northern Ireland - don't forget to bring a correct form of photo ID when you go to vote.

Thank you to all the artists who contributed!
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Noel Gallagher has reportedly been donating royalties from Oasis hit 'Don't Look Back in Anger' since locals began using it as an anthem against hate in the wake of the Manchester attack.

Shortly after a suicide bomber detonated a device at an Ariana Grande concert at the Manchester Arena, video footage taken at vigils showed spontaneous renditions of the song being sung by those in attendance.

Chris Martin also performed the song with Grande at the One Love Manchester concert, which took place two weeks after the attack.

Gallagher had been the subject of criticism by some fans, along with his younger brother Liam, after he did not appear at the benefit performance.

Liam Gallagher posted a string of tweets apologising on his behalf and also branding Noel a "sad f***".

Since his tweets, Radio X host Gordon Smart has spoken out in Noel's defence and revealed that the former Oasis star has apparently been donating his share of royalties from the song.

"I've seen some unpleasant headlines about Noel and why he never played the gig in Manchester at the weekend," he said.

 Manchester crowd sing Oasis song after minute's silence

"It's only right to point out, and I don't think this is public knowledge because I'm sure he would never mention it, but I found out today that as soon as 'Don't Look Back in Anger' started to appear spontaneously at the vigils, he made sure all the royalties went back to the families. That was before any gig was mentioned.

Recommended What Noel Gallagher said about playing One Love Manchester

"It seems wrong to me that Noel's getting a hard time for a reunion he was never part of," Smart continued. "It's a shame any attention at all has been taken away from a really special occasion at Old Traffod. But there you go, true fact. He gave his blessing for the songs without any drama at all.

"Loads of amazing musicians from Manchester couldn't play the gig, but none of them have been dug out. All that has come from that night is good will from most people."

The Independent reported that Noel had missed the concert due to a "longstanding family trip" that had been organised before the concert.

A spokesperson said that while he would not making any additional comment, he had released a statement explaining that he would not be in the country for when the One Love Manchester event took place, but wishes "everyone huge success on the day".
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The fact that Im a white person may mean that Id survive a prison riot more easily, and thats a horrifying thought, says Orange is The New Black star Taylor Schilling.

People are dying in riots in the States  the Ferguson unrest wasnt that long ago. I dont know how one survives a riot. I dont think there is a recipe for it. I think its a systemic problem, the system that caused the riots needs to change.

Season 5 of Orange is The New Black plays out over three days as the inmates at Litchfield riot. The episodes were filmed whilst last years US Presidential election was taking place. Schilling says that daily on the set, the actors would discuss the election campaign.

Its impossible to strip the show from the context in which its being created, Schilling says. The world at large is part of what we are making on a day to day basis.

Talking to Schilling in a London hotel, I point out that her character Piper Chapman wouldnt be allowed to vote anyway, because she is in prison.

She hits back, If youre in prison for a non-violent offence you should not be stripped of your right to participate in democracy.

These are all issues that Schilling admits she was not concerned about before being cast in the hit show. Yet now, this prosecutors daughter is a vocal proponent of prisoners rights. She calls the prison system disgusting and at boiling point, arguing that it needs reform.

Laura Prepon as Alex Vause, with Schilling as Piper Chapman, in the new season (Netflix)

The Boston-born actress is an American who gets sarcasm.

I note that she has her shoes on for this interview. We laugh about a recent interview she appeared in on Ellen, in which the topic of conversation became about her appearing barefoot following on from an ankle injury, which was conducted while pictures of Ellen DeGeneress numerous pets were put on the screen in the background as the show's picture editor searched for an X-ray picture that Ellen had requested be shown to the audience. That was one of the weirdest interviews Ive ever done.

I say this one will be stranger, and jokingly ask whether shes excited to be on Orange. As quick as a bat she responds, Im thrilled  its unprecedented. Netflix is an untested medium, repeating the comments she made in 2013 when Orange in the New Black became the video-on-demand companys first original drama series. To this day, it remains the services most popular programme.

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Schillings character is based on Piper Kerman, the author of the non-fiction book Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Womens Prison. The first season was told through Pipers fish-out-of-water eyes, but as the series moved on, Pipers become a meaner, nastier, more cunning part of the ensemble, no longer front and centre for the viewer.

Its a decision that she wholeheartedly endorses: I think on some level, if a show representing the prison system in the States  which is, I think, over 80% women of colour  was told only through the eyes of an upper-class woman, that would be the epitome of racism and it would represent the status quo. If anything, this show has been anything but the status quo.

She adds, Its not necessarily Pipers story that is of most cultural relevance.

Despite this belief, she says OITNB had to focus on her character when it began because of the makeup of the audience and their ingrained expectations.

The audience is still mainly made up of white males, so they are interested in f****ing a privileged white woman.

Much to Schillings delight, her character Piper has also changed, morphing from privileged white woman to angry thug.

We take that idea of a lady hero that you all know and have seen before, and mess that up. What if she is manipulative, not inherently likeable, amoral, self-interested, selfish, self-centred and its not about serving someone else?

The fallout has surprised Schilling, who discovered that institutionalised opinions are hard to eradicate.

Its so uncomfortable for people, that is what Ive found. Its uncomfortable for people to have a woman like this. Its almost like, how dare you not be likeable and just sit in the corner, white lady.

Schilling also faces the challenge of stereotyping in her own career. Like many actors who have made their name by playing an acclaimed role with which they are inevitably associated, it can be difficult to branch out.

The series can only go on for so long  although two more seasons have been commissioned. In the book, the author is in jail for 13 months, and Schilling says that although weve been watching for five years, only 10 months have passed in Litchfield.

So the question is: can Schilling outgrow Piper?

The actress in Oscar-winning film Argo, before she found fame with 'Orange is the New Black'

Before she found fame in OITNB, she had landed roles in major films. For example, she played Ben Afflecks wife Christine in his Oscar-winning film Argo in 2012.

Christine is the traditional Hollywood female role, used for exposition when something in the story needs explaining; family is her priority and shes mainly there to give the male protagonist an emotional private life.

On the back of her Netflix success, shes appeared in vibrant, challenging independent movies with a sense of fun, such as 2015s The Overnight, in which she plays a woman befriends some swingers along with her husband, played by Adam Scott.

Its about that relationship you have with yourself, she beams when talking about the film. That is what I loved about that movie so much: its taking the things that you feel most uncomfortable with and embracing them.

I just call it the penis movie. In my world, with my friends, its the penis movie.

Now that fame has given her choices, Schilling is picking roles that challenge orthodoxy. Its what makes her such an exciting actress to watch out for.

Those are the stories that Im attracted to telling. Outsider stories really attract me. Thats where I feel that I can use myself to communicate best. I dont really relate to being right in the middle.

Adam Scott and Taylor Schilling starred in The Overnight  or the penis movie (Rex Features)

There are several movie projects coming up, including one written and directed by Emilio Estevez called The Public, which takes place in a library forced to close its doors during an Arctic storm.

Ignoring the demands of off-site management, the workers turn the library into a shelter. Its another project that Schilling is involved that she argues gives voice to the people that society are choosing to ignore.

She has 2.1 million followers on her Instagram account, which she set up to appease Warner Brothers when promoting a movie. She posts infrequently, and with far less of the social concern she shows in person.

I ask if social media is something she can now use to create change, or put forward her ideas.

Its so confusing to me, and so permanent to craft an image and be almost labelling yourself, she says. You have to give a lot of access.

Im not even sure of who I am! That changes on a day-to-day basis. Its not something that I set up as an extension of my heart, so it feels like work.

'Orange is the New Black' season 5 is available on Netflix from 9 June
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Nicolas Cage turned down the opportunity to cameo in season two of Netflix series Master of None, it has ben revealed.

The actor is the centre of one of season two's most memorable jokes - he's the star of the fake movie Death Castle - which features in the standout episode 'New York, I Love You.'

Aziz Ansari, who co-created the series alongside Alan Yang, reveals that they attempted to get the Hollywood actor to lend his voice to the film which can be heard off-screen in the episode's final scene.

I think we did go out to Cage and quickly received a no,' IndieWire reports Ansari as stating at an LA screening earlier this week.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine star Andy Samberg voiced Cage instead. Also 'starring' in Death Castle - the film which acts as the episode's through line - is Emma Watson and Fast & Furious actor Tyrese Gibson.

The episode is notable for featuring a completely silent segment starring two deaf characters using only sign language.

The TV shows you'll be bingeing in 2017 Show all 27 1 /27 The TV shows you'll be bingeing in 2017 The TV shows you'll be bingeing in 2017 Game of Thrones season 7 Creator: David Benioff, D.B. Weiss David Benioff, D.B. Weiss Cast: Lena Headey, Kit Harington, Peter Dinklage, Emilia Clarke Plot: With the HBO fantasy series gearing up to a close, this penultimate season will pick up where the last left off; with Cersei in power and the Mother of Dragons en route to Westeros. Premiere date: June 2017, Sky Atlantic The TV shows you'll be bingeing in 2017 Taboo Creator: Steven Knight, Tom Hardy, Chips Hardy Steven Knight, Tom Hardy, Chips Hardy Cast: Tom Hardy, Oona Chaplin, David Hayman, Jonathan Pryce, Michael Kelly Plot: Set in 1814, the drama follows James Delaney, an adventurer who uncovers a dark family conspiracy upon returning home from Africa with the aim of avenging his father's death. 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Master of None's first two seasons are available to watch on Netflix.
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The world added enough renewable energy capacity to power every house in the UK, Germany, France and Italy combined last year, according to a new report. The record figure of 161 gigawatts cost about 187bn, but this was a staggering 23 per cent cheaper than it would have cost in the previous year.

And, in a further sign of the tumbling price of low-carbon electricity, Denmark, Egypt, India, Mexico, Peru and the United Arab Emirates are all now receiving supplies at less than five US cents (about 4p) per kilowatt-hour, well below fossil fuels and nuclear.

The Renewables 2017 Global Status Report, published by international renewable body Ren21, found solar panels made up nearly half, 47 per cent, of the extra capacity added, followed by wind on 34 per cent and hydro-electric schemes on 15.5 per cent.

In a statement, Ren21 said: Renewables are becoming the least cost option. Recent deals in Denmark, Egypt, India, Mexico, Peru and the United Arab Emirates saw renewable electricity being delivered at $0.05 per kilowatt-hour or less. This is well below equivalent costs for fossil fuel and nuclear generating capacity in each of these countries.

Winners of two recent auctions for offshore wind in Germany have done so relying only on the wholesale price of power without the need for government support, demonstrating that renewables can be the least cost option.

Christine Lins, executive secretary of REN21, said the world is in a race against time.

She added: The single most important thing we could do to reduce carbon dioxide emissions quickly and cost-effectively, is phase-out coal and speed up investments in energy efficiency and renewables.

When China announced in January that it was cancelling more than 100 coal plants currently in development, they set an example for governments everywhere: change happens quickly when governments act  by establishing clear, long-term policy and financial signals and incentives.

In total, more renewable capacity was added that the total extra capacity from all fossil fuels combined.

However, the transition to a zero-carbon economy is still not happening quickly enough to meet the targets set by the Paris Agreement on climate change.

And investments in new renewable energy installations fell by 23 per cent between 2015 and 2016.

Investment continues to be heavily focused on wind and solar PV, however all renewable energy technologies need to be deployed in order to keep global warming well below 2C, the Ren21 statement said.

Transport, heating and cooling sectors continue to lag behind the power sector. The deployment of renewable technologies in the heating and cooling sector remains a challenge in light of the unique and distributed nature of this market.

10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Show all 10 1 /10 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change A group of emperor penguins face a crack in the sea ice, near McMurdo Station, Antarctica Kira Morris 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Floods destroyed eight bridges and ruined crops such as wheat, maize and peas in the Karimabad valley in northern Pakistan, a mountainous region with many glaciers. In many parts of the world, glaciers have been in retreat, creating dangerously large lakes that can cause devastating flooding when the banks break. Climate change can also increase rainfall in some areas, while bringing drought to others. Hira Ali 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Smoke  filled with the carbon that is driving climate change  drifts across a field in Colombia. Sandra Rondon 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Amid a flood in Islampur, Jamalpur, Bangladesh, a woman on a raft searches for somewhere dry to take shelter. Bangladesh is one of the most vulnerable places in the world to sea level rise, which is expected to make tens of millions of people homeless by 2050. Probal Rashid 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Sindh province in Pakistan has experienced a grim mix of two consequences of climate change. Because of climate change either we have floods or not enough water to irrigate our crop and feed our animals, says the photographer. Picture clearly indicates that the extreme drought makes wide cracks in clay. Crops are very difficult to grow. Rizwan Dharejo 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Hanna Petursdottir examines a cave inside the Svinafellsjokull glacier in Iceland, which she said had been growing rapidly. Since 2000, the size of glaciers on Iceland has reduced by 12 per cent. Tom Schifanella 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change A river once flowed along the depression in the dry earth of this part of Bangladesh, but it has disappeared amid rising temperatures. Abrar Hossain 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change A shepherd moves his herd as he looks for green pasture near the village of Sirohi in Rajasthan, northern India. The region has been badly affected by heatwaves and drought, making local people nervous about further predicted increases in temperature. Riddhima Singh Bhati 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change A factory in China is shrouded by a haze of air pollution. The World Health Organisation has warned such pollution, much of which is from the fossil fuels that cause climate change, is a public health emergency. Leung Ka Wa 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Water levels in reservoirs, like this one in Gers, France, have been getting perilously low in areas across the world affected by drought, forcing authorities to introduce water restrictions. Mahtuf Ikhsan

Renewables-based decarbonisation of the transport sector is not yet being seriously considered, or seen as a priority. Despite a significant expansion in the sales of electric vehicles, primarily due to the declining cost of battery technology, much more needs to be done to ensure sufficient infrastructure is in place and that they are powered by renewable electricity.

While the shipping and aviation sectors present the greatest challenges, government policies or commercial disruption have not sufficiently stimulated the development of solutions.

In the UK, the number of new solar installations fell by 81 per cent in the first three months of this year compared to the average for 2016.

The industry has complained that government policies  including a massive business rate hike of up to 800 per cent, subsidies reduced to minimal levels while fossil fuels enjoy lavish taxpayer support, and red tape  have severely hampered the sector.

The Government has also withdrawn any kind of support for onshore wind scheme, even though this, along with solar, is one of the cheapest forms of electricity generation.
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Many moons ago, people in their early twenties were all settling down, getting married and popping out children all over the shop.

Now, however, the average age to get married in the UK is 34.3 for women and 36.7 for men.

Times are a changing and many of us now have a whole decade of singlehood dotted with relationships here and there to navigate before tying the knot.

Recommended The key to getting a second date

But rather than the idea of being single as tragic and sad, its something to be celebrated - in fact, society tends to encourage young adults to be single so they can go off, have adventures and focus on their own personal development without being tied down.

Having been with her boyfriend for eight years, this is something 25-year-old Alicia has experienced: At first it was fine, but as the years piled up more and more people respond with shock when I tell them how long I've been with my boyfriend, she explained to The Independent.

Sometimes they seem to pity me, as if I'm probably too scared of change to break up with him. Others wonder how the hell we can still be bothered to sleep with each other, because surely the spark died years ago?

Whether or not they believe me when I say it's got better as we've grown up together is up to them I suppose!

But the thing is, as we all near 30, societal pressure shifts, and singletons start being asked why they havent found someone yet.

Heres how, for some people, dating changes throughout your twenties:

21: YOUNG AND FREE!

Woohoo, youre an adult and can now, well, do basically all the same things youve been doing since you were 18. The dating pool is vast as many high-school sweethearts broke up during uni. Go do your thang.

22: Let's date

Youre a serious grown-up now (possibly even with a job - well, internship - and everything) so arent just going to snog someone behind a bike-shed, oh no. Youre going out for dates and drinking cocktails in swanky bars (and then crying into your bank statement afterwards).

The cartoons that perfectly sum up relationships Show all 10 1 /10 The cartoons that perfectly sum up relationships The cartoons that perfectly sum up relationships Catana Chetwynd The cartoons that perfectly sum up relationships Catana Chetwynd The cartoons that perfectly sum up relationships Catana Chetwynd The cartoons that perfectly sum up relationships Catana Chetwynd The cartoons that perfectly sum up relationships Catana Chetwynd The cartoons that perfectly sum up relationships Catana Chetwynd The cartoons that perfectly sum up relationships Catana Chetwynd The cartoons that perfectly sum up relationships Catana Chetwynd The cartoons that perfectly sum up relationships Catana Chetwynd The cartoons that perfectly sum up relationships Catana Chetwynd

23: Urgh, so over dating

Youre poor, you still live at home (which is totally killing your mojo) and quite frankly you ceebs with dating. You may be suffering from burnout. But, loads of your friends are in relationships that started on dating apps. Maybe one more swipe...

24: In a relationship

This is nice. You have someone with whom to hang out, go to the cinema, get a takeaway and have sexual exploits with on a regular basis.

25: Serious stuff

Your parents are getting excited, youre considering moving in together and you start thinking this might just be the one. Should you get a dog? But. But What if theres someone better round the corner?

26: Single again

Many people end their long-term relationships in their mid-twenties when they realise that actually, this person isnt who they want to spend the rest of their lives with, but if they end it now, they still have time to enjoy being single and find someone else to settle down with.

27: Woah

Oh bloody hell, your friends are starting to get engaged and married. And youre over here getting drunk with a different Bumble date every week. But its cool, right? Youre only 27. You have pleeeenty of time.

28: Whats happening?

Babies. The babies have started. They may not be your close friends but your Facebook newsfeed is starting to clog up with pictures of the babies of your old schoolmates and people you met on that drama summer school when you were 16. The babies all look the same.

29: REALLY HAPPY OK

No, auntie Susan, I wont have a boy-/girlfriend joining us on Christmas Day, yet again, BUT I REALLY LIKE BEING SINGLE, OK! The nagging is becoming unbearable.

30: Oh, sheesh

Youre 30. How the flippin hell did that happen? Sure, you have friends who are married with babies, and maybe you dont, but thats no bad thing.

Everyone lives their lives at their own pace, and there is literally no rush to settle down. Dont marry someone just because theyre there when youre the age that you think you should be settling down.

You have to kiss a lot of frogs to find your prince or princess, and if you dont find them till you're way past your twenties, it doesnt matter. If you do, super!

You do you and when the right person comes along, youll be ready.
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Almost a third of small businesses want a new government that would reverse the Brexit decision, new research has revealed.

In Wales, where a majority of people voted to leave the EU last June, the figure was 36 per cent, while in London it rose to 41 per cent, Hitachi Capital found.

The proportion in Scotland was similarly high at 36 per cent, although their top priority was a clear and final position on Scottish independence  an issue for 49 per cent of business owners.

More than 1,000 owners and directors of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) nationwide were asked which policies a new government could enact to help their businesses grow.

SMEs predicting a declining business outlook were almost twice as likely to say they wanted a government that would not go ahead with EU withdrawal, the survey found.

Neither of the Labour or Conservative parties have said they would go back on the Brexit vote. Tim Farrons Liberal Democrats have campaigned on an anti-Brexit message but are currently languishing in the polls and look likely to secure just a handful of seats.

Prime Minister Theresa May has taken a hard-line approach with her stance that, no deal is better than a bad deal for Britain. The OECD said today that it believed Ms May would be unable to secure a comprehensive trade agreement with the EU within the allotted two-year timeframe, and therefore the UK would be faced with a damaging cliff-edge situation.

Brexit Concerns Show all 26 1 /26 Brexit Concerns Brexit Concerns Brexit will put British patients at 'back of the queue' for new drugs Brexit will put British patients at the back of the queue for vital new drugs, the Government has been warned  forcing them to wait up to two years longer A medicines regulator has raised the alarm over a likely decision to pull out of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), as well as the EU itself. ealth Secretary Jeremy Hunt dropped the bombshell , when he said he expected the UK would quit the EMA  because it is subject to rulings by the European Court of Justice. Getty Images Brexit Concerns London to lose status as 'gateway to Europe' for banks One of Germanys top banking regulators has warned that London could lose its status as gateway to Europe for the banking sector after Britain quits the European trading bloc. Andreas Dombret, who is an executive board member for the BundesbankGermanys central banktold a private meeting of German businesses and banks earlier this week in Frankfurt that even if banking rules were equivalent between the UK and the rest of the EU, that was still miles away from [Britain having] access to the single market, the BBC reports. Jason Hawkes Brexit Concerns Exodus The number of financial sector professionals in Britain and continental Europe looking for jobs in Ireland rocketed in the months after the UK voted to leave the European Union Shutterstock Brexit Concerns Brexit is making FTSE 100 executives richer Pay packages of many FTSE 100 chief executive officers are partly tied to how well share prices are doing rather than the CEOs performance -- and some stocks are soaring. ritish equities got a boost since the June vote because the likes of Rio Tinto, Smiths Group and WPP generate most sales abroad and earn a fortune when they convert these revenues back into the weakened pound. Sterlings fall also made UK stocks more affordable for overseas investors. Rex Brexit Concerns Theresa May: UK to leave single market Theresa May has said the UK "cannot possibly" remain within the European single market, as staying in it would mean "not leaving the EU at all". Getty Brexit Concerns Lead campaigner Gina Miller and her team outside the High Court Getty Brexit Concerns Raymond McCord holds up his newly issued Irish passport alongside his British passport outside the High Court in Belfast following a judges dismissal of the UK's first legal challenges to Brexit PA wire Brexit Concerns SDLP leader Colum Eastwood leaving the High Court in Belfast following a judges dismissal of the UK's first legal challenges to Brexit PA wire Brexit Concerns Migrants with luggage walk past a graffiti on a wall as they leave the 'Jungle' migrant camp, as part of a major three-day operation planned to clear the camp in Calais Getty Brexit Concerns Migrants leave messages on their tents in the Jungle migrant camp Getty Brexit Concerns The Adventist Development and Relief Agency (Adra) which distributes approximately 700 meals daily in the northern Paris camp states that it is noticing a spike in new migrant arrivals this week, potentially linked the the Calais 'jungle' camp closure - with around 1000 meals distributed today EPA Brexit Concerns Migrant workers pick apples at Stocks Farm in Suckley, Britain Reuters Brexit Concerns Many farmers across the country are voicing concerns that Brexit could be a dangerous step into the unknown for the farming industry Getty Brexit Concerns Bank of England governor Mark Carney who said the long-term outlook for the UK economy is positive, but growth was slowing in the wake of the Brexit vote PA Brexit Concerns The Dow Jones industrial average closed down over 600 points on the news with markets around the globe pluninging Getty Brexit Concerns Immigration officers deal with each member of the public seeking entry into the United Kingdom but on average, 10 a day are refused entry at this London airport and between 2008 and 2009, 33,100 people were detained at the airport for mainly passport irregularities Getty Brexit Concerns A number of global investment giants have threatened to move their European operations out of London if Brexit proves to have a negative impact on their businesses Getty Brexit Concerns Following the possibility of a Brexit the UK would be released from its renewable energy targets under the EU Renewable Energy Directive and from EU state aid restrictions, potentially giving the government more freedom both in the design and phasing out of renewable energy support regimes Getty Brexit Concerns A woman looking at a chart showing the drop in the pound (Sterling) against the US Dollar in London after Britain voted to leave the EU Getty Brexit Concerns Young protesters outside the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, to protest against the United Kingdom's decision to leave the EU following the referendum Getty Brexit Concerns Applications from Northern Ireland citizens for Irish Passports has soared to a record high after the UK Voted in favour of Leaving the EU Getty Brexit Concerns NFU Vice President Minette Batters with Secretary of State, Andrea Leadsome at the National Farmers Union (NFU) took machinery, produce, farmers and staff to Westminster to encourage Members of Parliament to back British farming, post Brexit Getty Brexit Concerns The latest reports released by the UK Cabinet Office warn that expats would lose a range of specific rights to live, to work and to access pensions, healthcare and public services. The same reports added that UK citizens abroad would not be able to assume that these rights will be guaranteed in the future Getty Brexit Concerns A British resident living in Spain asks questions during an informative Brexit talk by the "Brexpats in Spain" group, about Spanish legal issues to become Spanish citizens, at the town hall in Benalmadena, Spain Reuters Brexit Concerns The collapse of Great Britain appears to have been greatly exaggerated given the late summer crowds visiting city museums, hotels, and other important tourist attractions Getty Brexit Concerns The U.K. should maintain European Union regulations covering everything from working hours to chemicals until after the government sets out its plans for Brexit, said British manufacturers anxious to avoid a policy vacuum and safeguard access to their biggest export market Getty

Hitachi found that 48 per cent of agricultural firms were keen to see a government that was committed to negotiating favourable trade deals beyond the EU  far higher than the average figure across all sectors of 24 per cent. Amongst the manufacturing sector, this figure was 37 per cent.

While Brexit prompted strong opinions amongst survey respondents, the key demands from SMEs were a reduction of red tape, which was cited by 40 per cent of respondents, and lower taxes, which 35 per cent said was important.

Less regulation was a top three wish for every sector in the survey, peaking in the agriculture sector where it was a priority for 70 per cent of business owners.
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Theresa May will fail to secure a comprehensive free trade agreement with the rest of the EU by 2019 in a development that would mean a destructive cliff-edge Brexit for the UK, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has predicted.

In its latest Global Economic Outlook report, the Paris-based multilateral economic organisation has upgraded its 2017 GDP growth forecast for the UK to 1.6 per cent, up from 1.2 per cent last November.

But it is still anticipating a sharp slowdown in UK growth to just 1 per cent in 2018.

This projection critically assumes that 'most favoured nation' treatment will govern UK trade after the United Kingdom leaves the European Union in 2019," the OECD says, referencing a description of the way that countries must trade with each other under minimal World Trade Organisation rules.

In her Lancaster House speech in January, Theresa May said that she wanted to conclude a a new, comprehensive, bold and ambitious free trade agreement with the rest of the EU.

The Prime Minister also signalled her willingness to agree a transitional deal post 2019, which would allow trade to carry on unimpeded while such an overarching free trade agreement was concluded.

But she also warned that no deal is better than a bad deal, implying that she could also walk away from the negotiating deal and that the UK could crash out of the EUs single market and customs union with no new agreement in place.

That latter threat was also contained in the Conservative manifesto.

The WTO outcome would imply, among many other things, 10 per cent tariffs on UK car exports to the EU, tight quotas on agricultural exports and an abrupt end to the right of UK financial firms to operate in Europe.

The OECDs baseline assumption is that this is what materialises  and also that the UK has no other new free trade deals with other non-EU countries in place by 2019.

It said that the channels through which this would likely adversely impact the UK economy next year were through weaker household consumption, confidence and investment.

The major risk for the economy is the uncertainty surrounding the exit process from the European Union. Higher uncertainty could hamper domestic and foreign investment more than projected, the OECD writes.

Catherine Mann, the OECDs chief economist, told The Independent that it was sticking with the same WTO Brexit outcome it used in previous UK forecasts made since last June's referendum.

Discussions regarding the nature of trade modalities, the timetable for any deal, as well as interim agreements are ongoing between the UK and the EU. We continue with the same assumption of WTO 'Most Favoured Nation' basis, as in our previous projections." she said.

The overwhelming majority of economists expect that a cliff-edge Brexit would be highly damaging for the UK economy.

Researchers from the London School of Economics estimate that it would cost 2.6 per cent of GDP by 2020, rising to 9.5 per cent by 2030.

The one detailed study that argues trading on WTO rules post 2019 would boost the UK economy has been severely criticised as methodologically flawed and making wildly implausible assumptions.

Business groups have warned loudly about the catastrophic impact of a "no deal" Brexit, with the CBI president Paul Dreschler saying it would open Pandora's box for firms.

In its latest report, the OECD also argues that Britain needs a major increase in infrastructure spending, something more in line with Labour's manifesto pledges than the Conservatives'.

"Higher investment in transport infrastructure, in particular in less productive regions, would improve connectivity and the diffusion of knowledge," the OECD says.

Labour's manifesto also promises a free trade agreement with the EU and explicitly rejects "no deal" as a viable option.

The UK's GDP growth slowed to just 0.2 per cent in the first quarter of 2017, well down from the 0.7 per cent expansion in the final quarter of 2016.

This was the joint slowest quarterly expansion of any G7 country, alongside Italy, although growth is expected to pick up somewhat in the following quarter.

Responding to the OECD report, Sir Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, said: Voters should listen to this eve of poll warning on the major economic risk posed by Theresa Mays reckless approach to Brexit.

"The hardline approach [she] has taken, insisting that no deal is better than a bad deal and planning to take us out of the single market, will seriously damage opportunities and jobs for years to come. The Liberal Democrats will fight to keep Britain in the single market and customs union, and to ensure the people have the final say on the Brexit deal.
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Nearly a year after the EU referendum, one could be forgiven for fearing another political surprise in this weeks UK general election. And even as polls have tightened in the week ahead of Thursdays vote, a Labour majority would still stun financial markets.

While Prime Minister Theresa May is leading a campaign thats less business-friendly than past Tory candidates, Jeremy Corbyn has pulled his party leftward, with promises to nationalise railways and raise wages and taxes.

At the same time, unlike the Tories, Labour has vowed to retain the benefits of the EU single market  a desire shared by most companies and investors.

Recommended Pound could plummet if General Election delivers hung parliament

In the final days before the election, May and Corbyn have traded blows over each others records on countering terrorism, as recent attacks in London and Manchester turned the focus from Brexit to security. Polls have called for increasingly narrow margins for the Tories amid a series of political missteps by May, with the latest one by Survation/GMB ended Saturday showing just a one-percentage point lead.

Equity markets have a lot on the line: The FTSE 100 rallied to an intraday record high last week as perceived certainty over the votes outcome helped shift the focus to Europes economic recovery and solid earnings.

More dramatic swings might be expected in the event of an unlikely Labour victory, but Brexit would continue to cast a pall, Alastair Gunn and Rhys Petheram, fund managers at Jupiter Asset Management, wrote in a note.

Here are the sectors and stocks to look out for in case of a Labour upset:

LOSERS

Domestic Companies

In addition to higher political uncertainty, a Labour comeback is expected to push down sterling, making imports more expensive for domestic producers and squeezing consumption  which is why UK mid-caps tend to underperform when the pound is weak.

With Labour proposing to raise the minimum wage and strengthen workers bargaining power, companies with a large local staff  transport players such as IAG, EasyJet and Interserve, as well as retailers such as Next and Sainsbury's  will take a hit, JPMorgan strategists led by Mislav Matejka wrote in a note.

Nationalisation Targets: Royal Mail, Railways

Corbyn has pledged to re-nationalise Royal Mail, as well as rail companies when the franchises expire. This could spell trouble for FirstGroup and National Express Group, which offer transit services, according to JPMorgan.

Financial Industry, Especially RBS

Unsurprisingly, the populist Corbyn is no fan of big banks. Hes vowed to separate investment and retail banking and extend the Stamp Duty Reserve Tax to a wider range of assets. One particular stock to watch is Royal Bank of Scotland: the Labour Party said it will launch a consultation on breaking up the lender to create new local public banks.

Defence

When asked about his position on Trident, Britains nuclear weapon system, Corbyn has equivocated  though his partys manifesto endorses renewal after his opposition was overruled in a party vote. Not renewing the system could potentially remove a large stream of business for BAE Systems, said Sandy Morris, an analyst at Jefferies.

M&A

Both major parties are calling for greater scrutiny of takeovers, with Labour vowing to make sure critical companies have a clear plan to protect workers and pensioners in case of a merger. Thomas Seidl, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, warned it would be negative for UK equities, and would strip out any remaining M&A premium on the stocks.

Utilities

Higher power bills are another target that have united May and Corbyn, but according to Citigroup, the latters plan is even harsher for utilities. The Labour Party has proposed an immediate 1,000 cap on average household energy bills annually before transitioning to a fairer system, as well as creating public energy and water companies and regaining control of energy supply networks.

Pennon Group, Severn Trent, SSE and Centrica are among companies that may be hurt, JPMorgan said. UK-focused utilities have already slid after the Tories also pledged to cap energy costs, before recovering amid a lack of clarity. Companies including Centrica, SSE and National Grid will plunge at least 10 per cent in the case of a Labour-led government, Deutsche Bank AG said in a Tuesday report.

WINNERS

Exporters and Global Corporations

While the stock market may take a hit amid the initial shock, the FTSE 100s resilience after Brexit shows theres a silver lining in currency weakness. A drop in sterling makes exports more competitive and boosts overseas earnings in pound terms.

Of course, Brexit is still the dominant issue for the campaign  and for most UK companies. With the Tories outright backing an exit from the single market in their manifesto, some analysts say a weakening of the party may help pave the way for a better deal with the EU. A smaller Tory majority or even a Labour-led government may actually be better for risk assets in the medium term, according to Morgan Stanley.

Better checks and balances against a hard Brexit could be possible in case of a hung parliament, Ken Odeluga, a market analyst at brokerage City Index wrote in a note. If Labour wins, a softer Brexit would still be likelier, and the market has made plain that it prefers soft to hard.

Bloomberg
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In the UK, the worlds fifth richest economy, vulnerable children are being denied education. Asylum seekers and refugee children are struggling to access education  and unable to attend school or college. This contravenes rights to equal educational access in accordance with international human rights law.

Im currently working on research projects about child refugees, one of which compares experiences of children in the UK with those arriving in Sweden  and I am concerned that the UK education system is not currently fit for purpose or able to provide adequate schooling for every child. The fact of the matter is that refugee children should be resettled in the UK. It is quite simply the right thing to do for obvious humanitarian reasons. As Ghandi observed:

"The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members."

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Lessons should be learned from countries such as Sweden, where more inclusive practices are already in place. It should also be considered how education policies and practices are working against schools and teachers who want to welcome refugees but who are unable to.

Hassans story

Take Hassan, hes 15 and Iranian, and I met him at an arts workshop for recently arrived child refugees in the UK. Hassan had been in the UK for four months and did not yet have a school place. His age is the first barrier when it comes to an education. This is because Hassan should be in year 11  GCSE year  which means a school could be reluctant to take him because he is unlikely to have sufficient preparation time for exams.

New arrivals are unable to absorb skills and content required to pass high-stakes GCSEs (Pexels)

Teachers are also under massive amounts of pressure to deliver outcomes to boost their schools progress scores and performance in league tables. And new arrivals such as Hassan  regardless of their prior attainment and experience  are unlikely to be able to adjust to the English school culture and absorb the content and skills required to pass high stakes examinations in the remaining months of year 11.

The second barrier is language. When we met, Hassan had a friend translating. And until he has a school place, Hassan will be reliant on the support of volunteer groups for English language lessons. There is another practical barrier, too  Hassan had a letter from his local authority (which he carries with him) saying there are three potential schools for him. But none are near Hassans home, and two of the schools are two bus rides away.

Navigating the system

If Hassan isnt successful in finding a school place in 40 days, his case will appear before whats known as a Fair Access Panel. This will allocate a place to Hassan and there will be a further period of time when the school can appeal this decision.

Should he find a place, the school, undoubtedly worried about balancing budgets and managing limited resources, will decide which class to put him in, which subjects, and which sets. He might also attend an intervention programme to develop his English and help him access the curriculum, but such places are limited. More likely, Hassan will be placed in a mainstream classroom and given in-house language support  which will mean withdrawal from some lessons. He will probably also be placed in lower sets because his English will mask his real ability.

These decisions will have short, and maybe, longer-term implications for Hassans prospects and for the friendship groups he develops.

The Swedish way

But until Hassan gets a school place, he is stuck. He reached the UK but is unable to begin making a new life because he cannot access the support the education system should be able to offer him. And if this is still the case after the age of 16, his experiences are likely to be worse because places in post 16 provision are often even more limited.

But had Hassan landed in Sweden, he and his family would access two hours daily of Swedish language tuition  as part of their residence permit. In school, Hassan would also receive two hours teaching per week in his home language.

Continued instruction in a child's first language is essential to learn a second or third language (Shutterstock)

This reflects research which shows that when it comes to language learning, a bilingual environment is most successful. This means a childs first language is continued to enable them to learn a second or third language more quickly. In Sweden, Hassans local school would also commit to enrol him as quickly as possible. Often within a fortnight of arriving in the country.

Like Sweden, schools in the UK should also be inclusive spaces that offer education for all rather than just for league tables. This is important because young refugees are likely to complete their education in their new country  becoming full members of their post-settlement society. So instead of restricting access to education, the UK should instead recognise the potential of these children and welcome them in its schools as they begin their new lives.

Joanna McIntyre is an associate professor of education at the University of Nottingham. This article was originally published on The Conversation (www.conversation.com)
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The election of Donald Trump could be harmful to peoples health, according to a review of recent research.

Public health experts from Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital said some early studies had found an increase in hostility towards Muslims, immigrants and ethnic minorities following the Republican billionaires election.

But they said the same had also been experienced after Barack Obamas election as president.

And such increased social tension had been linked to mental and physical health problems, including stress, increased risk of disease, babies being born to early and even premature death.

Professor David Williams, of the Harvard T H Chan School of Public Health and Harvard University, said: Elections can matter for the health of children and adults in profound ways that are often unrecognised and unaddressed.

Mr Obamas election had been followed by an uptick in racial animosity among white Americans and a proliferation of hate websites and anti-Obama sentiment on social media, according to a statement about the research issued by the Harvard Chan School.

Donald Trump's election appeared to heighten already hostile attitudes toward racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants, and Muslims, according to some early research, it added.

The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Show all 9 1 /9 The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the media White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer takes questions during the daily press briefing Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Union leaders applaud US President Donald Trump for signing an executive order withdrawing the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations during a meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington DC. Mr Trump issued a presidential memorandum in January announcing that the US would withdraw from the trade deal Getty The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Mexico wall A US Border Patrol vehicle sits waiting for illegal immigrants at a fence opening near the US-Mexico border near McAllen, Texas. The number of incoming immigrants has surged ahead of the upcoming Presidential inauguration of Donald Trump, who has pledged to build a wall along the US-Mexico border. A signature campaign promise, Mr Trump outlined his intention to build a border wall on the US-Mexico border days after taking office Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and abortion US President Donald Trump signs an executive order as Chief of Staff Reince Priebus looks on in the Oval Office of the White House. Mr Trump reinstated a ban on American financial aide being granted to non-governmental organizations that provide abortion counseling, provide abortion referrals, or advocate for abortion access outside of the United States Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Dakota Access pipeline Opponents of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines hold a rally as they protest US President Donald Trump's executive orders advancing their construction, at Columbus Circle in New York. US President Donald Trump signed executive orders reviving the construction of two controversial oil pipelines, but said the projects would be subject to renegotiation Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and 'Obamacare' Nancy Pelosi who is the minority leader of the House of Representatives speaks beside House Democrats at an event to protect the Affordable Care Act in Los Angeles, California. US President Donald Trump's effort to make good on his campaign promise to repeal and replace the healthcare law failed when Republicans failed to get enough votes. Mr Trump has promised to revisit the matter Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Donald Trump and 'sanctuary cities' US President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January threatening to pull funding for so-called "sanctuary cities" if they do not comply with federal immigration law AP The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the travel ban US President Donald Trump has attempted twice to restrict travel into the United States from several predominantly Muslim countries. The first attempt, in February, was met with swift opposition from protesters who flocked to airports around the country. That travel ban was later blocked by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The second ban was blocked by a federal judge a day before it was scheduled to be implemented in mid-March SANDY HUFFAKER/AFP/Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and climate change US President Donald Trump sought to dismantle several of his predecessor's actions on climate change in March. His order instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to reevaluate the Clean Power Plan, which would cap power plant emissions Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

The researchers pointed to a survey by the American Psychological Association in January which found that a large proportion of American adults were stressed by the current political environment. The problem affected more Democrats than Republicans and more minorities than non-Hispanic whites.

A study, published in August last year, of 1,836 US counties found a higher risk of death from heart disease among both black and white residents of areas where there were high levels of prejudice with a stronger effect among blacks than whites, the statement said.

And a study about birth problems among women of multiple racial and ethnic groups in California found that Arab American women had a higher risk of giving birth prematurely or to babies with a low birth weight in the six months after the 11 September terrorist attacks on the US.

Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, the researchers suggested doctors could suggest psychotherapy or medication to people displaying signs of side-effects from the presidential election.
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It was the end that the most extravagantly wealthy arms dealer of the modern era would have wished for.

Adnan Khashoggi died peacefully, surrounded by his loving family, just days short of his 82nd birthday.

His family spoke of him being able to live out his final days with the same elegance and dignity that characterised his remarkable life. It hailed him as a pioneer who achieved global recognition through his extraordinary business achievements and renowned generosity.

Recommended Britain is now the second biggest arms dealer in the world

Because this was no time to go into the details of those extraordinary business achievements or to list the weapons sales that helped fund the elegance and dignity in which the arms dealer lived out his life.

Instead, the family declared, Our father understood the art of bringing people together better than anyone.

How crass it would be to mention that the weapons he helped sell perfected the art of blowing people apart.

And Adnan Khashoggi helped sell enough of these weapons to become one of the worlds wealthiest men: a fortune once estimated at 2.4 billion, friendships with Saudi and Hollywood royalties, homes all over the world, a superyacht later sold to Donald Trump, a personal bodyguard nicknamed Mr Kill.

He started young, helped by the contacts that come from having a father who was the court doctor to King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia.

Aged 21, about a year after enrolling at Chico State College, California, he earned a commission of $150,000 dollars for assisting in a deal to sell $3 million of trucks to Egypt.

He never returned to finish his college degree.

Instead, as the Saudi royal family began to plough its oil wealth into weaponry in the 1960s and 1970s, Khashoggi became the perfect Mr Fixit, linking his old friends in Saudi Arabia with his new friends, the American and British arms manufacturers.

One Lockheed Martin director described him as a one-man marketing department. Others whose deals he helped facilitate included the British firms Marconi and Westland Helicopters.

As his reputation spread, Khashoggis commission rates increased to as much as 15 per cent, on deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

And as his fortune grew and grew, the settings in which Khashoggi fixed the deals became ever more congenial.

He went through yachts the way you or I go through cars, said his biographer Ronald Kessler.

By 1980, he could afford Nabila, named after his daughter, 281ft (86.6 metres) long, the largest private yacht in the world at the time, on which it is said Khashoggi lavished money with utter abandon: sundeck with bullet-proof glass, solid gold sink in the master suite.

They didnt just use any old onyx in the bathrooms of the chamois leather-lined cabins. It was hand carved onyx, sculpted by the finest craftsman from the hills of Italy, as described by the next owner, Donald Trump, who in 1987 bought her for nearly $30m.

Never one to miss an opportunity to flaunt his wealth, Khashoggi let his yacht be used for the 1983 Bond film Never Say Never Again. It appeared as the floating HQ of international supervillain, SPECTRE agent Maximillian Largo.

That, of course, was fiction.

The reality, though, was almost as exotic.

10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Show all 10 1 /10 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses In October 2014, three lawyers, Dr Abdulrahman al-Subaihi, Bander al-Nogaithan and Abdulrahman al-Rumaih , were sentenced to up to eight years in prison for using Twitter to criticize the Ministry of Justice. AFP/Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses In March 2015, Yemens Sunni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi was forced into exile after a Shia-led insurgency. A Saudi Arabia-led coalition has responded with air strikes in order to reinstate Mr Hadi. It has since been accused of committing war crimes in the country. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Women who supported the Women2Drive campaign, launched in 2011 to challenge the ban on women driving vehicles, faced harassment and intimidation by the authorities. The government warned that women drivers would face arrest. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Members of the Kingdoms Shia minority, most of whom live in the oil-rich Eastern Province, continue to face discrimination that limits their access to government services and employment. Activists have received death sentences or long prison terms for their alleged participation in protests in 2011 and 2012. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses All public gatherings are prohibited under an order issued by the Interior Ministry in 2011. Those defy the ban face arrest, prosecution and imprisonment on charges such as inciting people against the authorities. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses In March 2014, the Interior Ministry stated that authorities had deported over 370,000 foreign migrants and that 18,000 others were in detention. Thousands of workers were returned to Somalia and other states where they were at risk of human rights abuses, with large numbers also returned to Yemen, in order to open more jobs to Saudi Arabians. Many migrants reported that prior to their deportation they had been packed into overcrowded makeshift detention facilities where they received little food and water and were abused by guards. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses The Saudi Arabian authorities continue to deny access to independent human rights organisations like Amnesty International, and they have been known to take punitive action, including through the courts, against activists and family members of victims who contact Amnesty. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Raif Badawi was sentenced to 1000 lashes and 10 years in prison for using his liberal blog to criticise Saudi Arabias clerics. He has already received 50 lashes, which have reportedly left him in poor health. Carsten Koall/Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Dawood al-Marhoon was arrested aged 17 for participating in an anti-government protest. After refusing to spy on his fellow protestors, he was tortured and forced to sign a blank document that would later contain his confession. At Dawoods trial, the prosecution requested death by crucifixion while refusing him a lawyer. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Ali Mohammed al-Nimr was arrested in 2012 aged either 16 or 17 for participating in protests during the Arab spring. His sentence includes beheading and crucifixion. The international community has spoken out against the punishment and has called on Saudi Arabia to stop. He is the nephew of a prominent government dissident. Getty

His whole modus operandi was to influence clients with his opulent lifestyle, the biographer Mr Kessler told New York magazine in 1988.

And Khashoggi did not confine his attempts at influence to just businessmen. At one point, it is said, he simultaneously entertained five heads of state including three kings on board his yacht.

His ability to charm was legendary. Khashoggi became friends with Richard Nixon in the 1960s, helping fund both his US Presidential election campaigns, at one point reportedly presenting Tricky Dickys daughter with a $60,000 dollar bracelet.

It has been alleged that one of his first weapons deals was providing weapons to David Stirling, founder of the SAS, for a covert operation in Yemen in 1963.

Forty years later, in March 2003, the New Yorker claimed that Khashoggi had met with Richard Perle, the chairman of the US Defence Policy Board shortly before the invasion of Iraq. Like many of the fine details of Khashoggis encounters with the powerful, however, exactly what may have passed between the two men remains unclear.

On board the yacht Nabila, visitors included at least one US ambassador. But the most frequent guests were as New York magazine put it, Arab princes, Third World officials, and shadowy European and American businessmen.

Ensconced in its suites, they used the 150 telephones and the satellite communication system to arrange arms sales and commodities trades.

Donald Trump later renamed the yacht (AFP/Getty)

On occasion Khashoggi would go from cabin to cabin, keeping as many as 16 different deals going at the same time.

And whatever was needed to smooth the deal, the client would get.

He would give them anything they wanted: girls, food, cash, said Mr Kessler. He had quite a variety of occasions on the boat. Some were very formal, some were orgies.

One of the girls used in this way, Pamella Bordes, later spoke of being part of an enormous group  used as sexual bait.

In 1989 Vanity Fair magazine bluntly described Khashoggi as one of the greatest whoremongers in the world. Very few of his business associates ever complained.

And when the time came to sign the contract, the yacht could slip into international waters, where sovereign restrictions on their business deals did not apply.

At least some of Khashoggis commissions, meanwhile, are alleged to have been directed towards front companies in Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

Despite such discretion, his name had a habit of appearing in connection with some of the worlds most controversial arms deals.

Khashoggi's private jets were said to contain two wardrobes: one with Savile Row suits, the other containing traditional Saudi dress (Getty)

In the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s, Khashoggi was named as one of the key middlemen between Oliver North in the White House and Iran.

As such, he was claimed to have been caught up in the Reagan administrations secret plot to secure the release of hostages by selling arms to Iran, with the money paid to the US being diverted to right-wing Contra rebels in Nicaragua whose alleged human rights abuses included rape and torture.

Also in the 1980s it seems Khashoggi was, at least initially, on the side of France in the battle with Margaret Thatchers Britain to secure the massive, ironically named al-Yamamah (meaning Dove) arms deal with Saudi Arabia.

In 1994 there were allegations that Britain got the multi-billion deal thanks to bribes to members of the Saudi government and royal family.

At the same time, Khashoggi claimed that the success of his rival Wafic Said in securing the deal for Britain had been aided by the involvement of Mark Thatcher, the former Prime Ministers son.

The Sunday Times quoted Khashoggi as saying: Wafic was using Mark's intelligence. His value to Wafic was his name.

Mark Thatcher seen here with his mother and his wife Sarah in 2012 has always denied making money from the al-Yamamah deal (Rex Features)

Where the truth lies, though, remains uncertain. Mark Thatcher has always strenuously denied making money from the deal signed by his mother in 1985.

In 2006 a Serious Fraud Office inquiry into alleged bribes to Saudis was dropped, with the Blair government saying it was not in the national interest, and BAE Systems raising fears it was about to lose out on the third phase of the al-Yamamah deal.

As for Khashoggi, he was never convicted of any crime, in any of his dealings  although he had a few anxious moments.

In 1989, while in Switzerland, he was arrested at the Schweizerhof, Berns most luxurious hotel.

Khashoggi was wanted by the US government in connection with allegations that he had conspired with Ferdinand Marcos, former dictator of the Philippines, and his shoe-loving wife Imelda, to hide wealth that the couple had stolen from their country.

His three months awaiting extradition in a Swiss jail on charges of racketeering, conspiracy, obstruction of justice and mail fraud were not, however, overly arduous.

It was reported that someone ensured the arms dealer had gourmet food from the Schweizerhof brought to his cell.

Khashoggi was accused, but then cleared over his dealings with dictator's widow Imelda Marcos (AP)

Even better, when Khashoggi got to America, the authorities dropped all but the less serious charges of obstruction of justice and mail fraud. And then in 1990 a federal jury in Manhattan cleared both him and the by-now-widowed Imelda.

Towards the end, looking back on his life, Khashoggi had insisted: What did I do wrong? Nothing. I behaved unethically, for ethical reasons.

Perhaps this is what his family meant when in their statement they praised his over-riding loyalty to his country, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. His work always furthered the interests of his country.

Khashoggi himself chose to characterise his work to at least one bemused interviewer as marketing.

If it was marketing, it was the kind of marketing that was conducted in palaces, luxury properties and a superyacht that never went anywhere the zones of war and collateral damage that were the ultimate destination for some of the weapons being sold.

And it was the kind of marketing that brought with it enough money to ensure that for Khashoggi there were no laws, no skies, no limits - to quote his friend Prince Alfonso Hohenlohe-Langenburg of Spain.

Thus Khashoggi ensured that on his yacht, the owners suite  separate from his wifes accommodation  had not just a 10ft-wide bed, but a secret passageway.

It allowed for discreet exits to be made by the women he called his pleasure wives. One woman, brought into the orbit of the 5ft 4in, 14-stone billionaire as a naive young model in the 1980s, described falling in love with him, becoming a member of his harem.

I want you to be one of my pleasure wives, he told her. By Saudi Arabian law, I'm allowed to have 11 pleasure wives and three legal wives.

The legal wives began in 1961 with Sandra Daly, 20 yrs old at the time, double his height, who grew up on a Leicester council estate and who met him while visiting Paris with her mother.

After they divorced in 1974, Mrs Khashoggi, now converted to Islam and renamed Soraya, eventually received a divorce settlement of $875 million, which at the time was the largest ever.

His second wife, an Italian named Laura Biancolini, whom he married in 1980, was only 17 when she met him. In 1991, he also wed Iranian-born Shahpari Azam Zanganeh, although this marriage was later dissolved.

Romantically, Khashoggi did not always have everything his own way.

In 1999 it was revealed that he was not the biological father of Sorayas daughter Petrina. The real father was Jonathan Aitken, ex-Conservative minister for Defence Procurement, at the time awaiting court proceedings that would lead to him being jailed for perjury.

Petrina Khashoggi (Getty Images)

It also has to be said that in business as well as pleasure, not everything worked out as Khashoggi planned.

By the mid-Eighties, he had homes in London, Paris, Cannes, Monte Carlo; a 10,000-acre ranch in Kenya; a sprawling two-floor Manhattan residence created by buying 16 separate apartments and knocking them all together.

He owned a stable of Arabian horses, 100 limousines, three private jets, and could call upon the services of a South Korean bodyguard trained in martial arts and rejoicing in the nickname Mr Kill.

It was said Khashoggi spent $250,000 a day to keep himself in the luxury to which he had become accustomed.

To celebrate his 50th birthday, in July 1985, he treated 400 guests to a five-day extravaganza at his 5,000-acre seaside estate in Marbella, Spain. Khashoggis brother reportedly gave him a lion cub. Shirley Bassey sang Happy Birthday, and he danced with the Hollywood star Brooke Shields.

A fleet of refrigerator trucks were brought in just to cool the champagne.

The birthday cake, was said to have been a work of art, topped by a 3ft long sugar recreation of the coronation crown of Louis XIV, the French Sun King.

Khashoggi and his wife on the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival in 2008 (EPA/GUILLAUME HORCAJUELO)

Khashoggi was, in the telling comparison of one commentator the Gatsby of his time.

The downfall was never as complete or as theatrical as Gatsbys, but soon after that 50th birthday party, Khashoggi started to be hit by the fall in oil prices that prompted the Saudis to cut back on arms buying.

Creditors  the Sultan of Brunei among them - started to circle.

In 1987, Triad America Corporation, his American company which was involved in a $400 million development in Salt Lake City, filed for bankruptcy after it was unable to pay its debts.

Khashoggis gambling, it was said, was making things worse. There were unproven rumours of him taking money from his businesses to pay for his losses at the gaming tables, and failing to pay bills, or his servants.

In 1998 he suffered the embarrassment of having the High Court hear claims that his cheques, written to the value of 3.2 million, had bounced when he tried to settle losses incurred at the roulette wheel of the Ritz Casino in London.

He eventually agreed an out-of-court settlement with the casino, but not before the court had heard how he had made repeated promises to pay back the money, while claiming that he was having financial difficulties.

The private jets eventually went, Khashoggi having to slum it on commercial airlines. Mr Kill the bodyguard was also told his services were no longer affordable.

It seems the creditors chased him for the rest of his life.

At the Lambertz Monday Party in Cologne, January 2008 (EPA/FELIX HEYDER ) (EPA/FELIX HEYDER)

And yet it also seems that Khashoggi avoided anything as ignominious as personal bankruptcy.

He just lived the quiet life in Monaco  while getting invitations to some of the glitziest parties going in that part of the world: in 2005 the guestlist for one Cannes Film Festival party included Sharon Stone, Jessica Alba, Penelope Cruz and Adnan Khashoggi.

At the 2007 festival, he was partying at the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc, stopover of choice for Hollywood stars since 1946.

For an arms dealer and whoremonger extraordinaire, it probably wasnt too bad a life.
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Islamophobic hate crimes jumped fivefold in the wake of the London Bridge terror attack, new figures show.

The data, collated by the Metropolitan Police, reveals there was a 40 per cent increase in racist incidents on 6 June compared with an average day this year.

Provisional figures show the number of racist incidents recorded on Tuesday was 54, compared with a daily average of 38 this year.

Looking only at incidents where the Islam was listed as a trigger, the statistics show a fivefold increase - its highest daily level in 2017.

Twenty such crimes were handled by police on Tuesday, compared with a daily average for 2017 of 3.5.

The number of reported Islamophobic hate crimes was also higher than in the days following the Paris attacks in November 2015 and the murder of Lee Rigby in May 2013.

Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, has encouraged members of the public to report hate crimes to the police, saying the city was adopting a zero-tolerance approach.

He said: "One of the greatest things about London is our defiant unity in the face of adversity - and that will not change in the aftermath of this horrific attack.

"Just as the police will do everything possible to root out extremism from our city, so we will take a zero-tolerance approach to hate crime.

"If you witness a hate crime please report it to the police. If you commit a hate crime, you face arrest.

 Islamophobic crimes rose after Westminster attacks, police reveal

Crowds gather for vigil honouring victims of London Bridge attack Show all 8 1 /8 Crowds gather for vigil honouring victims of London Bridge attack Crowds gather for vigil honouring victims of London Bridge attack John Loughrey lays down flowers in Potters Fields Park, central London in honour of the London Bridge terror attack victims PA Crowds gather for vigil honouring victims of London Bridge attack People queue to lay flowers after a vigil for victims of Saturday's attack in London Bridge, at Potter's Field Park in London AP Crowds gather for vigil honouring victims of London Bridge attack Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan (centre) British Home Office Secretary, Amber Rudd (right) and British Shadow Labour Home Secretary (left) Diane Abbott arrive with flowers EPA Crowds gather for vigil honouring victims of London Bridge attack PA Crowds gather for vigil honouring victims of London Bridge attack Floral tributes left for victims of Saturdays London Bridge attack AP Crowds gather for vigil honouring victims of London Bridge attack People pay their respects, leaving floral tributes after a vigil for victims of Saturdays attack in London Bridge AP Crowds gather for vigil honouring victims of London Bridge attack People queue to honour those killed on Saturday. Police have arrested several people and are widening their investigation after the attack AP Crowds gather for vigil honouring victims of London Bridge attack Tributes lie outside City Hall in London EPA

The spike in reported hate crimes comes just three days after terrorists murdered eight people on London Bridge and outside restaurants and bars near Borough Market.

Mr Khan added: "I'm calling on all Londoners to pull together, and send a clear message around the world that our city will never be divided by these hideous individuals who seek to harm us and destroy our way of life.

"London will never be cowed or divided by terrorism."

 London Bridge terrorists: What we know so far

After the suicide bombing in Manchester on 22 May, Muslim leaders warned of a rise in hate crimes in the city.

There was also a spike following the Westminster incident in March, when five people were killed in a car and knife attack.

Craig Mackey, acting Commissioner of the Met, said at the time he had seen a slight uplift in the number of anti-Muslim attacks the day after Khalid Masood went on a killing spree.

Recommended 500 imams refuse to perform funeral prayer for London Bridge attackers

Commenting on the upsurge, Fiyaz Mughal, founder of Islamophobic helpline Tell Mama, said there was a measurable and large spike after the latest attack in London.

We know from all of the terrorist attacks since 2011 that anti-Muslim hatred spikes sharply in our country after them, he told The Independent.

Westminster was the only terrorist attack that did not produce a large spike of anti-Muslim hate incidents.

We are at the coalface of supporting victims of anti-Muslim hatred and in ensuring that hate crimes are tackled and we know that the Manchester murders produced one of the largest spikes and number of cases that we have seen in 7 days after a terrorist attack.

Within days of the spike dropping, we have another significant, measurable and large spike after the London Bridge murders.

Terrorists are trying to divide our communities and society. People who target innocent Muslims who have nothing to do with extremism or terrorism are playing into the hands of Islamist extremist terrorists. This is what they want  divided societies and communities.
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Hundreds of voters in Plymouth have been left without postal voting forms just days before the general election.

Plymouth City Council says it has reissued "around 370 replacement ballot packs" to those who have contacted them, and urged anyone whose remain missing to call their offices.

The local authority claimed it had sent out all the forms in accordance with the regulations, adding that this had been "confirmed by our printers". Both it and Royal Mail are now investigating.

Those who applied before the May 23 deadline and have not yet received them can order replacement packs via special delivery on the same day, go in to the council offices during select times on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday or nominate someone to collect it for them, the council said.

Several people took to social media to complain about the issues.

Elliot Phillips, 25, is due to go on holiday before election day, and described the problems as "an absolute joke", saying: "People are essentially being robbed of their right to vote."

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. 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"The whole point of postal votes is so that people who can't make it to a polling station can still vote. Their solution to postal votes not being delivered on time... is to get people to come down to the council offices," he added.

Mr Phillips said: "I'm lucky as the only reason I requested a postal vote is because I'm going on holiday later today. My boss let me out of work early so I can go and vote before I leave.

"I know some people now won't get the chance which is unacceptable and blaming it on the Royal Mail is utter b*******."

Another resident, Tom Carmichael, said he had given up calling the council after five attempts to get through.

Recommended Theresa May has done a lot worse than run through wheat fields

"I've read that if my postal vote does arrive by Thursday morning, I'll be able to complete it and hand it in at my nearest polling station, so that's what I'm planning to do that at the moment, should it arrive before then."

A Royal Mail spokeswoman said: "We are aware that a number of postal votes in Plymouth have not arrived with recipients.

"Royal Mail takes its responsibility of delivering election information very seriously and is investigating this matter urgently.

"We are currently working closely with the council to organise specific deliveries so that the individuals affected receive their ballot packs as soon as possible."
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The first pictures to emerge of Borough Market since Saturday nights terror attack show tables and chairs strewn about as police tape flutters in the background.

Overturned furniture and other items fill the abandoned Stoney Street outside the Wheatsheaf pub, where drinkers were caught up in the attack by murderers Khuram Butt, Rachid Redouane and Youseff Zaghba.

The trio killed eight people and injured dozens before they were shot dead.

(Jeremy Selwyn (Jeremy Selwyn)

The historic market is still sealed off, but these images were taken from the top deck of a number 21 bus on Wednesday.

The death toll from the attack rose to eight on Wednesday morning, when detectives searching for a French national recovered a body from the Thames near Limehouse.

Xavier Thomas, 45, is thought to have been struck by the terrorists van on the bridge; witnesses reported him being thrown into the water.

(Jeremy Selwyn (Jeremy Selwyn)

At least 500 imams and religious leaders have now refused to perform funeral prayers for the London Bridge attackers in condemnation of the vile murderers.

Support for the move is growing as a group of British Muslims prepare to gather near the site of the atrocity, in order to outline renewed efforts against extremism.

The British Muslim Forum said members would set out how communities and mosques will challenge, robustly and precisely, the perverted interpretation of Islam that is put forward by Isis and other extremist groups, while calling on people to report anyone expressing sympathy to authorities.
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At least 500 imams and religious leaders have now refused to perform funeral prayers for the London Bridge attackers in condemnation of the vile murderers.

Support for the move is growing as a group of British Muslims prepare to gather near the site of the atrocity to outline renewed efforts against extremism.

The British Muslim Forum (BMF) said members would set out how communities and mosques will challenge, robustly and precisely, the perverted interpretation of Islam that is put forward by Isis and other extremist groups, while calling on people to report anyone expressing sympathy to authorities.

Qari Asim, spokesperson for the BMF and imam of the Leeds Makkah mosque, said: the group aimed to broadcast the message that violent extremism was forbidden by Islam.

If you follow this path you are stepping away from Islam to a dark and godless place, he added.

Your views are not welcome in our mosques or in our communities. This is not a path to heaven.

 Thousands join together for vigil after London Bridge terror attack

Shaykh Shahid Raza, a trustee of the BMF said that although the vast majority of British Muslims reject extremism, there are individuals and organisations trying to sell a perverted version of Islam to impressionable young people.

We want to make very clear, as Islamic scholars and leaders, that they are wrong, he added. The violent and hate-filled views they hold are not Islamic.

A joint statement endorsed by 500 imams across the UK will reiterate the commitment to not accepting terrorists in life or death by refusing to perform funeral prayers for terrorists.

It comes after almost 200 imams and religious leaders made the same pledge in a separate statement shared by the Muslim Council of Britain.

Supporters said they were praying for terrorists to be judged in accordance with the gravity of their crimes in the hereafter, adding: Consequently, and in light of other such ethical principles which are quintessential to Islam, we will not perform the traditional Islamic funeral prayer for the perpetrators and we also urge fellow imams and religious authorities to withdraw such a privilege.

These vile murderers seek to divide our society and instil fear; we will ensure they fail.

Shaykh Yunus Dudhwala, head of chaplaincy at Barts Health NHS Trust, said the grassroots movement was part of efforts to show those at risk of radicalisation that the ideology espoused by Isis is not from the teachings of Islam.

We needed to go a step further and disassociate ourselves from these people, he told The Independent.

The refusal to perform funeral prayers will hopefully by a deterrent but were also trying to reach out to anyone who is of that thinking to say talk to the imams, speak to us and ask us why weve made this statement  then we can have that dialogue and move them away from extremism.

Imam Dudhwala said it was essential for young Muslims to be part of local mosques to gain full religious teaching and discuss theological questions.

London Attack victims Show all 8 1 /8 London Attack victims London Attack victims Christine Archibald, a Canadian woman who was killed in the latest London attack PA London Attack victims James McMullan, 32, who is believed to be one of victims who died in the London Bridge terror attack after his bank card was found on a body at the scene PA London Attack victims Australian nurse Kirsty Boden, aged 28. a staff nurse at Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital in London, England, who died in the 03 June 2017 terror attack on London Bridge and Borough Market EPA London Attack victims Darren Mole Twitter / DarrenMole London Attack victims Oliver Dowling and his girlfriend Marie Bondeville were injured in the london terror attacks Facebook London Attack victims Candice Hedge London Attack victims Alexandre Pigeard, from Normandy, was knifed to death at Boro Bistro after three terrorists went on the rampage on Saturday night DoyouBuzz London Attack victims Geoff Ho Facebook

The majority of these individuals are groomed or brainwashed outside of the mosques and they usually dont attend because they feel we are not teaching the correct Islam, he added.

Mosques and Islamic groups across the UK have condemned the London Bridge attack and other atrocities committed by Isis supporters.

Worshippers at a mosque attended by Khuram Butt pointed out that he had been thrown out after ranting about elections and claiming voting was un-Islamic, but not detained despite numerous warnings to police over radicalisation.

Security services are facing serious questions over why they did not prioritise the attacker, who was known to police and MI5, and publicly associated with Anjem Choudarys network of extremists.

They have also been criticised for letting fellow attacker Zaghba Youssef into the UK after he was prevented from travelling to join Isis in Syria and told Italian police he wanted to be a terrorist.

His mother, Valeria Collina, told reporters in Bologna she understood imams refusal to offer prayers for her son.

I understand them and share their choice because we need to send a strong political signal, she said.

The third attacker, Rachid Redouane, had been refused asylum in the UK but gained residency through his marriage to an Irish woman who suffered domestic abuse because of her refusal to convert to Islam.
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The estranged wife of one of the London Bridge attackers has said she was left numb by his actions.

Charisse O'Leary, who married Rachid Redouane in Dublin in 2012, said she has shed many tears for the people caught up in this horrific incident that left eight victims dead.

I am deeply shocked, saddened and numbed by the actions of my ex-partner who has killed and injured so many innocent people, she said in a statement.

"We have a beautiful young daughter, that for the last six months has been our only bond and reason for contact, she continued.

"My thoughts and efforts now are with trying to bring up my daughter with the knowledge that some day I will have to try and explain to her why her father did what he did.

"I wish to make it absolutely clear, so there can be no doubt, I condemn his actions and do not support the beliefs he held that led to him committing this atrocity[my] heartfelt thoughts go out to all those murdered or injured ."

Images provided by Met Police of murderers (left to right) Khuram Butt, Rachid Redouane and Youssef Zaghba

Ms O'Leary, who had complained over Redouanes failure to visit their daughter on social media, said they split earlier this year.

Friends said the suspected Isis supporter had physically and emotionally abused his wife while attempting to force her to become a traditional Muslim wife.

Wed try to arrange to meet for coffee but she would call and say, I cant, a friend told the Daily Mirror.

It would either be, hes slapped me in the middle of the street today or hes kicked me or he will not let me out the house.

He did not want her to drink or smoke  he wanted her to wear a hijab, he wanted a traditional Muslim wife, and Charisse was not that.

Ms OLeary reportedly told friends her marriage felt like she was in prison, saying her husband hit, kicked and slapped her, and sometimes confined her to the house.

The pair had met in London in 2010, getting married in Dublin in 2012 with a traditional Islamic ceremony followed by a civil ceremony at a registry office.

 London Bridge terrorists: What we know so far

Redouane later moved back to his home country of Morocco, where he stayed for more than a year before the couple moved to the UK.

He had been refused asylum by the British government in 2009 but was granted a EU residence card through his marriage in Ireland, which later allowed him to reside in the UK.

Redouane, who worked as a pastry chef, also used the surname Elkhdar and is believed to have been known as Rachid al-Magrabi.

There were reports he had fought against Muammar Gaddafis forces at the start of the Libyan civil war in 2011, where he potentially could have come into contact with Manchester attacker Salman Abedi and his family.

The terrorist was born in Morocco but his father was Libyan, causing him to describe himself as both Moroccan and Libyan according to the Metropolitan Police.

At the time of Saturdays attack, Redouane had been living in Barking, near the home of suspected ringleader Khuram Butt.

The third attacker, Youssef Zaghba, lived in nearby Ilford and moved to the UK despite being put on a Europe-wide terror watchlist after attempted to join Isis in Syria and telling Italian police he wanted to be a terrorist.

Crowds gather for vigil honouring victims of London Bridge attack Show all 8 1 /8 Crowds gather for vigil honouring victims of London Bridge attack Crowds gather for vigil honouring victims of London Bridge attack John Loughrey lays down flowers in Potters Fields Park, central London in honour of the London Bridge terror attack victims PA Crowds gather for vigil honouring victims of London Bridge attack People queue to lay flowers after a vigil for victims of Saturday's attack in London Bridge, at Potter's Field Park in London AP Crowds gather for vigil honouring victims of London Bridge attack Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan (centre) British Home Office Secretary, Amber Rudd (right) and British Shadow Labour Home Secretary (left) Diane Abbott arrive with flowers EPA Crowds gather for vigil honouring victims of London Bridge attack PA Crowds gather for vigil honouring victims of London Bridge attack Floral tributes left for victims of Saturdays London Bridge attack AP Crowds gather for vigil honouring victims of London Bridge attack People pay their respects, leaving floral tributes after a vigil for victims of Saturdays attack in London Bridge AP Crowds gather for vigil honouring victims of London Bridge attack People queue to honour those killed on Saturday. Police have arrested several people and are widening their investigation after the attack AP Crowds gather for vigil honouring victims of London Bridge attack Tributes lie outside City Hall in London EPA

Prosecutors in Italy say there was not enough evidence to arrest or charge the 22-year-old when he was intercepted at Bologna airport in March last year, but the incident sparked serious questions for British security services.

The Metropolitan Police said Zaghba was not a subject of interest to police or MI5, but Butt had been under investigation as a prominent associate of Anjem Choudarys network of extremists.

Police have said Redouane was not known to security services, but he is believed to have associated with Zaghba.

The pair were seen together at a cafe next to a betting shop in East Ham, where a flat above was raided this week.

The death toll of the trios bloody rampage rose to eight on Wednesday after a victims body was found in the River Thames.

Xavier Thomas, 45, is thought to have been knocked off London Bridge by their speeding van before the attackers emerged with knives and stabbed passers-by at bars and restaurants around Borough Market.

The other seven victims killed have been named as: Canadian Christine Archibald, 30, James McMullan, 32, from Hackney, east London, Alexandre Pigeard, 27 and Sebastien Belanger, 36, both from France, Australians Kirsty Boden, 28, and Sara Zelenak, and Spaniard Ignacio Echeverria, 39.


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An Australian woman who was thought to be missing following the London Bridge terror attack was killed in the atrocity after avoiding two other terror attacks, her mother has revealed.

Sara Zelenak's mother, Julie Wallace, said DNA tests had confirmed her daughter was among those murdered when three men drove a van into pedestrians before stabbing passers-by.

The 21-year-old nanny, from Brisbane, had become separated from her friends as they left the London Grind bar near the bridge when the attack happened.

According to Ms Wallace, her daughter had been at Westminster Bridge the day before Khalid Masood ploughed through pedestrians there in March, and had planned to go to the Manchester Ariana Grande concert on 22 May, Australian radio station 97.3FM reported.

Ms Zelenak's family and friends paid tribute online.

Her father, Mark Wallace, shared a video of his daughter and wrote: I really miss that funny little laugh.

Friend Elle Bishop said on Facebook: "I find solace in the fact that the hate that saw you taken from us, you have never felt inside, making you a remarkable young woman."

London Bridge Terror Attack Show all 16 1 /16 London Bridge Terror Attack London Bridge Terror Attack Armed police on Borough High Street as police are dealing with a "major incident" at London Bridge PA London Bridge Terror Attack Armed Police talk to members of the public outside London Bridge Hospital as police are dealing with a "major incident" at London Bridge PA London Bridge Terror Attack Police Officers outside the Barrowboy and Banker Public House on Borough High Street as police are dealing with a "major incident" at London Bridge PA London Bridge Terror Attack Armed Police talk to members of the public outside London Bridge Hospital as police are dealing with a "major incident" at London Bridge PA London Bridge Terror Attack Armed police on Borough High Street as police deal with a 'major incident' at London Bridge PA London Bridge Terror Attack Emergency services near the scene of the incident Screengrab London Bridge Terror Attack People run down Borough High Street as police are dealing with a "major incident" at London Bridge Reuters London Bridge Terror Attack Emergency services arrive at the scene near Borough market at London Bridge Carl Court/Getty Images London Bridge Terror Attack Emergency personnel on London Bridge as police are dealing with a "major incident" at London Bridge PA London Bridge Terror Attack Police sniffer dogs on London Bridge as police are dealing with a "major incident" at London Bridge PA London Bridge Terror Attack A second helicopter lands on London Bridge as police are responding to three incidents in the capital, amid reports that a vehicle collided with pedestrians on London Bridge, Scotland Yard said. Officers are dealing with reports of stabbings in Borough Market, where armed officers attended and shots were fired. They are also at an incident in the Vauxhall area PA London Bridge Terror Attack Police attend to an incident on London Bridge in London REUTERS London Bridge Terror Attack Police attend to an incident on London Bridge in London, Britain Reuters London Bridge Terror Attack A police officer escorts members of the public to safety at London Bridge Getty Images London Bridge Terror Attack Police attend to an incident on London Bridge in London, Britain Reuters London Bridge Terror Attack Police attend to an incident near London Bridge in London, Britain Reuters

Ms Zelenak's aunt said on Facebook: "We are all so distraught to have lost our little Sara. She is the most beautiful, happy, positive young lady with so much to live for. Her heart and spirit will live on in all of us."

Ms Zelenak had not been seen since the attack after she became separated from friends on Saturday night.

Two Australians were confirmed among the dead by the country's minister for foreign affairs, Julie Bishop.

Later on Wednesday the Metropolitan Police confirmed Ms Zelenak's death and released a statement on behalf of her family.

It said: "We are deeply saddened at the tragic loss of our beautiful daughter and sister of Harrison and Scott. Sara's family and friends are devastated. We would like to thank our friends and family who are helping us through this very difficult time."

Additional reporting by agencies
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The death toll from the London Bridge terror attack has risen to eight after detectives searching for French national recovered a body from the Thames near Limehouse.

Xavier Thomas, 45, is thought to have been struck by the terrorists van on the bridge and witnesses reported him being thrown into the water.

The body was recovered near Limehouse, downstream of London Bridge, at around 7.45pm on Tuesday by specialist officers from the marine police unit.

His next of kin have been informed, Scotland Yard said.

It comes as the siblings of a 39-year-old banker said their brother was one of the eight people killed in the attack.

Ignacio Echeverria was last seen lying on the ground near London Bridge after he confronted the assailants with a skateboard.

His sister Isabel wrote on Facebook: My brother Ignacio tried to stop some terrorists and lost his life trying to save others.

 Minute's silence on London Bridge for attack victims

Earlier, France said two of its citizens had died when three men drove a van into revellers before going on a stabbing spree in central London on Saturday night.

The foreign ministry said that a third French national was still missing and four were seriously injured.

Le Parisien daily newspaper named the second Frenchman to die in the attack as 36-year-old Sebastian Belanger.

London Bridge Terror Attack Show all 16 1 /16 London Bridge Terror Attack London Bridge Terror Attack Armed police on Borough High Street as police are dealing with a "major incident" at London Bridge PA London Bridge Terror Attack Armed Police talk to members of the public outside London Bridge Hospital as police are dealing with a "major incident" at London Bridge PA London Bridge Terror Attack Police Officers outside the Barrowboy and Banker Public House on Borough High Street as police are dealing with a "major incident" at London Bridge PA London Bridge Terror Attack Armed Police talk to members of the public outside London Bridge Hospital as police are dealing with a "major incident" at London Bridge PA London Bridge Terror Attack Armed police on Borough High Street as police deal with a 'major incident' at London Bridge PA London Bridge Terror Attack Emergency services near the scene of the incident Screengrab London Bridge Terror Attack People run down Borough High Street as police are dealing with a "major incident" at London Bridge Reuters London Bridge Terror Attack Emergency services arrive at the scene near Borough market at London Bridge Carl Court/Getty Images London Bridge Terror Attack Emergency personnel on London Bridge as police are dealing with a "major incident" at London Bridge PA London Bridge Terror Attack Police sniffer dogs on London Bridge as police are dealing with a "major incident" at London Bridge PA London Bridge Terror Attack A second helicopter lands on London Bridge as police are responding to three incidents in the capital, amid reports that a vehicle collided with pedestrians on London Bridge, Scotland Yard said. Officers are dealing with reports of stabbings in Borough Market, where armed officers attended and shots were fired. They are also at an incident in the Vauxhall area PA London Bridge Terror Attack Police attend to an incident on London Bridge in London REUTERS London Bridge Terror Attack Police attend to an incident on London Bridge in London, Britain Reuters London Bridge Terror Attack A police officer escorts members of the public to safety at London Bridge Getty Images London Bridge Terror Attack Police attend to an incident on London Bridge in London, Britain Reuters London Bridge Terror Attack Police attend to an incident near London Bridge in London, Britain Reuters

In addition to the eight killed, 48 were injured in the knife and vehicle assault on London Bridge and Borough Market's nearby bars and restaurants.

James McMullan, 32, from Hackney, Canadian citizen Christine Archibald, 30, Australian nurse Kirsty Boden, 28, and Alexandre Pigeard, 27, have already been named among the dead.

Nathalie Cros Brohan, sister of Mr Thomas's girlfriend Christine Delcros, posted on Facebook on Wednesday morning that the family "fear the worst".

Mr Thomas had been missing since he was caught up in the attack with Ms Delcros.

The couple, who were visiting London for the weekend, were walking south over London Bridge around the time the attack started, according to police.

Ms Delcros was seriously injured by the van, although her condition in hospital has stabilised, her family said.
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The suspected ringleader of the London Bridge attack was cautioned over extremist behaviour in January, it has emerged amid questions over how the trio of terrorists were able to launch the atrocity.

Khuram Butt was known to police and MI5 after publicly associating himself with Anjem Choudary and other extremists in his Islamist network.

Having insulted a counter-extremism campaigner at a protest praising the murder of Lee Rigby in 2013, Butt was reported again to police for assaulting a moderate imam last July.

Dr Usama Hasan said Butt started screaming abuse at him during a family funfair celebrating the Islamic festival of Eid in London.

He tried to assault me, he ran at me with an expression of hatred in his face, he added, describing how he ran as family members wrestled Butt away from his target.

Relatives took photos of the assailant, who they did not recognise as he accused Dr Hasan of taking money from the government to work against Muslims ... spying on Muslims and called him an apostate.

Bystanders said Butt had been kicked out of a local mosque for spouting extremist views, which have since been revealed to include the assertion that voting was un-Islamic.

 London terror attack suspect named

Dr Hasan believes the jihadi recognised him because of his work as head of Islamic studies for counter-extremism organisation Quilliam.

He called police over Julys assault, telling officers the unidentified attacker bore all the hallmarks of Choudarys banned al-Muhajiroun group.

In my view they are affecting national security, they must be monitored, they are clearly part of the pro-Isis network, Dr Hasan told the BBC.

Butt was eventually tracked down after about six months and cautioned.

The Metropolitan Police would not confirm what action was taken against Butt in January, saying his background would form part of their investigation.

A caution can be issued with or without a formal arrest, and may impose conditions on the offender.

Butt was already known to British security services over his links to Choudary, who has subsequently been jailed for inviting support of Isis, and members of his inner circle.

In a documentary on Islamist extremists broadcast last year, Butt was shown with the group publicly praying to a black flag associated with jihadi groups, then arguing with police.

London Attack victims Show all 8 1 /8 London Attack victims London Attack victims Christine Archibald, a Canadian woman who was killed in the latest London attack PA London Attack victims James McMullan, 32, who is believed to be one of victims who died in the London Bridge terror attack after his bank card was found on a body at the scene PA London Attack victims Australian nurse Kirsty Boden, aged 28. a staff nurse at Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital in London, England, who died in the 03 June 2017 terror attack on London Bridge and Borough Market EPA London Attack victims Darren Mole Twitter / DarrenMole London Attack victims Oliver Dowling and his girlfriend Marie Bondeville were injured in the london terror attacks Facebook London Attack victims Candice Hedge London Attack victims Alexandre Pigeard, from Normandy, was knifed to death at Boro Bistro after three terrorists went on the rampage on Saturday night DoyouBuzz London Attack victims Geoff Ho Facebook

Jesse Morton, a former al-Qaeda recruiter who became an FBI aide after being jailed, said his communications with Butt dated back several years.

He described him as the administrator for renamed factions of al-Muhajiroun on an online chat platform used by extremists.

He wasnt a key figure but I knew Khuram Butt as someone who was a sympathiser and supporter of our cause, Mr Morton told The New York Times.

[After being released in 2015] I noticed Khuram and expanded his influence inside the al-Muhajiroun network.

In a report for the FBI that year, Mr Morton said he identified the extremist, who used an Islamic name in extremist circles, as someone who might sustain the message despite a crackdown on leaders including Choudary.

Scotland Yard confirmed Butt was known to the police and MI5, adding: However, there was no intelligence to suggest that this attack was being planned and the investigation had been prioritised accordingly.

His accomplice Rachid Redouane, was not known to authorities for extremism, but the third named attacker, Youssef Zaghba, had been put on a Europe-wide watchlist after attempting to travel to Syria and telling Italian police he wanted to be a terrorist.

Work is ongoing to understand more about them, their connections and whether they were assisted or supported by anyone else, a spokesperson for police said.

The way the trio met remains unclear, but a European intelligence official told The New York Times Zaghba was introduced to Butt by an Italian faction of al-Muhajiroun.

Youssef Zaghba was born to a Moroccan father an Italian mother

Zaghba, an Italian citizen of Moroccan descent, lived in east London while working in a Pakistani restaurant in Ilford.

But he continued to visit his mother in Bologna, attempting to travel from the Italian city to Syria in Mach last year, and telling police who stopped him he wanted to be a terrorist.

Zaghbas mother believed he was radicalised in London, saying: He spent his time with the wrong kind of people."

He and Redouane appear to have been friends, reportedly being seen together at a cafe next to a betting shop in Newham.

Police raided a flat above the row of shops this week, but residents told The Independent the people they were looking for had moved on.

Butt, whose family were from Pakistan, and Redouane lived in nearby Barking, where both had young children.

Redouane, who claimed to be from both Morocco and Libya, had been denied asylum in the UK in 2009 but moved back to London after gaining an EU residency card by marrying a woman in Ireland.

His estranged wife, Charisse O'Leary, said the pair split six months ago but neighbours said Redouane continued to visit their young daughter at her home.

While she was at work he used to come here with friends, a neighbour told The Sun.

Khuram Shazad Butt, left, and Rachid Redouane, who were shot dead by police after the London Bridge terror attack (Metropolitan Police)

I think they used the flat to plan the attack ... on Saturday he was here with Khumar Butt.

After the split, Redouane had moved to a rented bedsit in nearby Dagenham that was raided by police in the aftermath of the terror attack.

It sits in a property known as the Little Yellow House on the A13, which has previously been used by swingers clubs for sex parties.

Police said Redouane, who worked as a pastry chef, also used the surname Elkhdar and Rachid al-Magrabi.

There were reports he had fought against Muammar Gaddafis forces at the start of the Libyan civil war in 2011, where he potentially could have come into contact with Manchester bomber Salman Abedi and his family.

Investigators are not treating the two atrocities as linked but Theresa May has warned of the risk of copycat attacks, saying: Terrorism breeds terrorism.

Isis has claimed responsibility for the attacks in London Bridge, Manchester and Westminster, having released detailed instructions on how to carry out massacres using vehicles and knives.

The group has called on supporters around the world to launch intensified attacks during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, as it seeks to maintain momentum while losing swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq.
Doctor Kokhan looks for his Armenian patients

Famous Russian medic Evgeny Kokhan is looking for his Armenian patients, whom were treated after the 1988 earthquake. A team of famous physicians led by Doctor Kokhan arrived in Armenia after the 1988 earthquake in the country. The group comprised of 15 doctors and 17 nurses spent seven days in Yerevan and worked for 24 hours, performing 168 operations, says journalist Tatiana Chernova. The doctor keeps a notebook with the patients surnames but it further complicates the efforts to find the patients. The journalist is now trying to help the Doctor Kokhan in his search. He [Kokhan] is writing a book about his patients, there are many celebrities among them. He keeps contact with all of them but has been unable to find his Armenian patients. He wants to know whether they are alive, says the journalist. Tatiana Chernova came to Armenia for her summer holidays but she also wants to help the doctor find these people. She is going to apply to the National Archives, hospitals and Gyumri Municipality to collect information about the people who were operated on after the 1988 earthquake.
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Two French citizens were among the seven people killed in the London Bridge attack, the country's foreign ministry said.

A third French national was still missing and four were gravely injured, the statement added.

Le Parisien daily newspaper named the dead man as 36-year-old Sebastian Belanger.

Police said they feared a French tourist, 45-year-old Xavier Thomas, had been thrown into the River Thames by the attackers' van and drowned.

His girlfriend was seriously injured in the collision.

 Man covering London Bridge terror attack stops broadcast after man falls into Thames

It comes after a man was arrested on suspicion of terror offences after an early morning raid at an address in east London.

The 30-year-old was held on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of terrorist acts during a search of a property in Ilford and taken for questioning at a south London police station, Scotland Yard said.

Detectives also arrested a 27-year-old man under the Terrorism Act at an address in Barking, east London, shortly after 8am on Tuesday.

Crowds gather for vigil honouring victims of London Bridge attack Show all 8 1 /8 Crowds gather for vigil honouring victims of London Bridge attack Crowds gather for vigil honouring victims of London Bridge attack John Loughrey lays down flowers in Potters Fields Park, central London in honour of the London Bridge terror attack victims PA Crowds gather for vigil honouring victims of London Bridge attack People queue to lay flowers after a vigil for victims of Saturday's attack in London Bridge, at Potter's Field Park in London AP Crowds gather for vigil honouring victims of London Bridge attack Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan (centre) British Home Office Secretary, Amber Rudd (right) and British Shadow Labour Home Secretary (left) Diane Abbott arrive with flowers EPA Crowds gather for vigil honouring victims of London Bridge attack PA Crowds gather for vigil honouring victims of London Bridge attack Floral tributes left for victims of Saturdays London Bridge attack AP Crowds gather for vigil honouring victims of London Bridge attack People pay their respects, leaving floral tributes after a vigil for victims of Saturdays attack in London Bridge AP Crowds gather for vigil honouring victims of London Bridge attack People queue to honour those killed on Saturday. Police have arrested several people and are widening their investigation after the attack AP Crowds gather for vigil honouring victims of London Bridge attack Tributes lie outside City Hall in London EPA

On Tuesday the third attacker was named as Youssef Zaghba, an Italian national of Moroccan descent, who was living in east London.

Zaghba, Pakistan-born British citizen Khuram Butt, 27, and Rachid Redouane, 30, who claimed to be Moroccan-Libyan, launched a murderous rampage around London Bridge and Borough Market on Saturday night.

Police shot and killed the three perpetrators within eight minutes of the alarm being raised, but 48 people had already been injured.

Additional reporting by agencies
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The mother of one of the London Bridge attackers has said she is ashamed to mourn her son after he took part in the massacre of at least eight people.

Valeria Khadija Collina, an Italian woman living in Bologna, said Youseff Zaghba had phoned her for what she later realised was a goodbye call on Thursday.

Even though he didn't say anything in particular, I could hear it in his voice, she told LEspresso.

We joked about how he would greet me at the airport in London. I was due to go there in ten days to celebrate the end of the month of Ramadan.

But when Ms Collina contacted her son the next day he did not reply, then his father living in Morocco called to say Zaghba could not be reached.

On Tuesday morning, Italian counter-terror police knocked on Ms Collinas door and said her son was dead, among three suspected Isis reporters killed by police during a bloody rampage through Borough Market.

 London Bridge terrorists: What we know so far

The mother said she was thinking of her sons victims, adding: I can understand from my own personal tragedy.

But I don't even have the courage to compare my pain to theirs. It's as if I were ashamed to say 'I'm also a mother, I'm also suffering.'

Hundreds of imams have refused to say funeral prayers for the terrorists  a choice the mother says she supports to send a strong political signal.

Zaghba, an Italian citizen, is believed to have lived in Ilford since 2015, but regularly returned to Italy.

There were suggestions he struggled financially while working at a restaurant in east London.

A crowdfunding account was set up in his name attempting to raise 200 for a new pair of shoes, but no money had been donated by 26 January, when the page closed.

I really need the shoes guys, trust me, said a message posed alongside a photo appearing to show Zaghba's feet in a pair of old black trainers.

An account in the name of Youssef Zaghba attempted to raise 200 for 'new shoes' in January

In March last year, he was arrested at Bologna airport after attempting to travel to Syria, telling police he wanted to be a terrorist.

Italian authorities who found him in possession of Isis propaganda said he was put on a Europe-wide terror watchlist after the incident, with information shared with MI5.

Ms Collina said she believed her son was radicalised in the UK, and was concerned about videos of Syria he showed her.

He thought Syria was a place where you could live according to a pure Islam, she added.

He said it was a dream they had sent to him through the internet. I always said there were horrible things that they didnt show him.

Unfortunately I was not able to change his mind....when children make mistakes, parents always feel some guilt. But I did my best, and I think he was worn down on the inside."

London Bridge Terror Attack Show all 16 1 /16 London Bridge Terror Attack London Bridge Terror Attack Armed police on Borough High Street as police are dealing with a "major incident" at London Bridge PA London Bridge Terror Attack Armed Police talk to members of the public outside London Bridge Hospital as police are dealing with a "major incident" at London Bridge PA London Bridge Terror Attack Police Officers outside the Barrowboy and Banker Public House on Borough High Street as police are dealing with a "major incident" at London Bridge PA London Bridge Terror Attack Armed Police talk to members of the public outside London Bridge Hospital as police are dealing with a "major incident" at London Bridge PA London Bridge Terror Attack Armed police on Borough High Street as police deal with a 'major incident' at London Bridge PA London Bridge Terror Attack Emergency services near the scene of the incident Screengrab London Bridge Terror Attack People run down Borough High Street as police are dealing with a "major incident" at London Bridge Reuters London Bridge Terror Attack Emergency services arrive at the scene near Borough market at London Bridge Carl Court/Getty Images London Bridge Terror Attack Emergency personnel on London Bridge as police are dealing with a "major incident" at London Bridge PA London Bridge Terror Attack Police sniffer dogs on London Bridge as police are dealing with a "major incident" at London Bridge PA London Bridge Terror Attack A second helicopter lands on London Bridge as police are responding to three incidents in the capital, amid reports that a vehicle collided with pedestrians on London Bridge, Scotland Yard said. Officers are dealing with reports of stabbings in Borough Market, where armed officers attended and shots were fired. They are also at an incident in the Vauxhall area PA London Bridge Terror Attack Police attend to an incident on London Bridge in London REUTERS London Bridge Terror Attack Police attend to an incident on London Bridge in London, Britain Reuters London Bridge Terror Attack A police officer escorts members of the public to safety at London Bridge Getty Images London Bridge Terror Attack Police attend to an incident on London Bridge in London, Britain Reuters London Bridge Terror Attack Police attend to an incident near London Bridge in London, Britain Reuters

Speaking to reporters from her home in the suburb of Fagnano, she said Zaghba had changed in the past year and she could tell there had been a radicalisation.

The mother said the area of east London where he lived made her feel uncomfortable, adding: I was there and didn't like it. He spent his time with the wrong kind of people."

She also blamed the internet in part for his radicalisation, believing Zaghba had watched Isis propaganda and other extremist material.

Ms Collina said she would dedicate her life to fighting jiahadi ideology by teaching real Islam to people and trying to convince families to fill the void that they might find in their children.

[The attack] was a horrible thing, something that should not happen, she added.

It shouldn't have happened and it should not happen again.

Italy's police chief said his force has its documents and conscience clear after flagging Zaghba as a potential terrorist, but understood how he slipped through the cracks.

Franco Gabrielli added: "We can understand the concern, the suffering and the difficulty of those who are called to manage complicated situations."

Images provided by Met Police of murderers (left to right) Khuram Butt, Rachid Redouane and Youssef Zaghba

Italian prosecutor Giuseppe Amato said there was not enough evidence to arrest or charge the 22-year-old when he was caught at Bologna airport.

He said Zaghba was always tracked by Italian intelligence officers while in the country and that UK authorities were informed.

"We did everything we could have done, but there weren't elements of proof that he was a terrorist," he added.

Investigators confiscated Zaghba's computer but did not contain proof of a crime, while the Metropolitan Police said he was not a police or MI5 subject of interest.

The terrorist, born in the Moroccan city of Fez in 1995, was estranged from his father but lived in the country for much of his life.

Italian authorities said he only spent 10 days in Italy over the past 18 months.

Counter-terror agencies were already under intense scrutiny after it was revealed Khuram Butt, 27, and Rachid Redouane, 30, were also known to security services.

Butt had appeared in a television documentary on British jihadis, openly associated with a network of extremists surrounding Anjem Choudary and had been reported to authorities several times.

The trio killed eight and injured 48 in their rampage around London Bridge and Borough Market on Saturday night.

Additional reporting by agencies
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A young boy handed police officers heartwarming letters and chocolate coins in the wake of the Manchester suicide bombing.

The 11-year-old, known only as Ben, ran up to the constables outside Manchester town hall on Tuesday and handed them envelopes addressed to "The Superhero's [sic] of Manchester" before quickly running away.

Each envelope was filled with a small chocolate coin and a letter thanking police for protecting citizens in the wake of the terror attack on the city, which left 22 dead and dozens more injured.

The heartwarming letters were signed by three children Ben, 11, Amy-Leigh, 14, and Charlotte, 4. Each featured a child's drawing of a police officer and a heart.

"We currently have Police Constables working on duty outside the Town Hall in Manchester this afternoon when a young Boy who we only know as Ben approached him and gave him two envelopes, then run off. The envelopes were addressed to 'The Superheros [sic] of Manchester'," a statement on Greater Manchester Police's Facebook page read.

The letter was signed by three children and thanked police for their efforts following the Manchester attack (Facebook)

"Thank you for brightening up our day :)"

A total of 18 people were arrested after Mancunian Salman Abedi detonated a homemade explosive device in the foyer of an Ariane Grande concert.

Ten men remain in custody in connection with the attack. Another eight people have been released without charge.
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An inquest will be held into the suicide of Sir Nicholas Wall, who was once Britain's most senior family law judge, who took his own life following a recent diagnosis with dementia.

The family of Sir Nicholas - who became president of the Family Division in 2010 and retired on health grounds in December 2012 - said earlier this year that he died by his own hand on 17 February aged 71.

In a statement following his death in Sevenoaks, Kent, his relatives said: Sir Nicholas took his own life having suffered for several years from a rare neurological disease called frontotemporal lobe dementia that had only recently been diagnosed.

A death notice published in The Times newspaper was accompanied by a moving verse from Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem 'Tithonus'.

Frontotemporal dementia is one of the less common forms of dementia and is sometimes called Pick's disease or frontal lobe dementia, according to the Alzheimer's Society.

Recommended Former top British family judge kills himself after dementia diagnosis

It affects part of the brain connected to control behaviour and emotions plus the understanding of words.

Frontotemporal dementia is caused when nerve cells in the frontal and/or temporal lobes of the brain die and the pathways that connect them change.

The Family Law Bar Association (FLBA) said Sir Nicholas had continued to struggle with ill health since his retirement in 2012.

He was described as a compassionate judge who thought and cared deeply about the outcome of his cases.

Cambridge-graduate Sir Nicholas was called to the Bar in 1969 and appointed Queen's Counsel in 1988.

He became a recorder in 1990 and then a judge of the High Court Family Division in April 1993.

Sir Nicholas worked at the Employment Appeal Tribunal, and then the Administrative Court before being promoted to the Court of Appeal in January 2004.

In 2011, he said a live-in lovers law would protect women in long-term relationships from losing their home and income in a break-up with their partner.

He also said couples should be allowed to divorce without having to blame one or the other, adding he could see no good arguments against no-fault divorce.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 9 November 2022 Australia and Spain play during the Wheelchair Rugby League World Cup group A match at the Copper Box Arena, London PA UK news in pictures 8 November 2022 A migrant attempting to communicate with journalists is pinned against a fence by members of staff, before being taken out of view, at the Manston immigration short-term holding facility, located at the former Defence Fire Training and Development Centre in Thanet, Kent PA UK news in pictures 7 November 2022 Handout photo issued by Just Stop Oil of a protester who has climbed a gantry on the M25 between junctions six and seven in Surrey, leading to the closure of the motorway PA UK news in pictures 6 November 2022 A grey seal with its pup, at the Donna Nook National Nature Reserve in north Lincolnshire, where they come every year in late October, November and December to give birth to their pups near the sand dunes, the wildlife spectacle attracts visitors from across the UK PA UK news in pictures 5 November 2022 Demonstrators with placards calling for a General Election march near the Houses of Parliament AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 4 November 2022 A peacock is seen in the early winter sunshine in the Dutch Gardens in Holland Park AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 3 November 2022 Florence Kasumba, Letitia Wright, Tenoch Huerta and Lupita Nyongo attend the European Premiere of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever in London Getty UK news in pictures 2 November 2022 A red squirrel gathers nuts in Pitlochry, Scotland Reuters UK news in pictures 1 November 2022 Englands Tara-Jane Stanley scores their sides seventh try against Brazil during the Womens Rugby League World Cup group A match at Headingley Stadium, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 31 October 2022 GBs James Hall competes during the mens parallel bars qualification at the World Gymnastics Championships in Liverpool AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 October 2022 People dressed in Halloween costumes paddle board along the river Avon in Christchurch, Dorset PA UK news in pictures 29 October 2022 Members of the public take pictures as police officers remove activists from a road during a Just Stop Oil protest, in London Reuters UK news in pictures 28 October 2022 A cosplayer attends the MCM Comic Con London 2022 at the ExCel Centre in London Reuters UK news in pictures 27 October 2022 98-year-old D-Day Veteran Bernard Morgan, whose story is among those featured on the giant poppy wall, during the launch of The Royal British Legion 2022 Poppy Appeal, at Hay's Galleria in central London PA UK news in pictures 26 October 2022 A meerkat explores a pumpkin in the enclosure at Wild Place, Bristol, where some of the animals are having pumpkin treats as part of their environmental enrichment PA UK news in pictures 25 October 2022 King Charles III welcomes Rishi Sunak during an audience at Buckingham Palace, where he invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative Party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 24 October 2022 Rishi Sunak celebrates with Tory MPs outside the Conservative Campaign Headquarters after becoming the new leader of the Conservative Party Reuters UK news in pictures 23 October 2022 The Green Man at October Plenty, Borough Market's annual Autumn Harvest festival, in London, which returns for the first time post pandemic PA UK news in pictures 21 October 2022 Sculptor Peter McKenna puts the finishing touches to a pumpkin that will form part of the Planet A Hebden Bridge Pumpkin Trail in the West Yorkshire town PA UK news in pictures 20 October 2022 Britains Prime Minister Liz Truss delivers a speech outside of 10 Downing Street in central London to announce her resignation AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 19 October 2022 Salmon leap up Stainforth Force on the River Ribble in the Yorkshire Dales as they swim upriver to their spawning grounds during the annual Salmon migration PA UK news in pictures 18 October 2022 Just Stop Oil protesters continue their protest for a second day on the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links Kent and Essex and which remains closed for traffic, after it was scaled by two climbers from the group PA UK news in pictures 17 October 2022 Hundreds of students take part in the traditional Raisin Monday foam fight on St Salvator's Lower College Lawn at the University of St Andrews in Fife PA UK news in pictures 16 October 2022 A protester holds a placard during a march into central London at a demonstration by the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 October 2022 A member of the public drags an activist who is blocking the road during a "Just Stop Oil" protest, in London, Britain REUTERS UK news in pictures 14 October 2022 Germanys Womens double skulls during day one of the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals at Saundersfoot beach, Pembrokeshire PA UK news in pictures 13 October 2022 Family and mourners arrive at St Michael's Church, in Creeslough, for the funeral mass of 49-year-old mother of four Martina Martin, who died following an explosion at the Applegreen service station in the village of Creeslough in Co Donegal on Friday PA UK news in pictures 12 October 2022 Motorists in Coventry pass trees showing autumnal colour PA UK news in pictures 11 October 2022 A woman and her dog in the the North Sea at Tynemouth Longsands beach before sunrise PA UK news in pictures 10 October 2022 Police officers remove a campaigner from a Just Stop Oil protest on The Mall, near Buckingham Palace, London PA UK news in pictures 9 October 2022 A drummer plays during the Diwali on the Square celebration, in Trafalgar Square, London PA UK news in pictures 8 October 2022 Timothee Chalamet attending the UK premiere of Bones and All during the BFI London Film Festival 2022 at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London PA UK news in pictures 7 October 2022 Two young male fallow deer lock antlers in Dublins Phoenix park as rutting season begins PA UK news in pictures 6 October 2022 The Princess of Wales during a cocktail making competition during a visit to Trademarket, a new outdoor street-food and retail market situated in Belfast city centre, as part of the royal visit to Northern Ireland PA UK news in pictures 5 October 2022 Greenpeace protesters interrupt Prime Minister Liz Truss as she delivers her keynote speech to the Conservative Party annual conference PA UK news in pictures 4 October 2022 Prime Minister Liz Truss and Britains Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, visit a construction site for a medical innovation campus in Birmingham AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 3 October 2022 British artist Sam Cox, aka Mr Doodle, reveals the Doodle House, a twelve-room mansion at Tenterden, in Kent, which has been covered, inside and out in the artist's trademark monochrome, cartoonish hand-drawn doodles PA UK news in pictures 2 October 2022 Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring Manchester City's second goal against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. The building was built in 1480 as a residential dwelling but has been a tearoom for over 50 years PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2022 Criminal barristers from the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), demonstrates outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, as part of their ongoing pay row with the Government PA UK news in pictures 27 September 2022 David White, Garter King of Arms, poses with an envelope franked with the new cypher of King Charles III 'CIIIR', after it was printed in the Court Post Office at Buckingham Palace in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 26 September 2022 A gallery staff member poses next to a painting by Lucian Freud - Self-portrait (Fragment), 1956 - on show at a photocall for the Credit Suisse exhibition - Lucian Freud: New Perspectives at the National Gallery in London PA UK news in pictures 25 September 2022 Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer is interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg in Liverpool before the start of the Labour Party annual Conference which he opened with a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and sang the national anthem PA UK news in pictures 24 September 2022 Handout photo issued by Buckingham Palace of the ledger stone at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 23 September 2022 A climate change activist protests against UK private jets while lighting his right arm on fire during the Laver Cup tennis tournament at the O2 Arena in London EPA UK news in pictures 22 September 2022 Woody Woodmansey, Lee Bennett, Kevin Armstrong, Nick Moran and Clifford Slapper attend the unveiling of a stone for David Bowie on the Music Walk of Fame at Camden, north London PA UK news in pictures 21 September 2022 A flock of birds in the sky as the sun rises over Dungeness in Kent PA UK news in pictures 20 September 2022 Flowers which were laid by members of the public in tribute to Queen Elizabeth II at Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland are collected by the Hillsborough Gardening Team and volunteers to be replanted for those that can be saved or composted PA

Sir Nicholas is survived by his wife Margaret, his children Imogen, Emma, Rosalind and Simon and his grandsons Joshua and Arthur.

The inquest will be held at the Archbishop's Palace in Maidstone from 10am on Wednesday.

Press Association
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Police have carried out a controlled explosion near the new US embassy in south-west London after being alerted to two unattended vehicles .

Specialist officers attended the scene on Pontin Road, Wandsworth, along with ambulance and fire service vehicles and cordons have been put in place.

A spokeswoman for the US embassy said no diplomats were on the construction site of the new building after controlled explosion.

One of the vehicles belonged to Taus Larsen, 40, who said he was "surprised" to find that the front passenger side window has been smashed and the back door has been crow-barred.

He said: "In hindsight maybe it wasn't ideal to have left it here for so long. But there wasn't any lines.

"I only live around the corner, I Just came back to check up on it. I came here on my bike and thought someone had robbed it.

"I thought the commotions had been because there had been a break-in. It turned out the police had broken in or crow-barred the window, or try to crowbar the back door open."

Mr Larsen had parked the car on the street on Monday.

Scotland Yard later tweeted: "This was not terrorism related."

The explosions came within days of the London Bridge terror attack, which claimed the lives of eight people and injured 48.

The most recent victim to be named was the 45-year-old French national Xavier Thomas who is thought to have been struck by the terrorists van on the bridge. Witnesses reported him being thrown into the water.

His body was recovered near Limehouse, downstream of London Bridge by specialist officers from the marine police unit.

Le Parisien named the second Frenchman to die in the attack as 36-year-old Sebastian Belanger.

The siblings of a 39-year-old banker also said their brother was one of the eight people killed in the attack.

Ignacio Echeverria was last seen lying on the ground near London Bridge after he confronted the assailants with a skateboard.

James McMullan, 32, from Hackney, Canadian citizen Christine Archibald, 30, Australian nurse Kirsty Boden, 28, and Alexandre Pigeard, 27, have already been named among the dead, along with Australian nanny, Sara Zelenak.

On Tuesday the third attacker was named as Youssef Zaghba, an Italian national of Moroccan descent, who was living in east London.

Zaghba, Pakistan-born British citizen Khuram Shazad Butt, 27, and Rachid Redouane, 30, who claimed to be Moroccan-Libyan were also shot by police at the scene.
Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

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Diane Abbott is being replaced as Labour's shadow home secretary during a "period of her ill health", the party has confirmed.

Ms Abbott has suffered from a series of gaffes and difficult interviews in recent weeks, with the Conservatives increasingly focusing their political fire on her performance.

She will be replaced by Lyn Brown, who currently serves as the party's shadow policing minister.

Recommended Diane Abbott pulls out of debate after another bungled interview

On Wednesday Jeremy Corbyn refused to say whether Ms Abbott would be given the job of Home Secretary if Labour won on Thursday. He said only that she had done "a good job" but was "not well today".

Speaking to reporters on the Labour battle bus on Tuesday he noted that she had faced "an awful lot of very unfair criticism and abuse in the past".

On Monday Ms Abbott struggled to recall the contents of a report on counter-terror policing during an appearance on Sky News.

Earlier in the campaign she had failed to recall the cost of Labour's policy to hire more police officers during an awkward interview with LBC radio.

Since then Ms Abbott has pulled out of an interview on the BBC's Woman's Hour programme and a London hustings debate hosted by the Evening Standard newspaper.

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 is understood that there has been tension within Labour's top team about whether Ms Abbott has become a liability or not.

A statement issued by the party said: "Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labour Party, has asked Lyn Brown to stand in for Diane Abbott as Shadow Home Secretary for the period of her ill health."
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A London council has told a voter in a semi-marginal seat that he cannot vote on the eve of polling day after an admin error apparently saw his electoral roll application lost.

John Fairhurst, who lives in the Finchley and Golders Green seat, which is ranked as the 65th most marginal of the Tories 331 seats, registered to vote on the Governments website on deadline day.

He received an email acknowledging his application and notifying him that his local borough of Barnet would be in touch to confirm he was registered.

However, after waiting more than two weeks without hearing anything, he contacted the local electoral resignation office.

Recommended Record number of people register to vote on deadline day

Mr Fairhurst, a musician, claims he was told by a council employee that legislation prevented her from processing his application, and he was informed he would not be able to vote  less than 24 hours before polling booths opened.

In an email seen by The Independent, an election call centre adviser told Mr Fairhurst he would not be able to cast a ballot on 8 June.

It would appear as though the gov.uk team did not forward us your application after receiving it, as we do not appear to have any applications pending under your name, the email said.

As this is the case, you will be unable to vote in the upcoming election.

UK General Election 2017 Show all 47 1 /47 UK General Election 2017 UK General Election 2017 12 June 2017 British Prime Minister Theresa May leaves 10 Downing Street for the 1922 committee on June 12, 2017 in London, England. British Prime Minister Theresa May held her first cabinet meeting with her re-shuffled team today Getty Images UK General Election 2017 12 June 2017 DUP leader Arlene Foster stands alongside deputy leader Nigel Dodds as they hold a press conference at Stormont Castle as the Stormont assembly power sharing negotiations reconvene following the general election on June 12, 2017 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Discussions between the DUP and the Conservative party are also continuing in the wake of the UK general election as Prime Minister Theresa May looks to form a government with the help of the Democratic Unionist parties ten Westminster seats. Stormont and the political situation in Northern Ireland has been in limbo following the collapse of the power sharing executive due to the Renewable Heat Incentive scheme scandal which implicated the DUP Getty Images UK General Election 2017 12 June 2017 Priti Patel, International Development Secretary leaves 10 Downing Street Getty Images UK General Election 2017 12 June 2017 Larry the Downing Street cat runs ahead of Michael Fallon Britain's Secretary of State for Defence as he arrives for a cabinet meeting at Downing Street in London, Britain, June 12, 2017. REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth REUTERS UK General Election 2017 12 June 2017 Michael Gove, Environment Secretary leaves 10 Downing Street on June 12, 2017 in London, England. British Prime Minister Theresa May held her first cabinet meeting with her re-shuffled team today Getty Images UK General Election 2017 12 June 2017 Scottish National Party Leader Nicola Sturgeon (C) leaves after speaking to the media in Parliament Square. Getty Images UK General Election 2017 12 June 2017 British Prime Minister Theresa May (C, L) holds the first Cabinet meeting of her new team. Getty UK General Election 2017 11 June 2017 British Prime Minister Theresa May attends church in her constituency with her husband Philip May, a few days after disappointing results in a general election. Rex Features UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Leader of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn leaves Labour Party HQ this morning, following a general election yesterday. Parliament is hung, with no individual party gaining an overall majority. Post general election reaction. Rex UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - JUNE 09: DUP leader and Northern Ireland former First Minister Arlene Foster (C) holds a brief press conference with the DUP's newly elected Westminster candidates who stood in the general election Getty Images UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 A " Get May Out" demo took place opposite the gates of Downing Street, calling for May to resign, after the shock election results and Mays coalition with the DUP. Rex Features UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 A demonstrator wears a mask depicting Britain's Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party Theresa May, poses with a mock gravestone bearing the words "Hard Brexit, RIP", during a protest photocall near the entrance 10 Downing Street in central London AFP/Getty Images UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May arrives at the Conservative Party's headquarters in London Reuters UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Britain's Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party Theresa May flanked by her husband Philip delivers a statement outside 10 Downing Street in central Londo Getty UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Britain's Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party Theresa May leaves Buckingham Palace in London the day after a general election in which the Conservatives lost their majority Getty Images UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 A TV cameraman watches the door of 10 Downing Street in London Getty Images UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is greeted by his Office Director Karie Murphy as he arrives at Labour Party HQ in Westminster, London, after he called on the Prime Minister to resign, saying she should 'go and make way for a government that is truly representative of this country' Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May arrives at the Conservative Party's headquarters with her husband Philip in London REUTERS/Peter Nicholls UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Ukip leader Paul Nuttall speaks during a press conference at Boston West Golf Club where he announced that he is standing down as party leader Joe Giddens/PA UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Ruth Davidson, leader of the Scottish Conservatives, leaves the counting centre for Britain's general election with her partner Jen Wilson in Edinburgh, Scotland REUTERS/Russell Cheyne UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale celebrates with candidate for Edinburgh South Ian Murray as he retains his seat at the Meadowbank Sports Centre counting centre in Edinburgh, Scotland Getty Images UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 First Minister Nicola Sturgeon speaks to the media at the Emirates Arena in Glasgow, as counting is under way for the General Election Andrew Milligan/PA Wire UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson at Meadowbank Sports Centre in Edinburgh, as counting is under way for the General Election PA UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Scottish National Party (SNP) leader Nicola Sturgeon reacts at the Emirates Arena in Glasgow, Scotland EPA UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Jeremy Corbyn, leader of Britain's opposition Labour Party, arrives at the Labour Party's Headquarters in London REUTERS/Marko Djurica UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 UKIP Leader Paul Nuttall leaves in a car following the vote count for the constituency of Boston and Skegness in Boston, England Anthony Devlin/Getty Images UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 British Prime Minister and Conservative Party leader Theresa May speaks at the declaration at the election count at the Magnet Leisure Centre in Maidenhead, England. Getty Images UK General Election 2017 8 June 2017 A policer officer enters a polling station in London AP UK General Election 2017 8 June 2017 A woman leaves after casting her vote at the Hove Museum and Art Gallery near Brighton, in southern England Getty UK General Election 2017 8 June 2017 A polling station sign is seen on a telephone box outside the polling station at Rotherwick Hall, west of London Getty UK General Election 2017 7 June 2017 A woman walks past a general election display in the window of a betting shop in Camden on June 7, 2017 in London, United Kingdom. Britain goes to the polls tomorrow, Getty Images UK General Election 2017 7 June 2017 Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May visits Atherley Bowling Club during an election campaign visit on June 7, 2017 in Southampton, England. Britain goes to the polls tomorrow June 8 to vote in a general election. Getty Images UK General Election 2017 6 June 2017 A supporter wears a pair of Jeremy Corbyn decorated tights at a general election campaign event in Birmingham, central England, on June 6, 2017. Britain goes to the polls on June 8 to vote in a general election only days after another deadly terror attack in the nation's captial. AFP/Getty Images UK General Election 2017 6 June 2017 A picture taken in London, shows election leaflets from various parties displayed ahead of the United Kingdom's general elections. Britain goes to the polls on June 8 to vote in a general election only days after another terrorist attack on the nation's capital AFP/Getty Images UK General Election 2017 6 June 2017 Election workers, George Gaunt and Luca Tragid deliver the first ballot boxes, on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh AFP UK General Election 2017 6 June 2017 British Prime Minister Theresa May meets with Conservative party supporters during an election campaign visit to a bakery during an election campaign visit on June 6, 2017 in Fleetwood, north-west England. Britain goes to the polls on June 8 to vote in a general election only days after another terrorist attack on the nation's capital Getty Images UK General Election 2017 5 June 2017 British Prime Minister Theresa May speaks during a general election campaign visit to a removals depot in Edinburgh AFP/Getty Images UK General Election 2017 3 June 2017 Pro-Independence supporters hold a march through Glasgow AFP/Getty Images UK General Election 2017 3 June 2017 Opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn campaigns for the upcoming general election in Beeston, Nottinghamshire AFP/Getty Images UK General Election 2017 3 June 2017 Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn reacts to supporters after a rally at Beeston Youth and Community Centre as he visits the East Midlands during the final weekend of the General Election campaign on June 3, 2017 in Nottingham, England. If elected in next week's general election Mr Corbyn is pledging to create a million new jobs and to scrap zero-hours contracts Getty Images UK General Election 2017 1 June 2017 Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party leader Ruth Davidson joins a selection of Scottish Conservative election candidates and activists during campaigning on May 1, 2017 in South Queensferry, Scotland. With only seven days to go until the general election on June 8th, polls are showing the SNP out in front and the Conservatives set to close in on Labour. Getty Images UK General Election 2017 29 May 2017 Prime Minister Theresa May canvasses in Richmond with Conservative candidate Zac Goldsmith on May 29, 2017 in London, United Kingdom. After suffering defeat in the London Mayoral election Zac Goldsmith resigned over the Government's position on Heathrow expansion. He stood as an Independent but lost in a by-election to the Liberal Democrats. Britain goes to the polls on June 8 to elect a new parliament in a general election Getty Images UK General Election 2017 22 May 2017 Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron poses for a selfie taken by carer April Preston during a General Election campaign visit to the Barlow Medical Centre, in Didsbury, Manchester Yui Mok/PA UK General Election 2017 22 May 2017 Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May speaks at an election campaign event in Wrexham, Wales Reuters UK General Election 2017 22 May 2017 Britain's main opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, and Labour's former deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, exit the party's general election campaign 'battle' bus as they arrive at an event in Kingston upon Hull, northern England Getty Images UK General Election 2017 22 May 2017 Britain's main opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn walks with supporters between venues, before speaking again at another general election campaign event in Kingston upon Hull, northern England Getty Images UK General Election 2017 22 May 2017 An anti-fox hunting protester is taken away and arrested by police outside the venue where Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May was due to launch the Welsh Conservative general election manifesto at Gresford Memorial Hall in the village of Gresford, near Wrexham, North Wales, on May 22, 2017. Britain goes to the polls on June 8 to elect a new parliament in a general election AFP/Getty Images

Mr Fairhurst said: It is impossible to maintain any faith in the current system.

Every vote counts in this election and I demand the right to be able to cast the vote for which I registered.

His experience prompted others who had been similarly disenfranchised to speak out.

One, Rachel Allmand, claimed she had been denied a vote after an "admin error" by Waltham Forest council. She told The Independent she was also denied an emergency proxy vote and would be unable to cast her ballot on 8 June.

A third potential voter, Jacqueline Stuart, who lives outside the UK, said she and others who she knew had not received their postal ballots.

Complaints of missing papers came after hundreds of voters in Plymouth were left without postal voting forms just days before the election.

Plymouth City Council says it has reissued "around 370 replacement ballot packs" to those who have contacted them, and urged anyone whose remain missing to call their offices.

The local authority claimed it had sent out all the forms in accordance with the regulations, adding that this had been "confirmed by our printers". Both it and Royal Mail are now investigating.

 Artists from the UK have a message for you about the General Election

Those who applied before the May 23 deadline and have not yet received them can order replacement packs via special delivery on the same day, go in to the council offices during select times on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday or nominate someone to collect it for them, the council said.

Several people took to social media to complain about the issues.

Elliot Phillips described the problems as "an absolute joke", saying: "People are essentially being robbed of their right to vote."

A Barnet Council spokesperson said: In this case, we did not receive any confirmation following the residents application on the register to vote website. The registration was also approved by gov.uk past the legal statutory deadline, which means we could not progress the application.

"While we understand the residents frustrations, we are not able to do anything to resolve this matter."
Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

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Record numbers of people signed up to vote on deadline day before registrations closed, with more than 600,000 names added to the electoral roll in the final 24 hours.

On the last day that new voters could register, a total of 622,398 applications were received by the Governments Individual Electoral Registration digital service.

That exceeded the previous record of 525,254 applications on a single day, set before the EU referendum on 7 June 2016  a spike of around 20 per cent.

Recommended Student voter registration rockets with most vowing to back Corbyn

The figures point to a sharp increase in young voters adding their names to the register, with around two-thirds  453,000  of the new voters to sign up on deadline day aged between 18 and 34.

A late surge in young voter registrations will be seen as good news for Labour, whose election day hopes have historically hinged on a high turnout among young people.

Jeremy Corbyns party has traditionally attracted more support from young voters, many of whom will be attracted to Labours promise to scrap university tuition fees,

However, pre-election polling still suggests the Tories will emerge on 9 June as the largest party.

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

John Curtice, a political scientist at the University of Strathclyde, cautioned against reading too much into the figures.

He told The Independent his own calculation of the new voter registrations since last December put the figure at 1.1 million, down from 1.35 million in England and Wales over the same period a year earlier.

Recommended Theresa May has made a dire mistake ignoring young voters

Almost three million people registered online to vote in the period between the announcement of the election on 18 April and the registration deadline of 22 May.

Kainos, which helped develop the online registration system with the Cabinet Office, said the biggest single spike in applications on 22 May coincided with the 10 oclock news, when 23,854 voters signed up.

Theresa May announced her intention to call a general election from the steps of Downing Street on 18 April.

On that day, 147,000 people registered online and 3,364 paper forms were submitted.

The total number of new registrations is likely to be even higher as the Kainos figures do not take into account the small proportion of paper applications.

 Funniest moments from the General Election campaign

However, Dr Caitlin Milazzo, politics professor at the University of Nottingham, told The Independent the sharp rise in voter registrations did not automatically translate into extra votes.

If all those voters actually vote, obviously it helps Labour a lot," she said.

"But it is easier to register to vote than it is to check the electoral roll, so a lot of people may already be registered to vote. We dont actually know how many of those people are new voters.

The second point is that these new voters have to be in the right places. If you interject half a million new voters, but they are spread across the country, it may not have an effect.

Under the first-past-the-post system, you can boost Labours vote share and not have an impact on the overhaul allocation of seats.

A recent report found that if 18-to-34-year-olds had turned out to the polling stations in similar proportions to the over-65s in the 2015 election, it would have been enough to deny David Cameron an overall majority.

Labour would claim election victory if only people under 40 voted, despite being behind overall, according to one YouGov poll.
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Bands of rain or showers affecting the UK, with the risk of hail and thunder on Thursday, says the Met Office. Traditionally, this is said to be bad for Labour, as its voters are supposed to be more likely to be put off by the rain. Shami Chakrabarti, a member of Jeremy Corbyns shadow cabinet, blamed the rain in Copeland for Labours defeat in the by-election there in February, because Labour voters are less likely to have cars.

But is it true? It seems to be true in the United States, where a 2007 study of 14 presidential elections found an association between turnout and the weather. An inch of rain reduced turnout by 1 percentage point. This tended to hurt the Democratic candidate more than the Republican, and may have helped George Bush beat Al Gore in 2000.

The weather also affects turnout in the Netherlands, where rain or cold means fewer people vote, although the study didnt report any political bias in the effects.

But there is no evidence that the weather has any effect in Sweden, where a 2014 study found the weather seems to have a negligible, if any, effect on voter turnout.

Or in Britain, where John Curtice, Professor of Politics at Strathclyde University, says: Weve had one or two general elections when its been raining in some parts of the country and not in another and there has been no significant variation in turnout.

The theory seems to be that Conservative voters tend to be older and more civic-minded, and therefore more determined to vote. And they are also better off and so more likely to have a car so they can drive a few hundred yards to the polling station.

It is generally true that Conservative voters are more likely to vote in safe Conservative seats, where there is strictly less need for them to do so  turnout tends to be lower in safe Labour seats, although this may also be partly the effect of age on likelihood to vote.

Older voters are more likely to turn out to vote, as all the polling analysis shows, but that does not mean that rain would increase the gap in turnout between old and young. Until someone produces evidence that rain depresses the Labour vote more than the Conservative one, we can safely assume that the risk of hail and thunder tomorrow wont affect the result.
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Jeremy Corbyn is attracting bigger crowds to his campaign rallies than any leader since Winston Churchill, it has been claimed.

Channel 4 journalist Michael Crick, who has followed the Labour leader around the country during the general election campaign, said Mr Corbyn had probably addressed bigger meetings in 2017 than any leader since Churchill.

It comes as Mr Corbyn spent the last day of campaigning before the election addressing six rallies in England, Scotland and Wales.

 General Election 2017: The biggest gaffes

He began the day in Glasgow before travelling to Runcorn in Cheshire and then on to Colwyn Bay in north Wales. Returning to London, he spoke to crowds in Watford, Harrow and his own constituency in Islington.

Mr Corbyn often draws hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of people to his rallies.

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

Professor Anand Menon, a lecturer in European Politics and Foreign Affairs at Kings College London, said no other leader had attracted grassroots support in the way Mr Corbyn has.

Hes obviously different and he obviously has this ability to address rallies, he told The Independent. Hes attracted young votersAmong the grassroots in the party hes inspired an energy that wasnt there before.

I cant think of anyone else who has done it to that extent.

Professor Menon said he thought support for Labours policies was real but that Mr Corbyn also has his own personal appeal.

Theres absolutely no doubt that theyve produced a pretty good manifesto that is enormously popular but I think its about more than that, he said.

Hes got that uniquely anti-politics element that is his calling cardhes seen as being picked on, hes seen as being attacked unfairly, theres a bit of the underdog about him.
Armenian, Italian FMs meet in Rome

On June 7, in Rome, the meeting of Edward Nalbandian, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Armenia, and Angelino Alfano, Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of Italy, took place. While greeting the Foreign Minister of Armenia, the head of the Italian Foreign Ministry noted that the two countries have a history of millennia long friendship, which serves as a strong basis for the further deepening and strengthening of cooperation in various fields: I am confident that the past is the best foundation for building future, and this formula lies in the basis of our relations. The Ministers noted with satisfaction, that during the 25 years since the establishment of diplomatic relations between Armenia and Italy, the two countries succeeded in building an active political dialogue and deepening the collaboration in different fields. The Foreign Ministers of Armenia and Italy discussed a wide range of issues of bilateral and multilateral agenda. Edward Nalbandian and Angelino Alfano considered as an essential achievement the first session of the Armenian-Italian Intergovernmental Commission, held on the same day, expressing a confidence that it will give a new impetus to the mutually beneficial cooperation between the two countries. The perspectives of and the envisaged steps for the development of the relations between the two countries were discussed. The interlocutors touched upon the issues of strengthening the collaboration within the international organisations, expanding the legal framework, and holding regular consultations between Foreign Ministries. The Ministers exchanged views on expanding the business ties between two countries, and highlighted in this regard the importance of the Business Forum held in Rome, with more than two hundred businessmen. The importance of continuous strengthening of cooperation in the fields of education, science, culture and preservation of historical monument was underlined. In this context, the interlocutors valued the joint declaration on establishing in Armenia of a Regional Centre for Preserving and Restoring the cultural heritage, signed during the visit to Armenia of Paolo Gentiloni, the former Foreign Minister and the current Prime Minister of Italy. The Foreign Ministers of Armenia and Italy highlighted the importance of participation of Armenian peacekeepers within the Italian contingent in Lebanon, under the auspices of the UN. The European Union-Armenia cooperation was also on the agenda of the meeting. Edward Nalbandian presented the results of his recent visit to Brussels, and the meeting of Armenia-European Union Cooperation Council. The sides highlighted the importance of singing of the Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement between the Republic of Armenia and the European Union anticipated this fall. The interlocutors touched upon a number of urgent international and regional issues. They exchanged views on the priorities of the Italian Chairmanship in OSCE next year, and the cooperation in the framework of the organization. Edward Nalbandian presented the efforts undertaken by Armenia and the OSCE Co-Chair countries towards exclusively peaceful settlement of Karabakh conflict. The Foreign Ministers of Armenia and Italy touched upon the developments in Middle East, Syria and Iraq, migration flows, fight of the international community against terrorism. Edward Nalbandian and Angelino Alfano held a joint press conference on the outcomes of the first session of the Armenian-Italian Intergovernmental Commission and negotiations.
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Labour's final day of campaigning has suffered a blow after a prominent prospective MP was taped saying her regional party is corrupt.

Naz Shah, fighting to retain her seat in tomorrow's election, made the claim in 2015 in a recorded telephone call now passed to The Independent.

But during the conversation, Shah also appears to push another party member into creating letters that would discredit a selection process she had just lost.

In the call she can be heard saying she needs five letters, suggesting what they should say and who they might come from.

However, Ms Shah told The Independent she was simply encouraging others to raise what she believed to be valid grievances over the selection.

One local party figure who wished to remain anonymous said: It's not right that we go into election without people knowing about all of this.

The call took place in the wake of the 2015 selection process in Bradford West, in which Shah came third, losing out to winner Amina Ali.

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

In an apparent attempt to drum up evidence to overturn the result, she asks the party member to get letters.

She can be heard saying: By morningI need the lettersI need at least five.

She adds: You want me to text the template? All they need to say is, look that we are not happy with whats happened, because they understand the process has been corrupt, thats all they have to say.

Going into more detail, Ms Shah later says: One of them can say, look we believe that we were asked on the day to vote for Amina Aliwe were told of which way to goone of them can say that.

 Jeremy Corbyn speaks to huge crowd at Birmingham rally

One of them can say, a message from someones Mum, loads of people came and told me what had happened, and I mention on my mums behalf, and my mums West Labour memberone could be like that, but I need five yaar and I am working on my own.

She goes on to highlight that the letters must be sent to Labours National Executive Committee, not the regional party which she brands as corrupt.

Shortly after the call, Amina Ali stood down as a candidate  citing an unwillingness to move her children to Bradford  and the resulting process of interviews led by prominent Labour MP Keith Vaz, resulted in Ms Shah being given the candidacy.

A spokesperson for Naz Shahs campaign said: This is all ancient history and doesnt reflect Nazs views on the regional Labour Party or any other section of our Party. There were plenty of Bradford West members who expressed their concerns at the initial selection process back in 2015, and Naz stands by her encouraging them to make their grievances heard.

People trying to dig this sort of thing up now are clearly just trying to deflect from the fact theyve lost the arguments in this election  tomorrow people in Bradford West have to choose who will be a strong voice for them in parliament and Naz is proud to be standing on her track record and Labours exciting offer of hope and a government delivering for the many, not the few.

A Yorkshire and Humber Labour Party spokesperson said: Were proud to have Naz Shah as our candidate in Bradford West and urge people there to vote for her tomorrow to continue to have a strong voice standing up for them in Bradford and in parliament.

Transcript

Caller: Salam Naz

Naz: Wasalm  Caller you alright

Caller: I am ok how are you doing

Naz: Im good

Naz: Any news on this recording

Caller: Aah, give me about ten minutes, I will call you back

Naz: I also need, I really, really need, I need a conversation Caller. I need to have this done.

Caller: Right.so

Naz: By morning, I need the letters. I need at least five yaar (mate)

Caller: And whats happening, have you made any progress or?

Naz: I have made progress, but I need couple of more letters.

Caller: OK

Naz: Dont worry I made, trust me, there is more progress in more areas than you think. I need it to be

Caller: Well, there are people who have already sent letters, believe it or not, Ill send, but there are all membershello?

Naz: Yeah. How many are they, how many are (inaudible) the other problem, they can send them to region, but region are corrupt

Caller: No they sent it to NECstraight to the NECyou know addressed to all the you know people which everbut I had people approach us saying that weve been not happy with the whole process and everything and weve written to

Naz: Right, they need to write Ian McNicol direct

.pause.

Caller: Hi, sorry Naz just got cut offhello?...Hello?

Naz: Bus yaar meri reception chali gai thee (mate, my reception went)

Caller: No problems

Naz: You want me to text the templateall they need to saylook that we are not happy with whats happened because they understand the process has been corruptthats all they have to say

Caller: Just two liners

Naz: Just two lines, one paragraph.

Caller: Ah, right, ok

Naz: One of them, one of them, one of them can say, look we believe that we were asked on the day to vote for Amina Ali, we were told of which way to go by people who were (an individual) supporters. Thats all they have to say. One of them can say that. One of them can say, a message from someones mum, loads of people came and told me what had happened

Caller: yeahhello

Naz: and I mention on my mums behalf and my mums West Labour memberone could be like that but I need five yaar and I am working on my own.
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Nicola Sturgeon has claimed Theresa Mays difficult character will lead her to struggle in Brexit negotiations.

Scotlands first minister said the Prime Minister was a very difficult person to establish rapport with but that she didnt know her well enough to know whether I like her or not.

The SNP leader also claimed Ms May sounded like she was reading from a script in one-on-one conversations with her, a frustration she claimed the public was now starting to witness in Ms Mays communications.

You literally go into a one-to-one with her and its like shes reading from a script than having a conversation, she told The Guardian.

Now OK, were miles apart politically but then so too were David Cameron and I, but we still managed to find a way of working that respected each others positions. We found a way of being civil.

She also said she believed Ms May would come out of Thursdays election weakened, regardless of the result. A YouGov polling model released on Monday showed Ms May as on course to fall 21 seats short of a majority.

UK General Election 2017 Show all 47 1 /47 UK General Election 2017 UK General Election 2017 12 June 2017 British Prime Minister Theresa May leaves 10 Downing Street for the 1922 committee on June 12, 2017 in London, England. British Prime Minister Theresa May held her first cabinet meeting with her re-shuffled team today Getty Images UK General Election 2017 12 June 2017 DUP leader Arlene Foster stands alongside deputy leader Nigel Dodds as they hold a press conference at Stormont Castle as the Stormont assembly power sharing negotiations reconvene following the general election on June 12, 2017 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Discussions between the DUP and the Conservative party are also continuing in the wake of the UK general election as Prime Minister Theresa May looks to form a government with the help of the Democratic Unionist parties ten Westminster seats. Stormont and the political situation in Northern Ireland has been in limbo following the collapse of the power sharing executive due to the Renewable Heat Incentive scheme scandal which implicated the DUP Getty Images UK General Election 2017 12 June 2017 Priti Patel, International Development Secretary leaves 10 Downing Street Getty Images UK General Election 2017 12 June 2017 Larry the Downing Street cat runs ahead of Michael Fallon Britain's Secretary of State for Defence as he arrives for a cabinet meeting at Downing Street in London, Britain, June 12, 2017. REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth REUTERS UK General Election 2017 12 June 2017 Michael Gove, Environment Secretary leaves 10 Downing Street on June 12, 2017 in London, England. British Prime Minister Theresa May held her first cabinet meeting with her re-shuffled team today Getty Images UK General Election 2017 12 June 2017 Scottish National Party Leader Nicola Sturgeon (C) leaves after speaking to the media in Parliament Square. Getty Images UK General Election 2017 12 June 2017 British Prime Minister Theresa May (C, L) holds the first Cabinet meeting of her new team. Getty UK General Election 2017 11 June 2017 British Prime Minister Theresa May attends church in her constituency with her husband Philip May, a few days after disappointing results in a general election. Rex Features UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Leader of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn leaves Labour Party HQ this morning, following a general election yesterday. Parliament is hung, with no individual party gaining an overall majority. Post general election reaction. Rex UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - JUNE 09: DUP leader and Northern Ireland former First Minister Arlene Foster (C) holds a brief press conference with the DUP's newly elected Westminster candidates who stood in the general election Getty Images UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 A " Get May Out" demo took place opposite the gates of Downing Street, calling for May to resign, after the shock election results and Mays coalition with the DUP. Rex Features UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 A demonstrator wears a mask depicting Britain's Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party Theresa May, poses with a mock gravestone bearing the words "Hard Brexit, RIP", during a protest photocall near the entrance 10 Downing Street in central London AFP/Getty Images UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May arrives at the Conservative Party's headquarters in London Reuters UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Britain's Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party Theresa May flanked by her husband Philip delivers a statement outside 10 Downing Street in central Londo Getty UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Britain's Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party Theresa May leaves Buckingham Palace in London the day after a general election in which the Conservatives lost their majority Getty Images UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 A TV cameraman watches the door of 10 Downing Street in London Getty Images UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is greeted by his Office Director Karie Murphy as he arrives at Labour Party HQ in Westminster, London, after he called on the Prime Minister to resign, saying she should 'go and make way for a government that is truly representative of this country' Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May arrives at the Conservative Party's headquarters with her husband Philip in London REUTERS/Peter Nicholls UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Ukip leader Paul Nuttall speaks during a press conference at Boston West Golf Club where he announced that he is standing down as party leader Joe Giddens/PA UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Ruth Davidson, leader of the Scottish Conservatives, leaves the counting centre for Britain's general election with her partner Jen Wilson in Edinburgh, Scotland REUTERS/Russell Cheyne UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale celebrates with candidate for Edinburgh South Ian Murray as he retains his seat at the Meadowbank Sports Centre counting centre in Edinburgh, Scotland Getty Images UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 First Minister Nicola Sturgeon speaks to the media at the Emirates Arena in Glasgow, as counting is under way for the General Election Andrew Milligan/PA Wire UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson at Meadowbank Sports Centre in Edinburgh, as counting is under way for the General Election PA UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Scottish National Party (SNP) leader Nicola Sturgeon reacts at the Emirates Arena in Glasgow, Scotland EPA UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 Jeremy Corbyn, leader of Britain's opposition Labour Party, arrives at the Labour Party's Headquarters in London REUTERS/Marko Djurica UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 UKIP Leader Paul Nuttall leaves in a car following the vote count for the constituency of Boston and Skegness in Boston, England Anthony Devlin/Getty Images UK General Election 2017 9 June 2017 British Prime Minister and Conservative Party leader Theresa May speaks at the declaration at the election count at the Magnet Leisure Centre in Maidenhead, England. Getty Images UK General Election 2017 8 June 2017 A policer officer enters a polling station in London AP UK General Election 2017 8 June 2017 A woman leaves after casting her vote at the Hove Museum and Art Gallery near Brighton, in southern England Getty UK General Election 2017 8 June 2017 A polling station sign is seen on a telephone box outside the polling station at Rotherwick Hall, west of London Getty UK General Election 2017 7 June 2017 A woman walks past a general election display in the window of a betting shop in Camden on June 7, 2017 in London, United Kingdom. Britain goes to the polls tomorrow, Getty Images UK General Election 2017 7 June 2017 Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May visits Atherley Bowling Club during an election campaign visit on June 7, 2017 in Southampton, England. Britain goes to the polls tomorrow June 8 to vote in a general election. Getty Images UK General Election 2017 6 June 2017 A supporter wears a pair of Jeremy Corbyn decorated tights at a general election campaign event in Birmingham, central England, on June 6, 2017. Britain goes to the polls on June 8 to vote in a general election only days after another deadly terror attack in the nation's captial. AFP/Getty Images UK General Election 2017 6 June 2017 A picture taken in London, shows election leaflets from various parties displayed ahead of the United Kingdom's general elections. Britain goes to the polls on June 8 to vote in a general election only days after another terrorist attack on the nation's capital AFP/Getty Images UK General Election 2017 6 June 2017 Election workers, George Gaunt and Luca Tragid deliver the first ballot boxes, on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh AFP UK General Election 2017 6 June 2017 British Prime Minister Theresa May meets with Conservative party supporters during an election campaign visit to a bakery during an election campaign visit on June 6, 2017 in Fleetwood, north-west England. Britain goes to the polls on June 8 to vote in a general election only days after another terrorist attack on the nation's capital Getty Images UK General Election 2017 5 June 2017 British Prime Minister Theresa May speaks during a general election campaign visit to a removals depot in Edinburgh AFP/Getty Images UK General Election 2017 3 June 2017 Pro-Independence supporters hold a march through Glasgow AFP/Getty Images UK General Election 2017 3 June 2017 Opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn campaigns for the upcoming general election in Beeston, Nottinghamshire AFP/Getty Images UK General Election 2017 3 June 2017 Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn reacts to supporters after a rally at Beeston Youth and Community Centre as he visits the East Midlands during the final weekend of the General Election campaign on June 3, 2017 in Nottingham, England. If elected in next week's general election Mr Corbyn is pledging to create a million new jobs and to scrap zero-hours contracts Getty Images UK General Election 2017 1 June 2017 Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party leader Ruth Davidson joins a selection of Scottish Conservative election candidates and activists during campaigning on May 1, 2017 in South Queensferry, Scotland. With only seven days to go until the general election on June 8th, polls are showing the SNP out in front and the Conservatives set to close in on Labour. Getty Images UK General Election 2017 29 May 2017 Prime Minister Theresa May canvasses in Richmond with Conservative candidate Zac Goldsmith on May 29, 2017 in London, United Kingdom. After suffering defeat in the London Mayoral election Zac Goldsmith resigned over the Government's position on Heathrow expansion. He stood as an Independent but lost in a by-election to the Liberal Democrats. Britain goes to the polls on June 8 to elect a new parliament in a general election Getty Images UK General Election 2017 22 May 2017 Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron poses for a selfie taken by carer April Preston during a General Election campaign visit to the Barlow Medical Centre, in Didsbury, Manchester Yui Mok/PA UK General Election 2017 22 May 2017 Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May speaks at an election campaign event in Wrexham, Wales Reuters UK General Election 2017 22 May 2017 Britain's main opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, and Labour's former deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, exit the party's general election campaign 'battle' bus as they arrive at an event in Kingston upon Hull, northern England Getty Images UK General Election 2017 22 May 2017 Britain's main opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn walks with supporters between venues, before speaking again at another general election campaign event in Kingston upon Hull, northern England Getty Images UK General Election 2017 22 May 2017 An anti-fox hunting protester is taken away and arrested by police outside the venue where Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May was due to launch the Welsh Conservative general election manifesto at Gresford Memorial Hall in the village of Gresford, near Wrexham, North Wales, on May 22, 2017. Britain goes to the polls on June 8 to elect a new parliament in a general election AFP/Getty Images

I think almost regardless of the outcome, she is going to come out of this election weakened. I cant believe that shes doing anything other right now than wishing she hadnt called the election in the first place, she said.

Ms Sturgeon also voiced renewed scepticism about Ms Mays two-year timetable to withdraw Britain from the EU.

She said she would be prepared to hold a second referendum when the Brexit deal is done.

Theresa May has said explicitly  and I readily concede theres a lot of scepticism about this  but she has said that that will be before the UK exits in spring 2019. Which is why I have talked in that timeframe, she said.

Recommended May and Corbyn are in a conspiracy of silence over Brexit

If it takes longer than that, then it will be longer than that before we are at the end of the Brexit process.

It comes just days after Ms Sturgeon said she would be open to forming a progressive alternative to the Conservatives with left-leaning parties if the election delivers a hung Parliament.

She said she could work with Jeremy Corbyn on an issue-by-issue basis if Labour emerged the largest party in a hung parliament.
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Jeremy Corbyn has taken a dig at Theresa May for campaigning using a private jet.

The Prime Minister flew from Southampton to Norfolk for the last push of her campaign on Wednesday.

On Mr Corbyns final campaign trip to Wales, the Labour leader said he had a train to catch.

I don't have a private jet, I don't have a helicopter, he joked.

I think some people go around in private jets, I can't imagine who it is.

He made the comments while speaking to hundreds of supporters who gathered on Colwyn Bay prom in the Clwyd West constituency.

At the event Mr Corbyn urged people to vote for a Government which would not be afraid to pick up the phone to Donald Trump and say you're wrong on trying to destroy the Paris Climate Change Agreement.

Polls suggest the Conservatives have the upper hand over Labour ahead of tomorrow's general election, though they disagree on Ms May's margin of victory.

Additional reporting by PA
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Theresa May has belatedly agreed to be interviewed by Channel 4's Jon Snow, after he complained about her refusing to do so on Twitter.

The Tory leader had faced criticism when it appeared she would becoming the first PM in decades to refuse to be interviewed by some of the UKs biggest broadcasters. She was also the first premier in 40 years to refuse to appear on BBC Radio 2.

Mr Snow had written on Twitter: In seven General Elections as anchor at Channel 4, after weeks of requests, Theresa May is the first serving PM to refuse me an interview  why?

His fellow presenter, Krishnan Guru-Murthy, then added: Theresa May has refused to sit down with any [Channel 4 News] presenter this election campaign. And Jeremy Corbyn hasnt done one yet since manifesto.

A Channel 4 spokesperson confirmed to The Independent that Ms May had refused the request but said the channel was still in talks with Mr Corbyns team about the possibility of arranging an interview.

The spokesperson declined to comment further.

But Mr Snow later tweeted that the PM had relented, saying: "Extraordinary news.. we have an interview with the Prime Minister. Twitter works!!"

Mr Snow is spending the day before the general election travelling across the country in a bid to chase the leaders and attempt to interview them at their final campaign events.

He said he had had "no dice" with interviewing Mr Corbyn because the Labour leader had to catch a train.

The BBCs Jeremy Vine tweeted: For the record, this is the first election in 40 years where the Prime Minister has not appeared to be interviewed on BBC Radio2.

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

Ms May has repeatedly come under fire for her reluctance to openly debate her opponents. She has refused to take part in any head-to-head debates with other party leaders and has frequently failed to properly answer journalists questions during campaign events.

During the campaign, Ms May has conducted sit-down interviews with the BBC and ITV, as well as taking part in a Battle for Number 10 programme, organised jointly by Sky News and Channel 4, that saw her quizzed by Jeremy Paxman and a studio audience.

She has also been interviewed by Channel 4 reporters while on the campaign trail, but has refused to do what Mr Guru-Murthy called a wide-ranging presenter interview.

 General Election round-up: June 6

Social media users earlier responded to Mr Snows question by speculating as to the reasons for the Prime Ministers refusal to be interviewed.

Because the more time she spends on TV the more everyone realises shes rubbish, wrote one.

She has nothing original to say  and she's terrified of being questioned and challenged, suggested another.

The Conservative Party is yet to respond to a request for comment.
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It has been a running theme of the campaign  Theresa Mays refusal to give straight answers to crucial questions about the Conservatives plans if they win the general election.

Accused of evasion in robotic performances in front of the TV cameras, the Prime Minister earned herself the unwelcome nickname of Maybot.

Here are 12 key questions Ms May has failed to answer, during the long campaign:

* What would be a bad deal in the Brexit negotiations?

After insisting no deal is better than a bad deal, Ms May was repeatedly asked what could be worse than crashing out of the EU with no agreement  threatening an enormous hit to trade, massive queues at Calais, planes unable to fly, etcetera. Answer came there none.

* What are the dire consequences of not getting a deal?

At other times, Ms May warned of the dire consequences of failing to get a good deal  but just how dire would they be? In one excruciating BBC interview, she failed to answer five times, although she did offer: We need to get Brexit right and We want to make sure that we get a good deal.

* What size of divorce bill would you accept?

The EU has insisted it will not talk about future trade until the UK has agreed to pay many tens of billions of pounds for past and future liabilities. Privately, Ms May is believed to have said the UK owes nothing, but her manifesto conceded she would agree a fair settlement. We were not told what a fair sum might be.

* What economic damage would you accept for curbing immigration?

The independent Office for Budget Responsibility is crystal clear: lower immigration makes Britain poorer by cutting tax revenues, in an ageing country with labour shortages. Asked if that was a price worth paying, Ms May simply stuck to her pledge to cut net migration to tens of thousands.

* What will be the cap on lifetime social care costs?

After her spectacular dementia tax U-turn, announcing there would  after all  be a cap, the Prime Minister was asked over and over to give worried pensioners a clue about the level at which it would be set. Instead, she pointed to a post-election consultation, promising to take peoples views.

* How many pensioners will lose winter fuel payments?

When the Tories said the popular payments would be restricted to the poorest, it was estimated that ten million older people would lose them. Asked if that was correct, Ms May said: We will ask people, charities, organisations at what level that should be set.

* Can you rule out increases in income tax and national insurance?

Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said he could  for the richest few  but was slapped down by the Prime Minister who stuck to her mantra that she had absolutely no plans to raise taxes. That, of course, is politicians speak for you bet your life we might!

* Will Philip Hammond still be Chancellor?

Mr Hammond was dubbed the Lord Lucan of the campaign, going missing after one painful appearance with Ms May and convincing reports of a bust up. So will he survive at the Treasury? Weve worked together over the years, for many years... she said. Note the past tense.

* Will the promised 8bn for the NHS be new money  or require other cuts?

Suspicions were raised when one Cabinet minister said the Tories would be re-targeting money from elsewhere in the NHS. Is he right? According to the Prime Minister, voters arent bothered. What people want to know is are we actually going to have the strong economy that enables us to pay for the NHS...

* Will there be further disability benefit cuts?

A promise, last year, of no further raids on the social security budget was missing from the manifesto, which instead ruled out only further radical welfare reform. Put on the spot by The Independent, Ms May refused to look forward, saying: We are spending more on disability benefit payments than has been done by any government in the past.

* How will the UK retain access to EU terror-fighting databases?

After two terrorist atrocities, Ms May was asked how she could guarantee Britain would not fall out of Europol and the Schengen watchlist, with its 8,000 suspected terror suspects. The EU says oversight by the European Court of Justice is a must  which the Prime Minister has ruled out. There could be appropriate oversight of the data swaps, she said  vaguely.

* Did you watch the TV debate you refused to take part in?

Ms May was dubbed the lady not for turning up after ducking out of a BBC leaders debate, but did she tune in from her No 10 sofa? A simple yes-no question, surely? Amber Rudd did an absolutely excellent job, she replied.
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For those who spend their days glued to the rolling news channels, it can only have been like being back watching Live Aid in 1985, when by virtue of some teleportation miracle known as a privately chartered Concorde, Phil Collins appeared at both the simultaneous London and Philadelphia concerts.

One minute the Prime Minister was being jovially abused by some Labour supporting butchers at Smithfield market in London, then within seconds she was at a crown green bowls club in Hampshire before, with the morning not yet fully over, she was in Norwich, returning to her preferred setting of an out-of-town function room, with a thin shower of party activists for company.

Conspiracy theorists may in the future claim the whole thing was faked, done on a secret sound stage in the basement beneath No 10, the bowlers actors, the angry butchers a false flag operation, but unlike every other day of the campaign, some of it did appear to be real.

Recommended This election should have been fought on the NHS

Conservative strategy, in these final hours, is to get the out to the constituencies that can still be coaxed your way, so if you're a Labour MP and Theresa May turns up in your seat today, it's rather like a corrupt dictator encountering the BBC's John Simpson in the arrivals lounge.

Evidently, the Conservatives think there are 4,000 nickable votes from Labour in the rather industrial seat of Southampton Test, or the Prime Minister would not have been staring at a crown green bowls match at 7am. But whether there are too many political swingers among the members, one of whom described themselves to an enquiring journalist as extremely Conservative, we shall have to wait and see.

In Norwich (to where I teleported, via Great Anglia Express) it is evidently Labours leadership hopeful Clive Lewis that the ruthless Conservative opposition vanquishing machine has in its sights. A Conservative victory here and it would be too late not to renew Trident. Labour would have been hit by one.

The Prime Minister is clearly up for the fight. Bounding on to the stage, past husband Philip, she did appear to have drawn a tiny sip from the same grail of humanity from which Jeremy Corbyn has been drinking freely for weeks.

One simple fact no one should forget, she said. If we lose six seats, the majority will be gone. If anyone is forgetting this, they have not been paying much attention.

She warned again of the grave consequences of how everything depends on Brexit and getting the right Brexit deal.

Of course, now as seven weeks ago, she maintains that no deal is better than a bad deal, even while ramping up the warnings on how much a bad deal  Jeremy Corbyns deal will destroy the country and wipe out your childrens future.

It seems now too hopeful to find out quite what the Prime Minister thinks Corbyns terrible, country-destroying deal would be. It cant be no deal because we know thats better than a bad deal. It cant be, for example, making large payments into the EU budget, or remaining under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, or staying in the single market or the customs union. It cant even be keeping freedom of movement, because these are all things that a year ago, Theresa May said were in the countrys best interests. She campaigned for them and then voted for them.

Too late now to deviate from the core message. This is the most important election of my lifetime, she said again. The country faces a stark choice.

Who do you want driving the country off the precipice? Theresa May or Jeremy Corbyn? Its got to be one or the other.
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Introducing a guaranteed basic income could eradicate extreme poverty in at least 66 countries, an economist has claimed.

John McArthur, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said making unconditional cash transfers to poor citizens could help hundreds of millions of people.

Dozens of countries could eliminate extreme poverty in short orderwithout a penny of extra foreign aid required, he said.

Recommended Universal basic income scheme set for trials in three European cities

Mr McArthur highlighted the work of GiveDirectly, a non-profit organisation that gives money, without conditions attached, to people in some of the worlds poorest countries.

Last year, the organisation launched a guaranteed basic income scheme in Kenya in which people are given transfers of around $200 per year  roughly the amount needed to lift them out of extreme poverty.

Writing on the Brookings Institution website, Mr McArthur said a similar scheme applied to more of the 650 million people in the world who are living in extreme poverty could have a huge impact.

Even if the cash transfers were only introduced by governments in countries where the total cost to the state would be less than 1 per cent of GDP, this would still allow up to 66 countries to afford such a policy.

This would help lift 185 million people out of extreme poverty, including around 100 million in India, 17 million in Indonesia and 9 million in Brazil.

A further 25 countries, including Bangladesh and Nigeria, could afford to introduce a basic income if they were willing to spend between 1 and 5 per cent of their GDP on it - potentially helping an additional 150 million people.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

A large and growing number of countries could quickly take the lead in ending their own extreme income poverty, Mr McArthur wrote. A mix of domestic and peer country pressure is needed to focus efforts.

There are no silver bullets in the fight against extreme poverty, but cash transfers have shown themselves to be a powerful weapon in the arsenal. A large and growing number of countries could now deploy it on their own terms."

It is the World Banks unique obligation to help countries explore the potential for introducing a basic income, he added.

However, a basic income policy would cost above 5 per cent of GDP - and therefore would most likely be prohibitively expensive - in another 31 countries where 300 million people are living in extreme poverty.

 Canada is trialing universal basic income

Mr McArthur said this showed why foreign aid was still crucial to ending poverty.

None of this should be interpreted as an argument against foreign aid, which merits ardent ongoing defence, he said.

Underscoring the depth of the poverty challenge faced in many places, the same calculations show that approximately 300 million extremely poor people live in 31 countries where [a basic income] would require at least 5 per cent of national income.

In Burundi, for example, poverty is so pervasive and the economy so small that the required transfers would be equivalent to around two-thirds of national income.

The idea of a basic income has attracted growing support in recent years. Pilot studies have taken place in Namibia, Brazil, Finland and parts of Canada, among others.

In the UK, the Conservatives have largely dismissed the idea but Labour has expressed interest in the policy and earlier this year set up a working group to investigate its potential.
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Police in Mozambique have reportedly issued a warning that bald men may be attacked for the purposes of witchcraft and rituals associated with local superstitions.

The warning comes after two bald men were brutally killed in the south east African country's Zambezia province, according to the Agence France Presse (AFP). One of the men had been found with his head cut off and his organs removed.

The murders led to the arrest of two men, whose motivations came from superstition and culture  the local community thinks bald men are rich, national police spokesman Inacio Dina told the news agency.

In a separate interview with the BBC, he added: The belief is that the head of a bald man contains gold."

The killings happened in the same region where albino people have been murdered as part of rituals, the broadcaster reported.

Amnesty International recently reported there had been a sharp increase in human rights abuses against people with albinism in neighbouring Malawi since 2014.

People with albinism are abducted and killed and their graves are robbed, the human rights organisation reported.

They are targeted for their body parts which some believe have magical powers and bring good luck, it said.

Amnesty International estimates between 7,000 and 10,000 people with albinism live Malawi. At least 18 people were reportedly killed between 2014 and 2016, while five people disappeared over the same period.
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Barack Obama and Justin Trudeau have kept the image of their "bromance" alive as they met for dinner in Montreal.

The former US President and Canadian Prime Minister dined together after Mr Obama gave a talk organised by the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal, during which he said the Paris climate accord still has a chance despite the "temporary absence of American leadership."

Last week, Donald Trump announced the US would pull out of the agreement.

 Obama admits 'hardest thing about being President'

"Obviously I'm disappointed with the current American administration decision to put out of Paris," Mr Obama said according to an ABC News report.

"We're going to have to act with more urgency. I'm looking forward to the United States being a leader and not just on the sidelines going forward."

Mr Obama and Mr Trudeau met to discuss "their shared commitment to developing the next generation of leaders," the Obama Foundation said in a tweet.

"How do we get young leaders to take action in their communities?" Mr Trudeau asked in a tweet.

"Thanks @BarackObama for your visit & insights tonight in my hometown."

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

While local media is yet to report on what the pair ate at Liverpool House in Montreal's Little Burgundy neighbourhood, a website for the restaurant reads: "Seaside cottage charm and bustling oyster counter.

"Sexy Old World wines, and crazy fresh market food. A great club house feel."

Crowds waited for hours outside the restaurant for the two men to emerge, Global News reports, with the two men hugging in a long embrace before Mr Obama drove away.
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The only woman to secure a trial against Bill Cosby for sexual assault has taken the stand  breaking her silence of more than 10 years and telling a jury that the once-celebrated entertainer drugged and assaulted her in 2004.

[He was] somebody I trusted as a mentor, and somewhat of an older figure to me, Andrea Constand told the jurors assembled in the Montgomery County, Pennsylvania courtroom.

When Mr Cosby started inviting her over for dinner, Ms Constand said, she thought he was trying to help her fit in after her recent move. When he gave her pills to take one evening, she told him, I trust you, Ms Constand claimed.

Ms Constand says she later awoke from her drug-induced slumber to find his hands groping her breasts and his fingers penetrating her. He also placed her hands on his genitals.

"In my head I was trying to get my hands to move or my legs to move, but I was frozen, she said.

When she awoke in the morning, Mr Cosby gave her tea and a muffin. They exchanged few words. She left.

Mr Cosby has pleaded not guilty to three charges of aggravated indecent assault.

Ms Constands words on the stand will be highly scrutinised, as they may be the only testimony that could land Mr Cosby behind bars. More than 50 women have publicly accused the iconic comedian of sexual assault, but only Ms Constand has secured a trial.

But the first days of this highly anticipated trial allowed one other of Mr Cosbys accusers to take the stand: Kelly Johnson, a former employee of Mr Cosbys agent.

Ms Johnson testified on Monday that the comedian had drugged and assaulted her when she worked for the William Morris Agency in 1996.

Bill Cosby: Career in pictures Show all 20 1 /20 Bill Cosby: Career in pictures Bill Cosby: Career in pictures Bill Cosby Winner of his first Emmy for 'I Spy' is Bill Cosby being congratulated by his wife Camille held at Americana Hotel, 1966 Bill Cosby: Career in pictures Bill Cosby Bill Cosby in 'I Spy', 1960s Bill Cosby: Career in pictures Bill Cosby Bill Cosby in July 1973 in Perth Bill Cosby: Career in pictures Bill Cosby Bill Cosby and Richard Pryor in 'California Suite', 1978 Bill Cosby: Career in pictures Bill Cosby Bill Cosby and Elmo in Sesame Street, 1989 Bill Cosby: Career in pictures Bill Cosby Bill Cosby poses for a picture with Florence Griffith-Joyner in June 1989 Bill Cosby: Career in pictures Bill Cosby Comedian Bill Cosby back in 1992 Rex Features Bill Cosby: Career in pictures Bill Cosby A scene from a 1992 episode of 'The Cosby Show' AP Bill Cosby: Career in pictures Bill Cosby US Monica Seles breaks into laughter as she jokes with comedian Bill Cosby during a celebrity match in the stadium at the US Open for the Arthur Ashe AIDS Challenge on 27 August 1995 Bill Cosby: Career in pictures Bill Cosby Bill Cosby meets Toronto Blue Jays' All-Star Joe Carter after the Stars played the Stripes in the Celebrity All-Star game which preceded workouts for the 67th All-Star Game at Veterans Stadium on 8 July 1996 in Philadephia Bill Cosby: Career in pictures Bill Cosby Co-hosts Oprah Winfrey and Bill Cosby joke with each other during the opening of the 2000 Essence Awards 14 April 2000 at Radio City Music Hall in New York City Bill Cosby: Career in pictures Bill Cosby Bill Cosby jokes with baseball great Hank Aaron after they both received the Presidential Medal of Freedom Award from U.S. President George W. Bush during a ceremony on 9 July 2002 at the White House in Washington Bill Cosby: Career in pictures Bill Cosby Bill Cosby poses backstage after winning the 'Bob Hope Humanitarian Award' during the 55th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards at the Shrine Auditorium on 21 September 2003 in Los Angeles Bill Cosby: Career in pictures Bill Cosby 'Tonight Show' host Jay Leno and comedian Bill Cosby laugh during a surprise visit by Cosby to sign a Harley-Davidson motorcycle that Leno is using to raise money for the victims of Hurricane Katrina at NBC studios on 9 September 2005 in Burbank, California Bill Cosby: Career in pictures Bill Cosby Bill Cosby speaks during a taping of 'Meet the Press' at the NBC studios on 14 October 2007 in Washington Bill Cosby: Career in pictures Bill Cosby Bill Cosby at the 12th annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor at the John F. Kennedy Center on 26 October 2009 in Washington Bill Cosby: Career in pictures Bill Cosby Bill Cosby speaks at the National Action Network's 20th annual Keepers of the Dream Awards gala in New York on 6 April 2011 Reuters Bill Cosby: Career in pictures Bill Cosby Bill Cosby during the 100th anniversary celebration of the Beverly Hills Hotel & Bungalows supporting the Motion Picture & Television Fund and the American Comedy Fund, 2012 Getty Images Bill Cosby: Career in pictures Bill Cosby Bill Cosby speaks onstage at the Thurgood Marshall College Fund 25th Awards Gala on 11 November 2013 in Washington Bill Cosby: Career in pictures Bill Cosby Bill Cosby performs at the Treasure Island Hotel & Casino on 26 September 2014 in Las Vegas

Ms Johnsons mother, Patrice Sewell, took the stand on Tuesday, testifying that her daughter had called her in 1996 to recount the assault.

She said Mr Cosby asked her to meet her at the Bel-Air Hotel to talk about her career.And when she went to the hotel she was directed to (a bungalow), Ms Sewell said.

Later, Ms Sewell says the comedian forced her daughter to take a pill. She awoke in bed next to Mr Cosby, her clothes undone, it is claimed.

The testimony of Ms Sewell  and of Joseph Miller, who represented the William Morris Agency when Ms Johnson filed a workers compensation claim against them  largely supported Ms Johnsons testimony.

Mr Miller said he was surprised when Ms Johnson mentioned Mr Cosby in her workers compensation deposition, and she she told him Mr Cosby had taken out his penis  and wanted her to fondle him, and she didnt want to do that.

The defence, however, tried to poke holes in Ms Johnsons story, asking why she had previously said under oath that the assault occurred in 1991, not 1996. Mr Miller testified that she told him the assault occurred in 1990.

Ms Johnson is the only other accuser who will be permitted to testify. The trial is expected to last two weeks.
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Donald Trumps sons have defended their fathers scathing attack on Sadiq Khan and argued the London Mayor is in denial about the terror attacks which have plagued London in recent months.

President Trump sparked heavy criticism for his one-sided Twitter tirade against Mr Khan in the wake of the London Bridge terror attack which left seven dead and dozens injured. In the immediate aftermath, Mr Trump wholly misconstrued quotes from Mr Khan, wrongly claiming the mayor had said there was no reason to be alarmed about the risk of terror attacks in London.

After Mr Khan's spokesperson said that the US President had deliberately taken his remarks out of context, Mr Trump doubled down on his comments. He said: Pathetic excuse by London Mayor Sadiq Khan who had to think fast on his no reason to be alarmed statement. MSM [Mainstream media] is working hard to sell it!

The billionaire property developers sons Donald Trump Jnr and Eric Trump have now rallied behind their fathers barbed attacks on Londons first Muslim Mayor.

Despite the fact Mr Khan has made a point of not responding to President Trumps barrages of criticism - saying he did not have the time to respond to tweets from him  Trump Jnr claimed the mayor should stop attacking his father.

Maybe rather than the mayor of London attacking, maybe he should do something about it, Trump Jr told ABC in Trump Tower. Maybe he should do something to fix the problem rather than just sit there and pretend there isn't one.

He claimed Mr Khan, who has been busy working in conjunction with the security services and held a vigil for victims of the attack, was not doing enough to tackle terrorism in the wake of the atrocities.

In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour Show all 39 1 /39 In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 20 May 2017 US President Donald Trump and Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud arriving for a reception ahead of a banquet at Murabba Palace in Riyadh Getty Images In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 20 May 2017 US President Donald Trump, accompanied by First Lady Melania Trump, and Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud being welcomed at Murabba Palace in Riyadh Getty Images In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 20 May 2017 US President Donald J. Trump with King of Saudi Arabia Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud during a welcome ceremony with traditional sword dancers at Murabba Palace, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia EPA In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 20 May 2017 King of Saudi Arabia Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud with US President Donald J. Trump and wife Melania during a welcome ceremony at Murabba Palace, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia EPA In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 20 May 2017 US President Donald Trump adjusts the Collar of Abdulaziz Al Saud Medal, after it was bestowed upon him by Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud at the Royal Court in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia Reuters In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 20 May 2017 Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud presents U.S. President Donald Trump with the Collar of Abdulaziz Al Saud Medal at the Royal Court in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia Reuters In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 21 May 2017 Palestinians print posters depicting US President Donald Trump in preparations for his planned visit, in the West Bank town of Bethlehem Reuters In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 21 May 2017 US President Donald Trump accompanied by first lady Melania Trump, his daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband White House senior advisor Jared Kushner, before delivering his remarks to the Arab Islamic American Summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia Reuters In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 21 May 2017 US President Donald Trump looks on as U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Muhammad bin Nayef exchange a memorandum of understanding Reuters In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 21 May 2017 First Lady Melania Trump shares a laugh with a child during a visit to the American International School in the Saudi capital Riyadh Getty Images In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 21 May 2017 US President Donald Trump holds a bilateral meeting with Bahrain's King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa AP In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 22 May 2017 Israeli soldiers rest during preparations ahead of President Trump's landing in Tel Aviv, Israel Getty Images In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 22 May 2017 First Lady Melania Trump makes her way to board Air Force One in Riyadh as she heads with her husband the US President to Israel Getty Images In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 22 May 2017 US President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump board Air Force One for Israel, the next stop in Trump's international tour, at King Khalid International Airport AP In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 22 May 2017 Israeli soldiers wait for the arrival ceremony of US President Donald Trump at Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv, Israel AP In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 22 May 2017 US President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump arrive aboard Air Force One at Ben Gurion International Airport in Lod near Tel Aviv, Israel Reuters In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 22 May 2017 US President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump disembark Air Force One on arrival at Ben Gurion International Airport AP In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 22 May 2017 US President Donald J. Trump and his wife, US First Lady Melania Trump are welcomed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu upon arrival at Ben Gurion Airport, in Lod outside Tel Aviv, Israel EPA In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 22 May 2017 US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sit during welcome ceremony in Tel Aviv AP In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 22 May 2017 US First Lady Melania Trump chats wife Sara Netanyahu as US President Donald Trump chats to Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a welcoming ceremony to welcome Trump at Ben Gurion International Airport Reuters In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 22 May 2017 US President Donald Trump delivers a speech upon his arrival at Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv Getty Images In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 22 May 2017 US President Donald Trump gestures during a press conference with Israel's President at the President's Residence in Jerusalem Getty Images In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 22 May 2017 US President Donald Trump watches as First Lady Melania Trump signs the guest book at the President's Residence in Jerusalem Getty Images In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 22 May 2017 US President Donald Trump walks with first lady Melania Trump in Jerusalem's Old City Reuters In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 22 May 2017 US President Donald Trump visits the Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews can pray, in Jerusalems Old City Getty Images In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 22 May 2017 US President Donald Trump stands next to Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz at the plaza in front of the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest prayer site, in Jerusalem's Old City Reuters In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 22 May 2017 US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and White House senior advisor Jared Kushner leave notes at the Western Wall in Jerusalem Reuters In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 22 May 2017 US First Lady Melania Trump touches the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest prayer site, in Jerusalem's Old City EPA In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 22 May 2017 Ivanka Trump, assistant and daughter of US President Donald J. Trump, touches the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest prayer site, in Jerusalem's Old City EPA In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 22 May 2017 President Donald Trump visits the Western Wall AP In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 24 May 2017 US President Donald J. Trump arrives in a vehicle to Saint Damaso's Court for a private audience with Pope Francis in Vatican City EPA In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 24 May 2017 Pope Francis walks past Ivanka Trump and First Lady Melania Trump on the occasion of the private audience with President Donald Trump, at the Vatican AP In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 24 May 2017 Pope Francis exchanges gifts with US President Donald Trump during a private audience at the Vatican Getty Images In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 24 May 2017 Pope Francis meets US President Donald Trump and his wife Melania during a private audience at the Vatican Reuters In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 24 May 2017 Pope Francis with US President Donald J. Trump EPA In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 24 May 2017 Pope Francis gets into is car after meeting with US President Donald Trump AP In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 24 May 2017 President Donald Trump and his wife Melania look at the frescoed ceilings during their visit to the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican L'Osservatore Romano/Pool Photo via AP In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 24 May 2017 US President Donald Trump security vehicles are seen in front of Air Force One before take off from Leonardo da Vinci-Fiumicino Airport in Rome, Italy Reuters In pictures: President Donald Trump on tour 24 May 2017 US President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump wave to reporters before boarding the Air Force One to Brussels, at the end of a 2-day visit to Italy including a meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican, at Rome's Fiumicino international airport AP

Trump Jnr, the Presidents oldest child, added: We keep appeasing it. And we keep saying, 'Okay, it's gonna be great. We're gonna hold fast and we're gonna keep calm and carry on. Maybe we have to keep calm and actually do something.

Eric, who works alongside his older brother as a trustee of the Trump Organisation, also weighed in on the furore.

He said: You should be alarmed. Because this has become the new norm. And it's not right. And we, as a society, especially as Americans, better do something about it.

His reference to alarm ties into Mr Trumps misrepresentation of Mr Khans words after the attack. The mogul-turned-politico, who was accused of politicising the attack for his own gain, wrongly claimed the mayor had said there was no reason to be alarmed about the risk of terror attacks in London.

At least seven dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is no reason to be alarmed! he said on Twitter.

Nevertheless, the mayor had been telling people not to be alarmed about increased police presence in the capital and in no way telling people they should not be alarmed by the atrocities themselves.

On the contrary, in the wake of the attack, Mr Khan issued a statement saying: My message to Londoners and visitors to our great city is to be calm and vigilant today. You will see an increased police presence today, including armed officers and uniformed officers.

There is no reason to be alarmed by this. We are the safest global city in the world. You saw last night as a consequence of our planning, our preparation, the rehearsals that take place, the swift response from the emergency services tackling the terrorists and also helping the injured.

This is by no means the first time Trump Jnr, who claimed his fathers comments about grabbing women by the pussy are typical among some men and are a fact of life last year, has launched an attack on Mr Khan.

After the Westminster attack in March of this year, Trump Jnr shared a six-month-old story by The Independent on Twitter which quoted the Mayor of London saying terror attacks were part and parcel of living in a global city.

Trump Jnr, an executive of the Trump Organisation, said: You have to be kidding me?!

It was not clear whether Trump Jnr had even read the actual article before misconstruing the London Mayors comments. It also was unclear whether he was aware the six-month-old piece did not bear any relation to the attack outside the Houses of Parliament and instead focused on Mr Khans reaction to a wholly unrelated bombing in the Chelsea neighbourhood of New York.
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The day after President Donald Trump asked James B. Comey, the FBI director, to end an investigation into his former national security adviser, Comey confronted Attorney General Jeff Sessions and said he did not want to be left alone again with the President, according to current and former law enforcement officials.

Comey believed Sessions should protect the FBI from White House influence, the officials said, and pulled him aside after a meeting in February to tell him that private interactions between the FBI director and the President were inappropriate. But Sessions could not guarantee that the President would not try to talk to Comey alone again, the officials said.

Comey did not reveal, however, what had so unnerved him about his Oval Office meeting with the President: Trumps request that the FBI director end the investigation into the former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, who had just been fired. By the time Trump fired Comey last month, Comey had disclosed the meeting to a few of his closest advisers but nobody at the Justice Department, according to the officials, who did not want to be identified discussing Comeys interactions with Trump and Sessions.

Comey will be the centre of attention Thursday during testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, where he is expected to be quizzed intensely about his interactions with Trump and why he decided to keep secret the presidents request to end the Flynn investigation.

Comeys unwillingness to be alone with the president reflected how deeply Comey distrusted Trump, who Comey believed was trying to undermine the FBIs independence as it conducted a highly sensitive investigation into links between Trumps associates and Russia, the officials said. By comparison, Comey met alone at least twice with President Barack Obama.

A spokesman for the FBI declined to comment on Comeys request. A Justice Department spokesman, Ian Prior, said that the attorney general doesnt believe its appropriate to respond to media inquiries on matters that may be related to ongoing investigations.

Yet according to two people who were briefed on the discussions, Sessions offered to resign in recent weeks as he told Trump he needed the freedom to do his job.

On Tuesday, the White House declined to say whether Trump still had confidence in his Attorney General.

The Justice Department typically walls off the White House from criminal investigations to avoid even the appearance of political meddling in law enforcement. But Trump has repeatedly interjected himself in law enforcement matters, and never more dramatically than in his private meetings with Comey.

You have the President of the United States talking to the Director of the FBI, not just about any criminal investigation, but one involving his presidential campaign, said Matthew S. Axelrod, who served in senior Justice Department roles during the Obama administration and is now a partner at the law firm Linklaters. That is such a sharp departure from all the past traditions and rules of the road.

But that raises one of the questions Comey will have to answer in his testimony on Thursday. If he believed that Trump was trying to get him to end an investigation, why did he not tell anyone about it?

Trumps defenders note that Andrew G. McCabe, the acting director of the FBI, has said that there has been no effort to impede our investigation. Current and former law enforcement officials say Comey kept his interactions with Trump a secret in part because he was not sure whom at the Justice Department he could trust.

FBI officials were also unsure whether what Trump had done was a crime or how the conversation could ever be corroborated. So Comey kept the circle of officials at the FBI who knew about his interactions with Trump small because he did not want agents and analysts working on the case to be influenced by what the president wanted.

Comeys decision to keep his interactions with Trump a secret from the Justice Department were the latest example of how he set himself apart from the department throughout his tenure at FBI director.

Several times during the FBIs investigation into Hillary Clintons personal email server last year, for example, Comey made decisions without the Justice Departments knowledge or approval, often to the consternation of Loretta Lynch, then the Attorney General. Comey has said he made those decisions  which have been praised and criticised along partisan lines  to protect the FBIs independence.

In a legal sense, were not independent of the Department of Justice, Comey told Congress last month. We are spiritually, culturally pretty independent group, and thats the way you would want it.

Comey is also likely to be asked Thursday what he told Trump about the Russia investigation. Trump has told aides and said publicly that, on three occasions, Comey assured him that he was not under investigation.

Current and former law enforcement officials said that when the investigation was handed over last month to a special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, Trump was not a target. But it is not clear what, if anything, Comey told the President about whether he was being investigated.

While Justice Department policy allows authorities to tell people whether they are the target of an investigation, prosecutors  not FBI agents  handle such discussions. We typically do not answer that question, McCabe testified recently.

Former officials say Comey anticipated that the president might ask whether he was being investigated, and consulted his advisers on how to delicately sidestep the question. The officials were not aware of how Comey decided to answer.

When the Justice Department transferred the Russia investigation to Mueller, it gave him the authority to investigate whether the president broke any laws by attempting to obstruct the case or by firing Comey.

As FBI Director, Comey wrote a detailed memo after every major phone call or meeting with Trump and left those memos in the bureaus files when he left. As special counsel, Mueller has access to those memos, but the FBI declined a request from the Senate Intelligence Committee for copies, citing the ongoing investigation. It is unclear whether Comey still has copies of all of them or plans to read from them during his testimony.

According to people briefed on the memos, they describe not only what Trump said, but details such as his tone and where he was sitting. In one memo, Comey described a dinner with Trump at the White House a week after the inauguration in January. Trump asked Comey to pledge his loyalty but Comey refused.

Two weeks later, on 14 February, Trump kicked Vice President Mike Pence, Sessions and other senior administration officials out of the Oval Office so he could have his one-on-one conversation with Comey, according to people briefed on one of Comeys memos.

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

It was in that conversation that Trump asked Comey to end the investigation into Flynn, and encouraged him to investigate leaks, the people said.

I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go, Trump told Comey, according to the memo Comey wrote describing that meeting. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.

Asked Tuesday about Comeys coming testimony, Trump replied, I wish him luck.

The New York Times
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A former US cabinet member has said he fears Donald Trump is losing his mind and argues it is time to consider his removal from office.

Robert Reich, the author and chancellors professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkley, is the former Labor Secretary to President Bill Clinton. He argues that it is now time to seriously consider the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, which provides for removal of a president who is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.

Section four of the 25th Amendment allows Congress to form a body that can evaluate whether the president is fit for office, and remove him without impeaching him.

I fear the man is losing his mind, Mr Reich wrote. Today Trump attacked Democrats (whom he called Obstructionists!), the Mayor of London (whom he derided as pathetic), and the judicial system (which he termed slow and political!).

Prime Minister Theresa May has faced calls to scrap Mr Trumps planned visit to the UK following his comments about London Mayor Sadiq Khan in the wake of the London terror attack.

Mr Reich also claimed Mr Trump attacked his own justice department for the watered down, politically correct version of his executive order to the Supreme Court.

The President tweeted that the order stopping people entering the US from seven Muslim-majority countries is a travel ban, while his legal team have been attempting to make the case that it is not.

We know hes a sociopath, but he seems to be growing worse, Mr Reich said, citing a source close to Mr Trump, who claimed to CNN that the president now lives within himself, which is a dangerous place for Donald Trump to be.

The presidents infamous use of Twitter has reportedly stretched to him blocking users who reply to his tweets with criticism or that mock him, which a free speech institute claims is breaking the law by violating the First Amendment of the Constitution.

A Gallup daily tracking poll showed the Presidents approval rating dipped to 36 per cent over the weekend, while a Politico/Morning Consult poll showed last week that nearly 43 per cent of Americans favour the idea of starting an impeachment process, Newsweek reported.
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The nation's top intelligence official told associates in March that President Donald Trump asked him if he could intervene with then-FBI Director James Comey to get the bureau to back off its focus on former national security adviser Michael Flynn in its Russia probe, according to officials.

On 22 March, less than a week after being confirmed by the Senate, Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats attended a briefing at the White House together with officials from several government agencies. As the briefing was wrapping up, Trump asked everyone to leave the room except for Coats and CIA Director Mike Pompeo.

The President then started complaining about the FBI investigation and Comey's handling of it, said officials familiar with the account Coats gave to associates. Two days earlier, Comey had confirmed in a congressional hearing that the bureau was probing whether Trump's campaign coordinated with Russia during the 2016 race.

After the encounter, Coats discussed the conversation with other officials and decided that intervening with Comey as Trump had suggested would be inappropriate, according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal matters.

The events involving Coats show the President went further than just asking intelligence officials to deny publicly the existence of any evidence showing collusion during the 2016 election, as The Washington Post reported in May. The interaction with Coats indicates that Trump aimed to enlist top officials to have Comey curtail the bureau's probe.

Recommended James Comey asked Attorney General not to leave him alone with Trump

Coats will testify on Wednesday before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Lawmakers on the panel said they would press him for information about his interactions with the president regarding the FBI investigation.

The question of whether the president obstructed the Russia investigation is expected to take centre stage this week with Comey's highly anticipated testimony on the Hill on Thursday. Comey associates say that before the director was fired in May, the president had asked him to drop the investigation into Flynn, and Comey refused.

Brian Hale, a DNI spokesman, declined to comment on whether Trump asked Coats to intervene with Comey regarding the Flynn investigation. Hale said in a statement: Director Coats does not discuss his private conversations with the President. However, he has never felt pressured by the President or anyone else in the Administration to influence any intelligence matters or ongoing investigations.

US Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats (Gary Cameron/Reuters)

A spokesman for Pompeo declined to comment on the closed-door discussions. The White House referred questions to outside lawyers, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump has repeatedly denied any coordination took place between his campaign and the Russian government, which, according to US intelligence agencies, stole emails embarrassing to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and leaked them to undermine her campaign.

Flynn had served as an enthusiastic surrogate for Trump during the campaign and then was fired after just 24 days as national security adviser over revelations he misrepresented his discussions with the Russian ambassador to the United States.

The incidents suggest that Trump may not have appreciated the traditional barriers meant to insulate the intelligence agencies from politics.

Though the office of the DNI oversees other intelligence agencies, the FBI director operates independently of the DNI on many matters. For example, Comey kept James Clapper, Coats's predecessor in the DNI job during the Obama administration, in the dark about the bureau's investigation into possible coordination.

A day or two after the 22 March meeting, the President followed up with a phone call to Coats, according to officials familiar with the discussions. In the call, Trump asked the DNI to issue a public statement denying the existence of any evidence of coordination between the Russian government and the Trump campaign. Again, Coats decided not to act on the request.

Trump similarly approached Admiral Mike Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency, to ask him to publicly deny the existence of any evidence of coordination between the Russians and the Trump campaign, as the Post previously reported, according to current and former officials. Like Coats, Rogers refused to comply with the president's request.

Trump announced in January that he was nominating Coats to serve as DNI, an office which is responsible for overseeing US intelligence agencies and for briefing the president on global developments.

In February, as tensions flared between intelligence agencies and the White House over Russia and other issues, some of Trump's advisers floated the idea of appointing a New York billionaire, Stephen Feinberg, to undertake a review of the DNI. Coats, who was preparing for his confirmation hearing, felt blindsided, officials said.

The White House backed away from the idea of naming Feinberg after Coats and members of the intelligence community and Congress raised objections.

Officials say Trump's advisers have since revived their proposal to appoint Feinberg to a senior position, possibly to review the roles of the DNI and other intelligence agencies.

Some officials said they viewed the prospective appointment of Feinberg as an effort by the White House to put pressure on intelligence agencies to close ranks with the White House.

In an appearance last month before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Coats refused to provide details about his interactions with Trump.

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

But Coats indicated that he would cooperate with the Russia probe now being led by special counsel Robert Mueller. Under questioning by Senator Martin Heinrich, Democrat-New Mexico, Coats said that if asked, he would provide details of his conversations with Trump to Mueller.

Coats also said that if he is called before an investigative committee, such as the Senate Intelligence Committee, I certainly will provide them with what I know and what I don't know. He said the Trump administration has not directed the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to withhold information from members of Congress conducting oversight.

The Washington Post
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An Ohio man has been charged with murder in the AIDS-related death of a woman he was accused of infecting with HIV during a five-year sexual relationship in which he failed to tell her that he had the virus.

Ronald Murdock, 51, of Toledo, appeared on Tuesday in a Lucas County criminal court where a judge set his bail at $1.5 million, prosecutor Clinton Wasserman said.

Murdock has not entered a plea. Wasserman said his arraignment was postponed to 13 June to allow time to obtain an attorney.

Murdock was indicted last week on charges of murder and felonious assault, both counts stemming from his sexual relationship with the woman, according to local media.

The indictment marks the latest in a series of criminal cases brought against HIV-positive individuals prosecuted in the United States for sexual behaviour and other conduct that would expose another person to HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

Ohio, like several other US states, has a law requiring people with HIV to disclose that fact to their sexual partners.

The Center for HIV Law & Policy in New York has tallied nearly 280 arrests and prosecutions related to concerns about HIV exposure in the United States between 2008 and 2016, but has said that list is not exhaustive.

The centre and other advocates for people with HIV oppose laws such as the one used in Ohio to prosecute Murdock, saying they stigmatise people with the disease.

But Josh Klempner, the son of the woman who died, voiced support for the prosecution in an interview with a Toledo television station WTVG.

It would be different if he had let people know that he had it (HIV) before he got in that relationship, but he didn't, Klempner told the station. So that right there tells me and everybody else that he has no care.

Klempner's mother, Kimberly Klempner, died in February at age 51, according to WTVG. The station aired images of her death certificate listing AIDS as the cause.

Murdock was married to another woman during his affair with Klempner, the television station reported, citing a police report.

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The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. 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A police spokesman could not be reached for comment.

Josh Klempner told the station his mother discovered Murdock had HIV when she looked at his medication bottles.

Murdock, who could not be reached for comment, faces a sentence of up to life in prison if convicted of murder.

Reuters
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Parents who prayed for their sick newborn baby instead of taking her to the hospital are charged with murder. The infant died just hours after she was born.

Sarah and Travis Mitchell of Oregon City, Oregon are members of the Followers of Christ Church, which does not believe in modern medicine. Instead, members rely on prayer and anointing oils for healing.

Ms Mitchell gave birth to twin girls on 5 March in her grandparents home with only midwives and family present.

Recommended One baby dies every two weeks from a preventable infection

One of the newborns died within hours due to lung formation and breathing problems associated with a premature birth.

State Medical Examiner Dr. Karen Gunson told local news station KATU that she estimates Ms Mitchell gave birth approximate two months early.

It is not immediately clear whether the child would have survived had she been born in a hospital or at least taken to one shortly after birth after the breathing trouble became noticeable.

However, Ms Gunson said the baby would have had a chance had the parents done so.

In 2011, church members Dale and Shannon HIckman, were convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to six years in prison for the death of their newborn infant.

That same year, the state removed faith healing as a legal defence in murder and manslaughter cases.
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A month after he fired James Comey as the FBI Director, Donald Trump has announced he is nominating lawyer and former assistant Attorney General Christopher Wray to replace him.

Mr Trump ousted Mr Comey as he was overseeing a federal probe into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russias alleged meddling in the 2016 election. At the time, he said to an interviewer: 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.

With the post having been empty since Mr Comeys firing on 9 May, Mr Trump and his team had considered a number of people for the position. Among them was former Democratic senator Joe Lieberman.

Mr Trump, who has shown no small ability to create headlines, especially to replace negative ones about him, used Twitter to make his announcement. He did so just hours before four intelligence officials were due to give testimony on Capitol Hill about the Russia investigation, and a day before Mr Comey is himself scheduled to appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

While Mr Comey is not expected to divulge details of the ongoing probe, now being headed by former FBI Director Robert Mueller, reports suggest he will provide details of conversations he had with Mr Trump, and which he kept notes of.

 Trump denies that he urged Comey to close Flynn investigation

Among the conversations he will reportedly provide details of, is one where Mr Trump allegedly asked him to display his loyalty to the President. During another reported conversation, Mr Trump allegedly asked Mr Comey to drop his investigation into his former national security advisor, Michael Flynn, a former general who was forced to resign after it emerged he had lied about his contacts with Russian officials.

Some were quick to point out the timing of Mr Trump's announcement. It appears, obviously, that the President is trying to change the topic because weve got two days of hearings here that could be explosive, Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told MSNBC.

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. 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Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. 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

Last month, it was announced that Mr Wray, 50, who served as assistant Attorney General from 2003 to 2005, would join the list of applicants being interviewed for the vacant position.

The White House finally released a statement on Mr Trumps nomination hours after Mr Trumps tweets saying that Mr Wray has been recognised throughout his career as a leader in the field of white-collar criminal defence and government investigations.

It also expanded on Mr Trumps earlier remarks: I am proud to announce Christopher as my choice as the Director of the FBI. During his previous service at the Department of Justice, Christopher was the leader of major fraud investigations, and was a key part of the team overseeing the Justice Departments actions in the war on terrorism following the 9/11 attacks, said President Trump. He is an impeccably qualified individual, and I know that he will again serve his country as a fierce guardian of the law and model of integrity once the Senate confirms him to lead the FBI.

Mr Trump also told reporters on a trip to Cincinnati that Mr Wray was gonna be great.

The website of the Mr Wrays law firm says: Mr Wray chairs the King & Spalding Special Matters and Government Investigations Practice Group, which represents companies, audit and special committees, and individuals in a variety of white-collar criminal and regulatory enforcement matters, parallel civil litigation, and internal corporate investigations.

It is a great honour to be selected by the President to return to the Department of Justice as Director of the FBI, Mr Wray said. I look forward to serving the American people with integrity as the leader of what I know firsthand to be an extraordinary group of men and women who have dedicated their careers to protecting this country.

Among his high profile clients was Chris Christie, the New Jersey Governor, who retained Mr Wray during the so-called Bridgegate controversy, an investigation into the 2013 closure of lanes on the George Washington Bridge as political payback against a local politician.

Three senior officials working for the governor were found guilty, but Mr Christie was not charged in the case.

Mr Christie said last week that Mr Wray was an outstanding lawyer.

Other Republicans lined up to praise the decision to nominate Mr Wray, although some were caught out by Mr Trumps announcement. Legislators attending a closed-door caucus said they had no early word of the Presidents selection of Mr Wray.

Representative Mike Conaway of Texas said, At first blush, he seems like a great choice to lead the FBI. But Mr Conaway added he wasnt given a heads up and told reporters that they had surprised me on the way in.

House Speaker Paul Ryan said Mr Wray seemed like the perfect kind of person for the important job. Mr Ryan added that he favoured a career person and that Mr Wray certainly seems to fit that bill.

Mr Wray is a traditional choice for the job. President Trump had considered current and former politicians, including Mr Lieberman, and some FBI agents worried that Mr Trump would try to politicise the bureau.

Thomas O'Connor, president of the FBI Agents Association, said that group looked forward to meeting with Mr Wray and learning about his views on the bureau and the challenges agents face.

A top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, said Mr Wray had impeccable credentials, vast experience and strong support across the board.

But others were more cautious.

With the many threats that the US faces domestically and internationally, we need a strong FBI director, said Oklahoma Senator James Lankford, a Republican and member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. In the coming weeks, we will evaluate Christopher Wrays qualifications to lead the FBI and his plans for our security and law enforcement.
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Former FBI Director James Comeys testimony is the modern equivalent of secret recordings that played a major part in leading to the resignation of former President Richard Nixon, a former White House lawyer says.

Norman Eisen, a former special counsel in the Obama White House who was known for championing strict ethics standards, compared the remarks prepared by Mr Comey  which some have said shows Donald Trump attempted to obstruct justice  to the Nixon Tapes during an interview on CNN.

This is the equivalent of the Nixon Tapes, Mr Eisen said.

Recommended James Comey confirms Trump tried to make him drop Russia investigation

Mr Comeys planned testimony indicates that the President repeatedly asked him to drop an investigation into a former member of the Trump administration, who had been forced to resign over contacts with Russian officials. The former FBI director, during the prepared remarks, details several interactions with the President, including conversations he felt were inappropriate enough that he was compelled to ask Attorney General Jeff Sessions to ensure that he wasnt alone with the President again.

Reaction to the testimony has been mixed. Some have shrugged off Mr Trumps attempts to convince Mr Comey to drop the investigation, while others say that it presents a clear effort by the President to obstruct justice.

Mr Eisen is clearly in that second camp. The Nixon Tapes are audio recordings of conversations between former President Nixon and his administration officials, family members, and White House staff that were produced through sound-activated recording devices installed in the Oval Office in the 1970s. Those tapes, once handed over to the House Judiciary Committee, provided the special prosecutor with the so-called smoking gun in the Nixon impeachment case.

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

That smoking gun tape was a recording of Mr Nixon speaking with his administration officials just six days after the Watergate break-in. He agreed that the administration should reach out to high-ranking CIA officials and request that they ask the FBI to halt its investigation into that break-in. The special prosecutor determined that, in agreeing to those efforts, Mr Nixon had entered into a criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice.
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The Trump administration is paving the way for drilling for oil to start off the US east coast for the first time, environmentalists have warned.

The US National Marine Fisheries Service said it had received requests from five companies to allow seismic surveys of the seabed with airguns, despite the harassment this causes wildlife, particularly marine mammals. The fisheries service has now invited public comments on its plan to issue permits ahead of a decision later this year.

Donald Trump has made clear his desire to boost production of fossil fuels in the US, with repeated pledges to revitalise the coal industry and the issuing of an executive order in April designed to increase offshore drilling for oil.

The Southern Environmental Law Centre pointed out that 120 cities and towns along the Atlantic coast have passed resolutions opposing seismic tests and offshore drilling.

Sierra Weaver, of the centre, said: If the Administration continues to push forward risky seismic blasting, it will pave the way for offshore drilling, which would be a direct hit to our economy, environment, communities, and way of life.

And even before the drilling gets underway, seismic blasting would do significant harm to our robust commercial fishing industry and endangered whales over vast areas of the ocean.

The coast said no to the last President when he tried to impose seismic blasting and offshore drilling on our communities, and we say no to this one, too.

The centre said that any proposed activity in the sea was not legally allowed to have more than a negligible impact on marine mammals.

It added that 75 scientists had concluded that seismic blasting could cause significant, long-lasting and widespread harm to fish and marine mammals.

10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Show all 10 1 /10 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change A group of emperor penguins face a crack in the sea ice, near McMurdo Station, Antarctica Kira Morris 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Floods destroyed eight bridges and ruined crops such as wheat, maize and peas in the Karimabad valley in northern Pakistan, a mountainous region with many glaciers. In many parts of the world, glaciers have been in retreat, creating dangerously large lakes that can cause devastating flooding when the banks break. Climate change can also increase rainfall in some areas, while bringing drought to others. Hira Ali 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Smoke  filled with the carbon that is driving climate change  drifts across a field in Colombia. Sandra Rondon 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Amid a flood in Islampur, Jamalpur, Bangladesh, a woman on a raft searches for somewhere dry to take shelter. Bangladesh is one of the most vulnerable places in the world to sea level rise, which is expected to make tens of millions of people homeless by 2050. Probal Rashid 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Sindh province in Pakistan has experienced a grim mix of two consequences of climate change. Because of climate change either we have floods or not enough water to irrigate our crop and feed our animals, says the photographer. Picture clearly indicates that the extreme drought makes wide cracks in clay. Crops are very difficult to grow. Rizwan Dharejo 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Hanna Petursdottir examines a cave inside the Svinafellsjokull glacier in Iceland, which she said had been growing rapidly. Since 2000, the size of glaciers on Iceland has reduced by 12 per cent. Tom Schifanella 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change A river once flowed along the depression in the dry earth of this part of Bangladesh, but it has disappeared amid rising temperatures. Abrar Hossain 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change A shepherd moves his herd as he looks for green pasture near the village of Sirohi in Rajasthan, northern India. The region has been badly affected by heatwaves and drought, making local people nervous about further predicted increases in temperature. Riddhima Singh Bhati 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change A factory in China is shrouded by a haze of air pollution. The World Health Organisation has warned such pollution, much of which is from the fossil fuels that cause climate change, is a public health emergency. Leung Ka Wa 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Water levels in reservoirs, like this one in Gers, France, have been getting perilously low in areas across the world affected by drought, forcing authorities to introduce water restrictions. Mahtuf Ikhsan

This process involves dynamite-like blasts going off every ten seconds for weeks or months on end, the centre added.

But, as The Hill political news website pointed out, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke told delegates at a conference on offshore drilling in Houston in May that they should be excited by the administrations plans.

If youre in the oil and gas and energy segment in this society  the stars are lined up, he said. Were going to make jobs, were going to bring the economy ahead.
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White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer has said that Donald Trump's tweets should be "considered official statements" by the US President.

Mr Trump's tweets, even deleted ones, are saved as part of the country's official record that goes to the National Archives and Records Administration. Former President Obama's Twitter account has also be archived.

Recently, senior White House aide Kellyanne Conway criticised the media for having this obsession with covering everything he says on Twitter and very little of what of he does as President."

Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Show all 33 1 /33 Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's first 100 days in office were marred by a string of scandals, many of which caught the eye of the Independent's cartoonists Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Trump's first 100 days have seen him aggressively ramp up tensions with his nuclear rivals in North Korea Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump has warned of a "major, major conflict" with the pariah nation lead by Kim Jong Un Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump dropped the "mother of all bombs" on alleged ISIS-linked militants in Afghanistan, amid an escalation of US military intervention around the globe Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump has been accused of falling short of the standards set by his predecessors in the Oval Office, including Franklin D Roosevelt Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons The tycoon's ascension to the White House came at a time when the balance of power is shifting away from Western nations like those in the G7 group Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Western politicians, including the British Conservative party, have been accused of falling in line behind Mr Trump's proposals Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Brexit is seen to have weakened Britain, reducing still further any political will to resist American leadership Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump's leadership has been marked by sudden and unexpected shifts in global policy Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Trump's controversial missile strike on Syria, which killed several citizens, was seen by some analysts as an attempt to distract from his policy elsewhere Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons The President has also spent a large majority of his weekends golfing, rather than attending to matters of state Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Though free of gaffes, a visit from Chinese president Xi Jinping spotlighted trade tensions between the two states Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons One major and unexpected setback came when Mr Trump's Healthcare Bill was struck down by members of his own party Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Mr Trump has been a figure of fun in the media, with his approval at record lows Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons A string of revelations about Mr Trump's financial indiscretions did not mar his surge to the White House Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Outgoing President Barack Obama was accused of wiretapping Trump Tower by his successor in America's highest office Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons The alleged involvement of Russian intelligence operatives in securing Mr Trump the presidency prompted harsh criticism Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons The explosive resignation of Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who lied about his links to the Russian ambassador, was just one scandal to hit the President Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Many scandals, such as the accusation Barack Obama was implicated in phone-hacking, first broke on Mr Trump's Twitter feed Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's election provoked mass protests in the UK, with millions signing a petition to ban him from the country Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump cited a non-existent terror attack in Sweden during a campaign rally Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump stands accused of stoking regional tensions in Eastern Asia Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons North Korea has launched a number of failed nuclear tests since Mr Trump took power Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Theresa May formally rejected the petition calling for Mr Trump to be banned from the UK Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons When Mr Trump's initial so-called Muslim ban was struck down by a federal justice, the President mocked the 69-year-old as a "ridiculous", "so-called judge" Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons A week after his inauguration, Theresa May met with Mr Trump at the White House Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's first days in office were marked by a hasty attempt to follow through on many of his campaign promises, including the so-called Muslim ban Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's decision to ban citizens of many majority-Muslim countries from the US sparked mass protests Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Revelations about Donald Trump's sexual improprieties were not enough to keep him from being elected President Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons British PM Theresa May was criticised by many in the press for cosying up to the new President Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons One of Mr Trump's top aides, Kelly Anne Conway, was mocked for describing mistruths as "alternative facts" Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons British PM Theresa May was quick to demonstrate that her political aims did not hugely differ from Mr Trump's Donald Trump's first 100 days: in cartoons Donald Trump's inauguration, on 20 January 2017, sparked protests both at home and abroad

Mr Spicer said in his news briefing that Mr Trump is his own "most effective representative of his agenda."

Twitter "gives him the opportunity to speak to the American people...the same people critiquing him now," did so during the election, Mr Spicer noted.

Mr Spicer said it turned out to be "a very effective tool".

Earlier this week, Mr Trump taunted the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan in the wake of the London Bridge attack and praised Saudi Arabia for cutting ties with Qatar over funding terror groups.

The President is also reportedly planning to live-tweet the Senate Intelligence Committee testimony of former FBI Director James Comey, who Mr Trump sacked on 9 May.
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Hawaii has become the first state in the US to formally codify its pledge to defy Donald Trumps decision to withdraw the country from the Paris climate agreement.

Governor David Ige signed two landmark laws that would require the island state to honour the commitments and goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions laid out in the accord. Hawaii is joined by many other US states and localities to declare that the Paris agreement would be honoured, with many governors and mayors signing executive orders or pledging to continue the fight.

The two Hawaii bills codifies the state legislatures commitment to Paris, and commits Hawaii to cut emissions by publishing greenhouse gas contribution levels every five year to promote environmental integrity. The state hopes to protect forests, wetlands, and nature preserves while providing incentives for companies to become carbon-neutral. A certification scheme for farmers will be implemented to measure and promote carbon-neutrality as well.

Recommended By 2030 renewable energy will overtake fossil fuels

Mr Trump announced that the US would withdraw from the international accord last week, making American one of three countries in the world to not be a part of the framework. The President  who has previously called climate change science a hoax  said that the non-binding commitments laid out in the Paris agreement threatened American jobs and disadvantaged the country.

That announcement drew the ire of international allies, including France, Germany, and Italy, which issued a joint statement condemning Mr Trumps actions. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the move was extremely regrettable. French President Emmanuel Macron joined in the fray with a play on Mr Trumps campaign slogan, saying, make our planet great again.

10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Show all 10 1 /10 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change A group of emperor penguins face a crack in the sea ice, near McMurdo Station, Antarctica Kira Morris 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Floods destroyed eight bridges and ruined crops such as wheat, maize and peas in the Karimabad valley in northern Pakistan, a mountainous region with many glaciers. In many parts of the world, glaciers have been in retreat, creating dangerously large lakes that can cause devastating flooding when the banks break. Climate change can also increase rainfall in some areas, while bringing drought to others. Hira Ali 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Smoke  filled with the carbon that is driving climate change  drifts across a field in Colombia. Sandra Rondon 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Amid a flood in Islampur, Jamalpur, Bangladesh, a woman on a raft searches for somewhere dry to take shelter. Bangladesh is one of the most vulnerable places in the world to sea level rise, which is expected to make tens of millions of people homeless by 2050. Probal Rashid 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Sindh province in Pakistan has experienced a grim mix of two consequences of climate change. Because of climate change either we have floods or not enough water to irrigate our crop and feed our animals, says the photographer. Picture clearly indicates that the extreme drought makes wide cracks in clay. Crops are very difficult to grow. Rizwan Dharejo 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Hanna Petursdottir examines a cave inside the Svinafellsjokull glacier in Iceland, which she said had been growing rapidly. Since 2000, the size of glaciers on Iceland has reduced by 12 per cent. Tom Schifanella 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change A river once flowed along the depression in the dry earth of this part of Bangladesh, but it has disappeared amid rising temperatures. Abrar Hossain 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change A shepherd moves his herd as he looks for green pasture near the village of Sirohi in Rajasthan, northern India. The region has been badly affected by heatwaves and drought, making local people nervous about further predicted increases in temperature. Riddhima Singh Bhati 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change A factory in China is shrouded by a haze of air pollution. The World Health Organisation has warned such pollution, much of which is from the fossil fuels that cause climate change, is a public health emergency. Leung Ka Wa 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Water levels in reservoirs, like this one in Gers, France, have been getting perilously low in areas across the world affected by drought, forcing authorities to introduce water restrictions. Mahtuf Ikhsan

But American cities and states have stepped up to try and fill the void in leadership from the US that Mr Trump is leaving behind. Hundreds of mayors have vowed to honor the climate commitments, and a growing number of states have indicated the same. An alliance between California, Washington, New York, and nine other states quickly vowed to drop emissions by 26-28 percent from 2005 levels. Those states represent some of the largest US economies, and a considerable portion of the overall emissions.
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Reality Winner is making headlines for being the first person the Trump administration has charged with leaking classified information.

Who is she?

Texas-raised Reality Winner, 25, is an intelligence contractor with Pluribus International Corporation, which provides services to the National Security Agency (NSA). She began working at the companys location in Georgia starting in February and holds top secret clearance.

Recommended Russian hackers tried to hack US voting software days before election

She has served as a linguist for the US Air Force and speaks Pashto, Farsi and Dari, her mother told CNN. Titus Nichols, her court-appointed attorney, also told CNN that outside of work she works as a yoga instructor. She's just a normal person.

What did she leak?

The Justice Department has charged Ms Winner with removing classified material from a government facility and mailing it to a news outlet. According to the agency, Ms Winner has admitted to FBI agents that she intentionally did this, knowing that the information was classified.

In the US, an individual facing criminal charges is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty at later criminal proceedings.

While court documents filed in the case do not identify the outlet or describe the type of information leaked, the details of the case appear to correspond to information included in an Intercept article.

The article uses an NSA intelligence report to detail Russian attempts to hack US voting systems before the 2016 presidential election. The Intercept said the documents were submitted anonymously.

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

Why did she leak it?

Not sure. Posting under the pseudonym Sara Winners, Ms Winner often criticised Donald Trump on social media. She tweeted Well. People suck. #ElectionNight after it became apparent that Mr Trump would win the presidential race, as well as rebuked him for his order in January restricting travel from six predominantly Muslim countries. The account also liked tweets by Edward Snowden and WikiLeaks.

She's never ever given me any kind of indication that she was in favour of that at all, her mother said regarding Ms Winners stance on leaking. I don't know how to explain it.

What happened to her?

The FBI arrested Ms Winner on 3 June at her home in Georgia.

What punishment is she facing?

Ms Winner could face up to 10 years in prison if she is convicted of leaking the confidential information.
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Donald Trump will meet with what he calls Obamacare victims on an official visit to Ohio, where he will also discuss his infrastructure initiatives ban.

The White House hasnt released too much information on who those victims may be, but Republicans including the president have railed on rising premiums in states across the country. Those same politicians also tend to point to major healthcare insurers pulling out of Affordable Care Act marketplaces, potentially leaving thousands without primary insurance providers in their counties.

Rate hikes and insurer abandonment of markets  Anthem recently announced that it would drop out of the Ohio market, for instance  dont necessarily paint as pure of a failure of Obamacare as Republicans say, however. While Anthem pulling out of Ohio will leave more than 10,000 customers in the lurch (67,000 will also need to choose a new plan in 2018) in counties where the insurance provider was the only marketplace provider (or one of two), other factors point to a more successful program.

Expanded Medicaid allowances in the state serves 691,000 citizens, for example. Beyond that, the high rate hikes are estimated on the presumption that customers wouldnt shop around during open enrollment to find cheaper rates (the average rate increase approved in Ohio for 2017 was 17.33 percent, but benchmark rates only increased by 2 percent for the year, according to healthinsurance.org). Between 2010 and 2015, the Affordable Care Act led to 664,000 more Ohio residents signing up for insurance.

Anthem cited Republican efforts in Congress to repeal the Affordable Care Act as one of the reasons it decided to pull out of Ohio, as the company is unsure whether new legislation would still pay reimbursements to insurers that Obamacare subsidies for low-income out-of-pocket healthcare costs. Anthem also cited existing volatility in the individual health plan market as a reason for pulling out.

Faces of Obamacare: The health scheme at the centre of the shutdown Show all 3 1 /3 Faces of Obamacare: The health scheme at the centre of the shutdown Faces of Obamacare: The health scheme at the centre of the shutdown obama.jpg Faces of Obamacare: The health scheme at the centre of the shutdown obama2.jpg Faces of Obamacare: The health scheme at the centre of the shutdown obama3.jpg

A repeal of Obamacare in the state would result in an estimated 945,000 people losing their health insurance, and local Republicans have expressed concern that legislation might include a pull back on Medicaid funding in the state. Ohio's Governor John Kasich, a vocal critic of Mr Trump and a former Republican presidential candidate, has met with the president to discuss those concerns.
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Democrats have attacked US intelligence officials for refusing to answer questions publicly about whether Donald Trump asked them to influence an investigation into whether the President's campaign advisers colluded with Russian officials.

In a contentious Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, Admiral Michael Rogers, head of the National Security Agency (NSA), and Mr Trumps intelligence director Dan Coats said they did not feel that it was appropriate to comment in an open session on classified conversations they have had with the President.

Senator Angus King, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, asked on what legal basis the officials were not answering certain questions.

I feel it is inappropriate, Senator, Mr Rogers said.

What you feel isnt relevant, Admiral, Mr King retorted.

Media outlets have reported that Mr Trump separately appealed to Mr Rogers and Mr Coats to downplay the Russia investigation. The President also reportedly asked the intelligence director if he could intervene with then-FBI Director James Comey to get the bureau to pull back its inquiry into former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

The hearing came a day before Mr Comey, fired by Mr Trump last month, is also set to openly testify before the Senate committee. Mr Comey is expected to reveal whether the President asked him to drop the bureau's probe into Mr Flynn.

Mr Flynn resigned in February after it was revealed that he had misled Vice President Mike Pence and other top White House officials about his conversations with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the US.

The White House has dismissed the memo as inaccurate.

Despite contending that they could not publicly discuss their interactions with the President, both Mr Rogers and Mr Coats said they had never felt pressured to intervene in an investigation. But they would not comment on whether Mr Trump had asked them to do so.

Mr King pushed back, asking for the legal basis for why the intelligence chiefs couldn't respond to this question. He also asked if it was because Mr Trump had invoked executive privilege.

Mr Rogers responded that the President had not.

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

Both Mr Rogers and Mr Coats  who said he didnt know if he had a legal basis for not responding  asserted that they would be willing to answer senators questions more directly behind closed doors on Wednesday afternoon.

But the officials said that they would first check with legal counsel at the White House to make sure the President did not intend to invoke executive privilege.

Saying he was disappointed with the officials answers, Democratic Senator Mark Warner, the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence committee, said there appears to be a pattern where the President seems to want to intervene, downplay, or halt the Russia investigations.

None of the officials testifying, which also included Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and acting FBI director Andrew McCabe, were laying to rest media reports making those allegations.

If he is even asked, that is a relevant piece of information, Mr Warner said. At some point these facts have to come out.

Republicans Marco Rubio and John McCain also expressed frustration over the officials' refusal to answer certain questions.

When Mr McCain asked about a Washington Post article alleging that Mr Trump asked Mr Coats and Mr Rogers to push back on the Russia probe, Mr Coats responded that he's been around long enough to not take everything at face value thats printed in the Post.

Just because it's published in the Washington Post doesn't mean that it's unclassified, Mr Coats says.

Mr Trump has repeatedly called the alleged connections between his campaign advisers and Russian operatives fake news.
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The crisis over Donald Trumps alleged links to Russia is significantly worse than the Watergate scandal, according to a former US director of national intelligence.

James Clapper said Watergate, which led to the resignation of Richard Nixon, pales in comparison to the current scandal engulfing Mr Trump.

Mr Clapper served as Barack Obamas director of national intelligence from 2010 to 2017.

Recommended James Comey asked Attorney General not to leave him alone with Trump

"I lived through Watergate, I was on active duty then in the Air Force, I was a young officer, it was a scary time, Mr Clapper said.

"I have to say though, I think if you compare the two, Watergate pales really in my view compared to what we're confronting now."

It is absolutely crucial for the United States, and for that matter for the world, for this presidency, for the Republicans, for the Democrats and for our nation at large, that we get to the bottom of this, he added.

Is there a smoking gun with all the smoke? I dont know the answer to that. I think its vital, though, we find that out.

Speaking at Australias National Press Club, Mr Clapper attacked Mr Trump for launching an assault on the institutions of US democracy.

"I am very concerned about the assault on our institutions coming from both an external source, read Russia, and an internal source, the President himself, he said.

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

He said Mr Trumps closeness to Vladimir Putin was very problematic and said the Republicans firing of FBI director James Comey was egregious and inexcusable.

Mr Clapper also revealed that, during a private phone call in January, Mr Trump had asked him to refute an intelligence report suggesting Russia had interfered in the presidential election.

"Ever transactional, he simply asked me to publicly refute the infamous dossier, which I couldn't and wouldn't do, the former intelligence chief.

It comes days before Mr Comey is due to give his highly anticipated verbal testimony to the Senate intelligence committee, which is examining whether Mr Trumps team colluded with Russia in an attempt to influence the election outcome.

"I'm very interested to see what happens with Jim Comey's hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee," Mr Clapper said. "What I think will be very significant to see, both what he says, and what he is asked about and doesn't respond to."
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Parts of a Burmese military plane have been found in the sea after it disappeared with more than 100 people on board.

A spokesperson for the chief of the countrys army said the aircraft went missing during a domestic flight on Wednesday.

Communication was lost suddenly at about 1.35pm (8.05 BST) when it reached about 20 miles west of Dawei town, read a statement posted on Facebook.

Search and rescue operations involving ships and aircraft were ongoing in the Andaman Sea.

Officials said pieces of the aircraft, which was carrying more than a dozen children, had been found in the sea.

The plane left the southern coastal town of Myeik in the early afternoon and was bound for Yangon, the largest city in Burma.

It was declared missing after losing contact with air traffic control.

General Myat Min Oo said the Chinese-made Y-8 aircraft was carrying 90 passengers  mostly families of military personnel  and 14 crew members.

A source told AFP the weather in the region was fine at the time of the incident.

We think it was a technical failure, he added.

In pictures: Burma migrants abandoned at sea Show all 8 1 /8 In pictures: Burma migrants abandoned at sea In pictures: Burma migrants abandoned at sea Myanmar migrants Rohingya migrants swim to collect food supplies dropped by a Thai army helicopter after they jumped from a boat (R) drifting in Thai waters off the southern island of Koh Lipe in the Andaman sea In pictures: Burma migrants abandoned at sea Myanmar migrants Rohingya migrants pass food supplies dropped by a Thai army helicopter to others aboard a boat drifting in Thai waters off the southern island of Koh Lipe in the Andaman sea In pictures: Burma migrants abandoned at sea Myanmar migrants A Rohingya migrant eats food dropped by a Thai army helicopter after he jumped to collect the supplies at sea from a boat drifting in Thai waters off the southern island of Koh Lipe in the Andaman sea. A boat crammed with scores of Rohingya migrants, including many young children, was found drifting in Thai waters, with passengers saying several people had died over the last few days In pictures: Burma migrants abandoned at sea Myanmar migrants Rohingya migrants stand and sit on a boat drifting in Thai waters off the southern island of Koh Lipe in the Andaman sea In pictures: Burma migrants abandoned at sea Myanmar migrants Rohingya migrants stand and sit on a boat drifting in Thai waters off the southern island of Koh Lipe in the Andaman sea In pictures: Burma migrants abandoned at sea Myanmar migrants A Rohingya migrant eats food dropped by a Thai army helicopter after he jumped to collect supplies at sea from a boat drifting in Thai waters off the southern island of Koh Lipe in the Andaman sea In pictures: Burma migrants abandoned at sea Myanmar migrants Rohingya migrants bring back food supplies dropped by a Thai army helicopter after jumping to collect them at sea from a boat drifting in Thai waters off the southern island of Koh Lipe in the Andaman sea In pictures: Burma migrants abandoned at sea Myanmar migrants A Rohingya migrant woman holding a child cries as she stands on a boat drifting in Thai waters off the southern island of Koh Lipe in the Andaman sea

Another Burmese military plane crashed shortly after taking off from Naypyidaw airport in February last year.

Four military personnel were killed and one was seriously injured after the small air force propeller plane went down.

Burma, a former British colony that was under military rule until 2011, is in the grip of a number of sectarian conflicts including in Kachin, Rakhine state and Kokang.

The government headed by former political prisoner Aung San Suu Sky has denied supporting ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims, provoking an ongoing refugee crisis.

Additional reporting by Reuters
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A teenager from a poor background in Mumbai is to study at one of the worlds leading ballet schools after the intervention of an Indian billionaire.

Amir Shah, 15, who has six siblings and whose father works as a welder, was offered a place at the American Ballet Theatres Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School in New York, if he could collect the money. The teenager and his ballet teacher in Mumbai launched an online fundraising campaign.

Now, it has been announced that a foundation established by an Indian billionaire has stepped forward to meet most of the teenagers costs. An update on his GoFundMe page said that the Yusuf and Farida Hamied Foundation had offered to pay for his tuition and residence costs.

Yusuf Hamied is the chairman of Cipla (Getty)

However, we are still fundraising to make sure Amir will be able to afford classes outside of JKO to keep up his technique when not at the school, English tutoring, dance equipment, as well as the high cost of living in New York, it said. It said that they were also still trying to collect money to ensure that the teenagers teacher in Mumbai, Israeli American Yehuda Maor, can visit his protege in the US.

Amir and Yehuda have overcome all odds to get to this point, and he needs as much support as possible, it said.

The foundation that has come to the teenagers assistance was established by 80-year-old Mr Hamied, an Indian scientist and businessman who chairs Cipla, a generic pharmaceuticals company founded by his father in 1935. He is said to have a net worth of $1.45bn (1.1bn).

Speaking from Mumbai, Mr Hamied told The Independent he had been inspired to donate the money after watching Amirs video. Have you seen that video. Its amazing, he said. I saw it and thought, hes got talent. I decided to donate. Its no big deal.

He added: He called me two days ago and he thanked me profusely. I hope he does well. I wished him good luck.

 Welder's son from Bombay raising money to attend top NYC ballet school

Mr Hamied, who was educated at Cambridge University, is known within the pharmaceutical world for producing and creating cheap, generic drugs to treat diseases such as Aids.

In 2000, Mr Hamied staggered European Union health ministers and the CEOs of major pharmaceutical multinationals, by proposing to produce generic antiretroviral cocktails for around $800 per person per year, a fraction of the $14,000 then being charged by the multinational firms.

The following year, he announced he was ready to sell the drugs even more cheaply  at about $300 per patient, per year.

It is legal in India to copy a drug designed abroad and sell it in the market, as long as the company can prove that it used a different manufacturing process.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. 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Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. 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Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

But in October 2003, Mr Hamied secured a major victory when former US president Bill Clinton brokered a deal in which four companies making cheap, generic Aids drugs were permitted to begin supplying to millions of people in developing countries.

One of them was Mr Hamieds firm, Cipla.

Mr Hamied told the BBC of the deal brokered by the Clinton Foundation: Generic drug companies, especially from India, have now got respectability, quality and trust. Multinationals have been running us down for years. Now theres international recognition of our quality and service.

The teenager has only been studying ballet for two years (Janey Lee) (YouTube)

Amir has said he is thrilled by the prospect of coming to New York.

I sometimes think if I didnt have ballet, I would not have anything, the teenager said in a video posted on his fundraising page. I didnt know ballet could take me so far. I didnt realise I could become a ballet dancer.

A spokeswoman for Cipla, Pallavi Golar, confirmed that the foundation established by Mr Hamied and his wife, had made the donation to meet the teenagers costs.

Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for the ballet school, Kelly Ryan, said that the teenager had been accepted for the year-long course after auditioning by video. She said they had been told that a foundation had stepped in to meet his tuition costs. She added: Were expecting him to start this fall.
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A Muslim man has been hailed as a hero in the Philippines after he hid 64 Christians from Islamist militants hunting them on the Filipino island of Mindanao.

A group of heavily-armed gunmen from the Maute, stormed the city of Marawi on the island last week and have been engaged in fierce fighting with the Filipino army.

The group which also calls itself the Islamic State of Lanao, is reportedly backed by Isis and have been targeting Christians.

The militants had reportedly been planning to set up their own Islamist enclave on the island, officials said after the emergence of a video showing their leaders in a secret strategy meeting.

Although 90 per cent of Filipinos identify as Christian, Mindanao  at the very south of the country  is majority Muslim and has been a target for Islamist insurgents for years.

President Rodrigo Duterte, who was previously mayor of Davao City on the island, has declared martial law and sent the army to retake the city leading to over a week of fighting in the streets.

Around 90 per cent of the population, 180,000 people, have already fled the fighting but some have been unable to escape.

Norodin Alonto Lucman, a Muslim former politician and traditional clan leader, opened his home to around 71 people, including 64 Christians, when they could not escape.

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. 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Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

Mr Lucman said Christians couldn't leave the city, so I had to take responsibility in protecting them.

The following days, other Christian workers took refuge in my house. There were about 64 of them in my hands and I was very determined that nothing happens to them, he added.

He said the militants would only get to them over my dead body.

Mr Lucman was later able to march them to safety outside the city by waving white flags. When fighters stopped them and asked if they were Christians, they responded with Allahu akbar  a Muslim rallying cry  and were allowed to leave.

Recommended Isis tells supporters the rewards for bloodshed are greater in Ramadan

He said they had been forced to escape because they were getting close to starvation.

He described a scene of devastation in the town centre and said the streets were strewn with rotting corpses and debris.

I almost puked as we were walking, he said, estimating that there were more than 1,000 dead.

Official government estimates put the death toll at 120 militants, 38 government forces and 20 civilians.

Additional reporting by Reuters
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At least eight people are dead and several more have been injured in twin shooting and suicide bomb attacks at the Iranian parliament and the Mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini in Tehran.

One guard and six others were killed in the incident in parliament early on Wednesday, Tasnim news agency reported, in an attack which occurred around the same time four men launched an assault on Ayatollah Khomeini's tomb with guns and two suicide bombs.

Reports emerged that another suicide bomb was detonated on the fourth floor of parliament and several people had been taken hostage later on Wednesday morning. Heavy gunfire could be heard coming from inside as security forces swarmed at the building's entrances.

In the mausoleum attack, assailants killed a security guard and injured at least four others, state television said. A picture reportedly showing the first explosion, released by Jamaran News, shows an empty courtyard.

Initial reports said one attacker was shot dead at the scene and one woman arrested. Tehran's governor later said that one attacker had been killed, and another had blown himself up.

There are conflicting reports as to how many gunmen were involved in the parliament attack. At least four people have been taken hostage.

Unconfirmed reports said that the attackers had been looking for the chamber where MPs were in session, but lost their way once inside the building.

At least one male assailant escaped the building but was captured as he was on the run, the agency reports.

The identity and motivation of the attackers in both incidents is still unclear, or whether the two are linked.

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini launched the county's Islamic revolution in 1979. He is regarded as the revolutionary founder of the modern state and is revered in Shia Islam worldwide.

The incidents occurred during Ramadan - the holy Muslim month - in which jihadi group Isis tells supporters the rewards for jihad are multiplied. No claim of responsibility has yet been made.
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The suicide bombing and shooting in Tehran is the most surprising and also, in terms of fallout, the most significant of the terrorist attacks which have taken place internationally in the past week. It comes at a time when the Middle East is going through an extraordinary political upheaval, cutting across its traditional sectarian faultlines  and when Donald Trump is conducting a campaign of threats against Iran.

Iran, unlike much of the rest of the Middle East and North Africa, has been relatively free of terrorist attacks. There have been bombings in Ahvaz in the south-west where there is a long-running Sunni Arab secessionist movement, but the last major attacks in cities were seven years ago. Four scientists were assassinated between 2010 and 2012, but these are alleged to have been carried out by Israel in an effort to hinder Irans then nascent nuclear programme.

Indeed, the safety offered by Iran is one of its strongest selling points.

Recommended Isis releases video from inside Iran parliament as battle rages

Reporting from there on elections this year and last, I came across businessmen from abroad who complained about the problems caused by sanctions still lingering despite 2015 nuclear deal with the West. And the problems caused by Irans bureaucracy and red tape. But, at the same time, they stressed the stability offered by election victories of a reformist government and the lack of a major terrorist threat, unusual for the region, made the prospect of investment a bit more attractive.

I also came across a surprisingly large number of foreign tourists taking advantage of Iran opening up to the outside world to visit the fabulous history of places like Isfahan and Shiraz: similar kinds of holidays in Egypt, Turkey and Tunisia are increasingly less of an option because of the violence which has become pervasive in those places.

The attacks on the parliament in Tehran and the tomb of Ayatollah Khomeini, killing 12 people and injuring 45 others, will of course dent that image of security and there will be further damage to confidence if there are more acts of terrorism.

Isis has claimed credit for the assault. If that is true  and one has to bear in mind that the group routinely tries for ownership of terrorist attacks internationally  then it is the first time that it has struck successfully inside Iran.

It would make logical sense for Isis to carry out such an attack. Salafist Sunnis regard Shia Iran as a nation of heretics and legitimate targets. Iran is also fighting against Isis in support of Bashar al-Assads regime. And there have also been recent threats issued by Isis against Iran, with the group putting out a video in Persian calling on Irans Sunni minority to rise up.

But Iran also has other enemies who would be keen to see the country destabilised. There were bound to be accusations that other players  states which had backed Sunni extremist groups in Syria  were hidden hands behind what happened. Just hours before the murderous attack in Tehran, the Saudi foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, had declared that Iran is the worlds leading supporter of terrorism and must be punished. It was thus not surprising that Irans Revolutionary Guard has accused Saudi Arabia of being behind the attack, paving the way towards a dangerous confrontation.

The potentially incendiary development comes as the region is going through dramatic twists and turns fracturing its Sunni alliance. Qatar is being isolated at the instigation of Saudi Arabia which has decided that the time has come to slap down its tiny Gulf neighbour which was getting too big for its boots. The official reason given was Qatars supposed support of terrorist groups, and, in particular the Muslim Brotherhood, hated by the Saudis, but certainly not considered terrorists by countries such as the UK.

The Saudis and their Bahraini and Emirati allies are also furious with Qatar for being conciliatory towards Iran and maintaining diplomatic relations with their great Shia adversary. One Sunni state, Oman, had taken a more balanced approach to Iran for a while and, indeed, was the place where some of the nuclear talks took place. Kuwait, too, had urged negotiations with Iran to solve the sectarian conflicts in the area. The Saudis, seeing their Sunni satellite states beginning to drift, have now lashed back, with the Qataris made an example of.

 Isis release video from inside Iran parliament during Tehran attack

Looming over this all this is the shadow of Donald Trump: in his first official tour as President, which was essentially to sell arms to the Saudis and other Gulf states, he repeatedly attacked Iran, accusing it of exporting terrorism, ignoring the fact that almost all terrorist attacks in the West have been carried out by Sunnis inspired by Saudi-based extremist Wahaabi, Salafist creed and not Shias.

The US Presidents stance emboldened the Saudis who are now talking of regime change in Qatar. Mr Trump has now stepped in again, inevitably in a series of tweets, ranging in coherence, attacking Qatar. The Pentagon and the State Department are scrambling to mitigate the damage caused by the blundering President. Qatar is the hub for US military operations in Iraq and Syria.

The Iranian government was initially restrained in its reaction to the attack, just as it was to Mr Trumps threats in Riyadh. But then came the statement by the Revolutionary Guard blaming the Saudis and pointing out that it came soon after Mr Trumps threats against Iran. It is in the interest of the countrys hardliners, who the Guard support, to exploit the terrorist assault and undermine the President Rouhanis policy or reform at home and reconciliation abroad. A neighbourhood already violent and volatile, has just got even more dangerous.
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Anti-Isis forces are advancing into eastern Raqqa, the de facto Isis capital in Syria, and Iraqi troops have penned surviving Isis fighters into one part of the Old City in Mosul, once the heart of the self-declared Caliphate.

They are down to their last neighbourhoods in Mosul and they already lost part of Raqqa, and the Raqqa campaign from here on can only accelerate, said Brett McGurk, the US envoy to the international coalition fighting Isis. These are critical elements in the ultimate defeat of Daesh [Isis], but this will be a long-term effort.

Predictions of impending victory, mixed with doubts about just how long this will take, are echoed by fighters in the front line as they approach Raqqa. We broke into Raqqa from the east in just two hours, says a Syrian Kurdish fighter in the Peoples Protection Units (YPG), who did not want to give his name, when contacted by The Independent. We advanced for 1.5 km in a few hours and the centre of the city is about 2 km away from us.

But the grim experience of the seven-month siege of Mosul is making everybody cautious about forecasting imminent victory. The YPG fighter says that Isis has withdrawn quickly and without putting up much resistance from the eastern entrance to Raqqa, but he warns that the battle will not be as easy as many expect and maybe they [Isis] are hiding in tunnels.

Isis has become skilled in waging urban guerrilla warfare using a limited number of fighters in the face of superior numbers backed by artillery and air strikes. Snipers, suicide bombers, mines and booby traps slow the advance of the anti-Isis forces. One well-informed estimate suggests that Isis had between 2,500 and 4,000 military in Mosul of whom only between 450 and 800 were in contact with the enemy.

The same thinning out of forces in Raqqa may already have been ordered by the fanatical but experienced Isis commanders. Another observer believes that Isis still has as many as 36,000 fighters available in Syria and Iraq who will revert to the sort of guerrilla warfare they waged before capturing Mosul in 2014 and made sweeping advances in Iraq and Syria.

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

Isis does not see the ultimate loss of Mosul and Raqqa as a final defeat, but rather as a new phase in a long war in which they will hold several valuable cards. Once Isis fighters no longer have to defend fixed positions in cities, they will be better able to avoid being overwhelmed by the firepower of the US-led air campaign. The Syrian and Iraqi armies and the Kurdish forces in both countries are short of combat troops and will have difficulty holding the territory they have taken. The pervasive brutality and corruption of the occupying armies will soon alienate the local Sunni population which may once again look towards Isis as its only defenders.

There are other signs Isis is not fought out or finished as a religious military movement. Its fighters launched an offensive at the weekend to over-run that part of Deir Ezzor, the biggest city in eastern Syria, that is not held by the Syrian army. Accounts of the fighting imply that Isis is close to winning, despite heavy bombing by the Russian air force.

Isis may calculate that the loose anti-Isis coalition is only held together by common fear of Isis and, once Mosul and Raqqa have fallen and the fear dissipates, its ill-assorted members will quarrel among themselves and create the sort of chaos that originally gave birth to Isis and enabled it to expand.
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Saudi Arabia has issued neighbouring Qatar with a list of 10 demands it must meet, after Riyadh and other nations in the region took the unexpected step of cutting off ties to the tiny kingdom, accusing it of supporting terrorism.

Kuwaiti mediators flew to the Saudi capital on Tuesday, where diplomats conveyed extensive demands of Doha, including cutting off all links with Iran and expelling resident members of Palestinian militant group Hamas and the pan-Arab Muslim Brotherhood.

Other points included curbs on the freedom of Qatars state-funded broadcaster al-Jazeera, which its Gulf neighbours have accused of slander and fake news, orders to stop interfering in foreign countries affairs and to cease any funding or support for terrorist organisations.

Qatar vehemently denies all these allegations.

 Saudi Arabia cuts ties with Qatar over terror links

Saudi Arabias foreign minister demanded on Tuesday that Qatar respond to its ultimatum soon, if the leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) were to meet to discuss further reconciliatory action.

It was with great pain that his country and others took measures against Qatar, said Adel al-Jubeir, but it was the aim of restoring relations to how they were in the past.

The minister spoke to media after meetings with his German counterpart in Berlin.

An Emirati diplomat took a harder stance on Wednesday, telling the Associated Press there's nothing to negotiate with Qatar.

Doha has chosen to ride the tiger of extremism and terrorism and now needs to pay the price, said Emirati Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash, in a signal that some involved in the standoff are not willing to negotiate.

The UAEs justice ministry warned social media users on Wednesday that any expressions of sympathy for Qatar could result in between three to 15 years in prison, as well as hefty fines.

A woman and boy walk past a Qatar Airways branch in the Saudi capital of Riyadh on 5 June 2017 (AFP/Getty Images) (AFP/Getty)

On Monday, the Saudis accused Doha of supporting Iran-backed terrorist activities in the countrys east, as well as in Shia-majority Bahrain. The suggestion that Qatar is aiding and abetting Shia Iran  the majority Sunni Gulf's arch-rival  is particularly sensitive.

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt severed all diplomatic ties, followed by the internationally recognised governments of Yemen and Libya, the Maldives and Mauritania.

The crisis has only escalated since, and could have manifold economic and political effects for the Middle East  as well as alter the course of the regions many conflicts.

The closure of the tiny energy-rich kingdoms sea, land and air borders with its neighbours has effectively left Qatar under siege. Panicked citizens have cleared supermarket shelves of produce, the countrys stock market has plummeted, and Qatari nationals living abroad have been given 14 days to leave.

Road sign in the Saudi capital of Riyadh (Reuters)

Dohas Hamad International Airport has been eerily quiet since Riyadh led the charge in revoking state-owned Qatar Airways operational licences.

The airline has been blocked from landing in the affected countries, and Al-Jazeera offices have been shut down by authorities in Saudi Arabia and Jordan.

Doha has long been considered rogue and maverick by its neighbours, said Emirati Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi on Wednesday. Its citizens must question if this is going to end up in seeing a change in leadership itself, he added.

On Wednesday, several Gulf diplomats suggested their complaints about Qatar go back years, implying criticism of Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, who took over as Qatars emir in 1995 and greatly expanded his nations international influence through negotiating hostage releases, briefly flirting with diplomatic ties to Israel, hosting controversial groups such as Hamas and the Taliban and creating Al-Jazeera.

Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, his son, became Qatars ruling emir in 2013.

The latest row is the worst to affect the region since Qatar drew ire across the Gulf by publicly backing the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 2014.

Aside from the terror support allegations, it has been sparked by other factors such as anger over fake news distributed by Qatars state-run news agency last month  blamed on Russian hackers  and Dohas April decision to pay a colossal $500m (389m) in ransom money to Shia paramilitaries in Iraq for the safe return of several members of its Royal family, kidnapped on a hunting trip.

Iran, the secondary target of Mondays co-ordinated move, has blamed US President Donald Trump for emboldening the Gulf states after a two-day trip to Riyadh last month in which he reiterated US support for Saudi Arabia and singled out Iran as a sponsor of Islamist terrorism.

While in tweets Mr Trump appeared to back his Saudi allies decision, the White House has officially urged Arab unity for peace and security in the region.
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Russian hackers were behind a fake news report in Qatar's state media that helped stir the Gulf nation's current diplomatic crisis, US investigators reportedly believe.

The state-run Qatar News Agency has been offline since a supposed hack in May that reignited tensions between the gas-rich nation and its Gulf Arab neighbours over its alleged support of Islamist groups.

After an FBI team was sent to Doha to help the Qatari government investigate, US officials have intelligence indicating Russian hackers were behind the intrusion, according to CNN.

The Kremlin responded by saying there was "zero" proof that Russian hackers were involved, the Interfax news agency reported.

The supposedly fake report, published last month, quoted Emir Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, the Emir of Qatar, on a number of sensitive regional issues and Dohas relationship with Donald Trump. Its publication is thought to have contributed to tensions between neighbouring countries.

Mr Thani was quoted as saying there is no wisdom in harbouring hostility towards Iran and that his relationship with the Trump administration was tense despite a positive meeting between the two leaders in Riyadh, the Saudi Arabian capital.

Qatars ties to Israel were good, the story quoted the sovereign as saying, and that he hoped to help broker a peace deal in the Arab-Israeli conflict. It attributed to the ruler positive statements about Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and Gaza-based extremist organisation Hamas.

Qatar's foreign minister, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, told CNN: Whatever has been thrown as an accusation is all based on misinformation.

It was started based on fabricated news, being wedged and being inserted in our national news agency which was hacked and proved by the FBI.

According to the broadcaster it was not clear whether the hack had been traced to criminals or official Russian organisations.

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A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. 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 biggest diplomatic crisis in the Persian Gulf since the 1991 US-led war with Iraq pits several nations against Qatar, home to some 10,000 American troops and a major US military base.

Saudi Arabia broke diplomatic relations and all land sea and air contacts with Qatar on Monday, saying the move was necessary to protect the kingdom from what it described as terrorism and extremism.

Bahrain, Egypt and the United Arab Emirate have also cut ties, as have the internationally recognised governments of Yemen, Libya and The Maldives.

Additional reporting by agencies
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Saudi Arabia has re-arrested womens rights campaigner Loujain al-Hathloul, who is best known for her defiance of the kingdoms driving ban.

Ms al-Hathloul was detained at King Fahad International Airport in Dammam on the countrys east coast near the border with Bahrain on 4 June and is expected to be taken to Riyadh for questioning by the Bureau of Investigation and Prosecution.

She has had no access to a lawyer and has not been allowed to contact her family, Amnesty International reported.

The exact reason for her arrest has not been made public but Amnesty said they believe it is due to her human rights activism in the country.

The 27-year-old is most famous for defying the kingdoms ban on female drivers after attempting to drive into Saudi Arabia from the United Arab Emirates.

Following the stunt she was arrested and detained by the Saudi authorities for 73 days.

She then went on to stand as a candidate in the 2015 Saudi election  the first time women were ever allowed to stand  but her name was never added to the ballot paper.

Samah Hadid, Director of Campaigns for Amnesty International in the Middle East, said: The Saudi Arabian authorities continuous harassment of Loujain al-Hathloul is absurd and unjustifiable.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

It appears she is being targeted once again because of her peaceful work as a human rights defender speaking out for women's rights, which are consistently trampled in the kingdom. If so she must be immediately and unconditionally released.

Instead of upholding its promise of a more tolerant Saudi Arabia, the government has again shattered any notion that it is genuinely committed to upholding equality and human rights.

The kingdom is notorious for having one of the worst records when it comes to womens rights.

All women living in the kingdom are required to have male guardians  usually a male relative such as a husband, father or brother  who can decide whether they are able to work, go out in public and or study at university.
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A gunman on the loose inside the Iranian parliament building has detonated his suicide vest on the fourth floor of the building, according to local media reports.

Twin terror strikes hit the capital of Tehran on Wednesday morning. Local media reports at least eight people have been killed since gunmen stormed parliament and two suicide bombs were detonated at the tomb of Ayatollah Khomeini in the south of the city. Isis issued a claim of responsibility for the ongoing incidents.

Four people have been taken hostage in parliament, Tasnim news agency said. There are conflicting reports as to how many gunmen are involved in both attacks. At least one assailant was shot dead by police attempting to escape the parliament building.

It was reported earlier that four attackers descended on the mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini, killing a security guard and detonating a suicide bomb which injured four members of the public. However, Tehran's governor later said that one assailant had blown themselves up, and one had been killed by police.

Isis, which views majority-Shia Iran as a heretical state, has ramped up anti-Iranian propaganda in recent months.

The attacks on Wednesday are the first major assaults carried out by the Sunni group inside the country.

The Tehran bombings occur during the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, in which Isis tells would-be jihadists the rewards for martyrdom are increased.

Wednesday's twin strikes are the fourth major terror attack worldwide claimed by the group in recent weeks.
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Isis has claimed responsibility for twin attacks at the Iranian parliament and the tomb of Ayatollah Khomeini in Tehran, its first major terror operation on Iranian soil.

State media said that 12 people died in the violence and 42 were injured in what was rare attack on the Iranian capital, lasting five hours. Irans Revolutionary Guard has blamed the attack on regional rival Saudi Arabia.

Parliament was in session when four gunmen wielding Kalashnikov rifles stormed the building early on Wednesday, detonating a suicide bomb. Politicians and other staff remained trapped inside, and at least four people were taken hostage, Tasnim news agency said.

A short clip purportedly filmed by the assailants and released by the Isis-linked news agency Amaq shows the injured or dead body of a man in business attire lying on the floor of an office as a man with an assault rifle walks past.

The fighters can be heard shouting in Arabic, rather than Farsi, as gunshots ring out and alarms go off in the background. Oh God, thank you... Do you think we will leave? No! We will remain, God willing, one of them says, parroting a slogan popularised by Isis spokesperson Abu Mohammad al-Adnani, who was killed in Syria last year.

Sporadic gunfire could be heard as security services swarmed around parliaments entrances before the interior ministry declared that the assailants had been killed on Wednesday afternoon.

Lookout: police officer observes events in a wing of the parliament building in Tehran (REUTERS)

Irans deputy interior minister Mohammad Hossein Zolfaghari said security forces had managed to surround the attackers, who originally entered parliaments main gate dressed as women before they opened fire, shooting them dead in a tense stand off.

At least one security guard died in two suicide bombings at the tomb of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the 1979 Islamic revolution, which was attacked by four more gunmen.

Some coward terrorists infiltrated one of the buildings of parliament. They were confronted. It was not a major issue. Our security forces have taken necessary steps, parliament speaker Ali Larijani said in an open session broadcast live by state TV.

The intelligence ministry said security forces had arrested another terrorist team planning a third attack, but did not give further details.

Isis is at war with Iran-backed forces in Syria and Iraq, and views Shia Islam as heretical. In recent months there has been a marked step-up in propaganda targeting majority-Shia Iran on the militant Sunni group's news networks, as well as messaging in Persian aimed at recruiting Iranian Sunnis.

Smoke is seen coming from parliament during a terror attack claimed by Is (Reuters)

Analyst Charlie Winter said Isiss claim, which appeared on the group's official newswire Amaq, had massive implications for the region.

An attack like this could provoke disproportionate counter-terror response in Iran. Iranian officials will be called on to step up intervention in Iraq-Syria big time. If this happens, a more intense Sunni war against Shia Islam will pour petrol on [Isiss] ideological fire, the research fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at Kings College London added.

This terrorist attack happened only a week after the meeting between the US president [Donald Trump] and the backward [Saudi] leaders who support terrorists. The fact that [Isis] has claimed responsibility proves that they were involved in the brutal attack, a statement from Iran's religious Revolutionary Guards said. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir, speaking in Berlin, said there is no evidence Saudi extremists were involved.

Tensions are running particularly high in the region following Saudi Arabia and other Sunni powers decision to cut ties with Qatar on Monday, accusing it of backing Tehran and militant groups.

The attacks took place less than a month after the re-election of President Hassan Rouhani, a moderate, whose landslide victory defeated candidates supported by the hardline clergy and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which is responsible for national security.

The atmosphere is tense. It is a blow to Rouhani. How can four armed men enter the parliament, where a very tight security has always been in place, a senior official, who asked not to be named, told Reuters.

Dina Esfandiary, a MacArthur fellow at the Centre for Science and Security Studies at Kings College London, said that although Iran has a good track record at foiling previous attacks, the incidents in Tehran would be welcomed by Isis supporters.

Iranian police stand near parliament during a terror attack in central Tehran, Iran, 7 June 2017 (REUTERS) (Reuters)

It is indeed a boost to Isis morale, especially given that its the first successful attack in Iran, and it will help distract operatives from the losing effort in Iraq, she said.

Isis has called for for increased attacks on unbelievers during Ramadan, during which it says the rewards for jihad in heaven are multiplied.

Wednesdays events in Tehran mark the fourth major attack worldwide claimed by the group since the holy month began on 27 May.

The car-ramming and stabbings in London Bridge, bombing of an ice cream shop in Baghdad and storming of a casino in Manila have all been claimed by Isis, as well as the attack on an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester on 22 May.

A further suicide truck bombing in Kabul last week killed at least 90 people, although no claim of responsibility has been made. The Afghan intelligence services believe a wing of the Taliban is to blame.

Isis continues to lose control of territory across Syria and Iraq in the face of US-backed operations to destroy its so-called caliphate.

Experts believe it will increasingly turn towards insurgency and terror tactics around the world to prove its enduring legitimacy.

Reuters contributed to this report
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The Trump Hotel group is distancing itself from its unpredictable owner as it expands into new markets, launching two new hotel brands that will not mention his name.

On Monday the company unveiled plans for a new three-star hotel chain called American Idea, providing budget friendly accommodation in small towns. The move is a departure from the luxury hotels in upmarket areas the group is known for.

At a press conference Eric Danziger, the chief executive of the Trump organisations hotels division, explained that the new brand will reflect traditional US values and honour the local heritage with its properties.

It is about hometown America, said Danziger. We look at it as almost flea market-chic. It means in any given city theres history, theres things you can do. You can get a fire truck that was part of that citys history or if it was a hangar factory town, use the hangars in the hotel to share the concept with the community and the people who live there . . . and thats what were doing. It plans to start with three properties in the Mississippi Delta area.

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American Idea is the second spin-off in the last year for the Trump group. Last summer, the company announced its intention to build a new boutique hotel chain called Scion. Scion, meaning the descendant of a noble family was the first Trump owned hotel that would not bear his name. The four-star brand hopes to cater to millennials with a sleek modern design and large lobbies featuring work by local artists.

A render of the lobby at a Scion Hotel (Scion Hotels)

Details of the first Scion property were also revealed at Mondays press conference. The 100-room hotel will be in Cleveland, Mississippi and will feature a spa and fitness centre, an event hall, two acres of outdoor space, two restaurants and a cinema. Four more Scion locations are to be announced in the next few months.

The Trump groups business strategy is not new. Many multinational hotel companies have created spin off brands to tempt new customers. The Marriot started Moxy, Hilton has Canopy, and Starwood, bought by Marriott last month, developed the Aloft line. But none of these established companies have such a divisive figure as the de facto face of their brand.

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The organisation does not publish information about occupancy rates so its impossible to accurately assess the effect President Trumps personal unpopularity is having on the business. But as a polarising figure many corporate clients have chosen to eschew his properties to avoid controversy.

Trump promoted his hotels and business throughout his election campaign and has come under fire for not distancing himself from his various holdings as he entered office. Keeping his name out of new, high profile hotel launches may also be a way for the President to avoid complaints about potential conflict of interests.
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I was in central London on Saturday night with friends until the terror attacks forced us to leave. Half of us wanted to stay and carry on drinking, otherwise we were letting the terrorists win. But the other half were worried about seeing their children again, or had wives who wanted them somewhere safe. We had to leave. Sometimes our gut reactions are more right than we'd like to admit.

London will, of course, carry on with grit and determination, as it always has, but its not enough to just call for solidarity and not giving into fear. We need to recognise that people need to feel safer than they do now. Calls for unity and tolerance are no substitute for feeling safer; in fact, you cannot have one without the other.

In other words, we need a debate on how to improve counter-terrorism without name-calling. So far, that has proved beyond our wit.

The fact that thousands of British Muslims have become radicalised by Isis and the civil war in Syria since 2011 is a major cause for alarm, and yet neither the Government nor British Muslim leaders seem to know how to respond.

It should no longer be controversial to say British Muslims have a role to play in defeating Isis. If they are not best equipped to stop more individuals being seduced by this murderous cult, then who is?

Do Muslims need to take responsibility for the minority of extremists? No. Do they need to condemn extremists every time? No, they dont. But can they help in the fight against extremists? Absolutely.

London Bridge Terror Attack Show all 16 1 /16 London Bridge Terror Attack London Bridge Terror Attack Armed police on Borough High Street as police are dealing with a "major incident" at London Bridge PA London Bridge Terror Attack Armed Police talk to members of the public outside London Bridge Hospital as police are dealing with a "major incident" at London Bridge PA London Bridge Terror Attack Police Officers outside the Barrowboy and Banker Public House on Borough High Street as police are dealing with a "major incident" at London Bridge PA London Bridge Terror Attack Armed Police talk to members of the public outside London Bridge Hospital as police are dealing with a "major incident" at London Bridge PA London Bridge Terror Attack Armed police on Borough High Street as police deal with a 'major incident' at London Bridge PA London Bridge Terror Attack Emergency services near the scene of the incident Screengrab London Bridge Terror Attack People run down Borough High Street as police are dealing with a "major incident" at London Bridge Reuters London Bridge Terror Attack Emergency services arrive at the scene near Borough market at London Bridge Carl Court/Getty Images London Bridge Terror Attack Emergency personnel on London Bridge as police are dealing with a "major incident" at London Bridge PA London Bridge Terror Attack Police sniffer dogs on London Bridge as police are dealing with a "major incident" at London Bridge PA London Bridge Terror Attack A second helicopter lands on London Bridge as police are responding to three incidents in the capital, amid reports that a vehicle collided with pedestrians on London Bridge, Scotland Yard said. Officers are dealing with reports of stabbings in Borough Market, where armed officers attended and shots were fired. They are also at an incident in the Vauxhall area PA London Bridge Terror Attack Police attend to an incident on London Bridge in London REUTERS London Bridge Terror Attack Police attend to an incident on London Bridge in London, Britain Reuters London Bridge Terror Attack A police officer escorts members of the public to safety at London Bridge Getty Images London Bridge Terror Attack Police attend to an incident on London Bridge in London, Britain Reuters London Bridge Terror Attack Police attend to an incident near London Bridge in London, Britain Reuters

Of course we all have our part to play. It is also the responsibility of white people to challenge the racism they perceive around them, the role of Hindus to speak out against violence in India, of Buddhists to condemn massacres of Rohingyas, and so on.

Yet we spend so much time arguing about who should take responsibility for what actions, and who should be condemned, more important questions are never asked.

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Here is the key question: why is the Prevent programme, designed to stop Britons being seduced by extremists, failing so badly? Its not just radical Islamism that is on the rise; white far-right extremism is also growing.

In some parts of the UK more white young people are being referred to Prevent than Muslims. It may be doing some good work but the system is broken and unable to cope. And it is failing because neither the Government nor Muslim groups want to admit they are at fault and make a change.

Last month, the Muslim Womens Network had a stark message after the Manchester attack: Those who do not want to help find solutions must stop trying to deliberately disrupt and demonise those actively working to defeat extremists and terrorists; otherwise the cost will be the loss of more innocent lives.

Yet that message barely seems to have been heeded.

 Who are the victims of the London Bridge attacks?

Some Muslim critics of the Prevent strategy had good reasons for raising concerns about racial profiling, excessive spying and removing basic civil liberties from innocent individuals.

But there are British Muslim groups whose sole agenda has been to undermine counter-terrorism and criticise the Government without offering alternatives. There have been relentless campaigns to smear anyone who works with the Government to stop radicalisation.

And, as prosecutor Nazir Afzal has pointed out, politicians have only engaged for show with more self-appointed community leaders than representative groups. The Government needs to treat Muslims as partners, as citizens, not as a problematic alien group.

And there lies the crux of the problem: the Tories have been more interested in using counter-terrorism to score points than to make sensible reforms.

Counter-terrorism wont function effectively unless the police and security services work with British Muslims, not against them. Yet they have largely ignored advice from Muslims that have wanted to work with them and resisted calls for reforming the Prevent programme. Instead, this Tory Government has taken every opportunity to look tough, rather than act sensibly.

Theresa May, for her part, has tried to divert blame by taking everyone down the rabbit hole of mobile encryption and trashing human rights law. Both are pathetic excuses.

The Government doesnt need more laws on terrorism: there have been more than 100 implemented since 2001 alone. Neither can the Government persuade tech companies to build them a backdoor, especially since one caused the NHS cyber-attack. Nor will she admit that cuts to policing numbers have made counter-terrorism harder.

The Home Office is even failing in the basic task of monitoring or barring hate preachers from entering Britain. Even as Labour MPs have raised this issue, the Government has ignored them.

Our national security is more important than political point-scoring. If Britons dont feel safe, there will be more attacks, more polarisation and more strife.

Britain has shown tremendous spirit and solidarity in recent weeks after each attack, but it now needs to be followed up with sensible plan of action.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny will join Princess Astrid of Belgium at the centenary commemoration of the Battle of Messines in Flanders

The Duke of Cambridge and Enda Kenny will later pay solemn tribute to soldiers from Ireland's unionist and nationalist army divisions who fought side-by-side in the First World War.

William and the Taoiseach will join Princess Astrid of Belgium at the centenary commemoration of the Battle of Messines in Flanders.

The successful Allied offensive on June 7 1917 was the first occasion the 36th Ulster and 16th Irish divisions fought together in the front line.

The two divisions predominantly comprised men who were on opposing sides of the great political upheaval back in Ireland around whether the country should be granted self-governance from Westminster.

Former Stormont first minister Arlene Foster will also be among invited dignitaries at the joint UK and Irish event in Belgium.

The commemoration will focus on the Island of Ireland Peace Park at Messines.

The park was built in 1998 - the year of the historic Good Friday peace agreement - to mark the sacrifice of all those Irishmen who fought and died in the war.

Mr Kenny and the Duke will later visit nearby Wytschaete Cemetery, where many of those who died now rest.

The village of Wytschaete was captured by the 36th and 16th during the Battle of Messines.

A new memorial erected at the entrance of the cemetery last week depicts a scene that many believe encapsulates the legacy of the day Irish Protestant and Catholic soldiers fought together - the attempted battlefield rescue of fatally wounded 56-year-old nationalist Home Rule MP Willie Redmond by a young unionist private, John Meeke.

Major Redmond's brother John was the leader of the constitutional nationalist Home Rule movement.

Members of the Redmond family are due to attend Wednesday's commemorations in Belgium.

The capture of Messines Ridge was a key objective of the Allied Forces ahead of their mid-summer 1917 offensive on German lines between the nearby town of Ypres and the small village of Passchendaele - a battle that has since become synonymous with the horrors of trench warfare.

The Allies sustained around 10,000 casualties during the Battle of Messines, the Germans around 25,000.

Between them the 36th and 16th lost around 2,500 killed, injured or missing.

The two divisions fought together only twice in the First World War.

The second came in a heavy defeat, two months after Messines, during an ill-fated offensive at nearby Langemark in the first weeks of the Battle of Passchendaele.

The commemoration in Belgium is set to be Mr Kenny's last overseas engagement as Taoiseach ahead of him stepping down from the role later this month.
The ex-partner of London Bridge terrorist Rachid Redouane, who previously lived in Ireland, has spoken of her shock and condemned his actions.

Charisse O'Leary said she has "shed many tears for the people caught up in this horrific incident".

She said in a statement released to the Press Association: "I am deeply shocked, saddened and numbed by the actions of my ex-partner who has killed and injured so many innocent people."

Miss O'Leary said she had been separated from Redouane for six months.

"We have a beautiful young daughter, that for the last six months has been our only bond and reason for contact," she continued.

"My thoughts and efforts now are with trying to bring up my daughter with the knowledge that some day I will have to try and explain to her why her father did what he did.

"I wish to make it absolutely clear, so there can be no doubt, I condemn his actions and do not support the beliefs he held that led to him committing this atrocity."
Rachid Redouane had previously been refused asylum in the UK in 2009 (Metropolitan Police/PA)

London Bridge killer Rachid Redouane was not involved in any terror cell in Ireland during his time there, the police chief has said.

But Garda Commissioner Noirin O'Sullivan accepted he went through a "normal process of immigration" in Dublin.

Redouane, who claimed to be Moroccan-Libyan, had previously been refused asylum in the UK in 2009.

His marriage to a UK citizen in Dublin in 2012, giving him an EU travel permit, has prompted claims Ireland is being used by jihadis as a back door into Britain.

"The indications at this time are that this individual lived in this country for a short period of time, going through a normal process of immigration," Ms O'Sullivan said during an international policing conference in Dublin.

"Thereafter, he left and went with his wife, who is a UK citizen, to the UK and we are satisfied with the inquiries we have made at this time, that there is no link to terrorism in this country.

"We are also satisfied from the indications from our partners (in the UK) that that is also the case."

Garda inquiries into Redouane's time in Ireland currently centre around suspected immigration offences.

Two people believed to have documents linked to the killer have been arrested.

One Garda source said there is no knowledge of Redouane being involved with other international terror suspects who have been under surveillance in Ireland, and that he lived an apparently normal life during his time in Dublin.

But the source added that investigators were "still shaking the tree".

Ms O'Sullivan defended Ireland's security response to the international terror threat, saying there had been a number of arrests and deportations in recent times.

A number of individuals are also being "monitored very, very closely" and some of them are before the courts.

The Garda chief said her force was working with UK counterparts within an hour of the London Bridge attacks at the weekend.

She also pointed to a beefing-up of armed police in Ireland, with numbers in the armed support unit to increase by a third by the end of this month.

"There will be more visible, overt armed patrols," she said.

"People shouldn't be afraid of that. That is actually to make sure the public are safe."

Ms O'Sullivan said counter-terrorism investigations around the country "make sure we know exactly what is happening in communities".

Irish detectives are attempting to trace whether another of the London Bridge attackers, Khuram Shazad Butt, had spent any time in Dublin.

It is understood some members of the Muslim community in Dublin have been contacted.

Shaykh Dr Umar Al-Qadri, imam of the Islamic Centre of Ireland, said he thought he recognised the killer's face after seeing police pictures but later said he had no idea why he thinks the face is familiar.
Brian Hanratty holds a field map belonging to his father Alfie Hanratty following a ceremony at the Island of Ireland Peace Park in Messines, Belgium to commemorate Battle of Messines Ridge.

A man whose father fought at the Battle of Messines 100 years ago has made an emotional return to the scene.

Bryan Hanratty's father Alfie Hanratty, from Co Louth, was a soldier in the 36th Ulster Division.

He survived the bloody battle, but witnessed the death of many of his friends and comrades, both unionist and nationalist.

Choking back tears after a poignant commemoration at the Island of Ireland Peace Park in Messines, Mr Hanratty said it was a very special day for him.

He had in his possession his father's field map that he used on June 7 1917, the first day of a week-long battle.

"This is very valuable to me. My father survived the battle and went back to college and studied medicine," he said.

"Sadly, he died in 1958. I was just six at the time. I never had much of the personal engagement with my father, but I have the memorabilia which is the connection.

"This has been a great day. It is very emotional time. It's very special to be alive for it.

"The spirit of Messines, two tribes of the island of Ireland, worked together. It epitomises the mutual respect. Think of how relevant that is in the modern island of Ireland for people to work together constructively.

"The people of 100 years ago could work together for a common cause so we can do it again today."

Alan Williamson, whose great uncle Joseph Stevenson was killed in the battle, met with the Duke of Cambridge, Irish Premier Enda Kenny and Princess Astrid of Belgium at a ceremony in nearby Wytschaete Cemetery where many of those who died during the Battle now rest.

The Prince, Taoiseach and Princess joined him at his great uncle's grave.

"It's a very poignant and sentimental day today. The meaning behind it, the reconciliation, is very poignant," said Mr Williamson.

During the ceremony, Mr Williamson read a letter that Joseph's mother wrote in reply to the correspondence she received informing her of her son's death.

"It is very important to have this in the family's possession," said Mr Williamson.

"These men fought and died together. That is a terrific message we can take home today.

"Meeting the Duke of Cambridge was one of the highlights of my lifetime. He was so down to earth. It was wonderful to talk to him, Mr Kenny and a Princess Astrid about the significance of today."
The effects of the UKs decision to leave the EU will be visible from next spring, with airlines offering less routes to the UK, and at higher prices, Kevin Toland, CEO of the Dublin Airport Authority, has told a Seanad Special Select Committee on Brexit.

Toland, who will leave the DAA later this year to join global bakery company Aryzta, also warned that the UK will become a bigger competitor of Irelands both in terms of tourism and the provision of flights to regional airports in the UK.

Currently 42pc of tourist numbers into Ireland come in from the UK, with visitors from Great Britain generating 1.1bn in revenue for the Irish economy in 2016.

However Toland warned that the tourist numbers were already falling, with trips by UK residents to the Republic of Ireland down 10.7pc between February and April this year.

Read more: Transatlantic trips prove popular as record 2.6 million passengers travel through Dublin Airport

Further to this, the UK could become more competitive in attracting tourists away from Ireland as the Sterling weakens, he said.

In terms of what could be done to mitigate the affect of Brexit, the Seanad was told that the Irish airline industry needs to deepen its connectivity, in particular through greater numbers of long-haul flights and the building of a new runway at the airport.

Toland, who has been CEO of the DAA since 2013, advised that introducing duty-free shopping between Ireland and the UK should commence immediately after the UK leaves the EU, and that Ireland should position itself as the business destination of choice.

Toland also warned the need to prioritise the airline industry in Ireland, advising that, out of the EU-27 members, Ireland is most dependant on the UK, with traffic to and from the UK representing 36pc of Dublin Airports business.

In comparison, France only depends on the UK for 6.8pc of its air traffic, while for Germany, the percentage of traffic to and from its airports to the UK is even smaller, at 6.1pc.

Read more: Third challenge to 320m runway plan is fast-tracked

On the subject of the need for a second runway at Dublin Airport, Toland said that currently during the hours of 5am to midnight, the airport is at 87pc capacity, therefore it was a priority that another runway be built as soon as possible to ensure that Ireland remains the preferred location for business and tourism.

A longer runway would also increase the airports capacity for long-haul flights, as well as facilitate approximately 2.2bn growth in GDP and approximately 31,000 new jobs.
Irelands largest private rental sector portfolio has hit the market for over 425m, with Savills appointed to bring Dublin Living to the market this week.

The quoting price in excess of 425m equates to an estimated net income yield of approximately 4.6pc after purchasers costs, and it is expected to attract significant levels of interest from domestic and overseas investors.

The sale will represent Irelands largest Private Rented Sector (PRS) public offering comprising approximately 1,170 units within four schemes in one lot.

This exclusive portfolio will present an excellent forward funding opportunity to acquire a significant volume of new private rented sector units within a thriving cosmopolitan European capital city, as property prices and rents in Dublin continue to rise, Domhnaill OSullivan, of Savills Ireland, said.

Read more: How 30pc of houses for sale cant find buyers despite crisis

The portfolio will contain four newly developed schemes including Mount Argus and St. Clares in Harolds Cross, Dublin 6W along with Carriglea in Bluebell, Dublin 12 and the Cabra Road development in Dublin 7.

The development sites are currently owned by Marlet Property Group in conjunction with their finance partner, the international asset managers M&G Investments.

The development will consist of three, two, and one bed apartments, and according to Savills, the four schemes will benefit from exceptionally strong rental demand owing to their close proximity to Dublin city centre and good transport connectivity.

Based on current market rental prices, the estimated net rental value of the portfolio is predicted to be in the region of 20.5m.

However, the rental figure could increase as schemes become completed in the second half of 2018 and the early part of 2020, due to the current undersupply of private rental accommodation in Dublin.

Read more: Loans for buy-to-lets despite poor credit

According to Savills director of research, Dr. John McCartney, the number of households renting privately in Dublin has grown by 42,400 since 2012.

However the limited amount of housing construction has failed to keep up with this continually increasing rental demand and the current vacancy rate in the Dublin private rental sector has been driven down to just 1.4pc.

Dublins population is also rising by around 1.4pc, or 20,000 people per annum, and recent Census figures have shown a preference towards urbanisation in Ireland.

As a result of this considerable supply and demand imbalance, Savills predicts continued growth, with new residential rents in Dublin expected to rise by an average of 7.3pc per annum or 14.5pc compounded up to the midpoint of 2019.
An artist's impression of how the Aqua Vetro tower, which would be Dublins tallest building, would look

The 'iconic' 22-storey Aqua Vetro tower planned by Johnny Ronan for Dublin will damage the character and integrity of key buildings and architecturally sensitive locations, a leading conservation group has warned.

Irish Georgian Society (IGS) Executive Director Donough Cahill says the 88m-high tower - which will be Dublin's tallest building - is contrary to the city council's policy to protect its built heritage.

In a submission to Dublin City Council on the planning application for the Tara Street site, Mr Cahill said the IGS was writing to the council "to raise our concerns about the planning application which in our view would have a significant detrimental impact on the character of Dublin city's most architecturally important buildings and public spaces".

Mr Cahill states that the Dublin City Development Plan permits structures in excess of 50m on George's Quay.

However, Mr Cahill states that any such proposal should be assessed on the basis of its response to its context of scale, bulk, height, massing and design.

Mr Cahill states: "Using these measures, the society contends that the current proposal would have a considerable detrimental impact on the character and setting of protected structures."

However, in the application, consultants for developer Mr Ronan's Tanat Ltd, John Spain & Associates, say that the architectural intent for the proposal "is to create an iconic building that will become a landmark in the Dublin skyline".

Mr Spain states that the proposal "will be an exemplar of inner-city regeneration including high-quality office and hotel accommodation, sustainable design and infrastructure, high-quality public realm, enhanced permeability and connectivity".

Mr Spain also states that the proposed development "will result in the development of a key site in the city centre and create a sustainable, viable and vibrant scheme".

He adds that "the development will have significant economic renewal and employment-generating benefits. It will promote movement and connectivity through the creation of new through routes and spaces".

In a separate submission, Dublin Chamber of Commerce CEO Mary Rose Burke said that the high-rise element of the project was to be welcomed.

Ms Burke said that taller buildings can add to and become emblematic of the city and that the scheme can help to rejuvenate Tara Street.
Ireland's corporate culture still has much room for improvement, with staff being prepared to bend rules in respect of fraud and corrupt practices.

More than one in five of those questioned (22pc) said that they were prepared to act unethically to improve their own career progression or remuneration package.

Almost one in five employees here say they'd make cash payments to help a business survive, according to the EY Fraud Survey 'Human Instinct, Machine Logic', released today. The figure is significantly higher than the Western European average of 10pc.

An increasing number of survey respondents - 16pc, up from 12pc in 2015 - said they would recognise revenue earlier to meet a target. Recognition of revenue early, before it should be booked, is similar to the practice that led to the 2014 Tesco scandal, where the grocery giant accelerated the recognition of commercial income in its accounts. In March this year Britain's Serious Fraud Office confirmed that it had fined Tesco 129m in respect of the scandal.

The EY survey found employees here would consider ignoring unethical conduct in a team or at a supplier or even providing false information to management or third parties.

"Our research shows bribery and corrupt practices remain a significant risk in Irish business today. It also highlights why it's so important that senior management are alert to the potential unethical decisions that may be made by employees when they are under pressure to meet targets, hide errors or advance their own careers," Julie Fenton, partner and head of EY's fraud investigation and dispute services said.

Almost one in two Irish respondents believe bribery and corrupt practices are widespread here, significantly higher than the Western European average of 33pc.

The research has also found a decline in the number of respondents hearing senior management communicate about the importance of maintaining high ethical standards, with only 28pc of respondents saying that they had heard such communication from senior management.

"It is a business imperative that organisations put in place programmes and training to make their employees aware of the implications of their actions, and that they understand the consequences of behaving unethically," Fenton said.

The survey also found that employees were not open to introducing policies that would help to detect fraud, such as email, telephone or social media monitoring.

Of those surveyed, 60pc said that the monitoring of telephone calls by employers would be a violation of their privacy, 55pc felt that the monitoring of their emails would violate their privacy, while 49pc felt that the monitoring of their instant messenger accounts and apps would violate employee privacy.

The survey found that just 28pc of Irish respondents said that regulatory activity had a positive impact on ethical standards in their company, information which exposes a clear fault line within Irish business in which fraudulent practices can thrive.

Among employees concerned by potential wrong doing, 56pc of Irish respondents said that they had considered resigning but ultimately remained at their company, well above the EMEIA average of 37pc. Over 4,100 employees across 41 countries took part in the survey.
As many as 29 lives could be lost to to workplace accidents in the farm sector, experts have warned.

The Health and Safety Authority (HSA) told a high level meeting of farm bodies and Ministers' that there were 12 deaths so far this year, with eight over the age of 70.

The safety experts warned that based on past trends the fatality rate could reach as many as 29 by year end.

The ICMSA's John Comer described it as "absolutely frightening" and called on every single farmer to consciously redouble their efforts in relation to farm safety.

"It should be a warning to all farm families that, as we get older, we need to recognise that we simply have to take more precautions."

HSA inspector Pat Griffin said it was not surprising that farmers working into old age had less flexibility, movement and potentially health issues that leave them more prone to accidents.

He said workers in most other professions including civil servants or multi-nationals are sent on courses to prepare for retirement.

"A farmer doesn't get any training on how to retire. He signs a piece of paper and hands the farm over. Yet when they walk out their backdoor they are straight into their workplace," said Mr Griffin. "Retirement is not in their heads."

He warned many farmers' identities were centred around their work and many suffered depression and self-esteem issues after they retire.

Mr Griffin said the key to safety was training and a suite of up to 20 courses from tractor safety to first aid was needed for the farming community. He said this could be linked into schemes to ensure that farmers must complete a one-day course each year.

Concerns over quads and the potential of installing safety rollbars was also raised.

Teagasc's John McNamara warned the majority of the deaths this year were linked to farm tractors and quads.

Minister of State Pat Breen who set up the meeting along with Agriculture Minister Michael Creed will seek submissions on measures that might help curb farm deaths.
The Lleyn ewe is a medium sized lowland sheep weighing up to 75kg at maturity, renowned for their hardiness, prolificacy, easy lambing, strong mothering instinct, milkiness and easy handling.

It was with these attributes in mind that Clifford Richardson, who farms outside the village of Carrigallen in south Leitrim, chose the Lleyn breed as the foundation stock for his expanding sheep enterprise.

Clifford is focused on having a labour-efficient flock which, when combined with good fencing, housing and handling facilities, enable him to work full time off farm.

The 2016 profit monitor analysis for the farm shows lambs reared per ewe at 1.76, a sales figure of 157 per ewe from 97kgs of liveweight output per ewe.

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This resulted in a gross margin of 61 per ewe. Clifford plans to increase this to over 90 in the next three years which, when combined with an increase in stocking rate, will dramatically increase the overall gross margin on the farm.

Like most other flock owners in the west of Ireland, stocking rate is the main factor limiting overall farm profitability when technology and farm efficiencies are maximised.

Clifford recently hosted an extremely well-attended Lleyn society open day on the farm, promoting the attributes of the breed. Lambing went well on the farm this year, with 1.79 live lambs on the ground for mature ewes and 1.25 lambs for ewe lambs mated.

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This was Clifford's first year to lamb down ewe lambs. No major problems occurred and he plans to continue breeding ewe lambs next year.

Feeding a ration with 20pc soya bean meal prior to lambing and feeding the single bearing ewes an additional 100g of soya per day ensured that ewes and ewe lambs lambed down with an adequate colostrum supply for twin lambs.

The majority of multiple born lambs were cross fostered on to single bearing ewes. The challenge for Clifford from now on is to ensure that post lambing losses are kept to a minimum and lamb performance from grass is maximised. The main reasons for post-lambing losses up to weaning are starvation, ewes with inadequate milk supply, clostridial diseases and pasteurella pneumonia, coccidiosis and parasites nematodirus and strongyles.

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An outbreak of orf or mineral deficiencies, while they may not result in lamb mortality, can severely affect lamb thrive if not addressed. Clifford treated all lambs with Scabivax at turnout.

The earliest born batch of lambs were given a white worm drench for nematodirus on April 17 when the nematodirus warning was issued and were also treated for coccidiosis with a toltrazuril-based product.

Clifford also vaccinated the lambs with their first injection of Heptavac P to protect against pasteurella pneumonia. The younger batch of lambs were given the same treatments two weeks later. All lambs will be given a six month cobalt and selenium bolus when they are gathered for their booster Heptavac P vaccination.

Clifford plans to change his dosing strategy for lambs this year from routine dosing as practiced in previous years to dosing only when required. Routine dosing is like gambling - it's a shot in the dark and you may get it right sometimes.

Future dosing for strongyles on the Richardson farm will be based on faecal sampling carried out every three weeks over the summer months.

"I would have routinely dosed the lambs last week if I hadn't taken faecal samples." On May 24, five weeks after their first dose for nematodirus, lambs were faecal sampled. This was carried out in the field where they were grazing. Ten individual random samples were taken from lambs as they passed faeces on to the grass.

It is best to lift samples in the field when sheep are settled or lying. When the lamb gets up, it stretches and normally passes faeces. It is vitally important that you keep a good eye on the spot the lamb defecates as you need to ensure that the faeces are fresh and, more importantly, come from a lamb with no cross contamination with ewe faeces.

Place the faeces in the plastic sealable containers provided by the lab you have selected, collecting an amount similar to a large marble - the circumference similar to a 2 coin.

Samples should not be mixed from different lambs - this will be carried out in the lab where three grams from each sample is taken and pooled prior to testing.

This is done to avoid a large proportion of faeces coming from a single lamb with a high count influencing the final pooled sample count. Lifting 10 individual samples normally takes 20-30 minutes.

However, as in Clifford's case, it could save a lot of time and effort if the result shows that the lambs do not require a dose. It will also influence the long term efficacy of the drug used as reduced use will reduce the onset of drug resistance. It is important that the samples are lifted early in the week, are properly sealed for posting using the three-layered system to avoid leakage, and are posted or delivered to the lab as soon as possible after they are taken.

The results of faecal samples are sent to your local vet, with whom the future dosing strategy based on the findings should be discussed. The parasitology report from Clifford's lambs showed they had a strongyle count of 350, a nematodirus count of 150 and showed few coccidia present.

The lambs sampled were born from the last week of February to the first week of March and should have built up their own resistance to nematodirus at this stage.

However, if there were younger lambs on the farm beginning to eat grass and becoming exposed to nematodirus for the first time, then they will require a dose, preferably a white drench.

The coccidia count is evidence that the toltrazuril dose has done its job. Lambs will require a dose for strongyles when the egg count reaches the 500-1,000 eggs per gram.

Clifford will sample every three weeks and dose again when the count indicates that the dose is necessary.

Tom Coll is a Teagasc business and technology advisor based in Mohill, Co Leitrim
The Brexit vote has dealt short-term damage to the UK's offering as a foreign direct investment location, a report claims, with the country experiencing a 42pc fall in greenfield capital investment year-on-year.

The number of projects dropped by 9pc, as did job creation, according to the data from the 'Financial Times' FDI Intelligence unit.

The UK remained at the top of the European league table by far, however, by project numbers and market share.

There were 1,039 FDI projects into the UK last year, compared with 472 in Germany, which was in second place, and 187 for Ireland. The Irish figure was up 6pc year-on-year. The UK has a 22pc market share in Europe, with Ireland on 4pc.

"What we can see already is that Brexit has done short-term damage to the UK's once enviable FDI position," said Courtney Fingar, editor-in-chief of fDi magazine, and head of content for fDi Intelligence.

"Despite admirably solid economic growth - at least in western terms - the UK experienced a 42pc decline in greenfield capital investment year-on-year and a 9pc decline in job creation via greenfield FDI. The number of projects has declined 9pc".

Ms Fingar said many investors have opted to postpone UK expansion or investment plans until there is more clarity on what kind of agreement the UK is able to strike with Brussels.

"Despite these uncertainties, the UK has held on to its top-ranked position as an investment destination in Europe, showing that its FDI appeal, while dented, does retain some of its strength." Globally, greenfield FDI continued to rise, with capital investment increasing by 6pc. In the US, inward investment jumped nearly 40pc in January.
So far this year, more than 10.9 million passengers have travelled through Dublin Airport Stock image

This year's holiday season has begun with a bang as a record 2.6 million passengers travelled through Dublin Airport last month.

According to a DAA spokesperson, the recorded figures represent a 5pc increase in passengers over May 2016.

The volumes of those travelling to and from continental Europe has risen by 4pc with almost 1.4 million passengers travelling to these destinations last month.

Meanwhile, over 843,000 passengers travelled to UK destinations - an increase of 1pc compared to the same period last year.

Passengers heading to and from destinations in North America increased by 18pc as almost 321,000 travelled on this route sector in May.

Furthermore, other international traffic increased by 3pc - over 56,000 passengers - principally to destinations in the Middle East.

However, the volumes of passengers on domestic routes actually decreased by 9pc with just over 8,000 passengers travelling on domestic flights last month.

So far this year, more than 10.9 million passengers have travelled through Dublin Airport, a 6pc increase compared to the first five months of last year.
Fine Gael MEP Brian Hayes has said that the cabinet needs to do more to reduce the gender gap in pensions

The pension gender gap is twice as large as the pay gender gap in Ireland, according to a report by human resource consulting firm, Mercer.

Irelands pension gender gap is 35pc, slightly below the EU average but more than double Irelands gender pay gap of 14.8pc.

Speaking at the Pensions Europe Annual Conference in Brussels, Brian Hayes MEP, called on the new cabinet to do more to close the pension gender gap, saying that it should be a clear focus of the new Cabinet, particularly as we go into very sensitive public sector pay and pension talks.

While there has been some good progress made in Ireland and the EU to reduce the pay divide between men and women, the pension gender gap is something that has been sadly neglected, the MEP for Dublin said.

With rising life expectancy and the ageing of both the Irish and European population, the pension problem has become a ticking time bomb.

Read more: World heading for a pensions crisis, but no quick fix is in sight

In Ireland, the next big pensions faultline is pay talks between Government and the public sector unions, where the costs of future retirement benefits as much as wages are in focus in the push to restore salaries reduced through levies after the financial crisis.

At the same time, many private corporate pension scheme are facing massive challenges to remain solvent as investments and new entrants fail to keep pace with entitlements.

I believe this issue needs to come up in discussions on the public sector pay and pensions talks. Any change in pension contributions needs to take into account gender issues and the effect they can have on peoples retirement income, Hayes said.

Hayes also noted the little consideration given to the fact that some women take career breaks or work part-time.

Read more: Employees warned on new pension deals as more companies expected to close schemes

Because there are maximum pension contribution limits, it is difficult for employees who have had a career break to catch up on missed contributions, he said.

However, he also said that there were a number of things that the government could do to tackle the issue of pension gender gap including changing the nature of the pension system to recognise the differences in work life balance between women and men.

Many will say that the pension gender gap is a natural manifestation of the difference in work patterns between men and women. However, if we look at the Baltic countries, they all have pension gender gaps of below 15pc, Estonias pension gender gap is just 4pc, Hayes commented.
Vodafone has announced that it is cracking down on its advertising policy

Vodafone has announced that it is cracking down on its advertising policy, meaning that its adverts will no longer appear on any type of media outlet that creates or shares what it describes as hate speech or fake news.

The telecommunications giant said that its decision is largely in response on evolving technology within advertising and media and the digital algorithms being used.

The advertising industry and digital advertising providers such as Google and Facebook have developed automated advertising technologies that use algorithms to deliver digital advertising to targeted demographic categories of internet user, serving ads dynamically within individual websites and social media channels as those users browse, it said in a press release.

While automated advertising is a powerful tool  allowing advertisers to focus their investment on specific market segments across almost all digital properties  in a small minority of instances it can also lead to unintended and potentially harmful outcomes including advertising appearing next to offensive content, it added.

Read more: US spy services queried in Irish Facebook case

It said that as a result of this, automated advertising technologies can end up generating revenue for outlets focused on hate speech and fake news.

Companies like Vodafone risk their brands being marketed within outlets that are fundamentally at odds with their values and beliefs as a company while inadvertently providing a source of funding for those outlets, it said.

Vodafone, which spends about 750m annually on advertising making it one of the UK's biggest advertisers, said that it will implement its new policy immediately, using a whitelist-based approach, where it will earmark media outlets that it is willing to advertise on rather than the ones that it it is not.

It said that it will use content controls implemented by WPP, the global agency used by Vodafone, as well as Google and Facebook.

The approach means that Vodafone advertisements will only appear on selected outlets which the company identifies as highly unlikely to be focused on harmful content.

The measures will be reviewed regularly.

Read more: John McGee: Facebook must match its power with responsibility

Vodafone has a strong commitment to diversity and inclusion; we also greatly value the integrity of the democratic processes and institutions that are often the targets of purveyors of fake news, Vodafone CEO Vittorio Colao said. We will not tolerate our brand being associated with this kind of abusive and damaging content."

A spokesperson for Vodafone declined to say which media outlets would be on the whitelist but said that the list would be extensive and include most major outlets.

Global companies and brands have come under intense scrutiny in recent months for their advertising standards.

Earlier this year more than 250 companies, including Marks & Spencer, Toyota, and HSBC, suspended contracts with Google, accusing the tech giant of allowing their adverts to appear next to controversial content on YouTube.

Big advertisers like Vodafone hold the key to addressing this problem, said Richard Wilson, one of the founders of Stop Funding Hate, a campaign which urges companies to pull advertising from certain media outlets they say promote hate speech. If enough companies commit to advertising ethically, then this could help to make media hate - and fake news - unprofitable.
Television viewers have said Channel 4s new school drama Ackley Bridge is just a budget version of Waterloo Road.

The drama depicting the merging of two segregated schools  one predominantly white, one predominantly Asian  debuted on Wednesday night.

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But viewers were largely unimpressed, declaring that it was a poor imitation of the award-winning BBC series Waterloo Road, which wrapped in 2015.

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So far this is like a budget version of waterloo road, said another, while one disgruntled viewer deemed it cheap and weird.

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Others said the series was only different in that it had a race issue thrown in.

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The series, set in the fictional Yorkshire mill town of Ackley Bridge, features several television newcomers as well as established stars such as Jo Joyner and Sunetra Sarker.

But it was former EastEnders actor Paul Nicholls who proved to be one of the high points for viewers.

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One even said that having Paul in the cast gave Ackley Bridge the edge: Waterloo road didnt have Paul Nicholls though did it? #AckleyBridge for the win!!!
AN ESTONIAN man charged with conspiracy to murder a friend of the Hutch family has been further remanded in custody.

Gardai from the Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau supported by members of the Special Crime Task Force, Emergency Response Unit and Armed Support Unit raided a premises in west Dublin on the morning of April 4. Three men were arrested as part of an investigation into the Hutch-Kinahan feud.

Imre Arakas, 58, with an address at Sopruse, Tallinn, Estonia, was charged on April 6 last and then remanded in custody.

He is accused of conspiring with others not before the courts to murder James Gately in Northern Ireland between April 3 and April 4. The offence is under Section 71 of the Criminal Justice Act 2006.

He faced his sixth hearing on Wednesday when he appeared at Cloverhill District Court.

Judge Victor Blake further remanded him in custody to appear again on June 21 next. At his first hearing, on April 6, a court was told he made no reply to the charge and due to the nature of the charge a bail application could only be made in the High Court.

He has not yet indicated how he will plead to the charge.

Legal aid was granted following submissions that he was unemployed and unable to pay for a lawyer.

The other two other men arrested in connection with this investigation have been released from Garda custody without charge. A file is being prepared for the DPP.
Gardai have arrested a second man in connection with the London Bridge terror outrage.

A man aged in his thirties was detained in Wexford, at around 5pm on Tuesday as part of ongoing investigations into Irish links to the atrocity.

The suspect is being questioned about documentation connected to Rachid Redouane, one of the three killers behind the weekend attack.

Redouane married British woman Charisse Ann O'Leary in Ireland in November 2012 and gave an address in Rathmines, Dublin.

He left the country at some point and is believed to have lived in Ireland again in 2015.

Gardai confirmed a suspect was being held at Wexford Garda station in connection with documentation linked to Redouane under the Theft and Fraud Offences Act.

Expand Close Former home of London terrorist Rachid Redouane at 30 Grosvenor Square, Rathmines. Photo: Tony Gavin / Facebook

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He can be questioned for up to 24 hours.

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A case file is being prepared on another man who was arrested and later released without charge over the discovery in Limerick of identity documents in Redouane's name.

The Director of Public Prosecutions will be asked to assess if he should be charged in relation to offences under theft and fraud laws.

Redouane is known to have lived in Ireland at different times over the last number of years.

He married Ms O'Leary at the office of the Civil Registration Service at Sir Patrick Dun's Hospital in Dublin.

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It is not clear when he came to the Republic or how long he stayed but it is believed he used Irish jurisdiction to get a European Union permit which allowed him to be in the UK.

He is also thought to have travelled to Morocco after leaving Ireland before settling in the UK.

Redouane returned to Ireland in 2015, again for an unknown length of time, but Taoiseach Enda Kenny said he was not one of a small number of radicals under surveillance in Ireland.

An Irish security source described the killer as having "extensive immigration history related to the UK".
After it emerged that one of the men who carried out the terror attack in London lived unnoticed in Dublin, there are fears Ireland is being used as a gateway to the UK for extremists.

Rachid Redouane lived in Rathmines with his wife and child just months before he carried out Saturday's attack with two other jihadis, killing seven and injuring dozens of others.

Redouane is not the first terrorist to live here and on Tuesday former Justice Minister Dermot Ahern said we need more investment in An Garda Siochana to ensure we can effectively monitor potential terror suspects and respond in an emergency.

Here is Ireland's history with Muslim extremists:

Late 1990s: Gardai and the Defence Forces begin monitoring suspected Islamic terror sympathisers.

2000: A Jordanian man, who would later be described as the foremost Irish-based facilitator of Isil fighters, arrives in Ireland.

The same year an Algerian national gets refugee status in Ireland after concealing his identity as an Islamist extremist sympathiser. He uses his new status to travel to the continent and fundraise for jihadists.

October 2003: Khalid Kelly, a Dublin-born Muslim convert previously born Terrence Kelly, appears on the 'Late Late Show' with British extremist Anjem Choudary defending the 9/11 terror attacks.

2004: Naturalised Irish citizen Ibrahim Buisir is put on a US government list of suspected terrorists for alleged fundraising activities. Libyan-born Buisir is never charged with any terrorist offence and denied the US claims.

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September 2005: Government officials tell the US Embassy up to 30 al-Qa'ida sympathisers are under surveillance.

November 2005: The Algerian is convicted in Paris of terror offences in Ireland, England, France, Spain and Andorra. His trial hears he is an al Qa'ida sympathiser, which he denies.

October 2009: American Muslim convert Coleen LaRose, dubbed 'Jihad Jane' is arrested in the US for conspiring to murder a Swedish cartoonist who depicted the prophet Muhammad as a dog. The plot was hatched while she was living in Waterford. She is subsequently jailed for four years.

May 2011: Khalid Kelly is arrested for threatening to kill US President Barack Obama on his visit to Ireland.

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November 2012: Moroccan Rachid Redouane marries a Scottish woman in a Dublin registry office, guaranteeing him EU residency. He lives in Rathmines and works as a chef.

February 2016: Spain clears extradition to the US of Algerian-born Ali Charafe Damache, an alleged co-conspirator of Coleen LaRose. He previously successfully fought against extradition from Ireland.

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July 2016: The Jordanian is deported after a lengthy legal battle during which he was supported in court by Khalid Kelly.

November 2016: Khalid Kelly blows himself up in a failed suicide bombing mission for Isil in Iraq.

June 2017: Rachid Redouane and two other men launch an attack on London, using a van and knives to murder seven and injure dozens more. The three attackers are killed by police.
Frontline gardai have received no counter-terrorism training and are inadequately equipped to deal with an Isil attack, according to the body representing Garda sergeants and inspectors.

Concerns have also been raised about intelligence gathering on potential Islamic extremists in the wake of the most recent terror attack in London on Saturday.

It comes as two foreign nationals were arrested by gardai with suspected links to terrorist Rachid Redouane, who previously lived in Ireland.

The men were detained in separate counties. One man was using documentation linked to the terrorist while the other man is suspected of money-laundering offences.

Last night, the president of the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors (AGSI) said that cuts to community policing have effected intelligence gathering on terror suspects.

"Most of the intelligence gathering comes from communities but there has been a huge reduction in community policing over the last five years," AGSI president Antoinette Cunningham said.

"I have commended the London police on their quick response to the London Bridge attack, but I would have concerns about the Garda response time to a similar incident outside of Dublin," she added.

Ms Cunningham's comments are at odds with Tanaiste Frances Fitzgerald's statement that gardai are sufficiently resourced to deal with such incidents here.

Ms Fitzgerald, who is also Justice Minister, said: "Gardai have in place the necessary operational measures in terms of intelligence, a well-trained and equipped special intervention capability and other national support resources."

Ms Cunningham responded: "If the Minister for Justice is referring to gardai being adequately trained then it must be specialist units and not front-line officers. I represent almost 2,500 gardai and the majority are on the front-line, and we would have a very different opinion to the Minister of Justice in relation to front-line gardai being resourced."

Separately, security sources have also claimed Ireland is a hotbed for Islamic extremists. The Irish Independent has learned that although specialist gardai are monitoring more than two dozen suspects, the exact number of jihadists who could be living in Ireland is "unquantifiable".

The scale of potential Isil operations here was seen with two separate arrests, in different parts of the country within less than 24 hours, linked to killer Redouane.

On Monday night, a Moroccan national was detained in Limerick after he was found in possession of documents linked to the London Bridge attacker.

It is believed he was working as a waiter in the city while using a PPS number linked to Redouane. Detectives questioned him for a number of hours before he was released without charge.

Read more - Paul Williams: Gardai in no way ready to respond adequately to terror attack here

Then shortly after 5pm yesterday a second person with suspected links to Redouane was arrested by the Special Detective Unit (SDU).

The man, also a Moroccan national, was detained under the Theft and Fraud Offences Act 2001 in Wexford town. The Irish Independent understands documents linking the arrested man to Redouane were found during follow up searches by London police. The man works in the catering industry.

It has also emerged Redouane was refused asylum status in the UK in 2009. Redouane is first recorded here on November 7, 2012, when he married UK citizen Charisse O'Leary (38).

They left before returning to Ireland in February 2015, while the last record of Redouane leaving Ireland was in March of last year.

The Government has previously been criticised by the European Commission for failing to introduce information-sharing systems aimed at combating international terrorism and organised crime.
While the questions asked were clear and straight-forward, the Leaving Cert higher level Home Economics paper was not predictable, according to teacher Sandra Cleary.

She said small areas of the course were given quite a lot of weighting, and students who were relying on specific topics to appear may be disappointed.

Students who left nothing to chance and covered the course in its entirety, will do very well in this exam.

Ms Cleary, of the Institute of Education, Dublin said while the short questions, were not too challenging, they related to topics that students may not have been expecting.

The compulsory Question 1 was topical and straight-forward and while Question 2 was also straightforward the topic cheese had not been asked before, she said.

Ms Cleary said come students may have been caught out by the taste experience and sensory analysis testing, a very small part of the course, but with a whole question devoted to it.

The topical issue of housing was a theme on the paper, and, to her surprise marriage also appeared, as it had two years ago.

Social housing provision, unemployment, employment and work all appeared in Electives 1 & 3 and Ms Cleary said reliance on Home Economics textbooks would not have helped here and students would need to be very tuned to current affairs and recent commentary on these issues."
Today is the day for which sixth year students, and their families, have been preparing for many years. It can be a stressful day, but, in my experience, and excluding a few hours before the exam begins, the worst of the stress has now passed.

It is amazing for all involved how quickly students settle into a new, daily routine; there are often minimal nerves as the days and weeks progress.

By today, most of the work is done. Now it is important to maintain balance, wherever possible. The Leaving Cert is both a physical and mental challenge and there are a number of things students can do to ensure they are in the best possible position to meet it.

Before each exam, students should take time to go over notes and think about what is to come. They should make sure that the structure of each exam is familiar and, if there is more than one paper in a subject, know exactly which questions are covered on which paper. They should also be sure to understand which sections allow choice and which are compulsory.

A student who opens the paper and feels they don't know anything should accept this is nerves and begin writing. They should write anything, even if they think it is not relevant. The process of writing allows the brain to start making connections and more relevant information will begin to flow.

It is essential too to know the timings for questions, and stick to them. Students should not stay longer on a particular question than they had planned, even though they may be tempted. If a student runs out of time on a question, they should leave it and return later.

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Most importantly, students should always stay to the end of the exam and make additions to answers, where necessary, or reread the paper looking for any errors. If a candidate remembers something once they have left the exam hall, it is too late. It is important to be able to walk away from each exam knowing that they have truly given it their best.

While working through each paper, candidates may find information for different questions popping into their head. They should make a note in the rough work section and return to add them in later.

Once an exam is completed, students should move on and avoid post mortems. Spending too much time reviewing the paper, or trying to figure out what mark was achieved, will not change the grade but is likely to increase stress and anxiety or affect future exam performance. Similarly, avoid other students who may wish to discuss exams in too much detail. It is likely this person is just trying to make themselves feel better. Put yourself first and walk away.

Students should try to take some time to relax after each exam, especially if there is more than one in the same day: have lunch, chat to a friend, have a little walk, before moving on to reviewing notes for the next exam. Brains and bodies need a rest to perform at their best.

Best of luck to the class of 2017. You're nearly there!

Aoife Walsh is a guidance counsellor at Malahide Community School, Co Dublin

Important dates

TODAY

Information Sessions - Roslyn Park College, Dublin

TOMORROW

Deadline to reply to offers made before May - UCAS

JUNE 12

Summer School - Maynooth University

JUNE 13

Open Evening - Dublin Business School

JUNE 14

Open Evening - National College of Ireland

JUNE 15

Priority closing date for renewal applications - SUSI

June 19

Summer Camp - University College Cork

Q. One of the courses I listed on my CAO has been cancelled. What should I do?

A. Every year, a number of courses listed in the CAO handbook are cancelled. In addition, a number of new courses are released after the publication of the CAO handbook. The CAO posts a list of such courses to all applicants in preparation for the opening of the Change of Mind period.

The lists are also available on the CAO website, appearing as Important Changes in the CAO handbook. CAO applicants may use the Change of Mind period, up to July 1, to make amendments to their choices.

Among the courses included on the cancellation list are DC292 Arts Joint honours with Gaeilge, and DC122 Computational Problem Solving and Software Development, both in DCU. This will, no doubt, be disappointing for some, as both degrees provide students with in-demand skills.

Interesting additions for which applicants may apply through the Change of Mind system include Culinary Arts and Gastronomic Studies, available at both level 7 and 8 (GA378 GA382) at GMIT and common entry Engineering (DK843) at DkIT.
It was the first of the new Junior Cycle English papers and while the novel was missing the grammar police will be happy that the apostrophe has made reappearance in the State exams.

Liz Farrell of the Teachers Union of Ireland (TUI), a teacher at Colaiste Eoin, Hacketstown, Co Carlow, reckoned it was about 30 years since Junior Cert candidates were tested on their knowledge of apostrophes.

Overall, Ms Farrell liked the new-style papers, which she said gave students an opportunity to demonstrate the knowledge they have gained in the classroom.

The reformed Junior Cycle English syllabus aims to develop critical thinking skills in students and to end the days of regurgitating rote-learned material in a written exam

The new June written exam is worth 90pc of the marks, with the other 10pc gained for classroom-based work.

Under the new regime, students have been told that there is no guarantee that the June exam will include questions on Shakespeare, a novel and poetry, even though they all have to be covered.

Speaking about the higher level paper, Ms Farrell said: We had a Shakespearean text, we had poetry but the novel didnt appear.

She added that the Shakespeare question was much different from the style of previous years. The question was about a film version of a Shakespearean play and students were asked what they would include on a poster advertising the film to represent what they thought was important in the play and to create a sense of anticipation for its upcoming release.

That encompasses an awful low of skills they would have learned. It was getting them to adapt their knowledge to fit the question. It covered visual literacy, film terminology, knowledge of the text and how a plot is driven in term of anticipation, she said.

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Ms Farrell said there was also a departure in the comprehension section, and the work the students would have done in preparing for classroom -based assessments came through in questions.

And there was a grammar question, on the apostrophe, worth five marks. We were told that grammar and convention would be important. I havent seen a question about the apostrophe for at least 30 years. Maybe next year it will be the Oxford comma.

Another big change was that students had to write in the space given, rather than on other sheets, which she said was a big challenge, but all in all, a fair paper.

Ms Farrell said the focus of the ordinary level paper was also very much on testing skills. Here, students got a question on graphic novel, which, she said, some may have found difficult if they had not covered that genre.

We were told we need to look at texts in evert different format, we will look at them more deeply as we go forward, she said.

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A question asking candidates to write an email may also have stumped some, she thought as from my perspective 15 years-olds dont write emails, it is all Facebook. They need an email to sign up, but I dont think they use them; they regard it as old-fashioned.

Ms Farrell described the section on poetry as lovely.
Gardai comb a location linked to a fatal collision in which Declan Kelly was killed outside Arklow, Co Wicklow. Photo: Garry O'Neill

Gardai are investigating all the circumstances surrounding a mystery traffic collision which left a man dead after he suffered horrific injuries.

The victim was named locally yesterday as well-respected Arklow man Declan Kelly (49) who was hit by a car in the early hours of Monday morning close to his home in the Co Wicklow town.

Gardai have identified a suspect in the horrific case and have taken statements from the middle-aged local man who presented himself to officers around 40 minutes after the collision had occurred.

The man's Ford Mondeo car has been seized and has been the subject of detailed forensic examination.

Trawl

There have been no arrests so far, but officers are trawling through CCTV and phone records.

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Whatsapp Gardai comb a location linked to a fatal collision in which Declan Kelly was killed outside Arklow, Co Wicklow. Photo: Damien Eagers

They have not yet ruled out the involvement of a second vehicle in the fatality.

A post-mortem examination carried out on Mr Kelly's body proved inconclusive and further examinations are due to take place today.

Gardai have been working on a number of different theories in relation to the fatal collision, including whether Mr Kelly's body had been moved from where he was originally struck by the car.

Mr Kelly's body was discovered by people passing through the Coolgreany road area in Arklow, shortly before 2.30am on Monday.

At around the same time, a local man presented himself to gardai in relation to the incident.

Yesterday morning, gardai began examining a second location, around 2km from where the victim's body was found.

Five members of the Garda divisional search unit combed the trees and bushes at a cordoned-off scene on the outskirts of Arklow town in a search for missing clothing items belonging to Mr Kelly.

The search concluded shortly after 5pm with "significant" items found by the investigation team.

Mr Kelly's family are said be "terribly cut up" following his death.

Fianna Fail councillor Tommy Annesley told the Irish Independent that he knew the family well, having grown up with many of them.

"I know the whole family, I was out at the house, they're all devastated," he said.

Mr Kelly lived just outside Arklow town with his father, Peter - who he had been taking care of since his mother died two years ago. His brother also tragically passed away a number of years ago.

Mr Kelly was described as "the glue that kept the family together".

"Declan looked after the father, he cooked the breakfast and that," Mr Annesley said.

The tragic victim set up his own business as a concrete groover.

His products helped prevent livestock from slipping on concrete surfaces and he was known throughout the farming community in Wicklow.

It is understood he was a prominent member of the Irish Cattle Foot Trimmers Association.

Local councillor Pat Fitzgerald said the whole area is in a state of shock. "It's a huge shock to learn of the tragedy," Cllr Fitzgerald said.

"Declan was a member of a very well-liked family, very well-known in farming circles too.

"I just want to offer my sympathy to his family and from speaking to many of his friends they are deeply shocked," he added.

Mr Kelly's family were last night being comforted by friends and family as they make preparations for his funeral.

Gardai are appealing for witnesses or anyone with information to contact them at Arklow garda station on 0402 26320 or any garda station.
Some direct bus services to the city centre could be scrapped under plans to introduce high-frequency corridors across the capital.

Passengers could be forced to change from one bus to another under proposals from the National Transport Authority (NTA) to improve services for 400,000 daily commuters, which although less convenient would result in faster trips.

If implemented, services would be provided every three to six minutes on high-frequency corridors across the city, with local services to specific destinations every 15 minutes.

US transport consultant Jarrett Walker, who is working with the NTA, said passenger numbers would grow if high frequency corridors with fast, reliable and connected services, were developed. The "pay-offs" for increased frequencies were "high".

"People are attracted to Luas because it's one or two lines and you know what to do. It's impossible to do this with buses," he said. "The big question is can we ask people to change buses more if you produce a network which is more frequent and gets you to where you want to go quicker?"

The NTA has launched a public consultation, called the Dublin Area Bus Network Redesign Choices Report, stressing that no decisions have been made. Submissions can be made at busconnects.ie.

The proposal outlines how main radial bus corridors through the city centre would be consolidated and run between fixed terminuses, for example Dublin Airport to Rathgar, Crumlin to Artane or Lucan to Ringsend. Different routes would use the corridors, but branch out to serve local areas after reaching the terminus.

Suburban feeder routes could also be developed. These include Dunboyne to Blanchardstown, where instead of one bus service operating from Dunboyne to Blanchardstown and another to the city centre, commuters would all travel to Blanchardstown and then switch to a high-frequency corridor to the city centre.

In other cases, orbital routes would be developed - such as from Dundrum to Tallaght - to improve connectivity between the high-frequency corridors and local areas.

Examples of service improvements include the journey from Harold's Cross to Drumcondra. There is currently a direct bus service, and the trip takes 40 minutes. This would fall to 38 minutes, even after passengers switched buses. Others include Donnybrook to Heuston Station, down from 30 to 29 minutes, and Lucan to UCD which would fall to 49 minutes from 56 minutes 30 seconds.

The plan, which is part of the Bus Connects project, could be implemented from late 2018, and is not dependent on capital funding to improve bus corridors. Advantages include shorter waiting times at stops due to higher frequency of services. The network would be simpler and easier to navigate, and more routes would be accessible.

The disadvantages include interrupted journeys and the requirement to complete "short walks" at interchanges, but the NTA said real-time passenger information and shelters would be provided. Work was also under way on restructuring fares to ensure it would cost no more to interchange.
Bishop O'Reilly said that in 10 years time there are likely to be just 25 priests to cover 34 parishes. Stock Image

The Catholic Bishop of Kilmore has linked the crisis in vocations in the priesthood and religious life to hostility and antipathy towards the Church, which he said borders on persecution.

At a ceremony to honour the relics of St Oliver Plunkett, Bishop Leo O'Reilly said people from abroad are often "astonished at the antipathy to the Church displayed in our country".

Acknowledging that the Church today isn't subject to the kind of persecution that it experienced in the 17th century during St Oliver's ministry, Dr O'Reilly said nevertheless you didn't have to be "paranoid to believe that there is a kind of persecution of the Church taking place here all the same".

He said it was more subtle than physical persecution, and took the form of gradual exclusion of Church people or activities from the public space.

Dr O'Reilly also criticised the role the media has played in denigrating the role the Church plays in people's lives.

"There is denigration of religious beliefs, practices and institutions on radio, television and on social and other media.

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"There is often a focus on bad news about the Church to the almost total exclusion of any good news."

Recalling a time when there were more newly ordained priests than vacancies for them to fill, the bishop highlighted that there has only been one ordination in Kilmore in the past 13 years and just one seminarian.

He warned that unless there is a dramatic change in the vocations trend, the future for the diocese is bleak. He said that in 10 years' time there are likely to be just 25 priests to cover 34 parishes.

Recently, it was warned that in the Diocese of Cork and Ross the priest shortage crisis is such that some Masses could be replaced by public prayers with no Communion in the years ahead.

The Bishop of Limerick Brendan Leahy has also warned that Mass may not take place every Sunday in some parishes in the area due to a lack of priests.
Amy Webster and her boyfriend walk away from the scene of the London terror attack

An Irish woman has admitted she feels "incredibly lucky" after surviving the London terror attack and an earthquake in Nepal.

Amy Webster (26) was enjoying a night out in a restaurant in London's Borough Market with her boyfriend on Saturday night when three jihadists drove a van into pedestrians, before they jumped out and started stabbing people.

Derry native Amy told BBC Radio Foyle of the London attack: "There were glasses being chucked around, bottles, and then people were throwing chairs.

"People at the back of the restaurant started screaming and running away from it."

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She added: "We started to run away and it wasn't until after a couple of minutes the manager managed to get the guys out of the restaurant and close the shutters.

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"We started to come back into the restaurant and someone was saying: 'A girl's been stabbed.'

"Basically, three men had come in with knives and stabbed a girl next to the door."

The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack and the three men who carried it out were killed by police.

She added that her boyfriend actually saw one of the attackers.

Ms Webster said: "My partner saw one of the attackers briefly . He saw a man holding up a big knife that [he said] was about a foot-and-a-half long and waving it about.

"We thought it was all over. I was getting our bags together and i was down next to the door and then we started hearing gun fire outside.

"We heard about four rounds of gun shots, in hindsight that was probably the police but we didn't know they were there at that point.

"I found leaving the restaurant was almost the scariest part. We didn't know what was on the other side of the door."

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Incredibly, Amy also escaped a 7.8 magnitude earthquake in Nepal in April 2015 unharmed.

Seven people died and dozens more were injured.

The earthquake killed more than 7,000 people and injured another 10,000 near base camp.

She said that she feels grateful to have survived when so many didn't.

She said: "We walked past a couple of other bars that were also attacked, there was a lot of blood on the ground and there was people still in the bars that were injured and were being treated. It just seemed chaotic.

"We feel incredibly lucky. There were so many people who weren't as lucky as we were to walk away unharmed."
A new study has found that one in four people regularly forget to flick off the immersion after a bath or shower

One of the scariest memories of an Irish childhood has to be the horror moment of recognition after forgetting to turn off the immersion heater, but it seems many of us still have not learned our lesson.

A new study by Hive has found that one in four people regularly forget to flick off the immersion after a bath or shower, despite years of scoldings and the bad habit could be costing them.

Research from Bord Gais Energy has revealed that regularly forgetting about the immersion could add up to 1500 to your electricity bill annually.

The study, which examined the wasteful habits of over one thousand homemakers, also found that one in three people regularly leave lights on when they aren't needed, and 50pc of us boil the kettle several times for one cup of tea as we become distracted.

However, more of us are becoming tech-savvy when it comes to our electricity use. The company said 58pc of Irish people believe smart technology would make their homes better, as Bord Gais Energy continues to promote its tech brand Hive.

Commenting on the findings, Nina Bhatia, MD of Centrica Connected Home said: "Households across Ireland are clearly beginning to embrace smart home technology but its interesting to see that, while the number one desire for smart technology in the home is to help save energy, old habits such as forgetting to turn the immersion off and repeatedly boiling the kettle continue to be common daily occurrences.

"Our mission is to make the smart home real for everyone, with affordable, easy to use solutions."
This year's batch of Leaving Cert students has more opportunity to pursue different further or higher education paths than were available in the past.

Despite the surfeit of bad news about, things are looking up for our young people, especially those with a Leaving Certificate or higher. In fact, the higher the qualification the better it is when it comes to getting a job.

It's hard to believe that just five years ago youth unemployment reached a record of 31.2pc in Ireland; it was down to 12pc in April. That's still above the lowest level recorded of 6.2pc but it represents a dramatic turnaround in a few short years.

All the evidence is that those with qualifications are reaping the rewards in terms of greater employment prospects. Education, of course, is not just about preparation for the workforce but for life, and OECD datas show that those with higher qualifications tend to live longer and enjoy better health than early school leavers.

Generally speaking we have more data about third-level education than we do about further education and some fascinating figures were revealed at a Higher Education Authority organised forum in Dublin last week.

It showed that in European terms Ireland has the highest percentage of young people in the 30 to 34 year age bracket who had gone to third-level education - 52.3pc in 2015, which was way up from 38.6pc in 2004. We are even ahead of countries such as Norway, Sweden and Switzerland.

The expansion in third-level numbers in Ireland has been so rapid that a huge gap has opened up between the educational attainments of young and older people, i.e. those between 50 and 64. The gap is wider in Ireland than in all other EU/EEA countries.

What's also growing is the earnings gap between those with a third-level education and those with upper secondary education. In Ireland's case those who went to college earned 47.3pc more in 2003, but this had risen to 54.8pc in 2013, according to research by Professor Francis Green and Dr Golo Henseke from the Centre for Global Higher Education, University College London Institute of Education.

This expansion in student numbers is coming at a price in Ireland and elsewhere because of the growing phenomenon of graduate 'underemployment' - where those with degrees are overqualified for their jobs. There are many reasons for it, from a mismatch between what's taught and what's needed by employers, sluggish jobs growth in employment in many countries - Ireland being the EU outlier - to labour market rigidities and poor management of graduate talent and skills.

The research quoted last week by Professor Claire Callender from London showed that graduate underemployment is particularly pronounced in Ireland - we can all point to examples of graduates who are working in what are clearly non-graduate jobs. Sometimes they are taking jobs that previously required a Leaving Certificate or lower qualification. Despite this, she predicted that demand for higher education in Ireland will continue to grow.

She noted that employment in both low-skilled and high-skilled occupations has grown in Ireland, especially high skilled. At the same time employment in intermediate skilled jobs - classic middle class jobs - has shrunk. She sees Ireland as evolving into an 'hour-glass' economy with the traditional middle class jobs going, but concluded that the graduate-earning 'premium' is considerable and is holding up in Ireland.

The same might be said about further education and training (FET), where we finally have a strategy in place which is opening up new apprenticeships and bringing greater coherence to post Leaving Certificate courses. There is now a national database of all Further Education and Training Programmes (www.fetchcourses.ie). This is part of a wider IT system being developed, which will provide much more comprehensive data around FET courses, learners and outcomes.

Apprenticeship registrations have recently made a welcome recovery, principally in the traditional craft apprenticeships. They are expected to increase significantly both in these existing craft areas and as the number of available apprenticeships expands. In the past year new ones have come on stream including insurance practice, industrial electrical engineering, manufacturing and polymer processing. A further 19 are in development, many at ordinary and honours degree level.

We may not end our obsession with traditional university degrees anytime soon but parents and students are increasingly seeing further education and training as a very rewarding option.

John Walshe is an education consultant
Its not every day you come face-to-face with a prime minister, especially not one who appears on your doorstep in a kayak.

The Robinson family from Ontario were treated to a surprise visit from Canadian PM Justin Trudeau after he paddled up to their home along the Niagara River.

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To mark World Environment Day and Canadas commitment to tackling climate change, Trudeau spent part of his day on the river, stopping to chat with neighbours along the way.

The Robinsons have lived by the river for five years and mum Anne told the BBC: It was certainly a surprise when he turned and kayaked right over to us for a chat. Prime Minister Trudeau is very engaging and easy to talk with.

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The prime minister uploaded photos of his Niagara River adventure on Twitter after posting a statement which said Canada has taken strong steps to protect the environment and promote clean economic growth and is committed to fighting climate change.

The statement read: World Environment Day reminds us that we have a global responsibility to safeguard our environment  and that each of us has a role to play to preserve and protect it.

More than ever, Canada is committed to provide international leadership to fight climate change and support clean economic growth. We will continue to work with our domestic and international partners to drive progress on the environmental challenges we face as a global community.
Gypsy, Roma and Traveller (GRT) communities face more barriers than most when it comes to voting in a general election.

From the practicalities of registering to vote with no fixed address to issues of illiteracy and apathy, there are a host of hurdles that need to be overcome before making it to the polls on Thursday.

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As you would expect with all disadvantaged groups, there is a real sense of disenfranchisement within the GRT communities, says Yvonne MacNamara, chief executive of the Traveller Movement charity, who lives in London.

You hear the same arguments against getting involved in politics as you do on the news when they interview any other group: whats the point, no one will listen to me anyway.

These concerns have led the Traveller Movement to launch a campaign aimed at getting GRT communities out to the polls, called Operation Traveller Vote.

The 2011 census  the first to include an ethnicity option for Gypsies and Travellers  revealed the community is the countrys smallest ethnic minority at 58,000 people. Add in the Roma population and the figure expands to between 80,000 and 300,000.

Although there are few figures tracking democratic participation in these communities, the Traveller Movement says turnout is lower for them than for other minority groups.

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We are trying to make politics more accessible and demonstrate that their voices do matter and they can influence decisions, said MacNamara.

We have published easy-to-read guides on the manifestos, explaining how the main parties policies can and will affect their daily lives.

The organisation has also asked members of the community which issues matter to them and produced a list of questions for members of the GRT community to ask campaigners. Topics include site provision, services and health for the community.

Cassie Marie McDonagh, 28, from Watford, is an Irish traveller who will be voting for the first time on June 8. She says she feels ignored, and that some politicians pander to the settled communities fears by closing designated sites for roadside travellers.

But she added: We cant keep sitting back thinking oh whats the point. We need to start showing politicians they have to help us too and the best way to do that is to go out and vote.

She says education is at the top of her agenda, particularly the government dropping support for Gypsy Roma Traveller History Month.

My brother, who is in high school, wouldnt feel like he could go to school and talk about us and our way of life Its not right that he has to feel ashamed of our culture and who he is, she said.

She believes Gypsy Roma Traveller History Month gives our kids a way to speak about their culture and show the other children about how we truly are and not the myths they get told all the time. Stopping racism and prejudice starts in schools.

As well as making the communities aware of the policies out there, the movement is also working to make the process of voting itself easier for GRT people.

This includes working with the Electoral Commission to cater to the specific needs of the GRT community.

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For roadside Travellers, its about explaining that they can still vote even if they dont have a fixed address, said MacNamara. There is something called a declaration of local connection, which allows people with no fixed address but a local connection to vote.

Another barrier is literacy. According to the Traveller Movement, around 80% of Travellers are illiterate. This raises obvious issues when it comes to registering to vote, reading campaign literature and the act of voting itself.

Those with difficulty reading or writing can either ask the presiding officer at the polling station or can take along someone over 18 who is eligible to vote to help.

Its not just the Traveller Movement working to get the vote out.

McDonagh says shell be trying to persuade as many friends and family members in the GRT community as possible to vote on Thursday.

She said: Once you explain to them what the parties stand for and what it means for our way of life then they start to think it might be worth it.

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McDonagh said she has been posting about the election on her Facebook page, and a particular video from Labour Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has had a positive impact.

She said: My cousin saw it and then he called me to ask what it was about  after he watched the video he called me back and said he wanted to vote so I sent him the link to register.

The Labour Party are standing with Travellers and we should stand with them. Vote Labour!

I talked him through the process and he also registered his mammy. So thats at least three more votes for Labour!
When a black bear broke into a family home in Colorado, it was the piano that peaked its interest.

If the idea of a bear breaking into your home doesnt exactly fill you with intense joy, theres noting to worry about here.

After sniffing around in search of food, our friend decided to play a spot of piano to help him get his bearings.

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According to local police, it hasnt been seen since  but if you hear piano in the night, maybe just check to see if theres a bear downstairs.

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Bear-based puns only make it more brilliant.
The term hero is often used so much that its in danger of losing its meaning, but it couldnt be more appropriate to describe this Illinois man.

Randy Tompkins jumped through the open window of a moving car to save a driver who was having a seizure.

The incident was caught in its entirety on the police dashcam, and Tompkinss quick reaction is really incredible.

When Tompkins was driving his truck on Friday afternoon he spotted a car driving in the wrong lane heading right at him. Wasting no time at all he jumped from his truck and through the passenger window of the car.

He then put two fingers into the convulsing drivers mouth to prevent him from swallowing his tongue, which is pretty admirable stuff.

Even though its Tompkins who is the man of the hour, he took to Twitter to thank Dixon police for calling to thank him for his efforts.

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How sweet.
In the wake of the attacks on London Bridge and Manchester Arena, Theresa May has said she is ready to rip up some human rights laws in order to crack down on the terrorist threat.

We need to make sure that our police and security and intelligence agencies have the powers they need, the Prime Minister said in a speech. If our human rights laws stop us from doing it, we will change the laws so we can do it.

Mays statement has been criticised by global human rights charity Amnesty International.

The non-governmental organisation has been fighting human rights violations since the 1960s and called Mays comments reckless and misinformed.

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This is exactly the time that human rights must be protected and cherished, not attacked and undermined, said the charity. Human rights are there to protect all in society  that is just pure common sense.

Whoever is in government after the 8 June election must ensure our human rights are protected.

Mays statement also drew criticism from opposition leaders in the General Election, which comes to a close this Thursday. Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron accused her of simply posturing, having been prepared to offer up the police for cut after cut when she was home secretary.

This was a view shared by some on Twitter.

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Meanwhile more users believed May was simply wrong to believe affecting human rights was the answer.

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However, some were quick to leap to the Prime Ministers support.

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As Britain heads to the polls on Thursday, numerous pundits and presenters will be warming up to bring the results to the public on television.

Heres what is happening on each TV channel and the important milestones to watch out for overnight.

Where to watch

BBC

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David Dimbleby will be leading the coverage on BBC1 and the BBC News Channel as the polls close, from 9.55pm to 7am. This will be his 10th time at the helm of the BBCs coverage, joined by graphics whizz Jeremy Vine and reporters Emily Maitlis and Mishal Husain.

Huw Edwards will then take over until 10am, joined by Andrew Neil at 1pm. Neil will host the rest of the coverage alone over on BBC2 until 4.30pm.

ITV

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Tom Bradby will steer ITVs coverage through the night, starting at 9.55pm. Hell be joined by the channels Political Editor Robert Peston, former Labour MP and Strictly Come Dancing star Ed Balls and Evening Standard Editor George Osborne.

Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid will take over with a special edition of Good Morning Britain from 6am  9.25am, after which an extended ITV news will run until 2pm.

Channel 4

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Channel 4 is mixing comment with comedy for its alternative election night. From 9.45pm the stars of Gogglebox will be giving their views on the election, followed by news heavyweights Jeremy Paxman and Cathy Newman co-hosting with David Mitchell and Richard Osman.

The programme promises to combine serious coverage mixed with light relief until 6am.

Sky News

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Veteran presenter Adam Boulton partners with Sophy Ridge to lead the election charge, beginning at 9pm. They will be supported by live coverage from 300 constituencies.

Skys results night will extend to Snapchat from 10pm with rolling coverage on the picture and video sharing platform.

First indication of results

Ipsos MORI will release the results of its exit poll to the BBC, ITV and Sky at 10pm  as soon as polling stations close.

The poll will be taken from 144 polling stations across Britain, asking voters at these stations to mark a mock ballot paper to show how they have voted.

It has correctly predicted who would take the keys to number 10 in the last *five* elections, and in 2005 and 2010 came extremely close to predicting the exact number of seats.

Results to watch for

(all timings are approximate)

By 12am

The three Sunderland constituencies  traditionally first to declare  should be in. All are safe Labour seats & all three should return women MPs, meaning that by this point in the night the House of Commons should be 100% female.

1am

Nuneaton: the first marginal seat to declare. Marcus Jones (Con) is defending a majority of 4,882 and Labour needs a 5.4% swing to win.

1.30am

Darlington: if the Tories win here in Labours heartland of north-east England, theyre on course for a very good night.

Wrexham: the first chance for the Tories to gain a seat from Labour in Wales.

2am

Bury North; Peterborough; Thurrock: three Tory marginals are due to declare  all are key Labour targets.

Clwyd South: can the Tories surge in Wales and grab this seat from Labour?

Hastings & Rye: the seat of Home Secretary Amber Rudd, which would fall to Labour on 4.8% swing

2.30am

Islington North: Jeremy Corbyns result should see him safely returned by a big margin.

Vale of Clwyd; Warwickshire North: two chances for Labour to make gains from the Conservatives.

Ynys Mon: a close three-way fight between Labour (who are defending the seat), Plaid Cymru and the Conservatives

3am

Dunbartonshire East: the Lib Dems are hoping to take this seat back from the SNP.

Ealing Central & Acton; Hampstead & Kilburn: two marginal seats that could offer the Tories their first chance of gaining from Labour in London.

Exeter: can Ben Bradshaw cling on to one of Labours few remaining seats in the south-west?

Moray: might the SNPs deputy leader Angus Robertson be defeated by the Conservatives?

Westmorland & Lonsdale: Tim Farrons seat is due to declare. The Lib Dem leader would lose to the Tories on a 9.3% swing.

3.30am

Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale & Tweeddale: the Tories only seat in Scotland is being challenged by the SNP.

Enfield North; Ilford North; Westminster North: more Labour London seats at risk from a swing to the Conservatives.

Sedgefield: Tony Blairs former seat would fall to the Conservatives on an 8.9% swing.

4am

Birmingham Northfield; Newcastle-under-Lyme, Walsall North: three key West Midlands Labour seats at risk from a Tory surge.

Carshalton & Wallington; Southport: two Lib Dem seats fancied by the Tories.

Gower: the seat with the smallest majority in the country (just 27 in 2015), which Labour is hoping to take back from the Conservatives.

Richmond Park; Twickenham: can Zac Goldsmith (Con) and Vince Cable (Lib Dem) win back their respective former seats?

4.30am

Blackpool South; Wolverhampton South West: two more Labour marginals eyed by the Tories.

Maidenhead: Theresa Mays seat is expected to declare around now

Sheffield Hallam: Nick Clegg could lose his seat on a swing of 2.2% to Labour.

5am

Boston & Skegness: Ukip leader Paul Nuttall is hoping to win this seat from the Conservatives.

Bristol West: can the Greens oust Labour and claim their second ever MP?

Brentford & Isleworth; City of Chester; Wirral West: three of Labours most marginal seats  all are being challenged by the Tories.

Fermanagh & South Tyrone: Sinn Fein is hoping to win back the seat from the UUP.

Halifax: May launched the Tories manifesto here  but can Labour hold on?

5.30am

Berwickshire, Roxburgh & Selkirk: the Conservatives are hoping to snap up this SNP marginal.

Hove: can the Tories seize one of Labours few remaining seats in south-east England?

6am

Brighton Pavilion: Caroline Lucas is defending the Greens only seat.

Derby North: on paper, Labours best chance of a gain from the Tories, who are defending a majority of just 41.

Derbyshire North East; Lancaster & Fleetwood: two late chances for Tory gains from Labour.

7am

Morley & Outwood: Labour is hoping to win back the seat of the former shadow chancellor Ed Balls.

Thanet South: Tory marginal being defended by Craig Mackinlay, who has been charged with allegedly overspending in the 2015 general election.

By 12pm

After a lull during the morning, the final seats should be declared just before lunchtime: Berwick-upon-Tweed, Blyth Valley and Wansbeck.
Identities of the London Bridge attack victims have continued to emerge, as police recovered a body from the Thames while searching for a French tourist missing since Saturday night.

Christine Archibald

Canadian Archibald, 30, was the first victim to be named.

She died in her fiances arms after being struck by the speeding van on London Bridge.

Her family said she would have had no understanding of the callous cruelty that caused her death.

James McMullan

McMullan, 32, from Hackney, was last seen outside the Barrowboy And Banker pub and his sister said police have told her his bank card was found on a body at the scene of the attack.

Melissa McMullan described her brother as an inspiration and told Sky News: While our pain will never diminish, it is important for us all to carry on with our lives in direct opposition to those who wish to destroy us, and remember that hatred is the refuge of small-minded individuals and will only breed more.

She added that police told her they were unable to formally identify him until the coroners report is released.

Alexandre Pigeard

Pigeard, 27, has been named by French media as one of those killed.

Brittany news outlet Le Telegramme reported an account from Boro Bistro manager Vincent Le Berre, who told how his colleague, Pigeard, was attacked by a terrorist in the bar near Borough Market on Saturday night.

I managed to escape him, but my friend Alexandre did not have that chance. He was hit in the neck with a knife, he said.

According to French media, Pigeard was from Caen, in Normandy, but had been living in London for more than two years.

Sebastien Belanger

French chef Belanger, 36, is thought to be among those who died.

He was drinking at the Boro Bistro near Borough Market when the area came under attack.

Originally from Angers, western France, Belanger had lived in London for several years and worked at the Coq dArgent restaurant in the City, the Daily Telegraph reported.

French media have reported that his family are travelling to London on Wednesday to identify a body which is believed to be his.

Kirsty Boden

Australian nurse Boden was killed after she ran towards danger to help people, her family said.

Relatives said the 28-year-old was loved and adored by her family, friends and boyfriend, while colleagues at Guys and St Thomas Hospital in central London described her as one in a million.

As she ran towards danger, in an effort to help people on the bridge, Kirsty sadly lost her life, her family said in a statement. We are so proud of Kirstys brave actions which demonstrate how selfless, caring and heroic she was.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told Melbourne Radio 3AW Ms Boden was killed by cowardly, vicious terrorists.

Sara Zelenak

Family and friends of Australian Zelenak have said she died in the attack as they posted tributes to her online.

Her father, Mark Wallace, shared a video of his daughter and wrote: I really miss that funny little laugh.

Friend Elle Bishop said on Facebook: I find solace in the fact that the hate that saw you taken from us, you have never felt inside, making you a remarkable young woman.

Zelenak has not been seen since the attack after she became separated from friends on Saturday night.

Two Australians were confirmed among the dead by the countrys minister for foreign affairs, Julie Bishop.

Meanwhile the grim wait continues for the families and friends searching for loved ones since the attack:

Ignacio Echeverria

Spanish banker Echeverria, 39, was reported missing after he was last seen in the area of Borough Market defending a woman with his skateboard.

His family confirmed his death, although they said it had not been made official by police.

His father, Joaquin Echeverria, said British authorities had not shared any information with them, but his sons employer, HSBC, had provided the services of a private detective to help with their search.

On Wednesday, journalist and relative Isabel Duran wrote on Twitter: Ignacio Echeverria attacked the terrorists to try to save a woman. He is in heaven with his inseparable skateboard.

Xavier Thomas

Thomas, 45, has been missing since he was caught up in the attack with his girlfriend, Christine Delcros  though Scotland Yard confirmed an as-yet-unidentified body was recovered from the River Thames on Tuesday evening.

The French couple, who were visiting London for the weekend, were walking south over London Bridge around the time the attack started, according to police.

Delcros was seriously injured when she was struck by the van, while witnesses accounts suggest Thomas was thrown into the Thames by the impact, Scotland Yard said.

The body was recovered near Limehouse in east London, downstream of London Bridge.

Thomass next of kin have been informed.
Donald Trump has announced he will be nominating ex-Justice Department official Christopher Wray as FBI director.

His choice will be particularly closely scrutinised after the president fired James Comey from the position last month.

Heres everything you need to know about Wray, who was picked from the range of former prosecutors, politicians and law enforcement officials Trump interviewed.

Whats his background?

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Wray studied law at Yale law school, and currently works at the King & Spalding law firm in Washington DC.

Notable moments from his career?

Wray represented New Jersey Governor Chris Christie during the investigation into the George Washington Bridge lane-closing case, when two former Christie aides were convicted of plotting to close bridge lanes to punish a Democratic mayor who wouldnt endorse the Republican governor.

Wray worked for the Justice Department under President George W Bush as assistant attorney general overseeing the criminal division. The New York Times said that he was key in overseeing operations in the aftermath of the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks.

What are his politics?

The role of FBI director is traditionally a role that is kept separate from politics.

Wray is not a politician, but the New York Times reports that Wray seems to have Republican leanings  he has donated at least $35,000 to Republican candidates or committees in the last decade.

What are people saying?

Some people are querying Wrays links to Trumps business interests. Newsweek has noted that Wrays law firm advises the Donald J Trump Revocable Trust, which holds the presidents business assets.

However, the New York Times called him a safe, mainstream pick.

House Republicans say the pick seems like a good choice. House Speaker Paul Ryan says Wray seems like the perfect kind of person to succeed Comey.

What has Wray said?

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It is a great honour to be selected by the president to return to the Department of Justice as Director of the FBI, he said.

I look forward to serving the American people with integrity as the leader of what I know firsthand to be an extraordinary group of men and women who have dedicated their careers to protecting this country.
Qataris walk by the sea in front of the Doha skyline (Kamran Jebreili/AP)

A top Emirati diplomat has said "there's nothing to negotiate" with Qatar over a growing diplomatic dispute about the energy-rich nation's alleged funding of terror groups, signalling Arab countries trying to isolate it will not back down.

Speaking in a rare interview, Emirati Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash said Qatar has "chosen to ride the tiger of extremism and terrorism" and now needs to pay the price.

He said Qatar "absolutely" should expel members of Hamas, stop its support of terror groups "with al-Qaida DNA" around the world, and rein in the many media outlets it funds, chief among them the Doha-based satellite news network Al-Jazeera.

While applauding a Kuwaiti effort to mediate the crisis, Mr Gargash said Emirati and Saudi officials plan to concede nothing to Qatar, an international air travel hub now cut off from some of the skies around it and blocked from receiving the trucks full of food it relies on to feed its citizens.

Their "fingerprints are all over the place" in terror funding, he said.

"Enough is enough."

Qatar has long denied funding extremists, and its foreign minister has struck a defiant tone in interviews, even after worried residents emptied grocery shops in the capital Doha fearing food shortages.

Bahrain, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates were among those who joined Saudi Arabia on Monday in cutting diplomatic ties with Qatar.

The Arab countries have blocked Qatari vessels from entering their airspace, as well as using their seaports, and Saudi Arabia has closed off its land border.

While its flag carrier Qatar Airways now flies increasingly over Iran and Turkey, the airline has been blocked from landing elsewhere in the Middle East. Al-Jazeera offices also have been shut down by authorities in Saudi Arabia and Jordan.

Speaking from a Foreign Ministry office in Dubai, Mr Gargash listed a number of terror groups he alleged Qatar had funded, including al-Qaida's branches in Syria and Somalia, militants in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula and other groups with "al-Qaida-type organisations" in Libya.

He offered no documents to support his claim, but Western officials have long accused Qatar's government of allowing or even encouraging funding of Sunni extremists.

Mr Gargash particularly pointed out the tens of millions of pounds paid to Shiite militias and others to free dozens of Qatari ruling family members and others in Iraq after 16 months in captivity.

Asked for specifics about what Arab nations want from Qatar, Mr Gargash said expelling members of Hamas and other groups from Qatar is important.

Gaza's Islamic Hamas rulers, a major recipient of Qatari aid, have called Saudi Arabia's call for Qatar to cut ties with the Palestinian militant group "regrettable" and said it contradicts traditional Arab support for the Palestinian cause.

In Germany, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir also said he wants to see a response from the Arab countries' demands "soon".

Both Mr al-Jubeir and Mr Gargash in their comments suggested their complaints about Qatar go back years, likely implying their criticism is focused on Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani.

Sheikh Hamad took over as Qatar's emir in 1995 and expanded his nation's presence on the international scene through negotiating hostage releases, briefly flirting with diplomatic ties to Israel, hosting a Taliban office and creating Al-Jazeera.

Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, his son, became Qatar's ruling emir in 2013, but Sheikh Hamad still looms large in the tight, insular world of Qatari ruling family politics.

Qatar faced a similar crisis in 2014 that saw Arab countries pull their ambassadors from the country. That crisis ended eight months later, but the roots of it are clearly seen in the latest dispute.

An outspoken Emirati ruling family member has even raised the prospect of Qatar's leadership changing amid the growing crisis.

Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi said: ''Qataris are questioning whether this is going to end up in seeing a change in leadership itself in Qatar,'' he said. ''So it is a very serious issue. Again, this is Qataris speaking to international media wondering whether this is possible at all.

''Doha now is completely isolated. Doha now needs to take serious steps very rapidly to placate not only their neighbours but also their allies around the world.''

AP
The family of an Australian nurse who was one of the seven people killed in the London Bridge extremist attacks said she died while trying to help other victims of the van and knife rampage.

London's Metropolitan Police issued a statement from the family of 28-year-old Kirsty Boden praising her compassion and natural instinct to help.

"As she ran towards danger, in an effort to help people on the bridge, Kirsty sadly lost her life," read the statement, which went on to say that Ms Boden's actions "demonstrate how selfless, caring and heroic she was, not only on that night, but throughout all of her life."

Australian media reported that she was from Loxton in southern Australia.

Also yesterday, a talented French chef was identified as one of the dead by his grieving family, who were asked to identify his body after a long wait.

Sebastien Belanger was separated from his friends as the three terrorists slammed their truck outside the Boro Bistro.

Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close Sara Zelenak Chrissy Archibald. Photo: AFP/Getty Images James McMullan. Photo: PA Ignacio Echeverria Xavier Thomas Sebastien Belanger / Facebook

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Mr Belanger, who worked at the Coq d'Argent restaurant in the city, was having a last drink in the Boro Bistro when they heard the attackers' van smash into a wall directly above them. His friend Robin (24) said that in the panic, he lost sight of Mr Belanger.

Police have identified Canadian Christine Archibald, a 30-year-old social worker who worked at a homeless shelter before moving to Europe to be with her fiance, as also among the dead.

And the sister of missing 32-year-old James McMullan, who is British, said he is believed to have died in the attacks because his bank card was found on one of the bodies. Melissa McMullan said authorities would not be able to formally identify him until a coroner's report was released.

At least 48 people were injured, nearly half critically, in Saturday night's attacks. As of yesterday, friends and relatives were becoming increasingly desperate to learn the fate of others still missing.

Police said yesterday that a French man who has been missing since the night of the attack may have been thrown off London Bridge and into the River Thames by the killers' speeding vehicle.

The Metropolitan Police force appealed for information about 45-year-old Xavier Thomas, who was walking with his girlfriend over the bridge when the attack began on Saturday night. Mr Thomas's girlfriend was struck and seriously injured by the van.

The force said witness accounts suggest he might have been thrown into the river. Boats from the police marine unit and the Royal National Lifeboat Institution have been searching the river.

Another Australian woman, 21-year-old Sara Zelenak, also has been missing since the attack. Her family is pleading for information and raising money to fly her parents to Britain, where Ms Zelenak worked as a nanny.

Ignacio Echeverria, a 39-year-old Spanish banker, also remains missing after trying to help a woman injured in the vicinity of Borough Market, his father said, based on the account of a friend of Mr Echeverria's who was at the scene. The friend described seeing Mr Echeverria lying on the floor after confronting one of the assailants.

The son's employer, HSBC bank, has provided the services of a private detective to help in the search.
Police at the scene of the incident at the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, France (Matthieu Alexandre/AP)

File photo: People walk past the entrance to the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris REUTERS/Charles Platiau//File Photo

French police and gendarmes stand at the scene of a shooting near the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, France. Photo: REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer

The man who attacked police officers patrolling in front of Paris's Notre Dame Cathedral, shouting "This is for Syria!", was a mature student who had not been suspected of radicalisation, a French government spokesman has said.

Christopher Castaner told RTL radio on Wednesday that police were quickly able to classify the hammer attack as a terrorist act because of "the words he said".

An officer was slightly injured in the attack on Tuesday and the attacker remains in hospital after being shot by police.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the incident, but police searching the man's residence outside Paris found a declaration of allegiance to the Islamic State group, according to the Paris prosecutor's office.

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A student identity card showed he is from Algeria and 40 years old. He was reported to be working on his thesis for his doctorate.
Germany is to pull its troops and reconnaissance aircraft out of Turkey's Incirlik air base after Turkish officials refused to let members of parliament visit those stationed there.

The decision announced by German defence minister Ursula von der Leyen comes after a lengthy impasse over the visits and ongoing friction between Berlin and Ankara.

The rift has involved a multitude of other issues, including the arrest of German journalists in Turkey and Germany's decision to grant asylum to soldiers and others who Turkey alleges were involved in last year's failed coup.

Germany has about 270 troops stationed at Incirlik, near the Syrian border, with Tornado reconnaissance aircraft that support the international anti-Islamic State mission, and a refuelling plane.

They will now redeploy to a base in Jordan, but the move may take up to two months.
The complaint centres on the case of Abu Zubaydah, a Saudi citizen and senior al-Qaeda member who was detained in the wake of the 9/11 attacks (US Central Command/AP)

A civil rights group has urged German authorities to issue an arrest warrant for the recently-appointed deputy director of the CIA over claims she oversaw the torture of terrorism suspects 15 years ago.

The European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights has submitted a legal brief to German federal prosecutors alleging Gina Haspel allowed the waterboarding of prisoners at a secret US detention centre in Thailand.

The prosecutor's office confirmed on Wednesday the complaint had been received and is being reviewed. Similar complaints against senior US officials in the past have not resulted in arrest warrants.

Advocates describe waterboarding as a form of "enhanced interrogation", but critics say it amounts to torture because prisoners are made to feel they are drowning.

Ms Haspel was the first female career CIA officer selected to be deputy director in February.

The submission by the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights centres mainly on the case of Abu Zubaydah, a Saudi citizen and senior al-Qaeda member who was among scores of Islamic extremists detained worldwide in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

Drawing on media reports and congressional testimony, lawyers for the Centre allege Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in August 2002, while Ms Haspel was in charge of a detention facility in Thailand known as Cat's Eye base or Detention Site Green.

The submission identifies two CIA contractors, psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, as the only people authorised to have contact with Zubaydah during that time and claims they were answerable to Ms Haspel.

The American Civil Liberties Union is currently suing Mr Mitchell and Mr Jessen on behalf of three men who say they were tortured using techniques the psychologists designed.

A US Senate investigation in 2014 found their interrogation techniques produced no useful intelligence in the so-called war on terror, but some former intelligence officials say the techniques have produced valuable information.

"For the purposes of determining criminal liability, what is most relevant is the fact that as head of the secret prison in Thailand, Gina Haspel followed each day of Abu Zubaydah's torture from August 4 to 23, 2002, and she alone had the responsibility to end this torture but failed to do so," the submission to German prosecutors states.

It also cites the case of Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri, the alleged mastermind of the USS Cole bombing in 2000, who was waterboarded at Cat's Eye base in November 2002.

Both men are now held at the US detention centre in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

In a separate legal proceeding, Europe's top human rights court ruled in 2014 that Poland had violated the rights of Zubaydah and al-Nashiri by allowing the CIA to secretly imprison them on Polish soil from 2002-2003 and facilitate conditions under which they were tortured.

The ruling by the European Court of Human Rights marked the first time any court had passed judgment on the rendition programme launched by US President George W Bush after 9/11.

Civil rights groups have tried to prosecute several senior US officials implicated in the torture programme, including former CIA director George Tenet, former US secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld, top CIA legal counsel John Rizzo and Geoffrey Miller, the former commander of the Guantanamo Bay centre.

The submission naming Ms Haspel is the first in Germany against a high-ranking official still in service with the CIA.

The agency declined to comment on the German group's legal efforts to have her arrested.

AP
The photo of Omran became a symbol of Syria's suffering

New photographs have emerged of Omran Daqneesh, the little Syrian boy whose image was seen around the world as a symbol of the suffering of Aleppo.

Three-year-old Omran became a global icon last August after his home was bombed by Russian or Syrian regime forces in the final months of the siege of Aleppo.

In photographs published on social media on Monday he appears healthy and recovered and is sitting on his fathers knee.

Omrans image was widely used to illustrate the brutality of the Assad regime as it tried to crush the opposition in Aleppo, Syrias largest city.

New photographs starting to emerge of Omran Daqneesh, the little boy who became a symbol of Aleppo's suffering. pic.twitter.com/a0NHhgubwS  Raf Sanchez (@rafsanchez) June 5, 2017

But his family, like many others in rebel-held east Aleppo, are reported to have remained loyal to the regime throughout the siege.

They refused all media interviews and reportedly went into regime-held west Aleppo when they had a chance.

The family was interviewed this week by several pro-regime Syrian and Lebanese television channels. In a clip from one interview, Omran's father said rebel groups and the international media wanted to use his son to attack the Syrian regime.

"They wanted to trade in his blood and published his photos," he said. He said his shaved his son's head to try to disguise him and shield him from media attention.

It is possible the family felt forced to take part in the interview for their own safety.

Omrans older brother Ali, aged ten, was killed in the same strike that injured Omran.

Kinana Allouche, a pro-regime journalist, posted photographs of herself interviewing Omran and his family. "The child Omran, those who tried to shed Syrian blood mislead the news that he was hit by the Syrian Arab Army," she wrote. "Here he now lives in the Syrian state with its army, its leader and its people."

Ms Allouche drew internet attention last year after she posted a smiling selfie of herself standing in front of dead rebels.

The siege of Aleppo ended in December last year, when a deal was reached to allow residents and fighters from east Aleppo to leave their homes and go into the countryside.

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022]
US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva yesterday

The Trump administration has called for radical reform of the UN Human Rights Council as it accused the body of "chronic anti-Israel bias".

"The United States is looking carefully at this council and our participation in it. We see some areas for significant strengthening," Nikki Haley, US ambassador to the United Nations, told the Geneva forum, opening a three-week session.

The council's critical stance of Israel has long been a contentious issue for the United States, Israel's main ally.

The body has taken a strong position against Israel's occupation of territory seized in the 1967 Middle East war, its treatment of Palestinians, and its building of Jewish settlements. Most countries consider illegal the settlements that are in areas the Palestinians envisage as part of an eventual independent state.

Washington says the council is stacked with opponents of Israel and boycotted it for three years under President George W Bush before rejoining under Barack Obama in 2009.

"Tragically, we've been down this road before," Ms Haley said later. "America does not seek to leave the Human Rights Council. We seek to re-establish the council's legitimacy."

She named Venezuela, Cuba, China, Burundi, and Saudi Arabia as not upholding the highest standards despite their membership and said that the forum was becoming "discredited" like its predecessor body, the Human Rights Commission.

The 47-member Council adopted five "biased" resolutions on Israel and the Palestinian territory at its March session, but never even considered a resolution on Venezuela, she said.

"This relentless, pathological campaign against a country that actually has a strong human rights record makes a mockery not of Israel, but of the council itself," Ms Haley said, as some in the audience interrupted briefly with laughter at the remark.

Some activists urged Washington to focus on abuses at home. "It's hard to take Ambassador Haley seriously on US support for human rights in light of Trump administration actions like the Muslim ban and immigration crackdowns," said Jamil Dakwar of the American Civil Liberties Union.
A teenager gave birth on the side of the road after a car crash, minutes before she died from her injuries.

Joanna Delgado (18) was in her third trimester of pregnancy when she was involved in the head-on-collision at Five Points in Fresno County, California after 7pm Sunday.

Tragically Ms Delgado and the other driver, Adriana Solorio Romero both died in the incident.

Your Central Valley reports that the teenager gave birth by Cesarean Section at the scene.

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The baby was rushed to hospital but sadly died on Monday, it is not yet known exactly how far along Joanna was in her pregnancy but the sheriff's office reports it was between six and nine months.

Ms Delgado's male passenger (16) remains in hospital with critical injuries, according to US reports.

Indicating that she had a daughter, a Go Fund Me page has been set up " In Loving Memory of Joanna and Mila."

Ms Delgado was due to graduate on Thursday from Tranquillity High School and a moment of silence will be held in her honour.

Principal Jim Reed paid tribute to Ms Delgado, saying: "She was a wonderful student, she was very well liked by her classmates and teachers."
Alishia Noel-Murray and her late husband Omar on their wedding day

A woman accused of plotting her husband's murder for the life insurance payout remarried and took a policy out for her new partner.

Alishia Noel-Murray (29) is on trial at Brooklyn Supreme Court over her alleged involvement in the fatal shooting of her first husband Omar Murray in their New York home in September 2014.

After his death she would have pocketed up to $900,000 (800,000) from his three life insurance policies, which the prosecution claim she needed to clear her debts.

Her ex Dameon Lovell (33) claimed that he set up a deal for Kirk Portious to kill Mr Murray for $3500 (3100).

Assistant District Attorney Emily Dean asked Ms Noel-Murray: "You remarried in September 2014, correct?"

She then asked her: "Did you take out any insurance policies on him (your new husband)?"

Ms Noel-Murray confirmed she did take out life insurance for her new husband but denied any involvement in Mr Murray's murder.

She told the court she was angry with him for "cheating on her with prostitutes and having a child with another woman months before they got married."

She also claimed she heard Mr Murray chatting to someone moments before he was killed.

She said: "I couldnt make out what he was saying. Right after that I hear three pops Almost like someone put a balloon under shirt and popped it.

"After that I called him on his phone. I look outside and see jeep outside. I called him on his phone and he didnt answer. I called again and he didn't answer so I called 911.

"I locked the bedroom door. I was scared. I was very scared."

If convicted, Noel-Murray faces life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The director of the US National Security Agency has said he has never been asked to do anything illegal or felt pressure to do anything immoral during his three years at the helm.

Mike Rogers was responding to a senator's question about whether President Donald Trump asked him to intervene in or downplay the ongoing FBI investigation into Russia's election meddling and possible ties with the Trump campaign.

Mr Rogers said he will not publicly discuss private conversations he had with the president.

It has been reported that Mr Trump asked the head of the intelligence agency t o publicly state there is no evidence of collusion between Moscow and his campaign.

Mr Rogers was testifying before the Senate intelligence committee about surveillance laws.

Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats also refused to publicly discuss private conversations he has had with Mr Trump when he faced the committee.

Mr Coats also said he has never been pressured or felt pressure to intervene in shaping intelligence products.
Major Obamacare insurer pulls out of Ohio, leaving big gaps in coverage

Health insurer Anthem is pulling out of Ohio's Affordable Care Act marketplaces, a move that leaves people in a fifth of the state's counties facing the prospect of having no insurers selling individual health plans in their area next year.

Ohio had one of the country's most competitive insurance marketplaces. In 2016, there were 17 insurers selling exchanges on the state's marketplace, with four offering plans state-wide. In 2017, there were still 11 insurers, but 20 counties had only one insurer, according to the Ohio Department of Insurance.

In its decision to leave the state's exchange, Anthem cited lack of certainty around billions of dollars in federal payments that help reduce out-of-pocket costs for lower-income Americans. It also pointed to "an increasing lack of overall predictability."

As part of the Affordable Care Act, the federal government pays billions of dollars to insurers to help lower-income Americans cover their deductibles and out-of-pocket health care costs. The Trump administration has not been clear about whether it will continue making those payments next year, as they're tied up in an ongoing legal challenge.

Anthem's statement also emphasized "continual changes in federal operations, rules and guidance" and a "shrinking individual market."

Anthem's withdrawal from Ohio's exchanges - markets created by the law where people who buy individual insurance plans can take advantage of federal subsidies -- will leave 10,500 people from Ohio in 18 counties with no choices, according to Ohio's Department of Insurance.

It also raises the deeper question of whether Anthem might be contemplating a larger exit from the marketplaces. Unlike many states where insurers are weighing whether to withdraw, Ohio's insurance marketplaces have been competitive and performed better financially than the national average last year, according to an analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

"It seems this is more motivated by political and regulatory uncertainty, and it could be a sign that Anthem would exit nationally," said Cynthia Cox, associate director for the Program for the Study of Health Reform and Private Insurance at the Kaiser Family Foundation. "If that is the case, that could leave hundreds of thousands of people without any insurer option. This could be the tip of the iceberg."

Leslie Porras, a spokeswoman for Anthem said in an e-mail that the company remains in "active dialogue" with states and regulators.

"Regulations and deadlines for making the decision regarding our participation vary by state and we intend to continue our dialog with regulators until that time," Porras said.

Anthem has already signaled its intent to participate next year in exchanges in some other states, including Virginia and Connecticut.

"For more than seven decades, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield has served consumers in the individual market and throughout that time our commitment remained the same: to provide access to affordable, quality healthcare," the company's statement said. "As the individual marketplace continues to evolve, Anthem will continue to advocate solutions that will stabilize the market to allow us to return to a more robust presence in the future."

The last few months have seen a trickle of news on insurers exiting markets or requesting big rate increases, with more announcements expected as deadlines approach in other states. Republicans have pointed to insurer exits or massive rate increases as evidence that the Affordable Care Act is dead. Democrats, meanwhile, have blamed Republicans for refusing to provide companies the regulatory clarity they need to continue providing insurance to millions of Americans.

"Obamacare continues to collapse," White House press secretary Sean Spicer said at the White House briefing on Tuesday, pointing to Anthem's decision in Ohio.

The political blame game is likely to continue and intensify in coming weeks as insurers announce more decisions, either to curtail or withdraw from markets or to seek big rate increases.

"This is the latest example of President Trump and Republicans in Congress destabilizing health care coverage for the American people. Their constant attacks and intentional efforts to create uncertainty are pushing some plans to withdraw from the marketplace and others to raise premiums," Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich., said in a statement.

In other states, insurers have made requests for large rate increases. Others face the prospect of having zero option for consumers. In Iowa and Nebraska, a small mid-western insurer called Medica has been catapulted into the national spotlight as potentially the last insurer in both states' marketplaces, although that company has not announced a final decision about whether to participate in either state. In Missouri, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City announced in late May that it would leave 32 counties in Kansas and Missouri.

"Without true competition and choice in the market, we will never be able to lower health care costs for families and small businesses. This is one more reason why the status quo on health care is unsustainable. The Affordable Care Act has failed to meet the promises that were made to Ohio families," Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, said in a statement.

- - -

The Washington Post's Juliet Eilperin contributed to this story.

healthcare-ohio

Washington Post News Service (DC)

6/6/2017 3:05:20 PM Central Daylight Time
Chinese foreign investments (FDI) into India have surged in recent years, heavily targeting startups and technology platforms.

In a break from its usual FDI forays in other Asian markets, Chinas investment momentum in India showcases a familiarity with key market trends in the Indian economy.

While China predominantly focuses on infrastructure, extractive, and manufacturing industries in the rest of the world; in India, Chinese investors are intent on strengthening its digital ecosystem and hyperlocal startups.

What has sparked Chinas recent interest in India after over a decade of neglect?

Chinese pattern of investment in India

From 2014 to 2015, mainland Chinas FDI into India grew either by 200 percent or 600 percent  depending on which of the two countries reported it.

Indias Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) claims Chinese annual FDI rose from US$123.99 million in 2014 to US$494.75 million in 2015; Global Times, Chinas state owned media outlet, said the figure rose from roughly US$145 million in 2014 to US$870 million in 2015. In 2016, between June and August alone, Chinese firms purportedly invested US$2.3 billion into India.

To put this into context, FDI inflow from mainland China totaled US$1.2 billion between April 2000 and September 2015.

Compare Chinese investments into Indian startups with Chinas investment history in India. A single investment now overshadows an entire sector.

Since 2015, Chinese firms have pumped in hundreds of millions of dollars into Indian digital startups. These figures  not yet reflected in official Indian records  significantly increase the volume of Chinese FDI going into India. It also redirects Chinese investment into a new market.

Traditionally, Chinas Indian investments focused on the automobile industry, and primarily targeted old industry hubs like the states of Maharashtra and Gujarat  Prime Minister Modis home state.

But, in the last two years, Chinese firms have diversified their Indian investments into new industries while venturing into other states such as Haryana, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, and Andhra Pradesh  either directly or through global mergers and acquisitions.

Official records have not been able to keep up with Chinas recent increase in investment. Likewise, Chinese firms do not always publicize their investments.

In search of the next unicorn

Besides Chinese corporations, venture capital (VC) funds from the country are keenly scouting Indian startups in search of the next big internet investment, taking advantage of the investor vacuum in the sector in the last two years.

VC investments from China amounted to US$34 million in 2017 across nine deals and US$30 million across four deals in the first six months of 2018.

Currently, multiple Chinese VC funds, including Qiming Ventures, Morningside Ventures, CDH Investments, 01VC, and the Orchid Asia Group, are considering buying stakes in Indian startups, ranging from those innovating financial and education technology to e-commerce, content, and online classifieds platforms.

These investors are primarily looking at making series B and C investments, and not providing seed funding, meaning propsect startups have proven the workability of their business model in their respective industry verticals.

Adapting the China plus one model

Chinese investments into Indias startups and digital platforms represents a new take on the tried and tested China plus one model  shifting or expanding operations out of China to benefit from cheaper labor, new markets, and less domestic vulnerability.

In three major ways, however, Chinese companies are expanding on the China plus one model to enhance their access to Indian markets, and deepen their presence in the burgeoning digital economy.

Importing best practices to a similar market

China and India are culturally and politically very different, however, their markets have important similarities.

Both countries, for example, have massive populations with many first time mobile phone users. China has already utilized its considerable experience providing smartphones to its own domestic market to win over Indias smartphone buyers. Indeed, Chinese brands now account for 51 percent of smartphone sales in India.

Similarly, the Chinese have been at the forefront of innovating digital payments systems, a sector that is rapidly expanding in India and which enjoys government support.

Using their domestic experience, Chinese companies can provide Indian digital startups with best practices for meeting the needs of a large-scale, technologically illiterate population.

Bolstering Indias digital economy

Indias digital ecosystem is in its early stages; Chinese investors have great opportunities to become big players in this growing market. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in China will especially find more growth potential in India than in the Chinese digital sector, already controlled by large companies.

By investing in existing digital startups, Chinese companies minimize the risk and operational costs of establishing an independent, competing presence. Furthermore, it is in Chinas interests to see Indian digital startups flourish.

The rise of American e-giants like Amazon and Uber reduce the space for Chinese firms to achieve international growth, sometime even threatening their stronghold at home. During the market access war between Didi and Uber in China, for instance, Didi invested an unpublicized amount (estimated at US$10 million) into Ola  an Indian ride-sharing startup currently engaged in its own battle for the Indian market with Uber.

Promoting competition in India may even save Chinese digital firms in the long term as they confront international upstarts.

Integrating Chinese knowledge with Indian resources

India has a robust IT industry that operates at cheaper costs than in China.

By investing into promising startups in India, China is in a unique position to not only help Indias digital sector but to shape it.

Chinese investors will then be able to utilize developments and innovations from India back into Chinas own digital ecosystem, and vice versa.

For example, for many of the apps being developed by Indian startups, a Chinese equivalent already exists. Not only will such knowledge allow Chinese businesses to shape this rapidly growing industry, Chinese companies can also integrate innovations from India into their home operations.

China to become a big player in India

Despite the sudden upward trajectory, Chinas FDI into India still pales in comparison to its investments throughout the rest of South Asia.

Comparatively, China is Pakistans biggest foreign investor and has recently pledged a staggering US$55 billion to develop the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have also received significant investments from China.

This could, however, change in the near to mid term.

In May, Chinas leading state-run bank, The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, publicized the launch of its first India-dedicated publicly offered investment fund.

Named the Industrial and Commercial Bank Credit Suisse India Market Fund, it will track the following sectors for investments  financial industry, information technology, alternative consumption, energy, essential consumption, raw materials, and healthcare, among others.

Coming barely a fortnight after the informal summit in Wuhan between Prime Minister Modi and President Xi, the fund showcased Chinas interest and optimism in investing in the Indian economy over the long term.

In effect, the increase in Chinese investments into Indian startups reflects how Chinese investors now perceive opportunities in India.

By injecting millions of dollars into promising technology platforms and local solutions-driven startups, Chinese investors appear to be in for the long haul in India. Simultaneously, they are strengthening Indias domestic players at a time when China is competing with Western companies in almost every sector.

Following the success of recent investments, China could soon become one of Indias top foreign investors.

Editors Note: This article was originally published on June 7, 2017 and has been updated to incorporate new developments.
New Delhi, Jun 7 (IBNS): The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Wednesday, gave its approval for the issue 13,90,00,000 fresh equity shares of Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency (IREDA) of Rs.10 each to the public on book-building basis through the IPO.

The shares will be issued to retail investors and IREDA employees at a discount of 5 per cent on the issue price of each equity share on book-building basis, with cap of 0.5 per cent on equity post issue for CPSE employees and the allocation to retail investors in the net offer will not be less than 35 per cent, as per the ICDR, 2009.

However, the number of shares proposed to be issued to employees and retail investors will be finalized in consultation with the lead managers and as per the SEBI regulations.

It has given its approval to conduct book building process for the said IPO by MNRE / IREDA through Book Running Lead Manager (BRLM) as per the guidelines of Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM) and as per guidance of the Inter-Ministerial Group.



The Public issue of equity will enable IREDA to increase its equity base which will help them raise more debt resources for funding RE projects.

Such public issue will also enable it to unlock its true value and increase its visibility in domestic and international financial markets.

IREDA, being the premier institution for RE Sector, will be required to raise equity funds to leverage loan financing for RE Sector.

IREDA has to cater to the increasing needs of the sector to sustain its contribution to the Renewable Energy Sector.

Government of India has scaled-up the RE targets to 175 GW by the year 2022. To achieve this ambitious target, substantial investments in RE sector will be required.

IREDA is a Public Financial Institution established in March, 1987 and is registered as Non-Banking Financial Company with the Reserve Bank of India.

Image: IREDA website
New York, June 6(Just Earth News): The United Nations humanitarian wing on Tuesday said it is deeply concerned for the safety and protection of more than 400,000 civilians in Syria's war-torn Raqqa Governorate, awho continue to be exposed to daily fighting and airstrikes.a

The humanitarian situation in Al-Raqqa governorate remains dire, with the majority of the population reportedly facing critical problems in meeting their immediate needs, Alessandra Vellucci, Director of the UN Nations Information Service in Geneva on behalf of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) told reporters at on Tuesday's regular press briefing.

She also reiterated the UN's call for unconditional, unimpeded and sustained access to those affected by the fighting in Raqqa, and more broadly to the 4.5 million who are still in hard-to-reach areas across the war-torn country.

Turning to the internally displaced (IDPs), she pointed out that more than 160,000 people have been displaced since 1 May with the situation on the ground remaining fluid. There are some 87,200 in the Ar-Raqqa governorate; nearly 37,000 in Aleppo; over 33,400 in Idlib; and smaller numbers in Hama, Deir-ez-Zor and Ho

On 3 June, three internally displaced people, including a pregnant woman, had been reportedly killed by a landmine. On 4 June, airstrikes on the al-Mashlab neighbourhood in Raqqa city had reportedly resulted in the destruction of two schools while mortar shelling in the vicinity of another school injured several people, she said.

Vellucci stated that since March, UN agencies continued to provide multi-sectoral humanitarian assistance through their local partners  such as food, medical treatment and vaccinations throughout Raqqa, including IDPs in camps.

Some 60,000 Syrian refugees in Lebanon in Jordan could lose assistance

For its part, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) sounded the alarm that humanitarian programmes supporting Syrian refugees and their host communities are quickly running out of resources.

Citing critical gaps in Lebanon and Jordan, UNHCR spokesperson Andrej Mahecic told journalists in Geneva that vital parts of its response to Syrian refugees were critically underfunded.

Despite generous pledges, humanitarian programmes in support of Syrian refugee and communities hosting them are quickly running out of resources. The situation is most dramatic in Lebanon and Jordan where a number of direct cash assistance activities could dry up in less than four weeks, he said.

Those who fled to Jordan face stark challenges.

Refugees tell our staff that UNHCR monthly cash support means a meal a day, a better roof, their dignity. Now they fear losing everything. Many say would prefer to go back to Syria to die if they stop receiving this assistance, continued Mahecic.

In Lebanon, where UNHCR urgently needs $116 million, direct cash assistance programmes for refugees will be affected first.

These include a lifeline of multi-purpose cash for 30,000 Syrian refugee families, a winter cash assistance for two months for another 174,000 families and protection cash assistance for 1,500 refugee households to help them overcome periods of hardship, he continued.

The funding gap also jeopardises 65,000 life-saving secondary health care interventions and support to UNHCR's and the Lebanese Authorities' capacity to issue and renew documentation for refugees, following a recent decision to waive the residency renewal fees which most refugees could not afford, Mahecic added.

Mid-way through this year, the $4.6 billion inter-agency appeal to meet the immediate humanitarian needs of Syrian refugees across the Middle East and North Africa is only 18 per cent funded.

Photo: UNICEF/UN039561/Soulaiman

Source: www.justearthnews.com
Kathmandu, Jun 7 (IBNS): Sher Bahadur Deuba, 70, of the Nepali Congress (NC) will take oath, on Wednesday, as the country's 40th PM, according to media reports.

He will succeed PM Pushpa Kamal Dahal.

This is Deuba's fourth stint as the PM of Nepal. According to media reports, he regains his post after 12 years, when he was unceremoniously removed by the then King Gyanendra.

Sher Bahadur Deuba was the sole candidate to contest in the prime ministerial election as the main opposition UML and other parties did not send their candidates.

He had the support of more than 50 per cent lawmakers needed for his election to the top post, media reported.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Tuesday, congratulated the veteran leader. He said, ""Called Shri Sher Bahadur Deuba to congratulate him on being elected the Prime Minister of Nepal."

"I conveyed my best wishes to Shri Deuba for peace, prosperity and progress in Nepal under his leadership", the Prime Minister said.
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Amidst the bloodshed, wars, and everything that breaks our heart, there are tiny changes that are happening in the world which deserves our attention. In a rather happy news, Vogue had a 20-year-old transgender model on its cover and proved that everyone indeed is trying to make the world a better place to live.

Never in her dreams did model Valentina Sampaio think that apart from all the local shows and photo shoots near her hometown, she would be offered to pose for the covers of coveted magazines like Elle Brasil and LOfficiel Brasil.

Agua  A post shared by Valentina Sampaio (@valentts) on May 8, 2017 at 7:44am PDT

Valentina indeed made fashion history, after she became the first transgender model, to be on the cover of any edition of Vogue. She appeared on the front of the flagship Vogue Pariss March issue. Sampaio spoke at a cosmetics shoot in a warehouse in Rio de Janeiro last month and spoke about being on the cover of Vogue. She said,

Monday A post shared by Valentina Sampaio (@valentts) on Apr 17, 2017 at 8:24am PDT

Things have happened so fast, Ive barely had time to process and think about what all this is.."

Even though there have been a lot of setbacks for the LGBT community in Brazil, this one decision by Vogue gives the world a ray of hope that we as a society are opening our hearts and arms wide for the community, to give them an equal opportunity in every way possible.

@voguebrasil @maxwebertotalbeauty @mazzacanteras  A post shared by Valentina Sampaio (@valentts) on Mar 22, 2017 at 6:05am PDT

Emmanuelle Alt, the editor-in-chief of Vogue Paris, also wrote an editorial, where he justified and explained this move by saying that, Sampaio, like all other top models, has graced the magazines cover and made it really special in ways more than one.

Instagram/Valentino

In his editorial, he also wrote, Only when a transgender person poses on the front cover of a fashion magazine and it is no longer necessary to write an editorial on the subject will we know that the battle is won."

A Buzzfeed report quotes Sampaio saying,

The world has taken huge steps for transgender people in recent years. My cover is another small step  an important step that shows we have the force to be Vogue cover girls. The fashion industry is an instrument to raise flags promoting diversity, where things are more fluid and beauty evolves. Fashion is a world thats freer.

If you were someone who has always been cynical about world progress and where we are heading, I hope you have a sigh of relief now.
Remember yesteryear's super hot actress Mamta Kulkarni? Well, now her life has turned 360 degrees, and she's nothing like uber sexy belle you remember from Karan Arjun.



Salmaniacs

The bold and seductive actress who was once known for her glamourous roles in Aashiq Awara and Jaane Jigar is now absconding with her partner and drug lord Vicky Goswami. A special court has declared the two in the multi-crore ephedrine haul case as proclaimed offenders.

"It is pronounced and declared that accused Vicky Goswami and Mamta Kulkarni are proclaimed offenders. The immovable properties belonging to the accused be attached," special Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) court judge H M Patwardhan said in the order.

Mamta Kulkarni is controversy's favourite child and the actress yet again finds herself embroiled in a new drama. Here's taking a look at her controversial life.

1. She came into fame with her topless photoshoot

Stardust

Known to be a sex symbol back in 90s, Mamta Kulkarni always found herself embroiled in controversies. Her bold avatar and sassiness often came under the radar of moral police. The former actress went topless for film magazine Stardust back in her hey days. It created a huge controversy and garnered her negative publicity.

2. Mamta was one of the first actresses to work with all the three Khans

Youtube

What is considered today as a rage for heroines was very normal for actress Mamta Kulkarni. Yes, she managed to work with the Khan clan. And apart from sharing screen space with Salman, Shahrukh and Aamir Khan, the actress also worked with Ajay Devgn, Anil Kapoor.

3. She filed a sexual harassment case on the China Gate director

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Mamta Kulkarni accused director Raj Kumar Santoshi of sexual harassment on the sets of the movie China Gate. There were reports of Santoshi and Mamta having creative differences and the director wanted her out of the film.

However, there was pressure from the underworld to cast her and that went on to become Mamta's first film where she was a leading actress.

4. Underworld and their connection with the letter 'M'

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There is a fatal attraction between Bollywood beauties and mafia dons. Interestingly, there seems to be a M-connection also between the mafia and Bollywood. It all started with Mandakani, followed by Monica Bedi and now ends with Mamta Kulkarni.

5. Mamta got married to Vicky Goswami in Jail



Twitter

Mamta took Bollywood by storm when she decided to marry drug kingpin Vicky Goswami in a Dubai jail. Vicky was arrested in 1997 for drug trafficking and sentenced to 25 years of imprisonment. He later converted to Islam and married Mamta in jail itself.

6. Bombshell Mamta Kulkarni turns Yogini

After disappearing from limelight for 16 years, Mamta revealed details about what made her quit the glamour industry at the peak of her career and bond with an international drug merchant since then. This was for the first time she faced the camera after so long and talks about her journey as a yogini. The actress has also written a book on spirituality.

7. Mamta and her husband Vicky are proclaimed offenders and absconding

Stardust

Thane police had raided Avon Lifesciences in Solapur last year and seized around 18.5 tonne of ephedrine worth Rs 2,000 crore. According to police, ephedrine was being diverted from Avon Lifesciences to a Kenya-based drug cartel headed by Mamta's husband Goswami where it was used to make party-drug Methamphetamine.

Further interrogation revealed that Goswami was one of the top operatives of the racket and Mamta is touted to be equally involved in it.

Twitter

Over the last two decades, Vicky along with Mamta's help have been expanding their network to Dubai and Africa, police had said.
Tamil superstar Rajinikanth is in Mumbai currently shooting for hid upcoming film, Kaala Karikalan. The actor is currently in the city for a 40-day schedule of the film.



Viral Bhayani

Kabali director Pa Ranjith is directing the actor in Kaala Karikalan also and his favourite musician Santhosh Narayanan is composing the tunes for the film which is being made in Tamil, Hindi and Telugu.

Rajinikanth plays a Tamil gangster based in Mumbai in Kaala. Check out pictures of the Tamil superstar on location:

Viral Bhayani

Looks like, this green bike has a vital role to play in the film as Rajini is seen posing with it in all the pictures.

Viral Bhayani

The movie is being touted as 2016 gangster film Kabali's sequence.

Viral Bhayani

Viral Bhayani

The film had earlier courted controversy with the adopted son of Mumbai don late Haji Mastan alleging the plot was based on his fathers life. The makers had however denied it.
Comedian Bill Cosby attended the first day of his trial for alleged sexual assault of Canadian Andrea Constand, one of more than 60 women who have filed criminal charges against him.

Agency reports claim that the 79-year-old remained mum during the trial, which began on Monday (June 5). There were strong security measures at the Norristown courthouse, outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

reuters

Reports further claim that this trial will go on for about two weeks. The trial revolves around Constand, who claimed that in early 2004 Cosby invited her to his mansion in Cheltenham, Pennsylvania, and gave her some pills which made her dizzy, and which allowed him to abuse her.

reuters

Constand, 44, is expected to testify at the trial, although it is not yet known when. Instead, another woman testified on Monday. Known only by the alias Kacey, she said that in 1996 Cosby invited her to a hotel in Los Angeles, California, drugged and paralysed her, and later abused her, a story that Constand as well as dozens of other women claim to have happened to them as well.

The comedians defence, led by lawyer Brian McMonagle, objected to Kaceys testimony at the trial as they believe it was not relevant to Constands case or the romantic relationship that, according to them, Cosby and Constand had.

reuters

Even though Cosby has repeatedly rejected the allegations of sexual abuse, he also added that his relationship with Constand was consensual. But he did admit that he used drugs as a lure to attract women but never as a tool to incapacitate them.

Allegations of sexual abuse by Cosby date back to the 1960s and are too old to be prosecuted, so prosecutors believe that Constands case can be crucial to prove the alleged sexual assaults that dozens of women suffered for years. Cosby is charged with three counts of sexual abuse, each carrying a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a fine of $25,000.
Muslims around the world are currently observing the ninth month of Islamic calendar, Ramadan, where they fast from dawn till dusk. No food or water is to be eaten during fasting time, to honour the first revelation of the Quran to Prophet Muhammad, according to Islamic beliefs. Religious rituals unite people no matter where they are, who they are - no matter their gender or colour. This unity is blatantly visible in these photographs of Muslims observing Ramadan from around the world:

1. A woman prays at a shrine before breaking her fast in Mumbai, India.

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2. A man reads the Quran at the shrine of Sheikh Abdul Qadir Jeelani, a Sufi saint, in Srinagar.

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3. Muslims pray after offering the first Friday prayers inside Sarkhej Roza mosque in Ahmedabad, India.

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4. A Palestinian woman lifting a girl on the first Friday of the holy fasting month of Ramadan, on the compound known to Muslims as Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as Temple Mount in Jerusalem's Old City.

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5. A Palestinian woman prays in Jerusalem's Old City.

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6. Fishermen sit on a fishing boat as they prepare to break their fast during a Muslim holy month of Ramadan in Ibrahim Hyderi, on the outskirts of Karachi, Pakistan.

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7. Men arrange food plates for passersby to break their fast in Karachi, Pakistan.

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8. A man reads the Quran in a mosque during the fasting month of Ramadan, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

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9. Muslim American woman Emily Miry, 24, takes part in an afternoon prayer at the Islamic Cultural Center in Manhattan, New York.

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10. People pose for selfie as they break their fast at the main shopping and pedestrian street of Istiklal on the first day of the holy fasting month of Ramadan in central Istanbul, Turkey.

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11. A man performs (Wuduh) ablution before offering the evening prayer at a mosque in Kolkata, India.

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12. An official looks through a telescope for the sighting of the new moon in Jakarta, Indonesia.

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13. Muslims perform tarawih prayers to mark the start of Ramadan at a mosque in Singapore.

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14. Indonesian Muslims pray for the first day at Istiqlal Mosque in Jakarta, Indonesia.

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15. Officials from the Nahdlatul Ulama Islamic organization use telescopes for the sighting of the new moon for the start of Ramadan in a mosque in Surabaya, East Java, Indonesia.

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16. A man arranges sweets to be sold ahead of Ramadan in the rebel-held besieged city of Douma, in the eastern Damascus suburb of Ghouta, Syria.

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17. A girl waits for the sun to set as she prepares to break fast during the holy month of Ramadan in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.

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reuters

Amid a ruckus between the Gulf states, three gunmen on Wednesday stormed parliament in Iran and took some hostages, media reports said. Meanwhile, there was an attack on the shrine of Ayatollah Khomeini. Read more

Here are more top news stories of the day:

1) Modi Govt Is Shutting Education Bodies UGC And AICTE Soon, They Will Be Replaced By 'HEERA'

education news

The University Grants Commission (UGC) and the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) will soon become history. The Narendra Modi government has decided to replace the two education bodies with one regulator. Read more

2) By 2050, 25% Of World Population Will Lack Access To Clean Water; India, China To Suffer Most

BCCL

With rising population and limited fresh water resources, at least 25% of the world population will lack access to clean water by 2050. The global demand for fresh water is projected to grow by more than 40% and highly-populated countries like India, China and Bangladesh will face a "chronic or recurrent" lack of clean water. Read more

3) Gurugram Horror: After Being Gang Raped In Auto, Helpless Victim Travelled In Metro With Her Dead Baby

bccl/representational image

Among the thousands of people who took the Yellow and Violet lines of Metro on the morning of May 30 was a 19-year-old woman who was travelling with a dead eight-month-old baby in her arms. Read more

4) In UP, Cattle Smuggling, Slaughter To Be Punishable Under NSA, Gangsters Act

PTI

After the Centre banned cow slaughter across India, the UP government has decided to book the cow smugglers under the National Security Act (NSA). Read more

5) Telangana Govt Will Finally Put An End To Manual Scavenging, Now Machines Will Clean The Sewers

bccl

The Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (HMWS&SB) has deployed 70 mini jetting machines aimed at eliminating manual scavenging in Telangana. Read more
With rising population and limited fresh water resources, at least 25% of the world population will lack access to clean water by 2050. The global demand for fresh water is projected to grow by more than 40% and highly-populated countries like India, China and Bangladesh will face a "chronic or recurrent" lack of clean water.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the Security Council yesterday that "strains on water access are already rising in all regions", noting that three-quarters of the 193 UN member states share rivers or lake basins with their neighbours.

BCCL

"Water, peace and security are inextricably linked. Without effective management of our water resources, we risk intensified disputes between communities and sectors and increased tensions among nations", Guterres said.

The water crisis on the planet will only get worse in the coming decades.

BCCL

"If current patterns of consumption continue unabated, two-thirds of the world's population will be facing water shortages as a daily reality by 2025", Morales added.

Currently, over 800 million people across the world lack access to safe drinking water and more than 2.5 billion don't have basic sanitation.

BCCL

Somalia is already facing acute food shortages and threatening famine and a lack of clean water that is exacerbating the crisis sparked by Boko Haram in northeast Nigeria and sickening thousands.

In South Asia, 1 billion people across Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Nepal and Pakistan rely heavily on just three rivers. Despite facing problems linked to water demand, the collaboration between these countries is limited.
Among the thousands of people who took the Yellow and Violet lines of Metro on the morning of May 30 was a 19-year-old woman who was travelling with a dead eight-month-old baby in her arms.

twitter/ANI sketch of rape accused

The night before, she had been subjected to unimaginable barbarism. She was raped by three men - the driver and two "co-passengers" of a shared auto she had got into with her baby girl, as reported by TOI on June 6. She had then watched in horror as one of the men flung her baby on the median verge of a road in Gurugram's Manesar, next to the spot where she was raped.

In a place so dark and desolate, there was no one to ask for help. It was past 2 am when the men fled, and she waited till dawn, holding the motionless baby in her arms, before she got an auto to her in-laws' place in Old Gurgaon.

There, a doctor told her the child had died.

She didn't believe him. Accompanied by her father-in-law, she set out for Tughlakabad in Delhi, where her parents live. They boarded a Metro and visited another doctor who also told her the baby had died. With the body in her arms, she returned to Gurugram, this time to file a police case. She got off at the MG Road station, where her husband and cops were waiting.

twitter/ani sketch of rape accused

The bereaved mother and rape survivor, according to the FIR lodged at the Manesar police station are just 19-years-old.

(Our report on June 6, based on police versions, had said the woman's attackers had thrown the baby out of the auto. But as details began to emerge on Tuesday, and we spoke to the woman's husband, accounts of cold-blooded brutality unfolded, far worse than what was initially believed).

Late evening on May 29, she had left in a huff for her in-laws' place on Khandsa road in Old Gurgaon, taking her baby girl along with her, after a fight with her immediate neighbours. She hadn't wanted to spend the night in the house, in a village near IMT Manesar, in such an acrimonious atmosphere as her husband was away for work.

On NH-8, she got a lift from a truck driver. But she got off minutes later as the man seemed heavily drunk and was harassing her. She then waved down a shared auto that was headed towards Gurugram. There were two men in the passenger seats. It had seemed like any other auto ride till the driver suddenly took a U-turn on the highway, before Kherki Daula toll plaza.

bccl/representational image

The two men in the passenger seat then started making sexual advances at her. The baby was crying but that only irritated them, made them more aggressive. "Some distance after taking the U-turn, the driver stopped the auto and said to one of the other men, 'Hari, khaana la' (Hari, bring food)," says the FIR, quoting the woman.

They then drove on to IMT Sector 8 where she was dragged out of the auto, to a vacant plot. One of the men had snatched her daughter away and covered the baby's mouth with his palm to stop it from bawling. The men took turns to rape her here. Each time, one person held the baby. When they were ready to leave, one of the men threw the crying baby at the concrete median verge of the road. "I became numb from that point. All I remember is seeing my child's head hitting the road divider," the FIR says, quoting the 19-year-old.

twitter/ani sketch of rape accused

With the baby in her arms, the woman walked down the road and reached a factory, Pencil Electro Ltd, where a guard asked her to wait till dawn and then helped got her escorted to an auto that took her to Khandsa road, where her in-laws lived. Her thoughts were fully centred on the condition of her baby, and she did not even mention what had happened to her to her family members till later in the day.

She did not have a cellphone on her. Her husband came to know what had happened from his father after she reached their place. He went to the police, who told him to ask his wife to return immediately to Gurugram from Delhi with the child's body. At MG Road station, SHO Narender Singh was present to escort her.

"My family has been shattered," the woman's husband told TOI on Tuesday.

"I was mourning my daughter when my wife revealed about the gang rape. I want the police to make the arrests quickly."
In a triumph of justice that would give hope to millions of other NRIs, Sachit Poonekar and Tejal Sonwalkar took the case of managed take a racist man to court and get a favourable order and a compensation.

facebook

Living in the town of Swindon in England's Wiltshire county for about a decade now, Poonekar and Sonwalkar consider England their second home and run a flourishing Indian food joint business there. On October 7, 2016, they were heading out of their restaurant for a delivery when Poonekar had an argument with one Michael Francis Wright over what side of the road to drive on.

That's when Wright hurled abuses at the couple.

The case was later taken up for investigation by the police and on May 18, the Chippenham magistrate court ruled in their favour and asked Wright to pay up for the harassment.

"As is the norm here, the outgoing traffic is always given preference. There were three other cars behind me as I was leaving the parking to step out, and the British couple's (Wright's) car was coming from the opposite direction. They kept asking me to 'Go back', which I agreed to. We moved back, including the three cars behind me, to make way for this one car. When his car came parallel to mine, he got out to abuse me," recalled Poonekar.

facebook

"When the couple got out of the car, the guy started hurling abuses at me and even called me a 'f**king Asian monkey'. The fear that the next thing would be a blow coming my way, given the guy's big build, made me refrain from saying anything," Poonekar added.

The cops, who were informed about the incident and they recorded the statement of the people around.

Since Poonekar had managed to take a picture of the car's number plate, he was able to produce it in his statement to the cops. That is how Wright could be traced. After the court hearing that followed, Poonekar won the case.

"Winning the case was important for me not because I needed the compensation, but because I needed to know that the place I called my second home considered me a part of it, too. There are so many like me who face issues like this on a daily basis. Standing up against the bullies is what they must do, no matter what," he insisted.

facebook

"Ever since Brexit, there have been several cases of racial abuse. I have myself heard of many that occurred in London. But our neighbourhood mostly comprises Polish and Hungarian people. There aren't many Indians here, so we didn't hear of incidents involving racial slurs on them, till it happened to us," he added.

In the order that was issued on May 19, the magistrate court sentenced Wright to pay 120 as fine, 400 as compensation, 30 as victims' surcharge and  220 as crown prosecution service (CPS) costs.
Gurugram police have arrested one person in connection with the brutal gang rape of a 23-year-old and the murder of her nine-month-old baby last week.

The accused has been identified as Yogender, while the two remaining accused, Jayakesh and Amit are still at large.

PTI

According to police, all the three accused belonged to Bulandshahr in Uttar Pradesh.

"Due to sustained intelligence and efforts, one accused has been nabbed and efforts are on to arrest the remaining. We will arrest them soon, "Gurgaon Police Commissioner, Sandeep Khirwar said.

The trio had gang-raped the victim who had left home in Bas Khusla village after an altercation with her husband and neighbours on the night of May 29.

She was on her way to her parental house at Khandsa village when she was first given a lift in a truck. The truck driver also molested her but as she put up strong resistance, he dropped her off on NH 8.

BCCL/ Representational Image

As the victim was alone, the three accused in the auto offered her a lift and then gang-raped her.

The accused also threw her infant daughter from the vehicle to avoid attention after she started crying.

The accused left the victim after raping her for four hours. She then went to the spot where they had earlier thrown her nine-month-old daughter and picked her up in the middle of road and went to a hospital, where the infant was declared brought dead.

Police registered an FIR on the next day based on a complaint by the victim.

Police had constituted a Special Investigation Team and had released the sketches of three men and questioned over 50 auto drivers plying in the IMT, Manesar area, since the crime occurred in a moving auto-rickshaw.

Meanwhile, there is much outrage on social media about the heinous act. Many called for capital punishment for the accused.
The CPIM office in New Delhi witnessed high drama on Wednesday after two Hindu Sena men barged into the building and tried to assault party General Secretary Sitaram Yechury.

BCCL

The men barged into the office raising slogans of 'Hindu Sena zindabad' and 'CPI(M) murdabad' as Yechury was about to address a press conference.

PTI

#WATCH One of the 2 protesters who tried to manhandle Sitaram Yechury during his press conf. in Delhi, later beaten up;handed over to Police pic.twitter.com/NRUcrljB2W  ANI (@ANI_news) June 7, 2017

The two miscreants, identified as Upendra Kumar and Pawan Kaul, both members of Hindu Sena tried to heckle and manhandle the Rajya Sabha MP.

BCCL

They were detained by party workers and later handed over to police. Even though the reason behind the attack is unclear, it is likely to be linked with the cattle slaughter ban.

Left ruled Kerala has for long been at loggerheads with right wing fringe groups, especially over the issue of beef.

Kerala had protested the recent restrictions on cattle sales for slaughter with beef festivals across the state.

Reacting to Wednesday's incident Yechury said "We will not be cowed down by any attempts of Sangh's goondagardi to silence us. This is a battle for the soul of India, which we will win".

We will not be cowed down by any attempts of Sangh's goondagardi to silence us. This is a battle for the soul of India, which we will win. https://t.co/FdPmtoq1Ky  Sitaram Yechury (@SitaramYechury) June 7, 2017

Strongly condemn the attack on Com: @SitaramYechury. It amounts to an attack on Indian Democracy.  CMO Kerala (@CMOKerala) June 7, 2017

3. We all know that Hindu extremist group attacked @SitaramYechury today due to provocative news againt him, making him look like anti-India  Sumit Kashyap (@sumitkashyapjha) June 7, 2017
While attending Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose, California on Tuesday, Michelle Obama shared an interesting piece of trivia.

afp/getty images

The former First Lady candidly revealed how for eight years her husband, Barack Obama, wore the exact same tux and shoes and no one noticed.

While Michelle was scrutinised for the tiniest detail about her ensemble, year after year, Obama got away with wearing the same tux at publicised events.

getty images

Calling it "unfair", Michelle shared that Obama was really "proud of it too". "He's like, 'Mmm, I'm ready. I'm ready in 10 minutes. How long did it take you?' I'm like, 'Get out of here'," she added.

Now that the former President is free from his worldly duties, we are sure he's getting a lesson in 'how to dress differently' by Michelle!
Two weeks ago, a suicide bomber murdered 22 people in Manchester, England, when he triggered an explosive at an Ariana Grande concert. Then London suffered through another terror attack. Soon after, Twitter and Facebook were flooded with images and videos of the incident. Its an understandable consequence of the horrific incident; people want to spread the word, want to empathise with those suffering. Unfortunately, that's exactly what the terrorists want.

Terrorism has one main purpose, thats in the name; spreading fear. And nothing spreads fear better than an Internet post with all the gruesome images and half the information. When the police and government delay too long in making a statement, because they want to have all the information first, people and news crews alike turn to social media, hoping to find information from people who were at, or know details about the incident. So heres what you should and should not be doing, the next time innocent people are the victims of a terror attack.

Evaluate the truth

When you hear about a bomb blast, mass shooting, or other similar attack, your first instinct may be to spread the word. Perhaps you have loved ones in the area, or are just trying to raise awareness. Posting the information on social media is fine, but make sure your source is credible. If its a news report, look for details instead of hearsay. If its a tweet or Facebook post, try to find similar posts that corroborate, but arent simple copy pastes or retweets. Misinformation can not only incite panic, it can have grievous consequences even when accurate. Hate and fear following the Manchester attack spurred locals on to crimes of their own; a mosque in the area suffered arson mere hours after the bomb blast occurred.

Think before you post

When posting about a terror attack, you have to seriously weigh your words and any images you may attach to them. Does your post empathising with the victims really need to be accompanied by pictures of the attack? Do you really want to aid the terrorists by spreading panic with your tweets? And, more importantly, does spreading the pictures justify the emotional damage you could be causing to the friends and families of those that died in the attack? If you have photos or videos of the event, seeing as everyone these days has a camera phone in their pocket, youre better off sending them to the local authorities. Any little clue may help to shed more light on the traumatic situation.

Not just the scene of the attack, dont ever post photos of the dead attackers, even if youve seen their faces in police reports on the news. All that does is allow the perpetrators to be glorified as martyrs for the cause. Its better to just pack away that immediate anger and hate, and instead focus on conveying your sympathy and support to the victims and their families.

Self control on social media

You may want to show that you care, in the wake of a terrorist attack, or express your outrage online at those responsible. But all this does is perpetuate the cycle of fear, hate, and violence. Instead, look towards ways you can help out in real life. Focus on the rebuilding and comforting, not on seeking out the enemy. The main objective in a suicide bombing is not gaining the highest kill count, its drawing out the biggest shock factor possible, and causing turmoil in a society from within. In the modern age of the Internet, its not just the news agencies that need to self-censor their content, weighing the importance of pieces of information against their necessity, thats up to everyone with a Twitter handle or Facebook profile.

So next time you tweet or post something on Facebook during or about a terrorist attack, just hit the pause button and think about what you're doing and the consequences of your action. Then hit the post button.
Today, the global mining community faces significant challenges, ranging from technological to social, environmental and economic issues. The mining community has confronted and solved such challenges over centuries and has thereby delivered important contributions to the use and development of our mineral resources.

The key objective of the 2nd International Conference Mining in Europe is to share the latest developments on mining expertise, activities, developments and research in Europe and beyond. The Conference will address a series of topics, with a focus on mineral resources, mining technologies, and responsible mining.

Invitation

We invite professionals from the mining industry and practitioners from consulting companies, equipment suppliers and software providers, people from research institutions and government agencies as well as academic scholars and researchers to attend this Conference. An additional objective of this Conference is to encourage MSc and PhD students to showcase their research.
President Muhammadu Buhari has been hailed by the Metropolitan Diocese of Ikeja, Methodist Church of Nigeria, it said that the manner in which the President is fighting the anti-corruption war is a great one, urging him to remain unwavering and focused in the fight.

The church, while praying for the quick recovery of the ailing President, who is currently in London, the United Kingdom on medical vacation, however, urged other arms of government to join him in the anti-corruption war.

Noting that corruption had eaten deep into the nations fabric, the church argued that no arm of government should be a stumbling block to efforts being made to eliminate the scourge.

This was contained in a communique issued at the end of the maiden annual synod of the Metropolitan Diocese, Ikeja.

The synod with the theme, Gods word  My guide, held between June 1 and 4, 2017 at the Methodist Cathedral of Peace and Excellence, Opebi, Ikeja, Lagos, was presided over by the Right Revd. Stephen Adegbite.

In the communique made available to our correspondent on Tuesday, the church also hailed Buhari on the success of the Federal Governments war against the Boko Haram insurgents in the North-East, particularly the recent release of 82 out of the over 200 abducted Chibok schoolgirls.

While thanking the Switzerland government and the International Red Cross Society for their role in the negotiations for the girls release, the church said, it was a glorious sight to behold when the girls were reunited with their families for the first time in over three years.

It urged Nigerians to continue to pray for the safe rescue of the other Chibok schoolgirls still in the insurgents captivity.

The synod lauded the acting President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, for providing the country with purposeful leadership in the absence of Buhari, and called on the citizens to continue to pray for the acting President.

On the state of the economy, the church urged government at all levels to focus on agriculture and to invest in the power sector, which, it noted, would enhance economic recovery.

The synod added, Diversification of our economy must be given priority if we are to overcome the recession in which our economy currently lies.

In addition, the synod advocates more serious investments in sectors like solid minerals, renewable resources, education, science and technology and works, as these sectors can generate short and mid-term employment that can lead us out of economic stagnancy.

The synod, however, expressed displeasure at the delayed approval of the 2017 budget, urging the Federal Government to ensure the quick signing and full implementation of the 2017 budget, which possesses the right elements of creating jobs for several unemployed people through teaching and agriculture.

The church also acknowledged what it termed as the giant strides of the Lagos State Governor, Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode, in the area of infrastructural development and sustenance of peace in the state despite the ethnic diversity of the residents.
It was a sad day for the Nigerian Police force especially the Osun State Police Command after they lost three policemen after an attack by the hoodlums in the state , while one suspected armed robber was also killed on Tuesday in a robbery operation in Iwo, Osun State.

It wss gathered that the hoodlums first went to the police station in the town and attacked the men on duty before proceeding to the area where the three banks in the town were located.

The banks located in the area are First Bank, Skye Bank and Sterling Bank.

Our correspondent gathered that the hoodlums attacked the three banks which were very close to the Bowen University.

However, the university was not attacked.

Some of the Automated Teller Machines on the banks premises were reportedly removed by the hoodlums.

A resident told our correspondent that the streets were deserted as robbers and policemen exchanged gunfire during the operation.

He said, The armed robbers killed three policemen and the police also killed one of the robbers.

I think the banks were aware that they could be attacked because they had been closing by 12noon for the past two months.

The source said the hoodlums were forced to abandon one of the vehicles they used for the operation and fled when the policemen reinforced.

The Police Public Relations Officer in the state, Mrs. Folashade Odoro, could not be reached on the telephone as her telephone lines indicated that they had been switched off.

The Oluwo of Iwo, Oba Abdulrasheed Akanbi, confirmed the robbery on the telephone to our correspondent.

He said the policemen killed one of the robbers but some policemen were killed by the hoodlums.

The monarch said the state Commissioner of Police, Mr. Fimihan Adeoye, was on his way to the scene to assess the situation.

Source: ( Punch Newspaper )
A Federal High Court in Abuja on Tuesday fixed July 4 for ruling on the no-case submission filed by a former Senate Leader, Ali Ndume , seeking an order terminating his trial on terrorism charges preferred against him by the Federal Government.

Ndume, through his no-case submission, is seeking an order discharging him of the charges, including the allegation of supporting Boko Haram, and failure to disclose material information arising from his alleged relationship with the sect.

His no-case submission was anchored on the grounds that the prosecution had failed to lead evidence linking him to the alleged offences.

In denying the charges on Tuesday, Ndume explained how he came in contact with the sect and how he disclosed the necessary information about his interaction with the sect to the then Vice-President and the then Director General of the Department of State Services.

But the Federal Government insisted on Tuesday that it had led sufficient evidence showing Ndumes complicity in the alleged offences, thus the need for him to offer some explanations.

Justice Gabriel Kolawole fixed July 4 for ruling on the arguments after hearing both the defence and the prosecution counsel on Tuesday.

The Federal Government had on December 12, 2011, arraigned Ndume on four counts of terrorism.

The prosecution had alleged a link between Ndume and a suspected member of Boko Haram, Ali Konduga, who had since been convicted and sentenced on terrorism charges.

Ndume was accused of, among others, sponsoring the Boko Haram sect, and failing to disclose the phone number of Konduga, which was alleged to be in his (Ndumes) possession.

He had pleaded not guilty to all the charges.

The prosecution commenced trial on July 3, 2012 and closed its case on June 22, 2016, after calling a total of nine witnesses.

The prosecution also tendered five exhibits two of which were phones with which Ndume allegedly communicated with the Boko Haram member.

Justice Kolawole had adjourned until July 9, 2016, for the defendant to open his defence.

But instead of opening his defence, the defendant, through his counsel, Mr. Rickey Tarfa (SAN), filed a no-case submission on August 16, 2016, arguing that he should be discharged on the grounds that the prosecution failed to adduce any prima facie evidence linking him to the alleged offences.

The no-case submission was anchored on section 303 of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act, among other provisions of the same law.

Adopting his clients addresses on Tuesday, Tarfa insisted that an analysis of the phone conversation between Ndume and Konduga failed to disclose any fact warranting the senator from Borno State to offer any defence.

He explained that Ndumes contact with the Boko Haram insurgents came about when the senator was a member of the Presidential Committee on Security Matters in the North-East.

The lawyer said, We have taken the counts from one to four and have analysed them.

Clearly, there is nothing in the evidence led by the prosecution that will necessitate the defendant to be called upon to enter his defence in the charge.

Clearly, from the totality of the evidence placed before the court, the defendant coming into contact with the Boko Haram sect came about when he was acting on behalf of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in the presidential committee set up to look at the security challenges in the northeastern part of the country.

The evidence is clear and has been confirmed through cross-examination of the prosecution witnesses.

We have shown how the alleged analysis of the mobile phone did not disclose any fact which will necessitate the defendant to defend the charge.

Clearly, having regards to the four counts before the court, we have analysed the ingredients of the counts and shown how the prosecution has failed to proffer any evidence in support of the ingredients in the four counts.

Opposing the no-case submission, the Federal Governments lawyer, Mrs. G.N Okafor, argued that there was sufficient evidence led by the prosecution linking Ndume to the alleged crimes, thus the need for him to offer some explanations through his defence.

She said the defendant had not denied communicating with the Boko Haram member.

She maintained that the defendant rather corroborated the communication in his statements tendered as exhibits before the court.

She also indicated that there could not have been any legitimate basis for Ndume to communicate with Boko Haram members as he was not the only member of the presidential committee on the security challenges in the North-East.

Justice Kolawole fixed 2pm on July 4 for ruling.

Source: (Punch Newspaper )
Acting President Yemi Osinbajo has written a letter to the Senate and the House of Representatives, requesting them to separate the $1.49bn meant for projects in 10 states from the 2016-2018 External Borrowing (Rolling) Plan of the Federal Government.

He said this was to enable the National Assembly to give accelerated hearing to the loan request so that projects would be quickly executed in the affected states.

The states are Ogun, Ondo, Kaduna, Kano, Ebonyi, Plateau, Abia, Katsina, Jigawa and Enugu.

The states have projects tied to a total loan value of $1.49bn under the external borrowing plan.

Osinbajos letter was read to members of both chambers of the National Assembly on Tuesday in Abuja.

The letter read in part, You may wish to know that the request for the separation of the state projects from the list became imperative in view of the current economic realities in the country and the pressing needs of these states to provide infrastructural and social amenities for their citizens.

The total loans for the states being presented for special consideration and approval is $1.49bn.

Ogun and Kaduna states have loan requests of $350m each for development projects; Kano, Plateau and Enugu will take $200m for water projects, while Kano will take another $200m for agricultural and water resources development.

Ebonyi is expected to take $70m and $80m for road projects; Abia is seeking $100m for rural development; Katsina is requesting $110m for health projects; while Jigawa has asked for $32.4m.
Igbos living in all the 19 Northern States have been given three months ultimatum by the Arewa Youth Consultative Forum, ACYF, a coalition of socio-political groups in northern Nigeria to vacate the region.

If the Igbos fail to leave by the October 1, 2017, the group said, it would use force to evict the Igbos.

The group also threatened to take over all the landed properties of the Igbos after they had left the region.

Though the group did not specifically say how it intends to carry out its threat, it said not even the Arewa Consultative Forum or the Northern Elders Forum would prevent it from carrying out its threat.

At a press conference in Kaduna, the AYCF officials led by the groups National President, Yerima Shettima, claimed that a successful sit-at-home protest organised by Igbo groups, was a threat to the countrys national security.

The sit-at-home was organised by two pro-Biafra groups, IPOB and MASSOB, in remembrance of the Biafra secessionist war that led to the death of about three million people.

But the AYCF said they would not tolerate such action hence the issuance of the three months ultimatum for the Igbos to leave.

We are also telling our brothers (northerners) out there in the South-East to get prepared to come back home, the National President of AYCF, Yerima Shettima, said at a press conference in Kaduna.

Reading the press conference text on behalf of the group, Abdul-Azeez Suleiman, who is the National President of the Northern Emancipation Network, one of the groups that formed AYCF, said all northerners residing in the eastern Nigeria should within the period of the ultimatum return to their states.

With the effective date of this declaration, which is today, Tuesday, June 6, 2017, all Igbo currently residing in any part of northern Nigeria are, hereby, served notice to relocate within three months and all northerners residing in the South-East are advised likewise, he said.

All northern civil societies and pressure groups are, by this declaration, mandated to mobilize for sustained, coordinated campaigns at their respective state Government Houses, state Houses of Assembly, local government council secretariats and traditional palaces.

Our first major move shall be to reclaim, assume and assert sole ownership and control of these landed resources currently owned, rented or in any way enjoyed by the Igbos in any part of northern Nigeria.

The group warned that they would mobilize mass support from the north against the Igbos should they fail to hearken to the relocation order.

Speaking further, while fielding questions from journalists, the AYCF President said the federal government should not take their agitation for the eviction of Igbos from the north as a joke.

The federal government should our threat with all seriousness, he said.

Asked if they had consulted the ACF and the NEF, Mr. Shettima said his group did not need the authorization of the northern elders to do what they felt was necessary.

Never again shall we allow any group, (northern) elders to take us back, he said. The ACF was part of the decadence of the region.

When contacted by journalists for comments on the relocation order issued by the AYCF, the Ohanaeze Ndigbo, an umbrella socio-political organisation of Igbos, called for an immediate arrest of Mr. Shettima for issuing an assault order against the Igbos.

The Deputy Publicity Secretary of the Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Chuks Ibegbu, who spoke from Enugu said the DSS, the police and other security agencies should take note of the statement by the Arewa Youth Consultative Forum and the other Northern groups for issuing the threat against the Igbo.

It should not be seen as an empty threat; urgent action is needed to foil the plan to attack the Igbos in the North. It happened in the past and we dont want it to happen again.

In fact, Yerima Shettima should be arrested by the DSS immediately. We are watching to see what the DSS would do in this situation.

Shettimas statement is treasonable; he is inciting one section of the country against another section and we know from experience that this sort of thing could lead to a civil war. His utterances could destroy this country.

The text of the ACYF press conference was jointly signed by leaders of the coalition, which comprised Nastura Ashir Sharif (Arewa Citizens Action for Change); Alhaji Shettima Yerima (Arewa Youth Consultative Forum); Aminu Adam (Arewa Youth Development Foundation); Alfred Solomon, (Arewa Students Forum); Abdul-Azeez Suleiman (Northern Emancipation Network), as well as Joshua Viashman, who signed on behalf of the Northern Youth Vanguard.

The police are yet to react to the threat by the Northern groups.

Source: ( Premium Times )
Men of the Police force has arraigned a commercial driver, identified as Thompson Oromoro,before an Ikeja Magistrates Court, Lagos State, for allegedly stealing a carton containing 53 pieces of mobile phones valued at N1.2m.

The defendant was arraigned on Monday on one count of stealing before a presiding magistrate, Mrs. O.A. Akokhia.

A police prosecutor, Inspector Benedict Aigbokhan, told the court that one Oludare Oyewonyi, who lived in Benin, Edo State, had given the phones to Oromoro for delivery to a customer in Iyana Ipaja, Lagos State, but the defendant allegedly diverted them.

The suspect said he stopped on his way to Lagos to eat at a restaurant, but discovered that the phones had been stolen on getting back to where the car was parked.

The charge read, That you, Thompson Oromoro, on January 3, 2017, at about 7pm at Iyana Ipaja, in the Lagos Magisterial District, did steal a carton containing 53 pieces of handsets valued at N1,209,500, property of one Oludare Oyewonyi, thereby committing an offence punishable under Section 285(1) of the Criminal Law of Lagos State of Nigeria, 2011.

The defendant pleaded not guilty to the charge.

The magistrate, Akokhia, granted the accused bail in the sum of N300,00 and adjourned the case till July 11, 2017.
The Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) has banned the checking of lugagges of travellers at the departure hall of the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos.

The Managing Director, FAAN, Mr. Saleh Dunoma, said this was part of the plan to ensure the implementation of the Executive Order recently issued by the Acting President Yemi Osinbajo.

Dunoma made this known after a meeting with all the participating agencies at the airport on Tuesday.

The Executive Order does not give room for pre-checks on luggage. All checks should be done in designated areas. Luggage should not be checked at the departure hall, he said.

Dunoma added that there would be no compromise with the procedures and that whatever security procedure or security checks the agency would adopt would not be compromised.

He said, We have to meet the deadline set by the Executive Order. There are strategies in line with the order, but the concerned agencies need to meet regularly to ensure that these strategies are adhered to and improved.

Concentration is on the Lagos airport because it is the key airport due to its size, complexity and passenger traffic. If we get it right in Lagos, we will get it right in other airports. Once we do that, I believe all the other airports will be easy for us.

Dunoma stated that the participating agencies, including the Nigeria Police, Department of State Security, Quarantine Services, National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, Nigeria Immigration Services, Nigeria Customs Services and FAAN Aviation Security, among others, would implement the directive successfully.

All participating agencies are ready to key into this big committee set up for the implementation. Everybody is contributing positively. From all indications, all hands are on deck to make sure the Executive Order is implemented successfully. FAAN does not envisage any problem at all, and it is fully committed to give all participating agencies its full support to close any obstacle that may arise, he said.

Meanwhile, the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority has directed all aviation safety inspectors to monitor the level of compliance with the Executive Order at the airports, in addition to their statutory oversight responsibilities.

According to the agency, the directive given by the Director-General, NCAA, Capt. Muhtar Usman, is enshrined in the Nigerian Civil Aviation Regulations, 2015 (Nig.CARs 2015).

The NCAA said it had also put in place adequate measures to ensure full and sustained compliance with the Executive Orders at the airports.

The regulatory agency said in a statement signed by its General Manager, Public Relations, Mr. Sam Adurogboye, that all aviation parastatals under the Federal Ministry of Aviation, including the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, Nigerian Airspace Management Agency, Nigeria Meteorological Agency and Accident Investigation Bureau, had since commenced compliance with the orders.

Source: ( Punch Newspaper )
A Committee in the House of Representatives on Tuesday threatened to handover some companies involved in the procurement of pre-shipment inspection contracts, who allegedly forged tax certificates, to anti-graft agencies for prosecution.

The lawmakers also resolved to invite former ministers of finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and Nenadi Usman, former Head of Service of the Federation, Steve Oronsaye; former Accountant General of the Federation, Jonah Otunla; and all permanent secretaries of the ministry of finance since 1999 till date.

They are to come and defend themselves and let us know the various roles they played within the period of their stewardship. The essence of this invitation is to enable the investigative hearing have a balance position on all issues, the committee chairman, Oluwole Oke, said.

Mr. Oke, Chairman House Committee on Public Procurement, stated this during an interactive session with Kemi Adeosun, Minister of Finance over alleged breach of the Public Procurement Act, 2007.

Mr. Oke, who warned against appointment of portfolio contractors by various Ministries, Departments and Agencies, MDAs, decried the level of evasion of taxes.

Its alarming that a company that collected a contract of $120 million only to pay N20,000 as tax to Federal Government, to say the least this is annoying and those are the things this investigative hearing is trying to right.

We have documents submitted by companies that are in total variance with what FIRS, BPP, NSITF, PenCom and ITF gave us and you all know that our children and sibblings benefit from ITF and if the right amount is not paid how will they get trained.

Henceforth we will not hesitate to handover such companies to anti-graft agencies, he said.

The committee also directed Federal Ministry of Finance to provide details of the NESS accounts with the view to ascertain where the operating surplus goes into at the end of each financial year in line with extant financial regulations.

Speaking earlier, Kemi Adeosun, Minister of Finance disclosed that the process of the pre-shipment inspection contract which started in 2016 was ongoing and will soon be concluded.

She said that the exercise was delayed due to the security nature of the pre-shipment inspection contract which involved accessing of oil terminals.

Mrs. Adeosun, however, assured that various issues bothering on tax evasion and abuse of Procurement Act as raised by the Committee will be addressed.

She further noted that the exclusion of some companies was based on security matters adding that the NESS scheme was self-sustaining.

She said: Its pertinent to start by stating that the process of procurement of consultants for pre-shipment Inspection and Monitoring of Crude oil and gas export from Nigeria, which the National Assembly is calling for investigation into allegations of abuse, breach and violation of the Procurement Act 2007, is still ongoing.

The ministry embarked on the procurement process for the appointment of pre-shipment agents and monitoring of oil and gas exports in February, 2016 based on BPPs approved invitation for expression of interest duly published in two new national dailies and the Federal Tenders journal of February 8, 2016 soliciting expression of interest of bids from competent and reputable consultants for engagement as pre-shipment inspectors and monitors of oil and gas exports.

A total of 67 companies were pre-qualified out of 166 companies that expressed interest, while 49 companies passed the quality based selection having scored 70 per cent mark and above.

Its relevant to reiterate that from the beginning of the procurement process till date, the ministry has been working closely with BPP having obtained necessary approvals including advertisements, Request for Proposal (RfP) and approval to adopt quality based selection method to select the consultants.

However, there is need to point the following: There was no procurement plan, because the NESS is statutorily self-financing and is not expected to be included in the annual budget, therefore budgetary is not applicable.

The delay in concluding the procurement of the consultants was because of various procurement processes which include expression of interest, advertisement bid opening bid evaluation, request for proposal, request for certificate of No Objection from BPP, the minister said.

While ruling, Mr. Oke urged the minister to ensure inter-agencies synergy in the bid to address various issues raised by the committee and the petitioners as well as fix a time frame for the completion of the pre-shipment procurement exercise.

He also directed FIRS to submit details of all taxes paid by the companies involved in the pre-shipment inspection contract, noting that most of them understate their turnovers.

Source: (NAN)
A Christian couple is currently trending online after they involved Jesus in their marriage by inviting him to be part of their pre-wedding photoshoot.

What do you think of the photo-shoot? Too Christian-like? Too Much or?

See the photos below;
Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, on Tuesday hosted Nigerias Lola Omolola, the founder of a private Facebook group called Female in Nigeria.

FIN was founded in 2015 by Ms. Omolola, as a movement of women focused on building compassion and providing support for one another, with the goal of having up to 1000 members in the group.

However, the group exceeded its target as it recently hit one million members. It currently has about1,045,148 members, all female.

According to Mr. Zuckerbergs Facebook page on Tuesday, he will be meeting with Ms. Omolola and hundreds of other top Facebook group admins in Chicago later in the month for the first ever Facebook Communities Summit.

Mr. Zuckerberg said, Over the past few weeks, Ive been meeting group admins across the country that are building meaningful communities on Facebook and will be at the summit. Two years ago, she founded a secret Facebook group called Female IN, or FIN.

FIN is a no-judgment space where more than a million women come to talk about everything from marriage and sex to health issues and work problems. It is helping to end the culture of silence that exists for women in some parts of the world.

He said for the past decade, Facebook had been focused on making the world more open and connected. The Facebook founder expressed the willingness of the platform to continue to connect persons, adding that there was the need to do much more by bringing people closer together and build common understanding.

Im looking forward to meeting more admins like Lola and talking about how we can help them do even more to build community. Ill share more info on the summit as we get closer, and Ill stream the event live from my profile later this month, he added.

Source: ( Premium Times )
Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg received Lola Omolola, Chicago-based Nigerian founder of Facebook group, Females In Nigeria (FIN) at Facebook Headquarters on Tuesday, June 6th.

Taking to his page, Zuckerberg wrote that he will be meeting with Omolola and some administrators of top Facebook groups in Chicago later this month for the first ever Facebook Communities Summit.

His full post below:

Im heading to Chicago later this month for our first ever Facebook Communities Summit with a few hundred of our top Facebook group admins.

For the past decade, Facebook has been focused on making the world more open and connected  and were always going to keep doing that. But now its clear we have to do more. We also need to bring people closer together and build common understanding. One of the best ways to do that is by helping people build community, both in the physical world and online.

Ive written and talked about these themes throughout this year  especially in my community letter in February and at Harvard Commencement last month. This summit will be the next chapter and well discuss more of what were building to empower community leaders to bring the world closer together.

Over the past few weeks Ive been meeting group admins across the country who are building meaningful communities on Facebook and will be at the summit.

This photo is with Lola, who lives in Chicago and is originally from Nigeria.

Two years ago, she founded a secret Facebook group called Female IN, or FIN. Its a no-judgment space where more than a million women come to talk about everything from marriage and sex to health issues and work problems  and its helping end the culture of silence that exists for women in some parts of the world.

Im looking forward to meeting more admins like Lola and talking about how we can help them do even more to build community. Ill share more info on the summit as we get closer, and Ill stream the event live from my profile later this month.
A Nigerian model based in the United States of America, Nneoma Anosike, has filed an action against Wema Bank PLC before a Lagos Division of the Federal High Court for allegedly using her photos for commercial purposes without authorization.

Ms. Anosike, 22, sued the bank through her father, Frank Anosike, who doubles as her lawyer, claiming N97 million as damages.

According to the plaintiff, the bank on April 11, 2016, used her photo for a commercial on a social network platform, Instagram, without her permission or authorization from Ford Models Inc, her American management company.

Among her prayers, the plaintiff is seeking an order directing the defendant to pay N75 million for allegedly passing off her services.

She is also seeking an injunction warning the defendant from passing off or causing others to pass off her professional services and a declaration that she is entitled to her privacy of her correspondence under Section 37 of the Nigerian Constitution.

The plaintiff is also seeking an order directing the bank to pay her N20 million for the breach of her privacy by advertising her private correspondence; an order to publish a written apology in two national dailies in Nigeria and in the U.S.; and N2 million as the cost of filing the suit.

According to the statement of claims attached to the suit, the plaintiff claimed that she is a trustworthy international model who had won many laurels within and outside the country, including the Elite Model Look 2013 in Nigeria.

Ms. Anosike said based on her reputation, Pepsi-Cola Nigeria made her its brand ambassador for Aquafina water.

The plaintiff further averred that her contract with Ford Models Inc took her to the U.S. and that prior to the defendants advert of her, she was in negotiations with the company for a renewal of her contract.

But on April 11 last year, according to Ms. Anosike, the management of Ford Models summoned her to a meeting on April 12 wherein she was presented with her photo advert procured from the Instagram account of the defendant.

She alleged that the defendant mutilated and edited her professional photo for the said advert uploaded on the internet, adding that based on that action, her contract renewal with the American company has been jeopardized.

But in its statement of defense, the defendant averred that the bank was not a party to the alleged modeling contract between the plaintiff and the American company and was not privy to it.

The bank also stated that the photo in question was sourced from social media for its weekly online motivational and educational series, intended to inspire going online users.

The bank denied using the plaintiffs photo for any advertisement purposes or for any commercial gain but for a purely free educational purpose under its Corporate Social Responsibility program.

Justice Ibrahim Buba adjourned the matter till June 15 for further hearing.
After spending 81 days in a Port Harcourt prison, it seems Kemi Olunloyo has turned a better leaf.

The controversial journalist who says she is now a political activist has thanked people who reached out to her while in prison and people who are currently contributing to help her offset her bills.

She also sent a shout out to actress, Georgina Onuoha who despite their social media war, called for her release from prison. She also revealed actress, Ibinabo Fiberesima reached out to her while in prison. She wrote;
A teenage boy has been confirmed dead in Nwala-Jan Gahe community in Katsina State during a heavy windstorm which also

destroyed about 300 houses during in the community.

Five persons were also reported to have sustained varying degrees of injury in the incident which occurred last Friday.

The Executive Secretary of the Katsina State Emergency Management Agency, Dr. Aminu Waziri, who confirmed the incident to journalists on Tuesday, said the windstorm caused great havoc in the new community.

He revealed that the boy died after a fence collapsed on him during the windstorm.

Waziri added that the agency had already carried out immediate cautionary intervention of providing the displaced persons with foodstuffs.

He added that assessment was on to ascertain the level of damage and the loss suffered by individuals, after which government would provide relief materials for the affected persons to help them resume their normal lives.

He explained, On Friday evening, we received a distress call through one of our emergency contact lines and quickly mobilised to the scene of the tragedy.

We realised that there was a windstorm in the neighbourhood. It is a new layout and one can imagine if wind of high magnitude comes in, the possibility of distabilising the area is high especially when development was done with low level of compliance or low quality of materials. You can imagine how much loss could happen.

Well, we were able to mobilise and at least provide human intervention. With the help of the state fire service department, we were able to stabilise the situation.

We lost one person, a young boy who happened to rush out of his mothers room, because the wind had already blown off the roof and they were a bit confused, so, he came out and one of the fences fell on him and we lost him instantly.

Also, five others sustained varying degrees of injury in form of fracture. Over 300 houses were affected. And so, we intervened quickly knowing that people will be displaced. And in the spirit of community relations, they were accommodated within the same community by their neighbours.

So, we immediately provided relief items of foodstuffs with the directive of Governor Aminu Bello Masari. And the governor was so proactive himself, because he was there at 3am on the day the incident happened to see things for himself and why it happened.

Source:( Punch Newspaper )
24-year-old Emmanuel Adekola, a National Diploma II student of Benue State Polytechnic, has died and according to reports, he was stoned to death by a vigilante group in Ugbokolo, Benue State.

Speaking to us, Emmanuels brother, Akola Okewu ThankGod, said that his brother was killed on June 1st shortly after he finished his morning duties and stepped out of his house.

Okewu, who resides in Lagos, said he traveled to Benue on Wednesday and went straight to his family home where he passed the night with the deceased and some other members of the family. The next morning, their father told Emmanuel to weed the compound. He said Emmanuel was ill on that fateful day and had a slight fever, yet he went about the errand as requested by his father. When he was done, he took traditional medicine, popularly called agbo, to treat his ailment and it was at that time that he got a call.

Okewu said:

He finished the work and that very day he was not too strong. He was feeling feverish. So he went to take this local drugs. That was when they said he received a call. Before that day he had been talking about his school, saying that he wants to go and visit his project supervisor. So they said that there was a call, that somebody called him and he now left home that very morning between 8 to 10, thereabout, because I know I left him in the house before I went out.

Then, later, about two hours later, they now called me that they have killed my brother in Ugbokolo. I was saying, No, it cant be him because I left him at home this morning. Only for me to get to Ugbokolo and find out that it was him that they killed.

Okewu said that when he got Ugbokolo, he was told that the body of Emmanuel had been taken to Okpoga where it will be deposited in the mortuary. On getting to Okpoga, he was shown the corpse and to his shock, it was indeed his brother. Okewu said he received reports from witnesses that his brother was killed by the vigilante in the area.

There are reports from DailyPost that Emmanuel, aka Tu Green, was a cultist and member of a notorious criminal group and that he was at his home when he got information that members of his clique had been killed by the vigilante group, so he left for school to locate their corpse. On getting to school, some members of the vigilante group approached him and interrogated him after which they asked him to take them to his house. Once there, they allegedly searched his room and found what looked like charm, which Tu Green claimed he was only using for protection.

DailyPost further reports that a source said Emmanuel mysteriously disappeared from their midst after the charm was found but the vigilante group also disappeared and went after him, reappearing at the same spot as him. They shot him but the bullets would not penetrate so they resorted to stoning him until he died.

Okewu denied the claims that his brother had been a cultist, stating that theirs was a very good Christian home and Emmanuel was close to God. He said his brother was not found with any weapon neither was he seen at a robbery scene. He described what had been done to his brother as wrong and said there was no logical explanation for it.

Let me tell you the truth because we are from a good Christian family and we dont tell lies, that killing  though Im not a judge  but that killing is jungle justice. When Emma was leaving on that day, assuming he was caught with weapon or he was at the robbery scene, its a different case. This is an innocent man. This is a man that doesnt I dont know how they did it, Im sure that its through somebody. He was not with any weapon, they just picked him and killed him. This killing is arbitrary, it is wrong.

When asked if his brother had indeed been stoned to death he said he had no idea how he was killed but he knows that his brother was lynched. When LIB asked if he could not determine from the wounds on his body if he was stoned or shot, Okewu said he only went to identify if it was his brother or not and did not really pay attention to the body to see how he was killed. He said his elder siblings were the ones handling the case and he has left it up to them.

Im not the eldest in the family. My elderly ones are the ones handling this case. Im sure they know how to go about it better than myself. I am yet to call my elder brother to ask him some questions about how they are pursuing the case.

Okewu gave vague answers as regards what was being done to pursue justice. He said he got information from his elder ones who told him they contacted police and theyve denied being involved in Emmanuels killing. He said he was unaware what measures were being taken to ensure justice is served and that he leaves justice to God.

Nobody is happy for now because we never know that that can come up in our family. That day, my brother was in the house here so everybody is surprised. What I know is that God is on the throne to judge.

The mother of the deceased is reportedly broken by the death of Tu Green, who was the last child of the family. Okewu said his mother has been unable to eat and has been in tears since his death. His father is also affected by the incident.

My mother has been crying because Emma is the last born of the family and you know what it is for someone to lose her last born. Even to eat, she cant even eat

Source: Naijaloaded
Shootin' the Bull about wild markets Swift Trading Company - 17 minutes ago The whopping two tenths of a percent decline in CPI set equities, bonds, and currencies on fire this morning. Unfortunately, if you weren't privy to the coming action, or did not get in until after the...

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Update 10/4/18  Construction is underway on the Northwest self-storage project at 62939 N. U.S. Highway 97, previously referred to as the development planned for N.E. Third St. The three-story, $6 million project will comprise 80,000 square feet in 584 units, larger than the 58,000 square feet initially reported. The facility will offer heated units and two freight elevators. Its expected to be complete by the end of November, according to the source.

The concrete and metal structure will be metal-sided, with windows and awnings for visual interest on long wall, said Steven Boothroyd, site superintendent for builder Able General Contracting LLC, which is overseeing the project.

Though the availability of steel could affect the timeline of the project, at least 30 truckloads of steel have already been delivered to the site, according to Boothroyd. Steel is getting harder and harder to get, he told the source. The West Coast is booming right now.

Able also served as general contractor for the recently completed expansion of the Old Mill location, and will oversee the planned expansion next year of another Northwest facility in Terrebonne, Ore., the source reported.

6/6/17  A pair of three-story self-storage facilities is being planned for Bend, Ore. Seattle-based investment firm Columbia Pacific Advisors LLC expects to begin construction during the third quarter on a 107,000-square-foot facility at 2705 N.E. Fourth St., and Northwest Self Storage is in preliminary discussions to develop a 58,000-square-foot location on the west side of N.E. Third St., according to the source.

The Columbia Pacific facility will include 820 climate-controlled units on 1.7 acres. The company acquired the property last year for $1.2 million through its affiliate OR Bend Self Storage LLC. The project is part of a plan to build about 6,000 storage units in Colorado and the Pacific Northwest, company spokesperson Ashley Bach told the source.

Northwest Self Storage paid more than $1 million in December for its 1-acre parcel on Third Street. In addition, the company intends to expand its Old Mill Self Storage location on S.W. Industrial Way, according to Leonard Waggoner, a site consultant for the company. Were building what we think the market needs and can absorb, added Nate Schwalbach, vice president of operations.

Population growth in Bend has spurred interest from several self-storage developers. Investor Scott Cassidy earlier received city approval to build about 150,000 square feet of storage on N.E. Fourth Street but halted the project when Columbia Pacific moved forward with its plan, he told the source. Were going to see the performance of those that go in and go from there, Cassidy said.

An unidentified developer has also submitted plans to build a storage facility with 11 buildings at the southeast corner of Cooley Road and N. Highway 97. The project is under administrative review, the source reported.

Columbia Pacific maintains a diversified portfolio across multiple sectors. Its real estate interests include hospitality, industrial, multi-family, office, retail, self-storage and senior-housing properties.

Based in Clackamas, Ore., Northwest operates 78 self-storage facilities in Oregon and Washington. Along with sister company Kevin Howard Real Estate, the firms specialize in self-storage services in the Pacific Northwest. The family-owned and -operated Northwest was founded by Kevin Howard more than 30 years ago. It specializes in self-storage consultation, brokerage, design and development, operation, and property management.

Sources:

The Bulletin, Northwest Self Storage Builds 584 Units in Bend

The Bulletin, Bend Draws Multistory Self-Storage Projects
Access Self Storage, which operates more than 50 facilities in the United Kingdom, is supporting Brides Do Good, a charity founded by Chantal Khoueiry to assist the United Nations goal of eradicating child marriage worldwide by 2030. The storage operator is providing the organization with two months of free storage at its Battersea, London, facility for the storage of goods for sale.

Through Brides Do Good, women sell their designer wedding gowns, donating part of the proceeds to the cause. One third of the funds is dispersed to Plan International and Too Young to Wed, charities focused on protecting potential child brides.

Brides Do Good is delighted to partner with Access Self Storage, which has joined our movement to help end child marriage by kindly providing a home for our beautiful dresses waiting to find their bride-to-be, Khoueiry said.

The charity is also supported by Livia Giuggioli, wife of actor Colin Firth and founder of Eco-Age, a sustainable-fashion consultancy. If you decide to sell your gown after the wedding, try to make sure it is going to a good home, she said. Brides Do Good sends a third of each sale to charities to help protect the millions of girls who are at risk of early marriage.

Brides Do Good stocks hundreds of gowns from notable designers including Galia Lahav, Lela Rose, Marchesa, Vera Wang and Valentino. The gowns are available for viewing on the organizations website. Those looking to donate or sell their gown will also find more information.

Founded more than 20 years ago, Access Self Storage facilities offer virtual office services, parking, document management and mailboxes in addition to self-storage. The companys properties are concentrated in Greater London.
StorageMart, a family-owned company that operates more than 190 self-storage properties across Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States, is welcoming its next generation of leadership as Alex Burnam, son of company president Cris Burnam, has been appointed to the position of senior acquisitions analyst. In the newly created role, Alex Burnam will implement systems and processes that will streamline and modernize the companys property-acquisition process and accelerate its growth opportunities, according to a press release.

"I think being family-owned has given us a unique environment that helped us become successful," said Cris Burnam. "The family atmosphere allows us to be open. We genuinely care about the growth of our team, and I couldn't be more excited to bring my son onboard officially."

Over the years, Alex Burnam has worked at StorageMart in various capacities, including interning for the marketing department and acquisitions team, and managing a company facility. "It means a lot to me to be a part of the family business, he said. I remember at a very young age going to the old headquarters to see my grandpa, so things have really come full circle, and I'm ready to hit the ground running."

Alex Burnam majored in finance and legal studies at Tulane University in New Orleans. After graduating last year, he worked at Heitman, a Chicago-based real estate management firm. While there, he collaborated on real estate closings in excess of $275 million in the firms acquisitions department, the release stated.

Founded in 1999 and based in Columbia, Mo., StorageMart is privately owned and operated by the Burnam family, which has been in the storage industry for three generations. It serves more than 75,000 self-storage customers, and operates in Chinese, English, Punjabi, Quebecois French and Spanish.
Thursdays U.K. general election has hedge funds and mutual fund managers positioned for a fall in the countrys currency, even as they expect the Conservatives to prevail.

Investors and fund managers are anticipating that Thursdays U.K. general election results will trigger a fall in sterling when markets open Friday, despite their confidence in the ultimate outcome.

While fund management firms expect a Conservative Party win, they think the result will not be as emphatic as polls had predicted when the election was announced in April, which may lead to a fall in the British pound. Prime Minister Theresa May called for an early general election on June 8  ahead of the regularly scheduled election in 2020  in a bid to win more Conservative seats in Parliament. With the current Conservative majority of only 17 seats in the House of Commons, May has less power to negotiate the terms of the U.K.s exit from the European Union than she would like. A number of Conservatives are seeking a so-called hard Brexit, or a swift and total withdrawal from the EU. May is seeking a softer Brexit, which she deems less likely to harm the U.K. economy, according to reports.

Philippe Ferreira, head of hedge funds research at Lyxor Asset Management, wrote in a report on Tuesday that macro hedge funds on the Lyxor platform were net short sterling. His report said macro hedge funds had added to their short sterling positions going into the vote, at a time when opinion polls narrowed and expectations that the Tories would significantly reinforce their majority in the House of Commons vanished.

Tom Elliott, international investment strategist at financial consultancy deVere Group, said in a report he thinks there is a 55 percent chance the Conservatives will have a majority of fewer than 60 seats in the House of Commons, which could lead to some volatility in the pound. (In the U.K. a party has to win 326 seats to win an outright majority; if it cannot do so, the largest party can form a government by sharing power with another party, as the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats did in the coalition government of 2010.)

Should this happen, sterling would wobble, and would fall sharply if that majority is below 40 and Theresa May is again beholden to the hard Brexit lobby of Tory MPs, he wrote. The FTSE 100 would rally as sterling falls, U.K.-focused stocks weaken and gilt prices would rise (and yields fall) in anticipation of a weaker economy.

Alastair Gunn, a portfolio manager at Jupiter Asset Management, added in a report to clients that sterling was having a tough time ahead of polling day.

Investor reactions follow an opinion poll published Tuesday by pollsters at Survation that suggests the U.K. may be heading for a hung parliament  where no party has a clear majority.

The poll of more than 1,100 U.K. residents over the age of 18 , conducted on June 2 and 3, suggests the Conservative lead  measured as high as 16.6 percent on May 9  could be less than 2 percent.

At the beginning of the election, poll data was being treated with caution because predictions of the outcome from the U.K.s EU referendum and the U.S. election result proved to be wide of the mark.

However, market observers at Schroders think polls are still influencing how investors are positioned. Azad Zangana, senior European economist at the British fund management firm, says the company is anticipating a Conservative majority, but the size of the increase is now difficult to predict.

If it is only a small increase, that could hurt sterling, Zangana says. He says the election was originally called to strengthen Mays hand against backbench members of Parliament who would like to pull out of the EU immediately. That sort of 50-seat majority is the magic number; if they manage to get over that point, we can see more investor optimism, he says.

Not all fund managers expect sterling to fall, however. Stefan Kreuzkamp, Deutsche Asset Managements chief investment officer, published a statement Wednesday saying the pound would probably strengthen, based on the companys base case of a stable or increased Tory majority.

Elliott acknowledged that any Conservative majority that extends beyond 60 would be welcomed by currency speculators, sending sterling upward. He said investors would see a large majority as allowing May to ignore the estimated 30 or so members of her parliament who want to divorce the EU on the hardest terms.
More competition for a limited supply of viable investments has pushed up prices, according to Cambridge Associates.

Infrastructure investing is more popular than ever  and more expensive since the 2008 financial crisis.

Rising demand for a limited supply of viable opportunities has pushed prices up, erasing some of the yield that had made infrastructure investments attractive, according to a new report from Cambridge Associates. The average yield for core infrastructure investments tumbled 300 to 350 basis points from 2010 to 2015, raising prices by as much as 40 percent, the consulting firm said, citing JPMorgan Chase & Co. estimates.

Although President Donald Trump has promised to encourage $1 trillion in infrastructure investments, Cambridge said any new projects would take time to develop, and a flood of new investment opportunities in the next few years appears unlikely. Private funds focused on infrastructure already raised a record amount of capital last year globally, possibly setting the stage for a mismatch in in supply and demand.

Prudent investors looking to allocate to the asset class should ratchet down return expectations relative to the solid performance of years past, Cambridge said. The number of projects depends, in part, on local governments support for privatization, and that support, particularly in the United States, can be weak.

Institutional investors currently favor greenfield projects  building new infrastructure, rather than renovating existing brownfield assets  in developed markets, according to the report. The majority of deals are in Europe, followed by North America.

Governments have recognized the crucial role the private sector can play in helping to bridge the large spending gap and investors desperate for yield. And while investors should expect lower earnings compared to recent years, there are still opportunities for the stable, high-income returns that infrastructure investing has become associated with, Cambridge said.

The firms global infrastructure benchmark gained 12.5 percent in the 12 months through September, outpacing private investments including natural resources, real estate, and private equity. The benchmark returned 8.9 percent in the five-year period through September, and 7.1 percent over 10 years.

Of these four private benchmarks, infrastructure had the lowest volatility of rolling annual returns over the last ten-year period, making its risk-adjusted returns more compelling than natural resources and real estate and comparable, though slightly less than, private equity, Cambridge said in the report.

Within infrastructure, the consulting firm said investors could still find value in carefully evaluated managers and strategies.

Cambridge recommends established value-add managers focused on broad mandates rather than specific structures, noting that core infrastructure strategies could prove useful for liability-driven investors. Opportunistic managers might target higher returns, but the reliance on leverage and greenfield projects may prove riskier than is desired, according to its report.

Established value-add managers, particularly those focused on middle-market opportunities in developed countries, appear best positioned to generate infrastructures classic characteristic  stable, high-income returns  with some upside in the years ahead, Cambridge said.
Insurers are scheduled to meet with communities in Brisbane and northern NSW
Swiss Re Corporate Solutions has announced a new CEO for its business in Australia and New Zealand.

Melanie Slack has been appointed to the role, effective immediately, and will relocate to Sydney from Hong Kong where she held the role of head of life and health products for Swiss Re Asia.





Search and compare insurance product listings for D&O from specialty market providers here Slack joined Swiss Re Group in 2002 and has worked in a number of senior management positions for the firm in Asia, Europe and the US.

In her current role, Slack manages a large team across eight locations in Asia Pacific, including Australia.

In her new role, Melanie will execute on Corporate Solutions local strategy, working with brokers to provide innovative insurance programmes for mid-sized corporate clients and large multinational corporations, Fred Kleiterp, CEO Asia Pacific for Swiss Re Corporate Solutions said.

With over two decades worth of experience in the insurance industry, Slack said she is excited to take the reins of the local arm of the international firm and will look to help clients build resilience through traditional and innovative risk transfer solutions.

Swiss Re Corporate Solutions was founded in 2010 and has offices in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

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A flood review in Tasmania has been backed by the insurance industry as it calls for improvements in flood mapping and further examination of mitigation options.The independent review into the Tasmanian floods of June and July 2016 has called on the Government to review its existing flood maps and consider undertaking comprehensive flood mapping of the entire state, a suggestion that was welcomed by the Insurance Council of Australia (ICA).The ICA also welcomed findings that highlighted the need for the state Government to explore adaptive strategies and investment in flood mitigation infrastructure and an examination of whether the Government is investing enough in mitigation.The report also found that the flood levees at Launceston North and Northern Midlands Council had worked well during the flooding and noted that public education around flood dangers should also be improved, which the ICA also welcomed. Campbell Fuller , ICA spokesman, said that the report provides valuable insights into the protection needed by homes and businesses in the state, which is Australias most flood-exposed.Investments in permanent, well-maintained mitigation  such as Launcestons upgraded levee system  save governments substantial sums in the long term by removing the need to continually rebuild and repair flood-damage, Fuller said. Effective mitigation can only take place where the risk is understood. Flood mapping allows communities to identify which areas are exposed to flooding, how often and to what depth. Its a crucial tool to help councils, households and businesses protect themselves.The east coast low that hit Tasmania in 2016 caused insured losses of approximately $60 million in the state and the report noted that insurers need to ensure that policies are understood, especially in relation to flood cover.The industry recognises the need for clearer, more engaging policy disclosure and is actively examining how to do this, Fuller continued.
The recent decision by the New South Wales state Government to reinstate the emergency services levy (ESL) continues to cause client concerns.Since the decision last week, NIBA has met with the New South Wales state treasurer Dominic Perrottet, who confirmed the decision to continue with the ESL on insurance policies and said the Government plans to introduce legislation later this month to reinstate the levy.Sarah Lyons, managing director of Australian broking at Arthur J Gallagher , said that the Governments decision, just four weeks away from when the proposed changes were due to take place, is causing concern for clients.The Governments backflip on the ESL has created a number of concerns, most importantly the material impact on our clients, Lyons told Insurance Business. In the interim, while discussions continue to establish a firmer position, we are keeping clients informed on events as they unfold and will ensure they remain our first priority.Brokers should tell clients to expect a continuation of the current ESL arrangements until the Government makes specifics known in the near future.The industry reacted with shock and disappointment to the news that the Government had decided against reducing taxes on insurance.With ESL, stamp duties and GST, more than 30% of household insurance premiums and 40% of commercial insurance property premiums go straight to the Government.Drew Ferns, AJGs Wollongong branch manager, said that the U-turn from the Government has sent a mixed message to the industry.Removing the ESL component was seen to be a big step in the right direction, so this announcement sends mixed messages to the entire community, he said.
The trade credit market has faced a tough year but the market could be set to pick up, an expert has said.The end of the financial year is normally one of the busier periods in the trade credit market and Chris Little, ANZ commercial director of Coface, said that while it has been tough sledding over the last 12 months, the market is beginning to brighten.This year has been soft, Little told Insurance Business. It is a tough market.We are starting to see some green shoots.Last year was highlighted by several high profile insolvencies, from electronics retailer Dick Smith to mining firm Arrium Steel, which helped spur the product, Little noted.With insolvencies still an issue across industries, but with a lack of attention-grabbing collapses, the interest in the market has been lacking recently. The construction industry in Queensland was noted as a particularly loss-prone area with several insolvencies reported but contractions in the mining markets in Western Australia have hampered the insurance market.Little said that economic data for Australia remains relatively positive, which is a good omen for the take-up of trade credit insurance.When companies perform well we tend to see them stay in [the market] a bit longer, Little continued. Seeing the proposals that we have seen coming in the doors since May, I predict the second half of the year will be a lot stronger than the first.Little said that now is the time for brokers to approach their clients with trade credit cover. With the end of the financial year just around the corner, clients can tie-up all lines of business they need for the coming year and trade credit could be an important part of an insurance program.
It looks like Luxembourg is out and its either the Netherlands or Sweden for Preston-based life insurance firm Chesnara, when push comes to shove after Brexit.While there is currently no intention to move, Chesnara cited the Netherlands and Sweden as possible options since the UK insurer has presence in both markets. The decision to move at all will depend on how Britains withdrawal from the European Union will impact regulation.In a report by Reuters, a Chesnara spokesperson was quoted as saying, Chesnara already has two insurance companies in the Netherlands and one in Sweden so could move its headquarters to either of these locations, depending on the regulatory environment post-Brexit.In 2016, chief executive John Deane said Chesnara could move its headquarters to Amsterdam if necessary.Meanwhile, other industry players are looking at Luxembourg, Brussels, Munich and Dublin.
With insurers looking outside Britain for possible post-Brexit options, Ireland is finding itself competing against the likes of Luxembourg and Belgium.Sydney-based insurance firm QBE , for instance, said it was to follow Lloyds and set up its EU base in Brussels, according to a report by The Irish Times. The daily also cited RSA and CNA Hardys move to pick Luxembourg.Following a few other recent losses  notably the decision by Lloyds of London to favour Brussels over Dublin  this raises questions about just how significant the Brexit influx will be for Dublin, added the report.Earlier this year Lloyds of London said it is setting up a new European insurance firm in Brussels, with CEO Inga Beale excited about the opportunities this venture will offer the market by providing that important European access efficiently.While Standard Life is heading to Dublin and Aviva is reinstating its Irish operation as a subsidiary, Lloyds and American International Groups ( AIG ) picks are seen to offset initial successes. In March, AIG announced it will locate an insurance company in Luxembourg.Our Luxembourg company will be complementary to our existing structure and will be part of our single European module, said Anthony Baldwin, chief executive of AIG Europe.Meanwhile, the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority is closely monitoring the developments and will publish in due course its guidance for national authorities on sound principles for authorisation and supervision.
In the short-term, the losses on insurers could be relatively modest given the scope of the event and there may even be an uptick in demand for cyber insurance policies, particularly in Europe. In the long-term, however, WannaCry is an illustration of one of the most important shifts impacting global insurance, which will require the industry to take a whole new approach to understanding risk and aggregation.

This article attempts to provide some of the basic facts based on what we know, as well as exploring some of the short- and long-term implications for various constituents in the cyber insurance industry.

What is WannaCry?

WannaCry is a virulent new strain of ransomware. It has hit hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide since its emergence and is far more dangerous than other common ransomware types because of its ability to spread itself across an organizations network.

WannaCry searches for and encrypts 176 different file types and appends .WCRY to the end of the file name. It asks users to pay a US$300 ransom in Bitcoin. The ransom note indicates that the payment amount will be doubled after three days. If payment is not made after seven days, the encrypted files will be deleted. Users of Microsoft operating systems are vulnerable to the attack.

When was this vulnerability discovered?

On January 16, 2017, the DHS US Computer Emergency Readiness team issued a warning about an SMB remote code execution vulnerability in Microsoft Windows computers.

On March 14, 2017, Microsoft responded by issuing a patch (MS17-010), which remedied the vulnerability for supported licensed users who applied the patch.

Is it common for vulnerabilities to emerge in such a critical piece of software?

Yes, vulnerabilities in software are very common.

In 2016, Symantec tracked 3,986 new vulnerabilities, which forms part of a database of 88,900 vulnerabilities, covering 24,560 vendors over two decades. Vendors such as Microsoft have a detailed process for tracking and remedying vulnerabilities and in May alone, Microsoft released 56 vulnerabilities, 17 of which are rated critical.

How did this vulnerability get exploited?

Having a vulnerability emerge does not mean that companies will experience a loss as there needs to be a tool to exploit that vulnerability.

An exploit for this vulnerability, known as Eternal Blue, was released online in April, in the latest of a series of leaks by a group known as the Shadow Brokers . This group claimed it had stolen the data from the Equation cyber espionage group, whose most likely country of origin is the United States.

Who was impacted?

The ransomware hit hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide in over 100 countries and spread rapidly.

Symantec observed 22 million attempts to infect machines and at its height was blocking 200k attacks per hour. Attacks spiked on Friday, May 12.

Detections of WannaCry were highest in Brazil, Russia, China and the United Kingdom but all major economies were impacted.

What will the short-term impact on cyber insurers be?

As this attack is unfolding, it is too early to say, however there are mitigating factors that will substantially reduce the financial impact of this event.

Around 85% of all standalone cyber insurance policies are written within the United States, which has not been badly impacted. Ransomware amounts are typically below the deductible and even when a business interruption or network interruption policy will respond to attack, coverage includes a 12hr or 24hr waiting period.

More importantly, one of the key mitigating factors is that the cyber insurance losses are fundamentally lower for the exploit of an unknown vulnerability when compared to a known vulnerability like Eternal Blue.

Why are the losses for insurers so much lower for known vulnerabilities like Eternal Blue?

With a known vulnerability, clients will often have had time to patch software. Nonetheless, with nearly 330 material vulnerabilities emerging every month (and patches only available for a subset of those vulnerabilities) losses cannot be modeled on the basis of patch cadence alone and nor is it the only line of defense.

Companies are also protected by security software. Software can provide protection against unknown exploits but is particularly effective against exploits leveraging known vulnerabilities.

To use WannaCry as a specific example, Symantec released IPS sig to explicitly block exploit attempts on May 02, 2017, which provided an added layer of protection on top of an existing suite of technologies that provided protection against unknown vulnerabilities. As of May 15, 2017, Symantec had blocked 22 million attempted WannaCry ransomware attempts and Symantec Endpoint Protection and Norton customers are fully protected from WannaCry, regardless of their current patch status. Other security companies have also been successful at blocking attacks against unpatched systems. Regardless, patching remains an important additional layer of defense as new variants continue to emerge.

What does this mean for underwriters?

Much has been made of how far the underwriting industry has to go in terms of understanding cyber risk and asking the right questions of their insureds .

Saying that, we should also pause and reflect on how far the cyber underwriting discipline has come. The insurance industry has a growing cadre of specialist cyber underwriters, with an understanding of cyber risk. One of the reasons why losses from WannaCry will be relatively low is that the (primarily) US carriers who have expanded internationally into markets more impacted by WannaCry have brought with them underwriting guidelines and expertise. Carriers that have expanded into Brazil (a market particularly hard hit by WannaCry) will be highly unlikely to have accepted a submission from a firm using a pirated version of Windows software with no formalized patching cadence and no endpoint protection.

As demand for cyber insurance increases, demand for skilled cyber underwriters will also increase and there will continue to be a fundamental labor supply/demand mismatch. Going forward, there will be a need for more technology-enabled tools to streamline the underwriting process and supplement decisions with readily consumable underwriting data, even for those underwriters without deep expertise.

What does this mean for brokers?

Two of the biggest drivers of cyber insurance awareness and purchasing are regulatory changes around breach notification and major high profile cyber security events.

Early indications suggest an increase in cyber insurance interest from brokers. In particular, given the low cyber insurance penetration rates in Europe, the footprint of the current attack and the impending roll-out of GDPR, European brokers in particular could be beneficiaries.

What does this mean for aggregation management?

The last 12 months have illustrated that insurers cannot ignore the aggregation impact of cyber as a peril.

This is particularly true of insurers with large standalone cyber portfolios; however, there are even larger exposures that exist within other lines of insurance, including business interruption, which is transitioning from a silent cover to an affirmatively covered peril within a property policy for some carriers.

A year ago, it was possible (but incorrect) to make the case that insurers are not yet subject to cyber aggregation risk. After the near misses of the Amazon S3 outage, the Mirari DDOS attack and now the WannaCry ransomware attack, cyber aggregation is a topic all insurers must now take seriously.

Is it even possible to model cyber aggregation?

Cyber aggregation presents fundamentally new challenges to the insurance industry but the risk can and must be modeled.

Unlike natural catastrophes, where events have a geographically contained footprint, companies impacted by cyberattacks cross geographic boundaries. The risk is non-stationary and is impacted by changes in technologies, attack patterns and defense postures. Furthermore, Internet of Things device penetration expected by some to grow from 15 billion to 200 billion devices, means few aspects of the global economy will remain non-impacted by cyber risk.

A multi-pronged approach is needed to understand cyber aggregation as there is no silver bullet but here are four initial guidelines that are important to consider when modeling aggregation scenarios:

Modelers need an understanding of historical events as not all of these risks are completely novel and parallels can be drawn from the past. For example, in 2004, Symantec detected the first occurrence of the Sasser worm, a self-replicating piece of malware that took advantage of a vulnerability in the Windows Operating System impacting several hundreds of thousands of machines and has many similarities to Mays attack. We need an understanding of security data across the entire kill chain, and not just at the level of publicly observable data points scrapped from the internet. This is particularly true when getting to the nuance of quantifying different types of both known vulnerabilities like Eternal Blue but also unknown vulnerabilities and the likely impact on a portfolio. Modelers need to engage deeply with security experts in emerging technologies as hard data has substantial limits in modeling emerging IoT technologies that have yet to be rolled out. Finally, we need an understanding of adversaries, including their capabilities (tools, tactics and procedures), their motivations (target categories and regions) and their recent activities.



Modeling cyber aggregation is one of the most difficult analytic challenges facing the cyber security and insurance industry but a multi-pronged approach can help understanding where risk already lies in insurer portfolios today and in the future.

Summary

Should those in the insurance industry want to cry? In the long-term those tears could be tears of joy or tears of sadness depending on how well the industry understands the risks its clients are facing.

WannaCry is one of the most significant malware events seen to-date but it will not be the last to pose a potential systemic risk to the global economy. Understanding emerging cyber risk may seem challenging but as interconnected technologies permeate all aspects of the global economy, the problem is too important for insurers not to understand. Addressing cyber risk will require collaborations between the cyber security industry, insurers and our mutual clients.

Together, the cyber security and insurance industries can make our economy more resilient to the most important risk of the 21st century.

The preceding was an opinion article written by Pascal Millaire, the vice president and general manager, cyber insurance, at Symantec Corporation. In that role he is responsible for creating underwriting and catastrophe modeling software for insurers, as well as developing new offerings at the intersection of cyber security and insurance. The views expressed within the article are not necessarily reflective of those of Insurance Business.




So thats why, in April, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) set up an Innovation and Technology Task Force to help educate state regulators.

NAIC president Ted Nickel told Insurance Business in April, not long after establishing the taskforce, the NAIC needed to keep on top of technological changes and how they impact the industry  lest the technology overwhelm regulators.

It [the establishment of the taskforce] is an attempt to wrap our collective arms around the issues and better inform existing regulators and new regulators and better understand what is going on  because I could see a real easy scenario where the US regulatory side is overwhelmed by some new technology, he said.

The webpage for the taskforce reads: The mission of the Innovation and Technology Task Force is to provide a forum for regulator education and discussion of innovation and technology in the insurance sector, to monitor technology developments that impact the state insurance regulatory framework, and to develop regulatory guidance as appropriate.

And changes are already in play. When upstart insurtech Lemonade hit a snag launching its services in Florida, the company successfully lobbied for legislative changes there.

Lemonade co-founder Shai Wininger said last week  in a provocative blog that took aim at his more traditional insurance opponents  that the company had helped pass what he titled The Lemonade Act.

When youre a new kind of insurance carrier, launching in a new state is tough. Even when the regulators are willing, as was the case in Florida, the law doesnt always oblige, he wrote. Insurance laws were written for the old insurance industry, creating barriers for disruptive companies. So when we hit a wall with Floridas law, we worked with the Florida Senate to change it, and it worked!

Scott Morris, chief technology officer at the NAIC, said the taskforces main role is making sure insurers arent inhibited in their development  while protecting consumers.

There is a lot going on in this space, he said. Everybody is aware that some of this stuff looks pretty good on the surface, but I think what they want to do is dig down and see what the challenges are in protecting consumers. Everybody likes a good app.

Regulators understand that there are benefits to innovation, but theyre cautious to look at whats going on  and is this just a new way to acquire customers or is this a completely new concept, is it truly innovation?





Related stories:

President of NAIC outlines the four big issues of 2017

Industry body wants regulatory definition of "big data"
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced steps on Monday to encourage insurers to keep selling health plans in the states Obamacare exchange, as the companies withdraw from other markets amid uncertainty surrounding the health law.

The state is tying participation in the Affordable Care Acts marketplaces to other government contracts. Insurers that exit Obamacares individual market would be cut off from government business including Medicaid, the childrens health insurance program and the Essential Plan, which offers cheap coverage to some low-income people who dont qualify for other programs, according to a statement from the governors office.

With Congressional Republicans working to repeal and replace Obamacare, and the Trump administration fomenting uncertainty about some funding for insurers, major national carriers like Aetna Inc. and Humana Inc., as well as smaller regional plans, have quit some states. Those departures have threatened to leave some consumers without any insurance options for 2018, and Republicans have pointed to them as a sign the health law is failing.

While choices vary by county, New York has more individual-insurance options than some other states, with 14 companies offering health plans for 2017. Publicly traded carriers that sell in the states exchange include Anthem Inc. and UnitedHealth Group Inc. UnitedHealth has largely exited Obamacare in other states, while Anthem has indicated its weighing whether to leave some regions.

The new measure may push insurers to stay in the states Obamacare exchange, because the other government businesses are far larger. About 242,000 people enrolled in individual health plans through the states exchange, while 665,000 picked Essential Plans. More than 6 million people are enrolled in Medicaid, the program for the poor, and a related childrens health insurance program in New York, according to federal data.

New York insurers have concerns about the plan, especially since the regulations to put it in place arent yet available, said Leslie Moran, senior vice president at the New York Health Plan Association.

Were not sure that they can legally just say we wont contract, because there are already contracts in place, she said. We just have some questions and concerns about where theyre trying to go with that.

Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.

Topics Carriers New York
Arthur J. Gallagher & Co., the insurance broker and risk management service firm, has announced the acquisition of Total Reward Group in Sevenoaks, England.

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Founded in 2005, Total Reward Group is a consultancy that offers remuneration support, executive search, interim placement and corporate training for reward professionals throughout the world, said Arthur J. Gallagher & Co., headquartered in Rolling Hills, Ill..

Based in South East England, in the county of Kent, Total Reward Group works with global brands, mid-size firms, public and third sector organizations across a range of industrial sectors.

Mark Childs and his associates will continue to operate from their current location under the direction of Leslie Lemenager, head of Gallaghers international employee benefit consulting and brokerage operations.

Total Reward Groups expertise in compensation consulting and global mobility will deepen our international benefit capabilities, enhancing our ability to deliver broad solutions to current and future clients in the UK and around the world, said J. Patrick Gallagher Jr., chairman, president and CEO.

Source: Arthur J. Gallagher& Co.

Topics Mergers & Acquisitions A.J. Gallagher
XL Catlins insurance operations announced the promotion of Adias Gerbaud to head international environmental.

In her newly expanded role, Gerbaud will be responsible for managing XL Catlins environmental portfolio while leading a team of eleven underwriters across the UK, Western Europe and Australia. She is based in Madrid, Spain.

Gerbaud joined XL Catlins Spanish operation in 2007 as a claims adjuster. She moved to London in 2008 to become a member of the environmental underwriting team before returning to Spain in 2010 to lead the environmental insurance business in Iberia. She was appointed underwriting manager environmental, Southern Europe & Latin America, in 2013. She became head environmental, EMEA, in 2016.

Gerbaud holds a bachelors degree in corporate law from the University of Poitiers, a bachelors degree in European legal studies from the University of Cambridge, a masters degree in international law and Anglo-American business law from Paris I University / Pantheon-Sorbonne, as well as an environmental science degree from the UKs Open University.

XL Catlin said Gerbauds appointment is in line with its drive to further strengthen its environmental insurance capabilities across its EMEA, LatAm and APAC regions, providing a range of solutions for businesses exposed to environmental risks, including pollution & remediation, legal liability and contractors pollution liability.

Many multinational companies across EMEA, LatAm and APAC are increasingly aware that minimal environmental protection practices dont lead to a sustainable future, said Daniel Maurer, chief underwriting officer, International Casualty  Insurance.

He said that Catlins risk engineers can help minimize environmental exposures and tailor insurance solutions to mitigate the myriad expenses associated with environmental clean-ups, he added.

Source: XL Catlin

Topics Europe Pollution AXA XL
First of Two Articles

While everyone talks about blockchain, also known as mutual distributed ledger technology, just a few people actually know what this technology can do and how it could someday revolutionize the re/insurance industry, just by streamlining back-office processes.

As a result, Insurance Journal in this article provides a description of what blockchain is and how it works. The second article in this series covers some of the industrys nascent steps into using the technology.

Mutual distributed ledgers are records of transactions, which are shared, cant be changed, are stored in multiple locations with no central ownership, explained Michael Mainelli, executive chairman at Z/Yen, a London-based technology company and think tank.

I can add transactions to the ledger  for example, correcting a misspelled name  but theres always a permanent record of the original document as well as the corrected document, he said. In other words, its a multi-organizational data base with a super audit trail.

Paul Meeusen, Swiss Res head of Finance and Treasury Services, uses an everyday analogy to explain blockchain. I tell people to think of it as a 1) dropbox [the distributed ledger], 2) that is secure and 3) has intelligence.

Meeusen leads Swiss Res involvement in the Blockchain Insurance Industry Initiative (B3i), which launched in October 2016 to explore the potential use of distributed ledger technology and now has 15 industry members.

Rather than everyone transacting business on their own, with a distributed ledger, for example, the broker, the cedent and the panel of reinsurers share information. Meeusen said such sharing makes business sense because when a nat-cat loss event happens, its the same base underlying risk and data that affects all of us on the risk.

While the concept of a shared ledger appeals to many people in the industry, they are worried about the security aspect of the process and want to be certain that a competitor cant view proprietary information.

As a result, cryptography and public and private keys are being developed to make sure that while we share, we are always certain about data privacy, security and anonymityso that people should see only what they are supposed to see, Meeusen said.

He then described the third blockchain pillar, intelligence, where so-called smart contracts are employed, protected with encryption.

Meeusen explained that the encrypted smart contract would include legal conditions such as triggers, the accumulation of loss events, what lines are covered, excluded risks and policy limits.

With this intelligence, information is shared securely and gets processed and interpreted more quickly, he said.

Industry Opportunities

Of course, blockchain and distributed ledger technology is still very theoretical for the insurance industry, where it is in the proof-of-concept phase. Indeed, B3i is gearing up to use blockchain for the first time in a reinsurance contract in June.

Mainelli believes blockchain will help the wholesale insurance market work together as never before. This technology for the first time may enable a sophisticated market such as the London marketto automate itself, he emphasized.

Historically, the London market has feared automation via platforms dominated or owned by market participants, which would create natural monopolies for central third parties who want to extract rents, or fees, for operating on the platform, he explained.

Indeed, the London market is littered with failed central exchanges (Limnet, Kinnect, Electronic Placement Support, Ri3K, Project Darwin, etc.). Some believe they didnt receive market buy-in because of the potential dominance they might have created for industry participants that owned the exchanges.

Distributed ledger technology would overcome this problem because the platform is shared and becomes a mutual utility, said Mainelli.

He used the example of a shipping registry to explain how a ledger works when owned and controlled by a central third party, also known as a trusted third party. The registry validates the existence of a vessel and its ownership and also safeguards and preserves the transaction records so a ship isnt sold twice to different people.

Blockchain can largely replace two of the three roles of a trusted third party  safeguarding and preserving transactions  while validation is an issue that can be addressed in a number of different ways, he continued.

For example, the party to the transaction might be able to rely on a digitally certified document for validation, he added.

Mainelli said there are many different applications for blockchain. Anywhere you see a group of people trying to work together on shared data or processes, there is probably a potential application for a mutual distributed ledger.

This ranges from wholesale insurance to other processes such as time stamping, regulatory reporting, archiving, know your customer (KYC) systems and identity systems.

The Science Bit

Diving into a description of blockchain technology, Mainelli said the distributed ledger approach uses two techniques from computing: hashing and cryptography.

With hashing you can take any document and put it into a computer and come out with a unique digital signature for that document containing a line of characters and numbers, he explained.

Cryptography actually encrypts the document until the key is produced to decrypt it, Mainelli added.

What makes the transaction really secure is to incorporate a hash from a previous entry into the hash you make for a new entry, he continued, noting that this is where the term chain comes from.

The distributed ledger system is secure, Mainelli affirmed, because a hacker would have to go back to a specific entry and change the hash structures of previous and subsequent transactions. This is believed to be computationally impossible.

Blockchain technology has existed since the 1990s, but it was the 2009 introduction of bitcoins, the cryptocurrency, that actually brought the technology into the publics awareness, he said, noting that bitcoins use a form of blockchain technology.

In a real-life example of the security of a shared ledger system, Mainelli said, the bitcoin system has not been broken in eight years, even with its huge monetary value of about $20 billion at the end of April 2017.

Hackers have succeeded in stealing coins from online wallets and exchanges, but the bitcoin ledger never has been knowingly violated.

In case youre wondering where the block in blockchain came from, Mainelli explained that bitcoin transactions are processed in batches called blocks, although many of the new emerging distributed ledger chains are not using blocks.

However, along with the technology, the name blockchain appears to be here to stay.

A version of this article first appeared in Insurance Journals sister publication, Carrier Management.

Related:

Topics InsurTech Tech Market London
AmTrust named one of its executives focused on merger as its new chief financial officer.

Adam Karkowsky has served as AmTrusts executive vice president for Strategic Development and Mergers & Acquisitions since March 2011. Hell replace Ronald Pipoly Jr., who has served as CFO role since 2005.

In Karkowskys previous role, he directed AmTrusts strategic expansion both in the U.S. and internationally. As CFO, hell be based at AmTrusts New York City headquarters.

In March, the New York-based insurer delayed its 2016 annual report by a few weeks in order to conduct an audit and restate financial statements for the year as well as related disclosures for 2014 and 2015. Those restatements led to a 7.2 percent decline of net income attributable to common stockholders in 2014 and an 11.2 percent drop in 2015. AmTrust said the reports of its former independent auditor BDO USA were at issue. The company has since said it has boosted its internal financial controls, and created a chief accounting officer position.

Recently, the family of AmTrust Chairman and CEO Barry Zyskind and director George Karfunkel injected $300 million into the company for new shares in a private placement in an effort to stabilize AmTrust, as its market capitalization dropped by about half so far this year ($2.1 billion.)

The Securities and Exchange Commission is also reportedly investigating AmTrusts accounting.

Source: AmTrust Financial Services
Fatal workplace shootings, like the one Monday in Orlando, Florida, are ticking upward in the United States, government statistics show.

Revenge against an employer, romantic partner or co-workers often is the motive, experts say. Reports of workplace violence are quick to spread across social media.

It really all boils down pretty much to the same issues: A person wants to feel that they have more control, they want to have more power, said threat assessment expert Michael Corcoran. What are seeing when this happens is it gets played up more, so they say, Ah OK, thats an alternative.

What has changed in recent years is the willingness of employers to set up systems to monitor people who might be threats, experts said.

A lone gunman on Monday returned with a semi-automatic pistol to the Orlando awning factory where he was fired in April and methodically killed five people, then himself, the Orange County sheriff said.

Sheriff Jerry Demings identified the shooter as John Robert Neumann Jr., a 45-year-old Army veteran. Authorities had confronted him once before at the Fiamma Inc. awning factory, when he was accused of battering a co-worker in June 2014. But after interviewing both men involved, deputies filed no charges, Demings said. That co-worker was not among Mondays victims, the sheriff said.

The most recent records by the Bureau of Labor Statistics say workplace homicides rose by 2 percent to 417 cases in 2015, with shootings increasing by 15 percent. The 354 shootings in 2015 represent the first increase since 2012.

Identifying people with concerning behavior is key for virtually any company, experts said. That means setting up an interdisciplinary threat assessment team of company managers and, sometimes, local law enforcement, to look at and perhaps track workers who were terminated or suspended, said Matthew W. Doherty, senior vice president for threat and violence risk management at Hillard Heintze.

Anybody that employs anybody in the U.S. should have one, said Doherty, a retired special agent who was in charge of the Secret Services Threat Assessment Center.

He noted that Aaron Alexis, killed in a gunfight with police after he had killed 12 people at Washington Navy Yard in 2013, was well known for his bizarre behavior. Several of the victims families and survivors filed millions of dollars in lawsuits against the companies overseeing Alexis work. The lawsuits allege that the companies were aware of Alexis troubling behavior, including that he heard voices, believed he had a chip implanted in his head and thought people were following him.

He was of concern to almost everyone in the workplace, Doherty said. Of Mondays shooting at Fiamma Inc., he said, Id be very curious in this case if they followed security industry best practices for monitoring this persons behavior.

Theres a change in some quarters on how to react.

See something, say something is kind of tiresome, said active shooter prevention expert and author Chris Grollnek. You see out-of-ordinary behavior, make a quick note. And if youre in a bad situation, its get up, get out. There is no more hiding under a desk.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics USA Commercial Lines Business Insurance
A federal judge may tap attorney and longtime compensation adviser Kenneth Feinberg to oversee claims for nearly $1 billion that Takata Corp. will pay out to victims of defective air bag inflators linked to numerous deaths and injuries, court officials said on Monday.

In April, U.S. District Judge George Caram Steeh said he planned to name former Federal Bureau of Investigation director Robert Mueller to oversee the Takata settlement funds. But Mueller resigned from his law firm last month to head the Justice Departments probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election and told Steeh he could no longer accept the Takata assignment.

Takata, which is based in Tokyo, is one of the worlds largest automotive suppliers. It pleaded guilty in February in federal court in Detroit to fraud charges as part of a settlement agreement with the U.S. government over massive recalls stemming from the faulty air bag inflators.

The devices can explode with excessive force, unleashing metal shrapnel inside cars and trucks. They have been blamed for at least 16 deaths and more than 180 injuries worldwide.

The Takata settlement includes a $25 million criminal fine, $125 million in victim compensation and $850 million to compensate automakers who have suffered losses from massive recalls.

The Justice Department in January recommended Feinberg to oversee the Takata settlement payout. A specialist in mediation and dispute resolution, he previously oversaw the Sept. 11 attacks compensation fund, the BP oil spill fund and compensation paid by General Motors Co to victims of its faulty ignition switches.

Feinberg said Monday he had not spoken recently to Judge Steeh and was unaware of any decision on who will serve as the monitor. Steeh has made no final decision on who will serve as monitor following Muellers withdrawal, his office said Monday.

Bob Mueller took an extraordinary monetary loss to drop this assignment and willingly gave up fees that would have amounted to millions of dollars to accept the Justice Departments Special Counsel appointment, Steeh said in a statement.

Inflator recalls began around 2008 and involve around 100 million inflators around the world used in vehicles made by 19 automakers, including Honda Motor Co (7267.T), Volkswagen AG and GM.

Takata is seeking financial backers as it faces potentially billions of dollars in recall-associated costs.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Tom Brown)

Topics Talent
The Georgia Supreme Court says a man who was severely beaten while leaving Six Flags Over Georgia a decade ago can collect $35 million in legal damages from the amusement park and his attackers.

The ruling by Georgias high court Monday reverses an appeals courts decision to throw out the damage award and order a new trial in the lawsuit by Joshua Martin. Case evidence showed Martin was attacked by a mob while waiting for a bus to leave the theme park in July 2007. His lawyers say Martin suffered permanent brain damage.

Six Flags said it wasnt liable because the beating didnt happen on its property. The Supreme Court unanimously rejected that argument, but ordered a new hearing on what portion of the damages Six Flags must pay.

Topics Legislation Georgia
Some coastal residents always put off emergency preparations until storm clouds loom on the horizon. The National Hurricane Center is going to try giving those people a deadline this year, issuing experimental advisories showing when tropical-storm force winds may hit particular communities to help them understand when its too late to put up storm shutters or evacuate.

The forecasters advisories will be fueled by more data than ever, thanks to new weather satellites and an expanded network of underwater gliders.

On the official start of hurricane season, June 1, Florida Gov. Rick Scott joined Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly at the Miami center to encourage residents to prepare and heed warnings.

New Advisory

To help people understand when storm preparations should be completed, the hurricane center will experiment with advisories showing the times when sustained tropical-storm force winds are estimated to hit land. If a tropical disturbance nears shore, forecasters also could post advisories or warnings before it develops into a tropical depression or named storm.

Floridas emergency management director, Bryan Koon, said the new advisories could help validate evacuation orders for people who complain about hype around approaching storms.

We can say, `Listen, this is when things are going to get bad in your area, Koon said. We can also use that to say, `A few hours ahead of that, stores are going to close, roads are going to get jam-packed with people, we might have to shut down power substations.

Storm surge watches and warnings will be issued this year when U.S. coastlines are at risk for life-threatening flooding.

___

Shrinking Cone

The uncertainty cone showing a storms projected path shrinks again this year, with continued improvements in track forecasts. Its still the best-known advisory released by the hurricane center, but forecasters continue to emphasize individual hazards away from the center of a storm.

On his last day as hurricane center director before returning to The Weather Channel, Rick Knabb said better data and better computer models help create a narrower cone. But that can give a false sense of security to areas outside the cone.

Hurricane watches and warnings can extend well outside the cone. In fact, the hurricane itself can be much larger than the width of the cone, Knabb said. So clearly a hurricane is not just a point on the map.

Forecasters will add an outline of a storms wind field to the graphic to help people see hurricane impacts beyond the cone, Knabb said.

___

Intensity Forecasts

Predicting the intensity of a storm remains a challenge. Apart from improving public communications about storm hazards, the hurricane center also has been working to improve its forecasts predicting when and how much a storm will strengthen.

Its difficult to measure whats happening around a hurricanes eye  where the strongest winds swirl  or how it interacts with the ocean and the atmosphere, and that affects the accuracy of storm intensity forecasts, said Dan Brown, a senior hurricane specialist at the hurricane center in Miami.

Its a combination of everything, but oftentimes, its understanding what the structure of the storm is and getting that right when the computer models are first run, Brown said.

___

Forecasting Technology

More and better data will be streaming into those models this year, which forecasters hope will help improve their predictions for a hurricanes intensity.

NASA launched eight mini-satellites in December to measure surface winds deep in the hearts of hurricanes. Unlike other weather satellites, the $157 million Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System can give scientists a clear look into a hurricanes eye even through walls of clouds and rain.

Forecasters said the $1 billion GOES-16 weather satellite, launched in November, is as significant an upgrade as switching to high-definition television, with more detailed images and more channels looking at storms.

To keep up with higher resolution forecast models, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has upgraded the Doppler radar on its hurricane hunter aircraft to give scientists a more detailed look at hurricane winds.

NOAA again will launch four underwater gliders from Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands to collect ocean data, and this summer the agency will expand its data pool by collaborating with universities and research institutions in the U.S. and Bermuda that have up to 20 their own gliders in the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic.

Gustavo Goni, director of the physical oceanography division at NOAAs Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, said glider data has helped improve the models understanding of the ocean. He added that we want to put all these efforts together to make a better analysis.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Catastrophe Natural Disasters USA Windstorm Hurricane
San Francisco-based CAL Insurance & Associates Inc. has named John M. Ryan director of employee benefits advisory.

Ryan has experience working with middle-market businesses to design employee benefits program offerings.

He was a senior director in employee benefits consulting for NFP prior to joining CAL. He was with Northwestern Mutual before that.

CAL Insurance is an independent insurance agency in San Francisco.
Hub International Ltd. has acquired the assets of Elk Grove, Calif. The Ponce de Leon Insurance Group Inc., dba Colton Insurance Associates.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The Colton team will join Hubs Sacramento operations reporting to Rob McVicar, executive vice president of HUB California.

Colton specializes in personal lines insurance solutions.

Chicago, Ill.-based Hub is an insurance brokerage that provides property/casualty, life and health, employee benefits, investment and risk management products and services.

Topics Mergers & Acquisitions California
A Southern California jury awarded $2 million to the granddaughter of Trinity Broadcasting Network founders Jan and Paul Crouch, finding that her grandmother acted outrageously in refusing to report the girls sexual assault by an employee.

Carra Crouch, now 24, says she was assaulted when she was 13 by a 30-year-old Trinity employee in an Atlanta hotel room. But when she reported it to Jan Crouch, the employee was fired and the assault kept quiet, Carra Crouch said.

This week, the jury in Santa Ana awarded her $1 million for past emotional damage and $1 million for future pain and suffering.

Trinity attorney Michael King said after the verdict that the organization disagrees and plans to appeal. Paul and Jan Crouch both died in the five years since the lawsuit was first filed, but they denied the allegations after the lawsuit was first filed.

Both sides agree that during Trinity Broadcastings 2006 Praise-a-Thon fundraiser, Carra Crouch and the man smoked a cigarette together, drank alcohol together, and watched a movie on a bed in her room. But Carra Crouch and her attorneys allege the man fondled her, tried to kiss her, and gave her a glass of water that she believed was laced with a drug. She suspected she had been raped when she awoke.

The lawsuit says that when Carra Crouch reported the incident to her grandmother back in California, Jan Crouch berated her and screamed its your fault.

The lawsuit said that as an ordained minister, Jan Crouch was required to report potential sexual abuse to authorities.

King argued during trial that Carra Crouch did not approach her grandmother as a minister. The jury agreed but said her actions were still egregious.

They determined that her behavior in the way that she treated Carra qualified as outrageous conduct, plaintiffs attorney David Keesling told The Associated Press by phone.

The jury found that Trinity Christian Center, the nonprofit parent of TBN, was on the hook for $900,000 because Jan Crouch was 45 percent responsible for her granddaughters suffering.

This has been going on since I was 18, so that has consumed my entire adult life, she said. Its exciting that theyre being held accountable for at least part of the blame.

The jury also found that Carra Crouchs mother and the Trinity employee were also partially responsible, but neither was named in the lawsuit.

Keesling said a court would most likely revisit the issue later to determine how the money should be paid.

Carra Crouch told reporters outside court that she felt huge relief after such a long lawsuit.

The Associated Press doesnt normally identify the victims of possible sexual crimes. But Carra Crouch has spoken openly and publicly about the incident, and through her attorney approved the use of her name.

The Crouches founded TBN in 1973 and built it into an international Christian empire that beams prosperity gospel programming, which promises that if the faithful sacrifice for their belief, God will reward them with material wealth. The opulent sets and outfits on their broadcasts showed off the fruits of that wealth.

Their TV empire started showing cracks about five years ago, with allegations from members of their large extended family of financial shenanigans including lavish spending on private jets and mansions.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics California
When experimenters or researchers are looking for data, it is often impossible to measure every individual data point in a population. However, statistical methods allow for inferences about a population by analyzing the results of a smaller sample extracted from that population. There are several methods of sampling.

Stratified random sampling is one common method that is used by researchers because it enables them to obtain a sample population that best represents the entire population being studied, making sure that each subgroup of interest is represented. All the same, this method of research is not without its disadvantages.

Key Takeaways Stratified random sampling allows researchers to obtain a sample population that best represents the entire population being studied by dividing it into subgroups called strata.

This method of statistical sampling, however, cannot be used in every study design or with every data set.

Stratified random sampling differs from simple random sampling, which involves the random selection of data from an entire population, so each possible sample is equally likely to occur.

Stratified Random Sampling: An Overview

Stratified random sampling involves first dividing a population into subpopulations and then applying random sampling methods to each subpopulation to form a test group. A disadvantage is when researchers can't classify every member of the population into a subgroup.

Stratified random sampling is different from simple random sampling, which involves the random selection of data from the entire population so that each possible sample is equally likely to occur. In contrast, stratified random sampling divides the population into smaller groups, or strata, based on shared characteristics. A random sample is taken from each stratum in direct proportion to the size of the stratum compared to the population.

Stratified Random Sampling Example

The following is an example of stratified random sampling:

Researchers are performing a study designed to evaluate the political leanings of economics students at a major university. The researchers want to ensure the random sample best approximates the student population, including gender, undergraduates, and graduate students. The total population in the study is 1,000 students and from there, subgroups are created as shown below.

Total population = 1,000

Researchers would assign every economics student at the university to one of four subpopulations: male undergraduate, female undergraduate, male graduate, and female graduate. Researchers would next count how many students from each subgroup make up the total population of 1,000 students. From there, researchers calculate each subgroup's percentage representation of the total population.

Subgroups:

Male undergraduates = 450 students (out of 100) or 45% of the population

Female undergraduates = 200 students or 20%

Male graduate students = 200 students or 20%

Female graduate students = 150 students or 15%

Random sampling of each subpopulation is done, based on its representation within the population as a whole. Since male undergraduates are 45% of the population, 45 male undergraduates are randomly chosen out of that subgroup. Because male graduates make up only 20% of the population, 20 are selected for the sample, and so on.

While stratified random sampling accurately reflects the population being studied, conditions that need to be met mean this method can't be used in every study.

Advantages of Stratified Random Sampling

Stratified random sampling has advantages when compared to simple random sampling.

Accurately Reflects Population Studied

Stratified random sampling accurately reflects the population being studied because researchers are stratifying the entire population before applying random sampling methods. In short, it ensures each subgroup within the population receives proper representation within the sample. As a result, stratified random sampling provides better coverage of the population since the researchers have control over the subgroups to ensure all of them are represented in the sampling.

With simple random sampling, there isn't any guarantee that any particular subgroup or type of person is chosen. In our earlier example of the university students, using simple random sampling to procure a sample of 100 from the population might result in the selection of only 25 male undergraduates or only 25% of the total population. Also, 35 female graduate students might be selected (35% of the population) resulting in under-representation of male undergraduates and over-representation of female graduate students. Any errors in the representation of the population have the potential to diminish the accuracy of the study.

Disadvantages of Stratified Random Sampling

Stratified random sampling also presents researchers with a disadvantage.

Can't Be Used in All Studies

Unfortunately, this method of research cannot be used in every study. The method's disadvantage is that several conditions must be met for it to be used properly. Researchers must identify every member of a population being studied and classify each of them into one, and only one, subpopulation. As a result, stratified random sampling is disadvantageous when researchers can't confidently classify every member of the population into a subgroup. Also, finding an exhaustive and definitive list of an entire population can be challenging.

Overlapping can be an issue if there are subjects that fall into multiple subgroups. When simple random sampling is performed, those who are in multiple subgroups are more likely to be chosen. The result could be a misrepresentation or inaccurate reflection of the population.

The above example makes it easy: Undergraduate, graduate, male, and female are clearly defined groups. In other situations, however, it might be far more difficult. Imagine incorporating characteristics such as race, ethnicity, or religion. The sorting process becomes more difficult, rendering stratified random sampling an ineffective and less than ideal method.
SIMPLE IRA vs. Traditional IRA: An Overview

A traditional IRA can be set up by any person who has earned income and wants a tax-advantaged way to save for retirement. A SIMPLE IRA is designed to be opened by a small business owner on behalf of up to 100 employees, including the owner if that person is a sole proprietor.

Only the owner of a traditional IRA makes contributions to the account. Both the employee and the employer make contributions to a SIMPLE IRA, which stands for Savings Incentive Match Plan for Employees.

Key Takeaways Traditional IRAs are set up by individuals, while SIMPLE IRAs are set up by small business owners for employees and for themselves.

Traditional IRA contributions are made by the individual only, but SIMPLE IRA contributions can be from both an employee and an employer.

The key requirement for a traditional IRA is that you have earned income during the year, while SIMPLE IRAs may have other restrictions, put in place by the small business owner.

For 2022, a traditional IRA has a $6,000 annual contribution limit. For 2023, a traditional IRA has a $6,500 annual contribution limit. There is also a $1,000 catch-up contribution limit for those 50 years old and older.

For 2022, the SIMPLE IRA limit is $14,000. For 2023, the SIMPLE IRA limit is $15,500. There is also a catch-up contribution limit for SIMPLE IRAs of $3,000 in 2022 and $3,500 in 2023.

SIMPLE IRA

Contributing to a traditional IRA requires only that a person has earned income during the year. By contrast, small business owners who open SIMPLE IRAs for their employees may make additional stipulations about who can participate. Employee contributions to a SIMPLE IRA are not tax-deductible.

SIMPLE IRA contributions are made before income taxes are deducted. Contributions to SIMPLE IRAs reduce taxable income, but they are not deductible on your tax returns as they do not appear in your taxable income. However, sole proprietors may deduct both salary reduction contributions and matching contributions, using Form 1040.

With a SIMPLE IRA, an employee may contribute up to $14,000 in 2022 and $15,500 in 2023. For those who are 50 years or older, the IRS catch-up provision allows an additional $3,000 in 2022 and $3,500 in 2023.

The SIMPLE IRA contributions can be either matched dollar for dollar by the employer, up to 3% of the employees compensation, or the employers contribution can be a fixed amount of 2% of the employees compensation.

Both traditional and SIMPLE IRAs allow for deferment of income tax on amounts contributed to the plans until they are dispersed, as well as on any earnings as long as they remain in the plans.

Traditional IRA

For traditional IRAs, the maximum allowable contribution for 2022 is the smaller of $6,000 (or $7,000 for those 50 and older) or the person's total income for the year. This contribution limit in 2023 is the smaller of $6,500 (or $7,500 for those 50 and older) or the person's total income for the year.

While employee contributions to a SIMPLE IRA are not deductible, contributions to a traditional IRA can be tax-deductible. That is, contributions to traditional IRAs are made on a pre-tax basis. The tax deduction is taken that year. Taxes will be due when the money is withdrawn, presumably after the person retires.

This is different from a Roth IRA, which is funded with after-tax money. For Roth IRAs, the money can be withdrawn tax-free during retirement. On the downside, there is no immediate tax deductibility of Roth IRA contributions.

For a SIMPLE IRA, with a few exceptions, such as for people over age 59, the penalty rises from 10% to 25% if the money is withdrawn within two years of an employer making the first deposit.

Both traditional and SIMPLE IRAs incur penalties for early distribution of funds10%unless the money is withdrawn for specific hardship reasons or for certain exceptions defined by the IRS. In any case, any income tax due must be paid on the amount withdrawn.

SIMPLE IRA vs. Traditional IRA

Two of the most common types of IRAs are the SIMPLE and the traditional retirement accounts. Though both allow savers to put money aside for retirement, there are widely varying rules on how the accounts are managed and rules of maintenance.

SIMPLE IRA Offered by employers.

Must earn a certain amount of money each year to contribute.

Employer contributions are required.

In 2023, contribution limit is $15,500.

In 2023, catch-up contribution limit is an additional $3,500.

Can be used by small business owners and their employees (as long as they meet other eligibility requirements) Traditional IRA Not offered by employers.

Must be under 70.5 years old and have earned income to contribute.

No employer contributions.

In 2023, contribution limit is $6,500.

In 2023, catch-up contribution limit is an additional $1,000.

Can be used by anyone meeting age and earned income eligibility requirements).

Special Considerations

A law signed in January 2020 called the SECURE Act allows more employers to offer annuities as investment options within 401(k) plans. Under the Act, insurance companies, not employers, will be responsible for offering suitable investment choices.

The act also means that for multiple employer plans, in which small businesses can join together to provide retirement plans for employees, employers no longer have to share a common characteristic, such as being in the same industry.

Also, long-term part-time workers can now be eligible for plans. The threshold for eligibility is now one full year with 1,000 hours worked or three consecutive years of at least 500 hours.

Lastly, under the act, small business employers who automatically enroll workers in their retirement plan are eligible for a tax credit to offset the costs of starting a 401(k) plan or SIMPLE IRA plan with auto-enrollment, on top of the start-up credit they already receive.

What Are the Contribution Limits for a Traditional IRA and a Roth IRA? The annual contribution limit for both IRAs is $6,000 in 2022 and $6,500 in 2023. If you are 50 and older, you can contribute an additional $1,000.

What Is the Contribution Limit for a SIMPLE IRA? The annual contribution limit for a SIMPLE IRA in 2022 is $14,000 and in 2023 is $15,500. In 2022, a $3,000 catch-up amount is allowed if you are 50 or older. In 2023, this catch-up contribution limit is $3,500.

What Is the Difference Between a Traditional IRA and a Roth IRA? The primary difference between a traditional IRA and a Roth IRA is how they are taxed. A traditional IRA is funded with pre-tax dollars and taxed when withdrawals are made. A Roth IRA is funded with after-tax dollars and is not taxed when withdrawals are made.

The Bottom Line

Investors and savers have many options when planning for their retirement. Two very common options are to contribute into a SIMPLE IRA or traditional IRA. A SIMPLE IRA is geared towards small business owners and their employees, while anyone meeting age and earned income requirements can contribute into a traditional IRA. Each type of account has different contribution limits and eligibility requirements.
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Wind River, a subsidiary of Intel and software developer for the IoT, has announced that it will join with the Transportation Research Center (TRC), Ohio State University (OSU), and the City of Dublin, Ohio to advance smart, connected, and autonomous vehicle technologies.

The planned collaboration, which is focused around the Columbus region in central Ohio, has the stated goals of accelerating learning in the automotive community, and developing strategies and technologies that safely and securely increase the pace, quality, development, testing, and deployment of self-driving and other connected vehicle technologies.

The Central Ohio region is an emerging hub for smart city and smart vehicle technologies, and our unique ensemble approachuniting minds from academia, the public sector, and the tech industrycan set a standard for how communities can innovate mobility and use the learnings to impact vehicle development and deployment best practices, said Marques McCammon, general manager, Connected Vehicle Solutions, Wind River. To realize autonomous driving for the masses, a variety of players must come together with an aligned understanding.

The group said it is planning to test emerging technologies to discover how a symbiotic relationship between vehicles and infrastructure can improve the lives of community residents. In addition to the self-driving cars themselves, the group plans to test technologies such as vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication, connected vehicle cockpit software, smart sensing and mapping, and the associated data collection. With Ohio State students, researchers, and faculty to play a key role, the collaboration is also intended to further develop the next generation of expert automotive minds.

The key objective for the project's initial phase includes joint development and testing of autonomous vehicles or rolling laboratories. Applying its expertise from the aerospace and defense, industrial, and automotive industries, Wind River plans to spearhead the project development and contribute its proven software for safety-critical systems.

The first autonomous vehicle will be on the highway before the last driver vehicle comes off. So, really, part of the challenge is: how do you mix the two? We can mix the two, on purpose in a safe and controlled environment here, said Mark-Tami Hotta, CEO and president, Transportation Research Center. Smart mobility, with connected vehicles and enhanced infrastructures, offers greater accessibility and mobility options, reduced road congestion, and more efficient use of natural resources.

Edited by Alicia Young
Apple has finally revealed the iOS 11 update to the world. While it wont be out for public until Fall 2017, weve got our hands on the iOS 11 beta for iPhone and iPad and weve been having fun digging around.

If youre curious about all the new iOS 11 features and changes and how exactly they work, just keep reading.

Top New iOS 11 Features and Changes

1. Redesigned Lock Screen

While it might not look like it, the Lock screen has been redesigned in iOS 11. If you dont have Touch ID or a passcode set up, youll be able to swipe up to unlock your device. Both Lock screen and Notification Center have been merged and behave in the same way.

So instead of swiping down from the top of the screen, you swipe up from the middle of the Lock screen to reveal all notifications.

2. Redesigned Notification Center

When youre in an app and you swipe down, youll see a new, redesigned Notification Center that will show the current notifications and the Now Playing card. To view all notifications, you need to swipe up.

Granted, this is a bit confusing and I hope Apple iterates on this approach before the final release.

3. New Lock screen Now Playing

When youre playing something, it now shows up as a card in the Lock screen instead of taking over the entire screen.

4. Redesigned Control Center

One of our biggest wishes has come true. Apple has finally redesigned Control Center. Now, its back to being just one page. Design wise, each tile has a dark background. There are some tiles that can be expanded to reveal more functionality. Like the toggles tile and the Now Playing tile.

When you 3D Touch the Now Playing tile, youll get access to audio outputs. The toggles tiles shows more toggles when expanded, including Cellular Data and Personal Hotspot.

5. Customizable Control Center

And it gets better. Control Center is customizable. Go to Settings -> Control Center and youll be able to add and remove several actions like Notes shortcut, Alarms, Magnifier and so on.

6. New Unlock Animation

When you unlock your device by pressing on the Home button, the Lock Screen now pushes out by sliding up to reveal the Home Screen.

7. New Status Bar Icons

One of the subtle changes is in the Status bar. Instead of the bubbles, you now see a classic Nokia style cell range icon. The location icon is also hollow and the battery icon looks slightly different and more rounded.

8. Screen Recording

One of the customizable toggles in Control Center is for Screen Recording. Tap on it and youll be able to start recording the screen. Tap on the blue bar on top to bring up the popup to stop recording. The video file is saved in Photos app.

9. Redesigned iMessage Apps Drawer

Apple is trying to fix the iMessage apps discovery and usability problems by integrating a small, horizontal scrolling apps bar right in the bottom of the conversation view. Tap on an app icon to directly jump into the iMessage app. Tap and hold on the bar for a larger view of the apps, along with their names.

10. Redesigned Messages App

Like many other default apps, Messages app sees a redesign that puts a big bold Messages tag at the top of the messages view. Theres update in typography as well, with titles being a lot bolder across the app.

11. Redesigned Calculator App and Icon

Calculator apps redesign makes it look more like the circular keypad in the Phone app. The new icon has a retro feel to it.

12. Do Not Disturb While Driving

Do Not Disturb While Driving is a new feature that automatically engages when youre in a car. Its built on top of Do Not Disturb so it automatically disables notifications from everyone except your Favorite contacts. When someone tries to contact you via iMessage, theyll get a canned reply that youre currently driving.

13. Siri Intelligence Throughout iOS 11

It looks like Siri is going to be everywhere on iOS 11, paying attention to things you do in apps like Safari and suggesting other actions. For example, it can prompt you to create a calendar event for a concert you just booked in Safari.

14. Same Siri For All Devices

Apple will now sync your personal data and customizations between all your devices (in a private and encrypted manner) so that the Siri experience across all devices is similar.

15. Siris Voice Is More Natural

Apple has made improvements in Siris speech engine to make it sound more natural and less robotic.

16. New Male Siri Voice

Theres a new male Siri voice as well, just as natural sounding.

17. New Siri Visual UI

Siris UI has also been slightly tweaked. Theres more space everywhere, and the replies are in bold and Siri now presents multiple results instead of just one.

Plus, the text is now left-aligned. Theres also an always animating Siri orb in the bottom and a much clearer, Tap to Edit button that lets you change your command.

18. Translation Feature in Siri

While its in Beta, Siri is bringing translation support for Chinese, French, German, and Italian, and Spanish.

19. Ability To Type To Siri

If you go to General -> Accessibility -> Siri and turn on Type to Siri, youll now get a type only UI in Siri. Unlike Google Assistant, theres no option to have both voice and typing feature side-by-side. Which is a shame.

20. Lists and QR Code Support in SiriKit

Siri can now support two more kinds of apps  lists and QR Codes. Youll be able to ask Siri to display your QR code from an app so that your friend can scan it. And youll be able to add things to a to-do list app like Todoist right from Siri.

21. App Store Redesign

App Store sees its first redesign since it launched 9 years back. The apps redesign looks like the Music app, with big cards and horizontal swiping lists.

22. Today Tab in App Store

Along with a new tab for Apps and Games, theres an entirely new Today tab. This will be a great way for users to discover new apps, videos, in-app purchases, features and more everyday.

23. Person to Person Apple Pay

Apple will now let users pay each other using Apple Pay. It works using the iMessage app thats integrated in iMessage threads. Youll be able to enter the amount, pay from your connected card and authenticate using Touch ID.

24. Apple Pay Cash

When you recieve money using Apple Pay, it will go to your Apple Pay cash. You can use this wallet balance to pay for apps, to other users or to transfer to your bank.

25. Apple Music Friends Network

Apple Music now lets you have your own public profile that people can follow. When youre in the For You tab, youll see icons for people who have listened to or liked the songs and albums. So you have an idea what your friends are listening to.

26. Photos App Redesign

Photos app also sees a minor redesign like the Messages and Notes apps.

27. Memories UI and Technology Overhaul

The Memories tab has been overhauled in UI and the technology. Memories engine is now much smarter and will automatically create videos for your pets, your kids and more. They also have a new style when it comes to text.

28. Portrait Memories Videos

Memories videos are generated intelligently and just like Snapchats Spectacles, theyll automatically adjust themselves when you switch from landscape to portrait mode.

29. Live Photos Effects: Loop, Bounce, Long Exposure

To add an effect to a Live Photo, just swipe up and select one from the Effects left. There are three cool effects. Loop lets you loop the effect like a GIF. Bounce adds a reverse effect that looks like a Boomerang. Long Exposure does a really cool thing that adds long exposure effect to the moving parts of the photo, while the background stays still.

30. Live Photo Editing: Trim, Mute, Key Photo

When viewing a Live Photo, tap the Edit button. Youll now see all frames in the Live Photo in bottom. Select a frame and tap on Make Key Photo to make it the main image. To mute the Live Photo, tap on the speaker in the top-left. To trim a Live Photo, grab the handles at either side of the frames and pull them in.

31. Indoor Mapping in Maps App

Maps app brings indoor mapping for hundreds of Malls across the world. Theyll also be adding Airpots in future.

32. Lane Guidance in Maps App

When youre navigating in Maps, youll now also get lane guidance for making the turns.

33. New Files App Replaces iCloud Drive

Files replaces the iCloud Drive as the preinstalled app when you update to iOS 11 on iPhone and iPad. Files app gives you access to files on your device, along with services like iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Box and more.

The app lets you create folders to manage your file structure. Theres tagging support as well.

34. Markup Screenshots

When you take a screenshot on iPhone or iPad, youll see a preview for it in the bottom-left corner. Tap on it and youll be able to mark it with a doodle, annotation, text, signature and more. When done, you can save it to Photos or share it to any app using the Share sheet.

35. Makeshift Dark Mode Using Smart Invert Colors Feature

Theres a new setting in Accessibility -> Display Accommodations -> Invert Colors called Smart Invert. It inverts the colors for just the UI elements and text and not images and rich media. So what you end up with is a version of a dark mode, especially in apps like Settings (but it doesnt work so well across the OS).

36. iPad: The Dock

Theres a new, Mac style floating Dock on the iPad. You can now add more than 6 icons here. And your recent apps and Continuity apps show up in the far right edge.

37. iPad: New Slide Over

Instead of swiping in from the right edge to bring up Side Over, you now swipe up when youre in an app to bring up the Dock. Tap on an app in the dock and bring it up to expand it as a floating bubble. You can dock it to the left/right edge. Or swipe it away.

38. iPad: New Multitasking System

To actually dock an app to the right/left side of the running up, bring up the Dock, and drag an app icon to the far edge of the screen till you see the dark edge.

Then drop the app. Use the handle bar to adjust the width.

39. iPad: New App Switcher

Swipe all the way up from the bottom of the screen, double click the Home button or swipe up using four fingers to reveal the new App Switcher. This now integrates apps, spaces, Dock and even Control Center. Tap and hold on apps or spaces to get the option to close them.

40. iPad: Drag and Drop

When two apps are open side by side, youll be able to drag text, links, images and files between the two apps.

41. iPad: Handwriting Recognition in Notes App

When you write using Apple Pencil in Notes app, Apple will be able to scan the text and index it in Spotlight so youll be able to get back to your handwritten notes using Search. We dont know if other features like text export are supported yet. This feature works over iCloud so you can even search your handwritten notes from your iPhone.

42. iPad: Unlock with Apple Pencil

On the Lock Screen, just tap with your Apple Pencil to open your most recently used note in Notes app.

43. iPad: QuickType Keyboard Flick Gesture

On the iPad keyboard, just swipe down any key to type the alternative character.

44. iPad: Inline Drawing

In Notes and Mail app, just start doodling with the Apple Pencil to create a sketch.

45. One Handed Keyboard

iPhone 6 and above users can tap and hold the Globe key to dock the keyboard either to the left/right side of the screen, making it easier to type with one hand.

46. Redesigned Storage Management Section

Storage and Cloud Usage section in Settings is now renamed to iPhone Storage. It has a new UI that shows a graph of storage space by apps, photos, media and other.

46. Offload Unused Apps

A new feature in iPhone Storage section automatically deletes old and unused apps when youre low on storage. All of the apps data and documents are saved.

47. Unified Siri and Search Section

Theres a new Siri & Search section in Settings tab that unifies both Siri and Search sections.

48. New Accounts and Passwords Section

Theres a new section called Accounts & Passwords that lists all your Mail and Contacts accounts, along with all the passwords saved on the device.

49. AirPods Settings

iOS 11 now lets you customize actions for individual AirPod. So you can double tab left one for Siri and right one for Play/Pause. Theres also new actions for Next and Previous tracks.

50. Automatic Setup

When you buy a new iPhone running iOS 11, youll be able to copy over passwords, data and apps easily from your old device. During setup, youll see the Automatic Setup section. At that time, just bring your old iPhone closer to the new one to start the transfer.

51. New App Store and iTunes Store Icons

52. New Passcode UI

The new passcode UI has buttons without borders and bolder text.

53. Phone App Redesign

Phone app also gets huge titles in all tabs, bolder titles and the keypad looks like the Passcode.

54. New Spotlight UI Design

Now, when you search for an app in Spotlight, it will show up in the Siri Suggestions box, instead of a list. And right, below youll get autocomplete like search lists.

55. No Labels in Dock

On both the iPhone and iPad, the Dock no longer has labels for apps and folders.

56. Persistent Status Bar for Location Services

Whenever an app is using location in the background, youll see a persistent bar at the top. This is great for spotting when apps like Uber keep using location even after youve left the app. But its not so great for apps like Moves.

57. 32 Bit Apps No Longer Supported

While youll still find them on the App Store, you can no longer install 32 bit apps on iOS 11.

58. No Volume HUD When Playing Videos and Audio

When youre playing a video or audio, you wont see a Volume HUD take over the middle of the screen when you go to change the volume. Other times (and when adjusting the ringer), it still does show up.

59. FLAC Support

You can now play FLAC files in iOS 11 using the built-in media player.

60. Create PDF from Pages (and Mark up)

In Safari, in the Share sheet, theres an option to covert the entire page into a PDF (on both iPhone and iPad). Plus, once coveted, you can start marking it up right there.

61. Quickly Share Screenshots

After taking a screenshot, tap on the preview in the bottom-left corner and then tap on the Share button to quickly send it to a device using AirDrop or to an app like WhatsApp.

62. New Purchases Overlay in App Store

When you got purchase a new app on App Store, youll see an Apple Pay style overlay before you confirm the purchase.

63. Seconds Option in Timer

You can now set Timers in seconds.

64. iMessages in iCloud (with Manual Sync)

iMessages can now live in iCloud and can be the same between all devices. Theres a toggle for it in the Settings and also an option to manually force the sync.

65. New iMessage Effects

There are two new iMessage Effects  Echo and Spotlight.

66. Podcast App Redesign

Just like the App Store, the Podcasts app also sees an Apple Music style redesign.

67. Social Sharing Features in Apple Music

You can now create a profile in Apple Music, and follow people. Others listening recommendations will show up throughout the app.

68. UI Changes in Safari

In Safari, the URL bar is now more spaced out and tabs are more rounded out. Reading List UI also gets the huge headers.

69. Faster Scrolling in Safari

Scrolling in Safari now works the same way it does in the rest of the OS. The inertial scrolling is gone.

70. Create Tables in Notes

Theres a new Tables option in the formatting bar in Notes.

71. Document Scanning in Notes

In Notes, tap the + button and select Scan Documents to scan paper documents in color or gray scale. The borders will be selected automatically but you can always edit them yourself later.

72. Swipe Options in Notes

Swipe in from the right edge to get the option to lock the note, move it or delete it.

73. Pin Notes to Top

Swipe in from the left edge of a note in the list view and tap on the Pin button. It will now always show up at the top of the list.

74. Change Paper Style in Notes

From the Share menu, select Change Paper to get the option to get grid and lined paper options.

75. New Notes Typography

The typography in Notes app is slightly tweaked.

76. GIF Support in Photos App

You can now save and playback GIFs in the Photos app.

77. Create Watch Face from Photos App

When youre viewing a photo, tap on the Share button and select Create Watch Face to make a watch face from the current photo.

78. Auto Answer Calls

This is an accessibility option. Basically, you can tell iOS to automatically answer any call after a set seconds.

79. Mail App Design Updates

Mail app also gets the huge headers and spaced out UI.

80. New Background Refresh Options

You can now select the Background App Refresh to only happen when connecting to Wi-Fi and not to Cellular data.

81. Prevent Cross Site Tracking in Safari

The new Apple feature that prevents sites from following you everywhere you go is enabled by default.

82. New Wallpaper

iOS 11 brings a new beach wallpaper.

83. New Numeric Keypad Design

Theres a new, more button-like rectangular design for the keypad.

84. Disable Aut0 Join Feature by Networks

In Wi-Fi settings, you can now toggle auto-join feature based on each network.

85. Alerts look like Banners

Persistent alerts now look like banners and show up from the top of the screen instead of the middle.

86. Share Wi-Fi Passwords

When a friend of your comes over, and if theyre running iOS 11, youll now be able to log them into your network without them doing anything. When both devices are near, youll get an AirPods style popup asking if youd like them to connect to your network.

87. Family iCloud Sharing

If you have a 200 GB or higher iCloud plan, you can now share it with your Family members.

88. HEVC (H265) Video Support

iOS 11 has officual HEVC support and thats what Apple will use for recording videos, resulting in a 2x compression in size.

89. AirPlay 2

AirPlay 2 is the update to Apples audio stream format. AirPlay 2 now supports multi-room audio.

90. Kannada, Malayalam and Odia keyboards

91. Flashlight for iPads

iPads now get Flashlight controls in Control Center.

92. 3D Touch for Safari Tab Switcher

You can now switch between tabs quickly using 3D Touch.

93. Spotlight Tab in News App

You can now search through the News app.

94. iCloud File Sharing

You can now share files you have stored in iCloud Drive.

95. WebRTC Support

A big deal for the open, web-based audio and video interface format. Safari now supports WebRTC.

95. One Handed Zoom in Maps app

Just like Google Maps, you can now tap and hold with one finger in Apple Maps and swipe up and down to zoom in and out.

96. Scan QR Codes from Camera

https://twitter.com/daytonlowell/status/871859736144207872

Now, just open the Camera app and point to a QR code. iOS 11 will recognize it and if its a Wi-Fi QR code, it will even offer to connect to the network for you.

97. Dictation Works in Hindi

What could be a boon in India, the Dictation (Speech to text) feature now works in Hindi as well.

98. Move Multiple Apps on iPad

Tap and hold on an app and move it, now tap on other apps and youll select them too. Move to another page, release your finger and youll be moving multiple apps.

99. HEIF Replaces JPEG

Just like HEVC, HEIF is an open, compressed format for images. Apple will end up saving half the storage space. When you share photos, theyll go out as JPEG though.

100. New Video Player UI

The new video player UI has a floating view and is dark. There are clearer buttons for Picture in picture and AirPlay.

101. Disable Recent Apps in Dock

From Settings -> Control Center you can now stop recent apps from showing up in the Dock on the iPad.

102. Disable Control Center in Apps

The newer betas also bring back the ability to disable Control Center when youre in an app.

103. Settings for Do Not Disturb while Driving

There are now dedicated settings items for Do Not Disturb while Driving mode. You can decide the auto reply message, and who to allow calls from.

104. New Advanced Settings for Safari

Safaris Settings section adds a new section for Advanced Settings. Youll find experimental features here.

105. AirPlay Button in Music Widget

The Lock screens music widget now has an AirPlay button right there.

106. Better Search in Music App

When you search in the Music app, youll now get smarter results with links to directly search in artists, playlists and more.

107. Files App Share Extension

Theres a new Save to Files extension that lets you add anything to the Files app using the Share sheet.

108. Locations in Files App

Locations section in Files app has been enabled and you can now add sources like Dropbox.

109. Long Press Option for Screenshot Preview

When you tap and hold the screenshot preview, youll now get the familiar Share sheet. So you can now share a screenshot to an app without ever opening the Photos app.

110. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Toggle Behavior Change

In Beta 3, when you tap on the Wi-Fi or Bluetooth toggle, it doesnt actually disable them. It just disconnects from the current network and temporarily disables the process for auto connecting to a new network.

111. Swipe Up to Quit Apps on iPad

You can now swipe up on app previews in the App Switcher to quit apps.

112. AR Mode in Apple Maps App

Apple Maps Flyover feature now works on the ARKit technology. When youre in it, you can move your device to basically fly around a city. Its really cool.

113. Automatically Create Zips When Sharing Folders in Mail app

When you drag a folder from the Files app to the Mail app, it will automatically create a zip from the contents of the folder and attach it to the email.

114. Authentication API for Safari

Safari in iOS 11 has a new authentication API that will make it easier for apps and websites to log users in.

115. Safari View Controller Update

Safari View Controller has been redesigned so that when you 3D Touch a link thats supported in the Safari format, it will no longer show top and bottom toolbars.

116. Content Blockers Work Again

As of iOS 11 beta 3, content blockers for Safari are once again functional.

117. New TV Providers

The TV Providers section in Settings adds new providers like Comcast but right now its just a list item that doesnt go anywhere.

118. iMessage in the Cloud Counter

Theres now a counter that shows how many iMessage are yet to be uploaded to iCloud.

119. Thinner Screen Recording Bar

in Beta 3, the screen recording bar is now thinner, only highlighting the status bar.

120. Control Center Icons Are Colorful

Icons for the flashlight, low power mode and so on now have a colorful tint when theyre available.

121. AirPlay Works with Third Party Apps

As of Beta 3, AirPlay feature now works like it should when it comes to third party apps.

122. Control Center Music Widget Update

Music widget in Control Center now shows proper album art. And when you tap on the widget the source app opens directly.

123. Beta 3 Improves Unified Notifications

Beta 3 removes the extra swipe when youre using Notification Center. Now, the Earlier Today just shows up as a section.

124. Control Center Is More Interactive

Now, when you 3D Touch something like the timer or alarm widget, youll be directly able to swipe up or down to increase or decrease the time. This wasnt possible before Beta 3.

125. Icons in Control Center

The list items in Control Center now have icons.

Stay Tuned!

According to Apple, iOS 11 includes hundreds of new features and refinements, so we wont rest till we find all of them. So dont forget to bookmark this page for the complete list of iOS 11 features.

Your Favorite Features

What are some of your favorite iOS 11 features and changes? Share with us in the comments below.
The Independent Alliance are demanding more free votes within Government if Leo Varadkar is to secure their votes to become Taoiseach next Tuesday, write Daniel McConnell and Elaine Loughlin of the Irish Examiner.

The group  Ministers Shane Ross, Finian McGrath, John Halligan and Kevin Boxer Moran, along with whip Sean Canney  met with the Taoiseach-elect Leo Varadkar in Government Buildings on Tuesday night to discuss their agenda.

The group are also insisting that they are not prepared to depart from the Programme for Government, despite Mr Varadkar's call to merge the Universal Social Charge with PRSI.

They said they would stick to the Programme for Government which commits to the abolition of the much hated Troika tax.

We want to see where he stands on the USC, said Mr Moran. During the hustings the lads were talking about keeping the USC but the Programme for Government talks about phasing it out.

Mr Halligan added: The Programme for Government has to be implemented in its entirety. Part of that was the abolition of the USC and we are sticking by that.

In relation to free votes, Mr Ross said the Government has been strained over arguments around free votes and he said it is the Alliance's policy to have a free hand as much as possible.

We are certainly going to be looking for more free votes as we found that was a sore point last year. Any issues which are not in the Programme for Government and are not bound by Cabinet responsibility should be free votes, Mr Ross said.

Mr Ross said the group are also seeking the swift passage of legislation which has become clogged in the system which he described as unsatisfactory.

On next Tuesday we are going to vote for Leo Varadkar for Taoiseach provided we see they get the priority we feel they deserve, he said.

Tomorrow, the other independent ministers Denis Naughten and Katherine Zappone along with Dr Michael Harty of the Rural Alliance will meet with Mr Varadkar and his advisors.

The meeting between Mr Varadkar and the Alliance lasted for more than 90 minutes. The meeting was described by Mr Varadkar as "positive and constructive".

"The wide ranging discussion lasted for an hour-and-a-half and focused on how to make further progress on commitments in the Programme for a Partnership Government. Particular issues discussed included legislation to prioritise, matters which will be fast tracked, and where free votes will apply," his spokesman said.

All matters discussed are already contained within the Programme for Government. Minister Varadkar will now discuss particular issues raised with the relevant line Ministers in advance of a subsequent meeting with the Independent Alliance before the weekend, he added.

In a separate statement, the Alliance said the meeting was 'very constructive and very satisfactory'.

"The group stressed the need to accelerate various pieces of recent legislation as negotiated in the Programme for Government. Among the issues discussed included Brexit, rural affairs and infrastructure. The group will hold a second meeting with Mr Varadkar at the weekend," their spokeswoman said.

Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin will also be meeting with Mr Varadkar and his team tomorrow.

He too is to say completely insufficient progress has been made in addressing numerous issues contained in the Confidence and Supply arrangement agreed between Fine Gael and Fianna Fail last year.

Among the issues he will raise are the housing crisis, access to health services, the crisis in third level education and broadband.

Mr Martin is also to press for the need to prioritise additional spending on services over tax cuts on a 2:1 basis in October's budget.

We now need to see a major step change in the energy applied by Government to addressing these issues. The Irish people need to see delivery and a marked improvement in access to and quality of services, Mr Martin said.
A prestigious space event is bringing Dr Buzz Aldrin to Cork this summer.

The International Space University (ISU) is hosting its 30th Space Studies Program (SSP17) at Cork Institute of Technology (C.I.T) from June 26 to August 25.

The intense nine week programme will attract 320 international space professionals from 26 countries, including five astronauts, who will examine all aspects of space and its related enterprises; from Engineering, Science, and Applications to Law, Business, Humanities, and Human Performance in outer space.

More than 50 public events will take place across Cork city and county and throughout Ireland to raise awareness of the opportunities and challenges which our exploration of the Universe offers us.

Chancellor of the ISU, Apollo 11 Astronaut and one of the first humans to walk on the moon, Dr Buzz Aldrin will open the 2017 Space Studies Program in Cork on Monday June 26 at an invitation-only ceremony.

Dr Aldrin said: This extensive programme will raise public awareness of the benefits, challenges and inspiration of Space Exploration and other space endeavours. Im looking forward to my time in Cork and hope to experience many of the exciting events while there.

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin to open the 2017 Space Studies Program here in Cork on 26th June 2017.#CIT #SSP17#BuzzAldrin #OurSpaceOurTime pic.twitter.com/3WUT8aeBOF  Paul F (@paul8f) June 5, 2017

Buzz Aldrins public lecture will take place on Tuesday June 27 at 8pm at C.I.T. and tickets are free. They will be available from 12:00 noon tomorrow.

Dr Niall Smith, Head of Research at C.I.T, said that they feel exceptionally honoured that Dr Aldrin has agreed to attend this unique event.

"He was an integral part of the most pioneering space programmes of their time having participated in both the Gemini and Apollo series of missions. He has continued his lifelong association with space in academia and in space engineering and is an ongoing inspiration to all of us," he said.

Tickets to these events are free and will be available from Wednesday June 7 on a first come first served basis here. Other events that are being run in association with CIT Blackrock Castle Observatory and Cork County Libraries are available to book on www.bco.ie/events/ and www.corkcoco.ie/Library

For more see www.ssp17.ie
A decision on the proposed Tara St building  which would be Dublins tallest structure if given the go-ahead  is due next month.

However, in a submission to Dublin City Council, Irish Georgian Society executive director Donough Cahill said the plan is contrary to the councils policy to protect the capitals built heritage.
And warning about the way the Government has spent huge one-off tax bounties in the past  including spending a surge in corporate tax revenues  Seamus Coffey, the new chairman of the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (IFAC) warned the potential 3bn in proceeds from the sale of shares in AIB should go to pay down debt and not be used to pump up levels of spending further.

It was Mr Coffeys first presentation of the watchdogs bulletin since he took over earlier this year from John McHale, who was the first chairman of the watchdog since it was set up to prevent the re-occurrence of the conditions that led to the financial crash.

Some opposition parties have called on the Government to forego paying down the national debt more quickly and use a potential windfall of over 3bn from the part-privatisation of AIB to alleviate the housing crisis. Many business and industry groups have separately called for large increases in capital spending on roads, rail and schools.

However, the watchdog warned the Governments minimalist approach to the EU rules had led to it breaching the ceiling in 2016, though not by a significant amount to trigger sanctions from Brussels. Government plans this year will likely result in a further breach, IFAC said.

Based on Department of Finance estimates, the watchdog numbers suggest that the successor to outgoing Finance Minister Michael Noonan will have little to play with in Octobers budget.

The budget could be the last before the Coalition calls an election. Under EU rules, most of the 1.8bn IFAC estimates is available in so-called fiscal space to the next finance minister is already accounted for.

After extracting 600m to pay for demographic demands of a growing population and 700m to take account of the carryover costs of commitments in previous years, the autumns 2018 budget only allows for a net 500m in spending increases and tax cuts.

Mr Coffey said the exchequer returns reporting the latest tax revenues and spending should have no bearing on the resources the Government has for additional spending or tax cuts.

IFAC also returned to focus on the consequences of Mr Noonan having spent the proceeds of a corporate tax revenue boom in 2015 when he announced 1.5bn in extra spending on the eve of the 2016 budget.

It reiterated that the technical treatment of the AIB preference shares on the Government books in 2015 had the effect of increasing the base effect on overall spending in subsequent years. Since 2015, improvements in the health of the public finances have slowed, it said. Saying that the recovery was strong enough, IFAC warned that any further boost by spending or tax cuts was unwarranted.
Saudi Arabia  the only country to share a land border with Qatar  has closed the border, cut off trade and revoked Qatar Airways Saudi operating licence over allegations of Qatari support for extremist groups.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, and Egypt have also cut ties with Qatar and have suspended all flights to and from the country.

In April, Qatar Airways announced its debut Irish route  marking Irelands first ever link with the Gulf state. The daily Dublin-Doha service will launch, as planned, next Monday and will provide Irish passengers with connection opportunities to more than 150 destinations including to the Far East and Australia.

At the time of the announcement, Qatars chief executive, Akbar al-Baker, called Dublin an important and growing international hub, adding that Irelands increasing global presence makes the route an attractive investment.

A spokesperson for the airline confirmed plans for the Irish route will be unaffected by diplomatic tensions in the Middle East.

Qatar Airways operations are running as normal, with no disruptions to flights with the exception of those to the four countries Qatar Airways has been restricted to fly to, said the spokesperson

At Qatar Airways, our passengers remain our utmost priority and we will continue to ensure they have a seamless journey to their final destinations.

It remains unclear, however, what may happen should Qatar Airways be shut out of neighbouring airspace.

Qatar Airways is a major shareholder in Aer Lingus owner International Airlines Group (IAG), upping its stake to 20% in April 2016. There was no indication that Qatar Airways situation would affect IAG operations. A spokesperson for IAG said the group did not comment on shareholders.

A spokesperson for British Airways (BA), which is also owned by IAG, said that the airline was continuing to operate a full schedule to Doha.

Meanwhile, figues show that Europes leading low-cost carriers saw strong passenger growth last month. Ryanair carried 11.8m people across its European route network in May, 11% up on a year-on-year basis; with load factor for the month  which shows how full its planes were  at 95%.

IAGs group traffic in May increased almost 2% compared to the same month in 2016. The company said an independent investigation will examine every aspect of the power failure that caused an IT meltdown for BA, disrupting thousands of passengers, during the UKs May bank holiday weekend.

The meltdown is estimated to have cost the airline up to 100m and led passenger numbers to decline by almost 2%. Almost 700 flights were cancelled.

EasyJets May traffic was up 9.5% year-on-year, with the airline carrying 7.5m passengers. Load factor was flat at 91.5%.

Norwegian Air carried 2.9m passengers in May, up 11% year-on-year. The company will launch the first ever transatlantic flight from Cork to Providence in Rhode Island next month. Wizz Air saw annualised passenger growth of 22% in May.
The first collection of its kind will be available exclusively at Lidl stores later this year in what is expected to be a highly anticipated launch for the fast-growing retailer. It is expected to be available to Irish shoppers before the end of the year after initially launching in the UK.

Ms Klum, who has previously designed for brands such as Victorias Secret and Birkenstock and has an eponymous swimwear range, said: Lidl is known for making quality products at affordable prices and Im proud to partner with them on this fashion collaboration. I had so much fun designing the pieces in this collection.
James Fitzgerald, a lecturer in terrorism at DCU, said the ratcheting up of suspicions, in the absence of evidence of a threat, is irresponsible and damaging.

He said, contrary to media speculation of gardai being wholly unprepared, gardai have been proactive in the cases that have come to light in recent years.

Alarmist media coverage over the fact that one of the London attackers lived in Ireland is not helping, he said.

It bears no relation to the level of threat posed to this country by Jihadist terrorism.

He said the obsession with making Ireland a direct part of this conversation and ratcheting up sweeping narratives of suspicion in the absence of any evidence of threat is irresponsible and damaging in the long term.

The media narrative has become saturated by claims that Ireland is woefully unprepared, that the gardai are inept and that its only a matter of time before an attack happens here.

He said that if you look at the evidence, there has not been a jihadist terror attack in Ireland, almost 16 years on from 9/11.

Any cases that have come to light are mostly relating to individuals providing financial support to terrorist organisations, he said.

They are indicative of how the gardai have been proactive and that our legal system is well capable of seeing such cases through the courts.

He said Irish media should provide a more balanced and nuanced view of the current situation.

The current coverage only serves to enhance popular suspicion and demonisation of Muslims, while eroding our greatest defence to Jihadist terrorism: a tolerant, progressive integrated civil society, which stands up to the us versus them mentality and refuses to bow to messages of hate that are entirely predicated on sowing discord and telling groups of people that they dont belong.

Meanwhile, Ali Selim, a senior member of the Islamic Cultural Centre of Ireland, told the Today with Sean ORourke show that addressing the terrorist threat is always looked at from a security point of view.

All the time, people are taking this issue from a security point of view and only a security perspective. Security is essential and important, but in the UK they have 20,000 people on the list and they are trying to watch them. How can you do that? The answer to that is not only a security answer.

He said the Muslim community in Ireland has grown and that this is a good sign, showing that both Muslims and wider Irish society feel comfortable with that growth.

He said gardai do already engage regularly with the Muslim community and have clinics in mosques on Fridays.

They meet with Muslims and talk to them, which is fantastic, he said.

Fazel Ryklief, a senior member of the Islamic Foundation of Ireland in Dublin, told the Irish Examiner that they too have a garda clinic at their mosque every third Friday.

If anybody did anything out of line in relation to Islam we would inform on him, he said. We are very careful here.

But he added: Its very unlikely if someone is going to do something that they would advertise it beforehand. A lot of it is over the internet and in private.
Like Redouane, the man arrested in Limerick is of Moroccan descent and had been illegally working here as a chef for some time.

It is understood that the Limerick-based chef received Redouanes identity information on the black market and it was chance that he ended up with this mans identity.

An investigation was carried out by the Garda National Immigration Bureau and it is believed gardai are satisfied he is not connected to the terrorist in London whose identity he was using.

A source said: This man had used false ID to acquire a PPS number in order to work. It seems he got Redouanes PPS number by chance and he used his own photo on the identity card with Redouanes name.

Before coming to Limerick he worked in the south-east of the country. He worked as a chef.

It appears his name came up on the welfare system data and gardai were alerted.

The man was released yesterday afternoon, having been in custody since his arrest on Monday. A file has been sent to the DPP.

Fianna Fail spokesman Niall Collins said the arrest shows up major flaws in the welfare identity system. It now seems that PPS details of individuals are being sold on to illegal immigrants who want to get work. This is worrying from a security point of view and also in relation to fraud, he said.

This only came to light because a major trawl has been conducted once it emerged that the killer, Redouane, had lived and worked as a chef in Dublin and was moving over and back to the UK.

The Minister for Justice Frances Fitzgerald and the Minister for Social Protection Leo Varadkar must make immediate and detailed statements as to what has been going on.

This has now come to our own doorstep. Islamic fundamental terrorists are now using Ireland as a base for their activities in the UK. We are seen as an easy open door to the UK as our security services have been decimated with cutbacks.

Meanwhile, security services in Britain are to launch a review into the atrocity amid mounting questions for police and MI5.

The third attacker has been named as Youssef Zaghba, an Italian national of Moroccan descent, who was living in east London.

The latest developments come with counter-terror agencies already facing intense scrutiny after it was revealed another member of the terror gang, Khuram Shazad Butt, 27, had been known to security services.

Butt was investigated by officers in 2015 but they found no evidence he was planning an attack and he was prioritised in the lower echelons of our investigative work, police said.

The disclosure means perpetrators in all three of the terrorist outrages to hit Britain this year had at some point appeared on the radar of security agencies.

British Prime Minister Theresa May said a review had been launched after the Manchester bombing last month and she expected the same process following Saturdays rampage.

Butt and Redouane, who also used the name Rachid Elkhdar, lived in Barking, while Zaghba worked in a restaurant in London.

A teenager who went to the same gym as London Bridge knifeman Butt said he seemed like the last person to carry out an attack.

Abdullah Mohamed, 18, said he had sparred with Butt at the Ummah Fitness Centre in Ilford. Butt would box at the gym and also occasionally sit on the front desk and take payment, said Mr Mohamed.

The gym said Butt trained there occasionally, but that they do not know him well, nor did we see anything of concern.

Mr Mohamed identified Butt from a police-issue mugshot and said: I saw him here a few times. He just used to tell us the rules about the gym. He was a quiet guy.

He did a little bit of boxing. He used to just help out little kids, like 10-, 12-year-olds when they used to come over, and he sparred with us once or twice.

Asked if Butt seemed to be training in preparation for an attack, Mr Mohamed said there was nothing to suggest as much.
In 1847 when the Choctaw nation heard of the starving Irish they responded by contributing $170 (about $4,400 today) to send food aid to Ireland.

This show of solidarity came despite the great hardships being faced by the Choctaw people themselves. They were also living in starvation and poverty having been driven by white settlers from the southern states to the more barren Oklahoma in what became known as The Trail of Tears. Thousands died on the trek.

Native American Choctaw and Irish cultures will come together on Sunday, June 18 for the official dedication of the Kindred Spirits sculpture in Midleton, Co Cork, which commemorates a donation made by the Choctaw.

The chief of the Choctaw Nation, Chief Gary Batton, and a delegation of 15 Choctaw representatives will attend the public ceremony at 2pm at Bailick Park The event will include traditional Choctaw and Irish music and dancing, as well as several activities around the sculpture and the story.

Kindred Spirits, by Cork-based sculptor Alex Pentek, was commissioned in 2013 by the former Midleton Town Council to commemorate the Choctaw generosity.

Alex Perteks Kindred Spirits sculpture consists of nine 20ft eagle feathers that represent a bowl filled with food. Picture: Neil Danton

The sculpture comprising of nine, 20ft-high eagle feathers, arranged in a circular shape, represents a bowl filled with food, presented to those suffering hunger.

Joe McCarthy, the county councils East Cork municipal district officer, said the Choctaw people were still recovering from their own injustice: But they put their hands in their pockets and they helped strangers. Its rare to see such generosity. It had to be acknowledged. They bestowed a blessing not only on the starving Irish men, women and children, but also on humanity.

The gift from the Choctaw people was a demonstration of love and I hope that this monument and the official dedication acknowledges that, and that it will encourage the Irish people to act as the Choctaw people did.

Ahead of his upcoming visit, Chief Gary Batton spoke about the connection between his people and the Irish: Your story is our story. We didnt have any income.

This was money pulled from our pockets. We had gone through the biggest tragedy that we could endure, and saw what was happening in Ireland and just felt compelled to help.

The bond between our nations has strengthened over the years. We are blessed to have the opportunity to share our cultures, and meet the generous people who have continued to honour a gift from the heart, Chief Batton said.

In 1990, Choctaw leaders travelled to Co Mayo to take part in a re-enactment of an 1848 eviction.

Their nation also declared former President Mary Robinson an honorary Choctaw chief.
Danny Whelan, aged 25, of no fixed abode but formerly of Thomas St in Waterford City and originally from Thurles, Co Tipperary, made his third appearance before the district court in Waterford yesterday since being charged with the murder of Samantha Walsh.

Inspector Anthony Dineen told the court a file is ready to be sent to the DPP as he sought a further remand in custody for a month.
Speaking in Dublin yesterday, Volker Turk, assistant high commissioner for protection of UNHCR, the UNs refugee agency, said Irelands comprehensive response to refugees shows a level of commitment that is urgently needed from all countries.

Addressing the Institute of International and European Affairs, Mr Turk said Irelands willingness to engage on refugee issues, co-leading the process that led to the New York declaration, conducting search and rescue missions in the Mediterranean, and increasing commitments to resettlement should serve as an example to other countries.

Refugees are an international responsibility, and all countries need to share this equitably, said Mr Turk.

The Irish people have a long history of advocating strongly for the fundamental rights of all human beings and they carry into the present, and future, a firm belief in the power of moral force to move mountains.

As co-chair of the UN Refugee and Migrant process last year, Ireland was an instrumental force in the adoption, by 193 countries, of the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants. It has also been a powerful voice for the implementation of the 2013 Sustainable Development Agenda which calls for leaving nobody, including refugees, behind.

Mr Turk later met Tanaiste Frances Fitzgerald where they discussed progress on reforms of the protection system in Ireland as well as UNHCR priorities for discussions at EU level on reform of the Common European Asylum System.

Mr Turk said: Irelands international engagement shows the power of all countries, no matter their size, to affect real change. In practical terms, Ireland has not been found wanting  it is supporting those developing and middle-income countries hosting the majority of the worlds refugees. It is also providing opportunities for some of the most vulnerable refugees to be resettled out of precarious situations so they build a future for themselves and their families. Ireland is now resettling 520 refugees a year, a figure we strongly encourage the authorities to maintain into the future.

He added, however, that in light of recent limitations introduced on family reunification, it will be important for Ireland to consider new pathways for refugees to find safety. Irelands history of flight and migration puts it in a unique position to remind the world that refugees are an international responsibility, he said.
Mary Barron, aged 35, with an address at St Kevins Square, Industry St, off Barrack St, pleaded guilty to wilful obstruction of gardai, engaging in threatening behaviour likely to lead to a breach of the peace, and being drunk and a source of danger.

A second accused, Sophia Davern, aged 35, of the same address, also admitted the obstruction and threatening charges and a count of failing to leave the scene of a disturbance when directed by gardai.

Inspector Ronan Kennelly said the incident occurred on December 17. The women shouted profanities and behaved in a hostile fashion. They were trying to encourage the crowd to rebel against gardai, he said.

The women arrived in the middle of a disturbance and believed excessive force was used by gardai, said their solicitor, Michael Quinlan.

They thought at the time they were doing their civic duty, said Mr Quinlan. But since then, they have seen the CCTV of what was happening before they arrived. Now they accept they were wrong to behave as they did. They have instructed me to apologise.

Judge Aingeal Ni Chonduin asked how they would feel about paying 1,000 to Cuanlee Refuge for Abused Women and Children.

Mr Quinlan said they would agree if it meant avoiding convictions. Each woman was directed to pay 500 within a month, and the charges would be struck out.

If I meet them again I will remember them, they dont want to meet me again or it will be double, the judge warned the pair.
In the past five years, the rate of claims and amounts paid out to victims in cases where the State was negligent, soared from 58m in 2011 in 567 cases, to nearly 100m last year, in 1,307 cases.

One of the most high- profile cases recently settled was for 6.3m, involving Grace, a woman with severe physical and intellectual disabilities who had been abused for two decades at a state-funded foster home.

Documents in which the figures are contained state that the payouts include all HSE-related matters, but exclude claims relating to Tusla, the States child protection agency.

As such, the final cost to the taxpayer could be substantially higher.

The alarming cost in dealing with the cost of mistakes in the care of patients has been criticised by Oireachtas finance committee chairman John McGuinness, who said it is completely inexcusable that such failure is allowed to continue.

Oireachtas finance committee chairman John McGuinness

This is the shocking cost of HSE failure revealed for the first time in such detail, he told the Irish Examiner.

Systemic incompetence, neglect and a failure of management within the HSE. To see taxpayers having to deal with payouts of near 100m a year, as it was last year, is disgraceful.

According to the figures from the office of Health Minister Simon Harris, 5,753 cases have been settled or concluded from the period 2011-2016 at a total cost of 478m. The documents show the stated figures may not be the final costs to be borne by the State.

There may still be some associated payments and reimbursements outstanding on finalised claims, notes in the document explained.

The management of claims against the HSE and the Department of Health is delegated under the National Treasury Management Agency Act to the State Claims Agency (SCA) which has a statutory mandate to investigate and manage cases to completion.

In 2015, 97% of clinical negligence cases which were handled by the SCA were settled without the necessity for a contested court hearing, Mr Harris said in the documents, in which the figures are contained.

According to the documents, a claim in this context refers to a notification of intention to seek compensation for personal injury and/or property damage where it is alleged that the State was negligent.

A finalised claim refers to when a claim and all other matters associated with it have been agreed, including legal costs and compensation, the documents add.
As new Fine Gael leader Leo Varadkar mulls over who he will keep in Cabinet and who will be demoted, Mr Coveney, who lost out in the leadership race, says he hopes and expects that Mr Harris will be retained.

Mr Coveney said the careers of those who supported him during the leadership campaign should not be damaged in any way and has called for unity within the party.

Many of those who remained loyal to Mr Varadkar and were left on the back-benches during Enda Kennys time as Taoiseach will be hoping to secure either junior or senior ministerial positions, including John Paul Phelan, who is widely tipped to be made Government chief whip.

Others expecting promotions include Brendan Griffin, Pat Deering, John Deasy, Jim Daly, and Fergus ODowd.

Mr Coveney refused to indicate whether he had spoken to Mr Varadkar about being appointed tanaiste when the new cabinet is announced, expected to be next Tuesday.

Wicklow TD Mr Harris was one of the most high- profile members of Fine Gael to back Mr Coveney in his failed leadership bid and there are now fears that he will be punished for doing so.

When asked about Mr Harriss future in the Cabinet, Mr Coveney said: I think there is a big responsibility on me to ensure the party is unified.

Simon Harris is a very talented guy, a very able communicator, he is only 30 years of age, he has a huge contribution to make to politics so I would hope and expect that he will be part of Leos plan.

One if the things I have made very clear to Leo is that we need to unify the party now and people who supported me shouldnt in any way be damaged by that in terms of their career, he said on Corks 96FM.

Mr Coveney said that he spoke with Mr Varadkar for around 90 minutes on Saturday and has been in regular contact since then over putting together a new frontbench.

He said a decision on whether he will remain on in the Department of Housing has yet to be made and he likewise remained tight-lipped on rumours that he may be given the position of tanaiste.

Mr Coveney said: What I would like to do is have the maximum impact I can in Government, if its staying in Housing I would be happy with that; if its another area that needs energy and focus and good ideas, I am happy to go there too.
Gardai are investigating after it emerged that Rachid Redouane, one of the terrorists responsible for the latest London attack, had lived in Rathmines in Dublin before moving to Britain.

Mr Ahern said the Government must ensure our security services are adequately staffed and trained for an attack. He said he is not surprised Redouane lived in Ireland for a time.
Cliona Ring would have celebrated her 26th birthday this year. But fate delivered a cruel blow to the Limerick girl when she developed an inoperable tumour and tragically died when she was just 15 years old.

Her parents Terry and Brendan were devastated by the death of their young daughter but instead of giving in to the obviously crippling grief they and their son Colm were experiencing, channelled their energies into creating a charity in Clionas name to raise funds for families of other terminally ill children around the country.

Because they knew that despite the sheer enormity of the stress experienced by parents of a child with a life-limiting illness, the day-to-day finances and practicalities still need to be addressed, and this adds to an already emotional situation.

Set up in 2007, Clionas Foundation provides financial assistance for the non-medical expenses which families have to cover while trying to cope with the reality of caring for a child with a life-limiting condition.

On June 3, a memorial cycle took place in Limerick to raise funds for the charity and founder Terry Ring says they aim to do all they can to help families coping with a sick child.

We have come across a very large number of families who have to go through huge financial worry at the same time as watching their child suffer, says Clionas mum, Terry.

All parents want is to be at their childs side as they go through this enormously difficult time, so they shouldnt have to worry about taking time off work or about finding the money for a childminder for their other children, while they travel to and from hospital, explains Terry.

At any given time, there can be up to 5000 critically ill children in the country and while a parents first priority is being there for their child, the bills can and do mount up and this is where the foundation helps out.

David and Mary Crowe also lost their daughter to a terminal illness and say that while nothing could ease the burden of watching their child die, the knowledge that some of the everyday bills were being taken care of, was a huge weight off their mind.

When your child is seriously sick, you really dont give a toss about whether the electricity bill is paid or not, but the reality is that if it isnt then the rest of the family will suffer further as a consequence, says David.

Our daughter Sarah was diagnosed with a life-limiting disease called Alpers when she was almost three years old, and doctors gave her just a year or two at the most to live. But they werent prepared for her determination and she actually battled on for almost ten years.

Every minute we had Sarah with us was a blessing but she finally passed away in March 2016 when she was 12   Mary and I and our son Jimmy were utterly devastated.

I had given up work to take care of her, while Mary worked harder than anyone could imagine, but still the bills mounted up.

My sister applied to Clionas Foundation for help and although I didnt want her to (as I didnt want to admit that my daughter was dying), she told me that she had already put in an application for a donation  and I was so grateful when the financial help arrived as there were times when we really couldnt have coped with the unpaid bills on top of everything else.

David, who is also from Limerick, says with National Carers Week coming up on June 12, it is vitally important that people recognise the work that both the Care Alliance and Clionas Foundation do for families all across the country.

There are so many people in the same situation that Mary and I found ourselves in for years, and it is disgraceful that the Government does so little to help, he says.

They dont seem to realise that if the carers of the country werent looking after their families, it would cost the State a huge amount of money.

We have to rely on the Care Alliance and groups like Clionas Foundation to help us to get by at a time when we are crippled with stress, sadness and fear for our children, David says.

Clionas Foundation do incredible work and 100% of everything they raise goes to help people like us  its shameful that they have to fundraise at all as the Government should be helping them to help the most vulnerable people in our country.

 Mary and I have worked all of our lives and yet, we had to fight tooth and nail for any kind of help when we needed it most.

Without a Government grant and relying entirely on donations, Clionas Foundation has helped over 400 families to date  and Terry Ring says it hopes to continue.

We believe that no family should have to face any added financial stress, when already struggling with the nightmare, devastation and trauma of having a seriously ill child, she says.

The ordeal of a childs grave illness or injury tests families far beyond their endurance, taking an enormous toll financially, emotionally and physically.

And while we cannot cure a child, we want to help parents cope and soften their heart-breaking journey, by uniquely providing financial assistance to families, who have exhausted all other resources, explains Terry.

National Carers Week takes place from June 12.

For more information on the wrok of Clionas Foundation click here.
Its a cold morning and steam billows from a vent in the loading bay at the back of Midletons Aldi supermarket.

Im spending a few hours with FoodCloud volunteer Deirdre McGranaghan as she collects surplus food from Aldi stores and delivers it to a Cork charity.

We separate food into containers, one for bread, one for fresh meat, one for salads and so on. This run takes two to three hours and is done morning and evening, five days a week, from different supermarkets to different charities, by volunteers in customised vans, nine of which were supplied by Opel.

FoodCloud was founded in 2012 by Iseult Ward and Aoibheann OBrien when they met while studying in Trinity College Dublin.

Within one community, there can be a business thats throwing away perfectly good food and just around the corner theres a charity thats struggling to feed people in need, says Ward. We wanted to connect the two.

Irish households spend roughly 700 million a year on food that ends up being thrown out. About a million tonnes of food is dumped here each year, even as many people struggle to put food on the table.

Last year, France became the first country to pass a law to ban supermarkets from throwing away or destroying food, a move which prompted suggestions a similar law should be considered here.

FoodCloud says it offers an innovative solution, rescuing surplus food suitable for human consumption and distributing it to charities.

This morning on the Cork FoodCloud run, Deirdre is the driver and Im the navigator. In that role, I fall at the first hurdle by somehow managing to get lost on Little Island and showing up 20 minutes late. Deirdre is very understanding. Deirdres day-job is with the Brothers of Charity Child and Family Clinic in Mayfield.

Each Aldi loading bay has its own micro-climate today. Carrigtwohill is a freezing wind tunnel and we are very glad to be let inside the door for shelter.

Glanmire is positively summery. Mayfield is chilly. The loading bay for the Elysian Aldi is in the underground car-park and sheltered. There Aldis manager Karl Browning gives us a hand with the surplus food.

This is a fantastic service, Karl says, hefting a tray of bread rolls, and Aldi is delighted to help out. To be honest, its Deirdre and the other volunteers do all the hard work.

Just short of three hours after we set out, we arrive at the Cork Life Centre, which is situated on Winters Hill, in Sundays Well, in the old Christian Brothers Edmund Rice House. There Deirdre and I unload our boxes and trays and are greeted by Don OLeary, Cork Life Centres administrator.

The Cork Life Centre is a voluntary organisation which offers one-to-one tutoring for children who have fallen between the cracks of our education system and who have become marginalised.

Last year, they had ten kids complete the Leaving Cert and 9 the Junior Cert. This year, they have 13 kids in the Leaving and 13 in Junior Cert. Their director, Don OLeary, says that for them, academia is the smallest part of what we do. Self-esteem is everything.

They run the place on a shoestring and supply breakfast and lunch to kids who might otherwise go hungry.

Showing us around, OLeary tells us that this house was originally the home of the Lord Mayor of Cork and - from the window of what was once the ballroom - he shows us the view down to the building that was Corks Mansion House from 1767 to 1842, these days the Mercy Hospital.

The Mayors ballroom is now a warm, steamy kitchen and here, every day, over a hundred meals are prepared.

Todays menu includes mushroom soup and pasta with a choice of sauces. Everything is cooked fresh and it smells delicious. Volunteers bustle around as they put the finishing touches to todays lunch. OLeary says nobody leaves here hungry.

FoodCloud has been a blessing to the Cork Life Centre, freeing up desperately-needed funding they would otherwise have to spend on food.

Odile Le Bolloch of the Environmental Protection Agency is impressed with FoodClouds work but sounds a note of caution, especially on the idea of legislation forcing companies to donate surplus food to charity.

Over a million tonnes of food waste is generated in Ireland every year and donating surplus food alone will not solve the problem, she says. We need to do more to reduce wasted food all along the supply chain; we need to work together. Everyone has a part to play; producers, growers, retail, hospitality and consumers.

While creating legislation to force companies to donate surplus food might seem like the right thing to do, it is important that charities do not become a dumping ground for overproduction in the food supply chain.

Tackling the issue must start with preventing food waste at source and (encouraging businesses toward) becoming more efficient in using what we have, followed by rescuing surplus food that cannot be prevented.

Since FoodCloud began operations in its hubs in Galway, Dublin and Cork, it has redistributed 1,150 tonnes of food.

Thats the equivalent of an astionishing 2.5 million meals.

Le Bolloch says that dealing with donated food has its own challenges for charities, saying: It would be important (for charities) to build capacity and provide support in the form of developing skills, and providing infrastructure to handle, cook and store this food.

This rings true for the Cork Life Centre, where Don OLeary confides that the centre now feeds far more than just kids taking another crack at the education system, and also looks after a broader community which might otherwise go hungry.

We dont do charity, he says. We just ask people to do us a favour and take some surplus food off our hands.
When I rolled my wheelchair out of my apartment block on Sunday morning  mere hours after three attackers killed seven a few hundred yards away in London Bridge and Borough Market  the most striking thing was the sense of calm.

American headlines such as that in the New York Times describing the country as reeling are wide of the mark.

Indeed, mocking such coverage is itself a coping strategy for us. If anything, London and Manchester in particular  like New York after 9/11  are showing a muscular, communal self-confidence since coming under attack in recent weeks.

As in the Second World War, when London and other cities endured the repeated air raids of the Blitz, people are scared but not prepared to show weakness. Theres a robust, almost savage pride in the armed police response that left all three attackers dead within eight minutes of the first emergency call.

By the time police arrived, it now appears that the three knife-wielding militants were being pushed back by pub and restaurant customers wielding bottles and chairs. A Romanian baker hit one over the head with a crate.

Such tales will stick in British mythology for a long time. Knowing that corner of London, I would expect nothing less.

No one doubts that Britain is facing a serious problem. With the May 22 Manchester bombing, as well as the vehicle and knife attack in Westminster exactly two months earlier, the tempo of attacks on civilians is now even greater than at the height of IRA bombing campaigns in the 1970s and 80s.

Britons dont believe America covered itself in glory after the recent attacks. The ludicrous inability of the US national security infrastructure to keep even the most basic operational detail secret after the Manchester bombing provoked widespread frustration amongst both officials and the public.

US president Donald Trumps tweets have hardly helped, particularly his attacks on Londons first Muslim mayor Sadiq Khan. For all the assumptions that the attacks would inflame communal tensions, the opposite may be happening, most particularly in the affected cities.

Sunday nights Manchester concert, showcasing a range of local and international artists and attendees from across ethnic communities, was a particularly striking show of solidarity.

Some parts of Britains security response worked well, others less so. Gaps have been identified. There is now a genuine and urgent debate on what to do next, one that will inevitably feed into the British election campaign ahead of polling day tomorrow.

British police might be under-resourced and mostly unarmed, but they have proved amongst the best in the world when it comes to an immediate response. They have been preparing for situations like these since the 2008 Mumbai attacks killed 164 people, and both their training and efforts in refining command-and-control paid off on Saturday night.

Thats not to say there havent been oversights elsewhere. Government buildings in places such as Whitehall have long been surrounded by bollards, but concrete obstacles were not put in place on Londons most important bridges until Monday morning, more than a day after the attacks. That should have happened sooner.

In many respects, Britains Muslim communities hold the key to stopping assaults claimed by groups such as Islamic State (IS), whether carried out by British converts, second-generation migrants, or anyone else. No one disputes that there have been problems in integration, even if talk of predominantly Muslim no-go areas in Britain remains a gross over-exaggeration.

The good news, however, is that it appears friends and relatives of the attackers in both Manchester and London had already expressed concern about them to the authorities. On Sunday, the Muslim Council of Britain announced a new campaign to ensure that happens more often.

That says something reassuring about Britains relationship with its Muslim population. The issue, it seems, is that such reports were not followed up.

Its important not to be too judgmental here. Police and security services are invariably overstretched, and inevitably individuals will slip through nets. But we have to do better, particularly when those around an individual are openly telling authorities there is a threat.

This is dangerous ground for British prime minister Theresa May. As home secretary from 2010 until last year, she was responsible for the police and law enforcement  and she is hugely unpopular with rank-and-file officers.

At one conference in 2015, Ms May was told by an award-winning front-line Manchester officer that cuts to community police units would make it much harder to track potential attackers  exactly what appears to have happened in these assaults.

The video has been widely shared in the last two weeks.

A botched snap election campaign was already undermining her position before the latest London attack.

An expected landslide victory has evaporated amid U-turns and a bizarre unwillingness to face discussion and debate. Some within her own party are now openly calling for her resignation.

That almost certainly wont happen. In the last weeks of the election, Britains opposition Labour Party has been surging in the polls but it may not have closed the gap.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyns greatest weakness could still be his willingness to talk with the Irish Republican militants who attacked the UK 30 years ago.

His statements this weekend, however, have been a full-throated defence of Britain as an inclusive liberal democracy, pledging greater support for the police and security services.

Even if Mr Corbyn does not win, Labours most left-wing manifesto in a generation has proved remarkably popular. Labour mayors Mr Khan in London and Andy Burnham in Manchester have provided firm, inspiring leadership during these attacks, and either could be a future party leader.

I wrote last week that opposition to Mr Trump, Russias Vladimir Putin, and extremism in mainland Europe seemed to have given centrist politicians new heart. Something similar may be happening on the British left, and these attacks will help shape it.

Last Friday afternoon, one of Britains former top counterterrorism officials told me that most individuals who join IS or conduct attacks do so because they are desperate for a compelling identity, a path that offers excitement and redemption that they cannot find elsewhere.

Two women comfort each other during todays minutes silence on London Bridge in honour of the terror attack victims who died in Saturdays outrage.

The potent public response to the latest attacks sends a different message. It tells would-be assailants they will be swiftly gunned down and dubbed cowards.

But it also offers them a real option to find their place in a society that welcomes diversity while venerating crate-throwing bakers, concert-goers and armed response officers.

There will almost certainly be more attacks  or attempts at them. But they will bring the country closer together, not the other way around.

Britain has always relished defining itself as under attack.

At times that can be toxic  as it may yet prove with Brexit. But in my grandparents time, that dogged determination held off Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and created the welfare state. The nation is perfectly capable of producing such greatness again.

Peter Apps is Reuters global affairs columnist. He is founder and executive director of the Project for Study of the 21st Century; PS21, a non-national, non-partisan, non-ideological think tank in London, New York and Washington.

Before that, he spent 12 years as a reporter for Reuters covering defence, political risk, and emerging markets. Since 2016, he has been a member of the British Army Reserve, the UK Labour Party, and a Future of War fellow at New America.
RESIDENTS are opposing proposals for a 60-seat McDonald's drive-through restaurant in Biggin Hill.

An application to redevelop the West Kent garage site, on Main Road, has been submitted to Bromley Council for approval.

But residents say the burger chain could lead to traffic congestion, vandalism and litter.

Chairman of Biggin Hill and District Residents' Association David Haslem said: "Potential problems include congestion on Main Road caused by traffic queuing at the site and noise and litter from youngsters, who might be attracted to the area by the restaurant."

But he added: "We want to look at the plans carefully so we can make a decision based on information rather than gut feeling."

Councillor Geoff Gosst, who represents the Biggin Hill ward, said the plans had pros and cons.

He said: "The restaurant would provide employment opportunities and a place for young people to meet but residents feel the development would change the character of the village.

"They also feel a McDonald's would attract more people to the area, which will increase problems of vandalism and litter."

McDonald's spokesman Victoria Hague said: "The proposed restaurant would provide between 50 and 60 full and part-time employment opportunities."

McDonald's representatives discussed the plans with worried residents last night at the Women's Institute, in Lebanon Gardens, Biggin Hill.

A council committee will meet at the end of June to hear the application.
UKIP parliamentary candidate Daryll Pitcher has announced his plans for Isle of Wight devolution.

Citing issues such as Sandown Bay Academy, ferry regulation, the future of St Mary's Hospital, and economic development, Mr Pitcher has stated that the only answer is to devolve further powers to the Isle of Wight.

A day before the general election, Mr Pitcher said: "Neither the MP nor the Isle of Wight Council individually or combined have enough power to resolve them outright. Put simply if we want to sort these problems out we need more control."

"Today I call for Isle of Wight devolution to be negotiated and I will make it my number one priority if elected on Thursday."

The key aspects of any deal would include health and social care, transport, planning, environment, economic development, and education.

Similar devolution deals have been brokered elsewhere in the country including Scotland, Wales, London, and Manchester.

Mr Pitcher added: "One of the clinching arguments for Brexit was that as an independent country we would at least stand or fall by our own decisions.

"The same can be said for Isle of Wight devolution.

"We know that to most of the UK we are nothing more than an interesting geographic afterthought.

"Many people, including senior people, don't even realise we are a separate county.

"They will never seriously address our issues, they have no reason to.

"Only we can solve our problems and to do so we need devolution.

"If you want someone who will stand up for the Island and who has the only realistic plan on how to do so please vote for UKIP tomorrow."


Despite Israels 5th election in four years, it remains a beacon of democracy and freedom

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JERUSALEMI was on a short visit to Israel and spent time with a friend with whom I have been engaged in a 30-year argument. Elli...
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Mobile operator Vodafone Ukraine (PrJSC VF Ukraine) will channel UAH 1.4 billion, or about US$53 million at the current forex rate, into the payment of dividends, the company has reported in the State Securities and Stock Market Commission's disclosure system.

The relevant decision was approved at a general shareholders' meeting on April 27, 2017, the report said.

The list of the persons entitled to dividends should be drawn up and handed over to Vodafone Ukraine CEO Olha Ustinova on June 15.

The dividends are scheduled to be paid from June 15 to October 27, 2017.

Vodafone Ukraine (PrJSC VF Ukraine) is the second largest mobile communications operator in Ukraine. By the end of 2016 its Ukrainian clientele was about 20.9 million subscribers. The operator has about 500 retail outlets across the country.

Vodafone Ukraine is wholly owned by Prelludium B.V. (the Netherlands) and is part of the international group MTS listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker MBT.
A local aviation management group is attempting to resurrect for a second time an aircraft maintenance company at Smith Reynolds Airport.

Charlie Creech, president of North State Aviation Holdings LLC, said in a statement Tuesday that his group has purchased the assets of North State Aviation LLC, which abruptly went out of business March 23, eliminating 345 local jobs.

The closed entity specialized in the maintenance, repair and overhaul of large transport aircraft, with United Airlines by far its largest customer.

Creech said the asset purchase represents a strategic opportunity for the new North State to offer maintenance, repair and overhaul services to the aviation industry.

Creech could not be reached immediately for further comment, in particular on how challenging it could be for the new company to rehire former employees and secure previous or new contracts. Other aircraft maintenance companies, both regionally and nationally, have conducted job fairs for North State employees.

The assets of inventory, tooling and equipment were purchased in a bid process from NSA Holdings Inc., an entity that held the assets after the closing. The price was not disclosed.

Gary Smith, North State Aviations president and chief executive at the time of the closing, was responsible for conducting an inventory of the assets and preparing the request for bids during the wind down of the closed business. Smith said the new entity had the full support of the Airport Commission of Forsyth County.

North State Aviation Holdings was formed April 28, according to the N.C. Secretary of States website. Listed as managers were Creech and other former North State Aviation LLC officers David Coe, Russell Kota, Joel Marion and Kenda Richards.

Scott Piper, chairman of the airport commission, said in the statement that we look forward to airplanes and employees once again occupying 4001 North Liberty St.

In an interview with the Journal, Piper acknowledged that the new North State Aviation entity will face challenges in gaining contracts and employees.

Im optimistic from our conversations with the management group that they will be able to accomplish their goals, starting with an appropriate ramp-up of business to become viable once again soon, Piper said.

When North State Aviation LLC closed, it cited an unforeseeable significant downturn in business in a notice required by the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act. The act is a labor law that requires employers with 100 or more employees to provide a 60-day notice before plant closings and mass layoffs.

Due to declining revenue and difficult business conditions, we were forced to take this action, Smith said March 23. He said the company was facing increased competition for business from companies outside the United States.

The companys second location in Kinston, which opened in September 2015, had shut down prior to the local closing. North State had pledged to hire 109 employees in Kinston and to spend $900,000 on capital investments at the Global TransPark site.

North State Aviation LLC took over the airport production space of Pace Airlines, which closed abruptly in September 2009, putting 423 employees, including about 300 locally, out of work.

The company, which opened in early 2011, vowed to have at least 308 employees within four years when it was made eligible for $300,000 in performance-based state incentives. It had 28 employees at that time.

For the Kinston project, the company had been made eligible for up to $250,000 in performance-based economic incentives from the One North Carolina Fund, along with matching local incentives.
Georgian Defense Minister Levan Izoria and Ukrainian Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak discussed possibilities for holding joint military exercises at a meeting in Tbilisi, the Georgian Defense Ministry press service said on Wednesday.

"Within the framework of bilateral cooperation, the ministers discussed prospects for holding joint military exercises. In particular, they considered aspects of participation of servicemen from the two countries in multinational military exercises planned in Georgia and in Ukraine," it said.

Poltorak arrived in Georgia for a two-day official visit on Tuesday.
Andrew Jackson Higgins, the man Dwight D. Eisenhower once credited with winning World War II, was a wild and wily genius.

At the New Orleans plant where his company built the boats that brought troops ashore at Normandy on June 6, 1944, Higgins hung a sign that said, Anybody caught stealing tools out of this yard wont get fired  hell go to the hospital.

Whatever Higgins did, he did it a lot. His profanity, Life magazine said, was famous for its opulence and volume. So was his thirst for Old Taylor bourbon, though he curtailed his intake by limiting his sips to a specific location.

I only drink, he told Life magazine, while Im working.

That Higgins was able to accomplish what he did  provide U.S. forces with the means to swiftly attack beaches, including on D-Day  despite his personal shortcomings is a testament, historians say, to his relentless talent and creativity as an entrepreneur.

It is Higgins himself who takes your breath away, Raymond Moley, a former FDR adviser, wrote in Newsweek in 1943. Higgins is an authentic master builder, with the kind of will power, brains, drive and daring that characterized the American empire builders of an earlier generation.

Higgins was not native to the South, despite his love of bourbon. He grew up in Nebraska, where, at various ages, he was expelled from school for fighting. Higgins temperament improved around boats. He built his first vessel in the basement when he was 12. It was so large that a wall had to be torn down to get it out.

He moved South in his early 20s, working in the lumber industry. He hadnt thought much about boats again until a tract of timber in shallow waters required him to build a special vessel so he could remove the wood. Higgins signed up for a correspondence course in naval architecture, shifting his work from timber to boats.

In the late 1930s, he owned a small shipyard in New Orleans. By then, his special shallow-craft boat had become popular with loggers and oil drillers. They were tunnel stern boats, whose magic was in the way the hull incorporated a recessed tunnel used to protect the propeller from grounding, according to the Louisiana Historical Association.

Higgins called it the Eureka boat. The war brought interest by U.S. forces in a similar style vessel to attack unguarded beaches and avoid coming ashore at heavily defended ports. The Marines settled on the Higgins boat, transforming what had been a 50-employee company into one of the worlds largest manufacturers.

To put Higginss accomplishment in perspective, historian Douglas Brinkley wrote in a 2000 article for American Heritage magazine, consider this: By September 1943, 12,964 of the American Navys 14,072 vessels had been designed by Higgins Industries. Put another way, 92 percent of the U.S. Navy was a Higgins navy.

Though Eisenhower and even Hitler acknowledged the importance of the Higgins boat  military leaders came to call it the bridge to the beach  its builder went mostly unmentioned in histories of the war. That is, until 17 years ago, when the World War II Museum opened in New Orleans and recognized Higginss life, displaying a reproduction of his boat.

Still, theres been just one biography written: Andrew Jackson Higgins and the Boats that Won World War II, by historian Jerry Strahan.

Without Higginss uniquely designed craft, there could not have been a mass landing of troops and materiel on European shores or the beaches of the Pacific islands, at least not without a tremendously higher rate of Allied casualties, Strahan wrote.

Higgins, who died in 1952, certainly wasnt modest about his accomplishments.

Youre the only man Ive ever met, President Franklin D. Roosevelt told him, who has done all the talking.

Thats another thing he did a lot  talk.

His majestic laughter booms like thunder in the mountains, Life magazine wrote. He has an immense stock of stories.

Including the one about winning a war.
Transit costs remained high on the list as members of the Winston-Salem City Council discussed the 2017-18 budget on Tuesday.

Council Member Dan Besse said hes working on a plan to offset possible Trans-AID fare hikes with bus passes for those who would be financially hard hit.

And Council Member Robert Clark, who chairs the Finance Committee, called on the city to consider eliminating some bus routes that have few riders, hence high costs per rider.

If the council adopts the proposed budget of City Manager Lee Garrity, the tax rate would increase from 58.5 cents to 59.74 cents for every $100 of taxable property.

One of the drivers of the increase is transit costs. Pointing to a cost of $71.12 per ride for each person taking Route 100, Clark said that it would be cheaper to buy that person a car and give them insurance than to keep paying for the route.

I have a very simple philosophy, Clark said. The purpose of the bus is to transport people. If we have a route that is virtually unused ... (we should) put the buses where the people want them.

Clarks criticism zeroed in on Route 100 and three other routes costing the city more than $26 per ride to finance.

All bus routes are subsidized, but most cost the city less than $7.50 per ride to operate.

Under City Manager Lee Garritys budget proposal, Route 100 would be cut out because of low ridership. The route, which links Winston-Salem State University, the UNC School of the Arts and Forsyth Technical Community College, has had only 2,330 riders since the beginning of the year.

Cutting the route saves $216,000 from the citys transit spending, although that is more than offset by $800,000 for enhanced weekend and night service on some routes.

Council Member Derwin Montgomery has advocated keeping Route 100 to maintain a transit connection between the colleges. Montgomery was not at Tuesdays Finance Committee meeting, but said in a telephone interview that he favors keeping the route at least in the short term and trying to market it better.

The citys proposed tax rate of 59.74 cents is 6.2 percent higher than the rate of 56.24 cents the city would need to pass to have a so-called revenue-neutral rate one bringing in the same revenue as the current rate, which was passed before revaluation raised most property values.

Under the current tax rate, the owner of a $150,000 property is paying $877.50 in city tax. If the homeowners tax value stayed the same, the new bill would come to $896.10  an increase of only $18.60.

But if the $150,000 property increased in value by 6.6 percent  the average revaluation increase in the city  its new value would be $159,900.

The new tax rate of 59.74 cents would result in a tax bill of $955.24. Thats an extra $77.74 in city taxes, or an increase in the tax bill of 8.9 percent. (A previous Journal story stated the increase would be 9.4 percent, but that was based on an incorrect reading that the average increase because of revaluation was 7.1 percent).

Meanwhile, Besse said Tuesday that a proposed fare hike from 50 cents to $1 for Trans-AID rides should be offset by bus passes for those who cant afford the increase.

Trans-AID is the citys door-to-door bus service for the disabled. Although the fare is only 50 cents per ride, most riders dont pay anything because of an exemption for people on Medicaid. Although the WSTA board has proposed hiking the fare to $1 and eliminating some of the free Medicaid trips, that change is not in the city budget so far.

Besse said Winston-Salem, unlike other cities in North Carolina, charges only half the fare for Trans-AID rides, when the law allows the city to charge double the fare of a regular bus.

Council Member James Taylor repeated his opposition to higher Trans-AID fares, saying that everyone who talks to him about the issue opposes the fare increase.

The Finance Committee holds its public hearing on the proposed 2017-18 budget at 7 p.m. Thursday at City Hall.
FLEMING EL-AMIN, Winston-Salem

Simply barbaric

When will innocent people stop being used by the pea-brained advocates of religious intolerance to hide barbaric inhuman behavior? The most recent incident in Manchester, England, where children attending a concert were targeted by these so-called religious advocates (UK police: 19 confirmed dead in blast, May 23) is simply barbaric, uncivilized behavior committed by criminals. It reminds me of Timothy McVeighs barbaric attack on innocent children in Oklahoma. The capture of innocent female students in Nigeria who were partially released back to their families is another appalling example. Those first-graders and other primary school-age children murdered in school in Connecticut still shatters my soul.

So many innocent children having their lives cut short by barbaric behavior should be declared a crime against humanity and prosecuted with the same vigor and resolve as previous incidents in history. When will the innocent stop being used as tools of insane criminal-minded people? When humanity declares with one voice that barbaric behavior is uncivilized and treats these advocates as criminals without the cloak of religion or political covers to hide under.

***

BILLY C. MEADOWS, Winston-Salem

Our leaders

When times are difficult, we all want leaders who will lead  who will reassure us and comfort us. We want leaders who will put firm hands to the tiller and set an optimistic course for the future.

When times are tough, we want leaders who will reaffirm the values that draw all of us together, who will urge us to be generous and patient with each other, to work together. We want leaders who support and bolster the institutions that give our lives a sense of reliability, that make life better for everyone and keep the course steady.

Instead, weve now got a president who wants to weaken our institutions and our alliances, who calls Americans haters and losers, and who spouts gibberish on Twitter.

We, like Germany, can no longer look to the White House for leadership. Well have to get by on our own.

Which is, when you think about it, exactly what Republicans say they want us to do.

***

BRENDAN LANG, Winston-Salem

American contributions

I agree 100 percent with Michael Reagans June 1 column, American tourist dollars feed Castros human zoo. Our policy in Cuba contributes to oppression and human suffering there. Just as our policy in Saudi Arabia contributes to oppression and human suffering there.

Fortunately, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, along with President Trump, has signaled to the Saudis that our foreign policy is no longer going to be influenced by concerns for human rights, but by whether their interests (cough  profits) align with American interests (cough  profits). If your country can help make America great (cough  profits), were in.

Of course, were finding ways to profit from Cuba. So somebody tell Reagan: we dont have to worry about oppression and human suffering there anymore.

Please submit letters online to Letters@wsjournal.com or mail letters to: The Readers Forum, P.O. Box 3159, Winston-Salem, NC 27102.
Direct railway passenger traffic between Ukraine and the European Union will be expanded, Ukrainian Infrastructure Minister Volodymyr Omelyan has said.

"On December 23, 2016, the Intercity+ Kyiv-Lviv-Przemysl train was launched. This route has become very popular among Ukrainian passengers. Ukrzaliznytsia is looking into the possibility of launching the second pair of Kyiv-Lviv-Przemysl trains by another route (through Vinnytsia, Khmelnytsky and Ternopil). The total population of the cities of Vinnytsia, Khmelnytsky and Ternopil (with agglomerations) exceeds one million people, which means that for one million Ukrainians Europe will become more accessible," the minister said at a briefing in Kyiv on Tuesday.

According to the minister, convenient transfers to train No. 233/234 Khmelnytsky-Lysychansk will be arranged at Vinnytsia and Khmelnytsky railway stations, which will provide convenient connection for inhabitants of northern Donbas, Kharkiv, Poltava to Przemysl, No. 69/70 Mariupol-Lviv (provides convenient connection for the inhabitants of southern Donbas, Dnipro, Zaporizhia, Cherkassy to Przemysl), other trains in the direction of Mykolaiv, Kherson, Odesa, Chisinau.

Thus, all regions of Ukraine will get convenient connections for routes to Poland. In addition, it will be possible to attract passenger traffic from Moldova.

According to Omelyan, starting from June 11, 2017, new railway communication between Ukraine and Poland on the Kovel-Chelm route is planned (with the possibility of extending the route through the Ukrainian territory to Lutsk and Lviv). One pair of trains on this route is currently planned with a subsequent increase to two-three pairs, depending on the passenger traffic. At the first stage, the passage of border and customs control is planned at the Yahodyn station (Ukraine) and Dorohusk station (Poland). Also, a new route Lviv-Krakow is planned to be launched on August 1, 2017.

"Until the end of the year, the Ukraine-EU rail traffic will service at least 100,000 passengers per month. Przemysl and Chelm have formed hubs for further connection with other cities in Poland and Europe," the minister said.

Omelyan also announced "The Train of Five Capitals" project, which is aimed at connecting five capitals of Europe by rail: Kyiv (Ukraine)  Minsk (Belarus)  Vilnius (Lithuania)  Riga (Latvia)  Tallinn (Estonia) with a possible extension to Odesa to connect the route to the Baltic and Black Seas. The traffic is planned by a railway track gauge of 1,524 mm, which makes it possible not to change train wheels en route.

The infrastructure minister also expressed his hope that the construction of a new Beskydsky tunnel Tunnel in the Carpathians will be completed this year.
Summerville, SC (29483)

Today

Thunderstorms likely. Rainfall will be locally heavy at times. Potential for heavy rainfall. Low 69F. Winds SE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 90%..

Tonight

Thunderstorms likely. Rainfall will be locally heavy at times. Potential for heavy rainfall. Low 69F. Winds SE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 90%.
IFC to invest up to $20 mln in Horizon Capital's new fund for Ukraine

The International Finance Corporation, a member of the World Bank Group, is to invest up to $20 million in a direct investment fund, Emerging Europe Growth Fund III, L.P. (EEGF III), registered in Delaware in the United States and launched by Horizon Capital Advisors, LLC for investment mostly in Ukraine.

The IFC board approved the project at a meeting on June 5, IFC said in a statement.

IFC's investment will not exceed 20% of the total fund size. Small- and medium-sized growing enterprises are expected to be main recipients of EEGF III investment.

IFC recalls it is an investor of EEGF II fund, and participation in the new fund will help Horizon complete individually launched investment projects.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) can be engaged as a co-investor of the fund, the statement said.

As reported, U.S.-based Overseas Private Investment Corporation in June 2016 reported the disbursement of up to $37.5 million to EEGF III fund, launched by Horizon Capital, for up to 10 years.

The fund with a declared volume of $150 million will focus on medium-sized fast-growing, export-oriented companies in Ukraine and Moldova with the potential to become local or regional market leaders. It is assumed that the fund will make investment by buying a minority stake in such companies. At the same time, if necessary, it is also possible to provide seed capital for start-ups, acquire businesses or participate in privatization.
The New York Court of Appeals ruled [opinion, PDF] Tuesday that a 2001 New York zoning ordinance that banned adult establishments from residential and most commercial and manufacturing zones was not a violation of the owners First Amendment rights. The zoning ordinance classified adult eating and drinking establishments as regularly featuring live performances characterized by an emphasis on specified anatomical areas or specified sexual activities in any portion of the establishment. The ordinance classified adult bookstores as establishments with at least 40 percent of their floor/stock dedicated to adult purposes. Many establishments attempted to circumvent the ordinances in place before this 2001 amendment. The court held that the city satisfied its burden of proving that many businesses were in sham compliance with the older ordinances, which justified strengthening the initial ordinances with the 2001 amendments.

Zoning ordinances can be a source on controversy in regard to the constitutional rights of people as well as business owners. In January, the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit struck down [JURIST report] Chicago restrictions on gun ranges throughout the city. The court held that these restrictions violated Chicago citizens Second Amendment rights because they were excessively broad and were not supported by evidence demonstrating the citys interest in regulating gun ranges. In July the US Department of Justice brought a lawsuit against a Pennsylvania town for denying zoning approval to a mosque in 2014. In January 2014 a judge for the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois struck down [JURIST report] a Chicago ordinance that banned the licensed sale of firearms in the city. In 2014 in Kennesaw, Georgia, the Kennesaw City Council refused to issue a permit [JURIST op-ed] to build a mosque in a retail only district despite having done so for a Pentecostal church prior. The city council overturned its decision after the DOJ threatened file suit against the city.
Philippine opposition lawmakers petitioned the Supreme Court [official website] on Monday to reject President Rodrigo Dutertes [BBC profile] imposition of martial law. Duterte declared martial law on May 23 when heavily armed militants linked to the Islamic State [BBC profile] took over [JURIST report] large parts of Marawi City, a provincial capital in the predominantly Roman Catholic country. Six House lawmakers, led by Representative Edcel Lagman [official profile], said [AP report] those allied with Duterte should have held joint sessions to evaluate the constitutionality of the Presidents declaration. The petitioners said the claims that militants took over a hospital and decapitated a local police chief were incorrect. The also asserted that the conflict was caused by a government operation to capture a high-profile militant commander and not an unprompted uprising. Critics of Dutertes declaration of martial law say it parallels [AFP report] former dictator Ferdinand Marcos rise to power. The martial law declaration has raised suspicions as to whether Duterte has other motivations, as he has introduced the prospect of martial law several times in connection with his deadly attempt to suppress drug sales in the Philippines. Duterte said he would ignore any opposition from the Supreme Court on the issue. The Supreme Court has 30 days to make a decision regarding the petition.

More than 8,000 people have reportedly been killed over drug-related offenses since Duterte took office last year. Numerous rights groups have been critical of the killings and have spoken out against the current administration. Early in March Human Rights Watch [advocacy website] released a report that accused the police of falsifying evidence [JURIST report] in relation to the alleged police killings of citizens. This policy of sanctioned killings has been part of Dutertes rhetoric since his time as mayor of Davao City. In December a UN Human rights chief called for a murder investigation [JURIST report] after Duterte admitted to killing people in his role as mayor.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott [official website] signed a series of abortion regulations into law on Tuesday. Senate Bill 8 [materials] will require the burial or cremation of fetal tissue and bans the donation of fetal tissue. The legislation also bans so called partial-birth abortion, which is already banned by federal law, as well as the dilation and evacuation procedure, a common second trimester abortion technique. Also Tuesday Abbott announced a special legislative session to take up additional abortion-related measures, as well as other controversial items such as the bathroom bill.

The US Supreme Court struck down [JURIST report] a controversial Texas abortion law in June. The court ruled [opinion, PDF] 5-3 in Whole Womans Health v. Hellerstedt [SCOTUSblog materials] that HB2 [text], which imposed certain requirements on abortion clinics and doctors, created an undue burden on access to abortion, and was therefore unconstitutional. A Texas regulation requiring the burial of fetal remains has been blocked [JURIST report] by a federal judge.
Russian giant, AvtoVAZ recently unveiled sales figures which appear to bear out the slightly more optimistic tone struck by the AEB after four years of unrelenting market falls. The country is undoubtedly beset by challenges almost unknown anywhere else as a combination of international economic sanctions and a reliance on commodities have a correlation on consumer behaviour, but a stabilising ruble and exchange rate may see business pick up. Simon Warburton caught up with the AvtoVAZ CEO at the recent St Petersburg International Economic Forum to take the temperature of any recovery.

AvtoVAZ is describing its recent sales performance as robust, as its own data bears out figures from the Association of European Businesses (AEB) showing a modest recovery in the Russian vehicle sector.

The AEB released numbers recently showing April sales rose 6.9%, while the AvtoVAZ Lada brand saw sales increase 7% in April to 26,300, with the manufacturers overall sales also rising.

I think the trend is now robust, AvtoVAZ CEO, Nicolas Maure told just-auto on the sidelines of last weeks St Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF). AvtoVAZ released its May sales and we are more than 10.5% increase year on year.

The year is not done  we are five months [in] and I think we will stay on that kind of increase until the year end. Overall the market will be between +5% and +10%, which is good news for everybody, for carmakers and suppliers.

There is a clear restart especially for automotive which comes up [from] one of the most depressed sectors. Now the thing is how to speed up the capacity especially with suppliers, so it may even be a kind of paradoxical situation where we have demand and we cant supply.

AvtoVAZ retains a high level of vertical integration, producing its own castings, stamping and plastic injections for example, but the CEO notes the Russian manufacturer is slowly introducing some Renault-Nissan Alliance production techniques, with a target to complete that process within three years.

This means we still have some excess people and the plan is to create an industrial park in Togliatti [AvtoVAZ HQ] next to the park where we invite suppliers to come and also third party companies, added Maure. Sperbank [for example] will start a call centre, they will take 1,000 people.

We may have some excess white collars, but also blue collars and the challenge is how to transform blue collars into call centre employees, but I am quite confident we will. We dont have so [many] third party suppliers  maybe we do some outsourcing but it is not for the two years to come.

It was the genesis of AvtoVAZ, it had to be vertically integrated because there was no supplier industry at the time.

The Russian government has been encouraging import substitution as a way to counter the effects of international economic sanctions, but also exports to take advantage of weak ruble for the past couple of years, although the currency has notably appreciated recently.

When you look at the history of AvtoVAZ and Lada, the highest export volume was 350,000 cars during the 1980s, said Maure. The drive was more to get hard currency [and] this led to a significant car fleet in some countries.

For example, in Cuba they have more than 100,000 Lada cars and most of them are still running. [Now the] Lada 44 has huge potential, so this is what we are thinking for export strategy, to have a very strong portion based on the 44, which is going to be a worldwide niche product.

For the rest of the line-up we are of course looking at the countries of the CIS. We have around 25% market share in Kazakhstan, more than 10% in Belarus and are also exporting significantly to Azerbaijan.

The rest is mainly Middle East, Africa and Latin America. In the Middle East we made a pilot test in Lebanon that will be extended to Jordan. Speaking about Cuba, we will ship the first cars in July. We are already in Chile, Peru [and] Bolivia, but we think we can do much more.

The AvtoVAZ chief also noted the Russian government is looking to additional measures to ensure the fledging recovery recently witnessed in the domestic market can be maintained. The Kremlin has already piled in with a raft of measures aimed at reducing the car parc age, coupled with lower vehicle credit and rental rates programmes to increase demand.

The RBL50bn (US$883m) boost has taken a considerable time to percolate through the hitherto reluctance of Russian consumers to buy new vehicles however and now it appears Moscow is evaluating further steps to solidify any up-tick.

Today there are two sets of measures that are very effective, added Maure. The so-called fleet renewal  scrappage  this is close to 50% of our sales and the second is subsidising loans [for] three years  that is 20% of our sales.

The government especially and the Ministry of Trade are looking at additional measures that should be decided in June, which will target specific segments of customers. One is aimed at promoting ownership of cars at people who do not have cars today and the second is cars for families.

It is [also] to stimulate birth rates in Russia which is good because the country can do much more than 146m. There are also programmes for businesses such as farmers. We believe these programmes can be very effective  this will contribute to the growth of the market.

We are in talk [s] with the Ministry [ies] of Labour, Economy, Industry Interior Affairs and Defence and the government is working on what they call in Russia, Automotive Strategy 2025. The idea is to have a better balance between short-term market support and long-term investment and innovation strategy.

Russia has used the continuing international economic sanctions to target domestic production and import substitution through its Decree 166 programme mandating a certain proportion of component production originated locally, with its successor still being pored over in Moscow Ministries.

Decree 166 is due to end during the middle of next year, with the Ministry of Economy working on a replacement, although details have not yet been finalised.

Russia uses a range of Decree mechanisms to stimulate markets, with automotive forming a key plank of the countrys industrial strategy and as well as localised schemes such as 166, the countrys Export Centre also uses the 905 initiative to increase the amount of support available to carmakers looking to take business overseas.

The Kremlin has enacted Decree 905 to encourage Russian manufacturers to search abroad for export opportunities, as the home market continues to present major sales challenges, with 16 automakers taking advantage of the US$345m available for export initiatives last year.

AvtoVAZ is confident it has turned the corner and a push to reduce fixed costs coupled with an export drive, leads it to believe it can break even in a relatively short time.

We can generate profits with reasonable volumes, noted the AvtoVAZ chief. What we have said in terms of operating profit, we will break even in 2018  today all the indicators are confirming this. I am used to cycles  I started working in the automotive industry in 1987 and I [saw] cycles in 1993 and the shock in 2008.

The difficulty is to be able to adjust quickly  Russia is a bit more amplified. The whole business would welcome the lifting of sanctions  for sure review of the sanctions would be extremely good. For example, we used to have a big volume in the Ukraine, today sales are very limited for obvious reasons; opening up Ukraine would be very interesting for us.

Regarding oil and gas, it is linked to the ruble exchange rate so today the rate is favourable and imports less expensive but on the other hand exports are less competitive  we would see some interest in having a bit lower ruble for exports. There is a short term [goal] to improve the balance sheet of the company  Renault and Rostec have been very supportive. After a capital increase in the last year which generated RBL26bn, this is the first step of the recapitalisation process which will continue through the years to come.

Maure noted despite the alliances undoubted expertise in the electric vehicle field, the sheer scale of climactic and geographical challenges inherent in Russia, made it difficult for the technology to flourish.

Hugely cold temperatures in Russia  it was 6C last week in St Petersburg with even a brief June snow shower  place enormous strain on batteries while the near 6,000 miles between Moscow and Vladivostok gives some idea of the vast distances of the largest country in the world.

There could be interest [however] within cities, added the AvtoVAZ CEO. Of course for buses is also very interesting. [Also] what we have been doing in AvtoVAZ is launching CNG cars starting with Vesta.

Since the cost of fuel is around half of Western Europe, fuel efficiency is less; I would not say it is none, but less than Western Europe. Hybrids will come, but it is also linked to some decisions taken by cities such as St Petersburg or Moscow.

Today, regarding emissions standards we are Euro V and we are Euro VI in probably 2021 or 2022. 
Austria to assign EUR 1 mln to ICRC for demining in Donbas  Kurz

The Austrian government has decided to allocate EUR 1 million for humanitarian mine sweeping projects in Donetsk and Lugansk regions, Austrian Foreign Minister, OSCE Chairman-in-Office Sebastian Kurz has said.

"I am pleased with today's decision of the Council of Ministers aimed at providing a total of EUR 1 million for ICRC's demining in Ukraine's east," Kurz wrote on Twitter on Wednesday.

He noted that half of the funds will be allocated by Austria's Foreign Disaster Fund and another half by the Austrian Development Agency (ADA).

OSCE Chairman-in-Office, Austrian Foreign Minister Kurtz is on a working visit to Kyiv on June 7-8. Later on June 7, Kurtz is scheduled to meet with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin.
Output of passenger cars in Ukraine in May 2017 grows by 40%

Output of passenger cars in May 2017 grew by 40% year-over-year, to 661 vehicles, according to the Ukrautoprom Association's preliminary data.

For the first time since the beginning of the year, they produced not only by CrJSC Eurocar, but also Zaporizhia-based ZAZ plant.

In particular, ZAZ produced 94 passenger cars (in May last year the plant did not produce a single vehicle), Eurocar increased output by 20% compared to May2016, to 568 units. In addition, ZAZ in May manufactured 10 commercial vehicles and three buses.

Taking into account these indicators, the production of cars in Ukraine in January-May increased by 82.7% compared to the same period in 2016, to 2,353 vehicles. In particular, Eurocar boosted output by 76%, to 2,259 vehicles, while ZAZ increased its output from 4 vehicles to 94 vehicles.

As a result of this period, in total, ZAZ produced 267 vehicles against four passenger cars in the same period of last year.

At the same time, the Bogdan Corporation's car production facilities have been idle.

Ukrautoprom said that the highest dynamics of growth for the first five months were again demonstrated by bus producers: 270 units were released against 48 Units for the same period of 2016.

In particular, 131 buses were produced by Cherkasy bus plant (including 31 in May), 35 buses by Chasiv Yar bus plant (three in April), 57 units by Etalon Corporation's Chernihiv-based automobile plant (13 units), 10 buses by ZAZ, 37 buses by Bogdan (not a single one in May). During the same period of 2016, 10 buses were produced by Bogdan and 39 by the Cherkasy bus plant.

At the same time, 50 buses were manufactured in May 2017 against 37 in May 2016 and 51 in April 2017.

The association said that truck output statistics do not include figures from public joint-stock company AutoKrAZ.

The output of commercial vehicles in January-May was 163, which were manufactured by ZAZ. Some 332 trucks and commercial vehicles were produced in the same period last year. Most of them, 330 vehicles were AutoKrAZ vehicles.
An agreement on visa regime facilitation and an agreement on readmission were signed between Ukraine and Switzerland in Kyiv on Wednesday, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin has said.

"We have just signed two agreements. I signed an agreement on the facilitation of the visa regime... And Interior Minister Arsen Avakov signed a readmission agreement," he said at a joint news conference with Head of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs of Switzerland Didier Burkhalter said in Kyiv on Wednesday.

The Ukrainian minister said during the meeting the parties discussed the escalation of the situation in Donbas, issues of bilateral cooperation and cooperation within the framework of international organizations.

Klimkin also said the consistent and unequivocal support by Switzerland for Ukraine in its struggle for independence, including the imposition of sanctions against the Russian Federation, means a lot to Ukrainians.
Speculation regarding the coming or non-coming to Ukraine of Ryanair low-cost airline is an attempt of one national air carrier to maintain its monopoly position in the market, earning super profits on Ukrainian citizens, Minister of Infrastructure Volodymyr Omelyan has said.

He stated this during a briefing on Ukraine's infrastructure readiness for a visa-free regime with the EU in Kyiv.

"In addition, this is a blatant attempt to deprive Ukrainians of the dream of becoming a full-fledged part of the European community. Ukrainians have the right to travel to Europe for EUR50 but not for EUR500, and Ukraine in one step from that. The Ministry of Infrastructure has performed work on attracting Ryanair to Ukraine by 90%, the remaining 10% is due to the airports' management," the minister said.

He stressed that most low-cost air carriers operating in Ukraine are flying to the countries of the Middle East, but the most popular destinations are low-cost transfers to the EU countries.

"Flights from Ukraine to EU countries are carried out by airlines that are not low-cost carriers. The price of tickets is too high for the majority of the Ukrainian population. Therefore the ministry attracts the leading European low-cost companies to Ukraine," he said.
Some UAH 6.5 bln will be used to support farmers in 2018 - Groysman

Some UAH 6.5 billion will be used to support agricultural producers and UAH 1 billion to compensate for the cost of agricultural machinery in 2018, Prime Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Groysman has said.

"This year we foresaw UAH 550 million for the support of Ukrainian agricultural machinery producers because we want the machinery to be manufactured in our country to create jobs and every year increase this support in Ukraine. We believe in 2018 this support will be UAH 6.5 billion, we will spend another UAH 1 billion on agricultural machinery," the prime minister said at the opening of the  Agro 2017 agro-industrial exhibition.

According to him, 1% of proceeds from all agricultural production are to be reinvested in agriculture.

The premier said 40% of the country's forex earnings fall on the agrarian sector.
The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine has approved a list of investment programs and regional development projects that could be implemented in 2017 at the expense of the State Regional Development Fund in the amount of UAH 766 million.

The corresponding decision was made at a government meeting on June 7.

Prime Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Groysman noted the allocation of funds in the amount of UAH 766 million is the first stage since the fund foresees UAH 3.5 billion for the implementation of regional projects.

Later on the same day the press service of Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Regional Development, Construction, Housing and Utilities Services Hennadiy Zubko said 111 projects worth a total of more than UAH 765.9 million have been approved.

In particular, projects in Vinnytsia, Volyn, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Zhytomyr, Zakarpattia, Zaporizhia, Ivano-Frankivsk, Poltava, Rivne, Sumy, Ternopil, Kharkiv, Kherson, Khmelnytsky, Cherkasy, Chernivtsi and Chernihiv regions will be financed.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman has called for preserving the West's sanctions against Russia.

"The lifting of the sanctions should be a reward for abandoning aggressive plans," Groysman said on Tuesday at a meeting with Rudolph Giuliani, an informal cybersecurity adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump and former mayor of New York City.

Ukraine is interested in deeper political and economic cooperation with the United States, Groysman said.

"We are going through quite difficult times of our state's establishment, and the United States of America is playing a historic role in our country's modern history. We are interested in strengthening our political and economic cooperation. We have immense opportunities and hope that these relations will bring about a good result," the Ukrainian government press service quoted Groysman as saying.

Groysman informed Giuliani about the Ukrainian government's steps aimed at stabilizing Ukraine's economic situation and plans of reforms in the healthcare, pension, and privatization sectors.

"This is what will be changing the country and making it more stable in the midterm. Our goal is to bolster economic growth, make the pension system more just, change the healthcare system, carry out education reform, overhaul the country, repel the Russian troops, ensure a vibrant judicial system, and adopt all modern anticorruption systems," Groysman said.

Giuliani in turn expressed support for Ukraine on the part of the U.S. leadership in its fight for freedom and independence.
KEARNEY  First National Bank has awarded Kearney Area Habitat for Humanity a $15,000 grant to support affordable housing in the community.

In presenting the grant, Kearney/Grand Island Market President John Hoggatt said, First National Bank is committed to the success of the communities we serve, and by investing in Kearney Habitat, we are taking steps to fulfill that commitment. Affordable housing is important not only in Kearney, but across the country.

Ken Mumm, Kearney Habitat president, said in a press release, Kearney Habitat lives on volunteers and donations, and it works because of the community support.

This year marks the 25th year for Kearney Habitat. Three homes are under construction. When completed, the three will bring the number of homes built for and with Kearney homeowners to 79.

Kearney Habitat contributes 10 percent of every donation to Habitat for Humanity International for the construction of one-third of a Third World home or the needed rehabilitation of one or two homes, according to Jim McKenzie, Kearney Habitat fundraising chair.

Locally, the $13,500 is enough to pay for 30 roof trusses, 50 sheets of roof sheathing, all nine windows, 85 pieces of sheetrock and the guttering in homes two and three this year, McKenzie said. Hundreds of volunteers, along with the homeowners, will be installing all of these items at no charge.

A $16,000 grant from First National Bank in November 2016 was designated for the first Habitat home being built this year.
A ruling by Kyiv's Economic Court of Appeals, which upheld a Kyiv economic court ruling on the cancellation of a ban imposed by Kyiv City Council on the retail sale of alcoholic beverages in the Ukrainian capital from 23:00 to 10:00, has come into force.

The court ruling dated June 6 obliged Kyiv City Council to execute the decision by the administrative board of the Anti-monopoly Committee's Kyiv branch by repealing the No. 19/1023 decision dated September 22, 2016, on limiting the sale of alcoholic, low-alcohol beverages and beer in retail outlets in Kyiv depending on the parts of the day, the AMC's Kyiv branch said in an announcement on its website.

As reported, Kyiv City Council members on September 22, 2016, banned the sale by retailers of alcoholic and low-alcohol beverages in the territory of Kyiv from 23:00 to 10:00. The decision was backed by 86 council members.

That decision stipulated that the ban applied only to the sale of alcohol through retail outlets. The sale of alcoholic beverages and beer in cafes and restaurants at night was not prohibited.

Prior to that, on March 17, 2016, the Kyiv authorities outlawed the sale of strong drinks in kiosks.
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Switzerland's authorities are assisting in identifying owners of Ukrainian assets frozen in Swiss banks who are facing money laundering charges in Ukraine, Head of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs of Switzerland Didier Burkhalter has said.

"The return of assets that are now in Switzerland is a priority for our state. Despite the fact that our relations with Ukraine are benevolent, the process of returning these assets is very long," he said at a joint press conference with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin in Kyiv on Wednesday.

Burkhalter also noted that Switzerland for its part provides assistance to the judicial system of Ukraine for establishing the owners of these assets. "It is very important to determine the owners of these assets. The process will then accelerate," he added.
Police seal off the access to Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, France, Tuesday, June 6, 2017. Paris police say an unidentified assailant has attacked a police officer near the Notre Dame Cathedral, and the officer then shot and wounded the attacker. (AP Photo/Matthieu Alexandre)
A 73-year-old Illinois man is facing a felony charge for shooting a man at a Bristol shooting range while trying to clear his jammed shotgun.

Donald E Bekeleski of Elk Grove Village appeared in court Tuesday on a charge of second-degree reckless injury, use of a dangerous weapon. Bekeleski waived his right to a preliminary hearing, acknowledging that there was probable cause to believe he committed the crime.

Bekeleski has been out of custody on a signature bond since his initial appearance in court May 9.

Pointed at others

According to the criminal complaint, Bekeleski was at the Conservation Club of Kenosha County, 21320 85th St., in Bristol on April 8 in the trap shooting area. The complaint states that Bekeleskis gun jammed and he bent over to attempt to clear the jam, with the gun barrel pointed at other shooters as he did so. According to witnesses, the gun discharged, the shot striking James Kloet, 64, of Kenosha, who was standing 5 to 7 yards away.

According to the criminal complaint, Kloet was critically injured with abdominal injuries and has required multiple surgeries and a lengthy hospital stay.

Multiple witnesses

The criminal complaint states that multiple witnesses were concerned about Bekeleskis handling of his weapon and at least one person had talked to him about it in the past.

I have seen (Bekeleski) be unsafe with his weapon in the past at the range. He should not have attempted to unjam his firearm where he was, one witness said, according to the complaint.

Another witness said he had told Bekeleski a couple times in the past not to point his gun in an unsafe direction.

If convicted, Bekeleski could be sentenced to up to 17 years in prison and fined up to $25,000.
Switzerland to introduce visa-free regime for Ukrainians together with EU on June 11

Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko on Wednesday discussed with Head of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs of Switzerland Didier Burkhalter future cooperation and situation in Donbas, the press service of the head of state said.

"During the meeting, the two also noted the intention of both sides to further deepen bilateral cooperation, the Swiss foreign minister confirmed that his country will introduce the visa free regime for Ukrainian citizens together with the EU from June 11," the report reads.

Burkhalter and Poroshenko also discussed the ways to speed up the return of frozen assets of former Ukrainian top officials, which are kept in Swiss banks, to Ukraine.

The Ukrainian president told the Swiss foreign minister in detail about the consequences of Russia's continuing aggression in Donbas, and also thanked the Swiss side for their contribution to the settlement process.

According to the report, Poroshenko extended his invitation to the president of Switzerland to visit Ukraine.
Ukraine's Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin last night discussed with his French counterpart a sharp deterioration of the situation in Donbas.

"We have a real deterioration of the security situation in Donbas, with a large number of shellings. We have a lot of wounded, Russia deliberately destabilizes the situation. I discussed this with my counterparts in the Normandy format. Last night I had a detailed conversation with the French foreign minister in order to break this conscious escalation of the situation by Russia," he said at a joint news conference with Head of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs of Switzerland Didier Burkhalter in Kyiv on Wednesday.

According to Klimkin, the parties will continue to do everything possible to prevent escalation in the region, as well as to reach an agreement on the release of hostages.

The press center of the anti-terrorist operation (ATO) headquarters reported as of 06:00 on Wednesday that in the past 24 hours militants fired 85 times at the positions of the Armed Forces in Donbas wounding eight Ukrainian servicemen. In the coastal area, militants used weapons against Ukrainian military 25 times, in the Donetsk sector 28 times, and in the Luhansk sector 32 times.

Militants used 152-mm, 122-mm and 120-mm artillery, including missile launchers, as well as 120-mm and 82-mm mortars, automatic and anti-tank grenade launchers, large-caliber machine guns and small arms.
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I once participated in a discussion about a research study that was drawing data from charges submitted to Medicare and patient outcomes. The head of the project was referring to the financial data as costs, and I simply asked, Isnt this really charges, what Medicare is being charged by the hospital? The response was a sort of non-answer, and then the person concluded, It probably doesnt really matter whether we call them charges or costs. Other physicians in the room nodded knowingly.

And  thats the problem with our health care system. At the heart of it, pharmaceutical companies and health care entities (referring to large hospital networks and medical centers as entities) are both trying to achieve the same thing: they are trying to maximize the amount that they can charge while minimizing their own internal costs. Insurance companies and payers (Medicaid and Medicare) are trying to minimize the amount of charges that they pay out on while minimizing their own internal costs.

Physicians are at the core of the problem because they are the driver, either directly or indirectly, of those charges. As the advocate for the patients, the physicians are on the hook for being the gatekeeper to prevent these runaway charges from consuming and destroying our health care system. However, theres a catch. I would say the vast overwhelming majority of physicians have absolutely no clue what the other half  the costs  are. Unless a physician is in a purely administrative role (in which case theyre probably not submitting much in the way of charges), theres virtually no way any physician can base any decision on a charges-to-costs ratio in a way that is either most beneficial for the patient and/or the health care system.

You might say, It doesnt matter. They have access to the charges, and thats whats driving the problem. However, this point ignores two simple facts: 1) Physicians are trained specifically to be payor-blind. 2) Physicians are conditioned to fear missing a crucial diagnosis and, subsequently, litigation. Lets say you have symptom X from a patient, and the physician can get to the answer most of the time by ordering tests A, B and C. If the physician does not order tests E and F also, which are super expensive but can miss a rare but concerning outcome that might also be treatable, then the physician may have delay in diagnosis in a small percentage of cases. What do you think happens in real life? Tests E and F get ordered, and, in addition, there are multiple places to send either of those tests with a wide range in what the patients insurance gets charged. Are most physicians spending the time researching what is charged for sending E or F to eight different places? Of course not  the last question was rhetorical.

It would seem that were talking about costs all the time. Its everywhere. However, the subtle thing of saying, Hey, those are charges were really talking about! No one is talking about that. Its important because as long as the powers that be are equating the terms charges and costs, then they dont have to have the conversation about what their costs actually are  opening the books, as one might say. All will deny it (that theyre avoiding that conversation). Health care systems will talk about the mission statements and their commitments to providing outstanding patient care.

Meanwhile, a study by Johns Hopkins showed that the so-called nonprofit hospitals are making money hand over fist. The pharmaceutical companies will tolerate a few examples of outrageous charges for medications because theyre hiding the fact that its quite literally occurring across the entire industry. I once asked a pharmaceutical representative to give me information on the costs of the production of a multiple sclerosis drug, meaning what it costs the company to manufacture it. Hes still laughing (I asked him about six weeks ago). Another outstanding article showed how pharmaceutical companies can inflate their charges.

Whats at the core of these two examples? If the system can be gamed for profit, it will be gamed for profit. Things will always be moved around to inflate the charges and minimize the internal costs to maximize that ratio and insurers will move to minimize those same charges.

Of course, even if the books were opened, who would police and enforce it? The American populace has been conditioned for generations to not pay attention to health care charges and costs and to rely on the all-powerful insurance. Even getting an actual itemized bill from a hospital stay is a Herculean endeavor.

The goal of medicine is altruistic, perfect strangers helping to prevent or offset acute and chronic diseases to prolong life. If the physician is not equipped, the patient does not have access to the information and the other players are trying to maximize profit, whos policing whats fair and just in these ever increasing charges?

One thing physicians can do, as the currency of many physicians is the science, i.e. the publications, is to have a requirement that publications submitted also submit information on the charges for each test and/or treatment and the cost (the internal cost for the institution or lab for, lets say, a CBC) for the same things. Then it would be out in the open, for scrutiny and digestion.

Until then, have fun talking about your health savings accounts, trying to get the Medicaid reimbursement rates changed or the next ineffectual carrot or stick law that claims it will get costs under control. Until we have a very real, frank conversation on how we decouple charges and costs, and that information becomes widely available, nothing will change.

The author is an anonymous physician.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
Representatives of the Naval Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the city of Brindisi (Italy) are participating in an expert meeting on amphibious operations.

"The purpose of the event is to exchange experience and study the issues of combating terrorism, piracy, smuggling, preventing pollution of the environment in the marine zone of responsibility, as well as studying tactics of combat operations and landing to capture and retain important facilities," the press centre of the Navy of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said on Wednesday.

The Navy expects that in the future, the received information can be used in the context of reforming the Ukrainian Navy.
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Its common knowledge in medicine: Doctors routinely order tests on hospital patients that are unnecessary and wasteful. Sutter Health, a giant hospital chain in Northern California, thought it had found a simple solution.

The Sacramento-based health system deleted the button physicians used to order daily blood tests. We took it out and couldnt wait to see the data, said Ann Marie Giusto, a Sutter Health executive.

Alas, the number of orders hardly changed. Thats because the hospitals medical-records software has this cool ability to let you save your favorites, Giusto said at a recent presentation to other hospital executives and physicians. It had become a habit.

There are plenty of opportunities to trim waste in Americas $3.4 trillion health care system  but, as the Sutter example illustrates, its often not as simple as it seems.

Some experts estimate that at least $200 billion is wasted annually on excessive testing and treatment. This overly aggressive care also can harm patients, generating mistakes and injuries believed to cause 30,000 deaths each year.

The changes that need to be made dont appear unrealistic, yet they seem to take an awful lot of time, said Dr. Jeff Rideout, chief executive of the Integrated Healthcare Association, an Oakland, Calif., nonprofit group that promotes quality improvement. Weve been patient for too long.

In California, that sense of frustration has led three of the states biggest health care purchasers to band together to promote care thats safer and more cost-effective. The California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS), the Covered California insurance exchange and the states Medicaid program, known as Medi-Cal  which collectively serve more than 15 million patients  are leading the initiative.

Progress may be slow, but there have been some encouraging signs. In San Diego, for instance, the Sharp Rees-Stealy Medical Group said it cut unnecessary lab tests by more than 10 percent by educating both doctors and patients about overuse.

A large public hospital, Los Angeles County-University of Southern California Medical Center, eliminated preoperative testing deemed superfluous before routine cataract surgery. As a result, patients on average received the surgery six months sooner.

These efforts were sparked by the Choosing Wisely campaign, a national effort launched in 2012 by the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) Foundation. The group asked medical societies to identify at least five common tests or procedures that often provide little benefit.

The campaign, also backed by Consumer Reports, encourages medical providers to hand out wallet-sized cards to patients with questions they should ask to determine whether they truly need a procedure.

Critics have knocked Choosing Wisely for playing it too safe and not going after some of the more lucrative procedures, such as certain spine operations and arthroscopic knee surgeries.

Daniel Wolfson, chief operating officer at the ABIM Foundation, said the Choosing Wisely campaign has been successful at starting a national conversation about unwarranted care. I think we need massive change and that takes 15 years, Wolfson said.

The state effort, dubbed Smart Care California, is in the early stages as well.

Initially, the group has focused on cutting the number of elective cesarean sections, reducing opioid use and avoiding overtreatment for patients suffering low-back pain. In its contract with health insurers, the Covered California exchange requires that their in-network providers meet a range of quality standards, including low C-section rates.

Dr. Richard Sun, co-chairman of the Smart Care group and a medical consultant at CalPERS, said hes pursuing safer, more affordable treatments for low-back pain, a condition that cost the state agency $107 million in 2015. One challenge is developing metrics that everyone can agree upon to measure improvement, he said.

For patients, overtreatment can be more than a minor annoyance. Galen Gunther, a 59-year-old from Oakland, said that during treatment for colorectal cancer a decade ago he was subjected needlessly to repeated blood draws, often because the doctors couldnt get their hands on earlier results. Later, he said, he was overexposed to radiation, leaving him permanently scarred.

Every doctor I saw wanted to run the same tests, over and over again, Gunther said. Nobody wanted to take responsibility for that.

At Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, officials said that economic incentives still drive hospitals to think that more is better.

We have excellent patient outcomes, but its at a very high cost, said Dr. Harry Sax, executive vice chairman for surgery at Cedars-Sinai. There is still a continued financial incentive to do that test, do that procedure and do something more.

In addition to financial motives, Sax said, many physicians still practice defensive medicine out of fear of malpractice litigation. Also, some patients and their families expect antibiotics to be prescribed for a sore throat or a CT scan for a bump on the head.

To cut down on needless care, Cedars-Sinai arranged for doctors to be alerted electronically when they ordered tests or drugs that run contrary to 18 Choosing Wisely recommendations.

The hospital analyzed alerts from 26,424 patient encounters from 2013 to 2016. All of the guidelines were followed in 6 percent of those cases, or 1,591 encounters.

Sax said Cedars-Sinai studied the rate of complications, readmissions, length of stay and direct cost of care among the patients in whose cases the guidelines were followed and compared those outcomes with cases where adherence was less than 50 percent.

In the group that didnt follow the guidelines, patients had a 14 percent higher incidence of readmission and 29 percent higher risk of complications. Those complications and longer stays increased the cost of care by 7 percent, according to the hospital.

In 2013, the first year of implementation of Choosing Wisely guidelines, Cedars-Sinai said it avoided $6 million in medical spending.

For perspective, Cedars-Sinai is one the largest hospitals in the nation with $3.3 billion in revenue for the fiscal year ending June 30. It reported net income of $301 million.

In Northern California, Sutter has incorporated more than 130 Choosing Wisely recommendations as part of a broader effort to reduce variation in care. In all, Sutter said, it has saved about $66 million since 2011.

Thats a significant sum. However, during the same period, Sutter reported $2.7 billion in profits. Last year alone, it posted an operating profit of $554 million on revenue of nearly $12 billion.

Giusto said her team of employees tasked with changing physician behavior and eliminating these variations is separate from administrators who are focused on maximizing reimbursement. She said there can be conflicting forces within a hospital.

We get real excited about a project with [emergency department] doctors on reducing CT scans for abdominal pain, said Giusto, director of Sutters office of patient experience. Then I can hear the administration say that was a fee-for-service patient. I just lost money, right?

Giusto meets with doctors to present data on how many tests or prescriptions they order and how that compares to others. At one clinic, she shared slides showing that some doctors were ordering more than 70 opioid pills at a time while others prescribed fewer than 20. In response, Sutter set a goal of 28 tablets in hopes of reducing opioid abuse.

Most of the physicians changed, Giusto said. But there were still two who said, Screw it. Im going to keep doing it.

Chad Terhune is a senior correspondent, Kaiser Health News, where this article originally appeared.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
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The medicine model has changed since our predecessors practiced medicine in the days of Dr. William Osler. These days, medicine is a commercialized industry. The hospital makes this clear by prioritizing charting and patient satisfaction over patient care. Also, patients are accountable for making it feel this way. Some patients want to dictate their care completely, like making an order at Burger King. Physicians are encouraged to please patients, because three stars are better than four under their name on Google. This is only the beginning.

In the future, medicine will likely go something like this: imagine a world where only three big companies essentially run everything. These companies are Facebook, Amazon, and Google. After breaking into the grocery shopping industry, Amazon decides, why not medicine?

Future customers, I mean patients, will all have a medical profile. Their genome will be uploaded, and known health risks will be displayed. Genetic specific advertisements will pop up frequently while one tries to click through to their first appointment with a physician, really an artificially intelligent being trained in medicine. This bot will analyze genetic and lifestyle risks and make suggestions. It will also recommend vaccines and screening. Patients can then go to a local Amazon clinic and get their vaccines and screening tests by assembly line nurses and doctors; until AI can do an IV and colonoscopy.

If patients are sick, theyll type in symptoms and the on call Dr. Bot will run an algorithm of the likely causes.There will be handheld scanning devices developed by Google that patients will use to upload imaging. Patients can then go to a local Amazon, have their blood drawn and treatment given. A significant fewer amount of doctors and nurses will be involved in these clinics. Since hospital stays are costly, Amazon finds a way to reduce this. Only those who require ICU and step down care will be in the hospital. The bots will analyze mortality and reduce ICU time based on this data. This may include ending care. If Donald Trump can be president, anything at this point is possible, right? Meanwhile, all other care will take place at home or Amazon hospital homes. Again, this will mostly be staffed by Dr. Bots, cheap residents and nurse practitioners. There will be a significant reduction in the need for human physicians. Who knows what the implications on morbidity and mortality will be.

The doctor-patient relationship will not really exist. It is already being reduced with hospitalist medicine, high volume and high turn over. Internal medicine docs are scarce and can only spend so much time with patients. With no major incentives to go into internal medicine, this will get worse. More young docs with colossal debt will opt to specialize.

As a training physician, I am not very optimistic about this inevitable transition. Job security will reduce, along with the doctor-patient relationship, and the art of medicine. Since I envision this change, Im working on plan B like most other people in my generation. I hope this new model will be a bust and we return to old school medicine. Until then, I will need a side hustle. Ill also need to create a specific niche to compete in this new world.

Dr. Mary is an internal medicine resident who blogs at Diverse Medicine.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
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After another long shift of patients with colds, bug bites, ankle sprains and sore throats I eagerly looked through the wine selection at the local grocery store. It was my wedding anniversary and nearing 9 p.m. at the beginning of a holiday weekend. While at the checkout line, an elderly woman in front of me thanked me for my service. At that moment, I realized that I was wearing my military uniform, which I typically did not do while grocery shopping. That elderly woman then proceeded to ask the cashier to credit my bill with $20, which she gave to her and asked her not to tell me. I was extremely humbled.

I quietly sat in my car, reflecting about why I had chosen emergency medicine as a career, and furthermore, why I had joined the United States Army. While I have enjoyed most of the past seven years of my military career, it was not the patriotism in me that drew me to the military. It was the opportunity to pay my student loans and the thought of an exciting lifestyle in military emergency medicine.

Military medicine is often described as cutting edge medicine with the latest technology, yet there are many reports of military health care system being subpar when compared to their civilian counterpart. This is due, in part, to not seeing as many high acuity patients, the culture of a compartmentalized system, the resistance to change and strict adherence to rank in the military medical department.

The reality is that the Armys garrison clinical setting is not adequate for emergency physicians maintenance of critical procedural skills. This could have a tremendous impact on retention and satisfaction of emergency physicians. To keep emergency medicine skills sharp and ready for deployment to conflict areas around the globe the military typically allows physicians to moonlight at civilian facilities in their free time. However, off-duty employment is highly regulated at the local level, and some commands make strict policies to ensure most physicians are not able to moonlight.

Increasing wages for military physicians could increase retention, however increasing the intellectual stimulation and allowing emergency physicians to easily moonlight and obtain a higher level of intellectual challenge might be more effective. Working in a medical center with residency programs might offer that challenge to some, however, most of the military treatment facilities are small community hospitals that just do not have the resources, or the sick patients needed to stay sharp in the profession.

There are many great physicians that have made the military a career, and I am thankful for them, but some of us long for something different. While I made a choice to put on the uniform, I wish the military had more to offer physicians. More autonomy in the practice of medicine and less influence of rank with concern to medical decisions. The money is not the issue with physician retention nor is the population we serve. The bureaucracy and administrative burdens are what frustrates physicians, along with the feeling of impotence and the daily struggle with moral and ethical dilemmas. Sometimes military physicians are challenged by an order to provide medical care that they believe is wrong or inadequate. This never ending internal conflict, this duel loyalty idea, at times just takes a toll.

I am thankful for those that find true passion and satisfaction in military medicine, but after over seven years of military service, I personally need a change. I realize, however, that no matter how I feel about my profession, there is honor in serving the country that has taken me as one of its own; the country that has freed me from a communist upbringing. Today at that checkout line, I was reminded that despite my lack of satisfaction with the system in which I practice, providing care to our countrys bravest is a privilege. I was reminded of the honor that comes with helping preserve our countrys fighting strength and serving those who serve.

Demis N. Lipe is an emergency physician.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
Lawmakers in the State of Texas are heading back to work next month.

The governor has called a Special Session to address 20 different topics - including the state bathroom bill, abortion, school vouchers, voter fraud and tax cuts - just to name a few.

State Representative Richard Raymond speaks about a bill he feels is very important: "First of all, the one thing that we have, we have to pass a bill that would allow the Texas medical board to continue, otherwise it will close on September 1. So obviously, that's very important."

The session starts July 18. This will be the first time the legislature has a Special Session since 2013.
Kiplinger's spoke with Molly Moon Nietzel, 38, founder of the Seattle-based dessert company Molly Moon's Homemade Ice Cream (opens in new tab), about why she left an executive-level position in the nonprofit world to start her own business. Here's an excerpt from our interview:

Why ice cream? I worked in an ice cream shop in my hometown of Boise, Idaho, and at one in Missoula, Mont., in college. For most of my twenties, I was executive director of a political nonprofit that I founded, but eventually I burned out on asking people for money. When I whined to my mom, What will I do with my life? she said, Why not open an ice cream shop? I opened my first shop in Seattle in 2008, and immediately there were lines around the block.

Whats special about your formula? Our ice cream is 19% butterfat. The milk and cream come from local dairy farms, and they are hormone- and antibiotic-free. Our ice cream has some of the lowest sugar content in town, and we use only non-GMO cane sugar. When we started, it was hard to find local organic ingredients, such as strawberries, in commercial quantities. Its still not easy, but its easier. [See Mollys blog at www.mollymoon.com/blog (opens in new tab).]

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Where do you make the ice cream? We make it in every shop, rather than in one big commissary. Ice cream delivered in trucks melts and refreezes, which leads to icy ice cream.

Whats your biggest seller? Cookie doughoatmeal chocolate-chip dough in a nutmeg-and-cinnamon ice cream. But spring garlic and cheddar cheese were two that bombed.

How much do you charge? We charge $4.25 a scoop and $9.50 for an 18-ounce scoopers pint. Because of a global shortage of vanilla beans, a gallon of organic vanilla costs us $420. Were doing some testing to decide whether we need to use vanilla in as many flavors.

How did you fund your start-up? I knew people in my network who had money to invest, including a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, and soon raised $220,000. One of the people I asked was a former boyfriend, Zack Reinig. He invested $50,000, and his parents invested, too. Zack and I later married, and we have a beautiful daughter, February Moon Reinig. To open our second shop quickly, I raised money a second time in exchange for equity. Since then, weve financed growth through cash flow and a bit of debt.

How have you grown? Our revenues in 2008 were almost $400,000. In 2016, they were nearly $6.6 million, and we expect to hit $7.9 million in 2017. We have eight shops now, and well add another shop this year and two more next year. We have 100 to 120 employees year-round, and we hire seasonally, so well have about 212 employees this summer.

Whats your greatest satisfaction? Creating jobs and building a company that is a leader in labor practices. Every new shop creates 20 jobs. We pay 100% of medical premiums for employees and their children, and we offer a family-leave plan. This past spring, we launched a 401(k) program. Were matching employees contributions up to 1% of their income in 2017, and we expect to raise the match to 2% in 2018 and 3% in 2019.
After his grandfather died more than a decade ago, Lamarr Couser and his family were caught by surprise when the funeral director asked whether the World War II veteran was covered by a life insurance policy from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Couser, who is himself a U.S. Navy veteran and former National Guardsman, wasnt aware of the VA life insurance, a $10,000 policy for disabled veterans who might otherwise be denied private coverage, nor had he yet applied for it. His grandfather didnt have it, either. I was shocked, he says. It must be one of the best-kept secrets there is.

Indeed. The insurance is just one of several substantial benefits for many veterans and their familiesfrom insurance to caregivingthat you may never have heard of. Consider Aid and Attendance, a tax-free benefit that helps cover an eligible veterans costs for caregivers, nursing homes or assisted livingin some cases, to the tune of nearly $2,000 a month.

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Many vets may also be unaware that the VA recently made it easier for veterans to get hearing aids, says Louis Celli, director of Veterans Affairs and Rehabilitation for the American Legion (opens in new tab). No longer does a vet need a physicians referral to get an appointment with a hearing specialist. He or she can simply schedule an appointment. VA insurance covers the cost; Medicare typically doesnt.

And in March, the VA said it will recognize eight diseases linked to contaminated water at Camp Lejeune, N.C. (opens in new tab), and cover claims for veterans suffering from those ailments who served there at least 30 days between August 1, 1953, and December 31, 1987.

Theres a whole framework of resources out there, says Joseph Montanaro, a financial planner with USAAs military affairs advocacy group (opens in new tab). Dont assume youre not eligible, he says. And recognize that spouses and dependents may qualify, too.

Montanaros family learned that lesson when his father died of a service-related lung disease. They were surprised to discover their stepmother qualified for Dependency and Indemnity Compensation, a monthly tax-free payment for surviving spouses and dependents that can total more than $1,200, Montanaro says.

Whos Eligible

Its not just career military vets who can qualify for benefits. In general, veterans who served before 1980 need only have 90 days or more of active duty and a discharge other than dishonorable to qualify for many benefits. Veterans who served after 1980 must have served 24 continuous months of active duty or the full period for which they were called to active duty.

Ignore the common myth that you have to be disabled to use VA health care. You can check your eligibility at www.vets.gov/healthcare/eligibity (opens in new tab). Co-pays may be required, depending on income and other factors.

Seek help from veterans groups such as the American Legion (opens in new tab), the Veterans of Foreign Wars (opens in new tab) (VFW), the Disabled American Veterans (opens in new tab) (DAV) and the Vietnam Veterans of America (opens in new tab) (VVA). Through those organizations websites, you can find a veteran service officer in your area who can point you toward benefits you might be eligible for, help you apply and assist in appeals. Their services are free.

As a first step, be sure to fill out an intent to file form covering the specific benefit you seek, says Kaylin Gilkey, community engagement manager for Veteran-Aid.org (opens in new tab), an advocacy group. It may take months for your claim to be approved, but your benefits will be retroactive to the date you filed the form. That could mean thousands of dollars in reimbursements, she says. If a veteran dies while a claim is outstanding, it can be pursued by a surviving spouse or dependents, says Michael Figlioli, deputy director of the VFW National Veterans Service (opens in new tab).

Wide Range of Benefits Available

Spouses and dependents of a permanently and totally disabled vet can qualify for health insurance through the VAs Civilian Health and Medical Program (opens in new tab), or CHAMPVA. It can be a huge savings, for you and your family, says Chad Moos, the DAVs deputy national service director. But some veterans have gone years and years without even realizing their dependents are eligible. There are no premiums for CHAMPVA health and prescription coverage. Those on CHAMPVA can also sign up for Medicare Part D, which does have premium costs; Medicare is always the primary payer.

For veterans who need more help at home, theres a hidden benefit known as the Veteran-Directed Care Program, says Adrian Atizado, DAVs deputy national legislative director. It allows certain disabled veterans to hire family and friends to help with daily living tasks, such as doing the laundry or helping with breakfast. The VA provides you or your financial counselor as much as $2,000 a month, on average, to pay caregivers and aides you choose. The program is available through VA Medical Centers (opens in new tab) in at least 35 states.

Vietnam War vets who may have been exposed to Agent Orange, a herbicide used during the war, are eligible for a range of compensation and health care benefits. To qualify, you need to prove that you had boots on the ground in Vietnam, even briefly, between January 9, 1962, and May 7, 1975. You also need to show that you have a current diagnosis of one of the disabilities recognized by the VA as linked to the exposure (opens in new tab), such as diabetes mellitus Type 2 or ischemic heart disease. Vets exposed to Agent Orange aboard ships, on aircraft and in other locations can also qualify.

If you meet the requirements for Agent Orangerelated benefits, you may obtain disability compensation benefits and access to other health services more quickly, says Kelsey Yoon, director of veterans benefits for the VVA. And children of veterans exposed to Agent Orange who were born with spina bifida and certain other birth defects may also qualify for benefits, including compensation, health care and vocational training. Older vets especially worry about who is going to take care of their kids when theyre gone, Yoon says. This is one of the most unknown benefits.

For long-term care, the Aid and Attendance benefit is aimed at helping older veterans and their spouses when they can no longer handle daily living tasks, such as dressing and showering, on their own, says Veteran-Aids Gilkey. To qualify, you usually need to be paying for some kind of care, have roughly $80,000 or less in assets (excluding one home and one vehicle) and have served at least one day during wartime while on active duty. The $80,000 figure is a rough estimate, Veteran-Aid notes, and you can sometimes qualify above that limit. A single veteran can receive as much as $1,794 a month; a surviving spouse, $1,153; and two married veterans as much as $2,846. Its been around a long time, but its still so little-known, Gilkey says.

Vets who have mobility problems can apply for grants available to modify a car or home. There are also state VA benefits, from exemptions for local property taxes to free fishing and hunting licenses. For details, see the State Veterans Benefits map at Military.com (opens in new tab), a benefits information site.

After a veterans death, survivors may qualify for benefits such as the monthly benefit payment that Montanaros stepmother received. You could be eligible if the veteran died in the line of duty or from a service-related cause, says Kevin Friel, assistant director of the VAs pension and fiduciary service.

The VA can help with some burial expenses, and it provides a free headstone or marker and burial flag. The VA just created a program that allows veterans to apply for burial benefits in advance, so veterans and their families can plan ahead. Go to www.cem.va.gov/pre-need (opens in new tab) to learn more.
Earlier this year, the Baden-Wurttemberg consortium for a German internet institute coordinated by Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) made it into the final round of the competition together with four other renowned science regions. Today, the decision was made in favor of the consortium from Berlin. However, the KIT-coordinated consortium of institutions from Baden-Wurttemberg, namely, the University of Mannheim, FZI Research Center for Information Technology, Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (ISI), International Center for Ethics in the Sciences and Humanities (IZEW) of Eberhard Karls University of Tubingen, Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences (GESIS), Leibniz-Institut fur Wissensmedien (IWM, Leibniz Institute for Knowledge Media), Center for European Economic Research (ZEW), and the Center for Art and Media (ZKM), Karlsruhe, plans to use of the synergies resulting from the application procedure and to continue cooperation. In line with the states digitization strategy, it has decided to study impacts of digital change on society. The state government has already promised support.

[...]

Being The Research University in the Helmholtz Association, KIT creates and imparts knowledge for the society and the environment. It is the objective to make significant contributions to the global challenges in the fields of energy, mobility, and information. For this, about 9,800 employees cooperate in a broad range of disciplines in natural sciences, engineering sciences, economics, and the humanities and social sciences. KIT prepares its 22,300 students for responsible tasks in society, industry, and science by offering research-based study programs. Innovation efforts at KIT build a bridge between important scientific findings and their application for the benefit of society, economic prosperity, and the preservation of our natural basis of life. KIT is one of the German universities of excellence.
SHANGHAI, June 7 (Reuters) - China's Ministry of Finance on Wednesday auctioned 40 billion yuan ($5.89 billion) of one-year bonds at an average yield of 3.6695 percent, and an additional 40 billion yuan of 10-year bonds at 3.6985 percent, traders said, both above market forecasts.

For one-year bonds, market estimates had centred around 3.53 percent and forecasts ranged from 3.45 to 3.65 percent.

The auction yield came in above Tuesday's benchmark secondary market yield of 3.5158 percent for one-year government bonds .

For the 10-year bonds, market forecasts had centred around 3.66 percent and ranged from 3.58 to 3.75 percent.

The auction yield also came in above Tuesday's benchmark secondary market yield of 3.6328 percent for 10-year government bonds .

For stories on Chinese debt issues, click on .

($1 = 6.7942 Chinese yuan)

(Reporting by Shanghai Newsroom; Editing by Sunil Nair)
Former U.S. President Barack Obama is still optimistic about the Paris climate agreement, despite Trump walking away from it last week, he told a sold-out crowd Tuesday.

Speaking to the Board of Trade of Montreal, Obama said: In Paris, we came together around the most ambitious agreement in history to fight climate change. An agreement, even with the temporary absence of American leadership, will still give our children a fighting chance. 

An estimated 6,000 people were gathered at the Palais des Congres, a convention center in downtown Montreal to hear the former head of state.

Obama added that he took great comfort in hearing that U.S. states, cities, and companies still remain committed to the Paris agreement.

The former president never once mentioned Trump by name in his speech.

Obama also took the time to reassure the audience that the international order created after WWII will survive.

We will have to replace fear with hope  that is the spirit that we need right now, he said. When we lead with our hopes and not our fears, we are capable of doing things other nations cannot or will not do.

At this time, we cannot stand still, we have to act with greater urgency and greater conviction. We have to acknowledge some very real problems that exist in our world today, Obama said.

He also pointed out that income inequality and economic insecurity created by the pace of globalization sometimes makes populism and the politics of nationalism very tempting.

In some cases, that leads people to search for certainty and control and they can call for isolationism or nationalism or they can suggest rolling back the rights of others, he said. "Or simply they can try to retreat and suggest we have no obligations beyond our borders, or beyond our communities, or beyond our tribe  that what's good for me and my immediate people is all that matters, that everyone else is on their own.

Even though such instincts are understandable, they must be avoided, Obama urged.

History also shows there is a better way, he said. Canada shows, the United States, Europe, Japan show it is possible for us to overcome our fears and to reach across our divides.

This is especially important in the age of constant and instant information, Obama said. Where TV and Twitter can feed us a steady stream of bad news and sometimes fake news, it can seem like the international order we have created is constantly being tested and the center may not hold.

This was the first time Obama visited Canada since he left the White House in January. The last time he visited Canada was on a state visit in June 2016.

The event was sold-out in less than 15 minutes, according to media reports. Prices ranged from $57 to $1,600.
By David Lawder | WASHINGTON

The U.S. and Mexican governments reached a new agreement to significantly shift their sugar trade mix, but U.S. sugar producers have failed to endorse the deal, leaving question marks over whether it could still sour broader trade relations.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the "agreement in principle" with Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo calls for Mexico to reduce the share of refined sugar in its exports to the United States, while increasing the share of raw sugar.

He said Mexico met nearly every request by the U.S. sugar industry to fix problems with a 2014 sugar trade agreement.

"Unfortunately, despite all of these gains, the U.S. sugar industry has said it is unable to support the agreement in its present form," Ross said without elaborating on their objections.

He added that the agreement would go through a final drafting stage in which he hoped that the U.S. producers could come on board with it.

Asked how long this would take, Ross said, "It should be days, not weeks or months."

The deal cut by Ross and Guajardo leaves Mexico's overall access to the U.S. sugar market unchanged but refined sugar must fall to 30 percent of overall imports from Mexico from a previous limit 53 percent.

It also lifts the U.S. price paid for Mexican raw sugar to 23 cents per pound from 22.25 cents, while, the price for refined sugar will rise to 28 cents per pound from 26 cents. These prices exclude shipping and packaging costs, the Commerce Department said in a summary.

An agreement was expected to help avoid potential retaliation from Mexico on imports of U.S. high-fructose corn syrup, a trade battle that would heighten U.S.-Mexico tensions as both countries along with Canada prepare to begin renegotiating the 23-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement in August.

Ross on Monday extended the deadline for the negotiations by 24 hours to complete what he called "final technical consultations" for a deal.

Sources on both sides of the border said on Monday that the U.S. sugar industry had added new demands outside of the terms agreed on earlier in the day by the two governments.

U.S. refiners have complained that high-quality Mexican raw sugar was going straight to sugar consumers, rather than passing through U.S. refineries.

The deal would mark the culmination of a years-long dispute between the countries over sugar, after U.S. groups three years ago asked the government for protection from dumping of subsidized imports from Mexico. In 2014, the U.S. government slapped large duties on Mexican sugar but hammered out a deal with Mexico that suspended those levies. Factions of the U.S. industry have said that the deal has failed to eliminate harm from Mexican imports.

The U.S. industry involved in the dispute include a coalition of cane and beet farming groups as well as ASR Group, the maker of Domino Sugar that is owned by the politically connected Fanjul family.

ASR and fellow cane refiner Imperial Sugar, owned by commodities firm Louis Dreyfus Company BV [AKIRAU.UL], have said they are being starved of raw supplies under the current deal. They have asked the U.S. government to terminate the pact.

The latest talks began in March, two months after U.S. President Donald Trump took office vowing a tougher line on trade to protect U.S. industry and jobs.

(Additional reporting by Susan Heavey in Washington, Anthony Esposito and Dave Graham in Mexico City and Chris Prentice in New York.; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Meredith Mazzilli and Lisa Shumaker)
June 7 (Reuters) - The Baltic Exchange's main sea freight index , tracking rates for ships carrying dry bulk commodities, rose on Wednesday, snapping a 16-session decline on better rates for capesize vessels.

The overall index, which factors in rates for capesize, panamax, supramax and handysize shipping vessels, was up 3 points, or 0.37 percent, at 821 points.

The capesize index gained 13 points, or 0.95 percent, to 1,379 points.

Average daily earnings for capesizes, which typically transport 150,000-tonne cargoes such as iron ore and coal, were up $218 at $10,178.

The panamax index was flat at 783 points.

Average daily earnings for panamaxes, which usually carry coal or grain cargoes of about 60,000 to 70,000 tonnes, decreased $6 to $6,281.

Among smaller vessels, the supramax index fell 6 points to 652 points, while the handysize index declined 5 points to 429 points.

(Reporting by Karen Rodrigues in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)
MINSK, June 7 (Reuters) - The Belarussian central bank will raise the required ratio for banks' dollar-denominated reserves to 15 percent from 11 percent as part of ongoing efforts to reduce the amount of dollars in the market, it said on Wednesday.

"The change to the reserve ratio will help increase the attractiveness of savings in Belarussian roubles," it said.

The new ratio will come into effect on July 1.

(Reporting by Andrei Makhovsky; Writing by Alessandra Prentice)
Gold futures are among the few bright spots for commodity bulls, with prices poised to test their 2017 high, says Mike Zarembski, senior commodities analyst with optionsXpress. Comex August gold on Tuesday threatened the $1,300-an-ounce level for the first time since mid-April, with investors moving some assets to so-called safe havens like gold and U.S. Treasury notes, he says. Factors cited by traders for moving into gold include recent terrorist attacks and an important election in the U.K. Thursday, along with recent weakness in the U.S. dollar, which is trading at lows not seen since the spike low immediately following U.S. elections, Zarembski says. In addition, data out of Asia seems to confirm that physical gold demand has been increasing in both China and India, which is adding support to physical gold prices, he continues. With psychological resistance at $1,300 just a few ticks above current price levels, we may see gold prices begin to accelerate higher should resistance fail to hold and trend-following commodity funds add to positions on a breakout to new highs for the year. As of 8:51 a.m. EDT, Comex August gold was down $3.40 for the day to $1,294.10 an ounce after hitting a Tuesday high of $1,298.80.

By Allen Sykora of Kitco News; asykora@kitco.com

BBH: Traders Prepare For Most Important Day Of The Quarter

Thursday may be the most important day of the quarter for investors, says Brown Brothers Harriman. Market participants will be watching for the outcome of a European Central Bank meeting, and U.K. voters go to the polls. In the U.S., James Comey, the former director of the FBI, is scheduled to deliver congressional testimony. He was fired by President Donald Trump last month while overseeing an FBI investigation of Russian influence in last autumns U.S. elections. Ahead of these significant events, the global capital markets are mostly quiet, with some pockets of activity, BBH says.

By Allen Sykora of Kitco News; asykora@kitco.com

Commerzbank: Indian Gold Demand Robust But May Wane

Physical gold demand in India still appears extremely robust, although this could be curbed by higher prices in the month ahead, says Commerzbank. Analysts cite data from Thomson Reuters GFMS showing that Indian gold imports in May climbed to 103 tonnes, roughly four times as high as in the same month a year ago, although Commerzbank notes May of 2016 was a weak month. In the first five months of 2017 combined, imports totaled 424 tonnes, a year-on-year gain of 144%. This high level will not be maintained, however, Commerzbank says. The significantly higher price level is likely to slow gold buying in India, as should the introduction from 1 July of the 3% goods and services tax, ahead of which we should see purchases brought forward though.

By Allen Sykora of Kitco News; asykora@kitco.com

MKS: Gold May Consolidate Ahead Of Major Risk Events

Gold remains poised to push above $1,300 an ounce although the market could meander sideways for a while before a number of major upcoming events, says Alex Thorndike, senior precious-metals dealer with MKS (Switzerland) S.A. Spot metal briefly poked above $1,296 on Tuesday. A test of $1,300 seems almost inevitable from here, Thorndike says. A lot will be riding on the political outcomes of the British election Thursday and [former FBI Director James] Comey's congressional testimony, which threatens to damage [the] Trump administration, and the ECB over the next 48 hours. Then attention turns to next weeks meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, with markets factoring in a roughly 90% probability of a rate hike, Thorndike continues. If the Fed holds on this, a correction in the precious -- particularly gold and silver -- could be sharp and severe, he says. For now, we see the metal consolidating around $1,280-1,300, leading into these risk events.

By Allen Sykora of Kitco News; asykora@kitco.com

Metals Focus: Gold GST Rate Will Help The Industry Over The Long Term

Metals Focus says the 3% goods and service tax (GST) on gold, announced over the weekend, should be helpful for gold in the long term since it was not as high as some feared. The GST was passed in August 2016. Since, the GST Council has met 15 times to set tax rates for various commodities, the consultancy explains. During a weekend meeting, gold-market participants watched to see what the council would decide for precious metals and jewelry. The GST on precious metals was one of the last items to be finalized, reflecting a lack of consensus among council members over the past several months, Metals Focus says. Consuming states wanted a higher GST rate, whereas the manufacturing states called for a lower rate. After intense lobbying, the council announced a 3% GST on precious metals and jewelry. This announcement is significant, as there was a growing fear among the industry that the council might announce a GST of 5% or higher, especially as a section of the government wanted a higher rate, Metals Focus says. Prior to this decision, the council had already approved tax bands of 0%, 5%, 12%, 18% and 28% for goods and services. As such, the 3% band for precious metals appears to be a special rate which highlights the importance of the industry to the government. We believe that this rate will help the industry over the long term.
(Updates with final prices, details from Mexico)

By Bruno Federowski

SAO PAULO, June 7 (Reuters) - Brazil's stock index and currency on Wednesday advanced after a planned reform of labor regulations cleared a hurdle in Congress, but uncertainty over the outcome of an electoral court trial that could oust President Michel Temer limited gains.

Temer's proposal to loosen labor laws won approval from the Senate's economic affairs committee on Tuesday, clearing the way for a full-house vote and reducing expectations that a growing political crisis could jeopardize his reforms agenda. The benchmark Bovespa stock index rose 0.34 percent, driven higher by rising shares of banks such as Itau Unibanco Holding SA , Banco Bradesco SA and Banco do Brasil SA .

Brazil's real inched up only 0.13 percent as the TSE, Brazil's top electoral court, argued whether Temer received illegal campaign funding in 2014, when he ran for vice president with his leftist predecessor, Dilma Rousseff. Temer's opponents see a ruling as a way out of the political crisis set off by corruption allegations leveled against the center-right leader, but a decision could take weeks, if not months, and could be appealed by Temer.

Trading was muted in much of Latin America.

In Mexico, the IPC share index and the peso rose very slightly as investors eyed events scheduled for Thursday, when Britain holds a general election, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation's former director testifies to Congress and the European Central Bank (ECB) meets to decide on policy.

"Tomorrow may be the most important day of the quarter for investors," analysts at Brown Brothers Harriman wrote in a note to clients.

Political noise has weighed on demand for risky assets in recent days, with MSCI's emerging stock benchmark dipping for a second day. Contributing to caution were decisions by several Arab countries to cut diplomatic ties with Qatar, accusing it of supporting terrorism. Qatar vehemently denies the allegations.

Key Latin American stock indexes and currencies at 2100 GMT: Stock indexes daily % YTD %

change change

Latest MSCI Emerging Markets 1015.75 -0.01 17.8 MSCI LatAm 2565.46 0.38 9.6 Brazil Bovespa 63170.73 0.34 4.89 Mexico IPC 49274.97 0.11 7.96 Chile IPSA 4890.39 -0.44 17.80 Chile IGPA 24508.20 -0.4 18.20 Argentina MerVal 22218.66 -0.61 31.33 Colombia IGBC 10757.84 -0.56 6.22 Venezuela IBC 83374.02 0.94 162.97

Currencies daily % YTD %

change change

Latest Brazil real 3.2721 0.13 -0.70 Mexico peso 18.22 0.02 13.85

Chile peso 668.90 -0.04 0.27 Colombia peso 2916.5 -0.74 2.91 Peru sol 3.271 -0.12 4.66 Argentina peso (interbank) 15.98 0.09 -0.66 Argentina peso (parallel) 16.31 -0.12 3.13 (Reporting by Bruno Federowski; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Lisa Shumaker)
BERLIN, June 7 (Reuters) - German industrial orders dropped way more than expected in April, data showed on Wednesday, suggesting this sector of Europe's largest economy started the second quarter on a weak footing.

Factories saw their orders slump by 2.1 percent in April after contracts for 'Made in Germany' goods rose in the previous two months, data from the Economy Ministry showed.

That undershot by a long stretch the Reuters consensus forecast for a 0.4 percent drop and followed a slightly upwardly revised increase of 1.1 percent in March.

The Economy Ministry said the number of large-scale contracts was below average for April and adjusted to take account of that, orders would have been unchanged on the month.

A breakdown of the April data showed domestic demand decreased by 0.2 percent and foreign orders slumped by 3.4 percent.

(Reporting by Michelle Martin; Editing by Madeline Chambers)
By Wilda Asmarini

JAKARTA, June 7 (Reuters) - Indonesian miner Amman Mineral Nusa Tenggara is planning to reduce its workforce by up to 700 workers, or 20 percent, offering benefits to those that voluntarily resign, a company executive and government official told reporters on Wednesday.

Amman is a unit of oil and gas company Medco Energi Internasional , which bought the Batu Hijau copper mine in West Nusa Tenggara from Newmont Mining Corp last year.

"We are reviewing our manpower so we can be more efficient going forward," said Rachmat Makkasau, chief executive of Amman.

Fellow copper miner, Freeport-McMoran's Indonesian unit, has already laid off some workers due to a contract dispute with the Indonesian government and a prolonged strike at its giant Grasberg mine.

Bambang Gatot, Indonesia's director general of coal and minerals at the mining ministry, said that Amman has informed the government of its plan to offer voluntary resignation to 500-700 employees while production is low.

Production has fallen in the Batu Hijau mine due to a delay in development in the mine, Gatot said. According to Medco, the mine produced 240 million pounds of copper and 0.3 million ounces of gold in 2015.

Gatot said when Amman's smelter project is completed, the miner would hire more workers.

Petrus Mahdi, secretary general of Amman's labour union, confirmed that the company has offered benefits for employees who volunteered to leave. Mahdi said the offer would last until the end of July.

"If (the firm) starts to force people to quit, then we will stand up for them," he said.

The union said Amman currently employs around 3,500 people.

Gatot said in March that Amman has committed to invest $9.2 billion to expand its business, including the construction of a new copper smelter near its mine. Makkasau said the company is currently conducting a study for a smelter with the capacity to process 2 million tonnes of copper concentrate.

He denied media reports that Amman is in talks with Freeport Indonesia to jointly build a smelter, although saying the firm is open to possibility of partnering with anyone. Freeport, the world's largest publicly traded copper miner, started laying off workers in February amid an escalation of a mining contract dispute with the government. In late May, it said approximately 4,000 striking workers at Grasberg mine have been deemed to have resigned due to failure to report for work. (Reporting by Wilda Asmarini; Additional reporting and writing by Gayatri Suroyo; Editing by Tom Hogue)
SYDNEY, June 7 (Reuters) - Iron ore shipments to China from Australia's Port Hedland terminal, used by BHP Billiton and Fortescue Metals Group , rose to a record 38 million tonnes in May from 34.86 million in April, port data released on Wednesday showed. Overall iron ore shipments from the world's biggest export terminal for the raw material increased to 44.08 million tonnes in May from 42.29 million in April, according to the Pilbara Ports Authority.

(Reporting by James Regan; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and may not reflect those of Kitco Metals Inc. The author has made every effort to ensure accuracy of information provided; however, neither Kitco Metals Inc. nor the author can guarantee such accuracy. This article is strictly for informational purposes only. It is not a solicitation to make any exchange in commodities, securities or other financial instruments. Kitco Metals Inc. and the author of this article do not accept culpability for losses and/ or damages arising from the use of this publication.
* LCH urges cross-border supervision of euro clearing

* Eurex dismisses industry margin estimate for clearing

* Talk that Brussels eyeing euro clearing volume cap

By Huw Jones

LONDON, June 7 (Reuters) - Forced relocation of euro-denominated clearing from London to the European Union after Brexit would harm the bloc, and the focus should be on increasing cross-border supervision, LCH said on Wednesday.

LCH, part of the London Stock Exchange, clears the bulk of euro-denominated derivatives in Europe.

The EU is due on June 13 to say whether this activity should be shifted to an EU state after Britain leaves the bloc in 2019.

LCH Group Chief Operating Officer Daniel Maguire said the clearing house, which stands between two sides of a trade to ensure its smooth completion, is already directly registered and supervised in many countries. It has a clearing house in Paris.

Brussels is looking at several options, such as forced relocation or an EU role in directly supervising LCH in London where it is regulated by the Bank of England.

Maguire said it was very encouraging that the so-called "enhanced supervision" option was on the table. "For global markets it makes sense to move towards more enhanced oversight," he told a Futures Industry Association (FIA) conference.

There was talk among delegates at the event that Brussels was leaning towards caps on the volume of euro-denominated clearing that could take place outside the bloc without relocation.

Maguire referred to a recent speech by Christopher Giancarlo, acting head of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, who said the United States could still supervise clearers in London that handle dollar-denominated securities, despite an ocean the size of the Atlantic between them.

"We should also think that the sea as big as the Channel is not too big for us to get across and ensure you have the same level of enhanced oversight," Maguire said.

"I definitely think there is a willingness to do that."

"We hope that over time there will be sensible debate, cooperation and discussion, and a conclusion that keeps markets together, which is to the advantage of the EU, and the real economy, clients, members, central banks," Maguire said

It did not make sense for a global currency like the euro to become "localised", he said.

This week the FIA warned that forced relocation of euro clearing would lead to a near doubling of the $83 billion users currently set aside in case of contract defaults.

Eurex Clearing in Frankfurt, which has said it was ready to handle relocated euro clearing, dismissed this figure.

"I think it's very far from a realistic number," Eurex Clearing CEO Eric Mueller told the conference.

He also cautioned against dismissing arguments put forward by the European Central Bank and others in favour of relocation.

"We as an industry need to find answers to the concerns, instead of just saying, you know it's not a good idea," Mueller said.

"We need to work with those constituencies to find answers... There is some understanding that things on the oversight angle have to change."

(Reporting by Huw Jones; Editing by Adrian Croft)
BUCHAREST, June 7 (Reuters) - Here are news stories, press reports and events to watch which may affect Romanian financial markets on Wednesday.

GDP

Romania's National Statistics Board to release a preliminary breakdown of first-quarter gross domestic product at 0600 GMT.

DEBT TENDER

Romania sold a planned 200 million lei ($49.28 million) worth of Sept. 2031 treasury bonds on Tuesday, with the average accepted yield at 4.12 percent, central bank data showed. STATE WAGES

Romania will scale back planned public sector wage hikes next year to ensure it meets budget targets, Finance Minister Viorel Stefan said on Tuesday. WORLD BANK

IFC, a unit of World Bank has issued a 70 million lei ($17.28 million) bond as a private placement to support financing of the local private sector. CEE MARKETS

Central European stocks fell on Tuesday despite a rare initial public offering (IPO) announced in Budapest, ahead of elections in Britain and France and as some Arab states severed ties with Qatar. ABUSE OF OFFICE

Changes to the criminal code will include putting a cap to the financial damage caused by abuse of office, the justice ministry said on Tuesday, after a ruling by the contitutional court to a challenge made by the former wife of the ruling Social Democrats's leader Liviu Dragnea.

For the long-term Romanian diary, click on For emerging markets economic events, click on For an index of all diaries, click on For other related news, double click on: --------------------------------------------------------------- Romanian equities RO-E E.Europe equities .CEE Romanian money RO-M Romanian debt RO-D Eastern Europe EEU All emerging markets EMRG Hot stocks HOT Stock markets STX Market debt news DBT Forex news FRX For real-time index quotes, double click on: Bucharest BETI Warsaw WIG20 Budapest BUX Prague PX --------------------------------------------------------
By Chris Thomas

June 7 (Reuters) - Philippine shares rose on Wednesday, led by industrial and real estate stocks, as investors were confident that a tax reform bill critical to President Rodrigo Duterte's economic programme would soon get Senate approval.

The lower house of Congress passed the much-anticipated tax reform bill last week, aimed at generating revenue to fund a multi-billion dollar infrastructure programme key to the government's economic agenda. The bill should widen the tax base and boost revenue, Fitch Ratings said in a statement on Wednesday. "We (the Philippine market) have been rallying on the back of news that the tax-reform programme might be passed sooner than expected," said Victor Felix, an equity analyst with Manila-based AB Capital Securities.

Among the key stocks that gained, SM Investment Corp rose as much as 3.7 percent to a record high, while Ayala Land climbed 3.1 percent to close at its highest in nearly 10 months.

Foreign investors have been net buyers of equities for nearly a month and a half and that has also been pushing the market higher, Felix added.

Other Southeast Asian markets were mixed, with investors cautious ahead of key political and economic events including UK elections and the European Central Bank's policy meeting. Indonesian shares pared early gains to close 0.2 percent higher, with Bank Central Asia gaining 1.4 percent and Bank Rakyat Indonesia rising 1.7 percent.

Vietnam shares extended gains into a third session, posting their highest close in more than nine years, with financials leading the rise.

Military Commercial Joint-Stock Bank hit an all-time high, while Vietinbank jumped to its highest in nearly 11 months.

Both Singapore and Thailand fell nearly 0.2 percent due to last-minute selling, while Malaysia closed 0.3 percent lower, snapping three sessions of gains.

For Asian Companies click; SOUTHEAST ASIAN STOCK MARKETS: Change on day Market Current Previous Close Pct Move Singapore 3230.49 3235.75 -0.16 Bangkok 1566.58 1568.95 -0.15 Manila 8002.32 7953.12 0.62 Jakarta 5717.325 5707.831 0.17 Kuala Lumpur 1785.92 1791.01 -0.28 Ho Chi Minh 753.46 751.31 0.29

Change on year Market Current End 2016 Pct Move Singapore 3230.49 2880.76 12.14 Bangkok 1566.58 1542.94 1.53 Manila 8002.32 6840.64 16.98 Jakarta 5717.325 5296.711 7.94 Kuala Lumpur 1785.92 1641.73 8.78 Ho Chi Minh 753.46 664.87 13.32 (Reporting by Chris Thomas; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu)
HANOI, June 7 (Reuters) - Here's a snapshot of Vietnamese dong exchange rates in the official and unofficial markets, indicative SJC gold prices in Hanoi and interbank offered rates at 4:03 GMT.

June 7 USD/VND mid-point 22,401 USD/VND interbank 22,690/22,710 USD/VND unofficial 22,700/22,715 SJC gold (mln dong/tael) 36.35/36.57

Interbank offered rates Overnight 2.0-2.5

1 week 2.3-2.7

1 month 3.3-3.7

3 months 3.9-4.5

NOTES: As of Jan. 4, 2016 the State Bank of Vietnam has begun setting the mid-point rate on daily basis, allowing dollar/dong transactions to move in a band of +/- 3 percent around the mid point. The dong's exchange rate against other currencies is not restricted by a band. Interbank offered rates are the latest indicative bid/ask prices, quoted from market sources.

One tael is equivalent to 37.5 grams or 1.21 troy ounces. SJC gold prices are quoted by state-owned Saigon Jewelry Co.

For more interbank rate fixings released at 0400 GMT, click on .

For Vietnam market overview click on: Vietnam's bonds market auctions: Bonds auction results: (Compiled by Hanoi Newsroom)
LONDON, June 7 (Reuters) - Fixed income trading platform Tradeweb said it would open early on Friday due to Britain's general election. UK voters head to the polls on Thursday with results expected to filter through Friday. In a statement, Tradeweb said it would extend its operating hours on Friday across all European asset classes from 0200 London time (0100 GMT). Tradeweb's operating hours typically start from 0600 GMT.

(Reporting by Dhara Ranasinghe; editing by John Geddie)

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and may not reflect those of Kitco Metals Inc. The author has made every effort to ensure accuracy of information provided; however, neither Kitco Metals Inc. nor the author can guarantee such accuracy. This article is strictly for informational purposes only. It is not a solicitation to make any exchange in commodities, securities or other financial instruments. Kitco Metals Inc. and the author of this article do not accept culpability for losses and/ or damages arising from the use of this publication.
LONDON, June 7 (IFR) - Turkey will raise 1bn through a June 2025 bond at a spread of 285bp over mid-swaps, according to a lead.

Demand was more than 2.5bn.

The spread is at the wide end of swaps plus 280bp-285bp guidance.

The notes were initially marketed at plus 295bp area.

The deal is today's business via BNP Paribas, HSBC and UniCredit.

The sovereign is rated Ba1 (negative) by Moody's and BB+ (stable) by Fitch.

(Reporting by Sudip Roy, editing by Julian Baker)
(Adds details from report)

OTTAWA, June 7 (Reuters) - The value of Canadian building permits declined in April as there were fewer construction plans for single-family homes in Ontario, where a lack of supply has driven up home prices in some markets, data from Statistics Canada showed on Wednesday.

Permits dipped 0.2 percent, the third monthly decrease in a row. Figures for March were upwardly revised to show a decline of 4.9 percent from the previously reported 5.8 percent decrease.

Residential building permits were down 2.5 percent as a decline in plans for single-family homes offset a gain in intentions to build multi-family buildings, such as apartments.

Permits for single-family homes tumbled 8.1 percent, driven by declines in Ontario. In Toronto, Canada's largest city, construction plans for single-family homes fell to the lowest level since January 2016.

Economists say tight supply is partly to blame for home prices that have been surging in Toronto until recently. Data earlier this week showed the pace of price gains cooled in May in the wake of new housing rules aimed at dampening demand. Non-residential building permits rose 4.1 percent in April, lifted by higher intentions for institutional and industrial structures.

<^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Graphic - Canada building permits Graphic - Canada economic snapshot ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^> (Reporting by Leah Schnurr; Editing by Nick Zieminski)
(New throughout, adds Escondida and Sierra Gorda, emergency services)

By Fabian Cambero

SANTIAGO, June 7 (Reuters) - Mines in northern Chile have suspended key operations after heavy rains lashed the high altitude desert region of Antofagasta overnight and into Wednesday, companies told Reuters.

BHP Billiton's Escondida, the world's biggest copper mine, said it was snowing and all operations had been suspended.

State-run Codelco said mining activities at its flagship Chuquicamata deposit and at nearby Radomiro Tomic and Ministro Hales had been suspended as a preventative measure, while Antofagasta said Centinela and Zaldivar had suffered intermittent interruptions.

Polish miner KGHM's Sierra Gorda said it was considering whether to restrict some operations as a precaution.

The heavy rains in Antofagasta, forecast to continue through Wednesday, led Chile's emergency service Onemi to trigger its highest 'red alert' warning. No damage has yet been reported.

In April 2016, torrential downpours led rivers to burst their banks and caused suspension of mining activities in a clutch of mines near capital city Santiago. In 2015 rain made roads impassable in northern Chile's Atacama region, crimping output for a number of miners. Chile is the world's biggest copper exporter.

(Reporting by Fabian Cambero, Writing by Rosalba O'Brien; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and David Gregorio)
* Santander buys failing Spanish bank for nominal sum

* Santander to raise 7 billion euros in capital increase

* Rescue follows intervention by European authorities

(Adds background, detail, Santander comment)

By Sonya Dowsett and Francesco Canepa

MADRID/FRANKFURT, June 7 (Reuters) - Spain's biggest bank Santander announced on Wednesday that it would buy struggling rival Banco Popular for a nominal one euro after European authorities determined the lender was on the verge of insolvency.

Santander will carry out a capital increase of around 7 billion euros ($7.9 billion) to cover the capital and provisions required to boost Popular's finances.

The move, which followed a declaration by the European Central Bank that Banco Popular was set to be wound down, marks the first such use of a regime to deal with failing banks adopted after the financial crisis.

It followed a withdrawal of deposits, which compounded the bank's funding problems and ultimately triggered its sale, which will see Banco Popular shareholders and some of the bank's creditors suffer losses.

"The decision taken today safeguards the depositors and critical functions of Banco Popular," said Elke Konig, Chair of the Single Resolution Board, an EU agency that winds down stricken banks.

The ECB had blamed what it called a "significant deterioration of the liquidity situation of the bank in recent days" in concluding that it "would have, in the near future, been unable to pay its debts or other liabilities."

SHARE SLIDE

Spanish Economy Minister Luis de Guindos said that Santander's takeover was a good outcome for Popular given its situation in recent weeks and it would have no impact on public resources. It implied no contagion to other banks, he said.

Santander Chairwoman Ana Botin said that the combination of the banks would strengthen the group's geographic reach as the economy in Spain and Portugal improved.

"We welcome Banco Popular customers," she said.

Struggling under the weight of 37 billion euros of non-performing property assets left over from Spain's financial crisis, Popular had seen its share price slump by more than a half after supervisors at the ECB warned Popular faced being wound down. That prompted the move by Santander.

Santander, which did not absorb any underperforming lenders during Spain's banking crisis, said the acquisition of Popular would accelerate growth and profit generation from 2019 onwards.

It said it would set aside 7.9 billion euros to cover for non-performing assets after the acquisition.

Popular's non-performing loan ratio is around three times above the average of its Spanish rivals.

Popular has long had one of the strongest small and medium sized company loan portfolios among Spanish lenders, and Santander said on Wednesday it would now lead the lucrative market in Spain, with a 25 percent share. ($1 = 0.8876 euros)

(Additional reporting by Andres Gonzalez, Jose Elias Rodriguez and Angus Berwick in Madrid, Francesco Canepa in Frankfurt and Jan Strupczewski in Brussels; writing by John O'Donnell; Editing by Keith Weir)
Stuff reports:

The Crown decided last year it no longer needed the former ministerial residence. When the Commissioner of Crown Lands offered it to Wellington SPCA and the Vogel Charitable Trust  who were beneficiaries of Jocelyns will  a legal battle ensued. Jocelyns grandsons requested a rehearing, and an investigation by an independent lawyer. In an unexpected twist, the independent lawyer advised that neither the Vogels nor the two charities should be given the property. The parties were this week told Vogel House would instead be sold on the open market, with the proceeds going to the Crown. Wellington SPCA boss Steve Glassey said it was a sad outcome for the two amazing Wellington charities who desperately needed the money to care for animals and the needy people of Lower Hutt.

It is sad, and if the Vogel grandsons had not contested the original decision, the SPCA would have benefited hugely.

The case comes amid calls for changes to succession laws to better honour will-makers last wishes. Glassey said the case was just one of many in which charities, and the community, lost out. He estimated three-quarters of SPCA bequests were challenged by family members, costing $500,000 to $1 million a year. People should be warned that, despite family members saying they wont contest, soon after the casket is lowered they are clawing at the money, Glassey said. Sadly, your word is no longer law. He advocated removing the right for independent, adult children to dispute their parents wills  a change Law Commission recommended in 1997.

Id support that, so long as the person was clearly of sounds mind when making the will. If someone wants to leave their estate to the SPCA they should be able to without challenge.

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Finance minister nominee not considering raising comprehensive real estate tax

By Yoon Ja-young

Finance minister nominee Kim Dong-yeon answers questions during his confirmation hearing at the National Assembly in Seoul, Wednesday. / Yonhap

Finance Minister nominee Kim Dong-yeon showed his determination to tackle speculative real estate investments that have heated up housing prices in and around Seoul.

"As the real estate market is showing signs of overheating especially in Seoul, we are closely monitoring it," he said at a National Assembly confirmation hearing Wednesday.

Following President Moon Jae-in's nomination of the former vice finance minister, lawmakers focused on examining his economic policy directions.

They asked him about his policies on mortgage regulations such as the loan-to-value and debt-to-income ratios, which determine the size of a mortgage a person can get according to housing value and income.

The former President Park Geun-hye administration eased the regulations to boost the housing market, but increasing calls say they should be tightened again amid its overheating and snowballing household debt.

Though he didn't mention whether the loan regulations will be strengthened or not, Kim made it clear the government would show zero tolerance toward real estate speculation.

"Next week, the related ministries will start examining the market," he said, hinting that the government will soon announce measures.














By Park Hyong-ki



Policymakers are scrambling to tackle and curb rising inequality by pushing the government's extra spending plan forward.



This comes as the income gap between the top and low earners have increased at an alarming pace, and this could bring "catastrophe" for the economy, they said.



A former prime minister even warns of the possibility of a people's uprising if the government does not deal with the issue in a prompt and proper manner.



Jang Ha-sung, presidential chief of staff for policy, recently said that the disparity has reached a level that would spell economic disaster.



"We need to seriously look into ways to correct our wealth redistribution," Jang recently told the press.



"The government will seek to change the economic structure over the next five years."



The productivity gap between large and small companies, and the income gap between regular and irregular employees have fueled inequality over the past years, Jang noted.



Like the United States, the top 10 percent income group here has taken more than half of all the high-quality jobs, lawmakers from both progressive and conservative parties said.



The Gini index, measuring income distribution, stood at 0.3 last month, up from 0.295 in 2016, according to Statistics Korea. A number close to 1 indicates worst inequality.



President Moon Jae-in of late scolded the Korea Employers Federation, a lobby group for businesses, for making the situation worse by increasing the hiring of irregular workers and not creating quality jobs.



Bank of Korea (BOK) Governor Lee Ju-yeol also said that income inequality poses a challenge to the economy, adding that it would eventually bring an end to a virtuous cycle of income growth on employment and economic growth.



Even though globalization and innovation have also caused inequality, Korea cannot go against the global trend.



The BOK chief suggested pursuing "inclusive growth" as recommended by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.



"We should pursue inclusive growth, which ensures that many people can share the benefits of growth," Lee said in a recent conference.



"More specifically, creating more jobs, increasing household incomes and expanding the social safety net are recognized as relevant policies for promoting inclusive growth."



This is especially needed as more jobs are expected to be lost amid the Fourth Industrial Revolution.



Have-nots get angry



The widening gap between haves and have-nots is feared to spawn social instability. A former prime minister even worried about a public revolt.



"Korea doesn't have the luxury to sit idly against the worsening inequality. If it does not take immediate measures, people may start an uprising. The situation is that serious," said the former prime minister who asked not to be named. He was definitely not joking.



Economists agreed that Korea's inequality has reached a "dangerous level," which could ultimately not only hurt the low income group but also the middle and upper classes.



An increasing number of young adults are being included in the low income bracket amid the record jobless rates.



The older generation will have to continue supporting the young, and this will negatively affect the former's financial assets and consumption.



"This, in turn, will further weigh on the real estate market given that the majority of people's savings and capital are tied to this sector," said Kim Doo-un, an economist at Hana Financial Investment.



"If one income group falls apart, other groups will also be in danger."



This is why the economist said that the government is trying to mobilize its supplementary budget around job creation for the low income group to prevent this from happening.
By Park Hyong-ki







SK Networks Chairman Choi Shin-won / Yonhap

SK Networks Chairman Choi Shin-won has recently sold all of his SKC shares after regular trading hours, according to SKC's regulatory filing on Wednesday.



He unloaded all of his 594,543 SKC shares in an apparent move to use the sales proceeds to further acquire SK Networks shares, market observers say.



Choi's stake in SK Networks has been increasing from 0.07 percent in 2010 to 0.63 percent as of the end of the first quarter of this year, according to SK Networks' audit filing.



The stake increase comes as the chairman is said to be further solidifying his position at the company his father founded.



SK Networks is a listed trading company with business interest in hotels, rental cars, gas stations and mobile phone distribution. SKC is a chemical materials manufacturer.



SK Networks and SKC's biggest shareholder is SK Holdings, which has about a 40 percent stake in the two, respectively.



However, the two companies do not have direct equity ties. SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won is Choi Shin-won's cousin. The former's younger brother SK Group Vice Chairman Chey Jae-won holds minority shares in SK Networks and SKC.



Choi returned to take the helm at SK Networks last year after 17 years working at other SK affiliates, including SKC.



After his return, SK Networks sold its fashion unit to Hyundai Department Store and acquired Tongyang Magic, a kitchen appliances maker. Tongyang Magic has been renamed SK Magic.



SK Networks' more than 2,900 gas stations account for 37 percent of its total turnover, followed by trading of steel, coal and chemicals, which take up 34 percent.
United Nations human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein has called on North Korea to cooperate with the U.N. point man on the North Korean human rights situation, Voice of America reported Wednesday.



VOA's Korea Service said Zeid, the high commissioner for human rights, made the remarks at the opening of the U.N. Human Rights Council's session in Geneva on Tuesday, adding many countries are not cooperating with his office.



Zeid criticized North Korea for rejecting the council's resolutions on the appointment of the U.N. special rapporteur on North Korea and repeatedly turning down visits to the North by the special rapporteur.



U.N. human rights experts, including U.N. Special Rapporteur on North Korea Tomas Ojea Quintana and his predecessor Marzuki Darusman, had arranged for visits to the North to investigate alleged crimes against humanity in the country, but they were not able to do so due to the North's objection.



The report also said Zeid welcomed the North's agreement last month to a visit by a U.N. human rights expert for the first time ever. North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un allowed Catalina Devandas-Aguilar, the special rapporteur on the rights of people with disabilities, to visit Pyongyang and South Hwanghae Province.



Considering the human rights situation in the North, Zeid said the visit to the North by the special rapporteur on the rights of people with disabilities doesn't make up for North Korea's lack of cooperation with the U.N. special rapporteur on North Korea, his office and the U.N. office on North Korea's human rights in South Korea. (Yonhap)




U.S. President Donald Trump announces on June 3 that the U.S. will withdraw from the Paris climate accord. / Yonhap



By Lee Han-soo

North Korea says the U.S. decision to pull out of the Paris climate accord is foolish.

A spokesperson for North Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) told the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Tuesday that it shows the U.S.'s shortsightedness, in that protecting the earth the U.S. can also prosper.

"The withdrawal from the Paris agreement, which is a byproduct of Trump's America first policy, shows the U.S.'s selfishness and low morality," the spokesperson said. "It means that the U.S. is willing to sacrifice the whole world to have a prosperous life of its own."

The spokesperson said the withdrawal also had caused great danger in other areas.

"The U.S. attitude toward the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue is a representative example," the spokesperson said.

"It is very unfair and dangerous for the U.S. to pursue hostile policies against North Korea and demand sacrifices from other nations to do the same for its own security."

U.S. President Donald Trump announced the withdrawal from the accord on June 3.
By Choi Ha-young





Joachim Son-Forget

Korean-born French citizen Joachim Son-Forget will likely win a parliamentary seat for the ruling En Marche! party, by clinching 63.55 percent of votes in the first-round poll at a foreign district, Sunday (local time).

The 34-year-old was born in Seoul and adopted to France, after being abandoned at three months old. He threw his hat in the ring for a foreign district in Switzerland and Liechtenstein, as a candidate of the party led by President Emmanuel Macron. To advocate its nationals residing in foreign countries, France has allocated 11 seats for them.

He will face a second round of voting, since only 20.19 percent of eligible voters cast their ballots. French electoral law stipulates that a candidate can only be elected in the first ballot if he or she obtains a majority of at least 25 percent of eligible voters. The second round with Claudine Schmid from the conservative Les Republicains will take place June 18.

His victory is expected, as the outgoing Schmid came in a distant second with 15.76 percent in the first ballot.

"We plowed the ground, especially among the young people," Son-Forget said, quoted by local media Le Temps. He intends to meet with voters over the next 15 days.

According to Le Temps on May 14, Son majored in cognitive science at Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, and moved to the French-speaking city of Lausanne in Switzerland to receive his doctorate in medicine from University of Lausanne (UNIL) in 2008.

Serving as a radiologist in UNIL hospital, he is also a talented pianist, performing at Victoria Hall in Geneva on Feb. 13. He is also a karate practitioner. "Martial arts made me curious about the functioning of the brain and the body, making me in touch with philosophy and science," Joachim said.

Last April he met Macron for the first time, and the young president proposed he run in the legislative election. "I love his attachment to the freedom and emancipation of the individual, his struggle for equal opportunity," he told Le Temps.
A university student teaches computer programming at a children's welfare center in Beon-dong, northeastern Seoul. / Courtesy of JUMP



By You Soo-sun

In a country where education is highly valued, private tutoring is almost essential for Korean students to get admitted into a top-ranking university. For those who cannot afford the luxury of private tutoring, "Join Us to Maximize our Potential" (JUMP), an organization that provides free tutoring to kids from low-income families, may serve as an alternative.

JUMP was established in 2011 with the simple goal of providing equal educational opportunities for all regardless of their socioeconomic background, explained founder and CEO Yi Euy-hun.

"I wanted to give these children a fair starting line," Yi said.

JUMP has modest beginnings. In its second year, it worked with just 15 community centers in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province. But since then, JUMP has seen remarkable progress. By the end of 2016, 613 college students have tutored 2,385 children at 106 community centers across Seoul, Gyeonggi Province, and Daegu.

It is also expanding overseas to China and Japan. A former volunteer had come up with the idea and led the facilitation of the project, now called "JUMP UP."

While there are a number of programs in Korea that offer tutoring to children of disadvantaged backgrounds, JUMP is quite unique for two main reasons.

First, JUMP works with a wide range of parties including regional governments, universities, and one of the country's leading corporations, Hyundai Motor. With their financial support, JUMP is able to provide quality services. In return, each party is able to fulfill its own needs  the local government may spend its related budget wisely and save facilitative costs, universities can effectively support their students through conditional scholarships, and businesses can promote and advance their images.

"It's a product of a collaborative effort among various parties. We use existing resources, link them together, and thereby save costs for each party involved," Yi said.

However, Yi thinks the greater change was brought by and to the college student volunteers. "I see more positive changes in our student volunteers  perhaps even more so than the children receiving tutoring."

JUMP not only links young students to college volunteers but also college students to adult sponsors who act as their personal mentors. The adult sponsors, who work in a wide variety of fields including public service, academia, businesses, and arts, help college students search and build their own careers through one-on-one meetings and group workshops.

"I also wanted to give college volunteers a chance to be inspired and find their own careers," Yi said.

During the interview, his staff was preparing for a workshop designed to help college volunteers seeking vocational counseling. Some of the volunteers who had come for the workshop offered to speak about their experiences.

"I've volunteered in many similar programs," said Yu Ga-eul, 22, a sophomore at a university in Seoul who attended almost all the mentoring workshops. "This program is different though because not only did I give, but I also received a lot of help."

Chun Soo-hyun, 25, said it was his second year volunteering at JUMP. He initially applied to this program because of the mentoring service. But a different reason led him to stay for a second year.

"I had volunteered in other tutoring programs as well, but I became very skeptical of these programs. They only intended on raising grades and I felt kids were forced to study without knowing why," he said.

"But at JUMP, I'm given a lot more freedom. So I try to expose my students to a lot of different things. One of my students went to professional college to become a professional barista."

Yi emphasized that helping all participants to build close, sustainable relationships is a crucial part of his work. And because college students also benefit from the program, they are also induced to become sponsors after graduating. Two former college volunteers, for example, now work as full-time employees at JUMP. Many more have become sponsors and mentors.

"Change comes little by little," Yi said when asked about the progress and limitations of JUMP. "What I learned through JUMP is that it is possible to give kids equal educational opportunities."
By Jun Ji-hye

Cheong Wa Dae's investigation into the controversial deployment of a U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery here has ended in less than a week, with only one high-level official of the defense ministry being disciplined.

Opposition parties criticized the government, claiming that the probe into the ministry's omission of key information about the deployment in a policy report to the Moon Jae-in administration started strongly but ended with an anticlimax.

Indeed, the outcome of the probe failed to punish the leadership of the defense sector, including Defense Minister Han Min-koo and former National Security Office chief Kim Kwan-jin who have been suspected of concealing the deployment process that began under the former Park Geun-hye government.

Not many people seem to believe that it was Deputy Minister for Policy Wee Seung-ho's unilateral action to omit details on the arrival of four additional THAAD launchers. Wee was named to the position only in January, months after South Korea agreed with the United States on the deployment after fierce controversy and protests.

Therefore, criticism against the government seems fully understandable.

But it seems improper to view the Moon administration's quick finalization of its investigation into the incident, which the President described as "very shocking," as its abandonment of reform of defense that has long been criticized for holding fast to secrecy and frequently involved in corruption.

It seems more proper to see it as the government's move to take a step backward to take two steps forward toward its goal.

The THAAD deployment is a very sensitive national security issue amid mounting nuclear and missile threats from North Korea. There is little for Moon, who was attacked during the campaign for what his critics say was his "unstable view" of security, to gain if he locks horns with the military for too long.

The issue is also directly related to an alliance between South Korea and the United States that are scheduled to hold a summit later this month in Washington. Again, it is no good for the government to allow it to drag on.

It is expected that Moon will pursue his defense reform drive in earnest once a new defense minister is appointed. Measures include restructuring the military's top command structure and increasing the number of civilian leaders.

Moon already named Suh Choo-suk, a reform-minded researcher, as vice defense minister, Tuesday, signaling a willingness to speed up defense reform. Suh replaced Hwang In-moo, a retired three-star Army general who graduated from the elite Korea Military Academy.

For its part, the Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI) is moving to conduct a full inspection into the Park government's THAAD deployment decision-making process and look into her security lineup, according to sources, Wednesday.

The possibility of legal action against former and incumbent defense officials cannot be ruled out if any irregularities during the deployment process are discovered by the BAI's follow-up inspection.

"There is the possibility the government will find other issues to punish Han and Kim for if it is hard to hold them responsible for the deployment," a source said.

Coincidentally or not, the BAI has already launched an investigation into the controversial F-X program, under which Seoul decided to buy Lockheed Martin F-35s in 2014. At the time, Kim was serving as a defense minister.
By Kim Bo-eun

Lee Young-ryeol (left), Ahn Tae-geun

The team inspecting dubious cash exchanges between officials of the prosecution and justice ministry has filed for the dismissals of two top officials _ former chief of Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office Lee Young-ryeol and former Justice Ministry Criminal Affairs Deputy Minister Ahn Tae-geun.

The team also requested the prosecution investigate Lee over charges of violating the anti-graft law.

"We have filed for dismissals to the justice ministry as punitive measures for Lee and Ahn," a ministry official who headed the inspection said in a briefing at the Gwacheon Government Complex, Gyeonggi Province, Wednesday.

The announcement came 20 days after a 22-member team was drawn up to inspect the case.

The Ministry of Justice will open a prosecutor disciplinary action committee meeting to decide on the final measures to be taken against Lee and Ahn.

They were among 10 officials present at a dinner on April 21 at which the cash exchanges were made.

Seven senior-level prosecutors of the Supreme Prosecutors' Office's special team investigating the scandal involving former President Park Geun-hye and her confidant Choi Soon-sil, and three senior-level justice ministry officials were present at the dinner, which took place a few days after investigations into the scandal were concluded.

Ahn presented the investigation team's officials with envelopes containing between 700,000 won to 1 million won each and Lee also provided two ministry officials with envelopes holding 1 million won each. The ministry officials handed back the cash the following day.

Following reports on the dinner, the attendees said the cash was provided to reward the officials and make up for investigation expenses.

However, suspicions had arisen that the money was provided to have former prosecutor and presidential aide Woo Byung-woo, one of the key suspects in the scandal, escape detention. Most of the other key figures in the scandal have been detained and are on trial.

Warnings were issued for the other eight officials, as they were seen to have attended due to orders from their superiors.

Lee and Ahn were demoted to positions at regional district offices after the inspection began. Acting Justice Minister Lee Chang-jae resigned citing responsibility for the incident.

The justice ministry will hand over inspection records to the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office for further investigations.


Yoo Som-na, 51, the daughter of the late Yoo Byung-eun, the owner of Cheoghaejin Marine that operated the ill-fated ferry Sewol, enters the Incheon District Prosecutors' Office, Wednesday, following her extradition from France. Yonhap







--Yoo Som-na extradited three years after ferry disaster--



By Lee Kyung-min

The daughter of a late businessman whose negligence is believed to have contributed to the 2014 sinking of the ferry Sewol was extradited to Korea, Wednesday, ending a three-year stay as a fugitive in France.

Yoo Som-na, 51, the daughter of Yoo Byung-eun, then Semo Group chairman and de facto owner of its affiliate Cheonghaejin Marine, arrived at Incheon International Airport at around 3 p.m. She is the first person to have been returned to Korea since an extradition treaty between the two countries took effect in 2008.

With a piece of a black cloth covering her handcuffs, Yoo, wearing a white pants suit and khaki jacket, denied all allegations against her in front of the Incheon District Prosecutors' Office where she was taken for questioning.

"The embezzlement allegation is simply preposterous," she said. "I have worked my entire life and earned money in return for my services. I have never engaged in embezzlement or breach of trust."

Yoo also denied any involvement in the management of Cheonghajin Marine, the operator of the Sewol, adding the company was not owned by her late father.

"I do not believe news reports about my father being the de facto owner of Cheonghaejin Marine, not to mention how nonsensical that accusation is. It is sheer media speculation," she said.

Yoo denied she lived the life of a fugitive, implying that she wanted to avoid being made a political scapegoat.

"I only sought protection under the law, regardless of whether it was from a foreign country, to secure myself a fair trial. I think everybody remembers how those in power harshly, politically pushed ahead with the investigation (of companies related to the Sewol sinking). I never fled. I never received a single letter from the prosecution. I expect a fair trial now."

Yoo said she offered her deepest condolences to the victims of ferry sinking.

"I feel heartbroken thinking about them every time I have water on my hands. I know nothing would console the bereaved families, so I think I should mourn with them."

She was placed on a Korean Air plane that departed from Charles de Gaulle Airport at around 3:30 a.m. after French police took her into custody at her home, near the Champs-Elysees in Paris. The ultra luxury apartment had a monthly rent of around 10 million won ($8,923).

Yoo had been staying there on a temporary residence visa since February 2013. She was arrested by the French authorities in May 2014, a month after the prosecution here summoned her for questioning over the suspected embezzlement.

Yoo headed the design firm Moreal Design, through which she is suspected of embezzling 8 billion won from company affiliates including Dapanda.

Prosecutors believe the amount is only the tip of the iceberg. They suspect she was also involved in the embezzlement of 49 billion won from Cheonghaejin Marine.

Prosecutors allege the design firm was involved in creating a slush fund using overseas accounts.

Her extradition came five days after the justice ministry said it was notified by France's supreme administrative court, the Conseil d'Etat, that it had dismissed her appeal against it.

Her father was found dead in June 2014 following a nationwide manhunt, amid investigations into his alleged responsibility for the ferry disaster.

His poor management of the Sewol including illegal modification, overloading of cargo and neglecting emergency crew training is believed to be the main reason for the sinking. He also faced charges of embezzlement, breach of trust and tax evasion.

The 6,800-ton ship sank off the country's southwestern coast on April 16, 2014, in the country's worst maritime disaster. More than 300 passengers were killed, most of whom were high school students on a field trip.

Meanwhile, the two-year-old son of Chung Yoo-ra, the daughter of Choi Soon-sil, the central figure in the influence-peddling scandal that brought down former President Park Geun-hye, was brought to Korea.

The toddler and his nanny arrived at the international airport, but managed to avoid any media exposure.

Their return came a week following Chung's extradition from Denmark after she decided to withdraw her appeal fighting the order.

Following her return, the Danish authorities were no longer obliged to protect the child and his nanny.
By Choi Ha-young







Kim Sang-jo

Kim Sang-jo, nominee for chairman of the Fair Trade Commission (FTC), is expected to get approval from the National Assembly as more lawmakers from two minor opposition parties are backing the nominee.

The liberal opposition People's Party and the minor conservative opposition Bareun Party have softened their stances on Kim's nomination, while the main opposition Liberty Korea Party (LKP) remains firm against Kim.

"The nation should fill in the power vacuum as early as possible. We are not selecting a pastor or a monk," Rep. Ha Tae-keung of the Bareun Party said in a radio interview, Wednesday.

"Kim has proven ability to lead the antitrust watchdog. The Assembly should endorse him, unless there are critical lapses."

On the same day, Park Jie-won from the People's Party said: "Kim is obliged to push for reforms on chaebol, family-run conglomerates. Personally, I hope Kim and the other two minister-designates get approval."

The progressive Justice Party, which shares a goal of chaebol reform with the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK), has been favorable to Kim. He is nicknamed the "chaebol sniper" for his background as an outspoken civic activist.

"The LKP will draw fire if it puts a strain on state affairs by reckless opposition," Justice Party spokeswoman Chu Hye-seon said.

Originally, the Assembly was supposed to adopt the joint report over Kim's suitability Wednesday, but the People's Party requested to postpone the decision showing its deliberation. The National Policy Committee in charge of the report has ended inconclusively. It is likely to make a decision in a meeting Friday.

Though the parliamentary process is not legally binding, the dissonance could become a burden for President Moon Jae-in, who has emphasized harmony with the opposition bloc. For Cheong Wa Dae, Kim's nomination is a symbolic motion to pursue thorough economic reform, in line with widespread public desire shown in the street rallies last year. The corruption scandal involving the ex-president exposed a lingering alliance between politics and businesses here.

However, the LKP, which aims to be a "clear-cut" opposition party, has renewed its call for Kim's resignation, claiming he lied during the Assembly hearing. The conservative party further criticized the People's Party calling it a "backup force" of the DPK.

Snowballing public support for Kim brought about the positive atmosphere in the Assembly. During the hearing, he calmly explained the flood of allegations involving himself and his family members.

Particularly, his "worn-out bag" has gone viral online after the hearing as evidence of his frugal life. On Tuesday, 498 experts from all walks of life, including former Prime Minister Chung Woon-chan, declared their support for Kim.
Kang Kyung-wha, the foreign minister nominee, answers a question during a confirmation hearing at the National Assembly, Wednesday. / Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul



By Kim Rahn

Foreign Minister nominee Kang Kyung-wha was grilled by opposition lawmakers at a confirmation hearing, Wednesday, over alleged past wrongdoing involving her and members of her family.

While she gave her account on the allegations, the lawmakers said she was unfit to head the foreign affairs ministry, showing unfavorable signs about endorsing her. Although the National Assembly's approval is not binding for her appointment, it remains to be seen whether President Moon Jae-in will push ahead with the appointment if the parties do not endorse her, because it would break his own pledge for cooperation with the parliament.

Opposition lawmakers first grilled Kang over her false residence registration. She admitted that she did so to help her daughter enter a high school of her choice, and apologized for it.

"It was a misjudgment as a public official. I truly apologize," she said.

It was found that the house of the false address belonged to the school, unlike Cheong Wa Dae's earlier explanation that it belonged to a relative of Kang. She said there was a misunderstanding and she could not explain it in detail as she was on a flight when the presidential office was nominating her.

Some opposition lawmakers also took issue with her daughter's U.S. citizenship. The girl, who had dual citizenship after being born in the U.S., renounced her Korean citizenship after becoming an adult. Some said it was improper for a person with a child of another nationality to hold a ranking public position.

Kang said her daughter promised to regain her Korean nationality by giving up her U.S. one. But she also said she does not agree with the former government's rule not to assign an official with such children to overseas posts. "I think it is behind the times to deprive a person of a chance to serve the country because of their children's nationality," she said.

Kang denied real estate speculation allegations. About tax evasion suspicions, she said she found out some unpaid taxes while preparing for the hearing and paid them immediately. Kang also denied her academic paper plagiarism allegation, saying she had only minor technical errors in her references.












Foreign citizenship of FM nominee's daughter matters for confirmation

By Jane Han

DALLAS  While the foreign citizenship of Foreign Minister nominee Kang Kyung-wha's daughter has the public debating her qualifications, many Koreans in the U.S. say it's no surprise that this is a deal-breaking factor.

On Wednesday at a confirmation hearing at the National Assembly in Seoul, Kang told lawmakers that her daughter has decided to give up her U.S. citizenship.

Many Korean-Americans here said that top government officials must go through a thorough vetting and foreign citizenship of their children is an issue serious enough to affect their jobs.

"Even some private U.S. companies require a top security clearance," said John Kim, a lawyer based in Los Angeles specializing in administrative law. "It's both acceptable and understandable that foreign citizenship of immediate family members would be a risk factor for anyone wanting to serve as a top government official."

Security clearances are required for a wide range of jobs  particularly in the aerospace and defense industries  in the U.S., but senior government positions call for the most rigorous screening prior to employment.

According to experts, the U.S. government uses 13 adjudicative guidelines to determine the eligibility of a candidate, and two of them are related to gauging the foreign influences on a candidate and their preferences.

"The citizenship status of a candidate's spouse, children and other close family members is important information, among other factors, that is subject to a comprehensive review," said Kim.












Kim Yi-su, the nominee for the Constitutional Court president, speaks during a confirmation hearing at the National Assembly, Wednesday. /Yonhap



By Kim Se-jeong

Kim Yi-su, the nominee for Constitutional Court president, apologized Wednesday for his 1980 rulings as a military judge on anti-government civilians in the Gwangju Uprising, in a confirmation hearing at the National Assembly.

"I apologize to those who are affected by my decisions," Kim said before a panel of lawmakers.

The nominee served as a judge in a military court in 1980. Convicting three Gwangju citizens involved in the uprising, Kim sentenced them to death, one year in prison and one year in prison suspended for two years, respectively. Reportedly, all appealed later and won their cases.

The nominee said his experience in 1980 left him with indelible agony. "But it became an important reference point and helped me stay committed to protecting democracy and constitutional order throughout my career."

President Moon Jae-in nominated Kim to lead the court on May 19.

Having served the Constitutional Court since 2012, he is most remembered for his dissenting opinion on the disbanding of the ultra-left Unified Progressive Party in 2013. He was the only justice out of nine to do so, and the party was banned.

At the hearing Wednesday, that was one of the biggest sticking points to his endorsement.

The main opposition Liberty Korea Party (LKP) attacked him, claiming the dissenting opinion reflected his left-leaning bias that should disqualify him from leading the court.

The ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) said the incident showed his courage to speak out.

The nominee argued his opinion had a different purpose.

"By giving a dissenting opinion, I wanted to call public attention to true democracy and the spirit of the Constitution. You can have a dissenting opinion in court too."

Conservative party members also attempted to undermine Rep. Park Ju-min from the DPK who filed a constitutional suit himself.

"I don't believe it's fair that Rep. Park is here to ask questions of the nominee who once ruled in his favor," Rep. Kwak Sang-do of the LPK said. Park and his liberal colleagues dismissed the claim.

Kim expressed a progressive view on conscientious objectors during the hearing.

The nominee said the current way of dealing with them was problematic and there was room for improvement. Objectors are sent to jail, without an option to serve the nation in other ways. The Constitutional Court is currently reviewing a conscientious objection case.

Kim also expressed the same opinion on punishing gay soldiers. A military court's recent decision to convict a soldier for having sex with a male soldier drew backlash from civil society.

When it came to gay marriage, he only said open discussions are necessary before legalization.

Kim will undergo a second day of hearings today before the lawmakers cast votes on endorsement.
Kang Kyung-wha, the foreign minister nominee, answers a question during a confirmation hearing at the National Assembly, Wednesday. / Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul



Kang rejects alleged tax evasion, real estate speculation



By Kim Hyo-jin

The National Assembly held confirmation hearings Wednesday for President Moon Jae-in's nominees for finance and foreign ministers, and Constitutional Court president.

The opposition parties focused on alleged irregularities with the nominees, using the hearings as an opportunity to attack the Moon administration.

The main opposition Liberty Korea Party (LKP) went so far as to call on President Moon to withdraw his nominations, or for the nominees themselves to step down voluntarily, saying it would otherwise boycott Assembly sessions.

"The government will face a serious backlash if Moon pushes ahead with the appointment of such disqualified figures," LKP floor leader Chung Woo-taik said during a party meeting. "They might have to brace for a fierce battle against us in dealing with reform plans and the budget bill."

The ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) remained highly defensive, denouncing the opposition parties for playing what it called "hostage politics." It said there was no need to reconsider the nominations as the nominees had no critical flaws.

"They are just obsessed with playing the role of the opposition bloc. They aim to drag down at least one nominee, and their opposition based on such obvious intent will only prompt a public backlash," a party official said.

Attack on FM nominee

The opposition particularly took aim at Foreign Minister-designate Kang Kyung-wha, who has been involved in a series of allegations on her child's false address registration, belated gift tax payments and real estate speculation.

On the allegations of tax evasion and real estate speculation, Kang actively defended herself, saying they were "groundless accusations."

Opposition lawmakers earlier accused her of having sought to evade tax by reporting the sale price of her mother's house  under her name  as lower than the real market value when it was being refurbished. "I had no idea as the construction firm reported this to the authorities," she said.
By William R. Jones





People always predict things, anything, it doesn't matter. Most people who predict the coming of a future event do it with an informed guess or opinion. When someone predicts by any procedure or any source of information, we usually say they are foretelling the coming of a future event. For example, the end of the world has been predicted and foretold many times and continues to be so.

Here is a classic example of a prediction printed by Business Week magazine in 1968, "With over fifteen types of foreign cars already on sale here, the Japanese auto industry isn't likely to carve out a big share of the market for itself." Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy stated to President Truman in 1945, "The atomic bomb will never go off, and I speak as an expert in explosives."

Obviously the above quotes had failed to stand up to the test of time. It is a bad idea to say something can't or won't be done, especially, in the realm of politics, economics, science, and technology. It is a worse idea to presume or to expect or assume with confidence without evidence or proof.

The end-times predictions are the most astonishing. These predictions were and are based on faith, fear, uncertainty, math, and insanity. These apocalypse, doomsday, and end of the world as we know it predictions had their many followers. Christopher Columbus claimed in his Book of Prophesies that the world would end in 1656. Others asserting the end-time were Methodists founder John Wesley, Martin Luther, Joseph Smith, Charles Manson, Nostradamus, Isaac Newton, Jeane Dixon, Edgar Cayce, Unification Church founder Moon Sun-myung, Pat Robertson, the Mayan calendar, the year 2000 Y2K computer bug and more than one Pope. And, the list goes on and on and the list fails and fails.

One Warren G. Ellis said, "I try not to get involved in the business of prediction. It's a quick way to look like an idiot." Yes, sometimes I'm a foolish or stupid person, however, I'm not a social misguided misfit making monumental predictions, but rather small-scale ones that are a bit more credible. Nevertheless, I predict the end of the world will be the day I die, at least, it will be the end for me.

The one prediction that seems to be not only possible, but probable, and it comes from the scientific community is the end date of our Sun's current phase of development, after which it shall completely scorch Earth. That, of course, will be around 5,000,000,000 A.D. however, as the sun gradually grows hotter (over millions of years) the Earth may become too hot for life in as few as one billion years from now!





The writer has taught conversational English for 15 years. He currently works for Virginia State University. His e-mail address is: wrjones@vsu.edu.
Delineation pivotal to detente 2.0



North Korea has refused to allow the visits of by two nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The North previously allowed one for the celebration of the 2000 inter-Korean summit but only after the South Korean delegation dropped its suggestion of Gaeseong as the venue and accepted Pyongyang instead.



During the one month since Moon Jae-in, the self-proclaimed successor to the pacifist liberal late presidents _ Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun _ was inaugurated, the North has conducted three missile tests.



Already, the Moon government has approved 15 requests for inter-Korean contacts, a major departure from the previous Park Geun-hye government, and the preceding conservative head of state, Lee Myung-bak.



Now, the North repeatedly demands the Moon government be ready to abide by the spirit of cooperation as stipulated by the 2000 summit and the follow-up in 2007.



There is no reason to be disappointed at the North's initial negative responses to our peace overtures. But Moon should see limitations in a radical turnaround and delineate how he will proceed with his friendly policy toward the North.



Rumors abound that Moon wants to undo the May 24 Sanctions imposed two months after the North's March 2010 torpedo attack on the ROK frigate, Cheonan. A total of 46 ROK sailors onboard were killed.



The lifting of the eight-year-old sanctions could be a major step to turn the South's North Korea policy hard away from starboard but three conditions should be met.



First, the public would be reluctant to accept it unless the North addresses the issue at heart _ via an apology or a similar reference for the incident for which it has denied responsibility despite the outcome of a multinational investigation. Or the government would show a reasonable level of hope that the North may change, once such an olive branch is offered.



Second, going back on the current sanctions-first policy requires the consensus of the international community and understanding of Korea's key ally and partner in security, the United States. True, the U.S. has downshifted its stance for dialogue with the North _ from dismantling of its nuclear weapons to a moratorium. But Korea may not unilaterally ease the May 24 Sanctions or reopen the Gaeseong Industrial Complex without violating the international framework and straining the ROK-U.S. alliance.



Thirdly, the North is not what it was 20 years ago when it agreed to dismantle its incipient nuclear program under the 1994 Agreed Framework arrangement with the U.S. Pyongyang has a sizable arsenal of nuclear weapons with its intercontinental missile program being significantly finessed. Seeing it as its only meal ticket, the North has no intention to give up its asymmetric weapons _ or if it does, it would call for a much stiffer price than before.



Moon has not shown much of what he intends to do to the point that his North Korea policy is derided as the "Moonshine" policy. For this tricky issue that has a lot to do with the nation's fate, the President should stick to his open communication policy and share his thoughts with the nation.




By Park Jaehyuk





Kumho Asiana Group Chairman Park Sam-koo

Kumho Asiana Group Chairman Park Sam-koo is pondering over a request for him to clarify his position, this week, on whether to allow Doublestar Tyre to use the "Kumho" brand name. It remains to be seen how he will react to the ultimatum, observers said Wednesday.

Earlier this week, Kumho Tire creditors including the Korea Development Bank sent an official document to Kumho Industrial, to ask if it will allow the Chinese tire firm to use the Kumho brand name for 20 years.

Kumho Industrial is a holding company of Kumho Asiana Group. As Park is a representative director of the company, analysts said that the official document is the creditors' ultimatum to the chairman.

Although Park recently said that he can consider allowing Doublestar to use the trademark for five years, he has yet to clarify the company's official position. He also wants to raise the license fee, claiming that Kumho Tire will be separated from the group after it is sold to Doublestar.

Creditors are using Kumho Tire's 1.3 trillion won ($1.1 billion) debt as a weapon against Park.

The maturity date is coming this month. If creditors do not postpone the date, Kumho Tire will be in trouble. They will make the final decision next Thursday.

If the chairman declines to respond to the official document or ignores the demand, creditors are expected not to delay the maturity date. They have pressured Park, saying Kumho Tire may go into receivership, something Park is unlikely to countenance.

Kumho Asiana Group has yet to make any official response. The group said it will mull over the matter until the deadline.

An official said that Park will not dramatically change his stance because the creditors did not make any concessions. But the creditors claim that the group has no choice but to sell the tire unit for its recovery.

Kumho Tire's operating profit rate has continued to decline since it finished a workout in 2014. It suffered a loss in the first quarter this year, while its local rivals have maintained 10 percent operating profits rate.

The company's union wants to deprive Park of his control of the company and his right of first refusal as well.

The creditors have already got permission to use the brand name from Kumho Petrochemical, a joint owner of the trademark.

The chemical company, which is led by Chairman Park Chan-koo, a brother of Chairman Park Sam-koo, has used the Kumho brand, since it separated from the group in 2011. Although Kumho Industrial filed a copyright suit in 2013, Kumho Petrochemical won the trial and an appeal is under way.

The latter said there is no reason to oppose to the use of the trademark, if Doublestar pays the current license fee.

In addition, the creditors are expected to pressure the group's chairman indirectly by using their bonds and stakes in Asiana Airlines.

Creditors have secured 500 billion won in bonds of the group's key subsidiary. Also, KDB is the third-largest stockholder of the company with a 5.94 percent share.

But still, negative public sentiment can be a burden to the creditors. Surveys have shown that most Koreans are not in favor of selling a local company to a Chinese firm.
By Jhoo Dong-chan



Hyundai Motor joins hands with Baidu in developing connected cars, aiming at gaining a competitive edge in the strategically important market through a partnership with China's largest internet service provider.



Korea's primary carmaker announced during the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) Asia 2017 Wednesday that it will install the Baidu MapAuto navigation system and the Duer OS Auto artificial intelligence (AI) personal assistant. The event took place at the Shanghai New International Expo Center.



With its advanced technologies in navigation mapping services and voice recognition as well as AI, Baidu has collaborated with Hyundai since 2015 when the former started to supply its smart phone connectivity platform, Car Life, to the latter.



During this year's CES Asia, the two companies showcased the Baidu MapAuto and the Duer OS Auto simultaneously operating in Hyundai Motor vehicles.



A Hyundai Motor official said a Hyundai Motor Santa Fe SUV equipped with the two information technologies will be on display during the event, giving a glimpse of the future connectivity of automobiles.



The Baidu MapAuto provides not only a navigation service but also useful information for the driver such as traffic congestion, famous restaurants and tourist attractions in real time through processing big data from the internet. It also synchronizes with a smart phone to download useful information to provide a customized driver interface in the car.



Duer OS Auto is an AI assistant with a voice recognition system for cars. Hyundai Motor vehicles will adopt it for the first time among global carmakers. Duer OS Auto makes controls not only for automotive air conditioning and infotainment systems but also self-driving and internet services.



"Hyundai Motor's efforts for a connected car will generate opportunities for a better future," said Yang Woong-chul, Hyundai Motor Group research division Vice Chairman.



"We will strengthen our partnership with Baidu to introduce a connected car that helps our customers' lives."







Baidu effect?



The business alliance with Baidu is also expected to have a favorable side effect of easing Chinese motorists' negative sentiments towards Hyundai.



After Seoul decided to deploy a U.S. anti-missile shield, Chinese drivers have shunned Korean brands, which prompted Hyundai's China sales to plunge over the past few months.



With the inauguration of the new administration in Korea last month, however, there are signs that the soured Sino-Korean relationships are back to normal.



The cooperation with China's representative high-tech company Baidu is also expected to help Hyundai regain its past popularity, watchers pointed out.



Owned and produced by the Consumer Technology Association and co-produced by Shanghai Intex Exhibition, the CES Asia is the premier event in the region for the consumer technology industry. It showcases the full breadth and depth of the innovation value-chain in the Asian marketplace.



A number of global major players participate in the event to grow and reinforce their brand by showcasing the latest products and technologies to consumers as well as to tech industry insiders.




Ahn Chang-ki, CEO of Beesen / Courtesy of Beesen



CEO Ahn Chang-ki says he got stung, and then hooked on bees



By Kim Ji-soo



From goat's milk and snail mucin to kelp, snake venom and bee venom _ seemingly exotic ingredients are now central in cosmetics products. These cutting-edge cosmetics, including those made with bee venom, have garnered high-profile singular fans such as Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton and Oscar-winning actress Gwyneth Paltrow.

The cosmetic benefits of honey bee venom have surged to the fore in recent years. The venom's toxin melittin is known to prompt production of natural collagen and elastin. Bee sting therapy has been an alternative treatment in Korea, but now one local company is looking to popularize it through cosmetics.

Beesen, based in Geumsan, South Chungcheong Province, has the knowhow to extract and make bee venom into a key ingredient, Bee M4A, which has anti-inflammatory and anti-aging properties. Last Monday, it signed a contract worth 300 billion won ($268 million) to export 8 million facial mask packs to DIA Group of China over a two-year period.





One of the facial mask packs that Beesen makes

/ Courtesy of Beesen

"The signing of the contract is a clear herald of good Korea-China (economic) ties," said Ahn Chang-ki, CEO of the Geumsan-based company. The news indeed can ease some of the Korea-China tensions in the industry over the deployment of the U.S. missile system Terminal High Altitude Area Defense in the country.

While these are affordable facial mask packs, costing less than 30,000 won for five sheets, Beesen is definitely aiming for a future where M4A can produce natural antibiotic feed for livestock and fisheries and treat previously incurable human diseases.

But back to cosmetics for now, as Korean cosmetics is one of the hottest sectors domestically and internationally. Beesen's contract also means the estimated 40,000 bee farmers in the country do not have to sit idly after the honey-reaping season stretching late April to late June and work until August extracting bee venom, he said.

Ahn himself started with a bee farm in 1995 after leaving a conglomerate, the predecessor of SK Group, where he worked as a researcher in textiles. Ahn said he got hooked on bee venom research after he got stung by swarming bees one fall. He not only survived the stings, but said his acne problems disappeared.

"It has happened to some people, including myself," Ahn said.





Ahn Chang-ki works with bees/ Courtesy of Beesen



So he dug deep into bee venom research, founding a company in 1997. He then established Beesen in 2008, first delving into producing products to treat bees themselves with bee venom. "Bees too have illnesses and diseases," Ahn said. It was by all means, a niche industry where conglomerates did not compete, so Beesen seized upon it. With financial assistance from the Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries in 2010-2013, Beesen developed modern equipment and related technologies for extracting bee venom. The assistance was to produce natural-antibody feed for livestock. Beesen's R&D expertise has accumulated over the years, and it now also makes cosmetic products such as facial mask packs using the venom.

Discovering Bee M4A involved a long period of difficult research work and of persuading experts, policymakers and consumers of the benefits of bee venom. For example, Beesen sought the help of Strathclyde University professor Mark Dufton, a snake venom expert, for the research consortium. He was not initially sold on Beesen's idea but eventually joined the research after verifying bee venom's effects.

"We were able to persuasively make the point that while bee venom can be extracted only in small amounts compared to snake venom, for which each extraction can easily fill a juice cup, bees are much more numerable compared to snakes," Ahn said. The Bee M4A was discovered, through a research consortium with CHA Hospital and the Strathclyde University in Glasgow, Scotland, in 2015.

Beesen said Bee M4A is a natural anti-aging ingredient that only extracts 6 percent (compared to the total amount of venom) and it is effective for anti-ageing treatment with allergens removed from the venom.

"It is actually a code name of the project, and you can say it is the result of our sweat," Ahn said. When Bee M4A was discovered, he felt like he had struck gold. It was at the mention of the discovery of Bee M4A that Ahn smiled for the first time during the interview.

His employees said Ahn is a proactive leader who is very hands-on with tasks, especially research.

The company's cash cow is its array of products that treat or feed bees. But Ahn is looking to diversify into facial mask packs, as well as natural antibiotics for livestock and humans.

Beesen outsources bee venom in bulk from various farms around the nation every year.

At its lab in Geumsan, South Chungcheong Province, it has about 150 boxes containing 30,000 bees per box. The company extracts the venom without killing the bees by using a glass pane through which a small amount of electrical current passes. The bees, feeling the electricity, sting the glass pane, leaving their venom on the pane without losing their stinger.

With 27 employees including 12 researchers dedicated to bee venom research, the company recorded around 4.4 billion won in sales in 2016.

"We are surviving, but we hope to see some meaningful growth in the coming years," Ahn said.

Ahn sees various possibilities from Beesen's research.

This February, the company's lab announced its discovery of some Bee M4A benefits in treating diabetes, and its paper is awaiting acceptance for publication in an international journal. Ahn spoke passionately about using Bee M4A to treat animals and consequently promote healthy meat and seafood in the future.

"A future in anti-aging products, soon followed by providing safe, natural antibiotics for cows, pigs, chickens and fish, and then curing (previously) incurable human diseases so that people can live their given lives healthy that is our goal for the future," Ahn said. "There is just so much more work ahead."
BIGBANG T.O.P's distraught mother is angry over false reports downplaying her son's condition and expressed her grief over her son's unconscious state. She said that her son is not merely sleeping as some reports claim but are in fact in critical condition and "close to dying."

According to a report by Koreaboo, BIGBANG T.O.P's mother spoke up after learning about reports from police sources that claim that the BIGBANG rapper regained consciousness and will be back to normal after a few days. T.O.P's mother said that police official never made such a statement that her son is doing well when she talked to officials.

BIGBANG T.O.P's mother said that it hurts their family to read the news that T.O.P. was merely in a deep sleep when his condition is much worse than that. The YG artist needs an oxygen mask to help him breathe and it is unsure how worse his condition would get in the next days.

"Due to the lack of oxygen, he may have possible brain damage," T.O.P's mother said about her son's condition. YG has also released a statement confirming that the BIGBANG rapper was unconscious and that only close family members were allowed visitation rights.

Doctors at the Ehwa University Hospital where T.O.P. is currently confined held a press conference yesterday following the conflicting reports that have been released regarding the BIGBANG member's condition. The doctors confirmed that on June 6, T.O.P. was rushed to the emergency room unconscious, as opposed to some reports that T.O.P. was conscious when he was rushed to the hospital, YG United reported.

Doctors also confirmed that they found traces of the anti-anxiety drug benziodiazepine in the drug tests conducted on the patient in excessive doses. Doctors also confirmed that T.O.P. was in a deep sleep and was still in critical condition due to the need to monitor his carbon dioxide levels as well as his breathing. While there is no concrete schedule on when T.O.P. would regain consciousness and what complications will arise when he wakes up, doctors have said that they will be working with the neurology and psychiatric departments for T.O.P's treatment which may include psychiatric care once he regains consciousness in roughly a week's time.

BIGBANG's T.O.P. was recently discharged from service after he was found positive for marijuana in a hair follicle test conducted in March by the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency where he was serving his two year mandatory enlistment as a member of the band unit. His case is pending investigation by the prosecutor's office, Kpopstarz reported. Meanwhile, #StayStrongTOP has become the #1 trending topic worldwide as T.O.P.'s fans rally behind the beleaguered BIGBANG member amid his ordeal.
State Auditor Nicole Galloway says the Missouri Department of Revenue needs to do more to address complaints about unpaid income tax refunds. She says taxpayers are understandably frustrated that they haven't received the refunds and can't find out when they'll be paid.

Missouri officials said last week that nearly all state tax refunds should be delivered by June 30. The Missouri Department of Revenue said the only unpaid returns should be those that were flagged for various reasons.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that, if nearly all refunds are paid by June 30, that would be an improvement over last year, when former Gov. Jay Nixon ordered the agency to use overtime or hire temporary workers to process tax returns. Some returns took up to 10 weeks to return and the state paid $294,837 in late fees to nearly 84,000 people.

State law requires the state to pay interest if refunds aren't paid within 45 days of taxes being filed.

Taxpayers are fed up and frustrated by not receiving their refunds from the state. Complaints of missing refunds have poured in to state offices as well as private offices of income tax return preparers.

A reporter contacted almost a dozen local tax service offices on Wednesday, and they all said the same thing: people aren't getting their state refunds and they don't know why.

The accountants say people who filed tax returns well before the April 18 deadline still wait to get their money back. Problem is, when the citizens and accountants try to find what's taking so long, they encounter frustrating waits at the Department of Revenue.

"It's frustrating that we don't have answers, I don't mind checking for people and I always give them the website how they can check it daily, but I can check it daily also, and it just says still being processed and it says that every day and that's frustrating," said tax return preparer Sue McDonald.

Galloway said her office also has taken more than 1,000 of those complaints, and she says state law requires a refund to be paid with interest if it's paid more than 45 days after the return was filed.

News release from Galloway on Tuesday:

More than 1,000 Missourians from throughout the state have contacted State Auditor Nicole Galloway to report missing refunds and other concerns about their tax returns. In a letter issued today, Auditor Galloway wants the director of the Department of Revenue to take quick action to address citizens' complaints about unpaid income tax refunds.

"Over the last six weeks, more than 1,000 Missourians have contacted my whistleblower hotline seeking information on the status of their tax refund. They report long wait times, disconnected calls, the inability to speak to a representative when seeking status information on their refunds, and receiving a refund after 45 days without receiving interest. Missourians are becoming understandably frustrated by the delay and I urge the Department of Revenue to take all necessary steps to complete refund processing as quickly as possible," Auditor Galloway said.

Missouri law requires that any personal income tax refunds issued after 45 days past filing be paid to taxpayers with interest. Refunds were due on June 2 to all taxpayers who filed income tax returns by the April 18 deadline.

Auditor Galloway is currently auditing the Department of Revenue. The audit includes a review of the processes used to ensure refunds are paid timely and with all appropriate interest. The audit will review the Department of Revenue's compliance and timeliness over the past two years.

Updated information on the amount refunded by the state is available online at auditor.mo.gov/statedailyspending.

Citizens can request an update on the status of their refund by contacting the Department of Revenue directly at 573-751-3505.

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Police say a man died after he was shot shortly after 4 p.m. Wednesday along West Talmage Street just east of Kansas Expressway.

The shooter remains on the run, but police say people who live and work in the area should not feel like they are in danger.

"I don't know of any direct information that would lead me to believe that anyone is in any more danger than any other day at this time," said Springfield Police Lt. Chad Eutsler. "So down the road, hopefully, we'll have a little more information we can put out."

Shortly after the shooting, someone drove the gunshot victim to Cox North Hospital where he later died.

Investigators are looking at all forms of evidence right now to find out what happened, including any surveillance video from nearby businesses.

"We look everywhere, the routes the people . . . allegedly took and we're looking at that," Eutsler said. "But if somebody thinks they have something on their camera, on a recording, we would love to see it. And maybe someone just videoed something that seemed odd to them, someone's driving behavior, or something odd like that."

At this point, no information has been released about the victim.

Investigators are still trying to find out who's behind the crime, and the relationship, if any, with the victim.

Witnesses' description of the shooter's car has not been released.

Witnesses gave officers descriptions of a vehicle that was in the area at the time and whose occupants may have been involved.

Police put Crime Scene tape around part of a bank parking lot on Kansas, but says the bank is not involved in the shooting.

Police hope surveillance video from area businesses will provide clues. And they're asking people who may have captured video of anything suspicious around the time of the shooting to contact police.
The leader of the Willard School District won't get to work in his final month before he retires because of his speech at the high school graduation ceremony in May.

The Willard School Board says Superintendent Kent Medlin violated a district policy by saying a prayer at a school-sponsored event. The superintendent had to pack up and leave his office, just weeks before his retirement on June 30. In a statement, the school board says it made that decision because that prayer violated school policy.

The board says Medlin will be on paid leave until the end of the month. So far he has not returned a reporter's calls to comment about his remarks.

Students say he cited his savior, quoted the Bible and prayed. One parent says it sounded more like a church sermon. Students protested the speech, calling it offensive.

The school board would not comment on why it made the decision now, other than citing the school's policy.

Board's statement:

At a special meeting of the Willard School Board of Education held on May 26, 2017, the board placed Superintendent Dr. Kent Medlin on a paid leave of absence. The leave will continue through June 30, 2017 when Dr. Medlin's contract expires. The board's action was based upon the board's belief that Dr. Medlin's High School Commencement Speech violated Board of Education policies regarding prayer at school sponsored events.

The board has selected Assistant Superintendent Dr. Stewart Pratt as the Interim Superintendent until July 1, 2017. Dr. Pratt will represent the district at all district activities during this period. The districts new Superintendent, Dr. Matt Teeter, will assume his duties July 1. All district activities are continuing as planned including summer school, school construction projects and preparation for 2017-2018 school year.

The Board wishes to express gratitude for the understanding and support of the Willard community.
Leaving the movie theater after seeing Lee David Zlotoffs 1996 film, The Spitfire Grill, I knew it would remain in my memory for a long time. Excited to actually see the play at the North Coast Repertory Theatre, I was once again charmed.

Percy Talbott (Aurora Florence) has not had a good life. In fact, she is just being released from prison and escorted by Sheriff Joe Sutter to the wimpy little town of Gilead, Wisconsin. Once there, shes escorted in to meet the owner of The Spitfire Grill, Hannah Ferguson (Devlin).

Hannah takes one look at the down-and-out young woman and suspects Miss Percy will be more trouble than shes worth. However, Hannah is not the spring chicken she once was and certainly has lost her spitfire proficiency (plus, the cute and polite officer Joe is hard to say no to), so she agrees to take on Percys help.

Things might have started off great for boss and employee but for the shenanigans of Effy Krayneck (Maggie Carney). Shes the towns postmaster, but most call her the towns bigmouth tattletale. It wouldnt be so bad if she didnt spout opinions to everyone about things she thinks are the truth, but in reality, are far from it.

After Hannah is waylaid by a leg/hip injury, Percy puts more effort into helping  even though most of the town is wary of the newcomer. Percy soon meets Shelby Thorpe (Meghan Andrews), a neighbor who helps Hannah at The Spitfire Grill, and Caleb Thorpe (Kevin Earley), her stubborn husband who doesnt like Percy nor trust her. Shelby and Percy become friends and share a lot as they work together to save the Grill, but Percy doesnt reveal a secret she discovers that Hannah has been hiding for years.

Buoyed by a plan to raffle off The Spitfire Grill through a national contest, the women manage to raise the sagging towns spirits (along with their own) as they come to terms with and move past personal tragedies.

The actors are true to their characters, and as they lift their powerful voices in soulful tunes, they win audience hearts. The play offers mystery, humor (Carney keeps everyone laughing), and beautiful accompaniment by the off-stage musicians Alby Potts, Nikko Nobleza, Catherine Gray and George Spelvin.

The splendid cast and inspiring story perceptively affirm theres no place like home!

IF YOU GO: The Spitfire Grill is on stage through July 2 at North Coast Repertory Theatre, 987 Lomas Santa Fe Drive, Solana Beach. Tickets from $42. (858) 481-1055. northcoastrep.org
Memorial Day is meant to be a time for remembrance.

A time to honor all veterans, regardless of rank or branch, for the many sacrifices theyve made in the name of freedom.

This year, however, four local families probably didnt spend the holiday weekend commemorating fallen members of the military.

Instead, they were most likely focused on another loss, equally tragic but wholly without cause.

On the eve of the nationwide celebration, four people lost their lives in Walworth County, all victims claimed by two separate single-car collisions.

The first occurred in the town of Lyons at roughly 7 p.m., when a 2003 Volkswagon Jetta veered off the road and into a tree, extinguishing the lives of three young men from Burlington.

Then, several hours later, a 2012 Dodge truck suffered nearly the same exact fate while driving in Sharon on Highway B. It careened off the road during the early hours of the morning, crashing into a utility pole and bursting into flames.

Its sole occupant was badly burned and declared dead on the scene, as were the three victims of the earlier crash, with both accidents appearing to be a result of nothing but excessive speed.

Thats all it takes.

Four families are now bereft, left in ruin; shattered, grieving and reeling.

And while there are no words capable of alleviating their sorrow or diminishing their pain, their tragedy contains a lesson that may easily be missed by the unaffected.

To be blunt, dont squander the opportunity to tell your loved ones what they mean to you.

No one knows how much time they have left.

The world is a chaotic and tumultuous and unforgiving place, with neither rhyme nor reason, and whether lives are claimed by illness or carelessness, thoughtless violence or random chance, it only takes a moment.

And, too often, those of us who remain behind are left wanting, wishing we could have at least said goodbye.

I discovered that firsthand last month when my father, Thomas Michels, passed away on May 2.

At least, thats when I received the call from the police chaplain in Rockford, Illinois, telling me that he was gone.

It was a Tuesday.

I was sitting at my desk when the phone rang.

Its important to mention that my dad always had a knack for calling at the most inopportune times, like a telemarketer who only calls during dinner.

So at first, when I saw the Rockford area code, I just assumed it was his terrible timing again, calling while I was on deadline to put out the paper.

But of course, it wasnt.

It was the chaplain, the harbinger of a loss I wasnt even aware Id suffered.

Even now, Im not sure that I can describe the different feelings that filled me that day.

Shock, mostly, I guess, followed by grief, and anger.

But ever since, of all my memories of my dad, the most prominent have been those inconvenient phone calls and how, now, Id give anything to answer one.

To hear him ask How you doing, Davey? and listen to him reminisce about Buddy, our old family dog, or about the latest Tom Clancy book hed found, ghostwritten by my apparent doppelganger, David Michaels.

I remember all of the stupid, inconsequential things that, at the time, I thought were more important, and I feel guilty.

That guilt sits in the forefront of my mind now, with unyielding persistence.

And when I fail to dispel it, I feel worse, knowing he wouldnt want me to remember him that way, wouldnt want to be a burden.

Thats why its so essential to make the most of what little time we have, and to tell our loved ones just that, that we love them.

Every day should be spent appreciating those who make life worth living, because Memorial Day may be a time of remembrance, but so is every other day once theyre gone.
Last week marked 14 years of sharing what we do at The Time Is Now to Help in our weekly column. An idea to inform our communities about the need for poverty relief turned into an opportunity to help not just the 729 people written about over the past years, but thousands of people we have helped thanks to your compassion, generosity, caring and sharing.

More than 30 years ago we were looking for a charity that would actually use the funds donated for their actual cause, not their overhead or salaries. We were frustrated when we saw great need but too much red tape for our funds to get to the people we wanted to help.

We found many people living in shacks, on park benches and in overcrowded shelters. We found children and the elderly living with the constant pain of hunger. We found the handicapped living without basic needs and resources. I went to each and every place we gave and assessed their needs. When I talked to women with children living in shelters I found they needed diapers and personal hygiene products. When I visited the handicapped I found they did not have supportive wheelchairs, ramps or even clothing. When I found hunger I provided food. The Time Is Now to Help was established so we would be assured that every penny of our own and our donors funds would be put to work immediately to remove the pains of poverty.

While much has changed in our communities during the past 14 years, the need for poverty relief remains the same. People are still becoming homeless, children are still hungry, senior citizens are still struggling to make ends meet, the handicapped are unable to afford basic needs and working poor families cannot afford rent and other necessities of life. We knew we could never solve the many complex reasons for poverty, but we could ease the pains of living in poverty. And we have done just that thanks to all of you. You have been an integral part of all we do at The Time Is Now to Help. Every one we have comforted and assisted over the past 14 years was thanks to all of you.

I founded The Time Is Now to Help more than 30 years ago with the following mission: The Time Is Now exists solely for the purpose of alleviating the suffering of those who find themselves facing economic hardship. The Time Is Nows continuing goal is to make sure every cent donated is utilized to provide goods and services, such as food, clothing, utilities, toiletries, automobile assistance, and shelter assistance to help the extremely poverty-stricken children, senior citizens, disabled, and families live more comfortably, improve their quality of life, and remove their pain and suffering. This continues to be our mission statement and guides all we do together.

Prior to the past 14 years, even before our incorporation in 1989, I, my wife and a handful of people were all that made up The Time Is Now to Help.

We accomplished many great things together, but the work load was heavy and we were often lonely in this mission of providing assistance to those in desperate need.

We purchased food, mattresses, diapers, wheel chairs, blankets, sheets, toiletries, toys, clothing and shoes, loaded the trucks and made the deliveries all on our own. We established a food pantry in one of the most impoverished areas. We helped homeless senior citizens, women and children. This was all done with our own funds. Then years later I began receiving letters from people desperate for poverty relief asking for assistance.

That was when my mission of bringing relief right to peoples homes, or where ever they happened to be living, sometimes tents, sometimes cars, began. When we began sharing one letter a week in the newspaper with all of you, you came forward with your caring and sharing hearts and I realized how much more rewarding sharing our mission of love and goodness is.

In the past 14 years Ive realized we not only remove the pains of poverty but we also repair broken hearts and spirits. When someone truly is cold, hungry, physically impaired, it can lead to a broken heart always living in the fear and pains of poverty. Poverty is ruthless and does not care about your age, race, gender, religion, handicap or impairment. Poverty is cruel. Thanks to all of you supporting The Time Is Now to Help for the past 14 years we have been able to provide mending and healing with our love, caring and sharing.

Over the past 14 years I have told everyone weve helped about you that make our charity even possible. Here are some of the comments and thanksgiving they have told me to share:

How can I ever thank all of you for your kindness and generosity toward my children?

How can I ever express to all of you how much you have done for my family? I dont think it is even possible.

The Time Is Now to Help support has been the biggest blessing of my life. The help provided extended far beyond my financial survival.

My children were blessed and beaming after a shopping trip for new clothing provided by everyone at The Time Is Now to Help. They were crying happy tears when changing their ragged hand me downs to new clothes that fit.

When I was told by my church that The Time Is Now to Help is like a guardian angel to the elderly and the handicapped that are destitute, I did not realize how my life was going to be renewed by all of your help. I went from what felt like a bottomless pit of agony to feeling blessed to be alive again.

When I received a visit I was told about all the people that make up The Time Is Now to Help. I asked God, is this group of angels for real? Through all your love and compassion I found his answer was Yes.

Now that I am back on my feet and have been blessed with a new job, I am proud to be giving back to The Time Is Now to Help. I know what your assistance meant to me and I know you will do the same for someone else suffering in poverty just like I was.

I know that miracles happen, as God orchestrates them. God continues to use The Time Is Now to Help in the orchestration of healing lives and removing the evil pains of poverty.

The words and actions of The Time Is Now to Help are vehicles of hope and healing. Thank you for the hope and healing you gave to my family.

As you left from our visit you told me that you were proud of me. When the door closed I began to cry as I realized, in my entire life virtually no one had ever told me that. Until that moment I had little idea how much I needed to hear those encouraging words. I have immeasurable appreciation, respect and love for everyone at The Time Is Now to Help.

Together we have stood people back up on their feet, we have fed them, clothed them, sheltered them we have reformulated budgets and helped find jobs. If we try to put into numbers how much assistance we have provided in the 14 years our letters have been in the newspaper it could put things in perspective of how much we have all done together. We average helping 500 people living in poverty each year so that means 7,000 people have been helped by The Time Is Now to Help in the past 14 years. 7,000 of our fellow creations have been touched by our caring and sharing assistance.

Thanks to all of you we hope to continue our battle against poverty, one letter at a time, for many years to come. The children, senior citizens, working poor families, veterans and the handicapped are all counting on us. We really are their lifeline, often their only hope. If it werent for all of you and The Time Is Now to Help what would have happened to those thousands of our fellow creations living in the pains of poverty? Where would they be? How many children would have gone hungry? How many senior citizens would have been living in the cold and the dark? I pray there is never a day when we have to answer those questions.

Thank you for your continued support of the charity work we all do together. It is a group effort, a labor of love and a blessing to many suffering in poverty in our communities. God Bless you.

Health and happiness, love and God bless everyone, W.C./Sal

How to help

Please help: There are many coming to us in desperation. Our good fellow creations need our compassion. Together we make a big difference. Make checks payable to: The Time Is Now to Help, P.O. Box 1, Lake Geneva, WI 53147. The Time Is Now to Help is a federally recognized 5013 charitable organization licensed in the states of Wisconsin and Illinois. You will receive a tax deductible, itemized thank you receipt showing how your donation provided assistance for the poverty stricken.

A very special thank you: Family Foundation, The Gallo Family Fund, Scott and Lisa Stearns, Fox Charities, Martin Business, John Stensland and Family, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Schuberth, Christine Adams, Thomas Morrissy, Black Point Estate, Aurora Health Care Employee Partnership Campaign, James and Shari Loback, John and Marian McClellan, John and Virginia Sullivan, Dorothy Tookey, Robert and Patricia Davis, Wingfield Watson Trust, Karen Anderson, John and Kathy Poiron, Denise Hubbard, Mary Jo Milazzo, John and Vickie Geier, Margaret and Randall Smith, our anonymous donors and all of you who support The Time Is Now to Help donation boxes, and the businesses that allow our donation boxes. Anyone who would like a Time Is Now donation box in your business, please call (262) 249-7000.

Honoraries: Les and Pauline Malsch in honor of Al and Geri Hinton.

Memorials: Mary Dunham in memory of Vera Lawton. Daniel and Donna Casey in memory of their sister Eileen. Les and Pauline Malsch in memory of Mark Malsch. Bill Wells in memory of Mary Osborne.

Prayer chain: The power of prayer and positive thoughts comes from the true healer, our Lord answering our prayers. Please pray for healing for the following people: Mike, Caroline, Susan, Jennifer, Clarence, Jayden, Santina, Alex, Lily, Kaitlyn, Kynesha, Brandis Grandma and Marilyn.

Inspiration Ministries Resale Shop: Please donate your gently used household items and furniture to the Inspiration Ministries Resale Shop. For local pick up of major items or collection appointments please call (262) 275-2264. Inspiration Ministries Resale Shop is located at N2270 State Highway 67, Walworth, WI 53184. Hours: Monday through Saturday 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Closed Sundays. Please visit often knowing your support will provide life changing assistance for the fellow creations in their care. Inspiration Ministries is home for up to 80 residents that live with multiple physical and mental challenges. I thank all of you for helping. For more information visit www.inspirationministries.org.
To the Editor:

I support President Trumps withdrawal from the Paris climate accord which would have cost billions and hampered our economy.

The accord is non-binding, but even if followed uniformly by all signers the global temperature would decrease by less than 0.17 degree centigrade by 2100. There is, however, no means of enforcing the agreement to reach even this goal. There is not even effective monitoring. The United States wanted an independent agency to monitor compliance, but with Chinese and Indian opposition this was not instituted.

China is allowed a nearly 20-percent increase in coal production by 2020 and no improvements are required for 30 years, as noted by Richard Epstein of the Hoover Institute. That China signed the agreement is not surprising. American industry is burdened, costing our economy billions, while Chinese industry is allowed to develop unfettered.

Climate variability has been constant long before human existence. Climate scientists Richard Linden and others found a negative correlation between temperature and carbon dioxide levels over the past 11,000 years. Climate scientist Judith Curry writes that the role of natural forces is underestimated.

Research to reduce fossil fuel emissions can be of immediate benefit. Currently wind and solar represent less than 1 percent of global energy use. Out of the accords we can control our research priorities to focus on improving fossil fuel use.

As President Trump noted, negotiations for a more meaningful treaty can begin. Meanwhile, our citizens will not suffer the effects of a flawed and unworkable agreement.

Sincerely,

Pamela Wolfe, M.D.

Lake Geneva


I was down at the Central Library on Saturday to do a few things. While there I was able to check out the exhibit for Josh Kun's amazing book of LAPL-owned sheet music, Songs in the Key of Los Angeles, in the first floor gallery. Downstairs in the History and Genealogy department, I caught "King, the Kennedys, & Los Angeles." The exhibition fills a wall with photos from the Los Angeles Public Library collection showing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., President John F. Kennedy and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy in LA during various visits. Go here for online highlights.

I was stopped by a picture I don't think I had ever seen, above, of the hearse carrying RFK's remains away from Good Samaritan Hospital on June 6, 1968. It's from the Herald Examiner, uncredited, and shows the scene at Wilshire Boulevard and Lucas Avenue. There is a lot of history and emotion in the photo, even if you don't see faces.

Kennedy died at Good Sam after a day-long vigil. More than 24 hours earlier, he had won the California primary election, and probably the Democratic Party nomination for president, then was shot down by Sirhan Sirhan in the pantry at the Ambassador Hotel. Richard Nixon, who in the 1960s used to eat at the restaurant that occupied the current HMS Bounty space, right across Wilshire from the hotel, went on to be elected president.

After seeing this image, I had to go online and see what other photos the library has from that street scene. I knew there were people on sidewalks viewing the hearse everywhere along the route to LAX, where Kennedy's remains were flown to New York City and taken to Saint Patrick's Cathedral. These are two more images that I find powerful, both at the start of the trip. All are from the Her Ex.

Photos: Los Angeles Public Library photo collection/LA Herald Examiner




Honoring Cesar Chavez

Op Ed by Ruben Martinez, Ph.D.

Cesar Chavez died near his hometown of Yuma, AZ on April 22, 1993 at the age of 66. Chavez was in San Luis, AZ to assist UFW attorneys defend the union against a lawsuit brought by Bruce Church Inc. (BCI), a giant California-based lettuce and vegetable producer.

Eastern Michigan University's 12th annual Cesar Chavez celebration

YPSILANTI: Eastern Michigan University is the most diverse university in Michigan, which it holds as a defining and singular strength. As part of that, EMU is proud to host various events throughout the year that celebrate all races, cultures and ethnicities.

Por: Isabel Flores, corresponsal La Prensa

DETROIT, MI: La Comision Nacional de Libros de Textos Gratuitos (Conaliteg) cuenta en su portal de internet con el acervo digital de todos los libros de texto gratuitos para el ciclo escolar 2019 - 2020. El catalogo puede consultarse en la direccion: http:/libros.conaliteg.gob.mx De esta manera, los ninos podran mantenerse entretenidos con informacion en su propio idioma y estar al dia con sus materias, mientras se encuentran en casa por la contingencia.

Census 2020: Todos Debemos ser Contados
PRESS RELEASE

China, International Space Leadership, Call for Global Cooperation

June 6, 2017 (EIRNS)At the opening the three-day Global Space Exploration (GLEX) conference today in Beijing, President Xi Jinping told the more than one thousand delegates from 51 countries in a letter read by Vice President Li Yuanchao, that China is willing to enhance cooperation with the international community, as he hailed achievements made in space exploration. He said that progress in space science and technology will benefit people around the world in the future. China attaches great importance to space exploration as well as innovation in space science and technology, said Xi, noting that his country wants to use these achievements to create a better future for mankind. He expressed hope that the conference will promote international exchanges and cooperation.

The GLEX conferences are sponsored by the prestigous International Astronautical Federation (IAF), which formed in 1950, and is headquartered in Paris. The "members" of the IAF are space institutions and organizations from almost every nation in the world. The Chinese sentiment for closer international cooperation was enthusiastically echoed by Roberto Battiston, President of the Italian Space Agency, who praised this dream of a "global space agency," as quoted by the IAF.

Delegates attended a Plenary event organized by the Chinese host, which highlighted the key role played by other nations in in Chinas Change-4 lunar mission, which include the European Space Agency and Germany.

Senior Chinese astronaut Yang Liwei told the GLEX conference participants that China is planning at least four manned space flights over the next five years, to build its space station. China will orbit the core module and two research laboratories, with docking ports that can accomodate laboratories (and astronauts) contributed by other countries.

The core module will be launched (unmanned) in 2019, with station completion slated for 2022. Yang said that two manned missions will be conducted in 2020, which will be for station assembly. In an interview with Beijing Youth Daily, Yang said that later this year, China will select its next class of astronauts.

"The first batch of astronauts were all bachelors degree-holders selected from the PLA Air Force. Now, we will give more consideration to aerospace engineers and other experts from broader society. They will more likely be postgraduates,"

he said.

Yang predicted that Chinese astronauts would land on the moon by around 2030, adding, "One day, we may go to Mars, or even further."
PRESS RELEASE

Modi Comments at St. Petersburg on India-China Relations

June 6, 2017 (EIRNS)Speaking at a panel discussion at the recently-concluded St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), Indias Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in the current inter-connected and inter-dependent world, countriesmeaning China and Indiamay have some disputes and some areas of collaboration. The Indian Express reported his remarks on June 3.

Modi was asked whether Indias opposition to Chinas One Belt, One Road project reflects deep discord in their relationship. Sharing the stage with Russian President Vladimir Putin and the leaders of Austria and Moldova, the Indian Prime Minister said: "It is true that we have a border dispute with China. But in the last 40 years, not a single bullet has been fired because of border dispute."

Modis statement on the ability of both India and China, the two most populous countries in the world, to keep things in the right perspective, was welcomed in Beijing.

"We have noted the positive remark made by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi about the China-India [situation]. We welcome that," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying observed during her regular media briefing on June 5, The Hindu reported. "The two major countries China and India maintaining sound and steady bilateral relationship is of great significance," she observed.

The Hindu also reported June 5 that Chinas Assistant Foreign Minister Li Huilai had welcomed the multiple meetings between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Modi, and said that healthy relations between China and India would contribute to Asian as well as world peace and stability.
"Eat, Pray, Love" author Elizabeth Gilbert celebrated her partnership with ailing writer and musician Rayya Elias in a "ceremony of love" on Tuesday, she announced on Instagram. Gilbert posted a photograph of her and Elias holding flowers and gazing lovingly at each other.

Eat, Pray, Love comes to an end

Gilbert announced last summer that she was getting a divorce from Brazilian businessman Jose Nunes, who was called "Felipe" in the love section of her bestselling 2006 memoir "Eat, Pray, Love." In September, she publicly announced that she and Elias, who had been best friends, were in a romantic relationship.

She said she was moved to make the change in her life after Elias was diagnosed with cancer of the pancreas and liver.

"I do not merely love Rayya; I am in love with Rayya," Gilbert posted on Facebook at the time. And I have no more time for denying that truth. The thought of someday sitting in a hospital room with her, holding her hand and watching her slide away, without ever having let her [or myself!] know the extent of my true feelings for her...well, that thought was unthinkable.

Elias, a Syrian-born musician and filmmaker, is the author of the 2013 memoir Harley Loco: A Memoir of Hard Living, Hair, and Post Punk, from the Middle East to the Lower East Side. Gilbert wrote the book's introduction.

Elizabeth Gilbert (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

Since Eat, Pray, Love, Gilbert has published a novel  The Signature of All Things; two books of nonfiction  Committed and Big Magic; and a podcast focused on creativity  Magic Lessons.

In her Instagram post Tuesday, Gilbert again made reference to the challenge of Elias' illness.

"More difficult days are to come," she wrote. "It doesn't get easier from here. Her illness is grave. But our love is strong. We will walk together as far as we can go together. After that, it all gets turned over to God."

"Create beauty with every day you are given," Gilbert concluded.
Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black, Henry Ford once said.

Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk is taking the same approach to early versions of the Model 3, due for initial production and delivery in July.

The first wave of customers will have only two choices for the mid-market electric car, Musk said: What color do you want, and what size wheels do you want?

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Speaking at Teslas annual shareholder meeting in San Jose on Tuesday, Musk vowed not to repeat the problems encountered by the Model X SUV when it was introduced in 2015. Available in multiple configurations from the start, it was riddled with manufacturing and quality problems.

The pressure on Tesla is intense. To justify a high-flying stock valuation, the Model 3 must sell well in large numbers. The company plans to be building 5,000 a week by the end of the year, with visions of hundreds of thousands sold each year.

Demand appears strong. More than 370,000 people have put down refundable $1,000 deposits, the company said. The challenge for the company, which has yet to build more than 84,000 cars in any given year, will be to reach high volume production with high levels of quality.

The shareholder meeting produced no drama. Even Musk himself seemed more subdued than usual.

A proposal from the Connecticut Retirement Plans and Trust Funds was voted down by shareholders. It would have required the entire board be voted on every year. Right now, the terms are staggered.

Under pressure from some large shareholders earlier this year, Tesla said it would add outside members to its board. Musk said Tuesday that two or three new board members would be named within the next two months.

Musk also reacted to recent news that AAA of Southern California was raising its rates on Tesla cars by 30% because of frequent and expensive claims.

There is a simple solution, Musk said. Change your insurer.

Unexpectedly, Musk brought up the subject of music, and left the audience with a mystery. Its very hard to find good playlists and good recommendation algorithms for discovering new music. Expect an announcement later this year, he said, offering no detail.

Tesla stock rose $5.53, or 1.6%, to $352.85 on Tuesday.

russ.mitchell@latimes.com

Twitter: @russ1mitchell
Sam Brownback has been a Tea Party star since taking office as Kansas governor in 2011. He rolled back anti-discrimination laws and vetoed a bill that would have brought health coverage to 180,000 residents by making his state the 32nd to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.

But his signature achievement  if one could call it that  was to institute a package of drastic tax cuts to produce what he predicted would be a shot of adrenaline into the heart of the Kansas economy. Brownbacks tax consultant, supply-side guru Art Laffer, promised Kansans that the cuts would pay for themselves in supercharged economic growth.

For the record: An earlier version of this article misspelled commentator Yael T. Abouhalkahs surname as Abouhalkar.

Instead, job growth in Kansas trailed the nation. Month after month, revenue came in even lower than fiscal officials most dire expectations. Instead of turbocharged growth, observes veteran local commentator Yael T. Abouhalkah, the state had to divert billions of dollars in road funding, slice higher ed money, cut social services, reduce support for public pensions and fall behind on previous pledges to improve funding of K-12 schools. Despite that, Brownback squeaked through to reelection in 2014 with a 49.82% plurality.

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The override represents a blow to the legacy of one of the most unpopular governors in America.  Wichita Eagle

Now, the dime has finally dropped. The Republican-controlled state Legislature on Tuesday overwhelmingly overrode Brownbacks veto of desperately needed tax increases. The action rolls back much of Brownbacks 2012 tax cuts, producing a $1.2-billion shot of adrenaline for the state budget over two years.

The rare rebuke of Brownbacks policies is being taken in the state as a major reversal in the governors political career and a prelude to his rescue by President Trump. The override represents a blow to the legacy of one of the most unpopular governors in America, wrote Jonathan Shorman and Daniel Salazar of the Wichita Eagle, amid speculation that he may not serve out his remaining time in office but instead take a federal position.

Brownbacks policies were designed to make Kansas a national laboratory of tea party economics. But their dismal effects have been visible for years. By 2015, job growth was lagging its neighbors, the U.S. as a whole and more fiscally responsible states such as California. Job growth had actually slowed since the enactment of Brownbacks tax-cutting package, lagging that of 37 other states, including neighboring Missouri.

A year after the tax cuts were implemented, Brownback touted impressive early results to the Wall Street Journal, citing the formation of a record number of small businesses  more than 15,000. But that was deceptive. As was shown by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 16,000 had disappeared. Many of the others cited by Brownback appeared to be created to take advantage of his elimination of all taxes on partnerships, sole proprietorships and LLCs that pass through their tax liabilities to their owners. That scheme allowed everyone from freelancers and petty contractors to huge partnerships to avoid any state income tax at all, as long as they were organized as a certain type of small business.

If that sounds familiar, its because the same idea is part of President Trumps tax proposal. Its an invitation to tax dodging (and perhaps not coincidentally, would be a huge boon to Trumps own businesses and family).

As Brownback anticipated, Kansas has indeed been a lesson for America, just not in the way he hoped.

Keep up to date with Michael Hiltzik. Follow @hiltzikm on Twitter, see his Facebook page, or email michael.hiltzik@latimes.com.

Return to Michael Hiltziks blog.

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Cutting and merging two agencies that investigate workplace discrimination wont reduce the governments enforcement power, Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta said Wednesday. But Democrats pointed to what they say is President Trumps broader effort to roll back decades of civil rights protections.

Department of Labor is going to allow, now, discrimination to run rampant, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland) told Acosta at a hearing on Trumps budget, which proposed the changes.

Trumps budget recommends merging the office that enforces civil rights among federal contractors with the independent Equal Employee Opportunity Commission, which handles complaints against private businesses. The administration says that would save taxpayer money.

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The idea has generated opposition from employers as well as workers groups, who fear such a move would create a sort of super enforcement agency that would dilute investigations but carry overwhelming punitive power.

Its far from certain the Republican-controlled Congress will write the plan into its version of the budget. Acosta told the House panel that making the change would require legislation. He called the proposed merger a common-sense move and said savings would come from the streamlining process and not from enforcement.

As for Lees remark about allowing discrimination to run rampant: With respect, I dont think thats the case, Acosta said.

I think it is, Lee replied.

The exchanges were striking in part because Acosta is the only Latino in Trumps Cabinet and has spoken in emotional terms about immigration matters  sometimes in conflict with Trumps hard line on the issue.

Republicans have long criticized the Equal Employee Opportunity Commission for its case backlog.

Armed with subpoena power, the commission resolved more than 97,000 cases in fiscal year 2016 and took in nearly 92,000 new ones. The budget document says the number of new cases would probably drop slightly. The backlog of unresolved cases also is expected to gradually decline, to 60,000 cases in fiscal year 2020 from more than 73,000.

The second agency, Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, is part of the Labor Department. The budget proposes reducing staff to 440 employees from 571 and merging it with the Equal Employee Opportunity Commission, for a savings of more than $17 million.
Its a dirty job, but somebodys got to do it.

And when it comes to the expensive, claustrophobic and sometimes dangerous work of inspecting natural gas and oil pipelines, that somebody might be a robot.

We can make sure that these critical elements of energy infrastructure operate more safely, more reliably, more economically, said Edward Petit de Mange, managing director at the San Diego hub of Diakont, an international high-tech engineering and manufacturing company with offices in Russia, Italy and North America.

According to the federal government, more than 2.6 million miles of pipelines supply the nations energy needs.

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But aging and deteriorating pipelines pose substantial risks.

In Northern California, a natural gas pipeline explosion killed eight people in San Bruno in September 2010.

Data from the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration reports that since 2010, an average of about 200 crude oil spills a year are reported. While most of the leaks are small, its been estimated that 8.9 million gallons have been spilled during that time.

When a natural gas pipeline fails, its usually much more violent, but when a hazardous liquid pipeline fails, its a lot messier from an environmental standpoint, Petit de Mange said.

For years, energy companies and utilities inspected their pipelines by using techniques such as sending pressurized water to test a lines strength, inserting barrel-shaped devices called pigs that travel inside operating pipes or simply digging into the ground and performing spot inspections.

But pipeline owners often did not have a good idea how sturdy a pipeline actually was or how close it teetered on failure.

We can make sure that these critical elements of energy infrastructure operate more safely, more reliably, more economically.  Edward Petit de Mange, Diakont

The San Diego offices of Diakont. (Alejandro Tamayo / San Diego Union-Tribune)

From its location in an unassuming San Diego office park, Diakont is one of the few companies that use robots that actually enter natural gas and liquid fuel pipelines to inspect for wear, tear and corrosion.

Called the Remotely Operated Diagnostic Inspection System, or RODIS, the contraption resembles the robot from the movie Wall-E.

RODIS looks a little like the movie robot Wall-E. (Alejandro Tamayo / San Diego Union-Tribune)

Crawling through the pipeline via a horizontal set of traction wheels, the RODIS makes its way past any bumps or bends in the line.

At the same time, two arms trace the circumference of the pipeline, measuring its thickness and structural integrity by using ultrasonic sensors that act like sonar devices that bounce high-frequency signals through the line.

A cable connects the robot to an operator, commonly stationed in a truck a safe distance from the pipeline, who monitors the sensor data. The pipelines integrity is determined by sound pulses, lasers and video that check for defects such as cracking.

A typical inspection covers about a quarter-mile in one day.

It doesnt go really fast, Petit de Mange said. Our key is we get very accurate, very complete data.

How much does a typical robot pipeline project cost?

Citing contractual provisions, Petit de Mange would not offer specifics.

Were in the hundreds of thousands [of dollars], usually for a project, he said.

Essentially, companies are paying for the certainty that a robot-inspected pipeline provides.

Pipelines are assets that operators keep in the ground for a long time, and they make money when the product is flowing through them, Petit de Mange said. So when you have downtime, or worse yet, a failure of that pipeline  that can be in the tens to hundreds of millions of dollars. So being able to perform inspections and get really valid data to ensure the pipeline is in good condition, that can save utility companies a lot of money.

Diakonts work extends beyond California.

In 2015, Diakont inspected two natural gas pipelines that run underneath the Hudson River, between New Jersey and New York City.

Petit de Mange said although the Hudson River project was completed in about a week, the planning process took close to two years. The inspection showed the lines were in excellent shape.

In April, Diakont was one of 114 companies that received a California Competes Tax Credit, created by Gov. Jerry Browns office, aimed at helping businesses grow and stay in the Golden State.

Diakonts award came to $250,000; the company, whose San Diego home for the last six years employs 33 people, will use the tax credit to bolster its efforts to nearly double its workforce and invest $6.8 million in the next four years.

The Stingray is a robot designed to inspect fuel tanks. (Alejandro Tamayo / San Diego Union-Tribune)

And the company is poised to move robot inspections into the fuel tank storage area.

Like pipelines, large fuel storage tanks containing products such as gasoline, diesel fuel and jet fuel require inspections. But the floors of the tanks are hard to access, and operators often have no choice but to drain them, taking them out of service for six to eight weeks.

Its a very complex process to clean out all that flammable sludge out of the tank, said Petit de Mange of the process that can range from hundreds of thousands to low millions of dollars, not to mention the inherent danger of putting inspectors into potentially volatile areas.

Diakont recently developed a robot it calls the Stingray that works on the same principle the RODIS tool uses in pipelines.

Without having to take out any fuel, the Stingray is placed in the tank and conducts its inspection as it moves along the floor, with sensors sending signals back to an operator. Data are collected to determine the integrity of the fuel tank.

This is super exciting for us because this is a brand-new kind of market were breaking into, Petit de Mange said.

Diakont is seeking regulatory certification for the Stingray equipment and hopes to launch its robotic fuel tank inspections this fall.

Nikolewski writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.

rob.nikolewski@sduniontribune.com
In its latest wave of cuts, Sears Holdings Corp. will close 66 Sears and Kmart stores across the country, including four in California, according to a person with knowledge of the situation.

A list circulated internally on Tuesday said the California stores slated for closure are a Sears location in Chico and Kmart locations in Blythe, Sacramento and Manteca.

The closures of 17 Sears stores and 49 Kmart stores nationwide are part of the companys operational restructuring efforts, said the person, who was not authorized to comment publicly because the closures had not been formally announced.

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One of the Sears stores will shut in late July, and the rest of the closures will take place in early September, the person said.

Sears  based in the Chicago suburb of Hoffman Estates  has been on shaky ground for a while. In March, it said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that substantial doubt exists that the company could survive.

Chief Financial Officer Jason Hollar quickly dismissed concerns, saying that the language was required by regulators but that Sears was focused on turning itself around and was still a viable business that can meet its financial and other obligations for the foreseeable future.

In an effort to stop the bleeding, the company has closed more than 1,000 stores in recent years, and in January, it sold its Craftsman tools brand to Stanley Black & Decker for about $900 million.

The sale of Craftsman lifted Sears to a profit last quarter, but the company posted a $2.2-billion loss for the fiscal year that ended Jan. 28  double its $1.1-billion loss the previous year.

Sears struggles come during a tough time for traditional retailers. Shoppers are increasingly buying online, and a report from Credit Suisse last week predicted that between 20% and 25% of the nations shopping malls will shut in the next five years.

Shares of Sears jumped 6.2% to $7.02 on Wednesday. The stock was still down 48% from a year earlier.

jack.flemming@latimes.com

@jflem94

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Surf Air, the membership airline based in Santa Monica, has acquired a Texas counterpart and announced plans to expand to nearly a dozen new destinations.

Surf Air declined to reveal how much it paid for Dallas-based Rise airline. The deal adds Rises 1,000 members to Surf Airs 3,000 members and adds six Texas locations to Surf Airs current 12 destinations in California.

Over the next 18 months, the combined carriers expect to add nearly a dozen new destinations, including Las Vegas, Seattle and New Orleans, plus weekend service to Cabo San Lucas in Mexico, and Aspen and Vail in Colorado.

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This is the first step in our global expansion plan, Surf Air Chief Executive Sudhin Shahani said.

The two companies operate nearly identical businesses, charging a monthly fee to fly busy executives, entrepreneurs and celebrities as often as needed on small planes between a handful of destinations. Both charge a monthly membership fee starting at $1,950.

The primary difference has been that Surf Air owns its aircraft while Rise charters its planes from local operators.

Under the acquisition deal, Rise aircraft will be replaced by Surf Air planes, with the headquarters for the new consolidated company based in Santa Monica. Members of Rise will automatically get their memberships transferred to Surf Air.

Rise Chief Executive Nick Kennedy will become president of Surf Airs Texas and southeast region, reporting to Shahani.

Shahani attributed the success of Surf Air to the convenience the service provides for busy business travelers who dont want to hassle with long lines, security pat-downs and cramped seats offered by traditional airlines.

We have created an experience which the airlines cant match, he said.

Under the companys plans for expansion, Shahani said Surf Air will look to serve pairs of cities around the world that are approximately 400 miles apart and feature high demand by business executives.

hugo.martin@latimes.com

To read more about the travel and tourism industries, follow @hugomartin on Twitter.
Americas top patent and trademark official has abruptly resigned from her post.

Michelle Lee, who has been director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for more than two years, submitted a letter of resignation Tuesday afternoon.

I am confident that the leadership team in place will serve you well during this transition, Lee wrote in an agency-wide memo to staff.

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A spokesperson for the office confirmed the resignation but declined to comment further.

Lee was nominated by President Obama and confirmed to the role in March 2015. A former Google executive who advocated strongly for women and minorities, Lee took control of the patent office at a crucial time for the technology industry. Tech companies were awash in frivolous lawsuits, many involving software patents, filed by patent trolls  companies that control intellectual property but derive much of their income from legal action rather than manufacturing goods.

Much of this litigation, analysts said, stemmed from low-quality patents that should not have been approved in the first place.

While in office, Lee oversaw and defended the agencys practice of invalidating low-quality patents that are brought to the organizations attention. The patent office published a report in August 2015 showing that the process had resulted in roughly 1 in 4 questionable patents being overturned under the program.

Although Lee served through the end of Obamas tenure, her status came into question after President Trump was sworn in. For weeks, the patent office declined to say whether Lee was still its director, even though Lee appeared to bid staff goodbye at an event in January.

Current and former staff at the patent office said then that Lee was continuing to perform some of her offices functions, even though a website for the Commerce Department listed the directors position as unfilled.

It was not until early March that the patent office clarified that Lee was indeed continuing as the agencys director, sending a letter to University of Missouri law professor Dennis Crouch to confirm her role.

Now, Lees sudden departure adds to the list of Trumps vacancies that he will be expected to fill, leaving businesses and inventors wondering what  and who  will come next.

The White House didnt immediately respond to a request for comment.

It is not clear what Lee will do next. But in a post on her Facebook page, Lee said she looked forward to the future.

It has been a special honor, she wrote, to be the first woman to hold the position of Under Secretary and Director of the USPTO in our countrys 200+ year history.

Fung writes for the Washington Post.
In Guatemala City, there is a contemporary art museum housed in a small structure in the shape of an egg  a space that, on a good day, can accommodate a total of four people. In August, a replica of that egg will make the journey overland from Guatemala to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art as part of the Getty-funded Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA.

To cover the costs of re-creating the egg and transporting it 3,000 miles  from Guatemala through Mexico into Texas and, ultimately, to California  LACMA is launching its first-ever Kickstarter campaign.

The goal: to raise $75,000 to cover fabrication, transportation and programming costs so that the NuMu (short for Nuevo Museo de Art Contemporaneo) can take up residence on the grounds at LACMA as part of the upcoming PST exhibition A Universal History of Infamy.

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The museum was founded in 2012 by artists Jessica Kaire and Stefan Benchoam and has featured works by figures such as performance artist Regina Jose Galindo and conceptualist Mario Garcia Torres. The space came to the attention of LACMA curators as they conducted research on contemporary art practices in Central America for PST.

Its playful, but it was also dead serious when it comes to the effort, said LACMAs Rita Gonzalez, co-curator of the exhibition. We were really impacted going to NuMu. It was the spirit of the place  two artists who launched a contemporary art museum in a former egg stand.

Gonzalez said that for A Universal History of Infamy, a group exhibition that looks at the ways in which artists practices extend beyond the world of fine art, they didnt want to represent the NuMu with a wall of photos and documentation.

The artists said, We want to do this and we want to do it big: We want to make a replica and drive it to the U.S.,  Gonzalez said. We were, like, its crazy  but lets do it!

That, however, added a major expense to the shows bottom line  hence the Kickstarter effort.

The egg is tentatively scheduled to depart Guatemala City in mid-August, after which it will make pit stops in the Mexican cities of Oaxaca, Mexico City and Guadalajara, before entering the U.S. at Laredo, Texas. It would land in Los Angeles in early September, in advance of the Gettys main PST LA/LA kickoff event, which includes a concert at the Hollywood Bowl.

Gonzalez said that though the museum hails from Guatemala, its egg shape will make it right at home in Los Angeles.

This is the place of doughnut and tamale buildings, she explains. Now it will have an egg.

Find more information on NuMus journey and LACMAs crowd-funding effort at kickstarter.com.

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carolina.miranda@latimes.com

@cmonstah

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As embattled Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? director Robert Aldrich, actor Alfred Molina faced off with Susan Sarandons Bette Davis, Jessica Langes Joan Crawford and Stanley Tuccis studio head, Jack Warner, in some of Feuds most crackling scenes.

But the on-camera antagonism did not seep behind the scenes, the British actor said when he stopped by The Times video studio. It was a very harmonious set, and the cast and crew had a history. As did he  with Tucci and Jackie Hoffman, who played Mamacita.

Molina was given the opportunity to shed light on the old-school generation of Hollywood directors.

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He belongs to a generation of men in the film business who were allowed to behave any way they want to. They certainly werent answerable to any women in positions of authority, Molina said. His generation had a level of entitlement and privilege that they probably werent even aware of because it would have never occurred to them to think in terms of privilege and entitlement.

Watch other Emmy Award contenders talk TV and more 

The engaging actor pointed to Aldrichs own bad behavior as well as him turning down his assistant Paulines (Alison Wright) revolutionary request to direct the film she had written. To varying degrees, Aldrich, Davis and Crawford had successful careers after Baby Jane and remain important figures in the history of the industry and to some degree cautionary tales.

I think Joan Crawford has always been somewhat underestimated as an actor. She suffered probably in the same way that young actresses do now where they become, in a sense, victims of their beauty  kind of trapped in this beautiful ghetto where no ones going to take you seriously outside of that because the way you look is so much the part of what makes you interesting or what people perceive is the best part of you. Bette not so much because she was never quite the conventional beauty.

That particular idea is highlighted by a conversation between Crawford and Davis in the FX series, in which they each say being beautiful and talented was never enough.

That is the dilemma actresses are constantly fighting against. So for all the groundwork thats been made for all the changes weve seen here and there  more women directors, women writers  thats all wonderful. But I think one of the points of Feud is that nothing has changed that much.

The most-read Entertainment stories this hour 

As for his own career, Molina has enjoyed years of steady success with appearances on stage, television and film. Hes been in classic films such as Raiders of the Lost Ark and Chocolat and appeared in Law & Order: LA, Robot Chicken and Drunk History  often as foreigners or Americans.

I just said yes to everything, Molina explained of his genre-exploring career. His former agent once told him that his strength lies in being ethnically ambiguous. His Spanish and Italian ancestry and ear for accents contributed to his longevity.

I wasnt precious about [roles]. I went for things because it sounded interesting. It paid the bills. It got a couple of kids through college, he said.

Watch Molinas full interview, in which he shares the key to nailing an American accent and the parallels between Baby Jane and Get Out, below.

 Feuds Alfred Molina talks about the FX series welcoming atmosphere; his character, director Robert Aldrich; and more.

Follow me: @NardineSaad

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Celebrating #HarryPotter20: How Harry Potter and his blockbuster films came of age on screen

The Boy Who Lived has cast his spell on the box office since Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone, the first film in Warner Bros. blockbuster franchise, hit theaters in 2001.

The bestselling, seven-book series was adapted into eight record-breaking films -- and a two-part play -- as the boy wizard ventured through Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and the wizarding world with his pals Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley, taking on the enigmatic Lord Voldemort and his magical henchmen each school year.

As J.K. Rowlings debut novel Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone -- the first of the books from which the decade-spanning films were adapted -- marks its 20th anniversary, heres a reminder of how Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan reviewed the Harry Potter films. (Spoiler alert: He didnt always like them.)

1. Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone film is imaginative and faithful but shuns any risk-taking (2001)

As his 11th birthday approaches, orphan Harry Potter learns that hes a wizard and enrolls at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where his reputation as the Boy Who Lived precedes him during his magical training.

The result is a remarkably faithful copy of the book that treats the text like holy writ (hence its 2-hour-and-33-minute length), wrote The Times film critic Kenneth Turan. From the gold in Gringotts, the safe-as-houses goblin-run bank, to the centaur lurking in the forbidden forest that adjoins Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, so much is presented just as written that Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone starts to resemble one of those fiendishly exact replicas of great works of art that Sunday painters can be seen working on in galleries of museums.

2. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets doesnt capture the well-balanced tone of the book (2002)

In their second year at Hogwarts, Harry and his pals Ron and Hermione contend with a celebrity author professor and a well-meaning house elf named Dobby who thwart the trio in unexpected ways.

The darkness that invades Chamber of Secrets underlines how well the books managed to exactly balance good and evil, dark and light, so that within their pages you seemed to be experiencing both at the same time. Not so here, Turan wrote. Because Chamber of Secrets cant seem to get the balance right, it ends up broadly overdoing things on both ends of the spectrum. The films scary moments are too monstrous and its happy times have too much idiotic beaming, making the film feel like the illegitimate offspring of Alien and The Absent-Minded Professor.

3. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban film comes close to capturing the essence of the books (2004)

The wizarding world gets markedly darker as convicted murderer Sirius Black (Gary Oldman), who is believed to have killed Harrys parents, escapes from the Azkaban prison and the soul-sucking Dementors are loosed to chase him down. Director Alfonso Cuaron takes the helm from Chris Columbus, who directed the two previous films.

"[T]he final hour of the two-hour-and-21-minute Azkaban is the closest any of the films has gotten to capturing the enormously pleasing essence of the Potter books, wrote Turan, adding, Those three leads (Daniel Radcliffe as Harry, Emma Watson as Hermione, Rupert Grint as Ron) play characters who are now 13, an age when anger and frustration are more publicly expressed. One of the benefits of Cuarons direction, his expertise with younger actors, means that the constant determination and occasional fury exhibited by the characters, especially Harry and Hermione, are completely convincing.

4. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire finally gets Harry Potter right (2005)

Harrys surprising inclusion in the prestigious Triwizard Tournament, as a fourth-year student, raises concerns and brings danger to the Hogwarts castle.

Its taken them long enough, but the movies have finally gotten Harry Potter right, wrote Turan. It has fallen to the veteran [director] Mike Newell, eager, in his own words, to break out of this goody-two-shoes feel, to make the first Harry Potter film to be wire-to-wire satisfying.

Though memorable acting is neither called for nor delivered on the part of Goblets collection of juveniles, Radcliffes Harry does get one thing exactly right. Watching him face myriad challenges, were convinced that Harrys heart will lead him to do the right thing. He does good in the most natural way and, like so much of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, thats just how it should be.

5. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix cant shake an episodic feeling (2007)

With the Ministry of Magic refusing to acknowledge Lord Voldemorts (Ralph Fiennes) return, fifth-year Harry is brooding at school as he contends with spooky visions and Ministry transplant Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton). His knowledge of the dark magic-fighting organization, the Order of the Phoenix, and a prophecy further complicate matters.

"[Director David] Yates and his team handle the films visuals well, including the impressive sets for the atrium of the Ministry of Magic and its Hall of Prophecy, as well as fine flying sequences involving either broomsticks or equine creatures called Thestrals, Turan wrote. The director also works well with the films juvenile leads, which is important, because these are the raging hormone years at Hogwarts School, and that is especially true where Harry is concerned. Looking so disgruntled in his gray hoodie that you fear he might start rapping, Harry comes off as more Grumpy Potter than the bright light of the wizarding world.

6. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is well-crafted but sometimes hard to endure (2009)

As dark magic spills into the Muggle world, Harrys mentor, Professor Dumbledore (Michael Gambon), tasks him with bringing down Lord Voldemort. But Harrys discovery of an old textbook teaches him more than he expected about his past.

Now in its sixth episode shot over an eight-year span, with two more features still to come, this one-of-a-kind film cycle has become as comfortable and reliable as an old shoe, providing a degree of dependability thats becoming increasingly rare, Turan wrote. As directed by David Yates, who did the previous film and is on tap for the final two, Half-Blood Prince demonstrates the ways that the Potter pictures have become the modern exemplars of establishment moviemaking. We dont turn to these films for thrilling or original cinema, we look for a level of craft, consistency and, most of all, fidelity to the originals -- all of which we get.

7. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows -- Part 1" (2010)

The penultimate film sees Harry, Hermione and Ron venturing out into the real world to locate and destroy Lord Voldemorts soul-encapsulating Horcruxes as Hogwarts and the wizarding world fall to He Who Must Not Be Named.

Much of the plot of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows involves the attempt to find and destroy a series of Horcruxes, and if you havent a clue about what they are or why theyre important, you might as well stay home, Turan wrote. There is something different, however, about this Potter movie, and that is the words Part 1' that end the title. Understandably distraught about Hallows being the last of the phenomenally popular J.K. Rowling novels, Warner Bros. has split the final effort into two films and is likely kicking itself for not having thought of that with the earlier books.

(It should be noted that the studio reboots the wizarding world with the forthcoming Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them series. The first film hit theaters in 2016.)

8. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows -- Part 2" (2011)

Harry goes wand-to-wand with Lord Voldemort, concluding Harrys final year at the wizarding school with the epic Battle of Hogwarts.

In a classic storybook finish, however, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows -- Part 2' turns out to be more than the last of its kind. Almost magically, it ends up being one of the best of the series as well, Turan wrote. The Harry Potter films, like the boy wizard himself, have had their creative ups and downs, so its especially satisfying that this final film, ungainly title and all, has been worth the wait. Though no expense has been spared in its production, it succeeds because it brings us back to the combination of magic, adventure and emotion that created the books popularity in the first place.

For more of The Times Harry Potter anniversary coverage, go here.
Beatriz at Dinner is a darkly comic fantasy about an empathetic, nature-loving Latina healer who comes face to face with a racist, vulgar, thoroughly despicable member of the 1%. I say fantasy not because it couldnt happen, but because the movie is predicated on the rare thrill of seeing an all-too-human monster being made to answer for his crimes, if only for the duration of one surreal and savagely funny evening.

The director, Miguel Arteta, and the screenwriter, Mike White, who previously joined forces on the movies Chuck & Buck (2000) and The Good Girl (2002) and the short-lived HBO series Enlightened, have a proven knack for making their characters and audiences squirm. They wield their scalpel here with practiced skill, though like some of the other sharp blades on display, it takes its time to emerge.

When we first meet the sweet-souled Beatriz (a never-better Salma Hayek), shes hanging out in her L.A. home with her dogs and goats, then performing massages at a holistic treatment center. Shes a healer and a nurturer, and her deep feeling for the suffering of others is signaled by a twinkly score and some serenely lovely mangrove-forest imagery that the film keeps dipping into, as if it were a warm, regenerative bath.

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Later that afternoon, Beatriz drives 60 miles south to meet a regular client, Kathy (Connie Britton), at her gated Newport Beach estate. The massage is soon finished but Beatrizs car wont start, and Kathy, eager to show both her hospitality and her understanding, invites Beatriz to stay for the dinner that she and her husband, Grant (David Warshofsky), are hosting for some very important business associates.

The first to arrive are a young corporate go-getter (Jay Duplass, terrifically asinine) and his wife (Chloe Sevigny, all willowy hauteur), but the star of the evening is Doug Strutt (John Lithgow), a billionaire real-estate mogul who shows up with his third wife (Amy Landecker) and a lot of smug blather about his latest deal. At first no one takes much notice of the plainly dressed newcomer in their midst, until Doug, spying Beatriz out on the patio, asks her to refresh his drink.

From there the evening gets steadily worse (the movie, meanwhile, keeps getting better), as White and Arteta raise the emotional temperature by deliciously incremental degrees. Theres a bit of misdirection going on here, as if we were being invited to share the other guests condescension toward Beatriz, to observe her gentle earth-mother demeanor and assume that she must be submissive and unsophisticated to boot.

But any confusion soon passes, and the films sympathies become entirely clear. It isnt intelligence that Beatriz lacks; its guile. What gives the movie its unsettling power is its ear for the rhythms and evasions of small talk  a polite, patrician language for which Beatriz has neither the aptitude nor the patience. Gently but with increasing purpose, she seizes hold of the dinner conversation and steers it in an unsettling new direction.

It wouldnt take a particularly attentive viewer to deduce that Beatriz at Dinner is a barbed allegory for the Trump era.

Doug, his arrogance and vulgarity barely hidden beneath an air of gentlemanly good humor, is clearly used to holding court. He doesnt expect Beatriz to engage or push back the way she does  politely at first, then with increasing vigor, her inhibitions fading with every glass of wine. He asks her about her immigration status; she presses him about his business dealings, specifically whether he happens to own the luxury hotel that bankrupted the poor Mexican village she once called home.

Even before Doug brings up his latest African hunting expedition, it wouldnt take a particularly attentive viewer to deduce that Beatriz at Dinner is a barbed allegory for the Trump era. Certainly it seemed that way to some of us who saw the movie at this years Sundance Film Festival, three days after the presidential inauguration. Seeing it again last week, on the very day Trump announced the U.S. would exit the Paris climate accord, only brought renewed force to its indictment of environmental callousness and corporate greed.

But this queasily funny and suspenseful movie is more than a smirking exercise in ideological deck stacking, and to praise it for its political relevance would be to understate its subtlety and specificity. Theres a sly Bunuelian elegance to the satire (its probably no coincidence that Beatriz shares her name with a character from Bunuels doomed-dinner-party classic The Exterminating Angel), and to the scripts pattern of building and releasing tension, escalating the stakes with each new go-round. Arteta moves the camera through Kathy and Grants Spanish colonial estate with sinuous skill, wittily framing Beatriz in ways that bring Japanese horror films to mind.

Lithgow gives a marvelous performance, and his villainy is too nuanced, too filigreed, for Doug to be mistaken for a mere Trump stand-in (hes too eloquent, for starters). The supporting cast is equally fine; watch the dinner-table cutaways to Britton and Landecker in particular, both superb at playing women who are all too used to defusing tension and massaging their mens egos.

But Beatriz at Dinner finally rests on Hayeks shoulders, and while the actress may be Hollywood royalty, her transformation goes well beyond Beatrizs flat bangs and ponytail. Theres a wonderful mellowness to her performance  sometimes her eyes pool with warmth, while other times they grow as wide as saucers  but after a while you realize that Beatriz isnt drifting or spacing out. Shes leaning in and focusing hard, trying to figure out why her destiny and Dougs have become so improbably entwined.

Why are we here? What difference can we really make, and what good can we accomplish? These are questions that Beatriz  like Amy Jellicoe, the self-help poster girl played by Laura Dern on Enlightened  takes incredibly seriously. But they should also resonate with anyone who has ever considered the Doug Strutts of the world and felt a deep, inconsolable despair.

Beatriz at Dinner has an eerie undertow of menace and melancholy that seems destined to end in violence, an expectation that the movie both honors and upends. Ill say no more, except that my earlier description of the film now seems both accurate and curiously inadequate. What initially looks like a darkly comic fantasy has exposed itself, by the end, as something awfully close to tragic realism.

------------

Beatriz at Dinner

Rating: R, for language and a scene of violence

Running time: 1 hour, 23 minutes

Playing: The Landmark, West Los Angeles; Arclight Hollywood; Arclight Pasadena

See the most-read stories in Entertainment this hour 

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justin.chang@latimes.com

@JustinCChang

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UPDATES:

6:13 p.m.: This article was updated with additional details. This article was originally published at 2:40 p.m.
Its taken nearly 40 years for Steve Sansweet to amass what the Guinness World Records named the largest collection of Star Wars memorabilia. His Petaluma-based museum, Rancho Obi-Wan, is the Smithsonian of Star Wars.

But a series of thefts, revealed Monday on the museums website and social media channels, has left Sansweet shaken by the loss of more than 100 rare items worth over $200,000.

This has become the spiritual home, in a way, for Star Wars collectors, Sansweet, president and CEO of the nonprofit museum, told The Times. For somebody to come in and steal items from that reference collection, to steal major and important items that I treasure from an emotional standpoint, not from a financial standpoint  has been really devastating.

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The accused is Carl Edward Cunningham, 45, of Marietta, Ga., a fellow Star Wars collector and friend of Sansweets who visited Rancho Obi-Wan several times through early 2016. Cunningham turned himself in to Sonoma County Sheriffs authorities on March 24 and pleaded not guilty to one count of felony grand theft.

Rancho Obi-Wan is the home, according to Sansweet, of more than 400,000 Star Wars collectibles dating back to the release of 1977s Star Wars: Episode IV  A New Hope. Located on a converted Petaluma chicken ranch, the fan mecca is dedicated to preserving and exhibiting props, costumes, toys and memorabilia from the most beloved movie franchise in history.

The thefts went undetected until another collector, Philip Wise, discovered the disappearance of a rare rocket-firing Boba Fett action figure from his own massive Star Wars collection housed in Roanoke, Texas. He posted about the missing item online and was contacted by Southern California-based toy dealer Zach Tann, who had bought the Boba Fett from Cunningham.

For somebody to come in and  steal major and important items that I treasure from an emotional standpoint  has been really devastating.  Steve Sansweet, president and CEO of Rancho Obi-Wan

A Sonoma County Sheriffs investigation into the Rancho Obi-Wan thefts led to a case against Cunningham, who has been released on $25,000 bail and is expected back in court for a preliminary hearing on June 27, according to Sonoma County Sheriffs Dept. Sgt. Spencer Crum.

At least three times last year he was left in the store alone to help organize things, help dust, clean up. [Sansweet] didnt realize that Cunningham had taken a bunch of stuff out of the storage room, said Crum, who noted that Cunningham allegedly acknowledged the theft in later emails to Sansweet.

The Sonoma County Sheriffs Department is aiding efforts to recover the bulk of the stolen property. Many of the stolen items, including rare and valuable Star Wars action figures worth thousands of dollars individually, have already been resold and are highly difficult to track down.

According to Sansweet, only 5% of the stolen items have so far been returned to the museum.

Were starting to hear from people saying, I want to make sure this gets back to Rancho Obi-Wan, a weary Sansweet said after receiving a huge outpouring of support from the Star Wars community.

My hope would be that everyone will be compensated for what they bought and will be willing to return the items to Rancho, but that all depends on an insurance settlement. And thats never easy with insurance companies.

For Sansweet, a popular fixture in the Star Wars community who headed Lucasfilm fan relations for 15 years and still works as a liaison to the companys global fan base, the betrayal and loss was deeply personal.

Most of the Rancho Obi-Wan collection was purchased by Sansweet, who ramped up his private collection after he quit a career in journalism to follow his lifelong passion for Star Wars.

Star Wars collectibles have been hot and are getting hotter as the new movies come out and people really love them, said Sansweet of the lucrative Star Wars merchandising industry estimated to have generated between $20 billion to $32 billion over four decades. But the vintage collectibles from the era from 1977 through 1986 have gone way beyond my wildest nightmare, because its impossible to buy in the market these days for somebody like me.

Luckily, I got a lot of my stuff early on, he added. But thats the stuff that was stolen.

Among the rare items taken from the Rancho Obi-Wan shelves: A Ben Kenobi 12 Back series packaged Palitoy action figure worth more than $1,100, part of the very first line of action figures produced for the original Star Wars, and a Luke Skywalker action figure from Empire Strikes Back that goes for $200 to $800 online.

Two of Sansweets most prized  and still missing  pieces hold special places in his heart. One is a cardboard Death Star made by the toy company Palitoy in 1978 in England. It was sold in just a handful of countries overseas and is considered a holy-grail item by hardcore Star Wars collectors.

The other, a rare Canadian packaged wind-up R2-D2 figure, wasnt listed on any of the purchase manifests investigators used to track what had been stolen and then resold.

In spite of the devastating loss, Sansweet is heartened by the support Star Wars fans have offered after hearing his plea to help Rancho Obi-Wan recover its artifacts by sending in tips on the whereabouts of additional stolen items.

The Star Wars fan community is such an amazing group of people, he said. When we first heard about it we thought, What are we doing this for? Why are we working our butts off putting this museum out there for people to see? And, you know, a nonprofit struggles  we certainly dont do it for the money.

But Star Wars fans  there are none better, he said. Were not letting this one really rotten apple spoil the bunch.

jen.yamato@latimes.com

@jenyamato

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At 10:30 a.m., when all his 10th-grade AP history students had taken their seats, Jeff Horton took care of one last detail before stepping to the front of the class.

He pulled on his blue blazer and cinched up his necktie.

He does this out of respect for his students and the teaching profession. To him, this is serious business, and there would be no shortcuts on the final week of a four-decade career that has meandered from Los Angeles Unified School District classroom to boardroom and back again. Horton taught at Crenshaw High before becoming a protege of lefty school board member Jackie Goldberg and winning election to succeed her in 1991.

Hes no stranger to controversy

Over the years, Horton has found himself in the middle of controversies over a plan to break up L.A. Unified (he was opposed), the creation of a less Eurocentric approach to history (he argued that a broader world view was long overdue in multicultural Los Angeles), and on gay rights (he came out while a school board member, supported distribution of condoms, and clashed with critics who accused him of having a homosexual agenda).

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So its unsurprising that Horton, a staunch union supporter, has strong views on the ever-escalating trench war over who knows best how to educate children  career educators and their union leadership, or wealthy outsiders and charter school supporters. In Los Angeles, weve just witnessed the most expensive school board race in U.S. history, with pro-charter forces spending $9.7 million to score two victories and take control of L.A. Unified.

Charter schools are no panacea, in Hortons mind, even though he concedes some charter schools may work for some students whose parents are engaged and involved enough to seek out alternatives to traditional public schools.

But thats going to leave behind tens of thousands of kids, he said.

The charter movement follows a narrative, in his mind, of a decades-long attack on public institutions. And now even more resources will be drained from traditional L.A. public schools, which have already been hit by Californias decline in national spending-per-pupil rankings.

Dont parents deserve a choice?

Maybe so, but parents like options and students deserve better schools, and change isnt coming quickly enough in a district that hasnt been particularly well-run in the 16 years Ive been paying attention.

As I pointed out to Horton, he teaches at an elite L.A. Unified magnet  the Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies. Not every student wins the lottery and makes it into LACES, so what would Horton tell the parents of the unlucky students?

Horton took me back to the 1990s, when he was on the school board and the reform movement of the moment was something called LEARN (Los Angeles Educational Alliance for Restructuring Now). The idea was to decentralize and give schools more power to determine the specific needs of students and come up with a customized strategy  in collaboration with teachers and parents  to meet them.

Putting students first always sounds good, but theres seldom consensus on how best to do that. Improvements under LEARN were neither swift enough nor universal, and in 1999, a new set of reformers came along. Horton and others were ousted when some of the same donors involved in this years charter movement (Eli Broad and Richard Riordan) backed a slate of candidates to shake up LAUSD. Hortons seat was grabbed by Caprice Young, and he returned, eventually, to teaching.

In 99, our race was the most expensive school board race in history, said Young, who looks back now on the $1 million spent on her own campaign as chump change compared to this years windfall.

Does either side have all the answers?

It leaves one to wonder whether, in 18 years, L.A. Unified will be in better shape, or well be in the midst of yet another reform movement and set yet another record for political fundraising.

Ive got issues with both sides and dont think either will ever have all the answers. But while Horton may be disappointed in the current direction of public education after 40 years in the business, hes had the luxury of spending most of his career in the sanctuary of the classroom. There, it all comes down to respect for students and the noble profession of inspiring them, and a good teacher can make magical things happen.

He pushes you to where you dont think you can go, Luz Lopez, a 10th-grader, told me before history class began Monday morning.

Sid Thompson, who would later become LAUSD superintendent, was principal of Crenshaw High in 1975 when a rookie out of Yale walked in to apply for a teaching job.

He started talking about what these kids need, and how can they go forward if we dont care enough to make a commitment to them? said Thompson, who hired Horton on the spot.

He touched so many lives by making students understand theyre valuable and have a voice, said Florence Saleh, who was one of Hortons first speech class students at Crenshaw.

She said Horton implored students to follow the news, get involved and support good candidates for public office. Saleh said that in 1988, she became the first African American and woman to win a national speech competition in college, and Horton was the first person she called with the news.

Shes now a teacher, inspired in part by Horton.

He taught me to see how students were not just students, Saleh said. They were my future neighbors, they were community members, and I shared that with them.

On Monday morning, Hortons students took turns stepping to the front of the class to talk about a historic event that had an impact on a member of their family.

A girl told about her grandfather moving the family from Louisiana to California after threats from racists.

A boy talked about his familys flight from war in El Salvador.

A girl told about her great grandfathers exploits with the Russian army in the defeat of the Nazis.

Horton, who says he learned a great deal from his students and was constantly re-energized by them, was radiant as history came alive in Room 202.

On the wall was a poster filled with tributes from his students.

We will miss you, said one.

Get more of Steve Lopezs work and follow him on Twitter @LATstevelopez

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In 2003, flames raced through a nightclub in Rhode Island during a rock concert, killing 100 people in one of the worst fire disasters in U.S. history.

Prosecutors charged two nightclub owners and a bands tour manager with involuntary manslaughter; one eventually pleaded guilty and the other two pleaded no contest.

Those same type of charges were filed this week against two operators of Oaklands so-called Ghost Ship warehouse, where 36 people died in a fire in December.

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But the two cases have one big difference. In Rhode Island, investigators determined a cause of the fire: Pyrotechnics, set off by the tour manager of the band Great White, ignited the clubs foam ceiling.

By contrast, prosecutors acknowledge they dont know the origin or the cause of the Ghost Ship fire, and officials said they might never have those answers.

Legal experts said the lack of a cause could complicate the Ghost Ship prosecutions, but there is a debate about how much.

Alameda County Dist. Atty. Nancy E. OMalley argues that master tenant Derick Ion Almena and concert runner Max Harris illegally converted the warehouse into a concert space and dwelling without proper safety systems or permits.

Authorities say the men filled the building from floor to ceiling with tapestries, pianos and furniture, turning the Ghost Ship into a tinderbox. On Dec. 2, when nearly 100 people piled into the warehouse for a concert, a stairwell that served as a secondary exit was blocked off, leaving concertgoers and residents with only one way out when the fire started.

That, OMalley argues, makes what the defendants did criminal and not simply neglectful.

Former Los Angeles Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley said prosecutors would probably concentrate on the repeated flouting of safety codes and the efforts to conceal it. In court documents, prosecutors noted that Almena had told police no one lived in the warehouse.

This pair here committed repeated criminal recklessness and it cost dozens of lives, Cooley said.

Others, however, said the case is not so open and shut.

Former prosecutor Dmitry Gorin said the fact that Almena, his wife and children as well as Harris lived in the Ghost Ship could be used by the defense.

The pivotal issue is whether the property managers were aware of the risks and failed to mitigate them, he said.

Louis Shapiro, a well-known Southern California criminal defense attorney, said prosecutors would have to show that Almena, 47, and Harris, 27, knew of the potential dangers at the Ghost Ship.

To say it is foreseeable  is a tough sell, Shapiro said. The defense lawyers can use statistics to show there arent many fires like this. If this has never happened before, how was this foreseeable?

But the prosecution does have strong material to work with, he added, alleging that the defendants lied to city officials about the conditions inside the warehouse.

The prosecution also has the emotional power of such a staggering loss of life, Shapiro said.

How will any jury set aside the impact here? Jurors and family of victims are feeling someone has got to pay for this, he said.

Almenas attorneys have said that he is being made a scapegoat and that they will vigorously fight the charges. Neither Harris nor his attorney could be reached for comment.

Jeff Pine, who represented one of the nightclub owners in the Rhode Island fire, said prosecutors in Oakland dont need to show the actions were intentional, just that the behavior amounted to gross negligence.

Pine, Rhode Islands former attorney general, said Oakland prosecutors will probably present evidence that any reasonable person would see that the warehouse posed a danger in the event of a fire.

But Jean M. Daly, a former prosecutor in Los Angeles and San Francisco, believes the unknown cause of the Oakland fire could be a big problem for prosecutors.

When you dont know the origin and cause, she said, that makes for reasonable doubt.

richard.winton@latimes.com

Twitter: @lacrimes
The police warnings were brief and bone-chilling: Theres an armed man intent on coming to your home or place of business to kill you.

A group of Bay Area oncologists sought to protect themselves recently when authorities told them that a terminally ill cancer patient had armed himself and appeared intent on exacting revenge.

He was disgruntled; he clearly bore some substantial animosity, Palo Alto Police Lt. James Reifschneider said of Yue Chen.

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Though Chen wasnt able to execute his alleged plan, authorities are confident he was serious about following through on it.

When Chen was found just hours after the warnings went out May 31, he was about 20 miles outside Palo Alto on southbound Highway 101. Police found a white rubber mask, a notebook with names, addresses and directions to the homes of several doctors and two loaded guns inside his car, court documents show.

A note titled Why do I kill was found. It justified the act of revenge and the consequences of treating a person like an animal, court documents show.

According to Santa Clara County prosecutors, Chens family had recently told him that he was terminally ill with Stage 4 cancer. He didnt have long to live.

So Chen sought to find the oncologists who had treated him the previous year and kill them, police said.

In custody, Chen told investigators he believed that doctors had treated him like a tool for experimentation, or a laboratory monkey, according to court documents. He said he believed doctors had damaged his spine so they could train new students, court documents show. Originally from China, Chen told police that he lived in New York for 12 years before moving to California, documents show.

In his search for doctors, Chen had driven to a hospital in San Francisco but left without hurting anyone, according to a police report. He also tried another location where he thought one of his doctors lived, documents show.

But none of that was known earlier that morning on May 31, when Chens family had just reported him missing. It wasnt until Visalia police arrived at the home and found evidence of the plot that they alerted people in the Bay Area. Inside Chens home, investigating officers found a typed note that said he had to kill these doctors today because they are evil, court documents show.

His computers Internet search history revealed some of the people and places he allegedly intended to target, and a search of his home revealed that two handguns registered to his name with 16- and 32-round high-capacity magazines were gone, authorities said.

This is a man with nothing to lose and wants to take people with him, said Charles Huang, Santa Clara County deputy district attorney.

Visalia police notified the California Highway Patrol and police in Palo Alto, San Francisco and surrounding communities where Chens doctors lived and worked, officials said. Police told them to be on the lookout for him  he was driving a rented red 2017 Nissan Rogue, Visalia Police Sgt. Damon Maurice said.

CHP officers found him about 7:45 p.m. May 31, about 20 minutes outside of Palo Alto and 150 miles from his home, police said.

Chen was arrested without incident and taken to the hospital. From there he was transported to Santa Clara County jail, where records show he is being held without bail.

On Friday, he was charged with three counts of premeditated attempted murder. There was evidence at his home and in the car that Chen had planned to target more than three doctors, but the evidence justifies charging him with plans to kill three people only, Huang said.

Police were able to avert a massacre of some of the top oncologists in the world, the prosecutor added.

If convicted, Chen could face life in prison with the possibility of parole in 21 years, Huang said.

At his arraignment Friday, Chens defense attorney argued that due to his condition, Chen should be placed in hospice care rather than held in jail. The judge rejected the motion.

Chens arraignment was continued to June 28. His defense attorney was not immediately available for comment.

To read the article in Spanish, click here

joseph.serna@latimes.com

For breaking California news, follow @JosephSerna on Twitter.

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When Rani Ghanem sees an opportunity for Internet stardom, he takes it.

On Monday, the 21-year-old was working at his uncles Arcadia liquor store when a female peafowl, or peahen, strolled through the open front door and startled a customer.

Within minutes, an animal control officer arrived on site and set out to capture the wily bird. Thats when Ghanem whipped out his cellphone, hit record, and made the Royal Oaks Liquor Store a viral sensation.

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For roughly six minutes, Ghanem recorded a slapstick battle of wits between man and beast, and the destruction of numerous bottles of alcohol.

Ever since then, customers have joked that the liquor store should change its name to something more bird-like, or post a No Peacocks Welcome sign, Ghanem said. One woman simply showed up to get a selfie with the clerk.

While peafowl are a common sight in Arcadia  one of the birds is emblazoned on the city seal and the creatures roam freely through the city  Ghanem and other locals cant stop talking about the boozy peahen.

I love telling this story, Ghanem said Wednesday. So many people are coming in. Hey, Ive seen you on the news. Are there any more birds in the store?

Ghanem said it all started when he was behind the counter and a woman walked in and asked him about the bird, he said.

I get up around and I look. Oh my God, theres a peacock in the store. A peahen. It was just cruising between the aisles like it was shopping around or something, Ghanem said.

Ghanem said he confronted the bird in the snack section, between the chips and candy.

When Ghanem tried to shoo it toward the exit, it jumped up and then flew next to the front door, where it landed on top of a portable freezer full of wine, he said.

The clerk then dialed 911 and repeated for the dispatcher twice that yes, there was indeed a bird in the store that he needed help capturing.

By the time an animal control officer with the Pasadena Humane Society and SPCA arrived, the peahen had relocated to a higher shelf deeper in the store, where it was illuminated by a glowing Pabst Blue Ribbon sign. Its wings and feet were dangerously close to the priciest bottles of Champagne in the store.

In the video, posted on Youtube, the animal control officer can be seen poking and prodding at the bird in vain for more than three minutes trying to capture or move it.

To me it looked like [the animal control officer] was scared. I didnt blame him. The thing had some really sharp claws, Ghanem said.

Then, without warning, the peahen swooped down onto shelves in the middle of the store.

Thats where all the destruction happened, Ghanem said with a hint of sadness.

About five minutes into the video, the peahen flapped her wings violently and bottles began to fall.

One of the first casualties was a bottle of the Big N Cabernet Sauvignon from Knights Valley, Ghanem said.

Then a $50 bottle of Moet & Chandon Champagne shattered, followed by the Vueve Clicquot.

Honestly, I didnt want to take an account of the damages. In my heart I know it mightve been more than $500, Ghanem said. Some of those bottles were in casing.

With the damage piling up, the wine pooling on the floor and the situation going nowhere fast, Ghanem had the animal control officer trap the bird in his net so he could grab it and carry it out of the store.

Once it was released in the parking lot, it simply walked away, officials said.

After the situation was handled, Ghanem had to break the news to his uncle.

I had to repeat myself a couple of times, he chuckled. It got to the point where he didnt believe me. So I said, You know what, just look at the news later.

joseph.serna@latimes.com

For breaking California news, follow @JosephSerna on Twitter.
A Los Angeles police officer will not be charged for the fatal shooting of an African American woman in a South L.A. alley, a controversial killing that caused protesters to camp outside City Hall for weeks decrying the police.

The decision from the district attorneys office was made public Tuesday, nearly two years after Officer Brett Ramirez shot Redel Jones, 30, who authorities say was armed with a knife and suspected of robbing a nearby pharmacy about a half-hour before she was killed.

In a May 1 memorandum explaining their reasoning, prosecutors said Ramirez reasonably feared for his life and acted lawfully to defend himself when he pulled the trigger. Jones, the memo said, was an armed, dangerous fleeing felon and Ramirez used reasonable force to apprehend her.

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Jones 2015 death came amid the ongoing national outcry over how police officers use force, particularly against African Americans. The shooting quickly drew the attention of activists with the local Black Lives Matter movement, who chanted Jones name at weekly meetings of a police oversight panel and spread it on Twitter as a hashtag.

When members of the Police Commission determined last summer that the shooting fell within the Los Angeles Police Departments policy for using deadly force, activists and others marched in protest from police headquarters to City Hall. They camped there for more than a month, holding signs and circulating a petition demanding that Mayor Eric Garcetti fire LAPD Chief Charlie Beck.

Melina Abdullah, a Cal State L.A. professor and Black Lives Matter organizer, said she believed the shooting warranted charges. She disputed the idea that Jones posed a threat and questioned why the officer felt he had to shoot a woman who stood only about 5 feet tall.

Abdullah also echoed a persistent criticism from other activists and community leaders who assert Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey has not been tough enough on police officers accused of using too much force.

Its enraging and heartbreaking at the same time, she said of the decision not to charge the officer who shot Jones. I think it points to a larger issue with this D.A., where we havent seen any charges filed.

Dale Galipo, an attorney representing Jones family in a federal civil rights lawsuit filed against Ramirez and the city, said he was disappointed but not surprised by the lack of prosecution. The district attorneys office last charged an on-duty officer in a shooting more than a decade ago, he noted.

Why is there even a review process? he said. Its a farce.

Jones husband gave emotional testimony to police commissioners shortly before they weighed the case last year, describing the mother of his children as a kind woman who always thought of others more than herself.

You all stole her from me, Marcus Vaughn told the board, saying he wanted the officers prosecuted.

Larry Hanna, one of the attorneys who represented Ramirez after the shooting, said he was not surprised that the district attorney had declined to pursue a criminal case. Prosecutors, he added, treat these things seriously.

Officers are always saddened when they have to take a life, he said. She stopped so suddenly and lunged at the officer  he had no choice.

The events leading up to the deadly shooting began about 1:45 p.m. on Aug. 12, 2015, when a woman entered a Baldwin Hills pharmacy and slipped the cashier a note.

I have a gun, the paper read, according to the prosecutors memo. Give me all the money in the register.

The woman pointed a knife at the cashier, who authorities said grabbed about $80  a couple of $20 bills, several fives and ones  and stuffed the cash in a brown paper bag. The woman then left.

Officers responded to the pharmacy and interviewed the cashier, who described the robber as a black woman wearing an oversized beige shirt, baggy pants and a purple scarf on her head, according to the memo. Police broadcast that description  along with a description of the knife  to other officers in the area.

Ramirez and his partner spotted a woman  later identified as Jones  wearing baggy clothing and a purple scarf on her head and trailed her as she walked down an alley. At one point, Ramirez, who was still sitting inside his black-and-white patrol car, told her to stop.

Jones kept walking, the memo said. Ramirez and his partner parked their car, jumped out and started after her on foot. At that point, the memo said, Jones pulled out a knife.

Shes got a knife in hand! Ramirez broadcast on his radio, according to the memo. Shes running!

The officers chased Jones down the alley, telling her to stop and drop the weapon, the memo said. At one point, prosecutors said, she stopped suddenly and charged toward Ramirez, pointing the knife at him.

Ramirez fired his gun as another officer shot a Taser. Jones died at the scene.

The note used in the robbery was underneath her body, and money  including a couple of $20 bills, several fives and ones  was in her pants pocket, the memo said. The knife was also found at the scene.

The memo from prosecutors included photos of the knife and blood-soaked note, along with a still image from the security camera footage that captured the pharmacy robbery. The footage, which was independently viewed by The Times in the days following the shooting, shows a woman wielding a knife.

The memo also included statements from three other people who were in the alley. Two men told investigators they saw officers chase Jones and saw her turn or move toward police while holding the knife.

Another witness, however, said she saw something else. The woman, who was interviewed by The Times after the shooting, told investigators she didnt see anything in Jones hands when she was shot, and never saw her turn toward police.

Prosecutors pointed to the broadcast from Ramirez, along with the video footage from the robbery and the knife found at the scene.

While there is a conflict between the witnesses opinions as to what occurred just prior to the officer involved shooting, we find the overall evidence is sufficient to conclude Jones was armed with a knife, turned and advanced toward Ramirez, the memo said.

Two police cars that were parked in the alley during the shooting had cameras, the memo added, but neither were turned on until after the shooting.

kate.mather@latimes.com

@katemather

UPDATES:

7:00 p.m.: This article was updated with comments from an attorney representing Jones family.

This article was originally published at 5:55 p.m.
A 17-year-old was shot and killed in Los Angeles while walking with friends early Tuesday, two days before he was to graduate from high school.

Favian Nunez was with three friends at about 12:30 a.m. in the 900 block of West I Street when the gunfire erupted, according to a statement from the Los Angeles Police Department.

Someone has said there was a suspicious car that was cruising around in the neighborhood, Det. David Cortez told KCBS-TV. The car parked in an alley across from where they were hanging out, Cortez said.

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Ana Leticia Rodriguez at a memorial for her son Favian Nunez in Wilmington. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

A man in dark clothing exited a vehicle and approached Nunez, police said.

The group of friends fled, running in different directions. The gunman fired multiple rounds at Nunez before returning to the vehicle and fleeing, police said.

None of the other boys was injured.

The teens mother told the TV station that she woke up from the sound of gunshots and rushed to the scene. There, she saw her son.

Paramedics took Nunez to the hospital, where he later died, police said.

Its unclear what motivated the shooting. Family members said Nunez wasnt a gang member. He was scheduled to graduate from Nathaniel Narbonne High School on Thursday, police said.

In a statement issued to the Daily Breeze, Los Angeles Unified School District Supt. Michelle King said the district was deeply saddened by the students death.

His death is a loss to the entire L.A. Unified family, King said.

matt.hamilton@latimes.com

Twitter: @MattHjourno

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Los Angeles police officials are investigating how officers killed a man in Wilmington, first shooting him before their cruiser ran over and pinned him, authorities said Wednesday.

The officers had responded about 9 p.m. Tuesday to a report of a man with a handgun in the 1100 block of North Wilmington Boulevard, according to a statement released by the LAPD.

A toy gun was found at the scene by investigators, police said in the statement.

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When officers arrived, they saw a lone man in his mid-20s and the deadly encounter unfolded  but authorities provided a vague account of what transpired.

Believing this may be the suspect from the radio call, they directed their attention toward him; at that time there was an officer-involved shooting, the department said in the statement.

LAPD officials did not say whether officers saw the toy gun before opening fire or whether the man aimed it at police.

Police said several shots were fired and the man fell to the ground. Then the officers cruiser traveled forward and struck the man, pinning him underneath it, police said.

The man was pronounced dead at the scene. The exact cause of his death  gunshot wounds or the weight of the cruiser  has not been determined.

Ed Winter, a deputy chief of investigations for the L.A. County coroners office, said the man has not yet been identified.

During the deadly encounter, one of the officers suffered an injury to his arm and was taken to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. Police have not explained how the officer was injured but said he was released Wednesday after treatment.

The incident may have been caught on video as police cruisers in the LAPDs South Bureau are equipped with dash cameras.

The initial police radio call of an officer down overstated the extent of the officers injury, and a dispatcher described the officer as having been shot in the arm.

Shots fired; can you help, an out-of-breath officer is heard saying into his radio. The officer then advised where to approach the scene from on Wilmington Boulevard.

Suspect down by vehicle; possible gunfire, the officer said shortly after to a dispatcher. Another officers voice interjected, Weve got an officer down.

A dispatcher then tells officers over the radio that one of the officers at the scene was shot in the arm, and directs all units to Denni Street and Wilmington Boulevard.

Once the LAPDs specialized shooting investigators arrived, they determined that the officers were not fired at and that the item recovered at the scene was a toy gun.

Initially, a police spokesman had said another suspect was in custody. But as the investigation evolved, LAPD Communications Director Josh Rubenstein said only one suspect  the man who was fatally shot  was involved in the incident.

A multi-agency investigation is underway, which is standard procedure for all LAPD officer-involved shootings. It will be reviewed by the Los Angeles County district attorneys office, the Police Commission and its inspector general.

A white shade tent covered the police cars front end on the sidewalk into early Wednesday morning when coroners investigators entered the area to remove the mans body.

Tuesday nights shooting is two blocks away from where 17-year-old Fabian Nunez was gunned down earlier that same day.

Times staff writer Joseph Serna contributed to this report.

Richard.Winton@latimes.com

Matt.Hamilton@latimes.com

UPDATES:

6:15 p.m.: This article was updated with more information from police about the incident.

This article was originally published at 7:50 a.m.
A woman was arrested this week on suspicion of placing methamphetamine in a 2-year-old boys mouth as he played in a Berkeley park, police said.

Sayyadina Thomas, 36, was taken into custody on suspicion of attempted homicide, according to the UC Berkeley Police Department.

Thomas approached the child as he frolicked in a play structure at Peoples Park on Haste Street with his nanny, police said. She then placed something in his mouth, authorities said.

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The nanny immediately checked the childs mouth but found nothing. She called police, who took Thomas into custody for psychiatric evaluation.

During the car ride to a holding facility, police said, Thomas told officers she fed the toddler methamphetamine.

The child was taken to a hospital, where doctors confirmed that he had been given the powerful drug. Police said the boy is recovering.

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veronica.rocha@latimes.com

Twitter: VeronicaRochaLA
Orange County-based Trinity Broadcasting Network has for decades been one of Americas largest religious broadcasters, beaming messages of faith and Christianity to a global audience.

But the televangelism empire, which has listed in tax records assets of more than $750 million, has long faced questions about its operations and spending.

The latest scandal involved the granddaughter of TBNs founders, who claimed that TBN co-founder Jan Crouch turned her back when she reported she was sexually abused by a network employee.

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On Monday, an Orange County jury awarded Carra Crouch $2 million for her years of emotional trauma and future suffering, finding that Jan Crouchs response caused outrageous harm.

Heres a closer look at TBNs vast, multimillion-dollar organization and its history through the pages of The Times.

Paul and Jan Crouch raise their hands in praise during a song at a revival meeting at the Cathedral of Light in Selma, Calif., on Aug. 18, 1988. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)

Paul Crouch was a pastor in Austin, Texas, when he saw the future on TV evangelism. He began buying TV stations and created the Trinity Broadcasting Network.

TBN would become a powerhouse, and the nonprofits growth made Crouch and his wife, Jan, rich. He built a grand headquarters off the 405 Freeway in Costa Mesa.

TBN was not the first Christian network  televangelist Pat Robertson had launched the Christian Broadcasting Network a decade earlier  but TBN surpassed its rivals in scope and ambition, bringing the word of God to a global audience of millions.

He has created an enormous platform for many ministries to do what he says is very important to him  that is, to spread the gospel not only in this country but around the world, said Steve Strang, founder and chief executive of Charisma Media, a leading publisher of books and magazines for charismatic and Pentecostal Christians.

The son of a poor missionary, Crouch was known for preaching a gospel of prosperity. His twice-yearly praise-a-thons on TBN generated as much as $90 million a year in donations, mostly in small amounts from lower-income Americans. When you give to God, Crouch said in a typical appeal, youre simply loaning to the Lord, and he gives it right on back.

Crouch channeled much of the revenue into charity, funding soup kitchens, homeless shelters and an international humanitarian organization, Smile of a Child, founded by wife Jan. In 2011, he donated more than 150 low-power TV stations to the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council, which helps minorities, women and other underrepresented communities own and operate TV and radio stations. The company rebranded itself as the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council in 2015.

But Crouchs main mission was to build an alternative to secular media, a dream he achieved with single-minded devotion and creativity. TBN, which celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2013, is a 24-hour family of networks with something for nearly every evangelical Christian demographic.

Offerings have included biblical cartoons and soap operas, game shows, programs on fitness and faith healing, religious movies and late-night Christian rock videos. Prominent independent ministers such as Robertson, Jimmy Swaggart and Robert Schuller bought airtime on TBN, which also broadcast Billy Grahams crusades.

This year, TBN announced that former presidential candidate and Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee was launching a weekly news and talk show on the network, part of a lineup that includes megachurch pastors like Joel Osteen and South L.A. pastor Fred K. Price Jr.

Before the Crouches deaths, the center of Trinitys programming had long been the nightly talk show Praise the Lord, hosted by the silver-haired Crouch and his flamboyantly coiffed wife. The show was broadcast from an Orange County studio decorated with stained-glass windows, gilded imitation antiques and plush pews for the audience.

The extravagance carried over to Crouchs personal life, provoking criticism from watchdog groups as well as members of his family. He and his wife had access to TBNs multimillion-dollar private jets and more than two dozen ministry-owned homes, including his-and-hers mansions in Newport Beach, a mountain retreat near Lake Arrowhead and a ranch in Texas.

Over the last 31 years, Crouch and his wife, Jan, have parlayed their viewers small expressions of faith into a worldwide broadcasting empire  and a life of luxury, a 2004 Times investigation reported. Lower-income, rural Americans in the South are among TBNs most faithful donors. The network says that 70% of its contributions are in amounts less than $50. Those small gifts underwrite a lifestyle that most of the ministrys supporters can only dream about. (Read more from the investigation here.)

In 1991, the FCC began to examine accusations that a minority-controlled company TBN had created to buy a Miami commercial station was a sham front that allowed the network to own more commercial stations than the 12 allowed by law. After a protracted legal battle, an appeals court ruled that the federal ownership rules were unclear and that the network could not be punished.

There also were a series of family squabbles. In 2004, it was revealed that Crouch had paid a former employee $425,000 to keep quiet about claims of a homosexual tryst. Crouch denied having sexual contact with the employee.

While Paul Crouch was the head of the organization, many viewers had a special bond with Jan. The couple appeared together on television for decades.

Born Janice Bethany, she was the daughter of a prominent Assemblies of God minister. She met Paul Crouch  a child of missionaries who became a ham radio enthusiast  in the mid-1950s in Rapid City, S.D., where he came after seminary.

Despite the scandals, Jan Crouch enjoyed vast, loyal support from viewers of Praise the Lord, the show in which she appeared with her husband. Fans found inspiration in her family story, lifestyle and charity work.

Affected by the poverty she saw on a trip to Haiti, she founded a humanitarian organization called Smile of a Child, which provides food, toys and medical services around the world.

Paul died in 2013, and Jan died in 2016. Today, TBN is led by one of their sons, Matthew Crouch.

Earlier this year, the organization announced it had sold its opulent 65,000-square-foot Costa Mesa headquarters to a commercial real estate firm. In recent months, a gated Newport Beach mansion owned by a Trinity-related entity, Trinity Christian Center of San Marcos, sold for more than $5 million, the Orange County Register reported.

Granddaughter Carra Crouch said the sexual abuse she experienced as a teen occurred when she was attending one of Trinitys annual fundraising telethons in Georgia.

In 2006, when she was 13 years old, Carra Crouch said a 30-year-old Trinity employee sexually assaulted her in an Atlanta hotel room.

When she told her grandmother, Jan Crouch blamed her for what happened and never reported the incident to police, Carra Crouch said.

She said the Trinity employee coerced himself into her hotel room and ordered wine from room service. Next, he pressured her to drink and then offered a glass of water, which she contends was laced with a sedative.

When she awoke the next morning, she said blood was on the sheets and her body was sore, which indicated she had been molested and raped, according to the lawsuit.

Shortly after, she went to her grandmothers Newport Beach estate and told her what had happened. The elder Crouch became enraged and upbraided her granddaughter, according to court papers.

Why would you have that man in your room? Why would you let this happen? her grandmother said, Carra Crouch testified.

She said her grandmother also feared a spate of negative press if details of the incident were made public, according to court papers. Trinitys lawyers deny allegations of a cover-up attempt.

The Trinity employee soon was fired, and he was not arrested or charged with any crime.

The lawsuit said that under Californias child protection laws, an ordained minister such as Jan Crouch was required to report the suspected sexual abuse to police.

Jan and Paul Crouch had disputed their granddaughters allegations. An attorney for Trinity said the granddaughters lawsuit was painful for the family matriarch.

You can imagine what a grandmother feels when her granddaughter sues her over something like this, Trinity attorney Michael King said. She always maintained her love for her granddaughter and was disappointed by the allegations.

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Defense attorneys for Bill Cosby on Wednesday sought to discredit the testimony of his sexual assault accuser Andrea Constand, one day after she had a dramatic courtroom confrontation with the entertainer.

Launching their cross-examination of the former Temple University basketball staffer  the prosecutions most important witness  the defense suggested that the 2004 encounter at Cosbys home for which hes on trial was part of a two-way romantic entanglement, not an attempt to prey on an unwitting victim.

But prosecutors and the accusers mother, Gianna Constand, rebuffed those attempts and insisted that Andrea Constands relationship with the entertainer was based on nothing more than work and friendship. The elder Constand in particular jolted the courtroom, especially when she discussed a conversation in which Cosby conceded that it sounds like Im a perverted person.

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The entertainers lawyer, Angela Agrusa, peppered Andrea Constand with questions about an earlier night when Constand was on the bed at Cosbys hotel room at Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut, as well as a dinner at Cosbys home that involved alcohol and a lit fireplace.

The approach led to a somewhat bizarre courtroom sequence in which Agrusa tried to play up the romantic qualities of Cosby and Constands earlier encounters while Constand played them down.

Your bodies were touching, and you laid there for at least 15 minutes, Agrusa said of the night at Foxwoods, where Cosby had invited Constand to see him perform.

No, I was reclining with my elbow, with my feet off the bed, Constand replied.

And did he open the door while wearing a robe? the defense asked. He was in a white shirt and pants, Constand said, slightly annoyed.

Constand has accused Cosby of giving her pills and violating her sexually while she was unconscious at his home, the basis of three charges of indecent aggravated assault.

Agrusa also recounted the details of the first dinner at his home some time before the night Constand alleges he attacked her.

So you knew on that first night that you were alone in his home, sitting by a fire and drinking brandy, that Mr. Cosby was interested in you in a romantic way, Agrusa said.

No, maam, he never said a word to me, Constand replied.

Agrusa later said, He was coming on to you. He was buying you presents. He was showing affection. After a pause, Constand replied, Yes.

Prosecutors replied to the defenses claim of Constands interest by characterizing her as simply a polite and pragmatic employee of Temple University, where she worked and Cosby was a trustee.

The argument was made even more strongly by Gianna Constand, taking the stand late in the day.

Andrea never shared anything with you about their romantic relationship? Agrusa asked in her cross-examination.

No. Because there wasnt anything to share, Gianna Constand replied.

More feisty and defiant than her daughter, the elder Constand recounted a phone conversation in which she pressed Cosby on the alleged sexual assault.

I said, Tell me everything you physically did to her. He said that he was touching her breasts. He said Mom  he called me Mom throughout the conversation  Dont worry, there was no penile penetration, just digital penetration, she said.

He was talking about it almost like he was leading me to believe it was consensual, or it was OK. He was manipulating it, she said. He said to me, Mom, she even had an orgasm, she added. And I was fuming.

Gianna Constand said she got very aggressive and asked about the unidentified pills Cosby allegedly supplied her daughter. Cosby said he would mail her the name of the prescription, she testified, but never did.

I kept asking, Why did you do that to my daughter? I said, My daughter was sick. Why didnt you call 911?

Cosby responded, Gianna Constand said, that I feel bad telling you about it. I feel like it sounds like Im a perverted person.

He offered to pay for the younger Constands therapy. She declined and said she just wanted an apology.

And he said, I apologize to Andrea and I apologize to you, Mom, she recounted.

In another phone conversation with Gianna Constand, this one recorded and played for the jury Wednesday, Cosby suggested he would pay for her daughters graduate schooling if Andrea Constand chose to pursue a career in sports broadcasting.

Gianna Constand tried to change the subject to the information about the pills her daughter was given by Cosby, pressing Cosby on his promise to send her the prescription details. But Cosby steered the conversation back to the tuition he was offering to pay. I wouldnt even worry about it, he said. Lets get with the other thing.

Gianna Constand in court also described her daughters state of mind after the alleged attack. She said the events were so traumatic that when her daughter returned home to her native Ontario after leaving Philadelphia in 2004, She was having a lot of nightmares. She would scream in her sleep or wake up in a sweat, Gianna Constand said. Something was going on. Our daughter was not the same person.

Demonstrating the opposite  or at least that Constand was fully aware of and open to Cosbys romantic interest from an early point  is key to the defenses argument. Such awareness would have little bearing on whether she gave consent during the interaction in question. But legal experts say that such knowledge on Constands part could color the jurys perception of the night of the alleged attack  if the defense could get it right.

It was essential that they make the [romance] argument, but Im not sure the way they presented it that it resonated with the jury, said Dennis McAndrews, a former Philadelphia-area prosecutor who has been in the courtroom observing the trial.

In addition to the buildup to the January 2004 night, Agrusa also sought to show that Constand maintained interest in Cosby after the incident, laying out phone records that showed some of the 53 calls the defense says she made to Cosby.

She even maintained contact with him after she moved back to Toronto, including lodging a request for tickets for her family to see a performance he was giving there.

So in the month and days after the alleged assault, you were calling him with a lot of frequency, werent you? Agrusa said.

The lawyer focused on about half a dozen calls of varying duration to Cosbys home in New York over a particular 24-hour period.

You called him on Valentines Day, Agrusa said.

I called him on the 14th, she said.

A number of the calls she made, the prosecution countered, came after she had checked her voice mail, presumably responding to a message from him rather than initiating contact. There were no calls, the prosecution and Constand noted, for more than four months after she left her job and moved home.

Once you left Temple, was there any reason to speak to this man? said the prosecutor, Kristen Feden.

No, said Constand.

Part of the defenses focus Wednesday also involved inconsistencies in Constands initial report to Pennsylvania police the year after the incident. She had told authorities at that time that the attack occurred in March 2004, not in January of that year, as she testified Tuesday and has maintained more recently.

Agrusa went through phone records on that March date, when Constand and Cosby had attended a Philadelphia high school fundraising dinner, which showed a number of calls during the hours when she would have been unconscious. Constand admitted that the date on the police report was incorrect and that the attack in fact had happened two months earlier.

The defenses argument boiled down to whether a victim would remember the date of a sexual assault or whether it could be reasonably confused with the date of another encounter, a conflation Constand said she had made.

Agrusa argued the shift was the result of a more calculating change of tune. Once you got hold of your phone records, the lawyer said, you changed your story.

Wednesdays proceedings featured a number of bizarre moments. In one, a zealous court police officer yelled for reporters lingering in a hall to put away phones as Cosby, assisted by his aide, Andrew Wyatt, passed by during a lunch break  presumably so the reporters would not take photos.

The unexpected loud voice startled the partially blind Cosby, who stumbled badly, bobbled his walking stick and grabbed onto a wall for safety. He appeared OK, if rattled, as Wyatt and others around him tried to laugh it off. The policeman tried to smile, sheepishly.

Another moment also involved Cosby. The entertainer has had supporters sitting in the front of the courtroom each day of the trial  whether for his benefit or the camera is unclear. On Monday it was Keisha Knight Pulliam, who played Rudy on The Cosby Show. On Tuesday it was several trustees at Temple University, dressed in yacht-wear and occasionally kibitzing with Cosby at his defendants chair.

Wednesday yielded an unexpected pair: the celebrity hairstylist John Atchison and his wife Sheila Frazier, known for her role in the music-minded 1972 blaxploitation movie Super Fly. The couple sat quietly through testimony and at one point trailed Cosby as he exited the courtroom.

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UPDATES:

7:35 p.m.: The article was updated with additional testimony and anecdotes from the scene in and around the courtroom.

3:55 p.m.: The article was updated with additional witness testimony.

1:05 p.m.: This article was updated with additional details about the defense lawyers arguments.

This article was originally published at 9:55 a.m.
The grand economic experiment on the prairie has ended.

Kansas Republican-held Legislature delivered a stunning defeat to Republican Gov. Sam Brownback on Tuesday, voting to demolish his massive tax cut that led to massive budget shortfalls and sent Kansas into a political tailspin.

It was a Waterloo moment for the conservative second-term governor, who refused to back down from the tea-party-inspired plan he signed in 2012 to promote business growth in the state.

After the Legislature passed a bill Tuesday morning, just after midnight, to roll back most of Brownbacks tax agenda, the governor exercised his veto power to kill it. But a coalition of Republicans and Democrats united Tuesday night to override the veto with a two-thirds majority in both chambers.

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The Senate voted 27 to 13 and the House of Representatives 88 to 31 to increase income taxes and raise a projected $1.2 billion over the next two years. The state had been facing a $889-million budget shortfall through June 2019.

Last night was a really big deal, said Rep. Melissa Rooker, a moderate Republican from the greater Kansas City area who voted in support of the override. Were swinging back to a more centrist position, which is where our comfort level is in Kansas, in my opinion.

Democratic House Minority Leader Jim Ward, who represents southern Wichita and also voted to raise taxes, said he felt relieved once he realized victory was assured.

It was time, Ward said. I think last night the vast majority of legislators said enough was enough; we have to move away from this failed tax experiment and on to sound fiscal policies. 

Addressing the media on Wednesday, Brownback said the Legislature made the wrong move, calling it a shortsighted decision that would hurt Kansas in the long run.

It had all been about the future, said Brownback, whose future has been the subject of speculation over whether he might leave office early to join the Trump administration. His term ends in 2018 and he cannot run for governor again.

Weve been declining as a percent of the population in the country, Brownback said. We havent had robust economic activity, and we tried to move in a place, in a way that would be pro-growth so we could attract more people, attract more businesses, attract more opportunities.

Brownbacks tax plan, enacted with the help of a conservative-dominated Legislature, initially earned him praise from small-government advocates as a potential model for elsewhere in the nation. Brownback had called on the economist Arthur Laffer  famous for theorizing that tax revenue can increase if tax cuts promote enough growth  as an advisor for the plan.

Well see how it works, Brownback said in one television appearance. Well have a real, live experiment. A Kansas City Star story on Brownback signing the tax cut in 2012 asked: Economic gold rush? Or fiscal wreck?

It definitely wasnt a gold rush.

As the years passed, the promised growth failed to materialize. Monthly tax receipt reports became a drumbeat bearing the same bad news: revenues were lower than expected, meaning budget shortfalls would be greater than expected.

State programs had to be slashed, but it still wasnt enough. The state Supreme Court intervened, saying the budget didnt provide enough funding for the states public school system. The states credit rating got downgraded, then downgraded again.

Brownbacks approval ratings plummeted so far that he became the least popular of the nations 50 governors, a status Brownback only recently relinquished to Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank that favors tax cuts and scores governors on their fiscal policies, downgraded Brownback from an A grade in 2014 to a D in 2016.

As Donald Trump reclaimed the White House for the GOP in 2016, Democrats and moderate Republicans in Kansas defeated more conservative opponents to gain power in the statehouse, paving the way for Tuesdays tax increase.

The primary issue in most elections was the road Sam Brownback had taken us down, and the consequences of his bad decisions, said John Gibson, chairman of the Kansas Democratic Party.

Burdett Loomis, a professor of political science at the University of Kansas, said the elections gave a lot of energy to Brownbacks opponents.

Legislators got an earful in town meetings, people emailed them; they kept the pressure up, Loomis said.

Rooker, the Republican representative, lived in Los Angeles for 18 years but moved back home to Kansas in 2004 because she wanted the affordable education offered by the states respected public schools in the Kansas City suburbs.

The tax cuts impact on the school system turned her and many other Republicans into opponents of Brownbacks economic agenda.

Its not just in blue districts; it is statewide, Rooker said. People recognized the damage being done to infrastructure, schools and the services and the state functions they depend on.

Rep. Dan Hawkins, a conservative Republican, had initially opposed the Legislatures proposed tax increase.

But after a meeting with the governor earlier in the week, Hawkins said he realized that Brownback wasnt going to compromise and agree to any significant tax increase.

So he flipped his support.

My thought is, this is probably as good as its going to get, Hawkins said. Lets just stop this nonsense and make sure the state can move forward and pay our bills and do what we need to. It really was a realization that our governor wasnt going to work with us on anything else.

matt.pearce@latimes.com

@mattdpearce

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The investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election is entering a high-stakes phase for the White House as lawmakers prepare to publicly question former FBI Director James B. Comey and other top intelligence and law enforcement officials about whether President Trump sought to block the FBI inquiry.

The Senate Intelligence Committee will hold hearings on Wednesday and Thursday into the intensifying legal and political thicket, one that already has spawned a special counsel to oversee a multi-pronged FBI investigation, a related criminal grand jury inquiry and four separate congressional investigations.

Comeys testimony on Thursday will be the marquee event, broadcast live on nearly every TV network and cable news channel, since the former FBI director will be speaking out for the first time since Trump fired him without warning on May 9 for what the president later described as the Russia thing.

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Whatever light they may shed, the political theater of nationally televised hearings will be a reminder of previous congressional nail-biters  especially Watergate in the 1970s, Iran-Contra in the 1980s and Monica Lewinsky in the 1990s  that riveted the nation and brought down or sharply undermined Presidents Nixon, Reagan and Clinton.

The political risks may be just as high for Trump, who has been forced to retain his own lawyer for the Russia-related inquiries as he struggles to take control of a sprawling political agenda and a skeptical Republican Party less than five months after taking office.

Lawmakers said Tuesday that they expect Comey to provide details about his phone calls and meetings with Trump but to refrain from discussing the FBI investigation into any Trump campaign ties to Russia. Its not clear how far Comey will go in public in laying out his legal concerns about Trumps comments.

If he comes close to affirming in public the same level of concern that associates have said he expressed in private, it will be an explosive hearing that could further cloud Trumps White House with questions of whether he sought to obstruct justice, a potentially impeachable offense.

If he confirms whats been alleged, its obviously serious business, Rep. Adam B. Schiff of Burbank, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said in an interview.

He added, I dont think we ought to anticipate the consequences until we get all the facts.

Comey is likely to face withering questioning from some Republicans intent on defending the president and poking holes in Comeys interpretation of his conversations with Trump.

If he has the view that he can talk about specific things he wants to talk about and cant talk about exactly similar things that he doesnt want to talk about, I think thatll be a big problem with me  and with the committee, said Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), a committee member who is part of the GOP leadership.

Comey also is likely to be asked about a New York Times report that during a dinner in January, the president asked Comey to pledge loyalty to him. Comey declined to do so, he later told associates.

Before a White House meeting with congressional leaders Tuesday, Trump was asked if he had a message for Comey. I wish him good luck, the president said.

The hearings kick off Wednesday when some of Americas top national security officials  Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence; Adm. Michael S. Rogers, director of the National Security Agency; Andrew McCabe, acting FBI director; and Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general  will testify.

Lawmakers are likely to press the intelligence officials about the leak of a classified report on Russian hacking to the Intercept, a national security news website. Federal prosecutors filed a criminal complaint against a government contractor in Georgia, charging her with sharing classified information with a news organization.

In a House hearing last month, Coats and Rogers refused to discuss reports that Trump also had sought to pressure them to ease up on the Russia inquiry. Both said they would not discuss their private conversations with the president.

But Comey insisted on testifying in public, raising the likelihood that he will provide an account of his private meetings and calls with Trump.

Before he was fired, Comeys associates have said, he had carefully rebuffed what he interpreted as requests from Trump to stop the FBI investigation of former White House national security advisor Michael Flynn, who was forced to resign in February after officials said he had lied about his conversations with the Russian ambassador.

On Tuesday, Flynn turned over 600 pages of business records to the Senate Intelligence Committee, complying with a subpoena seeking documents from his consulting business related to Russia, according to a congressional aide.

Comey apparently cleared what he planned to tell Congress when he spoke last week with Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel appointed by the Justice Department to oversee the federal investigation.

I understand the Special Counsel has not fenced him off in any way, shape or form, Sen. Richard M. Burr (R-N.C.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told CNN.

The House Intelligence Committee is conducting a separate inquiry into Russias role in the election and has asked Mueller to see Comeys memos of his conversations with Trump. We have an aggressive investigation going on right now, Rep. K. Michael Conaway (R-Texas), who is leading that inquiry, said Tuesday.

The Senate hearing Thursday is expected to focus, in large part, on those memos.

Trump told Comey on Feb. 14, the day after Trump fired Flynn, that I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, referring to the FBIs Flynn investigation, according to an associate of Comey who has read the memo the FBI director wrote after the meeting. He is a good guy, Trump said of Flynn.

Comey wrote other memos to document other Trump statements that he found potentially improper, the associate said. He has not given copies of the memos to the committee, apparently because they are considered potential evidence in the FBI investigation, two congressional aides said.

When he fired Comey, Trump declared in a statement that Comey had told him three separate times that he was not under FBI investigation.

The next day, Trump derided the FBI director as crazy, a nut job to Russias foreign minister and its ambassador during a private meeting in the Oval Office, according to published reports that cited a leaked White House transcript.

After stories described Comeys memos of his conversations with Trump, the president said on Twitter that the ousted FBI director had better hope that no secret tapes existed of their discussions, an implied threat that added echoes of Watergate to the drama.

Trump and his aides have denied any wrongdoing, arguing that the leaks of classified material to the media have posed a greater threat to national security than Russian meddling in the election.

Although nearly a month has passed since he fired Comey, Trump has yet to name a new FBI director. The president has scheduled a speech to religious conservatives on Thursday shortly after Comey is expected to begin his testimony.

Times staff writer Lisa Mascaro contributed to this story.

david.cloud@latimes.com

Twitter: @davidcloudLAT

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President George W. Bush spoke with his military commander in Iraq nearly every week.

President Obama was so deeply involved in military operations that his first three Defense secretaries all complained, sometimes bitterly, about what they considered White House micromanagement.

In nearly five months in office, President Trump has yet to meet or speak with either his Iraq or Afghanistan commander, even as his administration weighs deeper and longer-term involvement in both conflicts and asks Congress for a vast increase in defense spending.

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Trumps hands-off approach to Americas longest wars demonstrates how much control his administration has entrusted to Defense Secretary James N. Mattis, a retired four-star Marine general, and commanders on the ground.

Senior Pentagon officials and military officers who often chafed under Obamas centralized decision making have welcomed the shift, saying it has freed them to carry out operations based on military, and not political, considerations.

But it also raises concerns that Trump has given too much latitude to the Pentagon, which already has been accused of more indiscriminate bombings than in the past, causing an increase in civilian casualties.

The idea of the 10,000-mile screwdriver from Washington making decisions for a field commander, as has been the case over the past decade, is flawed, said James Stavridis, a retired admiral who served as NATO supreme commander and is now dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.

We need to be cautious that we do not go so far in the other direction that we end up with rogue commanders, Stavridis added. The White House needs to lay out a strategic vision but then let commanders do the tactical execution.

The president already has granted Mattis authority to raise troop levels in the wars in Iraq and Syria, a power usually held closely by the White House.

Trump is expected to grant Mattis the same authority in Afghanistan, where civilian casualties have soared in fighting this year. The Taliban now controls or contests more than 40% of Afghan territory  holding more ground than at any point since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001, according to recent United Nations estimates.

The president also has authorized his commanders to move more aggressively against militants in Somalia and Yemen, where U.S. special operations forces have stepped up raids against Islamic State and other terrorist groups.

What I do is I authorize my military, Trump said on April 13 after the Air Force dropped the most powerful conventional bomb in its arsenal on an Islamic State complex in eastern Afghanistan, a decision that was made without White House input.

We have the greatest military in the world, and theyve done the job, as usual, Trump said. We have given them total authorization, and thats what theyre doing.

A White House official, who wasnt authorized to speak on conversations in the chain of command, said the delegation of authority has enabled commanders to take a more aggressive approach in which missions are executed with more speed and more efficiency.

That is in no small part due to the fact that the president is putting his trust in the generals, not tying their hands and micromanaging their ability to fight the fight they need to fight, the official said.

Trump has regular working dinners with his national security team in his personal dining room at the White House, aides say, and thus remains briefed on major operations.

His companions include Mattis, Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, Trumps national security advisor; and Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly, another retired four-star Marine general.

They have great rapport with one another, the White House official said. Mattis and Dunford usually dine with Trump once a week, sometimes in a group, sometimes one-on-one, the official said.

The president does respect the chain of command and he gets the vast majority of his information from the top echelons of his national security teams, the official said.

The generals running the wars  Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend in Iraq and Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr. in Afghanistan  are three or four echelons below the president, the official said.

Both commanders recently completed sweeping written assessment of the conflicts they oversee. Still, the official said, the president is keeping with the chain of command by not communicating with them directly.

It hasnt taken long for ground commanders to exercise their newfound freedom under Trump  and for it to backfire.

In April, Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., the Pentagons top commander in the Pacific, announced that he had ordered the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson and its escort ships to detour north from Singapore to North Korea amid rising tensions with the nuclear-armed regime.

Trump quickly boasted that an armada was racing toward the Korean peninsula, suggesting a confrontation was possible.

The Pentagon was left scrambling a week later, and the White House was caught flat-footed, when it emerged that the Carl Vinson had instead sailed south to conduct exercises in the Indian Ocean, 3,500 miles away from the Korean peninsula. Harris later apologized to Congress for the confusion.

Nicholson, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, similarly surprised the White House when he authorized use of the so-called mother of all bombs against an Islamic State tunnel complex.

Officials said later that Nicholson did not foresee how the giant bomb, which had never been used in combat before, would generate headlines around the globe and be interpreted as a sign that Trump would be more aggressive than previous presidents.

Both Harris and Nicholson had the authority to make those decisions under Obama. But its unlikely either would have taken such action without first seeking approval from the White House, according to officials.

In one incident last year, the Pentagon waited for White House approval to move three Apache attack helicopters from Iraq to Syria in the fast-moving fight against Islamic State. Obama finally approved the transfer shortly before he left office.

Obamas first three secretaries of Defense  Robert M. Gates, Leon E. Panetta and Chuck Hagel  all accused the administration of needlessly interfering in military matters, though they did so after leaving office.

The controlling nature of the Obama White House and the staff took micromanagement and operational meddling to a new level, Gates wrote in his 2014 book, Duty.

Ned Price, the National Security Council spokesman under Obama, argued that careful deliberations often resulted in better policy decisions.

What our critics would label micromanaging was the Obama White House taking prudent steps to ensure that the decisions of one component complemented the broader U.S. government approach, he said. Indeed, failing to do so can be a detriment to our strategic goals for the country or region in question and  place our men and women in uniform at greater risk.

The risk of Trumps hands-off policy, at least for the Pentagon, was clear when he seemed to accept no responsibility after a U.S. military raid in Yemen that he had personally authorized went awry nine days after he took office.

He instead appeared to blame the generals for the death of Navy SEAL Chief Petty Officer William Ryan Owens in the ill-fated Jan. 29 raid, which also killed more than a dozen civilians, including women and children.

They came to me, they explained what they wanted to do  the generals  who are very respected, my generals are the most respected that weve had in many decades, I believe, Trump told Fox News. And they lost Ryan.

Anthony Cordesman, a former intelligence director at the Pentagon now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, said the military will carry out tactics to execute a presidents policy but cannot develop its own policy.

Military operations should not be micromanaged but they cannot go unmanaged either, he said. A president has to take responsibility for his own policy and overarching strategic goals. That is not something that can be delegated.

william.hennigan@latimes.com

Twitter: @wjhenn

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The Justice Department has accused a National Security Agency contractor named Reality Leigh Winner of leaking highly classified information to a news organization, the first such charge brought by the six-month-old Trump administration, which has been continually plagued by leaks.

Department officials did not reveal where the leaked documents originated or the name of the news organization that Winner allegedly gave them, but the charges coincided with a report published Monday by the online magazine The Intercept, based on leaked NSA documents that made the case Russian military intelligence launched a cyberattack on voting machines during the 2016 election.

This latest leak has drawn intense focus to the person at the center of it, Winner, who up until Monday had just been a 25-year-old contractor based in Georgia, living life in relative anonymity.

So, who is she? What exactly is she accused of doing? Here is what we know about Reality Winner.

Arrest and charges:

The FBI arrested Winner at her home in Augusta, Georgia, on Saturday, June 3. While detained, Winner cooperated with authorities and admitted that on or around May 9, she intentionally printed the classified documents and then mailed it to a news outlet, the Justice Department said.

Related: Trump's 'low-life leakers' are the modern-day 'Deep Throat'

If convicted, Winner could face up to 10 years in prison, CNN reported.

The government hasnt said exactly how they identified the leak, but one cybersecurity blogger speculated about how it would be easy to link the person printing out documents using information embedded in the documents themselves, which The Intercept posted online.

Winners attorney, Titus Thomas Nichols, declined to say whether Winner leaked those documents to The Intercept. A spokeswoman for The Intercept said the documents were received anonymously.

My client has no (criminal) history, so its not as if she has a pattern of having done anything like this before, Nichols told the Associated Press. She is a very good person. All this craziness has happened all of a sudden.

Work and life:

Yes, for those wondering, Reality is her real name, much to the internets delight.

The Justice Department said she had been working for an NSA contractor company called Pluribus International Corporation at a government facility in Georgia since Feb. 13, and had Top Secret clearance.

Winner was a linguist with the U.S. Air Force and spoke a number of Arabic languages including Pashto, Farsi and Dari, her mother told a Guardian reporter. A Facebook account that appears to belong to Winner shows that she had attended H.M. King High School in Kingsville, Texas, and that she was an avid weightlifter.

CNN and other news outlets on Tuesday identified a Twitter account believed to belong to Winner, which includes tweets that show her political views and show criticism of President Donald Trump and his administration.

Online reaction:

News of the top-secret leaks from the NSA drew immediate reactions from critics who called her actions stupid and counterproductive to U.S. intelligence, and from supporters like WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange who called her actions courageous.

BuzzFeed reported that Winners detention hearing is set for Thursday.

The arrest of Winner also comes at a time when President Donald Trump has vowed to find and prosecute those who leak information from the highest levels of government.

High-level leaks, especially those that pertain to the ongoing investigation into Russias interference in the 2016 election, have been published by The Washington Post, The New York Times, CNN and others.

The Intercept, like numerous other news organizations, has set up ways for whistleblowers to leak information anonymously. In a statement reacting to the charges brought by the Justice Department, The Intercept denies any knowledge of the identity of the person who provided the document.

While the FBIs allegations against Winner have been made public through the release of an affidavit and search warrant, which were unsealed at the governments request, it is important to keep in mind that these documents contain unproven assertions and speculation designed to serve the governments agenda and as such warrant skepticism, the statement read.

Have some thoughts to share?

Join me in a conversation: Shoot me a private email with your thoughts or ideas on a different approach to this story. As always, you can also send us a tweet.

Email: luis.gomez@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @RunGomez

Read The Conversation on Flipboard.
Former FBI director James B. Comey is scheduled to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday, just one day after President Trump announced the nomination of former Asst. Atty. Gen. Christopher Wray to succeed him.

Comeys prepared statement for Thursdays meeting is deeply disturbing  particularly his accounts of how Trump sought to have him drop any investigation of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and asked him for a profession of loyalty. (Comey says he replied that you will always get honesty from me.) Although both the request for leniency for Flynn and the plea for loyalty have been reported in the media, Comeys confirmation of those accounts is chilling.

Comeys statement is incomplete, however, on some matters that acquired additional urgency after he was unceremoniously fired by Trump last month  and after the conflicting accounts from the administration about why he was dismissed. (Initially, the White House suggested that Trump acted on the recommendation of Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod Rosenstein, who had found fault with Comeys investigation of Hillary Clintons use of a private email server; later Trump himself acknowledged: I was going to fire regardless of [Rosensteins] recommendation and that when he made the decision he had this Russia thing on his mind.)

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Senators particularly need to question Comey about his view of what Trump hoped to achieve in his conversations with Comey, which the FBI director clearly considered inappropriate. He also needs to be asked why, if he regarded the presidents interventions into FBI business as so troublesome, he didnt immediately sound the alarm with his superiors.

Does Comey now believe that Trump wanted to sideline the larger investigation into possible ties between his campaign and Russia?

As expected, Comey expresses discomfort in his prepared statement with a meeting in the Oval Office on Feb. 14 at which Trump  after dismissing other participants at a meeting  tells Comey that Flynn is a good guy and has been through a lot and says, I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go.

Comey makes it clear in his statement that he did not agree to let this go. And he makes it plain that I had understood the president to be requesting that we drop any investigation of Flynn in connection with false statements about his conversations with the Russian ambassador in December. This, he said, was very concerning.

Thats an understatement. Yet Comey and his advisors decided not to report on Trumps request to Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions or the U.S. attorney who was serving as the acting deputy attorney general. He seems to regard that as no harm, no foul because the investigation continued; but senators should press him on whether it was wise not to immediately advise the Justice Department of this concerning event. And was it really only concerning  or was it an attempt to obstruct justice?

Another ripe subject for questioning is this passage in Comeys statement about his conversation with Trump on Feb. 14: I did not understand the president to be talking about the broader investigation into Russia or possible links to his campaign. I could be wrong, but I took him to be focusing on what had just happened with Flynns departure and the controversy around his account of his phone calls.

Yet elsewhere in his statement Comey describes Trumps anxiety about the burden that larger investigation was creating for him. In a March 30 telephone call, Comey said, Trump told him the Russia investigation was  a cloud that was impairing his ability to act on behalf of the country. Trump mention the cloud again in an April 11 phone call, Comey said, a conversation in which the president reiterated a request that Comey get out the information that Trump wasnt personally being investigated by the FBI. (Comey earlier had given Trump such an assurance privately.)

Does Comey now believe that Trump wanted to sideline the larger investigation into possible ties between his campaign and Russia, which he publicly has dismissed as a hoax used by Democrats to explain away his victory over Hillary Clinton? And, if so, does he also believe that that was why he was fired less than four years into his 10-year term?

Congress is entitled to answers to these questions; so are the American people.

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The Supreme Court this week agreed to decide whether police must demonstrate probable cause that a crime has occurred before obtaining a suspects cellphone records. That might seem like a narrow question about police procedure. But if the justices think boldly, they can use this case to redefine the 4th Amendments protection against unreasonable searches and seizures for a society in which technology has transformed traditional notions of privacy.

Timothy Carpenter was convicted of committing nine armed robberies in the Detroit area, partly on evidence investigators obtained from mobile phone networks showing that he made calls using towers near the robbery sites. The prosecutor told the jury that Carpenter was right where the first robbery was at the exact time of the robbery, the exact sector.

Carpenters number was among those obtained by the FBI from an admitted member of a robbery ring. Agents obtained data about Carpenters calling history and location from his wireless provider not with a warrant based on probable cause, but with a federal magistrates order based on the lesser standard  contained in the federal Stored Communications Act  that the government had reasonable grounds for believing that the records were relevant and material to an ongoing investigation.

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Highly personal information that an individual considers private may still be in the possession of a communication company.

The U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Carpenters conviction on the grounds that the acquisition of the incriminating records wasnt a search under the 4th Amendment, and it cited an oft-invoked 1979 Supreme Court decision to conclude that Carpenter had no reasonable expectation of privacy. In that case, Smith vs. Maryland, the court upheld the use without a warrant of a device called a pen register to track the telephone numbers a suspected criminal called  information, the court said, that a customer voluntarily shares with the phone company.

The appeals court also said that the records showing the locations where Carpenters cellphone connected with a mobile phone network were not his property but business records obtained from a third party, which can only diminish the defendants expectation of privacy in the information those records contain.

The appeals court accurately stated longstanding 4th Amendment doctrine  but thats precisely the problem. The Supreme Courts interpretations of reasonable expectation of privacy, business records and third-party information havent kept up with technological developments  and some of the justices have admitted as much.

In a 2012 case, Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted in a concurring opinion that in the digital age, people reveal a great deal of information about themselves to third parties in the course of carrying out mundane tasks. Its not just the phone numbers of the people they contact that can be disclosed, Sotomayor wrote, but far more personal material, such as the Web pages they visit and the books, groceries, and medications they purchase online.

The revealing nature of these data is whats key here. Its why the information collected looks less like lists of transactions and more like the content of communications, which falls clearly within the 4th Amendments umbrella.

That same year Chief Justice John G. Roberts told a university audience that the challenge for the court for the next 50 years would be: How do we adapt old, established rules to new technology?

Roberts was the author of the majority opinion in a 2014 case in which the court ruled unanimously that police generally may not, without a warrant, search digital information on a cellphone seized from someone who has been arrested. Cellphones, Roberts wrote, hold for many Americans the privacies of life. The fact that technology now allows an individual to carry such information in his hand does not make the information any less worthy of the protection for which the Founders fought.

In the same opinion, Roberts noted that, while some information is contained on a phone itself, other information is stored on servers online. Thats another way of pointing out that highly personal information that an individual considers private may still be in the possession of a communication company.

The law  including the interpretation of what constitutes an unreasonable search and seizure  should reflect such realities. The Carpenter case gives the court a chance to bring the 4th Amendment into the 21st century.

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Its been a bloody 11 days. Since May 27, at least 28 people have been shot dead across the country and another 47 wounded in 13 separate mass shootings, defined as confrontations in which at least four people are shot in one incident. The violence included a rampage in Mississippi late last week in which a man who told a reporter he was trying to commit suicide by cop killed seven relatives and one police officer before being captured. On Monday, a disgruntled former employee walked into a job site in Orlando, Fla., and killed five former co-workers before turning the gun on himself. Yet those U.S. killings barely caused a ripple in the public consciousness.

One reason is all the attention being paid to acts of political terrorism. And of course terrorism of the sort that occurred in London and Manchester, England, recently  and in San Bernardino, Paris, Madrid and New York and elsewhere in recent years  is a very significant concern that requires extraordinary vigilance, close scrutiny and effective, preventive countermeasures. But the cold, hard reality is that the most pressing risk to American lives comes not from Islamic State, but lies here at home, among ourselves and our obscenely large arsenal of firearms. In fact, it is the commonness and ordinariness of gun violence that is so chilling. An analysis of statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows an average of 33,880 annual deaths involving firearms from 2011-2015. Of those, 11,564 were homicides, or an average of about 32 homicides and 58 suicides a day, every day, over five years.

Thats an astounding level of carnage. A CNN analysis last year found that for every American killed by an act of terror in the United States or abroad in 2014, more than 1,049 died because of guns.

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A man can allegedly kill eight people, including a police officer, and not rivet the nations attention.

Fortunately, the nations murder rate (including non-negligent homicide) has dropped from 8.2 per 100,000 in 1995 to a low of 4.5 in 2013 and 2014, before increasing to 4.9 in 2015 (the rate for 2016 has not yet been calculated). That recent uptick is something that law-enforcement and criminal policy experts need to address. But while its good news that we arent killing each other as often as we used to, were still committing acts of violence at levels unseen in any other industrialized, developed society. And then there are the accidental shootings. And those who are shot and survive but are left physically and mentally maimed  nearly 68,000 victims nationwide in 2015 alone, according to CDC data.

The Trump administration seems uninterested in the very obvious and omnipresent threat to Americans  our easy access to firearms. Trump ran for president with the early and full-throated support of the National Rifle Assn., which continues to press a national agenda to get more guns in the hands of more people with as few restrictions as possible. Trump, notably, has hosted Wayne LaPierre, the NRAs most visible leader, at the White House, and in April addressed the NRAs annual convention, at which he said, You have a true friend and champion in the White House.

That is very bad news for the safety of the nation. But perhaps even more chilling is that a man can allegedly kill eight people, including a police officer, and not rivet the nations attention. We must stay focused on the persistent and deeply challenging problem of too many guns, and too many people with too easy access to them. Studies have found that states with tighter gun control laws tend to have fewer gun-related deaths, and that the presence of a gun in a home increases the chances someone in the home will be a victim of homicide or suicide.

The Supreme Court is weighing whether to hear an appeal of a San Diego case called Peruta vs. County of San Diego, in which the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower courts decision that the 2nd Amendment does not confer a right to carry a concealed weapon outside the home. Letting that decision stand would be a positive step. Citizens cant really lobby the Supreme Court, but heres something they can do: Lobby Congress to drop the de facto ban on the CDC from conducting research into gun violence, and press federal and state elected officials to adopt sensible gun control laws that put public safety ahead of the gun-lobbys absolutist view of the 2nd Amendment. If Trump and other elected officials wont take seriously their responsibility to ensure public safety through better and smarter gun policies, then voters need to hold them accountable.

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Health insurance giant Anthem Inc. didnt cite President Trump when it announced Tuesday that it was withdrawing from the Obamacare marketplace in Ohio, leaving the marketplace with no insurer in at least 18 counties. But Anthem pointed the finger right at him  and at the Republicans in Congress who are trying to repeal and replace the 2010 healthcare law.

The insurers move isnt as bad for Ohio as it sounds, given that only about 13,000 people shop for policies on the marketplace in those counties. But it tells the administration and Congress to stop sabotaging the health insurance market before other insurers follow suit. Yes, there were problems in the exchanges before 2017, but Trump and congressional Republicans have made them much, much worse.

At issue is the individual insurance market, which serves people not covered by large employer health plans. These policies are sold both on and off the state insurance exchanges, but these exchanges are the only places where consumers may take advantage of the premium and cost-sharing subsidies that the Affordable Care Act provides.

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Rather than trying to undermine the ACA marketplaces until they collapse, the administration and Congress should be shoring them up.

Anthem said it was pleased that the government has tried to improve programs designed to help insurers with disproportionately sick customers and deter people from gaming the system. Nevertheless, it said, the market for individual policies is still volatile and getting increasingly unpredictable, forcing the company to the sidelines.

One specific reason was the uncertainty surrounding whether Washington would pay insurers for the cost-sharing subsidies the ACA requires them to give their lowest-income customers  funding that Trump himself has cast in doubt. And for no good reason, because the only things insurers are likely to do in response are to raise everyones premiums to cover the cost of the subsidies or drop out of the market.

The administration also has destabilized the individual market by deciding not to enforce the tax penalty on adults who dont obtain insurance coverage, as required by the ACA. Without the penalty, younger and healthier Americans are more likely to go without insurance, leaving insurers with a costlier group of customers and driving up premiums. Meanwhile, the House passed a Republican-penned bill that would repeal the insurance mandate and replace it with a far milder penalty, which also would encourage healthy people to avoid coverage until they knew they needed care.

So its understandable why Anthem might not like where things appear to be going. And if the company decides to withdraw from the ACA marketplaces across the country, that could leave 300,000 Americans with no way to buy insurance with ACA subsidies, Bloomberg reports. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 21% of the people who bought insurance through an ACA marketplace had only one option last year for coverage; so far, 25 counties in Missouri have lost their only marketplace insurer, and the state of Iowa may soon find itself in the same boat.

Compared to the number of people insured through their employers or through healthy individual marketplaces, such as Californias, the population at risk here as small. But to those who need insurance but suddenly cant find it or cant afford it, the threat is practically existential.

Rather than trying to undermine the ACA marketplaces until they collapse, the administration and Congress should be shoring them up. Republicans arent likely to embrace proposals like the one from Californias two Democratic senators, Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to help more Americans afford individual insurance coverage by providing subsidies to anyone whose monthly premiums exceeded 9.69% of their monthly income. But they could take a number of less dramatic steps to stabilize the individual market, starting with committing to paying for the cost-sharing subsidies that the law now requires. They should also lift the exemption for pre-ACA noncomprehensive individual policies that have kept healthier people from signing up for coverage through the ACA marketplaces. They can do a far better job encouraging younger, healthier people to buy coverage. And they can explore multistate insurance compacts that bring more people into risk pools, thereby more safely spreading costs and risks.

At the moment, Senate Republicans are trying to line up enough votes to pass their own version of the Houses misbegotten American Health Care Act, which seeks to lower premiums for the healthy at the expense of those with preexisting conditions. The fight in the Senate reportedly is over whether to keep the Medicaid expansion that the ACA authorized, an expansion that helped fuel a dramatic reduction in the number of uninsured Americans. Instead of struggling to figure out a politically palatable way to end coverage for millions of people, lawmakers and the White House should stick to solving the problems in front of them  particularly the ones theyre creating.

jon.healey@latimes.com

Twitter: @jcahealey
Bill Cosby now faces trial on charges that he drugged and sexually assaulted Andrea Constand in 2004. He has been accused by 59 other women of drugging and/or sexually assaulting them. Meanwhile, his allies have been painting a picture of him as a victim of a conspiracy driven by racism. Cosby continues to deny all accusations and has even tried to burnish his reputation by associating himself with the civil rights movement. As one of Cosbys accusers and a black immigrant Latina, I find this PR strategy reprehensible.

For many years I was afraid to go public. I knew that as a black woman accusing a beloved black celebrity of such heinous conduct, I would come under heavy scrutiny from the black community and expose myself to possible retaliation.

But on May 1, 2015, empowered by dozens of brave women who declared that they were victimized by Cosby, I finally found the courage to publicly accuse Americas Dad of drugging me, raping me, and threatening me to keep silent in the early 1990s, during the preparation for my guest-starring role on The Cosby Show. The day prior to going public, I filed a police report in Atlantic City, N.J., alleging that it was one of the locations where Cosby had attacked me. In an hours-long videotaped interview conducted by detectives, I told my story about the assault and other abuses I endured.

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Of the 60 women whove accused Cosby of drugging and/or sexual assault, one third of us are black.

Later I was disappointed to find out that the prosecutor couldnt even consider pressing charges, because the incident in Atlantic City occurred just a few months outside of the New Jersey statute of limitations.

There was no recourse for me to seek justice, either in a criminal or civil court. My only option was to offer my voice in advocacy for rape survivors, of all races.

The day after my first public disclosure, Cosby staged his last live performance. I attended a demonstration outside of the venue, carrying pink gladiolus flowers, which are a symbol of peaceful protest in my birth island of Cuba. During the press conference, I quoted Martin Luther King Jr., who once spoke of carving a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of disappointment. Those words helped me survive this extremely difficult period in my life.

Two weeks later, Cosby claimed Kings mantle in a desperate attempt to change the narrative. He donated money to a Selma, Ala., charity and staged a march across the historic Edmund Pettus Bridge, where in 1965 John Lewis of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Rev. Hosea Williams of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference demanded the right to vote. Marchers were met by armed policemen who suffocated them with tear gas and bloodied them with nightsticks. Later, King succeeded in leading thousands of marchers across the bridge to the state capitol in Montgomery, where he gave his famous How Long, Not Long speech.

As if it wasnt bad enough for Cosby to connect himself to anti-racist American heroes, his allies have tried to use our countrys history of racism as a shield.

In a July 2015 CNN interview, when asked whether she had ever seen a case where dozens of people accusing one person were all making it up, Cosbys attorney at the time, Monique Pressley, responded, Yes, through the decades we have seen what we used to call lynch mobsThat happened often in the 60s and 70s in this country. In a May 2017 Breakfast Club radio statement, Cosbys daughter Ensa said, My father has been publicly lynched in the media. (She also noted that her father was a civil rights activist.) Shortly thereafter, in a Sirius XM radio interview, Michael Smerconish asked Cosby if he agreed with his daughters claim that he is being racially targeted. Cosby answered, Could be, could be . . . there are so many tentacles, so many different  nefarious is a great word, and I just truly believe that some of it may very well be that.

Of the 60 women whove accused Cosby of drugging and/or sexual assault, one-third of us are black. The suggestion that we and the media are some kind of lynch mob sullies the memory of real lynching victims, such as Laura Nelson, who in 1911 was raped and then hanged from a suspension bridge alongside her 14-year-old son. Or the pregnant Mary Turner, who in 1918 was also raped during her lynching, and whose 8-month-old fetus was gouged out of her belly and stomped to death by a mob.

How dare Cosbys allies liken us to white supremacist thugs who targeted and murdered black women, children and men. Thats despicable, and it adds insult to the injury we attest he has already caused us.

No, Bill Cosby, your accusers, who have found the fortitude to go public, are not a lynch mob. We are not nefarious. The person I believe you are describing with that word is, in fact, yourself.

I remember the live audience applauding and roaring at the end of The Cosby Show episode in which I guest starred, in December of 1991. I remember you glared at me, and I heard you mutter under your breath, Fooled them again. Heres what I took that to mean: That you had duped your adoring fans into believing that you were just like the fictitious character you portrayed on TV: Dr. Cliff Huxtable. That you were the embodiment of wholesomeness. The audience could not possibly have known that you were hiding behind a facade of pontificating morality. Stop telling black kids to pull up their pants, Bill Cosby, and pull up your own.

Lili Bernard is a visual artist and actor who lives in Los Angeles.

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One of the more troubling things happening in California politics right now is the signature-gathering effort to recall freshman state Sen. Josh Newman from his seat in the 29th District, straddling Los Angeles, Orange and San Bernardino counties. Efforts on the ground consist of canvassers in parking lots and supermarket entryways, confidently offering shoppers a chance to repeal the latest gas tax hike if they sign.

Thats an enticing offer. Commuters with young families and steep mortgages, late-career professionals closely monitoring their 401ks as the 2008 recession sits uncomfortably in the rearview, and retirees with grandkids climbing a tuition mountain  everyone wants a reprieve.

But the canvassers arent telling the whole story; recalling Newman wont magically undo the $52-billion transportation package passed by the state Legislature in early April, which funds road improvements with a 12-cent-per-gallon gas tax increase and a bump in vehicle registration fees.

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The signature-gathering effort to recall Newman, as the president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. candidly admitted in an op-ed for the Orange County Register, is really about political retaliation, not a legislative reversal.

Recalling Newman wont magically undo the $52-billion transportation package passed by the state Legislature in early April.

Newman did vote for the transportation package, but he was hardly the deciding factor,as one Republican-funded ad claims. The bill passed the state Senate 27-11, and one Republican, Modestos Sen. Anthony Cannella, voted for it too. The recall effort targets Newman simply because he won a historically Republican district by only 3,185 votes. Republicans view this as their seat, and they are keen to take it back.

One force behind the recall effort is a former San Diego City Council member who hosts a local talk radio show, Carl DeMaio. San Diego state Sen. Joel Anderson from the 38th District is also on board. Theyve been encouraging folks to swarm Wal-Mart and Sprouts stores in Anaheim, Fullerton, Brea, Yorba Linda, Chino Hills and West Covina to collect the requisite 63,592 signatures from registered voters in Newmans district. (By Friday, proponents had already gathered over half of the signatures.)

I met two signature-gatherers at my local supermarket. Neither lived in the district; both acknowledged that they knew nothing about California politics in general or Newman in particular. Whats more, an analysis of recent tax documents revealed that as of Saturday, less than 5% of the $44,000 raised to recall Newman came from Newmans constituency.

Those behind the recall effort dont seem to care that Newman won a fair election, or that attempting to recall a legislator just for doing his job  voting for what he believes is right  sows turbulence and chaos. No ones accusing Newman of incompetence or corruption, high crimes or misdemeanors.

And its not as if theres no down side to the recall effort. If its successful, a standalone election could cost OC taxpayers alone up to $1.6 million, and thats not including what L.A. and San Bernardino counties will have to put up or the cost to the state as a whole. Supporters of the recall dont seem to mind the waste.

We run elections all the time. Why not just wait for the next cycle and then challenge Newman on the merits?

Newmans a big boy and he can defend himself. One thing lost in the gas-tax furor, however, is who he actually is. He hosts town halls and local coffee gatherings, volunteers at our Special Olympics events, advocates for veterans and regularly meets with constituents to hear our concerns, all while caring for a young family. Hes community-oriented, committed and connected.

Whatever Newmans angry opponents think of the transportation bill or Newmans vote in favor of it, they ought to consider the fact that hes actually a pretty good representative of his constituency.

Jason Sexton is editor in chief of Boom California, published by University of California Press, and teaches at Cal State Fullerton.

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Photo taken on April 26, 2017 shows the scenery of the county seat of Xiongxian, north China's Hebei Province. China announced the plan for Xiongan New Area, an economic zone about 100 kilometers south of Beijing, on April 1, 2017. The new area will span Xiongxian, Rongcheng and Anxin counties in Hebei Province, eventually covering 2,000 square kilometers. Hebei announced recently it would call for international bids to plan and design Xiongan New Area. Global companies are welcomed to bid with their ideas for a 30-square-km area at initial stage. (Xinhua/Yang Shiyao)

BEIJING, June 6 (Xinhua) -- China is seeking a new path for urban development through Xiongan New Area, a policy advisor said Tuesday, stressing that development of the new economic zone will not be "kidnapped" by property developers.

Xu Kuangdi, director of a council of experts for coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (Jing-Jin-Ji) region, made the remarks at a forum on urban development Tuesday in Beijing.

China announced plans to establish Xiongan New Area in April as part of measures to integrate Jing-Jin-Ji development and cure "urban ills" such as traffic congestion and air pollution in the capital.

The move has since driven a speculation frenzy in the property market in the area, which prompted policymakers to put in place strict controls on real estate development in Xiongan New Area.

Xu said the construction of the new area should focus on a more efficient transport network, environmental protection, urban and rural integration and innovative urban planning.

Xiongan should be a livable, modern city, with green spaces taking up more than half of the area, according to Xu.

The economic zone should also be a region led by innovation-driven development and a demonstration area for new urbanization in China, he said.

Located some 100 km southwest of downtown Beijing, Xiongan New Area will mainly cover the three existing counties of Xiongxian, Rongcheng and Anxin in Hebei Province.
The 70-year-old woman had hung up her clothes and her backpack and was taking a shower in a gym locker room when another woman, four decades her junior and a former Playboy Playmate, took her picture. That was a crime, a misdemeanor, under the California penal code. What happened after that  the online posting of the photo, with the caption, If I cant unsee this, then you cant either  wasnt a crime then, but it soon could be.

The city of Los Angeles case against 30-year-old Dani Mathers was settled with Mathers sentenced to clean up graffiti, to pay restitution and to spend three years on probation. Shes appeared on television to apologize and talk about the shaming shes getting on social media.

But what about the victim? She was contacted by Los Angeles police after the gym realized who she was, but City Atty. Mike Feuer has pledged that her identity will remain a secret. He has talked with her at length, and heres what he can say about her.

Click here for the full archive of "Patt Morrison Asks" podcasts 

You have spoken with the victim in this case. Tell me about her.

I spoke to her myself a day or two after the conclusion of the Mathers case. I wanted to get a sense from her directly what she was feeling at that moment, and it was a very poignant conversation. She has been humiliated. Shes relieved that she didnt have to endure a trial and testify, but she was willing to do so. She wishes the whole chapter, this painful chapter, would close  the impact of the photograph being taken and disseminated and what thats meant to her as well as what its meant to hear that Ms. Mathers be held accountable for what she did

What has the impact been on this lady?

She used the word, that it had been humiliating. Theres nothing that exemplifies that more than this: When the outcome of this case was being reached, the topic of restitution came up, and she sought restitution of, like, $60. And people wanted to know afterwards, why? And the answer is, she had to buy a new backpack. Because the photograph depicted her in the shower, her backpack was hanging there, and it was a way people could identify her. She had to replace that with another backpack.

Why does that matter? Because the impact of this incident is irreparable. And it causes harm that will reverberate on and on. Body shaming is inhumane. And it tears down the victims self-respect. It has devastating consequences. It stigmatizes victims. I think theres no question that in this case, the invasion of her privacy, compounded by the dissemination of the photo that was taken, has had what will be I hope a dissipating impact over time but certainly a severe impact now.

This is an individual who had the courage to come forward and was prepared to testify to endure a trial. She cooperated throughout the preparation of this case. But you might imagine, she wanted nothing more than to try to turn the page in her life.

One thing that appears to be the case now is that Ms. Mathers is attempting to portray herself as the victim. She is not the victim. She is the perpetrator.

Ms. Mathers says that she didnt intend to widely disseminate the photo. That ignores the fact that she invaded another womans privacy by taking a nude photo of her in a gym. And then, of course, once she took the photo, she added a cruel caption to it before she sent it out.

I saw Ms. Mathers on Good Morning America. She claims that shes tried to contact the victim, I presume to apologize. I will share with you, that surprises the victim, who told me she is unaware of any attempt by Ms. Mathers to reach out to her.

I dont think of Ms. Mathers as the victim. Here, she is the perpetrator.  Los Angeles City Atty. Mike Feuer

The focus of our attention needs to be on the fact that invading peoples privacy and body shaming is so deeply injurious to the most basic levels of self-respect that one should have. Think today about the trans kid who is struggling with their identity. Think about members of the LGBTQ community, about disabled people. We are hearing more and more in the media about how horrific body shaming can be for its victims, and I hope that this case deters people from engaging in that kind of behavior in the future, because it is so deeply harmful.

Ms. Mathers said that because of this, she now has to hide out at her mothers house, and that felt really low. So heres the same Internet that spread that original photograph around that now seems to be exacting or demanding punishment of the woman who took it.

I dont think of Ms. Mathers as the victim. Here, she is the perpetrator. If there are consequences, there are consequences. The way a perpetrator feels is of lesser significance to me just now.

She said shes gotten death threats, and those are criminal 

No one should have to endure that, lets agree. Of course not. Thats way beyond the pale here, and we should all condemn that. But this case should be about protecting vulnerable people and assuring they have private spaces that are truly private, assuring that no one is going to humiliate them because of the way they look.

How was the sentence arrived at?

The term community service really misstates whats going on here. This is community labor. This is not a glamorous star turn someplace. This is erasing graffiti on the street. And I think that, combined with restitution, combined with the probationary terms here, which are fairly extensive, taken together is an appropriate sentence.

When I first became aware of this case, it was striking to me that the taking of the photo was a crime but that the subsequent dissemination of it was not. That gap in the law is a gap we are trying to close right now.

Ive sponsored a bill thats being authored by [California state] Sen. [ Cathleen] Galgiani (D-Stockton). It passed the state Senate. What that bill would do is penalize the distribution of a photo that invades a persons privacy this way. The bill would in addition provide a monetary penalty. It would also provide restitution to enable the victim to obtain whatever assistance is necessary to remove the photo from the Internet, which as you might imagine in this day and age, with social media being so prevalent, is especially important.

In any of the discussions your office had with the victim, does she realize she has become the symbol of this kind of illegal invasion?

When we talked, I said to her that the courage that she has displayed here will have a meaningful impact on preventing anybody else from being victimized in the future, both because of the case itself and because this case is the catalyst for the legislation. Shes very modest, very humble about that, and disclaimed any credit that she might have for having what it takes to have seen this through.

Is it, do you think, a generational difference in what privacy means to one age group, and is that why the law seems to you to be necessary?

What it means to have private space has never been more important. I think the expectations that we have of where we can be private shouldnt have to evolve. Certainly when one is in a shower in a gym, that has to be thought of a private space.

And all of us in our society are struggling with the emerging questions about whether we need to be rethinking where we can expect to have true privacy. Thats a shame. As oriented as I am to the importance of the public space and engaging each other to try to improve our common life, its got to be possible to retreat from that and have a space where no one else is allowed. I think the technology is challenging that every day.

In California, some criminal laws bear the names of the victim  Chelseas Law, Marsys Law. This is one that wont.

In this case that will never happen because the anonymity of the victim here is extremely important, and something that I have pledged personally to her to maintain. We shouldnt expect of her anything more than what shes already given.

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To the editor: It didnt seem possible, but President Trumps Twitter bullying of London Mayor Sadiq Khan in the wake of another horrific terrorist attack marked a new low for his rampant indecency. (Another terror attack, another thoughtless Trump tweetstorm, Opinion, June 4)

The White Houses attempt to blame the debacle on mainstream media spin is just another example of this administrations credo: Dont believe your lyin eyes. This president is conducting a daily and embarrassing assault on all that Americans hold dear: goodness, honesty, decency and generosity. He possesses none of these qualities, and Americas reputation is being tarnished as a result.

How much longer will he drag this nation through the mud before congressional Republicans decide that enough is enough?

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Wendy Blais, North Hills

..

To the editor: Trump got it wrong when he said that Londons mayor told his citizens not to be alarmed by terrorism. In fact, the mayor was encouraging the people of London not to be alarmed by an increased police presence.

Our presidents behavior comes laughingly close to that of the hard-of-hearing character played by Gilda Radner on Saturday Night Live.

On the show, Radners Emily Litella would deliver a strident reaction to a news story shed completely misunderstood but spoke about with absolute authority. She indignantly complained, for example, Whats all this fuss I keep hearing about endangered feces? After working herself into a lather and when told the real issue was endangered species, Emily smiled, looked into the camera, acknowledged her mistake and said, Never mind.

If only Trump could admit erring.

Richard Tuch, Los Angeles

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Gov. Jerry Brown doubles down on California measure changing recall process, calling it eminently reasonable By Christine Mai-Duc State Sen. Steven Bradford (D-Compton), left, and Gov. Jerry Brown talk about funding for projects under the state transportation bill, SB1, at Cal State Dominguez Hills in Carson. (Christian K. Lee/ Los Angeles Times) The partisan volleys have continued this week in the effort to recall state Sen. Josh Newman (D-Fullerton) over his vote to pass an increase in the gas tax. Those seeking to recall Newman submitted more than enough signatures needed to qualify the measure for the ballot, if theyre all deemed valid. Newman supporters looking to halt the recall filed a lawsuit Thursday, claiming signature gatherers had misled voters. And Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill that makes changes to long-standing recall rules, an effort that Republicans have decried as an attempt by Democrats to rig the system to protect one of their own. Brown seemed to double down on that measure Friday at a press conference at Cal State Dominguez Hills, where he discussed the new gas tax, calling the new recall process eminently reasonable. The measure allows voters up to 30 days to remove their signature from a recall petition and creates a new process to review costs associated with a recall election. Brown said the bill provides an opportunity for people who have been hoodwinked to change their mind. Its all about truth and giving people the opportunity to make sure that their vote and their signature is knowingly given, Brown. The only people who would be against that are people who wanted to fool people and dont want to test it in court or in the light of day. .@JerryBrownGov responds to GOP criticism of budget trailer he signed that could make Newman recall harder. Calls it "eminently reasonable." pic.twitter.com/hSsmIPiHtP  Christine Mai-Duc (@cmaiduc) June 30, 2017 Browns comments came after a roundtable discussion in which he and state Sen. Steven Bradford (D-Compton) spoke about the importance of directing transportation dollars raised by the gas tax increase to businesses owned by women, minorities and people who are disabled. Brown cast it as part of a larger question of equality and opportunity in America. But the discussion took place even as Brown mused about efforts to repeal the controversial tax package, which is expected to raise $52 billion over 10 years for road repairs and other transportation projects. If people want to not fund the roads, then they can put something on the ballot and maybe change things, Brown said. But I think most people in California want to fix the roads. Assemblyman Travis Allen (R-Huntington Beach), who is running for governor, has filed a ballot measure to repeal the gas tax. Brown dismissed a recent poll by the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley, which said that a majority of registered voters oppose the gas tax increases Brown and legislators recently approved. That was a poll that said, Do you want to raise a tax? Brown said. Of course people are going to say no. Brown added that when voters are given concrete situations like education and roads, theyre more likely to support tax increases. I think Californians are always leery of taxes. Im leery of taxes, Brown said. You want to drive around on gravel roads? Ive got a gravel road out in front of my house in the country. Its not bad. But I dont think thats what people want. I think they want real, paved roads  and to have paved roads youve got to spend real money. Times staff writer Patrick McGreevy contributed to this report. Facebook

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San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer says he wont run for governor, dashing hopes of GOP leaders By Phil Willon San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer speaks during a news conference about the San Diego Chargers in 2015. (Gregory Bull / AP) Republican San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, who has been lobbied intensely by GOP leaders to run for California governor, on Friday rejected the idea and vowed to serve out his second term at city hall. Both House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) and state Republican Party Chairman Jim Brulte had urged Faulconer to run. A fiscal conservative and social moderate who has demonstrated crossover appeal by winning over Democrats, Faulconer has been seen as the GOPs strongest potential gubernatorial candidate, and one who could help Republicans in down-ballot races if he was at the top of the ticket in 2018. But Falconer nixed the idea of a gubernatorial bid in a Facebook post Friday afternoon, saying he was deeply honored by so many encouraging him to run. Its a testament to the people of San Diego, and the progress weve made to create a fiscally responsible, prosperous city that is moving in the right direction. I made a pledge last year to serve out my second term as mayor, and thats exactly what Im going to do, Faulconer said in the post. He was facing pressure to enter the race and GOP insiders who were familiar with his thinking believed he was leaning toward running. Faulconer ultimately decided not to run because he did not see a certain path to victory, according to a top state party official who did not want to be identified because they were not authorized to speak for the San Diego mayor. The last time a GOP candidate won a statewide race was in 2006. The governors race already has attracted a handful of Republican candidates, but none with Faulconers political stature. They include conservative Orange County Assemblyman Travis Allen and Rancho Santa Fe venture capitalist John Cox. Speculation is mounting that former state Assemblyman David Hadley plans to announce a run. The Democratic heavyweights in the race include Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and state Treasurer John Chiang. A strong GOP top-of-the-ticket candidate would be expected to increase Republican turnout next fall. Faulconers decision not to run could impact some hotly contested congressional races in California, and potentially affect Republican efforts to retain control of the House of Representatives. If a Republican gubernatorial candidate fails to make the general election, creating a Democrat-on-Democrat race in November 2018, that could depress GOP turnout and affect those targeted congressional races. It leaves the Republicans without an obvious front-runner that the donors would have confidence in, said GOP strategist Rob Stutzman, who previously advised former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and 2010 GOP nominee Meg Whitman. But it still depends on the nature of the race next November. Its too early to say. Update 4:21 p.m.: This story was updated with reaction about Faulconers decision and more information about the 2018 election. This story was originally published at 3:30 p.m. Facebook

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Assembly Democrats denounce threats made after single-payer healthcare bill was sidelined Facebook

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Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom blasts National Rifle Assn. recruitment video, saying it could lead to violence By Seema Mehta (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press) Gubernatorial candidate Gavin Newsom called on the National Rifle Assn. to take down a controversial new video that he argued villanizes political rivals and could lead to violence. Come after politicians. Come after policy makers. Come after ME, Newsom wrote on his Facebook page Thursday. But do not implicitly call for demonstrations of force against your fellow Americans in a country that is already reeling. You are powerful. People are listening to you. And your message could lead to tragedy. The NRA video, which urges people to join the organization, was posted earlier this month and features conservative commentator Dana Loesch talking about political rivals who she argues use the media, schools and Hollywood for sinister purposes. The video features footage of police clashing with protesters and a bloodied Trump supporter, and flashes images such as the Hollywood sign, Disney Hall and the Los Angeles Times building as Loesch repeatedly invokes an unnamed opponent she refers to as they. Loeschs concluding remarks in the minute-long video have drawn the most ire. The only way we stop this, the only way we save our country and our freedom, is to fight this violence of lies with the clenched fist of truth, Loesch said. Im the National Rifle Assn. of America, and Im freedoms safest place. Newsom is a longtime foe of the NRA. He was a primary sponsor of Proposition 63, a ballot measure voters approved in November that requires background checks to purchase ammunition, bans possession of high-capacity magazines and other gun-safety efforts. On Thursday, the NRA claimed victory when a federal judge, at their attorneys request, granted a preliminary injunction blocking a related law that would have required Californians to get rid of large-capacity magazines by Saturday or face fines and potential jail time. Newsom, the states lieutenant governor, wrote that he felt a chill down my spine when he watched the video. He said while he and the NRA have long disagreed, the video crosses the line of appropriate political debate. He described it as dangerous because it tells viewers that our fellow Americans are to be feared  and even worse. How does this video advance debate? How does it bring people together for common ideals? How does it do anything but cast Americans as enemies to be defeated in a cynical ploy to sell as many weapons as possible? he wrote. Facebook

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Tired of exporting campaign cash, these politicos are putting California first By Mark Z. Barabak Air Force One leaves California after another fundraising foray. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times) California feeds the world with its bounty, fuels the economy with its innovation, fires the imagination with its creativity. There is one export, though, that is far less celebrated: the unceasing torrent of outbound campaign cash. For political fundraisers, California has long been the Big Rock Candy Mountain, excavated, mined and, ultimately, shafted by candidates of both parties who use the boodle to run for president in Iowa or New Hampshire, or Congress in East Podunk. Now, Democratic efforts are underway to put California first, directing more campaign cash from whence it came by focusing on seven targeted House districts in the Central Valley and southern part of the state. Read More Facebook

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Federal judge blocks California gun law By Patrick McGreevy A handgun is displayed with 10- and 15-shot magazines. (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press) A federal judge Thursday granted a request by attorneys for the National Rifle Assn. to block a law that requires Californians to dispose of large-capacity ammunition magazines by Saturday or face fines and possible jail time. U.S. District Judge Roger T. Benitez wrote in San Diego that the rights of voters who approved Proposition 63 in November have to be balanced against the rights of gun owners. If this injunction does not issue, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of otherwise law-abiding citizens will have an untenable choice: become an outlaw or dispossess ones self of lawfully acquired property, Benitez wrote. That is a choice they should not have to make. C.D. Michel, an attorney for the NRA and state gun owners, welcomed the decision, which allows a lawsuit to be decided on its merits before the law takes effect. My clients are pleased the Court affirmed that the Second Amendment is not a second class right, and that law abiding gun owners have a right to choose to have these magazines to help them defend themselves and their families, Michel said in a statement. Read More Facebook

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Two California Democrats join with House Republicans to vote for Kates Law By Sarah D. Wire There would be tougher penalties for people repeatedly caught crossing the border illegally, and millions of dollars less in federal funds for so-called sanctuary jurisdictions such as Los Angeles under two House immigration bills approved Thursday. Both bills would fulfill President Trumps campaign promises if they became law, but the Senate has killed similar legislation and is unlikely to be able to reach the 60-vote requirement to pass the bills. The House voted 257 to 167, with 24 Democrats crossing party lines, to pass Kates Law, which would create harsher mandatory minimum prison sentences for people who repeatedly enter the U.S. illegally. It is named after Kathryn Steinle, who allegedly was shot and killed in San Francisco in 2015 by Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, a Mexican immigrant who had repeatedly entered the country illegally and was released from jail by sheriffs officials despite a request by immigration officials to keep him behind bars. Two California Democrats, Reps. Jackie Speier of Hillsborough and Eric Swalwell of Dublin, joined Republicans in voting for the bill. Swalwell grew up with Steinle and is still in touch with her family, he said. This bill is not perfect, and its shameful that the Republicans did not allow any debate. But it does improve our ability to punish individuals who repeatedly break the law and to deter those who may do so, he Swalwell said in a statement. Read More Facebook

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Committee unexpectedly opens door to Rep. Barbara Lees push to end military force authorization By Sarah D. Wire (Paul Morigi/Getty Images) In September 2001, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland) was the only member of Congress to object to an Authorization for the Use of Military Force, a resolution in response to the terrorist attacks that paved the way for the war in Afghanistan. In the 16 years since, the resolution has been used by President George W. Bush, President Obama and now President Trump as justification for more than 35 military actions in nearly 20 countries around the world -- which means those presidents have not gone back to Congress for new permission to send troops into harms way. On Thursday, the House Appropriations Committee opened the door to ending that 2001 authorization when it added Lees amendment to a Defense Department measure. Congress would have 240 days to debate a new authorization. At the end of that time the 2001 authorization would be repealed. Lee has lobbied hard just to get to this first step, which was approved by a voice vote in the Republican led committee. Ive been working on this for years and years and years. Im just really pleased that Republicans and Democrats today really understood what Ive been saying and Ive been explaining for the last 16 years, and that is, this resolution is a blank check for perpetual war, Lee said. Committee members broke into applause after the unexpected vote. Lee said Thursday she plans to personally call Speaker Paul Ryan and make the case for keeping her amendment in the bill when it gets to the House floor. The public wants to see a debate, Lee said. Our young men and women in harms way need to know their Congress is supporting them and backing them up, or not. Facebook

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Volkswagen submits revised plan for installing charging stations as part of emission-cheating settlement By Chris Megerian (Markus Schreiber / Associated Press) Volkswagen would build more electric vehicle charging stations in disadvantaged communities under an updated plan being submitted to state regulators on Thursday. The companys subsidiary, Electrify America, revised its proposal after an earlier version was rejected as inadequate by the California Air Resources Board. The proposal is the first phase of an $800-million investment in the state, one piece of a much larger settlement over Volkswagens cheating on vehicle emission rules. Although the money is expected to yield hundreds of new charging stations and boost Californias efforts to foster the market for electric cars, its also been a source of controversy. State regulators want 35% of the money to be spent in disadvantaged communities, a target endorsed by the Legislature as well. Electrify America CEO Mark McNabb said, We will strive hard to hit it. The updated plan adds Fresno to the list of metropolitan areas, which already included Los Angeles and Sacramento, where charging stations would be installed. It made sense to get out into the Central Valley, McNabb said. We thought that was an improvement we could make to the plan. Facebook

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Californias top elections officer to Trumps voting fraud panel: No By John Myers (Dylan Stewart / HS Insider) President Trumps voter fraud commission will not be getting the names and addresses of Californias registered voters. The panels request was denied on Thursday by Secretary of State Alex Padilla, who said it would only legitimize false claims of massive election cheating last fall. Padilla refused to hand over data, including the names, addresses, political party and voting history of Californias 19.4 million voters. Kris Kobach, the secretary of state of Kansas who serves as vice chairman of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, sent letters to all 50 states on Wednesday for information he said would help the group examine rules that either enhance or undermine the American peoples confidence in the integrity of federal elections processes. Padilla, though, suggested the effort is little more than a ruse. I will not provide sensitive voter information to a commission that has already inaccurately passed judgment that millions of Californians voted illegally, he said in a written statement. Californias participation would only serve to legitimize the false and already debunked claims of massive voter fraud made by the President, the Vice President, and Mr. Kobach. Last November, Trump tweeted that California was one of three states where serious voter fraud took place in the general election. No state or local elections official has found any evidence to back up the presidents assertion. Kobachs request says the panel seeks only publicly available information. Basic information about California voters is routinely shared with journalists, political campaigns and researchers after a written request and payment of a fee. The letter asks for data including information regarding any felony convictions, information regarding voter registration in another state, information regarding military status, and overseas citizen information. Padilla also criticized the selection of Kobach to help lead Trumps commission, accusing the Kansas official of past efforts at racial profiling and suppressing voter turnout. His role as vice chair is proof that the ultimate goal of the commission is to enact policies that will result in the disenfranchisement of American citizens, Padilla said. The presidential commissions first meeting is scheduled for July 19. Facebook

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Supporters of state Sen. Josh Newman sue to stop effort to recall him, alleging voters have been misled By Patrick McGreevy Sen. Josh Newman (D-Fullerton) faces a recall. (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press) Supporters of state Sen. Josh Newman filed a lawsuit Thursday seeking to stop a recall campaign against the lawmaker, alleging that signature gatherers have misled voters and the petition contains false information. The Democratic legislator from Fullerton faces a recall funded by the California Republican Party for voting with other lawmakers to increase the states gas tax and vehicle fees to raise $5.2 billion annually for road repairs. On Tuesday, the state party announced it had submitted 84,988 signatures to election officials, some 20,000 more signatures than would be needed if officials determine they are valid. The lawsuit against Secretary of State Alex Padilla was filed in Sacramento Superior Court by three residents of Newmans Senate district and paid for by the campaign against the recall. It alleges that signature gatherers misled voters to sign the petitions by saying they would repeal the car tax. The petition gathering campaign has misrepresented the nature of the petition by informing voters that it will Stop the Gas Tax when it will not, the lawsuit says. These statements are intentionally misleading statements of fact that are false beyond dispute and mislead voters The legal complaint, which also names several signature gatherers, alleges that the notice of intent to file the petition is inaccurate in saying that the tax bill provides billions of dollars for mass transit in Northern California without Newmans district benefiting from the revenue. The bill itself does not earmark where money will go, but the intent of lawmakers was that Newmans district would benefit, the lawsuit says. The lawsuit asks that the circulation of the petition be stopped and the recall effort, using the petition as drafted, be halted. This suit is about nothing less than the integrity of our election process; a recall election simply should not be certified when signatures were gathered based on lies to voters, said James Harrison, an attorney who filed the lawsuit. Former San Diego City Councilman Carl DeMaio, an organizer of the recall, said the lawsuit is without merit. Josh Newman refuses to accept accountability for his disastrous vote to raise the car and gas tax and instead has chosen to blame others for the recall against him with lies and frivolous lawsuits, DeMaio said. Facebook

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State to pay $2.9 million to three men wrongfully convicted in Los Angeles cases By Patrick McGreevy Kash Delano Register outside a Los Angeles restaurant in November 2013 after his release from prison. (Christina House / For The Times) The state Senate has approved payment of $2.96 million to settle three claims by men who were wrongly convicted for crimes in Los Angeles and served time in prison before they were exonerated. The approval of the payments, amounting to $140 for each day served behind bars, next goes to Gov. Jerry Brown. The largest payment  $1.7 million  goes to Kash Delano Register, who said he was wrongfully convicted of a 1979 murder because of a flawed LAPD investigation. He served 34 years in prison. In 2013, the Los Angeles County Superior Court ordered that Register be released from prison after it found he had been denied due process of law and a fair trial because material exculpatory information and evidence was not disclosed. The court acted after lawyers and students from Loyola Law School cast doubt on the testimony of a key prosecution witness. The Los Angeles County district attorneys office later dismissed the charges, and Register was found by the court to be factually innocent. The Senate payment for 12,427 days served in custody is in addition to a $16.7-million settlement paid to Register by the city of Los Angeles. The Senate also voted Thursday to pay $886,760 to Luis Vargas, who spent more than 17 years in custody before a court ruled him factually innocent of a 1998 rape. In 2012, DNA evidence from one of the victims showed that a suspect known as the Teardrop Rapist, not Vargas, was the perpetrator of the rape. The third payment, $340,620, goes to Reggie Cole, who was found factually innocent after serving time in prison for the shooting death of a man outside a South Los Angeles house of prostitution in 1995. Facebook

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Public affairs strategist Fiona Hutton hosts fundraiser for Antonio Villaraigosa By Phil Willon Antonio Villaraigosa in July (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) Los Angeles public affairs strategist Fiona Hutton is hosting a San Fernando Valley fundraiser for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Antonio Villaraigosa in July. Hutton, who has worked on a number of statewide campaigns, also raised money for Villaraigosa during his successful campaign for mayor of Los Angeles in 2005. The July 25 fundraiser is being held at Huttons office in Studio City. Tickets run $1,000 apiece. To be a co-host, itll cost $10,000. Along with serving as president of her company, Fiona Hutton & Associates, Hutton sits on the board of directors of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce. Facebook

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California joins other states asking the Trump administration for information on how its enforcing immigration law By Patrick McGreevy Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra wants more information on federal enforcement of immigration laws. ( Andrew Harnik / Associated Press) A group of nine state attorneys general, including California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra, filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Department of Homeland Security on Thursday seeking records that would clarify how the Trump administration is enforcing federal immigration law. The request seeks the number of immigration detentions, deportations and detainer requests, and the rationale for each, as well as clarifying information on whether Trump is following through on comments that he will not target young people who were brought to the country illegally by their parents. The attorneys general also want to know whether immigrants in the country illegally have been detained at schools, hospitals and places of worship, which the state officials feel should be off-limits for enforcement. Mixed messages from the Trump Administration on immigration enforcement are sowing confusion and increasing anxiety among immigrants, Becerra said in a statement. Today we ask the Administration to tell us what it is doing in this area. The data could be used in a barrage of legal challenges the states have filed against federal immigration policies. Becerra noted that immigration-related arrests have increased nearly 40% since Trump became president, and there is concern that some of the arrests have included young people who were given a deferral from deportation under the Obama administration. The Presidents Executive Orders, and the steps taken by the Department of Homeland Security to implement those orders, have generated new fears and uncertainties in immigrant communities across the country, the attorneys general wrote in the request for information. The other states represented in the request are New York, Illinois, Washington, Massachusetts, Iowa, Maryland, Oregon and Hawaii. Facebook

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This is why Californias Legislature cant fix the states housing problems By Liam Dillon An apartment complex in Hollywood (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) For 50 years, California has had a law that aims to encourage developers to build housing. But the law has failed at helping stem the statewide shortage of homes that drives Californias affordability problems. The reason? The law requires cities and counties to produce prodigious reports to plan for housing  but it doesnt hold them accountable for any resulting home building. Cities and counties resent the law. To avoid complying, theyve asked the state to let prison beds count toward their low-income housing goals, among other things. And despite knowing about the laws weaknesses for decades, state lawmakers have provided no incentive, such as a greater share of tax dollars, for cities and counties to meet their housing goals. Read More Facebook

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Californias attorney general joins the fight against President Trumps sanctuary city order By Patrick McGreevy Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra led a group of 10 states Wednesday in filing an court brief supporting San Francisco and other California communities that challenged President Trumps executive order to withhold federal funds from sanctuary jurisdictions. After the local governments won a preliminary injunction against the order, the Trump administration asked the courts to dismiss the cities lawsuit. The brief filed by Becerra argues that public safety is improved when local law enforcement agencies focus on crime prevention instead of helping federal authorities enforce immigration laws. The Trump Administration does not have the right to coerce states, counties or municipalities to do the federal governments job, Becerra said in a statement. Californias state and local law enforcement officials are in the business of public safety, not of deportation. Threatening public safety funding to compel localities to do immigration work is a dangerous game that undermines public safety. Facebook

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California Supreme Court leaves in place decision upholding cap-and-trade system By Chris Megerian Mary Nichols, chairwoman of the Air Resources Board, oversees the cap-and-trade program. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times) After more than four years, a legal challenge to Californias cap-and-trade program has reached an unsuccessful conclusion. The end came on Wednesday when the California Supreme Court declined to consider an appeal from business groups who consider the program to be an unconstitutional tax. The program requires companies to buy permits to release greenhouse gases, a system intended to provide a financial incentive to reduce emissions. The law that provided the programs foundation was not passed with a two-thirds vote in the Legislature, the legal threshold for new taxes, sparking lawsuits from the California Chamber of Commerce and the Pacific Legal Foundation. A state appeals court rejected their arguments in April, but they appealed. Business groups were also concerned the decision was too broad and could open the door to additional taxes. Despite the states victory in court, there are other legal questions around cap and trade. Gov. Jerry Brown is pushing lawmakers to extend the program past 2020 with new legislation. With this Supreme Court victory, now its up to us to take action extending Californias cap-and-trade system on a more permanent basis, Brown said in a statement. This story has been updated with a statement from the governor. Facebook

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Rohrabacher on meeting with Manafort while he was a foreign agent: It was a nice little dinner By Sarah D. Wire (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) When former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort belatedly filed as a foreign agent on behalf of a pro-Russian Ukrainian political party this week, he listed a meeting with just one U.S. politician  Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of Huntington Beach. Manaforts years-late filing with the Justice Department details $17 million in political consulting work he did between 2012 and 2014 for the Party of Regions, a Ukrainian party considered friendly with the Kremlin. Rohrabacher told the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday that the March 2013 meeting happened over dinner at the Capitol Hill Club, a popular Washington Republican social club. He said Manafort billed it as a chance to get reacquainted decades after they worked together in the 1970s on President Reagans campaign. Still, he assumed Manafort had an agenda. I assume when old friends call me up and are wanting to get reacquainted and stuff I always assume they are in some way under contract with somebody, Rohrabacher said. Rohrabacher, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats, has long been known for encouraging improved relations with Russia, something thats made him an outlier in the Republican Party. He said Russia and the Baltic states probably came up during dinner, but it wasnt the focus of their conversation. We discussed a myriad of things, a lot of personal stuff, a lot of different analysis of the politics of the day, Rohrabacher said. It was a nice little dinner. Three days later, Manafort contributed $1,000 to Rohrabachers reelection campaign. Manaforts modest donation didnt stand out, Rohrabacher said. Ongoing FBI and congressional investigations into Russian attempts to interfere in the 2016 election, and how the Trump campaign may have been involved, have heightened interest in any connections American politicians may have had with the Russian government or its proxies. Rohrabachers opponents immediately began fundraising off the revelation that Manafort met with the congressman while serving as a foreign agent. Democrat Harley Rouda, whos running for Rohrabachers seat in 2018, called it embarrassing in a solicitation email Tuesday. We need someone who cares more about Orange County and America than supporting Russia and Putin, Roudas email stated. Facebook

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Democrats block Republican legislators proposal for forensic audit of UC Office of President By Patrick McGreevy Two months after a state audit found mismanagement at the University of California, Democratic state lawmakers on Wednesday blocked a Republican legislators proposal to have auditors go back in and look deeper at spending, this time with an eye for possible criminal activity. Assemblyman Dante Acosta (R-Santa Clarita) said the follow-up examination was justified after an audit in April found the UC Office of the President had failed to disclose a $175-million budget surplus to the Board of Regents and the public, was paying excessive salaries and expenses and had inadequate financial safeguards in place to prevent abuse. The lack of controls, the audit concluded, was putting millions of dollars at risk of abuse. I am fighting to return trust in the institution of the UC Office of the President for students, parents, faculty and staff, Acosta said. Only complete transparency can accomplish that goal. However, no Democratic lawmakers on the Joint Legislative Audit Committee voted to authorize a new audit, so the motion failed. Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi (D-Torrance) said the university administration should be given time to address the recommendations of its recent audit. I believe this request is premature, he said. State Auditor Elaine Howle said Wednesday in response to a legislators question that she did not find any evidence of misuse of funds. We didnt see anything nefarious, Howle told the panel. UC President Janet Napolitano said funds were not hidden, but she has agreed to adopt policies to make the budget process more transparent. Monica Lozano, chairwoman of the UC Board of Regents, told the legislative committee Wednesday that a new audit is unnecessary and may interfere with the systems implementation of recommendations from the last audit, including the hiring of an accountant to look at UC spending. Facebook

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Single-payer healthcare advocates protest at Capitol with a message for Californias Assembly speaker: Shame on you! By Melanie Mason View Twitter post Backers of a measure to establish a single-payer healthcare system in California rallied at the Capitol on Wednesday to renounce Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Paramount), who shelved the bill last week. Several hundred demonstrators, many affiliated with the California Nurses Assn., the legislations sponsor, convened in the Capitol rotunda, where they unfurled a banner that blared Inaction = Death, before handing off signs with written complaints to a member of Rendons staff. The rally, on the heels of a smaller demonstration at Rendons district office on Tuesday, is a sign of how single-payer backers continue to seethe after the bill, SB 562, stalled on Friday. Patty Estefes, a retired nurse from San Jose, said the campaign for single-payer heathcare, in which the government would cover all residents healthcare costs, was her passion. Rendon sabotaged SB 562 and we want to take the knife out, said Estefes, explaining her sign, which had an image of the California grizzly bear stabbed in the back with a blade labeled Rendon. The image has become popular among supporters of the bill, although other Democrats have said the violence of the image makes them uneasy. View Twitter post A depiction of violence in any form is unacceptable and inappropriate. #StandwithRendon #StrongerTogether #DeathThreatsUnacceptable pic.twitter.com/KLF8nNvxdZ  Rudy Salas Jr (@rudysalasjr) June 27, 2017 Meanwhile, another union leader, Robbie Hunter of the powerful State Building and Construction Trades Council of California, chimed in Wednesday with support for the state Assembly speaker. Working people have real fights, and they are not with a labor champion like Anthony Rendon, said Hunter, who denounced the criticism from single-payer advocates as unfair and unwarranted attacks. Facebook

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Garcetti and Schwarzenegger urge cities and states to lead fight against climate change in Trump era By Michael Finnegan Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti on Wednesday called on cities and states to lead the nations fight against global warming as the federal government begins to reverse its climate change policies. The Republican former film star  who signed a landmark 2006 law to reduce Californias carbon emissions  and the Democratic mayor spoke out against President Trumps denial of climate science at a forum at Creative Artists Agency in Century City. Both argued that steps taken by cities and states to promote renewable energy could largely make up for the Trump administrations withdrawal from the worldwide Paris agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Facebook

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California voters could decide in 2020 whether to remove mandatory punishment for falsifying U.S. citizenship records By Jazmine Ulloa A proposed California law would let state voters decide in November 2020 whether to remove the mandatory punishment for a person who falsifies citizenship documents. The legislation by Assemblyman Raul Bocanegra (D-Pacoima) would make the crime a wobbler, meaning prosecutors would have the discretion to charge suspects in such cases with either felony offenses or lower-level misdemeanors. That, supporters say, would bring the penalties in line with those for similar crimes committed by legal residents who falsify government records, such as drivers licenses. Assembly Bill 222 moved out of the Senate Public Safety Committee on Tuesday with a 5-2 vote along party lines. An amendment added Tuesday places the issue on the ballot in November 2020. Bocangera said the measure was introduced as a response to President Trumps hard-line stance on immigration and would reverse part of Proposition 187, a 1994 California ballot measure to deny public services to immigrants in the country illegally. The bill would repeal provisions in the penal code that require a person to serve an automatic five-year mandatory prison sentence or pay a $75,000 fine if they are convicted on charges of manufacturing, distributing or selling false documents to conceal someone elses citizenship or residency status. It has the support of the Los Angeles County district attorneys office, which says there are far more serious crimes that carry substantially lower penalties. Today, if an underage college student uses a fake ID to purchase a six-pack of beer, he or she can be charged with a misdemeanor, Bocanegra said in a statement. However, if an immigrant is caught using that same fake ID, he or she is automatically charged with a felony and is subject to five years in prison. Facebook

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Its all good: Gov. Jerry Brown (again) signs a budget without any vetoed spending By John Myers Gov. Jerry Brown, signs bills in his Capitol office on Oct. 9, 2015. (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press) Gov. Jerry Brown holds two unique records when it comes to state budgets. No governor has signed more of them, and none in modern times have been as hesitant to veto items they dont like. In the budget he signed on Monday, Brown made no changes. Its not the first time. This was Browns second consecutive budget in which he took no veto actions, and his third veto-free budget since 1982. Governors have line-item veto power to erase budget expenditures, decisions that arent subject to review by the Legislature. Previous chief executives have used their unilateral power far more often, a way to trim spending from a variety of state budget-related programs. State documents show former Gov. George Deukmejian holds the modern record for the most budget changes, issuing 367 line-item vetoes on July 21, 1983. In total amount of spending, the record belongs to former Gov. Pete Wilson, whose budget vetoes in 1998 added up to more than $1.9 million. Brown also has the distinction of issuing fewer vetoes of stand-alone legislation of any governor in the last half-century, suggesting its a sign of respect for the legislative branch of government. The governors signature on the latest state budget sets in place $183.2-billion in spending, covering a wide range of programs and services while setting aside more in cash reserves than ever before. Read More Facebook

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Campaign to recall freshman state senator submits more than enough signatures to qualify for the ballot By Patrick McGreevy State Sen. Josh Newman (D-Fullerton) at the Capitol on April 20. (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press) The campaign against state Sen. Josh Newman has turned in more than enough signatures to force the freshman Democrat from Fullerton into a recall election. Republican Carl DeMaio, a lead organizer of the effort, said the group submitted 84,988 signatures on Tuesday. More signatures are being collected but only 63,500 registered voters in the 29th Senate District are needed to put the recall question on the ballot. It shows that there is an unbelievable grass roots movement to fire Josh Newman for his disasterous vote to support an increase in the gas tax, said DeMaio, a conservative radio talk show host from San Diego. The recall drive was complicated by recently enacted legislation that allows voters to ask that their signatures not be included in the recall petitions if they felt they were misled. Elections officials in Los Angeles, Orange and San Bernardino counties must now determine whether there are sufficient valid signatures to qualify the recall. Mike Roth, a spokesman for the campaign against the recall, said special interests including Chevron have helped fuel a misleading petition drive. The recall petition is a costly power grab by out-of-district special interests that wont save taxpayers a dime and wont solve any problem voters care about, Roth said. What it will do is cost up to $3 million in tax dollars that would be better spent on our schools and public safety. Facebook

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In massive shake-up, Gov. Jerry Brown breaks up Californias scandal-plagued tax collection agency By Patrick McGreevy In a move that triggers the most dramatic shake-up of the California Board of Equalization in its 138-year history, Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation Tuesday that strips the embattled state tax collection agency of most of its powers and duties as officials scramble to create an entirely new department by July 1. The board is the target of an investigation by the state Department of Justice, and its employees and members have been accused by auditors of mismanagement, including putting $350 million in sales taxes in the wrong accounts and improperly interfering with decisions to open field offices and transfer staff. The governor signed a bill that pares the state board from an agency with 4,800 workers to one of 400 employees, shifting the other staff engaged in the collection of sales and excise taxes to a new California Department of Tax and Fee Administration. The elected, five-member Board of Equalization will also give up its role hearing taxpayer appeals to a new Office of Tax Appeals, leaving the board to advocate for taxpayers and continue setting rates for gas taxes and pipeline levies, and making sure counties fairly assess property taxes. Anticipating the governors action, officials had already started work to create a new state department by July 1. Its a short period, acknowledged Marybel Batjer, secretary of the California Government Operations Agency, who is coordinating the changes. The new department will be headed by a director appointed by the governor and requiring state Senate approval. Brown will also appoint a chief deputy and chief counsel. The recruitment is underway for those positions, Batjer said, adding that the transition will continue after July 1, obviously. Not every i will be dotted and t crossed between now and July 1. We will do our mighty best to do the most important things before July 1. Learn more on the history of the state board and whats next. Facebook

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Gov. Jerry Brown approves a $183-billion state budget, though a few details are unfinished By John Myers (Justin Sullivan/Getty) Gov. Jerry Brown on Tuesday signed into law a $183.2-billion budget, a spending plan with significant boosts for public schools and a variety of programs to help Californias most needy residents. While the blueprint depends on a series of other related bills that havent reached his desk, Browns action largely ratifies the plan approved by the Legislature and ensures the state will have a budget in place for the new fiscal year that begins Saturday. This budget provides money to repair our roads and bridges, pay down debt, invest in schools, fund the earned income tax credit and provide Medi-Cal health care for millions of Californians, Brown said in a written statement released by his office. The budget boosts total state and local spending on K-12 education and community colleges to $74.5 billion, roughly $11,000 per pupil in the coming school year. It also increases funding for the University of California and Cal State University systems, and provides additional money for preschool and child care programs. Brown and lawmakers agreed to devote a portion of new tobacco tax dollars to higher payments for doctors and dentists that treat patients in Medi-Cal, the states healthcare program for the poor. Divvying up the dollars generated by last falls Proposition 56 was among one of the most contentious issues during spring budget negotiations. The budget sets aside additional money in the states rainy-day reserve fund, growing the contingency account to $8.5 billion. Brown, who rarely uses his line-item veto power in trimming budgets, left entirely intact the plan ratified by the Legislature on June 15. While the governor signed 15 budget-related bills Tuesday, a handful of other related bills have yet to make their way to his desk. Those include a plan to make an extra $6-billion payment to the California Public Employees Retirement System, or CalPERS, borrowing the money from surplus state revenues. The plan was approved by the state Senate on Monday. Facebook

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Gov. Jerry Brown says GOP healthcare bill cuts right into the heart of what is already a divided nation By Sarah D. Wire Californias senators, Kamala Harris, left, and Dianne Feinstein. (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press) One in three California residents are covered by Medicaid, and California is thought to have the most to lose if Republicans gather enough votes to roll back major aspects of the Affordable Care Act. California would see the nations biggest increase in uninsured people by next year and face a $24-billion budget shortfall by 2026 because of reduced Medicaid funding, Californias Democratic senators and Gov. Jerry Brown warned during a call with reporters on Tuesday. The Californians call was just one of dozens of events House and Senate Democrats held Tuesday to try to stir up anger over the bill. Brown called the bill divisive, saying it puts tax cuts for the wealthy above healthcare for the poor. This is such a political bill, he said. This bill will be the most divisive maneuver, cutting right into the heart of what is already a divided nation. The bill would increase the number of people without health coverage by 22 million and push up medical costs for millions of other poor and sick Americans, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. After pledging to pass the bill this week, Senate Republicans abruptly delayed a vote until after the July Fourth recess. A handful of Republicans have announced they are leery of the bill, saying it either goes too far or doesnt go far enough, and the White House is lobbying them to get on board. Every major medical association has come out against the bill, which was written by a small group of senators behind closed doors. Sen. Kamala Harris said the bill is being rushed to the Senate floor without hearings, debate or much time for senators to review it. Its absolutely wrong, it is harmful and it is unconscionable. The bill would restructure our nations entire health care system, she said. Sen. Dianne Feinstein said its not enough to amend the existing GOP bill, and Congress needs to start over instead. She said 10 or 12 Republican senators need to defect so the bill is not revived after a few changes, as a similar bill was in the House. I am optimistic that it is doable to kill it, Feinstein said. Its the most indefensible bill Ive actually seen in 24 years in the Senate. Facebook

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National Republicans target California water needs in new ads against House Democrats By Sarah D. Wire The National Republican Congressional Committee is going after five California Democrats for votes on a water issue. The online ads are identical except for one line tailored to target each Democrat: Reps. John Garamendi of Walnut Grove, Ami Bera of Elk Grove, Salud Carbajal of Santa Barbara, Raul Ruiz of Palm Desert and Scott Peters of San Diego. They specifically are about the Democrats voting against a bill to funnel dam permits through a single federal agency in an effort to speed up new water storage projects. Tell Congressman Garamendi to stop letting politics get in the way of our water, one ad says. Sponsored by Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Elk Grove), the bill passed the House last week, with a 233-180 largely partisan vote. Democrats need 24 seats to regain control of the House, and are expected to focus their attention in the midterms on tying Republicans to President Trump. Their list of seats they need to flip includes 9 of the 14 California seats held by Republicans. The ads, which will run online for the next week, could be the first glimpse of an NRCC strategy of trying to keep the focus on local issues in the 2018 election. California Democrats want to help radical environmentalists more than their drought-stricken constituents. If Democrats continue to sit on their hands and let this chance to capture much-needed water float on by, the NRCC will hold them accountable, said spokesman Jack Pandol. Facebook

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Only a few California counties may use the new state law for sending every voter a ballot in the mail By John Myers A broad effort to close thousands of California neighborhood polling places in favor of absentee ballots and multi-purpose vote centers has yet to find traction beyond a handful of counties. Data collected by Secretary of State Alex Padillas office concludes only two counties have a plan in place to implement the sweeping change in state election law enacted last year. As many as 14 counties can do so in 2018, with Los Angeles County and others able to switch to the system in 2020. Change is hard, said Jill LaVine, registrar of voters in Sacramento County, one of the counties that has already approved adoption of the system to swap polling places for a limited number of vote centers offering several different election services. Meanwhile, leaders in the county that has done the most planning to move toward changing its election system -- Orange County -- have rejected the new law for 2018. Read More Facebook

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Nurses union uses the image of a California bear stabbed in the back after single-payer bill is blocked Facebook

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Rep. Grace Napolitano to miss House votes for several weeks while husband receives cancer treatment By Sarah D. Wire Rep. Grace Napolitano (D-Norwalk) will miss House votes while her husband, Frank Napolitano, undergoes chemotherapy and radiation to treat esophageal cancer, her spokesman said. The congresswoman, 80, easily beat out former Democratic state Assemblyman Roger Hernandez of West Covina in the November election. She said in April that she would seek reelection in 2018, and her husbands health does not change her plan to seek an 11th term, spokesman Jerry ODonnell said. Napolitano has missed the last two weeks of House votes, though shes working some from the district, and is expected to remain in California for several more weeks to care for her husband during the treatment, ODonnell said. He did not know for sure how long Napolitano would be gone, but it is possible she might make it back for some votes during the seven-week-long treatment, he said. Napolitano said by phone she will try to return if the House votes again on the GOP health care bill. I intend to be back at work soon, Napolitano said. The House leaves Friday for a one-week break and leaves again at the end of July for the August recess. Napolitano suffered a minor stroke in 2016 that affected her ability to write and slightly slowed her walk. For the record, 8:47 a.m.: An earlier version of this post identified the type of cancer Napolitanos husband has as lung cancer. It is esophageal cancer. 8:47 a.m., June 27: This post has been updated with a quote from Napolitano. 2:45 p.m. This post has been updated to correct how many terms the congresswoman has served. 2:26 p.m. This post has been updated with more details about when Napolitano might return. This post was originally published at 2:06 p.m. Facebook

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After a career in the majority, Jimmy Gomez prepares for life in the minority in Washington By Sarah D. Wire (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times) Congressman-elect Jimmy Gomez has spent his entire political career as a member of the majority party. When hes sworn in as central and northeast Los Angeles newest member of Congress in the coming weeks, hell be the most junior Democrat  194th out of 194  in Congress. Hell have to find a path forward in a Congress dominated by the opposing party. Even if Democrats win back control, hell have hundreds of more senior and just as eager colleagues ahead of him in line. Read More Facebook

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Rep. Maxine Waters focuses on GOP healthcare bill at packed town hall By Andrea Castillo (Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times) Rep. Maxine Waters, who spoke Saturday at a packed town hall meeting in Gardena, said she worries some Americans will be forced to do what her family did if the Republican healthcare bill passes. Senate Republicans have pledged to pass a bill before the July Fourth holiday. To illustrate why she believes everyone should have access to comprehensive healthcare, the Los Angeles Democrat said she and her 12 siblings never saw a physician or a dentist their entire childhood. I was born at home in St. Louis back in the day when it was hard for minorities to get into hospitals, she said. Read More Facebook

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This former Jeff Denham challenger wont run again, but hes launching a committee to elect Democrats By Christine Mai-Duc Two-time congressional challenger Michael Eggman says he wont try for a third campaign against Republican Rep. Jeff Denham (Turlock), but hes hoping to help Democrats running against the him. Eggman, a beekeeper and farmer, announced Monday that hes starting a political action committee to help oust Republicans in seven seats, including Denhams in the Central Valley, which Democrats have targeted for 2018. The committee, Red to Blue California, filed papers with the Federal Election Commission in March but so far hasnt reported raising any money. Andrew Feldman, a spokesman for the PAC, said the group has taken in about $50,000 and its goal is to raise at least $7 million in the 2018 cycle. Eggman will serve as chair of the committee. In a statement, Eggman said that while he lost last year, I learned a heck of a lot on the way. Now as Donald Trump threatens to upend the very fabric of what makes our country great, Im doing my part to join the resistance. In addition to Denhams seat, the committee will target Republican Reps. Steve Knight (Palmdale), David Valadao (Hanford), Ed Royce (Fullerton), Mimi Walters (Irvine), Dana Rohrabacher (Huntington Beach) and Darrell Issa (Vista). All seven were reelected in districts won by Hillary Clinton in the presidential election. The committee also plans to use some of the money to promote down-ballot candidates in each of the districts as a way of building a base of Democratic candidates. Eggman, a beekeeper and farmer who received a rare endorsement from Barack Obama in the Democrats unsuccessful quest to take back the House last year, lost to Denham by 5% in November. Spending in that race topped $14 million. Six Democrats have already filed to run in Denhams 10th Congressional District, including Josh Harder, a venture capital executive whose campaign manager worked for Eggman in 2016. Facebook

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California Politics Podcast: Theres a powerful new ally of those who support a sanctuary state By John Myers Supporters of an ambitious California effort to limit law enforcement cooperation with federal immigration authorities begin the week with a prominent new ally. On this weeks California Politics Podcast, we take a look at the impact of Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck endorsing the sanctuary state bill thats now under consideration in Sacramento. We also discuss the decision by Assemblyman Travis Allen (R-Huntington Beach) to run for governor, and how his conservative politics could have a big effect on how Republican voters view their choices in 2018. Im joined by Times staff writer Melanie Mason and Marisa Lagos of KQED News. Facebook

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California wont be passing a single-payer healthcare system any time soon  the plan is dead for this year By Melanie Mason View Twitter post A high-profile effort to establish a single-payer healthcare system in California sputtered on Friday when Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Paramount) decided to shelve the proposal. Rendon announced late Friday afternoon that the bill, SB 562 by state Sens. Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens) and Toni Atkins (D-San Diego), would not advance to a policy hearing in his house, dampening the measures prospect for swift passage this year. SB 562 was sent to the Assembly woefully incomplete, Rendon said in a statement. Even senators who voted for SB 562 noted there are potentially fatal flaws in the bill, including the fact it does not address many serious issues, such as financing, delivery of care, cost controls, or the realities of needed action by the Trump Administration and voters to make SB 562 a genuine piece of legislation. Rendon took pains to note that his action does not kill the bill entirely  because it is the first year of a two-year session, it could be revived next year. But the move is nonetheless a major setback for legislation that has electrified the Democratic partys progressive flank. The California Nurses Assn., the bills sponsors and the states most vocal advocates for single-payer, blasted Rendons decision as cowardly. Acting in secret in the interests of the profiteering insurance companies late Friday afternoon abandons all those people already threatened by Congress and the Trump administration, Deborah Burger, the unions co-president, said in a statement. Burger continued: The people of California are counting on the Legislature to protect them now, not sometime next year, and as polls have shown Californians support this proposal by a wide majority. A solution to this health care emergency could be at hand; Speaker Rendon is standing in opposition. In a joint statement, Lara and Atkins, the measures authors, said they were disappointed the robust debate about healthcare for all that started in the California Senate will not continue in the Assembly this year. This issue is not going away, they added. Gov. Jerry Brown, who had signaled wariness about the proposals costs, said in a statement that Rendon made the case that theres clearly more work to do before anyone is in a position to vote on revamping Californias healthcare system. I recognize the tremendous excitement behind the measure, but basic and fundamental questions remain unanswered, Brown said. Updated at 6:44 p.m.: This article was updated with a comment from Gov. Jerry Brown. Updated at 5:38 p.m.: This article was updated to include comments from the California Nurses Assn. and the measures authors. This article was originally published at 4:38 p.m. Times staff writer Patrick McGreevy contributed to this report. Read More Facebook

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California politicians are in Dallas despite new ban on state employees traveling to Texas By Patrick McGreevy Sen. Ricardo Lara (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press) A day after California banned state employees from going to Texas on official business, a group of politicians from the Golden State was in Dallas on Friday for a major conference. California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra on Thursday announced he was prohibiting state employees from traveling at state expense to Texas and three other states that he determined have approved laws that discriminate against gay and transgender people. Sen. Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens), who is openly gay, is among those attending the annual gathering of the National Assn. of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO). A spokesman said he is using his own money, not taxpayer funds. Lara voted for the bill that enacted the travel ban. Lara felt participating in a panel discussion on immigration was important amid debate over Gov. Greg Abbotts signage of a controversial immigration law that bans sanctuary cities for immigrants in the country illegally, spokesman Michael Soller said. Texas just passed one of the nations most anti-immigrant laws with Senate Bill 4, and California went down this road with Proposition 187 more than 20 years ago, Lara said in a statement. With LGBT and immigrant rights under assault across the country, I thought it was important to join other Latino leaders and show Californias example. Like Lara, West Hollywood Mayor Pro Tem John Duran made plans to attend the Dallas convention well before Becerra announced the travel ban, which does not apply to non-state employees. Duran is the national chairman of NALEO and said the conference was scheduled for Dallas three years ago. I dont know about the LGBT laws in Texas or AG Becerras call for a boycott -- I am not only LGBT but also Latino, Duran said in an email, adding he is very angry over Texas SB 4, which requires law enforcement to cooperate with federal immigration officials in enforcing immigration laws. I am here supporting my elected official colleagues in Texas from Austin, Houston, San Antonio and Dallas who are joining together to sue the state of Texas, Duran said. Being a Californian who worked against Gov. Pete Wilsons Prop 187 -- I have experiences and strategies to share with them. Facebook

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Texas responds to California LGBT travel ban, saying Golden State firms fleeing over taxation and regulation By Patrick McGreevy A day after California officials said they are banning state workers from traveling to Texas on official business, an aide to Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott returned a verbal volley claiming mistreatment of businesses. On Thursday, California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra said Texas and three other states were being put on a list of states that had adopted laws seen by Becerra as discriminatory to the LGBT community and therefore were off-limits for state-sponsored travel. That drew a response Friday from John Wittman, Abbotts press secretary. California may be able to stop their state employees, but they cant stop all the businesses that are fleeing over taxation and regulation and relocating to Texas, Wittman said. Becerra put Texas on the travel-ban list after the governor signed HB 3859 last week. The new law allows foster care agencies to deny adoptions and services to children and parents based on sincerely held religious beliefs. Becerra said the measure allows agencies to discriminate against children in foster care and potentially disqualify LGBT families from the states foster and adoption system. A spokesman for Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin also criticized California officials. It is fascinating that the very same West Coast liberals who rail against the Presidents executive order, that protects our nation from foreign terrorists, have now contrived their own travel ban aimed at punishing states who dont fall in lockstep with their far-left political ideology, said Woody Maglinger, Bevins press secretary. Updated at 1:35 pm to include comment from Woody Maglinger. Facebook

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Rep. Tom McClintocks bill to streamline dam permits passes House largely on party lines By Sarah D. Wire Dam permits would be funneled through a single federal agency in an effort to speed up new water storage projects under a bill that passed the House on Thursday. Sponsored by Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Elk Grove), the 233-180 vote was largely along partisan lines. Reps. Jim Costa (D-Fresno), Lou Correa (D-Santa Ana) and six other Democrats joined with Republicans to pass the bill. McClintock said the various local, state and federal agencies that must sign off on new projects dont have to communicate or set deadlines, and often require redundant information from permit applicants, which can make the application process drag on for years and drive up costs. Dam applications can go on endlessly, McClintock said after the vote. A lot of these projects become cost prohibitive. He pointed to a dam project proposed by the town of Foresthill in his district as an example. Conflicting demands from several federal agencies about a plan to install a spillway gate on the dam at the Sugar Pine Reservoir have driven up the cost, he said. The project application is still under review. So a $2-million project that was a heavy lift for a little community, but within reach, becomes an $11-million cost-prohibitive boondoggle, McClintock said. Under the bill, the Bureau of Reclamation would coordinate with other federal agencies on all aspects of a dam application and set deadlines for deciding whether to approve a project. Democrats who voted against the bill said the bureau would be able to set arbitrary deadlines for the at-times lengthy environmental reviews required for water projects, which could undermine reviews required by laws like the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act. Fixing the process isnt just about saving some headaches or a few hours of time. This is about making sure millions of people in California and across America have the water they need and deserve, said Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield). Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) has filed similar legislation in the Senate, and McClintock said he is cautiously optimistic it will pass. Facebook

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Gov. Jerry Brown says Senate healthcare bill has same stench as House version Facebook

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Travis Allen, a conservative and controversial Orange County lawmaker, jumps into California governors race By Phil Willon Conservative Orange County Assemblyman Travis Allen (R-Huntington Beach) is jumping into Californias 2018 race for governor, a move that could splinter the GOP vote in what promises to be a crowded and competitive race. Travis, elected to the Legislature in 2012, said he decided to run because of the years of wasteful spending and dictatorial policies pushed by Jerry Brown and the Sacramento Democrats. I am running to be the next governor of California to take back our state for the forgotten ordinary citizens of California, who will no longer tolerate the squandering of our incredible natural abundance of people, economy, and resources by limousine liberals beholden to ravenous public sector union bosses and extremist environmentalists, Travis said in a statement announcing his campaign. Outspoken and controversial, Travis has filed a ballot measure to repeal the recently approved gas tax and sponsored legislation requiring voters to show photo ID. Allen has faced criticism for claiming that a new law that barred police from arresting people under 18 for soliciting sex or loitering with intent to commit prostitution was an effort to legalize child prostitution. The purpose of the law was to treat minors as victims of sex trafficking rather than offenders. Allen, 43, worked as a certified financial planner before he ran for the Legislature. His Assembly district includes all or portions of Seal Beach, Huntington Beach, Fountain Valley and Garden Grove. Allen will face stiff competition from fellow Republican John Cox, a Rancho Santa Fe venture capitalist who already has put $3 million of his own money into his campaign. Former GOP Assemblyman David Hadley of Manhattan Beach also is exploring a run, and former Los Angeles Rams football player Rosey Grier announced plans to jump into the race but thus far has not established an official campaign. The race also has attracted a cadre of Democratic heavyweights, including Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and state Treasurer John Chiang. Delaine Eastin, a former state legislator and state schools chief, is also running. In California, Democrats hold a 19-percentage point advantage over Republicans in voter registration, a strong head wind against GOP candidates running for statewide office. Because of the large field of Democrats in the race, a Republican could have a good shot of finishing in the top two in the June 2018 primary if they can put together GOP support. But Allens entry into the race could divide Republican voters, reducing the odds of a GOP candidate making it to the November general election. The first- and second-place finishers in the primary advance to the general election regardless of their party. Facebook

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Coastal panel spawned by 1930s oil scandal now a player in governors race By Michael Finnegan (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times) When John Chiang joined the State Lands Commission, it quickly became a platform to showcase his environmental record, starting with his 2007 vote to block construction of a shipping terminal for liquefied natural gas in Ventura County. The commission has served the same purpose for Gavin Newsom, who often uses his seat on the panel to remind Californians that he opposes offshore oil drilling. Now that both Chiang and Newsom are running for governor, they are drawing rare attention to the little-known but powerful State Lands Commission, which oversees 4 million acres of land beneath California waters. Read More Facebook

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Ballot measure to expand L.A. County Board of Supervisors advances By Patrick McGreevy State Sen. Tony Mendoza, D-Artesia, wants to expand the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors from five to seven members. Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press ( Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press) The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors would be expanded from five to seven members and an elected chief executive post would be created under a measure recommended Wednesday by a state Senate panel despite opposition from the county. Two members of the countys 2015-16 civil grand jury testified that the group felt the current government is inadequate for a county of more than 10 million residents. They said that if the county was a state, it would be the eighth-largest state in the country based on population. The board is too small to adequately serve the diverse needs of county residents, grand jury member Molly Milligan told the Senate Governance and Finance Committee, before its 5-1 vote to recommend Senate Constitutional Amendment 12. The proposed statewide ballot measure was introduced by Sen. Tony Mendoza (D-Artesia). The proposal was opposed by Phyllis Marshall, the chief legislative representative for Los Angeles County, who noted that the proposal would allow voters statewide to decide the governance structure for one county. Voters in other counties do not have sufficient knowledge to vote on a constitutional amendment to change the governing structure of Los Angeles County, Marshall told the panel before the measure was sent to another policy panel on its way to a possible full Senate vote. Facebook

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Kimberly Ellis blames Democratic Party hacks for losses in Tuesdays congressional races By Phil Willon Kimberly Ellis (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press) Kimberly Ellis, who has challenged the results of the California Democratic Party leadership election she lost, blamed party establishment hacks who are the worst in the biz for losses in congressional races in Georgia and South Carolina on Tuesday. Ellis, a progressive Bay Area Democrat who tapped into a wellspring of disaffected Bernie Sanders backers, on Tuesday night sent a tweet saying that it was time for a new coalition. That drew a sharp rebuke from veteran Democratic operative Bob Mulholland, who has criticized Ellis for not conceding. Ellis blamed her narrow May loss to Eric Bauman for state Democratic Party chairperson on voting irregularities. Ellis, who lost the race by 62 votes,has called on the party to conduct an independent audit of the election. Bauman rejected that request, saying the party already has a process in place to review contested elections. The partys compliance review commission, made up of six members who were appointed during former chairman John Burtons tenure, is currently reviewing the election. On Friday, Bauman announced that the party hired the law firm of Olson Hagel & Fishburn LLC to oversee, advise and counsel the commission during the inquiry. Let's thank Jon Ossoff, his staff and the thousands of volunteers for their effort. Let's ignore Trump and Kimberly Ellis attacks on Ossoff.  Bob Mulholland (@Chico_Bob) June 21, 2017 Facebook

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These legislators are trying to make sure Jimmy Gomezs replacement in the Assembly is a woman By Christine Mai-Duc As soon as Congressman-elect Jimmy Gomez announced he was running for Congress, his Assembly colleague Cristina Garcia got to work. Garcia, a legislator from Bell Gardens who became chair of the Womens Legislative Caucus in December, called Gomez, other Assembly members, and labor and environmental groups to make it clear: If Gomez won the 34th Congressional District and vacated his Assembly seat, her priority would be electing a woman in his place. With Gomez headed to Washington after his June 6 win, Garcia said its time to put her groups plan into action. Its simple, said Garcia in a recent interview. As long as we dont have parity, were going to fight at every opportunity to try to get another woman in office. Women hold 17 out of 80 seats in the state Assembly and nine of 40 of the state Senate seats. On Wednesday morning, the Democratic arm of the womens legislative caucus announced it was endorsing Wendy Carrillo, a Democrat who ran in the 34th District primary against Gomez, and who is the only woman running to replace him so far. I am impressed by her ongoing activism for environmental justice, womens rights, LGBTQ rights, immigrants and social justice movements that are the bedrocks of a progressive democracy and welcome the tenacity she will bring to further promote these issues in the state Legislature with a womans perspective, Garcia said in a statement. Eight other candidates have filed to run for or have announced campaigns for Gomezs 51st Assembly District. The election date and its accompanying filing deadlines have not yet been set, mainly because Gomez has not stepped down, so another woman could still jump in. But Garcia is hoping her caucus announcement will head that off. If the 34th Congressional District race is going to teach us any lessons, its that we dont have the luxury of having multiple women split the field, Garcia said. More than a dozen women ran in the crowded primary to replace Xavier Becerra in the central Los Angeles District. None of them won more than 10% of the vote. So Garcia and her colleagues havent just been talking about their mission; theyve been trying to shape the field of candidates, too. Garcia said she reached out to former 34th District hopefuls to gauge their interest, solicited names of potential female candidates from interest groups, and had conversations with half a dozen women who were considering jumping in. Garcia said she didnt discourage any women, but was up front with them about the challenges each might face. Shes also encouraged women who expressed interest to work it out among themselves in hopes that they could unite behind one female candidate. Its a somewhat new tactic for the womens caucus, which has struggled to unite on political endorsements in the past and is hoping to flex more muscle in Sacramento. We are being more strategic now, Garcia said. It cant just be like, I like you and you have a great heart. Thats not good enough. You have to put in the work and be able to build a coalition and win. Carrillo said it was unfortunate that none of the women in the 34th District race made it past the primary. But, she added: Men dont get asked the question of whether theyre worried about splitting the vote. The outcome in the congressional primary, Carrillo said, had more to do with a lack of money flowing to many of the womens campaigns, something she hopes to remedy. Ive learned a lot ... [about] just what it takes to build coalitions and how best to move forward in terms of having a strategy to win, Carrillo said. Ultimately, the voters are going to decide based on issues, Carrillo said. I think that I bring a very unique perspective, having grown up in the district, in terms of advocating for labor and for education and for healthcare and all the issues that residents care for. ------------ FOR THE RECORD June 21, 2:53 p.m.: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Cristina Garcia became chair of the Womens Legislative Caucus in January. She took over the position in December. ------------ Facebook

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Prompted by San Bernardino shooting, House passes bill to require reports to Congress after terrorist attacks By Sarah D. Wire Evacuated workers pray on the fairway of the San Bernardino Golf Club shortly after the 2015 mass shooting at the nearby Inland Regional Center. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) Intelligence agencies would have to make recommendations to Congress on how to stop the next domestic terrorist attack under a bill inspired by the 2015 San Bernardino shooting. The bill, which passed the House on Tuesday without opposition, requires the Homeland Security secretary to submit a report to Congress within one year of a terrorist attack in the U.S. The report, which would be unclassified, must include details of what happened and recommendations for laws or policies that can be changed to prevent a similar attack. It would also include input from the attorney general, FBI director and the head of the National Counterterrorism Center. Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Redlands), who represents San Bernardino, filed the bill about a year after the Dec. 2, 2015, shooting in which 14 people were killed and 22 were wounded by a married couple at the Inland Regional Center. Aguilar told The Times that individual members of Congress shouldnt have to press agencies for details about what happened after an attack. By nature every terrorist event is unique, and so we need something to prod the agencies to tell us why its unique and what we can do better, Aguilar said. There is no current requirement for the agencies to submit a report to Congress after a terrorist event. We think that it makes sense to do that and that it will help us learn from these events and become smarter about it. After the San Bernardino attack, the Justice Department worked with the Police Foundation, a Washington-based research group, to create a report, but it was aimed at training law enforcement on responding to an attack. We think there are more lessons to be learned, but that only happens when those agencies work with Congress on what we can change, Aguilar said. The bipartisan bill was backed by nine other Californians: Reps. Ken Calvert (R-Corona), Paul Cook (R-Yucca Valley), Lou Correa (D-Santa Ana), Nanette Barragan (D-San Pedro), David Valadao (R-Hanford), Jeff Denham (R-Turlock), Steve Knight (R-Palmdale), Darrell Issa (R-Vista) and Duncan Hunter (R-Alpine). Aguilar said he is still working to line up a sponsor for the bill in the Senate. Facebook

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New super PAC targets seven California Republicans By Phil Willon Former Northern California Rep. Ellen Tauscher has launched a new super PAC targeting seven vulnerable Republicans in the states congressional delegation, hoping to aid the Democratic effort to win control of the House of Representatives in 2018. Each Republican represents a district that backed Hillary Clinton in the November election. On the Fight Back California PACs list are Reps. Jeff Denham of Turlock; David Valadao of Hanford; Steve Knight of Palmdale; Ed Royce of Fullerton; Mimi Walters of Irvine; Dana Rohrabacher of Huntington Beach and Darrell Issa of Vista. Of those, the former congresswoman served with Issa, Royce and Rohrabacher. This isnt personal, Tauscher said. But the fact is that Im a Californian, and they dont vote in the interest of my state. Tauscher represented Northern Californias 10th Congressional District for 14 years before becoming undersecretary of State during the Obama administration in 2009. Katie Merrill, the PACs political strategist, said the campaign will target the Republicans records on issues that directly affect voters in the district, such as the GOPs efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. We intend to soften the ground. So when the Democratic nominee emerges ... they are facing a significantly weakened incumbent, Merrill said. Updated at 4:02 p.m.: This story was updated to include a comment from Tauscher. Facebook

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Overhaul of Californias state tax board plagued by confusion, members say By Patrick McGreevy Board of Equalization Chairwoman Diane Harkey says there is confusion around the reorganization of the board. (Don Kelsen / Los Angeles Times) State tax board members on Tuesday said there remain a lot of unanswered questions about how their agency will transfer many of its duties to two new offices, a reorganization approved last week by the state Legislature in response to problems with the panel. About 4,400 of the state Board of Equalizations 4,800 employees will be transferred to a new California Department of Tax and Fee Administration, which will take over collection of sales and excise taxes, and an office of administrative law judges who will take over taxpayer appeals. The change was outlined by the boards executive director, David Gau, at a meeting with the panel Tuesday. I dont think anything is easy, Board Chairwoman Diane Harkey said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. I think its going to be expensive. There is a lot of confusion. Board member George Runner said there are questions about whether he can continue to hold educational events for taxpayers, while board member Jerome Horton said he wants to know whether he can continue to advocate for taxpayers. There are still some issues they need to work out, Horton said. Harkey said new bills will have to be approved with clarifying language on some issues. For instance, the newly approved legislation takes away the boards power to hear appeals after July 1 even though lawmakers want the board to continue handling the hearings until the new administrative law judges are operating Jan. 1. In addition, the board employs civil service workers who are trained for jobs that will no longer exist with the board, she said, adding that the new department is supposed to begin operating July 1. This is all still in flux. Its a huge step to take in a couple of weeks, Harkey said. Marybel Batjer, secretary of the California Government Operations Agency, has addressed the board employees, assuring them that they will be able to shift to jobs in the new department. She told The Times on Tuesday that planning has already begun for the new department, including the early stages of recruitment of its administrative staff. Meanwhile, board representatives, including Harkey, confirmed that investigators from the state attorney generals office have begun interviewing agency employees after Gov. Jerry Brown called for a probe into whether staff and resources were mishandled by the agency. Were just hearing that they are around, Harkey said of investigators. I think it scares everybody. Facebook

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Californias Clean Air Act waiver should be yanked, Trumps former environmental advisor says By Chris Megerian (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) The head of President Trumps Environmental Protection Agency may not be prepared to battle California over air regulations, but the man who led Trumps transition team for the department is ready. Myron Ebell, who works at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington and helped devise Trumps environmental agenda, said California should not be allowed to set its own standards for greenhouse gas emissions from vehicle tailpipes. The state has that authority under a Clean Air Act waiver granted by President Obama, one of dozens that have been issued over the years. The waiver has to go, in my view, Ebell told journalists on Monday at a training program organized by the National Press Foundation. The problem, he said, is that the California regulations are a backdoor attempt to regulate fuel economy, a power thats reserved for the federal government. California said it would push forward on greenhouse gas rules earlier this year even though the Trump administration has opened the door to rolling them back on the federal level. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt had previously suggested that the Trump administration could try to revoke Californias waiver, but during a recent Capitol Hill hearing he said it wasnt currently under review. Ebell has denied mainstream science on global warming. But apart from the waiver he wants to see revoked, he told journalists that he didnt have a problem with California trying to reduce its own greenhouse gas emissions. I believe in competitive federalism, he said. The only problem, Ebell said, is whether Gov. Jerry Brown tries to conduct his own foreign policy and sign international treaties. Facebook

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A new audit says some California agencies sidestepped competitive bidding rules on contracts By Patrick McGreevy Two California agencies in charge of high-tech projects failed to provide proper oversight for billions of dollars in contracts awarded without competitive bidding, according to a state audit released Tuesday. State law requires the Department of General Services and the California Department of Technology (CDT) to use the competitive bidding process whenever possible to ensure fair competition and eliminate favoritism, fraud, and corruption, State Auditor Elaine Howle wrote in a letter to Gov. Jerry Brown. The investigation examined a sample of those contracts and found nine noncompetitive requests valued at almost $1 billion that agencies likely could have avoided had they engaged in sufficient planning, Howle wrote. The auditors cited approval of a request by the California High-Speed Rail Authority for a $3-million noncompetitive contract amendment to provide financial consulting services. The proposal was submitted 17 days before the existing contract was set to expire. When justifying its noncompetitive request, High-Speed Rail stated that the financial consulting services were critical to its mission and that the vendors skills were specialized and not widely available. However, it did not provide a valid reason why this vendor alone could meet the states needs, as financial consulting services are not unique, the audit found. In all, auditors estimated that the state awarded at least $44 billion in noncompetitive contracts of more than $1 million each during the five fiscal years ending June 30, 2016. The two agencies have the power to enforce contract rules but they rarely employed them, allowing agencies to continue inappropriately using noncompetitive requests, the audit concluded. State workers also allegedly wrote reports in ways that misled about which projects were competitively bid. In one case, a $3-million contract was identified as competitively bid, to which an additional $31 million in noncompetitive contracts was added through nine amendments. Amy Tong, director of the California Deptartment of Technology, agreed with the auditors recommendations, saying the agency believes that the recommendations will strengthen CDTs oversight of information technology and telecommunication procurements, especially those acquired through the noncompetitive request process. Daniel C. Kim, director of the Department of General Services, also agreed to improve the process, writing to auditors that his agency will take appropriate action to address the issues presented in the report. Facebook

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Billionaire environmental activist Tom Steyer has a big decision to make By Phil Willon Tom Steyer at a Los Angeles high school in 2014. (Damian Dovarganes / Associated Press) For months, billionaire Democratic donor and environmental activist Tom Steyer has been acting like a candidate running for governor  hobnobbing with Democratic loyalists, putting out a position paper on income inequality and continuing his aggressive efforts to combat climate change. Steyer says hes still considering jumping into the race. But he may have another target on his radar. Steyer has starting mounting his own challenge to President Trump, going so far as to call for impeachment and use his nonprofit, NextGen Climate, to encourage citizens to lobby their congressional representatives for it. Read More Facebook

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Lobbying firm fined $4,000 for violating gift limit buying dinner for former state Sen. Ronald Calderon By Patrick McGreevy Ron Calderon, shown in while still in the senate in 2014, was treated to a dinner by a lobbying firm that violated a gift limit. ( (Rich Pedroncelli / AP)) Mercury Public Affairs has agreed to pay $4,000 in fines to Californias ethics watchdog agency for violating the $10 gift limit on lobbying firms when it provided dinners worth $200 to former state Sen. Ronald Calderon and his wife. In October, Calderon was sentenced to 42 months in federal prison after he pleaded guilty in a public corruption case unrelated to the Mercury dinner. The fines proposed against Mercury by the enforcement staff of the state Fair Political Practices Commission stem from violating the $10 gift limit and failing to report that Calderons wife also received a dinner, according to the investigative report. Calderon and his wife attended an April 2013 dinner paid for by Mercury at Mastros in Beverly Hills. Also present was former Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, a non-lobbyist partner of Mercury, and four other unidentified people. The violation of the state Political Reform Act was found by a random audit by the state Franchise Tax Board. Mercurys $200 gift to Sen. Calderon, while not extravagant, significantly exceeded the gift limit, the investigative report said. A central purpose of the act is to prevent improper influence by lobbyists and the acts strict gift limit on lobbying firms is intended to effectuate that purpose. The commission will vote on the fines on June 29. Facebook

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California bill aims to revive broadband privacy rules that were killed by Trump and Congress By Melanie Mason A woman works on her laptop in the Rose Main Reading Room of the New York Public Library. ( Mark Lennihan / Associated Press) Several months ago, President Trump signed into law a repeal of sweeping privacy regulations limiting what broadband providers can do with customer data. Now, an Assembly Democrat is trying to resuscitate those rules for Californians. Assemblyman Ed Chau (D-Monterey Park) unveiled a measure on Monday that would largely enshrine the sputtered federal regulations into California state law. The bill would require Internet service providers, such as Verizon, Comcast and AT&T, to get permission from customers before using, selling or permitting access to data about their browsing history. Such restrictions were crafted by the Federal Communications Commission under the Obama administration. But the FCC under Trump sought to roll back those rules before they went into effect. Congress approved the repeal in March, and the president signed it. Congress and the administration went against the will of the vast majority of Americans when they revoked the FCC rules, Chau said at a news conference, adding that with his measure, AB 375, California is goi
President Trump summoned Republican leaders to the White House on Tuesday to discuss his summer legislative agenda, but progress is being stalled by the GOPs inability to fulfill its long promise to repeal and replace Obamacare.

Lacking a consensus over how to gut the Affordable Care Act without leaving millions more Americans uninsured  as the House GOPs bill would do  Senate Republicans now face a legislative logjam that could imperil other priorities, such as tax reform and infrastructure.

This week was expected to be a pivotal one for the healthcare overhaul, which lawmakers hope to finish before the July 4 break in order to move to other pressing issues. Among them is raising the debt ceiling to avoid defaulting on the nations bills, always a thorny political lift.

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But glum senators emerged from a series of closed-door meetings Tuesday no closer to an agreement than they have been after weeks of private talks.

The areas we have consensus on? Lets see, Obamacare sucks, said Sen. John Kennedy, a first-term Republican from Louisiana. We may be working on this for a while.

That echoed similarly pessimistic comments in recent days from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Richard M. Burr of North Carolina. Some have speculated that leaders may be tempted to call a Senate vote on the bill even if they know it will fail, simply to move the issue off their plate for now.

Trump emphasized the importance of a healthcare vote in a pep talk to House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, McConnell and other leaders.

At the core of this agenda is repealing and replacing the disaster known as Obamacare, said Trump, who dined later Tuesday with House and Senate Republicans. He praised the House bill as a good first step. Now the Senate, Im sure, will follow suit and get a bill across the finish line this summer that will be great healthcare for Americans.

But Republicans are staring down a legislative calendar with little to show for their hold on the House, Senate and White House. Usually, the first six months of a new presidency  especially with a Congress controlled by the same party  are prime time for legislating before the midterm campaign season begins.

But this year has been an exception, thanks in large part to Trumps unusual leadership style and the deepening investigation into his campaigns potential ties with Russian interference in the 2016 election. Trumps own shifting policy positions have left Ryan and McConnell struggling to lead restive Republicans in a coherent strategy.

We need to get some legislative accomplishments, said Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Republican.

The White House acknowledged that the Russia investigation had taken its toll. Questions swirl almost daily with developments on Capitol Hill, and more are expected this week when fired FBI Director James B. Comey testifies publicly before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Theres no doubt that keeping members focused on investigations detracts from our legislative agenda and detracts from what were trying to deliver to the American people, said Marc Short, the White House legislative director, in a conference call with reporters this week. To what extent, I think its hard for me to answer.

Trump has not helped matters, lawmakers say, with his unfiltered tweets that often amplify and prolong story lines that a more disciplined leader would be able to quiet.

Ive said this before, Im not a fan of the presidents tweets, and that still remains my view, McConnell said Tuesday before heading to the White House.

The crux of the legislative stalemate is the inability of Republicans to deliver on their healthcare promise. Even though Ryan ushered the House GOPs healthcare bill to passage in May, Senate Republicans dismissed the measure, in part because it is expected to leave 23 million more Americans without health insurance.

In trying to build their own bill, McConnell has jettisoned the traditional legislative process of committee hearings and expert testimony in favor of a closed-door approach among key senators who are most engaged on the issue.

Some Republicans, including Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, praise this strategy. One of the most encouraging aspects of these discussions is they have not been litigated in the press, he told reporters Tuesday.

But others say a more open process, including one that didnt rely on a procedural maneuver that will allow simple majority passage without any need to build bipartisan consensus with Democratic votes, would have been more productive.

This is a really big mess, and a very complex system, and so you dont do that in a couple of weeks, said Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who expects Republicans will need to provide a stopgap measure to stabilize insurance markets while they continue working on a broader overhaul. I dont like what were going to have to do, but Im supporting doing that. I think its our responsibility.

Senate Republicans face a series of difficult decisions in crafting the bill they hope to vote on by the end of the month, including how to protect older, sicker and lower-income consumers who would see huge insurance premium hikes under the House bill.

But no issue has proved more challenging than how to approach Medicaid, the half-century-old government safety-net plan for the poor that is a pillar of Obamacares coverage expansion.

While many Republicans have spent years pledging to cut Medicaid, they are now reluctant to undo the program that provides coverage to more than 70 million low-income Americans, including many of their constituents.

The House bill would slash more than $800 billion in federal Medicaid spending over the next decade, rolling back the expansion and capping future federal aid to states. It is considered among the largest entitlement program cuts in a generation.

But those cuts  decried by major physician and patient groups  have made a number of key Republican senators uncomfortable, including lawmakers from states that have expanded Medicaid, such as Nevada, Arizona, West Virginia and Ohio. Many states also rely on Medicaid for treatment in the opioid crisis.

Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said senators were considering a longer glide path to cutting Medicaid than the House bill, pushing off the reductions until after 2020  and the next presidential election.

If McConnell cannot bridge the Medicaid divide, he may have to refocus efforts on more limited legislation to rescue insurance markets across the country that have been battered by the political turmoil in Washington.

A growing number of insurers are leaving Obamacare markets or proposing steep premium increases next year, partly because of the laws weaknesses but also now because the Trump administration refuses to commit to steps to keep them operating, such as enforcing a penalty on people who dont get insurance and providing aid to low-income consumers.

On Tuesday, Anthem announced it was pulling out of Ohios Obamacare marketplace, leaving thousands without coverage on the private market.

That is becoming a growing political problem for Republican lawmakers, as polls indicate that Americans increasingly hold the GOP responsible for the fate of the nations insurance markets.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Tuesday that Trump was sabotaging the healthcare law.

The Affordable Care Act is the law of the land, Pelosi said on CNN. The president should be honoring the law of the land and funding it. If the rates go up, thats at his doorstep, because he has not obeyed the law of the land.

lisa.mascaro@latimes.com

@LisaMascaro

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The Justice Department will no longer set aside money from fraud settlements with corporate wrongdoers to give to community groups and nonprofits, Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions said Wednesday, a victory for conservative groups that opposed the Robin Hood-like grants.

Under the Obama administration, some of the billions of dollars that big banks paid in penalties after the 2008 financial crisis were doled out to help legal aid and housing organizations that were working to stave off foreclosures in hard-hit communities.

But the practice was harshly criticized by some Republicans and conservative legal scholars who said the Justice Department was essentially handing out money to Obama administration political allies without going through Congress.

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When the federal government settles a case against a corporate wrongdoer, any settlement funds should go first to the victims and then to the American people  not to bankroll third-party special-interest groups or the political friends of whoever is in power, Sessions said in a statement Wednesday.

He said the Justice Department would no longer require banks or others accused of fraud to pay groups that werent a party to the litigation.

The revised policy will apply only to new court settlements, not to existing cases.

It could dry up a source of funds for community organizations and also affect mitigation payments mandated by environmental settlements, such as the $17 billion paid by Volkswagen to settle claims related to cheating on vehicle emissions tests.

The decision is another sign of the continuing rightward shift of the Justice Department under Sessions. In recent weeks he has ordered federal prosecutors to return to tougher criminal charges for drug offenders and other criminals, and urged them to file more criminal charges against people who illegally enter the country.

The decision Wednesday grew out of a controversy stemming from two court-approved settlements in 2014 for financial fraud leading to the housing crash and bank crisis  $16.6 billion from Bank of America and $7 billion from Citigroup.

Part of the settlements mandated by the Obama-era Justice Department required the banks to pay about $150 million each to community development groups, housing counseling agencies and legal aid.

The agreements were the focus of congressional hearings and attacked by conservative groups. The U.S. Chamber of Commerces legal wing, the Institute for Legal Reform, issued a report calling the payments slush funds.

The House Judiciary Committee determined that settlements had required $880 million in payments to third parties in less than two years. Rep. Robert W. Goodlatte (R-Va.), the committee chairman, has introduced a bill to outlaw such side payments.

The Obama administration defended the grants as a way to channel resources to help communities and groups hardest hit by the housing bubble and financial crisis.

Nearly $400 million from the Bank of America settlement went to a group called Interest on Lawyers Trust Accounts, which distributes funds to legal aid groups across the country.

If you can help prevent foreclosure, what you do is provide economic stability to the community, which is exactly what the Bank of America dollars were supposed to do, said Judith Baker, president of the national association of the lawyers trust groups. If you can have a lawyer, you can really help stabilize the situation and get a positive outcome.

joseph.tanfani@latimes.com

Twitter: @jtanfani

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You see it all the time during playoff season: people sneaking peeks at live streams of games on their smartphone while theyre supposed to be working.

Expect the same kind of thing today and tomorrow, as all eyes turn toward a pair of congressional hearings that could provide a pivotal moment for President Trump.

Good morning from the state capital. Im Sacramento Bureau Chief John Myers, and weve got a busy few days in store here, too, with the deadline looming for a new state budget.

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But lets get to the high drama that will soon be underway on Capitol Hill.

THE WARMUP: ROSENSTEIN

The investigation into Russian election interference will no doubt loom large over Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod Rosensteins testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

He kicks off what David S. Cloud calls a high-stakes phase of the investigation into last years election.

Rosenstein, the author of the memo cited in the ultimate firing of James Comey as FBI director, was asked to testify on the renewal of federal surveillance powers. Hes scheduled to testify alongside three other top officials, including the acting director of the FBI.

And speaking of Comey

THE MAIN EVENT: COMEY ON TRUMP

On Thursday, the same senators will hear from the man who may have the answers to a significant number of questions about the president and any effort to block the investigation into Russian activities.

Comeys testimony is sure to draw a national TV audience, since the veteran lawman will be speaking out for the first time since Trump fired him on May 9.

Just in time for the big show, weve got an online guide to the Comey hearing, which gets underway at 7 a.m. Thursday.

Well also have live coverage on our Essential Washington news feed of the dramatic events from both days.

TRUMP BOASTS OF HIS ROLE IN SAUDI DECISION ON QATAR

On the second day of a week that his administration had promised would be all about infrastructure, the president took the conversation in a different direction.

In other words, he tweeted.

His tweets appeared to take credit for spurring Saudi Arabia and four other Arab nations to break off diplomatic and economic ties with neighboring Qatar -- a development that creates complications for U.S. policy.

So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off, Trump boasted in a Tuesday morning tweet. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism.

ITS A TRAVEL BAN, SAYS TRUMP

And then there were the tweets about his administrations effort to impose new travel restrictions on those coming into the United States.

The president made it clear what he sees his policy as being, and used the London terror attacks as a new reason for the courts to step aside. Those tweets came after earlier missives criticizing the mayor of London in the wake of the attacks.

AND ABOUT HIS TWITTER USE

But the president may not love everything about Twitter. In some cases, he blocks users from reading his tweets.

In a letter to the White House on Tuesday, the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University called on the president to stop blocking users, arguing that the @realDonaldTrump handle with its nearly 32 million followers amounts to a designated public forum that all Americans should have access to  even opponents.

This is a context in which the Constitution precludes the president from making up his own rules, Jameel Jaffer, the Knight Institutes executive director, said in a statement.

THE NEW CONGRESSMAN FROM LOS ANGELES

Voters in Californias 34th Congressional District elected Jimmy Gomez on Tuesday, with the two-term state Assembly member defeating attorney Robert Lee Ahn for the seat vacated earlier this year by current Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra.

From afar, the contest likely looked to be between two Democrats with very similar ideas on what to do upon arriving in Washington. But it was a hard-fought race that saw candidates flexing muscles in L.A.s Latino and Korean American communities. And it began with a crowded field of contenders in April, leaving Ahn and Gomez in a two-way runoff.

Both men were campaigning up until the final hours, and our Times team found voters with very different opinions on which candidate was the right guy for the job.

See the full results here. And our data team crunched the numbers to determine how Gomez won. See how your neighbors voted here.

CAPITOL HILL CRUNCH TIME ON HEALTHCARE

The president summoned congressional leaders to the White House on Tuesday to talk about the legislative agenda that lies ahead, but the biggest hurdle is whats still lingering from the past.

Lisa Mascaro and Noam Levey write that the stalled Senate efforts on repealing Obamacare threaten to derail efforts on tax reform and infrastructure. And senators meeting on efforts to revamp the healthcare law were not optimistic.

Consider the following as an entry for most spot-on quote of the week.

The areas we have consensus on? Lets see, Obamacare sucks, said Sen. John Kennedy, a first-term Republican from Louisiana.

We may be working on this for a while.

CHINAS XI SITS DOWN WITH GOV. JERRY BROWN

Californias governor hit the midway point of his week in China with something pretty unusual: an in-person meeting with the countrys president.

Chinese President Xi Jinpings decision to meet with Gov. Jerry Brown was perhaps the clearest signal so far of the states special status on all things climate change in the era of Trump.

Brown and Xi have a relationship that dates back to the Chinese leaders father, who met with Brown during the Democrats first stint as governor four decades ago.

Be sure to check our Essential Politics news feed for more coverage of the governors trip to China, which is focused on the states efforts to combat climate change.

GOODBYE, CHINA

Browns high-profile visit stood in contrast on Tuesday to other big news: The acting U.S. ambassador in China resigned after saying he could not support Trumps decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord.

David Rank, a highly regarded diplomat with nearly three decades of service at the State Department, resigned his post in what officials called a personal decision.

The man who signed the Paris pact, former President Barack Obama, expressed optimism about the plans future on Tuesday in a speech in Montreal, even with the temporary absence of American leadership.

WHEN BROWN RETURNS

The governor is expected to be back in Sacramento next week for the final few days before lawmakers must send a state budget to his desk.

Members of both the state Assembly and Senate are meeting this week to come up with a unified plan, which then is subject to closed-door negotiations with the Brown administration.

Our quick glance at what to watch in this years budget debate begins with two key points: The debate over tax revenue estimates and a fight over how to spend tobacco tax proceeds.

The deadline for legislative action on a state budget is next Thursday.

JUSTICES WEIGH WHETHER TO NIX PROP 66

California voters approved a plan last fall to speed up executions of condemned inmates, but the law has been in legal limbo for months.

On Tuesday, the California Supreme Court heard oral arguments on whether to uphold or overturn Proposition 66. And the justices seemed divided on the issue -- most notably, on the ballot measures mandate for death penalty cases to be resolved in no more than five years.

We are talking about systemic change if the initiative is enforced, said Justice Goodwin Liu.

WHATS CALIFORNIAS NEW TOP COP GOING TO DO ON POLICE?

California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra has major policing issues on his plate just a few months into his new job. He has to decide how to implement a 2015 law designed to prevent racial profiling and finish civil rights investigations in Kern County and Bakersfield after years of complaints about police shootings.

In contrast to his numerous statements against the Trump administration, Becerra has been relatively silent about what hes going to do about policing. Both law enforcement groups and civil rights activists are hopeful and concerned about his tenure, Liam Dillon reports.

TODAYS ESSENTIALS

-- In nearly five months in office and as he considers a troop surge, Trump has not yet met or spoke with his commanders in either Iraq or Afghanistan, W.J. Hennigan and Brian Bennett report.

-- A woman who worked as a records contractor for the federal government has been arrested on charges of turning over a secret document to a news organization, the first arrest of an alleged leaker by the Trump administration.

-- More than 200 volunteers will knock on doors in California this weekend, and while they arent representing a specific candidate, they do have a cause: keeping the Republican majority in the House.

-- Los Angeles City Councilman Jose Huizar essentially compared fellow Democrats Gavin Newsom and Antonio Villaraigosa to President Trump as he endorsed state Treasurer John Chiang in the 2018 governors race.

-- Kimberly Ellis, who narrowly lost the race to be the next leader of the California Democratic Party, on Monday said her campaign found evidence of hundreds of voting discrepancies, including mismatched voter signatures and multiple cases of delegates voting more than once.

-- White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer returned to the podium on Tuesday, with a little less confrontationand a few more demurrals.

-- California lawmakers may add oversight of immigrant detention centers to state budget negotiations.

LOGISTICS

Essential Politics is published Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

You can keep up with breaking news on our politics page throughout the day. And are you following us on Twitter at @latimespolitics?

Miss Mondays newsletter? Here you go.

Please send thoughts, concerns and news tips to politics@latimes.com.

Did someone forward you this? Sign up here to get Essential Politics in your inbox.
News of stores and hospitals hit hard by major cyberattacks has mobilized California lawmakers to increase safeguards against identity theft in the private sector. But strengthening laws to protect personal information in the event of a government data breach has proved much harder.

Legislation to require state and local agencies to provide 12 months of identity theft protection for anyone affected by a government data breach  similar to whats required of businesses  stalled in a fiscal committee in the Legislature amid concerns over the costs it would impose on cash-strapped state and local budgets.

The bill by Assemblyman Matt Dababneh (D-Woodland Hills) was meant to motivate government agencies to better secure sensitive information, a strategy that its supporters said worked when major retailers, such as Home Depot and Target, were failing to protect their customers.

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But opponents argued that as state and federal agencies increasingly share data centers, it would be difficult to discern which agency was liable for a breach. The real burden, security experts said, would instead fall on taxpayers  many of whom will not only have lost their data but would end up having to foot the bill too.

Once you have a Social Security number stolen, once you have your credit card information stolen, you can never be made whole again, said Chester Wisniewski, principal research scientist at Sophos, a security software and hardware company. You cant put the genie back in the bottle.

Long before cybersecurity became a national focus amid a contentious election, California lawmakers were grappling with the growing threat of security breaches across the state. A 2016 report from then-Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris found that though the number of attacks nationwide remained relatively flat in 2015, the actual records compromised had drastically increased, from 4.3 million in 2014 to more than 24 million the following year.

In that time, just six breaches were responsible for 70% of nearly 50 million records stolen in California. The hardest hit was health insurance provider Anthem, which had 10.4 million records breached in 2015. Just below it were retail giants Target and Living Social, each which compromised 7.5 million of the stolen records in 2013.

The attacks spurred lawmakers to pass a 2014 state law that required any person or business responsible for a breach of Social Security or drivers license numbers to offer an identity theft protection or mitigation service to those affected at no cost, for at least 12 months.

Dababneh has since sought to extend the measure to state agencies responsible for transferring, storing and destroying the kinds of personal data that are often more valuable to hackers. In recent years, according to a state legislative analysis, security breaches have been reported in at least 10 California public agencies, including the California State University system, the Departments of Motor Vehicles, Social Services and Employment Development.

As major retailers and private companies have moved to fortify their cybersecurity teams, Dababneh said, what we have seen is the technology that our public agencies and even state and federal agencies are using, compared to the private market, is falling farther and farther behind.

But security experts say private companies have been more motivated by negative publicity than state law to boost their information security teams.

And Dababnehs bill, similar to another that was blocked last year, has faced a larger hurdle: its cost. His latest proposal was rejected by the Assembly Appropriations Committee, which found it could cost hundreds of millions  even billions  of dollars for state and local agencies. If an attack on the Department of Motor Vehicles were to compromise one quarter of its 26 million drivers license records, the committees analysis said, the expense for providing identity theft prevention to the affected residents would be more than $1 billion, assuming a cost of $15 monthly per person.

If 6,000 people were affected, the cost was estimated at roughly $1 million.

In an opposition letter, the California State Assn. of Counties, the Urban Counties of California, and the League of California Cities said a large enough data breach could result in millions of dollars in costs to local governments already struggling to provide basic services to their residents.

Dababneh said his goal is to look into the possibilities of creating an insurance market through which state agencies could pool together their resources to fund the identity theft protection or mitigations services. Security experts doubt those services would be beneficial to residents after their information has been stolen, saying the pooled money would be better spent on prevention services.

For now, prevention is the major focus of the most significant cybersecurity bill sailing through the legislative process with bipartisan support. The bill by Assemblyman Jay Obernolte (R-Big Bear Lake) would establish the California Cybersecurity Integration Center to develop a cybersecurity strategy. It would require the director of the states Office of Emergency Services to administer $193 million in federal grant money for cybersecurity prevention measures.

Assemblyman Ed Chau (D-Arcadia), chairman of his chambers privacy and consumer protection committee, said multiple reasons have kept lawmakers from figuring out how to deal with the complex and evolving threat of security breaches to public and private networks, including costs, the intangible nature of the threat and differences of opinion between the public and private sectors on information security.

It is not an exaggeration to say that cybersecurity may well be the single biggest challenge that the public sector will face over the next decade or more, he said in a statement. We dont necessarily need legislation for every new technology that comes along, or in response to every data breach, but we should certainly be thinking and talking about it.

Retail sector is most vulnerable to data breaches in California 

jazmine.ulloa@latimes.com

@jazmineulloa

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California lawmakers take aim again at establishing statewide rules for drones

Why lawmakers are trying to make ransomware a crime in California

L.A. County targeted in phishing cyberattack; private information of 750,000 people compromised

Updates on California politics
Trumps latest tweet in media war is a literal show of mock pugilism By Laura King President Trump on Sunday circulated a doctored video clip on Twitter that showed him physically attacking a crudely rendered stand-in for CNN, a post that drew rebukes from critics as an incitement to violence, but prompted renewed expressions of support from backers. In doing so, Trump also ignored pleas to stop tweeting or at least take a more presidential tone -- from lawmakers in his own party -- after he took his war against news media to new heights last week with a coarse post on the appearance and intellect of cable television host Mika Brzezinski. On Saturday he also posted several anti-media messages as Americans began their Fourth of July celebration. Sundays tweet, which used an edited version of a years-old promotional video for professional wrestling, showed Trump, clad in a business suit and tie, administering a choreographed beat-down to a figure whose face was obscured by CNNs logo. #FraudNewsCNN #FNN pic.twitter.com/WYUnHjjUjg  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 2, 2017 CNN, which has been a particular target of the president since the network was forced to retract a story relating to an element of the sprawling investigation into possible collusion with Russia by the Trump campaign, quickly condemned the tweet. It is a sad day when the President of the United States encourages violence against reporters, the network said in statement. It also tweeted a recent assertion by White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders that Trump had never engaged in such incitement. "The President in no way form or fashion has ever promoted or encouraged violence. If anything, quite the contrary." - @SHSanders45 6/29/17  CNN Communications (@CNNPR) July 2, 2017 As is often the case, the presidents surrogates were left scrambling to explain or justify an inflammatory Twitter outburst. Homeland security advisor Thomas Bossert, who was shown the clip while appearing on ABCs This Week, watched it stone-faced and then declared: No one would perceive that as a threat. I hope they dont. The night before, Trump had used a celebration of veterans at Washingtons Kennedy Center to again denounce the news media. The president, who had briefly broken a weekend golf getaway to appear at the rally, pounded away at the theme that he is being treated unfairly. The fake media tried to stop us from going to the White House, he told the raucous crowd. But Im president, and theyre not. Facebook

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Increasing number of states reject request for personal information on voters from Trump commission By Colleen Shalby (Carolyn Kaster / Associated Press) A growing number of states have rejected a request for personal information about voters from a presidential commission on vote fraud led by Kansas controversial Secretary of State Kris Kobach. Kobach, the vice chairman of the commission, sent letters to each state and Washington, D.C., asking for voters personal information. The request asked for names, addresses, voting history and the last four digits of voters Social Security numbers. The commission was set up to look into voter fraud after President Trump alleged that he lost the popular vote in 2016 only because millions of people voted illegally -- a claim that numerous states election officials from both parties and outside experts have dismissed as groundless. As of Friday afternoon, at least 13 states had outright rejected the request from the Presidential Advisory Committee on Election Integrity. Officials in several other states either said they would not supply all the information or needed more information before making a decision. Some officials did not mince words in their nos. They can go jump in the Gulf of Mexico, and Mississippi is a great State to launch from, Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann wrote in a statement. California Secretary of State Alex Padilla said in a statement that strongly criticized Kobach that he would continue to defend the rights of all eligible voters to cast their ballots free from discrimination, intimidation or unnecessary roadblocks. Secretary Padilla's response to the Election Commission's request for personal data of CA voters: pic.twitter.com/UdUt55HSim  CA SOS Vote (@CASOSvote) June 29, 2017 As a Kansas official, Kobach has been a leading backer of immigration restrictions and of measures to put new requirements on who is allowed to vote. His opponents note that he was fined last week for misleading a federal court in a voting rights case. Democratic elected officials in several states criticized the commission, itself, not just the information request. The president created his election commission based on the false notion that voter fraud is a widespread issue  it is not, Kentucky Secretary of State Allison Grimes wrote. "I do not intend to release Kentuckians' sensitive personal data to the fed. gov't."  Sec. Grimes



Statement on Pres. Commission request: pic.twitter.com/9Js05x99eF  Alison L. Grimes (@KySecofState) June 30, 2017 In an odd contradiction, Kobach said that Kansas, like some other states, will partially reject at least one aspect of the request. In Kansas, the Social Security number is not publicly available.  Every state receives the same letter, but were not asking for it if its not publicly available, he told the Kansas City Star. The states that have fully rejected the request include California, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, North Dakota, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia, Mississippi and Minnesota. Others, including Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma, Connecticut, Missouri, Kansas, Utah and Texas will turn over some of the requested information. Vermont has requested an affidavit from the commission. And Wisconsin has suggested that the commission could purchase the publicly available information, just as political campaigns do. Officials in Washington state said they were reviewing the request. Facebook

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Look at possible conflicts of interest in Trump teams OneWest Bank probes, 2 Democrats urge By Jim Puzzanghera Protesters gather outside a OneWest Bank in Pasadena in 2014. (Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times) Two House Democrats want Congress to look into possible conflicts of interest in the Trump administrations handling of investigations into Pasadenas OneWest Bank  a bank formerly headed by now-Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin. Reps. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) and Al Green (D-Texas) said Friday that there was room for considerable doubt as to the impartiality and the adequacy of this administrations investigations into OneWest and a subsidiary, Financial Freedom. Mnuchin was the banks chairman from 2009 to 2015. President Trump has nominated Joseph Otting, the former chief executive of OneWest, to be comptroller of the currency, a key bank regulator who is part of the Treasury Department. And Brian Brooks, who was OneWests vice chairman, reportedly will be tapped to be deputy Treasury secretary. Read More Facebook

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Healthcare issue delivers nothing but pain for Nevadas embattled Sen. Dean Heller By David Montero Dean Heller is Stephanie Diaz-Gonzalezs problem now. Shes never met Nevadas Republican senator and hadnt had much time to familiarize herself. How could she? The 25-year-old is holding down a full-time job and ra+ising a 7-year-old son, who keeps her busy with soccer games, math homework and those too-often terrifying moments when he cant breathe. When President Trump was elected and congressional Republicans moved on their top priority to dismantle Obamacare, Diaz-Gonzalez got to know Heller a whole lot better. Given his back-and-forth on the issue, she came to distrust him. I dont know if I could vote for him or support him, the Democrat said. He seems very contradictory. Which is why Heller is also Karen Steelmons problem. Steelmon, a 48-year-old Republican who grew up in northern Nevada, isnt happy with the lawmaker, who is considered the most vulnerable GOP senator in the country when he comes up for reelection next year. Obamacare has always been an abomination to Steelmon, an ardent supporter of repeal. To her, deeply held principles are at stake. Heller has never acted in favor of what I would consider conservative, constitutional principles as a general rule, said Steelmon, who would like to see the incumbent taken out in a GOP primary. And on the very few times he has, its always come as a surprise. This is Hellers dilemma. Read More Facebook

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Trump will meet face-to-face with Putin in Germany next week By Brian Bennett (Alexei Nikolsky / Associated Press) President Trump has governed five months under a cloud of questions about his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, yet the two men will meet next week for the first time, on the sidelines of the G20 summit of world leaders in Hamburg, Germany. White House officials on Thursday confirmed plans for the private meeting but said no decisions had been made about the topics Trump will raise. So its unclear whether the men will discuss Russias election-year cyberattacks that are the focus of criminal and congressional investigations. Our relationship with Russia is not different from any other country in terms of us communicating with them, really, what our concerns are, where we see problems in the relationship but also opportunities, said Trumps national security advisor, H.R. McMaster. McMaster said he expected the two men to have a broad, wide-ranging discussion about problems in the relationship but also about where the U.S. and Russia have common interests. Theres no specific agenda, McMaster said. Its really going to be whatever the president wants to talk about, he added. The White House has refused to say whether Trump would sign legislation with new sanctions on Russia for meddling in the elections by hacking, including into some states voting systems, and by spreading false news stories. But Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin indicated the existing restrictions against Russia were sufficient. Weve got plenty of those as well, Mnuchin said. Trump will also meet with the leaders of China, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Indonesia, Singapore and other countries during the summit of 20 major world economies. Trumps director of the White House National Economic Council, Gary Cohn, said the meeting would fall short of a typical bilateral discussion between the American president and the head of another country, but would be more than whats known in diplomacy-speak as a pull aside  a quick, informal get-together on the edge of a conference. Trumps scheduled meeting with Putin in Hamburg places added significance on his stop in Poland next Wednesday. In Warsaw, McMaster said, Trump intends to bolster U.S. relationships with Poland and other central European and Baltic states that were once in Moscows orbit under the Soviet Union, but now rely on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the U.S. to counter pressure from Russia. Trumps meetings there seem designed to strengthen his hand with Putin. McMaster called Poland a front-line NATO nation with regards to the eastern flank, noting that it sent troops to fight alongside the U.S. in Afghanistan and Iraq and has exceeded its pledge on NATO defense spending. As a candidate and president, Trump has criticized other NATO countries that have not yet met those pledges for military spending equal to at least 2% of the size of their respective economies. Facebook

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Travel ban seen a win by at least one conservative; Breitbart focuses on upcoming votes in Congress By Kurtis Lee After it stalled for several months in federal courts, a portion of President Trumps travel ban is set to take effect Thursday evening and will bar individuals from six majority-Muslim countries. Some in conservative media are viewing it as a much-needed political victory for Trump. Here are some of Thursdays headlines: Two wins for Trump (Washington Times) Trump has seen setbacks in his fledgling administration  probes into possible collusion with Russia, infighting among his party over a healthcare overhaul, federal courts halting his travel ban. But now, the president gets a W. The Supreme Courts decision to allow portions of President Trumps travel ban to proceed is a much-needed victory for the administration, Cal Thompson writes. In doing so the unanimous court affirmed  at least temporarily, pending a full hearing on the case in the fall  a presidents constitutional authority to determine whether people seeking admittance to the U.S. pose a threat to our safety and security. Thompson also highlights the Supreme Court decision this week that churches have the same right as other charitable groups to seek state money for new playground surfaces and other non-religious needs. Thompson called the ruling in the case, Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia Inc. v. Comer, a victory for religious institutions and Trump, who at times has touched on the issue of religious freedom. Breitbart prods GOP leaders to pass pro-American immigration reforms (Breitbart) For Trump, Breitbart hasnt always delivered the most approving headlines for his administration  particularly on immigration. Some right-wing bloggers and pundits dont think Trump has done enough on immigration, a key pillar of his campaign platform. This piece turns the attention to members of Congress, where two bills  focused primarily on detaining people in the country illegally  could come up for a vote . The GOP-run House is expected to vote for two modest immigration-reform bills as soon as this week, but pro-American reformers are using the two votes to build loud and energetic public pressure for major reform legislation, notes the right-wing website. Trump attacks Psycho Joe Scarborough, Crazy Mika Brzezinski in Twitter tear (Fox News) At first, they were friends; now, perhaps, enemies?

Trump used Twitter early Thursday to jab Morning Joe hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, who the president in past has said he admires. The tweets have drawn the ire of Republicans. Heres what the president wrote: I heard poorly rated @Morning_Joe speaks badly of me (don't watch anymore). Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came..  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 29, 2017 ...to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year's Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 29, 2017 And the response? pic.twitter.com/8YhzcCUwM1  Mika Brzezinski (@morningmika) June 29, 2017 Facebook

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Trump plans to nominate Brendan Carr to fill final FCC seat and provide crucial vote on net neutrality rules By Jim Puzzanghera President Trump intends to nominate Brendan Carr, a former aide to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai, to fill the final open seat at the agency and provide a crucial vote on the future of tough net neutrality rules. Carr, the FCCs general counsel, would fill a Republican slot on the commission and would be expected to support Pais push to roll back the regulations for online traffic. Carrs intended nomination was announced by the White House on Wednesday night. It comes after Trump nominated Jessica Rosenworcel, a former FCC commissioner, on June 14 to fill a Democratic seat. If the Senate confirms both nominees, as expected, the FCC would have its full complement of five commissioners and a 3-2 Republican majority. Read More Facebook

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Gorsuch is already pushing Supreme Court to the right on religion, guns and gays By David Savage Supreme Court Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch (J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press) When Judge Neil M. Gorsuch went before the Senate in March as President Trumps first nominee to the Supreme Court, he sought to assure senators he would be independent and above the political fray. There is no such thing as a Republican judge or Democratic judge, he said more than once. We just have judges. But in just his first few weeks on the high court, Justice Gorsuch has shown himself to be a confident conservative activist, urging his colleagues to move the law to the right on religion, gun rights, gay rights and campaign funding. He dissented along with Justice Clarence Thomas when the court rejected a gun-rights challenge to Californias law that strictly regulates who may carry a concealed weapon. The 2nd Amendments core purpose, they said, shows the right to bear arms extends to public carry. He wrote a dissent, joined by Thomas and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., when the court struck down part of an Arkansas law that gave opposite sex-couples, but not same-sex couples, the right to have both spouses listed on a childs birth certificate. The court said it had already decided that same-sex couples deserve fully equal rights under state law. And when Trumps travel ban came before the court this week, Gorsuch dissented from the majoritys middle-ground approach, which allowed the ban to take effect except for foreign travelers who had a relationship with this country, such as a close relative or a student enrolled in a university. Read More Facebook

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When he meets South Koreas president, Trump will be asking for trade concessions and help confronting North Korea By Brian Bennett (Nicholas Kamm / AFP Photo) President Trump plans to pressure South Korean President Moon Jae-in to make trade concessions when they meet Friday, while at the same time seeking closer cooperation against North Koreas accelerating nuclear program. Both aims, outlined Wednesday by a senior administration official, could make for some difficult discussions, especially since the newly elected Moon campaigned for a softer approach to the government in Pyongyang. Moon, who arrived Wednesday in Washington, began his four-day visit by laying a wreath at a memorial at Marine Corps Base Quantico in northern Virginia to the U.S. Marines who died during the Korean War in the battle at Chosin Reservoir. Trump will host Moon and his wife, Kim Joon-suk, for dinner at the White House on Thursday before the two leaders meet one-on-one in the Oval Office on Friday morning. Having criticized the two countries trade agreement when he was running for president, Trump will argue for a more balanced trade relationship, the administration official said in a background briefing. In particular, Trump will cite the large amount of Chinese steel that is sometimes processed in South Korea before being sold cheaply in the U.S. market. The two leaders will have a friendly, frank discussion about the trade imbalance between South Korea and the United States, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Seouls trade surplus is shrinking, the official added, but there is still a large gap. The visit will mark the first time the two leaders have met since the liberal Moon took office last month after the ouster of President Park Geun-hye, a scandal-tarred conservative who had taken a hard line against North Korea. Trump and Moon share precisely the same goal, the Trump aide said -- the complete dismantlement of North Koreas nuclear program. But the approach of the two leaders is starkly different. Trump has called for maximum pressure against North Korea, seeking additional economic sanctions and demanding that China, North Koreas main ally and patron, do more to shut off assistance to Pyongyang. Moon has risen through the ranks of his countrys politics advocating for closer ties between the Koreas, which technically are still at war. Already he has taken steps to delay the deployment of the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, known as THAAD, an anti-missile system intended to counter any North Korean strikes. The anti-missile system is a divisive issue in South Korea; it prompted protests last weekend at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul. China has objected to installation of the powerful radar defense as well, but the White House believes the U.S. system will ultimately be fully operative. The delay should not be equated as a reversal of the decision to deploy THAAD, the official said, and suggested that the topic would not be central to the two presidents discussions. As important as anything [will be] building a rapport and getting to know each other, the official said. Facebook

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Senate Republicans aim for new healthcare bill by Friday, but skeptics remain By Lisa Mascaro (Alex Brandon / Associated Press) Senate Republicans reconvened behind closed doors Wednesday trying to break the impasse on their healthcare overhaul but emerged with no apparent strategy for resolving differences by an end-of-week deadline. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky vowed to try again for a vote after the Fourth of July recess, despite having abruptly delayed action this week. Senators were aiming for a revised bill by Friday, the Republican whip, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, told reporters, so it could be assessed by the Congressional Budget Office during the break. But senators remained skeptical after the lengthy lunchtime huddle that appeared to run long on ideas but short on consensus. I think its going to be very difficult, said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine). McConnell surprised senators by delaying this weeks expected votes once it became clear he did not have a majority for passage  or possibly to even open the debate. As many as 10 Republican senators now publicly oppose the bill, the Better Care Reconciliation Act, and leaders are scrambling to win them over with an estimated $200 billion in savings from the bill that can be applied to their particular states needs. But even with that fund of resources, it is not clear McConnell will be able to satisfactorily improve the legislation, which now threatens to cut 22 million Americans off health insurance. He can only afford to lose two Republican votes in the face of Democratic opposition. Its going to be very difficult to get me to a yes... have to make us an offer we cant refuse, Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) said on a telephone town hall late Tuesday, according to journalist Jon Ralston, who monitored the call. Fresh polling Wednesday showed paltry support for the Republican approach to overhauling the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, which has enjoyed a surge in popularity now that Republicans are closer than ever to repealing it. A USA Today poll put approval of the Senate GOP bill at 12%. Republicans, though, are under enormous pressure from their most conservative supporters  and big dollar donors, including the powerful Koch network  to deliver on their promised to end Obamacare. Senate Democrats, meanwhile, suggested that President Trump convene all 100 senators  much the way then-President Obama did during his first days in office for a session at Blair House  to see how they might be able to work together to improve, rather than repeal, the Affordable Care Act. Id make my friends on the Republican side and President Trump an offer: Lets turn over a new leaf. Lets start over, said Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.). President Trump, I challenge you to invite us  all 100 of us, Republican and Democrat  to Blair House to discuss a new bipartisan way forward on healthcare in front of all the American people. No such invitation, however, seemed forthcoming. Trump dismissed Schumers proposal  he just doesnt seem like a serious person, the president said  and instead promised his own big surprise on healthcare. Healthcare is working along very well, Trump told reporters at the White House. We could have a big surprise, with a great healthcare package. Asked what he meant by a big surprise, Trump simply repeated: A great, great surprise. The Republican bill, like its counterpart passed by House Republicans, does not fully gut Obamacare, but rescinds the new taxes imposed on high-income individuals and healthcare companies to pay for expanding coverage through Medicaid and subsidies for private insurance on the ACA marketplace. Senators said the private talks Wednesday focused mainly on changes to the Obamacare marketplace that could bring down the cost of insurance premiums. One idea from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) to allow insurers to offer policies that do not meet the Obamacare benchmarks for what insurance needs to cover met with mixed reaction, senators said. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a physician, warned that such changes would alter the risk pool, keeping insurance costs high. You end up with policies that, for example, dont cover maternity, Cassidy said. Do you want a policy that doesnt have maternity, which would be principally appealing to young men, when obviously typically men have had a role in that pregnancy? Other senators were floating new ideas, but McConnell gave no indication whether those proposals would be included in the final revised product. Michael A. Memoli contributed to this report. Facebook

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No new laptop bans, but air travelers to the U.S. will face tighter screening all over the globe By Joseph Tanfani Homeland Security officials said Wednesday they will order stricter passenger screening and other new security measures for all flights entering the United States but will not bar laptop computers in carry-on luggage as airlines and passenger groups had feared. The new order will cover about 2,000 flights a day from 280 airports in 105 countries, a move that could make international flying even more onerous just as the busy summer travel season starts. Security officials would not detail the new measures but said passengers headed to the United States will face more intensive screening at airports, and probably more security dogs. They gave no date for when the new procedures will start. If carriers dont implement the measures effectively, Homeland Security still may ban laptops, e-readers and other electronic devices larger than cell phones from cargo holds as well as passenger cabins. The decision follows intelligence, reportedly gathered from Islamic State in Syria by Israeli spy services, suggesting a lethal new threat from bombs that could be concealed in digital devices and that could evade detection by airport screening devices. In March, U.S. and British authorities banned laptops in cabins on flights from eight Muslim-majority countries in North Africa and the Middle East, saying terrorists were seeking innovative methods to bring down commercial jetliners. Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly told a security conference in Washington on Wednesday that the new security measures will be both seen and unseen and will be phased in over time. He said they will include tougher screening, particularly of electronic devices, plus new technology and procedures to protect planes from so--called insider attacks by airline employees. It is time that we raise the global baseline of aviation security, Kelly said. We cannot play international whack-a-mole with every new threat. He said terrorists still see commercial aircraft as the crown jewel target for attacks, and that intelligence has shown renewed interest by terrorists to attack airlines. Kelly told a House committee several weeks ago that the department was considering extending the laptop ban to 71 more airports overseas. But Kelly ultimately decided to tighten screening across the board, instead of focusing on laptops or chasing after each item that might be used to bring down a jetliner, senior Homeland Security officials said Wednesday in a conference call with reporters. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to brief reporters, said Kelly worked with airlines to find ways to improve screening without unduly inconveniencing passengers. Intensive doesnt always mean slower, said one official. In some cases, airlines have been doing these things at international airports for some time. The officials said more security dogs, which sniff for explosives, may be used. And they said airlines and airports may institute pre-check programs like those approved by the Transportation Security Administration for use in U.S. airports. The officials said restrictions on the first 10 airports will be lifted once airlines in those countries satisfy the new security protocols, officials said. Airport authorities in the eight countries affected by that ban  Jordan, Egypt, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates  have been told about the new security measures and will put them in place so the ban is lifted, the officials said. In recent weeks, Kelly and his aides have huddled with their counterparts overseas, as well as with representatives of major airlines, to discuss whether to expand the ban around the globe. Airlines protested that a laptop ban would inconvenience passengers and not remove the threat. Aviation experts and European security officials warned that putting laptops in cargo holds would pose other dangers because the lithium batteries could start fires. In 1988, a bomb hidden in a radio cassette player exploded aboard a Pan Am jet flying over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 passengers and crew. The plot was blamed on then-Libyan strongman Moammar Kadafi. In 2010, powerful bombs hidden in printer ink cartridges were found aboard two cargo jets headed from Yemen to Chicago. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula later claimed responsibility for the plot. Facebook

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Its crunch time for McConnell after Senate GOP is forced to delay vote on healthcare bill By Lisa Mascaro ( (Alex Brandon / Associated Press)) The abrupt decision Tuesday by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to temporarily shelve a vote on the Republican Obamacare overhaul gives him a few extra weeks to build support for a revised bill before it risks becoming hopelessly stalled by the opposition. The seasoned GOP leader will be aided by what amounts to a $200-billion piggy bank to push Republican holdouts into line. Thats the bills extra cost savings, compared with the House version, that McConnell can tap to provide perks to individual senators, from more opioid assistance to expanded tax-free health savings accounts. A similar strategy  delay and enticements  worked well in the House, where Republicans last month passed their healthcare bill on the third try. But prolonging the debate also gives Democrats and other critics time to mobilize, and ensures that senators will be exposed to an onslaught of opposition as they head home for the weeklong holiday break to defend a bill that has estimated would leave tens of millions of Americans without insurance. After the delay was announced, President Trump hosted a White House gathering of all GOP senators. But rather than rally them around the bill with the power of the presidential bully pulpit, he struck a surprisingly detached tone. This will be great if we get it done, Trump told senators in the East Room. And if we dont get it done, its just going to be something that were not going to like. And thats OK. Read More Facebook

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As vote looms, concerns over Medicaid cuts rise from some in conservative media By Kurtis Lee Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) (J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press ) The vote  for now  is delayed. As President Trump has urged Senate Republicans to pass a bill that would overhaul the Affordable Care Act, some, including Sens. Dean Heller of Nevada and Rob Portman of Ohio, have expressed concerns over cuts to Medicaid. Both represent states that, under Obamacare, expanded Medicaid coverage to low-income adults. The current Senate healthcare bill would deliver deep cuts to Medicaid, leaving millions uninsured. While Trump awaits a vote in the coming weeks  originally scheduled for this week, but pushed back until after the July 4 recess  its on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to gather enough support from within his GOP caucus to secure the bills passage. Some in the conservative media are questioning the current bill. Here is an overview of todays headlines on this and other issues: Republicans have a Medicaid problem (Weekly Standard) The Republican healthcare bill would cut Medicaid spending by $772 billion over the next decade. Chris Deaton writes that Republicans aim to offset the consequences of these Medicaid changes by offering tax credits for private insurance to people under the poverty line. In this piece, Deaton raises the question of whether low-income earners would be better off with Medicaid coverage or obtaining insurance through a GOP tax credit? He answers by noting, Its long been a contention of conservative thinkers that healthcare outcomes improve with private insurance rather than Medicaid. Paul Manafort, former Trump campaign chairman, registers as foreign agent (Associated Press) Hes among those facing scrutiny in an FBI investigation into Russian meddling in last years election. Now, Paul Manafort, who at one time served as Trumps campaign chairman, has registered with the Department of Justice as a foreign agent. In a filing with the department, Manafort notes that his consulting firm received nearly $17 million between 2012 and 2014 from a Ukrainian political party with links to Russia, according to the Associated Press. Last spring, former national security advisor Michael T. Flynn, who resigned from his position in February after misleading administration officials about contacts with Russians, also registered as a foreign agent, for consulting work he did for a Turkish businessman. A Democratic road to recovery (American Spectator) The party is attempting a reboot. After Hillary Clintons 2016 loss and defeats in several special elections this year, Democrats are in search of a new face for the party. Even so, liberals are in lock-step in their opposition to Trump. This piece offers Democrats some advice  from the right  on how to recover. Leftists: You have been lied to and taken advantage of. When you eventually come out of this haze you are in, you will realize that it was done not by the president, but by the snake oil salesmen and charlatans, who took advantage of your sickness and weakness, simply for money and power, writes Judah Friedman. Ask yourselves this: What is the Democratic Party, right now, without this rage, and hate, with which it is fueling your addictions? The answer is nothing. Facebook

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Sarah Palin sues the New York Times for tying her PAC ad to mass shooting By Associated Press Former vice presidential nominee and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is accusing the New York Times of defamation over an editorial that linked one of her political action committee ads to the mass shooting that severely wounded then-Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords. In the lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court Tuesday, Palins lawyers say the Times violated the law and its own policies when it accused her of inciting the 2011 attack that killed six people. The lawsuit refers to a June editorial in the Times on the recent shooting of Louisiana Congressman Steve Scalise. The editorial later was corrected. Palin is seeking damages to be determined by a jury. A spokeswoman for the Times, Danielle Rhoades Ha, says the company hasnt seen the lawsuit but will defend against any claim vigorously. Facebook

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Trump succeeds where Obama failed  spawning a new wave of liberal activism By Mark Z. Barabak Amanda Litman and Ross Morales Rocketto launched the Democratic activist group Run For Something, which encourages people under 35 to seek elected office. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) The night Hillary Clinton lost the White House, Amanda Litman cried so hard she threw up. In Atlanta, as the returns rolled in, Traci Feit Love faced a question from her anguished 8-year-old daughter: Now what do we do? Across the country, in the heart of Silicon Valley, Rita Bosworth wondered the same thing. The three never met, never spoke, never communicated in any fashion. But in the days and weeks that followed, they became common threads in a sprawling patchwork: the angry and politically aggrieved who  with no help from politicians, political parties or any formal campaign structure  have joined to fight President Trump and his policies. Read More Facebook

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Trump on healthcare bill: If we dont get it done ... thats OK By Associated Press (Evan Vucci / Associated Press) President Trump said that if the healthcare bill fails to pass in the Senate, he wont like it  but thats OK. Trump spoke Tuesday at a gathering of Senate Republicans after their leaders delayed a vote on their healthcare bill until at least next month. Trump said, This will be great if we get it done and if we dont get it done its going to be something that were not going to like and thats OK and I can understand that. He added, I think we have a chance to do something very, very important for the public, very, very important for the people of our country. Facebook

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Watch live: Press briefing with Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Sanders and Energy Secretary Rick Perry Facebook

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Senate GOP leaders abruptly delay vote on healthcare bill until after July 4th recess By Lisa Mascaro Facing resistance from their own party, Senate Republican leaders said Tuesday they would postpone a vote on their healthcare bill until after the July 4th recess. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wants to provide more time to make changes to the bill to try to convince reluctant GOP senators to vote for the measure. Were going to press on,' McConnell said, adding he remains optimistic. Were continuing to talk. Since the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said the bill would leave 22 million more Americans without insurance after 10 years, several Republicans senators had said they would not even support allowing the bill to be brought to the Senate floor for a vote. Meanwhile, President Trump invited all GOP senators to the White House for a meeting Tuesday afternoon. But Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a moderate who has expressed serious doubts about the bill, questioned whether revisions would make a difference. I have so many fundamental problems with the bill, that have been confirmed by the CBO report, that its difficult to see how any tinkering is going to satisfy my fundamental and deep concerns about the bill,' Collins said on CNN. McConnell is struggling to appease two factions in his party. Centrists like Collins want to lessen the impact of proposed cuts to Medicaid, while conservatives want to go further in repealing benefits provided under Obamacare. Senate leaders hope to continue talks this week, with an eye toward moving quickly when Congress returns after the holiday. McConnell plans to wait for the CBO to review any changes and reissue a score. He can only afford to lose two Republicans given the partys 52-seat majority in the Senate. Theres more work that needs to be done, its pretty obvious, said Republican Sen. Jim Risch of Idaho as he was leaving a Senate lunch with Vice President Mike Pence. Pence ignored reporters questions about the decision. If more work needs to be done, you shouldnt try to light the fire. But the delay in a vote will give Democrats and other opponents of the repeal bill more time to mobilize, particularly as Republicans return to their home districts during the holiday. We know the fight is not over,' said Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer of New York. Facebook

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Trump administration warns of Syrian chemical attack, but with damaged credibility By Noah Bierman The Trump administration Monday night sent the kind of dire warning -- of the Syrian regimes apparent preparation for another chemical weapons attack, and a threat of U.S. retaliation -- that requires credibility to have a receptive national and foreign audience. Yet the initial bafflement about the warning among U.S. defense officials, and the simultaneous distraction of President Trumps unrelated tweets, seemed to undercut the seriousness of the moment. More broadly, the episode is testing the damage Trump has done to his and his administrations trustworthiness by his assaults on the intelligence community as well as other perceived enemies. Trump has spent months attacking the credibility of the intelligence community, at one point comparing their tactics to Nazis and repeatedly calling its findings of Russian meddling in the election a hoax and witch hunt, even as foreign policy experts cautioned that he was diminishing the reputation of a community he would need in times of crisis to rally public support. At a moment of crisis when U.S. decisions and actions rest upon information coming from the intelligence community, [Trump] may have diminished the credibility of that information in the eyes of the public and the eyes of the international community, said Daryl G. Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Assn. Kimball called the White House statement unusual and said such messages would normally be sent through private diplomatic channels. He added that the public allegation should be followed by a formal presentation of the evidence to the United Nations Security Council, to build international support against suspected Syrian violations of the chemical weapons ban. The four-line statement on Syria from the White House Press Secretary came just after 9:44 p.m. EDT Monday. The United States has identified potential preparations for another chemical weapons attack by the Assad regime that would likely result in the mass murder of civilians, including innocent children, the statement read. The activities are similar to preparations the regime made before its April 4, 2017 chemical weapons attack. If Syrian President Bashar Assad conducts another mass murder attack using chemical weapons, he and his military will pay a heavy price, it concluded, citing a U.S. missile strike after the previous chemical attack to reinforce the new threat. A Pentagon spokesman confirmed Tuesday that preparations for a chemical attack were observed at the same base in Syria from which its military launched a sarin nerve gas attack that killed 86 people, including children, in April. We have observed activities at Shayrat Air Base that suggest possible intent by the Syrian regime to use chemical weapons again, Pentagon spokesman Maj. Adrian J.T. Rankine-Galloway said in a statement. These activities are similar to what we observed prior to the regime chemical weapons attack against Khan Sheikhoun in April. But some senior U.S. defense and intelligence officials reached late Monday and early Tuesday were caught off guard by the White House statement. Some knew, some didnt, said a U.S. official who sought anonymity to discuss the intelligence matter. The official described the release of the nighttime statement as ungraceful, but said the assessment that Syria was preparing for an attack is sound. Such official statements are typically distributed widely across an administration for internal vetting before theyre publicly released. The White House said the relevant agencies were informed before the statement was published. Yet Trump lent further confusion about the urgency of the matter and his own level of concern by sending out a tweet about domestic politics only minutes later. He cited a Fox news report about the FBIs Russia investigation, writing as he often does about the probe, Witch Hunt! From @FoxNews "Bombshell: In 2016, Obama dismissed idea that anyone could rig an American election." Check out his statement - Witch Hunt!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 27, 2017 Indeed, Trump continued through the next morning to demonstrate his frustration with the Russia investigation and what he calls the American medias fake news with posts on his Twitter feed. Many tweets quoted supportive conservative commentators and Fox News reports. Trump was eager to go after CNN, one of his top media targets, after it retracted a Russia-related story and three journalists involved resigned. So they caught Fake News CNN cold, but what about NBC, CBS & ABC? What about the failing @nytimes & @washingtonpost? They are all Fake News!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 27, 2017 Trumps willingness to mix politics and his administrations ominous red line to Syria opened him up to criticism that he was trying to divert attention from other unfavorable news Monday. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office had found that the Republican plan to replace Obamacare would strip 22 million people of health insurance coverage over the next decade. The Syria statement also prompted a sharp backlash from the Kremlin, which is Assads military ally in his nations civil war. Russian officials denied there is evidence of an imminent chemical attack and called the White House threat unacceptable. The tensions have heightened as Trump is expected to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin next week at the G20 Summit of industrialized nations in Germany. Mondays statement may be seen as a warning not just to Syria but to Russia, which is widely seen as enabling Assads harsh tactics by bolstering his military as he has tried to retain power. Facebook

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Kremlin calls White House warning to Syria unacceptable, denies any Assad chemical attack in the works By Sabra Ayres The Kremlin is calling unacceptable a White House warning to Syrias government that it would pay a heavy price if it carries out another poison gas attack against its own people. Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, also declared Tuesday that there is no indication that a chemical weapons strike is in the works. The White House said late Monday night that activity had been detected similar to that preceding a nerve gas attack on April 4 that killed dozens of civilians, including children, in rebel-held Idlib province. President Trump responded by launching nearly 60 Tomahawk cruise missiles at a Syrian military airfield that U.S. officials said was used for the chemical attack. It was the first U.S. attack on Syrian forces in the six-year civil war. Russia continues to deny that Assads forces carried out the April 4 gas attack and Peskov criticized the White House for saying there were signs of preparation for another such strike. Peskov said the Kremlin does not think it is possible to lay the blame on the Syrian armed forces for the April strike on the village of Khan Sheikhoun, which the U.S. and its allies said involved sarin, a banned nerve agent. Despite all the demands from the Russian side, an impartial international inquiry into a previous tragedy using chemical agents has not been carried out, the spokesman told Russian news agencies. Peskov criticized the White House warning to Assad, saying such threats to Syrias legitimate leaders are unacceptable. Read More Facebook

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Senate healthcare overhaul hits trouble as Republicans hesitant to proceed to vote By Lisa Mascaro The Senate Republican healthcare bill ran into serious trouble late Monday when key GOP senators indicated they may block the Obamacare overhaul from proceeding to a vote this week. Political turmoil has been building over the bill for days. But GOP tension burst open after the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported that 22 million more Americans would lose insurance coverage under the plan and that out-of-pocket costs for many of those buying policies on the Affordable Care Act marketplace would rise. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell hoped to start procedural votes by Wednesday, and President Trump called key senators over the weekend as support splintered. Its the same political dynamic that stalled the House Republican bill last month, as conservative and centrist factions wrestle for dominance. Conservatives want a more complete repeal of the Affordable Care Act, which they hope will lower premium costs, while centrists are trying to avoid leaving millions of Americans without health coverage. Senate bill doesnt fix ACA problems for rural Maine, tweeted Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine). I will vote no on mtp, she said, referring to the motion to proceed to the bill. Conservative Sen. Mike Lee of Utah is also working to change the bill so that he can vote yes on the procedural motion. We are not there yet, Lees spokesman said. Senators have bristled at what they viewed as McConnells secretive and rushed process, and several other senators said they wanted more time before voting. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas was among those Republicans who shared concerns in weekend calls with Trump. We continue to make progress, Cruz told reporters Monday, as Democrats, who oppose the bill, planned an almost-all-night protest session. Cruz is part of the gang of four conservatives -- including Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky -- who have said they cannot vote for the bill as is. Among the changes being pursued is one provision that would allow insurers to offer cheaper policies that do not meet ACAs requirements and another to let consumers sock more money into health savings accounts We can get there and Im hopeful we will get there, Cruz said. However, he declined to say whether he would agree to Wednesdays procedural vote. Also hesitant to proceed was Nevada Sen. Dean Heller, who has strongly criticized undoing Obamacares Medicaid expansion that has enabled about 200,000 people to gain coverage in his state. Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, for example, wanted changes to help residents in her geographically far-flung state where healthcare costs are particularly high. Some senators, though, dismissed the budget analysis and said keeping the ACA would be worse. Its clear the CBO cannot predict the purchasing patterns for millions of Americans, said Georgia Sen. David Perdue, a Trump ally, in a statement. This bureaucratic analysis will do nothing to prevent Obamacare from failing. Others are weighing their votes. Republican Sen. Bob Corker, whose office is receiving thousands of daily calls, spent part of Monday on the phone with health officials in Tennessee as he assesses the fallout in his state of 22 million more people in the country without healthcare. I kind of figured it was going to be a pretty big number, said Corker, who remains undecided. Theres a lot of incoming. CBO says 22 million people lose insurance; Medicaid cuts hurt most vulnerable Americans; access to healthcare in rural areas threatened. 2/3  Sen. Susan Collins (@SenatorCollins) June 26, 2017 Facebook

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Supreme Court puts off decision in three pending cases about borders and immigration By David Savage ((Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images) Amid its flurry of decisions Monday about Trumps travel ban and cases involving religious liberties and guns, the Supreme Court put off final rulings on three pending cases involving immigration and the U.S. border. In Hernandez vs. Mesa, the court in an unsigned opinion told the U.S. appeals court in New Orleans to take a second look at a border shooting case. The parents of a 15-year-old Mexican boy sued a U.S. border patrol agent who shot and killed the teenager when he was standing a few feet from the border on the Mexican side. The 5th Circuit had thrown out the parents suit. The facts alleged in the complaint depict a disturbing incident resulting in a heartbreaking loss of life, the court said in sending the case back for a further hearing. The court said it would rehear in the fall a Los Angeles case involving whether immigrants awaiting deportation can be jailed indefinitely, or instead have a right to a bond hearing after six months. The courts action suggests the eight justices were evenly split in Jennings vs. Rodriguez. The court also said it will rehear the case of Sessions vs. Dimaya to decide whether non-citizens can be deported for an offense like breaking into an empty home because it may be deemed a crime of violence. Facebook

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Refugee advocates says even partial reinstatement of travel ban will cause hardship By Laura King Immigration and refugee advocates expressed disappointment Monday with the Supreme Courts partial reinstatement of President Trumps travel ban, saying even limited implementation could cause hardship to refugees and others seeking to travel to the United States from six affected Muslim-majority countries. However, organizations taking part in the months-long legal fight against the revised travel ban expressed hopes that the high court ultimately will reject the restrictions after arguments are heard in October. And they welcomed what they described as an implicit rebuke of the White Houses assertion that Trump has unfettered powers to exclude arrivals based on purported national security concerns. The initial rollout of the ban, days after Trump took office in January, caused pandemonium at airports across the United States and overseas as tens of thousands of visa-holders arriving from seven affected countries were turned away without warning or detained. After courts blocked that order, Trump issued a revised travel ban that took Iraq off the list. A replay of Januarys travel chaos was unlikely Monday because the courts action will allow visa-holders with bona fide ties to people or entities in the U.S. to enter, meaning students, employees and family members can still get in. But refugee advocates said the courts limited ruling, which the administration can move to implement on Thursday, could leave many would-be arrivals in limbo pending the finalizing of new vetting procedures. The administration had originally said a three-month travel ban was needed in part to review the checks to which would-be entrants are subjected. David Miliband, president of the International Rescue Committee, said the partial reinstatement of the ban particularly threatens vulnerable people waiting to come to the U.S., including those with urgent medical conditions. We urge the administration to begin its long-delayed review of the vetting process and restart a program which changes lives for the better, said Miliband. The National Immigration Law Center, one of the groups that challenged the ban, said that as of this week, approximately 50,500 refugees from the six affected countries had been approved for travel and resettlement in the United States  all having already undergone intensive checks. The Middle East Studies Assn., one the groups contesting the ban in the lower courts, said many students and academics were ensnared by the original order. Even though Mondays court move should allow entry to those studying or working at American academic institutions, many from the affected countries remained wary of leaving and then attempting to re-enter the United States, the group said. Iran  along with Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Syria and Libya  is one of the affected countries, and Southern California is home to a large Iranian American community that was hit hard by the original ban. Some advocates said even with Mondays limited action, there has already been a chilling effect on movement. Todays Supreme Court decision immediately places the status of many Americans families into question again, said Shayan Modarres, legal counsel for the National Iranian American Council. The group said that visas issued to Iranian passport-holders had fallen by nearly half since the legal battle over the ban began, and that obtaining a U.S. visa was becoming so onerous that many would not even try to get one. The Trump administrations new idea is to make it so hard on Iranians and Muslims to get a visa that visa officers will have the unrestricted discretion to reject visa applications, Modarres said. He added that grounds for rejection could be social media postings critical of Trump or not being able to produce airline boarding passes that could have been issued and used more than a decade ago. Advocacy groups reiterated their position  which was argued in a number of the lower court cases that propelled the issue to the high court  that the travel restrictions run counter to core American traditions and values. Mark Hetfield, president of the refugee resettlement agency HIAS, said the group considered the courts move an affirmation that the president does not have unfettered, unchecked authority to bar refugees from the U.S. without evidence to justify such action. But he added that the executive orders partial resurrection would once again cause irreparable damage to refugees, immigrants, and Americas reputation as a welcoming country. The initial ban prompted large nationwide protests, and advocates suggested they would again seek to marshal popular opposition to the restrictions. When the first order went into effect, tens of thousands of Americans showed the world that this is not who we are and not what we want, said Becca Heller, director of the International Refugee Assistance Project, another of the groups involved in the legal challenge. We will never give up defending the rights of those who are affected by this discriminatory executive order. Facebook

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Trump says Supreme Court action on travel ban gives him important tool By Michael A. Memoli .@POTUS statement says SCOTUS action allows him to "use an important tool for protecting our Nation's homeland." Will admin press further? pic.twitter.com/gxBJO5aYYZ  Mike Memoli (@mikememoli) June 26, 2017 President Trump celebrated the Supreme Courts decision Monday to allow a curtailed version of his travel ban to take effect, calling it a clear victory for our national security. In an official White House statement, the president said he was particularly gratified that at least part of the ruling was 9-0; three conservative justices said they would have let the presidents revised executive order take effect completely. My number one responsibility as Commander in Chief is to keep the American people safe. Todays ruling allows me to use an important tool for protecting our Nations homeland, he said. The White House has long maintained that the president was acting within his authority in seeking to temporarily restrict travel to the United States. They most often point to a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act that states a president can suspend or limit entry of individuals whenever the president finds that the entry ... would be detrimental to the interests of the United States. Facebook

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Rival Senate factions push competing agendas as healthcare bill hangs in balance By Laura King Heading into a week of intense jockeying and arm-twisting over the Senates polarizing healthcare plan, the rift appeared to widen Sunday between moderates who consider the measure too punitive and conservatives who want to see the sweeping bill toughened up before agreeing to back it. President Trump, who made the repeal of his predecessors signature Affordable Care Act a campaign centerpiece, expressed optimism about chances for Senate passage, but declared again that he wanted to see a plan with heart  suggesting he might undercut Republican efforts to bring recalcitrant conservatives on board. With Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) seeking to push ahead with a vote this week, the bills prospects hung in the balance. Five GOP senators have said publicly they oppose the measure as written; the defection of only three Republicans would be enough to sink it. Read More Facebook

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Analysis: Atop 2017 losses, a sobering challenge for Democrats aiming at Trump next year By Cathleen Decker Republican Karen Handel, winner of last weeks special House election in Georgia. ( (Bob Andres / Atlanta Journal-Constitution)) Democrats have hoped that President Trumps deep unpopularity would propel them to gains in next years midterm election as they fight to take control of the House and improve their position in the Senate. But last years contests and this years special elections suggest a complication: Trump is so distinctive a politician that its hard to persuade voters that other Republican candidates are carbon copies of the president. Trumps outsized persona makes even those Republicans who share his views seem more moderate, an important attribute to swing voters. That presents a problem for the party out of power. Midterm elections traditionally serve as referendums on the president, but voters complicated views of Trump may give Republicans more running room than his popularity figures suggest. The votes cast by individual Republican incumbents may be more important to their survival than any linkage with the president. Read More Facebook

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Conservatives at Koch summit outline changes to Senate healthcare bill to win their support By Lisa Mascaro Tim Phillips, who heads Americans for Prosperity, the largest of the Koch networks advocacy groups, speaks to the media at the White House in Washington on March 8. (Andrew Harnik / Associated Press) Conservatives floated two amendments for toughening up the Senates Obamacare overhaul this weekend at the influential Koch networks confab of wealthy donors, as Republicans seek ways to win over detractors and tip enough GOP votes for passage. That the Koch network quickly panned the Senate bill is no surprise. The organization of deep-pocketed conservative advocacy groups similarly rejected the House GOP bill this spring until party leaders tacked on tough amendments to appease right-leaning Republicans. Weve been disappointed that movements not been more dramatic toward a full repeal or a broader rollback of this onerous law Obamacare, said Tim Phillips, who heads Americans for Prosperity, the largest of the Koch networks advocacy groups. But we are not walking away, he said. We worked to make the House bill better and it did get better. Were doing the same thing on the Senate front. One key lawmaker attending the weekend summit at the luxurious Broadmoor Hotel, Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus and a chief negotiator on the House bill, outlined two key changes to the bill that he said could likely win enough conservative support for passage. One amendment from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) would allow companies that offer insurance policies on the Obamacare marketplace to also offer plans that do not meet the ACAs strict requirements. Such a change would in essence allow insurers to offer cheaper, though skimpier, policies that may help achieve the GOPs goal of lowering premiums for consumers. Another amendment would broaden the ability of those who buy insurance on the marketplace to sock away more money in tax-free Health Savings Accounts to help them pay for their premiums. Cruz is one of four Senate conservatives who have said they would not support the bill unless changes are made, positioning them for negotiations in the days ahead. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) needs to win back some of their votes to pass the bill with his slim 52-seat Republican majority. One of the conservatives, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), was among those feted Saturday night at a reception with Charles Koch, the billionaire industrialist who funds the conservative network. Koch told those gathered for an outdoor cocktail reception on a breezy Colorado Springs evening about how far his team has come over the years at promoting what is a libertarian-leaning conservative agenda. Now when I look at where we are, at the size and effectiveness of this network, Im blown away, he told donors. Koch met Friday with Vice President Mike Pence. But the politics in the Senate remain difficult as McConnell continues to negotiate behind closed doors and rushes the bill to a vote expected this week. On Sunday, one key centrist, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, doubted a swift resolution. Its hard for me to see the bill passing this week, she said on ABCs This Week. Another crucial vote, Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a physician who had offered his own proposal, also criticized the rush. I frankly would like a few more days to consider this, Cassidy said on CBSs Face the Nation. But Republicans are anxious to resolve the healthcare debate, which has created a logjam in their legislative agenda. Meadows also told reporters if the Senate passes the bill this week, the House could quickly follow with a weekend session -- ahead of a Fourth of July bill signing by the president. Facebook

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Schiff: Obama should have acted on Russian interference, but Trump shouldnt complain By Laura King A top House Democrat says President Obama should have reacted more forcefully upon learning of Russian election-meddling, but also asserted that it was illogical for President Trump to levy such criticism against his predecessor. I think the [Obama] administration needed to call out Russia earlier, needed to act to deter and punish Russia earlier, Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), said in an interview aired Sunday on CNNs State of the Union. Failure to do so, he said, had been a very serious mistake. But Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said Trumps criticism of Obama made little sense in light of the current presidents own inaction in the face of decisive U.S. intelligence conclusions about Kremlin efforts to tip the 2016 race to Trump. Trump, Schiff said, is in no position to complain here in light of the fact that as a candidate, he openly urged the Russians to hack Clintons emails. To criticize Obama is now a bit like someone knowingly receiving stolen property blaming the police for not stopping the theft, said Schiff, a former prosecutor. On Saturday, Trump issued a statement on Twitter referencing a Washington Post report a day earlier detailing the previous administrations wrestling with how, when and whether to make public the degree of Russian interference. Since the Obama Administration was told way before the 2016 Election that the Russians were meddling, why no action? Focus on them, not T! the president tweeted. The Post report said Obama was worried about the appearance of improperly using mounting intelligence reports about Russian activities to aid Clintons candidacy. The subject was particularly inflammatory because at that point in the race, Trump had complained repeatedly about the rigged political process and even suggested he might not respect the election outcome. Facebook

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Trump says hes optimistic about Senate approval of GOP healthcare measure By Laura King President Trump says he believes that backers of a sweeping GOP healthcare measure are going to get there and pass the measure despite the refusal of five Republican senators to endorse the bill as written. Healthcare is a very, very tough thing to get, but I think were going to get it, Trump said on Fox and Friends in an interview aired Sunday that he had touted beforehand on Twitter. We dont have too much of a choice because the alternative is the dead carcass of Obamacare, the president said, referring to the Affordable Care Act, his predecessors signature piece of legislation. Opinion polls have indicated low public support for the version of the healthcare bill passed earlier by the House of Representatives. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), wants to bring the Senate version, unveiled days ago, to a vote this week. In addition to the five Republican senators who have publicly aired their opposition, several others have declined to explicitly endorse the bill, which would overhaul the U.S. healthcare system and set the stage for massive tax breaks that would primarily benefit the wealthiest Americans. With a 52-seat Republican advantage in the 100-member chamber, only three GOP defections would be sufficient to derail the measure, since Vice President Mike Pence could cast a tie-breaking vote. Facebook

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Pro-Trump group launches new attack ad against special counsel Robert Mueller By Lisa Mascaro A Southern California group backing President Trump is out with a new ad attacking special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, criticizing the investigation into the Trump campaigns possible cooperation with Russian interference in the 2016 election. The ad, called Witch Hunt, features conservative favorite Tomi Lahren reflecting Trumps own language to complain about the probe. The more than $400,000 ad buy is expected to start running Sunday. Only in Washington could a rigged game like this be called independent, Lahren says, using air quotes in the ad to emphasize her point. She is now a senior advisor to Great America Alliance, which backs Trump. The ads chief complaint echoes Trumps criticism that Muellers team has ties to Democrats, because some of the lawyers have given campaign contributions to the party. Trump has also complained of the relationship between fired FBI Director James B. Comey and Mueller, who was once his boss. Mueller is a registered Republican. Among the members of the legal team he is assembling for the Russia probe -- which is also looking into whether the president obstructed the federal investigation by firing Comey -- four have donated to Democrats. One who gave the maximum donation to Trump rival Hillary Clinton also donated to Republicans. Both Republicans and Democrats have praised Muellers credentials and ability to handle the Russia probe as an independent investigation. The group, which ran a similar attack against Comey ahead of his testimony earlier this month on Capitol Hill, has emerged as a key pro-Trump organization. Facebook

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Koch brothers political network says Senate GOP healthcare bill is insufficiently conservative By Associated Press ( (Andrew Harnik / Associated Press)) Chief lieutenants in the Koch brothers political network lashed out at the Senate Republican healthcare bill on Saturday, becoming a powerful outside critic as GOP leaders try to rally support for their plan among rank-and-file Republicans. This Senate bill needs to get better, said Tim Phillips, who leads Americans For Prosperity, the Koch networks political arm. It has to get better. Phillips called the Senates plans for Medicaid a slight nip and tuck over President Obamas healthcare law, a modest change he described as immoral. The comments came on the first day of a three-day private donor retreat at a luxury resort in the Rocky Mountains. Invitations were extended only to donors who promise to give at least $100,000 each year to the various groups backed by the Koch brothers Freedom Partners  a network of education, policy and political entities that aim to promote small government. No outside group has been move aggressive over the years-long push to repeal Obamas healthcare law than the Kochs, which vowed on Saturday to spend another 10 years fighting to change the healthcare system if necessary. The Koch network has often displayed a willingness to take on Republicans  including President Trump  when their policies arent deemed conservative enough. Read More Facebook

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Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions wants to get tough on crime. These people think hes got it all wrong By Jaweed Kaleem Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions has vowed to crack down on crime by sending more criminals to prison for longer periods of time. Every one of our citizens, no matter who they are or where they live, has the right to be safe in their homes and communities from the scourge of criminal gangs, rapists, carjackers and drug dealers, Sessions said in an address to law enforcement officials in Memphis, Tenn., last month. In his view, imprisoning more criminals would make families safer, and fewer people would break the law if there were more severe punishments for crimes such as drug offenses. In a recent memo to federal prosecutors, Sessions instructed them to pursue the harshest punishments legally allowed, a reversal of an Obama-era move giving federal lawyers more leeway to reserve such prosecutions for repeat offenders and people who had committed the worst of crimes. Department of Justice officials hope the changes at the federal level  where a sliver of crimes across the country is prosecuted  will trickle down to a similar approach to crime in states. Read More Facebook

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Vice President Mike Pence stops in for an unscheduled chat with billionaire Charles Koch By Lisa Mascaro Vice President Mike Pence popped in for a visit this weekend with Charles Koch, the billionaire GOP donor hosting his semi-annual confab of like-minded business leaders assessing their priorities for the White House and Congress. The meeting was not listed on Pences official schedule for the day. President Trump never much enjoyed backing from Koch s sprawling, secretive, political enterprise, which has emerged as a libertarian-leaning power center, sometimes overshadowing the traditional Republican Party apparatus with its high-dollar donors and vast operations. Kochs group did not endorse the GOP presidential nominee. But the network has always had close ties with Pence. The vice president had previously attended the exclusive gathering of donors, held this weekend at the luxurious Broadmoor hotel. And his top staff was plucked from a key Koch organization, Freedom Partners. Pence and Koch and their top aides spoke for nearly an hour late Friday, according to a Koch spokesman. They discussed tax reform, the GOPs healthcare overhaul and other heavy legislative lifts that have run into resistance in the Republican-controlled Congress. The aide described the talks as casual. Pence was in the area making other stops, including at the Air Force Academy and an evening fundraiser for GOP Sen. Cory Gardner. Even without investing in Trump, the Koch network has made impressive strides in advancing its agenda this year. Congress swiftly rolled back more than a dozen regulations, including some intended to protect the environment, that Koch-backed groups complained were too rigorous and invasive in industry operations. The Koch network groups, including Freedom Partners, a free market-oriented, chamber of commerce-type organization, is pushing the Trump administration and Congress to pass tax reform and overhaul healthcare. Both those efforts have stalled in Congress amid Republican infighting, but the Koch groups is able to put their army of resources  money, staff and volunteers in the states  to pressure lawmakers to act. Facebook

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Kris Kobach fined for misleading court and refusing to produce previously exposed Trump memo By Colleen Shalby (Carolyn Kaster / Associated Press) Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach has been fined $1,000 for misleading a federal court in an effort to keep two documents private. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit last year against Kobach arguing that his states proof of citizenship law violates the National Voter Registration Act. ACLU lawyers asked Kobach to produce two documents they said pertained to the case. One of those documents was a draft of a proposed amendment to the National Voter Registration Act. The second was a document that had been photographed and widely shared in late November after Kobach met with then-President-elect Donald Trump. The power of a zoom lens exposed certain details of his proposal to Trump to deport potential terrorists. In a 24-page ruling made public Friday, U.S. Magistrate Judge James OHara wrote that Kobach did not accurately represent the contents of the documents when he argued against producing them. Defendant refused to produce these documents, asserting that they are beyond the scope of reopened discovery, do not seek relevant information, and are protected by the attorney-client, deliberative-process, and executive privileges, the judge wrote. The court took Kobach at his word, OHara wrote, but upon review of the documents  produced under a court order  found that they did relate to the voting rights case. The judge wrote that while the court could not say that Kobach flat-out lied, the defendants statements can be construed as wordplay meant to present a materially inaccurate picture of the documents. For now, the documents will remain classified, as Kobach designated them. But, OHara wrote, that status could change. Trump tapped Kobach last month to serve as vice chairman of a presidential commission that would oversee a voter fraud investigation. Facebook

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Number of refugees admitted to U.S. drops by almost half By Tracy Wilkinson (Patrick T. Fallon / For the Los Angeles Times) The number of refugees admitted to the United States was cut by nearly half in the first three months of the Trump administration compared with the final three months of the Obama presidency, reflecting the new presidents skepticism toward immigration. Government statistics released Friday showed that more than 25,000 refugees were permitted to enter and reside in the United States at the end of the Obama administration. In the initial months under President Trump, the number fell to 13,000. The statistics were released by the Department of Homeland Security, based on information supplied by the State Department. Countries of origin were largely unchanged. In both periods, two-thirds of the arrivals came from five countries: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Syria, Iraq, Somalia and Myanmar. Refugees from two of those countries  Syria and Somalia  would have been banned under Trumps executive order against entries from certain Muslim-majority nations, but federal courts have blocked the order. Trumps original order covered Iraqis as well, but he omitted Iraq from his revised order. The data suggest that the Obama administration, as it was about to turn over power to Trump, significantly stepped up the number of refugees admitted. Arrivals in its final three months reflected an 86% year-over-year increase compared to the same period the previous year. In Trumps first three months, arrivals were 12% lower than for the same period in the previous year. Trump has sought to limit the number of refugees to 50,000 this year. But adverse rulings in the courts could work against him. The United States already has one of the lowest quotas of refugee admissions among major receiving countries. Nations closer to conflict zones such as Syria have taken in millions of refugees. More people have been displaced from their home nations, because of violence and poverty, than at any time since World War II. Facebook

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Trump nominates former Dodgers co-owner Jamie McCourt as ambassador to Belgium By Lauren Rosenblatt Trump nominated Jamie McCourt, former co-owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, as ambassador to Belgium. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times) President Trump nominated Jamie McCourt, former co-owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, to be the ambassador to Belgium on Thursday night. McCourt, who co-owned the Dodgers with her husband, Frank, until their messy 2011 divorce, has donated money to several Republican organizations, including funds for Trumps campaign and his transition to the White House. McCourt was among many business leaders who signed their support for Trump early on in his campaign, praising his plan for economic development and growth. In the months leading up to Trumps victory, McCourt gave more than $400,000 to the Trump victory fund, according to data from the Federal Election Commission. She signed a letter in October 2016 with 100 other business executives and CEOs championing Trumps plan and criticizing opponent Hillary Clinton for having thrown in the towel on strong economic growth. McCourt was listed as a 2016 State Victory Finance Chair for Trumps campaign in July, according to a report from the GOP. Robert Wood Johnson, chairman and CEO of the New York Jets and Trumps nominee for ambassador to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, was also on the list as Trump Victory vice chair. After Trump won the election, McCourt continued to financially support his transition to office. In December, she helped host a fundraiser breakfast for the incoming president where tickets sold for $5,000 a piece. Prior to her support for Trump, McCourt also donated to the campaigns of several other Republican presidential candidates, including John Kasich, Marco Rubio and Carly Fiorina, although in much smaller amounts. In the past, she has also supported former President Obama, contributing to his campaign and victory funds in 2011 and donating $50,000 to the inauguration in 2009. She donated about $2,000 to Hillary Clinton for her presidential campaign in 2007, according to the FEC. McCourts ex-husband said his former wife had political aspirations of her own, with an end goal of ending up in the White House, according to a March 2010 Los Angeles Times article. Her high-profile divorce gathered a lot of public attention and ended in dispute over finances and assets. McCourt has founded and directed entrepreneurial enterprises in Los Angeles and Boston throughout her career as a entrepreneur and attorney. Her investment firm, Jamie Enterprises, invests in real estate and technology start-ups. She has degrees from Georgetown University, the University of Maryland School of Law and from MIT/ Sloan School of Management. The Senate must confirm McCourts nomination for ambassador. Facebook

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Nevada Sen. Heller -- a key swing vote -- says he opposes Senate healthcare bill By David Lauter (Andrew Harnik / AP) Nevada Sen. Dean Heller said Friday that he planned to vote against the Republican healthcare bill, a potentially key defection. Although the White House and Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky have said they plan further negotiations over the bill, its going to be very difficult to get me to a yes, Heller said at a news conference in Nevada with Gov. Brian Sandoval (R). The bill unveiled Thursday by McConnell is simply not the answer, he said. In this form, I will not support it. Given the unified Democratic opposition to the bill, McConnell can afford to lose only two Senate Republicans, so Hellers announcement is significant. A no vote by Heller would not seal the fate of the bill, however. Heller is widely viewed as the most vulnerable Republican senator up for reelection in 2018 -- the only one running in a state that Hillary Clinton carried last year -- and Republican leaders have been hoping to avoid having to count on his vote. Heller cited several reasons for opposing the bill, but the chief one was its deep reductions in federal support for Medicaid. This bill will mean a loss of coverage for millions of Americans and many Nevadans, he said. Nevada, under Sandoval, has used its authority under the Affordable Care Act to expand Medicaid, which has given health coverage to more than 210,000 additional state residents, Sandoval said. These are folks who are worth fighting for, he added. The cutbacks the Senate bill, which would end Medicaid expansion, would cost the state $120 million a year by 2022, with the cost rising sharply after that the governor said. Thats a cost that the state cannot sustain. Heller also cited the bills impact on treatment for opioid addiction and the likelihood that the plan would fail to reduce premiums. There isnt anything in this piece of legislation that will lower your premiums, he said, contradicting one of the main arguments that supporters of the bill have made. Hellers announcement increases the pressure on McConnell to find ways of persuading several other reluctant senators to support the bill. Four conservatives, Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky, Mike Lee of Utah, Ted Cruz of Texas and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, said Thursday they were opposed to the bill in its current form because it does not go far enough to roll back the Affordable Care Act. Several more centrist senators, including Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Rob Portman of Ohio and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, have voiced concerns similar to Hellers about the depth of the bills Medicaid cutbacks and its impact on opioid treatment. Collins and Portman have both said they want to review the analysis of the bill from the Congressional Budget Office before making up their minds. The budget office has said it will release that assessment early next week. Facebook

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Trump signs VA reform bill to make it easier to discipline and fire employees By Lauren Rosenblatt President Trump signed into law Friday a bill that will ease restrictions on the discipline and termination of employees from the troubled veterans affairs department. The Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act of 2017 is designed to speed up the process to discipline an employee for misconduct and put more decision-making power in the hands of Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin. The act is in response to the 2014 VA scandals involving long wait times for medical care and attempts by VA employees to cover up the delays. Trump, who promised to improve healthcare for veterans during his campaign, said the bill was one of the largest reforms to the VA in its history and is essential to making sure our veterans are treated with respect. The bill passed the House with bipartisan support June 13 and the Senate on June 6. Although the bill is widely supported by veterans advocacy groups, civil servant unions condemn the legislation as a way to get around long-standing protections for government employees and whistle-blowers. The reform, Shulkin said, will not be used as a tool for mass firings, but rather a way to raise morale throughout the department and attract new employees. Slow, steady, incremental change isnt what this organization needs, Shulkin said. Right now, I believe this is progress. Facebook

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Mexico pushes back against Trumps tweet calling it the second deadliest country in the world By Kate Linthicum Mexicos Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray speaks during a news conference in Cancun, Mexico, on June 19. (PEDRO PARDO/AFP/Getty Images) After President Trump incorrectly tweeted that Mexico is the second deadliest country in the world after Syria, the Mexican government responded quickly. No, Mexico isnt the second deadliest place on the globe, said a tersely worded statement issued by Mexicos secretary of foreign relations, pointing to a host of other Latin American countries that have higher per capita murder rates. And while homicides have been rising in Mexico in recent years, rising violence in Mexico is inextricably linked to demand for drugs in the United States, the statement said. Illicit drug trade is indeed the most important cause of violence in Mexico and drug trafficking is costing thousands of lives both in Mexico and the U.S., the foreign ministry said Thursday. However, as has been repeatedly stated by the U.S. government itself, drug trafficking is a shared problem that will end only by addressing its root causes: high demand for drugs in the U.S. and supply from Mexico and other countries. In order to be effective, we must be able to move beyond finger-pointing, the statement said. The Mexican government issued the response after Trump tweeted a reference to a controversial recent study that ranked Mexico as the worlds second most-dangerous conflict zone after Syria. Trump misrepresented the study in his tweet, saying Mexico was just ranked the second deadliest country in the world. He also neglected the considerable debate about the studys accuracy. The annual Armed Conflict Survey, released this year by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, has been called into question by the Mexican government and others who say it wrongly points to the existence of an armed conflict in Mexico. The existence of criminal groups is not sufficient criteria to speak of a non-international armed conflict, said a joint statement issued by Mexicos secretaries of governance and foreign relations in May, adding that drug-war violence is part of a bigger regional problem. Although Mexicos homicide rate has soared  the first two months of 2017 were the most violent since the government started releasing such statistics in 1997  other countries are experiencing higher homicide rates. In January, Mexico had a homicide rate of 20 deaths per 100,000 people, according to a Times analysis of Mexican crime statistics. By comparison, El Salvadors homicide rate was 81 deaths per 100,000 people in 2016, according to InSight Crime, a think tank that studies organized crime in Latin America. Venezuela had a homicide rate of 59 deaths per 100,000 people. Trump ended his tweet with a frequent campaign mantra: We will BUILD THE WALL! Mexico was just ranked the second deadliest country in the world, after only Syria. Drug trade is largely the cause. We will BUILD THE WALL!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 22, 2017 Facebook

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Supreme Court says final decisions of term will come on Monday By David Savage The Supreme Court is shown at sunset on Feb. 13, 2016. (Jon Elswick / Associated Press) (Jon Elswick / Associated Press) The Supreme Court announced it will hand down its final rulings for this term on Monday. But that does not mean the justices will actually decide the six cases that remain, which include three significant disputes involving immigration and the U.S. borders. Heres a look at the notable decisions so far. On Nov. 30, with one seat on the court still vacant, the eight justices heard arguments in a Los Angeles case on whether noncitizens who face possible deportation can be held in jail indefinitely or instead have a right to a bond hearing after six months. The case, Jennings vs. Rodriguez, has taken on added importance in the Trump era, but the long delay may signal that the justices are split 4-4. If so, the court may announce Monday that the case will be reheard in the fall, leaving it to new Justice Neil M. Gorsuch to cast the tie-breaking vote. Also still pending, since January, is a California case that will decide whether a crime such as breaking into an empty home qualifies as a crime of violence, triggering automatic deportation, even for an immigrant who is a longtime legal resident. A ruling in Sessions vs. Dimaya could affect thousands of deportations The third case, pending since February, is a closely watched border shooting. At issue in Hernandez vs. Mesa is whether a U.S. agent can be sued for fatally shooting a 15-year-old who was standing on the Mexican side of the border. On Friday, the justices gave a second chance to a Korean restaurant owner from Memphis who faces deportation for selling Ecstasy pills. Based on his lawyers advice, he pleaded guilty to the drug charge, having been assured it would not trigger his deportation. The lawyer was wrong. By a 6-2 vote in Lee vs. United States, the court said the Korean man may withdraw his guilty plea and go to trial. But for his attorneys incompetence, he would not have accepted a plea, said Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.. Dissenting were Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.. The justices, including Gorsuch, are likely to rule in a significant case on religion and funding for church schools. In Trinity Lutheran vs.Comer, the justices will decide whether states may exclude church schools from receiving public funds. Also still pending, but on a different track, is the Trump administrations appeal over his blocked foreign travel ban. The court may act on that appeal at any time. Facebook

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Trump backs L.A. Olympic bid in meeting with IOC officials By Michael A. Memoli The opening ceremonies of the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. (Ken Hively / Los Angeles Times) President Trump pledged his full support for the Los Angeles bid to host a future Summer Olympics, the White House said Friday after an Oval Office meeting with the head of the International Olympic Committee. Trump met Thursday with IOC President Thomas Bach and three U.S. members of the IOC -- Larry Probst, Anita DeFrantz and Angela Ruggiero. A White House official called it a very constructive conversation in which Trump backed a potential third Summer Games in Los Angeles. With only L.A. and Paris bidding to host the 2024 games, the IOC is moving to reward both cities, giving one hosting duties in 2024 and the other in 2028. The United States hasnt hosted a Summer Olympics since the Centennial games in Atlanta in 1996. Salt Lake City hosted the Winter Olympics in 2002. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said he discussed the citys Olympic bid during a post-election conversation with Trump last November and that the then-president elect pledged his backing. Facebook

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Trump says he tweeted about tapes to influence Comeys account of their private conversations By Michael A. Memoli .@POTUS on why he wanted former FBI Dir. James Comey to believe there were tapes of their conversations pic.twitter.com/pCuibM5Z6k  FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) June 23, 2017 President Trump called it bothersome that the special counsel now overseeing the Russia probe was good friends with fired FBI Director James B. Comey, and said he hinted at having tapes of his private conversations  apparently falsely  to try to influence Comeys eventual testimony. The president made his remarks during an interview that aired Friday morning on Fox & Friends, but was recorded on Thursday just hours after he tweeted that he did not, in fact, have tapes. Trump said that floating the possibility they did exist might have forced Comey to tell what actually took place at the events. When he found out that, I, you know, that there may be tapes out there, whether its governmental tapes or anything else, and who knows, I think his story may have changed, Trump said. My story didnt change. My story was always a straight story. Foxs Ainsley Earhardt followed up: So it was a smart way to make sure he stayed honest in those hearings? It wasnt very stupid, I can tell you that, Trump answered. Many disagree, including Republicans. Comey testified that Trumps tweet is what prompted him to as
The Los Angeles County district attorneys office determined last week that the Burbank Hospitality Assn. violated the Brown Act back in September when the organization decided to donate money to the Committee for Yes on Measure B without properly placing the request on its agenda.

According to a letter written by Bjorn Dodd, deputy district attorney, dated May 30, which was sent to Burbank resident David Spell, the district attorneys office agreed with one of Spells complaints, which alleged the Burbank Hospitality Assn., commonly known as Visit Burbank, had inappropriately discussed and given $50,000 to the Committee of Yes on Measure B without placing the issue on the agenda.

The BHA incorrectly justified handling the matter under the agenda item Ongoing Operational Issues, Dodd wrote. This constituted a violation of the [Brown] Act.

Spell was one of a group of residents that on Jan. 17 filed a complaint with the district attorneys office against Visit Burbank, alleging that the organization violated the Brown Act and misused public funds to help the pro-Measure B committee pay for campaign mailers.

The passage of Measure B paved the way for the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority to move forward with plans to construct a replacement 14-gate terminal at the Hollywood Burbank Airport.

In December, Spell also filed a complaint with the California Fair Political Practices Commission alleging the same issues against Visit Burbank. However, Spell wrote in an email that the state agency is still conducting its investigation.

Spell stated in the email that, although the news from the districts attorneys office was a small victory for him and other residents, there were still a few issues that have not been resolved. While the local agency determined that there was a Brown Act violation, Dodd wrote in the letter that district attorney officials are still investigating whether public funds were misused.

It appears that they are still looking into this, and we are hopeful someone will be held to account for this, Spell stated in the email.

Additionally, Spell wrote that there could have been a chance to overturn the $50,000 donation had the complaint been submitted within 30 days of the alleged violation.

Residents learned about the Burbank Hospitality Assn.s actions after the Nov. 8 election, when Burbank voters approved Measure B.

Spell and other residents found a city memo dated Sept. 20 which stated that former state Assembly candidate Sunder Ramani, a member of the Committee for Yes on Measure B, had approached the Burbank Hospitality Assn. during a meeting on Sept. 14 and asked the organization for $50,000 to help educate Burbank residents on the importance of voting yes on Measure B.

Visit Burbank is in charge of promoting the city to tourists and other businesses by using funds generated by a 1% assessment on hotel stays in the city.

Since the allegations arose, the City Council voted in late December to take steps members think will prevent the association from taking part in activities in such a way again. Some of the actions council members approved were providing Brown Act training, prohibiting the group from making any further donations to political campaigns, requiring that Visit Burbank use its own address rather than the citys, and cutting the organizations budget by $50,000.

anthonyclark.carpio@latimes.com

Twitter: @acocarpio
A sober-living operator whose rented Westside Costa Mesa house was cited for having too many recovering addicts pleaded guilty this week to a misdemeanor charge.

Carrie Heckel, founder of Serenity Shores Recovery Center, based in Costa Mesa, had been charged with having 18 client beds in a two-story, six-bedroom house on the 600 block of Senate Street  11 more beds than city law allows for recovery homes in single-family neighborhoods.

She pleaded guilty Monday and agreed to a civil compromise  a kind of informal probation, said Michael Do, a city attorney working on the case.

Heckel, who initially pleaded not guilty in January, faces thousands in fines, but if she doesnt commit any crimes for a year, she can then pay a reduced fine of $400 to the city. She was unavailable for comment Wednesday.

Were happy to put this matter to rest, said city spokesman Tony Dodero. Were also glad that this community is no longer being affected by a group home that was breaking the law.

Throughout 2014, city officials received complaints about the Senate Street home, including reports of loud arguments, profanity, trash, excessive traffic, loitering and cigarette smoke, according to a news release. The house was also advertised as an Alcoholic Anonymous meeting location.

After issuing a violation notice and subsequent citation to the homes owner, Saroj Gupta of Orange, officials inspected the house on Oct. 29, 2014.

At that time, they only found seven beds, but hours later, city officials received photos of trucks moving additional beds into the house. With that evidence, they were able to obtain a search warrant and raided the home in November 2014, when they found the 18 beds, seven of which were in a single room.

In January, Heckel told the Daily Pilot that the extra beds were temporary, and that she had since ceased operations at the house.
Fountain Valleys City Council passed a budget Tuesday for fiscal 2017-18 with an anticipated boost from the citys newly increased sales tax.

The additional 1% sales tax, which local voters approved as Measure HH in Novembers election, is expected to close a $4.2-million gap in the citys general fund. With $46.9 million in operating expenses, the general fund is the largest and least restricted portion of the citys overall $79-million budget.

Without help from the tax, the city would have $46.9 million in operating expenditures and only $42.7 million in revenue, officials said.

The additional tax, which raised the sales tax in Fountain Valley to 8.75%, took effect in April and is expected to generate $11.5 million annually for 20 years. Money raised from it is to be used for public safety, after-school programs, senior services, pension obligations, stormwater systems and other general services. It will be disbursed starting this fall.

City Finance Director David Cain on Tuesday summarized a spending plan for phasing in Measure HH funding for services such as adding a fire battalion chief and two police officers, new fire apparatus, repairing park lights and playgrounds and maintaining senior citizen and youth programs.

Cain said the city will review the spending plan after six months.

The capital-improvements portion of the budget will cover several building and infrastructure projects, including an exterior refresh of the main recreation center at Mile Square Regional Park, neighborhood road repairs and a new traffic signal at Talbert Avenue and Mount Washington Street.

Cain said the city most recently issued bonds in 2014 and 2016 and does not expect to issue more in the near future.

Councilman abstains

Councilman Mark McCurdy abstained from voting on the budget, along with all other agenda items, Tuesday because of how the evenings meeting was noticed to the public.

The full agenda was not available to residents until Monday morning. It is typically available by the Friday before the meeting.

Per state law, a regular meeting must come with 72 hours notice. A special meeting, as Tuesdays was billed, can be posted with 24 hours notice. McCurdy acknowledged that as a special meeting, it was posted legally, but said he still thought it was unfair to residents because it didnt give them adequate time to read the agenda and accompanying documents. He said he abstained as a matter of conscience.

Interim City Manager John Sibley said residents were informed of Tuesdays meeting date when the May 16 council meeting was adjourned. The posting delay was an administrative oversight, he said, so the city noticed the meeting as special out of an abundance of caution. Special meetings legally can include budget meetings.

hillary.davis@latimes.com

Twitter: @Daily_PilotHD
Prosecutors filed additional charges Monday against a former Orange Coast College student suspected of vandalism, disturbing the peace and violating a protective order that barred him from the Costa Mesa campus.

Robert Bouton McDougal, 21, of Costa Mesa is now facing a felony count of vandalism with damage of $400 or more, as well as various misdemeanor counts, including five counts of violating a protective order, two counts of resisting and obstructing an officer, one count of disturbing the peace on a school campus, one count of disturbing public school and a count of remaining on campus without consent, according to the Orange County district attorneys office.

The district attorneys office filed the count of disturbing the peace on a school campus on March 29 but amended its complaint Monday to include the additional charges.

McDougal pleaded not guilty to the disturbing the peace charge in April. He has not entered a plea on the new charges, according to Orange County Superior Court records.

If convicted of all charges, he could face a maximum sentence of three years in state prison and seven years in county jail.

According to OCC officials, McDougals issues at the college began in February when he began incessantly emailing his chemistry instructor asking to retake an exam with the help of a calculator.

He had received a B on the exam without a calculator, a lower grade than he had expected. The instructor, Amy Hellman, declined his request to retake the test, according to transcripts of emails filed in Superior Court in March.

A week after the exam, school officials say, McDougal  who had dropped the course  barged into the classroom while other students were present. Security officers escorted McDougal out of the building, but when they werent looking, he ran back inside and sprinted in circles around the classroom, according to a Costa Mesa police report.

Prosecutors allege McDougal yelled a racial slur at a campus safety officer, and security officers eventually used pepper spray to subdue him after he kicked them, according to police, who arrested him.

McDougals attorney, John Christl, on Tuesday painted a different picture of that incident. In an interview with the Daily Pilot, he called the criminal charges erroneous and said the college should have handled the situation differently.

Christl said McDougal suffers from disabilities, though he declined to elaborate.

College administrators and Hellman were aware of McDougals disabilities and failed to provide him adequate resources to take the exam, Christl alleged.

Christl said McDougal was too embarrassed to ask for a calculator during the exam and that when he received his score, he became fixated on improving it.

According to Christl, Hellman eventually agreed to allow him to retake the exam after class. However, when McDougal arrived, campus security was waiting for him, Christl said.

He was tackled and pepper-sprayed, Christl said. Its amazing what theyve done to this boy. Its horrific. Its something that could have been completely avoided had the college handled it the right way from the very beginning.

A restraining order barring McDougal from entering the campus or contacting Hellman was granted by Superior Court Judge Michael McCartin in March at the behest of college officials.

Christl said his client is unable to comprehend the significance of a restraining order.

On March 7, McDougal was suspended from all Coast Community College District facilities until March 2019, according to college officials.

He was arrested again March 13 on suspicion of carving a swastika and the N-word into the hoods of two OCC security vehicles and slashing the tires. He was booked into Orange County Jail and later posted bail.

Prosecutors allege McDougal returned to the campus several times between April 21 and May 25, in violation of the protective order.

He is expected to appear in Superior Court in Westminster on June 20 for a pretrial hearing.

hannah.fry@latimes.com

Twitter: @HannahFryTCN
An attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union and another man protesting a fundraiser in Costa Mesa for Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas were injured when they were struck by a car outside the venue Tuesday night, a protest organizer said Wednesday.

Costa Mesa police responded to reports of a hit-and-run at about 8:20 p.m. at Turnip Rose Elite Catering at 1901 Newport Blvd., where a fundraiser for Rackauckas reelection campaign was being held.

Police did not release the identities of the people who were hit. However, Ronnie Sandoval, who helped organize the protest, identified them as Brendan Hamme, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Southern California, and Jordan Hoiberg, an activist with the Socialist Party USA.

Sandoval said about 10 people were protesting outside Turnip Rose when a silver Chrysler exiting the parking lot struck Hamme and Hoiberg as they were crossing a street. Hoiberg appeared to be hit on an elbow, she said.

It wasnt clear what street they were crossing. It also wasnt clear whether the driver of the car had attended the fundraiser.

It was a blatant hit-and-run, Sandoval said. Brendan was crossing the street and the [driver] stepped on the gas, hit the brake and then just floored it.

Sandoval said she heard the cars engine roar and saw Hamme holding onto the hood as the driver sped away.

He [Hamme] was just looking up at us in shock, Sandoval said. We were all in shock.

Police said they are investigating the crash.

According to Sandoval, Hamme was taken to Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach, where he was treated for injuries including a concussion. He was released early Wednesday.

Hoibergs condition was unknown.

A statement Wednesday from the Rackauckas campaign read: We are aware of an incident involving an aggressive mob of protesters who were blocking cars and confronting guests as they were leaving last nights event. We have no further information at this time.

But Hector Villagra, executive director of the ACLU of Southern California, wrote in a statement Wednesday that the protest was peaceful and that a video taken by a protester shows the car fleeing the scene into oncoming traffic.

At a time when protesters are increasingly seen as targets, we find this chilling incident to be unacceptable and urge the police and prosecutors to send the message that protest met with violence will not be tolerated, Villagra wrote.

Tuesdays fundraiser, presented by the Lincoln Club, a business and political organization, was held to raise money for Rackauckas 2018 election campaign.

I will be running on the strong track record of our office, where I oversee and am responsible for the performance of hundreds of attorneys, investigators and professional staff who work tirelessly to ensure the administration of justice in our county, Rackauckas wrote in a letter on the Lincoln Club website.

A group called People Enraged Over Persecutors and Law Enforcement, a coalition of organizations and residents, encouraged people to protest the fundraiser, citing what they believe to be corruption by the district attorneys office.

His corruption has led to an erosion of trust in our criminal justice system and local government, organizers wrote on a Facebook event page promoting the protest.

The district attorneys office has been accused of routinely denying defendants fair trials by using jailhouse informants to secretly gather evidence.

Rackauckas recently was accused by investigators with the DAs office of interfering in multiple investigations, covering up criminal conduct by police and using his position to help supporters and retaliate against employees who express opposition.

One protester Tuesday held a sign with Rackauckas picture and the message Rackauckas must resign. Another held a posterboard reading Who prosecutes the OCDA?

Anyone with information about the crash is asked to contact Costa Mesa police Det. Darren Wood at (714) 754-5264.

ALSO

Investigators accuse Orange County D.A. of cover-ups, interfering with investigations

O.C. Supervisor Todd Spitzer calls for federal oversight of district attorneys office

hannah.fry@latimes.com

Twitter: @HannahFryTCN

UPDATES:

3:50 p.m.: This article was updated with a statement from the executive director of the ACLU of Southern California.

This article was originally published at 2:35 p.m.
The Glendale Unified school district became a nuisance, according to a Los Angeles Superior Court judge, because it removed trees, built a 6-foot-high wall and expanded parking on its facilities site next to an apartment building, violating municipal codes and a land-use variance.

The decision handed down last month by Judge Daniel Murphy comes about two years after James and Michael ODonnell filed a lawsuit against the school district.

The ODonnells will receive $10,000 in damages from Glendale Unified, and the school district must pay for the cost of the lawsuit, court records show.

The ODonnells own an apartment building on Palmer Avenue near San Fernando Road, next door to Glendale Unifieds Facility and Support Operations, where the districts maintenance crews are based.

The Glendale Unified site is located in a zone intended for medium-density residential development, according to court records.

Prior to the 1950s, the site was a former school, but in 1956, city officials granted Glendale Unified a land-use variance, allowing Glendale Unified to house its maintenance operation there.

Glendale school officials operated the site without making excessive noise until a few years ago, according to James ODonnells testimony during a three-day bench trial in March.

In 2012, Glendale Unified violated the 1956 variance by removing a wall from the side yard located between the site and the apartment building.

The next year, the school district placed shipping containers near the property line.

The actions of Glendale Unified constituted nuisances.  Los Angeles County Superior Court decision regarding Glendale Unifieds illegal construction on its facilities site next door to an apartment building

By June 2015, Glendale Unified had removed Jacaranda trees along Palmer Avenue to build the 6-foot wall along the streets sidewalk, eliminating the frontyard setback, which was required to be maintained according to a variance and municipal codes.

Erik Krause, interim deputy director of planning for the city of Glendale, testified that the district would have needed to secure a building permit before constructing a wall that high in that zone.

The school district did not secure a permit, and no city of Glendale employee inspected or approved the trench, footing or rebar concerning this block wall, court records show.

Krause testified that only 18-inch decorative walls are allowed in the setback area.

After removing the trees and invading the setback area, Glendale Unified added 50 to 70 parking spaces on the site.

Krause said a parking-lot modification would also have been required from the city, but Glendale Unified officials did not seek a modification, according to court records.

Some parking spots were located on the property line. Early in the morning, employees would park their cars about 3 feet from the tenants bedroom windows and talk loudly, disrupting their sleep, according to tenants testimony.

Some employees would arrive at work as early as 5:30 a.m.  another violation of a variance that states they cannot arrive any earlier than 7 a.m.

When the ODonnells complained about the construction to city officials, the city of Glendale told the plaintiffs that there was nothing it could do, court records show.

The illegal construction led to more cars parking on the site and more noise, according to Murphys decision.

The actions of Glendale Unified constituted nuisances, Murphy stated.

The school districts facilities director, Christopher Smith, did not dispute in trial that the construction project, which cost Glendale Unified $170,000, violated municipal codes.

[Smith] conceded at trial that Glendale Unified was required to obtain a permit to erect the block wall along Palmer. Glendale Unifieds only explanation for not getting a building permit and being in violation of the 1956 variance and the municipal code is that it was ignorant of the need to get a building permit and to comply with the 1956 variance and municipal code, court records show.

Murphy ruled that Glendale Unified must return the front- and side-yard setbacks so it complies with the 1956 variance, and place the wall 20 feet from Palmer Avenue.

Employees must not be on the site between 6 p.m. and 7 a.m.

In a statement they released through their attorney Craig Sherman, the ODonnells said they were pleased with the judges decision.

We were sick and tired of Glendale Unified school district using a residential property as a commercial site without any regards to the neighborhood or any accountability to the variance terms it agreed to in order to even have the [facilities operation].

Kristine Nam, a spokeswoman for Glendale Unified, said the district declined to comment on the ruling.

We are still researching the impact of this decision, so we do not have a response at this time, she said in an email.

kelly.corrigan@latimes.com

Twitter: @kellymcorrigan
The family of a 19-year-old La Crescenta man who died in a motorcycle collision late last month is still reeling in the wake of his death.

Michael Nelson was riding his motorcycle around 6 p.m. on May 30 near the intersection of Foothill Boulevard and New York Avenue in north Glendale when he collided with a car driven by a 60-year-old woman.



For the record: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated a fundraiser at El Sol Mexican Restaurant will be held Tuesday. It will take place Wednesday, June 7.

The Glendale Police Department said Nelson suffered significant injuries and was transported to a nearby hospital, where he later died.

Brandy Yi, Nelsons cousin, described him as someone with a heart of gold.

He was a caring person, always had a smile on his face, she said. He would help anybody. Hed give you the shirt off his back. He was that type of kid.

News of his death blindsided the family, according to Yi.

Nelson is one of six children in his family and worked part time with his father at the familys thread-grinding business in North Hollywood. His mother works as a noon aide at Lincoln Elementary School in La Crescenta.

Its something you cant prepare for, you dont expect to get that call, Yi said. Everybody is just a wreck, completely devastated over it.

According to Sgt. Robert William with Glendale police, Nelsons death has been determined to be an accident. However, its unknown what caused the collision or who was at fault.

William said speed has been ruled out by investigators, and the driver was not impaired.

Meanwhile, Yi said the local community has rallied behind Nelsons family.

A GoFundMe campaign for Nelsons funeral and memorial has collected more than $12,000. Yi said she also started a meal train, where residents have volunteered to make dinners for Nelsons family over the next two weeks.

The community has been amazing. It shocked all of us how much theyve rallied behind us and supported us, she said.

Additionally, several local restaurants have held or will hold fundraisers on the familys behalf.

On Wednesday, the El Sol Mexican Restaurant in La Crescenta donated 15% of its sales that day to the family.

Joselitos Mexican Food in Montrose will donate 15% of its sales from 5 to 10 p.m. Tuesday. Yi said diners wanting to participate will have to drop their receipts in a box that will be at the front of the restaurant.

On June 19, Blaze Pizza in La Canada Flintridge will donate 20% of its sales that day.

Both the Black Cow Cafe and Star Cafe will donate 15% of their proceeds on June 21.

Its just another way that the community has shown support, Yi said.

A memorial service will be held on June 16 at the Montrose Church on 1480 E. Washington Blvd. in Pasadena. The service is expected to begin at 2 p.m.

andy.nguyen@latimes.com

Twitter: @Andy_Truc

UPDATES:

June 7, 2017, 3:10 p.m.: This article was updated with information about a memorial service for Nelson.

This article was originally published on June 6, 2017 at 3:20 p.m.
Harry Zavos, professor emeritus at Loyola Law School and co-founder of the Glendale Coalition for Better Government, died on May 25. He was 84.

Zavos was born to Greek immigrants in Detroit, Mich., on Jan. 6, 1933. He graduated from Wayne State University and later received a doctorate degree from the University of Iowa. He went on to earn a law degree from Loyola Law School, where he later taught for more than 30 years before retiring.

As a professor, he tended to have a lot of people who thought he was utterly confusing and didnt get it, but he also tended to attract a group of people who just thought the world of him, said his son, Nicholas Zavos.

In retirement, Harry Zavos co-founded the local advocacy group Glendale Coalition for Better Government. Along with the coalition, Harry Zavos advocated for local residents on issues that included debates on a hillside ordinance and overdevelopment in downtown Glendale.

Most recently, Harry Zavos litigated a case against the city of Glendale, and a judge ruled that the city had violated the state constitution with illegal energy-rate increases and then ordered the city to repay residents $58 million.

Incontestably the brightest star of our organization, wrote coalition board member Roland Kedikianon on the organizations website. His brilliance was contagious and inspiring to all who had the honor to have worked with him. His commitment to the coalition and its principles was unwavering.

Harry Zavos had also been a board member of the Rossmoyne/Mountain Homeowners Assn. since 2010. He played a major role in the push to grant a historic designation to 504 single-family Rossmoyne homes in 2012, according to Lorna Vartanian, association president.

When Nicholas Zavos visited his father in Glendale from Wisconsin, he said that walking around the city with his dad was like hanging out with the big man on campus as people would wave, say hi or walk up to Harry Zavos to greet him.

I really got a sense of how involved he was in Glendale, Nicholas Zavos said.

In May, newly elected Councilman Vrej Agajanian formally recognized Harry Zavos prolonged commitment to Glendale with a council commendation.

Harry Zavos is survived by his son and three grandchildren.

Funeral services are scheduled at 10 a.m. Saturday at the Saint Sophia Cathedral, Los Angeles, located at 1324 Normandie Ave., Los Angeles.

jeff.landa@latimes.com

Twitter: @JeffLanda
A 14-member group of La Canada women comprising the Foothill Auxiliary of Ahead With Horses recently awarded a therapeutic equestrian program with an $11,000 check representing the proceeds of their annual Chinese Auction and Luncheon that was held in February.

Accepting the check was Michelle Newman, executive director of Ahead With Horses, based in Shadow Hills. The award-winning organization, founded in 1968, assists children with disabilities.

The community is invited to attend the Ahead With Horses Fun Day, set for 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. this Saturday, June 10. Admission is $7 for kids and $14 for adults. The facilitys address is 10157 Joahanna Ave., Shadow Hills. Demonstrations will take place from noon to 2 p.m.; food, game booths and other activities will be included.

To learn more about Ahead With Horses, call (818) 767-6373. Organizations interested in having an auxiliary member serve as a guest speaker can call member Joyce Davison, (818) 249-6015.

carol.cormaci@latimes.com

Twitter: @CarolCormaci
My father was born in small-town Kansas and spent the rest of his life trying to overcome it.

He wasnt sure what he wanted from life, but he knew he wanted to say goodbye to the Walnut River Valley and the sulfury smell from the nearby oil wells.

Advertisement

Some say the odor of oil is the smell of money, but something else tugged at him, telling him to get away, to have an adventure, to find a life and live it with abandon.

Your ultimate guide to planning the best summer road trip 

He found that life in travel. Small steps at first in the Midwest. And then big ones: Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea and the Philippines, courtesy of the U.S. Navy.

By the time he was discharged in 1945, as thin as a rail and a whole lot tanner, he was ready to get in a car with his wife and daughter (and later, another daughter and still later another daughter) and go wherever the road took him.

Even as a humble federal civil servant, he managed to be king of the road, thanks to the U.S. government, which moved us every two years.

When duty called, he packed us up and pointed the car in the direction of our new home. A vacation, he called it.

It didnt occur to me until I was an adult that normal vacations do not begin with tears and saying goodbye to family, friends and the familiar.

But wasnt it a vacation to get in a new-model of a Chevy and drive from Virginia to San Francisco on our way to Honolulu?

Perhaps, unless that Chevy was a Corvair, which, with its rear-mounted, air-cooled engine, promised to be a dream come true but eventually inspired Ralph Naders Unsafe at Any Speed.

It was a dream, but a really bad one. As my mother said repeatedly, We made lots of new friends on our trip. Most of them were Chevrolet mechanics.

Flights of fancy

We spent hours in repair shops, which, on balance, was better than wilting by the roadside in New Mexico or Arizona while waiting for the engine to cool in the 100-degree heat. I had not yet developed Southwest sensibilities so the landscape looked to me like a whole lot of empty.

But our road-trip lives were rich and full. For instance, there were always a lot of arguments, especially among the back-seat denizens about who had to sit in the middle (always me, because I was the youngest) and who had to hold the bird cage.

Oh yes. Did I mention that Riot, the aptly named parakeet, was traveling with us? I loved our little blue budgie and fantasized, as trickles of sweat glued the backs of my legs to the car seat, that I would open the door of his cage, then open the back door of the car and together we would fly away as the car wheezed and sputtered its way through the Southwest.

I remain grateful to my sisters for keeping me in the middle and away from the door. They probably saved my life, even if it was unintentional.

You learn a lot about gratitude from a road trip.

Building skills

That first interminable trip was followed, of necessity, by smaller ones. You cant drive far when you live on an island.

My dad thought it would be fun to circumnavigate Oahu, our new home. Just two years into statehood, Hawaii still had unpaved roads that lacked the guardrails that would keep us from plunging to our death in the Pacific.

I held my breath for several hours that day. I am sure I remember this correctly because almost overnight I became a much better swimmer. I also learned how to suppress a scream.

You learn a lot of new skills from a road trip.

Sometimes they are human relations skills. Our next road trips were in the Philippines, yet another new home.

In Manila, humidity clings to you like plastic wrap, so we would escape occasionally to Baguio City, a haven at 4,900 feet in northern Luzon.

But in the 1960s, every day of that 160-mile road to the hills was Carmageddon.

First we drove to Quezon City, which should have been a one-hour drive but was nearly three, thanks to bad roads and worse traffic. My parents laughed and talked and puffed on cigarettes whose smoke made our eyes sting until tears ran down our cheeks.

But we endured because we didnt want to break the mood.

My father did that for us as we arrived in Quezon City.

Did you put our suitcases in the car? he asked my mother.

From the back seat, we saw her turn toward my father as if in slo-mo.

No, she said. I thought you did. That is how a seven-hour car trip turned into 16, the last 13 mostly in strained silence.

Today you can make the trip in about four hours, especially if you remember to put the luggage in the trunk.

You learn a lot about forgiveness from a road trip.

Directionally challenged

Letting go of anger is always good. So is letting go of the notion that you will never get lost.

We could never quite get our bearings on our first road trip after we resettled in Virginia. Maybe it was because we werent moving somewhere.

Instead, our vacation to Maine was supposed to help us escape the steam heat of a Southern summer, which we evidently hadnt figured out how to do even after years in the tropics.

In reality, we were never going to get our bearings because we could never decipher a map. My parents and their children didnt come wired with the directional gene. Blame was pointless because this deficiency was innate, not deliberate.

But family finger pointing had become our favorite car game. Further, when the lights on our new car shorted out after dark on a rainy road to Bar Harbor, my parents, recent graduates of marital gladiator school, blamed each other, not the nitwit who failed Wiring 101.

The thing about being a jerk on a road trip is that you dont have anywhere to go. Youre in a box on wheels, and unlike Riot, you cant roll down the window and fly away.

You learn a lot about apologizing from a road trip.

In a car, love means always having to say youre sorry. You have to mean it too because you are still in a rolling box with all the same people  unless you open the car door and push them out.

Educational material

You could romanticize and dignify our family journeys by pretending they were a paragon of this American road trip tradition, but thats putting lipstick on a pig.

These trips oinked, and no first sight of the Golden Gate Bridge, the Halona blowhole in Hawaii, the mist-draped mountains of Southeast Asia or the ocean-chilled coast of Maine could change that.

On the other hand, as mobile universities, they rocked. They conferred upon us doctorates in coexistence, a lesson then, maybe an even better one now.

Getting along sometimes seemed impossible, especially when you consider the best-behaved member of this road-trip crew was the bird.

Riot, it turned out, was our role model. Even after thousands of miles in an unair-conditioned automotive affliction, I never heard him say, Thanks, but I think Ill fly next time.

If life somehow granted us a do-over, neither would we.

travel@latimes.com

@latimestravel

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For the Conservative Party, it was supposed to be an election about who was best placed to lead the country as it embarks on the complex negotiations that will take Britain out of the European Union.

For voters, Thursdays general election has become about far more than the stability the partys leader, Prime Minister Theresa May, promises to deliver.

As Britons prepare to head to the polls Thursday, the Conservative Party still appears to have enough support to secure a majority in Parliament, according to recent polls. But it is unlikely to be the landslide that many were predicting seven weeks ago.

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I think thats Theresa Mays fault, said Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London. She wanted this to be the Brexit election but she didnt want to talk about Brexit. As a result, other issues have intruded.

When May called the snap election on April 18, she said it was to stamp out political infighting that risked undermining her hand in upcoming Brexit talks. She also hoped that nearly a year after the deeply divisive referendum campaign where the country voted to leave the EU by 52% to 48%, she could create unity, and she sought a strong electoral mandate to secure the best deal for Britain.

This was especially important given that she was never voted in as prime minister, but succeeded David Cameron who stepped down last year after backing the failed Remain side.

But little has gone according to plan since the election was called. Despite successfully peeling off support from the UK Independence Party, which campaigns on a staunchly anti-EU platform, her campaign style has failed to inspire. She was sharply criticized for refusing to appear in a live television debate along with the leaders of six other main parties.

The Conservatives were also forced to alter a manifesto pledge that would have changed the way people pay for social care, a move that some branded a U-turn.

That policy was part of their offering to working-class voters, said Anand Menon, professor of European Politics and Foreign Affairs at Kings College London. But their inability to get that simple message across, that was staggering.

By contrast, her main opponent, Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn  who never wanted the election to be about Brexit given his partys internal divisions on the issue  has performed far better than many predicted.

He attracted strong crowds to his election rallies and spoke pointedly about the austerity measures Mays government has introduced, which have hit key services such as the National Health Service and education.

Europe has never been a big issue at general elections in this country, and it was naive to think it would be this time around, Bale said. The bread and butter issues that people generally think about when voting  health, education, tax, spending  have emerged as key themes.

Britain has also been rocked by three terrorist attacks in as many months. Two have occurred since the election campaign got underway: the first in Manchester where 22 concertgoers were killed when a terrorist detonated a suicide vest at the exit to an Ariana Grande show.

And more recently in the capital, three attackers drove a car over London Bridge, mowing down pedestrians, and then marched through Borough Market, stabbing diners and pub-goers enjoying their Saturday night. The death toll from that attack rose to eight on Wednesday.

Both incidents put a temporary stop to electioneering and changed the tone of the campaign. They also pushed a fierce debate around policing numbers and security to the top of the agenda and forced May to defend her record as home secretary, when she presided over a cut of 20,000 police officers.

You would normally think that a terror attack would work unambiguously for the Conservatives but because shes been in charge of this stuff, it has come back to haunt her, Menon said. Analysts have doubts about the extent to which the terrorist incidents will affect the election, however, as Corbyn has also been criticized for being weak on national security and voting against anti-terrorism legislation.

In that sense, May and Corbyn have canceled themselves out, but only by merit of their failings.

Its been a pretty awful campaign, Menon added. The quality of the two main candidates has been appallingly low. This has been the election of the steadily lowered bar.

Voters seem to agree that in many ways, no candidate is ideal.

I think [May and Corbyn] are people that a lot of voters dont want to vote for, but theyre the best of a bad bunch, said Londoner Peter Alan, 44, who works in publishing. He was an undecided voter when the election was first called but has gradually migrated over to the Labor camp, which is how he plans to vote on Thursday.

For me personally, its about the NHS, he said.

London teacher Purdie Brown, 36, said she also plans to vote Labor in her west London constituency, but in reality her ideal scenario would be if no one candidate wins overall and they are forced to form a coalition.

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Boyle is a special correspondent based in London.
Venezuela has been gripped by near daily protests for the last 10 weeks, resulting in 69 deaths, 1,235 arrests and millions of dollars in property damage.

The demonstrations started in late March after the Supreme Court, which is controlled by President Nicolas Maduro, ruled that it was taking over the powers of the legislature and intensified a week later when the government disqualified a leading member of the opposition from running for office for the next 15 years.

But the protests have also been years in the making, as Maduro and his predecessor, the late Hugo Chavez, the founder of a socialist movement known as Chavismo, chipped away at democracy by canceling elections, shutting down news outlets and arresting political opponents.

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Food shortages and rising crime have only added to the anger.

This is a new chapter in the conflict between chavismo and the opposition, a chapter animated by the catastrophic government of Maduro, said Luis Salamanca, a professor at Central Venezuela University in Caracas. Citizens are struggling to make the government respect their constitutional rights.

Public protests may be the only recourse left to the opposition, experts said.

The cumulative effect of increasingly severe and blatant authoritarian measures can be seen in the wave of street protests in Caracas and elsewhere, said Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington. The opposition has pursued other avenues to press for change but has consistently hit a wall.

Here are some ways that the government has worked to limit the oppositions power:

Attacks on news media

In 2007, Chavez refused to renew the broadcasting license of RCTV, the most widely followed anti-government station, forcing it to shut down and sparking nationwide protests.

Since then, an estimated 300 independent small-town radio stations have either been shut down or forced to change to government-friendly formats, according to Marcelino Bisbal, a professor at Andres Bello Catholic University.

Globovision, the last television station to broadcast anti-government editorials, was forced to sell in 2013 after owners complained of mounting government fines and political harassment. The new owners are businessmen with ties to Maduro.

Workers for the Venezuelan private station RCTV (Radio Caracas Television) broadcast part of a special farewell program in 2007, during their last day of transmission. (Pedro Rey / AFP/Getty Images)

CNN, El Tiempo TV, NTN24 and other Spanish language cable channels that have criticized the government have been banned from broadcasting in Venezuela.

Maduro halted TV broadcasts of National Assembly sessions last year after the opposition won majority control.

In 2014, the largest daily newspaper, El Universal, was forced to sell to a government-friendly owner group.

Interference with the National Assembly

In nationwide elections in December 2015, opposition candidates won the two-thirds majority needed to control the National Assembly. That should have allowed the opposition sweeping powers to overturn Maduros decisions and take control of the budget.

But before the new congress was installed, Maduro added 13 new justices to the Supreme Court. With Maduro allies in control, the court then disqualified three newly elected assembly members from Amazonas state by claiming voting irregularities.

That deprived the opposition of super-majority powers in the legislature and preserved Maduros political potency.

Venezuelas Supreme Court President Maikel Moreno speaks at court headquarters in Caracas on April 1, 2017. Venezuelas Supreme Court abandoned measures to seize power from the opposition-controlled legislature. (Federico Parra / AFP/Getty Images)

In July 2016, after opposition leaders claimed the high court had presented no proof of voting irregularities, they installed the three Amazonas assembly members anyway. The court responded by declaring the congress to be in contempt and said that all laws passed from that point on were unconstitutional and thus null and void.

The Supreme Court gave all legislative powers to Maduro on March 29 and eliminated parliamentary immunity, making all members subject to prosecution. Domestic and international reaction to the ruling was so negative that the court reinstated immunity two days later. Maduro was allowed to keep his new powers.

Last month, he extended a state of emergency for an eighth straight two-month period, maintaining discretionary powers and the suspension of certain individual constitutional rights.

Electoral interference

Soon after the opposition-controlled assembly took its seats, the majority began a campaign to exercise its constitutional right to hold a recall election to remove Maduro from power.

Despite the collection of 1.3 million signatures in the first phase of the campaign last year, the Maduro-controlled National Electoral Council delayed the process so long that even if the opposition had won the vote, Maduros vice president would have served out his term ending 2019. The opposition then rejected the referendum.

Elections for state governors and mayors were supposed to have been held in December of last year. But the electoral council has postponed them and not set a new date.

Disqualification of opposition candidates.

One by one, leading opposition candidates have been disqualified from running for office, often on flimsy pretexts.

On April 7, the controllers office said that Henrique Capriles, the governor of Miranda state who finished a close second to Maduro in the 2013 presidential reelection to replace Chavez, was ineligible to run for any public office until 2032 because of alleged misuse of funds. Capriles rejected the charges and described the action as a coup to eliminate a competitor in the 2019 presidential elections.

Leopoldo Lopez, a charismatic former Caracas borough mayor, was disqualified from running for office for six years starting in 2008 for alleged misuse of public funds. As the ban was running out, he was jailed in February 2014 on incitement of violence charges related to nationwide protests. He denied both charges.

Former assembly member Maria Corina Machado was disqualified from elections in 2015 on suspicion of planning to violently overthrow the government, a charge she has denied. She previously had been expelled from congress for attempting to speak at a meeting of the Organization of American States in Panama.

Liborio Guarulla, the popular opposition governor of Amazonas state and one-time Chavez follower, was disqualified on May 7 from running for any office before 2032. The electoral council said the reason was administrative negligence. Guarulla, a member of an indigenous community, dismissed the charges and leveled a curse against authorities for trying to do us evil.

Arrests and imprisonment of political leaders

Lopez, who is being held at a military prison near Caracas, is not the only politician arrested on charges that appear suspect.

In 2015, authorities arrested Antonio Ledezma, who was then mayor of metropolitan Caracas, and charged him with attempting to overthrow the government, which his family has described as ludicrous.

Yon Goicoechea, a former student leader who rose to prominence during 2007 demonstrations against the closing of RCTV, was arrested in August of last year and charged with possession of explosives. His wife, who rejected the charges, told reporters that her husband was tortured while in confinement.

Daniel Ceballos, mayor of San Cristobal, the capital of Tachira state, has been jailed since 2014, when authorities accused him of contempt of a court order to restrain protesters during a wave of demonstrations that turned violent. He denied any responsibility.

Special correspondent Mogollon reported from Caracas and Kraul from Bogota, Colombia.
Iran suffered its worst terrorist attack in recent memory Wednesday, a bold strike by assailants armed with explosives and assault rifles against the tomb of the Islamic Republics revolutionary founder and the parliament building. At least 12 people were killed and 43 others injured.

The militant group Islamic State claimed responsibility via its Amaq news agency, saying the near-simultaneous attacks were carried out by martyrdom-seeking fighters with two explosive vests.

If true, it would be the Sunni Muslim extremist groups first successful attack in Shiite-led Iran, a nation it regards as a leader of apostates.

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Irans powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard put the blame on Saudi Arabia and the United States, which have stepped up their alliance against Tehran and its nuclear ambitions.

Parliament was in session when four assailants armed with Kalashnikov rifles and explosives stormed the building around mid-morning, said Deputy Interior Minister Mohammad Hossein Zolfaghari. At least one was disguised as a woman, according to witnesses.

Even as that attack was underway, four gunmen and suicide bombers struck outside the shrine of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a venerated gathering spot for Shiite faithful on the southern edge of Tehran.

Eleven of the deaths took place at the parliament building and one at the shrine, state-run media reported. All eight attackers were also killed and a number of suspects taken in for questioning, authorities said.

Iran has long been a target of Islamic State. The militant group released a video in March in which it accused Iran of persecuting its Sunni minority and promised to conquer the country.

But the security forces keep a tight grip, and Iran had so far avoided the kind of deadly rampage that the militants have been inciting with increasing frequency around the world as they lose ground in their Syrian and Iraqi strongholds.

The attacks came at a sensitive time in the Persian Gulf, where several of Irans rivals, emboldened by President Trumps recent visit to Saudi Arabia, severed ties this week with Qatar, the one Arab country in the region that maintains relations with Tehran.

They also came the day after a U.S.-backed alliance of Syrian Kurdish and Arab militias announced the start of a long-awaited assault on the city of Raqqah, Islamic States self-styled capital in Syria.

The militants released a graphic video of the attacks. Do you think we will go away? a narrator asks. We are here to stay, God willing.

Islamic State is defending its brand and ensuring Al Qaeda doesnt steal it, said Paul Salem, vice president for policy analysis, research and programs at the Washington-based Middle East Institute.

We really are in a situation of full standoff between Iran and its friends on one side, and the U.S., Saudi Arabia and its friends on the other, he said. Countries like Qatar, he added, are caught in that vice.

The Revolutionary Guard noted in a statement that the attacks happened shortly after Trumps meeting with one of the reactionary rulers of the region, an apparent reference to Saudi King Salman.

It called the timing a meaningful coincidence, and said Islamic States claim was further evidence that the American president and the reactionary ruler are involved in this brutality.

The assault drew swift condemnation and expressions of condolence from countries such as Syria, Pakistan and Russia.

Hours later, Trump issued a two-sentence statement in which he said, We grieve and pray for the innocent victims of the terrorist attacks in Iran, and for the Iranian people.

But Trump suggested that Iran shared in the blame, warning that states that sponsor terrorism risk falling victim to the evil they promote.

The Trump administration has made Iran the focus of its anti-terrorism rhetoric and policies, apparently creating a quandary for how to respond when Iran itself is the target of an attack.

The U.S. has long considered Iran to be a sponsor of terrorism outside its borders, pointing to its support of groups such as Lebanons Hezbollah militia. Yet Tehran has been active in the fight against Islamic State, another stated priority of the administration.

The State Department also issued a brief statement, saying: The depravity of terrorism has no place in a peaceful, civilized world.

But it pointedly did not express solidarity with Irans government or offer assistance. Separately, the Senate voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to advance a bill that would impose new sanctions on Iran over its ballistic missile program and supply of weapons to militant groups.

Saudi Arabias foreign minister, Adel Jubeir, rejected the Iranian accusations of complicity, saying he had no idea who was responsible.

We condemn terrorist attacks anywhere they occur, and we condemn the killing of the innocent anywhere it occurs, he was quoted as saying by Saudi-owned media at an event in Berlin.

Irans supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, played down the significance of the attacks, saying, These fireworks have no impact on the willpower of the people. But experts said they were bound to cause alarm, especially as the countrys leadership had assured residents that fighting Sunni militants in Iraq and Syria would keep them from attacking the Islamic Republic.

The militants have attacked the beating heart, the nerve center of the Islamic Revolution, said Fawaz Gerges, a professor of international relations at the London School of Economics. For many Iranians, now, they are on our streets.

1 / 5 The body of a terrorist, at background left, lies on the ground while police control the scene at the shrine of late Iranian revolutionary founder Ayatollah Khomeini, just outside Tehran. Several attackers stormed Irans parliament and a suicide bomber targeted the shrine. (Ebrahim Noroozi / Associated Press) 2 / 5 Lawmakers gather inside the main hall of the Iranian parliament on Wednesday. (Chavosh Homavandi / AFP/Getty Images) 3 / 5 An image grab taken from AFPTV shows the scene outside the Iranian parliament in Tehran on Wednesday during an attack on the complex. (AFP/Getty Images) 4 / 5 Police monitor the scene around the shrine of late Iranian revolutionary founder Ayatollah Khomeini after an assault by several attackers in Tehran. (Ebrahim Noroozi / Associated Press) 5 / 5 Police officers patrol around the shrine of late Iranian revolutionary founder Ayatollah Khomeini, after an attack. (Ebrahim Noroozi / Associated Press)

The siege at parliament lasted about three hours, and it appeared that not all lawmakers were aware of the extent of the violence at first.

Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh, a member of parliament, said lawmakers were in regular session when a couple of colleagues arrived about 10:15 a.m. with bloodstains on their clothing.

Daesh has attacked, Falahatpisheh recalled them saying, using a common Arabic acronym for Islamic State. We continued  discussions until 1 p.m., when we heard the shooting.

He said his bloodstained colleagues told them the attackers had entered the building through the western gate, through which constituents normally enter to meet with members of parliament. At least one of the attackers appeared to be dressed in the traditional black robe worn by many Iranian women.

The terrorist wrapped up in a black chador and carrying a gun entered, shot the gate guard and opened the gate for his fellow terrorists, Falahatpisheh said. They started shooting.

After 1 p.m, an elite law enforcement force stormed the building and lawmakers were able to leave through the southern gate, he said.

Mohammad Ali Saki, editor of the English-language Tehran Times, said the assailants attacked an administrative building next to parliament, targeting guards, cleaners, and other employees, but never got near the parliament chamber.

The main door where parliamentarians enter has not been targeted, Saki said.

Word of the attack quickly spread to the streets outside. Ali Reza Kianpour, a journalist at Shahrvand newspaper in Tehran, said he was near the parliament building when the attack was just starting.

I heard a sound and someone shouting they needed help, he said in a telephone interview. And then I heard ambulances coming.

Kianpour saw two people emerge who appeared to be wounded. Some of the people started to be let out and they told me they were in shock, he said.

Police initially directed the citys 14 million residents to avoid the downtown area and public transportation. Those orders were lifted late Wednesday, but people did not immediately return to the streets.

The people are both angry and concerned because we are the only country in the region that had remained safe from the vicious acts of terrorism, Saki said, noting that officials disrupted several terrorist networks last year.

Unfortunately, they succeeded in attacking the symbols of the country, of democracy and what is cherished by the people, the shrine of the founder of the Islamic Republic.

After the end of the siege, Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani made a defiant address to lawmakers.

This morning a few terrorists committed a cowardly terrorist action, were seriously brought down, and parliamentarians are doing their normal jobs, he said. Iran is a pillar in fighting terrorism. They want to make a problem, but the problem will be solved.

Special correspondent Mostaghim reported from Tehran and staff writers Hennessy-Fiske and Zavis reported from Beirut and Los Angeles respectively. Times staff writers Melissa Etehad in Los Angeles and Tracy Wilkinson in Washington contributed, along with special correspondent Nabih Bulos in Erbil, Iraq.

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UPDATES:

5:10 p.m.: This story was updated with Saudi Arabia rejecting Iranian accusations of complicity.

4:40 p.m.: This story was updated with the number of injured increasing to 43.

3:20 p.m.: The story was updated with authorities saying all eight assailants were killed, an additional witness account and an interview with an analyst.

1:50 p.m.: The story was updated with additional U.S. and international reaction.

12:20 p.m.: This story was updated with reaction from Irans supreme leader, the State Department and an analyst.

10:05 a.m.: This story was updated with witness statements.

9:10 a.m.: This story was updated with Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guard alleging that Saudi Arabia and the U.S. were behind attacks.

6:50 a.m.: The story was updated with comments from the parliament speaker.

4:45 a.m.: Updated with latest death toll.

4:13 a.m.: Updated to add the siege on the parliament ended.

3:36 a.m.: Updated with new death toll and number injured

2:40 a.m.: This article was updated with claims of the attacks by Islamic State.

2:00 a.m.: This article was updated with information about a suspect blowing himself up.

12:45 a.m.: This article was updated with staff reporting.

12:30 a.m.: This article was updated to reflect the number of wounded.

This article was originally published at 12:20 a.m.
A U.S. military investigation has concluded that an airstrike targeting a meeting of Al Qaeda operatives in Syria was legal, on target and did not inadvertently kill scores of civilians as humanitarian groups have alleged.

The Pentagons classified investigation of the March 16 bombing on a building in Al Jinah village near Aleppo found that at worst one civilian was killed or injured  possibly a child, based on the height observed from aerial surveillance, according to Army Brig. Gen. Paul Bontrager, the lead investigating officer from U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Fla.

We are confident this was a meeting of Al Qaeda leaders and members, he told reporters at the Pentagon via teleconference. This was not a meeting of civilians.

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Analysts with a U.S. special operations task force, which hunts terrorist groups around the globe, watched the site for three days, Bontrager said. The target underwent what the military calls a thorough assessment, review and validation process, he said, before the order was made to scramble U.S. F-15 fighter jets and MQ-9 Reaper drones to destroy it.

The investigation report, which was not publicly released, did identify several shortfalls, however, including failing to recognize that the targeted building was a school or madrassa associated with a nearby mosque.

Religious buildings, such as churches and mosques, are protected against U.S. military airstrikes. If commanders believe they have been overtaken by enemy forces, the buildings can be targeted only with the approval of senior military officers.

No U.S. service member was punished as a result of the oversight for not properly classifying it, Bontrager said.

There was no negligence found, he said, adding that the airstrike itself was lawful.

U.S. military investigators did not visit the site, nor did they interview surviving victims, first-responders, or on-the-ground witnesses, Bontrager said. The area is known to be under Al Qaeda control.

The Pentagon had released a black-and-white aerial photo of a compound that it said showed the small mosque nearby still standing. A much larger building across the road was reduced to rubble.

That building was the newly built Omar Ibn al-Khatab mosque, according to the monitoring group Human Rights Watch. The group released a lengthy report April 18 that featured interview transcripts, 3-D modeling of the building, and video footage of the building before and after the attack.

The report, based on interviews from 14 people who had either witnessed the attack firsthand or had visited in the aftermath, determined that the mosque was bombed during night prayers, then a second wave of warplanes strafed survivors as they attempted to flee.

At least 38 people were killed in the attack, Human Rights Watch said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based monitoring group with a network of activists in Syria, reported that the airstrike killed at least 49 people.

The incident is the latest example of the gulf in reporting that exists between the Pentagon and Syrian human rights and humanitarian aid groups on the impact of deadly airstrikes.

Obtaining accurate independent figures is difficult because of the challenges of reporting on the ground in the multi-sided Syrian civil war.

The Pentagon estimates that at least 484 civilians have been killed in more than 22,123 airstrikes launched by the U.S. and its allies in Iraq and Syria since the air war against Islamic State began in mid-2014.

Independent monitoring groups say, however, that errant bombs or poor targeting have caused thousands of civilian casualties.

william.hennigan@latimes.com

Twitter: @wjhenn

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Authorities in Italy are looking for the thieves who stole relics of St. John "Don" Bosco, founder of the Salesian religious order, from a basilica east of Turin.

The relics, including a piece of brain tissue from Bosco, were stolen from the Catholic church bearing the saint's name near Turin on Saturday, after a group of pilgrims left the site. Members of the faithful and of the cloth are now praying for its safe return.

"We hope and pray for this relic to soon return to its rightful place, at Colle Don Bosco, precisely where Don Bosco himself was born." said Father Francesco Cereda in a statement released Tuesday.

St. John Bosco was famous for preaching, educating, and being charitable to street children around Italy. He was beatified in 1929 and formally made a saint by Pope Pius XI in 1934.

Theft of religious artifacts of historical value aren't uncommon to Italy. In 2014, thieves stole a relic containing former pope and now Saint John Paul II's blood from a church in central Abruzzo, but threw it away as they fled thinking it worthless, the Associated Press reported. Authorities later recovered the relic.

Among the devotees of Saint Bosco is chatter of dealing with potential ransom demands from the thieves, but they are remaining steadfast in their faith.

"We are also sure that as it has happened, a relic of Don Bosco can be stolen, but Don Bosco cannot be taken away from us and the many pilgrims who visit these places every day," said Father Ezio Orsini, Rector of Basilica of St. Bosco.
Jun 7, 2017, 2:18pm ET

Ford's Louisville plant to shorten summer break

Ford will continue to crank out compact SUVs over the summer.

Ford is shortening the typical summer shutdown at its Louisville Assembly Plant in order to produce more units of its hot-selling Ford Escape and Lincoln MKC sport utility models.

Ford plants usually take a two-week break during the summer months, but that summer vacation will be cut down to just one week at the Louisville plant where the Escape and MKC are manufactured. Ford says the shortened break will allow the company to crank out an additional 8,500 units.

"The record sales for Ford Escape through May are being driven by strong demand from our retail customers, said Raj Nair, Ford's executive vice president and president - North America. "This is our strongest ever retail start for Escape, with retail sales up more than 6 percent versus this time last year.

On the whole, Escape sales are up about 3 percent this year to 129,805 units. Lincoln has delivered 11,161 units of its MKC through the first five months of the year, marking an improvement of about 10 percent compared to the same period in 2016.

Ford says its other North American plants will stick with the typical two-week shut down.
Kia previews entry-level Stonic crossover

Jun 7, 2017, 5:57am ET

The Stonic could debut in Frankfurt.

Kia's crossover offensive is set to continue with a brand-new model named Stonic. The soft-roader could make its global debut this fall at the Frankfurt Auto Show.

The South Korean company explains the Stonic name is a combination of the words "speedy" and "tonic." The teaser sketches hints at a bolder evolution of Kia's design language characterized by thin angular headlights, sculpted bumpers, and pronounced haunches. However, keep in mind sketches can be spectacularly misleading.

The cabin features a clean, tech-oriented design. The dashboard is dominated by a large color touch screen underlined by a piece of U-shaped trim. All of the buttons typically scattered across the cabin are grouped in a cluster on the center console, which gives the rest of the cabin an uncluttered look.

Kia isn't ready to divulge what lies under the sheet metal. British magazine Autocar reports the Stonic is closely related to the funky-looking Hyundai Kona that will debut next week, meaning it will come standard with front-wheel drive, a four-cylinder engine, and an automatic transmission.

We'll bring you more details about the Kia Stonic in the coming weeks. When it lands, it will slot below the Niro as the company's smallest and most affordable crossover. Its main rivals will include the Nissan Juke -- which is allegedly getting axed in the United States -- and the Toyota C-HR.
The Turkey Hill Minit Market and gas station at Route 412 and Interstate 78 wants to sell beer.

The convenience store chain is asking Bethlehem City Council to approve a liquor license transfer that would allow the store to sell beer for takeout as well as for in-store consumption, according to a letter sent to the city.

Council has scheduled a public hearing on the request for Tuesday, June 20.

There are no liquor licenses available in the city, so Turkey Hill wants to transfer a restaurant liquor license from Morici's Inc., 218 Cattell St. in Easton, to the store at 1140 Hellertown Road in the city, according to a form submitted to the city.

The Bethlehem store will be renovated to create a seating area for at least 30 customers, which is required under the license, according to the letter from Paul A. Namey, an attorney with the firm of Flaherty & O'Hara.

Customers would be able to buy up to 192 ounces of beer per transaction for takeout -- that's 12 16-ounce beers -- and in the future bottles of wine for takeout may be available, the letter states.

Turkey Hill opened its first Minit Market in 1967 in Lancaster County and now there are more than 240 stores in Pennsylvania and 20 locations in Ohio and Indiana.

Sara K. Satullo may be reached at ssatullo@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @sarasatullo and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
At a time that the nation's police officers are increasingly turning to body cameras, the Bethlehem police squad cars don't have one working dashboard camera.

The Bethlehem Police Department hopes to change that shortly.

After months of vetting four different companies, Bethlehem City Council on Tuesday night authorized the purchase and installation of 35 dash cams and the accompanying equipment.

The $224,313 contract was awarded to Texas-based Watch Guard Video. It will largely be paid for through a bond that council authorized in February.

Deputy Police Chief Todd Repsher said Tuesday that the department met with four companies, tested two of them and selected Watch Guard.

The five-year contract carries warranties and the department plans to only install 34, so there is one in reserve, he said.

In 2007, about three-quarters of city police vehicles had working dashboard cameras. Two years ago, six to nine of them worked but none do today after a server failed.

Last fall, police Chief Mark DiLuzio asked the city to back both dash cams and body cameras in the city's 2017-21 capital plan. He advocated for cameras by saying they can show exactly what transpired when there's a complaint against police or when someone is charged criminally.

Nationally, there has been a movement for police departments to add or require body cameras in the wake of fatal officer-involved shootings and questionable police actions recorded by bystanders.

Repsher said the department is pushing back its timelines on body cameras by a year. The majority of officers don't have experience even with dashboard camera video, so officials want to give them time to acclimate before adding in body cameras, too, he said.

Police body cameras are a relatively new technology and they tend to be quite large, Rephser noted. The technology may evolve rapidly and, even in a year, costs and the size could shrink much like with cell phones and other new technology, Repsher said.

DiLuzio, who was not at Tuesday's meeting, has said he wants to equip 125 of his 155 officers with body cameras eventually.

He plans to start out with a pilot program of at least six months, so the department can test out several different cameras.

Sara K. Satullo may be reached at ssatullo@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @sarasatullo and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
An Upper Nazareth Township woman was charged with welfare fraud in the state's food stamp program.

Stephanie N. Dezzi, 32, of the 100 block of Fourth Street, was charged April 20 with receiving $3,440 in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits -- food stamps -- when her financial situation didn't justify it, according to the Pennsylvania Inspector General's Office in Allentown.

Dezzi gave up her right to a preliminary hearing on the charge, which is a felony due to the amount, and carries possible penalties of seven years in jail and a $15,000 fine, according to court records and the statute.

When Dezzi applied for assistance on Oct. 9, 2015, she reported she was living with her two children and no one else, authorities said. She also said she was working part-time at Century 21 and provided proof of income, court papers say.

When she submitted a semi-annual report on May 3, 2016, she didn't state any change in her circumstances but did not verify her income, so her benefits were suspended, according to court records. She then requested the benefits be terminated and they were ended effective April 30 of that year, court papers say.

Dezzi's husband Raymond is employed full-time with the Forks Township Police Department and in 2014 earned $80,537 as a corporal, records show.

"This household income and accurate household composition was unreported to the Northampton County Assistance Office," court papers say. The charge was filed in District Judge Antonia Grifo's court in Downtown Easton.

Northampton County Assistant District Attorney James Augustine said the crux of this type of case is whether Dezzi and her husband were living separately while she received the benefits. While she says they were maintaining separate homes, there's evidence gathered by the inspector general's office that they were together, Augustine said.

"That's going to be the issue," he said.

The Dezzis own a home in Upper Nazareth. Under the law, Stephanie Dezzi would have to repay the $3,440.

Township police Chief Greg Dorney said Raymond Dezzi faces no charges and his job was in no way impacted by the case against his spouse.

While the Dezzis were married the whole time in question, neither Dorney nor Stephanie Dezzi's attorney Thomas Joachim would say if the couple were separated at any point in those six months.

Stephanie Dezzi faces a formal arraignment Aug. 3 in Northampton County Court.

"We're working on a mutually beneficial resolution on this matter," Joachim said Tuesday.

Augustine said cases like this don't usually go to trial.

Stephanie Dezzi does not have a criminal record. Acceptance into Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition -- a probationary program that, if successfully completed, leads to the charges being removed from her record -- is seldom allowed in such cases but possible, he said.

Augustine said he discussed a few options with Joachim but they haven't reached an agreement.

"I'm sure we can work something out," he added.

Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
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New Jersey voters will be deciding the fate of dozens of candidates who are seeking their party's nominations in Senate and Assembly districts across the state.

(Star-Ledger file photo)

Polls across New Jersey closed at 8 p.m. Tuesday, starting the counting process that will determine the fate of dozens of candidates seeking bids to represent their political parties in November's state Senate and Assembly elections.

Contested Senate elections took place in eight legislative districts: the 12th, 13th, 14th, 17th, 24th, 35th, 37th and 40th.

There were contested Assembly races in 15 legislative districts: the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 6th, 7th, 11th, 12th, 15th, 17th, 22nd, 24th, 26th, 31st, 37th and 40th.

While it's not too common to have competitive primary elections for state legislative nominations, at least two districts have noteworthy battles being waged. Among them are:

In the

In the

In the

Here are the unofficial results of all the contested state Senate and Assembly primary elections held across the state on Tuesday, compiled by the Associated Press. (Note: Vote totals are expected to start coming in about 8:15 p.m. and will be updated throughout the night, so refresh your page or return later to see the latest tallies.)

CONTESTED SENATE RACES

CONTESTED ASSEMBLY RACES

MORE N.J. ELECTION RESULTS

Latest results of primary race for governor

County and local election results

The Associated Press and NJ Advance Media staff writer Brent Johnson contributed to this report. Len Melisurgo may be reached at LMelisurgo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @LensReality or like him on Facebook. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
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Democrat Phil Murphy, left, and Republican Kim Guadagno, right, are among a crowded field of candidates vying for nominations to run for the New Jersey governor's seat.

(AP file photos)

Polls across New Jersey officially closed at 8 p.m. Tuesday in a crowded primary election that will determine which Democrat and Republican will be on the November ballot for governor.

It's a packed field, with six Democrats and five Republicans each trying to secure a bid to represent their political party and succeed Gov. Chris Christie, who is serving the final year of his second -- and final -- term in office.

The Democratic frontrunner, Phil Murphy, is a former Goldman Sachs banking executive who has spent more than $18 million on his campaign -- nearly four times as much as all the other major-party candidates combined.

The Republican frontrunner. Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno, has held double-digit leads over her closest rivals in recent election polls.

Here are the unofficial results of the Democratic and Republican primary elections held across the state on Tuesday, compiled by the Associated Press. (Note: Vote totals are expected to start coming in about 8:15 p.m. and will be updated throughout the night, so refresh your page or return later to see the latest tallies.)

Rounding out the Democratic field are state Sen. Ray Lesniak, a veteran attorney from Union County who has served in the state Legislature since 1978; state Assemblyman John Wisniewski, a longtime attorney from Middlesex County and former chairman of the state Democratic Party; Bill Brennan, a community activist and former Teaneck firefighter; Jim Johnson, a former federal prosecutor and former U.S. treasury official, and Mark Zinna, a Tenafly councilman and owner of a data management company.

Also fighting for the GOP nomination are state Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli of Somerset County; Nutley Township Commissioner Steven Rogers; Ocean County businessman and actor Joseph Rullo, and aerospace and defense industry executive Hirsh Singh of Atlantic County.

MORE N.J. ELECTION COVERAGE

State Senate and Assembly results

County and local election results

The Associated Press and NJ Advance Media staff writer Brent Johnson contributed to this report. Len Melisurgo may be reached at LMelisurgo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @LensReality or like him on Facebook. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
NEWARK -- Phil Murphy, a former banking executive and U.S. ambassador to Germany who has poured millions from his own fortune into the race for New Jersey governor and vows to reinvigorate the state's economy, fought off five rivals Tuesday night to win the Democratic nomination in the battle to succeed Chris Christie.

The Associated Press called the race for Murphy about an hour after the polls closed.

Murphy, a 59-year-old Middletown resident, will now face Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno in November's general election. Guadagno edged four opponents to win the Republican nod on Tuesday.

Murphy was heavily favored heading into the Democratic primary, bolstered by a heavy pocketbook, support from leading Democrats across the state, and a double-digit lead in the polls.

He beat a slate of challengers that included two veteran state lawmakers (state Assemblyman John Wisniewski and state Sen. Raymond Lesniak), a former U.S. Treasury official (Jim Johnson), and a pair of lesser-known candidates (former Teaneck firefighter Bill Brennan and Tenafly Council President Mark Zinna).

With 39 percent of the vote recorded Tuesday night, Murphy had 91,175 votes (46 percent), followed by Wisniewski with 46,324 (23 percent), Johnson 41,755 (21 percent), and Lesniak 10,207 (5 percent), according to the AP.

Political experts say Murphy is now the favorite to win November's general election to take over for Christie, a term-limited Republican who is in the waning months of his eighth and final year as governor. New Jersey is traditionally a blue-leaning state, and Republican Christie's approval ratings in the state have reached historic lows in recent months.

Murphy has never been elected to public office before, but he does have a background in politics. After 23 years at Wall Street investment banking firm Goldman Sachs, where he retired as an executive, Murphy was national finance chair of the Democratic National Committee and later served as U.S. ambassador to Germany from 2009 to 2013 under then-President Barack Obama.

Asked why he was motivated to run for office at this point in his life, Murphy said: "I've been brought up with an ethos of service and I've been, in my own ways, trying to do that along the way for many, many years.

"I didn't just wake up and decide to jump in a race like this," he said. "This has been a long time building."

Originally, the Democratic primary was supposed to be a fierce three-way race between Murphy, Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop, and state Senate President Stephen Sweeney.

But Murphy began to consolidate support from Democratic Party county chairmen, and first Fulop, and then Sweeney, opted not to enter the race.

In the end, Murphy received the endorsement of the local party in all of the state's 21 counties.

He also spent more than $20 million in the primary -- nearly five times more than the other 10 major-party candidates combined. He loaned his campaign $16.4 million of his own money.

That drew unflattering comparisons to former Gov. Jon Corzine, another Democrat and former Goldman Sachs executive who spent millions of his own money to win the governorship in 2005 and then lost to Christie in his re-election bid four years later.

In the wake of the progressive and populist undertones of the 2016 presidential election, opponents repeatedly accused Murphy of buying his support and the nomination.

Wisniewski painted the race as being a battle between Wall Street and Main Street. Johnson said Murphy would continue New Jersey's insider-driven politics.

But Murphy dismissed those criticisms, saying he has campaigned tirelessly for the state and has used his money to help build the party in the state.

Murphy also weathered recent barbs from Christie, who called the Democrat a "fraud" and a "joke" who "bought" the nomination.

On Tuesday, Murphy brushed aside the remarks, as well.

"Given the state of New Jersey and its economy, I don't have a whole lot of regard of the governor's opinion on my skills," he said.

Murphy has targeted New Jersey's economy in the race, saying he will help fix the state in the wake of Christie.

His biggest proposal is a state-run bank, that would give some tax money to community banks to give out loans to small businesses and students, with the profit returning to the state budget.

Murphy has also said he will protect residents against the policies of President Donald Trump, a Republican who poll shows is also deeply unpopular in the state, where registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans nearly 2-to-1.

New Jersey is one of only two states with a governor's election this year, along with Virginia. It's also the first major race since Trump took office in January.

In a surprise, Murphy has said he will now participate in the state's matching funds program, in which gubernatorial candidates receive $2 in public money for every $1 they raise.

That will limit Murphy to spending no more than $13.8 million in the general election.

But it will not prohibit outside groups from spending to support him.

Johnson, a former federal prosecutor who ran a progressive campaign and surprised experts by becoming a strong factor in the race, has been rumored to be a possible candidate for future elections, possibly for the U.S. House or Senate next year.

Wisniewski, most famous to being the lawmaker who led the legislative investigation into the George Washington Bridge scandal, will now have to leave his seat in the Assembly after 21 years. State law prohibits candidates from seeking two offices in the same year.

Lesniak, a 71-year-old who has served the second-longest tenure of any lawmakers in New Jersey history, will end a four-decade career in the state Legislature in January.

Matt Arco ay be reached at marco@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MatthewArco or on Facebook.

Brent Johnson may be reached at bjohnson@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @johnsb01. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.
An surprise windfall of 2.65 million to Laois County Council is earmarked for work on footpaths, but county councillors are fighting it out to get the lions share of it.

The cash is a refund from Irish Public Bodies, the council's insurers. Some 880,000 will be refunded to the council annually over the next three years.

Cllr James Kelly said his Municipal District of Borris-in-Ossory / Mountmellick should get the majority.

It should get the bulk because it is the biggest area, said the Mountrath-based Independent politician.

Cllr Caroline Dwane Stanley, of Sinn Fein, put the case for Portlaoise.

Well be looking for our share in the Portlaoise area. Any motions we submit, we are told to use our own discretionary budgets. It is my intention to put 10k into Hillview Drive, but I welcome the extra budget to finish the whole area. Ill be twisting Kieran Kehoes (Director of Services), arm up his back, she said.

Sinn Fein represententative, Cllr Aidan Mullins made the bid for Portarlington.

We are out of the starting blocks already, there is 2.7km of paths in the town that need an upgrade, I estimate that will cost north of 300k, he said.

Cllr Ben Brennan, an Indpendent, wants some for Crettyards paths.

They are in a very bad state. A young lad using a wheelchair there was knocked out of control, and he was robbed. The only way he can travel is on footpaths and they need money, he said.

Cllr Paddy Bracken,a Fianna Fail councillor based in Mountmellick said the money should be targetted.

Can we look at areas where people have mobility issues, and focus on access? We should do this if we have the opportunity of spending this money. Every town will have this problem, he said.

Cllr Tom Mulhall, from Emo, also wants it distributed fairly.

We have three municipal districts, this money is about dangerous footpaths, we should leave it up to the engineers to assess where the real problems are, over the next three years, he said.

Cllr Mary Sweeney and Cllr John Joe Fennelly complimented Cllr Jerry Lodge for bringing back the news from the IBP, where he represents the council.

Cllr Lodge had the last word.

I smiled when Cllr Kelly gave out his list, it reminded me of the late Martin Luther King, 'I have a dream'. One of the terms and conditions is that I would oversee the budget, so you can all come and talk to me, he said
Was a Northern Irish woman caught speeding on the motorway trying to get out of the Republic after being overwhelmed by her time in Cork?

So wondered Judge Alan Mitchell at last weeks Portlaoise District Court, in the case of Louise Mullan (21), Sheskin Road, Greysteel, Co Derry.

The accused was initially charged with dangerous driving, but defence, Ms Josephine Fitzpatrick said the State would be prepared to reduce this to careless driving.

Inspector Aidan Farrelly gave evidence that on May 15 this year, on the M8 motorway at Clogh, Ballacolla, the accused was driving at 176km/h in a 120km zone.

The weather was good, said Insp Farrelly, but the dangerous aspect was her speed.

I would consider that dangerous, said Judge alan Mitchell.

Insp Farrelly said the accused was from outside the jurisdiction and had said she didnt realise she was doing that speed.

The inspector said there were no aggravating factors and the accused was very cooperative with the gardai. She was driving a Kia jeep, he said.

Ms Fitzpatrick admitted there had been no emergency on the day, when her client was travelling home from Cork to Derry after visiting a friend. She had never visited there before and hadnt realised she was doing that speed, which was a concern in itself, said defence.

She got a right good fright, said Ms Fitzpatrick.

Asked Judge Mitchell of the accused: You didnt find Cork too overbearing and wanted to get out of the Republic?

Judge Mitchell said he would accept a plea to the lesser charge of careless driving. He told the accused it was a very good road, but at that level of speed she wouldnt have much time to react if something happened.

The accused was convicted and fined 390, and disqualified from driving for three months.

Keep north of the border to be certain, he told her.
Kildare writer, Robert Massey, has been selected for a playwriting festive set to take place on Sunday, July 16.

Taking place in Birr, Co Offaly the festival is being run by Script Ireland.

Mr Massey was one of a record 100 submissions received by festival organisers this year.

The Clane resident is one of three playwrights from across the country who will travel to Birr for a week of mentoring with top playwright Eugene O'Brien (author of hit tv series, Pure Mule).

The plays will then be performed as rehearsed readings with professional actors at the Scripts headline event at Birr Theatre and Arts Centre on Sunday, July 16.

The overall winning play will then be selected by a prestigious panel including Jesse Weaver (New Work Associate, the Abbey Theatre) and Artistic Director of Fishamble Theatre Company, Jim Culleton.

Mr Massey, top right, with fellow cast members Amanda Ryan, Ashleigh O'Neill and James Murphy.

Mr Massey is possibly best known to Kildare theatre lovers as a stalwart of Prosperous Dramatic Society appearing in most of its most successful recent productions.

His play Deadline was developed through the New Writers programme at the National Theatre, produced by Lane Productions in Andrew's Lane Theatre and then, was nominated for the BBC Stewart Parker award.

His next, Over & Out, was produced by Lane Productions at the Civic Theatre Dublin before embarking on a national tour including venues like Draoicht Blanchardstown, the Pavillion and Cork Opera House.

Read more: GALLERY: Abbey success for Prosperous Dramatic Society

His play, Rank, was produced by Fishamble and directed by Jim Culleton at the Helix as part of the Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival 2008 before transferring to the Tricycle Theatre London for an extended run.

It was revived in 2013 under the direction of Wilson Milam at the Odyssey Theatre, Los Angeles.

He was also commissioned by the Abbey Theatre to write Growth as part of the Something Borrowed season directed by David Horan.

His plays have also been the subject of numerous public readings in Solus Nua, Washington and Irish Rep Centre in New York.

Read more: Play by Clane man at the Riverbank
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A Kildare judge has slammed Tuslas recommendation to house a 16 year old boy in a relatively unsupervised homeless shelter in Dublin.

The agency charged with looking after the child was severely criticised at Naas District Court yesterday, June 6, by Judge Desmond Zaidan.

The youth had appeared at the in camera hearing charged with causing damage in care homes and for taking cannabis.

The Court was told he had significant underlying issues.

After reading a psychiatric report which said that the youth, who was being temporarily held at Obserstown centre, needed well supervised care, the judge was told by Gardai it appeared there would be no direct supervision of the youth at a Laffoy House.

The Garda said he stood to be corrected, but he did not believe there was sufficient supervision at the shelter.

A solicitor for Tusla said it was her instruction that the next step for the youth was the shelter, pending other options.

Judge Zaidan said he could not believe he was hearing this from Tusla about a youth from a disturbed and distressing background.

Judge Zaidan said that option would leave the 16 year old very open to criminality and a danger to himself.

The youth said he would rather got to Laffoy House than stay at Oberstown.

Judge Zaidan said it was not his place, as a judge, to keep the youth in custody because the State had no place for him.

The Gardai in the case said the youth had been in private residential care and had been discharged. The private institutions did not want him.

Judge Zaidan said this boy is a walking time bomb.

He said he could not endorse Tuslas recommendation.

It is highly irresponsible, embarrassing and very serious, he said. He needs to be protected from himself."

Garda Inspector John Costello agreed the youth could not be left on the street.

The judge suggested to the youths solicitor that she could got to the High Court to get it to compel Tusla to provide a safe alternative.

He adjourned the matter to today, June 7.

UPDATE June 7, 1.40pm: A solicitor representing Tusla has, in the past half hour, addressed Naas District Court and explained that "despite strenuous efforts" the agency has been unable to find any place for the teenager.

Barry Fitzgerald, solicitor for the young man put it to the court that the young man was now faced with going to Laffoy House, which is for homeless people. The solicitor for Tusla denied that this was the case. He also added that what he called "the full suite of services would be made available to him".

He said that if a placement became available, he could take it up

"It falls short of meeting his requirements," Mr Fitzgerald told Judge Desmond Zaidan.

The Judge said that the vulnerable boy had moved from the frying pan of his family, to the fire of Tusla. He described the situation as tragic and added that the boy himself didn't realise how vulnerable he was.

The judge imposed the Probation Act on all of the charges saying that he would not use prison to cover up for the State's failure to cater for the boy's needs.
An Eadestown man has achieved a Masters in Law from Harvard Law School, despite an ongoing tough battle with cancer.

Michael Mullan graduated from one of Americas most prestigious institutions in Massachusetts, Harvard, on Thursday May 25.

His girlfriend, Mel Murphy said: Since going back to law school in August he had a tough year, so I just cant believe he graduated, he was just so determined. And we are all beyond proud.

The 25-year-old has fought cancer twice.

He had neuroblastoma as a baby, then renal cell cancer in 2013 while studying at Trinity College in Dublin.

He graduated with an honors degree, and was then accepted into Harvard Law School.

He moved over to the US with his girlfriend of nearly nine years and family in the Summer of 2015.

Since November 2015, he has been fighting metastasized renal cell cancer, and is still battling through.

Treatment isnt available in Ireland so he is attending DanaFarber Cancer Institute in Boston for as long as needed.

Michael (better known as Mick) is on targeted chemotherapy since October and has had six rounds of radiation. Before that, he was on immunotherapy.

The son of Patrick and Patricia Mullan of Eadestown, Mick attended Rathmore National School and Naas CBS, and played GAA for the local club.

He has two brothers, Ciaran and Dermot. Dermot and his wife Steph lived in New York and used to get the bus up nearly every weekend to visit.

In February 2016, the community of Eadestown rallied behind Mick and organised a Run for the Hills fundraiser to raise money for his treatment, which was a huge success.

It wasnt an easy year for him but he loved his classes and was so interested in it and determined! And he got an Honour which is the highest grade in his thesis, and in many other classes too, Mel added.

Micks interests are disability law and criminal law. He plans to do research with some Harvard professors, and will go on to do a PHD this year.
Is it insanity, stupidity or senility that has led me to volunteer to deliver so many pigging Good Mornings tomorrow? Eight bundles!

Tim Farron says hell be up at 5am, so I will be up at 5am. I am not going to be outdone by Tim Farron. But I have had to carefully choose the sequence of the roads I will do. One has to carefully judge the extent to which residents in certain roads will tolerate some numpty stumbling around at 5am delivering Good Morning leaflets. (By the way, if you knock over some milk bottles, take a tip from an old colleague of mine and shout: Sorry  Labour Party delivering leaflets!. (Thats a joke by the way)).

Several decades ago, I began delivering leaflets for a council by-election in a rural road at 5am. After a while, a police car drew up (the constabulary had been, no doubt, alerted by the local Neighbourhood Watch). Can I ask what you are doing, sir?, asked the PC in the passenger seat. I showed him one of my leaflets which had a picture of an elephant with its trunk tied in a knot and the text: Have you forgotten something?. I think the PC instantly realised that a burglar wouldnt go equipped with such paperwork.

Good luck to all tomorrow!

* Paul Walter is a Liberal Democrat activist and member of the Liberal Democrat Voice team. He blogs at Liberal Burblings.
This election has shaken up many peoples conception of politics. For the time being, we as Lib Dems have succeeded in what weve always attempted to create  a political triangle of us, Labour and the Conservatives.

As my first election  and indeed my first opportunity to experience politics as an adult  its been an interesting campaign. But Im not in my home territory of Accrington. Im in western Wales, on the fringes of our island. Im not fighting Red or Blue, because Im fighting Green, or to put it another way, Im fighting the Welsh Nationalists. And my experience from this campaign wont be of Cleggmania sweeping the land; itll be of an ideological struggle to personally define my values as a Lib Dem and of my values more generally.

Here is the confusing thing about Plaid  something after several weeks of thinking and debating I am still not sure about. They are a party of the centre-left, sharing our platform on a wide range of issues. They are a party that proposes a stronger Welsh government. I do not disagree with that. So instead of that sort of ideology, it is a debate of scale and values. Not on macro-economics, but the concept of what the voter considers their values to be. And thats why its been such a nerve-wracking campaign, because you cannot change peoples core values.

It is of the scale of the smallest issues  of individual casework and tiny rural schools  to the biggest, namely what the role of the Welsh is going to be in the future. And its so odd  so mind-numbingly odd  for that reason alone. We have to appeal to these voters as well as the vast student population.

And as someone only with loose ties to Wales  as someone who associates his own personality with pies, puddings, fish and chip dinners, rain that you enjoy more than the sunshine and so many of the hallmarks that makes Lancashire so unique  I struggle to empathise with Plaid voters, because I cannot, and I suspect I will never be able to truly understand, what drives someone to consider themselves so much of a Welsh patriot as to scupper their countys relevancy at Westminister.

I have at times been tempted to  as one of my lecturers here at Aberystwyth University has often been wont to do  link the problem to economics. The Plaid rally in Aberystwyth town centre attracted a crowd of people that struck me as being of the rural middle-class variety  nice houses overlooking the coast, a good few acres of land for the purpose of growing sheep, that sort of thing  and that for a time was my solution. Plaids voter base was of a class that had ended up living the good life and so could devote their cause to the simplest political lot to associate with  their local nationalists. Now, I am not of that opinion. However, that aforementioned Plaid rally has given me the clue I needed to really get to the core of what I wanted to understand.

It was heard several times  the phrase London parties. I had to get a good deal of what they were saying translated  as you might expect from a nationalist rally they all spoke at length in Welsh  but that was the common phrase. Plaid sat on their manifesto and simply condemned all their opponents for being too English. Plaid cast themselves as simply not being so. And slowly it began to dawn on me what was going on.

It began with me questioning my Lancastrianess. If I considered myself Lancastrian, surely that must be a similar  although lesser  feeling to what it must be if one considers themselves to be Welsh. So, I asked myself, what is that feeling representing?

1) A somewhat jokey rivalry with Yorkshire.

2) Imagery  the aforementioned food and produce.

3) A sense of pride, represented by the sort of phenomenon that hit Boris Johnson, that results in anger when what I consider to be my home is insulted.

If I was a Lancastrian Nationalist, I reasoned, what would I do to best represent that feeling? How would I convert that feeling into electoral success?

1) Link myself to symbols of Lancashire. I would have something like a red rose as my symbol (which would work if Labour hadnt stolen it for their own nefarious purposes!) and adorn my pamphlets with images of the countryside to ground myself in the region. Mix this in with a link to local politics.

2) Make big issues of anything that could be seen to harm the Lancastrianess of Lancashire. Make sure French cuisine is always balanced with steak pies in restaurants, campaign for local fish merchants versus big supermarkets

3) Try and worm this concept of militant nationalism into the minds of people. It has to matter to people that theyre Lancastrian. Make sure to get the children early as well.

4) The goal would be to make sure that the Lanc Nats would be seen as the us in the us vs them debate that we would create. The ultimate goal will be to create such a strong Lancastrian sentiment that it would become impossible to ignore, securing seats in the process. Then in power, and Lancastrianness fully ensuring well never get voted out, we can do whatever we like, relying on the populist nationalism weve created to create a mandate for whatever we like.

Plaid began from a stronger platform than pies and pastries. Thatcher flooding valleys tends to sharpen peoples minds. But the above is, largely speaking, what they have done. A political party has created a debate, exploiting the easiest aspect of peoples minds  their identity. Students of Eastern European nationalism will recognise the signs. The party begins as a defence of identity  it ends with the creation of a block vote.

This is Plaids true platform. An artificial division between London  though I maintain there is no such thing as a unified English identity  and Us. To fit in in Wales is to follow Plaids prescriptive agenda, most notably by forcing people to learn Welsh but also by prescribing a healthy dislike of the opposition, the English. They believe they are in the moral right because they have their identitys best interests at heart.

But this is where their argument comes apart at the seams.

I never pretend that my concept of Lancastrianess fits everyone. Plaid think opposite. Plaid deny people the ability to be themselves  it is more important in their minds to be Plaid Welsh than be unique. This argument simply does not hold water. And this reveals a nasty truth about what Plaid voters vote into Westminister  a party that hides its political irrelevancy behind the creation of an illusion of Plaids Wales that is both rhetoric and nostalgic, just to ensure that they keep their jobs.

Plaids slogan is Think Different. Think Plaid. But in reality, Plaid would rather you not really think  like Ive been doing  at all.

* Huw Dawson is a student at Aberystwyth University, and is involved in the campaign to re-elect Mark Williams in Ceredigion.
Some great photos from Getty Images (click on the arrows to see the slide show) which give a great view of the workings of democracy on these islands (as they say).

Mandy Hassan, an assistant area electoral officer for Antrim and mid Ulster, accompanies the ballot box on the ferry destined for Rathlin Island, Northern Ireland. There are 99 voters on the island and they usually have a 80% turnout.

Update 8/6: I changed the title upon sage advice from locals. Weather concerns were not a factor.

* Paul Walter is a Liberal Democrat activist and member of the Liberal Democrat Voice team. He blogs at Liberal Burblings.
Tim Farron ends his tour of target seats in Oxford on Wednesday night. This is part of his final pitch for votes at a rally there:

This election is only taking place because Theresa May is taking you for granted. She wants a blank cheque to do as she pleases and expects you to just hand it to her, even if what she proposes to do is as awful as the dementia tax, no questions asked. And as if to prove the point she has spent every day since she called the election trying to avoid answering any questions.

The Tories are heartless  but they have also shown themselves to be hapless.Look at the Dementia Tax, their NHS and schools cuts, or their cuts to the police that have made us less safe. They cant even write a manifesto they can stand by, yet they want you to trust them with the biggest negotiations this country has ever done.

Have no doubt, Theresa May will get us a bad Brexit deal  and I mean dementia tax bad. Thats why I believe you should have the final say over the deal. Not Theresa May, not the politicians, you . And if you dont like the deal youre being offered, you should be able to reject it and choose to remain.

Remember  every vote for the Conservatives is a vote for the dementia tax, NHS cuts, sacked teachers and a bad Brexit deal. If thats what you want, go for it. If it isnt, then dont write Theresa May a blank cheque.

If you are a Conservative supporter but those things worry you, then dont do it. Vote for someone who will stand up for you and your family instead.

If you are a Labour supporter who lives somewhere where the only way of beating the Conservative candidate is a Liberal Democrat then I need you to lend me your vote.

Every Liberal Democrat MP elected tomorrow will stand up for a better deal on Europe. Every Liberal Democrat MP elected tomorrow will stand up for your schools and hospitals. And every Liberal Democrat MP elected tomorrow will stand up to Theresa May on the dementia tax and everything else. Stand up and make your vote count for the Liberal Democrats tomorrow.
The New Statesman has a profile of the East Dunbartonshire seat where Jo Swinson is hoping to regain the seat she lost to the SNP in 2015.

Its clear that she is held in great affection by the voters:

The Liberal Democrat candidate is happy to play on her personal connection to the constituency where she was raised. This election has come so soon after the last one, at which Swinson lost the seat to the SNP, that she can run on her record. She had a reputation as a hard-working local representative, and voters seem to have retained a remarkable fondness for her. One young mum I encounter confirms Swinson has her vote, and then adds: I feel connected to you. Weve missed you. Another supporter admits that Swinsons personality is swaying her choice. She dismisses sitting MP John Nicolson  I dont like him. Jo did more for us  before turning to Swinson and softly saying: Im so glad youre back. Its impossible to tell if there are tears in Swinsons eyes as she steps away from the doorstep, or just drops from the relentless rain. When youve lost your seat and you know you worked hard, you know its not personal, she says. But still its nice when people actually say stuff like that and confirm it.

And the New Statesman is on to the SNPs spurious claims (which they are making in Edinburgh West and North East Fife too) that its the Tories that are their main opposition.

The SNP are talking up the Tories in the hope they can split the unionist vote and let Nicolson win again. His majority of just over 2,000 is one of the smallest among the Nats, who all but swept the board in Scotland in 2015. The Lib Dems are convinced that had the Conservatives soft-pedalled back then, they could have won over more voters and kept Swinson in.

Jos a veteran of four campaigns in East Dunbartonshire and this feels better even than when she first won the seat in 2005:

I wasnt able to corral votes to stop Labour in 2005 like Ive been able to corral votes to stop the SNP at this election, she says. Two years ago people hadnt experienced what its like having 56 of the 59 Scottish seats represented by the SNP and how that feels like a one-party state. Thats uncomfortable for the 55 per cent of people who dont back them. You saw in the 2016 Scottish elections, people got savvy and we saw some pretty sophisticated tactical voting.

* Newshound: bringing you the best Lib Dem commentary in print, on air or online.
Willie Rennie holds his last campaign rally in North East Fife where he hopes Elizabeth Riches will take the seat for the Scottish Liberal Democrats.

He will say
THE Limerick Against Pollution group is set to host a talk on the dangers of incineration with an expert from the US to give his views.

The group has opposed plans by Irish Cement to phase out the use of petroleum coke, and use rubber tyres and solid recovered waste instead, a process which they fear will release a number of toxic emissions into the air including dioxins, furans, and sulphur dioxide and in turn can cause a range of health problems.

Irish Cement has said the process planned in a 10m plan to burn waste at its Mungret site is combustion and not incineration.

The contentious plans led to protests in Limerick earlier this year, and a flurry of appeals to An Bord Pleanala after the local authority granted planning permission for the development.

The firms licence application  which has caused concern in many quarters  is currently before the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The event  in the Strand Hotel on this Friday, June 9 at 7.30  will be the latest in a series of public meetings for the group.

Dr Paul Connett, a professor in Environmental Chemistry at St Lawrences University in Canton, New York, will speak about the process of incineration at the event.

For the past 30 years, Paul has put his scientific knowledge to work by helping communities around the world understand the science of controversial issues like incineration and fluoridation, said a LAP spokesperson.

In addition to explaining the dangers of these practices, he offers details of the alternatives.

The deadline for people to object the plans to the EPA is July 17 of this year.

So far over 2,500 objections have been submitted, according to LAP.

In May, Irish Cement moved to reassure Mungret residents that no burning of rubber material is currently taking place at its factory.

Claire Keating, the chairperson of neighbouring Sli na Manach residents association, said many parents in Mungret park complained of a smell of rubber allegedly emanating from the plant.

She said LAP had received reports that Irish Cement has already started tests of rubber at the plant.

But a spokesperson for the factory issued a firm denial of this, saying: Irish Cement can categorically state there is no burning of any rubber material taking place at the Mungret factory at the present time.
LIMERICK'S councillors were asked to approve a 1.2m expenditure on refurbishment works in corporate buildings without definite plans in place at a recent meeting in County Hall.

However, after Fianna Fail councillor James Collins objected to this, council chief executive Conn Murray made a commitment to not spend the allocated funds without presenting design plans to the chamber.

Cllr Collins said that, following a very strong surplus in the 2016 budget, the council was hoping to transfer 1.2m into a sinking fund in order to deliver refurbishment works to County Hall and City Hall in the future.

According to the council, 300,000 is set to be spent on historic capital costs and 900,000 will be ringfenced for council buildings, such as the Council Chamber in Dooradoyle, Customer Service areas in Dooradoyle and Merchants Quay and the Glazed Street in Merchants Quay

I raised the issue and asked if we had detailed designs as to what it is that they want to do with City Hall, and they needed to have support from the councillors first, set the money aside, before they could come up with details for the design," said Cllr Collins.

So I obviously objected to that. One or two of the other councillors agreed with me. And the only commitment we did get from the chief executive (was) that he agreed not to spend the money until he returned to the chamber with a detailed design of what improvement works he had planned, he said.

In response to Cllr Collins concerns, Mr Murray said at the full meeting of Limerick City and County Council: We are not spending 1.2m - we are putting it aside so we can come back to it with plans. At the time we have appropriate plans we will refer them to council.

Mr Murray said that the proposed refurbishment works are needed for the quality and the standards of our staff.
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Armed police with guns descended on a street in Gainsborough after reports of a man with a gun.

Officers were deployed to Marshalls Rise at 5.30pm.

Concerned residents contacted Lincolnshire Live saying they had seen the team but did not know what they were doing.

Lincolnshire Police have now confirmed they arrested a man in his 20s who was in possession of an imitation firearm.

The force said the man has been released and no further action will be taken.

It comes less than a week after a police helicopter was spotted circling the North Hykeham area after responding to claims local people had seen a man with a gun.

That report turned out to be false.
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Lincolnshire Police is warning that action will be taken against people who post Islamophobic material online.

The force confirms that it has passed files to the Crown Prosecution Service following four cases in recent months.

Chief Inspector Stewart Brinn told BBC Radio Lincolnshire that Lincolnshire Police takes any hate crime seriously.

He said: "We are getting that trust and we are getting people who genuinely, genuinely do not want to see atrocities like we have seen in London and Manchester and they will go out of their way to make sure that does not happen."

A drunken yob threw a stone at a a window of the mosque in Orchard Street, Lincoln, following the terrorist attack in London on Saturday, June 3, but police initially said they were not treating this as a hate crime.

However, on further investigation, police now say it is being treated as racially motivated.

Tanweer Ahmed, chairman of the Islamic Association of Lincoln, says that last week he was verbally abused by people in a car passing the site of the new mosque in Dixon Street.
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A pensioner who drank a glass of whisky before driving to Aldi to buy another bottle crashed his car into a lorry and hit a pedestrian.

Michael Edwards, 78, drank the glass of whisky before getting behind the wheel of his Hyundai on May 6.

When he arrived at Aldi he parked his car blocking in a lorry at the Spalding store car park. The lorry was parked up while goods were unloaded into the store.

Staff tried to help the lorry driver manoeuvre around the awkwardly parked car belonging to Edwards' but it proved too tricky.

Edwards, of Parkside Crescent, Spalding, was made aware of the blocked lorry, left the shop and went into the car park to move his car. He entered the car and began moving forward nudging a pedestrian in the legs and hitting the lorry.

He then stopped the car and police were called. He was breathalysed and gave a reading of 77mg in 100ml of blood. The legal limit being 35mg.

He pleaded guilty to the charge of drink driving when he appeared at Boston Magistrates Court.

Paul Wood, prosecuting, said: He said he went to Aldi to do some shopping and brought a bottle of whisky. He said he had a glass of whisky before he went shopping.

Edwards solicitor Helen Coney said her client had surrender his licence after the incident and would not be driving again.

Edwards was fined 120 and ordered to pay a victim surcharge of 30 and 85 costs.

He was also disqualified from driving for 20 months.
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A 64-year-old who embraces the freedom of being naked has said there is no such thing as a forbidden beach.

Peter Wright from British Naturism claims nudists can enjoy any public beach as it is entitled for the use of anyone.

He has slammed police officers for attending recent reports of naked people walking on Lincolnshire beaches as he says being naked on any beach is lawful.

There is no such thing as a nudist beach, said Peter.

The law on things like this is quite plain. You can wear clothes and not wear clothes as long as you behave properly.

Police have no right to throw them off. Theddlethorpe is a nature reserve area and there are paths.

The Crown Prosecution Service states: In the absence of any sexual context and in relation to nudity where the person has no intention to cause alarm or distress it will normally be appropriate to take no action unless members of the public were actually caused harassment, alarm or distress (as opposed to considering the likelihood of this).

Peter claims the police are wrong to attend a report of nudists on Lincolnshire beaches.

He says British Naturism has written to police constables and police and crime commissioners telling them to retrain their officers because they are making the same silly mistake.

They will send police saying they have had a report, he said,

They wouldnt attend someone who has a jacket on, has green hair or has a moped. Why would police attend [nudists] because its entirely lawful?

Everyone is entitled on the beach to be in the nude because its a public beach.

Naturists are respectable and go to the edge of the beach and don't impose themselves and are not confrontational.

A quiet place like Theddlethorpe beach does not seem out the way to enjoy naked walking.

This is okay, so leave them to it.

We have a Be Naked Day on August 5 to get people to have a go in order to perhaps get acquainted with being naked.

I am going to Kos in Greece for two weeks and I will be naked on the beach everyday with my wife Christine (60). And I will be naked on the balcony.

Its a wonderful sense of freedom. If you swim without a costume, you wont swim with one again.

Its a curious thing, the English wearing clothes.

Peter has been embracing naturism most of his life.

He said if he goes for a walk with his wife, then they will both spend their day in the nude. He also enjoys doing housework while naked.

He says, according to information gathered by British Naturism, five million people in the UK do this.

Peter added that 94 per cent of people either support it, enjoy it or have no problem with.

Six per cent dont like it and less than one per cent would report it to police.

This comes after police have attended two Lincolnshire beaches after reports of naturism.

Police were called on May 28 after a man was spotted walking along a beach in Chapel St Leonards at around 3pm - naked from the waist down.

A 53 year-old man from Scotland was arrested on suspicion of exposure and subsequently released under investigation.

Police are keen to hear from any further witnesses who were on the beach that day.

Just days later, people were seen walking naked along Theddlethorpe beach.

The local neighbourhood policing team took to Facebook to remind people the beach, which is a designated National Nature Reserve, that it is not a naturist site.

The post said: "Your Neighbourhood Team attended at Theddlethorpe beach following a report of persons walking around an area in the sand dunes naked.

"Theddlethorpe is NOT a naturist beach!"

Inspector Colin Haigh from Lincolnshire Police said: "The police will investigate all allegations of indecent exposure and at the same time consider the rights of naturists to follow alternative lifestyles.

"The Lincolnshire coast has a reputation as a family orientated area and the majority of our visitors are families.

"At the moment, there are no designated naturist beaches in the coast area and if the demand for such an area exists the police will work with our partner agencies to identify a suitable location."
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A man is visiting shops across the county attempting to spend fake Irish bank notes, say police.

The man, travelling in a green BMW, has tried to use the dodgy notes at several places.

Police issued a warning on Monday to make businesses aware of the scam.

The man was initially reported after visiting businesses in Lowdham and Southwell in Notts.

And yesterday, a number of petrol stations in the Newark and Sherwood District area were also targeted by the same person.

The man, whose description has not been released by police, is driving a green Series 1 BMW.

A spokesman for Nottinghamshire Police's Sherwood beat team said: "It has been reported that a male is visiting local shops and handing over fake Irish twenty pound notes.

"Please make businesses aware when visiting."

Anyone with information should contact 101, or ring Crimestoppers on 0800 555111.
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(File photo/Xinhua)

UNITED NATIONS, June 6 (Xinhua) -- China has stepped up efforts to adopt comprehensive measures to prevent and control marine pollution, said a Chinese envoy on Tuesday.

Lin Shanqing, deputy director of China's State Oceanic Administration, made the remarks at an event on the sidelines of the UN Ocean Conference.

As for practices on marine ecosystem protection, China is taking actions to promote management of coastal zone and watershed sea areas, Lin noted.

China also has passed law amendments on island protection, use of sea, and resource exploration in deep seabed areas to protect marine ecosystem.

Through these laws and measures, the government, more capable to monitor the land and sea areas situation, could respond to possible incidents in time.

Marine and coastal ecosystems include marine living resources and important habitats such as coral reefs, sea-grass beds, which are crucial for sustainable oceans and seas.

The United Nations, along with other environment agencies and experts, has recognized that marine and coastal ecosystems are increasingly threatened, degraded and destroyed by marine- and land-based human activities.

Open until Friday, the UN Ocean Conference will give special attention to the sustainable use of oceans, seas, and marine resources.
Chang'e 5 lunar probe (file photo)

BEIJING, June 7 (Xinhua) -- China's Chang'e 5 lunar probe is expected to land in the Mons Rumker region, and to take moon samples back to earth at the end of the year, according to a Chinese space official.

Liu Jizhong, director of China Lunar Exploration and Space Engineering Center of China National Space Administration (CNSA), for the first time disclosed the probe landing site, an isolated volcanic formation located in the northwest part of the Moon's near side.

Liu also mentioned China's Chang'e 4 lunar probe. Delivering a report at the Global Space Exploration Conference, which opened in Beijing Tuesday, he said China's Chang'e 4 lunar probe, which is expected to be the first human carrying probe landing on the far side of the moon, would be launched in 2018, carrying 11 scientific payloads, including four developed by other countries.

He said lunar exploration had many international cooperation opportunities and that constructing the international moon village or international research station, proposed by European Space Agency (ESA), was also a long-term goal for China.

"China is planning and designing its future lunar exploration program. We will focus on the south pole region of the moon. The research on water and the permanent shadow area of the lunar south pole region will bring greater scientific discoveries," Liu said.

He said that China would push forward international cooperation in exploring the south pole of the moon, constructing lunar scientific research station and establishing long-term energy supply and autonomous infrastructures.

Liu proposed jointly exploring the lunar polar region and constructing the scientific research station as a guide for the international moon village or station, following international law.

He also proposed creating an open platform for cooperation in accordance with the principle of "sharing the risks and achievements," and to set up the International Union of Planetary Scientists and the International Union of Planetary Science College Students.

He said scientists from different countries might jointly formulate scientific objectives, develop scientific payloads and carry out scientific data research.

"Partners may develop probes and facilities independently, which will complement each other. Enterprises are also encouraged to actively participate in lunar exploration," Liu said. "Intergovernmental cooperation should be strengthened, and governments should co-ordinate existing deep space exploration infrastructures to share the resources and enhance investment efficiency."

At the conference, Wu Yanhua, vice administrator of CNSA, honored the international partners of China's Chang'e 4 mission, which will carry payloads from the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden and Saudi Arabia.

Since China proposed international cooperation on the Chang'e 4 mission last year, China has received more than 20 schemes from other countries.

"We support more international cooperation in China's future lunar and Mars missions, as well as exploration to the Jupiter system and asteroids that are still under discussion," Wu said.

"It is exactly what I was looking forward to," said Jan Woerner, director general of the ESA. "It will fit perfectly to the moon village, ESA's vision for international cooperation on the moon."
S. Korean FM nominee says to consider high delegates to China over THAAD

(File photo/Xiakedao)

SEOUL, June 7 (Xinhua) -- South Korean Foreign Minister nominee Kang Kyung-wha said Wednesday that she will consider sending senior-level delegates to China over the installation of the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) missile defense system.

Kang told a parliamentary confirmation hearing that communications between South Korea and China should be maintained through a variety of channels to narrow differences in how to recognize the THAAD issue.

Since President Moon Jae-in took office on May 10, Kang said, special envoys of South Korea were dispatched to China, while leaders of the two countries held a telephone conversation.

If confirmed, Kang would become the country's first-ever female foreign minister. The top diplomat post does not require the parliamentary approval, though the nominee is required to go through the confirmation hearing.

The FM nominee said the THAAD deployment lacked public discussions and failed to win the public consensus, reiterating the new government's stance that the THAAD installation requires parliamentary discussions.

In her earlier opening remarks, Kang pledged to develop the bilateral strategic cooperative partnership with China by restoring trust and strengthening sincere communications between the two countries.
Villages in a southwestern region of Myanmar were recently deluged with thousands of rats, according to local officials. The swarm of vermin descended following heavy flooding that may have driven them from their nests in nearby caves, the Myanmar news website The Irrawaddy reported.

In two locations  the towns of Zee Chaing and Kyauk Chaung  villagers, police officers, health officials and other government representatives killed over 1,000 rats on June 5, with the remainder retreating to the area's forests, according to The Irrawaddy.

"There were so many rats that it was impossible to count them," Soe Soe Min, a police lieutenant with the Haigyikyun Central Police Station, told The Irrawaddy. "They ate bamboo plants, and were staying in bushes and trees outside the villages," Min said. [Rats and Lizards and Monkeys, Oh My! 9 Islands Ruled by Animals]

A photo shared by The Irrawaddy on Twitter shows dozens of dead rats  a fraction of those that were killed, according to local reports.

See more

Hordes of opportunistic rats "with white bellies" first appeared on June 3 on Haigyi Island in the village of Zee Chaing, and then emerged on June 5 in Kan Chai village and Kyauk Chaung village, the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) reported.

Volunteer exterminators from the infested villages labored from dawn to dusk dispatching the rodents for a bounty of 50 Myanmar kyat (about 4 cents) per animal, using "sticks, slingshots and rocks," according to Agence France Presse (AFP). Officials also sprayed pesticides in the area.

By evening, the rats had retreated to trees "like flocks of birds," a villager told DVB, and in the end a total of 1,667 rats "were destroyed and systematically buried underground," the Myanmar Ministry of Information said in a statement.

Sudden and unexpected as this rodent swarm was, similar devastating rodent plagues appear in half-century cycles in Myanmar's Chin State, which is located a bit farther to the north than the region that experienced the recent outbreak.

When the area's bamboo forests flower every 50 years, the excess of available food spurs a massive population explosions in rats, leading to hordes of hungry rodents that blanket and decimate farmlands, according to a case study published in 2010 in the book "Rodent Outbreaks: Ecology and Impacts" (International Rice Research Institute).

The Chin people call the cyclical event "maudam"  "mau" is the Chin's word for bamboo and "dam" translates as "rat famine," according to the case study.

During seed shedding, the high availability of food enhances the breeding performance of female rats; consequently, the rat population increases within a short time," the study authors wrote.

But once the bamboo seeds germinate and seedlings begin to grow, the hungry rats look elsewhere for food, which leads them to villagers' rice fields. Many farmers lose between 50 and 100 percent of their rice crops during these plague years, leaving thousands of people to face food shortages and even starvation  nearly 7,000 people required emergency food aid during the last maudam event in 2008, the study authors wrote.

Original article on Live Science.
The Palace Museum

How big is the Palace Museum? It is said that it contains 9,999.5 rooms. During an interview yesterday with the Peoples Daily, Shan Jixiang, director of the Palace Museum, said that the correct number is actually 9,371. Shan also shared his blueprint for the future of the Forbidden City.

Currently, the Hall of Mental Cultivation, the residence of eight emperors from the Qing Dynasty, is still under renovation. The project is expected to be completed in 2020. Shan explained that the reason why the project has taken so long is that in the past, we only opened 30 percent of the hall to the public. Visitors could only catch a glimpse of the building through windows. But [after 2020] we will open three doors so visitors can enter the building and take a closer look.

Shan added that visitors will also be able to tour the imperial kitchen, where staff members will recreate the scene of cooking for emperors.

The Palace Museum

The director also replied to questions asked by netizens on social media. Some wondered whether the admission price of the museum will rise in the future. Shan replied: The present ticket price is not expensive. The peak season ticket is 60 RMB, while in off-peak times it is 40. But we wont raise the price. Actually, if the government approved and the public understood, we would consider opening the museum for free.

Shan Jixiang in the interview with People's Daily

On the subject of capping visitor numbers, Shan said: Last year, the number of visitors hit a record high, totaling 16 million, 2 million more than the Louvre and the British Museum combined. That is why we put a cap on the number of visitors--80,000 per day. It is working well and we will continue this practice. We suggest that visitors book tickets online ahead of time so they can get in easily by just scanning their ID cards.
French astronaut Thomas Pesquet posted this image on Twitter Tuesday (June 6), writing. "I took the #ParisAgreement to the ISS: from space, climate change is very real. Some could probably use the view #MakeOurPlanetGreatAgain," he tweeted.

Opposition to President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate pact has reached new heights.

French astronaut Thomas Pesquet registered his objection today (June 6), throwing some shade via Twitter at Trump and the president's "Make America Great Again" tagline. Pesquet just returned to Earth from the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday (June 2).

"I took the #ParisAgreement to the ISS: from space, climate change is very real. Some could probably use the view #MakeOurPlanetGreatAgain," Pesquet tweeted. His post included a photo of the astronaut's copy of the climate deal floating in front of a window offering a view of Earth against the blackness of space.

See more

The Paris Agreement involves nearly 200 countries and took years to negotiate. The accord is an attempt to mitigate the worst effects of climate change; it aims to keep average global temperatures this century from rising more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) above pre-industrial levels.

President Trump announced last week that he intends to pull the United States out of the accord, claiming that the Paris Agreement "disadvantages the United States to the exclusive benefit of other countries." The only United Nations member states that did not sign on to the accord are Syria and Nicaragua.

The move prompted criticism from a number of high-profile people and organizations, including SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk. Musk said that he will now resign from the three White House advisory councils on which he had been serving.

"Am departing presidential councils. Climate change is real. Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world," Musk tweeted on June 1.

Pesquet arrived at the ISS in November 2016 and stayed on orbit for 196 days as a crewmember for the station's Expedition 50 and Expedition 51. Pesquet's 6.5-month mission was the French astronaut's first spaceflight.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.
Two species of highly similar deep-sea octopuses are hard to tell apart  unless you look closely at their "warts," a new study finds.

Octopuses in the Graneledone genus are pink and pebbly, with trademark bumps on the skin of their mantles  the bulbous body part resembling a head. Taxonomists have traditionally used the number of warts to differentiate between the species Graneledone pacifica, which lives in the Pacific Ocean, and Graneledone verrucosa, an inhabitant of the Atlantic Ocean. But with limited access to specimens, these warty distinctions didn't always hold up across larger numbers of octopuses, the study authors wrote.

This new investigation, in which scientists analyzed 72 octopuses, is the first to comprehensively examine dozens of G. pacifica and G. verrucosa specimens to determine what about these warts really distinguishes the two octopus species  and the scientists conducted their analysis one wart at a time. [Photos: Amazing Tech Inspired by the Octopus]

Physical features that are unique to a certain animal species can take many forms: the size, shape and number of teeth, distinctive colors or patterns in fur, scales or feathers, the color of an iris, the shape of a thorax or the sweep of a fin, to name just a few. Biologists also listen for vocalizations that no other animal produces, and peer at animals' DNA to tell species apart.

But deep-sea octopus species can be particularly tricky to distinguish, the study's lead author Janet Voight, an associate curator of invertebrates at The Field Museum of Natural History (FMNH) in Chicago, told Live Science.

As with any deep-sea creature, observing and collecting octopuses is challenging, so there are simply fewer individual animals to study and compare, Voight said. Specimens in museum collections  and most of the octopuses in the study were FMNH specimens  can be centuries old, or might have been collected and preserved before DNA analysis was feasible, making it impossible to extract genetic material from their tissues, she said.

"In deep-sea invertebrates, you don't have song, or color, or behavior. You have a specimen preserved for  in some cases  decades," Voight said.

"To take that specimen and make it into something that tells us about biology, and about evolutionary history and species distribution and diversity  that takes background knowledge. It's stuff you can't just pick up in childhood being out in nature," she said.

Octopus oddballs

The Graneledone genus is an odd one among octopuses, the study authors wrote. Features that typically distinguish between octopus species in other genera  such as the number of gill membranes and arm suckers, and the shape of a certain organ near the beak  vary too much between Graneledone individuals to be useful, the scientists said in the study.

The researchers gathered their dozens of specimens representing the two species, and hunkered down to count warts. They devised a new method for tracking the distribution of bumps, and eventually pinpointed two characteristics that were consistent across individuals in a given species  how far the warts extended to the tip of the mantle and how far they spread down the arms, Voight said.

Unique distribution of bumpy "warts" in Graneledone pacifica (top) and Graneledone verrucosa helped researchers differentiate between the two near-identical species. (Image credit: NOAA)

They found that the Pacific species had a more extensive covering of bumps, with warts reaching farther down the mantle and dotting its arms to the 10th sucker (counting away from the body toward the arm's tip). By comparison, the bumps on the Atlantic species reached only as far as the sixth and the ninth sucker. And in both species, certain arms and parts of the between-arm webbing had no warts at all  unlike other Graneledone species, the study authors wrote.

"We compared that to all the literature and the reports of all specimens of all the species I had in the genus, and realized that those characters made those two species distinct  and distinct from all others in the genus," Voight told Live Science.

Finding a way to quickly and easily visually differentiate between octopus species could help biologists who encounter potentially new species either on video footage or through brief glimpses in the wild, Voight said. And better data showing where different species are distributed will improve scientists' ability to understand how these elusive animals interact with other marine life, and could inform future conservation efforts, Voight added.

"The better we know what's out there, the better we can protect these unique animals," she said.

The findings were published online today (June 7) in the journal Marine Biology Research.

Original article on Live Science.
For middle schoolers, obesity can lead to unreciprocated friendships and even cause peers to actively dislike a child, new research finds.

The study, published today (June 7) in the journal PLOS ONE, adds to a body of research detailing how being overweight as a child can lead to social and psychological struggles. Previous work has suggested that overweight schoolchildren have fewer friends and are often pushed to the periphery of social groups, and the new research finds that overweight children may be actively ostracized by their peers.

The negative relationships, said the authors, can carry serious mental and physical health implications for overweight kids, who have become a significant part of the U.S. population. Obesity affects one out of five school-age children in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"Overweight kids are being rejected by their peers," said Kayla de la Haye, lead author of the new study and an assistant preventive medicine professor at the University of Southern California's Keck School of Medicine. "It's not just exclusion, but there's also an overt rejection and dislike for these kids and that is a serious risk factor for them [not] having healthy social development." [10 Ways to Promote Kids Healthy Eating Habits]

Middle school friendships

In the new study, researchers surveyed 504 preteens in the Netherlands, who came from 28 middle school classrooms. The researchers asked the children to name an unlimited number of other kids whom they considered among their "best friends," as well as an unlimited number of classmates whom they "disliked." Researchers also individually measured each child's height and weight to assess body mass index.

The results showed that overweight children were less likely to be named as friends than their slimmer classmates in 70 percent of the classrooms.

Overweight children listed as many people in the friend category as children with healthy weights, on average. However, the overweight kids were 1.7 times more likely to be disliked by others than children who were not overweight. The overweight kids were also 1.2 times more likely to dislike their peers.

The survey also found that overweight children were more likely to include, in their lists of friends, classmates who did not list the overweight children as friends.

Lynn McAfee, who works as an advocate with the Council on Size and Weight Discrimination, said she remembers middle school as a particularly tough time, when she felt "second rate" as an overweight child.

"I had a terrible time," McAfee told Live Science. "What I learned as a fat child is that I had to be charming. I had to be friends with people who, maybe, I didn't have much in common with, but they were willing to be friends with me." [5 Ways to Foster Self-Compassion in Your Child]

De la Haye told Live Science that the findings point to the urgent need to address the widespread stigma associated with being overweight.

"There's no evidence that stigmatizing obesity motivates people to lose weight," she said. "In fact, there is more evidence showing it's counterproductive. It leads to social and mental health risk factors. We also know that kids who are ostracized are more like to eat [high-calorie] foods and are less likely to be active. And they end up in peer groups that tend to be less active."

Reducing stigma

The stigmatization of overweight children has been documented for decades. A 1961 experiment showed that when children were asked to rank images of potential friends, including children with disfigurements and disabilities, obese children were consistently ranked last. A follow-up study in 2007 replicated the 1961 study and found that children at that time ranked the images of obese children even lower than children had 40 years previously. More children ranked obese children last in their list of potential friend choices in the later study.

That research suggests that as obesity rates have increased, so has the social stigma associated with being overweight. The percentage of children with obesity in the United States has more than tripled since the 1970s, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

De la Haye argued that it's important to reframe the discussion about obesity to minimize the stigma associated with it.

"The problem is we have looked at obesity as a moral problem of an individual, a result of their laziness or lack of willpower," she said. "Now, we know that that is not the cause of this large-scale rise in obesity rates. It's really because we've created these food systems and environments that make it really easy to consume a lot of calories and be sedentary."

Originally published on Live Science.
Human-caused climate change has resulted in record rates of glacial melting. This glacier and the marker of it's edge in 1908 is in Jasper National Park, Canada.

Climate change is any long-term alteration in average weather patterns, either globally or regionally. Climate change has occurred many times in Earth's history, and for many different reasons. The changes in global temperature and weather patterns seen today, however, are caused by human activity. And they're happening much faster than the natural climate variations of the past.

Scientists have many ways to track climate over time, all of which make it clear that today's climate change is linked to the emission of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane. These gases trap heat from the sun's rays near Earth's surface, much like the glass walls of a greenhouse keep heat inside. Small changes in the proportions of greenhouse gases in the air can add up to major changes on a global scale.

On average, the effect of greenhouse gases is to increase global temperatures. This is why climate change is sometimes called global warming. However, most researchers today prefer the term climate change because of the variability of weather and climate across the globe. For example, warming global average temperatures might alter the flow of the jet stream, the major air current affecting North American weather, which could in turn lead to seasonal periods of extreme cold in some areas.

"It's important for people to realize that there is a lot of variability from place to place on the Earth in terms of the temperature," said Ellen Mosley-Thompson, a paleoclimatologist at the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center of The Ohio State University. "When we talk about global climate change, we're talking about temperature changes over large areas."

How do scientists know climate change is real?

The effects of global warming are visible. The climate of the past is recorded in ice, sediments, cave formations, coral reefs and even tree rings. Researchers can look at chemical signals  such as the carbon dioxide trapped in bubbles inside glacial ice  to determine what atmospheric conditions were like in the past. They can study microscopic fossilized pollen to learn what vegetation used to thrive in any given area, which in turn can indicate what the climate was like. Scientists can also measure tree rings to get a season-by-season record of temperature and moisture. Ratios of chemical variants of oxygen in corals and stalactites and stalagmites can reveal past precipitation patterns.

Different types of natural records can reveal different clues about the climate of the past. Ocean sediments don't carry season-by-season or even year-by-year levels of detail, but they can provide blurrier pictures of climate dating back millions of years, Mosley-Thompson told Live Science. (The oldest cores drilled from ocean sediments date back 65 million years, according to The Smithsonian Institution (opens in new tab).) Tree records are relatively short but incredibly detailed. And ice can be chock-full of information: Not only do glaciers capture atmospheric gases in the form of air bubbles, they trap dust and other sediments, pollen grain, volcanic ash and more. As the ice gets older and more compressed, the record can become fuzzy, Mosley-Thompson said, but newer ice can provide a year-by-year look at what the climate was doing.

The most recent changes in the climate  since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution  have also been tracked directly. Record-keeping of things like land temperature began to improve in the late 1800s, and ship captains began to keep a wealth of ocean-based weather data in their logs. The advent of satellite technology in the 1970s provided an explosion of data, covering everything from ice extent at the poles to sea surface temperature to cloud coverage.

Overall, the Earth is warming up because of human-caused climate change. But climate change also causes seasonal periods of extreme cold. (Image credit: Shutterstock)

(opens in new tab)

How is the climate changing?

Taken together, these records show that the modern climate is undergoing a swift departure from the patterns of the past.

Before the Industrial Revolution, there were about 280 carbon dioxide molecules for every million molecules in the atmosphere, or 280 parts per million (ppm). As of 2021, the global average level of CO2 was 419 ppm  more than 100 ppm higher than the level has been in the last 800,000 years, and up 6.5 ppm from 2020, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) (opens in new tab). The last time atmospheric carbon reached today's levels was 3 million years ago, according to NOAA.

The rate of change in today's atmospheric carbon is also faster than in the past, according to NOAA. The rate of increase was 100 times faster over the past 60 years than any time in the last million years or so  a period that saw eight major climate flip-flops between glacial cycles, in which ice expanded from the poles into the middle latitudes, and interglacial cycles, in which the ice retreated to where it is today. And the rate continues to increase. In the 1960s, atmospheric carbon went up by an average of 0.6 ppm a year. In the 2010s, it rose by an average of 2.3 ppm per year.

The heat-trapping ability of all that extra carbon has translated to rising global average temperatures. According to NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) (opens in new tab), Earth's average temperature has risen by just over 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) since 1880, a measurement accurate to within a tenth of a degree Fahrenheit. As with the rate of atmospheric carbon increase, the rate of global temperature increase is also speeding up, according to NASA's Earth Observatory (opens in new tab): Two-thirds of the warming thats taken place since 1880 has occurred since 1975.

What are the impacts of climate change?

This warming has caused changes in Earth ecosystems and environments. Some of the most dramatic changes have occurred in the Arctic, where sea ice is on the decline. Record-breaking ice extent lows have been the new normal since 2002, according to NASA (opens in new tab), and studies are finding that even the oldest, multiyear sea ice is thinning rapidly. Summer 2020 was one of the worst years ever for summer sea ice extent , with only one year on record  2012  exhibiting a lower ice extent. Scientists now expect the first ice-free Arctic summer sometime between 2040 and 2060.

Glaciers are retreating globally, particularly in the middle latitudes, Mosley-Thompson said. Montana's Glacier National Park was home to 150 glaciers in 1850. Today, there are only 25. Mosley-Thompson and her team estimate that the last tropical glaciers will disappear within the next decade.

Melting ice and the expansion of ocean waters due to heat have already contributed to rising sea levels. According to NOAA (opens in new tab), the global average sea level has risen 8 to 9 inches (21 to 24 centimeters) since 1880. The rate of rise is increasing, from 0.06 inches (1.4 millimeters) per year in the 20th century to 0.14 inches (3.6 mm) per year from 2006 to 2015. According to NOAA, this sea level rise has translated to a 300% to 900% increase in high-tide flooding in coastal areas of the United States.

Ocean water absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, which creates a chemical reaction that causes ocean acidification. The global average pH of ocean surface waters has decreased by 0.11 since the Industrial Revolution began  a 30% increase in acidity  according to NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (opens in new tab). Increasing ocean acidity makes it more difficult for corals to build their carbonate skeletons and for shelled animals such as clams and some types of plankton to survive.

Climate change is even affecting the timing of spring-like weather. The earliest spring (as defined by plant growth and temperatures) on record in the United States was in March 2012. Climate models now suggest that such early springs could be the norm by 2050 (opens in new tab). But late freezes will likely still occur, creating conditions in which plants could leaf out early and then be damaged by cold temperatures. Climate models also predict the exacerbation of alarming trends in droughts and wildfires due to warmer temperatures.

Models are a key tool for climate scientists, said Kathie Dello, a state climatologist for North Carolina. There is no way to compare different futures for Earth in the real world, Dello said, but models enable scientists to create virtual versions of the planet to test different scenarios. Though the Earth system is complicated, these computer models have proved capable of predicting future climate trends. A 2020 paper in the journal Geophysical Research Letters (opens in new tab) found that climate model predictions published between the 1970s and 2010 were accurate when compared with the actual warming that occurred after publication.

Can we reverse climate change?

A growing number of business leaders, government officials and private citizens are concerned about climate change and its implications, and they are proposing steps to halt and reverse the trend.

"While some argue that 'the Earth will heal itself,' the natural processes for removing this human-caused CO2 from the atmosphere work on the timescale of hundreds of thousands to millions of years," Josef Werne, a geochemist and paleoclimatologist at the University of Pittsburgh, said. "So, yes, the Earth will heal itself, but not in time for our cultural institutions to be preserved as they are. Therefore, in our own self-interests, we must act in one way or another to deal with the changes in climate we are causing."

If all human greenhouse gas emissions stopped immediately, Earth would likely still experience more warming, some studies suggest (opens in new tab), because carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. There are proposals that could theoretically reverse some of this "locked in" warming by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, such as carbon capture and storage, which involves injecting carbon into underground reservoirs. Advocates argue that carbon capture and storage is technologically feasible (opens in new tab), but market forces have prevented widespread adoption.

Whether or not removing already-emitted carbon from the atmosphere is feasible, preventing future warming requires humans to stop causing the emission of greenhouse gases. The most ambitious effort to forestall warming thus far is the Paris Agreement . This nonbinding international treaty, which came into effect in November 2016, aims to keep warming "well below 2 degrees Celsius [3.6 F] above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius [2.7 F]," according to the United Nations. Each signatory to the treaty agreed to set their own voluntary emissions limits and to make them stricter over time. Climate scientists said that the emissions limits that were outlined in the agreement wouldn't keep warming as low as 1.5 or even 2 degrees C, but that it would be an improvement over the "business-as-usual" scenario in which no changes are made to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Under the Obama administration, the United States pledged to limit greenhouse emissions to less than 28% of 2005 levels by 2025. However, President Donald Trump announced soon after his election that his administration would not honor the Paris Agreement. The Trump administration began the formal withdrawal process from the agreement in 2019. Upon assuming the presidency in 2021, Joe Biden re-committed the U.S. to the Paris Agreement. A 2021 study found that greenhouse emissions have already "locked in" enough warming such that Earth will warm more than 3.6 F , pushing past the Paris Agreement's goal. However, curbing emissions could still slow the temperature rise to a more manageable rate and reduce the ultimate peak.

Several state and local governments have launched their own efforts to combat climate change. For instance, 24 states and Puerto Rico have joined the U.S. Climate Alliance (opens in new tab), pledging to meet goals set in the Paris Agreement regardless of politics at the federal level.

"The federal government, even when it's operating well, is not the most nimble institution," Dello said. "But states and cities are a little more flexible."

Additional resources

For more on the sources of today's carbon's emissions, see the Live Science reference article on global warming. For a global view of how temperatures have changed over time, visit NASA's Earth Observatory. NOAA also catalogs signs of a warming world, from sea surface temperatures to shrinking Arctic sea ice to increased water vapor in the air.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issues regular reports on the state of climate science. The World Bank also tracks data related to climate change and lists climate mitigation projects around the globe.

Bibliography

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Sixth Assessment Report. Feb. 28, 2022. https://www.ipcc.ch/assessment-report/ar6/

United States Geological Survey. Climate Change Viewer. Accessed March 22, 2022. https://www.usgs.gov/tools/national-climate-change-viewer-nccv

National Snow and Ice Data Center. Arctic Sea Ice News & Analysis. Accessed March 23, 2022. https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

This article was originally written by Live Science contributor Stephanie Pappas and has since been updated.
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Firefighters, medics and FBI agents swarmed a normally quiet stretch of the Alameda waterfront next to the USS Hornet Museum on Wednesday morning, maneuvering around people lying on the ground as an ominous orange smoke filled the air and brightly colored emergency vehicles crowded the road.

The alarming scene was part of a two-day exercise called Operation Seasick  six months in the making and organized by the FBI  to practice how local, state and federal law-enforcement agencies and emergency responders would work together in the event of a complex terror attack involving weapons of mass destruction in an area like the Port of Oakland.

The simulation scenario was this: A terrorist deployed a chemical weapon using a dispersal device, shot several people from atop one of the ships at port, then barricaded himself inside the ship.

Shooting victims painted with red makeup to imitate blood and gore demanded attention from paramedics, but responders needed to deal with the chemical weapon before getting to them. A SWAT team contained the shooter to one area of the ship where he had barricaded himself.

The second day of the simulation will be held Friday and focus on the investigation stage of the incident, including recovering evidence from the water, FBI officials said.

Maritime environments like ports can add challenging variables for law-enforcement agents responding to a crisis, according to the FBI.

The reason the bay is difficult is its a fast-moving, ever-changing environment, said Katherine Zackel, an FBI spokeswoman.

Everything is moving. Its more difficult to recover evidence in water, difficult to work underwater or on top of water, she continued. Police are used to going in and clearing buildings, not ships. Theres more wind. If chemicals get in the water, thats obviously a problem. The environment affects the scene significantly.

More than 15 agencies and organizations took part in the exercise, including the Oakland Police Department, U.S. Coast Guard, the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Law-enforcement officers knew that the simulation involved weapons of mass destruction, but did not know the specifics going into the exercise.

These types of emergency-response simulations often involve surprises called injects, according to Coast Guard Lt. Steven Dross, who added that he did not think the scenario being simulated was a totally unlikely one.

It could happen, said Dross. When you think about todays world, there are a lot of active-shooter cases, there are chemical weapons being used.

Responding to a complex terror attack requires cooperation from agencies that rarely work together on a daily basis, so practice is important, according to John Bennett, special agent in charge of the FBIs San Francisco bureau.

We do a lot of work with police departments, but in a chemical release, we start bringing in elements that we dont normally have relationships with  the health department, say, said Bennett.

All these elements and challenges start getting into play  like, how do you get a tactical team into a hot zone that hasnt been cleared yet? he added.

An attack on a shipping hub like the Port of Oakland could be economically disruptive in addition to the obvious threat to public safety, counterterrorism experts at the Rand Corp. and other think tanks have speculated.

Just as the effects of an attack wouldnt be limited to the immediate area, the exercise wasnt happening solely on the Alameda waterfront, either, according to Zackel.

Six miles away, at Highland Hospital in Oakland, paramedics and hospital staff were simulating how they would treat victims who had been exposed to the chemical-weapons attack, she said. Emergency operations were also set up at the FBIs Oakland outpost, and a command post was established at the Port of Oakland.

We want to demonstrate if something of this magnitude were going to happen, we could come together as one team, said Bennett. One team, one fight.

Filipa Ioannou is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: fioannou@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @obioannoukenobi
Defectors

By Joseph Kanon

Atria. 290 pp. $27

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In his fascinating new novel, "Defectors," Joseph Kanon uses the tangled ties between two brothers to explore the world of espionage at the height of the Cold War. Kanon, the author of "The Good German," and "The Prodigal Spy," among others, is a master of the genre, and here delivers a book that will appeal to fans of "The Americans'' and "Bridge of Spies."

The plot follows the lives of Frank and Simon Weeks. Born a year apart to a prominent Boston family, they were students at Harvard in the late 1930s when Frank shocked his family and friends by leaving to join the Loyalist army and fight against fascism in the Spanish Civil War.

Wounded there, Frank returned to work in American intelligence during World War II. After the war, he joined the newly formed CIA. The brothers, always close, in those days would meet for lunch at Harvey's, the most celebrated Washington restaurant of its day, to gossip about girlfriends, politics and their jobs. Then, in 1949, Frank, a rising star with the CIA suddenly flees to Moscow with his wife, Jo, because he is about to be exposed as a Soviet spy.

Simon becomes the editor of a New York publishing house. (Kanon is a former publishing executive.) In 1961, he receives an offer from the disgraced brother he hasn't seen in more than a decade. Frank reports that his new masters at the KGB have given him permission to write a book telling why and how he became a spy. Simon thinks that such a book could be an international success and replies that he will publish Frank's story if he will tell it honestly. Soon Simon flies to Moscow to work with his brother on the book's final draft.

Simon is thus reunited with the charming, inscrutable older brother he still loves but doesn't entirely trust. He sees that Jo, whom he remembers as young and vibrant - they were briefly lovers before she met and married his brother - is now depressed, drinking too much and close to a breakdown. The couple live comfortably in Moscow but they and other defectors are trapped in ambiguity. Officially, they are heroes for their service to communism but in truth they know they're not trusted.

Simon meets Boris, the Soviet army officer who is Frank's driver, bodyguard and watchdog. Even when Boris is not there, Frank and Jo know their home is bugged. We meet other defectors, both American and British; some are content and others miserable. One plump, genial woman is celebrated because, when she worked at the Los Alamos lab and was searched by a soldier, she successfully "hid the atomic bomb design in her hat." Most of these defectors are fictional but real-life figures also appear. Guy Burgess, a member of the notorious Cambridge Five spy ring, for instance, turns up in a bar, drunk and bloated.

A quarter of the way through "Defectors," the real story begins when Frank admits to his brother that he has more in mind than a book. He intends to defect again - back to the United States, where he hopes to be welcomed for his detailed knowledge of the Soviet espionage service. He says he will do this for his wife and because of his disillusion not with the theory of communism but with its reality. Frank knows that if this new betrayal fails he will be shot, and Simon will likely receive a show trial and a long prison sentence. The recent trial of downed U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers is cited.

Frank's plan to escape the Soviet Union is immensely complicated, but its unfolding is enhanced by Kanon's graceful writing. When Simon attends the Bolshoi Ballet (to pass a message to an American spy in the men's room during intermission) readers receive this unexpected gift:

"He had always assumed (BEGIN ITAL)Swan Lake(END ITAL) was kitsch, a ballet for tourists, but here it meant something else. There was a fluttering of white, the entire stage suddenly twirling with white, darting, floating. A quiet gasp went through the audience, a collective pleasure, everything as it should be, the precise toe steps, the graceful leaps, inexplicably beautiful, the dreary city falling away, mad Stalin in his side box, the brutal prison stories, lives with years snatched away, all of that gone now, out of sight, nothing visible but this twirling, what the world would be like if it were lovely."

Such passages make "Defectors" as readable and suspenseful as the fine espionage novels of Eric Ambler, Graham Greene, Charles McCarry, Robert Littell, Alan Furst and John Le Carre - and its roller-coaster plot will keep you guessing until the final page.

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Anderson regularly reviews mysteries and thrillers for The Washington Post.
Given that "Spider-Man" is getting its third reboot since 2002, it's a small miracle that Universal waited as long as it did to resurrect 1999's wildly successful sleeper hit "The Mummy." In the midst of franchise mania, the studio is launching its very own universe of monster flicks, and the Tom Cruise-led action thriller heralds the start of a world that may include "The Bride of Frankenstein," "The Invisible Man" and "The Wolfman," to name a few.

That's some pressure the movie doesn't shoulder well, considering it's hardly the unqualified success of other trial balloons, like "Iron Man," "X-Men" or even "Man of Steel." In fact, "The Mummy" might make a viewer wonder whether this universe will even take off at all.

It won't be for a lack of star power. Cruise plays Nick Morton, a brave, foolish soldier of fortune who, along with his buddy Chris (Jake Johnson), scours the Middle East looking for antiquities to loot and sell on the black market. During one such trek he stumbles upon an Egyptian crypt. But as his recent bedfellow, archaeologist Jenny Halsey (Annabelle Wallis), breathily describes it: "This is not a tomb - it's a prison."

We already know what that means, thanks to some thoroughly informative voice-over narration by a certain Dr. Jekyll (Russell Crowe), who reveals the identity of the woman buried at this site. The daughter of a pharaoh, Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella) made a pact with Set, the god of death, before murdering her father, his wife and their newborn baby so that she could take the throne. She was caught before she could carry out the prophesy - using a fancy dagger to kill a man so that Set would have his very own body - and was mummified and buried alive far from Egypt.

She'd be forever stuck under a pool of mercury if Nick's reckless gunfire didn't upend the complex cable-and-pulley system holding her there. She appears to Nick in one of many daydream sequences to say how pleased she is with this turn of events, although once again Jenny is on hand to overexplain things: "We've angered the gods," she laments.

The rest of the movie, directed by Alex Kurtzman, is mostly chase scenes with the mummy on the loose in England, kissing innocent people to death, sucking the life out of them and then reanimating the corpses to create her own zombie army. In fact, "The Mummy" has more in common with "The Living Dead" movies than the 1932 horror film or its 1999 remake, although the dead aren't the only ones working for this villainess. She also has rats and spiders on her payroll, among many other creepy-crawlies designed to make the audience squirm and shudder.

Nick joins forces with Jenny and her boss, Jekyll, who is hammered into the story so that we don't forget this is the start of a franchise rather than a stand-alone movie that already has plenty going on without yet another plot thread.

Some of the action is thrilling, especially a brilliantly choreographed plane crash that has Nick and Jenny tossed around the cabin before he straps her into a parachute and pulls the cord, whisking her out into the sky. The movie also has a few genuinely funny moments. When the mummy ominously runs her long nails over Nick's torso, he starts giggling; he's ticklish, apparently.

But the big thrills and few laughs are no match for the cumbersome, convoluted story, not to mention the nonexistent chemistry between Cruise and Wallis. (We're not going to pin the blame on her considering the way her connection with Cillian Murphy popped off the screen in "Peaky Blinders.")

The whole thing culminates in an underwater chase scene that's painfully lugubrious. After the fast-paced thrills of the "Fast & Furious" franchise, among other action movies, seeing Cruise breaststroke away from some zombies is bizarre and comical. If something is in fact being launched with "The Mummy," it's not off to a very snappy start.

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One and one-half stars. Rated PG-13. Contains violence, action, scary images, some suggestive content and partial nudity. 110 minutes.

Ratings Guide: Four stars masterpiece, three stars very good, two stars OK, one star poor, no stars waste of time.
Hoosick Falls

A state Health Department investigation in Hoosick Falls found lower-than-normal rates of certain types of cancer that have been associated with exposure to a toxic manufacturing chemical that polluted the village's water supplies.

Details of the report were first reported by the Times Union Tuesday. The findings were mailed to village residents.

But critics informed of the state's cancer-study methodology said the investigation did not take into account residents diagnosed with cancer after moving away from the village. Indeed, most cancer registries  including New York's  list a person's address at the time they are diagnosed.

The report also does not indicate there was a specific review of cancer rates among people whose blood was found to contain elevated levels of the manufacturing chemical PFOA, or perfluorooctanoic acid. The stated purpose of the investigation was to determine whether village residents who consumed the contaminated water had an increased risk of cancer.

"The purpose of the investigation was to determine whether village residents who consumed contaminated water had increased rates of cancer relative to the rest of the state," said Brad Hutton, deputy commissioner for public health.

The study relied largely on the state's cancer registry, with researchers examining hundreds of documented cases of cancer among the village's population between 1995 and 2014. The state said exposure to PFOA for people drinking the village's water or working in local factories that used the toxic chemical stretches back more than 40 years.

Investigators acknowledged in the report they did not examine cancer rates among residents who live in the town of Hoosick surrounding the village, where 12 percent of the approximately 1,000 private wells tested by the state were found to contain PFOA at levels not considered safe by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. But the state agency said it limited its study to village residents because their "level of exposure" was consistent. Including town residents, many of whom may not have been exposed to PFOA, in the study could have skewed the results, the agency claimed.

The investigation also was limited to cancer and did not examine other health conditions that have been linked to long-term PFOA exposure, including colitis, preeclampsia, thyroid disease, high cholesterol and respiratory problems.

Hutton said that's because there are no registries that track the rates of those conditions.

The analysis revealed lower rates of some forms of cancer linked to long-term PFOA exposure - testicular, kidney and thyroid  but also revealed there were 91 cases of lung cancer during the study period, far above the expected rate of 65 for a village the size of Hoosick Falls, where the population is about 3,400 people. The investigation did not evaluate if the increased rate of lung cancer may be connected to diminished immune systems in residents exposed to PFOA. However, more than 24 percent of Rensselaer County's residents smoke cigarettes, which is higher than the state's average and what Health Department officials believe may be the cause of the village's increased rate of lung cancer.

In addition, a benchmark study in the Ohio valley found no evidence linking PFOA exposure and lung cancer.

The study also found slightly higher rates of oral, stomach, colorectal, liver, melanoma, uterus, prostate and rare or "other types" of cancer, but at levels the report said were not statistically significant, according to a person briefed on the findings.

The report also noted a lower incidence of cancer for other forms of the disease, including female breast and urinary bladder.

A manufacturing plant operated by Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics in Hoosick Falls has been a focus of the contamination of the village's nearby underground water supply. PFOA was used at the plant for decades, including by companies that operated the plant before Saint-Gobain purchased it in the late 1990s.

David Hassel, a mechanical engineer who worked at the Hoosick Falls plant, helped design the ovens that were part of a high-heat process used in the manufacturing. In the past two years, Hassel has studied cancer rates in Hoosick Falls and other Rensselaer County communities where PFOA was used in manufacturing. He said the Health Department, by limiting the study to those within village boundaries, excluded more than 100 residents who live outside the village but draw water from the municipal system.

"Most people move to a smaller house or an apartment after their kids move out and they retire," Hassel said. "In a little village like Hoosick Falls, moving a mile away after you drank contaminated water for 40 years but before you get diagnosed means you are out of the study. Over a 20-year period, I would bet at least 40 percent of the older citizens moved at least over the village lines  if not to Florida."

Hassel also criticized the state for not listing the identities of the people who were involved in the research, or any of the dozen or so scientists who conducted a peer review of the data.

"If you look at all the similar papers from Minnesota, New Jersey, California, Vermont  they all have not only the author's name, but their positions and background listed," he said. "This is the standard procedure for real science, and is a strong indicator that this is just a publicity paper."

The agency said it will update its findings every three to five years and continue to conduct blood testing to measure the levels of PFOA in residents. State health officials also will be in the village in the coming weeks to answer questions.

Elevated levels of PFOA were found in the village's public water system in 2014 by Michael Hickey, a former village trustee whose father died of kidney cancer.

Hickey sent water samples to a Canadian lab that reported levels of PFOA that the EPA later said are not safe for human consumption. PFOA is a man-made chemical used to make nonstick and other household and commercial products that are heat-resistant and repel grease and water.

The discovery by Hickey set off a public-health crisis as village leaders and the state Health Department faced criticism for their response to the pollution, which included informing residents for more than a year the contaminated water was safe to drink. Blood tests conducted by the Health Department later found levels of PFOA in residents of the village more than 30 times the national average.

Negotiations between the village and Saint-Gobain and Honeywell International, which acquired a company that previously operated the plant, have stalled after the village board recently tabled a settlement that called for the companies to pay the village $850,000 for its legal, engineering, public relations and other costs.

The seminal study that examined PFOA exposure and increased cancer and other health risks in the Ohio Valley was the work of a scientific panel formed as a result of a class-action lawsuit filed against DuPont. It found a probable link between long-term exposure to the chemical and increased risk of testicular and thyroid cancer, among other health problems.

In February, DuPont/Chemours agreed to a $670 million settlement in the federal class-action lawsuit in Columbus, Ohio, that was filed on behalf of approximately 3,550 people who said they were afflicted with diseases as a result of PFOA contamination of their drinking water.

The lawsuit centered on the contamination of public water supplies in and around a DuPont manufacturing plant in West Virginia, near the Ohio border. The company had already reached an earlier settlement in the case in 2004 and agreed to pay more than $350 million to filter water treatment systems in that region and conduct health studies on people affected by the pollution, including long-term biomonitoring of their health.

blyons@timesunion.com  518-454-5547  @brendan_lyonstu
Two high schools in Laredo failed to provide adequate education to their students in 2017, according to statewide rankings recently released by Children at Risk.

The educational research group ranked nine Laredo-area high schools as a way to guide parents and "spark important community dialogue on the quality of public education in Texas."
A fatality has been reported in a head-on collision on an overpass at Interstate 35 and Loop 20.

Police said preliminary information indicates a vehicle traveling the wrong way on the overpass hit a pickup truck head-on late Tuesday. A passenger in the pickup was killed in the collision.
A third person has been arrested in connection with a drug case involving officers finding a bulletproof vest that belonged to the Drug Enforcement Administration, according to Laredo police.

Arturo Martinez Jr., 25, was arrested and charged with felony possession of marijuana Friday in the 800 block of Park Street.
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The man involved in Fridays shootout that left three Laredo police officers wounded had served prison time for a murder conviction in the early 2000s, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

Antonio Gerardo Rodriguez, who was suspected of killing his girlfriend before the shootout, served an eight-year sentence for a murder that occurred in Harris County. He served his sentence from Feb. 28, 2000, to Feb. 28, 2008.

Harris County records state that three people went to Rodriguezs home, where all four were smoking crack cocaine and watching movies. Suddenly, a man got into an argument with Rodriguez about money Rodriguez owed him. As the argument escalated, he decided to take a VCR as collateral. Rodriguez then pulled out a rifle with laser sights and threatened to kill him.

READ MORE: Laredo PD officer released from intensive care after shot in face during central Laredo shootout

As the man put down the VCR and proceeded to leave the apartment, Rodriguez fatally shot him in the back, according to court documents.

Rodriguez, 55, died in the shootout in the parking lot of the Stripes convenience store at McPherson and Hillside roads. He was fatally shot after opening fire on police officers as they approached his vehicle in the parking lot.

Police had been searching for him in connection with the shooting death of his girlfriend, Reyna G. Gonzalez, whose body was found Friday morning in her apartment in the 400 block of East Travis Street.

Funeral services for Gonzalez, 50, are scheduled for Friday at Mother Cabrini Catholic Church.

Fundraisers

Laredoans have been out in full force to support the three LPD officers wounded in the shootout. Two have been medically cleared and the third remains in University Hospital in San Antonio.

Hector Guerrero, president of the Brother's 6 Law Enforcement Motorcycle Club of the Lone Star Chapter, said the club jumped into action when they heard about the case.

When our club heard of the incident that happened last Friday, we knew we had a duty to help our brothers in need. One of the officers shot is a family member of one of our club members, said Guerrero, who is a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

We are currently collecting donations from our Border Patrol stations, beginning a raffle and we have also started an account with officerdown.us, a donation site that gives 95 percent of all proceeds raised to the families and police officers in need.

RELATED: Laredo ISD counselor allegedly tried to take officer's gun after domestic dispute

Those wanting to donate can visit https://officerdown.us/projects/four-police-officers-shot-in-pursuit-of-homicide-suspect-one-officer-shot-in-face/.

For more information, email Guerrero at brothers6mclaredo@yahoo.com.

Bake sale

The Laredo Police Department and the Laredo Police Officers Association will have a bake sale to benefit the wounded and injured officers from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday.

Community members are encouraged to buy a treat to benefit the officers, authorities said.

Those wanting to buy baked goods may stop at LPD headquarters at 4712 Maher Ave. or at the City Hall Annex at 1102 Bob Bullock Loop.
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This past autumn, two of the three pumps that shoot water up from the Rio Grande to be treated at El Pico Water Treatment Plant malfunctioned and failed. Three weeks ago, the last pump failed too.

Now, the city is considering litigation.

The first two pumps have already been repaired, costing the city about $640,000. So this latest pump failure does not mean catastrophe for the entirety of north Laredo, which depends on this plant to receive clean water.

El Pico opened in May 2015 and cost the city about $96 million. The plant was designed by Dannenbaum Engineering, which conducted construction oversight as well. Dannenbaum collected about $9.3 million for their work on this project.

In March, City Hall along with several other city and county offices were searched by the FBI for documents related to projects involving Dannenbaum.

No arrests have been made and the FBI has not commented on the search, which occurred at other Dannenbaum offices across the state on the same day.

READ MORE: 19 businesses in Laredo caught selling, serving minors since start of last year

At Mondays meeting, City Council heard from El Picos insurance provider, the Texas Municipal League Intergovernmental Risk Pool, which provides liability and property coverage for local governments, as to the potential causes for the first two pumps failure.

Patti Tabor, senior claims specialist at the Municipal League, said there were different issues at either pump. With Pump 2, a component fracture brought the pump down completely, she said. A different component failed in Pump 3, which caused column pipes to shift.

The insurance company will cover $367,062 of the $640,000 in repairs the city had to pay because of these failures.

The origin of the cause for these initial malfunctions was discussed in executive session as the city contemplates litigation.

Mayor Pete Saenz said he cannot speak about what was discussed in closed session, but the fact that all three pumps failed shows that a systematic problem exists at the plant.

Utilities Director Riazul Mia previously told LMT that these pumps should function properly for a minimum of five to 10 years.

It should not fail. Something is definitely wrong, he said Tuesday.

Due to the size and complexity of these pumps, they have to be sent to Houston for repair. Pump 1 has not been sent out yet, Mia said.

RELATED: Laredo ISD counselor allegedly tried to take officer's gun after domestic dispute

The city will look at all options to cover costs that are not reimbursed through liability insurance, Interim City Manager Horacio De Leon told LMT.

Its definitely a concern to have a new plant with all these issues, De Leon said.

Councilman George Altgelt introduced to the public some of the problems at El Pico at a City Council meeting in early May.

Water is our most precious resource. The fact that the city taxpayer paid almost $100 million to a private company, that by a preliminary determination has not only taken us for a ride but has now saddled us with this problem that were going to be paying for for years to come ... This is a matter that we will be taking action on soon, Altgelt said Tuesday.

Julia Wallace may be reached at 956-728-2543 or jwallace@lmtonline.com
Game wardens working for the Texas Department of Parks and Wildlife Department responded to the following incidents in recent weeks:

Don't Mess with Texas

While on patrol at Falcon Lake, game wardens spotted two plastic bottles floating about 100 yards inside U.S. waters of the lake. While littering is a crime, so is fishing by illegal means and methods. The bottles were attached to a line that connected five illegal hoop nets. Over 100 pounds of carp were released back into Falcon Lake, as well as 50 pounds of catfish. The nets were seized.

Un-tagged, You're It

Game wardens patrolling the Rio Grande River in Maverick County conducted a water safety check on a vessel with three men in it that were out to set limb lines. Later that afternoon wardens discovered several limb lines while patrolling the river and none had the required gear tags attached. In total, 16 limb lines were recovered as well as one trotline. The wardens later identified the lines as the ones that were in the vessel they conducted a water safety check on earlier that day. Wardens launched early the next morning and found the individuals that had set the lines. During the investigation the men admitted the lines belonged to them. It was also found that the boat the men were in had unauthorized numbers displayed on the vessel. Citations and warnings were issued to the three men for no fishing license, unauthorized numbers on bow, and untagged fishing gear/throwline.

International Drifters

A Val Verde County game warden responded to a boater in distress call. The subjects were on a disabled jet ski in the main part of the lake that was in danger of drifting into Mexican waters. The warden was able to quickly muster assistance from National Park Service Rangers and recover the subjects safely.

Follow the Clues

A Wharton County game warden was patrolling the Colorado River for recreational boating and fishing enforcement when he came across a small flat bottom boat tied to the river bank with no motor attached and a single paddle inside. He surveyed the immediate area for throw lines and located what he thought was a single line, but when he attempted to pull the line he discovered a larger piece of rope tied to a heavy piece of metal. The warden recognized this as a possible hoop net anchor and after searching the bank he found two of the illegal nets hidden in the brush further up the river bank. The warden left the nets in place and with assistance from other wardens set up surveillance cameras in hopes of gathering evidence of illegal fishing. The cameras captured the suspects running the nets on two occasions. One individual ran the hoop net from the boat, while the other suspect stayed up above as a look out on the bank where he would also take the fish from the boat. The two subjects were identified as a father and son from El Campo who the warden had previously dealt with for felony hunting charges as well as hoop net charges. The wardens seized the net and various other equipment and the two suspects were issued citations for taking fish by illegal means or methods. Cases and civil restitution are pending.

Rapid Response Rescue

Late one evening while patrolling Lake Meredith, wardens responded to a 911 call about two individuals stranded on kayaks. Weather conditions were unfavorable with winds blowing 20-25 mph, water temperatures in the high 50s and air temp at 68 degrees. The wardens located two teenage boys in the middle of the lake on a single kayak that was half sunk and full of water. The second kayak had already sunk and only one teen was wearing a life jacket. A rope was thrown to the boys and the kayak flipped. Luckily, both of them hung onto the rope and were pulled and then lifted into the patrol boat. Both teens were severely hypothermic and cramping from holding on so long in the cold. Once on shore, EMS took both teens to the hospital where they were treated and released.

Warden Harassment?

A Williamson County game warden was patrolling the San Gabriel River and had made contact with two fishermen on the lower water crossing bridge when a white Ford Explorer pulled up behind the warden's patrol truck. The warden believed he was waiting to pass safely to the left, so he signaled to the driver to go ahead and proceed. Instead, the driver signaled some gesture with his hand and yelled back. As the warden accompanied one of the fishermen to his car to retrieve a fishing license, the Explorer's driver barked at him, "Why can't you just leave them alone?" Noting the driver exhibited slurred speech and a strong smell of alcohol, the warden suspected he may have been impaired. Further evidence on the center console, the warden observed an open container and two six packs of beer. On the passenger seat was a revolver within his reach. The warden immediately gave him instructions to keep his hands on the steering wheel and not make any sudden movements. The driver stated he didn't have a permit and didn't need one to carry his pistol. The warden retrieved the loaded .38 caliber pistol for officer safety and attempted to administer a field sobriety test, which the driver refused. The driver was subsequently arrested on suspicion of driving while intoxicated and unlawful carrying of a firearm. The two anglers were in compliance and went back to fishing. No further information at this time.

'Tis Not the Season

A Bastrop County game warden received a call from a sheriff's deputy with information regarding criminal trespassing, hunting without landowner consent, and hunting dove out of season. He called the complainant and was informed that the landowner had seen three male individuals walking through his crop field with one carrying a high-powered pellet gun. The landowner recognized one of the men as his neighbor and made contact. When the landowner asked them what they were doing, the individual with the gun responded, "Hunting dove." The landowner requested they leave and informed them that they couldn't hunt dove because it was out of season. Game wardens went to interview the suspected hunter who admitted to hunting doves and retrieved his harvest from the freezer. Doves were seized, citations were issued, and the case is still ongoing for the other two individuals involved.

Posted and Busted

In response to a social media post, game wardens investigated the killing of an eight foot alligator on Lake Corpus Christi. The wardens were able to obtain a photograph of the suspect holding the alligator. They located the suspect and, after a full confession was obtained, he was charged with hunting alligator without a hunting license and illegal means and methods. Cases and civil restitution pending.
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SOMERSET COUNTY, Pa. - Like many people here who have eked out a living underground, Edward Popernack, 84, is used to seeing outsiders paint the coal industry in sharp contrasts: Past or future. Liberal or conservative. Clean or dirty.

Popernack, who started working in his father's coal mine when he was 13 years old, knows firsthand the value - and the hardships - of the job. Coal mining ruined his lungs and almost took the life of his son, who was trapped underground for days in an accident. But it also has sustained his family and community.

The towns scattered through the coal-rich Appalachian Mountains of southern Pennsylvania were pleased to hear their names on President Donald Trump's lips last week as he announced the United States' withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement. Trump hailed "a big opening of a brand-new mine" - the Acosta Deep Mine, about 70 miles southeast of Pittsburgh - as a sign of new life for the coal industry.

But while the locals heartily embrace the 70 or more new jobs the mine will bring, some, like Popernack, a lifelong coal miner like his father and his son, don't share the president's view of the industry's renaissance.

"Coal country is a great place to be from," Popernack said as he sat behind his applesauce at the Coal Miner's Cafe in Jennerstown. He repeated the line, emphasis on "from," cracking a smile around broken teeth. "Do you get it?"

The future of the industry has become a charged political symbol, as Trump seeks to reverse what he and his supporters see as the Obama-era war on coal. Locals decry regulations that have strangled businesses, but they also say much of coal's decline is due to other factors, such as the natural-gas boom that has offered a cheaper, cleaner alternative.

America's coal mining industry is small, with just 50,000 workers today - fewer people than are employed by the fast-food chain Arby's - down from about 170,000 in 1985, according to the Labor Department. In 2014, Somerset County had 700 coal miners among a population of 76,000.

Coal and steel have long supported this area, where the ancient Appalachian Mountains open up into green valleys dotted with cows and old cars. The billboards speak to the rise and fall of industry in the region, touting steel-lined tanks, Red Wing boots and bankruptcy lawyers.

This county delivered 27,400 votes for Trump and just 7,400 for Hillary Clinton last fall. Some of the customers who patronize the Coal Miner's Cafe, a brick building along the Lincoln Highway where Popernack goes to drink coffee and commiserate with other "old-timers" nearly every week, stuck signs in their yards reading "Support coal, fire Obama."

Many locals have cheered Trump's support of the coal industry, including his March 28 order that nixed some of President Barack Obama's climate-change efforts and his decision last week to pull out of the Paris accord.

Yet the president's support probably had little to do with the decision to open the Acosta mine, a move driven by economic factors far beyond the horizon, said industry analysts and the company that runs the mine, Corsa Coal.

The Acosta Deep Mine focuses on metallurgical coal, which is used in making steel. Unlike thermal coal, which is used for power, metallurgical coal is a niche that is largely unaffected by the spread of natural gas and cheap renewable power.

The price of metallurgical coal crept up toward the end of 2016, after China announced that it was curtailing the number of working days at its mines. Then flooding and a cyclone in Australia shut off metallurgical coal mines from ports, sending the global price surging.

"Market analysts debate the future of Chinese steel production, the future of Australian coal mining," said Trevor Houser, a partner at Rhodium Group, an economic research company. "What there is no debate about is that the recovery of metallurgical coal prices has absolutely zero to do with any change in U.S. policy."

Executives at Corsa Coal spoke warmly about the president's economic platform, but they said it had little to do with their operations. "I don't think it had anything to do with the election," said Rob Bottegal, Corsa's head engineer.

The company decided to move ahead with the Acosta mine in September. Its mining permit was approved in 2013, but years of low prices for metallurgical coal led Corsa to stay its development.

In December, the company broke ground on the massive pit that would be the entrance to the mine. Bottegal and his crew have since removed 320,000 cubic yards of dirt to create a giant, 120-foot-deep rectangular hole in the earth. The Upper and Middle Kittanning coal seams run around the sides of the hole like dark rings in a gritty bathtub.

Monday afternoon, Bottegal stood alongside Joseph Gallo, Corsa's senior vice president, on a new viewing platform overlooking the hole, as workers prepared the site for the grand opening Thursday. Trump said last week that he would try to attend the event, but people here think he's probably not going to make it.

"Do you know where the tent is going?" Gallo asked.

Bottegal pointed in the direction of an adjacent farm field, where a storm front was gathering. "The big American flag is going there," he said, gesturing in the opposite direction, to the towering wall of the mine's rock face.

The company expects to draw coal from the Acosta mine for a decade or more. But analysts caution that while metallurgical coal prices are high now, global factors could easily knock the bottom out of the market, leaving local workers stranded - just as they were in 2015, when Corsa idled two mines in Somerset County, cutting more than 100 jobs.

Five miles away, past the Jennerstown Speedway, customers at the Coal Miner's Cafe were hopeful that opening a new mine would be symbolic, but they still saw it as mostly a thing of the past.

"He better take care of the miners," Popernack said of Trump. "The coal miner is going to be a lost breed."

His wife, Karen, said the community needs the mine: "We need the work."

For many people here, coal mining has taken limbs, lungs and years of their lives. It poisoned their wells, turning their water, their clothes and their bathroom walls orange, and the local townspeople against one another.

But the mines also sustained them - even with the industry's shortcomings. The orange water needed to be treated. The roads ripped up by heavy coal trucks needed to be fixed. The hungry miners needed to be fed.

And so Popernack and his wife welcome new mines, even though they are more acquainted with the industry's faults than perhaps anyone.

Popernack's body bears the scars of a long life of mining and farming. One eyelid droops a little over a flinty blue eye; two fingers on his left hand were lost to a buzz saw a decade ago. For nearly 20 years, Popernack has been trying to claim payments for his black lung. And 15 years ago, an accident in the Quecreek Mine nearly claimed his son.

Mark Popernack was underground on July 24, 2002, when the workers unknowingly struck an abandoned, poorly documented mine that had filled with water. As more than 50 million gallons gushed into their mine and blocked the entrance, the miners sought the highest ground they could find as the water rose for hours.

Ed Popernack, who was holding vigil above, assumed that his son was dead. But after 77 hours, Mark was the last man pulled out.

"If you're never scared, you're lying," Ed Popernack said.

He's happy about some coal jobs coming back to the area - but he wouldn't dream of advising his grandkids to pursue them.

"Let them do whatever they want, but if they go in the mine they're going to get a swift - " and he mimed a kick in the rear. "I don't want them even thinking about going in."
Multiple scientific assessments have concluded that manmade climate change is real and poses risks to human health and the environment. Even so, EPA administrator Scott Pruitt told Breitbart News Monday that he would like to essentially relitigate the science of climate change.

On Monday, in an interview with Breitbart's Joel Pollak, Pruitt proposed setting up opposing teams to debate key climate science issues.

"What the American people deserve, I think, is a true legitimate, peer-reviewed, objective, transparent discussion about CO2 [carbon dioxide]," Pruitt said.

Pruitt voiced support for a "red team-blue team" exercise to foster such a discussion. The red-blue team concept gained prominence in a Wall Street Journal commentary by Steven Koonin, a professor at New York University.

Koonin argued such an exercise would subject the scientific consensus on climate change to a rigorous test.The red team would challenge consensus findings from scientific assessments and the blue team would have the opportunity to respond.

"The outcome of a Red/Blue exercise for climate science is not preordained, which makes such a process all the more valuable," Koonin wrote. "It could reveal the current consensus as weaker than claimed. Alternatively, the consensus could emerge strengthened if Red Team criticisms were countered effectively."

Pruitt said such an exercise would improve understanding of what we know and don't know about carbon dioxide and the health risks it poses to United States and the world. "The American people need to have that type of honest open discussion, and it's something we hope to provide as part of our leadership," he said.

For his part, Pruitt has voiced skepticism about the human role in climate change, and said he does not believe carbon dioxide is a "primary contributor."

Historically, red teams have been called upon in military exercises as a way to introduce alternative ideas and, ultimately, strengthen organizational performance. But David Titley, a climate scientist at Penn State University and retired rear admiral in the Navy, said introducing a red team into climate science doesn't make sense. "Science already has a red team: peer review," he said.

A study of the peer-reviewed literature found 97 percent of published papers support the consensus view that human activities are responsible for the majority of recent climate warming.

Peter Frumhoff, director of science and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said introducing a red team is an act of false equivalence - giving more prominence to alternative ideas than they have earned in the refereed journal process.

"The notion that we would need to create an entirely different new approach, in particular for the specific question around global warming is unfounded and ridiculous and simply intended to promote the notion of a lack of consensus about the core findings, which in fact is a false notion," he told The Post's Chelsea Harvey.

Pruitt's call for a red-blue team dual has been promoted by two scientists outside the mainstream, unconvinced of the risks posed by climate change.

John Christy, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, said in his prepared testimony at a March House Science Committee hearing that a red team "would offer to Congress some very different conclusions regarding the human impacts on climate."

Judith Curry, professor emeritus at Georgia Tech's School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, also expressed support for the idea in Congressional testimony. On her blog, she elaborated on its potential benefits:

"Such an exercise, as pointed out by Koonin, would strengthen climate science, improve public understanding of science, better inform the policy process, and would publicly demonstrate scientific reasoning and argument.

"If the 'consensus' is really as strong as they think it is, then the 'consensus' scientists have nothing to lose in such an exercise - the consensus would emerge as strengthened."

But Marshall Shepherd, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Georgia, called the red-blue team concept a "gimmick". He said skeptics who complain about not being heard have ample opportunity to express their ideas through journal submissions and at scientific meetings. "This just feels to me a like another way [for climate change doubters] to skirt the tried and true scientific process that has worked for years in our field and many others," he said.

Pruitt's call for a review of key climate change science findings, after pulling out of the Paris Climate agreement is, in some ways, reminiscent of the actions of former president George W. Bush 16 years prior.

After pulling out of the Kyoto Protocol, in March 2001, the Bush White House also sought a review of climate change science - though the science was more uncertain then than it is now. In May of that year, it asked the National Academy of Sciences for "assistance in identifying the areas in the science of climate change where there are the greatest certainties and uncertainties."

In response, the National Academies - a body setup to provide objective scientific advice - published the 2001 expert assessment, Climate Change: An Analysis of Some Key Questions. That report, prepared by a diverse group of climate scientists, concluded the planet was warming, humans were likely contributing, and that warming posed risks.

Here are two key excerpts from that report:

"Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise. Temperatures are, in fact, rising. The changes observed over the last several decades are likely mostly due to human activities, but we cannot rule out that some significant part of these changes is also a reflection of natural variability. Human-induced warming and associated sea level rises are expected to continue through the 21st century."

"Global warming could well have serious adverse societal and ecological impacts by the end of this century, especially if globally-averaged temperature increases approach the upper end of the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] projections."

Since 2001, the planet has experienced its three warmest years on record and multiple subsequent reports from the National Academies, the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and U.S. government have found the case for human-induced climate change has only grown stronger.
China and Kazakhstan will sign agreements on trade, economy and water conservation during Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to the country from Wednesday to Saturday, the foreign ministry announced Monday.

Xi will attend the 17th Meeting of the Council of Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the opening of the Astana Expo 2017, Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Li Huilai said at a press conference on Monday.

The two sides will exchange in-depth views on the bilateral ties, a mutual developmental strategy between the two countries, the construction of the Belt and Road initiative, as well as other regional and international issues of common concern. A joint statement will be released, Li Huilai said.

"Xi's visit to Kazakhstan is another major Chinese diplomatic activity after the Belt and Road forum in Beijing in May," Li Xing, director of the Eurasian Studies Center at Beijing Normal University, told the Global Times on Monday.

"Xi's visit will continue to promote the construction of the Belt and Road initiative and the strategic link between the initiative and the Eurasian Economic Union," Li Xing said, noting that Kazakhstan is a vital country on the ancient Silk Road and has always been supportive of the initiative.

The 17th SCO summit in Astana, capital of Kazakhstan, will focus on the future of the organization, and SCO members will exchange views on vital regional and international issues, Li Huilai said.

China hopes all SCO members can reach a consensus on current regional and international issues and work together to sustain regional peace, encourage mutual prosperity as well as promote a fair and reasonable direction for the international order, Li Huilai added.

Li Huilai also announced that the SCO members will sign a treaty against terrorism. India and Pakistan will complete the process of joining the SCO during the summit.

"The SCO used to focus on cooperation against terrorism, but has gradually shifted to economic cooperation under the framework of the Belt and Road initiative," said Wang Dehua, director of the Institute for Southern and Central Asian Studies at the Shanghai Municipal Center for International Studies.

Cooperation against terrorism still needs to be strengthened among SCO member countries, especially after recent terrorist attacks in London and the Philippines, Wang stressed.

The membership of India and Pakistan will make the SCO the world's largest regional cooperation organization in terms of population, which will create unprecedented development potential and cooperation, the Xinhua News Agency reported last month.

Li Xing pointed out that the two countries' membership in the SCO will help the organization act better as a platform to link the Belt and Road initiative. However, he warned that territorial disputes between the two countries might create challenges to their cooperation within the organization.
The worst crisis in decades among the Gulf's Arab monarchies intensified on Wednesday, with a Saudi-led alliance imposing more punitive sanctions against Qatar and a senior UAE official playing down the chances of a quick diplomatic resolution.

The United Arab Emirates said it would no longer grant visas on arrival for foreigners living in Qatar, while Qatari nationals were barred from transiting through the country. Both decisions were relayed through state-run media. UAE residents who express support or sympathy for Qatar on social media could face a jail term of up to 15 years, the public prosecutor said.

Three Gulf states -- Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain -- along with Egypt on Monday blocked their transport routes with Qatar, including the country's only land border. They accuse Doha of destabilizing the region through supporting proxies of Shiite Muslim Iran and the Sunni militants of al-Qaida and Islamic State. Qatar says the Saudi charges against it are a ploy for regional dominance over archrival Iran, the emirate's ally.

Dispelling hopes that a solution to the impasse could be found soon, Anwar Gargash, the UAE minister of state for foreign affairs, said the alliance is willing to take further measures against Qatar if it doesn't pledge to overhaul its "subversive" foreign policy. In Berlin, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir called on Qatar to stop supporting "certain organizations," saying, "We don't have sufficient cooperation in this area."

As the pressure on Qatar mounted, Kuwaiti ruler Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah was shuttling among Gulf capitals in an effort to find a solution to a crisis that pits some of the world's richest nations against each other. President Donald Trump on Tuesday backed the Saudi-led measures, calling it just punishment for the country's financial support for extremists.

"For us, this a critical issue and there is no turning back to the status quo," Gargash said on Wednesday in Dubai. "There has to be first a very clear political indication, whether it's to the mediator, whether it's to the GCC countries, that Qatar is changing course. You start with that. You can't start mediation when Qatar is in denial and I think right now we are in a phase where Qatar is in denial."

Turkey -- which has sided with Qatar against Saudi Arabia in supporting the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Hamas militants who rule the Gaza Strip -- criticized the squeeze on the emirate and offered to try to mend the rift through dialogue.

"I'd like to say that we don't find sanctions against Qatar right," Erdogan said in Ankara late Tuesday. "We are ready to do everything to resolve other countries' problems with Qatar."

With a population lower than Houston's, Qatar is the world's No. 1 exporter of liquefied natural gas. Its $335 billion sovereign wealth fund owns stakes in global companies from Volkswagen to Glencore and Barclays.

But the crisis hit the Gulf country at a time when its economy was starting to face some headwinds amid the drop in global commodity prices. Moody's Investor Service cut Qatar's credit rating last month by one level to Aa3, the fourth-highest investment grade, citing uncertainty over its economic growth model.

Qatar's ability to weather the pressure is "best measured in months, not years," Michael Cirami, who manages about $13 billion at Eaton Vance in Boston, said by phone. "So I am going to start to get concerned if this goes on for a month or two, not that I think they can't weather a month or two but because that gives us an idea that this isn't a quickly resolvable issue."

The main question is to what extent Saudi will succeed in pressuring the Qatari royal family to turn against the emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, said Mokhtar Awad, a research fellow at George Washington University's program on extremism. "The situation has escalated to a point that it is difficult to imagine" Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates "backing down without Qatari capitulation or regime change," he said.

Qatar's benchmark QE Index for stocks fell 1 percent at the close in Doha. The measure tumbled more than 7 percent on Monday, the most since 2009.

While Gargash said he hoped that "cooler heads" in Qatar would prevail to defuse the crisis, he said the allies had tools to inflict more economic pain on the fellow Gulf Cooperation Council member if necessary. He denied that the alliance was seeking regime change in Qatar.

The sanctions are meant to say to Qatar that it has chosen a route "that supports extremism, supports terrorism," Gargash said. "You can live with it but you are not going to be part of what we want to do and so you can't have both worlds."

---

Bloomberg's Hussein Slim contributed.
Chancellor Angela Merkel's government backed the withdrawal of German troops from Turkey, escalating a feud between two NATO allies and major trading partners.

Germany will seek talks with the U.S. and other allies in the coalition fighting Islamic State in Syria and Iraq to ensure a smooth transition from Incirlik to a base in Jordan, Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen said after the German Cabinet backed the move on Wednesday. Merkel said the redeployment may remove an irritant in relations and allow the two countries to focus on addressing other disputes.

"This can also lead to a situation where we don't constantly have to engage in confrontation with Turkey on this issue," Merkel told reporters in Berlin. "We have a whole series of shared interests with Turkey, plus close economic ties. So keeping channels of communication open is very important."

While the immediate dispute centers on Turkey's refusal to allow visits to Incirlik by German lawmakers, it's only the latest flashpoint in a relationship that's deteriorated since President Recep Tayyip Erdogan consolidated power after a failed coup in July. Merkel has criticized Turkey's record on human rights and press freedom, and Turkey alleges that Germany is shielding fugitives suspected of involvement in the coup.

"Turkey is sticking to its position on lawmaker visits to Incirlik" and that's "not acceptable" to the German government, Steffen Seibert, Merkel's chief spokesman, told reporters in Berlin.

Redeploying to Jordan will take time, including an outage of two to three months for Tornado surveillance planes that Germany pledged to the U.S.-led coalition after the Paris terror attacks in 2015, von der Leyen said.

Germany and Turkey have a prickly relationship even though they share a web of ties. Turks make up the largest ethnic minority in Germany, and Merkel took the lead in negotiating a landmark deal with Turkey to halt refugees from entering Europe, which survives despite repeated threats by Erdogan to ditch it.

Business ties may be weathering the discord. Germany is Turkey's biggest trading partner, with German imports expanding almost 7 percent last year to more than 15 billion euros ($17 billion), according to Federal Statistics Office data. Two-way trade increased 1.4 percent from 2015 to 37.4 billion euros.

While the government says the redeployment doesn't require approval by Germany's parliament, lawmakers may vote on a resolution to signal broad political backing.

Diplomatic tension has increased over the past year after Germany's parliament recognized the century-old killings of Armenians by Ottoman authorities as genocide and Turkey arrested Deniz Yucel, a German-born reporter for Die Welt newspaper, in February on charges of spreading terrorist propaganda.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on Monday rebuffed a last-ditch request by his German counterpart, Sigmar Gabriel, to allow visits to Incirlik by lawmakers, whose access to foreign-based troops is an important symbol of German civilian oversight of the armed forces.

Instead, Cavusoglu pressed Germany to extradite Turks who sought asylum in the country after the coup -- something Germany says is legally impossible -- and complained about the presence of Kurdish militants and followers of Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen in Germany. Turkey views armed Kurdish groups and Gulen's movement as terrorist organizations.

"It's clear that dialogue with Turkey must be maintained," said Seibert, the German spokesman. "But talks with Turkish government officials are very difficult at this time."
North Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has condemned President Donald Trump for pulling the United States out of the Paris agreement on climate change, dubbing it a "shortsighted and silly decision."

In a statement published Tuesday on Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) and attributed to a foreign ministry spokesman who wasn't named, the isolated country warned that "global warming is one of the gravest challenges humankind is facing today" and praised the Paris accord for its attempt to stop it.

Noting that the Trump administration had announced on June 1 that the U.S. would leave the landmark agreement, the unnamed official said that this was because of the president's "America First" policies and an ignorance "of the fact that the protection of the global environment is in their own interests."

"This is the height of egotism and moral vacuum seeking only their own well-being at the cost of the entire planet," the statement said.

The Paris agreement was reached in 2015 and was a signature diplomatic achievement for Trump's predecessor, President Barack Obama. More than 190 nations came together in the French capital to agree to voluntary pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Only two nations didn't sign the agreement: Nicaragua, who argued that the agreement didn't go far enough, and Syria, which was in the midst of a devastating civil war.

Despite its international isolation, North Korea signed the agreement. In December 2015, then-foreign minister Ri Su Yong told delegates in Paris that the North Korea's Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un had "declared war on deforestation" and that the country aimed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by "37.4 percent compared with the levels of the 1990s."

Experts have warned that North Korea is at significant risk of climate change-related problems. In particular, the country's chronic food shortages could be made worse by droughts or flooding. In a report released on Wednesday by the North Korea-watching website NK News, academics David Von Hippel and Peter Hayes wrote that North Korea's estimates for its greenhouse gas reductions were roughly accurate and climate change represented a good opportunity for engagement with the international community.

The United States has long been criticized by Pyongyang's frequently bellicose official media outlets. However, during the campaign, Trump was largely spared criticism from North Korea - in one instance, a state media outlet praised him as "wise." Since entering office, Trump has been on the receiving end of a number of insults from outlets like KCNA.

Tuesday's foreign ministry statement linked Trump's "selfish" positions on climate change with the U.S. administration's stern opposition to North Korea's nuclear program. Warning of a "dangerous ideological trend" that had emerged in the U.S. with Trump's election, North Korea warned other nations not to follow suit.

"Whoever chooses to blindly follow the Trump administration overpowered by its bravado should be fully aware that the judgment of history shall take them all as one," the statement said.
BEIJING, June 7 (Xinhua) -- California is looking to expand cooperation with China in clean energy, especially in the fields of battery technology and zero-emission vehicles, said California Governor Jerry Brown Tuesday.

"China has many battery plants, and that brings down the costs of batteries. That would help California achieve the penetration of zero-emission vehicles," Brown told reporters on the sidelines of the ongoing eighth Clean Energy Ministerial and the Second Mission Innovation Ministerial in Beijing.

California will work with Chinese government officials and businesses to reach its goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 40 percent below 1990 levels, Brown said.

It also has goals that are consistent with, or even more aggressive than the Paris agreement on climate change, and achievement of such goals require collaboration with China, he said.

"We can only meet those [goals] if the technology continues improving, and to a significant degree, various businesses and entities in China will be part of that technological innovation. And for that I'm very grateful," Brown said.

On Tuesday, Brown signed an agreement on behalf of California with China's Ministry of Science and Technology, expanding cooperation on the advancement of low-carbon, renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies such as zero-emission vehicles, energy storage, grid modernization and low-carbon urban development, according to a statement released on the governor's office website.

In the past few days, Brown also signed clean energy agreements with China's Sichuan and Jiangsu provinces, respectively, hoping to bolster regional climate partnerships with China.

Under the agreements, California and Jiangsu will expand collaboration on greenhouse gas emission and air pollution reduction programs, including emissions trading systems. The pact with Sichuan will provide incubator space and market access for California clean energy and technology companies in the province, according to the statement.

Brown's visit to China came shortly after U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris agreement, a landmark global pact to fight climate change.

Brown said that while the decision will slow down the economic transition of the United States, he expected the country to rejoin the global effort to combat climate change.

While the United States stepped back from its commitment, China has stayed firm.

In response to Trump's decision, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said China would remain committed to upholding and promoting global governance on climate change and take an active part in the multilateral process.

Besides cooperation with China in clean technology, Brown also expressed his interest in China's Belt and Road Initiative, and said California was open to cooperation opportunities in fields including water, electricity, and railways.

While recognizing China's progress in combating climate change, Brown called for more global concerted efforts on the issue.

"We have a long way to go, but we are a lot further than we would have thought five years ago, and we'll accelerate. We'll accelerate in large part because China and United States, and California in particular, are collaborating," he said.
The Islamic State has struck at Iran and its allies for years - but always from afar, in places such as Iraq against Tehran-backed militias and in Syria battling government troops aided by Iranian forces.

That appeared to change Wednesday when bloodshed came to Tehran. In a few chaotic hours, Iran endured the kind of deadly rampages so often claimed by the Islamic State elsewhere.

The twin attacks, the first major assaults in Iran claimed by the Islamic State, targeted both the heart of Iran's political identity and the notion that militants were no match for the security forces zealously guarding Tehran.

At least 12 people were reported killed and 42 wounded in the assaults in the parliament building and outside the tomb of the leader of the nation's Islamic revolution. Security forces eventually killed all four assailants, state media reported. Hours later, Tehran's police chief said five suspects had been detained and were being interrogated.

While the attacks showed that the United States and Iran have a shared enemy, they appeared unlikely to reset U.S.-led efforts against the Islamic State or bring Iran more directly into the fight - especially since the Trump administration has embraced Iran's main regional foe, Saudi Arabia, as a bulwark in fighting Islamist militants and constraining Iran's regional influence.

In a White House statement, President Trump said Wednesday: "We grieve and pray for the innocent victims of the terrorist attacks in Iran, and for the Iranian people, who are going through such challenging times. We underscore that states that sponsor terrorism risk falling victim to the evil they promote."

The Washington-based National Iranian American Council promptly rebuked what it called Trump's "heartless message," saying that presidents who "cannot genuinely recognize victims of terrorism are incapable of leading the fight against terror."

Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard Corps took a thinly veiled jab at Saudi Arabia as a source of militant ideology, saying it was "meaningful" that the attacks occurred less than three weeks after President Trump visited Riyadh and asserted strong U.S. support for the Saudis and their allies.

The Revolutionary Guard statement added that the "spilled blood of the innocent will not remain unavenged."

Iran is predominantly Shiite Muslim and is at odds with Sunni extremist groups such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, which view Shiites as heretics and have attacked Shiite targets across the region.

While it is unclear what direct measures Iran could take against the Islamic State, the fallout is certain to deepen regional tensions at a difficult time. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and others have pledged to try to heal an unprecedented diplomatic breakin which Saudi Arabia and its allies have severed ties with Qatar, a key U.S. military partner in the Persian Gulf.

The Saudis and their allies accuse Qatar of supporting Islamist militants and oppose its outreach to Iran.

For the Islamic State, striking directly at Iran appears to be part of a wider attempt to stir regional discord.

An attack inside Iran was "absolutely the realization of a long-term ideological goal" for the Islamic State, said Charlie Winter, a senior research fellow at the International Center for the Study of Radicalization at King's College in London.

"Ideologically, the implications are huge," he said. "Attacking Iran is kind of like attacking the U.S. or Israel."

The near-simultaneous attacks - coming in the middle of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan - also appeared calculated to elicit maximum shock among Iranians.

Parliament is widely respected as a voice on domestic policies even though Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has the final word on most international and security issues. The shrine of Khamenei's predecessor, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, is a centerpiece of homage to the 1979 Islamic revolution, which overthrew Iran's Western-allied monarchy.

The timing, meanwhile, could have been intended to boost the Islamic State's stature among backers as it faces a two-pronged assault against its key urban strongholds: Mosul in northern Iraq and Raqqa in Syria. An expanded offensive by U.S.-backed forces against Raqqa, the Islamic State's de facto capital, began Tuesday.

"It is indeed a boost to ISIS morale, especially given that it's the first successful attack in Iran," said Dina Esfandiary, who studies global security issues at the Center for Science and Security Studies at King's College. The Islamic State is also known as ISIS.

Iranian state TV quoted Khamenei as dismissing the attacks as mere "fireworks" that would not weaken Iran's fight against groups such as the Islamic State.

The Islamic State's Amaq news agency claimed that the group carried out the attacks. The Islamic State, however, is often quick to take ownership of spectacular assaults without providing evidence.

But the news agency also circulated a 24-second video that purported to show a fighter walking near a body during the attack on parliament.

"Oh, Sunni people in Iran, don't you feel the pain from those shackles that are tied around your wrists and ankles," one militant said in the video, calling on them to wage battle against Shiites in their "dens and gatherings" in Tehran and other Iranian cities.

The Islamic State also began distributing its online magazine Rumiyah in Persian late last month.

Iran views its parliament, or Majlis, as a symbol of participatory government in contrast to its main regional rivals, including Saudi Arabia and allied sheikhdoms in the Persian Gulf. Last month, Iran's president, Hassan Rouhani, won reelection in a race against hard-line challengers.

"The parliament has very specific meaning for Iran after the recent election. Its democracy was attacked," said Marc Martinez, a senior analyst and Iran expert at the Delma Institute, a political consultancy in the Abu Dhabi.

The expansive complex around Khomeini's tomb is both a spiritual and political testament to the Islamic revolution.

The huge courtyard and buildings, including blue-tiled domes that tower over the mausoleum, are particularly filled with visitors during Ramadan, which began two weeks ago.

Attacks of this kind are rare in Iran's capital, where security forces are deployed at prominent sites. The Revolutionary Guard Corps also maintains a vast network of informants and allies through a volunteer paramilitary force called the Basij.

The parliament building is in the center of the city, and Khomeini's tomb complex is about 12 miles to the south.

Iran has suffered terrorist attacks in the past, but rarely in cities or the capital. Separatist groups and Sunni extremists have carried out bombings in the border region near Pakistan, including a suicide attack in 2010 that killed 39.

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The Washington Post's Paul Schemm in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; Loveday Morris in Irbil, Iraq; and William Branigin and Carol Morello in Washington contributed to this report.

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VIDEO:

Gunman attack parliament and a shrine in assaults claimed by Islamic State in Tehran. (Benjamin 55/YouTube)

http://wapo.st/2qW4UQX

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Video: Attacks in Iran's capital kill 12

The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the June 7 attacks on Iran's parliament and a shrine for the nation's Islamic revolutionary leader. (The Washington Post)

Short URL: http://wapo.st/2r6zqH7

Embed code: <iframe width="480" height="290" scrolling="no" src="//www.washingtonpost.com/video/c/embed/01e23526-4baf-11e7-987c-42ab5745db2e" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe>
South Korea's new president is suspending the installation of remaining components of a controversial U.S. missile shield pending an environmental impact assessment, Yonhap News reported, leaving the system incomplete while North Korea steps up its missile development.

"We are not saying the two launchers and other equipment that has already been deployed should be withdrawn," a senior official at President Moon Jae-in's office said Wednesday, according to Yonhap. "But those that have yet to be deployed will have to wait."

The official said the assessment could take as long as a year, slowing down the full installation of a missile system that China opposes.

During his election campaign, Moon called for a review of the deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense shield that was approved by his predecessor Park Geun-hye. He ordered an investigation last month into how the final components of the Thaad battery arrived in the country without the defense ministry informing him.

Two of the six launchers that form a complete battery were deployed in April in Seongju county, more than 200 kilometers (125 miles) southeast of Seoul, amid protests from residents. The remaining four launchers are needed to make the system fully operational.

"Only having two deployed will certainly minimize the strategic effectiveness of the system," said Michael Raska, an assistant professor in the military transformations program at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. "Of course, that doesn't mean that they won't have any coverage at all."

Defense Secretary James Mattis said last week that Thaad was dispatched to respond to the "real problem" of North Korea, which has tested ballistic missiles nine times this year as part of its nuclear weapons program. China objects to the deployment over concerns its powerful radar would allow spying on its own missile systems.

"There is a confluence of South Korea's domestic policy in a country that is deeply divided over this issue and Chinese pressure at play here," said Raska. "If South Korea accepts Thaad, it becomes increasingly dependent on the U.S., and South Korea is becoming increasingly worried about any unilateral decision by the United States against North Korea."

China is aware of the report and is following domestic developments in South Korea closely, foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a news briefing in Beijing. "No matter what happens, we are firmly opposed to the deployment of the Thaad system," she added.

The news was featured on the home page of China's Communist Party-affiliated Global Times, which ran a headline with two exclamation marks.
There has been much interest - among Republicans, it's hopeful; among Democrats, it's fearful - in how science will be conducted differently at the Environmental Protection Agency under Scott Pruitt. Following President Donald Trump's withdrawal from the Paris climate accord, the EPA head is seeking to explain.

The former Oklahoma attorney general is suddenly appearing on all kinds of media outlets -- from "Meet the Press " this past Sunday, to MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Tuesday to Fox News and Breitbart. In these segments, Pruitt not only defends the decision to depart the Paris accords ("all hat and no cattle," Pruitt called Paris to Fox's Martha MacCallum) but hints at what might come at the EPA.

On "Morning Joe" (not President Trump's favorite forum, incidentally), host and former Florida GOP congressman Joe Scarborough pressed Pruitt on whether he knew (no one else seems to) whether Trump believes that human activity causes climate change.

The appearances on NBC and MSNBC mark a bit of a turning point for Pruitt, who until recently stuck to conservative news organizations. As Scott Waldman of E&E News reported, Pruitt sought out friendly outlets after causing an uproar on CNBC's "Squawk Box" in March after saying that carbon dioxide is not a "primary contributor" to global warming, a position that contradicts the EPA's own science.

But Pruitt is still getting himself in front of Trump's base, where he's talking up some new ideas at his agency. In an interview Monday with a Breitbart podcast, Pruitt endorsed the idea of conducting something called a "Red Team/Blue Team" exercise for climate-change science at the EPA. Pruitt said:

"What the American people deserve, I think, is a true, legitimate, peer-reviewed, objective, transparent discussion about CO2. And, uh, there was a great article in The Wall Street Journal about a month or so ago, Joel, called "Red Team/Blue Team" by Steve Koonin, a scientist I believe at NYU, and he talked about the importance of having a Red Team of scientists and a Blue Team of scientists, and those scientists get in a room and ask, what do we know, what don't we know, and what risk does it pose to human health and the United States and the world, with respect to this issue of CO2. The American people need to have that type of honest, open discussion, and it's something that we hope to provide as part of our leadership."

Let's explain:

What is a "Red Team"?

Essentially, it's a group of people at an organization designated to be the Devil's Advocate (whereas "Blue Team" denotes the status quo). As Koonin, a theoretical physicist at New York University and under secretary for science at President Barack Obama's Department of Energy, put it in the aforementioned op-ed in the WSJ: "The national-security community pioneered the "Red Team" methodology to test assumptions and analyses, identify risks, and reduce-or at least understand-uncertainties. The process is now considered a best practice in high-consequence situations such as intelligence assessments, spacecraft design and major industrial operations."

Who thinks it's a good idea?

Naturally, many scientists outside of the consensus on man-made climate change believe this is the right approach for organizations like the EPA to take. One such scientist -- Judith Curry, professor emeritus at Georgia Tech's School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences -- said as much to the House Science Committee, which oversees the agency, during testimony in March:

"A scientist's job is to continually challenge his/her own biases and ask 'How could I be wrong? Playing 'Devil's Advocate' helps a scientist examine how their conclusions might be misguided and how they might be wrong. Overcoming one's own biases is difficult; an external Devil's Advocate can play a useful role in questioning and criticizing the logic of the argument."

Who thinks it's a bad idea?

Naturally, the scientists whose consensus on climate change is being challenged. They argue that conventional science already has a rigorous process of testing conclusions called peer review in which researchers in the same field anonymously scrutinized research results for errors before publication. (Proponents of the "Red Team" approach counter that a public debate is more honest).

When asked to elaborate on Pruitt's comments, EPA spokesperson Liz Bowman said, "We do not have anything to announce at this time, but as Administrator Pruitt said, the American people need to have that kind of honest, open debate."

If Pruitt decides to have warring teams of scientists duel to the truth inside the EPA, Trump's base might enjoy the spectacle.

Science and global warming especially has become a symbol among conservatives for everything that was wrong with the Obama administration and how the Trump White House can fix it. Trump's withdrawal from the Paris climate accord last week was applauded by 67 percent of Republicans, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, while 25 percent of GOPers opposed it.

If Pruitt goes through with the plan, he would likely endear himself to climate change skeptics, which -- judging by right-wing media sites -- has sometimes not been terribly happy with him, although that was before the Paris exit.

There was much blowback after an ill-received Fox News interview with Pruitt in early April in which Breitbart condemned the EPA head as having "sweated, stuttered, and floundered" and not adequately defending the view that climate change is exaggerated. "Here is the guy who was carefully selected to be in the vanguard of President Trump's war on the Green Blob which, for decades, has been doing untold damage to liberty, the scientific method, and the economy. And he can't even answer a few basic and obvious questions about why the job he is doing is necessary, important, and right," wrote Breitbart's James Delingpole.

But at least Pruitt showed up. Before the Paris deal, some administration officials were sharply divided on what to do about the Paris accords, with Trump's daughter Ivanka and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson leading the pro-Paris side and White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon and Pruitt pushing the anti-Paris cause. Only the withdrawal camp in the White House had an effective advocate on television in Pruitt. The other side didn't.

And by all appearances, Pruitt has gotten a bit better at handling interviewers. Questioned again last Sunday by "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd about what he believes the primary cause of climate change to be, Pruitt deflected:

TODD: "You don't believe that CO2 is the primary cause?"

PRUITT: "No, I didn't say that. I said it's a cause."

TODD: "Primary?"

PRUITT: "It's a cause of many. It's a cause like methane, and water vapor, and the rest."

Meanwhile, Pruitt is making his own stop at the Vatican ahead of a meeting with the G-7 ministers in Italy this week. It's unclear whether he'll meet, like Trump, with Pope Francis and be gifted a second copy of the pope's climate-change encyclical after Trump got one during his recent European trip.

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Paris fallout

- Former President Barack Obama weighs in again on the Paris decision. Calling Trump's decision a "temporary absence of American leadership," he told a group of Canadians in a speech the Paris agreement still has a chance. "We're going to have to act with more urgency. I'm looking forward to the United States being a leader and not just on the sidelines going forward," he said.

- The French ambassador to the United Nations adds his voice to the cacophony decrying the decision, The Post's Anne Gearan reported. "America is perceived on this on the wrong side of history. For some, its status has shifted. Once the most reliable guarantor of the world order, the U.S. is now being considered, again by some, and at the risk of exaggerating, a threat to our planet's equilibrium."

Bret Stephen - the New York Times columnist who wrote that controversial column arguing activists speak with too much certainty about the consequences of climate change -- isn't happy Pruitt quoted from his work during a press conference following the Paris announcement. During a Q&A with fellow columnist Gail Collins, he said:

"I was in Arizona, hiking with my son in Red Rock country, when Scott Pruitt, the E.P.A. administrator, gave the press conference that dragged me into it. I'm supposed to comment on the news, not be the news, so I tried to ignore it. But I guess it's unignorable. At the risk of being the columnist who doth protest too much, let me just say this: My climate column was not, repeat not, about policy. It was about our mentality. It was about the perils of certitude in all things, not just climate but also political campaigning. So it had no business being in a policy statement of any sort."

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Deconstruction sites

Putting into sharp relief the slow pace at which the White House is filling top administration jobs, The Post's Chris Mooney reported that "just seven, or 15 percent, of 46 top science posts in the federal government that require Senate confirmation" have been announced as of Tuesday.
JERUSALEM - As she received a hero's welcome, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Wednesday that Israel faces bullying at the U.N. - and she has no patience for it.

Haley arrived in Israel one day after threatening to withdraw U.S. participation in the United Nations Human Rights Council unless it changes its ways in general and its negative stance on Israel in particular.

Haley, a former South Carolina governor often touted as a future Republican presidential candidate, has focused heavily on what she calls the mistreatment of Israel during her six months at the U.N.

Her vocal efforts have made her the darling of Israeli leaders, as well as endearing her to conservative U.S. pro-Israel organizations.

"Thank you for all your help and standing up for Israel, standing up for the truth," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Haley in statements following their meeting in Jerusalem.

He said that with backing from President Donald Trump, Haley had begun to "change the discourse" on Israel within the international forum headquartered in New York.

"You know, all I've done is to tell the truth, and it's kind of overwhelming at the reaction," said Haley. "It was a habit. And if there's anything I have no patience for is bullies, and the U.N. was being such a bully to Israel, because they could."

Haley said that she has started to see a change in attitude toward Israel in the United Nations, a body that Israel has consistently complained is overwhelming against it, mostly over its 50-year occupation of the West Bank and its day-to-day treatment of the Palestinians.

Israeli leaders are hopeful that with Haley's support, backed by the Trump administration, there will be a change in the way Israel is treated at the U.N.

At a meeting of the Human Rights Council in Geneva on Tuesday, Haley said the United States was "looking carefully" at its participation in the council and she lambasted it for allowing countries involved in human rights abuses to remain members while maintaining what she called "chronic anti-Israel bias."

"It's hard to accept that this council has never considered a resolution on Venezuela, and yet it adopted five biased resolutions in March against a single country, Israel," she said.

Haley will spend three days in Israel, where she is slated to visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, spend time in Tel Aviv and take a helicopter ride to Israel's border with the Gaza Strip. She will also meet with Palestinian leaders, Israeli media reported.

"We are honored to welcome you to our country and thank you for standing resolutely by our side," Israel's Ambassador to the U.N. Danny Danon said at a welcoming ceremony for the American diplomat.

Danon will accompany Haley throughout most of the trip, except during her meetings with the Palestinians and while she makes a private tour of Jerusalem's holy sites.

He said that with help from Haley and the current U.S. administration, "Now is the time to enact real reforms at the U.N. so that it will reflect Israel's true stature in the international community."
Donald Trump's closest friends and allies have begun to publicly warn the president that his Twitter tirades are fueling mayhem in the White House and risk jeopardizing his presidency.

"The tweeting makes everybody crazy," said Trump's close friend Tom Barrack, chairman of Colony Northstar, at a Bloomberg conference in New York Tuesday. "There's just no gain in doing it."

The campaign by Trump's closest supporters amounts to a remarkable appeal to a sitting commander-in-chief, a sort of public intervention with the aim of convincing Trump to give up behavior that they believe is doing lasting damage to his presidency.

The tweets do more than simply distract from the administration's attempts to highlight Trump's policies. Across the administration, a sense of mayhem prevails as Trump's staff find themselves unable to plan and are constantly playing defense because of uncertainty over what the president may next say on Twitter or elsewhere, with his positions constantly shifting, one former administration official said. One Washington consultant whose clients work closely with the administration said the tweets feed into a sense that the White House is losing its way.

Barrack's criticism followed a Trump tweetstorm over the weekend, sparked by the London terrorist attack that killed seven people. Trump criticized the city's mayor and the U.S. Department of Justice for its legal defense of his travel ban. The tweets shocked the British and caused days of distraction, overshadowing the White House's public roll-out of a plan to overhaul the U.S. air-traffic control system.

Trump's allies were so alarmed that several have publicly called for him to stop.

The first public plea came from an unexpected quarter: George Conway, a longtime Trump friend and husband of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway.

"The pt cannot be stressed enough that tweets on legal matters seriously undermine Admin agenda and POTUS--and those who support him, as I do, need to reinforce that pt and not be shy about it," Conway wrote on Twitter Monday morning.

Conway was previously an unnoticed and noncontroversial presence on Twitter, causing news organizations to scramble to verify that he controlled the account. (A spokesman confirmed that he does.) His criticism was amplified on Tuesday by Republican members of Congress, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

"Every day that we're talking about tweets that are off message is a bad day," Graham told reporters.

Privately, Trump's allies had already dialed up pleas to Trump to lay off Twitter and focus on efforts to set the agenda in Washington. That effort has had little effect, said one Trump supporter and GOP consultant. That is perhaps because at least one other close Trump confidant, Republican operative Roger Stone, has encouraged Trump to remain unleashed on Twitter, two people close to Trump said.

"The president has always said that he wanted to buy a newspaper, and Twitter has filled that void -- in fact, he notes it's a newspaper without the losses," said Sam Nunberg, a former Trump campaign aide who was fired but remains a supporter. "There's a method to the madness."

Trump friend Chris Ruddy, the president and chief executive of NewsMax.com, said he thinks Trump should implement an internal White House review process for his tweets before hitting send. "There's nothing wrong with the tweeting," he said, but a backstop would be smart.

Barrack agreed there is a sense of chaos in the White House and said it was unlikely to abate soon. But he cautioned that the first year of any administration is often marked by disarray and said Americans should give Trump more time to find his way.

It is early in Trump's term to descend into panic over his agenda, but his allies say the clock is fast expiring for his loftiest domestic goals, including repeal of Obamacare and a tax overhaul. In a week that top officials hoped he could focus on his infrastructure plan, Trump instead made the narrative his Twitter feud with the London mayor and an apparent shift in policy toward Qatar, also first aired on the social media site.

The White House may lose control of the message again on Thursday when fired FBI Director James Comey testifies about his investigation into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia.

Administration officials felt they had ended last week on a high note after Trump's decision to exit the Paris climate accord. Many of his aides regarded his recently concluded first oversees trip -- during which his personal @realDonaldTrump missives were largely boring -- as a success. They looked forward to a pivot to his domestic agenda, with a focus on infrastructure and improving veterans' health care.

Trump had other ideas. As if demonstrating his disdain for his friends' advice, Trump tweeted again Monday evening -- after Conway's plea -- about his travel ban.

"That's right, we need a TRAVEL BAN for certain DANGEROUS countries, not some politically correct term that won't help us protect our people!"

And on Tuesday morning, he had a message for the hectoring media.

"The FAKE MSM is working so hard trying to get me not to use Social Media," he said. "They hate that I can get the honest and unfiltered message out."

--Bloomberg contributors: Kevin Cirilli Jennifer Jacobs Megan Murphy Steven T. Dennis Laura Litvan Joshua Green and Margaret Talev
BEIJING, June 7 (Xinhua) -- Global investors have appeared more confident in China encouraged by the steady economic recovery since the start of the year, according to a senior director of J.P. Morgan Chase.

"In contrast with a year ago, investors were mainly concerned about the overseas markets ...and were not so worried about the Chinese economy," said Jing Ulrich, the bank's managing director and vice chairman of Asia Pacific, on the sidelines of a three-day China Summit starting Monday.

Ulrich attributed the improved market sentiment to a firming broader economy.

China's GDP expanded 6.9 percent year on year in the first quarter of 2017, the fastest increase in 18 months, with robust investment, factory activity and foreign trade.

Unlike some forecasts that momentum would weaken and a downturn take shape in the second half, she predicted the economy would be resilient and grow 6.7 percent for the whole year, above the government's target of 6.5 percent.

Ulrich highlighted the role of consumption in sustaining the growth, especially a rapidly growing retail market and the Internet finance sector. "China's Internet finance sector will likely develop into a market worth 460 billion yuan (67.79 billion U.S. dollars) by 2020."

Ulrich said there would also be latent risks, citing uncertainties in the property sector, the government's fiscal support and a continued financial tightening.

The J.P. Morgan meeting, the thirteenth in China, has attracted a number of global corporate executives and investors looking to increase their presence and find opportunities in China's economy, as well as officials and economists. The total number of attendees surpassed 2,200. "China has become a core topic of discussion on geopolitics and global trade around the world. So it is significant for global investors to understand China and have a deeper insight into its development trend," Ulrich said.

The attendees will share their views on several areas, including China's financial development and economic outlook, the Belt and Road Initiative, urbanization, retail and e-commerce trend, finance technology and the Internet.
WASHINGTON - Top intelligence officials testified Wednesday to the Senate that they never felt pressured to intervene in an ongoing investigation, despite Washington Post reporting that they told associates that President Donald Trump asked them to either weigh in on the FBI Russia probe or to get the FBI to back off it entirely.

On the surface, their testimonies would seem to contradict The Post's reporting. But if we look closer, both Daniel Coats, the director of national intelligence, and Adm. Mike Rogers, the head of the National Security Agency, left open the possibility that Trump asked them to push back or intervene in an FBI investigation - they just didn't feel pressured to do anything about it.

On Wednesday, Coats and Rogers refused to answer senators' questions about their conversations with the president, saying they didn't want to share those private conversations in a public hearing.

But they did allow this:

Rogers: "In my three-plus-years I have as director of the NSA to the best of my recollection, I have never been directed to do anything I believe illegal, immoral, unethical or inappropriate. And to the best my recollection, during that same period of service, I do not recall ever feeling pressured to doing so."

Coats: "In my time of service, which is interacting with the president of the United States, or anybody in this administration, I have never been pressured. I haven't ever felt pressured to intervene or interfered in anyway in shaping intelligence in a political way."

Except, the Post is not reporting that Trump directed or pressured these intelligence officials to interfere in the FBI investigation. In May, The Post's Adam Entous and Ellen Nakashima reported that Trump asked Coats and Rogers to tell the public there was no evidence of collusion between Trump's campaign and Russia during the 2016 presidential election.

"Coats and Rogers refused to comply with the requests, which they both deemed to be inappropriate," The Post's national security team reported.

On Tuesday, Entous reported that Coats told associates the president asked him if he could intervene in then-FBI Director James B. Comey's investigation into Russia.

When the two were alone, Entous reports, "The president then started complaining about the FBI investigation and Comey's handling of it, said officials familiar with the account Coats gave to associates. . . . Coats discussed the conversation with other officials and decided that intervening with Comey as Trump had suggested would be inappropriate."

If the president directed his intelligence chiefs to do anything about the FBI investigation, that is, of course, more serious. It raises questions among legal experts of whether the president was attempting to obstruct justice.

But even just talking to them about the FBI investigation would still be inappropriate, according to current and former intelligence officials. It's just more nuanced. And given the limited information they shared with the Senate's investigative committee on Russia on Wednesday, Trump's top intelligence officials seem to be residing in that nuance.

For contrast, take House Speaker Paul D. Ryan's, R-Wis., answer Wednesday to the same question posed by a reporter: "Has the president ever asked you to weigh in publicly on his behalf on some of the Russia allegations?"

"No," Ryan said.

Nowhere in Wednesday's hours-long testimony did Coats or Rogers deny the president asked them to intervene; they simply refused to talk about it.

We don't know exactly what happened in the separate conversations between the president and Coats and Rogers. Sen. Mark R. Warner, D-Va., the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, indicated Wednesday that he plans to question a witness to Coats's conversation with the president. And of course, now-fired FBI director James B. Comey is testifying to the Senate on Thursday about his conversations with Trump on all this.

To the extreme frustration of senators on both sides of the aisle, Coats and Rogers refused to share details. The only thing they would say is that they never felt pressured to intervene in the Russia investigation.

To put it in frustratingly opaque government-speak, these top intelligence officials haven't confirmed whether Trump had inappropriate conversations with them about the FBI investigation. But they haven't denied it either.
President Donald Trump has for weeks pressed disparate forces throughout the Middle East to band together with Saudi Arabia to fight terrorism and punish Iran, long viewed by hawks inside his administration as the main source of instability and terrorism in the region.

But in his push to empower the Saudis, Trump may have unleashed problems, including increased sectarianism and regional strife, that are as bad as the one he was trying to fix, inflaming tensions that could imperil the battle against the Islamic State and other critical U.S. priorities.

"That's the fundamental problem in the Middle East," said Phil Gordon, a former official in the Obama White House who focused on the region. "Solving one problem in the region inevitably exacerbates others and can easily lead to escalation."

Trump administration officials, meanwhile, attributed rising regional tensions to the failed policies of the Obama administration, which in recent years had unnerved traditional U.S. allies in the region with policies that appeared to empower Iran.

The signs of that escalation were apparent Wednesday when Iran's leaders blamed Saudi Arabia for an attack by the Islamic State in Tehran that left 12 people dead and wounded 42 others. The stunning assault capped several days of spiraling tensions that kicked off when Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates led a group of Arab allies to move against Qatar - a U.S. partner and host of the main American air base in the region - which had sought accommodation with Iran.

Trump immediately celebrated the Saudis' move and even took some credit for it on Twitter.

"During my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology," Trump said on Tuesday. "Leaders pointed to Qatar - look!"

The danger for the United States and the Trump administration is that the spiraling tensions and saber-rattling throughout the region could imperil some of its key initiatives.

Sunni-led monarchies Saudi Arabia and Qatar are both part of the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State, a Sunni extremist movement that both have been accused over the years of at least indirectly financing.

Qatar is also part of a fragile, Saudi-led coalition fighting against Houthi rebels, in Yemen, backed by Iran's Shiite government.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has made rolling back Iran in Yemen and reaching a negotiated settlement with the rebels a top priority as a step toward containing it across the region. A split among the Arab partners fighting there would be a significant boon for Iran, said analysts.

Yet Trump appeared to take Saudi Arabia's side this week in a dispute with Qatar that his own senior national security advisers tried to quell with evenhandedness.

Qatar is an "artificial crisis," said Michele Dunne, a Middle East expert at the State Department from 1986 to 2003 and director of the Middle East program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

"All of the issues being cited - support for Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood" and the Qatar-based media organization Al Jazeera, which has been critical of both the Saudis and the U.A.E. - "have been going on for years now," Dunne said. "Why, all of a sudden, is there a crisis over it now? It does seem as though the Trump administration's approach to the region has sent a message to Saudi Arabia and the Emirates that they can call the shots in the region, and the U.S. will stick with them."

Dunne and Christopher Davidson, associate professor in Middle East politics at Durham University in England, suggested that Saudi Arabia's long-range plan, in addition to forcing Qatar to mitigate its more open attitude toward both Iran and political Islam, may include inviting the United States to move its air operations in the region from Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar back to Saudi Arabia.

So far, Davidson said: "Qatar is sticking to its guns. Turkey has pledged to support them, and there is provocative news that Iran might support them, too."

Senior Trump administration officials criticized the idea that Trump's backing for the Saudis on his recent trip or his latest tweets condemning Qatar for terrorism financing had contributed to instability or sectarian tension in the region. Instead, one White House official said that it was the previous administration's chilly relationship with Saudi Arabia and its deal with Iran to halt its nuclear weapons program that had "unleashed sectarianism."

From the opening moments of his trip to the Middle East, Trump made clear that he was determined to take the opposite approach of his predecessor. President Barack Obama assiduously avoided taking sides in the region's sectarian conflicts and infuriated the Saudis by suggesting that they would have to "share" the region with Iran.

"The Saudis interpreted that as the president telling them that the Iranians are a predator, and they should acquiesce to their ambitions and surrender to them," said Dennis Ross, who served as a senior Middle East adviser to Republican and Democrat presidents. "That is not my interpretation. That is literally what I was told in the region."

Since taking office, Trump has flipped the script, prioritizing the battle against all forms of terrorism over sectarian and regional tensions. The result for now is a stepped-up battle against the Islamic State that has involved deeper U.S. military involvement, some impressive battlefield gains and greater civilian casualties.

Both Trump and the Saudis described the president's meetings in the kingdom last month as the beginning of a new era in U.S.-Arab relations, the fight against terrorism and a much harder line on Iran.

"People have said there has really never been anything even close in history," Trump said.

His national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, amplified that message and spoke hopefully of a new alliance involving Israel and America's Arab partners - "all friends of America but too often adversaries of each other" - to roll back Iranian influence.

In a meeting with reporters, McMaster described Iran as "the greatest state sponsor of terrorism in the world" and a malign influence that has perpetuated civil wars throughout the region.

"These are really, really good reasons to focus on a concerted effort to counter Iran's destructive activities," McMaster said.

The long-term bet is that the United States' allies will be willing to take a harder line against Sunni Arab terrorist groups, such as the Islamic State, if the United States is also taking a harder line against Iran, which the Saudis and the Emiratis see as an existential threat.

In recent days, though, it has been hard to divine the exact policy that the administration is pursuing, especially regarding the dispute between the Qataris and the powerful Saudi-led bloc opposing them, is promoting more or less stability.

"What they are doing vis-a-vis Qatar is really unprecedented," Ross said. " This is not symbolic. You break diplomatic relations, deny Qatari planes the ability to operate in your airspace, call back nationals. This is a very tough response."

"The policy looks very much like a work in progress," Ross said.
WASHINGTON - Alone in the White House in recent days, President Donald Trump - frustrated and defiant - has been spoiling for a fight, according to his confidants and associates.

Glued even more than usual to the cable news shows that blare from the televisions in his private living quarters, or from the 60-inch flat screen he had installed in his cramped study off the Oval Office, he has fumed about "fake news." Trump has seethed as his agenda has stalled in Congress and the courts. He has chafed against the pleas for caution from his lawyers and political advisers, tweeting whatever he wants, whenever he wants.

And on Thursday, the president will come screen-to-screen with the former FBI director he fired, James Comey, who has consumed, haunted and antagonized him by overseeing an expanding Russia investigation that the president slammed as a "witch hunt."

Comey's testimony is a political Super Bowl - with television networks interrupting regular programming to air it, and some Washington offices and bars making plans for special viewings.

Trump is keen to be a participant rather than just another viewer, two senior White House officials said, including the possibility of taking to Twitter to offer acerbic commentary during the hearing.

"I wish him good luck," the president told reporters on Tuesday.

"He's infuriated at a deep-gut, personal level that the elite media has tolerated [the Russia story] and praised Comey," former House speaker Newt Gingrich said. "He's not going to let some guy like that smear him without punching him as hard as he can."

This account of Trump's mind-set and the preparations of his team in the run-up to Comey's testimony is based on interviews with 20 White House officials, Trump friends and other senior Republicans, many of whom spoke only on the condition of anonymity to offer candid perspectives.

The president's lawyers and aides have been urging him to resist engaging, and they hope to keep him busy Thursday with other events meant to compete for his - and the news media's - attention.

"The president's going to have a very, very busy day," White House press secretary Sean Spicer said. "I think his focus is going to be on pursuing the agenda and the priorities that he was elected to do."

As of now, Trump's Thursday morning - when Comey is scheduled to start testifying - is open. He plans to deliver a 12:30 p.m. speech at the Faith and Freedom Coalition's conference in Washington, D.C., followed by a 3:30 p.m. meeting with governors and mayors on infrastructure projects.

Jay Sekulow, a prominent conservative lawyer in Washington, has met several times recently with Trump and said he found the president to have his attention squarely on his priorities.

"He's been very much in control and in command," Sekulow said. "I don't sense any siege or panic at all. ... I've been there a lot, and I don't see the president in any context distracted or flustered by any of this. I just don't see it."

But privately, Trump's advisers said they are bracing for a worst-case scenario: that he ignores their advice and tweets his mind.

"He's not going to take an attack by James Comey laying down," said Roger Stone, a longtime Trump friend and former political adviser. "Trump is a fighter, he's a brawler and he's the best counterpuncher in American politics."

The president increasingly has come to see Twitter as his preferred method of communicating with his supporters, no matter the pitfalls.

"The FAKE MSM is working so hard trying to get me not to use Social Media. They hate that I can get the honest and unfiltered message out," Trump tweeted on Tuesday morning, making a reference to the "mainstream media."

The West Wing, meanwhile, has taken on an atmosphere of legal uncertainty. White House counsel Donald McGahn has told staff to hold onto emails, documents and phone records, officials said, a move of caution designed to prepare the staff for future legal requests, should they come. McGahn has specifically advised staffers to avoid what are known as the "burn bags" in the executive branch that are often used to discard papers.

While people familiar with the White House counsel's office described McGahn's moves as appropriate steps because of the ongoing probes, they said many junior staffers are increasingly skittish and fearful of their communications eventually finding their way into the hands of investigators.

Some staffers nervous about their own personal liability are contemplating hiring lawyers and have become more rigorous about not putting things in text messages or emails that they would not want to be subpoenaed, one person familiar with the situation said.

Attempting to invoke executive privilege to restrict Comey's testimony was never seriously considered by Trump or his legal team, said one senior White House official. But, this official added, the White House liked floating the possibility as a distraction.

In the weeks leading up to Comey's testimony, the White House had privately tried to erect a war room that would handle the communications and legal strategies for responding to the Russia matter. Former Trump campaign aides Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie were in discussions to lead it.

But the plan was scuttled, as with so much else in Trump's administration, because of internal disagreements, according to multiple officials. Arguments included whether the war room would be run from inside or outside the gates of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.; who would staff it; whether they could be trusted by the president's senior team, or even trust one another; and whether Marc Kasowitz, Trump's outside counsel, would ultimately control the message.

Kasowitz, who has a long-standing relationship with Trump, has been operating as an island of sorts in Trump world. He has been meeting regularly with the president and has a nascent relationship with McGahn, but he has not widely shared his legal strategy within the West Wing, according to two officials involved.

Kasowitz, whose combative personality mirrors Trump, has not found it easy to entice other big-name lawyers with Washington experience to join the cause because many prominent attorneys are reluctant to have him giving them direction and wonder whether he will be able to keep Trump from stumbling, one official said.

In the absence of a war room - and with the departure of communications director Michael Dubke - planning for the White House's response to the Comey hearing has fallen largely to Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and his lieutenants.

Trump's team is preparing a campaign-style line of attack aimed at undercutting Comey's reputation. They plan to portray him as a "showboat" and to bring up past controversies from his career, including his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation in 2016, according to people involved in the planning.

The Republican National Committee has lined up a roster of surrogates to appear on conservative news stations nationwide to defend Trump. But a list the RNC distributed on Tuesday could hardly be described as star-studded: The names include Bob Paduchik, an RNC co-chair who worked on Trump's Ohio campaign; Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, R; and Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, R.

Trump so far has been unable to recruit reinforcements for his beleaguered senior staff. Conversations about former Trump campaign official David Urban possibly joining the White House have stalled, although he remains in contact with several Trump advisers, officials said.

The White House has long struggled with its communications team, with Trump both privately and publicly voicing displeasure with his current staff. Press secretary Sean Spicer has started appearing less frequently on camera, and Trump and several top advisers, including son-in-law Jared Kushner, are considering a range of options to revamp the current structure.

The White House recently approached Geoff Morrell - who served as the Pentagon press secretary for more than four years under former Defense Secretary Robert Gates - about coming inside the administration and overhauling the communications operation, according to three people with knowledge of the overture.

Morrell declined to comment, but BP announced last month that Morrell would be moving to London this summer to run government relations and communications for the company globally.

Scott Reed, senior political strategist at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, was also approached about taking a communications role within the White House, according to two people familiar with the outreach. Reed declined to comment.

In addition, Laura Ingraham, a conservative talk-radio host and Trump friend, discussed joining the White House but made clear to officials that she is more comfortable remaining outside as a vocal Trump ally because of her many broadcasting and media commitments, officials said.

Some Trump loyalists outside the White House who are preparing to go on television news shows Thursday to defend the president and undermine Comey's testimony said they have been given no talking points, nor seen any evidence of a strategy taking shape. One such loyalist said external supporters are afraid to coordinate too closely with the White House because they fear they could be accused of obstructing justice.

Trump is personally reaching out to some allies on the Senate Intelligence Committee ahead of their questioning of Comey. He was scheduled to have dinner Tuesday night at the White House with Sens. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., both committee members, along with a few other lawmakers. The dinner had been long scheduled for the president to offer a debrief on his foreign trip, a senior White House official said.

Inside the West Wing, senior officials and junior aides fear that the president's erratic behavior could have sweeping legal and political consequences, and they are frustrated that he has not proven able to focus on his agenda - this was supposed to be "infrastructure week," for instance. Many are also resigned to the idea that there is little they can do to moderate or thwart Trump's moves, so instead they are focused on managing the fallout.

One Republican close to the White House summed up the staff's mantra as: "Please, don't, you're not helping things."

But Trump and his loyalists see a political advantage to the president personally engaging, however unseemly it may appear to traditionalists.

"He believes in the long run there is an enormous premium on being the person who stands there fighting," said Gingrich, author of "Understanding Trump," an upcoming book. "People respond to that and wonder if he's fighting this hard, maybe he's right and the other guys are wrong. It's the core of how he operates."

Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard Law School professor and criminal law expert whose television commentary on the Russia probe has caught the Trump team's attention, said he understands why the president would be motivated to speak out to counter Comey's testimony.

"Every lawyer would tell the president not to tweet, not to react," Dershowitz said. "But he's not listening. This is typical. I tell my clients all the time not to talk and they simply disregard it. It'd very hard to tell a very wealthy, very powerful man not to tweet. He thinks, 'I tweeted my way to the presidency,' and he's determined to tweet."
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An arson investigator testified Tuesday that a 2013 fire that engulfed a pickup where the body of a toddler was found was intentionally set inside the passenger compartment.

Juan Martinez, an investigator with the San Antonio Fire Department, also told the Bexar County jury that will decide the fate of Joel Soto that the only spot not completely burned inside the mans pickup was on the passenger seat, underneath where 2-year-old Jeremy Soto sat.

Do you believe the fire was intentionally set? asked prosecutor Stephanie Boyd.

Yes, I do, Martinez said.

When Boyd asked what Martinez thought was the source, he said an accelerant.

Soto, who turned 55 on Tuesday, the second day of his murder trial, told police that he was having trouble with his 1988 Chevy pickup on Nov. 16, 2013, and pulled over in the 5300 block of Rogers Road on the far West Side to see why smoke was coming from underneath the hood. He said the pickup caught fire with his 2-year-old grandson, Jeremy Soto, still inside.

Prosecutors allege Soto started the fire to hide that his grandson  whom he had custody of  already was dead from ingesting methamphetamine. The defense disputes that, saying the state cant prove Soto was in possession of illegal drugs.

Defense attorney Justin Fischer spent part of Monday afternoon and Tuesday objecting to several crime scene photographs that showed the victims body, calling them prejudicial.

Judge Ron Rangel allowed almost all the photos after Martinez, under questioning by both defense and prosecutors, said each one showed an angle that was important for his investigation.

Martinez said he smelled a strong odor of gasoline inside the vehicle, especially on clothing found on the floorboard of the burned-out pickup. One of the photographs showed a red melted spot that the investigator identified as a melted gas can that was near the pickup.

He also testified that marks on the pickup showed that the fire burned from the inside the pickup, and from the top down. He said the way the vehicle was damaged showed that the fire did not start under the hood, as the defendant said, but that it started in the passenger compartment.

When Boyd asked if there was any area that still contained cloth or foam, Martinez pointed to the passenger area on a photograph that did not show the childs remains.

The decedent was seated there, protecting the foam and cloth, Martinez told the jury.

If convicted of murder, Soto faces up to life in prison. He also is charged with arson and injury to a child by omission.

The trial resumes 9 a.m. Thursday morning in the 379th state District Court.

ezavala@express-news.net
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A detention deputy with the Bexar County Sheriffs Department received a 15-day suspension in May for repeatedly cursing at his estranged wife and calling her derogatory names while working private security at the Fiesta Oyster Bake.

Dentention Deputy Rico Renteria continually threatened to not let his wife into the event, even after being ordered repeatedly by a sheriffs sergeant to cut it out, according to suspension paperwork obtained by the San Antonio Express-News.

In the suspension documentation, Assistant Chief Deputy Ronald Bennett chastised Renterias actions, saying: Your failure to submit to authority, arrogant behavior, immature demeanor and lack of respect for authority placed the Sheriffs Office in a liable situation and damaged the good reputation of the Sheriffs Office as a whole.

RELATED: SAPD: Man steals squad car, leads police on high-speed chase, fights 2 officers before arrest

Around 8 p.m. April 21, during the Fiesta Oyster Bake, Renteria was working private security in his full sheriffs office uniform when he saw his estranged wife in line.

That (expletive) isnt allowed in here, he said, according to the paperwork. She was kicked out earlier!

A sergeant at the event asked Renteria who he was referring to. That (expletive) in the blue skirt! he responded. She knows better, shes my soon to be ex-(expletive)-wife and knows she is not allowed to be near me.

RELATED: Relative says 15-year-old held dying S.A. mother in arms after gunman shot her in back

Another sergeant reprimanded Renteria, telling him to return to his assigned duties. He smirked and continued yelling, according to the documentation.

Youre not (expletive) coming in! he said. Get the (expletive) out of here!

After receiving the suspension on May 1, Renteria requested a hearing with the assistant chief deputy, but Bennett upheld the discipline. Under the Bexar County Sheriffs Civil Service Rules, Renteria can appeal the decision to the chief deputy.

Renteria is one of 13 sheriffs officers or deputies who have received a suspension since the beginning of the year, out of nearly 2,000 employees in the department.

eeaton@express-news.net

Twitter: @emilieeaton
In mid-May, a senior member of the CPC, Wang Wenzhi, offered 10,000 RMB ($1,472) to dig a well in his village. He was concerned that without the well, people might starve due to a persistent drought.

The dry season lasts from the middle of May to July every year. Surrounded by the Taihang Mountains, Wangs village in northern Chinas Hebei province hasnt seen a single drop of rain for nearly half a year.

Though Wang was told by the village committee director Gu Wenxing that people are better off now and no one would starve, Wang nevertheless insisted on the donation. Thanks to his generosity, the village has now laid water pipelines in all its apple orchards to facilitate drip irrigation.

Wang joined the Chinese People's Liberation Army in 1947, and fought in the Liberation War and the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea. He and his wife live a simple life; an old television set and several cooking utensils make up the entirety of their belongings. Wang accepts no help from the government, saying that as long as he can rely on himself, he will not ask for help from the country.

Wang lent the Party constitution to Gu, who is currently a probationary Party member. He suggested that the latter carefully study the book in order to better serve the people.

Wang is an examplary Party member, Gu said.
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A 31-year-old man stole a San Antonio Police Department squad car, led officers on a chase and then injured two of them in a fight Wednesday morning in the North Side, according to police.

Michael Anthony Fernandez is now facing charges of possession of a controlled substance, felony criminal mischief, evading arrest and resisting arrest. He remains in the Bexar County Jail on a $67,000 bond.

RELATED: Relative says 15-year-old held dying S.A. mother in arms after gunman shot her in back

The hectic incident began around 2:45 a.m. in the 100 block of Lorenz, when officers responded to a suspicious person call at an apartment complex.

When police arrived, they encountered Fernandez, who immediately ran through the complex, then doubled back to the unattended squad cars. He entered one of the units and fled the scene.

Police said Fernandez drove onto Loop 410 and headed to the Northwest Side. The exact route of the chase is unclear, but the squad car was eventually spiked near UTSA Boulevard.

Fernandez finally came to a stop on the eastbound lanes of Interstate 10 near Colonnade Boulevard, according to police. He bailed from the squad car and ran across the westbound lanes to a nearby shopping center.

RELATED: Teen accused of luring man to West Side apartments where he was robbed at gunpoint

At one point, Fernandez allegedly turned around and fought two pursuing officers, causing them unknown injuries, according to police. After the fight, the Fernandez was arrested.

Bexar County deputies and paramedics responded to the chase Wednesday morning for assistance.

Text "NEWS" to 77453 for breaking news alerts from mySA.com

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Twitter: @calebjdowns
"its an agony". This is how Ignacio Echeverrias family defined it, the young man from Asturias whose location is unknown since last Saturday night, when he was last seen while he was trying to fend off the attack of three jihadist terrorists on a woman in London bridge. Ignacio Echeverrias father, Joaquin, from Oviedo, and his wife, flew yesterday at midday to the British capital city to follow up the verifications by the British police authorities. "The British authorities have asked us 24 or 48 hours longer", revealed yesterday his brother in his Facebook account, where he took the opportunity to thank the management performed by the Spanish authorities, from the diplomatic delegation to the Foreign Office.

"There is no news", assured yesterday evening a spokesman from the Diplomatic Information Office to LA NUEVA ESPANA after becoming known that Ignacio Echeverria was one of the seven fatal victims from the terrorist attack. "The fingerprints sent to the British authorities are being checked but we have no information so far about the results", added the same sources to this newspaper. His DNA is also being checked to confirm if it corresponds to any of the four fatal victims which are still pending identification. The missing mans brother, Joaquin Echeverria, admitted, also in the social networks, that it was no "good sign" that Great Britain demanded the fingerprints and in his message of appreciation to the Spanish authorities he emphasised the "terrible moments" the family was going through.

Joaquin Echeverria expressed "the greatest gratitude" from his family to the personnel of the Spanish Embassy and Consulate in London, in special to the ambassador, Carlos Basterreche; the consul, Jose Riera; the Foreign minister, Alfonso Dastis; and the Interior minister, Juan Ignacio Zoido. He also remarked the "exquisite and delicate constant attention in these last two days, even at early hours of the morning" of the Ministry officials who had attended them in the last days, of great anguish for all the family, which his brother in law echoed through another Twitter message: "The families of the London Bridge attack victims feel mistreated due to the lack of information, which leads to an unnecessary agony. 63 hours and no news yet", he wrote yesterday evening Fernando Vergara, who also lives in London with one of the sisters of the missing man.

The English media have already baptised Joaquin Echeverria as "the skateboard hero" as he was skating with some friends when he saw the attack on a woman, to whom he tried to defend from the terrorists. "In this moment, he jumped off his bicycle and hit the aggressor with a skateboard while the other two terrorists attacked him from behind and he laid on the floor. He was brave, he got into it to defend a woman" told his family yesterday.

Five people, among them Ignacio Echeverria, are yet to be found after the attack. Out of the 48 wounded people taken to hospitals, 36 remain in hospital yet, 18 of them in critical conditions, according to the police, which also explains that the identification of the rest of the victims is being slowed down as some of them are foreigners. The 21-year-old Australian woman Sara Zelenak is one of the missing people, as well as the French man Xavier Thomas, who was last seen in the area of the attacks.
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U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on June 6 emphasized the importance of the U.S.-China economic relationship, and said that he likes where it is heading.

I couldnt be more pleased with the direction of where we are heading, Mnuchin said in his keynote address at the annual meeting of the U.S.-China Business Council (USCBC) in Washington.

One major accomplishment Mnuchin brought up was the newly established Comprehensive Economic Dialogue, an important outcome of the meeting between the two countries' leaders at Mar-a-Lago in Florida.

I think that we made very good progress. The first issue is clearly we agreed on establishing the dialogue and making it action-oriented, Mnuchin said. We moved ahead with the 100-day plan. We have already agreed on very significant steps, probably the most notable is opening of their market for beef.

According to the first results of the action plan released by both sides in May, in addition to U.S. beef imports, China also agreed to allow wholly foreign-funded financial services to provide credit ratings in China, while the United States is to import cooked poultry from China.

The moves won applause from American businesses. USCBC President John Frisbie said that he is pleased with these initial outcomes to better balance the two countries commercial relationship.

Mnuchin also spoke highly of two sides' cooperation on financing anti-terrorism intelligence and the two leaders' discussions of the North Korea nuclear issue.

Speaking about the prospect of a bilateral investment agreement, Mnuchin emphasized that the Trump administration's approach to China prioritizes specific issues: I think what we're looking for is, opposed to just negotiating a large agreement, we're looking to negotiate very specific issues that deal with market issues today, he stated.
There was a large turnout of up to 100 local traders at the Longford County Council and Longford Chamber of Commerce Retail and Town Renewal seminar in the Longford Arms held on Tuesday, May 30.

Guest speaker on the night was Kevin Fitzsimons of Retail Excellence who gave an insightful presentation into the challenges faced by the retail sector.

Retail Excellence offers advice and guidance to thousands of its retail members across the country and this experience allowed Mr Fitzsimons to give real examples of how rural towns across Ireland and individual retail outlets have addressed the threats posed by on-line shopping, out of town malls, changing trends etc.

For individual retailers he placed particular focus on improving the offer to the customer giving them a better retail experience. He stressed the need to be knowledgeable about the products, create a story around them, display product information in a clear and concise manner and expand the reasons to visit the shop premises.

Speaking to the different authorities present he spoke about improvements to the public realm making a difference and the challenge for actually improving citizen engagement to the point that locals feel prouder in their town and more inclined to shop locally.

Contributions from the floor emphasised the importance of recognising and promoting what is positive about our living and retail space and special mention was given to Longford and Ballymahon Tidy Towns groups and the wonderful work they undertake on a daily basis. Paddy Mahon, Chief Executive of Longford County Council spoke about the his experience in Westport  Irish Times winner of Best Place to Live in Ireland, and attributed their success to a long term plan with the community, politicians and council management working together for the good of the town.

Derek Scanlon, President of Longford Chamber and Cllr Padraig Loughrey both recognised the achievements of all the business people in the room and spoke about the optimism generated around new retail outlets, upgrades or achievements.

Longford County Council Director of Services, Barbara Heslin reinforced the Councils commitment to a town renewal programme and reiterated the need for everyone to come together to promote and build on all the positive aspects Longford has on offer.

The event will be followed up with a dedicated capacity building programme aimed at the retail sector and anyone interested in taking part should contact the local LEO office 043 33 43321.
A man who was caught urinating along a busy street in north Longford has been fined 250 by Judge Seamus Hughes.

Patrick McDonnell, of St Annes, Clonturk, Longford pleaded guilty to urinating in a public place at Main Street, Granard on September 4 2016.

Mr McDonnell, who pleaded guilty to the offence was also charged with assault causing harm to a man he allegedly assaulted on the same date.

That incident, the court heard, took place at The Harpers Lodge, Granard.

When the matter was brought to the attention of Judge Hughes it was revealed the alleged victim wished to withdraw his original statement.

The man, who was called into the witness box to explain why he was now reneging on what he had previously stated.

He (Mr McDonnell) apologised through family and since then he apologised to me directly two weeks ago, said the man.

And I was happy enough to accept that.

The man denied he had been offered money by Mr McDonnell to withdraw his complaint, adding his injuries included facial swelling and a small cut inside his mouth.

Shrugging his shoulders as he looked down from the bench, Judge Hughes said there was little the court could do but to strike out the Section 3 assault charge against Mr McDonnell.

It was a move which nonetheless drew a stinging riposte from the judge.

Its very easy to say that, he told Mr McDonnells alleged victim, stating the lost manpower in investigating the case was something which especially annoyed him.

The law should change where people are wasting the resources of the Gardai.

You are getting the Gardai to do your dirty work.

In dismissing the assault charge, Judge Hughes turned his attention to the two other public order charges before the court.

Superintendent Brian Mohan said it was around 11:30pm when gardai who were passing through Granard in a patrol car spotted a man in a highly intoxicated state, falling around and unable to stand.

Gardai approached the male and Garda Lynn requested him to put his penis back inside his trousers, he explained.

Dressed in a suit and with his hands clasped in front of him, Mr McDonnell told the court he was a self employed market trader.

Standing beside him, his solicitor Brid Mimnagh said it was Mr McDonnells wife who alerted gardai to the fact her husband was in Granard drinking.

Ms Mimnagh said her client, a 52-year-old father of six was equally quick to put his hands up on the first occasion.

Judge Hughes was more keen to examine why Mr McDonnell had not opted to use a toilet.

He (Mr McDonnell) was outside at this stage, replied Ms Mimnagh.

He is a man who should have known better and it was a case of drink in, wit out.

In the midst of Ms Mimnagh continuing her mitigation to the court, Mr McDonnells wife stood up in the public gallery in an attempt to give further clarity to the incident.

I apologise, she said.

Mr husband was going through a tough time and his mother was not long deceased.

Mr McDonnell himself said he very much regretted his actions and was embarrassed by having to defend himself in an open court setting.

I wouldnt say it would be too easy to embarrass you, Judge Hughes sternly replied to Mr McDonnell.

Ms Mimnagh was quick to step in, insisting her client was not a man that would carry on like that.

Judge Hughes was not for turning however, sharply telling Ms Mimnagh: Sure, you wouldnt have a clue what he (Mr McDonnell) does.

In finalising the case, Judge Hughes imposed a 250 fine for the urination charge while the second public order offence was taken into consideration.
Gardai are investigating the damage done to Granard Motte after a metre-wide hole was dug in the base of the structure in a possible attempt to steal from the site.

There are several myths attached to the national monument, with rumours that a castle or vast amounts of treasures are concealed within its hollow centre.

But, according to Granard Postmaster Padraig McNamara, the chances of the perpetrators finding any buried treasure inside the well-known Granard heritage structure are slim.

Theres nothing there that Ive been aware of, Mr McNamara told the Longford Leader on Tuesday morning.

I dont really know what is inside the Motte. I know excavations have been done before and, if there was anything there, it would have been excavated.

The hole in the Motte was dug sometime between May 24 and June 1, and is about a metre wide, but no arrests have been made in connection with the crime as of yet.

Ive seen what has been done and I know the guards are following a definite line of enquiry, said Mr McNamara, who is heavily involved with the Granard Motte Community Enterprise.

Its sad to see that happen, but there is a positive side to it too because it has highlighted where were at with the heritage centre.

The Granard Motte Community Enterprise Ltd is an organisation set up by the people of Granard, who took a major step in purchasing 15 acres of land beside Granard town with the aim of turning it into a major tourist attraction.
A man who was convicted under the Theft & Fraud Offences Act before Longford Circuit Court last week received a suspended prison sentence following a hearing into the matter.

Festus Olubiyo with an address in County Cavan appeared before Judge Keenan Johnson where he pleaded guilty to two counts of deception by offering credit cards presented as genuine but which were fraudulent - one at Foxs Gala, Ballinalee on November 5, 2015, the other at McBriens Supermarket, Granard on November 9, 2015.

Outlining the evidence to the court, State prosecutor, Des Dockery BL said that on November 5 last, the accused entered the store in Ballinalee where he chose to purchase bananas and chewing gum.

When he got to the till, he told the lady there, that he wanted to purchase two 100 Paysafe vouchers, continued Mr Dockery BL.

He then handed the lady a Mastercard and told her that the chip wasnt working and he would have to manually enter the code.

The sale allowed him to make the purchase, however the next day when the owner of Gala - Declan Fox - rang the bank, he was told that the Mastercard that was accepted had been cloned from a card in Finland.

He was also told that he would be at a loss as a result of the transaction.

The court was then told that a few days later, on November 9, the accused travelled towards Granard and subsequently stopped off to purchase a number of items at McBriens supermarket located in the heart of the north Longford town.

While in McBriens, Mr Olubiyo ordered two 100 Paysafe vouchers and told the girl on the checkout that the chip wasnt working on the card but he could enter the pin manually, Mr Dockery BL added.

The Paysafe vouchers were printed off, but the owner Michael McBrien was also there and he immediately became suspicious and refused to allow the Mastercard to be used for payment.

Mr Olubiyo then asked Mr McBrien not to cancel the vouchers and indicated that he would return in one hour with cash for them.

The court went on to hear that 20 minutes later, the cashier in McBriens endeavoured to cancel the Paysafe vouchers but as she was doing so discovered that one of them had already been cashed.

The accused had taken a photo of the voucher on his phone while in the supermarket and then keyed in the code when he left, added Mr Dockery who then pointed out that Garda Liam Staunton happened to be passing on the street at the time and observed Mr Olubiyo leaving the store.

CCTV footage was viewed and the workers at both stores were in a position to identify the accused.

Mr Dockery BL went on to say that the defendant was subsequently arrested on December 5, 2015 and questioned at Bailieboro Garda Station.

The court heard that there was also a deportation order in place in respect of the accused but it had not been activated due to other legal matters including Mr Olubiyos application to the State seeking asylum.

Garda Staunton also told Judge Johnson that the defendant had 28 previous convictions including 18 for theft; three for driving with no insurance and seven for other road traffic matters.

The court also heard that the defendant had handed in 300 to the Gardai in recompense to the County Longford shop owners.

In mitigation, the defendants barrister, Mr OSullivan BL said that his client came to Ireland eight years ago and for the first six of those years, Never came to the attention of the Gardai.

It was only after his child was born that he encountered financial hardship; he has never been entitled to employment and as they say, The devil makes work for idle hands, Mr OSullivan BL continued.

He did turn to criminality, but he wasnt very successful at it because on each attempt at criminality, he was apprehended.

Mr OSullivan BL went on to tell the court that his client was genuinely remorseful about what happened.

Counsel said that Mr Olubiyo had made full restitution in respect of the matter before the court, and now lived quietly with his partner and child in Cavan.

I am asking you judge not to impose a custodial sentence; he has other matters before the courts and is hoping to make restitution in all of these matters, continued Mr OSullivan BL.

He will need time to be able to do that.

During his deliberations on the matter, Judge Johnson said that the accused struck him as being like somebody driving in a vehicle and picking up penalty points as he drives around.

He went on a spree, didnt he?, added the Judge.

He has pleaded guilty to both charges, however there was a considerable degree of connivance involved in what he did.

These are serious charges in that it is difficult enough for retailers to make a living these days without Mr Olubiyo carrying on like that.

It appears to me that the accused was on a role when he was apprehended by Garda Staunton.

Those seeking asylum in this country are being forced to live on 19 per week and this is something that really needs to be looked at.

The Judge subsequently sentenced the defendant to four years in prison on each charge but reduced the term to two years and eight months which he then suspended for five years on the condition the accused enter into a bond to keep the peace and be of good behaviour, and pay 1,000 to St Mels Conference, St Vincent de Paul. The matter will appear back before Judge Johnson on February 2. next.
Pets & Animal, Local News, Community, Charity & Cause, Politics

By Long Island News & PR Published: June 07 2017

Murray: "It is our responsibility to protect all pets, not just our own, because they dont have the ability to stand up against those who abuse their love and trust."

Albany, NY  June 7, 2017  Assemblyman Dean Murray (R,C,I- Assemblyman Dean Murray (R,C,I- East Patchogue ) is proud to continue to show his support for animals by sponsoring the Legislatures 7th annual Animal Advocacy Day. The day brings animals of all shapes and sizes to Albany with an increased focus on passing bills to improve protections for both animals and their owners.

A true pet enthusiast, Murray publishes Long Island Pet Lover newspaper and website and is also the dedicated owner of two dogs, Pete and Lola.
School & Education, Local News, Business & Finance

By Long Island News & PR Published: June 07 2017

Students from Farmingdale High School Win Awards in Multiple Categories.

Farmingdale, NY  June 7, 2017  Farmingdale High School business students recently participated in the annual Long Island Business Teachers Association competition. Every year, students compete as part of the Farmingdale School Districts advanced business curriculum, preparing the next generation of business leaders in America. In order to compete, Farmingdale High School business teachers selected two students to compete in each of the curriculum related contests. Students took an 80 question multiple choice test or a computer performance exam to qualify. The following students placed in the top five in their category against other Long Island students:

Christian Roth, 1st Place in Business Principles

Andrew Needham, 2nd Place in Business Law

Nicole Hamberger, 2nd Place in Web Design

Danielle Hopkins, 2nd Place in Web Design

Delia Masterson, 3rd Place in Accounting

Avery Stevenson, 4th Place in Accounting

Anthony Barbuto, 2nd Place in Business Calculations

Willie Wenzel, 5th Place in Business Calculations

Matthew Pinna, 3rd Place in College Accounting

Anthony Bhasin, 4th Place in Computer Applications

During a luncheon to celebrate the competition winners, Farmingdale High School senior Joseph Schmidt was also awarded a $500 scholarship to attend college. The scholarship is open to all seniors who have completed at least 3 credits in business education and plan on attending college next year majoring in business or business education.

Business teacher Jonas Viik was also awarded the Teacher of the Year award for 2017. Each year LIBTA recognizes an outstanding member who has positively influenced Business Education. Criteria may include such factors as interest and enthusiasm for the education of students, improving and expanding the Business Education program and active business involvement at the local, state or national levels.
Local News, Crime

By Long Island News & PR Published: June 07 2017

Joseph Valerio of Smithtown, 50, also ordered to serve a lifetime term of supervised release to follow his prison sentence.

Joseph Valerio of Smithtown, 50, has been sentenced to 60 years imprisonment for the production, transportation, receipt and possession of child pornography.

Smithtown, NY  June 7, 2017  Earlier today, Joseph Valerio, of Earlier today, Joseph Valerio, of Smithtown , New York, was sentenced at the federal courthouse in Central Islip , to 60 years imprisonment for the production, transportation, receipt and possession of child pornography. The sentencing proceeding was held before United States District Judge Joseph F. Bianco, who also ordered Valerio to serve a lifetime term of supervised release to follow his prison sentence. Valerio will be required to register as a sex offender.

The sentence was announced by Bridget M. Rohde, Acting United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York; William F. Sweeney, Jr., Assistant Director-in-Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation, New York Field Office (FBI); and Timothy D. Sini, Commissioner, Suffolk County Police Department (SCPD).

This lengthy prison sentence ensures that the defendant will never harm another child as long as he lives and serves as a warning to anyone who victimizes children, stated Acting United States Attorney Rohde.

As a parent, hearing details about the child pornography cases we are investigating is extremely hard, so it begins to boggle the mind when the victims are six and two-years-old, stated FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge Sweeney. These children cant fight off their attackers because the abuse is at the hands of adults who are supposed to be feeding, clothing and sheltering them from the evil in the world. No child should ever have to endure this sort of pain, humiliation and abuse. The agents and task force officers on the FBI Child Exploitation Task Force wont ever stop going after these predators with every tool we have.

The crimes committed by Joseph Valerio are despicable and this sentence of 60 years ensures the defendant will spend the rest of his life in prison for these heinous crimes, stated SCPD Commissioner Sini.

The evidence at trial showed that Valerio paid a woman in Ukraine to produce custom-made videos of child pornography that he scripted. woman, Olena Kalichenko,[1] produced over 30 pornographic videos of a then two-year-old girl that she emailed to Valerio between April and November 2012. After FBI agents discovered Valerio and Kalichenkos international child exploitation conspiracy, in January 2014, federal agents, joined by members of the Suffolk County Police Department, executed a search warrant at Valerios residence in Smithtown. During the search, investigators found several hidden cameras, computers and a stage. A forensic examination of computers and electronic devices recovered by investigators revealed that, in September 2010, Valerio had produced child pornography in the basement of his house involving a then six-year-old Long Island girl. Valerio has been in custody since February 2014.

This prosecution is part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by United States Attorneys Offices, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to better locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov
School & Education, Local News, Arts & Culture

By Long Island News & PR Published: June 07 2017

William Floyd High School students had the opportunity to expand their understanding of Italian culture during a recent field trip.

Mastic Beach, NY  June 7, 2017  Several student members of the William Floyd High School Foreign Language Honor Society (FLHS) had the opportunity to expand their understanding of Italian culture during a recent field trip to the Italian American Museum located in New York Citys Little Italy. The historic museum, located on the corner of Mulberry and Grand Street in Lower Manhattan, hosted FLHS students and introduced them to several exhibits that articulated the important contributions made by the people of Italy and their descendants, who continue to flourish in America today.

According to Derek Robinson, foreign language teacher and FLHS advisor, The neighborhood of Little Italy has changed significantly since its heyday in the late 19th century. Originally an area that attracted immigrants from Sicily and Naples, Little Italy stretched from Canal to Houston Streets; between Lafayette Street and Bowery. Although the size of this historic neighborhood has decreased, its historic impact remains strong.

The Italian American Museum was born on June 12, 2001 when it was officially chartered under the aegis of the University of the State of New York, Education Department as a museum. The purposes of which, are to establish and maintain a museum dedicated to Italian Americans, according to the Museums official mission statement. Additionally, this historic location was once the site of Banca Stabile or Stable Bank which served as a link for immigrants in the United States with their relatives in Italy. The Banca Stabile became the hub of daily transactions in the late 1800s including offering telegraph services, travel via steam ships, import and export transactions and even served as the post office.
Iranian media announced the death of an Afghan militiaman in the vicinity of Tanf military base in southeastern Syria on Monday, where coalition forces are training Syrian insurgents fighting the Islamic State. Mohammad Hosseini aka Salman was the intelligence chief of the Fatemiyoun Divisions Hazrat-e Fatemeh Zahra Brigade, according to the media. He was reportedly killed after stepping on a mine during a reconnaissance mission. Iranian media have thus far released no further details.

Following last months strike, US jets struck yet another pro-regime convoy yesterday in the deconfliction area of Tanf. The base is located close to the Jordanian and Iraqi borders and a major crossing into Iraq. The Tehran-controlled, Iraqi Sayyida al Shuhada Brigades last month acknowledged casualties from the strike. Several Iranian-backed Lebanese, Iraqi and Syrian militias and Syrian regime forces are operating in that front. Hosseinis death confirms the Fatemiyoun Divisions presence there.

The Revolutionary Guards Qods Force established the all-Shiite-Afghan Fatemiyoun Brigade in 2013 to fight for Syrian President Bashar al Assad under the banner of waging jihad to defend Shiite shrines. Two years later, militia figures and Iranian media claimed the group was promoted to a division. Shiite-Afghan fighters have been operating in Syria since the early days of the Syrian conflict, and for some time operated as an auxiliary to an Iraqi contingent until the Fatemiyouns establishment.

Fatemiyoun fighters are primarily recruited from the Hazara diaspora in Iran, as well as from Afghanistan. Some are passport holders of Europe and Canada, according to a former commander.

The Fatemiyoun Divisions founding nucleus consists of veterans of previous Iranian-backed Afghan proxies. Many of the groups Afghan-national founding members fought in the Iran-Iraq War as part of the Abouzar Brigade and the Soviet-Afghan War as part of the Mohammad Corps in the 1980s. The latter remained active in Afghanistan into the 1990s and fought the Taliban until the 2001 US invasion, subsequently fleeing to Iran, when Iranian agents established ties with the Taliban around the same time. The Fatemiyoun Divisions founding leadership has since been wiped out.

Amir Toumaj is a independent analyst and contributor to 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.
Note: A version of this article was first published by The Daily Beast.

A team of terrorists struck the Iranian Parliament and the tomb of Ayatollah Khomeini earlier today. At least 12 people were killed, according to Irans state media. Irans Revolutionary Guard Corps blamed Saudi Arabia, further escalating tensions in the region. The Islamic State (ISIS) quickly claimed responsibility for the assault via its Amaq News Agency, which released statements and a short video from one of the attacks as it was still ongoing. Amaq says that two suicide bombers detonated their explosive vests at Khomeinis mausoleum, while inghimasis (well-trained fighters who immerse themselves in battle) raided the parliament.

The attack is a significant development, to grossly understate the matter. Tehran had long avoided being hit by the types of martyrdom operations that routinely rock the neighboring capitals of Baghdad and Kabul.

This is no accident. The Iranian governments security services are ruthlessly effective at suppressing all forms of opposition, including both legitimate protesters and those with ill-intentions.

More important, perhaps, is the fact that the Iranian regime cut a secret deal with al Qaeda.

Osama Bin Ladens organization and its spin-off, the so-called Islamic State, have fought against Irans proxies in Iraq and Syria for years. Killing Shiites is a blood sport for ISISs Sunni jihadists. And Abu Bakr al Baghdadis so-called caliphate reportedly has attempted to strike inside the mullahs country before. The group routinely agitates against the Iranians in its videos and propaganda statements. Yet, it wasnt until now that ISIS successfully attacked the heart of Tehran.

Al Qaedas leadership long sought to rein in the anti-Shiite violence in Iraq. Ayman al Zawahiri, Osama bin Ladens deputy and successor of emir of al Qaeda, even tried to persuade Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the founder of al Qaeda in Iraq, to stop targeting Shiite civilians. Zarqawi hoped to provoke a full scale, sectarian civil war in Iraq. When his men blew up the revered Golden Mosque in Samarra in 2006 they very nearly accomplished that goal. Despite the U.S. surge that averted complete disaster in the years that followed, sectarian violence has plagued Iraq ever since.

Zarqawi was killed in June 2006less than a year after Zawahiri tried to convince him to stop targeting Shiite civilians. Zarqawis heirs continued his sectarian strategy inside Iraq. But until 2014, they abided by an order from al Qaedas leaders to avoid terrorist operations inside Iranian territory and against Shiites outside of Iraq. The two sides formally split in early 2014. At that point, the organization calling itself the Islamic State (ISIS) gained strength, waging a campaign against Shiites throughout the regionand accusing al Qaeda of being soft on them.

In May 2014, ISIS spokesman Abu Muhammad al Adnani, delivered a stinging rebuke of al Qaeda leaders that exposed their cozy relations with Tehran.

Let history record that Iran owes al Qaeda invaluably, Adnani bristled, saying he and his men had complied with your [al Qaedas] request not to target [the Shiites] outside Iraq, in Iran and elsewhere. Adnani, who was killed in an American airstrike last year, explained that ISIS was acting upon the orders of al Qaeda to safeguard its interests and supply lines in Iran.

After al Qaedas general command disowned ISIS in February 2014, Baghdadi and Adnani no longer considered themselves bound by al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiris edicts. ISIS began launching indiscriminate attacks against Shiite Muslims far outside of Iraq, and it started eyeing operations inside Iran as well.

To this day, however, al Qaeda avoids attacks inside Iranat least those that can be directly attributed to the organization. (It is possible that al Qaeda supports other regional groups that occasionally target Iranian security forces on their home turf.)

Files recovered during the May 2011 raid on Osama bin Ladens compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan explain this reticence. One of the documents corroborates Adnanis testimony regarding al Qaedas orders.

In October 2007, bin Laden wrote a letter to the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), the immediate predecessor to Baghdadis ISIS. The missive was likely addressed to Abu Hamza al-Muhajir (a.k.a. Abu Ayyub al Masri), who led the ISI at the time. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi took charge of this same group in 2010, after Abu Hamza was killed.

Bin Laden disapproved of the ISIs threats against Iran. I have a few remarks concerning the matter of your threats to Iran, and I hope that you and your brothers will accommodate it, bin Laden wrote. The al Qaeda founder continued (emphasis added): You did not consult with us on that serious issue that affects the general welfare of all of us. We expected you would consult with us for these important matters, for as you are aware, Iran is our main artery for funds, personnel, and communication, as well as the matter of hostages.

Bin Laden was not against targeting Iran in principle. He simply thought the cost was too high and the benefits al Qaeda received from the relationship were significant.

The main artery bin Laden referenced was later targeted in a series of terrorist designations, reward offers and other official statements by the U.S. Treasury and State Departments.

In July 2011, Treasury first identified the al Qaeda leaders, including one known as Yasin al-Suri, who ran the facilitation network inside Iran at the time. Treasury explained that they operated under a formerly secret deal between the terror organization and the Iranian government. The Obama administration also referred to the Iranian hub as al Qaedas core facilitation pipeline, which allowed the jihadist organization to shuttle personnel and funds throughout the Middle East and South Asia. Al Qaeda operatives involved in plots targeting the West have moved through Iran as well.

The leadership of the network has evolved over time for several reasons. In December 2011, for instance, the State Department offered a $10 million reward for Suri, making him one of the most wanted terrorists on the planet. Al Qaeda was forced to reshuffle its deck and place another veteran in charge, but Suri eventually assumed command once again.

In the years that followed, several prominent al Qaeda figures in Iran went on to hold key positions elsewhere, including inside Syria. Indeed, designated terrorists such as Muhsin al-Fadhli and Sanafi al-Nasr, both of whom led the network in Iran for a time, became key players in the so-called Khorasan Group.

In 2014, the Obama administration ordered airstrikes targeting the Khorasan Group, saying that members of this al Qaeda wing were planning attacks in the West. Both Fadhli and Nasr were killed in American bombings in Syria.

The deal between al Qaeda and the Iranians has survived the wars in Syria and Yemen, despite the fact that they are on opposite sides in those bloody conflicts. It is one of the great curiosities in the jihadist world. There is no question that al Qaeda and Irans proxies are at each others throats in those countries. Al Qaeda has even kidnapped Iranian diplomats to force exchanges for senior jihadists and family members who were held in some form of custody inside Iran.

Still, even though the two sides frequently clash, their collusion is ongoing. In July 2016, for example, Treasury revealed that Abu Hamza al-Khalidi, al Qaedas Military Commission Chiefone of the most senior positions in the groupis located in Iran alongside some of his comrades. Another file recovered in bin Ladens lair refers to Khalidi as part of a new generation of leaders groomed to replace their fallen comrades.

As Adnanis May 2014 message demonstrated, ISIS has been keen to highlight al Qaedas unwillingness to strike Iran. The two Sunni jihadist groups remain at odds and ISIS wants to undermine al Qaedas legitimacy among Sunni fanatics who may not understand why bin Ladens heirs would refrain from directly attacking Iran. Other files recovered in Abbottabad show that bin Laden devised plans to undermine Irans regional position. But this doesnt go far enough for some.

According to Treasury, the predecessor to Abu Bakr al Baghdadis ISIS had its own relationship with Iranian intelligence during the height of Americas involvement in the Iraq War. But ISIS doesnt remind its audience of this inconvenient fact. Instead, ISIS criticizes al Qaeda for its willingness to compromise with the Iranians.

In 2016, for example, ISISs Naba magazine carried a series of interviews with an al Qaeda defector known as Abu Ubaydah Al Lubnani, who claimed that Iranian intelligence was in complete control of al Qaedas safe houses inside the country. Interestingly enough, Lubnani himself transited through Iran to the lands of the self-declared caliphate after leaving al Qaedas ranks. But the purpose of Lubnanis interviews was to indict ISISs rivals as being soft on the Iranians.

Other propaganda disseminated by ISIS has similarly sought to portray the group as the vanguard of Sunni opposition to Iranian-backed forces throughout the region.

There is no question that after todays attacks inside Tehran, ISIS will ramp up its messaging along these lines. ISIS can finally claim to have brought the Sunni jihadists war to Iran, something al Qaeda has been unwilling to do.

[For a timeline of U.S. government designations and other statements concerning Irans agreement with al Qaeda, see FDDs Long War Journal report: Treasury designates 3 senior al Qaeda members in Iran.]

Thomas Joscelyn is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Senior Editor for FDD's Long War Journal.

Are you a dedicated reader of FDD's Long War Journal? Has our research benefitted you or your team over the years? Support our independent reporting and analysis today by considering a one-time or monthly donation. Thanks for reading! You can make a tax-deductible donation here.
YANGON, June 7 (Xinhua) -- The wreckage of the missing Myanmar military aircraft has been found on sea off Dawei township in southern Tanintharyi region late on Wednesday, according to military sources.

The military circle said the tragedy might be due to bad weather condition but it is yet to be determined only after the black box is found.

With 104 passengers on board, the aircraft of the Myanmar air force suddenly lost contact with the ground and went missing Wednesday afternoon on its flight from southern Tanintharyi region's Myeik to Yangon.

The 104 passengers include 90 army family members and 14 crew members.

With a load of 2.4 tons of goods, the military aircraft, carrying some welfare goods and military family members in its transport mission, took off from Myeik air base at 01:06 p.m. local time for Yangon, but when the aircraft reached a height of 18,000 feet (5,400 meters) at about 01:35 p.m. local time, it lost contact with the ground at a location, 32 km west of Dawei and went missing.

The aircraft was on a round trip transport mission in accordance with the route Yangon-Myeik-Pokkpyin-Myeik-Yangon.

Two aircrafts of the air force and four vessels of the navy have begun search and rescue operation.
SHANGHAI, June 7 (Xinhua) -- China has launched an international contest to attract skilled high-level talent.

The China International Skills Competition 2017, held in cities of Shanghai and Suzhou, has drawn 227 contestants from 35 countries and regions to attend.

The event, scheduled from Tuesday to Friday, will have 21 areas of competition, including joinery, car repair and beauty therapy.

Senior skilled workers account for 40 percent of all industrial workers in Japan and 50 percent in Germany, but the ratio is only 5 percent in China, according to Li Shouzhen, an official with the All-China Federation of Trade Unions.

"The shortage of skilled and senior technical workers has affected the quality of China-made products," said Feng Weiyuan, head of Guangdong Machinery Technician College.

"I hope the competition will serve as a platform for young people to learn different kinds of skills, and for skilled talent to share experiences in their professions," said Yin Weimin, Minister of Human Resources and Social Security.

The event is organized by the ministry, Shanghai municipal government and the Jiangsu provincial government.
Cars / Cars and Bikes

Held alongside the Concorso dEleganza Villa dEste in Italy, RM Sothebys recent Villa Erba auction celebrated the expertise of Talbot-Lago and Bugatti in the 1930s, with two exceptional vehicles that sold for more than 3 million each

Jun 07, 2017 | By AFP Relaxnews

In the sumptuous setting of the shores of Lake Como, some 40 classic cars went under the hammer at the RM Sothebys auction. Of all the lots, two French classic cars stood out from the crowd.

A sensational Talbot-Lago T150-C SS Goutte dEau Coupe by Figoni & Falaschi sold for 3.36 million. This entirely restored Teardrop coupe is one of only two examples of the striking Goutte dEau built by Figoni & Falaschi with fully enclosed front fenders. Another big hitter at the sale was a 1935 Bugatti Type 57 Atalante Prototype, which sold for 3.024 million.

In third place came a 1993 Porsche 911 Carrera RSR 3.8, which sold for 2.016 million. Three Ferraris also broke the million mark: a 275 GTS by Pininfarina dating from 1965 (1.792 million), a 1964 250 GT/L Berlinetta Lusso by Scaglietti (1.428 million) and a 1990 F40 (1.064 million).

Note that several vehicles listed in the auction remain unsold, including a 1928 Mercedes-Benz 680 S Torpedo-Sport Avant-Garde by Saoutchik, which could have been the star of the sale (estimated at 6.5-8 million), as well as some much more recent vehicles, like a 2016 McLaren P1 GTR (estimated at 3.2 to 3.6 million) and a 2014 Ferrari LaFerrari (2.75 to 3.2 million).
Baku, Azerbaijan, June 7

Trend:

The OSCE monitoring held at the border of Azerbaijan and Armenia passed without incidents, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said June 7.

The monitoring was carried out today near the Alibayli village of Azerbaijans Tovuz district under the mandate of the OSCE chairperson-in-office personal representative.

On the Azerbaijani side, the monitoring was held by Simon Tiller and Mikhail Olaru, field assistants of the OSCE chairperson-in-office personal representative.

On the Azerbaijani territories occupied and controlled by Armenian armed forces, the monitoring was held by Andrzej Kasprzyk, ambassador and the OSCE chairperson-in-office personal representative, and his field assistants Ghenadie Petrica and Martin Schuster.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.
Baku, Azerbaijan, June 7

By Elmira Tariverdiyeva  Trend:

The co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group on the settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict are expected to arrive in Baku in mid-June, presumably on June 19, a diplomatic source told Trend June 7.

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.
Sources say Klaus Grabinski, president of the UPCs Court of Appeal, is known for his engaged approach and for always doing his homework
Washington : US President Donald Trump spoke to Saudi Arabia's King Salman and called for a united Gulf Cooperation Council to fight terrorism and promote stability in the region, amid deepening diplomatic crisis in Qatar Both the leaders discussed ways to prevent terror financing and eliminate extremism by any country in region, the White House said yesterday. During the phone call, Trump underscored that a united Gulf Cooperation Council is critical to defeating terrorism and promoting regional stability, the White House said. The White House statement came a day after Saudi Arabia and three other Arab countries  Egypt, Bahrain and the UAE  cut off diplomatic ties with Qatar.

In a tweet, early morning Trump apparently supported the actions of four Arab countries to cut off diplomatic relationship with Qatar. The US continues to be in close communication with all the parties to resolve the issues and restore cooperation which is so important to regional security there, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters. "I think there is note that his message of toughness on terror finance and extremism is being heeded by countries in the region. But the US still wants to see this issue de- escalated and resolved immediately, keeping with the principles that the president laid out in terms of defeating terror financing and extremism," he said. Spicer said Trump had a very, very constructive conversation with the Emir of Qatar during his visit in Riyadh.

At that time, he was very heartened by the Emir's commitment to formally join the terrorist financing targeting centre and showing their commitment to this issue," he said. At a separate briefing, State Department Spokesperson Heather Nauert said the US recognises that Qatar has made some great efforts to try to stop financing of terror groups, including prosecuting suspected financiers, freezing assets, and introducing stringent controls on its banking system there. "However, let me make this clear: They have made progress, but they still have work to do. More work needs to be done," she said. "I think our relationship with Qatar is one that's strong. It's one that we continue to cooperate with Qatar and other countries in the region in the fight against terrorism. Secretary of State Rex W Tillerson talked about this today," she added. PTI
Baku, Azerbaijan, June 7

By Ilhama Isabalayeva  Trend:

The European Union attaches special importance to the education system in Azerbaijan, said Head of the EU Delegation to Azerbaijan Malena Mard June 7 addressing a conference dedicated to the project of technical assistance, EU Support to Vocational Education and Training, in Baku.

She noted that the EU and Azerbaijan will start four new grant projects from July.

According to Mard, all these projects will be implemented for the modernization of vocational education centers.

A joint approach will contribute to ongoing reforms in the country, added Mard.

The EU official said that the cooperation with Azerbaijan plays an important role for the EU. The improvement of vocational education and training together with higher education are the basis of economic diversification, economic reforms in Azerbaijan, she added.

This system expands opportunities for those who entering or re-entering the market, said Mard.

The improvement of vocational training should be conducted in the right direction, she noted adding that the EU has extensive experience in this field.

She also spoke about the importance of having a content of curriculums and programs that meets the market requirements. They should be written in such a way that students can easily learn and use them, added Mard.

The new project is aimed at the development of vocational education in Azerbaijan and includes the EUs support for the country, said the official.

The EU will continue to support reforms in Azerbaijan, noted Mard.

The project, presented today and funded by the EU, shows the great importance that the EU attaches to the educational system of Azerbaijan, she added.
Something to consider

Now hold on about Trump and his family.

We had eight years of a president who used Air Force One and stayed on vacation. He knew absolutely nothing about being President.

Remember Bill Clinton, a Democrat, passed NAFTA. There went our jobs. Do you remember that?

He opened us up to Cuba which was closed for a reason.

Trump has only been in office five months. Can you build a wall in five months?

Hes not even being paid.

The federal government is basically a business. Doesnt it make more sense to let a businessman run it?

Also what about all the Congress, Judges and Senators who sit there for 50 to 60 years drawing big checks for doing nothing? Take another look at that.

Patricia Handy

Bassett

Lessons from kindergarten

Donald J. Trump graduated from New York Military Academy and Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in economics. Yet, he seems to have skipped a grade during his schooling experiences  kindergarten. Indeed, Robert Fulghum, a philosopher, artist and parish minister has identified in his book, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, the skills and behaviors that youngsters as young as 5 years begin to learn and practice under the patient tutelage of their teachers. These skills and behaviors include among others:

Play fair

Dont hit people

Clean up your own mess

Say youre sorry when you hurt someone

When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together

Somehow our current president has not learned these important life skills and behaviors. He bullies, name-calls, forces attention where it is not wanted, ignores opportunities to cooperate with others and he never apologizes. He has offended our Allies, women, Gold Star parents, members of both political parties, the judiciary and withdrawn from rather than revise treaties and programs that, while not perfect, have elements that are deserving of preservation. He spends valuable political capital reinventing wheels rather than moving forward with important improvements in education, health care and infrastructure. He has brought chaos rather than unity to our country during his short tenure and so confuses his staff, the Congress and the nations of our world that there is limited trust in his judgment.

Its time to call out Donald Trump and insist that he rise to the challenges of the presidency in a responsible, thoughtful, compassionate manner. Congress must step up to this job and we as voters must join them. In particular, as voters, we have the ability to send a strong message to Donald Trump that we expect more of him than he has given us so far. Our countrys survival depends on his learning and practicing the life skills and behaviors taught first in kindergarten.

Carol Meyer

Ridgeway
Baku, Azerbaijan, June 7

By Elchin Mehdiyev  Trend:

Baku today hosted a meeting after the 3rd Meeting of Heads of Anti-Corruption Organizations and Ombudsmen of ECO Member States, held June 6.

During todays meeting, Azerbaijans Prosecutor General Zakir Garalov expressed hope that the knowledge and experience gained at the event, which was held with financial and organizational support of the Azerbaijan government, help raise the activities against corruption in ECO states to a new level.

ECO Deputy Secretary General Seyed Jalaledin Alavi Sabzevari said the Baku event made an important contribution to the strengthening of cooperation between ECO countries.

Following the meeting, member countries of the ECO adopted the Baku Declaration for cooperation against corruption.

ECO member states agreed that they will send red alerts in respect of those who committed corruption crimes, and this was also reflected in the Baku Declaration.
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SPRINGFIELD -- Sears Holdings has plans to close its Kmart location in Newburyport on Massachusetts' North Shore in September.

But Sears locations in the Holyoke Mall, the Berkshire Mall in Lanesborough and the Eastfield Mall in Springfield and the Kmart locations in Holyoke, Springfield and Palmer and the Sears Outlet in Holyoke have apparently been spared in this round according to a list of 72 doomed stores circulated internally Tuesday and published online by Business Insider.

Those stores have been spared -- at least for now. The beleaguered retailer has made no secret of its plans to continue cutting locations as it deals with the rise of online shopping and across-the-board decline of business in brick-and-mortar retail.

The closings will bring the total number of Sears and Kmart locations to just 1,200. That's down from 2,073 five years ago.

Sears shut down its Enfield Square Mall location in Connecticut earlier this year along with Kmart locations in Fairhaven, Great Barrington and South Attleboro and a Sears Auto Center in Swansea.

The Sears in the Dedham Mall will close by July.

Sears is the lone remaining department store in Springfield's Eastfield Mall with the JC Penney having closed in 2011 and the Macy's having closed in 2016.

Eastfield Mall has plans to "de-mall," a major reconstruction that would see most of the building demolished save for, possibly, the movie theaters and a few other sections. Then the property would be redeveloped with a mix of retail, office and housing.

Sears announced that it lost more than $2 billion last year.
The sold-out "Million Dollar Quartet" musical which opened Majestic Theater's 20th anniversary season last fall will return to the West Springfield stage for a limited 12-performance run beginning June 14.

The encore performances - which serve as a precursor to the theater's summer lineup - will allow for those who couldn't obtain tickets to see the show that brought standing ovations to the cast during its initial run.

"This was a hugely popular show for us. If you look back at our history, we made our bones with 'The Buddy Holly Story,' which was our first production 20 years ago and went on to become a mainstay for many of our anniversary years. For me, 'Million Dollar Quartet' is more or less a replacement for 'Buddy,' which we have now retired from The Majestic stage," said Danny Eaton, producing director of the Majestic Theater.

The play was inspired by the famed recording session that brought together rock 'n' roll icons Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins for the first and only time on Dec. 4, 1956. Initially, Perkins was there to record a revamped version of the blues song "Matchbox," but what resulted was a casual, spur-of-the-moment jam session which Phillips had the foresight to record. A local reporter who sat in on the jam session headlined his article the next day as the "Million Dollar Quartet."

The hit play transforms that historic recording session onto the theater stage featuring a score of rock hits that brings the audience inside the recording studio with these four major talents who came together for one unforgettable night.

Among the songs from the hit list performed in the play are: "Matchbox" and "See You Later, Alligator" by Carl Perkins, "Hound Dog" and "Memories Are Made of This" by Elvis, "I Walk the Line" and "Ring of Fire" by Johnny Cash, "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" by Jerry Lee Lewis and others.

Most of the cast is back for the return-engagement with the exception of

Elvis, who is now played by Joey Boover, and Johnny Cash, now played by Joe Casey.

"Both are from New York and were recommended to me, and they have performed in other productons of the play," Eaton said.

Returning cast members include Brian Michael Henry from New York as Jerry Lee Lewis, Dan Whalton from Connecticut as Carl Perkins, and Jay Sefton of Hadley as Sam Phillips. Phillips, who owned Sun Records and Sun Studio, is credited with discovering Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lew and Johnny Cash, as well as launching Elvis Presley's career in 1954.

Mitch Chakour is musical director and the cast will be backed by Don Rovero on bass and Mike Santinelli on drums, who play Carl Perkin's two brothers, as well as Aaron Porchelli on guitar, who portrays Smokey Joe Baugh, another Sun artist.
The ex-wife of Scott Wolas, a man accused of stealing $1.5 million from people in an investment scheme, has been charged with lying to investigators and helping him hide in Florida.

Cecily Sturge, 69, of Delray Beach, Florida, has been charged with making a materially false statement to a federal agent about the whereabouts of her ex-husband, who was a fugitive for 20 years before he was caught in April.

Wolas was wanted in connection with a New York investment scheme. He was indicted on with fraud and grand larceny charges in New York in 1997. Wolas is facing federal charges in Massachusetts for allegedly running a $1.5 million real estate investment scheme in Quincy.

Sturge, who is scheduled to appear in a Florida federal court Wednesday, told investigators in November 2016 that she hadn't spoken to Wolas for about 15 years.

"Sturge maintained her answer, despite evidence of contact between her cell phone and one known to belong to Wolas that demonstrated more recent communication between the two," the U.S. Attorney's Office said.

Wolas was arrested on April 7, 2017, in a condo he was renting in Delray Beach, Florida. He rented the condo from Nov. 12 through Nov. 21, 2017 using an online rental website. He used multiple names, including his ex-wife's, to rent the condo.

"Messages exchanged between the condo owner and Sturge were also discovered, that depicted a photo of Sturge and messages indicating that Wolas (using the name Cameron Sturge) was Sturge's brother and a retired paleontologist in need of a place to stay," authorities said. "The owner of the condo told authorities that Sturge and Wolas arrived at the condo together in the same car on Nov. 12, 2017, five days before Sturge's interview with law enforcement."

Wolas and Sturge were divorced in 2001 by a default judgment in a Florida court. Sturge claimed in 2017 that she didn't know her ex-husband's whereabouts after she sought to have a judge release $647,000 that Wolas had in a retirement account.

Court records drafted to seek the release of the money were found in Wolas' room and on a thumb drive when he was arrested.

A federal investigation into Wolas began in September 2016 when he fled Massachusetts, authorities said. He is accused of defrauding at least 19 investors out of $1.5 million in connection with his purported efforts to develop two Quincy properties, including the site of the former Beachcomber Bar.
LONGMEADOW - Nonprofits in the Pioneer Valley employ thousands of individuals, have collective budgets in the millions and provide a range of educational, cultural as well as health and social services.

Yet, nonprofits today must survive in a competitive environment for donors' time and money, brand recognition and ways to engage the public.

Recent surveys indicate a need among such organizations to improve communication strategies that are said to focus on websites and email, and to improve ways to better measure their effectiveness.

A free breakfast seminar and workshop are being held Friday at Bay Path University to help area nonprofits address these concerns.

Amy Sample Ward, chief executive officer of the Oregon-based Nonprofit Technology Network, a membership organization of nonprofit technology professionals, is presenter for the event, which begins with the seminar, "Meeting Your Mission Through Integrated Communications Strategies," from 7:30 to 9:30 a.m. in Blake Student Commons, and is followed by the two-hour workshop, "Community-Driven Communications," in Wright Hall.

The breakfast seminar is open to the public, while both programs are open to area nonprofit professionals. Attendees at both can earn certified fund raising executive points towards certification or re-certification.

Interested participants may register for the event that is being co-sponsored by the Human Service Forum in conjunction with the university's master's programs in nonprofit management and philanthropy, as well as in strategic fund-raising.

The forum, an association of nonprofit and public agencies whose dozens of members include food banks, organizations that service victims of domestic violence, philanthropic foundations among others, estimates that more than 50,000 people are employed in the nonprofit sector at more than 1,000 nonprofits in the Pioneer Valley.

Sample Ward is co-author of "Social by Social: A handbook in using social technologies for social impact" and "Social Change Anytime Everywhere: How to implement online multichannel strategies to spark advocacy, raise money, and engage your community."

She was asked here about what suggestions she gives non-profits to better use today's technology to reach and keep donors and volunteers.

What is changing about how people communicate today that makes having a website and Facebook page not enough in terms of reaching a desired audience for any organization?

One important thing about how we communicate today is that we can communicate anytime from anywhere just about. Think about yourself and a friend or family member that you talk to often - you are probably connected to them in a number of channels and could just as easily send them an email as you could a text message.

As we get more and more used to connecting to people in our lives across devices and channels, as we move through our day, our expectations that we should also be able to connect to causes we care about in a similar way will only grow.

Non-profits are a pretty broad group, but what are three or four key points all of them have to keep in mind in terms of developing an effective communication strategy?

It doesn't matter how great the organization is, supporters want to feel recognized, appreciated, and part of the impact.

I think it is critical that organizations remember they do many things and have lots to talk about, but only a fraction of all of that work or communication is aligned with a supporter's interests.

Focus on getting to know what brings someone to the organization and reflect that knowledge in your communications with them instead of trying to tell them everything about what you do.

What are some of the communication strategies you might suggest to a smaller non-profit in terms of identifying supporters, keeping those supporters engaged and willing to donate funds or other support?

As a small organization, it's likely that there are hard limitations on capacity so some things may feel like wish list ideas that just do not ever get prioritized.

Keep track of what those ideas and options are so that you can intentionally look for opportunities to bring in pro bono tech support or community volunteers to take them on.

Similarly, in terms of larger non-profits, like hospitals, what are the biggest challenges they face in terms of engaging supporters and raising funds today across age groups? What do they have to assess in terms of developing an effective communication strategy for engagement and fund-raising?

I think that one issue large and very large organizations struggle with is in connecting with donors and supporters in a way that feels as personal as a small organization - handwritten notes, knowing the name of someone, and so on.

It is a challenge to reflect that they may be a big organization but they are still people connecting with supporters. And most importantly, that they need the help and support, a $10 donation is meaningful even though it is a much smaller percentage of funding than for a small organization.

What do you known about younger people today in terms of how they want to be engaged with a non-profit -- are young people interested in supporting non-profits, in what ways and how much do they want to be kept engaged? Do they like regular tweets, videos, etc.

Millennials are definitely engaged with nonprofits and want to have meaningful opportunities to support nonprofits. I think it is interesting to think about some of the highlights from research on this topic, including the annual Millennial Impact Reports.

For example, the idea that many Millennials do not identify with the label "activist" even though they may be responding to calls to action from nonprofits that would be considered activism by a traditional definition. With that in mind, how are organizations creating content and communication that supports engagement without using labels that may discourage participation?

Whether it is Millennials or seniors, every organization should provide clear ways for supporters to opt into the channels and types of communication they prefer - there's no better way to predict which channels to use than by asking people directly.
Baku, Azerbaijan, June 7

Trend:

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has extended his condolences to President of the Islamic Republic of Iran Hassan Rouhani.

We were deeply saddened and outraged by the news of casualties and injuries as a result of terror attacks in Tehran, said President Aliyev in his letter.

This bloody incident is yet another reminder that terrorism has become evil for the entire world and that it is important to resolutely and consistently fight it in all its manifestations, noted the Azerbaijani president.

On the occasion of this tragedy, on my own behalf and on behalf of the people of Azerbaijan, I extend my deepest condolences to you, families and loved ones of those who died and the whole people of Iran, and wish the injured the swiftest possible recovery. May Allah rest the souls of the dead in peace! he added.
Baku, Azerbaijan, June 7

Trend:

Azerbaijani Ministry of Foreign Affairs strongly condemns the terror attacks committed in the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hikmat Hajiyev said June 7.

We extend our heartfelt condolences to the families of the victims, Iranian people and government. We wish speedy recovery to those wounded and injured as a result of the terror attacks, reads a press statement by Hajiyev.

As a country suffering from terrorism, the Republic of Azerbaijan strongly condemns all forms and manifestations of terrorism. The Republic of Azerbaijan firmly supports the efforts of the international community in the fight against terrorism.

Separate attacks shattered Tehran on June 7. As reports said, several armed people tried to break their way into the Parliament building.



The attackers managed to get inside the building and engaged in a shootout with the security forces. One terrorist committed suicide by blowing himself up. The latest reports indicate that all terrorists who took part in the siege of the parliament building have been killed.



Meanwhile, another attack took place at the Imam Khomeini Shrine, which involved armed terrorists, suicide bombers. The reports said Iran's security forces neutralized one terrorist, another one committed suicide. Several pilgrims have also been injured in the attack.



A separate terrorist group in the country has been detained before it managed to carry out any terror attacks. Fars news agency issued a report, saying that ISIS claimed responsibility for the terror attacks in Tehran.
Baku, Azerbaijan, June 7

Trend:

Azerbaijans Deputy Foreign Minister Khalaf Khalafov paid a visit to Poland, the Foreign Ministrys press service told Trend.

On June 5-6, an Azerbaijani delegation, which included officials from state structures dealing with economy, transport, energy, defense and defense industry, agriculture and railways, led by Khalaf Khalafov, was on a visit in Poland.

During the visit, the deputy foreign minister held meetings with Polands Secretary of State, Chief of the Presidents Cabinet Krzysztof Szczerski and Deputy Foreign Minister Bartosz Cichocki. Bilateral relations were discussed and an exchange of views on issues of mutual interest was held during the meetings.

Meanwhile, members of the Azerbaijani delegation held meetings with representatives of Polands relevant structures.

Azerbaijans Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador to Poland Hasan Hasanov also took part in the meetings.
Senators Lead Bipartisan Effort to Protect Jobs and End Unfair Chinese Trade Practice that Targets Rural Economies

U.S. Senators Jon Tester, Steve Daines, Heidi Heitkamp, and John Hoeven are fighting to end an unfair Chinese trade practice that targets local honey producers and stings local economies.

For nearly two decades, Chinese honey producers have deliberately exported honey to the U.S. at a price below the cost of production to purposefully increase their market share and drive Montana and North Dakota honey producers out-of-businessa practice called "dumping."

In a letter to Acting U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Kevin McAleenan, the Senators from Montana and North Dakota are pushing CBP to immediately collect anti-dumping duties and interest on Chinese honey imports and distribute them to American honey producers.

"Honey production is a vital industry to our rural economies and to the strength of our rural communities," the Senators wrote. "It is essential the Customs and Border Patrol work expeditiously and meticulously to ensure our honey producers are fully protected and compensated from unfair foreign trade by pursuing the collection of all outstanding import duties and the interest accrued on those duties."

The United States placed anti-dumping duties on Chinese producers in 2001 to protect domestic producers and condemn Chinas unfair actions. The CBP has failed to collect many of these duties because China has exploited a loophole.

The CBP can charge anti-dumping duties on exporters in order to compensate local producers who lose market share due to unfair trade practices. To date, hundreds of millions of dollars in duties and interest on duties against Chinese honey producers remain uncollected.

The Senators underscored to the Acting Director that the CBPs slow enforcement and collection of duties against Chinese producers is denying Montana and North Dakota the recourse to financially overcome the harmful impacts of Chinese imports.

Montana and North Dakota are the top honey producing states in the country, which combined produced nearly $87 million worth of honey last year.

The Senators letter to Acting Director McAleenan is available HERE https://www.tester.senate.gov/files/Letters/2017-6-6%20Chinese%20Honey%20Duties%20Letter%20to%20CBP.PDF .
One week after President Donald Trump shunned the worlds leading scientists and pulled the United States from the global pact on climate change, more than 1,200 U.S. business leaders, governors, mayors and college presidents signed an open letter to the world.

Despite the presidents decision, they wrote, America would continue to support climate action in hopes of meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement, even "in the absence of leadership from Washington."

If they succeed, the worlds big coming-together may still hold planetary warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius.

By Martin Kidston/Missoula Current

Full Story: http://www.missoulacurrent.com/general/2017/06/montana-um-climate-steve-running/

***

Video: Montana Made Climate Science Panel 06/05/17 http://www.matr.net/article-77335.html
Montana Governor Steve Bullock today announced the availability of $3 million for Montana preschool programs to expand access to quality early childhood education for four-year-olds. Governor Bullock worked with the 2017 Legislature to secure the first-ever state investment in publicly funded preschool. Funding to create a pilot preschool grant program was included in House Bill 639 and passed with bipartisan support.

"Focusing on our youngest Montanans gives all families and their children the building blocks they need to succeed, prosper, and contribute to the states economy," said Governor Bullock. "This funding will expand access to preschool options that are affordable to families in both small and large communities who want to make sure their kids enter kindergarten ready to learn."

Full Story: http://governor.mt.gov/Newsroom/governor-bullock-announces-3-million-to-expand-preschool-in-montana
"For small to medium to national organizations, for events and fundraisers of any size, in any format  live, virtual or hybrid  the platform is built for scale."
If youre a frequent online shopper, you already know youre being watched. Companies collect reams of data based on your browsing and purchasing patterns. Theres so much data, in fact, that its easy to get lost in the numbers. Thats where Ken Moon comes in. A professor of operations, information and decisions at Wharton, Moon is researching how retailers can use online data to create effective pricing policies. He visited with [email protected] to discuss his paper, "Randomized Markdowns and Online Monitoring," which was co-authored with Kostas Bimpikis and Haim Mendelson of Stanford Universitys Graduate School of Business.

An edited transcript of the conversation follows.
The Montana University System has hired a Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm to help find the next president of The University of Montana-Missoula http://www.umt.edu . Current UM President George M. Dennison plans to retire Aug. 15 after two decades of service.

Academic Search Inc. http://www.academic-search.com/ has completed 177 presidential searches since 2004, as well as 256 searches for executive senior administrators. The firm also assisted with the recent presidential search for Montana State University-Bozeman, which resulted in the hiring of Waded Cruzado.

We now have a national company helping us do a national search for UM, said Clay Christian, vice chair of the Board of Regents, which oversees the state university system. We are working hard to meet President Dennisons Aug. 15 retirement goal.

Christian chairs the 20-member committee appointed to spearhead the search for UMs 17th president. He said the committee made the decision to hire a consulting firm in March, and Academic Search Inc. helped lay the groundwork for the presidential search during the committees April 8 meeting in Missoula.

Bill Franklin, senior consultant with Academic Search Inc., encourages nominations of promising prospects or exploration of personal interest in the position by e-mailing [email protected] or calling 830-249-1444.

A presidential search prospectus will be available soon on the UM Web site http://www.umt.edu/potumsearch and on and the Academic Search Inc. Web site http://www.academic-search.com . The prospectus provides detailed information about The University of Montana and its campuses, the position and its requirements, and the procedures for becoming a candidate.

For more information, call Christian at 406-728-1500 or e-mail [email protected] .

http://news.umt.edu/2010/04/041410pres.aspx
Flathead County residents in zoned areas can now legally operate short term rentals in the county for less than 30 days, like those popping up through online services like Airbnb.

On Tuesday morning in Kalispell Flathead County Commissioners voted 2-1 to adopt a zoning text amendment on short-term rental regulations. Previously, operating rentals less than 30 days in zoned areas of the county was illegal. But the decision wasnt unanimous. Commissioner Phil Mitchell voted against the resolution.

By Nicole Miller

Full Story: http://www.kpax.com/story/35605024/flathead-co-residents-get-ok-to-operate-short-term-airbnb-rentals
Private sector opportunities in Zimbabwe are limitless  Zimbabwe President Dr. Emerson Mnangagwa; Agriculture will power our way to achieving vision 2030  Anxious Masuka.

Zimbabwean President Dr. Emerson Mnangagwa has called on investors to realize the massive investment opportunities in Zimbabwe and shun negative perceptions of risk.

Zimbabwe, self-sufficient in food production and a major exporter of wheat, tobacco, and corn to the 14-member Southern African Development Community, to other African countries and the wider world before 2000, saw its exports plummet. Before 2000, farming accounted for 40% of all Zimbabwes exports. In 2010 though, it dropped to 2%.

President Mnangagwa spoke on Thursday at a special event on the margins of the Africa Investment Forum Market Days 2022 in Abidjan, Cote dIvoire. The event dwelt on the broad range of investment opportunities in Zimbabwe. Several cabinet ministers accompanied the president, namely Foreign Affairs Minister Frederick Shava, Finance and Economic Development Minister Mthuli Mcube, Agriculture Minister Anxious Masuka and Industry and Commerce Minister Sekai Nzenza.

The focus is to persuade global capital assembled in this city to realize that there are opportunities for investment in Zimbabwe, President Mnangagwa said.

The African Development Bank and its seven partners set up the Africa Investment ForumAfricas premier investment platformto attract investment and capital to Africa. The forums Market Days 2022 which runs from the 2nd to 4th of November, feature boardroom sessions that promote flagship sectors where Africa has a comparative advantage. Examples are women-led businesses, music, film, fashion, textiles, and sports.

President Mnangagwa said African Development Bank President Dr. Adesina invited him to the forum when Adesina visited Zimbabwe earlier this year. Adesina agreed to champion Zimbabwes debt clearance strategy. Zimbabwe has been hurt by sanctions imposed by the European Union and other Western countries.

Our mission here is to explain ourselves, assure investors that Zimbabwe is a safe investment destination, President Mnangagwa said.

Adesina said Zimbabwe could count on the African Development Banks strong support. He confirmed the banks approval of a $4 million grant to support the development of a secretariat to move the countrys debt arrears clearance issue forward.

I know the story of Zimbabwe, the opportunities and potential of Zimbabwe, Adesina said. I think Zimbabwe is not as risky as you thinkPrivate sector opportunities are limitless.

Adesina outlined the countrys many potential areas for investment, including steel, agriculture and information technology. He said the bank was lending support in these and other sectors.

The African Development Bank also made a grant to Zimbabwe during the Covid-19 pandemic, stepping in where other institutions had not.

Zimbabwe is strongly committed Zimbabwe will again be the breadbasket of Africa. I will swim right beside you, he said.

President Mnangagwas ministers also spoke bullishly about Zimbabwes investment prospects.

Ncube said the Zimbabwe Investment and Development agency (ZIDA) was the countrys one-stop shop for potential investors. With ZIDA, your investment is safewe have the capacitywe are waiting for you, the finance minister said.

Nzenza said the country was focusing especially on mining, agriculture, tourism and manufacturing, such as producing cotton, locally and lithium batteries.

Theres no doubt that sanctions hurt, but Zimbabwe is open for business. The key words are value additionwe have been exporting raw materials we must manufacture, Nzenza said.

Masuka said in his opinion, the biggest opportunity was the land reform program that Zimbabwe had embarked on. The government has put agriculture at the top of its agenda. We want to develop agriculturethere are massive opportunities. Agriculture will power our way to achieving vision 2030, Masuka said.

Private sector panelists at Thursdays event were invited to offer advice to potential investors in Zimbabwe. They included Marjorie Mayida, managing director of Zimbabwes leading insurance company, Old Mutual; George Manyere, managing director of Brainworks a Zimbabwean company listed on the Johannesburg and London stock exchanges; Kalpesh Patel, managing director of SteelMakers Group of companies; and Peggy Mapondera, an investment principal at Masawara PLC, a pan-African diversified investment holding group.

George Manyere of Brainworks Ltd said Zimbabwes economic performance against neighboring countries like Zambia, Malawi and Mozambiquewhich do not have sanctions and enjoy support from the international lending communitywas proof of the nations capacity to perform despite perceptions of risk, and the countrys biggest selling point.

Tshepidi Moremong, Chief Operating Officer of Africa50 noted the progress and opportunities in transport, logistics, infrastructure. She said that following a mission to Harare last month, Africa50 would be signing a memorandum of understanding, specifically on asset recycling.

Kapesh Pattel of SteelMakers Group advised that getting out in front of investors would help to demystify negative and misleading perceptions of Zimbabwe.

For the first time since the Africa Investment Forum began in 2018, three promising business transactions from Zimbabwe made it through to boardroom discussions during the Africa Investment Forum Market Days.

African Development Bank senior officials at the special side event included Director General for the Southern Africa region Leila Mokaddem, Zimbabwe Country Manager Moono Mupotola; and Kevin Urama, Vice President and Acting Chief Economist and Vice President for Economic Governance and Knowledge Management.

The Africa Investment Forum platform is an initiative of the African Development Bank and seven other development institutions: Africa 50; the Africa Finance Corporation; the African Export-Import Bank; the Development Bank of Southern Africa; the Trade and Development Bank; the European Investment Bank; and the Islamic Development Bank.

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Baku, Azerbaijan, June 7

Trend:

President of Swiss School of Higher Education (SSHE) Maryam Gamurziyeva, Professor Narmina Garayeva and SSHE Coordinator for Baku projects Nargiz Nadirova visited Baku Higher Oil School (BHOS) and met with BHOS Rector Elmar Gasimov.

Rector informed the guests about the Higher School main activities, international relations, successes achieved within a short period of time, and the new campus, which was recently opened. As he said, BHOS admits only those prospective students who earn high score at the entrance exams.

Elmar Gasimov reported that all five prospective students who earned 700 points at the entrance exams in 1st group of specialities this year selected the Baku Higher Oil School for their further study.

As SSHE President Maryam Gamurziyeva informed, the Swiss School of Higher Education is a private university offering students various Bachelor and Master Degree programs in Management including programs in Oil and Gas Management. At the meeting, prospects of cooperation development between BHOS and SSHE were also discussed.
Baku, Azerbaijan, June 7

By Elena Kosolapova  Trend:

Baku to host Indian food festival on Sunday, June 11, Indian Embassy in Baku said in a message.

The festival will take place at Hyatt Kishmish Hall from 11am to 5pm (UTC +4). Entry ticket is 2 AZN.

The event is organized by Indian Association in Azerbaijan and the Embassy of India.

The Festival is an opportunity to enjoy Indian cuisine from different parts of India, shopping before summer holiday starts, introducing Indian traditions, surprise cultural themes, best prizes from Raffle draw and many more, the Embassy said.

The event is child-friendly.

The food festival will be held within a year-long India-Azerbaijan Friendship Dostluq Festival to mark the 25th anniversary of establishment of diplomatic relations between two countries. Indian Embassy in Baku has organized a number of several cultural events as a part of this festival since last fall.

Follow the author on Twitter: @E_Kosolapova
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, June 7

By Huseyn Hasanov Trend:

The Turkmen Economy and Development Ministry will hold an auction for the sale of state facilities at 10:00 (GMT + 5 hours) June 27, 2017 at the following address: Archabil Avenue, 156, Ashgabat.

Industrial complex, shopping centers, carpet shop, textile factories, dairy farming enterprises, livestock farms are among the facilities to be put up for auction.

The citizens of Turkmenistan and foreign countries, as well as private legal entities of Turkmenistan and legal entities of foreign countries, who made bids in the prescribed form, as well as paid special fees and who have registered, are allowed to participate in the auction.

Foreign legal entities, international organizations established under the laws of foreign countries, their permanent representative offices and branches in Turkmenistan may participate as well only if there is conclusion of the Agency for Protection from Economic Risks under the Turkmen ministry.

All participants are able to preliminary review an object of privatization.

Phones: (+99312) 39-46-73, 39-46-75.
Baku, Azerbaijan, June 7

By Maksim Tsurkov  Trend:

SOCAR Turkey Enerji A.S., a subsidiary of Azerbaijans state oil company SOCAR in Turkey, is working on a project to create a new chemical enterprise in Turkey, Head of SOCAR Turkey Enerji Zaur Gahramanov told Trend.

According to Gahramanov, most likely, it will be a joint venture.

"These investments are big enough, so we cant invest it ourselves. Therefore, we are looking for partners who have experience in this industry," he noted. "We have some experience with Petkim, and today we are carrying out the engineering work."

A meeting was held on this issue with the Turkish government in Ankara and Turkey fully supports all projects of the company, added Gahramanov.

He noted that SOCAR Turkey Enerji regularly holds negotiations with big partners.

Particularly, the company also discusses the chemical complex project with Saudi Aramco, which is one of the biggest companies in the world, according to him.

Meanwhile, negotiations are underway with Chinese and American companies, said Gahramanov adding that they are talking mainly about technologies.

According to him, as part of new technical solution on the new petrochemical complex, SOCAR Turkey Enerji also discussed the rubber production with the Turkish government.

"This material is actively used by manufacturers of automobile tires. Tire manufacturers discussed this issue with the Turkish government and spoke about the necessity to localize the full production cycle in Turkey," said Gahramanov. "The government agreed with this, and we will most likely take this factor into account in the new decision. I think that it will be possible to give some specific figures at the end of this year."

About $11 billion of Turkeys negative trade balance accounts for the petrochemical sector, he noted, adding that therefore, the Turkish government is interested in the construction of the new complex.

Meanwhile, Turkish media outlets quoted Vagif Aliyev, chairman of Board of Directors at SOCAR Turkey Enerji, as saying that the amount of investments for building a new petrochemical complex may total about $3 billion.

It is expected that in 2018, the consolidated turnover of SOCAR Turkey Enerji will reach $15 billion and the company will become the second biggest industrial company in Turkey with 5,000 employees and export potential of $3 billion. It sets a goal to become the biggest industrial company of Turkey by 2023.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @MaksimTsurkov
Baku, Azerbaijan, June 7

By Leman Zeynalova  Trend:

A new tender on privatization of Greeces DESFA natural gas grid operator will be announced in June, Greeces nergy and Environment Minister Giorgos Stathakis said in an interview with Greek news website liberal.gr.

Eight companies have expressed interest in the new tender for privatization of DESFA.

These companies are Belgian Fluxys, Italian Snam, Dutch Gasunie, Spanish Enagas, Romanian Transgaz, as well as new players like the French GRTgas, SFPI and Marguerite.

Earlier, Greeces Government Council for Economic Policy (KYSOIP) approved the process of a new tender for DESFA.

The new tender to be conducted by Greece's privatization agency HRADF envisages sale of 66 percent of the gas grid operator.

Azerbaijans state oil company SOCAR won a tender in 2013 on the purchase of a 66-percent stake in DESFA for 400 million euros.



The Azerbaijani company intended to obtain a 31-percent stake from the Greek government and to buy a 35-percent stake in Hellenic Petroleum.



It was expected that the deal will be closed only after the purchase of at least a 17-percent stake out of SOCARs 66-percent by Italys Snam.



SOCAR, Snam and Greek government have been holding intensive talks against the background of changes in legislation that affected DESFAs financial position and market value.



However, the parties were unable to reach an understanding and consequently, the deal was terminated Nov. 30.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @Lyaman_Zeyn
The three types of ADHD vary by common symptom presentation. People with Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) may be hyperactive, impulsive, and inattentive. The frequency of these individual symptoms will determine which type of ADHD a doctor will diagnose. ADHD is one of the most common health disorders affecting children. In the United States, around 9.8% of children ages 317 have ADHD. The presentation of ADHD will vary between people. This article will explain the three different types of ADHD.

Types of ADHD Share on Pinterest Oliver Rossi/Getty Images There are three main types of ADHD, which differ according to the symptoms that present most commonly. The three types are: ADHD, combined presentation: This is the most common type of ADHD. The person will show impulsive and hyperactive behavior and get distracted easily.

This is the most common type of ADHD. The person will show impulsive and hyperactive behavior and get distracted easily. ADHD, predominantly impulsive/hyperactive: This is the least common type. The person will show signs of hyperactivity and the need to move constantly and display impulsive behavior. They do not show signs of getting distracted or inattention.

This is the least common type. The person will show signs of hyperactivity and the need to move constantly and display impulsive behavior. They do not show signs of getting distracted or inattention. ADHD, predominantly inattentive: People with this type of ADHD do not exhibit signs of hyperactivity or impulsivity. Instead, the person will get distracted easily and find it difficult to pay attention. ADHD is often first identified in school-aged children. A key sign is when their behavior becomes disruptive, and they show signs of: not being able to focus

making impulsive decisions

being hyperactive ADHD is more common among boys than girls. Some people refer to the predominantly inattentive type as ADD (standing for attention deficit disorder), as the term does not contain the word hyperactivity. People referred to the broad diagnosis of ADHD simply as ADD before medical professionals added hyperactivity into the disorders title. Essentially, ADD is now an outdated way to refer to ADHD.

ADHD in adults ADHD is a developmental disorder, meaning that it starts in childhood. However, people with ADHD may still exhibit symptoms in adulthood, many years after initial diagnosis. Other adults may also have undiagnosed ADHD In later life. A persons symptoms may also change with age. Typically adults with ADHD exhibit less hyperactive tendencies. However, they may still experience: impulsive behavior

poor concentration

risk-taking

Symptoms Some small children naturally display some of the signs of ADHD. These include: high levels of activity

difficulty staying still

inability to pay attention for long periods However, this behavior becomes an issue if it causes them problems at home, school, or with their family and friends. There are some key signs of ADHD that fall into three main types. Inattention Signs that suggest someone is experiencing inattention include: having trouble staying focused on tasks or activities

getting quickly bored with a task or activity and struggling to complete it

seemingly not listening when spoken to

having difficulty following instructions

showing signs of forgetfulness and making simple mistakes

trouble with organization and planning ahead

frequently losing or misplacing belongings

not enjoying study or prolonged periods of mental effort Impulsivity Signs that someone is experiencing impulsivity include: having difficulty waiting their turn

often interrupting others

blurting out answers or inappropriate things rather than waiting to hear the question or to be called upon

problems controlling powerful emotions, which can lead to anger issues

taking risks and not understanding the consequences of their actions Hyperactivity If someone has the symptom of hyperactivity, they may be showing signs of: constantly fidgeting or squirming

having difficulty sitting down and staying still

talking all the time

constantly moving around, including running and climbing

Diagnosis Doctors can diagnose ADHD at any age. However, most people receive a diagnosis at ages 37. Just because a child shows signs of inattention, impulsivity, or hyperactivity, it does not mean they have ADHD. Some other medical conditions, psychological conditions, or life events can cause similar symptoms, such as: learning disabilities, or problems with reading, writing, and language

traumatic experiences, such as moving house or school, bullying, parents divorce, or the death of a loved one

psychological disorders, such as anxiety or depression

behavioral disorders

medical conditions, including sleep issues, epilepsy, and thyroid problems There are no specific tests that can diagnose ADHD, so a qualified health professional needs to gather lots of information before they can make a diagnosis. Parents, carers, and teachers often have to give a detailed history of the childs behavior. The doctor will also observe the childs behavior and may recommend psychoeducational tests, which they use to identify and assess potential learning disabilities.

Treatment There is no cure for ADHD. However, many treatments can help people manage the disorder. The type of treatment recommended will depend on a variety of things, including: personal preferences

the age of the person

the severity of the symptoms

whether they have undergone different treatments before Medication Drugs can help manage symptoms by balancing the chemicals in the brain that are responsible for attention and controlling impulses. Common medications for ADHD include: Adderall

Concerta, or Ritalin (methylphenidate)

dextroamphetamine

Strattera (atomoxetine)

lisdexamfetamine These drugs can cause side effects, including: decreased appetite

trouble sleeping

headaches

stomach aches

anxiety Learn more about the different medications for ADHD here. Therapy Many types of therapy seek to address any social, behavioral, and emotional issues the person may experience. Behavioral therapy can include working in small groups or one-on-one to help the person develop the social skills that will help them to interact with others. Often therapy can be undertaken as part of the school program for children with ADHD, so discuss this option with both the doctor and the school to find out the best way forward.

Outlook Although many people can manage their ADHD, not addressing it can lead to serious problems, so it is important to seek help if concerned. People can make habitual changes to help manage the condition, including: ensuring proper exercise and sleep

establishing a routine for children with ADHD and sticking to it

observing and listening to a child with ADHD to look for triggers

organizing daily tasks and breaking them down into more manageable steps Some people have noticed a relationship between hyperactivity and eating foods that contain lots of sugar. If this is the case, it may help to reduce the childs sugar intake. There are many positive aspects to ADHD, particularly with proper management. For example, people with ADHD are often creative, enthusiastic, and have lots of energy and drive.
How does creativity work? And, more importantly, what can we do to become more creative individuals? These questions baffle the minds of neuroscientists, philosophers, artists, and corporate leaders alike, with phrases such as creative thinking and creative problem-solving on everyones lips nowadays. New research may have finally found an answer, and it involves electrodes and a knowledge of the human brain. Share on Pinterest New research finds that switching off a specific area of our brain can significantly enhance creativity. Researchers at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) and Goldsmiths University of London, both in the United Kingdom, set out to better understand the neurological mechanisms behind creativity, and to test whether or not creativity can be stimulated on demand. Previous research has suggested that turning off the editing, self-censoring parts of our brains could potentially enhance creativity. In a former experiment , jazz players placed inside a functional MRI machine revealed how the brain switches from self-monitoring mode to creative mode during improvisation. The new research, published in the journal Scientific Reports, aimed to actually shut down one of the brain regions involved in self-control to see whether it had any bearing on creativity. The first author of the new study is Dr. Caroline Di Bernardi Luft from QMULs School of Biological and Chemical Sciences.

Analyzing the link between cortex and creativity Dr. Luft and her colleagues used the so-called transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) technique to stimulate creativity in 60 participants. tDCS is a form of neurostimulation, or neuromodulation, that involves sending weak electric currents directly to the cortex using electrodes. The technique can inhibit or activate neural activity, and it has been used in neuropsychiatry and clinical rehabilitation. In this experiment, the electrodes were soaked in saline solution and placed over the scalp of the participants in order to modulate a brain region called the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), which plays a crucial role in thinking and reasoning. This brain area is also involved in working memory  that is, the brains ability to temporarily hold and process new information  as well as in decision-making and social interaction. Furthermore, the DLPFC is key for cognitive control, including self-control. Dr. Luft explains the relationship between the DLPFC and creativity: We solve problems by applying rules we learn from experience, and the DLPFC plays a key role in automating this process. It works fine most of the time, but fails spectacularly when we encounter new problems which require a new style of thinking  our past experience can indeed block our creativity. To break this mental fixation, we need to loosen up our learned rules. Using tDCS, the researchers managed to alternately suppress and activate the DLPFC. They examined the participants creativity by asking them to solve problems such as matchsticks puzzles. Such tasks are great for assessing creativity; they require a flexible and creative approach to arithmetic and algebra. The participants were asked to solve these problems in three conditions: while their DLPFC was inhibited, while it was activated, and when the brain area was not stimulated at all. The researchers examined the participants both before and after each of these interventions.
Baku, Azerbaijan, June 7

By Leman Zeynalova  Trend:

OPEC crude oil production is expected to average 32.3 million barrels per day in 2017 and 32.8 million barrels per day in 2018, about 0.2 million barrels per day and 0.4 million barrels per day, respectively, lower than previously forecast, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) said in its June Short-term Energy Outlook (STEO).

The lower forecast takes into account OPECs May 25 announcement regarding the extension of its production cuts.

On May 25, OPEC member countries and non-OPEC parties, Azerbaijan, Kingdom of Bahrain, Brunei Darussalam, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Mexico, Sultanate of Oman, the Russian Federation, Republic of Sudan, and the Republic of South Sudan agreed to extend the production adjustments for a further period of nine months, with effect from July 1, 2017.

The reductions will be on the same terms as those agreed in November.

The current forecast assumes OPECs cuts are extended beyond next March, but that non-compliance, which begins to grow in late 2017, increases somewhat in the second half of 2018, said the report.

Without a further extension of the OPEC agreement, EIA would expect larger inventory builds in 2018 than are included in this forecast.

EIAs OPEC production figures this month do not include Equatorial Guinea, which joined OPEC on May 25. EIA will include Equatorial Guinea in OPEC starting in the July 2017 STEO.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @Lyaman_Zeyn
Wonder Woman is literally taking over the world right now, and Gal Gadot is receiving a lot of praise for portraying the badass character with grace and a sense of hope. Even Wonder Womans fellow superheroes - including The Hulk, played by Mark Ruffalo, Black Panthers Lupita Nyongo and Captain America played by Chris Evans - have nothing but praise for the movie and Gal Gadot.

With all of the DC/Marvel crossover praise, obviously the question of which hero is stronger was posed to Gal Gadot. During an interview with Katie Couric, the 32-year-old Israeli actress was asked who would win in a battle between Thor and Wonder Woman.

Couric sent out a tweet asking Chris Hemsworth who would win.

Seems like Gadot was pretty confident in Dianas own powers and fighting prowess. Even though Thor can get a little cocky sometimes, at least Chris Hemsworth knows when he has lost.

He quickly replied saying :

I think she'd kick Thor's a**  Chris Hemsworth (@chrishemsworth) June 3, 2017

Yes, we our answer and Thor may have accepted his defeat already but Gadot still thinks a fair fight is required and a collision of the MCU and DCEU would be worth it.

I always knew you were a smart guy :) But I think its worth a fight . we should collide worlds?  Gal Gadot (@GalGadot) June 4, 2017

Now, that would be such a fun fight to watch and seems like were not the only ones excited about this idea.

That'd be a knock down, bloody knuckles, cover the children's eyes kind of a battle. pic.twitter.com/ZcFjJKtKtn  Samuel Montgomery (@TrojanWarrior) June 3, 2017
Baku, Azerbaijan, June 7

By Maksim Tsurkov  Trend:

Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) shipped 22.59 million tons of CPC Blend oil from Russias terminal Yuzhnaya Ozereyka-2 in January-May 2017, as compared to 18.43 million tons in the same period of 2016, reads a message posted on the CPC website June 7.

The consortium shipped 4.87 million tons of CPC Blend from the terminal in May 2017.

The consortium shipped 44.3 million tons of CPC Blend from the terminal in 2016 compared to 42.76 million tons shipped in 2015.

CPC shareholders are Transneft (24 percent), KazMunayGas (19 percent), Chevron (15 percent), LUKARCO (12.5 percent), Mobil Caspian Pipeline Company (7.5 percent), Rosneft Shell Caspian Ventures Ltd. (7.5 percent), CPC Company (7 percent), BG Overseas Holdings Limited (2 percent), Eni (2 percent), Kazakhstan Pipeline Ventures (1.75 percent) and Oryx Caspian Pipeline (1.75 percent).
Baku, Azerbaijan, June 7

Trend:

Extractive Industries Transparency Commission (EITC) held a meeting on June 7, 2017, at the State Oil Fund of the Republic of Azerbaijan (SOFAZ), said the Fund in a message.

During the meeting, the result of the request for proposals on selection of the company for reconciling and analyzing the reports on payments of local and foreign extractive companies and government receipts was discussed.

According to the legislation of the Republic of Azerbaijan, 10 internationally recognized audit companies operating in the country were invited to bid and 4 (RSM Azerbaijan, Moore Stephens Azerbaijan, BDO Azerbaijan, Baker Tilly Azerbaijan) of them sent their proposals. EIT Commission assessed the proposals of the bidders. According to the results, Moore Stephens Azerbaijan will prepare 2016 EIT report.

Representatives of civil society, foreign embassies, regional representatives of international financial organizations and members of local and foreign extractive companies operating in Azerbaijan participated at the meeting.

During the meeting, EITCs Secretariat made presentations regarding the Opinion of extractive companies on draft Agreement on collaboration of EITC with local and foreign extractive companies and on initial vision regarding potential web site of the Commission.
Baku, Azerbaijan, June 7

By Elena Kosolapova  Trend:

Russia equips its military bases in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan with the latest weapons to prevent the transfer of terrorist activity from Afghanistan to the Central Asia, RIA Novosti News Agency quoted Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu as saying.

"Russian Defense Ministry is taking measures to prevent the transfer of terrorist activity from Afghanistan to the Central Asian region. We increase the combat readiness of Russian military bases in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan and equip them with modern weapons and military equipment for this purpose," Shoigu said at a meeting of Defense Ministers of the member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in the city of Astana on June 7.

According to Shoigu, Russia as well provides assistance to the armed forces of the Central Asian states and pays great attention to increasing their combat capabilities. He went on to add that Russia regularly holds joint military drills with the Central Asian countries.

He informed that in September it is planned to hold military anti-terrorist exercises of the member states of The Collective Security Treaty Organization.

Follow the author on Twitter: @E_Kosolapova
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, June 7

By Huseyn Hasanov  Trend:

President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, noting that the system of benefits in the country has become completely ineffective, instructed to prepare proposals for cancellation of all benefits, the Neutral Turkmenistan newspaper said in an article June 7.

Berdimuhamedov was addressing a meeting with the leadership of the Turkmen banking and financial sectors.

Benefits should be provided not to anybody, but only to those who really need social assistance, he said.
Baku, Azerbaijan, June 7

By Elmira Tariverdiyeva  Trend:

Russian President Vladimir Putin has sent a telegram to his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani to express condolences over the terrorist attacks in Tehran, the Russian presidential press service reported.

Putin reaffirmed Russias readiness for further joint actions with Iran to continue combating terrorism, according to the press service.

The Russian president strongly condemned the Tehran attacks, which once again confirm the need to boost international cooperation in the fight against terrorism.

Separate attacks shattered Tehran on June 7. As reports said, several armed people tried to break their way into the Parliament building.



The attackers managed to get inside the building and engaged in a shootout with the security forces. One terrorist committed suicide by blowing himself up. The latest reports indicate that all terrorists who took part in the siege of the parliament building have been killed.



Meanwhile, another attack took place at the Imam Khomeini Shrine, which involved armed terrorists, suicide bombers. The reports said Iran's security forces neutralized one terrorist, another one committed suicide. Several pilgrims have also been injured in the attack.



A separate terrorist group in the country has been detained before it managed to carry out any terror attacks. Fars news agency issued a report, saying that ISIS claimed responsibility for the terror attacks in Tehran.
Deputy Foreign Minister Ioannis Amanatidis received today, Tuesday, 6 June 2017, in Athens the UNICEF Regional Director and Special Coordinator for the Refugee and Migrant Crisis in Europe, Afshan Khan. The President of the Greek National Committee for UNICEF, Sofia Tzitzikou, also participated in the meeting.



Presented to the Deputy Minister were the specialised actions and programmes UNICEF is developing in Greece for the provision of care, education and psychological support for child refugees, with emphasis on the key issue of protecting unaccompanied minors.



Mr. Amanatidis highlighted that Greece has signed and ratified the main international conventions on the Rights of the Child and participates actively in the relevant international fora. He also noted that our country participated in the international conference on Safe Schools and Protections of Education from Attacks, also signing the relevant Declaration and the Guidelines for Protection of Educational Institutions from Military Use during Armed Conflicts.



Moreover, Mr. Amanatidis expressed his appreciation for UNICEF's contribution to the Greek government's actions for confronting the refugee crisis, particularly as concerns its impact on the vulnerable group of child refugees. He made assurances of the Greek government's will to assist UNICEF in the multifaceted work it is doing in our country.
The website was developed using the open source software Elxis CMS by the Web Development Team

of Foreign Ministry's ST2 Directorate for Telecommunications and Information Technologies
Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias held a telephone conversation today with the Foreign Minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mohammad Zarif, with whom he discussed the recent developments in the Middle East region.
Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias received the U.S. Ambassador to Greece, Geoffrey R. Pyatt, at the Foreign Ministry today, Tuesday, 6 June.

Ahead of Mr. Pyatt's upcoming trip to the United States, the talks focused on the course of the bilateral relations between the two countries.
Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias spoke by phone yesterday and today, 5 and 6 June, with the UN Secretary General's Special Adviser on Cyprus, Espen Barth Eide.

During the talks, there was discussion of their next meeting, the prerequisites and preparations for holding the Geneva Conference.
Baku, Azerbaijan, June 7



By Fatih Karimov  Trend:



Three people including a security guard reportedly have been injured in a shooting incident in Irans parliament on June 7, Irans Tasnim news agency reported.



Reportedly unknown men fired several rounds at the guards protecting the parliament building in Tehran. One guard was injured.



According to initial reports, the assailants tried to break their way into the parliament building while shooting at the guards, leading to the injury of three people.



Conflicting reports suggest Iran parliament's attackers were arrested, however, some reports have not confirmed the arrest and say fire exchanges continue.
Tehran, Iran, June 7

By Mehdi Sepahvand - Trend:

Iranian Interior Ministry has held an extraordinary meeting over the terror attacks that stunned Tehran on June 7, Trends correspondent in Tehran reported.

Two separate attacks took place in Tehran on June 7, as reports said several armed people tried to break their way into the parliament building. Meanwhile, another attack took place at the Imam Khomeini Shrine.

Despite the attacks, the MPs in the parliament have completed the todays open session.

Ardabil representative Hemayat Mirzadeh told Trend he and his colleagues are attending their regular sessions in the parliament.

One of the four men who attacked the Iranian Parliament has been arrested, he told Trend.
Baku, Azerbaijan, June 7

By Farhad Daneshvar  Trend:

The officials of the Iranian Intelligence Ministry have arrested all the members of a terrorist group, which planned another attack in Iran, Borna news agency reported.



Two separate attacks took place in Tehran on June 7, as reports said several armed people tried to break their way into the parliament building. Meanwhile, another attack took place at the Imam Khomeini Shrine.



In both attacks people reportedly got wounded and killed.
Tehran, Iran, June 7

By Mehdi Sepahvand  Trend:

The June 7 terror attacks in Tehran were blind, Kazem Jalali, the head of Parliament Research Center, told Trend.

According to him, currently the world is facing a wave of terror attacks and there is not any common willingness on serious fight against terrorism.

Two separate attacks took place in Tehran on June 7. As reports said, several armed people tried to break their way into the Parliament building. Meanwhile, another attack took place at the Imam Khomeini Shrine.

In both attacks people reportedly got wounded and killed.

Fars news agency says that ISIS has claimed responsibility for todays terror attacks in Tehran.

Unfortunately, the world powers as well as some nations divided terrorist groups to two categories: bad and good ones. Some of terror groups are also supported by governments or intelligence services, Jalali said.

Jalali added that the fight against terrorism requires a global willingness.
Baku, Azerbaijan, June 7

By Emil Ilgar  Trend:

The June 7 terror attacks targeted Iranian government and democracy symbols in Iran, Nathalie Goulet, French senator and vice-chair of the Senates Foreign Affairs Committee, told Trend.

She added that the attacks benefit no one.

Separate attacks shattered Tehran on June 7. As reports said, several armed people tried to break their way into the Parliament building.

The attackers managed to get inside the building and engaged in a shootout with the security forces. One terrorist committed suicide by blowing himself up. The latest reports indicate that all terrorists who took part in the siege of the parliament building have been killed.

Meanwhile, another attack took place at the Imam Khomeini Shrine, which involved armed terrorists, suicide bombers. The reports said Iran's security forces neutralized one terrorist, another one committed suicide. Several pilgrims have also been injured in the attack.

A separate terrorist group in the country has been detained before it managed to carry out any terror attacks. Fars news agency issued a report, saying that ISIS claimed responsibility for the terror attacks in Tehran.

Iran remains the only country in the Persian Gulf to have a democratic parliament even it doesn't match our criteriums. Iran just showed a very democratic process in the presidential election, Goulet said.

No doubt that the heavy political attacks and the new US strategy will destabilize the Persian Gulf, she added.

She said that the sophisticated and well organized attack targeted Iranian regimes symbol (Imam Khomeini shrine) and the symbol of the political system (parliament), hurt badly the country.



According to Goulet, with the diplomatic crisis in the GCC and ban on Qatar, these attacks will bring more confusion in the region.

This is very scary. The region needs peace and stability and understanding not war and terrorism. The stability is crucial for the energetic survive of the world, she said.

Let's wait for the identification of the terrorists, their connections and background and let's pray in this holy month of Ramadan that prayers will bring the major players of the world to common understanding. No one can be pleased with Teheran attacks. Attacks will only serve the worst, she said, adding that France should help to bring more understanding and reason between the two banks or the Persian Gulf it's a matter of worldwide security, the senator added.
HURON COUNTY  Scheurer Hospital will host the following events:

 Michigan Sugar Festival Kids Safety Day Events: From 1 to 3 p.m. June 16 at the Sebewaing Village Park for Kids Safety Day. Events and giveaways for kids. Everyone is invited to help color the Monster Mural.

 Unused Medication Take Back: 3 to 8 p.m. June 23 in the Pigeon Recreation Park. Bring your unused medications (including controlled substances) for a chance to win a $100 gas card.

 Spark in the Park Wellness Event: 3 to 8 p.m. June 23 in the Pigeon Recreation Park for wellness, prizes, food and fun. Enjoy inflatables, nutrition and fitness activities, wellness information, freebies, games, massage, grand prizes and more. A light dinner will be served from 5 to 7 p.m., plus you can walk the Scheurer Path to Fitness. Everyone is welcome. For more information, call 989-453-5213.
Baku, Azerbaijan, June 7



By Fatih Karimov  Trend:



Senior politicians from various countries condemned the terrorist attacks in Tehran claimed by the ISIS terrorist group that killed at least 12 people.



France's foreign ministry, issued a statement on June 7, and strongly condemned the attacks that targeted the Iranian parliament and the Imam Khomenei shrine in Tehran.



The European Unions Foreign Policy Chief Federica Mogherini in a message offered condolences to the Iranian people over the attacks.

Mogherini, in a phone conversation with Irans foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, condemned the attacks and expressed sympathy and solidarity with Iran.



Meanwhile, the head of European Parliament Antonio Tajani said he stands in solidarity with the speaker of Iranian parliament and the Iranian people.



Italian Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano also noted that Tehran attacks underlined the necessity for a long-term strategy against terrorism.



Norway, Russia, Pakistan, India, Oman, the UAE, Turkey, Afghanistan and Syria were also among the countries, which condemned the attacks.



"Our position on terrorism is very clear ... Any terrorist attack in any country, in any capital, directed at innocent people is something that the UAE abhors and the UAE condemns", state minister for foreign affairs Anwar Gargash told AFP.



Richard Haass, the president of the Council of Foreign Relations, a public policy think tank in US and a former top diplomat under the US ex-president, George W. Bush, wrote on his twitter that condemnation of terrorism cannot be selective if it is to have meaning.



Terror attacks in Tehran must be condemned as well as in Europe, he advised the US president Donald Trump.



Separate attacks shattered Tehran on June 7. As reports said, several armed people tried to break their way into the Parliament building.



The attackers managed to get inside the building and engaged in a shootout with the security forces. One terrorist committed suicide by blowing himself up. The latest reports indicate that all terrorists who took part in the siege of the parliament building have been killed.



Meanwhile, another attack took place at the Imam Khomeini Shrine, which involved armed terrorists, suicide bombers. The reports said Iran's security forces neutralized one terrorist, another one committed suicide. Several pilgrims have also been injured in the attack.



A separate terrorist group in the country has been detained before it managed to carry out any terror attacks. Fars news agency issued a report, saying that ISIS claimed responsibility for the terror attacks in Tehran.
Camp Lejeune Town Halls Aim to Help Those Exposed to Toxic Water. Heres How You Can Go.

Retired Marine Master Sgt. Jerry Ensminger made it his mission to tell the world that if they lived or served on Camp Lejeune...
Closing unneeded bases and relocating troops is the best way to make the most of limited military construction funding, a panel of top Pentagon installation officials told lawmakers Tuesday.

"We are asking for base realignment and closure funding once again this year, and that's important to us," said Peter Potochney, the Defense Department's acting assistant secretary for energy, installations and environment. "In the end, it allows us to validate the installations that remain so they can compete for the funding we expect in the future."

Potochney and representatives from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps testified Tuesday at the Senate Appropriations military construction subcommittee hearing.

The Pentagon's 2018 budget request, sent to Capitol Hill last month, includes $11.9 billion for military construction and family housing, and a request to restart a Base Realignment and Closure, or BRAC, Commission process to shut down unneeded bases and facilities.

Related content:

About 20 percent of the Pentagon's facilities could be closed without negative impact, John Roth, the acting budget chief, told reporters May 22. Doing so would instead allow the department to spend construction money on upkeep of facilities that are actually needed, he said.

BRAC is a politically toxic subject, as individual lawmakers' districts stand to win and lose in the process with an increase or decrease of cash to local economies.

While findings from the proposed BRAC would not be delivered until 2021, after the 2020 elections, the Pentagon can't even analyze what the potential changes would look like without Capitol Hill's OK.

BRAC was last approved in 2005.

Low military construction funding levels over several years have resulted in a backlog for both facility maintenance and family housing upkeep, officials said.

"We have been putting ourselves in a hole," Potochney said. "This budget gets us out of the hole a little bit, or at least puts on a glide path to get out of the hole."

The Army, for example, has a $10.8 billion deferred maintenance bill, Lt. Gen. Gwendolyn Bingham, assistant chief of staff for Army Installation Management, told the subcommittee. The service also has 161 million square feet of expensive-to-maintain excess facility capacity. Yet only 33 million square feet of that excess can be shut down or divested without congressional approval for BRAC.

"Army installations can only be ready and resilient with adequate, predictable and sustained funding, and the authority to implement measures such as closing and realigning our resources," she told the committee.

The debate over whether to approve a new round of BRAC, as well as the president's baseline budget proposal of $603 billion, will likely stretch well into the fall.

-- Amy Bushatz can be reached at amy.bushatz@military.com.
The Marine officer who was named a "person of the week" in 2009 when she became the first-ever aircraft commander of Marine One -- the presidential chopper -- has been fired from her current post, the Marine Corps announced Wednesday.

Lt. Col. Jennifer Grieves, 45, was relieved from command of Marine Heavy Helicopter Squadron 464, a CH-53E Super Stallion squadron out of Marine Corps Air Station New River, due to a loss of trust and confidence in her ability to continue to lead, according to a statement released by II Marine Expeditionary Force.

A spokesman for II MEF, Lt. Col. Michael Armistead, said Grieves was fired by Maj. Gen. Matthew Glavy, commander of 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing, due to an off-duty incident that was not properly reported.

Grieves was arrested Dec. 16 at her home in Sneads Ferry, North Carolina, and charged with simple assault, Maj. C. D. Thomas of the Onslow County Sheriff's Office told Military.com. The incident happened around 3 a.m. and stemmed from a domestic argument, according to the arrest report. She was released on a $500 bond; the charge is still pending, Thomas said.

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Grieves, who enlisted in 1990 and would earn a commission eight years later, gained a level of celebrity when she became the first woman to ever command Marine One.

In 2009, ABC News named her a "person of the week" as she wrapped up her one-year tour in the post, reporting that her final flight featured an all-female crew. She also received a personal acknowledgment and send-off from then-President Barack Obama.

"As far as the female crews go, I was so incredibly proud of both of them when we came and landed," she told the outlet at the time. "Everything about [the flight] has probably made my Marine Corps career. And if I were to retire in six months, I would retire knowing that I've been part of an exceptional organization."

Grieves took command of HMH-464 in May 2015, according to her official biography. She previously served as a commander for other aircraft in Marine Helicopter Squadron 1, which supplies Marine One. After departing HMX-1 in 2009, she studied at the Marine Corps Command and Staff College. She would later deploy to Djibouti with HMH-461 out of New River in 2010 and to Afghanistan with HMH-464 in 2011.

Her awards include two Air Medals-Individual Action, three Meritorious Service Medals, five Air Medals-Strike/Flight, and the Combat Action Ribbon.

Grieves, who assumed command of the squadron in May 2016, has been replaced by Lt. Col Troy Callahan, formerly of Marine Operational Test and Evaluation Squadron One (VMX-1), as commander of the squadron. Grieves will be reassigned within II Marine Expeditionary Force.

-- Hope Hodge Seck can be reached at hope.seck@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @HopeSeck.
Ships and aircraft continued to search Wednesday for a sailor from the guided-missile cruiser Normandy who went overboard off the coast of North Carolina on Tuesday afternoon.

The Normandy, part of the Eisenhower carrier strike group, had been conducting independent training about 80 nautical miles off the coast when the sailor went overboard, a spokesman for Fleet Forces Command, Lt. Cmdr. Brian Wierzbicki, told Military.com in a statement.

It's not clear if weather played a part in the sailor going overboard, and Wierzbicki said he had no information to release about the sea state at the time. On Wednesday, a small craft advisory was issued by the National Weather Service, covering coastal waters from Surf City to Cape Fear, North Carolina, and extending out 20 nautical miles.

The advisory warned that winds of up to 20 knots and seas of up to 4 to 6 feet could produce hazardous conditions for smaller boats.

The search-and-rescue effort is ongoing with help from a small armada of Navy and Coast Guard craft. Aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, newly out of maintenance; Coast Guard medium endurance cutter Forward; and Arleigh Burke-class destroyers Bainbridge, The Sullivans, and Mason are in the area to help Normandy with search efforts.

Navy fixed and rotary aircraft are also assisting, though Wierzbicki could not say which platforms and which squadrons were part of the effort.

"The sailor's next of kin has been made aware of the incident and is being provided updates on the ongoing search-and-rescue operation," Wierzbicki said in a statement.

"Command leadership is in contact with Normandy families to make them aware of the incident as well," he added. "Our thoughts remain with the Normandy family, and we will continue to provide updates as they become available."

-- Hope Hodge Seck can be reached at hope.seck@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at@HopeSeck.
The White House has nominated a former member of the 75th Ranger Regiment who served in Afghanistan to become the next undersecretary of the Army.

The nomination Tuesday of Ryan McCarthy is another step forward in what has become a struggle for the Trump Administration to fill key leadership positions in the military and other agencies.

McCarthy most recently served as the vice president of sustainment for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program at Lockheed Martin Corp., where he restructured the sustainment line of business, according to a White House press release. At Lockheed, he has held a variety of roles on the F-35 program and at the corporate office.

He previously served as Special Assistant to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and also in the 75th Ranger Regiment during the invasion of Afghanistan, according to the release.

Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., said he was pleased at McCarthy's nomination on Wednesday during a hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee to discuss the Army's fiscal 2018 proposed budget.

"My understanding is you have a history with him, and I am looking forward to that being a team that accomplishes a lot on behalf of our nation," Moran said.

Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, expressed his concern that the White House hasn't yet filled key leadership positions, citing posts dealing with the Pacific region such as the "under secretary of defense policy, an assistant secretary for Asia and Pacific security affairs, an assistant secretary for political military affairs for east Asian and Pacific affairs and an ambassador to Korea."

"I assume that you feel that this is all part of the team in the Pacific AOR, and we need to fill those positions as expeditiously as possible," said Schatz, speaking to acting Secretary of the Army Robert Speer and Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley.

Milley agreed, but pointed out that the Army has a group of dedicated and professional civilians who "have stepped up to the plate and they are filling these executive positions and assistant secretary of the Army positions as is Mr. Speer, acting Secretary of the Army."

"And I will tell you that they are tremendously professional, they are doing an outstanding job on a day to day basis and we are not missing a heartbeat," Milley said.

Schatz acknowledged Milley's point, but said "there is a structural problem, however, when you have people who are not Senate confirmed and are not authorized to speak in the same way that a Senate-confirmed nominee would be on behalf of their country to another country."

"I mean that is the reason and that is the reason you have Senate confirmations and that is the reason for these assistant secretaries and ambassadorships," he said.

The White House thus far has made two unsuccessful attempts at nominating someone to the Army's top civilian post.

The first was the nomination of businessman and former Army infantry officer Vincent Viola in December. The 1977 West Point graduate withdrew his name from consideration in February, citing an inability to navigate the confirmation process and Defense Department rules concerning family businesses.

Then Mark Green, a Republican state senator from Tennessee, withdrew his name from consideration in May. During the review process, the decorated West Point graduate came under fire for past unfavorable comments about the LGBTQ community as well as Muslims.

-- Matthew Cox can be reached at matthew.cox@military.com.
If you think about it, there is not a better time to build a new morning fitness habit than right now with the end of...
Tehran, Iran, June 7

By Mehdi Sepahvand  Trend:

The recent twin terrorist attacks in Tehran are a sign that the Islamic State (aka IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh) terrorist group is drawing its last breath, Hossein Kanani Moqaddam, secretary general of Iran Green Party and former IRGC member, believes.

Information about the entire IS network across the world was revealed and given to security forces after the terrorist group took a hard blow recently in operations in Mosul, Iraq, Moqaddam told Trend June 7.

Therefore, he noted, it is inevitable that sooner or later their groups are attacked by security forces everywhere around the world, so they decide to carry out suicide attacks before they are caught.

Separate attacks shattered Tehran on June 7. As reports said, several armed people tried to break their way into the Parliament building.

The attackers managed to get inside the building and engaged in a shootout with the security forces. One terrorist committed suicide by blowing himself up. The latest reports indicate that all terrorists who took part in the siege of the parliament building have been killed.

However, the regular sessions of the Parliament were not interrupted. Trend was told by Ardabil representative Hemayat Mirzadeh that he and colleagues were attending their regular sessions.

Meanwhile, another attack took place at the Imam Khomeini Shrine, which involved armed terrorists, suicide bombers. The reports said Iran's security forces neutralized one terrorist, another one committed suicide. Several pilgrims have also been injured in the attack.

A separate terrorist group in the country has been detained before it managed to carry out any terror attack. Fars news agency issued a report saying that ISIS claimed responsibility for the terror attacks in Tehran.

According to Moqaddam, the attacks are part of a US-Saudi plot to punish Iran for having stood against their bigger regional schemes.

The IS has met failure in Syria and Iraq where Iran has been one of the few countries fighting their terrorism. This is why they have resorted to scattered terror attacks to once more draw attention, he said.

Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi in April said that 30 bombing plots were foiled in Iran during the past calendar year, which ended on March 20. Supreme National Security Council Secretary Ali Shamkhani also confirmed in June 2016 that some suicide attacks had been foiled in Tehran during the holy month of Ramadan.
Baku, Azerbaijan, June 7

By Emil Ilgar  Trend:

Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei condemned terror attacks on Parliament and Imam Khomeini Shrine on June 7, saying that these "firecrackers" wouldnt frighten Iranian nation.

Separate attacks shattered Tehran on June 7. As reports said, several armed people tried to break their way into the Parliament building.

The attackers managed to get inside the building and engaged in a shootout with the security forces. One terrorist committed suicide by blowing himself up. The latest reports indicate that all terrorists who took part in the siege of the parliament building have been killed.

Meanwhile, another attack took place at the Imam Khomeini Shrine, which involved armed terrorists, suicide bombers. The reports said Iran's security forces neutralized one terrorist, another one committed suicide. Several pilgrims have also been injured in the attack.

ISIS claimed responsibility for the terror attacks in Tehran. Twelve people and six terrorists were killed.

According to official website of Khamenei, he added that the domain of terror attacks would have widened if Iran hadnt have fought with terrorists abroad (in Iraq and Syria).

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani also said that the nation would become more united and would foil all ill-wishers plots and conspiracies with the help of its powerful security structure, IRNA reported June 7.

He offered condolences to the bereaved families of victims of recent terrorist attack in the capital, Tehran.

The ill-wishers recruited Takfiri elements to hide their regional defeats," the president noted, adding that undoubtedly, the attack would reinforce Irans commitment in fighting terrorism, extremism and violence in the region.

Fighting terrorism as a collective problem needs regional and international cooperation, he added.
Baku, Azerbaijan, June 7

By Farhad Daneshvar  Trend:

Twin terror attacks rocked Tehran on June 7. As reports said, several armed people tried to break their way into the Parliament building. The attackers managed to get inside the building and engaged in a shootout with the security forces. Meanwhile, another attack took place at the Imam Khomeini Shrine, which involved armed terrorists and suicide bombers.

Iranian authorities said that at least 12 people were killed in addition to assailants in the terror attacks in Tehran. Four attackers were killed in the Parliament building, and two more, including a suicide bomber, were killed in the Imam Khomeini Shrine. Several pilgrims were also injured in the Khomeini Shrine attack.

A separate terrorist group in the country was detained before it managed to carry out any terror attack. Fars news agency issued a report saying that ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks in Tehran.

---

13:58 (UTC +4) Security has been restored at the Imam Khomeini Mausoleum in Tehran, IRIB news agency reports.

According to an informed source, a bomber blew himself up, another one was shot dead by security forces, and eventually the law enforcement forces detained a female assailant who was earlier wounded.

Four pilgrims were wounded. A mausoleum gardener is among the victims.

13:33 (UTC +4) Irans Press TV reported that shooting is still heard at the Imam Khomeini Mausoleum.

13:10 (UTC +4) ISNA news agency reports that at least 35 have been transferred to nearby hospitals following two terror attacks this morning in Tehran.

12:55 (UTC +4) IRIB reports that another suicide bombing was carried out at the Imam Khomeini shrine.

12:28 (UTC +4) IRGC Special Forces have arrested two suspect terrorists at Imam Khomeini shrine.

12:05 (UTC +4) Iranian security forces have killed a second suicide bomber at the Imam Khomeini mausoleum, Mehr News agency reported.

11:49 (UTC +4) Tabnak news website reported that the armed attack on the Imam Khomeini shrine has left at least one killed and four injured.

11:05 (UTC +4) Tasnim news agency reported that an attacker has been arrested at Khomeinis tomb. The arrested attacker is a female.

YJC (Iran's Young Journalists Club) also reported that the bomber of Imam Khomeini shrine was a female.

10:47 (UTC +4) An unknown gunman has injured several people at the tomb of the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, near capital Tehran.

The incident has left several people injured, Fars news agency tweeted.



The officials have not revealed any details regarding the attack, or the casualties thus far.



In a separate incident on the same day, several attackers reportedly tried to storm the building of Iran's parliament, engaging in a shootout with the guards.



According to reports, several people got injured as a result of the attack.

According to ISNA, the attacker of the tomb has committed suicide bombing following the attack.
Baku, Azerbaijan, June 7

By Rufiz Hafizoglu  Trend:

It is hard for the Western countries, in particular Germany, to find an alternative to Turkeys Incirlik Air Base, Prof. Dr. Salih Yilmaz of the Ankara Yildirim Beyazit University told Trend June 7.

Yilmaz, an expert in international relations, was commenting on Germanys decision to withdraw its Air Force from the Incirlik Air Base in Turkey.

The withdrawal of the German Air Force from the Incirlik Air Base and the Air Forces deployment in Cyprus is not such a simple issue, the expert said.

He went on to add that for the deployment of the German Air Force in Cyprus, it is first necessary to obtain permission from the UK and a number of other countries.

One can state that there are also a number of obstacles for the deployment of the German Air Force in Jordan, Yilmaz said. As is known, at present, there are US military bases in that country and it is not yet known whether the Jordanian authorities will approve such a decision of Germany.

Germany decided to withdraw its Air Force from the Incirlik Air Base in Turkey after the country blocked a group of German lawmakers from visiting the servicemen at the Incirlik Air Base prompting German Chancellor Angela Merkel to suggest that Berlin may consider moving 250 troops stationed at the Air Base to one of the neighboring countries.

In turn, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said a possible withdrawal of the German Air Force contingent from the Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey poses no problem for Ankara.

Planes of the US-led coalition members, which participate in air operations against the so-called Islamic State (IS aka ISIS/ISIL) terrorist group, are stationed at the Incirlik Air Base.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
Baku, Azerbaijan, June 7







By Rufiz Hafizoglu - Trend:



It seems that it would be difficult to find a link between the Qatar crisis and a series of terrorist attacks that hit Tehran on June 7, if the Saudi Arabian authorities have not said this morning that a lesson should be taught to Iran.



The Saudi Arabian authorities have repeatedly stated that Iran pursues a sectarian policy in the region, but the thing is that such policy is also being carried out by Saudi Arabia.



Commenting on a series of terrorist attacks in the center of Tehran, a number of Arab and Iranian media outlets have already reported that the so-called Islamic State (IS aka ISIS/ISIL) terrorist group is behind those terrorist attacks.



According to the world media outlets, one of the terrorists committed suicide by drinking cyanide.



The tactic of committing suicide by wearing a suicide belt is widely used by IS terrorists in Syria and Iraq. However, it was never proved that IS terrorists have never used potassium cyanide to commit suicide during a terrorist attack.



This testifies that there is no IS factor in the terrorist attacks committed in Tehran.



If we thoroughly consider the situation in Iran, we can see that ethnic Arabs living in the Iranian province of Khuzestan have recently become very active. Most of the Arabs in this Iranian province are Shiites, however their social and economic conditions are very difficult.



The Arab media outlets periodically report about the difficult life and hard social conditions of the Iranian Arabs.



It is obvious that even if Iranian Arabs, sponsored from outside, are behind the terrorist attacks in Tehran, the Iranian government will not recognize this because otherwise it will become a trump card to the opponents of Iran.



Nevertheless, whoever is behind these events, Iran regards it as a terrorist attack, but the Arab media still disagrees about the events in Tehran.



According to history, depending on the political situation, one or another terrorist organization can be recognized as freedom fighters, or vice versa, the people's liberation and resistance can be positioned as a terrorist movement.



Unfortunately, as a result of armed conflicts in Iraq in Syria, peoples, living in this region for many centuries, openly say that their joint living is impossible now.



Today, Syria and Iraq are on the brink of ethnic split and the IS factor further accelerated this process.



That is, it is quite obvious that ethnic conflicts in the Middle East are as dangerous as growing religious radicalism.



In this regard, along with fighting against growing religious radicalism, Muslim countries must also fight against ethnic separatism, which is the second most important factor of splitting the Islamic world.

Follow Rufiz Hafizoglu on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
Baku, Azerbaijan, June 7

By Elena Kosolapova  Trend:

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) will increasingly resemble the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) after joining of India and Pakistan, Jos Boonstra, a project coordinator of the EU-Central Asia Monitoring (EUCAM) project of the Center of European Security Studies believes.

India and Pakistan are expected to become full members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) at SCO Astana summit on June 8-9.

The SCO was clearly created with two captains at the helm  Russia and China  and this will now change as India and Pakistan are large geo-political actors that poses nuclear weapons, have large populations and growing economies, Boonstra told Trend June 7.

According to the expert, the SCO is turning from a Central Asia focused organization towards a club that focuses on the broader Asian heartland.

With its economic, political-security and development focus it is increasingly resembling the OSCE, but lacking a democracy and human rights regime, the analyst said.

Boonstra noted that so far the SCO has not been influential as its key members Russia and China also have their own regional integration mechanisms: the Eurasian Economic Union for the former and One Road, One Belt initiative for the latter.

With India and Pakistan at the table this will not change. The SCO is likely to remain a forum for debate and a regional organization that also wants to make sure it is excluding The West and thus offering an alternative to US or Europe initiated forums, he said.

Explaining the reasons for India and Pakistan to join the SCO, Boonstra noted that it seems that the both countries have calculated that being together in this organization while being arch enemies, leading to a positive assessment.

According to the expert, the SCO will be another place where New Delhi and Islamabad are around the table which is good for lowering tensions.

More important reasons for both countries are: the potential economic benefits, the importance of good relations with China and Russia and the energy potential of Central Asian states, he said.

Commenting on the prospects of Iran joining to the SCO, he noted that they are reasonably good although it might take time. Iran has repeatedly expressed interest in becoming a full SCO member.

Current members will first want to see how it works out with an enormously enlarged SCO that includes India and Pakistan, he said.

According to Boonstra, Russia will be in favor of Iran joining but there might be doubts among other SCO members, also in the face of relations with the EU and US.

The SCO members now are China, Kazakhstan, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Afghanistan, Belarus, India, Iran, Mongolia and Pakistan are the SCO observer-countries, while Azerbaijan, Armenia, Cambodia, Nepal, Turkey, Sri Lanka are dialogue partners.

Follow the author on Twitter: @E_Kosolapova
Baku, Azerbaijan, June 7

By Rufiz Hafizoglu  Trend:

The OSCE Minsk Group couldnt resolve the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, the countrys Haber7 TV channel reported June 7.

Erdogan noted that the OSCE Minsk Groups activity on the resolution of the conflict is ineffective.

He added that the OSCE Minsk Group co-chair countries are members of the UN Security Council.

When one of these countries stands for the settlement of a conflict, the other one puts a veto on this, Erdogan said. This is the main obstacle to the resolution of conflicts.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
Baku, Azerbaijan, June 7

By Rufiz Hafizoglu  Trend:

Qatar is ready for a dialogue to solve the crisis that has recently occurred in its relations with a number of Arab countries, Qatar News Agency cited the countrys Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani as saying June 7.

He added that the regional countries are not superpowers to solve problems by military means.

Qatar does not support terrorism, the foreign minister said.

Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE announced about breaking their diplomatic relations with Qatar June 5, accusing Doha of supporting terrorist organizations and destabilizing the situation in the Middle East.

Later, the authorities of Libya, Yemen, as well as the Maldives and Mauritius also announced about breaking their diplomatic relations with Qatar.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
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The 36th Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Company will be held on Thursday, the 10th August, 2017, at the Registered Office of the Company at Regency Ball Room, Hyatt Regency Delhi, Bhikaiji Cama Place, M. G. Marg, New Delhi-110 066. The Register of Members and Share Transfer Books of the Company will remain closed from Saturday, the 5th August, 2017, to Thursday, the 10th August, 2017 (inclusive of both days), for the purpose of the AGM. The remote e-voting period commences on Monday, the 7th August, 2017, at 9.00 a.m. (IST) and ends on Wednesday, the 9th August, 2017, at 5.00 p.m. (IST). Members of the Company holding shares in physical form or in dematerialized form, as at the close of business hours on the cut-off date, being Friday, the 4th August, 2017, shall only be entitled to vote on the proposed resolutions; and their shareholding on such date shall only be reckoned for the purposes of arriving at the results of the remote e-voting and ballot at the AGM.Source : BSE
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Pursuant to Regulation 30 read with Schedule III of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Listing Obligations and Disclosure Requirements) Regulations, 2015 read with SEBI circular No. CIR/CFD/CMD4/2015 dated 9th September, 2015, this is to inform you that Sh. Jawahar Jain, an independent director, has tendered his resignation from the directorship of the Board of the Company vide his letter dated June 6th, 2017 with immediate effect.Further, we also inform you that Sh. Suman Jain has been appointed as an Additional Director of the Company with effect from June 6th, 2017 by the Board of Directors in their meeting held on 06.06.2017. He will be an independent director.Source : BSE
Bull's Eye, CNBC-TV18's popular game show, where market experts come together to dish out trading strategies for you to make your week more exciting and compete with each other to see whose portfolio is the strongest.

Remember these are midcap ideas not just for the day, but stocks that look attractive in the medium-term as well.

This week, Ashish Kyal, Gaurav Ratnaparkhi and Ruchit Jain battle it out for top honours.

Below their top stock picks and analysis

Ashish Kyal of wavesstrategy.com

Buy Apollo Hospitals with a stop loss at Rs 1274 and target of Rs 1368

Buy Kaveri Seed Company with a stop loss at Rs 628 and target of Rs 678

Sell SRF futures with stop loss at Rs 1666 and target of Rs 1580

Sell Tata Chemicals futures with a stop loss at Rs 637 and target of Rs 601

Gaurav Ratnaparkhi of Sharekhan

Buy Power Finance Corporation with a stop loss at Rs 124.80 and target of Rs 133

Sell CESC futures with a stop loss of Rs 915 and target at Rs 856

Sell Amara Raja Batteries futues with a stop loss at Rs 890 and target of Rs 835

Sell IRB Infra futures with a stop loss at Rs 236.50 and target of Rs 222

Ruchit Jain of Angel Broking

Buy Hindustan Petroleum Corporation with a stop loss at Rs 531, target of Rs 575

Buy Mahanagar Gas with a stop loss at Rs 975, target of Rs 1027

Buy Indraprastha Gas with a stop loss at Rs 1075, target of Rs 1180

Sell Cummins India with a stop loss at Rs 936 and target of Rs 884
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Last October, Indian drug maker Glenmark Pharmaceuticals hired Dr. Kurt Stoeckli, a high-profile scientist at Sanofis global biopharmaceutical division.

Stoeckli led several discovery research projects for the French drug maker including close involvement in the development of dupilumab, a monoclonal antibody approved recently for the treatment of moderate-to-severe atopic dermatitis.

Stoeckli spoke to CNBC TV18s Vikas Dandekar on the side lines of the annual meeting of the USAIC at Boston last month and shared his plans to power Glenmarks R&D engine.

Stoeckli: I was approached to lead Glenmarks research which was looking at transforming from a pure generics to a mixed generics play. I saw the pipeline and I realised that there is a huge potential but we needed to do it in the right way.

For Glenmark, the challenge is that we cannot mix generics with innovation too much and there are very different priorities and the way we manage issues. So Glenn, had to be sure that he had the right people on both sides. The way he was approaching and the way he has articulated his vision is very convincing.

He is a very visionary entrepreneur and we need to make sure that the teams in India, US and Switzerland can together make this journey. We have good people and now they are taking leadership and driving the portfolio for approvals in the next few years. Also we are looking to develop partnerships because some money has to come where we would like to de-risk the innovative side.

There is no innovation without risks but we also want to develop the products to such level where we can control the risks, we have distinct milestones and with partners we can eventually share the risks. We realise we cannot implement all the products and thats going to be too much. Right now we have a very interesting mix of biologics and small molecules.

Also our focus on three major areas  oncology, respiratory and dermatology  is a very important aspect. We need to develop core expertise where we have domain knowledge that goes deep and is profound. We will develop end-to-end capabilities, meaning from discovery all the way up to manufacturing.

Stoeckli: What is unique, is we have to realize that there is something in India that we need to learn on doing in the right way. The big advantage in my view is that companies in India like Glenmark explore the power and speed of translational medicines.

There are excellent medical centres in Mumbai, Bengaluru or Hyderabad or Delhi that have patients from where we can get a lot of material like blots or biopsies that can be tested early on for the discovery. That is something that is very complicated here where there is a lot of regulations that pose hurdles.

The advantage for Glenmark is that we are based in India and work to have a collaborative network with centres that can help in speeding up the discovery process and translational science. By doing this we de-risk the early portfolio because we have the data that is based on patient-derived material which is clinical as opposed to preclinical material like tests on a mouse or a rat.

For example, what you see in mouse in immunology is not translatable into clinical setting in humans. So this is one big advantage. I am basically also seeing that a lot of work on small molecule profiling or synthesizing work is done out of India. That has not happened in biologics yet but I feel there is a lot to come as the entire industry is shifting towards biologics and a lot of US FDA approved drugs are biologics.

So, my vision is to strengthen the collaborative network with select companies in India that have the capacity to really scale up our biologics plans. Strategically, this is very important but we need to establish the right quality mindset, culture and that comes with compliance or with regulatory standards in EU, US and the rest of the world. Only with that we will be able to produce biologics.

Stoeckli: As we clarified we want to go into the innovation side, but not everyone is on board. This is clearly for us to communicate much more into the future. We need to convince investor communities outside of India that now Glenmark is clearly focused on generics, but we are doing discovery in the best possible way with experienced people. We dont really jump into a risky place and do it in a way that is professional.

We are staring with biologics production outside of India. Our most advanced antibodies will be produced outside of India. I cannot share with you the exact details on the contract partners, but the ultimate goal for us is to produce internally but right now we dont have the capacity as it takes a while to build all this.

For the small molecules, everything is coming out of India or eventually will come from other countries where generics are also sold like in the US. Look at the story of Glenmark, between 2000 and now, it has been fantastic. I have not seen this before in any other companies. It is a good role model.

Stoeckli: What I can say is that the generics model is not sustainable. At this level of price erosion and the challenges from the consolidation of the distribution channels what we will see is further consolidation and stuff like M&As. Then we will have a finite number of major players but that may not help much. It will just be a lot of hard work for a few pennies.

Stoeckli: I dont think we can cross the entire value chain with all our research products. What we have seen in biotech, is that typically companies have chosen a Phase I exit strategy. So, they have done a lot of drug discovery and then basically looked for partnerships to give away their assets. Glenmark has also done the same thing with companies like Forest Labs, Eli Lilly or Sanofi.

Generally Phase I exit strategies are now over and the reason is if you want to go ahead and really convince people that you have something in hand, you need to be able to tell partners how this is going to be done in Phase I and II. Thats why Glenmark had to change its research strategy.

We are today more convinced that we can do this again because we have fundamentally prioritized and streamlined our portfolio that are now based on an end-to-end planning after putting in quality and rigor in science that linked with the research centres and discovery and the clinical science mostly based in the US.

In the US, we have recruited outstanding people in clinical science from companies like BMS and Roche. There is a substantial addition of knowhow. Likewise, if you see in the last couple of months, we got IND files submitted that are active now. In October, my team based in Switzerland and in US have been able to file three compounds. One is going into Phase I, another one we will initiate Phase I very soon, so you see by the outcome, in the short period of time this company is going into the clinical programs.

We plan to communicate strategically at major conferences like ASCO and others on our vision for the projects. We are already seeing more partner interest coming back. The most critical point will be when we show for the first time that Glenmark has moved up to the clinical proof of concept. I fully understand that people do not trust everything. We can claim a lot, but we have to show that it can be done. This is our duty to demonstrate that we will tell you it will work. But when will it be is your question!

We believe we have the most advanced project in Phase IIA which is GBR830, for atopic dermatitis which is an OX40 antagonist in autoimmune diseases. This is the most advanced project for us. The next will be bispecific antibodies in the area of immune-oncology projects. There we have two drugs in Phase I which is also highly exciting and we feel like this is very competitive and potent from what we see. Now we are working very hard to move fast.

By 2019, we think will be the time when we are aiming at proof-of-concepts for some of these projects, may be for GBR 830 it could be earlier. At the moment we are looking at approval of biologics is around 2021. Its still a long way to go I admit but think of the robustness of a pipeline that has three clinical stage projects and there is another coming up which is a biosimilar of Xolair for a clinical study.

We have met the criteria for the biosimilar in the US. This is where we want to go fast. So we are in atopic dermatitis, respiratory with Xolair and in immune-oncology with bispecific antibodies. We are reasonably well set. This is a balanced portfolio and we have a bunch of small molecule driven projects which Glenmark can do in a good way as we know what we have there. In my experience, even if we have the best people if we dont prioritize, we cannot implement an innovation business.

Stoeckli: That is really a challenge. You must admit that clinical studies cost a lot. If there is any partnerships that we look at, it will have to be on top of this 11 percent or 12 percent. If that is not enough, we would have to further streamline that is to say Glenn has given a clear guidance that 11 percent to 12 percent is the upper limit.

We dont want to put the generics business at risk as that is a stable business. Also, we need to count on the revenues from generics for the next 4-5 years and need to continue to invest there in the future. This is a balancing act that Glenn and his team has to manage.

Stoeckli: Most of the stuff came from internal research on the innovation side. On the next, our number one priority is to make sure that the early development pipeline is implemented. A significant part of research has to support scientifically development projects. But we are also opening up on discovery by embarking on a few highly innovative projects that fulfils criteria of competitiveness.

Thats why I myself have taken the effort to do a deep dive into the quality of the earliest discovery portfolio which we dont disclose but I can tell you that two things are important: a. we have recruited top notch people and b. we have gone through a priority decision. We have to make sure that our discovery biology has to be rapidly tested in the clinical settings and not in only preclinical animal models. Connecting early discovery with clinical and medical centres in India is important and I would like to be sure to start with high quality and to do that the risk is not that high. The de-risking comes from a very clear translational part of it.

The risk should come down to only technical feasibility. A lot of biotech in the last ten or fifteen years has jumped just on early signs and that may be just exciting but a significant risk. In terms of commercial or large-scale bio-manufacturing, we still have to do this by contract manufacturers. It may not be in India at present, but personally and this is not a Glenmark statement, if I go and talk to people in India for bio-manufacturing, in five years a lot of that will come from India.

Stoeckli: What we really want is, and this is different from the past, we dont give it away without a control. We want to be partners and not really do an out-licensing deal in the classical definition. We want strategic partnership. This will mean we want to co-develop and co-commercialise, may be want to split into indications or we have arrangements on regional responsibilities.

Stoeckli:

Glenmark is looking at three bispecific antibodies that are useful in immuno-oncology. We may have to consider one or two to get into the partnering side. This may not go the same way as Roche did or like the way GSK did. We are realistic enough about what we can do on our own and sometimes if we do it in partnerships, it adds value to healthcare.

I can say gene or cell therapy are platforms that are still developing. Nobody can tell you what it is really going to lead into. In the area that we are currently in bispecific antibodies, we are amongst the leading platforms and we know how to develop or scale it up.

Cell therapy like CAR-T holds promise, however, it is a couple of years down the road. There are several unknowns like the logistics, the business model, the supply and there are lot of open questions to which nobody has a good answer. What has happened with MAbs many years ago, for the new technologies, they will also have to go through a couple of years to make it routine and robust.

I dont see this as a mutually exclusive development and it may be just a little bit long term for gene or cell therapy. I want to say that we will begin to utilise our small molecule capabilities in India and combine small molecules with antibodies. If small molecules can be combined with antibodies, we can sensitise the tumour.

Basically, we have initiated a few oncology programs in Mumbai that are coordinated with our biologics scientists in Switzerland. This is a unique setting where we have competitive small molecule programs in India and we combine it with clinical stage biologics that we are running in Europe and US.

Stoeckli: I have worked in Big Pharma. I have handled people in several sites. Perhaps very typical of very large organizations is that we have a lot of committees and they are there to support decision making, but guess what is happening. At the end of the day, decision making gets slower and slower and becomes complex because everybody has something to say. Here it is different.

We talk to the leadership team and Glenn and we move. Today it is important that we move fast and this also means that we have to stop early where we must. My learning is that if we have a drug we know its effect early on very clearly. But if we dont have this quality, we should stop. It is critically important to have early information from the clinical settings and this is what we are focusing on.

Stoeckli:

wouldWe would want to demonstrate with one or two projects, the clinical proof-of-concept and end Phase III successfully in the next 3 to 4 years. What I dont want Glenmark to do is to mix things that is management of generics and innovation.

There should be justification to be in generics and there should be appetite to be an innovator company. Our blueprint has said that by mid-twenties we expect a third of the revenues would come from innovation stream.

Stoeckli: That is because the reallocation of resources, the upfront investments for manufacturing of biosimilars would be too much and this would not fit in. That is the reason we are focused on the innovation side so that we can control the cost management but also we can come up with partnerships.

Q: With that in mind, will you look at separation of the research arm from the generics business?

Stoeckli: That is an interesting question. What we realized that internally we cannot mix up things too much whether or not it is favourable to come up with separate legal entities or business units for generics or innovative drugs. I could, speaking personally, imagine that a model like this can offer investors options. Because then the investor can choose to invest in a mixed portfolio, purely generics or purely innovative drugs but this is the discussion that Glenn or the board has to decide. Right now we are not in discussions for that.

Stoeckli: We already decided to deprioritise or consider for out-licensing projects that are in the chronic pain area and chronic gastrointestinal disease.

We have stopped some projects. Our focus is on and that I have described to you before are GBR 830, GBR 310 which is a biosimilar respiratory and GBR1302 which is an oncology bispecific antibody in Phase I and there are a few other bispecific antibodies coming up.
(Representative image)

The government today approved four-laning of a road stretch to be developed at an estimated cost of Rs 2,776-crore in Himachal Pradesh.

The decision on the same was taken at the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) meeting, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The CCEA has given its "approval for development of four laning from 'end of Pandoh Bypass to Takoli' section of National Highway (NH)-21 in Himachal Pradesh", the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways said in a statement.

The project will help in expediting the improvement of infrastructure in Himachal Pradesh and in reducing the time and cost of travel for traffic, particularly heavy traffic, plying from 'end of Pandoh Bypass to Takoli' section, it said. "The cost is estimated to be Rs 2,775.93 crore, including cost of land acquisition, resettlement and rehabilitation and other pre-construction activities. The total length of the road to be developed is approximately 19 km," it said.

"This work will be done under the National Highways Development Project (NHDP) Phase IV B on Hybrid Annuity Mode," it said.

The development of this stretch will also help in uplifting the socio-economic condition of this region in the state.

It would also increase employment potential for local labourers for project activities. It has been estimated that a total number of 4,076 mandays are required for construction of 1 kilometre of highway.

As such, employment potential of approximately 77,000 mandays will be generated locally during the construction period of this stretch.
Bahrain's foreign minister said he appreciated Kuwaiti mediation to resolve an Arab row with Qatar, the Saudi newspaper Mecca reported on Wednesday, but that all options were open for his country to protect itself from Doha, Reuters reported.

Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and several other countries cut their ties with Doha on Monday, accusing it of supporting militants and their arch-foe Iran - charges Qatar says are baseless.

Kuwait's ruler, Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, traveled from the UAE to Qatar on Wednesday after visiting Saudi Arabia the day before to resolve the crisis.

But in some of the strongest comments related to those efforts by a senior Gulf Arab official, Bahrain's Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmed al-Khalifa reportedly told the newspaper that it doubted whether Qatar would change its behavior.

"The emir of Kuwait is a messenger of good, but the policies of Qatar have not granted his endeavors success," Mecca reported Sheikh Khaled as saying on its official Twitter page.

"We will not hesitate to protect our interests and the road is open to any options to protect ourselves from Qatar."
The Cabinet today approved the initial public offer of Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency, enabling it to mobilise funds for the clean energy sector.

"The IPO proposal of IREDA was discussed and approved in the meeting of the Cabinet Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) held today," a source said.

Under the listing proposal, IREDA will issue fresh 13.90 crore shares, increasing the paid up share capital of the company from Rs 784 crore to Rs 923 crore. At present the company has 78.46 crore equity shares.

The quantum of funds to be raised through the IPO will be ascertained later as the shares will be issued at premium through the book building process, which will lead to price discovery.

Following the CCEA approval, it will take 180 days to list IREDA, which is state-owned non-banking financial firm.

IREDA has plans to disburse Rs 13,000 crore for clean energy projects this fiscal and vying for around 20 per cent of the loan market share for such projects.

With the government aiming at adding around 15 to 16 GW of clean energy projects, including solar and wind, there would be total credit market size of around Rs 65,000 crore this fiscal.

IREDA has sanctioned around Rs 37,000 crore of credit for clean energy projects in the country so far and has released around Rs 28,000 crore to developers, which aids generation capacity of around 7,000 MW.
Ports and shipping

The Cabinet today gave ex-post facto approval to the agreement signed in April between India and Cyprus on merchant shipping, aimed at enhancing cooperation between the two nations for sea trade development.

"The Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has given its ex-post facto approval to the agreement between India and Cyprus on merchant shipping, which was signed in April 2017," the Ministry of Shipping said in a statement.

The agreement in merchant shipping will pave the way for cooperation in eliminating any hindrances which may hamper the development of sea trade between the two nations, it said.

The pact will encourage participation in the transport of goods between the countries and also from third countries. The MoU further seeks to enhance cooperation for employment, improvement of conditions of work and for the welfare of seafarers employed on each other's vessels.
India's sea food exports rose by over 23 per cent to USD 5.78 billion in 2016-17 on account of increasing demand of frozen shrimp and fish in global markets.

The commerce ministry said that in volume terms, the exports increased to 11,34,948 tonnes in the last fiscal as compared to 9,45,892 tonnes in 2015-16.

"Riding on a robust demand for its frozen shrimp and frozen fish in international markets, India exported 11,34,948 tonnes of seafood worth an all time high of USD 5.78 billion (Rs 37, 870.90 crore) in 2016-17," the ministry said in a statement.

It said the US and South East Asia continue to be the major importers, while the demand from the European Union (EU) grew substantially during the last fiscal.

"Frozen shrimp maintained its position as the top item of export, accounting for 38.28 per cent in quantity and 64.50 per cent of the total earnings in dollar terms," the ministry added.

Shrimp exports increased by 16.21 per cent in volume terms and 20.33 per cent in dollar terms.

"Frozen Fish was the second largest export item, accounting for a share of 26.15 per cent in quantity and 11.64 per cent in dollar earnings, registering a growth of 26.92 per cent in terms of value," it said.

The US accounts for 29.98 per cent of India's total sea food exports.

"Diversification of aquaculture species, sustained measures to ensure quality, and increase in infrastructure facilities for production of value added products were largely responsible for India's positive growth in exports of seafood," the ministry said quoting Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.

Besides, frozen shrimp and fish, India's other major seafood product was frozen squid.

Further, it said that dried items registered a growth of 79 per cent in value terms.
The Indian Railways is firming up plans to join hands with Malaysia to redevelop about 20 stations in Tier-II cities across the country.

Aimed at attracting nearly Rs 1 lakh crore private investment, the station redevelopment project envisages infrastructure revamp at platforms and circulating areas.

It also entails commercial exploitation of station areas for constructing hotels, eateries, multiplexes, shopping malls and office complex among others for the use of developers for a period of 45 years.

For facilitating growth of Tier II cities, the Centre, state and local governments provide a lot of support to transform these not so big cities into business havens and making them India's fastest growing cities.

While cities like Delhi and Mumbai are in Tier-I category, cities such as Faridabad, Cuttack, Amritsar, Jamshedpur, Kochi, Jammu, and Bikaner are considered Tier-II cities.

A long term partnership will be forged with Malaysia on a government-to-government basis for offering about 20 stations to the southeast Asian country, said a senior Railway Ministry official.

Railways have already launched the ambitious project offering about 400 stations to be redeveloped in PPP model envisaging investment of about Rs 1 lakh crore.

In the first phase, 23 railway stations including the iconic Howrah station, Mumbai Central and Chennai Central have been selected for the project which aims to make the best use of the assets of the stations.

A meeting was recently held with Malaysian officials where they showed keen interest in the station redevelopment project.

While Malaysia is participating in the bidding process for 23 stations, the railways are mulling to offer about 20 stations separately involving about Rs 10,000 crore investment on a government-to-government partnership basis, the official added.

The long term partnership scheme in station redevelopment project with Malaysia will be launched after getting Cabinet approval.

Other stations being modernised in the first phase include Pune, Thane, Visakhapatnam, Kamakhya, Jammu Tawi, Udaipur City, Secunderabad, Vijaywada, Ranchi, Kozhikode, Yesvantpur, Bangalore Cantt, Bhopal, Bandra Terminus, Borivali and Indore.

Bhopal station has already been awarded to a developer for redevelopment.

Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu will inaugurate the start of the work at an estimated cost of Rs 450 crore involving construction of hotel, hospital, parking lot, office and restaurant at the station premises.

The developer will hold the rights for commercial exploitation of the land for a period of 45 years, while ownership of the land would remain with the railways.
The Uttar Pradesh government is taking a number of steps such as promotion micro-irrigation system to deal with water shortage in the state, a minister said.

Owing to shortage of water, the state government has decided to promote micro-irrigation system, UP irrigation minister Dharm Pal Singh told reporters here.

"Instructions have been issued for cleaning ponds prior to rainy season to pave the way for bulk storage of water," Singh said. Besides, cleaning of canals is on and efforts would be made to get the land of irrigation department vacated from unauthorised encroachment, he added.

E-tendering system has been introduced for eliminating corruption in the department, he disclosed. He also claimed that renovation of the ghats was in full swing in Mathura.
GMR Airports Limited here has been selected to develop, operate and manage the new international airport of Heraklion at Crete in Greece, in partnership with Greek infrastructure major Terna SA.

GMR Airports Limited will be the designated airport operator in the consortium for this project, according to a press release.

GMR Airports Limited is a subsidiary of GMR Infrastructure Ltd, while Terna SA is a 100 per cent subsidiary of GEK Terna Group.

"The construction cost is estimated by the Greek ministry of infrastructure at around 850 million euros," a GEK Terna official had earlier told PTI.

The existing Heraklion Airport in Crete is the second largest in Greece and has witnessed steady traffic growth in the last 3-4 years. It is currently handling over six million passengers annually and is facing capacity constraint.

GMR Airports Business Chairman Srinivas Bommidala said, "We are excited about the project and the opportunity to partner with GEK Terna in Greece."

"This new airport will definitely boost the tourism industry and aid the growth of international tourists that Greece has been witnessing over the past couple of years.

"The airport is in line with the 'asset light' strategy we have adopted for overseas expansion and will see GMR participate in project and commercial management in addition to airport operations," he said.

The new airport, once completed, will replace the Heraklion airport. The scope of the project involves design, construction, financing, operation, and maintenance and exploitation of the new Heraklion Crete International Airport.

The concession period for the greenfield project will be 35 years, including phase-1 construction of five years, the release said.

GMR Airports Limited president Sidharath Kapur said this selection reinforces their position as a major global airport operator.

This will be GMR Group's second foray into Europe after having developed Istanbul's Sabiha Gokcen airport.
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As against the expectation of a merger between the public sector companies ONGC and HPCL, the Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM) has sought cabinet approval for Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) to buy out governments entire stake in the Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd (HPCL).

Reacting to the news, ONGC was trading today 0.55 percent higher while HPCL traded 0.91 percent lower.

The 51.11 percent holding of government in HPCL is expected to fetch around Rs 28,000 crore for the government. The merger prima facie is a win-win for all the major stake holders.

The government cashes in on its holding of HPCL, while continuing to hold it indirectly through ONGC where it has a 68.07 percent stake. ONGC and HPCL both benefit on account of the merger through synergies and a stronger balance sheet.

In a report on the possible merger, Edelweiss pointed out that there are limited immediate cost synergies, but the combined entity will enjoy lower earnings volatility across oil price cycles. Globally integrated players have enjoyed higher returns and stable valuations across oil price cycles as compared to pure refiners or pure oil exploration and production companies.

ONGC has a strong balance sheet and can easily absorb HPCL. According to Edelweiss, the deal value is equivalent to 4 years of ONGCs free cash flow. And based on ONGCs stake in HPCLs operating cash flow, the reasonable payback period is five years.

Looking at these numbers, ONGC has got a very good deal as under no condition would it have been possible to have a 25 million tonne refinery of the size of HPCL with its 14,500 petrol pumps.

So, if everything seems so good why did share prices of ONGC and HPCL not react to this news?

The government in its budget had announced that they were keen on creating a large integrated oil company, in line with some of the global majors. But, since the news HPCL has not moved higher despite broader markets touching new highs. ONGC, on the other hand, has fallen since the budget.

The reason is in the details.

Oil exploration and refining is a higher Return on Equity (RoE) business as compared to refining. ONGC will thus be utilizing its cash and piling more debt in acquiring a company which delivers lower RoE.

What is critical for ONGC and the country is to acquire oil assets both in India and abroad. Apparently, the news of a possible buyout of governments stake in HPCL by ONGC came on the same day when Iran decided to give Russia the development rights of Farzad B gas fields, which was discovered by a consortium of Indian-run companies.

Iran, it seems was unhappy with the amount ONGC was willing to invest in the gas field. The move was also considered to counter Indias decision to cut down oil imports from Iran. In such circumstances, it is more important for India and ONGC to secure and acquire its energy assets rather than meet government's divestment target through such forced acquisition.

Analysts have argued that the merged entity will be able to acquire stakes in bigger oil assets. But Indian companies, both in the private and public space, through various international acquisitions have shown that they are capable of acquiring assets by jointly bidding for the same. Merging the companies to create a bigger balance sheet does not hold water.

Another line of thought is why invest in an energy source when renewables are fast changing the world. Renewables installed capacity in India is 57 GW on a total power installed capacity of over 300 GW, but their feasibility - to a large extent - still dependent on government incentives. Stress is already visible across the value chain in the renewables space.

Further, oil apart from being used as a fuel also has multiple applications as a feedstock for petrochemical industry. Oil still has a long way to go before it can be completely substituted.

Thus, as far as ONGCs investment in HPCL is concerned, though the move seems good on account of synergistic benefits, the company would be spending resources in trying to integrate at a time when it should be acquiring oil assets, which is its main line of activity.

As oil prices are low and oil producing countries are in stress, this would have been a good time to acquire assets.
Reliance Nippon Life Asset Management (RNAM) has got approval from its board of directors for an initial public offer of AMC subject to necessary regulatory and corporate approvals.

The proposed listing will be in FY18 and initially, the AMC will dilute merely 10 percent.

"Initially we will be listing 10 percent and as per the SEBI (Securities and Exchange Board of India) guidelines over the next 3 years which is 2021, we will be going up to 25 percent," said Sundeep Sikka, ED and CEO, Reliance Nippon Life Asset Management details on valuations.

Market experts peg the valuation at Rs 20,000 crore, which is 5 percent of AUM.

It could be the first initial public offering by a major asset management company (AMC) in India though smaller rival UTI MF's IPO plans have been in the works for a long time.

Reliance Nippon Life Asset Management is a subsidiary of Reliance Capital with Nippon Life Insurance Company as its strategic partner. Reliance Capital holds 51 per cent stake in RNAM.

Sikka was addressing at a press conference held in Mumbai to announce the board approval for the AMC IPO.

On the rationale behind listing, Sikka said,"We are getting ready for consolidation in the industry. We believe the IPO will help us both for organic and inorganic opportunity which will come in near future."

Sikka also said discussions with merchant bankers, lawyers and auditors for IPO process will be initiated soon.

In October 2015, Reliance Nippon Life Asset Management, acquired global giant Goldman Sachs Mutual Fund business in India for Rs 243 crore.

RNAM will be the first among top 3 players in the AMC industry for listing.

The proposed listing of RNAM will facilitate sharing of value with the retail investors who will apply for IPO.

RNAM is among the largest asset manager in India managing assets of Rs 3,58,059 crore including MF assets under management (AUM) of Rs 2,10,891 crore as of March 31, 2017.

UTI MF's public issue will allow a partial exit to four of its investors - State Bank of India, Life Insurance Corporation, Bank of Baroda and Punjab National Bank.
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In a snub to India, Iran has signed initial pact with Russia's Gazprom for developing ONGC-discovered gas field of Farzad B but has kept the door open for awarding it to the Indian firm.

With Tehran delaying the award of rights to develop the 12.5 trillion cubic feet gas field to its discoverer -- ONGC Videsh Ltd -- India decided to cut oil imports from Iran by a fifth in 2017-18.

Iran retaliated by first cutting by one-third the time it gave to Indian refiners to pay for oil they buy from it as also raising ship freight rates, and now by signing a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Russian gas monopoly Gazprom.

Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh confirmed signing of the agreement with Gazprom while talking to Argus in Vienna.

"Yes. We have signed an initial agreement with them (Gazprom) or Farzad, the North Pars and Kish fields," he said.

Gazprom, on its website said, it signed a MoU with National Iranian Oil Co (NIOC) in Kremlin on March 28 when Iranian President Hassan Rouhani met his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

Iran has been unhappy with the USD 5.5 billion investment plan that OVL, the overseas arm of state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC), has submited for development of the Farzad-B field in the Persian Gulf.

Since it has to reimburse all of the money that is invested, together with a fixed rate of return, it wants the investment to be lowered and OVL commit to buying gas at a price fixed by it.

OVL, on the other hand, says it will take up development only if the terms are economical and cannot absorb any cost and the price of gas should be comparable to rates in current market.

Sources said Indian refiners have cut oil imports from Iran by a fifth to 190,000 barrels per day (bpd) in 2017-18 from 240,000 bpd in the previous fiscal.

Iran, Indias third biggest oil supplier, used to give a 90-day credit period to refiners like Indian Oil Corp (IOC) and Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd (MRPL) to pay for the oil they would buy from it.

Now, Tehran has reduced this to 60 days, essentially meaning that IOC and MRPL would have to pay for the oil they buy from Iran in 60 days instead of previous liberal term of 90 days, sources said.

Iran oil sale terms were the most attractive for Indian refiners. Besides, a liberal credit period, it also shipped the oil to India for a nominal 20 per cent of normal ocean freight.

Other Middle-East sellers offer not more than 15-day credit period.

Sources said National Iranian Oil Co (NIOC) has also decided to cut the discount it offers to Indian buyers on freight from 80 per cent to about 60 per cent.

Since the lifting of western sanctions, Iran has played hardball over award of the field which was discovered by OVL.

The two nations were initially targeting concluding a deal on Farzad-B field development by November 2016 but later mutually agreed to push the timeline to February 2017.

Now, the deal is being targeted to be wrapped up by September after the two sides agree on a price and a rate of return for OVL's investments.

Farzad B was discovered by OVL in the Farsi block about 10 years ago. The project has so far cost the OVL-led consortium, which also includes Oil India Ltd and Indian Oil Corp (IOC), over USD 80 million.

Sources said that in the master development plan (MDP), the company has estimated cost of putting up a facility to convert gas into LNG and shipping it to India at USD 5-6 billion.

The field in the Farsi block has an in-place gas reserve of 21.7 tcf, of which 12.5 tcf are recoverable.

New Delhi is keen that the gas from the field comes to India to feed the vast energy needs.
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Tata Motors-owned Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) today reported retail sales of 45,487 units for May, up 1 per cent from the same month last year.

The Jaguar brand posted record retail sales of 13,613 units in May, up 28 per cent, driven by continued strong sales of the F-PACE and growing sales of the long wheel base XFL.

Land Rover saw sales of 31,874 vehicles in May, down 7.1 per cent compared to May 2016.

Sales were hit primarily due to challenging conditions in overseas markets such as the UK, Russia, Brazil and South Africa.

JLR Group Sales Operations Director Andy Goss said: "May brought yet another strong performance from the Jaguar brand, led by further encouraging sales growth in North America and China."

Land Rover sales are expected to grow as the new Discovery continues to go on sale across the world, he added.

Besides, the new Range Rover Velar is scheduled to go on sale later this year and is already building a strong order bank, Goss said.
Baku, Azerbaijan, June 7

Trend:

Senegal said on Wednesday it would recall its ambassador in Qatar and expressed its active solidarity with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries which have cut ties to Qatar, Reuters Africa reports.

Senegal has decided, from this day, Wednesday, 7 June 2017, to recall for consultations its ambassador in Qatar, the foreign ministry said in a statement.

Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE announced about breaking their diplomatic relations with Qatar June 5, accusing Doha of supporting terrorist organizations and destabilizing the situation in the Middle East.

Later, the authorities of Libya, Yemen, as well as the Maldives and Mauritius also announced about severing diplomatic relations with Qatar.
Edelweiss Financial Services was on the radar of investors on Wednesday after a global financial services firm initiated coverage on the stock. The stock gained 7 percent intraday and hit its 52-week high mark.

Credit Suisse, in its note, said that it had initiated coverage with an outperform rating on Edelweiss Financial Services with a target price of Rs 220. This, it says, is based on its progress from being a capital market player to a lender and with growing businesses in wealth management and insurance.

This rounded business portfolio should help the firm tap the growing wealth management market. Simultaneously, it expects losses in the insurance business to peak in the next few years as well. .

We build in flat margins and credit costs, leading to a gradual improvement in lending ROAs. We expect Rs 6,000 crore in capital infusion in the ARC over the next three years, the report added.

The research firm highlighted that the companys lending focus on the retail side will now start bearing fruit and expects 26 percent loan book CAGR over three years.

The company should also benefit from a secular rise in financial investments in India (mutual fund and broking). Overall, we expect a 34% EPS CAGR over the next three years, it said in its report.

Among key risks to the stock is the margin pressure in home loans, lack of growth opportunities in distressed assets and a delay in insurance profitability.

The stock has gained nearly five percent in the past one month, while its three-day gain stood at 4 percent.

At 09:30 hrs Edelweiss Financial Services was quoting at Rs 199.00, up Rs 13.70, or 7.39 percent on the BSE. It touched a 52-week high of Rs 200.70.
Whatfix | Headcount: 350 | Headquarters: Bengaluru | Year founded: 2014 | As remote work becomes the norm and more businesses go online, Whatfix sees strong tailwinds going ahead, LinkedIn said. (Representative image)

The worlds largest software maker Microsoft has raised concerns over the government putting its weight behind open source software in its recent request for proposal to appoint a managed service provider for its e-marketplace, nicknamed GeM.

The RFP has allocated 50 out of 150 marks to solutions that are built using open source software only; this means that if a bidder does not use open source product only then it would be impossible for such a bidder to achieve the 65 percent qualification marks in solution evaluation and would then automatically become technically disqualified, Microsoft has said in a letter to the government, reviewed by Moneycontrol.

Moneycontrol has accessed a copy of the letter. In an official response, Microsoft confirmed sending a letter in this regard.

We confirm that Microsoft India had sent a letter to the government regarding the e-Marketplace project. The government has taken cognizance of the industrys concerns and is looking at addressing them. We remain committed to the Digital India vision, a Microsoft spokesperson told Moneycontrol in an email response.

The government had floated an RFP for design, development, operation and maintenance of Government e-Marketplace (GeM) on March 21, this year. A new and revised RFP is likely to be floated soon after concerns of various stakeholders.

The letter by Microsoft was written to several ministries and government departments, including the Prime Ministers Office and the Ministry of Commerce.

The letter further said that Microsoft is one of the biggest contributors to the open source community. All Microsoft products and cloud offerings work seamlessly with open source. However, we are strongly against shutting out any technology option, the letter added.

GeM is a platform developed by the procurement arm of the government, the Directorate General of Supplies and Disposals (DGS&D), under the Ministry of Commerce. It was launched in August 2016.

The marketplace was envisioned as an online portal on the lines of Flipkart or Amazon, which will enable vendors and government buyers to directly communicate with each other.

Read also: GeM of an idea? All you need to know about the govt's online marketplace

Referring to the open source software policy of the government, released by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY), Microsoft said in the letter, MEITYs (sic) policy on OSS has not been correctly interpreted or followed

We are disappointed that DGS&D, Ministry of Commerce, which is the apex procurement agency, is violating critical norms of purchasing and going against the frameworks developed by MEITY. This also undermines the Honble Prime Ministers efforts to improve the Ease of Doing Business, the letter said.

In March 2015, the government adopted an open source software policy, which made it mandatory for all software applications and services of the government be built using open source software.

Government organisations shall ensure compliance with this requirement and decide by comparing both OSS (open source software) and CSS (closed source software) options with respect to capability, strategic control, scalability, security, lifetime costs and support requirements, the policy states.

Departments opting for closed source software over open source technology have to justify the choice, according to the policy.

Some of the largest e-government projects in India have been implemented on open source, and the key reason for this is the ability to retain control over the technology, said open source evangelist Venkatesh Hariharan.

He added that in a mission critical project like the GeM, technology independence is even more important and that he wasnt surprised that open source has been given a significant weightage.

Use of free and open source software could lead to estimated savings of about Rs 8,254 crore in Indian schools, and about Rs 51.20 crores in police departments in India, says a 2015 study by Rahul De, Hewlett-Packard Chair Professor, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore.

The United States, United Kingdom and several countries in the European Union have started preferring the use of open source over proprietary software. Closer home, the Unique Identification Authority of India or Aadhaar project has been developed primarily on open source, as is the goods and services tax network, the IT backbone of the GST.

neha.alawadhi@nw18.com
Team communication platform Flock is tuning up its ante against its global competitors. After launching an open source Flock platform for developers to take on market leader Slack, the startup is soon to launch a Slack migration feature, taking the battle right on its rivals turf.

Started in 2014 as a messaging tool, Flock pivoted to focus on enterprise messaging in 2015. But Flock is not alone. Numerous Slack contenders have already thrown their weight to compete with the US-based company, trying to grab market share in a USD 26 billion industry.

Directi founder Bhavin Turakhia, who is also the founder and CEO of Flock has invested an estimated USD 45 million in his own startup.

Shanghai-based Teambition, in particular, seeks to combine the project management and file sharing services of Slack, Trello, Flowdock, and Dropbox.

As per estimates, the global enterprise communication and collaboration segment is expected to surpass USD 49 billion mark by 2021.

The company has a huge gap to fill if it wants to reach anywhere near Slack in terms of users. It has just about 50,000 users compared to Slacks 5 million users.

The new Slack migration feature is very intuitive. It imports all chat history, project history, messages, and so on (from Slack). So there is no data mismatch, Ninad Raval, VP for product and design at Flock told Moneycontrol.

The company plans to expand its team of 150, and to explore more international markets beyond Brazil, the US, the UK, Russia, and Spain.

Flock also wins in terms of cost. To start, Flock is free for all users, with no restrictions on features. It only charges the users who want to access chat or data history beyond 10,000, which costs USD 3 per person per month. In comparison, Slack is free till 5GB usage, post which it charges USD 6.67 per active user per month, plus a USD 8 monthly fee that provides 10GB file storage for every team member.

Flock is now working on creating a similar migration tool for HipChat, which is another Slack competitor. The startup which opened up its platform for developers to create chat apps independently, also plans to white-label the product for some companies. Flock has its product and development team based in India.

The platform has enterprise users such as Whirlpool, Voonik, Ricoh, Victorinox, Yepme, Voonik, 1mg, Arihant Capital, Meru Cabs, CouponDunia, Mothercare, and VMWare.

The aim now, Ninad says, is to evolve into a full stack business collaboration platform in order to differentiate.

durba.ghosh@nw18.com
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Adani Enterprises shares gained more than 5 percent intraday Wednesday after its stake in Adani Green Energy diluted below 50 percent.

The Adani Group firm informed exchanges that pursuant to allotment of further equity shares by Adani Green Energy (AGEL), its stake in AGEL has been diluted below 50 percent.

Consequently, Adani Green has ceased to be a subsidiary of Adani Enterprises with effect from June 6, 2017, it said in a statement.

The stock gained for fourth consecutive session today. In previous session, it rallied nearly 9 percent after Adani Chairman, Gautam Adani gave the green light for the Carmichael mine and rail projects in Queensland, Australia.

At 12:39 hrs Adani Enterprises was quoting at Rs 131.80, up Rs 4.00, or 3.13 percent.
Brokerage firm IIFL Holdings soared nearly 14 percent intraday on Wednesday as investors cheered coverage initiation on the stock.

Credit Suisse initiated coverage on the IIFL Holdings with an outperform rating and a target price of Rs 650.

The research firm highlighted that the company had made a niche for itself in the retail broking space and the traditional capital markets business now contributes less than 20 percent to its profits.

IIFL has demonstrated a scalable retail lending platform with its Rs 22,300 crore loan book built over the last ten years, it said in its report.

Furthermore, with the efforts in the past 3-4 years of setting up a base for home loans, gold and commercial vehicle financing bearing the fruit, it expects 28 percent CAGR over the next three years.

While the rising focus on home loans (high competition) could lead to margins compression, we expect operational expenditure gains as it achieves scale. Overall, we expect a gradual ROA improvement in lending, the report added.

Credit Suisse also places its bet on the wealth management business of the firm. It said that IIFL had emerged as the dominant private banker for HNIs in the country with USD 18.5 billion in assets under advice.

We see this as an underpenetrated market with a long runway of growth. IIFL's full portfolio of services (across broking, lending and wealth management) should help the company capitalise on this industry's growth, it said in the report.

Riding on the NBFC rally, the stock has gained nearly 12 percent in the past one month, while its three-day gain stood at 4 percent.

At 09:30 hrs IIFL Holdings was quoting at Rs 618.10, up Rs 67.50, or 12.26 percent on the BSE. It touched a 52-week high of Rs 629.00.
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Vivimed Labs shares gained more than 8 percent intraday Wednesday after the US health regulator cleared company's Spain facility.

"After successful inspection, the US Food and Drug Administration has issued zero 483 observations for Spain facility," the pharma company said in its filing.

Company's API manufacturing facility located at Sant Celoni, Spain was recently inspected by the USFDA in compliance with their requirements.

This was a routine inspection by the USFDA, the company said.

Established in 1991, Vivimed Labs has two business divisions - healthcare and specialty chemicals. It has 11 manufacturing plants across India (8) and overseas (3), out of which four plants are USFDA approved.

At 10:56 hours IST, the stock was quoting at Rs 111.50, up Rs 6.45, or 6.14 percent amid high volumes on the BSE.

Posted by Sunil Shankar Matkar
Prime Minister Narendra Modi

India will be admitted as a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) during the summit of the regional grouping on June 8-9 in Kazakhstan, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be present.

There is a possibility of a bilateral meeting between Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the summit in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan. However, the Ministry of External Affairs has denied any interaction with Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

"Indications are that the last leg of the entire process, as per the Memorandum of Obligations, which is the confirmation (of membership) by the heads of the states of the existing members of the SCO, is going to happen in Astana," G V Srinivas, joint secretary of the Eurasia Division in the Ministry of External Affairs, said.

Modi will also attend the World Expo 2017, an international exposition, in Kazakhstan.

Srinivas said there could also be a couple of bilateral meetings with the leaders of the SCO member countries.

When asked whether the prime minister would meet Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the SCO summit, MEA spokesperson Gopal Baglay said, "There is a possibility but the schedule is being worked out and our missions are coordinating locally."

On the possibility of a meeting between Modi and Sharif, he said, "There was neither any request from their side nor any such proposal from our side."

Srinivas added that India had been an observer country at the SCO since 2005 and had applied for a full membership in 2014.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization is a Eurasian political, economic, and military organisation which was founded in 2001 in Shanghai by the leaders of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.
India looks set to finally jump on the bandwagon of allowing women in combat roles after Army Chief General Bipin Rawat recently confirmed that the process for initiating women "jawans" was moving fast.

Rawat said the first step would be to induct women into the military police, a landmark moment given that women were only allowed to engage in operational and administrative work until now.

In fact, barring three women Short Service Commission Officers who were inducted as fighter pilots in the Indian Air Force in December 2015 - an experimental move - no other women have been allowed in combat positions in the Indian Army, Navy and Air Force combined.

Away from the frontline

Women started breaking through the armed forces' glass ceiling when they were first recruited in 1992. Even though women have been consistently signing up for the army since then, they only constituted 5 percent of the total strength of officers as of February 2015.

According to defence ministry report from February 2015, the number of women granted Short Service Commission in the three wings of the armed forces was 3,177 - Army (1,436), Navy (413) and Air Force (1,328). After including those in medical and nursing services, the number went up 8,350.

According to IANS data, the number of female officers (excluding medical and nursing) went up 11 percent to 3,537 in 2016.

A huge constraint for women is that they can only join as Short Service Commission officers, which grant them a service period of 14 years.

Women were initially only recruited in Army Service Corps, Army Ordnance Corps, Army Education Corps and Judge Advocate General Branch. Later on, since 1996, they started getting into Signals, Intelligence, Electrical, and Mechanical Engineering branches. Aviation and Air Defence opened up for them much later.

Women are not given Permanent Commission in most sectors of the armed forces. In 2008, they were given Permanent Commission in two branches - education and law.

Mixed messages

Over the past year, there have been mixed messages from the officialdom on the matter.

Before Rawat's recent comments, President Pranab Mukherjee had announced last year that women would finally be allowed to take up combat roles in all sections of the Indian Army.

But four months later, then Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar told the Rajya Sabha that there was no such plan. A few weeks before that, Parrikar had said that women could be recruited for all roles barring submarine operations.

The story abroad

Countries such as Germany, Finland, France, Denmark, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Spain, Sweden, and Israel have long allowed women in combat roles.

Closer to home, Bangladesh has allowed women in combat roles since 2014 while Pakistan also allows women to become fighter pilots.

Nonetheless, two major first world nations, USA and UK, took their time in opening up combat positions to women. US removed ban (a 1994 Pentagon rule) on women serving in direct combat in 2013 and UK followed suit only last year. Australia too lifted its ban in January 2013.

Given that it has taken all these countries at least three to five years to integrate women into the combat sections after taking the first step, it could be a while before an Indian woman takes guard on the frontline.
TBSE Board is set to declare Tripura 12th Result 2017 for Arts and Commerce today on tripuraresult.nic.in.

The Tripura Board of Secondary Education (TBSE) has declared Tripura board Class 12th Result 2017 on its official websites tbse.in and tripuraresults.nic.in .

TBSE has declared Tripura HS 12th Result 2017 for Arts and Commerce streams. Tripura board 12th Result 2017 (Science) was declared on May 20.

The results come a day after TBSE board declared Tripura Madhyamik Result 2017 (Class 10).

Besides the official websites tripuraresults.nic.in and tbse.in, results are also available on partner websites such as Examresuls.net.

Here's how to check TBSE result on the official websites.

- Log on to tbseresult.nic.in or tbse.in

- Click on either of the links that say TBSE Higher Secondary (HS 10+2) Arts & Commerce Result 2017.

- Input your roll number (only digits)

- Your name, total marks and division will be displayed on the screen.

Students can also check their results through SMS by send TBSE12<space><Roll no> to 7738299899.

According to a media report, about 21,000 students appeared for the exams this year, which were held between March 2 and April 8.

Last year, Tripura 12th Result 2017 Arts and Commerce was declared on June 9, with pass percentage of 74 percent and 72 percent, respectively, according to Jagran Josh.

The Tripura Board of Secondary Education conducted its first public examinations in 1976 - School Final Examination (old system), Madhyamik Pariksha (Secondary Examination - new system), and Higher Secondary Examination (old system). Subsequently, Higher Secondary (+2 stage) Examination (new system) was introduced in 1978.

With the abolition of old courses, the TBSE now conducts two major public examinations - Madhyamik Pariksha (Secondary Examination) and Higher Secondary (+2 stage) (both general and vocational courses) examination since 1981.
The BJP-led central governments blanket ban on the sale of cattle for slaughter in animal markets has triggered severe reactions in the north-eastern states. The BJP has drawn criticism within its party and allies in the region.

The opposition to the ban poses a problem for the BJP as it can not afford to upset citizens in poll-bound Meghalaya, Nagaland and Mizoram. All of them have a majority beef-eating population.

Meghalaya

Two of the BJP district presidents resigned in protest within a span of four days this month. It was a blow to the BJP ahead of assembly elections in the Congress-led state.

West Garo Hills BJP district president Bernard Marak, who had announced a beef party to mark Prime Minister Narendra Modis three years in office, was the first to resign. In the interest of the Garo people, I have put in my papers today as a mark of protest against the party s stand on beef, he had said.

North Garo Hills president Bachu Marak followed Bernards suit by resigning. He said the ban was against the traditional food habit of Meghalayas tribes.

The Meghalaya chief minister Mukul Sangma said, the state having 85 per cent beef-eating indigenous people, could not afford to ban the sale of cattle for slaughter. He also said the ban undermined the federal system of India.

Mizoram

Mizorams only Rajya Sabha member Ronald Sapa Tlau said beef and buffalo meat trade made up 18 percent of the countrys GDP and the ban on cattle trade for slaughter would negatively impact the economy.

Mentioning that the ban was against the federal structure and the citizens right to eat according to their choice, the MP said "radical moves" by the BJP and the RSS would backfire.

Nagaland

Nagalands minister Imkong Imchen said that the state government was not going to comply with the Centres notification. Imchen is belongs to the ruling Naga Peoples Front (NPF) which is BJPs ally in the state.

He also said that the ban would affect the traditional food habits of the people in the state where beef is a staple food.

Tripura

Though Tripura does not have a huge population that consumes beef, its Left-Front government declared to not implement the ban in tune with other North-East states. The left Front saw the newly introduced rules as an act of communalizing peoples food habit as well as harming the agrarian economy.

Tripuras CPM leader Gautam Das told The Indian Express that low-income farmers unable to take care of unproductive, old cattle would suffer due to the ban.

Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh

Manipur Chief Minister Biren Singh told Economic Times that BJP is not trying to force food choices as beef is part of majority of communities in the North-East. Singh, who heads the the BJP-led coalition government in the state, said the ban was to impose regulation in order to avoid illegal cattle slaughter.

Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister and BJP leader Pema Khandu told CNN-News18 that the Centre would consult states and again take a look at the notification banning the sale of cattle for slaughter.

He also mentioned consuming beef himself and that it was normal for his people to do so.

With inputs from PTI.
Baku, Azerbaijan, June 7

By Rufiz Hafizoglu  Trend:

Currently, Turkey has a number of problems with Egypt and United Arab Emirates, Murat Yesiltas, director of security policy program of the Turkish Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research (SETA), told Trend over phone.

He added that those Arab countries will likely to hamper Ankara's mediation in resolving the Qatar crisis.

The expert said that Ankara is sure that the Qatar crisis is a threat to the region and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is also working to resolve the crisis.

"The fact that Turkey has good relations with Saudi Arabia gives a reason to think that Ankara can succeed in its mediation mission," said Yesiltas.

While resolving the Qatar crisis, Turkey will be impartial, he said, adding that the country does not plan to take anybody's position.

Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE announced about breaking their diplomatic relations with Qatar June 5, accusing Doha of supporting terrorist organizations and destabilizing the situation in the Middle East.

Later, the authorities of Libya, Yemen, as well as the Maldives and Mauritius also announced about breaking their diplomatic relations with Qatar.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
Over the last 15 years, mobile phones have become an integral part of our lives as the device became smarter by the day, thanks to constant advancements in operating system (OS).

Initial years

The first mobile phone call was demonstrated by a Motorola engineer in 1983 but the story of mobile OS starts in the mid-1990s.

In 1994, the first smartphone IBM Simon was launched. It had touchscreen, allowed email exchange and acted as Personal Digital Assistant (PDA).

In 1996, Palm Inc rolled out Palm OS-enabled PDA. It was not much different from the IBM Simon but the Palm OS was continuously developed for its other products.

Decade that changed the face of smartphones

First modern OS for mobiles was Symbian. It was launched in the market with Ericsson R380 in 2000. This OS gained popularity after it was lapped up by Nokia for its high-end phones.

For the initial years of this decade, Symbian dominated the global smartphone market with 67 percent share in 2006.

Around the same time, two new players came into the market and changed the world of smartphones. Google unveiled its Android OS and Apple launched iOS through iPhone.

The first commercially available phone running Android was HTC Dream, in 2008. Whereas the first Apple phone running iOS was released in 2007.

Currently, Android's latest version is 7.0 'Nougat' and Apple announced it iOS 11 at its annual Apple World Wide Developers Conference.

What made Android and iOS tick?

Android

Android OS is open-source which gives it the popularity enjoys today among smartphone manufacturers. The availability of apps for this OS is staggering. More than 2.8 million apps are listed on Google Play Store in March 2017. Android supports hundreds of languages, which gives convenience for companies targeting specific regions.

iOS

Most features which are part of iOS can be found in other operating systems. The differentiator being enhanced user experience.

Future of smartphone market

Going by market share today, Google's Android and Apple's iOS combine for 99.8 percent global market share. In future, the scene is not going to change much either, as per the data provided by International Data Corporation (IDC).

The market would be dominated by 5-6 inches screen size smartphones, with their market share being more than 85 percent in 2021.
Chinese smartphone maker OnePlus is all set to launch its new model OnePlus 5 on June 22 in India.

Touted as the most awaited smartphone of 2017, OnePlus 5 will be introduced at Mumbai's NSCI Dome and CEO Pete Lau will also attend the event.

The smartphone by the Chinese tech giant is the much-awaited heir to the market success models of OnePlus 3T and OnePlus 3.

The big India launch event, which has its own cryptically worded mini-site with the tagline Focus on What Matters, is two days after the international launch on June 20.

There will be several events post the launch that will also allow people a chance to buy the phone there itself.



Are you prepared for the OnePlus 5? Focus on what matters and join our keynote live on June 22. https://t.co/i91k8PZgn6 pic.twitter.com/xjq0uKNZpl

 OnePlus India (@OnePlus_IN) June 7, 2017

CEO Pete Lau has said the phone will be an ultra-thin flagship. Lau posted screenshots of the Hydrogen OS home screen of the OnePlus 5 which revealed Microsoft apps like Outlook will be pre-loaded on the phone.

Proud of the work our team has put into improving the performance of the OnePlus 5. https://t.co/IIzsY9XrCA Pete Lau (@petelau2007) May 25, 2017

The company's claim to fame is its bid to offer flagship-level specs in its smartphones, at affordable prices.

The Chinese smartphone manufacturer will internationally release the OnePlus 5 on 20 June at 12 PM EDT, which is 9:30 PM IST.

Pop-up events will be held across New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Helsinki, Amsterdam and Copenhagen.



Are you prepared for the OnePlus 5? Focus on what matters and join our keynote live on June 20. https://t.co/uuWc1m3pz1 pic.twitter.com/KfbVfMyh00

 OnePlus (@oneplus) June 6, 2017

Like the previous ones, this launch too will be streamed live through the companys website.

Costing of the phone for the Indian market is not clear yet. According to the website Weibo, OnePlus 5 will be priced at 2999 Yuan, which comes to around Rs 28,400.

The trademark of OnePlus has been offering flagship-level features at affordable prices.

The Chinese tech giant has also partnered with DxO Labs to enhance the devices camera experience.

OnePlus 5 will have a dual rear camera setup combined with 12-megapixel Monochrome and 12-megapixel RGB sensors. On the front, it is said to sport an 8-megapixel front camera.

Can you tell which photo was taken with the OnePlus 5? pic.twitter.com/Pd27la4ewn OnePlus (@oneplus) May 29, 2017

The phone is likely to be made available exclusively on Amazon and through OnePlus online store, and also through its offline store in Bangalore.

For connectivity, the OnePlus 5 will feature 4G LTE, Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth, NFC, and a USB Type-C port for superfast charging and data transfer. The device will come loaded with a decent a 3,600mAh battery with companys Dash Charge technology support for fast charging.

The OnePlus 5 has been leaked more times than any other smartphone in recent months.

Expected Specifications

-Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor (Confirmed)

- Dual rear camera (horizontal)

-16 megapixel front camera

-23 megapixel rear sensor

-5.5 inch full HD screen with AMOLED display (confirmed )

-Two variants of 6 GB RAM + 64 GB storage &

-Oxyge OS Operating System based on Android 7.1 Nougat (Nougat)

- 8GB RAM plus 128 GB storage

- 3,300 mAh battery

-Dash Charge Technology

-Fingerprint sensor

OnePlus is a Shenzhen-based start-up and producer of smartphones founded in December, 2013. It initially sold its smartphones only through an invite system where customers would be sent an invite to purchase smartphones and they had to do it within a fixed time frame. Of late the company has held open sales of its smartphones too.
Jayant Sinha, Chairman, Finance Standing Committee

Union minister Jayant Sinha today proposed an air connectivity scheme on the lines of the UDAN scheme to connect smaller towns across the BIMSTEC region.

He also added that such a move will have to be supplemented by an agreement such as the Open Sky Agreement that India has with other SAARC nations as well countries located beyond a 5,000-km radius from New Delhi, allowing unlimited number of flights to six metro airports.

Minister of State for Civil Aviation Sinha was speaking at a curtain raiser to mark the 20th anniversary of BIMSTEC or Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation. The grouping includes Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Bhutan and Nepal.

"It is worth considering whether we can work with countries that are in the BIMSTEC to see whether we can create a policy package that will enable us to connect smaller towns across the entire BIMSTEC region," Sinha said.

He added that no formal talks on the matter had taken place with any of the BIMSTEC nations and this was merely an "an informal suggestion" being floated for debate and discussion.

Sinha also said that in order to execute such a scheme India will have to enter into an agreement with various countries to provide financial aid.

"We can sign an MoU with different countries to be able to provide support for an UDAN-type scheme across the BIMSTEC community. Of course, we will have to couple that with something like an Open Sky Agreement so that airlines can fly freely," Sinha told reporters.

The Centre's Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik (UDAN) scheme aims to boost air connectivity to tier-2 and tier-3 cities and make flying affordable for the masses by capping airfares at Rs 2,500 per hour.

The first flight under the scheme was launched on Delhi- Shimla route in April after as many as five airlines won 128 routes as part of a bidding process.

The government provides selected airline operators a subsidy to keep the fares low for passengers.
Prannoy Roy

live bse live

nse live Volume Todays L/H More 

There were no raids on NDTV with the CBI not entering any office of the channel, Union Information and Broadcasting Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu said today while dimissing allegations that the searches were an infringement on press freedom.

The Central Bureau of Investigation's raids on the properties of NDTV founder Prannoy Roy on June 5 on allegations of bank fraud had drawn criticism from several political parties as well journalist groups such as the Editors' Guild of India, Press Club of India and All India Newspaper Editors' Conference.

"There is no raid on NDTV. The CBI has not entered the premises of the newsroom or TV studio or any other related offices of the media channel. The management and promoters have to stand scrutiny and answer to the people instead of blocking it and then making allegations," Naidu said on the sidelines of a function here.

Rubbishing claims of a vendetta against the channel, Naidu said the promoters of NDTV, Prannoy and Radhika Roy, should submit to due process of the law as there were questions on their operations that needed disclosures.

"Those disclosures will be enquired into," the minister said, indicating that the troubles for the channel are unlikely to end soon.

Naidu said the media house cannot presume itself to be above the law. "This is especially true when ownership of most media today is defined by a vertiginous web of cross-holding involving corporate and entities for whom media is not a primary business," he said.

CBI had in a statement earlier cited a Supreme Court order of 2016 to assert that the agency has jurisdiction to take up investigation of cases of corruption concerning private banks as well.

It also refuted the charge that its move against the news channel was an infringement of freedom of speech, emphasising that searches, carried out in the basis of warrants issued by court, covered only the premises and offices of promoters.

Lashing out at the Congress for alleging that the government was misusing CBI, Naidu said, "I am surprised that the Congress party is talking about the misuse of CBI. My PM was grilled for eight hours when he was Gujarat CM during UPA regime and our party president was foisted with a false case and spent time in jail. Now these people are talking about misusing CBI."

The minister was referring to Modi being grilled in 2010 by a Supreme Court-appointed probe panel over his alleged complicity in not doing enough to stop the 2002 communal riots in Gujarat and Shah's stint in jail in the same year in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case.
Representative Image

Prime Minister Narendra Modi should make a public statement on the farmers' distress in the country and spell out the steps his government has taken to resolve the agrarian crisis, the CPI said.

"Why is the prime minister mum on the serious agrarian crisis and farmers woes," party national secretary D Raja said.

"At a time when farmers in Maharashtra and other parts are agitating for loan waiver and remunerative prices to agri produce, our PM isn't saying anything on the issue," Raja told PTI.

"We support the farmers and are with them in their struggle," the CPI leader said.

Cultivators in Maharashtra launched a stir for their demands on June 1, suspending supply of milk and vegetables to urban centres.

After a partial loan waiver was announced by Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis for small and marginal farmers last Saturday, a section of farmers announced withdrawal of the agitation. However, protests continued as another section stuck to its demand for a blanket loan waiver.

Raja said the BJP governments should make their stance on the farmers agitation clear. "Does the government have any policy for farmers, many of whom are committing suicides," he said.

Farmers have genuine demands and they are undergoing distress, the Left leader said, adding that the BJP government has failed to address farmers' grievances and remained utterly insensitive to their plight.

"Farmers are in the grip of indebtedness. The government helps corporates but doesn't want to help farmers," he claimed.

The prime minister should address the nation on farmers issues and outline the measures his government was taking to lessen their misery, Raja said.

Meanwhile, the CPI(M) claimed that the farmers were killed in "unprovoked" police firing and said it "exposed the anti-farmer character of the ruling BJP".

The CPI(M) Politburo, currently in session in New Delhi, demanded that the government should immediately suspend the culprits responsible for ordering the firing and insisted on compensating kin of those who were killed.

"The Politburo strongly condemns the brutal killing of the kisans (farmers) in police firing in Madhya Pradesh," the party alleged in a statement.

"This unprovoked police firing clearly exposes the anti- kisan character of the BJP in general and the state government in particular," it alleged.

Taking to Twitter, party general secretary Sitaram Yechury said, "Today's incident in MP shows us the difference between what the BJP says, and what it does. Condolences to families of the farmers killed (sic)."

The party also extended its support the ongoing protests by farmers in Maharashtra and asked the Fadnavis government in the state to fulfil the demands of the peasants.
World Health Organisation (WHO) on Wednesday updated the Essential Medicines List (EML) adding medicines for hepatitis C, HIV, tuberculosis and cancer.

The UN agency concerned with public health also dispensed with new advice on use of antibiotics.

The updated list added 30 medicines for adults and 25 for children, and specifies new uses for 9 already-listed products, bringing the total to 433 drugs deemed essential for addressing the most important public health needs.

The WHO EML is used by many countries to increase access to medicines and guide decisions about which products they ensure are available for their population.

Categorisation of Antibiotics

In the biggest revision of the antibiotics section in the EMLs 40-year history, WHO has grouped antibiotics into three categories  Access, Watch and Reserve with recommendations on when each category should be used.

Initially, the new categories apply only to antibiotics used to treat 21 of the most common general infections. If shown to be useful, it could be broadened in future versions of the EML to apply to drugs to treat other infections.

"The change aims to ensure that antibiotics are available when needed, and that the right antibiotics are prescribed for the right infections," WHO said in a statement.

"It should enhance treatment outcomes, reduce the development of drug-resistant bacteria, and preserve the effectiveness of "last resort" antibiotics that are needed when all others fail,"the WHO statement added.

These changes are part of WHO's global action plan on antimicrobial resistance, which aims to fight the development of drug resistance by ensuring the best use of antibiotics.

WHO recommends that antibiotics in the Access group be available at all times as treatments for a wide range of common infections. For example, it includes amoxicillin, a widely-used antibiotic to treat infections such as pneumonia.

The Watch group includes antibiotics that are recommended as first or second choice treatments for a small number of infections.

For example, the use of ciprofloxacin, used to treat cystitis - a type of urinary tract infection and upper respiratory tract infections such as bacterial sinusitis and bacterial bronchitis, should be dramatically reduced to avoid further development of resistance.

The third group, Reserve, includes antibiotics such as colistin and some cephalosporins that should be considered last-resort options, and used only in the most severe circumstances when all other alternatives have failed, such as for life-threatening infections due to multidrug-resistant bacteria.

WHO experts have added 10 antibiotics to the list for adults, and 12 for children.

"The rise in antibiotic resistance stems from how we are using  and misusing  these medicines," said Dr Suzanne Hill, Director of Essential Medicines and Health Products. "The new WHO list should help health system planners and prescribers ensure people who need antibiotics have access to them, and ensure they get the right one, so that the problem of resistance doesnt get worse."

Other Additions

The updated EML also includes several new drugs, such as two oral cancer treatments, a new pill for hepatitis C that combines two medicines, a more effective treatment for HIV as well as an older drug that can be taken to prevent HIV infection in people at high risk, new paediatric formulations of medicines for tuberculosis, and pain relievers.

These medicines are:

Two oral cancer medicines (dasatinib and nilotinib) for the treatment of chronic myeloid leukaemia that has become resistant to standard treatment. In clinical trials, one in two patients taking these medicines achieved a complete and durable remission from the disease;

Sofosbuvir + velpatasvir as the first combination therapy to treat all six types of hepatitis C (WHO is currently updating its treatment recommendations for hepatitis C);

Dolutegravir for treatment of HIV infection, in response to the most recent evidence showing the medicines safety, efficacy, and high barrier to resistance;

Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) with tenofovir alone, or in combination with emtricitabine or lamivudine, to prevent HIV infection;

Delamanid for the treatment of children and adolescents with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) and clofazimine for children and adults with MDR-TB;

Child-friendly fixed-dose combination formulations of isoniazid, rifampicin, ethambutol and pyrazinamide for treating paediatric tuberculosis;

Fentanyl skin patches and methadone for pain relief in cancer patients with the aim of increasing access to medicines for end-of-life care.
US President Donald Trump spoke to Saudi Arabia's King Salman and called for a united Gulf Cooperation Council to fight terrorism and promote stability in the region, amid deepening diplomatic crisis in Qatar.

Both the leaders discussed ways to prevent terror financing and eliminate extremism by any country in region, the White House said yesterday.

During the phone call, Trump underscored that a united Gulf Cooperation Council is critical to defeating terrorism and promoting regional stability, the White House said.

The White House statement came a day after Saudi Arabia and three other Arab countries  Egypt, Bahrain and the UAE  cut off diplomatic ties with Qatar.

In a tweet, early morning Trump apparently supported the actions of four Arab countries to cut off diplomatic relationship with Qatar.

The US continues to be in close communication with all the parties to resolve the issues and restore cooperation which is so important to regional security there, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters.

"I think there is note that his message of toughness on terror finance and extremism is being heeded by countries in the region. But the US still wants to see this issue de- escalated and resolved immediately, keeping with the principles that the president laid out in terms of defeating terror financing and extremism," he said.

Spicer said Trump had a very, very constructive conversation with the Emir of Qatar during his visit in Riyadh.

"At that time, he was very heartened by the Emir's commitment to formally join the terrorist financing targeting centre and showing their commitment to this issue," he said.

At a separate briefing, State Department Spokesperson Heather Nauert said the US recognises that Qatar has made some great efforts to try to stop financing of terror groups, including prosecuting suspected financiers, freezing assets, and introducing stringent controls on its banking system there.

"However, let me make this clear: They have made progress, but they still have work to do. More work needs to be done," she said.

"I think our relationship with Qatar is one that's strong. It's one that we continue to cooperate with Qatar and other countries in the region in the fight against terrorism. Secretary of State Rex W Tillerson talked about this today," she added.

"He said every country in the region has their own obligations and they need to live up to terminate their support for terrorism and extremism however it manifests itself anywhere in the world, she said.

Nauert praised Qatar for its role in fight against terrorism.

"The US and its coalition, we're grateful to the Qataris for their longstanding support of our presence there in that nation. They have helped to provide us with an enduring commitment to regional security. The Department of Defense has talked about this," she said.

"We have no plans to change our posture in Qatar and we would encourage all of our partners to try to work together to reduce tensions. That's something that the Secretary spoke to as well," Nauert said in response to a question.
Investigators continue to work at the scene near the heavy truck that ran into a crowd at high speed killing scores who were celebrating the Bastille Day July 14 national holiday on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, France, July 15, 2016. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard - RTSI2GB

Moneycontrol News

For decades, guns and bombs were the weapons of choice for terrorists. But with heavy security and a global crackdown on terror making it increasingly difficult to get and store weapons, terrorists have now devised a new strategy.

Over the past year, there have been a spate of terror attacks across Europe, several of which involved a vehicle ploughing through a crowded street and wreaking havoc.

The spontaneous nature of these attacks makes them extremely difficult to contain and anti-terror forces across the world are still searching for solutions.

Last Saturday night, terror struck the UK for the second time in less than a fortnight when a van rammed into pedestrians on London Bridge before its passengers got out and stabbed people nearby. Seven people were killed and 48 injured in the attack.

Here's a recap of similar attacks that have taken place in recent months:

April 7: Stockholm (Sweden)

Four people were killed and 15 injured when a man used a stolen car to ram through a departmental store in the Swedish capital Stockholm.

March 22: London (UK)

A car rammed into pedestrians on the southern side of Westminster Bridge in London, killing four and injuring around 46 others.

December 19, 2016: Berlin (Germany)

A truck deliberately drove through the Christian market next to the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin, killing 12 people and injuring 56 others.

July 14, 2016: Nice (France)In the worst attack of its kind, a cargo truck drove through Promenade des Anglais in Nice where people were celebrating France's National Day. The carnage that followed resulted in 86 deaths and left 434 others injured.
Baku, Azerbaijan, June 6

By Rufiz Hafizoglu  Trend:

The raids against the supporters of Fethullah Gulen movement have been resumed in Istanbul this morning, Istanbuls police said in a message June 7.

The Turkish authorities accuse Fethullah Gulen, living in the US, of being involved in the military coup attempt in the country on July 15, 2016.

According to the message, as a result of the raids there are detainees, however, their number and names have not been disclosed.

The operations are also being carried out in Kaynak Holding, which is one of the biggest companies of the country.

Kaynak Holding is one of the companies, having close ties with the Fethullah Gulen movement.

On July 15, 2016, Turkish authorities said a military coup attempt took place in the country as a group of servicemen announced about transition of power to them. However, the rebelling servicemen started to surrender July 16 and Turkish authorities said the coup attempt failed.

More than 200 people were killed during the attempted coup.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
Rabbis installation at Keneseth Israel will get a boost of student creativity
Baku, Azerbaijan, June 7

By Rufiz Hafizoglu  Trend:

Raids against supporters of Fethullah Gulen are underway in ASELSAN, an Ankara-based company of the Turkish Armed Forces Foundation, the Ankara police said in a message June 7.

As many as 18 people have been detained in the operation, and the names of the detainees are not disclosed, according to the message.

The Turkish authorities accuse Fethullah Gulen, living in the US, of being involved in the military coup attempt in Turkey July 15, 2016.

On July 15, 2016 Turkish authorities said a military coup attempt took place in the country as a group of servicemen announced about transition of power to them. However, the rebelling servicemen started to surrender July 16 and Turkish authorities said the coup attempt failed.

The death toll as a result of the military coup attempt was over 200 people.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
June 07, 2017

The Saudis Demand Total Surrender But Qatar Will Not Fold

Many people believe that Qatar will soon give in to recent Saudi demands and threats. I first though so too but have changed my opinion. Qatar will likely hold out way longer than anyone assumes and fight more intensive and much longer than foreseen.

The Saudi "young leader" has now given Qatar 24 hours to submit to 10 demands. These include (unconfirmed) the dismantling of Al Jazeera, breaking off of all diplomatic relations with Iran and (the Israeli demand of) ending all support for the Muslim Brotherhood and especially Hamas. The Saudis threaten with a military invasion.

But Qatar is not like Bahrain where 1,000 Saudi troops could easily take over to save a dictator from a mostly unarmed uprising of its people. It has way more resources and capable allies on its side and recent news shows that it knows how to use them.

Two days ago we extensively described the complex conflict between Qatar and some of its neighbors that has recently been escalating. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are the main forces on one side, joined yesterday by Donald Trump but not by the Pentagon. On the other side is Qatar, geographically isolated and seemingly without any real allies even though it hosts a very large U.S. command center and air-base.

The conflict has been simmering for years. Qatar has a strong media arm with Al Jazeera TV and other prominent news outlets. Qatar and its media support the political Islam of the Muslim Brotherhood which won elections in Egypt before being kicked out in a Saudi financed military coup. The ruling Turkish AK Party is a Muslim Brotherhood branch as is Hamas in Palestine. Muslim Brotherhood parties have thereby proven that it's possible to have an Islam(ist) aligned government without a hereditary dictatorship. Their pure existence de-legitimates the al-Saud clan and other dictatorial family enterprises in the wider Middle East.

There is little reason to waste tears on Qatar. It is a small country with only 200,000 original inhabitants but with 2,000,000 expatriates living there too. Thanks to its large natural gas reserves Qatar is ultra rich and has a very modern (but also vulnerable) infrastructure. The country is way more liberal than Saudi Arabia. Its cities are somewhat cosmopolitan. Unlike in Saudi Arabia women are allowed to drive and other religions than Islam can build their places of worship. But the rulers of Qatar officially follow the same ultraconservative and proselytizing Wahhabi cult as the al-Sauds. They support terrorists of the worst kind in the war against the Syrian people and elsewhere (just as the al-Sauds do).

The Saudis currently lack money. Oil prices are too low to finance the needs of its 26 million people and the exorbitant expenditures of its ruling family. The Qatari gas fields would be a very profitable extension of their oil empire. The UAE would like to take over strategic Qatari islands in the Gulf (and the hydrocarbon fields around them). Taking over Qatar would bring both countries into a better position to fight their presumed enemy in Iran.

As we wrote:

The extreme bullying of Qatar by the Saudis and the UAE, with total closure of all its borders, is designed to create an immediate capitulation. So far Qatar holds onto its course but in the end it is likely to fold. It will have to stop its support for "terrorism" i.e. the Muslim Brotherhood. Another scenario is a putsch in Doha with some Saudi puppet prepared to take over the realm. If that is unsuccessful a military move could follow. Qatar has little capabilities to withstand a potential Saudi invasion.

I have since changed my opinion and said so in a few conversation on Twitter. Qatar will hold out way longer than anticipated. It may not fold at all:

The map (source unknown) shows Qatar having moved from the Arab coast of the Gulf to the Persian one.

Our piece on the Qatar crisis two days ago also included this graph:

For Iran this is a chance to further blow up the GCC by intensifying its relations with Qatar. It could increase its food exports to the country and host Qatar airline flights. This in exchange for a Qatari retreat from Syria. The U.S./Saudi plan of confronting Iran through the GCC would then be in complete jeopardy.

Iran did exactly what I proscribed - NBC:

A top Iranian agricultural official responded by announcing Monday that Iran could send food shipments to Qatar by ship. He said the shipments would take 12 hours to reach Qatar. It is not known if any shipments have yet arrived.

...

An Iranian transportation official said Tuesday that Qatari flights bound to North Africa and Europe that used to cross Saudi, Egyptian or Kuwaiti airspace can now travel over Iran, Iraq and Jordan. Flights to Northern Europe can cross Iran.

Today Qatar officially asked Iran and Turkey for additional food supplies. [Update June 8, 1:00am - Turkish freighter planes with fresh food just landed in Qatar.]

But Iran can not send military support to Qatar - at least not openly and not yet. The Yemeni Houthi, who until very recently fought against Qatari soldiers on the Saudi side of the Yemeni border, now offer their support to Qatar. The Muslim Brotherhood ruled Turkey had planned since 2015 to set up a large "training base" in Qatar. Currently only 150 Turkish soldiers are there to prepare the ground. That will soon change:

Lawmakers from Erdogan's AK Party have proposed debating two pieces of legislation: allowing Turkish troops to be deployed in Qatar and approving an accord between the two countries on military training cooperation, AKP and nationalist opposition officials said. Both draft bills, which were drawn up before the spat between Qatar and its Arab neighbours erupted, are expected to be approved by the Ankara parliament later on Wednesday.

[Update June 8, 1:00am - The laws passed in record time. I expect additional Turkish troops in Qatar within 24 hours.]

The large Qatar Airways fleet is able to bring 10,000nds of Turkish troops to Qatar within days. It is somewhat amusing that these will use Iranian airspace while Iran financed proxy fighters in Syria are fighting Turkish and Qatari supported "insurgents".

The Saudi/U.S. strategy of bringing Qatar fully into the anti-Iran and anti-Muslim Brotherhood camps seems to have the opposite effect.

The U.S. controlled Al-Udeid air-base in Qatar is leading the fight against ISIS. The Pentagon surely does not want any interruption of its functioning. Many buildings and institutions in London are owned by Qatar. 90% of British gas imports, 17% of its total consumption, comes from Qatar. Qatar is an important industrial investor in Germany where it owns the largest minority share of the huge Volkswagen Group. It has friendly relations with Russia. Yesterday the Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani talked with President Putin:

Russian-Qatari cooperation, primarily in the trade, economic and investment areas, was discussed, and the results of the meeting of the bilateral Intergovernmental Commission in April 2017 were highly praised. International issues were also discussed. Vladimir Putin reaffirmed Russias principled position in favour of settling crises by political and diplomatic means, through dialogue.

Translation: Qatar offered additional money for Russia's support. A preliminary deal was made but there was no promise (yet) of full Russian support in a military conflict.

The Saudi coalition may have the backing of minor (paid off) nations and from tweets by Donald Trump. But the U.S. military is against a Saudi war on Qatar. It does not want to strengthen the Saudi position in the Gulf at the cost of other allies. The British government and other Europeans have also many reasons to not let Qatar fall into the hands of the al-Sauds.

Qatar is quite fast in getting its ducks into a row. It quickly solved the most immediate problems resulting from the Saudi border blockade. It called in Turkish military reinforcement to stave of a Saudi invasion. Iranian and Russian (military) supplies will be very valuable in any longer fight. Europe will not back the Saudis and will not support a Saudi annexation. It will press for solving the issue peacefully. Qatar has enough financial capabilities and reserves to withstand a longer crisis.

There is no reason for Qatar to give in soon to the overbearing Saudi demands. The ruling "young leader" - Deputy Clown Prince Mohammad bin-Salman - has (again) overestimated his capabilities. The Saudis were sure that Bashar Assad in Syria would leave in 2011 or 2012. The Houthis in Yemen would be defeated in a few days or weeks they thought. Years and billions of Saudi dollars later both are still in place.

Now the Qatari ruler Tamim bin Hamad is expected to fold in a day or two. Qatar may eventually have to submit to the Saudi demands and rule, but I sincerely doubt that this will happen anytime soon.

Posted by b on June 7, 2017 at 17:19 UTC | Permalink

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17 hours ago
Burke County is getting national attention for its work on local hiking and bicycle trails.

It recently got word that county planning staff won a 2017 Coalition for Recreational Trails achievement award in the Public-Private Partnerships and Access to/Use of Public Lands category for its Mountains-to-Sea/Fonta Flora State Trail connector.

The award in that category is given for facilitating and/or encouraging cost-effective partnerships between public and private entities, especially to increase access to and use of federal, state and local public lands, including parks, forests and wildlife refuges, says information on the awards.

The countys application for the award says the Mountains-to-Sea State Trail/Fonta Flora State Trail Connector is a 3-mile hiking and mountain biking trail that goes through the Linville Tract of NC Wildlife Resources Commission Game Lands to connect a proposed 30-mile loop trail across private and public lands around Lake James to miles of additional trails on public lands. Specifically, the trail connector crosses state managed game lands to connect Burke Countys Fonta Flora Park to the US Forest Services Linville Gorge, the application says.

It also connects two designated state trails, it says.

The trail connector provides a connection between all trails in the region, including the Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail, the Linville Gorge and Lake James State Park trail systems. The connection with the Mountains-to-Sea State Trail can lead to other public lands such as Stone Mountain State Park, Mount Mitchell State Park, Grandfather Mountain State Park, Pisgah National Forest and , eventually when the Mountains-to-Sea State Trail is complete, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Cape Hatteras National Seashore, the application says.

The application says the connector trail has received support from local government officials and cooperation by numerous agency personnel at the county, state and federal levels.

We are very excited about being a recipient of the annual Coalition for Recreational Trails award in the Public-Private Partnerships and Access to Use of Public Lands category, said Scott Carpenter, director of community development for Burke County. Burke County is working diligently to create a world class hiking/biking trail system to help with our eco-tourism region and to bring new and healthy exercise alternatives to our residents.

Carpenter said the connector will bring people off of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail and allow them to hike down to the shores of Lake James. It also , eventually , will allow direct access to downtown Asheville via of the Fonta Flora State Trail and to Lenoir and Kings Mountain when the Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail is completed, he said.

I would like to give a special shout-out to the Burke County Board of Commissioners and County Manager Bryan Steen, who have been very supportive of all of our trail building efforts over the past several years, Carpenter said. This would not have been possible without that support.

Carpenter said he plans to go to Washington, D.C. to accept the award on June 14. The awards will be presented at 5 p.m. at the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill.
Gallaudet University and Western Piedmont Community College recently signed an articulation agreement, allowing graduates of WPCCs Interpreter Education degree to transfer credits into Gallaudets Bachelor of Arts in Interpretation program.

Gallaudet is the only university in the world to offer interpretation programs from bachelors to doctorate levels. Gallaudet prepares students for a career in interpretation through hands-on training in a variety of medical, business, education, and government settings.

Having our students participate in a program that immerses them in a deaf space on the Galludet campus will not only benefit our students, but will help them help members of the deaf and hard of hearing community, WPCC President Dr. Michael S. Helmick said.

Our goal is to enable WPCC graduates to become qualified interpreters," said Dr. Melanie Metzger, chair of the Department of Interpretation and Translation for Gallaudet. Our hope is that through this agreement, WPCC graduates will easily be able to enter our interpretation program and become stellar interpreters through the unique, immersive culture that Gallaudet has to offer. Our interpreters are always improving, always learning everyday.

WPCC offers an associates in applied science degree in Interpreter Education and prepares students to work as entry-level Sign Language Interpreters who will provide communication access in interview and interactive settings.

WPCC has a long and proud tradition of working with the deaf and hard of hearing population in Burke County through our Interpreter Education Program," Helmick said. "We are pleased to be able to partner with Galludet to extend opportunities to our graduates as they transfer to the Bachelor of Arts in Interpretation at Galludet.

For more information on the AAS in Interpreter Education, please contact Danette Steelman-Bridges at 828-448-6028 or at dsbridges@wpcc.edu.
Baku, Azerbaijan, June 7

By Rufiz Hafizoglu  Trend:

Germany, after withdrawing forces from the Turkish Incirlik air base, will station its Air Force in Jordan, Jordanian media outlets reported.

The German Air Force will be stationed at the Al Azraq air base.

Germany will start pulling out its forces of the Incirlik air base in the coming weeks.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu earlier said that Turkey had not allowed a group of German MPs to visit the Incirlik air base.

Cavusoglu noted that German MPs can currently visit only the Konya air force base in Turkey.

Turkey had earlier blocked a group of German lawmakers from visiting the servicemen at the Incirlik air base prompting German Chancellor Angela Merkel to suggest that Berlin may consider moving 250 troops stationed at the air base to one of the neighboring countries.

In turn, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said a possible withdrawal of the German Air Force contingent from the Incirlik air base in southern Turkey poses no problem for Ankara. Turkey remains a key country  member of NATO in the Middle East. The Incirlik air base is one of the main bases of the US and NATO in the region.

Planes of the US-led coalition members, which participate in air operations against the so-called Islamic State (IS aka ISIS/ISIL) terrorist group, are stationed at this air base.
Damien Conover: When thinking about dividends, Pfizer (PFE) offers a great opportunity for investors. We think the stock is undervalued and pays a very strong dividend. Right now, the dividend yield is close to 4%. That dividend is really supported by a strong portfolio of drugs--a lot of new drugs coming into the portfolio and really not too many patent losses in the near term. So, we're anticipating relatively steady growth for the firm, and that will likely transfer into steady growth for the dividend.

When we think about its peer group, most of the large-cap pharmaceutical stocks pay out about 50% of their earnings in a dividend. Pfizer is right there with that group, and we think that will likely stay the case for the next several years. So, as earnings continue to grow, we think the dividend will grow modestly as well.

Thinking about historically, Pfizer's dividend has been very secure; however, when they did buy Wyeth back several years ago, they did cut the dividend. Now, we think that was largely due to a lot of the cash that they needed to fund that acquisition. Going forward, we expect Pfizer to make an acquisition of a larger size, but we don't anticipate a dividend cut. Now, a lot of the reasons for that is the balance sheet is very secure and the earnings are relatively stable.

So, when we think about the context of not only strong dividend, but from a valuation perspective, we think the stock is undervalued as well. So, we are looking at a firm that has a good total return for investors. On top of that, this is a firm that we see as having a wide economic moat, supported by a lot of drugs, both currently marketed as well as next-generation molecules out there for Pfizer.

When we think about risks to the overall equation, sometimes drug pricing pressure comes up. We believe that Pfizer's drug portfolio is well-positioned for that. A lot of complex molecules, molecules serving the more specialty-oriented group. That group tends to have stronger pricing power, and we think that will not only support earnings growth but also a secure dividend for the near and long term.
Robert Long, 74, describes himself as a keen investor: Its become a bit of a hobby in recent years, although I dont buy and sell shares as often as I used too. I more interested in decent long-term returns, rather than a quick gain.

Long started investing early. His first investments were insurance-based savings bonds he says. I saved monthly, into a type of endowment plan, he explained. It wasnt a huge amount each month, nothing I really missed, but after 10 years I had a decent sum of money. It taught me the benefits of saving on a regular basis. It soon adds up.

He started investing more seriously in the 1980s, when he bought a number of the shares in companies that were being privatised. This included BT (BT.A), British Airways and British Gas, which subsequently split into Centrica (CNA) and BG Group, recently acquired by Royal Dutch Shell (RDSB).

Long made strong gains on these shares shortly after they were privatised, he says: It felt like you couldnt lose. I probably held onto them a couple of years. I wasnt really thinking long-term then. I think I sold one tranche of shares to pay for a holiday.

This experience made him interested in buying more individual shares. Over the years I built up quite a portfolio. Some were very successful, others less so.

I always preferred picking my own investments, rather than paying a fund manager to choose them. Obviously, I made some fantastic gains in the run up to the tech boom, but then many of these holdings subsequently crashed. Like most people I held on for too long.

Long has tended to prefer investing in smaller companies. Often these were tips from people he worked with or other investors, adding: For a while I was a part of an investment club, wed swap ideas.

Why I Prefer Closed-end Funds

Long initially worked as a sales and product manager for an insurance company. Later on, he worked in sales in the food and drinks industry, before switching to the property sector.

He says: Looking back some of my better long-term holdings have been in investment trusts. I like the fact that charges are similar to holding and dealing shares, but they offer a bit more diversification. I invested in a few just to provide some steady returns when I was dabbling with higher risk shares. But I also liked the opportunity to potentially gear returns by buying those trusts trading on discounts.

He adds: Over the years though Ive mainly stopped investing in higher risk shares such as AIM-listed stocks or tech shares. I now largely hold investment trusts. Its a smaller portfolio but its probably delivering better returns.

Many of these trusts hes held for 10 years and more have an excellent track record on paying dividends. These include two Henderson trusts: City of London (CTY) and Bankers (BNKR).

Both trusts are highly rated by Morningstar analysts. Job Curtis has run the City of London trust for 25 years and this investment has a coveted Gold Rating.

David Holder, an analyst at Morningstar describes the trust as a compelling option for investors. He adds: Not only has the management been consistent but the process used by Curtis is also little changed over that time.

The trust, which mainly invests in larger UK companies, is conservatively managed, with a relatively low stock turnover. Curtis takes a bottom-up approach, focusing on well-managed companies with a commitment to paying dividends.

Holder adds: This prudent and measured approach to portfolio management here has resulted in outperformance over most time frames. Indeed, over Curtis tenure since 1991, the fund has returned an annualised 9.3%, some 80 basis points more than the FTSE All-Share and around 190 basis points ahead of the peer group over this period. The trust has increased its dividend for 50 years.

Bankers Investment Trust now has a more international remit, but is another trust that has increased its dividend for 50-plus years. It has a Silver Rating from Morningstar, reflecting analysts confidence that it will continue to outperform peers. The trust has been managed by Alex Crooke since 2003.

Holder says: In April 2016, Bankers benefitted as a rollover option for investors in Henderson Global Trust, which was being wound up. Consequently, the company issued nearly 60 million of new shares to these investors, increasing liquidity and spreading costs. This capital injection was also a catalyst to tilt the portfolio further away from its historical UK bias, work that that been under way over fund manager Alex Crooke's tenure.

Trust Pick for Long Term Growth

While these are strong dividend payers, Long says he also invests in more growth-orientated trusts such as Finsbury Growth & Income (FGT)  run by Nick Train. This he says has a lower yield that some of his other investment trusts holdings, but still pays around 2%. Long says he has been very impressed with the returns on this trust, which he has not held for as long as the others.

Morningstar analysts clearly share his view. This is another trust with a coveted Gold Rating from Morningstar. It also has a five-star rating reflecting its very strong performance in recent years, compared to peers.

Simon Dorricott of Morningstar says: Train's process is differentiated and has proved successful over a number of market cycles. He looks for unique and high-quality companies that offer a high and sustainable return on equity and low capital intensity and are cash-generative.

The result is a concentrated portfolio with clear biases relative to peers and the FTSE All-Share Index. Turnover is low, reflecting Train's long-term approach and his buy-and-hold style. He only sells out if he no longer considers a company to be of sufficient quality.

This process has led to strong absolute returns and, given the strategy has clear biases and risks, unusually consistent relative returns over the medium to longer term.

Private Pension Provision

Long says that for now his main income comes from his various pensions. Im lucky enough to have had a final salary pension from the days when I worked for an insurance company. This is supplemented with some private pensions and other smaller company pensions.

To date I havent started taking any income from my investment portfolio, though I have cashed in small amount of capital as and when we need the money. I think this is often more tax efficient. His holdings are split between SIPPs and ISAs as well as a separate investment account.
Baku, Azerbaijan, June 7

By Rufiz Hafizoglu  Trend:

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Turkey has strongly condemned the terrorist attacks in Iran.

Turkey expresses condolences to the Iranian people over the terrorist attacks in Tehran, the ministry said in a message.

Separate attacks shattered Tehran on June 7. As reports said, several armed people tried to break their way into the Parliament building.



The attackers managed to get inside the building and engaged in a shootout with the security forces. One terrorist committed suicide by blowing himself up. The latest reports indicate that all terrorists who took part in the siege of the parliament building have been killed.



Meanwhile, another attack took place at the Imam Khomeini Shrine, which involved armed terrorists, suicide bombers. The reports said Iran's security forces neutralized one terrorist, another one committed suicide. Several pilgrims have also been injured in the attack.



A separate terrorist group in the country has been detained before it managed to carry out any terror attacks. Fars news agency issued a report, saying that ISIS claimed responsibility for the terror attacks in Tehran.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
Baku, Azerbaijan, June 7

By Rufiz Hafizoglu  Trend:

Qatar has started talks with Turkey and Iran for the supplies of drinking water and agricultural products, Arab media outlets reported.

The foodstuff currently available in Qatar will suffice for four weeks, according to the report.

Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE announced about breaking their diplomatic relations with Qatar June 5, accusing Doha of supporting terrorist organizations and destabilizing the situation in the Middle East.

Later, the authorities of Libya, Yemen, as well as the Maldives and Mauritius also announced about severing diplomatic relations with Qatar.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
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To further protect the integrity of our editorial content, we keep a strict separation between our sales teams and authors to remove any pressure or influence on our analyses and research.

Read our editorial policy to learn more about our process.
A $7.6 million community housing project in the Hull district of Gatineau is now pushing forward with full support from the governments of Canada and Quebec, the Centre Mechtilde announced.The development plan received $2.1 million in funding from the federal and provincial governments under the Investment in Affordable Housing Agreement. The Gatineau city government also contributed over $630,000, while the Centre Mechtilde took out a mortgage of more than $5.2 million, secured by the Societe d'habitation du Quebec (SHQ).The project aims to complete 31 additional low-cost transitional housing units for homeless women and single mothers suffering from domestic violence. Tenants will benefit from the Rent Supplement program, a scheme that would allow them to pay a rent corresponding to 25 per cent of their income. The resulting financial assistance of approximately $534,000 (over five years) will be shouldered by the SHQ (90%) and the City of Gatineau (10%).This increased supply of transitional housing units in the area will facilitate the social reintegration of vulnerable women in difficulty. We can now start offering a broader range of services promoting the emergence of new opportunities and greater economic independence for these women, according to Lise Duguay, chair of the Centre Mechtildes board of directors.The City of Gatineau is very proud of the announcement made today and of the partnership that makes this achievement possible. We must remember that affordable housing is an important tool in the fight against poverty in our communities. These investments meet a need that is important both to the people of Gatineau and to our entire community, mayor Maxime Pedneaud-Jobin added.
Market Exec's View on Rates and Locks; Fannie and Freddie Changes; Book for Brokers

Summer is here, school is out for many, and its time for vacation, right? Heres a little trivia for your co-workers. What is number of available vacation days that Americans collectively did not take in 2016? Try "662 million" on for size. (There are about 124 million full time workers in the U.S.) Do you really think you'll be on your death bed saying, "I'm sure glad I didn't use all my vacation time again this year - the company would collapse without me there. Besides, I enjoy work more than vacation!"?



Capital Markets

Here's a note that I received from a director of capital markets from a well-known lender about locks. "What have we seen with locks over the last several weeks, and how dependent are locks on rates? Prevailing rates have decreased due to several factors, most notably a suffocation of post-election optimism around the ability of conservatives to pass pro-business agenda. Less regulation and lower taxes would in theory increase investment in markets and corporations, causing higher stock prices and boosting the economy, and in turn mortgage rates, at least that was the hope that drove up markets.

"Recently, markets have displayed confusing patterns, as U.S. stocks remain near at or near record highs despite economic data that continues to be positive but fails to meet expectations, pushing treasury yields and mortgage rates lower. We have seen the 10-year treasury yield go from above 2.40% in mid-May down nearly 30bps to a low last week of 2.14%.Throw in the geopolitical and cultural conflict we have seen - nationalist fervor in elections, dozens of terror attacks around the globe, political tensions involving Russia, the U.S., Syria, North Korea, Britain, domestic conflict within government over Russian interference in the election and before transition, travel bans, and withdrawal from the Paris climate accord, etc. - so much news to digest in the 24-hour news cycle world we live in.

"But what does it mean for rates and locks? Many of my competitors were forced to evaluate profitability with a shrinking refinance business in the wake of the presidential election in November. For our company specifically, we saw purchases go from nearly 60% of our applications in early May down to 42% last week. The increase in refinance business is always welcome, but we need to avoid basing future projections on this, as I would say this recent rush is primarily from borrowers who had been looking to refinance before we saw rates increase in April.

"Now that rates have decreased slightly and provided a temporary boon for refinancers, I expect the boon to be only that: temporary. Fed Fund futures have priced in over a 90% probability of a rate hike at next week's Fed meeting, and although markets will undoubtedly have this increase priced in come the time of the announcement, an increase would still likely mean a rise in prevailing mortgage rates over the next few months. For LOs asking me if they should wait or lock and get the ball rolling, my answer is going to be that a sure thing now is a better proposition than waiting and responding to markets in the future. With mortgage rates and treasury yields are back down towards pre-election levels, today is as good a time as any to push those borrowers toward closing their deal."

Yup, suddenly "refi" is back in originator's vocabularies. Yesterday U.S. Treasuries, and agency MBS prices, moved higher in a "curve-flattening trade." Why? Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) data showed job openings increasing more than expected in April. Oil prices rose meaningfully for the first time in a week as a dispute between Qatar and Saudi Arabia continued to preoccupy energy traders. China's government said that it stands reading to buy Treasuries, now that the yuan has stabilized. There are heightened concerns ahead of Thursdays' "risk events" including the UK general election. The 10-year note price closed over .250 better (2.15%) and 5-year Treasury securities and MBS improved about .125.

This morning we've had the MBA's survey of last week's locks: up 7.1%. Purchase apps were +10%, and refi apps were up about 3%. Overall apps are still down 16% versus this week last year. That about does it for scheduled news. We begin Wednesday with the 10-year at 2.15% and agency MBS prices worse a shade versus last night's close.



Freddie, Fannie, Investor Conforming Conventional News

For over 20 years, Freddie Mac has provided superior underwriting capabilities to lenders. "Now, we're leveraging the power of big data and advanced analytics to build game-changing solutions into Loan Product Advisor - our next-generation underwriting solution. Our goal is to drive efficiency in your loan manufacturing process, ultimately helping you cut costs and giving you rep and warranty relief sooner. For example, our automated collateral evaluation will speed up, simplify and save money in your appraisal process - you'll get your borrowers to closing faster, while receiving immediate certainty for collateral rep and warranty relief. Loan Product Advisor's automated asset and income validation will reduce paperwork helping to quickly confirm qualifications for borrowers. Finally, you can now expand homeownership opportunities through automated assessments for borrowers without credit scores. Plus, Loan Product Advisor is a simpler, more intuitive tool with easier navigation and data visualization, Ready to learn more? Visit our Loan Product Advisor web page."

A few months back the D.C. Circuit panel gave the U.S. Department of the Treasury and Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) a win over the allocation of profits from Freddie and Fannie to the Treasury. This affirmed a lower court's ruling that actions taken under the FHFA's conservatorship of the GSEs cannot be challenged in court. But Fannie and Freddie shareholders sued the two for agreeing to the deal. Now, the FHFA and Treasury are urging the D.C. Circuit not to modify its ruling.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have announced that the Closing Disclosure PDF will not be required to be embedded in the UCD XML file until April 2018.

Fannie Mae has added a clarification to effective dates for a prior foreclosure allowable increase has been made to the Hawaii AAA Matrix. To view the updated matrix, visit the Excess Attorney Fee/Cost Guidelines page.

Mortgage Solutions Financial is now offering Fannie Mae's Student Loan Cash-Out Refinance product. Click here to read its announcement.

Freddie Mac launched a Single-Family Fraud Risk homepage. Freddie established its Financial Fraud Investigation Unit - which is responsible for the prevention, detection, investigation and resolution of mortgage fraud - in 1989, and we've continually worked to keep the industry informed about the types of schemes detected. However, this page pulls together all its resources, including those for seller/servicers, industry professionals and consumers. It tells people how to report suspected fraud to Freddie Mac and it includes a Fraud Mitigation Best Practices checklist and a Mortgage Screening Process checklist.

Franklin American Mortgage Company expanded its HomeReady guidelines to include all Homeownership Education and Counseling options per the Fannie Mae Selling Guide. Homeownership Education/Counseling from a Community Seconds provider or a HUD approved Counselor as applicable are permitted in addition to Framework. This change is effective immediately.

Looking back a bit, effective April 28 NewLeaf updated its NewLeaf 1 & 2 Conventional guidelines and NewLeaf VA guidelines.

NewLeaf 2 Conventional Fixed and Hybrid DU Only product guidelines have been updated to reflect recent per the recent Fannie Mae announcement.

M&T Bank received confirmation from Fannie Mae that when a loan is eligible for a Project Eligibility Review Waiver, the lender is not required to confirm Fidelity Bond/Crime Insurance. Therefore, the requirements for Project Type Code "V" has been moved from the Full Review warranty form to Exhibit 03002A - Agency (FNMA) Condo Warranty - Limited Review. This update is effective immediately.

To ensure an efficient purchase process, for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans with Note dates on and after 9/25/2017, AmeriHome will require that Sellers submit their UCD files to both GSEs and provide evidence of a successful submission via the UCD Findings Reports. In addition, AmeriHome's FHA Standard 4000.1 Program Guide has been updated to clarify that, although single-close construction loans and construction loan modifications are not eligible for purchase, loans for the purchase of a newly constructed property are eligible.

To allow more preparation time, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have announced that the Closing Disclosure PDF will not be required to be embedded in the UCD XML file until April 2018. To support adoption of UCD, there are live webinars to facilitate the changes and offer abundant resources on the UCD page.

Fannie Mae recently announced several condo policy changes and a reduced Streamlined Project Eligibility Review Service (PERS) fee. Learn about PIW eligibility requirements and more in our PIW FAQs.

To align with Fannie Mae's policy for the Condominium Project Questionnaire - Full Form, Wells Fargo has clarified its age of document requirements to specify that, when utilizing the Wells Fargo Homeowners Association Certification Review, Form 24 or 25 must be completed within 180 days of the Loan Note date. Wells is also updating its Homeowners Association Certification Review forms for consistency with the Seller Guide by including a question and answer for zoning with legal non-conforming use of land.



Jobs, LO products, Residential Broker Book

Finance of America Mortgage is listed as a Top 10 Mortgage Lender, and is moving to Utah. "With residential lending, reverse mortgages, fix & flip and renovation financing, FAM has tools to help you grow your business! We have exciting opportunities for Branch managers and Mortgage Originators in Salt Lake City, and throughout all of Utah. For more information on how to become a part of our winning team, contact Scott Doren, or online here. If opportunity, support and culture are as important to you as they are to us, contact us today."

Starkey Mortgage, a nationally recognized residential mortgage company, announced the launch of Argos, its proprietary management and marketing platform. "Designed to provide Starkey's loan officers with the best in class business tools to improve productivity and increase business, Argos leverages the best technology and vendors to build their business through increased efficiencies in a variety of areas including prospecting, pipeline management, communications, and marketing. Powered by the CMPS Platform, Argos CRM module is a mobile-responsive platform that helps loan officers create and track daily sales activities, and measure progress with each relationship. Through easy to access dashboards, loan officers have a snapshot of their business, allowing them to think about new and innovative ways to grow their business while focusing on the details. Argos' functionality will continue to expand with tools to increase Starkey loan officer productivity and volume, including mobile-responsive loan comparison reports, video messages to clients and more." Learn more about Argos.

Are you looking to join an organization with great history, culture, and opportunity? If so, MGIC, the founder of the private mortgage insurance industry, has a great opportunity for an ambitious sales professional in the greater Seattle Metropolitan Area. As an Account Manager, you will develop and maintain strong, long-lasting client relationships as well as grow business by identifying new opportunities. The ideal candidate must have a college degree, strong presentation and communication skills, and the ability to occasionally travel overnight. This person will report directly to Dean Dardzinski, VP - Managing Director - Pacific Region. If you are interested in joining a company with 60 years of industry leadership and legacy, please send your resume to Nancy Vang-Lee, Senior Talent Acquisition Partner.

PRMG hired James Hooper as its National Strategic Sales Manager to help lead a team of managers and recruit sales staff to help grow market share. James held various senior leadership roles at several national wholesale lenders including Regional VP of Sales, U.S. Bank, Regional Sales Manager-Southwest EquiFirst and most recently First Vice President-TPO and Non-Delegated at Freedom Mortgage where he oversaw sales and operations, producing an annualized volume north of $3 billion a year. "We are very confident that along with his extensive experience in developing high-performing sales teams that James will be successful in helping PRMG grow our sales force in alignment with our goal to gain market share through various channels as we continue to build our footprint nationally," said Kevin Peranio, PRMG, Chief Lending Officer.

If you are looking for a good book for training new hires, here is a strong option to help them with their studies: "The Successful Mortgage Broker: Selling Mortgages After the Meltdown."

National mortgage lender New American Funding announced that it has hired 30-year vet Sue Silverman for a new role within the mortgage company working in several key areas with primary responsibilities centered on broker relations, product development, loan structuring, and assisting Secondary Marketing with identifying investors.

And First Guaranty Mortgage Corporation announced that mortgage industry veteran, Kimberly Donovan, has joined the company as an AE for the Correspondent Division in the Midwest area. Congrats!
Baku, Azerbaijan, June 7

By Rufiz Hafizoglu  Trend:

Considering the recent developments in the region, Turkey and Iran need major consultations, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told Turkish journalists in Ankara June 7.

What has happened in the region causes concern, he said, adding, Today, the region suffers from terrorism and security issues.

Zarif noted that the June 7 terrorist attacks in Tehran will further strengthen Irans position in the fight against terrorism. Condemning the deadly attacks in Tehran, he described terrorism as a regional and global problem.

Separate attacks shattered Tehran on June 7. As reports said, several armed people tried to break their way into the Parliament building. The attackers managed to get inside the building and engaged in a shootout with the security forces. One terrorist committed suicide by blowing himself up.

The latest reports indicate that all terrorists who took part in the siege of the parliament building have been killed.

Meanwhile, another attack took place at the Imam Khomeini Shrine, which involved armed terrorists, suicide bombers. The reports said Iran's security forces neutralized one terrorist, another one committed suicide. Several pilgrims have also been injured in the attack.

A separate terrorist group in the country has been detained before it managed to carry out any terror attack. Fars news agency issued a report saying that ISIS claimed responsibility for the terror attacks in Tehran.

Zarif arrived in Ankara on June 7, where he will meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Iran and Turkey will discuss the Qatari crisis and other regional issues during his visit.

Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE announced about breaking their diplomatic relations with Qatar June 5, accusing Doha of supporting terrorist organizations and destabilizing the situation in the Middle East.

Later, the authorities of Libya, Yemen, as well as the Maldives and Mauritius also announced about severing diplomatic relations with Qatar.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
Mount Pleasant, SC (29464)

Today

Tropical storm conditions possible. Thunderstorms likely. Low near 70F. Winds SE at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of rain 90%..

Tonight

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(Bloomberg) -- The first time James Comey met Donald Trump, he felt compelled to document their conversations, something he had not done regularly before. He typed up a memo recounting that Jan. 6 encounter on his laptop in a FBI vehicle outside Trump Tower the moment I walked out of the meeting.

In his nine one-on-one conversations with Trump, which form the basis of Comeys opening statement to a Senate panel Thursday, the former FBI chief said Trump pressured him for loyalty, sought forbearance for Michael Flynn and asked him to lift the cloud of a Russia investigation hanging over the administration.

Comey will testify that he did assure Trump three times that he wasnt personally the target of a counterintelligence case, confirming statements made by the president as hes tried to fend off critics.

But he also will say that he was uneasy with the unusual private conversations with Trump about matters under investigation. Their last was April 11. Trump fired Comey on May 9.

Watch Comeys testimony live: click here to set a reminder.

Comeys prepared testimony, released Wednesday by the Senate Intelligence Committee, is a remarkable, real-time recollection of his conversations with a president under siege, complete with Comeys own reactions -- most often an attempt to betray no emotion or accession to what the president wanted. Comeys contemporaneous memos allow the nation to hear the presidents own words: I need loyalty. I expect loyalty.

White House spokesmen referred questions to Marc Kasowitz, a lawyer representing the president in the Russia investigation, who said Comey affirmed Trumps assertions that hes not the target of the federal inquiry.

President Pleased

The President is pleased that Mr. Comey has finally publicly confirmed his private reports that the President was not under investigation in any Russian probe, Kasowitz said in a statement released by his office. The President feels completely and totally vindicated. He is eager to continue to move forward with his agenda.

The testimony is the work of a veteran law-enforcement officer, with details that seem superfluous and literary -- the door by the grandfather clock in the Oval Office closing, two Navy stewards buzzing about during his dinner with the president. It also suggests a man seeking to convince listeners of his credibility on the big things by capturing the details, too.

More than an historic record, Comeys words will be studied for the answer to the question of whether Trump committed an impeachable offense. Comey offers no opinion on the matter, but his testimony does offer some support for both the president and his opponents.

Read More About Why Obstruction of Justice Is Echoing in Washington

One key section details Trumps pleas on behalf of Flynn, who was an early supporter of Trumps campaign for the presidency and an energetic surrogate. In that instance, Trump asked to speak with Comey alone following a scheduled counterterrorism briefing, a day after Flynn was forced to resign for misleading statements about his contacts with Russias ambassador.

Trump said Flynn hadnt done anything wrong in speaking with the Russians but had misled Vice President Mike Pence, according to Comey.

He then said, I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go. I replied only that he is a good guy, Comey wrote.

Comeys account directly contradicts previous public statements by the president on some major points. At a May 18 news conference, after news reports about the encounter were published, Trump gave a blanket denial when asked if he urged Comey to close or back down in the investigation of Flynn.

Still, Comey said he didnt interpret the presidents request to let this go in regard to Flynn to be a broad reference to the probe into Russia meddling in last years campaign and whether anyone close to Trump colluded in it. U.S. intelligence agencies have found Russia interfered in an effort to hurt Democrat Hillary Clinton and, ultimately, to help Republican Trump win.

I had understood the President to be requesting that we drop any investigation of Flynn in connection with false statements about his conversations with the Russian ambassador in December, Comey wrote. I did not understand the President to be talking about the broader investigation into Russia or possible links to his campaign.

Line of Questioning

While that may help Trump on the question of whether he sought to impede the Russia probe, critics saw an opening for other lines of attack. Representative Adam Schiff, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said Congress must determine whether Comeys refusal to drop the Flynn investigation led to his firing by Trump.

There was pressure on other fronts, as well. In another section of the testimony, Comey writes of his unease on discovering that he was the only guest at a Jan. 27 dinner with Trump at the White House. During the meal, Comey wrote, Trump quizzed him about whether he wanted to remain head of the FBI even though the president twice previously said he hoped he would stay.

My instincts told me that the one-on-one setting, and the pretense that this was our first discussion about my position, meant the dinner was, at least in part, an effort to have me ask for my job and create some sort of patronage relationship, Comey wrote. That concerned me greatly, given the FBIs traditionally independent status in the executive branch.

Pressed for Loyalty

Thats when Trump pressed him for loyalty. When Trump brought up the subject of loyalty again, near the end of the dinner, Comey promised the president he would always get honesty.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer flatly denied at a May 12 briefing that Trump asked Comey to pledge his loyalty after the exchange was reported by the New York Times. Trump tweeted the same day that Comey better hope that there are no tapes of our conversations. In an interview with Fox News broadcast on May 13, Trump also directly denied asking Comey for his loyalty. But I dont think it would be a bad question to ask, he added.

Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona said hes not surprised Comey is confirming that the president asked for his loyalty and tried to end the Flynn probe.

Just as I suspected, McCain said. Theres going to be many shoes to drop before this one is over.

Comey has coordinated his testimony with Robert Mueller, another former FBI chief whos now special counsel in charge of the investigations into Russian meddling, according to a person familiar with Comeys plans.

Duty to Correct

Comey said he decided to document his one-on-one conversations with Trump from the very first one he had, the Jan. 6 briefing at Trump Tower on an unverified and salacious dossier about Trumps activities in Russia that had been circulating among politicians and the media. In the testimony, Comey recounted several unusual encounters that showed the president fretting about the impact of the Russia investigation on his presidency.

I did not tell the President that the FBI and the Department of Justice had been reluctant to make public statements that we did not have an open case on President Trump for a number of reasons, most importantly because it would create a duty to correct, should that change, Comey says in the testimony released on Wednesday.

In all, Comey said he had nine one-on-one conversations with Trump in four months, three in person and six by phone. By contrast, Comey said he spoke alone with President Barack Obama only twice in the course of three-and-a-half years and didnt document either conversation.

Comey said his last conversation with Trump took place on April 11, when the president called to ask what hed done to get the word out that Trump wasnt under investigation.

He said Trump told him, I have been very loyal to you, very loyal; we had that thing you know.

Comey said he didnt reply or ask what he meant by that thing."

(Updates with previous Trump denials in 13th and 20th paragraphs.)

--With assistance from Bob Van Voris

To contact the reporters on this story: Margaret Talev in Washington at mtalev@bloomberg.net, Chris Strohm in Washington at cstrohm1@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Bill Faries at wfaries@bloomberg.net, Joe Sobczyk, C. Thompson

2017 Bloomberg L.P.
Watches are not rocket science. Or are they? Watches are not rocket...

Perhaps you dont have a PhD. Well, thats a shame, because with some watches, youll need one to understand how to tell the time. Perhaps you dont have a PhD. Well,...
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Patients at the Coleman Family Clinic can learn information about the facilitys namesake through a new tribute wall. Photos, newspaper articles and other mementos in the waiting room honor Dr. Viola Colemans legacy.

We wanted to remember Ms. Coleman, said Wayne Suarez, clinic manager. We didnt want her history and her name to die. Shes such an important person in this community.

The wall marked the 10-year anniversary of renaming the East Florida Avenue clinic. Coleman, who died in 2005, practiced at the facility for about a decade, according to a previous Reporter-Telegram report.

The physicians relatives were among those present during the walls dedication ceremony on Saturday.

The family had contributed some items on the wall, said Michael Austin, chief executive officer of Midland Community Healthcare Services, the organization that operates the clinic. They were pleased to see some of them on display.

MCHS is also gathering on-camera interviews about Coleman for a documentary. Austin expects the video will be played in the waiting room.

The Coleman Family Clinic offers dental, pediatric, womens health and primary care services. MCHS aims to provide quality, affordable care locally, according to Austin.

Midland Community Healthcare Services is the institutional legacy holder of Viola Coleman, Austin said. When she was practicing in Midland, she wouldnt turn anyone away, no matter the time of day or if people came to her house. Of course she wouldnt turn them away if they didnt have insurance.

Suarez said the clinic continues to honor Coleman through its growth, including the addition of dental services and a triage to improve wait times.

MCHS also operates a clinic for pediatrics on Delano Avenue and another for womens services on the third floor of Midland Memorial Hospitals main campus. More than 14,000 patients turn to the health care provider annually, according to a press release.

Austin hopes the tribute wall informs patients who dont know about Colemans impact as a female African-American physician.

I think Viola Coleman was a woman ahead of her time, Austin said. The work she did in the community speaks to herself as an individual, but also for Midland as a community for bringing her here and putting her in position at [Midland Memorial] hospital.
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A 31-year-old man who died earlier this year contracted flesh-eating bacteria while swimming in the Gulf of Mexico with a freshly inked tattoo, according to a new report.

The gruesome details of the man's death are documented in a BMJ case report published May 27, 2017, which chronicles how the bacteria slowly ate away the flesh on the man's leg in the weeks preceding his death.

According to the report, authored by Nicholas Henderson, the man went swimming in the Gulf of Mexico five days after getting a tattoo of hands clasped in prayer and a cross on his right calf.

RELATED: Family: Texas man battles to keep leg after flesh-eating bacteria in Port Aransas causes infection

Three days later, the area around the new tattoo appeared irritated and red, and officials suspect vibrio vulnificus, a bacterial microorganism, entered the man's body through his calf tattoo and festered in his body.

According to a University of Michigan report, those with new tattoos should avoid any kind of swimming until the ink has healed.

Tattoos are considered open wounds and are susceptible to infection.

Experts concluded that a combination of seawater exposure the the still-fresh tattoo and alcoholic cirrhosis, a liver disease that develops from drinking too much alcohol, contributed to the severity of the bacterial infection, according to the report.

READ MORE: What you need to know about 'flesh-eating' infections caused by bacteria in Texas waters

Two hours after being admitted into the hospital, officials noted a purple patch was progressing on the man's right hip and dark purple bubbles began appearing on the man's leg as well.

After weeks of treatment, the man died due to cirrhosis, renal failure and necrotic skin lesions, according to the report.

kbradshaw@express-news.net

Twitter: @kbrad5
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As Patek Philippe has shown, themed brand exhibitions are a great way of showcasing the history and values of a traditional watch brand to the general public. While Patek Philippes travelling exhibition (which will be on show this summer in New York) is managed entirely by the brand itself, the new exhibition entitled Cartier in Motion at Londons Design Museum takes an entirely different approach. After the museum acquired Cartier Tank and Cartier Santos wristwatches for its permanent collection, Museum Director Deyan Sudjic approached Cartier with a view to commissioning none other than star architect Sir Norman Foster to curate an exhibition on design at Cartier.

Sir Norman Foster

The result is an exhibition that has been conceived, designed and produced by Sir Norman Foster and Foster and Partners right down to the smallest detail, from the mood board by Sir Norman (which was so clearly structured that it features in the exhibition and has even been used as the flyer for the exhibition) to the individual videos in the exhibition, which have all been filmed by a Foster & Partners in-house video crew. A total of 170 exhibits are on display, sourced primarily from the Cartier Collection and complemented by loans from the Monaco Princely Palace collection, the Musee de lAir et de lEspace at Le Bourget airport and the Rockefeller Center.

The exhibition starts with a look at early 20th Century Parisian architecture, as Baron Hausmann was designing a model of symmetry for Napoleon III and the city was dominated by the now iconic Eiffel Tower. As far as art was concerned, the world was in the midst of the Art Nouveau period, yet the influence of Hausmanns symmetry and geometric shapes is evident in Cartiers designs of the period, clearly moving away from the ostentation of Art Nouveau.

In the early 20th Century, Paris was also the cradle of aeronautics and the Cartier brothers (Louis and Pierre) were both members of the Aero-Club de France, the equivalent of a turn-of-the-century start-up incubator rather than a mere club for aviation enthusiasts. Its members came from the worlds of science, industry and sport. Just one year after the Wright brothers made the first controlled, sustained flight of a powered, heavier-than-air aircraft in 1903, Louis Cartier made his first wristwatch for his aviator friend Alberto Santos-Dumont. Over a century later, this watch is still in the brands current collection.

The Santos watch was notable for its square case shape at a time when the majority of watches were still round. In the following years Cartier made a name for itself as a specialst in shaped watches, launching the Tonneau in 1906, the Tortue in 1912 and the Tank in 1917, all characterised by the same purity of design. Cigarette cases, letter openers and desk sets attest to Cartiers desire to cater for the international traveller in the inter-war years before continuing its experimentation with design shapes from the 1950s onwards, which saw the birth of the Oval (1958), Crash (1967), Maxi Oval (1969), Panthere de Cartier (1983) and, more recently, the Drive de Cartier (2015).

The exhibition is being held at from 25th May until 28th July at the Design Museum, 224-238 Kensington High Street, London W8 6AG. It is open daily from 10am until 6pm with late opening until 8pm on the first Friday of every month.

For more information: designmuseum.org.
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The new Metiers dArt Villes Lumieres collection is an invitation to embark upon a nocturnal journey above cities bubbling with creativity. On dials draped with an enamelled base in deep shades, a wide variety of powders creates a birds-eye view miniature tableau of these sprawling urban expanses. Traditional Grand Feu champleve enamelling mingles with hand-applied precious powder, an art never yet used in Fine Watchmaking. After the lights of Geneva, Paris and New York, Vacheron Constantin is dedicated a new timepiece to the to the nocturnal magic of Beijing.

The shimmering glow of the Imperial City viewed from above carries a hint of its manifold splendours testifying to a proud history. The more intense halos of certain monuments, landmarks and particularly animated streets surround the vast Forbidden City, which remains less brightly lit and more mysterious. The Meridian Gate, the Gate of Heavenly Peace and Tiananmen Square can be distinguished on this meticulous cartography composed of enamel and precious powders.

Vacheron Constantin invited the Japanese artist Yoko Imai to associate her art with that of the enamelling artisan. Trained by the great Japanese masters, she has developed her own artistic technique: calligraphy-inspired painting on canvas, inspired by precious powder. For Vacheron Constantin, she has for the first time adapted this process to the enamel of a watch dial, while creating a fascinating chiaroscuro effect. To ensure a faithful transcription of the city lights, her deft hands are guided by absolute mastery, unwavering concentration and a special sensitivity. requiring a particular form of concentration and sensitivity.

The technique of applying precious powders borrows a fundamental principle from the art of calligraphy: the quest for balance and purity. Using a thin stylus, the powder particles are individually affixed using a technique that remains a jealously guarded secret. The luminous magic of the completed tableau depends on this extremely rigorous approach: each fragment is perfectly positioned in its rightful place and there is no room for anything random or superfluous.

The timepieces of the Metiers dArt Villes Lumieres collection are certified by the Hallmark of Geneva, a sure token of precision and reliability issued by an entirely neutral and independent body. Manufacture Vacheron Constantin mechanical self-winding Caliber 2460 SC drives a display of the hours, minutes and seconds. Visible through the transparent case-back, the 22K gold oscillating weight features a finely executed decoration inspired by the Maltese cross, the Vacheron Constantin signature emblem. Each of the components, whether visible or hidden, is adorned with finishes crafted in accordance with the finest watchmaking skills exemplified by bevelling, circular-graining and polishing. The movement is protected by a precious white gold case.
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Algeria expressed "deep concern" on Tuesday after several Arab states cut diplomatic ties with Qatar, appealing to the countries involved to resolve their differences through dialogue.

"While calling on all the countries concerned to adopt dialogue ... Algeria appeals for the need to observe, in all circumstances, the principles of good neighbourliness and non-interference in the internal affairs of states," said a foreign ministry statement carried by state news agency APS.

It said Algeria remained confident that the current rift would be temporary, despite "real challenges" to Arab unity and solidarity, "not least terrorism".

The statement was Algeria's first official comment since Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain severed diplomatic relations with Qatar in a coordinated move on Monday.

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Algeria and Tunisia have expressed complete understanding of the Egyptian airstrikes carried out last week against militants in the war-torn country, Egyptian foreign ministry spokesperson Ahmed Abu Zeid said in an interview with state-owned news agency MENA on Tuesday.

Foreign minister Sameh Shoukry explained to his Tunisian and Algerian counterparts in a meeting in the Algerian capital on Monday the reasons behind the Egyptian strikes in Derna against militants that Egypt says were involved in a deadly attack last month on Egyptian Christians in Upper Egypt.

Late last month, gunmen attacked a convoy of Christians heading to a monastery in Minya governorate, killing 30 people including women and children.

The militant group Daesh has claimed responsibility of the attack.

Following the attack, Egypt launched a series of airstrikes targeting militants in the Libyan cities of Derna and Jefra in coordination with the Libyan National Army.

On Monday, Egypt's foreign minister Sameh Shoukry held a meeting with his Tunisian and Algerian counterparts, FM Khemaies Jhinaoui and FM Ramtane Lamamra, as part of periodical tripartite meetings between the three countries to discuss developments in the Libyan civil conflict.

"Minister Shoukry explained why the airstrikes were carried out and how Egypt has been affected by the lack of security and chaos in Libya," Abu Zeid said.

"The three ministers agreed on the necessity of increasing cooperation in order to secure Libyan borders, as they pose a source of constant danger as long as the situation in Libya remains as is," he added.

The three ministers also agreed that the absence of stability and lack of a political solution to the Libyan conflict are the main sources of problems like irregular migration, the proliferation of arms, and drug trafficking, Abu Zeid said.

The Tunisian and Algerian FMs expressed full solidarity with Egypt in the fight against terrorism, and the three ministers agreed to hold their next meeting to discuss the situation in Libya in Cairo.

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Belgian police detained 12 people in connection with the Brussels bombings of March last year, after a series of home searches, federal prosecutors said in a statement.

Police carried out 14 house searches and a judge will decide in the coming hours whether the 12 people will be detained further, the statement said.

The Islamic State Group-inspired bombings at Brussels Airport and on the city's metro system in March 2016 killed 32 people.

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A half-hour is about how long it takes to drive from Lake Mary to downtown Orlando on a busy morning.

Could 30 minutes also be the amount of time to travel from Orlando to Miami?

Orlando-Miami corridor is semifinalist for Hyperloop consideration

Technology propels pod-like vehicles rapidly through a tube

Vehicles could take passengers from Orlando to Miami in 30 minutes



As fantastical as that sounds, this could be a possibility in the near future. It's called Hyperloop, and it has government support, including Miami-Dade's Director of Transportation and Public Works' Alice Bravo.

"I thought it was a very exciting transportation solution," she said.

Hyperloop is a proposed mode of passenger and freight transportation introduced and named by SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk in 2013 that would propel a pod-like vehicle through a tube that could exceed the speed of an airplane.

Compatible technology were already familiar with exists, and you may have even used them before at the drive-thru of your local bank: pneumatic tubes.

"Since [Hyperloop] was larger, it would also be on some type of Maglev (magnetic levitation) track that helps eliminate friction, so the tube could move very quickly, hundreds of miles per hour, Bravo said.

Hyperloop One is a California-based company not associated with Musk that is attempting to commercialize the industry. As such, a competition called the Hyperloop One Global Challenge is taking place as the company tries to determine which locations to implement Hyperloop first.

Bravo is trying to push a Hyperloop corridor from Miami to Ohio, broken up into multiple phases.

In fact, the corridor from Miami to Orlando is one of about 40 semifinalists worldwide for consideration. Eventually, 12 finalists will be named, followed by three winners.

"I think what's really exciting is the capability of linking the two cities in terms of commerce, in terms of moving freight, in terms of sharing capital," Bravo said.

So the Hyperloop One hype begs the question: What about the new Brightline trains still set to start running this year? Will they be obsolete? Bravo seems to think not and are still needed.

"The Brightline train is here now. Hyperloop One is still something conceptual we are looking for in the future, she said.
The situation in the Iranian capital of Tehran is now over with four attackers killed and at least 12 people dead, officials stated.

Gunmen, suicide bombers stormed Iran's parliament and Ayatollah Khomeini mausoleum

Eight victims in London attack found in the River Thames

Suspect in Paris-hammer attack pledged allegiance to ISIS

There was an assault on Irans parliament building and at the Ayatollah Khomeini mausoleum on Wednesday by gunmen and suicide bombers.

Iranian state media says at least a dozen were killed and dozens more wounded as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria has claimed responsibility for the attack.



Gunfire could be heard outside of the parliament, according to tweets by an Iran newspaper.

At the parliament building, gunmen apparently dressed as women went on a shooting spree with rifles and it is reported one attacker blew himself up inside.

A legislative session was underway there and attackers took a number of hostages.

At the same time, a shooting and bomb attack at the shrine about 15 miles away where one was arrested.

Along with these assaults, ISIS has also claimed responsibility for the attack in London Saturday where three men rammed a van into pedestrians on London Bridge before launching a stabbing spree.

On Wednesday morning, London police found the body of an eighth victim in the River Thames, the third French death in the London Bridge attack.

On Tuesday, a man attacked an officer in Paris with a hammer, however no group immediately claimed responsibility, but police say they found a declaration of allegiance to the ISIS terror group in the suspects home.
June 8, 1937: Steps in refinishing furniture were studied by members of the Snyder Home Demonstration Club at a meeting in the home of Mrs. J.P. McGarr.

--Graduates of Kress High School include Allene Evans, Max Bontke and Joe Robinson.

--Elizabeth Bryant received a bachelors degree in social science from Texas Tech.

June 8, 1947: Club Boys receiving Duroc gilts provided by the Plainview Kiwanis Club are Richard Morgan, Elowyn Ellis and Doyle Parker.

--Mayor J.N. Jordan presided over a council meeting discussing improvements needed to Plainviews sewage discharge facilities.

--The hiring of George Stokes by Wayland marks the beginning of an intensive effort to further the schools enlargement campaign, explains President J.W. Bill Marshall in an announcement.

June 8, 1957: Danna McNaughton accepted an apprentice teachers scholarship from the Sears Roebuck Foundation. She will apprentice teach in Littlefield.

--Attending a Junior Service League board luncheon were Mmes. G.C. Ratcliff, R.K, Williams, John Stoneham, Gene Owens, J.B. Roberts and Jack Adkins.

--Ray Garrison, Monty Ward, Roger Horan and Billy Maston presented a program for Teen Time at First Baptist Church.

June 8, 1987: A home shelter for victims of abuse has been opened at an undisclosed location by the Hale County Crisis Center.

--Alice Hall, director of the Retired Senior Volunteer Program in Plainview, highlights nursing home activities in Plainview in her weekly column.

--M System Food Stores celebrated its 63rd birthday with a storewide sale at the local store. The grocery store is located in the south end of the Edgemere Shopping Center at 24th and Yonkers.
Egypts President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi attended on Wednesday a conference at the Army's Galaa Theatre in Cairo where a number of ministers, governors and youth briefed him on the latest in efforts to reclaim state lands over the past few weeks.



Prime Minister Sherif Ismail told El-Sisi that from 16 to 31 May, the state recorded a total of 1.92 million feddans of illegally seized lands.



According to Ismail, over 919,000 feddans have been reclaimed by the state, while 771,000 feddans are being used for agriculture and their occupiers have filed formal requests to purchase them.

During the conference, El-Sisi said removing illegal buildings on islands in the Nile must be priortised, expressing concerns that those buildings lack proper sewage systems.



The president said a solution should be found to aid people who have made their living on the land being reclaimed.



In 2016, Sisi formed a national committee to address transgressions on state land in accordance with Egyptian law.

In May, El-Sisi urged governors, the interior ministry and the armed forces to put an end to such transgressions.



In December, the committee announced that it had restored 80,000 feddans of illegally acquired state land.

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Head of the delegation Ahmed Saeed said the Egyptian officials would meet with senior White House officials on Tuesday

An Egyptian delegation including 12 MPs affiliated with five parliamentary committees is due to arrive in Washington Saturday to exchange views with American politicians and congress people, and discuss relations between Egypt and the US.

Informed sources said the visit will begin Saturday and end Thursday. The delegation will include the heads of four parliamentary committees: Ahmed Saeed, head of the Foreign Relations committee; Saad El-Gammal, head of the Arab Relations Committee; Ahmed El-Sigini, head of the Local Administration Committee; and Gamal Shiha, head of the Education Committee.

The four will be accompanied by deputy head of the foreign relations committee Tarek Radwan; head of the Egyptian-British Parliamentary Friendship Association Dahlia Youssef; appointed MP and professor of Islamic studies Amna Nosseir; Coptic MPs and political analysts Emad Gad and Suzy Rafla, and member of the Economic Affairs Committee Bassant Fahmy.

Mohamed El-Sewedi, head of the majority pro-government "Support Egypt" bloc, said he was unable to join the delegation due to commitments in Cairo.

Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry met with the parliamentary delegation on Sunday. According to Foreign Ministry spokesman Ahmed Abu Zeid, the meeting covered ways to strengthen US-Egyptian ties.

Abu Zeid said Shoukry underlined the importance of the timing of the visit to follow last month's Arab Islamic American Summit in Riyadh.

"The visit is also important now that a US administration with a new and clear perspective on counter-terrorism efforts has come to office in Washington," said Shoukry.

Saeed told reporters the trip had originally been scheduled for January, but was delayed to allow for the inauguration of US president Donald Trump and so "the delegation could be expanded and prepare thoroughly for the meetings."

"The delegation aims to address a range of issues concerning terrorism and human rights with American decision-makers and research centres," said Saeed.

Saeed said that the delegation will meet with senior White House officials on Tuesday. "There will be also a business dinner with these officials," he added.

The MP said the delegation also plans to discuss political Islam and democratisation in Egypt with the new US administration and Congress, as well as lobby the new administration and Republican congress members to designate the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organisation.

MP Dahlia Youssef said the visit comes after numerous US congress members visited Cairo in recent months and expressed interest in forming an "American-Egyptian parliamentary friendship association to help reinforce strategic relations between the two countries."

Youssef added that "the foreign ministry took charge of preparing the schedule of the visit."

MP Tarek Radwan told Ahram Online that a report on the dangers of political Islam movements would be presented by the delegation to US Congress members and officials during the visit.

Radwan said the report on political Islam was prepared by the foreign affairs committee and the Egyptian Centre of Free Democracy Studies.

The MP said that Egypt's new NGO law would be also up for discussion during the Washington visit. The new NGO law, ratified by president Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi on 24 May, has come under sharp attacks from two prominent US senators: John McCain and Lindsey Graham.

The senators slammed the law as "draconian" for what they called "imposing heavy restrictions and effectively banning the work of non-governmental organisations in Egypt."

Radwan said he doubted that either of the above two senators had read the new law.

"I hope that we will be able to hold meetings with high-profile senators and Congress members to discuss the new NGO law and other issues in a very transparent way," he said.

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Uber Technologies lost a battle to prevent Waymo from seeing an internal report the Alphabet Inc. unit is betting will show that its former engineer colluded with the ride-hailing giant to steal driverless technology.

The ruling by U.S. Magistrate Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley in San Francisco may prove pivotal in a trade-secrets case headed to trial that could influence who wins the race to market self-driving cars. David A. Perlson, an attorney for Waymo, confirmed the ruling in a court hearing Wednesday.

Since Waymo sued in February, Uber and engineer Anthony Levandowski resisted turning over a due diligence report evaluating the risks associated with Ubers acquisition of Otto, the company Levandowski formed days after he quit Waymo. They argued it cant be disclosed because it involves confidential communications between attorneys and clients.

Waymo claims that in 2015, Levandowski and Uber hatched a plan for him to steal more than 14,000 proprietary files, including the designs for lidar technology that helps driverless cars see their surroundings. Levandowski left Waymo in January 2016. Uber bought Otto in August for $680 million.

Uber has denied Waymos trade-secret theft allegations and says its automation technology has been developed without significant input from Levandowski. The company fired Levandowski last month after a judge said the engineer should be threatened with termination for refusing to turn over evidence. Levandowski, who isnt a defendant in the lawsuit, has declined to testify in the case, asserting his constitutional right against self-incrimination.

The due diligence report likely contains information that is responsive to many of the questions Mr. Levandowski refused to answer, Waymo argued in a court filing. Indeed, the withheld report may be the only source of much of this information.

Corley reviewed the report privately and told lawyers at a May 25 hearing that its important to the case. Waymo argued that because the report was produced by a cyber-security firm and not by lawyers, attorney confidentiality doesnt apply. The company also contended the document doesnt qualify for privacy protection because it may reveal fraudulent or criminal wrongdoing.

Uber can appeal Corleys decision to U.S. District Judge William Alsup, who is overseeing the lawsuit. Alsup asked federal prosecutors to investigate Waymos claims after concluding the company made a compelling showing that Levandowski absconded with its files and that Uber knew or should have known Levandowski took the proprietary files from Waymo when it brought him aboard.

Uber spokesman Matt Kallman declined to comment on the ruling. A lawyer for the company said in court Wednesday that it will decide Thursday whether to appeal the decision.
A newly-founded body that regulates Egyptian publications and broadcasters said it would impose hefty fines on media organisations that use "vulgar language," Gamal Shawqy, head of the council's complaints committee, told state news agency MENA.

The Supreme Council for the Administration of the Media shall impose an "immediate" fine of EGP 200,000 (approx. $11,000) on TV presenters or guests that use "abusive terms" on air, according to Shawky.

If the offence is repeated three times within a six-month period, the licence of the offending organisation will be revoked and the violator will need to apply for a new licence.

Shawqy said the new decision is part of an attempt to curb the use of "offensive language" in the media.

A new code of ethics to regulate how media figures deal with controversial Arab issues will be drawn up and will be binding to members of the Journalists Syndicate and the media personnel syndicate, Shawky said.

The Supreme Council for the Administration of the Media was created late last year under a new media law to regulate the operation of Egyptian media organisations. It has the power to sue, fine or suspend broadcasters or publications.

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A passenger who took an Uber from Oakland to Moraga was sexually battered by her driver near the end of the ride, police said Tuesday.

San Francisco resident Leonid Beker, 42, was arrested in San Francisco on Thursday, according to the Moraga Police Department. He was booked into the Contra Costa County jail in Martinez on suspicion of felony sexual battery before being released on bail later that day, said Moraga Police Chief Jon King.
Local and area restaurants are geared up for Fathers Day, June 18, with a wide assortment of special menus, brunches, meal deals and drink options. Whether your dad is into barbecue, fine dining or pizza and wings, these spots have you covered.

Click through the gallery above to see the Father's Day deals being offered at restaurants and bars around San Antonio.
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Inspired by their personal quest to find the "Right" place to raise their family, California transplants to Texas have launched a service helping like-minded families do the same.

Conservative Move is a North Texas-based company assisting families looking to live in a more conservative area, according to its website. Those interested in moving can contact the company for job and real estate help.

"We wanted a better life for our four young children and we found it in Texas," reads the company website. "Our only regret was not doing it sooner."

RELATED: Jewelry heiress selling luxury Texas mansion at auction

The company was launched May 22, months after founders Paul and Brenda Chabot left California with their family and moved to Collin County in North Texas.

The company specifically helps move families to Collin County. Why? "Solid conservative values" and the "area is incredible," reads the site.

The county, which encompasses cities such as Plano, McKinney, Allen and Frisco in the Dallas metroplex, voted for Donald Trump on election day last year, NBCDFW reported. It is also the county where the state's first transgender elected official serves, according to the Texas Observer.

RELATED: Annual salary needed to buy a house in Texas

Eventually Conservative Move will be expanded to other like-minded counties across the country, according to the site. Those interested in the free service can head to the company's website, www.conservativemove.com.

Paul Chabot formerly ran for a U.S. Congressional seat in California and now runs a "counter terrorism consulting firm," according to his bio. Brenda Chabot heads operations for the company and used to be a law enforcement officer and the director of a county Republican Party in California.

Derek Baker, who formerly worked with Vice President Mike Pence and other conservative Republicans, serves as the company's real estate agent, helping families find a home in North Texas.

kbradshaw@express-news.net

Twitter: @kbrad5
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GREENWICH  A legislative stalemate over the new state budget will delay the start of construction on a new New Lebanon School building until the end of July at the earliest, as local officials wait for the approval of state funding before breaking ground.

The New Lebanon project is expected to receive more than $20 million in a grant from the state to help cover the schools $37 million price tag. The grant has already been approved by three legislative committees.

The last hurdle is the General Assembly, who will vote on New Lebanon funding as part of the Senate bond bill. The bond bill is voted on immediately after the state budget.

New Lebanon School construction was supposed to break ground this month.

Obviously based on all reports, were not going to be able to do that, said Stephen Walko, chairman of the New Lebanon Building Committee. In fact, it is looking more likely, if I am understanding various comments from legislators, that a budget will not be passed until the end of June at the earliest.

Students were slated to move into the new school in September 2018; now they will not be able to occupy the building until October or November of that year, Walko said.

I wont sleep well at night until the funding is in place, he said.

Midnight on Wednesday marked the close of the Legislatures 22-week session, the main purpose of which was to pass a new two-year budget that would start July 1 and address the states $5 billion deficit. With debate continuing to rage across party lines as the deadline approached, both chambers voted this week to hold special sessions in the coming weeks to discuss the budget.

It is unclear when the House and Senate may reconvene their debates and how long those debates might drag out.

Sadly, but not unexpected, the state has failed to pass a budget affecting our ability to get the students in the school as soon as possible, said Peter Bernstein, the Greenwich school boards representative on the New Lebanon Building Committee.

Budget delays dont necessarily hurt bonding prospects but do push things back, said state Sen. L. Scott Frantz, R-36th.

The New Lebanon Building Committee has planned for months to break ground in June, but cannot sign contracts with construction companies until the General Assembly signs off on the money for the project. Bidding on the project is currently open and will continue until June 21.

If debates over the budget drags on too long, more pitfalls could be in store. The project will lose valuable months of summer weather for construction if legislators are unable to agree on a budget quickly. In addition, construction bids will expire three months after they are received, so if debates continue into mid-September, Greenwich might have to seek new bids.

Those are all the issues we continue to grapple with, said Walko. You could spend a lot of time wondering the what ifs. At this time, we are imply watching it and understanding what our obligations are to the town of Greenwich and making sure our ducks are in a row so upon state approval, we are ready to go on our end.

A bigger building is intended to add capacity so that New Lebanon, 71 percent minority in its student population, can accept more magnet students from other parts of town, in addition to alleviating the schools current overcrowding.

The proposed construction project has been plagued with hurdles since December 2016 as it navigated various legislative bodies in Hartford.

In March, Melody Currey, commissioner of the state Department of Administrative Services, sent a letter to legislators recommending New Lebanon School be removed from the list of projects in the running for state funding.

I recommend removing this project from the list and working with Greenwich and the state Department of Education to determine their actual programmatic needs and to determine more cost-effective means to meet those needs, she wrote. I would like to take another look at this to see what might possibly be done within the community (to address racial balance) without building a brand new school.

In December 2016, Benjamin Barnes, secretary of the state Office of Policy and Management, wrote the state should not fund a larger New Lebanon School until the town has made much greater efforts to find a remedy within its existing school infrastructure, meaning redistricting school attendance zones in town.

The state Department of Administrative Services eventually leant their full approval to the project.

emunson@greenwich

time.com; Twitter: @emiliemunson
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WESTPORTEmphasizing the importance of empathy in communicating with people  a central tenet of Alan Aldas new book  Alda captivated the packed crowd as the Westport Librarys BOOKED for the Evening fundraiser honoree.

In its 19th year, the event has seen the likes of Tom Brokaw and Ron Chernow with Alda taking the spotlight this year.

The well-known actor and writer is also known for his humanitarian work and science advocacy. He has won seven Emmy Awards, nabbed three Tony nominations, earned an Oscar nomination and is enshrined in the Television Hall of Fame. Some of his credits include M.A.S.H., The West Wing and The Aviator.

Promoting his new book If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face?: My Adventures in the Art and Science of Relating and Communicating, Alda spoke about the importance of connecting to people, pointing to when directors would implore him to relate better to actors he worked with.

Directors would tell me to relate betterand then when I got better I could relate to people with my back turned to them, Alda joked about the skill. He stressed how much it helped a performance, show or movie when he could put himself into the shoes of other actors and empathize with them.

The new book taps into Aldas keen interest in science and is an extension of the work he started at Stony Brook University, where he founded the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science, aimed at facilitating communication between scientists and the public.

At the Center for Communicating Science, Alda said, they work to get the scientist to really relate to people by figuring out what they are thinking and feeling and by teaching them improvisation.

When that happens, he said, The passion comes out of you. Stories come out of you.

We do have stories and all of our mistakes are our greatest stories, he added.

Continuing with the thread of empathy as a tool to better understand others, Alda said the same goes for engaging in diplomacy, You cant do diplomacy without taking into consideration what the other person is thinking, he said. Thats empathy.

This type of communication also goes for marriages, Alda said. An example he gave was if a husband sees a sink full of dirty dishes late at night, when his wife is asleep, he is probably less inclined to do them. But if the husband feels empathy for the wife having to deal with the dishes the next morning, he is more liable to clean the dishes.

Hes going to realize washing the dishes is foreplay, Alda said in jest.

In a story Alda concluded the speech with, he talked about a walk he took with his young grandson in the Virgin Islands where they spoke about evolution, in-depth, for 45 minutes. The next day, Aldas grandson had another science-related question. When a member of the family suggested he ask his grandpa, the grandson responded, Im not making that mistake again.

@chrismmarquette; cmarquette@bcnnew.com
Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi and Burkina Faso's President Roch Marc Christian Kabore agreed during a Cairo meeting on Wednesday to boost trade and economic cooperation between the two countries.

El-Sisi said at a press conference after the meeting that the two countries will hold meetings of a bilateral committee aimed at boosting ties "at the earliest opportunity."

The Egyptian president said that Egypt looks to boost investments in Burkina Faso, mainly in energy, construction and infrastructure.

El-Sisi said the two leaders "exchanged views about political and regional security developments, including the situation in Libya and developments in African countries."

The duo also agreed to bolster security and counterterrorism cooperation.

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Two best friends celebrated each other's accomplishments as the top two graduates of the 2017 Conroe High School class.

While valedictorian Shelby Sinor has lived in Conroe her entire life, salutatorian Chikaneme Chidiuto Orioha moved to Conroe HS from Cy Fair half way through the seventh grade.

It was "academically challenging" for Orioha who had to play catch up on her new school's lessons. But she pushed through to not only succeed in the classroom, but to also participate in volleyball for three years, become the first vice president of the National Honor Society, the Academy for Science and Health professionals, serve as president of the Mu Alpha Theta math group, and participate in the Spanish Honor Society.

Now she plans to attend John Hopkins University and pursue a career in medicine-despite her childhood fear of needles and hospitals. She hopes to specialize in pediatrics or obstetrics and gynecology.

"I think I have just always been someone who wants to give my best in everything I do," she said. "I knew I could do it and I knew I just needed a little extra help. I just wanted to keep getting A's."

Although it was difficult at first to make friends, she said Conroe HS became like a family and she has "great friends" now. One of those friends, is Sinor. The two pushed each other with a dash of friendly competition to take top honors in the class of more than 750 graduates.

"It was great actually," Orioha said. "We found out during school at lunch and she (Sinor) had just gone back to class. I text (messaged her), called, and she did not reply. I went to her class, she looked it up, and we were hugging in front of class everyone. Everyone was like what is wrong with these girls."

"She (Sinor) worked so hard," she added. "She deserves it. I couldn't think of anyone better to share this experience with."

Sinor remembered the exciting moment Orioha broke the news to her, but most of all she remembered how the two supported each other throughout high school.

"We were there for each other," Sinor said. "We wanted each other to win.  We ran around school telling all of our teacher and friends (the news). It felt like the hard work paid off. It (earning the top rank) was something I dreamed about as a little kid. To know I accomplished it was a crazy thing."

Sinor served as captain of the swim and water polo team, Mu Alpha Theta treasurer, AP Ambassadors president, NHS member at large, and recently graduated from the Next Generation Leadership program as one of four of its $500 scholarship recipients. She said accomplishing the goal took "perseverance, no sleep, a few tears, and help from everyone around her"-including the Tiger community.

Moving forward she plans to study mechanical engineering at the University of Houston honor's college. She encourages the classes to follow 2017 to never give up and have fun. She thanked her fellow graduates for being friends and peers that she hopes has the best future possible.

"I'm so glad I was able to experience the family that is the tiger community," Sinor said. "I hope to come back with my kids and help them experience it as well. It really is the best community."
BEIJING - Two days after the State Department called for the release of three activists detained while investigating working conditions at factories that make shoes for Ivanka Trump, Chinese authorities appear not to be backing off the case.

Reports published Wednesday morning by the Communist Party-controlled press claimed the three men, Su Heng, Li Zhao and Hua Haifeng, are being investigated for selling commercial secrets to unnamed foreign organizations.

A detailed report in the Paper, a website controlled by the Shanghai city government, claimed the men took jobs at factories and then used "hidden camera watches" and other devices to gather information and send it abroad.

The account included a picture of evidence reportedly seized by police: two watches, some thumb drives, a battery and a cellphone. It also said the men had confessed. The men are in detention and have yet to be formally charged.

The use of the party-controlled press to build a public case against activists will renew concern about how China treats human rights campaigners and uses its courts. The back and forth between Beijing and Washington could also complicate U.S.-China ties under President Trump.

The current standoff started when three activists were detained while preparing a report about working conditions at Huajian shoe factories for China Labor Watch, a New York-based nonprofit organization that aims to defend workers' rights.

China Labor Watch's founder, Li Qiang, told The Washington Post last month that CLW investigators have been questioned and stopped from traveling over the years, but never detained.

"This never happened before in my 17 years' experience," he said then. "The only reason we think this case is different is that this is Ivanka Trump's factory."

On Wednesday, he said he now worries the men could face serious charges.

If the Chinese government indeed pursues the case, it could stop others from conducting investigations that have helped hold multinational companies accountable, said William Nee, a researcher with Amnesty International in Hong Kong.

"It could be that the Chinese government is now signaling that they are no longer tolerating this sort of workers' rights research," he said.

"Since China doesn't have an independent trade union, and domestic worker's rights NGOs have been squeezed, it will be very hard for workers to fight for their rights, and may leave corporations to violate them with impunity."

While Chinese police routinely target rights campaigners, the Trump connection quickly turned the China Labor Watch case into international news, calling attention to working conditions in Chinese factories - and the Trump family's business ties abroad.

On Monday, the State Department urged Chinese authorities to either let the activists go or afford them the right to fair trial. A spokesperson stressed that labor activists have been instrumental in helping U.S. companies understand conditions in their supply chains.

A spokesperson for China's foreign ministry on Tuesday dismissed U.S. concerns, saying it was an internal matter. On Wednesday, Hua Chunying, a spokeswoman for the China's Foreign Ministry, said she had no new information on the case.

Calls to the local police and the shoe manufacturer's public relations department went unanswered.

Behind the scenes, Chinese authorities seem to be stepping up pressure by isolating the activists and threatening their families.

Deng Guilian, wife of Hua Haifeng, said her husband was being held in a cell with about 20 inmates who had all been told not to talk to him. "It's very crowded inside," she said, "He sleeps near the toilet which is very painful and uncomfortable."

Local authorities are now trying to turn her against her husband, she said: "They said that I have to make a clean break, or I too could be charged."

Deng called on Ivanka Trump to issue a statement calling for her husband's release. "For her, it's just a matter of a few words, but those few words would save the entire family," she said.

"I beg her, on behalf of my families too, to be kind and let my husband to come home as soon as possible."

- -

The Washington Post's Carol Morello reported from Washington; Luna Lin, Liu Yang and Congcong Zhang reported from Beijing.
The Senate cleared a path Tuesday evening for the Department of Veterans Affairs to take swift action to fire and discipline problem employees, overhauling long-guaranteed job protections that Republicans would like to change across the federal workforce.

Following a voice vote - and action in the House earlier this year - a bipartisan bill is expected to arrive quickly on the desk of President Trump, who pledged to bring accountability to VA, the second-largest federal agency. Trump and his GOP allies on Capitol Hill have long criticized what they call a culture of incompetence and misconduct at VA and other agencies in which poor performers and rule-breaking employees rarely are punished.

Backed by large veterans service organizations, the change is one of the first legislative victories under Republican control of Congress and the White House. The threat of eroding worker protections has met with fierce opposition from federal employees, the unions that represent them and Democratic lawmakers. But conservatives consider VA - and the politically valuable constituency it serves - a template for a broader shake-up of federal job protections and benefits.

Similar legislation had cleared the House several times in recent years but stalled in the Senate, resisted by Democrats. But it gained new momentum this spring with a bipartisan agreement in the closely divided Senate, where more than a dozen Democrats are considered politically vulnerable after Trump's election.

"This is not a punitive measure," Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., the bill's Senate sponsor, said on the floor before the vote. "The VA must be properly managed. ... It has become clear that [it] is often unwilling or unable to hold individuals accountable for their actions or misdeeds."

Tuesday's vote comes as VA struggles to regain its footing three years after a scandal over falsified records for medical appointments, an embarrassing episode for President Barack Obama that forced the removal of his VA secretary.

Delays had resulted in the deaths of dozens of sick veterans as they waited to see doctors. But just a handful of managers and rank-and-file employees were let go after they fudged appointment records to look as though they were meeting the agency's goals for acceptable wait times.

The new Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act would affect 340,000 VA employees, about a sixth of the federal workforce. It would lower the standard of evidence for managers to pursue discipline or termination for performance or misconduct. Senior executives would have 21 days to fight action against them through an internal appeal board.

VA would have 15 days to take action against rank-and-file employees once managers build a case, and appeals by employees to their union or the government-wide panel on personnel decisions would need to be completed within 180 days. Under the current system, appeals and agency action can drag on for years.

Employees would not be paid while they appeal, as they are now. And those who lose their cases would have to pay back the government for any bonuses and relocation expenses.

The bill also boosts protections for whistleblowers to help ensure they are not retaliated against for reporting wrongdoing.

The legislation tones down language that cleared the House in March largely on party lines. But while the co-sponsors in the Senate, Veterans' Affairs Committee Chairman Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., and the panel's top Democrat, Jon Tester, Mont., agreed to changes that brought back some union protections, it still represents a watershed for civil service protections.

While Tester said the bill does not open the door to other changes to civil service protections, congressional Republicans see Trump's election as an opportunity to enact long-pursued changes across the government. Those include ending automatic raises, greenlighting the firing of poor performers across government, banning union business on government time and pension reductions.

Democrats were emphatic that VA will continue to protect employees' rights to union representation and to appeal action the agency takes against them.

"This bill does not trample on workers' rights," Tester said. "It maintains the bargaining rights of union workers. It does not gut due-process protections."

But the union, which represents more than 230,000 VA workers, expressed concern that good employees could be wrongly targeted.

"We just want to make sure that the overwhelming majority of excellent VA employees don't get caught up in the mix," J. David Cox Sr., president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said in a statement. "Remember, it wasn't the frontline employees we represent who ordered secret waitlists."

The Senior Executives Association, which represents about 6,000 top career employees in the government, was more critical, calling the legislation's "exclusive focus on punitive accountability measures" unfair and a return to the patronage spoils system that dominated the federal workforce until the 1880s.

VA Secretary David Shulkin has said that problem employees represent a small minority. But bad apples who linger on the payroll, either at work or getting paid at home, are hurting morale and recruitment, he contends.

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, pushed 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.
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FAIRFIELD  Democrat Kevin Kiley is headed back to the Board of Selectmen, claiming victory in Tuesdays special election that drew the attention of the Democratic National Committee.

Around 10 p.m. that night, DNC Chairman Tom Perez quoted a tweet from Connecticut Democrats, and wrote, Great news from Fairfield. Democrats now outnumber Republicans on the Board of Selectmen. Local elections matter.

A follower of Perez then tweeted: This needs national coverage. Democrats embrace a lifelong Republican bc (sic) hes the right guy for the job. Thats how we make American great!

When he previously served on the Board of Selectmen, the Board of Finance and the Representative Town Meeting, Kiley was a Republican. He switched party affiliation earlier this year.

When the votes were tallied up, it was 5,434 to Republican Ed Batesons 3,727. Bateson had been appointed in December to fill the vacancy when Republican Selectman Laurie McArdle resigned one year into a four-year term. Democrats forced the special election, which was fought unsuccessfully in the courts by the Republican selectmen. An appeal in the Appellate is still pending.

A jubilant Kiley, who won eight of the towns 10 districts, entered the Bear & Grill to chants of Ke-vin, Ke-vin.

This is a great night for the Democratic party; this is a great night for the town of Fairfield, Kiley told supporters. He said it had been six months of hard work, but we did it together.

A small group of Republicans, including Bateson, and Republican Town Committee Chairman James Millington, waited at Flipside for the results.

I am upset that the results did not go our way, Bateson said. Given the constraints I was under in challenging the legality of the election I believe we executed a compressed campaign over a 10-day period and, unfortunately, it just wasnt enough time to get our message out there.

Although he held fundraisers, Bateson did not actively campaign until the week before the election and did not take part in two candidate forums. He said that was on the advice of counsel because they believed a court stay was in place on the order instructing the town to go forward with the election. The Appellate Court said there was never a stay in place, and Town Attorney Stanton Lessor said even if there was a stay, it did not stop the candidates from campaigning.

This is a big win for the people of Fairfield, said Democratic Town Committee Chairman Steven Sheinberg. The voters have decided.

Sheinberg said he was calling upon the Republicans to drop their appeals and accept the rule of law and the will of the voters to decide who fills the remaining years.

Sheinberg was one of five plaintiffs who filed for a court order to hold the election after Bateson and fellow Republican Selectman Chris Tymniak refused to set a date once the petition signatures were certified. Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis ruled in their favor, ordering the special election be held June 6. She also rejected a request from attorney James Baldwin to certify an expedited review by the state Supreme Court and ordered that any stays in place be lifted.

Baldwins direct application to the Supreme Court was also denied, and he filed an appeal with the Appellate Court that has yet to be heard.

The court case named the Board of Selectmen, as well as Bateson, Tymniak and Tetreau individually in their official capacities. Asked if the newly constituted board could take any action regarding the pending appeal, Town Attorney Stanton Lesser said he believes it would be within power of the board to direct that the appeal be withdrawn with regard to the town and the Board of Selectmen. However, he said he is unsure if they can withdraw with regard to the individual selectmen.

greilly@ctpost.com; @GreillyPost
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Drivers heading north on Interstate 45 this weekend from Montgomery County should prepare for a headache.

Both I-45 northbound and southbound will be closed near New Waverly as part of an ongoing construction project to reroute FM 1374 in Walker County underneath I-45. Currently, FM 1374 runs over the highway, but plans to widen I-45 to six lanes dictate that the farm-to-market road should run at surface level with the highway bridging over the road.

EYES ON THE ROAD: New Texas driving ban takes effect Sept. 1

For this weekend, I-45 will be closed from 8 p.m. Friday until 4 a.m. Monday at the latest as crews work around the clock to demolish the existing bridge.

Northbound drivers will be routed on the frontage road just south of FM 1375 until they are able to get back on the highway north of FM 1374. Likewise, southbound drivers will be routed to the frontage road just before FM 1374 and will be allowed back on after FM 1375.

However, northbound drivers wishing to travel north can also take Texas 75 from Willis into New Waverly and then re-enter the highway north of FM 1374.
Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper eviscerated the Trump administration's handling of the Russia investigation Wednesday, suggesting that it is one of the greatest presidential scandals in U.S. history.

"Watergate pales . . . compared to what we're confronting now," Clapper said, referring to the 1974 scandal that forced forced former President Richard Nixon to resign.

The investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin to win the 2016 presidential election is often likened to the bombshell revelations that Nixon spied on Democratic operatives to win his own reelection and obstructed justice to cover it up.

Addressing the National Press Club of Australia, Clapper - who oversaw U.S. intelligence agencies for seven years under the Obama administration and has been working in intelligence for 50 years - said President Donald Trump's decision to fire FBI Director James Comey was "egregious and inexcusable."

Comey is scheduled to testify to the Senate Intelligence Committee Thursday in what media outlets are portraying as a much-anticipated showdown. CNN reported the former FBI director plans to debunk the president's claim that Comey told him he was not under investigation, but otherwise aims to be a source of facts, rather than judgment.

Speaking in Australia's capital, Canberra, Clapper also warned against Trump's apparent sidling up to Russia. "The Russians are not our friends," Clapper said, adding that Trump had also expressed to him that he wanted he wanted good relations with the Russian government.

Clapper noted that Russian meddling in the U.S. election had achieved results "beyond their wildest expectations."

"Given [the Russians'] success they have only been emboldened to be even more aggressive in the future. This is not, let me stress, fake news," he added.

The former spy chief also warned that China's intervention in Australia was similar to Russian intervention in American politics. "It is no secret thatChina is increasingly aggressive in attempting to gain influence in your political processes as Russia is in ours," Clapper said.

The intelligence community veteran has taken aim at Trump before. In March Clapper denied Trump's accusation that the Obama administration spied on him throughout the campaign.

"There was no such wiretap activity mounted against the president-elect at the time, as a candidate, or against his campaign," Clapper said.

In Australia, he urged journalists to continue digging into the Russia investigation. "Is there a smoking gun with all the smoke? I don't know the answer to that. I think it's vital, though, we find that out."
A Las Vegas police officer has been charged in the death of an unarmed man he shocked with a stun gun, punched in the face and put in an unauthorized chokehold while attempting to arrest him last month at a luxury hotel and casino.

Officer Kenneth Lopera of the Metropolitan Police Department was charged with one count each of manslaughter and oppression under the color of office after a coroner found that the victim, Tashii Brown, had been choked to death, officials said Monday.

The coroner ruled that Brown, 40, who also went by the name Tashii Farmer, died of "asphyxiation related to police restraint" during an encounter outside the Venetian Hotel in the early hours of May 14, Sheriff Joseph Lombardo said at a news conference. Brown suffered from an enlarged heart and was high on methamphetamines during the incident, which contributed to his death, according to the sheriff.

"The charges are the result of the coroner's findings, along with evidence gathered from video surveillance, body-worn cameras and witness statements," Lombardo said.

Lopera, 31, faces a maximum of four years in state prison on each charge. He has been placed on unpaid leave pending the outcome of his case and a separate administrative investigation by the police department, officials said.

Shortly after he was arrested and booked in the Clark County Detention Center on Monday, Lopera was released on $6,000 bail by the Las Vegas Police Protective Association, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. The union's president, Steve Grammas, defended Lopera's actions.

"We will be representing the officer to the fullest extent that we can," Grammas told the newspaper. "We will stand by him through this process."

An attorney representing Brown's family, Andre Lagomarsino, said they had hoped for a murder charge.

"There will be a time for justice," Lagomarsino told the Associated Press. "That time is coming soon."

At about 1 a.m. on May 14, Brown, who was black, approached Lopera, who is white, and another officer at a coffee shop in the Venetian, which is located in the heart of the Las Vegas Strip. Brown was "acting erratic," according to police, and told the officers that people were chasing him. When one of the officers tried talking to him, he abruptly ran through a set of open doors to an employee-only area.

Lopera gave chase, catching up to him on a roadway outside the hotel, where he saw Brown trying to unlatch the tailgate of an occupied pickup truck, police said. Believing Brown was trying to carjack the vehicle, Lopera fired his Taser at him. The driver would later tell investigators that he did not think he was being carjacked, according to police.

Lopera shocked Brown seven times with the Taser after he refused the officer's commands to roll onto his stomach, police said. Body camera video from the incident showed Brown writhing on his back with his hands in the air as Lopera stood over him. At one point in the footage, Brown could be seen trying to pull the Taser probe out of his skin.

During the struggle, Lopera hit Brown with a closed fist several times in the head and face, police said. He then put Brown in a chokehold to subdue him, holding him by the neck for more than a minute, according to police. Lopera released Brown when other officers arrived to help handcuff him.

Brown was pronounced dead at the Sun Trauma Center at 1:39 a.m.

Investigators concluded that no charges would have been filed against Brown had he survived the encounter, Undersheriff Kevin McMahill said in a news conference last month.

Initially, police described the maneuver Lopera used on Brown as a "lateral vascular neck restraint," designed to restrict blood flow to a person's brain by compressing neck arteries rather than cutting off the airway. The technique is used by police departments around the country, including the Las Vegas police department, which does not consider it deadly force.

But investigators later found that Lopera had used a "rear naked choke" to control Brown. The technique, based in martial arts, is not authorized by Las Vegas police.

Grammas told the Associated Press that the rear naked choke was "identical" to the hold approved by the department.

"Both are a carotid blood choke that cuts off blood flow to the brain," he said. "It's not a windpipe choke that cuts off the air."

The lateral vascular neck restraint and other chokehold-like practices have come under intense criticism since Eric Garner, an unarmed black man from Staten Island, died in 2014 after a police officer wrapped an arm around his neck and wrestled him to the ground. The American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada has called on the police department to stop using such techniques.

The case against Lopera marks the first time in 27 years a Las Vegas police officer has been charged in a fatal shooting or an in-custody death.

In 1990, three Las Vegas vice officers were indicted on involuntary manslaughter and misconduct charges stemming from the death of Charles Bush, a casino floor supervisor. Bush, who was unarmed, was choked to death by one of the officers after they entered his apartment without a warrant and tried to arrest him in connection with a prostitution investigation, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. A jury deadlocked and the charges against the officers were dismissed.

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Video: Las Vegas police officer Kenneth Lopera was charged June 5 in the death of unarmed man Tashii Brown last month. Bodycam footage showed Lopera firing his taser at Brown seven times and putting him in a chokehold. (Amber Ferguson/The Washington Post)

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Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn clashed on security and their respective visions of post-Brexit Britain as they made their final pitches to the nation ahead of Thursday's election.

As the prime minister and her Labour opponent each went on a whistle-stop tour of the country on the final day of campaigning, May promised voters a Brexit boost of billions of pounds in state investment to support business, transport and housing. Corbyn said the election was an opportunity to end the Conservative government's austerity agenda and build a more just society.

"It's a choice of the kind of world, kind of country we want to live in," the Labour leader told a rally in Runcorn, northwest England. "It's a choice of this or cuts, closure and privatization. It's a choice, quite simply, of hope or fear."

With polls at odds on how close the election will be, the outcome is far less certain than at the start of the campaign seven weeks ago, when May was projected to win a landslide. Since then, the Tory lead over Labour has narrowed as Corbyn outperformed expectations and May made unforced campaign errors, while two terrorist attacks in the past two weeks added a further layer of uncertainty.

At stake is the country's future prosperity as it prepares to leave the European Union, the U.K.'s largest market. Talks with EU officials on quitting the bloc are due to begin less than two weeks after the election, with economic indicators suggesting the outlook is worsening.

May portrayed the election as a choice of who is best equipped to lead the country into Brexit, which she described as "the basis of everything else."

"Who do you trust? To actually have the strong and stable leadership that is going to deliver the best deal for Britain in Europe," May told Conservative supporters in Norwich, eastern England. "There are great things that we can do together and I want us to reignite the British spirit. To show the opportunities and what we can be as a country."

Polls all show May's Conservatives ahead, but this week alone the lead over Labour ranges from 20 percentage points to just one point. Privately, Labour aides and candidates are preparing to lose seats.

May called the election in April in an attempt to increase her 17-seat majority and strengthen her position ahead of the Brexit negotiations. But a suicide bombing last month at a pop concert in Manchester and Saturday's attack at London Bridge saw the focus shifted onto security. May said on Tuesday night that she'd be willing to tear up human-rights legislation to combat terrorism.

Speaking to the BBC, Labour's Brexit spokesman, Keir Starmer, said the prime minister was attempting to divert attention from her responsibility for policing and security in her six years as home secretary in David Cameron's government. "Because she was facing searing questions yesterday about resources, she's brought up the Human Rights Act," Starmer said.

Pensions Secretary Damian Green insisted that the party's commitment, in its manifesto, to remain in the European Convention of Human Rights for the next parliamentary term wouldn't be affected. Instead, he said, the U.K. might opt out of parts of it.

As May takes flak for her Home Office record, the Tories have concentrated their fire on the Labour leader's past relationship with extremist groups, and the performance of his home-affairs spokeswoman, Diane Abbott.

Corbyn replaced Abbott on Wednesday with Lyn Brown, the party's spokeswoman on police matters, citing ill health. "For a couple of days, she's taking a break from the campaign," Corbyn told the BBC. Abbott later said on Twitter that she was "still standing" and would "rejoin the fray soon."

May meanwhile set out how she'd spend Britain's clawed-back contributions to the EU budget, saying that there would be more money for fast internet connections, funds to commercialize research, and better road and rail services as part of a 23 billion-pound ($29.7 billion) package. Her promise includes 7.8 billion pounds on housing and 740 million pounds on digital infrastructure.

The Tories confirmed their pledge to give leading universities money to help them turn ideas into commercial products. They have also outlined plans to almost double research and development spending to 2.4 percent of GDP by 2025 and 3 percent in the longer term. New university investment funds will be publicly listed for investors to finance the commercialization of discoveries, the party said.

For his part, Corbyn repeated plans that included scrapping tuition fees for all university students, introducing free school lunches for all primary school pupils and a pupil arts premium to allow children to learn a musical instrument. He also said he'd take on the U.S. president.

A Corbyn-led government, he said, "would not be afraid to pick up the phone to Donald Trump and say, 'listen mate, you're wrong on trying to destroy the Paris climate change agreement."'
The Egyptian National Committee on Libya has called on all Libyan factions to work to achieve peace and put an end to the lax security situation in the war-torn North African state, the Egyptian military said in a statement on Wednesday.

The committee urged all parties to comply with the deal brokered by the UN in December 2015 to create a unity government, until a consensus addressing the concerns of the Libyan people is reached.

"Any unilateral decision by any Libyan party could lead to further escalation and chaos," the committee said.

The committee called on all factions to swiftly reach a consensus to set up state organisations to avert "serious consequences" when the two-year transitional period ends in mid-december, the statement added.

Two rival governments are competing for power in Libya  the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA), based in Tripoli, and the House of Representatives in the eastern city of Tobruk.

Over the past months, Egypt has sponsored a diplomatic push to heal divisions in Libya.

In February, Egypt brokered a deal between Prime Minister Fayez Seraj of the Triploi government and Khalifa Haftar, a military commander supported by eastern factions. The two agreed to create a joint committee to negotiate reconciliation and elections by February 2018.

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In June 2017, the Village of Glen Carbon will celebrate the 125th anniversary of the date of its incorporation (Quasquicentennial). This is the 12th part of a series of articles dedicated to telling the rich story of people and events that contributed to the development of the community throughout its history.

It was the people who settled the American Bottoms and established The Goshen Settlement. It began with Samuel Judy who was of Swiss ancestry. Then came Czechs and Germans who farmed the river bottom. Others soon followed; the railroads were established and the area became a thriving agricultural community. Well-known names from that era besides Judy, were Gillham, Meier, Kirkpatrick, Smola, Schumacher, Peters, Henry, Rapp, Durham and Good (who established the First Methodist church in Illinois).

To the east, it was the people who settled Mont Station and Glen Crossing. Migrating from the eastern U.S., farmers homesteaded the area known as Mont Station. Montgomery, Kinder and Barnsback were prominent names. Soon, a group of Bohemians immigrated to the area and established Glen Crossing. There were farmers in this group but their numbers also included coal miners, mechanics, blacksmiths, and laborers. Bollinger, Shashack, Nekola, Kovarik, Kubicek, Poneta, Meyer, Zajicek, Scheibal, Ranek are some of those old names you still hear around today.

In the Glen Carbon valley, Austrian, William Yanda built his blacksmith shop servicing the many travelers of the Goshen Road. The natural resources of exceptional clay and rich veins of coal were discovered, the St. Louis press Brick Company was established followed by the Madison Coal Corporation opening mines in the area. This brought an influx of immigrants from Europe. They were fleeing wars, oppression, depression, feudalism, and persecution. They all came looking for a better life. Other countries were represented as well. There were Welsh, Austrians, Russians, English, Germans, Hungarians, Scots, French, Poles, Irish, Italians, and Belgians with names such as Blatnick, Casna, Dawson, Going, Henshaw, Houba, Krumeich, Nicolussi, Miller, OHare, Sedlacek, Slemer, Trebing, and Weiler. While all had their homeland ethnicities, they all blended well working together to form a bustling, close knit community.

It was the entrepreneurs who found Glen Carbon a good place to start their business. With the population explosion, there was great opportunity to open a profitable business. Main Street became a bustling commerce center with stores and shops lining both sides of the street. There was Schroeders Meat Market, Schneiders Livery, Primas Bakery, Wieduwilt Palace Saloon, Singeltarys General Store, Sam Birgers Grand Leader, Diebert Brothers Mercantile, W. B. Rasplicas general store, Dooner Brothers grocery store, Hirsch Dry Goods, Belenzens, Pizzini Western Brewery, Primas Bluff Saloon and garage, barbers, doctors, undertakers, and ice cream parlors. Everything a bustling community needed. In later years, there was Dees Notions, Allarias grocery, Slemers Red & White grocery, Oettels grocery, and Groteka Ideal Store. It was all these people who became Glen Carbon.

Once the brickyard burned and the mines closed, the businesses left one by one. Some of the population left but most remained in the place they had grown to love. Those that stayed found employment in nearby towns and Glen Carbon became a bedroom community. In the 1960s Glen Carbons population began to increase. Slowly at first and then in leaps and bounds. The catalyst for the tremendous growth was the construction of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville in the early 1960s, Interstate 270, and Merrill Ottweins 1970s Cottonwood development. SIUE brought not only citizens from other parts of America but immigrants from other countries: Middle Easterners, Asians, South Americans, Africans, Hispanics and other ethnic groups. They were instructors, students, and staff members. It was a new wave of immigration. Many found Glen Carbon and the Land of Goshen the place they chose to live. Glen Carbon again became a melting pot. As in the past, ethnic customs and traditions are maintained while blending into the newly formed society. Today, Glen Carbon is still a product of the people who call it home and contribute to the betterment of the Village and its citizens.

Almost thirty years ago, forward thinking citizens formed a historical preservation organization to gather and maintain the history of this community. Beginning with one room in the library, today the Glen Carbon Heritage Museum occupies a beautiful 100 year old school house which was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2014. The museum contains four rooms brimming with historical artifacts and documents telling the history of Glen Carbon. It was Dee Krumeich, Evelyn Viere Wiechman, Joyce Harris Williams, William M. Rasplica, Leroy Harris, Isabelle Weiler Rasplica, Bob Williams, Joan Treat Foster, and Karen Miofsky, and others who brought the idea of preservation to realization. Once the library moved to its new quarters, the entire old school building was set aside for the museum. With the support of the village government and the leadership of Will Shashek, Historical Commission members Phil Phillips, Joan Treat Foster, Leona Houba Smith, Joan Trebing Callahan, Jim Stram, Maureen Kobler and others arranged, organized and put in place exhibits in the new museum.

It was all the people of Glen Carbon who helped to make it the place it is today. It is fitting to end this series with the Epilogue written by Jennie Raffaelle in 1992 for A History of Glen Carbon. Her words still ring true today.

Throughout the early history of Glen Carbon, the role of the industrial interests can be observed. One must read between the lines. All the documents and records carefully read are of little value unless one remembers that the moving force at all times was a human one. It was the people of the Village who were responsible for its development. In their lives can be found the true story of a settlement developing to a peak as a mining village and then passing through various stages to become a residential community. Glen Carbon proved to be a true melting pot of European nationalities. Hardly a nation can be named that was not represented in one of the three endeavors of those early-industry, merchandising, and farming.

The surrounding area, devoted mainly to agriculture, was settled primarily by the Czech (Bohemian) people who established homes on farms and contributed much to the development of the entire community. Within the village, living and working side by side, were many immigrant Europeans. Most of them had already become naturalized citizens. Although many of these people spoke their mother tongue and practiced their homeland customs within their own homes, they adapted to a new culture and acquired a new language with surprising rapidity. Their ability to adapt to a new and often difficult environment, their mutual respect and understanding of others, their perseverance in working together to establish homes for their families this is the heritage that cannot and must not be ignored as we look to the next century.

This is the last in a series of twelve articles describing briefly the history of Glen Carbon in the past 125 years. Members of the Glen Carbon Historical and Museum Commission and the Museum Coordinator are responsible for the content of the articles and hope they were of interest to the public. Information for the articles was gleaned from information and artifacts housed in the museum, interviews, newspaper articles, and A History of Glen Carbon published in 1992.

Museum Coordinator, Linda Sinco; Commission Members: Larry L. Jones, Carol Dappert, Paige Maag, Ronnie Hicks, Joan Foster, Jennifer Stedelin, Judy Crnkovich and Diane Rasplica Jones.
Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao defended President Donald Trump's plan to remove air-traffic operations from the government, saying the system could no longer handle growth and "still maintain safety."

Skeptical senators from both parties on the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee questioned Chao Wednesday, many saying they opposed the plan because the administration couldn't guarantee that a private air-traffic system would protect the interests of small, rural airports.

"This is a tough sell in my state of Mississippi," Republican Sen. Roger Wicker said, joining other members of the president's party who are opposed to the plan or are wavering. "And I think you're going to see this on both sides of the aisle."

Chao told the committee that a non-profit corporation would be better suited to overseeing the adoption of the new technology needed to keep traffic flowing.

"Passengers will benefit because these reforms will speed up delivery of new technology that will reduce delays and congestion," she said.

The president on Monday opened a week-long series of events to promote his plan to spend $1 trillion on infrastructure with a signing ceremony for a plan to turn over the Federal Aviation Administration's air-traffic system to a nonprofit, delivering a stinging assessment of the agency's operations.

While Trump said the FAA has wasted billions of dollars on new equipment and he promised more direct and efficient flights under a revamped system, Chao's written testimony was the first to say the agency would not be able to keep flights safe in the future. As skies become more congested, that leads to more delays and indirect flight routes, Chao said.

"What this means is that we do not have a system that can handle increasing capacity and still maintain safety," she said.

Chao did not raise the safety concerns in her shorter oral testimony and didn't provide specifics in her written testimony. Aviation accidents attributed to air-traffic errors or system failures are rare, according to National Transportation Safety Board records. There hasn't been a fatal airline crash in the U.S. attributed to any such issues in more than a decade, according to NTSB.

Advocates of separating air traffic from the FAA believe it will enhance safety by creating a more arm's length distance between the regulator and the operator, DJ Gribbin, a special assistant to the president, told reporters Monday as the plan was unveiled. Under the proposal, the FAA would continue to regulate and monitor the new air-traffic corporation.

A similar plan to remove air traffic operations from the FAA didn't get traction in Congress last year and was never voted on. Trump's proposal is based largely on that legislation, introduced by Rep. Bill Shuster, the Pennsylvania Republican and chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Shuster plans to reintroduce the measure by the end of the month, he said in an interview.

The proposal has been endorsed by most airlines, including American Airlines Group Inc. and Southwest Airlines. The National Air Traffic Controllers Association union has said it's open to the idea. Airlines argue that a corporation would be better able to introduce new technology and its funding, based on user fees for aircraft, would be more stable than Congress' budget process.

''We're all in, and very supportive," JetBlue Airways Corp. Chief Executive Officer Robin Hayes said in an interview Sunday. "Any opportunity for the system to work better is something that our customers are going to benefit from."

However, a coalition of groups including private-aircraft manufacturers and operators, as well as other FAA unions, oppose the idea. Joined by most Democratic lawmakers, they say that a new air-traffic organization isn't necessary because flight delays have declined in recent years and the new corporation would give airlines too much power.

Sen. John Thune, the South Dakota Republican who is chairman of the Commerce committee, said Tuesday he doesn't believe there are enough votes to win Senate approval unless Trump can convince some of those opponents. Chao didn't provide specifics when Thune asked her how the administration planned to ensure a new system would protect private aviation interests at small airports.

The chief advocate for Trump's air traffic plan -- airlines -- were repeatedly criticized during the hearing. Carriers have received bad publicity over several recent high-profile incidents, including a doctor who was injured after being dragged off a United Continental Holdings Inc. flight in Chicago.

Sen. Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, said airlines, which would be able to nominate at least some of the board members to oversee an air-traffic corporation, should have to show improved customer service and reliability before such a plan moved forward.

"This air-traffic control system isn't going to be controlled by airlines," Chao said.

The measure also faces high hurdles in the House. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, a Florida Republican who leads the Appropriations Committee panel that oversees FAA's budget, told reporters Tuesday passage in that chamber is "highly unlikely." He called it a flawed plan that would give too much control to airlines.

In other testimony, Chao asked Senators to support an administration proposal to give the government more authority to detect, track and disable drones it considers a security threat. Administration agencies drafted legislation and presented it to the Senate and House Armed Services committees, she said.

"Drones present unique security challenges," she said. The FAA also is working with the Justice, Homeland Security and Defense departments on better ways to identify and track drones as part of its effort to craft regulations allowing small unmanned craft to fly closer to people.

---

Bloomberg's Michael Sasso, Erik Wasson and Steven T. Dennis contributed.
WASHINGTON - Attorney General Jeff Sessions is reversing an Obama administration practice that encouraged and sometimes required banks and other companies to donate large amounts of money to outside groups as part of settlement agreements with the federal government.

In the Obama administration, the Justice Department negotiated settlements, especially with large banks in connection with the residential mortgage-backed securities crisis, that required the settling parties to pay funds to third-party community organizations, such as the National Council of La Raza, Habitat for Humanity and the National Urban League.

"These third-party organizations were neither victims nor parties to the lawsuits," Sessions said in a memo sent Wednesday to senior Justice Department officials and U.S. attorney's offices. Sessions said that, effective immediately, settlement payments to nongovernmental third parties, such as advocacy or housing groups, are prohibited.

"When the federal government settles a case against a corporate wrongdoer, any settlement funds should go first to the victims and then to the American people - not to bankroll third-party special interest groups or the political friends of whoever is in power," Sessions said in a statement.

"Unfortunately, in recent years, the Department of Justice has sometimes required or encouraged defendants to make these payments to third parties as a condition of settlement," Sessions said. "With this directive, we are ending this practice and ensuring that settlement funds are only used to compensate victims, redress harm and punish and deter unlawful conduct."

The Obama administration's third-party settlement practice had been criticized by Republican commentators and lawmakers, who have referred to it as a "slush fund." In January, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., introduced legislation to prohibit the Justice Department and other federal agencies from requiring defendants to donate money to third-party groups as part of a settlement.

In 2013, the Department of Justice reached settlements with several banks, ranging from $7 billion (Citigroup) to $16.65 billion (Bank of America) related to the selling of residential mortgage-backed securities. As part of those settlements, the department required banks to pay approximately $3 billion to third-party groups, such as NeighborWorks and state legal aid organizations, according to Justice officials.

In 2015, the Justice Department settled claims with JPMorgan Chase related to robo-signing practices and required JPMorgan to pay $7.5 million to the American Bankruptcy Institute's endowment for financial education, Justice officials said.

And in 2016, as part of a civil settlement, the Justice Department required Volkswagen to invest $2 billion to fund zero-emission technology and infrastructure and to promote zero-emission vehicles - funding that would not be allowed under the new policy.

Under Sessions' policy, settlement funds will go to the U.S. Treasury. An exception to the policy are payments that directly remedy the harm addressed in the settlement, including harm to the environment or from official corruption, according to the memo. The policy also does not apply to payments for legal or other professional services in connection with the case and to payments that provide restitution to a victim.
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A central feature of a ballot measure aimed at speeding up executions in California  its requirement that the state Supreme Court decide all death penalty appeals within five years  got an apparent thumbs-down from the courts justices Tuesday and drew little support even from the measures defenders, who sought to recast the mandate as a nonbinding guideline.

It was far less clear, however, whether the court planned to strike other provisions of the wide-ranging initiative, Proposition 66, which won in November with a 51 percent majority while the voters were also rejecting a rival measure, Proposition 62, to repeal the states death penalty law.

Condemned prisoners in California now wait more than 20 years, on average, for a final ruling on their appeals. Prosecutors and crime-victims groups who backed Proposition 66 told voters the measure would cut that period in half by requiring faster court action, limiting some types of appeals, and requiring more lawyers to accept capital cases.

One of its provisions said the states high court, which hears the appeals required by law in every death sentence, shall rule within five years of sentencing, more than twice as fast as its current pace. The same five-year deadline would apply to the second-stage appeals known as habeas corpus, which often focus on claims of misconduct by prosecutors or jurors and inadequate representation by defense lawyers.

At a hearing Tuesday in Los Angeles on a lawsuit seeking to overturn the entire measure, several justices suggested that such a timetable, if binding, would be unconstitutional.

A five-year deadline may not be achievable without radically changing the ability of the courts to carry out their functions in any cases other than death penalty appeals, said Justice Leondra Kruger.

Defenders of the measure countered that, despite the wording of Prop. 66, the five-year timetable was not mandatory. Deputy Attorney General Jose Zelidon-Zepeda noted that Prop. 66 did not specify any consequences, such as dismissal of the appeal, if the court took longer than five years to decide it.

What the measure was trying to do was speed up the process and encourage the court to eliminate unnecessary delays, Zelidon-Zepeda said. He noted that Prop. 66 directs the state Judicial Council to propose methods to handle capital cases more quickly and efficiently.

That is a massive delegation of power to reorganize the third branch of government, said Justice Goodwin Liu.

Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation and one of the authors of Prop. 66, told the court that a five-year timetable was achievable and that California courts were more willing than courts in other states to postpone death penalty hearings at defense lawyers requests. But he said the ballot measure does acknowledge that the goal will not always be met.

The justices seemed skeptical  So its a mandatory deadline thats toothless? asked Kruger  but they also questioned the contention by opponents of Prop. 66 that eliminating the deadline should invalidate the entire measure.

The lawsuit was filed by the late John Van de Kamp, a former state attorney general, and Ron Briggs, a former El Dorado County supervisor whose father, state Sen. John Briggs, R-Fullerton (Orange County), sponsored the 1978 ballot measure that established the current death penalty law.

They argued that Prop. 66 violated a state constitutional rule limiting initiatives to a single subject  a position that drew no apparent support from the justices Tuesday  and that the five-year deadline, and other provisions, interfered with judicial authority and reduced safeguards against wrongful death verdicts.

The voters were promised that they could make death penalty cases happen faster and cheaper and without killing ... any innocent people, said the plaintiffs lawyer, Christina Von der Ahe Rayburn.

Noting that the court has a backlog of nearly 400 capital cases, Rayburn said Prop. 66 was drafted to require rulings within five years  in very mandatory language  and that it was uncertain that the voters would have passed it if they had been told the timeline was merely advisory.

But Liu told Rayburn that the willingness of Prop. 66s defenders to recast the mandate as a guideline removes a central pillar of your argument.

Theres still a lot more to it, he said of the ballot measure.

Another provision seeks to reduce delays in capital cases by requiring defense lawyers to handle death penalty appeals if they accept other court assignments to represent criminal defendants. Rayburn argued that only the states high court is authorized to set standards for lawyers in death appeals, now handled only by lawyers with experience in death penalty or other murder cases.

Another change would eliminate the authority of a state administrative agency to review the legality, after considering public comment, of Californias proposed procedures for executions by a single drug, replacing the former three-drug procedure.

A ruling in Briggs vs. Brown, S238309, is due within 90 days.

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com

Twitter: @egelko
The United Arab Emirates tightened the squeeze on fellow Gulf state Qatar on Wednesday threatening anyone publishing expressions of sympathy towards it with up to 15 years in prison, and barring entry to Qataris.

UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash also told Reuters there would be more curbs if necessary and said Qatar needed to make iron-clad commitments to change what critics say is a policy on funding militants.

Qatar vehemently denies any such backing.

UAE-based newspaper Gulf News and pan-Arab channel Al-Arabiya reported the crackdown on expressions of sympathy with Qatar.

"Strict and firm action will be taken against anyone who shows sympathy or any form of bias towards Qatar, or against anyone who objects to the position of the United Arab Emirates, whether it be through the means of social media, or any type of written, visual or verbal form," Gulf News quoted UAE Attorney-General Hamad Saif al-Shamsi as saying.

On top of a possible jail term, offenders could also be hit with a fine of at least 500,000 dirhams, the newspaper said, citing a statement to Arabic-language media.

Since the diplomatic row erupted, slogans against and in support of Qatar have dominated Twitter in Arabic, a platform used widely in the Arab world, particularly in Saudi Arabia.

Newspapers and television channels in the region have also been engaged in a war of words over Qatar.

Efforts to defuse the regional crisis -- triggered on Monday when the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and others severed diplomatic ties with Qatar over alleged support for Islamist groups and Iran -- showed no immediate signs of success.

U.S. President Donald Trump took sides in the rift on Tuesday, praising the actions against Qatar, but later spoke by phone with Saudi King Salman and stressed the need for Gulf unity.

His defence secretary, James Mattis, also spoke to his Qatari counterpart to express commitment to the Gulf region's security. Qatar hosts 8,000 U.S. military personnel at al Udeid, the largest U.S. air base in the Middle East and a launchpad for U.S.-led strikes on the Islamic State militant group.

Kuwait's emir has also been seeking to mediate, meeting Saudi's king on Tuesday.

Qatar's sudden isolation has led to the country holding talks with Turkey, Iran and others to secure food and water supplies, according to a Qatari official.

Allegations of Islamist sympathies and support have for years strained Doha's relations with its Gulf Arab neighbours, who consider movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood a security threat.

The UAE's state-owned Etihad Airways, meanwhile, said all travellers holding Qatari passports were currently prohibited from travelling to or transiting through the emirates on government instructions.

Foreigners residing in Qatar and in possession of a Qatari residence visa would also not be eligible for visa on arrival in the UAE, Etihad spokesman said in an email.

"This ruling applies to all airlines flying into the UAE," the spokesman said in the statement.

Those breaking ties with Qatar are the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, the Maldives, Mauritania and Libya's eastern-based government. Jordan has downgraded its diplomatic representation and revoked the license of Doha-based TV channel Al Jazeera.

Squeeze

Qataris were loading up on supplies in supermarkets, fearing shortages.

One official in Doha, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there were enough grain supplies to last four weeks and that the government also had large strategic food reserves. But talks were underway to ensure supplies.

"We are in talks with Turkey and Iran and other countries," the official said on condition of anonymity.

He said supplies would be brought in through Qatar Airways cargo flights.

Closing all transport links with Qatar, the three Gulf states who have moved against Doha gave Qatari visitors and residents two weeks to leave. Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt banned Qatari planes from landing and forbade them from crossing their air space.

"This is a very diverse relationship that Qatar has with the UAE and with Saudi and Bahrain  families, business, travel, interests ... It will be quite complex to disentangle, but we are intent on saying we cannot go back to the status quo ante," Gargash, the UAE minister, told Reuters in an interview.

He said more steps against Qatar, including further curbs on business, remain on the table.

"We hope that cooler heads will prevail, that wiser heads will prevail and we will not get to that," he said.

Markets

Qatar's stock index <.QSI> was down 1.15 percent after plummeting 8.7 percent over the last two days.

"Tensions are still high and mediation efforts by fellow Gulf Cooperation Council state Kuwait have yet to lead to a concrete solution, so investors will likely remain on edge," said one Dubai-based trader.

Oil prices dipped on renewed concerns about the efficacy of OPEC-led production cuts due to the tensions, and also over growing U.S. out

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Turkey's parliament on Wednesday approved a draft bill allowing its troops to be deployed to a Turkish military base in Qatar, following a bitter feud between Doha and its neighbours in the Gulf.

The move appears to be a signal of support from Turkey to Qatar after Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain, among other states, cut diplomatic ties and major transport links with the gas-rich emirate.

The bill, drafted before the rift, passed with 240 votes in favour, largely with support from the ruling AK Party and nationalist opposition MHP.

The Arab states accuse Qatar of supporting extremism, a charge Doha firmly denies.

Turkey has called for dialogue and said it is ready to help defuse the row.

Lawmakers told AFP that parliament would discuss implementing a Qatar-Turkey defence deal that was agreed in late 2014.

Part of that deal saw the opening of a Turkish military base in Qatar, and allowed joint training exercises and the possibility of Turkish armed forces being deployed on Qatar's territory.

Ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) lawmaker Taha Ozhan said the agreement had passed through the committee stage and would now be discussed by the main parliament.

Sezgin Tanrikulu, an MP from the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), said 80 soldiers have been sent to the base to prepare what will be Turkey's first military facility in the Gulf region.

The Turkish ambassador to Qatar Ahmet Demirok told AFP last year the base would eventually be home to up to 3,000 troops or possibly more "depending on the needs".

Turkey has close ties with Qatar including in the energy sector, but also maintains good relations with other Gulf countries.

During the six-year Syrian conflict, Doha and Ankara have backed rebels trying to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad.

Qatar is also home to the largest US airbase in the Middle East.

As the forward headquarters of US Central Command, it is seen as crucial to the US-led campaign against the IS militants group.

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Hospitals Against Violence Hope (#HAVhope), in a day of awareness, on Friday will focus national attention on ending all forms of violence. This is an outgrowth of a project initiated by the American Hospital Association Board of Trustees to give voice to hospitals efforts that combat violence in their communities and their facilities. Violence has become a major public health and safety issue for nearly everyone in our country. More than 2.3 million people are treated in U.S. emergency departments each year for violent injuries, and violence costs more than $85 billion annually in medical expenses and lost productivity, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. What is constant, however, is the commitment of hospitals in helping their employees, patients, and communities address violence in whatever form it may take.

At Midland Memorial Hospital, we have done much to help in preventing violence in the workplace.

-- MMH has embraced a culture of ownership and created a common language that does not tolerate acts of toxic emotional behaviors such as incivility, disrespect, bullying.

-- MMH has established the Midland County Hospital District Police Department to be readily available and assist to mitigate all acts of violence on our campuses.

-- MMH leadership and the district police officers have educated most staff to be situationally aware of their environment and trained in techniques to protect themselves and others;

-- MMH Leadership regularly engages our people in drills such as bomb threats and active shooter on campus to better understand how to manage under these horrific circumstances, if they ever do occur. Oftentimes these drills include our friends from the Midland Police Department, Midland County Sheriff's Office, Midland Fire Department and other emergency response organizations.

-- Our people -- including nurses, medical provider -- are regularly involved with educating our community about gun and knife violence, sexual assaults and how best to prevent these from occurring.

While much has been done at MMH to heighten the awareness of violence and prevention of this violence, more could be done in collaboration with our community partners to address community violence and help in creating the healthiest community in Texas. Here are some suggestions for how you can raise awareness and support #HAVhope Day on Friday.

-- Share a photo on Friday of yourself holding hands with others in our community or workplace committed to combating violence. This collection of photos will provide a visual to demonstrate that we stand together to combat all acts of violence.

-- Use #HAVhope on social media (such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter) to highlight your commitment to combating violence in Midland and your workplace.

Lets all be more kind, compassionate and empathetic to others needs. Smile more; slow down and smell the roses, if you will. We have a great community in Midland. Lets make it even greater by standing together to make it more safe.

Bob Dent is senior vice president, chief operating and chief nursing officer of Midland Health.
A Bexar County sheriff's deputy received a 10-day suspension in May for sexually harassing a county court clerk while working at the courthouse and then lying about it, according to suspension paperwork obtained by the San Antonio Express-News.

Deputy Charles Cook had been reprimanded twice before: Once for sexual harassment involving the same county clerk and another time for behavior involving a different female court liaison officer, the paperwork states.

On Feb. 1, Cook was working at the county courthouse when he entered a courtrooms back office and inquired about a defendant.

RELATED: Relative says 15-year-old held dying S.A. mother in arms after gunman shot her in back

Office staff told Cook to wait in the courtroom, but he returned minutes later with the defendant. Cook walked over to the county clerk, standing very close to her and almost touching her, according to the paperwork.

Cook proceeded to read the defendants ID for the court clerk. She asked to see the ID, but Cook refused. Another employee told Cook she could look up the information, but Cook remained standing by the county clerk, lingering over her, the paperwork states.

The other employee again told Cook she could search the information, but he continued encouraging the county clerk to do it.

Cook eventually left the office. The county clerk later said the incident made her feel uncomfortable because she had made a sexual harassment allegation against him once before in 2012. Details about that incident were not included in the documentation.

RELATED: Relative says 15-year-old held dying S.A. mother in arms after gunman shot her in back

When asked by a supervisor, Cook said he had no idea what the county clerk walk talking about, according to the documentation. A supervisor later reviewed Cooks personnel file and found a letter of reprimand for the 2012 incident.

The supervisor also learned that Cook had received a verbal warning in 2012 regarding his behavior toward a different female court liaison officer.

On April 13, after receiving the proposed suspension, Cook requested a grievance hearing, but the sergeant refused to change the discipline. Cook can continue to appeal the decision if he chooses.

Cook is one of 13 sheriffs officers or deputies who have received a suspension since the beginning of the year, out of nearly 2,000 employees in the department.

eeaton@express-news.net

Twitter: @emilieeaton
A man found shot to death inside a car outside an East Side convenience store over the weekend has been identified as Nicholas Joseph Ciarrocchi, 41, of San Antonio.

San Antonio police went to the store in the 3100 block of Martin Luther King Drive around 12:30 a.m. Saturday after getting reports of a disturbance involving a gun. They found Ciarrocchi dead from multiple gunshot wounds. Ciarrocchis death has been ruled a homicide, according to the Bexar County Medical Examiners Office.
San Antonio Express-News file photo

San Antonio is receiving $1 million from the federal government to bolster its terrorism and disaster preparedness.

Congressman Henry Cuellar and Mayor Ivy Taylor announced Tuesday that the city is receiving the funds from the U.S. Department of Homeland Securitys Federal Emergency Management Agency. The only other Texas cities receiving funds are Houston and Dallas.
Bexar County Sheriffs Office

A woman accused of hitting her boyfriend with a car after he walked off during an argument has been arrested.

Alicia Cano Saenz, 61, was charged Monday night with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, according to court records. Her bail was set at $75,000.
WASHINGTON  With the Texas Legislature readying for a special session to hash out a proposed transgender "bathroom" bill, Sugar Land Republican Pete Olson joined a group of lawmakers Wednesday to roll back former President Barack Obama's protections for gender identity.

Olson's Civil Rights Uniformity Act, filed Wednesday, would ensure that that gender identity is not treated as a protected class under federal law without prior approval by Congress.

The bill takes aim at a 2015 Obama administration proposal to apply Civil Rights Act prohibitions against "sex" discrimination to include "sex stereotyping," "gender identity," and "termination of pregnancy." It also challenges what Olson's office termed "the staggering twisting of Title IX to set gender social policy in local schools."

"The Founding Fathers never intended unelected bureaucrats in federal agencies to make sweeping changes to the definition of gender," Olson said in a statement. "While we have a new president in office, we must restore the voice of the people given to them by our Constitution and put an end to this dangerous precedent of removing Congress' power to make laws."

Also among the House sponsors is Texas Republican Brian Babin of Woodville. "The Obama Administration used brute force and coercion to compel states and localities to accept its redefinition of sex to include 'gender identity,'" he said. "Though the Trump Administration has rolled back most of these overreaching executive orders, the Civil Rights Uniformity Act would ensure that any redefinition of sex by the U.S. government would have to originate from Congress."

The bill is backed by Louisiana Republican Ralph Abraham, Heritage Action for America, and the American Association of Christian Schools. Critics say that unchallenged, the Obama policies could leave healthcare providers vulnerable to extensive liability should they refuse to participate in or pay for "gender transition" treatments or "sex change" operations based on medical opinion, moral, ethical, or religious reasons.
Germany on Wednesday condemned "in the strongest terms" the twin attacks that killed 12 people in Iran.

Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said "once again, unscrupulous criminals have killed many innocent people".

"I condemn in the strongest terms the attacks in the Iranian parliament building and the tomb of the revolutionary leader (Ayatollah Ruhollah) Khomeini," he said in a statement.

"We mourn with the people of Iran. We offer our condolences to families of the victims. We hope that the many injured will fully recover soon."

Twelve people were killed when gunmen and suicide bombers stormed Iran's parliament and the shrine of its revolutionary leader.

The assaults were claimed by the Islamic State group, the first time it has taken responsibility for an attack in Iran.

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A devote Catholic, Eleanor Ellie Krupa didnt just attend church on Sunday mornings.

She also spent countless evenings and weekends instructing congregants about church sacraments and, along with her husband, taught marriage preparation classes to Catholic couples.

Early on it was Continuing Christian Education, her son Michael Krupa said. As the years went by, she progressed to being director of religious education at St. Mark The Evangelist, St. Anthony of Padua and at St. Helenas in San Antonio.

Ellie Krupa died May 31 at 80.

The middle child among three daughters, Krupa was raised in St. Louis, Missouri, and attended what is now Webster University, graduating with a degree in elementary education in 1958.

She met her future husband, a student at Parks College, also in St. Louis, at a dance.

Marrying in 1959, the couple moved frequently as her husband built his career with General Electric, relocating to California, Florida and, in Texas, to Pasadena and Houston.

Living in the Houston area in the 1970s, Krupa and her husband became deeply involved in the Galveston-Houston diocese, where her husband was ordained as a deacon in 1972.

With no blood relatives in Texas, Krupa and her husband created an extended family for their eight children from those in the church.

More Information Eleanor A. 'Ellie' Krupa Born: March 31, 1937, St. Louis, Missouri Died: May 31, 2017, San Antonio Preceded by: Husband Joseph Krupa; son-in-law William Hardy Cook; parents George and Marie Meyer; and two sisters Survived by: Daughters Jeanne Cook, and Anne Jimenez and son-in-law John; sons Michael Krupa and daughter-in-law Tracy, Christopher Krupa and daughter-in-law Dion, William Krupa and daughter-in-law Julie, Robert Krupa and daughter-in-law Denise, Mark Williams, and James Krupa and daughter-in-law Karen; and 20 grandchildren. Services: Visitation at 5 p.m. and rosary at 7 p.m., Monday at Porter Loring Mortuary North, 2102 N. Loop 1604 East; Mass at 10 a.m. Tuesday at Holy Trinity Catholic Church, 20523 Huebner Road See More Collapse

Priests and the nuns became family for us, her daughter Jeanne Cook said. We didnt know any other way.

To stay close to each of her children, Krupa chose one to take with her when she went on speaking engagements.

We really enjoyed  having that attention for a whole weekend, Cook said.

Her family also helped her make her point during speaking engagements.

She would share examples of us growing up, and talk about  how kids think about things, her son said. She didnt name names, but people would come up afterwards and ask if it was us.

Krupa continued to work in Catholic education after the family moved to San Antonio in 1980. She returned to school at what is now the University of the Incarnate Word, receiving a masters degree in religious studies in 1996.

mheidbrink@express-news.net
Some weeks ago, Gov. Greg Abbott took the time to write a commentary for the San Antonio Express-News. In it, he suggested that misunderstandings about Senate Bill 4 were being used as pretexts for fearmongering. More recently an ugly confrontation between opponents of this new law and supporters of the law took place at the Texas Capitol. Tempers and rhetoric flared dramatically. This is not all the result of misunderstanding and fearmongering.

There is a long background to the latest expressions of anger and frustration. During the legislative debate, the rhetorical pitch of anti-immigrant sentiment reached high levels. As we now know, inflamed rhetoric engenders enflamed rhetoric. And, as has happened on the national level, this state law encourages the notion that the immigrant community is defined by the criminals in our midst, instead of defined by the fact that most immigrants are working families with children. These things generate fear in the immigrant community.

The public debate often makes it sound as if all immigrants are criminals because they are here without proper documentation. Overstaying a visa is not a criminal offense; it is a civil offense against a federal statute. To be an immigrant without valid documentation does not make you a criminal. Yes, immigrants without valid documents have infracted federal statute, but they are not justly lumped together with human traffickers, drug dealers and murderers.

The Catholic bishops of Texas opposed SB 4 as it was making its way through the state Legislature, and at the time of its passage encouraged the governor to veto it. The law obscures the jurisdictional boundaries between enforcement of federal statutes and enforcement of state and local laws. The law now explicitly says that local and state police may ask about immigration status at any point beginning with routine police stops. It was the inclusion of these field enforcement provisions in the law that were most vehemently opposed by the bishops as injurious to community trust in local law enforcement.

It is not the case, as the governor and others argue, that only criminals need to fear SB 4. This law promotes uncertainty and ambiguity. People are now afraid that pretexts will be invented so that they can be stopped and asked about their immigration status. Yes, the law prohibits discrimination and profiling, but the immigrant poor are not likely to have the resources or the counsel needed to defend themselves. People get stopped, and they are desperately afraid. They immediately wonder about their children, and about their own safety if deported. It is this uncertainty and potential panic at the moment of questioning that breeds fear and hurts the community fabric.

And what happens, then, when some local and state police forces are inevitably more aggressive than others in exercising this may ask option? Are they not encouraging immigrants to distrust all potential askers? And does not such uncertainty make it less likely that crimes will be reported?

The Legislature passed the bill and the governor signed it into law, and so the whole state will have to deal with the ongoing consequences. We are a nation of laws, as the governor says; unfortunately, not all our laws are good laws. Bad laws have bad effects. For the Catholic bishops, this means we will step up our efforts to inform persons of their rights, including the right to remain silent, and to make available the best advice about what to do if you are stopped and are without valid documentation. We will also work to repeal SB 4, or correct the most injurious aspects of this law. And we encourage all who oppose this law to work together in strenuous and peaceful ways toward this same end.

Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller leads the Archdiocese of San Antonio, which includes more than 700,000 Catholics. Bishop Daniel Flores is the sixth bishop of the Diocese of Brownsville, which serves 1.14 million Catholics.
About six years ago, a Texas resident visited Minnesota three times to talk with its Somali community. Not just any Texas resident: This was Andrew Wakefield, the doctor disgraced for his fraudulent 1998 study claiming a connection between autism and the measles vaccine.

Dozens of studies have since proven Wakefield wrong, but scientific fact hasnt stopped him from continuing to spread harm.

That harm is very real and obvious today. Continued targeting of Minnesotas Somali community led the vaccination rate to plummet by more than half, to 42 percent, in 2014. And recently, 69 Minnesotans, most of them young children, most of them Somali, almost all of them unvaccinated, fell sick with measles.

Measles is a potentially deadly illness. About a fourth of the stricken Minnesota children had to be hospitalized. One in 1,000 measles patients will suffer the serious side effect of encephalitis, or brain swelling, and many other complications are possible. And measles is so swift-spreading that 90 percent of the unvaccinated people who are exposed will fall ill. Only 3 percent of vaccinated people catch the disease.

The situation in Minnesota might seem remote, but the parallels to the situation in Texas shouldnt be overlooked.

Yes, the childhood vaccination rate in this state is higher than 90 percent, but it is in Minnesota, too. The problem is that pockets of low vaccination appear in both states. At least three Texas schools  two private and one charter  have vaccination rates that appear to be below 70 percent. That is far too low for protecting our children. Some unvaccinated children have serious medical issues that preclude being vaccinated; they are vulnerable to diseases that sweep a community.

No one knows how low the rates might have fallen at traditional public schools, because the state doesnt report those numbers. The only numbers available are the overall rates for the entire school district.

The Minnesota outbreak shows us in Texas how easy it is for a vulnerable population to be misled by disinformation campaigns. With no way to ensure that the Somali community was hearing the other, factual, science-based story, it was all too likely that young children would be seriously sickened. That could happen here.

Texas is, unfortunately, one of the strongholds of anti-vaccine sentiment, perhaps not surprising considering Wakefield lives in our midst. State lawmakers have refused to take even the most basic steps to fend off a Minnesota-like scenario. Bills died this legislative session that would have allowed parents to view the vaccination rates at individual public schools  would you want your child attending a school with a 42 percent immunization rate?  and that would have had parents take a simple online course to educate them about immunization before they could send their children to school unvaccinated.

Vaccine advocates and educators are not giving up, not by a long shot. The Immunization Partnership, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and many other groups will continue to provide the facts about vaccination, and we hope parents will visit these websites. We will press forward with education campaigns, because knowledge is the best antidote to baseless fears.

Dr. Lindy McGee is chair of the advocacy committee for the Immunization Partnership, a statewide nonprofit organization that aims to eradicate vaccine-preventable diseases.
The Trump administration has been exhaustingly eventful, but almost none of the events has involved Congress.

The beginning of Donald Trumps presidency has been an extension of the last six years of the Obama administration, when Capitol Hill was largely a sideshow to the main event in the executive branch in general and the Oval Office in particular. Barack Obama and Donald Trump have almost nothing in common, except their modes of governance.

Obama was coolly cerebral and deliberative to a fault, whereas Trump is blustery and impulsive. Yet Obama and Trump are both, in their own ways, attention-hungry celebrities. Obama never demonstrated the patience or aptitude for real persuasion, whether LBJ-style arm-twisting or Reagan-style move-the-needle public argument. Neither has Trump. Institutionally, Obama was content to be a loner, and so is Trump.

Until further notice, this is the American model  government by and of the president. We live in the age of unilateral rule.

It may be that Congress eventually passes Obamacare repeal-and-replace and tax reform, and makes its mark. Neither initiative is looking robustly healthy at the moment, though. And the action is all with Trump, what he does, says and tweets.

To his credit, Trump hasnt pushed the constitutional envelope the way Obama did with his Clean Power Plan and his executive amnesty (both blocked in the courts). What Trump has done unilaterally has been firmly within bounds and largely defensive in nature. He has either reversed Obama actions or used executive orders as symbolic measures.

Still, the yin and yang from Obama to Trump means that American government has become a badminton match between rival presidents with dueling executive actions. As a result, our laws are largely contested in the realm of executive decisions, agency rule-making and the courts. Arguably, in striking down Trumps travel ban on highly dubious grounds, the 4th Circuit has done more legislating this year than the United States Congress.

If Trumps unilateral rule is an extension of what has come before, it also is an intensification.

First, theres the timing. Ordinarily, a president loses Congress or otherwise stalls several years into his tenure, and looks to foreign affairs and executive orders for victories. Trump is already dependent on presidential unilateralism, even though his party controls both houses of Congress.

Its not that Trump is deliberately cutting Congress out; he is desperate for it to get things done. He just doesnt have the interest or knowledge to push legislation along.

Meanwhile, Congress has been handing over authority to the administrative state for decades, and lately has gotten out of the habit of passing almost anything except last-minute omnibus spending bills. The Senate, in particular, is debilitated by a near-automatic 60-vote threshold.

Second, there is the continued centralization of power in the White House. This has long been the trend, but President Trump has taken it to another level; he operates on a hub-and-spoke system with a small group of loyalists and family members jostling for influence around him.

In the mid-1980s, the late political scientist Theodore Lowi wrote a book called The Personal President. It warned of the effects of a plebiscitary presidency unhinged from Congress and political parties. He was on to something, although Bill Clinton and George W. Bush subsequently governed fairly traditionally. It is with Obama and Trump that we have moved into a different gear.

We may be witnessing the creation of a new norm, one that hollows out the branch of government charged with writing the nations laws.

comments.lowry@nationalreview.com
Saudi Arabia's foreign minister rejected an accusation by Iran's Revolutionary Guards that his country was behind twin attacks in Tehran on Wednesday that killed at least 12 people.

Suicide bombers and gunmen attacked the parliament building and the Mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini in the Iranian capital. Islamic State Group claimed responsibility and released a video purporting to show gunmen inside the parliament.

Speaking in Berlin, Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir said there was no evidence to implicate Saudi Arabia in the attacks in Tehran, which is Riyadh's arch regional rival.

"We condemn terrorist attacks anywhere they occur and we condemn the killing of the innocent anywhere it occurs," Jubeir told an event hosted by the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, the think- tank of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union.

He said Riyadh had no knowledge of who was responsible for the attacks, and denied that Saudi groups were behind it.

"We dont know this. We havent seen the evidence," he said, repeating Riyadh's longstanding view that Iran is the primary sponsor of terrorism around the world.

Jubeir said Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries would be willing to reestablish normal ties with Iran if it changed its behaviour and stopped supporting militants and fighters in Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and elsewhere across the region.

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President Donald Trumps trip to Europe was truly historic.

He left our most important allies there so uncertain about Americas commitment to their security from Russia and to shared values on trade and climate change that German leader Angela Merkel was prompted to tell her countrymen that Europes days of relying on the United States are over to a certain extent, and therefore Germany and its European allies really must take our fate into our own hands.

No U.S. president ever put a crack in the Atlantic alliance on his inaugural tour. Historic.

Merkel is just the first major leader to say out loud what every American ally is realizing: The United States is under new management. Who is America today? is the first question Ive been asked on each stop through New Zealand, Australia and South Korea. My answer: Were not the USA anymore. Were the new UAE: the United American Emirate.

We have an emir. His name is Donald. We have a crown prince. His name is Jared. We have a crown princess. Her name is Ivanka. We have a consultative council (Congress) that rubber-stamps whatever the emir wants. And like any good monarchy, our ruling family sees no conflict of interest between its personal businesses and those of the state.

So any lingering Kennedyesque thoughts about us should be banished. Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay no price, bear no burden, meet no hardship, support no friend, oppose no foe to assure liberty  unless were paid in advance. And we take cash, checks, gold, Visa, American Express, bitcoin and memberships in Mar-a-Lago.

The Trump doctrine is very simple: There are just four threats in the world: terrorists who will kill us, immigrants who will rape us or take our jobs, importers and exporters who will take our industries  and North Korea. Threats to democracy, free trade, the environment and human rights are no longer on our menu. Therefore, no matter how unsavory you are as a foreign leader, you can be the United American Emirates best friend if you:

Pay us by buying our weapons. (Saudi Arabia has set the bar high, starting at $110 billion.)

Pay us in higher defense spending for NATO, not to deter Russia, which is using cyberwarfare to disrupt every democratic election it can, but to deter terrorism, something tanks and planes are useless against.

Pay us in trade concessions. And it doesnt matter how lame those concessions are. All that matters is that Emir Trump can claim concessions.

Pay us by grossly flattering our emir about how much of an improvement he is over Barack Obama. See President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines and Bibi Netanyahu of Israel.

Be Russia, and you pay nothing.

If you do any one of these things, the United American Emirates commitment to you  its ironclad  is that you can do anything you want out back.

Does Trump have a point that German economic policies have dampened its imports and disadvantaged southern Europe? He does. And NATO members should fulfill the alliances long-term spending targets. But how much is Germany spending to absorb 1 million Syrian refugees so they wont join ISIS? How much security is that buying the world? The U.S. took 18,000 Syrians. Trumps friend Vladimir Putin took zero, but Trump never thinks about such things.

It took us decades to build the Atlantic alliance, and it has brought us so many tangible and intangible benefits in the form of security, stability, growth and friendships. Trump could break it, not just crack it.

Last week I saw the official photographs that now grace U.S. embassies. Vice President Mike Pence is smiling warmly. Trump is scowling. If his picture had a caption, it would be: Get off my lawn.

It could also say: Let all who enter this embassy know: We dont do alliances any more. We only do Master Limited Partnerships. Interested? Call 1-202-456-1414. Operators are standing by.
It was an ugly legislative session that ended with a shoving match and war of words between lawmakers. And this will be the case no matter what a special session produces from the governors long and highly dubious to-do list, announced Tuesday. (Hint: He should have stopped at sunset legislation and school financing).

In short, the regular session was defined by mean-spirited, pointless and regressive politics. The best you could say about it is it could have been worse, something the special session may very well remedy. Bad legislation is surely ahead. The governor, for instance, wants both a bathroom bill and property tax reform legislation to be taken up in the special session. Both these items are what contributed to the mean-spiritedness of the regular session.

Unfortunately, the just-announced special session promises more of the same.

But before that special session starts, theres still time to review Texass 85th regular legislative session. Lets run through some of the highs and lows.

Sanctuary cities legal fight

The legal fight has already begun over Texas sanctuary cities ban  and San Antonio has joined that fight. The new law bans sanctuary cities and allows law enforcement to question the immigration status of people who are legally detained. It is a show-me-your-papers law that invites racial profiling and will alienate immigrant groups from police. State lawmakers and Abbott made it a priority despite the objections of many police chiefs, including San Antonios William McManus.

New anti-abortion law

Lawmakers also passed sweeping anti-abortion legislation, which will almost certainly be tied up in court. Among other things, it would require medical care providers to bury or cremate any fetal remains from abortions, miscarriages or stillbirths. Its a particularly cruel response to tragedy. Now, Abbott has directed the Legislature in special session to require women to pay a separate premium if they want their health care to cover elective abortion.

Alamo funding

A definite high. State lawmakers fully funded Land Commissioner George P. Bushs request for $75 million to reimagine and restore the Alamo. This comes in addition to a $38 million commitment from the city of San Antonio. The public funds will leverage private dollars to ensure the site is properly preserved and honored as the Cradle of Texas Liberty.

Bexar County trash service

Even a small win is a win. Trash problems in unincorporated Bexar County have long flummoxed lawmakers. State Sen. Jose Menendezs legislation will ensure no neighborhood in our metro region is blanketed in trash the way Camelot II was for years. It allows Bexar County to contract with solid waste haulers. And it requires landlords with properties in the city of San Antonios extraterritorial jurisdiction have trash service.

Menendez had a particularly strong session for a Democratic lawmaker, filibustering a faulty annexation bill from Sen. Donna Campbell. The bill would have stripped cities of a key planning tool and contributed to sprawl. Unfortunately, Abbott has asked the Legislature to bring this annexation bill back for consideration in the special session. It should again be rejected.

F on school finance

Instead of focusing on which bathrooms transgender people use, state lawmakers could have focused on funding Texas public schools. Thats what the Texas House of Representatives did, thanks to the leadership of Speaker Joe Straus, but the Texas Senate and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick didnt go along. The Senate gutted funding and inserted a school voucher proposal into school finance legislation. It was a poison pill that should not be reinserted when the Legislature considers school financing in its special session.

The irony is school funding accounts for the majority of property tax bills. Properly funding schools, then, should mitigate property taxes, which was a priority for Patrick. Instead, lawmakers passed a budget that cuts school funding by about $1.1 billion, which will be offset by local property taxes  hence the need for this item in a special session.

Straus leadership

Yet again, the San Antonio Republican stood out for his leadership skills. Straus blocked quite a bit of bad legislation, and he remained focused on substantive issues. He is an inclusive and thoughtful leader who represents and balances the interests of all Texans.

Straus must continue these efforts in the upcoming special session. Few of what the governor outlined as priorities should ever reach his desk. Mission impossible? Do your best, Mr. Speaker  and all legislators of conscience.
President Donald Trump has withdrawn the U.S. from the Paris agreement on climate change despite the two hottest years in a row in history; the melting and disappearance of glaciers and thousands of square miles of Arctic and Antarctic ice fields; rising oceans; unusual storms and weather; and the fact that the U.S. is the biggest polluter in the world.

The accord was the product of decades. After the withdrawal, business leaders, military leaders, financial leaders, Democrats and lots of Republicans immediately announced opposition and pledged to continue the accord even though we are withdrawing. Many will die as oceans rise, crops fail and cancer explodes. The naval base at Norfolk has already had several docks go underwater and are useless.

Shame! We look simple-minded, selfish, isolationist and uncaring for the future. Better to withdraw from Trump.

James C. Berbiglia, Helotes

Leader of nothing

Now that Donald Trump has pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement, we no longer can say the president is the leader of the free world. The U.S. is no longer a leader in the world at all.

Mark Porter

Disrespecting veep

Re: Notre Dame grads displayed civility, Mary Roemer, Another View, June 1:

I am disappointed  but not surprised  that a retired school counselor doesnt understand how the limited number of Notre Dame students who choose the school graduation to make their political statement were completely wrong and disrespectful.

They knew ahead of time the vice president would be speaking. They didnt have to go if they had so much hate and anger toward him they couldnt just sit through the ceremony. The graduation was not the time or place to make a political statement or stage a protest.

Their selfish actions took away from a day of celebration for most of the student body that came to celebrate their accomplishments and graduation.

Carthel Williams, Spring Branch

Puzzling lament

Re: We are in the golden age of incivility with Texas on top, Ruben Navarrette, Other Views, June 2:

So Navarrette whines about incivility while defending Greg Gianforte. IOKIYAR (Its OK If Youre A Republican), I suppose.

How long do you intend to allow this person to continue to embarrass your newspaper?

Henry Ridgeway
1 Rights council blasted: The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations on Tuesday berated the U.N.s top human rights body, calling it a forum for politics, hypocrisy and evasion that allows rights abusers to whitewash their images and foes of Israel to criticize the Jewish state unfairly. Nikki Haley, in the first visit to the Human Rights Council by Americas top diplomat at the U.N., trained most of her focus on alleged abuses by Venezuelas government, a relatively easy target in that President Nicolas Maduro has increasingly run afoul of some of his Latin American neighbors. Haley made only a passing reference to poor human rights in Saudi Arabia, a longtime U.S. ally that recently agreed to buy hundreds of billions of dollars worth of U.S.-made weapons over the next decade. Many of the weapons could be used in the Saudi-led fight against rebels in impoverished, war-wracked Yemen.

2 Trial for soldier: A Jordanian soldier faces murder charges in the shooting deaths of three U.S. military trainers whose convoy came under fire at a Jordanian air base last year, a government official in Amman said Tuesday. The Jordanian soldier will be tried by a military court, with proceedings to begin Wednesday, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case. The decision was welcomed by parents of the U.S. Army Green Berets, after Jordan initially claimed the Americans triggered the Nov. 4 shooting by disobeying orders of Jordanian troops at the gate of the al-Jafr air base in southern Jordan. I believe it is a good first step toward justice, said Chuck Lewellen of Kirksville, Mo., whose son, 27-year-old Staff Sgt. Matthew C. Lewellen, was among those killed. The other two slain Americans were 30-year-old Staff Sgt. Kevin McEnroe of Tucson and 27-year-old Staff Sgt. James F. Moriarty of Kerrville, Texas.
A military alliance fighting in support of President Bashar al-Assad threatened on Wednesday to hit U.S. positions in Syria, warning its "self-restraint" over U.S. air strikes would end if Washington crossed "red lines".

The threat marks an escalation of tensions between the United States and the Syrian government and its backers over control of Syria's southeastern frontier with Iraq, where Washington has been training Syrian rebels at a base inside Syrian territory as part of its campaign against Islamic State militants .

The area is seen as crucial to Assad's Iranian allies and could open an overland supply route from Tehran to Iraq, Syria and Lebanon - the "Shia crescent" of Iranian influence that is a major concern to U.S.-allies in the region.

Tensions have been growing in southeastern Syria over the last several weeks. The United States launched air strikes on Tuesday against what it said were pro-government forces who it said posed a threat to U.S. and U.S.-backed forces in the area, the second such air strike in three weeks.

The statement from the pro-Assad alliance was issued in the name of the "commander of the operations room of the forces allied to Syria", and was circulated by a military news unit run by the Lebanese group Hezbollah, one of Assad's military allies.

The statement did not spell out whether Russia, Assad's most powerful ally, was a signatory. Speaking in Baghdad, a U.S. envoy said the United States was counting on regular contacts with Moscow to help avoid a conflict with pro-Damascus forces in the southeastern region known as the Badia.

Separate remarks by Syria's foreign ministry, carried by state TV, warned of the "dangers of escalation" and demanded the U.S. coalition stop strikes on Syrian soil.

The statement from the "allies of Syria" said attacks on U.S. forces could be carried out with "different missile and military systems, in the light of the deployment of American forces in the region".

"America knows well that the blood of the sons of Syria, the Syrian Arab Army, and its allies is not cheap, and the capacity to strike their positions in Syria, and their surroundings, is available when circumstances will it," the statement said.

It added that the silence of "the allies of Syria" thus far was "an exercise in self-restraint" to allow for "other solutions". "This will not last if America goes further, and crosses the red lines," it said.

In an apparent message to show the capabilities of Damascus backer Iran, Hezbollah aired what it said was footage taken undetected by an Iranian drone of a U.S. drone flying over southeastern Syria.

'Hostile Forces'

The U.S. military, which has sought to stay out of Syria's civil war and focus its firepower on Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq, has repeatedly warned pro-Assad forces to stay away from a so-called "de-confliction" zone around their garrison near the southern Syrian town of al-Tanf.

Brett McGurk, the U.S. envoy to the international coalition against Islamic State militants , said the air strike on Tuesday was meant to defend American forces.

"We really do depend upon the Russians through our de-confliction military channels ... to help work these things out, and so we hope obviously that will not happen again," he said.

The U.S.-led coalition said that ahead of Tuesday's air strike there had been communications with Russia over allowing pro-government forces into the de-confliction zone to evacuate personnel wounded in an attack by an insurgent group.

In comments to Reuters, the coalition said it had agreed to the request and four unarmed trucks were observed evacuating the wounded personnel from the area, where Islamic State has previously mounted attacks.

"Later, at a separate location in the de-confliction zone, the coalition observed a large Syrian pro-regime force enter the de-confliction zone," the coalition added.

"These forces were clearly hostile and comprised a tank, artillery, anti-aircraft weapons, armed technical vehicles and more than 60 soldiers, which were posing a threat to coalition and partner forces based at the al-Tanf garrison," it said.

"The coalition issued several warnings prior to conducting the strike on two artillery pieces, an anti-aircraft weapon and a tank."

Tensions in southern Syria have flared as the intensity of the Syrian war has died down in areas of western Syria covered by an agreement brokered by Russia, Turkey and Iran to ease the fighting.

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Don Rhoads with The Convenience Group shares his thoughts on why debit-card reform is so crucial to his business.

VANCOUVER, Wash.  Ive been in business a long time, yet Ive never seen so much disinformation, distortion and outright nonsense as the big banks spewed about a reform that has actually saved consumers and Main Street retailers $40 billion, wrote Don Rhoads, president of The Convenience Group, in an op-ed published yesterday in The Hill. Below is an excerpt of his piece.

Fortunately, Congress saw through the banks smokescreen and, in one of its most significant actions this year, resisted the big banks pleas to let them throttle competition.  [Swipe fees] became many merchants second-largest operating cost, after only labor. For convenience store operators like me, it got to the point that the banks often took more out of my business in profits than I did.

Congress decided to do something about this glaring inequity for debit card fees in 2010, and passed a law giving banks an incentive to compete. It also required retailers have a choice of at least two competitive networks to process their transactions. Before, the banks had been trying to squash these competitors.

The law only affected debit cards, not credit cards; created a modest amount of competition; and still let banks that refused to compete on price mark up their fees an astonishing 500%, according to Federal Reserve figures. Yet the banks couldnt stand having to compete in a business that had previously worked like a form of collusion. The banks blew so much smoke that they got some members of the House Financial Services Committee to try to repeal debit reform as part of the Choice Act, a bill to repeal much of the Dodd-Frank financial-regulation law.

But when Congress counted votes, they found the bill would never pass the House with repeal of debit reform in it. So they dropped it. It was a huge victory for Main Street merchants, consumers, the economy (since retailing is such a huge component of economic activity) and, finally, for the free markets that made us the largest economy in the world. 

Debit reform has let my chain of a dozen convenience stores in Washington state pass tens of thousands of dollars worth of savings on to customers by holding down the price of the gas and soft drinks and snacks we sell.

Imagine how much more we would all benefit if every card transaction was free of banks price-fixing. In fact, it would look like the rest of our free-market economy. Its high time that it did.
Yves here. I beg to differ with Weeks on some of his assumptions. First, his cheery view that a UK trade deal with the EU can be achieved faster than CETA is optimistic. The reason is that what most people loosely call a trade deal would in the case of the UK and EU, include a deal on services since financial services are the UKs biggest export to the EU. Services deals are much more difficult and time consuming than pacts involving physical goods. And on top of that, the Foreign Office has been hollowed out, and woefully undermanned to handle Brexit, let alone the at least 759 other agreements it will need to think about redoing when it departs the EU.

Second, his view that the German view will drive the talks. While Germany is influential, it is less so when it is not writing checks, as it was in the case of the Greek bailout. Each country has a vote on Brexit matters which means in theory any one could lodge a veto. In practice, the EU generally follows when France and Germany agree, because their native interests and inclinations are enough at odds that if they come to a unified position, the other nations conclude it cant be all that bad. And let us not forget at a critical juncture when the 2015 Greece negotiations had broken down completely and the consensus was to let Greece default, it was Hollande, not Merkel, who got everyone back to the negotiating table.

Nevertheless, even he with his more cheery views generally confirms what we and many others have been saying: that Mays no deal talk on Brexit is sheer bluster.

By John Weeks, Professor Emeritus, School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London, and author of Economics of the 1%: How mainstream economics serves the rich, obscures reality and distorts policy, Anthem Press. Originally published at Open Democracy

A year ago this month the referendum campaign to leave the European Union ended with victory for the EU leavers. Almost immediately both the winners and the losers embarked on a second campaign, to convince the British public that the process of leaving (divorce) would be protracted and expensive, possibly leading to untold disasters.

For the pro-EU side, the lengthy-and-costly narrative allowed claims I told you so  they told us during the campaign that leaving would devastate the UK economy and, they assert, how right we are. For leavers, Brexit disaster serves their broader interests, especially in the current election campaign. Their narrative also asserts a costly and protracted process that requires a strong and stern leader to stand up to the fickle and vindictive Europeans.

In the last days of the election, the Conservatives have placed Brexit disaster at the centre of their campaign with Theresa May billed as our unlikely saviour, telling us she would have no deal rather than a bad deal. Unlikely applies to the prime minister for many reasons, not least her reversal from remainer to leaver and her vacillation on numerous other policy issues.

In practice, however, weak or strong, vacillating or steadfast, are largely irrelevant. I campaigned for remain and strongly regret leaving the European Union, but the exit process will prove difficult only if the British government chooses it to be so. The route to a solution is not difficult to map, and negotiations, while tedious, should not encounter intractable problems.

Reaching an agreement with the European Commission (the body formally representing the European Union) will prove extremely lengthy because of the EUs ratification procedure, not difficulties in reaching agreement. EU treaties require that all member governments ratify any such agreement. In the case of Belgium, the ratification process devolves to the legislatures of the four regions.

The approval of the Canadian-European Trade Agreement (CETA) demonstrated how long ratification can take. The negotiations began in 2009, ended in 2014, and the treaty ratified in 2017. I would predict that Brexit negotiations need not require five years as with CETA, but ratification would occur no faster.

I reached this decidedly minority opinion  what might be named easy Brexit  after a visit to Berlin at the end of April, where I gave evidence to the Committee on the Affairs of the European Union of the Bundestag (described here). The German government, most powerful by far among EU decision-makers, will in practice determine the parameters of the negotiations from the European side.

These parameters will follow from the two central concerns: 1) the Merkel governments need to resolve the funding problem created by the exit of Britain, and 2) the importance to German business leaders of maintaining its current trade surplus with Britain.

During the period 2015-2016, according to a report of Parliament, the UK governments net contribution to the EU budget was 10.8 billion or 13-14% of net contributions by the member states (money payments in minus benefits). A report by the European Policy Centre estimates, through 2020, a post-Brexit UK contribution of slightly less, about 12%. Rather than a problem, the demand by the European negotiators for these contributions, the infamous divorce cost, provides the vehicle for a mutually acceptable and beneficial agreement.

How to cover the UK contribution presents the Merkel government with a serious political problem. Angela Merkels perennially close ally, the Bavarian Christian Democratic Union, has rejected additional contributions to the EU budget; i.e., they will oppose the German government increasing its contribution to fully or partially offset the loss of UK contributions. The alternatives are to reduce the already miniscule EU centre budget (1% of EU GDP) or pressure other members to increase their contributions. Both would severely weaken German government influence among the countries receiving net benefits (a majority of members).

Though the UK media has reported that German industry supports Chancellor Merkels tough stance on negotiations, I came away from Berlin with the opposite impression. Close inspection of the statements of German business leaders, one of whom gave evidence to the Bundestag when I did, indicate more nuanced conclusions.

The position of the German Confederation of Industry, as its director Markus Kerber stressed, is that it is of utmost importance to reduce the damage [of Brexit] for the German economy  a view shared by representatives of branches of large industry (summarised here).

Combining the political difficulties for the EU budget and the division of opinion among German business leaders shows the route to agreement. Agreement in principle to pay contributions for the foreseeable future would initiate discussions. This would not represent an important concession by the UK government. Several non-members contribute to the EU budget, for example Norway. Any form of post-Brexit EU association will require such payments.

Making these payments would not be controversial were it not for toxic rhetoric of Brexit ideologues. Post-Brexit contributions to the EU budget should be no more controversial than UK funds for the budget of the World Trade Organization, payments for services in return for benefits.

On the emotive issue of immigration, I gained the impression in Berlin that this will not block reaching agreement. Behind closed doors (where the EU governments manage consensus) an arrangement for the British government to accept three of the four freedoms could emerge (unrestricted capital flows, EU rules on trade flows, and cross-border bidding for private and public services).

The aggressive anti-EU rhetoric Mays government makes the coming negotiations appear difficult when they need not be. Should the prime minister return to power after 8 June, a softening of that rhetoric will certainly occur. However, regaining good relations with EU governments will be no easy task for a government full of rampant Brexiteers. Having accused Commission officials of sabotage and threats, on 19 June she and her negotiators may find it difficult to convince them and European governments that they were just kidding.

A Labour victory on 8 June would make a positive approach to negotiations much easier. The new Corbyn government could immediately confirm its intention to make payments to the EU budget, as well as unilaterally granting employment and residency rights to EU citizens now in Britain. This would also undermine the case for a second Scottish independence referendum  a collateral benefit of considerable importance.

In his famous exchange with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Hamlet says for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so (Act 2, Scene 2). In the case of Brexit negotiations, agreements are neither hard nor easy, but rhetoric makes them so.
Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region will hold a referendum on statehood in September, its presidency said Wednesday, despite opposition to independence from Baghdad.

Iraqi Kurds largely support the idea of an independent state, but a yes vote in September would only be the start of a contentious project that would face major external and internal challenges.

"The date for the independence referendum shall be Monday, September 25, 2017," the presidency said in a statement.

"It will be on that day when the people of the Kurdistan region, as well as those living in the disputed areas, will cast their votes on whether they accept independence," the statement said.

The decision was made at a meeting attended by Kurdish leader Massud Barzani and representatives of the region's political parties, it said.

Iraqi Kurdistan is made up of three provinces that are run by an autonomous regional government and protected by their own security services, providing the basis for a potential state.

But there are major political and economic obstacles to Iraqi Kurdish independence.

The presidency statement said in Kurdish the referendum would include "areas of Kurdistan outside the administration of the region", which were termed "disputed areas" in English.

This refers to swathes of northern territory that are claimed by both Kurdistan and Baghdad, including the key oil-rich province of Kirkuk.

Opposition in Baghdad to Iraqi Kurdistan becoming independent would become even greater if the region tried to take disputed territory along with it.

Iraqi Kurdistan, like the rest of the country, depends almost entirely on revenue from crude sales to provide government funds.

Kurdistan exports most of its oil via a pipeline leading to the Turkish port of Ceyhan, but also overland through Turkey by tanker truck.

A major external challenge to independence is potential opposition from Turkey.

Turkey has a large Kurdish minority with which the government has been engaged in a multi-decade armed conflict, and Ankara would almost certainly fear that Iraqi Kurdish independence could fuel increased calls for a similar move within its territory.

Due to how Iraqi Kurdistan exports its oil, Turkey potentially has both an effective veto over independence in general, and a ready means to apply huge pressure to any fledgling state's economy if it did split from Iraq.

Given the poor state of relations between Ankara and Baghdad, Iraq is likely to oppose part of its territory being turned into a state under Turkey's influence.

Internally, Iraqi Kurdistan has been hit hard by low oil prices to the point that it has stopped paying some government employees for extended periods.

And while the concept of Kurdish independence has broad appeal, Iraqi Kurds are deeply divided politically, which could lead to paralysis in a new state.

The regional presidency's statement said that "the political parties... agreed to resolve some of the outstanding political and economic issues prior to the date of the referendum".

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Antarctica Is About to Lose an Ice Shelf the Size of Delaware Pacific Standard

Historic Heat Wave Sweeps Asia, the Middle East and Europe Weather Underground

A Minsky moment isnt imminent, but investors should be wary FT

Return to the Roaring 20s Le Monde Diplomatique

Uber Still Doesnt Look Like the Next Facebook Bloomberg. With shout-outs to Hubert Horan at here.

An airline tried to get a musician to check her 17th-century violin. A wrestling match ensued. WaPo. Guess which airline.

Neuroscientists rewire brain of one species to have connectivity of another Science Daily.

Taxonomy anarchy hampers conservation Nature. Taxonomist, classify thyself!

A once in a lifetime opportunity. Who made money off the Oroville Dam crisis? Sacramento Bee

China?

India

Brexit

London attack: How are UK extremists radicalised? BBC

Theres a simple economic reason why terrorists like the London Bridge attackers cant change our behaviour Independent

Sensitive UK terror funding inquiry may never be published Guardian. From late May, relevant today.

Syraqistan

New Cold War

Trump Transition

Dangerous Discourse: When Progressives Sound like Demagogues Common Dreams

All Worked Up and Nowhere to Go The Baffler

GOP strategists plot anti-media strategy for 2018 elections McClatchy. I can hardly wait.

Health Care

Legislature overrides Brownbacks veto of bill that rolls back his 2012 tax cuts Kansas City Star

Class Warfare

Exclusive: Apple makes iPhone screen fixes easier as states mull repair laws Reuters. On the right to repair, see NC here.

YouTube clarifies hate speech definition and which videos wont be monetized Ars Technica

Secret Algorithms Threaten the Rule of Law MIT Technology Review

Antidote du jour (via):

Pass the popcorn.

See yesterdays Links and Antidote du Jour here.
By Nathanael Johnson, Grists food writer and the author of All Natural: A Skeptics Quest to Discover If the Natural Approach to Diet, Childbirth, Healing, and the Environment Really Keeps Us Healthier and Happier. Follow him on Twitter at @savortooth. Originally published at Grist

It was the closest thing you get to a blind date between a scientist and a journalist.

I had never met the entomologist John Tooker before he opened his door at Penn State, where I was giving a lecture this April, and invited me into his office. Tooker is tall, lean, and balding, with expressive black eyebrows and ears that stick out from his skull. He leaned back in his chair and linked his hands behind his head.

I thought it might be worth meeting, he said, because I read the piece where you said GMOs had decreased the amount of insecticide used. This is an important data point in the ongoing debate over the environmental effects of GMO crops. As long-time Grist readers know, Ive explored this topic in depth.

Well, Tooker continued, in 2015, we published a paper showing that theyve actually driven insecticide use up.

I gaped. Even anti-GMO partisans generally accept the premise that genetically modified crops have reduced insecticide use. For a moment I worried Tooker might be crazy, determined to hold me captive while he ranted. But as an entomologist and agricultural extension specialist, he was sure to be familiar with the evidence. What the heck was going on?

The question of whether GMOs are harmful or beneficial to humanity doesnt always have an easy answer, and lots of contradictory claims can be made in the debate. Sometimes, it turns out, each claim can be right in its own fashion. Every scientist and activist sees the overall picture from a slightly different angle.

For that reason, Im always open to a new perspective that challenges what Ive come to learn over the years of investigating GMOs. (For the record, my personal conclusion is that despite all the dire predictions and heated rhetoric on both sides, GMOs dont actually matter that much.) So I was more than open to hearing Tookers new evidence and exploring where it might lead  once I determined he wasnt nuts.

The result was a fresh argument for a form of pest control  a golden mean of organic and industrial. Heres a roadmap of the journey I followed to get there.

First, well need some background. Over the last few decades, farmers have been using more of a type of insecticide called neonicotinoids, or neonics for short. These relatives of nicotine deliver insects a lethal high. (Maybe not such a bad way to go?)

Neonics are mostly used as seed coatings. Theyre one part in a cocktail of fungicides, insecticides, and beneficial microbes swaddling nearly every seed that modern farmers stick in the ground  GMO seeds and non-GMO alike. But, Tooker argues that the increase in genetically modified crops is whats really causing the use of neonics to skyrocket, to the point that just about every kernel of field corn planted in the United States is coated with this class of insecticides.

The reaction to the widespread use of neonics, like so much in agriculture today, has been polarized and divisive.

Farmers love them. Weve gone from using pesticides with a skull and crossbones on the label, Iowa farmer Mark Jackson told me. I used to lay down a seven-inch band of granular insecticide on the ground over my seeds.

Those ground treatments and sprays kill beneficial insects along with the pests. But a tiny drop of neonics applied right to the seed casing gets sucked into the plant as it grows. Bugs that chomp down on the neonic-infused leaves get a killer dose of the chemical. Whats not to love?

Environmentalists, by contrast, see neonics as a catastrophe that is wiping out valuable pollinators and other beneficial insects along with their target pets. Greens point to studies that suggest farmers gain little to no economic benefit from seed treatments. Theres some evidence  in Europe, at least  of a marked decline in many insect populations, although data on whats causing this remains scant. (I go deeper here, if you want more background on the bee crisis and its possible causes.)

Farmers cant see any downside to neonic seed treatments. Environmentalists cant see any upside. When people cant see the other side of any debate, they become vulnerable to a form of blindness. Which is what made me wonder: Has everyone become so blinkered that were unable to see what Tooker sees, and there really is a massive, under-the-radar increase in insecticide use?

* * *

The fascination with GMOs and neonics got its claws into Tooker at a breakfast meeting with farmers. As part of his job at the ag extension service, he visits with farmers across Pennsylvania to provide advice and learn what about their challenges.

When he walked through the doors of Ards Farm Restaurant in Lewisburg, a small town on the Susquehanna river, eight years ago, he was expecting maybe five people to show up. Instead, some 30 farmers looked up from their coffees. Tooker ordered fried eggs and scrapple and asked what had brought everyone out.

The answer: slugs. Thousands of eraser-sized grey slugs were appearing in fields at dusk and gnawing through the stems of the sprouting crop, killing plants en masse.

This was weird. Slugs are usually controlled by insects  including a couple species of ground beetles common to Pennsylvania. To figure out what was going on, Tooker and Margaret Douglas, then a grad student, began setting up little terrariums  clear plastic half-pint cartons (like for your potato salad) with a little dirt in the bottom.

These were tiny coliseums for a clash of mortal foes  slugs versus beetles. Douglas called the containers arenas.

Its like something youd see on YouTube, Douglas says. Spider versus wasp!

Slugs are hard to kill. There are a few molluscicides out there, but theyre expensive. And even their born predators, the ground beetles, have trouble taking them down.

They produce a protective slime, Douglas said, so when they are attacked, that slime gets all up in the predators mouthparts, and its pretty disgusting, though there are some predators that can deal with that.

Still, when the beetles got hungry, they chowed down on the slugs  slime be damned. To add a touch of farmland verisimilitude, and to see how well beetles might protect a crop from ravenous slugs, Douglas germinated a few seeds that had been sitting in the lab refrigerator and placed a few sprouts in each arena. Then she went home.

The next day, she found the seedlings shredded, and every beetle dead. The slugs were snoozing, their bellies full.

Tooker and Douglas quickly realized that the seeds Douglas had used were coated with a mix of chemicals, including a neonic insecticide. As they sucked up water in the germinating tray, the sprouts had also absorbed the neonics, which bind tightly to water molecules and hitch a ride into plant cells.

The slugs ate the plants, and the insecticide had spread through the molluscs without harming them. When the beetles attacked the slugs, they got a mouthful of poison and keeled over.

Douglas and Tooker confirmed this narrative with further experiments, then published their work and took their findings back to farmers. They suggested that farmers could control the slugs in part by planting seeds without neonics on them.

But farmers told them it was hard to find the seeds they wanted without the insecticides, especially if the seeds were GMOs. Tooker and Douglas started to wonder how widespread neonics were, and realized that nobody knew; the Department of Agriculture hadnt been tracking seed treatments in its pesticide surveys.

After some sleuthing with government data collected by other agencies, they published a 2015 paper showing that neonic use had ballooned.

Tooker and Douglas

* * *

What wasnt clear in their paper documenting the increased use of neonics is why Tooker contended that GMO seeds had driven that growth more than non-GMOs. It was only after I spoke with Scott Beck, president of Becks Hybrids, an 80-year-old family business in Iowa, that the possible relationship between GMOs and neonics became clear.

Back in the 1980s, when seeds were relatively cheap, farmers often planted extra in their fields, Beck said, expecting to lose some. But then, with the advent of biotechnology in 1996, seed prices rose.

At that point, he said, it no longer made sense for farmers to buy more seeds than they needed. Better to protect their pricier genetically modified seeds with insecticides like neonics.

So is Tooker right that farmers are using more insecticides than they would be without biotechnology? Certainly it might look that way from the perspective of a ground beetle, and talking to Beck had helped me understand Tookers argument.

But the numbers dont add up if you are measuring insecticides by the pound. Take, for instance, this recent study: It counted neonic seed treatments and confirmed the conventional wisdom that GMOs were responsible for a big drop in insecticide use.

Perry et al.

After a little follow up, Tooker conceded that he was making a bit of leap from his 2015 paper on the increased use of neonics to placing the blame on GMOs. He suggested I talk to Douglas, his research partner.

Shes a bit more cautious, he admitted wryly. Sometimes I let my mouth get out ahead of me.

When I got her on the phone, Douglas explained that farmers are using less insecticide, but spreading it over a much larger area. Whether thats good or bad depends on what you care about.

If you are worried about toxicity to humans, things are improving. But if you care about insects, the ubiquity of neonics may very well mean were looking at an increasing threat. Measured in acres treated, it looks like weve reached an all-time high in the use of neonic seed treatments. Now theyre spread over 90 percent of corn fields and a little under half of soy fields, Tooker said.

Thats when it finally clicked for me: Tooker studies insects that live on farmland. The bugs he cares about are experiencing a massive increase in poisoned habitat.

For people who care about bugs, neonics have a trio of troubling attributes: They can persist in soil for years; they bind to water molecules, so theyre liable to wash into creeks; and they are lethal to insects at microscopic doses.

Scott Black is one of those people who cares. He is the executive director of the Xerces Society, a conservation nonprofit for bugs. Black isnt an anti-neonic crusader. He knows that if neonics were banned, farmers could replace them with other insecticides. He understands that habitat loss, climate change, and many types of pesticides are ganging up on bugs.

Nonetheless, he thinks neonics deserve special attention. At this point, he said, they are the most widely used insecticides in the world.

* * *

REUTERS/David Mercado

GMOs certainly arent the only force driving the spread of neonics. Farmers told me seed treatments became more important as they embraced cover crops and no-till practices. Because they had stopped plowing, there was more insect life in their fields. Naturally, some of those insects liked to eat sprouting grain.

The seed treatments seemed like the perfect solution: Instead of spreading chemicals on their fields and killing good and bad species of insect alike, farmers could use a fraction of a gram with pinpoint accuracy, applied to their seeds.

Tooker says seed treatments can be great if used strategically. When he and Douglas started sharing their findings about beetles and slugs, they hoped their research might turn farmers away from the preemptive use of insecticides and toward integrated pest management.

Thats a practice that takes the best from both organic and conventional farming. You encourage natural predators and let low-level pests go untreated. But when an infestation threatens, you make a surgical strike with the best available chemical.

This practice would take more work for farmers  and create more worry  but it would save them money, keep pesticides working longer (the more you apply, the more their targets breed resistance), and might just bring back a host of beneficial insects, like slug-eating beetles.

Interestingly, the ag giant Monsantos chief technology officer, Robert Fraley, says that technical advancements  like down-to-the-meter mapping of fields  are making it easier for farmers to adopt this method of dealing with pests. Savvy farmers will soon be tricking out their seed planters to place insecticide-treated seeds in one spot, anti-nematode seeds in another, and a high-yielding hybrid in another, Fraley told me.

Planters used to be like inkjet printers, he said. Todays planter, you have to think of as being a 3D printer.

To reduce the use of neonic-coated seeds, though, first youll have to convince farmers that theres a problem with them. Even the enlightened ones I talked to who already use integrated pest management dont see any harm.

But Tookers findings (along with those of many other scientists) suggest that theres an underappreciated danger in routinely applying tiny amounts of insecticide over huge areas. If farmers could see things from the perspective of their allies, the slug-chomping beetles, it might plant an important seed of understanding.

We could stand to cultivate a lot more of that in the GMO wars.
A new weekly consultant led dermatology service is now operating at South Tipperary General Hospital.

The dermatology service has been established after a three year break in the service.

Up to three years ago there was a monthly service but now STGH will provide a weekly service.

The service was discontinued due to the retirement three years ago of a consultant in Waterford which was providing the monthly service in Clonmel.The consultant was restored to Waterford in recent months and STGH made a strong case not only for the return of the service to Clonmel but also an enhancement of that service.

When Waterford filled the post we felt it was an opportunity for STGH to look for the dermatology service to return to Clonmel and we are delighted that not only is the dermatology service up and running again but it is now a weekly service rather than a monthly one said hospital manager Maria Barry.

The hospital manager said it was important for the hospital that the service was established in Clonmel and said it would save people having to go to Waterford and it will allow people to have treatment in Clonmel and have their cases managed from Clonmel.

Up to the return of the service to Waterford people from Clonmel had to go to Cork.When it returned to Waterford made a strong case for the return the service to Clonmel and thankfully now it has happened said the hospital manager.

The South/South West Hospital Group has announced the opening of the weekly consultant delivered clinic in STGH.

This service which will see patients with a wide range of dermatology problems is being delivered by visiting consultant dermatologists Dr.Lyndsey Paul and Dr.Michael OConnell from University Hospital Waterford.

The three hour clinic will be held every Monday morning at 9am.

Attending the launch were Ger O Callaghan,Chief Operating Officer of the SSWHG and Dr.Aami Majeed, clinical director at STGH.
A 29 years-old Cashel man who kicked down the door of a house in Clonmel where he believed his pregnant ex-girlfriend was staying, was sentenced at Clonmel Circuit Court to seven years imprisonment with the last three years suspended.

The sentence was imposed on Edward (Neddy Boy) O'Reilly of Windmill Road, (caravan under the bridge), Cashel at the latest session of Clonmel Circuit Criminal Court.

He was found guilty by a jury following a trial of burglary of No. 20 Cooleens Close, Clonmel with intent to cause assault causing harm on March 9, 2015 and causing criminal damage to the property's front door on the same date. O'Reilly had pleaded not guilty to the charges.

A "nolle prosequi" was entered in relation to a third charge of assaulting his former girlfriend Rebecca Buck on March 5, 2015.

At the sentencing hearing, Gda. Sgt. Kieran O'Regan read a Victim Impact Statement from Stacey Murphy, whose home O'Reilly broke into in search of Ms Buck.

She said 320 damage was caused to the front door. She outlined that she suffered from panic attacks before this incident and these had increased. She regularly attends her GP about anxiety attacks.

She felt extremely nervous and fearful when she was at home alone. Her partner Aisling O'Brien works shifts.

When she was working, she stayed with family and friends. She found this extremely upsetting as she prided herself on being very independent before this.

Ms Murphy said she constantly checks her doors and windows are locked, even during the day and finds herself looking over her shoulder.

Ms Murphy expressed the hope O'Reilly would receive a custodial sentence. She felt that what he did was outrageous and has had a lasting effect on her and her partner.

O'Reilly had 21 previous convictions including two counts of arson on the home of another ex-girlfriend and her mother. He received a prison sentence in the circuit court for these offences.

His other convictions included drugs possession, producing an article in the course of a dispute, drink driving, breach of a barring order, theft, public order and road traffic offences.

Defence barrister Keith Brannigan BL submitted 500 compensation to the court on behalf of this client, wo saved the money during the brief period of time he wasn't in custody.

He confirmed to Judge Teehan that his client accepted the jury's guilty verdict and was very apologetic.

He said this crime was motivated by his client's emotions rather that the desire for financial gain.

He had broken up with his partner, who was pregnant, and was looking for her.

Mr Brannigan pointed out that his client was now in a two year relationship with a new partner and was engaged to her and they had a six months old daughter.

He hadn't committed any offences while in this relationship, which began in June, 2015.

The barrister said his client was quite young when he went to prison and struggled to re-integrate into society when he was released. He hadn't any positive role model in his life and committed this offence within a matter of months of being released.

Mr Brannigan pointed out that O'Reilly had spent more of his adult life in custody than in the outside world. He was now at a point in his life where he had come to a fork in the road and he was conscious his daughter will come to an age when she will realise what a prison visit is.

This was something he wanted to avoid. His fiancee believed he was willing to change.

He presented to the court a letter from the Tipperary Rural Travellers Project, which his client has engaged with while in custody. O'Reilly would continue to engage with this project.

The barrister also pointed out that O'Reilly has been in 23 hours lock-up protective custody for the past 11 months. He suffered a broken eye socket when he was in the prison exercise yard.

Judge Teehan commended Ms Murphy and the two other female witnesses who gave evidence in the trial for their bravery.

"I am sure they found it extremely difficult. The effects on Ms Murphy were considerable and ongoing. I can't lose sight of that very salient fact."

He said the offences O'Reilly committed involved a massive interference with the injured party's constitutional right to private property and the peaceful enjoyment of her private property which flowed from that.

"She didn't have that on this night nor did the other occupants.

Ms Murphy continued to suffer radical life changes as a result of what happened to her on that night."

He said O'Reilly's motive was emotionally based; it was an effort to find his former girlfriend.

He went to this house with aggressive intent as the evidence graphically illustrated. And he committed these acts while under a lengthy suspended sentence.

He took particular account of O'Reilly's previous convictions for arson and other relatively serious offences and also the Probation Service assessment that he was a high risk for re-offending.

All these matters placed this case at the very top of the middle range of offences,

Judge Teehan noted that O'Reilly's new stable relationship and baby were important in dealing with sentencing him and remarked that frequently young men came to see the error of their ways when they came to their 30s and took on the responsibility of parenthood.

He also noted his apology for these crimes and the undertaking he had given to the people who gave evidence in the trial that they had nothing to fear from him in the future.

He warned O'Reilly that if he breached this undertaking, he would be brought back before him for contempt of court.

The Judge imposed a seven year sentence for the burglary offence and a concurrent three year sentence for criminal damage.

He suspended the last three years of the sentence on condition O'Reilly entered into a bond to keep the peace and be of good behaviour for four years after his release.

He backdated the commencement of the sentence to July 12 last year when he was placed in custody after the trial jury gave its verdict.

He directed O'Reilly to continue to engage with the Tipperary Travellers Rural Project and to engage with the Probation Service for two years after his release. He also directed him to attend an anger management course.

"I hope when you do come out of prison that you lead a productive life and don't find yourself in prison again," Judge Teehan added.
The flag of Montenegro was raised at NATO Headquarters on Wednesday (7 June 2017) in a special ceremony to mark the countrys accession to NATO. Flag raising ceremonies were also held simultaneously at Allied Command Operations (SHAPE) in Mons and Allied Command Transformation in Norfolk, Virginia. Montenegro became the 29th member of the Alliance on Monday (5 June 2017) when it deposited its instrument of accession to the North Atlantic Treaty with the US State Department in Washington DC.

Standing alongside President Filip Vujanovic of Montenegro, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said, We value Montenegro, and recognise the unique contribution you make to the Alliance. The Secretary General also commended Montenegros commitment to Euro-Atlantic integration and congratulated the Montenegrin government and people for their achievements in the 11 years since the country regained independence.

Allied foreign ministers signed Montenegro's Accession Protocol in May 2016, after which all 28 national parliaments voted to ratify its membership. Montenegros accession represents NATO's first enlargement since 1 April 2009, when Albania and Croatia joined the Alliance.
The NATO Deputy Secretary General, Ms. Rose Gottemoeller will visit Prague on Thursday, 8 June and Friday, 9 June 2017.

On 8 June, the Deputy Secretary General will participate in the 4th National Jagello 2000 Conference and on 9 June she will participate in the Defence and Security Conference Prague.

The Deputy Secretary General will deliver a speech at both events.

During her visit, the Deputy Secretary General will meet with the Prime Minister, Mr. Bohuslav Sobotka, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Lubomir Zaoralek and the Minister of Defence, Mr. Martin Stropnicky.

Still images of the event will be available on the NATO website (www.nato.int) after the event.

More details on the Conference can be found at http://bit.ly/2s3xggf.

Follow the Deputy Secretary General on Twitter (@Gottemoeller). Also follow us at (@NATOPress).
(Natural News) Recently, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) announced that they would be filing suit against the Federal Bureau of Information (FBI). Why? Because they justly believe that the FBIs use of Best Buys Geek Squad employees to search innocent peoples computers without a warrant is a violation of American citizens Fourth Amendment rights.

To fight back against this tyrannical federal overreach, the EFF has filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the FBI. The organization is seeking to obtain records that would illustrate to what lengths the FBI goes to direct and train Geek Squad employees to engage in searches of peoples devices sans-warrant. One of the key issues EFF hopes to gain a better understanding of is at what point does a Geek Squad members search turn into a warrantless government search  which would be a blatant violation of the Fourth Amendment.

Private searches do not count as a violation of the Fourth Amendment, unless a government agent instructed someone to do so. One would think the fact that several Geek Squad employees have been paid anywhere from $500 to $1,000 for their finds would be enough to denote the FBIs involvement with the searches, but the legal aspects of this are murky at best as laws regarding illegal searches have not kept pace with technological innovations.

The case of Dr. Mark Rettenmaier is a perfect example of this. As EFF explains, [T]he FBI was apparently directing Geek Squad workers to conduct fishing expeditions on peoples devices to find evidence of criminal activity. Prosecutors would later argue, as they did in Rettenmaiers case, that because private Geek Squad personnel conducted the searches, there was no Fourth Amendment violation. Since the Rettenmaier case, suspicions of an unsavory relationship between the FBI and the Geek Squad have been running high.

The judge from Rettenmaiers case recently ruled that because he had consented to a Geek Squad search of his device, both in writing and verbally, his Fourth Amendment rights had not been violated.

Yet, you might question whether or not previous instruction from the FBI still counts as conducting a search on their behalf  and if that is the case, then there was indeed a violation. EFF writes, [T]he courts ruling demonstrates that law enforcement agents are potentially exploiting legal ambiguity about when private searches become government action that appears intentionally designed to try to avoid the Fourth Amendment.

The organization goes on to explain that it appears the FBI is exploiting the fact that legally, there is a distinction between purely private searches and searches private citizens conduct at the behest of a government agent. But as EFF explains, there are two factors that help to make this determination:

The federal appeals court covering California and other western states has ruled that determining whether a party is a state or private actor comes down to two elements: (1) whether government officials knew of and agreed to the intrusive search and (2) whether the party conducting the search intended to assist law enforcement or further her own ends.

If we apply these stipulations to Geek Squad employees, its obvious that they should be considered agents of the government, or at the very least, people acting on the governments behalf. The payments given to Geek Squad members by the FBI illustrate that these illegal searches were conducted to benefit the FBI  and these payments also show that the FBI knew about the searchers and instructed the Geek Squad associates to perform them.

Geek Squad informants are conducting warrantless searches at the behest of the FBI; this is almost irrefutable at this point  and its shameful that the government thinks it can just bypass civil rights with a little loophole. Hopefully, the EFFs lawsuit will help to put a stop to this disgraceful and unconstitutional behavior.

Sources:

EFF.org

WashingtonPost.com
(Natural News) The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines racism as the belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race. Youll notice that nowhere in this definition does it mention white superiority or the discrimination of African-Americans because racism goes both ways; that is, whites can be racist towards blacks, AND blacks can be racist towards whites.

Liberals dont see it this way, however. Instead, they have come up with their own definition of racism, which has to do with whites discriminating against blacks and nothing more. In April of 2013, for instance, MSNBC host Chris Matthews played a clip on the air of Rush Limbaugh suggesting that Barack Obama inspires racism. In response, Matthews said, Well actually, Rushbo, racism is the belief that one race  whites  should rule all others. Get your definitions straight.

There is a deep, dark reason why liberals only acknowledge racism when it is whites discriminating against blacks and not the other way around. For decades now, liberals in this country have been painting minorities as victims  victims of racism, victims of capitalism, and victims of a societal system that is somehow designed to prevent them from reaching their life goals. They perpetuate this victim mentality so that at the end of the day, they can come in as the saviors, promising minorities that if they vote for Democrat politicians, then the Democrats will fight to end the so-called systemic racism that they say is embedded within the DNA of our country.

In other words, they make people into victims to remain in power. To acknowledge the fact that racism can also be defined as blacks discriminating against whites would be to dilute the electoral support from black voters. Thus, they claim that only minorities can experience racism.

This is the very reason why there has been little outcry (if any at all) from the left over the events that have recently unfolded at Evergreen State College in Washington.

Last month at Evergreen, students demanded that all white people on campus, including professors and school administrators, leave the college for a Day of Absence. Whats even more shocking is the fact that the schools president, Mr. George Bridges, responded to the racist event by expressing gratitude to the students who were trying to make it happen. Let me reiterate my gratitude for the passion and courage you have shown me and others, Bridges said, as reported by the student newspaper The Cooper Point Journal. I want every one of you to feel safe on this campus and be able to learn in a supportive environment free from discrimination or intimidation. (RELATED: Racist student mob at Evergreen College just got granted homework exemptions by the snowflake administration after threatening professors).

So the school administration didnt seem to have a problem with this Day of Absence event, but what about the mainstream media? Surely the hosts on CNN and MSNBC who are always talking about how racist this country is would have a problem with a school that bans white people for a day, right?

Wrong. Besides a segment on Tucker Carlson Tonight, the events that are unfolding at Evergreen State College have hardly been discussed at all. The reason, as previously mentioned, is because most of the liberals within the mainstream media dont see this as racism, because whites are the victims in this case instead of blacks.

Could you imagine if the opposite were true? What if a group of white students got together on a college campus and decided to have a Day of Absence free from black people? Do you think the talking heads on cable television would pay attention then? Of course they would. The news coverage would be endless.

Sources:

NYPost.com

Newsbusters.org

Breitbart.com

WashingtonTimes.com
(Natural News) When law enforcement officers entered an American Airlines plane to escort one of the passengers off the craft, they expected an extremely intoxicated individual. Michael Mennella greeted them instead. The shaky hobble that American Airline personnel took as a sign of Mennellas inebriation was actually the result of him being a double amputee with no feet. Why he was staggering down the plane aisle in the first place was simple: he wanted to ask for water to drink his pain medication after he was forced to cross the jet bridge on his stumps. American Airlines forgot to provide him with the wheelchair he requested prior to the flight.

Menellas ordeal occurred on August 28, 2016, while the suit that followed was filed in federal court in Miami just recently. As reported by MiamiNewTimes.com, the suit stated that: As demonstrated by police-administered field tests, and as revealed in an official field report, Mr. Mennella was not intoxicated. Instead, he was an innocent victim of AAs brutish misconduct.

The word brutish is an apt word for what the Florida businessman endured. The flight from Miami International Airport to Las Vegas was diverted to Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport in order to have Mennella removed from the plane. American Airlines personnel told passengers and Mennellas colleagues that he was a drunk, while airport police were told Mennella was intoxicated to the point of needing medical attention.

In the lawsuit, it was stated that The law enforcement officers proceeded to tell Mr. Mennella that he was being arrested for a felony due to his intoxication, and that the severity of his crime merited a lengthy incarceration. However, once the officers spoke with the businessman they concluded that he was not under the influence of any substances. Mennella was subsequently released and had to arrange another flight for Las Vegas.

In addition to calling the airlines actions negligent, Mennellas lawsuit further claimed that American Airlines damaged his reputation and defamed him by calling him a drunk and forcing him off the plane. (Related: United Airlines drags physician kicking and screaming off a flight he PAID FOR because they overbooked and wanted the seat back)

American Airlines believes otherwise. An email that was included in the lawsuit came from an American Airlines customer service representative. In the email, the representative wrote that the flight had to be diverted because of Mennellas disruptive and unruly behavior that was compromising the safety of the other passengers. We believe our pilot made the correct decision in this situation, the customer service representative wrote in the email. And we apologize if you feel otherwise.

Since the story broke out, American Airlines has been condemned by social media users. So American Airlines treated a double amputee like a dog. Just disgusting. Time to sell my AA stock. wrote Kerry L. Armstrong, who added the hashtag #boycottamericanairlines to his tweet.

Menenllas lawsuit could not have come at a more stressful time for the airline. Just last April, American Airlines was involved in an earlier controversy, one involving a flight attendant and some passengers. In the now-viral video, a flight attendant violently took a stroller from a passenger with her baby, hitting the passenger and narrowly missing the child as he did. A male passenger confronted the flight attendant over the incident. While the passenger and flight attendant never came to blows, it escalated to the point that the captain had to step in to diffuse the situation. The flight attendant has since been suspended, while the female passenger and her family were upgraded to first class for the rest of their trip.

It remains to be seen if Mennella will be receiving treated just as fairly.

Go to NewsTarget.com today for more stories similar to the Mennella case.

Sources include:

MiamiNewTimes.com

DailyMail.co.uk

Carbonated.tv

USAToday.com
Unsolved! The History and Mystery of the World's Greatest Ciphers from Ancient Egypt to Online Secret Societies Craig Bauer Princeton University Press: 2017. 978-0-6911-6767-1 | ISBN: 978-0-6911-6767-1

The Phaistos disc, discovered in Crete in 1908, remains untranslated. Credit: Leemage/Corbis via Getty

The concluding words of Unsolved! are a call to action. Craig Bauer, a US mathematician and editor-in-chief of the journal Cryptologia, ends his hefty history of cryptography by noting that even as he was compiling the book, unsolved ciphers from decades, sometimes centuries, in the past were coming to light on a regular basis, along with a plethora of new puzzles. For cryptography fiends, it's a thrown gauntlet.

Unsolved! spans a huge arc of time and space, from Julius Caesar's simple substitution cipher to composer Edward Elgar's 1897 Dorabella Cipher  a still-unsolved letter to Dora Penny, a dedicatee of his Enigma Variations. Uncracked ciphers from the twentieth century are associated with the Irish Republican Army, a series of grisly murders in California  and messages 'detected' from Mars.

Bauer's compelling chapter on the medieval Voynich manuscript occupies one-sixth of the book. In his 1967 The Codebreakers, cryptography historian David Kahn called the manuscript the longest, the best known, the most tantalizing, the most heavily attacked, the most resistant, and the most expensive of historical cryptograms. Its weird colour illustrations and indecipherable calligraphy attract 16% of online traffic to the library at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, where it is held (A. Robinson Nature 539, 2829; 2016). Bauer speculates as to whether the manuscript is written in a monoalphabetic substitution cipher (MASC)  each plaintext letter substituted with a letter from a single scrambled alphabet. A crackable MASCed text in English reveals the principles. But, as he shows, the Voynich manuscript has too much redundancy (order) to be MASCed English, French, German, Italian, Spanish or Japanese. (Wisely, Bauer offers no theories of his own.)

Unsolved! digs into the riches of ancient Viking, Roman, Greek and Egyptian cryptography. Egyptologists tend to avoid tackling the latter because of its sheer complexity. Bauer reveals how Caesar's cipher worked, substituting each plain-text letter with a letter a fixed number of places away in the alphabet. Inexplicably, however, he relegates to an endnote the undeciphered Phaistos disc found on Crete in 1908  the only example of its much-discussed script (A. Robinson Nature 453, 990991; 2008). Nor is there even a passing reference to Michael Ventris, celebrated for his 1952 decipherment of the script Linear B as a form of archaic Greek, or to the exciting solution of Central America's Mayan script, launched by Soviet linguist Yuri Knorozov.

Perhaps the most successful chapter centres on ciphers by the notorious, never-captured 'Zodiac Killer', who murdered at least five people in California in 196870 (dramatized in David Fincher's 2007 film Zodiac.) The murderer sent taunting letters to local newspapers, featuring four ciphers offering clues to his identity. The first was broken by husband-and-wife amateurs Donald and Bettye Harden. She guessed that a self-centred person might begin his message with 'I'; that 'KILL' might feature in it more than once; and even that the phrase 'I LIKE KILLING' might appear. This proved the key to translating the simple MASC to meaningful, if misspelt, English, although no sense could be made of the killer's signature, EBEORIETEMETHHPITI.

The Zodiac's other ciphers have proved resistant. Bauer hazards that a nine-letter 'word' with some resemblance to the ten-letter 'CALIFORNIA' may mean just that, although a letter is missing  possibly due to lousy spelling. But would a killer with poor spelling, as opposed to someone like the wordplay-loving Elgar, be attracted to ciphering? Later, Bauer guesses that such misspellings were likely intentional.

The level of decoding skill needed for Unsolved! varies significantly. A willingness to grapple with plain text and cipher text is necessary, but some parts require undergraduate-level mathematics. One is the section on RSA, unveiled in the 1970s as one of the first practical public-key cryptosystems. The book's combination of convincing logic and sometimes-convincing speculation is a familiar mix to those of us interested in undeciphered writing, such as the script of the Indus civilization (A. Robinson Nature 526, 499501; 2015) and the rongorongo script used on Easter Island.
The Pentagon denied Wednesday that large numbers of civilians were killed in a March strike by a Syrian mosque, acknowledging only one possible civilian death at an adjoining religious compound.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has claimed that the March 16 strike in the village of opposition-held Al-Jineh in northern Aleppo killed 49 people -- most of them civilians.

But an investigation led by Brigadier General Paul Bontrager found that about two dozen men attending an Al-Qaeda meeting were killed in the strike, with several others wounded.

"Sadly, we did assess that there was likely one civilian casualty," Bontrager said, noting he was "unsure" whether the person survived.

The general said the probe looked at media reports that indicated a large number of civilian deaths, but investigators did not uncover evidence to support those claims.

"We are not aware of large numbers of civilians being treated in hospitals after the strike," he said.

"We are confident this was a meeting of Al-Qaeda members and leaders."

The strike, conducted by F-15 warplanes and Reaper drones, completely destroyed a building next to a small mosque, which investigators now recognize was a madrassa -- or Islamic religious school -- that was still under construction.

The review found that the strike's targeting officers were not made aware that the complex under construction had a general religious purpose, Bontrager said.

"The failure to identify the religious nature (of the building) is a preventable error," he said, adding, "there should have been more questions asked."

While no one was found to be negligent in approving the strike, Bontrager said officers should have better interrogated each other about whether they should hit the structure.

"Any madrassa or any other structure at all, if it's being used for military purpose, can be struck, can be a legal target to strike," he said, "it simply has to go through a different legal authority."

The investigation also found an "overarching problem" of incomplete information flow in the "target engagement" cell, Bontrager said.

"Though the investigation identified some critical information gap that contributed to misinformation and an overall lack of understanding of the situation, we ultimately struck a blow against Al-Qaeda," he said.

Syria's conflict erupted in March 2011 with widespread protests against the regime, but it has since morphed into a multi-front war that has left 320,000 people dead.

The US military has said coalition air strikes in Iraq and Syria had "unintentionally" killed 484 civilians, but observers say the number is far higher.

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Sometimes, downsizing pays off. After working as a postdoctoral researcher at large institutions including the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Oregon in Eugene, evolutionary biologist Helene Morlon now runs her own laboratory at the Ecole Normale Superieure (ENS), a small college tucked into central Paris.

Morlon is one of only seven principal investigators in the ecology and evolution section; Berkeley, by comparison, lists nearly 70 faculty members in its analogous integrative-biology department. Her section might be tiny, but Morlon maintains a global network of collaborators that keeps her connected. She also has no shortage of visitors, whether for a long stint in the lab or a quick conference talk. It's easy, she says. Even if we give them an economy ticket, they come because it's Paris. Credit: Adapted from Yuoak/Getty Images

The ENS is ranked by the London-based Times Higher Education as one of the best small universities (defined as having fewer than 5,000 students) in the world. But in common with all such institutions, its size is both a help and a hindrance. Researchers at small universities have fewer colleagues down the hall for conversation or collaboration, and this can lead to a sense of detachment in their field. On the other hand, it forces them out of their intellectual comfort zones. Morlon says that she has much more contact with colleagues in other disciplines than she ever had at a large university. I've never before been to so many genomic and neurobiology talks, she says.

Scientists who are considering employment at small institutions will also need to modify their expectations when applying for large grants and setting timelines for producing publications. They must also take a highly focused, hands-on approach to building collaborations and dealing with lab and administrative tasks that researchers at larger institutions can usually delegate.

Still, for many (see 'Finding your niche'), small is the right fit. At Lincoln University in Christchurch  the smallest in New Zealand, with roughly 2,000 full-time students  environmental chemist Brett Robinson has learnt to rely on pluck and ingenuity to overcome a relative lack of resources. At a small institution, we don't necessarily have all of the equipment or perhaps even the expertise that a large university would have, he says. You have to find new ways of doing things instead of throwing up your hands and giving up. You need a can-do attitude.

That spirit became essential after an earthquake shook the campus in 2011, causing extensive damage to the university. We operate under a tighter financial space because we have fewer students to support basic services, he says. We don't have the economies of scale. That makes us more vulnerable in a crisis. After rounds of staff cuts in the aftermath of the quake, the university now seems to be financially stable enough to survive and move forward, Robinson says.

Where on-campus alliances or support are lacking, outside connections become crucial. Nic Bury, an aquatic toxicologist, recently moved from King's College London (where more than 27,600 students were enrolled in 2016) to the University of Suffolk (total enrolment about 5,000), in the small UK town of Ipswich. I've had a lot of collaborations over the years, and I'll need to keep those alive, he says.

Robinson also relies on his networks to maintain connections with researchers at larger, more prominent organizations. A lot of my collaborations are with European institutions, including ETH Zurich and the Institute of Soil Science in Vienna, he says. Some scientists at small institutions appreciate what they feel is a more laid-back culture than might prevail at a large university. Bury relocated to Suffolk partly for family reasons, but he is also comfortable with its environment. 

Yet the security of Suffolk comes with some sacrifice, particularly to his research programme. He anticipates teaching three or four courses every term, a load that will make it impossible to keep up the research schedule he's been used to. At King's College, I had five projects running at a time, he says. I'm going to have to cut that down to one or two.

Researchers at small institutions can also feel uneasy about their ability to win competitive grants. Karl Johnson, a neuroscientist at Pomona College in Claremont, California, says that his grants are consistently rejected. Pomona, a 4-year liberal-arts college, has an enrolment of about 1,600. I keep getting turned down in the preliminary stages, he says. He suspects that the size of US liberal-arts colleges  enrolment is below 5,000 for each of the top 100 such institutions, as ranked by US News and World Report  puts them at a funding disadvantage. He acknowledges that his lab could never handle a big, complicated project, but he also feels that his ideas are worth funding. And without grant money, he can't afford the experiments that could validate his concepts and justify more funding. Once you're out of the grant cycle, it's very hard to get back in, he says.

Bury shares these concerns. Scientists at larger institutions, which can support complex, high-profile projects, have an advantage when applying for European Research Council (ERC) grants, he thinks. He plans to seek money from other sources, but he's still thinking big. He has applied for a grant from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, a major governmental funding organization in the United Kingdom. Researchers at small institutions devote a lot of time to teaching, both in and outside the classroom. Credit: Linda Davidson/TWP/Getty

But researchers from larger institutions don't necessarily have better luck winning ERC grants, according to the organization's most recently compiled data, covering 200713. The ERC doesn't track overall success rates for smaller institutions, but many such places have a strong record of winning grants.

The ENS won 15 grants out of 47 submissions over that period, a success rate of 31.9%. The Research Institute of Molecular Pathology in Vienna supports 200 scientists in 15 labs, but those scientists enjoyed a 71% success rate  the highest of any institution with at least 10 grant recipients. By comparison, the overall success rate for ERC applications was just over 10%. The council notes that it funds researchers at more than 600 universities and research centres of widely varying size. The ERC is able to find excellence wherever it is and to offer opportunities to thousands of researchers regardless of the profile of their organizations, says Jean-Pierre Bourguignon, the council's president.

Researchers at small US universities have some specialized funding options. The US National Science Foundation (NSF), for instance, provides Research in Undergraduate Institutions grants to colleges that don't offer graduate degrees. The NSF funded 132 such grants in fiscal year 2015, at an average of roughly US$110,000 each. NSF values the research and education proposals it receives from faculty at all types of academic institutions, says Suzi Iacono, head of the NSF Office of Integrative Activities. The participation of researchers at different types of schools brings new perspectives, research approaches and ideas to the scientific community.

Still, scientists at smaller institutions don't always require a steady stream of grants to keep their labs running. Like many of his colleagues, Johnson operates his lab on a bare-bones budget. I'm happy with my research productivity, he says. He works on Drosophila flies, which don't need a lot of expensive upkeep. And because Pomona is an undergraduate institution, he doesn't have to pay salaries to graduate students. Instead, he staffs his lab with undergraduates who, although short on experience, are long on enthusiasm.

I'm teaching, and I'm at the bench. A lot of people at major research institutions don't set foot in the lab any more.

But the absence of a larger lab team also means fewer hands to help out. Joshua Sandquist, a cellular biologist at Grinnell College, an undergraduate liberal-arts college in Iowa, says he's extremely busy, largely because he lacks people who can help him with mundane tasks such as performing statistical analyses or procuring lab supplies. It's not everybody's priority to get your lab up and running, he says. He will have two undergraduate students in his lab this summer, and hopes that one will stick around once the autumn semester starts.

He has, however, been able to avoid one of the more odious aspect of scientific life: grant writing. My institution doesn't require it, he says (although in 2014, he did win an NSF Major Research Instrumentation grant that allowed him to buy an infrared scanner to detect proteins). He thinks that his time is best spent on teaching and whatever research he can afford. If you do win a grant, you're left with a bunch of work that you promised to do that you have to squeeze into your teaching, Sandquist says.

Indeed, small US liberal-arts colleges generally emphasize teaching above all else. If you don't love teaching, you're going to be pretty miserable here, Johnson says. He spends 713 hours in class every week, and that's just a part of the load, which can include assembling a syllabus and selecting textbooks; developing lectures and lab sessions; and assigning and marking exams, papers and lab reports. A lot of teaching takes place outside of the classroom, he says. And for Sandquist, even when he's in the lab, his highest priority is not necessarily churning out data and papers to further his own research career. At a liberal-arts school, you're using your lab to train future scientists, he says.

Over the years, Johnson has given several presentations to early-career scientists about life as a small-school researcher, often as part of a panel on 'alternative' careers. Some scientists see this as a non-traditional career, he says. But it's funny. I'm more traditional than someone at an R1 [top research] school. I'm teaching, and I'm at the bench. A lot of people at major research institutions don't set foot in the lab any more.

Some researchers might once have viewed small universities as a 'plan B' in case they couldn't land a job at a big-name institution. But that idea needs an update. We get more than 200 applications for every faculty position, Johnson says. With so many applicants, Pomona and similar institutions can afford to be picky. Increasingly, they are looking for people who fit the small-school mould. It's another example of specialization in science. Young researchers should already be thinking about what size workplace would suit them best.
Since 2015, Terry Hughes has monitored coral bleaching  a result of rising ocean temperatures  at Australia's Great Barrier Reef. When reefs bleach, they expel crucial algae and can die. Hughes describes how, as director of the Australian Research Council's Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies in Townsville, he is trying to save the reef, vital for marine life.

What have the past two years been like?

Credit: ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies/Andrew Rankin It's been a whirlwind. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Australian Bureau of Meteorology have each developed near-real-time maps to forecast the likelihood of mass bleaching. We saw it in 1998 and 2002. We knew by May 2015 that there could be a third event. The National Coral Bleaching task force  consisting of 300 researchers from universities and government agencies  formed in November 2015 to coordinate research into a potential third mass bleaching. We booked research stations, vessels and aeroplanes. I spent March to April 2016 and this past March aerially surveying the bleaching along the Great Barrier Reef.

Was aerial surveillance a risky approach?

Yes. That's why we also put 100 divers in the water in March and April 2016, who confirmed that our scoring of the extent of bleaching was highly accurate. We published a paper on that data  featured on the cover of the 16 March Nature issue (T. P. Hughes et al. Nature 543, 373377; 2017)  and then, two days after its publication, we boarded an aeroplane to assess coral bleaching for the second year in a row.

Can you publish findings before the next field season?

No. The back-to-back bleaching we are now seeing has overtaken our capacity to keep up.

What is the most difficult part of the research?

The uncertainty. We hoped that a bleaching event wouldn't happen, and there was a period in 2015 when the forecast said that it was unlikely. But that was followed by a period of rapid heating, so we had warning of only 23 weeks before we needed to conduct reef-bleaching surveys. Luckily, I had kept the bookings for the boats, so it was easy to fire up again.

How do you have such flexibility?

I direct a Centre of Excellence, a consortium of four universities funded by the Australian Research Council, equivalent to the US National Science Foundation. Our graduate programme has 210 PhD students. Because we have a seven-year block of funding, we can set up ambitious projects.

What was your best move as director?

Since 2005, when we established the centre, I've hired more than 100 postdocs. And I've hired more social scientists and people who work on the dynamics of institutions, governance, legal frameworks and international treaties. Knowing everything about the biology of coral reefs won't improve their governance.

Does the dire situation affect student interest?

Most of our PhD students and postdocs come from abroad. People are galvanized by this problem and the urgent need to address it. Still, it has the potential to be overwhelming. Many PhD projects have been disrupted by the heavy reef mortality.

Is there an upside?

It is, dare I say it, a research opportunity. I don't want to come across as taking advantage of ecological disaster, but we are learning a lot. In Australia, we have a lot of science around bleaching events but lack science-based policy responses. The elephant in the room is climate change.

Do you focus more on outreach to the public or to policymakers?

Both. We routinely give government briefings. In addition, when the National Coral Bleaching task force that I formed began gathering data, we put out press releases and blogposts about bleaching. We've taken some flak over releasing findings that haven't yet been peer reviewed. But we will continue to put out important preliminary results that we feel the government or the public should know about.
U.S. President Donald Trump recently announced that he is leaving the Paris Agreement. Trump thinks that the budget allotted for climate change could be used for something else.

The recent announcement brought distraught among anti-climate change lobbyists. Billionaire and tech titan Elon Musk already warned that he will leave the president's council as an advisor if President Trump leaves the Paris Agreement.

"We're getting out," U.S. President Donald Trump announced. "But we will start to negotiate and we will see if we can make a deal that's fair. If we can, that's great. If we can't, that's fine."

This did not sit right with other leaders, including Musk himself. Right after the announcement was made, the SpaceX and Tesla CEO tweeted his disappointment and confirmed his earlier warning to leave the council.

"Am departing presidential councils. Climate change is real. Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world," Elon Musk said in a Tweet.

Before Trump's presidency, experts say that Musk's success is fragile if he won. This is the reason why Musk's agreement to join Trump's advisory council came as a surprise to many. However, the partnership and affiliation were cut short after President Trump withdrew from the Paris Agreement.

Many industry leaders expressed their disappointment and their renewed commitment to fight climate change with or without the help of President Trump. Disney's Robert Iger also resigned from the Presidential Council after the President Trump's withdrawal from the Paris Agreement.

In another tweet, it seems like Musk is not only leaving the administration's side but he's also debunking what President Trump previously said about climate change. The tweet links to an article that discusses China's plans to produce clean energy as much as the U.S. in 2030.
Police tracked down and detained a couple who allegedly abandoned a 5-year-old child near the San Francisco Zoo on Monday, according to the San Francisco Police Department.

Police said Tuesday that the mother was seen pushing the child out of a stationary car next to the zoo around 6:20 p.m. Monday, near the intersection of Great Highway and Sloat Boulevard, and then driving away. The man was seen leaving the scene on foot and may not have been aware the child had been left there, police said.

A 1-year-old infant was still in the car with the woman, police said.

Police tracked down the man Tuesday evening and said he was cooperating with the investigation. He is the father of the 1-year-old, and the woman is the mother of both children. The father directed police to a location in Oakland where the infant was under the care of a babysitter.

Later Tuesday night, the mother surrendered to investigators and was being questioned.

The abandoned child was not injured, police said. Sources told NBC Bay Area the child is from Arkansas. Both children were in the custody of Child Protective Services on Tuesday night, police said.

Police spokeswoman Giselle Talkoff said paramedics from the city's fire department witnessed the incident near the zoo and called police.

People stopping by nearby Ocean Beach on Tuesday were stunned to hear about the incident.

"You would never think anybody would drop or leave a kid off here, but Im guessing if they did, maybe they thought because theres a lot of people the baby would be found or the kid would be found," San Francisco resident Angel Padilla said. "Its just an awful thing to hear."

Police said late Tuesday it was still an active investigation. Anyone with information related to the incident should contact the SFPD Anonymous Tip Line at 415-575-4444 or text a tip to TIP411 with SFPD at the beginning of the message.


Two men were wounded late Tuesday night in a police-involved shooting after allegedly firing on officers and leading them on a chase in Chicago's North Side, police said.

The officers were in the 2900 block of North Newland in the Rogers Park neighborhood just before midnight when they said they saw two men in a grey-colored sedan fire shots in their direction, hitting another vehicle.

The officers chased the sedan through an alley where they got into an "armed confrontation." One officer fired at the men, striking a man in the passenger seat, Chicago police said in a statement. Police initially said a second man was shot by police but later said that man suffered an "impact head injury during the course of the incident."

The two men were taken to area hospitals in critical condition and the officers were transported to Rush Medical Center in stable condition, though Chicago police said they were not injured in the incident.

Police said two weapons were recovered from the scene.

The incident marks the 4th time officers have been fired on while on-duty since Friday.

Police said the shooting is under investigation and the officers involved will be placed on routine adminsitrative duties for 30 days.
A Chinese businessman was sentenced Tuesday to 10 years in federal prison for attempting to sell batteries for an anti-aircraft and miscellaneous military gear to a Peruvian terrorist organization, the U.S. Attorney's office announced.

Fifty-year-old Guan Ying Li, also known as Henry Li, of Hong Kong, pleaded guilty in 2014 to attempting to provide material support and resources to Shining Path, a terrorist organization aiming to overthrow the Peruvian government and replace it was a Maoist socialist system, according to the U.S. Attorneys office.

In 2011, Li brokered multiple deals, prosecutors said, with a Chicago-area businessman to sell Shining Path military gear knowing that the equipment was to be used to kill Peruvian and U.S. government personnel. The Chicago businessman, unbeknownst to Li, was actually and undercover law enforcement agent, officials said.

Li acquired and sold five thermal batteries designed for use with a portable air-defense system MANPAD, prosecutors said. The MANPAD system launches surface-to-air missiles that would have allowed Shining Path members to shoot down helicopters. According to Lis plea agreement, Li caused the batteries to be shipped from Hong Kong to an address in Central America given by the undercover agent.

Li also sold eight paratrooper assault harnesses, eight paratrooper backpacks, eight shovels, two VHF radios and four night-vision systems, the plea agreement says, according to the U.S. Attorneys office. The address the undercover agent provided for these items was located in Elmhurst, Ill.

Attorneys for Li, the Chicago Sun-Times reports, citing a sentencing memo, said the otherwise law-abiding man wouldnt have brokered the deal if authorities hadnt manipulatively engineered him.

U.S. District Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow imposed the 120-month prison term at a sentencing hearing in federal court in Chicago.

Li, who is a graduate from the University of North Carolina, agreed to cooperate in any matter in which he is called upon
Kuwait's Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad Al-Sabah arrived in Qatar on Wednesday after talks with Saudi and Emirati leaders aimed at resolving a Gulf diplomatic crisis.

The official KUNA news agency said the emir was received in Doha by Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani.

Earlier in the day Sheikh Sabah held talks with Emirati leaders, after meeting on Tuesday with Saudi King Salman in Jeddah over the crisis facing the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council.

Saudi Arabia and allies including the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt on Monday cut diplomatic ties with fellow GCC state Qatar over claims Doha supports extremism.

Qatar strongly denies the allegations.

The Saudi-led alliance also imposed economic blockade over the small gas-rich state which included cutting off the only land exit for Qatar.

They called on Qatar to change its policies and to halt its alleged support to extremist groups including the Muslim Brotherhood and the Palestinian Hamas movement.

Kuwait, also a GCC member, did not join its neighbours in severing ties with Qatar.

The Kuwaiti emir played a pivotal role in mediating a compromise in a 2014 diplomatic dispute between Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Gulf states.

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U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow is expected to issue a ruling Tuesday on whether the health care bills for Medicaid patients move to the head of the line for payment as the Illinois budget impasse continues.

Many of the state's bills are paid through various consent decrees, but Illinois budget backlog has grown to reach more than $14.3 billion.

In Illinois, doctors who serve Medicaid patients are often reimbursed through Managed Care Organizations, or MCOs. But those MCOs are not legally required to pay health care professionals if they are not receiving payments from the state.

Therein lies the problem  if doctors and other health care professionals are not being reimbursed, theres a growing concern that they will stop seeing Medicaid patients.

More than two dozen health care providers and insurance companies have asked for a federal ruling.

"All we're asking for today is that the consent decree takes precedent over pension obligations," attorney Thomas Yates, executive director of the Legal Council for Health Justice said.

David Chizewer, one of the other attorneys unable to negotiate a settlement with the state, asked "who has to suffer?"

It's estimated that 85 percent of the Medicaid bills are unfounded since July 2015 when the budget stalemate began.

Lawyers representing the Illinois Attorney General's office claim that the state is paying its bills, but "just not as prompt as the plaintiffs would like."

During Tuesdays hearing, Judge Lefkow said Illinois has "an insolvency situation," comparing the state's finances with bankruptcy  but she was reluctant to tell State Comptroller Susana Mendoza which bills to prioritize.

Mendoza has suggested that if the court rules in favor of the MCOs, that would be the tipping point that would prevent her from paying state lawmakers and other bills.
A tick bite may have led to the death of a young Indiana girl who fell dangerously ill in a matter of days last week, family members said.

WTHR reports that 2-year-old Kenley Ratliff, of Plainfield, died Sunday after her family suspected she was infected with Rocky Mountain Spotted fever following a tick bite during a camping trip.

Family members said it took only one week for Kenleys health to deteriorate.

Within less than like five days, family friend Monica Kirby, who was asked to speak on the grieving familys behalf, told WTHR. Her little body couldnt handle it.

First, Kenley tested positive for strep throat. But the young girls fever continued to climb to nearly 104 degrees.

They just couldnt break it, Kirby told the news outlet.

Kenley died at Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis Sunday.

The family had said physicians suspected Kenley was suffering from Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, but confirmation from testing could take up to two weeks to complete.

The CDC reports Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever can be fatal if not treated in the first few days of symptoms.

Symptoms include fever, headache, abdominal pain, vomitting and muscle pain. In many cases, a rash may also develop, but that can take days to appear, if at all, health officials said.

The progression of the disease varies greatly, according to the CDCs website. Patients who are treated early may recover quickly on outpatient medication, while those who experience a more severe course may require intravenous antibiotics, prolonged hospitalization or intensive care.

Health officials note that in children, symptoms including a cough, sore throat and diarrhea may be seen, which can lead to misdiagnosis.

Kenleys death comes amid numerous alerts from health departments across the Midwest warning of tickborne illnesses, particularly as warm weather approaches.

The Illinois Department of Public Health warned residents Wednesday about a rise in ticks across the area.

A bite from a tick can cause anywhere from mild to severe illness, and even death in some cases, so it is important to protect yourself against bites, Director Nirav D. Shah said in a statement.

The DuPage County Health Department sent out a similar alert.

Health officials recommend the following tips for avoiding tick bites:

 Wear light-colored, protective clothinglong-sleeved shirts, pants, boots or sturdy shoes, and a head covering. Treat clothing with products containing 0.5 percent permethrin.

 Apply insect repellent that contains 20 percent or more DEET, picaridin, or IR3535 on exposed skin for protection that lasts several hours.

 Walk in the center of trails so grass, shrubs, and weeds do not brush against you.

 Check yourself, children, other family members, and pets for ticks every two to three hours.

 Remove any tick promptly by grasping it with tweezers, as close to the skin as possible and gently, but firmly, pulling it straight out. Wash your hands and the tick bite site with soap and water.

For information on how to remove a tick if you find one attached to your skin, click here.

A GoFundMe page has been set up to help Kenleys family cover medical costs and funeral arrangements. As of Wednesday, more than $5,100 had been raised.
Connecticut lawmakers have passed a bill that creates a new regulatory system for transportation network companies such as Uber and Lyft and also modifies some taxi and livery service regulations.

HB 7126 lays out everything from market entry requirements to service standards, insurance requirements, hiring practices, and driver requirements.

The state Senate voted in favor of the bill Tuesday 28 to 8. The House had previously approved it.

Lyft spokesman Scott Coriell released the following statement on the bill:

"This bill will allow ridesharing services like Lyft to expand in Connecticut, which will bring increased transportation options, earning potential, and economic activity to individuals and communities around the state. We'd especially like to thank Senators Larson, Leone, Boucher and Linares for their hard work to get this bill through the Senate, and we look forward to the Governor signing it into law."

Uber General Manager Matthew Powers also released as statement:

"Today's bipartisan action by the Connecticut Senate is a monumental step forward to maintaining safe, affordable and reliable transportation for riders and flexible economic opportunities for drivers. Uber looks forward to continuing to work with Governor Malloy in anticipation of the signing of this important bill, which would make Connecticut the 42nd state to enact comprehensive ridesharing legislation."

During public testimony regarding the bill in March, Ace Taxi Service and Ace Transportation owner Michael Olschafskie expressed concerns that the legislation would make it difficult for traditional companies to compete with the new model of the transportation network companies.

Some amendments were made to the original bill to allow more flexibility for these traditional models.

The bill still needs to be approved by the governor.
A West Hartford man was arrested on drug charges after State Police troopers found cocaine in a vehicle a traffic stop in Tolland Tuesday, according to state police.

Connecticut State Police said they pulled over a car that was weaving in and out of traffic on Interstate 84 in Tolland around 8:50 p.m. During the traffic stop troopers became suspicious because the driver had multiple cell phones that were ringing or receiving text messages constantly.

A K9 unit was called in and indicated narcotics in the vehicle. The driver, identified as 31-year-old Aldo Elescano, was arrested and charged with possession of cocaine, possession of cocaine with intent to sell and several traffic violations.

He was held on a $25,000 bond and is due in court on Wednesday.
Federal prosecutors in East Texas say a Dallas man has been indicted for smuggling dead hummingbirds into the U.S. from Mexico.

A federal grand jury this week indicted 53-year-old Carlos Delgado Rodriguez on charges alleging he smuggled about 60 of the birds into Texas over the course of a year.

Authorities say Rodriguez intended to sell the dead birds but it wasn't immediately clear who would be interested in purchasing them.

Prosecutors say Rodriguez violated state and federal laws, including ones that prohibit the smuggling or sale of migratory birds.

If convicted, he faces up to 20 years in federal prison.
Freshman Texas State Rep. Victoria Neave (D-Dallas) told police "I love you and I will fight for you" as she was arrested on suspicion of driving while intoxicated following a single-vehicle crash in Dallas Tuesday night.

Dallas police said Neave, 36, drove her BMW into a tree near the intersection of Abrams Parkway and La Vista Drive at about 11:30 p.m.

When officers arrived, they said Neave was unsteady, had blood shot eyes and that her breath smelled of alcohol.

Texas State Rep. Victoria Neave is arrested on suspicion of driving while intoxicated after a single-vehicle crash in Dallas Tuesday night.

According to police, Neave's speech was slurred during field sobriety tests in which she repeatedly requested her attorney while invoking her 5th amendment rights. She refused a request for a blood specimen, so police obtained a blood warrant and a sample was taken at Baylor Medical Center in Dallas.

The representative was arrested on suspicion of driving while intoxicated, a Class B misdemeanor, and booked into the Dallas County Jail at 3:38 a.m., police said. She was released Wednesday morning after posting $500 bond.

Police said Neave has no prior DWI convictions.

Wednesday afternoon, Neave issued a public apology in a video published to Facebook.

Texas State Rep. Victoria Neave (D-Dallas) issued a public apology in a video published to Facebook after she was arrested on suspicion of driving while intoxicated.

Neave represents District 107, which includes eastern portions of Dallas, Mesquite and Garland. She was sworn into her first two-year term in the Texas House in January.

During the 85th Legislative session, which ended last month, the freshman representative staged a four-day fast against the so-called "sanctuary cities" bill signed by Gov. Greg Abbott on May 7.

She also sponsored a bill asking drivers renewing their licenses to donate $1 or more to help fund the testing of thousands of rape kits awaiting analysis. Texas has about 3,800 untested kits at a state lab and thousands more in cities such as Dallas and Austin -- processing a kit costs between $500 and $2,000. The bill was passed and signed by Gov. Greg Abbott on May 29; it goes into effect Sept. 1.



On May 29, the Texas House Democratic Caucus named Neave Freshman of the Year.



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Unsurprisingly, news of the Representative's arrest drew condemnation from Republicans and calls for support from Democrats.



Phillip Huffines, Chairman of the Dallas County Republican Party, said "Dallas County doesn't need representatives who are break the law and endanger our children and the public by driving drunk. Dallas County, and House District 107 must demand better. Our focus is on getting Republicans elected throughout the County and we will be actively supporting the Republican nominee for this seat in 2018."



Huffines plans a run for political office in 2018, hoping to win the District 8 seat and join his brother Don Huffines in the State Senate.



Dallas County Democratic Party Chairman Carol Donovan also issued a statement saying, "We understand, and are thankful, that no other person was involved or injured in the accident. Nevertheless, we look forward to speaking with her regarding the facts of her case and to insure she is alright. We wish her the very best and pray for her swift recovery so that she can resume her strong representation of the citizens of House District 107."

Neave is a partner in the Dallas law firm Neave & Scott, with attorney Mark Scott, specializing in personal and business litigation. According to a bio on the firm's website, Neave grew up in Pleasant Grove and decided to attend law school after becoming involved in civil rights advocacy groups at a young age. After graduation, she worked as a litigation attorney for an international firm before launching her own practice.
A North Texas mother has been charged with capital murder two years after her son died from abuse.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports that the May 31 indictment accuses Jessica Langlais of causing the death of 2-year-old Adrian Langlais by striking him with or against a hard surface, injury to a child and failing to seek medical attention for the boy.

Jail records show Langlais was booked into the Tarrant County Jail on Monday with bail set at $500,000.

A hospital examination revealed Adrian had severe head trauma, multiple skull fractures and bleeding on the brain, and bruising and swelling on his face.

A month after Adrian's death, Langlais' then boyfriend, Christian Tyrrell, was arrested and accused of inflicting fatal injuries on the boy. He's scheduled for a hearing in August.

Mark Daniel, Langlais' court-appointed defense attorney, declined to comment to the Associated Press.

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Information from: Fort Worth Star-Telegram
An assailant wielding a hammer attacked Paris police guarding Notre Dame Cathedral Tuesday, crying "This is for Syria" before being shot and wounded by officers outside one of France's most popular tourist sites, authorities said.

At least 600 people were blocked inside the iconic 12th century church while police first secured the streets around it, then combed the pews while visitors sat with their hands raised for the check. Others fled in panic from the sprawling esplanade outside the cathedral.

The assault was the latest act of violence targeting security forces at high-profile sites in France, which remains under a state of emergency after a string of Islamic extremist attacks.

Interior Minister Gerard Collomb told reporters that a police officer in a three-person patrol was lightly wounded in the attack, and the assailant was shot and wounded by a fellow officer. The attacker's condition was being evaluated.

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"A person came up behind the police officers, armed with a hammer, and started to hit the police officer," he said.

The man cried "This is for Syria!" but said nothing else indicating a motive or a link to extremist groups, Collomb said. No group immediately claimed responsibility, and Collomb said he appeared to have acted alone.

A hammer and kitchen knives were found on the assailant, as well as a student identity card indicating he was from Algeria, Collomb said. He said authorities were working to verify the card's authenticity.

"We have passed from a very sophisticated terrorism to a terrorism where any instrument can be used for attacks," the interior minister said.

The head of the Municipal Police Defense Union, Cedric Michel, said the attacker was about 40 years old. A police official from another union confirmed the age of 40. The second official asked to remain anonymous to discuss the investigation.

The incident happened around 4:20 p.m. (1420 GMT). A large number of police cars descended on the Ile de Cite island in the Seine River, where the celebrated cathedral is located.

Authorities told people to stay away from the area and some took refuge inside the cathedral. People inside Notre Dame, the nearby Sainte-Chapelle, a nearby chapel noted for its stained glass, and area bars and cafes were told to stay inside while the police operation was underway.

Among the several hundred people ordered to remain inside the cathedral was former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nancy Soderberg. She was admiring the church's stained glass windows when a French announcement came on urging those inside to stay calm as police dealt with an incident outside.

The visitors got nervous when they were told soon after that the doors were closing and everyone had to stay inside, Soderberg told The Associated Press from inside Notre Dame.

"It was really scary, we had no idea if there were any accomplices inside," she said.

They were being released Tuesday evening one by one after careful police searches.

Witnesses described a dramatic police operation in the tourist-filled area.

Images on social media showed people inside the cathedral with their hands up.

"It sounded like two gunshots went off and then I saw crowds fleeing. The police responded right away," said tourist Abigail Miller, who is from Minnesota, on MSNBC.

Paris has been the target of several such attacks in recent years, most recently at the Louvre in February. A man wielding two machetes was shot and seriously wounded by police; the head of the Paris police force said the attacker "wished to carry out a terrorist incident," NBC News reported.

Locked inside #notre dame cathedral in #paris while police investigate attack outside against a policeman. All calm pic.twitter.com/Z4B8wUzPTV  Nancy Soderberg (@nancysoderberg) June 6, 2017

Lawrence Langner, a 73-year-old American visiting the neighborhood just across the Seine River from the cathedral, told The Associated Press that he suddenly heard a commotion and two detonations like gunshots.

Journalist David Metreau, who said his office overlooks the square that fronts Notre Dame, tweeted that there were two blasts that sounded like shots. Looking down from his office, he saw a man inert on the square.

"The police didn't seem interested in him at the beginning," Metreau said. "I thought he was dead."

Officers then checked the man's pulse, while medics eventually came and took him away on a stretcher.

Soderberg said those inside the cathedral remained calm and orderly throughout despite not knowing what was happening, though "everyone was very quiet and very scared" when police came in to check the cathedral's pews row by row.

She tweeted a photo from inside the Notre Dame showing those locked inside putting their arms in the air as instructed by police.

"We will remember this for the rest of our lives," she said. "Now everyone just wants to go home."

The attack came the day before new President Emmanuel Macron unveils his first efforts against terrorism, which Collomb called the president's top priority.

Paris remains under high security after a string of Islamic extremist attacks in recent years, including several targeting police officers and security personnel.

The Cathedral of Notre Dame of Paris, in English Our Lady of Paris, is one of the most famous of the Gothic cathedrals of the Middle Ages and is enormously popular with tourists. It is the setting for Victor Hugo's novel, "Notre-Dame de Paris."

It stands on the eastern end of the Ile de la Cite, built on the ruins of two earlier churches. The foundation stone was laid by Pope Alexander III in 1163; the choir, and other sections added until the mid-1300s, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Angela Charlton, John Leicester and Sylvie Corbet contributed to this story from Paris. Sylvia Hui contributed from London.
While President Donald Trump has said his visit to Saudi Arabia influenced four key Middle Eastern states to sever their diplomatic ties with Qatar, tensions with this tiny nation in the Arab Gulf preceded Trump's trip to the region, NBC News reported.



Officials from Egypt and the United Arab Emirates  two of the countries that explled Qatari diplomats  believe that the small monarchy has been providing support to groups that are seen as radicalist or extremist, including Hamas and the Taliban.

That would make the nation's meddling in others' affairs a destabilizing force in the region, and has led to the first siege by Gulf states on their own.

It began when the official Qatari news agency issued a series of controversial statements attributed to the country's ruler in May, which it later claimed came as the result of hacking, that criticized Trump, embraced both Hamas and Israel and praised Iran.



Although President Donald Trump is saying his visit to Saudi Arabia influenced four key Middle Eastern states to sever their diplomatic ties with Qatar, tensions with this tiny nation in the Arab Gulf have preceded Trump's trip to the region.

NBC News reported that officials from Egypt and the United Arab Emiratestwo of the countries that explled Qatari diplomatsbelieve that Qatar has been providing support to groups that are seen as radicalist or extremist, including Hamas, the Taliban, and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Moreover, the country has carried out a paradoxical foreign policy, engaging with populist revolutionary forces in Tunisia and Libya but backing establishment powers in other Arab Spring countries like Yemen.

When the official Qatar News Agency issued a series of controversial statements attributed to the country's rulerwhich it later claimed came as the result of hackingthese statements were picked up and treated as news in neighboring countries, fueling opposition to Qatar.
Fired FBI Director James Comey, set to appear Thursday before a Senate committee investigating Russian election interference, will testify that President Donald Trump said to him at a private dinner: "I need loyalty, I expect loyalty."

That bit of testimony was part of a prepared statement Comey released Wednesday, a day before he is set to appear before the Senate intelligence committee.

While many lawmakers told reporters they hadn't yet read the statement, some reacted almost immediately on social media.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said the "whole thing is crazy." Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., tweeted, "Do they think we are going to allow the Trump Administration to muzzle the only people who can offer the American people the truth they deserve?"

GOP senators initially had more measured reactions. In a statement released by the Republican National Committee, Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said: "President Trump was right. Director Comey's testimony reconfirmed what the president has been saying all along  he was never under investigation."

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, told NBC News he believes both Comey and Trump are men of integrity. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said the statement was unsurprising in that it matches what has already been publicly reported.
"Fighters from Islamic state attacked Khomeini's shrine and the Iranian parliament in Tehran," the news agency said.

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Claire Lewis, 13, has many interests like other teens her age, including playing the piano, clogging and watching television. But unlike other 13-year-olds, she also has an Associate of Arts degree.

In May, she became the youngest person ever to graduate from Palomar College, a community college in San Marcos, California. And she did it with a 4.0 GPA, according to her mother.

Lewis' parents are professionals in information technology, and realized when she was nine years old she wasn't being challenged in school.

"My mom didn't know how to home school me, so I went to Palomar College to do assessment testing and I did so well they let me take classes there," Lewis said.

She started attending at age 10. She received a general studies degree with an emphasis in science and math. She took biology, calculus, geography and geology to obtain her degree.

"I love math, it's my favorite," Lewis said.

Lewis is also a classical pianist, listing Chopin as one of her favorite composers to play.

"I want to get my undergraduate degree in piano and then I want to be a orchestral conductor when I grow up," Lewis said.

Lewis plans to take a year off and then start applying to music conservatories for school. Her parents will move with her where ever she goes, since she is too young to live on her own for now.
A Taiwanese citizen has been charged in connection with the smuggling of abalone and sea cucumber in February 2016, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of California.

Wei Wei Wang, 37, who lives in New York, was arraigned Tuesday. Wang was charged along with 48-year-old Alan Ren.

According to the indictment, Wang and Ren smuggled 250 pounds of illegal seafood from Mexico--including 83 pounds of black abalone and 172 pounds of sea cucumber.

Black abalone, found off the coasts of California and Baja California in Mexico, are listed as "endangered" since 2009 under the Endangered Species Act.

Isostichopus fuscus, a type of sea cucumber, are protected under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). They can be found in the Eastern Pacific Ocean from Mexico to Ecuador.

Wang and Ren are facing charges of Conspiracy, Smuggling/Importation Contrary to Law, and Unlawful Importation of Wildlife.

Ren has not been arrested yet.
A woman who was arrested earlier this week after drugging a toddler with methamphetamines at a Berkeley park has a criminal history and was described as violent and mean-spirited by people acquainted with her.



Sayyadina Thomas, 36, was taken into custody Monday on suspicion of attempted homicide after she walked up to a 2-year-old boy at a playground at People's Park and placed something in his mouth, police said. She is scheduled to be arraigned Thursday, according to court documents.

An eyewitness who did not wish to be identified came face to face with the potentially deadly situation.

"He was playing with the nanny in the play yard," the witness said. "She just walked up to him a grabbed him, and she stuck her hands in his mouth."

After the boy's nanny checked his mouth and found nothing, she called UC police to report the incident, and officers and paramedics responded. Thomas initially was taken into custody for a psychiatric evaluation, but while en route to the holding facility, she told the paramedics that she had given the child methamphetamines, police said.

The boy was taken to UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital Oakland, where it was determined that the boy had indeed ingested methamphetamines, police said. The boy was recovering in the hospital Tuesday.

Park visitors who know Thomas describe her as mean-spirited and violent.

"She has mental issues," one visitor said Wednesday. "She's highly aggressive; she beats up elderly people."

NBC Bay Area learned Wednesday that she's no stranger to police. Court records show Thomas has been arrested or cited more than 20 times since 2002, with convictions for resisting a police officer and battery with serious bodily injury.

Nanny Pam Valenzuela cares for a 2-year-old herself. She said the attack is a wake-up call for nannies and parents alike.

"You never know who you can trust," she said. "You have be careful everywhere you go. I never let him out of my eyesight."



Neighbor Matt McBryan said he walks his dog in the area daily, but he rarely sees children playing at the playground.

"I know this isnt the cleanest place, not a good place to have your kids," he said.

Anyone with information about the crime should contact the University of California Police Department's Criminal Investigation Bureau at 510-642-0472 or 510-642-6760.
Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez defeated public interest attorney and fellow Democrat Robert Lee Ahn in Tuesday's special election in the 34th Congressional District.

Gomez, D-Eagle Rock, led 57.07-42.93 percent, 13,837-10,408 with 80 of 192 precincts reporting, 41.67 percent, according to figures released by the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk.

The special election was prompted by the appointment of then-Rep. Xavier Becerra as attorney general, succeeding Kamala Harris, who was elected to the Senate. Becerra endorsed Gomez, who said he hopes to "continue to build an inclusive and diverse country that values people from all walks of life."

Gomez said he ran "to fight" President Donald Trump.

"I've always believed that in times like these its important to run towards the fight and not away from it,'' Gomez told City News Service.

"From expanding paid family leave, to leading the nation in the fight against climate change, we've demonstrated that progressive values are achievable. In Congress, I will work to build a new progressive coalition that puts our values first."

Gomez concedes that the Affordable Care Act "was not perfect" but said he will fight to protect the gains made through the legislation. He has also called for immigration reform and vows to fight rollbacks by "climate change deniers."

Gomez promised the district's voters "that no matter what, I'll put their values first."

Gomez was born and raised in Southern California. He graduated from UCLA, then earned a master's degree in public policy at Harvard University.

Gomez was the political director of the United Nurses Association of California and worked with several other unions, and also worked in the offices of then-Councilman Mike Feuer and then-Rep. Hilda Solis. He was elected to the Assembly in 2012, and re-elected in 2014 and 2016.

Gomez topped the 24-candidate field in the April 4 primary, collecting roughly 25 percent of the vote, with Ahn second with 22 percent.

Because no candidate received a majority, Gomez and Ahn were forced into Tuesday's runoff.

The district stretches roughly from Koreatown in the west to the Long Beach (710) Freeway in the east and from the Santa Monica (10) Freeway in the south to the Ventura (134) Freeway in the north. It includes downtown Los Angeles, the Westlake district, Highland Park, Eagle Rock, Boyle Heights and Lincoln Heights.

Ahn, a Korean American, was looking to break through in a traditionally Latino district, saying there has not been a "Korean voice in Congress" for two decades, "and never from the Democratic Party." He painted himself as a political outsider not beholden to special interests.

A Los Angeles native, Ahn has a law degree from USC and once worked as a clerk for former District Attorney Ira Reiner before practicing law at a variety of Southland firms. he later joined his family's real estate and asset-management business.

Ahn was appointed to the city's Redistricting Commission in 2011 by then-Councilman Eric Garcetti, who later appointed Ahn to the city Planning Commission.

Ahn vowed to fight against efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act; to support investments in clean energy infrastructure; to resolve the nation's immigration visa backlog and to push for "humane immigration reform."
California may ban pet stores from selling dogs, cats and rabbits unless they are rescue animals under a bill passed by the state Assembly on May 30.

Lawmakers voted 44-6 to send the measure to the state Senate. The bill by Assemblyman Patrick O'Donnell aims to prevent California pet stores from selling animals bred in puppy mills and other mass-breeding operations. Such operations are primarily clustered in the Midwest and house animals in "disturbingly unsanitary and overcrowded conditions," the Long Beach Democrat said.

The bill, AB485, would allow California residents to purchase animals directly from breeders, where they have a better opportunity to see the living conditions of the animals. It would prohibit pet stores from selling dogs, cats and rabbits unless they were obtained from an animal shelter or nonprofit rescue organization. Supporters of the bill said the measure will also help unwanted animals find homes.

More than 30 cities and counties in the state have already restricted pet store sales of non-rescue animals. Several lawmakers representing cities and counties with those rules spoke in support of the measure.

Assemblyman Laura Friedman, a Democrat, said that when her city of Glendale passed a similar ordinance, the City Council didn't receive any complaints from pet stores but did see a decrease in the number of unwanted animals.

Republican Assemblyman Matthew Harper of Huntington Beach says the measure would hurt small pet shops. "Imposing this on local businesses, small businesses, I think is the wrong thing to do," he said.

He joined five fellow Republicans in voting against the measure. Both Republicans and Democrats supported the bill.

Pet stores and industry groups have registered in opposition to the bill and spoken against the measure. Pet store representatives said during a committee hearing on the measure earlier this month that local bans on non-rescue animal sales have harmed their businesses and a statewide ban would strain pet stores further.
The eastbound lanes of the 118 Freeway between Yosemite and Rocky Peak were closed Tuesday afternoon due to a brush fire in Ventura County.

The Ventura County Fire Department and the Los Angeles Fire Department were battling two small brush fires near Rocky Peak shortly after 3 p.m.

Smoke was visible from 5 miles out, according to the Ventura County Fire Department.

All lanes of the eastbound 118 were temporarily closed by the California Highway Patrol around 3:40 p.m. while officials battled the blaze.

The fire was 100 percent contained by 5 p.m.

No structures were threatened and no injuries were reported.

The freeway reopened around 5 p.m., but traffic was slow.
Pet microchipping led to a heartwarming reunion Tuesday for a Southern California family and their dog, who finally returned home seven years after she was stolen.

Kona, an 8-year-old pit bull, was dropped off by animal control at Ventura County Animal Services (VCAS) Saturday in Camarillo, where workers scanned her for a microchip implant that led to her owner, Shannon Pratt.

The last time Pratt and her family saw Kona was seven years ago when the then-1-year-old pit bull was stolen from their backyard in Ventura County, according to VCAS. The family has since moved to Bakersfield and Kona's collar was left behind.

Upon receiving the good news from VCAS, Pratt and her daughters drove to Ventura County to pick up Kona.



Tuesday's emotional reunion, which was streamed live on VCAS' Facebook, shows Pratt and her three daughters happy to be reunited with Kona.

"It's just the best feeling when the microchip scanner beeps," said VCAS director Tara Diller. "It means the pet has a microchip, and the chances of reuniting pets with their owners increases exponentially."

Even though a microchip implant dramatically increases the likelihood of locating a pet's owner, the vast majority of lost pets do not have these implants, according to VCAS spokesman Randy Friedman.

This is also true of the lost pets at the Camarillo Animal Shelter. Few animals there have microchips, making it difficult to locate owners and move animals out of the shelter. The Camarillo shelter currently offers shelter to 240 animals, almost 100 animals more than its intended 150-animal capacity. The shelter has been far over capacity since it became a "no-kill" facility in 2014, Friedman said.

[NATL] Unbelievable Animal Stories: Dog Befriends Abandoned Baby Giraffe

Microchip implants are the size of a grain of rice and last a lifetime, making them a "game changer" for lost pets, Friedman added.

Animal services officials especially urge owners to microchip their pets as July 4 nears. Friedman said that having a microchip implant will increase the chance that a pet will be returned if it gets lost after running from fireworks.

VCAS offers microchip implants for $10 at low-cost vaccination clinics that are held at different sites each month. Implants are offered for free for pets that were lost and have been returned to their owners.
A 64-year-old woman who was dragged across a Florida gas station parking lot as she tried to stop two purse thieves says she's lucky to be alive.

Patricia Coxe said she still finds it hard to watch surveillance video of Friday's incident.

"It scares me to death when I... see that video and realize what could have happened," Coxe said, choking back tears.

The grandmother said was pumping gas at the Southwest Ranches Shell gas station at Southwest 159th Avenue and Sheridan Street Friday morning when the robbery happened. Davie Police say two men pulled up alongside her car and smashed out the passenger window to steal her purse.

"I heard this loud kaboom, turned, saw the glass shattering in my car and saw a gentleman inside my car removing my purse," Coxe said.

Surveillance video shows Coxe running after the suspect as he jumps into the waiting car. As reached inside to grab her purse, the man closed the car's door on Coxe's arm, trapping it in the vehicle and dragging her across the parking lot.

"I was screaming 'let me go, let me go, let me go!,'" Coxe said, as the man held onto her arms. "I had my phone in my hand and he was twisting my hand to get that phone."

Video captured footage of the getaway car driving off with the grandmother dangling from the window. Coxe said the man finally released her after the driver told him to let her go. The suspects got away with her purse, medical bag and cell phone.

"At no time did I think when I went to grab my purse that I would be in the situation I got in to," she said.



The incident left Coxe's arms horribly bruised and swollen.

Police are searching for the two suspects and their vehicle, described as a late model silver Chevrolet Malibu or similar car.
The Sawgrass Mills mall in Sunrise will remain closed for the second straight day Thursday because of flooding in the surrounding area due to record-breaking rainfall across South Florida.

Sunrise Police and mall officials announced the move on Twitter just before 8 a.m. after spending the afternoon and evening hours Wednesday seeing if the waters would go down in depth.

Due to area flooding, Sawgrass Mills will remain closed at this time. We will continue to assess the situation and update regularly.  Sawgrass Mills (@ShopSawgrass) June 8, 2017

Officials said the area received another inch and a half of rain overnight and has received 15 inches of rain in the past three days.

It's the first time the mall has closed because of weather since Hurricane Matthew last October.



A spokeswoman for the mall released a statement to NBC 6 regarding the closure on Wednesday saying they would reopen "once the heavy rain stops, the water level decreases, and access to the malls entry is safe."

Large sections of the mall's parking lot were covered in water but none of the mall buildings have been affected by the heavy rain, mall officials said.

"It's deep out there, it's all over flooded," mall worker Sammy Davis said. "It's up to my waist wading out there, had to stop us from working, you know."



Police urged drivers to use caution when driving through flooded areas.

"We are from Germany and we want to go to the biggest shopping center in the United States and now it's closed. It's bad," tourist Sebastian Weber said Wednesday. "It's very much rain, I've never seen so much rain before and I was hoping we have only sunshine here."



The area received over seven inches of rainfall during a 24 hour period after additional rainfall earlier this week. Forecasts call for additional rain around the mall intermittently for the remainder of the week.

Stormy Weather Photos From Around South Florida
Security experts have long contended that the highly decentralized, often ramshackle U.S. election system is its own best defense against trickery or sabotage. New evidence from a leaked intelligence document suggests that foreign adversaries are exploring ways to attack it anyway.

The document, purportedly produced by the U.S. National Security Agency, outlines alleged attempts by Russian military intelligence to hack into state and local election systems  the latest evidence of a broad and sophisticated foreign attack on the integrity of U.S. elections. It does not indicate whether actual vote-tampering occurred.

The NSA report adds significant new detail to previous U.S. intelligence assessments that alleged Russia-backed hackers had compromised elements of America's electoral machinery. It also suggests that attackers may also have been laying groundwork for future subversive activity.

ELECTORAL RISK

The operation described in the document could have given attackers "a foothold into the IT systems of elections offices around the country that they could use to infect machines and launch a vote-stealing attack," said J. Alex Halderman, a University of Michigan computer scientist. "We don't have evidence that that happened," he said, "but that's a very real possibility."

Computer scientists have proven in the lab that once sophisticated attackers are inside an election network, they could manipulate pre-election programming of its systems and alter results without leaving a trace.

Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, said Tuesday that hacking into state voting systems ahead of the Nov. 8 vote was more widespread than has been disclosed.

Attempts by Russia to "break into a number of our state voting processes" was "broad-based," he said, without offering details. In Moscow, a Kremlin spokesman categorically denied Tuesday that Moscow had tried to hack the U.S. elections.

Warner did not directly address the classified intelligence report published Monday by The Intercept, an online news outlet. The Associated Press has not independently verified the authenticity of the report, although its apparent leaker, an NSA contract worker, was arrested last weekend in Georgia.

GOING LOCAL

The NSA document says Russian military intelligence first targeted employees of a Florida voting systems supplier in August. Apparently exploiting technical data obtained in that operation, the cyber spies later sent phishing emails to more than 100 local U.S. election officials just days ahead of the Nov. 8 vote, intent on stealing their login credentials and breaking into the their systems, the document says.

The emails packed malware into Microsoft Word documents and were forged to give the appearance of being sent by the system vendor, VR Systems of Tallahassee, Florida.

The Department of Homeland Security knew in September that hackers believed to be Russian agents had targeted the voter registration systems of more than 20 states. To date, no evidence of tampering with vote tallies or registration rolls has emerged.

The U.S. elections system is a patchwork of more than 3,000 jurisdictions overseen by the states with almost no federal oversight or standards. The attack sketched out in the NSA document appears designed specifically to cope with that sprawl.

The NSA document did not name any of the states where local officials were targeted by the emails masquerading as being from VR Systems.

But in September, the FBI held a conference call with all 67 county elections supervisors in the battleground state of Florida to inform them of infiltration of VR Systems without naming the company. Ion Sancho, who retired as Leon County supervisor in December, said he later learned from industry contacts that it was VR Systems.

LOCAL PROBLEMS

VR Systems officials did not respond directly to questions emailed by the AP. In a statement, the company said it only knows of a "handful" of customers who received the fraudulent email, adding that it had "no indication" that anyone had clicked on the malware. The NSA document says at least one account was likely compromised.

The company makes software for on-site voter registration at polling stations and backend systems for voting management, according to its website, which says it has customers in California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, New York, North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia.

VR Systems' electronic poll books  electronic systems used to verify registered voters at polling places  experienced problems on Nov. 8 in Durham County, North Carolina. The issue forced officials to abandon the system, issue paper ballots and extend voting hours.

North Carolina's state elections director said Tuesday that officials would investigate to see if officials in Durham County were targeted and possibly compromised.

Iowa University's Douglas Jones is among computer scientists who say voter registration systems are particularly vulnerable to tampering, in part because they are on the internet.

Someone trying to cause chaos and discredit an election could delete names from registration rolls prior to voting  or request absentee ballots en masse. In the latter case, a voter showing up at the polls on Election Day would be recorded as having already cast their ballot. That could force voters to file provisional ballots, and provoke long lines.

There is no evidence any of that happened last Election Day.

Associated Press writers Deb Riechmann and Emery D'Alesio contributed to this report.
A Syrian refugee artist has spent 19 months creating a series of paintings in his Brussels studio showing world leaders as displaced or disenfranchised people and is showing them in a Dubai gallery.

Abdalla Al Omari's "The Vulnerability Series" includes paintings of U.S. President Donald Trump as a bedraggled refugee with a sleeping child in his arms, Russian President Vladimir Putin as a beggar, as well as former British Prime Minister David Cameron and former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

"My aim somehow shifted from an expression of anger to a more vivid desire of disarming these figures, (to) picture them outside their positions of power", Omari told Al Jazeera.

Omari started painting in Damascus shortly after the start of the Syrian civil war broke out in 2011. He fled and was granted asylum in Belgium.

" The Vulnerability Series" exhibition is on view at "Ayyam Gallery", Dubai until 6th of July, 2017.

Gallery visitor Sami Azraq said the portraits were a unique take on the refugee crisis.

"I do think it's an interesting way or it's a nicer way to look at the problem rather than our usual news or social media or other outlets," he said.

For more arts and culture news and updates, follow Ahram Online Arts and Culture on Twitter at @AhramOnlineArts and on Facebook at Ahram Online: Arts & Culture

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"Just Shoot Me" and "Rules of Engagement" actor David Spade is the latest victim in a string of celebrity burglaries in California's Southland.

Beverly Hills police said they are investigating a burglary that occurred at Spade's home between May 27 and June 2.

Spade was not home at the time, police said.

"Because this is an active investigation, no additional details are available for release at this time," Beverly Hills police Lt. Elisabeth Albanese said.

It was not immediately clear what was taken from the home.

Spade, an alum of "Saturday Night Live," is the latest celebrity to be targeted by thieves in recent months. Break-ins have been reported at the homes of celebrities such as Alanis Morissette, Nicki Minaj, Emmy Rossum, Jaime Pressly, Yasiel Puig and Derek Fisher.
What to Know The 5-year-old boy was hit in the head by a stray bullet as he walked with his dad to a waiting car in the Bronx Monday, cops say

The bullet was fired by a gunman who shot at another man four times, police say

The child remained hospitalized in grave condition Tuesday

A Bronx man recently released from prison has been arrested in the stray bullet shooting that left a 5-year-old boy fighting for his life on his birthday, authorities said Tuesday.

Michael Quiles, 27, was arrested on attempted murder charges in the shooting that left the boy in critical condition. Quiles has 10 prior arrests, including for assault, criminal possession of a weapon and marijuana, and served time in prison for attempted kidnapping, sources say.

Information on a lawyer for Quiles wasn't immediately available.

A Bronx man recently released from prison has been arrested in the stray bullet shooting that left a 5-year-old boy fighting for his life on his birthday, authorities said Tuesday. Ida Siegal reports.

People booed Quiles as he was led from the police station Tuesday evening, shouting "Burn in hell" and "New York hates you." He said nothing as he was put into a police car.

The boy, Jaheem Hunter, was gravely wounded when a gunman opened fire on another man as the child walked to a car after a visit with his father on Washington Avenue in Morrisania around 5 p.m. Monday, police said. Surveillance video showed people ducking for cover and one person racing away from the scene.

The man racing from the scene, wearing a purple coat, is believed to be Quiles, according to sources. He was also seen in the video entering an apartment building, where he was arrested Tuesday.

Mayor de Blasio called the shooting "absolutely heartbreaking" and said doctors were working to save the boy's life.

A 5-year-old boy was shot in the head in the Bronx, leaving him fighting for his life. Checkey Beckford reports.

At a rally organized Tuesday by community groups in front of the hospital where Jaheem is still fighting for his life, city leaders and activists called on more to be done to stop the violence. Ironically, Hunter's own brother helped organize a motorcycle ride against gun violence over the weekend, only to learn his baby brother had become a victim.

Family asked for the public to keep the child in their thoughts.

"For the love of our baby Hunter, we ask you continue to lift our family uplift in prayer," said Linda Kemp.

Neighbor Dejion Taylor says he knows the family and saw what happened. He said Jaheem was with his father in the neighborhood bodega around 5 p.m., and the two had walked out when bullets started flying.

Taylor said looked out his window and saw the horrifying moment Jaheem hit the ground.

NYPD officials say a 5-year-old boy is in grave condition after he was struck in the head by a stray bullet in the Bronx.

"I heard shots, I looked outside -- I see the little boy hit the floor, I was just like, 'wow,'" said Taylor. "His father was just screaming, 'You shot my son, you shot my son.'"

Taylor described Jaheem as a happy little boy, always smiling and riding his scooter with his father.

Police haven't said what led to the dispute between the gunman and his intended target, but people in the neighborhood say the suspect was beaten by a man with a bat last week -- and he may have been seeking revenge.

Quiles has a prior arrest for attempted kidnapping, according to state correction records. He was sentenced in 2010 to eight years in prison and released on parole in October 2016.

[NATL] Top News Photos: Pope Visits Japan, and More
What to Know The Shulaya Enterprise operated in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Nevada

Alleged members are accused of various crimes, from murder for hire and extortion to illegally trafficking of 10,000 pounds of chocolate

The suspects are due in court later Wednesday

More than 30 members and associates of a New York City-based Russian organized crime group are named in federal court papers charging them with racketeering, murder for hire and other crimes, including trafficking tens of thousands of pounds of stolen chocolate, law enforcement sources familiar with the case tell NBC 4 New York.

The FBIs Joint Eurasian Organized Crime Task Force arrested more than two dozen members of the group, called the Shulaya Enterprise, in the NYC area and elsewhere early Wednesday, law enforcement sources said. The seven other suspects remain at large.

The group is accused of trafficking stolen goods -- including large quantities of cigarettes and 10,000 pounds of chocolate confections, court papers say.

The suspects also face charges of extortion, gambling, narcotics trafficking, wire fraud, credit card fraud, and identity theft, according to law enforcement sources. Some of the charges carry a maximum penalty of decades in prison.

Many of the suspects are from Brooklyn, and range in age from 22 to 59.

The group conspired to carry out a dizzying array of criminal schemes, including a murder-for-hire conspiracy, a plot to rob victims by seducing them and drugging them with chloroform, and a fraud involving the hacking of casino slot machines, a federal complaint says.

The leaders of the organization, 40-year-old Razhden Shulaya, of Edgewater, New Jersey, and 37-year-old Zurab Dzhanashvili, of Brooklyn, are among those arrested. Most of the organizations members were born in the former Soviet Union and maintain ties to Ukraine, Georgia, and the Russian Federation.

Shulaya was the vor, or thief-in-law of the group, and offered assistance and protection to members of the criminal enterprise, the complaint says.

The Shulaya Enterprise operated in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Nevada, the court papers say.

Among a long list of crimes, the complaint says the enterprise tried to operate an illegal poker business in Brighton Beach, defraud casinos in Atlantic City, and steal shipments from cargo ships.

The suspects arrested Wednesday were expected to appear in federal court.
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Police on the Main Line shut down a popular Tex-Mex chain restaurant Wednesday after an undercover drug sting.

Radnor Township police kept the Chipotle at 323 Lancaster Avenue in Wayne, Pennsylvania under surveillance, after learning that employees at the restaurant sold drugs, police Superintendent William Colarulo said.

Over time, undercover narcotics officers purchased marijuana from Chipotle employees, Colarulo said.

On Wednesday around noon, police arrested four people after the undercover officers purchased marijuana from a worker in the parking area of the strip mall eatery. Two face felony charges while two others face misdemeanor charges, police said.

Investigators then found half a pound of pot in one of the suspects cars, Colarulo said. A police K-9 also found drug traces in a restaurant restroom. Police later towed the car.

Police closed the Chipotle until the health department could make sure the eatery is meeting public health standards, investigators said.

This is the fourth Radnor Township establishment to be shut down due drug sales in the past few years, Colarulo said. A McDonalds employee was caught selling crack, a Seasons Pizza was caught selling marijuana and two Estia Taverna bartenders were caught selling cocaine.

Colarulo stressed police have zero tolerance for drug sales at businesses.
California lawmakers are taking another look at whether Daylight Saving Time should become a thing of the past.

Assembly Bill 807 received its first Senate reading Monday after last week's approval by the State Assembly. It's the second time in the last two years that state lawmakers have brought up a bill that could -- if it clears several hurdles -- do away with the need for Californians to set their clocks forward or back by an hour twice each year.

A similar version failed last year in the state Senate.

The practice of Daylight Saving Time, used as an energy saving measure, was approved by California voters with the passage of a 1949 ballot measure -- Proposition 12. Initially, Daylight Saving Time was from the last Sunday in April to the last Sunday in September in California. DST now lasts from mid-March to November after it was re-worked by Congress.

A proposed change would need to go before voters and clear Congress, which passed a law in 1966 that required states to either adopt DST or stick with standard time year-round. Hawaii and Arizona have exempted themselves from the law.

The bill in the California Senate asks voters to transfer a final decision to the state Legislature. The California Constitution allows the Legislature to amend or repeal an initiative statute by another statute that becomes effective when approved by voters, who would consider the issue in the next statewide election.

The Legislatures's options would include staying on standard time year-round, tinkering with time change dates, or applying DST year-round if authorized by federal law.

Opponents said the change would leave California out of sync with business in the rest of the country and leave farmers without as many hours of sunlight during fall harvests. Supporters have said the practice is no longer need as a fuel savings measure and can affect people's health.
Twenty-three shots from two guns were fired at the car in which two high school seniors were found dead Monday, the night before their graduation, sources told News4.

Shadi Adi Najjar, 17, and Artem Ziberov, 18, are remembered as "excellent students who had a positive impact." They were scheduled to graduate from Northwest High School in Germantown, Maryland, Tuesday afternoon, school officials said.

But hours before the teens were set to walk across the stage, police found their bodies inside Najjar's Honda Civic parked but still running in the 8200 block of Gallery Court in Montgomery Village, about five miles from their neighborhood. One of the victims was found clutching a $20 bill.

Officers went to the quiet residential street after a neighbor reported hearing gunshots about 10:46 p.m. Monday.

"My wife and I thought we heard someone hammering something, and it just didn't make any sense around 10:30," one neighbor said.

Another neighbor said his surveillance camera picked up the sound of the barrage of gunfire. Faintly, a car can be heard driving away from the area.

"May God punish who did this to my son. I'm sure the police will find who killed my boy," Najjar's father, Adi Najjar, said Tuesday, clutching his son's cap and gown.

Mourners spilled out of the Islamic Society of Germantown and into the parking lot for Shadi Najjar's funeral Wednesday.

Cold-blooded murder, thats what it is, said Najjars uncle, Ammar Najjar, the imam at the Islamic Society. Whoever shot him, looks like they didnt want him to live. They did it with the intention to kill this young boy just one day before his graduation.



Shadi Najjar and his best friend, Ziberov, left Najjar's house about 7 p.m. Monday and never returned. Najjar's father said he sent his son several text messages asking if he was OK and where he was.

His son was an honor student who wanted to be a surgeon and enjoyed volunteering at Shady Grove Medical Center.

Ziberovs stepfather said he was an Eagle Scout and National Honor Society student, who received a presidential academic award.

Both victims planned to attend college in the fall.

Sadness filled DAR Constitution Hall, where the victims should have received their diplomas with their classmates Tuesday.

There was a moment of silence for Najjar and Ziberov, and their principal remembered the lives of two young men he said had so much potential.

I had the honor of being Shadi and Artems principal both in middle school and now, he said.

Northwest High School sent a letter home to parents Tuesday, notifying them of the tragic incident.

"For those of you who knew Artem and Shadi, we ask that you remember and celebrate them. They were both excellent students who had a positive impact on those around them, and they will be greatly missed," Northwest High School Principal Jimmy DAndrea said in the letter.



Counselors returned the school for a second day Wednesday to help comfort students and staff members.

No arrests have been made.

"I want everybody to know what happened exactly," Adi Najjar said. "Why he's shot? Maybe somebody saw something, will call the police. At least I'll have an answer, you know? Because I will never be able to sleep until I find the answer who shot my boy and why they shot him."

Anyone with information about this case is asked to call police at 240-773-5070. A reward of up to $10,000 is being offered for information that leads to an arrest.
The film's star Ali Sobhy won the Muhr Best Actor Award at the Dubai International Film Festival, where it premiered

The award-winning Egyptian film Ali, the Goat and Ibrahim will be screened in 30 cinemas across France starting 7 June.

The film will be screened in Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Stransbourg, and Nice, and other cities.

Directed by Sherif El-Bendary, the film was screened at Cannes Junior Screenings this year alongside seven other international films, as well as at the Cannes Film Market.

Ali, the Goat and Ibrahim made its world premiere at the 13th Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF), earning Egyptian actor Ali Sobhy the Muhr feature award for his performance in the film.

The film's screenplay was written by Ahmed Amer and is based on a story by Ibrahim El-Batout, and stars Ahmed Magdy, Salwa Mohamed Ali and Nahed El-Sebaee.

During its production phase, Ali, the Goat and Ibrahim scooped three financial awards at the Final Cut Venice workshop and the ARTE prize in Dubai.

The film centres on a man who believes that his dead girlfriend has been reincarnated as a goat, which he names Nada. At the healers clinic, Ali meets Ibrahim, and they are both diagnosed as being cursed.

When the healer prescribes a solution to break the spell, it sets them off on an adventure that takes them to the Mediterranean, the Red Sea and the Nile.

This is the debut feature film for Sherif El-Bendary, who also released a debut short film Har Gaf Sayfan (Dry, Hot Summers) in 2016.

Ali, the Goat and Ibrahim is produced by Mohamed Hefzy's Fortress Film Clinic and Hossam Elouans Transit Films.

For more arts and culture news and updates, follow Ahram Online Arts and Culture on Twitter at @AhramOnlineArts and on Facebook at Ahram Online: Arts & Culture

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The D.C. neighborhood commissioner who said D.C. police slammed him to the ground last week for no reason was arrested Tuesday after his girlfriend reported he attacked her at a grocery store in Maryland.

Kendall Simmons was charged with assault and disorderly conduct after his girlfriend told police he punched and bit her at the Wegmans store on the 9000 block of McHugh Drive in Lanham, Maryland.

Glenarden police officers responded about 1:30 p.m. The woman said Simmons "became aggressive with her during an argument," punched her in the chest and then bit her left hand so hard that it bled, the police report says.

It wasn't immediately clear if the alleged incident occurred inside or outside the store.

Prince George's County

As officers helped the woman, a U.S. Secret Service agent spotted Simmons inside the Honu Hawaii BBQ restaurant nearby and told police. The agent said the suspect was in the bathroom.

As officers approached the bathroom, Simmons peeked out and then slammed the door shut, the report says. An officer drew a gun and ordered him to come out.

Simmons screamed and swore as officers forced handcuffs onto his wrists.

No information on a lawyer for Simmons was listed in online court records.

The 27-year-old told News4 earlier this week that D.C. police officers slammed him to the ground and searched him in Southeast D.C. on Friday for no reason.

"For them to attack someone that's for the community like I am, you know, it's just sad to see," he said.

A neighborhood commissioner claimed he did nothing wrong when officers on patrol handcuffed him and pushed him to the ground over the weekend in southeast D.C. News4s Meagan Fitzgerald reports.

"They humiliated me in front of my family, friends, you know, my mother, my niece, my nephews," he continued.

A D.C. police report says officers believed Simmons may have had a weapon after they say they saw him holding his pants pocket and walking with a limp. The officers asked him to put his hands up, but police say he put his hand in his pocket and refused.

No weapon was found, and no charges were filed against Simmons. D.C. police are investigating the incident and reviewing footage from police body cameras. The officers involved are not facing disciplinary action.

Southeast D.C. ANC commissioner Kendall Simmons tells News4's Darcy Spencer, he's planning to file a complaint against the Metropolitan Police Department. Simmons says officers put him in handcuffs and forced him to the ground Friday night in Southeast. The police department says it's investigating.

Simmons was elected as an Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner in Ward 8. Washington's ANCs are bodies of local government that issue advisory decisions on issues including liquor licenses, zoning and public safety.

For the alleged assault Tuesday, Simmons is being held on $2,500 bond. He's due in court Monday.
A Maryland woman will spend more than four decades years in prison for killing her two young children.

Sonya Spoon, of Cheverly, was arrested Sept. 7, 2014, after admitting to police that she suffocated her children, 1-year-old Ayden Spoon and 3-year-old Kayla Thompson.

Sonya Spoon was sentenced Wednesday to 45 years in prison. She had pleaded guilty in March.

"Knowing my children died by my own hands first seemed like a nightmare. I'm truly sorry for taking their lives," Spoon said during her sentencing hearing.

A family member found the children unresponsive in the Cheverly home. Bags had been placed over the children's heads and secured with duct tape, police said.

Both children were taken to Children's National Medical Center, where they died.

"The saddest aspect of this case is that these two babies in this case, Ayden and Kayla, 1 and 3 years old, never had a chance," Prince George's County State's Attorney Angela Alsobrooks said outside a courthouse Wednesday.



Spoon, then 24, was arrested at the scene and admitted to suffocating the children, Prince George's County police said.

Just six days before the killings, Spoon had received a mental evaluation after her mother called Cheverly police and told them she was worried because Spoon was threatening to kill Kayla and herself.

Following the evaluation, Spoon was released and allowed back home with her two children. Cheverly Police say they did all they could do, legally.

"Nobody helped. Nobody reached out to anybody. Nobody reached out to anybody to help. They just let her out two days later to kill my daughter and her brother," Lester Thompson, Kayla's father, said earlier this year.

"Our client Sonya Spoon was failed by the mental health system," Spoon's attorney Mirriam Seddiq said Wednesday. "We know this tragedy could have been avoided if proper mental health treatment had been provided to Ms. Spoon."



CORRECTION (Wednesday June 7, 2017, 1:13 p.m. ET): An earlier version of this story erroneously reported Spoon was sentenced to 22 years in prison. Spoon was sentenced to 45 years in prison Wednesday.
Fired FBI Director James Comey will testify Thursday that President Donald Trump sought his loyalty and urged him to stop investigating his first national security adviser, encounters that left Comey feeling uncomfortable, he says in a statement submitted to the Senate.

"I need loyalty, I expect loyalty," Trump allegedly demanded, according to a statement Comey submitted to the Senate intelligence committee. The statement detailing Comey's one-on-one interactions with Trump was released Wednesday, one day before Comey will appear before the committee.

It confirms Trump's assertion that Comey assured him three times that he was not personally under investigation and explains why Comey shared that information with Trump. According to the document, Comey first volunteered the information during a Jan. 6 meeting at Trump Tower. He told Trump again that he was not under investigation during a Jan. 27 dinner at the White House and a third time during a March 30 phone call when Trump pressed him on the issue, according to Comey.

Comey wrote that that the FBI and the Department of Justice were reluctant to say publicly that they did not have an open case on Trump, as Trump wanted them to do, "for a number of reasons, most importantly because it would create a duty to correct, should that change." Comey said he did not tell the president that.

The statement also confirms what Comey's associates have said previously, in anonymously sourced reports, that Comey told them that Trump asked him at a January dinner to pledge his loyalty to the president.

Comey says he answered that he could offer his honesty. When Trump said he wanted "honest loyalty," Comey replied, "You will get that from me."

Comey also wrote that, at an Oval Office meeting weeks later, the president asked him to consider letting go of an FBI investigation into Trump's first national security adviser, Michael Flynn.

That is something Trump has denied doing. At a May 18 news conference, Trump twice said "no" when asked if he tried to halt the probe.

But Comey wrote that Trump said, of Flynn, "He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go."

On Wednesday afternoon, Trump's outside counsel released a statement: "The President is pleased that Mr. Comey has finally publicly confirmed his private reports that the President was not under investigation in any Russian probe. The President feels completely and totally vindicated. He is eager to continue to move forward with his agenda."

Sen. Richard Burr, R-NC, said that Comey's statement was released early "because that's what Comey and I agreed to," but declined to discuss the contents of the statement.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D.-Mass., a frequent critic of the president, tweeted out Comey's statement and added: "This whole thing is crazy."

Trump fired Comey on May 9, later calling him a "showboat" and "grandstander" in an interview with NBC News' Lester Holt. On Wednesday, he announced he is nominating former Department of Justice official Christopher A. Wray to replace him.



Comey said he prepared memos from each of the meetings with Trump, writing he "can recall" nine one-on-one conversations in four months, three in person and six on the phone. He says in the statement that he has not included every detail of his conversations.

Below are selected highlights from the allegations in Comey's statement, broken down by date. Read the whole transcript here.

Jan. 6 Briefing

Before the Jan. 6 meeting, Comey had discussed with the FBI leadership team whether he should be prepared to assure Trump that the FBI was not investigating him personally.

"That was true; we did not have an open counter-intelligence case on him. We agreed I should do so if circumstances warranted. During our one-on-one meeting at Trump Tower, based on President-Elect Trumps reaction to the briefing and without him directly asking the question, I offered that assurance."

Jan. 27 Dinner

During a dinner with the president on Jan. 27, Comey wrote that the president began by asking him whether he wanted to stay on as FBI director, which he found strange because he had already assured the president that he intended to.

"My instincts told me that the one-on-one setting, and the pretense that this was our first discussion about my position, meant the dinner was, at least in part, an effort to have me ask for my job and create some sort of patronage relationship," Comey wrote. "That concerned me greatly, given the FBIs traditionally independent status in the executive branch."

At the dinner, Comey assured Trump for the second time that he was not personally under investigation by the FBI. Trump told Comey he was considering ordering the FBI director to investigate the salacious material about prostitutes in Russia, to prove that it had not happened. Trump had denied the allegations in the report and said he was disgusted by them. (He has also publicly denied the allegations, which are based on an unverified intelligence dossier.)



"I replied that he should give that careful thought because it might create a narrative that we were investigating him personally, which we werent, and because it was very difficult to prove a negative," Comey wrote.

Feb. 14 Oval Office Meeting

Trump asked the other members of his administration in a counter-intelligence briefing to leave, and when they had, said, "I want to talk about Mike Flynn," who had resigned the previous day.



Trump insisted Flynn hadn't done anything wrong by speaking with Russians but fired him because he misled Vice President Mike Flynn and "had other concerns about Flynn, which he did not then specify."

Apparently referring to the FBI investigation of Flynn, Trump said, "I hope you can let this go." Comey replied, "He is a good guy." After the meeting, he prepared an unclassified memo summarizing the conversation.

"I had understood the President to be requesting that we drop any investigation of Flynn in connection with false statements about his conversations with the Russian ambassador in December. I did not understand the President to be talking about the broader investigation into Russia or possible links to his campaign," Comey wrote, calling it very concerning.

Comey also write about that meeting:

Shortly afterwards, I spoke with Attorney General Sessions in person to pass along the Presidents concerns about leaks. I took the opportunity to implore the Attorney General to prevent any future direct communication between the President and me. I told the AG that what had just happened  him being asked to leave while the FBI Director, who reports to the AG, remained behind  was inappropriate and should never happen. He did not reply. For the reasons discussed above, I did not mention that the President broached the FBIs potential investigation of General Flynn.

March 30 Phone Call

Comey said Trump called him and "described the Russia investigation as 'a cloud' that was impairing his ability to act on behalf of the country" and asked what Comey could do to lift that cloud."

"I responded that we were investigating the matter as quickly as we could, and that there would be great benefit, if we didnt find anything, to our having done the work well. He agreed, but then re-emphasized the problems this was causing him," Comey wrote.

Comey explained to Trump that he had briefed congressional leadership that the FBI was not personally investigating Trump, who replied, "We need to get that fact out."



Trump again denied rumors that he had "been involved with hookers in Russia."



April 11 Phone Call

Trump reiterated to Comey his desire to "get out" to the public that he was not under investigation, saying the "cloud" was getting in the way of Trump doing his job. Comey said he directed Trump to the acting deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, and Trump said he would follow Comey's advice, adding he had been "very loyal" to Comey. It was the last time Comey spoke to Trump.
Some Vermont maple syrup producers are waging war against a tiny pest they fear could have a big impact on their way of life: caterpillars that could weaken trees over time.

The state's Agency of Natural Resources estimates that in June of 2016, 25,000 acres of forestland were defoliated because of the forest tent caterpillar.

Andy Naylor of Waterville, who produces thousands of gallons of maple syrup each year at his Judevine Farm, said last year's defoliation made his property look unsightly and sad.

"It was very stressful," he said of the loss of leaves across his many acres of trees. "Not just to the trees, but to my family and to my neighbors that were affected also. It was quite disturbing."

This year, Naylor's fighting back.

He recently contracted with a Lowville, New York, company called Duflo Spray Chemical, Inc. to provide an aerial treatment of a biological insecticide to 200 acres of his land. A pilot sprayed the trees in late May, Naylor said.

The Vermont Department of Forests, Parks, and Recreation assisted with land surveys and predictions of defoliation risks for 2017.

Naylor's $5,000 treatment of Bacillus thuringiensis, also known as Bt, was aimed at killing the newly-hatched forest tent caterpillars before they could feast on his property.

"This is a good sign," Naylor said Wednesday, pointing to a healthy leaf, free of caterpillars, and noting the sight was a dramatic improvement over 2016.

Leaves are vital to the way trees make carbohydrates and sugars, so Naylor wanted to ensure his maples stay strong, to protect future sap output.

Vermont is the king of maple syrup production in the United States.

In 2016, which was described as a record year, Vermont produced roughly 1.9 million gallons of syrup, which accounted for more than 47 percent of all the nations syrup.

As a precaution against defoliation that could weaken trees in the long term, landowners across Vermont planned to have roughly 3,600 acres of forestland treated with Bt to kill forest tent caterpillars, according the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks, and Recreation.

That land included 18 sugarbushes, state forestry experts said.

If you're worried about food safety because of this spraying, Vermont agriculture and forestry officials said you don't have to be. They explained Bt's effectiveness targets just the pests, and is safe to use even on organic land.

"The product is safe; it's non-toxic, and we make sure all the proper permits are in place," said Anson Tebbetts, the secretary of the Vermont Agency of Agriculture. "It will not impact the [maple] sap at all."

Forest health specialist Josh Halman of the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks, and Recreation, said most maples can bounce back from a caterpillar infestation.

However, big outbreaks, combined with other threats like last year's drought or poor soil health, could be trouble, Halman said.

"Right now, we're in the second year of this outbreak," Halman told necn. "It can kill some trees, given the right conditions. So if they have some line of defense against it, it can help sugar makers, especially."

Naylor said he is glad he sought out a safeguard against the forest tent caterpillar in the form of the aerial spraying.

"Any time maple trees are threatened, we should all be concerned," Naylor said. "Without maple, Vermont's just another place."
A Maine police officer who was injured during a water rescue on the Saco River during Memorial Day weekend has died.

Fryeburg police announced Officer Nathan M. Desjardins died on Tuesday at Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston. He was 20.

It was Desjardins' first day of training on May 28 when he and fellow officer Dale Stout, 51, were in a police boat attempting to find a woman who fell out of a canoe when the officers' boat hit an object near the shore while coming around a corner of the river, causing them to both be ejected.

Stout had serious injuries, but was in stable condition. The body of the missing woman, 38-year-old Jennifer Bousquet of South Berwick, was recovered days later.

"In the course of a police officer's responsibilities, they expose themselves to very real risks and dangers every day. Members of the Fryeburg Police Department are deeply saddened by the tragic death of our colleague. We offer our deepest and most heartfelt condolences to the family, fellow colleagues and friends of Nathan," Police Chief Joshua Potvin said.
Small bottles of liquor are at the center of big debate between Maine lawmakers and Gov. Paul LePage.

Gov. LePage has vetoed a bill to add a refundable five-cent deposit fee on 50 milliliter bottles, also known as "nips." In his veto message, he threatened to ban the sale of nips across the state if lawmakers override his veto.

"I don't think that will ever happen," said the bill's sponsor, Rep. Anne Marie Mastraccio (D-Sanford). "I think that's an idle threat."

Rep. Mastraccio said the goal of her bill is to cut down on the number of nips littered throughout the state.

"I think [with the deposit] people will collect them, they will bring them in, and they will be part of a bottle bill that's been very successful in Maine," said Mastraccio.

But the governor said the fee is bad for business. In his veto message, he estimates that it will cost more than $1 million to implement.

He said the real issue is that nips are being consumed behind the wheel.

"They throw them out of the car, because they don't want to keep the evidence in the car," said LePage in a radio interview with WGAN radio last month.

In LePage's veto message, he said if lawmakers do not increase penalties, "an alternative approach is to discontinue the sale of 50 milliliter bottles containing alcohol altogether."

LePage said he would instruct the Bureau of Alcoholic Beverages to de-list nips.

"From a business owner's perspective, Governor  you're wrong on this one," said Stephen Roop, owner of Rooper's Beverage and Redemption.

Roop said he thinks a five-cent deposit is a reasonable fee, which would cut down on littering. He believes an outright ban of nips would only hurt businesses like his.

"We're talking jobs in Lewiston," said Roop.

The Maine House voted 114-31 to override the governor's veto of LD 56, and the Senate could take it up Wednesday.
Maine police are searching for two suspects who robbed an acquaintance after a night of drinking.

Brunswick police say the 62-year-old male victim was robbed by two of his drinking partners Monday night. The Times Record reports they took nearly $1,000 from him and ran away.

Police Cmdr. Mark Waltz says they called a tracking dog, but were unable to find the suspects. Police say they are still searching for the suspects who face robbery charges.

The victim was not hurt, although the robbery is considered a strong arm robbery because the suspects used physical force.
Authorities say a missing 16-year-old Vermont girl who is believed to be with a convicted sex offender may be in New Hampshire.

Mickayla Lozell of Alburgh was reported missing around 5 p.m. Sunday. She's a ward of the state, but was living with her mother at the time.

Investigators believe Lozell might be with 47-year-old William Smith, a convicted sex offender whose last known address was in Swanton.

According to police, Smith does not have a permanent address listed with Vermont's sex offender registry, and he was not considered a high-risk offender after a 1999 sexual assault conviction.

Lozell called a friend and said that she was OK and in New Hampshire, investigators said. Police do not suspect foul play or believe that Lozell is being held against her will. They said they've received multiple tips and believe she may be in the Concord or Hampton Beach areas.

The two are believed to be driving in a gold-colored Dodge Intrepid with a Vermont license plate of GKR 282.



Anyone with information is asked to call 802-524-5993.
The renowned actor and 'father of comedy,' who left an important mark on Egyptian cinema, passed away on 8 June 1949

Is there anybody who is of a larger stature and has had a greater impact on comedy in the Arab world than Naguib El-Rihani?

His strength is obvious to everyone, from those who attempted to harm his reputation and belittle his impact to those who are learning, if not imitating, his performance style.

Above all, there are millions of viewers who adored what little of his art reached us.

What if this man had appeared in the time of television, or if he had lived longer and given us  as others have  dozens of films and plays?

El-Rihani was born Naguib Elyas El-Rihani in 1889 in Bab El-She'reya, a district in the heart of Old Cairo, to a father of Iraqi Chaldean Christian origin who worked in horse-trading and the gypsum trade and an Egyptian Coptic mother from Upper Egypt.

El-Rihani learned French at the College des Freres de la Salle, though he did not complete his education due to family circumstances as well as his fascination with acting.

El-Rihani was an accomplished stage actor and that his glory and name are engraved in the Egyptian theatres almanacs.

He acted in 81 plays between 1916 and 1949, though no known recording of them exists.

His most famous roles included The Egyptian Pound (1931), Men Don't Know How To Lie (1935), Five Till (1943).

However, it is on the cinema screen where he secured his artistic immortality and high stature.

Even though he was not initially enthusiastic about cinema and did not invest much into it, it was this medium that has captured a fraction of El-Rihanis art: his husky voice, which is familiar and unmistakable, as well as his artistic style and school of acting that left its imprint on his theatre companys members.

It is thanks to him that these members went on to become stars. Whether they acknowledge this fact or not, whether they admit his influence on them or not, they all bear his mark.

He also appeared in nine films between 1931 and 1949, of which seven survived. The latter works help us understand his genius and the art he represented.

Although the copies of two of his three early films were lost, the characters El-Rihani performed in both films, His Excellency Keshkesh Bey (1931) and His Highness Wants to Marry (1936), did not differ much from the characters he portrayed in theatres of the time.

A spirit of the theatre in cinema

The character of Keshkesh Bey, the mayor of Kafr El-Ballas, is exploited by traders in the morning at the Cotton Stock Exchange and at night by beautiful girls in casinos.

This character was similar to a clown, with no dialogue yet giving a performance that communicated well without words, according to El-Rihanis own memoirs, which he published in 1937.

In front of the camera, El-Rihani used a lot of improvisation, often co-authoring the script with his friend Badie Khairy.

Starting with his fourth film Salama is Alright (1937), directed by Niazy Mostafa, El-Rihani began giving up on improvisation.

He reached the pinnacle of his artistic maturity in his last film, Flirtation of Girls (1949), directed by Anwar Wagdi.

The performance in Flirtation of Girls was a far cry from that of a man who began his life on the edge of clownishness, moving to presenting characters with depth and provoking thought.

The first thing one notices in El-Rihani's films is that the actors long theatrical experience immensely influenced his acting.

In film, the dialogue is at the forefront and the actors' movement is limited in comparison to theatre. There is also larger diversity in shot sizes and angles.

El-Rihani tried to find his own vocabulary within this kind of medium, always pushing theatre into it.

Even though such theatrical performances would in many instances not be accepted in film, we should not ignore how much El-Rihani influenced the directors with whom he worked, especially since all of them, with the exception of Anwar Wagdi, made their directorial debuts with El-Rihani.

Being a theatre icon, El-Rihani used his skill to portray contradicting emotions in one scene, moving cleverly between tragedy and comedy and inciting the laughter of the viewer.

By plucking the strings of feeling within the viewer, El-Rihani knew well how to gain the audience's sympathy before addressing their minds and driving them to contemplate; displaying the flexibility of a trapeze performer.

Unlike many other actors, El-Rihani's comedy did not aim to provoke laughter per se; he was rather satisfied with drawing even the most subtle smile on the faces of his audience, pushing them to think in the process.

El-Rihani died of typhoid on 8 June 1949 at the age of 60.

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By IANS

MUMBAI: Recovering from a flat trading session, the Indian equity markets on Wednesday provisionally closed in the green, cheering the decision of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to boost liquidity levels in the commercial banking system.



The RBI in its second bi-monthly monetary policy review of 2017-18 decided to reduce the Statutory Liquidity Ratio (SLR) in order to induce liquidity into the banking system. However, the RBI kept its key lending rate unchanged at 6.25 per cent.



Besides, a better-than-expected monsoon forecast by the India Meteorological Department (IMD), coupled with healthy buying in banking, automobile and healthcare sectors, kept market sentiments buoyant.



The Nifty of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) provisionally closed at 3.30 p.m. at 9,663.90 points -- up 26.75 points or 0.28 per cent.



The 30-scrip Sensitive Index (Sensex) of the BSE, which opened at 31,252.71 points, closed at 31,282.43 points -- gaining 91.87 points or 0.29 per cent from its previous close at 31,190.56 points.



It touched a high of 31,346.99 points and a low of 31,172.98 points during intra-day trade.



The BSE market breadth was bullish -- with 1,465 advances and 1,170 declines.

MUMBAI: Recovering from a flat trading session, the Indian equity markets on Wednesday provisionally closed in the green, cheering the decision of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to boost liquidity levels in the commercial banking system. The RBI in its second bi-monthly monetary policy review of 2017-18 decided to reduce the Statutory Liquidity Ratio (SLR) in order to induce liquidity into the banking system. However, the RBI kept its key lending rate unchanged at 6.25 per cent. Besides, a better-than-expected monsoon forecast by the India Meteorological Department (IMD), coupled with healthy buying in banking, automobile and healthcare sectors, kept market sentiments buoyant. The Nifty of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) provisionally closed at 3.30 p.m. at 9,663.90 points -- up 26.75 points or 0.28 per cent. The 30-scrip Sensitive Index (Sensex) of the BSE, which opened at 31,252.71 points, closed at 31,282.43 points -- gaining 91.87 points or 0.29 per cent from its previous close at 31,190.56 points. It touched a high of 31,346.99 points and a low of 31,172.98 points during intra-day trade. The BSE market breadth was bullish -- with 1,465 advances and 1,170 declines.
By Express News Service

KOCHI: Apparel Manufacturers of India (AMI), the leading apparel group of manufacturers and traders, inaugurated the 11th edition of their trade fair in Kochi on Tuesday.

More than 350 key retailers from Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu participated at the fair trade. The three-day event will see participation from manufacturers and traders of ready made and unstitched garments.

AMI had hosted its first exhibition in January 2015 with the aim of bridging the gap between retailers, agents and suppliers.

The industry stands at an inflection point now. The GST roll-out will be a game changer for the industry, Kamlesh Nanda, Key Organizer, Apparel Manufacturers of India said. Stressing that retailers, agents and suppliers are the backbone of the industry, he said it is exciting to see the enthusiasm amongst them.

We are sure this will continue over the next two days, he added.

KOCHI: Apparel Manufacturers of India (AMI), the leading apparel group of manufacturers and traders, inaugurated the 11th edition of their trade fair in Kochi on Tuesday. More than 350 key retailers from Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu participated at the fair trade. The three-day event will see participation from manufacturers and traders of ready made and unstitched garments. AMI had hosted its first exhibition in January 2015 with the aim of bridging the gap between retailers, agents and suppliers. The industry stands at an inflection point now. The GST roll-out will be a game changer for the industry, Kamlesh Nanda, Key Organizer, Apparel Manufacturers of India said. Stressing that retailers, agents and suppliers are the backbone of the industry, he said it is exciting to see the enthusiasm amongst them. We are sure this will continue over the next two days, he added.
By IANS

NEW DELHI: Ahead of his departure to Astana, Kazakhstan, on Thursday to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday said full membership of the SCO will help India in terms of connectivity and economic and counter-terror cooperation with the Eurasian bloc.



Stating that once India becomes a full member of the SCO, the bloc "will represent over 40 per cent of humanity and nearly 20 per cent of global GDP", Modi said in a pre-departure statement: "We launched the process of full membership in Tashkent meeting of the SCO last year. I look forward to deepening India's association with the SCO which will help us in economic, connectivity and counter-terrorism cooperation, among other things."



He said that India has long-standing relations with SCO members and he looked forward to "progressing them further through the SCO for mutual betterment and growth of our countries and our people".



"Together, we will harvest new opportunities for beneficial engagement and redouble efforts to address common challenges that may come in the way of realizing our full potential," the Prime Minister said.



With Pakistan also expected to be granted full membership at the Astana Summit, the two South Asian neighbours are going to be the seventh and eighth members of the SCO after China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.



After participating in the Summit on Friday, Modi will also attend the World Exposition, which Kazakhstan is hosting this year, before returning to India.

NEW DELHI: Ahead of his departure to Astana, Kazakhstan, on Thursday to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday said full membership of the SCO will help India in terms of connectivity and economic and counter-terror cooperation with the Eurasian bloc. Stating that once India becomes a full member of the SCO, the bloc "will represent over 40 per cent of humanity and nearly 20 per cent of global GDP", Modi said in a pre-departure statement: "We launched the process of full membership in Tashkent meeting of the SCO last year. I look forward to deepening India's association with the SCO which will help us in economic, connectivity and counter-terrorism cooperation, among other things." He said that India has long-standing relations with SCO members and he looked forward to "progressing them further through the SCO for mutual betterment and growth of our countries and our people". "Together, we will harvest new opportunities for beneficial engagement and redouble efforts to address common challenges that may come in the way of realizing our full potential," the Prime Minister said. With Pakistan also expected to be granted full membership at the Astana Summit, the two South Asian neighbours are going to be the seventh and eighth members of the SCO after China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. After participating in the Summit on Friday, Modi will also attend the World Exposition, which Kazakhstan is hosting this year, before returning to India.
By Express News Service

CHENNAI: Honda Motorcycles and Scooters India (HMSI) continued to increase market share across geographies, with the two-wheeler maker announcing on Tuesday that it has gained the leading position in the Tamil Nadu two-wheeler market. According to Honda officials, who released a statement, Tamil Nadu is now the companys third biggest market by total volumes and the second biggest market when it comes to automatic scooter sales across India.

HMSIs sales in the state have grown to its highest ever market share of 35 per cent and one in every three customers is buying a Honda two-wheeler in TN, said the company.

Minoru Kato, president and CEO, HMSI pointed out that the coming year is likely to be quite challenging. 2017-18 is definitely the most challenging year for Honda Two-Wheelers India till now.

The India operation is already the No 1 contributor to Hondas global two-wheeler business. This year, we are aiming for six million units with 20 per cent growth over the large existing base. Undoubtedly, our aggressive plans for key states including Tamil Nadu will play an important role in contributing to this growth of Honda in India, Kato said.

CHENNAI: Honda Motorcycles and Scooters India (HMSI) continued to increase market share across geographies, with the two-wheeler maker announcing on Tuesday that it has gained the leading position in the Tamil Nadu two-wheeler market. According to Honda officials, who released a statement, Tamil Nadu is now the companys third biggest market by total volumes and the second biggest market when it comes to automatic scooter sales across India. HMSIs sales in the state have grown to its highest ever market share of 35 per cent and one in every three customers is buying a Honda two-wheeler in TN, said the company. Minoru Kato, president and CEO, HMSI pointed out that the coming year is likely to be quite challenging. 2017-18 is definitely the most challenging year for Honda Two-Wheelers India till now. The India operation is already the No 1 contributor to Hondas global two-wheeler business. This year, we are aiming for six million units with 20 per cent growth over the large existing base. Undoubtedly, our aggressive plans for key states including Tamil Nadu will play an important role in contributing to this growth of Honda in India, Kato said.
Abhijit Mulye By

Express News Service

MUMBAI: Shiv Sena ministers skipped a meeting of the Maharashtra state cabinet today, and later claimed that it was a protest against the "unilateral announcement" of a farm loan waiver by chief minister Devendra Fadnavis.

Shiv Sena leader and Maharashtra transport minister Diwakar Raote said the government should have discussed the issue with his party before announcing the scheme.

However, finance minister and senior BJP leader Sudhir Mungantiwar said the Shiv Sena leaders had sought and obtained prior permission from the chief minister to skip the meeting.

Raote indicated that his party was disappointed at not being consulted. "We cooperated with the government on GST. They discussed the details with Uddhavji (Thackeray). The issue of loan waiver too needs to be discussed in similar way," he said.

"None of the Shiv Sena ministers attended today's meeting. We met the chief minister earlier in the day and made him aware of the Shiv Sena's stand on the unilateral announcement of a loan waiver, an issue which we have been pursuing for over a year," senior Shiv Sena leader and industries minister Subhash Desai said while the cabinet meeting was still on.

However, Mungantiwar said there is no discord in the cabinet. "The idea of a loan waiver is still being discussed. We shall definitely listen to suggestions from the Shiv Sena president once he returns from his foreign tour," he said.

The issue of crop loan waiver has led to discord between the BJP and the Shiv Sena.

Today's protest happened against the backdrop of a meeting of all BJP ministers at the chief minister's official residence last night. Sources said the meeting began at around 10 p.m. and went on till 2 a.m.

When asked about the meeting, Mungantiwar said the BJP ministers shared their experience of the Shivar Samvad Yatra, the outreach programme undertaken by the party to assuage farmers.

"(BJP president) Amit Shah is visiting next week. So, preparations for meetings with him too were reviewed," he added.

However, speculation of a mid-term poll is high after the late night meeting of BJP ministers and the Shiv Sena's protest today.

MUMBAI: Shiv Sena ministers skipped a meeting of the Maharashtra state cabinet today, and later claimed that it was a protest against the "unilateral announcement" of a farm loan waiver by chief minister Devendra Fadnavis. Shiv Sena leader and Maharashtra transport minister Diwakar Raote said the government should have discussed the issue with his party before announcing the scheme. However, finance minister and senior BJP leader Sudhir Mungantiwar said the Shiv Sena leaders had sought and obtained prior permission from the chief minister to skip the meeting. Raote indicated that his party was disappointed at not being consulted. "We cooperated with the government on GST. They discussed the details with Uddhavji (Thackeray). The issue of loan waiver too needs to be discussed in similar way," he said. "None of the Shiv Sena ministers attended today's meeting. We met the chief minister earlier in the day and made him aware of the Shiv Sena's stand on the unilateral announcement of a loan waiver, an issue which we have been pursuing for over a year," senior Shiv Sena leader and industries minister Subhash Desai said while the cabinet meeting was still on. However, Mungantiwar said there is no discord in the cabinet. "The idea of a loan waiver is still being discussed. We shall definitely listen to suggestions from the Shiv Sena president once he returns from his foreign tour," he said. The issue of crop loan waiver has led to discord between the BJP and the Shiv Sena. Today's protest happened against the backdrop of a meeting of all BJP ministers at the chief minister's official residence last night. Sources said the meeting began at around 10 p.m. and went on till 2 a.m. When asked about the meeting, Mungantiwar said the BJP ministers shared their experience of the Shivar Samvad Yatra, the outreach programme undertaken by the party to assuage farmers. "(BJP president) Amit Shah is visiting next week. So, preparations for meetings with him too were reviewed," he added. However, speculation of a mid-term poll is high after the late night meeting of BJP ministers and the Shiv Sena's protest today.
By Express News Service

CHENNAI: With Marvels Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol 2, Disneys Pirates Of The Caribbean 5 and the much awaited Wonder Woman kick-starting the blockbuster summer of 2017 in earnest, heres a sneak peak into the other exciting films in store.

From horrific mummies to ravaging apes and kickass superheroes, it seems everybody has something to look forward to during the next couple of months.

The Mummy (June 9)

The Mummy franchise gets a promising reboot in the form of The Mummy that stars none other than Tom Cruise. The film is also the first installment in the Dark Universe series by the producers, Universal Studios. The film boasts of a stellar cast that includes Russell Crowe, Sofia Boutella, Annabelle Wallis and Jake Johnson.

Transformers: The Last Knight (June 23)

This is the fifth installment of the live-action Transformers film series and a direct sequel to 2014s Transformers: Age of Extinction. The film is directed by Michael Bay again, with Mark Wahlberg and Stanley Tucci reprising their roles from Age of Extinction alongside Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, and John Turturro from the first three movies.

Despicable Me 3 (June 30)

This third installment in the Despicable Me film seriesis directed by Pierre Coffin and Kyle Balda, and co-directed by Eric Guillon. The protagonist, Gru (Steve Carrell), will reportedly face off against a more charming twin brother, Dru, in this film that also features the voices of Steve Carell in a dual role, Kristen Wiig, Trey Parker, and Miranda Cosgrove.

Spiderman: Homecoming (July 7)

Weve now got ourselves a new Spider-Man in Tom Holland, who made his first appearance in Captain America: Civil War last year. The trailer looks good, and its never too late to resuscitate a dying franchise. If that were not exciting enough, it has been confirmed that the film will also feature Iron Man/Tony Stark played by Robert Downey Jr.

War for the Planet Of The Apes (July 14)

The apes are back in the War for the Planet of the Apes thats directed by Matt Reeves (who also made 2014s Dawn of the Planet of the Apes). The third installment in the Planet of the Apes reboot series stars Andy Serkis, Woody Harrelson and Steve Zahn. The film will have Caesars team in war with the humans, led by a ruthless colonel (Woody Harrelson).

CHENNAI: With Marvels Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol 2, Disneys Pirates Of The Caribbean 5 and the much awaited Wonder Woman kick-starting the blockbuster summer of 2017 in earnest, heres a sneak peak into the other exciting films in store. From horrific mummies to ravaging apes and kickass superheroes, it seems everybody has something to look forward to during the next couple of months. The Mummy (June 9) The Mummy franchise gets a promising reboot in the form of The Mummy that stars none other than Tom Cruise. The film is also the first installment in the Dark Universe series by the producers, Universal Studios. The film boasts of a stellar cast that includes Russell Crowe, Sofia Boutella, Annabelle Wallis and Jake Johnson. Transformers: The Last Knight (June 23) This is the fifth installment of the live-action Transformers film series and a direct sequel to 2014s Transformers: Age of Extinction. The film is directed by Michael Bay again, with Mark Wahlberg and Stanley Tucci reprising their roles from Age of Extinction alongside Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, and John Turturro from the first three movies. Despicable Me 3 (June 30) This third installment in the Despicable Me film seriesis directed by Pierre Coffin and Kyle Balda, and co-directed by Eric Guillon. The protagonist, Gru (Steve Carrell), will reportedly face off against a more charming twin brother, Dru, in this film that also features the voices of Steve Carell in a dual role, Kristen Wiig, Trey Parker, and Miranda Cosgrove. Spiderman: Homecoming (July 7) Weve now got ourselves a new Spider-Man in Tom Holland, who made his first appearance in Captain America: Civil War last year. The trailer looks good, and its never too late to resuscitate a dying franchise. If that were not exciting enough, it has been confirmed that the film will also feature Iron Man/Tony Stark played by Robert Downey Jr. War for the Planet Of The Apes (July 14) The apes are back in the War for the Planet of the Apes thats directed by Matt Reeves (who also made 2014s Dawn of the Planet of the Apes). The third installment in the Planet of the Apes reboot series stars Andy Serkis, Woody Harrelson and Steve Zahn. The film will have Caesars team in war with the humans, led by a ruthless colonel (Woody Harrelson).
By Express News Service

Disney Pixars Cars 3 will include a posthumous contribution from Paul Newman. The veteran actor who voiced for the character of Doc Hudson passed away nine years ago.

While the studio hasnt officially announced his appearance in the sequel, Newmans name is listed among the voice actors in the official Cars 3 cast. It is yet to be known if Pixar will use recycled dialogue from Cars (2006) or somehow interweave Newman lines that didnt make into the previous film.

The voice cast also features Armie Hammer as Jackson Storm, Larry The Cable Guy as Mater, Bonnie Hunt as Sally Carrera, Cheech Marin as Ramone, and Michael Wallis as Sheriff.

Directed by Brian Fee, and produced by Kevin Reher and Andrea Warren, Cars 3 has music by thje Oscar-winning Randy Newman. The film is set for release next week.

Disney Pixars Cars 3 will include a posthumous contribution from Paul Newman. The veteran actor who voiced for the character of Doc Hudson passed away nine years ago. While the studio hasnt officially announced his appearance in the sequel, Newmans name is listed among the voice actors in the official Cars 3 cast. It is yet to be known if Pixar will use recycled dialogue from Cars (2006) or somehow interweave Newman lines that didnt make into the previous film. The voice cast also features Armie Hammer as Jackson Storm, Larry The Cable Guy as Mater, Bonnie Hunt as Sally Carrera, Cheech Marin as Ramone, and Michael Wallis as Sheriff. Directed by Brian Fee, and produced by Kevin Reher and Andrea Warren, Cars 3 has music by thje Oscar-winning Randy Newman. The film is set for release next week.
In light of the Riyadh Arab-Islamic-American Summit, we need to go back and visit an earlier article that appeared as President El-Sisi was about to meet President Trump in a formal visit to Washington in April, 2017

Human Rights First article, Sisis Egypt is a Poor Partner for the United States in the Fight Against Terrorism, warned President Trump against mending ties with Egypt, concluding that Hosting Egypts repressive president sends the wrong message to the world on how to overcome the scourge of violent extremism and terrorism, reckoning El-Sisi and violent extremism and terrorism are somehow connected if not synonymous.

So, enough is enough; it is time to take Human Rights to task. The sweeping statements; the arrogant, know-it-all approach; and, more importantly, the incorrigible inaccuracies, call for a rebuttal.

The article starts off saying the Egyptian government has portrayed El-Sisi as a religious moderate playing a leading role in the fight against violent extremism, which is, in my books, perfectly true even if portrayed implies the opposite.

Indeed, El-Sisi is a moderate Muslim. He doesnt exemplify the stringently conservative notions but adheres to the Muslim altruistic traits: benevolence, humbleness, and compassion, while fighting violent extremism by, first, promoting religious reform and, second, by confronting terrorism.

At the Summit in Riyadh, President El-Sisi reiterated these principles. His succinct, four-point strategy underscored confronting all terrorist organisations without discrimination; addressing all related facetsincluding funding, arming, and political and ideological support; terminating the terrorist organisations ability to recruit new fighters through ideological and intellectual reform; and tackling the instability in national state institutions in the Arab region, which is a prerequisite for terrorist organisations growth.

Lets go back to Human Rights article. Since taking power by military coup from the elected, Muslim Brotherhood-backed, government of Mohamed Morsi in July 2013, Sisi has pursued policies that have fueled the grievances exploited by violent extremists.

All rhetoric military coup and the elected  Morsiaside, the writer believes that President El-Sisis policies create extremists, as though extremism did not exist on New Years Eve of 2011 when a bomb in an Alexandria church killed 21 churchgoers or in 97 when 70 were massacred in a Luxor Temple. The examples, prior to Sisi, are endless.

For a brief period, Egypt had become a malleable pawn in the hands of Islamists, and when Egyptians reversed the course, terrorism escalated further. El Sisi had no other alternative but to go after the culprits.

Besides, terrorism escalated all around the world, too, with affected countries immediately upping security and enhancing surveillance.

After the many explosions in Paris, France declared a three-month state of emergency, struck ISIS targets way inside Syria, and closed borders. It conducted warrantless searches and indiscriminate, intrusive surveillance tactics.

This while Belgium deployed more than 1,800 soldiers, carried several hundred raids, detentions, stops, and searches as Human Rights itself mentioned.

And yet such measures were never considered repressive, suppressive, destructive, dictatorial, counterproductive, brutal, or non pluralistic, as this article suggests Sisis rule is.

In a convoluted and verbose thought, the writer adds, His repressive policies have denied space to independent mainstream religious voices, who could credibly challenge and rebut extremist ideologues, while co-opting religious leaders to validate his dictatorial rule, thereby undermining their independence and credibility in the fight against extremist ideologies.

Unless the writer implies the Muslim Brotherhood organisation is a mainstream religious voice which would be misleading, Independent mainstream religious voices have not been denied space. Quite the contrary, many a time El-Sisi has been critical of Al-Azhar, the real mainstream voice, but he has never instituted change. He left it to Al-Azhar to change from within; it has yet to comply.

The article goes on. Sisis Egypt has received tens of billions of dollars of support from absolute monarchies in the Gulf, anxious to ensure that the popular demands for more representative government and human dignity, heard during the short-lived Arab Spring of 2011, should not take root in the Arab World.

Yes, Gulf States supported June 30th and the ousting of the Muslim Brotherhood president, fearing the Arab Spring consequences inflicted on Syria, Libya, and Yemen. The Gulf States also realised that Egypt is pivotal in the fight against terrorism and must remain strong.

Egypts dominant role was visible at the Summit even further. Earlier, President Trump called the Egyptian president to say he was looking forward to meeting him in Riyadh and vowing further robust strategic relations. Then President El-Sisi was favoured to launch the new Global Centre for combating extremist ideology together with King Salman and President Trump.

The article goes further. Sisis government perpetuated anti-Christian sectarianism and intolerance of religious diversity, is utterly flawed. It also failed to protect Christians. If anything such statements fuel rage and provoke uncalled-for reactionary measures, or maybe that is exactly what Human Rights wants to instil.

Of all Egyptian leaders, El Sisi is the most respectful of other religions and other peoples in general. During his visits to the Coptic Cathedral, El Sisi identifies all Egyptians as one entity with no hyphenation, as in Egyptian-Copt or Egyptian-Muslim. In fact, during Muslim and Christian festivities, as well as crises, the president congratulates and consoles all Egyptians with no reference to Muslims or Christians. As for being unable to protect Christians, I dont believe that any country is able to fully protect its citizens against terrorism. Egypt tries though; churches are the most guarded of all buildings and institutions in Egypt, intensely barricaded with roadblocks, barbed wire, and heightened security especially during festivities.

Besides, Egypt will continue to protect its Christians by going after violent extremists, and if, according to the writer, this provokes grievances, so be it.

The writer goes on to say, There can be no credible reform while religious institutions operate within the framework of rigid state restrictions. Id rather see Al-Azhar reform its books and doctrines, improve its sermons, and train its sheikhs than have it continue to dwell on issues that are exploited negatively. Id call these changes improvements not rigid state restrictions.

And at the Summit, President El-Sisi reiterated these notions. In his speech, he mentioned his initiative to renew the religious discourse that would lead to a comprehensive cultural revolution and illustrate the true essence of tolerant Islam.

But the most convoluted message of all lies here: The government suppresses peaceful dissent and stifles pluralism.

The writer is unaware that what exists in Egypt today is brazen terrorism. Hundreds of army officers and conscripts died; judges, police officers, helpless laypersons, and, of course, Copts were victimized. To consider such behaviour peaceful dissent is sheer nonsense.

The writer suggested President Trump challenge El-Sisi otherwise it would fuel resentment of the United States in Egypt and beyond. This is contrary to the truth; by offering strong support to President El-Sisi, President Trump smoothened out the wrinkles and resentments left by President Obama, and remedied the snub that continued for four years.

In fact, much to the chagrin of Human Rights, President Sisi was greeted warmly in Washington. Then, in Riyadh, it was clear that President Trump was fully aware of the role that Egypt has taken upon itself. He singled out Egypt for a forthcoming visit and praised President El-Sisi for focusing on the safety of Egyptians under trying conditions.

The upshot of the Riyadh Summits is proof that Human Rights message is defective and biased, a repetitive broken record.

The writer is an academic, political analyst, and author of Cairo Rewind: the First Two Years of Egypt's Revolution, 2011-2013.

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By BNS

Last week, the first song Ullu Ka Patha. from Jagga Jasoos was released. Katrina Kaif shared a video on social media to show some behind the scene moments from the song. She captioned it as, Jagga and Jughead. Naach Meri Jaan Paisa Milega ... A version of behind the scenes ... Others coming soon ... #JaggaJasoos

The video shows both Ranbir and Katrina trying out some quirky dance moves while goofing around on the streets of Morocco. Katrina is also seen taking digs at Ranbir. The making also features director Anurag Basu joining in the fun.

Along with Ranbir and Katrina, the film also features Adah Sharma. The film tells the story of a teenage detective who is in search of his missing father. The film is set to release on July 14, 2017.

Last week, the first song Ullu Ka Patha. from Jagga Jasoos was released. Katrina Kaif shared a video on social media to show some behind the scene moments from the song. She captioned it as, Jagga and Jughead. Naach Meri Jaan Paisa Milega ... A version of behind the scenes ... Others coming soon ... #JaggaJasoos The video shows both Ranbir and Katrina trying out some quirky dance moves while goofing around on the streets of Morocco. Katrina is also seen taking digs at Ranbir. The making also features director Anurag Basu joining in the fun. Along with Ranbir and Katrina, the film also features Adah Sharma. The film tells the story of a teenage detective who is in search of his missing father. The film is set to release on July 14, 2017.
S Subhakeerthana By

Express News Service

Being a star kid isnt easy business. Ask Gautham Karthik, who believes its his greatest challenge to come out of the shadow of his familys legacy and create an identity for himself. Its probably why Ive never really gone out of my way to socialise much, he says. Cinema is all he wants. My life is only about that, he adds. I dont feel the necessity to be seen all the time. I guess I should change that eventually. Though launched by a director of Mani Ratnams stature, the going hasnt been too great for Gautham since.

All I can do is work to the best of my ability. I have given my 100 per cent in every film so far. I have no regrets about doing a Vai Raja Vai or Muthuramalingam because I consider them all to be a learning experience, he adds.

The comparisons with dad have reduced, as I havent been giving hits. So, theres lesser pressure on me. I am consciously picking scripts that are different from each other.

Gautham, whos awaiting the release of Rangoon this week, has Indrajith, Ivan Thanthiran, Sippai, and Hara Hara Mahadevaki in the pipeline. I am excited about having so many releases this year. I am also simultaneously shooting for Oru Nalla Naal Paathu Solren with Vijay Sethupathi. We are shooting in the Thalakonam forests, and for an entire day, I was hanging upside down without food and water for a stunt sequence, he laughs.

Rangoon, he feels, has come at the right time in his career, as he was looking to push his limits as a performer. I play a Burmese repatriate, who comes to Chennai for a living. I had to learn the challenging North Madras dialect. I sport a tanned look, and each time, it took me at least two hours to put on the makeup!

For the actor brought up in Ooty, getting a chance to explore North Madras made for a memorable experience. I went to places in Chennai I had never been. I gorged on the street food, he smiles.

Heaping praises on director Rajkumar Periasamy, Gautham adds, From day one, he was honest about the script and had total clarity. He did extensive research before beginning the film and every character has a sense of purpose. When you see the film, these aspects become evident. Rangoon is more than a film. Its full of experiments.

Does he discuss these scripts with his father? We share a special bond, but he stays away from making these decisions. He is always proud of me. Are there plans to do a film with him? We have decided not to till I become a bankable hero.

Thanks to the reduced pressure on him, he says hes ready to take on a variety of films. I have had the opportunity to play varied characters. I am glad I havent done just one type of character, or become stuck with one type of cinema, he says.

Of his upcoming roles, hes excited about Ivan Thanthiran in which he plays a college dropout. Its about reverse engineering--about making duplicate products, he says. Gautham realises a hit is overdue. I have tried to figure out where I have gone wrong. Despite being from a film background, I have had only four releases. I am learning what I can and cant do. I think I can do justice to negative roles.

Quick five

Favourite actor: Vijay Sethupathi is really cool. Ive never seen an actor who gets involved in a script like he does.

On comparisons with Karthik: They often compare the way I speak or express myself. During the Vai Raja Vai shoot, I remember Vivekh saying I sounded like my grandfather.

A Karthik film hed like to remake: I dont want to meddle with his classics including Mouna Ragam or Agni Natchathiram. Maybe Ullathai Allithaa?

Favourite directors: Mani Ratnam, Shankar, AR Murugadoss, Gautham Menon.

Dream role: A period film like Baahubali, of course!

Being a star kid isnt easy business. Ask Gautham Karthik, who believes its his greatest challenge to come out of the shadow of his familys legacy and create an identity for himself. Its probably why Ive never really gone out of my way to socialise much, he says. Cinema is all he wants. My life is only about that, he adds. I dont feel the necessity to be seen all the time. I guess I should change that eventually. Though launched by a director of Mani Ratnams stature, the going hasnt been too great for Gautham since. All I can do is work to the best of my ability. I have given my 100 per cent in every film so far. I have no regrets about doing a Vai Raja Vai or Muthuramalingam because I consider them all to be a learning experience, he adds. The comparisons with dad have reduced, as I havent been giving hits. So, theres lesser pressure on me. I am consciously picking scripts that are different from each other. Gautham, whos awaiting the release of Rangoon this week, has Indrajith, Ivan Thanthiran, Sippai, and Hara Hara Mahadevaki in the pipeline. I am excited about having so many releases this year. I am also simultaneously shooting for Oru Nalla Naal Paathu Solren with Vijay Sethupathi. We are shooting in the Thalakonam forests, and for an entire day, I was hanging upside down without food and water for a stunt sequence, he laughs. Rangoon, he feels, has come at the right time in his career, as he was looking to push his limits as a performer. I play a Burmese repatriate, who comes to Chennai for a living. I had to learn the challenging North Madras dialect. I sport a tanned look, and each time, it took me at least two hours to put on the makeup! For the actor brought up in Ooty, getting a chance to explore North Madras made for a memorable experience. I went to places in Chennai I had never been. I gorged on the street food, he smiles. Heaping praises on director Rajkumar Periasamy, Gautham adds, From day one, he was honest about the script and had total clarity. He did extensive research before beginning the film and every character has a sense of purpose. When you see the film, these aspects become evident. Rangoon is more than a film. Its full of experiments. Does he discuss these scripts with his father? We share a special bond, but he stays away from making these decisions. He is always proud of me. Are there plans to do a film with him? We have decided not to till I become a bankable hero. Thanks to the reduced pressure on him, he says hes ready to take on a variety of films. I have had the opportunity to play varied characters. I am glad I havent done just one type of character, or become stuck with one type of cinema, he says. Of his upcoming roles, hes excited about Ivan Thanthiran in which he plays a college dropout. Its about reverse engineering--about making duplicate products, he says. Gautham realises a hit is overdue. I have tried to figure out where I have gone wrong. Despite being from a film background, I have had only four releases. I am learning what I can and cant do. I think I can do justice to negative roles. Quick five Favourite actor: Vijay Sethupathi is really cool. Ive never seen an actor who gets involved in a script like he does. On comparisons with Karthik: They often compare the way I speak or express myself. During the Vai Raja Vai shoot, I remember Vivekh saying I sounded like my grandfather. A Karthik film hed like to remake: I dont want to meddle with his classics including Mouna Ragam or Agni Natchathiram. Maybe Ullathai Allithaa? Favourite directors: Mani Ratnam, Shankar, AR Murugadoss, Gautham Menon. Dream role: A period film like Baahubali, of course!
A Sharadhaa By

Express News Service

Ramesh Aravind will be directing the Kannada and Tamil remakes of Queen, according to the production house that is coming out with its remakes in all the South Indian languages. Mediente, the production house, made the official announcement at the launch of the film in Kannada on Monday.

Remaking this heroine-oriented subject promises to be yet another interesting challenge for the actor-director. Ramesh Aravind tells CE that he was clear at the outset that he wanted to direct the remake in two languages. I was told that Revathy would be directing the Tamil and Malayalam versions, and so initially, I didnt ask for the Tamil project. In fact, I am very comfortable with Tamil. I can read and write the language, and have, after all, been part of 50 films here. Eventually, a lot of changes happened. The whole project was planned afresh, except for the Kannada version, and this time, I had no hesitation in pitching for the Tamil version as well.

Kajal Aggarwal has been signed to play the role in Tamil, while Parul Yadav will reprise Kangana Ranauts role in the Kannada version. The lead actresses have been finalised, and an official announcement can be expected soon.

I cant officially confirm the Tamil heroine, but yes, I was told that Kajal Aggarwal would come on board, says Ramesh.

The other important signing Ramesh Arvind is excited about is Amy Jackson who will reportedly be playing Lisa Haydons role in all four languages. He says that the decision to have her work across the board really elevates the film. It cuts down four films into two in terms of execution for me, he says.

The director has chosen the title, Butterfly, for the Kannada version. I see Queen as a story of metamorphosis. First, a caterpillar gets rejected by the world. Later, it withdraws into a cocoon, and turns out into a butterfly. That is why Ive chosen to call it that in Kannada. Even the English title is chosen for a reason. The story, after all, takes place in a foreign land.

The actor-filmmaker hasnt narrowed down on a title for the Tamil version. He has, however, decided on the locations of the shooting, which includes Karur, Tirupur and of course, later Paris, London and Amsterdam. The Kannada version, Butterfly, will be shot in Thirthahalli and Sagara.

The casting wasnt really a spot of bother for Ramesh, as the film has very few characters. Except for the female lead and a few other characters, the rest of the cast seen abroad will mostly be the same, he says.

We are looking for actors who are popular in Tamil and Kannada. We are also planning to bring in a newcomer as a hero and will soon be holding auditions for it, he says.

Ramesh hopes to complete shooting the remakes in both languages by the end of this year. Since I will be directing in both Kannada and Tamil, the project will need about 120 days of shooting schedule, he says.

He concludes by expressing his delight at getting a chance to remake Queen. I think it makes for a great story. I will definitely try and retain the essence of the film. Like I had said many times, Im here to remake the story, not the film.

Ramesh Aravind will be directing the Kannada and Tamil remakes of Queen, according to the production house that is coming out with its remakes in all the South Indian languages. Mediente, the production house, made the official announcement at the launch of the film in Kannada on Monday. Remaking this heroine-oriented subject promises to be yet another interesting challenge for the actor-director. Ramesh Aravind tells CE that he was clear at the outset that he wanted to direct the remake in two languages. I was told that Revathy would be directing the Tamil and Malayalam versions, and so initially, I didnt ask for the Tamil project. In fact, I am very comfortable with Tamil. I can read and write the language, and have, after all, been part of 50 films here. Eventually, a lot of changes happened. The whole project was planned afresh, except for the Kannada version, and this time, I had no hesitation in pitching for the Tamil version as well. Kajal Aggarwal has been signed to play the role in Tamil, while Parul Yadav will reprise Kangana Ranauts role in the Kannada version. The lead actresses have been finalised, and an official announcement can be expected soon. I cant officially confirm the Tamil heroine, but yes, I was told that Kajal Aggarwal would come on board, says Ramesh. The other important signing Ramesh Arvind is excited about is Amy Jackson who will reportedly be playing Lisa Haydons role in all four languages. He says that the decision to have her work across the board really elevates the film. It cuts down four films into two in terms of execution for me, he says. The director has chosen the title, Butterfly, for the Kannada version. I see Queen as a story of metamorphosis. First, a caterpillar gets rejected by the world. Later, it withdraws into a cocoon, and turns out into a butterfly. That is why Ive chosen to call it that in Kannada. Even the English title is chosen for a reason. The story, after all, takes place in a foreign land. The actor-filmmaker hasnt narrowed down on a title for the Tamil version. He has, however, decided on the locations of the shooting, which includes Karur, Tirupur and of course, later Paris, London and Amsterdam. The Kannada version, Butterfly, will be shot in Thirthahalli and Sagara. The casting wasnt really a spot of bother for Ramesh, as the film has very few characters. Except for the female lead and a few other characters, the rest of the cast seen abroad will mostly be the same, he says. We are looking for actors who are popular in Tamil and Kannada. We are also planning to bring in a newcomer as a hero and will soon be holding auditions for it, he says. Ramesh hopes to complete shooting the remakes in both languages by the end of this year. Since I will be directing in both Kannada and Tamil, the project will need about 120 days of shooting schedule, he says. He concludes by expressing his delight at getting a chance to remake Queen. I think it makes for a great story. I will definitely try and retain the essence of the film. Like I had said many times, Im here to remake the story, not the film.
By Express News Service

BHOPAL: At least 25 people, including men and women, were charred to death beyond recognition in an explosion at a licenced firecracker factory-cum-godown in Naxal-affected Balaghat district of Madhya Pradesh on Wednesday.

The explosion at the Warsi Patakha Dukan, located in the jungles of Khairigram village, also left six others with severe burns. While two of the injured have been admitted to the Balaghat district hospital, four others were undergoing treatment in Bhillai. The deceased and injured were mostly women.

According to Amit Sanghi, superintendent of police Balaghat, the explosion was set off by sparks in the crackers due to intense heat, around 3.30 pm. The godown, located in a big hall, was entirely flattened by the explosion.

So far, at least 25 bodies have been retrieved from the debris. Theres a possibility that more bodies may be found, said Sanghi. The State government announced `2 lakh compensation to each of the deceased persons kin.

BHOPAL: At least 25 people, including men and women, were charred to death beyond recognition in an explosion at a licenced firecracker factory-cum-godown in Naxal-affected Balaghat district of Madhya Pradesh on Wednesday. The explosion at the Warsi Patakha Dukan, located in the jungles of Khairigram village, also left six others with severe burns. While two of the injured have been admitted to the Balaghat district hospital, four others were undergoing treatment in Bhillai. The deceased and injured were mostly women. According to Amit Sanghi, superintendent of police Balaghat, the explosion was set off by sparks in the crackers due to intense heat, around 3.30 pm. The godown, located in a big hall, was entirely flattened by the explosion. So far, at least 25 bodies have been retrieved from the debris. Theres a possibility that more bodies may be found, said Sanghi. The State government announced `2 lakh compensation to each of the deceased persons kin.
By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Wednesday said that a team of five members will visit Madhya Pradesh to meet the protesting farmers. AAP also condemned the police firing on farmers in Madhya Pradesh and said that that case should be lodged against the erring officers over the incident which left up to eight people dead on Tuesday.

"The Aam Aadmi Party strongly condemns this barbaric act of police in Mandsaur... The party does not support any kind of violence, AAP Delhi convener Gopal Rai said in a press conference. He also said that a five member team will visit Mandsaur on Friday. On June 9, a five-member delegation of the party comprising Sanjay Singh, Ashutosh, Somnath Bharti, Bhagwant Mann and Sadhu Singh will go to Mandsaur and meet the protesting farmers, Rai added.

The government should also concede the demands of the farmers. Their loans should be waived off with immediate effect, the AAP leader said. He demanded that the minimum support price of the crops in Madhya Pradesh be fixed at 1.5 times above the input cost.

NEW DELHI: Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Wednesday said that a team of five members will visit Madhya Pradesh to meet the protesting farmers. AAP also condemned the police firing on farmers in Madhya Pradesh and said that that case should be lodged against the erring officers over the incident which left up to eight people dead on Tuesday. "The Aam Aadmi Party strongly condemns this barbaric act of police in Mandsaur... The party does not support any kind of violence, AAP Delhi convener Gopal Rai said in a press conference. He also said that a five member team will visit Mandsaur on Friday. On June 9, a five-member delegation of the party comprising Sanjay Singh, Ashutosh, Somnath Bharti, Bhagwant Mann and Sadhu Singh will go to Mandsaur and meet the protesting farmers, Rai added. The government should also concede the demands of the farmers. Their loans should be waived off with immediate effect, the AAP leader said. He demanded that the minimum support price of the crops in Madhya Pradesh be fixed at 1.5 times above the input cost.
By PTI

NEW DELHI: The ED today attached Rs 10 lakh in connection with its money laundering probe against a former IAS officer of Gujarat cadre, Pradeep Sharma. The 1984-batch officer was arrested by the central probe agency in July last year.

The Enforcement Directorate had filed a criminal case against Sharma and others under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), based on an FIR of the Gujarat CID.

The case pertains to the sanction of government land in Bhuj for industrial use to Ms Welspun India Limited, and its group companies, Welspun Power and Steel and Welspun Gujarat Style Roharan, in 2004 when Sharma was the district collector and chairman of the District Land Evaluation and Pricing Committee.

The agency, in a statement, said during the course of investigation it was revealed that in 2008-2009, Rs 22 lakh were transferred from the account of Ms Value Packaging to the NRO (Non-Resident Ordinary) account of Sharma's wife. "Out of the Rs 22 lakh, an amount of Rs 10 lakh was further transferred to the NRO account of Shvetang Chinubhai Dewashrayee, brother-in-law of Sharma, who is a US citizen. "These Rs 22 lakh are the proceeds of crime generated as a result of criminal activity related to the offence registered against Sharma and from this fund, an amount of Rs 10 lakh has been layered and integrated into the account of his relative and projected as untainted.

Therefore, the same has been provisionally attached," it said. The central agency had earlier said that Sharma had allegedly "sanctioned huge land at cheaper price to Ms Welspun India Limited and its sister concerns Ms Welspun Gujarat Stahi Rohren, Ms Welspun Power and Steel company by manipulative acts in gross violation of norms, instructions and guidelines as laid down by the state government of Gujarat".

Through this allotment, Sharma, in connivance with some others "has allegedly caused financial losses to the state government to the tune of Rs 1.20 crore (approx)", the agency had said. "Against this favour, he (Sharma) received gain to the tune of Rs 22 lakh in the name of his wife Shyamal P Sharma within a short period of 15 months by just investing Rs 1 lakh (in January 2008) in one Ms Value Packaging," the ED probe report had said.

The ED had invoked PMLA alleging that the money was first deposited in his wife's overseas bank account and then transferred to his account in violation of the Act. Sharma was also arrested by the Gujarat Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) in September 2014 in connection with a corruption case when he was the Bhavnagar municipal commissioner.

He had also approached the Supreme Court in 2013 seeking cognisance of audio tapes related to alleged illegal snooping of a young woman architect under the then Narendra Modi government in the state. The ED had filed a charge-sheet in this case last year and had earlier attached assets worth Rs 1.09 crore.

NEW DELHI: The ED today attached Rs 10 lakh in connection with its money laundering probe against a former IAS officer of Gujarat cadre, Pradeep Sharma. The 1984-batch officer was arrested by the central probe agency in July last year. The Enforcement Directorate had filed a criminal case against Sharma and others under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), based on an FIR of the Gujarat CID. The case pertains to the sanction of government land in Bhuj for industrial use to Ms Welspun India Limited, and its group companies, Welspun Power and Steel and Welspun Gujarat Style Roharan, in 2004 when Sharma was the district collector and chairman of the District Land Evaluation and Pricing Committee. The agency, in a statement, said during the course of investigation it was revealed that in 2008-2009, Rs 22 lakh were transferred from the account of Ms Value Packaging to the NRO (Non-Resident Ordinary) account of Sharma's wife. "Out of the Rs 22 lakh, an amount of Rs 10 lakh was further transferred to the NRO account of Shvetang Chinubhai Dewashrayee, brother-in-law of Sharma, who is a US citizen. "These Rs 22 lakh are the proceeds of crime generated as a result of criminal activity related to the offence registered against Sharma and from this fund, an amount of Rs 10 lakh has been layered and integrated into the account of his relative and projected as untainted. Therefore, the same has been provisionally attached," it said. The central agency had earlier said that Sharma had allegedly "sanctioned huge land at cheaper price to Ms Welspun India Limited and its sister concerns Ms Welspun Gujarat Stahi Rohren, Ms Welspun Power and Steel company by manipulative acts in gross violation of norms, instructions and guidelines as laid down by the state government of Gujarat". Through this allotment, Sharma, in connivance with some others "has allegedly caused financial losses to the state government to the tune of Rs 1.20 crore (approx)", the agency had said. "Against this favour, he (Sharma) received gain to the tune of Rs 22 lakh in the name of his wife Shyamal P Sharma within a short period of 15 months by just investing Rs 1 lakh (in January 2008) in one Ms Value Packaging," the ED probe report had said. The ED had invoked PMLA alleging that the money was first deposited in his wife's overseas bank account and then transferred to his account in violation of the Act. Sharma was also arrested by the Gujarat Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) in September 2014 in connection with a corruption case when he was the Bhavnagar municipal commissioner. He had also approached the Supreme Court in 2013 seeking cognisance of audio tapes related to alleged illegal snooping of a young woman architect under the then Narendra Modi government in the state. The ED had filed a charge-sheet in this case last year and had earlier attached assets worth Rs 1.09 crore.
By PTI

NEW DELHI: The government has floodlit 647 kilometers of the borders with Pakistan and Bangladesh to prevent terrorists and immigrants from infiltrating into Indian territory.

The floodlighting of the 647-km-long stretches of the two international borders was completed in last one year, a Home Ministry official said.

It will help border guarding forces keep strict vigil in the forward areas and check attempts of infiltration by terrorists and illegal immigrants.

Projects worth Rs 5,188 crore were sanctioned by the central government in the last three years of which Rs 2,138 crore has been released for the Indo-Bangladesh and Indo-Pak border projects.

These include erecting a fence in a 200-km area, constructing 430-km-long border roads, 110 composite border outposts and floodlighting the 647-km-long areas.

"A major push has been given by the government to border infrastructure and developmental works," the official said.

The total length of the Indo-Pak border is 3,323 km, including the Line of Control and the Actual Ground Position Line, while the Indo-Bangladesh border is 4,096 km long. The India-China border is 3,488 km long.

As regards to the India-China border, out of 27 border roads sanctioned in 2008, the construction of first eight roads was completed during 2014-16, while another nine roads are due to be completed by the end of the year.

The Home Ministry has also undertaken a new initiative for creation of model villages in border areas. More than Rs 92 crore has been released to seven states for development of 41 model villages, including 24 in Jammu and Kashmir.

To facilitate the border trade and passenger movement at land border crossings, the government has been promoting the setting up Integrated Check Posts (ICPs).

The ICP at Raxaul (Indo-Nepal border) was operationalised in June 2016 and at Jogbani in November. While the cargo terminal at the ICP, Petrapole (Indo-Bangladesh border) was inaugurated by prime ministers of India and Bangladesh in July last year, foundation stone for an ICP at Dawki in Meghalaya (Indo-Bangladesh border) was laid in January 2017.

In 2009, the central government had approved a proposal to construct additional 509 border out posts (BOPs) along the Indo-Pak and the Indo-Bangladesh borders at an estimated cost of Rs 1,832 crore.

In 2016, the scope of the project was revised by the Cabinet Committee on Security from 509 BOPs to 422 BOPs.

At present, there are 609 BOPs along the Indo-Pak border and an additional 126 BOPs are to be constructed to reduce the inter-BOP distance to 3.5 km.

There are 802 BOPs along the Indo-Bangladesh border where the additional 383 BOPs were to be constructed.

NEW DELHI: The government has floodlit 647 kilometers of the borders with Pakistan and Bangladesh to prevent terrorists and immigrants from infiltrating into Indian territory. The floodlighting of the 647-km-long stretches of the two international borders was completed in last one year, a Home Ministry official said. It will help border guarding forces keep strict vigil in the forward areas and check attempts of infiltration by terrorists and illegal immigrants. Projects worth Rs 5,188 crore were sanctioned by the central government in the last three years of which Rs 2,138 crore has been released for the Indo-Bangladesh and Indo-Pak border projects. These include erecting a fence in a 200-km area, constructing 430-km-long border roads, 110 composite border outposts and floodlighting the 647-km-long areas. "A major push has been given by the government to border infrastructure and developmental works," the official said. The total length of the Indo-Pak border is 3,323 km, including the Line of Control and the Actual Ground Position Line, while the Indo-Bangladesh border is 4,096 km long. The India-China border is 3,488 km long. As regards to the India-China border, out of 27 border roads sanctioned in 2008, the construction of first eight roads was completed during 2014-16, while another nine roads are due to be completed by the end of the year. The Home Ministry has also undertaken a new initiative for creation of model villages in border areas. More than Rs 92 crore has been released to seven states for development of 41 model villages, including 24 in Jammu and Kashmir. To facilitate the border trade and passenger movement at land border crossings, the government has been promoting the setting up Integrated Check Posts (ICPs). The ICP at Raxaul (Indo-Nepal border) was operationalised in June 2016 and at Jogbani in November. While the cargo terminal at the ICP, Petrapole (Indo-Bangladesh border) was inaugurated by prime ministers of India and Bangladesh in July last year, foundation stone for an ICP at Dawki in Meghalaya (Indo-Bangladesh border) was laid in January 2017. In 2009, the central government had approved a proposal to construct additional 509 border out posts (BOPs) along the Indo-Pak and the Indo-Bangladesh borders at an estimated cost of Rs 1,832 crore. In 2016, the scope of the project was revised by the Cabinet Committee on Security from 509 BOPs to 422 BOPs. At present, there are 609 BOPs along the Indo-Pak border and an additional 126 BOPs are to be constructed to reduce the inter-BOP distance to 3.5 km. There are 802 BOPs along the Indo-Bangladesh border where the additional 383 BOPs were to be constructed.
By PTI

GURGAON: Gurgaon police today released sketches of the three accused, who had allegedly gang raped a woman and killed her infant daughter.

After failing to recover any concrete evidence and clues of the accused, who gang-raped the 23-year-old woman and killed her baby daughter on May 29, Gurgaon police released the sketches of the accused and appealed to the public for their identification.

Since the crime occurred in a moving auto-rickshaw, the police has questioned over 50 auto drivers plying in the IMT, Manesar area and detained some of them for interrogation to ascertain the auto and accused persons.

It has become a challenge for the Gurgaon police to nab the criminals after three back-to-back cases of molestation and gang-rape since last month.

The accused left the victim after raping her for four hours. She then went to the spot where they had earlier thrown her nine-month-old daughter and picked her up in the middle of road and went to a hospital.

The doctors declared the infant dead but still she did not believe it and travelled with the dead child to a hospital in Delhi and later returned to M G Road metro station.

Gurgaon police commissioner Sandeep Khirwar admitted that the victim had travelled with her dead child in the metro the day after the incident and police learnt about the crime only after the victim's husband approached them.

"Her husband and Gurgaon police received the victim from M G Road metro station after she returned from hospital in Delhi. Following that, police conducted post-mortem of the infant," Khirwar said.

It has been alleged that as the victim belongs to a poor family, the police tried to suppress her statement.

The police also reportedly did not register an FIR of gang rape initially but later included the charge five days after the incident.

The police constituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to nab the culprits. The SIT has taken the victim to all possible locations to identify the crime scene and sequence of events.

The woman and her daughter had left home in Bas Khusla village after an altercation with her husband and neighbours on the night of May 29.

She was on her way to her parental house at Khandsa village when she was first given a lift in a truck. The truck driver also molested her but as she put up strong resistance, he dropped her off on NH 8.

As the victim was alone, the three accused in the auto offered her a lift and then gang-raped her.

The accused also threw her infant daughter from the vehicle to avoid attention after she started crying.

GURGAON: Gurgaon police today released sketches of the three accused, who had allegedly gang raped a woman and killed her infant daughter. After failing to recover any concrete evidence and clues of the accused, who gang-raped the 23-year-old woman and killed her baby daughter on May 29, Gurgaon police released the sketches of the accused and appealed to the public for their identification. Since the crime occurred in a moving auto-rickshaw, the police has questioned over 50 auto drivers plying in the IMT, Manesar area and detained some of them for interrogation to ascertain the auto and accused persons. It has become a challenge for the Gurgaon police to nab the criminals after three back-to-back cases of molestation and gang-rape since last month. The accused left the victim after raping her for four hours. She then went to the spot where they had earlier thrown her nine-month-old daughter and picked her up in the middle of road and went to a hospital. The doctors declared the infant dead but still she did not believe it and travelled with the dead child to a hospital in Delhi and later returned to M G Road metro station. Gurgaon police commissioner Sandeep Khirwar admitted that the victim had travelled with her dead child in the metro the day after the incident and police learnt about the crime only after the victim's husband approached them. "Her husband and Gurgaon police received the victim from M G Road metro station after she returned from hospital in Delhi. Following that, police conducted post-mortem of the infant," Khirwar said. It has been alleged that as the victim belongs to a poor family, the police tried to suppress her statement. The police also reportedly did not register an FIR of gang rape initially but later included the charge five days after the incident. The police constituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to nab the culprits. The SIT has taken the victim to all possible locations to identify the crime scene and sequence of events. The woman and her daughter had left home in Bas Khusla village after an altercation with her husband and neighbours on the night of May 29. She was on her way to her parental house at Khandsa village when she was first given a lift in a truck. The truck driver also molested her but as she put up strong resistance, he dropped her off on NH 8. As the victim was alone, the three accused in the auto offered her a lift and then gang-raped her. The accused also threw her infant daughter from the vehicle to avoid attention after she started crying.
By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury was Wednesday heckled by two members of Hindu Sena, a right wing organisation, in partys Delhi headquarters while he was coming to address media after the two-day Polit Bureau meeting here.

The two men sat inside the hall where media briefing was to be held at AK Gopalan Bhawa and when Yechury was about to enter, they stood up and ran towards him shouting slogans.

Party workers around the Left leader caught both the men and handed them to Delhi Police, which has registered a case.

Hindu Sena, issued a statement, saying "Delhi Police has detained two Hindu Sena activists Upendra Kumar and Pawan Kaul at Mandir Marg Police Station for protesting against Prakash Karat and CPI (M) for their article against the Indian Army. Hindu Sena will not allow any traitor to speak against the country and the army."

Karat in an article in partys mouth piece had criticized army chief for defending armys action in dealing with civilian protestors in Kashmir.

When asked about the incident, Yechury said: We will not be cowed down by any attempts of Sangh's goondagardi to silence us. This is a battle for the soul of India, which we will win.

He further said the attackers could not reach near him else he would have given them a befitting reply.

Condemning the incident, the Polit Bureau said: This is typical of the RSS methodology of seeking to browbeat and intimidate the opposition. Such tactics will not be allowed to succeed.

NEW DELHI: CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury was Wednesday heckled by two members of Hindu Sena, a right wing organisation, in partys Delhi headquarters while he was coming to address media after the two-day Polit Bureau meeting here. The two men sat inside the hall where media briefing was to be held at AK Gopalan Bhawa and when Yechury was about to enter, they stood up and ran towards him shouting slogans. Party workers around the Left leader caught both the men and handed them to Delhi Police, which has registered a case. Hindu Sena, issued a statement, saying "Delhi Police has detained two Hindu Sena activists Upendra Kumar and Pawan Kaul at Mandir Marg Police Station for protesting against Prakash Karat and CPI (M) for their article against the Indian Army. Hindu Sena will not allow any traitor to speak against the country and the army." Karat in an article in partys mouth piece had criticized army chief for defending armys action in dealing with civilian protestors in Kashmir. When asked about the incident, Yechury said: We will not be cowed down by any attempts of Sangh's goondagardi to silence us. This is a battle for the soul of India, which we will win. He further said the attackers could not reach near him else he would have given them a befitting reply. Condemning the incident, the Polit Bureau said: This is typical of the RSS methodology of seeking to browbeat and intimidate the opposition. Such tactics will not be allowed to succeed.
By PTI

HANDWARA: A Hizbul Mujahideen militant, who was seen in a video taken during the funeral of outfit commander Sabzar Bhat last week, has surrendered before authorities in Kashmir, police said today.

Investigations revealed that he was Danish Ahmed, a resident of Handwara in north Kashmir studying at the Doon P G College of Agriculture Science and Technology, Dehradun.

"A few days back, video clips of an unidentified terrorist wearing a battle pouch with a grenade were in circulation on social media.

"These video clips were clicked in Tral area by local media persons during the funeral of self-style terrorist commander Sabzar Bhat," a police spokesperson said.

Danish was also found to have been involved in stonepelting incidents in Handwara during the 2016 turmoil. "He was picked up by the police but was let off after counselling in view of his career," the spokesperson said.

After Danish's involvement in militancy was established, security forces got in touch with his parents and impressed upon them the need to counsel their son to surrender.

"His parents were convinced that if he surrenders, he would be dealt with fairly under law. Efforts made by security forces yielded results and Danish surrendered before police and 21 Rashtriya Rifles of army in Handwara," he said.

During questioning, Danish revealed that he had been in touch with militants in south Kashmir on social media and was persuaded to join them.

"He was tasked by Hizbul Mujahideen commanders to activate some local youth in north Kashmir and make the region as militancy infested as the southern part of Kashmir.

"However, after spending few days with the terrorists in south Kashmir, he realized the futility of joining militant ranks," the spokesperson said.

A case under relevant sections of law has been registered against Danish, he said. The case is being considered under the J&K Surrendered Militants Rehabilitation Policy.

HANDWARA: A Hizbul Mujahideen militant, who was seen in a video taken during the funeral of outfit commander Sabzar Bhat last week, has surrendered before authorities in Kashmir, police said today. Investigations revealed that he was Danish Ahmed, a resident of Handwara in north Kashmir studying at the Doon P G College of Agriculture Science and Technology, Dehradun. "A few days back, video clips of an unidentified terrorist wearing a battle pouch with a grenade were in circulation on social media. "These video clips were clicked in Tral area by local media persons during the funeral of self-style terrorist commander Sabzar Bhat," a police spokesperson said. Danish was also found to have been involved in stonepelting incidents in Handwara during the 2016 turmoil. "He was picked up by the police but was let off after counselling in view of his career," the spokesperson said. After Danish's involvement in militancy was established, security forces got in touch with his parents and impressed upon them the need to counsel their son to surrender. "His parents were convinced that if he surrenders, he would be dealt with fairly under law. Efforts made by security forces yielded results and Danish surrendered before police and 21 Rashtriya Rifles of army in Handwara," he said. During questioning, Danish revealed that he had been in touch with militants in south Kashmir on social media and was persuaded to join them. "He was tasked by Hizbul Mujahideen commanders to activate some local youth in north Kashmir and make the region as militancy infested as the southern part of Kashmir. "However, after spending few days with the terrorists in south Kashmir, he realized the futility of joining militant ranks," the spokesperson said. A case under relevant sections of law has been registered against Danish, he said. The case is being considered under the J&K Surrendered Militants Rehabilitation Policy.
Rajitha Sanaka By

Express News Service

LATUR: Driving in Latur at dawn in the last week of May, you see women splashing water on their front yards, and you know that the frightening drought of the year before has been forgotten. Last summer, an aeon ago, this was a town of water queues kept in order by the instrument of Section 144.

As water scarcities go, it had been an extraordinary one. An entire train had been commandeered to ply water to these parts, 108 trips by what came to be called the Latur Water Special, each time carrying 25.95 lakh litres to three lakh people in the parched district. The train had opened up possibilities: yes indeed why cant water be carried to deserts?

At dawn this summer, the town had gone back to being sleepy. The 360 water tankers that had rumbled about then have now been whittled down to six, operating only to uphill villages where the basalt bedrock allows no percolation to the water table beneath.

It could even be claimed as some sort of an achievement, as I was later to be told by the new collector and municipal commissioner of Latur, Sreekanth Sajjan. This year we started using water tankers only in the third week of May, he said.

The miracle occurred over a week in mid September last year. A downpour not seen in all of the monsoon months ensured that the annual precipitation figure soared to a record 1110.92 mm, against the 10-year average of 802.13 mm. It had dipped to 413.48 mm in the year of the Latur Water Special. It was some manna from heaven. The Manjara dam filled up and remains substantially turgid today. Ground water levels recorded an average of 1 m rise.

Predicatly, Latur was a happy place this summer, the opposite of what they had been in 2016  all for the grace of one burst of the clouds. Anasuya Podare remembers the torrid months last year. She and her husband had moved to Latur after a tiff with their children and took up a servitors jobs at the local Mahalakshmi temple. The 65-year-old woman used to spent three to four hours in queues for one pot of water last year. Now she walks a few metres to the tap and fills up as much as she needs.

"I have no count of the money I spent last season to buy water, she says.

But here in Marathwada, water shortage is an unforgettable mistress. It indulges you for no more than one season. Even in this summer of unanticipated surplus, there are localities in Latur that are served water once in eight days, plausibly because one of the nine water tanks in the city has gone on the blink.

But even in those localities, this years privations are leavened by the experience of last year. Anita Patil, a resident of water-short Revenue Colony, told me she still has to buy water. But its not as bad as last year, whe she had had to spend Rs 3000 per month all of 2016.



New to the job, collector Sajjan has to wrestle with the detritus of last years disaster, mainly illegal bore wells that had sprouted in the frenzy of near-famine conditions. "Illegal bore wells and lack of awareness among people are some of the reasons why we are unable to check water wastage, he said.

During the high fever of 2016, bore wells had been dug by the hundreds. While no one kept count of the exact number of illegal ones, at least 2000 bore wells were dug in the town, some as deep as 700-800 feet. The groundwater departments rules prescribe a dainty five per square km.

As anyone familiar with the hydrography of Marathwada knows, drought is never far away in Latur. Even in this frolicsome summer, you only have to step out of town to meet it. About 11 km east of Latur, in Bhatkeda village, a habitation of 600 families where one branch of the Manjara flows by, there is not a drop of water to drink.

After the downpour of September, water had to be released from the Manjara dam and it flooded the village. By January, barely four months later, the Manjara had dried up as always. Marginal farmer Baba Shiekh said, Theres water in this stream for four months a year. The rest of the year, its dry.

A 60-year-old farmer, Madhukar Gurame said hes not fooled by the surplus of September 2016. He had never been able to fully irrigate his 14 acres for 15 years. He dug 15 bore wells during that time, some as deep as 650 ft.

A SUGARCANE ADDICTION

Latur knows its been lucky. Knowing droughts frequent visitations, the state government launched what it called the Jalyukt-Shivar Abhiyaan (JYS) in 2014 with the bold aim of making the district drought-free by 2019. Some 13 different water conservation schemes were announced, involving broadening and deepening of river beds, afforestation, watershed management, rain water harvesting mechanisms, the works.

However, local conservaton experts Pradeep Purandare, a retired prof at the Water and Land Management Institute in Aurangabad, are sure they are missing the point as usual. They are digging up river beds, he complained. A river is a discharge zone, not a recharge zone. They need to check the hydrography of the place and study the aquifer status, where it allows filtration and penetration of ground water. All thats not being done.

Typical of the thrashing about that a disaster always produces in India, none of the water conservation schemes is being implemented in a scientific manner, Prof Purandare said. There is too much of widening and deepening of nalas and then are no watershed development systems in place either.

And then there is the local farmers obsession with water-guzzling sugarcane. Take Kendriya Veerendra Sambhaji Rao, a 49-year-old farmer who owns 20 acres in a village called Patoda, 80 km from Latur. After three years of drought had parched his land and drained his pockets, he still stuck with sugarcane. After that copious September, he sowed 10 acres of sugarcane and 10 acres of soya bean and toor dal. I earn a minimum of Rs 9 lakh from sugarcane, and less than Rs 2 lakh from any of the other crops. There are three sugarcane factories in this taluka and it is a lucrative option for me, he said. So why not?

But Prof Purandare has a quarrel with that. Sugarcane is the main reason for the water scarcity endemic in Latur -- bar the odd lucky year. Of the 10 river basins that fall in Marathwada, seven are in deficit with available water less than 3000 cubic metres per hectare. The forest area is only 4 per cent. There are 11 major irrigation projects and all of them have water in a good year. But sugarcane plantations guzzle it all up, he says.

In fact, when the Manjara project was designed, it had been mandated that only 3 per cent of the water should be used for sugarcane. Now the actual usage is more like 77 per cent.

The government does not want to address this issue. Instead, it comes up with ideas like JYS which would only make it worse, he said.

STILL SLOW TO ADOPT RWH

Latur is no stranger to the idea of rain water harvesting (RWH). Activist Amol Ravindra Gowande has been advocating it for 15 years. In all of that time, only about 5000 people set up systems on their rooftops. But after last year's drought, 5000 chastened households rushed to sign up. So today, only 10,000 of the one lakh properties in Latur have RWH in place.

For a drought-prone city, theres no good reason why the number should be so low. Oil merchant Mohan Pardesi is one of the few converts to RWH. His rooftop mechanism protected him from the Big Dry of 2016, generating 3000 litres of water per day even in the dreadful summer.

"We set this up in 2003 with an investment of Rs 6000. I harvest one lakh litres from the 2000 sq feet terrace every year. My bore well has not gone dry for 15 years," he said. It takes care of his household and the small-scale oil extraction industry he runs.

And his 200 ft bore well yielded enough to let him be charitable last summer. He shared 4000 litres of water with his neighbours.

Prof Purandare is skeptical that latur has come to its senses. It is hard to believe that after years of slacking, the people of Latur have woken up to reality, he says.

LATUR: Driving in Latur at dawn in the last week of May, you see women splashing water on their front yards, and you know that the frightening drought of the year before has been forgotten. Last summer, an aeon ago, this was a town of water queues kept in order by the instrument of Section 144. As water scarcities go, it had been an extraordinary one. An entire train had been commandeered to ply water to these parts, 108 trips by what came to be called the Latur Water Special, each time carrying 25.95 lakh litres to three lakh people in the parched district. The train had opened up possibilities: yes indeed why cant water be carried to deserts? At dawn this summer, the town had gone back to being sleepy. The 360 water tankers that had rumbled about then have now been whittled down to six, operating only to uphill villages where the basalt bedrock allows no percolation to the water table beneath. It could even be claimed as some sort of an achievement, as I was later to be told by the new collector and municipal commissioner of Latur, Sreekanth Sajjan. This year we started using water tankers only in the third week of May, he said. The miracle occurred over a week in mid September last year. A downpour not seen in all of the monsoon months ensured that the annual precipitation figure soared to a record 1110.92 mm, against the 10-year average of 802.13 mm. It had dipped to 413.48 mm in the year of the Latur Water Special. It was some manna from heaven. The Manjara dam filled up and remains substantially turgid today. Ground water levels recorded an average of 1 m rise. Predicatly, Latur was a happy place this summer, the opposite of what they had been in 2016  all for the grace of one burst of the clouds. Anasuya Podare remembers the torrid months last year. She and her husband had moved to Latur after a tiff with their children and took up a servitors jobs at the local Mahalakshmi temple. The 65-year-old woman used to spent three to four hours in queues for one pot of water last year. Now she walks a few metres to the tap and fills up as much as she needs. "I have no count of the money I spent last season to buy water, she says. But here in Marathwada, water shortage is an unforgettable mistress. It indulges you for no more than one season. Even in this summer of unanticipated surplus, there are localities in Latur that are served water once in eight days, plausibly because one of the nine water tanks in the city has gone on the blink. But even in those localities, this years privations are leavened by the experience of last year. Anita Patil, a resident of water-short Revenue Colony, told me she still has to buy water. But its not as bad as last year, whe she had had to spend Rs 3000 per month all of 2016. New to the job, collector Sajjan has to wrestle with the detritus of last years disaster, mainly illegal bore wells that had sprouted in the frenzy of near-famine conditions. "Illegal bore wells and lack of awareness among people are some of the reasons why we are unable to check water wastage, he said. During the high fever of 2016, bore wells had been dug by the hundreds. While no one kept count of the exact number of illegal ones, at least 2000 bore wells were dug in the town, some as deep as 700-800 feet. The groundwater departments rules prescribe a dainty five per square km. As anyone familiar with the hydrography of Marathwada knows, drought is never far away in Latur. Even in this frolicsome summer, you only have to step out of town to meet it. About 11 km east of Latur, in Bhatkeda village, a habitation of 600 families where one branch of the Manjara flows by, there is not a drop of water to drink. After the downpour of September, water had to be released from the Manjara dam and it flooded the village. By January, barely four months later, the Manjara had dried up as always. Marginal farmer Baba Shiekh said, Theres water in this stream for four months a year. The rest of the year, its dry. A 60-year-old farmer, Madhukar Gurame said hes not fooled by the surplus of September 2016. He had never been able to fully irrigate his 14 acres for 15 years. He dug 15 bore wells during that time, some as deep as 650 ft. A SUGARCANE ADDICTION Latur knows its been lucky. Knowing droughts frequent visitations, the state government launched what it called the Jalyukt-Shivar Abhiyaan (JYS) in 2014 with the bold aim of making the district drought-free by 2019. Some 13 different water conservation schemes were announced, involving broadening and deepening of river beds, afforestation, watershed management, rain water harvesting mechanisms, the works. However, local conservaton experts Pradeep Purandare, a retired prof at the Water and Land Management Institute in Aurangabad, are sure they are missing the point as usual. They are digging up river beds, he complained. A river is a discharge zone, not a recharge zone. They need to check the hydrography of the place and study the aquifer status, where it allows filtration and penetration of ground water. All thats not being done. Typical of the thrashing about that a disaster always produces in India, none of the water conservation schemes is being implemented in a scientific manner, Prof Purandare said. There is too much of widening and deepening of nalas and then are no watershed development systems in place either. And then there is the local farmers obsession with water-guzzling sugarcane. Take Kendriya Veerendra Sambhaji Rao, a 49-year-old farmer who owns 20 acres in a village called Patoda, 80 km from Latur. After three years of drought had parched his land and drained his pockets, he still stuck with sugarcane. After that copious September, he sowed 10 acres of sugarcane and 10 acres of soya bean and toor dal. I earn a minimum of Rs 9 lakh from sugarcane, and less than Rs 2 lakh from any of the other crops. There are three sugarcane factories in this taluka and it is a lucrative option for me, he said. So why not? But Prof Purandare has a quarrel with that. Sugarcane is the main reason for the water scarcity endemic in Latur -- bar the odd lucky year. Of the 10 river basins that fall in Marathwada, seven are in deficit with available water less than 3000 cubic metres per hectare. The forest area is only 4 per cent. There are 11 major irrigation projects and all of them have water in a good year. But sugarcane plantations guzzle it all up, he says. In fact, when the Manjara project was designed, it had been mandated that only 3 per cent of the water should be used for sugarcane. Now the actual usage is more like 77 per cent. The government does not want to address this issue. Instead, it comes up with ideas like JYS which would only make it worse, he said. STILL SLOW TO ADOPT RWH Latur is no stranger to the idea of rain water harvesting (RWH). Activist Amol Ravindra Gowande has been advocating it for 15 years. In all of that time, only about 5000 people set up systems on their rooftops. But after last year's drought, 5000 chastened households rushed to sign up. So today, only 10,000 of the one lakh properties in Latur have RWH in place. For a drought-prone city, theres no good reason why the number should be so low. Oil merchant Mohan Pardesi is one of the few converts to RWH. His rooftop mechanism protected him from the Big Dry of 2016, generating 3000 litres of water per day even in the dreadful summer. "We set this up in 2003 with an investment of Rs 6000. I harvest one lakh litres from the 2000 sq feet terrace every year. My bore well has not gone dry for 15 years," he said. It takes care of his household and the small-scale oil extraction industry he runs. And his 200 ft bore well yielded enough to let him be charitable last summer. He shared 4000 litres of water with his neighbours. Prof Purandare is skeptical that latur has come to its senses. It is hard to believe that after years of slacking, the people of Latur have woken up to reality, he says.
Prasanta Mazumdar By

Express News Service

GUWAHATI: Six people including an Indian army officer were killed in an encounter between security forces and two insurgent groups in Nagaland's Mon district bordering Myanmar past midnight Tuesday.

Although it is confirmed that six people were killed, there were conflicting reports about their identities. But the slain officer has been confirmed as Maj David Manlun of the Naga Territorial Army (NTA), a part of the Indian Army.

Three commandos of the elite 12 Para commando unit who were critically injured in the encounter and were evacuated to a military hospital in Assams Jorhat. When reports last came in, they were being treated in the intensive care unit.

The encounter took place at around 12.30 am when a combined team of the Para commandos and the Naga Territorial Army combed an area close to Lapa Lempong after receiving reports about the movement of a group of militants belonging to the Paresh Baruah faction of ULFA and SS Khaplang faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN-K).

Local sources claimed that those killed included an Army officer, four militants and a civilian. But defence sources said two civilians and three militants were killed apart from Maj Manlun.

However, Nagaland's director-general of police, L.L. Doungel said he was unaware of any civilian causalities.

The information I received was that six people were killed. They were a Naga Territorial Army major and five from the other side (militants). I haven't received any information about civilian casualties, he told the New Indian Express.

Maj Manlun hailed from Churachandpur district in Manipur. His father, subedar (retired) Khamzalam, served in the Assam Rifles. Maj Manlun was a student of St Anthonys School in Shillong, Meghalaya.

Several banned insurgent outfits of the Northeast work under the banner of the umbrella organisation United Liberation Front of Western South East Asia (UNFLW) which was formed in April 2015 in Myanmar where the outfits have their bases.

In June 2015, 18 personnel of the Dogra Regiment were killed in an ambush in Chandel district of Manipur. The UNFLW claimed responsibility for that attack.

The NSCN-K unilaterally abrogated its 14-year-old ceasefire with India in 2015. Since then, it has carried out a series of attacks on security forces in Nagaland, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh.

Tags: major, Davin Manlun, Naga Territorial Army, Nagaland, Assam, ULFA, UNFLW, Mon district, ambush, encounter, north-east, Assam Rifles

GUWAHATI: Six people including an Indian army officer were killed in an encounter between security forces and two insurgent groups in Nagaland's Mon district bordering Myanmar past midnight Tuesday. Although it is confirmed that six people were killed, there were conflicting reports about their identities. But the slain officer has been confirmed as Maj David Manlun of the Naga Territorial Army (NTA), a part of the Indian Army. Three commandos of the elite 12 Para commando unit who were critically injured in the encounter and were evacuated to a military hospital in Assams Jorhat. When reports last came in, they were being treated in the intensive care unit. The encounter took place at around 12.30 am when a combined team of the Para commandos and the Naga Territorial Army combed an area close to Lapa Lempong after receiving reports about the movement of a group of militants belonging to the Paresh Baruah faction of ULFA and SS Khaplang faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN-K). Local sources claimed that those killed included an Army officer, four militants and a civilian. But defence sources said two civilians and three militants were killed apart from Maj Manlun. However, Nagaland's director-general of police, L.L. Doungel said he was unaware of any civilian causalities. The information I received was that six people were killed. They were a Naga Territorial Army major and five from the other side (militants). I haven't received any information about civilian casualties, he told the New Indian Express. Maj Manlun hailed from Churachandpur district in Manipur. His father, subedar (retired) Khamzalam, served in the Assam Rifles. Maj Manlun was a student of St Anthonys School in Shillong, Meghalaya. Several banned insurgent outfits of the Northeast work under the banner of the umbrella organisation United Liberation Front of Western South East Asia (UNFLW) which was formed in April 2015 in Myanmar where the outfits have their bases. In June 2015, 18 personnel of the Dogra Regiment were killed in an ambush in Chandel district of Manipur. The UNFLW claimed responsibility for that attack. The NSCN-K unilaterally abrogated its 14-year-old ceasefire with India in 2015. Since then, it has carried out a series of attacks on security forces in Nagaland, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh. Tags: major, Davin Manlun, Naga Territorial Army, Nagaland, Assam, ULFA, UNFLW, Mon district, ambush, encounter, north-east, Assam Rifles
By Express News Service

BHOPAL: The Centre has rushed 1,100 anti-riot police personnel to Madhya Pradesh's Mandsaur to help restore peace in the district where five persons were killed in violence during a protest by farmers demanding debt relief and better crop prices.

The Home Ministry has also sought a detailed report over yesterday's violence and steps taken by the Madhya Pradesh government to restore normalcy in the violence-hit area.

Around 600 personnel of the Rapid Action Force, a specialised anti-riots force, have already reached Mandsaur to assist the local administration, a Home Ministry official said.

Altogether 500 more RAF personnel are being sent to Mandsaur by the Home Ministry on the request of the state government.

Earlier in the day, there were reports of arson and rioting in a few places although police officer spoke of peace returning.

Reports said villagers returning from the funeral of one of the victims reportedly assaulted collector Swatantra Kumar Singh and spoke sharply to superintendent of police O P Tripathi. They had to beat a hasty retreat.

Farmers set fire to three trucks and burnt a warehouse in curfew-bound Bahi Chaupati and Pipliya Mandi areas. Unconfirmed reports said mobs pelted stones and attempted arson in Suvasra town and in the Chandukhedi area of Ujjain.

Also Read: A new Patidar agitation in Madhya Pradesh as farmers union threatens to take stir nationwide

Additional director-general of police of Ujjain V Madhu Kumar said these were only sporadic incidents.

However, reports said farmer groups and Congress supporters took to the streets at other places in the state to make the MP bandh called by farmer unions successful. There were reports of roadblocks and protests from Gwalior, Sehore, Harda, Indore, Khandwa, Bhopal, Jhabua and Neemuch districts.

Angry farmers reportedly attacked policemen in Ujjain and Congress workers stopped trains in Dewas district.

WATCH VIDEO:

In Indore, the agitating farmer union Rashtriya Kisan Mazdoor Sangh (RKMS) demanded the dismissal of Shivraj Singh Chouhans government and imposition of presidents rule.

The Congress MP for Chhindwara, Kamal Nath urged chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan to quit.

In Bhopal, home minister Bhupendra Singh chaired an emergency meeting with senior police officers, including director-general of police Rishi Shukla.

Shivraj Singh Chouhan too convened his council of ministers, and talk was that some major announcements would be made to placate farmers.

On Wednesday morning, Mandsaur collector Swatantra Kumar and superintendent of police O P Tripathi decided to turn up at Barkheda Pant village located on NH 79 to console the family of one of the five men killed in Tuesday afternoons police firing.

Even as they were speaking to the bereaved family, some of the mourners started blaming the collector for the firing and ordered Tripathi to remove his cap. The villagers demanded that inspector Anil Singh Thakur, who allegedly ordered the firing on the agitators, be dismissed, arrested and booked for murder.

The officials tried to speak assuringly but the mood was ugly and someone from the crowd assaulted collector Swatantra Kumar. Some villagers extricated the latter from the mob and he fled the spot.

Swatantra Kumar later denied being assaulted. Some anti-social elements vitiated the atmosphere, so we had no option but to make a hasty retreat, he said.

Read: Agriculture is failing the 468 million Indians depending on it for livelihoods

In view of the seriousness of the situation, the local administration set a Rapid Action Force (RAF) posse to the area but it too had a tough time controlling the farmers, as hundreds of them had by now assembled on the national highway.

Wise from the collectors experience, the administration persuaded Madhya Pradesh BJP president Nandkumar Singh Chouhan and ministers Rampal Singh and Gauri Shankar Bisen not to entertain any notion of attending the slain farmers funerals. They were stopped in the Dodar area on the Ratlam-Mandsaur border.

Madhya Pradesh Congress president Arun Yadav, leader of the opposition Ajay Singh, MLA Jeetu Patwari and other party leaders were also stopped on the border.

Earlier in the day, former Mandsaur MP Meenakshi Natrajan of the Congress was not allowed to go into the town.

Key sources in the Congress in Delhi told New Indian Express that Rahul Gandhi was likely to travel to Mandsaur on Thursday.

The Rashtriya Kisan Majdoor Sangh, which called a statewide bandh on Wednesday, held a press conference in Indore, where it alleged that not five but eight farmers had died in the police firing.

The unions president Shiv Narayan Sharma Kakkaji alleged that policemen deliberately set fire to vehicles to serve as a ruse to open fire on farmers, killing not five but eight of them.

He also announced that the farmers stir, originally slated to go on for 10 days up to June 10, will now continue beyond that date. Ill go to Delhi to meet the representatives of 68 farmer bodies. It will no longer be just a statewide protest, but will be turned into a national movement by farmers. After June 10 well start a Jail Bharo Andolan, said Sharma.

An RKMS leader Trilok Chand said the Patidar community would teach a lesson to the BJP government in Madhya Pradesh.

Importantly, there was news that Hardik Patel, the Patidar leader from Gujarat, was likely to turn up in Mandsaur soon.

(With inputs from PTI)

BHOPAL: The Centre has rushed 1,100 anti-riot police personnel to Madhya Pradesh's Mandsaur to help restore peace in the district where five persons were killed in violence during a protest by farmers demanding debt relief and better crop prices. The Home Ministry has also sought a detailed report over yesterday's violence and steps taken by the Madhya Pradesh government to restore normalcy in the violence-hit area. Around 600 personnel of the Rapid Action Force, a specialised anti-riots force, have already reached Mandsaur to assist the local administration, a Home Ministry official said. Altogether 500 more RAF personnel are being sent to Mandsaur by the Home Ministry on the request of the state government. Earlier in the day, there were reports of arson and rioting in a few places although police officer spoke of peace returning. Reports said villagers returning from the funeral of one of the victims reportedly assaulted collector Swatantra Kumar Singh and spoke sharply to superintendent of police O P Tripathi. They had to beat a hasty retreat. Farmers set fire to three trucks and burnt a warehouse in curfew-bound Bahi Chaupati and Pipliya Mandi areas. Unconfirmed reports said mobs pelted stones and attempted arson in Suvasra town and in the Chandukhedi area of Ujjain. Also Read: A new Patidar agitation in Madhya Pradesh as farmers union threatens to take stir nationwide Additional director-general of police of Ujjain V Madhu Kumar said these were only sporadic incidents. However, reports said farmer groups and Congress supporters took to the streets at other places in the state to make the MP bandh called by farmer unions successful. There were reports of roadblocks and protests from Gwalior, Sehore, Harda, Indore, Khandwa, Bhopal, Jhabua and Neemuch districts. Angry farmers reportedly attacked policemen in Ujjain and Congress workers stopped trains in Dewas district. WATCH VIDEO: window.__ventunoplayer = window.__ventunoplayer||[];window.__ventunoplayer.push({video_key: 'OTQ2ODQwfHw4fHw2fHwxLDIsMQ==', holder_id: 'vt-video-player', player_type: 'vp', width:'405', height:'325'});In Indore, the agitating farmer union Rashtriya Kisan Mazdoor Sangh (RKMS) demanded the dismissal of Shivraj Singh Chouhans government and imposition of presidents rule. The Congress MP for Chhindwara, Kamal Nath urged chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan to quit. In Bhopal, home minister Bhupendra Singh chaired an emergency meeting with senior police officers, including director-general of police Rishi Shukla. Shivraj Singh Chouhan too convened his council of ministers, and talk was that some major announcements would be made to placate farmers. On Wednesday morning, Mandsaur collector Swatantra Kumar and superintendent of police O P Tripathi decided to turn up at Barkheda Pant village located on NH 79 to console the family of one of the five men killed in Tuesday afternoons police firing. Even as they were speaking to the bereaved family, some of the mourners started blaming the collector for the firing and ordered Tripathi to remove his cap. The villagers demanded that inspector Anil Singh Thakur, who allegedly ordered the firing on the agitators, be dismissed, arrested and booked for murder. The officials tried to speak assuringly but the mood was ugly and someone from the crowd assaulted collector Swatantra Kumar. Some villagers extricated the latter from the mob and he fled the spot. Swatantra Kumar later denied being assaulted. Some anti-social elements vitiated the atmosphere, so we had no option but to make a hasty retreat, he said. Read: Agriculture is failing the 468 million Indians depending on it for livelihoods In view of the seriousness of the situation, the local administration set a Rapid Action Force (RAF) posse to the area but it too had a tough time controlling the farmers, as hundreds of them had by now assembled on the national highway. Wise from the collectors experience, the administration persuaded Madhya Pradesh BJP president Nandkumar Singh Chouhan and ministers Rampal Singh and Gauri Shankar Bisen not to entertain any notion of attending the slain farmers funerals. They were stopped in the Dodar area on the Ratlam-Mandsaur border. Madhya Pradesh Congress president Arun Yadav, leader of the opposition Ajay Singh, MLA Jeetu Patwari and other party leaders were also stopped on the border. Earlier in the day, former Mandsaur MP Meenakshi Natrajan of the Congress was not allowed to go into the town. Key sources in the Congress in Delhi told New Indian Express that Rahul Gandhi was likely to travel to Mandsaur on Thursday. The Rashtriya Kisan Majdoor Sangh, which called a statewide bandh on Wednesday, held a press conference in Indore, where it alleged that not five but eight farmers had died in the police firing. The unions president Shiv Narayan Sharma Kakkaji alleged that policemen deliberately set fire to vehicles to serve as a ruse to open fire on farmers, killing not five but eight of them. He also announced that the farmers stir, originally slated to go on for 10 days up to June 10, will now continue beyond that date. Ill go to Delhi to meet the representatives of 68 farmer bodies. It will no longer be just a statewide protest, but will be turned into a national movement by farmers. After June 10 well start a Jail Bharo Andolan, said Sharma. An RKMS leader Trilok Chand said the Patidar community would teach a lesson to the BJP government in Madhya Pradesh. Importantly, there was news that Hardik Patel, the Patidar leader from Gujarat, was likely to turn up in Mandsaur soon. (With inputs from PTI)
Manish Anand By

Express News Service

NEW DELHI: The big move by the Uttar Pradesh government to waive farm loans appears to have opened a Pandoras Box with farmers agitations in BJP-ruled Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh turning violent. Even while there is a rising clamour for a UP-like waiver in other states, as sought by NCP chief Sharad Pawar during his meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday, the Centre remained firm that it has to be a State government call and the Union wont foot the bill.

Besides the demand for loan waiver, the farmers are also apparently anguished that they could not get the minimum support price (MSP) for a host of crops. The Centre had gone aggressive in hiking the MSP for pulses in the last two crop seasons. The farmers, taking a cue from the hiked MSP, sowed pulses on a large scale, which led to 22 million tonnes of production in 2016-17, against the average 17 million tonnes in the recent past.

Its true that the farmers had to sell pulses to traders at a price much below the MSP as the states have not yet created enough procurement centres and storage capacity. Since pulses need to be protected against moisture, which can result in fungal infection, the creation of scientific storage capacity is a big concern, which is depriving the farmers the price that they should genuinely get, said a senior official of the Ministry of Food and Consumer Affairs.

Incidentally, vegetable prices had crashed after demonetisation, while the subdued price trend continues. The Centre has been pursuing the State governments for reforms in the Agriculture Produce Market Committee to unveil a single market for farmers, besides integration with e-National Agricultural Market. Its progressing at snails pace. It has to be understood that there is no short cut to end the woes of the farmers. Agriculture has not seen reforms, which are needed to help the farmers increase their incomes, said a senior NITI Aayog official.

Incidentally, Pawar in his meeting with the Prime Minister reportedly pressed for a UP like farm loan waiver in Maharashtra. The Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh has constituted a team headed by the NITI Aayog Advisor Dr T Haque to look into the ways to waive the farm loan, besides suggesting the roadmap for revival of farm economy in the state.

NEW DELHI: The big move by the Uttar Pradesh government to waive farm loans appears to have opened a Pandoras Box with farmers agitations in BJP-ruled Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh turning violent. Even while there is a rising clamour for a UP-like waiver in other states, as sought by NCP chief Sharad Pawar during his meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday, the Centre remained firm that it has to be a State government call and the Union wont foot the bill. Besides the demand for loan waiver, the farmers are also apparently anguished that they could not get the minimum support price (MSP) for a host of crops. The Centre had gone aggressive in hiking the MSP for pulses in the last two crop seasons. The farmers, taking a cue from the hiked MSP, sowed pulses on a large scale, which led to 22 million tonnes of production in 2016-17, against the average 17 million tonnes in the recent past. Its true that the farmers had to sell pulses to traders at a price much below the MSP as the states have not yet created enough procurement centres and storage capacity. Since pulses need to be protected against moisture, which can result in fungal infection, the creation of scientific storage capacity is a big concern, which is depriving the farmers the price that they should genuinely get, said a senior official of the Ministry of Food and Consumer Affairs. Incidentally, vegetable prices had crashed after demonetisation, while the subdued price trend continues. The Centre has been pursuing the State governments for reforms in the Agriculture Produce Market Committee to unveil a single market for farmers, besides integration with e-National Agricultural Market. Its progressing at snails pace. It has to be understood that there is no short cut to end the woes of the farmers. Agriculture has not seen reforms, which are needed to help the farmers increase their incomes, said a senior NITI Aayog official. Incidentally, Pawar in his meeting with the Prime Minister reportedly pressed for a UP like farm loan waiver in Maharashtra. The Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh has constituted a team headed by the NITI Aayog Advisor Dr T Haque to look into the ways to waive the farm loan, besides suggesting the roadmap for revival of farm economy in the state.
Fayaz Wani By

Express News Service

SRINAGAR: After foiling the fidayeen attack on CRPF camp at North Kashmirs Bandipora, troops are on high alert following intelligence reports that militants are planning to carry out another fidayeen attack in the Valley. We have got intelligence inputs that militants are planning another fidayeen attack in the Valley, IG CRPF Ravideep Sahi told The New Indian Express.

He said the input was not area-specific, but states that militants might carry out fidayeen attack in any part of the Valley including Srinagar. The troops have been put on alert. The Quick Response Teams (QRTs) are on maximum alert to deal with any situation, he said.

The security men, he said, have conducted drills and were on alert mode to deal with any situation and foil the militant attacks. It was as a result of this alertness that CRPF men foiled the fidayeen attack on Monday, Sahi said. In view of the intelligence inputs, the Army has set up temporary check-posts at two places in Srinagar. Four heavily armed militants were killed by CRPF and policemen after the militants attempted to storm the camp in the wee hours.

DG CRPF Rajeev Rai Bhatnagar, along with J&K police chief SP Vaid, visited the 45bn CRPF camp at Sumbal, Bandipora on Tuesday and interacted with the jawans and officers. He complimented the officers for successfully foiling the attack.

J&K DGP S P Vaid said investigations were on to ascertain the identity of the slain militants. He said it had been established that the slain militants belonged to Lashkar-e-Toiba. In response to a question whether the militants had recently infiltrated, Vaid said, It would be known after investigations are completed.

In a separate incident, a student was killed and 10 other civilians were injured in a clash between a stone-pelting mob and security forces in Kashmirs Shopian district during a cordon-and-search operation, police said. The security forces launched the cordon-and-search operation in Ganowpora area of Shopian following information about presence of militants there.

SRINAGAR: After foiling the fidayeen attack on CRPF camp at North Kashmirs Bandipora, troops are on high alert following intelligence reports that militants are planning to carry out another fidayeen attack in the Valley. We have got intelligence inputs that militants are planning another fidayeen attack in the Valley, IG CRPF Ravideep Sahi told The New Indian Express. He said the input was not area-specific, but states that militants might carry out fidayeen attack in any part of the Valley including Srinagar. The troops have been put on alert. The Quick Response Teams (QRTs) are on maximum alert to deal with any situation, he said. The security men, he said, have conducted drills and were on alert mode to deal with any situation and foil the militant attacks. It was as a result of this alertness that CRPF men foiled the fidayeen attack on Monday, Sahi said. In view of the intelligence inputs, the Army has set up temporary check-posts at two places in Srinagar. Four heavily armed militants were killed by CRPF and policemen after the militants attempted to storm the camp in the wee hours. DG CRPF Rajeev Rai Bhatnagar, along with J&K police chief SP Vaid, visited the 45bn CRPF camp at Sumbal, Bandipora on Tuesday and interacted with the jawans and officers. He complimented the officers for successfully foiling the attack. J&K DGP S P Vaid said investigations were on to ascertain the identity of the slain militants. He said it had been established that the slain militants belonged to Lashkar-e-Toiba. In response to a question whether the militants had recently infiltrated, Vaid said, It would be known after investigations are completed. In a separate incident, a student was killed and 10 other civilians were injured in a clash between a stone-pelting mob and security forces in Kashmirs Shopian district during a cordon-and-search operation, police said. The security forces launched the cordon-and-search operation in Ganowpora area of Shopian following information about presence of militants there.
Abhijit Mulye By

Express News Service

AMARAWATI: Contrary to popular perception that opposition to the Samruddhi Corridor is limited only to Thane, Nashik and Ahmednagar districts in Maharashtra, farmers from Marathwada and Vidarbha too are opposing it.

The very first voices against the corridor originated from Shahapur in Thane district. The next fierce opposition was seen in Nashik and Ahmednagar districts.

This helped government agencies create an impression that there is hardly any opposition to the corridor in Marathwada and Vidarbha. But the ground reality is different. A majority of farmers from Marathwada and Vidarbha whose landholding is low feel cheated, said Appa Kullarni from Nhave village in Jalna district. He has been coordinating protests against the Samriddhi Corridor in the area.

Varud in Jalna district of Marathwada is at the centre of the proposed corridor. A water tank in the courtyard of Krishna Mhases house bears the mark to denote this. It also means that his house and around six acres of land where he has developed a vineyard would be removed. Of 800 acres of vineyards in Varud, almost 600 acres would be lost. The same is the case with the neighbouring villages of Kadvanchi and Nhava that grow grapes over 1,400 acres.

We earn about `12 lakh per acre every year. When we asked the collector at a meeting whether this loss would be compensated, we did not get a proper response, Krishna Mhase told The New Indian Express.

In Sindkhedraja in Buldana district in Vidarbha, people complained of false promises and coercion by government officials to get their consent for land measurement.

We want them to conduct remeasurement to prove that our allegations are wrong, said Dilip Kolhe, a farmer who is expected to lose 3.5 acres of his land.

Sadanand Waghmare of Hivarkhed Purni in Buldana district has filed a petition against the irregularities in land measurement procedures before the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court. The public prosecutor skipped four dates of hearing, he said, adding that none of his letters addressed to officials, including those of the Chief Ministers Office, has been answered.

Vardali village near Dusarbeed on the Aurangabad-Nagpur highway is slated to lose as many as 200 wells and 1,200 acres of irrigated land to the Samruddhi Corridor. The village has only 40 families, all of whom would be rendered homeless. Kunda Wagh, who grows vegetables and sells them in the local market everyday, was in tears as she spoke about what she felt when officials came to their village to conduct land measurement.

Opposition to land acquisition for the Samruddhi Corridor has grown fierce in Washim district of Vidarbha. In Dongaon, farmers have adopted a policy of non-cooperation with the government. The collector threatened me in front of 500 farmers. Ever since, we have adopted a policy of complete non-cooperation. We dont attend any meetings, dont respond to their communication and dont go to them with any demands, he said.

Prabhakar Bajal from Kenvad had symbolically climbed a funeral pyre to protest the alleged high-handedness of government officials. Another farmer Parshuram Vankhede said his younger brothers engagement had to be cancelled after the girls relatives learnt that the Vankhede family will lose seven of nine acres of their land to the corridor. I challenge the government officers to show my consent letter. They have cheated us, he said.

AMARAWATI: Contrary to popular perception that opposition to the Samruddhi Corridor is limited only to Thane, Nashik and Ahmednagar districts in Maharashtra, farmers from Marathwada and Vidarbha too are opposing it. The very first voices against the corridor originated from Shahapur in Thane district. The next fierce opposition was seen in Nashik and Ahmednagar districts. This helped government agencies create an impression that there is hardly any opposition to the corridor in Marathwada and Vidarbha. But the ground reality is different. A majority of farmers from Marathwada and Vidarbha whose landholding is low feel cheated, said Appa Kullarni from Nhave village in Jalna district. He has been coordinating protests against the Samriddhi Corridor in the area. Varud in Jalna district of Marathwada is at the centre of the proposed corridor. A water tank in the courtyard of Krishna Mhases house bears the mark to denote this. It also means that his house and around six acres of land where he has developed a vineyard would be removed. Of 800 acres of vineyards in Varud, almost 600 acres would be lost. The same is the case with the neighbouring villages of Kadvanchi and Nhava that grow grapes over 1,400 acres. We earn about `12 lakh per acre every year. When we asked the collector at a meeting whether this loss would be compensated, we did not get a proper response, Krishna Mhase told The New Indian Express. In Sindkhedraja in Buldana district in Vidarbha, people complained of false promises and coercion by government officials to get their consent for land measurement. We want them to conduct remeasurement to prove that our allegations are wrong, said Dilip Kolhe, a farmer who is expected to lose 3.5 acres of his land. Sadanand Waghmare of Hivarkhed Purni in Buldana district has filed a petition against the irregularities in land measurement procedures before the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court. The public prosecutor skipped four dates of hearing, he said, adding that none of his letters addressed to officials, including those of the Chief Ministers Office, has been answered. Vardali village near Dusarbeed on the Aurangabad-Nagpur highway is slated to lose as many as 200 wells and 1,200 acres of irrigated land to the Samruddhi Corridor. The village has only 40 families, all of whom would be rendered homeless. Kunda Wagh, who grows vegetables and sells them in the local market everyday, was in tears as she spoke about what she felt when officials came to their village to conduct land measurement. Opposition to land acquisition for the Samruddhi Corridor has grown fierce in Washim district of Vidarbha. In Dongaon, farmers have adopted a policy of non-cooperation with the government. The collector threatened me in front of 500 farmers. Ever since, we have adopted a policy of complete non-cooperation. We dont attend any meetings, dont respond to their communication and dont go to them with any demands, he said. Prabhakar Bajal from Kenvad had symbolically climbed a funeral pyre to protest the alleged high-handedness of government officials. Another farmer Parshuram Vankhede said his younger brothers engagement had to be cancelled after the girls relatives learnt that the Vankhede family will lose seven of nine acres of their land to the corridor. I challenge the government officers to show my consent letter. They have cheated us, he said.
M P Nathanael By

The Army chiefs recent statement that the Army is in the process of inducting women in combat roles seems to have been given without much thought. It appears to be more of a copycat syndrome than the result of any need for women in combat roles. The Indian Air Force had last year inducted three women in fighter squadrons and the Navy too is thinking along the same lines by allowing women on board ships.

General Bipin Rawat is keen to emulate countries like the US, Israel, Sweden, Germany, Australia, Norway and Finland. But these countries need the women in their forces genuinelythey do not have enough people for their armed forces, unlike India. They dont recruit women just for empowerment.

Is there a genuine need for India to increase the strength of women in the forces? Driven by the euphoria of women empowerment, the powers that be espouse the induction of more women in the forces without actually going into the nitty-gritty of such initiatives.

By virtue of their not being familiar with the ethos and environment of the services, the politicians can be exculpated but definitely not the top brass of the forces.

In the three defence services, viz. the Army, Air Force and the Navy, women have been serving in medical and administrative roles in the ordinance, education, signals and legal branches and as air traffic controllers.

Last year, the floodgates were thrown open for women to venture into combat roles in the Air Force thereby opening a Pandoras box for women to claim their right to combat roles in all the three services. Three women pilots opted to be fighter pilots. Why did the then Air Chief, Marshal Arup Raha push forward the proposal to induct women in combat stream? Of course, to his credit, he would figure in the annals of history of being the first air chief to induct women in combat roles. Fortunately and rightly so, none of the women pilots from the subsequent three batches at the Air Force Academy opted to be fighters, as there is a possibility of them being captured.

On the initiative of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, an all-women Battalion of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) was raised in 1986. The experiment proved successful. More battalions were added. The CRPF now boasts of five battalions comprising 5,850 women.

The Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) has 4,815 women largely for frisking female passengers in airports and metro stations. The Border Security Force (BSF) has 1,648 women for patrolling the Indo-Pak borders, with the first woman combat officer having passed out recently from the BSF Academy in Tekanpur as an assistant commandant.

Headed by a woman IPS officer, Archana Ramasundaram, the Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) has 1,126 women guarding Indo-Nepal and Indo-Bhutan borders while 780 women of the Indo Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) guard the Indo-China borders.

Home Minister Rajnath Singh announced last year that 33 per cent vacancies stand reserved for women in the CRPF and CISF and 15 per cent in the BSF, ITBP and SSB.

This, on the recommendation of the Committee on Empowerment of Women, which emphasised the urgent need to provide adequate representation to women in the paramilitary forces. The logic behind fixing the quota in the forces is beyond ones understanding. Not ground requirement but adequate representation has been the guiding factor.

The heavy burden it would impose on the exchequer has been ignored.

When more women are inducted into the forces, the major problems that will arise largely relate to the number of leaves of absence and a rise in sexual harassment cases. Women employees are entitled to 730 days of child care leave and another 360 days of maternity leave for two children. Women can take maternity leave in all fields but taking such a long leave of absence in the armed forces has a different impactthey would lose touch with their organisations. A sort of disconnect sets in and the element of esprit de corps, which is essential in armed forces, is lost. Denial of leave of absence or promotion despite a long break could lead to litigations and unpleasant environment.

Complaints of sexual harassment could increase. Again, sexual harassment might happen at all workplaces. Genuine cases of sexual harassment cases have to be dealt with seriously, but in the armed forces, where discipline is prioritised, there is a possibility of women filing a complaint against an officer who she feels is too harsh on her. False allegations of sexual harassment have reportedly been used to defame officers, thus affecting their careers. Twelve complaints of sexual harassment were registered, six of them in Army in last two years. With just 3,578 women and 66,044 male officers, the matter calls for some serious thinking.

In 1999, 365 cases of sexual harassment were reported in Israel Defense Forces. Fifty-four male officers were sacked on charges of sexual harassment while many were demoted or imprisoned. In 2004, it was reported that one in every five women soldiers suffered sexual harassment in the Israel Army. A study carried out by the United States Marine Corps in 2015 stated that women officers are weaker, more prone to injury, less adept at shooting weapons accurately, and their presence was a potential catastrophe for unit morale and added that the very idea of women in combat is a disaster waiting to happen. According to another Pentagon report, in 2014 alone, as many as 20,000 women in defence services were either raped or sexually assaulted.

National security cannot be sacrificed at the altar of womens empowerment. There are avenues galore for women in other sectors. Let us not play to the galleries, dear Chiefs.

M P Nathanael

Inspector General of Police (Retd), CRPF

Email: paulnathanael@hotmail.com

The Army chiefs recent statement that the Army is in the process of inducting women in combat roles seems to have been given without much thought. It appears to be more of a copycat syndrome than the result of any need for women in combat roles. The Indian Air Force had last year inducted three women in fighter squadrons and the Navy too is thinking along the same lines by allowing women on board ships. General Bipin Rawat is keen to emulate countries like the US, Israel, Sweden, Germany, Australia, Norway and Finland. But these countries need the women in their forces genuinelythey do not have enough people for their armed forces, unlike India. They dont recruit women just for empowerment. Is there a genuine need for India to increase the strength of women in the forces? Driven by the euphoria of women empowerment, the powers that be espouse the induction of more women in the forces without actually going into the nitty-gritty of such initiatives. By virtue of their not being familiar with the ethos and environment of the services, the politicians can be exculpated but definitely not the top brass of the forces. In the three defence services, viz. the Army, Air Force and the Navy, women have been serving in medical and administrative roles in the ordinance, education, signals and legal branches and as air traffic controllers. Last year, the floodgates were thrown open for women to venture into combat roles in the Air Force thereby opening a Pandoras box for women to claim their right to combat roles in all the three services. Three women pilots opted to be fighter pilots. Why did the then Air Chief, Marshal Arup Raha push forward the proposal to induct women in combat stream? Of course, to his credit, he would figure in the annals of history of being the first air chief to induct women in combat roles. Fortunately and rightly so, none of the women pilots from the subsequent three batches at the Air Force Academy opted to be fighters, as there is a possibility of them being captured. On the initiative of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, an all-women Battalion of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) was raised in 1986. The experiment proved successful. More battalions were added. The CRPF now boasts of five battalions comprising 5,850 women. The Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) has 4,815 women largely for frisking female passengers in airports and metro stations. The Border Security Force (BSF) has 1,648 women for patrolling the Indo-Pak borders, with the first woman combat officer having passed out recently from the BSF Academy in Tekanpur as an assistant commandant. Headed by a woman IPS officer, Archana Ramasundaram, the Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) has 1,126 women guarding Indo-Nepal and Indo-Bhutan borders while 780 women of the Indo Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) guard the Indo-China borders. Home Minister Rajnath Singh announced last year that 33 per cent vacancies stand reserved for women in the CRPF and CISF and 15 per cent in the BSF, ITBP and SSB. This, on the recommendation of the Committee on Empowerment of Women, which emphasised the urgent need to provide adequate representation to women in the paramilitary forces. The logic behind fixing the quota in the forces is beyond ones understanding. Not ground requirement but adequate representation has been the guiding factor. The heavy burden it would impose on the exchequer has been ignored. When more women are inducted into the forces, the major problems that will arise largely relate to the number of leaves of absence and a rise in sexual harassment cases. Women employees are entitled to 730 days of child care leave and another 360 days of maternity leave for two children. Women can take maternity leave in all fields but taking such a long leave of absence in the armed forces has a different impactthey would lose touch with their organisations. A sort of disconnect sets in and the element of esprit de corps, which is essential in armed forces, is lost. Denial of leave of absence or promotion despite a long break could lead to litigations and unpleasant environment. Complaints of sexual harassment could increase. Again, sexual harassment might happen at all workplaces. Genuine cases of sexual harassment cases have to be dealt with seriously, but in the armed forces, where discipline is prioritised, there is a possibility of women filing a complaint against an officer who she feels is too harsh on her. False allegations of sexual harassment have reportedly been used to defame officers, thus affecting their careers. Twelve complaints of sexual harassment were registered, six of them in Army in last two years. With just 3,578 women and 66,044 male officers, the matter calls for some serious thinking. In 1999, 365 cases of sexual harassment were reported in Israel Defense Forces. Fifty-four male officers were sacked on charges of sexual harassment while many were demoted or imprisoned. In 2004, it was reported that one in every five women soldiers suffered sexual harassment in the Israel Army. A study carried out by the United States Marine Corps in 2015 stated that women officers are weaker, more prone to injury, less adept at shooting weapons accurately, and their presence was a potential catastrophe for unit morale and added that the very idea of women in combat is a disaster waiting to happen. According to another Pentagon report, in 2014 alone, as many as 20,000 women in defence services were either raped or sexually assaulted. National security cannot be sacrificed at the altar of womens empowerment. There are avenues galore for women in other sectors. Let us not play to the galleries, dear Chiefs. M P Nathanael Inspector General of Police (Retd), CRPF Email: paulnathanael@hotmail.com
By Express News Service

ANANTAPUR: A 30-year-old woman devotee of Sathya Sai Baba was found dead under mysterious circumstances in a classroom of Sai Vidya Vahini, a school run by the Sathya Sai Central Trust, at Puttaparthi in Andhra Pradesh this afternoon.

The woman, identified as Sai Prava of Delhi, used to be a coordinator at Sai Vidya Vahini but had resigned from her post recently.

She was found hanging from the ceiling of a classroom at around 12 noon by workers. As it is the summer vacation, there were no students in the school.

Members of the Sai Baba ashram's Seva Dal informed the police. Though it is being described as a case of suicide for reasons yet unknown, the Puttaparthi police, who have registered a case, are investigating other possibilities.

ANANTAPUR: A 30-year-old woman devotee of Sathya Sai Baba was found dead under mysterious circumstances in a classroom of Sai Vidya Vahini, a school run by the Sathya Sai Central Trust, at Puttaparthi in Andhra Pradesh this afternoon. The woman, identified as Sai Prava of Delhi, used to be a coordinator at Sai Vidya Vahini but had resigned from her post recently. She was found hanging from the ceiling of a classroom at around 12 noon by workers. As it is the summer vacation, there were no students in the school. Members of the Sai Baba ashram's Seva Dal informed the police. Though it is being described as a case of suicide for reasons yet unknown, the Puttaparthi police, who have registered a case, are investigating other possibilities.
By Express News Service

HYDERABAD: A Member of the Legislative Council (MLC) of ruling TDP in Andhra Pradesh was on Tuesday arrested by the Hyderabad police in connection with forging documents of government lands and trying to grab them. The arrested MLC is Deepak Reddy of Anantapur. An advocate and a realtor from Secunderabad were also arrested in the case.



According to central crime station police, Sailesh Saxena, an advocate from Hyderabad in connivance with Deepak Reddy and realtor Srinivas created forged documents of government lands in Banjara Hills, Asif Nagar, Abids and few others places in Hyderabad. Later, Sailesh filed petitions in the court claiming that the lands belonged to private persons but government was claiming them.



The fraud came to light when Shaikpet tahsildar lodged a complaint with the police suspecting foul play in registration of lands under his jurisdiction. A few months ago, the CCS police have arrested one Sivabhushanam of Hyderabad, who was also a part of the fraud. During questoining, Sivabhushanam told police how he was used as a benami by Sailesh and others including Deepak Reddy.



Three cases were registered against Sailesh, two against Deepak Reddy and Srinivas. The CCS sleuths reportedly called the trio Sailesh, Deepak and Srinivas for questioning in one of the previous case.

HYDERABAD: A Member of the Legislative Council (MLC) of ruling TDP in Andhra Pradesh was on Tuesday arrested by the Hyderabad police in connection with forging documents of government lands and trying to grab them. The arrested MLC is Deepak Reddy of Anantapur. An advocate and a realtor from Secunderabad were also arrested in the case. According to central crime station police, Sailesh Saxena, an advocate from Hyderabad in connivance with Deepak Reddy and realtor Srinivas created forged documents of government lands in Banjara Hills, Asif Nagar, Abids and few others places in Hyderabad. Later, Sailesh filed petitions in the court claiming that the lands belonged to private persons but government was claiming them. The fraud came to light when Shaikpet tahsildar lodged a complaint with the police suspecting foul play in registration of lands under his jurisdiction. A few months ago, the CCS police have arrested one Sivabhushanam of Hyderabad, who was also a part of the fraud. During questoining, Sivabhushanam told police how he was used as a benami by Sailesh and others including Deepak Reddy. Three cases were registered against Sailesh, two against Deepak Reddy and Srinivas. The CCS sleuths reportedly called the trio Sailesh, Deepak and Srinivas for questioning in one of the previous case.
Suraksha P By

Express News Service

BENGALURU: Even before the picture of a frail 75-year-old Ameer Saab being dragged by his wife in a Shivamogga hospital faded from public memory, another heart-wrenching story came to light on Tuesday. A mentally challenged patient, who is also handicapped, was dragged by his father to the ENT block in Victoria Hospital in the city for lack of a wheelchair.

All recent cases of alleged hospital apathy, be it from Shivamogga, Hubballi or Bengaluru, are from hospitals under the purview of the Medical Education Department.

When Express spoke to relatives of some patients in Vijayapura Institute of Medical Sciences in Ballari, they alleged that staff nurses demand Rs 50-100 to shift patients from one ward to another. In fact, a male nurse, on the condition of anonymity, said that they have no choice but to seek bribe because they have not been paid salaries for the past months. The department however denies any charge of corruption or apathy.

In view of the Shivamogga incident, In-charge Principal Secretary of Medical Education, Manjula V, said, Our hospitals have enough stretchers and wheelchairs. This is a false allegation. We keep upgrading our infrastructure every year as per MCI norms.

Visits to government hospitals in Hubballi, Kalaburagi, Mangaluru, Ballari and Bengaluru revealed one thing in common  lack of proper infrastructure. Officials say insufficient funds and staffers are to be blamed for this.

The Medical Education Department gets Rs 2,004 crore as its annual budget but this is not enough. With seven specialty hospitals, 10 government medical colleges and 18 teaching hospitals, the departments resources are stretched.

Dr K S Manjunath, Director and Dean, Bowring and Lady Curzon Hospital, said, The Health and Family Welfare Department gets Rs 5,118 crore annually, but they cover everything from primary health centres to district hospitals. They handle more patients than we do, but our expenditure on each patient is higher because we offer specialised treatment.

Also, the priorities of the department are divided between patient care and educating students. Dr S Sachidananda, Director of Medical Education Department and dean of Bangalore Medical College and Research Institute, said, Half of our budget goes to pay salaries and the rest to medical colleges. Our district hospitals provide super-specialty services like neurosurgery. It will take another 10 years for our medical colleges to fully support the increased patient footfall that hospitals attached to them witness.

A senior obstetrician at Victoria Hospital said, Even if there is a slight complication, patients are referred here. None of the district hospitals want to attend to high-risk cases. They claim they either have no staff or no infrastructure.

Too old to be rebuilt

Dr Manjunath adds that it is difficult for these major hospitals to get certification like National Accreditation Board for Hospitals and Healthcare Providers because hospital buildings are old and cannot conform to basic infrastructural requirements. Bowring and Lady Curzon doesnt have fire clearance. I dont think Victoria Hospital has it either. Fire safety requires space around the building, access paths to be of a certain width, which are not possible to conform to. Hospitals like Jayadeva are new, he said. Bowring is 135 years old.

Some hope in sight

The splitting of Bangalore Medical College and Research Institute will give Bowring and Lady Curzon Hospital in Bengaluru its own medical college, which will give the hospital autonomy and funds. Also, the merger of Gosha Hospital with Bowring will create a wing for gynaecology and obstetrics in Ghosha, taking the burden off Vani Vilas Hospital.

Horror stories

Shivamoggas McGann SIMS Teaching District Hospital did not provide a wheelchair to an elderly man. As a result, his wife had to drag him on the floor to the scanning room

Relatives of a patient asked to cough up some money to the staffers at KIMS in Hubballi to dispose of a 20-week-old foetus

A patient with anal abscess was shunted between K C General Hospital and Victoria Hospital in Bengaluru for lack of a bed

A pregnant woman was denied treatment at the Taluk Government Hospital in Kundapura. Doctors told her family that the gynaecologist was on leave. She had to be taken to a private hospital for delivery.

BENGALURU: Even before the picture of a frail 75-year-old Ameer Saab being dragged by his wife in a Shivamogga hospital faded from public memory, another heart-wrenching story came to light on Tuesday. A mentally challenged patient, who is also handicapped, was dragged by his father to the ENT block in Victoria Hospital in the city for lack of a wheelchair. All recent cases of alleged hospital apathy, be it from Shivamogga, Hubballi or Bengaluru, are from hospitals under the purview of the Medical Education Department. When Express spoke to relatives of some patients in Vijayapura Institute of Medical Sciences in Ballari, they alleged that staff nurses demand Rs 50-100 to shift patients from one ward to another. In fact, a male nurse, on the condition of anonymity, said that they have no choice but to seek bribe because they have not been paid salaries for the past months. The department however denies any charge of corruption or apathy. In view of the Shivamogga incident, In-charge Principal Secretary of Medical Education, Manjula V, said, Our hospitals have enough stretchers and wheelchairs. This is a false allegation. We keep upgrading our infrastructure every year as per MCI norms. Visits to government hospitals in Hubballi, Kalaburagi, Mangaluru, Ballari and Bengaluru revealed one thing in common  lack of proper infrastructure. Officials say insufficient funds and staffers are to be blamed for this. The Medical Education Department gets Rs 2,004 crore as its annual budget but this is not enough. With seven specialty hospitals, 10 government medical colleges and 18 teaching hospitals, the departments resources are stretched. Dr K S Manjunath, Director and Dean, Bowring and Lady Curzon Hospital, said, The Health and Family Welfare Department gets Rs 5,118 crore annually, but they cover everything from primary health centres to district hospitals. They handle more patients than we do, but our expenditure on each patient is higher because we offer specialised treatment. Also, the priorities of the department are divided between patient care and educating students. Dr S Sachidananda, Director of Medical Education Department and dean of Bangalore Medical College and Research Institute, said, Half of our budget goes to pay salaries and the rest to medical colleges. Our district hospitals provide super-specialty services like neurosurgery. It will take another 10 years for our medical colleges to fully support the increased patient footfall that hospitals attached to them witness. A senior obstetrician at Victoria Hospital said, Even if there is a slight complication, patients are referred here. None of the district hospitals want to attend to high-risk cases. They claim they either have no staff or no infrastructure. Too old to be rebuilt Dr Manjunath adds that it is difficult for these major hospitals to get certification like National Accreditation Board for Hospitals and Healthcare Providers because hospital buildings are old and cannot conform to basic infrastructural requirements. Bowring and Lady Curzon doesnt have fire clearance. I dont think Victoria Hospital has it either. Fire safety requires space around the building, access paths to be of a certain width, which are not possible to conform to. Hospitals like Jayadeva are new, he said. Bowring is 135 years old. Some hope in sight The splitting of Bangalore Medical College and Research Institute will give Bowring and Lady Curzon Hospital in Bengaluru its own medical college, which will give the hospital autonomy and funds. Also, the merger of Gosha Hospital with Bowring will create a wing for gynaecology and obstetrics in Ghosha, taking the burden off Vani Vilas Hospital. Horror stories Shivamoggas McGann SIMS Teaching District Hospital did not provide a wheelchair to an elderly man. As a result, his wife had to drag him on the floor to the scanning room Relatives of a patient asked to cough up some money to the staffers at KIMS in Hubballi to dispose of a 20-week-old foetus A patient with anal abscess was shunted between K C General Hospital and Victoria Hospital in Bengaluru for lack of a bed A pregnant woman was denied treatment at the Taluk Government Hospital in Kundapura. Doctors told her family that the gynaecologist was on leave. She had to be taken to a private hospital for delivery.
Ajay Kanth By

Express News Service

KOZHIKODE: A day after many Arab nations isolated Qatar for its alleged support to Islamic State and al-Qaeda, it was no surprise that the after-shocks soon began to be felt in far-off Kerala. If the sizeable presence of the Malayali diaspora in and around Doha has hitherto been a matter of pride, intelligence agencies back home are on tenterhooks as a recent probe has revealed that Qatar has been funding a few religious organisations in north Kerala.

With Kerala turning a fertile ground for IS recruits, the intelligence agencies are under pressure to track each and every twist and turn of the money trail from Qatar that weaved its way through various agencies in Malappuram and Kozhikode.

A senior intelligence officer confirmed to Express that a few institutions of Qatari origin, including government departments, have been transferring large sums to these organisations based in Malappuram and Kozhikode districts.

In 2016 alone, these organisations received over Rs 7 crore from Qatar. Around six organisations were the beneficiaries of the funds transferred from Qatar, the officer said.

According to the details shared by the agency sources Ministry of Endowment in Qatar was the biggest contributor to funds that flowed into Kerala last year, accounting Rs 3.5 crore. This was followed by entities such as WNO Qatar WC in Doha, Qatar Charity and Hassan Group.

A bulk of the funds that came in from Qatar went to an NGO in Malappuram. Next in the pecking order was a similar NGO in Kozhikode. Though the Ministry of Home Affairs has all the details of the transactions which have been recorded as per the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, the details of the fund utilisation are still unknown.

We are verifying the details. Though we have been scanning the fund flow, we never suspected any hidden aspects in the tie-up of these organisations with Qatar. Most countries in the Middle-East, including the UAE and Kuwait, transfer money to various organisations in the state. But with Qatars nexus with terrorists organisations like IS and al-Qaeda getting exposed, we will have to initiate a series of investigations, the officer said.

The State Police have been scouting for leads to bust the modules of organisations with terror links.

It was the Base Movement, a home-grown organisation backed by al-Qaeda ideology, that managed to trigger a couple of Improvised Explosive Device (IED) blasts in Kerala that included the one in Malappuram Court on November 1, 2016.

KOZHIKODE: A day after many Arab nations isolated Qatar for its alleged support to Islamic State and al-Qaeda, it was no surprise that the after-shocks soon began to be felt in far-off Kerala. If the sizeable presence of the Malayali diaspora in and around Doha has hitherto been a matter of pride, intelligence agencies back home are on tenterhooks as a recent probe has revealed that Qatar has been funding a few religious organisations in north Kerala. With Kerala turning a fertile ground for IS recruits, the intelligence agencies are under pressure to track each and every twist and turn of the money trail from Qatar that weaved its way through various agencies in Malappuram and Kozhikode. A senior intelligence officer confirmed to Express that a few institutions of Qatari origin, including government departments, have been transferring large sums to these organisations based in Malappuram and Kozhikode districts. In 2016 alone, these organisations received over Rs 7 crore from Qatar. Around six organisations were the beneficiaries of the funds transferred from Qatar, the officer said. According to the details shared by the agency sources Ministry of Endowment in Qatar was the biggest contributor to funds that flowed into Kerala last year, accounting Rs 3.5 crore. This was followed by entities such as WNO Qatar WC in Doha, Qatar Charity and Hassan Group. A bulk of the funds that came in from Qatar went to an NGO in Malappuram. Next in the pecking order was a similar NGO in Kozhikode. Though the Ministry of Home Affairs has all the details of the transactions which have been recorded as per the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, the details of the fund utilisation are still unknown. We are verifying the details. Though we have been scanning the fund flow, we never suspected any hidden aspects in the tie-up of these organisations with Qatar. Most countries in the Middle-East, including the UAE and Kuwait, transfer money to various organisations in the state. But with Qatars nexus with terrorists organisations like IS and al-Qaeda getting exposed, we will have to initiate a series of investigations, the officer said. The State Police have been scouting for leads to bust the modules of organisations with terror links. It was the Base Movement, a home-grown organisation backed by al-Qaeda ideology, that managed to trigger a couple of Improvised Explosive Device (IED) blasts in Kerala that included the one in Malappuram Court on November 1, 2016.
By Express News Service

SALEM: Bringing back memories of the Nirbhaya gangrape case in Delhi, a minor girl was sexually assaulted in a bus at Narayanampalayam in the district late on Monday.

Three persons, including the private bus driver and conductor, were arrested on Tuesday in connection with the case.

Omalur Police said the 15-year-old girl studying in Class X and residing in Salem quarrelled with her parents and went to Salem Old Bus Stand, where she boarded a private bus heading towards Narayanampalayam near Omalur. She travelled in the bus throughout the day. When the last trip was over, it was 10.30 pm. But the girl stayed put.

Bus conductor Perumal (22), a resident of Muthampatti, befriended the girl and asked her why she was not alighting the bus. The innocent girl, who seemed to be unaware of the dangers involved, told him about the quarrel with her parents.

Sensing an opportunity, Perumal and bus drivers Manivannan (33), a resident of Sanniyasigundu, and Murugan (35), a resident of Athikarapatty, started misbehaving with her and later allegedly raped the minor girl.

Around 1.30 am, she managed to escape from their clutches, ran to a village in the vicinity and raised an alarm. Anxious villagers soon gathered around her and the girl narrated her plight to them.

Seized of the matter, angry villagers rushed to the spot, attacked the conductor and drivers and handed them over to Omalur Police. A case was registered under Sections 366 (A) (procreation of minor girl), 342 (wrongful confinement), 376 (D) and 506 (i) (criminal intimidation) of IPC and Section 5 (g) and 6 (aggravated penetrative sexual assault) of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, and Section 3 (1), 3 (2) (v) of SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act, 2015.

The three men were arrested and remanded in Salem Central Prison on Tuesday. The private bus in which the girl was allegedly raped was also seized. The police have admitted the girl to the Government Mohan Kumaramangalam Medical College Hospital for a medical test.

Police sources told Express that she regularly travelled in the private bus in question to school. In the course of her commute, she became friends with the bus conductor. On Monday, after quarrelling with her parents, she went to see him and instead found another conductor in the bus.

She travelled in the bus throughout the day. Noticing this, the conductor befriended her.

Superintendent of Police P Rajan said the three men have confessed to the crime.

SALEM: Bringing back memories of the Nirbhaya gangrape case in Delhi, a minor girl was sexually assaulted in a bus at Narayanampalayam in the district late on Monday. Three persons, including the private bus driver and conductor, were arrested on Tuesday in connection with the case. Omalur Police said the 15-year-old girl studying in Class X and residing in Salem quarrelled with her parents and went to Salem Old Bus Stand, where she boarded a private bus heading towards Narayanampalayam near Omalur. She travelled in the bus throughout the day. When the last trip was over, it was 10.30 pm. But the girl stayed put. Bus conductor Perumal (22), a resident of Muthampatti, befriended the girl and asked her why she was not alighting the bus. The innocent girl, who seemed to be unaware of the dangers involved, told him about the quarrel with her parents. Sensing an opportunity, Perumal and bus drivers Manivannan (33), a resident of Sanniyasigundu, and Murugan (35), a resident of Athikarapatty, started misbehaving with her and later allegedly raped the minor girl. Around 1.30 am, she managed to escape from their clutches, ran to a village in the vicinity and raised an alarm. Anxious villagers soon gathered around her and the girl narrated her plight to them. Seized of the matter, angry villagers rushed to the spot, attacked the conductor and drivers and handed them over to Omalur Police. A case was registered under Sections 366 (A) (procreation of minor girl), 342 (wrongful confinement), 376 (D) and 506 (i) (criminal intimidation) of IPC and Section 5 (g) and 6 (aggravated penetrative sexual assault) of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, and Section 3 (1), 3 (2) (v) of SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act, 2015. The three men were arrested and remanded in Salem Central Prison on Tuesday. The private bus in which the girl was allegedly raped was also seized. The police have admitted the girl to the Government Mohan Kumaramangalam Medical College Hospital for a medical test. Police sources told Express that she regularly travelled in the private bus in question to school. In the course of her commute, she became friends with the bus conductor. On Monday, after quarrelling with her parents, she went to see him and instead found another conductor in the bus. She travelled in the bus throughout the day. Noticing this, the conductor befriended her. Superintendent of Police P Rajan said the three men have confessed to the crime.
By Express News Service

LONDON: Seven people were killed and 48 injured when three knife-wielding attackers rammed a van into a crowd of pedestrians on the London Bridge and stabbed revelers in a nearby market on Saturday night, just days ahead of the June 8 general election in the UK.



Reportedly, a white van veered off the road and barreled into pedestrians on the busy London Bridge at around 10 pm local time. The three men then fled the van wielding large knives and attacked people indiscriminately at bars and restaurants in the nearby Borough Market. The attackers shouted, "This is for Allah", witnesses claimed.



Armed police rushed to the scene, and within eight minutes, shot dead the attackers. Several gunshots were heard in the area. Hundreds of people were sent into a panic as they were advised by police to run, tell, hide -- the standard Met Police anti-terror advice.



The injured were taken to a hospital, the Metropolitan police said.



The British Transport Police said one of its officers was seriously injured and hospitalised with non-life-threatening injuries after being stabbed while responding to the incident.



"We are treating this as a terrorist incident and a full investigation is already underway, led by the Met's Counter Terrorism Command, said Mark Rowley, Met Police assistant commissioner, and the UKs anti-terrorism lead.



He urged the people with information and images to contact the police. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.



The area that came under attack last night is one of the most popular weekend hangout areas in London with bars, restaurants, and clubs.



The area has been cordoned off for investigation.



Meanwhile, the Metropolitan Police is planning to deploy additional police officers in London in the forthcoming days to strengthen the overall policing of the city.



Prime Minister Theresa May described the incidents as "dreadful events" and chaired a meeting of the government's crisis response committee, on Sunday. She said in a statement: "I can confirm that the terrible incident in London is being treated as a potential act of terrorism. This is a fast moving investigation. I want to express my huge gratitude to the police and emergency services who are on the scene. Our thoughts are with those who are caught up in these dreadful events.

London mayor Sadiq Khan called it "a deliberate and cowardly attack on innocent Londoners".



"We will never let the terrorists win or cower our citizens," he said.



The Indian High Commission in London has set up a Public Response Unit for any Indians caught up in the attack.



The latest terror attack--third to hit the UK this year--comes less than two weeks after a suicide bomber, Salman Abedi, targeted a Manchester concert on May 22, killing 22 people.

The Manchester attack stopped the election campaigning for three days as troops were deployed to the streets and the UKs terror threat level was raised to "critical", meaning an attack was "imminent".



Britain's terror threat was subsequently lowered back to "severe", which meant that an attack was highly likely.



It is the third terrorist attack in the UK this year. In March Khalid Masood, an attacker, rammed a car into pedestrians near the UK Parliament, killing five people, including a police officer before being shot dead. The incident is being investigated byMet Polices Counter Terrorism Command with the help of other agencies.



(With inputs from PTI)

LONDON: Seven people were killed and 48 injured when three knife-wielding attackers rammed a van into a crowd of pedestrians on the London Bridge and stabbed revelers in a nearby market on Saturday night, just days ahead of the June 8 general election in the UK. Reportedly, a white van veered off the road and barreled into pedestrians on the busy London Bridge at around 10 pm local time. The three men then fled the van wielding large knives and attacked people indiscriminately at bars and restaurants in the nearby Borough Market. The attackers shouted, "This is for Allah", witnesses claimed. Armed police rushed to the scene, and within eight minutes, shot dead the attackers. Several gunshots were heard in the area. Hundreds of people were sent into a panic as they were advised by police to run, tell, hide -- the standard Met Police anti-terror advice. The injured were taken to a hospital, the Metropolitan police said. The British Transport Police said one of its officers was seriously injured and hospitalised with non-life-threatening injuries after being stabbed while responding to the incident. "We are treating this as a terrorist incident and a full investigation is already underway, led by the Met's Counter Terrorism Command, said Mark Rowley, Met Police assistant commissioner, and the UKs anti-terrorism lead. He urged the people with information and images to contact the police. There was no immediate claim of responsibility. The area that came under attack last night is one of the most popular weekend hangout areas in London with bars, restaurants, and clubs. The area has been cordoned off for investigation. Meanwhile, the Metropolitan Police is planning to deploy additional police officers in London in the forthcoming days to strengthen the overall policing of the city. Prime Minister Theresa May described the incidents as "dreadful events" and chaired a meeting of the government's crisis response committee, on Sunday. She said in a statement: "I can confirm that the terrible incident in London is being treated as a potential act of terrorism. This is a fast moving investigation. I want to express my huge gratitude to the police and emergency services who are on the scene. Our thoughts are with those who are caught up in these dreadful events. London mayor Sadiq Khan called it "a deliberate and cowardly attack on innocent Londoners". "We will never let the terrorists win or cower our citizens," he said. The Indian High Commission in London has set up a Public Response Unit for any Indians caught up in the attack. The latest terror attack--third to hit the UK this year--comes less than two weeks after a suicide bomber, Salman Abedi, targeted a Manchester concert on May 22, killing 22 people. The Manchester attack stopped the election campaigning for three days as troops were deployed to the streets and the UKs terror threat level was raised to "critical", meaning an attack was "imminent". Britain's terror threat was subsequently lowered back to "severe", which meant that an attack was highly likely. It is the third terrorist attack in the UK this year. In March Khalid Masood, an attacker, rammed a car into pedestrians near the UK Parliament, killing five people, including a police officer before being shot dead. The incident is being investigated byMet Polices Counter Terrorism Command with the help of other agencies. (With inputs from PTI)
By AFP

LONDON: The terror attack on Saturday in central London killed seven people and sent 48 others to hospital after three assailants attacked an area thronged with international revellers.

The dead include a Canadian charity worker, an Australian nurse and a French bistro worker, while the injured came from a variety of countries including Bulgaria, Germany, Greece, Spain and New Zealand.

Here is what we know about the victims so far.

Canadian killed on bridge

Christine Archibald, a 30-year-old Canadian, died in her fiance Tyler Ferguson's arms after the attackers' van mowed her down on London Bridge.

"My baby brother lost the love of his life," Cassie Ferguson Rowe wrote on Facebook.

"In a split second his entire life was ripped away from him. Hearing his painful sobs on the phone while he's alone trying to deal with this tears me apart."

Newspapers said Archibald was a charity worker.

Her family said in a statement that she worked in a homeless shelter before moving to Europe to be with her fiance.

"She would have had no understanding of the callous cruelty that caused her death," they said.

Nurse who ran towards danger

Australian staff nurse Kirsty Boden, 28, was killed as she ran to try to help the wounded on London Bridge, her family said in a statement.

She worked in post-operative care at Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital, right next to the bridge and Borough Market.

"She was the most outgoing, kind and generous person," her family said.

"As she ran towards danger, in an effort to help people on the bridge, Kirsty sadly lost her life. We are so proud of Kirsty's brave actions which demonstrate how selfless, caring and heroic she was."

Guy's chief nurse Eileen Sills said Boden was an "outstanding nurse" who "always went the extra mile" for her patients. Her colleagues called her "one in a million".

A second Australian was also killed in the attack, the country's foreign minister Julie Bishop said on Wednesday without naming the other victim.

French bistro worker

Frenchman Alexandre Pigeard, 26, was working as a waiter at Boro Bistro, a Breton-run restaurant in Borough Market, when he was stabbed.

His father Philippe Pigeard said his son's death was "an incredible injustice".

He was a "wonderful son, a perfect big brother," a "shining young man," Pigeard told AFP by telephone on Tuesday.

Alexandre Pigeard had spent nine months living in London, improving his English and enjoying the city's culture, his father said.

A tribute note signed from the "Boro Bistro family", left at the scene of the attack, said in French: "Alex, I hope that the place where you are now will be even more beautiful and peaceful than the desert of Jordan. With all my love. Rest in peace."

Stopped for a smoke

Another victim is believed to be James McMullan.

The 32-year-old from Hackney, east London, was identified by a bank card found on his body, according to his sister.

He had been out with friends and had stepped outside for a smoke at The Barrowboy and Banker, a pub next to where the attackers crashed their van before launching their stabbing spree.

"While our pain will never diminish, it is important for us all to carry on with our lives in direct opposition to those who wish to destroy us and remember that hatred is the refuge of small-minded individuals," Melissa McMullan told Sky News television.

"He was an inspiration."

Police appeal

British police on Tuesday issued a public appeal for information about a Frenchman, 45-year-old Xavier Thomas, missing since the night of the attack.

"Xavier was in London for the weekend with his girlfriend. They were walking south over London Bridge at around the time the attack started.

"Witness accounts suggest that it is possible that Xavier was struck by the van that resulted in him being thrown into the River Thames," London's Metropolitan Police said in a statement.

Officers have been searching the river for Thomas and appealed to anyone who has seen him or was on the bridge to come forward.

Thomas' girlfriend was seriously injured after being hit by the attackers' van.

Heroic policeman among wounded

An off-duty, unarmed London policeman who was having a post-work drink rushed to help. He is now in hospital in a serious condition, police chief Cressida Dick said, adding that he had been "utterly heroic".

A British Transport Police officer, one of the first on the scene, was stabbed in the face, head and leg and taken to hospital. Two other officers were also wounded.

Ignacio Echeverria, a 39-year-old Spaniard and an expert in the fight against money-laundering at HSBC, was still missing, last seen trying to defend a woman from one of the attackers with his skateboard.

He was last seen lying on the ground and has not been heard from since.

Geoff Ho, business editor at the Sunday Express newspaper, was outside the Southwark Tavern pub. He tried to help a bouncer who was being attacked but was stabbed in the throat himself.

He is out of surgery and "on the mend", he tweeted.

Oliver Dowling, 32, from Christchurch in New Zealand, was in an induced coma after being stabbed in the face, neck and stomach. His girlfriend was also injured, reports said.

A Greek man, a Bulgarian man and German citizens were also among the injured.

LONDON: The terror attack on Saturday in central London killed seven people and sent 48 others to hospital after three assailants attacked an area thronged with international revellers. The dead include a Canadian charity worker, an Australian nurse and a French bistro worker, while the injured came from a variety of countries including Bulgaria, Germany, Greece, Spain and New Zealand. Here is what we know about the victims so far. Canadian killed on bridge Christine Archibald, a 30-year-old Canadian, died in her fiance Tyler Ferguson's arms after the attackers' van mowed her down on London Bridge. "My baby brother lost the love of his life," Cassie Ferguson Rowe wrote on Facebook. "In a split second his entire life was ripped away from him. Hearing his painful sobs on the phone while he's alone trying to deal with this tears me apart." Newspapers said Archibald was a charity worker. Her family said in a statement that she worked in a homeless shelter before moving to Europe to be with her fiance. "She would have had no understanding of the callous cruelty that caused her death," they said. Nurse who ran towards danger Australian staff nurse Kirsty Boden, 28, was killed as she ran to try to help the wounded on London Bridge, her family said in a statement. She worked in post-operative care at Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital, right next to the bridge and Borough Market. "She was the most outgoing, kind and generous person," her family said. "As she ran towards danger, in an effort to help people on the bridge, Kirsty sadly lost her life. We are so proud of Kirsty's brave actions which demonstrate how selfless, caring and heroic she was." Guy's chief nurse Eileen Sills said Boden was an "outstanding nurse" who "always went the extra mile" for her patients. Her colleagues called her "one in a million". A second Australian was also killed in the attack, the country's foreign minister Julie Bishop said on Wednesday without naming the other victim. French bistro worker Frenchman Alexandre Pigeard, 26, was working as a waiter at Boro Bistro, a Breton-run restaurant in Borough Market, when he was stabbed. His father Philippe Pigeard said his son's death was "an incredible injustice". He was a "wonderful son, a perfect big brother," a "shining young man," Pigeard told AFP by telephone on Tuesday. Alexandre Pigeard had spent nine months living in London, improving his English and enjoying the city's culture, his father said. A tribute note signed from the "Boro Bistro family", left at the scene of the attack, said in French: "Alex, I hope that the place where you are now will be even more beautiful and peaceful than the desert of Jordan. With all my love. Rest in peace." Stopped for a smoke Another victim is believed to be James McMullan. The 32-year-old from Hackney, east London, was identified by a bank card found on his body, according to his sister. He had been out with friends and had stepped outside for a smoke at The Barrowboy and Banker, a pub next to where the attackers crashed their van before launching their stabbing spree. "While our pain will never diminish, it is important for us all to carry on with our lives in direct opposition to those who wish to destroy us and remember that hatred is the refuge of small-minded individuals," Melissa McMullan told Sky News television. "He was an inspiration." Police appeal British police on Tuesday issued a public appeal for information about a Frenchman, 45-year-old Xavier Thomas, missing since the night of the attack. "Xavier was in London for the weekend with his girlfriend. They were walking south over London Bridge at around the time the attack started. "Witness accounts suggest that it is possible that Xavier was struck by the van that resulted in him being thrown into the River Thames," London's Metropolitan Police said in a statement. Officers have been searching the river for Thomas and appealed to anyone who has seen him or was on the bridge to come forward. Thomas' girlfriend was seriously injured after being hit by the attackers' van. Heroic policeman among wounded An off-duty, unarmed London policeman who was having a post-work drink rushed to help. He is now in hospital in a serious condition, police chief Cressida Dick said, adding that he had been "utterly heroic". A British Transport Police officer, one of the first on the scene, was stabbed in the face, head and leg and taken to hospital. Two other officers were also wounded. Ignacio Echeverria, a 39-year-old Spaniard and an expert in the fight against money-laundering at HSBC, was still missing, last seen trying to defend a woman from one of the attackers with his skateboard. He was last seen lying on the ground and has not been heard from since. Geoff Ho, business editor at the Sunday Express newspaper, was outside the Southwark Tavern pub. He tried to help a bouncer who was being attacked but was stabbed in the throat himself. He is out of surgery and "on the mend", he tweeted. Oliver Dowling, 32, from Christchurch in New Zealand, was in an induced coma after being stabbed in the face, neck and stomach. His girlfriend was also injured, reports said. A Greek man, a Bulgarian man and German citizens were also among the injured.
By AFP

LONDON: A man has been arrested at Heathrow airport as part of the investigation into last month's deadly suicide bombing in Manchester, British police said on Wednesday.

"The 38-year-old was arrested on suspicion of offences contrary to the Terrorism Act and remains in custody.

"The arrest was planned beforehand and there was no direct threat to the airport," Greater Manchester Police said in a statement.

Police did not immediately confirm when the suspect was detained at Europe's busiest airport, or whether he landed at the airport as part of an extradition procedure.

The arrest comes more than two weeks after the May 22 attack on Manchester Arena at a concert by US pop star Ariana Grande.

The bombing carried out by Salman Abedi killed 22 people, including children, and wounded more than 100 others.

A total of 19 people have been arrested in Britain as part of the terror probe, 12 of whom have been released without charge.

Abedi's father and brother are also in detention in Libya, where authorities say the two brothers were both part of the Islamic State group which claimed responsibility for the deadly attack.

Police are still trying to piece together the bomber's final movements and on Tuesday released photos of a bag within which forensics had "uncovered significant evidence".

They also published images of a white car which investigators believe Abedi took items from to build the bomb.

"Although it is positive that we are making significant progress, we still need you to help us build a picture of exactly what led to this atrocity," police said, appealing for anyone who recognised the car or bag to come forward.

LONDON: A man has been arrested at Heathrow airport as part of the investigation into last month's deadly suicide bombing in Manchester, British police said on Wednesday. "The 38-year-old was arrested on suspicion of offences contrary to the Terrorism Act and remains in custody. "The arrest was planned beforehand and there was no direct threat to the airport," Greater Manchester Police said in a statement. Police did not immediately confirm when the suspect was detained at Europe's busiest airport, or whether he landed at the airport as part of an extradition procedure. The arrest comes more than two weeks after the May 22 attack on Manchester Arena at a concert by US pop star Ariana Grande. The bombing carried out by Salman Abedi killed 22 people, including children, and wounded more than 100 others. A total of 19 people have been arrested in Britain as part of the terror probe, 12 of whom have been released without charge. Abedi's father and brother are also in detention in Libya, where authorities say the two brothers were both part of the Islamic State group which claimed responsibility for the deadly attack. Police are still trying to piece together the bomber's final movements and on Tuesday released photos of a bag within which forensics had "uncovered significant evidence". They also published images of a white car which investigators believe Abedi took items from to build the bomb. "Although it is positive that we are making significant progress, we still need you to help us build a picture of exactly what led to this atrocity," police said, appealing for anyone who recognised the car or bag to come forward.
By Associated Press

CIUDAD VICTORIA: At least four people including three police officers were killed in an hours-long prison shootout involving inmates and security forces in a northern Mexican border state, authorities said.

Loud, sustained bursts of gunfire could be heard from just outside the gates of the lockup in Ciudad Victoria, the capital of Tamaulipas state, as heavily armed security forces stood guard.

A state police officer who emerged from the prison with scratches on his face and did not give his name said the inmates were armed with automatic rifles. He spoke briefly to The Associated Press while being taken to an ambulance for treatment.

State security spokesman Alberto Rodriguez said in an interview with Milenio TV that three state police officers and one unidentified person were killed and six others were wounded.

Police and soldiers were mobilized to try to restore order.

"The operation continues," Rodriguez said Tuesday night.

Government photos from a helicopter overflight showed what appeared to be white smoke rising from one building.

Authorities closed nearby roads, and surrounding areas were under an evacuation alert.

Relatives of prisoners said the violence apparently broke out due to a conflict between local inmates and others who were recently transferred from a prison in the border city of Nuevo Laredo.

Uprisings are relatively common at Mexican prisons, where inmates are often in de facto control of their own environments.

Tamaulipas, a Gulf coast state bordering Texas, has seen high levels of violence in recent years as rival drug gangs and factions battle for control.

CIUDAD VICTORIA: At least four people including three police officers were killed in an hours-long prison shootout involving inmates and security forces in a northern Mexican border state, authorities said. Loud, sustained bursts of gunfire could be heard from just outside the gates of the lockup in Ciudad Victoria, the capital of Tamaulipas state, as heavily armed security forces stood guard. A state police officer who emerged from the prison with scratches on his face and did not give his name said the inmates were armed with automatic rifles. He spoke briefly to The Associated Press while being taken to an ambulance for treatment. State security spokesman Alberto Rodriguez said in an interview with Milenio TV that three state police officers and one unidentified person were killed and six others were wounded. Police and soldiers were mobilized to try to restore order. "The operation continues," Rodriguez said Tuesday night. Government photos from a helicopter overflight showed what appeared to be white smoke rising from one building. Authorities closed nearby roads, and surrounding areas were under an evacuation alert. Relatives of prisoners said the violence apparently broke out due to a conflict between local inmates and others who were recently transferred from a prison in the border city of Nuevo Laredo. Uprisings are relatively common at Mexican prisons, where inmates are often in de facto control of their own environments. Tamaulipas, a Gulf coast state bordering Texas, has seen high levels of violence in recent years as rival drug gangs and factions battle for control.
By AFP

BEIRUT: Reporters Without Borders on Wednesday condemned Saudi Arabia's decision to close the Riyadh office of Qatar's Al-Jazeera broadcaster after the kingdom and other Arab states severed ties with the emirate.

The media rights group, also known as RSF, said Al-Jazeera was a "collateral victim of (the) diplomatic offensive against Qatar," slamming Riyadh's decision to close Al-Jazeera's office and revoke its operating licence.

The decision came hours after Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates on Monday announced they were severing all ties with Qatar over its alleged support to extremism.

Egypt followed suit, and Jordan lowered the level of its diplomatic representation in Doha.

"Closing Al-Jazeera's bureaux is a political decision that amounts to censoring this TV broadcaster," said RSF's Middle East chief Alexandra El Khazen in a statement.

Jordan also said on Tuesday it was withdrawing licenses for the Amman bureau of the Doha-based television news channel.

Al-Jazeera, one of the largest news organisations in the world, has long been a source of conflict between Qatar and its neighbours, who accuse the broadcaster of bias and fomenting trouble in the region.

Cairo has accused Al-Jazeera of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood which it blames for violence after Egypt's military ousted the movement from power in 2013.

Three Al-Jazeera journalists, including a Canadian and an Australian, were detained in Egypt between 2013 and 2015, triggering international protests.

BEIRUT: Reporters Without Borders on Wednesday condemned Saudi Arabia's decision to close the Riyadh office of Qatar's Al-Jazeera broadcaster after the kingdom and other Arab states severed ties with the emirate. The media rights group, also known as RSF, said Al-Jazeera was a "collateral victim of (the) diplomatic offensive against Qatar," slamming Riyadh's decision to close Al-Jazeera's office and revoke its operating licence. The decision came hours after Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates on Monday announced they were severing all ties with Qatar over its alleged support to extremism. Egypt followed suit, and Jordan lowered the level of its diplomatic representation in Doha. "Closing Al-Jazeera's bureaux is a political decision that amounts to censoring this TV broadcaster," said RSF's Middle East chief Alexandra El Khazen in a statement. Jordan also said on Tuesday it was withdrawing licenses for the Amman bureau of the Doha-based television news channel. Al-Jazeera, one of the largest news organisations in the world, has long been a source of conflict between Qatar and its neighbours, who accuse the broadcaster of bias and fomenting trouble in the region. Cairo has accused Al-Jazeera of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood which it blames for violence after Egypt's military ousted the movement from power in 2013. Three Al-Jazeera journalists, including a Canadian and an Australian, were detained in Egypt between 2013 and 2015, triggering international protests.
By Associated Press

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump offered Wednesday to personally broker a resolution to the Persian Gulf's escalating diplomatic crisis, as both he and Qatar looked past his pointed suggestion only a day earlier that the tiny gas-rich nation enables terrorism.

In a phone call with Qatar's ruling emir, Sheikh Tamin bin Hamad Al Thani, Trump said he wanted to help Qatar and its Arab neighbors resolve the row that has upended any sense of Gulf unity, suggesting a possible White House summit among leaders. Though Trump again said countries must eliminate funding streams for terror groups, the White House said he focused on the need for the region's various U.S. allies to stick together.

Blockaded by its neighbors by land and sea, Qatar is eager for Trump's help. Qatar's U.S. ambassador, Meshal bin Hamad Al Thani, told The Associated Press his country is counting on Washington to persuade Saudi Arabia and others to back down.

"We have great confidence in the president's ability to calm this crisis and to resolve it," Al Thani said in an interview.

Trump's bid to fashion himself as a neutral arbiter among Arab governments departed from his stance only a day earlier, when he left little doubt about where he felt the fault rested. In a tweetstorm, Trump said Mideast leaders he'd met with last month had all "pointed to Qatar" as the source of terrorist financing, waxing optimistically that the isolation of the kingdom might be "the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism."

Bahrain, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates joined the Saudis earlier this week in cutting diplomatic ties to Qatar, accusing it of backing groups from al-Qaida and Hamas to the Muslim Brotherhood that threaten the region's other governments. Qatar vehemently denies such support. Al Thani, the ambassador, insisted his country had no idea why Qatar's neighbors were picking a fight.

Qatar received no notice from the other Arab countries before ties were cut, he said, calling it "a surprise and a shock to us, this act of aggression." He said normal life in Qatar is "not affected" by the blockage, insisting the tiny country maintains sufficient access to other air and sea routes to secure food for its people.

Trump also called Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, the capital of the U.A.E., Wednesday. On the call, he reiterated "the importance of maintaining a united Gulf Cooperation Council to promote regional stability, but never at the expense of eliminating funding for radical extremism or defeating terrorism," the White House said in a statement.

Trump's broadside Tuesday against Qatar, which plays a major role in U.S. military efforts in the Mideast, arrived as an early-morning shock to U.S. officials. They then sought to clean up the president's comments by stressing U.S.-Qatari cooperation remained intact and crediting the country with working hard to stem funding and support for extremists.

That was enough, it seemed, to persuade Qatar the U.S. wasn't abandoning its strategic partner.

"We don't see that he's pointing fingers at Qatar," Al Thani said. "Our relationship with the U.S. speaks for itself."

Countries across the globe re increasingly faced with the same conundrum: How much credence to give to the president's Twitter musings when they deviate sharply from U.S. policy?

Emirati officials said they perceived Trump's tweets as a sign Qatar shouldn't count on America taking its side despite U.S. having some 10,000 troops based in the country's al-Udeid Air Base.

But in Germany, Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin Schaefer pointed out that Trump's words differed substantially from those of State Department and Pentagon officials.

"I can indeed see differences in some 140 character comments by the American president," Schaefer said. "But what the position of the United States of America... is something I can't really say."

Both Qatar and the U.S. sought to show the rift wasn't affecting military cooperation. They cited no change to the status of al-Udeid Air Base. And a State Department official said an approved but pending sale of F-15 fighter planes to Qatar hasn't been affected.

The call with Qatar's emir showed Trump trying to personally involve himself in resolving the conflict. A day earlier, Trump discussed the crisis with King Salman of Saudi Arabia, which is leading the anti-Qatar campaign.

Other countries also are offering to intervene, and it's not clear if Trump will end up as the primary mediator. Kuwait's emir flew to the UAE on Wednesday to discuss the crisis, while Qatari ally Turkey voiced willingness to play a role.

A White House summit seemed an unlikely possibility. The potential for a coup makes it unlikely the Qatari emir would travel so far from home, especially as its adversaries hint that regime change would be welcome.

In the interview, Al Thani confirmed the FBI is helping Qatar investigate a hack of its state-run news agency last month that may have been a catalyst for the crisis. The Saudis and others have cited an article in which a top Qatari official seemed to pay tribute to Iran as a major regional power; the Qataris say the comments were fabricated as part of the hack.

Al Thani also denied any Qatari involvement in a separate hack of emails belonging to the UAE's Washington ambassador, which have surfaced at various news agencies this week.

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump offered Wednesday to personally broker a resolution to the Persian Gulf's escalating diplomatic crisis, as both he and Qatar looked past his pointed suggestion only a day earlier that the tiny gas-rich nation enables terrorism. In a phone call with Qatar's ruling emir, Sheikh Tamin bin Hamad Al Thani, Trump said he wanted to help Qatar and its Arab neighbors resolve the row that has upended any sense of Gulf unity, suggesting a possible White House summit among leaders. Though Trump again said countries must eliminate funding streams for terror groups, the White House said he focused on the need for the region's various U.S. allies to stick together. Blockaded by its neighbors by land and sea, Qatar is eager for Trump's help. Qatar's U.S. ambassador, Meshal bin Hamad Al Thani, told The Associated Press his country is counting on Washington to persuade Saudi Arabia and others to back down. "We have great confidence in the president's ability to calm this crisis and to resolve it," Al Thani said in an interview. Trump's bid to fashion himself as a neutral arbiter among Arab governments departed from his stance only a day earlier, when he left little doubt about where he felt the fault rested. In a tweetstorm, Trump said Mideast leaders he'd met with last month had all "pointed to Qatar" as the source of terrorist financing, waxing optimistically that the isolation of the kingdom might be "the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism." Bahrain, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates joined the Saudis earlier this week in cutting diplomatic ties to Qatar, accusing it of backing groups from al-Qaida and Hamas to the Muslim Brotherhood that threaten the region's other governments. Qatar vehemently denies such support. Al Thani, the ambassador, insisted his country had no idea why Qatar's neighbors were picking a fight. Qatar received no notice from the other Arab countries before ties were cut, he said, calling it "a surprise and a shock to us, this act of aggression." He said normal life in Qatar is "not affected" by the blockage, insisting the tiny country maintains sufficient access to other air and sea routes to secure food for its people. Trump also called Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, the capital of the U.A.E., Wednesday. On the call, he reiterated "the importance of maintaining a united Gulf Cooperation Council to promote regional stability, but never at the expense of eliminating funding for radical extremism or defeating terrorism," the White House said in a statement. Trump's broadside Tuesday against Qatar, which plays a major role in U.S. military efforts in the Mideast, arrived as an early-morning shock to U.S. officials. They then sought to clean up the president's comments by stressing U.S.-Qatari cooperation remained intact and crediting the country with working hard to stem funding and support for extremists. That was enough, it seemed, to persuade Qatar the U.S. wasn't abandoning its strategic partner. "We don't see that he's pointing fingers at Qatar," Al Thani said. "Our relationship with the U.S. speaks for itself." Countries across the globe re increasingly faced with the same conundrum: How much credence to give to the president's Twitter musings when they deviate sharply from U.S. policy? Emirati officials said they perceived Trump's tweets as a sign Qatar shouldn't count on America taking its side despite U.S. having some 10,000 troops based in the country's al-Udeid Air Base. But in Germany, Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin Schaefer pointed out that Trump's words differed substantially from those of State Department and Pentagon officials. "I can indeed see differences in some 140 character comments by the American president," Schaefer said. "But what the position of the United States of America... is something I can't really say." Both Qatar and the U.S. sought to show the rift wasn't affecting military cooperation. They cited no change to the status of al-Udeid Air Base. And a State Department official said an approved but pending sale of F-15 fighter planes to Qatar hasn't been affected. The call with Qatar's emir showed Trump trying to personally involve himself in resolving the conflict. A day earlier, Trump discussed the crisis with King Salman of Saudi Arabia, which is leading the anti-Qatar campaign. Other countries also are offering to intervene, and it's not clear if Trump will end up as the primary mediator. Kuwait's emir flew to the UAE on Wednesday to discuss the crisis, while Qatari ally Turkey voiced willingness to play a role. A White House summit seemed an unlikely possibility. The potential for a coup makes it unlikely the Qatari emir would travel so far from home, especially as its adversaries hint that regime change would be welcome. In the interview, Al Thani confirmed the FBI is helping Qatar investigate a hack of its state-run news agency last month that may have been a catalyst for the crisis. The Saudis and others have cited an article in which a top Qatari official seemed to pay tribute to Iran as a major regional power; the Qataris say the comments were fabricated as part of the hack. Al Thani also denied any Qatari involvement in a separate hack of emails belonging to the UAE's Washington ambassador, which have surfaced at various news agencies this week.
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The University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine will launch a new center that will focus on understanding tissue regeneration and pioneering future developments in stem cell biology as a means to repair diseased organs and tissues.

The center will partner with colleges and departments across the University of Illinois System.

Researchers in the new center will investigate the molecular signals that drive stem cells to mature into different cell types, such as blood, heart and blood vessel cells. The center will also study the epigenetic regulation of stem cells; determine the best approaches to transplant engineered cells, tissues and organs; and look for ways to efficiently produce the regenerative cells needed for novel treatments.

"The center will use a team-oriented multi-disciplinary approach that incorporates experts in biochemistry, biophysics, bioengineering and the clinical sciences to investigate stem cell biology and tissue regeneration," says Asrar Malik, the Schweppe Family Distinguished Professor and head of pharmacology, who is guiding the effort. A search is underway to recruit a director and additional faculty members, he said.

The current program in stem cell biology and regenerative medicine already includes seven faculty members, most within the department of pharmacology, who together have more than $10 million in research grants from the National Institutes of Health. Malik said that the "intent in the next few years will be to carry out additional recruitments with other departments, to build from this interdisciplinary foundation and capitalize on our strengths."

Three new faculty members have joined the center in the last two years. Owen Tamplin studies stem cells in zebrafish; Konstandin Pajcini investigates the role of stem cells in the development of leukemia; and Jae-Won Shin engineers stem cells and tissues with an eye towards transplantation.

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This will be the only dedicated stem cell and regenerative medicine center in Chicago with a focus on basic biology and translational science, and will affirm UIC's leadership role in these fields, and help attract additional talent to our team, said Malik.

The opening of the center will be commemorated with a June 12 symposium on stem cell and regenerative medicine from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the Faculty Alumni Lounge, UIC College of Medicine West building, 1853 W. Polk Street.

Speakers include:
At least 100,000 military veterans who served in the 1990-1991 Gulf War were exposed to chemical weapons, released into the air after the United States bombed an ammunition depot in Khamisiyah, Iraq. Today, many are still suffering from Gulf War Illness, a mysterious, multi-symptom disease that experts believe is linked to organophosphate nerve agents sarin and cyclosarin.

A new paper by researchers at Drexel University sheds light on the neurological consequences of exposure to low-levels of these nerve agents and suggests that drugs like tubacin could treat some of the toxins' neurological effects. The results were recently published in the journal Traffic.

To model Gulf War Illness, the researchers treated cultures of human and rat neurons with an organophosphate called diisopropyl flurophosphate, which is an analog of sarin. They also pretreated the neurons with stress hormones to better mimic the stressors of war.

Within the neurons, the research team was looking for deficits in the activity of microtubules, hollow cylinders that act as the cell's conveyor belt, which the investigators believe might go awry in Gulf War Illness patients. Organophosphates can affect a variety of proteins and pathways in cells, and the impacts on microtubules and microtubule-related proteins are likely to be many. The researchers wanted to find whether particular microtubule-related deficits could be identified and corrected pharmacologically to improve Gulf War Illness symptoms.

"In addition to being an architectural element that helps to shape the cell, the microtubule also acts as a railway, which transport organelles throughout the cytoplasm," said Peter Baas, PhD, a professor in the Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy at Drexel's College of Medicine. "We hypothesized that toxins would change the typical way microtubules are chemically modified in neurons and that a drug like tubacin could restore those modifications to normal, thereby treating the disease."

Once treated with tubacin, which makes the microtubules more chemically modified, the researchers observed a restoration in everything that went wrong with the microtubules due to the toxin and stressor treatments.

Surprisingly, they also found that once they corrected the microtubule deficit, defects in dopamine release also markedly improved. Fluctuations in dopamine are thought to be connected to many of the neurological symptoms that Gulf War Illness sufferers face, including insomnia, cognitive problems and headaches. This study's results suggest that dopamine alterations after toxin exposure are in part due to changes in microtubules, and restoring microtubule function to a more normal state could help to alleviate symptoms.

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"The fact that a microtubule-based therapy would correct the problem with dopamine release is really encouraging," Baas said.

Baas' research group is part of a multi-institution Gulf War Illness Consortium, a group of investigators dedicated to uncovering the source and treatment for Gulf War Illness. As described in the journal Neurology, Drexel University and Boston University recently received funding from the U.S. Department of Defense to create a Gulf War Illness human stem cell repository, to be shared with researchers across the country for a deeper understanding of this disease.

To create the repository, the researchers are taking blood cells from Gulf War veterans and "reprogramming" them into their "pluripotent" state, which can then be transformed into any type of cell, from a kidney to a neuron. These "pluripotent cell lines" will be especially groundbreaking for studying Gulf War Illness, because they preserve the genetic and possibly epigenetic factors specific to disease susceptibility.

For the study published in Traffic, the researchers did not use pluripotent cells lines derived from Gulf War veterans, but said they plan to use veterans' cells in the future for more refined results.

Since the use of organophosphate pesticides is widespread around the world, and growing evidence indicates a link between these pesticides and disorders such as Parkinson's disease, Baas said that a deeper investigation of low-level OP exposure is critical for preventing and treating neurological conditions arising from such exposures, in addition to Gulf War Illness. Baas also noted that the use of sarin is a concern for the growing threat of bioterrorism, so preparedness for treating victims is paramount.

"We're living in an increasingly toxic world," Baas said. "It's likely that this kind of disease is going to repeat itself if we don't educate ourselves as to its causes, as well as how to prevent and treat it."
After a long period of steady growth, Jeep's US sales dropped 18 per cent in May and have fallen 13 percent so far this year. Todd Goyer, Jeep spokesman, said the setback is temporary."It is due to a deliberate reduction in fleet sales, and the transition from the previous Compass and Patriot (models) to the ramp-up of the all-new Compass," he said in an email.In addition, he noted that "Global Jeep sales are up six per cent in 2017 through May."Even as it ramps up production at a plant in Mexico, the model changes cited by Goyer have forced FCA to halt Jeep production temporarily at plants in Belvidere, Illinois and Toledo, Ohio and the transition will not be completed until late this year.While sales of vehicles such as the popular Jeep Grand Cherokee remain robust, climbing 11 percent in May, other factors could be hobbling Jeep's expansion plans, analysts said."Fiat Chrysler vehicles have consistently ranked at or near the bottom of a number of product quality charts," said Michelle Krebs, an analyst with Autotrader.And the company "seems unable to turn it around while competitors race ahead with improvements," she said, which could be putting the brakes on sales.Meanwhile, the competition is increasing and putting more pressure on the brand. Just this week, Honda began building its Acura MDX, a direct competitor of the Grand Cherokee at a second plant in Ohio to keep up with demand.Karl Brauer, executive publisher of Kelley Blue Book, noted that Jeep has "been cashing in on" the American craze for SUVs from the beginning, while other brands are still rolling out new models to take advantage of the insatiable demand."That makes it easier for those brands to grow while Jeep has nowhere to go but down, especially while two (Jeep) compact models are phased out while a single one comes in to replace it," Brauer said.In China, where sales of Jeep vehicles increased by 131 per cent in 2016, Manley said he expects another big increase since Jeep will have three different vehicles available for Chinese customers.Jeep will have the capacity to build 350,000 units in China and could build more as demand increases, he said. Jeep also began building vehicles in India for first time June 1. The new Ranjangaon facility will build right-hand drive versions of the new Compass for the Indian market and other right-hand drive markets, the sole export facility those vehicles.
New Delhi: The Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) has seen a huge jump from $34,487 billion to $61,724 billion since 2013, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Wednesday.



Giving an overview of his three-year-old government, he said India is today seen as a bright spot in the global economy, doing business here has been made easier and the tax regime is more predictable and stable.



The GST is also going to have long standing benefits for the nation, he said in a write-up on LinkedIn.



"When we assumed office in May 2014, the country was going through a challenging phase. To begin with, the element of trust in government, in institutions- had disappeared. There was little potential and no incentive to invest in India. Corruption, nepotism and high handedness of authorities had demoralized industry," Modi said.



"One of our immediate priorities was to change this atmosphere, which we have done over the last three years," he added.



He said "positive results" of his government are visible. "Today, I am proud to share that India is getting record foreign investment," the prime minister said, giving the figures of 2016 in comparison to 2013.



Noting that the guiding tenet of his government is reform to transform', Modi said the reform agenda is "comprehensive and inclusive, covering all sections of society, all regions of India and all aspects needing attention."



He said it was a matter of "immense happiness" that a friendly spirit of competition has developed among the states for accelerating reforms and getting more investment.



"I want to appreciate the various states for these proactive measures. The nation stands to gain from these initiatives," the Prime Minister added.



He said his government was giving the added push to infrastructure projects with a special emphasis on timely completion.



Along with the write-up, he posted a number of graphics depicting to performance of various sectors.



"Our goal is a new India, powered by the skills and talent of our youth. Substantial ground has been covered in the last three years and we are poised to scale newer heights of progress," Modi concluded.
New Delhi: A food grain trader Suneel Jaiswal, along with his wife and son, was shot dead last night in an apparent robbery attempt in Uttar Pradesh's Sitapur town.



The incident took place in Civil Lines locality of the city.



Acording to reports it is alleged that the police reached the spot an hour after the incident took place. The killers are on the run.



Superintendent of Police Mrigendra Singh said the incident appeared to be that of loot. The culprits attacked Suneel at his home and shot him along with his wife and son.



All three died on the spot, the SP said. He said the crime branch is investigating the matter and CCTV footage of the incident could help in nabbing the culprits.



The trader association of the district has given a call for a strike to protest the incident and arrest of those involved in the killing.



Adityanath, who became the chief minister two months ago, has been under attack over the increasing number of crimes.



Earlier, the CM said: Efforts are being made to restore law and order and bring out the state from the jungle raj, mafia and goonda raj."







Adityanath has also blamed conspiracies for the deteriorating law and order situation in the state.
I appeal to my fellow brothers to maintain peace. I am deeply pained by the turn of events today.I stand by families in this hour of grief. pic.twitter.com/B8ayw2jQc8  ShivrajSingh Chouhan (@ChouhanShivraj) June 6, 2017

Violent protests by farmers spread to at least six districts across Madhya Pradesh on Wednesday, a day after six of them who were demonstrating for a loan waiver died in a police firing in Mandsaur.At the epicenter, 3 shops, a house and a factory were burnt down by protesters in Mansa Road and Podwal Dharmashala area. The protesters even threatened locals against dousing the fire. Police and fire tenders were unavailable. Rail tracks were uprooted in Barkhera area.Angry protests were also reported from Dhar, Harda and Sehore, while a police station in Neemuch was vandalized. Protesters attacked a private bank and tried to burn down an ATM in Mandsaurs Kayampur. Farmers clashed with police in Haatpiplya and Dewas after they pelted stones, torched vehicles (including a fire tender) and tried to stop a train, damaging the engine.Accompanied by Congress workers, farmers protesting against the SDM and Tehsildar vandalised petrol pumps and a dozen other spots in Khargone. At Ujjains Tajpur, farmers and the police clashed with stone-pelting injuring three policemen. The protestors also forcefully closed shops in Ujjain.The Indore-Bhopal highway was blocked as angry farmers gathered there and pelted stones. In Bhopal's Misod area, protestors torched CM Shivrajs effigy and vandalised vehicles.Earlier in the day, farmers gathered in Takravad town in Mandsaur and pelted stones on police in protest of local farmer Babloo Patidars death who had died in Mandsaur on Tuesday.Meanwhile, National president of Rashtriya Mazdoor Kisan Sangh (RMKS) Shiv Kumar Sharma on Wednesday claimed that the Mandsaur violence has taken the lives of eight people, including six from the Patidar community. The leader went on to allege that the government was withholding information on the number of those killed in firing.Four farmers and a student had been reportedly killed in Mandsaur on Tuesday.Eight people, including six of the Patidar community have been killed in the Mandsaur violence, said Sharma.The RKMS, with the Bharatiya Kisan Union and Aam Kisan Union held a joint press conference in Mandsaur, wherein the union alleged that farmers were shot in the neck and head which is a violation of Supreme Court guidelines. They stated that state government is forging casualty figures and demanded for Presidents rule in the state.The unions called for a state-wide court arrest agitation to be launched after June 10, while accusing the Shivraj Singh Chouhan-led government of gross corruption.The unions had earlier called for statewide farmers agitation from June 1 to 10 for better prices, farm package and loan waiver.Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Sivraj Sinch Chouhan tweeted, appealing for calm:Meanwhile, BJP national vice-president Prabhat Jha accused the Congress party for playing dirty politics.Shivraj government is committed to farmers welfare, no government has ever sanctioned Rs one crore compensation for the death of farmers, he said."Is it low politics that Rahul Gandhi wants to indulge in, he added, while questioning the Congress leaders timing of visit.The four farmers and one student who died on Tuesday were cremated in Piplaya as hundreds of farmers started charging at the police, RAF personnel forcing them to backtrack. Stones were pelted at Sitamau police station prompting security personnel to use tear gas shells. A factory and warehouse was also torched, said reports.The agitating farmers and police were also involved in stone pelting in Ujjains Badnagar.Curfew remains enforced at Mandsaur town and Piplaya Mandi, while internet services were curtailed in Mandsaur and nearby areas.BJP and Congress workers also came face-to-face at Gwalior and Indore over bandh calls from Congress and farmers unions.
: Rioting and arson was reported in several districts of Madhya Pradesh a day after six farmers died in police firing in Mandsaur. Mobs set banks, buses, petrol pumps and police vehicles and chowkis on fire, disrupted rail and road traffic, and heckled senior state officers.Several videos of bus passengers terrified by violent mobs and charred public vehicles did rounds of social media giving a glimpse of the battleground that the state has become. In many instances passengers were seen to be running away from their buses as rioters attacked buses and set them on fire. While police officials claimed the situation to be under control, the ground reality was anything but that.Violence was reported from Ujjain, Dewas, Mandsaur, Neemuch, Sehore and Piplia Mandi. In Neemuch and districts around it, police force fired teargas shells to prevent locals from setting a police station ablaze.Many of these districts have been placed under curfew. Internet connectivity has also been suspended in these areas.By late afternoon, Centre decided to rush 1100 riot control personnel to Mandsaur. And Madhya Pradesh home ministry wrote to the Union home ministry, asking for additional forces in Neemuch, Mandsaur, Dewas and Ujjain also. Police officials have fortified the state capital, Bhopal, to prevent the rioters from entering the city.Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi held an emergency meeting which was attended by external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj, home minister Rajnath Singh, finance minister Arun Jaitley and road transport minister Nitin Gadkari.Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan made overtures to people through Twitter. "I am a farmer and understand your problems. You can be assured your government will implement all things," Chouhan said while appealing for peace.Meanwhile, the state government deployed Cabinet minister Archana Chitnis to firefight the situation. Claiming that the state government had done a lot for farmers, she said, "MP government has already started procuring onions at Rs 8 per kg. Around 4,500 quintals have been procured across the state. MP government will provide support price for moong and tur... Farmers will now be provided 50 per cent cash and the rest through RTGS when they sell their produce at the 'krishi mandis'."While Congress leaders blamed the BJP for the ongoing stir, BJP retaliated by claiming that the violence was handiwork some Congressmen."Farmers fighting for their rights have died and the government is blaming the opposition. What can be more shameful than this," tweeted senior Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia.Senior BJP member Kailash Vijayavargiya hit back by said, "This is a Congress conspiracy. They are fuelling violence. Shivraj Singh Chouhan has focussed on agriculture.""We will release the videos how congress leaders are instigating the farmers," Vijayavargiya added.Meanwhile, the state Human Rights Commission announced that it had taken cognizance of the farmers' deaths, and sought explanation from senior officers on the incident.In the middle of all this milk and vegetable supplies have been severely affected in cities like Indore and Ujjain.
Hizbul Commander Sabzar Ahmad Bhat gunned down in an encounter in Tral: As the news spread like wildfire on May 27, and Kashmir plunged into yet another phase of uncertainty, select few people in New Delhi were unsurprised.What may have appeared like a sudden encounter to some was part of a larger strategy to reach a permanent solution in Kashmir.Exactly seven days later, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) went full throttle in Srinagar and Delhi, raiding houses and other establishments of Hurriyat leaders and their allies. The FIR registered by NIA was carefully, yet simply, worded.The Hurriyat was collaborating with Lashkar and Hizbul and raising blood money through hawala transactions to fund both gun totting militants and homegrown stone pelters in the valley, read the four-page report.Highly placed sources told CNN-News18 that the two incidents were not unrelated. They are, in fact, part of Prime Minister Narendra Modis three-point Kashmir plan.We have come up with a permanent solution to resolve issues in Kashmir. The initiative has begun and we are moving forward, Home Minister Rajnath Singh had said a few weeks ago.With Singh reiterating what happened, and cementing his governments stamp of control on the problems in Kashmir, CNN-News18 delves into what exactly the permanent solution looks like.If theres anything that Modi and his men have made clear, it is that the priority is to eliminate and completely crush militancy. Sources told CNN-News18 that a list of active terrorists and militants in the valley has been drawn up, and their names are being crossed out, one by one. Sabzar was part of that list.The Hizbul Mujahideen group photo.Use of arms and ammunitions looks like the order of the day. Fifteen years on, the vilified Cordon and Search Operations are now back to Search and Clear Ops. The differentiation between a homegrown militant and a foreign terrorist no longer exists. The armed forces across the 778-km long Line of Control (LOC) have been launching preemptive strikes at Pakistan Army posts that are allegedly harboring and aiding infiltrators. The Army, just days ago, went to the extent of releasing a video of one such attack. The hunt is on, without any apologies.Separatists are being hit where it hurts. Money. The Centre is said to be treading on the path based on the alleged fact that dry fruit trade in Kashmir is what keeps the pockets of separatists full.Nobody is clear about the amount of money involved, but estimates have pegged it at Rs 200-300 crore. A list of those involved in hawala transactions was drawn up two months ago. By linking these alleged hawala transactions to terror funding, the government has cleared the way for the NIA to breeze past the Income Tax department and hit the separatists directly.By ordering the NIA to clamp down on separatists, the government has made it clear that it is accusing the Hurriyat of waging a war against India. This money is allegedly used in organizing stone pelters and funding hubs of radicalization, the source said, adding that the idea was to choke terror funds and push the separatists to a corner.Though the BJPs alliance with PDP, led by Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, has more than once advocated dialogue with the separatists, the Modi government has always replied in negative. If at all, Modi government wants dialogue from a position of strength, not weakness.The power of the internet has the government worried. There are many within the valley who, by risking life and limb, shoot videos, click photographs and put them out on social media. Many have died in the process. The Internet has become a space with no boundaries for their call for freedom. And this is when the government stepped in. It has disconnected the valley from the Internet and social media.People were being mobilized in the valley via social media. Something had to be done. And it has worked, the source said. Take a look at Sabzars funeral procession. Only 3000 people turned up for his funeral because we snapped the Internet connection. We didnt want a repeat of what happened at Burhan Wanis funeral, the source told CNN-News18.The three-point plan for Kashmir is up and running. But the government has another problem at hand. There is a resigned acceptance within the BJP government that CM Mehbooba Mufti is failing at many levels in controlling the turmoil in Kashmir, the source said.CNN-News18 had previously reported on how Mehbooba Muftis popularity had seen a constant downfall ever since Burhan Wanis death last year. Mufti was also forced to withdraw from a public function after pro-Pakistan slogans were raised. But the government, the source added, has no option but to let the alliance continue.We are left with no alternative. Omar Abdullah was our first choice, but he didnt want to work with us. So, why hold another election when we know we will be stuck with the same partner? the source added.
: A shocking incident of a civic worker being forced to manually clean a sewer line has come to light in Mysore, the home district of Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah.The incident took place on Tuesday in Tavarakatte village near the Chamundeshwari temple in Mysore where a gram panchayat president allegedly told a civic worker to get into a manhole to unclog a blocked drain as "she wanted it done immediately".The worker, Ganesh, initially refused, saying the block is so severe that they should wait for equipment to be brought in to clear up the sewer line. But, he alleged that the sarpanch Geetha insisted he dip into the manhole and physically clear it as it was right in front of her house.Ganesh said Geetha even got the Panchayat Development Officer to put pressure on him, to the extent of threatening him with dismissal, if he failed to comply. Scared about losing his job, he did get into the manhole, but also had a friend take a video of the same -- a video that was later handed over to the media.District officials say they have filed a police complaint against Geetha and the PDO Anand, for criminal intimidation and for violations of the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers Act -- which prohibits local authorities from employing humans to clear sewer lines and septic tanks. All of these offences could attract jail terms of two years.Zilla Panchayat Chief Executive Officer P Shivashankar said that the complaint was filed after ZP officials did a preliminary enquiry and spoke to the civic workers."The main official in-charge had met with an accident two days before, and he was not there. But since the GP President is also head of the panchayat, she has asked the workers to take up this work. Since she is not an official, we have sent a report to the government to remove her membership (from the panchayat)," Shivashankar told News18. Panchayat members are elected without any party affiliation at the village level.He said a probe is also underway to ascertain whether there are other officials involved in the incident.
New Delhi: India will be admitted as a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) during the summit of the regional grouping on June 8-9 in Kazakhstan, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be present.



The prime minister is expected to hold a bilateral meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the summit at Kazakhstan's capital city of Astana. However, there is no meeting scheduled between Modi and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif.



Pakistan will also be admitted as a full member of the SCO along with India during the Astana summit.



"Indications are that the last leg of the entire process, as per the Memorandum of Obligations, which is the confirmation (of membership) by the heads of the states of the existing members of the SCO, is going to happen in Astana," G V Srinivas, joint secretary of the Eurasia division in the MEA, said.



Modi will also attend the World Expo 2017, an international exposition, in Kazakhstan. Srinivas said that there could be a couple of more bilateral meetings between India and heads of the member states.



Apart from China, there is also the possibility of a meeting between India and Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan is the largest supplier of uranium to India.



When asked whether Modi would meet Xi on the sidelines of the SCO summit, MEA spokesperson Gopal Baglay said, "There is a possibility, but the schedule is being worked out and our missions are coordinating locally."



On Modi and Sharif's meeting, he said, "External Affairs Minister (Sushma Swaraj) has already said that there was neither any request from their side nor any such proposal from our side. There is no change in the status on this."



Srinivas said India had been an observer country at the SCO since 2005 and had applied for a full membership in 2014.



Founded in 2001, the SCO currently has six members--- China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, and is headquartered in Chinese capital of Beijing.



During Modi's visit to St Petersburg earlier this month, Russian President Vladimir Putin had conveyed to India about its admission as a full member of the SCO. Highlighting the advantages of joining the regional grouping, Srinivas said one of the aspects deals with economy, connectivity and trade, while another aspect focuses on terrorism which includes protection of classified information. He said 38 different documents have been signed by India to be a part of the body.



On being asked that the SCO summit statement of 2015 had a reference to the Belt and Road Forum (BRF), a Chinese initiative opposed by India, the official said the aspect was not part of the 38 documents signed by India to become a member of the grouping. The One Belt One Road (OBOR) project under the Belt and Road Forum seeks to connect China with Europe, Asia and Africa. The China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is also a part of the project.



India opposes CPEC as it passes through Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK).



India also hopes to benefit from Tashkent-based Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (RATS).



"There is little possibility of India staying out of such an exercise. We hope that as we join the RATS, we will be able to benefit from this collaboration against our fight against terrorism. They (RATS) do a series of activities, including joint exercises in fighting terrorism, maintaining a data bank of terrorists and undesirable elements etc," Srinivas said.



Responding to a query on whether or not India would be invited to participate in any anti-terror exercise alongside Pakistan and China, Baglay said, "We work with many countries, including Pakistan, as well as in UN peacekeeping operations. Terrorism is a fight which is incumbent on the entire humanity, not just countries."



Srinivas also underlined the importance of "connectivity" after becoming a full member of the SCO.



"Connectivity for example is the prime desire for the country as we want to connect to central Asia," he said. For better connectivity with Central Asia, the official said India has also applied for a membership of the Ashgabat agreement.



The Ashgabat agreement is a multi modal transport agreement between Oman, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Pakistan for creating an international transport and transit corridor, facilitating transportation of goods between Central Asia and the Persian Gulf. Baglay said the SCO has member states who are neighbours to Afghanistan and it will be an institutional forum where India can engage with these nations.
Thiruvananthapuram: The Kerala Assembly has convened a special session on Thursday to discuss the Centres notification on sale of cattle meant for slaughter.



Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan will move the motion regarding the issue. The discussion is expected to last for 2 hours.



The state government and the opposition Congress had reacted strongly on the issue.



Vijayan had said he didnt need a lesson in food habits from New Delhi or Nagpur. "The state government will give all facilities to people to have food of their choice. There is no need for Keralites to learn it from anybody in New Delhi or Nagpur." The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is headquartered in Nagpur.



The CM had also called a meeting of all chief ministers to fight the central government's notification and dubbed it an encroachment on the rights of the state, democracy and federalism.



The Central governments new notification has imposed a blanket prohibition on the slaughtering of cattle (cows, bulls, buffaloes, camels, heifers) brought from animal markets. The notification bans the sale of cattle for culling and also restrains sacrificing the animals for religious purposes.
Madhya Pradesh: Protesting farmers got into a scuffled with #Mandsaur collector and SP for delay in their visit, demand presence of MP CM. pic.twitter.com/H6Q9W2kWIi  ANI (@ANI_news) June 7, 2017

Madhya Pradesh is an island of peace. I tell Congress don't politicise, don't fuel violence in the name of farmers: Venkaiah Naidu #Mandsaur pic.twitter.com/Y52LLII9T6  ANI (@ANI_news) June 7, 2017

Family of the student shot dead in alleged police firing in Mandsaur on Tuesday staged a road jam in Mandsaur demanding chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhans arrival on the spot on Wednesday.Mandsaur Collector Swatantra Kumar Singh and SP OP Tripathi were reportedly roughed up by farmers.Five farmers and a student Abhishek Patidar (17) were killed in the firing. The student was heading to his college when he was shot at during the protest, Abhisheks family claimed. A heavy police force, CRPF and RAF personnel remained posted at the spot in Mandsaur.Prominent grain and vegetable markets remained shut at most of the places in the state as Congress called for a bandh against the Tuesday firing on farmers. Meanwhile, Congress workers themselves engaged in vandalism at several places as they forced shopkeepers to close their outlets forcefully.Markets remained closed in Shajapur, Burhanpur, Mandsaur, Indore, Bhopal and several other places.Besides Mandsaur, where curfew has been clamped in Piplaya Mandi and prohibitory orders have been imposed in rest of the district, heavy police force was posted in remaining districts of Malwa region including Indore to keep a check on law and order.Former Mandsaur MP Minakshi Natrajan was arrested at Dodar as she tried to reach Mandsaur. BJP state head Nandkumar Singh Chauhan, revenue minister Rampal Singh and agriculture minister Gaurishnakar Bisen too were prevented from going to Mandsaur.Unfazed, Congress state head Arun Yadav and Leader of Opposition Ajay Singh also proceeded towards Mandsaur on Wednesday.Farmers remained agitated in Mandsaur alleging that they were being treated worse than stone pelters of Kashmir. They also rejected compensation announced by the state government.Reacting to the tragedy, Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Tuesday declared an ex gratia of Rs 1 crore for the families of the deceased and Rs 5 lakh for the injured. In addition to money, a government job, to one of the family members of the deceased, will also be given.Farmers in Mandsaur also alleged that CRPF had opened fire on them without any provocation after they exchanged stones with the police during the demonstration.
New Delhi: Funerals of slain militants have always been an occasion for the separatist brigade to showcase their public support, the air ringing with pro-Pakistan, pro-separatist slogans. But the recent funeral of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Sabzar Bhat went a step further as an unidentified gunman, wearing a battle pouch with a grenade in tow, was seen swearing revenge for Bhats blood.



Jammu & Kashmir Police has now confirmed the militant seen at the Bhats funeral in Tral, Awantipora, has surrendered.



Danish Ahmed, a resident of Kulangam in Handwara, surrendered after security agencies cast the net wide following videos of his presence at Bhats funeral going viral on social media.



Security agencies said Danish was a 3rd-year student of B.Sc at Doon PG College of Agriculture Science and Technology, Dehradun. They claimed Danish was involved in stone-pelting incidents at Handwara in 2016, was picked up, but let off after counselling in view of his career.



Once it was learnt that Danish has joined militancy, Handwara police and 21 RR army got in touch with his parents and impressed upon them to counsel their son for surrender. His parents were convinced that if he surrenders, he would be dealt with fairly under the law. Efforts made by security forces yielded results and Danish surrendered before Handwara police and 21 RR army, a J&K Police press release said.



On being questioned, he revealed that he was in touch with terrorists of South Kashmir region on social media sites; and it was at their instigation that he had decided to become a terrorist. He was tasked by Hizbul Mujahideen commanders to activate some local youth in North Kashmir and make the region as militancy infested as the southern part of Kashmir. However, after spending a few days with the terrorists in South Kashmir, he realised the futility of joining militant ranksDanish is being considered under the J&K Surrendered Militants Rehabilitation Policy, the release said.



According to sources in security agencies, during interrogation Danish confessed that most of the local boys become disillusioned with gun after joining militancy, but the boys find it difficult to surrender due to life threats from local commanders.



Danish revealed that most of the militants indulge in acts of extortion and thuggery in the areas of their operations, said the source, who also claimed that many youngsters join militancy to make friends with local girls who treat them as heroes.



Danish revealed that there was no dearth of money being supplied from Pakistan, the source added.






New Delhi: A rising star in Delhi police who had gone AWOL (Absent Without Official Leave) nearly six months ago has resurfaced, but his department is feeling embarrassment instead of relief.



Assistant sub-inspector Aslup Khan, an ace investigator of the crime branch who had received an out of turn promotion for his good work in solving a policemans murder, has been named a suspect in ATM robberies in Kerala by the police there.



Khans name cropped up after Kerala Police nabbed his accomplice Sukesh, who was allegedly one of Khans informers in Delhi. He confessed to the police that their gang was involved in a series of robberies in the state. It is still not clear how many men were involved in the robberies.



In fact, Khan has emerged as the leader of the gang. Police said that the Delhi policeman is the main accused in an ATM robbery in Alappuzha district, in which Rs 3.6 lakh were looted from an ATM. He is also the suspect in another ATM robbery in Kazhakootam in Trivandrum district. Two more ATM robbery bids are being investigated and police says there may be more such cases.



According to Kerala Police, Khan and his gang used gas cutters to cut open the cash chest of the ATM. They seemed to be experts at it as while cutting the chest, the cash was not damaged, police said.



Kerala Police has informed their Delhi counterparts of Sukeshs arrest and of Khan being named a suspect. After the news broke about his alleged involvement, his colleagues were left in shock and refused to talk. Some of his colleagues, who once worked with him, now refused to accept they know him.



His supervisor, on the condition of anonymity, said that Khan had started out as a constable in RK Puram branch of the crime branch. He was a diligent cop and there had been no complaints against him.



Khan was given an out if turn promotion after he and other team members arrested a wanted criminal Shaqir, who was wanted for the murder of a police officer. After the arrest, Khan became a head constable. He was promoted to the rank of an ASI last year, just before he went to Kerala.



But sources in the crime branch also said that he was notorious. Hailing from Mewat, he had a strong hold on gangs operating from that area and had his own way of dealing with informers.



Khan had gone on a one-month long leave in December, but just before his leave was to get over he applied for another months leave. After that he never came back. He was put on suspension as he didnt return. Oblivious to his new venture in Kerala, Khans seniors were expecting him to return anytime soon. But what came back was news of his loots and a big dose of embarrassment.
Bhopal: Madhya Pradesh suffered two back-to-back droughts, hundreds of farmer suicides and mass exodus of workers between 2014 and 2015. Then normal rainfall was registered in the state in 2016, but the situation didnt improve. According to information submitted to the state Assembly, 1695 farmers and farm labourers committed suicide between November and mid-November last year.



The information available with state Assembly and state crime bureau shows that nearly 20,000 farmers have killed themselves in MP in the past 15 years. The agrarian distress in Madhya Pradesh is severely understated its farmers say, who have been on a statewide stir, demanding government intervention since June 1. Just like their counterparts in neighbouring Maharashtra.



What happened in Mandsaur, 325 km from Bhopal, on Tuesday was part of a farmer agitation demanding, among other things, a Minimum Support Price (MSP) for their produce. MSP is the price fixed by the government to protect farmers against fluctuations in prices of crops. In a way it is a guaranteed price for farmers produce by the government.



Farmers in the state have been demanding that recommendations of Swaminathan Committee be implemented. MS Swaminathan, an agricultural scientist, had released a report back in 2006, recommending that MSP for crops should be at least 50 per cent more than their cost of production. BJP had included this recommendation in its 2014 general election manifesto.



But in an interview to PTI last month, on the occasion of Modi government completing three years in office, BJP president Amit Shah had claimed that no government can meet the Swaminathan formula for calculating the cost of production.



The spot where six people lost their lives on Monday in police firing, a claim that police officials till now have denied, is located in the most agriculturally distressed pocket of Western Madhya Pradesh. Areas like Ujjain, Ratlam, Neemuch and Mansaur, which have been placed under curfew and Internet ban, have seen farmer agitations for over a month now.



Several farmer unions have been coming out in protest against governments inaction for last several weeks, except the RSS-backed Bharatiya Kisan Sangh, which claims government had accepted most of its demands like buying onions at Rs 8 a kg and paying farmers half their dues at mandis in cash and the remaining via electronic transfer to their bank accounts.



We dont support the sort of hooliganism that was on display in the state. We dont support wasting vegetables and milk and being aggressive. Since the government has met all our demands, we are not going to participate in any stir. If at all, we come out on roads in protests, it will happen in November-December, when farmers will be free, said BKS state secretary Manmohan Vyas.



However, the president of Kisan Union, Shivkumar Sharma, said the state government was lying to people. The government has lied to us on all counts. As a matter of fact, eight, not six, people have died in police firing. We will take the farmer stir to national level in the coming days, Sharma said in a press conference in Indore.



The killing of farmers in Mandsaur is also significant for another reason. Of the six dead, five are from the Patidar community  Kanhailal Patidar, Bablu Patidar, Chainram Patidar, Abhushek Patidar and Satyanarayan Patidar.



With elections in Gujarat, where Hardik Patel has been leading a Patidar-led agitation against BJP, and Madhya Pradesh due next year, this is likely to become a bigger headache for the party.



While MP Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has announced Rs 1 crore compensation to the kin of the deceased, apart from announcing a judicial probe, fresh violence was reported in the region on Wednesday.



The kin of the deceased have refused to bury their dead and have blocked a road in Badkheda, refusing to cremate the dead till the Chief Minister comes and apologises in person.



All opposition leaders, from Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi to the Lefts Sitaram Yechury, to regional party leaders like SP president Akhilesh Yadav, RJD president Lalu Prasad Yadav and Trinamool Supremo Mamata Banerjee have reacted strongly against the killing of farmers.
New Delhi: How far will you go to recover Rs 40 charged wrongfully?



Ask Lekhraj, 70, who fought a relentless legal battle for three years, spent thousands and did not think twice when he had to take a fight to New Delhi from a small village in Himachal Pradesh to get back Rs 40. All because he did not concede to the notion of being wronged.



The septuagenarian stood vindicated last week when the National Consumer Commission ordered the state development authority to refund Rs 40 that it had imposed as a penal charge on Lekhraj in 2014.



The Commission, presided over by Justice D K Jain, minced no words in applauding Lekhrajs grit and perseverance, as it also awarded a compensation of Rs 5000 to the man who argued his case himself at all three fora.



The instant case depicts a perfect example of an enlightened senior citizen, who, undeterred by the insignificance of the quantum of the amount, is determined to pursue his cause to vindicate his stand against the high handedness and deficiency in service..., noted the apex consumer panel.



Lekhraj was allotted a house by the Himachal Pradesh Housing and Urban Development Authority, which made him pay Rs 40 as penal charges for reportedly not paying the maintenance amount due. Lekhraj was also threatened with disconnection of basic amenities such as water and sewerage connection if he did not pay up. Left with no alternative, he paid the demand along with the penal charge of Rs 40.



Subsequently, Lekhraj filed a consumer complaint in the district forum at Una but to no avail. In February, 2016, the forum dismissed his complaint on the ground that the additional demand was as per the terms and conditions contained in the allotment letter.



Lekhraj appealed against this order before the state consumer commission at Shimla. But the state consumer panel upheld the dismissal order along with a cost of Rs 1,000 to be coughed up by Lekhraj.



Resolute, the septuagenarian came to the national capital with second appeal and stood up before the Commission, questioning the arbitrariness of the HP Development Authority. The Authority also engaged a lawyer who vehemently defended the decision to impose the penal charge.



The Commission, however, pointed out that the Authority could not show the basis of charging Lekhraj Rs 848 when the demand was for Rs 808.



Manifestly, the threat of disconnection of basic facilities provided to the house, on Complainants failure to pay the overdue interest @14% per annum was without disclosing to the Complainant its basis. If such a decision had been taken by the functionaries of the Development Authority, the same had to be notified as per the prescribed procedure. No such decision has been placed on record or even pleaded in the written version filed on behalf of the Development Authority, it emphasised.



The Commission held the Authority guilty of deficiency in service for not waiving Rs 40 charged wrongfully from Lekhraj, thereby causing unwarranted harassment to him.



The Revision Petition is allowed, with a direction to the Development Authority to refund to the Petitioner a sum of Rs 40 within four weeks from the date of receipt a copy of this order. The petitioner shall also be entitled to costs, quantified at Rs 5,000, ordered the panel.
To reinvent yourself as an actor is to challenge yourself. Looking forward to portraying #DrManmohanSingh in #TheAccidentalPrimeMinister.:) pic.twitter.com/PsVdkpjZWY  Anupam Kher (@AnupamPkher) June 7, 2017

Unlike his contemporaries, veteran actor Anupam Kher has found immense success by being extremely versatile in his craft. Whether it is the films or plays that he has been featured in, Kher has done a variety of roles. Interestingly, the actor will now play former Indian PM Manmohan Singh - a character which will add to the wide range of roles on his resume.Kher will play former PM in a forthcoming political drama based on a memoir by Sanjay Baru, Manmohan Singhs media advisor.Kher took to his official Twitter account to share the first look. He captioned the first look - which shows his uncanny resemblance with former PM - with the caption that read, "To reinvent yourself as an actor is to challenge yourself. Looking forward to portraying #DrManmohanSingh in #TheAccidentalPrimeMinister.:)"Titled after the book - The Accidental Prime Minister: The Making And Unmaking of Manmohan Singh - the film is being directed by Vijay Ratnakar Gutte, produced by Sunil Bohra of Bohra Bros banner.A report in the Economic Times said the movie is expected to be released in December 2018, months before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.In the book, Baru had said that Manmohan Singh had been defanged by the Congress party with party chief Sonia Gandhi deciding on key appointments to the Cabinet and to the Prime Ministers Office as he seemed to surrender to her and to the alliance partners in the UPA government. Baru, PMs media adviser between 2004 and 2008, said Singh had told him that there could not be two centres of power.Kher was last seen in Naam Shabana, and will be soon seen in Akshay Kumars Toilet: Ek Prem Katha.
: In the midst of unrest in Darjeeling, Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) general secretary Roshan Giri met state BJP President Dilip Ghosh in Kolkata and discussed the current political situation in the Hills.Speaking to News18, Roshan Giri said, "I met state BJP President Dilip Ghosh and we discussed the current political scenario in the Hills. We also met state Governor Keshari Nath Tripathi and asked for his intervention in Mamata Banerjee's forcible imposition of Bangla language in schools."He said, "We have decided to intensify our movement for a separate Gorkhaland and we have discussed these issues with the state BJP. I am not revealing much about the meeting but it was about pending issues which need an urgent solution."When asked whether they have taken any decision to quit GTA because of Mamatas special audit order, he said, "Let her go ahead with the audit. We are not afraid of her. We will continue with our movement for the betterment of hills and for the people of hills.""As of now Bimal Gurung ji has not resigned from GTA," he said.On the context of separate Gorkhaland, "There was some discussion but since it is a central issue, I don't want to make any comment on this."State BJP president Dilip Ghosh said, "GJM representatives met me for the first time and he expressed his annoyance against state chief minister Mamata Banerjee. They also threatened to resign from the GTA for a fresh movement for a separate Gorkhaland."When asked that the state BJP has always raised voice against the separate Gorkhaland, he said, "We discussed Gorkhaland issue but we have nothing to do with it. This is a central matter."Sources said, there are differences of opinion among GJM leaders over continuing their alliance with the BJP. Some GJM leaders feel that once again the BJP is taking the 'opportunist stand' to make their presence in the Hills."We are getting a feeling that the central government may not agree for a separate Gorkhaland. The reason behind is - state BJP leaders are against the formation of separate Gorkhaland. Therefore our leaders met state BJP president in Kolkata to get the ground realties," a GJM leader said.On Tuesday, Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA) Chief Executive Bimal Gurung threatened to resign from the post and has warned to intensify movement against compulsory Bangla language in schools and for a separate Gorkhaland.On Wednesday, Bimal held a meeting with the GJM leaders and GTA members at Bhanu Bhawan at Darjeeling to decide next course of action."Before going for a GTA's special audit, she should look at her own party leaders who are under CBI scanner in Saradha and Narada case. She should have called for a probe before CBI came in the picture," Bimal had said.On Monday, Mamata ordered a 'special audit' of funds given to GTA since its inception in July 18, 2011.The decision taken by the state government is likely to bring more trouble for Bimal Gurung  who is also the founder of Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM).In recent years Mamata is having a bitter political fight with GJM in the hills who are demanding for a separate statehood and allied with BJP to fulfil their demand.
NKolkata: Beef may be an anathema for the BJP in the rest of the country, but there is nothing to worry about in Mizoram, state BJP chief J V Hluna has assured people in the state.



Amid the crackdown on cattle slaughter, Hluna said that there is no problem in eating beef in Mizoram as its consumption is allowed in the Bible. Mizoram has over 87% Christians and eating beef here is a norm.



Speaking to CNN-News18, he said that people should not worry about central governments notification on cattle ban. I am aware about the recent government notification on cattle ban but I would like to clarify that as per bible eating beef is allowed, he said.



When asked if central BJP leadership would object over eating beef in the state, he said, When our party president Amit Shah was in Mizoram, we asked him about the controversy over banning beef across India. He assured us there is nothing to worry and asked us to follow our tradition. And, as per bible and our tradition consumption beef is allowed.



Prof. Hluna, while stressing on not to make this issue controversial, said, BJP believes in secularism and our party does not interfere in personal choices and freedom. There is a political attempt across the country to project BJP as a communal party but the ground reality is BJP is the only party in India which follow the path of development and only development.



The state BJP is planning to celebrate Modi Mela in presence of Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, who is scheduled to meet chief ministers of Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur and Nagaland on June 12 to discuss border issues with Myanmar.



The CMs are once again likely to raise the beef issue with Rajnath Singh to understand governments latest stand on this issue. The Centre had earlier assured that any beef crackdown would not extend to the northeast.



State party leaders feel that unless BJP gives up the cow issue, it would not be able to challenge Congress and regional parties in three northeast states that go to polls next year.
New Delhi: The attempts by invaders to destroy religion in India by demolishing temples throughout history failed as people found new ways to reinvent it through the performing arts, said a senior RSS functionary on Tuesday.



"When outsiders saw India and its temples, they thought that they could destroy our religion by demolishing them. They thought that our religion is in these temples only. Each time a temple was demolished people came together and got artists to build more temples. They could only destroy temples, but not the emotions connected to it in the hearts of the people," said Krishna Gopal, RSS joint general secretary.



The RSS leader was speaking at a function co-organised by the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library and Sanskar Bharati, the culture arm of the Sangh in the city.



Gopal, speaking on the topic - 'Bharatiya Darshan in the visual and performing arts' - said "while we have a number of gods and their temples, the spirit behind all of them were the same".



"The emotions behind temples are all the same, only the artists use their imagination and make them look different. When the temples were demolished again and again, people said, it doesn't matter if they break temples, we will sing devotional songs. Let the mandir be, they thought, let it go.



Our spirit, our religion is with us, what is there in a building, they thought," said the RSS leader.



He further stated that in times of crisis and emergencies in the country, it was the performing arts that kept the emotions alive in the hearts of people.



"When there is a crisis or an emergency, art take its own course. It finds new ways to express emotions. Why do we need big temples, when we can have our gods at our homes? That is why during the 12th-18th century, we saw the prevalence of bhajans and kirtans, which was the new form of arts that came

forth at that time and is being perpetuated till date," he added.
Kolkata: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee expressed condolences to family members of six farmers who were killed in alleged police firing in Madhya Pradesh on Tuesday.



Incident in MP unfortunate. Sad six farmers lost their lives. My deepest sympathies to the bereaved families. We always stand by our farmers, Mamata tweeted.



Following the killing of farmers, who were seeking loan waivers in MP, Internet services were suspended in Mandsaur, Ratlam and Ujjain due to the protests.



A judicial inquiry has been ordered into the incident. Reacting to the tragedy, Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan declared an ex gratia of Rs 1 crore for the families of the deceased.



TMC insiders claimed that Mamata - who is in Darjeeling  got upset when she came to know about the killings.



She even discussed the matter with the party leaders, and planned to send a team of Trinamool Congress MPs to meet the family members of deceased in Madhya Pradesh, a source said.



Mamata is very sensitive towards farmers issue because through this movement in Singur (Hooghly district) and in Nandigram (West Midnapore) she came to power in Bengal.



The agitation in Singur started on October 13, 2006, when the CPM state secretariat endorsed former chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and former industries minister Nirupam Sen's decision to lease out 997 acres in Singur to Tata Motors at a concessional rate for Nano project.



And the protest in Nandigram took a brutal turn after the CPI-M government allowed Indonesian firm - Salim Group  to set up a chemical hub under the SEZ policy.



Mamata vehemently protested both the moves and fought for the farmers. Several people were killed during both the agitations and finally, on August 2008, Tata Group Chairman Ratan Tata pulled out of Singur. The same year Salim Group also decided not to invest in Nandigram.



These two farmers movement gave a strong political mileage to Mamata and on May 20, 2011, she became the Chief Minister of West Bengal.



Now with the farmers' issue in Madhya Pradesh, our Chief Minister will highlight this issue in her public meetings. She has already raised demonetisation, GST, cattle ban etc. and now farmers issue in BJP ruled states. Our party will always stand for the poor people across the country not only in Bengal, the insider said.
Kolkata: Trinamool Congress MP Derek OBrien slammed the BJP and asked the government to look in the mirror hours after it emerged that Income Tax department has issued a notice to the party seeking details of a Rs 24 crore publicity drive ahead of the 2014 general elections.



Dereks statements came after union minister Piyush Goel asked West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee come clean on the source of the money and questioned whether it is still not clear why she opposed the demonetisation move by the Centre to curb black money.



Don't give us lessons on regulatory and financial compliance. A central minister who addressed the media today is playing dirty games. Our party has submitted all its accounts to the Election Commission. It has replied to communications from the Income-Tax Department. What gives the Minister the authority to say all this? Derek asked.



Instead, why doesnt he check if his own house, his own party, is in order? Please don't give us lessons on regulatory and financial compliance. Our party has fulfilled all criteria and that is why we have been recognised as a national party recently, the MP said.



OBrien said that Goyals press conference is a part of a concerted attempt to browbeat political parties in the opposition, independent sections of the media and critics of the current regime in Delhi.



These wild allegations will only strengthen our resolve. The BJP cannot scare us. In time, the people will show this government what they think of it and its theatrics. Nasbandi was punished 40 years ago, Notebandi will be punished soon, he said.



Later hinting at killing of farmers in Madhya Pradesh, he tweeted, When its government fires bullets at farmers and desperately wants to change the narrative, BJP cooks up a diversion.



TMC leaders also claimed that the tax notice was purposely leaked in Delhi by BJP.



It was a very old notice and already reported earlier in some media. We have already replied to I-T and the Election Commission. They have found nothing and now BJP is raising this issue to divert the farmers killing issue in Madhya Pradesh, said a party leader.
Bharti Airtel has got approval from the Competition Commission of India for its proposed merger with Telenor (India), the company said in a regulatory filing.



The company has already received approval of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), BSE and National Stock Exchange of India Limited (NSE) for the proposed merger with Telenor (India).



Airtel had earlier announced (on February 23, 2017) that it has entered into a definitive agreement with Telenor South Asia Investments. As part of the scheme, Airtel will acquire Telenor India's running operations in seven circles - Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh (East), Uttar Pradesh (West) and Assam.



"These circles represent a high population concentration and therefore offer a high potential for growth. The proposed acquisition will include transfer of all of Telenor India's assets and customers, further augmenting Airtel's overall customer base and network," the company said in a statement.



"It will also enable Airtel to further bolster its strong spectrum foot-print in these seven circles, with the addition of 43.4 MHz spectrum in the 1,800 MHz band," it added.



During the acquisition announcement the deal was estimated to be in the range of Rs 1,800 crore-Rs 2,000 crore by industry sources.
Washington: The Pentagon has said that tension continues to exist along the disputed portions of Indo-China border even though the economic relationship between the two countries have increased in recent years.



According to Pentagon, China's use of force in territorial disputes has varied widely throughout its history.



"Tensions persist along disputed portions of the sino- Indian border, where both countries patrol with the armed forces," the Pentagon said in its annual report to the Congress.



In September 2016, an Indian patrol observed that more than 40 Chinese troops had set up a temporary shelter within Indian territory in Arunachal Pradesh, which China also claims as South Tibet, it said.



"The two sides conducted flag-officer level meetings where they agreed to maintain peace, and then withdrew to mutually acceptable positions," the Pentagon said as it listed out other border disputes that China has with neighbouring countries, prominent among them being the East China Sea.



Some disputes led to war, as in border conflicts with India in 1962 and Vietnam in 1979, it said, adding that a contested border with the former Soviet Union during the 1960s raised the possibility of nuclear war.



In more recent cases involving land border disputes, China has sometimes been willing to compromise with and even offer concessions to its neighbours.



"Since 1998, China has settled 11 land-based territorial disputes with six of its neighbours," the Pentagon said. In recent years, China has adopted a coercive approach to deal with several disputes that continue over maritime features and ownership of potentially rich offshore oil and gas deposits, it added.



The Pentagon said tensions remain with India along the shared 4,057 km border over Arunachal Pradesh, which China asserts is part of Tibet and therefore part of China, and over the Aksai Chin region at the western end of the Tibetan Plateau, despite growing China-India political and economic relations.



"China and India continue to accuse each other of frequent incursions and military build-ups along the disputed territories.



In 2013, however, Chinese and Indian officials signed the Border Defence Cooperation Agreement, which supplements existing procedures managing the interaction of forces along the Line of Actual Control," it said.



As per Chinese figures, cumulative Chinese investments into India till September 2016 stood at USD 4.75 billion while Indian investments into China were USD 0.689 billion. Indian businesses have a presence in China in sectors such as IT, pharmaceuticals and automobiles.



The Pentagon said China and Japan have overlapping claims to both the continental shelves and the exclusive economic zones in the East China Sea. The East China Sea contains natural gas and oil, though hydrocarbon reserves are difficult to estimate.



Japan maintains that an equidistant line from each country involved should separate the EEZs, while China claims

an extended continental shelf beyond the equidistant line to

the Okinawa Trench, it said.



Also the South China Sea plays an important role insecurity considerations across East Asia because Northeast Asia relies heavily on the flow of oil and commerce through South China Sea shipping lanes, including more than 80 percent of the crude oil to Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.



The total length of the Indo-Pak border in Jammu and Kashmir is 1,597 km, Himachal Pradesh 200 km, Uttarakhand 345 km, Sikkim 220 km and Arunachal Pradesh 1,126 km.
Al Jazeera did not focus on the statements and comments coming out of those countries, instead giving air time to the US and Turkish foreign ministers and an adviser to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani -- all urging dialogue.



Funded by Qatar's royal family, Wadah Khanfar, a Palestinian journalist who was director general of the network between 2006-2011, helped turn the Arab satellite channel into a world network with millions of viewers and more than 20 channels broadcasting in languages including Arabic, English and Swahili.



As one Arab state after another announced it was severing ties with Qatar, the tiny Gulf monarchy's flagship television channel Al Jazeera did not react like other broadcasters -- it updated its news ticker but its presenters said nothing.It was only when the Qatari foreign ministry released a statement saying it was facing a campaign of lies and fabrications aimed at putting the Gulf Arab state under guardianship that the channel came to life on the topic."This has been planned since 2014 but only came out after the Riyadh summit," said Mohamed al-Mosfer, one of the many Qatari analysts the channel had on to comment, referring to a meeting last month attended by US President Donald Trump.The Arab world's strongest powers cut ties with Qatar on Monday over alleged support for Islamists and Iran.Saudi Arabia, Egypt, United Arab Emirates and Bahrain coordinated their move, while Yemen, Libya's eastern-based government, and the Maldives joined in later.Al Jazeera did not focus on the statements and comments coming out of those countries, instead giving air time to the US and Turkish foreign ministers and an adviser to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani -- all urging dialogue.The channel is at the centre of the controversy. Arab rulers accuse Qatar of using its multi-million-dollar franchise as a mouthpiece to attack them.Local media in the countries that cut ties speculated it would be shut down in an effort by Qatar to appease its angry neighbours, but while journalists working there are rattled by the crisis, they think their station will survive."Everybody is shocked at the escalation but no one thinks the channel will close, said one journalist with Al Jazeera English. "It is something the Qataris will not give up."Later that night Al Jazeera focused on news coming out of Washington indicating Trump wanted to see the Gulf rift healed, as well as Kremlin statements calling for unity in the fight against militancy.A White House statement saying Trump would work to smooth things over between Arab Gulf states played for over an hour on Al Jazeera screens. Saudi and Emirati channels ignored it.When a senior Trump administration official told Reuters several of Qatar's actions worried its Gulf neighbours, Al Jazeera disregarded it. Other Gulf channels gave it prominence.The channel cheered on the 2011 Arab Spring revolts, particularly in Egypt, but now faces aggressive competition in its home region, and suspicion from many governments over air time given to Islamist groups in Syria, Libya and elsewhere.Al Jazeera's spectacular growth took place under former Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani who, unlike other Gulf Arab leaders, backed Middle East protest movements and played mediator in a host of wars.Under his son and current ruler Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Qatar has toned down its foreign policy.Founded in 1996 as part of Qatari efforts to turn economic power into political influence, Al Jazeera offered free-wheeling, uncensored debate of a kind rarely seen on Arab televisions.Its talk shows hosted guests who challenged the wisdom of Arab rulers and adopted the role of supporter of the dispossessed. Reporters broke with a widespread taboo of the Arab news media by interviewing Israeli officials.Funded by Qatar's royal family, Wadah Khanfar, a Palestinian journalist who was director general of the network between 2006-2011, helped turn the Arab satellite channel into a world network with millions of viewers and more than 20 channels broadcasting in languages including Arabic, English and Swahili.With Al Jazeera's expansion came unprecedented influence in the Arab world, but also new enemies.Egypt views Al Jazeera as critical of its government, and the channel has been banned there since 2013. Al Jazeera says it is an independent news service giving a voice to everyone in the region.Egyptian security forces have arrested several of its reporters and last year a Cairo court recommended the death penalty for two of them, charged in absentia with endangering national security by leaking state secrets to Qatar.Three others had previously been sentenced to between seven and 10 years in jail on charges including spreading lies to help a "terrorist organization" -- a reference to the banned Muslim Brotherhood -- but were later freed.Saudi Arabia shut down the channel on Monday."Al Jazeera condemns the measures taken by Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Culture and Information to close the Al Jazeera Media Network's office and withdraw the operating license," said a spokesman in Qatar.
Several people were reported injured after armed men burst into Tehrans parliament building and the mausoleum of revolutionary founder Ruhollah Khomeini on Wednesday, state media said.

One member of parliament told state broadcaster IRIB that there were three gunmen inside the parliamentary complex in central Tehran, armed with rifles and a pistol.

Stay tuned for LIVE updates.

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Lahore: Maryam Nawaz, daughter of Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, seems to have become careful in her activities on social media, especially Twitter.



A report in Dawn News said that Nawaz has cut short her impulsive reaction to different social media but also her direct criticism of opposition, especially Pakistan Tahreek-i-Insaf and its chairman Imran Khan".



Until May 2, Nawaz was quite active on Twitter where she had termed the Panama Papers as crap and said they were not about corruption. She further went on to say that the journalists who broke the news were part of a conspiracy against Pakistan.



Her tweets didnt go down well with those involved in the Panama leaks, with journalist Bastian Obermayer, a Pulitzer-winning journalist from German publication Suddeutsche Zeitung (which was the first to break the Panama story), saying that the papers were about corruption.



Frederik Obermaier, another Pulitzer-winning journalist, in a tweet told Nawaz that the scandal had not been as inconsequential as she believed.



Sources close to the Sharif family told Dawn News that Nawaz was asked to tone down her activities after this episode on Twitter. Her tweet on a meeting between her father and Indian business tycoon Sajjan Jindal also sparked controversy.



These days, the report stated, she has reduced her social media activity, mostly, to re-tweeting the comments and images critical of the PTI and its chairman.



Maryam, who joined the Twitter in 2012, started her social media activism after the PML-N came to power in mid-2013, especially to counter the PTI onslaught on the government. The PTI accuses her of overseeing media affairs of the PML-N to target the partys opponents. Before Maryams appearance on social media, the PTI was solely ruling the front, the report further said.



Maryam had evolved a social media set up to counter the political rivals of her fathers government. Because of her, PML-N today is on a par with the PTI on social media, sources told Dawn News. State Information Minister Maryam Aurangzeb, who is close to Maryam Nawaz, did not comment on Dawns query on the issue.



The report also quoted a PML-N MPA from Punjab, Hina Pervaiz Butt, who said that the impression that Maryam had limited her social media activity was wrong.



She is still active on social media and is highlighting and projecting positive developments happening in the country. Anything that happens in the country, Maryam responds to it very actively. She is a woman of strong nerves who never accepts defeat, the MPA was quoted as saying.
Washington: US officials investigating Qatars ostracizing by fellow Gulf countries believe that Russian hackers breaking into the countrys state news servers and planting fake stories could have contributed to the move, reports CNN.



Qatar and the US have confirmed that the FBI has sent a team to Doha to investigate the alleged hacking.



US officials told CNN that intelligence gathered by the US security agencies indicate that Russian hackers were behind the intrusion first reported by the Qatari government two weeks ago.



The alleged involvement of Russian hackers adds to the concerns by US intelligence and law enforcement agencies that Russia continues to try the same cyber-hacking measures on US allies that intelligence agencies believe it used to meddle in the 2016 elections.



US officials say the hackers goal appears to be to cause rifts among the US and its allies. In recent months, suspected Russian cyber activities, including the use of fake news stories, have turned up amid elections in France, Germany and other countries, says the report.



It's not yet clear whether the US has tracked the hackers in the Qatar incident to Russian criminal organizations or to the Russian security services blamed for the US election hacks.



The FBI and CIA declined to comment. A spokeswoman for the Qatari embassy in Washington told CNN said the investigation is ongoing and its results would be released publicly soon.



Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates announced on Monday that they were severing diplomatic ties with Qatar, marking fresh escalation of tensions between the Gulf partners over Dohas alleged support for Islamist militant groups.



The catalyst for Mondays action was said to be a Qatari news report that quoted Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani as criticizing Saudi Arabia, praising Iran, and describing Qatars relations with Israel as good. Qatari officials dismissed the news as fake, adding the news websites that published the report were the victim of a shameful cyber-crime. But the purported remarks were widely believed to echo official Qatari policy, reported The Atlantic.



Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman al-Thani told CNN the FBI has confirmed the hack and the planting of fake news.



"Whatever has been thrown as an accusation is all based on misinformation and we think that the entire crisis being based on misinformation," the foreign minister told CNN's Becky Anderson. "It began based on fabricated news being inserted in our national news agency which was hacked. This has been proved by the FBI."
People gather outside Iran Parliament in central Tehran after the shooting incident #tehranshooting pic.twitter.com/OGZ90zchZS  Press TV (@PressTV) June 7, 2017

First video emerges of the aftermath of Iran Parliament shooting incident#IranParliament pic.twitter.com/04WTu9PrnV  Press TV (@PressTV) June 7, 2017

Gunmen and a suicide bomber have carried out apparently coordinated attacks on Iran's parliament and the tomb of revolutionary founder Ruhollah Khomeini, state media said on Wednesday, with at least twelve people reported killed.Islamic State claimed responsibility for both the attacks, the group's state news agency AMAQ said. "Fighters from Islamic state attacked Khomeini's shrine and the Iranian parliament in Tehran," the news agency said.Meanwhile, Iran's Revolutionary Guards blamed on regional rival Saudi Arabia for the attacks.This terrorist attack happened only a week after the meeting between the US president and the (Saudi) backward leaders who support terrorists. The fact that Islamic State has claimed responsibility proves that they were involved in the brutal attack, a Guards statement said.A security guard was killed when four gunmen burst into Tehran's parliament complex, while a gardener was reported dead when several armed assailants entered the grounds of Khomeini's mausoleum in the south of the city, according to the ISNA news agency.At least eight people were wounded in the attacks, according to the reports.An official at Khomeini's mausoleum in south Tehran said "three or four" people had entered via the western entrance and opened fire, killing the gardener and wounding several people, according to the Fars news agency.Fars said a female suicide attacker blew herself up outside the shrine and published photos showing the explosion.Four men armed with rifles and a pistol were reported to be inside the parliamentary complex, around 20 kilometres away in the centre of the city.Tasnim news agency said one of the men had later left the building and was firing in the street, but was forced back inside by police fire.News agencies ISNA and Fars had earlier said three people had been shot after the gunmen entered via the north entrance, including at least one security guard.The ILNA news agency said security forces were dismantling a bomb inside the Khomeini shrine and that firing was still going on around the site.It was not clear if the assailants had been able to enter the actual mausoleum.The city was on lockdown, with streets blocked and the metro closed, and journalists kept away from the shrine by police.Interior Minister Abdolrahman Fazli told ISNA he had convened a special meeting of the country's security council.Iran has been singled out as a target by jihadist groups, including IS, but has largely escaped attacks within its urban centres.Iran, the predominant Shiite power, has been helping both Iraq and President Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria to battle the Sunni extremist group.IS is under increasing pressure in both countries, having lost significant territory in the face of offensives now targeting its last two major urban bastions, Raqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq.IS published a rare video in Persian in March, warning that it "will conquer Iran and restore it to the Sunni Muslim nation as it was before."IS and other extremists consider Shiites to be apostates, and the video accuses Iranians of persecuting Sunnis over the centuries and into modern times.Militant groups are also known to operate in Iran's southeastern Sistan-Baluchistan province, which borders Pakistan and has a large Sunni community.Jaish-ul-Adl (Army of Justice), which Tehran accuses of links with Al-Qaeda, has carried out several armed attacks inside Iranian territory in recent years.Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Sunday that attacks by IS in Europe and elsewhere showed that Western policies in the Middle East have backfired."This is a fire that (Western powers) themselves ignited and now has backfired on them," he told a gathering of senior officials in Tehran.Iran has been at the centre of a larger Middle East crisis that has seen powerful Sunni nations like Saudi Arabia and UAE teamed up against the Shia state. Iran has been accused of trying to build up a larger Shia arc in the region by supporting embattled Syrian President Bashar Al Assad and the Lebanon-based pro-Palestinian militant organization Hezbollah. Its Arab neighbours and Turkey find themselves at the other end of the Syrian war with support extended to a spectrum of anti-Assad forces ranging from the secular Kurdish forces to the Islamist Free Syrian Army to Al-Qaeda affiliate Nusra Front.Iran has also been at the cross-hairs of the new US administration led by Donald Trump that seems to have reverted to the George Bush policy of treating the Islamic Republic as one among the Axis of Evil.The Arab world's biggest powers had cut ties with Qatar on Monday, accusing it of support for Islamist militants and Iran, and reopening a festering wound two weeks after Trump's demand for Muslim states to fight terrorism.Iran, long at odds with Saudi Arabia and a behind-the-scenes target of the move, blamed Trump's visit last month to Riyadh and called for the sides to overcome their differences. "What is happening is the preliminary result of the sword dance," tweeted Hamid Aboutalebi, deputy chief of staff to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, referring to Trump's joining in a traditional dance with the Saudi king at the meeting.The hawkish tone on Tehran and on terrorism that Trump brought in his visit to Muslim leaders in Riyadh is seen as having laid the groundwork for the diplomatic crisis.Earlier, the Trump administration had said it was launching an inter-agency review of whether the lifting of sanctions against Iran was in the US national security interests while acknowledging that Tehran was complying with a deal to rein in its nuclear program.In a letter to U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, the top Republican in Congress, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Iran remained compliant with the 2015 deal, but said there were concerns about its role as a state sponsor of terrorism.Under the deal, the State Department must notify Congress every 90 days on Iran's compliance under the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). It is the first such notification under U.S. President Donald Trump.
United Nations: President Donald Trump's decision to quit the Paris climate accord will further erode US moral and political leadership in the world, France's ambassador to the United Nations has said.



"America is perceived as being, on this, on the wrong side of history," Ambassador Francois Delattre told reporters on Tuesday.



Trump announced the US exit from the 190-plus nation pact last week, drawing strong criticism from allies in Europe who vowed to turn to China and other countries as partners to implement the 2015 deal.



French President Emmanuel Macron has made a strong pledge to stand by the accord and similar reactions from India and China confirm that the Paris deal is "our common roadmap" to a low-carbon world, Delattre said.



The United States, the world's biggest carbon emitter after China, signed the agreement last year under the previous administration, but Trump has argued that the deal would harm the US economy.



Delattre said Trump's decision "goes beyond climate change policy" and is a "factor in the erosion of the moral and political leadership of the United States."



The decision could be perceived as "the birth certificate of the multipolar world" in which the United States is no longer "the most reliable guarantor of the world order," he added.



Trump's decision to scrap the Paris deal has left him isolated on the world stage and prompted a backlash at home, with several state governors, city mayors and powerful companies already drawing up plans to meet the pact's emission targets -- without Washington's backing.



Despite the setback on climate, Delattre expressed hope that the United States will nevertheless remain engaged in global affairs.



"A lasting American withdrawal from world affairs could give rise to a return to old spheres of influence whose dire consequences we are already familiar with," he said.
Guwahati: Three wild elephants, part of a herd that arrived at a wetland near the Thakurkuchi railway station engage in a tussle on the outskirts of Guwahati, Assam, India, Wednesday, June 7, 2017. According to forest officials the elephants from the nearby Amchang wildlife sanctuary came down to cool off in the waters Tuesday night. (Image: AP)
U.S. Rep. Bob Goodlatte will pay a fine of more than $200 following an April speeding incident in Nelson County.

According to online court records, Goodlatte originally was charged with driving 69 mph in a 35 mph zone. The offense occurred April 12, records show.

The speeding charge was amended Wednesday to a defective speedometer infraction, according to court records.

Nelson County Assistant Commonwealths Attorney Erik Laub said the charge was amended following an agreed-upon disposition, which resulted in a $238 fine for Goodlatte, a Republican whose 6th District covers all or part of 12 counties and seven cities, including Lynchburg, Amherst County and part of Bedford County.

Goodlatte also is required to pay $64 in court costs.

Laub said the fine is a standard fine for speeding of this type.

According to Laub, amending Goodlattes charge reflects standard procedure for the Nelson County Commonwealths Attorneys Office.

Our office tried to treat him exactly the same way we would anyone else, he said.

Laub said the office asks the court to impose a fine in such speeding cases when a driver has a clean record. The fine does not result in Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles points on the drivers record, Laub said.

According to Virginia State Code, Goodlatte could have faced a Class 1 misdemeanor charge of reckless driving had the previous speeding charge stood.

Virginia Code 46.2-852 states a person shall be guilty of reckless driving who drives a motor vehicle on the highways of the Commonwealth at a speed of twenty miles per hour or more in excess of the applicable maximum speed limit 

"Congressman Goodlatte regrets that this happened and will pay the fine," said Beth Breeding, a spokeswoman for Goodlatte. She referred all further inquiries to the Nelson County commonwealth's attorney's office.
North and South Korea look set to repeat a familiar fan dance as Pyongyang on Tuesday called on Seoul to live up to hasty promises made over a decade ago that came to naught as the North accelerated its nuclear program.

The demand came a day after North Korea spurned an offer from South Korean civic groups to resume aid and civilian exchanges.

"The North-South relations don't improve of themselves just because a new administration has come into power in South Korea," the state-run Rodong Sinmun daily wrote Tuesday. "Nobody can expect the relations to improve just because they allow some humanitarian aid or civilian exchanges that the previous conservative clique halted."
Amazon Is First Company to

Lose $1T in Market Value
Two kidnappers in India grabbed a 21-year-old Delhi University student who was driving a taxiand inadvertently messed with the wrong woman, reports India.com. "I just took my gun and shot them," says Ayisha Falaq, 32, the man's sister-in-law and a competitive sharpshooter. "I shot one in his leg, the other in the waist." It all started when the kidnappers beat the man for not having more money on him, and they called his brother at 1am demanding 25,000 rupees or "we will kill him." Little did they know that the young man's older brother was a competitive marksmanand that his wife had taken up shooting after the birth of their second child. In 2015, she'd won a bronze medal at a national shooting competition.

After the kidnappers abruptly changed the meeting spot to confuse the police, Falaq and her family were able to pull up behind their vehicle and show them the money. "I said they could take it, my brother was more precious," says the woman now being hailed a hero in India. Using a second car, they trapped the kidnappers, who "got scared" and started screaming. Falaq pulled her pistol from her purse to show that she was armed, and says they began shooting at her. "I normally shoot targets; this time I had to shoot people," she says. She hit both men, slowing their attempted escape on foot without causing life-threatening injuries. Police have the two men in custody, reports the Guardian, and authorities will launch an investigation into whether Falaq acted in self defense. (This widow and novice sharpshooter outshot a national champion.)
Ge Kun, a Chinese dairy firm executive, has been missing for more than two months. But, she's not alone: China Huishan Dairy now states it's also missing approximately $357 million in cash, CNN reports. According to the Wall Street Journal, Ge sent a letter dated March 21 to the Huishan chairman and hasn't been seen since. The letter said "recent work stress had taken a toll on her health." Ge was an executive director and co-owner of the company and in charge of everything from human resources to branding, including treasury and cash operations. Huishan announced this week that its accounts reveal it should have $426 million in cash or cash equivalents, but its bank states it only has $69 million.

Ge's disappearance and the missing money are part of a horrible six-month stretch for Huishan, which claims it runs more dairy farms than any other company in China. In December, a US investment research firm accused Huishan of fraud and reporting fake profits. And a few days after Ge's letter, the company's stock lost 85% of its value in a single day, Reuters reports. The drop is still unexplained. In the weeks since, nine out of 10 board members have left Huishan, the company's debt has ballooned to $3.9 billion, and 16 new legal proceedings have started against it. Huishan has filed a missing person's report for Ge and states it will hire a forensic accountant to investigate the "significant discrepancy" in its cash situation. (Read more China stories.)
Tuesday brought reports of another arrest and a potential eighth death in connection with Saturday's attack in London. Irish police arrested a man in his 30s under the Theft and Fraud Offenses Act on Tuesday south of Dublin, the AP reports. Police are questioning the unidentified man about documentation related to Rachid Redouane, one of the three attackers. Redouane had spent time in Ireland before being shot and killed by police Saturday in London.

Saturday's attack killed seven people and injured nearly 50. But police fear there may be an eighth victim dead, the Telegraph reports. Frenchman Xavier Thomas, 45, and his girlfriend were visiting London for the weekend and were walking on the London Bridge during the attack. Thomas' girlfriend was seriously injured, but Thomas hasn't been seen since. Based on witness statements, police believe it's possible he was hit by the van driven by the attackers and thrown into the River Thames. However, officers haven't found any bodies in the river. (Read more London terror attack stories.)
Doctors in Italy suspect that a man's herbal tea habit may have played a role in his psychosis. Specifically, the 25-year-old had been drinking four cups a day of tea made with St. John's wort, the doctors report in the Journal of Medical Case Reports. His friends brought him to the hospital because he had begun acting outamong other things, he believed people could read his mindand doctors diagnosed him with schizophreniform disorder. He improved after a regimen of anti-psychotic drugs. Doctors can't say for sure whether the St. John's wort caused his trouble, but the herbal tea "could have played a determinant role in the onset" of the man's symptoms, they write. That's because previous research has shown that some of its compounds may interact with systems in a person's body that are involved in regulating mood.

The man had suffered a previous psychotic episode months before but had opted not to take a prescribed anti-psychotic. He also refused to take ulcer meds when he developed stomach trouble and instead began to self-medicate with the herbal tea. "St. Johns wort (Hypericum perforatum) has been known for centuries for its therapeutic properties, and its efficacy as an antidepressant has been confirmed by a growing body of evidence," write the doctors. But they warn that taking it without a doctor's consent can be dangerous for those with mental health risks. Stuff notes that the herb should never be taken if you're on any prescription drugs, because the combo can trigger psychotic events as the body struggles to deal with a serotonin overload. The doctors caution that more research on the herb is needed. (This herbal coffee was recalled.)
The daughter of Yoo Byung-eon, the shipping tycoon and cult leader widely blamed for the 2014 ferry disaster, arrives in Korea on Wednesday afternoon after losing an epic battle against her extradition from France.

Justice Ministry officials took Yoo Sum-na into custody in Paris on Wednesday morning. Yoo is on the wanted list on charges of embezzling W49.2 billion from publicly traded companies controlled by her late father, some of it in the form of bogus consultancy fees (US$1=W1,118).

She was caught in France in May 2014 but fought her extradition all the way to the French supreme court, claiming she is the subject of political persecution and entitled to asylum.

On arrival, Yoo will be taken to the Incheon District Prosecutors' Office for questioning.

She will be the third of Yoo senior's immediate family to face criminal charges. Right after the disaster, prosecutors indicted his widow Kwon Yun-ja (74) of embezzling W29.7 billion. She was given an 18-month suspended jail sentence.

And his eldest son Yoo Dae-gyun (47) was tracked to a flat in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province in July 2014. He was released after serving a two-year prison term for embezzling W7.3 billion.

The whereabouts of Yoo Hyuk-ki (45), Yoo's second son, are unknown, although the Justice Ministry has asked the U.S. to extradite him. No charges were filed against his second daughter Sang-na (49).

Yoo Byung-eon was found dead on the lam in an apricot orchard in Suncheon, South Jeolla Province in June 2014.

An undischarged bankrupt with murky connections to those in power, his sharp practices are widely blamed for overloading the ferry Sewol before it sank in April 2014.


A grieving family in Indiana wants a little girl's death to raise awareness of Rocky Mountain spotted fever, which, despite the name, has been found in almost every state and has killed people a long way from the Rocky Mountains. Doctors believe the tick-borne illness caused the death of 2-year-old Kenley Ratliff, who died in Riley Children's Hospital in Indianapolis on Saturday, just days after becoming ill, WTOL reports. She had a brain infection, swollen hands, and, in what the CDC says is one of the most common early symptoms of the illness in children, rashes all over her body.

Kenley went from healthy to dangerously ill in less than a week, family friend Monica Kirby tells WTHR. "Her little body couldn't handle it." Kirby says the toddler became ill after a family camping trip. "Strep throat is what she initially tested positive for," she says. "Then she goes home and gets a nearly 104-degree fever. And they just couldn't break it." Tests are expected to confirm within two weeks whether Kenley died from Rocky Mountain spotted fever. Experts warn there could be more cases than usual this year because of a surge in the tick population caused by the warmer winter. Biologists say people should use a repellent containing DEET, taking care to spray their lower legs because ticks live in long grasses. (In Oregon, a toddler was temporarily paralyzed after a tick bite.)
The Syrian boy who drew worldwide attention last August after he was bloodied by an airstrike in Aleppo has resurfaced looking like any other healthy 5-year-old. But some are cautioning that looks can be deceiving. In interviews with pro-government outletsincluding reporter Kinana Allouche, who once shared a selfie with the bodies of rebel fightersOmran Daqneesh is seen next to his father as the older man accuses rebels of using Omran as a propaganda tool. "They wanted to trade in his blood and published his photos," he says, per the BBC. Mohamad Daqneesh, who lost an older son in the airstrike, adds he refused rebel offers to leave Aleppo because the rebels only seek to hurt the reputation of the Syrian Army, per Mashable.

Allouche notes "those who tried to shed Syrian blood mislead the news that he was hit by the Syrian Arab Army. Here he now lives in the Syrian state with its army, its leader and its people." The interview marks a decided turn for the regime of Bashar al-Assad, who last year said the photo of Omran in an ambulance was "forged." But a rep for the Syria Institute suspects a propaganda campaign has only just begun and says the family was "probably" coerced. Since rebels withdrew from Aleppo in December, "they are under government control now and this is a government that we know arrests and tortures anyone that speaks out against it," the rep tells Reuters. The Assad regime is known to offer incentives to those who speak out against rebels, reports the Guardian. (Read more Syria stories.)
The world is changing fast and Canada needs to set its own course as the US pulls back from global leadership, the country's foreign minister warned in a speech Tuesday. Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland told lawmakers that with American voters "animated in part by a desire to shrug off the burden of world leadership," Canada needs to invest more in its military to help defend against global threats, the Washington Post reports. "The fact that our friend and ally has come to question the very worth of its mantle of global leadership puts into sharper focus the need for the rest of us to set our own clear and sovereign course," she said.

"To put it plainly: Canadian diplomacy and development sometimes require the backing of hard power," Freeland said, per the Toronto Star, warning that Canada can't rely on getting a "free ride" from US military power. The minister, who promised there will be a "substantial" investment in beefing up the Canadian military, tells the CBC that to defend its values, its allies, and the "rules-based international order," Canada needs to have "strong muscles" as well as "good manners." She adds that Canada still plans to "double down" on keeping a good relationship with the US, though Ottawa will be "firm and resolute" in defending its economic interests. (Read more Canada stories.)
Usually on the side that's doing the accusing, Gloria Allred has just been slammed with a lawsuit from an ex-client alleging she's the guilty party. Per LawNewz, TV weatherman Kyle Hunter, who hired the celebrity lawyer to represent him in his claim that CBS discriminated against him in favor of pretty young meteorologists, filed a legal malpractice and fraud suit against Allred on Tuesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court. Hunter's specific beef: that Allred messed up key parts of his defense, and that she didn't clue him in that she and CBS were developing a legal drama based on her life, which he says is a conflict of interest. All of this led to "a near-seven-figure legal bill for Hunter, a sunk suit against CBS, and [his] impaired reputation," per his complaint. (The suit, which is asking for $1 million in damages, was filed by a lawyer who contributes op-eds to LawNewz).

In the suit, Hunter blasts Allred and other lawyers at her firm for not interviewing witnesses who may have helped his case, among other grievances. Per Variety, Hunter's suit says the $800,000 legal bill he had to pay when he lost to CBS left him near bankruptcy. LawNewz also uncovered in March that the State Bar of California is looking into Allred's actions for misconduct, for undisclosed reasons. "Allred sandbagged her client to serve her personal pecuniary interests, her penchant for public fame, and to protect the malfeasance of her media allies," the suit notes, adding she "needs to spend less time in front of a TV camera, and more time in an ethics library." A statement from Allred's law firm calls Hunter's claims "worthless" and notes he "has been threatening to sue our law firm for approximately one year in an attempt to get our law firm to pay him money which he is not entitled to." (Read more Gloria Allred stories.)
Just two guys, grabbing a bite at a Montreal eatery billed as "perfect for gin-tonic fueled evenings," chatting about how today's young people can turn into tomorrow's leaders. It's not clear if any gin was actually involved, but the two guys were none other than Canadian PM Justin Trudeau and former President Obama, meeting up for dinner Tuesday while the latter was in town to give a speech to a local business advocacy group, ABC News reports. "Tonight in Montreal, @BarackObama and @JustinTrudeau discussed their shared commitment to developing the next generation of leaders," the Obama Foundation tweeted Tuesday evening, along with a photo of the two in a secluded corner booth at Liverpool House.

The CBC notes a tinted-window Chevy Suburban pulled up to the restaurant to drop Obama off, and that while specific details of their talk haven't been revealed, "the timing of the meeting is conspicuous": Earlier Tuesday, Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland spoke on how Canada needs to set its own course in the world as the US retreats from its leadership role. In his own speech that day, Obama mentioned the "temporary absence of American leadership" in regard to the Paris Accord and said he was "disappointed with the current American administration decision" to drop out of the environmental agreement. Meanwhile, his cozy sit-down with Trudeau has spurred more references to their friendly relationship, with Newsweek painting it as a "bromance reignited." Trudeau thanked Obama in a tweet for his "visit & insights tonight in my hometown." (Read more Barack Obama stories.)
In a region where many watch politics more feverishly than sports, some DC bars are opting to open as early as 9am Thursday to screen former FBI Director James Comeys testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee. WTOP has a full list of venues open to viewers, such as Shaws Tavern, which advertised its event on Facebook as the Comey Hearing Covfefe, where customers can sip on Russian vodka specials and nosh on FBI sandwiches (hundreds have RSVPed). Business Insider reports that events are popping up in San Francisco and Houston bars as well, despite even earlier viewing times in those time zones. (Read more James Comey stories.)
Crowdfunded donations to Andrew Anglin, founder of the neo-Nazi site the Daily Stormer, have reached $150,000 to help pay for his legal defense in a lawsuit filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Per the Los Angeles Times, it took under two months to raise the money on the California-based site WeSearchr, which specifically champions far-right causes that won't fly on sites like GoFundMe and Kickstarter due to their hate-speech policies. The suit centers around complaints that Anglin started an anti-Semitic "troll storm" against a Jewish Montana woman and her family. NBC News reports that Anglin posted a message to his readers with Tanya Gersh's phone number, home address, and other personal information, instructing them to "tell them you are sickened by their Jew agenda."

Gersh claims that hundreds of death threats and harassing messages poured in, including a tweet to her 12-year-old son that read, "Psst kid, there's a free Xbox One inside this oven." The suit says that Anglin's "campaign of terror" continued as he posted about Gersh with 30 separate Daily Stormer articles. "My friends used to joke that I was the happiest girl on the planet," Gersh says. "Overnight, my life was stolen from me. I'm in trauma therapy and the safe world I lived in inside my beautiful mountain town was changed for me." Gersh is suing Anglin for invasion of privacy, intentional infliction of emotional distress, malice, and violating the state's anti-discrimination act. SPLC President Richard Cohen expressed surprise over Anglin's rapid fundraising, given that his site's popularity centers around "vicious, incendiary, racist rhetoric." (Read more Southern Poverty Law Center stories.)
Police have issued a warning to bald men in Mozambique: They could be targeted for ritual attacks. Five men were recently murdered for their body parts, the BBC reports. "The belief is that the head of a bald man contains gold," a police commander explains. "[Suspects'] motive comes from superstition and culturethe local community thinks bald individuals are rich." One of the men, for example, had his head cut off and his organs removed so medicine men could use them in rituals believed to bring clients their own riches.

Two suspects have been arrested in two of the murders, AFP reports. Police say the attacks are similar to ones that target albino people, who have also been known to be murdered for reasons related to witchcraft and healer rituals. These are the first such attacks on bald men in the region, but the Telegraph reports albino people have been subjects of more than 100 attacks in Mozambique since 2014, per the UN. (We're one step closer to predicting baldness.)
Two top intelligence officials say they never felt pressured by President Trump to intervene in investigations on possible Russian collusion with the Trump campaignthough they refused to say whether Trump had at least asked them to do so. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and National Security Agency Director Adm. Mike Rogers were questioned Wednesday by the Senate Intelligence Committee, CNN reports. According to NBC News, there were reports Tuesday that Trump had asked both men to publicly say they hadn't seen any evidence of collusion and asked Coats specifically to ask former FBI Director James Comey to ease off the investigation.

Rogers told the committee he hadn't been asked to do anything he felt was "illegal, immoral, unethical, or inappropriate." And Coats refused to discuss it, saying he is "not prepared to go down that road right now." Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chair Mark Warner was frustrated that both men said they didn't feel pressure from the Trump administration but wouldn't specify what was discussed during conversations with the president, CBS News reports. He said he left the hearing "with more questions than when I went in." Also being interviewed by the committee Wednesday were acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. (Read more Dan Coats stories.)
In 1981, the very first report on AIDS detailed five cases in gay white men. It left out a sixth case: that of a gay black man. The doctor behind the report now says that exclusion "might've made a difference." The HIV rate in gay and bisexual black men in America is higher than that of any country in the world. The New York Times, in an eye-opening report, calls it "one of America's most troubling public-health crises." Swaziland has the highest HIV rate in the world at 28.8%. The lifetime risk of HIV diagnosis in the US is about 1%. But according to the CDC, if current trends hold, the HIV rate for gay and bisexual black men in America will reach 50%. The problem is worst in the South. Already in Jackson, Mississippi, the HIV rate among gay and bisexual men is 40%.

In 2003, Congress passed a $15 billion plan to fight HIV/AIDS in Africa. There was no such funding or plan for black Americans fighting the disease. A 2014 study found it would take an extra $2.5 billion to make actual progress on the crisis affecting America's gay and bisexual black men. But that's not likely to happen; in fact, the situation will almost assuredly get worse. The Trump administration disabled the Office of National Aids Policy website and proposed cutting the CDC's funding for HIV/AIDS prevention, testing, and support by $186 million. There are fears that abolishing ObamaCare will return the country to a time of an HIV medication waiting list that is thousands of people deep. Read the full story here to put a personal face on the crisis. (Read more Longform stories.)
The infant grandson of ex-President Park Geun-hye's crony Choi Soon-sil returns to Seoul on Wednesday after his mother was extradited from Denmark last week.

Chung Yoo-ra left the boy behind with his nanny as she returned to face charges relating to the massive corruption scandal surrounding Choi and Park.

Prosecutors plan to take the nanny in for questioning when she arrives at Incheon International Airport.

Last week, the Seoul Central District Court declined to issue an arrest warrant for Chung, who is suspected of being a major beneficiary of her mother's slush funds. Prosecutors said they plan to file for another warrant on fresh charges.

The first arrest warrant was sought over underhand favors Chung received from the prestigious Ewha Womans University but did not include charges that she benefited directly from W7.8 billion in donations her mother extorted from Samsung (US$1=W1,118).

Chung has pleaded ignorance.

She was released from a remand prison last Saturday and now stays in a building in Gangnam owned by her mother. She is busy meeting her attorney and preparing her defense.

Asked by reporters if she misses her mother, Chung replied, "Of course I do" and added that she plans to visit Choi in jail.


The Islamic State may have claimed responsibility for Wednesday's twin terror attacks in Tehran that killed 12, but Iran has a different culprit in mind: regional rival Saudi Arabia. "This terrorist attack happened only a week after the meeting between the US president and the (Saudi) backward leaders who support terrorists," says a statement from Iran's Revolutionary Guards, per Reuters. It acknowledges that ISIS was "involved," however, thus insinuating a link between ISIS and the Saudis, notes New York. A look at coverage:



Potent symbols: The attackers hit not only the parliament building in Tehran but the mausoleum with the tomb of founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini"the two most potent symbols of the 1979 revolution," writes Simon Tisdall at the Guardian. For Iranians, this is "deeply shocking," the equivalent of someone attacking the Lincoln Memorial in the US.

The attackers hit not only the parliament building in Tehran but the mausoleum with the tomb of founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini"the two most potent symbols of the 1979 revolution," writes Simon Tisdall at the Guardian. For Iranians, this is "deeply shocking," the equivalent of someone attacking the Lincoln Memorial in the US. The attacks: Details on how the coordinated attacks unfolded are at the New York Times.

Details on how the coordinated attacks unfolded are at the New York Times. A first: Assuming the ISIS claim is legit, this would be the first ISIS attack in Iran, but the militant group has wanted to strike there for years, explains a Q&A at PRI. ISIS is Sunni, while Iran is a Shia nation, and it's no small distinction: ISIS views Shiites as apostates.

The backdrop: The New York Times notes the attacks come not only after Trump's trip (seen as emboldening the Saudis) but after the Saudi move to isolate Qatar, which it accuses of supporting terrorism and Iran. It all relates to the main issue: "Iran and Saudi Arabia are the leading nations on opposing sides of the Middle East split between Shiite and Sunni Islam."

The New York Times notes the attacks come not only after Trump's trip (seen as emboldening the Saudis) but after the Saudi move to isolate Qatar, which it accuses of supporting terrorism and Iran. It all relates to the main issue: "Iran and Saudi Arabia are the leading nations on opposing sides of the Middle East split between Shiite and Sunni Islam." Morale boost: Given ISIS retreats in Iraq and Syria, the successful strikes in Iran will clearly be a big morale boost to the group, per an analysis at the BBC. As they lose their strongholds in those countries, they want followers to launch attacks elsewhere, and no target is bigger than Iran.

Given ISIS retreats in Iraq and Syria, the successful strikes in Iran will clearly be a big morale boost to the group, per an analysis at the BBC. As they lose their strongholds in those countries, they want followers to launch attacks elsewhere, and no target is bigger than Iran. Trump response: It was notably mixed. "We grieve and pray for the innocent victims of the terrorist attacks in Iran, and for the Iranian people, who are going through such challenging times," he said in a statement. But then added: "We underscore that states that sponsor terrorism risk falling victim to the evil they promote." The US does indeed consider Iran a state sponsor of terrorism, notes Business Insider.

It was notably mixed. "We grieve and pray for the innocent victims of the terrorist attacks in Iran, and for the Iranian people, who are going through such challenging times," he said in a statement. But then added: "We underscore that states that sponsor terrorism risk falling victim to the evil they promote." The US does indeed consider Iran a state sponsor of terrorism, notes Business Insider. Ominous threat: Just hours before the attacks, the Saudi foreign minister had said Iran should be punished for supporting groups such as al-Qaeda, per Al Arabiya English.

(Read more Iran stories.)
States are continuing to fight back against President Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, with Hawaii becoming the first state to pass a law adopting the goals of the accord. NPR reports the bill was signed Tuesday by Gov. David Ige. He was joined by mayors from around the state, who also signed an agreement to commit to the goals of the agreement, according to the New York Times. "Climate change is real, regardless of what others may say," USA Today quotes Ige as saying. He says he was motivated by the signs of climate change he sees daily in Hawaii: "Tides are getting higher, biodiversity is shrinking, coral is bleaching, coastlines are eroding, weather is becoming more extreme."

The legislation signed by Ige commits Hawaii to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions and creates a commission to develop strategies for fighting climate change. While only Hawaii has passed a law to abide by the Paris climate agreement, more than a dozen states have joined the US Climate Alliance, which aims to uphold the tenets of the agreement at the state level. The governors behind the alliance say states can meet the goals of the accord without hurting their economies. While Trump's withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement can't be completed until 2020, he has said his administration will "cease all implementation" of the accord effective immediately. (Read more Paris Agreement stories.)
Sher Bahadur Deuba elected New Prime Minister of Nepal

New Delhi : Sher Bahadur Deuba was on Tuesday elected as the next Prime Minister of Nepal, returning to the post 12 years after he was removed from the post by then King Gyanendra. He succeeded former Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda who had resigned last month.

Prachanda resigned as per a consensus between the two major parties.The ruling parties - Nepali Congress and CPN(Maoist-Centre)- Prachanda entered into an understanding according to which Prachanda was supposed to quit the top post for the NC President to lead the coalition government.

Modi congratulates Deuba

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday called up Nepal's Prime Minister-elect Sher Bahadur Deuba to congratulate him and convey his best wishes for the country's progress.

"Called Shri Sher Bahadur Deuba to congratulate him on being elected the Prime Minister of Nepal. I conveyed my best wishes to Shri Deuba for peace, prosperity and progress in Nepal under his leadership," Modi tweeted.
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The Chosun Ilbo and financial information provider FnGuide tallied the donations of the nation's top 30 conglomerates and found that they plummeted 38.7 percent on-year during the January-March period to W254 billion, the daily said on Tuesday (US$1=W1,118). That was a whopping 66 percent less than in the previous quarter.

Major conglomerates achieved record profits in the first quarter of this year but cut back drastically on their charitable donations.

One reason was that conglomerates like Samsung and SK are embroiled in the corruption scandal that brought down ex-President Park Geun-hye, who is accused of extorting billions from them in donations to two dodgy nonprofits established by her confidante Choi Soon-sil.

Samsung made charitable donations of W142.9 billion in the first quarter of 2016, but that fell 73 percent to W43.5 billion in the same period this year as de facto chief Lee Jae-yong was arrested over the scandal.

SK's charitable donations more than halved from W96 billion to W45.2 billion. LG and Hanwha also cut back by 28 and 18 percent, and CJ by 63 percent. But Lotte, which is also embroiled in the scandal, increased donations from W10.1 billion to W18.1 billion, and Hyundai Motor and Doosan also gave more to charity than last year.

Yet the operating profits of the top 30 conglomerates soared 21 percent in the first quarter of this year. One source at a major conglomerate said, "We did not want our intentions to be misunderstood and took a cautious approach in donating to charity." But big businesses also made new rules in the wake of the scandal requiring board approval of large donations.

Another source at a major conglomerate said, "The execution of large donations became slower due to the need to obtain board approval for amounts over W1 billion, but charitable donations will probably go back to about the same level as before by the end of this year."
Fairbanks, AK (99707)

Today

Variable clouds with snow showers. High around 20F. Winds light and variable. Chance of snow 70%. Snow accumulations less than one inch..

Tonight

Cloudy skies this evening will become partly cloudy after midnight. Low around 10F. Winds light and variable.
New Delhi:

Rs 4,915 crore will be invested to double the manufacturing capacity for smartphones and refrigerators at Noida (UP) plant, consumer electronics major Samsung on Wednesday said.

The Korean chaebol said that the investment would position the Noida plant as a major production hub and create about 5,000 new jobs.

As a result of the investment spread over the next two years in the Noida factory, the production capacity of smartphones will rise to 12 million units a month from the existing 5 million.

The capacity for refrigerators would double to 3 million units per annum (against 1.5 million at present), and for TV panels to 2.6 million units (from 1.3 million), an official said.

Read more: Samsung Gear Fit2 gets massive updates; equipped with new workout tracking features, heart-rate zones

"The investment reaffirms Samsung's commitment to Make-in-India and Make-for-India and to the state of Uttar Pradesh", a company statement said.

The Noida plant was was set up in 1996 and is the first of two manufacturing units in India for the company. The plant started with the manufacture of televisions way back in 1997, and mobile phone manufacturing unit was added in 2005.

"The expansion of the plant on an additional 35 acres of land adjacent to the current facility will double the production capacity of both mobile phones and refrigerators...", the statement said.

Besides the factory in Noida, Samsung also has a production unit in Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu, five R&D centres and one design centre in Noida, employing over 70,000 people.

The company's investment proposal was recently approved by the UP Government under its Mega Policy.

"The expansion of the plant will act as a catalyst for the development of a robust electronics manufacturing ecosystem and is expected to generate thousands of new jobs, both direct and indirect, across the country", the statement added.

Read more: Samsung investigates Galaxy S8 'iris hack' claims by German group

The groundbreaking ceremony was held at the new site on Wednesday in the presence of Electronics and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, and NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant.

Speaking on the occasison, HC Hong, President and CEO of Samsung Southwest Asia, said, "A bigger manufacturing plant will help us cater to the growing demand for Samsung products across the country".

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Cheong Wa Dae has asked the White House to exclude the controversial issue of the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense battery stationed here, from the agenda when President Moon Jae-in meets his counterpart Donald Trump in Washington later this month.

A Cheong Wa Dae official said too much fuss is being made about Moon's plans to let the National Assembly review the deployment. "Some measures are being taken regarding the THAAD deployment, but that does not mean we want to send it back, and we have already conveyed this point to the U.S," a Cheong Wa Dae spokesman said.

"An understanding has already been reached between U.S. and Korean officials, so we expect the THAAD issue to be excluded from the agenda of the summit," he added. He claimed the U.S. has said it "understands" the matter, but no agreement has been made.

One diplomatic source said, "Even if the THAAD issue is excluded from the agenda, Trump may decide to comment on the issue during a press conference so we are preparing for that."

Trump has demanded that Korea pay for the deployment, which was heavily pushed by the Obama administration, but the Pentagon hastily pointed out that Washington is bearing the cost.

Meanwhile, the director of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, James Syring, took a look at the THAAD battery stationed in southwestern Korea on Tuesday, according to a U.S. military source.

"The visit was aimed at inspecting whether the battery was set up according to MDA standards and to listen to the input of the field commander," the source said.


New Delhi:

The Delhi government on Wednesday told that in order to tackle the menace of dengue and chikungunya it has released nearly Rs 25 crore to all three municipal corporations of the city.



According to the government, it has allocated Rs 11.50 crore and Rs 8.38 crore to North and South Delhi Municipal Corporations respectively to deal with dengue, chikungunya and malaria in the first quarter of the current financial year.

An amount of Rs 4.65 crore has been allocated to East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC) for the same purpose, a senior government official said.



As per the the latest municipal corporation report released on June 5, at least 61 cases of dengue and 131 cases of chikungunya have been reported in the national capital till June 3.



On Tuesday, SDMC said that dengue breeding checkers (DBCs) would be provided uniforms and identity cards so that they perform their duties without any hindrance.
Thane:

A special court here today declared as proclaimed offenders drug lord Vicky Goswami and his partner and former Bollywood actor Mamta Kulkarni in the multi-crore ephedrine haul case and directed attachment of their properties.



"It is pronounced and declared that accused Vicky Goswami and Mamta Kulkarni are proclaimed offenders. The immovable properties belonging to the accused be attached," special Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) court judge H M Patwardhan said in the order.



Following the order, special public prosecutor Shishir Hiray told PTI, "Now, the law-enforcing agencies have to act and the police have to file the compliance report within 30 days about execution of order. It also gives power to police to attach the properties of the accused."



"The order also empowers police to issue warrant against the accused on the last known address of accused," he said.



The court fixed the next date for hearing in the matter on July 10.



Last month, the prosecution had sought initiating the process of declaring Mamta and Vicky as proclaimed offenders.



The prosecution had told the court that since the investigation team had exhausted all its legal provisions and even served the warrants, the only remedy left was proclamation from the court.



Thane police had raided Avon Lifesciences in Solapur last year and seized around 18.5 tonne of ephedrine worth Rs 2,000 crore.



According to police, ephedrine was being diverted from Avon Lifesciences to a Kenya-based drug cartel headed by Goswami where it was used to make party-drug Methamphetamine.



The police have arrested over a dozen people in the case.



As per the case history, the Thane police had arrested a Nigerian national in April last year and recovered ephedrine from him.



Following his interrogation, police arrested some other accused and eventually led them to Avon Lifesciences in Solapur, where they recovered 18.5 tonnes of ephedrine.



The police then arrested the senior production manager of the unit. Further interrogation revealed that Goswami was one of the top operatives of the racket. The police also suspect the role of two Kenya-based druglords- Bakhtash and Ibrahim Akasha- in the case.



Ephedrine, the sale of which is banned in India, is popularly used overseas to treat asthma and bronchitis. Its abuse is known to cause euphoria, hypertension and nausea. It is also used to produce the popular narcotic methamphetamine.



According to police, Goswami, the son of a retired police officer from Gujarat, began as a bootlegger in the 1980s in Gujarat. He then began smuggling mandrax.



He fled to Mumbai while on bail after his arrest in a drug bust. Over the last two decades, he expanded his network to Dubai and Africa, police had said.



Mamta had starred in hit films like "Karan Arjun" and "Baazi" in the 1990s.

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New Delhi:

A CBI special court on Wednesday exempted BJP stalwarts L K Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Union minister Uma Bharti from personal appearance in the 1992 Babri Masjid demolition case. The senior leaders will now not have to attend day-to-day trial in the case.

CBI special judge S K Yadav passed the order on applications moved by former deputy prime minister Advani (89), ex-Union minister Joshi (83) and Bharti (58) seeking exemption from personal appearance on different grounds. Allowing the plea, the court, however, said the trio would have to appear before it as and when directed.

Counsel for the BJP leaders had cited old age of Advani and Joshi, and extensive travel by Bharti as reasons for their inability to appear before the court daily during the trial. They had been granted a similar relief during the trial proceedings in the case in Raebareli.

The Supreme Court had on April 19 transferred to Lucknow the Raebareli case for a joint trial in the two cases relating to the demolition.There are 34 accused in the case and the CBI court is conducting the day-to-day trial on the direction of the apex court. During Wednesday's proceedings, the CBI got a prosecution witness, Ramakant Dubey, discharged on the ground that it did not require him for recording of evidence.

ALSO READ: Babri Masjid case: CBI eyewitness deposes in court

The special court had on May 30 framed the serious criminal conspiracy charge against Advani, Joshi, Bharti and nine others and allowed the prosecution to begin the trial. Their application for discharge from the offence was rejected by judge Yadav.

The court had also granted them bail on a personal bond of Rs 50,000 each. The Supreme Court had on April 19 also directed that the trial in the demolition case be completed within two years.

It had ordered the restoration of the conspiracy charge against the three leaders. This charge against them had been dropped by a trial court in 2001 and the verdict had been upheld by the Allahabad High Court in 2010.

Besides the three senior BJP leaders, party MP Vinay Katiyar, one-time Hindutva firebrand Sadhvi Rithambara, VHPs Vishnu Hari Dalmiya, Mahant Nritya Gopal Das, Mahant Dharam Das Maharaj, Ram Vilas Vedanti, Champat Rai Bansal, Baikunth Lal Sharma and Shiv Sena leader Satish Pradhan are the other accused against whom charges have been framed by the special court.

READ: Babri Masjid case: Special CBI court asks Advani, all other accused to appear before it on May 30

The 16th-century disputed structure in Ayodhya was pulled down on December 6, 1992.The Supreme Court had called the destruction of the mosque a crime which shook the secular fabric of the Constitution while allowing the CBIs plea seeking restoration of the criminal conspiracy charge against Advani and others.

The accused are also facing charges of having made assertions prejudicial to national integration and injuring or defiling a place of worship.

The other charges against them include indulging in deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings, uttering statements leading to public mischief, rioting and unlawful assembly.

The maximum punishment which could be awarded to Advani and others upon conviction in the matter, could be up to five years imprisonment or fine or both, according to a lawyer.

With PTI inputs

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New Delhi:

The BJP on Wednesday asked Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi to refrain from "politicising the death of farmers", and alleged there was a "conspiracy" behind the ongoing agitation of farmers in Madhya Pradesh.

Allegations by BJP leaders, including Venkaiah Naidu and Narender Singh Tomar, came amidst the Central and state governments' efforts to contain the protest by farmers at Mandsaur in Madhya Pradesh. At least five persons have been killed in the violence during the protest.

The farmers have been protesting since June 1 demanding higher minimum support prices (MSP) for their produce and loan waiver among other things.

"Farmers of Madhya Pradesh are peace-loving. They do not indulge in violent activities. There is a conspiracy behind this entire incident. Those who do not want peace and prosperity in the state and can not see the BJP government functioning smoothly are behind this incident", Rural Development Minister Narender Singh Tomar said.

Read more: Mandsaur farmers protest: PM Modi calls emergency meeting, Rahul Gandhi to visit MP tomorrow

Tomar, who represents Gwalior seat in Lok Sabha, said farmers in Madhya Pradesh are the most prosperous in the country.

Replying to a question on Rahul Gandhi's scheduled visit to the protest site on Thursday, the minister said he should not "politicise" the death of farmers.

He also said that Gandhi and his party, which were in power for so long, were responsible for the poor condition of farmers in the country.

Naidu also hit out at the Congress for "hijacking" the protest in Mandsaur.

"It is a very sad turn of events in a state that is the most peaceful in India. Congress is trying to politicise farmers' problems after they failed to counter Shivraj Singh Chouhan politically in the state", he said earlier.

Read more: CWC meet ends: Sonia Gandhi hints at Opp candidate for Prez polls, says Modi Govt achieved success through UPA projects

Later in a press conference, BJP General Secretary Bhupender Yadav said the BJP government in the state was taking appropriate measures to tackle the issue.

Asked about the demand by farmers of various states for a loan waiver as was done by the BJP-ruled Uttar Pradesh government, Union minister Piyush Goyal said the situation varies from state to state and that it was up to the respective state governments to take decision.

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Lucknow:

The Congress on Wednesday attacked the Modi government over the rise in cases of crime against women and accused it of being silent on this issue.

The BJP government at the Centre is running merely on publicity and no work has been done on the ground during the partys three years in power, Congress spokesperson Priyanka Chaturvedi alleged.

The reality of their Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao campaign is that it has been confined only to advertisements and sloganeering... No concrete work has been done. During 2016-17, out of the budget of Rs 100 crore, Rs 43 crore was released and only Rs five crore spent, she said.

There has been a rise in cases of crimes against women, especially in states ruled by the BJP, but the Modi government has been silent on these, Chaturvedi said, adding like all the other unfulfilled promises, it has utterly failed to ensure security for women.

As for the Yogi Adityanath government, it has done in two months what the Modi dispensation could not do in three years... As per some reports there has been a seven-time increase in such crimes in Uttar Pradesh in the last two months, she said.

Presenting statistics, Chaturvedi said the state of education, unemployment and campaigns like Start-Up India, Stand-Up India, among others, were bad.

There is anti-Dalit sentiment from Hyderabad to Saharanpur and this is both unfortunate and condemnable, the Congress spokesperson said.

Also read: E-portal for women employees to file complaints against sexual harassment

Also read: Kerala minister makes objectionable comments against IAS officer, women activists



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New Delhi:

A 21-year-old man was murdered for allegedly opposing a person using drugs in a public toilet in Delhi on Tuesday evening. The deceased, Rahul is from Mundka village of Nangloi and used to work at a public toilet about 500 metre from Nangloi Metro Station with his mother.



According to a police officer, "On Tuesday evening, a person came to use the toilet. Rahul's mother found that he was using drugs in the toilet and opposed it,". After which Rahul opposed the person from using the toilet.

"The guy left the toilet, but he along with two others came back at around 4.30 p.m and stabbed Rahul," the officer said.

At 9.30 p.m on Tuesday, more than 50 people had gathered at the Nangloi Police Station demanding police to arrest the accused.

Rahul's cousin Amit complained: "My little brother has been killed and no one here (police station) is listening to us."

Delhi: A 21-year-old youth stabbed to death for asking a group of persons to not take drugs in Nangloi area, assailants absconding (June 6) pic.twitter.com/R9HkbtVoBO a ANI (@ANI_news) June 7, 2017

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Bhopal:

On the seventh day of farmers agitation on Wednesday, widespread violence, including several incidents of arson, were reported from western Madhya Pradesh, especially Mandsaur and Dewas districts.

The Centre rushed 1,100 anti-riots police personnel to Mandsaur district where five persons were killed on Tuesday allegedly in police firing.

Though the Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan announced a compensation of Rs 1 crore each for the families of five farmers, it didnt seem to have mollified the protesters who are demanding better prices for their produce and a complete farm loan waiver.

The BJP government also announced a loan-settlement scheme which it said will cover around six lakh farmers with accumulated dues of Rs 6,000 crore.

The government is contemplating a formula wherein it may waive interest on crop loans. Also, an Agricultural Costs and Marketing Commission to ensure better prices for farm produce would be set up, minister Archana Chitnis said after attending a meeting chaired by chief minister Chouhan.

The bandh called by the main Opposition Congress received a mixed response.

Curfew remained in force at Pipaliya Mandi areawhere five farmers were killed and six others were injured yesterday -- and in Mandsaur town. Prohibitory orders under section 144 of CrPC are still on in place in rest of the district, Inspector General of Police V Madhukumar said.

Also read: Mandsaur farmers demanding debt relief heckle DM, torch vehicles, indulge in stone pelting; IG says situation under control

The six injured persons were out of danger while the slain farmers were cremated, Madhukumar told PTI.

Tension prevailed in Mandsaur town again today, where all business establishments and offices remained closed. Police detained the former Mandsaur MP Meenakshi Natrajan who was not allowed to enter the district to meet families of the slain farmers.

Mandsaur collector S K Singh was heckled when he tried to persuade protesters to lift road blockade in Berheda Pant area.

Shops were torched in Suasara town in the district.

Inspector Shyambabu Sharma of Suasara police station

received head injuries when the police were trying to bring under control a mob which was throwing stones at Guratiya Pratap square.

A warehouse was set ablaze in Badi Choupati area and Mhow-Neemuch highway was blocked for hours in Mandsaur.

In Dewas district, protesters threw stones and set on fire four passenger buses running between Indore-Bhopal and eight other vehicles in Newari Fata area. Passengers in the buses got down and were safe, but Indore-Bhopal bus services were suspended.

A mob also torched vehicles parked outside the Hat Pipaliya police station in Dewas district.

Also read: Mandsaur farmers protest: PM Modi calls emergency meeting, Rahul Gandhi to visit MP tomorrow

Protesting Congress workers stopped a train in Dewas.

Shops and offices in Neemuch district adjoining Mandsaur

also remained shut. Protesters set on fire a police outpost in Harkiya Khal Phanta area.

In Ujjain district, around 10 policemen, including Mahal Kal police stations inspector Ajeet Tiwari, were injured in stone-pelting.

Protesters threw vegetables and fruits on road in Sanwer and Simrol areas of Indore and emptied milk containers.

In Khargone district, Bharatiya Kisan Sangh workers led by Gopal Patidar burnt an effigy of state home minister Bhupendra Singh in protest of alleged police firing in Mandsaur.

In Sehore district, car of additional collector of Barwani district Jayendra Kumar was pelted with stones. Protesters blocked the Indore-Bhopal highway at Ashta.

Violence was also reported from Dhar, while other areas of the state remained peaceful.

Congress legal cell chairman and Rajya Sabha member Vivek Tankha announced that the party would extend legal help to 450-odd farmers against whom false cases have been registered during the agitation.

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New Delhi:

Ahead of the International Yoga Day on June 21, Yoga guru Baba Ramdev held a Yoga session in Lucknow on Wednesday wherein Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath also participated. The session held at state Governors house and Ram Naik was also present at the event.



Ramdev had appreciated UP CMs Yoga skills and said that Yogi is an expert and his body is very flexible. Around 1500 people took part in the event.



On the occasion of International Yoga Day which is going to be held on June 21, Prime Minister Narendra Modi along with 50,000 people will perform Yoga in Lucknow. Last year, he performed Yoga at Delhis Janpath.

ALSO READ: International Yoga Day: Govt plans to declare 100 yoga parks across country

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New Delhi:

The Presidential polls will be held in July, which will be followed by elections for the post of Vice President in the same month, according to the Election Commision of India.

Here's excerpts from the CEC's press Conference in New Delhi

# Term of President Pranab Mukherjee will end on 24 July: CEC Nasim Zaidi



# ECI is taking all necessary steps to ensure free and fair elections to the office of President of India: CEC



# Polls for Vice President to be held next month: CEC Naseem Zaidi



# The Presidential election to be conducted via secret ballot: EC



# Article 53 provides Presidential Election shall be held in accordance with proportional representation: CEC



# Notification for the President poll will be issued on June 14: CEC



# Day of notification of nomination is June 20: CEC



# June 28 is the last date for making nominations for Presidential Elections: CEC



# Last date of Scrutiny of nomination paper: June 29



# Any violation of Voting Procedures will entail cancellation of ballot paper: CEC

# July 1 is the last date for the withdrawal of candidature: CEC

# Polling day: July 17



# Counting day: July 20





President Pranab Mukherjee is completing his tenure on July 24, while Vice President Hamid Ansari's second term ends on August 10.

Though no consensus has emerged on the name, the parties are working on it.

Among some prominent names doing the rounds are Gopal Krishan Gandhi, Sharad Yadav and Sharad Pawar, besides Meira Kumar. Sharad Pawar has, however, announced that he is not in the race.

There is also talk of a second term for incumbent Pranab Mukherjee, as proposed by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, but that may not happen till the ruling dispensation proposes his name.

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Bhopal:

The farmers protest in Maharashtras Mandsaur intensified further on Wednesday as 8-10 vehicles were set on fire, reports said. On Tuesday, five persons were killed as the farmers agitation turned violent in Mandsaur district of Madhya Pradesh, prompting the authorities to clamp curfew in the trouble-hit area.



Some eyewitnesses alleged that the victims suffered bullet wounds, but Mandsaur district authorities denied that police fired on the protesters, who were on a rampage. While the Congress called for state bandh on Wednesday, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan blamed the opposition party for instigating the violence.



Mandsaur collector S K Singh confirmed death of five persons and said a magisterial inquiry has been ordered. As tension prevailed, mobile internet service were suspended in Mandsaur, Ratlam and Neemuch districts since morning to check spread of rumours.

Here are the live updates:

#3:00 PM

Prime Minister Narendra Modi calls emergency meeting, Rahul Gandhi to visit Mandsaur on Thursday

#2:00 PM

Vehicles parked at a police station in Devas's Hatpipalya set on fire during farmers' agitation in Madhya Pradesh



#1:35 PM

Injustice with farmers in Madhya Pradesh, I demand proper investigation into Mandsaur incident: Kamal Nath, Congress MP



#1:29 PM



Can't recall such a massacre, they are giving death figures as 5,6 but I believe there are more. Met Rahul ji today, we are planning to go there (Mandsaur, MP). We will go together if we do: Sharad Yadav

#12:20 PM

-Rahul Gandhi wanted to visit deceased farmers' village to take part in funeral but administration didn't permit: Cong Gen Secy Mohan Prakash

-But Rahul Gandhi can reach there any moment. Wrong info being spread that he would participate in farmers' agitation: Mohan Prakash

#12:10 PM

Farmers's agitation further intensifies in Madhya Pradesh's Mandsaur, 8-10 vehicles set on fire

Farmers's agitation further intensifies in Madhya Pradesh's Mandsaur, 8-10 vehicles set on fire pic.twitter.com/xPe4ZFBlJM  ANI (@ANI_news) June 7, 2017

Singh also said that police categorically told him that they did not fire at the protesters. Curfew has been imposed in Pipalya Mandi police station area of Mandsaur district where the incident took place, while prohibitory orders restricting movement under section 144 of CrPC have been imposed in rest of the district, the collector said.

ALSO READ | Mandsaur killings: CM Shivraj Singh announces ex gratia of Rs one crore to kin of deceased



According to eyewitnesses, protesting farmers torched vehicles and indulged in stone pelting in Parshvanath area under Pipaliya Mandi police station limits of the district.



The CM announced a financial help of Rs 10 lakh to the kin of the deceased.



I request the farmers to be patient. Do not fall in the trap of anyone. The government stands with farmers. We will solve all problems through discussion, Chouhan tweeted while blaming Congress for the violence.



Farmers in western Madhya Pradesh are protesting since June one demanding higher minimum support prices (MSP) among others.



In Ratlam, the district collector Ashok Bhargava imposed prohibitory orders under section 144 of CrPC following the violence in neighbouring Mandsaur district.



Ratlam superintendent of police Amit Singh announced a reward of Rs 10,000 each for information about absconding farmer leaders D P Dhakad, Rajesh Bharava, Bhagwati Patidar (said to be Congress members) and others who were allegedly involved in violence in the district on Sunday in which two police personnel had been injured.

ALSO READ | Mandsaur: 5 killed, 4 injured in firing during farmers protest; MP CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan calls emergency meeting



Meanwhile, the state Congress and the Rashtriya Kisan Mazdoor Sangh have given a call for bandh on Wednesday across the state to protest the farmers death in Mandsaur.



We have called for a massive MP bandh tomorrow, state Congress chief Arun Yadav told PTI.



The Leader of Opposition in the Assembly, Ajay Singh, demanded resignation of Chouhan, saying the incident of firing in Mandsaur is shameful for a chief minister who claims to be a farmers son.



All the claims of the chief minister have proved false so far. Now the government is using bullets to suppress farmers voice. Chouhan should resign immediately, the Congress leader said.



The main opposition party also constituted a committee of MLAs to investigate the Mandsaur firing incident. Singh and the state Congress chief would visit Mandsaur on Wednesday.



Senior Congress leader and MP Jyotiraditya Scindia also condemned the incident. The BJP government dealt with the agitation through bullets instead of talks, he said.



This is a black day in the history of the state. It is shameful that the state government is crushing farmers agitation. Farmers demands are genuine, Scindia added.



Trouble was reported from many parts of western Madhya Pradesh as farmers stir continued for the sixth day today.



In Indore, police used lathi charge following stone-pelting during a march by farmers.



A police officer said that people taking part in the march started throwing stones at the police near Devi Ahilyabai Fruits and Vegetable Market, which led to lathi-charge.



In Dhar, farmers blocked the Indore-Ahmedabad national highway for about three hours. Farmers also staged protests at Amjhera and Ghoda Chowpati in the city.



The shops in the local market remained closed all day in Neemuch city.



Meanwhile, Mahendra Patidar, president of MP Patidar Samaj, said they would cremate the bodies of victims who died in Mandsaur district today only in the presence of the chief minister.

(With inputs from agencies)

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Hyundai will release its new small SUV Kona this month while Kia plans to release the sub-compact crossover SUV, Stonic in the second half of this year.

Hyundai and affiliate Kia are expected to heat up the small SUV market with the release of new models.

"The small SUV market is fast-growing with its market share growing by over 20 percent on-year," a Hyundai spokesman said on Tuesday.

Some 107,295 small SUVs were sold last year, up 24 percent from 86,233 in 2015. Ssangyong's Tivoli led the market with 56,935 units sold, followed by Renault Samsung's QM3 (11,542), GM Korea's Trax (10,672) and Kia's hybrid Niro (18,710 ).

Small SUVs are especially popular among young customers. Three out of 10 who bought the best-selling Tivoli last year were in their 30s.
New Delhi:

Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi may visit Madhya Pradeshs Mandsaur on Wednesday to meet the family members of farmers killed in police firing, said party sources.



Five farmers were killed and four injured on Tuesday after police opened fire on them following protests and stone pelting. Curfew has been imposed in sensitive areas.

Reacting to the killings of farmers, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday slammed Centre saying that the NDA government is at war with the farmers in the country.



Meanwhile, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan had ordered a judicial inquiry into the firing incident and called an emergency meeting of ministers regarding the matter.

CM Shivraj Singh has also briefed BJP president Amit Shah about the situation in Mandsaur, over the phone.



Singh had announced ex-gratia of Rs one crore to the kin of deceased in the firing incident. He also assured a government job to the kin of deceased as per their eligibility.



The Chief Minister had also urged people to maintain peace. A few people are trying to disturb the accord, but the government is committed to development in the state, he said.

MP CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan apprised BJP president Amit Shah of the situation in #Mandsaur, over the phone.  ANI (@ANI_news) June 7, 2017

ALSO READ: Mandsaur killings: CM Shivraj Singh blames Cong for conspiring violence, announces ex gratia of Rs one crore to kin of deceased

Visuals from Madhya Pradesh's Mandsaur of burnt vehicles in yesterday's farmers protest; curfew remains imposed in the city. pic.twitter.com/GTWm1Fg7nl  ANI (@ANI_news) June 7, 2017

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Mandsaur:

Farmers demanding debt relief and better crop prices on Wednesday "heckled" Mandsaur collector when he tried to pacify them, a day after five persons were killed in violence during their agitation in Mandaur in Madhya Pradesh.

Also, former MP from Mandsaur, Meenakshi Natarajan, was detained when she was on her way to meet the family members of the deceased.

Farmers in western Madhya Pradesh are protesting since June 1 demanding higher minimum support prices (MSP) for their produce, among others.

Five persons were on Tuesday killed as the farmers' agitation turned violent, prompting the authorities to clamp curfew in the trouble-hit area.

According to eyewitnesses, the protesting farmers had torched vehicles and indulged in stone pelting in Parshvanath area under Pipaliya Mandi police station limits.

Curfew remained in force in Pipalya Mandi police station area of the district and Mandsaur town, while prohibitory orders restricting movement under section 144 of CrPC are also imposed in the rest of the district.

Farmers in large numbers blocked a road on Wednesday in Berkheda Panth area, around 18 kms from Mandsaur.

When Mandsaur Collector SK Singh and Superintendent of Police Omprakash Tripathi reached the spot to mollify the protesters, the farmers allegedly manhandled the administrative officer.

"When the protesters started misbehaving and pushing the collector, we made way for him to come out safe," Berkheda Panth's sarpanch Dinesh told PTI.

Ujjain Range Inspector General of Police V Madhukumar, who is camping in Mandsaur, told PTI over the phone: "I have also come to know that something happened with the collector. But I exactly do not know what happened."

Also read: Mandsaur farmers protest: PM Modi calls emergency meeting, Rahul Gandhi to visit MP tomorrow

When contacted for his reaction, the collector refused to comment on the incident.

Asked if the police will take action against those who misbehaved with him, the district magistrate said, "It was the law-enforcers' job."

The IG, meanwhile, said that the mortal remains of the five persons who died on Tuesday were cremated this morning.

He said the situation in Mandsaur was under control.

Meanwhile, former MP and Congress leader Meenakshi Natarajan was stopped and detained at Nahargarh when she was on her way to meet the family members of the deceased.

However, other Congress leaders are on their way to Mandsaur to meet the kin of the deceased.

The Madhya Pradesh bandh called by the Congress today affected some western parts of the state, but petrol pumps, markets and other establishments remained open in Bhopal.

The district collector had on Tuesday said the police categorically told him that they did not open fire at the protesters.

After the incident, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, in his tweet, had blamed the opposition party for instigating violence.

According to the collector, a magisterial inquiry has been ordered in yesterday's incident. Mobile and Internet services have been suspended in Mandsaur, Ratlam and Neemuch districts to check the spread of rumours.

Centre blames Congress for violence

Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu on Wednesday blamed the Congress for instigating farmers in Mandsaur.

The protests were being hijacked by the Congress, Naidu said a day after the violence. Farmers in the area have been protesting since June 1 demanding higher minimum support prices (MSP) for their produce among other things.

"It is a very sad turn of events in a state that is the most peaceful state in India. Congress is trying to politicise farmers' problems after they failed to counter Shivraj Singh Chouhan politically in the state," Naidu said on the sidelines of a function.

He said Madhya Pradesh was amongst the best performing states on all counts and Chouhan one of the BJP's best chief ministers.

"Because of his initiatives in the country 20 per cent of farmers in the country are in MP... he has encouraged them, has got them land and electricity. Because of this their production has increased. They might not be getting ideal price for their crops and they are protesting against that, sure, and the state government is addressing these issues, Congress is politicising it," said Naidu.

Naidu, the minister for information and broadcasting as well as urban development, warned the Congress against fuelling violence.

"I saw news reports that farmers have burnt vehicles and destroyed railway tracks. Farmers never resort to this kind of violence. I just want to warn the Congress not to fuel violence in the name of farmers. It will boomerang on you. Whatever the condition of farmers across the country is because of the long years of neglect of the agricultural sector by you (Congress)," he said.

The minister went on to list pro-farmer initiatives of the BJP-led government at the centre, including the Pradhan Mantri Bima Fasal Yojana (new crop insurance scheme), the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sichai Yojana (irrigation scheme), the health card plan and the waiving of loans for farmers.

Also read: Mandsaur killings: CM Shivraj Singh blames Cong for conspiring violence, announces ex gratia of Rs one crore to kin of deceased

The problems would take time to solve but the government was committed to addressing them, Naidu said.

"The PM has ordered an enquiry and the truth will come out. I ask the Congress why they want instant solution to farmers' problems in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh when they have no solution for farmers in Congress-ruled Karnataka?"

Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday hit out at the government over the farmer's protest, saying it is at war with them and "feeding" them with bullets for demanding their rights.

Referring to the violence during the ongoing farmers' agitation in Madhya Pradesh's Mandsaur district, he said, "This government is at war with the farmers of our country."

"In BJP's new India, farmers demanding their rights get bullets in return," he said in a tweet.

The Congress party also tweeted, "Those who give us food, the government is feeding them bullets - 3 farmers dead, several injured in police firing in MP."

Farmers protest in Maharashtra

Politics over the ongoing farmers agitation in Maharashtra intensified on Wednesday with Shiv Sena ministers skipping the state Cabinet meeting.

Sena president Uddhav Thackeray, meanwhile, ridiculed the government's offer of holding talks only with "true" farmer leaders. "Who are these farmers? Is there a real farmer in your ministry," the Sena said, in an editorial in party mouthpiece 'Saamana'.

Making light of the Sena ministers' absence at the cabinet meeting, Finance Minister Sudhir Mungantiwar of the BJP said, "The Sena ministers did not boycott the Cabinet meet but sought permission not to attend it which the chief minister granted."

Meanwhile, agitating farmers put a lock outside the house of BJP legislator R T Deshmukh from Majalgaon in Beed district.

Security outside homes of ruling party legislators and MPs has been beefed up following the 'lock up' protest.

In Solapur's Barshi, former state minister Dilip Sopal locked his house to express support for the farmers' stir.

The developments come a day after Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis announced that Maharashtra government will come out with a loan waiver for farmers before October 31, which will benefit 1.07 crore farmers with less than five acre land holding.

"Before October 31, the distressed farmers who need help will be given a loan waiver. The modalities are being worked out and I can say with conviction that this will be the biggest loan waiver in Maharashtra's history," Fadnavis had said.

The Sena on Wednesday hit out at the Centre for allegedly pushing debt-ridden farmers into greater despair and allowing their farms to fall into ruin by 'brandishing the knife' of demonetisation.

"After years, monsoon last year brought hope to farmers and they had a bumper production but the knife of demonetisation led them to sell their produce at dirt cheap rates. They couldn't even recover their input costs and as a result, debt ridden farmers plunged deeper into losses," the Sena said in an editorial in Saamana.

The bickering ally also questioned the "apathy" of the government towards the agricultural sector at a time when the industry and services sector kept receiving periodical boost for their development.

With inputs from PTI

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Balaghat (MP):

An official on Wednesday said that twenty workers were charred to death and 10 others were injured, two of them critically, in a fire at a cracker factory in Kheri village in Balaghat district.

The blaze started around 3 pm in the factory located around 10 kms from the district headquarters in the Kotwali police station limits, Additional Director General of Police (Balaghat range) G Janardhan told PTI.

Twenty workers were killed in the fire and 10 others sustained injuries. Of the injured, eight have been rushed to Nagpur (in Maharashtra) for treatment, while two are being treated at a hospital in the district, he added.

The condition of two of the eight injured, referred to Nagpur, is critical, the official said.

Meanwhile, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan announced a compensation of Rs 2 lakh each to the next kin of the deceased. The state government would also bear the medical expenses of the injured.

According to Balaghat district collector Bharat Yadav, the cracker factory was owned by one Waris Ahmed and was being run legally.

Also read: Fire breaks out during Bhopal Foundation Day event, no casualties reported

He added that the victims were workers of the factory and the incident took place when the production was on.

According to Yadav, the blaze has been completely doused and the rescue operation has also got over.

Exactly what triggered the fire is yet be known. It is possible that someone might have thrown a burning beedi, he said.

Yadav said the factory was located away from the human settlement.

Also read: Tamil Nadu: Car catches fire, 3 of a family charred to death

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New Delhi:

At least three terrorists were killed and one jawan martyred while three others sustained serious injuries in an encounter with the security forces in Nagaland on Wednesday. TheA operation is still underway.

Three cadres of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN-K) and an Assam Rifles (AR) officer were killed in an encounter in Mon district of Nagaland, a defence spokesman said on Wednesday. Three AR jawans were also injured in the encounter that took place at Lappa in Tizit circle last night.

AR personnel raided Lappa at around 11 PM followinginformation that NSCN(K) cadres were moving through that area and an encounter ensued, the spokesman said. The encounter continued for several hours. Later, bodies of the three militants were found, the spokesman said.A

The attack comes days after the Ministry of Home Affairs claimed a sharp decline in violence and attacks on security forces in the northeast region. TheA ministry released data on three years of Modi govt and according to the dataA available with the MHA, only 484 such incidents were reported in 2016 as compared to 1,025 in 2012 and 732 in 2013 when the Congress-led UPA was in power.

#UPDATE: Encounter underway with a group reported to be of combined ULFA & NSCN(K) terrorists in Lapa Lempong and Oting near Mon in Nagaland a ANI (@ANI_news) June 7, 2017

1 civilian killed, 1 Territorial Army officer lost his life, 3 jawans injured & 3 terrorists killed in an encounter in Nagaland's Mon. a ANI (@ANI_news) June 7, 2017

With PTI Inputs

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New Delhi:

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is all set to visit Kazakhstan today for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) where India will become a full member of the organisation. India will be admitted as a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) during the summit of the regional grouping on June 8-9 in Kazakhstan.

The Prime Minister is expected to hold a bilateral meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the summit at Kazakhstans capital city of Astana.

However, there is no meeting scheduled between Modi and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif. In his departure statement, Prime Minister said, 'I will travel to Astana, Kazakhstan for two days on 8-9 June for the Summit meeting of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO).

Pakistan will also be admitted as a full member of the SCO along with India during the Astana summit.Indications are that the last leg of the entire process, as per the Memorandum of Obligations, which is the confirmation (of membership) by the heads of the states of the existing members of the SCO, is going to happen in Astana, G V Srinivas, joint secretary of the Eurasia division in the MEA, said.

ALSO READ: SCO Summit 2017: PM Modi to share dais with Pak PM Sharif, Chinese Premier Xi Jinping in Astana on June 8-9

Modi will also attend the World Expo 2017, an international exposition, in Kazakhstan. Srinivas said that there could be a couple of more bilateral meetings between India and heads of the member states.

Apart from China, there is also the possibility of a meeting between India and Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan is the largest supplier of uranium to India.When asked whether Modi would meet Xi on the sidelines of the SCO summit, MEA spokesperson Gopal Baglay said, There is a possibility, but the schedule is being worked out and our missions are coordinating locally.

On Modi and Sharifs meeting, he said, External Affairs Minister (Sushma Swaraj) has already said that there was neither any request from their side nor any such proposal from our side. There is no change in the status on this.

Srinivas said India had been an observer country at the SCO since 2005 and had applied for a full membership in 2014.Founded in 2001, the SCO currently has six members---China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, and is headquartered in Chinese capital of Beijing.

During Modis visit to St Petersburg earlier in June, Russian President Vladimir Putin had conveyed to India about its admission as a full member of the SCO.

Highlighting the advantages of joining the regional grouping, Srinivas said one of the aspects deals with economy, connectivity and trade, while another aspect focuses on terrorism which includes protection of classified information.

READ: Days before SCO summit, China terms India's NSG bid 'more complicated'

He said 38 different documents have been signed by India to be a part of the body.On being asked that the SCO summit statement of 2015 had a reference to the Belt and Road Forum (BRF), a Chinese initiative opposed by India, the official said the aspect was not part of the 38 documents signed by India to become a member of the grouping.

The One Belt One Road (OBOR) project under the Belt and Road Forum seeks to connect China with Europe, Asia and Africa. The China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is also a part of the project. India opposes CPEC as it passes through Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK).

India also hopes to benefit from Tashkent-based Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (RATS).There is little possibility of India staying out of such an exercise. We hope that as we join the RATS, we will be able to benefit from this collaboration against our fight against terrorism.

They (RATS) do a series of activities, including joint exercises in fighting terrorism, maintaining a data bank of terrorists and undesirable elements etc, Srinivas said.

Responding to a query on whether or not India would be invited to participate in any anti-terror exercise alongside Pakistan and China, Baglay said, We work with many countries, including Pakistan, as well as in UN peacekeeping operations. Terrorism is a fight which is incumbent on the entire humanity, not just countries.

Srinivas also underlined the importance of connectivity after becoming a full member of the SCO. Connectivity, for example, is the prime desire for the country as we want to connect to central Asia, he said.

For better connectivity with Central Asia, the official said India has also applied for a membership of the Ashgabat agreement.The Ashgabat agreement is a multi modal transport agreement between Oman, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Pakistan for creating an international transport and transit corridor, facilitating transportation of goods between Central Asia and the Persian Gulf.

Baglay said the SCO has member states who are neighbours to Afghanistan and it will be an institutional forum where India can engage with these nations.

With PTI inputs

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New Delhi:

CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury on Thursday met Congress president Sonia Gandhi on upcoming presidential polls. It is said that the leaders discussed strategy to unite the opposition for their candidature against the ruling party BJP in the presidential polls which will be held in July.

Prior to the meeting, Bihar Chief Minister and JD(U) chief Nitish Kumar had met Congress President Sonia Gandhi and is learnt to have advocated unity among opposition parties to take on the BJP-led NDA.

JD(U) also used the meeting to call for a joint opposition candidate for the election to the President's post and urged Gandhi to take the lead in the matter.

Its spokesperson K C Tyagi, however, had insisted that the issue of presidential election was not discussed in the meeting and added it was his party's view that a strong joint opposition candidate will be in national interest.

Presidential poll on mind, Yechury meets Sonia Gandhi https://t.co/gWcQODrrZG pic.twitter.com/tXk7OcjsFP  ANI Digital (@ani_digital) April 21, 2017

"There should a joint opposition candidate for the top Constitutional post and Sonia Gandhi being the leader of the largest opposition party should take the lead," he had said.

Also Read: Nitish Kumar meets Sonia Gandhi; discusses current political situation and strategy for 2019 LS elections

Kumar has already taken up the matter with leaders of the Left parties and received a good response, he had said.

Another senior JD(U) leader had said Kumar's visit to Gandhi's residence was a courtesy call as the Congress is the party's ally in Bihar and also because Gandhi had been ill for some time.

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New Delhi:

Mubeen Ahmed, a 26-year-old native of Sangareddy district suffered injuries after being shot by an unidentified person in California early on Sunday, according to the family members of the victim.

Mubeen who went to United States to pursue his Masters course in a University, had completed the course two months ago and was doing a temporary job at a private store at a location a few km away from California.

As per the reports by Telangana Today, Mujeeb Ahmed, the victims father who works at a military institution in Secunderabad stated that Mubeen was at the store when a few persons of black origin came in to make some purchase.

Read more: Sushma Swaraj tells Pakistani man to get Azizs letter for medical visa

There was some altercation between the customers and Mubeen. Later, they fired at him resulting in a rupture in his stomach and damage to liver, said Mujeeb.

Mubeen was taken to Eden Medical Centre in Castro Valley where he underwent surgery.

Two of our relatives who stay in Chicago have reached California and are attending to Mubeen. Doctors said that his condition continues to be critical, the distraught father said.

The family members have approached Minister for Irrigation T Harish Rao and other public representatives and sought their help in going to the United States.

Read more: Jalandhar woman Sukhwant Kaur sold, tortured in Saudi Arabia to return back to India tomorrow: Sushma Swaraj

My son is still unconscious and certain medical decisions have to be taken after discussion with the doctors there. I request the Telangana government to immediately help us, Mujeeb Ahmed appealed.

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New Delhi:

Danish Ahmed, a suspected militant surrendered before the Handwara police on Wednesday. The young man is a third year student at the Doon PG College of Agriculture Science and Technology in Uttarakhand's Dehradun.

Ahmed had earlier been seen in video clips from Hizbul Mujahideen commander Sabzar Bhats funeral. In the clip, he was seen in all-black outfit, holding a grenade and shouting slogans.

Bhat, the successor to Hizbul commander Burhan Wani who was killed in 2016, was shot dead in a massive anti-terror operation on May 27. According to the police, Ahmed has revealed that he was in touch with terrorists of south Kashmir on social media and was instigated by them. Danish was suspected of having been involved in stone-pelting incidents at Handwara during the 2016 unrest.

He was earlier picked up by police but was let off after counselling in order to protect his career. As security agencies became convinced that Danish had joined the militancy, Handwara police and the 21 Rashtriya Rifles unit of the Indian Army got in touch with his parents and asked them to counsel their son and get him to surrender.

ALSO READ: Zakir Musa releases first audio clip after joining al-Qaeda, slams Indian Muslims for not rising against gau rakshaks, rape

Ahmed has reportedly told the police that terrorists in south Kashmir are mainly involved in extortion and looting. He also confirmed that money is freely flowing from Pakistan for funding of terror in Jammu and Kashmir.

He further said that local boys also join militancy in order to make friends with the girls in the areas so that can be regarded as heroes.

Danish told interrogators that he is not the only one to get disillusioned with the militancy so quickly. According to him, most local boys become disenchanted with the 'gun' after just a few days of joining the militancy. However, they are too afraid to surrender because they believe their lives are under threat from their commanders.

READ: Video | Suicide attack on CRPF camp: Security forces kill all four militants, cache of arms and ammunition recovered

Jammu and Kashmir Police has registered a First Information Report (FIR) against Danish and is considering rehabilitating him under the J&K Surrendered Militants Rehabilitation Policy.















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New Delhi:

An alleged middleman, arrested in the Election Commission bribery case, on Wednesday sought bail in a special court in New Delhi on the ground of parity with AIADMK (Amma) faction leader T T V Dhinakaran.

The police, however, opposed the bail plea of Sukesh Chandrashekar, saying he was involved in 21 cases, majority of which are related to the offence of cheating.

Public prosecutor Balbir Singh claimed the police has recovered a CD containing the alleged telephonic conversations between Chandrashekar and Dhinakaran. He said Chandrashekar promised Dhinakaran that he will not only arrange the symbol for his faction but also fix the poll date as per certain auspicious astrological time at the behest of the AIADMK (Amma) leader.

Special Judge Poonam Chaudhry after hearing the arguments reserved for June 9 the order on the application.

Advocate Vijay Aggarwal, who appeared for Chandrashekar in his second bail plea, claimed that if Dhinakaran, for whose benefit the alleged offence was committed, was granted the relief, the same should also be applied to his client.

The persons for whose benefit the alleged offence was committed, were granted bail. There was no confessional statement of Chandrashekar as claimed by the police. Its only a disclosure statement.

The police claimed that if Chandrashekar, an influential person, was released on bail, he may try to tamper with the evidence. Dhinakaran, who was more influential, has already been released on bail, Aggarwal argued.

The counsel contended that police is yet to identify the public servant, who was said to be lured by the accused.

Public prosecutor Singh, however, opposed the bail plea saying apart from the CD, the agency has also recovered Rs 1.3 crore cash and fake MP, MLA ID cards from the possession of the accused.

Chandrashekar, who was arrested on April 16, had claimed that he was a scapegoat and had been falsely implicated in the case.

The court had dismissed his earlier bail application on the ground that he could tamper with evidence.

Dhinakaran, his close aide Mallikarjuna, suspected hawala operators Nathu Singh and Lalit Kumar have been granted bail.

Dhinakaran was arrested here on the night of April 25 after four days of questioning for allegedly attempting to bribe Election Commission (EC) officials for the symbol.

His faction had hoped to obtain the symbol for the bypoll to the R K Nagar Assembly seat in Tamil Nadu, which was later cancelled by the EC after the alleged irregularities were reported.

The bypoll was necessitated by the death of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa, who represented the constituency.

The EC had frozen the AIADMKs symbol after the two factions of the partyone led by Dhinakarans aunt Sasikala and the other by former chief minister O Panneerselvam staked a claim to it.

Mallikarjuna was arrested for allegedly facilitating a Rs 50-crore deal between Dhinakaran and Chandrashekar.

Dhinakaran has been accused of arranging the money from undisclosed sources and getting it transferred from Chennai to Delhi through illegal channels.

Also read: AIADMK symbol case: Court grants bail to 2 suspected hawala operators

Also read: AIADMK symbol case: Special court rejects middleman's bail plea

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Chennai:

The MLAs of the ruling AIADMK-Amma on Wednesday called on party deputy general secretary T T V Dhinakaran, being opposed by Chief Minister K Palaniswami-led camp, sparking speculations over the governments stability.

However, Finance Minister D Jayakumar, representing the cabinet, asserted that there is no threat to the government and dubbed the legislators meeting with Dhinakaran as personal.

There is no threat to the government and it will continue through its tenure till 2021, he told reporters in Chennai.

The MLAs met Dhinakaran amid the stand-off between him and the Palaniswami camp, which has revolted against him and jailed party general secretary V K Sasikala and decided to keep them away from the party affairs.

With Dhinakaran, appointed by Sasikala, going back on his earlier assurance to withdraw from party affairs, the ministers and senior party functionaries yesterday held a meeting and reiterated their opposition to him. Dhinakaran, however, had mocked at their meeting and questioned their authority to remove office-bearers appointed by the general secretary.

We (Palaniswami government) are having the absolute majority and that is not an issue, Jayakumar said answering a question.

Also Read: AIADMK cash for symbol case: Crime branch finds huge transactions from Dinakaran's accounts to hawala operator

He said the legislators meeting with Dhinakaran was at a personal level, and added it should not be politicised... A stable regime is on and there is no connection between the government and their meeting (Dhinakaran). Jayakumar said while the party was being led by a panel of seniors, the government was steered by Chief Minister K Palaniswami.

All are happy but some have worries, I am not going to say anything about that, he said.

Meanwhile, in a notable mark of the assertion of authority, Palaniswamis portrait was featured in the chambers of several state ministers in addition to those of late chief minister Jayalalithaa.

Also, new images of AIADMK founder and late chief minister M G Ramachandran could be seen in the chambers. When O Panneerselvam was chief minister, only the portraits of Jayalalithaa alone found the place in the ministers chambers.

Earlier in the day, some legislators, including Thanga Tamilselvan, V P Kalairajan and former transport minister V Senthil Balaji, called on Dhinakaran at his residence Chennai. Dhinkaran had returned to the city on June 3 after obtaining bail in the case related to alleged attempt to bribe EC officials.

He had on Wednesday met Sasikala in the Bengaluru prison, where she is serving her term in the disproportionate assets case.

Thanga Tamilselvan, a known loyalist of Dhinakaran, said only Sasikala and Dhinakaran were authorised to decide on party matters.

Hitting out at Jayakumar for asking Dhinakaran to stick to his assurance to keep off party work, he said, it is Jayakumars personal view, it is not valid. Asked if action can be expected against Jayakumar for breach of party discipline, he said, for sure, that information will come.

Legislators belonging to eight districts met Chief Minister K Palaniswami today at the state secretariat. According to Jayakumar, the meeting was about the issues in constituencies against the backdrop of commencement of Assembly session on June 14.

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Small and mid-sized businesses and self-employed entrepreneurs are up in arms after a presidential committee on job creation announced plans recently to hike the minimum wage to W10,000 an hour and cut maximum working hours from 68 to 52 a week (US$1=W1,123).

Small businesses complain that raising the minimum wage will only make things worse for them in a drawn-out slump that has seen most profits go to a handful of big conglomerates while the rest are suffering. More than 80 percent of minimum-wage workers are employed by small businesses with fewer than 30 staff -- often convenience stores, restaurants and coffee shops whose owners are self-employed.

If the minimum wage is hiked 54 percent to W10,000 an hour over the next three years, as the government plans, employers will have to shoulder an extra W140 trillion. Not many can afford it, so they will have to lay off staff instead. If a convenience store or small fried chicken restaurant pays a minimum wage of W10,000, the earnings of staff could exceed what the owners bring home, which means it makes more sense to work part time than to open a business. Shorter working hours will also mostly hit small businesses, which may be unable to keep going on higher cost and with the need to hire extra staff to fill in.

Above all, the government has unilaterally announced the measures without consulting all sides. President Moon Jae-in's plan to create jobs was devised without consulting employers' groups like the Korea Employers Federation, Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry or Korea Federation of Small Business.

The business community is keeping mum after Moon chided them for what he viewed as their lack of efforts to create jobs, so the communication channels are firmly closed as the government steams blindly ahead. That is no way to ensure prosperity for more people.


New Delhi:

Two men barged into the CPI(M) head office and tried to manhandle CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury on Wednesday. Both men said that they were members of a group called the Hindu Sena.

The CPI(M), whose workers thrashed the two men before handing them over to the police, blamed the RSS for the incident.

Hindu Sena chief Vishnu Gupta said the men, who entered the CPI(M) office posing as journalists, wanted to express their anger against the Left partys alleged criticism of the Indian Army in an editorial in its mouthpiece Peoples Democracy.

The CPI(M), however, has maintained that the editorial criticises Army Chief Bipin Rawat and not the force over his remarks defending the use of a human shield against stone throwers in Kashmir.

Reacting to todays incident, the party said it would not be cowed down by the Sanghs goondagardi (hooliganism) aimed at silencing the party and would win the battle for the soul of India.

Top opposition leaders including Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, her party vice president and son Rahul Gandhi, NCP chief Sharad Pawar, JD(U)s Sharad Yadav and CPI national secretary D Raja condemned the incident and expressed solidarity with Yechury.

Also read: CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury not to contest for Rajya Sabha berth

The incident took place when Yechury was about to enter the central committee hall on the first floor of the CPI(M) office to address the media on the conclusion of the partys two-day politburo meeting here.

The two men, identified as Pawan Kumar Kaul (30) and Upender Kumar (24), tried to get close to Yechury as they shouted slogans that said, CPI(M) murdabad and Hindu Sena zindabad.

Kaul is a driver with a city-based advocate, while Upender works as a cook in canteen at a private hospital, police said.

They tried to manhandle Comrade Yechury, but we came in their way and he was safe, a party worker present at the spot said.

Speaking to reporters about the incident, Yechury said the two men would have got adequate responses had they reached close enough to manhandle me.

Without violence, without terror, the RSS has never been able to increase its political influence. And these tactics have been answered by the people of India in the past and we will be answering it again, he said in a video message.

Also read: Sitaram Yechury meets Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik to discuss upon presidential polls

The Left leader also tweeted, We will not be cowed down by any attempts of Sanghs goondagardi to silence us. This is a battle for the soul of India, which we will win.

According to police, the matter is being investigated and they have received a complaint from the CPI(M) about the incident.

The police said they were probing the two mens claim that they were associated with the Hindu Sena.

No case has been registered yet. The two men are currently detained at the Mandir Marg police station, said a senior police official.

Reacting to the incident, JD(U)s Yadav said the opposition parties would not allow efforts (aimed at) shutting their voices.

Raja described the incident as an attack on the countrys communist movement by right-wing forces, which he alleged, had become aggressive under the NDA regime.

We now urge the police to take appropriate measures to get to the root of the matter as there could be a sinister design involved, he added.

The Delhi Police had deployed heavy security in view of Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayans presence at the meeting, which began on Tuesday, anticipating protests by cow vigilante groups.

Vijayan has been facing flak from some right-wing organisations over his criticism of the Centres recent notification relating to cattle slaughter.

The southern state of Kerala has also seen many incidents of political violence in the recent past involving CPI(M) and RSS workers.

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Srinagar:

Army foiled an infiltration bid in Machil sector of north Kashmirs Kupwara district in which two militants were gunned down, an official told on Wednesday.

The incident took place late on Tuesday night when troops guarding the Line of Control (LoC) noticed a group of militants trying to infiltrate into the valley from across the border in Machil sector under the cover of darkness, the Army official said.

Troops engaged the heavily-armed militants who tried to escape taking advantage of the thick forest cover. Two militants, who are still to be unidentified, were killed.

Search operations to track down other members of the group were going on, the official said.

This is the third infiltration bid foiled by the Army in north Kashmir in the past fortnight.

On May 26, two Pakistani Border Action Team (BAT) members who tried to infiltrate into Uri sector to carry out an attack on the soldiers, were killed.

Six more militants were killed in the same sector next day when they attempted to sneak into the valley from across the border.

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Solan:

Eight people, including four children, were killed and 15 others injured when a huge wall of a factory collapsed following heavy rains and storm in the industrial township of Baddi in Solan district, police said on Wednesday.

The storm was so fierce that the wall collapsed on Tuesday Night and a large number of migrant labourers sleeping in a cluster of jhuggis adjacent to the wall in Swarajmajra village were buried alive.

The SDM and DSP rushed to the spot and conducted rescue operations with the assistance of local people.

The bodies of all eight deceased were recovered from the debris and injured persons were rushed to a nearby hospital while three seriously injured persons were referred to PGI, Chandigarh.

The deceased were identified as Asrafi (35), his son and daughter Sailesh and Priti, Santosh Kumar and his wife Maya, Asha and her kids, Nanha and Jammi.

Meanwhile, a severe thunderstorm, accompanied by heavy rains lashed several areas of Himachal, triggering landslides at numerous places and disrupting water supply.

Also Read: Bharatpur wall collapse: Case filed against marriage hall owner; PM Modi announces ex-gratia of Rs 2 lakh

Mandi was wettest in the region with 64 mm rains while Saluni received 49.5 mm rains followed by Bhuntar 36.4 mm.

The night temperatures plummeted following rains and dropped by six to ten degrees.

The minimum temperature dropped to 19.5 degrees at Una and 14.4 degrees at Nahan 14.1 degrees, a drop of 10 degrees while Kalpa in tribal Kinnaur district was coldest at night with a low of 8.4 degrees.

Key tourist resorts of Manali, Shimla and Dharamshala recorded minimum temperatures at 9 degrees, 11.3 degrees and 14.8 degrees C followed by Palampur 15.5 degrees, Solan 15.7 degrees, Sundernagar 17.2 degrees, Una 19.5 degrees and Poanta Sahib 23 degrees C.

The local MeT office has warned of thunderstorm and hailstorm at a few places in mid and lower hills tomorrow and wet spell in the state over the next three days.

Top Trending: Iran terror attacks LIVE | 2 killed 13 hurt as terrorists open fire in Parliament

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New Delhi:

Scientists in a new study claim that Tyrannosaurus rex most likely had scaly skin despite its ancestors having feathers. Recent studies provided evidence for feathers in its ancestors and suggested that the giant predator may itself have sported bird-like plumage rather than reptilian scales.

According to the reports, Phil Bell, a paleontologist at Australias University of New England said the new research shows without question that T. rex had scaly skin.

Researchers analysed fossil evidence that suggests T rex had scales much like modern reptiles rather than feathers or fluff. The team investigated skin impressions from a T rex skeleton known as Wyrex, unearthed in Montana in the US.

Read more: Giant asteroid may collide with Earth, warn scientists after analysing 144 fireballs from meteor shower

The study published in journal Biology letters suggest that the giant tyrannosaurs lost their feathers over time because they no longer needed them as insulation.

The fossil integument (outer covering) from T rex and other members of the group confirm that these large-bodied forms possessed scaly reptilian-like skin, researchers said.

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New Delhi:

Gunmen and a suicide bomber have carried out apparently coordinated attacks on Iranas parliament and the tomb of revolutionary founder Ruhollah Khomeini, state media said on Wednesday, with at least five people reported killed.

It was not immediately clear who could be behind the attacks but Iran is a key player in efforts against the Islamic State group in both Syria and Iraq.



A security guard was killed when four gunmen burst into Tehranas parliament complex, while a gardener was reported dead when several armed assailants entered the grounds of Khomeinias mausoleum in the south of the city, according to the ISNA news agency.



At least eight people were wounded in the attacks, according to the reports.



An official at Khomeinias mausoleum in south Tehran said athree or foura people had entered via the western entrance and opened fire, killing the gardener and wounding several people, according to the Fars news agency.



Fars said a female suicide attacker blew herself up outside the shrine and published photos showing the explosion.



Four men armed with rifles and a pistol were reported to be inside the parliamentary complex, around 20 kilometres away in the centre of the city.Tasnim news agency said one of the men had later left the building and was firing in the street, but was forced back inside by police fire.



News agencies ISNA and Fars had earlier said three people had been shot after the gunmen entered via the north entrance, including at least one security guard.



The ILNA news agency said security forces were dismantling a bomb inside the Khomeini shrine and that firing was still going on around the site.



It was not clear if the assailants had been able to enter the actual mausoleum.



The city was on lockdown, with streets blocked and the metro closed, and journalists kept away from the shrine by police.

Here are the highlights:

#3:10 PM

8 grenades, 10 magazines, a bottle filled with pink fluid were being carried by a neutralized terrorist at Imam's Mausoleum



#2:40 PM

Islamic State group claims attacks in Tehran: Amaq agency - AFP



#2:10 PM

Reports: Two of terrorists attacking Tehranas Imam Khomeini Mausoleum arrested



#2:01 PM

A terrorist holed up inside Iran Parliament Building blows himself up



#1:55 PM

One of terrorists attacking Iran Parliament killed by IRGC forces: Press TV



#1:53 PM

Attackers take several hostages at Iranas Parliament: Press TV



#1:50 PM

Unofficial sources: Security forces have managed to capture to gunmen at Imam Khomeini Mausoleum in southern Tehran



#1:46 PM

Shivraj Singh Chouhan must resign, at the end it is his responsibility and it would be unjustified if shifted on any police officer: Kamal Nath

#1:45 PM

#1:35 PM

It is also reported that the gunman in the photo is one of the Iranian security forces not an assailant #TehranShooting pic.twitter.com/tdXoGvdQ4q a Press TV (@PressTV) June 7, 2017

#1:25 PM

Traffic ban enforced in streets near #Parliament building in Tehran #TehranShooting pic.twitter.com/vW10YdjjdV a Press TV (@PressTV) June 7, 2017

#1:21 PM

One attacker of Iran Parliament arrested, reports state news agency IRNA



#1:20 PM

#1:15 PM

One of the gunmen trapped inside as #Parliament Building is under siege by security forces



#1:10 PM

First photo of suicide explosion's aftermath at Imam Khomeini Mausoleum #TehranShooting pic.twitter.com/8wjUjMZW8t a Press TV (@PressTV) June 7, 2017

#1:08 PM

People gather outside Iran Parliament in central Tehran after the shooting incident #tehranshooting pic.twitter.com/OGZ90zchZS a Press TV (@PressTV) June 7, 2017

#1:06 PM

One of the armed men detonated himself in front of a bank outside the mausoleum, reports IRNA quoting Head of Imam Khomeini Mausoleum PRO.

#1:05 PM

Two killed in attacks on Iran parliament, Khomeini tomb: media

#1:05 PMA

BREAKING: Iran state TV says 4 attackers in parliament shooting, 8 people wounded. a The Associated Press (@AP) June 7, 2017

12:35 PM

Iran shooting: 1 killed, 5 injured in shooting spree at Imam Khomeini shrine; 8 injured in Parliament shooting, reports news agency Mehr

#12:25 PM

At least 2 injured in shooting in shrine of #ImamKhomeini in southern Tehran, #Iran: Local mediahttps://t.co/yYozBmJghm pic.twitter.com/L59IdBuK5D a News Nation (@NewsNationTV) June 7, 2017

A gunman opened fire on pilgrims at Imam Khomeini mausoleum in Tehran, Iran, injuring a number of people, reports state news agency IRNA a ANI (@ANI_news) June 7, 2017

Iran shooting: 1 killed, 5 injured in shooting spree at Imam Khomeini shrine; 8 injured in Parliament shooting, reports news agency Mehr a ANI (@ANI_news) June 7, 2017

#12:20 PM

At least two injured in shooting in shrine of the late founder of the Islamic Republic, Imam Khomeini in southern Tehran, Iran: Local media

#12:15 PM

3 shooters attacked Iran Parliament. Two civilian visitors, one security officer injured, reports news agency Mehr quoting MP Elias Hazrati.

#12:01 PM

Shooting inside Iran Parliament, three people injured: Local media

About ImamA Khomeini tomb:

The Mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini houses the tomb of Ruhollah Khomeini and his family a his wife Khadijeh Saqafi and his second son Ahmad Khomeini and some other pol leaders. It is located to the south of Tehran in the Behesht-e Zahra (the Paradise of Zahra) cemetery.

The site is a place of Ziyarat for followers of Khomeini. It is used symbolically by government figures, and is on occasion visited by foreign dignitaries.

(With inputs from agencies)

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Paris:

According to university officials and the French government's spokesman, the man who attacked police officers patrolling in front of Notre Dame Cathedral, crying out "This is for Syria!", was a former journalist who was working on a doctoral thesis and had not been suspected of radicalisation.

Christopher Castaner told RTL radio on Wednesday that police were quickly able to classify the hammer attack as a "terrorist act" because of "the words he said."

Surveillance video emerged on Wednesday showing the man lunging at officers on the plaza outside the cathedral, then being shot to death, according to the footage provided to The Associated Press.

Read more: Notre Dame cathedral shooting: French Police shoots attacker who claimed to be ISIS assailant

An officer was slightly injured in the attack on Tuesday and the attacker remained hospitalised after being shot by police. Police have not released his name.

No group immediately claimed responsibility, but police searching the man's residence outside Paris found a declaration of allegiance to the Islamic State group, according to the Paris prosecutor's office.

A student identity card showed he was from Algeria and 40 years old.

The university of Lorraine's president, Pierre Mutzenhardt, told France Bleu radio that the man was enrolled as one of its students and had been working since 2014 on a thesis about North African media. He said the man previously worked as a journalist for North African media.

"There'd been no difficulties with him. Nothing strange had been detected", he said.

Read more: Tehran: 4 terrorists, 12 others killed, 39 injured in twin terror attacks; Parliament siege over | As it happened

His thesis director, Arnaud Mercier, told broadcaster BFM that the suspect spoke Swedish, Arabic and French and that his resume mentioned that he had worked as a journalist in Sweden and Algeria.

"He was someone who believed a lot in democratic ideals, the expression of free thinking in journalism", Mercier saidon BFM. "Nothing, absolutely nothing, foretold that one day he'd be a jihadi who'd want to kill a policeman in the name of I don't know what cause."

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New Delhi:

Despite US President Donald Trumps withdrawal from the Paris climate deal, business and government leaders will go ahead with it. Trumps administration had withdrawn itself from the agreement on June 1.



13 states including New York and California represent approximately 40 per cent of the US economy have signed pledges to reduce their fossil-fuel emissions. Around 200 cities mayors and leaders of business giants including Apple and Amazon have also taken pledges despite Trumps announcement that he would withdraw the US from Paris climate deal.

ALSO READ: US Tech giants Apple, Google, Facebook, Intel, Microsoft join effort to honour Paris Climate deal



President Trump on June 1 announced his decision to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement on climate change and renegotiate the deal that was agreed upon by over 190 countries during the previous Obama administration.

Terming it as unfair for the United States, Trump said that it will badly hit its business & jobs and benefit countries like China and India.



Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Tuesday said that Trumps statement withdrawing from the Paris climate deal sent the message that Americas own concerns were paramount and was a shock for India and the world community.

ALSO READ: US exits Paris accord: Trump cries foul, says climate pact only benefits countries like India, China

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Singapore:

Twin brothers from India have been each jailed for five months and ordered to receive three strokes of the cane for attacking a compatriot at a dormitory in Singapore.



Lakshmanan and Raman Pothiyappan, 24, pleaded guilty to one count of causing grievous hurt to their fellow countryman and colleague, Thevvan Velayutham, 41. The duo were each jailed for five months and ordered to receive three strokes of the cane, The Straits Times reported on Tuesday.



They committed the offence at a Shaw Road dormitory near Upper Paya Lebar Road on Oct 29 last year. Deputy Public Prosecutor Soh Weiqi said Thevvan, who is also a construction worker, was sitting in the front porch of the dormitory when the two brothers started punching and kicking him.

ALSO READ: Pakistani Hindu arrested from temple in Haryanas Jhajjar



Lakshmanan, who had consumed alcohol shortly before the attack, also threw a chair at Thevvan and it struck his head and body.



Soh said: Raman had informed that the victim and Lakshmanan were not on good terms, and that he had joined in the assault to support his brother.



Thevvan later went to Changi General Hospital, where he was found to have injuries, including a broken nose and a fracture near an eye.Soh told District Judge Samuel Chua that the victim has since fully recovered from his injuries.



She urged the judge to sentence the brothers, who were unrepresented, to at least five months jail with caning. Before handing out the sentence on Monday, Judge Chua told the brothers: The injuries were severe... Such offences will not be tolerated in Singapore.



For causing grievous hurt, each attacker could have been jailed for up to 10 years and fined or caned.

ALSO READ: Bengaluru police arrests three Pakistanis with fake documents

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Three pandas return from Japan to China

From:Xinhua | 2017-06-06 16:18

Giant panda Yang Bang arrives at Chengdu Shaungliu International Airport today. -- Xinhua



Three giant pandas born and raised in Japan arrived in Chengdu in southwest China on Monday night, where they will begin a new life, and, hopefully, have offspring.

The panda twins and their younger sister had been living at Adventure World in Shirahama, Wakayama Prefecture.

The male-female twins, called Hai Bang and Yang Bang, were born on August 11, 2010, while their younger sister You Bang was born on August 10, 2012. The names are translated from Japanese names to Chinese, said Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, their new home.

The three pandas will return to the base on Tuesday. They will undergo a month-long quarantine and orientation period before meeting the public.

"They are expected to adapt to changes in food, environment, language, and even the taste of bamboo. We will perform health checks on the pandas," said Yang Zhi, a disease prevention expert with the base.

In 1994, the Chengdu base and the Japanese park started a panda breeding research program. Over the years, 15 pandas have been bred. Among them, eight have returned to China.

Cubs born to pandas that are "on loan" from China must be returned to China after they reach sexual maturity or when the cooperative agreement ends.
Chinese police officers start patrolling four Italian cities

From:Xinhua | 2017-06-06 15:47

Chinese police patrol Piazza di Spagna in Rome, Italy on June 5. -- Xinhua



Ten Chinese police officers began joint patrols in four Italian cities Monday, according to a statement from the Chinese Ministry of Public Security.

Four groups of Chinese police officers will join their Italian counterparts for patrols in the cities of Rome, Milan, Florence and Naples from June 5 to 25.

The 20-day program also includes a Chinese-language police hotline where calls are answered by Chinese police officers, who will help Italian police with security issues concerning Chinese tourists, the statement said.

China sent four police officers to Rome and Milan to conduct joint patrols in May 2016. This year, Florence and Naples, both popular destinations for Chinese tourists, were added and six additional officers were sent.

This is the latest program aimed at protecting the interests of Chinese tourists overseas, and will help expand and deepen the Sino-Italian law enforcement cooperation, the statement added.

From April 24 to May 7, four Italian officers and their Chinese counterparts conducted joint patrols at tourist areas in Beijing and Shanghai, the first foreign police officers to carry out joint patrols in China.

According to government statistics, more than 800,000 Chinese and Italian tourists traveled between the two countries in 2016.
Due to the busy schedule of Premier Li Keqiangs Germany visit, a luncheon on June 1 turned into a dialogue among government officials and 22 entrepreneurs from China and Germany.

We will talk with entrepreneurs during lunch, which actually helps illustrate the two countries practical cooperation and mutual trust, the Premier said. I hope you have a good lunch while reaching practical deals.

In fact, Premier Li and German Chancellor Angela Merkel find time to talk with entrepreneurs from both countries during their annual meeting every year, with how to enhance bilateral economic cooperation as an ongoing topic.

This year, Premier Li said that China has a huge market and millions in its skilled labor force, while Germany does better in industrial technology, making the China-Germany cooperation complementary.

Jack Ma, chairman of Alibaba, said he hopes both countries can explore cooperation potential on big data, cloud computing and between small and medium-sized companies.

Shu Yinbiao, chairman of the State Grid Corp of China, and Harald Krueger, chairman of BMW Corp, both said they hoped that enterprises from both countries can work together to expand the third-party market. This idea was endorsed by the Premier.

Entrepreneur representatives from Germany and China also raised some issues that they are most concerned about during the meeting.

Yi Huiman, chairman of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, expressed his hope that Germany can maintain an open policy on foreign investment. And Hubert Lienhard, CEO of Vioth Group, also expected German enterprises can be treated the same as Chinese domestic companies.

Premier Li responded that the level of opening-up is a major concern to both countries enterprises, indicating that the issue of information asymmetry still exists even with growing bilateral cooperation.

He explained that the two countries staunchly stick to safeguarding free trade and investment facilitation. However, it has only been about three decades since China opened up its market, so the issue of information asymmetry could result from insufficient business cooperation experience with German enterprises.

The Premier continued that with over 10 dialogue mechanisms established between the two sides, any issue can be openly discussed. China will never shut its door to the outside world, but only open wider.

Merkel also stated that Germany will strive to further practice equality and opening up for foreign investment, and she said allowing enterprises to express their concerns is an important step toward that goal.

Premier Li said he appreciated the honesty of the entrepreneurs and urged Chinese ministers attending the meeting to take note of each question and suggestion from the German side, and give them timely feedback.

He also hoped the German side could handle requests from Chinese enterprises efficiently in order to push forward the win-win results of bilateral cooperation.

Merkel spoke highly of Premier Lis positive view toward the issues and commented that the dialogue between China-Germany entrepreneurs has become a tradition that promotes fairness in bilateral interaction.
DANBURY - Advocates are hailing the passage this week of state legislation that protects the victims of human trafficking while increasing the penalties for those who prey on them.

The proposal was created by lawmakers after the breakup of a decades-old sex trafficking ring based in Danbury and that authorities believe victimized hundreds of young men with disabilities. The case represented the first time that people in Connecticut were charged under a 2010 law with patronizing a trafficked person.

The new proposal, which has already passed the legislature and is awaiting the governors signature, creates a new criminal charge of commercial sex abuse of a minor for anyone who solicits a person under the age of 18.

In the past theyd be charged with patronizing a prostitute, said Jillian Gilcrest, chairperson of the Connecticut Trafficking in Persons Council. But we dont want to call these victims of human trafficking prostitutes, and we want to hold these offenders accountable.

The bill also broadens the definition of enticing a minor to include those under 18, in contrast to previous law, which included only minors under the age of 16, and assesses a $2,000 fine for anyone convicted of patronizing a prostitute from a motor vehicle.

Additionally, it increases the prison term for anyone convicted of patronizing a trafficked minor to a maximum of 25 years.

Lets end this barbaric and inhuman practice in our state, said state Rep. Will Duff, a Bethel Republican Bethel who co-sponsored the legislation, which won broad bipartisan support.

Gilchrest applauded the new legislation.

Lawmakers have really taken a huge step in a new direction, which is focusing on the prevention side of this crime, she said. If we want to reduce human trafficking in the state, we need to deter those who are buying trafficking victims.

What we know from research is that what deters buyers the most is increased risks and penalties, Gilcrest continued. Hopefully, this new stand alone charge and the increased penalties will act as a deterrent for such behavior in our state.

At the center of the case that helped spark the new legislation was Robert King, a Danbury man who was charged in March with human trafficking after a lengthy investigation. Authorities said he would befriend his victims, often young mentally handicapped men, plying them with drugs and alcohol until they ran up big debts and then pressing them into paid sex to pay off their obligations.

Two men, Westport resident William Trefgzer and Bruce Bemer of Glastonbury, were charged at the same time with patronizing a trafficked person. Police said Trefzger and Bemer had been buying sexual favors from young men supplied by King for more than 20 years.

Civil lawsuits have also been filed by nearly half a dozen purported victims of the ring. Their attorney Joel Faxon, has sought to freeze at least $10 million in assets from the defendants in the event that the lawsuits are successful.

At least one of the victims repsenented by Faxon is a minor.

dperrefort@newstimes.com
While en route to the nation's capital, Canadians can sample this frozen giant to taste the purest water source on earth

TORONTO, June 6, 2017 /CNW/ - A cold front is moving into Southern Ontario thanks to the presence of a 20,000 year old iceberg. To celebrate Canada's 150th, Canada's own Iceberg Vodka is transferring one of Newfoundland's floating giants from the Atlantic Ocean to a specialty Ice-Bus that will travel across Ontario en route to Ottawa.

Now, Canadians can safely get close to one of these frozen giants, touch it and even taste it! Icebergs are not only a spectacular phenomenon, but they're also the purest source of water on the planet as they're comprised of frozen water preserved since the last ice age, before industrial pollution.

The Iceberg-Bus will stop in cities from Kitchener to Hamilton, Toronto, Kingston and Ottawa to celebrate Canada's sesquicentennial and gather the top 150 reasons why it's cool to be Canadian. Canadians will record their answers on a Canadian flag which will be erected on a floating Iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean on Canada Day.

"Nothing like this has ever been done before, but we wanted to celebrate Canada's 150th with something equally magnanimous and we believe an iceberg fits the bill," said David Meyers, President of Iceberg Vodka. "Icebergs float down from the Arctic, continuously melting into the ocean, and as they pass by Newfoundland, we harvest a small piece of iceberg as the water source for Canada's Vodka. It's this water which gives our vodka its characteristic smooth taste. Few people have ever tasted pure iceberg water, so we wanted to share this unique experience with other Canadians in honour of our country's milestone anniversary."

Media personality Shaun Proulx will serve as the host of the Iceberg Tour, meeting with Canadians along the route and guiding them on how to safely chip a piece off an authentic 20,0000 year-old iceberg. 2017 has seen a bumper crop of more than 673 drifting giants float past Canada's eastern-most shore. Now Canadians can see one up close and personal from the safety of land.

The Iceberg-Bus schedule is as follows:

Monday, June 26: Kitchener-Waterloo

Tuesday, June 27: Hamilton

Wednesday, June 28: Toronto

Thursday, June 29: Kingston

Friday, June 30 and Saturday, July 1: Ottawa

To follow the Iceberg-Bus's journey and for the chance to win an exclusive visit by the Iceberg-Bus on Canada Day, Canadians can visit Facebook.com/IcebergVodka.

SOURCE Iceberg Vodka

For further information: please contact Evangeline PR: Ciara Dalziel, [email protected], 416-564-6918; Katlin Hazen, [email protected], 416-898-8565
/NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO UNITED STATES NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES/

TORONTO, June 7, 2017 /CNW/ - Contact Gold Corp. (the "Company" or "Contact Gold"), formerly Winwell Ventures Inc. ("Winwell"), is pleased to announce the completion of the previously announced business combination with Carlin Opportunities Inc. ("Carlin") by way of a court approved statutory plan of arrangement (the "Plan of Arrangement") under the Business Corporations Act (British Columbia) and the subsequent acquisition of a portfolio of 2,762 unpatented mining claims (the "Carlin Trend Properties") distributed over 13 gold properties, including the Pony Creek gold project, located in Nevada (collectively, the "Transactions").

It is anticipated that the common shares of Contact Gold (the "Contact Gold Shares") will commence trading on the TSX Venture Exchange (the "TSXV") under the ticker symbol "C" on or about June 14, 2017.

Matt Lennox-King, President, CEO and co-founder of Contact Gold stated "We are very excited to have completed the acquisition of the Carlin Trend Properties and expect to begin trading on the TSXV in a matter of days. With a strong treasury we believe Contact Gold is well positioned for success. The team is composed of seasoned and successful mining professionals. Our collective backgrounds and expertise cover all facets of the industry, from exploration, development, production, finance, accounting, M&A and corporate governance."

"Our portfolio of assets is made up of advanced-stage, large, strategically located, district scale exploration properties on Nevada's prolific Carlin Trend and proximal to some of the most successful exploration projects and mines in Nevada. The Company is well financed with strong shareholders, including Waterton Precious Metals Fund II Cayman, LP and Goldcorp, and several leading institutional investors. We plan to begin exploration on the Pony Creek gold property immediately."

Vance Spalding, the newly appointed Vice-President, Exploration of the Company added, "I'm excited to work with many of my former colleagues from Fronteer Gold to use a proven systematic approach to advance our large project pipeline. Nevada is an area I am very familiar with having spent a considerable portion of my career working in the state. The Carlin Trend Properties have excellent potential to host multiple significant gold discoveries. Our initial focus will be the Pony Creek project which has an extensive exploration database including historic gold resources. This database will allow us to get off to a quick start to building on the work of previous operators while incorporating new ideas and learnings from other operators in the Railroad-Pinion district. This is a very exciting time for exploration in the district, and the recent discoveries on the ground to the north of Pony Creek are a testament to this."

New Board and Management

Upon closing of the Transactions, the board of directors and management of the Company were reconstituted as follows in place of the previous directors and officers of Winwell, including the appointment of directors Charlie Davies and Riyaz Lalani as Waterton Nevada Splitter, LLC's ("Waterton Nevada") representatives on the Company's board of directors:

Matthew Lennox-King , President and Chief Executive Officer and a Director;

, President and Chief Executive Officer and a Director; John Wenger , VP, Corporate Strategy, Chief Financial Officer and Corporate Secretary;

, VP, Corporate Strategy, Chief Financial Officer and Corporate Secretary; Vance Spalding , VP, Exploration;

, VP, Exploration; Andrew Farncomb , Senior Executive VP and a Director;

, Senior Executive VP and a Director; John Dorward , Chairman and a Director;

Chairman and a Director; George Salamis, Director;

Director; Mark Wellings , Director;

, Director; Charlie Davies , Director; and,

, Director; and, Riyaz Lalani , Director.

Matthew Lennox-King, President and Chief Executive Officer and a Director

Mr. Lennox-King brings over 20 years of experience in mineral exploration to the Company, as a geologist, and mining company executive. From April 2011 to November 2015, Mr. Lennox-King was President and Chief Executive Officer of Pilot Gold Inc., a TSX listed gold exploration & development company, active in the Western United States and Eastern Europe. At Pilot Gold, Mr. Lennox-King raised over $70 million in equity financings to support the company's activities. Prior to joining Pilot Gold, Mr. Lennox-King was a Senior Geologist at Fronteer Gold Inc. where he successfully identified properties and executed multi-million dollar exploration programs that generated exponential deposit growth for Fronteer Gold. Mr. Lennox-King brings expertise in mineral exploration, finance, corporate governance, M&A and corporate leadership to his role as President & CEO. Mr. Lennox-King holds a B.Sc. in Geological Sciences from the University of British Columbia and was a 2014 recipient of Business in Vancouver's Top 40 Under 40. Mr. Lennox-King is also a non-executive director of BCM Resources Inc., a TSX-V listed base metals focused exploration company.

John Wenger, Vice-President, Corporate Strategy and Chief Financial Officer

From 2011 to 2017, Mr. Wenger served as Chief Financial Officer and Corporate Secretary of Pilot Gold, where he was part of a management team that raised over $100 million, and successfully completed multiple property transaction deals and acquisitions. Mr. Wenger worked for Ernst & Young LLP from 2001 to 2011 where he acquired considerable experience in financial reporting for both Canadian and U.S. publicly listed companies, primarily in the mining industry. Mr. Wenger has been a Chartered Professional Accountant with the Chartered Professional Accountants of British Columbia since 2006. Mr. Wenger is also a non-executive director of New Dimension Resources Ltd., a TSXV-listed exploration company. Mr. Wenger will also serve as corporate secretary of the Company.

Vance Spalding, Vice-President, Exploration

Mr. Spalding's gold exploration experience spans more than 28 years. A Certified Professional Geologist (AIPG), and Qualified Person, he most recently served as Deputy Director of Brownfields Exploration for Kinross Gold Corporation. At Kinross, Mr. Spalding built and led the exploration team at Bald Mountain from January 2016 to June 2017, overseeing 60 km of drilling and adding 1.24 Moz of gold to the mineable reserve base. Mr. Spalding previously worked with Pilot Gold from listing in April of 2011 until January, 2016 serving first as Exploration Manager and then as Vice President of Exploration, managing programs at the Kinsley (Nevada) and Goldstrike (Utah) properties, and overseeing budgets of up to $20M per year and 20 full time employees in Nevada and Turkey. Prior to this, Mr. Spalding served as Fronteer Gold's U.S. Exploration Manager from 2009 until the sale to Newmont Mining Corporation in 2011, where he oversaw the generative exploration program as well as multiple early to advance stage drilling and development. He served as a Project Manager at Centerra / Cameco Gold from 1997 to 2009, where he led the discovery of 2 Moz of gold at the REN project on the northern Carlin Trend. He also served as Exploration Manager at Centerra's Kumtor Gold mine in the Kyrgyz Republic, where he managed a $15 million annual budget and supervised a staff of 400 employees. Prior to Centerra, he worked with Santa Fe Pacific Gold and Gold Fields Mining on various exploration and development projects in the western United States, including Mule Canyon and Atlanta in Nevada, and Elkhorn in Montana. Mr. Spalding holds a B.Sc. in Geology from the University of Idaho.

Andrew Farncomb, Senior Vice-President and a Director

Mr. Farncomb brings extensive experience in the capital markets to the Company. Mr. Farncomb has diverse experience advising public and private companies on mergers and acquisitions and financing transactions across a range of sectors. In the natural resources sector, Mr. Farncomb has worked with exploration to production stage companies in advisory and Board capacities. Mr. Farncomb is a founder and Principal at Cairn Merchant Partners LP, an independent merchant bank focused on early stage principal investing. Prior to forming Cairn Merchant Partners, Mr. Farncomb was a Partner at Paradigm Capital Inc., a Canadian investment bank focused on small to medium-sized companies. Prior to Paradigm Capital, Mr. Farncomb held a business development role at a consumer goods company in Hong Kong. Mr. Farncomb is also a board member of several TSXV-listed and private companies. He is also a member of the Board of Directors and chairs the Investment Committee at the Flavelle Foundation. Mr. Farncomb graduated from the Smith School of Business at Queen's University with a Bachelor of Commerce (Honors) degree and received the Merrill Lynch Scholarship.

Board of Directors

John Dorward, Chairman

Mr. Dorward is President and Chief Executive Officer of Roxgold Inc., a TSX-listed gold producer and has over 20 years of experience in the mining and finance industries. Prior to his time at Roxgold, Mr. Dorward served as Vice-President, Business Development at Fronteer Gold from October 2009 to April 2011 where he was an integral part of the team that sold the large Michelin uranium deposit, acquired AuEX Ventures Inc., and successfully advanced Fronteer Gold's properties prior to the company's sale to Newmont for $2.3 billion in 2011. Mr. Dorward was the Chief Financial Officer of Mineral Deposits Ltd. from 2006 to 2009, where he was responsible for financing the construction of the Sabodala Gold Project in Senegal, West Africa, and was the Chief Financial Officer at Leviathan Resources Ltd., an ASX-listed gold producer, before its acquisition in 2006. He was a non-executive director of Pilot Gold from 2011 to 2015, and is currently a non-executive director of Navarre Minerals Ltd., an ASX-listed exploration company.

George Salamis

Mr. Salamis has over 25 years of experience in mineral exploration, mine development and operations and is currently Executive Chairman of Integra Gold Corp., a gold development company subject to a friendly takeover bid by Eldorado Gold Corp. Mr. Salamis is also Chief Executive Officer of Pinecrest Resources Ltd., a TSXV-listed exploration company. Mr. Salamis has previously held senior management positions with a number of mining companies including Placer Dome Inc. and Cameco Corporation. He has been involved in mergers and acquisitions transactions valued over $1.8 billion, either through the sale of assets, or of junior mining companies that he played a key role in building. Mr. Salamis holds a degree in geology from the University of Montreal.

Mark Wellings

Mr. Wellings is a mining professional with over 25 years of international experience in both the mining industry and mining finance sector and is currently President and Chief Executive Officer and a director of Eurotin Inc., a director of Gran Colombia Gold Corp. and Principal at INFOR Financial Group Inc. From 1988 to 2004, Mr. Wellings worked in the finance industry with a variety of companies and roles including Derry, Michener, Booth & Wahl, Arimco N.L., Inco Ltd. and Watts Griffiths McOuat, acquiring valuable hands-on experience in exploration, development and production. In 1996, Mr. Wellings joined the investment dealer GMP Securities L.P. where he cofounded the firm's corporate finance mining practice. During his 18 years at GMP, Mr. Wellings was responsible for, and advised on, some of the Canadian mining industry's largest transactions, both in equity financing and mergers and acquisitions. Mr. Wellings is a Professional Engineer and holds a master of business administration degree and a Bachelor of Applied Science degree in Geological Engineering.

Charlie Davies

Mr. Davies has over 15 years of experience in exploration and mining, and is currently the Principal, Exploration for Waterton Global Resource Management, Inc., where his primary duties involve technical evaluations and developing mining projects for study work. Prior to joining Waterton, Mr. Davies served over six years as an Exploration Manager for Kinross Gold. Prior to Kinross Gold, Mr. Davies held senior exploration management roles for Bolnisi Gold NL in Mexico and Ivanhoe Mines Mongolia Ltd in Mongolia. Mr. Davies was awarded a PhD in Economic Geology and holds a Bachelor of Science (First Class Honours).

Riyaz Lalani

Mr. Lalani is the CEO of Bayfield Strategy, Inc., a communications firm that specializes in financial transactions, shareholder actions, crisis communications and media relations. He has been involved with over 100 shareholder actions, and dozens of hostile M&A transactions. Before founding Bayfield, Mr. Lalani served three years as the Chief Operating Officer of Canada's largest proxy firm. Prior to that, Mr. Lalani was employed by an international asset manager for almost 10 years in New York and Toronto. He worked in a variety of analytical, business development and operational roles at the firm, eventually leading overall research and operational efforts. Mr. Lalani is a director of Difference Capital Financial Inc., a TSX-listed company, a director of the Canadian Journalism Foundation and a past director of two junior mining companies.

Overview of Transactions

Prior to the completion of the Transactions, Winwell consolidated its share capital (the "Consolidation") on the basis of eight (8) (existing) common shares for one (new) common share ("Winwell Shares"), was continued under the laws of the State of Nevada (from British Columbia) (the "Continuance") and changed its name to "Contact Gold Corp." (the "Name Change").

Pursuant to the Plan of Arrangement, Winwell acquired 28,815,000 common shares of Carlin in exchange for the issuance of post-Consolidation Winwell Shares to shareholders of Carlin on a one (1) share for one (1) share basis. Following the completion of the Plan of Arrangement, Continuance and Name Change, the Company acquired from Waterton Nevada, a subsidiary of Waterton Precious Metals Fund II Cayman, LP, all of the issued and outstanding membership interests of Clover Nevada II LLC, the holder of the Carlin Trend Properties, in exchange for the issuance of 18,550,000 Contact Gold Shares, 11,111,111 preferred shares of the Company ("Contact Gold Preferred Shares") and a cash payment of C$7,000,000. On closing of the Transactions, there were 50,134,497 Contact Gold Shares issued and outstanding.

The TSXV has provided conditional acceptance of the Transactions including the listing of the Company as a Tier 2 Resource Issuer on the TSXV. The Contact Gold Shares were listed on the TSXV today and immediately halted, with trading expected to commence pending receipt by the TSXV of the Company's final submissions in connection with the completion of the Transactions. As noted above, the Company expects that the Contact Gold Shares will commence trading on the TSXV under the ticker symbol "C" on or about June 14, 2017.

For further information with respect to the Transactions, including the Plan of Arrangement and the Carlin Trend Properties, please refer to the management information circular of Winwell dated April 25, 2017 and the supplement to the management information circular dated May 8, 2017 (collectively, the "Circular") and posted under Winwell's issuer profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

Subscription Receipt Financing

As previously announced in March 2017, Carlin completed a subscription receipt financing led by Cormark Securities Inc. and including Macquarie Capital Markets Canada Ltd., BMO Nesbitt Burns Inc., Paradigm Capital Inc. and INFOR Financial Inc. (collectively, the "Agents"), whereby Carlin issued 11,000,000 subscription receipts ("Subscription Receipts") at a price of C$1.00 per Subscription Receipt for aggregate proceeds of C$11,000,000 (the "Brokered Offering"). Tranche two of the Offering (as defined below) consisted of the sale of 7,500,000 Subscription Receipts on a non-brokered private placement basis to Goldcorp USA, Inc. ("Goldcorp") (the "Non-Brokered Offering" and together with the Brokered Offering, the "Offering"). The proceeds from the Offering, less certain expenses, were placed into escrow on completion of the Offering. In connection with the completion of the Transactions, the Subscription Receipts were converted on a one-for-one basis into a total of 18,500,000 common shares of Carlin, which upon completion of the Plan of Arrangement, Continuance and Name Change automatically became Contact Gold Shares. The escrowed proceeds from the Offering, less certain fees, have been released from escrow to the Company.

Lock-up Agreements and Escrow

As a condition to the completion of the Transactions, and in addition to any escrow provisions imposed by the TSXV, Waterton Nevada's holdings in Contact Gold are subject to a lock-up whereby it shall not sell or otherwise dispose of its securityholdings in Contact Gold for a period of 24 months, other than in limited circumstances. In addition, the Contact Gold Shares held by each of Matthew Lennox-King, Andrew Farncomb, John Dorward, George Salamis and Mark Wellings are also subject to a lock-up period ending 24 months following the completion of the Transactions.

A total of 23,410,248 Contact Gold Shares held by certain principals and insiders of the Company are subject to a 36 month TSXV imposed escrow with such Contact Gold Shares to be released based on the following schedule: 10% released on the date that the Contact Gold Shares are listed on the TSXV with an additional 15% to be released 6, 12, 18, 24, 30 and 36 months thereafter.

Information for Shareholders

The Company's transfer agent, Computershare Trust Company of Canada ("Computershare"), will be mailing share certificates or statements pursuant to the Direct Registration System ("DRS") to all of Carlin's former shareholders holders of Subscription Receipts, evidencing the Contact Gold Shares that they received in connection with the completion of the Transactions. Shareholders of the Company wishing to receive a physical share certificate should contact Computershare for information on how to obtain physical shares certificates in place of a DRS Advice. The ISIN number for the Contact Gold Shares is US21074G1013 and the trading symbol for the Contact Gold Shares on the TSXV is "C".

Former holders of Winwell Shares that held their Winwell Shares through a broker or other person, were directed to contact that broker or other person for instructions and assistance in receiving post-Consolidation Winwell Shares (which are now Contact Gold Shares). Each person who was a registered holder of Winwell Shares immediately prior to the effective time of the Arrangement was instructed to forward a properly completed and signed letter of transmittal, along with the accompanying certificate(s) representing their Winwell Shares to Computershare, in order to receive post-Consolidation Winwell Shares (which are now Contact Gold Shares) to which such former holder of Winwell Shares is entitled under the Arrangement.

Early Warning

In connection with the Transactions and the Non-Brokered Offering, Waterton Nevada acquired 18,550,000 Contact Gold Shares and 11,111,111 Contact Gold Preferred Shares, and Goldcorp acquired 7,500,000 Contact Gold Shares, as further described above. Prior to the completion of the Transactions and the Non-Brokered Offering, neither Waterton Nevada nor Goldcorp owned any securities of Winwell or Carlin. As at the date hereof, the 18,550,000 Contact Gold Shares held by Waterton Nevada and the 7,500,000 Contact Gold Shares held by Goldcorp represent approximately 37% and 15%, respectively, of the total issued and outstanding Contact Gold Shares. The Contact Gold Shares and Contact Gold Preferred Shares were acquired for investment purposes only. Depending on market and other conditions, or as future circumstances may dictate, both Waterton Nevada and Goldcorp may, respectively, from time to time, and subject to the lock-up agreements referenced above, increase or decrease their holdings of Contact Gold Shares or other securities of Contact Gold.

This portion of the news release is issued pursuant to National Instrument 62-103  The Early Warning System and Related TakeOver Bid and Insider Reporting Issues of the Canadian Securities Administrators, which also requires an early warning report to be filed with the applicable securities regulators containing additional information with respect to the foregoing matters. A copy of the early warning reports of Waterton Nevada and Goldcorp will be available on Contact Gold's issuer profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Goldcorp's head office is located at 6100 Neil Road, Suite 500, Reno, Nevada 89511-1149. Waterton Nevada can be contacted c/o Elko Mining Group LLC, 230 South Rock Boulevard, Suite 30, Reno, NV 89502.

Other Matters

The Company also announces it has retained Venture Liquidity Providers Inc. ("VLP") to provide market-making services in accordance with the policies of the TSXV. The market making service will be undertaken by VLP through a registered broker, W.D. Latimer Co. Limited, in compliance with the guidelines of the TSXV.

VLP is a specialized consulting firm based in Toronto providing a variety of services focused on TSXV listed issuers. VLP will trade the Contact Gold Shares on the TSXV for the purposes of maintaining an orderly market and improving the liquidity of the Contact Gold Shares. In consideration for their services, Contact Gold has agreed to pay VLP C$5,000 per month. VLP will not receive shares or options as compensation. The capital and securities required for any trade undertaken by VLP as principal will be provided by VLP. The agreement between the Company and VLP may be terminated at anytime by either the Company or VLP. Contact Gold and VLP act at arm's length, and VLP has no present interest, directly or indirectly, in Contact Gold or its securities. The agreement between the Company and VLP is subject to regulatory approval.

About Contact Gold Corp.

Contact Gold is a gold exploration company focused on leveraging its properties, people, technology and capital to make district scale gold discoveries in Nevada. Contact Gold's extensive land holdings are on the prolific Carlin and Independence gold trends which host numerous gold deposits and mines. Contact Gold's land position is comprised of 24,772 hectares (247 square kilometres) of target rich mineral tenure which hosts numerous known gold occurrences, ranging from early to advanced-exploration and resource definition stage.

U.S. Disclaimer

The securities described herein 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 accordingly may not be offered or sold within the United States or to "U.S. persons", as such term is defined in Regulation S promulgated under the U.S. Securities Act ("U.S. Persons"), except in compliance with the registration requirements of the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities requirements or pursuant to exemptions therefrom. This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy and of the Company's securities to, or for the account of benefit of, persons in the United States or U.S. Persons. For more information about the transactions described herein, please refer to the Circular.

Additional information about the Company is available at www.contactgold.com.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Information

This news release contains "forward-looking information" and "forward-looking statements" (collectively, "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of the applicable Canadian securities legislation. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements and are based on expectations, estimates and projections as at the date of this news release. Any statement that involves discussions with respect to predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions, future events or performance (often but not always using phrases such as "expects", or "does not expect", "is expected", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", "plans", "budget", "scheduled", "forecasts", "estimates", "believes" or "intends" or variations of such words and phrases or stating that certain actions, events or results "may" or "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken to occur or be achieved) are not statements of historical fact and may be forward-looking statements. In this news release, forward-looking statements relate, among other things, to the timing and receipt of the final stock exchange and regulatory approvals for the Transactions and the commencement of trading of the Contact Gold Shares on the TSXV.

These forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions and estimates of management of the Company at the time such statements were made. Actual future results may differ materially as forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to materially differ from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors, among other things, include: final regulatory and other approvals or consents, the synergies expected from the Transactions not being realized; business integration risks; fluctuations in general macroeconomic conditions; fluctuations in securities markets; fluctuations in spot and forward prices of gold, silver, base metals or certain other commodities; fluctuations in currency markets (such as the Canadian dollar to United States dollar exchange rate); change in national and local government, legislation, taxation, controls, regulations and political or economic developments; risks and hazards associated with the business of mineral exploration, development and mining (including environmental hazards, industrial accidents, unusual or unexpected formations pressures, cave-ins and flooding); inability to obtain adequate insurance to cover risks and hazards; the presence of laws and regulations that may impose restrictions on mining; employee relations; relationships with and claims by local communities and indigenous populations; availability of increasing costs associated with mining inputs and labour; the speculative nature of mineral exploration and development (including the risks of obtaining necessary licenses, permits and approvals from government authorities); and title to properties. Although the forward-looking statements contained in this news release are based upon what management of the Company believes, or believed at the time, to be reasonable assumptions, the Company cannot assure shareholders that actual results will be consistent with such forward-looking statements, as there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. Readers should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements and information contained in this news release. The Company assumes no obligation to update the forward-looking statements of beliefs, opinions, projections, or other factors, should they change, except as required by law.

No stock exchange, securities commission or other regulatory authority has approved or disapproved the information contained herein. Neither the TSXV nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSXV) accepts responsibility for the adequacy of this release. No stock exchange, securities commission or other regulatory authority has approved or disapproved the information contained herein.

SOURCE Contact Gold Corp.

For further information: Matthew Lennox-King, President & Chief Executive Officer, E-mail: [email protected]
STE. CROIX, Quebec, June 6, 2017 /CNW/ -- Bibby Ste-Croix's Fonderie LaPerle (a division of Canada Pipe), which manufactures street castings, manhole frames, covers, and municipal road castings is joining the celebration of Canada's 150th anniversary. Bibby LaPerle has produced a commemorative manhole cover for the sesquicentennial celebration.

"Bibby LaPerle is proud to produce a commemorative product that will be used in many cities in Eastern Canada," said Tom Leonard, president of Bibby. "This commemorative manhole cover, featuring the 150th anniversary logo, will be seen by thousands of Canadians and visitors this year in celebration of our country's sesquicentennial."

It's important to the Eastern market to choose a product that is manufactured in Canada by Canadian workers. Manufacturing is the cornerstone of the Canadian economy. Bibby Ste-Croix is a 95-year old Canadian company that employs more than 540 team members at its two Quebec foundries. For each job Bibby creates, three additional Canadian jobs are created, contributing to the overall economic strength of our nation. What sets Bibby LaPerle street castings apart from imported products is the CSA certification. The CSA mark signifies manufacturing excellence. It's added peace of mind when municipalities and cities choose safe and enduring products that meet the stringent CSA standards.

About Bibby

Bibby-Ste-Croix produces cast iron soil pipe and fittings used in drain, waste and vent (DWV) plumbing systems. Founderie LaPerle manufactures street castings, manhole frames and covers, and municipal road castings. Bibby Ste-Croix is a division of Canada Pipe which is owned by McWane, Inc. For more information visit Bibby-Ste-Croix.com

About McWane - McWane, Inc. is a family-owned business based in Birmingham, Alabama, with companies across North America and the world. McWane is the leader in delivering clean, safe drinking water around the world while focusing on the safe, environmentally-friendly manufacturing of our products. For more information visit www.mcwane.com

SOURCE Bibby-Ste-Croix

For further information: Randy Sweet, National Sales Manager, Municipal/Waterworks Division, Phone 905-312-4776 /800-982- 5682, Email: [email protected]
Royal Canadian Mint issuing special Loonie numismatic set

OTTAWA, June 6, 2017 /CNW/ - In June 1987, Canadians from coast to coast to coast welcomed Canada's new 11-sided one-dollar coin in their pockets and change purses. The coin also found its way into our hearts and was soon dubbed the "Loonie" after the solitary loon that graces its reverse side. The introduction of the coin was the most significant change in Canada's currency system in almost 50 years.

"It's very fitting that during Canada 150, we are also celebrating one of the country's most recognizable symbols," said Sandra Hanington, President and CEO of the Royal Canadian Mint. "In addition to depicting several special designs over the past thirty years, the Loonie is also known around the world as an innovative trailblazer for its composition and cutting-edge security features."

To celebrate the Loonie's birthday, the Mint has produced a special numismatic set. This set features a 99.99% pure silver edition of the now-classic Loonie design that graces the reverse of Canada's one-dollar circulation coin, as designed by Robert Ralph Carmichael. Next to it, the second coin re-creates the coin's intended one-dollar design of the "Voyageur", as designed by Emanuel Hahn and which first appeared on the 1935 silver dollar. This set has a limited mintage of 10,000.

The set can be ordered today by contacting the Royal Canadian Mint at 1-800-267-1871 in Canada, 1-800-268-6468 in the US, or online www.mint.ca. It is also being sold at the Mint's boutiques in Ottawa, Winnipeg and Vancouver as well as through the Mint's global network of dealers and distributors, including participating Canada Post outlets.

About the Royal Canadian Mint

The Royal Canadian Mint is the Crown Corporation responsible for the minting and distribution of Canada's circulation coins. An ISO 9001-2008 certified company, the Mint is recognized as one of the largest and most versatile mints in the world, offering a wide range of specialized, high quality coinage products and related services on an international scale. For more information on the Mint, its products and services, visit www.mint.ca.

SOURCE Royal Canadian Mint

For further information: Christine Aquino, Director, Public Affairs, Royal Canadian Mint, Telephone: (613) 993-9999, [email protected]

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OTTAWA, June 7, 2017 /CNW/ - The Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, today met with Her Excellency Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, State Counsellor of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar, as part of her visit to Canada.

Prime Minister Trudeau expressed condolences for the tragic loss of life after a Myanmar military plane carrying servicemen and their families crashed near Dawei earlier today.

The two leaders discussed Myanmar's transition to democracy and Canada's support for ongoing reforms in Myanmar. The Prime Minister encouraged Myanmar to accelerate its efforts to uphold human rights, particularly with respect to women, youth, and protecting ethnic and religious minorities, including the Rohingya. They also discussed good governance, development cooperation, humanitarian issues, economic growth, and regional security.

Following the meeting, Prime Minister Trudeau announced $8.8 million in support for humanitarian assistance and the advancement of peace and stability in Myanmar. These contributions will help protect human rights, support peacebuilding, and promote women's participation in the national peace process. They will also support a range of life-saving services, including emergency food assistance, shelter and health care, to vulnerable populations.

Canada supports Myanmar's ongoing efforts to secure an inclusive and lasting peace after decades of civil war. Since 2010, the Government of Myanmar has taken steps towards democratization, economic liberalization and national reconciliation.

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"Canada's ties with Myanmar grow every day, and we are committed to support this country as its people progress towards true peace and stability. We encourage an inclusive peace process that respects human rights and meets the needs of all people in Myanmar, especially those of traditionally vulnerable populations, including ethnic and religious minorities, women and children."

Rt. Hon. Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada

Quick Facts

Canada and Myanmar established diplomatic relations when the Southeast Asian country became independent in 1948.

and established diplomatic relations when the Southeast Asian country became independent in 1948. Since 2013, Canada has disbursed over $95 million to Myanmar in official development assistance.

has disbursed over to in official development assistance. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi spent more than 15 years in detention from 1989 to 2010. She was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 in recognition for her non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights.

spent more than 15 years in detention from 1989 to 2010. She was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 in recognition for her non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights. In November 2015 , Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was democratically elected. She was subsequently nominated State Counsellor of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar and is now leading the ongoing reforms and the peace process in her country.

, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was democratically elected. She was subsequently nominated State Counsellor of the Republic of the Union of and is now leading the ongoing reforms and the peace process in her country. She is one of just six people to receive honorary Canadian citizenship. The others are Raoul Wallenberg , Nelson Mandela , the 14th Dalai Lama , the Aga Khan, and Malala Yousafzai .

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Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari

A new grand plan by an Aso Rock cabal led by the Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, to weaken the constitutional authority of Acting President Yemi Osinbajo has taken off at the presidential palace in Abuja, with a meeting held in London last week.

The new scheme comes after an earlier attempt to hijack Mr. Osinbajos constitutional authority failed, authoritative sources told SaharaReporters.The sources revealed that the cabal had the surreptitious meeting a few days ago in London at which a handful of disgruntled presidential aides were in attendance, but without the knowledge of the ailing President Muhammadu Buhari, who is in the United Kingdom on a medical vacation. The officials are described as abhorrent of Buharis transfer of presidential power transfer to his deputy, preferring that one of them be charged with the exercise of such authority in the absence of the President.SaharaReporters learned that the meeting resolved to adopt fresh tactics to constrain the Acting President by seeking to foist on him spurious and patently false allegations.One source stated that the cabal does not care that their activities would amount to a violation of the Nigerian constitution.In addition to Mr. Kyari, who is himself also sick and frequenting hospitals in the UK for a treatment of a variety of ailments, others involved in the plot include the Minister of State for Aviation, Hadi Sirika, as well as Buharis secretary, Tunde Sabiu.The cabal is miffed that the President gave the VP unfettered support to assert himself in the capacity of Acting President before departing Nigeria on his latest visit to London. The sources say the inner circle members fear not only that the move would reduce their presidential influence, but that it may also cause them to account for some of their shady deals that have been covered up so far, especially in view of the uncertainty of Buharis health.Lately, the President himself is reported to have become disillusioned about the antics and schemes of some of his aides who have attempted to undermine the authority of the Ag. President. Among such developments, Mr. Kyari is said to have showed up to see President Buhari with a list of career ambassadors, asking him to let the cabal decide where to place each of them.In a similar development, the Chief of Staff Kyari reportedly requested that communication from the vacationing President to officials of the government, including the Acting President, would be through him. He even suggested in some circles that the Ag. President should check with the President through him, any major decision on the economy, the Central Bank of Nigeria, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, and the military. But he lacked the courage to make the suggestion directly to the Acting President.While the cabal may have sought new ways to undermine Osinbajo's authority, President Buhari is said to believe in supporting him as well, although his health and treatment have not permitted him to do much.One of the main decisions of the meeting in London was to cast ethnic and religious aspersions on the Acting President's appointments, and the person chosen to implement this was Mr. Sirika, who is said to be uncomfortable with Osinbajos free-willing romance with the northern elite, and his seeming acceptance by the ordinary people in the north.Mr. Sirika was given the task of accusing Osinbajo of appointing only Christians to his office, a charge presidential aides disputed widely over the weekend.They pointed out that a huge majority of the Acting Presidents security aides and other officials are Northerners and Muslims inherited from the former vice-president, Namadi Sambo, who himself was surprised recently when he visited the acting President to see most of them still around."Even when you look at the stewards who serve the VP, they are all Northerners and Muslims," they claimed.The latest plot led by Mr. Sirika via social media shot its first round of attack on the Acting President with a phony author reeling off accusations on the former law professor. The faceless author went as far as insinuating that the Acting President was "consolidating for 2019." our source lamentedJust as if he knew what might happen during his latest trip to the United Kingdom, President Buhari reportedly did something unique on May 7, 2017, the day he flew out, bringing together the Vice President and leaders of the National Assembly at his residence. Explaining the nature of his trip, he informed them that he would be following the Constitution to write to the National Assembly so that power can temporarily transfer to the Vice President.Aso Rock sources explained that while the President had traveled abroad and transmitted power to the VP a number of times in the past, holding a joint physical meeting with him and the leaders of the National Assembly leaders was a new move by the President, as he had usually transmitted the letter and then traveled.SaharaReporters sources said he made the move because he no longer trusted some of his aides who have shown that they are threatened by the mutual and cordial relationship between himself and the Vice President. That also explains why, for instance, members of the cabal were taken by surprise when Mr. Buhari bypassed them in deciding on a probe to investigate the SGF and the NIA boss. Mr. Kyari was said to have been stunned when the media office issued the announcement without his knowledge.
Multiple taxes being levied on various business entities is having an effect on operations, many Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) operators have complained.

Some of these operators across Kwara, Kaduna, Nasarawa states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) said an average of 20 per cent and more of their gross earnings went for taxes payment monthly. This situation they said was not favourable to the growth of their businesses and it hindered their expansion and investment plans.

The Director, Perfectwork Ventures Limited, an aluminium assemblage firm in Kaduna, Mr Ejiga Enoch, said his business was being taxed by over five entities in Kaduna Metropolis.

He said, I pay taxes to Kaduna North Local Government; there is that of Environmental Health, there is Joint Tax Board (JTB), an arm of the Federal Inland Revenue Services (FIRS).

I also pay local security tax, market association tax and more. We even pay for sticker or signpost permit. These taxes are numerous that they threaten the existence of our businesses. Most often, failure to pay attracts the enforcers wrath as they will want to lock up the place, he explained.

In Mararaba part of Nasarawa State, our reporters observed that stickers of the state revenue service were being placed on all business shops.

One of the SMEs operators in the area, Mr Chukwudi Obi, who owns a chain of retail stores, said he was asked to pay from N10, 000 above for his various shops, depending on the size.

This is separate from what I pay when the JTB come to check for Value Added Tax (VAT) and withholding tax remittances. It is also separate from the local vigilante group tax that we have to pay, he lamented.

Another business owner in Nyanya, a suburb of the FCT, Mr. Collins Udeh, called for the centralisation of tax payment for SMEs to reduce the case of multiple taxation coming mostly from frivolous entities.

He said: Government at federal, state and local government levels should endeavour to harmonise the payments and help to reduce the taxes optimally.

Mrs. Latifat Balogun is the CEO of Hatlab place, Abuja. In the past months, she has paid different taxes in different guises.

The Federal Capital Territory is collecting one; Abuja Municipal Area Council (AMAC) is charging another one. Sometimes, the FCT will call it business premises charges, while AMAC will call it petty licensing for businesses and shops. We have things like tenement rates. This has increased our operational expenses, Balogun says.

The Chief Revenue Officer of Abuja Municipal Area Council (AMAC), Chief Danlami Awaje, said there was nothing like multi taxation in the area council.

He said the area council taxes were carried in relation to the provision of the councils bye laws.

Generally, whatever business you are doing aside the taxes paid to regulatory agencies for operating a business in the domain of AMAC, you have a duty to pay operational permit regardless of the business, Awaje said.

Every charge we bring to any organisation is backed up by our bye-law and any business owner that has issues with us, when he comes here we clarify the issue. If you operate your business within AMAC you have a duty to pay us taxes for that.

I agree that there are conflicting roles that are taking place between agencies of FCTA and the AMAC because there are some places that you find public health going to ask for money, by constitution it is our duty backed by law, Awaje explained.

He said harmonisation of the taxes was not easily possible because the demands were not coming from the same agencies.

The Director, Information and Communication at the FCT Administration, Stella Ojeme said the board of FCT Internal Revenue Services recently constituted by President Muhammadu Buhari was yet to be inaugurated because the chairman had not been confirmed by the National Assembly.

She said harmonising taxes in the territory would be enhanced with the passage of a bill before the National Assembly. The bill, when passed would harmonise several taxes collected by the FCT Administration and area councils including tenement rates. It would also curbed what some stakeholders termed multiple taxation.

Recently, in Kwara state, the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) kicked against a proposed manufacturing levy bill sent to the House of Assembly by the state government. They said it was constituting multiple taxation capable of killing businesses in the state.

They faulted the consumption tax bill during a public hearing which government said would drive revenue generation target of the state.

Chairman of the state chapter of MAN, Pharmacist Bioku Rahman, said the Manufacturing Processing Levy Bill must not be passed into law because they did not understand the objectives. They said there were already other taxes that manufacturers paid in the state.

He said that the manufacturers paid about 32 taxes, rates and levies and argued that the bill would only constitute a further burden on them which would not help the growth of manufacturing sector in the state.

Also speaking, Chairman of the state Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture (KWACCIMA), Alhaji Ahmed Raji, said his organisation was opposed to the bill because it considered it not beneficial to the development of the state.

But business owners like Balogun said government should harmonise these taxes.

We are saying the government should look at it and harmonise all their taxes, Balogun explains.
A former governor of Anambra State, Peter Obi, has warned that the Nigerian economy will collapse soon if the federal government does not take immediate steps to arrest the rot in the system.He also accused the government of not doing enough to alleviate the sufferings of the people even as he decried the high level of hunger and poverty that Nigerians are passing through.Mr. Obi gave the warning in an address at the Federal University, Ndufu Alike Ikwo (FUNAI) during the grand-finale and presentation of awards to winners of a creative writing competition.The event was organised by the universitys chapter of the Creative Writers Association of Nigeria, with the theme Hope for Africa: The Birth of A New Age.Mr. Obi who left office in 2014 after serving two terms as governor of the south-east state, urged youth across the country to show more concern to creativity to enable them realize their dreams and warned them to stop emulating the Nigerian leaders.Our leaders are doing things wrong, we should not follow them to celebrate what is wrong. What we have in Nigeria is that we are celebrating what is wrong. And I am of the opinion that we should stop celebrating what is wrong and start doing things right so that this country can grow.People are hungry and we should join hands together to question our leaders to tell us what is happening in this country and making sure that the right thing are done.The former governor urged the government to cut the cost of governance, warning that the country is living on borrowed time.Our leaders should cut the cost of governance and show more concern to how to improve the standard of living of all Nigerians.All of us, from 1960 when we gained independence, if we had done the right thing from then, it is not the question of PDP or APC. We have lived wrongly, we have done the wrong things and that is why the country is not growing.If we dont do anything now the country will collapse. Nigeria is living on a borrowed money. So, you see things are difficult in Nigeria and we need to change our society so that things will get better, he added.The Vice Chancellor of the university, Chinedum Nwajiuba, who was represented by Matthew Eduoga, said that the programme was organised to educate the youth on the need to be creative, stressing that the problem of Nigeria was that the leaders do not encourage creativity.If you are not creative, you are not going anywhere. The problem of Nigeria today is that we are not creative. We depend so much on imported things, he noted.Earlier in a remark, the president of the Creative Writers Association, FUNAI Chapter, Uche Agbo, said the programme was organized to refocus African youth on how to be creative and shun social vices.
A new list of Africa's richest billionaires 2017 published by Forbes has named Nigerian businessman, Aliko Dangote as the richest man in Africa.



Oil billionaire Folorunsho Alakija

According to Forbes ' newest report of the richest African billionaires in 2017, two Nigerians have lost their status while three others made it to the list.

Read the full report below:

The number of billionaires in Africa--and the size of their fortunes--continues to drop. On this year's list, FORBES is only including African billionaires living in Africa, instead of featuring Africa's 50 richest people. There are 21 billionaires on this years list, worth a combined $70 billion. On the November 2015 Africa Rich List, there were 23 African billionaires worth a combined $79.8 billion. That in turn was down from 28 African billionaires in 2014.

Nigerian cement tycoon Aliko Dangote remains Africas richest person for the sixth year running with a $12.1 billion fortune, despite a nearly $5 billion drop in his net worth for the second year in a row. Dangote is joined by just two other Nigerian billionaires on this years list -- telecom tycoon Mike Adenuga, who is Africas third richest person with an estimated $5.8 billion fortune, and oil billionaire Folorunsho Alakija, who has an estimated net worth of $1.6 billion. Two Nigerians dropped off the Billionaires List this year--oil marketer Femi Otedola, whose net worth dropped from $1.6 billion in November 2015 to just $330 million today, and sugar billionaire Abdulsamad Rabiu, whose net worth dropped below $1 billion in the wake of a weakened Nigerian currency.

South Africa retains its dominance on the Africa List. While the country is tied with Egypt for the largest number of individual billionaires, South Africas six billionaires are worth a combined $22.7 billion -- $7 billion more than Egypts six billionaires. The richest South African billionaire and the continents second richest person is diamond magnate Nicky Oppenheimer, who has maintained a low profile since selling his familys stake in diamond giant DeBeers to Anglo American for $5.1 billion in cash in 2012. Luxury goods tycoon Johann Rupert and retail magnate Christoffel Wiese are tied as South Africas second richest and Africas fourth richest billionaires, each with a $5.5 billion fortune. Wieses fortune has dropped $1 billion since the November 2015 Africa list, while Ruperts net worth is down $800 million.

Egypts richest billionaire is Nassef Sawiris, whose $5.3 billion fortune is up $400 million since November 2015. Sawiris runs OCI, one of the worlds largest nitrogen fertilizers. The countrys next richest person is his brother Naguib Sawiris, who was Egypts biggest gainer on the list. His net worth increased $700 million to $3.7 billion. In December 2016, Naguib Sawiris announced that he would be stepping down as CEO of his telecom company, Orasom Telecom Media & Technology.

FORBES counts only two female billionaires in Africa: Angola's Isabel dos Santos -Africas richest woman with a $3.2 billion fortune, and Nigerias Alakija. Dos Santos is the daughter of Angolas president, who appointed her as head of Angolas state oil firm Sonangol in June 2016. Alakija is the vice chair of Nigerian oil exploration company, Famfa Oil.

At 41, Tanzanian Mohammed Dewji is Africas youngest billionaire, well below the average age of 63. He is CEO of conglomerate METL, which his father founded in the 1970s. Eighty-six-year-old Onsi Sawiris of Egypt is the continent's oldest billionaire and the father of two other African billionaires -- Nassef and Naguib Sawiris.

Thirteen out of Africas 21 billionaires have self-made fortunes, while the other eight inherited their fortunes. The 21 billionaires hail from 7 countries: South Africa, Egypt, Nigeria, Morocco (which has 3 billionaires), Algeria ( 1 billionaire), Angola (1 billionaire) and Tanzania (1 billionaire).

Our list tracks the wealth of African billionaires who reside on the continent, thus excluding Sudanese-born billionaire Mo Ibrahim, who is a U.K. citizen, and billionaire London resident Mohamed Al-Fayed, an Egyptian citizen. This year's list includes only billionaires, rather than the 50 richest people in Africa. We calculated net worths using stock prices and currency exchange rates from the close of business on Thursday, January 5. To value privately-held businesses, we couple estimates of revenues or profits with prevailing price-to-sales or price-to-earnings ratios for similar public companies.

We have purposely excluded dispersed family fortunes such as the Chandaria family of Kenya and the Madhvanis of Uganda, because the wealth is believed to be held by dozens of family members. We do include wealth belonging to a members immediate relatives if the wealth can be traced to one living individual; in that case, youll see & family on our list as an indication.
Following her expulsion from a medical school, a pretty young female second-year student allegedly threatened to commit suicide and left shocking suicide note on a Whatsapp group.



Elain Madonho

A 2nd-year student nurse expelled from Gweru Provincial Hospital in Zimbabwe along with three of her colleagues for a series of misdemeanours, has allegedly threatened to commit suicide, claiming she had been unfairly dismissed.

Miss Elain Madonho allegedly posted a suicide note on a WhatsApp chat group on Sunday claiming that she had been dismissed unfairly from the institutions nursing school.

She is one of the four student nurses who include Miss Sharon Ndiva, Miss Ingrid Wombasha and Miss Shumirai Mandiga who were expelled from the hospitals nursing school on May 26 after appearing before a board that was set up by the Provincial Medical Director Dr Simon Nyandundu.

The four student nurses were allegedly facing charges that include forging the signature of a supervisor at a clinic where they were attached, incompetence and insubordination after refusing to write a report.

Following their expulsion, Miss Madonho on Sunday took to social media to pour out her heart, saying she was taking her life.

The woman was subsequently not reachable to her friends and efforts to contact her yesterday were not successful, but hospital authorities got in touch with her mother who lives in Harare and she allegedly said her daughter was at home.

It could not be established immediately if the student was dissuaded by someone from committing suicide, had faked the planned suicide or just changed her mind.

In her post which has gone viral, Ms Madonho said the expulsion had destroyed her life, adding that the hospitals Medical Superintendent Dr Fabian Mashingaidze failed to give her a second chance.

Ms Madonho accused the nursing school of protecting other students while expelling others for trivial crimes.



From what I heard years before I started attending ur (your) institution, all I heard were praises. Why couldnt you hear me if what I heard was true?? I gave u my voice and u shut ur (your) ears. Why did u let people over ride you and yet you could have decided on ur (your) own?? Where my grades not good enough to prove to you that I was serious with nursing?? 1 mistake and u have taken away my life? You allowed Christabel to continue even after falling pregnant and giving birth because she is the matrons daughter, Mupoperi was involved in so many school fights but she has qualified, Ms Madanho allegedly wrote.





Exactly wat have u seen in me that u felt it fit to steal my life away. Students only complete their competencies when results are out but I wasnt given that chance. The whole class was given 2 weeks but I hardly got 2 days. What did I do that I was not given e (the) chance to correct my mistake like e rest of e class?? Anyways I forgive u and hope u find the Lords mercy because u really need it. You can explain to my daughter where her mother is.

Dr Mashingaidze confirmed that the four students were expelled from the nursing school last week. He said they heard that one of the students had committed suicide but when they checked with the mother, they were told that she was home.





Yes there are four girls who were expelled from school after they were found guilty on some charges that were laid against them. Its too early to comment on the matter because they still have two weeks to appeal against the judgment. I dont know of any student that has committed suicide as the hospital hasnt been availed with such information, he said, adding that there was no room for crooks or incompetence in the medical field.
The APC in Cross River State said yesterday that the Acting President, Yemi Osinbajo, might have been deceived by Governor Ben Ayade during his recent visit to the state.Chairman of the party in the state, John Ochala, who played down on the commendation of Ayades administration by Osinbajo, said, The Acting President may have fallen victim but it has not changed the reality on ground because Cross Riverians know Ayade and therefore would judge him based on his performance not commendation by anybody.According to him, What people dont understand is that the Acting President was not in the state at the instance of the state government. It was part of his routine meeting with elders and stakeholders from the South South region. It is part of the APC-led administrations programmes to address the challenges in Niger Delta.Has the commendation changed the fact that Ayade didnt commission single government owned project in two years? Has it changed the fact that the much talked about garment factory is a privately owned company with Cross River having just 30% shares? Has it changed the fact that the Calabar Pharmaceutical Company is undergoing registration now as a privately owned company? he asked.Reacting, Chairman of the PDP in the state, Ntufam Edim Inok, said such characterization was unacceptable, and that the APC was only seeking for relevance.
Veteran Nollywood actor, Pete Edochie, has noted that Igbo people cannot fight any course together because they are not united.







Veteran Nollywood actor, Pete Edochie, has noted that Igbo people cannot fight any course together because they are not united.





Edochie said Igbos are scattered, with no particular goal, adding it is not struggle for anything that will bring them together but their cultural values.

According to the 70-year-old thespian, most Igbos do not even speak their language again, while calling on Igbo leaders to seek ways to bring the people together.

Edochie, who spoke in Igbo language, told newsmen at the events that mark his seventh birthday, There are so many issues making me shed tears. One of them is that Igbo people are scattered. They are not in unity.

If you take a close look at the Igbo, You will realize that they cannot fight together. Look, its not struggle for anything that will bring Igbo people together.

Have you noticed that only Igbo people pray before eating kola nut? Why Im saying this is because it is only the culture of the Igbo that can unit them.

If you take a close look, you will also notice that in the whole of Nigeria, the Igbo people are the ones very mad about speaking English.

A Hausa boy will not greet his father in English. A Yoruba person will not greet his/her father in English.

But Igbo person will say good morning sir instead of his local greeting. It is painful that the Igbo language is receding and no one is doing anything about it.

See video




The Deputy Publicity Secretary of the Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Mr. Chuks Ibegbu, has called on the Department of State Services and the police, to...

The Deputy Publicity Secretary of the Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Mr. Chuks Ibegbu, has called on the Department of State Services and the police, to take immediate steps to forestall any plan to launch attacks against the Igbo in the North.





Ibegbu was reacting to the call by a coalition of Northern Youth Groups tagged The Kaduna Declaration on all Igbos residing in any part of Northern Nigeria to relocate to their places of origin within three months. (read here

Ibegbu, who described the statement as treasonable, urged the relevant security agencies to swing into action before Igbos resident in the north are wiped out.

He said, The DSS, the police and other security agencies should take note of the statement by the Arewa Youth Consultative Forum and the other Northern groups for issuing this threat against the Igbo.

It should not be seen as an empty threat; urgent action is needed to foil the plan to attack the Igbo in the North. It happened in the past and we dont want it to happen again.

In fact, Yerima Shettima should be arrested by the DSS immediately. We are watching to see what the DSS would do in this situation.

Shettimas statement is treasonable; he is inciting one section of the country against another section and we know from experience that this sort of thing could lead to a civil war. His utterances could destroy this country.


Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, has ordered the arrest of people behind the three-month quit notice given to Igbos to leave the Nort...

Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, has ordered the arrest of people behind the three-month quit notice given to Igbos to leave the North.













In a statement signed by his spokesman, Samuel Aruwan, El-Rufai strongly condemned, the inciting, hate speech delivered by some self-appointed northern youths.

El-Rufai said, the Kaduna State Government has directed that its Ministry of Justice should prepare charges and prosecute the signatories and anyone complicit in arranging this egregious assault on the rights of fellow citizens.

The Governor condemned the action of the groups, and assured every resident of the state that, nobody can tamper with their freedom to reside where they choose.

The full statement reads: The Kaduna State Government condemns in the strongest terms the press statement by some self-appointed northern youths that threatened the safety and property of our citizens of Igbo extraction. Government assures every resident of our state that their constitutional and human rights to live peacefully and own property wherever they choose is sacrosanct. Even people who may feel unhappy about irresponsible comments or actions that have taken place in other states must know that two wrongs cannot make a right.

The Kaduna State Government believes in and will uphold the right of every Nigerian to live safely and develop his/her full potentials within its territory.

Reckless disregard for the rights of other citizens drips through the press statement by these northern youths who have chosen to use the discourse around restructuring to promote their own agenda of hate, division and incitement. This sort of opportunists cannot be allowed to distort debate, or turn it into a pretext for a barely-disguised agenda of displacement and dispossession of some citizens.

We will not tolerate such irresponsible statements and conduct in our state. The statement issued by the northern youths violates the laws of Kaduna State. Therefore, the Kaduna State Government has directed that its Ministry of Justice should prepare charges and prosecute the signatories and anyone complicit in arranging this egregious assault on the rights of fellow citizens.

Preparatory to prosecution, the police have been directed to immediately arrest, interrogate the signatories to the statement and investigate all the circumstances and persons that may be implicated in the matter.

The Kaduna State Government urges all residents to ignore the threats from the northern youths. We are in contact with the leadership of the Igbo community in Kaduna, and we delighted to say that this community, like all our other communities, believes in the strength of the constitutional order to protect all citizens.

KDSG wishes to encourage all our people to celebrate the diversity with which the Almighty has blessed us, to continue to shun agents of division, and to stand firm in upholding a common humanity. Everyone has a right to live in peace and harmony.
The Senate has confirmed the nomination of 82-year-old retired Justice Sylvanus Nsofor (Imo), whose appointment was rejected by the lawm...

The Senate has confirmed the nomination of 82-year-old retired Justice Sylvanus Nsofor (Imo), whose appointment was rejected by the lawmakers and renominated by President Muhammadu Buhari, as ambassador of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.Also confirmed at the plenary on Wednesday, based on the recommendation of the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, were Joseph Iji (Ondo) and Yusuf Hinna (Gombe).Details soon.
President Muhammadu Buhari has commended the Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai for ordering the arrest of leaders of the Coalition of N...

President Muhammadu Buhari has commended the Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai for ordering the arrest of leaders of the Coalition of Northern Youths, CNY, for asking Igbos to vacate the North in three months.





Buharis commendation was disclosed by the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed on Wednesday.

The Minister, who took to his twitter handle, @MohammedLai wrote:

The President Buhari commends the Kaduna state government for arresting those miscreants. Jobless youths.

The Buhari Administration vehemently condemns such a wicked plan by faceless Northern youths to evict Igbos from the North. This is their country na.

Recall that the spokesperson of a Northern Coalition group, Coalition of Northern Youths, CNY, Abdulaziz Suleiman, had ordered Igbos to vacate the region in three months.





Speaking yesterday, Suleiman had said the entire Northern Nigeria was tired of coexisting with the Igbos and asked that all Igbos currently residing in any part of Northern Nigeria are hereby served notice to relocate within three months and all northerners residing in the East are advised likewise.

The persistence for the actualization of Biafra by the unruly Igbo of South-Eastern Nigeria has lately assumed another alarming twist which involved the forceful lockdown of activities and denial of other peoples right to free movement in the South-East by the rebel Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and its overt and covert sponsors.

Against this backdrop, El-Rufai, earlier ordered the arrest of the group for making such inciting statement.

The Buhari Admin vehemently condemns such a wicked plan by faceless Northerns youths to evict Igbos from the North. This is their country na  Alhaji Lai Mohammed (@MohammedLai) June 7, 2017
A police officer who participated in the investigation of the murder of former World Bank consultant, Dr. Ayodeji Daramola, John Emeje, has...

A police officer who participated in the investigation of the murder of former World Bank consultant, Dr. Ayodeji Daramola, John Emeje, has tendered statements obtained from former Personal Assistant to Governor Fayose Fayose, Goke Olatunji, before an Ekiti State High Court in Ado-Ekiti.









Emeje appeared at the continuation of hearing of the case before Justice Adewale Fowe on the murder of Daramola, a former Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governorship aspirant on 14th August, 2006 at his personal residence in Ijan-Ekiti.

Olatunjis statements tendered by the witness and admitted in evidence by the court include the ones made on 19th October 2006, 10th November 2006 and 18th November 2006.

Emeje, a retired Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP), told the court that he was attached to the Inspector General of Police Special Investigation Unit at the Force Headquarters in Abuja. He said he came to the court to give evidence based on a letter he received from the Ministry of Justice.

He disclosed that he was contacted through a retired Assistant Inspector General of Police (AIG) Amodu Ali whom he said was assigned by the IGP to serve as the Chairman of Force Special Investigation Panel at Force Headquarters.

Emeje explained that Daramola murder case file was transferred from the State Criminal Investigation Department (SCID) of Ekiti State Police Command to the Force Headquarters and he was detailed to carry out investigation.

He said: I was the head of the team and I was actively involved in the investigation; I visited the scene of the crime with my team at the late Dr. Daramolas residence and by that time, he had been buried already.

We saw the grave, the post mortem had been performed by detectives in Ekiti State before the case was transferred. It was in the file, I can identify the report.

Emeje went on: In the course of our investigation, some persons including the defendant (Olatunji) were arrested and interrogated and in the course of the interrogation, the statement of the defendant was

recorded.

The interrogation of the defendant was sequel to a statement made by one of the suspects implicating him (Olatunji) in the murder of the late Daramola. I recorded the statement and subsequent statements were further made by the defendant in my presence.

The witness explained that based on Olatunjis denial of complicity in the killing of Daramola in all the statements he volunteered to the Police, an identification parade was conducted at Force Headquarters but he said he couldnt recall the date.

Emeje identified other suspects in the alleged murder to include Taiwo Olanipekun, Busuyi Aladesanmi and Daniel Ukaegbu with the parade conducted by AIG Ali adding that at the end of the parade, the suspects could not identify Olatunji.

Referring to Exhibits 1 and 3, which were the statements made by defendant, the witness told the court that he (Olatunji) was in Ikoyi Prisons on 14th August, 2006, the day Daramola was murdered.

According to the witness, Olatunji said in the statement that he was arrested on 24th July, 2006 at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport while accompanying his former boss to an overseas trip and was still detained in Lagos when the murder occurred in Ekiti. The case was adjourned to 3rd July, 2017 for further hearing.
Everton striker Romelu Lukaku says he has reached "an agreement" with another Premier League club.The Belgium forward stopped short of naming the club in question and when a transfer could happen, but said he is calm now he knows which direction his future will take.Speaking to journalists while on international duty, Lukaku said: "My agent knows what's going to happen and I know as well."I'm staying calm and we have an agreement with the club as well. We stay calm and at least we have a direction where we want to go."I'm just going to rest for a few days and then just prepare for next season. I want to put the time in on my holiday to take everything to another level and be better than I was last year."Lukaku also confirmed to Belgian media the club will be competing for the Champions League and the Premier League next season with reports circulating that Chelsea are keen on their former player.He told Belgium newspaper HLN: "We are now talking to the club. The most important thing is I want to win trophies."What I would like most is to play in the Champions League and to try and win the Premier League once - or better, a few times. That would be the most beautiful thing."That's important for my progress as a player. I don't want to stay at the same level. I want to improve and I know where I want to do that."
Minister of Finance Kemi Adeosun yesterday said high level corruption was endemic in Nigeria because it was too easy for people to loot ...

Minister of Finance Kemi Adeosun yesterday said high level corruption was endemic in Nigeria because it was too easy for people to loot public funds.He said the Federal Government was working to block avenues for looting and make it harder to hide stolen funds abroad.Adesoun spoke when she chaired a showcase session on the second day of the conference on Promoting International Cooperation in Combating Illicit Financial Flows and Enhancing Asset Recovery to Foster Sustainable Development.The session had the theme: Practical steps to stopping illicit financial flows.It was organised by the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption (PACAC) in collaboration with the Ministries of Justice and Foreign Affairs.The minister said: We are taking steps to improve tax administration, to improve compliance and to generally make it a little more difficult for people to loot the treasury.My experience from the little time Ive spent as a minister is that its far too easy to do these things in Nigeria, and weve got to make it much more difficult.The minister said it was better to prevent looting than to recover stolen funds, which she described as difficult.From the Ministry of Finance perspective, our view is that prevention is better than cure. Recovering money is exciting but its difficult. It takes yearsWere still battling to recover money that was looted from Nigeria 20 years ago. So my perspective as Minister of Finance and as an accountant is: how do we block the money getting out in the first place?How do we strengthen our controls? How do we create the early warning systems that tell us to flag certain transactions? Lets stop the money going out; lets stop the loss, and then we can work on recovery, she said.According to Adeosun, Nigeria could have achieved most of its development goals if public finds had been better channeled.Theres a saying that you cant miss what youve never had. But when we see our crumbling infrastructure, we are missing what we never had.We are missing the road, the power, the capital projects that could have been funded with money that has left our shores illegally, or money that is concealed within the country equally illegally, Adeosun said.The guest speaker, President, Global Financial Integrity, Washington DC, Raymond Baker, suggested ways to stop illicit financial flows, including whole government approach, in which all agencies collaborate and share information; indentifying beneficial ownership of stolen funds, effective use of legislation and developing better monitoring systems.He said assets recovery should be a diplomatic issue to make countries realise that relations can be adversely affected due to refusal to return stolen funds.Baker also recommended the use of global information exchange systems, among others.PACAC Executive Secretary Prof Bolaji Owasanoye, said looting takes place through suspence accounts in which banks open accounts without names and numbers, yet people lodge money in them.We want to see bankers go to jail for it, he said, adding that better use should be made of the Bank Verification System (BVN) in tracking stolen funds.The professor of law said bank chief executive officers and customs officials, among others, should be made to declare their assets.Many CEOs get richer than their organisaions. Its time to use the legislation on assets declaration against banks and customs officials, he said.Owasanoye said there were delays in recovering stolen funds because the person holding money hardly ever wants to leave it.He urged countries holding unto Nigerias looted funds to return them because there was no longer fears they could be re-looted.Acting Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), Addis Ababa, Dr Abdalla Hamdok, represented by Mr Adeyinka Adeyemi, called for an end to secrecy in money transfers.We have to undercut secrecy, he said, adding that if $100million, for instance, moves from Nigeria to another country, it should not be shrouded in secrecy as is presently the case.
Parents of the six Senior Secondary School students who were abducted two weeks ago at Lagos Model College, Igbonla, Epe, have accused government of being insensitive to their plights.Some of them actually accused the state government of treating the matter with kids gloves, adding that it had abandoned them to their fate.One of the parents who spoke with newsmen on the condition of anonymity said:  Today (yesterday) is the 12th day that my son was abducted and government seems not to be concerned. All it does is to keep assuring us that modalities were being worked out on how to rescue them. How long shall we continue to wait? What crime did I commit by sending my son to Lagos Model College?I have so far raised N400,000. My salary is not even up to N100,000 a month. We had to rally round relatives and friends before we got that amount. But the problem is, since they (kidnappers) contacted us last weekend to ask how much we had, we have not heard from them again. Then, we had N320,000 and they asked if we were bargaining for crayfish with them.Why is government silent? Is it because these children are not their biological children? My wife was taken away from the house since last week because she was continually running temperature.I am appealing to Lagos state government to help us. This is the longest any kidnapped student has stayed in abductors den. We just hope that they are safe wherever they are, he said, trying as much as he could not betray emotions.Another parent whose N2 million ransom was rejected, simply told Vanguard on phone: Government has abandoned us.After a long pause, which seemed like eternity, he continued; As it is now, we are on our own. I am appealing to these kidnappers to release our children. What crime did they commit to warrant this emotional and psychological torture meted on them? he asked and hung up.Navy collaborates with Police in rescue effortsMeantime, the Nigerian Navy, yesterday, said that it was collaborating with the Police in the rescue operation of the six students.It, however, said that caution was being applied in the rescue operation in order not to endanger the captives lives.Navys collaboration, as gathered, followed Police inability to navigate the terrain of the camp where the students were relocated to on Monday, due to non-availability of necessary platforms.The abducted students were relocated for the second time Monday following their parents' inability to pay the ransom demanded by the militants for their release.Police sources hinted that the terrain of the creeks was inaccessible as it was covered with foliage, adding that boats at the Police disposal could not access the route.When Vanguard contacted the Navy, saddled with the constitutional responsibility of ensuring safety of the waterways, on its position over the rescue of the abducted students, the Flag Officer Commanding Western Naval Command, Rear Admiral Ferguson Bobai, stated that they were collaborating with the police in the rescue operation.He explained that the use of force was not the best option in the rescue exercise. Rather, he said diplomacy or negotiation was the best option at this given time.Asked to explain what he meant by negotiation, Bobai said: Diplomacy or negotiation is a better option rather than the use of force. Negotiation here means an option that will lead to the rescue of the students instead of force. Remember that the kidnappers were engaged in the early part of the abduction where they suffered casualty.As it is now, the safety of the students is paramount to us. So we are applying every necessary means to ensure that they are not just rescued but rescued alive and we are collaborating with the Police in that regard. Any time the Commissioner of Police calls, we always oblige him. Some of our boats are patrolling with those of the Marine Police.Bobai who is also the Officer-in-Tactical Command of Operation AWATSE, a joint maritime operation created to checkmate excesses of militants and pipeline vandalism, said that the operation was still on, assuring that all was being done to ensure the students safe return.
The Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN, in the 19 Northern States and Abuja, has expressed shock over the recent press conference organi...

The Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN, in the 19 Northern States and Abuja, has expressed shock over the recent press conference organized by Northern youths, where they issued an ultimatum to the Igbos to leave the region within three months.





A statement issued on Wednesday by its Publicity Secretary, Rev. Joseph John Hayab, CAN noted that, it was shocked to have read some shortsighted and ignorant group from our region, calling on Igbos to leave the North before October. Such call is evil and a threat to national security and unity.

Leaders of this group and their sponsors should be arrested and prosecuted immediately.

If we may ask, Which North do they claimed to be speaking for and making these evil threat?

We are Northerners and cannot recall any meeting where such decision was taken and we will never support or encourage anyone to champion such evil idea.

What our country need today is unity for progress not threat from people who dont know and understand the positive contributions and sacrifice our parents and many people have made to keep this country united to this level.

The police should arrest them now without delay.They are not representing the North but some enemies of Nigeria.

We are appealing to peace loving Northerners irrespective of tribe and religion to come out to condemn and disassociate themselves from this group that want to plunge this nation into confusion.

CAN in the 19 Northern States and Abuja is calling on her members not to accept this evil calls but be loving to all Nigerians from all regions and faith.

Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God.
The Senate on Wednesday invited Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr Babatunde Fashola, to brief it on the delay in completing Bodo-Bonny road project.It directed that the minister should brief its Committee on Works on circumstances surrounding Federal Governments inability to partner Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas to complete the project.The upper chamber resolved that the committee should carry out independent and comprehensive evaluation of the project and brief it within four weeks.This emanated from a motion by Sen. Thompson Sekibo (Rivers-PDP) at plenary on Wednesday.Presenting the motion, the lawmaker decried the non-completion of the project in spite of previous appropriations for the completion of the project.In 2016, Gov. Nyesom Wike approached the NLNG management and appealed to the corporation to partner the Federal Government to execute the project.He made the appeal in view of the fact that it would benefit both the Federal Government, the NLNG business empire, the people of Bonny, other communities along the road and the business community.The 37-kilometre Bodo/Bonny road project in Rivers linking Bodo community in Gokana Local Government Area with Grand Bonny in Bonny Local Government hosts the NLNG complex.The project was awarded in 2002 by former President Olusegun Obasanjos administration at the contract value of N20 billion.The Obasanjos administration did not do much on the project after mobilizing the contractor to site as it was poorly funded.The Federal Government did not spend any amount out of the appropriated amount in 2015 and to worsen matters, the project was not captured in the 2016 budget.In the 2017 budget, the Federal Government proposed to spend a meager N9 billion which is not adequate to mobilise the contractors to site.This is the same attitude of the past administrations that eventually caused the abandonment of the project for this long, he said.He said that knowing the importance of the project, the NLNG management accepted to contribute 50 per cent of the contract re-valued at N120 billion, which was N60 billion.Sekibo said that the completion of the road project would enhance the status of the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas and attract more revenue to the government.He stressed that it would improve the business environment and assist in uplifting the standard of living for the indigenes, who had accepted to peacefully host the gas facility.In his contribution, Sen. James Manager (Delta-PDP) called for the political will on the part of the Federal Government to complete the road.He said that the onus lay on the government to fulfil its part of the agreement, particularly with the commitment of the NLNG to pay 50 per cent of the cost.There is N9 billion already in the 2017 budget. So, what is important is for the committee on works to do the necessary coordination for this very important commercial road to come to fruition.If there is any road that should be constructed it should be that road, he said.The Chairman, Committee on Works, Sen. Kabiru Gaya, pointed out that the present administration was fully committed to the project.He said, for the government to put N9 billion on a 35-kilometre road, it shows its commitment.This road is very important because it is the access link between the NLNG and the neighbouring environment.This project from what I have gathered is taking off soon and I assure that all the bottlenecks will be removed, he said.Sen. Magnus Abe (Rivers-APC) said that the project was not one for the South-South, but a project for all Nigerians.He said that all Nigerians would benefit from the project, adding that dividends from the Bonny NLNG paid to the Federal Government over the years, was in billions of Naira.It has been very difficult for Bonny NLNG to operate in maximum capacity at maximum profit because of the cost of transporting every single item by sea and air.And, due to the insecurity in the area, most of the staff members have to be airlifted at every point, every day and all that has created great challenges for the successful operation of the company.In his remarks, the President of the Senate, Dr Bukola Saraki, commended the sponsor of the motion, describing it as important.He said that the project ought to be completed for quick take-off, adding that it would improve host community-company relationship.I remember when the NLNG paid me a courtesy call. They did emphasise this point, that they were ready to finance 50 per cent of the project. The political will is really what we need now.This is another example of public-private-partnership. We just need the political will to make this happen. So, we ought to make this a priority to make sure it benefits all Nigerians, Saraki said.
Senator Kabir Ibrahim Gaya (APC), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Works, has reacted to criticisms trailing the N2.5 trillion recovered...

Senator Kabir Ibrahim Gaya (APC), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Works, has reacted to criticisms trailing the N2.5 trillion recovered from looters,and deposited in the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).





Senator Gaya said while he understands the feelings of Nigerians that the money can be used to fix economic hardship and budget deficit, he pointed out that there are ongoing cases in court.





His words: Only N500 billion can be accessed while the remaining N2 trillion is still there in the bank. This money is already being contested between the accused and the government in courts.





There are cases of corruption since the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo to date. Buhari wants to work and he needs money to do so but there are suits in court.

On alleged delay of the 2017 budget by the Senate, Gaya said the view was wrong.

He insisted that Senate President Bukola, Saraki and Speaker Yakubu Dogara, were in fact very keen on quick passage of the budget.

When we looked at the budget, there were so many things that needed to be addressed. I said we cannot finish it until April and they shouted at me, he told Daily Trust.

But I explained that President Buhari said in the federal executive council in January, he approved 36 road projects, and I know that they were not captured in the 2017 budget but in the 2016 budget.

That is why we had to check the budget of 2017 carefully. This is why I commend Saraki, Dogara, Goje and Dawaki because we studied the budget item by item, and we were able to finish the budget and submitted it to the government.

The budget of the Ministry of Works was about N28 billion during the last administration and when Buhari came, he made a budget of N280 billion on roads and N350 billion this year as his commitment to have good roads across the country.

And the National Assembly has amended the act to reduce the long process of procurement to three or four months because projects approved for 2016 were not procured until March and April of this year (2017). These are the reasons why we had the delay
The meet will take place on the sidelines of the G-20 Summit in Indonesia.
Once elected, members of the Public Service Commission typically have an easy time hanging onto their jobs. Voters dont know much about them or their work, and the only real money in the campaigns has traditionally come from utilities and others 
Andrea Milstead lived the coast life until landing in Council Bluffs a little more than five years ago.

Milstead was born in California and lived there until she was 11. Her family then moved to New York for a couple of years before making the move to Iowa, where the cost of living was cheaper and, most importantly, they had family living.

She transferred to Kirn Middle School toward the end of her seventh-grade year and later went on to attend Abraham Lincoln High School. A lover of the big city, she said she was guarded about leaving the Big Apple for the Midwest.

To be honest, I didnt want to move, she said. Coming from a big city, I thought Council Bluffs was going to be all farmland.

She came to realize that Council Bluffs and the metropolitan area as a whole wasnt just tractors and corn. And looking back, she said she is grateful for the experience.

Im glad that I moved here, she said. Ive got to experience different cultures ... backgrounds and lifestyles while moving all across the country.

Milstead said she was pretty shy during her time at Kirn, but that all changed when she got to high school. The recently-graduated senior took part in several extracurricular activities, many in the fine arts department, and she said she felt like a part of a big family during the past four years.

She got to deliver parting to words to that family as one of three senior commencement speakers during Sundays graduation ceremony at the Mid-America Center.

And now Milstead has another significant life event ahead of her, as she will be heading off to college in the fall. She will attend the University of Iowa to major in mathematics with an interest in actuarial science.

She said it was funny that she is studying math given her fine arts background, but she said she has always enjoyed the field of study.

Although she is leaving the high school she called home for four years, Milstead said she will always remember what Activities Director Jeff Novotny tagged his daily announcements with.

Its always a great day to be a Lynx.
A sky lantern festival is hoping to come to Council Bluffs this fall, though it will likely run into some obstacles before getting off the ground.

The Shine Festival would feature the release of around 5,000 or more sky lanterns, also known as Chinese lanterns, which are small, hot air balloons made of paper with an opening at the bottom with a suspended fire source.

Organizers are working to hold the event at Westfair in October.

Rick Killion and Nikki Woods with Westfair told the Pottawattamie County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday that the Shine Festival organizers have done their due diligence in speaking with local fire departments and going through the permit process.

But county supervisors, along with Killion, Wood and Pottawattamie County Planning Director Matt Wyant, expressed concern about the objects.

Theyre really dangerous, Supervisor Tim Wichman said. I wouldnt let them ever go off.

Attempts to reach Shine Festival organizers were unsuccessful.

On the festivals website, the organization notes, We modify our lanterns to allow us to put on a safe event. Unfortunately, most lanterns you are going to buy online are not modified to be safe. They are made to fly far and high.

The International Fire Code, followed by fire departments across the country, prohibits the use of sky lanterns unless they are tethered.

The Shine Festival said it spends months with state and local officials to work out the details and obtain the proper permits. Wyant told the board the festival has applied for a fireworks permit to release the lanterns.

Council Bluffs Fire Marshal Larry Wohlers said he was contacted by event organizers, but told them he has no jurisdiction on the area. The Council Bluffs City Council will vote Monday on the first reading of an ordinance to adopt the updated 2015 language from the International Fire Code, with a Wohlers-suggested amendment that bans the lanterns all together.

Theyre too dangerous, Wohlers said. Its an open flame in the air. You dont have any control of it once you launch it. Its my recommendation not to allow them.

On its website, the festival said organizers have local medical and fire suppression professionals at events.

We take the safety of our participants and venue property very seriously. We try to be as safe as possible. ... We are at the mercy of the weather and if it is unsafe to have our lantern launch, we wont have it, the website states.

The festival said it checks wind direction the day of and has volunteers ready to pick up the lanterns once they land. Any lanterns  which are made of rice paper, a bamboo ring, a fire resistant cotton string and a cotton sponge that burns up  that are not located by volunteers will fully biodegrade in a few months.

Wyant noted that if the festival is approved but there is a burn ban in place at the time of the event, the festival would be cancelled.

The county board noted the proposing timing isnt ideal, as October is a time when the cropland surrounding Westfair will be dry. Thats not to mention the homes in the area.

Im not a fun-hater, Woods said. But we have neighbors.

The 11-member Westfair board is scheduled to vote on whether to allow the festival to take place at the fairgrounds Thursday night. Killion said he plans to vote no.

This falls under our fireworks policy, so I will vote against it, he said, noting Westfair implemented a ban on fireworks a few years ago as another part of its effort to be a good neighbor to surrounding residents.

Killion said the Shine Festival organizers have been nothing but professional during the process.

Board Chairman Justin Schultz said hed be interested in a demonstration of the organizations work in ensuring the lanterns dont float too far away.

The board agreed unanimously to table a vote on the festivals fireworks permit application until the Westfair board votes on the issue.
DES MOINES (AP)  The Homestead farm is governed by a set of distinct ecosystems.

Like many other acreages across Iowa, the symbiotic relationships between soil, weather, farmers, seeds and pollinators produce the foods that make up our dinners.

But unlike so many other farms, the most important ecosystem at the Homestead is the one happening above ground, between people. Its the strength and expansion of the estates emotional ecosystem that will be used to determine whether 2017s yield was up to par. And its smiles and fist bumps, not acres planted or crops harvested, that will dictate a successful day.

Because, on this particular acreage, most employees have autism spectrum disorder, which can severely impair communication and social skills, The Des Moines Register reported. So while the men of the Homestead and the specifically trained associates who work alongside them harvest veggies for a Community Supported Agriculture program, their mission is more than farming. The Homestead is training these men for life.

On this farm, what really matters is how a person grows  not what they grow, said Angela Book-Glynn, a director at the Homestead, a Des Moines-based nonprofit focused on improving autistic Iowans lives.

Located just east of Southeast Polk High School, the farm currently employs four men who have autism: Thomas Kroska, Tony Hunter, Lloyd Williams and James Holaday.

Monday through Friday, they are tasked with all that goes into keeping up a working farm. They plant fields, harvest fruits and veggies, box them up for the Homesteads CSA  which runs until the end of September  and deliver those packages to specified pickup locations. They also create hanging baskets, prepare bedding plants, cultivate poinsettias and construct live wreathes.

In doing so, the men are bucking the upsetting trend of adults on the spectrum lacking opportunities for meaningful, paid employment, Book-Glynn said. Even though advocates have pushed organizations big and small to employ differently-abled people, many autistic adults remain unemployed or underemployed, experts say.

The farms goal is to give their employees an opportunity to dip their toes into the workforce, eventually growing their skills and confidence enough to find a job in the greater community just as their regularly developing peers do.

For us, this is so much bigger than just getting a box of produce, said Book-Glynn. I strongly believe that if you can contribute to your income, you can contribute to society. And thats what we want for the (employees) here, to be contributing members of society who are proud of their work and themselves.

Thats what everyone  no matter their ability  deserves.

Breakfast at Kroskas apartment, where he lives with two other autistic men, used to be a silent affair, said Don Cochran, Kroskas longtime aide. Like hear-a-pin-drop silent, he said, and youd be hard pressed to get him to look you in the eye.

Youd be lucky to get two words out of him the whole day, Cochran said.

But after seven years of working on the farm, the mornings at Kroskas apartment are louder. Kroska has a full menu that he asks for at breakfast, Cochran said, and hell throw out questions about Cochrans family or what theyre going to do that day.

While seemingly small, the ability to hold eye contact, start conversations and respond to questions or remarks in the moment was a major milestone for Kroska, Cochran and Book-Glynn agreed. Those are entry-level skills to interacting as an independent individual, they said.

His interaction with others is so much greater than it was before because of working on the farm, Cochran said. I see a lot more confidence in him. I think, in general, he is a shy person, but now hes glowing and brimming with spirit and assurance.

Both attribute that development to his time on the farm, where he has to interact with colleagues, problem solve and articulate issues and desires.

To understand how programs like the Homestead farm impact people with autism, one has to redefine the words big and small, Book-Glynn said. Its really those seemingly small changes which make a huge impact in these mens lives, she said.

In our society, work defines who you are, Book-Glynn said. It gives you self-esteem. You hear that all the time, What do you do? With this job, they can say, I work on a farm. Or I plant potatoes.

Or maybe for someone who is working on life skills in general it is, I got to get up, she continued. I got to set an alarm. I have to know how to get to work on time. I have to know how to focus. Whatever it is, they have a purpose now.

In addition to communication difficulties, autistic people often also have sensory issues. Certain sounds or lights can be extremely distracting, Book-Glynn said, as can tasks that dont have specific beginnings or endings.

But so many of the pitfalls an autistic person might experience in an office environment arent an issue at the farm, she added. Fluorescent lights are replaced by the suns rays. Endless tasks are interchanged with structured requirements. And whenever an employee needs a break or to switch assignments, the answer is undoubtedly OK.

While big businesses like Walgreens are making hiring employees with disabilities a part of corporate culture and smaller startups like Chicago-based Aspiritech are pushing innovative solutions to create a more welcoming workplace, 90 percent of autistic adults are unemployed or underemployed, according to Advancing Futures for Adults with Autism, a consortium of autism advocacy organizations.

More specifically, only 36 percent of adults ages 18 to 25 and 58 percent of adults ages 26 or older had paid employment, showed data collected in 2009 by the Kennedy Krieger Institute, an institution dedicated to studying brain disorders and developmental disabilities.

Of those who did not currently have paid employment, 42 percent said they wanted to work but couldnt find work, the study reported. Whatever their other reasons for not working, two-thirds said they also feared the workplace would be too challenging for them because of their autism.

When the planning for the Homestead farm started back in the early 1990s, local sustainable farming was in vogue, said Book-Glynn. But using farming as a tool for autistic adults was then and remains a fairly unique model in the field.

If you think about that time frame, the farm started not long after the period when people with disabilities were just put into institutions, she said. There were not a lot of options or creative approaches then and there certainly were no options for people with autism.

And although the Homestead isnt the only farm working with autistic or otherwise differently abled people, using farming to be therapeutic is still a unique model, she said.

Not too many other organizations can say, Oh, you like being outside? We have the place for you! she said. Or, Oh, you have difficulty with noise and people and too much stimulation? We have a job for you! Or, You like to finish things beginning to end? We have the perfect thing for you.

The farm offering opportunities for the men to excel is just one part of the ecosystem, the other important part is how the mens excitement and pride with their own progress rubs off on all the other employees.

Honestly, I probably learn more about the intangible qualities of happiness and fulfillment from these men than I teach them, Book-Glynn said. Thomas, for example, is so positive that he puts my life back into perspective when he greets me. I know he is going to ask me the same question and we have our little moment together and it just reminds me about what is really important in this world. You know, here is an individual who struggles with the symptoms of autism and can come in here and smile every day and go out there and work.

Its like, what the heck am I complaining about? she continued. I just need to go out there and work, too.

Ashley Bonnell, an autism associate who works alongside the men, said this job has allowed her to work on herself as she helps the men gain skills for their own independence.

Each one of these guys is really special to me, she said. Before I started here, I used to be really passive, but now I can say, OK, this is what we are doing, so theyve made me a stronger person.

That might not seem like a big deal, but it is a big deal to me, she said. Its priceless.

While that newfound purpose may be priceless on one hand, it is costly on the other. The men are paid through Medicaid and minimal funding from a few vocational programs, Book-Glynn said, but the farming equipment is maintained and restored by hand. Rarely is there money left in the budget for new supplies.

And attracting funding for work with autistic adults can be difficult.

Children are the focus now, Book-Glynn said. Research on children is the focus right now. Everything is about funding the children and, gosh, that is wonderful, but dont forget that those kids grow up and they become adults who need a job and want to live their life.

But thats why we are here, she said. And thats why well always have the farm.
DES MOINES (AP)  Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley is accusing the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs of lying about wait times for medical appointments at Iowas VA hospitals, based on documents provided by a whistleblower.

The Iowa Republican said the data shows the agency provided false information to his committee in late February when it said no veterans had been waiting more than 90 days for care earlier this year at the two medical centers.

According to the whistleblower data, which Grassley said the VA has since confirmed as accurate, the Iowa City VA reported 537 veterans waiting for a clinical appointment between 91-180 days, 539 between 181 days to a year, and 232 between one and two years.

The other VA hospital, in Des Moines, showed hundreds of others waiting for appointments more than 90 days, Grassley said the documents from mid-February show.

I would draw the conclusion that they were misleading us because the information was probably embarrassing, Grassley said in an interview Monday with The Associated Press. Its a crime that veterans are being treated this way.

The VA did not immediately respond to messages.

VA Secretary David Shulkin said in a May 26 letter to Grassley he was disheartened to learn of the contradictory information.

I assure you that was not our intent and believe this was a case of misunderstanding between VA and committee staff, he wrote.

Grassley said he doesnt believe it was a misunderstanding at all because he said his staff made clear in multiple meetings the information the committee was seeking. He said VA officials eventually acknowledged the whistleblower information was accurate. Grassley responded to Shulkin in a letter on Friday.

The appearance of an attempt to mislead the committee about the extent of the wait times in these facilities is extremely disturbing, Grassley said.

Grassley said a bill the House passed in March up for debate in the Senate Tuesday evening may help.

It increases the VAs authority to remove employees at all levels of the department and shortens the removal process. It also ensures an individual removed from the VA is not kept on the government payroll while appealing. Shulkin has called for its passage.

Grassley and 13 other senators signed a letter in October to Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert McDonald seeking answers about why fewer than six employees responsible for patient wait time problems have been fired in the last two years.

The letter cites an inspector general report filed six months ago that says supervisors instructed employees to manipulate patient wait time data in 40 VA medical facilities in 19 states.

The wait times have been a focus for the agency since a 2014 scandal involving delays at the Phoenix VA medical center during which as many as 40 veterans died while waiting months for appointments and it was determined VA personnel had been providing false data on patient wait times.
In the aftermath of President Donald Trumps decision to pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement, its been heartening to see cities, counties, states, nonprofit organizations, businesses and other entities in the country vow to continue to address climate change and other environmental issues.

The president announced his decision to leave the accord last week, saying its a job-killer for Americans, according to the Associated Press. But this agreement isnt hurting jobs, including in the coal industry.

Market factors have played a large part in the changing landscape in coal production, as renewable energies have become more viable and the need and use of natural gas continues to trend upward.

The Paris agreement lacked just about everything beyond non-binding commitments to work toward energy independence and other moves to slow the continued onset of climate change. But it was a start to a process that is more urgent than some people would like to admit.

And it was a start that featured widespread support for the first time. The U.S. is joined by Syria and Nicaragua  the latter a nation that felt the deal didnt go far enough  as the only countries not to sign.

Even though the federal government has pulled out of the agreement, its still up to Americans to lead when it comes to climate change and the environment.

All citizens of this great nation should realize that clean air and clean water are not only an issue for today but also an issue for tomorrow. And if we dont address the problems were experiencing today, we wont be able to tomorrow.

It should go without saying but, alas, it needs to be said: The environment is not a partisan issue. We need both sides of the aisle to come together and work toward goals to better the health of our people and places.

With the federal government abdicating its role as a leader on the world stage, other entities will continue their work toward the goal of a healthier planet. The AP reported that more than 100 colleges and universities have pledged to uphold the Paris Accord.

States like California, a leader in the fight, wont change their priorities as they move forward. In Iowa, wind energy production isnt going anywhere.

Luckily, leaving the Paris Agreement is a three-year process, meaning the U.S. will be committed to its provisions through almost all of 2020.

We hope, over the course of that time, President Trump and his administration will reconsider and realize that America must be a leader  not only in words but in actions  in the fight against climate change and addressing of other environmental issues.
The following editorial appeared May 31 in The Des Moines Register.

In June 2012, the Waterloo police picked up three individuals suspected of raping two 15-year-old girls in the basement of a known gang house on Adams Street.

The suspects, Deantay Williams, Taevon Washington and Cordarrel Smith, agreed to be interviewed and they provided the police with DNA samples for testing. Within an hour or so, they were released without being booked, jailed, fingerprinted or charged with a crime. They were allowed to leave the police station with no conditions or limitations placed on their release.

The police then sent the DNA samples to the Criminalistics Laboratory of the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation. But just a few weeks after the alleged rapes, two young cousins  10-year-old Lyric Cook and 8-year-old Elizabeth Collins  vanished while taking a bike ride near their grandmothers house in Evansdale. Five months later, their bodies were discovered in a park 25 miles from where they were last seen, and their murders remain unsolved.

According to court records, the Evansdale case consumed scarce state resources at the DCI and resulted in a delay in the crime labs processing of the DNA samples from the Waterloo rape case. The lab didnt complete its work on those samples until October 2013, at which point the three suspects were arrested and formally charged.

The 17-month delay, combined with a poorly written Iowa law that doesnt adequately define the point at which an arrest is made, would later jeopardize the states entire case against the defendants. In 2015, the Iowa Court of Appeals ordered the charges dismissed because the suspects werent charged within the 45 days of their arrest as required by law.

That finding was based on a 2010 Iowa Supreme Court ruling that declared an arrest is made not when a charge is filed or a person is jailed, but when a reasonable person concludes that he or she has been arrested.

The suspects, of course, argued that they believed they had been arrested in June 2012 when they were interviewed and released  not when they were picked up, booked, formally charged and hauled before a judge in late 2013.

Fortunately, the Iowa Supreme Court has reversed itself on this matter of defining arrest. Noting that no other state in the nation uses a reasonable belief definition of arrest, a 4-3 majority of the court said last Thursday that it had erred in 2010 and the arrest process is completed once a person is formally charged and appears in court.

This means the prosecution of the Waterloo men can proceed. But, more importantly, it means that police, not suspects, will determine the timing of an arrest. Defendants will not be able to dictate that charges be filed against them prematurely as a way to pre-empt an ongoing investigation and force a case to trial.

As the states lawyers argued, the unintended effect of the Supreme Courts 2010 ruling was to ban the prosecution of an individual for even the most heinous crimes if the prosecutor failed to file charges within 45 days of the suspect reasonably believing he was under arrest by police.

That, the state argued, created the added undesirable effect of pressuring prosecutors to resolve doubtful cases in favor of early  and possibly unwarranted  prosecutions.

That could not possibly have been the intent of Iowa legislators when they crafted the ambiguous set of laws that attempt to define an arrest  which is why state lawmakers should re-examine those statutes in 2018 to make clear their intent.

For now, though, the Iowa Supreme Courts new interpretation of the law brings Iowa into line with the 49 other states and with the federal government, which defines an arrest as the point at which a suspect is charged and held to answer for that charge.
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Software developer Ideagen is to create 50 new jobs as it bids to achieve an eighth year of consecutive growth.

The Nottinghamshire-based company, which provides information management programmes for clients such as the NHS and Heineken, will establish posts across its UK operations with diverse roles ranging from senior management to graduates and apprenticeships.

About 25 of the jobs will be at the firm's head office at Ergo House, in Ruddington Fields Business Park.

The recruitment drive includes 11 new employees for its UK-wide development department, nine customer support roles and 15 new positions in sales and marketing.

Three more people will oversee critical IT infrastructure, while further posts have been created for HR and quality assurance.

Ideagen has already launched a completely new demand department focusing on new business, comprising of five demand executives and demand manager.

Chief operating officer Barnaby Kent said the new roles were crucial to cement the company's position as one of the world's leading software companies.

He said: "As Ideagen continues to develop as an organisation, evolving into a leading software company while securing more complex and technically challenging projects, it is crucial that we continue to invest in the business and in our people.

"These roles are absolutely vital as we continue in that development.

"By touching every key operational point across the business  from sales and marketing to development and technical services  these new roles will ensure we continue to be well equipped, both in workforce and skillset, to successfully meet the demands of our customers across the ever-changing industries we operate in."

The new jobs will take Ideagen's global staff numbers to above 400, including 110 in Nottinghamshire.

It follows on from the company's trading update in May, which revealed that the firm expected to confirm another year of growth.

Revenue rose by 24 percent from 21.9m to 27.1m for the year ending April 30, while operating profit also increased by 24 percent from 6.3m to 7.8m.

Ideagen is an acquisitions-based organisation that has operated a "buy and build" policy since 2009.

In the past 12 months, it has acquired UK-based Covalent Solutions, IPI Solutions Ltd and PleaseTech Ltd, as well as Bulgarian organisation Logen Ltd.

David Hornsby, Ideagen CEO, added: "We are pleased to report on another successful year for the group, which included four new acquisitions and several key contracts across all of our strategic verticals.

"For nearly a quarter of a century, we have provided software solutions to thousands of customers across the globe such as the NHS in the UK, Emirates, Heineken and Harvard University.

"As we continue to expand the company, we are delighted to be able to bring both new investment and new opportunities across our operations in the United Kingdom.

"These new roles will see a 12 percent growth in staff numbers  exceeding the current UK economy growth of around two percent  and will offer competitive wages and comprehensive benefits in line with our status as one of the fastest growing software companies in the world."

Mr Kent added: "We already have some of the best quality, safety, risk, performance and audit software products on the market but having a skilled workforce behind each product is the lifeblood of the company.

"That's why I am delighted that, in what arguably remains an uncertain period in the midst of Brexit and the current UK election, that Ideagen continues to be strong enough and successful enough to offer new and exciting jobs across the United Kingdom."
Forms are required to go to the County Clerks office by law

Lincoln County property owners have received their valuations for 2017, and County Assessor Julie Stenger said knowing how  and where  to file a protest is important.

Assessments are based on several factors set by Nebraska law.

Stenger said many people have the misconception that valuations go up because the county has a budget shortfall.

Many people think the county has to make up these tax dollars by increasing the valuations, she said. That is not the case at all.

Stenger said valuations have nothing to do with any government budget.

Valuations, by state statute, are based on what the market shows property is selling for, Stenger said.

Should property owners want to discuss their valuations, Stenger encourages them to come to her office as soon as possible.

Folks need to come in and talk to us so we can go over the data and make sure what we have on file is accurate, Stenger said. However, when they get ready to file a protest, by law they have to file that form with the County Clerks Office.

Stenger said many people mail their protest form to her office and she has to return it to them. She also said when someone mails the form to her office at the last minute, that creates another issue.

First of all, the form did not go to the County Clerks Office as required, Stenger said. Second, there is not time for the taxpayer to resend it since the deadline to protest has passed.

A tip sheet with instructions for filing a protest was sent out with the tax notices.

There is also a reminder that the burden of proof is on the taxpayer, and if they want us to change anything, we encourage them to bring with them any photos, appraisals or whatever they have to discuss the valuation, Stenger said. If they bring it all with them that first time, then they only have to make one trip.

Otherwise, the taxpayer has to make a second appointment and that increases the risk the protest will not be filed before the June 31 deadline.

Stenger said the county assessors website at co.lincoln.ne.us/assessor/ and the GIS Workshop website at lincoln.gisworkshop.com/ both have information to help taxpayers with the protest process.

The assessors office may be contacted at 308-534-4350 for questions that are not answered on the websites.
Such was Sami Vaivai's desire to see his son Paterika make a career by playing rugby league that he kept a battle with liver cancer that he would lose in a matter of months secret from his son.

In 2009 Vaivai was in the first year of a two-year deal with the Melbourne Storm who had sent him to Brisbane to complete his schooling at Wavell State High School.

Born in Samoa and just 17 years of age Vaivai was already feeling the deep pangs of longing for home and when he returned to south Auckland for school holidays he knew there was something his father hadn't told him.

Diagnosed only months earlier, Sami passed away just two months after Vaivai had come home to visit, his decision not to return to Brisbane vindicated by the final days that he got to spend with his father.

"When I came home I figured out there was something wrong," Vaivai told NRL.com. "He was a bit skinny and looked a bit sick in the face so I kind of figured it out and decided to stay home and spend the rest of my time there.

"He had liver cancer. I was only going home for the two-week school holiday and then I found out that he'd had it for four months or so but he didn't want me to find out so I could focus on footy.

"Two months after I went home my father passed away so it was a good move for me to go back home and just spend some time with him before he passed away."



Match Draw Widget

[2017] Telstra Premiership - Round 14: Titans vs Warriors

His desire to remain closer to family put Vaivai in the path of the Warriors who signed him to a two-year under-20s contract.

In two years at the club he didn't feature in a single under-20s game and was cut at the end of the 2011 season but rather than holding any grudges Vaivai is thankful for the opportunity the club gave him and also their decision to let him go.

The 25-year-old has played six of the past seven games for the Titans and says there is no bitterness on his part as he prepares to face the club that cut him loose for the first time in his young NRL career.

"I made it hard on myself," Vaivai conceded. "I didn't really make some good choices and I was surrounding myself with some of the same friends I grew up with.

"I was just focusing on my father and my family at that moment. Footy was just in the back of my mind.

"I was lucky enough to have an older brother to step into that father figure role. We had my sisters and my mother to take care of so footy wasn't the main part of my life.

"I just wanted my family to be OK and that was it.

"I didn't really give myself the best opportunity then. It just took me a while to crack the 20s until my last year in 2012 [with Newcastle].

"It taught me a lot of life lessons, that talent can only get you so far and the work ethic is the main thing that gets you to the next level.

"It was a rough lesson how they let me go but I'm happy because it taught me how to mature a bit.

"I know a lot of the boys that play there so it will be good to play against them and have a run against them."

Always in his thoughts is his father, a man who was a police officer in Samoa before becoming a maths teacher in New Zealand and who continues to inspire Vaivai to make the most of the opportunities now in front of him.

"There was always times when I didn't make right choices but he was always there to give me that tough love and I always appreciated it," said Vaivai.

"I never took it the wrong way. I always knew where it was coming from.

"He was such a good father and role model for us, me and my older brother, in how to be a man.

"I miss him every day but I know he's watching down.

"I learnt a lot of things off him so it's good that I can still carry on his last name.

"The Vaivai name is now on the TV so all my family is happy with that."



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An industry poll found overwhelming support among Hoosiers to modernize the state's alcohol laws by allowing Sunday alcohol sales and cold beer sales at pharmacies, gas stations and grocery stores.

The Indiana Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Store Association commissioned a statewide poll by Fabrizio, Lee and Associates that found 71 percent of Hoosiers favor cold beer sales at any retailer, not just liquor stores, and 65 percent favor Sunday alcohol sales. To put those numbers in perspective, President Donald Trump carried deep-red Indiana with only 56 percent of the vote last year, and no Indiana gubernatorial candidate has gotten 65 percent of the vote since 1819.

This poll confirms that Hoosiers view Indianas alcohol laws as nonsensical and in desperate need of change, said Scot Imus, executive director of the Indiana Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Store Association. We are encouraged that this has been acknowledged by the leadership of the General Assembly with the announcement last week of the establishment of the alcohol code revision commission.

The poll of 600 registered voters across the state also found that 80 percent of residents would not change where they currently buy beer, wine or liquor if the laws were modernized.

The industry group is launching a Chill Indiana campaign that will "take a sometimes satirical look at Indianas archaic laws" and let residents contact their lawmakers. Eventually, it will identify where candidates stand on alcohol sales

We want to find a way to harness the strong support shown for responsible alcohol reform measures and ensure that Hoosiers are able to send that message to their legislators, Imus said. By the end of the year, we will be installing kiosks in convenience stores throughout Indiana to enable the thousands of consumers our members do business with on a daily basis to let their voices be heard.

The rival Indiana Association of Beverage Retailers, the liquor store lobby that's been fighting to prevent cold beer and Sunday sales, called for strict alcohol regulations to remain in place.

Big Oil is well-intentioned with their polls and campaign. However, they miss the point  alcohol is a dangerous commodity. It is not meant to be convenient," Indiana Association of Beverage Retailers Vice Chair Jon Sinder said. "The small business members of the Indiana Association of Beverage Retailers remain committed to their mandate from the State of Indiana to protect Hoosiers while preserving access to these dangerous substances in their communities. As our state continues to be embroiled in a deepening addiction crisis, it is more important than ever that we look for ways to control access to potentially fatal commodities, not continue down the road of deregulation.
Great Lakes steel production plummeted to 621,000 tons last week, a decrease of 4.6 percent.

Steel mills in the Great Lakes region cranked out 651,000 tons of metal the previous week, according to the American Iron and Steel Institute. Most of the steel made in the Great Lakes region is produced in Lake and Porter counties in Northwest Indiana.

So far this year, U.S. steelmakers have produced 38.1 million tons of steel, about 2.8 percent more than they did during the same period in 2016. Steel mills have been running at a capacity of 74.4 percent so far this year, up from 72.1 percent through the same time last year.

Domestic steelmakers used about 75 percent of their steelmaking capacity in the week that ended June 3, down from 75.2 percent the previous week, according to the American Iron and Steel Institute. Some analysts say 90 percent would be considered healthy for the industry.

Steelmaking capacity utilization was 74.5 percent during the same time period in 2016.

Overall, U.S. national steel output dipped by 4,000 tons last week to 1.749 million tons, a 0.22 percent decrease, according to the American Iron and Steel Institute.

Production in the Southern District, the country's second-largest steel-producing region, which spans mini-mills across the South, rose to 665,000 tons last week, up from 644,000 tons the previous week.
DANA  I didn't know who Ernie Pyle was as a third-grader growing up in Rockville in the 1950s.

But the famous WW II correspondent, who had died 15 years before on an island while covering the Pacific Theater, would set me on my career path.

It all started when I began checking out a series of biographies of famous Americans from the public library's children's section. They had the same book cover format (see photo) and old-fashion silhouette illustrations within.

Pyle, I learned, grew up in nearby Dana, the son of a tenant farmer. He was fond of writing.

I, the son of a local butcher, also was in love with writing.

I was too young to be going into the adult section of the library, but that was where I had to go to find his books: Brave Men and Here is Your War, both collections of Pyle's World War II columns.

The books provided an altogether different picture of warfare and soldiers than what I had envisioned based on my extensive viewing of John Wayne films.

The story of the beloved Indiana University product had inspired me to find a niche in the newspaper business in a way that I doubt a 144-character tweet or a five-minute video ever could. The biography and his books had ushered me not just into the adult section of the library, but the adult world, where the good guys also died.

I knew from the time I was 10 years old what I wanted to do with my life, thanks to Ernie Pyle.

There probably will never be another war correspondent like him.

Warfare has changed.

Embedded doesn't necessarily mean now what it did then.

The media have changed.

Pyle's dispatches embraced the notion that the war was just as much Pvt. Russell Lusher's as Gen. Douglas MacArthur's, and told readers so in describing the Marion, Indiana, GI's two-man dugout.

A quote from Capt. Jed Dailey of Sharon, Massachusetts, regarding why he rushed back to his combat unit from a shoulder wound: ... Your place is with your outfit, carried just as much weight as a comment from Gen. George S. Patton.

What Lt. Jim Gray of Wichita Falls, Texas, had to say about flak jackets merited as much space as anything five-star Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower might have intoned.

Was it an unconventional way to cover a war?

Was it old-fashion schmaltz, tinged with too much sentimentality?

Pyle won a Pulitzer Prize with his method.

It would be a shame to think the Ernie Pyle WWII Museum would once again have to close its doors as it did in 2009, and visitors would not experience the full flavor of the Hoosier writer's legacy.

His was the common touch. While it might not be appreciated now, it should.

A great American who went to war with a typewriter, Pyle had legions of followers  more than any general or admiral.

Stick your nose in a book, the older generation frequently tells youngsters.

Maybe we haven't told them often enough why they should.
Food lovers with a craving for seafood may want to visit a local fish house for a sample of its fare.

Harbor Point Shrimp House & Seafood, located in Burnham, Illinois, features a varied menu starring everything from shrimp, lobster and jambalaya to chicken wings, red beans and rice and assorted desserts.

The restaurant, which features only carry-out, is housed in a small building. After surveying the menu on the wall, customers walk up to the counter to place their orders. Most orders are prepared in a timely fashion.

During a recent visit to Harbor Point, we didn't have to wait very long for the food to be prepared. For our early dinner on a recent Sunday afternoon, we ordered the Shrimp Dinner ($8.65) and a Tilapia Dinner ($6).

Both preparations were fried and served with French fries, a roll and a side. As our side, we chose coleslaw, but potato salad was also available.

Both the shrimp and tilapia had a medium batter, nothing too heavy or greasy. The meals were flavorful and were served in ample portions.

Harbor Point is located on normally busy Torrence Avenue. It's not far from the recently opened Torrence Avenue bridge, which has been closed for nearly two years. Seafood fans and the operators of the business, I'm sure, are pleased to have the bridge back in working order making the eatery more accessible to people.

Among menu items at Harbor Point are Orange Roughy Dinners ($9); Jumbo Chicken Wing Dinners ( $5.75); Crab Chips Dinners ($9.15); Catfish Dinners ($7); and more.

Also featured are Lobster Mac and Cheese, ($5.95); Fried Lobster Tails ($28.50); Seafood Gumbo ($5.50 and $10.50); Fried Alligator ($8.20 for small); as well as assorted desserts and sides.

Various cakes for $3.95 a slice and Key Lime Pie, Cheesecake and more are available.

Additional items to accompany a dinner include fried okra, fried mushrooms and fried clam strips among other dishes.

Seafood fans may easily get hooked on the menu here.
In a dining room in a wealthy district in the hills above Haiti's capital, waiters in black outfits whisk plates of crunchy malanga fritters and a creamy cornmeal dish to well-off locals and tourists. In the kitchen, the chef ladles glistening, fresh conch into a pot as his staff dice tomatoes and watercress.

Haitian cuisine is a spicy confluence of French, Spanish, African and Amerindian cooking traditions that blends indigenous ingredients like the rich, earthy black mushroom known as djon djon with a variety of cooking techniques, crusted baguettes and flaky pastries. For decades, Haitian food has been seen as simple, hearty fare best simmered for hours over charcoal stoves at home or fried up and served in cheap curbside restaurants. Haitians who could afford a night out at a restaurant used to opt for versions of continental menus or a generic Caribbean fusion mimicking the food in island resorts.

In recent years a new generation of Haitian chefs here and abroad has begun reimagining the country's cuisine. Traditional delicacies like the milky cornmeal beverage called akasan; the fiery carrot and cabbage condiment called pikliz; citrus-marinated chicken with boiled cashews; and whole fish in spiced broth are being prepared using haute cuisine techniques and served in the growing number of restaurants serving foreigners and Haiti's small middle- and upper-class.

"It's a real exciting time right now for Haitian gastronomy. We have serious, bona fide culinarians who are creative and focused on raising the profile of our food," chef Jouvens Jean said as chile-laced shrimp sizzled in a pan at Jojo Restaurant in Petionville.

Accomplished chefs like Jean and Stephan Berrouet-Durand moved back to their homeland from the United States, importing the presentation and kitchen know-how of the various countries where they've worked, while others are increasingly vocal ambassadors for their food culture overseas, appearing on U.S. and European cooking programs.

"Suddenly, a lot of Haitian chefs don't have this fear of saying 'Haitian cuisine' out loud. It is becoming a very popular thing," said Georges Laguerre, a Miami-based food entrepreneur who ran a Haitian eatery in Los Angeles for over a decade.

Dependence on food imports has grown as a result of intractable economic stagnation, but local favorites like malanga root, chayote squash and a dark spinach are still grown organically on farmland plowed by oxen and maintained without pesticides or chemical fertilizers only because most farmers could never dream of affording them.

The fact that Haiti has a vibrant food culture at all can be surprising to those who only associate this Caribbean nation with hunger and crushing poverty. But even through decades of decline and recurrent political turmoil, Haiti never lost its delicious recipes.

"I think one of Haiti's greatest resources is its food. I have yet to meet anyone who did not appreciate the flavors of traditional Haitian cuisine," said Nadege Fleurimond, a Haitian-born writer and caterer based in New York City whose 2014 cookbook "Haiti Uncovered: A Regional Adventure into the Art of Haitian Cuisine " helped kick-start a fresh look at the country's recipes.

Some beloved dishes have roots stretching back to Haiti's founding on Jan. 1, 1804, following the world's only successful slave rebellion. The vibrantly colored pumpkin soup known as joumou is a typical Sunday dish and a must on independence day for the world's first black republic. During the dark days of bondage, plantation slaves in Haiti were prohibited from eating an aromatic squash soup - a favorite of their French masters - or much of anything else other than rudimentary provisions.

"When we got our independence what better way to celebrate than to eat the very thing that we were unable to eat as slaves," Fleurimond said.

Haitian restaurants and food festivals are springing up in cities such as Miami and Montreal, where members of the Grammy-winning rock group Arcade Fire back a Haitian eatery that serves specialties like stewed oxtail over rice along with cocktails made from the country's Barbancourt rum.

One famed chef, Spanish-born Jose Andres, turned his culinary adventures around Haiti into a 2015 television documentary.

In a culinary school in downtown Port-au-Prince operated by Andres' nonprofit and the Haitian government, young people eagerly prepare for careers as the nation's chefs and food-industry professionals, learning the basics of preparing dishes delectable to the eye as well as the palate.

"Haiti has a rich culinary history and we make sure we celebrate that in our curriculum," said Andres, whose World Central Kitchen nonprofit is also working to rejuvenate the country's fishing sector by investing in a new processing facility in the south coast town of Jacmel.

A growing pride in Haitian food is apparent among aspiring chefs.

"This is my country's culture and I want to show it off," said 23-year-old culinary student Peraldine Alceguerre as she sliced juicy Haitian mangos to bake into a pie.
HAMMOND  A federal judge has postponed the trial of two political operatives of convicted former Calumet Township Trustee Mary Elgin.

U.S. District Court Judge Joseph Van Bokkelen rescheduled the two-week trial of Ethel Shelton and Alex Wheeler to begin Sept. 25.

The judge stated in an order, dated Tuesday, that Wheeler, who was Elgin's former campaign manager and one of her supervisors at the township, has medical issues.

The order didn't identify the nature of Wheeler's medical issues, but states they would make it impossible for Wheeler to aid his attorney, Larry W. Rogers, in his own defense.

The judge ruled that he wants both Shelton and Wheeler to stand trial jointly, so he continued Shelton's jury trial in addition to Wheeler's. Jury selection originally had been scheduled to begin Monday.

Shelton and Wheeler are pleading not guilty to federal conspiracy and fraud charges alleging they conspired with Elgin to shake down other township government employees for political contributions to Elgin's re-election.

Shelton was Elgin's executive secretary and Wheeler was her deputy in charge of finding jobs for unemployed Calumet Township residents who petitioned the township assistance for housing and medical issues.

Elgin pleaded guilty May 8 to charges she demanded Shelton, Wheeler and her son, Steven Hunter, the township's computer director, help her require the rest of her staff to buy her fundraising tickets. Hunter pleaded guilty May 11 to similar charges.

Tuesday's order didn't state whether the later trial date for Shelton and Wheeler will delay Elgin's sentencing, now scheduled to take place Sept. 20, or Hunter's on Sept. 21.
CROWN POINT  The ex-girlfriend of a 38-year-old Gary man charged with murder testified Tuesday about the lover's dispute she claims led to the shooting death last year of April Bailey.

Marian Robertson told the jury she suspected on Jan. 13, 2016, that Bailey was sleeping with her then-boyfriend, Kevin D. Riley.

She said she spoke with Bailey on the phone and Robertson and Riley went to Bailey's house in the 4000 block of Delaware Street in Gary to read text messages Riley had sent to the alleged victim.

She said she was cordial with Bailey, but Riley stepped out of her vehicle and the next thing she heard was a gunshot.

She said she did not see Riley shoot Bailey, but she said Riley threatened to kill her if she did not drive him away from the scene.

Bailey, a 39-year-old mother of three children, was found dead outside the home, according to court records. Robertson and Riley were arrested the next day by police and Robertson initially told police she never visited Bailey.

She then changed her statement and said she visited Bailey, but the woman was alive when she left Bailey's home. Finally, she told police that Riley had killed Bailey.

Defense attorney Mark Gruenhagen hammered Robertson during cross-examination for her prior inconsistent statements, and suggested Robertson was the shooter.

Robertson said she initially lied to police because she was scared of Riley. She said she did not shoot Bailey.

I didn't kill her, she said. Kevin killed her.

The trial for Riley is expected to continue into early next week.

Riley was previously convicted in 1997 of involuntary manslaughter and criminal deviate conduct on allegations he molested and killed a 10-month-old child. He was sentenced to 38 years in prison and released in February 2014, according to the Indiana Department of Correction website.
JACKSON TOWNSHIP  A 2-year-old girl drowned Monday morning after wandering out of a house and into a neighboring swimming pool, according to Porter County police.

The girl exited the house in the 600 North block of County Road 500 East around 7:30 a.m. and was found by her mother in the unattended pool, police said. It is believed the girl fell into the pool, police said.

The girl was not breathing and was unresponsive when discovered, police said. Medical care was started immediately and continued until emergency responders arrived, but the girl was unable to be revived.

"We express our deepest sympathies to the family, friends and first responders that are dealing with this incident," the Sheriff's Department said.

The department reminded pool owners to familiarize themselves with state codes regarding safety features for residential pools.

Pool owners can find them in the Indiana Administrative Code at 675 IAC 14-4.3-296.

"While summer is a wonderful time of the year, please exercise extreme caution around pools and lakes," the department stated.
CROWN POINT  The City Council has unanimously approved a resolution granting the Southlake YMCA's request for special use to expand, a $35 million project that is one of the largest in Crown Point's history.

It will add about 76,000 square feet to the south Lake County facility. The 9-acre expansion is slated for land owned by Franciscan Alliance just east of the existing Y. The council approved rezoning the land from residential use to accommodate the construction.

Jeff Ban, of DVG Inc., which is providing engineering consulting for the project, said construction should begin late summer or early fall. It is expected to last 13-15 months with completion expected in December 2018. The expanded part of the existing Y should be open for business in January or February 2019.

The community phase of the fundraising capital campaign for the Y expansion is in progress. It kicked off last month and with the goal of raising $3.5 million.

Several events will be held as part of that campaign including a battle of the bands at the Y on July 21 and an online day of giving later in the drive.

In January, the Y announced the expansion plans that will include a six-lane lap pool, a zero-entry warm water pool with a slide and other features, an outdoor L-shaped pool, also with a slide and other features, mens lockers, womens lockers and universal locker rooms with private changing areas.

Two new gyms are planned along with an overhead walking/jogging track that will connect to the existing gym; six program studios for cheer, dance and group exercise; a steam, sauna and whirlpool; a family game room; a juice and coffee bar; a large lobby and lounge; a community meeting room with a teaching kitchen; a 21,000-square-foot comprehensive wellness center with cardio, strength and functional training equipment; a mezzanine/terrace for outdoor classes and social functions; and additional parking.

For more information on the project, visit crymca.org/southlakeYcampaign.
EAST CHICAGO  Federal housing officials believe it is in the citys best interest to tear down the lead- and arsenic-tainted West Calumet Housing Complex, according to a recently published environmental site assessment.

The demolition is warranted to protect human health, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development officials noted.

The low-income public housing complex, built in the early 1970s on the footprint of a former lead smelter, is the most highly contaminated area of the Environmental Protection Agencys USS Lead Superfund site. Soil cleanup is ongoing in the nearby Calumet and East Calumet neighborhoods.

Due to the presence of known contaminants, the housing authority also would not be allowed to spend any federal or non-federal funds on rehabilitation activities until the clean-up occurs," HUD said.

Project scope

The environmental assessment is required as part of a HUD review of the city housing authority's application for demolition or disposition. Local housing officials first submitted the application to demolish West Calumet last summer  around the same time East Chicago Mayor Anthony Copeland sent letters to the more-than-300 families living at the complex.

Copeland sounded the alarm by urging more than 1,000 people  including 680 children  to leave due to dangerously high levels of lead and arsenic in the soil. All but six households have relocated.

The completed site review marks the end of a months-long process and the start of next steps: demolishing the heavily contaminated site and eventual brainstorming among city officials and the community on future land use.

The Remedial Action Plan for demolition was created by Amereco Engineering, an environmental engineering consultant firm based in Valparaiso, and reviewed by the EPA, documents show. The project scope is limited only to demolition and does not address detailed soil excavation of the site.

HUD's review lays out three options: No action, partial demolition or complete demolition. A complete demolition  estimated at $6.8 million  would include removing hazardous asbestos, foundations and backfill, and razing all structures and infrastructure.

EPA in 2012 approved a cleanup plan that would have allowed West Calumet families to stay, as EPA excavated up to 2 feet of soil, depending on individual yard's level of contamination. However, EPA last year put that cleanup plan on hold after the city's housing authority and Copeland announced the desire to demolish.

A new environmental review will be required for any future HUD-assisted activities, HUD stated. The EPA is moving forward with a feasibility study for removing contaminated soil after the city's mayor informed the agency he wants it cleaned to residential standards.

While noting Copeland's interest mirrors that of the community  for the land to return to residential standards  Thomas Frank, an environmental activist in East Chicago, said he fears the instinct will be to allow the site to revert back to industry if residential cleanup is deemed too costly.

"That's a serious concern, especially in a community that is losing housing," Frank said.

As part of HUD's review, the agency on May 26 issued a notice stating it believes the demolition will have "no significant impact on the human environment."

That finding has raised some red flags for Sam Henderson, a staff attorney for the Hoosier Environmental Council, who is worried about the demolition's impact on the neighboring Calumet neighborhood.

"The demolition project involves ripping up almost all infrastructure, which will involve disturbing massive quantities of soil and groundwater. It's basically going to be an open-pit lead mine right next to the Calumet neighborhood," Henderson said.

The project plan spells out air monitoring requirements, dust control and ways to minimize public and contractors direct exposure to site materials during demolition.

Henderson and several groups, including a legal team representing Superfund residents, plan to weigh in before Tuesday, when the public comment period ends.

A HUD spokeswoman on Friday declined to answer many of The Times' questions about the environmental assessment, because it is subject to an open public comment period.

Attorneys representing the East Chicago Housing Authority said Tuesday ECHA aims to start the demolition process in fall. Future housing redevelopment on site could be beneficial to the city "if all appropriate environmental standards can be met following remediation," attorney said.

Other chemicals found

HUD's assessment confirms much of what the public already knows: The housing complex was built in the early 1970s on the footprint of a former lead smelter operation, and the soil is highly contaminated with both lead and arsenic. However, sampling conducted as part of the review also shows signs of other cancer-causing chemicals in the soil and groundwater.

Limited groundwater sampling at the site detected elevated levels of lead, arsenic, chromium, and, in fewer instances, mercury and cadmium, documents show. Utility maps show sanitary and storm sewers and water mains are buried between 3 and 9 feet below ground, the documents state.

"Therefore, it is anticipated that groundwater seepage will be significant during demolition of utilities at the site," according to the remedial action plan. Under the plan, it is estimated groundwater seepage will occur at approximately 100 gallons per minute with temporary trench stops used to capture the seepage.

The highest lead sample in the groundwater was 16,000 parts per billion, but results ranged as low as 20 ppb.

An EPA spokesman said Friday there are no federal standards for lead in groundwater, but in the case of a cleanup, EPAs Superfund program uses an action level of 15 parts per billion. However, the sampling conducted as part of the HUD review tested shallow groundwater, which is in direct contact with contaminated soil, EPA said. "Comparing shallow groundwater from the site to a drinking source would be incorrect," EPA said.

Residents receive drinking water from the city's water supply. However, residents in recent months have raised concerns about contamination possibly being carried into their basements by groundwater seepage and floodwaters after heavy rain.

As part of its evaluation of the USS Lead Superfund site, the EPA is conducting a separate groundwater study. The agency has not provided a target completion date, but Debbie Chizewer, an attorney at Northwestern University Pritzker Law Schools Environmental Law Clinic, said residents want the study expedited.

The underlying groundwater studies prepared in support of (HUDs environmental assessment) raise concerns and underscore the need for EPA to do its own thorough study of the entire Superfund site and take measures to protect residents from exposure from groundwater contamination, Chizewer said.

Past environmental reviews

The West Calumet Housing Complex also sits just north of a lead smelter, USS Lead, which went dormant in 1985 and was first entered into the EPA's RCRA program for cleanup in 1980.

The federal agency sampled soil in 1985, the same year USS Lead ceased operations. USS Lead began a cleanup in 1993 and concluded in 2002, when it finished confining hazardous materials on-site, records show.

In response to a Times February public records request for readily available past environmental reviews of the West Calumet site, HUD last week provided reviews for fiscal years 2003, 2004 and 2005-2009 to authorize the release of capital dollars for rehabilitation projects to the local housing authority.

One environmental clearance officer signed off on a review for fiscal year 2003. A handwritten note states the project was in compliance with environmental policies, because there was no industry visible from site, per Mr. Bonds,  no landfills or waste sites visible from property. Taryl L. Bonds signed off on the review as supervisor. Online records show Bonds is a former director of capital improvements at ECHA, and an online search shows he now is with the Gary Housing Authority. The Times called him at a phone number listed online and left a message.

Two reviews  one for fiscal year 2004 and another for 2005-2009  stated West Calumet is not near or more than 3,000 ft of a chemical or hazard (waste) site.

Missing from the reviews is any mention of the nearby shuttered USS Lead facility, which had been the subject of EPA study since 1985 as part of the agency's consideration of the site for cleanup. Extensive sampling and soil removal has been ongoing since 2003.

HUD last week provided some answers to The Times' questions about the current environmental assessment of West Calumet, but did not address questions posed about its past environmental findings.

Northwestern's Chizewer said in an email the conclusions made in the 2005-2009 review "would be laughable  if it were not tragic for the impacted residents."
MUNSTER  Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) Indiana Inc. held its annual Spring DARE Poster Contest, which is open to fifth-grade students from all throughout Indiana. The theme of the contest was "What Have You Learned in DARE?" and awards one grand prize and five honorable mention awards from the entries received from all over the state. Three Munster students were named as honorable mention award-winners and were presented with iPod shuffles for their efforts during their DARE graduation ceremonies.
Summer feeding program

HOBART  River Forest Community School Corp.'s 2017 Summer Feeding Program will begin Thursday at the River Forest Jr./Sr. High School cafeteria, 3300 Indiana St. The program ends Aug. 11. All Children 18 and under can eat breakfast and lunch at no cost. Breakfast will be served from 7:30-8:30 a.m. and lunch from 10:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Adults may purchase meals at $2 for breakfast and $3 for lunch. Meals will be served weekdays only.

Antique/classic car show fundraiser

CROWN POINT  An antique/classic car show fundraiser will be from 1 to 5 p.m. June 25 at Cross of Christ Lutheran Church, 99 S. County Line Road. The fundraiser will include a car show, music, a 50/50 raffle and games for children. All proceeds will benefit the Cross of Christ Christian Education program. Call 219-921-3129.

Home food preservation classes

CROWN POINT  Home food preservation classes are being offered by the Lake County Purdue Cooperative Extension Service from 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. July 12, 19 and 26. Individuals will get the latest information and learn the basics of safe home food preservation. Each class will consist of instruction, including lectures and hands-on food preservation techniques. The fee for the three-class series is $75. Class size is limited and there are no refunds. Deadline to register is June 28. Call 219-755-3240.

Family Fest

CALUMET CITY  Plans are underway for St. Andrew the Apostle Parishs Family Fest, the annual summertime celebration of family, friends and community. This year marks a milestone as the Calumet City church is celebrating 125 years of faith and service to the community. The fest is from 6 to 10 p.m. June 24 and 1 to 8 p.m. June 25 at 768 Lincoln Ave. Bring the kids for an afternoon of fun and games, including an inflatable jumper, obstacle course, clown and face painting. There will be games of skill for young adults, plus bingo for adults. Call 708-862-4165.

Kemil Beach Campfire at National Lakeshore

PORTER  Join a ranger for a sunset and campfire program from 8 to 9:30 p.m. June 10 at Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore's Kemil Beach. The program will start at the Kemil Beach parking lot, followed by a short walk to the beach. If you arrive late, please walk to the beach to join the event. Call 219-395-1882.

Education session

PORTAGE  The Mayors Veterans Committee is hosting a free educational session for veterans from 5 to 7 tonight at Woodland Park. Marc A. Magill, medical center director of the Jesse Brown VA Medical Center, will be the featured presenter. Magill will present on a variety of local VA Health Care Matters and listen to comments and concerns related to Jesse Brown VA Medical Center and community-based outpatient clinics.

Fundraiser planned

MUNSTER  The fifth annual Police & Fire Charity Softball Event will take place at 1:30 p.m. June 11 at Community Park. Tickets are $5 (available at the gates) and all proceeds will benefit the Officer Joe Pacheco Cancer Fund. The event will include two sets of games between police officers and firefighters from Munster, Highland, Dyer, Lansing, and Griffith. There will also be door prizes, rides through Community Park on the Little Obie Canadian National Railroad train, face painting, bounce houses, an emergency vehicle display, DJ music, a free photo booth, concessions, and an on-site blood drive in memory of fallen Indiana police officers (walk-ups are welcome). For more information, contact Officer James Ghrist at 219-836-6639 or jghrist@munster.org.

Spring Lake Bingo Reopens

Hobart  The Spring Lake Chapter of the Izaak Walton League of America has relaunched its weekly bingo events to raise funds for conservation and youth education programs. The new bingo license was approved by the Indiana Gaming Commission in May and bingo will take place at 6 p.m. Wednesday at the chapter clubhouse at 4700 W. 49th Ave.
MICHIGAN CITY  Every day, 10 people die from unintentional drowning in the United States, and of these, two are children 14 or younger, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Here in Northwest Indiana, drowning is always top of mind for lifeguards, especially those who trained on Tuesday morning at Washington Park beach in Michigan City, and on Monday at Whihala Beach in Whiting, as part of the Open Water Surf Lifeguard In-Service Training Program.

The training was conducted by the Great Lakes Surf Rescue Project. Instructor Dave Benjamin said this type of training is unlike any other.

There is a huge difference between pool and open water training. In a pool you have 100 percent visibility, warm water, consistent water depths and a contained number of people. In open water surf there are winds, waves, dangerous currents, drop-offs and holes, temperature fluctuations of 10 to 20 degrees in pockets, and thousands of people coming and going, he said.

Using rescue boards, rescue cans, and rescue tubes, some 36 area lifeguards participated in Tuesday's training.

The waves are steep today. Its a lot harder than it looks, isnt it? instructor Bob Pratt asked the group before climbing on a rescue surfboard to demonstrate techniques as the lifeguards stood dripping and shivering in their wetsuits in the wind.

There are two ways to paddle the board. One is like a surfboard, flat on your stomach, or you can kneel, grab the water, pull it behind you. Its more efficient kneeling, but less stable, so you have to determine which is best for the conditions, Pratt said.

Those conditions, said Benjamin, are always unpredictable in Lake Michigan waters, which is why it is by far the most deadly of the Great Lakes.

People will be safer if they realize there are dangerous currents in Lake Michigan and those are created by winds. It depends on the wind, which way the currents will go, he said.

For lifeguards, keeping a floatation device between them and the victim at all times, and always having a backup on shore who can supervise the situation, is the key to rescue and survival.

Mo Hakim, one of the head lifeguards at Washington Park, realized the dangers of Lake Michigan firsthand last summer when he rescued a victim who dived off of the pier, even though this is forbidden.

Many deaths in the Great Lakes happen off of these structures, he said, pointing to the pier, and last summer was probably one of the roughest in a few years. I pulled a kid out who was under for 10 minutes. I dove down and got him off of the bottom of the lake, got him on a Coast Guard boat, and we transported him, and hes alive today.

He said he hopes that this summer will be safer as people become educated to the dangers of Lake Michigan and Tuesdays training helps lifeguard teams to properly respond.

Jacob Breault, a rookie lifeguard with Indiana Dunes State Park, says the training will no doubt help him this summer.

This is a lot different than a pool. You get the experience of a real rescue on wavy days, he said.
MICHIGAN CITY  The city has approved all of its $12.1 million share of the funding for the proposed $290 million upgrades to the South Shore commuter line.

The City Council approved Tuesday night by a 6-3 vote to borrow $5.39 million from the south side tax increment financing district.

The decision came after the city's Redevelopment Commission on Thursday authorized paying all of the remaining $6.7 million up front out of the same fund.

"This is a magic moment in the perfect storm where we have the alignment. We don't want to miss this opportunity," said Cassandra Francis, who is involved with real estate and construction for the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District.

NICTD wants to add a second track from Michigan City to Gary, which they say would reduce travel times to Chicago by more than 30 minutes.

Among the opponents was Councilman Don Pryzbylinski, who felt Michigan City's share of the $18.25 million cost from LaPorte County was too much.

He also felt it was not fair to take dollars from the TIF on the south end to be invested on the line running on the north end of the city.

Resident Tom Smith said he would lose his house to make way for a double track if the project goes through. Smith also expressed concern about the cost.

Megan Applegate, an accountant from Michigan City, urged focusing on the big picture of Chicago-area residents coming to the city to live because of quicker commutes and using their expertise to open businesses here and employing people.

"It's going to make Michigan City officially a suburb of Chicago. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," she said.

Bill Hanna, president of the Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority, said Michigan City's potential  with its lakefront, zoo, revitalizing downtown and culture  for tapping into the Chicago market is strong and the reason lawmakers from the state and federal levels are on board with the project.

"You show me a suburb with the assets you have. This is a winner all day long," Hanna said.

Funds captured from annual growth within the TIF will be used to pay back the amount over a 21-year period.
BOONE TWP.  Three North Judson residents are dead after a sport utility vehicle collided head on with a 2017 Mack dump truck at 4:14 p.m. Tuesday in front of 319 W. Ind. 8, Porter County sheriff's police said.

The driver of the silver 2002 Mercury Mountaineer involved in the collision, 45-year-old Amber Fitzgerald, was pronounced dead at the scene, as were passengers Bonnie Sowles, 68, and Hannah Cullen, 7, according to a news release.

A fourth passenger, a 15-year-old girl also from North Judson, was transported to Franciscan Health Crown Point and later airlifted to Loyola Medical Center in Maywood, Illinois.

Jerry Niekirk, 59, of Crown Point, was the driver of the Mack truck, registered to Harry Brown Trucking Co. Inc. of Hebron, the release states. Niekirk was not injured in the crash. Indiana State Police will conduct a routine Department of Transportation inspection on the truck.

Ind. 8 between County Road 350 West and County Road 250 West was shut down as the accident reconstruction team completed their investigation.

Initial investigation shows traffic was stopped on eastbound Ind. 8 as another vehicle was waiting for westbound traffic so they could turn north into a driveway. Ind. 8 at that location is a two-lane road. The Mack truck was traveling west on Ind. 8 approaching 319 W. Ind. 8 when the eastbound Mountaineer went left of center into the westbound lane of the truck. It is believed the Mountaineer was trying to avoid rear ending the stopped eastbound traffic, the release states.

Niekirk was unable to avoid the collision and struck the Mountaineer head on, police said.

Assisting at the scene were Hebron and Kouts police, Hebron and Boone Grove fire departments, Porter EMS, Sandbergs Towing, Indiana State Police and the Porter County coroner's office. Police said Porter County Central Communications was also instrumental in the incident.
WASHINGTON  Fired FBI Director James Comey will testify under oath Thursday that President Donald Trump repeatedly pressed him for his "loyalty" and directly pushed him to "lift the cloud" of investigation shadowing his White House by declaring publicly the president was not the target of the probe into his campaign's Russia ties.

Comey's detailed and vivid recollections of his one-on-one conversations with Trump were revealed in seven pages of prepared testimony released Wednesday, the day before his much-anticipated appearance before the Senate intelligence committee.

His remarks paint a picture of an FBI director so disconcerted by his interactions with the president that he began keeping written memos of their private discussions. He'll tell lawmakers he believed the president was trying to create a "patronage relationship" with him and describe in detail an Oval Office meeting in which Trump urged him not to investigate ousted National Security Adviser Michael Flynn's contacts with Russian officials.

But the ex-FBI director also will validate Trump's assertion that he was not personally a target of the federal counterintelligence investigation into possible campaign collusion with Russia. Comey says he did offer the president that "assurance," but resisted Trump's appeals to make that information public.

"The FBI and the Department of Justice had been reluctant to make public statements that we did not have an open case on President Trump for a number of reasons, most importantly because it would create a duty to correct, should that change," Comey says in the prepared remarks.

Trump's personal lawyer said Trump was cheered by the testimony.

"The president is pleased that Mr. Comey has finally publicly confirmed his private reports that the president was not under investigation in any Russian probe," attorney Mark Kasowitz said in a statement. "The president feels completely and totally vindicated. He is eager to continue to move forward with his agenda."

Comey has not spoken publicly since he was abruptly fired by Trump on May 9. His dismissal, four years into a 10-year term, fueled claims Trump's ultimate aim was to quash the investigation and obstruct justice, potentially a federal crime or an impeachable offense. Some legal experts said Comey's account could bolster such a case.

Ryan Goodman, a professor at New York University School of Law, said Trump's efforts to protect Flynn provide "strong evidence" of obstruction of justice. However, Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, said that while Trump's dealings with Comey were inappropriate, "We do not indict people for being boorish or clueless."

Comey's statement came hours after two top intelligence officials told lawmakers they never felt "pressured" to do anything inappropriate by the president. But Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and Adm. Mike Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency, angered members of the Senate intelligence committee by staunchly refusing to answer questions about conversations they had with Trump.

The ex-FBI director's testimony recounts his conversations with the apparent precision of a veteran lawman. Comey notes he had nine one-on-one interactions with Trump over a four-month stretch, compared to two private conversations with President Barack Obama between September 2013 and the end of 2016. He also says he did not keep written memos of his interactions with Obama.

The first meeting with Trump after the inauguration occurred on Jan. 27, during a private dinner at the White House that Comey came to view as an attempt by the president to "create some sort of patronage relationship."

According to Comey, Trump asked if he wanted to remain as FBI director and declared: "I need loyalty. I expect loyalty." Comey says he replied that he could offer his honesty, and that when Trump said he wanted "honest loyalty," Comey paused and said, "You will get that from me."

Comey also describes at length a Feb. 14 meeting in the Oval Office in which he believed Trump asked him to back off an investigation into Flynn.

"He then said, 'I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go,'" Comey says, according to the prepared remarks. He said he believed the president was talking only about Flynn, not about the broader Russia probe.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said she was unsure if the president read Comey's testimony after its release. Asked whether the president stood by earlier assertions that he had neither sought Comey's loyalty nor asked for the Flynn investigation to be dropped, she said: "I can't imagine the president not standing by his own statement."

Earlier Wednesday, Trump announced that he planned to nominate Christopher Wray, a former Justice Department official, as Comey's successor.

Trump allies have raised questions about Comey's credibility ahead of his testimony, noting that the FBI had to correct some of his remarks from his last appearance on Capitol Hill. They've also questioned why Comey did not raise his concerns about Trump publicly or resign.

Comey's prepared testimony does not full answer that question, though he does say he asked Attorney General Jeff Sessions to help prevent him having any direct communication with the president in the future.

Trump has repeatedly cast the Russia investigation as a "hoax" and denied having any improper ties to Moscow. According to Comey, Trump was acutely aware of the political toll of the investigation, complaining that the probe had left a "cloud" that was "impairing his ability to act on behalf of the country."

In a phone call on March 30, Comey says the president asked him what could be done to "lift the cloud." He says Trump also volunteered that "he had nothing to do with Russia, had not been involved with hookers in Russia, and had always assumed he was being recorded when in Russia"  referencing an unverified intelligence dossier detailing compromising information Moscow had allegedly collected on Trump.

The White House initially said Trump fired Comey on the recommendation of the Justice Department, citing as justification a memo from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein that criticized Comey's handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation. But Trump later said he was thinking of "this Russia thing" when he fired Comey and would have dismissed him without the Justice Department's input.
"As Chairman of the Board of the Crossroads Regional Chamber of Commerce (CRCC), I am proud that we are such a vibrant, business-centered organization. One of the greatest benefits of my Chamber membership is the opportunity to network and meet so many other business owners and decision makers in the Region. Through the years, Ive gained new clients from Chamber connections and have built solid relationships with other members that have become friends, mentors or peer resources. Im excited about what the Chamber has planned as we keep moving forward, always listening to our members and consistently exceeding expectations.

Bryan Lazorik, President, Bryco Services Inc.

Chamber provides me the opportunity to regularly meet with centers of influence to assist me in growing my business. I have established numerous long-term business relationships from Chamber-sponsored events. Getting involved in Chamber events is part of my annual marketing plan.

Aaron Pinkus, Agent, State Farm Insurance

Being a member of the Chamber is a great, positive experience. I totally and completely, with every fiber of my being, believe in the Crossroads Chamber of Commerce. Our staff is wonderful, and the representation of the Chamber in the economic development of the region is excellent. We are the largest chamber in Lake County, representing over 650 businesses, and whether youre a big business or if youre a one-person office, the Chamber can be a voice for you.

Shirley Dunn, Agent, Allstate Insurance

I've enjoyed giving back to my community by working with the Crossroads Chamber on their annual event, Hometown Festival Days. Things have really come full circle; I attended the Corn Roast as a child and now I'm officially a co-chair. Im so happy to be behind the scenes to help make the festival a fun-filled family event in the heart of the city.

Erika Dahl, Director of Communications, South Shore Convention and Visitors Authority

Ive been in business over 20 years. What the Crossroads Regional Chamber of Commerce has that I havent found in other chambers is a real sense of organization. The Chamber interacts with and gives back to the community, connects members, creates partnerships, takes action and achieves results. They do a lot of great community projects that actually make a difference, such as working with non-profits and their very successful Business and Consumer Expo. Ive made a personal connection with the Chamber; when I joined three years ago, President and CEO Sue Reed came to my office personally and I could tell she was really committed. Since then, she has always connected with us and put us in touch with other people. This is not just an organization; the Chamber has helped to create relationships and friendships.

Jim Slavo, CEO, National Marketing Group and mycommunitysavings.org

Its the best networking opportunity for a small business owner who takes advantage of it. If you get involved, you have fun! The Chamber is ongoing and always looks to promote and be involved in the community. From a small business perspective, I really benefited from the Chamber-sponsored Small Business Saturday. They provided all the tools we needed and it was because the Chamber got involved that the Small Business Saturday was so successful. They even invited non-Chamber members to participate and that was awesome! I am now chair of the Ambassador committee and being involved really makes a difference. The networking that Ive been able to do has catapulted my business. Im so thankful for what the Chamber does in the community and for small business.

Barb Young, Owner, Barbara Jeans Gifts and Gourmet

As a councilman, one of the important functions of the Crossroads Regional Chamber of Commerce is that it promotes economic development, which ultimately means job creation. The Chamber represents, develops, serves, and supports the business community, which is the backbone of Merrillville.

Shawn Pettit, Assistant Real Estate Manager, Lamar Advertising; Ward 6 Councilman, Town of Merrillville

Overall, the Chambers benefit is twofold: its a good way to give back to the community, supporting the economy and local businesses, and provides the opportunity to connect with other businesses and network with them. This is a strategic alliance that will help everyone grow and prosper. As an involved and participating member of the Chamber, I co-chaired the Business and Consumer Expo. For my business, the Expo is a great fit; its way to lead by example and show our expertise.

Lisa Gapen, Owner, Generate Sales & Marketing

The Chamber has done a really good job of keeping up with what the community needs. I serve on the Voice on OF? Business Committee, which advocates for local businesses through the Indiana Chamber of Commerce. Ive been a Chamber member for many years but have become more active over the past five years, and this has helped expand my business. I recently attended the Business and Consumer Expo and made some really good contacts. The networking opportunity is priceless; people learn about your business, your skill set and about you as a person. That makes a huge difference.

Rich Shields, Business Development Manager, Chester Inc.

I work with the Crossroads Regional Chamber of Commerce and other organizations for fundraising. My company offers memorabilia on consignment to organizations. They hold auctions to help fund-raise for their cause, and our products attract multiple and large-size bids. The huge benefit about the Chamber is that everyone wants to keep business local if possible and by networking, you can find out about what each of the businesses do. Ive found it to be very useful in obtaining referrals for my business and knowing that these references are from someone you can trust.

Peter Kiefor, Owner, Absolute Memorabilia
With little fanfare or advance notice, the de Blasio administration released its much-anticipated plan to combat racial segregation in city schools. NY1's Lindsey Christ filed the following report.

The city says it will make changes to school admissions policies to try to make it easier for poor, homeless or otherwise disadvantaged students to gain access to better schools. It's part of a plan to address the lack of racial diversity the system.

"This is something in writing now that is a road map for what is going to come forth and really holding people accountable," said Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina.

City schools are among the most racially segregated in the country, but last month, Mayor Bill de Blasio hinted that his diversity plan would be modest in scope, despite his focus on fighting inequality.

"We're not going to put forward a plan that says we're instantly going to wipe away 400 years of American history and create a perfect model of diversity. But we can make a major difference in a number of schools," the mayor said.

The biggest policy change will impact about one-fifth of the city's 1,800 schools. They will no longer be allowed to prioritize students for admission who have taken a tour or met with a school representative. The city says that favors more privileged students, whose families speak English and have the time to navigate the admissions process.

But critics already are saying the plan doesn't go far enough. Indeed, the 13-page plan does not even use the words segregation, desegregation or integration.

Instead, officials refer to the issue as one of "diversity."

"To me, diversity is obviously racial. But it's also about language, it's socio-economics, it's about gender issues. It's a whole gamut of things," Farina said.

Advocates say this approach minimizes the problem of racial segregation, allowing schools like Stuyvesant High School, which only accepted 13 black students out of 926 students this year, to still claim diversity, since many students are from immigrant families.

The plan includes a few goals, including getting 50,000 more students over the next five years to attend schools that the Education Department classifies as diverse. But to be considered diverse, a school only needs to have 10 percent of students who are not black or Hispanic.
In an unusual move, the Council speaker added a last-minute condition in the city budget to make sure some funding was spent the way she wanted. NY1's Courtney Gross filed the following report.

On Friday night, they shook hands and agreed on a new $85 billion budget.

But when the Council voted on that budget agreement Tuesday, there was something else in it: a provision on how money for lawyers for immigrants facing deportation can be spent.

The only limitation would be on income. It wouldn't matter if those immigrants were convicted of a violent crime.

It was what the speaker wanted. She left City Hall Tuesday not explaining why or how it got in the budget.

All along, the mayor has opposed spending city money on lawyers for immigrants convicted of more violent acts. When they announced a budget agreement Friday, he said it would be up to his side of City Hall.

"The issue will be resolved in the contracting process. And I have very strong views I have made clear, and the contracting process resides in the executive branch," Bill de Blasio said.

That was not how the speaker saw it.

Immediately after the City Council approved the budget, members came downstairs to meet behind closed doors in Democratic conference. One of the topics at hand was this provision. It appears there was some confusion about what council members knew and when.

"There were people who were unaware, and we would like to have a very transparent process," said City Councilman Robert Cornegy of Brooklyn.

NY1 is told the speaker's office notified council members Tuesday morning that it was going to add this condition to the funding.

As NY1 spoke to members leaving City Hall, some appeared to be standing with the speaker, who they said was standing up for the City Council.

"I trust the speaker is the best defender of the Council's prerogative. I stand by the speaker and the principle position she has taken," said City Councilman Ritchie Torres of the Bronx.

The mayor's office did not respond to a request for comment.
Two men accused in the beating of a Bronx street vendor were arraigned in court Tuesday.

Octavious Profit, 24, and 18-year-old Enrique Foote pleaded not guilty to gang assault charges.

Bail for Profit was set at $500,000.

Foote was remanded to Rikers Island.

Both are due back in court on September 12.

Cellphone video of the attack appears to show Profit, Foote and others punching and kicking 53-year-old Souleymane Porgo in the head and face on May 2.

Police say the incident happened after Porgo tried to stop one of the men from stealing a purse from his table.

Porgo lost consciousness, according to police, and authorities say the men continued to beat him.

His cousin, Amade Belem, was in court. Belem says Porgo's recovery is going slow and he is still unable to talk.

"We use the word he's feeling better to please ourselves, but it's not exactly like we want. He still can't be able to stand up on his feet like he's been before," Belem said.

A third man, 21-year-old William Burgess, is also facing gang assault charges in the case.
Governor Andrew Cuomo and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi held a rally with union members at the Javits Center as part of the Democratic party's campaign to win control of the House in 2018. Reporter Grace Rauh filed the following report.

NEW YORK -- Governor Andrew Cuomo and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi are rallying the party base in New York as they fight to flip the House of Representatives to Democratic control next year.

"New York, are you ready to hold the Trump administration and the Republican Congress accountable?" Pelosi said.

Officially, Democrats are targeting all nine House seats held by Republicans in New York. But some representatives are more vulnerable than others.

"We say to these Congresspeople, we promise you, if you violate your office, you defraud the voters, you hurt the people of this state, we will remove you from office on November 2, 2018," Cuomo said.

Several hundred union members, nearly all of them men, attended the rally at the Javits Center. At times, it felt like an early 2020 presidential campaign event for the governor, a possible White House hopeful.

"While Republicans stonewalled in Washington, Governor Cuomo has delivered landmark victories for New Yorkers," Pelosi said.

There was one prominent New York Democrat conspicuously absent from the rally. Mayor Bill de Blasio did not attend.

A spokesman for the mayor told NY1 he was not invited. But an aide to the governor disputed that statement and said the mayor had been invited to the event, but only at 7:30 the night before. Invitations to other guests, meanwhile, went out as early as Saturday.

"Its an event thats clearly been in the works for some time. They informed us of it the night before. Thats not how the Mayor of New York Citys schedule works and thats not a real invite. This is a silly discussion we wont be involved in. Were focused on doing real work for the public," Eric Phillips, the mayor's press secretary, said in a statement.
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.
Laura Grill, executive vice president at the East Alabama Medical Center, was appointed this week to succeed Terry Andrus as chief executive officer.

The centers board of directors selected Grill to be the CEO-in-waiting at their April meeting.

Grill, who has 25 years of service with the center, will take on additional responsibilities in October and then assume full CEO responsibilities at the start of the centers new fiscal year on Oct. 1, 2018.

Laura Grill will do an excellent job when she becomes president, said Opelika Mayor Gary Fuller. The future is bright for EAMC, and thats a very large benefit for those of us living in East Alabama.

Grill, who is a registered nurse and who came to EAMC as the director of cardiology in 1992, has served as executive vice president since 2007. She will become only the seventh CEO in the hospitals history, which dates back to 1952, according to a press release from the center.

We think that Laura Grill will be great, said Lucinda Cannon, vice chairman of the board.

Cannon said Andrus has done a great job at leading the hospital.

He has kept the hospital in good financial shape, Cannon said.

Andrus became CEO in 1984. While he will officially retire with 38 years of service in October 2018, he will serve as president emeritus in an advisory capacity, according to a press release from the center.

Terry Andrus has been a truly exceptional leader for East Alabama Medical Center, Fuller said. Just a few short years ago, we had no choice but to go to Birmingham or Atlanta for many medical procedures. Thank goodness that is not the case today, and Terry deserves much credit for the treatment and care we can get here at home.

During the 20-plus years that Andrus and Grill have worked together in administration, the organization has achieved many notable accomplishments. These include being named by Fortune magazine as one of the Top 100 Places to Work; being named a key performer by The Joint Commission; being awarded multiple awards by Healthgrades; and becoming the second hospital in Alabama to earn the Baby Friendly distinction, according to a press release from the center.
The Opelika City Council will vote on whether to award a bid for a contract for the Frederick Road extension project to Robinson Paving Company at its meeting tonight.

The company was one of two bids received out of 10 vendors that were invited by the city. If approved, a purchase order will be issued to Robinson Paving Company in the amount of $2,608,293.34.
Zhang Jian, the controversial owner of a multi-level marketing company and self-proclaimed future richest man in the world recently made headlines in Asia for throwing a lavish banquet in Malaysia. The entrance fee was 200 ringgit per person, but Jian offered to let those sporting the right look eat for free. Over 1,000 people showed up with their hair dyed gold.

On Sunday, June 4th, Chai Leng Park in Butterworth, Penang, looked like the scene of a blondies convention. Over 1,000 people, both men and women, dyed their hair gold just to be able to attend Zhang Jians epic banquet for free. The Chinese businessman had also announced that a lucky few who sported the right look for the event stood to win a 1,000 ringgit cash prize. The temptation was apparently too hard to resist for a lot of people who didnt let a thing like looking silly stand between them and a free meal. Some even sported tattoos of Zhang, to show their support.

Bizarre photos taken at the big dinner wound up on social media, and were even featured on 9gag, where people compared gold-haired attendants to a flock of Pidgeottos in their natural habitat, and left comments like Would the real Slim Shady please stand up? At first no one really knew why so many blonde hair people had gathered in the same place, and it was only yesterday that The Star reported about the lavish banquet.

Apparently people came to Chai Leng Park from all over the region, some in their own vehicles, and other in chartered buses. The dinner was supposed to signal the return to glory of Zhang Jians multi-level marketing company, YSLM, which had previously been described as a pyramid scam offering get-rich-quick schemes. In fact, Zhang was reportedly arrested in 2014 for scamming RM 605 million ($141.8 million) out of peoples pockets in China, Malaysia and Thailand.

This year, he had been making another push in Malaysia, where he organized similar events to that in Chai Leng Park, in April. Unfortunately for him, things didnt go as expected. The Star reports that just two days after the now-famous banquet, the future richest man in the world was arrested in Indonesia, and will be deported to China, where he faces legal action for his shady business. His company website, ysmwxb.com, went down soon after his arrest, and over 5,000 Malaysians with around 17.5 millions invested in YSLM are now praying that they can get their money back. Well, at least they got a good meal out of the whole thing.
People usually visit cafes for a dose of energy-boosting caffeine to alleviate tiredness and keep themselves from falling asleep, but Mr. Healing, a popular cafe chain in South Korea actually encourages people to lie down, take a break, and even get some shut-eye.

Mr. Healing bills itself as a relaxation cafe, a place where people can come in, order a drink and lie down a comfortable massage chair, where they can even take a short nap to the soothing sound of ambient or classical music, with pleasant and relaxing scents inundating their senses. The experience is so popular among Koreans that the chain has expanded to 47 different venues throughout the Asian country.

Photo: video screengrab

Data from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development shows that many Koreans suffer from sleep deprivation as a result of overworking, so any opportunity to relax and even take a short nap is greatly appreciated. Mr. Healing is the perfect place to go when youre on a short work or school break and you need to catch up on sleep. The cafe offers its relaxing massage sessions in various intervals and modes, depending on how much time you have available and how you choose to spend it.

The 20 minute session is priced at 4,000 Korean won ($3.5), the 30 minute massage costs 7,900 won ($7), and the 50 minute session is ($9), all of which also include a drink. Once you make your choice, you are taken to the healing center, a large space split up into cubicles, all of which feature two comfy massage chairs. You are asked to take off your shoes as well as any jewelry that might damage the chairs, after which you can opt for a massage mode, from stretch, intense stretch or sleep. You can start with stretch for a few minutes, and then switch to sleep if you want to take a short nap.

Photo: Mr. Healing

After the relaxing session comes to an end, you are taken back to the actual cafe area to enjoy a coffee or one of the many other refreshing drinks on the menu.

Mr. Healing cafes are so popular in Korea, that patrons are advised to make reservations in advance to be sure that a massage chair is available. Its menu venues are frequented by virtually all age groups, from young students who need a break from studying, to workers, travelers, and even the elderly.

Photo: Mr. Healing

The customers vary from people who come alone to couples, friends, families, travelers  simply anyone who needs a break in their life, Park Hye-sun, manager of Mr. Healing in Myeong-dong, central Seoul, told the Korea Herald.

Asked what they thought by the experience offered by Mr. Healing, visitors couldnt stop praising it:

Photo: Mr. Healing

I have to sit on a chair and stare at a computer monitor all day due to my job, the healing room was truly effective to relieve fatigue and stress from weekdays, said Kim Eun-kyum, a 24-year-old noncommissioned officer.

Im usually in a state where I need more sleep, said Lee Ji-hyun, a student at a private academy in Gangnam, Seoul. If you go to a regular cafe, you need to sleep sitting up in a chair. Thats not much different from sleeping at the academy.

The (regular) cafes are inconvenient, Shin Jeong-sik, a regular customer at Mr. Healing, said. Theyre crowded and the chairs are stiff. I like it here because I can rest on a bed.

Some have described Mr. Healing and other similar relaxation cafes in South Korea as simple fads, but there are also those who see them as a sustainable business model, because they offer a service that Koreans really need.


07/06/2017 - The global economy is expected to pick up moderately but greater efforts are needed to ensure that the benefits from growth and globalisation are more widely shared, according to the OECDs latest Economic Outlook.



After five years of weak growth, there are signs of improvement, OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria said launching the Outlook during the Organisations annual Ministerial Council Meeting and Forum in Paris. The modest cyclical expansion underway will not, however, be sufficient to sustain strong gains in standards of living across OECD countries. Deeper, sustained and collective commitment to coherent policy packages that support inclusiveness and productivity growth are urgently needed. We need a more inclusive, rules-based globalisation that works for all, centred on peoples well-being Mr Gurria said. [Read full transcript]





Stronger business and consumer confidence, rising industrial production and recovering employment and trade flows will all contribute to an improvement in global GDP growth from 3.0% in 2016 to 3.6% in 2018, according to the Outlook.





Among the major advanced economies, the recovery will continue in the United States, which is projected to grow by 2.1% in 2017 and 2.4% in 2018. The euro area will see steady growth at 1.8% in 2017 and 2018. In Japan, growth is projected at 1.4% in 2017 and 1% in 2018. The 35-country OECD area is projected to grow by 2.1% in both 2017 and 2018, according to the Outlook.





In China, growth is expected to slow to 6.6% in 2017 and 6.4% in 2018, while Indias growth rates are expected to strengthen to 7.3% this year and 7.7% in 2018. Growth in Brazil is expected to turn positive for 2017 before reaching 1.6% in 2018.

While the Outlook welcomes the pick-up in the global economy, it points out that the forecasts still leave growth rates below both past norms, as well as the pace needed to escape fully from the low-growth trap. It also draws attention to the fact that while some factors could push global growth higher than projected, there are also significant downside risks.





On the positive side, the Outlook points to the ageing capital stock of firms that may spur stronger-than-expected replacement investment in higher quality capital with more advanced technology. This would improve cyclical conditions and support a revival of investment-intensive global value chains, with knock-on benefits to domestic demand. Higher quality capital would also improve productivity and boost potential output.





Among downside risks, the Outlook points to financial risks and vulnerabilities in advanced and emerging economies, high policy uncertainty in many countries and continued weak wage growth.





Policymakers cannot be complacent said OECD Chief Economist Catherine L Mann. Better choices on fiscal, structural and international policies will improve the well-being of a countrys own citizens, but also spill over to improve the outcome for others, raising the probability that the current cyclical upturn will endure and become the foundation for sustained and broad-based improvements in living standards around the world.





A special chapter in the Outlook shows that deeper trade integration through global value chains has increased productivity and raised well-being. But it has also led to job losses, particularly for some manufacturing workers, accentuating pressures from technological and demand changes. With manufacturing activities regionally concentrated, this has resulted in some regions falling behind.





The Outlook suggests that an integrated approach is needed to make globalisation work for all. This must include domestic policies to encourage opportunity, innovation and the creation of new firms, so as to yield economic growth that is both stronger than in the recent past and also more inclusive. At the same time, more effective targeted policies are needed to support people and regions that risk getting left behind. Last but not least, countries must work together to fill gaps in the governance of the international economy. This will ensure a more level playing field, as well as more robust and implementable international standards across a range of areas including labour markets, the environment, corporate responsibility, governance and taxation.





For more information on the Global Economic Outlook, see: www.oecd.org/economy/economicoutlook.htm





Read the full version online: www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/economics/oecd-economic-outlook-volume-2017-issue-1_eco_outlook-v2017-1-en



Journalists are invited to contact the OECD Media Office (+33 1 4524 9700).
Agricultural News

Nebraska Pig Farmer Terry O'Neel to Lead the Pork Checkoff's New Officer Team as President

Terry O'Neel, a pork producer from Friend, Nebraska, was elected as president of the National Pork Board at the organization's June board meeting in Des Moines, Iowa. The National Pork Board is comprised of 15 farmer-directors representing America's pig farmers.







"I am proud to represent our 60,000 pig farmers and I am both honored and humbled by the confidence that the board is placing in me," O'Neel said. "From the farm, through food chain partnerships, to the consumer's table, people care about how their food is produced. I look forward to helping to tell the story of real pig farming in the year ahead, and also to meet first hand with the leaders who deliver our product from farm to table."







O'Neel and his wife Diane own and operate O'Neel Farms in Friend, Nebraska, a farrow-to-finish pig farm that markets 12,000 pigs annually. In addition to pigs, O'Neel Farms also grows corn and soybeans on 700 acres.







Serving with O'Neel on the executive officer team of the Pork Checkoff is vice president Steve Rommereim, a pork producer from Alcester, South Dakota, and, as treasurer, Brett Kaysen, a pig farmer from Nunn, Colorado. Jan Archer, a pork producer from Goldsboro, North Carolina, will serve as immediate past president. The four executive officers will serve one-year terms in their positions effective at the close of the June board meeting.







"As an industry, we stand ready to face our challenges and to celebrate our successes," O'Neel said. "And we have so much going for us - from establishing our Secure Pork Supply plan to redesigning how we market our product. The Pork Checkoff is energized and we stand ready to roll up our sleeves and get to work in support of research, pork promotion and consumer and producer education."







Additional Biographical Information







Terry O'Neel, was elected to his second board term in 2016, most recently serving as vice president of the board. From 2015-2016, O'Neel was board treasurer. O'Neel also served on the Domestic Marketing, Producer Services, and Pork Quality, Safety and Human Nutrition committees. He has hosted farm tours for the Alliance for the Future of Agriculture in Nebraska, The International Water for Food Project and various service, student and youth groups. He served as president of the Nebraska Pork Producers Board in 2007.







Steve Rommereim is the owner, manager and operator of Highland Swine in South Dakota. Highland Swine markets 10,000 pigs annually. He also grows corn and soybeans, and has a cow/calf operation. In March, Rommereim was elected to serve a second term as a producer-member of the National Pork Board. As 2016-2017 treasurer, he chaired the Finance committee and served on the Domestic Marketing committee. He is an Operation Main Street speaker and has served as a South Dakota delegate to the Pork Industry Forum since 2003. Rommereim was on the National Pork Board's plan of work task force in 2009. He is past president of the South Dakota Pork Producers Association, serving on its board from 2001 to 2011. He also is past president of Agriculture United for South Dakota.







Brett Kaysen, is a partner in Flatland Showpigs, a seedstock producer that markets 480 pigs annually. Additionally, Dr. Kaysen is the Western Regional Sales Director for the U.S. Pork Business at Zoetis, a global animal health company where he leads a sales team serving pork producers and swine veterinarians with their animal health needs. Prior to joining Zoetis, Dr. Kaysen was in the Animal Sciences department at Colorado State University, Fort Collins. This past March Dr. Kaysen was elected to serve his second three-year term on the National Pork Board, and currently serves on the Animal Science committee and as board representative to the Swine Health Information Center. He is an Operation Main Street speaker and serves on the National Junior Swine Association board of directors. At the state level, Brett serves on the Colorado Pork Producers Council.







Source - National Pork Board













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Agricultural News

Brazil Scandal Keeps JBS in Hot Water With Temperatures Rising But How Will It Affect Them Here?







A giant in the American meat industry, JBS USA, has business holdings throughout the industry, from packing plants for both pork and beef and the Pilgrim's Pride Chicken operation, to Five Rivers, the largest cattle feeding operation in the US. The empire's parent company, JBS SA, headquartered in Sao Paulo, Brazil and its owners, the Batista family, are currently in big trouble facing major corruption charges in Brazil. Earlier this year, the company and many of its top executives were charged by Brazilian authorities with selling and exporting tainted meat products, and bribing government officials to do so. The story behind the scandal continues to develop. Jim Robb of the Livestock Marketing Information Center spoke with Radio Oklahoma Ag Network Farm Director Ron Hays this week, about the impact and potential fallout, the JBS scandal abroad could have on its business interests here in the United States.





"This does have some legal implications in the United States courts and legal system, too, but we have a much different situation," Robb said, explaining that the three entities that make up JBS USA, are somewhat legally separated from the scandal being investigated in South America. "Producers are not wanting to sell to JBS because they're not sure they're going to get paid. Let me underscore - that will not happen in the United States."





Through the Grain Inspection, Packers & Stockyards Administration (GIPSA), there are payment requirements in place that protect producers from this sort of financial situation, says Robb. Which is not the case in many countries around the world. The systems already established in the US should keep business running as usual, at least here in America. The only negative affect on the markets being seen right now, are happening internationally - which may actually present opportunity for US producers.





"In the large picture of international trade, this appears to be having some negative impacts on the ability of the Brazilians to export into some of their key markets," Robb pointed out, noting Russia and China as two examples. "It probably opens some more opportunity maybe for the United States to export into Asian markets."





Listen to Robb and Hays discuss the impacts the JBS scandal in Brazil is having on their business interests here in the US and abroad, on today's Beef Buzz.





The Beef Buzz is a regular feature heard on radio stations around the region on the Radio Oklahoma Network and is a regular audio feature found on this website as well. Click on the LISTEN BAR below for today's show and check out our archives for older Beef Buzz shows covering the gamut of the beef cattle industry today.





















Listen to Robb and Hays discuss the impacts the JBS scandal in Brazil is having on their US business

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Deaths associated with Tasers are the rare exception to what is otherwise a safer way for officers to bring people under control, a criminal justice scholar said.

Early Monday, a mentally ill man, Zachary N. Bearheels, died after being shocked with a stun gun by Omaha police. The department today will release more details of Bearheels death.

Tasers have their detractors. But Justin Nix, an assistant professor of criminal justice at the University of Louisville, said they have far more pluses than minuses because they decrease the risk of injuries to police officers and suspects.

They can keep officers from having to go hands-on with civilians, Nix said. Thats when people can really get hurt, when they have to wrestle each other, or fight with their hands and feet.

Four officers have been placed on administrative leave, and all have been interviewed. The department will turn its investigation over to the Douglas County attorney for review this morning.

In a statement Tuesday, the Omaha Police Department said, Our thoughts and prayers are with Mr. Bearheels family as well as the involved officers during this terribly trying time.

About a dozen people upset by Bearheels death gathered Tuesday evening at the Buckys gas station where Bearheels had been taken into custody the day before. Police have said Bearheels was acting erratically. He was shocked with the Taser and died about an hour after he was taken into custody.

Henry Barstow, 36, was among those at the Buckys at 60th and Center Streets.

The hour that elapsed between officers first encountering Bearheels and when he was stunned left plenty of time for the police to call a mental health professional to the gas station for guidance, Barstow said.

Bearheels mother, Renita Chalepah of Oklahoma, has raised questions about how police handled her son, whom she said suffered from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. He was in Omaha after being kicked off a bus. He was traveling from his fathers home in South Dakota to his mothers in Oklahoma. Chalepah said she had been in contact with Omaha police and her son during the day Sunday and had asked police to take him to the bus station or a crisis center. She said police told her they couldnt place him under emergency care because he wasnt a threat to himself or others.

According to Omaha police policy, officers can place mentally ill adults in emergency protective custody if they have committed an arrestable offense or threaten themselves or others.

Officers undergo mandatory training to deal with mentally ill adults. Guidelines in the police policies and procedures manual suggest that officers should speak calmly and slowly, provide lots of personal space, show concern about their well-being and not give multiple commands.

For people who do not meet emergency protective custody criteria, officers can call for help from the Douglas County Crisis Response Team, according to policy.

The service is provided by Lutheran Family Services and its primary goal is to resolve an immediate behavioral health crisis, according to its website.

Faiz Rab, director of public relations for the nonprofit, said he could not comment on the teams involvement with Mondays incident due to federal health privacy law. He also said the team isnt called if the situation is deemed unsafe, as they are civilians and not officers.

A legislative task force in December said in a report that Nebraska needs an emergency no-refusal center where law enforcement can take people with mental illnesses who are agitated and violent.

Nix said one-fourth of people shot by police were mentally ill, citing a 2015 Washington Post report. It is incumbent on police departments to consider how they deal with mentally ill people. Police come into contact with mental illness a lot, he said.

The Taser works by shooting two probes at a persons body. The probes travel in a V pattern, so that the farther the officer is from the subject, the wider the distance when they land on the subjects body. Once they land, a current travels between the probes, immobilizing that area of the body. Tasers most effective range is 7 to 15 feet, said Mike Dzezinski, head of Conducted Electrical Weapons training at Axon, which manufactures Tasers.

The farther away we can put those probes, the better and the bigger muscle groups we can get, he said

The goal: incapacitate the person by immobilizing them without a permanent injury.

It has no residual effect, he said.

The company does not tell law enforcement agencies how many times they can shock a suspect. Each agency needs to set policies congruent with local law.

Nix cited statistics from the British news organization the Guardian, which he said counted 50 stun gun deaths in 2015; last year they numbered 22.

Thats a really, really small number when you think about all of the interactions where Tasers are used successfully, he said. I think they are a wonderful tool in that they can prevent so many injuries from occurring ... I think the benefits outweigh the drawbacks for sure.

Stun guns have proved deadly in some circumstances or when suspects have certain health conditions, the Los Angeles Times reported in 2014.

Certain people may have, for example, heart problems or arrhythmia and might be particularly vulnerable to the application of stun guns, Julius Wachtel, a criminologist at Cal State-Fullerton, told the LA Times that year. That apparently also applies to a lot of people who may be mentally unstable.

In a statement, the company said the devices are not risk free but they are a safer response to resistance than batons, fists, guns and tackles.

The company says Taser use results in deaths in fewer than 0.1 percent of the times theyre used when taking a suspect into custody.

They are also the most studied less-lethal weapon in the world and there are more than 700 reports, abstracts, studies and letters on the safety of Taser weapons.
#first lady First lady meets with family of additional victim of Itaewon tragedy First lady Kim Keon-hee on Thursday visited a hospital in Seoul to meet with the family of a soldier who was pronounced brain dead the previous day after being injured in the Itaew...

#football S. Korea coach not yet planning alternatives for Son Heung-min's potential World Cup absence As South Korea's captain Son Heung-min tries to work his way back from a facial surgery in time for the FIFA World Cup, his national team head coach Paulo Bento does not yet have a...
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he would nominate a former Justice Department official as FBI director.

Trump tweeted that his choice, lawyer Christopher Wray, is "a man of impeccable credentials."

There's no more information in the two-sentence tweet that ends, "Details to follow."

Wray emerged from a list of former prosecutors, politicians and law enforcement officials interviewed by Trump since the president fired FBI Director James Comey last month.

Wray works at the King & Spalding law firm.

He represented New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie during the investigation into the George Washington Bridge lane-closing case. Two former Christie aides were convicted of plotting to close bridge lanes to punish a Democratic mayor who wouldn't endorse the Republican governor.

"Chris Wray is tough, qualified, and principled," Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., said in response to the news. "I look forward to sitting down with him to discuss both his commitment to our justice system and his vision for restoring public trust."

Wray worked for the Justice Department under President George W. Bush.

Meanwhile, with Comeys highly anticipated congressional testimony just a day away, the White House and its allies are scrambling for ways to offset potential damage.

Asked Tuesday about the testimony, President Donald Trump was tight-lipped: I wish him luck, he told reporters.

Comeys testimony Thursday before the Senate intelligence committee could expose new details regarding his discussions with Trump about the federal investigation into Russias election meddling.

Comey could also bring up other aspects of his dealings with the Trump administration. On Tuesday evening a person familiar with the situation said Comey had told Attorney General Jeff Sessions that he did not want to be left alone with Trump.

The person, who was not authorized to discuss the matter by name and spoke on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press the comment was made because of concerns Comey had about Trump.

It was not immediately clear when the conversation occurred. But The New York Times, which first reported the interaction with Sessions, said it came after Trump had asked Comey in February to end an FBI investigation into Trumps first national security adviser, Michael Flynn.

Justice Department spokesman Ian Prior declined to comment. He said Sessions doesnt believe its appropriate to respond to media inquiries on matters that may be related to ongoing investigations.

Trumps White House and its allies are crafting a strategy aimed at undermining Comeys credibility. Both White House officials and an outside group that backs Trump plan to hammer Comey in the coming days for misstatements he made about Democrat Hillary Clintons emails during his last appearance on Capitol Hill.

An ad created by the pro-Trump Great America Alliance  a nonprofit issues group that isnt required to disclose its donors  casts Comey as a showboat who was consumed with election meddling instead of focusing on combating terrorism. The 30-second spot is slated to run digitally on Wednesday and appear the next day on CNN and Fox News.

The Republican National Committee has been preparing talking points ahead of the hearing, which will be aired live on multiple TV outlets. An RNC research email Monday issued a challenge to the lawmakers who will question Comey. Theres bipartisan agreement, the email says, that Comey needs to answer a simple question about his conversations with President Trump: If you were so concerned, why didnt you act on it or notify Congress?

Comeys testimony marks his first public comments since he was abruptly ousted by Trump on May 9. Since then, Trump and Comey allies have traded competing narratives about their interactions. The president asserted that Comey told him three times that he was not personally under investigation, while the former directors associates allege Trump asked Comey if he could back off an investigation into Michael Flynn, who was fired as national security adviser because he misled the White House about his ties to Russia.

Democrats have accused Trump of firing Comey to upend the FBIs Russia probe, which focused in large part on whether campaign aides coordinated with Moscow to hack Democratic groups during the election. Days after Comeys firing, the Justice Department appointed a special counsel, former FBI Director Robert Mueller, to oversee the federal investigation.

The new revelation about Comeys uneasiness with Trump brings to mind a posting last month by Comey friend Benjamin Wittes on his Lawfare blog, in which he said Comey saw it as an ongoing task on his part to protect the rest of the Bureau from improper contacts and interferences from a group of people he did not regard as honorable.

Despite the mounting legal questions now shadowing the White House, Trump has needled Comey publicly. In a tweet days after the firing, he appeared to warn Comey that he might have recordings of their private discussions, something the White House has neither confirmed nor denied.

White House officials appear eager to keep the president away from television and Twitter Thursday, though those efforts rarely succeed. White House spokesman Sean Spicer said the president plans to attend an infrastructure summit in the morning, then address the Faith and Freedom Coalitions Road to Majority conference at 12:30 p.m.

The presidents got a full day on Thursday, Spicer said.

The White House had hoped to set up a war room stocked with Trump allies and top-flight lawyers to combat questions about the FBI and congressional investigations into possible ties between the campaign and Russia. However, that effort has largely stalled, both because of a lack of decision-making in the West Wing and concerns among some potential recruits about joining a White House under the cloud of investigation.

If there isnt a strategy, a coherent, effective one, this is really going to put us all behind the eight ball. We need to start fighting back. And so far, I dont see a lot of fight, said Barry Bennett, a former Trump campaign aide.

Still, Trump supporters say they are willing to step in to help the White House deflect any accusations from Comey.

If we feel he crosses a line, well fire back, said Ed Rollins, chief strategist of Great America PAC, the political arm of the group airing the Comey ad.

Copyright 2017, the Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
A car fire in a Lincoln driveway melted the siding on the front of a house Wednesday morning.

Lincoln Fire & Rescue crews were dispatched to the reported car fire at 10:03 a.m. When they arrived, the fire had spread to the house, and more units were called in, Battalion Chief Leo Benes said.

The cause of the fire is still under investigation, but an explosion that was reported could have been the front tires popping, Benes said.

The car was destroyed, Benes said, and the front of the home had extensive fire, heat and smoke damage. Damage to the house and car totaled about $85,000, Benes said.

No injuries were reported.
ONEILL, Neb.  After a parade of his neighbors and a sister-in-law criticized the proposed Keystone XL pipeline as unneeded and environmentally risky, James Crumly rose at a public meeting Wednesday to defend it.

The Page, Nebraska, area landowner said that he has invested in ethanol plants, leased land for wind turbines and supports shipping crude oil from Canada across his property as part of his desire to free the U.S. from reliance on the Middle East or other faraway countries for fuel.

The people of Holt County, the people of Nebraska and the people of the United States of America will benefit from energy independence, Crumly said.

But many more people rejected Crumlys hopes, saying that the current worldwide glut of oil has made the U.S. an exporter of oil, leaving no need for shipping expensive tar sands in a 36-inch pipe across Nebraska to refineries on the American Gulf Coast.

The country would be wiser to shift to other, renewable forms of energy, many opponents said.

This is a 20th century solution to a 21st century problem, said Jeanne Crumly of Page, James Crumlys sister-in-law.

And so it went during almost seven hours of testimony at the second public comment meeting conducted by the Nebraska Public Service Commission.

A lot of eyes nationally are on the low-profile, five-member elected commission. The panel is charged with deciding if the route across Nebraska proposed by Canadian pipeline developer TransCanada is in the public interest and should be approved.

The commissions approval is the last regulatory hurdle for the Keystone XL, though court challenges are likely regardless of how the commission rules.

On Wednesday, 90 people testified for and against the project, which was revived by President Donald Trump after he took office in January, overturning President Barack Obamas rejection of the Keystone XL.

Opponents outnumbered supporters by more than a 3-to-1 margin in testimony. By the applause for comments critical of the pipeline, it was easy to tell how most of the about 200 people attending felt.

Supporters of the pipeline, like the president, said it would boost the economy  creating up to 4,500 construction jobs and 35 permanent jobs, and generating $11 million in new taxes in its first year of operation.

Most of those testifying in favor of the pipeline were pipeline workers, union representatives or employees of TransCanada, who said the Keystone XL would be the most advanced and safest pipeline ever built.

Some day we might be able to live off alternative energy, but were not there yet, said Phillip Wallace, a Tulsa, Oklahoma-based representative of the Pipeliners Union 798.

Opponents of the project said that the route chosen is sandy and highly erodible and prone to landslides along the Keya Paha and Niobrara Rivers, and that the benefits will be temporary. Like the Obama administration, foes said the Keystone XL would exacerbate climate change.

The pipeline will eventually leak, they added, and that could contaminate groundwater and streams needed for livestock, crops and drinking water with toxic chemicals like benzene.

It seems senseless to me to risk our water, said Cindy Myers of Stuart, Nebraska.

Former State Sen. Mike Flood of Norfolk, who helped negotiate a shift in the proposed route of the Keystone XL in 2011, testified in favor of the project, as he did at a hearing in York a month ago.

Flood said that the construction of the first Keystone pipeline, which crosses eastern Nebraska, brought an economic boom to Norfolk during the recession years, and that the Keystone XL would do the same.

He said hed rather get oil from a friendly ally like Canada than from Saudi Arabia or Russia, and that the federal Department of Transportation has estimated that pipelines are 451 times safer than railroads when shipping oil.

Thats a number that tells a story Nebraskans need to hear, Flood said, to a couple of muffled boos from the audience.

Later Jane Kleeb, a leading opponent of the Keystone XL and chairwoman of the Nebraska Democratic Party, rose to refute some of Floods testimony.

Nebraska will not see a deluge of oil trains, and a spill from a rail car would be far less oil than from a high-pressure pipeline, she said.

Kleeb said that Flood should join the pipeline fighters if he doesnt want to do business with Russia and Saudi Arabia, because some of the pipe for the Keystone XL comes from Russia and the Saudis recently assumed 100 percent ownership of Americas largest refinery, Motiva Enterprises in Port Arthur, Texas, which she said would refine oil from the Keystone XL.

The fight over the pipeline will be expensive, she said, pledging that it will continue all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

We are not going to allow a foreign corporation to use eminent domain for private gain, Kleeb said.

Several landowners, including Jeanne Crumly, complained that TransCanada has used hard-ball tactics in attempting to obtain easements across their land. Several critics, but not all, recommended that the commission order the Keystone XL to be rerouted to parallel the path of the existing Keystone pipeline, arguing that landowners there seem to be OK with it. Along that route, they said, it would cross heavier, less porous soils.

But her brother-in-law noted that 83 percent of landowners on the Keystone XL route have reached easement agreements with TransCanada. The company did not testify at the public meeting, but had public relations people there early in the meeting watching the event.

The Public Service Commission is scheduled to hold a formal, legal hearing on the pipeline from Aug. 7 to 11 in Lincoln. It will rule later whether to approve or reject the proposed route across Nebraska.

Before then, another public meeting session will be held, according to commission member Tim Schram, though the time and location have not yet been determined.
40 down and counting: Forces on the verge of wiping out Pakistani terrorists in Valley

Mubin did it in Coimbatore: Why do Islamist terrorists shave their body before a suicide mission

3 terrorists killed, 1 Army officer martyred in Nagaland encounter

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

Three terrorists have been killed and one Army officer martyred in an ongoing encounter at Nagaland. The encounter broke in the early hours of Wednesday. The officer of the Territorial Army lost his life during the battle with terrorists in Nagaland's Mau on Wednesday.

There has been one civilian casualty, while three more jawans have been injured in the encounter as operations are still underway.

The Ministry of Home Affairs had released data highlighting three years of the NDA government. As per data available with the MHA, only 484 such incidents were reported in 2016 as compared to 1,025 in 2012 and 732 in 2013 when the Congress-led UPA was in power.

On June 2 an Army captain and a civilian were injured in an encounter with suspected insurgents of the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) in Assam's Kokrajhar district. The police said the encounter took place at Raimora in Gossaingaon area on Thursday night.

ONeIndia News
Army has free hand in Valley, does not have to look towards Delhi: Rathore

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

The Indian Army does not have to look towards Delhi. It has a free hand to take decisions in Kashmir said Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore.

The people only see what the cameras show them. Cameras show only stone pelting. The reality is that the situation in Kashmir is totally under control, Rathore also said. He further told a newspaper that the Kashmir solution cannot be found by just snapping a finger.

His comments come in the backdrop of several persons criticising the Army. Some including the CPI (M) even questioned the brute force used by the Indian Army in Kashmir.

The Army has tasted success in the Valley off late. It managed to kill a top commander of the Hizbul Mujahideen, Sabzar Bhat. The Army has vowed to wipe out the 180 odd militants before the winter sets in, in December. The Army has declared an all time high-alert in the Valley. There are around 4,000 personnel of the Armed forces in the Valley.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Wednesday, June 7, 2017, 5:45 [IST]
Before calling him Gen Dyer, go face the stones and bullets in the Valley

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

In the year 2013, there were 300 militants active in the Valley. The number came down to around 250 by 2014. With the new offensive launched by the Indian Army in the Valley, the number is at 180 today. The Army has given itself a deadline to wipe out militancy in the Valley before the winter sets in, in December.

The Army has been given a free hand by the Government of India to deal with the situation in Kashmir. The terrorists are no friends of India, the stone pelters are no angels and such situations need to be dealt with an iron fist.

The battle in Kashmir is not an easy one for the Army. One one hand they have to brave the bullets fired by the militants and on the other face the stones pelted by the protestors. Army officials say that they too want peace. But what do you do in a situation such as this where the problem does not seem to end.

In the midst of this tough battle, there are the likes of Partha Chatterjee who, in a recent article, seemingly compared Army chief General Bipin Rawat to General Reginald Edward Harry Dyer who was responsible for the Jalianwala Bagh massacre. Chatterjee in his article compared General Rawat's justification of Major Leetul Gogoi, who tied a Kashmiri civilian to an Army jeep, to the testimony Dyer provided defending his command to fire upon unarmed protesters at Jalianwala Bagh.

These statements were criticised heavily. Union Minister Venkaiah Naidu called Chatterjee's remarks "idiotic", "atrocious" and the "height of perversion," and said that Gogoi had "done a great job of saving lives".

Army officials say that they are on the job and would not let such issues come in the way. We have a job to get done and our utmost priority is to restore peace in the Valley. We have tried to talk, requested peace, told Pakistan to tone down, but nothing has worked.

The only way forward is to wipe out the militants and ensure that the people of Kashmir live in peace.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Wednesday, June 7, 2017, 6:49 [IST]
BJP leader who said Brahmins slaughtered cattle 'cow'ers down, retracts statement

India

oi-Anusha

"I do not want to stir controversy. I have retracted my statement and will now abide by whatever is the party's line," said Dr Vamana Acharya when OneIndia contacted him. The same man had just a couple of days ago rejected the idea of holy cow or Gomata. Vamana Acharya had also stated that Brahmins too slaughtered cows for consumption before India became an agrarian country, but retracted his remarks after facing flak from his own partymen.

Dr Vamana Acharya was invited as a panellist on a television channel's talk show. During the debate, he said that Brahmins had slaughtered cows. "Before India became an agrarian country, there are examples where all communities including Brahmins have slaughtered cows for consumption," he said. Acharya who is also the BJP spokesperson said that he did not subscribe to the idea of banning beef since cow was holy. "As a man of science, I cannot endorse cow either as holy or as a mother. I do not subscribe to the idea of banning beef because a cow is holy. I, in fact, welcome beef as a food choice for those who consume it," Acharya had said. Despite him making such claims in his personal capacity, BJP leaders and workers charged at Acharya.

Days after he expressed his views on beef, cow and slaughter, Acharya retracted the same and apologised for 'hurting sentiments'. "From the day he made such statements we have received severe backlash from own workers. People have continued to abuse him to this day. He has received many calls criticising his views," said a source from the BJP.

Senior leaders of the BJP like Go Madhusudhan, C T Ravi and Suresh Kumar distanced his statements from the party and lambasted Acharya.

OneIndia News
Cattle sale ban: SC to hear plea on June 15 against new rule

India

oi-Chennabasaveshwar

By Chennabasaveshwar

The Supreme Court to hear on June 15 a plea filed by a Hyderabad-based organisation challenging Centre's notification banning sale of cattle for slaughter.

A vacation bench of Justice Ashok Bhushan and Justice Deepak Gupta directed the listing of the matter on June 15 as counsel Sanobar Ali Qureshi, appearing for petitioner Mohammed Abdul Faheem Qureshi, on Wednesday mentioned the matter for an early hearing.

Challenging May 23 notification, counsel Qureshi told the bench that the official declaration was contrary to the provision of law that permitted the sale of animals for religious sacrifices.

No doubt the new notification has kicked up political storm in the country, even farmers were planning to approach the court against the rules.

The All India Kisan Sabha, the farmers' wing of the CPM, has decided to approach the Supreme Court against the new rules banning cattle sale for slaughter at animal markets.

Last month, Union Minister of Science and Technology, Earth Sciences, Environment Harsh Vardhan said that the ministry has notified the 'Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (Regulation of Livestock Markets) Rules, 2017'. He said that this notification is to regulate the animal market and the sale of cattle thereby ensuring welfare of cattle dealt in market. Both seller and buyer have to ensure that the cattle has not been bought and sold in the market for slaughter purpose.

(With agency inputs)
Chase, kill, freeze, block: The new Doval doctrine to restore peace in Kashmir

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

Chase, Kill, freeze, block- This is the three point strategy adopted by the Union Government to restore normalcy in the Valley. Over the past few weeks several security meets have been held with National Security Advisor, Ajit Doval at the helm of things.

It was stated repeatedly that the Indian Army must be given a free hand to tackle the problem. The results are quite visible already and the Army has said it would wipe out the terrorists before the winter sets in, in December.

There is a three point strategy that has been put in place to tackle the issue. While one would involve killing the terrorists, the other too deals with the funding and the rumour mongering on the social media.

Chasing them down:

Last week, a hit-list of 12 most wanted militants in the Valley was released. They were categorised as A+ and A++ militants. While the main emphasis would be to chase these terrorists down and kill them, the Indian Army would also look to wipe the rest on the ground.

A strong force of 4,000 is already in the Valley and in the next couple of months, the main focus would be on killing all the terrorists. The Army wants to get the job done by December. Once the winter sets in, terrorists from Pakistan normally do not infiltrate due to heavy snowfall.

Freeze:

The NIA has launched a probe against the Kashmir separatists for terror funding. The idea is to freeze and block all source of funds. The security establishment says that if the funds are frozen, the unrest cannot be funded. Multiple angles have cropped up during the probe.

It was found that the funds into the Valley had come in through cross-border trade, sale of California almonds and other means. Hawala traders have been traced to New Delhi through which funds were sent into accounts of separatists. The NIA probe looks to fix the culprits. Once done, this would ensure that the funding is frozen to a large extent which in turn would cripple the separatists.

Block:

The social media has been a bane for security agencies in Kashmir. Messages go viral and rumours are spread at the snap of a finger. There is a dedicated team of people who have launched several groups through which rumours are spread. Most of the rumours that are floated are relating to the Indian Army.

Highly placed officials say that the social media has to be regulated. The miscreants with the help of Pakistan have come up with various means to dodge the block. A new mechanism would urgently be put in place to ensure that such rumours do not float around in Kashmir.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Wednesday, June 7, 2017, 10:14 [IST]
Gangrape of 8-year-old in Mandsaur: Chargesheet filed against the accused duo

MP: Two men gets death sentence for raping 8-year-old in Mandsaur

CM Chouhan must resign, its a 'massacre' in Mandsaur: Opposition

India

oi-Vikas

By Vikas

With violence in Madhya Pradesh's Mandsaur intensifying and farmers refusing to relent, the opposition parties on Wednesday demanded Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan's resignation, terming the killing of farmers as a 'massacre'.

Fresh violence broke out Mandsaur today as agitating farmers drove away administrative officials, demanding that the Chief Minister visit the violence-hit district. At least 10 vehicles were set ablaze by protesters. Fresh reports state that vehicles parked at a police station in Devas's Hatpipalya were also set on fire.

In a bid to curb the spreading violence, authorities have suspended cellular data services in Ratlam, Neemuch, Mandsaur and Ujjain regions of the state.

Senior Congress leader Kamal Nath said that injustice was being meted out to the farmers and demanded a thorough probe.

"Shivraj Singh Chouhan must resign. At the end it is his responsibility and it would be unjustified if the blame is shifted on any police officer," he told media.

Senior JD-U leader Sharad Yadav told ANI that he is planning to visit the violence-hit area along with Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi.

"I can't recall such a massacre, they are giving death figures as 5 or 6 but I believe there are more," he said.

Union Minister Venkaiah Naidu claimed that the vandalism witnessed in Madhya Pradesh showed that those protesting were not mere farmers.

A day after five farmers were killed as a result of firing by security forces, complete bandh has been called for in Mandsaur. Bhartiya Kisan Union has called for complete shutdown in the violence-hit area amidst the government denying any permission given to police to open fire at agitating farmers.

[Rahul to visit MP's Mandsaur, to meet families of deceased farmers]

Section 144 continues to be imposed in Mandsaur and Pipaliya Police Station area along with Ratlam. Internet services have been suspended since Tuesday in sensitive localities.

The body of one of the farmers who was killed in Tuesday's firing was kept on the highway and farmers refused to perform last rites of those deceased until the Chief Minister visited.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Wednesday, June 7, 2017, 14:28 [IST]
Daughter's extravagant wedding lands Kerala CPI leader Geetha Gopi in trouble

India

oi-Anusha

Photos of a CPI leader Geetha Gopi's daughter's extravagant wedding is going viral and has come as a major embarrassment to the party. Geetha Gopi, a two-time Communist Party of India legislator from Nattika in Thrissur district has landed in trouble after pictures of her daughter decked in gold on her wedding day went viral.

The party has now sought an explanation from the legislator who has strayed from its ideology of austerity. The grand display of opulence by the CPI legislator has led netizens to accuse the party of hypocrisy. Geetha Gopi's daughter's wedding took place on Sunday and photos from the ceremony shows the bride decked up in layers of gold necklaces and dozens of gold bangles. Ironically, the CPI leaders during the previous assembly session had session urged Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan to find a way to stop extravagant weddings.

The pictures created a stir on social media with heavy criticism and mockery coming CPI's way. Incidentally, the wedding held at the Sree Krishna temple in Guruvayoor on Sunday saw many ministers and legislators in attendance.

Reacting to the controversy around her daughter's wedding, the MLA said that all she wanted was the best for her daughter. " I only did my duty as a mother. I purchased 50 sovereigns of gold for the wedding and the rest were gifted by friends and relatives," she said. Whatever the reason, a leader of a party like CPI indulging in splurging and display of wealth came as a massive embarrassment to the party. The incident comes days after CPM suspended its Rajya Sabha MP Ritabrata Banerjee for living a lavish lifestyle simple because it was against the party's ideology of austerity.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Wednesday, June 7, 2017, 15:40 [IST]
DigiLocker users can now store Ayushman Bharat health records: Here's how to do it

Delhi's cop turns out to be mastermind of Kerala ATM robbery gang

India

oi-Chennabasaveshwar

By Chennabasaveshwar

A top cop from Delhi Police's crime branch, who went missing for six months, allegedly turned out to be mastermind of the ATM robbers' gang.

Aslup Khan, attached with the RK Puram unit of the crime branch, ran a gang that robbed banks and ATMs in Kerala and is also suspected of having operated in Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka, reported TOI.

A special investigation team of Kerala Police recently arrested one of the gang members, Suresh (37) in Delhi. Suresh, a resident of Karnal, divuged details on Khan and his other associates. Suresh said he had initially met Khan as an informer.

As per reports, Aslup Khan had gone on a month's leave on December 15. Later, he extended his leave for one more month. Subsequently, he was suddenly suspended and his salary was withheld.

According to police, Khan's gang had looted ATMs located at Cheriyanadu, Kazhakoottam, Ramapuram and Kanjikuz. Suresh's role was to travel across Kerala and spot ATMs located in isolated areas which had no security. Khan and Suresh then chalked out the escape routes. Other gang members were proficient in ATM operations as they had a precise idea of the location of the cash and were careful not to burn the currency while using a gas cutter to get to the cash box.

The gang used mobiles with utmost care and switched them off at intervals. They avoided being spotted in ATMs' CCTVs. The car used by the criminals had the number registered to an ambulance which was earlier used at the Thiruvananthapuram airport.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Wednesday, June 7, 2017, 10:05 [IST]
ED attaches Rs 10 lakh in probe against Gujarat IAS officer

India

pti-PTI

New Delhi, Jun 7: The ED on Wednesday attached Rs 10 lakh in connection with its money laundering probe against a former IAS officer of Gujarat cadre, Pradeep Sharma.

The 1984-batch officer was arrested by the central probe agency in July last year. The Enforcement Directorate had filed a criminal case against Sharma and others under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, based on an FIR of the Gujarat CID.

The case pertains to the sanction of government land in Bhuj for industrial use to Ms Welspun India Limited, and its group companies, Welspun Power and Steel and Welspun Gujarat Style Roharan, in 2004 when Sharma was the district collector and chairman of the District Land Evaluation and Pricing Committee.

The agency, in a statement, said during the course of investigation it was revealed that in 2008-2009, Rs 22 lakh were transferred from the account of Ms Value Packaging to the NRO (Non-Resident Ordinary) account of Sharma's wife. "Out of the Rs 22 lakh, an amount of Rs 10 lakh was further transferred to the NRO account of Shvetang Chinubhai Dewashrayee, brother-in-law of Sharma, who is a US citizen.

"These Rs 22 lakh are the proceeds of crime generated as a result of criminal activity related to the offence registered against Sharma and from this fund, an amount of Rs 10 lakh has been layered and integrated into the account of his relative and projected as untainted.

Therefore, the same has been provisionally attached," it said. The central agency had earlier said that Sharma had allegedly "sanctioned huge land at cheaper price to Ms Welspun India Limited and its sister concerns Ms Welspun Gujarat Stahi Rohren, Ms Welspun Power and Steel company by manipulative acts in gross violation of norms, instructions and guidelines as laid down by the state government of Gujarat".

Through this allotment, Sharma, in connivance with some others "has allegedly caused financial losses to the state government to the tune of Rs 1.20 crore (approx)", the agency had said.

"Against this favour, he (Sharma) received gain to the tune of Rs 22 lakh in the name of his wife Shyamal P Sharma within a short period of 15 months by just investing Rs 1 lakh (in January 2008) in one Ms Value Packaging," the ED probe report had said. The ED had invoked PMLA alleging that the money was first deposited in his wife's overseas bank account and then transferred to his account in violation of the Act.

Sharma was also arrested by the Gujarat Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) in September 2014 in connection with a corruption case when he was the Bhavnagar municipal commissioner. He had also approached the Supreme Court in 2013 seeking cognisance of audio tapes related to alleged illegal snooping of a young woman architect under the then Narendra Modi government in the state. The ED had filed a charge-sheet in this case last year and had earlier attached assets worth Rs 1.09 crore.

PTI
Have come to my own home, Piyush Goyal says after having lunch at Dalit's home in Karnataka

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

I felt as though I have come to own home, Union Power Minister who had lunch at a Dalit's home in Karnataka said. Goyal who was in Bengaluru on a two day on Monday and Tuesday also addressed booth level party workers in a bid to establish direct contact with the people.

I am more than happy today. I felt that I had come to my own house. The love and affection I have received today I cannot describe. I felt that I have come to my own sister's home," he told the media after lunch.

Karnataka: Dalits assaulted over drinking water by upper caste men

Lauding Prime Minister Narendra Modi's commitment to bring a better future in this country, Goyal said the Centre would bring change without differentiating among people.

Together we are going to make India a super power in the world, he added.

Earlier last month, BJP president Amit Shah held a door-to-door campaign in a remote village of Gujarat's Chhota Udaipur district and had lunch with a tribal family.

OneIndia News
Will work to ensure defeat of Rahul Gandhi in Wayanad, says Prakash Karat

Karat draws flak for remarks on Army Chief, BJP demands apology

India

oi-Vikas

By Vikas

CPI-M leader Prakash Karat has drawn flak for his remarks on Army Chief General Bipin Rawat's handling of the Kashmir situation. His remark that the army was trying to 'suppress the people of Kashmir' has left defence experts and BJP leaders fuming.

BJP leader Sambit Patra reprotedly said that such statements 'provide oxygen to Pakistan' and demanded Karat's apology for his 'deplorable remarks.

In a scathing attack, BJP's S Prakash said that CPI-M has been supporting anti-Indian forces in Kashmir and in the JNU, reported ANI.

Meanwhile, defence expert Praful Bakshi decried that leaders like Karat were trying to gain political mileage out of the actions taken by the army and said that it would adversly affect the morale of the forces. Bakshi further adviced Karat to review his statement.

Prakash Karat on Tuesday raked up row by criticizing Army Chief Bipin Rawat for his comments on the use of a 'human shield' in Kashmir.

The editorial published in 'People's Democracy', said : 'Unfortunately, the army chief is reflecting the views of the Modi government which seeks to suppress the people of Kashmir, who are voicing their political protest, through the sole reliance on use of force. Not only the people of Kashmir but the Army itself will suffer irreparable damage due to the government's blind adherence to the use of coercive force against the civilian population.'

When Karat was asked questions by reporters on the sidelines of a CPI(M) politburo meeting, he said, "It was an editorial (which is) the party stand."

Karat's statements came after a social scientist and historian Partha Chatterjee compared Army chief Bipin Rawat to General Dyer .

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Wednesday, June 7, 2017, 11:18 [IST]
Kerala HC refuses to stay centres ban on sale of cattle for slaughter

India

oi-Anusha

The Kerala High Court on Wednesday refused to stay the centre's new notification banning the sale of cattle for slaughter. The HC decided not to order an interim stay on the implementation of Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (Regulation of Livestock Markets) Rules, 2017 (Rules), which prohibits the sale of cattle for slaughter in animal markets.

Justice PB Suresh Kumar while passing the order on a batch of petitions filed challenging Rule 22 of the new notification acknowledged that it affected the livelihood of many and hence listed the petitions for expeditious disposal on August 26.

The petitioners include a cattle trader P U Kunju Muhammed as well as MLA Hibi Eden along with Kozhikode district meat workers association. Petitioners represented by advocate Haris Beeran contended that the new rules violated Articles 14, 19 and 21 of the Constitution of India. They added that it amounted to a colorable exercise of the power and encroached upon the legislative domain of the State Legislatures.

While the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court had earlier granted a four-week stay on the operation of the new rules, a Division Bench of Kerala High Court on May 31 had dismissed a PIL challenging the notification filed by a youth Congress member.

The new Rules, notified under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, ban the sale of cows and buffaloes for slaughter at animal markets across India, and allow only farmland owners to trade at animal markets. The notification covers bulls, bullocks, cows, buffaloes, steers, heifers and calves, as well as the camel trade. They also require anyone purchasing cattle to provide an undertaking that the animals are bought for agricultural purposes and not slaughter.

OneIndia News
CBI Recruitment 2022 Out: Check salary, eligibility, and how to apply

'If I have nominated even one person using authority, I'll resign': Kerala governor on VC row

Kerala: Petrol bomb thrown at BJP office in Thiruvananthapuram

India

oi-Madhuri

Unidentified assailants hurled petrol bomb at Bharatiya Janata Party office in Trivandrum district on Wednesday.

Kerala: Petrol bomb thrown at BJP Thiruvananthapuram district committee office.No injuries pic.twitter.com/FrpETtvsKR  ANI (@ANI_news) June 7, 2017

The incident took place around 9:15 pm. According to reports, a few chairs that were laid on the portico of the office were damaged. However, no casualty or injury has been reported so far.

Following the incident, the BJP has called for hartal on Thursday in Trivandrum district. The police have launched a probe into the incident.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Thursday, June 8, 2017, 1:17 [IST]
Woman killed, 23 others injured as fuel tanker overturns and catches fire

11 dead as SUV hits an empty bus in MP's Betul; PM Modi announces ex-gratia

Two of 8 cheetahs released in acclimatisation enclosure at MP's Kuno National Park: Official

Two cheetahs make their first kill at Kuno National Park

Madhya Pradesh: 25 charred to death in cracker's factory blast in Balaghat

India

oi-Madhuri

Around twenty five workers were charred to death and 8 injured in a fire at a cracker factory in Madhya Pradesh's Balaghat district.

According to eyewitness, around 30-40 people were present during the incident. The injured people have been taken to hospital for treatment.

"An explosion in the firecracker factory in Katera village in Kotwali police station jurisdiction around 3.30 p.m. was so powerful that even factory walls collapsed due to the impact," Additional Director General of Police G. Janardan told.

"More bodies could be lying under the debris," the ADGP added.

OneIndia News
Maharashtra students to get CBSE Class 10 exam marks

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

The CBSE has said that it would share the scores of candidates who appeared for the Class X board examinations and are seeking admission to Class XI at schools. For those students based in Maharashtra, the board will share the scores with their schools in the state. The board has also decided to set up guidance centres at 9 CBSE affiliated schools in the state for those applying to Maharashtra government schools from other states. The students will get assistance in filling these forms at the centres.

The CBSE decided to share the scores with schools in Maharashtra as they do not accept grades for admission.

The Class X students from CBSE schools are being given grades in their board examinations since the 2009-10 academic year when the Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) system was introduced.

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Story first published: Wednesday, June 7, 2017, 7:10 [IST]
Why Punjab farmers burn stubble at this scale when others do not

MP: Fresh violence breaks out in Mandsaur, Para forces to be sent

India

oi-Anusha

The Ministry of Home Affairs is all set to send Paramilitary forces from Bhopal to Mandsaur to control widespread violence. The Prime Minister of Wednesday was appraised of the situation in Madhya Pradesh after which the decision to send para forces was taken.

Internet services continued to be suspended in Mandsaur where fresh violence broke out on Wednesday. Mobile data was suspended in many sensitive locations even as farmers continued to protest despite a curfew. Fresh violence broke out on Wednesday in Madhya Pradesh's Mandsaur as agitated farmers drove administrative officials.The Superintendent of police as well as district collector Swantra Singh were heckled by farmers who demanded that Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan visit the violence-hit district. At least 10 vehicles were set ablaze by protesters.

While farmers continued protests, political parties indulged in blame game holding each other responsible for the situation. Union Minister Venkaiah Naidu claimed that the vandalism witnessed in Madhya Pradesh showed that those protesting were not mere farmers. "Do not fuel violence in the name of farmers," Venkaiah Naidu told the Congress.

Madhya Pradesh farmers protest: Vehicles set on fire in Dewas pic.twitter.com/4Gbg4I4yKc  ANI (@ANI_news) June 7, 2017

A day after five farmers were killed as a result of firing by security forces, complete bandh has been called for in Mandsaur. Bhartiya Kisan Union has called for complete shutdown in the violence-hit area amidst the government denying any permission given to police to open fire at agitating farmers.

Section 144 continues to be imposed in Mandsaur and Pipaliya Police Station area along with Ratlam. Internet services have been suspended since Tuesday in sensitive localities. On Wednesday morning former MP from Mandsaur Meenakshi Natarajan was detained at Shyamghar by Nahrgarh Police. Tension continued in Mandsaur where farmers blocked the highway and demanded that Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan visit the district. The body of one of the farmers who was killed in Tuesday's firing was kept on the highway and farmers refused to perform last rites of those deceased until the Chief Minister visited.

The Shivraj Singh Chouhan government had announced compensation of Rs 10 lakh to kin of the deceased while Rs 1 lakh has been announced for those severely injured in the clashes that broke out. Owing to the outrage, the compensation to the families of the deceased was raised to Rs 1 crore.

While AICC Vice President Rahul Gandhi was scheduled to meet families of farmers who died in Tuesday's violence, no permission was granted, the Congress claimed.

Farmers in Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra have been protesting for days now demanding loan waiver and better support prices for their produce.

OneIndia News
NEET 2017: Impossible to declare result on June 8 says CBSE

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

The CBSE has said that there is no chance of the NEET 2017 results being declared on June 8. The submission was made by the board during a hearing at the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court. The court had stayed the declaration of the results after a petition challenged the different sets of question papers set for English medium and vernacular languages.

The CBSE told the court that it had set two question papers across the country for the NEET 2017 exams. Further it has also said that question papers in 8 vernacular languages had been set up for the entrance exam. The submission was made before the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court which had stayed the announcement of the results.

The Tamil Nadu government on the other told the court that it always stood against NEET.

The CBSE submitted that it would need 15 days time to declare the NEET 2017 results once it is permitted to do so. Thus the delay due to the order of the court is already beyond the permissible limit, the CBSE also stated.

The CBSE said that in the case the stay is not vacated the same would jeorpardise the future of lakhs of students. We need to complete the process and declare the results, it was also said.

The court directed the CBSE not to declare the results of National Eligibility and Entrance Test (NEET) for MBBS and BDS courses till June 7. The CBSE sought to vacate the stay and allow them to announce the results.

The CBSE further submitted that the question papers were set differently to prevent it from leaking.

The HC was moved challenging the conduct of NEET exam on May 7. The court had restrained the CBSE from announcing the results till final orders were passed on the petition challenging the entrance examination.

Justice N Seshasayee had last week sought the replies of the CBSE and the Union health secretary on the petition alleging that the test was not conducted in a uniform manner across the country. Different sets of question papers in English and Tamil were used for the examination and the degree of difficulty in both varied, putting many candidates at a disadvantage, the petitioner alleged.

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Story first published: Wednesday, June 7, 2017, 6:57 [IST]
NEET 2017: Won't pardon if you cite question paper leak, Guj HC to CBSE

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

The Gujarat High Court took to task the CBSE while hearing a petition by a group of students who appeared for NEET 2017. The CBSE said in its submission that it had set different question papers to avoid it from getting leaked.

Justice S G Shah was however not impressed by the argument and rapped the board. If the officer says that there is a chance of leakage in vernacular language, I am not going to pardon him, Justice Shah said.

On Monday the Gujarat High Court permitted a group of students who appeared for the NEET 2017 in English medium to join as respondents. A petition seeking to hold afresh the entrance test with a uniform set of set of questions for Gujarati and English medium students is being heard by the court.

Justice S G Shah will hear the matter today after the CBSE which conducted the test sought time to file its reply.

Students who had appeared for the NEET 2017 in English medium filed an application to join as respondents, which was allowed by the court. They contended that any decision to cancel the test will have an adverse effect on them and hence they should also be heard by the court.

Those who took the examination in Gujarati sought a direction from the High Court to scrap the test that was held on May 7. They wanted the test to be held afresh with the same set of questions for both Gujarati and English languages.

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Story first published: Wednesday, June 7, 2017, 7:03 [IST]
Two of 8 cheetahs released in acclimatisation enclosure at MP's Kuno National Park: Official

Two cheetahs make their first kill at Kuno National Park

BJP hits back at Rahul, says MP was Bimaru state under Cong rule

India

oi-Vikas

By Vikas

With Rahul Gandhi trying to corner the Madhya Pradesh government over the killing of protesting farmers in firing, the BJP has said that instead of politicising the issue the Congress vice-president must introspect how the farmers had suffered during the Congress governemnt in the state.

Rahul Gandhi is likely to visit Madhya Pradesh's Mandsaur on Wednesday where at least five farmers were killed in police firing. Farmers were killed as the farmers' agitation turned violent in Mandsaur district, prompting the authorities to clamp curfew in the trouble-hit area.

Some eyewitnesses alleged that the victims suffered bullet wounds, but Mandsaur district authorities denied police fired on the protesters who went on a rampage.

What some opposition leaders said over the incident:

Meenakshi Lekhi BJP leader Meenakshi Lekhi told news agency ANI that Madhya Pradesh used to be considered among 'Bimaru' (deprived) states when the Congress was in power. She said Rahul must recall how the farmers has suffered when there was urea scarcity during Congress regime. Shyam Jaju BJP leader Shyam Jaju, echoing similar sentiments, said farmers suffered a great deal in Congress rule and advised Rahul to not politicise the issue. AAP's Gopal Rai The Aam Aadmi Party on Tuesday demanded resignation of Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan over the deaths of five persons in the farmers' agitation in the state. AAP Madhya Pradesh in-charge Gopal Rai said the incident reflected anti-farmer mentality of the BJP who remembered farmers only during elections. "They have not been able to fulfil a single poll promise made during the elections," he said.

Rahul Gandhi earlier took to twitter to lauch a scathing attack on the Centre over the issue.

This Govt is at war with the farmers of our country#Mandsaur #MadhyaPradesh https://t.co/HQsjluDUPg  Office of RG (@OfficeOfRG) June 6, 2017

The farmers have been protesting since June 1 demanding a demanding minimum support price for their farm produce. The Chief Minister of MP, Shivraj Singh Chouhan said that price stabilisation fund of Rs 1,000 crore would be established to procure the farm produce at the minimum support price (MSP).

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Story first published: Wednesday, June 7, 2017, 9:22 [IST]
'Shaurya Diwas': Rajnath Singh says J&K entered new era of peace & prosperity after Article 370 abrogation

Pak committing atrocities against people in PoK, will have to bear consequences: Rajnath Singh

India's defence a notch higher with launch of 75 vital BRO projects in 6 states and 2 UTs, including J&K

Lack of development in J&K for decades was one of the reasons behind rise of terrorism: Rajnath Singh

'Cong is wide, AAP no-ball, only BJP is good length delivery': Rajnath Singh

Rajnath to hold meeting of North East CMs on June 12

India

pti-PTI

Aizawl, Jun 7: Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh will hold a meeting of chief ministers of north east states bordering Myanmar here on Monday.

Union Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju and top officials of the ministry would be present at the meeting, officials said.

Chief Ministers of Mizoram, Nagaland, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh are expected to attend the meeting, they said. Singh would be visiting Myanmar border areas by helicopter on Tuesday, state protocol department officials said.

PTI
SCO summit: Modi may meet Jinping, but not Nawaz Sharif

India

oi-Vikas

By Vikas

The Ministry of External Affairs on Wednesday said there is a possibilty of meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Astana, Kazakhstan, scheduled for Thursday.

MEA spokesperson Gopal Baglay, however, said that there is no meeting scheduled between Modi and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif.

India and Pakistan will be formally admitted into the China dominated six-nation grouping at the SCO summit tomorrow. The admission of India and Pakistan will enlarge the groups footprints for the first time to South Asia from Central Asia.

"Trade, connectivity, energy, banking and fight against terrorism are the main areas of cooperation," Baglay said while elaborating about the summit.

The group founded in Shanghai in 1996 is comprised of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan and it mostly acts as China-dominated security group especially focussing on Central Asia.

Li Wei, an anti-terror expert at the China Institute of contemporary international relations, had on Tuesday said that SCO will also become an ideal platform for members with disputes to solve their problems bilaterally based on the Shanghai Spirit, said reports.

He was also quoted as saying that 'India and Pakistan should not quarrel within the SCO, because they will find more reasons to cooperate'.

(OneIndia News with PTI inputs)

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Story first published: Wednesday, June 7, 2017, 16:18 [IST]
Strong words from a mother to her son who joined the ISIS

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

Adnan Hasan Damudi, a resident of Bhatkal in Karnataka was accused of recruiting people into the Islamic State. Damudi who was arrested in January received a letter from his mother who has asked him about his association with terrorists. The National Investigation Agency which is probing the 36 year will use the letter as evidence during the trial against him.

His mother Gulshan Banu has written a letter to him in which she questions him about his association with terrorists. It may be recalled that Damudi was deported from the UAE last year following which the NIA arrested him.

The handwritten letter in Urdu asks him why he had to associate with such people. The mother has expressed anguish, disappointment and anger over his association with such people and him taking part in unlawful activities.

The NIA which has the letter in its possession has verified the same at the forensic sciences laboratory. While submitting the same in court, the NIA said that they have been able to ascertain that the letter was written by Damudi's mother.

Damudi hails from Bhatkal and has been accused of being the key person behind the recruitments into the ISIS. Formerly a Dubai based accountant he was named with several others by the NIA in a case relating to recruitments into the ISIS.

The NIA accuses Damudi of providing 3,000 dirhams to a youth from Hyderabad in 2014 to enable him to travel to Syria/ Iraq to join the ISIS. He has also been identified as the person linked to a faction of the Indian Mujahideen. It may be recalled that a part of the IM had broken away to form an outfit sympathetic towards the ISIS. This faction was headed by two brothers- Sultan and Shafi Armar, residents of Bhatkal.

OneIndia News
Other side of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan: UP man sells 7 goats to build toilet as govt didnt help him

If you attack people for eating beef then also give up consuming mutton, says Netajis grandnephew

UP goat achieves notoriety for eating masters Rs 66,000

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia Staff Writer

Lucknow, June 7: Sarvesh Kumar Pal, a resident of Siluapur village in Kannauj, Uttar Pradesh, definitely has a unique pet, a goat, which loves to gorge on paper products. Because of his pet, people from nearby villages are flocking to his house to take a selfie with the goat, these days.

Isn't it great? But to achieve such popularity, Pal, a farmer, had to endure a loss of Rs 66,000. Yes, your guess is as good as ours. The goat chewed up the entire amount without even burping for once.

On Monday, Pal got a rude shock when he found that the goat had chewed Rs 66,000, which he had kept in his trouser's pocket before he went to take a shower. After he came out from the washroom, he saw the goat savouring the currency notes.

The farmer raised an alarm, but to no avail. Pal managed to save only two notes as rest of them were already being swallowed by the paper-loving goat. Even the two notes that Pal took out from the mouth of the goat have already been damaged.

The notes, all in Rs 2,000 denomination, were meant to buy bricks for construction work currently underway in Pal's house.

"I was taking a bath and the money was kept in the pocket of my trousers. Notorious for eating all kinds of paper products, the goat seized the chance to munch on its favourite food. What to do, my goat is like a child to me," Pal, with a broad smile, told The Times of India.

"Later, two notes wet in saliva could be retrieved in a damaged condition," he added.

Since then guests from neighbourhood to nearby areas are visiting Pal's house to have a glimpse of the goat. Many are even taking selfies with the goat.

"Some even suggested to take the goat to a veterinarian and get some medicines to make the animal vomit and recover the lost money. Many asked me to sell the goat to a butcher as it has brought misfortune to us," Sarvesh said.

One of the farmer's neighbours suggested him to hand over the goat to the police as it had committed a serious crime. "We can't be cruel to our pet. It is like our own child," Sarvesh and his wife said.

OneIndia News
Victory for Indian Army as top militant Danish Ahmed surrenders

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

In a major victory for the security agencies, a top militant Danish Ahmed surrendered. He surrendered before the Handwara police and the 21 Rashtriya Rifles Army. It may be recalled that a video of his had surfaced during the funeral of Hizbul Mujahideen terrorist, Sabzar Ahmed.

The police had said that a few days back video clips of Ahmed had surfaced in which he was seen wearing a battle pouch and holding grenades. These video clips were shot in Tral, Awantipore by the local media-persons during the funeral of militant commander Sabzar Ahmad Bhat of Hizbul Mujahideen outfit.

During investigation, police said the militant was identified as Danish Ahmed S/O Faooq Ahmed R/O Kulangam, Handwara. Danish was a student of B.Sc (third year) at Doon P.G. College of Agriculture Science and Technology, Dehradun. Danish according to police was found involved in stone-pelting incidents at Handwara in 2016. He was picked up by the police but was let off after counselling in view of his career, police statement said.

It was the police and the Army which called on his parents and coaxed him to surrender. His parents were told that Ahmed would be dealt with fairly if he surrendered. Efforts made by security forces yielded results and Danish surrendered before Handwara police and 21 RR army," police statement said.

During questioning Danish revealed that he was in touch with militants in South Kashmir and it was on their instigation that he had joined the Hizbul. He was told to activate some local youth in North Kashmir and ensure that even that part of the Valley was militancy infested. He however said that he realised that the entire exercise was a futile one and hence decided to surrender.

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Story first published: Wednesday, June 7, 2017, 10:32 [IST]
Why Punjab farmers burn stubble at this scale when others do not

30 per cent down: How Haryana aced the decrease in stubble burning

Who opened firing at protesting farmers in MP? Minister, top official give different versions

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia Staff Writer

Bhopal, June 7: Who killed the protesting farmers in Madhya Pradesh? The answer is still not clear as everyone is trying to pass the buck to each other. In such a tense atmosphere, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and the state administration have come up with different versions to complicate the situation further.

While a minister in the Shivraj Singh Chouhan cabinet told the media that "anti-social elements" were behind the shooting episode, a top official said policemen were forced to open fire to control the unruly protesters.

The farmers' protest in the state has left at least six killed and eight others injured in two separate incidents of firing in Mandsaur, around 325-km from the state capital of Bhopal on Tuesday.

The farmers, since June 1, are protesting to demand better prices for their produce and waiver of loans.

Madhya Pradesh home minister Bhupendra Singh told NDTV that the police did not shoot at the crowd in Mandsaur. "There was no firing by the police, an investigation has been launched," he said. "The bullets were shot by anti-social elements," added Singh.

However, a senior official told a totally different 'story' than what the minister shared with the media about the whole incident. Countering his boss, Ujjain Division Commissioner OM Jha told IANS that police personnel opened fire to control the unruly farmers.

"Around 2 pm, in order to control the agitated farmers, the police had to open fire in which two farmers died and several others were injured," Jha said.

Jha's version was echoed by a senior farmer leader. "The police started firing to disperse the crowd. Farmers were not carrying weapons," said Gajendra Tokas of the Rashtriya Kisan Mazdoor Sangh, a national farmers' union.

Chief Minister Chouhan alleged that the opposition Congress was behind inciting the farmers to resort to violence. The CM, who is the head of the state since 2005, reiterated that the government stands with the farmers.

"The Congress party has conspired to make this a violent agitation. Congress leaders have been trying to do this... The Mandsaur incident is sad and unfortunate," he said. "Unfortunately, anti-social elements have crept into the agitation," he added.

Meanwhile, CM Chouhan announced a compensation of Rs 1 crore and a job to the next of kin of each dead and Rs five lakh and free treatment to the injured.

"This government is at war with farmers," tweeted Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi. According to reports, Rahul is planning to visit Mandsaur on Wednesday to meet the families of the farmers who had died.

Several farmers' associations have called for a state-wide bandh on Wednesday. Senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh has supported the bandh.

OneIndia News.
In regular touch, trying for consular access: MEA on detention of 8 Indians in Qatar

Arab crisis: Qatar blockade could impact Al Jazeera

International

oi-Deepika

By Deepika

Cairo, June 7: Amid the current crisis in the Gulf region the name 'Al Jazeera' keeps coming up. No other Arab TV channel has become the focus of controversy in the Arab region like the Qatari-government-owned Al Jazeera did in the past years.

In the current crisis, some analysts view that the closure of Al Jazeera could be one of the demands to ease the tension and restore the diplomatic relations between five Arab countries and Qatar.

On Monday, Saudi Arabia and allies including Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain announced they were severing diplomatic relations with Qatar, state-funded television channel did not say a word, like any other it updated its ticker.

Only after the foreign ministry released a statement saying it was facing a campaign of lies aimed at putting the Gulf Arab state under guardianship that the channel came to life and had the news presenter broke the silence.

"This has been planned since 2014 but only came out after the Riyadh summit," said Mohamed al-Mosfer, one of the many Qatari analysts the channel had on to comment, in connection to a meeting attended by US President Donald Trump last month.

Key Arab countries on Monday had cut ties with Qatar citing terrorism. While Saudi Arabia, Egypt, United Arab Emirates and Bahrain coordinated their move, Yemen, Libya's eastern-based government, and the Maldives joined in later.

Even then, Al Jazeera, Doha- based broadcaster over looked the reason behnd the crisis by not focussing on the comments coming out of those countries instead highlighted the reactions from U S, Turkish foreign ministers and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani all stressing on dialogue between the countries.

Arab rulers accuse Qatar of using its multi-million-dollar franchise as a mouthpiece to attack them. The channel is at the centre of the controversy. As the local media speculated it would be shut down in an effort by Qatar to appease its angry neighbours, but employeers working there think their station will survive.

Everybody is shocked at the escalation but no one thinks the channel will close, said one journalist with Al Jazeera English.

Later in the day, Al Jazeera focused on a White house statement saying Trump would work to smooth things over between Arab Gulf states played for over an hour on Al Jazeera screens. While Saudi and Emirati channels ignored it.

The channel cheered on the 2011 Arab Spring revolts, now faces aggressive competition in its home region, and suspicion from many governments over air time given to Islamist groups in Syria, Libya and elsewhere.

Under Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani son and current ruler Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Qatar has toned down its foreign policy.

Al Jazeera founded in 1996 in an effort to turn economic power into political influence has come up with many free-wheeling, uncensored debate of a kind rarely seen on Arab televisions.

The talk shows were a sucess, where it hosted guests who challenged the wisdom of Arab rulers and adopted the role of supporter of the dispossessed.

Funded by Qatar's royal family, Wadah Khanfar, a Palestinian journalist who was director general of the network between 2006-2011, turned the Arab satellite channel into a world network with millions of viewers, but also new enemies.

Al Jazeera says it is an independent news service giving a voice to everyone in the region. While Egypt views Al Jazeera as critical of its government, and the channel has been banned there since 2013. Egyptian security forces have arrested several of its reporters and last year a Cairo court recommended the death penalty for two of them for leaking state secrets to Qatar.

Saudi Arabia shut down the channel

Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Culture and Information on Monday closed the Al Jazeera Media Network's office and withdraw the operating license. The decision was condemned by Al Jazeera.

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Story first published: Wednesday, June 7, 2017, 10:19 [IST]
In the name of the ISIS: Decoding an inspired terror module

International

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

The Islamic State was quick to call the London Bridge attack in which 7 people were killed by a group of three which included a Pakistani. If one looks at this group, it is clear that they were inspired by the ISIS and carried out a text-book styled attack.

Very often while reporting matters on terrorism, we journalists say that it was a module that carried out the attack. However in the case of the IS there is a difference since these are not technically modules, but inspired modules.

An inspired module is one that draws inspiration from a group's ideology. The members of the group of a lone person is not in touch with the members of the terrorist group. The planning of an attack is not discussed or known to the members of the group. The ideology is in circulation and it is up for grabs. Any person can draw inspiration and carry out an attack in the name of the terrorist group.

In India too several such modules were busted. Most of the members were not in touch with any of the members or handlers of the ISIS. They drew inspiration from the material circulated online and planned and tried to execute the attack on their own. This also meant that the ISIS or the al-Qaeda did not have to fund these modules. The members collect funds and go about their business on their own. For using the ISIS ideology, the group only would seek credit in return.

One needs to bear in mind is that the ISIS does not function like other terror groups. The ISIS does not function on the module theory. It is an outfit that works like an army in Iraq and Syria.

The function it gives its recruits in Iraq and Syria is very different to that it expects from its men in other parts of the world. When Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the boss of the ISIS delivered a message a year back, he made it amply clear that the outfit needed people who were inspired by it. He wanted to spread the ideology of the ISIS across the world and directed all to set up the Caliphate in their respective countries.

Top Intelligence Bureau officials say that the ISIS functions on inspiration. There is no set pattern that it works on. It has thrown a lot of material online about ideology and how it expects its men to function. It does not call for an attack that would require a great deal of planning.

Do not follow the rules is the message that it delivers. For instance, if a 'non-believer' is pushed down a building, the IS would call it an attack. The Nice attack in which a lorry mowed down several people was also called an attack. That attack was carried out by an ISIS inspired man who was not part of any module.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Wednesday, June 7, 2017, 6:23 [IST]
Know these India-origin candidates contesting UK elections

International

oi-Vikas

By Vikas

With a day left for elections in United Kindom, immigration and recent terror attacks are bound to have a significant bearing on the polls.

Amid all this, 56 Indian-origin candidates are contesting the polls this time around. In the 2015 polls, a record number of 10 Indian-origin candidates were elected to the British Parliament including Priti Patel, Alok Sharma, Keith Vaz, Virendra Sharma and Shailesh Vara.

Lets have a look at some of the Indian origin candidates who would be aiming for the British Parliament.

Labour candidate Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi, who is contesting for MP for the first time, is up for a tought fight in the Slough seat, which is held by Labour's Fiona Mactaggart since 1997. Labour party councillor Kuldip Singh Sahota would be contesting from Telford while from Birmingham Edgbaston it is going to be Labour party's Preet Kaur Gill.

If Preet Kaur Gill makes it to Parliament, she would be the first Sikh woman MP in the House.

From East Hampshire, it is going to be Labour nominee Rohit Dasgupta, who would be contesting a Tory safe seat.

The UKIP is fielding five Indian-origin candidates, who according to reports are not expected to win as most party supporters are expected to vote Conservative.

Conservative nominee Paul Uppal would be contesting Wolverhampton South West seat, where he needs to overturn the 2015 majority of just 801 votes to return to the House of Commons as MP, said a TOI report.

Reports say that as compared to the 1960s and 70s, when British Indians tended to vote Labour, the trend is now shifting. as Indians became economically better off, they have tended to vote Conservative.

Also, compared to people who have migrated from other parts of the sub-continent, Indian origin people are better off and well educated.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Wednesday, June 7, 2017, 10:00 [IST]
180 Hindu organisations write to UK PM, say they are living in a state of fear

Prayers for peace and candles in UK Parliament to celebrate Diwali

'Want to fix economy, unite country': Rishi Sunak to run for Britain's PM again

London attack: Imams refuse funeral prayers for attackers who misused 'Jihad'

International

oi-Chennabasaveshwar

By Chennabasaveshwar

More than 200 imams and Muslim religious leaders signed a statement refusing funeral prayers for the London attackers.

Imams, teachers, chaplains and other religious figures intended to send a strong message to extremists who commit acts of terror in the name of Islam, reports The Guardian.

Qari Asim, imam at the Makkah mosque in Leeds, said "This decision was not taken lightly. One of the last things you offer to the deceased is to seek forgiveness for them from God. By not performing the funeral prayer, we are not asking for forgiveness.

However, the families could do a private funeral. 'But these people don't deserve our prayers,' said a head of chaplaincy.

At least seven people were killed in central London by three terrorists on London Bridge and launched a knife attack in Borough Market on Saturday night.

All three attackers were confronted and shot dead by armed officers within eight minutes of being called after the attack.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Wednesday, June 7, 2017, 10:47 [IST]
Myanmar plane: Debris and bodies found in Andaman sea

International

oi-Vikas

By Vikas

Myanmar's military on Thursday said it has found the wreckage of a plane and some dead bodies in the Andaman Sea. The plane went missing with around 120 people on board as it flew from the southern city of Myeik to Yangon.

"We have found the plane and some dead bodies this morning about 8.25 AM (0725 IST)," a spokesman from the military's information team told AFP.

The country's Commander in Chief confirmed in a Facebook post that the wreckage had been found off the coast of Launglon, in southern Myanmar, by a Navy search team this morning.

Nine navy ships and three air force planes had been dispatched to search for the aircraft, which disappeared yesterday.

The plane had lost contact with the radar about 20 miles west of Dawei town, reports quoted a military official as saying. It lost contact around 7:05 GMT.

More than half of the passengers were from military families, including 15 children, along with 35 soldiers and 14 crew members, the army chief's office said in a statement.

It is monsoon season in Myanmar but there were no reports of stormy weather in the area at the time. Sources told AFP that debris had been found in the sea off the coastal town of Dawei, which lies an hour's flight southeast of Yangon.

In 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared on March 8, 2014, while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. The aircraft, a Boeing 777-200ER operated by Malaysia Airlines, last made voice contact with air traffic control when it was over the South China Sea, less than an hour after takeoff.

In 2016, an unidentified plane was thought to have plunged into the ocean close to Myanmar. The search for that plane was later called-off after the aviation department did not receive any reports of missing aircraft from airlines operating in Myanmar airspace.

(With agency inputs)

OneIndia News
Pakistan has put Gilgit-Baltistan on sale to China

International

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

The locals in Gilgit-Baltistan have been protesting for several days now. They are against Pakistan grabbing land from them and handing it over to China. This has been going on for long now says officials in the intelligence agencies.

The generals of Pakistan are directly involved in the grabbing of land. The fear among the locals is that the Pakistan would tell the Chinese army to guard this land.

"Thousands had their land snatched and occupied by the military authorities and their agencies. Under this black draconian rule, nobody can raise their voices against the CPEC," Wajahat Hasan, Chairman of the Gilgit-Baltistan Thinkers Forum (GBTF), told CNN-News18.

Pakistan has declared an iron rule in Gilgit-Baltistan which is referred to as the "Forgotten Kashmir." Post partition, the then government was unable to stop the Pakistani raiders from taking over the land. Since then Pakistan has stamped its authority.

The people of the area had their hopes raised when Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his Independence Day speech had criticised the atrocities committed by Pakistan in the region.

India has raised concerns after Pakistan decided to declare Gilgit-Baltistan as the country's fifth province after Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab and Sindh. India's concern is that Pakistan has not just been committing atrocities on the people of the region, but giving away large tracts of land to China. The Dawn had reported that, Pakistan was planning to elevate the constitutional status of the region in a bid to provide legal cover to the CPEC.

OneIndia News
12 dead after Iran Parliament, Khomeini shrine is attacked, ISIS claims responsibility

International

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By Chennabasaveshwar

Twin attacks on the Iranian Parliament and Ayotollah Khomenin's mausoleum have resulted in death of 12 persons. The attack began with a raid on the Iranian Parliament which was followed by a suicide bombing at the Mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini on Wednesday. Iran has said that the attack is over and all four terrorists have been killed.

The Iranian security forces said that they had managed to apprehend a team of terrorists which had planned a third attack. However further details of this operation was not given out. The attack was claimed by the Islamic State on its mouthpiece Amaq.

Three persons targeted the Parliament with one pistol and two AK-47 rifles. There are conflicting reports about a suicide bomber at the Parliament. While a section of the media reported that a suicide bomber blew himself up, others suggest that the explosion could have been caused by grenades thrown by the militants.

According to Tasmin news agency there were unconfirmed reports that the attackers had taken four hostages into the Parliament building. The agency also said that around 7 persons had died and several others were injured.

Around 30 minutes after the Parliament attack, militants opened fire at the mausoleum a few kilometres south of the city, wounding several members of the public, Iran's English-language Press TV said. One attacker detonated a suicide vest while another was killed by security forces.

OneIndia News
US to formally shift its Israel embassy in Jerusalem today; Middle East awaits danger

Trump hails Arab countries for ostracising Qatar

International

ians-IANS

By Ians English

Washington, June 7: US President Donald Trump has spoken with the king of Saudi Arabia on the financing of terror organisations and the Gulf region's unity after seven countries broke diplomatic ties with Qatar, the White House said.

Trump spoke to King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud over the phone, Efe news reported.

The "leaders discussed the critical goals of preventing the financing of terrorist organisations and eliminating the promotion of extremism by any nation in the region", the White House statement said.

However, "the President underscored that a united Gulf Cooperation Council is critical to defeating terrorism and promoting regional stability," the statement added.

The Cooperation Council for the Arab states of the Gulf was formed by Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain on Monday announced the rupture of diplomatic ties with Qatar and ordered the closure of the land borders and suspended sea and air transport to the country.

Soon the Maldives and the governments that Saudi Arabia supports in the conflicts in Yemen and Libya also severed diplomatic ties with Qatar.

They accuse the Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani-led Qatari government of supporting terrorist organizations, including the Islamic State, Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Qatar has denied the charges, describing them as "unjustified" and based on slander, and has assured that it "fights against terrorism and extremism".

Trump on Tuesday hinted that the "hard line" with Qatar was partly a result of his tour of the region in May.

"During my recent trip to the Middle East, I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology. Leaders pointed to Qatar - look!," Trump said on his Twitter account.

The US President also said that it was "so good to see" that his trip to Riyadh is "already paying off."

"Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism!" Trump highlighted.

Despite Trump's comments, the White House later called on the countries involved to reduce tensions and resolve the crisis "immediately," while the State Department said that the relationship with Qatar was "solid" and that Washington "continues to cooperate" with that country.

IANS
10 missions with humanitarian aid sent to Pak: US

White House to light up with Diwali celebrations this year

Diwali parties in US continue; Top diplomat hosts one at State Dept

White House defends Trump's tweets

International

ians-IANS

By Ians English

Washington, June 7: The White House has defended tweets by US President Donald Trump that have raised concern among opponents and allies alike.

"I think his use of social media ... gives him an opportunity to speak straight to the American people, which has proved to be a very, very effective tool," Xinhua news agency quoted White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer as telling the media on Tuesday.

"The President is the most effective messenger on his agenda," he said, adding that tweeting had served Trump well during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Trump said in a tweet earlier on Tuesday: "Sorry folks, but if I would have relied on the Fake News of CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, washpost or nytimes, I would have had ZERO chance winning WH."

Trump has also attacked London Mayor Sadiq Khan, calling him "pathetic" in the wake of the London terror attack, as well as Qatar, hinting the Muslim country may have sponsored radical ideology.

Trump's tweets have become the target of mockery for his opponents.

IANS
Why are Parliaments attacked by terrorists?

International

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

ISIS terrorists today attacked the Iranian Parliament in which 7 persons were killed. This attack comes just three months after an attack near the UK Parliament. It may be also recalled that the Indian Parliament too had been attacked by terrorists in December 2001.

An attack on Parliament is considered to be most audacious in nature. It is hitting the system directly. It is a challenge to democracy as well. It is also a way of telling a Government that it is not in agreement with it.

The Indian Parliament attack came just a few years after the Khandhar hijack. Maulana Masood Azhar, was released in exchange for the hostages. On his return to Pakistan, he floated the Jaish-e-Mohammad along with his brother Rauf Asghar.

The Jaish wanted to make an impact and in a bid to launch itself on the main stage planned the audacious Parliament attack. In Indian Intelligence circles it was said that the attack was sponsored and supported by the Pakistan establishment which was then headed by General Pervez Musharaff.

The Jaish wanted to convey a message to the Indian government that it is unhappy with the handling of the Kashmir. Moreover by hitting Parliament, the Jaish wanted to tell India that it would be a major player in Kashmir. This was the broad signal that the Jaish tried to send out by hitting the Indian Parliament.

The intention behind the UK and Iran incidents too are similar in nature. The ISIS which has claimed responsibility for both the attacks wanted to convey a message to the UK government that it was unhappy with its interference in Syria and Iraq. The UK is part of the global force that is battling the ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

The attack on the Iran Parliament is also a clear message that the ISIS intends to send out to the country. The ISIS which propagates the Sunni and Wahhabi ideology is opposed to Iran. The ISIS also draws support from several sections in Saudi Arabia. It is a well known fact that Iran and Saudi are at logger-heads. This could be a message from the ISIS to Iran on Saudi's behalf.

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Morocco, officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is the westernmost country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It overlooks the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria to the east, and the disputed territory of Western Sahara to the south. Morocco also claims the Spanish exclaves of Ceuta, Melilla and Penon de Velez de la Gomera, and several small Spanish-controlled islands off its coast. It spans an area of 446,300 km2 (172,300 sq mi) or 710,850 km2 (274,460 sq mi), with a population of roughly 37 million. Its official and predominant religion is Islam, and the official languages are Arabic and Berber; the Moroccan dialect of Arabic and French are also widely spoken. Moroccan identity and culture is a vibrant mix of Berber, Arab, and European cultures. Its capital is Rabat, while its largest city is Casablanca.
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LAtest Report On Global Commercial Automotive Thermal System Market 2021

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This report studies Commercial Automotive Thermal System in Global market, especially in North America, Europe, China, Japan, Southeast Asia and India, focuses on top manufacturers in global market, with Production, price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer, coveringBorg Warner Inc.Delphi Automotive plcDenso Corp.Mahle GmbHVisteon Corp.Calsonic Kansei Corp.Modine Manufacturing Co.Sanden Corp.Request Sample At:Market Segment by Regions, this report splits Global into several key Region, with production, consumption, revenue, market share and growth rate of Commercial Automotive Thermal System in these regions, from 2011 to 2021 (forecast), likeNorth AmericaChinaEuropeJapanIndiaSoutheast AsiaSplit by product type, with production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, can be divided intoNon-Electronically Controlled Thermal Systems segmentElectronically Controlled Thermal Systems segmentType IIISplit by application, this report focuses on consumption, market share and growth rate of Commercial Automotive Thermal System in each application, can be divided intoApplication 1Application 2Application 3Table Of Contents:Global Commercial Automotive Thermal System Market Research Report 20211 Commercial Automotive Thermal System Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Commercial Automotive Thermal System1.2 Commercial Automotive Thermal System Segment by Types1.2.1 Global Production Market Share of Commercial Automotive Thermal System by Type in 20151.2.2 Non-Electronically Controlled Thermal Systems segment Overview and PriceEnquire About Report At:2 Global Commercial Automotive Thermal System Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1 Global Commercial Automotive Thermal System Production and Share by Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)2.2 Global Commercial Automotive Thermal System Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)3 Global Commercial Automotive Thermal System Analysis by Region3.1 Global Commercial Automotive Thermal System Production, Revenue and Market Share by Region (2011-2021)3.1.1 Global Commercial Automotive Thermal System Production Market Share by Region (2011-2021)3.1.2 Global Commercial Automotive Thermal System Revenue Market Share by Region (2011-2021)3.2 Global Commercial Automotive Thermal System Consumption by Region (2011-2021)4 Global Commercial Automotive Thermal System Analysis by Type4.1 Global Commercial Automotive Thermal System Production, Revenue, Market Share and Growth Rate by Type (2011-2021)4.1.1 Global Commercial Automotive Thermal System Production and Market Share by Type (2011-2021)4.1.2 Global Commercial Automotive Thermal System Revenue, Market Share and Growth Rate by Type (2011-2021)4.2 Non-Electronically Controlled Thermal Systems segment Production, Revenue, Price and Growth (2011-2021)Research Beam features a wide array of research reports from publishers across the globe. We have a database of reports ranging over every market category and extensive collection of reports on sub-categories as well. We are dedicated to provide qualitative insights on your area of interest by gathering reports from various publishers at one place to save your time and money. Hundreds of organizations across the world are reaping great benefits from insights gained through reports sourced by Research Beam.Contact US5933 NE Win Sivers Drive,#205, Portland, OR 97220United States+1 (800) 910-6452
Failure Analysis Equipment Market - Industrial Progress Offers Lucrative Opportunities

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Global failure analysis equipment market was valued at USD 4.08 billion in 2012, growing at a CAGR of 8.8% from 2013 to 2019. Rapid growth in nanotechnology coupled with growth in medical applications in the Asia Pacific region has fueled the growth of failure analysis equipment market. In addition, increased investments in research and education infrastructure are also propelling the growth of failure analysis equipment market. However, high cost of failure analysis equipment leads to low adoption rate of these, especially in the cost sensitive countries of Asia Pacific region. Thereby, hinders the growth of failure analysis equipment to an extent. On the other hand, growing innovative techniques such as super-resolution microscopy and correlative light and electron microscopy (CLEM) are excellent opportunities for the market which are expected to bolster the failure analysis equipment market in the years to come.Browse Press Release of this Research Report:In 2012, Asia Pacific was the largest revenue generator for the failure analysis equipment market. The dominance by Asia Pacific is due to large number of countries such as China, India, Japan, Taiwan and Australia among others investing heavily in research and development infrastructure, nanotechnology as well as medical technologies. Similarly, North America and Europe collectively accounted for over one-third of the market share, as these have been continually focusing on research and development and have been using failure analysis equipment for R&D purpose.Focused Ion Beam system (FIB) and Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM) accounted for majority market share in 2012, owing to rapid usage of these equipments. However, Dual Beams systems (FIB/SEM) are expected to grow at the fastest pace in the years to come owing to the several advantages over a single-beam FIB system, especially for sample preparation and microscopy applications. Thus, Dual Beam systems (FIB/SEM) are expected to grow over the forecast period.Secondary ion mass spectroscopy (SIMS) accounted for majority market share in the year 2012 owing to several advantages such as the ability to identify elements present in very low concentration levels and the ability to identify all elements such as helium and hydrogen. Focused Ion Beam (FIB) techniques are used in applications such as die surface milling or cross-sectioning, high magnification microscopy and even material deposition. Thus, the usage in wide array of applications is expected to drive the FIB technology over the forecasted period from 2013 to 2019.Fill The Form For An Exclusive Sample Of This Report @The global failure analysis equipment market has been segmented by equipment into Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM), Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM), Focused Ion Beam Systems (FIB) and Dual Beam (FIB/SEM) Systems. The key industry participants include FEI Company, Hitachi High-Technologies Europe GmbH, Carl Zeiss SMT GmbH and JEOL, Ltd. among others.Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Transparency Market Research90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Crowd Funding Market to Reap Excessive Revenues by 2022

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The term Crowd funding refers to a collection of funds for any venture or project through various sources like equity and non-equity, the platform for collecting funds can be the internet and other social media. These crowd funding platforms help investors to meet entrepreneurs in need of funds for their ventures. Mostly, none- equity sector can be considered as the main source of crowd funding rather than equity sector. The crowd funding market had started in the early or mid of 2000s, and since then it has noticed an enormous growth owing to the increase of Start-Ups and many new projects globally. Moreover, such crowd funding platforms have been able to collect billions of dollars for meeting millions of campaigns in the year 2012. Nowadays, Investors are getting attracted to such crowd funding market because of the potential of the untapped market in many regions. North America is having a greater potential in crowd funding market due to the presence of economically sound countries like the US in this region. Likewise, every year crowd funding platforms are launched, thus globalizing the crowd funding market.To View Complete Report @ :The increase in a number of Start-Ups and many new small projects are responsible for the growth of crowd funding market for their capital needs. Moreover, Real Estate sector is growing with a significant rate in developing regions like North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. Hence, increasing fund requirement in Real Estate sector is a driving force for crowd funding market. In addition, this sector is having a good market share in crowd funding market.A sample of this report is available upon request @Besides the driving factors of crowd funding market, there are many stringent conditions of crowd funding platforms which can restrain the crowd funding market in further future. Many entrepreneurs are not aware of the existence of crowd funding platforms which can hamper the growth of crowd funding market. Like Kickstarter launched a mission to empower artists and creative projects owners for their ideas through reward crowd funding, but due to lack of awareness many entrepreneurs were not able to avail the benefits of crowd funding.To view TOC of this report is available upon request @The global Crowd Funding market is segmented into seven key regions as North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa and Japan. North America is having the maximum market share in the global crowd funding market, specially the US in this region is having a big chunk in crowd funding market because of its higher economy than other countries. North America is followed by Europe in crowd funding market and in Europe also, the best performing countries are UK and France. Asia Pacific is anticipated to witness a moderate growth in crowd funding market due to many new business opportunities in various sectors.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:
Contact Center Systems Market Estimated to Discern 2X Expansion by 2021

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Market globalization have enforced businesses to expand their operations across multiple regions and thereby fulfil their consumer demand. Businesses have customer interaction centers where professionals interact with customers and address their enquires on daily basis. Thus, a huge amount of enquires are generated during the conversion of sales between the business and customers. Businesses are finding it difficult to manage these enquires in the form of information and storage of data. Further, due to technological advancement in contact channel, the interaction between the customer and contact center have increased through voice, email and messaging. A contact center system is software based system which enables automatic contact routing facility during high amount of customer enquiries. The contact center system also involves additional services such as voice portal, quality monitoring system, outbound dialers, workforce management, interactive voice response (IVR) and analytical services. This helps contact center professionals to address customer concerns within less time and thereby increase their satisfaction level.To View Complete Report @ :Services such as IVR and voice portal saves valuable time of contact center through interactive voice based recordings which helps in assisting the concerns of customers. Further, in sales or outbound call center, most of the services such as cross-selling, renewals, cross-selling and satisfaction surveys involves making outgoing calls to customers. Contact center system helps in providing a list of prospective customer contact and maintain them on a timely basis. It also helps in analyzing the quality of call through sending automatic messages to customers in order to scale customer satisfaction. Contact center system also involves recording of voice call and chat history in order to monitor the team performance. This helps to formulate a team strategy with the help of additional analytical insights on customer satisfaction provided by contact center system.A sample of this report is available upon request @Contact center system requires a huge amount of data storage space as the large amount of data is generated during the process. In order to address this concern, contact center system providers are providing on-premise data center, private cloud and cloud system packages based on the business requirement. The demand for cloud and private cloud system is expected to increase in coming years owing to the low installation cost compared to on-premise systems. These providers offer services on a subscription based model which helps to further decrease the operational cost for businesses.To view TOC of this report is available upon request @The application of contact center system is anticipated to increase in healthcare, financial services, telecommunication, retail, and government and transportation sector owing to the increasing demand for customer enquires in coming years. The market for contact center system is increasing due to its easy deployment and increase in business agility. However, the risk of loss of credible information due to lack of security features can hamper the market for cloud based contact center system. The demand for contact center system is expected to increase in Asia Pacific and Latin American region as most businesses outsource their operations to third party service providers situated in these regions.Some of the key contact center system providers are Cisco Systems Inc., 3CLogic. Inc., Aspect Software, Inc., Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc., Five9 Inc., Oracle Corp., IBM Corp. and inContact Inc.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
WebRTC Market Perceive Robust Expansion by 2021

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Web Real-Time Communication (WebRTC) is an internet browser interface which enables real-time communication between two internet browsers. WebRTC enables peer to peer audio, video and data communication between the browsers without plugins. This key functionality of WebRTC not only reduces the time required but also makes the process easy for a non-technical user since WebRTC requires no plugins, frameworks or applications. The browsers use Session Description Protocol (SDP) to establish a connection for data transfer. WebRTC is using JavaScript Application Programming Interface (APIs) and HTML5 for embedded communication within the browsers. However, WebRTC is an emerging platform that is anticipated to have significant impact on the communication between browsers in near future.To View Complete Report @ :WebRTC is available for free and is accessible worldwide which is the key growth driver of this market. Moreover, WebRTC is platform and device independent which would help to attract global audience. Further, it provides better video and voice quality with advanced security and other operational features. WebRTC can adapt to various network conditions and is interoperable with Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and Unified Communications (UC) solutions which is expected to help companies to easily integrate it with their existing infrastructure. WebRTC provides a bright solution for customer facing businesses. As this communication is real time, WebRTC provides audio visual solutions without any cost. Retail and healthcare are two industries with high demand for WebRTC as direct communication with end users or customers is of immense importance in these industries.A sample of this report is available upon request @One key restraint associated with the use of WebRTC is that it uses internet platform which is a public domain and thus, the quality of service cannot be guaranteed all the time. Use of Internet could result in privacy issues as it is still not clear how WebRTC manages the security and privacy. Further, integration is another key challenge associated with WebRTC. Organizations could face problems in integrating and adapting the WebRTC to their current system. WebRTC is currently not supported on Microsoft Internet Explorer. Thus, there are a number of complexities linked with WebRTC however, technological advancements are anticipated to eliminate these challenges in near future.To view TOC of this report is available upon request @With WebRTC nearing its completion, organizations especially the consumer facing entities are expected to use this technology in near future across all platforms. WebRTC is an emerging industry standard for audio and video communication through a web browser. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) decided that browser makers should implement VP8 and H.264 video codecs. WebRTC is of huge importance for call centers and customer care centers, where direct communication is happening between a company representative and the end user or customer. WebRTC can simplify this communication further and increase the level of customer satisfaction. Companies are integrating WebRTC into their websites to enhance the overall user experience.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:
4G Expansion and Fiber Deployment Creates Opportunities for Multiplay Offerings Country Intelligence Report South Africa

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SummarySouth Africa will remain one of the largest telecom service revenue markets in the AME region in 2016, generating estimated revenue of $9.2bn. Going forward, we expect the telecom services revenue in South Africa to decline at a CAGR of -2.4% in USD during 2016-2021, due to local currency depreciation. However, in local currency, the revenue is expected to expand by 3.3%, due to increasing uptake of mobile and fixed data services. Operators are investing in upgrading their network infrastructure, including the expansion of 4G services and rollout of fiber networks across the country.GET SAMPLE REPORT @Key Findings- The overall telecom service revenue in South Africa is estimated to generate $9.2bn in 2016 and is estimated to decline at a CAGR of -2.4% during 2016-2021.- Mobile revenue will account for 75.6% of the total telecom revenue in 2021.- The South Africa telecom market will be dominated by Vodacom and MTN South Africa. Operators will continue to invest in fixed and mobile networks focusing on network expansion to roll out next-generation technologies to stay competitive.Synopsis"South Africa: 4G Expansion and Fiber Deployment Creates Opportunities for Multiplay Offerings," a new Country Intelligence Report by Pyramid Research, provides an executive-level overview of the telecommunications market in South Africa today, with detailed forecasts of key indicators up to 2021. Published annually, the report provides detailed analysis of the near-term opportunities, competitive dynamics and evolution of demand by service type and technology/platform across the fixed telephony, broadband and mobile sectors, as well as a review of key regulatory trends.The Country Intelligence Report provides in-depth analysis of the following:- Regional context: telecom market size and trends in South Africa compared with other countries in the region.- Economic, demographic and political context in South Africa.- The regulatory environment and trends: a review of the regulatory setting and agenda for the next 18-24 months as well as relevant developments pertaining to spectrum licensing, national broadband plans, number portability and more.- A demand profile: analysis as well as historical figures and forecasts of service revenue from the fixed telephony, broadband, mobile voice and mobile data.- Service evolution: a look at changes in the breakdown of overall revenue between the fixed and mobile sectors and between voice and data from 2016 to 2021.- The competitive landscape: an examination of key trends in competition and in the performance, revenue market shares and expected moves of service providers over the next 18-24 months.- In-depth sector analysis of fixed telephony, broadband, mobile voice and mobile data: a quantitative analysis of service adoption trends by network technology and by operator, as well as of average revenue per line/subscription and service revenue through the end of the forecast period.- Main opportunities: this section details the near-term opportunities for operators, vendors and investors in South Africa's telecommunication market.Reasons to Buy- This Country Intelligence Report offers a thorough, forward-looking analysis of South Africa's telecommunications market, service providers and key opportunities in a concise format to help executives build proactive and profitable growth strategies.- Accompanying Pyramid Researchs Forecast products, the report examines the assumptions and drivers behind ongoing and upcoming trends in South Africa's mobile communications, fixed telephony and broadband markets, including the evolution of service provider market shares.- With more than 20 charts and tables, the report is designed for an executive-level audience, boasting presentation quality.- The report provides an easily digestible market assessment for decision-makers built around in-depth information gathered from local market players, which enables executives to quickly get up to speed with the current and emerging trends in South Africa's telecommunications market.- The broad perspective of the report coupled with comprehensive, actionable detail will help operators, equipment vendors and other telecom industry players succeed in the challenging telecommunications market in South Africa.Table of ContentsExecutive summaryMarket and competitor overviewRegional contextEconomic, demographic and political contextRegulatory environmentDemand profileService evolutionCompetitive landscapeMajor market playersSegment analysis Mobile servicesFixed servicesPay-TVIdentifying opportunitiesOverall market opportunitiesContinuedACCESS REPORT @Get in touch:LinkedIn:Twitter:Facebook:WISEGUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersPune - 411028Maharashtra, IndiaWISEGUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersPune - 411028Maharashtra, India
Wealth Singapore Market 2017 Share, Trend, Segmentation and Forecast

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SynopsisThis report is the result of extensive research covering the high net worth individual (HNWI) population and wealth management market in Singapore.SummaryThis report reviews the performance and asset allocations of HNWIs and ultra-HNWIs in Singapore.It also includes an evaluation of the local wealth management market.GET SAMPLE REPORT @Scope Independent market sizing of Singaporean HNWIs in five wealth bands HNWI volume, wealth and allocation trends from 2011 to 2015 HNWI volume, wealth and allocation forecasts to 2020 HNWI and UHNWI asset allocations across 13 asset classes Geographical breakdown of all foreign assets Alternative breakdown of liquid vs. investable assets Details of the development, challenges and opportunities related to the wealth management and private banking sector in Singapore The size of the Singaporean wealth management industry Information on private banks Detailed wealth management and family office information Insights into the drivers of HNWI wealthReasons to Buy Singaporean Wealth Report 2016 is an unparalleled resource, and the leading resource of its kind. Compiled and curated by a team of expert research specialists, the report comprises a wide variety of data, created based on over 125,000 HNWIs from around the world in WealthInsight's database. With the wealth reports as the foundation for its research and analysis, WealthInsight is able to obtain an unsurpassed level of granularity, insight and authority on the HNWI and wealth management universe in each of the countries and regions it covers. The report reviews the performance and asset allocations of HNWIs and ultra-HNWIs. The report also includes projections of the volume, wealth and asset allocations of HNWIs to 2020, and a comprehensive background of the local economy. The report provides an overview of the private banking and wealth management sector.Key Highlights There were 150,404 HNWIs in Singapore in 2015, who collectively held US$779.8 billion in wealth. The Singaporean HNWI population decreased by 2.5% in 2015, following a 2.1% increase in 2014. The Singaporean HNWI population is forecast to grow by 12.6%, to reach 171,082 in 2020, while HNWI wealth is projected to grow by 20.1% to reach US$959.1 billion.Table of Content: Key Points1 DEFINITIONS AND METHODOLOGY1.1 Definitions1.2 Reports1.3 Methodology2 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY3 INTRODUCTION3.1 Definitions4 SINGAPORE KEY FACTS5 DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH IN SINGAPORE5.1 HNWI Volume and Wealth Trends6 FINDINGS FROM THE WEALTHINSIGHT HNWI DATABASE6.1 Trends in HNWI Wealth to 2020ContinuedACCESS REPORT @Get in touch:LinkedIn:Twitter:Facebook: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.Contact Info:NORAH TRENTPartner Relations & Marketing Managersales@wiseguyreports.comPh: +1-646-845-9349 (US)Ph: +44 208 133 9349 (UK)
China Industrial Burners Market Research Report 2017

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This report studies Industrial Burners in China market, focuses on the top players in China market, with capacity, production, price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer, coveringOilonHoneywell (Maxon)AndritzFoster WheelerLimpsfieldIBS Industrie-Brenner-Systeme GmbHJOHN ZINKMHPSBalturBloom EngineeringFaber Burner CompanyLingyunSelas Heat Technology CompanyWeishauptFill the form for an exclusive sample of this report @Market Segment by Regions (provinces), coveringSouth ChinaEast ChinaSouthwest ChinaNortheast ChinaNorth ChinaCentral ChinaNorthwest ChinaSplit by product Type, with production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, can be divided intoFuel oilGas (gas)Coal-fired (pulverized coal / coal-water slurry)Split by Application, this report focuses on consumption, market share and growth rate of Industrial Burners in each application, can be divided intoMetal IndustryFood industryTextile IndustryGlass and Cheramic IndustryPaper and Chemical IndustryTransportation and ShippingOther ApplicationsObtain Report Details @Table of Contents1 Industrial Burners Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Industrial Burners1.2 Industrial Burners Segment by Type1.2.1 China Production Market Share of Industrial Burners Type in 20151.2.2 Fuel oil1.2.3 Gas (gas)1.2.4 Coal-fired (pulverized coal / coal-water slurry)1.3 Applications of Industrial Burners1.3.1 Industrial Burners Consumption Market Share by Application in 20151.3.2 Metal Industry1.3.3 Food industry1.3.4 Textile Industry1.3.5 Glass and Cheramic Industry1.3.6 Paper and Chemical Industry1.3.7 Transportation and Shipping1.3.8 Other Applications1.4 China Market Size (Value) of Industrial Burners (2011-2021)1.5 China Industrial Burners Status and Outlook1.6 Government Policies2 China Industrial Burners Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1 China Industrial Burners Capacity, Production and Share by Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)2.2 China Industrial Burners Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)2.3 China Industrial Burners Average Price by Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)2.4 Manufacturers Industrial Burners Manufacturing Base Distribution, Sales Area, Product Type2.5 Industrial Burners Market Competitive Situation and Trends2.5.1 Industrial Burners Market Concentration Rate2.5.2 Industrial Burners Market Share of Top 3 and Top 5 Manufacturers3 China Industrial Burners Manufacturers Profiles/Analysis3.1 Oilon3.1.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors3.1.2 Industrial Burners Product Type, Application and Specification3.1.2.1 Fuel oil3.1.2.2 Gas (gas)3.1.3 Oilon Industrial Burners Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2015 and 2016)3.1.4 Main Business/Business Overview3.2 Honeywell (Maxon)3.2.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors3.2.2 Industrial Burners Product Type, Application and Specification3.2.2.1 Fuel oil3.2.2.2 Gas (gas)3.2.3 Honeywell (Maxon) 114 Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2015 and 2016)3.2.4 Main Business/Business Overview3.3 Andritz3.3.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors3.3.2 Industrial Burners Product Type, Application and Specification3.3.2.1 Fuel oil3.3.2.2 Gas (gas)3.3.3 Andritz 122 Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2015 and 2016)3.3.4 Main Business/Business Overview3.4 Foster Wheeler3.4.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors3.4.2 Industrial Burners Product Type, Application and Specification3.4.2.1 Fuel oil3.4.2.2 Gas (gas)3.4.3 Foster Wheeler Jan Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2015 and 2016)3.4.4 Main Business/Business Overview3.5 Limpsfield3.5.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors3.5.2 Industrial Burners Product Type, Application and Specification3.5.2.1 Fuel oil3.5.2.2 Gas (gas)3.5.3 Limpsfield Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2015 and 2016)3.5.4 Main Business/Business Overview3.6 IBS Industrie-Brenner-Systeme GmbH3.6.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors3.6.2 Industrial Burners Product Type, Application and Specification3.6.2.1 Fuel oil3.6.2.2 Gas (gas)3.6.3 IBS Industrie-Brenner-Systeme GmbH Million USD Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2015 and 2016)3.6.4 Main Business/Business Overview3.7 JOHN ZINK3.7.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors3.7.2 Industrial Burners Product Type, Application and Specification3.7.2.1 Fuel oil3.7.2.2 Gas (gas)3.7.3 JOHN ZINK Machinery & Equipment Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2015 and 2016)3.7.4 Main Business/Business Overview3.8 MHPS3.8.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors3.8.2 Industrial Burners Product Type, Application and Specification3.8.2.1 Fuel oil3.8.2.2 Gas (gas)3.8.3 MHPS Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2015 and 2016)3.8.4 Main Business/Business Overview3.9 Baltur3.9.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors3.9.2 Industrial Burners Product Type, Application and Specification3.9.2.1 Fuel oil3.9.2.2 Gas (gas)3.9.3 Baltur Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2015 and 2016)3.9.4 Main Business/Business Overview3.10 Bloom Engineering3.10.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors3.10.2 Industrial Burners Product Type, Application and Specification3.10.2.1 Fuel oil3.10.2.2 Gas (gas)3.10.3 Bloom Engineering Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2015 and 2016)3.10.4 Main Business/Business Overview3.11 Faber Burner Company3.12 Lingyun3.13 Selas Heat Technology Company3.14 Weishaupt4 China Industrial Burners Capacity, Production, Revenue, Consumption, Export and Import (2011-2016)4.1 China Industrial Burners Capacity, Production and Growth (2011-2016)4.2 China Industrial Burners Revenue and Growth (2011-2016)4.3 China Industrial Burners Production, Consumption, Export and Import (2011-2016)5 China Industrial Burners Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by Type5.1 China Industrial Burners Production and Market Share by Type (2011-2016)5.2 China Industrial Burners Revenue and Market Share by Type (2011-2016)5.3 China Industrial Burners Price by Type (2011-2016)5.4 China Industrial Burners Production Growth by Type (2011-2016)6 China Industrial Burners Market Analysis by Application6.1 China Industrial Burners Consumption and Market Share by Application (2011-2016)6.2 China Industrial Burners Consumption Growth Rate by Application (2011-2016)6.3 Market Drivers and Opportunities6.3.1 Potential Application6.3.2 Emerging Markets/CountriesAbout UsQYReseachReports.com delivers the latest strategic market intelligence to build a successful business footprint in China. Our syndicated and customized research reports provide companies with vital background information of the market and in-depth analysis on the Chinese trade and investment framework, which directly affects their business operations. Reports from QYReseachReports.com feature valuable recommendations on how to navigate in the extremely unpredictable yet highly attractive Chinese market.Contact Us1820 AvenueM Suite #1047Brooklyn, NY 11230United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Web:Email: sales@qyresearchreports.com
United States Pharmaceutical Excipients Market Report 2017

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In this report, the United States Pharmaceutical Excipients 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 splits the United States market into seven regions:The WestSouthwestThe Middle AtlanticNew EnglandThe SouthThe Midwestwith sales (volume), revenue (value), market share and growth rate of Pharmaceutical Excipients in these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast).Fill the form for an exclusive sample of this report @United States Pharmaceutical Excipients market competition by top manufacturers/players, with Pharmaceutical Excipients sales volume, price, revenue (Million USD) and market share for each manufacturer/player; the top players includingAshlandBASFDOWRoquetteFMCEvonikLubrizolAssociated British FoodsCroda InternationalArcher Daniels MidlandOn the basis of product, this report displays the sales volume, revenue, product price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoOral FormulationsTopical FormulationsParenteral FormulationsAdvanced Delivery SystemsOn the basis on the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, sales volume, market share and growth rate of Pharmaceutical Excipients for each application, includingProduceChemistryObtain Report Details @Table of ContentsUnited States Pharmaceutical Excipients Market Report 20171 Pharmaceutical Excipients Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Pharmaceutical Excipients1.2 Classification of Pharmaceutical Excipients by Product Category1.2.1 United States Pharmaceutical Excipients Market Size (Sales Volume) Comparison by Type (2012-2022)1.2.2 United States Pharmaceutical Excipients Market Size (Sales Volume) Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 Oral Formulations1.2.4 Topical Formulations1.2.5 Parenteral Formulations1.2.6 Advanced Delivery Systems1.3 United States Pharmaceutical Excipients Market by Application/End Users1.3.1 United States Pharmaceutical Excipients Market Size (Consumption) and Market Share Comparison by Application (2012-2022)1.3.2 Produce1.3.3 Chemistry1.4 United States Pharmaceutical Excipients Market by Region1.4.1 United States Pharmaceutical Excipients Market Size (Value) Comparison by Region (2012-2022)1.4.2 The West Pharmaceutical Excipients Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.3 Southwest Pharmaceutical Excipients Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.4 The Middle Atlantic Pharmaceutical Excipients Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.5 New England Pharmaceutical Excipients Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.6 The South Pharmaceutical Excipients Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.7 The Midwest Pharmaceutical Excipients Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.5 United States Market Size (Value and Volume) of Pharmaceutical Excipients (2012-2022)1.5.1 United States Pharmaceutical Excipients Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2022)1.5.2 United States Pharmaceutical Excipients Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2022)2 United States Pharmaceutical Excipients Market Competition by Players/Suppliers2.1 United States Pharmaceutical Excipients Sales and Market Share of Key Players/Suppliers (2012-2017)2.2 United States Pharmaceutical Excipients Revenue and Share by Players/Suppliers (2012-2017)2.3 United States Pharmaceutical Excipients Average Price by Players/Suppliers (2012-2017)2.4 United States Pharmaceutical Excipients Market Competitive Situation and Trends2.4.1 United States Pharmaceutical Excipients Market Concentration Rate2.4.2 United States Pharmaceutical Excipients Market Share of Top 3 and Top 5 Players/Suppliers2.4.3 Mergers & Acquisitions, Expansion in United States Market2.5 United States Players/Suppliers Pharmaceutical Excipients Manufacturing Base Distribution, Sales Area, Product Type3 United States Pharmaceutical Excipients Sales (Volume) and Revenue (Value) by Region (2012-2017)3.1 United States Pharmaceutical Excipients Sales and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)3.2 United States Pharmaceutical Excipients Revenue and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)3.3 United States Pharmaceutical Excipients Price by Region (2012-2017)4 United States Pharmaceutical Excipients Sales (Volume) and Revenue (Value) by Type (Product Category) (2012-2017)4.1 United States Pharmaceutical Excipients Sales and Market Share by Type (Product Category) (2012-2017)4.2 United States Pharmaceutical Excipients Revenue and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)4.3 United States Pharmaceutical Excipients Price by Type (2012-2017)4.4 United States Pharmaceutical Excipients Sales Growth Rate by Type (2012-2017)5 United States Pharmaceutical Excipients Sales (Volume) by Application (2012-2017)5.1 United States Pharmaceutical Excipients Sales and Market Share by Application (2012-2017)5.2 United States Pharmaceutical Excipients Sales Growth Rate by Application (2012-2017)5.3 Market Drivers and OpportunitiesAbout 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
Cloud Enterprise Content Management Market 2017 Global Key Players Opentext , Xerox, M-Files, Microsoft , IBM, Newgen Software, Oracle Corporation Market Analysis and Forecast to 2022

Cloud Enterprise Content Management

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Cloud Enterprise Content ManagementReport 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 PlayersOpentextXeroxM-FilesMicrosoftIBMNewgen SoftwareHyland SoftwareAdobeOracle CorporationEverteamBox Inc.Alfresco SoftwareDocuWareNovell .Click here for sample report @Market segment by Regions/Countries, this report coversUnited StatesEUJapanChinaIndiaSoutheast AsiaMarket segment by Type, Cloud Enterprise Content Management can be split intoPublic Cloud Enterprise Content ManagementPrivate Cloud Enterprise Content ManagementHybrid Cloud Enterprise Content ManagementMarket segment by Application, Cloud Enterprise Content Management can be split intoSmall and Medium-Sized EnterprisesLarge EnterprisesSome Major Points from Table of content:Global Cloud Enterprise Content Management Market Size, Status and Forecast 20221 Industry Overview of Cloud Enterprise Content Management1.1 Cloud Enterprise Content Management Market Overview1.1.1 Cloud Enterprise Content Management Product Scope1.1.2 Market Status and Outlook1.2 Global Cloud Enterprise Content Management 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 Cloud Enterprise Content Management Market by Type1.3.1 Public Cloud Enterprise Content Management1.3.2 Private Cloud Enterprise Content Management1.3.3 Hybrid Cloud Enterprise Content Management1.4 Cloud Enterprise Content Management Market by End Users/Application1.4.1 Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises1.4.2 Large EnterprisesEnquiry About Report @3 Company (Top Players) Profiles3.1 Opentext3.1.1 Company Profile3.1.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.1.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.1.4 Cloud Enterprise Content Management Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.1.5 Recent Developments3.2 Xerox3.2.1 Company Profile3.2.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.2.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.2.4 Cloud Enterprise Content Management Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.2.5 Recent Developments3.3 M-Files3.3.1 Company Profile3.3.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.3.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.3.4 Cloud Enterprise Content Management Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.3.5 Recent Developments3.4 Microsoft3.4.1 Company Profile3.4.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.4.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.4.4 Cloud Enterprise Content Management Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.4.5 Recent Developments3.5 IBM3.5.1 Company Profile3.5.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.5.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.5.4 Cloud Enterprise Content Management Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.5.5 Recent Developments3.6 Newgen Software3.6.1 Company Profile3.6.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.6.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.6.4 Cloud Enterprise Content Management Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.6.5 Recent Developments3.7 Hyland Software3.7.1 Company Profile3.7.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.7.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.7.4 Cloud Enterprise Content Management Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.7.5 Recent Developments3.8 Adobe3.8.1 Company Profile3.8.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.8.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.8.4 Cloud Enterprise Content Management Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.8.5 Recent Developments3.9 Oracle Corporation3.9.1 Company Profile3.9.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.9.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.9.4 Cloud Enterprise Content Management Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.9.5 Recent Developments3.10 Everteam3.10.1 Company Profile3.10.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.10.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.10.4 Cloud Enterprise Content Management Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)...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 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 and Chinese Mobile phone battery Market Drivers, Trends and Opportunities Forecasts from 2017 to 2022

Mobile phone battery Market

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Executive SummaryGlobal and Chinese Mobile phone battery Market:WiseGuyReports.com adds Mobile phone battery Market 2017 Global and Chinese Analysis, Growth, Trends and Opportunities Research Report Forecasting to 2022reports to its database.WiseGuyReports.Com Publish a New Market Research Report On Request a Sample Report @The 'Global and Chinese Mobile phone battery Industry, 2012-2022 Market Research Report' is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the global Mobile phone battery industry with a focus on the Chinese market. The report provides key statistics on the market status of the Mobile phone battery manufacturers and is a valuable source of guidance and direction for companies and individuals interested in the industry.Firstly, the report provides a basic overview of the industry including its definition, applications and manufacturing technology. Then, the report explores the international and Chinese major industry players in detail. In this part, the report presents the company profile, product specifications, capacity, production value, and 2012-2017 market shares for each company. Through the statistical analysis, the report depicts the global and Chinese total market of Mobile phone battery industry including capacity, production, production value, cost/profit, supply/demand and Chinese import/export. The total market is further divided by company, by country, and by application/type for the competitive landscape analysis. The report then estimates 2017-2022 market development trends of Mobile phone battery industry. Analysis of upstream raw materials, downstream demand, and current market dynamics is also carried out. In the end, the report makes some important proposals for a new project of Mobile phone battery Industry before evaluating its feasibility. Overall, the report provides an in-depth insight of 2012-2022 global and Chinese Mobile phone battery industry covering all important parameters.Browse Full Report Details@Some Major Points from Table of Content:Table of ContentsChapter One Introduction of Mobile phone battery Industry1.1 Brief Introduction of Mobile phone battery1.2 Development of Mobile phone battery Industry1.3 Status of Mobile phone battery IndustryChapter Two Manufacturing Technology of Mobile phone battery2.1 Development of Mobile phone battery Manufacturing Technology2.2 Analysis of Mobile phone battery Manufacturing Technology2.3 Trends of Mobile phone battery Manufacturing TechnologyChapter Three Analysis of Global Key Manufacturers3.1 Company A3.1.1 Company Profile3.1.2 Product Information3.1.3 2012-2017 Production Information3.1.4 Contact Information3.2 Company B3.2.1 Company Profile3.2.2 Product Information3.2.3 2012-2017 Production Information3.2.4 Contact Information3.3 Company C3.2.1 Company Profile3.3.2 Product Information3.3.3 2012-2017 Production Information3.3.4 Contact Information3.4 Company D3.4.1 Company Profile3.4.2 Product Information3.4.3 2012-2017 Production Information3.4.4 Contact Information3.5 Company E3.5.1 Company Profile3.5.2 Product Information3.5.3 2012-2017 Production Information3.5.4 Contact Information3.6 Company F3.6.1 Company Profile3.6.2 Product Information3.5.3 2012-2017 Production Information3.6.4 Contact Information3.7 Company G3.7.1 Company Profile3.7.2 Product Information3.7.3 2012-2017 Production Information3.7.4 Contact Information3.8 Company H3.8.1 Company Profile3.8.2 Product Information3.8.3 2012-2017 Production Information3.8.4 Contact Information.Chapter Four 2012-2017 Global and Chinese Market of Mobile phone battery4.1 2012-2017 Global Capacity, Production and Production Value of Mobile phone battery Industry4.2 2012-2017 Global Cost and Profit of Mobile phone battery Industry4.3 Market Comparison of Global and Chinese Mobile phone battery Industry4.4 2012-2017 Global and Chinese Supply and Consumption of Mobile phone battery4.5 2012-2017 Chinese Import and Export of Mobile phone batteryChapter Five Market Status of Mobile phone battery Industry5.1 Market Competition of Mobile phone battery Industry by Company5.2 Market Competition of Mobile phone battery Industry by Country (USA, EU, Japan, Chinese etc.)5.3 Market Analysis of Mobile phone battery Consumption by Application/TypeChapter Six 2017-2022 Market Forecast of Global and Chinese Mobile phone battery Industry6.1 2017-2022 Global and Chinese Capacity, Production, and Production Value of Mobile phone battery6.2 2017-2022 Mobile phone battery Industry Cost and Profit Estimation6.3 2017-2022 Global and Chinese Market Share of Mobile phone battery6.4 2017-2022 Global and Chinese Supply and Consumption of Mobile phone battery6.5 2017-2022 Chinese Import and Export of Mobile phone batteryPurchase a Copy of This Report @CONTINUEDMore about WiseGuyReports:Contact Us:NORAH TRENTPartner Relations & Marketing Managersales@wiseguyreports.comPh: +1-646-845-9349 (US)Ph: +44 208 133 9349 (UK)Wise Guy Reports is part of the Wise Guy Consultants Pvt. Ltd. and offers premium progressive statistical surveying, market research reports, analysis & forecast data for industries and governments around the globe. Wise Guy Reports features an exhaustive list of market research reports from hundreds of publishers worldwide. We boast a database spanning virtually every market category and an even more comprehensive collection of market research reports under these categories and sub-categories.WISE GUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, HadapsarPune  411028Maharashtra, India
Bath Soaps 2017 Global Key Players  Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Johnson & Johnson, Chicco, LUX, DOVE Market Analysis and Forecast to 2022

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Bath Soaps Market 2017Wiseguyreports.Com Adds Bath Soaps Market Market Demand, Growth, Opportunities, Analysis of Top Key Players and Forecast to 2022 To Its Research Database.Report Details:Global Bath Soaps market competition by top manufacturers, with production, price, revenue (value) and market share for each manufacturer;the top players includingProcter & GambleUnileverColgate PalmoliveJohnson & JohnsonChiccoLUXDOVESebapharmaPigeonGalderma LaboratoriesBurt's BeesHimalayaPZ CussonsWeledaMustelaWalchSafeguardDettolOLAYRequest for Sample Report @Geographically, this report is segmented into several key Regions, with production, consumption, revenue (million USD), market share and growth rate of Bath Soaps 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 intoMedicated Bath SoapNon-medicated Bath SoapOn 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 Bath Soaps for each application, includingRetail StoresSpecialty StoresOnline StoresOtherComplete Report Details @Table of Content:Global Bath Soaps Market Research Report 20171 Bath Soaps Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Bath Soaps1.2 Bath Soaps Segment by Type (Product Category)1.2.1 Global Bath Soaps Production and CAGR (%) Comparison by Type (Product Category) (2012-2022)1.2.2 Global Bath Soaps Production Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 Medicated Bath Soap1.2.4 Non-medicated Bath Soap1.3 Global Bath Soaps Segment by Application1.3.1 Bath Soaps Consumption (Sales) Comparison by Application (2012-2022)1.3.2 Retail Stores1.3.3 Specialty Stores1.3.4 Online Stores1.3.5 Other1.4 Global Bath Soaps Market by Region (2012-2022)1.4.1 Global Bath Soaps 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 Bath Soaps (2012-2022)1.5.1 Global Bath Soaps Revenue Status and Outlook (2012-2022)1.5.2 Global Bath Soaps Capacity, Production Status and Outlook (2012-2022)..7 Global Bath Soaps Manufacturers Profiles/Analysis7.1 Procter & Gamble7.1.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.1.2 Bath Soaps Product Category, Application and Specification7.1.2.1 Product A7.1.2.2 Product B7.1.3 Procter & Gamble Bath Soaps Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.1.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.2 Unilever7.2.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.2.2 Bath Soaps Product Category, Application and Specification7.2.2.1 Product A7.2.2.2 Product B7.2.3 Unilever Bath Soaps Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.2.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.3 Colgate Palmolive7.3.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.3.2 Bath Soaps Product Category, Application and Specification7.3.2.1 Product A7.3.2.2 Product B7.3.3 Colgate Palmolive Bath Soaps Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.3.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.4 Johnson & Johnson7.4.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.4.2 Bath Soaps Product Category, Application and Specification7.4.2.1 Product A7.4.2.2 Product B7.4.3 Johnson & Johnson Bath Soaps Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.4.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.5 Chicco7.5.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.5.2 Bath Soaps Product Category, Application and Specification7.5.2.1 Product A7.5.2.2 Product B7.5.3 Chicco Bath Soaps Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.5.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.6 LUX7.6.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.6.2 Bath Soaps Product Category, Application and Specification7.6.2.1 Product A7.6.2.2 Product B7.6.3 LUX Bath Soaps Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.6.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.7 DOVE7.7.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.7.2 Bath Soaps Product Category, Application and Specification7.7.2.1 Product A7.7.2.2 Product B7.7.3 DOVE Bath Soaps Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.7.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.8 Sebapharma7.8.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.8.2 Bath Soaps Product Category, Application and Specification7.8.2.1 Product A7.8.2.2 Product B7.8.3 Sebapharma Bath Soaps Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.8.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.9 Pigeon7.9.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.9.2 Bath Soaps Product Category, Application and Specification7.9.2.1 Product A7.9.2.2 Product B7.9.3 Pigeon Bath Soaps Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.9.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.10 Galderma Laboratories7.10.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.10.2 Bath Soaps Product Category, Application and Specification7.10.2.1 Product A7.10.2.2 Product B7.10.3 Galderma Laboratories Bath Soaps Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.10.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.11 Burt's Bees7.12 Himalaya7.13 PZ Cussons7.14 Weleda7.15 Mustela7.16 Walch7.17 Safeguard7.18 Dettol7.19 OLAYContinue.Buy this Report @Contact Us:NORAH TRENTSales@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 LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, HadapsarPune - 411028Maharashtra, India
Electronic Shelf Label Market: Deploying Electronic Shelf Label In Retail Stores Boosts Market

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The report Global Electronic Shelf Label (ESL) Market by Manufacturers, Regions, Type and Application, Forecast to 2021 available at Market Intel Reports estimates that Increasing Infrastructure in developed countries To Provide Prominent Opportunities For MarketBrowse 113 Pages of Research report on Global Electronic Shelf Label Market @The Electronic Shelf Label Market produces the electronic shelf label which is used to display products pricing on the shelves. The electronic shelf labelling uses electronic paper or liquefied crystal display for showing the product price to the customer. It uses wireless communication networks like radio, and infrared technology to communicate with the back end database.The electronic shelf edge labels in the Electronic Shelf Label Market can help to update the product information like the price within the store. They can also show graphic imaging to the customers. The electronic shelf label system also enables incorporation of dynamic pricing in which the retailers can fluctuate the price to match the demand, inventory levels, and product promotions.Scope & Regional Forecast of the Electronic Shelf Label MarketThe Electronic Shelf Label Market growth is boosted by the demand from the retailers for cost efficient, fast, and secure price labelling. The customers concentrate on enhancing the customer experience for an accurate pricing which leads to the large scale adoption of the digital shelf labels in the retail industry. The market growth is further fueled by the rising demand for flexible and fast updating of the prices of the products.The rising deployment of esl display in the retail shop stores is expected to supplement the growth of the Electronic Shelf Label Market. But high investment required for the installation of the electronic shelf label is expected to restrain the market. The problematic integration between the hardware and software of the electronic label technology is likely to reduce adoption of systems.The increasing demand for operational efficiency in the retail industry has led to the presence of shelf label manufacturers in the Electronic Shelf Label Market.Request Sample PDF Brochure of the report @Segmentations & Key Players Involved in the Electronic Shelf Label MarketThe Electronic Shelf Label Market can be broken down into various segmentations on the basis of  Type- Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) Displays, E papers Displays. Application- Grocery/Supermarket, Drug Stores, Specialty Stores, and Others. Region- North America (USA, Canada and Mexico), Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy), Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia), and Latin America, Middle and Africa.Some of the key players involved in the Electronic Shelf Label Market are as follows: SES(imagotag) Pricer Displaydata E Ink Opticon Sensors Europe B.VPurchase this report @About us:MarketIntelReports (MIR) aims to empower our clients to successfully manage and outperform in their business decisions. We do this by providing Premium Market Intelligence, Strategic Insights and Databases from a range of Global Publishers.MarketIntelReports currently has more than 70,000 plus titles and 75+ publishers on our platform and growing consistently to fill the Global Intelligence Demand  Supply Gap. We cover more than 15 industry verticals being: Automotive, Electronics, Manufacturing, Pharmaceuticals, Healthcare, Chemicals, Building & Construction, Agriculture, Food & Beverages, Banking & Finance, Media and Government, Public Sector Studies.Contact Us:Mayur SBusiness Development ManagerMarketIntelReportspr@marketintelreports.comPhone: 1-302-261-53432712 Centerville Road, Suite 400, Wilmington, DelawareUnited States
Click4Corp Ranked Number 2 in US for Best SEO Companies by 10seos

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Allen, TX  June 5, 2017  Click4Corp, a Dallas digital marketing agency providing advanced services such as web design, SEO ranking (search engine optimization), web development and more, has been ranked number two in the U.S. for Best SEO Companies by 10seos (10seos.com), a reviewing agency striving to find the best SEO firms in the world. Click4Corp was recognized by 10seos for its provision of digital marketing tools to complement its clients needs, in addition to the way the firm helps businesses grow  one website at a time.Associated with Virtuous Reviews LLP, one of the most renowned corporate reviewing segments in the world, 10seos works with a team of marketers, analysts, researchers, reviewers and PR specialists who help get the most genuine rankings for internet marketers. The organization follows a rigorous process that examines companies on the basis of a number of factors such as quality of services, years of experience, client feedback, pricing and many other relevant elements.As a growing professional digital marketing agency and website design firm, Dallas Click4Corp provides quality business solutions designed for small and medium-sized organizations, with services that utilize Internet technology to create new business opportunities for its clients. These clients range in size and industry, and because they require varying levels of attention, Click4Corp is structured with the capability to manage accounts from individual entrepreneurs to medium-sized businesses looking to build and expand their businesses.We have built a reputation in our industry for successfully growing our client base with our business-to-business marketing approach, says Mo Daka, founder and CEO of Click4Corp. This has proven that traditional business methods are still the preferred policy for building long-term relationships; whats more, weve been recognized by such giants as 10seos for the way in which we earn our clients trust. To this end, we work to continually improve our practices and encourage open communication with our clients.Click4Corps primary service offerings are divided amongst digital marketing, responsive web design and web development tactics, with the agencys digital marketing services encompassing local listings, pay-per-click strategies, social media, branding, email marketing, SEO ranking and reputation management. In the area of responsive web design, Click4Corp offers not only responsive web design but responsive web redesign, as well as customer WordPress websites, content writing, planning and video creation.According to Click4Corp representatives, the organization is dedicated to guiding its clients through the decision-making process regarding what solution best meets their objectives while placing emphasis on ensuring they are comfortable with details such as support quality, pricing structure and industry standard features.At Click4Corp, unrivaled support is at the heart of everything we do, adds Christian Jan, Click4Corps senior developer/designer. Were dedicated to providing the highest level of service in the industry  from a simple issue to a complex installation, we always deliver fast, personal client service. We care about our clients businesses, and as such we get to know them intimately while doing everything possible to provide them the peace of mind they deserve every day.Click4Corp is located at 115 Richardson Court Suite A1 in Allen and can be reached by calling (469) 441-4678. For more information visit#Click4CorpClick4Corp Ranked Number Two in the U.S. for Best SEO Companies by 10seos. One of the most renowned corporate reviewing segments in the world.Click4Corp115 Richardson Ct, Suite A1Allen, TX 75002469-441-4678
United States Smart Grid Deployment Tracker Market 2021 Trends, Challenges and Growth Drivers Analysis

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This research majorly assists by providing brief insight into innovations, opportunities and new improvements in the Smart Grid Deployment Tracker and its globally interconnected industries. There is a regional as well as a global study of fundamental trends and dynamics of market for the given forecast period. Among the many aspects covered, this report will give an acute understanding of business strategies, latest and upcoming developments, market study, competitive players and many more. Their revenue share, contact information and detailed SWOT analysis is also available.Get Sample Copy of this Report:The report provides insights on the following pointers:Market Penetration: Comprehensive information on products offered by the top players in the United States Smart Grid Deployment Tracker MarketProduct Development/Innovation: Detailed insights on the upcoming technologies, research & development activities, and new product launches in the United States Smart Grid Deployment Tracker MarketMarket Development: Comprehensive information about lucrative emerging marketsthe report analyzes the markets for United States Smart Grid Deployment Tracker Market products across various regionsMarket Diversification: Exhaustive information about new products, untapped geographies, and recent developments in the United States Smart Grid Deployment Tracker MarketCompetitive Assessment: In-depth assessment of market ranking, strategies, products, and manufacturing capabilities of the leading players in the United States Smart Grid Deployment Tracker MarketThe research study evaluates the existing markets past performance along with the future statistics during the forecast period on the basis of revenue as well as volume. The study includes quantitative and qualitative analysis of various marketing segments based on key criterias. This report also mentions the epitome segment and sub-segment clubbed with reasons which supports their growth. Similarly, it mentions the drop in segment and sub-segment with the factors hampering its growth.The report also consists, market size, expected growth rate and share of each segment which has been evaluated and discussed at length in the scope of the research report. An in-depth analysis of market segments is provided so that readers or enterprises can make most appropriate investments and make perfect use of their money.For more information/ Ask your queries:Every regions market has been studied thoroughly in this report which deals with the precise information pertaining to the Marketing Channels and novel project investments so that the new entrants as well as the established market players conduct intricate research of trends and analysis in these regional markets.Moving forward, a competitive landscape of Smart Grid Deployment Tracker market is presented for understanding the market importance. This section gives the prime strategies, weaknesses and strengths and the major contributed of the growth have been highlighted. Gross, revenues, product overview, contact information and many such points are explained for Smart Grid Deployment Tracker market in depth.Browse the entire report in detail on the below link:About Research N Reports:Research N Reports is a new age market research firm where we focus on providing information that can be effectively applied. Today being a consumer driven market, companies require information to deal with the complex and dynamic world of choices. Where relying on a sound board firm for your decisions becomes crucial. Research N Reports specializes in industry analysis, market forecasts and as a result getting quality reports covering all verticals, whether be it gaining perspective on current market conditions or being ahead in the cut throat Global competition. Since we excel at business research to help businesses grow, we also offer consulting as an extended arm to our services which only helps us gain more insight into current trends and problems. Consequently we keep evolving as an all-rounder provider of viable information under one roof.Research N Reports0916, Gold Point, Dr,Houston, TX,Pin - 77064,Sunny Denis(Sales Manager),+1 888-631-6977,sales@researchnreports.com,
Global Plasminogen Market Production, Revenue, Price, Gross Margin, Import, Export and Consumption Research 2017

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This report studies the Plasminogen market status and outlook of global and major regions, from angles of manufacturers, regions, product types and end industries; this report analyzes the top manufacturers in global and major regions, and splits the Plasminogen market by product type and applications/end industries.The major players in global Plasminogen market includeKedrionPrometicRequest a Sample atThe major players in global Plasminogen activator market includeGenentech (Roche)Boehringer IngelheimKyowa Hakko KirinOmeros CorporationBrowse Complete Report atGeographically, this report is segmented into several key Regions, with production, consumption, revenue, market share and growth rate of Plasminogen in these regions, from 2012 to 2023 (forecast) , coveringNorth AmericaEuropeChinaJapanSoutheast AsiaIndiaOn the basis of product, the Plasminogen market is primarily split intoIntravenous InjectionEye dropsOn the basis on the end users/applications, this report coversLigneous ConjunctivitisDiabetic FootWound HealingOthersGet discount on report purchase atKey Point from Table of Contents:1 Industry Overview of Plasminogen 12 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Plasminogen 133 Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants Analysis of Plasminogen 254 Global Plasminogen Overall Market Overview 325 Plasminogen Regional Market Analysis 346 Major Manufacturers Analysis of Plasminogen 566.1 Kedrion 566.1.1 Company Profile 566.1.2 Product Description 566.1.3 Kedrion 2018F Plasminogen Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis 576.1.4 Kedrion R&D Progress 576.1.5 Kedrion Clinical Program 586.2 Prometic 596.2.1 Company Profile 596.2.2 Product Description 596.2.3 Prometic 2017 Plasminogen Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis 596.2.4 Prometic R&D Progress 606.2.5 Prometic Clinical Program 617 Major Manufacturers Analysis of Plasminogen Activator Product 628 Development Trend of Analysis of Plasminogen Market 689 Therapeutic Areas Analysis of Plasminogen 8410 Conclusion of the Global Plasminogen Market Professional Survey Report 2016 98Purchase Complete Report atContact Info:Name: Sameer JoshiEmail: sales@reportsweb.comOrganization: ReportsWebPhone: +1-646-491-9876ReportsWeb.com is a one stop shop of market research reports and solutions to various companies across the globe. We help our clients in their decision support system by helping them choose most relevant and cost effective research reports and solutions from various publishers. The market research industry has changed in last decade. As corporate focus has shifted to niche markets and emerging countries, a number of publishers have stepped in to fulfil these information needs. We have experienced and trained staff that helps you navigate different options and lets you choose best research solution at most effective cost.505, 6th floor, Amanora Township,Amanora Chambers, East Block,Kharadi Road, Hadapsar, Pune-411028
United States, EU, Japan, China, India And Southeast Asia Contactless Payment Market Size, Status And Forecast 2021

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"The Report United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia Contactless Payment Market Size, Status and Forecast 2021 provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"About Contactless Payment MarketThis report studies the global Contactless Payment market, analyzes and researches the Contactless Payment development status and forecast in United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia. This report focuses on the top players in global market, likeGemalto N.V.Giesecke & Devrient GmbHIngenico GroupVerifone Systems, Inc.Wirecard AGHeartland Payment Systems, Inc.Inside SecureOberthur Technologies SaOn Track InnovationsProxama, PLCGet Sample Copy of this report @Market segment by Regions/Countries, this report coversUnited StatesEUJapanChinaIndiaSoutheast AsiaMarket segment by Type, Contactless Payment can be split intoPayment TerminalMobile PaymentOtherView Report @Market segment by Application, Contactless Payment can be split intoHealthcareEnergy and UtilitiesRetailHospitalityOtherTable of ContentsUnited States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia Contactless Payment Market Size, Status and Forecast 20211 Industry Overview of Contactless Payment1.1 Contactless Payment Market Overview1.1.1 Contactless Payment Product Scope1.1.2 Market Status and Outlook1.2 Global Contactless Payment 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 Contactless Payment Market by Type1.3.1 Payment Terminal1.3.2 Mobile Payment1.3.3 Other1.4 Contactless Payment Market by End Users/Application1.4.1 Healthcare1.4.2 Energy and Utilities1.4.3 Retail1.4.4 Hospitality1.4.5 Other2 Global Contactless Payment Competition Analysis by Players2.1 Contactless Payment 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 Gemalto N.V.3.1.1 Company Profile3.1.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.1.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.1.4 Contactless Payment Revenue (Value) (2011-2016)3.1.5 Recent Developments3.2 Giesecke & Devrient GmbH3.2.1 Company Profile3.2.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.2.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.2.4 Contactless Payment Revenue (Value) (2011-2016)3.2.5 Recent Developments3.3 Ingenico Group3.3.1 Company Profile3.3.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.3.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.3.4 Contactless Payment Revenue (Value) (2011-2016)3.3.5 Recent Developments3.4 Verifone Systems, Inc.3.4.1 Company Profile3.4.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.4.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.4.4 Contactless Payment Revenue (Value) (2011-2016)3.4.5 Recent Developments3.5 Wirecard AG3.5.1 Company Profile3.5.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.5.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.5.4 Contactless Payment Revenue (Value) (2011-2016)3.5.5 Recent Developments3.6 Heartland Payment Systems, Inc.3.6.1 Company Profile3.6.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.6.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.6.4 Contactless Payment Revenue (Value) (2011-2016)3.6.5 Recent Developments3.7 Inside Secure3.7.1 Company Profile3.7.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.7.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.7.4 Contactless Payment Revenue (Value) (2011-2016)3.7.5 Recent Developments3.8 Oberthur Technologies Sa3.8.1 Company Profile3.8.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.8.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.8.4 Contactless Payment Revenue (Value) (2011-2016)3.8.5 Recent Developments3.9 On Track Innovations3.9.1 Company Profile3.9.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.9.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.9.4 Contactless Payment Revenue (Value) (2011-2016)3.9.5 Recent Developments3.10 Proxama, PLC3.10.1 Company Profile3.10.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.10.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.10.4 Contactless Payment Revenue (Value) (2011-2016)3.10.5 Recent DevelopmentsMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.Mr. NachiketState Tower90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074USA: Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
Global 3D Printing Market: Size, Trend, Share, Opportunity Analysis & Forecast, 2014-2025

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3D printing, also known as additive printing technology, allows manufacturers to develop 3D object using digital file. The materials used in 3D printing include various types of polymers, metals, and ceramics. This type of printing offers methodologies that makes manufacturing of complex designs an apparent reality. The 3D printed object is achieved by using additive process, in which the object is produced by placing down consecutive layer of material until the object is created. The global 3D printing market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 21% from 2017 to 2025.The global 3D printing market is segmented based on component, application, and geography. Based on component the market is segmented into technology (stereolithography, selective laser sintering, electron beam melting, fused deposition modelling, laminated object manufacturing, and others), material (polymers, metals, and ceramics), and service. In terms of application, the market is classified into Electrical power, Oil & Gas, Water & waste-water, Automotive, Pharmaceuticals, Mining, Chemicals, Food & beverages, and Others. Based on geography, the global 3D printing market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and LAMEA.Request Sample At:Market Dynamics:Drivers:Efficient use of materialUse of multiple materials for printingReduction in human errorCustomization of productsReduces development cost and timeRestraints:Higher cost for individual userSoftware required for 3D printing are costlyLack of channel partner assistanceManufacturing ComplexitiesLimited Design ToolsEnquire About Report At:Market Players:The top players in the global 3D printing market include 3D Systems, Arcam AB, Autodesk, Inc., Stratasys Ltd, The ExOne Company, Hoganas AB, Optomec, Inc., Organovo Holdings, Inc., Ponoko Limited, and Voxeljet AGKEY TAKEAWAYSMARKET LANDSCAPEBy ComponentTechnologyo Stereolithographyo Selective Laser Sinteringo Electron Beam Meltingo Fused Deposition Modelingo Laminated Object Manufacturingo OthersBy GeographyNorth Americao U.S.o Canadao MexicoEuropeo UKo Germanyo Franceo Spaino Italyo Rest of EuropeAsia-Pacifico Chinao Japano Indiao Australiao South Koreao Rest of Asia-PacificRequest Discount At:Table Of Contents:1. Executive summary1.1. Key Findings1.2. Market Attractiveness and Trend analysis1.3. Competitive Landscape and recent industry development analysis2. Introduction2.1. Report Description2.2. Scope and Definitions2.3. Research Methodology3. Market landscape3.1. Growth Drivers3.1.1. Impact Analysis3.2. Restrains and Challenges3.2.1. Impact Analysis3.3. Porters Analysis4. Global 3D Printing Market by Component4.1. Technology4.1.1. Historical Market Size by Region, 2014-20164.1.2. Market Forecast by Region, 2017-20254.1.3. Stereolithography5. Global 3D Printing Market by Application5.1. Electrical power5.1.1. Historical Market Size by Region, 2014-20165.1.2. Market Forecast by Region, 2017-20255.2. Oil & GasResearch Beam features a wide array of research reports from publishers across the globe. We have a database of reports ranging over every market category and extensive collection of reports on sub-categories as well. We are dedicated to provide qualitative insights on your area of interest by gathering reports from various publishers at one place to save your time and money. Hundreds of organizations across the world are reaping great benefits from insights gained through reports sourced by Research Beam.5933 NE Win Sivers Drive,#205, Portland, OR 97220United States+1 (800) 910-6452help@researchbeam.com
Next Generation Memory Market 2017 Trend, Analysis and Forecast to 2021

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Next-generation memories include the latest developments in the memory industry such as ferroelectric random-access memory (FeRAM) , phase-change memory (PCM) , resistive random-access memory (ReRAM) , and magnetic random-access memory (MRAM) . The MRAM segment includes spin-transfer torque random-access memory (STT-MRAM) . Next-generation memories are usually nonvolatile in nature.Publisher's analysts forecast the global next generation memory market to grow at a CAGR of 66.63% during the period 2017-2021.For more information about this report:Covered in this reportThe report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global next generation memory market for 2017-2021. To calculate the market size, the report considers revenue generated from the sales of nonvolatile memory (NVM) technologies implemented in the different application segments.The market is divided into the following segments based on geography:- Americas- APAC- EMEAPublisher's report, Global Next Generation Memory 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 vendors- Cypress Semiconductor- Fujitsu- Intel- IBM- Micron Technology- ROHM Semiconductor- Samsung Electronics- Texas Instruments- ToshibaRequest Sample Copy atOther prominent vendors- Adesto Technologies- Crossbar- Everspin TechnologiesMarket driver- Growing demand for FeRAM in automotive applications.- For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challenge- Cyclical nature of consumer electronics industry.- For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket trend- Growing emergence of new FeRAM design using CMOS processes.- For a full, detailed list, view our reportInquire for Report atContact Us:Call: +1-646-491-9876Email: sales@reportsweb.comReportsWeb.com is a one stop shop of market research reports and solutions to various companies across the globe. We help our clients in their decision support system by helping them choose most relevant and cost effective research reports and solutions from various publishers. We provide best in class customer service and our customer support team is always available to help you on your research queries.505, 6th floor, Amanora Township,Amanora Chambers, East Block,Kharadi Road, Hadapsar, Pune-411028
Cloud-enabling Technologies Market 2017 Trend, Analysis and Forecast to 2021

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Cloud computing is the use of computing resources that are delivered to customers with the help of Internet. The evolution of cloud computing has led to the emergence of cloud-enabling technologies such as virtualization, automated computing, and service-oriented architecture (SOA) technologies. Cloud computing enables enterprises to use these technologies without having a deep understanding or expertise of how they function. Virtualization refers to the technique of creating a virtual version of the physical infrastructure and is the most popular among cloud-enabling technologies. It reduces IT costs and improves the agility of the business. After the emergence of cloud-enabling technologies, IT operations are being automated, and resources are being supplied on demand. SOA refers to a collection of services that can be integrated and offered as cloud-based solutions to enterprises. Advances in these technologies have led to the increased adoption of cloud-based services worldwide.Publisher's analysts forecast the global cloud enabling technologies market to grow at a CAGR of 8.84% during the period 2017-2021.For more information about this report:Covered in this reportThe report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global cloud enabling technologies market for 2017-2021. To calculate the market size, the report considers the revenue generated from the adoption of virtualization, automation and management (A&M) and service-oriented architecture (SOA) solutions for cloud environments.The market is divided into the following segments based on geography:- Americas- APAC- EMEAPublisher's report, Global Cloud Enabling Technologies 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 vendors- BMC Software- CA Technologies- Citrix Systems- HPE- IBM- Microsoft- Oracle- Dell (VMware)Request Sample Copy atOther prominent vendors- Adaptive Computing- Brocade Communications Systems- Fujitsu- Huawei Technologies- Infosys- NEC Corporation- Puppet- Red Hat- SAP- ServiceNow- Tata Consultancy Services- Veeam Software- WiproMarket driver- Decrease in the cost of cloud-enabling technology solutions.- For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challenge- Vendor lock-in between traditional physical infrastructure and software solutions.- For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket trend- Growing implementation of software-defined networking (SDN) .- For a full, detailed list, view our reportInquire for Report atContact Info:Name: Sameer JoshiEmail: sales@reportsweb.comOrganization: ReportsWebPhone: +1-646-491-9876ReportsWeb.com is a one stop shop of market research reports and solutions to various companies across the globe. We help our clients in their decision support system by helping them choose most relevant and cost effective research reports and solutions from various publishers. We provide best in class customer service and our customer support team is always available to help you on your research queries.505, 6th floor, Amanora Township,Amanora Chambers, East Block,Kharadi Road, Hadapsar, Pune-411028
Global Centrifuges For Food Industry Market 2017 - Aerne Analytic, Andreas Hettich, ANDRITZ KMPT GmbH, EYG Food Machinery

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The Centrifuges For Food Industry Market 2017 examines the performance of the Centrifuges For Food Industry market, enclosing an in-depth judgment of the Centrifuges For Food Industry market state and the competitive landscape globally. This report analyzes the potential of Centrifuges For Food Industry market in the present as well as the future prospects from various angles in detail.The Global Centrifuges For Food Industry Market 2017 report includes Centrifuges For Food Industry industry volume, market Share, market Trends, Centrifuges For Food Industry Growth aspects, a wide range of applications, Utilization ratio, Supply and demand analysis, manufacturing capacity, Centrifuges For Food Industry Price during the Forecast period from 2017 to 2022.To Get Sample Report Click Here:Manufacturers Analysis and Top Sellers of Global Centrifuges For Food Industry Market 2017:1 Ferraroni AFP2 Orto Alresa3 Aerne Analytic4 Andreas Hettich5 ANDRITZ KMPT GmbH6 EYG Food Machinery7 Hiller GmbH8 SteimelCentrifuges For Food Industry Market Analysis: By ProductVerticalHorizontalCentrifuges For Food Industry Market Analysis: By ApplicationFoodstuffs FactoryFood Research InstitutionOthersAt the beginning, the report covers the top Centrifuges For Food Industry manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on topographical regions.Further, the Centrifuges For Food Industry report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Centrifuges For Food Industry industry, Centrifuges For Food Industry industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. Centrifuges For Food Industry Market development scope and various business strategies are also mentioned in this report.To Buy Complete Report Click Here:The Centrifuges For Food Industry research report includes the products that are currently in demand and available in the market along with their cost breakup, manufacturing volume, import/export scheme and contribution to the Centrifuges For Food Industry market revenue worldwide.Finally, Centrifuges For Food Industry market report gives you details about the market research findings and conclusion which helps you to develop profitable market strategies to gain competitive advantage.Market.Biz is designed to provide the best and most penetrating research required to all commercial, industrial and profit-making ventures in any sector of online business. We take pride in our ability to satisfy the market research needs of both domestic and international businesses.James JohnsonS no. 51/14 First Floor, Office Number 4, Vishwa Arcade, Near Navale Lawns, Pune, Maharashtra, India 411041Maharashtra, IndiaTel: +1(857)2390696Web:Email: inquiry@market.bizBrowse Market Research Reports-Latest Reports-
Global Charge Coupled Device Market 2017 - SONY, SHARP, Panasonic, LG

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The Charge Coupled Device Market 2017 examines the performance of the Charge Coupled Device market, enclosing an in-depth judgment of the Charge Coupled Device market state and the competitive landscape globally. This report analyzes the potential of Charge Coupled Device market in the present as well as the future prospects from various angles in detail.The Global Charge Coupled Device Market 2017 report includes Charge Coupled Device industry volume, market Share, market Trends, Charge Coupled Device Growth aspects, a wide range of applications, Utilization ratio, Supply and demand analysis, manufacturing capacity, Charge Coupled Device Price during the Forecast period from 2017 to 2022.To Get Sample Report Click Here:Manufacturers Analysis and Top Sellers of Global Charge Coupled Device Market 2017:1 SONY2 SHARP3 Panasonic4 LGCharge Coupled Device Market Analysis: By Product1/2 inch1/3 inch1/4 inch1/5 inchCharge Coupled Device Market Analysis: By ApplicationCommon UseHigh-end Scientific UseAt the beginning, the report covers the top Charge Coupled Device manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on topographical regions.Further, the Charge Coupled Device report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Charge Coupled Device industry, Charge Coupled Device industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. Charge Coupled Device Market development scope and various business strategies are also mentioned in this report.To Buy Complete Report Click Here:The Charge Coupled Device research report includes the products that are currently in demand and available in the market along with their cost breakup, manufacturing volume, import/export scheme and contribution to the Charge Coupled Device market revenue worldwide.Finally, Charge Coupled Device market report gives you details about the market research findings and conclusion which helps you to develop profitable market strategies to gain competitive advantage.Market.Biz is designed to provide the best and most penetrating research required to all commercial, industrial and profit-making ventures in any sector of online business. We take pride in our ability to satisfy the market research needs of both domestic and international businesses.James JohnsonS no. 51/14 First Floor, Office Number 4, Vishwa Arcade, Near Navale Lawns, Pune, Maharashtra, India 411041Maharashtra, IndiaTel: +1(857)2390696Web:Email: inquiry@market.bizBrowse Market Research Reports-Latest Reports-
Saudi Arabia Pharmaceutical Market will Increase at a CAGR of 9% during 2016-2026

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The significant rise in lifestyle-related diseases and the developments in healthcare infrastructure are expected to influence the demand for pharmaceuticals in Saudi Arabia. In 2016, the Saudi Arabia pharmaceutical market is anticipated to procure value worth US$ 5,209.5 Mn at a y-o-y growth of 6.0 % over 2015. The mounting demand for branded drug products will continue to incite the growth of the Saudi Arabian pharmaceutical market in 2016.The demand for pharmaceuticals in Saudi Arabia is expected to register substantial growth owing to the increasing penetration of health insurance companies and the rising incidence rate of non-communicable diseases. Furthermore, the exceptional rise in the per capita income of Saudi Arabia is also expected to foster the demand for branded pharmaceutical drugs. Another key factor driving the growth of the pharmaceutical market in Saudi Arabia is the countrys strategic move to allow 100% FDI in the pharmaceuticals sector. Although, the shortage of profound indigenous research capacity in the pharmaceutical industry and the delayed registration of drug and medicine patents is expected to limit the expansion of the market in 2016 and beyond.Request For Sample@Based on the product type, the pharmaceutical market in Saudi Arabia is expected to witness an upsurge in the prescription-type branded drug products. In terms of market value, the branded drugs are estimated to reach US$ 2,760.8 Mn by 2016-end. The demand for generic drugs is projected to secure steady growth, attributing to the insisting promotion of generic drug adoption by healthcare insurance providers.On the basis of the diseases, the pharmaceutical drugs used for treatment of cardiovascular diseases will continue exhibiting robust growth in 2016. The demand for cardiovascular medications will continue to surge due to the prominence of circulatory disorders in Saudi Arabia. Additionally, the rising prevalence of disorders related to body sugar levels is expected to make diabetes a rapidly growing disease-based sub-segment in the Saudi Arabia pharmaceutical market.The pharmaceutical market in Saudi Arabia is also segmented on the basis of distribution channel, where retail pharmacies will continue to account for 80% market share compared to hospital pharmacies. The westernised modernisation of retail pharmacies in Saudi Arabia has led to the availability of a wide range drugs and medicinal products, thereby attaining a considerable growth in the retail pharmacy sub-segment in 2016 and further.Send An Enquiry@The rising resource potential in Saudi Arabia is projected to positively reform the production environment for pharmaceutical manufacturers. In order to expand the markets size, structuring alliances with well-established native companies is predicted to be a key strategy for global pharmaceutical leaders. The key players in the Saudi Arabia pharmaceutical market include Novartis AG, SPIMACO, Pfizer Inc., and Glaxosmithkline plc., Jamjoom Pharma, and Tabuk Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Co. among others.Long-term Outlook: The Saudi Arabia pharmaceutical market is expected to expand at a CAGR of 9.0% over the forecast period 2016-2026. In terms of market value, the pharmaceutical market in Saudi Arabia is estimated to be worth US$ 12,281.4 Mn by the end of forecast period.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT: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:
Global Pico Solar Photovoltaic Market Driven by Rising Adoption by Environment-conscious Consumers

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Latest Research Report titled " Global Pico Solar Photovoltaic Market Professional Survey Report 2017 " features Key Market Players, Market Trends, Market Challenges and Market Drivers.The report takes a close look at the development trajectory exhibited by the global pico solar photovoltaic market in the last few years and assesses the various factors affecting its growth. The segmentation of the global pico solar photovoltaic market is also dealt with in the report, which provides a granular picture of the market to readers. The report is titled Global Pico Solar Photovoltaic Market Professional Survey Report 2017.The pico solar photovoltaic market has arisen out of the need for smaller and more portable ways of harnessing solar energy. While solar power has rapidly grown in stature in the past few decades due to the rising acknowledgment of its need, the rise of the pico solar photovoltaic market is a consequence of the rising effort to derive practical uses from solar power apart from harnessing it through large, mass-scale installations. Pico solar photovoltaic devices are smaller than solar panels and are used as a portable and continuously chargeable source of photovoltaic power.Pico solar photovoltaic devices can be used to charge up electronic items, the rising demand for which has become a key driver for the global pico solar photovoltaic market. Pico solar photovoltaic devices produce power outputs in the range of 0.1 watts-peak to 5 watts-peak, which can recharge smaller electronic items such as smartphones, while the pico solar photovoltaic market also contains battery systems that can power individual houses.Browse Research PDF at:The global pico solar photovoltaic market has significant scope for growth over the coming years due to the clear price difference between conventional solar power systems and pico solar photovoltaic systems. While conventional solar power fields remain viable at a large scale, leading to rising government support all over the world, they are usually too expensive for individual customers.This gap in the solar energy sector has been bridged by the development of the pico solar photovoltaic market, which has also fit in with the steady development of smart home technology, which has allowed for efficient use of solar power harnessed from pico solar photovoltaic installations.Browse more details at:The report splits the global pico solar photovoltaic market by application into residential, commercial, and industrial users. While the commercial and industrial sectors hold significant opportunities for the market, residential users are more likely to comprise the leading segment of the global pico solar photovoltaic market in the coming years.Geographically, developed regions such as North America and Europe are likely to be the leading contributors to the global pico solar photovoltaic market in the coming years. The rising awareness among citizens about the importance of using solar power has led to steady acceptance of several initiatives in the solar power sector in developed North American and Western European countries. The growing regulatory support to smart power distribution initiatives in these countries is likely to remain a key driver for the global pico solar photovoltaic market.The report profiles leading players in the global pico solar photovoltaic market in order to shed light on the competitive dynamics of the market. Key companies examined in the report include Panasonic, Greenlight Planet, SunnyMoney, Philips, Nokero, and D. Light Design.About UsResearchMoz 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:
Global Chemical Spill Kit Market 2017 - 3M, American Textile & Supply, Global Spill Control, New Pig

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The Chemical Spill Kit Market 2017 examines the performance of the Chemical Spill Kit market, enclosing an in-depth judgment of the Chemical Spill Kit market state and the competitive landscape globally. This report analyzes the potential of Chemical Spill Kit market in the present as well as the future prospects from various angles in detail.The Global Chemical Spill Kit Market 2017 report includes Chemical Spill Kit industry volume, market Share, market Trends, Chemical Spill Kit Growth aspects, a wide range of applications, Utilization ratio, Supply and demand analysis, manufacturing capacity, Chemical Spill Kit Price during the Forecast period from 2017 to 2022.To Get Sample Report Click Here:Manufacturers Analysis and Top Sellers of Global Chemical Spill Kit Market 2017:1 Chemtex2 Darcy Spillcare Manufacture3 ENPAC4 Oil-Dri Corporation of America5 3M6 American Textile & Supply7 Global Spill Control8 New Pig9 Safetec of America10 Synder Industries11 Unique Safety ServicesChemical Spill Kit Market Analysis: By ProductDisposableReusableChemical Spill Kit Market Analysis: By ApplicationChemical ProductionAutomobileOthersAt the beginning, the report covers the top Chemical Spill Kit manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on topographical regions.Further, the Chemical Spill Kit report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Chemical Spill Kit industry, Chemical Spill Kit industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. Chemical Spill Kit Market development scope and various business strategies are also mentioned in this report.To Buy Complete Report Click Here:The Chemical Spill Kit research report includes the products that are currently in demand and available in the market along with their cost breakup, manufacturing volume, import/export scheme and contribution to the Chemical Spill Kit market revenue worldwide.Finally, Chemical Spill Kit market report gives you details about the market research findings and conclusion which helps you to develop profitable market strategies to gain competitive advantage.Market.Biz is designed to provide the best and most penetrating research required to all commercial, industrial and profit-making ventures in any sector of online business. We take pride in our ability to satisfy the market research needs of both domestic and international businesses.James JohnsonS no. 51/14 First Floor, Office Number 4, Vishwa Arcade, Near Navale Lawns, Pune, Maharashtra, India 411041Maharashtra, IndiaTel: +1(857)2390696Web:Email: inquiry@market.bizBrowse Market Research Reports-Latest Reports-
Global Colon Capsule Endoscopy Market 2017 - Given Imaging 2 IntroMedic Co, Olympus Corporation, Chongqing Jinshan Science & Technology

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The Colon Capsule Endoscopy Market 2017 examines the performance of the Colon Capsule Endoscopy market, enclosing an in-depth judgment of the Colon Capsule Endoscopy market state and the competitive landscape globally. This report analyzes the potential of Colon Capsule Endoscopy market in the present as well as the future prospects from various angles in detail.The Global Colon Capsule Endoscopy Market 2017 report includes Colon Capsule Endoscopy industry volume, market Share, market Trends, Colon Capsule Endoscopy Growth aspects, a wide range of applications, Utilization ratio, Supply and demand analysis, manufacturing capacity, Colon Capsule Endoscopy Price during the Forecast period from 2017 to 2022.To Get Sample Report Click Here:Manufacturers Analysis and Top Sellers of Global Colon Capsule Endoscopy Market 2017:1 Given Imaging2 IntroMedic Co3 Olympus Corporation4 Chongqing Jinshan Science & Technology5 Fujifilm Holding Corporation6 CapsoVision and RF SystemColon Capsule Endoscopy Market Analysis: By ProductWireless CapsuleOthersColon Capsule Endoscopy Market Analysis: By ApplicationOGIBCrohnsSmall Intestine TumorSAt the beginning, the report covers the top Colon Capsule Endoscopy manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on topographical regions.Further, the Colon Capsule Endoscopy report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Colon Capsule Endoscopy industry, Colon Capsule Endoscopy industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. Colon Capsule Endoscopy Market development scope and various business strategies are also mentioned in this report.To Buy Complete Report Click Here:The Colon Capsule Endoscopy research report includes the products that are currently in demand and available in the market along with their cost breakup, manufacturing volume, import/export scheme and contribution to the Colon Capsule Endoscopy market revenue worldwide.Finally, Colon Capsule Endoscopy market report gives you details about the market research findings and conclusion which helps you to develop profitable market strategies to gain competitive advantage.Market.Biz is designed to provide the best and most penetrating research required to all commercial, industrial and profit-making ventures in any sector of online business. We take pride in our ability to satisfy the market research needs of both domestic and international businesses.James JohnsonS no. 51/14 First Floor, Office Number 4, Vishwa Arcade, Near Navale Lawns, Pune, Maharashtra, India 411041Maharashtra, IndiaTel: +1(857)2390696Web:Email: inquiry@market.bizBrowse Market Research Reports-Latest Reports-
Thrust on Clean Energy Promotes Global Solar Hybrid Inverter Market: Forecast 2017-2021

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Latest Research Report titled " Global Solar Hybrid Inverter Market 2017-2021 " features Key Market Players, Market Trends, Market Challenges and Market Drivers.The report examines different facets of the solar hybrid invertor market and uncovers that it will expand at a CAGR of 9.05% from 2017 to 2021. Solar hybrid inverters serve two main functions  they convert direct current to alternate current and store excess power along with batteries. They help solve issues pertaining to renewable energy variability and unreliable grid structures. The report presents a comparison of the different technologies used in solar panels.As per the report, government efforts to curb the use of highly polluting fossil fuels in generating electricity and simultaneously promoting cleaner energy such as solar energy is one of the main factors fuelling growth in the global solar hybrid invertor market. Moreover, additional financial aids provided by the government for the deployment of alternative sources of energy such as solar panels will also boost the growth of the solar hybrid inverter market.Providing headwinds to the market, however, is the technical problems pertaining to solar PV components. Prominent trends in the market are swift uptake of hybrid power systems in telecom towers and installation of microgrids. Yet another game changing trend is the rapid technological progress leading to product innovations. This is expected to heat up the competition in the market in the foreseeable future.Browse Research PDF at:In order to study the global market for solar hybrid invertor market, the report segments it based on end users into residential and commercial sectors. Between the two, the commercial segment holds a dominant share in the market owing to strict government norms promoting the use of energy management systems (EMS) and inverters with solar PV panels.Browse more details at:Based on geography again, the report segments the market into the Americas, Asia Pacific, and Europe, Middle East and Africa. It studies the renewable targets and policies in the different regions. It finds Asia Pacific accounts for maximum share in the market because of the increasing environmental concerns, the growing demand for energy, a burgeoning population, and the better standards of living.In order to assess the competition prevailing in the global solar hybrid invertor market, the report leverages market-leading analytical tools such as Porters Five Forces analysis that studies the supplier power, buyer power, competitive rivalry, threat of substitution, and threat of new entry. At present the solar hybrid inverter market is in a nascent stage comprising of a handful of vendors. Realizing an opportunity, however, new players are foraying into the market and this will likely intensify competition in the near future.The report profiles major players in the global solar hybrid inverter market. They are Flin Energy, Delta Energy Systems, Su-Kam Power Systems, Luminous India, Schneider Electric, EAST Group, and Microtek Inverters.About UsResearchMoz 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:
Global Military Robotics Market to Flourish as Security Concerns Threaten Several Regions

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Latest Research Report titled " The Military Robotics Market - Key Drivers, Trends and New Developments " features Key Market Players, Market Trends, Market Challenges and Market Drivers.The report reveals indispensable intelligence as to the vital factors bolstering and preventing the growth of the global market for military robotics, apart from an in-depth analysis of the competitive landscape. A number of useful analytic tools have been leveraged to offer precise market projections.The escalating demand for drones witnessed worldwide is one of the central growth drivers of the global market for military robotics. Also known as unmanned systems, drones are compact-sized flying machines which are also more cost effective in comparison to their manned counterparts. Because they offer greater reliability, modernization, and higher security of digital communication, these systems are more apt at improving surveillance quality.One of the current trends in the global military robotics market is the replacement of military personnel with humanoid and other robots. The deployment of military robots significantly brings down the frequency of human casualties, apart from garnering superior information. The overall operational costs of various military operations can be reduced via the use of military robots. Military robots also feature high attack capability, simultaneously boosting the productivity of the defense sector.Browse Research PDF at:The global market for military robots can be segmented on the basis of application, platform, and payload. By payload, the market for military robots can be segmented into radars, weapons, sensors, video screens, and cameras. In terms of application, the global military robotics market can be segmented into metal detector robotic vehicles, firefighting, pick and place, voice-controlled robotic vehicles, and battlefield.Browse more details at:By geography, the global market for military robotics can be segmented into Asia Pacific, North America, the Middle East and Africa, Latin America, and Europe. Several countries including India, Japan, China, Singapore, Australia, and South Korea have been spending vast amounts of capital on military enforcements in general and on military robots in particular. As the GDP of developing economies is expanding rapidly, their defense expenditures are also expected to swell, aiding the expansion of the military robotics market in the region.North America and Europe are also posed for healthy growth over the forecast period. Canada and France are likely to represent a substantial portion of the global market for military robotics. Military robots are being designed in an astonishing range of sizes and shapes. For instance, the Netherlands-based Delft University of Technology created a dragon-fly shaped drone that does not weigh more than a gold wedding ring. DelFly is a surveillance drone that incorporates a high quality camera.The leading market players key collaborations and contracts have been discussed under the chapter on competitive landscape. Some of the prominent players transacting in the global market for military robotics are AeroVironment Inc., General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, iRobot, Northrop Grumman, and BAE Systems.About UsResearchMoz 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:
Molded Interconnect Devices Market to expand $629.5bn by 2023

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According to global molded interconnect devices market share to hit USD 629.5 billion by 2023. These devices are reshaping electrical and mechanical designs in many applications, particularly those in telecommunication and automotive sectors. They lead to more effective low-cost designs and are best options for replacingmany parts of a circuit board product by integrating electrical& mechanical functions in a single product.MIDare cost effective for complex electromechanical functions and minimize the number of parts in circuit saving space & reducing assembly time. All these factors have contributed to the growth of the global industry during forecastperiod.High designing flexibility and functional density is predicted to fuel the demand and growth of the industry.RTP Company had set its production unit in China in 2006. The new specialty thermoplastic compound facility provided technical support, product development and customer support to its clients in China along with increased support and service to international clients.It was the second production unit establishment of the company in Asia after it first opened its manufacturing set up in Singapore in 2002. The firm has seven production units set up in three continents along with sales representatives in Asia Pacific, Europe and North America.Request for a sample of this research report @Global molded interconnect devices market is segmented into key geographical regions including North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America and MEA.Asia Pacific molded interconnect devices market size was evaluated at more than $175 million for 2015. The growth can be attributed to availability of low cost parts in countries like China.European industry is predicted to witness high growth due to presence of many automotive industries in the region. It was evaluated at $24 million for 2015 and is predicted to register CAGR of 12.2% during the forecast period.US molded interconnect devices market size is predicted to surpass $25 million by end of forecast period. This has contributed to the rapid growth of the industry in North America.Browse key industry insights spread across 83 pages with 79 market data tables & 28 figures & charts from the report, Molded Interconnect Devices (MID) Market Size By Process (Laser Direct Structuring (LDS), Two-Shot Molding), By Application (Automotive, Telecommunication, Consumer, Industrial, Medical), Industry Analysis Report, Regional Outlook (U.S., Germany, UK, China, Japan), Application Potential, Price Trends, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2016  2023 in detail along with the table of contents:Key industry players profiled in the report includes, Molex, LPKF Laser & Electronics, RTP Company, TE Connectivity, MacDermid Incorporated, SelectConnect Technologies, Harting Technology Group.This latest molded interconnect devices market research report offers in-depth analysis, key industry insights, market sizing & forecast on a granular level for key products, applications across number of regional markets. The report also analyzes the molded interconnect devices industry from business strategy perspective, describing in detail growth drivers, pitfalls &challenges for participants, accompanied by a detailed competitive benchmarking including company market share analysis and detailed business profiles.Reasons to Buy This Report: Global Molded Interconnect Devices Market size & forecast by product & application. Growth drivers, pitfalls & industry challenges. Key Molded Interconnect Devices Market growth opportunities & emerging business models. Competitive benchmarking with market share analysis and company profiles.Make an inquiry for purchasing this report @About Global Market InsightsGlobal Market Insights, Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider; offering syndicated and custom research reports along with growth consulting services. Our business intelligence and industry research reports offer clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data specially designed and presented to aid strategic decision making. These exhaustive reports are designed via a proprietary research methodology and are available for key industries such as chemicals, advanced materials, technology, renewable energy and biotechnology.Contact Us:Arun HegdeCorporate Sales, USAGlobal Market Insights, Inc.Phone: 1-302-846-7766Toll Free: 1-888-689-0688Email: sales@gminsights.comWeb:
Acrylic Fiber Coating Market Overview, Growth, Demand and Trends Forecast by 2022

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Market HighlightsThe global acrylic fiber market has been evaluated to be rapidly growing and is expected to grow tremendously. Utilization of acrylic fiber is increasing as it is mixed with various material to provide enhanced quality to the final product. Along with supply of its substitute products like wool and cotton although in less quantity is affecting the global acrylic fiber market noticeably. These factors will increase the global acrylic fiber market over the forecasted period. However, the demand for acrylic fibers are facing sluggish demand for acrylic fiber in developed countries and are facing significant challenge in coping with the growth of the market as there is limited application of the acrylic fiber.The acrylic fiber market is segmented on the basis of form namely, staple and filament. The demand of acrylic staple fiber is declining consistently since 2003. In 2006 and 2007, its utilization declined approximately by 8.5%. In the following five years the demand for acrylic fiber was stagnant. Keeping in view the present economic situation, the utilization of acrylic staple fiber is expected to grow by 2.3 % which has started in 2016 and is expected to continue till 2022.Request a Sample Report @The acrylic fiber market is segmented on basis of blending namely cotton, wool, and others. The cotton blending segment is anticipated to register a CAGR of 4.5% over the forecasted period. When blended with other materials, acrylic fiber enhances the physical and chemical characteristics of the end product consequently increasing blend applications of the same.The acrylic fiber market is segmented on basis of end-use namely wardrobe, furnishing, industrial and others. The wardrobe segment is anticipated to register a CAGR of 4.1% over the forecasted period.Key Players Aksa Akrilik Kimya Sanayii A.S. (Aksa) Dralon, Aditya Birla Group Jilin Chemical Fiber Group Company taekwang industrial co. Ltd. Exlan Japan Co. Ltd. Kaneka Corporation Indian Acrylics Limited Pasupati Acrylon Ltd. Vardhman Acrylics Ltd.Full Report Acrylic Fiber Market @Regional AnalysisAsia-Pacific region is expected to maintain its dominance in the global acrylic fiber market. Emerging markets of China, South Korea, Taiwan and India are expected to boost the Asia Pacific acrylic fiber market. Other emerging markets are Middle East and Africa countries.The largest market of acrylic fiber is in Asia-Pacific as it has highest consumer of acrylic fiber. China is the leading producer of acrylic fiber followed by South Korea and Taiwan. Middle East and Africa are second largest market of acrylic fiber. North America is facing a sluggish growth since 2006 followed by Europe. European manufactures have stopped producing acrylic fiber as there is limited application of the same here.Segmentation:The global acrylic fiber market is majorly segmented on the basis of by form, by blending and by end-use. Based on form the market is segmented into staple and filament. On the basis of blending the market is classified cotton, wool, and others. Further on basis of end-use the market is segmented into wardrobe, furnishing, industrial and othersAbout 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.Market Research Future Magarpatta Road, Hadapsar, Pune - 411028 Maharashtra, India +1 646 845 9312
Narrowband IoT Chipset Market Driven by Low device cost, Increased battery life and better network scalability: Forecast 2017-2025

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Latest Research Report titled " Narrowband Internet-of-Things (IoT) Chipset Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share Growth, Trends and Forecast 2017 - 2025 " features Key Market Players, Market Trends, Market Challenges and Market Drivers.NB-IoT, which is being designed exclusively for the purpose of IoT communication, does have a dominating technological performance and dominant service capabilities over the existing M2M technologies. The requirement of NB-IoT in 200 kHz frequency makes it easier to fully utilize the operators' scattered spectrum. This would provide a support capability, which is 100 times as many connections compared to 4G connectivity. It has a sensitivity that is 100 times higher compared to that of 2G and it can increase the battery life of IoT devices increased up to 10 years.NB-IoT chipset also have low device unit cost and better network scalability.Thus, they can be used extensively across various industry applications.Thus, the rise in demand for smart appliances such as connected LED bulbs and connected temperature sensing devices is expected to create growth opportunities for NB-IoT chipset manufacturers during the forecast period. The Narrowband IoT chipset market is expected to expand significantly in the next few years, as low speed reliable data transfer and high level of reliability are anticipated to replace turbo codes with the convolutional codes for the purpose of downlink transmissions. With technological advancement in smart appliances and smart metering segment with higher adoption of Guardband deployment are fueling the growth of the Narrowband Internet-of-Things Chipset market.Browse Research PDF at:Based on deployment, the market has been segmented into three types Guardband, Inband, Standalone .A guard band is a tapered frequency distribution range which separates two wider ranges of frequency. This actually ensures that concurrently used telecommunication channels does not experience any kind of interference, which should actually result in a declined quality for both types of transmissions.The growing demand of NB-IoT in Smart appliances and smart metering is actually driving the market.The guardband concept is applied to both wired and wireless communications. It also helps to simplify the process of signal filtering for software, hardware or both. The market of guardband is anticipated to witness a high growth rate during the forecast period owing to its capability of reduced turnaround time during high network traffic .In addition to that, An inband management is involved in managing devices using the common protocol such as telnet or Secure Shell(SSH), for the purpose of operating network service securely over an unsecured network.The growing adoption of Guardband and Inband deployment in different smart applications is expected to drive the market in the forecasted period.Based on application, the market is segmented into seven segments they are like trackers, wearable devices, smart appliances, smart metering, alarms, detectors and others.Geographically, the Narrowband Internet-of-Things Chipset market is categorized into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, Middle East and Africa. The market for NB-IoT chipsets has been provided in (USD million) in terms of revenue and the CAGR for the forecast period of 2017 to 2025.Narrowband Internet-of-Things (IoT) Chipset Market by Deployment Type- Guardband- Inband- StandaloneNarrowband Internet-of-Things (IoT) Chipset Market by Application- Trackers- Wearable Devices- Smart Appliances- Smart Metering- Alarms- Detectors- OthersAbout UsResearchMoz 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:
Analyzing the market segmentation, trends and forecasting North America Cancer Vaccines Market (20162021)

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Market Data Forecast recently published a report on the North America Cancer Vaccines Market" which estimates the market which was worth $ 1.08 billion in 2016 and expected to reach $ 2.38 billion by the end of 2021 with a growing potential of 17.03%.View report at:Cancer treatment vaccines are different from the vaccines that work against viruses. These vaccines try to get the immune system to mount an attack against cancer cells in the body. Instead of preventing disease, they are meant to get the immune system to attack a disease that already exists. Some cancer treatment vaccines are made up of cancer cells, parts of cells, or pure antigens. Sometimes a patients own immune cells are removed and exposed to these substances in the lab to create the vaccine.Once the vaccine is ready, its injected into the body to increase the immune response against cancer cells. Vaccines are often combined with other substances or cells called adjuvants that help boost the immune response even further. Cancer vaccines cause the immune system to attack cells with one or more specific antigens. Because the immune system has special cells for memory, its hoped that the vaccine might continue to work long after its given.Request sample:The DROC Analysis contains some of the factors that have major effects on the market dynamics be it positive or negative. Few factors analysed in the section are rising number of people with cancer, increasing public awareness of vaccines, smoking and excessive alcoholic intake, and presence of strong late-stage pipeline Vaccines, vendors' patient-assistance programs are the major factors driving the growth of the market. Stringent regulations for the approval, Vaccines costs are the factors that are hampering the growth of the market.Buy now:The market is segmented based on treatment type, cancer type, vaccine type and end-users and is studied for a deep-level understanding of the Cancer Vaccines market. Each sub segment is accompanied with Market Size Estimations and Y-o-Y Forecasts as well.Treatment typeo Prophylactico TherapeuticCancer Typeo Prostate Cancero Cervical Cancero Colorectal Cancero Throat Cancero OthersVaccine Typeo Tumor cell Vaccineso Protein or Peptide Vaccineso Genetic VaccinesDNA VaccinesRNA Vaccineso Dendritic cell Vaccineso other VaccinesEnd Userso Cancer Treatment Centerso Research InstitutesCustomize report:North American Market is studied in geographic perspective by segregating the market shares between USA and Canada. North America is expected to dominate the overall market in the next five years owing to the presence of premium healthcare infrastructure, established reimbursement framework and high healthcare affordability in this region.Inquire before buying:As per the report, some of the key players operating in North America cancer vaccines market are Dendreon, GlaxoSmithKline and Merck. Other companies whose products are in pipeline stage are Aduro Biotech, Advantagene, Advaxis, Agenus, Altor BioScience, Argos Therapeutics, AVAX Technologies, Bavarian Nordic, Biothera, Celldex Therapeutics, CureVac, Galena Biopharma, Genexine, GlobeImmune, Gradalis, Heat Biologics, Immatics, ImmunoCellular Therapeutics, Inovio Pharmaceuticals, ISA Pharmaceuticals, Juvaris Biotherapeutics, NewLink Genetics, Northwest Biotherapeutics, NovaRx, OncoThyreon, Oncovir, Oxford BioMedica, Prima BioMed, Sotio, Transgene, Ubivac, Vaccinogen, Vaxon BiotechScope of the North America Cancer Vaccines Market :Regional and country-level analysis that provides an innate perspective of USA and Canada Market to that of the North American regionTo detect major focus areas of industrial growth Segment-level analysis on basis of type, therapeutics, end-user along with market size forecasts and y-o-y estimations are providedDetailed explanation of major drivers, restraints, opportunities, and challenges (DROC) that affect the market and impact the ever-shifting market dynamicsPESTLE and Porters Five Forces Analyses that examine the macro & micro environmental factors such as political influence, technological prowess, industry rivalry to name a few.An extensive listing of major market players along with company overview, product portfolios, key financial information (subjected to availability), SWOT analysis and analyst overview to study and sustain the market environmentmergers, acquisitions, collaborations in the field along with new product launches, comparative financial studies and recent developments in the market by the major companies all rolled out into Competitive landscapeExpertly devised Market Outlook comprising the Investment opportunities to provide both individuals and organizations a strong financial foothold in the marketRequest Discount:About Market Data Forecast:The publisher of this report is Market Data Forecast whose forte lies in Market research and Business Intelligence. Handling both individual and corporate clients across multiple business domains they offer syndicated/customized research to suit the clients research objective. Their research reports section offers a wide variety of market studies ranging from all-encompassing comprehensive market studies to product specific niche markets covering North America among other regions of the global market as well. 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 @
Vast Investments in Defense Sector Assist Growth of Global Military Aviation MRO Market: Forecast 2017-2027

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Latest Research Report titled " Global Military Aviation MRO Market 2017-2027 " features Key Market Players, Market Trends, Market Challenges and Market Drivers.The report analyzes the vital trends and recent developments in the global market for military aviation MROs, alongside the key catalysts and deterrents affecting the expansion of the market. The report includes an analysis of the value chain as well as leverages analytic tools such as Porters Five Force analysis to assess the level of rivalry between the market players.With the establishment of several new maintenance facilities across the globe, the worldwide market for military aviation MROs has been advancing at a quick pace. With a view to penetrate the unexplored terrains and thereby level up their revenues, a number of market players are extending their production capacities via new maintenance facilities.As the establishment of maintenance centers will render it unnecessary to fly aircrafts to other locations, end users will evidently accept the services offered by these service centers instead of third-party services. More importantly, the growing bulk of investments in military aviation is driving the growth of the market.Browse Research PDF at:The increasing importance of the development of environment-friendly aircrafts is one of the recent trends in the global market for military aviation MROs. As environmental concerns become more pronounced, the need to find eco-friendly solutions in the domain of military aviation MROs is expected to have a positive impact on the markets growth. Environment-friendly aircrafts do not only reduce fuel consumption, but they also help curbing toxic carbon emissions. As a result, the military aviation sectors of several nations have been trying to deploy more eco-friendly technologies.Browse more details at:By type, the global market for military aviation MROs can be segmented into UAV MRO, multi-role aircraft MRO, multi-mission helicopter MRO, and transport aircraft MRO. Of these, the multi-role aircraft MRO segment is expected to account for the largest share of 56% by the end of the forecast period. While the multi-mission helicopter segment is likely to hold a 12% share, the transport aircraft MRO segment is expected to represent a share of 22% in the international market for military aviation MROs.By geography, the global market for military aviation MRO can be segmented into Asia Pacific, North America, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa, and Europe. While North America might contribute the greatest portion of revenue to the global military aviation MRO market, Asia Pacific is slated for unparalleled growth over the oncoming period. The expanding military expenditures of China, India, Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea, Australia, and Japan are responsible for the increasing demand for military aviation MRO in these regions.Boeing, Rockwell Collins, Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), Airbus Group, SIA Engineering Company, and Lockheed Martin are some leading firms operating in the global military aviation MRO market.About UsResearchMoz 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:
Functional Tea Market is Expected to Grow at a CAGR over 4.4% From 2017 to 2023

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Market Research Future published a Half Cooked Research Report on Global Functional Tea Market which is estimated to grow more than 4.4% after 2023.Market OverviewConsumers are demanding varieties of functional tea, which is encouraging companies to launch new products with new healthy ingredients in functional tea. Several companies have been announcing the launch of products with new tastes, flavors, and form to maintain their competitiveness in the market. Availability of resources and large consumer base is creating huge opportunity for key players to expand their business in Asia Pacific region especially in the developing countries like China and India. Innovation in healthy ingredients and flavor from major players is attracting the consumers to buy functional tea compare to other normal hot beverages. This factor is influencing the market growth in North America and Europe region.Sample Copy of Report @Competitive Analysis-The major Key Players in Functional Tea Market are Tata Tea Limited (India) Herbaty Szlachetne Sp. Z O.O. (Poland) Guangzhou Lohas Biological Technology Co., Ltd (China) Godrej Tea (India) The Mate Factor (U.S.) Organic India (India) Wuhan z-Micro Unite S&T Co., Ltd. (China)Access the market data and market information presented through more than 25 market data tables and 25 figures spread over 110 numbers of pages of the project report Functional Tea Market - Forecast to 2023Market ForecastGlobal Functional Tea Market is mainly driven by increasing awareness about health benefits of various Functional Tea. Change in lifestyle and increase in disposable income has boosted the sales of functional tea in developing countries. Rising consumer awareness about health has influenced the key players to introduce new products which are healthier than usual functional tea from last few years.These factors will play a key role in the growth of Functional Tea market at the CAGR of 4.4% during 2017-2023.Downstream Analysis-Tea is the most consumed drink in the world after water. Based upon geographical region there are varieties of tea produced across the world, each type of tea has its unique characteristics which are beneficial for health. Growing awareness among consumers about health benefits of functional tea is influencing the sales of functional tea which helps in weight loss, heart health and detoxification of body. Innovation in flavor and packaging is playing the key role in the increasing demand of functional tea from last few years. Advancement in processing technology and improved distribution network across globe is providing lots of new opportunities for major players to expand their business in all over the world. Key players with large variety of product are getting attention from consumers as acceptance of new types and forms in functional tea has increased among consumers.Access Report Details @Regional AnalysisThe Functional Tea Market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and rest of the world (ROW). Asia Pacific has the major market share followed by North America. Top tea producing countries are located in Asia Pacific region which is the key factor behind the major market share of Asia Pacific region. Functional Tea market in Asia Pacific region is growing at significant rate due to increasing consumption of functional tea in countries like China and India where large consumer base is available. The business expansion of key players in Middle East and Africa region is playing a key role in growth of functional tea market especially in countries like Iran and Kenya.Market Segmentation-Global Functional Tea market is segmented by type, form, function, packaging and region.The type segment includes Fruit Tea, Herbal Tea, Longjing Tea, Flower Tea and Others.The form includes Broken Tea, Loose Tea, Instant Tea Powder and Others.The function includes Heart Health, Weight loss, Detox and Others.The packaging includes Can, bag, Bottle, Sachet and Others.List of FiguresFIGURE 1 Research MethodologyFIGURE 2 Primary Data Analysis ApproachFIGURE 3 Secondary Data Analysis ApproachFIGURE 4 Trends in Functional Tea Imports 2011-16Continued.About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.In order to stay updated with technology and work process of the industry, MRFR often plans & conducts meet with the industry experts and industrial visits for its research analyst members.ContactAkash Anand,Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com
Anti-caking agent for feed fertilizer Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share By 2025

Anti-caking agent for feed fertilizer Market

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An anticaking agent is an additive used by the feed & fertilizer industry to avoid the formation of lumps in feeds and fertilizers. It is also used to improve the packaging and transportation of these feeds and fertilizers. Anticaking agents provide better solution to the problem of moisture adsorption, nitrogen loss, and caking in granulated fertilizers. Anticaking agents comprise surface tension modifiers, powerful surfactants, crystal habit modifiers, and parting agents. Anticaking agents are soluble in alcohol, water, and other organic solvents.The global anticaking agent for feed & fertilizer market can be segmented based on application and region. In terms of application, the anticaking agent for feed & fertilizer market can be divided into fertilizer, poultry & cattle, and others. Fertilizer is the major application segment of the anticaking agent for feed & fertilizer market. Anticaking agent is primarily used in nitrogen, potassium, ammonium, and phosphorous based fertilizers to prevent them from absorbing moisture from the atmosphere and forming a cake. In poultry and cattle, anticaking agent is used in feed to stop caking and agglomeration, and increase the flow properties of feed ingredients.Obtain Report Details @The anticaking agent for feed & fertilizer market is anticipated to witness significant growth during the forecast period owing to the increasing demand for the agent in feeds and fertilizers in the manufacture of fertilizers. Demand for fertilizers is anticipated to increase in order to enhance the crop yield. Rise in demand for fertilizers is anticipated to drive the overall market of anticaking agent for feed & fertilizer. Factors such as ease of transportation and usage in packaging and consumption are also expected to boost the demand for anticaking agents. Rapid growth in the livestock industry is one of the major factors driving the anti-caking agent for feed & fertilizer market. However, potential health hazard is projected to hamper market growth. Furthermore, implementation of stringent governmental regulations, especially in developed countries, is likely to adversely affect the overall market during the forecast period.Based on region, the anticaking agent for feed & fertilizer market can be segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa, and Latin America. North America is anticipated to dominate the global anticaking agent for feed & fertilizer market, followed by Europe and Asia pacific. Expansion in the livestock industry in North America is estimated to boost the anticaking agent for feed & fertilizer market. Demand for animal feed is rising constantly. This, in turn, is projected to propel the feed additives market, particularly in feed anticaking agents.For more information on this report, fill the form @Rise in demand for anticaking agent for feed and fertilizer in the agriculture industry in Asia Pacific is anticipated to boost the overall market during the forecast period. Government initiatives to increase crop output and favorable policies encouraging sustainable & efficient agricultural practices are also estimated to play critical role in boosting the market in the region during the forecast period. The anticaking agent for feed & fertilizer market in Middle East & Africa and Latin America is also projected to expand substantially during the next few years.Companies are adopting merger and acquisition strategies to expand their market share. They are also shifting their production facilities to emerging economies in Asia Pacific and Latin America due to the easy availability of land, cheap labor, and governmental subsidies in these regions. Key players operating in the anticaking agent for feed & fertilizer market are BASF SE, Kao Corporation, Geocon Products, NAQ GLOBAL, Chemipol, Evonik Industries, Huber Engineered Material, PPG Industries Inc., and Sweetener Supply Corporation.About Us:-Transparency Market Research is a market intelligence company providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers.We are privileged with highly experienced team of Analysts, Researchers and Consultants, who 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 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:
Global Automotive Diesel Particulate Filter Market 2017: Focuses on top players Delphi, Tenneco, Freudenberg Filtration, Denso, Dow Automotive, Johnson Matthey, Weifu, SPMC

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The Automotive Diesel Particulate Filter research report by QY Research represents an inclusive evaluation of the Global Automotive Diesel Particulate Filter 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 Automotive Diesel Particulate Filter market and its corresponding segments that are based on technology, geography, and applications.The examination on value chain of Automotive Diesel Particulate Filter 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 Automotive Diesel Particulate Filter 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 Automotive Diesel Particulate Filter 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 Automotive Diesel Particulate Filter 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 Automotive Diesel Particulate Filter market report is a helpful source which assists manufacturers, distributors, suppliers, customers, and individuals and investors who have interest in this market.Global Automotive Diesel Particulate Filter market competition by top manufacturers, with production, price, revenue (value) and market share for each manufacturer; the top players includingDelphiTennecoFreudenberg FiltrationDensoDow AutomotiveJohnson MattheyWeifuSPMCMANN+HUMMELEECNGK InsulatorsDinexDonaldsoESW GroupAbout 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
Mapping the world's seabed by 2030

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TOKYO / NEW YORK - Mankind has mapped the Moon, Venus and Mars at 100 meters or better, but less than a scant 0.5% of planet Earth's ocean floor; Seabed 2030 hopes to change all that by mapping the entire seabed by 2030.The General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (GEBCO) and the Nippon Foundation through their sponsorship of Seabed 2030 look to expand their understanding of the ocean floor by mapping and compiling a high-resolution open-source Digital Bathymetric Model of the world's seabed at an unheard of 100 meter resolution or better.On Tuesday June 6th, at the UNESCO's "Ocean 8" marine science awards ceremony in New York City Nippon Foundation Chairman Yohei Sasakawa in his acceptance speech, announced plans to fund Seabed 2030 and produce a complete map of the worlds ocean floor by 2030.To secure a better picture of what the ocean floor actually yields, it's not just missing airplanes and underwater volcanic vents:-Ocean currents can be modeled and predicted with much greater accuracy and naturally so can climate conditions and climate change.-Navigation for submarines and ships becomes safer and more reliable.-Undersea prospectors gain a better picture of our natural resources.-Open-source distribution means benefits for public awareness and education.In creating this high-resolution map, the worlds ocean will be separated into four regions (North Pacific / Arctic Ocean, Atlantic / Indian Ocean, South Pacific / West Pacific Ocean, Southern Ocean), with a data assembly coordination center established in each region to collect existing data. The project will also utilize data collected from fishing and merchant vessels equipped with measurement devices.The cooperation of 78 fellows from 36 countries who have participated in the joint training program of the Nippon Foundation and the GEBCO Guiding Committee to train experts in the field of ocean floor mapping, as well as from public institutions, universities, and businesses, has already been enlisted.The newest version of the ocean floor map will be made available on Seabed 2030s official website every time there is an update. Cooperation with Google Earth and search engines like ESRIs Ocean Basemap is also being considered.In his acceptance speech, Sasakawa termed the completion of the worlds ocean map as peoples dream and asked all to support this project, stating that the worlds ocean map is necessary not only for safe navigation at sea, but also for promoting sustainable development at sea.Please feel free to share this with colleagues who may be covering areas of climate change, environmental science, marine science and education.Nippon FoundationThe ocean is essential to human life.Today, however, the world's seas and oceans face a variety of problems, including pollution, kidnapping and piracy, and the depletion of marine food resources.Resolving these problems requires human resources to tackle these issues.Even if there are people and organizations who share this sense of crisis for the future of our ocean, they are not able to work together and effectively realize their full potential.We are cultivating people to clear the future for the world's oceans, while at the same time building a foundation that connects these people and organizations, to pass on the ocean's riches to future generations.The Nippon FoundationThe Nippon Zaidan Building1-2-2 Akasaka, Minato-ku Tokyo 107-8404, JapanTEL : +81-3-6229-5111 FAX : +81-3-6229-5110email : cc@ps.nippon-foundation.or.jp
Global Tissue Banking Market Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2014 - 2024

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Tissue Banking Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2014 - 2024" to its huge collection of research reports.Tissue Banking devices are used to store tissues in controlled environment for quality, safety and effective use in different disease treatment. The report on global Tissue Banking market, analyzes the current and future prospects of the market. The report consists of an executive summary that provides information about the products, its segments and sub-segments, along with a market snapshot and comparative analysis by geography, in terms of revenue %, for 2015.Global Tissue Banking Market: Scope of the ReportA detailed overview of market dynamics, including the drivers, restraints, and opportunities of the Tissue Banking market, along with porters analysis, and value chain analysis, of the global market, has been provided in this report. Market revenue and volume analysis for all the above mentioned segments, and their sub segments has been provided for the forecast period of 2016-2024, considering 2015 as the base year, and 2014 as the historical year, along with compound annual growth rate (CAGR %), for the forecast period of 2016-2024. Market share estimations were based on in-depth analysis and study of products, and their features, prices etc. Pricing analysis, for every region has been provided considering the Average Selling Prices (ASP), of products, in these regions.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @This report provides in-depth analysis of the Tissue Banking market. The stakeholders for this report include companies involved in the manufacturing of Tissue Banking devices. For providing a snapshot of this market to the stakeholders, executive summary section is included in this report, which summarizes the market size, trends and competition in different regions. Market share analysis among the market players is analyzed to signify percentage share of the major players operating in the Tissue Banking market. Furthermore, the report incorporates market attractiveness analysis by geography that depicts the most attractive and significant region in the global market in 2015.The research methodology is a combination of primary and secondary research. Primary research includes information collected via e-mails, and telephonic interviews of Key Opinion Leaders (KOL), and forms the bulk of our research. Secondary research includes information collected from various sources, by study of company websites, annual reports, stock analysis presentations, press releases, and various national and international databases.Global Tissue Banking Market: SegmentationBased on Equipment type, the global Tissue Banking market has been segmented into Freezers, Storage system, Thawing Equipment, Labelling and Coding Equipment, Alarming and Coding equipment. Freezers are the highly growing market growing at a CAGR of % which is followed by storage system. Based on applications, the Tissue Banking are segmented into Clinical and Therapeutic, Research & Development, Drug Discovery. Tissue banking are highly used in clinical and therapeutics and growing at a CAGR of % and followed by research and development. Based on end users, the market is segmented as Hospitals, Tissue Banks, Research and Academics Institutes and Diagnostic Laboratories. Umbilical cord blood transfusion is highly growing therapeutic treatment segment in tissue banking globally.Global Tissue Banking Market: Geographical and Competitive DynamicsBased on geography, the market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa. The regions are further segmented into major countries which include, U.S., Canada, Germany, U.K., France, Italy, Spain, rest of Europe, China, Japan, India, Australia, Rest of Asia Pacific, Brazil, Mexico, Rest of Latin America, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Rest of Middle East & Africa. The report also comprises list major players in the market, their SWOT analysis, market share of these players in the Tissue Banking market, key business strategies, product portfolios, and recent developments. Key market players profiled in this report include, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Brooks Automation, Taylor-Wharton, Panasonic Biomedical, Backman Coulter Inc., Custom Biogenic Systems, Inc., Sigma-Aldrich Corporation, and BioLife Solutions, Inc., others. Majority of companies acquiring strategy of merger and acquisition for overall market growth. The technological advancement are another trend adopted by several companies for growth of business segment.Global Tissue Banking market has been segmented as follows:Global Tissue Banking Market, by Equipment- Freezers- Storage System- Thawing Equipment- Labelling and Coding Equipment- Alarming and Monitoring EquipmentGlobal Tissue Banking Market, by Application- Clinical and Therapeutic- Research & Development- Drug DiscoveryGlobal Tissue Banking Market, by End-users- Hospitals- Tissue Banks- Research and Academics Institutes- Diagnostic LaboratoriesGlobal Tissue Banking Market, by Geography- North America- U.S.- Canada- Europe- U.K.- Germany- France- Spain- Italy- Rest of Europe- Asia Pacific- China- Japan- India- Australia- Rest of Asia Pacific- Latin America- Brazil- Mexico- Rest of Latin America- Middle East & Africa- Saudi Arabia- South Africa- Rest of Middle East & AfricaMake an Enquiry of this report @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @
Global Facial Recognition Market Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2015 - 2022

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Facial Recognition Market (By Technology Type - 2D Facial Recognition, 3D Facial Recognition and Facial Analytics; By End-use Industry - Government and Utilities; Military; Homeland Security; BFSI; Retail; Others (Digital Signage, Automotive, Web Applications, and Mobile Applications)) - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2015 - 2022" to its huge collection of research reports.This research report provides analytical insights on the global facial recognition market. The market overview section of the report emphasizes on the market dynamics and trends, which include the drivers, restraints, and opportunities that influence the current nature and future growth of the market. The market estimates have been analyzed by keeping in mind the several factors, which affect the market including but not limited to technological, economic, social, environmental, and legal factors.Facial recognition is a biometric technology used for the identification and authentication of people by capturing facial images using a camera and then comparing the captured images with an existing database. These systems perform identification of facial images on the basis of various facial features, such as distance between eyes, cheek bones, eye-brows, and others. Facial recognition technology is preferred over other biometric techniques such as iris, fingerprint, and voice recognition as it does not require physical contact with the apparatus and is, thus, non-intrusive. Moreover, the facial recognition technology is easily deployable using existing cameras and monitoring devices. However, the facial recognition systems face criticism due to privacy issues, such as data cloning and misuse of personal information. Technological advancements paved way for the introduction of efficient surveillance systems to monitor rising crime, frauds, and terrorist activities which, in turn, resulted in the rise in demand for facial recognition solutions. These applications include access control, intruder identification, and detection of gender, age, and ethnicity, among others.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @The global facial recognition market is segmented on the basis of the type of technology into 2D facial recognition technology, 3D facial recognition technology, and facial analytics. The 2D technology deals with face recognition of an image based on its two-dimensional appearance. It is a widely used technology and has low cost of installation and operation compared to 3D technology. However, 2D technology fails in its operation if the facial image to be identified varies in light conditions, position, and facial expressions. 3D technology overcomes the drawbacks of 2D technology by analyzing a facial image in a three-dimensional view. With the use of 3D technology, various drawbacks such as varying angles and environmental conditions can be overcome, which results in ensuring more accurate recognition of facial images. The 3D technology includes use of complex algorithms and High-Definition (HD) technology. Thus, with the growing technological advancements, the 3D facial recognition technology is expected to witness much faster adoption compared to the 2D facial recognition technology in the near future. Moreover, facial analytics is another emerging technology that deals exclusively with facial expressions. This technology is used for determining different attributes such as age, gender, and other facial characteristics. This technology is majorly used in the retail industry for better marketing of products, and is being increasingly used by the police for identification of criminals based on their changing facial expressions.All these product types find wide applications in sectors such as government and utilities, military, homeland security, retail, banking, financial services, insurance (BFSI), and others (digital signage, web, and mobile applications). Facial recognition systems are majorly used in the government sector and law enforcement agencies for security purposes. Furthermore, due to the rise in frauds in the BFSI sector, facial recognition systems are being increasingly used in this sector to ensure security and reduce crimes. Additionally, facial analytics systems are used in the retail industry to determine the age, gender, and facial expressions of the customers in order to target them for marketing suitable products of the concerned company. In terms of geographical distribution, the global facial recognition market has been classified into regions such as North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa (MEA) and Latin America.Major players have been profiled with focus on their competitive details such as company and financial overview, business strategies, and their recent developments. These players are focused on developing efficient technologies that will ensure better surveillance or monitoring of people. Some of the market participants profiled in this report include NEC Corporation, Morpho S.A.S. (Safran Group), Cognitec Systems Pty Ltd, Aware, Inc., Animetrics, Inc., Ayonix, Inc., Cross Match Technologies, Inc., 3M Cogent Inc., FaceFirst, Inc. (Airborne Biometrics Group Inc.), ZK Software, Inc., and Aurora Computer Services Ltd., among others. The report analyzes the global facial recognition market in terms of revenue (US$ Mn) for each segment for the period from 2012 to 2022, along with the CAGR for the forecast period from 2015 to 2022.The global Facial Recognition market has been segmented as follows:Facial Recognition Market, by Technology Type- 2D Facial Recognition- 3D Facial Recognition- Facial AnalyticsFacial Recognition Market, by End-use Industry- Government & Utilities- Military- Homeland Security- Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance (BFSI)- Retail Industry- Others (Digital Signage, Automotive, Web Applications, and Mobile Applications)Facial Recognition Market, by Geography- North America- U.S.- Rest of North America- Europe- EU7 (UK, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands)- CIS- Rest of Europe- Asia Pacific- Japan- China- South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka)- Australasia (Australia, New Zealand, and Guinea)- Rest of Asia Pacific- Middle East and Africa (MEA)- GCC Countries- North Africa- South Africa- Rest of MEA- Latin America- Brazil- Rest of Latin AmericaMake an Enquiry of this report @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @
U.S. Asset Management IT Solution Market Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2016 - 2024

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Asset Management IT Solution Market - U.S. Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2016 - 2024" to its huge collection of research reports.Asset management refers to managing tangible or intangible assets. An asset management company serves as an advisor to clients, with a goal to maximize returns. Asset management firms are hired by institutional investors such as pension funds, corporations, and high net worth individuals. The asset management firms need IT solutions for managing assets such as equity, fixed income, real estate, commodities, and international investments. These IT solutions consist mainly of software solutions for business operations including portfolio management, compliance, and trade execution among others.U.S. Asset Management IT Solution Market: Scope and MethodologyThe U.S. asset management IT solution market report provides an analysis of the U.S. asset management IT solution market for the period 2014  2024, wherein 2015 is the base year and the period from 2016 to 2024 is the forecast period. Data for 2014 has been included as historical information. The report covers all the prevalent trends playing a major role in the growth of the asset management IT solution market over the forecast period. It also highlights various drivers, restraints, and opportunities expected to influence the market growth during the said period.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @The study provides a holistic perspective on market growth, throughout the above forecast period in terms of revenue estimates (in US$ Mn), across different geographies in the U.S., which include Northeast, Midwest, West and South. The report provides cross-sectional analysis of the U.S. asset management IT solution market in terms of market estimates and forecasts for all the segments across different geographic regions. This research report provides in-depth analysis of the U.S. asset management IT solution market on the basis components, deployment model and geography. The report also includes U.S. asset Management player profile and asset managers IT viewpoint deploying IT solutions and services for managing assets.Some of the key analytical pointers in the research study include Porters Five Force Analysis, and key market indicators which include industry outlook of investment management firms (asset managers) in the U.S. and key mergers and acquisition in the field of asset management IT solutions from vendor as well as buyers point of view.Applications encompassed in the research study include portfolio management, compliance, risk management, client statements & reporting, trade order management, workflow automation, benchmarking, and cash flow & accounting. Whereas services encompassed in the report scope include enterprise data management, data integration, reporting solutions & services, operation support & monitoring, application development and maintenance, and resource managementThis research study on the U.S. asset management IT solution market provides a detailed analysis of various components and their respective applications and services. The report also offers in-depth analysis of various factors such as market drivers, restraints, and growth opportunities affecting the market dynamics. These factors enable the analysis of various trends that would impact the market during the forecast period from 2016 to 2024. The report includes a comprehensive coverage of the underlying economic and technological factors under key trend analysis influencing the asset management IT solution market.U.S. Asset Management IT Solution Market: Competitive DynamicsThe report aims to provide strategic insights about the investment management firms deploying IT solutions with the detailed analysis of their requirements pertaining to IT solutions. Some of the key industry players in the asset management IT solution include Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP, FundCount, SoftTarget Inc., SimCorp Inc, QED Financial System, eFront Financial Solutions, Broadridge Investment Management Solutions, ProTrak International, SunGard Financials and CreditPoint Software.Key asset managers profiled in the research study along with their IT viewpoints and requirements include Barings Corporate Investors, Geode Capital Management, The Carlyle Group LP, Voya Investment Management, Lazard Asset Management, Bridgewater Associates and Hartford Investment Management. Co among others.U.S. Asset Management IT Solution Market Segmentation:U.S. Asset Management IT Solution Market, by Component- Application- Portfolio Management- Compliance- Risk Management- Client Statements & Reporting- Trade Order Management- Workflow Automation- Benchmarking- Cash Flow & Accounting- Service- Enterprise Data Management- Data Integration- Reporting Solutions & Services- Operation Support & Monitoring- Application Development and Maintenance- Resource ManagementU.S. Asset Management IT Solution Market, by Deployment Model- On-premise- Cloud-based- HybridU.S. Asset Management IT Solution Market, by Geography- Northeast- Midwest- West- SouthMake an Enquiry of this report @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @
Global Advanced Wound Care Management Market Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2016 - 2024

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Advanced Wound Care Management Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2016 - 2024" to its huge collection of research reports.The market for wound care is growing phenomenally, due to growing advancement is treating complex wounds. Advanced wound care market is anticipated to grow in forecasted period, as the products has been a promising solution for faster recovery and wound healing. These products offer superior solution than traditional products by offering desired outcome and effectiveness in healing wounds. The increasing incidences of chronic wound has aggravated the need for the products that offers faster and efficient wound healing. Thus, majority of hospitals have shifted their preferences towards the advanced wound care products. It helps to decrease the average length of stay in hospitals through early recovery from wounds. This assists to decrease the length of hospital stay in order to reduce surgical costs. Thus the rising need and demand for advanced products that increases therapeutic outcome drives the advanced wound care market.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Advanced Wound Care Management Market: Scope of the ReportThe report is a combination of primary and secondary research. Primary research formed the bulk of our research efforts, with information collected from telephonic interviews and interactions via e-mail. Secondary research involved study of company websites, annual reports, press releases, stock analysis presentations, and various national and international databases. The report provides market size in terms of US$ Mn for each segment for the period from 2014 to 2024, considering the macro and micro-environmental factors. Growth rates for each segment within the global advanced wound care market have been determined after a thorough analysis of past trends, demographics, future trends, technological developments, vaccination expenditure, and regulatory requirements.The market overview section of the report includes qualitative analysis of the overall advanced wound care market including the determining factors and market dynamics such as drivers, restraints, and opportunities, along with white space analysis. In addition, market attractiveness analysis by geography, technique, product type, type of wounds, end-user, and competitive landscape by key players have been provided which explain the intensity of competition in the market considering different geographies. The competitive scenario between market players has been evaluated through market share analysis. These factors would help the market players take strategic decisions in order to strengthen their positions and increase their shares in the global market.Advanced Wound Care Management Market: Growth and Competitive DynamicsThe driving factors for advanced wound care market are mainly increasing demand for faster recovery, decrease in healthcare cost by decreasing average length of stay in hospital, rising population falling for trauma, etc. Advanced wound care market is anticipated to grow in forecasted period, as the products has been a promising solution for faster recovery and wound healing. These products offer superior solution than traditional products by offering desired outcome and effectiveness in healing wounds. The increasing incidences of chronic wound has aggravated the need for the products that offers faster and efficient wound healing. Thus, majority of hospitals have shifted their preferences towards the advanced wound care products. It helps to decrease the average length of stay in hospitals through early recovery from wounds. This assists to decrease the length of hospital stay in order to reduce surgical costs. Thus the rising need and demand for advanced products that increases therapeutic outcome drives the advanced wound care market.Geographically, the global advanced wound care market has been segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa. The applications of advanced wound care are rapidly growing in North America due to increasing direct and indirect investments by the U.S. Government and private companies in wound care. Increasing investments and penetration by key market players in Asia Pacific are likely to drive the advance wound care market during the forecast period.Major players in the advanced wound care management market are 3M, Acelity L.P. Inc., B. Braun Melsungen AG, BSN medical GmbH, Coloplast A/S, ConvaTec Inc., Medline Industries, Inc., Medtronic, Molnlycke Health Care, Organogenesis, Inc., and Smith & Nephew plc.The global advanced wound care management market has been segmented as follows:Global Advanced Wound Care Management Market, by Product Type- Advanced Wound Dressings- Foam dressings- Hydrocolloid dressings- Hydrofiber dressings- Film dressings- Alginate dressings- Hydrogel dressings- Collagen dressings- Active Wound Care- Artificial skin and skin substitutes- Growth Factors- Antimicrobial dressingGlobal Advanced Wound Care Management Market, by Type of Wound- Diabetic foot ulcers- Pressure ulcer- Venous leg ulcer- Arterial Ulcer- Surgical and Traumatic wounds- Burns- Other chronic woundsGlobal Advanced Wound Care Management Market, by End-user- Hospital inpatient settings- Hospital outpatient settings- Community medical centers- Home healthcare- Others (private nursing home, pharmacies)Global Advanced Wound Care management Market, by Geography- North America- U.S.- Canada- Europe- Germany- France- U.K.- Italy- Spain- Rest of Europe- Asia Pacific- China- Japan- India- Rest of Asia Pacific- Latin America- Brazil- Mexico- Rest of Latin America- Middle East & Africa- South Africa- Turkey- Saudi Arabia- Rest of MEAMake an Enquiry of this report @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @
Global Paint & Coatings Sales Market 2017 - 3M, AkzoNobel, Henkel, MASCO, SK Kaken

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Report studies Paint & Coatings 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 Paint & Coatings in each application.In this report, the global Paint & Coatings 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.Download Free Sample Report @Geographically, this report is segmented into several key Regions, with production, consumption, revenue (million USD), market share and growth rate of Paint & Coatings in these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), coveringUnited StatesChinaEuropeJapanSoutheast AsiaIndiaGlobal Paint & Coatings market competition by top manufacturers, with production, price, revenue (value) and market share for each manufacturer, the top players includingAkzoNobelHenkelPPG IndustriesNippon PaintSherwin WilliamsBASFDOWBrilluxBenjamin MooreAsian PaintsBerger PaintsDuluxCaparolTikkurilaKansai PaintCromologyValspar PaintDunn-Edwards PaintsMeffert AGJotunAxalta Coating SystemsCHUGOKU MARINE PAINTSHempelRPM3MMASCOSK KakenKCC CorporationDAI NIPPON TORYOFujikura KaseiAccess Full Report @On the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoSolvent-Based CoatingsWaterborne CoatingsHigh-Solids CoatingsTwo-Component SystemsPowder CoatingsOthersOn 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 Paint & Coatings for each application, includingArchitecturalIndustrial UseAutomotive UseOthersIf you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report as you want.The report provides information on market sizes, trends, competitive background, market dynamics, market developments, and winning imperatives. The stakeholders of the market can use this information forIdentifying the present and upcoming market opportunitiesUnderstanding the global, regional, and national scenariosUnderstanding the market trends and dynamics along with key factorsTracking the market developmentsIdentifying potential markets in various regions for various Products.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.Contact UsMark StoneSales ManagerPhone: (201) 465-4211Email: sales@fiormarkets.comWeb:Blog:
Global 96-Well Microplates Market 2017 - Thermo Fisher, Qiagen, Beaverbio, Hellma, Corning

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Report studies 96-Well Microplates 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 96-Well Microplates in each application.This report studies 96-Well Microplates 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.Download Free Sample Report @Geographically, this report is segmented into several key Regions, with production, consumption, revenue (million USD), market share and growth rate of 96-Well Microplates in these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), coveringNorth AmericaChinaEuropeSoutheast AsiaJapanIndiaGlobal 96-Well Microplates market competition by top manufacturers, with production, price, revenue (value) and market share for each manufacturer, the top players includingThermo FisherCorningGreiner Bio OneEppendorfQiagenHellmaMerckGE HealthcareSPL LifesciencesBertholdNestBeaverbioAgilent TechnologiesAlpha Laboratories Ltd3d BiomatrixBio-RadAccess Full Report @On the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoRound 96-Well MicroplatesSquare 96-Well MicroplatesOtherOn 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 96-Well Microplates for each application, includingClinical LaboratoryBiologyAgricultural SciencesFood IndustryEnvironmental ScienceIf you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report as you want.The report provides information on market sizes, trends, competitive background, market dynamics, market developments, and winning imperatives. The stakeholders of the market can use this information forIdentifying the present and upcoming market opportunitiesUnderstanding the global, regional, and national scenariosUnderstanding the market trends and dynamics along with key factorsTracking the market developmentsIdentifying potential markets in various regions for various Products.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.Contact UsMark StoneSales ManagerPhone: (201) 465-4211Email: sales@fiormarkets.comWeb:Blog:
US Insurance Industry Governance Risk and Compliance | Latest Research Report

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Governance Risk and Compliance - The US Insurance Industry" to its huge collection of research reports.Timetrics 'Governance, Risk and Compliance The US Insurance Industry' report is the result of extensive research into the insurance regulatory framework in the US.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 operation 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, and recent and upcoming changes in the regulatory framework, taxation and legal system in the country. The report also includes the scope of non-admitted insurance in the country.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @SummaryThe report provides insights into the governance, risk and compliance framework pertaining to the insurance industry in the US, including:An overview of the insurance regulatory framework in the US.The latest key changes, and changes expected in the countrys insurance regulatory framework.Key regulations and market practices related to different types of insurance product in the country.Rules and regulations pertaining to key classes of compulsory insurance, and the scope of non-admitted insurance in the US.Key parameters including licensing requirements, permitted foreign direct investment, minimum capital requirements, solvency and reserve requirements, and investment regulations.Details of the tax and legal systems in the country.ScopeThe report covers details of the insurance regulatory framework in the US.The report contains details of the rules and regulations governing insurance products and insurance entities.The report lists and analyzes key trends and developments pertaining to the countrys insurance regulatory framework.The report analyzes the rules and regulations pertaining to the establishment and operation of insurance businesses in the country.The report provides details of taxation imposed on insurance products and insurance companies.Reasons To BuyGain insights into the insurance regulatory framework in the US.Track the latest regulatory changes, and expected changes impacting the US insurance industry.Gain detailed information about the key regulations governing the establishment and operation of insurance entities in the country.Understand key regulations and market practices pertaining to various types of insurance product.Key HighlightsThe NAIC coordinates the regulation of multi-state insurersComposite insurance is not permitted in the US100% FDI is permitted in the US insurance industryNon-admitted insurance is not permitted in the US; however, exceptions existOn January 1, 2015, the NAIC adopted the ORSA for large- and medium-sized insurersMake 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 @
Graft Versus Host Disease (GVHD) - Pipeline Review, H1 2017

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ReportsWorldwide has announced the addition of a new report title Graft Versus Host Disease (GVHD) - Pipeline Review, H1 2017 to its growing collection of premium market research reports.Global Markets Direct's latest Pharmaceutical and Healthcare disease pipeline guide Graft Versus Host Disease (GVHD) - Pipeline Review, H1 2017, provides an overview of the Graft Versus Host Disease (GVHD) (Immunology) pipeline landscape.Graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) is a complication that can occur after a stem cell or bone marrow transplant in which the newly transplanted donor cells attack the transplant recipient's body. Symptoms include abdominal pain or cramps, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea, dry or irritated eyes, jaundice, shortness of breath, vaginal dryness and weight loss. Treatment includes immunosuppressants.To Enquire about this Report please visit @Scope- The pipeline guide provides a snapshot of the global therapeutic landscape of Graft Versus Host Disease (GVHD) (Immunology).- The pipeline guide reviews pipeline therapeutics for Graft Versus Host Disease (GVHD) (Immunology) 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 Graft Versus Host Disease (GVHD) (Immunology) therapeutics and enlists all their major and minor projects.- The pipeline guide evaluates Graft Versus Host Disease (GVHD) (Immunology) 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 Graft Versus Host Disease (GVHD) (Immunology)To view a detailed description and Table of Contents please visit: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 Graft Versus Host Disease (GVHD) (Immunology).- 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 Graft Versus Host Disease (GVHD) (Immunology) pipeline depth and focus of Indication therapeutics.- Develop and design in-licensing and out-licensing strategies by identifying prospective partners with the most attractive projects to enhance and expand business potential and scope.- Adjust the therapeutic portfolio by recognizing discontinued projects and understand from the know-how what drove them from pipeline.About ReportsWorldwide.comReportsWorldwide.com is a leading provider of global market intelligence reports and services. With research reports from top publishers, consulting and advisory firms, ReportsWorldwide.com offers instant online access to a growing database of expert insights on global industries, companies, products, geographies and trends.Press Contact:Abigail CrastoSenior Vice President101, Arch StreetBoston, MA 02110USPhone +1 (617) 398-4994Fax +1 (617) 398-4995abigail@reportsworldwide.com
Global Wound Care Biologics Market key Analysis and 2017 Development Trends

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Qyresearchreports include new market research report "Global Wound Care Biologics Market Research Report 2017" to its huge collection of research reports.The global Wound Care Biologics market research report surpasses the latitude of conventional analysis techniques to facilitate improved decision making and expert solutions for complex industry-related business doubts. The analysts having compiled the report believe in offering best-in-breed research for players to place themselves at a better position in the global Wound Care Biologics market.A vigorous combination of in-depth industry knowledge and novel methodologies in data science, mathematics, economics, and statistics exhibited in the report is expected to help players gain the most of business opportunities in the global Wound Care Biologics market. Players could also be assured of accurate measuring of white spaces, competitive dynamics tracking, and quantification of competition amongst top companies.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @The forecasting models could be accounted for cross-regional as well as cross-country economic effects. In order to achieve the highest predictive power, the report authors could employ a number of tested models for each given dataset. These models could range from macroeconomic and demographic with behavioral equation systems for the purpose of obtaining mid-to-long run forecasts.With different product categories, geographical segments, and other classifications of the global Wound Care Biologics market, the researchers help readers understand the industry to the very core along with adjacent opportunities to cash in on. Each of the researchers are marked based on their specialist market categories with a view to help participants access the best of industry knowledge and result-oriented recommendations. Strategies based on invaluable inputs from subject-matter experts and industry trends and events are anticipated to bolster the statuses of participants in the global Wound Care Biologics market.Table of ContentsGlobal Wound Care Biologics Market Research Report 20171 Wound Care Biologics Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Wound Care Biologics1.2 Wound Care Biologics Segment by Type1.2.1 Global Production Market Share of Wound Care Biologics by Type in 20151.2.2 Type I1.2.3 Type II1.3 Wound Care Biologics Segment by Application1.3.1 Wound Care Biologics Consumption Market Share by Application in 20151.3.2 Application 11.3.3 Application 21.4 Wound Care Biologics Market by Region1.4.1 North America Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.2 Europe Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.3 China Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.4 Japan Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.5 Southeast Asia Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.6 India Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.5 Global Market Size (Value) of Wound Care Biologics (2012-2022)2 Global Wound Care Biologics Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1 Global Wound Care Biologics Production and Share by Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)2.2 Global Wound Care Biologics Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)2.3 Global Wound Care Biologics Average Price by Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)2.4 Manufacturers Wound Care Biologics Manufacturing Base Distribution, Sales Area and Product Type2.5 Wound Care Biologics Market Competitive Situation and Trends2.5.1 Wound Care Biologics Market Concentration Rate2.5.2 Wound Care Biologics Market Share of Top 3 and Top 5 Manufacturers2.5.3 Mergers & Acquisitions, ExpansionBrowse Complete Report with TOC @3 Global Wound Care Biologics Production, Revenue (Value) by Region (2012-2017)3.1 Global Wound Care Biologics Production and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)3.2 Global Wound Care Biologics Revenue (Value) and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)3.3 Global Wound Care Biologics Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.4 North America Wound Care Biologics Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.5 Europe Wound Care Biologics Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.6 China Wound Care Biologics Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.7 Japan Wound Care Biologics Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.8 Southeast Asia Wound Care Biologics Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.9 India Wound Care Biologics Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)4 Global Wound Care Biologics Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2012-2017)4.1 Global Wound Care Biologics Consumption by Regions (2012-2017)4.2 North America Wound Care Biologics Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.3 Europe Wound Care Biologics Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.4 China Wound Care Biologics Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.5 Japan Wound Care Biologics Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.6 Southeast Asia Wound Care Biologics Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.7 India Wound Care Biologics Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)5 Global Wound Care Biologics Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by Type5.1 Global Wound Care Biologics Production and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)5.2 Global Wound Care Biologics Revenue and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)5.3 Global Wound Care Biologics Price by Type (2012-2017)5.4 Global Wound Care Biologics Production Growth by Type (2012-2017)6 Global Wound Care Biologics Market Analysis by Application6.1 Global Wound Care Biologics Consumption and Market Share by Application (2012-2017)6.2 Global Wound Care Biologics Consumption Growth Rate by Application (2012-2017)6.3 Market Drivers and Opportunities6.3.1 Potential Applications6.3.2 Emerging Markets/CountriesAbout UsQYReseachReports.com delivers the latest strategic market intelligence to build a successful business footprint in China. Our syndicated and customized research reports provide companies with vital background information of the market and in-depth analysis on the Chinese trade and investment framework, which directly affects their business operations. Reports from QYReseachReports.com feature valuable recommendations on how to navigate in the extremely unpredictable yet highly attractive Chinese market.Contact Us1820 AvenueM Suite #1047Brooklyn, NY 11230United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Web:Email: sales@qyresearchreports.com
Global USV Market To Grow At A CAGR Of 13.72% During The Period 2017-2021

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Global Unmanned Surface Vehicle Market 2017-2021" to its huge collection of research reports.USVs are also known as ASVs. They are autonomous or semi-autonomous or can be operated with a remote controlling device. These vehicles are pre-programmed to perform certain defined tasks. Vendors in the marine system industry that have traditionally been dealing with unmanned underwater vehicles and unmanned aerial vehicles are expanding their scope to provide USVs.Technavios analysts forecast the global USV market to grow at a CAGR of 13.72% during the period 2017-2021.Covered in this reportThe report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global USV market for 2017-2021. To calculate the market size, the report considers the revenue generated from the sales of USVs.The market is divided into the following segments based on geography:AmericasAPACEMEATo Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Technavio's report, Global USV 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 vendorsASV GlobalATLAS ELEKTRONIKECALiquid RoboticsTeledyne MarineOcius TechnologyOther prominent vendorsClearpath RoboticsDeep Ocean EngineeringElbit SystemsEvoLogicsAutoNautOcean AeroQinetiQ North AmericaRafael Advanced Defense SystemsR&DroneSeaRoboticsSubsea TechTextron SystemsMarket driverAdvances in computing and communicationsFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challengeLimitations in operating safely over horizonFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket trendCalibration of long-baseline positioning systemsFor 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?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 @
Conditional Access Systems Market Type, Application, Specification, Technology and Forecast to 2022

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ReportsWeb.com added Global Conditional Access Systems Market Research Report 2017 to its vast collection of research Database. The report is spread across 116 pages and supported by 17 company leaders.The Global Conditional Access Systems Market Research Report 2017is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the Conditional Access Systems industry. In a word, This report studies Conditional Access Systems in Global market, especially in North America, Europe, China, Japan, Southeast Asia and India, focuses on top manufacturers in global market, with capacity, production, price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer. Key companies included in this research are Cisco Systems, Orange, Irdeto, ZTE, Nagravision, Verimatrix, China Digital TV, STMicroelectronics, Wellav Technologies, Ericsson, Arris Group, Austrian Broadcasting Services, Beyond Broadband Technology, Latens Systems, Compunicate Technologies, BS Conditional Access Systems and Conax Technology.Browse complete report @Market Segment by Region, this report splits Global into several key Region, with sales, revenue, market share and growth rate of Conditional Access Systems in these regions, from 2011 to 2022 (forecast), like orth America, Europe, China, Japan, Southeast Asia and India. Firstly, Conditional Access Systems Market On the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split into Smartcard CAS and Cardless CAS. On 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 Conditional Access Systems for each application, including Television, Internet Services and Other.Request for Sample @Major points from Table of Contents:1 Conditional Access Systems Market Overview2 Global Conditional Access Systems Market Competition by Manufacturers3 Global Conditional Access Systems Production, Revenue (Value) by Regions(2012-2017)4 Global Conditional Access Systems Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2012-2017)5 Global Conditional Access Systems Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by Types6 Global Conditional Access Systems Market Analysis by Applications7 Global Conditional Access Systems Manufacturers Profiles/Analysis7.1 Cisco Systems7.1.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.1.2 Conditional Access Systems Product Category, Application and Specification7.1.2.1 Product A7.1.2.2 Product B7.1.3 Cisco Systems Conditional Access Systems Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.1.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.2 Orange7.2.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.2.2 Conditional Access Systems Product Category, Application and Specification7.2.2.1 Product A7.2.2.2 Product B7.2.3 Orange Conditional Access Systems Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.2.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.3 Irdeto7.3.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.3.2 Conditional Access Systems Product Category, Application and Specification7.3.2.1 Product A7.3.2.2 Product B7.3.3 Irdeto Conditional Access Systems Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.3.4 Main Business/Business Overview8 Conditional Access Systems Manufacturing Cost Analysis9 Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream Buyers10 Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/Traders11 Market Effect Factors Analysis12 Global Conditional Access Systems Market Forecast (2017-2022)List of Tables and FiguresFigure Picture of Conditional Access SystemsFigure Global Conditional Access Systems Production (K Units) and CAGR (%) Comparison by Types (Product Category) (2012-2022)Figure Global Conditional Access Systems Production Market Share by Types (Product Category) in 2016Figure Product Picture of Smartcard CASTable Major Manufacturers of Smartcard CASFigure Product Picture of Cardless CASTable Major Manufacturers of Cardless CASFigure Global Conditional Access Systems Consumption (K Units) by Applications (2012-2022)Figure Global Conditional Access Systems Consumption Market Share by Applications in 2016Figure Television ExamplesFigure Internet Services ExamplesFigure Other ExamplesFigure Global Conditional Access Systems Market Size (Million USD) , Comparison (K Units) and CAGR (%) by Regions (2012-2022)Figure North America Conditional Access Systems Revenue (Million USD) and Growth Rate (2012-2022)Figure Europe Conditional Access Systems Revenue (Million USD) and Growth Rate (2012-2022)Figure China Conditional Access Systems Revenue (Million USD) and Growth Rate (2012-2022)Figure Japan Conditional Access Systems Revenue (Million USD) and Growth Rate (2012-2022)Figure Southeast Asia Conditional Access Systems Revenue (Million USD) and Growth Rate (2012-2022)Figure India Conditional Access Systems Revenue (Million USD) and Growth Rate (2012-2022)Figure Global Conditional Access Systems Revenue (Million USD) Status and Outlook (2012-2022)Figure Global Conditional Access Systems Capacity, Production (K Units) Status and Outlook (2012-2022)Figure Global Conditional Access Systems Major Players Product Capacity (K Units) (2012-2017)Table Global Conditional Access Systems Capacity (K Units) of Key Manufacturers (2012-2017)Table Global Conditional Access Systems Capacity Market Share of Key Manufacturers (2012-2017)Figure Global Conditional Access Systems Capacity (K Units) of Key Manufacturers in 2016Figure Global Conditional Access Systems Capacity (K Units) of Key Manufacturers in 2017Figure Global Conditional Access Systems Major Players Product Production (K Units) (2012-2017)Table Global Conditional Access Systems Production (K Units) of Key Manufacturers (2012-2017)Table Global Conditional Access Systems Production Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)Figure 2016 Conditional Access Systems Production Share by ManufacturersFigure 2017 Conditional Access Systems Production Share by ManufacturersFigure Global Conditional Access Systems Major Players Product Revenue (Million USD) (2012-2017)Table Global Conditional Access Systems Revenue (Million USD) by Manufacturers (2012-2017)Table Global Conditional Access Systems Revenue Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)Table 2016 Global Conditional Access Systems Revenue Share by ManufacturersTable 2017 Global Conditional Access Systems Revenue Share by ManufacturersTable Global Market Conditional Access Systems Average Price (USD/Unit) of Key Manufacturers (2012-2017)Figure Global Market Conditional Access Systems Average Price (USD/Unit) of Key Manufacturers in 2016Table Manufacturers Conditional Access Systems Manufacturing Base Distribution and Sales AreaPlace a Direct Purchase Order of Complete Report @ReportsWeb.com is a one stop shop of market research reports and solutions to various companies across the globe. We help our clients in their decision support system by helping them choose most relevant and cost effective research reports and solutions from various publishers. We provide best in class customer service and our customer support team is always available to help you on your research queries.505, 6th floor, Amanora Township,Amanora Chambers, East Block,Kharadi Road, Hadapsar, Pune-411028
Global Hospital Information Systems (HIS) Industry 2017 Emerging Companies, Market Status and System Analysis

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Qyresearchreports include new market research report "Global Hospital Information Systems (HIS) Market Size, Status and Forecast 2022" to its huge collection of research reports.This report presents a comprehensive analysis and forecast of the Hospital Information Systems (HIS) market on a global level to help readers understand the market thoroughly. The drivers and restraints governing the dynamics of the global Hospital Information Systems (HIS) market along with their impact have been assessed in the report. This information is designed to help market players gain a clear idea about leading trends in the current market scenario. Various economic factors predicted to affect the demand and supply chain of the global Hospital Information Systems (HIS) market are also highlighted in this report. The report sheds light on the market shares of the leading manufacturers and detailed industry structure. It also discusses the current market trends, growth opportunities, and key strategies increasing the popularity of the global Hospital Information Systems (HIS) market.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @The publication presents a market attractiveness analysis for all the regions and segments in the scope of the study, comparing market attractiveness on the basis of market share index and CAGR. The study also includes a section on the competitive landscape, which includes market share analysis and competition matrix of major players in the global Hospital Information Systems (HIS) market based on their revenues. The report provides a detail assessment of regulatory policies that may influence the global Hospital Information Systems (HIS) market in the coming years.The leading players in the global Hospital Information Systems (HIS) market have been profiled in detail, discussing details such as business strategies, company and financial overview, SWOT analysis, market revenues, and recent developments. On the basis of various parameters the contribution of leading companies have been assessed and presented in the report. The publication discusses current status of companies and also analyzes their growth in the near future. The report also serves as a crucial tool for enterprises looking to invest in the industry.Table of ContentsGlobal Hospital Information Systems (HIS) Market Size, Status and Forecast 20221 Industry Overview of Hospital Information Systems (HIS)1.1 Hospital Information Systems (HIS) Market Overview1.1.1 Hospital Information Systems (HIS) Product Scope1.1.2 Market Status and Outlook1.2 Global Hospital Information Systems (HIS) 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 Hospital Information Systems (HIS) Market by Type1.3.1 HMIS1.3.2 HCIS1.3.3 GMIS1.4 Hospital Information Systems (HIS) Market by End Users/Application1.4.1 Information Service1.4.2 Payment1.4.3 Others2 Global Hospital Information Systems (HIS) Competition Analysis by Players2.1 Hospital Information Systems (HIS) Market Size (Value) by Players (2016 and 2017)2.2 Competitive Status and Trend2.2.1 Market Concentration Rate2.2.2 Product/Service Differences2.2.3 New Entrants2.2.4 The Technology Trends in FutureBrowse Complete Report with TOC @3 Company (Top Players) Profiles3.1 Cerner Corp.3.1.1 Company Profile3.1.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.1.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.1.4 Hospital Information Systems (HIS) Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.1.5 Recent Developments3.2 Epic Systems Corp.3.2.1 Company Profile3.2.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.2.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.2.4 Hospital Information Systems (HIS) Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.2.5 Recent Developments3.3 McKesson Corp.3.3.1 Company Profile3.3.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.3.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.3.4 Hospital Information Systems (HIS) Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.3.5 Recent Developments3.4 Siemens Healthcare Ltd3.4.1 Company Profile3.4.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.4.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.4.4 Hospital Information Systems (HIS) Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.4.5 Recent Developments3.5 Agfa Healthcare Corp.3.5.1 Company Profile3.5.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.5.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.5.4 Hospital Information Systems (HIS) Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.5.5 Recent Developments3.6 Allscripts3.6.1 Company Profile3.6.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.6.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.6.4 Hospital Information Systems (HIS) Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.6.5 Recent Developments3.7 Healthcare Solutions Inc.3.7.1 Company Profile3.7.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.7.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.7.4 Hospital Information Systems (HIS) Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.7.5 Recent Developments3.8 Computer Program and Systems Inc.3.8.1 Company Profile3.8.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.8.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.8.4 Hospital Information Systems (HIS) Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.8.5 Recent Developments3.9 CompuGroup Medical AG3.9.1 Company Profile3.9.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.9.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.9.4 Hospital Information Systems (HIS) Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.9.5 Recent Developments3.10 GE Healthcare3.10.1 Company Profile3.10.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.10.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.10.4 Hospital Information Systems (HIS) Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.10.5 Recent Developments3.11 Keane Care Inc3.12 Medical Information Technology Inc4 Global Hospital Information Systems (HIS) Market Size by Type and Application (2012-2017)4.1 Global Hospital Information Systems (HIS) Market Size by Type (2012-2017)4.2 Global Hospital Information Systems (HIS) Market Size by Application (2012-2017)4.3 Potential Application of Hospital Information Systems (HIS) in Future4.4 Top Consumer/End Users of Hospital Information Systems (HIS)5 United States Hospital Information Systems (HIS) Development Status and Outlook5.1 United States Hospital Information Systems (HIS) Market Size (2012-2017)5.2 United States Hospital Information Systems (HIS) Market Size and Market Share by Players (2016 and 2017)6 EU Hospital Information Systems (HIS) Development Status and Outlook6.1 EU Hospital Information Systems (HIS) Market Size (2012-2017)6.2 EU Hospital Information Systems (HIS) Market Size and Market Share by Players (2016 and 2017)About UsQYReseachReports.com delivers the latest strategic market intelligence to build a successful business footprint in China. Our syndicated and customized research reports provide companies with vital background information of the market and in-depth analysis on the Chinese trade and investment framework, which directly affects their business operations. Reports from QYReseachReports.com feature valuable recommendations on how to navigate in the extremely unpredictable yet highly attractive Chinese market.Contact Us1820 AvenueM Suite #1047Brooklyn, NY 11230United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Web:Email: sales@qyresearchreports.com
Alumina Zirconia Oxide Abrasives Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth and Forecast Report To 2022

Alumina Zirconia Oxide Abrasives Market

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Alumina Zirconia Oxide Abrasives is a fused alumina, zirconia and small smaller amounts of the other elements abrasive grain used where improved cutting ability is required.Get a Sample of North America Alumina Zirconia Oxide Abrasives Market research report from Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the Alumina Zirconia Oxide Abrasives in North America market, especially in United States, Canada and Mexico. This report categorizes the market based on manufacturers, countries, type and application.Market Segment by Manufacturers, this report coversSaint-Gobain, Jingjiehui New Ceramic, Imerys, Zhongyue Abrasive, VSM AG, White Dove, Zhengzhou Jinghua, K.A Refractories Co.,Ltd, Henan RuishiMarket Segment by Countries, coveringUnited States, Canada, MexicoBrowse full Report with table of contents and data tables For North America Alumina Zirconia Oxide Abrasives Market Report @Market Segment by Type, covers< 20 Grit Abrasives, 20  60 Grit Abrasives, > 60 Grit AbrasivesMarket Segment by Applications, can be divided intoSteel, Cast Iron, OthersThere are 15 Chapters to deeply display the North America Alumina Zirconia Oxide Abrasives market.Chapter 1, to describe Alumina Zirconia Oxide Abrasives 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 Alumina Zirconia Oxide Abrasives, 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 profile, main business, news, sales, price, revenue and market share in 2016 and 2017;Chapter 4, to show the North America market by countries, covering United States, Canada and Mexico, with sales, revenue and market share of Alumina Zirconia Oxide Abrasives, 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 and 9, to analyze the segment market in United States, Canada and Mexico, by manufacturers, type and application, with sales, price, revenue and market share by manufacturers, types and applications;Chapter 10, Alumina Zirconia Oxide Abrasives market forecast, by countries, type and application, with sales, price and revenue, from 2017 to 2022;Chapter 11, to analyze the manufacturing cost, key raw materials and manufacturing process etc.Chapter 12, to analyze the industrial chain, sourcing strategy and downstream end users (buyers);Chapter 13, to describe sales channel, distributors, traders, dealers etc.Chapter 14 and 15, to describe Alumina Zirconia Oxide Abrasives Research Findings and Conclusion, Appendix, methodology and data sourceCheck for Discount @Some points from TOC:-1 Market Overview1.1 Alumina Zirconia Oxide Abrasives Introduction1.2 Market Analysis by Type1.2.1 < 20 Grit Abrasives1.2.2 20  60 Grit Abrasives1.2.3 > 60 Grit Abrasives1.3 Market Analysis by Applications1.3.1 Steel1.3.2 Cast Iron1.3.3 Others1.4 Market Analysis by Countries1.4.1 United States Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.2 Mexico Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.3 Canada Status and Prospect (2012-2022)ContinuedFor more help Speak to our Experts @No. of Report Pages: 123Price of Report (Single User Licence): $4480GIR 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.+1-888-376-9998 (US)Email- sales@globalinforeports.comWeb-Blogs-
Africa Printer Market - MPS and document solutions offered by vendors is also one of the factors propelling market growth.

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Major printer technologies include inkjet, laser and dot-matrix printers. The African economy is experiencing rapid growth spurred by high investments in energy, and information and communication technology sector in the recent years. According to the African Development Bank, more than one third of African countries have a GDP growth rate of more than 6%. This growth is attracting global printer manufacturers to the emerging economies of Africa as the global demand for printers faces volatility.Printers are used across enterprise and corporate printing and consumer printing solutions. In the past, the printers market in Africa has experienced a surge in demand for color prints. The shift from black and white printing to color printing has aided the growth of inkjet and laser printers and in turn, has been boosting the growth of the overall printers market. Inkjet printers market has been experiencing new technology trends such as high-speed continuous-feed inkjet and ultra-high volume inkjet printers and this trend is also influencing printers market in Africa.Obtain Report Details @These technological developments are expected to bring down the average cost per color impression significantly and thus have been spurring demand in recent years. Dot-matrix has been experiencing growth in applications where low-cost of printing is more significant than the quality of print. Corporate and enterprise, education sector, public sector, printing industry/media and consumer sector including small office and home office users, among others are the major end-users of printers.Majority of printer vendors including Hewlett-Packard Co., Epson, and Brother, among others have manufacturing locations in regions outside Africa such as China, Japan and Taiwan while they significantly depend on their distributor and reseller networks in the African region. This leads to increased foreign currency transaction and risk. Thus it becomes imperative to have highly efficient and structured distribution partners to operate the printers business in Africa.This study strategically focuses on printer products, providing market insight into and data about the size and growth of each segment. The report includes a detailed analysis of the prevalent market situation, company profiles and industry trends for printers. The study has been conducted with the objective of providing detailed coverage of the underlying technological and economic issues driving the printer business in Africa.The report provides market data and forecast for printer product types with an in-depth analysis of the African market, which has been further segmented based on major countries, for the period 2013 to 2019. The segmentation intends to provide strategic insight into each category, enabling stakeholders across the value chain to gain considerable business intelligence. The report aims to provide a comprehensive overview of product-wise market data and trends in South Africa, Angola, Botswana, Madagascar, Namibia, Zambia, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Rest of Africa. The report identifies factors driving and restraining growth, and future business opportunities in the African printer market.Fill The Form For An Exclusive Sample Of This Report @The competitive landscape section in the report provides market share analysis of major players in the African market in 2012. The detailed value chain analysis and porters five forces analysis helps the market competitors to formulate their business strategies at every stage of their business. Moreover, the market estimates have been analyzed by keeping in mind the several factors which affect the market including but not limited to technological, economical, social, environmental and legal.The key market players of ultra high definition market have been profiled with a focus on competitive details such as company and financial overview, business strategies, product portfolio and its recent developments. Companies profiled in the report include Brother Industries, Ltd., Canon, Inc., Hewlett-Packard Development Co. LP, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., and Seiko Epson Corp.Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Transparency Market Research90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Frozen Food Market 2017-Goya Foods Inc.,Iceland Foods Ltd. ,Kraft Food Inc. ,Mccain Foods Limited ,Nature's Peak LIC. ,Nestle SA

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MarketReports.biz, recently published a detailed market research study focused on the "Frozen Food Market" across the global, regional and country level. The report provides 360 analysis of "Frozen Food 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 Frozen Food industry, and estimates the future trend of Frozen Food market on the basis of this detailed study. The study shares "Frozen Food Market" performance both in terms of volume and revenue.Get Free Sample Copy of Report Here:Top Manufacturers Analysis of This ReportGoya Foods, Inc.Iceland Foods Ltd.Kraft Food, Inc.Mccain Foods LimitedNature's Peak, LIC.Nestle SANichirei CorporationNorthern Foods PLCPinguinlutosaAmy's Kitchen, Inc.Pinnacle Foods Group LIC.Ralcorp Frozen Bakery Products, Inc.Ardo N.V.Arena Agroindustrie Alimentari SPABellisio Foods, Inc.Bonduelle SCAConagra Foods, Inc.Findus Group.General Mills, Inc.The market research report explores the Frozen Food market across the globe along with major regions and countries. The research report provides a detailed study on each and every aspect of "Frozen Food 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 Frozen Food market based on major product types, application and end users industries of Frozen Food. Besides, the report also covers geographical segmentation for Frozen Food 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 Frozen Food is determined by assessing the major industry participants, production capacity, production capacity utilization rate, Frozen Food market's production chain, pricing by each manufacturer and the revenue generated by each manufacturer in the Frozen Food market globally.Enquire Before Buying @The worldwide Frozen Food market 2017 is further analyzed on the basis of product pricing, Frozen Food production volume, data pertaining to demand and Frozen Food supply, and the revenue garnered by the product. The report provides upstream and downstream analysis covering major raw material used in manufacturing of Frozen Food 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 Frozen Food across the world.About UsMarketReports.biz offers elevating market research worldwide. We have collection of various syndicated reports ofdifferent 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 onlineordering 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
Harmonic Filters Market - Escalating Demand For Ensuring Optimum Power Quality In It And Data Center Applications Offer Potential Opportunity For The Growth

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The market research report on the India harmonic filter market talks about the two types of harmonic filters and their varied applications. As per the report, the India harmonic filter market is anticipating significant growth due to the extensive demand from the IT sector and data centers, which offer potential opportunities for major companies in the India harmonic filter market.The market has been classified on the basis of product type, voltage level, and the various applications of harmonic filters. The report makes use of analytical tools such as SWOT analysis, value chain analysis, and Porters five forces analysis to analyze the India harmonic filter market. The report also specifies the current market trends and presents the forecast between 2013 and 2019, including the potential impact of market drivers and restrains.Obtain Report Details @The strategic recommendations and inputs provided in the report will help market players understand the present and future trends in the India harmonic filter market and design their strategies accordingly to gain competitive advantage.Overview of the India harmonic filter marketHarmonics occur in an electrical power system due to fluctuations in current or voltage levels. Harmonic fluctuations in the power system are a frequent cause of power quality issues and its proliferation severely disrupts the working of the whole system.Among the two types of harmonic filters, passive filters dominated the Indian market in 2012; however, the demand for active filters is expected to rise in the forecast period. Moreover, the harmonic filters market offers products operating on different voltage levels such as low, medium, and high. Among these, low voltage harmonic filters are widely used in the present scenario; nevertheless, the demand for high and medium voltage harmonic filters is anticipated to rise in the near future.Moreover, the rising need for power quality is crucial as there is significant shortage of power in India. As a result, the demand for harmonic filters is increasing for the purpose of harmonic suppression across varied industries such as oil and gas, manufacturing, and automotive. In addition, the enforcement of penalties by utilities and rigid regulations set by the government regarding the maintenance of harmonic levels in numerous industries are anticipated to propel the demand in the near future.The major factors driving the India harmonic filter market are the increasing demand for power quality in numerous industries and increased utilization of harmonic mitigation in different frequency drives. The growth of the power sector is also boosting the harmonic filter market in India. However, factors such as low product differentiation, high cost of harmonic filters, and easy availability of substitutes are expected to hold back the growth of the India harmonic filter market in the near future.Fill The Form For An Exclusive Sample Of This Report @As per the research report, the India harmonic filter market is expected to reach 188.5 million by the end of 2019, exhibiting progressive 12.8% CAGR through the forecast period.Companies mentioned in the research reportThe market research report has presented an in-depth analysis of the companies operating in the India harmonic filter market. Some of the prominent players operating in the Indian harmonic filter market include Schaffner Group, ABB India Ltd., Schneider Electric India, Neowatt Power Solutions Co. Pvt. Ltd., and Emerson Network Power (India) Pvt. Ltd.Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Transparency Market Research90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
3D Mapping and 3D Modeling Software Market to Register a Robust Growth by 2022

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This report studies the global 3D Mapping and 3D Modeling Software market, analyzes and researches the 3D Mapping and 3D Modeling Software development status and forecast in United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia. This report focuses on the top players in global market, likeAppleSAABAirbus Defence and SpaceGoogleAutodeskTrimbleIntermap TechnologiesTopcon CorporationCybercity 3DESRIGet sample copy@Market segment by Regions/Countries, this report coversUnited StatesEUJapanChinaIndiaSoutheast AsiaMarket segment by Application, 3D Mapping and 3D Modeling Software can be split intoApplication 1Application 2Buy a copy of Global 3D Mapping And 3D Modeling Software Market for single user price of $ 3300@Table of Contents:1 Industry Overview of 3D Mapping and 3D Modeling Software1.1 3D Mapping and 3D Modeling Software Market Overview1.1.1 3D Mapping and 3D Modeling Software Product Scope1.1.2 Market Status and Outlook1.2 Global 3D Mapping and 3D Modeling Software Market Size and Analysis by Regions1.2.1 United States1.2.2 EU1.2.3 Japan1.2.4 China1.2.5 India1.2.6 Southeast Asia1.3 3D Mapping and 3D Modeling Software Market by End Users/Application1.3.1 Application 11.3.2 Application 22 Global 3D Mapping and 3D Modeling Software Competition Analysis by Players2.1 3D Mapping and 3D Modeling Software Market Size (Value) by Players (2015-2016)2.2 Competitive Status and Trend2.2.1 Market Concentration Rate2.2.2 Product/Service Differences2.2.3 New Entrants2.2.4 The Technology Trends in FutureView this report@About us:Research Trades has team of experts who works on providing exhaustive analysis pertaining to market research on a global basis. This comprehensive analysis is obtained by a thorough research and study of the ongoing trends and provides predictive data regarding the future estimations, which can be utilized by various organizations for growth purposes.We distribute customized reports that focus on meeting the clients specific requirement. Our database consists of a large collection of high-quality reports obtained using a customer-centric approach, thus providing valuable research insights.Contact Us:Address: Flat No.10, Wing C, S. No. 245/4/2+245/5/1, Baner, Pune-411045Email: sales@researchtrades.comCall us: +91 7507349866Skype ID: researchtradesconWeb:
Polycystic Ovary Syndrome Drugs Market Will Procure US$ 1,154.8 Mn by 2024

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Growth of the global polycystic ovary syndrome drugs market is mainly driven by increasing prevalence of the disease and a growing awareness among the patient population. Increasing purchasing power among people and rising awareness of PCOS are factors expected to drive growth of the global PCOS drugs market. The need for effective management of diseases associated with PCOS such as hirsutism, obesity, and infertility is likely to boost the demand for PCOS drugs. Also, a growing popularity of combination drugs and their rising adoption among the patient population is expected to boost revenue growth of the PCOS drugs market in the coming years. A rising expenditure on research and development activities and introduction of novel drugs is further expected to boost growth of the global polycystic ovary syndrome drugs market over the forecast period. However, lack of FDA approved drugs, a low level of awareness of PCOS in underdeveloped countries, and increasing side effects associated with generics might hamper market growth during the forecast period.Browse Complete Report @According to the latest market report published by Persistence Market Research titled Polycystic Ovary Syndrome Drugs Market: Global Industry Analysis and Forecast, 20162024, the global polycystic ovary syndrome drugs market is expected to register a CAGR of 4.6% during the forecast period 20162024 and is expected to expand 1.5x in terms of revenue by 2024. The report analyzes the global PCOS drugs market performance and provides information on key drivers and trends likely to impact the market during the forecast period.The global market for PCOS drugs presents several growth opportunities for market players. There is a good growth potential in emerging markets and pharmaceutical drugs manufacturers are focusing on emerging economies in the Asia Pacific and Africa such as Kenya, Nigeria, etc. to target a large patient population. Also, effective reimbursement policies and reduction in the costs of drugs used for the treatment of PCOS is likely to increase the adoption of PCOS drugs across the globe. Leading market players are also investing significantly in developing new branded drugs to treat PCOS, owing to an anticipated high rise in the global patient population. The demand for branded PCOS drugs is likely to increase significantly during the forecast period.The global PCOS drugs market is segmented based on Drug Class into Oral Contraceptives, Insulin Sensitizing Agents, Anti-Depressants, Ornithine Decarboxylase Inhibitors, Aromatase Inhibitors, and Diuretics. The contraceptive drug class segment is projected to register a CAGR of 5.4% over the forecast period. Oral contraceptives are generally the preferred first line therapy for the treatment of PCOS as they are easily available as OTC drugs. The insulin sensitizing agent segment is expected to register a CAGR of 4.8% over the forecast period. About 70% of PCOS patients are overweight and are in the category of possible candidates for type 2 diabetes. As a result, insulin sensitizing agents are the widely prescribed drugs for the treatment of PCOS today. In terms of value, the oral contraceptives and insulin sensitizing agents drug class segments are collectively expected to remain the dominant and most attractive segments over the forecast period.The global PCOS drugs market is segmented based on Distribution Channel into Hospital Pharmacies, Drug Stores/OTC, E-Commerce, and Fertility Clinics. The hospital pharmacies segment is likely to lead the global PCOS drugs market in terms of revenue growth and is estimated to be valued at US$ 575.4 Mn by the end of 2024. In terms of value, the drugs stores/OTC segment is estimated to account for 27.0% share of the overall market by the end of 2016.A sample of this report is available upon request @On the basis of region, the market has been segmented into North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and the MEA. The North America market is expected to emerge as the dominant market for polycystic ovary syndrome drugs owing to a high diagnosis rate and increasing adoption of prescription drugs. North America is estimated to dominate the PCOS drugs market with maximum value share of the overall market by the end of 2016. The presence of well-established pharmaceutical companies in North America as well as a relatively high instance of patients being diagnosed in hospitals for PCOS is a major driver for market growth. The market in the Asia Pacific region is expected to register the highest CAGR of 5.5% over the forecast period. Significant increase in healthcare services spending along with rapid economic growth and increasing awareness about health issues are some of the key factors likely to push the sales of PCOS drugs in the APAC market.Request to view table of content @The report also includes detailed company profiles with company-specific long-term and short-term strategies, key offerings, and recent developments in the polycystic ovary syndrome therapeutics market. Some of the leading companies profiled in the report are Sanofi, Novartis, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Limited, Addex Therapeutics Ltd., BIOCAD, Merck KGaA, and AstraZeneca Plc. These companies are primarily focused on enhancing their product portfolio through research and development activities and the introduction of innovative and cost-effective treatment procedures in order to gain higher market share and to strengthen their respective position in the global market.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 Vertical Shaft Impact Crusher Industry Growth Rate 2017-2022

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The Global Vertical Shaft Impact Crusher Industry, 2012-2022 Market Research Report is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the global Vertical Shaft Impact Crusher industry with a focus on the Chinese market. The report provides key statistics on the market status of the Vertical Shaft Impact Crusher manufacturers and is a valuable source of guidance and direction for companies and individuals interested in the industry.Browse complete report with TOC @Firstly, the report provides a basic overview of the industry including its definition, applications and manufacturing technology. Then, the report explores the international and Chinese major industry players in detail. In this part, the report presents the company profile, product specifications, capacity, production value, and 2012-2017 market shares for each company. Through the statistical analysis, the report depicts the global and Chinese total market of Vertical Shaft Impact Crusher industry including capacity, production, production value, cost/profit, supply/demand and Chinese import/export.Get sample copy of report @The total market is further divided by company, by country, and by application/type for the competitive landscape analysis. The report then estimates 2017-2022 market development trends of Vertical Shaft Impact Crusher industry. Analysis of upstream raw materials, downstream demand, and current market dynamics is also carried out. In the end, the report makes some important proposals for a new project of Vertical Shaft Impact Crusher Industry before evaluating its feasibility. Overall, the report provides an in-depth insight of 2012-2022 global and Chinese Vertical Shaft Impact Crusher industry covering all important parameters.About US:TopMarketReports is a top provider and consulting services and leading market Intelligence Company that sells reports of top publishers in the technology industry.Contact US:TopMarketReports304, S. Jones Blvd, #3299,Las Vegas, NV  89107USA : +1 702-425-8599Email : Sales@topmarketreports.comWeb :
Diabetic Gastroparesis Treatment Market Will Procure US$ 3,769.3 Mn by 2024

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The global diabetic gastroparesis treatment market has been segmented on the basis of product type into drugs and surgical treatment products; on the basis of disease indication into compensated gastroparesis and gastric failure; and on the basis of distribution channel into hospital pharmacies, private clinics, drug stores, retail pharmacies, and e-commerce. Among product types, the drugs segment dominated the market with maximum revenue share of 66% in 2015 followed by the surgical treatment product segment with 34% share. Enhanced development of novel products such as the domperidone drug for the treatment of gastric motility disorder are expected to fuel the growth of the drugs segment over the forecast period. The hospital pharmacies segment is estimated to account for the highest market revenue share of 48.0% in the global diabetic gastroparesis treatment market by the end of 2016.Browse Complete Report @According to the latest market report published by Persistence Market Research titled Diabetic Gastroparesis Treatment Market: Global Industry Analysis and Forecast, 2016  2024, revenue from the global diabetic gastroparesis treatment market is projected to register a CAGR of 4.1% during the forecast period (20162024). Diabetic gastroparesis is the symptom of delayed gastric emptying affecting patients suffering from Type-1 and Type-2 diabetes. The disease primarily has no cure but its symptoms are treatable via various types of drugs and devices. The global diabetic gastroparesis treatment market was valued at US$ 2,650 Mn in 2015, which is expected to increase to US$ 3,769.3 Mn by 2024. The report analyzes the global diabetic gastroparesis treatment market in terms of market value on the basis of product type, disease indication, and distribution channel; and provides information regarding regional market dynamics, regulations, current trends, market estimations, and forecast.Rising prevalence of Type-1 and Type-2 diabetes with high unmet medical needs, growing demand for minimally invasive treatment for refractory gastroparesis, and availability of reimbursement for in-patient hospital stays are driving growth of the global diabetic gastroparesis treatment market. Increasing use of diabetic gastroparesis drugs to control symptoms such as nausea and vomiting is anticipated to fuel growth of the global diabetic gastroparesis treatment market over the forecast period. However, usage of non-prescription drugs to control the symptoms restricts diagnosis of stage 1 and stage 2 gastroparesis. Lack of clinical evidence on improvement offered by prescription drugs and termination of clinical trials are factors expected to hamper growth of the global diabetic gastroparesis treatment market over the forecast period.Request to view table of content @The report covers the global diabetic gastroparesis treatment market across five key regions namely North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific (APAC), and Middle East & Africa (MEA). North America is expected to remain the dominant market throughout the forecast period, driven by rise in healthcare expenditure, increasing demand for metoclopramide agents in the management of diabetic gastroparesis disease, increasing research on antibodies and other innovative prokinetics drug delivery formats, and technological advancements. Revenue from the diabetic gastroparesis treatment market in North America is expected to register a CAGR of 4.4% over the forecast period. Asia Pacific is expected to remain the second-most lucrative market for diabetic gastroparesis treatment, with an estimated CAGR of 4.5% over the forecast period.A sample of this report is available upon request @Some of the top companies profiled in the report are Janssen Global Services, LLC, Salix Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Abbott Laboratories, Medtronic, C. R. Bard, Inc., Kimberly-Clark Corporation, Boston Scientific Corporation, Cardinal Health, Inc., Rhythm Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Evoke Pharma, and Alfa Wassermann SPA. Leading market players are continuously introducing novel products to enhance their product portfolio, increase market share, and expand customer base.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:
QLED TVs Market Value Analysis for Global, Europe and North America Regions 2017

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ReportsWeb.com added Global QLED TVs Market Research Report 2017 to its vast collection of research Database. The report is spread across 105 pages and supported by 5 company leaders.The Global QLED TVs Market Research Report 2017is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the QLED TVs industry. In a word, This report studies QLED TVs in Global market, especially in United States, EU, China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, focuses on top manufacturers in global market, with capacity, production, price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer. Key companies included in this research are Samsung, ChangHong, TCL, Hisense and LG.Browse complete report @Market Segment by Region, this report splits Global into several key Region, with sales, revenue, market share and growth rate of QLED TVs in these regions, from 2011 to 2022 (forecast), like United States, EU, China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. Firstly, QLED TVs Market On the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split into 55 Inches, 65 Inches and Other. On 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 QLED TVs for each application, including Home Appliance and Commercial Appliance.Request for Sample @Major points from Table of Contents:1 QLED TVs Market Overview2 Global QLED TVs Market Competition by Manufacturers3 Global QLED TVs Production, Revenue (Value) by Regions (2012-2017)4 Global QLED TVs Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2012-2017)5 Global QLED TVs Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by Types6 Global QLED TVs Market Analysis by Applications7 Global QLED TVs Manufacturers Profiles/Analysis7.1 Samsung7.1.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.1.2 QLED TVs Product Category, Application and Specification7.1.2.1 Product A7.1.2.2 Product B7.1.3 Samsung QLED TVs Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.1.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.2 ChangHong7.2.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.2.2 QLED TVs Product Category, Application and Specification7.2.2.1 Product A7.2.2.2 Product B7.2.3 ChangHong QLED TVs Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.2.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.3 TCL7.3.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.3.2 QLED TVs Product Category, Application and Specification7.3.2.1 Product A7.3.2.2 Product B7.3.3 TCL QLED TVs Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.3.4 Main Business/Business Overview8 QLED TVs Manufacturing Cost Analysis9 Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream Buyers10 Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/Traders11 Market Effect Factors Analysis12 Global QLED TVs Market Forecast (2017-2022)List of Tables and FiguresFigure Picture of QLED TVsFigure Global QLED TVs Production (K MT) and CAGR (%) Comparison by Types (Product Category) (2012-2022)Figure Global QLED TVs Production Market Share by Types (Product Category) in 2016Figure Product Picture of 55 InchesTable Major Manufacturers of 55 InchesFigure Product Picture of 65 InchesTable Major Manufacturers of 65 InchesFigure Product Picture of OtherTable Major Manufacturers of OtherFigure Global QLED TVs Consumption (K MT) by Applications (2012-2022)Figure Global QLED TVs Consumption Market Share by Applications in 2016Figure Home Appliance ExamplesTable Key Downstream Customer in Home ApplianceFigure Commercial Appliance ExamplesTable Key Downstream Customer in Commercial ApplianceFigure Global QLED TVs Market Size (Million USD) , Comparison (K MT) and CAGR (%) by Regions (2012-2022)Figure United States QLED TVs Revenue (Million USD) and Growth Rate (2012-2022)Figure EU QLED TVs Revenue (Million USD) and Growth Rate (2012-2022)Figure China QLED TVs Revenue (Million USD) and Growth Rate (2012-2022)Figure Japan QLED TVs Revenue (Million USD) and Growth Rate (2012-2022)Figure South Korea QLED TVs Revenue (Million USD) and Growth Rate (2012-2022)Figure Taiwan QLED TVs Revenue (Million USD) and Growth Rate (2012-2022)Figure Global QLED TVs Revenue (Million USD) Status and Outlook (2012-2022)Figure Global QLED TVs Capacity, Production (K MT) Status and Outlook (2012-2022)Figure Global QLED TVs Major Players Product Capacity (K MT) (2012-2017)Table Global QLED TVs Capacity (K MT) of Key Manufacturers (2012-2017)Table Global QLED TVs Capacity Market Share of Key Manufacturers (2012-2017)Figure Global QLED TVs Capacity (K MT) of Key Manufacturers in 2016Figure Global QLED TVs Capacity (K MT) of Key Manufacturers in 2017Figure Global QLED TVs Major Players Product Production (K MT) (2012-2017)Table Global QLED TVs Production (K MT) of Key Manufacturers (2012-2017)Table Global QLED TVs Production Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)Figure 2016 QLED TVs Production Share by ManufacturersFigure 2017 QLED TVs Production Share by ManufacturersFigure Global QLED TVs Major Players Product Revenue (Million USD) (2012-2017)Table Global QLED TVs Revenue (Million USD) by Manufacturers (2012-2017)Table Global QLED TVs Revenue Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)Table 2016 Global QLED TVs Revenue Share by ManufacturersTable 2017 Global QLED TVs Revenue Share by ManufacturersTable Global Market QLED TVs Average Price (USD/MT) of Key Manufacturers (2012-2017)Figure Global Market QLED TVs Average Price (USD/MT) of Key Manufacturers in 2016Table Manufacturers QLED TVs Manufacturing Base Distribution and Sales AreaPlace a Direct Purchase Order of Complete Report @ReportsWeb.com is a one stop shop of market research reports and solutions to various companies across the globe. 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Bulgaria Upstream Fiscal and Regulatory Report - Attractive Fiscal Regime Likely to Remain Stable

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ReportsWorldwide has announced the addition of a new report title Bulgaria Upstream Fiscal and Regulatory Report - Attractive Fiscal Regime Likely to Remain Stable to its growing collection of premium market research reports.Bulgaria Upstream Fiscal and Regulatory Report - Attractive Fiscal Regime Likely to Remain Stable, presents the essential information relating to the terms which govern investment into Bulgarias upstream oil and gas sector. The report sets out in detail the contractual framework under which firms must operate in the industry, clearly defining factors affecting profitability and quantifying the states take from hydrocarbon production. Considering political, economic and industry specific variables, the report also analyses future trends for Bulgarias upstream oil and gas investment climate.To Enquire about this Report please visit @Scope- Overview of current fiscal terms governing upstream oil and gas operations in Bulgaria- Assessment of the current fiscal regimes state take and attractiveness to investors- Charts illustrating the regime structure, and legal and institutional frameworks- Detail on legal framework and governing bodies administering the industry- Levels of upfront payments and taxation applicable to oil and gas production- Information on application of fiscal and regulatory terms to specific licenses- Outlook on future of fiscal and regulatory terms in BulgariaTo view a detailed description and Table of Contents please visit:Reasons to buy- Understand the complex regulations and contractual requirements applicable to Bulgarias upstream oil and gas sector- Evaluate factors determining profit levels in the industry- Identify potential regulatory issues facing investors in the countrys upstream sector- Utilize considered insight on future trends to inform decision-makingAbout ReportsWorldwide.comReportsWorldwide.com is a leading provider of global market intelligence reports and services. With research reports from top publishers, consulting and advisory firms, ReportsWorldwide.com offers instant online access to a growing database of expert insights on global industries, companies, products, geographies and trends.Press Contact:Abigail CrastoSenior Vice President101, Arch StreetBoston, MA 02110USPhone +1 (617) 398-4994Fax +1 (617) 398-4995abigail@reportsworldwide.com
Global Advanced Wound Dressings Market Set For Expansive Growth By 2017

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http://www.researchtrades.com/report/global-advanced-wound-dressings-market-research-report-2017

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This report studies Advanced Wound Dressings in Global market, especially in North America, Europe, China, Japan, Southeast Asia and India, focuses on top manufacturers in global market, with capacity, production, price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer, coveringSmith & Nephew3M Health Care Molnlycke Health Care ConvaTec Healthcare B.S.A.R.L Coloplast A/S Paul HartmannKinetic Concepts Medline Industries, Inc. Laboratories Urgo BSN Medical Covidien B.Braun HollisterLohmann& Rauscher Advanced Medical Solutions Group Nitto Denko Winner Medical Co., Ltd.DeRoyal Industries Genewel Winner Medical Co., Ltd. Top-medicalMarket Segment by Regions, this report splits Global into several key Regions, with production, consumption,revenue, market share and growth rate of Advanced Wound Dressings in these regions, from 2011 to 2021 (forecast), likeNorth America Europe China Japan Southeast Asia IndiaTo Receive a Sample Copy of Global Advanced Wound Dressings Market Research @Split by product type, with production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, can be divided intoFilms Foam Dressings Collagen Alginates Hydrocolloids Hydrogels Super AbsorbersSplit by application, this report focuses on consumption, market share and growth rate of Advanced Wound Dressings in each application, can be divided intoAcute Wounds Chronic Wounds Surgical WoundsBuy a Copy of Global Advanced Wound Dressings Market Research for single user price of $ 2900@Key Chapters1 Advanced Wound Dressings Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Advanced Wound Dressings1.2 Advanced Wound Dressings Segment by Type1.2.1 Global Production Market Share of Advanced Wound Dressings by Type in 20151.2.2 Films1.2.3 Foam Dressings1.2.4 Collagen1.2.5 Alginates1.2.6 Hydrocolloids1.2.7 Hydrogels2 Global Advanced Wound Dressings Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1 Global Advanced Wound Dressings Production and Share by Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)2.2 Global Advanced Wound Dressings Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)2.3 Global Advanced Wound Dressings Average Price by Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)3 Global Advanced Wound Dressings Production, Revenue (Value) by Region (2012-2017)3.1 Global Advanced Wound Dressings Production by Region (2012-2017)3.2 Global Advanced Wound Dressings Production Market Share by Region (2012-2017)3.3 Global Advanced Wound Dressings Revenue (Value) and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)To View Full Report @Who we areResearch Trades has team of experts who works on providing exhaustive analysis pertaining to market research on a global basis. This comprehensive analysis is obtained by a thorough research and study of the ongoing trends and provides predictive data regarding the future estimations, which can be utilized by various organizations for growth purposes.We distribute customized reports that focus on meeting the clients specific requirement. Our database consists of a large collection of high-quality reports obtained using a customer-centric approach, thus providing valuable research insights. The research encompasses information gathered and examined by subject-matter experts, laying down growth opportunities and developmental strategies for enterprises.Reach at us:Flat No.10, Wing C, No. 245/4/2+245/5/1,Baner, Pune-411045Email: sales@researchtrades.comCall us: +91 7507349866Skype ID: researchtradesconWeb:
Australia Upstream Fiscal and Regulatory Report - PRRT Review Set to Report At The End of April

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ReportsWorldwide has announced the addition of a new report title "Australia Upstream Fiscal and Regulatory Report - PRRT Review Set to Report At The End of April" to its growing collection of premium market research reports.Australia Upstream Fiscal and Regulatory Report - PRRT Review Set to Report At The End of April, presents the essential information relating to the terms which govern investment into Australias upstream oil and gas sector. The report sets out in detail the contractual framework under which firms must operate in the industry, clearly defining factors affecting profitability and quantifying the states take from hydrocarbon production.Considering political, economic and industry specific variables, the report also analyses future trends for Australias upstream oil and gas investment climate.To Enquire about this Report please visit @Scope- Overview of current fiscal terms governing upstream oil and gas operations in Australia- Assessment of the current fiscal regimes state take and attractiveness to investors- Charts illustrating the regime structure, and legal and institutional frameworks- Detail on legal framework and governing bodies administering the industry- Levels of upfront payments and taxation applicable to oil and gas production- Information on application of fiscal and regulatory terms to specific licenses- Outlook on future of fiscal and regulatory terms in AustraliaTo view a detailed description and Table of Contents please visit:Reasons to buy- Understand the complex regulations and contractual requirements applicable to Australias upstream oil and gas sector- Evaluate factors determining profit levels in the industry- Identify potential regulatory issues facing investors in the countrys upstream sector- Utilize considered insight on future trends to inform decision-makingAbout ReportsWorldwide.comReportsWorldwide.com is a leading provider of global market intelligence reports and services. With research reports from top publishers, consulting and advisory firms, ReportsWorldwide.com offers instant online access to a growing database of expert insights on global industries, companies, products, geographies and trends.Press Contact:Abigail CrastoSenior Vice President101, Arch StreetBoston, MA 02110USPhone +1 (617) 398-4994Fax +1 (617) 398-4995abigail@reportsworldwide.com
Remote Patient Monitoring Device Market Will Procure US$ 1,502.9 Mn by 2024

http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/market-research/remote-patient-monitoring-device-market.asp

http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/market-research/remote-patient-monitoring-device-market/toc

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The global remote patient monitoring device market is segmented on the basis of Product Type (Cardiac Monitors, Respiratory Monitors, Hematological Monitors), Application (Cardiac Arrhythmia, Diabetes, Ischemic diseases, Hypertension, Sleep apnea, Chronic respiratory diseases, Hyperlipidemia), End User (Hospitals, Homecare Settings, Long-term Care Centers, Others), and Region (North America, Latin America, Europe, APEJ, and MEA).Browse Complete Report @According to the latest market report published by Persistence Market Research titled Remote Patient Monitoring Device Market: Global Industry Analysis and Forecast, 20162024, the global remote patient monitoring device market is expected to expand at a CAGR of 6.7% and is estimated to reach US$ 1,502.9 Mn by 2024, creating incremental opportunity of US$ 657.1 Mn between 2016 and 2024. Persistence Market Research analyzes the overall performance of the global remote patient monitoring device market and provides key insights on the factors and trends likely to influence the market during this eight-year period.Rising prevalence of cardio vascular diseases, respiratory disorders, and diabetes in the general population are major factors driving the growth of the global remote patient monitoring device market. Increasing healthcare expenditure and increasing availability of effective treatment solutions for chronic diseases is also projected to boost revenue growth of the global remote patient monitoring device market. Other factors boosting market growth include an increasing awareness among people to self-monitor before disease advancement and government reimbursement issued on homecare settings facilities.Lack of trained professionals to help with remote patient monitoring devices is expected to hinder market growth of the global remote patient monitoring device market. Insufficiency in maintaining the privacy and security of the stored data, lack of uniformity in device functionality, and lack of general awareness on patient monitoring devices are the key restraints challenging the market.By product type, the cardiac monitors segment is expected to remain the largest segment and is anticipated to reach US$ 765.4 Mn by the end of 2024, expanding at a CAGR of 6.9% over the forecast period. By the end of 2024, the respiratory monitors segment is projected to reach US$ 435.0 Mn, expanding at a CAGR of 6.5% over the forecast period. By application, the cardiac arrhythmia segment is estimated to reach US$ 307.7 Mn by 2024, expanding at a CAGR of 6.8% over the forecast period. The diabetes segment is projected to reach US$ 196.8 Mn by 2024, expanding at a CAGR of 5.6% over the forecast period. By end user, the hospitals segment is anticipated to reach US$ 690.1 Mn by 2024, expanding at a CAGR of 6.6% over the forecast period. The homecare settings segment is anticipated to reach US$ 347.3 Mn by 2024, expanding at a CAGR of 6.2% over the forecast period.Request to view table of content @Among regions, North America is estimated to dominate the global remote patient monitoring device market with 31.4% revenue share of the overall market by the end of 2016. The Europe remote patient monitoring device market is anticipated to reach US$ 341.1 Mn by 2024. By 2024, North America and Europe markets are expected to account for over four-fifth share of the global remote patient monitoring device market revenue.A sample of this report is available upon request @Some key companies covered in the report include Boston Scientific Corporation, Koninklijke Philips N.V., Abbott Laboratories, Nihon Kohden Corporation, F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., LifeWatch AG, Medtronic, and St. Jude Medical. These companies are primarily focused on enhancing their product portfolio through research and development initiatives and through the introduction of innovative technologies in order to gain higher market share and to strengthen their respective positions in the global market.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 and Chinese Network Management Industry to Register Substantial Expansion By 2017

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http://www.researchtrades.com/report/global-and-chinese-network-management-industry-2016-market-research-report

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The 'Global and Chinese Network Management Industry, 2011-2021 Market Research Report' is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the global Network Management industry with a focus on the Chinese market. The report provides key statistics on the market status of the Network Management manufacturers and is a valuable source of guidance and direction for companies and individuals interested in the industry. Firstly, the report provides a basic overview of the industry including its definition, applications and manufacturing technology. Then, the report explores the international and Chinese major industry players in detail. In this part, the report presents the company profile, product specifications, capacity, production value, and 2011-2016 market shares for each company. Through the statistical analysis, the report depicts the global and Chinese total market of Network Management industry including capacity, production, production value, cost/profit, supply/demand and Chinese import/export.To Receive a Sample Copy of Global and Chinese Network Management Industry @The total market is further divided by company, by country, and by application/type for the competitive landscape analysis. The report then estimates 2016-2021 market development trends of Network Management industry. Analysis of upstream raw materials, downstream demand, and current market dynamics is also carried out. In the end, the report makes some important proposals for a new project of Network Management Industry before evaluating its feasibility. Overall, the report provides an in-depth insight of 2011-2021 global and Chinese Network Management industry covering all important parameters.Buy a Copy of Global and Chinese Network Management Industry for single user price of $ 2800@Key ChaptersChapter One Introduction of Network Management Industry1.1 Brief Introduction of Network Management1.2 Development of Network Management Industry1.3 Status of Network Management IndustryChapter Two Manufacturing Technology of Network Management2.1 Development of Network Management Manufacturing Technology2.2 Analysis of Network Management Manufacturing Technology2.3 Trends of Network Management Manufacturing TechnologyChapter Three Analysis of Global Key Manufacturers3.1 Company A3.1.1 Company Profile3.1.2 Product Information3.1.3 2011-2016 Production Information3.1.4 Contact InformationChapter Four 2011-2016 Global and Chinese Market of Network Management4.1 2011-2016 Global Capacity, Production and Production Value of Network Management Industry4.2 2011-2016 Global Cost and Profit of Network Management Industry4.3 Market Comparison of Global and Chinese Network Management IndustryTo View Full Report @Who we areResearch Trades has team of experts who works on providing exhaustive analysis pertaining to market research on a global basis. This comprehensive analysis is obtained by a thorough research and study of the ongoing trends and provides predictive data regarding the future estimations, which can be utilized by various organizations for growth purposes.We distribute customized reports that focus on meeting the clients specific requirement. Our database consists of a large collection of high-quality reports obtained using a customer-centric approach, thus providing valuable research insights. The research encompasses information gathered and examined by subject-matter experts, laying down growth opportunities and developmental strategies for enterprises.Reach at us:Flat No.10, Wing C,S. No. 245/4/2+245/5/1,Baner, Pune-411045Email: sales@researchtrades.comCall us: +91 7507349866Skype ID: researchtradesconWeb:
Global Aniline Market 2017 Top Manufactures - Bayer, Tianji, Huntsman, Tosoh, BASF, The Chemours Company

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https://www.marketstudyreport.com/reports/global-aniline-market-research-report-2017

https://www.marketstudyreport.com/reports/global-and-chinese-aniline-hydrochloride-cas-142-04-1-industry-2017-market-research-report/?utm_source=RR-SP

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Worldwide Aniline Market report of 2017 provides a detailed market overview as well as industry analysis for / of companies, manufacturers and distributors covering data on gross margin, cost structure, consumption value, sale price and more.Growing at a steady pace, this Aniline market research values the industry size in USD million terms for 2016 and expected USD million value by the end of 2022 is provided for decision makers and stakeholders interested in Aniline market.Geographically, Aniline Market report is segmented into several key Regions, with production, consumption, revenue (million USD), market share and growth rate of Aniline in these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), covering: North America, Europe, China, Japan, Southeast Asia, IndiaRequest a Sample Copy of Global Aniline Market Research Report @Global Aniline market competition by top manufacturers, with production, price, revenue (value) and market share for each manufacturer; the top players including such as Bayer, Tianji, Huntsman, Tosoh, BASF, The Chemours Company, Sumitomo Chemical ...On the basis of product, global Aniline market report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split into: Reagent grade, Pharmaceutical Grade, Industrial grade, OtherOn the basis on the end users/applications, global Aniline market report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, consumption (sales), market share and growth rate of Aniline for each application, including: Dyes, Drugs, Resins, Rubber vulcanization accelerator, OtherEnquire about this report @Major Points in Table of Contents:Global Aniline Market Research Report 2017Aniline Market OverviewGlobal Aniline Market Competition by ManufacturersGlobal Aniline Capacity, Production, Revenue (Value) by Region (2012-2017)Global Aniline Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Region (2012-2017)Global Aniline Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by TypeGlobal Aniline Market Analysis by ApplicationGlobal Aniline Manufacturers Profiles/AnalysisAniline Manufacturing Cost AnalysisIndustrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream BuyersMarketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/TradersMarket Effect Factors AnalysisGlobal Aniline Market Forecast (2017-2022)Research Findings and ConclusionList of Tables and FiguresFigure Picture of Aniline MarketFigure Global Aniline Market Production (K MT) and CAGR (%) Comparison by Types (Product Category) (2012-2022)Figure Global Aniline Market Production Market Share by Types (Product Category) in 2016Figure Product Picture of Reagent gradeTable Major Manufacturers of Reagent gradeFigure Product Picture of Pharmaceutical GradeTable Major Manufacturers of Pharmaceutical GradeFigure Product Picture of Industrial gradeTable Major Manufacturers of Industrial gradeFigure Product Picture of OtherTable Major Manufacturers of OtherFigure Global Aniline Consumption (K MT) by Applications (2012-2022)Figure Global Aniline Consumption Market Share by Applications in 2016Figure Global Aniline Market Size (Million USD), Comparison (K MT) and CAGR (%) by Regions (2012-2022)For more information about Global Aniline Market Report @Related Reports: -Global and Chinese Aniline hydrochloride (CAS 142-04-1) Industry, 2017 Market Research ReportThe 'Global and Chinese Aniline hydrochloride Industry, 2012-2022 Market Research Report' is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the global Aniline hydrochloride industry with a focus on the Chinese market. The report provides key statistics on the market status of the Aniline hydrochloride manufacturers and is a valuable source of guidance and direction for companies and individuals interested in the industry. Firstly, the report provides a basic overview of the industry including its definition, applications and manufacturing technology.Centralize market research purchases across your entire organization in one place.Marketstudyreport.com allows you to manage and control all corporate research purchases to consolidate billing and vendor management. You can eliminate duplicate purchases and customize your content and license management.Market Study ReportThe Green Suite #4594,Dover, DE 19901United StatesPhone: 1-201-355-0868US Toll Free: 1-866-764-2150Email: sales@marketstudyreport.comWebsite:News:/newsConnect with us: Google+ | LinkedIn | Twitter
H1 2017 Production and Capital Expenditure Outlook for Key Planned Upstream Projects in North Sea: Norway to Lead in Crude Oil Production

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ReportsWorldwide has announced the addition of a new report title "H1 2017 Production and Capital Expenditure Outlook for Key Planned Upstream Projects in North Sea" to its growing collection of premium market research reports.A total of 38 key planned projects in the North Sea are expected to contribute around 880 thousand barrels per day of oil production and around 1,300 million cubic feet per day of global gas production in 2025.The UK has more than 25 planned projects, the highest in the region, followed by Norway and Denmark. About US$80 billion is expected to be spent in bringing these key planned projects online, of this, US$39 billion is expected to be spent during 2017 to 2025. Among companies, Statoil ASA would have the highest capex spending and highest planned production in the North Sea region.To Enquire about this Report please visit @Scope- Oil and gas production outlook by key countries and companies in the North Sea- Planned projects count and starts by key countries and companies in the region- Details of key planned crude and natural gas projects in North Sea- Capex and opex outlook by key countries and companies in the regionTo view a detailed description and Table of Contents please visit:Reasons to buy- Gain insight of oil and gas production outlook for the North Sea- Keep abreast of key planned production projects in the region- Facilitate decision making on the basis of strong oil and gas production forecast- Develop business strategies with the help of specific insights on North Sea production and capex outlook- Assess your competitors planned oil and gas production projectsAbout ReportsWorldwide.comReportsWorldwide.com is a leading provider of global market intelligence reports and services. With research reports from top publishers, consulting and advisory firms, ReportsWorldwide.com offers instant online access to a growing database of expert insights on global industries, companies, products, geographies and trends.Press Contact:Abigail CrastoSenior Vice President101, Arch StreetBoston, MA 02110USPhone +1 (617) 398-4994Fax +1 (617) 398-4995abigail@reportsworldwide.com
Global Adhesive Tapes Market is Expected to Grow at a CAGR of 5% from 2016 to 2022

Adhesive Tapes Market

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Market Research Future published a half cooked research report on Global Adhesive Tapes Market. The Global Adhesive Tapes Market is expected to grow over the CAGR of around 5% during the period 2016 to 2022.Market Highlights:Adhesive tapes are plastic or paper strips coated with adhesive which enables it to stick or holds to different surfaces under normal circumstances. The tapes can be commodity or specialty depending on the application and is used in all packaging processes. It is used across various industries such as healthcare, automotive, construction, food & beverages, electronics among others. These tapes are applied in surgical containers, monitoring electrodes, and other medical devices.The Global Adhesive Tapes Market is driven by the growth in healthcare industry. The healthcare sector is the largest end-user of adhesive tapes. The industry uses such tapes in various applications such as covering wounds, for fixing cover shields during surgeries, and for cleaning purposes in sterilized room. This has fueled the demand across the globe, with well-established markets being North America and Europe and fast growing market being APAC.Furthermore the growth of automotive industry due to high demand for automobile from the emerging nations has led to the increased market for tapes, which is one of the largest applications after healthcare. The regions of APAC have shown high population and urbanization which fuels the demand for automobiles in the region. Also, APAC is currently valued as the fastest growing market for adhesive tapes and is expected to keep up the pace by 2022. The foreign and domestic investment in infrastructure industry widens the scope for these tapes in construction industry as well. The Global Adhesive Tapes Market is expected to cross USD 62 Billion mark at the end of the forecasted period and is expected to show a staggering growth at CAGR of approximately 5% from 2016 to 2022.Request a Sample Copy @Market Research Analysis:The market is highly application based. Its dependency on the end-use industry has widened over a period of time. The tapes are used extensively in all the packaging process and this is backed by high investment by packaging companies in the technology.It is expected that the Global Adhesive Tapes Market will advance with higher growth rate as compared to previous years. The current challenge for the market is fluctuating raw material prices. The increasing utility of adhesive tapes across sectors is driving the market of Adhesive Tapes. This is supported by the upcoming government policies to strengthen the infrastructure for the rising population and industrialization in emerging countries, especially in APAC. These policies induce the demand for these tapes in construction and healthcare sector in the region. Healthcare is the largest market by application and is expected to attain a similar share in global adhesive tapes market by 2022. By material, paper is expected to drive the maximum share in the forecasted period due to high demand for light weight backing material. Furthermore, the growth in automotive sector on a global level has fueled the demand.Scope of the Report:This study provides an overview of the global adhesive tapes industry, tracking two market segments across four geographic regions. The report studies key players, providing a five-year annual trend analysis that highlights market size, volume and share for North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Rest of the World. The report also provides a forecast, focusing on the market opportunities for the next five years for each region. The scope of the study segments the Global Adhesive Tapes Market as material, technology, and application. On the basis of material it is segmented as polypropylene, paper, and polyvinyl chloride. On the basis of technology it is segmented as hot melt, solvent, and others. On the basis of Application it is segmented as healthcare, food & beverages, construction, automotive, consumer and others.Key Players:The key players of global Adhesive Tapes market report include- 3M Company, Avery Dennison Corporation, Tesa SE, Nitto Denko Corporation, Lintec Corporation, Henkel AG & Company KGaA, Intertape Polymer Group, Shurtape Technologies LLC, Scapa Group Plc and Lohmann GmbH & Co.KG.Brief TOC for Adhesive Tapes Market:1 Executive Summary2 Scope of the Report2.1 Market Definition2.2 Scope of the Study2.2.1 Research Objectives2.2.2 Assumptions & Limitations2.3 Markets Structure3 Market Research Methodology3.1 Research Process3.2 Secondary Research3.3 Primary Research3.4 Forecast Model4 Market Landscape4.1 Five Forces Analysis4.1.1 Threat of New Entrants4.1.2 Bargaining power of buyers4.1.3 Threat of substitutes4.1.4 Segment rivalry4.2 Value Chain of Global Adhesive Tapes MarketContinueAccess Report Details @About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.Contact:Akash AnandMarket Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com
Electronic Goods Packaging Market is Expected to Grow at a CAGR of by 2023

Electronic Goods Packaging Market

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Market Research Future published a half cooked research report on Global Electronic goods packaging market. The Electronic goods packaging market is expected to grow over the CAGR of around 5 % during the period 2017 to 2023.Market Highlights:The electronic goods packaging market is majorly driven by the increased need of packaging the electronic products basically for preventing them from the external damages. The boom in the e-commerce industry especially for electronic goods is also driving the growth of the electronic goods packaging market. The increase in internet based shopping and the app based shopping is also contributing to the growth of the electronic goods packaging market. However, the increase in the pressure for prices of the products is hindering the growth of the market.Request a Sample Copy @Key Players of Electronic Goods Packaging Market: DS Smith Plc. (U.K.) International Paper Company (U.S.) Mondi plc. (Austria) Sealed Air Corporation (U.S.) Smurfit Kappa (Republic of Ireland) Dunapack Packaging (Austria) Georgia-Pacific LLC (U.S.) Graham Packaging (U.S.) Pregis LLC (U.S.) Sonoco Products Company (U.S.) Stora Enso (Finland)Market Research Analysis:The Asia-Pacific region is expected to grow the highest in the Electronic goods packaging market owing to the availability of low cost labor in the region. The rapid advancements in the industrial sector of the region is leading to an increased production of all kinds of electronic goods, thereby leading to an increase in demand for electronic goods packaging market. The large scope of FDI in the emerging economies of the region such as India and China is also contributing to the growth of the electronics industry thereby driving the need of the electronics goods packaging industry.Scope of the Report:This study provides an overview of the global Electronic goods packaging market, tracking three market segments across four geographic regions. The report studies key players, providing a five-year annual trend analysis that highlights market size, volume and share for North America, Europe, Asia Pacific (APAC) and Rest of the World (ROW). The report also provides a forecast, focusing on the market opportunities for the next five years for each region. The scope of the study segments the global Electronic goods packaging market by its material, product size, technology and region.By Material Corrugated boxes Foamed plastic Paperboard Bubble packaging OthersBy product size Small appliances Large appliancesBy Technology Authentication packaging Track and trace packagingBy Region North America Asia Pacific Europe Rest of the WorldBrief TOC:1 Executive Summary2 Research Methodology2.1 Scope of the Study2.1.1 Definition2.1.2 Research Objective2.1.3 Assumptions2.1.4 Limitations2.2 Research Process2.2.1 Primary Research2.2.2 Secondary Research2.3 Market size Estimation2.4 Forecast Model3 Market Dynamics3.1 Market Drivers3.2 Market Inhibitors3.3 Supply/Value Chain Analysis3.4 Porters Five Forces Analysis4 Global Electronic goods packaging market, By Material4.1 Corrugated boxes4.2 Foamed plastic4.3 Paperboard4.4 Bubble packaging4.5 Others5 Global Electronic goods packaging market, By Product size5.1 Small appliances5.2 Large appliancesContinueReport 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 Anand,Market Research FutureOffice No. 524/528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, HadapsarPune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com
Helium Leak Test System Market to Witness a Healthy Y-o-Y Growth during 2017 - 2025

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http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/16024

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Helium Leak Test System Market: Market OverviewThe helium leak test system is a kind of test system for leak inspections of high pressure and with high accuracy in which helium gas is used as the detection or tracer gas. A helium leak testing system can control the leaking if product leaks more helium than what is acceptable and it also measures the leak rate. In most of the helium leak test systems, the testing is done by loading the product into a vacuum chamber along with connecting a vacuum below the product, then the product along with the chamber is pumped to a comparatively low vacuum level. Helium is put into the object and then the concentration of helium inside the chamber is measured. The helium leak test system is considered to be the only reliable leak detection method when very small leaks below 10-4 mbar  l / s have to be detected. The helium leak test system is very useful when extremely fast cycle times are required; it also has useful applications where complete automation is required and human errors or mistakes are not acceptable. Helium being a non-poisonous and non-explosive gas is preferred for leak testing systems. Hydrogen is the lightest element followed by helium; helium can penetrate into the small leaks where other heavy elements cannot.Get access to full summary @:Helium Leak Test System Market: Market DynamicsThe increase in demand for examining leaks in the object during operation or cycle times is fueling the growth of the helium leak testing system. The need to prevent unplanned and expensive shutdowns of many manufacturing plants and industries is creating the demand for the helium leak test system. The need for ensuring the integrity of machined parts has become essential in many industrial processes today, which in turn is leading to the growth of helium leak test system. The rise in helium costs is a restraining factor for the growth of the helium leak test system market. The manufacture of the customized helium leak test system for the specific needs of the customer sets the scope for the development of the helium leak test system market. The ability of helium leak test systems to detect the minutest of the leaks is beneficial for the manufacturers bending towards the fully automated manufacturing processes.Helium Leak Test System Market: Market SegmentationThe global helium leak test system market can be segmented on the basis of the number of chambers in the whole system: Single chambered, Double chambered, Multi-chambered. It can also be segmented on the basis of end-use industries: Automobiles, Aerospace & Aeronautics, Quick connectors and fitting, Construction, Medical, Pharmaceutical & Biotechnology, Food & Beverages, Electronics, Power Generation & Power Plants, Oil & Gas Industry (Fuel pipes), Cogeneration Stations, Cryogenics, Heat Treating and Brazing.To view TOC of this report is available upon request @Helium Leak Test System Market: Segmentation OverviewThe different types of helium leak test system are vacuum test, sniffer test, helium spray and bombing test. The vacuum test is used to test components such as airbags, canisters, condensers, evaporators, fuel tanks, hoses, pipes, tubes and thermostatic valves. The sniffer test is used for the parts which cant be pushed inside a vacuum chamber such as refrigerators or refrigerated food displays. It is also used to locate a leak which has already been detected by other methods, in order to allow for repair of other parts. The helium spray test is repeatedly used to check porosity in the cast parts or parts which operate in the vacuum such as water pumps and brake pumps. The bombing test is used to detect small leaks, where the usual leak range to be detected is from 5.0 x 10-2 mbar*L/s to 1.0 x 10-4 mbar*L/s.Helium Leak Test System Market: Regional OutlookThe global helium leak test system market geographically is segmented as North America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Latin America, Asia-Pacific excluding Japan, Japan, and Middle East & Africa. North America and Europe hold a significant share of the helium leak test system market owing to the fully automated manufacturing processes. Furthermore, the increase in R & D activities related to aerospace and automobiles, wherein helium leak test system are useful for detecting minutest leakages, aids in boosting the growth of helium leak test system market in the region. The market in the APEJ region is more inclined towards growing demand for helium leak test system because of the increasing industrial automation and increasing number of manufacturing plants.A sample of this report is available upon request @Helium Leak Test System Market: Prominent PlayersSome of the prominent players in the global helium leak test system market are: FUKUDA Co., Ltd, FUKUDA USA Inc., NOLEK, Lowener Vacuum Services AB, Pfeiffer Vacuum GmbH, Telstar Vacuum Solutions, Marposs S.P.A., Alliance Concept, HVS Leak Detection, Agilent Technologies, Cincinnati Test Systems.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:
US Biodefense Market Outlook 2022

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ReportsWorldwide has announced the addition of a new report title US Biodefense Market Outlook 2022 to its growing collection of premium market research reports.The dangers posed by the weapons of mass destruction have caught the attention of every nation worldwide. These weapons can be characterized by their potential for large-scale destruction and the indiscriminate nature of their effects, notably against civilians. Increasing threat of biological, chemical as well as nuclear terrorism and disease outbreaks; along with growing R&D investments in the field of biotechnology is expected to drive biodefense market growth with a CAGR of 9% during the forecasted period of 2017-2022.The report US Biodefense Market Outlook 2022 unfolds the market scenario of the US BioDefense market. The report provides an overview of the Biodefense market with respect to biological defense. It further gives a detailed analysis of its sub-segment, with an in-depth study of the Biodefense market scenario prevalent in the country.For a Detailed description and table of contents of this report please click here:A detailed analysis was carried out in the research to understand the significance of the biodefense market in United States, which revealed that Anthrax is the biggest bioterrorism threat to the country, as it is highly infectious and communicable. The other major threats are Small Pox and Botulism. Further, a meticulous category-wise segmentation has provided the understanding of the biodefense-related demand parameters prevailing in the country.The latter half of the report provides the status of the current rules and regulations that govern the Biodefense market. It also focuses on the analysis of current drivers, and the challenges of the market. The report further highlights the competitive landscape of the US BioDefense market, describing the business of the major industry players. On the whole, the report provides all the pre-requisite information for clients looking to make a debut in this industry, and facilitates them to formulate schemes while going for an investment/partnership in the US BioDefense industry.To Get Sample Copy of Report please visit @About ReportsWorldwide.comReportsWorldwide.com is a leading provider of global market intelligence reports and services. With research reports from top publishers, consulting and advisory firms, ReportsWorldwide.com offers instant online access to a growing database of expert insights on global industries, companies, products, geographies and trends.Press Contact:Abigail CrastoSenior Vice President101, Arch StreetBoston, MA 02110USPhone +1 (617) 398-4994Fax +1 (617) 398-4995abigail@reportsworldwide.com
Global WiFi Test Equipment Market 2017 - MR Cartool, Lascar Electronics, T-Metec, Greenlee, Usriot

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The Report describe Global WiFi Test Equipment Market Introduction, product scope, market overview, opportunities, risk, driving force also to analyze the top manufacturers, with development, revenue and price, market Trends, size with sales market share and growth rate by type, application, from 2017 to 2022Download Sample Report @This report studies WiFi Test Equipment 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, coveringDyconFluke NetworksB&K PrecisionLascar ElectronicsT-MetecGreenleeGfuveUsriotCobhamMR CartoolBy types, the market can be split intoDesktop WiFi Test EquipmentHandheld WiFi Test EquipmentBy Application, the market can be split intoHouseholdCommercialBy Regions, this report covers (we can add the regions/countries as you want)North AmericaChinaEuropeSoutheast AsiaJapanIndiaAccess Full Report With TOC @Table of ContentsGlobal WiFi Test Equipment Market Professional Survey Report 20171 Industry Overview of WiFi Test Equipment1.1 Definition and Specifications of WiFi Test Equipment1.1.1 Definition of WiFi Test Equipment1.1.2 Specifications of WiFi Test Equipment1.2 Classification of WiFi Test Equipment1.2.1 Desktop WiFi Test Equipment1.2.2 Handheld WiFi Test Equipment1.3 Applications of WiFi Test Equipment1.3.1 Household1.3.2 Commercial1.3.3 Application 31.4 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 WiFi Test Equipment2.1 Raw Material and Suppliers2.2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of WiFi Test Equipment2.3 Manufacturing Process Analysis of WiFi Test Equipment2.4 Industry Chain Structure of WiFi Test EquipmentFior 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 ManagerPhone: (201) 465-4211Email: sales@fiormarkets.comWeb:Blog:
Global Compound Semiconductor Materials Sales Market 2017 - Micron Technology, Qualcomm, Dow Corning, Dai Nippon Printing, Texas Instruments

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The Report describe Compound Semiconductor Materials Sales Introduction, product scope, market overview, opportunities, risk, driving force also to analyze the top manufacturers, with sales, revenue, and price, market type and application, with sales market share and growth rate by type, application, from 2017 to 2022The report titled Compound Semiconductor Materials Sales in Real Estate is an in-depth and a professional document that provides a comprehensive overview of the global Compound Semiconductor Materials Sales in Real Estate market.The report provides an executive-level blueprint of the Compound Semiconductor Materials Sales in Real Estate market beginning with the definition of the market dynamics. The analysis classifies the Compound Semiconductor Materials Sales in Real Estate market in terms of products, application, and key geographic regions. With focus on presenting a detailed value chain analysis, the study evaluates the set of region-specific approaches forged by the industry. To determine the market potential for Compound Semiconductor Materials Sales in Real Estate in the international scenario, the study delves into the competitive landscape and development landscape exhibited by the key geographic regions.Development plans and policies significantly impact the market dynamic. The report therefore studies in detail the impact of the strategies, plans, and policies adopted by leading vendors of the Compound Semiconductor Materials Sales in Real Estate market. Manufacturing cost of products and the pricing structure adopted by the market is also evaluated in the report. Other parameters crucial in determining trends in the market such as consumption demand and supply figures, cost of production, gross profit margins, and selling price of product and services is also included within the ambit of the report.To provide a detailed analysis on the competitive landscape, the report profiles the key players in the Compound Semiconductor Materials Sales in Real Estate industry. Information present in these chapters includes details of products manufactured by the leading companies, product specification and price, and production capacity. Using reliable analytical tools, the report evaluates the information sourced from both primary and secondary research. Results obtained through the detailed analysis helps in presenting refined forecasts regarding growth prospects of the Compound Semiconductor Materials Sales in Real Estate market. Apart from this, the analysts have also conducted upstream raw materials and equipment and downstream demand analysis to compile and present an exhaustive study on the Compound Semiconductor Materials Sales in Real Estate market.Download Free Sample Report @A detailed segmentation evaluation of the Compound Semiconductor Materials Sales in Real Estate market has been provided in the report. Detailed information about the key segments of the market and their growth prospects are available in the report. The detailed analysis of their sub-segments is also available in the report. The revenue forecasts and volume shares along with market estimates are available in the report.Fior Markets is a leading market intelligence company that sells reports of top publishers in the technology industry.Our extensive research reports cover detailed market assessments that include major technological improvements in the industry. Fior Markets also specializes in analyzing hi-tech systems and current processing systems in its expertise.We have a team of experts that compile precise research reports and actively advise top companies to improve their existing processes. Our experts have extensive experience in the topics that they cover.Contact UsMark StoneSales ManagerPhone: (201) 465-4211Email: sales@fiormarkets.comWeb:Blog:
BIM Market Size, Share, Analysis & Growth , 2024

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Building Information Modelling Market size is projected to witness a substantial growth in market share during the forecast timespan owing to the optimization of project performance and the increased productivity offered by these tools. It combines aerial imagery, laser scanning and other tools with 3D imaging to increase the productivity of the project. The technology allows for early identification of errors, real-time performance management and reduction of the risk of rework, thereby enhancing the building information modelling market growth.Building information modelling market are increasingly adopted into diverse industries due to the wide range of benefits that it offers and is highly focused in the engineering and construction sector. It is faster as compared to traditional 2D processes and each object is connected to a database that is updated as the project model evolves. The construction industry is expected to experience high growth and will increase the demand for the process. Administration measures to raise awareness of the benefits of these processes is also predicted to aid building information modelling market growth.Request for an in-depth table of contents for this report @Green buildings are gaining prominence across various countries. The rising awareness of energy consumption and the environmental consequences of the business operations has led companies to focus on adopting strategies to take up corrective measures. Construction and engineering activities contribute extensively to the emissions and energy consumption across the world. The application of building information modelling market during building energy simulations can massively improve the energy analysis process by aiding stakeholders in the critical design decisions. The introduction of this concept into has given rise to green buildings.The ROI of the building information modelling market is anticipated to be high and can further streamline the industry growth.The building information modelling market segmentation by type is divided into solutions and services. The services segment includes tools for 3D modeling, clash management, visualization, scheduling, layout, production control, change management, and others. Segmentation of the building information modelling market by deployment type is bifurcated into cloud-based and on premise solutions. Adoption of cloud based solutions among SMEs is expected to experience a high growth owing to the cost effectiveness and ease of access. On premise solutions offer security and privacy of project data but is comparatively more expensive and requires frequent software upgrades.Building information modelling market can be segmented on verticals include commercial, industrial, institutional, residential and infrastructure. The commercial and industrial segments are predicted to witness significant demand during the forecast timespan. It is attributed to the rising government regulations mandating the use of the software. Additionally, digital prototyping analysis and simulation aid in shortening the time required to complete the designing and construction of the project while boosting the productivity and lowering the risk associated with it.Make an inquiry for buying this report @U.S is anticipated to dominate the building information modelling market owing to the government regulations and rising awareness of its benefits among the contractors and constructors of commercial buildings. Rapid industrialization in emerging economies, for instance China and India, is expected to increase the building information modelling market growth in the Asia Pacific region.Companies in the building information modelling market include Beck Technology Ltd., Nemetschek Group, Autodesk Inc., Trimble Navigation Ltd, Asite Solutions Ltd, AECOM, Bentley Systems, Dassault Systems SA, and Pentagon Solutions Ltd. Players operating in the global marketplace need to adopt business strategies such as mergers, acquisitions and partnerships to capture market share and strengthen their foothold. In December 2016, Software provider Nemetschek SE had announced its acquisition of dRofus. This was done to strengthen Nemetschek Groups international hold which focuses on innovations such as Open building information modelling.This latest BUILDING INFORMATION MODELLING Market research report offers in-depth analysis, key industry insights, market sizing & forecast on a granular level for key products, applications across number of regional markets. The report also analyzes the BUILDING INFORMATION MODELLINGindustry from business strategy perspective, describing in detail growth drivers, pitfalls &challenges for participants, accompanied by a detailed competitive benchmarking including company market share analysis and detailed business profiles.Reasons to Buy This Report Global BUILDING INFORMATION MODELLING Market size & forecast by product & application. Growth drivers, pitfalls & industry challenges. Key BUILDING INFORMATION MODELLING Market growth opportunities & emerging business models. Competitive benchmarking with market share analysis and company profiles.About Global Market Insights:Global Market Insights, Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider; offering syndicated and custom research reports along with growth consulting services. Our business intelligence and industry research reports offer clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data specially designed and presented to aid strategic decision making. These exhaustive reports are designed via a proprietary research methodology and are available for key industries such as chemicals, advanced materials, technology, renewable energy and biotechnology.Contact Us:Arun HegdeCorporate Sales, USAGlobal Market Insights, Inc.Phone: 1-302-846-7766Toll Free: 1-888-689-0688Email: sales@gminsights.comWeb:Blog:Connect with us: Facebook | Google+ | LinkedIn | Twitter
Tongue Depressors Market - Global Trends, Market Share, Industry Size, Growth, Opportunities, And Market Forecast 2022

Tongue Depressors Market

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This report studies the Tongue Depressors market. A tongue depressor is a tool used in medical practice to depress the tongue to allow for examination of the mouth and throat. The most common modern tongue depressors are flat, thin, wooden blades, smoothed and rounded at both ends, but, historically, tongue depressors have been made of a variety of materials. Since they are inexpensive and difficult to clean, wooden tongue depressors are labeled for disposal after a single use.Get a Sample of Tongue Depressors Market research report from Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the Tongue Depressors 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:USA, Canada, Japan, China, Russia, France, UK, Korea, Germany, Australia, Middle East, South East Asia, South AmericaMarket 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)Browse full Report with table of contents and data tables For Tongue Depressors Market Report @Market Segment by Type, covers:Type 1, Type 2Market Segment by Applications, can be divided into:Hospitals, Clinics, Academic & Research Institutes, OthersThere are 15 Chapters to deeply display the global Tongue Depressors market.Chapter 1, to describe Tongue Depressors Introduction, product scope, market overview, market opportunities, market risk, market driving force;Chapter 2, to analyze the top manufacturers of Tongue Depressors, with sales, revenue, and price of Tongue Depressors, 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 Tongue Depressors, 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, Tongue Depressors market forecast, by regions, type and application, with sales and revenue, from 2017 to 2022;Chapter 13, 14 and 15, to describe Tongue Depressors sales channel, distributors, traders, dealers, Research Findings and Conclusion, appendix and data sourceCheck for Discount @Some points from TOC:-1 Market Overview1.1 Tongue Depressors Introduction1.2 Market Analysis by Type1.2.1 Type 11.2.2 Type 21.3 Market Analysis by Applications1.3.1 Hospitals1.3.2 Clinics1.3.3 Academic & Research Institutes1.3.4 Others1.4 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)ContinuedFor more help Speak to our Experts @No. of Report Pages: 115Price of Report (Single User Licence): $3480GIR 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.+1-888-376-9998 (US)Email- sales@globalinforeports.comWeb-Blogs-
Poultry Feed Market to register a healthy CAGR for the forecast period, 2015-2025

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Poultry feed market is a part of vast animal feed market and makes an important part of it as poultry is invariably consumed in most parts of the world. The concept of animal feed has been there in the market for several years especially in the developed markets. However, with the advent of globalization and rise in the standard of living of consumers, companies are expanding in the emerging markets of the world with improved products and wide range of options for each animal group. Poultry meat is the highest among others such as pork, beef and fish meat. Therefore, vast opportunity lies in the poultry feed segment.Poultry Feed Market: Drivers & RestraintsRising per capita income and widespread poultry diseases are the major driving factors of the poultry feed market globally. In addition, growth of domestic and international quick service restaurants in developing countries and demand for quality meat products by consumers has significantly contributed to the rising demand of poultry feed those regions. In 2014, Asia Pacific was the largest market in terms of poultry feed demand and revenue and would continue to dominate the market for several factors. The market growth is attributed to the higher standard of living among consumers coupled with shift towards away-from-home-eating. Manufacturers are closely working with the factory farmers to direct them towards higher yield of poultry thereby increasing their return on investment (ROI). For instance, Cargill Inc. were engaged closely with Malaysia based TD Poultry to deliver best poultry solution. As a result, TD Poultry could achieve remarkable results in broilers with 1.63 feed conversion rates. Also, 2.35 kg body weight was achieved in 35 days, down from previous 40 days.Request For Report Sample@Poultry Feed Market: SegmentationThe various type of poultry feed additives available in the market consists of antibiotics, vitamins, antioxidants, amino acids, feed enzymes and feed acidifiers. Feed acidifiers are the largest among all other poultry additive segment across the world. The regional segmentation includes North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America and Middle East & Africa. Asia Pacific is the largest market followed by North America. On the basis of type, the poultry feed market can be segmented as broilers, layers, turkey and others. The consumption of meat varies from region to region, for instance, in North America, broilers is the most preferred meat category and antibiotics falls under the largest category under the feed additives segment.Poultry Feed Market: Market OverviewPoultry feed is required to increase the feed conversion ratio by improving gut micro flora thereby enhancing animals health. It also maintains animal health by preventing diseases among them. The manufacturers are concentrating more on the developing markets to tap the under penetrated feed market in countries such as Vietnam, India, Indonesia, South Africa, Lebanon and Turkey. These markets offer greater opportunities to increase revenue and sales with higher per capita expenditure on quality food. Moreover, it is a proven fact that with rise in per capita income, people tend to consume more meat and meat products. Therefore the poultry feed market is expected to grow at a healthy CAGR through the forecast period (2015-2020).Poultry Feed Market: Recent DevelopmentPlayers such as Novus International, Inc. and Kemin group continue to deliver new products for poultry farmers. In November 2012, Novus International, Inc. launched AVIMATRIX- a feed solution for optimized broiler performance by acting over gut environment through targeted and controlled release of compounds in the broilers gut. There is an increasing demand of solution oriented customized products from the poultry farmers in the emerging markets. In May 2013, a South African firm AgriProtein Technologies bagged the Innovation Prize for Africa (IPA) for developing a commercial method to develop animal feed through maggots.Visit For TOC@Poultry Feed Market: Key PlayersKey global players of the poultry feed market include Alltech Inc., ADM (Archer Daniels Midland Company), ABF Plc (Associated British Food), BASF (Badishce Anilin und Soda Fabrik), Charoen Popkhand Foods, Cargill Inc., Evonik Industries AG, CHR.Hansen Holdings A/S, Novus International Inc, Nutreco NV, Royal DSM N.V., DLG Group and InVivo NSA.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:
U.K. Private Healthcare Market is set to Witness a CAGR of 2.8% During 2017 to 2025

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The decline in individual purchases of private medical insurance and low medical cover pay-outs to clinics and hospitals will continue to negatively impact the U.K. private healthcare market. Besides, the country has a well-defined public healthcare structure for its permanent residents. At the point of need, public healthcare coverage is subsidized or offered completely free and is usually paid through general taxation. Persistence Market Research in its latest study reveals that the U.K. private healthcare market is set to expand at a sluggish 2.8% CAGR during the forecast period (20172025). In addition, this market is anticipated to represents an absolute $ opportunity of US$ 321.4 Mn in 2018 over 2017. According to PMR findings, the U.Ks private healthcare sector is much smaller than the public sector. However, a rise in self-pay elective procedures and introduction of attractive packaged pricing is expected to support the countrys private healthcare sector in the near future.View Market Overview and Research Methodology@PMRs report titled Private Healthcare Market: U.K. Industry Analysis, 2012  2016 and Forecast, 2017  2025 further identifies some of the key trends governing the U.K.s private healthcare market under the influence of multiple factors. Leading private healthcare providers in the country are now offering several fixed packages for various procedures and treatments in an attempt to lure more patients. The focus has shifted toward a more meticulous marketing of medical services to patients. Some of the private companies are using local media and medical scheme membership brochures to reach out to more number of people. Market players are also investing in improving out-patient services, setting up day clinics and sub-acute beds in order to increase their services offerings.Hospital of St. Johns & St. Elizabeth, Care UK, CIRCLE HOLDINGS PLC, BMI Healthcare, Nuffield Health, HCA Management Services, L.P., Ramsay Health Care, Spire Healthcare Group plc., The London Clinic, Aspen Healthcare (A Sub. Of Tenet Healthcare), Bupa Cromwell Hospital, The Huntercombe Group, KIMS Hospital, 3fivetwo Group, London Welbeck Hospital, The Bournemouth Private Clinic Limited, Alliance Medical, King Edward VII's Hospital, The Private Clinic, and Vein Centre Limited are the key players operating in the regions private healthcare market. Currently, Ramsay holds the top position in the market, maintaining around 21.1% share despite the growing competition.As per the report, increasing waiting times for various treatment and procedures at public healthcare centers is prompting patients to opt for private healthcare services. This, in turn, is expected to create lucrative market opportunities for private healthcare organizations during the forecast period.View Report Table of Contents, Figures, and Tables@Additional Excerpts of the Report Include:The demand for private acute care services, private specialist services, and private patient care services is projected to remain higher as compared to other private healthcare services over 2025. By 2017-end, private hospitals that provide acute care services are expected to account for more than 57% value share of the market.Based on end-users, self-pay individuals and NHS referrals are expected to collectively account for a massive market share in terms of revenue. Over the next couple of years, increasing out-of-pocket spending on health care expenses is projected to create further demand for private healthcare services in the country.A sample of this report is available upon request@Persistence Market Research OverviewPersistence 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.ContactPersistence Market ResearchU.S. Sales Office:305 Broadway, 7th FloorNew York City, NY 10007United StatesT: +1-646-568-7751USA - Canada Toll-Free: 800-961-0353Web:Email: sales@persitencemarketreserach.com
Military Antenna Market to Witness an Outstanding Growth by 2025

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Increasing modernization of the military equipment coupled with the boost in legacy system around the world is expected to fuel the demand of military antenna market. Military antennas provide highly accurate tracking, surveillance, ground mapping, warning against aircrafts, weapons, etc. thereby enhancing the security. Apart from all the above mentioned features, military antenna used in the radars also provide missile guidance for accurate target tracking. The rise in border infiltration, terrorism activities, inter country conflicts, and attack prone borders are expected to drive military antenna market in the near future.Get access to full summary @:On the basis of platform, ground platform is expected to dominate the military antenna market as they help in providing real time information related to ground penetration, unexploded tunnels, etc. during the war. However, the market for space based platform is expected to witness significant growth over the forecast period. Based on application, homeland security system is estimated to dominate the global military antenna system market over the forecast period. The advancement in the surveillance system such as 3D drones and multifunctional radars is estimated to have high potential to drive the military antenna market globally.Global Military Antenna Market: DriversA major factor driving the growth of the global military antenna market is the rise in military spending. Moreover, escalation in the need for better border security is expected to upsurge the demand for military antenna market. Moreover, technological mushrooming coupled with the need of modern battle equipment is expected to fuel the betterment of military antenna market during the forecast period. Increasing use of military antenna in armored vehicles, naval vessels, aircraft, etc. speed up the expansion and growth of the global military antenna market.Global Military Antenna Market: RestraintsHigh initial costs coupled with the large spending on R&D activities is expected to hamper the growth of military antenna market. Moreover, economic crisis in the European countries like Germany, Russia, U.K. etc. is expected to restrain the growth of the global military antenna market.Global Military Antenna Market: SegmentationGlobal Military antenna market can be segmented on the basis of platform, product type, frequency, applications, and regions. On the basis of platform, the market can be segmented into airborne, ground, naval, and space. On the basis of product type, the global military antenna market can be segmented into vehicle mount antennas, base station antennas, shipboard antennas, man-pack and portable antennas, and asset tracking antennas. On the basis of frequency, the market can be segmented into High Frequency (HF), Very High Frequency (VHF) and Ultra-High Frequency (UHF). On the basis of applications, global military antenna market can be segmented into homeland security system, UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) and handheld equipment. On the basis of regions, market can be segmented into North America, Asia Pacific (APAC), Europe, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa.TOC of this report is available upon request @Global Military Antenna Market: Region wise OutlookBased on regions, North America is expected to be the most prominent revenue generating region in the global military antenna system market. North America spent nearly US$ 596 Bn., which holds nearly 36% of the entire worlds spending on military, in 2015. However, in the U.S., there is a decline in spending on military by 2.4% in 2015. Asia Pacific is expected to witness significant growth during the forecast period. The military spending in Asia Pacific increased by 5.6% in 2015. Moreover, APAC and China accounted for nearly 50% share in the total military spending which is nearly four times the spending in military by India. Additionally, increasing border disputes in APAC is expected to drive the growth of military antenna market in this region. Latin America is projected to witness sluggish growth due to severe economic crisis.Global Military Antenna Market: Market ParticipantsExamples of some of the prominent players identified in the global military antenna market are as follows: MTI Wireless Edge, Eylex Pty Ltd., Cojot Oy, Antenna Products Corporation, Comrod Communications, Barker and Williamson, Rohde & Schwarz, Lockheed Martin Corporation, Raytheon Company, Terma, Harris Corporation.The research report presents a comprehensive assessment of the market and contains thoughtful insights, facts, historical data, and statistically supported and industry-validated market data. It also contains projections done using a suitable set of assumptions and methodologies. The research report provides analysis and information according to categories such as market segments, geographies, type, machine size and end use.Sample of this report is available upon request @The report is a compilation of first-hand information, qualitative and quantitative assessment by industry analysts, inputs from industry experts and industry participants across the value chain. The report provides an in-depth analysis of parent market trends, macro-economic indicators, and governing factors, along with market attractiveness as per segments. The report also maps the qualitative impact of various factors on market segments and geographies.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Global Tomato Seeds Market 2017 - Limagrain, Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer, Sakata, VoloAgri, Takii, Advanta

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A seed is an embryonic plant enclosed in a protective outer covering. The formation of the seed is part of the process of reproduction in seed plants, the spermatophytes, including the gymnosperm and angiosperm plants.Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the Tomato Seeds in Global market, especially in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East and Africa. This report categorizes the market based on manufacturers, regions, type and application.Request For Sample Report @Market Segment by Manufacturers, this report coversLimagrainMonsantoSyngentaBayerSakataVoloAgriTakiiEast-West SeedAdvantaNamdhari SeedsAsia SeedMahindra AgriGansu DunhuangDongya SeedMarket 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)Access Full Report With TOC @Market Segment by Type, coversLarge Tomato SeedsCherry Tomato SeedsMarket Segment by Applications, can be divided intoFarmlandGreenhouseOthersThere are 15 Chapters to deeply display the global Tomato Seeds market.Chapter 1, to describe Tomato Seeds Introduction, product scope, market overview, market opportunities, market risk, market driving force;Chapter 2, to analyze the top manufacturers of Tomato Seeds, with sales, revenue, and price of Tomato Seeds, 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 Tomato Seeds, 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, Tomato Seeds market forecast, by regions, type and application, with sales and revenue, from 2017 to 2022;Chapter 13, 14 and 15, to describe Tomato Seeds sales channel, distributors, traders, dealers, Research Findings and Conclusion, appendix and data sourceAbout Fior MarketsFior Markets is a leading market intelligence company that sells reports of top publishers in the technology industry.Our extensive research reports cover detailed market assessments that include major technological improvements in the industry. Fior Markets also specializes in analyzing hi-tech systems and current processing systems in its expertise.We have a team of experts that compile precise research reports and actively advise top companies to improve their existing processes. Our experts have extensive experience in the topics that they cover.Contact UsMark StoneSales ManagerPhone: (201) 465-4211Email: sales@fiormarkets.comWeb:Blog:
Global Food Grade Canthaxanthin Market 2017 : Excelvite Sdn. Bhd., Dohler Group, Fmc Corporation, Royal Dsm N.V.

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A market study based on the "Food Grade Canthaxanthin Market" across the globe, recently added to the repository of Market Research, is titled Global Food Grade Canthaxanthin Market 2017. The research report analyses the historical as well as present performance of the worldwide Food Grade Canthaxanthin industry, and makes predictions on the future status of Food Grade Canthaxanthin market on the basis of this analysis.Get Free Sample Copy of Report Here :Top Manufacturers Analysis Of This Research ReportBasfRoyal Dsm N.V.Chr. Hansen A/SFmc CorporationKemin Industries, Inc.Cyanotech CorporationD.D. Williamson & Co., Inc.Allied Biotech CorporationExcelvite Sdn. Bhd.Dohler GroupThe report studies the industry for Food Grade Canthaxanthin across the globe taking the existing industry chain, the import and export statistics in Food Grade Canthaxanthin market & dynamics of demand and supply of Food Grade Canthaxanthin into consideration. The 'Food Grade Canthaxanthin' research study covers each and every aspect of the Food Grade Canthaxanthin market globally, which starts from the definition of the Food Grade Canthaxanthin industry and develops towards Food Grade Canthaxanthin market segmentations. Further, every segment of the Food Grade Canthaxanthin market is classified and analyzed on the basis of product types, application, and the end-use industries of the Food Grade Canthaxanthin market. The geographical segmentation of the Food Grade Canthaxanthin industry has also been covered at length in this report.The competitive landscape of the worldwide market for Food Grade Canthaxanthin is determined by evaluating the various industry participants, production capacity, Food Grade Canthaxanthin market's production chain, and the revenue generated by each manufacturer in the Food Grade Canthaxanthin market worldwide.Enquire Here :The global Food Grade Canthaxanthin market 2017 is also analyzed on the basis of product pricing, Food Grade Canthaxanthin production volume, data regarding demand and Food Grade Canthaxanthin 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 Food Grade Canthaxanthin across the globe.About Us :Worldwide Business 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 Worldwide Business, 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 :Worldwide BusinessUnited States
Wireless Infrastructure Market Analysis- Size, Share, Growth, Forecast, Segment, Application Analysis To 2022

Wireless Infrastructure Market

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Wireless Infrastructure can be defined infrastructure required to facilitate wireless networking. Wireless networking is a method by which homes, telecommunications networks and enterprise (business) installations avoid the costly process of introducing cables into a building, or as a connection between various equipment locations and communicate with each other.Get a Sample of Wireless Infrastructure Market research report from Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the Wireless Infrastructure 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:Ericsson, Nokia (ALU+MOTO), Juniper, Cisco, CommScope, HUBER + SUHNER, CorningMarket 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)Browse full Report with table of contents and data tables For Wireless Infrastructure Market Report @Market Segment by Type, covers:2G/3G, 4G, 5GMarket Segment by Applications, can be divided into:Military Use, Civil UseThere are 15 Chapters to deeply display the global Wireless Infrastructure market.Chapter 1, to describe Wireless Infrastructure Introduction, product scope, market overview, market opportunities, market risk, market driving force;Chapter 2, to analyze the top manufacturers of Wireless Infrastructure, with sales, revenue, and price of Wireless Infrastructure, 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 Wireless Infrastructure, 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, Wireless Infrastructure market forecast, by regions, type and application, with sales and revenue, from 2017 to 2022;Chapter 13, 14 and 15, to describe Wireless Infrastructure sales channel, distributors, traders, dealers, Research Findings and Conclusion, appendix and data sourceCheck for Discount @Some points from TOC:-1 Market Overview1.1 Wireless Infrastructure Introduction1.2 Market Analysis by Type1.2.1 2G/3G1.2.2 4G1.2.3 5G1.3 Market Analysis by Applications1.3.1 Military Use1.3.2 Civil Use1.4 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)ContinuedFor more help Speak to our Experts @No. of Report Pages: 121Price of Report (Single User Licence): $3480GIR 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.+1-888-376-9998 (US)Email- sales@globalinforeports.comWeb-Blogs-
Social Networks in China Leads to Higher Growth Due to Rising Trend of Live Streamed Shows: May 2017 Report

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Social media is becoming increasingly important as a digital megaphone for customers to share their experiences with friends and engage directly with brands. With a prime focus on Chinese market, a new study focusing on the trends in social networks has been broadcasted to the vast portfolio of Market Research Hubs research offerings. The report is titled as Social Networks - China - May 2017 which provides deep insights into the market and consumer trends towards the social networks. Moreover, detailed analysis on the key players active in the market, their competitive strategies, future prospects and growth opportunities.Request Free Sample Report:Chinas online users spend more than 40 % of their time online on social media, a figure that continues to rise rapidly. Chinas social-media users not only are more active than those of any other country but also, in more than 80 percent of all cases, have multiple social-media accounts, primarily with local players (compared with just 39 percent in Japan).At first, the report elaborates an executive summary of the market on social networks and finds that rural areas show potential. As per the key highlights of the study, total Internet users saw a 6.2% increase in 2016 and social networks become news feeds. Marketing on social networks in China also plays an important role. Moreover, Social media, mobile video and mobile search are the top channels for mobile ads in China in 2017. The use of mobile technologies to access social media is also growing rapidly in China. Therefore, consumers are showing a trend to switch off does not mean that marketing on social networks is no longer important. Instead of keeping consumers online, marketing should offer people alternative ways to connect with the real world.Make An Enquiry:The report further finds that for better marketing Variety shows/live shows and lifestyle related content have potential. Live streaming is broadcasting video content in real-time. Its often used to share events, but its starting to mature and diversify in China. There are 344 million users of live streaming by 2016 and 25-29s are core target audience of live-streamed shows. Event marketing works better on males and high earners. High earners are more likely to advertise for brands. Humour is important for engaging the 20-24s.The report analyzes the companies and brands; and finds that presently, Tencent continues to dominate the market, WeChat taking the lead because it is one of the largest standalone messaging apps by monthly active Chinese Users. This has been assessed by the number of monthly active users of WeChat, QQ, Qzone and Sina Weibo. On the other hand, YY Inc. leads live streaming sector but also faces fierce competition.Browse Full Report With TOC:In many ways, e-commerce live streaming shows are simply a new generation of ads: infomercials. But since everything is live, audience members can interact with the influence, who can charm the audience to purchase more.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.comWebsite:Read Industry News At:
Force Gauge Market Countries, Type, Application and Manufacturers Ametek, Shimpo, Sauter Forecast to 2022

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HTF Market Intelligence released a new research report of 124 pages on title 'Global Force Gauge Market by Manufacturers, Countries, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022' with detailed analysis, forecast and strategies. The study covers key regions that includes North & South America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa and important players such as Ametek, Shimpo, Sauter ..................SummaryThis report studies the Force Gauge market, a force gauge (also force gage) is a small measuring instrument used across all industries to measure the force during a push or pull test.Request a sample report @Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the Force Gauge 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 coversAmetekShimpoSauterMecmesinExtechMark-10DillonPCE InstrumentsSundooAllurisMarket 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, coversDigital Force GaugesMechanical Force GaugesMarket Segment by Applications, can be divided intoElectrical IndustryAutomobile Manufacturing IndustryPackaging IndustryOthersBuy this report @There are 15 Chapters to deeply display the global Force Gauge market.Chapter 1, to describe Force Gauge Introduction, product scope, market overview, market opportunities, market risk, market driving force;Chapter 2, to analyze the top manufacturers of Force Gauge, with sales, revenue, and price of Force Gauge, 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 Force Gauge, 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, Force Gauge market forecast, by regions, type and application, with sales and revenue, from 2017 to 2022;Chapter 13, 14 and 15, to describe Force Gauge sales channel, distributors, traders, dealers, Research Findings and Conclusion, appendix and data sourceGet Customization in the Report, Enquire Now @Table of Contents1 Market Overview1.1 Force Gauge Introduction1.2 Market Analysis by Type1.2.1 Digital Force Gauges1.2.2 Mechanical Force Gauges1.3 Market Analysis by Applications1.3.1 Electrical Industry1.3.2 Automobile Manufacturing Industry1.3.3 Packaging Industry1.3.4 Others1.4 Market Analysis by Regions1.4.1 North America (USA, Canada and Mexico)1.4.1.1 USA Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.1.2 Canada Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.1.3 Mexico Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.2 Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy)1.4.2.1 Germany Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.2.2 France Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.2.3 UK Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.2.4 Russia Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.2.5 Italy Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.3 Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia)1.4.3.1 China Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.3.2 Japan Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.3.3 Korea Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.3.4 India Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.3.5 Southeast Asia Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.4 South America, Middle East and Africa1.4.4.1 Brazil Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.4.2 Egypt Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.4.3 Saudi Arabia Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.4.4 South Africa Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.4.5 Nigeria Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.5 Market Dynamics1.5.1 Market Opportunities1.5.2 Market Risk1.5.3 Market Driving Force....ContinuedView Detailed Table of Content @Thanks for reading this article, you can also get individual chapter wise section or region wise report version like North America, Europe or Asia.HTF Market Report is a wholly owned brand of HTF market Intelligence Consulting Private Limited. HTF Market Report global research and market intelligence consulting organization is uniquely positioned to not only identify growth opportunities but to also empower and inspire you to create visionary growth strategies for futures, enabled by our extraordinary depth and breadth of thought leadership, research, tools, events and experience that assist you for making goals into a reality. Our understanding of the interplay between industry convergence, Mega Trends, technologies and market trends provides our clients with new business models and expansion opportunities. We are focused on identifying the Accurate Forecast in every industry we cover so our clients can reap the benefits of being early market entrants and can accomplish their Goals & Objectives.Contact Us:HTF Market Intelligence Consulting Private LimitedUnit No. 429, Parsonage Road Edison, NJNew Jersey USA - 08837sales@htfmarketreport.comPh: +1 (206) 317 1218
EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) Respiratory Medical Device Market Report 2017

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Qyresearchreports include new market research report "EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) Respiratory Medical Device Market Report 2017" to its huge collection of research reports.In this report, the EMEA Respiratory Medical Device market is valued at USD XX million in 2016 and is expected to reach USD XX million by the end of 2022, growing at a CAGR of XX% between 2016 and 2022.Geographically, this report split EMEA into Europe, the Middle East and Africa, With sales (Unit), revenue (Million USD), market share and growth rate of Respiratory Medical Device for these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast)Europe: Germany, France, UK, Russia, Italy and Benelux;Middle East: Saudi Arabia, Israel, UAE and Iran;Africa: South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt and Algeria.EMEA Respiratory Medical Device market competition by top manufacturers/players, with Respiratory Medical Device sales volume (Unit), price (USD/Unit), revenue (Million USD) and market share for each manufacturer/player; the top players includingCareFusion(BD)SchillerCHESTCOSMEDNDDnSpire HealthMGC DiagnosticsMinatoM&BAESRIGanshornMorgan ScientificSikedaRSDQFill the form for an exclusive sample of this report @On the basis of product, this report displays the sales volume (Unit), revenue (Million USD), product price (USD/Unit), market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoPortable Respiratory Medical DeviceComplete Respiratory Medical DeviceOn the basis on the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, sales volume (Unit), market share and growth rate of Respiratory Medical Device for each application, includingHospitalsPhysical Examination CenterPhysician GroupsOther ApplicationsIf you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report as you want.Table of Contents1 Respiratory Medical Device Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Respiratory Medical Device1.2 Classification of Respiratory Medical Device1.2.1 EMEA Respiratory Medical Device Market Size (Sales) Comparison by Type (2012-2022)1.2.2 EMEA Respiratory Medical Device Market Size (Sales) Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 Portable Respiratory Medical Device1.2.4 Complete Respiratory Medical Device1.3 EMEA Respiratory Medical Device Market by Application/End Users1.3.1 EMEA Respiratory Medical Device Sales (Volume) and Market Share Comparison by Application (2012-20221.3.2 Hospitals1.3.3 Physical Examination Center1.3.4 Physician Groups1.3.5 Other Applications1.4 EMEA Respiratory Medical Device Market by Region1.4.1 EMEA Respiratory Medical Device Market Size (Value) Comparison by Region (2012-2022)1.4.2 Europe Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.3 Middle East Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.4 Africa Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.5 EMEA Market Size (Value and Volume) of Respiratory Medical Device (2012-2022)1.5.1 EMEA Respiratory Medical Device Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2022)1.5.2 EMEA Respiratory Medical Device Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2022)Browse Market Research Report @2 EMEA Respiratory Medical Device Competition by Manufacturers/Players/Suppliers, Region, Type and Application2.1 EMEA Respiratory Medical Device Market Competition by Players/Manufacturers2.1.1 EMEA Respiratory Medical Device Sales Volume and Market Share of Major Players (2012-2017)2.1.2 EMEA Respiratory Medical Device Revenue and Share by Players (2012-2017)2.1.3 EMEA Respiratory Medical Device Sale Price by Players (2012-2017)2.2 EMEA Respiratory Medical Device (Volume and Value) by Type/Product Category2.2.1 EMEA Respiratory Medical Device Sales and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)2.2.2 EMEA Respiratory Medical Device Revenue and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)2.2.3 EMEA Respiratory Medical Device Sale Price by Type (2012-2017)2.3 EMEA Respiratory Medical Device (Volume) by Application2.4 EMEA Respiratory Medical Device (Volume and Value) by Region2.4.1 EMEA Respiratory Medical Device Sales and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)2.4.2 EMEA Respiratory Medical Device Revenue and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)2.4.3 EMEA Respiratory Medical Device Sales Price by Region (2012-2017)3 Europe Respiratory Medical Device (Volume, Value and Sales Price), by Players, Countries, Type and Application3.1 Europe Respiratory Medical Device Sales and Value (2012-2017)3.1.1 Europe Respiratory Medical Device Sales Volume and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.1.2 Europe Respiratory Medical Device Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.2 Europe Respiratory Medical Device Sales and Market Share by Type3.3 Europe Respiratory Medical Device Sales and Market Share by Application3.4 Europe Respiratory Medical Device Sales Volume and Value (Revenue) by Countries3.4.1 Europe Respiratory Medical Device Sales Volume by Countries (2012-2017)3.4.2 Europe Respiratory Medical Device Revenue by Countries (2012-2017)3.4.3 Germany Respiratory Medical Device Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.4.4 France Respiratory Medical Device Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.4.5 UK Respiratory Medical Device Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.4.6 Russia Respiratory Medical Device Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.4.7 Italy Respiratory Medical Device Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.4.8 Benelux Respiratory Medical Device Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4 Middle East Respiratory Medical Device (Volume, Value and Sales Price), by Region, Type and Application4.1 Middle East Respiratory Medical Device Sales and Value (2012-2017)4.1.1 Middle East Respiratory Medical Device Sales Volume and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.1.2 Middle East Respiratory Medical Device Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.2 Middle East Respiratory Medical Device Sales and Market Share by Type4.3 Middle East Respiratory Medical Device Sales and Market Share by Application4.4 Middle East Respiratory Medical Device Sales Volume and Value (Revenue) by Countries4.4.1 Middle East Respiratory Medical Device Sales Volume by Countries (2012-2017)4.4.2 Middle East Respiratory Medical Device Revenue by Countries (2012-2017)4.4.3 Saudi Arabia Respiratory Medical Device Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.4.4 Israel Respiratory Medical Device Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.4.5 UAE Respiratory Medical Device Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.4.6 Iran Respiratory Medical Device Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)5 Africa Respiratory Medical Device (Volume, Value and Sales Price) by Players, Countries, Type and Application5.1 Africa Respiratory Medical Device Sales and Value (2012-2017)5.1.1 Africa Respiratory Medical Device Sales Volume and Growth Rate (2012-2017)5.1.2 Africa Respiratory Medical Device Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)5.2 Africa Respiratory Medical Device Sales and Market Share by Type5.3 Africa Respiratory Medical Device Sales and Market Share by Application5.4 Africa Respiratory Medical Device Sales Volume and Value (Revenue) by Countries5.4.1 Africa Respiratory Medical Device Sales Volume by Countries (2012-2017)5.4.2 Africa Respiratory Medical Device Revenue by Countries (2012-2017)5.4.3 South Africa Respiratory Medical Device Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)5.4.4 Nigeria Respiratory Medical Device Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)5.4.5 Egypt Respiratory Medical Device Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)5.4.6 Algeria Respiratory Medical Device Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)6 EMEA Respiratory Medical Device Manufacturers/Players Profiles and Sales Data6.1 CareFusion(BD)6.1.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors6.1.2 Respiratory Medical Device Product Type, Application and Specification6.1.2.1 Product A6.1.2.2 Product B6.1.3 CareFusion(BD) Respiratory Medical Device Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)6.1.4 Main Business/Business Overview6.2 Schiller6.2.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors6.2.2 Respiratory Medical Device Product Type, Application and Specification6.2.2.1 Product A6.2.2.2 Product B6.2.3 Schiller Respiratory Medical Device Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)6.2.4 Main Business/Business Overview6.3 CHEST6.3.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors6.3.2 Respiratory Medical Device Product Type, Application and Specification6.3.2.1 Product A6.3.2.2 Product B6.3.3 CHEST Respiratory Medical Device Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)6.3.4 Main Business/Business OverviewQYReseachReports.com delivers the latest strategic market intelligence to build a successful business footprint in China. Our syndicated and customized research reports provide companies with vital background information of the market and in-depth analysis on the Chinese trade and investment framework, which directly affects their business operations. Reports from QYReseachReports.com feature valuable recommendations on how to navigate in the extremely unpredictable yet highly attractive Chinese market.1820 AvenueM Suite #1047Brooklyn, NY 11230United States
High & Average Risk NIPT Test Market: United States Growth Potential & Demand Forecast 2017  2023

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Complete Details Visit :DPI Research Published a New Report"United States Non-Invasive Prenatal Testing(NIPT) Market Insights, Opportunity, Analysis, Growth Potential & Demand Forecast 2017  2023"United States Non-Invasive Prenatal Testing(NIPT) Market is likely to reach nearly USD 1 Billion by the year end of 2023.Market growth can be attributed to factors such as rapid penetration of high and average risk NIPT test, high incidence rate of babies born with down syndrome, no risk of miscarriage with NIPT, shifting trend towards child bearing at advanced maternal age (35 years or older), launch of new and advanced NIPT products. With increased patient access to NIPT test, United States NIPT test market is anticipated to have a positive outlook in the coming years.The research report titled United States Non-Invasive Prenatal Testing(NIPT) Market Insights, Opportunity, Analysis, Growth Potential & Demand Forecast 2017  2023 examines the market, competitive landscape and trends of the United States NIPT Test Market. The study provides an indepth analysis of the actual and potential NIPT test market.The report provides a decisive view on the NIPT Test volume and market in United States. It also covers reimbursement pattern and offers a clear view of the regulatory landscape in the United States NIPT Test Market. Additionally, the report includes insights into the NIPT implementation in the high-income countries. Key trends in terms of collaboration, partnership, merger & acquisition, venture capital investment distribution and licensing agreement are analyzed with details. The report also explores detailed description of growth drivers and inhibitors of the United States NIPT Test Market.The report concludes with the profiles of major players in the United States NIPT Test Market. The key market players are evaluated on various parameters such as company overview, NIPT test portfolio, NIPT test analysis with volume and market revenue and latest development and trends of the NIPT Test Market.Key Topics Covered in the Report United States Actual NIPT Test Volume & Market Revenue (2015 - 2023) United States Potential NIPT Test Volume & Market Revenue (2015 - 2023) United States Average Risk Actual NIPT Test Volume & Market Revenue (2015 - 2023) United States Average Risk Potential NIPT Test Volume & Market Revenue (2015 - 2023) United States High Risk Actual NIPT Test Volume & Market Revenue (2015 - 2023) United States High Risk Potential NIPT Test Volume & Market Revenue (2015 - 2023) United States NIPT Test Market - Reimbursement & Regulation System NIPT Test Implementation in HighIncome Countries United States NIPT Test Market - Comparative Test Analysis United States NIPT Test Market  Major Deal Types Key Companies Analysis Key Drivers and Inhibitors of the United States NIPT Test MarketKey Companies Covered in the Report are as follows: Sequenom Laboratories (LabCorp) Ariosa Diagnostics (Roche) Illumina Natera Quest DiagnosticsContact DetailsMaria RaiSales ManagerSales@dpiresearch.com+91 - 7289949987DPI Research is a business solutions firm which offer bespoke market research reports, custom research solutions and consulting across multi geographies and industry verticals. We deliver wide range of cutting-edge research solutions that helps organizations in making better decisions of the business to business needs.DPI Research provides high standard of business research reports to the clients across industry verticals comprising Life Sciences, Information Technology, Telecom & Internet, Food Beverages & Agriculture, Travel & Tourism, Consumer Goods & Retail, Education and Social Sciences. We are committed to use advanced analytical tools and methodologies to help clients with crucial industry information for decision making.DPI Research approaches for the business research led by a team of dynamic industry experts. DPI Research provides a real insight for effective decisions to help business with the help of current source and accurate data available in the market. DPI Research reach across the globe with global standards from established markets in the North America and Europe to emerging markets in South America, Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa to provide the best business solutions.DPI ResearchVasant KunjNew Delhi-110070Maria Rai
Wireless Infrastructure Market 2022: by Manufacturers are Ericsson, Nokia (ALU+MOTO), Juniper, Cisco

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Market Size Forecasters released a new research report of 121 pages on title Global Wireless Infrastructure Market by Manufacturers, Countries, Type and Application, forecast to 2022 with detailed analysis, forecast and strategies. The study covers important industry Manufacturers such as including covering are Ericsson, Nokia (ALU+MOTO), Juniper, CiscoWireless Infrastructure can be defined infrastructure required to facilitate wireless networking. Wireless networking is a method by which homes, telecommunications networks and enterprise (business) installations avoid the costly process of introducing cables into a building, or as a connection between various equipment locations and communicate with each other.Request a sample copy of Wireless Infrastructure Market Research Report @Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the Wireless Infrastructure 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 Ericsson, Nokia (ALU+MOTO), Juniper, Cisco, CommScopeMarket 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 2G/3G, 4G, 5GMarket Segment by Applications, can be divided into Military Use, Civil UseRequest Discount for Global Wireless Infrastructure Market Research Report @There are 15 Chapters to deeply display the global Wireless Infrastructure market.Chapter 1, to describe Wireless Infrastructure Introduction, product scope, market overview, market opportunities, market risk, market driving force;Chapter 2, to analyze the top manufacturers of Wireless Infrastructure, with sales, revenue, and price of Wireless Infrastructure, 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 Wireless Infrastructure, 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, Wireless Infrastructure market forecast, by regions, type and application, with sales and revenue, from 2017 to 2022;Chapter 13, 14 and 15, to describe Wireless Infrastructure sales channel, distributors, traders, dealers, Research Findings and Conclusion, appendix and data sourceBrowse full table of contents and data tables For Global Wireless Infrastructure Market Report @Related Reports: -Smart Home M2M Market in UK 2017-2021A smart home comprises of an internal network, home automation, and intelligent control. It is equipped with advanced and automated digital devices, home appliances, and equipment that are interconnected to each other. This facilitates sophisticated monitoring and control over the building's functions. It performs three major actions -remote status checks, remote information, and remote control -to implement any action from a remote location.MarketSizeForecasters.com, a Skyline Market Research LLP brand, is an online aggregator of market research reports. MarketSizeForecasters.com offers a comprehensive collection of full length reports on global and regional markets in 100+ industry verticals. We have partnered with some of the leading business and market research publishing houses and regularly update our online library to offer wide range of reports to our customers.Market size forecastersThe Green Suite #4594,Dover, DE 19901United StatesPhone: 1-201-355-0868US Toll Free: 1-866-764-2150Email: sales@marketsizeforecasters.comWebsite:News:
Fly Ash and Ceramic Microsphere Market Countries, Type, Application and Manufacturers Jiahui, Hebei Tongxing, Hebei Celia Minerals Forecast to 2022

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HTF Market Intelligence released a new research report of 117 pages on title 'Global Fly Ash and Ceramic Microsphere Market by Manufacturers, Countries, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022' with detailed analysis, forecast and strategies. The study covers key regions that includes North & South America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa and important players such as Jiahui, Hebei Tongxing, Hebei Celia Minerals..................SummaryThis report studies the Fly Ash and Ceramic Microsphere market, which is a lightweight, inert, hollow sphere made largely of silica and alumina and filled with air or inert gas, typically produced as a byproduct of coal combustion at thermal power plants. The color of cenospheres varies from grey (or gray) to almost white, with a typical size between 5 and 500 microns.Request a sample report @Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the Fly Ash and Ceramic Microsphere 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 coversZhengzhou Hollowlite MaterialsShijiazhuang Horse Building MaterialsShanghai YisongJiahuiHebei TongxingHebei Celia MineralsXingtai QianjiaHebei HongyeYanbian YunmingCenoStarCeno TechnologiesCenosphere India PvtHongtaiOmya FilliteAsh TechReslabDurgesh MerchandiseWolkem Omega Minerals IndiaEnvirospheresMarket 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, coversParticle Size20 MeshParticle Size: 20-30 Mesh (Ex. 30 Mesh)Particle Size: 30-40 MeshParticle Size40 MeshMarket Segment by Applications, can be divided intoPetroleum IndustryCeramic IndustryConstruction IndustryOthersBuy this report @There are 15 Chapters to deeply display the global Fly Ash and Ceramic Microsphere market.Chapter 1, to describe Fly Ash and Ceramic Microsphere Introduction, product scope, market overview, market opportunities, market risk, market driving force;Chapter 2, to analyze the top manufacturers of Fly Ash and Ceramic Microsphere, with sales, revenue, and price of Fly Ash and Ceramic Microsphere, 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 Fly Ash and Ceramic Microsphere, 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, Fly Ash and Ceramic Microsphere market forecast, by regions, type and application, with sales and revenue, from 2017 to 2022;Chapter 13, 14 and 15, to describe Fly Ash and Ceramic Microsphere sales channel, distributors, traders, dealers, Research Findings and Conclusion, appendix and data sourceGet Customization in the Report, Enquire Now @Table of Contents1 Market Overview1.1 Fly Ash and Ceramic Microsphere Introduction1.2 Market Analysis by Type1.2.1 Particle Size20 Mesh1.2.2 Particle Size: 20-30 Mesh (Ex. 30 Mesh)1.2.3 Particle Size: 30-40 Mesh1.2.4 Particle Size40 Mesh1.3 Market Analysis by Applications1.3.1 Petroleum Industry1.3.2 Ceramic Industry1.3.3 Construction Industry1.3.4 Others1.4 Market Analysis by Regions1.4.1 North America (USA, Canada and Mexico)1.4.1.1 USA Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.1.2 Canada Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.1.3 Mexico Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.2 Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy)1.4.2.1 Germany Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.2.2 France Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.2.3 UK Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.2.4 Russia Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.2.5 Italy Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.3 Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia)1.4.3.1 China Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.3.2 Japan Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.3.3 Korea Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.3.4 India Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.3.5 Southeast Asia Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.4 South America, Middle East and Africa1.4.4.1 Brazil Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.4.2 Egypt Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.4.3 Saudi Arabia Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.4.4 South Africa Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.4.5 Nigeria Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.5 Market Dynamics1.5.1 Market Opportunities1.5.2 Market Risk1.5.3 Market Driving Force....ContinuedView Detailed Table of Content @Thanks for reading this article, you can also get individual chapter wise section or region wise report version like North America, Europe or Asia.HTF Market Report is a wholly owned brand of HTF market Intelligence Consulting Private Limited. HTF Market Report global research and market intelligence consulting organization is uniquely positioned to not only identify growth opportunities but to also empower and inspire you to create visionary growth strategies for futures, enabled by our extraordinary depth and breadth of thought leadership, research, tools, events and experience that assist you for making goals into a reality. Our understanding of the interplay between industry convergence, Mega Trends, technologies and market trends provides our clients with new business models and expansion opportunities. We are focused on identifying the Accurate Forecast in every industry we cover so our clients can reap the benefits of being early market entrants and can accomplish their Goals & Objectives.Contact Us:HTF Market Intelligence Consulting Private LimitedUnit No. 429, Parsonage Road Edison, NJNew Jersey USA - 08837sales@htfmarketreport.comPh: +1 (206) 317 1218
Conversion Talent keeps growing fast and wins 25 big clients since the beginning of the year

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Brussels, 31/05/2017Conversion Talent, Belgiums number one in digital recruitment & CX consultancy, proudly announced that its renowned client portfolio now includes big companies like Belfius, BNP Paribas Fortis, ING, KBC, Orange, Telenet and many other market leaders in Belgium. Conversion Talent already won 25 new international clients since the beginning of this year. It has been a very successful first semester for our company, says Jeroen Van Ermen, Managing Partner of Conversion Talent. To keep offering the best service, also for all our new clients, we increased our team by 12 experts and we opened a new office in Madrid to accelerate our growth. We were able to place many consultants who are now working for us at Belgium's top industry leaders in retail, banking, insurance, utilities and automotive.Conversion Talent claims to make the digital transformation happen.  People make it happen. By putting people first, companies are able to transform faster. says Jeroen.We are proud that companies we work with are notably transforming faster, continues Mathias Lamiroy, Managing Partner of Conversion Talent, Take for example Carrefour who is opening 30 Carrefour Drive in 2 months. Or check the transformation plans of the partners (Belfius, KBC, BNPPF, ING, Proximus, Orange, Telenet) of the Belgian Mobile ID, who launched its digital ID last week. Its exciting times with many opportunities, for both, the employers and the digital talented people to change the way we communicate and do business.About Conversion TalentConversion Talent offers digital recruitment, consultancy and execution solutions to drive digital transformation for leading brands in Europe. The Belgian founded company helps in building digital human-centric organisations and delivers sustainable customer experience (CX) solutions in a lean, agile and fast way with a team of 65 consultants located in 4 hubs in Belgium and Spain.Contact:Jeroen van Ermen  Managing PartnerConversion TalentKiekenstraat 1B3000 LeuvenMobiel: +32 468 32 75 91E-Mail: jeroen@conversiontalent.euWeb:
Global Cocoa Powder Sales Market 2017 - ADM, Cargill, Bunge, Barry Callebaut, Plot Ghana, Dutch Cocoa, Indcresa

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Cocoa Powder 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.In this report, the global Cocoa Powder 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.Download Sample Report @Geographically, this report split global into several key Regions, with sales (K MT), revenue (Million USD), market share and growth rate of Cocoa Powder for these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), coveringUnited StatesChinaEuropeJapanSoutheast AsiaIndiaGlobal Cocoa Powder market competition by top manufacturers/players, with Cocoa Powder sales volume, Price (USD/MT), revenue (Million USD) and market share for each manufacturer/player; the top players includingADMCargillBungeBarry CallebautPlot GhanaDutch CocoaCocoa Processing Company LimitedIndcresaBlommerJB Foods LimitedAccess Full Report With TOC @On the basis of product, this report displays the sales volume (K MT), revenue (Million USD), product price (USD/MT), market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoNatural Cocoa PowderAlkalized Cocoa PowderOn the basis on the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, sales volume, market share and growth rate of Cocoa Powder for each application, includingChocolateBeverageDessertsIf you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report as you want.Fior Markets is a leading market intelligence company that sells reports of top publishers in the technology industry.Our extensive research reports cover detailed market assessments that include major technological improvements in the industry. Fior Markets also specializes in analyzing hi-tech systems and current processing systems in its expertise.We have a team of experts that compile precise research reports and actively advise top companies to improve their existing processes. Our experts have extensive experience in the topics that they cover.Contact UsMark StoneSales ManagerPhone: (201) 465-4211Email: sales@fiormarkets.comWeb:Blog:
Renewable Energy Policy FiT Market Revenue, Opportunity, Segment and Key Trends 2017 - 2025

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Global Renewable Energy Policy FiT Market: OverviewTo reduce the dependency on fossil fuel, emphasis is laid upon using renewable energy. In order to promote renewable energy, governments across the world are setting mandatory renewable energy targets. It has become compulsory for power producers to produce certain proportion of the total electricity from renewable energy sources. Over 150 countries around the world have adopted one or the other renewable energy targets. Feed-in tariff (FiT) is one such policy. This policy is a performance-based incentive that promotes rapid deployment of renewable energy technologies. Economic growth and job creations are expected to receive a major boost through well-designed feed-in tariff policies.In the report, TMR Research presents a thorough analysis of drivers and restrictions in the global renewable energy policy FiT market. It also offers insight to the various segments and regions of the market.Request a Brochure of the Report @Global Renewable Energy Policy FiT Market: Key TrendsThe adoption of renewable energy technology is receiving impetus from the growing need to decrease ones dependence on coal and other fossil fuels, concerns over global warming, and an increasing stress on the reduction of air pollution. In addition, conventional power generation sources are much dearer when compared with renewable energy sources, thereby aiding the demand for renewable energy technology. By encouraging the use of renewable energy sources, the importance given to renewable energy policy FiT has increased, thereby driving the overall market.In terms of renewable energy installation, wind energy is the chief contributor to the global market and is applied extensively. Solar, bio energy, and geothermal are the next most widely used renewable energy sources.Request for TOC of the Report @Solar energy is considered to be a promising technology in the near future and is broadly being adopted worldwide. In 2015, China became the major installer of solar photovoltaics (PV), and in the following year, the U.S. and Brazil adopted a large additional capacity of geothermal and bio energy technology.Global Renewable Energy Policy FiT Market: Regional AnalysisGeographically, the global renewable energy policy FiT analysis market can be segmented into North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, and Rest of the World. North America has held a significant market share and is expected to continue its positive trajectory in the forecast period as well. The renewable energy policy FiT market is considerably gaining momentum due to well-designed feed-in tariff policies, especially in regions such as North America and Europe. The U.S. and few major countries of the European Union, including Germany and France, have rigid mandates for renewable energy technology adoption. Currently, there are seven U.S. states such as California and Washington that mandate feed-in tariffs.Asia Pacific is also significantly contributing to the growth of the market. Developing economies such as China, India, and Japan are keen on meeting renewable energy targets. There is enough importance given to reduce carbon emissions and tax credit, incentives such as feed-in tariff, and net metering, among others are provided by governments to boost renewable energy technology adoption. This is likely to boost the APAC market.Read Complete Report @Global Renewable Energy Policy FiT Market: Key PlayersThe report profiles key players in the global renewable energy policy FiT market based on various attributes such as company overview, business strategies, recent development, and financial overview. Borea Construction ULC, First Solar, Inc, Hanwha Q Cells GmbH, Areva, Black & Veatch Holding, Gamesa Corporation, JUWI AG., M.A. Mortenson Company, Mannvit, Martifier Solar, Ormat Technologies Inc., Prenecon S.A., Sunedison Inc., AMEC Foster Wheeler PLC, and Suzlon Energy are some of the leading organizations operating in the global renewable energy policy FiT 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
Drone-powered Business Solutions Market - Detailed Analysis and Forecast by 2025

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Global Drone-powered Business Solutions Market: OverviewSo far, drones have largely been used for enhancing warfare capabilities and in video and photography, but there are several other applications of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technology that are underway. From agriculture to internet access, drones have the potential to redefine the ways humans operate.UAV powered business solutions are gaining traction across a spectrum of industry verticals that require high-quality information combined with mobility. This is because UAV-enabled commercial solutions have the ability to address the issues faced by several industries historically that are related to managing assets spread over large areas such as utilities, roadways, railway, and infrastructure.Request a Brochure of the Report @The global drone-powered business solutions market can be divided on the basis of application, end-use, and region.The report analyzes the global drone-powered business solutions market in a ground-up manner providing valuable insights about its market dynamics, technological developments, geographical outlook, and competitive landscape. Comprising an extensive research phase, which includes receiving information from paid databases, press releases, white papers, and journals the report presents the market attractiveness until the end of the forecast period in 2025.Global Drone-powered Business Solutions Market: Drivers and RestraintsThe incessant development in drone technology along with surging investments by prominent players is among the primary factors driving the drone-powered business solutions market. The escalating demand for drone-based growth solutions across various industries, development of legislation and regulatory framework for UAVs, and overall advancement in the commercial drone industry are favoring the growth of this market. Furthermore, the rising demand for improved data processing and data accessibility capabilities in businesses along with increasing need for enhanced safety and cost-effective solutions is augmenting the growth of this market.Request for TOC of the Report @However, the growth of this market is challenged due to certain factors. High costs involved in drone maintenance and the complexities involved in their repairs is restraining the markets growth. The limitations pertaining to the short battery life of drone and stringent compliance requirements are further slowing the markets growth. Moreover, lack of trained personnel for operating drone and air traffic management issues are limiting the use of drones for business needs.Global Drone-powered Business Solutions Market: Regional OutlookNorth America is expected to be the leader in the drone-powered business solutions market in the coming years. The rising demand for drones and their use for generating data across a spectrum of industries, typically in the U.S. are driving this regional market.Europe is expected to exhibit a profound growth in this market in the coming years. The European Commission (EC) is increasing efforts to standardize unmanned aircraft safety (UAS) rules and has also proposed all UAVs to integrate into the EU aviation safety architecture.Global Drone-powered Business Solutions Market: Competitive OutlookIn matters of competition, some of the leading players in the global drone-powered business solutions market include 3D Robotics, Phoenix Drone Services LLC, senseFly Ltd., DroneDeploy, PrecisionHawk, and Pix4D. Some other players in this market include Aerobo, Eagel-Eye Drone Service, Airware Inc., Cyberhawk Innovations Ltd., Skylark Drones, and FlyWorx. UAV service providers worldwide are focused on widening their commercial application base, which includes developing innovative technologies and providing UAV training programs to gain a competitive edge.Read Complete Report @The report profiles these players for their distinguishing attributes of recent developments, business strategies, competitive position, and financial standing. Also, the report throws light on the growth trajectory that key players in this market are expected to exhibit.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 Vertical Inline Pumps Market 2017- Grundfos, Rotech Pumps & Systems, Xylem, Pentair, Sulzer

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The Vertical Inline Pump Market 2017 examines the performance of the Vertical Inline Pump market, enclosing an in-depth judgment of the Vertical Inline Pump market state and the competitive landscape globally. This report analyzes the potential of Vertical Inline Pump market in the present as well as the future prospects from various angles in detail.The Global Vertical Inline Pump Market 2017 report includes Vertical Inline Pump industry volume, market Share, market Trends, Vertical Inline Pump Growth aspects, a wide range of applications, Utilization ratio, Supply and demand analysis, manufacturing capacity, Vertical Inline Pump Price during the Forecast period from 2017 to 2022.To Get Sample Report Click Here:Manufacturers Analysis and Top Sellers of Global Vertical Inline Pump Market 2017:1 Grundfos2 Rotech Pumps & Systems3 Xylem4 Pentair5 Sulzer6 MP-GPS7 RuhrpumpenVertical Inline Pump Market Analysis: By ProductVertical Inline Pump Market Analysis: By ApplicationAt the beginning, the report covers the top Vertical Inline Pump manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on topographical regions.Further, the Vertical Inline Pump report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Vertical Inline Pump industry, Vertical Inline Pump industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. Vertical Inline Pump Market development scope and various business strategies are also mentioned in this report.To Buy Complete Report Click Here:The Vertical Inline Pump research report includes the products that are currently in demand and available in the market along with their cost breakup, manufacturing volume, import/export scheme and contribution to the Vertical Inline Pump market revenue worldwide.Finally, Vertical Inline Pump market report gives you details about the market research findings and conclusion which helps you to develop profitable market strategies to gain competitive advantage.QY Research is the terminal where all industrial, commercial and profitmaking venture will get the best research reports of the market in all sectors like automotive, electronics, pharmaceuticals and healthcare, food and beverages etc. We provide you the important and necessary information to identify and analyze the need of market and the market size.QY Market Research is the terminal where all industrial, commercial and profitmaking venture will get the best research reports of the market in all sectors like automotive, electronics, pharmaceuticals and healthcare, food and beverages etc. We provide you the important and necessary information to identify and analyze the need of market and the market size.Read more-S no. 51/14 First Floor, Office Number 4, Vishwa Arcade, Near Navale Lawns, Pune, Maharashtra, India 411041Telephone Numbers:+1(857)2390696+91 9130855334Email ID: inquiry@market.bizBrowse Latest Market News-
Quality Management Software Market Analysis, Development, Growth and Demand Forecast to 2025

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In order to improve operational visibility and productivity of the quality assurance process, service and product driven organizations require quality management software. The quality management software offers a variety of functions such as document control, nonconformance, calibration, change management, and complaint handling, among others, making it an indispensable utility for an organizations overall quality control.On the basis of application, the market can be segmented into consumer goods and retail, IT and telecom, defense and aerospace, manufacturing, transportation and logistics, healthcare, and others. Cloud and on-premise are the segments based on deployment in the market. Based on solution, the market is can be further classified into non-conformances / corrective & preventative, audit management, supplier quality management, document control, calibration management, complaint handling, change management, employee training, and other.Request a Brochure of the Report @In the report, TMR Research presents a thorough analysis of drivers and restrictions in the global quality management software market. It also provides insight to the various segments and regions of the market.Global Quality Management Software Market: Trends and ProspectsGlobalization of marketplaces, the growing importance of standards and regulations compliance, increased concentration of organizations on meeting customer demands and improving the efficiency of businesses, and the growing demand for cloud-based QMS solutions due to implied accessibility and scalability are the major factors affecting the global quality management software market in a favorable way.The manufacturing and transportation and logistics segment account for a large market share, and is expected to lead the market in the coming years as well. The demand is always constant from these sectors due to the strong demand for quality management software owing to the stringent regulations as well as the complex processes and integrated business systems.Request for TOC of the Report @Currently, the on-premise deployment segment is the key contributor to the market share, however, in the coming years the demand for cloud-based deployment is expected increase as more and more companies are moving to cloud.The non-conformance/ corrective & preventive and document control solution segment is expected to lead the market in the forecast period. Large organizations have to mandatory maintain quality adherence in these processes, thereby increasing the demand growth.Owing to the growing adoption of standard complaint handling processes and tools, the complaint handling segment is projected to further grow to become the market leader over the said period.Global Quality Management Software Market: Regional AnalysisThe global quality management software market can be geographically segmented into Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia Pacific, and the Middle East & Africa. North America and Europe are expected to be the key contributors to the market, and are projected to dominate the market over the forecast period. Early adoption of software and implementation of international standards by industries are the factors supplementing the growth of the market in this region.Read Complete Report @Asia Pacific is another promising region exhibiting lucrative opportunities for the quality management software market. The reasons for the fast development in this region include the growing awareness about standard compliance, availability of quality management software and presence of small and medium enterprises. Plus, emerging economies such as China and India are expected to fuel the growth of the market.Global Quality Management Software Market: Key PlayersThe report profiles key players operating in the global quality management software market based on various attributes such as financial overview, business strategies, company overview, and recent developments. Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Co., PSC Biotech Corp., Sparta Systems, Inc., SAP SE, Parasoft Corporation, MasterControl, Inc., Siemens AG, Aras Corporation, Autodesk Inc., Dassault Systemes SE, Arena Solutions Inc., Oracle Corporation, and Microsoft Corporation are some of the prominent players 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
Global Aircraft Cabin Lighting Market to reach $2,033 Million by 2022.

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Aircraft Cabin Lighting Market Report, Published by Allied Market Research, forecasts that the global market is estimated to reach $2,033 million by 2022, registering a CAGR of 5.3% from 2016 to 2022. In 2015, the wall, floor, and ceiling lights dominated the global aircraft cabin lighting market, in terms of revenue. North America is expected to be the leading contributor to the global market revenue during the forecast period.Access Full Summary at:The installation of aircraft cabin lighting systems is enhanced, owing to increase in air travel. Airline operators are replacing old traditional lights with LED lights to reduce aircraft weight, reduce fuel cost and increase in efficiency. Traditional lighting equipment consumes more power, thereby increasing the overall operational cost.The global aircraft cabin lighting market is driven by factors such as increase in air travel, growth in use of energy-efficient lighting systems, rise in demand for retrofit lighting systems, upsurge in competition among existing aircraft operators, increase in focus on enhancing travel experience for passengers, and high demand for aftermarket and maintenance of aircraft. However, high costs hamper the market growth. Furthermore, growth in demand for air travel across emerging countries, such as Asia-Pacific and LAMEA, with heavy government investments is expected to present lucrative opportunities for the aircraft cabin lighting market growth.Get a PDF Brochure of this report:The wall, floor, and ceiling lighting systems accounted for major market share in 2015, generating $855 million by 2022, registering a CAGR of 6.1%, owing to availability of innovative and energy-efficient lighting systems. Technological advancements in LED and organic LED lighting systems further drive the adoption of these lighting systems. The wall, floor, and ceiling lighting systems market is expected to generate $855 million by 2022, registering a CAGR of 6.1%.The retrofit lighting system market accounted for the highest share in the global aircraft cabin lighting market in 2015. Retrofit lighting, increases energy savings, improves safety, and offers increased productivity while reduces operation & maintenance costs, decreases heat emission of LEDs, and reduces light pollution.The aircraft cabin lighting system is installed in aircraft such as wide-body aircrafts, narrow-body aircrafts, very large aircrafts, and regional jets. In 2015, wide-body aircrafts accounted for the highest share in the global aircraft cabin lighting market, and is estimated to reach $808 million by 2022, registering a CAGR of 5.2%. The increase in air traffic in emerging economies of Asia-Pacific and LAMEA drives the wide-body aircraft market. The growth in usage of energy efficient lights in aircraft and high maintenance of the aircraft supplement the growth of wide-body aircrafts. The innovation in design & technology by key players provides the wide-body aircraft market an opportunity to strengthen their market position.North America generated the highest revenue in the global aircraft cabin lighting market in 2015, accounting for $500 million, and is projected to reach $676 million by 2022, registering a CAGR of 4.5% during the forecast period. This is attributed to increase in air traffic and rise in competition among existing aircraft operators and increase in inflow of investment in the defense sector and technological advancements.Key Findings of the Aircraft Cabin Lighting Market :In 2015, wall, floor, and ceiling lighting systems accounted for the major share in the global market, in terms of revenue, and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 6.1% during the forecast period.The retrofit lighting system accounted for the highest share of around 56% in 2015.In 2015, North America generated the highest revenue, accounting for around 35% of the global market.Asia-Pacific aircraft cabin lighting market is expected to grow at the highest CAGR of 6.6%.The renowned companies profiled in the report include Diehl Aerospace GmbH, STG Aerospace Ltd, United Technologies Corporation, B/E Aerospace, Inc, Astronics Corporation, Zodiac Aerospace, Honeywell International Inc., Soderberg Manufacturing Company Inc., Aveo Engineering Group, and Cobham PLC. These companies have consistently launched new products and introduced novel technologies to cater to the requirements of consumers. A significant increase in inflow of investments was observed for R&D activities among private and public organizations to facilitate product innovation and develop customized solutions.Allied Market Research (AMR) is a full-service market research and business-consulting wing of Allied Analytics LLP based in Portland, Oregon. Allied Market Research provides global enterprises as well as medium and small businesses with unmatched quality of "Market Research Reports" and "Business Intelligence Solutions". AMR has a targeted view to provide business insights and consulting to assist its clients to make strategic business decisions and achieve sustainable growth in their respective market domain.Contact:Pune ( India )Office No.102D & E,2nd Floor,A-3 Building E space IT park ,Pune Nagar Road,Pune 411014.Tel: +91 20 66346060help@alliedmarketresearch.com
Global Sustainable Palm Oil Market 2017- Kulim Berhad, United Plantation Berhad , New Britain Palm Oil Limited, IOI Corporation Berhad

Global Sustainable Palm Oil Market 2017

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The Global Sustainable Palm Oil Market 2017 examines the performance of the Sustainable Palm Oil market. It encloses an in-depth judgment of the Sustainable Palm Oil market state and the competitive landscape globally. This report analyzes the potential of Sustainable Palm Oil market in the present and the future prospects from various angles in detail.The Global Sustainable Palm Oil Market 2017 report includes Sustainable Palm Oil industry volume, market Share, market Trends, Sustainable Palm Oil Growth aspects. A wide range of applications, Utilization ratio, Supply and demand analysis are also consist in the report.It shows manufacturing capacity, Sustainable Palm Oil Price during the Forecast period from 2017 to 2022.To Get Sample Report Click Here:Manufacturers Analysis and Top Sellers of Global Sustainable Palm Oil Market 2017:1 Sime Darby Plantation Sendirian Berhad2 Golden Agri-Resources Limited3 Kulim Berhad4 United Plantation Berhad5 New Britain Palm Oil Limited6 IOI Corporation Berhad7 Cargill8 SIPEF Group Belgium9 Wilmer International Limited10 Kuala Lumpur Kepong BerhadSustainable Palm Oil Market Analysis: By ProductPalm Kernel OilFractional Palm OilRed Palm OilWhite Palm OilSustainable Palm Oil Market Analysis: By ApplicationFoodPet FoodSoap and DetergentsCosmeticsAt the beginning, the report covers the top Sustainable Palm Oil manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on topographical regions.Further, the Sustainable Palm Oil report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Sustainable Palm Oil industry, Sustainable Palm Oil industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. Sustainable Palm Oil Market development scope and various business strategies are also mentioned in this report.To Buy Complete Report Click Here:The Sustainable Palm Oil research report includes the products that are currently in demand and available in the market along with their cost breakup, manufacturing volume, import/export scheme and contribution to the Sustainable Palm Oil market revenue worldwide.Finally, Sustainable Palm Oil market report gives you details about the market research findings and conclusion which helps you to develop profitable market strategies to gain competitive advantage.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 Sodium Bicarbonate Market Research Report 2017 - Solvay, Church & Dwight, Natural Soda, Novacarb, Tata Chemicals, Yuhua Chemical

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Geographically, this report is segmented into several key Regions, with production, consumption, revenue (million USD), market share and growth rate of Sodium Bicarbonate in these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), coveringNorth AmericaEuropeChinaJapanSoutheast AsiaIndiaGlobal Sodium Bicarbonate market competition by top manufacturers, with production, price, revenue (value) and market share for each manufacturer; the top players includingSolvayChurch & DwightNatural SodaNovacarbTata ChemicalsFMC CorporationNatrium ProductsTosoh CorporationAsahiInner Mongolia YuanxingYuhua ChemicalOn the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoTechnicalGradeMedicalGradeFood GradeTo Get a Free Sample Copy of this Report Visit @On 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 Sodium Bicarbonate for each application, includingFeed IndustryFood IndustryPharmaceutical IndustryFlue Gas TreatmentChemicals IndustryOtherTable of Contents1 Sodium Bicarbonate Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Sodium Bicarbonate1.2 Sodium Bicarbonate Segment by Type (Product Category)1.2.3 TechnicalGrade1.2.4 MedicalGrade1.2.5 Food Grade1.3 Global Sodium Bicarbonate Segment by Application1.3.2 Feed Industry1.3.3 Food Industry1.3.4 Pharmaceutical Industry1.3.5 Flue Gas Treatment1.3.6 Chemicals Industry1.3.7 Other2 Global Sodium Bicarbonate Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1 Global Sodium Bicarbonate Capacity, Production and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.1.1 Global Sodium Bicarbonate Capacity and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.1.2 Global Sodium Bicarbonate Production and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.2 Global Sodium Bicarbonate Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.3 Global Sodium Bicarbonate Average Price by Manufacturers (2012-2017)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
Colocation Industry 2017 Market Analysis Survey Research Growth and Forecast Report

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Global Colocation Market: SnapshotJust about every business sector and geographical region is envisaged to be advantaged by better data management solutions such as colocation. Players operating in the global colocation market are not only advised to tap into newer geographies but also untapped industries. In the foreseeable future, the global colocation market could gain a large impetus on the back of a perpetual growth triggered by a diverse range of industries, including IT, power, energy, government agency, and healthcare. It is not just North America that is envisioned to bring in lucrative opportunities for players, Europe could also step into the action and draw a heavy demand on account of the rising growth in cities such as Amsterdam, Paris, and London.In terms of type of service, vendors of wholesale services could clinch some profit-making business deals in the global colocation market while riding on economical rates and lower space and power consumer requirements. As a result, wholesale services are prophesied to be highly adopted among business enterprises.Request Sample Copy of the Report @Interxion had partnered with Microsoft in May 2015 for deploying the Microsoft cloud at its colocation data center with the help of Azure ExpressRoute solutions. Colocation facilities are not just online, physical structures located close to vital power hubs could function to maintain data centers. One of the reasons for physical colocation facilities to be placed near power hubs is prognosticated to hold a strong relation with accessible connectivity. Colocation centers could also help consumers with bandwidth, cooling, and power security.Global Colocation Market: OverviewWith the growing data production, companies across the world are increasingly searching for creative and cost effective data center services. Colocation solutions are being increasingly acknowledged as an effective way of managing files across small, mid-sized, and even large organizations. These solutions aid in enhancing business potential by cutting down in house IT maintenance and operational expenditures and maximizing the ability to focus on the core business. The major end-user verticals of the market are banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI), telecomm and IT, government, utilities, and healthcare and life sciences.The research report serves as a reliable source of analysis and information regarding various vital parameters of the global colocation market including its dynamics, geographical segmentation, and vendor landscape. It profiles prominent companies operating in the market along with their latest developments, business strategies, and contact information.Request TOC of the Report @Global Colocation Market: Drivers and RestraintsThe non-availability of strategic location for the data centers is translating into the greater adoption of cloud computing. The increasing implementation of cloud technologies is leading to the introduction of the concept of hybrid platform, which is an amalgamation of traditional and cloud colocation that eases the storage and management of data. This, in turn, is augmenting the market. Moreover, the increasing emphasis on improving business continuity and disaster recovery capabilities is creating a staggering volume of demand for colocation services. However, the high cost of initial start-up and the growing skepticism regarding the loss of direct control over the servers is limiting the global colocation market from realizing its utmost potential.Global Colocation Market: Geographical SegmentationThe regions methodically examined in the report are North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, and Rest of the World. North America is expected to account for a substantial share in the colocation market throughout the forecast period. The early adoption of cloud computing provides the region an edge over other regions. Rapid technological advancements and robust IT infrastructure are contributing to the growth of the region.Asia Pacific is expected to progress at a brisk pace during the same period. The paradigm shift towards cloud technologies along with the overall increase in data production is providing a fillip to the growth of the region. Furthermore, the emergence of the region as a dynamic hub for e-trading is attracting global players to invest in the region. Countries such as Japan, India, China, and Taiwan will be the major contributors in the Asia Pacific market.Read Comprehensive Overview of Report@Global Colocation Market: Vendor LandscapePlayers in the global colocation market are focusing towards offering products with unique scalability, data security, and cost-effectiveness in order to stay relevant. Key companies are investing large amounts in the research and development of new ways of securing and controlling data to stay ahead in the market. Some of the key players in the global colocation market are AT&T, Colt, Coresite, Digital Realty Trust, Dupont Fabros Technology, Equinix, IBM, Internap, Navisite, Verizon Terremark, and NTT Communications.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 researh 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
North America Ventricular Assist Device Market is Expected to Grow With a Healthy CAGR of 9.20% Between 2016 and 2024 - Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast

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ResearchMoz added Latest Research Report titled " Ventricular Assist Device Market - North America Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2016 - 2024 " to it's Large Report database.North America Ventricular Assist Device Market: OverviewAdvance Heart Failure is characterized as weakening of the heart caused due to failure of the left ventricle, due to which the heart is unable to pump blood to different parts of the body. According to the AHA (American Heart Association), 5.7 Mn people in the U.S suffer from heart failure and 300,000 die each year of heart failure. Moreover, the AHA predicts that advance heart failure will become the most common cause of death globally. However, these statistics have already materialized in the U.S. and Canada, where advance heart failure is currently said to be the leading cause of mortality. In Canada, the figures are rising day by day. In Canada nearly 600,000 of the total is affected by heart failure. A large proportion of these population can be saved with proper treatment and care. Thus, the existence of an unmet medical need is clearly evident and is anticipated to augment the ventricular assist device market.Request for Sample PDF of Premium Research Report with TOC:North America Ventricular Assist Device Market: Scope of the StudyThis report on the ventricular assist device market in the North America analyzes the current and future prospects of the market. The report comprises an elaborate executive summary, including a market snapshot that provides overall information of various segments and sub-segments. The research is a combination of primary and secondary research. Detailed qualitative analysis of factors responsible for driving and restraining market growth and opportunities has been provided in the market overview section. Market revenue in terms of US$ Mn for the period between 2014 and 2024 along with the compound annual growth rate (CAGR %) from 2014 to 2024 are provided for all the segments, considering 2015 as the base year. Market related factors such as technological developments, patent expiry, recent approvals, investment in clinical studies and acquisitions by leading players in the market, and historical year-on-year growth have been taken into consideration while estimating the market size.Read All Medical Equipments Market Research Reports @Table of ContentChapter 1. Preface1.1. Market Definition and Scope1.2. Market Segmentation1.3. Key Research Objectives1.4. Research HighlightsChapter 2. Assumptions and Research MethodologyChapter 3. Executive Summary: North America Ventricular Assist Device MarketChapter 4. Market Overview4.1. Introduction4.2. Key Industry Developments4.3. Market Dynamics4.3.1. Drivers4.3.2. Restraints4.3.3. Opportunity4.4. Porters Five Forces AnalysisChapter 5. North America Ventricular Assist Device Market Analysis and Forecast, By Product Type5.1. Key Findings5.2. Introduction5.3. Market Size (US$ Mn) Forecast, by Product Type5.3.1. Left Ventricular Assist Device (LVAD)5.3.2. Right Ventricular Assist Device (RVAD)5.3.3. Biventricular Assist Device (Bi-VAD)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 Bicycle Helmet Market Focuses on Valuable Statistics and Analysis, Forecast 2022

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Orbisresearch.com has published new report on "2017 Market Research Report on Global Bicycle Helmet Industry". The report provides information on Industry Trends, Demand, Top Manufacturers, Countries, Material and Application.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 Bicycle Helmet Market is confident in meeting their needs and expectations. The 2017 market research report on Global Bicycle Helmet 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 Bicycle Helmet Market report is a noteworthy.Request a sample of this report @The Global Bicycle Helmet 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 Bicycle Helmet 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 Bicycle Helmet Industry. Accurate forecasts and expert opinion from credible sources, and the recent R&D development in the industry is also a mainstay of the Bicycle Helmet 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.Finally, the Bicycle Helmet 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 Bicycle Helmet 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.Place a purchase order of this report @Major Points from Table of Content:Chapter One: Bicycle Helmet Market OverviewChapter Two: Global Bicycle Helmet Market Competition by ManufacturersChapter Three: Global Bicycle Helmet Capacity, Production, Revenue (Value) by Region (2012-2017)Chapter Four: Global Bicycle Helmet Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Region (2012-2017)Chapter Five: Global Bicycle Helmet Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by TypeChapter Six: Global Bicycle Helmet Market Analysis by ApplicationChapter Seven: Global Bicycle Helmet Manufacturers Profiles/AnalysisChapter Eight: Bicycle Helmet Manufacturing Cost AnalysisChapter Nine: Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream BuyersChapter Ten: Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/TradersChapter Eleven: Market Effect Factors AnalysisChapter Twelve: Global Bicycle Helmet Market Forecast (2017-2022)Chapter Thirteen: Research Findings and ConclusionChapter Fourteen: AppendixAbout Us:Orbis Research (orbisresearch.com) is a single point aid for all your market research requirements. We have vast database of reports from the leading publishers and authors across the globe. We specialize in delivering customized reports as per the requirements of our clients. We have complete information about our publishers and hence are sure about the accuracy of the industries and verticals of their specialization. This helps our clients to map their needs and we produce the perfect required market research study for our clients.Hector CostelloSenior Manager  Client Engagements4144N Central Expressway,Suite 600, Dallas,Texas - 75204, U.S.A.Phone No.: +1 (214) 884-6817; +912064101019For More PRs:
EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) Hospital Room Furniture Market Report 2017 : Stiegelmeyer, Joerns, ArjoHuntleigh

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In this report, the EMEA Hospital Room Furniture market is valued at USD XX million in 2016 and is expected to reach USD XX million by the end of 2022, growing at a CAGR of XX% between 2016 and 2022.Geographically, this report split EMEA into Europe, the Middle East and Africa, With sales (K Units), revenue (Million USD), market share and growth rate of Hospital Room Furniture for these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast)Europe: Germany, France, UK, Russia, Italy and Benelux;Middle East: Saudi Arabia, Israel, UAE and Iran;Africa: South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt and Algeria.Get Free PDF for more Professional and Technical insights @EMEA Hospital Room Furniture market competition by top manufacturers/players, with Hospital Room Furniture sales volume (K Units), price (USD/Unit), revenue (Million USD) and market share for each manufacturer/player; the top players includingParamount BedHill-RomStrykerLinet GroupStiegelmeyerJoernsArjoHuntleighFrance BedPardoGuldmannMerivaaraMed-MizerBazhou GreatwallSjzManyouHbYangguangBjKangtuoHaohanOn the basis of product, this report displays the sales volume (K Units), revenue (Million USD), product price (USD/Unit), market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoBedsChairsBedside cabinetsTablesOn the basis on the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, sales volume (K Units), market share and growth rate of Hospital Room Furniture for each application, includingHospitalClinicHomeIf you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report as you want.Table of ContentsEMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) Hospital Room Furniture Market Report 20171 Hospital Room Furniture Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Hospital Room Furniture1.2 Classification of Hospital Room Furniture1.2.1 EMEA Hospital Room Furniture Market Size (Sales) Comparison by Type (2012-2022)1.2.2 EMEA Hospital Room Furniture Market Size (Sales) Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 2016Full Report @2 EMEA Hospital Room Furniture Competition by Manufacturers/Players/Suppliers, Region, Type and Application2.1 EMEA Hospital Room Furniture Market Competition by Players/Manufacturers2.1.1 EMEA Hospital Room Furniture Sales Volume and Market Share of Major Players (2012-2017)2.1.2 EMEA Hospital Room Furniture Revenue and Share by Players (2012-2017)About Us :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.Contact US:Brooklyn, NY 11230United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-618-1030Email: sales@qyresearchreports.com
Global Terpineol Market 2017- Socer Brasil, DRT, Yasuhara Chemical, Ernesto Vent?s, Sky Dragon Fine-Chem

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The Global Terpineol Market 2017 examines the performance of the Terpineol market. It encloses an in-depth judgment of the Terpineol market state and the competitive landscape globally. This report analyzes the potential of Terpineol market in the present and the future prospects from various angles in detail.The Global Terpineol Market 2017 report includes Terpineol industry volume, market Share, market Trends, Terpineol Growth aspects. A wide range of applications, Utilization ratio, Supply and demand analysis are also consist in the report.It shows manufacturing capacity, Terpineol Price during the Forecast period from 2017 to 2022.To Get Sample Report Click Here:Manufacturers Analysis and Top Sellers of Global Terpineol Market 2017:1 Socer Brasil2 DRT3 Yasuhara Chemical4 Ernesto Vent?s5 Sky Dragon Fine-Chem6 Wansong Forestry Perfume Manufacturing7 EcoGreenTerpineol Market Analysis: By ProductIndustrial GradeFragrance GradePharma GradeTerpineol Market Analysis: By ApplicationFragranceIndustrialPharmaAt the beginning, the report covers the top Terpineol manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on topographical regions.Further, the Terpineol report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Terpineol industry, Terpineol industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. Terpineol Market development scope and various business strategies are also mentioned in this report.To Buy Complete Report Click Here:The Terpineol research report includes the products that are currently in demand and available in the market along with their cost breakup, manufacturing volume, import/export scheme and contribution to the Terpineol market revenue worldwide.Finally, Terpineol market report gives you details about the market research findings and conclusion which helps you to develop profitable market strategies to gain competitive advantage.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-
Combustion Controls Equipment and Systems Market - Forecast, Demand, Outlook and Market Research Report 2025

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Global Combustion Controls Equipment and Systems Market: SnapshotThe global combustion controls equipment and systems market is prognosticated to be positively influenced by the highly competitive nature of its vendor landscape. Several participants are expected to adopt different strategies to create a lasting impression in the global combustion controls equipment and systems market.General Electric, for instance, could take to the manufacture of novel technologies that explore deep underground and sea floor sites of oil and gas reserves. On the other hand, Alfa Laval is prophesied to make its clients more competitive in their individual industries by helping them curb their consumption of energy with the introduction of energy-efficient processes. Another reason for the competitive characteristic of the global combustion controls equipment and systems market could be the large presence of leading participants.Request Sample Copy of the Report @According to type of product, the global combustion controls equipment and systems market is envisioned to witness the contributions of control instruments, systems and monitoring, and boilers. Out of these, control instruments could take the lead in the global combustion controls equipment and systems market, owing to advantages such as avoidance of accidents at workplaces and potential exposure to hazardous materials. Besides this, control instruments are anticipated to find application in an extensive ambit of sectors such as chemicals and oil and gas.Aerospace and marine could be key applications in the global combustion controls equipment and systems market because of their high demand for energy-efficient equipment and systems. However, energy and power, cement, refining and petrochemicals, metallurgy, and process sectors are foretold to be other crucial applications in the global combustion controls equipment and systems market.Global Combustion Controls Equipment and Systems Market: OverviewThe ever-rising demand for electricity and robust growth of the industrial sector are creating a pressing need for greater number of power generation facilities across the globe. This is working in favor of the growth of the global combustion controls equipment and systems market. Combustion controls equipment and systems offer solutions that contribute towards a cleaner environment by adapting effective pollution control methods and standards for excellence. Their demand is higher in developing regions as they are undergoing industrial expansion at a greater pace. These equipment and systems are used across a large number of industries including metallurgy, refining and petrochemicals, process industries, energy and power, cement industry, and aerospace and marine.Request TOC of the Report @The primary objective of the report is to provide a 360-degree view of the global combustion controls equipment and systems market. It does so by methodically examining various critical parameters of the market including its dynamics, trends, geographical segmentation, and competitive landscape. The information regarding the market is gathered from various paid and unpaid sources such as press releases, journals, presentations, and white papers. The report profiles key players in the global combustion controls equipment and systems market along with their business strategies, latest development, market shares, and revenue structures. It presents the SWOT analysis that helps in calculating the growth trajectory of each key player in the market.Global Combustion Controls Equipment and Systems Market: Drivers and RestraintsThe global market combustion controls equipment and systems market is gaining tremendous traction with the rising resistance against nuclear power. Countries such as Switzerland and Germany have decided to slow down their nuclear power generation due to the large amount of radioactive wastage generated by nuclear reactors, which is hazardous to human health and can cause diseases such as cancer. In addition, the growing concerns regarding hazardous air pollution (HAP) and volatile organic compound (VOC) are providing a significant boost to the growth of the market.On the other hand, the availability of substitutes along with their competitive prices is hampering the growth of the global combustion controls equipment and systems market. However, the rapid growth of the shale gas industry is likely to augur well for the growth of the market in a long run.Read Comprehensive Overview of Report@Global Combustion Controls Equipment and Systems Market: Geographical SegmentationThe regional markets meticulously covered in the report are Asia Pacific, North America, Europe, and Rest of the World. Asia Pacific will be a prominent market for combustion controls equipment and systems throughout the forecast period, with China and India being the site of high growth rates. Governments in these countries are pouring sizeable funds into the expansion of power generation facilities. Moreover, rapid technological advancements are providing a significant momentum to the market in the region.Global Combustion Controls Equipment and Systems Market: Competitive LandscapeDeveloping technologies and products with low energy consumption and high cost-effectiveness are becoming the norm for players in the global combustion controls equipment and systems market, as clients are lining up to patronize the vendors who can offer novel and innovative features. Some of the prominent players in the market are ABB, Alstom, Dongfang Boiler Group, Doosan, General Electric, Hitachi Ltd., Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Siemens AG, The Babcock & Wilcox Company, and Toshiba.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 researh 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
Automotive Electronic Braking System Market to Develop Rapidly by 2026

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IntroductionEveryday advancement in automobile technology and evolving aerodynamic design has enabled us to utilize engine power efficiently and has helped us achieve greater speeds. Automobile at high speed initiates demand for efficient vehicle stability. Brakes are therefore crucial to control vehicle motion and ensure the safety of goods and passengers. Electronic Braking System (EBS) was introduced for enhanced brake stability and for the reduction in stopping distance. EBS system communicates with other components such as signal transmitter, valves modulators and other components electronically to actuate brakes on the drivers request. EBS is primarily preferred over other braking systems due to enhanced benefits of simultaneous operation of Antilock braking system (ABS), load sensing system, Anti-Slip Reduction (ASR), and others.Get access to full summary @:Market DynamicsAutomotive electronic braking system market is progressing towards a strong growth owing to multiple benefits over the conventional systems such as reduction in number of brake system component, predictive braking controls, lower maintenance and enhanced diagnostic of the complete system. The escalating demand for passenger cars and light commercial vehicles is chiefly driving the sales of automotive electronic braking systems. With onset of electric vehicles and hybrid vehicles in emerging markets, demand for efficient braking systems that aid in overall reduction of vehicle weight and improving vehicle efficiency is high. Therefore, the demand for automotive electronic braking systems is anticipated to escalate significantly. However, due to capital intensive nature of equipment, the sales of the automotive electronic braking system technology is restricted.Market SegmentationThe automotive electronic braking system market can be segmented on the basis of vehicle type, sales channel, and product type. On the basis of vehicle type the automotive electronic braking system market can be segmented as: Passenger Cars, Light commercial vehicles, Heavy Commercial vehicles. On the basis of sales channel the automotive electronic braking system market can be segmented as: OEM, Aftermarket. On the basis of product type the automotive electronic braking system market can also be segment as: Electronic Stability Control, Adaptive Cruise Control, Anti-lock Braking System, Differential Slip Control, Traction Control System.A sample of this report is available upon request @Regional OutlookThe market can also be segmented on the basis of region including North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, APEJ, Japan, and Middle East & Africa. The recovering light commercial vehicle sales and passenger cars in North America is propelling the sales of electronic braking system in the region. Likewise owing to emerging automobile industry in Mexico the demand for electronic braking system is increasing steadily. The modest growth in the production and demand for electric and hybrid vehicles in Western Europe is driving the sales of electronic braking systems in the region. The contribution of Asia Pacific market to the global automotive electronic braking system is highest in terms of both production and demand.India and China are major automotive braking system markets in the region therefore are expected to register double digit growth during the forecast period. The thriving automotive industry of Asia Pacific is expected to create significant opportunities for international and regional players. The evolving electric car market scenario in Japan is expected to create a sustainable demand for automotive electronic braking system and is expected to significantly contribute to the global market. OEM and aftermarket demand for automotive electronic braking systems in GCC Countries in Middle East and Africa is expected to boost the market in the region.To view TOC of this report is available upon request @Key PlayersSome of the key players identified in the automotive electronic braking systems market are Robert Bosch GmbH, Knorr Bremse AG, Haldex, ZF TRW, Continental AG, and Advics Group among others.The research report presents a comprehensive assessment of the market and contains thoughtful insights, facts, historical data, and statistically supported and industry-validated market data. It also contains projections using a suitable set of assumptions and methodologies. The research report provides analysis and information according to categories such as market segments, geographies, types, technology and applications.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Global Thermal Portable Printer Market 2017- Canon, Brothers, Honeywell, Seiko Epson, Toshiba

Global Thermal Portable Printer Market 2017

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The Global Thermal Portable Printer Market 2017 examines the performance of the Thermal Portable Printer market. It encloses an in-depth judgment of the Thermal Portable Printer market state and the competitive landscape globally. This report analyzes the potential of Thermal Portable Printer market in the present and the future prospects from various angles in detail.The Global Thermal Portable Printer Market 2017 report includes Thermal Portable Printer industry volume, market Share, market Trends, Thermal Portable Printer Growth aspects. A wide range of applications, Utilization ratio, Supply and demand analysis are also consist in the report.It shows manufacturing capacity, Thermal Portable Printer Price during the Forecast period from 2017 to 2022.To Get Sample Report Click Here:Manufacturers Analysis and Top Sellers of Global Thermal Portable Printer Market 2017:1 Canon2 Brothers3 Honeywell4 Seiko Epson5 Toshiba6 Zebra Technologies7 Bixolon8 Citizen Systems Japan9 Cognitive TPG10 Fujitsu Isotec11 Polaroid12 Printek13 Star Micronics14 Xprinter TechnologyThermal Portable Printer Market Analysis: By ProductDirect Thermal Portable PrintersThermal Transfer Portable PrintersThermal Portable Printer Market Analysis: By ApplicationHospitalityPostal & Parcel ServicesHospitalLaw EnforcementRetailSecuritiesOthersAt the beginning, the report covers the top Thermal Portable Printer manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on topographical regions.Further, the Thermal Portable Printer report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Thermal Portable Printer industry, Thermal Portable Printer industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. Thermal Portable Printer Market development scope and various business strategies are also mentioned in this report.To Buy Complete Report Click Here:The Thermal Portable Printer research report includes the products that are currently in demand and available in the market along with their cost breakup, manufacturing volume, import/export scheme and contribution to the Thermal Portable Printer market revenue worldwide.Finally, Thermal Portable Printer market report gives you details about the market research findings and conclusion which helps you to develop profitable market strategies to gain competitive advantage.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-
Extrusion Coating Market : New Business Opportunities & Investment Research Report 2017 - 2025

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Global Extrusion Coating Market: OverviewThe world market for extrusion coating is forecasted to gain impetus from the soaring count of packaging applications in a diverse scope of end-use sectors. On a global platform, liquid packaging is prophesied to be a larger extrusion coating segment in terms of application. It finds application in the packaging of goods such as household cleaning products, spirits and wines, and beverages and liquids. Out of the miscellaneous forms of liquid packaging available to this day, stand-up pouches, caps and closures, bottles, and bag-in-boxes are the most prominent.The eminent areas of segmentation of the global extrusion coating market include application and type of material. These critical segmentation areas are further segmented and analyzed while considering the volume and value forecasts.Request a Brochure of the Report @All the reports published by TMR Research can be tailor-made as per the demands of the buyers. Our analysts have procured the vital findings of the world extrusion coating market while taking into consideration a wide compass of target audiences, including manufacturers, distributors, and investment and equity firms. The report authors have assessed different elements to carefully draw the competitive landscape of the global market.Global Extrusion Coating Market: Trends and OpportunitiesWith a moderate CAGR, the international extrusion coating market is expected to reach an admirable figure in terms of both value and volume. A number of activities performed by different players in the industry in relation to new product development apart from their acquisitions and mergers are prognosticated to encourage a tangible growth in the global market. The packaging sphere is foreseen to significantly contribute for the dilation of the market growth. One of the reasons for this is the driving demand for the process of extrusion coating and their application in various packaging procedures.Request for TOC of the Report @For the forecast period, low density polyethylene (LDPE) is anticipated to stand as a dominating segment by material type in the global extrusion coating market. LDPE finds vigorous applications in a gamut of packaging domains such as commercial, flexible, and liquid. Preferable sealability properties and excellent moisture barrier are some of the astounding characteristics of LDPE that have given it much importance in the packaging sector. LDPE is anticipated to help the world market reach great heights of success on the back of its elevating number of applications. These applications belong to a range of end-use sectors such as pharmaceutical and medical, construction and building, and automotive, not just packaging.Global Extrusion Coating Market: Regional OutlookUntil the end of the forecast period, the Asia Pacific region is foretold to demonstrate supremacy in the international extrusion coating market. The food and beverage sector of developing countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea, Japan, India, and China is witnessing a strong growth in the packaging domain. This has resulted into the extensive usage of extrusion coating in Asia Pacific. Besides this, the aggravating strength of the Asia Pacific population and aggressive economic growth in the region have upgraded the maturation of the global market. For the forecast years, China is predicted to be a faster rising market in the developing region.Some of the regional markets associated with the global extrusion coating industry could suffer because of the pernicious by-products generated with the employment of certain polymer resins such as polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polypropylene (PP), ethylene-vinyl acetate (EVA), and LDPE. These polymers are mostly used during the process of extrusion coating. However, the towering growth opportunities birthed in emerging countries of the Middle East and Africa and Asia Pacific are envisaged to dilute the effect of the restraint. Moreover, the increasing number of applications in various innovative forms of packaging such as liquid packaging is envisioned to offer good opportunities in the long run.Read Complete Report @Global Extrusion Coating Market: Companies MentionedCompanies such as Bobst Group SA, Exxon Mobil Corporation, Mondi Plc., AkzoNobel N.V., and The Dow Chemical Company are profiled to possibly have taken to different strategies for securing their share in the global extrusion coating market. In this regard, new product launches, mergers, and expansions could be the go-to inorganic and organic schemes adopted by the top industry players for a substantial advancement.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 Medical Implants Market Professional Survey Report 2017 : Boston Scientific, Biotronik, Sorin Group

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This report studies the Medical Implants market status and outlook of global and major regions, from angles of manufacturers, regions, product types and end industries; this report analyzes the top manufacturers in global and major regions, and splits the Medical Implants market by product type and applications/end industries.The global Medical Implants market is valued at XX million USD in 2016 and is expected to reach XX million USD by the end of 2022, growing at a CAGR of XX% between 2016 and 2022.The major players in global Medical Implants market includeMedtronicZimmer BiometSt.Jude MedicalBoston ScientificBiotronikSorin GroupCyberonicsAbiomedMED-ELPhilips HealthcareCardiac ScienceZoll MedicalSchillerNihon KohdenGE HealthcareCochlearAdvanced Bionics (Sonova)Mindray MedicalQinming MedicalNurotronGet Free PDF for more Professional and Technical insights @Geographically, this report is segmented into several key Regions, with production, consumption, revenue, market share and growth rate of Medical Implants in these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), coveringNorth AmericaEuropeChinaJapanSoutheast AsiaIndiaOn the basis on the end users/applications, this report coversOrthopedicCardiovascularDentalOthersAbout Us :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.Contact US:Brooklyn, NY 11230United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-618-1030Email: sales@qyresearchreports.com
Industrial Batteries Market - Forecast, Demand, Outlook and Market Research Report 2017 - 2025

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Global Industrial Batteries Market: OverviewThe world industrial batteries market is projected to march its way along the path of a steady expansion while spreading its presence to different sectors. Telecom and data communication being the stallion end-user sector is foreseen to secure a larger share in the international market. A major part of the demand in this sector is foretold to take charge while riding on the need for high-efficient electricity backup and upswing in telecom growth. High capital investment and safety problems could check the expansion of the market but to a minimal extent. Howbeit, the soaring want of telecom businesses and datacenters for industrial batteries, adoption of powered automobiles, and clean energy sources supported by government incentives are envisaged to provide laudable opportunities.In respect of product type and end use, the report on the global industrial batteries market can provide a meticulous segmentation for the buyers to comprehend the forecasted share of each segment.Request a Brochure of the Report @In a customized form, the publication enlightens the interested parties about the vital dynamics of the global industrial batteries market, viz. industry-specific challenges, opportunities, restraints, and drivers. It also strategically profiles the important industry players and analyzes the crucial developments witnessed on a competitive platform. Apart from a compendious evaluation of the competitive landscape, the report has stood for its preciseness and usability by studying the top market leaders with SWOT analysis. It is well-addressed to a range of target audiences extending from manufacturers to industry associations.Global Industrial Batteries Market: Trends and OpportunitiesThe international market for industrial batteries could look forward to attain an imposing revenue growth on the back of a decent CAGR. With reference to energy density, industrial batteries offer a superior performance which is called for by the end users in different sectors. Lithium-based and lead-acid industrial batteries can be recycled with amplified efficiency. This has obtained support from the burgeoning growth witnessed in the renewable energy field. Besides this, the automotive domain has been counting on industrial batteries as one of the key operational components. All of these factors have pronounced the advancement of the global market.Request for TOC of the Report @Although the lead-acid segment by type has been sitting at the apex of the world industrial batteries market, lithium-based industrial batteries are forecasted to advance as a faster growing segment in the near future. On the grounds of their impressive attributes, i.e. low emission, recyclability, and long life, lithium-based batteries have been swiftly adopted for a number of industrial applications. Applications which deem low maintenance, temperature sensitivity, weight, and volume more important than initial cost have found extreme suitability for lithium-based batteries.Global Industrial Batteries Market: Regional OutlookThe world industrial batteries market is prognosticated to rest its tangible furtherance on the back of the demand for power backups boasting a higher capacity and multiplying industrial undertakings in North America and Asia Pacific. With countries such as Japan, China, and South Korea on the scene, the Asia Pacific region will look to capitalize on the implementation of renewable energy in various devices supported by the governments. The lengthening demand for industrial batteries in this region is expected to help it grow faster than other geographies such as Europe, Central and South America, and the Middle East and Africa.Read Complete Report @Global Industrial Batteries Market: Companies MentionedThe tough players in the international industrial batteries market have taken to different strategies to prove their toughness for survival. Companies such as GS Yuasa Corporation, EnerSys Inc., Exide Technologies Inc., Johnson Controls, and Saft Groupe S.A. are focusing on agreements, new product development, partnerships, and acquisitions to further their progression in the global 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
Global Trimmer Potentiometer Market 2017- Compit, GC Electronics, Honeywell, KEMET

Global Trimmer Potentiometer Market 2017

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The Global Trimmer Potentiometer Market 2017 examines the performance of the Trimmer Potentiometer market. It encloses an in-depth judgment of the Trimmer Potentiometer market state and the competitive landscape globally. This report analyzes the potential of Trimmer Potentiometer market in the present and the future prospects from various angles in detail.The Global Trimmer Potentiometer Market 2017 report includes Trimmer Potentiometer industry volume, market Share, market Trends, Trimmer Potentiometer Growth aspects. A wide range of applications, Utilization ratio, Supply and demand analysis are also consist in the report.It shows manufacturing capacity, Trimmer Potentiometer Price during the Forecast period from 2017 to 2022.To Get Sample Report Click Here:Manufacturers Analysis and Top Sellers of Global Trimmer Potentiometer Market 2017:1 Bourns2 BI Technologies3 Copal Electronics4 Compit5 GC Electronics6 Honeywell7 KEMET8 Murata Manufacturing9 Nidec Copal Electronics10 Roxburgh EMC11 RS Pro12 TE Connectivity13 Tyco Electronics14 Vishay DaleTrimmer Potentiometer Market Analysis: By ProductSingle TurnMulti TurnTrimmer Potentiometer Market Analysis: By ApplicationCommunicationsMedicalIndustryOthersAt the beginning, the report covers the top Trimmer Potentiometer manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on topographical regions.Further, the Trimmer Potentiometer report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Trimmer Potentiometer industry, Trimmer Potentiometer industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. Trimmer Potentiometer Market development scope and various business strategies are also mentioned in this report.To Buy Complete Report Click Here:The Trimmer Potentiometer research report includes the products that are currently in demand and available in the market along with their cost breakup, manufacturing volume, import/export scheme and contribution to the Trimmer Potentiometer market revenue worldwide.Finally, Trimmer Potentiometer market report gives you details about the market research findings and conclusion which helps you to develop profitable market strategies to gain competitive advantage.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-
Non-destructive Testing (NDT) Services Market Growth with Worldwide Industry Analysis to 2025

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Global Non-destructive Testing (NDT) Services Market: SnapshotNon-destructive testing (NDT) is a broad group of evaluation techniques which are employed in the science and technology industry in order to analyze the properties of a system, component, or material without triggering damage. As non-destructive testing does not alter the article in inspection permanently, it is an extremely valuable technology that helps saving both time and money in terms of product research, troubleshooting, and evaluation. Basic NDT methods comprise low coherence interferometry, eddy-current testing, remote visual inspection, radiographic, liquid penetrant, magnetic-particle, and ultrasonic. NDT is generally employed in art, medicine, aeronautical engineering, systems engineering, civil engineering, electrical engineering, petroleum engineering, mechanical engineering, and forensic engineering. Innovations in the area of non-destructive testing have initiated reflective impression on medical imaging, comprising digital radiography, medical ultrasonography, and echocardiography.Evaluation and recording a non-destructive failure mode is likely to be accomplished employing a high speed camera which can record incessantly till the failure is noticed. Failure detection can be accomplished by the use of a stress gauge or a sound detector which releases a signal in order to activate the high-speed camera. After the fiasco, the camera will eventually stop recording and thus, the captured pictured can be played backwards in slow motion to exhibit the events after and before the non-destructive situation.Request a Brochure of the Report @The market intelligence report investigates into the conceivable growth prospects for the global NDT services market and the sequential growth of the market during the course of the forecast period. It also exclusively provisions the mandatory data related to aspects such as the dynamics manipulating the progress in all possible reflective manner. Numerous pervasive and non-pervasive trends have also been stated in the report. An outlook of extensive nature keeping in mind the Porters five forces analysis has been provided to make the vendor landscape transparent to the reader. The report further points out several activities related to R&D, mergers, acquisitions, and crucial conglomerates and corroborations. The companies in attention have been examined on the basis of market shares, prime products, and key marketing strategies.Request for TOC of the Report @Global Non-destructive Testing (NDT) Services Market: Trends and OpportunitiesThe numerous applications of non-destructive testing services include shipyards, oil refineries, nuclear power plants, construction sites, and manufacturing plants. In the last couple of years, the demand for non-destructive testing service has significantly gained momentum owing to the expansion of profit margins and propelled capital expenditure after the recovery of the U.S, from deep recession. In the near future, incessant technological innovation is expected to make non-destructive testing services more efficient and cost effective for the end-user industries, thus eventually bolstering the demand for it in the coming years. The demand for NDT services is expected to intensify over the coming years owing to the significant growth in the development of new infrastructure and the aging infrastructure. Furthermore, due to the shift towards advanced non-destructive testing techniques from conventional NDT techniques is expected to enhance the skills of the technicians. Thus, due to this the demand for NDT services is likely to gain momentum owing to the dearth in trained professionals.Read Complete Report @Global Non-destructive Testing (NDT) Services Market: Regional OverviewOwing to the large number of ongoing infrastructural projects and progressing manufacturing sector in countries such as China and India, Asia Pacific is expected to emerge as a prominent region favoring the growth of the market. North America is also anticipated to aid the growth of the market due to progress in aerospace and defense verticals, oil and gas sector, power transmission, and transportation.Global Non-destructive Testing (NDT) Services Market: Competitive LandscapeSome of the key participants in the market are TUV Rheinland AG, Yxlon international GMBH, Intertek Group, Zetec Inc., Mistras Group Inc., Ashtead Technology, and GE Oil & Gas Digital Solutions.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
Analysis of the US Fast Casual Restaurant Market Research Report: Industry Size, Trends & Forecasts 2017-2021: Key Players are Five Guys, Panda Express etc.

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ResearchMoz added Latest Research Report titled " The US Fast Casual Restaurant Market: Size, Trends & Forecasts (2017-2021) " to it's Large Report database.Scope of the ReportThe report entitled The US Fast Casual Restaurant Market: Size, Trends & Forecasts (2017-2021), provides analysis of the US fast casual restaurant market, with detailed analysis of market size and growth, and segmentation of the industry. The analysis of the US fast casual restaurant market includes the market by value and by segments.Moreover, 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 the US fast casual restaurant market has also been forecasted for the years 2017-2021, taking into consideration the previous growth patterns, the growth drivers and the current and future trends.Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc., Firehouse Restaurant, Five Guys and Panda Express are some of the key players operating in the US fast casual restaurant market, whose company profiling has been done in the report. In this segment of the report, business overview, financial overview and business strategies of the companies are provided.Request for Sample PDF of Premium Research Report with TOC:Company CoverageChipotle Mexican Grill, Inc.Firehouse RestaurantFive GuysPanda ExpressExecutive SummaryA restaurant is a place or a business which prepares and serves food and drinks to customers in return for money. On the basis of the services provided by the restaurants, they can be broadly classified into two groups as: Full-service restaurants and Limited-service restaurants.A full service restaurant refers as a sit down eatery where food is served directly to the customers table. Full-service restaurants can be further categorized into Fine Dining Restaurant, Casual Dining Restaurants and Family Dining Restaurants.Read All Hotels & Restaurants Market Research Reports @Table of Content1. Executive Summary2. Introduction2.1 Restaurant: An Overview2.2 Full Service Restaurant: An Overview2.2.1 Fine Dining Restaurants2.2.2 Casual Dining Restaurants2.2.3 Family Dining Restaurants2.3 Limited Service Restaurants: An Overview2.3.1 Fast Food Or Quick Service Restaurants2.3.2 Fast Casual Restaurants2.3.3 Pizza Restaurants2.3.4 Cafes2.4 Advantages and Disadvantages Of Fast Casual Food Restaurant3. Global Market Analysis3.1 Global Fast Casual Restaurant Market: An Analysis3.1.1 Global Fast Casual Restaurant Market by Value3.1.2 Global Fast Casual Restaurant Market by RegionAbout 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:
Proteins in Oncology Market Analysis and In-depth Research on Size, Trends, Emerging Growth Factors and Forecasts 2023

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Global Protein in Oncology MarketOncology is the branch of medical science dealing with cancer research and treatment. There are several research facilities and universities identifying unique proteins in oncology for developing diagnostics. Several studies are underway to discover new proteins that play a role in cancer. Currently there are a number of companies and/or their collaborators engaged in developing several protein drugs in cancer. Surgical treatments and radiation therapy, though effective at treating primary tumors, are not found to be successful in detecting metastatic tumor cells and those flowing in the bloodstream, making treatment of these cancer cells very difficult. Cancer is one of the largest causes of death worldwide and finding leads to cure or control the disease is one of the primary goals of governments globally.Global Protein in Oncology Market: SegmentationObtain Report Details:The global proteins in oncology market has been segmented based on protein type and geography. Protein types include recombinant non-glycosylated proteins, recombinant glycosylated proteins and recombinant peptides. Geographically, North America and Europe lead the global proteins in oncology market thanks to the very stringent regulatory environment for clearing the products. Asia-Pacific countries such as China and India are estimated to be the fastest-growing markets. South Korea and Brazil are also poised to register high growth in the coming years due to boost in biosimilars market. The services that can be provided in the global proteins in oncology market include contract research organizations and contract manufacturing organizations.Global Protein in Oncology Market: Drivers and RestraintsWorldwide increase in the prevalence of cancer and the rising awareness of the therapeutic and commercial opportunities offered by new oncology treatments have provided a major incentive for the pharmaceutical industry to pursue the development of new agents for the treatment of cancer. Proteins or peptide drugs are usually required to be administered only by injection due to their large and labile nature. Peptide drugs are used effectively in monitoring various tumors and related therapies. They selectively are known to bind responsive versus unresponsive tumors. Therefore, this advantage associated with the use of peptides assists their use in assessing tumor response and evaluating its effectiveness in cancer therapy. The main challenge for the newer generation of recombinant drugs seems to be the new route of administration, new formulations and consequently even higher efficiency and safety. Though the parenteral route of administration is the most common, there are advances being made to deliver medicines through the oral route, which is considered to be the most preferred one due to better patient compliance.Recently new research has demonstrated that attaching a cancer killer protein to white blood cells annihilates metastasis. Isolation of a protein named as TRAIL by researchers at Cornell University in the U.S. demonstrated killing of cancer cells on contact. The TRAIL protein is binded with leukocytes (white blood cells) that are present across the bloodstream. The cancer cell is essentially known to kill itself when it comes in contact with TRAIL protein. The mechanism has been surprising and unexpectedly effective as compared to targeting the cancer cells with liposomes.Fill the form for an exclusive sample of this report:Global Protein in Oncology Market: Competitive Landscape AnalysisThe key players contributing to the global proteins in oncology market include Actavis, Inc., Biocon Ltd., Celltrion, Inc., Dr. Reddys Laboratories Ltd., Emcure Pharmaceuticals Ltd., Hospira, Inc., Merck, Mylan, Inc., Roche Holding Ltd., Sandoz, Teva Pharmaceuticals and Wockhardt Ltd. Expansion of product portfolio enables these companies to gain a competitive advantage over other players in the market. Strengthening of market position by extensive investments in research and development is also one of the business strategies undertaken by the key players. A lot of research is still to be carried out in the protein recombinant drugs in oncology market which will come along with years of efforts and high risk.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 U.S.-based provider of syndicated research, customized research, and consulting services. TMRs global and regional market intelligence coverage includes industries such as pharmaceutical, chemicals and materials, technology and media, food and beverages, and consumer goods, among others. Each TMR research report provides clients with a 360-degree view of the market with statistical forecasts, competitive landscape, detailed segmentation, key trends, and strategic recommendations.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:
Blood Preparation Market: Current Developments , Expected Advancements & Global Industry Analysis 2024

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Global Blood Preparation Market: OverviewBlood components refer to products derived from platelet-rich plasma or whole blood. Blood components such as platelets, plasma, red blood cells, and white blood cells are derived from blood by the process of phlebotomy or hemapheresis through the technique of differential centrifugation. These blood components are separated from whole blood in hospital laboratories and blood centers, and are administered to patients suffering from various diseases through transfusion. The whole blood is often collected and separated into major components before transfusion. However, automated collections are becoming increasingly popular nowadays and only blood components that are needed for transfusion are collected.On the basis of product type, the global blood preparation market has been segmented into whole blood and blood components. While whole blood comprises platelets, plasma, red cells, and granulocytes, blood components constitute whole blood components, leukocyte reduced RBC, packed red cells, frozen plasma, and platelet concentrate. According to the antithrombotic and anticoagulant type, the blood preparation market has been divided into anticoagulants, fibrinolytics, and platelet aggregation inhibitors. Major application segments in the blood preparation market include renal impairment, thrombocytosis, and pulmonary embolism.Obtain Report Details :Global Blood Preparation Market: Drivers and RestraintsThe growing demand for blood transfusion across emergency departments in hospitals has boosted the growth of the global blood preparation market. The rise in blood disorders such as thrombocytosis and the increasing requirement for blood during accidents and surgical procedures have supported the growth of the market.According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, conditions such as deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and pulmonary embolism (PE) lead to over 60,000 deaths in the U.S. every year. Various initiatives taken by the National Institutes of Health and other regulatory bodies to spread awareness about the complications associated with these conditions have also propelled the markets growth.However, during blood transfusion, the chances of transmission of diseases such as viral hemorrhagic fever, HIV, and Hepatitis B are high. This is the single major restraining factor impacting the growth of the global blood preparation market. The overall market has a significant opportunity to grow with the development of high speed technology to separate blood components without losing their activity. The introduction of new oral anticoagulants and the re-launch of drugs such as Urokinase, the growing demand for source plasma, and the need for specific blood components such as packed red blood cells will create new growth opportunities for the market.Global Blood Preparation Market: Region-wise OutlookThe global blood preparation market has been segmented into four key regions: Europe, Asia Pacific, North America, and Rest of the World. North America has been contributing significantly to the growth of the market owing to the presence of a robust healthcare infrastructure. In the U.S., the collection, preparation, storage, and transport of blood is regulated by the FDA. Other federal agencies are working toward the implementation of health insurance portability standards to achieve adequate reimbursement for blood components.Fill the form for an exclusive sample of this report:However, during the forecast period, the Asia Pacific blood preparation market is anticipated to expand rapidly due to various initiatives taken by governments, especially in countries such as India and China. The positive growth of the healthcare sector across Japan and Australia will also support the growth of the regional market.Global Blood Preparation Market: Competitive LandscapeSome of the key players in the global blood preparation market are GlaxoSmithKline PLC, Pfizer Inc., Leo Pharma Inc., Celgene Corp, Sanofi Aventis, Baxter Healthcare Corp., Shandong East Chemical Industry Co., Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., and AstraZeneca Co. The blood preparation market worldwide is being driven by technology. As a result, market players are investing heavily in research and development to introduce novel and cost-effective drugs.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 U.S.-based provider of syndicated research, customized research, and consulting services. TMRs global and regional market intelligence coverage includes industries such as pharmaceutical, chemicals and materials, technology and media, food and beverages, and consumer goods, among others. Each TMR research report provides clients with a 360-degree view of the market with statistical forecasts, competitive landscape, detailed segmentation, key trends, and strategic recommendations.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:
Current And Future Prospects Of Dental Membrane and Bone Graft Substitutes In Global Market During The Period 2016 - 2024

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Current And Future Prospects Of Dental Membrane and Bone Graft Substitutes In Global Market During The Period 2016 - 2024" to its huge collection of research reports.Dental membrane and bone graft substitutes is used in the bone graft surgeries. Bone graft surgery is required when tooth is lost by accidents, dental disease and old age. According to WHO, Globally, about 30% of people aged 6574 have no natural teeth and Across the world, 16-40% of children in the age range 6 to12 years old are affected by dental trauma due to unsafe playgrounds, unsafe schools, road accidents, or violence. Moreover, According to the American Academy of Periodontology, approximately 64.7 million Americans have periodontitis. Thus, market is tend rise rapidly during forecasted period as number of oral and dental disease patient is increasing.Dental Membrane and Bone Graft Substitutes Market: Scope and MethodologyThis report on the global dental membrane and bone graft substitutes market analyzes the current and future prospects of the market. The report comprises an elaborate executive summary, including a market snapshot that provides overall information of various segments and sub-segments. The research is a combination of primary and secondary research. Detailed qualitative analysis of factors responsible for driving and restraining market growth and opportunities has been provided in the market overview section. Market revenue in terms of US$ Mn for the period between 2014 and 2024 along with the compound annual growth rate (CAGR %) from 2016 to 2024 are provided for all the segments, considering 2015 as the base year. Market related factors such as technological developments, recent products approvals, investment in clinical studies and acquisitions by leading players in the market, and historical year-on-year growth have been taken into consideration while estimating the market size. Growth rates for each segment within the dental membrane and bone graft substitutes market have been determined after a thorough analysis of past trends, demographics, future trends, technological developments, product development life cycle, and regulatory requirements. These factors would help the market players to take strategic decisions in order to strengthen their positions and expand their share in the dental membrane and bone graft substitutes market.Dental Membrane and Bone Graft Substitutes Market: SegmentationBased on product type, the dental membrane and bone graft substitutes market has been segmented into dental membrane and bone graft substitutes. The dental membrane has been further segmented into resorbable membranes and non - resorbable membranes. The bone graft substitutes has been further segmented into demineralized bone matrix (DBM), autograft, allograft, xenograft and synthetic bone graft substitutes.Based on material, the dental membrane and bone graft substitutes market has been segmented into hydrogel, collagen, polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), human cells source, other species, hydroxyapatite (HA), tricalcium phosphate (TCP).Based on end user, the dental membrane and bone graft substitutes market has been segmented into hospitals, ambulatory surgical centers and dental clinics. The dental clinics are further segmented into individual practice and group practiceGeographically, the dental membrane and bone graft substitutes market has been segmented into five regions: the North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America and Middle East and Africa. These region have been further segmented by product, by material, by end user and by country.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Dental Membrane and Bone Graft Substitutes Market: Competitive DynamicsThe competition matrix section included in the report is likely to assist the existing players to increase their market shares and new companies to establish their presence in the dental membrane and bone graft substitutes market. The report also profiles major players in the market based on various attributes such as company overview, financial overview, SWOT analysis, key business strategies, product portfolio, and recent developments. Key companies profiled in the report include Geistlich Holding, Zimmer Dental Inc., Integra LifeSciences Corp, DENTSPLY Implants, Institut Straumann AG, BioHorizons IPH, Inc., Osteogenics Biomedical, Nobel Biocare, Implant Direct LLC., Collagen Matrix, NovaBone India and Maxigen Biotech Inc.The dental membrane and bone graft substitutes market has been segmented as follows:Dental Membrane and Bone Graft Substitutes Market, by ProductDental MembraneResorbable MembranesNon - Resorbable MembranesBone graft SubstitutesDemineralized Bone Matrix (DBM)AutograftAllograftXenograftSynthetic Bone Graft SubstituteDental Membrane and Bone Graft Substitutes Market, by MaterialHydrogelCollagenPolytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE)Human Cells SourceOther SpeciesHydroxyapatite (HA)Tricalcium Phosphate (TCP)Dental Membrane and Bone Graft Substitutes Market, by End- userHospitalsAmbulatory Surgical CenterDental ClinicsIndividual PracticeGroup PracticeDental Membrane and Bone Graft Substitutes Market, by GeographyNorth AmericaU.S.CanadaEuropeGermanyFranceUnited KingdomSpainItalyRussiaPolandNetherlandTurkeyMake 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 @
Hypodermic Needles Market: Emergence of advanced technologies and global industry analysis 2024!!

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Global Hypodermic Needles Market: OverviewThe global hypodermic needles market is likely to exhibit robust growth. The increasing prevalence of chronic ailments and a rising geriatric population are the key factors boosting the market. The growth witnessed by this market is mainly driven by the role played by hypodermic needles in research activities. These needles also reduce the chances of contamination of fluid used during the injection of a sterile substrate.Hypodermic needles are hollow and are attached to hypodermic syringes to extract and inject fluids from the body. These needles have a long cylindrical shape with a puncturing point at the tip that pierces the patients skin. These needles can be reusable as well as disposable. Reusable needles are mainly used by diabetes patients to administer their insulin shots. However, it is very important to sterilize the reusable needles before using them in order to avoid infections of any kind. The rising prevalence of diabetes has therefore emerged as a crucial factor fuelling demand from the global hypodermic needles market.Obtain Report Details:The report provides a holistic overview of the global hypodermic needles market. It studies the various growth drivers and restraints influencing the market. In order to study its competitive landscape, the report also profiles some of the most prominent enterprises operating therein. The market has been segmented on the basis of various parameters for the purpose of the study. The report includes an overview of the present market dynamics, prevailing trends, historical development, and future outlook of the market across major regional segments.Global Hypodermic Needles Market: Drivers, Restraints, and Market SegmentationGovernments around the world have been implementing various regulations aimed at curtailing the incidence of needle-stick injuries. These legislations mandate the safe usage of needles to avert the risk of infections. The implementation of such stringent regulations has been crucial in stimulating demand from the global hypodermic needles market. The growth exhibited by the market is also supported by the introduction of the latest technologies in hypodermic needle-based delivery of drugs.On the flip side, the risk of infections associated with administering drugs using hypodermic needles, the increasing incidence of needle-stick injuries, and the presence of alternatives may restrain the growth of the global hypodermic needles market. Nevertheless, the market is expected to gain from the launch of novel products and the growing trend of publicprivate partnerships between manufacturing companies and government organizations.By type, the global hypodermic needles market can be segmented into safety needles and nonsafety needles. In terms of application, the market can be classified into diagnostic centers, hospitals, and home health care. Regionally, the global hypodermic needles market can be classified into North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, and Rest of the World.Fill the form for an exclusive sample of this report:Global Hypodermic Needles Market: Regional OutlookRegionally, North America dominates the global hypodermic needles market. The increasing geriatric population in the region and the rising prevalence of chronic diseases have been fuelling demand for hypodermic needles in North America. The regional hypodermic needle market is also gaining from the implementation of favorable regulations by governments. Apart from this and driven by increasing demand from India, China, and Japan, Asia Pacific is expected to exhibit attractive opportunities for the market.Some of the leading companies operating in the market are Terumo Corp., Albert David Ltd., Dickinson and Company, Becton, and Connecticut Hypodermics Inc. A SWOT analysis is conducted to study strengths and weaknesses of these companies. The analysis also helps in examining the opportunities and threats that these companies could face in the coming years.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 U.S.-based provider of syndicated research, customized research, and consulting services. TMRs global and regional market intelligence coverage includes industries such as pharmaceutical, chemicals and materials, technology and media, food and beverages, and consumer goods, among others. Each TMR research report provides clients with a 360-degree view of the market with statistical forecasts, competitive landscape, detailed segmentation, key trends, and strategic recommendations.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:
Various Technology Used In Global Adaptive Optics Market Includes Wafefront Modulator, Wavefront Sensor And Control System During 2016 - 2024

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Various Technology Used In Global Adaptive Optics Market Includes Wafefront Modulator, Wavefront Sensor And Control System During 2016 - 2024" to its huge collection of research reports.Adaptive optics is a technology used to enhance the efficiency of an optical system by reducing the wavefront distortion effects. Adaptive optics primarily aims to correct the deformation of a coming wavefront by defacing a mirror for compensating the distortion. In order to provide an in-depth analysis of the adaptive optics market, the market has been segmented on the basis of technology, application and geography. Various technology used in adaptive optics includes wafefront modulator, wavefront sensor and control system. Adaptive optics also finds its application across various sectors including biomedical, defense and security, astronomy, manufacturing, consumer devices and communication. The market of adaptive optics is estimated to experience an exponential growth rate during the forecast period from 2016 to 2024 owing to rapid growth of various application segment across the globe.Global Adaptive Optics Market: Growth DynamicsInitiatives taken by the government to encourage rapid research and development activities in the optics industry is the primary factor responsible for the growing demand of technologically advanced adaptive optics during the forecast period from 2016 to 2024. In addition, increasing demand of adaptive optics from medical sector, astronomy and cellular imaging sector coupled with reduction in price of adaptive optics components owing to rapid technological advancement in material technology is also predicted to trigger the demand of adaptive optics in the coming years. In addition, rapid growth of the ophthalmology and retinal imaging treatments across the globe due to growing number of aging population and increasing adoption of retinal implants is also anticipated to create a better opportunity for various adaptive optics manufacturers during the forecast period.However, Increasing regulatory compliances in line up with rising health treatment cost due to tax reforms are some of the major factors anticipated to affect the market growth of adaptive optics in the coming years. Adaptive optics technology involves aiming high frequency lasers into the lower atmosphere to correct for atmospheric distortions. There are different regulatory issues pertaining to the use of powerful lasers, which in turn is restraining the growth of adaptive optics market to some extent.Global Adaptive Optics Market: Scope of the ReportThis report highlights the current market synopsis of the adaptive optics market along with future anticipated market growth during the period from 2016 to 2024. In addition, various political, economic, social and technological factors that are anticipated to affect the current and future demand of adaptive is also provided in this report. In addition, information related to key players operating in the market along with their market share and key strategies adopted to maintain their leading position is also provided in this report. The report also contains the present market size of adaptive optics technology in terms of revenue (USD Million) along with predictive forecast from 2016 to 2024.Global Adaptive Optics Market: SegmentationBased on technology, the global adaptive optics market is majorly driven by wavefront sensors with highest market share in 2015. Extensive use of wavefront sensor for detecting the state of wavefront across the adaptive optic technology is the primary factor behind this segment's dominance. However, the market for control system used to measures the shape of the wavefront and produces signals that represent the wavefront, is predicted to experience the most promising market during the forecast period from 2016 to 2024.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @By application, adaptive optics is majorly used in defense and security sector. The defense and security sector held the largest market share in 2015 and is predicted to maintain its dominance in the coming years. Adaptive optics are increasing used various defense communication system, surveillance and laser missile defense system. On the other hand, in terms of growth, consumer devices is predicted to witness the most promising market during the forecast period. Increasing demand for consumer devices having quick response, high optical quality and less power consumption are some of the key factors anticipated to boost the demand adaptive optics from various consumer goods manufacturers in the coming years.Some of the major players operating in the adaptive optics market include includes Benchmark Electronics, Inc. (U.S.), Northrop Grumman Corporation (U.S.), IRIS AO, Inc. (U.S.), Olympus Corp. (Tokyo), Boston Micromachines Corporation (U.S.), Raytheon Co. (U.S.), Canon Inc. (Japan), Carl Zeiss Meditec AG (Germany), Celestron LLC (U.S.) and Sacher Lasertechnik Gmbh (Germany) among others.The global adaptive optics has been segmented as follows:Global Adaptive Optics Market, By TechnologyWavefront ModulatorWavefront SensorControl SystemGlobal Adaptive Optics Market, By ApplicationBiomedicalDefense and SecurityAstronomyManufacturingConsumer devicesCommunicationGlobal Adaptive Optics Market, By GeographyNorth AmericaThe U.S.Rest of North AmericaEuropeThe U.K.GermanyFranceItalyRest of EuropeAsia PacificMake 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 @
Major Factor Currently Driving The Demand For Halal Products In Global Market Between The Period 2016 - 2024

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Major Factor Currently Driving The Demand For Halal Products In Global Market Between The Period 2016 - 2024" to its huge collection of research reports.The global halal products market is a highly lucrative market with meat and processed food and beverage segments being the most attractive market in 2015. This market is also a highly diversified market ranging from food and beverage products to personal care and pharmaceutical products. The major companies operating in the field of halal foods captured a major portion of the market since halal food and beverages dominated the market in 2015. However, due to the absence of global halal standards, the major outlook of the companies is to get the halal certification from the regulatory organization from each country separately.Global Halal Products Market: Drivers and RestraintsGrowing Muslim population is one of the prime factors pushing the demand for halal products market at present. This is due to the fact that hala products market is not confined to food and beverages, since it has expanded into personal care, and pharmaceutical industries as well. It is estimated that 26.4% of the global population is expected to be Muslims by 2030 as compared to 19.9% in 1990. The growth rate is much faster compared to other religions. In addition to this, rising purchasing power of the Islamic countries due to the rapid growth in their economy, especially in Middle East and South East Asia is a major contributing factor to the growth of this market. Further, consumption of hala products among the non-muslim population is also on the rise.Improvement of the retail sector is another major factor which is the currently driving the demand for halal products market across the globe. This was possible post improvement in the halal certification standards and the retail outlets selling halal certified products. Further, high degree of globalization and multilateral trade agreements has boosted the trade flow of halal products. This factor would ensure the smooth flow of halal products in the market.However, the lack of uniformity for halal standards is a major factor barring the growth of the market. The Islamic regulatory bodies of different countries are different due to which the definition of halal may be different in different countries. Due to this, products accepted by the Halal Certification Board of one country may not be accepted in other countries.Global Halal Products Market: Trends and OpportunitiesHowever, the manufacturing of halal products is relatively slow in most of the countries with high demand. Due to the small scale manufacturing of halal products, most of the countries with high demand for high demand for halal products are heavily dependent on imports from other countries. In order to reduce the over dependency on imports, the Government of some of the countries with high Muslim population (or high halal demand) is offering lucrative incentive to companies to manufacture halal products and promote the use of halal certified goods. This factor would pose to be a suitable opportunity for the growth of the halal products market at the global level.Global Halal Products Market: SegmentationThe market for global halal products is segmented on the basis of product types into primary meat, processed food and beverages, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and personal care and others. In term of revenue, primary meat and processed food accounted for the major market share in 2015 and is expected to witness a major surge in its demand by the end of the forecast period. Pharmaceuticals held the second largest market share in 2015, but the market is expected to witness a drastic decline by the end of the forecast period.On the basis of region, Asia Pacific and Middle East and Africa accounted for more than 85% of the total market in 2015 and they are expected to continue dominating the market throughout the forecast period.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Some of the key players operating in the field of halal products market include Nestle S.A., The Coca Cola Company, Kelloggs Company, Krafts Food Group Inc., Unilever Plc, GlaxoSmithKline Plc and LOreal S.A. among others.Global Halal Products Market: Scope of the ReportThe report has been segmented by product type, and geography and it includes drivers, restraints and opportunities (DROs), halal certification, halal standards, market attractiveness by products of the global halal products market. The study highlights current market trends and provides forecast from 2016 to 2024. We have featured the current market scenario for the global halal products market market and identified future trends that will impact demand for hala products during the forecast period.The global halal products market has been segmented into following types based on their product types including primary meat, processed food and beverages, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and personal care and other halal products.The global halal products market can be segmented as follows;-Global Halal Products Market, by Product TypePrimary MeatProcessed Food and BeveragesPharmaceuticalsCosmeticsPersonal CareOther Halal ProductsGlobal Halal Products Market, by GeographyNorth AmericaU.S.Rest of North AmericaEuropeU.K.GermanyFranceMake 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 @
Functional Requirements And Learning Analytics Of Student Information System In Global Market Over The Period 2017 - 2021

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Functional Requirements And Learning Analytics Of Student Information System In Global Market Over The Period 2017 - 2021" to its huge collection of research reports.SIS are highly compatible and can be installed either on a web server or local server of institutions. This encourages schools to adopt software as they will not incur high fixed cost, and they can conveniently blend traditional and online learning. Moreover, these software modules can be used via mobile devices, allowing uninterrupted information access to users. As the digitization of education reaches emerging countries like India and China, there will be a higher demand for the software from APAC. From an end-user perspective, higher education will dominate the market, owing to stronger functional requirements and learning analytics initiatives. The availability of cloud-based software programs is another factor that is increasing the acceptance of administrative software in schools globally. Cloud-based software programs offer safe and flexible data storage, easy accessibility, and do not require huge investments in hardware and servers.Technavios analysts forecast the global student information system market to grow at a CAGR of 16.62% during the period 2017-2021.Covered in this reportThe report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global student information system market for 2017-2021. To calculate the market size, the report considers the revenue generated from software licenses, maintenance, implementation, and subscriptions in the education sector.The market is divided into the following segments based on geography:APACEuropeNorth AmericaROWTechnavio's report, Global Student Information System 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 vendorsEllucianJenzabarSkywardUnit4To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Other prominent vendorsAnubavamCampus ManagementClasse365ComSpec InternationalFocus School SoftwareForadian TechnologiesIlluminate EducationITG AmericaSAPTribal GroupWorkdayMarket driverIncreased application of analytics in education.For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challengeLack of transparent communication between stakeholders.For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket trendIncorporation of social media into SIS.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?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 @
US Offshore Deepwater Gulf of Mexico Mad Dog Phase 2 Project Panorama - Oil and Gas Upstream Analysis Report

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ReportsWorldwide has announced the addition of a new report title "US Offshore Deepwater Gulf of Mexico Mad Dog Phase 2 Project Panorama" to its growing collection of premium market research reports.US Offshore Deepwater Gulf of Mexico Mad Dog Phase 2 Project Panorama, GlobalDatas latest release, presents a comprehensive overview of the asset. This upstream report includes detailed qualitative and quantitative information on the asset, provides a full economic assessment and reflects several parameters including (but not limited to) geological profile, asset development and specific challenges. Based on this analysis, future outlook for the asset is presented with possible trends and related scenarios identifying upside/downside potential.To Enquire about this Report please visit @Scope- Overview of the asset based on an analysis of the economic indicators- Key financial indicators including Net Present Value and Internal Rate of Return- Review of factors affecting the economic outcome of the field including development overview, geology, challenges, reserves and production with qualitative perspective on of the overall assets life with GlobalDatas analysis on the assets future outlook- Detailed production profile for the asset, giving annual output rates for each commodity produced- Cash flow statements from our economic analysis of the asset including capital expenditures, operating expenditures and tax liability- Individual valuations for equity holders- Sensitivity analysis for asset value considering a range of factorsTo view a detailed description and Table of Contents please visit:Reasons to buy- Understand the economic and non-economic factors that affect production of an asset- Benefit from an asset valuation derived from detailed research and modeling by our analysts- Basic view of various scenarios and its effect on the asset for risk or strategy planning- Utilize the quantitative and qualitative evaluation to ascertain trends within the region to inform decision making- Identify economic trends of an asset to determine investment requirementAbout ReportsWorldwide.comReportsWorldwide.com is a leading provider of global market intelligence reports and services. With research reports from top publishers, consulting and advisory firms, ReportsWorldwide.com offers instant online access to a growing database of expert insights on global industries, companies, products, geographies and trends.Press Contact:Abigail CrastoSenior Vice President101, Arch StreetBoston, MA 02110USPhone +1 (617) 398-4994Fax +1 (617) 398-4995abigail@reportsworldwide.com
Analysis Of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) In Global Market: Size, Trends & Forecasts, 2017 - 2021

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Analysis Of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) In Global Market: Size, Trends & Forecasts, 2017 - 2021" to its huge collection of research reports.The report entitled Global Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Market Size, Trends & Forecasts (2017-2021) provide a detailed analysis of global LNG market with analysis of market size and growth. The analysis includes market size in terms of trade volume, demand, and LNG export and import market share by country.The report provides brief regional analysis of Middle East, JKT (Japan, Korea and Taiwan), China-India, Europe and Americas. Regional analysis include market sizing in terms of export, import and demand. The Middle East has been the largest exporting region over the past few years and is expected to remain the largest exporter of LNG globally.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 global LNG market has also been forecasted for the period 2017-2021, taking into consideration the previous growth patterns, the growth drivers and the current and future trends.A brief company profiling of major market players namely Royal Dutch Shell, ExxonMobil, BP Global and Chevron Corporation has been provided in the report on the basis of aspects like business overview, financial overview and business strategies adopted by respective companies.Company CoverageExxonMobil CorporationRoyal Dutch ShellBP GlobalChevron CorporationRegion/Country CoverageMiddle EastJKT (Japan, Korea and Taiwan)China-IndiaEuropeAmericasExecutive SummaryNatural gas is one of the safest, cleanest and most used form of energy which gives both heat and light. Natural gas is hydrocarbon which means it is made up of compounds of hydrogen and carbon, containing seventy to ninety percent methane in most cases. It can be used as fuel in many sectors as; transportation, industrial, agricultural, and a raw material for petrochemical industry. There are three forms of natural gas: pipe natural gas, natural gas for vehicle (NGV) and liquefied natural gas.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @LNG is a clear liquid which forms when natural gas is cooled to -162C (-260F). The cooling process shrinks the volume of the gas 600 times, making it easier and safer to store and ship LNG is produced at the so-called liquefaction facilities (plants), following which it can be transported in special cryogenic tanks: sea tank ships or tank cars. It enables rapid delivery of gas to the areas located far from the gas trunk lines.The global LNG trade volume has increased over the years and projections are made that the market would rise in the next five years i.e. 2017 to 2021 at a rapid pace. Major factors contributing in the increasing trade volume of LNG are startup of several new projects in Australia and Indonesia, rapid economic growth especially of emerging economies, and rising demand for environmentally cleaner fuels etc.In the forecasted period, market would be pushed by increase in LNG exports, lower shipping cost, technological advancements and access to new markets etc. In spite of high growth in trade volumes of LNG, market is still facing some challenges that are obstructing the growth of the global LNG market. Challenges faced by LNG industry are supply and demand imbalance, lower LNG prices, competition from fossil fuels and renewable energy and emergence of regional trade etc.Table Of Content1. Executive Summary2. Introduction2.1 Overview of Natural Gas2.1.1 Forms of Natural Gas2.1.2 Top 10 Countries with Proved Natural Gas Reserves2.2 Overview of LNG2.2.1 LNG Process2.2.2 Uses of LNG2.2.3 Advantages of LNGMake 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 @
Customer Relationship Management Market: Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast, 2022

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Customer Relationship Management Market: Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast, 2022" to its huge collection of research reports.This report studies the global Customer Relationship Management market, analyzes and researches the Customer Relationship Management development status and forecast in United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia. This report focuses on the top players in global market, likeSalesforce.comMicrosoftSAP SEOracleAdobe SystemsSugarCRMZohoNetsuiteInsightlyBpmonlineMarket segment by Regions/Countries, this report coversUnited StatesEUJapanChinaIndiaSoutheast AsiaMarket segment by Type, Customer Relationship Management can be split intoOn-premiseCloudTo Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Market segment by Application, Customer Relationship Management can be split intoBFSIRetailHealthcareIT & TelecomDiscrete ManufacturingGovernment & EducationOthersTable of ContentsGlobal Customer Relationship Management Market Size, Status and Forecast 20221 Industry Overview of Customer Relationship Management1.1 Customer Relationship Management Market Overview1.1.1 Customer Relationship Management Product Scope1.1.2 Market Status and Outlook1.2 Global Customer Relationship Management Market Size and Analysis by Regions1.2.1 United States1.2.2 EU1.2.3 Japan1.2.4 China2 Global Customer Relationship Management Competition Analysis by Players2.1 Customer Relationship Management Market Size (Value) by Players (2016 and 2017)2.2 Competitive Status and Trend2.2.1 Market Concentration Rate2.2.2 Product/Service DifferencesMake 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 @
Norway Oda Project Panorama - Oil and Gas Upstream Analysis Report

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ReportsWorldwide has announced the addition of a new report title Norway Oda Project Panorama - Oil and Gas Upstream Analysis Report to its growing collection of premium market research reports.Norway Oda Project Panorama, GlobalDatas latest release, presents a comprehensive overview of the asset. This upstream report includes detailed qualitative and quantitative information on the asset, provides a full economic assessment and reflects several parameters including (but not limited to) geological profile, asset development and specific challenges. Based on this analysis, future outlook for the asset is presented with possible trends and related scenarios identifying upside/downside potential.To Enquire about this Report please visit @Scope- Overview of the asset based on an analysis of the economic indicators- Key financial indicators including Net Present Value and Internal Rate of Return- Review of factors affecting the economic outcome of the field including development overview, geology, challenges, reserves and production with qualitative perspective on of the overall assets life with GlobalDatas analysis on the assets future outlook- Detailed production profile for the asset, giving annual output rates for each commodity produced- Cash flow statements from our economic analysis of the asset including capital expenditures, operating expenditures and tax liability- Individual valuations for equity holders- Sensitivity analysis for asset value considering a range of factorsTo view a detailed description and Table of Contents please visit:Reasons to buy- Understand the economic and non-economic factors that affect production of an asset- Benefit from an asset valuation derived from detailed research and modeling by our analysts- Basic view of various scenarios and its effect on the asset for risk or strategy planning- Utilize the quantitative and qualitative evaluation to ascertain trends within the region to inform decision making- Identify economic trends of an asset to determine investment requirementsAbout ReportsWorldwide.comReportsWorldwide.com is a leading provider of global market intelligence reports and services. With research reports from top publishers, consulting and advisory firms, ReportsWorldwide.com offers instant online access to a growing database of expert insights on global industries, companies, products, geographies and trends.Press Contact:Abigail CrastoSenior Vice President101, Arch StreetBoston, MA 02110USPhone +1 (617) 398-4994Fax +1 (617) 398-4995abigail@reportsworldwide.com
Congo Republic Banga Kayo Project Panorama - Oil and Gas Upstream Analysis Report

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ReportsWorldwide has announced the addition of a new report title Australia Esophagoscopes & Gastroscopes Market Outlook to 2023 to its growing collection of premium market research reports.Congo Republic Banga Kayo Project Panorama, GlobalDatas latest release, presents a comprehensive overview of the asset. This upstream report includes detailed qualitative and quantitative information on the asset, provides a full economic assessment and reflects several parameters including (but not limited to) geological profile, asset development and specific challenges. Based on this analysis, future outlook for the asset is presented with possible trends and related scenarios identifying upside/downside potential.To Enquire about this Report please visit @Scope- Overview of the asset based on an analysis of the economic indicators- Key financial indicators including Net Present Value and Internal Rate of Return- Review of factors affecting the economic outcome of the field including development overview, geology, challenges, reserves and production with qualitative perspective on of the overall assets life with GlobalDatas analysis on the assets future outlook- Detailed production profile for the asset, giving annual output rates for each commodity produced- Cash flow statements from our economic analysis of the asset including capital expenditures, operating expenditures and tax liability- Individual valuations for equity holders- Sensitivity analysis for asset value considering a range of factors.To view a detailed description and Table of Contents please visit:Reasons to buy- Understand the economic and non-economic factors that affect production of an asset- Benefit from an asset valuation derived from detailed research and modeling by our analysts- Basic view of various scenarios and its effect on the asset for risk or strategy planning- Utilize the quantitative and qualitative evaluation to ascertain trends within the region to inform decision making- Identify economic trends of an asset to determine investment requirementsAbout ReportsWorldwide.comReportsWorldwide.com is a leading provider of global market intelligence reports and services. With research reports from top publishers, consulting and advisory firms, ReportsWorldwide.com offers instant online access to a growing database of expert insights on global industries, companies, products, geographies and trends.Press Contact:Abigail CrastoSenior Vice President101, Arch StreetBoston, MA 02110USPhone +1 (617) 398-4994Fax +1 (617) 398-4995abigail@reportsworldwide.com
Iraq Miran Project Panorama - Oil and Gas Upstream Analysis Report

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ReportsWorldwide has announced the addition of a new report title Iraq Miran Project Panorama - Oil and Gas Upstream Analysis Report to its growing collection of premium market research reports.Iraq Miran Project Panorama, GlobalDatas latest release, presents a comprehensive overview of the asset. This upstream report includes detailed qualitative and quantitative information on the asset, provides a full economic assessment and reflects several parameters including (but not limited to) geological profile, asset development and specific challenges. Based on this analysis, future outlook for the asset is presented with possible trends and related scenarios identifying upside/downside potential.To Enquire about this Report please visit @Scope- Overview of the asset based on an analysis of the economic indicators- Key financial indicators including Net Present Value and Internal Rate of Return- Review of factors affecting the economic outcome of the field including development overview, geology, challenges, reserves and production with qualitative perspective on of the overall assets life with GlobalDatas analysis on the assets future outlook- Detailed production profile for the asset, giving annual output rates for each commodity produced- Cash flow statements from our economic analysis of the asset including capital expenditures, operating expenditures and tax liability- Individual valuations for equity holders- Sensitivity analysis for asset value considering a range of factorsTo view a detailed description and Table of Contents please visit:Reasons to buy- Understand the economic and non-economic factors that affect production of an asset- Benefit from an asset valuation derived from detailed research and modeling by our analysts- Basic view of various scenarios and its effect on the asset for risk or strategy planning- Utilize the quantitative and qualitative evaluation to ascertain trends within the region to inform decision making- Identify economic trends of an asset to determine investment requirementsAbout ReportsWorldwide.comReportsWorldwide.com is a leading provider of global market intelligence reports and services. With research reports from top publishers, consulting and advisory firms, ReportsWorldwide.com offers instant online access to a growing database of expert insights on global industries, companies, products, geographies and trends.Press Contact:Abigail CrastoSenior Vice President101, Arch StreetBoston, MA 02110USPhone +1 (617) 398-4994Fax +1 (617) 398-4995abigail@reportsworldwide.com
Vietnam Ca Rong Do Project Panorama - Oil and Gas Upstream Analysis Report

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ReportsWorldwide has announced the addition of a new report title Vietnam Ca Rong Do Project Panorama - Oil and Gas Upstream Analysis Report to its growing collection of premium market research reports.Vietnam Ca Rong Do Project Panorama, GlobalDatas latest release, presents a comprehensive overview of the asset. This upstream report includes detailed qualitative and quantitative information on the asset, provides a full economic assessment and reflects several parameters including (but not limited to) geological profile, asset development and specific challenges. Based on this analysis, future outlook for the asset is presented with possible trends and related scenarios identifying upside/downside potential.To Enquire about this Report please visit @Scope- Overview of the asset based on an analysis of the economic indicators- Key financial indicators including Net Present Value and Internal Rate of Return- Review of factors affecting the economic outcome of the field including development overview, geology, challenges, reserves and production with qualitative perspective on of the overall assets life with GlobalDatas analysis on the assets future outlook- Detailed production profile for the asset, giving annual output rates for each commodity produced- Cash flow statements from our economic analysis of the asset including capital expenditures, operating expenditures and tax liability- Individual valuations for equity holders- Sensitivity analysis for asset value considering a range of factorsTo view a detailed description and Table of Contents please visit:Reasons to buy- Understand the economic and non-economic factors that affect production of an asset- Benefit from an asset valuation derived from detailed research and modeling by our analysts- Basic view of various scenarios and its effect on the asset for risk or strategy planning- Utilize the quantitative and qualitative evaluation to ascertain trends within the region to inform decision making- Identify economic trends of an asset to determine investment requirementsAbout ReportsWorldwide.comReportsWorldwide.com is a leading provider of global market intelligence reports and services. With research reports from top publishers, consulting and advisory firms, ReportsWorldwide.com offers instant online access to a growing database of expert insights on global industries, companies, products, geographies and trends.Press Contact:Abigail CrastoSenior Vice President101, Arch StreetBoston, MA 02110USPhone +1 (617) 398-4994Fax +1 (617) 398-4995abigail@reportsworldwide.com
EpiCast Report: Cystic Fibrosis - Epidemiology Forecast to 2025

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ReportsWorldwide has announced the addition of a new report title EpiCast Report: Cystic Fibrosis - Epidemiology Forecast to 2025 to its growing collection of premium market research reports.Cystic fibrosis (CF) is an inherited disorder that affects the cells that produce mucus, sweat, and digestive juices, causing severe damage to the lungs, digestive system, and other organs. In CF patients, a defective gene results in sticky and thick secretions that plug up tubes, ducts, and passageways. The signs and symptoms of CF vary depending on the severity of the disease. Most of the signs and symptoms of CF affect the respiratory system and digestive system.GlobalData epidemiologists provided two different forecasts for the diagnosed incident and diagnosed prevalent cases of CF in the 7MM: a forecast based on registry data and a forecast adjusted for the underestimation of registry-based data. According to the forecast based on registry data, the diagnosed incident cases of CF in the 7MM will decrease from 1,925 cases in 2015 to 1,813 cases in 2025, at an Annual Growth Rate (AGR) of negative 0.58%. The US will have the highest number of diagnosed incident cases of CF among the 7MM throughout the forecast period, while Germany will have the lowest.According to the forecast adjusted for underestimation of registry data, the diagnosed incident cases of CF in the 7MM will decrease from 2,217 cases in 2015 to 2,074 cases in 2025, at an AGR of negative 0.64%. The US will have the highest number of diagnosed incident cases of CF among the 7MM throughout the forecast period, while Germany will have the lowest.GlobalData epidemiologists utilized peer-reviewed, country-specific studies to forecast diagnosed incident cases, diagnosed prevalent cases, and mortality due to CF in the 7MM from 2015-2025. Diagnosed prevalent cases were segmented by sex, age, specific mutation type, and MRSA infection to provide more detailed information about the patient population. GlobalData epidemiologists ensured that the forecast methodology was consistent across all the 7MM to allow for a meaningful comparison of CF across these markets.To Enquire about this Report please visit @Scope- The Cystic Fibrosis (CF) EpiCast Report provides an overview of the risk factors and global trends of CF in the seven major markets (7MM) (US, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK, and Canada). It includes a 10-year epidemiology forecast of diagnosed incident cases of CF, diagnosed prevalent cases of CF, and CF mortality segmented by sex in these seven markets. Diagnosed prevalent cases of CF are further segmented by age (starting from zero years of age and up to 85 years and older), specific mutation type, and chronic Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection.- The CF epidemiology report is written and developed by Masters- and PhD-level epidemiologists.- The EpiCast Report is in-depth, high quality, transparent and market-driven, providing expert analysis of disease trends in the 7MM.To view a detailed description and Table of Contents please visit:Reasons to buyThe CF EpiCast series will allow you to -- Develop business strategies by understanding the trends shaping and driving the global CF market.- Quantify patient populations in the global CF market to improve product design, pricing, and launch plans.- Organize sales and marketing efforts by identifying the age groups and sex that present the best opportunities for CF therapeutics in each of the markets covered.- Identify the percentage of CF diagnosed prevalent cases by age, sex, specific mutation type, and MRSA infection.About ReportsWorldwide.comReportsWorldwide.com is a leading provider of global market intelligence reports and services. With research reports from top publishers, consulting and advisory firms, ReportsWorldwide.com offers instant online access to a growing database of expert insights on global industries, companies, products, geographies and trends.Press Contact:Abigail CrastoSenior Vice President101, Arch StreetBoston, MA 02110USPhone +1 (617) 398-4994Fax +1 (617) 398-4995abigail@reportsworldwide.com
Italy Esophagoscopes & Gastroscopes Market Outlook to 2023

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ReportsWorldwide has announced the addition of a new report title Italy Esophagoscopes & Gastroscopes Market Outlook to 2023 to its growing collection of premium market research reports.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.To Enquire about this Report please visit @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.To view a detailed description and Table of Contents please visit: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 ReportsWorldwide.comReportsWorldwide.com is a leading provider of global market intelligence reports and services. With research reports from top publishers, consulting and advisory firms, ReportsWorldwide.com offers instant online access to a growing database of expert insights on global industries, companies, products, geographies and trends.Press Contact:Abigail CrastoSenior Vice President101, Arch StreetBoston, MA 02110USPhone +1 (617) 398-4994Fax +1 (617) 398-4995abigail@reportsworldwide.com
Increasing Incidence of Thyroid Gland Disorders Expected to Propel the Thyroid Gland Disorders Treatment Market

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Thyroid gland is made of thyroid cells that absorb iodine from food and convert it into triiodothyronine (T3) and thyroxine (T4). These hormones are released into the blood stream and play an important role in the regulation of metabolism. Thyroid gland disorders are defined as an abnormal release of thyroid hormones which may demand proper therapeutic agents to correct the disorder condition. This report studies the market in a view of different types of thyroid drugs i.e. hypothyroid drugs and hyperthyroid drugs.The report comprises an elaborate executive summary, which includes a market snapshot that provides market dynamics of various segments and sub-segments that are included in the report in a precise manner. Moreover, executive summary comprises waterfall diagram, which reflects the market size of various segments in the descending order.Obtain Report Details @A detailed qualitative analysis of the factors responsible for driving and restraining the growth of the global thyroid gland disorders treatment market and future opportunities has been provided in the market overview section. This section of the report also provides with market attractiveness analysis, epidemiology study, event impact analysis, regulatory framework and market share analysis by key players (%) operating in the thyroid gland disorders treatment market.Based on disorders, the global thyroid gland disorders treatment market has been segmented into hypothyroidism and hyperthyroidism. The market for these types has been extensively analyzed for different thyroid gland disorders drugs based on sales revenue of the various generic and branded products developed by the manufacturers. The market size and forecast in terms of USD million for each disorder has been provided for the period from 2013 to 2023. The report on the thyroid gland disorders treatment market also provides with compounded annual growth rate (CAGR %) for each of the market segments mentioned above with the forecast period from 2015 to 2023, considering 2014 as the base year.Geographically, the thyroid gland disorders treatment market has been categorized into North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and Rest of the World (RoW) which are further divided based on the disorder types i.e. hypothyroidism and hyperthyroidism. Asia Pacific, further comprises detailed country analysis for China and Rest of APAC. Likewise, Latin America extensively provides with the detailed countrywise analysis for Brazil and Rest of LATAM. The market size and forecast for each of these regions and the mentioned countries have been provided for the period from 2013 to 2023 along with CAGR (%) for the forecast period from 2015 to 2023. The research study also incorporates the competitive scenario of major players in these regions.Fill the form to gain deeper insights on this market @A list of recommendations has been provided for new entrants to help establish a strong presence and for existing market players to increase their market shares. The report concludes with the profiles of the major players in the thyroid gland disorders treatment market based on various attributes such as company overview, financial overview, business strategies, product portfolio, and recent developments. Major players profiled in this report include Abbott Laboratories, Lannett Company, Inc., Pfizer, Inc., Merck KGaA, and Mylan N.V.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:
Costume Jewelry Market to Reach $40,631 Million, Globally, by 2022

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According to a new report published by Allied Market Research, titled, Costume Jewelry Market by Type, Mode of Sale, Gender, and Geography: Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecasts, 2014-2022, the global costume jewelry market size was valued at $25,554 million in 2015, and is estimated to reach $40,631 million by 2022, growing at a CAGR of 6.9% from 2016 to 2022. North America accounted for around 32% share of the overall market revenue in 2015, owing to rising prices of precious metal jewelries such as gold, silver and diamond, resulting in higher adoption of costume and imitation jewelries among consumers. Asia-Pacific is anticipated to grow at the highest CAGR of 8.5% from 2016 to 2022.Request Sample Report at:The market is driven by factors such as low-maintenance cost, growing fashion consciousness, rising prices of gold & diamond jewelry, and affordability of costume jewelries. However, fluctuating costs of raw materials, lack of durability of jewelry item, and stringent import & trade laws are the constraints for the market growth.The global costume jewelry market is categorized based on the type of product into necklaces & chains, rings, earrings, bracelets, cufflinks & studs, and others. Necklaces & chains segment generated a higher revenue in 2015, and is expected to dominate the market throughout the forecast period. Increase in use of artificial jewelry such as necklaces and chains in bridal wear, daily wear, and fashion wear is expected to boost the market growth.The global costume jewelry market is segmented based on gender into male and female consumers. Female consumers segment generated the highest revenue in 2015, constituting more than 64% of the total market by value and maintain its dominance during the forecast period. The male consumers segment is expected to exhibit significant growth with improvement in mens jewelry designs, growing demand for wedding rings, and rising preference for corporate dressing. Other factors driving the male costume jewelries market are growing fashion awareness and inclination towards piercing and tattooing ornament on their bodies.Access Full Summary at:The global costume jewelry market is categorized based on the mode of sale into retail sales channel and online sales channel. Retail sales channels include brand outlets, physical stores, departmental stores, retail shops, and flagship stores. The segment contributed largest revenue in 2015, constituting around 86% of the total costume jewelry market. However, the online sales segment is anticipated to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period owing to improvements in various digital platforms and increasing e-commerce websites.The demand for imitation jewelry is growing at a steady pace. The market has witnessed a steady increase in the demand for costume jewelries, globally, every year.. However, the adoption is faster in Asia-Pacific and LAMEA. With the increasing penetration of artificial jewelry among males and females, especially for the products such as rings, earrings, and bracelets, costume jewelry manufacturers are now targeting developing nations such as India and China as the potential markets. Growing population, rising disposable income, and improving economic conditions are the key factors fueling the market growth in these regions.China is one of the top three exporters of costume jewelry in the world, as it is a cost-effective manufacturing hub with a large base of manufacturers. Many of the companies shifted their manufacturing base from Western countries to the East, and especially to China owing to the low cost of labor and operations. This scenario is expected to result in paradigm shift in the industry increasing focus on product innovation & differentiation rather than lost-cost product offerings and streamlining distribution channels.The global costume jewelry market is highly fragmented with both small and large players as well as other small brands and local non-branded products. LOUIS VUITTON, Avon Products, Inc., BaubleBar Inc., and Buckely London are key companies in the global costume jewelry market.North America accounted for the major share in the global costume jewelry industry in 2015, and is expected to maintain its dominance throughout the forecast period, owing to growing demand for imitation jewelry items and increase in imports in U.S. Asia-Pacific is projected to grow at the highest rate in the near future, owing to increasing adoption of inexpensive artificial jewelry items, growing fashion consciousness, and rising purchasing power of consumers.Key Findings of the Costume Jewelry Market The rings segment is expected to grow at the highest CAGR of 8.8% from 2014 to 2022. U.S. accounted for the largest customer base in the North American costume jewelry market in 2015, and is anticipated to dominate the market throughout the forecast period. The online mode of sale segment is expected to grow at a highest CAGR of 7.7% The male consumers segment is expected to grow at a highest CAGR of 7.6% during the forecast period.The key players profiled in the report are Buckley London, Avon Product Inc., Swank, Inc., Cartier, LOUIS VUITTON, DCK Concessions, Billig Jewelers, Inc., BaubleBar Inc., Giorgio Armani S.p.A, and Stuller, Inc. Market players have adopted various strategies such as product launch, acquisition, collaboration, and partnership to expand their foothold in the market.About Us:Allied Market Research (AMR) is a full-service market research and business-consulting wing of Allied Analytics LLP based in Portland, Oregon. Allied Market Research provides global enterprises as well as medium and small businesses with unmatched quality of "Market Research Reports" and "Business Intelligence Solutions". AMR has a targeted view to provide business insights and consulting to assist its clients to make strategic business decisions and achieve sustainable growth in their respective market domain.We are in professional corporate relations with various companies and this helps us in digging out market data that helps us generate accurate research data tables and confirms utmost accuracy in our market forecasting. Each and every data presented in the reports published by us is extracted through primary interviews with top officials from leading companies of domain concerned. Our secondary data procurement methodology includes deep online and offline research and discussion with knowledgeable professionals and analysts in the industry.Contact:Rahul Thakur5933 NE Win Sivers Drive#205, Portland, OR 97220United StatesToll Free: +1-800-792-5285UK: + 44-845-528-1300Hong Kong: + 852-301-84916India (Pune): +91 20 66346060Fax: +1?855?550-5975help@alliedmarketresearch.com
Collagenase Clostridium Histolyticum Market Trends and Opportunities for the Industry by 2024

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Global Collagenase Clostridium Histolyticum Market: OverviewCollagenase clostridium histolyticum is primarily used in the treatment of Dupuytrens contracture and Peyronie's disease. Thus, the global market for collagenase clostridium histolyticum is gaining traction due to the rising prevalence of these two diseases, especially in developed countries. Collagenase is an enzyme that helps in breaking down the chord of thickened tissue and permits straightening of fingers. Some of the primary medications available in the market based on this enzyme are Xiapex (Europe), Xiaflex (U.S.), and Collagenase Santyl.Browse through Collagenase Clostridium Histolyticum Market report to know what factors will shape the market by 2024:The report identifies and meticulously examines the trends and opportunities impacting the growth of the global collagenase clostridium histolyticum market. It extensively covers the entire value chain of the market along with the suppliers and distributor analysis. For a clear understanding, the report segments the market on the basis of geography and provides data for the market across each segment. The key players in the market are profiled along with their business strategies, market shares, latest developments, and revenue and cost structures. The report includes a separate section of recommendations by industrial experts for both established as well as emerging players in the collagenase clostridium histolyticum market.Global Collagenase Clostridium Histolyticum Market: Drivers and RestraintsBesides their conventional use in the treatment of Peyronie's disease and Dupuytren's contracture, collagenase clostridium histolyticum is used in various medical areas such as wound care, necrotic tissue, burn management, and pain management. In addition to this, over the past few years, an increase has been witnessed in the number of clinical studies, especially in developed countries, focused on discovering other usages of collagenase in human healthcare. Therefore, its widening scope of applications is providing a fillip to the global collagenase clostridium histolyticum market. The market is thriving due to the lack of other standard and reliable medicines and therapies for the treatment of Dupuytren's contracture and Peyronie's disease.On the other hand, the presence of stringent regulatory approval framework and high prices of collagenase are acting as stumbling blocks for the global collagenase clostridium histolyticum market. Moreover, a raft of side effects is associated with the use of collagenase clostridium histolyticum. They include, itching on the treated hand, blisters at the site of injection, painful sexual intercourses, painful erection, and swollen and painful glands in the area around elbow and underarms. However, increasing research and development activities for the introduction of safer drugs and therapies are likely to unfold tremendous growth opportunities for the global collagenase clostridium histolyticum market.Global Collagenase Clostridium Histolyticum Market: Geographical SegmentationIn terms of geography, the report divides the global biofuels market into Asia Pacific, Europe, North America, Latin America, and the Middle East and Africa. North America will be a prominent market for collagenase clostridium histolyticum, thanks to high awareness among the populace regarding diseases such as Peyronies and Dupuytrens and their medications. Rapid clinical advancements are also contributing to the growth of the region. Europe will also account for a substantial share in the market, owing to the rising prevalence of the aforementioned diseases. The presence of advanced healthcare infrastructure is also responsible for the prominence of both the regions.Request a sample of this report to know what opportunities will emerge in the rapidly evolving Collagenase Clostridium Histolyticum Market by 2024:Global Collagenase Clostridium Histolyticum Market: Competitive LandscapeThe global collagenase clostridium histolyticum market is highly competitive and consolidated in nature owing to the presence of a handful of large players. The majority of key companies are involved in mergers and acquisitions and collaborations to strengthen their position in the market. Players are also paying high attention to clinical advancements in order to provide improved and safer drugs. Some of the prominent participants in the global collagenase clostridium histolyticum market are Healthpoint Ltd., BioSpecifics Technologies Corp., Auxilium Pharmaceuticals Inc., Actelion Pharmaceuticals Canada Inc, Smith & Nephew Plc., Advanced Biofactures Corporation, and Swedish Orphan Biovitrum AB.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:
Fosfomycin Calcium Market Growth and Regional Forecast by 2023

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Global Fosfomycin Calcium Market: OverviewFosfomycin calcium is a bactericidal agent with low toxicity levels and low cross-resistance level with other antibiotics. Known simply as fosfomycin or oral fosfomycin, it acts as an anti-infective agent by killing sensitive bacteria present in the affected body part. This substance exhibits high level of activity when used against gram positive and gram negative bacteria. White or yellow colored in the powdered form, fosfomycin can be used as an additive in drinking water and animal feed.Browse through Fosfomycin Calcium Market report to know what factors will shape the market by 2023:A clear, lucid analysis of the crucial factors accelerating and inhibiting the growth of the global market for fosfomycin calcium has been provided in the report. The major market trends and developments in the competitive landscape have been discussed, alongside a detailed analysis of the key market vendors and their business tactics such as partnerships, product innovation, and mergers. An analysis of the value chain, detailed descriptions of the key product and application segments, and market attractiveness are also included in the report.Global Fosfomycin Calcium Market: Drivers and RestraintsSeveral studies such as clinical trials and case reports that incorporate data for patients of all ages, ranging from children to elderly populace suffering from disorders such as cystitis, pyelonephritis, gastrointestinal infections, and UTIs have revealed the efficiency of fosfomycin calcium. It has also been found to be useful in treating infections caused by several multidrug-resistant bacteria including penicillin-resistant pneumococci, vancomycin-resistant enterococci, and methicillin-resistant S.aureus. Tobramycin is used in combination with fosfomycin calcium in the treatment of lung infections in patients suffering from cystic fibrosis.Moreover, when 28 patients with chronic sinusitis were administered with fosfomycin calcium as a nebulized treatment, it led to reduction of symptoms in 22 of them. Fosfomycin calcium can also be a viable alternative replacing fluoroquinolones in the treatment of chronic bacterial prostatitis, finds a small study that was presented at Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy held in San Diego during 2015.In this study conducted by Ilias Karaiskos, MD, from the Hygeia General Hospital in Greece, a daily dosage of 3gms for a week, and then 3gms per 48 hours for a 6 week period was given orally to 20 patients. 85% of these patients, displayed signs of improved or resolved infection. The positive results of such research projects could pave the way for further expansion of the market in the future.However, side effects such as nausea, dizziness, and gastrointestinal disturbances incurred by fosfomycin calcium-drugs might inhibit the growth of the global market for fosfomycin calcium. Nonetheless, the expansion of the market is assured by the ceaseless efforts of the market players who are attempting to explore the emerging markets.Global Fosfomycin Calcium Market: Regional OutlookAsia Pacific, being the fastest growing region, promises considerable growth opportunities. India and China, exhibiting high demand for fosfomycin calcium are expected emerge as the key contributors to revenue generated by the Asia Pacific market. Countries such as Brazil, Germany, Japan, South Africa, France, and Spain have been using fosfomycin calcium on a large scale. North American region is also likely to register significant growth, thanks to the adoption of fosfomycin calcium in the treatment of uncomplicated urinary tract infection (UTI). Europe has also been displaying increasing demand for fosfomycin calcium, which is sold for oral use under different brand names.Request a sample of this report to know what opportunities will emerge in the rapidly evolving Fosfomycin Calcium Market by 2023:Companies mentioned in the research reportFarmaSino Pharmaceuticals (Jiangsu) Co., Ltd., Ercros S.A., AdvaCare Pharma, China Sinopharm International Shanghai Co., Ltd., Serendex Pharmaceuticals A/S, Northeast Pharmaceutical Group Co., Ltd., SINTOFARM FARMACEUTICI S.p.A., and Mingshui Fukang Chemical Co., Ltd. are some of the major companies operating in the global market for fosfomycin calcium.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:
CEA Antibodies Market Outlook And Research Survey To 2023

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CEA stands for carcinoembryonic antigen, is a protein that is usually produced in developing fetus and disappears or is absent in adults. Production of abnormal amount of CEA protein may lead to cancer. CEA test is performed to measure the level of proteins and check for the recurrence of colon and other cancers in patients already diagnosed with cancer. The normal accepted range of this protein that is non-cancerous in nature is 0 micrograms to 0.25 micrograms per liter of blood. Elevated levels of carcinoembryonic antigen in patients recently treated for cancer, indicates recurrence of the cancer.Browse through CEA Antibodies Market report to know what factors will shape the market by 2023:The elevated levels of carcinoembryonic antigens results in different types of cancers and other conditions such as cholecystitis, lung infection, heavy smoking, inflammatory bowel diseases, peptic and ulcer. High level of carcinoembryonic antigens is also found in the patients who are not diagnosed with cancer. This increases the risk of developing cancer in such patients. Hematoma (blood accumulating under the skin), infection, dizziness and excessive bleeding are some of the risks associated with abnormal levels of CEA. The abnormal levels of CEA in the body can be detected by using arcitumomab, a monoclonal antibody. This is commonly utilized in identification of glycoprotein expression in tissue samples. CEA antibody acts against the CEA, and help treat patients with presence of CEA protein. Hence, this antibody in utilized extensively to treat the patients suffering from CEA associated cancers.Several drugs (CEA antibody) are currently available in the market that are utilized to treat CEA cancer. Pan CEA and clone II-7 are some of the examples of CEA antibody drugs. Discovery of specific antigens and biomarkers propels the growth of carcinoembryonic antigen antibody market. Similarly, continuous technological advancements in the drugs will also augment the growth of carcinoembryonic antigen antibody market. Likewise, rise in geriatric population also supports the growth of carcinoembryonic antigen antibody market. This is due to the fact that this class of population is at higher risk for developing CEA associated cancers. The World Health of Organization has estimated that by 2050, around 2 billion people belong to this population. However, lack of awareness and availability of novel technological solutions might pose a challenge to the growth of CEA antibody market.In 2012, North America accounted for the largest share of the global carcinoembryonic antigen antibody market. This is due to the presence of large number of companies engaged in developing and manufacturing carcinoembryonic antigen antibodies. Also, increasing R&D expenditure by various players in the region will augment the growth of carcinoembryonic antigen antibody market. Likewise, increasing government initiatives regarding the development of carcinoembryonic antigen antibody will further accentuate the growth of carcinoembryonic antigen antibody market. Europe accounted for the second largest share by revenue in 2012 of global carcinoembryonic antigen antibody market. This large market revenue is attributed to the presence of large geriatric population coupled with increasing healthcare expenditure in the region. Asia-Pacific along with Rest of the World (RoW) contributed smallest share in the global carcinoembryonic antigen antibody market in 2012. Lack of awareness coupled with presence of few pharmaceutical companies that are engaged in developing and manufacturing carcinoembryonic antigen antibodies restrict the growth of carcinoembryonic antigen antibody market in these two regions of the globe.Request a sample of this report to know what opportunities will emerge in the rapidly evolving CEA Antibodies Market by 2023:Some of the major players operating in the carcinoembryonic antigen antibody market include Abbott Laboratories, Siemens Healthcare, bioMerieux, Danaher Corporation (Beckman Coulter), Myriad Genetics, Epigenomics, Qiagen N.V., and Life Technologies Corporation among other significant players.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:
In-vitro Cancer Diagnostics Market Segmentation and Major Players Analysis and Forecast to 2024

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Global In-vitro Cancer Diagnostics Market: OverviewA collection of various diseases caused due to the prevalence of several genetic malfunctions is known as cancer. Cancer is triggered by the uncontrolled growth of several tissues and organs. A human body can be affected by more than 100 types of cancer and each one of them is categorizes on the basis of the cell type that gets affected initially. When the damaged cells split irrepressibly to form tissue lumps and masses, it is when patients suffering from cancer are harmed more. These masses are known as tumors. These tumors can grow easily and interfere with the working of the circulatory, digestive, and nervous systems. Tumors are known for releasing hormones that alter the functions of the body. The tumors that are stable and stay at one spot are benign tumors and the ones that grow are malignant tumors, thus becoming fatal to the human body.Browse through In-vitro Cancer Diagnostics Market report to know what factors will shape the market by 2024:The research report presents an in-depth analysis of the historical growth trajectory, current state, and future growth prospects of the global in-vitro cancer diagnostics market. It also evaluates the factors that are likely to positively or adversely impact the growth of the market along with the trends predominant in the market. The important elements at play are also mentioned in the study. Porters five forces have also been analyzed to present a clear understanding of the global in-vitro cancer diagnostics market and provide information on the degree of entry and exit barriers in the market. The shares, products, and strategies of the leading players have also been highlighted in the report.Global In-vitro Cancer Diagnostics Market: Trends and OpportunitiesIn-vitro cancer diagnostics is a technique in which the reagents and medical devices are employed to examine specimens such as body fluids, tissues, stool, urine, and blood. These specimens are derived from the human body to diagnose and detect infections, conditions, and diseases. These tests can be performed in point of care units, hospital based laboratory, and stand-alone laboratories. Researchers and doctors are being impelled to focus on personalized medicines from the conventional diagnostic methods owing to the continuous innovations in the technology and design of in-vitro cancer diagnostics products.The rising demand for in-vitro cancer diagnostics arises due to the growing cases of infectious and chronic diseases and the burgeoning geriatric population which is prone to immunological syndromes. Furthermore, the global market for in-vitro cancer diagnostics is also expected to be driven by the extensive spread of knowledge related to rare diseases and the rising application of personalized medications. Likewise, the growing incidences of gynecological diseases, neurological disorders, and colorectal cancer is also expected to propel the demand for in-vitro cancer diagnostics market. The manufacturers operating in the market are likely to gain potential opportunities from the growing disposable income of customers across the globe and the mounting demand for advanced diagnostic equipment. However, the implementation of strict regulations by governments and insufficient reimbursement policies are likely to hamper the growth of the market.Global In-vitro Cancer Diagnostics Market: Regional OutlookGeographically, the global in-vitro cancer diagnostics market is segmented into North America, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa, Europe, and Asia Pacific. North America dominated the market over the last couple of years and is expected to retain the lead in the forthcoming years. Asia Pacific is also expected to witness strong growth during the forecast period.Request a sample of this report to know what opportunities will emerge in the rapidly evolving In-vitro Cancer Diagnostics Market by 2024:Companies Mentioned in the ReportThe key players in the market are MDx Health Quest Diagnostics, R-Biopharm AG, Signature Diagnostics, Siemens Healthcare, Randox Laboratories, Epigenomics AG, Beckman Coulter, Inc., and Abbott Laboratories among others.Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Our data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts, so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With a broad research and analysis capability, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques in developing distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Curcumin Market Showing 10.93% CAGR Growth to 2021: Company Profiles & Trends Analysis

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Curcumin market is Projected to grow at 10.93% CAGR during the period 2017-2021. Network Consulting Industry research report also provides granular analysis of the market share, segmentation, revenue forecasts and geographic regions of the market.About Curcumin marketCurcumin is a natural yellow-orange colored compound. It is mainly obtained from the powdered root of turmeric (Curcuma longa). The molecular formula of the compound is C21H20O6. Curcumin possesses a wide range of therapeutic and pharmacological properties such as anti-inflammatory, anti-arthritic, anticancer, analgesic, anti-diabetic, antioxidant, anti-amyloid, and anti-atherosclerosis. The compound also has a decent anti-microbial property, which increases its use in food, pharmaceuticals, and cosmetics applications.Research analysts forecast the global Curcumin market to grow at a CAGR of 10.93% during the period 2017-2021.The Curcumin Market 2017-2021 report is available at a discount of USD 1000 on listed prices and for a limited time only  get your discount @Covered in this reportThe report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global curcumin market for 2017-2021. To calculate the market size, the report considers the retail selling price as the average selling price of the product.The market is divided into the following segments based on geography: Americas, APAC, EMEAResearch report, Global Curcumin 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.Request a sample copy of Curcumin Market Research Report @Key vendorsARJUNA NATURAL EXTRACTS, Biomax, HINDUSTAN MINT & AGRO PRODUCTS, SVagrofood, Synthite IndustriesOther prominent vendorsHerboveda, Konark Herbals and Health Care, Sabinsa Corporation, Star Hi-Herbs.Market driverTherapeutic properties propelling the demand of curcuminFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challengeUncertainty in raw material supplyFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket trendDemand for products that combat the signs of agingFor 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?Find out more @Related Reports: -2017 Top 5 Metakaolin Manufacturers in North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East and AfricaThe Global Metakaolin market size will be XX million (USD) in 2022, from the XX million (USD) in 2016, with a CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) XX% from 2016 to 2022. This report studies MetakaoliAbout Us:Centralize market research purchases across your entire organization in one place.Marketstudyreport.com allows you to manage and control all corporate research purchases to consolidate billing and vendor management. You can eliminate duplicate purchases and customize your content and license management.Contact Us:Market Study ReportThe Green Suite #4594,Dover, DE 19901United StatesPhone: 1-201-355-0868US Toll Free: 1-866-764-2150Email: sales@marketstudyreport.comWebsite:News:
ASEAN Automotive Aftermarket increasing at a healthy CAGR of 9.6% through 2026

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In Future Market Insights market report titled, Automotive Aftermarket: ASEAN Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment, 2016-2026, poor road infrastructure and extended vehicle life have been identified as profitable factors for the growth of the automotive aftermarket in ASEAN. On account of growing out-of-warranty car parc, the US$ 19.3 Bn ASEAN automotive aftermarket is predicted to surpass US$ 48 Bn in revenues by 2026 end, increasing at a healthy CAGR of 9.6% through 2026.Key Trends Impacting the ASEAN Automotive AftermarketGrowing popularity of new, lightweight vehicle modelsAdvances in OEM technology and OEM globalisationAdoption of remote vehicle diagnostic systems, growing awareness about self-inflating tyres, and widespread acceptance of electric vehicle technologyOnline sales of automotive parts and accessoriesEstablishment of franchises in emerging countries, especially those where vehicle parc is steadily gaining tractionAsk For Report Sample@Segmentation Highlights: Tyres Will Remain Highest Selling Parts; Indonesia to Remain the Largest MarketBy type, tyres will continue to account for the largest revenue share. In the accessories segment, the interior accessories segment  which includes steering wheels, seat covers, seat belts, liners, floor mats, liners, gauges, dash boards, and shift knobs  will reportedly hold a major share of over 66%, crossing a value of US$ 9.0 Bn by 2026 end.By service, general automotive repair is estimated at over 86% value share during the forecast period, maintaining dominance over automotive transmission repairs. By vehicle type, passenger cars will continue to attract higher revenues compared to commercial vehicles. Indonesia will remain the largest market accounting for 35% revenue share of the market in 2026. Thailand and Malaysia, the other key markets will collectively account for over 50% revenue share of the market.Fundamental Shift in Consumer Preference and Drivers Choice Will Impact the MarketWith driverless car technology and dashboard pyro techniques steadily gaining traction, consumers are likely to have more aftermarket channels to shop. Consumer behaviour is expected to shift from a conventional way of buying vehicle parts, accessing repair services, and selecting accessories. Moreover, evolving driver preferences also reflect a new set of revenue generation opportunities for automakers, auto part suppliers, repair shops, and accessory retailers. Consumers are increasingly becoming aware of the latest launched products and thus, will access a plethora of aftermarket product offerings to cater to their comfort, aesthetics, and infotainment-related requirements.Ask For More Information@Key Players Focussing on Boosting Expansion CapacityThe key players highlighted in the ASEAN automotive aftermarket include Denso Corporation, Hella KGaA Hueck & Co., Continental AG, Delphi Automotive PLC, ACDelco, Faurecia SA, Magneti Marelli SpA, Robert Bosch GmbH, Aisin Seiki Co., Ltd., and Bridgestone Corporation. Bridgestone, one of the top companies, announced expansion of its international manufacturing capabilities in Germany this year. Post-acquisition of Speedy France, the company also launched a new manufacturing plant based in Indonesia. Continental AG also opened its new production plants in India and China this year.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.616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.compress@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Global Biostimulants Market will expand at a CAGR of nearly 11% through 2025

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Demand for biostimulants is expected to surpass US$ 4 billion in revenues, according to a new research report by Future Market Insights (FMI). The report titled, Biostimulants Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2015-2025 forecasts the demand for biostimulants to expand at a CAGR of nearly 11% through 2025.Biostimulants are finding increasing application in the agriculture sector owing to their environmentally-friendly and organic nature. Rising food demand is putting pressure on land and focus has shifted to enhancing the yield per hectare.Governments around the world are speeding up efforts to boost agricultural production. Use of biostimulants is being encouraged to improve the overall output, and this is expected to fuel demand in the near future, said the FMI analyst who compiled the report.Ask For Report Sample@Although FMI expects the demand for biostimulants to expand at a robust pace during the forecast period 2015-2025, certain factors can impede growth. Lack of standardisation and slow pace of innovation are the key restraining factors for the global biostimulants market.Foliar Dominant Application Segment for BiostimulantsBiostimulants are used in foliar, seed, and soil; among these, use of biostimulants is highest in the foliar segment, accounting for nearly one-third market share in 2014. On the basis of crop type, use of biostimulants is predominant in row crops, and fruits and vegetables. Application of biostimulants in turf and ornamental is at a nascent stage currently. FMI forecasts the turf and ornamental segment to expand at a CAGR of over 6% during 2015-2025.Strong Demand for Acid-Based BiostimulantsDemand for acid-based biostimulants is higher than acid-based- and extract-based biostimulants, owing to easy availability of raw materials and higher efficiency. Biostimulants containing Vitamin B, chitin and chitosan are expected to gain traction during the forecast period.Western Europe Most Lucrative MarketWestern Europe is the largest market for biostimulants, accounting for over 30% market value share in 2014. Focus on enhancing yield per hectare coupled with government support are the key factors propelling the growth of the market in the region.Ask For More Information@Asia Pacific Excluding Japan is emerging as a lucrative market for biostimulants. The agriculture sector in the region is witnessing a shift from traditional farming practices to use of technology and additives, owing to which biostimulants are expected to gain traction in the next decade.Acadian Seaplants Limited, Biostadt India Limited, Omex Agrifluids Ltd., Italpollina Spa, Koppert B.V., BioAtlantis Ltd., Micromix Plant Health Limited, Trade Corporation International, Valagro S.p.A, Isagro S.p.A, Platform Specialty Products Corporation, BASF SE, Novozymes A/S, Agrinos A/S and The Dow Chemical Company.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.compress@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Global Technical Textiles Market registering value CAGR of 4.6%, 2017- 2027

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Future Market Insights recent report on global technical textiles market projects that Asia-Pacific will be observed as the worlds largest market for technical textiles during the forecast period, 2017-2027. The report values the global technical textiles market at little less than US$ 166 Bn, and anticipates it to reach US$ 260.3 Bn by the end of 2027. While the global market for technical textiles is projected to grow at below average pace and register a value CAGR of 4.6%, the demand for technical textiles is likely to gain traction across Asia-Pacific countries such as India and China, among others.The report, titled Technical Textiles Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment, 2017-2027, also projects that in terms of consumption, the market shall incur a promising growth, exhibiting a volume CAGR of 5.3%. By the end of 2017, more than 34 million tonnes of technical textiles will be consumed across the globe. And, this number is likely to reach 57 million tonnes by 2027-end. During this forecast period, the report is anticipating a sluggish revenue growth for global technical textiles market, primarily due to high prices of technical textiles as opposed to alternative fabrics and lack of awareness regarding benefits of technical textiles.Ask For Report Sample@According to the report, more than 50% of global technical textiles revenues will be accounted by the Asia-Pacific region. While the Asia-Pacific technical textiles market will registers rampant expansion at value CAGR of 6.8%, regions such as North America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and Middle East & Africa will showcase sluggish growth through 2027. Sales of technical textiles in Latin America, on the other hand, are likely to depict a relatively favourable growth at 4.5% CAGR.Ask For More Information@Companies such as E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, Low and Boar PLC, Ahlstrom Corporation, 3M Company, Avintiv, Arville Textiles Ltd., Milliken and Company, Dickson-Constant, Baltex, and Freudenberg & Co. KG are profiled in the report as key players of global technical textiles market. The report also reveals that over 20% of technical textiles produced in the world are procured for mobiltech applications. Demand for technical textiles is also expected to remain high across buildtech, indutech, meditech, geotech and oekotech applications. With respect to process used for manufacturing technical textiles, more than 45% of technical textiles produced across the globe will be non-woven by end of 2027. And, this segment is likely to exhibit a value CAGR of more than 5%.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.616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.compress@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Global Automotive Wiring Harness Market anticipated to reach US$ 91.53 Bn by 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.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.Ask For Report Sample@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.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.Ask For More Information@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.616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.compress@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Global Foodservice Equipment Market Global Foodservice Equipment Market by 2024 end

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Rising number of restaurants, hotels, and fast-food joints will remain a primary driver to the global foodservice equipment market. Up from US$ 27.69 Bn attained in 2015, the market for FSE is likely to reach US$ 28.91 Bn by 2016 end. Developing regions are expected to raise significant demand for foodservice equipment. Asia Pacific will remain the most lucrative market for foodservice equipment.Increasing market demand for processing, handling, and storage of food products will continue to fuel the market for innovative foodservice equipment. In addition to cooking and baking equipment, the demand for refrigerators and other freezing equipment is also projected to propel due to an ever-growing need for food storage. Evolving consumer lifestyle, including the consumption of packaged and ready-to-eat foods will be another strong factor pushing the market growth. Growing popularity of processed or preserved foods is expected to boost the demand for FSE further. Soaring activities of food and beverages import and export is identified to be a major factor escalating the demand for FSE.A shift from refrigerators, freezers, and other storage equipment to advanced technology, energy-efficient equipment will remain a key driver bolstering the demand for foodservice equipment. Rising inclination toward open kitchens and growing adoption of digital menus and online ordering facilities will further support the market growth. Beside, hotels and restaurants, a growing number of takeaway food joints, nursing homes and hospitals, hostels, religious trusts, and charity/welfare institutions will also raise substantial demand for advanced FSE in order to process and serve significant amounts of food within a timeline.Ask For Report Sample@Rising consumer inclination toward healthy yet indulgent food, growing preference for grab-and-go culinary settings, and digitised foodservice are a few recent trends in the global FSE market. In addition, open kitchen renovation is a trend among restaurant owners and foodservice operators. These trends will continue to hold a positive impact on the market growth.Based on product type, baking equipment and cooking equipment segments will continue to lead the market in 2016 with a collective share of around 47%, followed by dishwashers, and food and drink preparation equipment segments.On the basis of end-user, full-service restaurants are expected to remain the largest consumer of FSE, followed by quick-service restaurants. Demand for FSE from the full-service restaurants segment is likely to exceed US$ 19 Bn in 2016, whereas that from the rapidly growing quick-service restaurants is expected to cross US$ 5 Bn by 2016 end. Hotels and club restaurants, coupled with caterers, will also support the market growth.By region, North America will remain dominant in 2016, accounting for over 29% market share in 2016. However, this region is anticipated to witness a fall against rapidly flourishing market in Asia Pacific post-2016. This growth in APAC is attributed to slashing crude oil prices and shipping costs, resulting in a remarkable sprint in sales. Europe will be the third largest market.Ask For More Information@Middleby Corporation, Hobart Corporation, AB Electrolux, Manitowoc Foodservice Inc, Ali S.p.A, Libbey Inc., Tupperware Brands Corporation, Fujimak Corporation, Duke Manufacturing Co. Inc., Cambro Manufacturing Company, Inc., Vollrath Co., Hoshizaki Electric Co., Ltd., Dover Corporation, and Rational AG are some of the key players competing in the global foodservice marketplace.Long-term Outlook: Over 2016-2024, the global foodservice equipment market is anticipated to expand at a steady CAGR of 5.2%, attaining the revenues worth US$ 42.92 Bn by 2024 end.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.616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.compress@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Geospatial Imagery Analytics Market Evolving Technology by 2025

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Geospatial technology allows experts and operators to store, capture and display and process an extraordinary amount of information which is related to the environment and wide variety of phenomena.The exceedingly wide range data which is available pose critical challenges for the operators which require extract key pieces of knowledge from heterogeneous and large sets of geospatial information.Geospatial imagery analytics can provide solutions which can provide effective solutions for ensuring enhanced environmental control and prevent environmental crisis. Geospatial imagery analytics refers to the videos or image data which relates to outer or inner data surface of the earth.Obtain Report Details:Moreover, the geospatial imagery data also provides historical shifts and insights, future predictions and current occurrences which are in relation to the shifting earth surface and its impacts on humans.Many organizations are opting for a wide range of data which include text data, social data, machine data and a diverse form of analysis which is required for achieving sustainability.The geospatial tools are incorporated with a wide range of technologies which would provide businesses or organizations in focusing at incorporating analytics with geographic information system (GIS).This helps in getting insights from real time market intelligence and strategizes business. This is expected to drive the demand for geospatial imagery analytics market. Some of the factors driving the geospatial imagery analytical market include commercialization of geospatial information, need for safety and security and amalgamation of mainstream technology with geospatial imagery analytics.Stringent government regulation in countries all over the world against the application of geospatial imagery analytics is a key factor in restraining the market growth. Some of the key opportunity areas driving the geospatial imagery analytics market are big data and the integration of cloud computing Further with the reduction in cost by increasing focus in research and development is further expected to drive the market.The geospatial imagery analytics market by type could be segmented into video and images. The image segment in the geospatial imagery analytics market segmented by type led the market.Application of earth imagery across a wide range of industries is expected to fuel the demand. Further, the geospatial imagery analytics market by collection medium could be segmented into satellites, unmanned flying vehicle, and geographic information system (GIS) and others.The geospatial imagery analytics market by end use industry could be broadly segmented into government, defense and surveillance, energy sector, environment monitoring, agriculture sector, insurance sector, healthcare industry, mining sector and other. The environment monitoring segment in the geospatial imagery analytics is expected to lead the geospatial imagery market segmented by end use industry.Geographically the geospatial imagery analytics market could be segmented into Asia Pacific, North America, Europe, Middle East and Africa and Latin America. Europe is expected to lead the geospatial imagery analytics market. North America is predicted to growth at the fastest rate over the next few years. Asia Pacific is expected to follow North America in terms of growth rate over the next few years.Fill the form to gain deeper insights on this market:Some of the key players operating in the geospatial imagery analytics market include Digitalglobe Inc. (Colorado, U.S.), Hexagon AB (Sweden), Urthecast Corporation (Vancouver, Canada), Harris Corporation (Melbourne, Florida, United States), Trimble Inc. (Sunnyvale, California, U.S.), Google Inc. (California, U.S.), Keyw Corporation (Maryland, U.S.), Geocento (Madrid, Spain), Satellite Imaging Corporation (U.S.) and EOS Data Analytics Inc. (California, U.S.) among others.The key players operating in the geospatial imagery analytics market adopts various strategies to expand their business and have competitive advantage over its competitors. Partnership, merger and acquisition and product development are some of the business strategy adopted by the key players operating in the geospatial imagery analytics market.The report offers a comprehensive evaluation of the market. It does so via in-depth qualitative insights, historical data, and verifiable projections about market size. The projections featured in the report have been derived using proven research methodologies and assumptions.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:
e-Tourism Market Evolving Technology by 2025

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With global growth for tourists only expected to increase there are endless opportunities for the growth of the tourism industry. Technology has played a major part in the tourism industry further giving rise to the e-tourism or electronic tourism. The design, implementation as well as application of IT with the e-commerce solutions has helped the travel & tourism industry to grow.There is an emergence of e-commerce sector in tourism known as e-tourism. E-Tourism involves digitization of the whole processes including the value chain members involved with the tourism, travel, and hospitality industries.It is a way of establishing commercial relationships using the internet for offering tourism related products such as flights, hotel reservation, car rental and so on, enabling organizations to maximize the overall efficiency and effectiveness. For tourism businesses, internet offers immense help by making information and booking facilities available to a large numbers of tourists at a lower cost.Obtain Report Details:This also provides a tool that is helpful for communication between tourism intermediaries, suppliers as well as end-consumers. The global e-tourism market has been segmented by system type, application and geography.Based on system type the global market has been segmented into computer reservation systems, property management systems, social media and global distribution systems among others. Hospitality, aerospace and medical among others form the major application areas for the global e-tourism market.Global e-Tourism market geographically has been segmented into Europe, Asia Pacific, North America, Latin America and Middle East and Africa.The comfort factor associated with application and implementation of e-tourism market has been a major driver for this market. Electronic tourism allows customers to access all the relevant information from the desired and related websites. Moreover, the processes associated with e-tourism is fast and secure along with giving on the control and freedom to plan the trip accordingly.Access to the complete travel package as well as strategic access to know about all the relevant information related to the place has helped customers making them opt for electronic media for making their travel plans. Additionally, this also helps in saving time along with reducing the need for physical exertion that has also been a major benefit for this market forming another major driver for this market.With all these drivers that positively drives the market, there are presence of certain restraints that limits the market growth. One such important factor being the technological dependency of the customers that poses as a major restraint for this market. People not having access to a computer or internet cannot benefit from all its functions posing limitations for this market.Another important restraint being the misleading of information interpretation that may provide problems to different customers. After considering all these drivers and restraints technological advancement along with internet penetration for providing various services is expected to provide growth opportunities for this market in the coming years.Geographically, it is North America followed by Europe that forms some of the major regions for this market. Technological advancement along with better access to information has been some major driver for this regions.Fill the form to gain deeper insights on this market:Asia Pacific accounted for a major region along with accounting one of the fastest growth globally. Japan, India and China are some of the major regions contributing to the growth. The advent of technology along with growing demand for secure information access has been a few major drivers for this region.Some of the key players present in the global e-tourism market include Aban Offshore Ltd. (India), Crown Ltd. (The U.S.), Accor Group (France), Balkan Holidays Ltd. (The UK), Fred Harvey Company (The U.S.) and G Adventures (Canada) 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:
Dimethyl Ether Market - Global & China Industry Analysis 2020 | Research Report

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Global Dimethyl Ether Market: SnapshotThe dimethyl ether market is the largest in Asia-Pacific region, specifically China. The companies, China Energy Limited (Singapore) and Jiutai Energy Group (China) are dominant players in the Asia-Pacific region. The market for DME is expected to grow during the forecast period on account of its use in LPG blending. DME is extensively used by aerosol propellant. The capacity for fuel has increased in Asia Pacific and this is expected to continue to grow steadily, on account of the increasing establishment of new plants for sufficient domestic fuel supply. Asia Pacific is the most populated region worldwide and thus, the demand for fuel substitutes such as dimethyl ether is highest from this region. Countries such as Indonesia, Japan, and South Korea, are fueling the growth of the DME market, apart from China, which is the largest contributor.This 91 page report gives readers a comprehensive overview of the Dimethyl Ether Market. Browse through to unlock the hidden opportunities in this market @Use of DME in LPG Blending to Remain Key Driver for MarketThe various applications of DME studied in the report are: LPG blending, aerosol propellants, transportation fuel, industrial, and others which comprise chemical feedstock among others. Of these, the LPG blending segment is anticipated to lead in the market. The scarcity of LPG is a growing concern gripping countries that have inadequate gas reserves or insufficient supply to meet the high demand from growing population. DME has emerged as a boon for such countries as it reduces the dependency on LPG imports. LPG imports are reduced by blending 20% DME with LPG, which is then used for cooking, fueling the growth of the market. DME is blended in LPG and requires no change in the infrastructure and has emerged efficient, thus driving the market to a large extent.DME as Potential Transport Fuel to Create Growth OpportunitiesWith little alterations in the fuel injection systems, DME has promising potential to be used in conventional engines as transport fuel in place of diesel. This is expected to create immense growth potential for the market and players will benefit from the opportunities offered by DME in the transport sector. The global dimethyl ether market will witness a rapid growth in the years to come on account of its clean combustion properties. The growth in the automobile industry will push the DME market in China. With easy and abundant coal reserves in China, the market will flourish in the country. The market is expected to receive boost from favorable regulations set by governments regarding emission control for environmental conservation, which will compel the use of cleaner fuels such as DME.Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the Dimethyl Ether Market. Request a sample to stay abreast on the key trends impacting this market @Lack of Export Infrastructure to Limit Growth Opportunities for DME Market PlayersOne of the key challenges of this market is the lack of proper export infrastructure which is dampening the growth of the market. Despite the high demand for DME from various countries, the lack of trade norms is acting as a major hurdle for the growth of this market. Due to these two constraints, the compound is seldom exported to countries, negatively impacting the global DME market. Another hurdle in the market is the small plant capacities. This has compelled players in the DME market to operate their plants at much lower rates. The impact of this restraint is estimated to reduce in the years to come as government strives hard to overcome the challenge. This is expected to help the markets in China, Papua New Guinea, and Saudi Arabia.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:
Innovations in healthcare products and solutions the Global Health Insurance Market to grow at a CAGR of 11.14% during the period 2016-2020

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Health insurance is a type of insurance where the insurer pays the medical expenses on behalf of the insured. The insurer has to pay a monthly premium to the health insurance company, which can be on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis. Health insurance covers disability and long term nursing. The healthcare providers cover the costs related to medical treatments, drugs, and other expenses. The coverage depends on the health insurance plan taken by the insurer. Health insurance plans are provided through direct-insurance companies, independent brokers, and employer-sponsored programs. Beside the premiums being paid by the insurer, there are other additional costs that are taken into consideration in health insurance coverage that includes co-insurance, co-payments, deductibles, and stop loss limits.Technavios analysts forecast the global health insurance market to grow at a CAGR of 11.14% during the period 2016-2020.Covered in this reportThe report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global health insurance market for 2016-2020. To calculate the market size, the report considers the total amount of premium generated primarily in emerging markets, such as APAC, EMEA, and the Americas.Get The Sample Copy of This Report @The market is divided into the following segments based on geography:AmericasAPACEMEATechnavio's report, Global Health Insurance 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 vendorsZurich InsuranceUnited HealthcareAvivaAXAAllianzOther prominent vendorsAetna FoundationAIA InsuranceBlue Cross Blue ShieldKaiser foundationMarket driverGrowth in the number of aging population and increase in life expectancyFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challengePressure in cost associated with health insuranceFor a full, detailed list, view our reportView More Report @Market trendInnovations in healthcare products and solutionsFor 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
Oil Filter and Fuel Filter Market - Global Industry Analysis 2020 | Research Report

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Global Dolomite Mining Market: Brief AccountThe global dolomite mining market is anticipated to witness a healthy growth during the period from 2017 to 2025 on account of the thriving construction business especially in the emerging economies of Latin America and Asia Pacific. Dolomite is extensively used as a base material for the construction of roads, driving the market. The growing construction of motorcycle speedway in countries such as New Zealand, Australia, and others have also created a heightened demand for dolostone, which in turn is boosting the demand for dolomite mining. Moreover, the growing applications of dolomite in particle detectors, horticulture, iron smelting, and magnesium oxide is fueling the growth of the global dolomite mining market.Browse Market Research Report @Global Dolomite Mining Market: Trends and OpportunitiesThe applications of dolomite have been increasing and this spells growth for the market. Dolomite is added to the soil because it is a great source of magnesium. It is also used for pH buffering in horticulture applications. Particle researchers make use of dolomite to detect exotic particles which are minute in nature, thus boosting the global dolomite mining market. It is also finding applications in float glass production and this will further the growth of the global dolomite mining market. Dolomite is used as a glazing ingredient in the pottery and ceramic industry.In addition to all these factors, the increasing profit margins achieved due to logistical efficiency and improvements in mining due to technological advancements are also slated to propel the market towards growth. Some of the challenges faced by the industry are transportation of products, increased time for processing licenses, and the growing environmental concerns over mining. This could possibly result in the adoption of cleaner mining technologies in the near future. All these factors are anticipated to have adverse impact on the growth of the global dolomite mining market. However, with rising infrastructure requirements in developing nations from Asia-Pacific and Latin America, the demand for dolomite is estimated to grow.Global Dolomite Mining Market: Geographical AnalysisThe report studies the global dolomite mining market from a geographical standpoint, taking into consideration regions such as Asia Pacific, Europe, North America, and the Rest of the World. Of these regions, Asia Pacific is projected to show a massive scope in the dolomite mining market on account of its thriving construction industry and growing road constructions in rural areas. China is expected to make the most significant contribution to the Asia Pacific dolomite mining market. Owing to the demand from particle detectors and use as magnesium oxide source, North America is expected to witness moderate growth in the dolomite mining market. Technological advancements in mining and logistic activities are expected to make the U.S, the leading consumer of dolomite. Europe will witness average growth on account of increasing mining activities from Austria, Hungary, Ireland, and Italy. Latin AmericaGet accurate market forecast and analysis on the Dolomite Mining Market. Request a sample to stay abreast on the key trends impacting this market @Global Dolomite Mining Market: Companies MentionedThe report profiles key players operating in the global dolomite mining market. They are Infrasors Holding Limited (South Africa), DMITRE (Department of Manufacturing, Innovation, Trade, Resources and energy) (Australia), Arrium mining and materials (Australia) and Inca mining. JFE mineral companies Limited (Philippines), Essel Mining and Industries Limited (India). The report studies the recent developments by each of these players. The key strategies adopted by players are also revealed in the 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:
United States Corrosion Monitoring Systems Market Size, Share and Forecast Report 2017 : Honeywell, ClampOn, Emerson, Intertek, SGS Group

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In this report, the United States Corrosion Monitoring Systems 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 splits the United States market into seven regions:The WestSouthwestThe Middle AtlanticNew EnglandThe SouthThe Midwestwith sales (volume), revenue (value), market share and growth rate of Corrosion Monitoring Systems in these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast).United States Corrosion Monitoring Systems market competition by top manufacturers/players, with Corrosion Monitoring Systems sales volume, price, revenue (Million USD) and market share for each manufacturer/player; the top players includingHoneywellClampOnEmersonIntertekSGS GroupApplied Corrosion MonitoringBuckleys (UVRAL)ChemTreatKorosi SpecindoCircul-AireCosascoHuguenot LaboratoriesIcorr TechnologiesPyramid Technical ServicesRysco Corrosion ServicesBAC Corrosion ControlAquarius TechnologiesAlabama Specialty ProductsOn the basis of product, this report displays the sales volume, revenue, product price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoIntrusiveNon-intrusiveOn the basis on the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, sales volume, market share and growth rate of Corrosion Monitoring Systems for each application, includingOil and GasChemicalPower GenerationOtherGet The Sample Copy of This Report @If you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report as you want.Table of ContentsUnited States Corrosion Monitoring Systems Market Report 20171 Corrosion Monitoring Systems Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Corrosion Monitoring Systems1.2 Classification of Corrosion Monitoring Systems by Product Category1.2.1 United States Corrosion Monitoring Systems Market Size (Sales Volume) Comparison by Type (2012-2022)1.2.2 United States Corrosion Monitoring Systems Market Size (Sales Volume) Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 Intrusive1.2.4 Non-intrusive1.3 United States Corrosion Monitoring Systems Market by Application/End Users1.3.1 United States Corrosion Monitoring Systems Market Size (Consumption) and Market Share Comparison by Application (2012-2022)1.3.2 Oil and Gas1.3.3 Chemical1.3.4 Power Generation1.3.5 Other1.4 United States Corrosion Monitoring Systems Market by Region1.4.1 United States Corrosion Monitoring Systems Market Size (Value) Comparison by Region (2012-2022)1.4.2 The West Corrosion Monitoring Systems Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.3 Southwest Corrosion Monitoring Systems Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.4 The Middle Atlantic Corrosion Monitoring Systems Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.5 New England Corrosion Monitoring Systems Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.6 The South Corrosion Monitoring Systems Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.7 The Midwest Corrosion Monitoring Systems Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.5 United States Market Size (Value and Volume) of Corrosion Monitoring Systems (2012-2022)1.5.1 United States Corrosion Monitoring Systems Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2022)1.5.2 United States Corrosion Monitoring Systems Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2022)2 United States Corrosion Monitoring Systems Market Competition by Players/Suppliers2.1 United States Corrosion Monitoring Systems Sales and Market Share of Key Players/Suppliers (2012-2017)2.2 United States Corrosion Monitoring Systems Revenue and Share by Players/Suppliers (2012-2017)2.3 United States Corrosion Monitoring Systems Average Price by Players/Suppliers (2012-2017)2.4 United States Corrosion Monitoring Systems Market Competitive Situation and Trends2.4.1 United States Corrosion Monitoring Systems Market Concentration Rate2.4.2 United States Corrosion Monitoring Systems Market Share of Top 3 and Top 5 Players/Suppliers2.4.3 Mergers & Acquisitions, Expansion in United States Market2.5 United States Players/Suppliers Corrosion Monitoring Systems Manufacturing Base Distribution, Sales Area, Product Type3 United States Corrosion Monitoring Systems Sales (Volume) and Revenue (Value) by Region (2012-2017)3.1 United States Corrosion Monitoring Systems Sales and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)3.2 United States Corrosion Monitoring Systems Revenue and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)3.3 United States Corrosion Monitoring Systems Price by Region (2012-2017)4 United States Corrosion Monitoring Systems Sales (Volume) and Revenue (Value) by Type (Product Category) (2012-2017)4.1 United States Corrosion Monitoring Systems Sales and Market Share by Type (Product Category) (2012-2017)4.2 United States Corrosion Monitoring Systems Revenue and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)4.3 United States Corrosion Monitoring Systems Price by Type (2012-2017)4.4 United States Corrosion Monitoring Systems Sales Growth Rate by Type (2012-2017)5 United States Corrosion Monitoring Systems Sales (Volume) by Application (2012-2017)5.1 United States Corrosion Monitoring Systems Sales and Market Share by Application (2012-2017)5.2 United States Corrosion Monitoring Systems Sales Growth Rate by Application (2012-2017)5.3 Market Drivers and OpportunitiesMarketResearchReports.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
Oil Filter and Fuel Filter Market - Global Industry Analysis 2020 | Research Report

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Global Oil Filter and Fuel Filter Market: OverviewThe global oil filter and fuel filter market is slated to expand at a considerable pace over the oncoming period, as these filters are mandatory components in vehicles. Clean motor oil is necessary for maintaining the wear and tear of vehicle engines. If left unfiltered for long, unfiltered oil can become saturated with minuscule, hard particles which can potentially damage the engine surface.Browse Market Research Report @The key function of fuel filters is to eliminate dust and other contaminants present in fuel. While fuel filters are installed in internal combustion engines, oil filters are used in different types of hydraulic machines. Oil filters are chiefly used for removing contaminants from engine oil, lubricating oil, hydraulic oil, and transmission oil.The research report on global oil filter and fuel filter market can be segmented by geography, type, vehicle type, and sales channel. Several facets of the global oil filter and fuel filter market including attractiveness, value chain analysis, SWOT analysis, and drivers and restraints have been discussed in detail in the report.Global Oil Filter and Fuel Filter Market: Drivers and RestraintsSince oil filters and fuel filters have a limited lifespan, they need to be replaced often. As a result, the demand for these automotive parts is expected to stay elevated. The phenomenal growth of the automotive industry is one of the key drivers of the global oil filter and fuel filter market. The large scale production of automobiles in developing countries, technological advancements in the field of fuel filters and oil filters, and strict regulatory frameworks have also been aiding the market to expand.The passenger car segment promises substantial growth, thanks to the escalating demand for passenger vehicles and commercial transport. As a result, this segment might represent the largest portion of the market by type of vehicle. On the flip side, the augmenting demand for electric vehicles can pose a threat to the expansion of the global oil filter and fuel filter market. The need for long drain intervals is another major restraint of the global oil filter and fuel filter market. However, the market will keep progressing on account of growing inclination toward diesel powered vehicles.Global Oil Filter and Fuel Filter Market: Regional OutlookBy geography, the global oil filter and fuel filter market can be segmented into the Middle East and Africa, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and North America. North America is expected to emerge as the leading segment of the global oil filter and fuel filter market, triggered by increasing preference for environment-friendly automobiles across the region, alongside stringent government policies regarding the deployment of eco-friendly components in vehicles. Europe might represent a significant chunk of the global oil filter and fuel filter market over the next few years. Presence of several key market players and high demand for automobiles has been responsible for the expansion of European oil filter and fuel filter market.The developing nations housed in Latin America, the Middle East and Africa, and Asia Pacific are also poised for immense growth. Vehicle production is gaining traction with technological advancements leading to emergence of advanced automobiles. China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, Thailand, South Korea, and Mexico are likely to contribute substantial volume of revenue to the global oil filter and fuel filter market by the end of 2020.Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the Oil Filter and Fuel Filter Market. Request a sample to stay abreast on the key trends impacting this market @Companies mentioned in the research reportHollingsworth & Vose Co. Inc., Hengst Gmbh & Co. Kg, Ahlstrom Corporation, Affinia Group Inc., Gud Holdings Ltd., AC Delco Inc.,Clarcor Inc., Cummins Inc., and Cummins Inc. are some major companies operating in the global market for oil filter and fuel filter.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:
Dock and Yard Management Systems Market Technological Advancements by 2025

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The global supply chain continues getting more complex with facility managers and warehouse executives facing unique set of challenges on a day to day basis. Issues regarding costs associated with materials and final products seem to get out of control at times which is the reason the yard and dock management systems are used for increasing operational and logistics efficiency.A yard management system or dock management systems are basically software systems being designed for monitoring the movement of trucks or trailers within the yard of distribution centers, manufacturing facility or warehouse.These systems provide real-time information about the location of trailers within the yard further assisting yard employees in movement of trailers from staging to the docks fulfilling orders in an efficient manner.Obtain Report Details:Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology may also be built in these systems for faster and more accurate tracking of the trucks. By involving all supply chain partners within this process provides more visibility into requested, scheduled or rescheduled dock appointments.The global market for dock and yard management system has been segmented on the basis of type, application and geography. Based on types, the global market has been segmented into warehouse management systems (WMS) and transportation management systems (TMS) among others. Transportation & logistics, grocery, manufacturing, retailing and parcel post among others form the major application areas for this market globally.Global dock and yard management systems market on the basis of geography has been segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America and Middle East and Africa.The online appointment scheduling for the trailers and carriers has been a major advantage for this market driving the overall growth. Use of dock and yard management systems allow vendors to book appointments in dock over the web along with monitoring the real time status of the shipment that has been another major driver for this market.Application of these systems further allows inbound coordinators to prioritize their shipments, configure prioritization rules, refuse carrier requests and automate the constraints related to the scheduling process. Moreover, these systems also monitors load leveling of the goods flow to the respective dock resources.The historical data analysis, compliance tracking along with improved visibility to the inbound supply has been a few other factors to contribute in the rising demand of this market. With all the respective drivers, presence of certain restraints pose challenges for the market growth as well.Some of these factors include the chances of human errors, mishandling of information received along with wrong interpretation of real time information that is likely to provide challenges in the market growth.Besides all these drivers and restraints, it is the growing demand for well-defined shipment tracking and management systems for monitoring the growth of traffic in ship yards that is expected to provide growth opportunities for this market in the coming years.Geographically, North America followed by Europe formed some major regions contributing to the market growth. Application of real-time information for increasing the process efficiency as well as cost-effectiveness related with these systems has been some of the major drivers for this market.Asia Pacific accounted as one of the fastest growing region for this market globally. South Korea, China, Japan and India among others are some of the major countries contributing to the growth.Fill the form to gain deeper insights on this market:The rise in demand for automated systems to monitor the shipments along with growing of transportation in waterways has been a few important factors to help in the market growth.Some of the key players that are operating in the global dock and yard management systems market include C3 solutions (Canada), Descartes Systems Group Inc. (Canada), 4sight solution (The U.S.), Manhattan Associates (The U.K.), Kelley Entrematic (The U.S.), Zebra (The U.S.), Oracle Corporation (The U.S.), Softeon (India) and Royal 4 systems (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:
Steam Methane Reforming Market :Global Industry Analysis,Trends and Forecast 2020

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A new research report by Transparency Market Research offers a comprehensive evaluation of the global steam methane reforming Market. The study, titled Steam Methane Reforming Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2014 - 2020, is available for sale on the firms website.Global Steam Methane Reforming Market: OverviewThe expanding hydrogen generation industry as emerged as a crucial driver of the global steam methane reformers market, considering steam methane reforming has remained the most economical method of producing hydrogen. Steam methane reforming primarily involves two reactions: Water gas shift reaction and the reforming reaction. In case of the latter, natural gas is usually missed with steam and then heated at a very high temperature to derive hydrogen and carbon monoxide.Browse Market Research Report @The global steam methane reforming market can be segmented based on type into primary reformers, secondary reformers, compact reformers, and pre-reformers. The report presents in-depth insights into the various factors influencing the markets trajectory across the aforementioned segments. Based on region, the global steam methane reforming market can be classified into North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, and Rest of the World. Growth drivers and key restraints affecting the markets growth across the regional segments are identified and analyzed in detail.The report is thus compiled to enable stakeholders understand the prevailing dynamics and growth potential of the global steam methane reforming market in detail. It uses industry-leading analytical tools to gauge the competitive strength of various market players. Results obtained from the evaluation of suppliers and buyers bargaining power are included in the report as well.Global Steam Methane Reforming Market: Trends and OpportunitiesHydrogen finds use across diverse applications ranging from chemical processing, fuel cells, petroleum recovery, and refining to metal production. Among these, the demand for hydrogen is the highest in the petroleum refinery and ammonia production segments. The transportation industry also promises considerable growth opportunities for the market as it is expected to emerge one of the leading hydrogen consumers in the coming years. Considering expansion witnessed in these segments and industrialization across emerging nations, the future of the global steam methane reforming market seems highly positive. Also the use of fuel cells has augmented considerably in the past few years, accelerating sales opportunities in the steam methane reforming market. With industries inclining toward smaller size and portable products, in future the demand for steam methane reformers is expected to increase further.Global Steam Methane Reforming Market: Regional OutlookRegionally, Asia Pacific is currently occupying the majority share in the global steam methane reforming market. The rising number of petrochemical complexes and refineries in the region, the steam methane reforming market is forecast to pick up pace in Asia Pacific in the coming years. Besides this, the large population across leading Asia Pacific economies also bolsters the demand for hydrogen and thus methane reformers across diverse sectors.In the coming years, Europe is expected to emerge as a lucrative market for steam methane reformers. However, experts find the demand profiles in Eurasian countries and Europe much different from one another. While Russia boasts massive petrochemical capacities and large refineries, the refinery industry in Europe is slowly diminishing. On the other hand in Europe, the transportation sector is expected to remain a key consumer of hydrogen and thus steam methane reforming. Because the market is nearly mature in North America, it is expected to showcase a slowing rate of growth in the region.Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the steam methane reforming market. Request a sample to stay abreast on the key trends impacting this market@Global Steam Methane Reforming Market: Vendor LandscapeBesides identifying growth drivers, key restraints, and opportunities, the report also profiles some of the leading players operating in the global steam methane reforming market. Some of these companies are CB&I Company, Linde AG, Chevron Lummus Global LLC, Axens, Foster Wheeler, DuPont, KBR Inc, Haldor Topsoe, GTC Technology, Shell Global Solutions, Flour Corporation, Exxon Mobil, and UOP among others.Geographies analyzed under this research report includeNorth AmericaAsia PacificEuropeRest of the WorldThis report gives you access to decisive data such as:Market growth driversFactors limiting market growthCurrent market trendsMarket structureMarket projections for the coming yearsAbout 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 :
Supercritical Boilers Market Size, Share | Industry Trends Analysis Report, 2020

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A new research report by Transparency Market Research offers a comprehensive evaluation of the global Supercritical Boilers Market. The study, titled Supercritical Boilers Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2014 - 2020, is available for sale on the firms website.Global Supercritical Boilers Market: OverviewWith the augmenting need to reduce the emission of carbon in the environment and to improve the operational efficiency of power plants, the uptake of supercritical boilers has increased significantly across the world. The global market for supercritical boilers is gaining substantially from the rising awareness regarding the benefits of these boilers, such as low consumption of fuel, better utilization of resources, and consequently high profitability margins.Browse Market Research Report @As a result of the increasing environmental concerns, the demand for highly efficient coal supercritical boilers is augmenting across the world, which is expected to boost the global supercritical boilers market over the next few years. The increasing industrialization and the rising number of government development programs are also projected to accelerate the growth of this market in the years to come.This exhaustive research report on the global market for supercritical boilers provides a thorough assessment of this market, focusing specifically on its past and current performance. The growth prospects of this market have also been studied at length in this research report to determine its future status.Global Supercritical Boilers Market: Trends and OpportunitiesThanks to the augmenting need for effective power generation systems with low carbon emission, fueled by the increasing concerns of people over environmental pollution, the global market for supercritical boilers are witnessing tremendous growth. Since, the governments across the world are obligated to reduce carbon footprints, the investment in supercritical boilers is likely to escalate in the years to come, influencing the market substantially.On the other hand, the high cost incurred in the deployment of supercritical boilers and the increasing focus on upgrading power plants with ultra supercritical boilers may limit the markets growth in the near future. Low mass flux spiral walls, medium mass flux vertical walls, and high mass flux vertical walls are likely to emerge as the key evaporator systems utilized in supercritical boilers over the next few years.Global Supercritical Boilers Market: Regional OutlookRegionally, the worldwide market for supercritical boilers market reports its presence across Asia Pacific, North America, Europe, and the Rest of the World. The most prominent share of the overall market is acquired by North America and Europe. However, both the regional markets are likely to witness sluggish growth in the years to come, as they already have installed supercritical boilers, which limit the demand for new ones. Nonetheless, the power plants in these regions are aging and need continual advancements, leading to upgradation and replacement in the near future, thus providing lucrative opportunities for market players.Amongst other regional markets, Asia Pacific and the Middle East are likely to offer promising growth opportunities over the forthcoming years, thanks to the significant rise in industrialization and dynamic development in the economy. The swift surge in the deployment of supercritical boilers in high capacity power plants in several countries, such as China, India, and Japan, are likely to propel the Asia Pacific market for supercritical boilers remarkably in the years to come.Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the Supercritical Boilers market. Request a sample to stay abreast on the key trends impacting this market@Companies Mentioned in the ReportAt the forefront of the global supercritical boilers market are Alstom, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Larsen & Toubro Power, Thermax Babcock & Wilcox Energy Solutions Pvt. Ltd., and Siemens and Cethar Ltd. These enterprises rely specifically on technological advancements and product innovation to reach a large base of customers across the world.Major regions analyzed under this research report are:EuropeNorth AmericaAsia PacificLatin AmericaMiddle East and AfricaThis report gives you access to decisive data such as:Market growth driversFactors limiting market growthCurrent market trendsMarket structureMarket projections for the coming yearsAbout 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. TMR's 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.Contact UsTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:Visit :
DDI Market Technological breakthroughs by 2025

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A DDI (DNS, DHCP and IP address management) solution delivers the initiative with the necessary tools to easily and quickly manage the numerous tasks related with internet protocol address management, as well as DHCP and DNS services management across the internet network.Thus, DNS, DHCP and IP address management solution is a necessary tool for the different enterprise management. In recent trends, a DDI ((DNS, DHCP and IP address management) solution is able to reduce OPEX related to IPAM, DNS and DHCP by or more than 50%.This in turn is expected to save headcount for larger enterprises.In addition, numerous features such as upsurge attacks on proliferation of bring your own device (BYOD) at workplace, reduction in operational expenditure (OPEX), DNS server and emergence of Internet of Things (IOT) platforms among others are responsible for the growth of the DDI market.Therefore, the (DNS, DHCP and IP address management)market is predicted to witness a steady growth during the projection period from 2017 to 2025.Obtain Report Details:Global DDI (DNS, DHCP and IP address management) solution market has been segmented on the basis of component, application, deployment, size of organization, end use industry and geography. On the basis of component type, global DDI market has been segmented into services and solution.Additionally, global DDI market has been separated on the basis of application which includes virtualization and cloud, network security, data center transformation and network automation among others. Moreover, the evolution to IPv6 from the IPv4 Internet protocol (IP) is anticipated to contribute expressively to industrial demand.Across the globe, the cumulative focus on consciousness of impending implementations of IPv6, need to streamline IP address management and security risks among others important factors are expected to assist the growth of DDI service provider. Security plays a significant role in this development and is likely to drive the growth of DDI market during the forecast period.In this report, global DDI market is segmented based on deployment type into cloud based and on premises. Various DDI vendors are now focusing on merger and acquisition primarily to strengthen its position globally. Consequently, the DDI market is classified on the basis of end use industry into aerospace and defense, telecommunication, manufacturing, and Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance (BFSI) among others.Increasing the demand of cloud computing in various telecommunication and IT sectors is an important factor that is estimated to impact the DDI market. The DDI vendors are now predicted to rise the use of virtualized services. This is expected to rise the demand of DDI (DNS, DHCP and IP address management)Market in coming years.Consequently, the various DDI vendors are now extensively spending on research and development facilities to gain competitive advantage. Currently, the rising demand of industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) platforms and significant adoption of virtualization by organization significantly is driving the growth of the DDI market during the estimate period. However, on the flip side, lack of consumer awareness and complexity of DDI installation is restraining the growth of global DDI market in coming years.Geographically, global DDI (DNS, DHCP and IP address management)market has been segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle- East and Africa (MEA), Latin America. In 2016, North America held the largest share of the DDI market due to the high technological adoption of innovations such as mobility, cloud and big data among others in this region.Asia Pacific is expected to be the fastest growing market for DDI market currently, followed by North America. Furthermore, Asia Pacific are probable to grow at a significant rate owing to the proliferation of mobile devices, high density of population and internet usage in the region is expected to contribute to the growth of industry.Fill the form to gain deeper insights on this market:Furthermore, the growth adoption of 4G and upcoming 5G networks solution is estimated to increase the average internet connection speeds owing to achieve effective IPAM solutions to manage the various IP address pools. This is expected to increase the demand of DDI (DNS, DHCP and IP address management) Market during the forecast period from 2017- 2025.The major players operating in the global DDI market includes BlueCat Networks (Canada),Nokia Corporation (Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise) (France), BT Diamond IP (U.S.), ApplianSys (U.K.), Infoblox Inc. (U.S.),Microsoft Corporation (U.S.), Apteriks (Netherlands), NCC Group (U.K.),Cisco Systems, Inc. (U.S.), EfficientIP (U.S.),Men & Mice (Iceland), FusionLayer,Inc. (Finland), TCPWave Inc. (U.S.), PC Network (Philadelphia) and SolarWinds (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:
Global Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) Market Research, Analysis, Share, Size, Growth Rate and Forecast Report 2017

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In this report, the global Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) 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 Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) in these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), coveringNorth AmericaEuropeChinaJapanSoutheast AsiaIndiaGlobal Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) market competition by top manufacturers, with production, price, revenue (value) and market share for each manufacturer; the top players includingTexas Instruments (U.S.)ST Microelectronics (Switzerland)Linear Technology (U.S.)ROHM (Japan)Cypress Semiconductor (U.S.)Analog Devices (U.S.)On Semiconductor (U.S.)Maxim Integrated (U.S.)Renesas Electronics (Japan)Intersil Corporation (U.S.)On the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split into1V to 5V5V to 10VAbove 10VOn 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 Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) for each application, includingConsumer ElectronicsAutomotiveIndustrialOthersGet The Sample Copy of This Report @If you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report as you want.Table of ContentsGlobal Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) Market Research Report 20171 Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Reset Integrated Circuit (IC)1.2 Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) Segment by Type (Product Category)1.2.1 Global Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) Production and CAGR (%) Comparison by Type (Product Category) (2012-2022)1.2.2 Global Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) Production Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 1V to 5V1.2.4 5V to 10V1.2.5 Above 10V1.3 Global Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) Segment by Application1.3.1 Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) Consumption (Sales) Comparison by Application (2012-2022)1.3.2 Consumer Electronics1.3.3 Automotive1.3.4 Industrial1.3.5 Others1.4 Global Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) Market by Region (2012-2022)1.4.1 Global Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) 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 Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) (2012-2022)1.5.1 Global Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) Revenue Status and Outlook (2012-2022)1.5.2 Global Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) Capacity, Production Status and Outlook (2012-2022)2 Global Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1 Global Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) Capacity, Production and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.1.1 Global Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) Capacity and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.1.2 Global Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) Production and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.2 Global Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.3 Global Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) Average Price by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.4 Manufacturers Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) Manufacturing Base Distribution, Sales Area and Product Type2.5 Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) Market Competitive Situation and Trends2.5.1 Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) Market Concentration Rate2.5.2 Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) Market Share of Top 3 and Top 5 Manufacturers2.5.3 Mergers & Acquisitions, ExpansionView More @3 Global Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) Capacity, Production, Revenue (Value) by Region (2012-2017)3.1 Global Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) Capacity and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)3.2 Global Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) Production and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)3.3 Global Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) Revenue (Value) and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)3.4 Global Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.5 North America Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.6 Europe Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.7 China Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.8 Japan Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.9 Southeast Asia Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.10 India Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)4 Global Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Region (2012-2017)4.1 Global Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) Consumption by Region (2012-2017)4.2 North America Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.3 Europe Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.4 China Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.5 Japan Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.6 Southeast Asia Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.7 India Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)5 Global Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by Type5.1 Global Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) Production and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)5.2 Global Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) Revenue and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)5.3 Global Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) Price by Type (2012-2017)5.4 Global Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) Production Growth by Type (2012-2017)6 Global Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) Market Analysis by Application6.1 Global Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) Consumption and Market Share by Application (2012-2017)6.2 Global Reset Integrated Circuit (IC) Consumption Growth Rate by Application (2012-2017)6.3 Market Drivers and Opportunities6.3.1 Potential Applications6.3.2 Emerging Markets/CountriesMarketResearchReports.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
Anti-static Agents Market Research Report and Forecast up to 2023

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Anti-static Agents Market: Key InsightsDespite witnessing slow growth across developed nations, demand for anti-static agents will increase in the forthcoming years as their sales opportunities rise in emerging economies. Plastic substrates are often coated with anti-static agents to make their surface more conductive and dissipate static energy. As per Transparency Market Research (TMR), the increasing application of plastics across the automotive and electronics industries will subsequently boost demand for anti-static agents. Besides this, the increasing use of plastics in the packaging industry will augur well for the global anti-static agents market.As per TMR, the global anti-static agents market was valued at US$316.7 mn in 2014. The market is expected to reach US$530.5 mn by the end of 2023, rising at a CAGR of 5.9% between 2015 and 2023.This 185 page report gives readers a comprehensive overview of the Anti-static Agents market Browse through 51 data tables and 38 figures to unlock the hidden opportunities in this market.Increasing Use of Polypropylene across Industries to Fuel Demand for Anti-static AgentsBased on application, the global anti-static agents market is segmented into polyvinyl chloride, high density polyethylene, acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, low density polyethylene, polypropylene, and others. Of these, the others segment, which includes linear low density polyethylene dominated the market, holding a share of 20% in 2014.Polypropylene emerged as the second-largest segment with a share of 19.9% in the same year. It is a widely used plastic across industries such as automotive, packaging, textiles, electrical. Due to its structural properties and effective functionality, application of polypropylene is expected to surge considerably in the near future. The increasing demand for polypropylene will subsequently boost sales of anti-static agents.In the same year, high density polyethylene (HDPE) emerged as the third-largest application segment. The market is also expected to gain from the rising use of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) in automotive, consumer electronics, and rigid packaging industries is expected to considerably fuel demand from the segment in the forthcoming years. Apart from this, TMR expects the demand for anti-static agents in the polyvinyl chloride (PVC) segment to rise as well. As the consumption of PVC increases in the packaging and construction sectors it is expected to fuel demand for anti-static agents in response.Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the Anti-static Agents market. Request a sample to stay abreast on the key trends impacting this market.Rapid Industrialization in Asia Pacific to Seal the Regions Position as Market LeaderRegionally, Asia Pacific led the global anti-static agents market in 2014 with a share of about 49.8% in 2014. Furthermore, TMR expects this region to exhibit the fastest growth during the forecast period. The increasing population in Asia Pacific, favorable government policies, and rising per capita income are the key factors fuelling demand for anti-static agents from Asia Pacific. The anti-static agents sales in Asia Pacific is poised to surge in response to the rapid growth witnessed in the automotive, electronics, plastics, and textile industries across the emerging economies of the region.China emerged as the most lucrative market for anti-static agents in Asia Pacific in 2014. The rapid industrialization witnessed in the regions boosts sales opportunities for anti-static agents. In the same year, Europe emerged as the second-largest regional market for anti-static agents. However, TMR expects this regional market to exhibit sluggish growth during the forecast period. Stringent government regulations and trade policies imposed on use of plastics as raw materials limits scope for expansion of the anti-static agents market in Europe. Nevertheless, increasing use of these components in recycled plastic industry will enable the market to maintain steady growth in Europe.The global anti-static agents market exhibit a consolidated vendor landscape. Some of the leading players operating in the market include AkzoNobel N.V., BASF SE., Cytec Industries Inc., Croda Internationalplc., ClariantAG, and ArkemaS.A.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:
Authorized Generics Market SWOT Analysis Of Top Key Player Forecasts To 2024

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A generic drug is a duplicate copy of original branded drug, which has same dosage form, active pharma ingredients (API), strength, route of administration, and also same intended use as the branded one. Regulatory authorities and governments have mandated that an authorized generic drug has to medicinally correspond to the branded drug and sanctioned as an Abbreviated New Drug Application (ANDA) by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). An authorized generic is the branded companys individual product, but repackaged and marketed as generic drug either via subsidiary or third party. These are already approved as a New Drug Application by the FDA, only they are promoted via private label. The authorized generics market grew rapidly in the past few years as these provide consumers with branded quality drugs at generic prices. Presently, there is a growing trend of original maker giving approvals to a subsidiary or a private label distribution company to sell its brand name drug as a generic drug at a subsequently low price.View Report @An example of authorized generic drug is Azithromycin Pak which is sold under by the company name Greenstone. Pfizers original branded drug Z-pak was approved by the FDA. Before patent expiry of Z-pak, Pfizer allowed Greenstone to sell Z-pak using authorized generic name Azithromycin Pak. Greenstone is a wholly owned subsidiary of Pfizer.The global authorized generics market is expected to witness strong growth. Authorized generic drugs are priced at significantly discounted rate i.e. 50% to 70% as compared to branded counterparts. Additionally, many of the popular branded drugs of pharma companies are losing patent protection rights, which is also termed as patent cliffs. This would pave the way for entry of new complex generics in the market. These factors are likely to drive the authorized generics market in the near future. Other factors driving the market are health care plans by governments across the world, rapidly increasing cost of branded drugs, and aging populations. On the other hand, possibility of side effects, and lack of regulatory awareness about products and quality management are factors likely to restrain the global authorized generics market.The global authorized generics market can be classified based on product type, application, end-user, and region.In terms of product type, the global authorized generics market can be segmented into biosimilars, simple generic, super generic, and others. Based on applications the market can be classified into cardiovascular, anti-infective, anti-arthritis, central nervous system, anti-cancer, respiratory, and others.Geographically, the global authorized generics market can be divided into North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa. North America accounted for the largest share of the market, primarily due to technological advancements, rise in demand for generic drugs, increase in overall cost of branded drugs, and presence of key players. Europe held a significant share of the market attributed to advancements in generic drugs, rise in various types of cancer, and blood related disorders. Asia Pacific, however, has been exhibiting high growth rate on account of growing demand for generic drugs, rise in geriatric population, increase in disposable income, and government initiatives to support generic drugs. Rapidly rising population in the region has increased demand for better health care and induced both private and government players to meet the demand. Developing economies such as India and China have also made a significant contribution to the rise of the global authorized generics market by focusing on establishing a better health care infrastructure.Key players in the market are Teva Pharmaceuticals, Sandoz, Allergan, Mylan, Sun Pharmaceuticals, and STADA Arzneimittel. Other prominent vendors in the market are Abbott, Amgen, Apotex, Aspen, AstraZeneca, Aurobindo Pharma, Baxter, Berlin-Chemie, Biocon, Biogen, Boehringer Ingelheim, Celltrion, Cipla, Coherus Biosciences, Dr. Reddy's Laboratories, Daiichi Sankyo, Eli Lilly and Company, Emcure Pharmaceuticals, Eurofarma Laboratories, Gedeon Richter, Gilead Sciences, and GlaxoSmithKline.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.Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the Authorized Generics market. Request a sample to stay abreast on the key trends impacting this market.The study is a source of reliable data on:Market segments and sub-segmentsMarket trends and dynamicsSupply and demandMarket sizeCurrent trends/opportunities/challengesCompetitive landscapeTechnological breakthroughsValue chain and stakeholder analysisThe regional analysis covers:North America (U.S. and Canada)Latin America (Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Chile, and others)Western Europe (Germany, U.K., France, Spain, Italy, Nordic countries, Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxembourg)Eastern Europe (Poland and Russia)Asia Pacific (China, India, Japan, ASEAN, Australia, and New Zealand)Middle East and Africa (GCC, Southern Africa, and North Africa)The report has been compiled through extensive primary research (through interviews, surveys, and observations of seasoned analysts) and secondary research (which entails reputable paid sources, trade journals, and industry body databases). The report also features a complete qualitative and quantitative assessment by analyzing data gathered from industry analysts and market participants across key points in the industrys value chain.A separate analysis of prevailing trends in the parent market, macro- and micro-economic indicators, and regulations and mandates is included under the purview of the study. By doing so, the report projects the attractiveness of each major segment over the forecast period.Highlights of the report:A complete backdrop analysis, which includes an assessment of the parent marketImportant changes in market dynamicsMarket segmentation up to the second or third levelHistorical, current, and projected size of the market from the standpoint of both value and volumeReporting and evaluation of recent industry developmentsMarket shares and strategies of key playersEmerging niche segments and regional marketsAn objective assessment of the trajectory of the marketRecommendations to companies for strengthening their foothold in the marketAbout 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 Chairs Market SWOT Analysis Of Top Key Player Forecasts To 2024

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Dental procedures demand optimum co-operation from patients. Dental chairs enable adjustment of height, back rest, and arm rest that provide complete support to patient as well as health care professional. The two types of dental chairs currently available in the market are hydraulic and electromechanical chairs. Electromechanical chairs offer integration of a variety of engines such as computer equipment, which results in increased adoption of these chairs in practice. In addition, modern dental chairs offer systems to hold hand pieces and other dental equipment such as mouth mirror, periodontal probe, and gauze that reduce extra box clutter.Considering the increasing prevalence of obesity in developed countries, manufacturers such as Diaco, Ltd. offer dental chairs that have working load limit of up to 500 kg. In addition, manufacturers offer dental chairs specially designed for wheelchair patients, which enable efficient working for orthodontists. Hence, increasing benefits of modern dental chairs are fueling the growth of the dental chairs segment. Beaverstate Dental Systems, DCI Equipment, and Takara Belmont USA, Inc. are the key players operating in the dental chairs segment.View Report @According to the World Health Organization, in 2012, dental caries was reported to be a major public health problem in most high-income countries such as the U.S. The disease affected 60% to 90% of school-age children and majority of adults in the country. Several high-income countries with established preventive programs demonstrate a systematic decline in dental caries in children and improved status in the adult population.Dentistry in the U.S. is in a state of transformation, with increasing baby boomer generation having periodontal diseases. The health care delivery system is changing rapidly with the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. The American Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons found that 69% adults aged between 35 years and 44 years have lost at least one permanent tooth to an accident, gum disease, failed root canal, or tooth decay. Three out of four persons in Canada visit a dental clinic; one of the highest rates among OECD countries. A study by the Montreal Economic Institute in 2013 indicated that private dental clinics are preferred to public clinics in Canada. Demand for private dental clinics is primarily driven by easy access, less waiting period, and better treatment offered to patients.The dental chairs market can be segmented based on chairs delivery systems, end-user, and geography. In terms of chairs delivery systems, the dental chairs market can be classified into over-the-patient delivery, rear delivery, and side delivery. Over-the-patient delivery systems are most commonly used in dental clinics, as these are easy to use and meet the requirements of time and motion concepts and promotes good ergonomic positioning. Based on end-user, the market can be segmented into hospitals, dental clinics, and research and academic institutes.Geographically, the dental chairs market can be segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa. Europe is likely to be the largest market for dental chairs due to high number of laboratories and high patient pool for dental related treatment. According to Oral Health Platform, in 2012, over 50% of the population of Europe was suffering from some form of periodontal diseases, which were relatively higher among people aged 60 years and above. The British dental technician trade has declined sharply in the past few years as many practices outsource their lab work to overseas laboratories. Over 12,000 qualified dental technicians operated in the U.K. a decade ago. Currently, this figure is approximately 5,000 and is decreasing by 200 qualified technicians every year. The dental chairs market in North America is expected to witness strong growth during the forecast period driven by increasing baby boomer generation having periodontal diseases. The market in Asia Pacific is driven by increase in geriatric population and surging demand for dental restoration due to rise in oral health awareness.Major players operating in this market include Danaher Corporation, Midmark Corporation, Planmeca Oy, Sirona Dental Systems, Inc., SMTmax, and Ritter Dental.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.Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the Dental Chairs market. Request a sample to stay abreast on the key trends impacting this market.The study is a source of reliable data on:Market segments and sub-segmentsMarket trends and dynamicsSupply and demandMarket sizeCurrent trends/opportunities/challengesCompetitive landscapeTechnological breakthroughsValue chain and stakeholder analysisThe regional analysis covers:North America (U.S. and Canada)Latin America (Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Chile, and others)Western Europe (Germany, U.K., France, Spain, Italy, Nordic countries, Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxembourg)Eastern Europe (Poland and Russia)Asia Pacific (China, India, Japan, ASEAN, Australia, and New Zealand)Middle East and Africa (GCC, Southern Africa, and North Africa)The report has been compiled through extensive primary research (through interviews, surveys, and observations of seasoned analysts) and secondary research (which entails reputable paid sources, trade journals, and industry body databases). The report also features a complete qualitative and quantitative assessment by analyzing data gathered from industry analysts and market participants across key points in the industrys value chain.A separate analysis of prevailing trends in the parent market, macro- and micro-economic indicators, and regulations and mandates is included under the purview of the study. By doing so, the report projects the attractiveness of each major segment over the forecast period.Highlights of the report:A complete backdrop analysis, which includes an assessment of the parent marketImportant changes in market dynamicsMarket segmentation up to the second or third levelHistorical, current, and projected size of the market from the standpoint of both value and volumeReporting and evaluation of recent industry developmentsMarket shares and strategies of key playersEmerging niche segments and regional marketsAn objective assessment of the trajectory of the marketRecommendations to companies for strengthening their foothold in the marketAbout 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:
Europe Microfluidic Devices Market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 20.80% and is expected to reach USD 5385.80 million by 2024

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Europe Microfluidic Devices Market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 20.80% and is expected to reach US$ 5385.80 million by 2024. In Europe Microfluidic Devices Market, Germany accounted for the largest market share in 2015.Request a Copy of Sample Report @European region is largely affected by Microfluidic Devices. The Europe market comprises of regions like Germany, France, Italy, UK, Switzerland, Netherland, Belgium, Spain and Rest of Europe. UK is fastest growing market for microfluidic devices. The market is also divided based on by industry (in vitro diagnosis, pharmaceutical, medical devices and others) by material (glass, polymer, silicon and others) and by application. European microfluidic devices market is increasing due to an increase in the demand of diagnostic requirements. This is due to an increase in geriatric population and lifestyle diseases. Increase in healthcare expenditure by European countries has also driven this market in Europe.Europe Microfluidic Devices market statistical report published by Market Research future contains a brief overview of Europe Microfluidic Devices market. By country, the market has been segmented into Germany, France, Italy, UK, Switzerland, Netherland, Belgium, Spain and Rest of Europe. Germany commands the largest share and is expected to grow continuously during the forecasted period of 2016-2024. The report analyzed the Europe Microfluidic Devices market and presents systematic data of market share on the basis of segments and countries, and its growth rate for 2013 to 2016, along with forecast till 2024.Market Research future through this report aims to provide understanding of the Europe Microfluidic Devices market on the basis of segments & countries, and also assists identification of ongoing trends along with anticipated growth during the forecasted period. For this report, extensive primary research was conducted to gain a deeper insight of the market performance. Various industry experts and Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) were contacted and interviewed to get an idea of Europe Microfluidic Devices market.List of TablesTable 1 Europe microfluidic devices Market, By Country, 2014-2024 (USD million)Table 2 Europe microfluidic devices Market, By indystry, 2014-2024 (USD million)Table 3 Europe microfluidic devices Market, By material, 2014-2024 (USD million)Table 4 Europe microfluidic devices Market, By application, 2014-2027 (USD million)Browse Full Report Details @List of FiguresFigure 1 Europe microfluidic devices Market, By country, 2015 (%)Figure 2 Europe microfluidic devices Market Share By industry, 2015Figure 3 Europe microfluidic devices Market, By industryFigure 4 Europe microfluidic devices Market share By material, 2015Figure 5 Europe microfluidic devices Market, By materialFigure 6 Europe microfluidic devices Market share By applicationFigure 7 Europe microfluidic devices Market, By applicationContinueWe are thankful for the support and assistance from Europe Microfluidic Devices Market from 2016 to 2024 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
Europe Small Molecule API Market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 6.8 % and is expected to reach USD 71329.5 million by 2027

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Europe Small Molecule API Market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 6.8 % and is expected to reach US$ 71329.5 million by 2027. In Europe Small Molecule API Market, Germany accounted for the largest market share in 2015.Request a Copy of Sample Report @Europe Small Molecule API is one of the fastest growing industry. API`s are active chemical ingredients which produce a desired effect on the body. The Europe small molecule API market comprises of re4gions namely Germany, France, UK, Italy, Spain and Rest of Europe. Europe is encouraging the manufacturing of generic drugs leading to the growth of this market. It has also encouraged the establishment of local pharmaceutical industry. France, Germany and UK have fixed budget spending plans in order to overcome economic crisis in the country. Germany is the largest market for API in Europe followed by France and UK. UK is the fastest growing region in this market. The market is also segmented by type including Synthetic/ chemical API`s and biological API`s. Synthetic API accounts for the largest market share in Europe. Biological API is the fastest growing market in this region.According to application the market in Europe is segmented into cardiovascular, Oncology, Immunological disorders and others. Cardiovascular is the largest segment in this market by application and Oncology is the fastest growing segment.According to manufacturing method, small molecule API market in segmented into In-house and contract manufacturing. In-house manufacturing segment is the largest market. Contract manufacturing is the fastest growing segment in Europe.Europe Small Molecule API market statistical report published by Market Research future contains a brief overview of Europe Small Molecule API market. By manufacturing method, the market is segmented as In-house and Contract manufacturing. Germany commands the largest share and is expected to grow continuously during the forecasted period of 2014-2027. The report analyzed the Europe Small Molecule API market and presents systematic data of market share on the basis of segments and countries, and its growth rate for 2014 to 2017, along with forecast till 2027.Browse Full Report Details @Market Research future through this report aims to provide understanding of the Europe Small Molecule API market on the basis of segments & countries, and also assists identification of ongoing trends along with anticipated growth during the forecasted period. For this report, extensive primary research was conducted to gain a deeper insight of the market performance. Various industry experts and Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) were contacted and interviewed to get an idea of Europe Small Molecule API market.ContinueWe are thankful for the support and assistance from Europe Small Molecule API Market from 2016 to 2027 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
Aircraft Synthetic Vision System Market Survey and Major Key Player (Cobham, Garmi, Honeywell Aerospace, Rockwell Collins, Universal Avionics Systems and among other) Forecast to 2021

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The global Aircraft Synthetic Vision System market is expected to grow at a CAGR of around 8% during 2016-2021. The growing demand for synthetic surveillance systems (SVS) in UAV and rotorcraft platform, improved safety standard, and growing retrofit market are the key drivers for the market growth.As per the MRFR analysis, the potential threat for the market is the integrity of database which would hamper the functioning of synthetic vision systems. Also, regulatory issues and challenges associated with airworthiness certification in the emerging markets are the factors limiting the market growth in the long term.Request a Copy of Sample Report @Key Players Cobham, Garmi, Honeywell Aerospace, Rockwell Collins, Universal Avionics Systems, Aspen Avionics, Avidyne, ENSCO Avionics, ForeFlight, Hilton Software, L-3 Avionics Systems, and among otherStudy Objectives of Aircraft Synthetic Vision System Market To provide detailed analysis of the market structure along with forecast for the next 5 years of the various segments and sub-segments of the Global Aircraft Synthetic Vision System Market To provide insights about factors affecting the market growth To analyse the Global Aircraft Synthetic Vision System 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 application and type s To provide strategic profiling of key players in the market, comprehensively analysing their core competencies, and drawing a competitive landscape for the market To track and analyse competitive developments such as joint ventures, strategic alliances, mergers and acquisitions, new product developments, and research and developments in the Global Aircraft Synthetic Vision System MarketThe reports also cover country level analysis: Americas (North & Latin)o USo Canadao Brazilo Others Europeo Germanyo Franceo Italyo Spaino Ko Rest of Europe Asia  Pacifico Chinao Indiao Japano Australia/New Zealando Rest of Asia-Pacific Middle East & Africao UAE,o Kuwaito Israelo Rest of Middle East & AfricaBrowse Full Report Details @The market report for Aircraft Synthetic Vision System 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 Aircraft Synthetic Vision System 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
Live Cell Imaging Market Outlook 2022

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ReportsWorldwide has announced the addition of a new report title Live Cell Imaging Market Outlook 2022 to its growing collection of premium market research reports.Live Cell Imaging is defined as the study of living cells using high content screening or analysis systems and imaging systems such as microscopes, cell analyzers, etc. These technologies are used in number of investigations in order to provide critical insights into the fundamental nature of tissue and cellular function.The new report introduced by RNCOS entitled Live Cell Imaging Market Outlook 2022, includes a comprehensive analysis of the current and future outlooks of the Live Cell Imaging industry. The live cell imaging market is expected to reach US$ 7 Billion by 2022.For a Detailed description and table of contents of this report please click here:The report presents an in-depth analysis of several techniques used in imaging of live cells; as well as the segmentation of market by products, applications, technology and geography. Based on product types, the market has been segmented into equipments, consumables and softwares. Equipment market is expected to account for the largest share in 2016. According to technologies used in live cell imaging, the market has been divided into FRET, FISH, and other major techniques.Similarly, geographical regions include North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Rest of the World. North America is the largest market for live cell imaging due to high number of cell biology researches conducted in the region. As per RNCOS analysis, live cell imaging is widely entering into a number of fields such as cell biology, developmental biology, drug discovery, stem cell biology, neurobiology and electrophysiology. It is emerging as a powerful tool for providing critical insights into cell function, including dynamic processes in living cells with nano-scale resolution in real time. Recent advances in microscopy techniques such as fluorescence light microscopy, including super resolution, photo activation, etc. and confocal microscopy are moving live cell imaging for a number of applications.The last section of the report discusses about the prominent players in global live cell imaging market. A brief business overview and financial information about each of these players has been provided along with their product portfolios. The recent development and strength weakness analysis of every player has also been presented in the report. Overall, the research contains exhaustive information that will help clients in formulating market strategies and assessing opportunity areas in the global live cell imaging market.To Get Sample Copy of Report please visit @About ReportsWorldwide.comReportsWorldwide.com is a leading provider of global market intelligence reports and services. With research reports from top publishers, consulting and advisory firms, ReportsWorldwide.com offers instant online access to a growing database of expert insights on global industries, companies, products, geographies and trends.Press Contact:Abigail CrastoSenior Vice President101, Arch StreetBoston, MA 02110USPhone +1 (617) 398-4994Fax +1 (617) 398-4995abigail@reportsworldwide.com
Indian NIPT Market Outlook 2022

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ReportsWorldwide has announced the addition of a new report title Indian NIPT Market Outlook 2022 to its growing collection of premium market research reports.NIPT helps obstetricians and pregnant women over different age-groups to better manage their pregnancy at a very early stage. Over the last few years, an increasing number of women in Tier-1 cities in India are giving preference to their career, and are opting for childbearing at a later age, stretching to their 30s. As a result, a rising trend of conception related complications can be observed in Indian cities. In India, around 80,000-100,000 IVF cycles are performed annually. Also, due to the large number of births, India has the largest number of babies born with chromosomal disorders in the world. Every year, between 23,000 and 29,000 children are born with Downs syndrome in India, the highest in the world. Up to 90% of such cases can be detected if pregnant mothers opt for genetic screening, which represents a tremendous opportunity for NIPT tests in India in future.According to RNCOS new research report Indian NIPT Market Outlook 2022, with the launch of NIPT tests, India represents a great opportunity for the growth of NIPT. In this regard, in October 2015, MedGenome collaborated with Natera for providing Panorama test in India. The company performed 1000 free NIPT test to identify the pattern of chromosomal abnormalities in fetus. However, factors such as lack of awareness relatively lower affordability, and a high number of births taking place in rural India limit the growth of the industry.For a Detailed description and table of contents of this report please click here:The report provides the potential market for NIPT in India. Furthermore, the report also provides a depiction of macro-economic factors, healthcare infrastructure and population demographics to assess the industry potential and growth. The report also covers a brief description regarding the available NIPT tests in India as well as in global market. Moreover, regulatory scenario has been prudently analyzed to reflect a clear picture of the immense possibilities in the Indian NIPT market.Pathology labs and IVF clinics in India are rapidly expanding their networks, and witnessing a huge surge in fertility tourism and so in NIPT. The report also includes the findings from another RNCOS survey namely Gynecologists survey to assess the potential for NIPT in India, which reveal moderate awareness level of NIPT in India and highlights tremendous scope of NIPT that could revolutionize the prenatal diagnosis scenario in India.The last section of the report discusses about the prominent players in the global as well as Indian market with a brief business overview and analysis of their strengths and weaknesses, which will act as a pristine source of business intelligence for players looking to enter the highly lucrative Indian NIPT market. Besides, detailed profiling of Indian pathology labs and IVF clinics will help the medical centers who are seeking for partnerships and collaborations to make an informed decision. Overall, the research contains exhaustive information that will help clients in formulating market strategies, and assessing opportunity and potential areas in the Indian NIPT market.To Get Sample Copy of Report please visit @About ReportsWorldwide.comReportsWorldwide.com is a leading provider of global market intelligence reports and services. With research reports from top publishers, consulting and advisory firms, ReportsWorldwide.com offers instant online access to a growing database of expert insights on global industries, companies, products, geographies and trends.Press Contact:Abigail CrastoSenior Vice President101, Arch StreetBoston, MA 02110USPhone +1 (617) 398-4994Fax +1 (617) 398-4995abigail@reportsworldwide.com
Global Food Safety Testing Market Outlook 2021

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ReportsWorldwide has announced the addition of a new report title Global Food Safety Testing Market Outlook 2021 to its growing collection of premium market research reports.Food contamination now-a-days is quickly becoming a worldwide issue, that is raising the concern for adequate food safety testing methods and procedures. Food-related queries and complaints are continuously rising with time, which reflects a growing concern of government authorities and consumers. Along with alarming increase in the number of diseases related to contamination of food is among the major reason for increasing food safety and testing market globally. Now, manufacturers are also engaged in developing cost effective new technologies to uncover the hazardous effect associated with the contamination of food. The global food safety testing market has grown aggressively in the last few years. Further, this market is forecasted to grow at a CAGR of around 8% during 2017-2021.In the latest research report Global Food Safety Testing Market Outlook 2021, our analysts have studied the global food safety testing market in terms of contaminants and technology. The food safety testing market by contaminants is sub-divided into pathogen, GMO, toxins and pesticides. In context of technology, its sub-segmented into the traditional technology method, rapid testing method, and latest technology method. For the in-depth insight, several rapid testing methods like PCR, Chromatography and ELISA has been discussed in the report. In the latest technology method, Biosensors, Mass Spectroscopy, Flow Cytometry and Biochips are elaborated in detail.For a Detailed description and table of contents of this report please click here:Besides, we have presented the market forecast of the global food safety testing market till 2021, for countries such as US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, and China. We have also tried to lay down the present scenario and analysis of food safety testing market in countries like Canada, Japan, India, Brazil, Argentina and South Africa. With the growing emphasis on food safety by the government and regulatory bodies, food safety testing has gained its importance across in these countries. Thus, we have consolidated food safety regulations in key countries to provide a complete understanding of the market.Our report also includes the business overview, recent development and key financials of the key players, such that Agilent Technologies, BioMerieux SA, Eurofins, Intertek, DuPont, SGS SA, etc., along with its comprehensive outlook. The report further portrays the various key trends and drivers of the industry that stimulate the growth of the global food testing market.Moreover, the report covers all the important aspects of the global food safety testing market. Overall, the report is a result of extensive research and prudent analysis that will be offering suitable knowledge base to those who are interested in this industry.To Get Sample Copy of Report please visit @About ReportsWorldwide.comReportsWorldwide.com is a leading provider of global market intelligence reports and services. With research reports from top publishers, consulting and advisory firms, ReportsWorldwide.com offers instant online access to a growing database of expert insights on global industries, companies, products, geographies and trends.Press Contact:Abigail CrastoSenior Vice President101, Arch StreetBoston, MA 02110USPhone +1 (617) 398-4994Fax +1 (617) 398-4995abigail@reportsworldwide.com
Innovation Management Market : Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment

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Innovation management is an amalgamation of change management and management of innovation process. It refers to organizational innovation, product and business process. It comprises set of tools that permit engineers and managers to cooperate with a mutual understanding of processes and goals. Moreover, it also allows the organization to respond to internal or external opportunities and use its creativity to introduce new processes, ideas and products. It is not regulated to research and development, it encompasses workers at each level in contributing productively to a companys marketing, product development and manufacturing.The market is driven primarily due to the change in work culture in various organizations. Real innovations begins with the companys culture. By using innovation management tools, the management of an organizations is likely to deploy and trigger the creative capabilities of the workforce for the continuous development of the company. The major aim of the innovation management in an organization is to cultivate a suitable environment to boost innovation. Another major factor driving the global innovations management market is the increasing focus of the companies in the new innovative product development. Innovation management tries to renew the organization's significance to those it functions. The emphasis is on external factors, conditions and dynamics in ascertaining needs and prospects and altering them into solutions and customers respectively. Its purpose is to develop and present innovative value propositions in the form of new processes, products, or services. Innovation is integrally allocentric, engrossed externally on aiding others. Its chief concern is fostering efforts of developing new value.Obtain Report Details @Evaluating feasibility and practicality of the ideas proposed is one of the major challenging factor in the global innovation management market. Many times the goal to create new technology depends on the resources that we have. The feasibility evaluation sometimes turns out to be difficult for the implementation of ideas proposed.Rising adoption of cloud based technology is likely to be one of the major opportunities in the global innovation management market. Increasing automation, and security are some of the factors that is likely to be improvised thereby helping the market to bloom during the forecast period. Another major opportunities in this market is the collaboration of innovation management software with enterprise social platforms and social media platforms to attain effective innovations.The innovation management market on the basis of type is bifurcated into software and services. Based on deployment mode the market is segregated into cloud and on-premises. Moreover, on the basis of organizational structure the market encompasses small/medium enterprises and large enterprises. Based on the application, the market has been bifurcated into Freelancers and Human Resource Platforms, Product Research & Development Platforms; Design, Marketing and Idea Platforms and Collective Prediction and Intelligence Platforms. The product research and development segment accounted the highest market share during the estimated period due to the increasing demand of the innovative products that caters the changing needs of the customers. Additionally, on the basis of industries the market is segmented into BFSI (Banking, Financial Services and Insurance), Aerospace and Defense, Healthcare, Retail, Logistics and Transportation, IT and Communication Technology and Others. Retail sector accounted for the highest market share during the forecast period.Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the Innovation Management Market. Request a sample to stay abreast on the key trends impacting this market@The regional split of the market encompasses North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa and Latin America. North America is expected to hold the highest market share during the forecast period. Presence of strong domestic solution providers, technological advancement, and extensive adoption of technology and internet infrastructure are the few factors responsible for the market growth.Some of the top players in the global innovation management market encompasses Brightidea, Inc. (U.S.), Qmarkets (Israel), Imaginatik PLC (U.S.), Ideascale (U.S.), Hype Innovation, Inc.(Germany), Innosabi GmbH (Germany), Crowdicity Ltd. (U.K.), Cognistreamer (Belgium), Planbox, Inc.(Canada), Exago (Portugal), Spigit, Inc. (U.S.), Inno360, Inc.(U.S.) and SAP SE (Germany) 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. 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. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who us e proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR Syndicated Research report covers a different sector  such as pharmaceuticals, chemical, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, our syndicated reports thrive to rovide clients to serve their overall research requirement.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA  Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Insurance Telematics Market: Market and Growth Analysis

Insurance Telematics Market

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Insurance telematics refers to the usage of a black box in a vehicle, by the insurance company, to monitor the driving patterns of the driver, for determining the price of the policy. It is mutually beneficial since the vehicle owner is provided with better safety options, while the insurance company can assess the risk better and determine the policy price accordingly. Insurance telematics functions through installation of a black box inside a vehicle. The black box is a recorder, which records different types of data, such as miles covered, types of roads travelled on, driving pattern, and speed of vehicle at different time points, vehicle braking pattern, vehicle cornering pattern and timings of travel among others.Such factors are monitored since all these data provides critical information to the insurance company. All these data are analyzed and based on the same the policy price for that vehicle is determined. For example, higher usage of the vehicle during peak hours increases the chance of accidents, and hence the price of policy increases, while driving within speed limits can lead to decrease of the policy price. The insurer, in general, charges a fee upfront. The fee commonly includes the price for the black box and the installation charges, among others. Based on analysis of the data received, the premium price may increase or decrease or remain same, from month to month, or depending on the timeframe the insurer chooses. Certain insurers can also send the black box to the client, for self installation, and then request the device to be sent back, post a certain timeframe.Obtain Report Details @The insurance telematics market is still a relatively new concept and is most often practiced in developed nations. The market is primarily being driven by the rising insurance claims from road accidents. As per the World Health Organization (WHO), an estimated 1.2 million people die from road accidents annually, while higher number of vehicular accidents is reported. Such high number of accidents led to large number of insurance claims, which leads to significant loss for the insurer. Hence, insurance companies are resorting to insurance telematics for offering better policy prices and lowering capital loss. This in turn has been furthering the growth of the market for insurance telematics. Additionally, the black box installed offers security for the car as it can be tracked remotely, coupled with bettering of driving for the driver, among other advantages. Such advantages have been generating demand for insurance telematics from the vehicle owners also. This again has been positively impacting the growth of the insurance telematics market globally. However, factors such as privacy concerns and lack of standardized equipment among others, leads to uncertainty in installation of such devices in the vehicle. This in turn has been restraining the growth of the market for insurance telematics to some extent. Currently, insurance telematics has very low penetration rates in developing nations and hence is expected to be provided with high rates of application opportunities, during the forecast period.Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the Insurance Telematics Market. Request a sample to stay abreast on the key trends impacting this market@The global insurance telematics market is segmented, on the basis of region, into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific (APAC), South America and Middle-East & Africa (MEA). Europe was the largest market in 2016, followed by North America. Europes large market share can be attributed to the higher adoption of insurance telematics by the insurers and the growing acceptance from the vehicle owners.The major companies of the insurance telematics market globally are Octo Telematics, Ltd. (The U.K.), Tomtom N.V. (The Netherlands), Verizon Enterprise Solutions (The U.S.), Trimble, Inc. (The U.S.), Mix Telematics (South Africa), Aplicom Oy (Finland) and Sierra Wireless (Canada) among various other companies.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. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who us e proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR Syndicated Research report covers a different sector  such as pharmaceuticals, chemical, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, our syndicated reports thrive to rovide clients to serve their overall research requirement.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA  Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Integrated Stack Systems Market: Present Scenario and the Growth Prospects

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An integrated stack system involves a bundled vendor product that helps in providing a scalable network, storage as well as server infrastructure done with the help of automation and management software. This are used by various organizations as this integrated stack system bundles servers, provides storage and networking within a preconfigured product that is both easy to install and manage. Essentially the customers have to only unpack the stack components and then add the associated software applications to get the system running. Although these stacks are packaged and then sold by a single vendor, there are some elements of the stack that includes networking interfaces and switches which might get supplied by a different vendor.Vendors may even form partnerships with other manufacturers to procure the parts of the stack they dont manufacture providing the final stack system. The global market for integrated stack systems has been segmented on the basis of type, application and geography. Based on type, the market has been segmented into system in converged software and hyper-converged software. In addition to this, healthcare, automotive and telecommunication among others forms the various end use industries for this market.Obtain Report Details @Global integrated stack systems market geographically has been segmented into Europe, Asia Pacific, North America, Latin America and Middle East and Africa.Easier usage, longer stability and better performance are some of the key drivers for this market. Integrated stacks helps in reducing the overall cost of deployment along with managing IT infrastructure of the organization. These systems provide an alternative for companies that doesnt want to invest time as well as effort into integrating other solutions to their personal database. The suppliers here offer converged infrastructure delivering added value to the customer further providing validated configurations that are based on tested product components. Quick deployment that allows systems to be made in a short span of time along with a single support point providing solutions by a particular supplier makes things easier for the organization forming a major driver for this market.Moreover, certified solution by the vendors along with on-going maintenance support by suppliers also has a positive impact on the overall global demand. Even though there are numerous drivers that has pushed the demand for this market, still there are certain restraints that has posed challenges and limitations on its growth. One such factor being the fixed configurations and high costs associated with implementation of these systems that has acted as a major limitation for this market. Moreover, lack of choice for the components allows suppliers to provide parts that is only available to them and has been another major restraint for this market. Considering all these drivers and restraints, it is the rise of complex organization structure along with growing applications of different stacking methods may provide future opportunities for this market.Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the Integrated Stack Systems Market. Request a sample to stay abreast on the key trends impacting this market@Geographically, North America followed by Europe formed some of the major regions for this market. It is the growing complex database structures along with rise of big data that formed a few important factors to positively impact this market. Asia Pacific formed another major region for this market along with accounting one of the fastest growth globally. China and India among others formed a few important countries contributing to the growth of this market in APAC region. Growing complexities associated with organization infrastructure along with rise in IT based data systems are likely some of the key factors to have a positive impact on this market in APAC region.Some of the key players that are present in the global integrated stack systems market include Oracle Corporation (The U.S.), International Business Machine Corporation (The U.S.), HP (The U.S.), Nutanix (The U.S.) and Dell (The U.S.) among others.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who us e proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR Syndicated Research report covers a different sector  such as pharmaceuticals, chemical, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, our syndicated reports thrive to rovide clients to serve their overall research requirement.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA  Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Personalized Cancer Genome Sequencing Market Research Report: Advanced technologies & growth opportunities in global Industry by 2024

Personalized Cancer Genome Sequencing Market

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Global Personalized Cancer Genome Sequencing Market: OverviewCancer genome sequencing refers to the specialized field of genetic engineering focusing on the identification of genetic sequence in cancer cells. A more specialized sub-segment of this niche area is the field of personalized cancer genome sequencing, which refers to the identification and characterization of abnormal DNA and RNA sequencing in a particular cancer cell. Across the globe, the vast rise in prevalence of a variety of cancers has led to a significant rise in research activities aimed at the formulation of effective and accurate diagnostic and treatment methods.Over the past few years, intense research and technological developments in genetic engineering have made the personalized cancer genome sequencing technology a reliable technique for the treatment of several kinds of cancers. This report on the global personalized cancer genome sequencing market presents a detailed overview of the market with the help of in-depth quantitative and qualitative details and verifiable forecast about markets future growth prospects.Global Personalized Cancer Genome Sequencing Market: Trends and OpportunitiesThe vast rise in prevalence of cancer across the glove, rising awareness regarding the available treatment methods in the market, and a rising openness towards the adoption of promising futuristic treatment methods are the key factor driving the global personalized cancer genome sequencing market. The market is also driven due to the vast developments observed in gene sequencing techniques and the high accuracy in results.Being a relatively new method of cancer treatment, personalized cancer genome sequencing method is presently under clinical trials in several countries. In some countries across regions such as North America and Europe, these methods are practiced but are dealt through stringent regulatory control and taxing approval procedures from regulatory bodies. In the United States alone, the personalized cancer genome sequencing market is regulated by bodies such as Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the U.S. FDA.View Report-Global Personalized Cancer Genome Sequencing Market: Regional OutlookFrom a geographical perspective, the personalized cancer genome sequencing market has been examined in the report for regional markets such as Asia-Pacific, Europe, North America, and Middle East and Africa. Of these, the North America market presently dominates, followed by the Europe market. Factors such as the highly developed healthcare infrastructures, high prevalence of cancer, presence of some of the worlds leading biotechnology companies, and high expenditure on healthcare present vast development opportunities for the market in these regions.Asia-Pacific is also expected to emerge as a promising destination for development of the personalized cancer genome sequencing market in the next few years. This regional market is expected to exhibit growth at a healthy pace in the next few years. Factors such as the rising disposable incomes, increased expenditure on healthcare and wellness, and an improving healthcare infrastructure across developing economies such as India and China will drive the market. The thriving medical tourism industry in these countries is also expected to be a key driving factor. However, high costs of personalized cancer genome testing could limit the rate of adoption of this technique across the region to a certain extent.Global Personalized Cancer Genome Sequencing Market: Competitive DynamicsAlthough the scope of growth of the global personalized cancer genome sequencing market is huge, the market has witnessed the entry of very few companies owing to the stringent regulatory scenario governing the development prospects of new solutions and their marketing across regional markets with differing sets of approval processes. In the next few years as well, this factor is expected to permit few new players to foray into the global personalized cancer genome sequencing market.Some of the leading players operating in the market are Ambry Genetics, Beckman Coulter Genomics, Illumina, Inc., Cofactor Genomics, and BGI Americas Corporation.Request a brochure of this report to know what opportunities will emerge in the rapidly evolving Personalized Cancer Genome Sequencing Market during 2016- 2024About 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:
Equine Veterinary Services Market Research Report: New Tech Developments and advancements to watch out for 2024

Equine Veterinary Services Market

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Equine Veterinary Services Market: OverviewGlobal equine veterinary market is observed to be a multi-billion dollar industry that consists of various equine activities such as horse racing, competitive riding and leisure. Thus, various veterinary services that supplement the growth of this market are vaccination, gynecological care, dental care, gastroscopy, lameness, respiratory care, colic assessment and treatment.The vaccination regime of horses is integral part of equine health against various clinical conditions like equine influenza, tetanus, strangles, ringworm, EHV (Equine Herpes Virus), EVA (Equine Viral Arteries) and West Nile Virus (WNV). Dental care services include the routine dental examinations and rasping service for horses, some of the complex problems are also diagnosed with an X-ray.The gynecological care comprises routine sampling of CEM (Contagious Equine Metritis) and EVA testing , fertility check accompanied with hysteroscopies, artificial insemination, pregnancy diagnosis, pregnancy follow-up, assistance during foal birth and umbilical scanning, bloodsampling for IgG estimation in newborn foal health management. Gastroscopy consists of use of 3 meter videoscope for diagnosis of gastric ulcers. Lameness is one of the most common cause that affects limbs of horses and is diagnosed with digital X-rays, ultrasound and thermal scans. Respiratory care includes services related with tracheal washing and broncho-alveolar-lavage.Equine Veterinary Services Market: Region-wise OutlookThe veterinary services provided in market by major breeding farms and equine veterinary hospitals. This is a very specialized sector and is limited to equine species healthcare management hence, overall its considered to be a premium sector because of the specific requirements. The major market shift is estimated to be observed in coming five years where due to economic downturn in Europe has forced the market to export the horses to slaughterhouses or to Asian countries as there is significant potential for horse racing and showcase in China. This is perceived to affect the North American and European global market share in equine veterinary market as the Asia-Pacific market is observed to be growing in case of horse population.As a constituent of Asia-Pacific, Australian equine market was observed to rank among the top three regional equestrian and equine veterinary services markets. After the European downturn and legal hindrances in North American market Australia turned out to be among the leading horse producing / breeding countries in the world. On the same basis, China was perceive to expand its investing and capacity in horse racing and betting by importing quality breeds from countries especially from European region.Thus, China intends to maintain particularly race-horse breeds; as race-horses require additional care and supervision thus equine veterinary services market is expected to grow significantly. According to a equine industry source, China is mounting the capacity and investing in horse racing and betting by importing quality breeds from North American and European countries. The equestrian racing infrastructure development comprises of horse race-tracks developed with an investment of approximately USD 2.0 billion with about 3,000 horses. Investment also comprises the cost of s developing trainers and riders in particular equine training schools.View Report-Equine Veterinary Services Market: Key Segments and PlayersThe major products observed in the industry are in-house diagnostics, reference laboratories, digital imaging and others. The in-house diagnostics segment is expected to account for the largest share in the global equine veterinary services market. Some of the key players having presence in the global equine veterinary services market are IDEXX Laboratories, Inc., Medical Management International, National Veterinary Associates and VCA Antech, Inc.The report offers a comprehensive evaluation of the market. It does so via in-depth qualitative insights, historical data, and verifiable projections about market size. The projections featured in the report have been derived using proven research methodologies and assumptions. By doing so, the research report serves as a repository of analysis and information for every facet of the market, including but not limited to: Regional markets, technology, types, and applications.The study is a source of reliable data on:Market segments and sub-segmentsMarket trends and dynamicsSupply and demandMarket sizeCurrent trends/opportunities/challengesCompetitive landscapeTechnological breakthroughsValue chain and stakeholder analysisThe regional analysis covers:North America (U.S. and Canada)Latin America (Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Chile, and others)Western Europe (Germany, U.K., France, Spain, Italy, Nordic countries, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg)Eastern Europe (Poland, Russia)Asia Pacific (China, India, Japan, ASEAN, Australia and New Zealand)Middle East and Africa (GCC, Southern Africa, North Africa)Request a brochure of this report to know what opportunities will emerge in the rapidly evolving Equine Veterinary Services Market during 2016- 2024About 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:
UV Curing Systems MarketGrowth Analysis, Research Report , comprehensive analysis, Emerging Trends

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UV curing systems is a process in which visible light and ultraviolet light is used to initiate a photochemical reaction that is used to instantly dry or cure inks, adhesives or coatings. UV curing is a low temperature and a high speed process that helps in curing by polymerization rather than evaporation. It is adaptable to coating, printing, decorating and assembling of a variety of products and materials. The global UV curing systems market is anticipated to witness a robust growth rate during the forecast period from 2017 to 2025 owing to the increasing demand for improved quality of the finished products and for greater consistency.The global UV curing systems market is expected to witness a progressive growth in the coming years due to the requirement of less equipment space and energy since there is no need to wait for the product to get dry. This helps in creating an efficiency that exists through the entire manufacturing process. In addition, it is a one part system that requires no need to measure or mix and does not have any pot life concern. It also allows testing of parts soon after assembly that helps in eliminating possible quantities of work in process scrap. In addition due to the UV curing systems UV-LED printers enjoy a higher degree of traction compared to conventional printers due to their versatility and energy efficiency.Obtain Report Details @However, when curing in the air the oxygen in the atmosphere can cause the oxygen to inhibit the cure on the surface layer. This causes the top layer to become uncured sticky and wet while the bottom layer have hardened into dry finish. This affects the long term reliability of the coated layer. This is one of the reason which can hamper the growth of UV curing systems market.For the purpose of providing detailed research report, the global UV curing systems market is segmented on the basis of product type and application. On the basis of product type the market is segmented into free radical systems and cationic systems. Among the different product types of UV curing systems available in the market, free radical system is expected to grow at a higher rate owing to its facilities that majority of the commercial light cure products are of free radical types and use acrylic components that helps the polymerization to stop as soon as the light gets eliminated.UV curing systems also finds its application across various end user segments including automotive, electronics, telecommunication, graphic arts and others.Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the UV Curing Systems Market. Request a sample to stay abreast on the key trends impacting this market@Geographically, the global UV curing systems market has been further divided into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa, and Latin America. North America is expected to hold the largest share of the UV curing systems market among the different regions in 2016. The UV curing systems market of North America is majorly driven by the U.S owing to increasing demand for electric vehicle. Tesla, one of the major car electric manufacturer sells nearly 6,500 electric car every month in U.S. Government is also encouraging sale of electric car by giving discounts and providing incentives due to the decreasing oil resources and increasing demand for petrol. On the flip side, the Asia Pacific UV curing systems market is expected to witness the highest growth rate during the forecast period. UV curing system is widely used in Indonesia and are mostly in the wood based industry such as coating of parquet, table top fancy plywood and others.Some of the key vendors operating in the global UV curing systems market includes BASF SE (Germany), DSM AGI Corporation (Taipei), Nippon Gohsei ( Japan), Wanhua Chemical Group Co. Ltd.( China), Toagosei Co. Ltd (Japan), Jiangsu Sanmu Group Corporation (China) and many moreAbout UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who us e proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR Syndicated Research report covers a different sector  such as pharmaceuticals, chemical, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, our syndicated reports thrive to rovide clients to serve their overall research requirement.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA  Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Blood and Organ Bank Market Research Report: Analysis & Trends 2023

Blood and Organ Bank Market

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Blood transfusion and Organ transplant is done to save the life of an individual or to improve patients health. Blood bank is an institute from where blood is, stored entirely or as its components (plasma, blood cells and platelets) which is then transfused to the needy patients suffering with deficiency of blood or blood components. Organ Banks are banks which recover, process, storage and distributing an organ as well as body tissue and bone for transplantation. A single organ and tissue donor can save up to 40-50 patients lives which marks the importance of blood and organ banks.Every year million cases either undergo transfusion of blood, blood components, plasma derivatives, and transplantation of organs. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), out of 108 million blood donations done globally, 50% of the blood donations happen in high income countries. More than 65% of blood transfusions in low income countries are given to children below five years of age while the scenario is reverse in high income countries where transfusion is done for elderly patients (age 65 years and above). According to another report by the WHO, voluntary unpaid blood donations have increased tremendously in low- and middle-income nations. From 2004 to 2012, more than 8.6 million blood donations that came from voluntary unpaid donors has increased in 162 countries. Among these countries, there were 73 nations which.The blood and organ market is segmented on the basis of the following: Products (Blood products which include whole blood, Red blood cells, Platelets, Granulocytes, Fresh frozen plasma, Albumin, Immunoglobulin, Antithrombin III and Protein C concentrate and others (Factor VIIa, Factor VIII Fraction, Dried factor IX fraction, Factor XIII dried) and under Organs include (Kidney, liver, heart, pancreas and cornea).The end users include either the Public Hospitals or the Private Hospitals.On the basis of geography, the global the blood and organ market can be segmented into North America , Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East and Africa. North America has been a leading region in the market owing to high demand for organ transplant. Annually, more than 120,000 Americans need a new organ.View Report-The blood and organ bank industry has grown healthily in past decades and is expected to continue its growth trajectory during the forecast period from 2015 to 2023. According to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN), more than 1 million patients are on waiting list for organ transplant. As the number of organ donors is increasing, an increase in transplant procedures is bound to happen this will expand the global market for blood and organ bank market. Moreover, the government efforts for creating awareness for blood donation and restoring donors and the patients confidence in blood transfusion services has also up stretched the demand for these systems. Rising incidences of accidents are propelling the market for blood and organ banks because in such cases there is high probability of demand for blood or organ. Increasing healthcare insurance coverage, greater improvement in post-transplant outcomes are among other factors that help drive the market growth.Some of the market players in this industry segment are The American Red Cross, Blood Systems, Musculoskeletal Transplant Foundation, Inc., New York Blood Center, New England Organ Bank, The Living Bank, NOTTO and 21st Century Medicine.This research report analyzes this market on the basis of its market segments, major geographies, and current market trends. Geographies analyzed under this research report includeNorth AmericaAsia PacificEuropeMiddle East and AfricaLatin AmericaThis report provides comprehensive analysis ofMarket growth driversFactors limiting market growthCurrent market trendsMarket structureMarket projections for upcoming yearsRequest a brochure of this report to know what opportunities will emerge in the rapidly evolving Blood and Organ Bank Market during 2015- 2023About 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:
Animal Parasiticides Market 2023 - Global Industry Analysis | Research Report

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The demand for animal parasiticides is growing due to the increasing awareness of zoonatic diseases. With the rising concern towards animal welfare is one of the major reasons behind the growing popularity of animal parasiticides. The market has been segmented by products into ectoparasiticides, endoparasiticides, endectocides, tablets, oral liquids, sprays, injectables, spot on and pour on, ear tags, collars. Furthermore, the market is also segmented by animal types such as Cats, Pigs, Dogs, Cattle, Sheep and Goats. The market by geography has been segmented into Europe, Asia Pacific, North America and Rest of the World (RoW).Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the Animal Parasiticides Market. Request a sample to stay abreast on the key trends impacting this market.Spot-ons and pour-ons accounted the largest market share of the global animal parasiticides market in 2014. The growth in this segment can be attributed to rising popularity and use of spot-on and pour-on formulations in animal parasiticides market. Furthermore, growing demand for ectoparasites for food-producing animals and companion animals is also expected to stimulate the growth of the market. Availability of wide array of parasiticides product by major players, rising demand for animal-based food and animal protein are some of the driving factors for the animal parasiticides market. In addition, rising animal welfare awareness is increasing the adaption of animals such as dogs and cats among others. Increasing livestock farming as a source of income in developing nations are fueling the demand for animal parasiticides. However, there are some of the restraining factors may hinder the growth of the market in near future such as stringent rules and regulations of authoritative bodies in use of parasiticides in food- producing animals in some of the countries. Moreover, time consuming and expensive procedures of new product development are some of the restraining factors for the market.Browse Global Strategic Business Report:Europe is leading the market for animal parasiticides followed by North America, Asia Pacific and Rest of the World. In developed nations, implementation of animal welfare acts is one of the major driving factors for the animal parasiticides market. The emerging market in Latin America and Asia Pacific is contributing in the positive growth of animal parasiticides market owing to the increasing population of companion animals and livestock. Moreover, increasing per capita expenditure on animal health along with improving infrastructure of animal welfare is some of the major factors fueling the demand for animal parasiticides in these regions. With growing awareness towards animal healthcare, countries such as China, India, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand in developing nations like Asia pacific is expected to depict a significant growth over the forecast period from 2015 to 2021. Argentina and Brazil are potential market for animal parasiticides across Latin America.Some of the key players operating in the animal parasiticides market are Ceva Sante Animale S.A., Vetoquinol S.A., Virbac SA in France, Bayer Aktiengesellschaft in Germany, Novartis AG in Switzerland, Merial Limited, Eli Lilly and Company, Zoetis Inc. and Merck & Co., Inc. in U.S.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:
Hospital Acquired Infection Treatment Market Research Report: Latest Trends and Forecast Analysis up to 2024

Hospital Acquired Infection Treatment Market

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The global market for hospital acquired infection (HAI) treatment features an exceedingly fragmented vendor landscape, with no leading vendor accounting for a dominant share in the market in 2015, observes Transparency Market Research in a recent report. Notable players in the market, including Merck & Co., Inc., Abbott, Bayer AG, and Pfizer, Inc., struggle for profitable returns amid the emerging threat of generics following patent expirations of several blockbuster drugs.Although strict barriers in form of complex approval procedures and stringent regulatory framework in several regional markets exist, the market has witnessed the entry of a large number of new players in the past few years. The threat of new entrants remains high in the near future owing to the promising market for generics and a slew of new players is expected to enter the global HAI treatment market in the next few years, further intensifying the level of competition.Transparency Market Research states that the global HAI treatment market will exhibit a moderate 2.7% CAGR from 2016 through 2024, rising from a valuation of US$28.99 bn in 2015 to US$36.61 bn in 2024.This exhaustive report includes 36 data tables and 140 figures to give readers a 360 view of the Hospital Acquired Infection Treatment Market. Browse through this 198-page report to know what factors will shape the market during the period 2016-2024North America Market to Retain DominanceOf the key HAI treatment types examined in the report, the segment of antibacterial treatment takes the lead in terms of demand and consumption. The rising prevalence of hospital acquired bacterial infections across the globe is likely to allow the segment of antibacterial treatment retain its dominance in the global HAI treatment market over the forecast period.From a geographical perspective, the global HAI treatment market is dominated by North America, followed by Europe. The regional market valued at US$10,272.70 mn in 2016 and is expected to retain its dominant position over the forecast period as well. The rapidly rising pool of geriatric patients and the presence of some of the worlds leading pharmaceutical companies will allow the region to remain dominant.Rising Geriatric Population and Increased Demand across Emerging Economies to Propel MarketSome of the chief factors that are presently driving the global demand for effective HAI treatments are the rising geriatric population and the increased focus on improving healthcare infrastructures in developing and less-developed economies. The geriatric population is more prone to a number of infections and are a demographic that account for a massive share in the overall expenditure on healthcare and wellness spent by any society.The threat of developing nosocomial infections is significantly high in elderly people owing to their low immunity to diseases. Therefore, as the worlds population ages, the demand for HAI treatment methods is also expected to rise at a significant pace in the next few years.Rising Numbers of Multidrug Resistance Microorganisms Drive Demand for Alternative TreatmentsOne of the key factor hindering the growth of the global HAI treatment market is the steadily rising numbers of multidrug resistance (MDR) microorganisms that resist multiple antimicrobial drugs. Resistance to most available treatment methods and drugs is threatening the public health and pressuring the healthcare industry to find alternative treatments, restricting the adoption of standard nosocomial infection drugs to a notable extent.Nevertheless, the market could benefit from the several drug candidates for treating hospital acquired infections that are presently in the pipelines of some of the leading pharmaceutical companies of the globe. The increasing focus on the rising prevalence of HAIs in emerging economies has generated vast untapped growth opportunities in the form of elderly population from the lower and middle income categories. These opportunities can prove to be beneficial for established players as well as new entrants in regions such as Asia Pacific and Latin America.Request a sample of this report to know what opportunities will emerge in the rapidly evolving Hospital Acquired Infection Treatment Market during 2016- 2024About 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:
Povidone Iodine Market Insight and Future Forecast until 2023

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Povidone Iodine Market: OverviewPovidone Iodine is a stable chemical complex of polyvinylpyrrolidone and elemental iodine. It is universally preferred iodine antiseptic. It is a widely used antiseptic for topical application in the prevention and treatment of infections in wounds. Povidone Iodine is used in first aid of blisters, minor cuts and burns among others. It is extensively used in the medical field. It is completely soluble in cold and mild-warm water; glycerol and isopropyl alcohol. Povidone Iodine has applications in the field of nanomaterials as well. Povidone Iodine is also known as Wokadine, Pyodine and Betadine.Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the Povidone Iodine Market. Request a sample to stay abreast on the key trends impacting this market.Iodine is a recognized as a widely used bactericide that has proven to be effective against viruses, protozoans, fungi, and molds. However, iodine causes irritation at the application site. Povidone Iodine overcomes the drawbacks of iodine primarily because the iodine in it is carried in a complex form and as a result the concentration of free iodine in it is very low. Povidone Iodine has applications such as a scrub for pre- and post-surgery skin cleansing; for treating and/or preventing wound or ulcer infections, as well as in cuts and burns. It is also used in deceits ulcers and stasis ulcers for treating infections.Povidone Iodine Market: DriversHigh awareness regarding general well-being is driving the healthcare market. Additionally, growth in aging population is likely to boost the healthcare market. Presence of strict government mandates in Europe and North America and a well-developed healthcare industry is expected to help boost the use of povidone iodine during the reports forecast period. Thus, the growing healthcare industry coupled with the increasing awareness regarding hygiene will likely drive the demand for povidone iodine market over the next few years. However, there are various substitute products available for povidone iodine in the market. Chlorhexidine-alcohol is one of the major substitutes for povidone iodine. Thus, the presence of substitute products may be a factor that may restrain the growth of the povidone iodine market within the forecast period.Povidone Iodine Market: Region-wise OutlookFrom the demand standpoint, North America was the top region in povidone iodine market. U.S. generated the highest demand for Povidone Iodine owing to sizeable demand from the healthcare industry coupled with appreciable demand from the nanomaterials sector. Stringent regulation in Europe regarding healthcare and hygiene are expected to drive the demand for povidone iodine in the near future. European countries such as Germany and the UK were the major consumers of tri-isopropanolamine in this region.Browse Global Strategic Business Report:Rising global population and the expanding base of geriatric persons has been either directly or indirectly helping the growth of the market. This trend is expected to continue until the end of the reports forecast period. Several countries in Asia Pacific have demonstrated rapid economic growth over the past decade. This trend is projected to only grow stronger through the next few years. The Asia Pacific povidone iodine market was followed by markets in the Rest of the World.Key players in the povidone iodine Market are H&P Industries, Inc.,Glide Chem Private, Medline Indusries Inc and RN Laboratories among others. There are many large and small scale industries present across various geographies.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:
Keloid Treatment Market, Industry Analysis, Research Report 2024

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Global Keloid Treatment Market: OverviewThe British Skin Foundation describes a keloid scar as an overgrown scar that spreads beyond the original area of the damaged skin. It is a growth of extra scar tissue in the place where the skin has healed post-injury. Keloids can appear anywhere on the body and affect an estimated 10-15% of all wounds. There are several established treatment options available for keloid scars, including laser treatment, surgery, radiation, steroid injections, cryotherapy, and interferon. Moreover, there are a number of products available in the market today to hasten the healing of keloids. These include creams, sprays, gel sheets, ointments, elastic wraps, oils, and topical gels.Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the Keloid Treatment Market. Request a sample to stay abreast on the key trends impacting this market.While most keloid scars are benign, the continuous growth of the scar may result in skin cancer and this is a key factor driving the market for keloid treatment. Several pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical companies, medical centers, and universities have been conducting clinical trials for the development of drugs and treatment options for keloid scars.The report offers readers a detailed assessment of the ongoing economic, technical, consumer, regional, and political trends impacting the trajectory of the global keloid treatment market. The bargaining power of prominent buyers and suppliers, the threat presented by new entrants and substitutes, and the intensity of rivalry among key players have been thoroughly evaluated in the report with the help of the Porters Five Forces analysis model. An extensive overview of the competitive landscape of the keloid treatment market has also been provided, which focuses on the business overview, recent developments, product and service portfolio, and financial outlook of the leading companies.Global Keloid Treatment Market: Growth Drivers and RestraintsThe global keloid treatment market is primarily driven by rapid technological advancement in skin care as well as in keloid scar removal and the growing awareness among patients regarding the availability of these products and treatment options. Changing lifestyles, the ever-rising focus on appearance and aesthetics, and the increasing expenditure on personal care products and services have also significantly contributed toward the expansion of the keloid treatment market. Demand for radiation therapy, surgical intervention, and steroid injections is supported by the growing trust and acceptance of the patients, thereby ensuring that the keloid treatment market registers a healthy growth over the forecast period.On the flip side, however, this market is being hampered by the possible side effects of keloid treatment, the high cost of various treatment options, and the risk of extreme pain and complications during treatment.Global Keloid Treatment Market: Region-wise OutlookThe global market for keloid treatment is segmented on the basis of geography into Europe, North America, Asia Pacific, and Rest of the World. North America is the dominant regional market for keloid treatment and is likely to retain its lead through 2024. High disposable income of people in this region, coupled with the comparatively high availability as well as acceptance of new technologies, products, and treatment alternatives are responsible for the rapid growth of the North America keloid treatment market. Europe is also a major market for keloid treatment driven mainly by the favorable reimbursement scenario for skin treatment and the increasing awareness of the consumer.Browse Global Strategic Business Report:Asia Pacific is an immensely promising market for keloid treatment owing to the increased focus on appearance and aesthetics in several emerging economies. The rapid growth in population, increasing disposable incomes, and improving healthcare facilities in the region are also anticipated to boost the market for keloid treatment in Asia Pacific.Global Keloid Treatment Market: Competitive LandscapeThere are a number of players competing in the global keloid treatment market. These include Pacific World Corporation, Revitol Corporation Inc., GlaxoSmithKline plc., Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, Novartis AG, Renovo Group plc., Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc., Galena Biopharma, Inc., RXi Pharmaceuticals, Inc., and Avita Medical.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:
Systemic Antibiotic-Sulfonamide Combination Pharmaceuticals Market Research Report- Size, Grwoth and Forecast 2023

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Global Systemic Antibiotic-Sulfonamide Combination Pharmaceuticals MarketSulfonamides are a group of drugs that are derived from sulfanilamide, a sulfur containing compound. Sulfonamides are the most commonly used antibiotics around the world and have been in clinical use since 1968. Sulfonamides, also known as anti-metabolites and sulfa drugs act by inhibiting the folic acid synthesis pathway in a bacterial cell. These antibiotics are considered as selective targeted option since human do not synthesize folic acid, but a bacterial cell requires it for the synthesis of adenine and thiamine derivatives of its nucleic acid. These drugs are bacteriostatic in nature and are often utilized in the systemic treatment of acute, uncomplicated urinary tract infections and respiratory upper tract infections. With a broad spectrum of activity, these drugs are also utilized to treat various other bacterial infections like enteritis, chronic bronchitis in adults, otitis media in children and travelers diarrhea. The leading drugs in this segment are sulfamethoxazole, sulfisomidine, sulfadiazine, sulfaisodimidine, sulfacetamide, sulfisoxazole, sulfasalazine, sulfadoxine and dichlorphenamide. One of the combination drugs available in this class is the sulfamethoxazole/trimethoprim combination which becomes bactericidal in action in contrast with the other sulfa drugs. Some of the key brands available in this class are Dapsone (diamino-diphenylsulfone) and Sepmax (sulfamethoxazole and trimethoprim) from GlaxoSmithKline plc; Blephamide(prednisolone and sulfacetamide) from Allergan, Inc. and Vasocidin (prednisolone and sulfacetamide) from Novartis AG.Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the Systemic Antibiotic-Sulfonamide Combination Pharmaceuticals Market. Request a sample to stay abreast on the key trends impacting this market.Global Systemic Antibiotic-Sulfonamide Combination Pharmaceuticals Market: Drivers and RestraintsMajor growth drivers for the systemic antibiotic-sulfonamide combination market will include availability of large number of generics at affordable prices in emerging markets and increasing prevalence of various infectious diseases such as urinary tract and upper respiratory tract infections. These drivers are likely to push the volume sales of drugs of this class. Worldwide rise in elderly population is also expected to play a key role in driving the market growth as elderly populations is at high risk of developing various infections requiring systemic antibiotic-sulfonamide combination drugs for cure.Global Systemic Antibiotic-Sulfonamide Combination Pharmaceuticals Market: Geographical DynamicsGeographically, the market for systemic antibiotic-sulfonamide combination pharmaceuticals has been segmented into four major regions, namely, North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Rest of the World (RoW). In North America and Europe, the market is characterized by market maturity and increasing penetration by generic manufacturers. Stringent regulatory guidelines pose a significant challenge before the growth of this market to some extent in these regions. However, the market may experience a significant growth on the introduction of new products during coming years. Asia-Pacific represents the most potential market for this segment and is expected to record the highest growth rate during the upcoming years. Some major factors expected to drive the systemic antibiotic-sulfonamide combination market growth in the region include, presence of large number of generic manufacturers in major Asian countries (especially in India and China), growing incidences of infectious diseases and emerging economies leading to increased purchasing power of the people belonging to this region. In addition, the region being a home for more than half of the world population is also likely to represent a large pool of patients with various infectious diseases that would consequently increase the uptake of sulfonamide class of drugs.Browse Global Strategic Business Report:Global Systemic Antibiotic-Sulfonamide Combination Pharmaceuticals Market: Competitive LandscapeSome of the major players engaged in the development, manufacturing and marketing of systemic antibiotic-sulfonamide combination drugs are GlaxoSmithKline plc, Allergan, Inc., Pfizer Ltd., Sanofi, Novartis AG, Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, Bayer AG, Eli Lilly and Company, Merck & Co., Inc. and AstraZeneca plc. These players compete with each other in order to get competitive advantages over each others. In developing nations like India, China, Mexico and Brazil, they face intense competition from local manufactures that offer systemic antibiotic-sulfonamide combination drugs at relatively low prices.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:
Liu Zhenyun, best-seller author [Photo provided to China Daily]

Writer Liu Zhenyun was the top scorer on Henan province's national college entrance exam in 1978.

Many other celebrities have also topped the exam over the years.

Li Yanhong from Baidu did well in 1987 when he was among the top examinees in Yangquan city, Shanxi province, and Liu Qiangdong from JD.com shone in 1992 in Suqian city, Jiangsu province.

"The exam offers a window and a new opportunity in life, and I wanted to seize the chance," says Liu Zhenyun, recalling how he quit the army to appear for the examination.

The memory was so intense for him that in 1987 he published his debut novella, Tapu.

It's a story about young people in a village preparing for the examsome succeed and some fail.

The novella was well received and launched his writing career.

Liu Zhenyun worked hard for the exam in his village in Yanjin county in Xinxiang, Henan province.

"I was very good at math. It helped me to score highest marks in my province," he says.

He says that math made him logical and sensitive to details, which are key qualities for storytelling and for writers to see through the mist in their search for the truth.

"Math helps me to deal with the connections between sentences and paragraphs," he says.

Liu Zhenyun is the author of the Mao Dun Literature Prize-winning novel One Sentence Worth Ten Thousand and I Did Not Kill My Husband, both best-sellers with film or TV adaptations.

Speaking about the impact of the exam on his life and writing, he says: "What it gave me was the chance to go to Peking University, which had a far-reaching influence on me, because at the time I was there the literary masters were alive and teaching there."

The university's Chinese literature department at that time had influential scholars from the May Fourth Movement like Wang Yao (1914-89); and founders of modern Chinese linguistics like Wang Li (1900-86); and Wu Zuxiang (1908-94).

"They changed me from the village writer I could have been, giving me a different perspective," says Liu Zhenyun.
Homeopathic Products Market Research Report Forecast 2024

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Homeopathic Products Market: OverviewHomeopathy is a medical practice and philosophy based on the principle that human body has the capacity to heal itself. Established in Germany in the late 1700s, homeopathy has been extensively practiced all over Europe. Homeopathy considers symptoms of illness as usual responses of the body as it tries to regain health. Homeopathy is based on the principle that like cures like. According to this principle, if a substance produces a symptom in a healthy person, giving a very small amount of the same substance to that person may cure the illness. Homeopathic medicines contain extremely dilute amounts of natural substances that are used to treat a variety of ailments. Homeopathic medicines are manufactured by a process of serial dilution and succession (vigorous shaking).Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the Homeopathic Products Market. Request a sample to stay abreast on the key trends impacting this market.Homeopathic Products Market: SegmentationHomeopathic medicine can be classified on the basis of type of treatmentAuto-isopathyClassical homeopathyClinical homeopathyComplex homeopathyHomotoxicologyIsopathyPluralistic homeopathyOn the basis of originPlant kingdomAnimal kingdomMineral kingdomTypes of homeopathic medicinesClassical medicinesConstitutional medicinesPolychrestsIsopathic medicinesAllergodesNosodesSarcodesTautodesComplex medicinesHomeopathic Products Market: Regional DynamicsGeographically, the global homeopathic products market is divided into four regions: North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Rest of the World (RoW). In terms of geography, North America followed by Europe is the largest market for homeopathic products due to increasing interest of people in homeopathic and herbal medicines, rising number of disorders and diseases and favorable regulatory framework. In countries such as the Brazil, the U.K., India, Mexico and Cuba homeopathy is incorporated into the health system and covered by public health insurance.However, the Asia Pacific market is also growing at a considerable rate due to development of healthcare industry, increasing awareness of people in homeopathy and herbal medicines and increasing prevalence of chronic diseases. According to a study by Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) 2011, the size of the domestic homeopathy market was around 523 million US Dollars in 2010 and was expected to exceed 160 million US Dollars in the next three years.Browse Global Strategic Business Report:The global homeopathic products market is witnessing strong growth due effective and efficient treatments available in homeopathy for various diseases. Homeopathy is proved to be effective in many cases of chronic and acute diseases. Even though there is lack of clear understanding of working of homeopathic medicines, but there is clear evidence that the medicines are active and can be curative. In India, homeopathic medicine has fully incorporated with both traditional ayurvedic and western medicine. African homeopathic medicine market is also growing at a fast rate due to its affordability and effective system of medicine that fits with many traditional African spiritual beliefs. According to WHO, homeopathy is the second largest system of medicine with a growth rate of 20-25% every year. The growing popularity of homeopathy and its legal acceptance has been seen in 66 countries.Homeopathic Products Market: Competitive OverviewThe homeopathic medicine market is developing significantly due to the participation of many new players in this market. New participants are focusing on new technologies and introducing new product into the market. Also, the market is expected to witness a high growth rate due to growing demand for homeopathic medicines. Some of the major players in homeopathic medicine market are Hahnemann Laboratories Inc., Hylands Homeopathic, Natural Health Supply, Nelson & Co Ltd and SBL.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:
Cholera Treatment Market, Industry Research report, Forecasts upto 2024

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Cholera disease spreads because of contamination of water and food and is closely associated with poor sanitation and lack of clean drinking water. The global disease burden is around 35 million cases and 100 000 130 000 deaths per year. In recent time the frequency of cholera epidemics has increased. The disease is caused by Vibrio cholerae a rod-shaped waterborne bacterium. The toxins released by bacterium causes loss of intravascular and extravascular fluids and essential electrolytes in the small intestines.Cholera disease is generally characterized as acute, profuse watery diarrhea of one or a few days duration. In extreme condition the patients may suffer severe dehydration within 34 hours. Rehydration is the mainstay of treatment of Cholera or antibiotics are indicated for severe cases only.Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the Cholera Treatment Market. Request a sample to stay abreast on the key trends impacting this market.According to reports published by W.H.O Cholera control should be the main priority in the endemic areas. Right now there are only two types of oral cholera vaccines available. These oral vaccines should be used in conjunction with other preventive measure in areas where the disease is endemic. The vaccination provides an immediate short-term response while to completely overcome the disease other interventions such as availability of clean water and proper sanitation should be put into place.To control endemic cholera vaccination should be targeted at individuals with higher risk, the best way to counter cholera can be periodic mass vaccination campaigns, for example such as pre-school and school aged children, HIV-infected individuals and pregnant women. Older age individuals may also be taken into consideration for cholera vaccination. Currently protection induced by current cholera vaccines is 2 years, therefore initial vaccination of 2 dose should be followed by a booster dose after every 2 years.In recent times W.H.O. and its partners are considering newer ways to complement the traditional methods. The oral cholera vaccines have proven to be effective against the disease, the evidence provided by the use of cholera vaccines has paved way for investigation for mass vaccination for protection against cholera disease. As of now there are three types of oral cholera vaccines available Crucell, Dukoral and ShanChol, which are approved by W.H.O. Out of these three vaccines one is monovalent and the other two are bivalent vaccines. Several other oral cholera vaccines are under development. Currently the demand for cholera vaccines is uncertain as it depends on the immunization strategy which may vary total demand requirement.Browse Global Strategic Business Report:The W.H.O strongly recommends monitoring for confirmed cases of cholera disease must be integrated in already existing surveillance programs so that the impact of the disease and vaccination could be monitored.The global market for Cholera Vaccines is segmented into type of product type, vaccines type, end-user and region:Global Cholera Vaccine market segmentation on the basis of product type:SuspensionInjectableGlobal Cholera Vaccine market segmentation on the basis of vaccine type:Monovalent VaccinesDivalent VaccinesGlobal Cholera Vaccine market segmentation on the basis of end-user:HospitalsDrug StoresRetail PharmaciesGeographically cholera disease is a rare disease in the U.S. and other countries who have good sanitation system and clean water, however it is more prevalent in other parts of the world like developing countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America which do not have such kind of sanitation system and clean water.Key players in cholera vaccines manufacturing are Janssen Global Services, LLC, Shantha Biotechnics Pvt. Ltd, EuBiologics Halfkin Bio-Pharmaceuticals Corporation Ltd.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR syndicated research report covers a different sector  such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, TMRs syndicated reports strive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA  Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
WASHINGTON -- The nation's chief executive may be irrepressible on Twitter, using it to declare the Russia investigation a "witch hunt," sound off about "fake news" or negative press "covfefe," and bash London's mayor for his response to the city's terror attack.

But CEOs of most Fortune 500 companies are less enthused, with a recent report showing that use of social-media platforms by Fortune 500 CEOs flat-lined in 2016. Sixty percent of these CEOs of America's largest public companies don't have a single professional account or channel on any of six major social media platforms, the report finds, and just 36 of the Fortune 500 CEOs have Twitter accounts, down from 50 last year. Of those, only 25 are active.

The report, done by business software company Domo and its site CEO.com, also reported smaller total numbers of Fortune 500 CEOs with a professional Facebook page in 2016, while the number of them on LinkedIn, where many are "influencers" who can post messages about their companies, ticked up. According to the report, 181 Fortune 500 CEOs were on LinkedIn last year, a safer "on-ramp" to social media for CEOs. The report identified the social profiles of every CEO on the Fortune 500 list across six major platforms (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram and YouTube) and scrubbed any accounts that weren't credible. Private personal accounts were not included, a Domo spokesperson said.

Leslie Gaines-Ross, the chief reputation strategist for Weber Shandwick, which also issues a report on CEOs and their social media use, says LinkedIn is more popular among CEOs in part because commenters can't be anonymous. As a professional-oriented site, the commentary is also usually more tame. "It's a bit of a safer platform if you have a thin skin," she said.

Facebook, meanwhile, can help humanize a CEO, and Twitter is particularly important for CEOs navigating bad news or a reputation issue, as well as to share views or statements they hope will go viral. "It seems to be the platform of choice when you're in a crisis," she says, with a message that "gets out quickly and immediately. It has its own advantages."

The report also named the most followed CEOs in 2016 on certain platforms. At the time of its research at the end of last year, Apple's Tim Cook had the most Twitter followers, while Warren Buffett's nine tweets had been the most retweeted. BlackRock's Larry Fink and JPMorgan Chase's Jamie Dimon had the most followers on their LinkedIn Influencer pages, the report said.

Gaines-Ross said founders tend to be more active than CEOs-for-hire. But she would have thought more big-company CEOs would have their own professional social-media accounts, as it's become such a pervasive way for companies -- and the people who are their public face - to recruit people, interact with customers, tout company news and offer a view into what they do all day. "It's important for CEOs to have some participation in social media," she says. "That's where your customers are. That's where the talent is."

Some CEOs, of course, are avid Twitter users, such as Salesforce's Marc Benioff, who tweets frequently about everything from company conferences to state-level "bathroom bill" legislation. Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has been known to troll short sellers of his stock on Twitter, announce his departure from Trump's advisory council after the president's Paris accord exit, and even respond to a question about his underwear.

"Wearing anything at all is just a conspiracy by the capitalist running dogs of Big Underwear" - Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 5, 2017.

As for why more CEOs of big companies don't use social media, the report cited public mentions of CEOs saying they're too busy -- or they don't understand its return on investment -- as reasons they were staying off the platforms, rather than fears or concerns about making any big mistakes. "I think CEOs and their communications people have learned a lot of the lessons about what's safe and what's not safe," Gaines-Ross said. "We don't really see a lot of big gaffes out there by Fortune 500 CEOs on social media."

To be sure, CEOs do tend to have teams of people who approve their tweets or social media messages, even if they are involved in the process, to help them avoid a late night mistake that gets them into trouble. "There's usually a team behind it," Gaines-Ross said, who may aid in crafting messages or can help "just to check the spelling -- at least."

-- The Washington Post
Police fatally shot a bank robbery suspect during an exchange of gunfire Tuesday afternoon in Vancouver, an official said.

The man suspected in the robbery ran into an iQ Credit Union on Northeast Fourth Plain Boulevard wearing a ski mask and carrying a rifle around 2:20 p.m., said Kim Kapp, a Vancouver police spokeswoman. He robbed the bank and left in a car, Kapp said.

Officers saw him change cars at a nearby parking lot and at some point tried to stop him, but he continued to flee in the second car, she said.

Officers briefly pursued him, Kapp said, and performed a maneuver to stop him from getting away.

Three officers and the suspect exchanged gunfire, Kapp said. She didn't know who initiated fire or whether the suspect was still in the car at the time.

No officers or other people were injured, Kapp said. The officers who fired their weapons are on critical incident leave, a standard practice in officer-involved shootings.

The shooting happened near Northeast 182nd Avenue and 73rd Street, according to The Columbian. The intersection is about 1-1/2 miles from the credit union.

Kapp said Vancouver police are continuing to investigate the robbery and that Regional Major Crimes Team detectives are investigating the shooting. She said detectives will be processing the crime scenes -- the credit union, parking lot where the suspect changed cars and shooting location -- for several hours.

The fatal police shooting is the second in less than three weeks in Vancouver.

A Clark County Jail inmate who had been transferred to PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center "took action" that prompted deputies to shoot him on May 18, the county sheriff's office has said.

The inmate, 66-year-old John Jeffery Martin, had complained about a medical problem and was under guard at the hospital, according to the sheriff's office.

-- Jim Ryan

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Vancouver police have publicly identified the three officers involved in a fatal shootout with a bank robbery suspect Tuesday.

The suspect, who hasn't been publicly identified, died in the exchange. The officers who fired are Cpl. James Burgara, Officer Erik Jennings and Detective Richard Rich. Each of the officers, longtime Vancouver police personnel, are on critical incident leave, a standard practice in officer-involved shootings.

Police spokeswoman Kim Kapp said Tuesday she didn't know who initiated fire or whether the suspect was still in the car at the time. No officers or other people were injured, Kapp said.

The man suspected in the robbery ran into an iQ Credit Union on Northeast Fourth Plain Boulevard wearing a ski mask and carrying a rifle around 2:20 p.m., Kapp said. He robbed the bank and left in a car.

Officers saw him change cars at a nearby parking lot and at some point tried to stop him, but he continued to flee in the second car, she said.

Officers briefly pursued him, Kapp said, and performed a maneuver to stop him from getting away. The officers and suspect exchanged shots, and the suspect died.

The department hired Burgara in 1998, and he was promoted to corporal in 2007, Kapp said in a news release. Burgara, 55, has been working as a neighborhood officer in the department's East Precinct since 2014.

Jennings, 45, was hired in 2000 and has been working in his current role as a neighborhood officer in the East Precinct since 2014.

Rich, 46, was hired in 2005 and currently works in patrol.

The fatal police shooting was the second in less than three weeks in Vancouver.

A Clark County Jail inmate who had been transferred to PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center "took action" that prompted deputies to shoot him on May 18, the county sheriff's office has said.

The inmate, 66-year-old John Jeffery Martin, had complained about a medical problem and was under guard at the hospital, according to the sheriff's office.

The Regional Major Crimes Team is continuing to investigate Tuesday's shooting, Kapp said. Police didn't release any additional information about the investigation Wednesday.

-- Jim Ryan

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503-221-8005; @Jimryan015
Spain is coming to Portland this summer. Starting June 12, the city will be the U.S. host for this year's World Tapas Day, an international celebration of Spanish bar food organized by Spain's tourism agency. For one week, 11 Portland restaurants will offer tapas representing a different region of Spain. Visiting chefs from Salamanca, Bilbao and Malaga will make appearances at special dinners, cooking demos and a roving tapas truck.

That promises to be a busy time, but it's really just a warmup: One month later, July 13-16, comes La Ruta PDX, a four-day festival organized by John and Renee Gorham of Toro Bravo. A dozen Spanish chefs and winemakers will come to Portland for a trade show, a film screening, an outdoor, all-ages food fair and, of course, a half-dozen pricey collaborative dinners.

It probably shouldn't be surprising that Portland is getting a double dose of Iberian extravaganzas. We're home to an unlikely number of good Spanish restaurants, along with hispanophile shops, bars and even wineries. You don't need a festival to explore the diversity of Spanish food and drink hereyou can work your way around the country, from Andalucia to Valencia, any time you like.

Andalucia

Flamenco, beaches and ornate religious festivalsThis southernmost region of Spain most remembers the country of tourist brochures and 19th-century travelogues. It's no wonder hot, sunny Andalucia invented gazpacho, the chilly blend of tomato, olive oil, bread and lots of garlic that's ideal for 100-degree summer days. It's a seasonal dish, but you can always find a good, spicy version at Northwest Portland's Ataula (1818 N.W. 23rd Place, ataulapdx.com).

Andalusians love their fried seafood: shellfish, squid and especially pescaditos, or tiny, crunchy sardines and anchovies. You can get yourself a plate of them with lemon at Northeast Portland's Toro Bravo (120 N.E. Russell St., torobravopdx.com), which departs from tradition by serving them without the heads.

The town of Jerez, just inland of the Atlantic coast, is the home of sherry, the fortified wine that ranges from light and bright manzanillas and finos to sweet and creamy Pedro Ximenez. Southeast Portland tapas hotspot Bar Casa Vale (215 S.E. 9th Ave., barcasavale.com) has a smart selection of glass pours, but it can't touch the giant bottle list at Bar Vivant (2225 E. Burnside St., barvivant.com). If you want to really dig into the stuff, check out the events of Sherry Week in Portland, Nov. 7-13.

Asturias and Cantabria

Trapped between the snowy Picos de Europa and the Bay of Biscay, this stretch of the north coast is the heart of "Green Spain." Fishing is a big industry here, supplying many of the conservascanned seafood in oil or tomato saucethat Spaniards go ape over. Bar Vivant has a whole menu of the stuff, including conches and scallops, and the eponymous Northwest Portland import shop Conserva (1720 N.W. Lovejoy St. #108, conservashop.com) has even more to explore.

Asturias makes Spain's favorite blue cheese, the spicy and odorous Cabrales. It's not one for beginners, and hard to come by. You'll find it making occasional appearances at Toro Bravo and Cheese Bar (6031 S.E. Belmont St., www.cheese-bar.com).

As the nation's biggest apple-growing region, the north coast produces loads of sidra, or cider. These range from dry, barely carbonated Asturian brews meant for quaffing to some seriously funky, sour ciders from the Basque Country. You'll always find the former on tap at Toro Bravo and Urdaneta (3033 N.E. Alberta St., urdanetapdx.com) and the latter at Bar Casa Vale and Bar Vivant. Reverend Nat's Hard Cider (1813 N.E. 2nd Ave., reverendnatshardcider.com) recently released a spot-on homage made with American apples that can be purchased by the bottle at the tasting room.

Basque Country, Navarra and La Rioja

The mountainous Northeast is home to the Basques, a cooking-obsessed tribe of fishermen, bankers and industrialists whose history predates the Roman invasion. Though Eastern Oregon was once to home to many Basque shepherds, Basque dishes are rare on Portland menus. Some ingredients show up: Urdaneta serves chistorra, a skinny, high-fat chorizo variant, as does Feastworks (1325 S.E. Tacoma St., feastworks.com), a Sellwood deli and frequent farmers market vendor. Bar Casa Vale serves kalimotxo, a 50/50 blend of red wine and Coke that's ubiquitous in Bilbao. And the ornate tapas at local Spanish restaurants share their spirit with the bars of San Sebastian. If you want to delve deep, Urdaneta chef Javier Canteras hosts an occasional Basque Supper Club.

Catalunya and Valencia

The best-represented region among Portland restaurants, including the just-opened Can Font), this Eastern region's fierce cultural independenceand, pending a referendum planned for September, possibly political independence as wellshows up in its cuisine. The signature sauces are alioli (allioli in Catalan), which you'll find all over any Spanish menu, and romesco, a blend of red peppers and nuts that's served under asparagus at Bar Casa Vale and above an incredible burger at Toro Bravo and Pollo Bravo (Pine St. Market, 126 S.W. 2nd Ave., pollobravopdx.com).

Catalans like their shrimp, served grilled a la plancha (at Toro Bravo) or fried with garlic al ajillo (at Bar Casa Vale). Squid ink's also popularBar Casa Vale serves rice soaked in the stuff; Ataula makes a similar dish with toasted noodles. All that seafood goes great with Cava, the local sparkling wine, of which Bar Vivant has an intimidating selection. Don't forget to finish with crisp churros (or, in Barcelona, xurros) and drinking chocolate. The versions at 180 (2218 N.E. Broadway, 180pdx.com) are as good as any in Spain.

Just south on the Mediterranean coast is Valencia, home of paella, Europe's finest casserole. The rice dish is traditionally prepared in a huge pan over an open fire; that's inconvenient in a restaurant setting, where two-person portions are more common. Chesa (2218 N.E. Broadway, chesapdx.com) has a large variety of smoky paellas, but for my money the seafood paella at Ataula is the most consistently great one in town. They also make a fine rossejat, a paella variant made with toasted noodles, mushrooms and romesco.

Galicia

Spain's northwest is known for its rain, its dramatic coastline and its cuisine. Sound familiar? Galician razor clams, navajas, are firmer and more flavorful than Oregon's. Get them seared at Toro Bravo. The region's most famous dish, pulpo a la gallega, is boiled octopus with olive oil and smoked paprika. It's scarce in Portland, but Bar Vivant offers a decent rendition. Pimientos de Padron -- seared padron peppers -- come from the the hamlet of Herbon and are served fried and dusted in sea salt throughout Spain and in many Portland restaurants in late summer. If they're all spicy you got a bad batch. Galicia's native wine is Albarino, which Roseburg's Abecela has been making from its own fruit since 2001.

Upcoming Spanish food festivals

Word Tapas Day USA 2017 - June 1218

Eleven Portland restaurants will each represent a different region of Spain during this event organized by Spain's tourism agencies. Highlights include a cider house steak dinner at Bar Vivant, tapas-themed bicycle tours, a roving tapas truck, dinners with visiting chefs Gemma Gray and Mikel de Luis, a celebration of Andalucia and a free tapas party at Plaza del Toro. Ticket and information at

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La Ruta PDX - July 1417

Presented by Toro Bravo, this four-day event will feature special dinners with Spanish chefs and winemakers; seminars on wine, cider and sherry; a screening of the documentary Soul; a trade show with Spanish and local winemakers, brewers, distillers, butchers and blacksmiths; and a party in Director Park with food, Flameco dancing and music. Tickets and information at

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Madrid, Castilla y Leon, Castilla-La Mancha and Extremadura

Spain's central plateau is dry, sparsely populated and dotted with castles. This is where most of the prized black Iberian pigs graze before they become jamon. You can get a pricey portion of the nutty, dry-cured ham at many Portland Spanish restaurants, or pick up a leg of your own at Conserva. The primo pork is also sublime uncured. Chesa serves a tender little cut of it in a red pepper-onion-eggplant sauce and it is entirely perfect. A less appreciated Castillian pork producton these shores, anywayis morcilla, a rich black sausage of pork blood, fat and onions. Laurelhurst Market (3155 E. Burnside St., laurelhurstmarket.com) does a solid rendition.

Madrid, the capital, is known for bar fare like fried-squid sandwichesUrdaneta serves the only version in Portlandand patatas bravas, which are basically home fries covered in spicy ketchup. Toro Bravo makes a satisfying traditional take, but Ataula's version is otherworldly, with crisp-edged chorizo-infused cubes made from finely sliced and reconstituted taters.

Everywhere

Walk into any bar in Spain and you'll see two things: Tortilla, a pan-fried potato-egg omelet, and croquetas, deep-fried oblongs of breaded bechamel. Portland has many takes on tortilla, from the very traditional, very good wedge at Toro Bravo to the impossibly airy, souffle-like version at Chesa. Croquetas can be had with salt cod at Ataula, chicken and ham at Pollo Bravo, ham and egg at Urdaneta or just ham at Toro Bravo.

Another national obsession of late is the gin and tonic. Cocktail culture is new in Spain, but it's been embraced with typical dramatic flair. Toro Bravo offers four different versions, each with a different gin and garnishes; Chesa puts a lot of work into its apparently minimalist, ungarnished version with a huge hit of quinine and lime flavor; and Bar Casa Vale goes all-out with a huge, ice-filled goblet sprinkled with spices and topped with swirls of lemon peel and cucumber.

-- Ben Waterhouse, special to the Oregonian
Even if you don't plan on attending one of Portland's two major upcoming Spanish food festivals -- a week of events surrounding the Spanish tourism board's World Tapas Day on June 15, then a cavalcade of visiting chefs and special dinners at the Toro Bravo chef John Gorham's La Ruta PDX starting July 13 -- there's no reason you can't live La Vida Tapa any day of the year. Here, we offer three perfect itineraries for tapas crawls throughout the Rose City. And just in case you imbibe one too many gin & tonics, we've included the TriMet bus line to get you from stop to stop.

Salt cod fritters with smoked piquillo alioli at Ataula.

1) Ataula - Can Font - Pollo Bravo

Ataula: What better place to start this first tapas crawl than Northwest Portland's Ataula (1818 N.W. 23rd Pl.), where talented Barcelona-born chef Jose Chesa first began raising the bar on Portland's tapas scene in 2013. Start with the famous patatas bravas, a mini order of the squid-ink-blackened toasted noodles called rossejat and a gin and tonic from bartender Angel Teta.

Walk six blocks to Northwest 23rd Avenue and Marshall Street, ride the streetcar east to Northwest 13th Avenue and Lovejoy Street, then walk four blocks northeast to Can Font, 1015 N.W. Northrup St.

Can Font: Meet one of Portland's more unusual restaurant imports, a second location of a Michelin-recognized (but not starred) restaurant on the outskirts of Barcelona best known as a destination for weddings and other large gatherings. The space, in a glass and concrete Pearl District condo, looks wildly different from the rustic original, but the menu is nearly identical. Order a glass of rioja, some croquetas and a paella when you sit down (it takes 45 minutes).

Grab a 16 bus three blocks away at Northwest Naito Parkway and Ninth Avenue and ride south to Southwest Oak Street and First Avenue, then walk to Pollo Bravo, 126 S.W. Second Ave.

Pollo Bravo: Consider a bocadillo or the namesake rotisserie chicken, or, if you haven't saved room, snack on potato chips and olives alongside a sherry nightcap from the little library at this one-time Toro Bravo offshoot at Pine Street Market, now owned by Josh and Sarah Scofield.

Urdaneta's Gilda, with boquerones, pepper spread and anchovy-stuffed olives.

2) Urdaneta - Toro Bravo - Bar Casa Vale

Urdaneta: Meet some friends here in the former Natural Selection space (3033 N.E. Alberta St.) for a "pintxo hour" from chef Javier Canteras, who specializes in Basque cuisine. Start this crawl with open-faced sandwiches topped with grilled morcilla (blood sausage), some croquetas de jamon and a kalimotxo (red wine and cola) or two, just $5 each.

Head four blocks to Northeast 27th Avenue and Alberta Street, hop on a 17 bus headed south, then get off at Northeast Broadway and Second Avenue, about seven blocks south of Toro Bravo, 120 N.E. Russell St.

Toro Bravo: Portland's best known Spanish restaurant makes up the meat in this tapas crawl sandwich. Grab a seat in the intimate "makeout room" for an outsider's view of the bustling dining room, then dig into the Madrid-inspired tapas, pinchos and conservas. Bacon-wrapped dates are mandatory, the tortilla con amor is optional (but recommended) and the radicchio salad and potatoes bravas are basically Portland institutions.

Head to Northeast Martin Luther King Boulevard, grab a 6 bus headed south, get off at Southeast Ash Street and walk five blocks east to Bar Casa Vale, 215 S.E. Ninth Ave.

Bar Casa Vale: By now, Bar Casa Vale should be bumping. If it's warm, grab a seat on the brick-lined patio, or try out the very Spanish standing rail inside. The selection of Spanish hams rivals any in town, and the Barcelona-style gin and tonics and Pimm's cups are wonders to behold: large bowls filled with ice and a veritable bouquet of fruit and spices.

Filled xurros from the bright little shop at the front of Northeast Portland's Chesa.

3) Bar Vivant - Chesa - 180

Bar Vivant: The lightest crawl of the three starts with conservas -- canned seafood, typically packed in oil -- and a bottle of cava from Bar Vivant's award-winning wine list. You'll know you're in the right place when you see the black Osborne Bull towering over the red building, 2225 E. Burnside St., or the line waiting for Cheryl Wakerhauser's popular dessert bar Pix Patisserie, which shares a space with the tapas bar.

From here, you're probably best off walking to Chesa, 2218 N.E. Broadway, which is only about a mile away on a route that lacks a particularly direct bus route. Plus, the final leg in this crawl doesn't require any travel at all.

Chesa: Slip into the bar at Jose Chesa's second Portland restaurant for a clarified gin and tonic or a glass porron of dry cider meant for sharing, messily, with friends. If you have the time, order a small paella from the wood-burning Josper oven, plus a board of Spanish meats and cheese and the souffle-esque tortilla. Under no circumstances should you miss the secreto, a tender cut of uncured Iberian ham in a sweet slurry of red pepper and onion.

Walk to the front ...

180: Where you'll find the perfect dessert at 180, Jose Chesa, Cristina Baez and David Martin's ode to the modern xurro/churro bars of Barcelona and Madrid. Often eaten early in the morning, either as a light breakfast snack or a sop after a long night at the club, these fresh-fried and stuffed cylindrical doughnuts are perfect with a cup of Cocanu drinking chocolate. Take note: 180 stays open until 10 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, but closes at 8 p.m. the rest of the week.

-- Michael Russell
Summer is getting painfully close. But with events like these eight lined up for the coming week in Portland, you'd think we're already there.

Grand Floral Parade

If you see one parade this summer, make it the Grand Floral. Headlining the Rose Festival with ingeniously crafted floats and pomp and circumstance fit for the newly crowned Rose Festival Queen, it's been a signature of summer in Portland for generations.

10 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday, June 10; downtown Portland, traveling from Veterans Memorial Coliseum to Providence Park; free; rosefestival.org

Ira Glass's "Seven Things I've Learned"

The voice and creator of "This American Life" shares lessons learned from a life spent in pursuit of stories.

7:30 p.m. Saturday, June 10; Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 S.W. Broadway; $32.50-$54; portland5.com

"Fly-In" for the Milwaukie Bomber

Remember the "Lacey Lady," the old B-17 bomber that sat perched outside The Bomber Restaurant on McLoughlin Boulevard? Check out this classic car cruise-in and airplane fly-in to support its restoration.

5 p.m.-8:30 p.m. Friday, June 9 and 9 a.m.-7 p.m. Saturday, June 10; McNary Field, 2990 25th Ave. S.E., Salem; $10; b17alliance.com

Dragon Boat Races

You've seen them practicing on the Willamette River for months. Now catch the city's most mythical paddlers steer their dragons in the human-powered boat race of the summer.

8 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday, June 10-Sunday, June 11; Tom McCall Waterfront Park; free; rosefestival.org

Scandinavian Midsummer Festival

Celebrate the fact that winter is finally behind us with the centuries-old traditions of Scandinavia - and just a great afternoon spent outside.

11 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday, June 10; Oaks Park, 7805 S.E. Oaks Park Way; $7-$8; scanheritage.org/midsummer

PDX Hempfest Expo

As the cannabis industry continues to sprout in Oregon, experts and entrepreneurs gather to discuss where pot is going and how to get there yourself.

8 a.m.-8 p.m. Saturday, June 10; Portland Expo Center, 2060 N. Marine Dr.; $20; pdxhempfestexpo.com

Portland Beer Week

As if every week wasn't beer week in Portland, Breweries, taprooms and restaurants throughout the city offer special events and deals to celebrate craft brew culture and all its offshoots, from beer ice cream to beer art.

Various times Thursday, June 8-Sunday, June 18; locations across town; specific event and beer prices vary; pdxbeerweek.com

Fleet Week

Eight ships in all will tie up in Portland for tours and sailor greetings, including U.S. Coast Guard cutters, two Canadian Coast Guard ships, two U.S. Navy ships, and a brand new littoral combat ship.

Docking times vary, tours generally available 9 a.m.-3:30 p.m. Wednesday, June 7 Sunday, June 11; Tom McCall Waterfront Park; free;
Dancer Yu Rongling, by Niu Weiyu. [Photo/namoc.org]

An exhibition featuring 200 works from photographers Gao Fan and Niu Weiyu will be held at the National Art Museum of China on June 8.

Born in 1922 in Zhejiang province, Gao, the former editor-in-chief of PLA Pictorial, once participated in the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1937-45). Niu, from Henan province, also joined the war in 1945.

A collective presentation of lifetime works from Gao and Niu, the exhibition will let people find the passion and spirit in the times captured by the two artists.

The exhibition will run until June 18.
Visitors tour Antarctica in January. According to Tuniu, a travel website, in the past Spring Festival, about 10 Chinese visitors, who are mostly from Shanghai, booked tours to the continent.[Photo by Wang Yanan / For China Daily]

Despite a sluggish world economy, the expanding group of wealthy Chinese, especially millennials, is showing a bigger appetite for luxury travel, adding a bit to the members' spirit of adventure.

According to The Chinese Luxury Traveler 2017 Report - jointly released on Monday by Shanghai-based Hurun Re-search Institute, which observes the rich, and International Luxury Travel Market Asia - the average upscale traveler spent 380,000 yuan ($55,855) on family travel last year, 220,000 yuan of which was devoted to shopping, up 57 percent year-on-year.

This seventh report released by the two organizations covers wealthy travelers from 12 Chinese cities. The survey polled 334 affluent Chinese with an average personal wealth of 22 million yuan.

In terms of accommodation budgets, the younger generation, who were born in the 1980s, had a budget 3,325 yuan higher than others, up 7 percent from 2015.

However, private short-stay rentals, like those provided through Airbnb, had not won equal favor among wealthy Chinese tourists. When asked if they would consider such service, 28 percent of those surveyed said no and 10 percent said it was highly unlikely.

Another 31 percent showed a neutral attitude. The lack of top-tier services at the private residences is the main reason for the luxury travelers' indifference.
LONDON - Britain's opposition Labour Party has replaced its interior affairs spokeswoman the day before a national election, citing her ill health.

Britain's Home Secretary Amber Rudd and shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott speak on the BBC's Marr Show in London, May 28, 2017. [Photo/Agencies]

Diane Abbott has suffered a series of gaffes during the election campaign, and Prime Minister Theresa May's Conservatives have increasingly focused their fire on her as the campaign has become centred around security.

Abbott, a close ally of left-wing leader Jeremy Corbyn, had pulled out of a radio debate on Tuesday, saying she was unwell.

"Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of the Labour Party, has asked Lyn Brown to stand in for Diane Abbott as Shadow Home Secretary for the period of her ill health," the party said in a statement.

Brown is the party's policing spokeswoman.

Opinion polls predict the Conservatives are on course to win Thursday's vote, although their lead has narrowed significantly since the start of the campaign and some have suggested she may fail to win an overall majority.
Thursday 8 June 2017 12:24pm



Vice-Chancellor Professor Harlene Hayne

We are delighted by our prominent placing in the latest QS World University rankings for 2018, which sees Otago securely placed in the top echelons of universities worldwide and as one of New Zealands top two universities.



Otagos latest ranking of 151 represents a modest, but welcome, improvement on 2017s score of 169. This overall rise in the rankings  the second for Otago in as many years  is due to gains across a range of areas including academic and employer reputation, and citations per academic staff member. The QS report notes that, at 28th globally, the International Faculty indicator is Otagos strongest and places us first in the country for this measure. The aim of this indicator is to assess how successful a university has been in attracting academics from other nations.

Alongside this most recent success it is essential to note that our QS ranking is just one measure of our overall performance. Otago should also be judged on its outstanding results in the Tertiary Education Commissions national Educational Performance Indicators (EPIs).

The Universitys near clean sweep of first placings amongst New Zealands eight universities in the last (2016) EPI round reflects how our amazing students, through their own hard work, are making the most of the rich opportunities we offer here. Otagos stellar results reflect the excellence of the teaching and learning environment that the University offers students, and the efforts those students put into their studies.

Additionally, Otago academics have now won the Prime Ministers Supreme Award for tertiary teaching excellence five years in a row. The Supreme Award is considered the ultimate tertiary teaching national prize and celebrates New Zealands finest tertiary teachers. No other university in New Zealand has come close to this record.

We are thrilled that the Universitys steadfast performance reinforces its long-standing status as a leading research and teaching institution. Our focus will remain on providing the very best in teaching and learning opportunities and encouraging the pursuit of the highest-quality research.

Professor Harlene Hayne

Vice-Chancellor
McLaren Central Michigan has received the Michigan Peer Review Organizations 2017 Governors Award of Excellence for lowering the risk of infection, effective reporting and measurement for outpatient quality reporting and hospital value-based purchasing.

This year, more than 100 Michigan hospitals, physician practices, nursing homes, inpatient psychiatric facilities, ambulatory surgery centers, home health agencies and community-based organizations are being honored with the Governors Award of Excellence. This award recognizes participants for their dedication and success in improving healthcare quality and patient safety in Michigan. To be eligible for the award, participants must have achieved, maintained and continually improved in specific and rigorous milestones related to the award they received.
For 27 years, the plush grounds behind the H Hotel have hosted the Picnic at the Tridge, when area GOP supporters have gathered to meet with their local U.S. House representative. Monday, Rep. John Moolenaar hosted his third annual picnic under the tent as friends gathered for hamburgers, hot dogs and ice cream, and legislative updates.

Former Rep. Dave Camp began the tradition when he took office in 1991. Since succeeding Camp in 2015, Moolenaar has carried on the event.

This is a great turnout and an encouraging group of friends, Moolenaar said in remarks to the Daily News.

Serving his second term in Congress, Moolenaar has received an assignment to the House Appropriations Committee where he serves on the following subcommittees: Financial Services and General Government, Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies, and Legislative Branch.

Its important that we prioritize our spending and that we spend taxpayers money wisely and that we have oversight of the executive branch and appropriately reign in the executive branch as a matter of checks and balances, he said. Thats something I take very seriously.

Along with healthcare, tax reform is also a priority for the House and President Donald Trump.

I look forward to working with him the next few years. I feel that hes offering leadership and excited to be part of a team that is going to make our healthcare system better, our tax system better and rebuild our defenses. All those goals are in place and were working at them little by little, Moolenaar said.

Monday was also the same day that the U.S. Senate begin its discussion on healthcare reform.

The Senate has a different structure and different rules how they do their business. In some cases it takes longer to get things done. But, Im optimistic. They want to see a better healthcare system and we dont have another option because what we have now is not working, Moolenaar stated.

The House has already passed its healthcare plan, commonly called the American Health Care Act, or H.R. 1628, which Moolenaar supported.

I think it is important that we have a patient centered system that gives individuals the opportunity to choose their doctor, their healthcare plan that best meets their needs and something that will bring their costs of healthcare down. One of the things that Ive heard more than anything is that premiums are skyrocketing. They cant afford to use their healthcare because their deductibles are so high and thats wrong. We believe that this kind of approach is going to be bringing the cost of healthcare down so more people can afford it and choose what really best suits their needs. Whether its buying insurance across state lines, encouraging more competition for peoples business. Im hopeful that we will have a system that is sustainable in the long term, that insurers will want to participate. Right now, in some states, Iowa for example, 93 out of 98 counties did not have an insurer that was participating in the exchange. That is a system that is falling apart and collapsing. I voted for it as taking a step forward towards a better system. The Senate will do their work and see what they develop and work collaboratively to have a policy in place.

However, under the plan, the C.B.O. (Congressional Business Office) reported that the number of uninsured would grow to 24 million people.

I think they are basing it on certain assumptions about Obamacare and peoples behavior rather than a new system that is more affordable and gives people the option to purchase the insurance that best meets their needs, Moolenaar responded. Some of the assumptions are that if you dont mandate something, people wont buy it. I think thats an accurate assumption. Under the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), you were mandated and some people chose not to and took a financial penalty as a result. Weve given people the flexibility to purchase what they need. However, if we drive the costs down and show that there is value in the policies that they have: that the deductibles arent so high and the policies arent so costly, I believe that more people will want to participate than the C.B.O. estimate.

Moolenaar stated that the next two months are key as the House also returns to Washington for seven out of the next eight weeks.

I believe this will be the time where well know whether the Senate is able to pull something together and what the similarities and differences are (between the House and Senates plan), Moolenaar said. There is presidential leadership and he wants to make it happen. The House and Senate are both committed to it. I think things only get worse if we fail to act.
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The Illinois-born sisters who became best friends found their harmony early on. Raised in a musical family, they knew music would be a significant part of life.

Now, Emma Wagner, 27, and Cora Lambert, 32, are crafting perhaps their greatest symphony: UpBeat Music Academy, which had its grand opening at 109 E. Ashman St. on Saturday.

The door to UpBeat Music Academy, outside the inner Ashman Circle at the center of the city, opens to a small lobby with new wooden floors and ceiling tiles. A desk extends from a soundproof wall. Lambert walks past a whiteboard adorned with the words Create, Explore, Laugh, and Learn, overhead a table with tiny white chairs in tow.

She motions toward an area where there will be 8-by-8-foot rooms with a piano, music stand and supplies for teachers for private lessons. Theres an early childhood room where a music therapist would serve and a large group classroom, with six pianos and lessons for children three and a half years old to adults.

There were plans for a big stage area, but we ran out of square feet, an energetic Wagner said, laughing.

The sisters say people have enrolled in some of the 14 music programs or camps. The first class, Tunes & Tales, started Monday. Summer camps run until Aug. 21. For a schedule and more info, call 989-492-2213, go to www.upbeatmusicmidland.com or search @upbeatmusicmidland on Facebook and Instagram.

Lambert and Wagner said with the academy, it was important to create a safe environment for children. Young families  children and adults  are the business bread and butter.

They want to involve adults with parent-children interactive classes  but also firsthand, with guitar and piano lessons for adults starting in the fall.

Theres a place for everybody in music, and theres a place for everybody at UpBeat, Wagner said.

Lambert and Wagner said they live within a mile of the academy. Lambert has been in Midland six years, following her husband, a chemist, whose job brought him to the city. Wagner landed in Midland within the past year. They say its reminiscent of the small Chicago suburb where theyd grown up.

We love Midland, Wagner said.

Their love for music grew when their grandma took them to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

We grew up in a family that always had to be doing something musical, Wagner said. Its the focal point of our entire family. Thats what drove us to this.

Lambert majored in flute performance at Michigan State University and attended the Interlochen Arts Academy. Shes UpBeats director of education. Shes also a mother of four. Wagner adds business management experience as director of operations. Shes a mother of two.

They teach the Harmony Road curriculum for piano. But they were able to concoct creative ideas for classes, like blending yoga and music and a hands-on session where attendees physically build instruments (Wagner has a trombone built entirely from PVC piping in her office).

Many ideas came to mind during Lamberts 15-plus years teaching music. But they played the waiting game, unborn until UpBeat.

So this is mainly a fruition of a dream, Lambert said.

Getting involved with the new academy doesnt require any prior musical experience, the sisters said. For children, they said music need not be intimidating, and learning it at the academy can help develop motor skills because classes get kids jumping and making hand motions. They also learn to follow directions.

Kids learn very well through music, Wagner said.

A class starting in the fall, Kangaroo Chorus, aims to help new mothers bond with their babies.

Our business builds from babies, Wagner said. And there are always going to be 2 year olds.

Theres also an avenue for adults who want to pick up the trombone or flute they put down in high school, or fret with a guitar and play properly at the next campout with friends this summer.

To get the music started, the sisters say they put in upward of $130,000 to buy and renovate the building. They secured the property in early April.

The city of Midland has been great, Wagner said. They want entrepreneurs here.

Near the Ashman Circle and Center City district, many businesses have come and gone over the years. The sisters say they want to make a 30- or 40-year run with UpBeat, a venture they credited to their extended families that have given tremendous support.

We are here to stay. Our families are rooted here, Wagner said.

We want it to be our lifes journey. Were all in. Our babies even take naps here now, Lambert said, laughing. Having this is totally a fulfillment of a very long dream.

An introductory special includes eight 30-minute lessons for $200. The sisters also are looking for specialists to teach any instrument.
NORMAL  While Bloomington and Normal have a solid foundation, officials need to talk to each other and listen to diverse voices to unlock the Twin Cities' potential.

That was the message Tuesday from Mick Fleming, president and CEO of the Association of Chamber of Commerce Executives, as he spoke at BN Beyond, an event hosted by the McLean County Chamber of Commerce.

The event featured speakers and videos celebrating local achievements, looking ahead and inviting organizations to participate in the BN Advantage initiative. About 600 attended the event at Rivian Automotive in Normal.

McLean County Board member Josh Barnett said he appreciated Fleming's plea for collaboration given recent disagreements in the Twin Cities, including Bloomington's unilateral decision to end the Metro Zone tax-sharing pact and Normal's response that it makes the city of Bloomington an "untrustworthy partner."

Community collaboration, public and private, is going to be essential. ... We dont necessarily do it as much as we talk about it, said Normal Mayor Chris Koos. "Its not about putting blame on anyone; its the realization we need to do a better job with it.

Officials hope BN Advantage can be part of the solution. Organizations involved include the Chamber, the Bloomington-Normal Economic Development Council and Bloomington, Normal and McLean County governments.

"BN Advantage's purpose is to be a place that can help navigate challenges that our community has and hopefully tear down some of the silos that exist," said EDC CEO Kyle Ham. "Everybody's focused on what's in front of them and can lose sight of the bigger picture. We want to cut through that."

Fleming also encouraged leaders to welcome millennials and minorities, including putting them in positions of power and accepting they may have a different idea of participation than sitting around a board room table.

Koos and Bloomington Mayor Tari Renner said they've made concerted efforts to get those groups involved, including on city boards and the town of Normal's Vision 2040 committee.

The message he had about old white guys in suits driving the process is very true, but there's a conscious effort to change that, Koos said.

Four years ago, our boards and commissions did not look like people in Bloomington. There was nobody under 40, and most members were over 60. Now we do have large numbers of millennials, gay, straight, people of color and white people, Renner said. Theres an attempt to get as diverse a workforce as we can, but that's a slower process."

Fleming also stressed learning to work with strong disagreements in an increasingly polarized world.

Koos said the solution is, again, communication, including holding public Coffee with the Council events and other meetings.

The most important part of leadership is the ability to listen, he said.

Renner said transparency is a key for the city in persuading people to support it and can help "debunk some crazy, elaborate conspiracy theories a significant minority believe.

Its one of the most serious problems we face, except for global warming, he said. Bipartisanship has declined even in our community.
NAPLATE, Ill.  Nancy Rick-Janis said she saw the news of the tornado on television at home in Downers Grove.

"My brother Bob called me, and as he's calling me I'm telling him, 'You need to get in the basement, because there's a tornado headed your way.'"

Her brother, Bob Rick, is a volunteer fireman and public works employee in Naplate. Her other brother, Jim, is the mayor.

"For over 48 hours we had no idea if anyone was hurt, the damage, we couldn't get any information," Rick-Janis said. She said she came for a couple of days to help clean up debris.

"After seeing the devastation, I went home and said 'What could I do to help comfort the residents here?'"

Rick-Janis belongs to a quilting group in Downers Grove, Faithful Circle Quilters, which does charity work. She looked to see if the group had any quilts to donate, hoping for 30. Instead, there were only 11, and they were baby quilts. So she sent out a message to the group on social media and reached out to other quilting guilds in that area.

"The response was incredible," Rick-Janis said. "We ended up collecting 110 quilts."

On April 30 at the village hall, the quilts were distributed to the people who needed them. People who were displaced were the first to receive them.

"Nobody walked out of here empty-handed," said resident Sandy Panko. Panko, who is living in Utica while her home is being repaired from the storm, said she went home and put the quilt on her bed right away.

Mary Cupples had the first pick. At 99, she said she's lived in Naplate since her family moved here when she was 3 years old. She had lived in her home since 1955, until the damage from the tornado forced her to move in with her daughter, Cindy, in Ottawa.

Many of the displaced residents had lived in their homes for decades and have deep roots in the town. Panko said her husband's father built their home himself. Her own father was Jim Vittone, the first mayor of Naplate and the namesake of its main park. The current mayor, Jim Rick, is the son of Art Rick, the second mayor.

The quilt distribution provided another opportunity for residents to come together after the storm. Cheryl Mucci said she volunteered at the village hall every day for two weeks to help feed 100-200 workers and residents, all with meals donated from restaurants, churches and other organizations.

"It was a wonderful downpour," Mucci said.

Bob Rick said there are about 250 homes in Naplate, and about 25 were severely or extremely damaged by the tornado.

Lori McConnaughhay has been staying in Utica since her house was damaged. She's lived in Naplate for 27 years. She said she's in a tough spot: the house isn't condemned, but she doesn't have enough insurance coverage to repair it. All of her belongings still in her home are coated in glass dust, she said, and to walk through stirs it up. She doesn't want to take things out of the house because of the dust.

"We won't recoup from this," McConnaughhay said.

But she said the quilt she received helps.
STREATOR  The body of a Streator woman killed in an accident more than a week ago near Tupelo, Miss., that also killed three companions, has been found.

A maintenance man working at the lock and dam on the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway spotted the body of Amber Smith, 25, Wednesday morning, said Lee County Coroner Carolyn Green.

The dam where Smith was found is in neighboring Monroe County, about 40 miles from where the accident occurred.

The sport utility vehicle in which Smith and three friends were traveling to Florida was found May 30 by fishermen in Town Creek, under an Interstate 22 bridge.

Green said Town Creek is part of a system that feeds into the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway.

The bodies of Heather Uhren, 25, and Sean Haygood, 30, both of Streator, were found inside the overturned vehicle, according to Green, and Terrance Wege Jr., 29, of Ottawa was found less than a mile downstream. Green said Wege Jr. had been ejected from the vehicle and all three died from multiple trauma from the crash.

The friends had left Streator on May 26 and the accident is believed to have occurred several days before the SUV was found, Green said last week.

The search for Smith was hampered by heavy rain in the area that caused creek levels to rise. There also was heavy rain in the days before the vehicle was discovered, authorities said.

Tupelo Police Captain Charles McDougald described Town Creek as a flood tributary that rises quickly in heavy rain. He said the interstate bridge is about 50 feet above the usual water level.

Police, fire and sheriff personnel from Tupelo, Lee County and Monroe County searched for Smith on foot, in boats and with a canine unit and also used a drone and a helicopter, officials said.

Green said funeral homes in Mississippi are working with the families to return the bodies to Illinois.
SPRINGFIELD  The chief justice of the Illinois Supreme Court is adding his voice to others in the legal community calling for renewal of federal funding for attorneys to represent the nation's poor and elderly.

The elimination of $500 million in funding to the Legal Services Corporation proposed in the initial version of the federal budget would mean the loss of the major funding source for 133 legal aid programs across the country, including three in Illinois that receive $12 million to help cover the cost of lawyers for indigent clients.

In a message posted on the state Supreme Court website, Chief Justice Lloyd Karmeier said the impact of the cuts proposed by the Trump administration could push to the brink a legal aid system already overwhelmed by requests.

"The resulting casualties would be among the most vulnerable in our society: children, the elderly, veterans, the victims of domestic violence, the survivors of natural disasters and the poor who reply on LSC-funded legal aid organizations in times of crisis as their best hope for fair treatment in our system of justice," said Karmeier's statement.

Last year, three Prairie State Legal Services attorneys represented almost 2,000 individuals in McLean County with 930 non-criminal cases involving divorce, tenant and foreclosure issues, and other civil matters. More than 14,000 cases were handled by Prairie State's 31-county service area.

The majority of local cases involve landlord-tenant issues, according to Adrian Barr, managing attorney for the legal aid office.

If the Trump budget becomes a reality, Prairie State would be forced to cut staff in all its local offices and close smaller ones, said Barr.

"This will mean hundreds or even thousands fewer families, seniors and disabled persons will receive the civil aid they need to keep their utilities and housing, have access to medical care, address serious consumer problems and maintain their safety from domestic violence and elder abuse," said Barr.

Bloomington lawyer Mike McElvain is one of 73 lawyers who donate their time to handle legal aid cases. McElvain estimated that he accepts between six and 15 cases a year that cannot be handled by Prairie State because of a conflict. Most cases involve family and child-related issues.

Pro bono, or representation without fees, work is a responsibility every lawyer has in the community, said McElvain. "Part of being an attorney is helping the powerless against powerful," he said.

Shutting off federal money for legal aid services "would be one of the cruelest things society could do to the vulnerable," said McElvain.

The local legal aid office not only connects people with a lawyer but also brings informational programs to the community on common legal issues that often result in litigation.

Lawyers Helen Ogar and Todd Miller both find time at their Bloomington law practice to help indigent clients who are filing for divorce.

"Attorneys have an obligation to all aspects of society. Justice is supposed to be there for everyone," said Miller, who estimated he has taken as many as 10 cases in a year, including some divorces with complicated issues.

Ogar recalled a pro bono case involving a woman who fled an abusive relationship in another state with her four children. The situation ended with an agreement for financial support and the woman's safe relocation in Central Illinois.

"This is a profession where we're supposed to be seeking justice. Everyone deserves that," said Ogar.

Illinois' two other legal aid centers are the Land of Lincoln Legal Assistance Foundation, which covers 65 counties in central and southern Illinois, and the Legal Assistance Foundation, which serves Chicago and suburban Cook County.
BLOOMINGTON  A Bloomington man accused of stabbing a woman more than 100 times in a hotel room in May was charged Wednesday with possession of child pornography in connection with photos collected by police from his cell phone.

New felony charges state that Kyle Brestan, 32, was in possession of pornographic images of a 14-year-old girl. Last week, Brestan was charged with murder in the death of Shannon Hastings, a Peoria woman found May 21 in a room of the Econo Lodge on Brock Drive on the city's west side.

According to a statement read in court Wednesday by Assistant State's Attorney Jacob Harlow, police found the illegal photos of the girl on the suspect's phone during their investigation into Hastings' death.

Harlow told Associate Judge Bill Yoder that the minor girl told authorities she met Brestan at a support group for addicts and started spending time with him.

She said she stayed with Brestan during her spring break from March 24 to March 31 and that he later took the nude photos of her after she had been drinking, according to Harlow.

Yoder set Brestan's bond at $1 million on the new charges, meaning he must post $100,035. The murder charges carry an additional $500,035 bond requirement.

In his bond request, Harlow described Brestan as a "self-reported drug user" with multiple convictions for domestic battery in northern Illinois.

The public defender's office was appointed to represent Brestan in both cases.

Brestan is scheduled for a June 23 arraignment on the new charges that carry a possible 15 years in prison on each count, if convicted. Any sentence in the child pornography case would be consecutive to the 45 years to life sentence he could receive if he is convicted of Hastings' murder.
Hold out your arm today or tomorrow, and you'll help save a life.

The Red Cross is celebrating 100 years of service in Central Illinois with a blood drive Wednesday and Thursday at Eastland Mall in Bloomington. The goal is to collect 100 pints of blood.

"100 Pints for 100 Years," conducted in partnership with The Pantagraph, will be noon to 6 p.m. both days at the mall's JC Penney wing.

"There is no better way to celebrate this occasion (the Red Cross Central Illinois centennial) than by helping the Red Cross maintain a sufficient blood supply," said Lyn Hruska, CEO of the Red Cross Central and Southern Illinois Region.

The collection for blood and platelets comes amid a typical drop-off in donations, when drives at high schools and colleges are stopped for summer, and many regular donors go on vacation. At the same time, the need for blood is as strong as it is other times of the year.

All blood types are needed. Type O blood, referred to as a universal donor, can be transfused to anyone. Other blood types (A, B, AB) can be transfused only to people with specific blood types.

As reported in a recent Pantagraph story, 38 percent of the population is eligible to donate blood but fewer than 10 percent do. Donors must be at least 17 years old, weigh at least 110 pounds and be healthy. When you show up to donate, you'll fill out a form with basic medical history and your blood will be checked (through a quick pinprick) to make sure your donation can be used and that you'll stay in good shape after donating.

Once you've been approved, you'll get settled into a lounge chair and a technician will insert a needle that allows your blood to drain into a pint-size plastic bag (if looking at blood makes you woozy, just look away, bring a book or close your eyes). When you're done, the technician will make sure you feel OK and encourage you to drink some water or juice and eat a snack.

The blood will be thoroughly tested and typed before it is added to the local supply. Donated blood is good for only 42 days and platelets are good for only five days.

Among people who may need blood are accident and burn victims, heart surgery and organ transplant patients, and people receiving treatment for leukemia, cancer or sickle cell disease. Other people may need blood if they lose blood during surgery. Some synthetic blood products are available, but blood produced by donors is the best way to replenish a loss of blood, regardless of the cause.

To make an appointment for a Red Cross blood drive, use the Red Cross Blood Donor App, visit www.redcrossblood.org or call 800-733-2767. To donate through the Central Illinois Community Blood Center, visit www.cicbc.org or call 866-448-3253.
Almost 18 months after the superstar lost his private battle with cancer, Bowie's wife Iman has posted a special tribute to him on Instagram commemorating the day that would have marked 25 years of their marriage.

The couple solemnized their marriage, after an April wedding in Switzerland, on June 6, 1992. In the post, the Somali supermodel couples an image of Bowie kissing her forehead head as the two share an umbrella with the text "I would walk forever, just to be in your arms again." It doesn't get much more heart wrenching than that.

The image is just one of many photos of the couple that Iman has shared post Bowie's death, however it's not often that she accompanies an image with a message like this one. Fans flooded the comments with love and support, assuring Iman that David still lives on in her heart.

"I believe you'll meet again," one commenter wrote, "and it will all make sense."

I hope so, because right now it really doesn't.

[h/t Harper's Bazaar]

Image via Getty
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Apple's CEO Tim Cook announced yesterday that attendees would be getting a big surprise for day 2 of the company's annual developer conference: a fireside chat with none other than the former first lady of the United States.

Obama was a guest speaker at WWDC, Apple's annual developer conference, on Tuesday. She was introduced by Tim Cook himself before sitting down with Lisa Jackson, the former head of the EPA who now heads up social and environmental initiatives for Apple. Their hour-long discussion touched on Obama's post-White House life, diversity in tech and not falling down the stairs of Air Force One.

"Who are you marketing to? Who do you think is going to use these apps? If women aren't at the table, you're going to miss my dollar. Because you don't really know me," Obama said, according to clips of the talk posted on social media.

Obama urged the audience to make room for women and people of color in technology. Silicon Valley continues to struggle with diversity, a topic that was back in the spotlight Tuesday with news that Uber had investigated 215 harassment claims and fired 20 people. For more on this you can check out the CNN report here





Going by Tim Cook's Tweet today at the WWDC event, he's a true blue democrat through and through. I don't remember a group hug with Trump last year. In fact his staged look was that of death warmed over, as noted below. Ha! Maybe Michelle Obama will run for President in 2020 with Tim Cook as her running mate. You never know.











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In February Patently Apple posted a report titled "Apple Supplier Announces 5nm Processors Scheduled for 2019-2020 Time Line." TSMC has 6,000 R&D staff working on the 5nm process at present. TSMC hopes to have 5nm chips in volume by 2020 or three years away. TSMC revealed in April that they'll be adopting extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography technology for higher performance and lower costs. TSMC noted that their 7nm and 5nm chips will give birth to new and innovative features for smartphones and headsets by advancing AR, VR, context-aware computation, AI and deep learning, areas that were touched on at Apple's WWDC keynote.

Yet there's one more thing that is special about 5nm processors. They could introduce new battery advances that could power smartphones for days. Last week Patently Apple posted a report about Flexible Fuel Cells under development. On Monday the IBM Alliance revealed that 5nm processors will introduce battery advantages that could also allow devices to go days without charging.

IBM stated that "In less than two years since developing a 7nm test node chip with 20 billion transistors, scientists have paved the way for 30 billion switches on a fingernail-sized chip. The resulting increase in performance will help accelerate cognitive computing, the Internet of Things (IoT), and other data-intensive applications delivered in the cloud. The power savings could also mean that the batteries in smartphones and other mobile products could last two to three times longer than today's devices, before needing to be charged.

Compared to the leading edge 10nm technology available in the market, a nanosheet-based 5nm technology can deliver 40 percent performance enhancement at fixed power, or 75 percent power savings at matched performance. This improvement enables a significant boost to meeting the future demands of artificial intelligence (AI) systems, virtual reality and mobile devices.





This same Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography approach used to produce the 7nm test node and its 20 billion transistors was applied to the nanosheet transistor architecture. Using EUV lithography, the width of the nanosheets can be adjusted continuously, all within a single manufacturing process or chip design. This adjustability permits the fine-tuning of performance and power for specific circuits  something not possible with today's FinFET transistor architecture production, which is limited by its current-carrying fin height. Therefore, while FinFET chips can scale to 5nm, simply reducing the amount of space between fins does not provide increased current flow for additional performance."

Considering that TSMC has already let it be known that they'll be adopting extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography technology in their 7nm processors, we can be assured that this process will likewise be used in their 5nm processors. Whether TSMC's technology will be able to equal the power savings that the IBM/Samsung/GlobalFoundries 5nm chips will is unknown at this time. However, TSMC is likely to have something similar to offer Apple for their 2020 iPhone or it could be an advantage too hard for Apple to pass on and switch back to Samsung. Just don't count TSMC out of the race yet. I fully expect TSMC will make some kind of formal statement to counter this announcement by the IBM Alliance within the year. Stay tuned.

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News and commentary on organized crime, street crime, white collar crime, cyber crime, sex crime, crime fiction, crime prevention, espionage and terrorism.
John Kerry: New sanctions on Iran could be dangerous

06/07/17

Source: Tehran Times

Former Secretary of State John Kerry warned on Monday that imposing new economic sanctions against Tehran could be dangerous.





Former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry (July 2015 file photo)

twitter



"If we become super provocative in ways that show the Iranian people there has been no advantage to this, that there is no gain, and our bellicosity is pushing them into a corner, that's dangerous and that could bring a very different result," AP quoted him as saying in San Francisco at a fundraiser for Ploughshares Fund.



He also said that the Iran nuclear deal could hold even if President Donald Trump pulls out.



The U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved in May the most sweeping sanctions against Iran since the nuclear deal was reached in 2015.



The Trump administration has supported new sanctions against Iran, which were approved 18 to 3 by the committee.



The measure is claimed to be punishing Iran over its ballistic missile program, alleged support for terrorism and human rights violations.



Elsewhere, Kerry said that there is a view that seems to dominate the Trump administration that "the U.S. can do anything that it needs to do all by itself" and he urged those in attendance to do more to fight for the government to recognize the value of diplomacy.

Related Story:



www.diplomacyworks.org

John Kerry, security experts team up to defend Iran deal from Trump - Former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry along with other top security experts have come to defend the Iran nuclear deal, also known as the JCPOA, from the country's hardline President Donald Trump. Through a newly formed organization called Diplomacy Works, Kerry and several national security experts who served under former U.S. President Barack Obama are fighting to protect the nuclear agreement, The Independent reported.
Creating a USB thumb drive loaded with Windows 10 installation media is very easy thanks to Microsofts Media Creation Tool. With a prepared USB drive you can install the latest version of Windows on a new PC or have an install drive at the ready should your current rig start to malfunction.

If youve never used the Media Creation Tool, however, even this simple process might be a little overwhelming. Heres a step-by-step guide to creating a Windows 10 USB drive with the Media Creation Tool.

Ian Paul/IDG

The first thing you need to do is go to Microsofts dedicated website for Windows 10 downloads, and click Download tool now to grab the Media Creation Tool. Now would also be a good time to insert the USB drive you want to use as your installation media. It needs to be at least 5GB in size (youll see 4GB in the tool, but Microsoft confirmed the larger number), and make sure you know which drive letter its been assigned (D, E, F, etc.) once you plug it in.

Ian Paul/IDG

Once the tool is downloaded, double-click the MediaCreationTool.exe file to launch it. After clicking through the licensing agreement, youll have the option either to upgrade your current PC or create installation media. We want the latter, so select the radio button labeled Create installation media (USB flash drive, DVD, or ISO file) for another PC and click Next.

Ian Paul/IDG

By default, the Media Creation Tool will download the same version of Windows thats on the PC youre currently using. If thats fine, click Next.

Ian Paul/IDG

If you need to change anything such as the default language, edition of Windows 10 (Home or Pro), or the architecture (32- or 64-bit), deselect the check box labeled Use the recommended options for this PC. The change most users will likely need to make is to the architecture. If you try to upgrade a 32-bit PC with a 64-bit version of Windows, for example, it wont work. Once youve made the necessary changes, click Next.

Ian Paul/IDG

Now you have to decide whether you want to create installation media or just download an ISO file. We want to create a USB flash drive, so select that radio button and click Next.

Ian Paul/IDG

On the next screen, youll be prompted to choose the USB drive you want to use. Make sure you know the correct drive letter as mentioned earlier. Select it so its highlighted (the D drive is selected in the case pictured here), and click Next.

Ian Paul/IDG

Now the Media Creation Tool will begin downloading Windows 10 to your PC. Once its downloaded the tool will then put Windows 10 on the USB drive. After thats done, your drive will be ready. Next click Finish, let the tool clean up, and unplug your USB drive.
Another reason to get rid of Google is make your choice as a consumer for a healthier, more responsible media. As a working journalist, Im acutely aware that Google and Facebook jointly dominate the media distribution and discovery landscape. With no strong competitors to Google Search in particular, Googles algorithms hold unprecedented sway over the discourse in our society.

How to download your Google data so you can see whats being recorded.

To Googles credit, the company gives you tools to opt out of the give-us-your-private-data-for-our-services game altogether. We cover the basics in these two articles:

Security goes hand-in-hand with that. Im sure Googles servers are closely guarded, but I still didnt want all my data to be concentrated in one place.

The appeal of escaping Google comes down to privacy. Google collects an alarming amount of data about you. Its safe to say that if youre not a paying customer then youre the product being sold, and thats Googles business model.

After being a devoted Googler for many years, I realized putting all my data on one platform had its downsides. A couple of factors in particular drove me to make a clean break.

I deleted Google from my life, and I can show you how to do it, too.

The importance of search discovery means that publishers and journalists must write stories to match the queries typed in by readers. That means coverage is guided by readers preconceived notions about a news event, not by objective reporting. Thats a deeply disturbing state of affairs for any democratic society.

Google outwardly seems as dedicated to responsible stewardship as one could hope, but its still concerning enough to merit supporting alternatives and competitors.

How my Google-free experiment started

When I decided to drop Google, I had just left a full-time job at a company that used Google mail and other apps. I stopped using all Google products while I freelanced. Note: If youre an Android user, this is basically a no-go. Fortunately, I use a combination of Windows PCs, Macs, and iOS devices, so I wasnt trapped.

MicrosoftMicrosofts web-based Outlook email service is well-designed and not too annoying about the ads.

Everyone uses Google differently, but I focused on forgoing the services that are core to the experience: Gmail, Docs, Drive, Calendar, Maps, and Search.

Dropping Gmail was easier than expected. I tried Yahoo! Mail, but there were too many ads for my taste. The web interface for Apple Mail at icloud.com was just adequate. I found Microsofts overhauled Outlook web interface (and truly excellent mobile app) was the best alternative.

Instead of Docs, I tried Office 365 and iWork for iCloud. I liked them both better than Docs because I prefer native apps to web apps, and because I think both have more elegant designsespecially iCloud. Apples iWork for iCloud is similar to Docs in that its online-only, and designed for collaboration. It also has a mobile app. Office 365 will be pretty familiar to anyone whos worked with Offices desktop versions.

It was also pretty easy to kick Drive to the curb. Cloud storage competitors abound. I always preferred Dropbox to Drive anyway because I find that its OS X and Windows apps are better-integrated into the OSs normal file browsing experience. Google Drive feels like its meant to be a place to store documents and back up files, not seamlessly augment your local storageeven though it does that in some ways.

Dropbox Dropboxs file-sharing features are competitive and in some ways better than those in Google Docs.

Google Calendar has plenty of competition. This is a more personal choice, and people can get very attachedconsider the furor when Microsoft shuttered Sunrise Calendar. On the other hand, it inspired us to find third-party alternative calendars, which could also replace Google Calendar.

What didnt go well

Google I tried Apple Maps. I tried Waze. Google Maps is still the best.

I couldnt quit everything Google offered so easily. Google Maps alternatives were a challenge. Your best bets are Waze or Apple Maps, but lets be honestthey have nothing on Google Maps. Unlike Apple Maps, Waze has a web app, and powerful community-sourced data is its biggest selling point. But guess what? Google uses Wazes data in Maps! So rather than gaining that feature, youre just losing all the stuff Maps has that Waze doesnt.

Google Search rules for a reason. I found only two decent alternatives: Bing and DuckDuckGo.

Microsoft Bing is as good or better than Google in many respects, but Googles algorithms and semantic search win hands-down.

You may be surprised at how well Bing stacks up against Google. People whove made the switch from Google to Bing tout advantages such as better video search, not to mention the money you can make via Bing Rewards. But Bings algorithm and the semantic search show more cracks than Googles do.

DuckDuckGo isnt as full-featured, but it records no user datathats the primary selling point of the platform. Both search options were passable, but Google has nailed semantic search with a precision that no one else can touch.

Back in Googles grasp

I lived Google-free for five months, compromises and all. Then I was hired at a new job that required me to use Google. I considered the experiment a success, to the point that I was dismayed to abandon it at the new gig.

Google has us in its grasp for good reason. Looking back at my life without it, I can honestly say some alternatives couldnt compare. Your mileage may vary based on which services you value most. If you decide to delete Google from your life, too, let us know how it goes on our Facebook page.
Minister for Railways Development, Joe Ghartey, who doubles as Member of Parliament (MP) for Essikado-Ketan, has assured local engineers that the railway sector would fully engage their services in infrastructural development.



Mr Ghartey disclosed this when a team of engineers from the Ghana Consulting Engineers Association (GCEA) called on him at his office in Accra.



Reiterating governments strong desire to use local expertise, Mr Ghartey said the Ministry of Trade and Industry would look at the legal framework for local content and participation after which their services wouls be fully engaged.



He gave assurance that the railway sector would be the single largest investor in Ghana in the next four years.



Ministry of Railways Development is one of the flagship programmes under the Akufo-Addo administration.



Government has clearly spelt out its decision to revamp the dormant railway sector to boost and transform the economy.



Taking the rail lines from Accra to Paga is the objective of the newly-created Ministry of Railways Development.



The once productive sector upon which the local economies of Tema, Nsawam, Sekondi Takoraidi and Taka were built, has since the late 90s lost its glory, becoming almost non-existent.



It is now confronted with huge challenges, which include broken and dysfunctional locomotives, as well as encroachment of the railway lines and lands.



The Minister said the priority project, when completed, will create industrial hub, rail estates, among others.



Highlighting some measures being put in place to achieve this vision, Mr Ghartey said the Ministry is in the process of creating legislative, institutional and regulatory reviews.



The Ministry of Railways Development, which will change the economic fortunes of the country, will be a means to an end and will create new cities as far as the rails will go, the Minister asserted.



Mr Ghartey urged the local engineers to have faith in the current government and also offer their expertise whenever they are called upon.



Currently, the Ghana Consulting Engineers Association is unable to absorb young engineers from the universities.



This, according to the President of the Association, Ing. Albert Ogyiri, is as a result of unsustainable job procurements which is hindering their ability to grow businesses to support government.



They therefore called on government to give priority to indigenous engineers to sustain and improve local content.



Local and foreign investors, who have expressed interest in various projects, would all go through a stricter tender.



The Ministry will also engage the services of a Transaction Advisor ensure transparency and fairness.

Source: Daily Guide









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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.
Trade and Industry Minister in the Nana Akufo-Addo government, Hon. Alan Kwadwo Kyerematen as part of his government policy to support the private sector investment in the country has cut the sod to initiate the development of Ayi Mensah Park.



The Ayi Mensah Park is a gated 218-mixed use residential development situated at the foot of the Aburi Mountains, opposite the Ayi Mensah Police station in the Greater Accra Region.



Ayi Mensah Park is an initiative of IndigoHomes, a BlackIvy Ghana Limited in collaboration with land owner Mercury Estates and the caretaker chief of Ayi Mensah to lay the foundations for the delivery of the homes and infrastructure.



Speaking to Peacefmonline.com, Hon. Alan Kyerematen indicated that his government has provided the enabling environment which is very supportive of the private sector development; making it possible for the US investors investing with their private partners from Ghana.



If the environment is not conducive the investment will not be made in the first place. You are aware of the number of incentives and policy interventions that government has already introduced to support the private sector in the area of taxes and levies, he averred.



He added that Nana Akufo-Addos government has already launched very comprehensive program to reform regulations in support of private sector development.



We are looking at improving our ranking on the World Bank business index and our objective is to make Ghana the most business friendly country in the whole of Africa. Obviously that comes with challenges but the point is that we launched a program to deal with all those key challenges that have confronted our private sector, he revealed.



He again mentioned that his government wants to be responsive to the specific needs of investors; thus, apart from the general incentives that the government provides on the case by case basis depending on the specific circumstances of a particular investor, his government will support investment.



He emphasized that this initiative by IndigoHomes and BlackIvy will contribute to reducing the gap that currently exist in the delivery of homes in the country as there is a deficit of about 2 million housing units which seems to be growing at an average of 120,000 units every year.



So you can imagine the gap that needs to be filled. For all of us as individuals, I believe that one of the things we all dream of is to have a roof over our heads and so any intervention and initiative that delivers homes and housing units is one that needs to be appreciated, he stated.



He further appreciated the fact that the Ayi Mensah Park project is using a technology that will provide the basis of reducing the cost of delivering homes and housing units; reiterating that the technology for this development provide concretes everybody needs for their homes.



I know there are a number of technologies that are emerging in this country; Ghanaians dont have money but they want to see concretes and building blocks. The interesting thing about this particular technology is that you get the concretes that you are looking for and at the same time, you are getting quality homes which is delivered to you with speed, he revealed.



He however was enthused by the fact that such project as Ayi Mensah Park is creating jobs for most Ghanaians as it is helping the government to deliver its promise of job creation.



He stressed that government is looking for foreign investment with Ghanaian partnership such as this project as by so doing the country will attract private capital to develop the local enterprise base.



The Ayi Mensah Park development will consist of 1-bedroom luxury condos, 2-bedroom terrace townhomes and 3-bedroom semi-detached townhomes currently priced from $70, 500.



Ayi Mensah Park home designs include: open floor plans; gourmet kitchens with deep basin sinks and modern appliances; covered outdoor kitchen; engineered stone countertops; master bedroom suite with dual vanities; spacious closets and terrace balconies with mountain views.



Total estimated cost for the Ayi Mensah Park is $30 million dollars.

Source: Daniel Adu Darko/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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Zimbabwean police have cautioned unsuspecting men and the general public to be wary of a group of women accused of sexually assaulting men in the capital Harare.



Two separate incidents were reported last week after August last year when four women drugged and sexually molested a 29-year-old man they had offered a lift.



Police spokesperson Chief Superintendent Paul Nyathi told local media The Herald that the first incident occured last Saturday when a 37-year-old man boarded a bus with two female passengers and a male driver.



He explained that another female passenger joined the bus before the driver later changed his route to evade a police roadblock.



On the way, one of the females who had boarded the vehicle together with the complainant, drew what appeared to be a pistol and force-marched the complainant into a bushy area along Delport Road, The Herald quoted the police spokesman.



One of the females forced the complainant to have sexual intercourse with him without his consent while another female accused forced the complainant to drink an unknown liquid which left the complainant unconscious, he said.



Chief Superintendent Nyathi also narrated the ordeal of the second victim who was given a lift to Harare by five women. He was offered a drink which left him unconscious.



When the complainant gained consciousness he discovered that he had been abused, he said.



He urged the public with information to assist the police with their investigation.



We would like to urge members of the public to be on the lookout for a group of men and women who are giving unsuspecting victims transport and end up abusing them, Chief Superintendent Nyathi advised.



Similar incidents also spiraled in September 2015 when two women allegedly raped a man at gunpoint after offering him a lift, The Herald reports.

Source: africanews.com









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Flag bearer of the All Peoples Congress (APC), Dr Hassan Ayariga has said that lynching of Major Maxwell Mahama by residents of Denkyira-Obuasi will prevent foreign investors from doing business with Ghana.



He said until security institutions are tasked to perform their duties in order to correspond with international procedures, foreign investors will stop coming to Ghana.



Our lives are important. Security institutions must work. If there is no security, investors wont come here. Any investor will ask of security because they read and see whats happening in the country. We cant sit and watch people put the law into their hands. President Nana Addo is the boss of security in the country. Others traveling to Dubai for business is because there is 0.04 percent violence and 98.6% security is guaranteed in Dubai he explained.



Dr Hassan Ayariga was reacting to the lynching of Major Mahama by some residents of Denkyira-Obuasi in the Upper West Denkyira District of the Central Region.



The Captain was killed on Monday after some residents claimed they mistook him for an armed robber. He had a weapon on him, which incensed the residents, it was reported.



He fell unconscious after he was severely beaten and stoned. He was later set ablaze.



But Dr Hassan Ayariga, believes a nation can only boast of power and strength when the lives and rights of the citizenry are protected and well ensured.



He added that, no foreign investor in his right senses seeing all the news reports circulating on social media will tune their frequency to invest in the country for business.



A nation can only boast of power and strength when there is good security. Without that, there will be no investor and peace for the people. It is until our rights are protected that we are sure they we are leaving in a democratic world he said on Accra based Okay FM.



He further urged the government to ensure that the lives of Ghanaians are secured.



What happened to the captain is not the best. People are lynched for no reason. Instances like this bring about civil war. If the army had not control themselves there would have been civil war. Security means our life should be secured. We cant do things without the law. I think the president should sit up with laws in the country

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.

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Staff of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) have vowed to stay away from Somanya in the Eastern Region until the Chiefs of the area render an unqualified apology and asuure them of their safety.



According to them, they are not ready to compromise on their security and will only return to Somanya to render services, when theres a life threatening situation such as the collapse of an electricity pole carrying life line in order to protect lives.



The workers are currently at Juapong and the Regional Office at Tema.



Their decision follows the Public Utilities Workers Union(PUWU) advising them to withdraw their services vis a vis the imminent danger they face in the enclave.



PUWU says such decision is necessary due to the apparent threats of possible attacks by the locals of the Eastern regional town.



Hundreds of locals took over the offices of the ECG at Somanya two weeks ago and vandalized properties belonging to the company to protest against what they described as outrageous ECG bills.



The Deputy General Secretary of PUWU Mr Nyaba in an interview noted that on the 26th of May the people of Somanya presented a petition to the ECG management in which they demanded that all ECG staff in the area should be transferred hence the workers cannot be there to risk their lives.



The chiefs who signed the letter together with some youth leaders should be able to give us assurance that the ECG workers when they return to their office in Somanya will be safe, when that is done the workers will come back.



Meanwhile, the Nene Akuetey II, Vice Chairman of Krobo United Voice Association, has called the bluff of the ECG workers, insisting that no apology will ever be rendered.

Source: kasapafmonline.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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ExLA Group Gender Programme is pleased to announce to all stakeholders and the general public that the Chief Executive Officer of the Rwanda Development Board (RDB), Ms. Clare Akamanzi, will deliver the keynote address for the Young African Women Congress (YAWC) 2017 scheduled for July 23  27, 2017 in Accra, Ghana.

She will speak on the theme for the congress, Harnessing Africas Demographic Dividend: the Case for Women in Leadership.

As CEO of the Rwanda Development Board (RDB), Ms. Akamanzi also serves as Member of the Cabinet of Rwanda. Prior to these roles, she served as Head of Strategy and Policy for H.E President Paul Kagame. She has been a prominent figure in the socio-economic transformation of Rwanda having served as the Chief Operations Officer (COO) of the RDB for over 7 years.

Ms. Akamanzi has also previously served as a Commercial Diplomat in London and a Trade Negotiator in Geneva at the World Trade Organization. She is an International Trade and Investment Lawyer, who has lived, schooled and worked in 7 countries in 3 continents but nothing beats the privilege of being part of rebuilding her nation. She is a 2012 Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum and was named one of Africas Top 20 leading women in economic development by Forbes in 2013.

Ms Akamanzi is a Harvard Kennedy School MPA alum, where she was the recipient of the Lucius N. Littaeur Fellows Award; the Raymond & Josephine Vernon Award, both for academic excellence and distinguished contribution to HKS community, as well as the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Excellence in Public Service. She also holds an LLM (International Trade and Investment) with distinction from the University of Pretoria, South Africa, and LLM (Hons) from Makerere University, Uganda.



On her presentation, Ms. Akamanzi will give insight into how Africa can fully utilise the advantage of its demography with women in leadership. She will also pay heed to the Rwandan success story and how they benefit from being one of the topmost countries in promoting gender diversity in leadership at all levels.

The Young African Women Congress (YAWC) 2017 will be a gathering of young women within the age limits of 18 and 40 across Africa and the diaspora in a 5-day residential congress to discuss issues pertinent to women and girls development on the continent. They will be guided by accomplished women leaders through keynote presentation, panel discussions, group sessions and career fairs among others.

Prospective participants can register at www.yawcafrica.org

Source: Ama Acheampomaa/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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The Minority in Parliament is asking for the whereabouts of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, ranting his absence from Ghana without prior notification to Parliament is disrespectful.



President Akufo-Addo is currently in Belgium attending the United Nations Advocacy Group of Eminent Personalities on the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, in his capacity as co-Chairperson of the Group. He will leave for Germany to attend the G-20 Partnership for Africa Summit in Germany. He will return June 17, 2017.



The Minority National Democratic Congress (NDC) is furious over the Presidencys failure to officially inform Parliament ahead of the presidents foreign trip which is a Constitutional requirement. Articles 59 and 60 of the 1992 Constitution of Ghana says: The President shall not leave Ghana without prior notification in writing, signed by him and addressed to the Speaker of Parliament. 60. (1) There shall be a Vice-President of Ghana who shall perform such functions as may be assigned to him by this Constitution or by the President.



Mr. Speaker the people of Ghana deserve to know the whereabouts of the No. 1 person of the country, Minority Leader Haruna Iddrisu said on the floor of Parliament Wednesday. We do not know his whereabouts.



The constitution says prior notification and not an after-thought Majority Leader where is your President and where is the official communication? Mr. Speaker the President has sworn an oath and an oath is to uphold the Constitution of the Republic of Ghana and he is showing disrespect to the provisions and Article 59 and 60 of the Constitution. We must know who will act in his stead, the MP for Tamale South opined.



The official communication was presented to the Speaker after the Minority leaders rant.



Akufo-Addo will also be in the US. In America, President Akufo-Addo will participate and address the UN Oceans Conference, the high-level UN Conference being held in New York to support the Implementation of SDG 14: Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development (Life under Water). The President will also have his first formal meeting with UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres.



In Germany, President Akufo-Addo will pay a courtesy call on the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, and participate in the G-20 Africa Partnership Summit, being held in Berlin to deliberate on Germanys Marshall Plan for Africa, at the invitation of the German Chancellor.



He will also deliver a speech on the theme Ghana, Africas Rising Star, at an event organised by the Konrad Adenaeur Stiftung.



President Akufo-Addo will then pay a two-day private visit to the United Kingdom, and return to Ghana on Saturday, 17th June, 2017.

Source: starrfmonline.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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Omran Daqneesh, the young Syrian boy who came to symbolise conflict in the wartorn Syrian city of Aleppo, has been shown in apparent good health months after footage captured him dazed and bloodied in the back of an ambulance.

The new images were released after boys father was interviewed in Aleppo by a journalist sympathetic to the Bashar al-Assad regime.

The boys father refuted claims that Omran was injured in a regime air strike, and that Omran was captured by rebel gunmen who needlessly took him to hospital.

Furthering his anti-rebel stance, Omrans father said that he changed his sons name and cut his hair to reduce the risk of kidnapping attempts.

He also said that international media had used the images as propaganda, adding they wanted to trade in his blood and published his photos.

However, those claims have been contested.

Valerie Szybala of the Syria Institute says that since rebels fled the city and the regime resumed control, the situation seems to suggest this [interview] is probably coerced.

Forces opposing the al-Assad regime were fought out of Aleppo late last year, with civilians posting terrified goodbye messages online as government troops secured the city.

Over 300,000 people have died in the Syrian civil war so far.

Source: BBC / ABC.

Photo: CNN / YouTube.
The family of Sara Zelenak, the 21-year-old Brisbane woman still missing in London after Saturdays horrific van and knife terror attack, say theyre preparing for the worst.

Zelenak, who has worked as a nanny in the UK for three months, was on London Bridge at the time of the incident. She was separated from a friend who tried calling her afterwards, but did not respond.

Speaking to 9 News last night, Zelenaks aunt Tara said the family is trying to keep it together but bracing for the worst obviously.

She described her niece as one of those people that doesnt drink, doesnt do drugs, doesnt do anything wrong.

WATCH: Family of the other suspected Australian victim Sara Zelenak has spoken of their anguish as they wait for word of her fate. #9News pic.twitter.com/aFbgHifwDT  Nine News Adelaide (@9NewsAdel) June 6, 2017

Concerns for her wellbeing grew when she did not respond to messages hours after the attack. Zelenak, who is understood to keep in close contact with family in Australia, last spoke to her mother on Friday about a planned reunion in France.

It is understood the Australian consulate is involved in efforts to locate Zelenak, and a fundraising page has collected over $15,000 in order for Zelenaks parents to travel to London to assist in the process.

28-year-old South Australian woman Kirsty Boden has been confirmed as a victim of the attack.

Bowden, Zelenak, and the two Australians recovering from stab wounds after the incident are the four individuals Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said the government had real concerns for.

Seven people were killed and 48 were wounded during the incident.

Source: News.com.au / The Age.

Photo: Liv Cootes / Facebook.
Mischa Barton is dating someone new and, sadly, its not Ben McKenzie.

The dude who Marissa Cooper was spotted canoodling with at the Cannes Film Festival back in May has been identified as a model from Toorak in Melbourne, whose family is extremely loaded.

His names James Abercrombie, son of millionaire businessman and former VIC Liberal Party treasurer Andrew Abercrombie, whose net worth was reported as $574m on this years AFR Rich List.

They apparently met at a party in LA last month, hit it off and later travelled to Monaco together to hang out of superyachts, as ya do.

Heres their first #coupleshot, which did appear on his Instagram until he set it to private earlier today.

Clearly frothing on the association of his client to a Hollywood star, Abercrombies modelling agent Stephen Bucknall told Confidential:

Its all official. Romance is blooming and they are dating. The boy from Toorak is dating the bad girl from LA.

Just this week, Barton won a permanent restraining order against her ex Jon Zacharias, a skeeze whos allegedly been shopping around a sex tape that was filmed without her knowledge.

They reached a private settlement, under which he agreed not to distribute any of the images and turn over any footage he did have.

Fingers crossed this Abercrombies less of a fkn lemon.

Source: Confidential.

Photo: Instagram / @didyousay_ja.
Uber has fired 20 employees after concluding a massive investigation into allegations of sexual harassment at the company.

The ride-sharing company confirmed this morning that it had investigated 215 claims all up, mostly concerning incidences of discrimination, sexual harassment, unprofessional behaviour and bullying  and mostly in the San Francisco office.

Following the conclusion of that investigation  and on top of the firings  a further 31 employees are now in training, seven were issued with final warnings, and 57 employees are still under review.

2/ And heres a further breakdown of the 215 claims: pic.twitter.com/yLhFGvgmlJ  Uber Comms (@Uber_Comms) June 6, 2017

It comes after former engineer Susan Fowler wrote a viral blog post outlining her experiences of sexual harassment while at the company, and the combined efforts of management and HR to do sweet fuck all about it.

After her post went viral, embattled CEO Travis Kalanick tweeted that anyone who behaves this way or thinks this is OK will be fired, so this is Uber making good on its promises.

The company has also beefed up its HR department, set up a confidential hotline, and hired an academic specialising in gender and diversity issues in the workplace, Frances Frei, to help lift it out of the bro culture funk.

Frei described the company as being sanded and ready to have some education painted on it, which uh, certainly is a metaphor.

My goal is to make this a world-class company that can be proud of itself in the end, rather than embarrassed, she said.

Fair enough.

Photo: Uber.
The LGBT community is being celebrated in Philadelphia on June 18 with the Philly Pride parade and festival.

The event is back for its 28th year and brings in around 25,000 people. The festival includes food, music, and dancing.

The parade kicks off at 11:30 a.m. at 13th and Locust streets before making its way down Locust St., up 7th St. and down Market St. to Penn's Landing, with performances along the way. The festival itself kicks off at noon, but the parade isn't expected to arrive at the location until 1 p.m.

Fans of "Will and Grace" will no doubt recognize the headliner of Philly Pride.

Megan Mullally is headlining the festival with her musical group Nancy and Beth. Mullally is famous for playing the eccentric Karen on the popular sitcom. Nancy and Beth is an alternative country duo made up of Mullally and and "Friday Night Lights" actress Stephanie Hunt.

Admission to the festival is $15, but those hoping to save can score tickets for $10 by buying them at the Pride kick-off party on June 16. The kick-off block party runs from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. at 12th and Locust streets.

Those attending Philly Pride Festival should expect large crowds to get into the area. Avoid bringing backpacks and other bags to help you get into the festival quicker.

The festival was originally slated to occur on June 11, but was rescheduled after the Washington D.C. National Pride March announced it would be held on that same date.

DETAILS: 11:30 a.m. parade start, noon festival gates open on June 18. Parade starts at 13th and Locust streets. Festival is held at The Great Plaza at Penn's Landing, 101 S. Christopher Columbus Blvd., Philadelphia. Cost: Free for parade, $15 for festival. Phillygaypride.org

Want more stories about Philadelphia? Click here for all our coverage of the City of Brotherly Love.
The headline on The Evening News on Tuesday, June 6, 1944, in large, bold capitalized letters read: "NAZI DEFENSE OVERCOME IN INVASION SUCCESSES"

In smaller, bold, capitalized letters - "ROOSEVELT ASKS U.S. TO JOIN IN PRAYER"

The message to the left of the masthead - "GOOD EVENING, Herr Hitler: The Yanks are coming!"

On D-Day, more than 160,000 Allied troops landed on 50 miles of beaches in Normandy, France, to fight Nazi Germany.

The death toll was tremendous - more than 9,000 soldiers were killed or wounded, "but their sacrifice allowed more than 100,000 soldiers to begin the slow, hard slog across Europe, to defeat Adolf Hitler's crack troops," according to www.army.mil/d-day/.

The United Press reported, "American, British and Canadian invasion forces landed in Northwestern France today, established beachheads in Normandy, and by evening had 'gotten over the first five or six hurdles' in the greatest amphibious assault of all time."

The Evening News was all but dedicated to news about the invasion:

Invasion Day Church Services Begin at 6 A.M.

Planes, Warships Cover Invasion

Allies Gain 3 Miles And Win Beachheads in Cracking West Wall

Where Allies Have Struck First Blow in Europe

Churchill Finds Good Progress

Eisenhower Calls For Full Effort

Eisenhower Warns Europe To Await Uprising Signal

Germans Send E-Boats In Invasion Zone

From history.com: "The invasion was one of the largest amphibious military assaults in history and required extensive planning. Prior to D-Day, the Allies conducted a large-scale deception campaign designed to mislead the Germans about the intended invasion target. By late August 1944, all of northern France had been liberated, and by the following spring the Allies had defeated the Germans. The Normandy landings have been called the beginning of the end of war in Europe."
Authorities with the Lebanon County drug task force recently arrested three people for drug related offenses on consecutive days.

Kyle Hill, Kaycee Lee Reist and Eric L. Gildner are at the Lebanon County Correctional Facility after their arrests last week on drug charges. Hill was arrested first June 2 when police recognized him in a vehicle parked on the 100 block of North 12th Street in Lebanon.

Authorities took Hill, 25, who was wanted in connection with an active bench warrant, into custody. It was then that officers found him to be in possession of four bags of crack cocaine, officials said.

Reist and Gildner were both in the car with Hill and police saw Reist crushing a glass smoking device with her feet inside of the car. Officials said the smoking device is used to ingest crack cocaine.

Reist, 26, and Gildner, 26, were released with authorities intending file charges through court summons. Hill was taken into police custody on the bench warrant for a parole violation and subsequently charged with possession with the intent to deliver, possession of crack cocaine and possession of drug paraphernalia. He is being held on $50,000 bail.

On June 3 in the area of North 12th and Willow streets, drug task force members saw Reist and Gildner in the same vehicle as the day before, appearing to engage in a drug transaction with a man who left the scene on foot. Reist drove the vehicle away from the area and parked on the 300 block of North 20th Street.

When police approached the vehicle, they saw both Reist and Gildner smoking crack cocaine. When officers made contact with Reist, she dropped the glass pipe on the floor and began smashing it with her feet, officials said.



Reist and Gildner were arrested and taken in to custody. Reist is charged with two counts of tampering with physical evidence, obstruction of governmental function, criminal conspiracy, possession of drug paraphernalia and possession of crack cocaine. Gildner is charged with criminal conspiracy and possession of drug paraphernalia. Both are being held on $25,000 bail.
Update: The gun was found near the mother

While authorities have confirmed the mother and two children found dead in a house on fire in Strasburg Township early this morning had gunshot wounds, they aren't releasing their names.

The investigation continues into what state police say are the suspicious deaths and fire at a home in the 1400 block of Village Road in rural Strasburg Township.

The three victims suffered "apparent gunshot wounds," said Brett Hambright, spokesman for the Lancaster County district attorney's office. Cause and manner of death are still to be determined.

State police Trooper James Spencer said this morning the woman's husband was not home at the time of the incident, that there were no suspects and the public was not in danger.

The deaths are being treated as homicide until the cause is determined, said Trooper Chad Roberts at the scene this afternoon.

Chief John Stoltzfus of Strasburg Fire Company said a passerby reported the fire around 3 a.m.

Three people were found dead in a room in a rear bedroom of the house, he said.

Firefighters initially found the garage fully ablaze, and fire in a room at the south end of the house, which is detached from the garage.

Autopsies are set for Wednesday morning, said Dr. Stephen Diamantoni, Lancaster County coroner.

An Amish farmer who lives behind the house was also one of the first on scene.

"They were nice people, very nice neighbors," said the neighbor, Mr. Fisher. "The sign was they had a good relationship," he said, but added he didn't know what went on inside their home.

Mr. Fisher said he initially saw fire in the garage, and then saw smoke coming out the roof of the house.

Richard Rhoads, who lives across the street, said his grandson heard what sounded like a car door slam around 2:45 a.m. After hearing there were people shot, they now wonder if it had been a gunshot that he heard.

Rhoads said the family made a lot of improvements to the house, which used to have a lot of brush growing in the yard.

"I can't imagine anybody doing that," said neighbor Barb Benner, who's lived in her house for 41 years. "This is the first time anything like this happened in all the years I've been here."
NORRISTOWN - She didn't waver under cross-examination.

As Bill Cosby's attorney, Angela Agrusa, picked apart more than a decade's worth of statements from Andrea Constand, looking for differences in times, dates, statements and testimony, Constand calmly and in an even-keeled voice answered her questions.

When she didn't know or couldn't remember an answer, Constand would said so. And when she was mistaken about a date in a statement to police, she admitted that, as well.

Constand's cross-examination was a lengthy one - beginning Tuesday afternoon and likely continuing through this afternoon. But she's an important witness to both the prosecution and defense because she and Cosby are the only two who really know what happened that night at Cosby's suburban Philadelphia home in 2004.

Cosby is accused of giving Constand three pills, which left her incapacitated, and then sexually assaulting her while she could not move nor tell him to stop.

Constand shared the details of their 16-month friendship, culminating in that night, with the jury on Tuesday.

And Agrusa laboriously scoured through that testimony, as well as pages upon pages of phone records and transcriptions of interviews with the police.

Constand still sat, listening to Agrusa's questions, sometimes with a slight smile on her face. Agrusa pieced together the evidence, pointing out:

Constand told the police she knew Cosby for only six months, when it was actually 16 months.

She initially told police she was never alone with Cosby except for the night she said he sexually assaulted her, but she later testified that they were alone numerous times.

Constand told authorities she had limited contact with Cosby after the incident, but phone records show she called him more than 50 times.

But Constand sat tall on the witness stand and spoke in a steady voice. She said she was mistaken when she told police the incident happened in March 2004 instead of January of that year. And she said some other timelines blurred because she was nervous when she first spoke to the police.

For the defense, it comes down to credibility. If they can show the jury enough inconsistencies in Constand's testimony, it could weigh in favor of Cosby. The defense used a similar tactic with Kelly Johnson, another Cosby accuser who was permitted to testify on Monday.

And Agrusa wrapped up the morning's cross-examination by building the argument that Constand had to have known Cosby had romantic intentions towards her, which Constand denied.

Agrusa brought up a time when the two sat by a fire and sipped brandy and Cosby touched her inner thigh.

She then asked about another occasion, which Constand, at first, did not share with law enforcement, Agrusa pointed out.

"You haven't told any law enforcement officer about the night you went to Mr. Cosby's home alone and he put his hands down your pants," Agrsua said.

"That didn't happen," Constand said, and told her that Cosby tried to unbutton her pants, but stopped when she leaned forward, and then left his home moments later. But Agrusa said Constand called a friend as she left Cosby's home to tell her that Cosby made a pass at her.

Constand maintained Cosby, "never disclosed to me that he had affection for me."

But Agrusa said when Cosby suggested she change her frizzy hair, she did cut it shorter for him, and he bought her a $225 blow dryer.

Constand's cross-examination will continue this afternoon.
Update: Mom shot and killed 2 kids, then took her own life: Coroner

EAST LAMPETER TOWNSHIP -- Lancaster County authorities are asking for help in determining the mental state of the mother found dead with her two children early Tuesday morning in Strasburg Township.

Carola Arnau, 40, her two children - a 10-year-old girl and a 4-year-old boy - and the family dog were found dead in their home on the 1400 block of Village Road. Authorities responded to the scene after a fire was reported at around 3 a.m.

All three people and the dog had been shot, officials said, declining to disclose the location of the injuries. Police found a handgun by Arnau's body, which she purchased the day before, said Lancaster County District attorney Craig Stedman at a news conference at state police headquarters in East Lampeter Township. He also described the fires as intentionally set, but said more work was necessary to confirm that Arnau's gun fired the fatal shots and determining who set the fire.

'All I can do is just pray for them,' neighbor says of 3 found dead in burning home

Stedman implored any of Carola Arnau's friends to come forward with information as to her mental state or what she may have been thinking and feeling leading up to her death. He said some of the events and evidence are consistent with this growing from a divorce dispute, adding that authorities want to make sure everything adds up.

Explaining that Carola Arnau and her husband, Miguel, were in the process of a divorce, Stedman said it was natural to look to the father first for this kind of case. Stedman went on to explain that Miguel Arnau was at work when the shooting and fire took place and said he has been extremely cooperative with investigators.

Though police had been called and the couple had a bitter divorce and custody issues, Stedman said there is no indication Miguel Arnau did anything criminal leading up to Tuesday morning's incident. Stedman added that he wasn't sure who filed for divorce first, but added that both were interested in ending the marriage.

Miguel Arnau had been living at the home, but in a detached garage, which was also engulfed in flames when first responders arrived at the scene. Stedman described Miguel Arnau's current state "terrible" after the death of his family members.

Noting that the children died of gunshot wounds while sleeping, Stedman said he isn't releasing their names at this time. He described the investigation as one of the darkest days for he and those following the case, pointing to the deaths of the young children.

Autopsies on the bodies are scheduled for Wednesday morning. Stedman said authorities do not believe the public is in any danger.

Court documents show the recent troubled marital history between the Arnaus.

Carola Arnau filed for divorce in February 2016, after 10 years of marriage. The divorce was apparently never finalized.

On Feb. 24 of this year, Carola Arnau filed for a Protection From Abuse order against Miguel Arnau, but then filed to discontinue it April 4.

In the PFA filing, Carola Arnau accused her husband of having inappropriate contact with their son. Her claim was determined to be unfounded by Lancaster County Children & Youth Services. She also cited other marital discord between between the couple.

After the PFA order was terminated, Miguel Arnau sued for custody of their two children, who were then in custody of their mother.

The court ordered shared custody April 7 until a May 11 hearing.

Miguel Arnau was allowed to have time with the children at least every other weekend and after school week days until 7 p.m., and before school by agreement with his wife.

He withdrew his complaint April 20, saying he and his wife communicated and wanted to resolve any outstanding custody issues outside of court.

The couple purchased their home in August 2014. Neighbors say while they didn't know the family well, they saw no signs of obvious domestic conflict in the home.

An Amish neighbor who was among the first at the scene this morning said when Miguel Arnau arrived he was "hysterical - he was devastated."

The neighbor, Mrs. Fisher, said they woke up to the sound of a horn blaring and somebody screaming. They ran down to the house, and saw the garage fully involved in flames. Fire was soon discovered in the house as well, which was filled with smoke, she said.

Fisher described the Arnaus as "very friendly. They seemed like Christian people."

State police and the district attorney's office continue to investigate.

PennLive reporter Barbara Miller contributed to this report.
NORRISTOWN - Andrea Constand spent the early part of the afternoon telling the jury her story and what she said entertainer Bill Cosby did to her.

She said while she worked at Temple University she got to know the comedian over the course of 16 months, and in January 2004 he drugged and sexually assaulted her at his Elkins Park home in suburban Philadelphia.

But Cosby's defense team spent the rest of the afternoon picking apart her testimony, hoping to show the jury inconsistencies between it and her initial statement to the police. While Cosby's lawyers hope this will show their client's innocence, Constand had another explanation for any differences in her stories.

"I told them the truth," Constand told defense attorney Angela Agrusa. "I also testified I was really nervous and I wasn't able to recall every particular moment I saw Mr. Cosby."

Today was the second day of Cosby's trial. He is facing three counts of aggravated indecent assault. Much of the defense's focus today was on comparing Constand's statements as well as her phone records.

Constand said it was a year before she told her mother what happened to her, but when she finally couldn't hold it in any more and gave her the news in January 2005, they called the police.

But Agrusa showed the jury Constand's phone records, indicting that before Constand placed that call to the Durham Regional Police in Ontario, she called several lawyers in Philadelphia. Specifically, lawyers who specialize in sexual-assault lawsuits.

Constand admitted she did seek out attorneys who specialize in sexual assault cases, but she said a lawsuit was not her intent. This was new, legal territory for her, and she wanted to make sure she was represented.

As Agrusa picked apart Constand's statements to the police, she pointed out:

Constand told the detectives she only knew Cosby for six months when she testified today they knew each other for 16 months.

She said she was never alone with Cosby except for the night of the sexual assault, but she testified earlier they had been alone numerous times.

And what Constand called "suggestive" contact when she said Cosby on one occasion touched her thigh and on another tried to unbutton her pants, she called "sexual" contact in her statement to the police, Agrusa pointed out.

"I was answering to, 'yes there was sexual contact.' I don't know if it was a trick question. The answer was 'yes,'" she said.

And when Constand said she only had brief interactions with Cosby after the incident, Agrusa pointed out her phone records in which she was in contact with Cosby more than 50 times.

Cross-examination will continue Wednesday morning.
HARRISBURG--Does Harrisburg have to disclose the names and home addresses of people who donated to a legal defense fund in 2015?

That was the issue before the Commonwealth Court Wednesday as judges heard an appeal of the state's Office of Open Records decision ordering the city to release the information.

Joshua Prince, a gun rights attorney who filed a lawsuit against the city in January 2015 over its gun ordinances, requested the list of donors one week after city officials announced they had started a "Protect Harrisburg" fund to help them fight gun ordinance lawsuits.

The irony now is that the city has spent nearly four times the amount of the donations to protect the names and addresses of the donors who initially wanted to help the city. The city collected about $5,000 in donations.

The city gave Prince a redacted list detailing the amounts donated to the city, but city officials redacted the names and home addresses of the donors.

Redacted donors list provided by Harrisburg to attorney Joshua Prince.

The lawyer representing Harrisburg, Josh Autry, said the state's Right to Know law provides an exception for individual donor names specifically to protect those people and encourage donations.

But Adam Kraut, the lawyer representing Prince, told the panel of Commonwealth judges that the exclusion for donors doesn't apply because the information amounts to a financial record.

The donor exception is not valid for "financial records," under the law.

The law's definition for "financial records," however, leaves room for interpretation so both attorneys spent a chunk of their allotted 15 minutes before the judges arguing for their opposing interpretations.

Autry said the list of donors was simply that: a list of donors. It wasn't a financial ledger or bank statement that would constitute a "financial record."

But Kraut said that the list included donation amounts, which reflect the receipt of funds. That, he argued, met the definition of "financial records," under the law.

Under that "broad" interpretation, however, Autry said the exclusion for personal identifying information relating to a donor would be rendered meaningless because all donor records then would be considered financial records.

Autry argued that legislators could have spelled out that the definition for financial records includes "any record that deals with a financial record," but they didn't. That means that wasn't their intent, he said.

Instead, he said, the definitions provided by legislators for "financial records," referred simply to "accounts, vouchers or contracts" dealing with the receipt or disbursement of funds.

If the judges eventually agree that the donor list meets the definition of a financial record, Prince must overcome a second hurdle. The court then will need to apply a Constitutional test weighing the benefits of public disclosure against the donors' right to privacy.

To that end, Judge P. Kevin Brobson said the state's Right to Know law was intended to create transparency to hold government leaders accountable.

"How does disclosing names and addresses of donors hold the city accountable?" he asked. "Is it just transparency for transparency's sake?"

Kraut said the addresses would show where the money was coming from and that could be important to know whether they are local residents or people from out of state "trying to influence politics."

Brobson clarified that "it's not politics. It's law."

Autry contended that the plaintiff only wants the names and addresses to be able to harass or shame the donors.

Prince previously wrote on his blog that he wanted donors prosecuted on grounds that they are conspiring with the city to violate the state's preemption on gun laws. City officials have said, however that their ordinances are legal and that state preemption is a civil matter.

Autry cited two Supreme Court rulings that he said should be considered because they previously determined the home addresses of teachers and union members should be protected.

The judges will issue their ruling at a later date.

Meanwhile, city officials still are awaiting a ruling from state court regarding Prince's lawsuit that contends the city's gun ordinances are illegal.

Lancaster also launched a legal defense fund to protect their gun ordinances. Prince filed a similar request with the city of Lancaster that also was denied and later overturned by the Office of Open Records. That case has been stayed, pending the outcome of Harrisburg's case.
The state Department of Health ordered Hillcrest Women's Medical Center in Harrisburg to suspend services to patients at the close of business on Tuesday.

This decision came after an unannounced inspection on Monday found additional deficiencies and violations beyond ones found in an earlier inspection in February.

"The department concluded that it was no longer safe for the facility to continue providing medical services to patients," said Dr. Karen Murphy, state health secretary, in a news release issued late Wednesday afternoon. "Therefore, I have ordered the facility to suspend all services until such time that it can demonstrate it is safe for women to receive care."

On Wednesday, an answering machine at the clinic stated that the office is closed at this time. A woman who answered the clinic's phone on Tuesday declined comment.

A February inspection at the clinic identified several deficiencies, including record-keeping violations and failing to have a registered nurse on site. While Monday's visit found that some of the issues have been corrected, such as hiring a registered nurse, the inspection also found additional violations, including expired sterilization and medical supplies.

"Protecting the health and safety of Pennsylvanians is paramount," Secretary Murphy said. "If you have been a patient of Hillcrest Women's Medical Center and have questions or concerns about your health, you should speak with a health care provider. You can also contact the department at 1-877-PA-HEALTH for more information."

On Monday, three Republican senators sent a letter to Murphy asking why the department had allowed the clinic to remain open while correcting the deficiencies in light of the February inspection findings that they found to be "obviously deeply troubling."

They also pointed out that the clinic has been found to have health violations four times in six years; some of them for the repeat deficiencies.

In their letter, Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati of Jefferson County and Sens. John DiSanto of Dauphin County and Bob Mensch of Montgomery County cited a 2011 law that directs the health department to license and inspect abortion clinics in the same manner as other ambulatory surgical facilities. They said the intent of that law as to ensure abortion clinics were keeping their patients safe.

"Hillcrest is clearly failing to live up this standard," the letter states.

That letter dated on Monday, however, wasn't what triggered the department's order to the clinic to suspend services, said health department spokesman April Hutcheson. She said Monday's unannounced visit was in the works prior to the department receiving it.
With Tuesday's ordered closure of Hillcrest Women's Medical Clinic in Harrisburg until health violations are corrected, two other clinics are available in southcentral Pennsylvania that provide abortion services.

According to the state Department of Health website, there is:

In Dauphin County, Planned Parenthood Keystone-Harrisburg at 1514 N. Second St.; phone: 234-2468, and

In York County, Planned Parenthood Keystone-York at 728 S. Beaver St.; phone: 845-9681

Other clinics that provide abortion services located elsewhere in Pennsylvania can be found in this full listing of health care facilities on the health department website.
WILLIAMSPORT - A federal judge wants the U.S. Postal Service to do a better job of screening prospective employees.

U.S. Middle District Judge Matthew W. Brann on Tuesday told Assistant U.S. Attorney Sean A. Camoni to advise the Postal Service its screening process should go back more than five years.

The judge voiced his opinion after sentencing Lisa Belawske, 52, of Canton, to four months in prison followed by two years' probation.

She had pleaded guilty in February for misappropriating $12,322 while postmaster in relief in Sylvania, Bradford County, between October 2105 and June 2016.

The thefts occurred by cashing 66 postal money orders and taking cash.

Had the Postal Service done a better job of screening it would have discovered Belawske had five prior convictions for fraudulent activity in Bradford County and Colorado, he said.

The most recent of the convictions was in 2002 for identity theft. The others were for bad checks and lying to obtain food stamps.

Although Assistant Public Defender D. Toni Byrd argued for probation or house arrest, the judge said with Belawske's record a prison sentence was warranted.

The judge denied her request for work release but allowed her to self-report on June 23. She must pay back the $12,322.

While on probation she is prohibited from obtaining employment in which she would have control over money or engage in fiscal transactions.

Belawske acknowledged having a gambling problem in the past, but Byrd claimed it was not a factor in stealing from the Postal Service.

She began taking money to rent a hall related to a son's wedding and she continued to do so to pay personal expenses, she said.

"What I did was stupid," Belawske told the judge.

Camoni, in arguing for a prison sentence, claimed what Belawske did was deliberate conduct, not a mistake.
A real estate sold sign is shown outside a house in Vancouver, Tuesday, Jan.3, 2017. The OECD is calling on Canada to do more to address risks associated with high-priced housing markets in cities such as Toronto and Vancouver, the latest international body to draw attention to the country's real estate sector. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward
FILE -- In this May 21, 2017, file photo, President Donald Trump, right, holds a bilateral meeting with Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Trump sided with Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries Tuesday in a deepening diplomatic crisis with Qatar, appearing to endorse the accusation that the oil-rich Persian Gulf nation is funding terrorist groups. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
GOP remains on top in Northern Michigan but Democrats made some inroads Tuesday

The election showed that while the Republican Party still dominates Northern Michigan, there were some results that should give Democrats some hope.
U.S. sides with Saudi Arabia in Gulf rift, backs isolation of Qatar

Trump vows to calm Gulf flareup - Watch enlarge video

WASHINGTON/RIYADH

Petroleumworld 06 07 2017

President Donald Trump threw his weight behind the Saudi-led diplomatic isolation of Qatar, calling it just punishment for the country's financial support for Islamic extremists and taking sides in a dispute among key U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf.

During my recent trip to the Middle East I stated there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology, Trump said on Twitter Tuesday. Leaders pointed to Qatar - look!

He followed with two additional tweets, saying the action was proof that his meeting with Persian Gulf Arab leaders in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia earlier this month was already paying off.

Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism! he said.

The U.S. has had a friendly and cooperative relationship with Qatar, which is home to the forward headquarters of the U.S. military's Central Command. CentCom, as it's known, has a primary role in the battle against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. A U.S. official said there is no serious consideration of pulling out of the base, though there may be concerns about transporting supplies and basic goods across borders if the current dispute drags on.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer confirmed the president's tweets are official statements of his views, but he described a softer U.S. stance on the dispute.

The U.S. still wants to see this issue de-escalated and resolved immediately, Spicer said, several hours after Trump commented on Twitter. He added that Trump was very heartened by Qatar's pledge to join an effort targeting terror finance.

No Change

Although Trump's tweets suggested the rupture was an outgrowth of his meetings in Saudi Arabia two weeks ago, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the U.S. was only informed of the Saudi-led actions against Qatar immediately beforehand. She echoed the more nuanced position taken by Spicer and other government officials, saying the U.S. is grateful for support from Qatar and has no plans to change our posture toward the country.

Trump spoke with Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud on Wednesday, according to a White House statement, which said they discussed the critical goals of preventing the financing of terrorist organizations and eliminating the promotion of extremism by any nation in the region. The statement also said that Trump underscored that a united Gulf Cooperation Council is critical to defeating terrorism and promoting regional stability.

Accusations

Saudi Arabia and three other U.S. allies in the region -- the United Arab Emirates , Egypt and Bahrain -- accused the Gulf Cooperation Council member of supporting a range of violent groups, from proxies of Shiite Muslim Iran to the Sunni militants of al-Qaeda and Islamic State. They suspended flights and sea travel to Qatar, ordering Qatari diplomats and citizens out.

Trump's tweet fuels more conflict, increases tensions and will be used by those who are trying to demonize Qatar, said Mahjoob Zweiri, a professor of Middle Eastern politics at Qatar University in Doha.

They also caught some U.S. officials by surprise. Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican, said he wasn't aware of the president's tweets when asked about them Wednesday afternoon at the Capitol.

Our general stance as a nation has been that these things ebb and flow and they come up from time to time, but we've worked with all the countries, Corker said.

Qatar has dismissed the Saudi charges as baseless, and said the Saudis are seeking to dominate the region. Western officials have expressed concerns that Qatar may back fundamentalist groups, but they've also raised similar issues about Saudi Arabia.

We are combating the funding for any terrorist group, Qatar Foreign Minister Mohammed Al Thani told CNN.

Allies at Odds

The crisis pits U.S. allies against each other, disrupting trade, flights and business activity in one of the world's most strategically important regions. The Saudi-led action has prompted some analysts to openly speculate about the possibility of regime change in Qatar, the No. 1 exporter of liquefied natural gas, whose sovereign wealth fund owns stakes in global companies from Barclays Plc to Credit Suisse Group .

Oil prices surged on Monday before settling lower as the rupture was seen as having little impact on global oil supplies. West Texas Intermediate for July delivery rose 79 cents to settle at $48.19 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

The crisis has roots as far back as 1995, when the father of the current emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani deposed his own pro-Saudi father and the country began shipping natural gas from the world's largest reservoir, a resource it shares with Iran.

Qatar used its gas wealth to back the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Hamas in the Gaza Strip and armed factions opposed by the UAE or Saudi Arabia in Libya and Syria. Gas also paid for a global television network, Al Jazeera, which at various times has embarrassed or angered most Middle Eastern governments.

Careful Wording'

Moving Qatar away from supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and others is good for the region and the world, said Paul Sullivan, a professor at Georgetown University in Washington. It may be partially done by public missives and speeches, but a lot of this has to be behind the scenes. And careful wording is needed-- very careful wording. This situation could spin in many directions. And some of those directions are likely not where we want to go.

Mediation efforts intensified on Tuesday, with Kuwaiti ruler Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah traveling to Saudi Arabia for talks to defuse the crisis. Sheikh Sabah also spoke with Qatar's ruler and urged him to avoid any escalation, Kuwaiti state-run media reported.

Sinan Ulgen, a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe, said that Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. have decided to put pressure on Qatar, which so far has seemed to refrain from pursuing equally harsh policies toward Iran. Trump's latest tweet is a reflection of his anti-Iran stance.






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.
Who knew that a mutual fund company, like a political campaign, might seek to hire lawyers to do opposition research, searching for questionable activity by rivals, in hopes of using it against them?

Vanguard Group did just that, posting a help-wanted listing on its website Monday for a marketing lawyer whose responsibilities include reviewing "competitors' campaigns for possible [regulatory] violations" and to "advise the business on whether to raise matters" with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), which oversees U.S. investment companies and can fine them or kick them out of the business.

Business rivals often carp about each others' tactics. But lawyers who represent big corporations say it's unusual for a company to hire specialists explicitly to bring such complaints before regulators.

"I've not seen something like that," said Timothy McTaggart, a partner at law firm Stinson Leonard Street LLP in Washington and a former Delaware state banking commissioner. "There are requirements that entities have to report to FINRA" on their own vendors' or customers' possible misbehavior; "if something is askew, they have responsibilities to report it. But not for their competitors. This is a little different."

More commonly, a trade association will complain that members of another industry are poaching clients on its turf in apparent violation of, say, banking industry rules, McTaggart added. But it "is unusual" for financial companies to lay out explicit plans for targeting competitors to inform on them to regulators.

Companies' checking out and reporting potential violations by others "goes on all the time. But I can't say I've ever seen that made explicit in an actual job description," said John Soroko, chairman and CEO of Philadelphia's Duane Morris corporate law firm. "That's a new one on me," especially in the investments business, he added. "Guess you've got to give them a high grade for candor."

FINRA, the industry-controlled overseer of U.S. investment companies and stock markets, reviews investment ads, typically before they are published, though firms sometimes ask the nonprofit group to review competitors' published ads "for accuracy," FINRA spokeswoman Nancy Condon told me. She made an exclamation of surprise when I read her Vanguard's ad language, then said she could not comment.

The Vanguard ad was taken down Wednesday, the day after I emailed John Woerth, spokesman for the fast-growing, $4 trillion-asset investment giant, and he had indicated he was "working on" a reply.

When I asked if Vanguard took the ad down in response to my inquiry, Woerth answered, "No."

So did Malvern-based Vanguard find someone to fill the job? Woerth replied that the company is still looking for several lawyers "with expertise and experience in advertising, marketing, and brand management" and would seek them using "other means," not just the website.

Soroko noted there are other venues for sore competitors to air their grievances. Fairness complaints about ads for mass-market products and services are often lodged with the advertising industry's self-regulating body, the Better Business Bureau's National Advertising Division, where, for example, Comcast and Verizon have been challenging each others' claims about internet speeds for years. It's also where Campbell Soup and Progresso squared off over Progresso's claim that it used South Jersey produce in its soup (until Progresso closed its Vineland plant last year). The division sometimes tells a company to stop making claims it can't verify. A famous 1990s ad dispute in which Pizza Hut challenged Papa John's "fresh ingredients" claims ended up in a federal appeals court, which found no harm done.

If opposition research isn't your specialty, but firing people is, another ad for a Vanguard position in Arizona may be of interest.

Among other human-relations duties, the company seeks applicants willing to "support the involuntary termination process for crew members," and to "recommend and conduct termination as needed." "Crew members" are what Vanguard calls its 15,000 employees.

I ran that past a few Philadelphia-area human-resources veterans, and got this sole on-the-record comment, from insurance industry veteran and former St. Joseph's University M.S. in H.R. program director David Benglian: "This looks like a death squad who will help identify and facilitate terminations," he told me. "Disturbing."

At most companies, "the decision to terminate falls on an employee's immediate supervisor," not a firing specialist, Benglian told me. Human resource people tend to focus on helping and advising through the employee work review and, if necessary, firing process, "to protect both the employee and the company," he said, adding that he's speaking not as an H.R. pro but as a longtime corporate observer.

The HR ad was still up after my story was posted. Here's the text of the lawyer ad that was taken down:

June 5, 2017

Vanguard is a leading provider of financial products and services to individual and institutional investors worldwide. In addition, Vanguard is an employer of choice that continually invests in the growth, development and success of its employees over the course of their Vanguard careers. Known for its strong ethical business practices and client focus, Vanguard fosters a collaborative, team-oriented environment that rewards and recognizes its attorneys for providing business-focused legal solutions, with a strong emphasis on excellent client service and relationship management skills. Vanguard is seeking an attorney to partner with the business and Compliance to provide legal advice on all aspects of marketing and brand management issues.

Specific Responsibilities:

-Provide thought leadership on all marketing, advertising and brand management issues.

-Advise the business on the creation of a holistic brand management strategy and a marketing rules-based framework.

-Coordinate with PR on brand management issues and assist with positioning of content.

-Serve as a legal resource for our Advertising Compliance Group.

-Create guidelines to differentiate between marketing and servicing communications, and create appropriate processes to evaluate these different materials.

-Provide legal advice on all aspects of Vanguard's use of social media.

-Advise on marketing campaigns at their inception to ensure campaigns are consistent with all relevant laws, including FINRA marketing regulations.

-Provide legal advice with respect to FINRA inquiries on Vanguard marketing materials.

-Review competitors' campaigns for possible FINRA violations; advise the business on whether to raise matters with FINRA.

-Draft regulatory comment letters related to FINRA advertising rules.

Qualifications and Experience:

-Minimum 5-10 years of relevant professional experience; excellent undergraduate and -law school academic credentials

-In-house experience required, preferably in a global organization

-Demonstrated ability to influence business leaders and impact decision-making

-Demonstrated track record of providing business-focused solutions that combine excellent judgment, creativity, risk-taking, and technical expertise

-Demonstrated expertise in the use of data and digital market trends

-Shares Vanguard's values, including unmatched ethical standards, teamwork, client service, work ethic and positive attitude

-Vanguard is not offering visa sponsorship for this position

(This article was expanded after publication to include Benglian's statements.)
Cristina Martinez, left, and Ben Miller, right, photographed at South Philly Barbacoa, Friday, Sept. 16, 2016, in Philadelphia. On the table are two tacos, a bowl of consomme, and a half kilo of lamb. As well as fresh squeezed juices. ( JESSICA GRIFFIN / Staff Photographer) Read more

Cristina Martinez and Ben Miller announced on social media that South Philly Barbacoa, her acclaimed Mexican eatery, will close after business on June 25 as she consolidates her operation seven blocks away at sister restaurant El Compadre, at 1149 S. Ninth St. in the Italian Market.

"We prefer to work in the same space," Miller said in an interview. He identified his wife as the sole proprietor and chef, preferring the title "field manager" for himself. Miller heads the organization Popular Alliance for Undocumented Workers' Rights, and proudly pointed out that Martinez is undocumented.

The Ninth Street restaurant, selling the lamb barbacoa, tortas, consome, and guisados (stews) of Martinez's native Mexico, will retain the name El Compadre, ending a chapter in the couple's lives that began in February 2014 with a food cart parked near their home at Eighth and Watkins Streets.

South Philly Barbacoa drew city scrutiny and grumbling among some neighbors as it found an appreciative audience of foodies and Mexican immigrants. The cart was disbanded when the couple went the brick-and-mortar route in mid-2015 with the colorfully tiled restaurant at 1703 S. 11th St.

Martinez then helped her son, Isaias Berriozabal-Martinez, open El Compadre, a shop specializing in tortas, last October. Less than three months later, he collapsed and died at age 23.

Bon Appetit named South Philly Barbacoa as one of the 10 best new restaurants of 2016. Earlier this year, the couple were a semifinalist for the James Beard Award for best chef, Mid-Atlantic.

"We were very successful with South Philly Barbacoa, like we had a hit record," said Miller. "Now we are trying to come out with another smash hit. I want to get four bells," referring to Inquirer critic Craig LaBan's top rating.

"It's a fresh project for us to build out," Miller said. "I don't feel we can grow in South Philly Barbacoa, and the story behind El Compadre is more compelling and it fills us with a sense of purpose to have a thriving business which can bring more traffic to that corridor on Ninth Street."

The restaurant is open for barbacoa from 5 a.m. till sellout on weekends, and operates from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday to Friday with tortas, guisados, and tortillas.
Order a pepperoni, a green pepper, or an anchovy pizza, and you pretty much know what you'll get.

Ask for a tomato pie, and all bets are off. In most of the country, the pizza guy may layer sliced tomatoes from the sub counter onto a red pizza and pop it into the oven. In Trenton and central New Jersey, you'll get a thin-crust upside-down pizza, with cheese directly on the bottom crust and sauce on top.

Around here  particularly in South Philadelphia and a swath of the region running mainly from Manayunk to Norristown, as well as in Utica, N.Y.  tomato pie is an entirely different thing.

This is the tomato pie that started out a century ago in Italian American bakeries, some of which now specialize in the product along with traditional rolls and breads.

It's baked in large rectangular or square sheet pans, like focaccia. Most, like Iannelli's and Sarcone's, have raised crusts along the edges. One popular shop  Gaeta's  dispenses with the side crust and spreads its sauce across the entire top. Its oven's heat helps caramelize the tomato sauce at the edges into a crunchy treat.

The tomato sauce is thick and slightly oily, just a notch thinner than tomato paste. Most shops' sauces are sweet, though Marchiano's and Sarcone's lean toward savory thanks to a dose of oregano and other herbs. Carlino's Market goes all chunky, adding plenty of basil.

What's the secret in the sauce? No one will talk.

Perhaps most tellingly, tomato pie is not buried under tangles of mozzarella, as most red pizzas are. It is virtually cheeseless, though some popular shops, like Cacia's, mix cheese into the sauce for a distinctive tang.

Others, like Corropolese, do not. Some, like Conshohocken Italian Bakery and Morabito's, sprinkle just a rumor of grated Parmesan and Romano on top of the finished pies, almost as decoration.

Tomato pie is served cold or at room temperature. Always.

Each style has its adherents. I was raised in Northeast Philadelphia on Gaeta's, but I'm also a fan of Corropolese (say it "CORE-puh-leeze"), just outside Norristown.

The origin of bakery-style tomato pie, incidentally, is lost to the ages. Illustrator Hawk Krall, waxing rhapsodic in Saveur several months ago about tomato pie from a Utica shop, called it "an American version of Sicilian sfincione, a similar flatbread sold on the streets of Palermo at room temperature, dusted with bread crumbs and anchovy."

Joe Corropolese at Corropolese Bakery & Deli in East Norriton also was not sure of the origins, only that it was served in the home before bakeries began selling it. Corropolese, who has worked in the family business for 37 of his 51 years, says he sells 300 whole sheets a day from the Old Arch Road store alone; more come out of the locations in Limerick and Douglassville and soon a fourth in Oaks. Joe is a son of Guilio "Butch" Corropolese, whose father, an immigrant from Naples named Joe, founded the bakery in Norristown in 1924. Joe's brother, Michael, runs the bakery. I chatted with Joe at the bakery the other day.

Where did tomato pie come from?

Back in Italy, they just got fresh tomatoes, crushed it down, poured it over, and just sprinkled on some cheese on top of it, and it was like dinner for them. Then it evolved into regular pizzas and all that, but this was a little niche thing.

Why tomato pie?

Everybody likes it, even little kids. A lot of people don't like chunk tomatoes or they don't like garlic, but tomato pie, I think, caters to pretty much everybody. If you don't want it with cheese, you don't have to get any sprinkled cheese. There's a lot of vegans out there that don't want the sprinkled cheese, so we don't put the sprinkled cheese on.

What made it popular with you?

We started selling to grocery stores, and then in, I think it was '86 or '87, we opened up this store and then it just blew up from there. We pulled it out of the grocery stores and you had to come here for it.

Why did you do that?

Because I wanted [customers] to come here because we had deli meats and all that stuff. If you wanted our stuff, you had to come here. I was hoping, since they had to come here, everything else would go well, too. And it did. It was kind of like the draw, and now everybody knows. They will just come for tomato pie, and they'll come for deli meats.

Morabito has the supermarket business now. You didn't want it back?

They asked me first, and I know Mike, I'm like, 'If Mike wants to do that kind of stuff, I said, Let him go to market.' We're in a couple of stores, like Di Bruno's in Philadelphia. We don't do supermarkets, though. We'll do little delis and we always keep it like 10 miles away from [our] stores.

What's in the sauce?

That I can't really tell you.

Well, tomatoes.

Fresh tomatoes, salt, you know. Salt, sugar, seasonings  that's as far as I can go with that.

I had to ask.

I know, I know.
The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board Wednesday fined Parx Casino in Bucks County $35,000 for two incidents of underage gambling. A 20-year-old woman was on the gaming floor for more than 90 minutes on March 12, 2016 and placed two wagers at a roulette table before she was asked for identification. Another 20-year-old woman played slot machines for more than an hour on April 8, 2016. The woman's associate dropped a plastic bag containing a suspicious white substance under a slot machine, the board said. A manager found the bag, suspected of containing a controlled substance. Surveillance film identified the woman and her associate. Pennsylvania State Police were called, and the female was identified. The legal age is 21 to operate slot machines and play table games.

This was the fourth penalty assessed to Parx in Bensalem for violations of underage gaming since November 2014, the board said. The casino paid $15,000 for two infractions in 2014, $25,000 for two underage gaming incidents in February 2016, and $15,000 for an incident in December 2015.
It takes a little determined exploration to find the new home of Sky Cafe, the South Philly Indonesian BYOB that had to move after its original location on the 1500 block of West Ritner Street burned down in late 2015. Its new spot isn't visible from the street when you pull into the chaotic parking lot of Wing Phat Plaza at 11th and Washington. But step just inside the corridor of this Asian food shopping complex, where it occupies a glassed-in bay, and trust me when I say it's worth it. Co-owner Betty Yu and her mom, Lily Tjia, are cooking all the same aromatic specialties they were serving when I first reviewed their restaurant in 2012, their menu influenced by the regional Sumatran flavors that result in exceptional handmade noodle soups, a frequent embrace of pork (unlike the rest of Indonesia, which is Muslim), and Chinese-influenced flavor profiles that tend to be spicier and less sweet than regions like Java, which inform other local Indonesian kitchens at Hardena and Lil' Java. One of the newer highlights is a portable version of the multi-dish "rice table" called nasi bungkus, an entire meal of jasmine rice, vegetables, and curried meat stew wrapped to-go inside a banana leaf bundle. We chose beef rendang as the filling for ours (a spicier beef curry is another choice). A hunk of tender beef, true to drier Sumatran style, vibrant with galangal, lemongrass, chilies, and kaffir lime, was embedded in a mound of jasmine rice, along with a feast of other flavors. Meaty young jackfruit braised in coconut curry. Steamed collard greens. A hardboiled "curry egg." And then there was a little sandwich of two cucumber rounds, which appeared to be a quenching respite  until I took a fire-stoking bite and discovered a high-voltage green chili sambal inside. "Indonesians eat pretty much everything with chilies," Yu told me, after the fact. No matter. For $8, you'd be hard-pressed to find a better value for flavor in town. And the added bonus? Banana leaves are microwave-safe, so, once you've found this hidden gem inside a South Philly mall, you can take your bungkus to go.

 Craig LaBan

Nasi bungkus, $8, Sky Cafe, Wing Phat Plaza, 1122-38 Washington Ave., 215-271-1983; skycafephilly.com
SOFIA BOUTELLA in a spectacular, all-new cinematic version of the legend that has fascinated cultures all over the world since the dawn of civilization: "The Mummy." From the sweeping sands of the Middle East through hidden labyrinths under modern-day London, "The Mummy" brings a surprising intensity and balance of wonder and thrills in an imaginative new take that ushers in a new world of gods and monsters. Read more

The title character in The Mummy is a woman, and the story takes her from Egypt to Iraq to England, where folks can just call her mum.

Her sponsor on this journey is Tom Cruise, playing larcenous Army officer Nick who, with sidekick Jake Johnson, raids tombs in Iraq for treasure. He disturbs the grave of a wicked Egyptian princess (Sofia Boutella), activating a curse that follows them both to London, where her sarcophagus is to be studied by Egyptologist Jenny (Annabelle Wallis) and her mysterious associate, Dr. Jekyll (Russell Crowe).

None of this, of course, goes according to plan, and Nick and Jenny end up fighting off hordes of zombies and the mummy princess, who has four irises and a bad temper. This is mostly played for laughs  the movie has the half-serious, jokey tone of the first Brendan Fraser Mummy movie, and Nick is a similar sort of rogue adventurer, with the same attraction to a smart, tough female associate.

This new Mummy, though, carries the burden of corporate ambition. Director Alex Kurtzman is not merely out to tell a story here, or to entertain. The job of The Mummy is to provide the foundation for a new franchise and extended universe, with a roster of characters (werewolves, vampires, etc.) that will grow and expand and compete with Marvel and DC in the fantasy-industrial complex.

It's not far-fetched to think that one day, with ongoing consolidation, all of these characters will be owned by the same entity, and will appear in the same movie, in an extravaganza that might look like our recent Wizard World, with hundreds of costumed characters randomly bumping into each other.

What this means for cinema is probably a secondary question. As a harbinger, The Mummy is not encouraging. It's brisk, competent, and kind of funny for about an hour  Johnson's sidekick role takes an unexpected turn  before the sweaty labor of franchise-building starts to kick in.

While princess Four Eyes is ravaging London and building a zombie army and searching for the ruby stone that will activate the dagger of eternal life (don't ask), writers digress to integrate the story of Dr. Jekyll and his cryptic organization.

This causes Crowe to give several pompous and poorly scripted speeches about the nature of evil  Jekyll is evidently in the business of studying, managing, and containing it. His insight derives from his own experience, suppressing the demonic Mr. Hyde. Thus is established the template for this new vision  tormented souls fighting internal battles and whatever new monster is next in line.

During the (yawn) zombie-army climax, characters pause to explain to us what is happening to Nick, so we don't get lost on the way to the next movie/profit center.

It feels like a step backward for Cruise, who can rise to the challenge of inventive material like Edge of Tomorrow. And Crowe looks particularly bored with his new assignment. I'd bet he'd much rather star in a franchise built around The Nice Guys.

MOVIE REVIEW

The Mummy

Directed by Alex Kurtzman. With Tom Cruise, Russell Crowe, Sofia Boutella, Annabelle Wallis and Jake Johnson. Distributed by Universal.

Running time: 2 hours.

Parent's guide: PG-13 (Violence, scary images, partial nudity).

Playing at: Area theaters.
This home in Manahawkin, N.J., was surrounded by water after only a moderate storm in March. Things could be a lot worse this season, according to a report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Read more

Shore areas could see 10 percent to 20 percent more tidal flooding this year because of continued sea level rise and a potential El Nino, according to a new federal report.

Philadelphia could also see an increase in flooding, but that level is harder to predict, researchers say.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released the report Wednesday as an update to its sea level rise outlook on what is variously dubbed "nuisance," "recurrent," or "sunny day" flooding. Such flooding is driven mostly by high tides, not storms. Current models predict at least a weak El Nino, though they remain fuzzy. The East Coast often experiences above-normal precipitation and warmer weather during El Ninos.

The NOAA data show that even without an El Nino, three of the local locations examined, Atlantic City and Sandy Hook in New Jersey and Philadelphia, have all shown a continual increase in nuisance flooding over the last 50 years.

More Nuisance Flooding Predicted Locally The chart shows the annual number of days of tidal flooding at Sandy Hook, N.J., Atlantic City, and Philadelphia. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted Wednesday that shore areas could see a 10 to 20 percent rise in tidal flooding this year. Predictions for 2017 for Sandy Hook and Atlantic City assume the effects of an El Nino. NOAA did not make a 2017 prediction specific to Philadelphia. Click on the names of the locations below for more information. Staff Graphic

"What I see for Atlantic City and Sandy is an acceleration in the number of days per year in high-tide flooding," said NOAA's Billy Sweet, one of the report's authors. "It's growing by leaps and bounds. That's a concern, because ultimately this trend is going to have to be reconciled locally."

The data he cited are taken from tide gauges monitored since the 1950s. The report calls for a possible 25 percent rise in nuisance flooding nationally.

For the last few years, Sweet and other researchers have been warning that local governments need to prepare for more days when flooding happens almost randomly because of sea level rise.

Indeed, Rutgers and Princeton researchers released a separate report on flooding today about the impact of rising seas on flooding. Robert Kopp, a Rutgers climate scientist and an author on the study, said their findings show more moderate flooding will occur more frequently.

Kopp said some areas will become almost permanently flooded.

"It makes the flooding associated with storm surges worse because you're starting with a higher base," Kopp said. "And it takes a lesser tide to cause flooding."

Kopp said Atlantic City can expect to see what was once 1-in-10 year flooding occur much more frequently by 2050.

But preparedness for more routine flooding can be costly, as storm-water systems, roads, and even housing have to be rethought.

The new NOAA data are derived from observations taken during the 2016 meteorological year, which ended in April. Atlantic City had 28 days last year when "minor" tidal flooding exceeded long-term averages, which is in line with researchers' predictions. Yet Atlantic City had just three such days in 1950. While the numbers have bounced around from year to year, the trend has been a marked rise over time.

Philadelphia is much more influenced by its rivers, so the numbers aren't as dramatic and are harder to predict. The city saw nine minor flooding days in 2016. The high point was 30 days in 2011  the year of Hurricane Irene.

Other areas of the country, especially the Southeast, are harder hit by high-tide floods. Wilmington, N.C., had the most, with 84 days, meaning there is minor flooding almost every four days or so. Charleston, S.C., Savannah, Ga., and Key West, Fla., all saw their local records broken, with some areas 50 percent higher than normal.

Lisa Auermuller of Rutgers University's Jacques Cousteau National Estuarine Research Reserve said that local storm-water drainage systems are often overwhelmed along bay shore areas in New Jersey. The storm systems were set up decades ago to drain into the bay or ocean.

"During flooding, the drain acts more like a conduit for water to come back into the town," said Auermuller, who coordinates with local officials. "Sometimes in high tides, it's actually pushing water back into the streets."

Philadelphia has a plan that describes the impact of flooding and sea level rise, said Sarah Wu, deputy director of the Philadelphia Office of Sustainability.

"Although Philadelphia lies 90 miles from the coast, its tidal rivers make sea level rise, which is likely to reach two feet by 2050 and four feet by 2100, a particularly important risk for the city," according to the 2015 plan. "By the end of this century, more than 30 city-owned facilities would be highly or moderately vulnerable to flooding from sea level rise alone."

"We're getting hotter, with more extreme heat and heat waves," Wu said in a recent interview. "We're also seeing heavier precipitation through storm burst. And we're going to see sea level rise."
A 16-year-old boy who was part of a large fight involving about 50 people in the Rittenhouse Square area on Tuesday afternoon repeatedly punched a Philadelphia bicycle police officer in the face when the officer tried to usher the teen away from the scene, authorities said.

The incident was the latest in a recent string of cases involving teens allegedly assaulting adults in Philadelphia.

Police said around 2:25 p.m. Tuesday, officers responded to 15th and Chestnut Streets for reports of a fight. Authorities found about 50 juveniles in the area, some fighting, and began to separate the individuals and disperse the crowd, police said.

When a bicycle officer told a 16-year-old and another boy to move away from the scene, the teen reached over the officer's bike and punched him in the face several times, police said. Other officers on the scene grabbed the boy, took him to the ground, and placed him in custody.

The officer, whose identity was not released, was treated for scratches and bruises to his face at Hahnemann University Hospital, police said.

On Monday, police announced the arrest of two teens, ages 18 and 19, for shooting into a crowd of about 30 people on May 20 in North Philadelphia, injuring 10. Monday evening, a video of a group of teens and a 12-year-old assaulting a man with intellectual disabilities in Germantown went viral.

By Tuesday, police had connected some of the youths involved in that assault with the assault of a school principal in Germantown last week who was hit in the face with a brick when he tried to break up a schoolyard fight. On Wednesday morning, police announced they had filed charges against two of the teens in the assault on the principal as the investigation into the assault of the other man continued.

The teenagers have been charged with aggravated assault, conspiracy, recklessly endangering another person, and related offenses.

One of the two 15-year-old boys facing charges in that case is also under investigation in the unprovoked assault of Mark Smith, a 38-year-old man with an intellectual disability whose beating by juveniles was captured in a video that went viral Monday, a police spokeswoman said. The second 15-year-old charged in the assault on the principal is the brother of another suspect in the assault on Smith and may have been present for that assault as well, according to police.

Charges have not yet been filed against the juveniles who watched or participated in Smith's assault, but the investigation remains ongoing, police said.

Authorities are not releasing the names of the suspects involved in any of the incidents because they are juveniles.

The two assaults happened two days and three blocks apart from each other in Germantown.
WASHINGTON  Sen. Cory A. Booker is invoking the "I"-word  impeachment.

The New Jersey Democrat, a potential presidential candidate who just 10 days ago urged caution on talk of impeaching President Trump, raised the prospect Wednesday morning in a message to his 3.1 million Twitter followers.

"When the truth comes out (and it will) & if the president has committed crimes, we (the people) will fight and win in the battle to impeach," Booker tweeted.

On May 28, the senator sounded a different note, telling CNN, "I'm not going to rush to impeachment," and adding, "I think we need to deal with this in a very sobered way."

While some in the Democratic base  and Congress  have eagerly promoted the idea of ousting Trump, other party leaders have urged a more measured approach, worrying that overreaching will backfire.

Booker has usually tried to promote a more uplifting and less combative message, recently telling a liberal conference, for instance, that the Democratic agenda cannot focus solely on opposing the president.

But as he and numerous other Democrats eye 2020, they are also facing a party base eager for battle against Trump.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.), another potential presidential candidate, had already expressed support for impeaching Trump if he did in fact impede an investigation into whether his campaign collaborated with Russia in its meddling in the 2016 presidential race.

But others on the left have warned against getting ahead of the facts.

"I don't think you want to make that leap to impeachment until you follow a path which leads us there," Sen. Bernie Sanders (Ind., Vt.), yet another potential 2020 candidate, recently said at a CNN forum. "Maybe it will, maybe it won't, but I'm not there at this point."
A 45-year-old New Jersey Transit bus driver was shot and killed Tuesday afternoon in Washington Township by a woman who later shot herself, authorities said.

Ryan Reynolds, of Sicklerville, was shot at an NJ Transit garage sometime before 2 p.m., according to the Gloucester County Prosecutor's Office.

Piacenta M. Jackson of Woodbury, a 44-year-old believed to have been responsible for the killing, shot and killed herself a short time later in Mantua near a business at Center and Trenton Streets, said Bernie Weisenfeld of the prosecutor's office.

The Gloucester County Prosecutor's Office, the Washington and Mantua Township Police Departments, and NJ Transit are investigating the incident.
A patron thwarted a robbery at a Wawa in Winslow Township, New Jersey. Read more

Officials are crediting a 52-year-old patron with fighting and tackling a 26-year-old armed robber at a New Jersey Wawa early Wednesday, holding him in his grip until police arrived.

Winslow Township police said they received a call at 1:53 a.m. for a robbery in progress at the Wawa on 672 Cross Keys Road.

A man had entered the convenience store brandishing a handgun and had ordered all the store employees to the ground, police said. As the robber, identified as Alexander Ray, of Maple Shade, walked to the cash register a patron tackled him and a fight ensued.

Police identified the patron only his first name, Darryl and said he lived in Philadelphia.

Police said Ray did not drop his gun and allegedly pistol whipped Darryl, who kept Ray in his grip. The fight moved to the outside of the store, where Ray was eventually disarmed and arriving offices took him into custody.

Both men were transported to separate hospitals for treatment. No employees were injured. The gun was unloaded.

Darryl was treated for cuts to his face and numerous bruises at John F. Kennedy Hospital in Washington Township and released. Ray, who went to Cooper University Hospital in Camden for treatment, is facing numerous charges including robbery, aggravated assault, and weapons charges, police said.
Badia Weeks couldn't stop smiling as she sat in the Wells Fargo Center in her Ursinus College sweatshirt. Surrounded by hundreds of other Philadelphia high school seniors, she grew more excited as she listened to speeches about following her dreams, and realized that after making it through years of standardized tests, applications, and deadlines, she could officially say she was going to college.

Weeks, a senior at George Washington Carver High School of Engineering and Science, was one of several thousand Philadelphia high school seniors who packed the center in South Philadelphia on Wednesday for #ReachHigherPhilly College Signing Day, an event reminiscent of signing day for athletes. During the event, students waved homemade Class of 2021 signs, cheer squads and bands performed, and the Washington-based rapper Wale took to the stage as Philadelphia celebrated the seniors' achievements.

The goal of the event: Get students excited about college.

"College isn't a luxury, it's a necessity," said keynote speaker Eric Waldo, who helped found the program as executive director for the U.S. Department of Education's Reach Higher Initiative.

"Believe in yourself," he added. "There's a whole system out there who want to see you get to, and through, college."

This year, with a new partnership with the nonprofit CF Charities, more than 50 Philadelphia high schools and 3,000 students attended the fully funded event.

Seniors from local public, charter, and parochial schools gathered in the arena to celebrate as they and their peers received scholarships, won prizes, and watched as representatives from their new colleges paraded in and welcomed them.

The highlight of the event was the surprise appearance by Wale, who performed some of his hits as students sang and danced along.

"This event is huge. It's a lot bigger than I thought it would be," said Malik Rush, a senior at Carver who will study computer science at Virginia State University in the fall. "It shows how Philly is progressing when it comes to youth and education."

"It means a lot. It's just so much to know that I got into college and everyone cares and is celebrating," said Jasmine Smith, a senior at Samuel Fels High School who will attend Shippensburg University. "I'm really glad I came."

Signing Day has grown nationally since it was started three years ago by former first lady Michelle Obama. This year, there were more than 1,500 events in all 50 states, the program reported.

Philadelphia was one of the first cities in the country to join the program, and the number of participating students and schools has doubled since it was first held at St. Joseph's University in 2015, officials said.

"Philly does an amazing job.  I'm just thankful that the city was able to come out and support our students," said #ReachHigherPhilly event chair Tia Rideout. "We need to make sure our students know that higher education is the key in order for them to be successful."
Phil Murphy speaks to supporters during a Democratic primary election watch party at the Robert Treat Hotel, Tuesday, June 6, 2017, at in Newark, N.J. Read more

NEWARK  The winners of Tuesday's gubernatorial primaries in New Jersey offered different visions for the state, but they agree on at least one thing: Gov. Christie's brash style needs to go.

Primary voters elected former Wall Street banker Phil Murphy, a Democrat, and Republican Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno, both of whom are calling for a more inclusive approach to governing.

Both candidates had establishment support and were the front-runners for the nominations. But Murphy enters the general-election campaign as the heavy favorite: Christie's historically low approval ratings are expected to drag down the GOP nominee, and registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans by about 840,000 voters. To be sure, a plurality of voters is unaffiliated with either party.

Murphy has framed his candidacy as a rejection of "special interests," even though he spent more than $20 million and won with the backing of nearly every Democratic power broker and interest group. Similarly, Guadagno has railed against "Trenton insiders," even though she has worked in the state capital for 7 years as Christie's second-in-command.

Speaking to hundreds of supporters at a hotel here in Newark, Murphy, 59, of Middletown, Monmouth County, said, "Four more years of Christie-style politics won't make New Jersey the state where we draw the line against Donald Trump, but we will."

"New Jersey cannot afford a governor who has been complicit in the failures that have left New Jersey lagging where we should be leading," Murphy said as he stood alongside his wife, Tammy, and their four children.

Murphy, who has never held elective office, led with 48 percent of the vote as of 10 p.m., with 70 percent of precincts reporting. He defeated five other candidates, including former U.S. Treasury Undersecretary Jim Johnson, Assemblyman John S. Wisniewski, and State Sen. Raymond J. Lesniak.

Guadagno, 58, of Monmouth Beach, Monmouth County, told supporters in a Long Branch banquet room that "this campaign, our campaign, is about making New Jersey affordable for everyone." She defeated four rivals; her main challenger was Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli, 55, of Hillsborough, Somerset County, whom she thanked for his "faithful service" to the GOP and state.

"I'm running for governor based on my values. Based on my record. And based on my principles," Guadagno said to applause, appearing to distinguish herself from Christie.

While Guadagno has sought to distance herself from Christie, Murphy also faces unwelcome comparison to an unpopular governor: Jon Corzine, Christie's Democratic predecessor, who was CEO of Goldman Sachs for part of the time Murphy worked there.

"The only difference between Phil Murphy and Jon Corzine is Phil Murphy doesn't have a beard," Christie said recently, as he accused Murphy of buying the Democratic nomination. Murphy says he will participate in the state's public-financing system in the general election, which will limit his spending to $13.8 million.

Guadagno told supporters Tuesday that "if we elect Phil Murphy governor of the state of New Jersey, then the only person who will be able to afford to live in the state of New Jersey will be Phil Murphy."

Voter turnout was expected to be low: It had not exceeded 14 percent in the state's gubernatorial primaries since 1997.

Murphy says he would spur innovation by investing in STEM fields and clean energy, and restore trust in state government by fully funding obligations such as pensions and schools. He wants to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour from the current $8.44 and says he would raises taxes on millionaires, close corporate loopholes, and stop investing state pension money with hedge-fund managers.

Guadagno, a former Monmouth County sheriff and federal prosecutor, has focused on affordability, promising to find $1.5 billion to pay for property tax relief and to negotiate with unions to address the state's public worker pension crisis.

She defended her record in Christie's administration as successful in growing jobs and attracting businesses to the state, while Ciattarelli argued for a new direction  tying Guadagno to the 11 downgrades of the state's credit rating and other fiscal challenges during Christie's tenure.

While Christie had stayed neutral in the GOP primary, he said Tuesday that he voted for Guadagno.

The more important race was one that had been underway for some three years.

Not long after Christie's reelection in 2013, the shadow campaign to succeed him began in earnest among three high-profile Democrats: Senate President Stephen Sweeney of Gloucester County, Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop, and Murphy.

Although Murphy had virtually unlimited financial resources, he didn't have a natural political power base. Sweeney had a lock on South Jersey and needed to make inroads in the northern part of the state, which is home to a greater share of the statewide Democratic primary electorate.

Fulop, as mayor of New Jersey's second largest city, sought to unify northern support to counter Sweeney and his political benefactor, George E. Norcross III, the hospital and insurance executive.

Murphy began unofficially testing the waters by founding nonprofits and hiring veteran consultants who would eventually work for his campaign. He took the highly unusual step of announcing his candidacy a full year before the primary and immediately loaned his campaign $10 million.

While political insiders believed the primary was up for grabs, that changed in September, when Fulop announced that he would not run for governor and was instead endorsing Murphy. By that time, Murphy had laid the groundwork to win over Fulop's supporters and force Sweeney out of the race, too.

His checkbook was also helpful. Murphy and his wife, Tammy, have donated at least $799,100 to New Jersey Democratic campaigns and committees since 2014, an Inquirer review of campaign-finance filings shows.

Murphy was the Democratic National Committee's finance chairman from 2006 to 2009, after which he became President Barack Obama's ambassador to Germany.

"Murphy had done a lot of groundwork in meeting and greeting Democratic Party leaders across the state, no matter who they supported, so that when the dominoes started to fall, he was in prime position to sweep in and collect all the support," said Patrick Murray, a political analyst at Monmouth University.

Murphy won the support of all 21 county Democratic organizations, meaning he had the full backing of the party machine.

His official opponents  Johnson, Wisniewski, and Lesniak  didn't even compete for the county "lines," saying the process was rigged in Murphy's favor. They attacked his ties to Goldman Sachs, which is reviled by many on the left as a symbol of Wall Street greed; questioned his investments in energy companies; and contended that he, like Corzine before him, was trying to buy the election by donating a small fortune to county political parties and turning the campaign into a "bidding war."

But the underdogs had difficulty delivering their message in the expensive New York and Philadelphia media markets. And the reliable New Jersey political machine turned out the vote for Murphy.








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Michelle Carter listens as prosecutor Maryclare Flynn makes her opening statement, displaying many texts between Carter and Conrad Roy III. Read more

Sitting in his pickup truck one summer day in 2014, Conrad Roy III wavered about his plan to kill himself.

He was scared, he texted his girlfriend.

"Get back in," she replied.

Roy did.

The 18-year-old who had long battled depression and suicidal thoughts succumbed to carbon monoxide. He was found dead the following day in a Kmart parking lot several miles outside Boston. His girlfriend, 17-year-old Michelle Carter, was charged with involuntary manslaughter.

Now, nearly three years later, Carter is on trial in a controversial case that experts say raises new and contentious questions: Can a person be charged and convicted in someone's death even if she was not with the victim when he died? And can a person be found guilty of killing someone based solely on what she said in text messages?

Such questions are critical in a state such as Massachusetts, where assisting someone to commit suicide is not considered a crime.

The prosecution's most damning evidence against Carter, now 20: Dozens upon dozens of text messages they allege pushed Roy to commit suicide.

During opening statements Tuesday, prosecuting attorney Maryclare Flynn said Carter played a "sick game" with Roy's life and accused her of seeking sympathy and attention by being the "grieving girlfriend," ABC affiliate WCVB reported.

Carter's attorney, Joseph Cataldo, said Roy's suicidal tendencies predated his relationship with Carter.

"It was Conrad Roy's idea to take his own life; it was not Michelle's idea," Cataldo said, according to WCVB. "This was a suicide  a sad and tragic suicide, but not a homicide."

Roy's mother, Lynn, testified that although her son was "a little depressed," there was no indication he might kill himself, MassLive.com reported. He was a recent high school graduate who had just been accepted to Fitchburg State University to study business, she said.

The two exchanged hundreds of text messages for several days before Roy killed himself. In one, she implied that he would be better off dead: "You're finally going to be happy in heaven. No more pain. It's okay to be scared and it's normal. I mean, you're about to die."

They also texted early in the morning of July 12, 2014, hours before Roy's suicide. In some of the exchanges, Carter appeared to be faulting Roy for delaying it.

"So I guess you aren't gonna do it then, all that for nothing  I'm just so confused like you were so ready and determined," she said.

When Roy said he wanted to go back to sleep, Carter suggested that "now" is the best time to do it because everyone was still sleeping.

"Just go somewhere in your truck. And no one's really out right now because it's an awkward time," she said.

In another text that same day, she kept pushing.

"I thought you wanted to do this. The time is right and you're ready  just do it babe," she said.

Shortly after Roy died, Carter told a friend that she was talking to him on the phone when he killed himself.

"I helped ease him into it and told him it was okay  I could've easily stopped him or called the police but I didn't," she texted her friend.

Daniel Medwed, a law and criminal justice professor at Northeastern University, said Carter's text messages arguably encouraged Roy. What prosecutors will have to prove this week is whether Carter's encouragement resulted in his death.

"Prosecutors will have to prove that Carter causes Conrad Roy to kill himself and essentially caused his death," Medwed told The Washington Post. "Defense lawyers are going to argue that he's had suicidal tendencies predating their relationship. They're going to emphasize that he was alone in his car, that ultimately it was his decision. 

"There may be an issue on the extent to which she was aware of the risk. She knew he was suicidal, but did she know that he was going to go through with it?"

Carter was indicted in 2015 and appealed, taking the case to the state's Supreme Court. Last summer, the court ruled that she could stand trial for her alleged role in Roy's death. She faces up to 20 years in prison.

In the ruling, the court found that Carter's "virtual presence" at the time of the suicide and the "constant pressure" she had placed on Roy, who was in a delicate mental state, were enough proof for an involuntary manslaughter charge.

Medwed thinks the involuntary manslaughter charge is a stretch. Although assisted suicide through coercion is considered a crime in most states, Massachusetts is one of a few where it isn't.

"Usually, manslaughter charges involve direct action by the defendant  some type of horrific unintentional killing where the behavior disregarded a risk, like firing a gun into a crowd," Medwed said. "This is different."

David Siegel, a professor at New England Law Boston, agreed that the case has broken ground.

"This defendant acted remotely only through communication, through text messages, and that's different," Siegel said. "What I think is going to be significant, at least in the facts of this case, is that this was repeated, lengthy electronic communications between two young people. The issue is going to be whether that series of communications between those people under those circumstances amount to wanton and reckless conduct."

Carter's and Roy's ages and their relationship also would be critical, experts say, and Carter could argue that the text messages, although harrowing, are how teenagers communicate.

"We recognize that a lot of our conduct today is virtual," Siegel said. "A lot of our virtual conduct today is electronic, and we recognize that there can be just as serious consequences from electronic or digital or virtual actions as from physical actions in the physical world."

Carter waived her right to a jury trial Monday. A judge will hear her case and issue a verdict.

Medwed said choosing a bench trial over a jury trial is a savvy move on the defense's part.

"The idea is the judge has sort of seen it all and won't be shaken by the facts and horrible details," he said. "While jurors who are unaccustomed to the horrible nature of criminal activity, they could react emotionally to facts like these and hold it against her. A judge could be a little bit more dispassionate and objective in looking at the case."

Lindsey Bever contributed to this report.
Francisco "Frank" Moran, a longtime Camden councilman and lifelong city resident, won by a wide margin Tuesday in the city's Democratic mayoral primary election.

With 88 percent of the city's wards reporting, Moran, 48, was leading with 74 percent of votes cast, according to unofficial results reported by Camden County. The win means Moran, who faces no Republican opponent in this fall's election, is likely to be the city's next mayor.

Moran had the endorsement of Mayor Dana Redd, who announced earlier this year that she would not seek a third term. He also had the backing of South Jersey's Democratic network, which made it an uphill climb for his opponents.

Moran faced challengers Theo Spencer, 41, a Camden-raised web consultant, and Raymond Lamboy, 48, a Camden business leader and activist.

Moran, who is City Council president, ran on the accomplishments he and Redd have been touting in recent months: growing commercial development in the city that comes courtesy of state business tax incentives, a state takeover of the district's struggling schools, and a county police force created in 2013 following the disbanding of the city's longtime department.

Lamboy and Spencer campaigned against that record, arguing that Moran has, over the years, put political gains ahead of the best interests of the city's residents.

General elections in the heavily Democratic city of 77,000 are often seen as mere formalities, and the primaries often have voter turnout below 20 percent. Fewer than 2,000 people voted for Redd for mayor in the 2009 primary, with just over 7,100 people voting for her in the general election.

For decades, Camden has been among the poorest, most crime-ridden municipalities in the state. With a budget largely dependent on state aid, the city's mayor holds sway over millions of public dollars that go toward paying the city's bills.

First elected to council in 1997, Moran has since held a number of city and county government positions, including his current role as director of the Camden County Parks Department. Moran has said he would resign from that job if elected mayor.

Along with Moran, incumbent council members Angel Fuentes and Curtis Jenkins were reelected with 27 and 25 percent of the vote, respectively. Longtime community activist Sheila Davis was elected to her first term on City Council, earning 25 percent of votes cast.
HARRISBURG  A group of Philadelphia senators is championing language inserted into a state gambling bill that would divert about $2 million in casino revenues for city economic development and revitalization projects instead of sending it directly to schools or the city's general fund.

Its supporters argue it is smart public policy that will allow Philadelphia, like other cities that host casinos, to spread some of those funds to community groups for public interest projects.

Critics call it another form of WAMs, short for "walking-around money"  the long-assailed and largely obsolete practice of doling out tax dollars, with little or no accountability, to nonprofits, community groups, and other entities that legislators favor.

At the heart of the issue is how millions in gambling revenues are distributed every year in counties and municipalities that have casinos.

Under state law, casinos are required to kick back a portion of their slots revenues to their host community. In Philadelphia, that money, known as the local share assessment, is earmarked for the school district and the city's general fund.

But as legislators rush to cobble together budget-related legislation to expand gambling, as well as make a court-ordered fix to how much casinos pay in local share assessments, some in Philadelphia's Senate delegation have seized the opportunity to change how the city's take is distributed.

Under a bill approved last month by the GOP-controlled Senate, Philadelphia's local share dollars would increase  but some of the new money would be sent to the state Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED) to fund city-based development and revitalization projects.

Sen. Larry Farnese (D., Philadelphia), a key leader of a coalition advocating the change, said in an interview Tuesday that anyone in the city could apply for the DCED grants  including the school district  and that the state would make the final call on who gets the money.

"This isn't legislators going around and handing out checks," Farnese said. "Any group that is engaged in community or economic development, or involved in any project that is in the public interest, is going to have access to those dollars."

The way it stands now, Philadelphia gets about $7 million in local share dollars from SugarHouse Casino. By law, the first $5 million goes to the school district, and the rest to the city's general fund.

Statewide, casinos paid $95.5 million in local share assessments in the 2015-16 fiscal year, the last full-year figure available.

Under the Senate-passed bill, SugarHouse would pay $10 million annually for Philadelphia. The school district would continue to get the first $5 million; another $3 million would go to the city; and the remaining $2 million would go to DCED for the special projects, according to Senate officials.

Farnese and other Philadelphia Democrats who back the change note other communities that host casinos use some of their local share dollars for economic development and other projects.

Indeed, Montgomery County, home to Valley Forge Casino, funnels local share money through the Commonwealth Financing Authority, a state agency that in turn awards grants for environmental and other projects in the county, according to state officials.

And DCED administers local share funds for economic development projects in Washington and Fayette Counties, both of which have casinos, state officials said.

Still, Capitol insiders and other government officials privately acknowledge that legislators have a big say in who gets those grants. In fact, lawmakers submit lists of projects, in order of priority, that they want to see funded  and though officials at DCED score projects before awarding the grants, it is rare that legislative wish lists are ignored, according to one former state official familiar with the process who asked not to be identified.

"I think a lot of the programs at DCED are viewed as the most acceptable version of WAMs that can exist in today's culture," the state official said.

The city has taken a cautious approach to the proposed bill.

"The administration is obviously aware of this legislation," said city spokesman Mike Dunn. "We are monitoring its progress as it moves through both chambers, and we continue to be interested in working with members on both sides of the aisle toward a resolution that will be positive for the city and school district."

Philadelphia School District officials did not respond to a request for comment.

The Senate-passed bill is now in the GOP-controlled House of Representatives, where its fate is unclear. But some key Philadelphia Democrats are signaling support.

Rep. Ed Neilson (D., Philadelphia), who sits on the House Gaming Oversight Committee, said he can back the change as long as the school district and the city continue to receive at least the same amount of money that they do now.

"I'm OK with it as long as the city doesn't lose out on the deal and the school district stays whole," he said.

Asked whether the change would allow legislators to effectively hand out WAMs, he said: "We haven't had WAMs in Harrisburg for years. I don't even know what they are anymore."
The former manager of a Northwest Philadelphia mental health services facility has been sentenced to 30 months in prison and ordered to repay $607,067 she admitted embezzling over a 12-year period.

Sonja McQuillar, 51, of New Castle, Del., was sentenced Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Gene E.K. Pratter based on McQuillar's March guilty plea to theft and making false statements to authorities. The former director of health and information management at Northern Children's Services, McQuillar admitted creating phony invoices to pay family members, friends, and agency contractors for work they did not perform.

The charges against McQuillar in the embezzlement from Northern were the result of a tip to the Philadelphia Office of Inspector General. The nonprofit's administrators discovered the financial improprieties in June 2014.

The lost funds helped lead to Northern's public appeal for funds to help repair a broken boiler that had forced some buildings to close in winter at the agency's site on Ridge Avenue in Wissahickon.

"This case is an example of the most damaging kind of theft," city Inspector General Amy Kurland said in a statement. "The defendant stole taxpayer dollars that were meant to support at-risk children."

Assistant U.S. Attorney Michelle Morgan had sought a federal sentencing-guidelines prison term of 37 to 46 months. Defense attorney Jose Luis Ongay asked for a 24-month sentence, citing McQuillar's continuing care of her 14-year-old son and need to repay the stolen money.
Former FBI Director James Comey is scheduled to testify at 10 a.m. before the Senate Intelligence Committee in his first public appearance since President Trump abruptly fired him in May. Read more

WASHINGTON  In this politics-crazed city, they're comparing it to the Super Bowl.

Bars are opening early and serving Russian vodka specials. Business are planning for distracted work forces. Senators are canceling planned announcements, knowing their proposals would be little more than media roadkill, as Washington and much of the country focuses Thursday morning on fired FBI Director James Comey and his virtual showdown with President Trump.

Comey is scheduled to testify at 10 a.m. before the Senate Intelligence Committee in his first public appearance since Trump abruptly fired him in May.

A preview of his testimony caused an early storm Wednesday afternoon when the committee posted Comey's prepared remarks. In them, the former FBI director recounts with novelistic detail the instances in which he says Trump sought pledges of loyalty, asked him to back off one aspect of the FBI investigation into contacts between Trump allies and Russian officials, and urged Comey to publicly say the president wasn't personally under investigation.

All could provide fuel for Trump critics who argue that the president at the very least crossed a line by trying to exert political influence over what is meant to be an independent law enforcement agency, and at worst may have obstructed a critical probe into a foreign power's meddling in a U.S. election.

Comey's testimony makes clear that he did in fact tell Trump he was not the target of an investigation. But it also shows that the FBI chief was uncomfortable with the pressure from his new boss from the start. He memorialized their interactions in writing, refused to offer his allegiance, and eventually asked Attorney General Jeff Sessions to help him avoid any direct contact with Trump.

Many of the details he shared confirm previous news reports. Still, Comey burnishes them with drama.

"The President said, 'I need loyalty, I expect loyalty,'" he wrote of his one-on-one dinner with Trump at the White House Jan. 27. "I didn't move, speak, or change my facial expression in any way during the awkward silence that followed."

That sit-down was one of five meetings or phone calls Comey described in detail, down to the grandfather clock in the Oval Office. He tells how Trump tried to create a "patronage" relationship by trying to get Comey to ask to stay in his job, how the president complained that the Russia investigation had created a "cloud" over him, and how he urged Comey to publicly announce that the president wasn't a target. He also confirms that Trump asked him to back off his scrutiny of Michael Flynn, the national security adviser fired for misleading statements about his meetings with Russian officials.

"It is the most shocking single document compiled about the official conduct of the public duties of any president since the release of the Watergate tapes," Comey friend Benjamin Wittes wrote Wednesday afternoon on the Lawfare blog.

Gov. Christie, a Trump ally, downplayed the conversations as those of an outsider president who wasn't familiar with the norms of government.

"What you're seeing is a president who is now very publicly learning about the way people react to what he considers to be normal New York City conversation," Christie, a former federal prosecutor, said on MSNBC.

With the prospect it could shed light on the high-stakes investigations into Russia's attempts to influence last year's election and questions about whether the president's allies had a hand in any such interference, the hearing is being anticipated like a pivotal episode in a long-running series starring the reality-show president.

Television networks are preempting regular programming to focus on turf usually only covered by C-Span. Across the Capitol and much of the country, televisions and smart phones Thursday are expected to tune in. More than 150 reporters and photographers had requested access, including some from Swedish and Dutch news outlets.

The event is drawing comparisons to the kind of high-profile hearings that come around rarely. Think Oliver North testifying on Iran-contra in 1987 (his testimony drew more viewers than even the soap opera General Hospital) and Anita Hill in 1991, when 20 million tuned in as she spoke about sexual harassment at the hands of then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas.

And Trump aides are bracing for the prospect of a presidential tweet-storm in response to a man he has derided as a "showboat." Trump also has an afternoon speech planned.

"It could be a historic moment for Donald Trump and the American presidency, and one that ranks with a number of other times testimony before Congress has brought about big political shifts," Princeton political historian Julian Zelizer wrote on CNN.com.

Patricia Phalen, who has studied the intersection of politics and popular culture at George Washington University, said the build-up to the hearing reflects "the pop-culturization of politics," which she argues has risen as late-night entertainers and others have taken sharp aim at Trump.

Comey arrives at the hearing as a divisive if not central figure in the drama of the 2016 presidential race. He'll testify as Russia investigations continue in both chambers of Congress and, at the Justice Department, under the direction of Robert Mueller, his FBI predecessor now serving as special counsel to handle the politically-charged inquiry.

Senators in both parties have been gearing up for their chances to question Comey ever since his dismissal and news reports of Trump urging Comey to drop his scrutiny of Flynn. Comey's testimony asserts that he understood Trump's request to be limited to Flynn, and not about stopping the entire probe. "Regardless," Comey wrote, "it was very concerning, given the FBI's role as an independent investigative agency."

When Trump fired Comey last month, he and his aides initially cited Comey's handling last year of the investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server.

But that explanation quickly melted away. Trump added fuel to the controversy when he explained the decision to NBC News by citing "this Russia thing with Trump and Russia" that he argued "is a made-up story." (Numerous U.S. intelligence agencies and congressional leaders from both parties say Russia did attempt to influence the election, though there are still questions about whether Trump's campaign collaborated in it.)

The president and former FBI director seemed to have been circling one another ever since.

Trump told Russian officials visiting the Oval Office that Comey was "a nut job" and that his dismissal had relieved "great pressure."

And he seemed to threaten Comey, writing on Twitter that he "better hope that there are no 'tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!"

Days later came a New York Times report that Comey had written a memo memorializing a meeting in which Trump urged him to drop the Flynn inquiry, asking him to "let this go."

The explosive revelation figures to be a central issue in a day with few parallels on Capitol Hill.

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Potter County, Pa., where this photo was taken earlier this year, is among rural communities where adults have higher-than-average rates of Medicaid coverage, a new study finds. Read more

In states including Pennsylvania, rural America carried President Donald Trump to his election night upset last November.

Trump Country it may be, but rural counties and small towns also make up Medicaid Country  those parts of the nation whose low-income children and families are most dependent on the federal-state health insurance program, according to a report released Wednesday.

Medicaid's enrollment has swollen to more than 72 million in recent years, and the ranks of uninsured Americans has fallen to 9 percent in 2015 from 13 percent in 2013. That's largely due to the Affordable Care Act, which allowed states to expand Medicaid eligibility with federal funds. Thirty-one states, including Pennsylvania and New Jersey, did so.

Those gains may be in jeopardy under a GOP- and White House-backed health care measure called the American Health Care Act that would replace major parts of the ACA  known as Obamacare  and dramatically cut federal funding for Medicaid. The House passed the bill in May.

"There is no doubt that children and families in small towns would be disproportionately harmed by cuts to Medicaid," said Joan Alker, executive director of the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families.

According to the center's new report, Medicaid covered 45 percent of children and 16 percent of adults in small towns and rural areas in 2015. Those figures are lower in metropolitan areas  38 percent of children and 15 percent of adults.

Rural areas have larger Medicaid populations because more people with disabilities live there, household incomes tend to be lower, unemployment rates higher and jobs with employer-paid insurance less common, the Georgetown report said.

In Pennsylvania, 12 rural counties have adult Medicaid coverage rates that are higher than the national rural average of 16 percent. Around the U.S., many more children than adults are covered under Medicaid. But in five rural Pennsylvania counties, more than 45 percent of children (the national average for such areas) are covered by the program.

New Jersey and Delaware weren't included in the study because less than 2 percent of their populations live in rural areas.

In states that expanded Medicaid under Obamacare, the rate of uninsured people in small towns and rural areas fell by 11 percentage points between 2008-09 and 2014-15  from 22 percent to 11 percent, the report said. That was slightly larger than the decrease in metro areas of expansion states.

If the House-passed bill became law, Medicaid would be cut by more than $800 billion over 10 years. Alker said that would lead to higher uninsured rates and reduce Americans' access to health care.

The Republican-controlled Senate is expected to circulate a preliminary proposal of their repeal-and-replace legislation to members as early as this week. Compared with House members, senators are typically more sensitive to issues facing rural Americans because they represent entire states rather than districts often dominated by urban areas.

With the Senate edging closer to creating its own bill, disability and health advocates and Medicaid enrollees on Tuesday held "Don't Cap My Care" rallies in nine cities imploring Congress to reject efforts to cut Medicaid funding.

About 400 people gathered outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.  blind, disabled, elderly people among them  with many holding signs reading "Don't Mess With Medicaid" and "No Cuts, No Caps to Medicaid."

Ten million people with disabilities rely on Medicaid to help them live, work, attend school and participate in their communities.

Cindy Jennings, 53, of Lititz, just north of Lancaster, Pa., attended the Washington rally. She said she fears the loss of Medicaid coverage under the Republican plan or reduced coverage for her son, Matthew. He is disabled and unable to speak because he was born with a chromosome abnormality.

"It's frustrating and scary," she said. "I need to stay healthy to care for him."

Erickia Bartee, 31, of Owings Mills, Md., said Medicaid enables her to live in a group home and get drugs and other health services to live with cerebral palsy. "I will struggle to survive if my Medicaid benefits are cut," she said.

Other findings from the report:

Thirteen states have at least 20 percent of adults in rural areas enrolled in Medicaid. Arizona leads the nation with 34 percent in the program.

Rural Oregon saw the biggest gain in adults with insurance over the study's period. Its uninsurance rate dropped 19 percentage points, while adults in the state covered by Medicaid increased 17 percentage points.

In 14 states, more than half of children in rural areas are covered by Medicaid. Of those, Arkansas and Mississippi were the only states with 60 percent or more of children in rural areas on Medicaid.

The report defined America's rural areas and small towns as non-metropolitan counties, whose main urban areas have no more than 50,000 people.

Kaiser Health News, a nonprofit health newsroom whose stories appear in news outlets nationwide, is an editorially independent part of the Kaiser Family Foundation.
ATLANTIC CITY  In a city where the State of New Jersey has usurped much of the power of the mayor and City Council, the primary battles for both were nonetheless fiercely fought.

With unofficial results coming into campaign headquarters Tuesday night, Councilman Frank M. Gilliam Jr. watched on Facebook as his rival for the Democratic nominee for mayor, City Council President Marty Small Sr., addressed his constituents a few blocks away on Atlantic Avenue in apparent defeat shortly before 10 p.m.

Gilliam then declared victory as his supporters hoisted him on their shoulders, prayed and cheered. With 100 percent of the vote in, Small had a 100 vote edge in the machine vote, according to posted results, but Gilliam had a 485 vote edge in vote by mail ballots, giving him the apparent victory.

"As we move forward, Christie is more or less a thing of the past," Gilliam, 47, said. " Our job is to build and grow Atlantic City."

If the unofficial results stand, Gilliam will face Republican incumbent Mayor Don Guardian, 63, in the November general election.

Election officials said about 1,000 mail-in ballots had been submitted countywide, with much of that expected to be from Atlantic City. Unofficial tally of the vote-by-mail vote had Gilliam with 694 and Small with 209, which was expected to give the election to Gilliam. Small held a small edge in the machine votes, according to results called in to campaigns.

All the candidates were anticipating the Jan. 16, 2018, Inauguration Day ending the Chris Christie era, and were hopeful that the locally unpopular state takeover would end with it, as promised by the leading candidates to succeed him. Four candidates ran for a chance to unseat Guardian in November.

Guardian has governed Atlantic City during an exceptionally bumpy era, in which the nearly broke city flirted with insolvency, weathered the closures of five casinos and fought unsuccessfully to stave off a Christie-led takeover in which the city government is being run by a law firm in West Orange.

Former Republican Sen. Jeffrey Chiesa and his law firm have billed more than $1.1 million for services related to the Atlantic City takeover and have overruled City Council on matters including the privatization of public works and the regulation of rolling chairs on the Boardwalk. The state also has moved to unilaterally modify public safety worker contracts but has been stymied by court orders in efforts to lay off half the fire department.

Small, 43, fought the governor alongside Mayor Guardian during numerous trips to Trenton. He will keep his seat on city council.

Gilliam, an at-large councilman, stayed more on the sidelines of the battle to keep the state out, and had the support of a super PAC, Our Atlantic City, that took out billboards and did opposition research against Small.

Both candidates flung some mud at the other in the closing weeks, dredging up behavior from decades ago.

On Primary Day, Small, dressed in a red campaign T-shirt, rallied his red-clad troops in a huddle and cheer inside his storefront Atlantic Avenue headquarters and urged them to call everyone in their contact list to get out the vote.

The suit-and-tie clad Gilliam, who said his campaign had knocked on 1,500 doors, had the aid of a voter turnout specialist from Maryland, who was holed up in his Atlantic Avenue headquarters. He said his campaign had "raised the bar" and brought "a different sense" to the fray. He had the backing of the local Democratic party and raised $87,000 in donations, according to recent campaign filings.

Small reported $34,000 in contributions.

"It got a little dirty, but politics is what it is," Gilliam said.

"The Reds are out here in big numbers," Small said. "We just have to tell the voters why Atlantic City's problems are big, but the solution is Small. Here come the Reds."

Also running were Jimmy Whitehead, a 60-year-old Navy veteran who grew up in Washington, D.C., who wants to turn the city into a cybersecurity hub, and Fareed Abdullah, 38, a substitute teacher who previously has run for city council.
Incumbents swept Democratic primary races for the state Assembly in South Jersey, according to unofficial results compiled by the Associated Press. On the Republican side, the loser in the only contested race was a candidate who had earned notoriety for using sexually crude language toward a woman.

In the First District, Democratic incumbents Bob Andrzejczak and R. Bruce Land were unopposed. On the Republican side, James Sauro and Robert Campbell each secured spots in November's general election, beating Brian McDowell. It was the lone South Jersey district in which the Republican primary was contested.

McDowell, a North Wildwood real estate broker, unmarried father of three, and backer of President Trump, is a former contestant on Trump's TV show, The Apprentice. He lost the support of the local GOP establishment after video emerged of him seemingly taunting a woman to have sex with him.

"It would be really good. Listen, you never know," he is heard telling the woman in a bar. He said later she was a friend.

In the Second District Democratic primary, incumbent Vincent Mazzeo and running mate John Armato beat out a host of challengers. Republicans Vince Sera and Brenda Taube were unopposed.

In the Third District, Democratic incumbents John Burzichelli and Adam Taliaferro defeated challenger John Kalnas. They will face Republicans Philip Donohue and Linwood Donelson in November.

In the Sixth District, incumbent Democrats Louis Greenwald and Pamela Lampitt easily beat Frederick Dande of Cherry Hill. Winston Extavour and David Moy will run on the Republican ticket in November.

In the Seventh District's Democratic primary, incumbent Herb Conaway and newcomer Carol Murphy defeated challenger Jennifer Hiniu Chuang. Octavia Scott and Mike Piper were unopposed on the Republican side.


President Trump plans to nominate Christopher Wray, a former Justice Department official who served as Gov. Christie's lawyer during the George Washington Bridge lane-closures scandal, to lead the FBI.

Christie told reporters last week that he first met Wray when the two served in the Bush administration. Christie was the U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey, and Wray was the deputy attorney general.

The Republican New Jersey governor declined to say whether he had recommended Wray to Trump, who announced his intention to name Wray to the FBI post on Wednesday.

"I don't talk about what advice I give to the president of the United States," Christie said.

But on Wednesday, he emphasized his confidence in Wray.

When I was simply at the lowest point of my professional life, right after Bridgegate was revealed  I know every good lawyer in New York, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, and the first call I made and the only call I made was Chris Wray, Christie said on MSNBC.

After serving as deputy attorney general, Wray led the Justice Department's criminal division. Christie said he worked with Wray during the Justice Department's investigation into an accounting scandal at the pharmaceutical company Bristol-Myers Squibb.

In 2005, the company agreed to pay $300 million as part of a deferred prosecution agreement.

"I have the utmost confidence in Chris. He's an outstanding lawyer," Christie told reporters in Trenton last week. "He has absolute integrity and honesty. I think the president certainly would not be making a mistake if he asked Chris Wray to be FBI director."

Christie hired Wray to represent him in the federal criminal investigation into the George Washington Bridge lane-closing scandal.

Defense attorneys for two former Christie allies had issued a subpoena for the cellphone the governor used during the September 2013 scheme and its aftermath, but a federal judge ruled the subpoena was too broad.

A jury in November convicted Bill Baroni, Christie's former top executive appointee at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and Bridget Anne Kelly, Christie's former deputy chief of staff, of intentionally misusing Port Authority resources and conspiracy, among other charges.

Prosecutors accused Baroni, Kelly, and former Port Authority official David Wildstein of causing massive traffic jams near the bridge in order to punish a mayor for his refusal to endorse Christie's 2013 reelection campaign.

Wildstein pleaded guilty and awaits sentencing. Baroni and Kelly, who were each sentenced to prison, are appealing their guilty verdicts. Christie was not charged in the case.

The president announced his decision to nominate Wray on Twitter on Wednesday morning..

The pick drew quick praise from U.S. Rep. Patrick Meehan (R., Pa.), a former U.S. attorney in Philadelphia, who worked with Wray on a corporate fraud task force after the Enron scandal.

"His judgment is sound, his command of complex topics complete, and his demeanor even-heeled," Meehan said in a statement. "He was previously confirmed by unanimous consent for a top position in the Justice Department and he should be as well-received by the Senate again. I commend the president for his patient search and his wise selection."

Trump's announcement came one day before the FBI director whom Trump fired last month, James Comey, is to testify in public on Capitol Hill for the first time since his dismissal.

Comey, during his appearance before the Senate intelligence committee, is expected to describe his encounters with Trump in the weeks before his firing May 9. Comey could offer new details regarding discussions with Trump about the federal investigation into Russia's election meddling and possible coordination with the Trump campaign.

The White House and its allies have been looking for ways to offset that potentially damaging testimony and have been working on strategies aimed at undermining Comey's credibility.

Staff writers Jonathan Tamari and Maddie Hanna contributed to this article, which also contains information from the Associated Press.

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When the traditional Hawaiian canoe Hokule'a set sail four years ago, the wayfinders on board  men and women navigating the open sea by a map of stars  vowed to seek a renewed sense of self and share with the world a treasured message: Malama Honua.

In Hawaiian, it means to care for Island Earth, a mission especially important to Pacific Islanders, whose home and economy is under constant threat from the rising seas and coral bleaching caused by a warming planet.

This week, the wayfinders will return to a Hawaii that on Tuesday took a defiant stand, becoming the first state to legally implement portions of the landmark Paris climate agreement that President Trump chose to abandon.

"Climate change is real, regardless of what others may say," Hawaii Gov. David Ige said at a bill signing ceremony Tuesday in Honolulu. "Hawaii is seeing the impacts first hand. Tides are getting higher, biodiversity is shrinking, coral is bleaching, coastlines are eroding, weather is becoming more extreme. We must acknowledge these realities at home."

Ige said the state had a "kuleana," or responsibility, to the Earth.

"Like the voyaging canoe Hokule'a, we are one canoe, one island, one planet," the governor said. "We cannot afford to mess this up. We are setting a course to change the trajectory of Hawaii and islanders for generations to come."

With Ige's signature, two bills became law.

The first, SB 559, expanded strategies and mechanisms to reduce greenhouse gas emissions statewide, a tenet of the Paris agreement. The second, HB 1578, established the Carbon Farming Task Force within the state's Office of Planning, to support the development of sustainable agriculture practices in Hawaii, a skill native islanders had once mastered before planes, freighters and Amazon linked them to the mainland.

Both bills were introduced in January, after President Trump moved into the White House and began what many climate scientists felt was a wholesale dismantling of the Environmental Protection Agency and a reversal of the steps taken by the Obama administration to combat global warming.

They weren't meant to be signed into law for several more weeks, Scott Glenn, an environmental adviser to Gov. Ige, told The Washington Post. But after Trump announced the United States would exit the Paris agreement, Glenn and his co-chair on the Sustainable Hawaii Initiative recommended the bill signing and ceremony be moved up because "this was of such national importance," he said.

Senate majority leader Sen. Kalani English, D, introduced SB 559 and said in a statement Tuesday that it gave Hawaii the "legal basis to continue adaptation and mitigation strategies . . . despite the Federal government's withdrawal from the treaty."

Gov. Ige also committed Hawaii to the U.S. Climate Alliance, a collection of 12 states and Puerto Rico who have vowed to uphold the Paris climate agreement on the state level.

It's not the first time this year that Hawaii has inserted itself into the fray of national controversy. In March, Hawaii became the first state to file a lawsuit against Trump's revised travel ban because, it claimed, the order would negatively impact its many international students, tourism and Muslim population.

The state has so far prevailed in the suit, prompting Attorney General Jeff Sessions' now-infamous remark that he was "amazed that a judge sitting on an island in the Pacific can issue an order that stops the president of the United States."

That Hawaii would take such a firm stance on environmental issues should not surprise anyone, Darren Lerner, director of the Sea Grant College Program at the University of Hawaii, told the Post.

"First and foremost, for Hawaii in particular, the science really speaks clearly," Lerner said. "Due to its vulnerability and relative isolation, it needs to move forward on these issues."

Lawmakers and environmental leaders in Hawaii are quick to say that there, the environment and the economy are inextricably linked. Tourists flock to the collection of islands to experience its beaches and explore its coral reefs, both of which are threatened by warming and rising waters.

In late May, the islands suffered the highest tides the state has seen in its 120 years of recording them. Called "king tides," the water creeps up onto shore, swallowing beaches and flooding streets. King tides occur during the summer solstice and stretch the island's high tides even higher, Lerner said.

Rainfall patterns are shifting and the islands are experiencing more extreme weather, Lerner said, which was most evident during hurricane season in recent years. The 2015 season set five records, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The mounting evidence and creeping threat has thrust Hawaii into what Lerner called "a very significant rebirth" and commitment to understanding and addressing climate change.

And the voyage of Hokule'a, with its wayfinders and message of Malama Honua, has offered the state a symbol for that renewed spirit of sustainability.

Building Hokule'a and training the wayfinders has been the life work of Nainoa Thompson, president of the Polynesian Voyaging Society, whose late best friend Lacy Veach was one of the first astronauts to leave our planet's orbit.

At the bill signing ceremony Tuesday, Thompson spoke of Veach and how he compared the Hawaiian islands to Earth, "the blue island in space." Veach is who inspired Thompson to send wayfinders on Hokule'a to learn from people around the globe fighting for the environment.

Thompson recalled Veach encouraging the wayfinders to bring their knowledge from the voyage "home to Hawaii."

On Tuesday, Thompson said there were six navigators out on the water, just hours away from finding their way back home.

"When they find Hawaii, I will call them and tell them the Hawaii they are coming home to is powerful, strong, united and willing to do the right thing," Thompson said.

Veach, who was on board the space shuttle Columbia in 1992 as it flew over Hawaii, would be proud of the islands and his people, Thompson said.

"We need places to shine the light strongly. We need places of hope, we need places that the rest of the world can turn to and understand real success," he said. "That's what happened today."

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A bipartisan measure that provides for automatic sealing of criminal records for minor offenses was voted out of committee in Harrisburg Tuesday, heading to a vote in the state Senate. The "Clean Slate" legislation  Senate Bill 529, along with its companion, House Bill 1419  has the potential to be the first of its kind in the nation. Sponsors say that by automatically sealing criminal records for certain offenses, people with criminal pasts will have a better chance of finding work. The records would still be available to law enforcement.

The measure was cosponsored by State Sen. Scott Wagner (R., York), State Sen. Anthony Williams (D., Phila.), and 24 others from both parties. "Someone who has committed a minor offense 20 years ago should not still be judged for that crime today," Wagner said in a statement.

Gov. Wolf has promised to sign the measure if it reaches him. The House version is still in committee.
Bill Cosby arrives for his sexual assault trial at the Montgomery County Courthouse. Read more

Cliff Huxtable is dead and Bill Cosby killed him.

The jury's verdict in the current sex-assault case doesn't matter. Bill Cosby's reputation is in the landfill, mixed with Cliff Huxtable's ashes. Cosby has traded designer-label sweaters for, likely, the label of a sexual predator.

The loss of reputation, what some cultures call "face," is enough punishment for the former Jell-O Pudding front man, some believe. I am not one of them.

Looking past Cosby's cloak of celebrity, it seems clear he raped, sexually abused, and humiliated women for decades. If you don't believe that, you have to disbelieve accusatory stories told by more than 50 women who came forward. I wonder how many more women could not bring themselves to do that.

He survived a smudge on his squeaky-clean image when his love child Autumn Jackson identified him as her father and he admitted it in 1997. That proved adultery he delicately framed as a "rendezvous." Things always sound pretty in French. His wife, Camille, did not attend the opening day of the trial.

Cosby is a unique case because his shield was not just "celebrity." Sometimes celebrity can work against you, as in the case of dunderhead Justin Bieber. Is any cop or prosecutor going to cut him a break?

Cosby's celebrity was varnished by his likability, a smiling mug many of us have seen all our lives  the totally acceptable, nonthreatening black male who comes across just as if he is one of "us."

Like O.J. Simpson.

If Cosby walks, there will be no riots.

If Cosby walks, will there be cheers, as followed Simpson's acquittal in his criminal trial?

If there are cheers, will they come from the black community or the white community? You think both? If Cosby walks, you could ask, as with O.J., how a man so much a part of the system can be cheered for beating the system?

Or if his race exacerbated the drama surrounding him. There may be some truth in that, but the furor is driven more by the moral failings of someone whom the media proclaimed "America's Dad." He's gone from paternal to predator in the minds of many.

In the O.J. trial, prosecutor Marcia Clark said she made a big mistake when she failed to discuss race with the jurors, nine of whom were black. The jury had 10 women and two men, only two with college degrees, all Democrats, only one of whom regularly read a newspaper.

For Cosby, two of the 12 jurors are African American, drawn from Allegheny County, in the western part of the state. The prosecution had challenged some black jurors, and the defense challenged some women jurors.

Does jockeying over race and gender matter? When a single vote can prevent conviction, yes it does.

Many Americans believe that defendants are entitled to be judged by a jury of their peers. A peer is someone of the same legal class, according to one dictionary definition, someone equal to another in ability, qualifications, age, background, social status, possibly race and gender.

But a jury of peers is a myth, a concept that "some lawyers may have latched on to" from British law harking back to the Magna Carta, says Jules Epstein, law professor and director of advocacy programs at Temple University's Beasley School of Law.

In the United States, the Sixth Amendment guarantees "a public trial by an impartial jury," Epstein says. The system seeks "a fair cross-section of the community."

If defined narrowly, the judgment-by-peers concept is foolish.

How do you select a panel of peers for cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer? Who are Cosby's peers  multimillionaire African Americans with Ph.D.s?

If we had a jury of true peers for every defendant, it's hard to see how prosecutors ever would get a conviction.

That's why the Constitution stresses impartiality, says Epstein.

That presents its own problems.

It was hard to find jurors who were impartial about Cosby, who was one of America's best-loved entertainers even before he invented Cliff Huxtable and then killed him.

The jurors are not truly Cosby's peers and are challenged to judge him on the facts of the case, not on the TV Emmys he won. Today, the words The Cosby Show have a malignant feel.
The Provident Mutual Life Insurance building sits behind a tall chain-link fence as its being renovated by the city at the corner of 46th and Market. Read more

Philadelphia spent nearly $50 million over the last three years on construction and designs for a new police headquarters in West Philadelphia.

Contractors gutted and rehabbed the old Provident Mutual Life Insurance Co. at 4601 Market St. and developed plans so detailed that arborists had selected the types of trees and shrubs to dot the property.

Last month Mayor Kenney announced he would scrap those plans in favor of moving police to 400 N. Broad St., the former home of the Inquirer, Daily News, and Philly.com. The city offered several reasons for the move: The building is large enough to include two district police stations (the Sixth and the Ninth), a toxicology lab, office functions, the emergency dispatch center, and the morgue.

The North Broad Street location has a parking garage, which the other building did not have. And the location, Police Commissioner Richard Ross has said, is more central and convenient for officers, many of whom live in the Northeast.

But whether the $50 million can ever be recouped remains to be seen. Kenney's office has said the city hopes to recover money through the sale of the West Philadelphia building and other city properties that can be consolidated as a result of the new plan.

City Council approved up to $250 million in borrowing in 2014 to develop the 15-acre campus for the Police Department, the medical examiner, and other Health Department offices.

Since then, dozens of contractors have worked inside the neoclassical building in West Philadelphia.

It cost $4 million to purchase the property and about $13 million for gutting and cleaning, environmental remediation, demolition, and electrical work. About $11 million was spent to redo the roof and facade, and $18 million covered design work.

The public property commissioner, Bridget Collins-Greenwald, said aspects of the design can be reused in the new space. All the rehabbing makes the building more valuable to buyers, she said.

"These are things we think will make that property marketable now," Collins-Greenwald said. "It's weather-tight. It's more sellable."

Everett Gillison, a former deputy mayor who worked on the West Philadelphia plan under Mayor Michael Nutter, said he was surprised by the decision to move to North Broad Street. Gillison said the designs were too specific to the Market Street space to replicate in a new location.

"It made no sense to me because of all of the evaluations and efforts that were made.  For us, this was a four-, five-, maybe even six-year move," Gillison said. "This was the largest project we would undertake. It was a lot of work."

Gillison said a 3D model provided floor-by-floor renderings of the building including "design features, color, carpeting, almost down to the kind of desks and what the commissioner's office would look like."

Center City locations, including the North Broad site, were considered at the time, Gillison said, but the planning team favored a less centralized location, to bring economic development to the West Philadelphia neighborhood. There were also security reasons for keeping the police away from Center City and separate from emergency dispatch, which will move into the North Broad Street building.

"I wanted to make sure you didn't have everything in one facility, in case it were to go down," Gillison said.

Police are slated to move from the dilapidated four-story building at 750 Race St, known as the Roundhouse, by spring 2020.

The city has estimated the sale of the Roundhouse, the Medical Examiner's Office, and the Sixth District headquarters at 11th and Vine Streets could bring in $50 million. The move into the North Broad location, which will house about 1,000 employees, will cost about $290 million, according to city estimates.

"By selling off three city buildings and locating all their functions into one, we are putting three buildings back on the tax roll," city spokeswoman Lauren Hitt said.

Collins-Greenwald said the city hopes for a development deal by the end of the year for the Market Street property. A request for proposals will go out at the end of the month.

Time will tell whether the decision is a waste of taxpayer money or a smart pivot, said Michael Masch, a former city and state budget director.

"If they're able to leverage what they've done to some other use that stimulates economic development in that part of West Philly  it'll be worth it," Masch said. "And if it turns out to have been completely wasted money and the site sits abandoned for a very long time, then that will be unfortunate."

Still, Masch cautioned the city against selling too quickly.

When he was city budget director under Mayor Ed Rendell, the city moved employees out of the City Hall annex building, which sat empty for years, prompting complaints. The building eventually became the Courtyard Marriott.

"Frankly my counsel to the mayor and the administration would be to be patient," Masch said. "They should not do a fire sale on the West Philly site, and they'll take some heat for that, but in the life of cities things move slowly, and these large development projects take time."
President Trump, who is still calling for a travel ban, prepares to board the Marine One helicopter at the White House Wednesday. Read more

In this era of anti-immigrant rage, nothing has infuriated me more than its impact on Iraqis who helped the U.S. military at great risk to their lives.

So, as President Trump tweets up a storm demanding that the courts restore his "travel ban" on (mainly Muslim) immigrants, I'm happy to write a good-news immigration story. It concerns the reversal of a cruel injustice the U.S. bureaucracy perpetrated on the Albaiedhani family, whose sons worked as interpreters for the U.S. Army.

This reversal reflects the dedication of Peter Farley, the U.S. Army officer who went out on daily patrols with Wisam Albaiedhani. Like so many U.S. officers who have worked tirelessly to rescue their 'terps, Farley recognized what Americans owe to those Iraqis  and the shame of failing to pay that debt.

The Albaiedhani family paid a high price for its close association with U.S. forces. Radical Shiite militiamen shot Khalid Albaiedhani in the face and sent Wisam a bullet wrapped in cloth; they murdered an uncle who had also worked as an interpreter. The brothers escaped to the United States, helped by Farley, and found jobs, but had been trying for years to rescue their parents and younger siblings in Baghdad.

After five years of extreme security vetting, the family was told it had cleared all hurdles for visas; the parents sold their home and all their possessions and were prepared to fly from Baghdad for Massachusetts last August, only to have the U.S. government suddenly withhold and then deny their visas  no reason given, no chance of appeal. Wisam got the final notice last year on the day before Thanksgiving.

Such denials are almost never reversed. Until this week, the family was living in limbo in Baghdad, crowded in with relatives, under intense fear of militia reprisals with little hope. Then, suddenly, came word, via the brothers' pro bono lawyer working with the International Refugee Assistance Project, that the denial had indeed been rescinded, pending one last security check.

"We still can't believe it. My dad had heart issues in the last three weeks and was hospitalized in Baghdad, but he was jumping like a little kid," Wisam told me by phone from Haverhill, Mass. "We are trying to balance excitement with caution," Farley told me, given the memory of how things can suddenly take a bad turn.

So how did this near miracle happen? Much of the credit goes to Farley, a former elementary school teacher now working for Veterans Affairs in Rhode Island, who volunteered to fight in Iraq because he felt it was his patriotic duty. He wound up training Iraqi military police, with Wisam constantly beside him.

Farley mobilized a petition in support of the family on Change.org that garnered 22,000 signatures from all over the country. He asked signatories to contact their local representatives and ask them to send letters of support for the Albaiedhanis.

He also reached out to Massachusetts senators and congressmen, in his and in Wisam's home districts, and beyond to send letters of support, tracking down Democratic Congressman Seth Moulton, a four-tour Iraq veteran on Facebook. Moulton replied personally and invited Wisam to speak at a Veterans' Day commemoration in his district, where many of the vets thanked Wisam for his service.

"Not a lot of Americans know what these vets went through," Wisam told me last year. "Not a lot of Americans know what we interpreters went through."

Farley knows. "Wisam was a veteran," he told me, with emotion. "Wisam and his family sacrificed more because they had to stay in Iraq and I could come home to the USA."

Most powerful among their support letters, says Farley, was one from a Gold Star mother, Ida Gonzalez, whose fallen son, Specialist Michael L. Gonzalez, also trained Iraqi police. She has become a friend of Wisam's, Farley says, "despite the fact that her son was killed by masked men in the name of Islam. She was able to differentiate between [that and] good Muslims who want the best for their country."

All this material was forwarded in support of the Albaiedhanis' case. "When agencies know there are eyes on it they do pay attention to individual cases," says Farley. But this Iraq vet is fearful that every day Wisam's family still has to wait for their visas increases the chance that they may suffer militia reprisals.

And Wisam tells me he's concerned that Trump is again pushing for a broad travel ban against Muslims, or at minimum a temporary halt to refugee resettlement. "I'm afraid he could push this through the Supreme Court and this would put my family in jeopardy," he said. "My family has been living in limbo since August, and we hope it won't take more years for them to get here."

From his lips to the Supreme Court justices' ears.
The Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper, reported June 4, 2017, that Harvard revoked admission offers to at least 10 prospective freshmen over offensive online messages. Read more

Branded the first casualties of a nation-wide 'college meme war,' ten students were uninvited to join the incoming freshman class of Harvard University due to the dissemination of controversial memes. Frankly, they deserved it.

As a tech-savvy millennial and a comic combatant in this so called "college meme war," I enjoy the relief that a witty meme can provide just as much as the next sleep-deprived college student. As an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania  a part of the Ivy League  I am a member of our own meme page whimsically dubbed the "Official Unofficial Penn Squirrel Catching Club." With more than 15,000 followers  more than the entire undergraduate student body  the page serves as a place of comical respite in a demanding academic environment.

Some of the group's favorite topics: comparing the elite of the Wharton business school to the snakes of Slytherin from the Harry Potter series and lampooning our university president, Amy Gutmann, for her ever-growing salary.

At the end of the day, these sorts of memes can be simply chalked up as light-hearted banter between students, but what happened at Harvard crossed the line between humorous commentary and hate speech.

At Harvard, what started as a typical college meme group turned ugly when a smaller splinter group formed. The group was dedicated to sharing controversial and offensive memes. Some of the memes mocked sexual assault, ethnic minorities, the Holocaust, and most disturbingly, the death of children.

One post called the hypothetical hanging of a Mexican child "pinata time."

When the university administration caught wind of the disturbing posts, they withdrew the acceptances of these students on the grounds that the university reserves the right to withdraw an offer of admission if an admitted student "engages or has engaged in behavior that brings into question their honesty, maturity or moral character."

The students' dismissals has reignited a debate about the the nature of the Internet.

Some disagreed with the university's actions on the grounds of privacy  that it is not the university's right to pry into the conversions of their students on social media sites. Others such as Erica Goldberg, an assistant professor at Ohio Northern Law who has weighed in on the case, consider inflammatory memes to be as "unabashedly irreverent" as the popular card game Cards Against Humanity, "whose purpose is to be as cleverly offensive as possible."

Outside of university guidelines, under normal circumstances, posting controversial memes such as these would simply be exercising one's freedom of speech, but these are not normal circumstances. It's no secret among millennials that universities have been monitoring the social media pages of prospective students  it has been happening since the beginning of social media.

These students were applying to Harvard University, one of the most prestigious and sought-after universities in the country. They were surely smart enough to know that what they were saying on social media was not private and had the potential to influence their admission.

To draw humor from topics such as the Holocaust and the death of children is unjustifiable. Even the "cleverly offensive" can still be offensive, and to say that a meme is "unabashedly irreverent" is the modern, digital version of a high-school bully saying that his antics are just jokes.

Those who attend elite universities such as Harvard are supposedly the leaders of tomorrow, and to allow students to spout such distasteful content within the confines of these digital echo-chambers is a dangerous precedent to have. Harvard made the right call.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

James Meadows is an editorial intern through the University of Pennsylvania's RealArts writing program. E-mail: jmeadows@philly.com. Twitter: @jameadows95
Secretary of State George Marshall visited Harvard on June 5, 1947, to give a commencement address. In it, he laid out his vision for the Marshall Plan, a framework for U.S. investment in European reconstruction after World War II.

One of his worries was that the burden of power and influence had fallen on an American people still on the whole underprepared for it. Whatever the good intentions of ordinary Americans might have been, the fact was that, in his words, "the people of this country are distant from the troubled areas of the earth and it is hard for them to comprehend the plight and consequent reactions of the long-suffering peoples." Moreover, the world situation was "of such enormous complexity that the very mass of facts presented to the public by press and radio make it exceedingly difficult for the man in the street to reach a clear appraisement of the situation."

Seventy years after Marshall's compelling articulation of a vision for American links to Europe, we find ourselves in an America full of fog and confusion  beset by a whirlwind of fictions bruited about as facts  and as distant in our sympathies from the troubled areas of the earth as most of us have seen in our lifetimes. Current circumstances might incline some to think that the time has arrived not to celebrate the Marshall legacy but to bury it.

It strikes me, therefore, that this should be a moment to recommit to the cause of connection that Marshall identified as urgent. Figuring out concretely how to do so is no small matter, however, because the geopolitical situation has changed profoundly since 1947. These shifts also seem to have been accompanied by a diminishment in U.S. foreign policy foresight.

We rarely say it out loud, but three American administrations have now moved steadily away from Europe. Despite the Blair-Bush alliance, the George W. Bush administration castigated "old Europe." The Obama administration pivoted toward Asia and devoted relatively little attention to the euro crisis, and scarcely more to the refugee crisis. This was the case despite the United States' having been a central cause, ultimately, of both crises, given our destabilization of global financial markets through mortgage-backed securities and our destabilization of the Middle East through the invasion of Iraq. The Trump administration has moved away more aggressively, of course.

The rise of China as the only genuine global competitor to the United States is reason enough, a foreign policy realist would say, for the United States to shift its energies and resources from the Atlantic to the Pacific Rim and to seek to nudge Europe toward assuming more proactive leadership in its own defense. But realism comes in many flavors  and this is where we come to the more important point, the issue of decline in American foreign policy understanding.

Last week H.R. McMaster and Gary Cohn, President Trump's national security adviser and chief economic adviser, respectively, published a statement of this administration's foreign policy principles in the Wall Street Journal. If we trace a 70-year arc leading from the realism of Marshall to that of McMaster and Cohen, we have no choice but to acknowledge a diminishment.

In his brief, eloquent commencement address, Marshall organized his approach to foreign policy around a key idea that "any successful action on the part of the United States requires an understanding on the part of the people of America of the character of the problem and the remedies to be applied." To this end, Marshall walked his audience through a concise analysis of the economic and political problems facing Europe at the end of the war, not merely naming them but dissecting and explaining them. The achievement of peace, which brings security, required, Marshall argued, a policy directed "not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos." Restoring a working economy would permit the development of political and social conditions that would ward off desperation and chaos, precisely by enabling the construction of free institutions.

This formulation rested on three important ideas:

First, there was the idea that successful foreign policy actions require domestic political work: the cultivation through argument of a shared understanding among the people why the action is needed and how it is expected to work. Second, that successful foreign policy requires a big-picture diagnosis of the conditions that are causing desperation, and a commitment to bringing about conditions that ward those off. Third, that our strategic interest encompasses a moral interest in free institutions as the better solution, the more permanent solution, among the array of options, to the problems of desperation and chaos.

None of these ideas is present in McMaster and Cohn's essay. They assert that we need to do more to defeat terrorism, but provide no explanation of the "character of the problem." They complain of trade deficits but provide no big picture of the challenges facing the global economy and their consequences for hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos. They ignore what is surely the biggest threat to our prosperity, namely climate change.

Their eschewal of any effort to cultivate a shared understanding in the American people of the character of the problems defining the world today reflects an absence of comprehension on their part of what politics is  the achievement of shared understandings, shared at least by a majority, to ground and stabilize the actions of a democracy. Similarly, as they list the tools and goals of their foreign policy, "military strength" comes first; diplomacy is an afterthought. They see no moral interest intrinsic in our strategic interests, instead viewing the world as "an arena where nations, nongovernmental actors, and businesses engage and compete for advantage." They seek bare advantage, not peace.

This brings me back to my suggestion that we ought to take this moment not merely to celebrate but also to revive Marshall's vision. As successive American governments have pulled away from Europe, they have neglected one other important element of foreign policy foresight. Human societies are learning organizations.

Just as individuals take on shapes responsive to the adversaries on whom their attention is concentrated, so too do nations. In 1954, as part of fighting the Cold War, the United States added the phrase "under God" to thePledge of Allegiance, thereby dividing the phrase "one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all." The goal was to distinguish the theistic United States from the atheistic Soviet Union. Paradoxically, we thereby took the conflict into our midst, driving a wedge between the secular and the faithful with regard to the capacity of each group to embrace a basic ritual of affiliation.

As the United States pivots toward Asia and seeks to counter China's rising power, we find ourselves modulating our educational practices in the direction of Chinese competitors who outperform us in math and science. We've shifted our educational investments away from the humanities and social sciences and toward science, technology, engineering, and mathematics; we've developed a far more extensive regime of high-stakes tests. Consequent to this is the underpreparation of our citizenry for their civic responsibilities. Studies show a decline of time spent on social studies in K-12 classrooms over the past decade and a half.

To counteract the gravitational pull in the direction of our main competitor, we Americans need tight relationships with our friends in Europe, whose political systems are like our own, who recognize the value of an education for citizenship, and who continue to preserve an education in the humanities and social sciences as well as in STEM fields. We need a learning partnership with, for instance, Britain, whose traditions of constitutional rights and decision-making through parliamentary debate provide the world's longest-lived example of free institutions. We need context and occasion for relearning that a shared moral interest in itself supplies a strategic interest.

We Americans need these things not just for our own advantage but also so that we may again equip ourselves to meet our responsibilities in the world.

Danielle Allen is a political theorist at Harvard University and a contributing columnist for the Washington Post. This column is adapted from her recent keynote address at a 70th anniversary celebration for the Marshall Scholarship at Harvard University.
Removing dust and bacteria from the air could significantly cut the costs associated with poor lung health  and a technology to do just that is being trialled by AHDB Pork at Harper Adams University. It provides cleaner air although, at first glance, the pig pens dont look at all clean.

In fact, a startling amount of dust is seen clinging to surfaces and that is the key to how it works: electrostatic particle ionisation (EPI) ionises (or charges) dust and bacteria particles so they are removed from the air and instead stick to each other, the pen railings and floors where they cant be inhaled by pigs or stockmen.

AHDB Pork technical manager Dominic Charman said: Its a crucial project for the pig industry, as respiratory disease can be very costly. For example, enzootic pneumonia (EP) costs between 50p and 5 per pig before vaccination costs. Initial findings in the first batch of pigs in the trial show they were 4.5 times less likely to have EP-like lesions at slaughter than the control batch, so were very keen to see if this is repeated in the next couple of batches.

The AM Warkup technology was first featured at AHDB Porks 2015 Innovation Conference and, after interest from Harper Adams University, it has part-funded the project to investigate the effects on dust and pathogen levels in the air, pig performance and pig health.

Potentially, its very exciting for all sectors of livestock production, said Harper Adams University livestock unit manager Richard Hooper. Itll not only take out the pathogens but also the dust, improving the air quality that the animals and livestock workers breathe. There could be wider benefits for the environment in reducing emissions from a building and also reducing odour.

The trial involved pigs during the grower/finisher period from 12 weeks of age to finishing at approximately 22 weeks.

Two finisher rooms at the Harper Adams University pig unit were selected, one as treatment and one as control. The rooms were identical, housing approximately 350 pigs in 14 pens, fan-ventilated (SKOV), slatted and representative of modern indoor pig units. The unit was EP-positive and all pigs were vaccinated for EP.

The treatment room was fitted with the EPI equipment and a live feed was fitted with an electricity data logger so its on/off status could be logged and recorded, along with its energy consumption.

Data measured in the EPI room and the control room:

* Temperature and relative humidity

* Dust

* E.coli/gram negative bacteria (both in the air and falling to the floor)

* Energy consumption in each building via cloud-based monitoring

* Ventilation rate

* Pig numbers

* Pigs were identified and weighed individually at:

 Entry (10 weeks of age)

 Week three

 Week eight

 First draw

 Second draw

* Feed use was also recorded to allow feed conversion ratio to be calculated on a pen-by-pen basis

* Pleurisy and pneumonia scoring (using the BPHS system) was carried out at the abattoir by a trained veterinarian

In addition to the findings that pigs in the EPI room were 4.5 times less likely to have EP-like lesions at slaughter, there also appeared to be lower incidence of pleurisy. This is thought to be due to the significant reduction in both respirable dust and gram-negative bacteria shown, as these parameters have been shown to affect EP-like lesion levels in previous studies.

The equipment only used around 2p worth of electricity per pig during the 14-week period.

Harper Adams pig unit technician Fred Baker said of the system: It is very straightforward to use as its entirely automated and its just a question of checking the lights on the control box to make sure its working properly. From a cleaning point of view, although the room is dirtier, it hasnt taken any more effort to wash, aside from a bit of extra attention to detail in crevices and gaps where the dust has collected. The way dust sticks to the walls in the room gives a real appreciation of the dust were taking out of the air.

Mr Charman, (pictured, right) added that, although it was a standalone trial looking at two rooms on one unit, it was as robust as scientifically possible. The data has been analysed by statistical experts.

The further batches that are being examined will add additional power to these analyses, he said. The key point is that it appears EPI caused, or at least significantly contributed to, a marked reduction in EP-like lesions. This was in finisher animals on a pig unit that is representative of many in the industry today and routinely challenged by this common production issue.

In an industry that is currently under large amounts of pressure to reduce veterinary interventions and drug use, innovative and novel technologies such as EPI potentially have a role to play.

Aside from the improvement in respiratory health for pigs (and, potentially, stockmen), this project could show several other benefits, including a reduction in trimming of carcases and condemnations at the abattoir due to fewer cases of lung disease and pleurisy.

There may also be a reduction in local pollution, including ammonia, to the atmosphere, soil and water and EPI could be an alternative option to air scrubbers.



Initially, ammonia was measured using basic monitors, which seemed to show that it was marginally higher in the building where the EPI was installed (but below levels that are believed to impact pig performance). It is possible that this was due to it remaining trapped in the building within the dust and therefore not being emitted to the environment. If this is the case, then ammonia levels could become far more manageable  controlling and disposing of it could become part of the routine wash down procedure, negating the need for costly scrubbing equipment, for example.

A new trial began in early May to explore the possibility that EPI reduces ammonia emissions, using AHDB Porks highly accurate real-time ammonia monitor.

Mr Charman added: We hope there may be lower capital and operating costs than with alternatives and, because EPI is more flexible, it has the potential to be retrofitted to existing installations to address local pollution matters. Its not restricted to controlled ventilation buildings either.

Producers were able to find out more about the trial and the technology at the AHDB Pork Innovation Conference at Pigs 2022 (www.pigs2022.com) in Solihull on June 7. The system will be available commercially after the event.

Contact Nick MacIvor at AM Warkup: [email protected] The trial report has also been published in the Proceedings of the British Society of Animal Science, Advances in Animal Biosciences, Volume 8, Issue 1

www.cambridge.org/core/journals/advances-in-animal-biosciences For more information and guidance on disease management, AHDB Porks Think BioRisk app features interactive videos demonstrating good practice and common mistakes on pig farms: http://thinkbiorisk.pork.ahdb.org.uk

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My role on the Deep Impact project was to lead the mission design development. For those of us who worked on the missionwhose goal was to spear a comet and study the aftermathMike was a calm influence in the center of a turbulent project development. NASA had passed on our first proposal to the Discovery Program in 1996, despite the hard work of the science team, first brought together by PI Michael Belton, and many engineers at Ball Aerospace and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Mike AHearn was promoted to provide some younger blood as the principal investigator for the 1998 proposal, and refinements guided by now-Deputy PI Belton and instrument expert Alan Delamere strengthened the proposal. Our optimism peaked when the detailed proposal was accepted by NASA in 1999, but multiple crises soon followed as the budget grew, schedules stretched, and difficult compromises had to be made. Dismayed as he saw instrument and mission capabilities reduced and the project threatened with cancellation, Mike had to grow into the role of an assertive project leader to save the science that he had promised to NASA. In this period he continued his multiple scientific responsibilities with exhausting travel and frequent sessions at NASA headquarters to assure top managers that the project could still succeed.

During the proposal development, we had promised NASA to reach the target Tempel 1 on the Fourth of July 2005. The project ended up a year late in delivering the Deep Impact flyby spacecraft and its attached impactor to the Cape Canaveral launch pad in January 2005, but fortunately its target could still be reached on the planned date. As the operations teams crammed what had been planned as eighteen months of flight activities into six months of intense effort, Mike marshaled the science team and their collaborators in final preparations for an expansive campaign of observations of the comet and the impact event. This included studies from ground and other space observatories, including Spitzer and Hubble.

By the night of the encounter, I was only an observer in the science teams operations center at JPL. I was also thinking about the possible extended mission we could pull off if the impact was successful and the flyby spacecraft survived its flight through the dusty coma of Tempel 1. Mike was off in the engineering control room to make any final decisions if any contingency plans had to be implemented. As the size of the comet began to grow in the images being returned, tension in both rooms grew. Would the self-guided impactor reach its target while traveling at a relative speed of 10.2 kilometers per second, and what would that explosion look like?

Despite that excitement, I was just as impressed by the interactions of the science team as they went about their roles as organized with Mike. There was a smooth harmony and little hierarchy in the work of the science team, which included several women as co-investigators and among the many young collaborators and graduate students assisting the team. The team cheered as the first images came back showing a dust cloud erupting from the comet nucleus, but within minutes there was only the hum of quiet collaboration between the scientists as they worked the first data sets.
Ana Sophia Scheller is having one busy December: In between performances of New York City Ballets Nutcracker, shell jet set to Honolulu to dance Dew Drop and the Snow pas de deux in Ballet Hawaiis brand-new production. Choreographed by Septime Webre, this Nutcracker incorporates the history and culture of Hawaii, and features guest artists from NYCB and other companies. Pointe spoke with Scheller about her double dose of the holiday ballet.

What gives this

Nutcracker its Hawaiian twist?

Septimes Nutcracker is set in Honolulu in 1858, during the areas first Christmas Eve party with the first Christmas tree. I think he hopes the audience will recognize a bit of themselves in the production. And you know the Snow Scene? Its set on a volcano in the big island of Hawaii.

Since youre dancing Dew Drop with two companies, is it tricky keeping the choreography straight?

Ive already done the Balanchine version at New York City Ballet for, like, 12 years, so thats not a problem. But when I rehearse for Septimes production, I make sure I watch a video every time I go into rehearsal to remember the steps and choreography. Thankfully, I know the music already.

Who will be your partner for the Snow pas in Hawaii?

Im performing with Nicolai Gorodiskii. He is from Ukraine, but he grew up in Argentina so we both speak the same language. And he is my boyfriend actually. Its our first Nutcracker together.

Whats it been like working with Septime Webre?

He has good energy, and his choreography is very different from other stuff that Ive done. If the music is slow, there are a million steps. I always keep moving.

Will you have any time to relax in Hawaii before you return?

[laughs] Not so much actually. The last performance is a matinee show, so the dancers from NYCB are flying back that same day. We perform and then we get on a place to New York.

Youve been doing

Nutcrackers for many years. How do you make it through such a long run?

The corps de ballet dancers have it the hardest. When I was in the corps at NYCB, we did more than 40 Nutcrackers. My first year I did probably 43 shows of Flowers and 2 of Dew Drop. When I did Dew Drop, I was like, Oh my god. I cannot believe Im doing something different. It was a special day. Once youre a soloist or principal, you dont dance every show, so its exciting every time you go onstage.

Ballet Hawaii presents

The Nutcracker Dec. 16-18 in Honolulu.


Miami City Ballet just announced their official roster for the 2017-18 season, including some exciting additions to and promotions within the company. The new season, which starts on Oct. 20 in Miami, consists of a 53-member roster that was made complete thanks to six new dancers and the return of former longtime MCB dancer Katia Carranza.

Carranza will be returning to the rank of principal, a spot that she previously held from 2004 until 2007 before joining Ballet de Monterrey as a principal dancer. Other promotions for the upcoming season include Jennifer Lauren to principal, Lauren Fadeley to principal soloist and Ashley Knox to soloist.

Among the dancers joining MCB are current Pennsylvania Ballet principal Alexander Peters and Los Angeles Ballet principal Julia Cinquemani. Peters will be joining MCB as a principal soloist, and Cinquemani will be a member of the corps de ballet.

Get to know the rest of the companys new members, ahead!

Harrison Monaco

joins the corps from Pennsylvania Ballet, where he spent the past six seasons.

Eric Beckham

will join the corps de ballet, having previously danced with The National Ballet of Canada.

Aaron Hilton

will be taking a leave of absence from his studies at Princeton University to join the corps de ballet.

Alyssa Schroeder

accepts her first company position in the corps, having received her training at Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet.

For more news on all things ballet, dont miss a single issue.


In the latest round of artistic director musical chairs, Royal New Zealand Ballet has announced major news: Patricia Barker has been named the companys new artistic director. Later this month, shell replace Francesco Ventriglia. The companys first production under Barker, however, will be Ventriglias brand-new Romeo and Juliet in August.

Barker, a former Pacific Northwest Ballet principal and current director of Grand Rapids Ballet, will bring star power and dedicated leadership experience to her new role. Still, theres a twist.

Patricia Barker. Photo Courtesy RNZB.

Frequent Pointe contributor Steve Sucato reported that Barker will do double duty. During the 201718 season, she will juggle dual titles as artistic director of both RNZB and Grand Rapids Ballet. If youre asking how thats even possible, youre not alone. Luckily, RNZBs programming was already set by Ventriglia for the coming season. The other saving grace is that the two companies are on different hemispheres: Its nice because their [New Zealands] summer is our winter and there will be opposite weeks of work, Barker told Sucato.



Barkers appointment isnt the first time RNZB has had an American star at the helm. Remember the Ethan Stiefel era from 2011 to 2014? Cheers to the latest chapter for this company down under.
Las Vegas Metropolitan police officer Kenneth Lopera has been charged with involuntary manslaughter over a suspect's death last month. (Photo: Clark County SD)

A Las Vegas police officer has been charged with involuntary manslaughter over an in-custody death that occurred last month on the Vegas Strip.

Las Vegas Metropolitan police officer Kenneth Lopera was charged Monday with involuntary manslaughter in the Mothers Day death of Tashii Farmer, 40, at The Venetian casino hotel. He also was charged with oppression under the color of office.

The charges stem from an early morning incident on May 14. Farmer approached Lopera and his partner inside the hotel around 12:50 a.m., to complain of people chasing him, police said. Farmer then ran into a restricted area of the property, and Lopera followed.

An altercation escalated, and Lopera punched Farmer with a closed fist multiple times, used a stun gun on him several times more than rules allow, and used an unauthorized rear naked choke to stop what the officer believed to be a carjacking in progress, police said.

The rear naked choke that Lopera used on Farmer is not approved by the Las Vegas department, according to a police department statement.

The Las Vegas Police Protective Association paid Loperas $6,000 bail, KTLA reports.

Lopera, who had been on paid leave since the incident, was placed on unpaid administrative leave after charges were filed, police said. He also faces an internal administrative investigation.
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This is pretty heartbreaking. Thanks to Donald Trump, Canada regretfully waved goodbye to the USA as a world leader today.

Making a case against President Trumps protectionist policies, Canadian FM Chrystia Freeland observed with some regret that America is abandoning its position as a world leader.

Indeed, many of the voters in last years presidential election cast their ballots animated in part by a desire to shrug off the burden of world leadership. To say this is not controversial, it is simply a fact.

Watch here:

Here's video. Canadian FM Chrystia Freeland repudiates Trump's protectionism, says Canada needs hard power to support the global order. pic.twitter.com/rZ0xs2QAKZ  Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) June 6, 2017

As the Prime Minister said last week: Canada is deeply disappointed by the decision by the U.S. federal government to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate, Freeland said beginning to address the United States.

The United States has truly been the indispensable nation, Mr. Speaker. For their unique, seven-decades-long contribution to our shared peace and prosperity, and on behalf of all Canadians, I would like to profoundly thank our American friends.

As I have argued, Canada believes strongly that this stable, predictable international order has been deeply in our national interest. And we believe it has helped foster peace and prosperity for our southern neighbors, too.

Yet it would be naive or hypocritical to claim before this House that all Americans today agree. Indeed, many of the voters in last years presidential election cast their ballots, animated in part by a desire to shrug off the burden of world leadership. To say this is not controversial: it is simply a fact.

Heres the sad goodbye to the U.S.A. as a world leader:

Canada is grateful, and will always be grateful, to our neighbor for the outsized role it has played in the world. And we seek and will continue to seek to persuade our friends that their continued international leadership is very much in their national interestas well as that of the rest of the free world.

Yet we also recognize that this is ultimately not our decision to make. It is a choice Americans must make for themselves.

The fact that our friend and ally has come to question the very worth of its mantle of global leadership, puts into sharper focus the need for the rest of us to set our own clear and sovereign course. For Canada that course must be the renewal, indeed the strengthening, of the postwar multilateral order.

We will follow this path, with open hands and open hearts extended to our American friends, seeking to make common cause as we have so often in the past. And indeed, as we continue to do now on multiple frontsfrom border security, to the defence of North America through NORAD, to the fight against Daesh, to our efforts within NATO, to nurturing and improving our trading relationship, which is the strongest in the world.

And, at the same time, we will work with other like-minded people and countries who share our aims.

As Germany before, Canada sees no world leadership coming from the embattled President of the United States. Goodbye, World Power.

Also known as Making America Great Again, Republican style.
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This is almost too much but its all going toward obstruction of justice so the pieces matter, especially since this is Comey week.

On the day we learned from Jonathan Karl atABC that AG Jeff Sessions suggested he might resign due to President Trumps anger over the escalation of the Trump Russia investigation, the New York Times drops the news that Comey basically begged Sessions that he didnt want to be alone with Trump after Trump asked him to kill the investigation into now fired Mike Flynn, which is part of the Trump Russia probe.

The day after President Trump pressured the then FBI Director James Comey to drop the Trump Russia investigation, Comey reportedly confronted Jeff Sessions saying he didnt want to be left alone again with Trump, according to a new The New York Times report by Michael Schmidt and Matt Apuzzo.

This information came via current and former law enforcement officials, which is another way of saying MORE WITNESSES. Comey is not new to this game.

Mr. Comey believed Mr. Sessions should protect the F.B.I. from White House influence, the officials said, and pulled him aside after a meeting in February to tell him that private interactions between the F.B.I. director and the president were inappropriate, the Times reported. But Mr. Sessions could not guarantee that the president would not try to talk to Mr. Comey alone again, the officials said.

So Sessions didnt feel he could guarantee Comey independence from the President, which is something the FBI Director was supposed to have from the White House. This notion of independence goes to Trumps attempt to interfere in an investigation, which is when obstruction of justice charges could apply.

But wait.

There are also two more rather big potential witnesses, based on a Washington Post report by By Adam Entous that President Trump asked the Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats to steer Comey away from the Russia probe, two days after his March testimony. CIA Director Mike Pompeo was also asked to stay in the room.

The nations top intelligence official told associates in March that President Trump asked him if he could intervene with then-FBI Director James B. Comey to get the bureau to back off its focus on former national security adviser Michael Flynn in its Russia probe, according to officials.

Coats is testifying Wednesday in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee. It should be noted, however, that Coats spokesperson told the Washington Post, Director Coats does not discuss his private conversations with the President. However, he has never felt pressured by the President or anyone else in the Administration to influence any intelligence matters or ongoing investigations. That is not an explicit denial that Trump asked Coats to intervene.

Comey will testify this Thursday in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The former FBI Director has left a trail of additional witnesses to back up his memos: Trump is playing Checkers, Comey is playing Chess.
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Democrat Jon Ossoff dominated the first debate with Republican Karen Handel as he delivered a clear message of independence and change, while Handel stumbled on health care and snuggled up to Trump.

There were several recurring messages during the debate. Ossoff touted his independence and how he was going to be an independent voice for the people of the sixth district. Ossoff repeatedly throughout the debate drove home the message that Karen Handel is a career politician.

Handel dredged up that old Republican favorite villain Nancy Pelosi and tried to link Ossoff to Pelosi. Handel showed that she is the embodiment of a generic Republican by claiming that Ossoff was too liberal for voters.

Ossoff leveled some of his clearest criticism of Trump by calling his foreign policy weak, while Handel firmly attached herself to Trumps Muslim ban. Later, Handel went all in on supporting and agreeing with Trump on the Iran deal.

On health care, it got flat out ugly for Karen Handel as she supported Trumpcare, and Ossoff hit her hard on the American Health Care Act (Trumpcare). Handel responded to Ossoffs valid criticisms of Trumpcare and Handels support for it by feigning outrage because her sister has a pre-existing condition. Handel then falsely claimed that Trumpcare wouldnt harm people with pre-existing conditions. Ossoff responded by hammering Handel for being wrong about Trumpcare and pre-existing conditions and used Handels own statements against her about how she bragged about defunding breast cancer screenings. Handel responded by saying that Ossoff was misleading and using womens issues as a wedge issue like all liberals do.

Ossoff went back to his question, and Handel responded by saying that the press was misleading.

The health care discussion was Handels big stumble and the moment that this debate turned from bad for Republicans to a rout for Ossoff.

Ossoff understood the power of the health care issue, as he came back to it when the candidates were allowed to ask each other a question. Ossoff asked Handel about her role at Komen, and all she could do was lie and feign outrage. Ossoff was able to turn Handels question about not being a resident of Sixth District into Handel not being from Georgia.

Handel put all of her eggs into the Ossoff is a liberal backed by Pelosi basket. With all the money and interest being poured into this special election, it is clear that this contest comes down to the classic choice of change versus the status quo. One of the reasons why Karen Handel may lose this election is that Ossoff did a good job of painting Handel as the career politician incumbent.

What Republicans dont understand is that their old strategy wont work anymore, because Donald Trump is the incumbent and Republicans are the party in power. If voters in the Sixth District are dissatisfied with Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress, Ossoff is the clear choice. Karen Handel took a big risk by linking herself to Trump. If the voters are upset with Trump, they will reject her.

The health care issue seriously damaged Karen Handel, and if the voters in the special election mirror the feelings of the nation at large, Trumpcare could sink the Republican chances in the Georgia House special election. Karen Handels only strategy was to repeat Nancy Pelosi liberal while cuddling up to Trump.

Karen Handel is a failed and terrible candidate, but that doesnt take away from a dominant performance from Jon Ossoff. After watching this debate, it is easy to see why this election is so close and Republicans are in danger of losing a seat that they have held since 1979.

Jon Ossoff is impressive, and he looks like the right candidate in the perfect year to flip the Sixth.
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Rep. Al Green (D-TX) is drawing up impeachment articles against Donald Trump. While his impeachment articles wont be a factor in 2017, if Democrats take back the House in 2018, the prospects for impeachment will get real.

The Hill reported, Greens criticisms focus on Trumps firing of former FBI Director James Comey, who was leading the administrations probe into Russias meddling in the 2016 elections. Trump had reportedly pressured Comey earlier in the year to drop the investigation into Michael Flynn, Trumps former national security advisor, who was fired after lying about the nature of his conversations with a Russian ambassador.

Rep. Green has rejected the effort by House Democratic leadership to tamp down talk of impeachment, and even though his articles will have no immediate impact, they represent the growing popular sentiment that Donald Trump should be impeached.

The fact that serious conversations are being held about impeachment less than five months into Trumps term illustrates how deeply troubled and scandal-filled this president is. People are taking Rep. Green seriously because even if 2017 isnt the time, the moment is approaching quickly when Trump may be looking impeachment square in the eye.
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The top Democrat on the Senate Intel Committee warned that the extent of the Russian attacks is much broader than has been reported so far, and further sounded the alarm about the 2018 midterms.

I dont believe they got into changing actual voting outcomes. But the extent of the attacks is much broader than has been reported so far, Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in interview with USA TODAYs Susan Page.

Warner was referring to the NSA document obtained by The Intercept.

The Intercept document revealed that days before the 2016 election, Russian military intelligence launched a cyberattack on the U.S. that raises the possibility that Russian hacking may have breached at least some elements of the voting system, with disconcertingly uncertain results.

So Warner is saying that the extent of the attack is much broader than the NSA document revealed.

Warner also sounded the alarm about the midterms, None of these actions from the Russians stopped on Election Day.

Warner is pushing for the names of the states hit to be declassified in order to prepare for the 2018 midterms. I really want to press the case This is a case to make sure that the American public writ large realizes that if we dont get ahead of this, this same kind of intervention could take place in 2018 and definitely will take place in 2020.
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It was a room full of Republican men, so you know the mansplaining was in full force.

North Carolina Republican Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr cut off Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) during the Senate Intel hearing Wednesday with remarkably obvious sexism that was picked up by men and women alike, prompting Senator Elizabeth Warren to make a public show of solidarity telling Harris to Keep fighting, Kamala!

Republicans shut Harris down as she was pressing Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein about giving Special Counsel Robert Muellers Trump Russia probe full independence from the Justice Department, which we all can see Republicans definitely do not want to do- after all, if the Russians dont help them win 2018 and anyone starts asking questions about how many Republicans won their seats in 2016 with the help of a foreign adversary during their cyber attack on the U.S., well that wouldnt allow Republicans to keep ignoring the people.

Watch the boys talk down to and cut off Harris if you havent had your share of this at your own work today yet:

Senator, Im very sensitive about time and Id like to have a very lengthy conversation and explain that all to you, Rosenstein responded to Senator Harris.

Can you give me a yes or no answer? Harris demanded.

Its not a short answer, Senator, Rosenstein smirked.

It is. Either you are willing to do that or you are not, Harris replied.

Senator John McCain didnt like that, so he cut off Harris, objecting, Mr. Chairman, they should be allowed to answer the question.

Are you willing or are you not willing to give him the authority to be fully independent of your ability, statutorily or legally, to fire him? Harris pressed, trying to get an actual answer on a key matter. Yes or no, sir. Are you willing to 

Will the senator suspend? Burr interrupted, before beginning his lecture about courtesy.

The chair is going to exercise its right to allow the witnesses to answer the question, and the committee is on notice to provide the witnesses the courtesy, which has not been extended all the way across, extend the courtesy for questions to get answered, Burr chastised Harris.

Mr. Chairman, respectfully, I would point out that this witness has joked, as we all have, his ability to filibuster, Harris replied.

The senator will suspend! Burr demanded, cutting Harris off. Mr. Rosenstein, would you like to thoroughly answer the question?

So that was fun. Girls, you must be courteous when dealing with matters of national security. Perhaps the ladies might wish to bring some muffins in for the next hearing, instead of asking questions that lack the proper amount of courtesy.

Heres Warrens show of solidarity with Harris, who was one of three women on the panel today:

Just a few of the men who noticed:

Burr rebukes Kamala Harris during intense questioning of Rosenstein about whether Mueller has full authority. "The senator will suspend!"  Manu Raju (@mkraju) June 7, 2017

Just now in the Intel hearing: A male GOP senator (Burr) tells a female Dem senator (Harris) to pipe down. Where have we seen this before?  Ed O'Keefe (@edatpost) June 7, 2017

Don't recall him treating Wyden that way. https://t.co/DDs5KmiyaF  Eli Stokols (@EliStokols) June 7, 2017

Burr just heavy-handedly stopped Kamala Harris from questioning Rosenstein. She was punchy but since when can't senators interrupt witnesses  Tom McCarthy (@TeeMcSee) June 7, 2017

Republicans interrupt witnesses and speak with contempt to them constantly, so their objection to Harris line of questioning and not being courteous enough is odd. Whatever they can do to keep the Russia investigation from moving forward as it should, they will do.

If being courteous is a new qualification for Senators, someone better tell Republicans post haste.

Image: Sen Kamala Harris, ABC News screen cap
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Sen. Warner asked the make or break question of the Russia hearing when he pointed out that the hearing is not about the intelligence officials feelings, but about facts regarding what was said to them by the President of the United States, who is not above the law.

Senator Mark Warner (D-VA), the top ranking Democrat on the Senate Intel Committee, grilled Intel Chiefs over their flimsy feelings dodge of direct questions about President Trumps possible interference in the Trump Russia investigation.

Warner charged, What we dont seem to have is the same commitment to find out whether the President of the United States tried to intervene directly with leaders of our intelligence community and ask them to back off or downplay.

You testified to your feelings response; candidly, your feelings response is important, but the content of his communication with you is absolutely critical. The President is not above the law, if the President intervenes in a conversation and intervenes in an investigation like that, would that not be the subject of some concern?

Watch here:

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and the three Intel Chiefs NSA chief Mike Rogers, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, and Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe all took varying degrees of dodging questions, refusing to say whether or not they had been asked to interfere in the Trump Russia investigation.

They often took the dodge of I feel or I didnt feel, which is a pretty obviously sketchy way of avoiding the facts.

Heres an example of Admiral Rogers to answer, saying, I feel it is inappropriate, Senator to which Senator King (I-ME) responded, What you feel isnt relevant, Admiral.

Watch here:

Why not answering Qs? Rogers: I feel it is inappropriate, senator King: What you FEEL isnt relevant, admiral https://t.co/Ir3X5Iiwnh  Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) June 7, 2017

Another example of the feelings dodge was when Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe wouldnt answer Senator Martin Heinrichs (D-NM) questions about conversations McCabe had with James Comey about his talks with President Trump, claiming they might fall within the purview of the special counsels investigation.

King asked, Is there some prohibition in the law that Im not familiar with that you cant discuss an item that youve been asked directly?

Rogers answered, I feel it is inappropriate.

King wasnt having that, What you feel isnt relevant, Admiral. What you feel isnt the answer.

Heres Coats admitting that he is not sure he has a legal basis for not answering:

.@SenAngusKing: "What is the legal basis for your refusal to testify to this committee?" DNI Coats: "I'm not sure I have a legal basis." pic.twitter.com/aFcjA4K7ET  ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) June 7, 2017

The one thing the intel chiefs didnt say was that they had not been told by the President or his people to lay off the investigation. All they were sure about, it seemed, was how they felt about it. But feelings are not facts.

It is a very simple question to answer, and Mark Warner was right. You testified to your feelings response; candidly, your feelings response is important, but the content of his communication with you is absolutely critical.

The content of the communication is the only evidence that is needed, their feelings are irrelevant.



Update: Story correct to reflect Warner is a Senator from VA.
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Vice President Mike Pence was so freaked out by the release of Comeys opening statement that he canceled a scheduled interview with PBS and went into hiding.

Here is the statement from PBS on Pence bailing:

Per PBS, Miles OBrien was at Johnson Space Center today to conduct a scheduled interview w/ Pence, was promoted last night on air (1/2)  Hadas Gold (@Hadas_Gold) June 7, 2017

"We received word that the interview was cancelled just before it was to take place.  PBS exec producer and Senior VP Sara Just told me https://t.co/G5LdhUHeJC  Hadas Gold (@Hadas_Gold) June 7, 2017

The White House was apparently caught off guard by Comeys decision to release his opening statement the day before he testifies, and they went on media lockdown as soon as the statement came out.

Despite the attempts by the Trump White House and Republican allies to downplay the importance of Comeys testimony, the fact that the Vice President of the United States would head for the hills because he doesnt want to be asked about Comey speaks volumes about how dangerous of a crisis this is for the White House. If Pence was set to go on something friendly like Fox and Friends or Hannity, I doubt that the interview would have been canceled, but the PBS Newshour is real journalism, and the VP couldnt take the risk of being asked a question for which there is no good answer.

Many Republicans want to pretend that if Trump gets impeached or resigns Pence will take over and things will be just fine. The problem is that Pence is also up to his eyeballs in the Russia scandal. If Trump goes down for this, the entire administration goes with him.

The scandal wont go away if Trump is out of office, and Mike Pence isnt going to be able to save the Republican Party.
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Ranking Member of the CIA Subcommittee of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Eric Swalwell (D-CA) told MSNBC that it was inappropriate of President Trump to ask for then FBI Director James Comeys loyalty, to so obsessively hound him about the Mike Flynn case.

Watch here:

Eric Swalwell tells @MSNBC it was "inappropriate" of Trump to ask for Comey's loyalty, to "so obsessively hound him" about the Flynn case. pic.twitter.com/pxkBK2T1OV  Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) June 7, 2017

Yes, its called trying to shut down a criminal investigation, which if Republicans were putting the U.S.A. first, would be an impeachable offense.

Republicans might be feeling impervious to the needs and demands of the people, given Senator Mark Warners warning that the Russians are still at it, and are set to attack the 2018 and 2020 elections.

So this suggests that Republicans see that they cant get elected without help from a foreign adversary, and they are perfectly fine turning their backs on President Trumps relationship with Russia if it means they can still get reelected while taking away your healthcare and stabbing our country in the back.

Its time to get really angry and demand action.

Image: Rep Swalwell, MSNBC screen cap
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While in Ohio, Trump fumed and complained that Democrats are giving him no help on health care, and sounded like he was on the verge of a breakdown because Republicans are going to have to do health care alone.

Video:

Trump said, A lot of the great Senators and they happen to be Republicans because were having no help from Democrats. No help. Its only obstruction from the Democrats. The Democrats are destroying healthcare in this country. We have had no help. We will get no votes. No matter what we do. If we gave you the greatest plan in the history of the world, you would have no Democratic vote. Its all going to be Republicans or bust.

The President seems to think that the American people are stupid. Poll after poll has shown that voters know who is to blame for taking away their health care and making it more expensive, and it isnt the Democrats.

There is a simple reason why Democrats wont support the Republican plan. There are zero Democrats among the thirteen Senators who are drafting the Senate version of the healthcare bill. There were zero Democrats allowed to participate in the House writing of the American Health Care Act. If Trump and the Republicans wanted Democratic support, they should have included Democrats in the drafting process.

What the Presidents outburst in Ohio demonstrates is that even when he isnt on Twitter, Trumps behavior is the same. The President bashes Democrats, freezes them out of the process, accuses them of destroying healthcare, then expects their support.

Trumps methodology is a recipe for failure, and it also suggests a thought process that is illogical and broken.

The Russia scandal is always looming over Trump, and his comments on health care show that he is cracking under the pressure.
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With all that Trump is doing to destroy Americas reputation abroad and our values at home, imagine also living with an intimate partner who beats you to within inches of your life. The statistics on domestic abuse are daunting. According to the National Coaltion Against Domestic Violence (NCADV) 20 people, women and men are abused by intimate partners every minute. That works out to 10 million abuse victims every year.

Only 34% of people who are injured by intimate partners receive medical care for their injuries. That statistic is likely to get worse under a Trump presidency. Trumps policies in several areas suggest he is trying to normalize domestic abuse and rape. By normalizing them, I mean he is doing everything to make it impossible for survivors to report the crime or get medical treatment for their injuries.

Under the various versions of Trumps healthcare law that have been scored, we know that millions of Americans will lose healthcare. Its possible the Senate version will actually protect people with the pre-existing condition of domestic abuse or rape, rather than simply leaving it to the states to decide, as was the case with the House version.

But even so, fewer people will be eligible for insurance. That means premiums will inevitably go up pricing more people out of insurance each year.

Trumps budget goes further by slashing the budgets of programs intended to help survivors of domestic abuse. So aside from making access to medical treatment for injuries harder, Trump intends to make access to shelters and legal advice harder, if not impossible.

This also means fewer voices to answer 20,800 calls survivors make to domestic abuse hotlines.

According to the American Psychological Association, 74 percent of all murder-suicides involved an intimate partner. Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury related deaths during pregnancy.

Trump joins NRA sycophants in the Republican Party in an agenda to make even more guns accessible to even more people who shouldnt have them, as reflected in a bill to remove background checks for people with mental illnesses he signed in February. Trump made clear during a speech in April, he is the NRAs champion,

Thats despite the indisputable fact that 50 women are shot to death by an intimate partner every month. The fact is there is a five time higher probability that a victim of domestic abuse wont live to report it if the abuser has a gun.

Of the mass shootings that occurred between 2009 and 2015, 57 percent of the shooters killed intimate partners or other family members.

The combination of policies will result in fewer victims reporting domestic abuse. Fewer reported incidents creates the illusion of few incidents, further enabling the abuser and silencing the abused.

The same dynamic is likely to occur with rape victims, based on the policies and statements weve seen so far from the Trump administration. Betsy DeVoss hired Candace Jackson as the deputy assistant secretary and acting assistant secretary of the Education Departments Office for Civil Rights. The OCR oversees Title IX and sexual assault on Campus. Jackson described victims of alleged sexual violence by Donald Trump as fake victims.

Jackson criticized Liberals for wanting to help women and people of color in her book, In Their Lives: The Women Targeted by the Clinton machine.

As you can tell from the title, she joins Trump and Putin in their anti-Clinton crusade. Oh and of course, Jackson believes that she is a victim of racism against white people.

In April, DeVoss met Earl Ehrhart who has tried to pass a law to discourage rape survivors from reporting. Womens groups outlined that and the rest of Ehrharts history of hostility to student rape survivors to DeVoss in a letter, stating in part:

Representative Ehrhart has further campaigned against student victims rights by suing the U.S. Department of Education under a theory that his stepson might someday be accused of rape.

One of Trumps tweets from 2013, says it all when it comes to his views on rape in the military.

26,000 unreported sexual assults in the military-only 238 convictions. What did these geniuses expect when they put men & women together?

26,000 unreported sexual assults in the military-only 238 convictions. What did these geniuses expect when they put men & women together?  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 7, 2013

There is ample reporting about Trumps own history of harassing, abusing and groping women. That history didnt leave much to the imagination about the likelihood that Trump would use policy not only to silence the women he abused, but every domestic abuse and rape survivor in America.
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Trumps choice to be the next FBI director represented Chris Christie during Bridgegate and made sure that federal investigators never got the governors cell phone

In a statement on social media, Trump announced:

I will be nominating Christopher A. Wray, a man of impeccable credentials, to be the new Director of the FBI. Details to follow.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 7, 2017

Only Trump could see linking himself to Bridgegate as a step up. The fact that Wray managed to keep Christie out of prison was obviously a big selling point for the President.

There is also this:

FBI director hopeful Chris Wray held onto the cell phone Chris Christie used during Bridgegate and never let go. Was never obtained by feds. https://t.co/KbgEKYBbis  Matt Katz (@mattkatz00) May 30, 2017

Trumps top criteria for an FBI Director is loyalty to Trump, also the willingness to kill the Russia investigation would be nice too.

Its like Trump is trying to tell everyone in the country that he is guilty on Russia. The Trump White House is the worst true crime novel ever written. There is no way that Wray should be FBI Director. Efforts to stop his confirmation should begin right now.
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Heres more from Comeys opening statement for the Senate Intel Committee Thursday, June 8th. In this bit, Comey will testify to trying to explain to President Trump why it wouldnt be good for Trump to order Comey to investigate the salacious material Comey had briefed Trump on.

President Trump was very upset about the salacious allegations and denied them, telling Comey he was considering ordering the FBI Director to investigation the alleged incident to prove it didnt happen. Comey tried to explain to Trump that that might look like the FBI was investigating Trump personally, which they were not.

During the dinner, the President returned to the salacious material I had briefed him about on January 6, and, as he had done previously, expressed his disgust for the allegations and strongly denied them. He said he was considering ordering me to investigate the alleged incident to prove it didnt happen. I replied that he should give that careful thought because it might create a narrative that we were investigating him personally, which we werent, and because it was very difficult to prove a negative. He said he would think about it and asked me to think about it.

As was my practice for conversations with President Trump, I wrote a detailed memo about the dinner immediately afterwards and shared it with the senior leadership team of the FBI.

This seems to refer to the Steele Dossier, which was published January 10th, 2017, also known as PeeGate. Trump was briefed about the Steele Dossier on the week of January 5th, so it makes sense that this is what Comey is referring to when he says he briefed Trump on the 6th, right before it was published by Buzzfeed.

This exchange is noteworthy because it reveals Trumps obsession with image and managing narratives; something Presidents dont actually get to do. It also showcases Trumps complete refusal to comprehend the purpose of the FBI. The FBI is not working as the Public Relations Firm for President Trump.

Business Insider reported that Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said in an interview Tuesday that Trump asked him to publicly refute the infamous dossier, which I could not and would not do.
Charleston, SC (29403)

Today

Tropical storm conditions possible. Thunderstorms likely. Rainfall will be locally heavy at times. Low 71F. Winds SE at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of rain 100%..

Tonight

Tropical storm conditions possible. Thunderstorms likely. Rainfall will be locally heavy at times. Low 71F. Winds SE at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of rain 100%.
Local nursing students traveled to Ecuador last month as part of a Rochester Community and Technical College course to learn culturally competent care.

The "transcultural nursing" study-abroad course is conducted through a partnership with Hands for Humanity. Two instructors and 20 nursing students from five Minnesota colleges traveled to Ecuador during the eight-day trip.

Seven of the 20 nursing students were from RCTC, while another came from Winona. The remaining 12 students were from colleges in East Grand Forks, Worthington and Duluth. More than 100 students have participated in the program since it started.

The goal of the course is to boost students' competence when caring for patients of different cultural backgrounds, said Kate Welp, founder and executive director of Hands for Humanity.

Welp, a longtime Mayo Clinic nurse, started the course in collaboration with RCTC seven years ago. She said she wanted nursing students to experience another country's health care and gain appreciation for what they have.

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"I just thought  what a great way to start off a nursing career by seeing health care elsewhere than just Minnesota," Welp said.

Students attended a weekly class in the five weeks leading up to the trip, where they learned about native illnesses, food safety and other preparatory processes.

Once in Ecuador, the group traveled to the cities of Guayaquil, Portoviejo, Manta, Puerto Lopez and other rural towns  where they visited schools and hospitals and organized a health fair to educate residents on health care practices.

Many students had to speak through translators to communicate with residents and patients, said Dale Lester, an RCTC nursing student.

"Being there really  makes you understand how important it is to be fluent in Spanish as well," she said.

Lester said the communication barrier also taught her to have more patience in her work.

"If I'm taking care of a Spanish-speaking person and I'm getting frustrated and I can't understand  don't show that anger, that frustration," she said. "Show compassion and that you're there."

RCTC nursing student Ajolisse Lonzo didn't expect to have a "culture shock" in Ecuador, because of her Puerto Rican roots.

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But going from Rochester to Ecuador, she said, showed her how privileged she is.

"Coming back home, I'm like, 'We're so grateful, we have Mayo Clinic in our backyard,'" Lonzo said.

The trip pushed the students outside their comfort zones, Welp said, adding that some students had never flown or seen the ocean.

"They have to be gutsy enough to say I'm going to go for this," said Diane Witzig, an RCTC nursing instructor who also helped develop the course.

Some students expressed apprehension before the trip, Welp said, so seeing the payoff at the end was "extremely rewarding."

The only downside of the trip, Lester said, is that it wasn't longer.

"It all came to an end way too quick," she said.
In the coming years, there will likely be more repairs and building projects than Rochester Public Schools can keep up with.

At least that's what the district's director of facilities, Scott Sherden, warned the school board of Tuesday night as he shared plans for more than $121 million in maintenance and building projects planned over the next decade.

"Our needs are just higher," Sherden said, noting the $6 to $9 million the district gets each year from the state for facilities is not enough. "So I'm just putting that out there so that you're aware of what we're going to be looking at in the future."

School board members approved the 10-year plan  subject to change  which included about $68 million in maintenance and another $53 million in bonded, or construction, projects.

The district is required to create and submit the plan to the Minnesota Department of Education each year.

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The plan is created by looking at what was done in previous years, getting feedback from maintenance staff and doing assessments on parking lots, roofs and other facilities to determine when they'll need to be replaced.

But Sherden added that the plan is fluid and is modified each year.

"We can't anticipate all the projects that might pop up," Sherden said, pointing to another request that was brought forward to the school board Tuesday night  $165,000 for a water heater at Mayo High School because of problems surfaced in March.

The district had to pull money away from a parking lot project to make sure the repairs could happen.

"Just because there's a project on that 10-year plan listed for whatever year it's on, doesn't mean that project is going to remain there," he added.

"Things are just constantly changing, but it gives you a pretty good snapshot of where we're at right now," Sherden said.

The district holds about 3.1 million square feet of facilities throughout its 34 buildings.
Olmsted County commissioners approved an agreement Tuesday with Rochester Public Schools that could help offset costs related to a federal policy shift.

Under federal policy, the county is required to make sure students in foster care can continue to go to their home schools, unless it doesn't make sense for the student. However, a change in federal policy last year ended funding for such busing.

State funding became available this year as part of a pilot program proposed by state Sen. Carla Nelson. The Rochester Republican's bill set aside $1 million to help school districts and counties work together to make sure students can stay in their home schools.

Amy Shillabeer, county child and family services director, said a service agreement with Rochester Public Schools should make the county eligible to tap into the state funds to cover the $77,100 it expects to spend this year.

The school district already bills the county for any transportation requirements outside the normal bus routes, but a written agreement is required by the state program.

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While busing of students in foster care can mean crossing into other school districts and even crossing county lines in some cases, Shillabeer said county expenses have so far been limited to Rochester students.

"We, at this point, have not received any invoicing for any district other than Rochester," she said.

In other business, the county board:

 Approved a list of county and township bridge priorities. County Engineer Kaye Bieniek said no county bridges are in danger of being closed.

 Approved revisions to rules and regulations for county parks. The policies had not been updated since 1995, and changes address new issues, including how emerald ash borer infestations impact firewood use, the effects of other invasive species and the use of e-cigarettes and drones in parks.

 Accepted a $157,307 state grant to help fund a peer-support specialist and an additional mental health professional for the sustainability of assertive community treatment services through 2018. Emily Colbenson Ties of Community Services said the positions are expected to be self-sustaining by 2019.

 Met as the county's Regional Railroad Authority and Building Authority to hold required annual meetings and appoint officers. No action was taken by either body.
Welcome home.

The Bloomington Army National Guard Armory was lined with dozens of family and friends Wednesday morning as they waited for the arrival of more than 200 Minnesota National Guard soldiers returning home from a peacekeeping mission on the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, according to a National Guard spokeswoman.

While deployed in support of the Multinational Force and Observers mission, the southern Minnesota "Red Bull" units provided force protection, served as a quick reaction force and contributed to enforcing the 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, according to previous coverage.

Several companies from Rochester, Winona and West Saint Paul were included in that mission. The southern Minnesota "Red Bull" units mobilized in July and departed for predeployment training at Fort Bliss, Texas and began their mission in Egypt at the end of last summer.

Around 80 soldiers from the southeast Minnesota region were deployed. There were eight soldiers deployed from Rochester, and four from Austin.

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From the updated numbers, four out of the 237 soldiers deployed were women. This was the first deployment for around 140 soldiers, the second deployment for 60 soldiers, the third deployment for 21 soldiers, fourth deployment for eight soldiers, and fifth or more deployment for eight soldiers.

Check back with the Post-Bulletin for more information once made available.
NELSON, Wis.  More than 150 people crammed into the Nelson Community Hall across the Mississippi River from Wabasha on Tuesday to hear the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers discuss the draft of its dredge material management plan.

The town hall meeting was the first of two where the Corps will explain its new 40-year plan and listen to concerns from area residents. Those concerns were universally against the draft plan and its recommendation that the Corps acquire nearly 500 acres for permanent storage of the dredge material plus another 39 acres to serve as on-shore transfer sites in the city of Wabasha.

"You don't need our farm, you want it. You want it because it's convenient for you," said Nora Drysdale,

The Corps would like to take 298 acres of Drysdale's farm and fill it with about 15 feet of dredge material over the course of the plan. Drysdale was one of dozens of people who spoke up. None offered support for the draft plan.

The plan is needed to keep open the 9-foot navigation channel for the $2 billion in annual commercial traffic that floats up and down the Mississippi River.

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Craig Evans, with the Corps, said the draft was developed with two guiding principles in place: dredge the river at the least cost, and do so in a way that is environmentally acceptable. For the environmental part, that means avoiding wetlands and adhering to the Clean Water Act. "That's what our regulations say we have to do," he said.

If someone approaches the Corps with a plan that includes filling a wetland, Evans said, the first question is whether they have another alternative. If yes, they'd receive no permit. "The Clean Water Act is the biggest driver on the environmental side," Evans said.

As for cost, Evans said, dredging the river and hauling the material are the biggest costs. Acquiring the real estate for the plan will amount to about 2 percent of the overall costs.

According to the Corps, most of the 270,000 cubic yards that is dredged annually in Lower Pool 4 from the foot of Lake Pepin to Lock & Dam No. 4 is silt that comes off the Chippewa River. While shoreline erosion is part of the problem, the bigger issue is the Chippewa River is steeper than the Mississippi River, and the silt and sand comes off the riverbed. "She's doing what a river does," said Paul Machajewski, channel maintenance coordinator. "The majority of this is her digging herself deeper."

Evans said the plan would include on-shore loading at two sites in Wabasha and one site in Alma for a total of about 90 days a year. Neighbors of one of those sites, the Southside Fitzgerald site along River Drive in Wabasha, told the Corps their plan was both unworkable and would ruin the value and enjoyment of their properties.

Karla Schedlbauer's home abuts the 165-acre site where silt and sand would be stored, dried and loaded onto as many as 20 trucks an hour to be hauled to a permanent storage, likely the Drysdale's farm. Schedlbauer comwdplained about the heavy-handedness of the Corps in dealing with landowners. "You're only here tonight because we forced you to be here tonight," she said, adding that the constant sorties of trucks would "destroy Wabasha."

"We've heard a lot about your costs, your concerns, nothing about public safety," she said. "The site you're proposing is 100 feet from my back door. You'd ruin my peace."

Evans explained that the plan must follow the cost and environmental mandates set by the Corps, and while he understands some parts of the plan -- particularly the Corps acquiring property from people not interested in selling -- can be unpopular, it is necessary for the longterm maintenance of the shipping channel.

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"It's beautiful farmland, and we don't take that lightly," Evans said, referring to the Drysdale's farm. However, other sites would add significantly to the costs either through trucking or wetland impact, he argued. "This site poses the least risk of running into wetlands of any other."

"I know you're sticking to your mandates, but your mandates have to change," Schedlbauer said.

Several people suggested finding ways to reduce the amount of silt coming off the Chippewa River by using riprap and wing dams. While others recommended the Corps tour gravel and sand pits around the region that could hold the volume of sand -- more than 10 million cubic yards -- over the plan's 40-year lifespan.

Rep. Steve Drazkowski, who represents Minnesota House District 21B where the Drysdale farm resides, echoed Evans' compliment of the farm. "It's was mentioned that's a nice piece of farmland," Drazkowski said. "It could be argued it's the best parcel of farmland in Wabasha County."

Drazkowski, a former county ag agent, questioned the Corps' diligence in developing the plan. For example, Evans had previously noted the Corps used Google Earth to find wetlands in the region. "That's not how you do wetland evaluations," the Minnesota lawmaker said. "It seems we should exhaust all options on public owned land rather than take a fourth-generation farm. We're talking about a family and their livelihood."

Extending the study period for the plan to do a more thorough job, he said, seemed prudent.

The Corps will hold another town hall meeting at 7 p.m., June 15 at Wabasha-Kellogg High School. Public comments on the draft dredge material management plan are being accepted by the Corps of Engineers through June 23.
Gov. Mark Dayton is urging legislative leaders to return to the negotiating table instead of looking to the courts for relief.

Dayton sent a letter to legislative leaders on Tuesday inviting them to meet with him. Dayton recently used his line-item veto to eliminate funding for the Minnesota Legislature in a bid to get legislators to renegotiate several items  including a $650 million tax bill the governor is worried will hurt the state's long-term fiscal health. During a visit to Rochester on Tuesday, Dayton defended his decision and emphasized his hope Republican legislative leaders will be willing to talk it out.

"My desire, as this letter expresses to the four legislative leaders, is not to take this matter to the court, but rather to sit down and come to a resolution," Dayton said.

GOP leaders said they are willing to sit down with the governor, but they have no interest in renegotiating items agreed to as part of a final budget deal. House Speaker Kurt Daudt said in an interview that the governor signed off on all the items he now wants to negotiate.

"When you give your word to someone, you need to honor that, and that's not what the governor is doing. He is not honoring his own word in his own agreement," Daudt said.

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What led to this blow-up between the governor and legislative leaders? Here's a recap of what happened.

A budget deal without the details

With less than an hour left in the regular legislative session last month, the governor and legislative leaders emerged with a one-page sheet of paper outlining the framework for agreement on a $46 billion budget. The governor then called an immediate special session that was supposed to wrap up in two days. Instead, it stretched on for four days. And it quickly became clear that while they had the broad framework of a budget deal, the details still hadn't been nailed down and were still being negotiated behind closed doors. Ultimately, lawmakers did pass all the budget bills, sending them to the governor's desk.

The surprise 'poison pill'

While reviewing the bills, the governor learned that Republicans had tucked language into a state government budget bill that stated if he vetoed the tax bill, funding for the Minnesota Department of Revenue would be eliminated. The governor called the measure a "poison pill" and "legislative treachery." Republicans said it was an insurance policy aimed at making sure the governor would sign their number one legislative priority  a robust package of tax cuts.

What happened next?

The governor reluctantly signed the tax bill  along with all of the other budget bills  to avoid a partial government shutdown. But in a surprise move, he line-item vetoed funding for the Minnesota House and Senate. Dayton said he believes he has the authority to eliminate the Legislature's funding because the state's Constitution gives him line-item veto authority and doesn't say what he can and cannot use it on. But Republican legislative leaders say they believe the governor's actions are unconstitutional because the Legislature is a separate branch of government.

So now what?

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The Republican-led Legislature has taken initial steps to sue the governor over his move to defund the Legislature. Daudt said he expects a lawsuit to be filed in district court soon. Meanwhile, a conservative group has already filed a lawsuit arguing the state Constitution requires lawmakers to get paid  something that won't happen without funding for the Legislature. There are 440 partisan and non-partisan staffers who work for the Minnesota Legislature. The House and Senate have some money in reserves to cover costs for a short period of time. But if the money isn't resolved soon either by the courts or negotiation, those workers will be temporarily laid off.

What does Dayton want?

The governor said he has serious concerns with the tax cut package passed by lawmakers, which he said will cost the state $5 billion in lost revenue over the next 10 years. He said that could lead to future budget deficits  something he is determined to avoid after inheriting a $6 billion budget deficit when he took office in 2011. He also wants changes to language in an education budget bill that overhauls the state's teacher licensing system, arguing it fails to set high enough standards to make sure quality teachers are in the classroom. He also wants language removed that prohibits undocumented immigrants from getting driver's licenses.

Republicans not interested in more negotiations

Both Daudt and Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka agree they aren't going to renegotiate items they say the governor had already signed off on. Rochester Sen. Carla Nelson said she agrees with that philosophy. As chairwoman of the Senate E-12 Finance Committee, Nelson said she made sure the governor was OK with the teacher licensure language in her bill. She said she only learned later that there were concerns with some of its provisions. She said those disagreements could be worked out in future legislative sessions.

"There are remedies for that, but it's not zeroing out the Legislature," Nelson said.

What do Democratic lawmakers want?

DFL lawmakers say they share Dayton's concerns over some of the provisions that were passed. They are urging Republicans to sit down with the governor to try to resolve the feud.

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"I think that the public would really like the leaders, the governor and those that are involved to negotiate and come to a solution and resolution as expedited as possible," said Rep. Duane Sauke, DFL-Rochester.
While one Winona Republican lawmaker has decided against a bid for the 1st Congressional District seat, some Rochester legislators are still considering a run.

Sen. Jeremy Miller, R-Winona, announced Tuesday that he has decided not to run for the open congressional seat. In a press release, he said he was contacted by people from across the district and Washington, D.C., urging him to run. But in the end, Miller decided to stay in the Senate, where Republicans have a razor-thin 34-33 majority.

"I discussed the opportunity with my wife, family, friends and colleagues. After serious consideration, Janel and I feel that at this particular time, I can be most effective in my current role as Deputy Majority Leader of the Minnesota Senate," Miller said.

Plenty of other local GOPers are eyeing a run. The interest comes after 1st District DFL Rep. Tim Walz announced in March he would not seek re-election for the seat. Instead, he is running for governor in 2018. The southern Minnesota district, which stretches from South Dakota to Wisconsin, is considered a swing seat.

So far, only two candidates have formally announced they are running. Blue Earth Republican Jim Hagedorn is making his fourth bid for the seat after narrowly losing to Walz last year. Former Owatonna DFL Sen. Vicki Jensen announced Monday she is also jumping in. The Wall Street Journal reported that Dan Feehan is also considering running. He served as assistant secretary of defense in the Obama administration and grew up in the First District. He is reportedly looking for a home in Mankato.

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Among those seriously considering running is Rochester Rep. Nels Pierson.

"I'm going to be spending some time over the next month or two talking to voters in the 1st District," Pierson said

He added that initial steps have already been taken to set up a campaign in case he decides to run. But Pierson said he wants to hear from voters about their concerns before making a final decision.

Also thinking about running is Rochester Sen. Carla Nelson. She said she plans to spend time talking to voters about a possible bid for the congressional seat, but she has also been approached recently about running for governor.

"I've realized that is what really gives me joy is serving others, and we'll figure out where I could be the most effective. It could be the Minnesota Senate, which I love. It could be the First District. It could be governor. I'm not sure," Nelson said.

Olmsted County Republican Party Chairman Aaron Miller is also still seriously considering running. He ran for the seat in 2014 and won the party endorsement, but he lost to Hagedorn in the primary. Miller said he expects to make a decision within the next couple of weeks.

He added, "I've had conversations with a lot of folks, and we still haven't ruled it in or out."
The mere election of Donald Trump has had salutary effects with regard to illegal immigration. Reportedly, for example, the number of people trying to enter the country illegally has dropped dramatically. The Associated Press hasnt expressed an opinion on that trend, to my knowledge, but it is concerned about a similar phenomenon: fewer illegal immigrants are signing up for food stamps.

A crackdown on illegal immigration under President Donald Trump has driven some poor people to take a drastic step: opt out of federal food assistance because they are fearful of deportation, activists and immigrants say. People who are not legal residents of the U.S. are not eligible to take part in what is formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

That is correct.

But many poor families include a mix of non-legal residents and legal ones, such as children who have citizenship because they were born in the U.S. In those cases, it is often an adult who is not a legal resident who submits the application.

So once again, the anchor baby is the hook.

Some now feel that is too dangerous under a president who has made immigration enforcement a priority. Throughout the U.S., there are accounts of people resisting efforts of nonprofit organizations to sign them up for food stamps, letting benefits lapse or withdrawing from the program because of the perceived risk.  A 52-year-old woman interviewed in New York City, a Mexican in the country illegally, told The Associated Press she was motivated in January to drop a benefit that was supporting her teenage daughter, a U.S. citizen, purely because she was afraid of being in the food stamp system, which requires applicants to state their immigration status. I had been told that its OK to apply for food stamps. But, for the moment, I dont want to take any risks, said the woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of her immigration status and was introduced to AP through an organization that helps immigrants, the Mexican Coalition of the South Bronx.

Note that this individual had been toldit is not clear by whomthat its OK to apply for food stamps. The AP, on the other hand, says the food stamp system requires applicants to state their immigration status. This is technically true, but highly misleading. The applicant is the child who is eligible for SNAP benefits, not the illegal alien parent or other relative who fills out the form. The U.S. Department of Agriculture makes it very clear that an illegal immigrant can apply for food stamps on behalf of an eligible personwho is, technically, the applicantwithout divulging anything about immigration status:

To ensure that only those who are eligible for SNAP receive the benefits they are eligible to receive, State agencies must verify the immigration status of only those individuals who are applying for SNAP benefits. State agencies are not required to verify the immigration status of anyone who is applying for SNAP on behalf of others in their household. For example, a non-citizen may choose to apply only for his or her U.S. citizen children in the household. Under no circumstances may a State agency: 1) Require any information about the citizenship or immigration status of anyone who is not applying for SNAP; 2) Deny SNAP to applying household members because a non-applicant household member has not disclosed his or her citizenship or immigration status or Social Security number; or 3) Try to establish or verify immigration status through any means other than the procedures outlined below. DHS has primary responsibility to determine the status of non-citizens. Why is this important? Eligible persons have an entitlement to food assistance and the Food and Nutrition Act requires that State agencies provide fair service to applicants. Some applicants (typically eligible children in families where other adults are not eligible) cannot apply on their own. They depend on adult household members to secure assistance. States must be able to structure an application process that enables these members to apply for children without divulging information about their own immigration status.

It is hard to see how the federal government could make it any clearer, or what, exactly, the AP is complaining about.

The AP, to its credit, got a quote from Mark Krikorian:

Mark Krikorian, a well-known advocate for reducing immigration to the U.S., said their situation reflects the fact that many people who come to the country lack the skills to earn enough money here. It is an attempted moral blackmail to say If you Americans dont give me your money, I cant stay here and feed my children, he said. Well, its your choice. No one made you sneak into the United States.

The article contains this shocking statistic:

About 3.9 million citizen children living with noncitizen parents received food stamps in the 2015 fiscal year, the most recent available data, according to the Department of Agriculture, which administers the food stamp program.

Some of those parents are legal residents, of course, but no doubt the large majority are not. So out of more than three million, the AP found two who have given up food stamps out of an excess of caution.
During a news conference last December, President Obama claimed that Russian interference in the 2016 election ended after he told Russian President Vladimir Putin to cut it out in early September. In Obamas telling, he warned Putin of serious consequences if Russian interference continued. As a result the interference ceased.

Here is what Obama told the American public:

What I was concerned about in particular was making sure [the DNC hack] wasnt compounded by potential hacking that could hamper vote counting, affect the actual election process itself. So in early September when I saw President Putin in China, I felt that the most effective way to ensure that that didnt happen was to talk to him directly and tell him to cut it out and there were going to be serious consequences if he didnt. And in fact we did not see further tampering of the election process. But the leaks through WikiLeaks had already occurred.

(Emphasis added)

However, Peter Hasson of the Daily Caller points out that Obamas self-serving claim is contradicted by leaked documents. These documents indicate that Russia attempted to interfere in the election just days before it occurred: Hasson writes:

NSA documents published by The Intercept on Monday revealed that as late as October 31 or November 1, hackers launched an election-related spearfishing operation targeting U.S. local government organizations. In other words, Russia was still tampering with the American electoral process after Obama said they ceased doing so. The documents authenticity has been confirmed by U.S. officials, and the U.S. Department of Justice charged on Monday the woman who leaked the Top Secret documents to The Intercept. The NSA assessed that this phase of the spear-fishing operation was likely launched on either October 31 or November 1 and sent spear-fishing emails to 122 email addresses associated with named local government organizations, probably to officials involved in the management of voter registration systems, The Intercept reported.

And thats not all:

The leaked documents reveal that two other election-related hacking efforts were launched in October  one month after Putin supposedly cut it out.

Theres no reason to believe that the Russian efforts to hack the voting process succeeded. But its noteworthy that Russia went after the exact target  actual election process itself  that Obama says he was determined to stopping them, and did stop them, from targeting.

It was always difficult to believe that Putin would take seriously a directive by Obama to cut it out (it being anything Putin wanted to do). As I reported in 2009, the Russians concluded, based on what they witnessed during Obamas visit to Moscow, that the president was a lightweight. As one source told me, they felt they could steal his pants.

Obama repeatedly confirmed this assessment. He did so most egregiously when he turned to Russia to bail him out after Assad crossed the red line by using chemical weapons on civilians. But this wasnt the only example.

Obamas assertion that he caused Putin to back away from interfering in the 2016 election is best viewed as an attempt to reclaim his trousers, or at least to substitute a fig leaf. But now we know that Obamas assertion was false.
The media blob is making much of a Washington Post/ABC News poll that finds the public by a 2 to 1 margin opposes President Trumps decision to withdraw from the Paris Accord:

Most Americans oppose President Trumps decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, with a majority saying the move will damage the United States global leadership, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. Opposition to Trumps decision outpaces support for it by a roughly 2-to-1 margin, with 59 percent opposing the move and 28 percent in support.

Gee: I wonder where anyone might have got the idea that the move would damage Americas global leadership. Maybe from relentless news reports last week that all omitted to mention the salient fact that the U.S. has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions more than any other nation?

You need to click through to the actual poll questions to see what a crappy poll it is. The poll only asked five questions. This is the headline question:

Q: Do you support or oppose Donald Trumps decision to withdraw from the main international agreement that tries to address climate change?

Talk about virtue signaling! Lets try this for a poll question:

Q: Do you support grand sweeping gestures in favor of sugar and spice and everything nice?

Conspicuously missing are any questions about whether people support appropriations for wealth transfers from the U.S to developing nations that the Paris Accord included (and into which Obama tossed $1 billion)? No questions, also, about whether people are willing to pay higher energy costs for an agreement that will make no difference to the planets temperature 80 years from now, according to the EPAs own models.

When you actually put such measures to a vote, rather than a treacly poll question, the results turn out rather differently. Take Washington state, a deep blue state these days, which voted down a carbon tax ballot initiative last fall by 58-42 margin. Everybodys for saving the planet if it doesnt cost them anything, and stupid polls will find that out every time. Maybe the Post/ABC News pollsters should include just one question about how much theyre willing to pay next time. Jeff Bezos wasted a lot of money on this one. The Post should stick with straight fake news. Its cheaper.
The Washington Post reports that gunmen stormed two major sites in Tehran today. They killed at least 12 people and wounded another 42 in gunfire and suicide blasts in parliament and at the tomb of Ayatollah Khomeini (the Post calls this a revered shrine). ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks.

According to the Post, this is the first serious terrorist attack in Iran. Past attacks have been confined to minor incidents near the border with Pakistan.

Given the enmity between Sunni and Shiite radicals, its not surprising that ISIS would want to attack key symbolic locations in Tehran. Such an attack is all the more enticing given that ISIS, which is being defeated in Mosul and in the outskirts of Raqqa, needs to pull off something big.

What seems surprising is that ISIS (or some other terrorist group) was able to carry out successful attacks in the heart of the ayatollahs police state. As the Post notes, security forces are deployed at prominent sites, and Irans powerful Revolutionary Guard Corps maintains a vast network of informants and allies around the country.

The security forces apparently werent up to the job. The attackers reportedly entered the parliament building through the main entrance. Their siege lasted more than an hour. Moreover, according to the New York Times, one attacker left the building an hour into the siege, ran around shooting on Tehrans streets, and then returned.

Perhaps the regime has become complacent given its success in taming the population. Perhaps its just extremely difficult to prevent these kinds of attacks even in a police state.

The regime, which must be hugely embarrassed, has responded, predictably, by blaming the U.S. and the Saudis. The Revolutionary Guard stated:

The public opinion of the world, especially Iran, recognizes this terrorist attack  which took place a week after a joint meeting of the U.S. president and the head of one of the regions backward governments, which constantly supports fundamentalist terrorists  as very significant.

Taking a rather different line, and displaying characteristic indifference to human life, Ayatollah Khamenei characterized the attack as the setting off of firecrackers.

The U.S. State Department issued a statement condemning the attacks. It extended condolences to the victims, their families, and the Iranian people, stating that the depravity of terrorism has no place in a peaceful, civilized world. Nor, the State Department might have added, does it have a place even in a brutal, uncivilized, terror-supporting regime like Irans.
The linchpin of the Obama Administrations so-called Clean Power Plan (CPP) is something called the social cost of carbon, which is a calculation of the net present value of future climate damages from greenhouse-gas caused global warming. The official figure the Obama EPA came up with in their regulatory analysisabout $40 a tonwas necessary for the Clean Power Plan to pass a cost-benefit test.

This calculation is tricky to do, and involved the crucial step of picking a discount rate against projected costs in the distant future. The scandal of the EPAs calculation is that the conventional discount rates that the government (and private industry) typically uses for such forward-looking calculations all came in with climate cost numbers so low that the Clean Power Plan couldnt be justified. So the EPA cheated, and used an artificially low discount rate far outside the range of standard practice. (The Trump EPA is currently reviewing the social cost of carbon mischief, and may well reverse it as part of their unraveling of the CPP.)

But even if you accept both the catastrophic temperature predictions of the climatistas and their phony social cost of carbon estimate, there is still the question: what are the economic benefits of cheap fossil fuel energy use? No one ever bothers to offer an estimate of how much better our lives are for the development and diffusion of large scale energy over the last 150 years. (Start with, oh I dont knowhow about longer life spans because of all the material improvements energy has made possible?)

Until now, that is. Richard Tol, one of the worlds pre-eminent environmental economists, has produced a working paper entitled The Private Benefit of Carbon and Its Social Cost. Heres the dynamite abstract:

The private benefit of carbon is the value, at the margin, of the energy services provided by the use of fossil fuels. It is the weighted average of the price of energy times the carbon dioxide emission coefficient, with energy used as weights. The private benefits is here estimated, for the first time, at $411/tCO2. The private benefit is lowest for coal use in industry and highest for residential electricity; it is lowest in Kazakhstan and highest in Norway. The private benefit of carbon is much higher than the social cost of carbon.

Yes, Id say that $411 > $40. Let that sink in: the benefit of using fossil fuels, even accounting for all damages from pollution and prospective climate change, are one order of magnitude higher than the cost of climate change, even using the EPAs self-serving calculation.

The conclusion of Tols paper make the matter clearer and more direct:

The private benefit of carbon is large and, in most cases, much larger than the social cost of carbon. But while the social cost of carbon is tied to carbon dioxide emissions and their impact on the climate, the private benefit of carbon is not tied to fossil fuels. The private benefits of carbon are, really, the benefits of abundant and reliable energy  or rather, the benefits of the services provided by energy, such as warm homes, cooked food, travel and transport, information and communication, and so on.

This is the fundamental reason why the world is not giving up fossil fuels, but is going along with charades such as the Paris Climate Accord.

P.S. For an example of the emperors new clothes aspect of the worlds climate pantomime, take in this story:

India Touts Commitment to Paris Climate Accord, Promptly Invests in Australias Largest Coal Mine By Michael Bastasch A major Indian corporation approved a $4 billion plan for what will be Australias biggest coal mine just one day after a top Indian minister said the country joined the Paris climate accord due to our commitment to protecting the environment. Adani Corporation gave final approval to build what would be Australias biggest coal mine, Reuters reported Tuesday. Adani is also hopeful they will get a $900 million loan from the government  the same government backing the Paris accord. Adanis comments came the same day as External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj rebuffed criticism from President Donald Trump that India only joined the Paris agreement because they were promised billions and billions and billions of dollars in foreign aid from other nations.

Heh. Heres me and the author, Professor Tol, from a couple years back:
The British general election will be held tomorrow. In search of comic relief from the domestic political scene, I have turned to the Daily Mails account of shadow Labour home secretary Diane Abbotts latest car-crash interview (video below).

Having returned from her public absence following an earlier car crash interview last month, as well as a follow-up car crash interview about the car crash interview, Ms. Abbott gave an interview in which she seemed utterly clueless about Lord Harriss report on improving the response to terror in London, despite claiming she had read it (here Im borrowing from the summary posted with the YouTube clip above).

Following Ms. Abbotts performance in the interview yesterday, Labour candidate for Prime Minister Jeremy Corbyn said his counter-terrorism chief was unwell and would be temporarily replaced by Lyn Brown  a little-known politician who previously quit his frontbench complaining that his leadership was untenable.' The Daily Mail adds: Senior Labour figures said Ms Abbott had been diagnosed with a serious, long-term condition. She tweeted this afternoon to thank supporters, saying she would rejoin the fray soon.'

The Daily Mail helpfully explained that Ms. Abbott had struggled with questions posed by Sky News interviewer Dermot Murnaghan (a long-standing ally of Mr Corbyn and one of his few cheerleaders in the parliamentary party) as she left long pauses and struggled to give answers about the content of the Harris report.

What happened next? The Daily Mail reports:

In the wake of the meltdown, she pulled out of appearances on BBC Radio 4s Womans Hour with just half-an-hours notice. The close Corbyn ally seemed to have made it to within striking distance of the BBC studios, however  with a photograph posted on Twitter showing her apparently on her phone at Oxford Circus Tube station at 8.40am.

As noted above, Labour depicts Ms. Abbotts condition as dire: Shadow international trade secretary Barry Gardiner told LBC radio: I have been told that Diane has been diagnosed with a serious, long-term condition.' Im guessing that the condition is probably incurable.

One has to read deeply into into the story for the hilarious coda:

Ms Abbott came under fire yet again last night after being fooled by a prankster pretending to be a top party adviser in an email hoax. She replied to a chain of emails that she thought were from party spin doctor Seumas Milne following her withdrawal from Womans Hour. But they were actually sent from a fake account set up by a joker in a bid to prank the politician. * * * * * Hoax artist @SINON_REBORN has previously tricked Bank of England governor Mark Carney and Barclays boss Jes Staley. The 38-year-old prankster from Manchester posted screenshots of Abbotts replies  which appear to have been sent from her personal account. In the emails the politician revealed private details about her health and said she was hesitant to tell untruths about it in the press. The hoaxer told Abbott he had spoken to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and the pair think she should add some colour to the illness which prevented her from taking part in the radio debate with Amber Rudd this morning. He adds: Flesh it out with some more detail if you will, perhaps also mention some medication which might be retrospectively seen as a mitigating reason for the Murnaghan interview. Abbotts reply reads: Do you still want to add colour to the illness story? If so maybe we should speak. Ms Abbott allegedly replied later: Im not sure what colour I can add. I have always enjoyed good health until the last few years. And diabetes, in itself, would not stop me doing Womans Hour. I am worried about telling untruths about my health which are easily disproved.

Whole thing here.

Quotable quote (Prime Minister Theresa May): I just wish Diane a speedy recovery.
Atlanta attorney Craig Bertschi writes from Georgias Sixth District with a report on the pending special election to replace HHS Secretary Tom Price in the House. The great Harvey Klehr  historian extraordinaire of American Communism and now emeritus of Emory University  makes a cameo appearance in Craigs report. After that, the highlights are few and far between. Consider Craigs report a plea to Republicans in the district to turn out and vote:

Im a long-time fan of Power Line and a resident of Georgias 6th District. The big Handel-Ossoff Debate is tonight at 8:00 pm EDT. In advance of the debate, I thought Id give you some local color. So, here goes:

Im a lifelong Republican, casting my first vote for President Reagan in 1984. I went to Emory University here in Atlanta (back when you could still find a conservative or two on campus). Harvey Klehr was my favorite professor and one of my advisors. With the exception of three years in Athens, attending UGA for law school, Ive lived in GA-6 most of my adult life. I know this District and its voters very well. We arent accustomed to the national political spotlight and particularly the non-stop political ads.

Karen Handel wasnt my first choice, but I will go to the polls and vote for her. Most of the Republicans I know are doing likewise, not with any sense of enthusiasm, but out of duty and certain knowledge that Ossoff is a robotic vote for gun control, abortion, illegal immigration and the rest of the progressive agenda. Handels grassroots and canvassing efforts seem weak. With the exception of this ad, her TV spots have been lackluster.

The enthusiasm for Ossoff is unprecedented in this district. In my normally quiet and conservative neighborhood, Ossoff signs have proliferated like lawn weeds. Hes got a good spin team, plenty of money and hasnt made any unforced errors. Hes avoiding the controversial issues, even going so far as to call out both parties for spending too much money. Yeah, right.

Its tempting to compare this race to the Michelle Nunn and Jason Carter races of several years ago. Nunn and Carter were stronger candidates than Ossoff for a host of reasons, including the obvious name recognition advantages. Those races also generated a lot of buzz, national money and base excitement. Yet in those races both Democrat candidates lost, scoring in the mid 40s, which seems to be the high-water mark for Democrats in statewide races in Georgia over the past 20 years.

I dont see Ossoff suffering the same fate as Nunn and Carter. I think he wins in a very close race. Trump seems to have moved the partisanship needle, making the moderately left-of-center crowd much more likely to vote.

This is all a terrible shame because Ossoff is a very weak candidate. He spent his formative years at The Paideia School, one of Atlantas famously liberal in-town private schools, where he marinated in this. Hes only been out of high school for 12 years. As best I can tell, he has never had a real private sector job. He worked as a staffer for Rep. Hank Johnson. Hes currently the CEO of a film company that appears to be financed by his fathers charitable foundation (see here).

Its a safe bet that every paycheck Ossoff has drawn in his lifetime has been underwritten by Daddy or Uncle Sam. It would be interesting indeed to see his tax returns. To his credit, Ossoff has managed to move out of his parents basement. Hes currently shacked-up with this girlfriend, who is attending Emory Medical School. In short, this kid is vapor.
The Senate Intelligence Committee has released the prepared remarks that former FBI director James Comey intends to present when he testifies tomorrow. Comey plans to testify that President Trump personally sought his loyalty while also pressing to lift the cloud of the Russia investigation.

Comey will describe a January 27 dinner where, he says, Trump told him: I need loyalty. I expect loyalty. In addition, he plans to say that Trump sought his help regarding embattled former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Finally, in good news for the president, Comey plans to testify that he assured Trump he was not personally being investigated. He did this three times, just as Trump has been saying.

Until Comey testifies, and is questioned, its premature to draw any conclusions. However, I cant resist.

If Comey testifies as described above and his testimony is truthful, it seems to me that Trump acted improperly. I question whether a president should be telling the FBI director who is investigating the administration that he expects loyalty, and its clear to me that he shouldnt tell the director what he wants the outcome of the investigation to be.

Others, Im sure, will take a different view. However, I would ask anyone who disagrees with me to consider how he would view the matter if Barack Obama were the president telling an FBI director these things.

On the other hand, Comeys prepared testimony comes nowhere close to describing obstruction of justice. And the fact that Trump later fired Comey doesnt change this, in my view.

President Trump may well dispute Comeys account of the meetings between the two. It would be hopelessly premature to weigh their credibility in the event of conflicting versions.

I will say that, though Comey has been strongly criticized, and not without justification, Ive never heard anyone I respect say hes dishonest. He may be self-righteous to the point of egomania, but dishonest? I have no reason to think so.

But lets see what Comeys full testimony is, including answers to questions from committee members, and what, if anything, Trump says to contradict the former director. Then, perhaps, we can judge.

UPDATE: Dan McLaughlin at NROs Corner has a good analysis of Comeys prepared remarks.
Acting President Yemi Osinbajo on Wednesday received the Togolese President and newly elected Chairman of ECOWAS, Faure Gnassingbe at the Presidential Villa, assuring him of Nigerias support to him and the regional body.

Nigeria will support you in every way and we are very happy with your election, Mr. Osinbajo, a professor, told the visiting leader, according to a statement by his spokesperson, Laolu Akande.

I know that our President, President Buhari will give every measure of support required because he would want you to succeed very much, Mr. Osinbajo said.

The Acting President added that the Buhari administration was pleased that President Gnassingbe visited Nigeria almost immediately after his election to lead the regional body, assuring him that Nigeria would continue to play an active role in ECOWAS.

He assured the Togolese President that President Buhari holds him in high regard as a person and considers him a friend.

Mr. Osinbajo congratulated Mr. Gnassingbe on his election as the Chairman of ECOWAS and assured him that Nigeria was fully engaged and concerned about regional issues and would continue to explore resolutions in partnership with other member-states.

The Acting President also welcomed continued consultations on the issue of the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between ECOWAS and the European Union (EU) while observing also that each country had peculiar challenges.

The Acting President expressed the hope that the spirit of ECOWAS, which is the spirit of brotherhood would be helpful in addressing some of the issues confronting the regional body.

Earlier, the new ECOWAS leader said he came to hold consultations with Nigeria because he and the body considers Nigeria a very important player in the region.

According to him, Nigeria is an important player and Nigeria has to be fully engaged in ECOWAS.

During the visit, President Gnassingbe highlighted a number of ECOWAS issues and challenges, including the European Partnership Agreement, being discussed by the regional body.

He said that as the ECOWAS chairman, he would be involved in frequent exchanges and consultations with Nigeria considering Nigerias role in the region.

The Togolese President also said he wanted the relationship between his country and Nigeria to remain very close.

In a related development, Acting President Osinbajo earlier today received a Special Envoy of the Nigerien President, Issoufou Mohamadou, Foumakoye Gado.

Mr. Osinbajo assured the envoy of Nigerias continued support and cooperation with Niger. Mr. Gado is the Petroleum Minister of Niger.

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Turkish authorities detained 60 soldiers on Wednesday and issued detention orders for another 128 people in operations targeting the network of a Muslim cleric the government blames for the 2016 failed coup, local media reported.

Some 50,000 people have been arrested since the failed putsch in July and around 150,000 sacked or suspended, including soldiers, police officers, teachers and public servants, over alleged links with the movement of U.S-based cleric Fethullah Gulen.

Authorities detained the soldiers in raids focused on the central Turkish province of Konya and 32 other provinces, the Hurriyet daily said.

Separately, the state-run Anadolu Agency said detention orders had been issued for 128 people with ties to the publishing company Kaynak Holding, which was linked to the Gulen movement before authorities seized it.

Hundreds of firms like Kaynak, many of them smaller provincial businesses, were seized by authorities in the post-coup crackdown and are now run by government-appointed administrators.

Of the 128 people being sought, Anadolu said 39 people had been detained so far in an operation carried out in Istanbul and seven other provinces.

There was no official comment on the detentions.

On Tuesday, authorities detained the local chair of Amnesty International and 22 other lawyers in the Aegean coastal province of Izmir for suspected links to Gulens network, the rights group said.

Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania since 1999, has denied involvement in the coup and condemned it.

The scope of the purges, which have also seen more than 130 media outlets shut down and some 150 journalists jailed, has unnerved rights groups and Turkeys Western allies, who fear President Tayyip Erdogan is using the coup as a pretext to muzzle dissent and purge opponents.

Turkish officials, however, say the crackdown is necessary due to the gravity of the coup attempt which killed 240 people on July 15, 2016.

(Reuters/NAN)

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The police said that eight people, including four children, were killed and over 12 others injured when a factory wall collapsed in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh on Wednesday.

The police said the incident took place early in the morning at Saraj Majra village, 120 km from the state capital Shimla, when the boundary wall of the factory adjoining a big slum suddenly collapsed during a storm.

While eight people died on the spot, those injured have been admitted to Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research in the neighbouring state at Chandigarh, where they were referred to by a local hospital.

The death toll may go up later in the day as the condition of some of the injured is serious.

Doctors at the hospital are trying their best to treat the injured, the police said.

The police said that some senior officials have gone to the area to assess the damage.

A probe had been ordered into the incident to ascertain how the people constructed the illegal slums near the factory.

In May, 26 people were killed and 28 others injured after the wall of a wedding hall collapsed due to heavy rains and thunderstorm in the western Indian state of Rajasthan.

(Xinhua/NAN)

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The cabinet of German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday approved the withdrawal of 260 German soldiers from the Incirlik airbase in south-eastern Turkey over a diplomatic row between the two countries, government sources told dpa.

German troops are stationed at Incirlik, located near the border with Syria, as part of the fight against the Islamic State terrorist group, but Turkey has imposed a ban on German lawmakers visiting the base.

The source said that the relocation of the troops is likely to take place later in June.

The German Defence Minister, Ursula Leyen, has yet to make arrangements for how their absence will be handled in the context of the U.S.-led military coalition against Islamic State.

The source added that moving the 260 German soldiers and military equipment including Tornado reconnaissance jets to an airbase in Jordan will take approximately two months.

NAN reports that in March, relations between Ankara and Berlin deteriorated sharply in the run-up to an April 16 referendum in Turkey, which saw President Tayyip Erdogans powers dramatically increase.

Citing public safety concerns, Germany banned Turkish politicians from addressing rallies of expatriate Turks, prompting Erdogan to accuse Berlin of Nazi-like tactics.

Germany and other Western allies have voiced concern about what they fear is a drift towards authoritarian rule in Turkey.

More recently, Berlin angered Ankara by granting asylum to some Turkish holders of diplomatic passports.

According to reports in German media, more than 400 Turkish military personnel, diplomats, judges and other officials, along with their relatives, had sought political asylum in Germany.

Turkish authorities have detained tens of thousands of officials on suspicion of involvement.

The vast crackdown heightened tensions between Turkey and Germany, which is home to a three-million-strong ethnic Turkish population, the legacy of a massive guest worker program in the 1960s and 1970s.

(dpa/NAN)

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A military alliance fighting in support of President Bashar al-Assad said on Wednesday it could hit U.S. positions in Syria.

The threat which came in a statement in the name of the commander of the operations room of the forces allied to Syria, warned that its self-restraint over U.S. air strikes on government forces would end if Washington crossed red lines.

The statement was circulated by a military news unit run by the Lebanese group Hezbollah, one of Assads military allies.

Assads allies also include Iran and Russia.

The statement did not spell out whether Moscow was a signatory to it.

America knows well that the blood of the sons of Syria, the Syrian Arab Army, and its allies is not cheap, and the capacity to strike their positions in Syria, and their surroundings, is available when circumstances will it, the statement said.

The U.S. launched air strikes on Tuesday against what it said were Iranian-backed fighters who it said posed a threat to U.S. and U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in southern Syria, the second such attack in three weeks.

The assault overlaps with the final stages of the U.S.-backed attack to recapture the Iraqi city of Mosul from Islamic State.

The SDF spokesperson, Talal Silo, told Reuters the battle started on Monday and the fighting would be fierce because Daesh (Islamic State) will die to defend their so-called capital.

It follows months of advances to the north, east and west of Raqqa by the SDF, which includes Arab and Kurdish militias.

Islamic State captured Raqqa from rebel groups in 2014 and has used it as an operations base to plan attacks in the West.

The UN estimates there are approximately 160,000 people left in Raqqa city, but said this was not a formal estimate.

Humanitarian aid organisation International Rescue Committee said 200,000 people were still trapped inside, and warned civilians in Raqqa risk being killed by Islamic State snipers or mines if they try to flee but could be used by the militants as human shields if they remain.

(Reuters/NAN)

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President Donald Trump on Wednesday said that he will nominate Christopher Wray, former U.S. Assistant Attorney-General under President George Bush, to lead the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

I will be nominating Christopher Wray, a man of impeccable credentials, to be the new Director of the FBI. Details to follow, Mr. Trump said in a statement on Twitter.

The U.S. Senate must approve Mr. Trumps choice to replace former FBI Director James Comey, whom the president fired last month amid the agencys ongoing probe into alleged Russian meddling into the U.S. election.

Mr. Trumps announcement comes the day before Mr. Comey is scheduled to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Moscows alleged interference and any potential ties to Mr. Trumps campaign or associates.

The president met last week with candidates for the FBI director post, including Mr. Wray, according to White House spokesman Sean Spicer.

Mr. Wray currently works for King and Spaldings Washington and Atlanta offices where he handles various white-collar criminal and regulatory enforcement cases, according to the firm.

He served as assistant attorney general in the Justice Departments criminal division from 2003 to 2005, working on corporate fraud scandals and cases involving U.S. financial markets, according to his biography on the law firms website.

Many lawmakers have said that Mr. Trump should pick a career law enforcement professional.

One former FBI official questioned whether Mr. Wray had the management experience to run an agency with more than 35,000 people, given the small size of the division he ran at the Justice Department.

(Reuters/NAN)

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The leaders of the Arewa Youth Consultative Forum, AYCF, have said that the threat of arrest by the government of Kaduna State will not stop them from insisting that people of Igbo extraction should leave the north.

The group, a coalition of some northern groups, insisted on its stance that Igbos leave the 19 northern states within three months.

One of the leaders of the group, who read their declaration on Tuesday, Abdulaziz Suleiman, said they held a meeting in Kaduna on Wednesday after the threat of arrest and decided that there will be no retreat, no surrender.

Mr. Abdulaziz, the National Coordinator of Northern Emancipation Network, NEN, informed PREMIUM TIMES over the telephone on Wednesday evening that contrary to the position by Kaduna State government, they are not advocating violence.

Our declaration did not mention violence at all. The Igbo have consistently insisted that they dont want to be in Nigeria, let them therefore, go back to their places

They dont believe in Nigeria, so, we also dont believe in them, he said.

Mr. Suleiman also accused Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State of playing politics over the matter.

Where was El Rufai when the Igbos gave the Fulani ultimatum to leave their areas?

Where was he when over 500 northerners were killed in Ile Ife? These people just politicise everything.

Because he wants to run for President, he chose to ignore his people and appease the Igbo? Goodluck to him, he said.

Like Mr. El-Rufai, the Nigerian government has also condemned the call by the northern coalition, assuring Nigerians that the threat by the group should be ignored.

It is not new, but what I want to assure you is that the security agencies are on top of the situation, the information minister, Lai Mohammed, said.

The call by the Northern group has also been condemned by Nigerians across ethnic and political divide, as well as Igbo groups like MASSOB and the Ohaneze Ndigbo with the latter cautioning Igbos in South-east Nigeria not to retaliate with a similar call.

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Apple, Bloomberg, Google, Nike, Gap, Tesla, Microsoft and Estee Lauder are some of the Fortune 500 companies that have pledged their continued support for climate action to meet the Paris Agreement after President Trump decided to pull the U.S. out of COP21 Paris Climate Accord last week.

Within hours of Mr. Trumps announcement last Thursday, Americans opposed to the decision came together in various groups across the country, culminating over the weekend in a coalition named We Are Still In, led by billionaire former mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg.

COP21 (The 21st Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change) is the climate change agreement signed in Paris in December 2015 to combat extreme weather events and other effects of increasingly high temperature across the world. Unlike Kyoto Agreement and others before it, COP21 was a turning point because a record 196 countries which includes low carbon emitters like all 55 countries in Africa, and major polluters like the United States and China signed the agreement.

In a press release dated Monday, June 5, We Are Still In announced that a grand total of 1,219 governors, mayors, businesses, investors, colleges and universities from across the U.S. or with significant operations in the U.S., representing the broadest cross section of the American economy are part of the coalition and have declared their intent to continue to ensure the U.S. remains a global leader in reducing carbon emissions.

Mayors and chief executives of cities and counties that have flocked to the We Are Still In movement include leaders of so-called liberal cities like New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Honolulu, Washington DC and also cities in the conservative states of Utah, Arizona, Texas and South Carolina that voted overwhelmingly for Mr. Trump in the presidential elections last November.

An open letter published on the new coalitions website, wearestillin.com, declared that Mr. Trumps decision is out of step with what is happening in the United States.

In the U.S., it is local and state governments, along with businesses, that are primarily responsible for the dramatic decrease in greenhouse gas emissions in recent years, the letter stated.

The coalition emphasises that no matter what policies Mr. Trump adopts, its signatories will deliver concrete emissions reductions that will help meet Americas emissions pledge under the Paris Agreement.

It is imperative that the world know that in the U.S., the actors that will provide the leadership necessary to meet our Paris commitment are found in city halls, state capitals, colleges and universities, investors and businesses. Together, we will remain actively engaged with the international community as part of the global effort to hold warming to well below 2C and to accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy that will benefit our security, prosperity, and health.

The Governor of California, the largest state in the U.S., took opposition to Mr. Trumps about-turn on the Paris Agreement a step further when he travelled to China for conference on climate warming at about the same time the President was making his announcement. News reports on Tuesday indicate that Governor Jerry Brown signed agreements to expand trade between California and China with an emphasis on renewable energy sources.

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The Senate has confirmed the nomination of 82-year-old Sylvanus Nsofor as an ambassador, after he was initially rejected in March.

Mr. Nsofor from Imo State was one of the three non-career ambassadorial nominees the Senate rejected alongside Jacob Daodu from Ondo State, in March.

Although he was calm at the screening, he looked frail and tired. His responses to the issues raised were either not answered or devoid of details and mostly satirical, observed Monsurat Sunmonu, chairperson of the foreign affairs committee, giving reason for Mr. Nsofors earlier rejection on March 23.

Mrs. Sunmonu, APC-Oyo, also noted that Mr. Nsofor, during his screening, refused to recite the national anthem and questioned Senators reason for asking him for the recital.

According to Mrs. Sunmonu, the 82-year-old judge pushed back a question on his suitability for the job of an envoy based on his age.

Mrs. Sunmonu quoted the nominee as saying the Senate should ask Zimbabwes President Robert Mugabe how he was leading his country despite his very advanced age.

But despite his earlier rejection as well as the observations raised by the Senate, Mr. Nsofor was renominated for confirmation by Mr. Buhari on April 27.

However, the committee on foreign affairs reversed itself on Wednesday by recommending Mr. Nsofor for confirmation.

Mrs. Sunmonu said the nominee had improved in the ways he responded to questions during his second screening.

She also said a report by the State Security Service against the nominee could not be sustained because it did not bother on criminal records but was a mere advisory based on Mr. Nsofors old age.

Apart from Mr. Nsofor, the Senate also confirmed the nominations of Olusola Iji, Ondo State, and Yusuf Hinna, Gombe State, as non-career ambassadorial nominees.

Meanwhile, the Senate tasked its foreign affairs committee to investigate the rationale for increased cost of Hajj pilgrimage by the National Hajj Commission of Nigeria.

The committee has a week to report back.

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The federal government has assured all Nigerians of safety and security following the ultimatum given to Igbos by a northern group to leave the region.

The Arewa Youth Consultative Forum, ACYF, a coalition of socio-political groups in northern Nigeria, had on Tuesday issued a three months ultimatum for all Igbos in the 19 northern states to vacate the region.

Responding on Wednesday, the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, said the threat is not new.

It is not the first time that different groups will issue such threats, he said.

Mr. Mohammed, who spoke with State House correspondents after a meeting of the Federal Executive Council, which held inside the council Chamber of the Presidential Villa also said the threat is being handled by the relevant agencies of government.

It is not new, but what I want to assure you is that the security agencies are on top of the situation, he said.

Also, the Kaduna State Government has assured every resident of the state that nobody can tamper with their freedom to reside where they choose.

In a statement issued in Kaduna on Wednesday, the state government said that the constitutional right of every Nigerian to own property, move freely and to live in peace and harmony is sacrosanct.

Signed by Samuel Aruwan, spokesman to Governor Nasir El-Rufai, the statement said that the Kaduna State Government strongly condemns the inciting, hate speech delivered by some self-appointed northern youths seeking to target and violate the rights of our citizens of Igbo extraction.

The Kaduna State government said it takes exception to the fact that the northern youths did their irresponsible press conference in Kaduna.

This government has been consistent in taking action to punish hate speech and incitement. People who may feel unhappy about irresponsible comments or actions that have taken place in other states must know that two wrongs cannot make a right, and they cannot use our state to do or say things that threaten the peace, Mr. Aruwan said, adding that the state government has therefore ordered the arrest, investigation and prosecution of the signatories to the statement.

The spokesperson said the Kaduna State government believes in and will uphold the right of every Nigerian to live safely and develop his/her full potentials within its territory.

Reckless disregard for the rights of other citizens drips through the press statement by these northern youths who have chosen to use the discourse around restructuring to promote their own agenda of hate, division and incitement. This sort of opportunists cannot be allowed to distort debate, or turn it into a pretext for a barely-disguised agenda of displacement and dispossession of some citizens.

We will not tolerate such irresponsible statements and conduct in our state. The statement issued by the northern youths violates the laws of Kaduna State. Therefore, the Kaduna State Government has directed that its Ministry of Justice should prepare charges and prosecute the signatories and anyone complicit in arranging this egregious assault on the rights of fellow citizens, he added.

Mr. Aruwan said, Preparatory to prosecution, the police have been directed to immediately arrest, interrogate the signatories to the statement and investigate all the circumstances and persons that may be implicated in the matter.

The Kaduna State Government urges all residents to ignore the threats from the northern youths. We are in contact with the leadership of the Igbo community in Kaduna, and we delighted to say that this community, like all our other communities, believes in the strength of the constitutional order to protect all citizens.

KDSG wishes to encourage all our people to celebrate the diversity with which the Almighty has blessed us, to continue to shun agents of division, and to stand firm in upholding a common humanity. Everyone has a right to live in peace and harmony.

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A former ministers son, Shamsudeen Bala, was on Wednesday granted permission to travel for lesser hajj by a Federal High Court, sitting in Abuja.

The lesser hajj is an Islamic rite to Saudi Arabia recommended for Muslims who can afford it. It is not mandatory on Muslims, neither is it health related, with health treatment being a mjor reason judges usually give such permission for foreign travels.

Mr. Bala, son of former FCT Minister, Bala Mohammed, is being prosecuted by the anti-graft EFCC for alleged money laundering totalling about N1.2 billion.

He was re-arraigned on May 30, on an amended 15-count alongside four companies  Bird Trust Agro Allied Limited, Intertrans Global Logistic Limited, Diakin Telecommunications Limited and Bal-Vac Mining Nigeria Limited.

The father, the ex-minister, is being prosecuted separately for allegedly fraudulently receiving over N800 million as gratification while in office as minister.

At the resumed hearing of the sons trial on Wednesday, the defence counsel, Kanayo Okafor, asked the court to release the international passport of the defendant to enable him travel for the lesser hajj.

The prosecution counsel, Ben Ikani, who opposed the application, stated that the defence was trying to delay the trial.

After listening to both counsel, the judge, Justice Nnamdi Dimgba granted the defendant permission to travel for the hajj.

Mr. Dimgba ruled that a member of the National Assembly shall write an undertaking to guarantee that the defendant would be back to the country.

He ordered that the EFCC would verify the identity of the NASS member before releasing defendants international passport.

The judge further ordered that the defendant must deposit his international passport to the registry of the court within 24 hours of his return to the country.

He adjourned the matter until June 26 for continuation of trial.

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There has been an attack on Maiduguri, the Borno State capital by suspected members of the Boko Haram.

Although details are still sketchy, a resident said the affected part of the city is the Jidari Polo area and the attack occurred at about 7 p.m.

He explained that the area is just about 4 km from the Maiduguri GRA (Government Residential Area).

Another resident described it as one of the most brazen by Boko Haram on the Borno capital in recent years.

Efforts are ongoing to get security agencies to speak on the attack.

Details later

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The attack by members of the Boko Haram on Maiduguri was successfully repelled, the Army said on Wednesday evening.

PREMIUM TIMES reported the attack on the Jiddari Polo area of the city, a few kilometres from the elite Government Residential Area, GRA.

In its response, the army said it neutralized the attackers.

In a merciless operation, Nigerian troops have neutralized Boko Haram gunmen who attempted to attack Jiddari Polo community in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, Army spokesperson Sani Usman said.

The brigadier general added that there was an attempt by a few suspected Boko Haram to attack Jiddari Polo and all have been neutralized. Situation cool and calm.

The Army confirmed that residents of the area had planned to flee their homes but were reassured with rapid response of Nigerian troops.

Mr. Usman assured that there was heavy security presence in the area and the situation was now under control.

The army did not, however, provide details of the casualty figure from Wednesdays attack.

Wednesdays attack in the most daring by Boko Haram on Maiduguri in recent years since the military retook most of the territory once controlled by the terror group.

The Boko Haram insurgency has caused about 100,000 deaths since 2009.

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The Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, FAAN, on Tuesday said it would be uncompromising in the implementation of the Federal Governments Executive Order at airports in the country.

The Managing Director of FAAN, Saleh Dunoma made this known after a meeting with all the participating agencies at the committee level set up to fast track the implementation of the order at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos.

As indicated by the executive order, there will be no compromise with the procedures. This means whatever security procedure or security checks we adopt, will not be compromised.

I told them that we have to meet the deadline set by the executive order. They have mapped out their strategy in line with the order, but they need to meet regularly to ensure that this strategy is adhered to and improved, Mr. Dunoma said.

According to him, attention will be focused on the Lagos airport because it is the key airport, due to its size, complexity and passenger traffic.

If we get it right in Lagos, we will get it right in other airports. Once we do that, I believe all the other airports will be easy for us.

I am confident that other participating agencies will support FAANs efforts to achieve M

Mr. Dunoma said FAAN was fully committed and was ready to give support to all the participating agencies to close any obstacle that may arise.

The executive order does not give room for pre-checks on luggage. All checks should be done in designated areas. Luggage should not be checked at the departure hall.

Once it is implemented, it must be sustained that is why everybody must own it. The agencies are sitting together now to make sure that they own the executive order. Once you own it, then it will be sustained, he said.

Also, the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority said it had put in place measures to ensure full and sustained compliance with the Federal Governments Executive Order at airports in the country.

The General Manager, Public Relations, NCAA, Sam Adurogboye, said the agencys Director General, Muhtar Usman, had directed all Aviation Safety Inspectors (ASI) to monitor the level of compliance with the order.

Mr. Adurogboye said this was alongside their statutory oversight responsibilities at the airports, as enshrined in the Nigerian Civil Aviation Regulations 2015 (Nig.CARs 2015).

All aviation parastatals under the Federal Ministry of Aviation, Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA), Nigeria Meteorological Agency (Nimet) and Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB) have since commenced compliance to the order.

On its part, NCAA has prepared a standard document outlining its core functions and services, appropriate charges, fees, licences, waivers and other tax-related processes, in adherence to the order.

The schedule contains mode of communication of official decisions to the various applicants for our sundry services, Mr. Adurogboye said in the statement issued in Lagos.

According to him, this information, together with other vital information, for ease of doing business in the Nigerian aviation sector are contained in the official website of the NCAA.

He said the federal government had handed down the order with the view to eliminate the unnecessary bureaucracy that impedes business activities at Nigerias airports.

Mr. Adurogboye added that it would improve safety, security and facilitation of passengers within and around the airports.

He said the NCAA director general was in constant discussions with the heads of aviation agencies to ensure sustained adherence to the order by the agencies and continuous surveillance by the regulatory authority.

The News Agency of Nigeria recalls that the Acting President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, had on May 18 signed three far-reaching executive orders expected to ease business, fast-track budget submission and promote made in Nigeria products.

The participating agencies include the Nigerian Police Force, Directorate of State Security, Quarantine Services, National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, Nigerian Immigration Services, Nigeria Customs Services, FAAN Aviation Security amongst others.

(NAN)

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The Arewa Youth Consultative Forum, ACYF, a coalition of socio-political groups in northern Nigeria, on Tuesday issued a three months ultimatum for all Igbos in the 19 northern states to vacate the region.

If the Igbos fail to leave by the October 1, 2017, the group said, it would use force to evict the Igbos.

The group also threatened to take over all the landed properties of the Igbos after they had left the region.

Though the group did not specifically say how it intends to carry out its threat, it said not even the Arewa Consultative Forum or the Northern Elders Forum would prevent it from carrying out its threat.

At a press conference in Kaduna, the AYCF officials led by the groups National President, Yerima Shettima, claimed that a successful sit-at-home protest organised by Igbo groups, was a threat to the countrys national security.

The sit-at-home was organised by two pro-Biafra groups, IPOB and MASSOB, in remembrance of the Biafra secessionist war that led to the death of about three million people.

But the AYCF said they would not tolerate such action hence the issuance of the three months ultimatum for the Igbos to leave.

We are also telling our brothers (northerners) out there in the South-East to get prepared to come back home, the National President of AYCF, Yerima Shettima, said at a press conference in Kaduna.

Reading the press conference text on behalf of the group, Abdul-Azeez Suleiman, who is the National President of the Northern Emancipation Network, one of the groups that formed AYCF, said all northerners residing in the eastern Nigeria should within the period of the ultimatum return to their states.

With the effective date of this declaration, which is today, Tuesday, June 6, 2017, all Igbo currently residing in any part of northern Nigeria are, hereby, served notice to relocate within three months and all northerners residing in the South-East are advised likewise, he said.

All northern civil societies and pressure groups are, by this declaration, mandated to mobilize for sustained, coordinated campaigns at their respective state Government Houses, state Houses of Assembly, local government council secretariats and traditional palaces.

Our first major move shall be to reclaim, assume and assert sole ownership and control of these landed resources currently owned, rented or in any way enjoyed by the Igbos in any part of northern Nigeria.

The group warned that they would mobilize mass support from the north against the Igbos should they fail to hearken to the relocation order.

Speaking further, while fielding questions from journalists, the AYCF President said the federal government should not take their agitation for the eviction of Igbos from the north as a joke.

The federal government should our threat with all seriousness, he said.

Asked if they had consulted the ACF and the NEF, Mr. Shettima said his group did not need the authorization of the northern elders to do what they felt was necessary.

Never again shall we allow any group, (northern) elders to take us back, he said. The ACF was part of the decadence of the region.

When contacted by journalists for comments on the relocation order issued by the AYCF, the Ohanaeze Ndigbo, an umbrella socio-political organisation of Igbos, called for an immediate arrest of Mr. Shettima for issuing an assault order against the Igbos.

The Deputy Publicity Secretary of the Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Chuks Ibegbu, who spoke from Enugu said the DSS, the police and other security agencies should take note of the statement by the Arewa Youth Consultative Forum and the other Northern groups for issuing the threat against the Igbo.

It should not be seen as an empty threat; urgent action is needed to foil the plan to attack the Igbos in the North. It happened in the past and we dont want it to happen again.

In fact, Yerima Shettima should be arrested by the DSS immediately. We are watching to see what the DSS would do in this situation.

Shettimas statement is treasonable; he is inciting one section of the country against another section and we know from experience that this sort of thing could lead to a civil war. His utterances could destroy this country.

The text of the ACYF press conference was jointly signed by leaders of the coalition, which comprised Nastura Ashir Sharif (Arewa Citizens Action for Change); Alhaji Shettima Yerima (Arewa Youth Consultative Forum); Aminu Adam (Arewa Youth Development Foundation); Alfred Solomon, (Arewa Students Forum); Abdul-Azeez Suleiman (Northern Emancipation Network), as well as Joshua Viashman, who signed on behalf of the Northern Youth Vanguard.

The police are yet to react to the threat by the Northern groups. The Kaduna police spokesperson, Aliyu Usman, was yet to respond to PREMIUM TIMES enquiry as at the time of this report.

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The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, MEND, on Wednesday attacked former President Goodluck Jonathan, describing him as a pathological liar.

A statement signed by its spokesperson, Jomo Gbomo, said Mr. Jonathan lied against Charles Okah, a leader of MEND, when he accused him of culpability in the Independence Day bombing.

The statement came a week after the Abuja Division of the Federal High Court cleared Mr. Okah of treasonable felony charges.

The presiding judge, Gabriel Kolawole, said there was no evidence to back the federal governments claim that Mr. Jonathan was a target of the bombing, which occurred during the 2010 Independence Day celebration at Eagle Square, Abuja.

Mr. Gbomo welcomed the ruling as thoughtful and cultivated, but slammed the Nigerian justice system as irritatingly slow because the trial had dragged for too long.

He said the conclusion of the court vindicated the Okah brothers and exposed Mr. Jonathan as a compulsive, desperate and pathological liar.

The spokesperson said the group had no interest whatsoever in assassinating Mr. Jonathan or any other Nigerian leader.

Instead, Mr. Gbomo said, MEND remained disturbed by Mr. Jonathans alleged failure to emancipate the people of Niger-Delta when he was president from 2010-2015.

Our grouse with the former president borders on the fact that he single-handedly frittered away the golden opportunity bestowed on him by providence to emancipate the Niger Delta region.

Mr. Jonathans spokesperson, Ikechukwu Eze, did not immediately respond to PREMIUM TIMES requests for comments Wednesday afternoon.

Mr. Okahs brother, Henry, was also identified as one of the masterminds of the Independence Day bombing, found guilty and sentenced to prison in South Africa.

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Nigerians on twitter have reacted to the widespread agitations caused by the threat made on the lives of Igbos living in Northern Nigeria by some Northern groups.

The Arewa Youth Consultative Forum, ACYF, a coalition of socio-political groups in northern Nigeria, on Tuesday issued a three months ultimatum for all Igbos in the 19 northern states to vacate the region.

The threat was issued during a press conference held in Kaduna where the AYCF officials led by the groups National President, Yerima Shettima, gave a three-month ultimatum after which it would use force to evict them.

The group also added that it would claim ownership of all landed properties belonging to the Igbos after the mass eviction it called for.

The news spread like wildfire across various geopolitical borders and has amassed reactions by various individuals and bodies respectively.

Reacting to the threat, a socio-political Igbo group, Ohaneze Ndigbo, urged its people living in the Northern part of Nigeria to relocate for their safety.

The National Publicity Secretary of Ohaneze, Uche Achi-Okpaga, in a statement in Abakaliki, the Ebonyi State capital made its stance known.

At any rate, two wrongs dont make a right, he said. We encourage our sons and daughters to accept every Nigerian and even a foreigner living legally and lawfully in the South-East. We also advise our people living in the North to relocate if your life has been so crystally threatened. It has no spare either.

In the same vein, the Governor of Kaduna state, Nasir El-Rufai condemned the call and has ordered the arrest of sponsors of the Arewa forum.

See reactions of Nigerians below:

The war in Nigeria will start if the northern youths dare touch any Biafran in north,We want referendum to determine our future not war.  Emeka Gift (@EmekaGift) June 7, 2017

The most remarkable thing about the Northern Youths declaration is that the meeting held at the renowned AREWA HOUSE in Kaduna. Never forget  . (@Tomyboiz) June 7, 2017

We're not even an inch closer to being united in Nigeria. How can these Arewa groups wake up and make this sort of declaration. Sad!  Jaguda_Pikin (@Djruffee) June 7, 2017

Northern Youths who disagree with this statement please retweet. They don't speak for us. We are NOT at war with Igbos.They are not leaving. https://t.co/vP4ulJhSyQ  Dr. Aminu Gamawa (@aminugamawa) June 6, 2017

16 northern youth groups met in Kaduna, give Igbo residing in their states up to October 1, 2017 to vacate the region. pic.twitter.com/BXGgXgo9KG  Adetutu Balogun (@Tutsy22) June 7, 2017

Ultimatum by "Coalition of Northern Youths", to Igbos, is utterly condemnable. Should be treated as Hate Speech & Incitement to Violence.  tolu ogunlesi (@toluogunlesi) June 7, 2017

I expect the DSS to be rounding up those Northern Youth against the IGBOS by now, unless this country is truly a JOKE  Oke Umurhohwo (@stalyf) June 7, 2017

The threats by northern Youths against #Biafrans living in northern Nigeria has been documented, our people has been placed on red alert.  Emeka Gift (@EmekaGift) June 7, 2017

Some weed-smoking, blood-thirsty touts under the guise of "Northern/Arewa youths" cant dictate my stance, as a Northern youth,on ONE Nigeria  PLANGKAT (@peekaymila) June 7, 2017

This news about Northern coalitions asking Igbo people to leave the north better be a joke from the stables of night of a thousand laughs  Babasola Kuti (@SKSolaKuti) June 7, 2017

It is time FG is decisive in squashing agents of destabilization, be it "Northern Youths" or IPOB. This country is bigger than us all.  HENRY Okelue (@4eyedmonk) June 7, 2017

If by now, @PoliceNG have not rounded up those Idiots calling themselves Northern Youth groups against IGBOS, then, ONE Nigeria is a JOKE.  Prince Adeoye | (@AdelajaAdeoye) June 7, 2017

Another #progrom against #Biafrans loading. D earlier #Biafrans leave d Islamic Northern niGEria d better 4 them. Another #progrom loading.  prince jimmy (@jim3love) June 7, 2017

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A former minister of Aviation, Femi Fani-Kayode, has blamed Nigerian intelligence agencies for the collapse of a six-storey building inside the premises of The Synagogue Church Of All Nations in Lagos in 2014.

In an article he titled Murder in the Church (Part 1), Mr. Fani-Kayode described the blowing up of the building by our intelligence agencies as Nigerias version of the 911 terrorist attack in the US.

The whole thing appears to have been covered up and those in high places in the intelligence agencies at the time, having discovered that this was yet another rogue operation by a group of fifth columnists within the security apparatus who were keen on silencing the Presidents friends and who wanted to use the operation to embarrass and terrify their perceived enemies and adversaries, decided to brush the whole thing under the carpet and keep it quiet, Mr. Fani-Kayode said.

At least 115 people, mostly foreigners, died after an under-construction building collapsed while additional floors were being added to it.

A coroners inquest instituted by the Lagos State government following the incidentindicted the church, accusing it of criminal negligence by failing to obtain the requisite permit before adding additional floors to the collapsed building.

The coroner recommended that the church be prosecuted.

The Lagos State government said it would not prosecute the church for criminal negligence, but commenced prosecution of the engineers involved in the collapsed building.

But the church, which is owned by popular televangelist Temitope Joshua (popularly known as TB Joshua) had immediately rejected the coroners report, saying it was one-sided.

The church had maintained throughout the inquest that the building collapse was caused by sabotage, with one of their witnesses saying that the plane-like object that flew over the building minutes before it collapsed fired an infrasonic weapon  a low sound radiation used to cause structural damage and destruction to objects.

In his piece, Mr. Fani-Kayode largely pushed the sound weapon attack narrative, insisting that the motive was to silence and discredit Mr. Joshua who, according to him, was exposing the deepest secrets of those working against then president, Goodluck Jonathan.

The attack involved the use of certain members of our intelligence agencies who used a large remote-controlled drone to fly over the building and who then activated an explosive device which had been planted in the building days earlier with the drone.

There is a video on YouTube of the drone hovering at very close range over the building three times just before it collapsed. I urge readers to look for it and view it.

After the third time, the entire building collapsed like a pack of cards. This was after a loud explosion, which was clearly heard by many of the survivors within and outside of the building, shattered the tranquillity, peace and silence of the structure and blew out its foundations.

Mr. Fani-Kayode said the claims that the building collapsed due to the weight of the additional floors being added to it was implausible and lacks credibility.

As trusting as ever, the Nigerian people bought this hideous mendacity lock, stock and barrel whilst many prominent clerics and Church leaders who were envious of Joshuas rising profile, power and popularity revelled in the lie and helped to preach, spread, perpetuate and consolidate it, he said.

They argued that the building was built without the relevant permits and conveniently overlooked the fact that, according to my sources at Alausa, Lagos state, between 60 and 70 percent of buildings in the environs and suburbs of Lagos state either never had a building permit in the first place, procured one only after the relevant building was constructed or have fake ones which were procured through bribes.

That being the case it seems strange that far many more buildings have not collapsed in Lagos if the assumption is that they all have weak foundations.

The ex-minister said the security agents ought to have called in forensic-based and professional investigators but, instead, began looking for a scapegoat in the person of Mr. Joshua.

They ignored all the evidence that suggested that there was far more to the matter than that and instead sold this unlikely and utterly absurd narrative and dummy to the Nigerian people and the international community, he said.

They then proceeded to initiate criminal proceedings against Joshua and some of his Church members and sought to discredit, disgrace, shame and utterly destroy him.

With this they had managed to divert attention away from the real cause of the collapse of the building, they had found an easy and convenient scapegoat and consequently the real perpetrators managed to escape any form of suspicion or scrutiny.

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The national body of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) has attributed the successes recorded by Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi of Enugu State to his vision and commitment to Godly things.

The body also identified with the positive efforts being made by the governor to impact on the lives of the people and in moving the state forward.

The CANs commendations were conveyed by its National President, Sampson Olasupo Ayokunle, who led a delegation of the association to pay a courtesy call on the governor at the Government House, Enugu.

Mr. Ayokunle also expressed delight at the governors availability to receive them in spite of the short notice, saying such gesture was a respect for God and a clear indication of his closeness to the Almighty God.

The CAN President, who prayed for the progress of Governor Ugwuanyi and Enugu State, informed the governor that they were in the state to visit the two communities affected by the unfortunate herdsmen attacks in 2016, to pray for the people and donate some relief materials as part of the associations social responsibility and religious obligation.

Your Excellency, we identify with all your efforts in moving this state forward. The Bible says in Proverbs 29: 2 that when the righteous are on the throne, the people rejoice, but when the wicked are in authority the people groan. I pray that you (Ugwuanyi) will continue to be that righteous one that God has chosen for the people of Enugu State to bring smiles to many faces in Jesus name, Amen, Mr. Ayokunle said.

Responding, Governor Ugwuanyi appreciated the Christian body for the visit, saying that his administration was deeply touched by the unprecedented gesture and prayed God to reward them bountifully.

Mr. Ugwuanyi assured the CAN president of his administrations firm support and cooperation as he strives to take the association to greater heights, adding that the state government is always happy and eager to share company with ordained servants of God and not in the least, the leader of the Christian Community in Nigeria.

According to the governor, as the umbrella body of Christian groups and societies in the country, CAN is not only the voice of Christians in Nigeria but one that has made and continues to make very positive and significant contributions to the development of the society, especially through the unrelenting propagation of faith and the promotion of values and principles that lead to the betterment of the society.

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The Academic Staff Union of Research Institutions, ASURI, has decried the disparity in the salary structure of research and allied institutions and that of universities.

ASURIs Secretary-General, Theophilus Ndubuaku, expressed the unions displeasure on Wednesday in Abuja, while briefing journalists shortly before the public hearing on ASURIs demands at the House of Representatives.

Mr. Ndubuaku said that the disparity also existed in the funding and retirement age of research directors in research institutions and research professors in the universities.

Whereas the conditions of service for Federal Research Institutes and Allied Institutions states that the salary structure of Research Institutions/Colleges of Agriculture shall not be inferior to the prevailing structure of University Academic Staff Scale, yet nothing has changed.

As a result, as soon as most researchers get their PhDs, they leave the research institute sector for universities.

They exit before they attain the age of 50; this is unprofitable for the system.

A researcher in a mandate institute must conduct research and publish it or he or she will stagnate and perish; in other words, he will not receive promotion, he said.

He said that an average Nigerian-institute-based researcher was compelled to use his personal resources to conduct research and publish it.

According to him, in spite the commitment of Nigerian-institute-based researcher, there remained a disparity in salary between his and his colleague employed in the university.

The ASURI scribe said that there was an urgent need to amend the Agricultural Research Council (ARCN) Act.

He said that agriculture was one of the most important sectors of Nigeria economy as it absorbed 75 per cent of the nations workforce.

Mr. Ndubuaku said that agriculture was also a vital source of export earnings.

Ironically, in spite of this rich agricultural resource and technical endowment as well as several interventions by successive administrations, Nigerias agricultural sector has been operating far below its potential.

We know that the performance of the agricultural sector has failed to fulfil its critical role in the countrys economy due to a number of factors that include unstable policy, environment, agro-ecological factors and institutional failures.

He appealed to the House of Representatives to lend its support to the amendment of ARCN Bill 2016 which had the capacity to correct the disparity in salary and retirement age of researchers.

The lower chamber had invited ASURI to the public hearing on ARCN Amendment Bill and Other Bills.

(NAN)

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A Nigerian Senator, Buruji Kashamu, (Ogun-PDP) has told the Federal High Court, Abuja, that the Inspector-General of Police (I-G) and the Director-General of State Security Service, SSS, plan to extradite him to the United States to face trial on drug related offences.

Mr. Kashamu, who brought an application before the court on Wednesday, prayed the court to stop both agencies from inviting or arresting him.

The senator told the court that the invitation to him in respect to a petition on an assassination attempt on the life of Oladipupo Keshington (PDP-Ogun), was a ploy to arrest him and transport him to the US.

Counsel to Mr. Kashamu, Raphael Oluyede, asked the court to protect his client and stop the Police and SSS from inviting or arresting him and forcefully transporting him abroad.

According to Mr. Oluyede, if the court fails to stop the plot, his clients fundamental rights to liberty will be breached.

The lawyer further argued that the petition for which the police was inviting him, had been investigated and found to be baseless.

Opposing the application, counsel to the I-G, David Igbodo, said the issue of extradition raised by the senator was a figment of his imagination.

According to Mr. Igbodo, the police was inviting Mr. Kashamu to make a statement before a special investigative panel set up to look into the allegation of attempted assassination brought against him.

He prayed the court not to grant the application, but to rather, issue an order to compel the senator to appear before the police panel for interrogation in the alleged assassination attempt.

There are two petitions addressed to the I-G on allegations of an assassination attempt in Port Harcourt, Rivers. The first one was written by Keshington upon which the senator was invited.

Rather than honouring the Police invitation, the senator chose to write a counter petition on the same issue.

At the moment, the I-G has two petitions and has set up a special panel to look into them and ascertain the genuineness of the allegation, he said.

He added that Mr. Keshington had appeared before the police panel and made statements, while the senator opted for a court order to stop the Police.

I humbly urge this court not to grant the prayers of the applicant as doing so, will send a danger signal and would prevent the Police from performing its functions.

Counsel to Mr. Keshington, Ehi Uwaifo, also urged the court to dismiss the case of the senator and order him to appear before the panel to enable it discharge its responsibility.

Justice Nnamdi Dimgba, after listening to the arguments, adjourned the matter until July 6 for judgment.

(NAN)

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The Federal High Court, Abuja, has ordered the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, to deposit N12.5 million imposed on it for infringing on the fundamental human rights of Abdulaziz Nyako.

Justice Gabriel Kolawale, who made the order on Tuesday in Abuja, said the fine should be deposited with the Chief Registrar of the court.

The News Agency Nigeria reports that the N12.5 million was imposed on the anti-graft agency as a fine for arresting and detaining the senator for three days.

It was also imposed on the agency for freezing all of Mr. Nyakos bank accounts for over two years without a court order, or charging him to court.

The fine was part of the judgment delivered by the court on June 22, 2016 in favour of Mr. Nyako, who is a serving senator and son of former Adamawa governor, Murtala Nyako.

Ruling on an application by the EFCC for stay of execution of the judgment, Justice Kolawale struck out the application saying it lacked in merit.

The judge said that no cogent reason was placed before the court to enable it use its discretion in favour of the anti-graft agency and stay the judgment.

He disagreed with the argument of the EFCC that it would not be able to function if it paid the fine, adding that the argument was based on sentiments and not on law.

The judge agreed with Mr. Nyako that the motion of appeal said to have been filed by the EFCC was a ploy to deny him the fruit of his success in his court case against the agency.

More than a year after the judgment was entered against EFCC, the compilation of records by the agency for transmission to the Court of Appeal has not been done and the period allowed by law has expired, he said.

Mr. Kolawale also agreed with the senator that his arrest and the freezing of his accounts for over two years was an abuse of his fundamental rights as a serving senator and a responsible citizen of the country.

He added that the claim by the EFCC that the fine would hamper its performance was not tenable, because EFCC was adequately funded by the Federal Government.

He ordered that the EFCC, should within 30 days, issue a bank draft in the sum of N12.5 million in the name of the Chief Registrar of the Federal High Court.

The registrar shall open an interest yielding account in a reputable bank of his choice with the draft, Mr. Kolawale said.

In the alternative, the court ordered the anti-graft agency to provide a bank guarantee of N12.5 million.

He said that in the event that the EFCC failed to deposit the bank draft within 30 days, the respondents shall have the right to apply for garnishee order nisi.

A garnishee order nisi is to allow Mr. Nyako withdraw directly from EFCCs account with the Central Bank of Nigeria.

The EFCC had in an application praying for stay of execution of the judgment, complained that it would not be able to undertake its statutory functions if the N12.5 million fine was paid to the senator.

The anti-graft agency also informed the court that it had filed a notice of appeal in respect to the judgment of the Federal High Court.

The agency said it would be in the interest of justice to delay the payment, pending the decision of the Court of Appeal on the issue.

Earlier, the judge had berated the EFCC for claiming that the court issued a judicial fiat in respect to the judgment.

The judge said that the EFCC as an organisation established by law, should learn to conduct its statutory functions within the ambits of the law.

He decried the situation where security agencies rushed to magistrate courts to obtain detention warrants in matters where magistrate courts had no jurisdiction.

The judge said that such habits amounted to nothing but corruption on its own.

In this extant case, EFCC cannot be said to be a diligent party having just filed a notice of appeal in a judgment delivered almost a year ago.

The EFCC should wake up and realise that the law that established it is not a cosmetic law but designed to protect the Nigerian citizens from acts of recklessness in the name of performing statutory functions.

It is a political slogan that a security agency cannot be subjected to court orders when it goes out of its way to infringe on the fundamental rights of the citizens.

The act of arresting and detaining before investigation is unconstitutional and bizarre and must not be condoned by any law court.

Remanding suspects through magistrate court orders in matters where magistrate courts have no jurisdiction is not only tragic but unfortunate.

This trend must be stopped, the security agencies must realise that Nigeria is now being governed through a democratic process, the judge said.

The Federal High Court had in 2016, ordered the EFCC to pay as damage the sum of N12.5 million to Mr. Nyako.

The court also ordered that the EFCC should tender a public apology to Nyako for freezing his bank accounts and unlawfully detaining him for days without obtaining a court order. (NAN)

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The Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Ibrahim Magu, said on Tuesday that the commission has secured more convictions than its sister agencies.

Mr. Magu, who was represented by the agencys secretary, Emmanuel Adegboyega, made the disclosure on Tuesday in Abuja at the project launch of Law Enforcement and Public Engagement in Nigeria.

The project was launched by CLEEN Foundation, and supported by the International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs Office of the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria.

The event was held at Reiz Continental Hotel, Central Business District Area, Abuja.

Mr. Magu refuted claims that the anti-graft agency had secured only few convictions in its anti-corruption quest.

The anti-graft agency has recorded more convictions than any other sister agencies in the country.

EFCC does not have control over the court proceedings, the commission only investigates and charges suspects to court. We cannot teleguard the court; the court determines the verdict and that has always been the final.

This year, we had 340 convictions from various criminal cases. What happens in the court is beyond the power of EFCC, he said.

Mr. Magu also described the extent of corrupt practices in Nigeria as alarming, but assured that the agency is equal to the task.

The EFCC has a robust platform in collaboration with Interpol to track down corrupt persons, he added.

Representing the Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, at the event, Habila Joshack, a deputy inspector general, explained the huge gap between the police and the public during prosecution of criminals.

Its true that weve not been blowing our trumpet; but you will understand that there has been no other time than now that youve seen the police opening up its activities to members of the public, the police chief said.

He said the police are using social media platforms to communicate with the public.

I agree that we have a lot to do, but you can see that we are on the right direction, he said.

In his remark, Benson Olugbuo, the Executive Director CLEEN Foundation, spoke on the organisations activities.

We do our advocacy in partnership with government, civil society and private sector, he said.

Our program cuts across different aspects of human security and we work specifically on achieving justice sector reform. We work under accountability and justice, we work on public safety and security we also do research at strategic development.

Over the past 18 years, CLEEN foundation has engaged closely with the Nigerian Police Force. We also engage with EFCC and other security agencies including the military in various project in ensuring a better service delivery to the general public, he said.

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A House of Representatives committee on Tuesday threatened to handover some companies involved in the procurement of pre-shipment inspection contracts, who allegedly forged tax certificates, to anti-graft agencies for prosecution.

The lawmakers also resolved to invite former ministers of finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and Nenadi Usman, former Head of Service of the Federation, Steve Oronsaye; former Accountant General of the Federation, Jonah Otunla; and all permanent secretaries of the ministry of finance since 1999 till date.

They are to come and defend themselves and let us know the various roles they played within the period of their stewardship. The essence of this invitation is to enable the investigative hearing have a balance position on all issues, the committee chairman, Oluwole Oke, said.

Mr. Oke, Chairman House Committee on Public Procurement, stated this during an interactive session with Kemi Adeosun, Minister of Finance over alleged breach of the Public Procurement Act, 2007.

Mr. Oke, who warned against appointment of portfolio contractors by various Ministries, Departments and Agencies, MDAs, decried the level of evasion of taxes.

Its alarming that a company that collected a contract of $120 million only to pay N20,000 as tax to Federal Government, to say the least this is annoying and those are the things this investigative hearing is trying to right.

We have documents submitted by companies that are in total variance with what FIRS, BPP, NSITF, PenCom and ITF gave us and you all know that our children and sibblings benefit from ITF and if the right amount is not paid how will they get trained.

Henceforth we will not hesitate to handover such companies to anti-graft agencies, he said.

The committee also directed Federal Ministry of Finance to provide details of the NESS accounts with the view to ascertain where the operating surplus goes into at the end of each financial year in line with extant financial regulations.

Speaking earlier, Kemi Adeosun, Minister of Finance disclosed that the process of the pre-shipment inspection contract which started in 2016 was ongoing and will soon be concluded.

She said that the exercise was delayed due to the security nature of the pre-shipment inspection contract which involved accessing of oil terminals.

Mrs. Adeosun, however, assured that various issues bothering on tax evasion and abuse of Procurement Act as raised by the Committee will be addressed.

She further noted that the exclusion of some companies was based on security matters adding that the NESS scheme was self-sustaining.

She said: Its pertinent to start by stating that the process of procurement of consultants for pre-shipment Inspection and Monitoring of Crude oil and gas export from Nigeria, which the National Assembly is calling for investigation into allegations of abuse, breach and violation of the Procurement Act 2007, is still ongoing.

The ministry embarked on the procurement process for the appointment of pre-shipment agents and monitoring of oil and gas exports in February, 2016 based on BPPs approved invitation for expression of interest duly published in two new national dailies and the Federal Tenders journal of February 8, 2016 soliciting expression of interest of bids from competent and reputable consultants for engagement as pre-shipment inspectors and monitors of oil and gas exports.

A total of 67 companies were pre-qualified out of 166 companies that expressed interest, while 49 companies passed the quality based selection having scored 70 per cent mark and above.

Its relevant to reiterate that from the beginning of the procurement process till date, the ministry has been working closely with BPP having obtained necessary approvals including advertisements, Request for Proposal (RfP) and approval to adopt quality based selection method to select the consultants.

However, there is need to point the following: There was no procurement plan, because the NESS is statutorily self-financing and is not expected to be included in the annual budget, therefore budgetary is not applicable.

The delay in concluding the procurement of the consultants was because of various procurement processes which include expression of interest, advertisement bid opening bid evaluation, request for proposal, request for certificate of No Objection from BPP, the minister said.

While ruling, Mr. Oke urged the minister to ensure inter-agencies synergy in the bid to address various issues raised by the committee and the petitioners as well as fix a time frame for the completion of the pre-shipment procurement exercise.

He also directed FIRS to submit details of all taxes paid by the companies involved in the pre-shipment inspection contract, noting that most of them understate their turnovers.

(NAN)

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Kemi Adeosun, Nigerias Minister of Finance, Tuesday, said high level corruption was endemic in Nigeria because it was too easy for public funds to be looted.

Speaking at a conference organised by the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption, PACAC, in collaboration with the Ministries of Justice and Foreign Affairs, Mrs. Adeosun said the Federal Government was working towards blocking avenues for looting of public treaaury.

She added that measures are also being put in place to make it harder for looters to hide stolen funds abroad.

Speaking on the theme Practical steps to stopping illicit financial flows, the minister the government would also improve tax administration to facilitate compliance and prevent looting.

We are taking steps to improve tax administration, to improve compliance and to generally make it a little more difficult for people to loot the treasury, she said.

My experience from the little time Ive spent as a minister is that its far too easy to do these things in Nigeria, and weve got to make it much more difficult.

Mrs. Adeosun said it was better to prevent looting than to recover stolen funds, which she described as difficult.

From the Ministry of Finance perspective, our view is that prevention is better than cure. Recovering money is exciting but its difficult. It takes years.

Were still battling to recover money that was looted from Nigeria 20 years ago. So my perspective as Minister of Finance and as an accountant is: how do we block the money getting out in the first place?

How do we strengthen our controls? How do we create the early warning systems that tell us to flag certain transactions? Lets stop the money going out; lets stop the loss, and then we can work on recovery, she said.

According to the minister, Nigeria could have achieved most of its development goals if public finds had been better utilised.

She said, Theres a saying that you cant miss what youve never had.

But when we see our crumbling infrastructure, we are missing what we never had.

We are missing the road, the power, the capital projects that could have been funded with money that has left our shores illegally, or money that is concealed within the country equally illegally.

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Enefiok Essien, a professor of law and Vice Chancellor of the University of Uyo, Uniuyo, has been nominated for the award of Senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN, despite his indictment for sexual assault and forgery by the Court of Appeal.

PREMIUM TIMES had exclusively reported how the Court of Appeal, Calabar, in 2005, indicted Mr. Essien when the court gave judgment against Uniuyo for expelling a female law student accused of examination malpractice.

The student, Linda Essell, apart from her argument that Uniuyo did not give her fair hearing before she was expelled, had told the court that Mr. Essien, then a senior lecturer in the law faculty, manipulated the university system against her because she refused to have a sexual relationship with him.

One striking thing about Ms. Essells case was that it was Mr. Essien who invigilated in the examination that she was alleged to have cheated in. It was Mr. Essien who accused Ms. Essell of examination malpractice and he also chaired the Examination Malpractice Panel that tried her.

Ms. Essells expulsion was first nullified by a federal high court and then followed by the Court of Appeal judgment which affirmed it.

The Court of Appeal in its judgment declared that Ms. Essells statements as contained in her affidavit were serious indictment on Essien.

Mr. Essien did not file an affidavit to counter Ms. Essells statements.

The Court of Appeal, in its unanimous decision, held that Ms. Essells allegations not having been challenged, contradicted and controverted, must be deemed to be true and correct.

The court also held that the proceedings of the panel that was chaired by Mr. Essien must have been tampered with.

The university did not appeal the judgment.

Despite Mr. Essiens indictment surfacing 20 years after, in 2015, he was appointed the vice chancellor of the university.

Mr. Essien had told the then Chairman of the Uniuyo Governing Council, Kimse Okoko, that he was away in the U.K for his Ph.D. while the case was going on in Nigeria.

The professor may also be honoured with the SAN title soon unless the authorities heed the appeal from an NGO, the Civil Society Network Against Corruption, CSNAC.

CSNAC is asking the Legal Practitioners Privileges Committee, LPPC, to step down the consideration of Mr. Essien for the award because of his indictment by the court.

The civic group had previously petitioned the Federal Ministry of Education against Mr. Essiens appointment as the vice chancellor of Uniuyo.

We are of the view that the said Professor Enefiok Essien should not be allowed to further benefit from his own wrong by being appointed to the prestigious rank of a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, the group said in its petition.

His appointment by the LPPC as SAN will be a huge slap on the face of the academic world which he may represent and also ridicule the current administrations commitment to ensure sanity in our educational system.

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Devastated parents of kidnapped students of the Lagos State Model College, Igbonla, Epe, on Wednesday gathered at the Government House, Alausa, Ikeja, to seek release of their children.

The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the six male students were kidnapped by gunmen from their school premises two weeks ago.

The parents, numbering about 20, converged at the government house at 9 a.m., with the mothers crying and shouting until they were addressed by a government official at 10 a.m.

Some of the parents, who spoke to NAN, said that the kidnappers told them on Tuesday that four of the students had taken ill.

They added that the abductors said that they would no longer negotiate with them nor allow them to speak with their children.

Toyin Philips, the mother of one of the kidnapped boys,17-year-old Pelumi, prayed that the government should act fast.

I want my son back. I sent him to that school because there is no money. If I had the money the kidnappers are demanding, I would not send my son to that school, she told NAN.

The mother of one of the students, Judah, who gave her name simply as Mrs. Agbaosi, equally urged the government to secure the release of the children fast.

Government, please, dont let our children die. Let their release be done today, she urged.

She told NAN that the kidnappers were demanding a N100 million ransom.

Another parent, Moruf Ramon, whose 19-year-old son, Isiaka, is also being held, said that it would be impossible for the parents to raise N100,000 from their pockets.

Mr. Ramon said that the parents offered to give the kidnappers N10 million they were able to raise, but they rejected it

The spokesman for the parents, Dapo Adesega, told government officials and journalists that the kidnappers had decided not to negotiate with the parents anymore but with state government.

He said that the students had been with the kidnappers for 14 days, urging that the government should initiate dialogue with the abductors urgently.

Nobody from the government has come to us since the incident occurred two weeks ago; yet, we did not come here with placards because we want government to help us.

We have been trying to negotiate with them  kidnappers- but they rejected our offer because it is small.

They said we cannot speak with our children again, and that four of them are ill, he said.

Addressing the parents, Muslim Folami, the state Commissioner for Local Government and Community Affairs, gave the assurance that the government would do its possible best to secure the childrens release.

We, therefore, appeal to you to be calm. Government is doing all it can to get the children released.

Work is going on; soon, your children will be released to you, Mr. Folami said.

(NAN)

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A defiant coalition of some youth from the northern part of the country on Wednesday afternoon convened another meeting to respond to Governor Nasir El-Rufai for condemning their attempt to kick out Nigerians of Igbo origin resident in Northern Nigeria.

The meeting, which was underway in Kaduna at the time of this report, is aimed at responding to Mr. El-Rufai for ordering the arrest and prosecution of members of the fringe group, PREMIUM TIMES learnt.

Abdulaziz Suleiman, a coordinator of the group, said Mr. El-Rufais move to block his group from forcing a mass exodus of Igbo from northern states was disappointing.

We are currently meeting to decide on how best to react, Mr. Suleiman told PREMIUM TIMES Wednesday afternoon.

Personally, I am disappointed with some of our leaders. These types of threats were issued against the Fulani recently and no governor from the South came out to condemn it, Mr. Suleiman added.

His group, Arewa Youth Consultative Forum, caused a nationwide anxiety on Wednesdayafter it held a press conference in Kaduna Tuesday afternoon to give Igbo a 12-week deadline upon which they must vacate Northern Nigeria and return to East, the part of Nigeria with a predominantly Igbo population.

The group held the media briefing at the headquarters of Arewa Consultative Forum, a political and cultural association of Northern Nigeria leaders.

Mr. El-Rufai said the misguided elements failed to realise that every Nigerian has a right to live in any part of the country.

Walid Jibrin, a Peoples Democratic Party chieftain, joined Mr. El-Rufai in condemning Mr. Suleimans group, saying in a statement to PREMIUM TIMES Wednesday that the Igbo should not be disturbed.

The Igbo are very broad-minded people who have helped to develop the economy of the North.

There is no village, ward or town where you will not find an Igbo race living peacefully with the people.

Igbo and the South-South people have always remained the allies of the North since independence. Any action that will lead Nigeria to a civil war should never be entertained especially now that Nigeria needs unity from everyone, Mr. Jibrin, the chairman of the opposition PDP Board of Trustees, said.

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The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, on Wednesday confirmed registration of five new political parties for the country.

The commissions spokesperson, Adedeji Soyebi, said in a statement that the registration of the new parties has brought to 45 the total number of political parties in Nigeria.

The newly registered parties are:

Young Progressive Party (YPP)

Advanced Peoples Democratic Alliance (APDA)

New Generation Party of Nigeria (NGP)

All Democratic Peoples Movement (ADPM)

Action Democratic Party (ADP)

Their registration comes as INEC intensifies preparations for the 2019 elections.

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Governors of the nineteen northern states on Wednesday disowned a coalition of Arewa groups, who issued an ultimatum to Igbos to vacate the northern part of Nigeria within three months or be forced to leave.

The Borno State Governor and Chairman of the Northern States Governors Forum, Kashim Shettima, spoke on behalf of his colleagues in Maiduguri on Wednesday evening.

The governors said they are in touch with heads of their security agencies and have taken measures that will guarantee the rights of all Nigerians to live in the 19 states in the three geo-political zones within the north.

The governors also called on security agencies to arrest the promoters of the coalition and probe the motive behind their action, saying the call by the group was a suspicious act that falls in line with recent trend of confiscation of arms and coup rumours which, he said, may not be a coincidence.

On behalf of the governors of the 19 Northern States, we totally condemn such irresponsible pronouncements by those groups. We condemn, we disown, and we are totally distancing ourselves from those faceless groups who dont have the mandate of the people of Northern Nigeria to make such loud pronouncements.

Section 41, Subsection 1 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is very explicit in safeguarding the rights of all Nigerians to reside in any part of the country with no hindrance whatsoever.

But then, when you see a toad dancing in the broad daylight, the drummer is not far off from the main road. We wish to call on the security agencies to beam their lenses on these groups, and unearth the faces behind the mask.

Some months back, there were cases of importation of arms, illegal importation of arms intercepted at the ports, then we started hearing rumours of a coup detat.

Now, a group, or a bunch of groups that do not have the mandate of the people came up with remarks capable of destabilizing the north and the country as a whole. We are one nation tied to a common destiny, the governance of Northern Nigeria is not in alignment with those pronouncements, and we will take whatever measures that is necessary to safeguard the lives and properties of Nigerians living in any part of the North, Mr. Shettima said.

The Borno governor said he is in contact with most of his governor colleagues, and that they are all talking to heads of security establishments in their respective domains.

We cannot afford to take chances. We cannot afford to toil with the destiny of this country. The 19 Northern Governors wish to call on our brothers of Igbo descent to remain calm and go about their legitimate businesses.

Nobody can dare to intimidate, harass or dehumanise them in any of the 19 northern states, our governors will not allow that, Mr. Shettima said.

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Governor Mohammed Abubakar of Bauchi State on Wednesday said his commissioner was quoted out of context on the expenditure of N96 million state funds.

Mr. Abubakar said the N96 million his commissioner said was spent on horses for emirs was spent on more than horses.

PREMIUM TIMES reported how the Commissioner for Local government Affairs, Nasurudeen Mohammed, mentioned the expenditure on horses on Tuesday.

N96 million was expended by this administration in the last two years for purchase of horses to six emirate councils to maintain the tradition and culture of the state, Mr. Mohammed said.

The commissioners statement has drawn widespread criticisms from Nigerians about a state considered one of the poorest in Nigeria.

The governor, however, said Mr. Mohammed was quoted out of context.

According to a statement signed by the spokesperson to the governor, Abubakar Al-Sadique, on Wednesday, the administration treats the emirate councils with the highest of respects, but the Commissioner was clearly quoted out of context in the report in question, because the amount of money said to have been spent on the purchase of horses in the stories, was actually the cumulative amount disbursed in the last two years to the six emirate councils for the preparation of the past four Sallah celebrations, and not the purchase of horses as reported.

The spokesperson said Mr. Abubakars administration accords priority attention to Sallah celebrations, which had been put on hold for some years due to the insecurity that ravaged the state and other north-eastern states.

He also said the government supports Sallah celebrations because of its potential at showing that normalcy has returned to the state, in addition to showcasing the tourism potentials of Bauchi, which the state government is trying to harness as an alternative source of revenue.

He said it was in realisation of the assurance of peace and security in the state that 60,000 hectares of land was recently allocated for the cultivation of sugarcane and the establishment of a $200 million sugar milling plant and refinery through public-private partnership.

Mr. Al-Sadique said the government is establishing a sugar milling plant, a refinery and farm for the cultivation of sugarcane.

Governor Abubakar, therefore, called on the people of Bauchi State to disregard the reported news as his administration continues to explore ways of improving the lives of the common man as promised during electioneering campaign.

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The Bayelsa State Governor, Seriake Dickson, has begged members of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, not to leave the party.

The PDP has been bedevilled by a leadership crisis that has seen two factions  the Ahmed Makarfi and the Ali Sheriff factions  laying claim to leadership since the party lost the 2015 presidential election to the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC.

Mr. Dickson, who is the Chairman, PDP National Reconciliation Committee, has been making efforts to restore peace in the party. But the committee seems to have achieved little or nothing in that regard so far.

Many PDP leaders and members have been decamping to the APC, while the leadership tussle drags on in the court.

Mr. Dicksons plea is coming at a time PDP members are anxiously awaiting the Supreme Court judgment on the party leadership crisis. It is also coming at a time a new political association, Advanced Peoples Democratic Alliance, APDA, has just been launched in Abuja.

There are speculations that APDA was being floated by some prominent members of the Ahmed Makarfi-led faction of the PDP who planned to quit the party in the event that it loses its appeal against the Ali Sheriff faction at the Supreme Court.

The PDP will bounce back soon, Mr. Dickson said in a statement issued on Tuesday by his Special Adviser on Media Relations, Francis Agbo.

The governor advised party leaders and members not to lose hope, but to remain in the party.

He said he was concerned with the way the PDP members were decamping to other parties and the reports that some of the party leaders were floating alternative political platforms.

Mr. Dickson said what the PDP needed at this juncture was a genuine reconciliation founded on compromises and forgiveness, adding that if the party leaders had accepted the reconciliation template put together by his committee the crisis would have been over by now and a unity national convention would have been held this month to elect a new leadership for the party.

The governor said political leaders in Nigeria exert too much pressure on the judiciary by failing to do the right thing and by also failing to build consensus.

The PDP crisis, the governor said, has weakened the party across the entire country, especially in states like Edo, Ondo, Benue, Lagos, and others where the governorship and local government elections have been held or are about to hold.

The governor said his committee would not relent on reconciliation and confidence-building in the party. He promised to address PDP members after the Supreme Court judgment.

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The Akwa Ibom State government has ordered traders to immediately reduce the cost of foodstuff in the market across the state.

Idorenyin Raphael, the Special Assistant to Governor Udom Emmanuel on Traders Matters, issued the order on Monday through a letter he wrote to the various market unions.

Mr. Raphael, in the letter, threatened that the state government would dissolve the leadership of any union that does not comply with the order within 31 days.

He said the unions were taking undue advantage of the poor economic situation in the country to inflate prices of foodstuffs, thereby causing unnecessary hardship among the people.

The governors aide later appeared on a radio programme on Wednesday to explain how the unions were allegedly responsible for the high prices of foodstuffs in the markets.

Garri is selling between N30,000 and N22,000 per bag in the state, but if you go outside Akwa Ibom garri it is sold between N18, 000 and N17, 000. The union doesnt allow people who are not their members to sell garri in bags in the market, Mr. Raphael said on the radio programme.

If you are not their member and you bring in bags of garri into the market, they will seize them from you.

If you look at it, there are no Customs duties on garri, and garri is not purchased with dollars, so it is the union that is causing the price increase.

We will not continue to fold our hands and watch them do this; the unions must give traders the free hand to sell their goods.

Another example is the crayfish. If you travel to Aba (in Abia State) youll discover that the crayfish there are cheaper there than in Akwa Ibom, and the traders from Aba are buying from here. It is because of the union, Mr. Raphael said, adding that the government would do whatever it takes to break the monopoly that the unions are trying to create in the markets.

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The socio-political Igbo group, Ohaneze Ndigbo, has urged Igbos leaving in the North to relocate only if they feel their lives are not safe anymore.

However, another pan-Igbo group, MASSOB, asked Igbos to commence relocation from Northern Nigeria immediately.

The groups were reacting to the three months ultimatum issued by the Arewa Youth Consultative Forum, ACYF, a coalition of socio-political groups in northern Nigeria, to all Igbos in the 19 northern states to vacate the region.

The federal government and the Kaduna State government have since condemned the call, assuring of maximum security while Governor Nasir El-Rufai called for the arrest of the sponsors of the Arewa forum.

In his reaction, the National Publicity Secretary of Ohaneze, Uche Achi-Okpaga, in a statement in Abakaliki, the Ebonyi State capital, urged Igbos in the south-east to continue living in peace with everyone.

At any rate, two wrongs dont make a right, he said. We encourage our sons and daughters to accept every Nigerian and even a foreigner living legally and lawfully in the South-East. We also advise our people living in the North to relocate if your life has been so crystally threatened. It has no spare either.

The Igbo group blamed President Muhamadu Buhari and the ruling All Progressive Congress for the ultimatum alleging that the AYCF was just following in the footsteps of the president and the party, who have allegedly shown disdain and hatred for the Igbos.

In Ohaneze, we are not surprised about the ultimatum because Actions repeated long enough become automatic. The people of the North have copied the deliberate and conspicuous body language of the government. The President didnt mince words on inception of power when he told the world that he does not place much premium the people that gave him five per cent vote. What has this government not done to the South East since then.

Mr. Achi-Okpaga alleged that the south-east has been marginalised in appointments and provision of amenities.

Appointment wise, apart from the statutory (at least) one ministerial slot per state, what else has the South East. Even the little positions they occupy, they are tactfully removed and replaced. Chief Elias Mbam was reappointed the Chairman of National Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation & Fiscal Commission since August last year by the President but his name was never sent to the Senate for confirmation. Instead, a northerner has been acting as the Commissions Chairman.

The PENCOMs head was removed and quickly replaced by a Southern Westerner and ally of the Acting President. You can see that be it under Buhari or Osinbajo, the APC governments body language remains the same.

This is a Federal Government that is said to be encouraging agriculture but the farmlands have been pulverized, women raped and innocent Nigerians killed in hundreds by criminals masquerading as herdsmen and there is no solution.

The Northern Governors had stated that the criminals are not Nigerians. The question is, does it mean that the government is allowing foreigners to come in and kill Nigerians? So, the body language has inflicted the Northerners so that they are now thinking that anything is right to say or do.

This present government is voraciously infested by ethnic chauvinism so that the Country has become more divided than united. I sincerely pity South-Eastern politicians who are cross carpeting to the APC, except you have a financial skeleton in your cupboard and looking for shield from the EFCC and other agencies in which case one would bear with you.

In its reaction, the Movement for the Actualisation of Sovereign State of Biafra, MASSOB, urged Igbos not to wait for the three-months before leaving the region.

According to MASSOB Leader, Uche Madu, the quit notice did not come as a surprise.

MASSOB is aware that such rascality will happen. As a matter of fact, this is the only rascality exhibited by sponsored Arewa youths to forcefully exit the people of Biafra residing in Arewa land that MASSOB will 100 per cent support. Their Boko Haram tactics didnt work as planned. We pledge our total support towards this divinely approved quit notice.

MASSOB congratulates the Arewa political, religious, traditional and opinion leaders who sponsored their youths wing by using Arewa House in Kaduna for this greatest meeting of a coalition of Islamic fundamentalist.

As there is no other alternative to stop Biafra freedom, the northern leaders have resorted to using their youths wing to start terrorising the people of Biafra living in the northern region. What they saw during the sit-at-home exercise to mark the 50th anniversary celebration of Biafra declaration by General Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu marvelled them irrespective of the promises made to them by their stooges in Biafra land.

MASSOB urges our people to start returning home now. Dont wait till the three months for quit notice to expire. MASSOB is begging our people to re-invest their investments back to Biafra land.

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A bill for the establishment of the South East Development Commission, on Wednesday, scaled second reading in the Senate, one week after a similar bill was thrown out in House of Representatives.

The bill co-sponsored by two South-eastern senators, Stella Oduah, PDP-Anambra, and Samuel Anyanwu, PDP-Imo, was subsequently referred to the committee on establishment and public service matters, which, Senate President Bukola Saraki ruled, should report back in four weeks.

The bill, SB 303, seeks to establish the development commission to act as catalysts to develop the commercial potential of the Southeast, according to Mr. Anyanwu in his lead debate.

It will also help enhance infrastructural development of the region, he said.

He noted how the region had contributed to Nigeria, yet, the federal government is not doing enough for the region.

He said the passage of the bill would engender greater sense of belonging to the Nigerian project (in the southeast).

Apart from the Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, who spoke briefly to urge his colleagues to support the bill, no further deliberation was allowed.

Mr. Saraki called for vote, which resulted in positive outcome for the bill.

After the bill was passed for second reading and referred to committee for further legislative action, Mr. Saraki noted that development and unity of Nigeria goes beyond just a bill.

We have the responsibility to bring down tension, bring unity. In doing this, we are showing we listen to everybody but the issues go beyond this bill. More work needs to be done, there are people we are leading and we have to play our role. We have only one country. he said.

But while he was on his closing remarks, the Senate erupted in wild jubilation, as senators congratulated the sponsors of the bill.

The bill was first read in the Senate on June 22, 2016, one year ago.

The Reps version of the bill failed at third reading, after it had passed second reading, as it happened in the Senate on Wednesday.

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The suspended chairman of the Ondo State chapter of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Isaacs Kekemeke, has dragged the state governor, Rotimi Akeredolu, before the south west zone of the party, accusing him of being behind his recent woes.

In the petition addressed to the regional office of the party on Tuesday, Mr. Kekemeke alleged that the governor was fuelling the crisis within the party.

Mr. Kekemeke was controversially suspended by some members of the state executive committee over allegations of anti-party activities and dereliction of duty as chairman of the party.

His deputy, Ade Adetimehin, was appointed to act as chairman, pending the conclusion of work by an investigative panel set up to probe the allegations levelled against him.

Some APC followers believe that Mr. Kekemekes allegation against the governor reflected the posture of his administration of excluding party members who did not support his governorship candidacy.

Mr. Kekemeke, who insists he remains the chairman, said Mr. Akeredolu had refused to put behind him the controversy surrounding his emergence as the gubernatorial candidate of the party from the September 2016 party primaries.

Mr. Akeredolu won the primaries, and the eventual election, in controversial circumstance despite the opposition of some party leaders including Mr. Kekemeke and former Lagos governor Bola Tinubu.

The party chairman alleged that the governor had been using government machinery to vilify those who were perceived not to be in his camp during the last election of the party.

Clearly this song with its familiar and cacophonic tune was scripted by Mr. Rotimi Akeredolu, Governor of Ondo State, who has refused to break-away from the bitterness and vestige of the Ondo State APC gubernatorial primary election, he asserted.

He has therefore deployed state machinery to vilify perceived enemies, resulting in this latest choreography with a macabre sense of humour.

The Chief Press Secretary to Mr. Akeredolu, Segun Ajiboye, denied that the governor was involved in the current travails of the chairman.

He said Mr. Akeredolu had been very much engaged with matters of state and had no time to meddle in the affairs of the party leadership.

According to Mr. Ajiboye, the suspension of the chairman was purely a party affair.

The governor is too busy to be involved in the administration of the state and the party at the same time, said Mr. Ajiboye.

The chairman should look elsewhere, as the governor will not interfere in the affairs of the Party.

Mr. Kekemeke in the petition maintained that he remained the chairman of the party in the state, describing the action of some members of the state executive calling for his removal as unconstitutional and most unconscionable.

It must be noted, however, that no meeting of the State Executive Committee was ever called by either the State Chairman or the State Working Committee; neither was there a complaint nor petition by any member against the Chairman or any other officer received; to necessitate the invoking of the disciplinary procedure as provided for by Article 21(B) of the APC Constitution, he said.

We are however baffled that such a respected and respectable organ of our party created by the Constitution for noble ends, could be wrongly and maliciously appropriated by a few misguided and unqualified elements without regards to the clear constitutional requirements of the mode and composition of that organ.

And most shockingly, with the active connivance of the State Governor, who ought to know better, but is only bent on re-enacting his position immediately before the Ondo State APC gubernatorial primary election.

We are quick to draw your attention to this ongoing political experiment because of the danger it poses to the health of our party in the State, Zone and Nation at large.

He however urged the zonal committee to intervene to forestall further derailment of the party leadership.

Your intervention in accordance with Article 13.5(i) and 21(B)(V) of the Constitution of the Party can prevent the implosion that is waiting to happen, Mr. Kekemeke said.

We remain resolute to resist this war of attrition with its attendant consequences on our party, now and in the future.

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Armed robbers on Tuesday killed four police officers in multiple bank robbery attacks in Iwo, Osun State, the News Agency of Nigeria reports.

The attacks, which were targeted at three banks on Bowen University road, Iwo, were said to have been carried out at about 4.p.m.

Confirming the robbery to the News Agency of Nigeria, the police spokesperson, Folashade Odoro, said the incident claimed four policemen.

Ms. Odoro said the Commissioner of Police in the state, Fimihan Adeoye, as well as top officials of the police and State Security Service were presently in Iwo to deliberate on how to apprehend the hoodlums.

The incident led to pandemonium in the community as students and other residents were reported to have been injured as they scampered for safety.

(NAN)

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The University of Ibadan may soon re-open following the intervention of the Academic Staff Union of Nigerian Universities, ASUU, and the Alumni Association of the university in the dispute between the management and the students union.

The university was shut down on May 30 after a protest by the students over the suspension of their union for alleged acts of insubordination.

But the chairman of the Lagos chapter of the universitys alumni association, Shina Odugbemi, on Wednesday told PREMIUM TIMES that considerable progress had been made in resolving the issues involved in the dispute between the management and the students.

Mr. Odugbemi who presided over a meeting on Tuesday attended by officials of the university and the students leaders, said the crisis was not unusual and would be resolved soon.

The crisis is not unusual, what is unusual is to have a protracted and unsolvable situation, but solutions have been provided to solve this.

After speaking with the school management and the students, we came

out joyfully hoping that in a few days, activities will come back to normal in the school.

He said other stakeholders had also intervened to ensure quick reopening of the school.

I am aware that ASUU is also part of the effort to bring peace to the campus. I am also aware that other associations, especially campus associations like NASU, key leaders in the society and the alumni of the school in the diaspora are working on how peace can be restored.

Efforts made by PREMIUM TIMES to confirm the development from the chairman of the Ibadan chapter of ASUU, Deji Omole, were not successful.

The universitys spokesman, Olatunji Oladejo, also said he could not speak with our reporter because he was at the crucial meeting.

But the students union president, Ojo Aderemi, confirmed that stakeholders had intervened.

Earlier on Tuesday, in a press statement he made available to PREMIUM TIMES, Mr. Aderemi denied that he publicly insulted the Vice-Chancellor, Idowu Olayinka, one of the reasons said to have led to the suspension of the students union.

The management had also announced the postponement of the second semester examination to July 17.

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Organizers and Participants

of the ceremony proclaiming

the Church of All Saints in Warsaw

as the House of Life

Your Excellency, Most Reverend Bishop Markowski,

Excellencies, Ambassadors,

Distinguished Representatives of the Foundation,

Reverend Father Walendzik,

Honourable Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen,

The ceremony today honours a symbolic space which at the time of barbarity and terror became an enclave of justice and humanity. In the years when Hitler`s Third Reich occupied Poland, amid immense misery inflicted by German Nazis, the Warsaw Church of All Saints served as

a place where Poles were helping Jews in an unusual way. It was possible thanks to the determination and heroism of a group of people led by Reverend Prelate, the late Marceli Godlewski  the then parish priest of the local church, which for some time was situated within the boundries of the ghetto.

Faced by unbelievable evil and bestiality, Priest Godlewski decided that it was indispensable to act, to stand unequivocally on the side of good. Together with his supporters he stood up against extermination plans of the German occupiers and their relentless law aimed at breaking the solidarity of Polish people with their Jewish fellow citizens and neighbours. In Poland, and further to the east, any help to Jews was punishable by death. And indeed it was enforced, as proved by numerous examples, including the history of the Ulma Family from Markowa, or that of the Kowalski Family from Ciepielow. Despite the real threat, Poles risked their own lives and those of their families, demonstrating extraordinary bravery and courage. In 1942, the Council to Aid Jews Zegota was established. One of its activists, Irena Sendlerowa, saved almost 2,500 Jewish children. Jan Karski and Witold Pilecki  representatives of the Polish Underground State  informed the world about the Holocaust in their reports. We will certainly never know the names of all the Poles who saved their Jewish fellow citizens. Nevertheless, all of them are our national heroes. The Republic of Poland is proud of them.

One of them, Priest Marceli Godlewski  referred to as the parish priest of the ghetto  helped Jews by issuing false documents, smuggling food and medicines, trying to find shelter for Jewish children. More than 100 people found hiding thanks to him, but presumably thousands of Jews turned to Father Godlewski for assistance. This wonderful chapter in the history of the local parish church constitutes, in a sense, the implementation of the eternal idea of the Ark  a safe refuge which allows to survive and save one`s life, even in the darkest of times.

Therefore, I wish to thank cordially the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation for awarding to the Church of All Saints  for the first time in Poland  the honourable title of the House of Life. I am truly delighted. I consider this to be the sign of gratitude and acknowledgement of the heroism and courage of all Poles who were saving Jews during World War II.

For our nation the principles by which they were led: solidarity with their neighbours, human brotherhood and loyalty vis-a-vis fellow citizens are always valid. Also today, the sovereign Polish State wants to be the Republic of Friends. We want to remain faithful to our

historical tradition and values  the same as those followed by Marceli Godlewski and hundreds of thousands of our compatriots across Poland who risked their lives by helping Jews. May this newly awarded distinction contribute to preserving their deeds in the collective memory of both our nations: the Polish and the Jewish one, as well as in the awarness of Europe and the world.

Respectfully yours,

The President of the Republic of Poland

Andrzej Duda
The Dearborn Schools Board interviewed six candidates Tuesday night to fill an open trustee position, including two former trustees and a candidate from last falls election.

The board hopes to make a decision at Mondays regular meeting, with procedural guidance from an outside consultant, new board President Mary Lane said.

Before starting the interview process, Lane said this is only the second time in more than a decade that the board has had to fill a vacant trustee position. The last time was less than two years ago when Fadwa Hammoud was appointed.

Applicants for the current position include former trustees Roxanne McDonald and Alex Shami. Also on the list is Adel Mozip, who finished third for two trustee positions in last Novembers election.

Other interviewees include business owner and parent Celia Nasser, counselor Zeinab Sobh and preschool teacher Irene Watts.

A seventh candidate, Wadeeah Alshawi, withdrew over eligibility issues, Lane said.

Whoever is appointed will serve until November 2018, when someone will be elected to complete the last two years of the term vacated by former board President Mariam Bazzi.

During the interviews, each candidate received the same five questions and 15 minutes to answer and give a closing statement. Candidates waited outside the room until it was their turn. About 70 people were in the audience.

Nasser was the first to be interviewed. The mother of three future Dearborn students, she is a graduate of the district and owns three Dearborn businesses. She noted her masters degree in public health, her business experience and advertising background as assets she would bring to the board.

She commented on each trustees background and said her experience would be a good addition to the board.

Nasser also praised the opportunities created by the relationship between the school district and Henry Ford College, which share the same board of trustees.

There are so many opportunities within the school district, she said.

Roxanne McDonald was the next candidate. She touted her five years on the board, her passion for public education and her continued involvement in the school community since she left the board at the end of last year.

I absolutely am passionate about education and not just education, but public education, McDonald said. Public education is the foundation of what has made this country great.

As to the boards role, she clarified that trustees main purpose is to oversee the schools and college and the superintendent and college president  not to interfere with day-to-day operations. However, she said trustees can still serve as a liaison to help residents understand whom to contact in the district and how to proceed if an issue arises.

McDonald also noted that she has served on the board as it searched for a college president, which trustees will be doing again next year.

I know I have a lot to contribute, she told trustees. I have worked with many of you before, and I think it is a good team. There is no question I have been an asset to this board and to this district.

Next in the interview chair was Mozip, who said he comes from an immigrant family and his parents instilled in him the importance of education. He served on the districts most recent strategic plan committee, is a product of Dearborn Public Schools, has been active in the community for a decade and has two children who are or will be district students.

I would like to make sure all Dearborn School students, as well as Henry Ford students, receive a quality education as I would like it for my two sons, Mozip said.

He said he started at Fordson High School in 2000, knowing only a handful of English words, but he worked hard and was able to get a college scholarship. He now has an MBA from Wayne State University and is COO of a start-up company.

I understand what makes successful organizations, said Mozip, who also has a background in computer programming.

He also noted that he spent three years teaching weekend classes for ACCESS. I had an amazing time teaching, he said. I do understand what teachers really go through.

Part of the role of the school board is to deliver quality products, if you are talking business wise, Mozip said. That means preparing students for success after school either in continued education or the workforce, he added.

He said his passion will help him be a great board member. People who do things they love do it best, he said.

Zeinab Sobh said her background in psychology has shown her there is a need in the community for help dealing with depression and anxiety.

She worked in a counseling program where college freshmen were facing existential crisis about their own identity as they separated from their parents. She said the emotional struggle caused them to fail at school.

Sobh said she and her children are products of Dearborn Public Schools and that the district gave her the background she needed to succeed.

Asked how she viewed herself becoming a productive member of the board, Sobh said: When I hear productivity, I hear paying it forward. She said she wants to use her degrees and experience to help the district and serve the community.

Education is a human system, Sobh said. A lot of schooling focuses on numbers like test results, but too often the emotional side of the equation is overlooked, she said.

Irene Watts applied for the last vacant board position in the district. She said her 16 years of teaching experience would make her a valuable board member. She teaches in the Great Start Readiness Program  a state sponsored preschool program.

She touted her teaching experiences, such as adjusting lesson plans to a tired childs needs and how even children under the worst circumstances can succeed.

We really need to try to recruit more teachers to come to early childhood or to teaching in general, Watts said.

Alex Shami was the last person interviewed.

He said he had time to serve on the board again because he just retired as a professor from Wayne County Community College. He previously worked as both a middle and high school teacher in Detroit and served six years on the Dearborn Public Schools Board of Education.

He said he lost his reelection bid because of conflicts between east and west Dearborn, and ended up working in Saudi Arabia and then Lebanon before returning to the states.

There is a huge problem with the addiction of the drugs, not just in the school, but in the city, Shami said.

He also stressed that reading is the key to any education.

Shami also noted that being a trustee is important work.

Its not a Mickey Mouse job  you just come and attend the meetings and go home, he said.

Besides drugs, he said his top concern would be to talk to Ford Motor Co. executives about why they do not send their children to Dearborn schools and see if there are problems the district can address to change that.

Lane thanked each candidate for coming. Earlier she noted, that while appointing a superintendent is difficult, she thinks appointing a fellow trustee is even harder.

In my opinion, it is the most important job we will do, she said.

Katie Hetrick covers Dearborn Public Schools. She can be reached at katie_hetrick@hotmail.com.
One of the suspects involved in the recent London Bridge terror attack may have been influence by a Dearborn cleric, according to a friend of one of the attackers.

The Detroit Free Press reports that the source told a British media outlet the suspect  one of three charged in the fatal attack  was influenced by Ahmad Musa Jebril, of Dearborn, who is reportedly popular among ISIS fighters. The friend continued to say that the suspect often watched radical YouTube videos of Jebril, who has developed an expansive following internationally.

The suspect was killed by police immediately following Saturdays attack, which left seven people dead and nearly 50 injured, and he has not been identified by investigators.

Jebril could not be reached for comment by the Detroit Free Press.

Read the full story at the Detroit Free Press.
MAYS LANDING An Atlantic City man was indicted Wednesday on a murder charge in the December shooting of his ex-girlfriend in her home, authorities said.

A grand jury handed up four criminal counts against Joseph McCoy, 43, in the death of Jacqueline Hoyle, 23, according to Atlantic County Prosecutor Damon Tyners office.

Superior Court Judge Patricia M. Wild set bail for McCoy at $750,000, Tyners office wrote in a statement.

Police went to Hoyles home on North Tennessee Avenue, which she and McCoy shared sometimes, at 4:22 a.m. Dec. 20 after a report that Hoyle was found dead, the prosecutor said.

Hoyle had a gunshot wound to the chest and was pronounced dead at the scene. Police accused McCoy two days later, but he wasnt arrested until he was found Jan. 5 using the name Abdul Salaam at a homeless shelter in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina.

He was extradited March 20 to New Jersey and taken to the Atlantic County jail.

Assistant Prosecutor Rick McKelvey has said two 911 calls were made Dec. 20, one of which at 3:15 a.m. was from a number associated with McCoy.

One caller informed police of a shooting and robbery near the home, he said. A second phone call from a number linked to one of McCoys associates led to Hoyles body, he said.

McCoy is also accused of unlawful possession of a weapon, possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose and possession of a weapon by a convicted felon, the Prosecutors Office said.

A murder conviction could draw a prison term of 30 years to life.

Anyone with information about the case is asked to call the prosecutors Major Crimes Unit at 609-909-7666 or the police investigators at 609-347-5766.

Staff Writer Claire Lowe contributed to this report.
Rainy weather and a few contested races may not have made for an exciting election, but voters did respond and get out to select candidates for office ranging from governor down to city council.

Voter turnout in Atlantic, Cape May and Ocean counties all topped 10 percent. It was less than 5 percent in Cumberland County, but half of the districts had not reported by deadline.

Democrats were energized in Atlantic County, with 18 percent of registered Democrats voting.

Here are the unofficial returns.

Assembly, 2nd District

Incumbent Assemblyman Vince Mazzeo and John Armato will represent the Democratic Party in the race for the state Assembly in the 2nd District after holding off four challengers in Tuesday's primary.

Mazzeo received 4,789 votes, while Armato received 3,767. Democrat Ernest D. Coursey, an Atlantic County freeholder, received 1,446 votes, while Theresa Watts received 643, Rizwan Malik 123 and Jim Carney 492.

Seventy-two percent of the districts had reported results as of 9:30 p.m.

On the Republican side, Vince Sera, a Brigantine councilman, and Brenda Taube, a former Margate commissioner, both won running unopposed. They'll face Mazzeo and Armato in November.

Atlantic County Sheriff

In the race for the Democratic nomination for sheriff, Eric Scheffler beat Dennis Munoz. Scheffler received 4,567 votes to Munoz's 2,511.

Municipal races

In Absecon, Republicans overwhelmingly approved 1st Ward Councilman Jim Vizthums re-election campaign with a 196-31 decision over challenger and school board member Chris Cottrell.

Meanwhile, in Egg Harbor City, one incumbent won and one lost in the citys contested Democratic City Council primary. Newcomer Donna Heist was the top vote-getter at 197, while incumbent Robert Ross  who previously switched his affiliate from the Republican Party  came in second with 192.

That means incumbent Hazel Mueller is out of the general election. Mueller garnered 129 votes. Challengers Andrew Dixon and Ingrid Clark received 183 and 107 votes, respectively, not including absentee and provisional votes.

Cape May County

Voters were deciding a three-way Assembly race on the Republican side of the 1st Legislative District race.

With just under half the 1st District's 206 districts reporting, Cumberland County Freeholder Jim Sauro led with 56 percent of the vote.

Downe Township Mayor Robert Campbell had 24 percent, while North Wildwood real estate agent Brian McDowell had 20 percent.

All results were unofficial. The winners will face Democratic incumbent Assemblymen Bob Andrzejczak and Bruce Land in November.

McDowell, a former contestant on TVs The Apprentice, lost the support of the Republican Party organizations in Cape May and Cumberland counties after an inappropriate video of him surfaced online. In the clip, the candidate used a vulgarity in telling a woman she should have sex with him.

I was in a bar. I had a couple of drinks, McDowell said Tuesday. It (the video) was being used to keep me out of the race.

Cumberland County Republicans replaced McDowell with Robert Campbell, the mayor of Downe Township. Campbell wasnt on the party line in Cape May County, but the county GOP urged voters to cast their ballots for him on the partys Facebook page.

Cape May County GOP Chairman Marcus Karavan told the Press of Atlantic City on Tuesday it was the consensus of committee leaders to vote for Campbell.

Karavan declined to say whether the party would back McDowell if he finished as one of the top two vote-getters in the primary.
ATLANTIC CITY  Laura Goldens routine Boardwalk bike ride from Ventnor to Atlantic City just became a few blocks longer.

The 38-year-old from Galloway Township rode past the casinos and now past the former Revel casino on the new boards, which opened to the public last month.

Its amazing. Its beautiful, she said, turning to glance at the new wooden stretch. I watched them from when it was blocked off. It was building slowly, and its just beautiful.

The city began work a year ago on the project, which included demolishing and reconstructing the Boardwalk from the shuttered Revel to The Ocean at 101 Boardwalk apartment building.

The city on Thursday will host an official grand re-opening for the new section of the Boardwalk from Rhode Island to Oriental avenues. Atlantic City Mayor Don Guardian will hold a ribbon-cutting 11 a.m. at Vermont Avenue.

The reconstruction of this section of the Boardwalk has been talked about for decades, Guardian said in a statement. By rebuilding the Boardwalk in this area, the Southeast Inlet becomes an attractive area for biking, strolling, beachgoers and future development.

This project had been funded by an approximately $5 million grant from the New Jersey Economic Development Authority and was contracted to Walters Marine Construction Inc., said Russell Cipolla, city engineer. The project also included installation of handrails and lights, as well as new wooden seating areas and ramps.

For Del Jones, 72, the ride to the Atlantic City Boardwalk from Toms River several times a year is worth it. He said he first visited the city in 1963 and has watched it evolve since. On Wednesday, he gave the new wooden chairs a try while he did his meditation.

The construction of the extension of the Boardwalk should bring people here, he said.

The jetties in the South Inlet also attract fishing enthusiasts, both local and visiting. Fisherman Adam Zatek, 70, of Scranton, Pennsylvania, brought his gear to the jetty in front of the Ocean at 101 on Wednesday. He accessed it via the new boards.

Zatek admired the construction, and noticed the lighting along the walkway. He said its attractive for people who want to get out near the water on that end.

Its good for not only the fishing, but the public will use the area more now, he said.

Phase two of the Boardwalk rebuilding project beyond Oriental Avenue is still underway, in another contract that is being run by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

That project involves building bulkheads and a seawall along the Inlet, as well as a new section of the Boardwalk that will begin at Oriental Avenue and stretch beyond the Flagship Resort.

When the project is complete, which should be by early next year, Cipolla said, it should connect from Oriental Avenue to the citys Maine Avenue Promenade, up toward Gardners Basin.

John Rice, 68, of Atlantic City, had been watching the construction on the Boardwalk right outside his ocean-view apartment for months. He said its worth the wait.

Its a great thing, Rice said. This is what weve been waiting for.
10:46 p.m. That's it for the updates tonight. We'll be back updating our database of election results starting at 6 a.m.

10:40 p.m. Gov. Chris Christie congratulated Kim Guadagno for winning the GOP governor's nomination by email just moments ago, followed by several shots at her opponent, Democrat Phil Murphy.

"Kim, we need a leader who will fight back against Goldman Sachs Democrats and I'm confident you are the person to do that. Mary Pat and I extend our congratulations to you, your family and your campaign on a hard fought and well deserved victory."

10:10 p.m. - Atlantic City Council president Marty Small won the vote for Democratic mayoral candidate Tuesday, but it wasn't enough. Opponent Frank Gilliam had a commanding lead in the mail in ballots 694 to 209. Once again mail-in ballots, were the difference in Atlantic City.

10:00 p.m. - Voter turnout in Atlantic, Cape May and Ocean counties all topped 10 percent. Lower results in Cumberland, just under 5 percent, but the tally of votes is much slower out there.

9:41 p.m. - Registered Republicans in Cape May, Cumberland and portions of Atlantic counties had the opportunity to vote Tuesday in a three-way Assembly race.

Cumberland County Freeholder Jim Sauro, Downe Township Mayor Robert Campbell and North Wildwood real estate agent Brian McDowell were running to be on the GOP ticket to face Democratic incumbent Assemblymen Bob Andrzejczak and Bruce Land.

In Cape May County, with 80 out of 127 district reporting, Sauro led with 57 percent of the vote, with Campbell at 22 percent and McDowell with 20 percent, according to unofficial results posted on the county clerks website. In Cumberland County, with 25 of 92 district partially reported, Sauro led with 47 percent of the vote, followed closely by Campbell with 46 percent and McDowell at 7 percent, according to unofficial results.

McDowell was ahead in Atlantic County with 48 percent of the vote with Sauro at 47 percent and Campbell at 5 percent with three out of four district reporting, according to unofficial totals.

McDowell, a former contestant on TVs The Apprentice, lost the support of the Republican Party organizations in Cape May and Cumberland counties after an inappropriate video of him surfaced online. In the clip, the candidate used a vulgarity in telling a woman she should have sex with him.

9:36 p.m. - Republican Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno has won the GOP primary and will take on Democrat Phil Murphy in the gubernatorial election in November.

9:27 p.m. Phil Murphy, the Democratic primary winner, told his supporters he was "honored and humbled" to be his party's nominee.

"Today, you helped send a message that progressives and working New Jerseyans are united to end the failed status quo in Trenton and fight back against President Trump in Washington."

9:15 p.m. The celebration has started early in the Frank Gilliam headquarters Tuesday night as early numbers have him leading political rival Marty Small. The two Democratic candidates in the Atlantic City mayoral race were holding post results gatherings just blocks apart, but their rooms were studies in contrast.

9:10 p.m. - In the Republican primary for Absecon Ward 1, James Vizthum defeated Christopher Cottrell. Vizthum received 196 votes, while Cottrell received 29 votes.

9:05 p.m.  With nearly 42% of the polling locations reporting, Vince Mazzeo and John Armato lead in the democratic primary for General Assembly in District 2.

9:02 p.m. - The Associated Press reports that Phil Murphy wins the Democratic primary in the run for New Jersey governor.

8:52 p.m. - At Frank Gilliam's headquarters, there's preliminary celebration as the word is Gilliam is leading in the initial mail-in ballot tally.

Early indications are that Gilliam is dominating the mail-in ballots. People at the Gilliam headquarters already celebrating. pic.twitter.com/YzwES9hptb  John DeRosier (@ACPressDeRosier) June 7, 2017

8:46 p.m. - Results starting to appear now in Cape May County with 14 of 127 districts reporting.

8:43 p.m. - With about one-fourth of the 413 districts in Ocean County reporting results, longtime incumbent Republican Freeholder Joseph Vicari is outpacing challenger Jenny Heinz. Vicari is carrying more than 75 percent of the popular vote at this point.

8:40 p.m. - In Ocean County: Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagano has a 30 point lead on Jack Ciattarelli with 118 out of 413 voting district reporting.

8:20 p.m. It was only one of 21 districts, but the first results coming into Marty Small's HQ give Small a lead. Small didn't look too assured. There was a long way to go after all.

Marty Small, left, paces nervously back and forth as the numbers come in pic.twitter.com/1WwV05s2Qx  John DeRosier (@ACPressDeRosier) June 7, 2017

8 p.m. - Polls are now closed. We will start reporting results on contested races as they come in. Check back for updates.

7:15 p.m. - Polls close in less than an hour, but early reports of low turnout in South Jersey for today's primary election.

An exception is the number of mail-in ballots requested in Atlantic County.

Lynn Caterson, a board member of the Atlantic County Board of Elections said the county has 1,100 mail-in ballots, are large number by her estimate.

The board is already determining which ones are valid, she said.

Speaking in front of a reported 1,200 people at a rally in Bergen County last week, former Vice President Joe Biden called the race to replace outgoing Gov. Chris Christie the most important election in the country before the 2020 presidential election.

But a potential new governor hasnt excited residents in South Jersey, who Tuesday will join residents across the state heading to the polls for the Republican and Democratic primaries. Instead, local races in Atlantic County will garner the most attention.

The ugliest race is the Atlantic City Democratic primary for mayor between political rivals Frank Gilliam and Marty Small. Gilliam, an at-large councilman, has put up billboards around the city and distributed two campaign mailers highlighting drug-distribution charges in 1993 and an arson charge in 2005 against Small. Small was never convicted, and the charges were dropped.

Small, meanwhile, called for Gilliam to drop out of the race after it was revealed that a former girlfriend filed for a restraining order against him in 1997 under the New Jersey Prevention of Domestic Violence Act.

Gilliam has no plans to drop out. On Friday, he said the response to his campaign has been very positive around the city.

We are ready to put Atlantic City first again, he said.

Substitute teacher Fareed Abdullah and Navy veteran Jimmy Whitehead are also on the ballot in the Democratic primary.

The winner of the Democratic primary will face incumbent Don Guardian in November. He is unopposed in the Republican primary.

Atlantic County Democrats back John Armato for Assembly EGG HARBOR CITY  After nine days and four rounds of vote tallies, the Atlantic County Democ

But around Atlantic County, Democratic candidates for the New Jersey Assembly have been knocking on doors and attending events in hopes of securing one of two available spots on the party ticket.

Freeholder Ernest Coursey, former surrogate Jim Carney, former Atlantic City Councilman Rizwan Malik and attorney Theresa Watts have been working to buck the official party endorsement of Vince Mazzeo and John Armato, whose names are under Murphy and state Senate candidate Colin Bell on the ballot.

The challenge is that the Democratic Party has the party line, and some people will just vote that without knowing who the candidates are, Carney said. But you dont really know whats going to happen because people are disillusioned with Democrats and Republicans right now.

Carney and Coursey forced four rounds of voting at the Atlantic County Democratic Convention in March for the official party endorsement despite party officials publicly endorsing Mazzeo and Armato before the vote.

Coursey said Monday his name recognition has helped him throughout the county.

Atlantic City and Pleasantville are my stronghold, but people know me from my time as a freeholder, Atlantic City councilman and commissioner at the SJTA, Coursey said. I feel really good about my chances.

Meanwhile, Mazzeo has been knocking on doors with Armato and Bell to try and drum up interest for Tuesdays race.

Historically speaking, you dont see much interest in these primary races, he said. But this year, youre seeing a little bit more engagement because of what is going on with the Trump administration.

Mazzeo added that people are looking forward to a change in the governorship, even if they dont end up voting Tuesday.

The Democratic Assembly winners will face Republicans Vince Sera, a Brigantine councilman, and Brenda Taube, former Margate commissioner, in November.

In the race for governor, Biden, who is reportedly mulling his own run for president in 2020, endorsed Democratic front-runner Phil Murphy just a week and a half before the primary.

In the most recent poll conducted by Stockton University, Murphy led challenger Jim Johnson by 24 points and Assemblyman John Wisniewski by 25 points.

On the Republican side, Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno has increased her lead over Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli to 19 points.

Guadagno and Ciattarelli have run campaigns distancing themselves from Christie. In a recent campaign ad, Guadagno highlighted her time as sheriff in Monmouth County, but did not mention her current role as lieutenant governor.

Murphy, meanwhile, has focused on running a campaign with a progressive agenda that includes raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour and keeping New Jersey within the guidelines of the Paris Climate Accord despite President Donald Trump pulling the country out of the international agreement last month.

Murphy has consistently polled ahead of Guadagno in a theoretical general election match up.
PETACH TIKVA, Israel, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Paving the path towards sustainable food production

Stockton STK, a leading company in development and marketing of botanical based solutions for crop protection, announced today that they signed a distribution agreement with Duwest Dominicana in the Dominican Republic for Timorex Gold.

As the world's population increases and the need for food sustainability grows by trade and/or consumers, Stockton STK continually invests in research and development to bring new sustainable crop protection solutions to the farmer.

Timorex Gold is a biofungicide which provides an effective, sustainable solution that improves productivity and efficiency of the crop, lowering residues in the food production while reducing chemical load and negative environmental impacts.

Timorex Gold has been sold by Duwest in the Dominican Republic for the past 8 years, in the organic banana sector with excellent results in the control of the fungus Micosphaerella fijensis. This fungus is the cause of a terrible plague known as Black Sigatoka, which affects and damages banana plantations around the world.

"Stockton has been partners with Duwest for many years now. The synergy between both companies is very high as we are committed to improving yield production without compromising environmental integrity so that the farmer can safely produce sustainable, healthy, high quality food," explained Guy Elitzur, CEO of Stockton STK. "This is another significant confirmation of our product's platform, paving the way for the flow of our new and innovative products and for sustainable crop protection."

"We are pleased to continue our business relationship with Stockton STK that began over 8 years ago," Randolfo Funez, Country Manager of Duwest Dominican. "There is no doubt in our mind that Timorex Gold is an effective tool in the fight against Black Sigatoka and other plant diseases."

Timorex Gold, equivalent to chemical fungicides and is suitable to be used in conventional and organic agriculture, meets the demand of modern agriculture without compromising environmental integrity so that the farmer can safely produce sustainable, healthy, high quality food. Timorex Gold is registered and sold in over 30 countries worldwide, achieves high performance in disease control and the reduction of chemical pesticides waste.

About Duwest Group

Duwest is a 50-50 partnership with DuPont (a multinational leader in the chemical and agricultural sector) and Westrade (a pioneer company in the formulation and synthesis of products protecting crops with more than 50 years of presence in the market of Central America and the Caribbean and more than 4 years ago also in the market of Colombia. It serves more than 14.000 clients in the region and represents companies leading the crop protection market such as Dow, Syngenta, Adama, Gowan, Sumitomo, Monsanto, Pioneer, Jacto, Stoller and now Stockton and others. Its focus is to provide farmers and customers in the region with excellent quality products and services to improve agricultural production and the challenge of healthy and sustainable feeding to a growing population every day.

About Stockton STK

Stockton STK is a leading biotechnology company, specializing in the development and marketing of botanical-based solutions. Stockton's core focus is on incorporating biological solutions into integrated agriculture to create a balanced, cleaner and sustainable agricultural environment.

Stockton STK is a global company established in 1994 active and selling in over 30 countries worldwide. Stockton has a unique R&D Center based in Israel, investing substantial resources for the development of future natural products for crop protection. Stockton has a variety of products adapted to different agro ecological areas, biological parameters and regulatory guidelines.

Stockton's flagship, awards winning product Timorex Gold is used to protect and control a broad spectrum of diseases in diverse crops. The product demonstrates an efficacy equivalent to chemical fungicides and is suitable to be used organic agriculture as well as conventional. Timorex Gold is registered and sold in over 30 countries.

Contact: For more information, please visit our website: http://www.stockton-ag.com or contact Judy Jamuy at: +972 52 7599242 or judy@stockton-ag.com.

SOURCE Stockton STK and Duwest Group
The new organization will create a single agriculture sustainability standard, it will simplify the certification process and continue to improve livelihoods for farmers and forest communities.

AMSTERDAM and NEW YORK, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The Rainforest Alliance and UTZ, two of the world's leading sustainability certification organizations, have announced their intention to merge later this year.

The new organization, to be named the Rainforest Alliance, will tackle environmental and social issues around the world, including climate change, deforestation, poverty and unsustainable farming. It will create a single global certification standard that will simplify certification for farmers and empower companies to build more responsible supply chains, more efficiently. It will also work to expand advocacy efforts and through new partnerships ensure conservation of entire landscapes in priority regions from India to Indonesia, Guatemala to Ghana.

New organisation, new certification standard

The future Rainforest Alliance will help ensure that more products are responsibly sourced, helping farmers and companies meet the growing demand for products with sustainable credentials.

The future sustainability standard, a single certification program known as the Rainforest Alliance standard, will utilize the respective strengths of the current Sustainable Agriculture Network and UTZ standards while creating a single auditing process for certificate holders.

As a result, it will be an easier path for companies to achieve proven sustainability certification, allowing them to drive innovation throughout their supply chains. Streamlining the certification process will also help the 182,000 cocoa, coffee and tea farmers currently certified under both standards and new farmers alike to invest more efficiently in sustainability, avoiding a double administrative load of working with two standards and certification systems.

Stronger together

Adopting the name 'Rainforest Alliance' helps retain well-established engagement with consumers. By combining forces, the two NGOs will provide a leading platform to help increase demand for responsibly sourced products.

Together, the new organization will act as an advocate for change, continuing to protect the natural environment and striving to make sustainable agriculture and forest management the norm by working side by side with communities, businesses and governments. An aim that is already at the core of the missions of UTZ and the Rainforest Alliance.

Once the two organizations have merged, Han de Groot, current executive director of UTZ, will be the CEO of the Rainforest Alliance. Nigel Sizer, current president of the Rainforest Alliance, will take on the role of Chief Program Officer, Advocacy, Landscapes and Livelihoods.

The future Rainforest Alliance will continue to be a member of the Sustainable Agriculture Network, working in partnership with other organizations to promote sustainable agriculture.

Quote: Han de Groot, Executive Director, UTZ

"The challenges we work on are more urgent than ever: climate change, deforestation, systemic poverty and inequality are increasingly intertwined with the way we manage land and produce food and forest products. The future Rainforest Alliance will have a bigger reach and stronger voice, allowing it to better protect the natural environment and allow farmers, businesses and consumers to be make even more responsible choices, more easily. We have a history of continuous growth and strong partnerships  this new venture will give us more influence to bring us closer to our mission: a world where sustainable farming will be the norm."

Quote: Nigel Sizer, President of the Rainforest Alliance

"Our missions are very similar, to work with farmers and communities in an effort to protect the natural environment and help mitigate the effects of climate change on a global scale. By uniting with UTZ, and partnered with SAN, we will combine our strengths to expand our impact on improving the lives of farmers and forest communities, protecting biodiversity and championing companies that are on the path to sustainability."

Quote: Daniel Katz, Founder and Chairman of the Board of the Rainforest Alliance

"Now, more than ever, stronger collaborations are needed to ensure we are doing the best we can to create a more sustainable planet. This new alliance moves us forward in that regard as it combines first-rate global conservation efforts with the gold standards of independent third-party certification. We believe that collectively the Rainforest Alliance, UTZ and the Sustainable Agriculture Network, working closer together, will benefit more farmers and more ecosystems worldwide."

Quote: Roberto Velez, CEO Colombian Coffee Growers Federation

"Thousands of Colombian coffee farmers who are certified by both UTZ and The Rainforest Alliance will benefit from this development. It should bring great benefits to them, such as being audited against one standard instead of two, thereby making major savings on auditing costs. This should allow coffee growers to invest more efficiently in sustainability and increase their income, hence contributing to their economic sustainability." The Colombian Coffee Growers Federation (FNC) represents more than half a million families dedicated to growing coffee in Colombia.

Quote: Jason Clay, WWF Senior Vice President, Markets and Food

"This shift offers an opportunity to help marginal producers in developing countries realize higher returns for their products through the harmonization and simplification of global certification programs. This should enable the adoption of better farming practices more quickly as well as continuous improvement in the production and sale of key commodities [such as coffee, cocoa, tea, and bananas]. I want to congratulate the leaders of both the Rainforest Alliance and UTZ for coming together in order to find a common good."

Quote: Andre de Freitas, Executive Director of the Sustainable Agriculture Network

"The Sustainable Agriculture Network fully endorses the merger between the Rainforest Alliance and UTZ. As a key partner of the Rainforest Alliance for more than two decades, we will participate in the governance of the new organization and look forward to supporting it over the coming years."

Quote: Pascal Baltussen, Vice President, Commercial, at Mars Chocolate

"For years Mars has supported certification with both Rainforest Alliance and UTZ as part of our commitment to certify our entire cocoa supply chain as produced in a sustainable manner. To achieve sustainability even greater impact and assurance is required, therefore we have high expectations that this merger will result in a positive transformation of farmer livelihoods and land use practices on a greater scale, which is urgently needed."

About Rainforest Alliance (http://www.rainforest-alliance.org/)

The Rainforest Alliance is a global nonprofit that works with people whose livelihoods depend on the land, helping them transform the way they grow food, harvest wood and host travelers. From large multinational corporations to small, community-based cooperatives, businesses and consumers worldwide are involved in the Rainforest Alliance's efforts to bring responsibly produced goods and services to a global marketplace where the demand for sustainability is growing steadily.

About UTZ (https://utz.org/)

UTZ is a program and label for sustainable farming. Sustainable farming helps farmers, workers and their families to fulfill their ambitions and contributes to safeguarding the earth's natural resources, now and in the future. The mission of UTZ is to create a world where sustainable farming is the norm; where farmers implement good agricultural practices and manage their farms profitably with respect for people and planet, industry invests in and rewards sustainable production and consumers can enjoy and trust the products they buy.

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/520399/Rainforest_Alliance_and_UTZ_Logo.jpg

SOURCE Rainforest Alliance; UTZ
PHILADELPHIA, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- 1315 Capital, LLC, an expansion and growth equity firm that invests in commercial-stage specialty pharmaceutical, medical technology, and healthcare services companies, announced today the continued expansion of its senior investment team with the addition of Matthew Q. Reber as a Partner. Mr. Reber joins Founding Partners, Adele C. Oliva and Michael Koby, and brings deep healthcare investing experience across equity and debt transactions to 1315 Capital.

"Matt's extensive transaction expertise and entrepreneurial spirit will help us continue to build 1315 Capital as a nationally recognized leader in healthcare expansion and growth equity," said Oliva.

Mr. Reber joins 1315 Capital after spending nine years at HealthCare Royalty Partners, most recently as a Managing Director. He has fifteen years of growth stage investing experience with a focus on the specialty pharmaceutical and medical technology sectors. Mr. Reber has worked on over $1 billion in healthcare financings over the course of his career.

"I am excited to return to Philadelphia and have the opportunity to build on the tremendous success already achieved at 1315 Capital," said Reber. "While we focus nationally, the richness of entrepreneurial activity and experienced management teams in the region provides an ideal backdrop to establish a leading growth and expansion stage healthcare investment firm."

Mr. Reber holds a Bachelor of Science in Engineering degree, magna cum laude, from Princeton University, a Master of Business Administration degree with honors from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and a Master of Biotechnology degree from the University of Pennsylvania.

About 1315 Capital

1315 Capital provides expansion and growth capital to commercial-stage specialty pharmaceutical, medical technology, and healthcare services companies. 1315 Capital leverages experienced investors and proven operating teams to work alongside portfolio company management to rapidly grow platform companies into high value businesses that positively impact patients, physicians, and the broader healthcare system. For more information, visit http://www.1315capital.com.

Contact Information

Alyson Kuritz, Zer0 to 5ive for 1315 Capital

[email protected]

908-8927149

SOURCE 1315 Capital, LLC

Related Links

http://www.1315capital.com


More than 700 people from the scientific and business circle in the field of top-level design and intelligent manufacturing attended the forum to pool their wisdom and contribute their ideas on the revitalization of Shenyang. Under the theme of "Shenyang Strength, Intelligent Future," the participants had in-depth discussions on the targets, policy measures and supporting services for building Shenyang into China's Intelligence Valley, as well as the development direction of the intelligent industry in the Hunnan District.

According to statistics, information technology, intelligent manufacturing, biological medicine, civil aviation and other leading industries accounted for 93 percent of the gross output generated by industries above designated size. Their profits jumped by nearly 40 percent in 2016 compared to the previous year, and they laid solid foundation for the creation of China's Intelligence Valley.

Wang Yibing, Secretary of the Hunnan District Committee of the CPC, said that to build Intelligence Valley is not only about the development of intelligent manufacturing and high-tech industries, but also the need to attract research institutions and talents. That is to say, the Shenyang Intelligence Valley should be a magnet for China's intelligent industries and intellectual resources across the Northeast Asia, with intelligence, intellect and intelligent manufacturing as its core.

In addition to the theme discussion, the 2017 forum also included five sub-fora with such topics as "the direction of industrialization of artificial intelligence," "the strategy and measures for the development of health care and bio-pharmaceutical industries", ect.

Image Attachments Links:

http://asianetnews.net/view-attachment?attach-id=290662

SOURCE Shenyang Municipal Government
LOS ANGELES, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- 2020 Mom and the Perinatal Mental Health Society (PNMHS), with the generous support of Denver's Zoma Foundation, announce the Maternal Mental Health Innovation Awards.

These competitive awards will be presented annually to impactful programs which deserve recognition for leadership in supporting maternal mental health. It is time we share what works in addressing maternal mental health disorders, which impact up to one-in-five women during pregnancy and the postpartum period.

The award program seeks exemplary programs which should be lifted up and could prove as models for broader adoption across the country.

The program has two primary goals:

To recognize those who are impacting maternal mental health through innovative initiatives.

To facilitate sharing innovative models in order to scale and promote change in a rapid and effective manner.

Categories and Criteria of Innovation Awards in Maternal Mental Health:

Innovative Programs in Care  Care models (both clinical and non-clinical) with strong outcomes for addressing maternal mental health and lend themselves to broader adoption. Innovative Community Solutions  Leadership, communication, and broad community engagement that brings focus to maternal mental health and sustainable engagement. Innovation in Policy and Advocacy -National, state or local legislative or regulatory advocacy efforts with impactful results stemming from passage and/or implementation.

Award Details:

The first-place winner in each category will receive $3,000 and and the honorable mention winner will receive $1,000 .

and and the honorable mention winner will receive . A representative from each of the 2017 winners will receive complimentary registration, hotel accommodations for three nights and travel costs for the PNMHS conference in November and the winning programs will be presented and recorded on Wednesday morning, November 8, 2017 .

. Winning programs will also be highlighted on the PNMHS and 2020 Mom websites, along with supporting materials, and winners will present their findings via via webinar.

Application Details:

Applications are due by July 31, 2017 and should be emailed to [email protected]

and should be emailed to Applications will be juried by a panel of experts appointed by 2020 Mom from multiple disciplines

Winners will be notified by Aug. 20 2017

For more information, visit: 2020mom.org/innovation-awards

About 2020 Mom :

2020 Mom, founded in 2011 as the California Maternal Mental Health Collaborative, has evolved as a national organization with a mission of Closing gaps in maternal mental health care. 2020 Mom understands the complex health care system and shares widely a platform of action and tools to national, state and local stakeholders and thought leaders to drive policy change.

About Perinatal Mental Health Society :

The Perinatal Mental Health Society is committed to the advancement of Clinical Care, Advocacy, Research and Education (CARE) in the field of maternal mental health.

About the Zoma Foundation :

Early childhood development is a focus of the Zoma Foundation and drives our commitment to reducing social-emotional and executive functioning disparity by age 5 in the greater Denver metro area. Our work is grounded in the belief that every child deserves to be surrounded by supportive, safe environments and that every parent and primary care provider should have easily accessible information and tools to help make that possible. . It is our hope that innovative work in addressing maternal mental health and our other initiatives in the greater Denver metro area will yield results that can be replicated statewide, nationally and even internationally.

Media Contact:

Joy Burkhard

[email protected]

626-390-4173

SOURCE 2020 Mom

Related Links

https://www.2020mom.org


MIAMI, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Law Firm 500 Award applications and nominations are now being accepted to honor the fastest growing law firms in the United States. Firms that have experienced high velocity growth over a 12, 24 or 36-month period will want to apply at www.LawFirm500.com/Apply2017/

Law Firm 500 Award applications and nominations are now being accepted to honor the fastest growing law firms in the United States. Firms that have experienced high velocity growth over a 12, 24 or 36-month period will want to apply at www.LawFirm500.com/Apply2017/ Honorees receive recognition for their accomplishments, and will be included in a list of law firms published by industry media outlets, select journals and mentioned by thought leaders. Deadline is June 30, 2017. 2016 Law Firm 500 Award winners Eric and Jenn Broel of Broel Law Group, Marietta, GA were 11th on the list of fastest growing law firms in the U.S., with a 489.57% growth between 2012 and 2015. Application deadline for 2017 applications is June 30th.

Law firm owners are required to submit four years of revenue history, and must be a for-profit entity delivering legal services in the United States. The window for entry ends at 11:55 pm on June 30, 2017. Award winners will be notified August 1, 2017. Confidential tabulation is conducted by Kahuna Accounting.

Unprecedented, this is the second year for this legal industry award, which celebrates the hard work, commitment, and strategic vision that it takes to be one of the most successful law firms in the country.

Unlike other legal awards and lists that are seeing an average growth between 1-4%, the 2016 Law Firm 500 Award honorees achieved up to 1500% growth over 36 months. We are already seeing the same exponential growth from 2017 applicants, claims Charlene Brisson, Director of Public Relations for the Law Firm 500 Award & Conference. https://lawfirm500.com/award-honorees/ Honorees serve as a positive example to the legal community that progress is possible in any economic climate.

Law Firm 500 honorees receive recognition for their accomplishments, and will be included in a list of law firms published by industry media outlets, select journals and mentioned by thought leaders.

Winners will be invited to receive their Award at the Gala Banquet during the annual Law Firm 500 Conference October 19-21, 2017 at the Waldorf Astoria in Boca Raton, Florida. This year's conference keynote speaker is pioneer entrepreneur and Shark Tank investor, Daymond John.

Christopher Anderson, Esq., President of How to Manage a Small Law Firm, Executive Sponsor of the Law Firm 500 Conference and Award Gala, sheds light on the award and the desired contribution it makes in the legal community. "The Law Firm 500 Award celebrates law firm owners who are growing businesses by helping more people more deeply. In counter-point to celebrations of the nation's largest law firms, the Law Firm 500 puts to bed the debate between law firms as a business and a profession. Clearly, they are both. A well-run law firm business grows by helping more people, more deeply, and that is truly something to celebrate."

For more information on the Law Firm 500 Award, to apply or nominate, visit www.LawFirm500.com/Apply2017/

For press or media inquiries contact Charlene Brisson, MAPC, Director of Public Relations at 760-637-1378, [email protected].

SOURCE Law Firm 500 Award & Conference

Related Links

http://www.LawFirm500.com/Apply2017


WOOD DALE, Ill., June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- AAR (NYSE: AIR) has expanded its global footprint by signing a multi-year component support agreement with Viva Colombia and Viva Air Peru. AAR will be providing pool support to affiliate airlines within the Viva LatinAmerica group including VivaColombia, Colombia's first low-cost carrier, and the newly established low-cost carrier Viva Air in Peru. AAR will make inventory available from its facilities in Miami and Chicago, as well as positioning stock in Bogota, Medellin and Lima.

"Our individualized cost-per-flight-hour programs are providing real-time support for our growing clientele all over the world," said Deepak Sharma, President, International Supply Chain, AAR. "We are excited to add South American airlines to our portfolio of more than 1,300 aircraft under contract."

"We are proud to allow millions of Latin Americans to take their first airline flight or travel by air more frequently," said William Shaw, founder and CEO of VivaColombia and Viva Air Peru. "We are excited to begin working with AAR to help continue to provide affordable air travel in the region."

"This contract is the latest example of how AAR's flight-hour support programs are a perfect fit for fast-growing airlines in emerging markets, in addition to established carriers in major markets," said John Holmes, President and Chief Operating Officer, AAR. "We use our capital, buying power and experience in component support on behalf of our partners, so they can focus on cost-effective operations and expansion."

VivaColombia and Air Peru are part of the Irelandia Aviation group, the world's premier low-cost airline developer, led by Declan Ryan, one of the founders of Ryanair. Irelandia has successfully developed 6 LCCs around the world, namely Ryanair, Allegiant, Tigerair, Viva Aerobus, VivaColombia and Viva Air Peru, which combined have a fleet of over 420 aircraft and have carried more than 1 billion passengers to date.

About AAR

AAR is a global aftermarket solutions company that employs more than 5,000 people in over 20 countries. Based in Wood Dale, Illinois, AAR supports commercial aviation and government customers through two operating segments: Aviation Services and Expeditionary Services. AAR's Aviation Services include inventory management; parts supply; OEM parts distribution; aircraft maintenance, repair and overhaul; and component repair. AAR's Expeditionary Services include airlift operations; mobility systems; and command and control centers in support of military and humanitarian missions. More information can be found at www.aarcorp.com.

This press release contains certain statements relating to future results, which are forward-looking statements as that term is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are based on beliefs of Company management, as well as assumptions and estimates based on information currently available to the Company, and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from historical results or those anticipated, including those factors discussed under Item 1A, entitled "Risk Factors", included in the Company's Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended May 31, 2016. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize adversely, or should underlying assumptions or estimates prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described. These events and uncertainties are difficult or impossible to predict accurately and many are beyond the Company's control. The Company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of such statements or to reflect the occurrence of anticipated or unanticipated events. For additional information, see the comments included in AAR's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

SOURCE AAR

Related Links

http://www.aarcorp.com


NEW YORK, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The report titled "Africa Telemedicine Outlook and Opportunities" provides a comprehensive analysis of e-Health scenario in Africa covering market challenges and success case studies by countries and at multinational levels. The report discusses about the current health scenario of different countries such as South Africa, Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda, Botswana, Cameroon and Ethiopia.





Read the full report: http://www.reportlinker.com/p04887125/Africa-Telemedicine-Outlook-and-Opportunities.html







The report also provides current e-health scenario and future government plans for development of e-Health space in all countries. The report also includes trends & developments, growth drivers and major restraints, and challenges within the industry to understand current market dynamics in the industry. The report also serves as a benchmark for existing players and for new players who wish to capitalize on the market potential and investors who are looking forward to venture into the e-Health space in Africa by providing information on success and failure case studies and optimal business model in the region.



Current Scenario:

Albeit recent improvements in the country's health care services, the health of large proportion of Africans is still not at par. Sub-Saharan Africa has ~ % of the global population; however, it carries ~% of the world's disease burden. The continent is deprived of the healthcare conditions which could be justified by the basic indicators of health with high child and maternal mortality rates, low birth weights of the children, and poor sanitation and healthcare access. Moreover, Africa has only ~ physicians per 1000 people with widespread communicable diseases which is low as compared to other countries.



It has been observed that the Government has been playing supportive in implementing the e-health policies. The same could be advocated from the fact that a number of National e-Health policies such as RAFT, m4RH and others have been initiated by the government. Rising level of mobile and internet penetration and increasing number of awareness programs run by the government and NGOs is further assisting in improving the healthcare scenario in Africa with the help of telemedicine. However, this has not helped much in providing a positive impetus to the growth of eHealth sector in the country. The main reasons for the same could be listed as lack of proper infrastructure pertaining to ICT, problem of collating data through several platforms due to lack of uniformity of the data, incomplete health records from the lowest level of health facilities, lack of technical staff for supporting the eHealth initiatives.



Key Observations-

Kenya

With foreign players entering into the Kenya telemedicine market coupled with efforts of the government of country, telemedicine market in Kenya is expected to grow at rapid pace during the future. The government plan to establish eHealth in five hospitals all across the country, which would improve the healthcare system of Kenya by increasing the probability of accurate diagnosis and providing information and accessibility to available treatment options.



South Africa

Inspite of the slow start, telemedicine in South Africa still holds opportunity as a tool to support the delivery of healthcare especially in rural regions of the country. Though the regulations don't allow people to doctor conversation through telemedicine platform, but conversation between doctors in rural hospital with specialist doctor in specialized hospital would also help in better diagnosis and treatment. Moreover, telemedicine had attracted considerable interest in innovation among academics, researchers, private enterprises and health professionals, which could be advocated by the noteworthy achievements made by public health domain in South Africa.



mHealth could be considered as most successful telemedicine type in South Africa which has revolutionized healthcare in the country. With the mobile penetration rate of ~% in the country, the telemedicine market is expected to record high growth in South Africa in future also.



Ghana

It has been observed in various cases that a successful effort would require the indulgence of both public and private sector. For instance, current investment in the telemedicine space such as the setting up of teleconsultation centers (TCCs) has been sponsored by the Novartis Foundation. However, government investment is the key to develop this across the country. Moreover, Government support is also required for the regular payments of the staff and the maintenance of the equipment.



Nigeria

All the eHealth projects implemented were initiated as small scale pilot projects in the country. On the gloomy side, none of the programs were able to successfully correspond to other health systems or share information across geographies or technologies. Most of these projects were discontinued or not running sustainably on the back of poor enabling environment, lack of involvement of the stakeholders in all the stages, low funding and deficiency of a common system to integrate multiple systems in the country among other reasons.



Uganda

Uganda is one of the least developed countries in the world. The country has around ~ pathologists which work in key regional referral hospitals. For improving the healthcare situations in the country, government is continually making efforts towards improvisation of telemedicine. mTrac has been one successful project in telemedicine industry in Uganda which is a scalable solution to the challenge with health service delivery. mTrac would work on any mobile platform, broadening the process of data collection by leveraging SMS to simplify the process of reporting through a series of keyword codes and fields.



Key Topics Covered in the Report:

 Current Health Condition of Africa level as well as on country level for South Africa, Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda, Botswana, Cameroon and Ethiopia

 Investment requirements for telemedicine in Africa

 Growth Drivers, Trends and Developments, and Challenges in Africa E-Health Market

 Current E-Health initiatives on country level for South Africa, Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda, Botswana, Cameroon and Ethiopia

 Future government Plans for South Africa, Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, and Uganda

 SWOT Analysis for Africa telemedicine market

 Success case studies on country and regional levels

 Analyst Recommendations and Optimal Working Model

Read the full report: http://www.reportlinker.com/p04887125/Africa-Telemedicine-Outlook-and-Opportunities.html



About Reportlinker

ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place.



http://www.reportlinker.com





__________________________

Contact Clare: [email protected]

US: (339)-368-6001

Intl: +1 339-368-6001

SOURCE Reportlinker

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BOISE, Idaho, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- As part of a collaborative effort to improve access to hormonal contraception for Oregon women, Albertsons Companies announced today select pharmacies can now bill Oregon Medicaid plans for the consultation service fee and was the first in the nation to successfully complete the process for a patient.

Following the implementation of Oregon bill HB 2879, which allowed anyone 18 years and older to receive birth control prescribed by a pharmacist, Albertsons Companies, in partnership with Oregon State University, worked to develop the processes that now allow Oregon pharmacists to be paid by Medicaid for the consultation service fee when prescribing birth control, eliminating the fee for the Medicaid patient.

"Oregon was the first in the nation to implement a law that gave women access to hormonal contraceptives through their local pharmacy," explained Mark Panzer, Senior Vice President, Albertsons Companies, Pharmacy Health and Wellness. "We are excited to be at the forefront with them to broaden patient access to healthcare services, decrease financial barriers, and add to ways that community pharmacists can directly and conveniently provide care for customers through the pharmacy."

While the effort to set up billing through Medicaid for Oregon women is a milestone, the work is not complete.

"We are strategically expanding the service with Oregon insurance providers and pharmacy retailers to extend this billing capability for hormonal contraceptives," states Paige Clark, RPh, Director of Alumni Relations & Professional Development, Oregon State University/OHSU College of Pharmacy. "Eventually, we anticipate all insurance plans will have processes in place to cover the pharmacist consultation service fee so that any woman in Oregon who wants birth control can have access to it, regardless of their financial constraints."

The process for obtaining hormonal contraceptives through a pharmacist is simple. No appointment is needed. The patient completes a self-assessment questionnaire and meets with the pharmacist in a private area to discuss their information and personal contraceptive needs. If the patient's self-assessment information and blood pressure are acceptable, the pharmacist creates the written prescription, counsels the patient and dispenses the medication in pill, patch, ring or depo form depending on state law. The process takes about 15 minutes.

The process for billing consists of two transactions: one for the medication and another for the consultation service fee. Insurance already covers the cost of birth control medication. The pharmacist consultation service fee, which is now covered by Medicaid, is reimbursed at the same rate as Medical Doctors, Doctors of Osteopathy, Nurse Practitioners, and Physician Assistants. If a patient does not have insurance, she has the option to pay cash for the consultation service and can discuss with the pharmacist what low-cost contraceptive choices are available to her.

Limitations to women obtaining hormonal birth control directly from a pharmacist may include high blood pressure, certain health conditions, and contraindications to the hormonal contraceptive therapy.

For qualified women, hormonal contraceptives can be obtained in most Safeway or Albertsons pharmacies in Oregon. Please call for availability.

About Albertsons Companies

Albertsons Companies is one of the largest food and drug retailers in the United States, with both a strong local presence and national scale. We operate stores across 35 states and the District of Columbia under 20 well-known banners including Albertsons, Safeway, Vons, Jewel-Osco, Shaw's, Acme, Tom Thumb, Randalls, United Supermarkets, Pavilions, Star Market, Haggen and Carrs. Albertsons Companies is committed to helping people across the country live better lives by making a meaningful difference, neighborhood by neighborhood. In 2016 alone, along with the Albertsons Companies Foundation, the company gave nearly $300 million in food and financial support. These efforts helped millions of people in the areas of hunger relief, education, cancer research and treatment, programs for people with disabilities and veterans outreach.

Media Contact:

Jennifer Rapley  [email protected]

SOURCE Albertsons Companies

Related Links

http://www.albertsons.com


DUBLIN, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Allergan plc (NYSE: AGN), a leading global pharmaceutical company, today announced that Allergan's wholly-owned subsidiary, Allergan Sales LLC agreed to acquire Keller Medical, Inc., a privately held medical device company and developer of the Keller Funnel. The Keller Funnel is a cone-shaped, lubricated plastic funnel that reduces surgeon and patient contact during breast augmentation or reconstruction procedures. Keller Medical launched the original Keller Funnel in 2009 and the Keller Funnel 2 in 2014, and hundreds of thousands of funnels have been used in breast augmentation or reconstruction procedures to date globally.

"Allergan is focused on providing technologies and products to help our surgeon customers improve procedures and Keller Funnel is that product for breast augmentation and reconstruction procedures," said David Moatazedi, Senior Vice President of Medical Aesthetics at Allergan. "The Keller Funnel was developed and designed by pioneering surgeons to improve breast implantation, and reduce the risks of implant contamination during procedures. This is a natural complement to our world-class plastic surgery and regenerative medicine business, and marketing this innovative device further enhances our commitment to our customers and patients."

The Keller Funnel is used to assist plastic surgeons in breast augmentation and reconstruction procedures by guiding silicone gel implants into the surgical pocket. The Funnel also allows surgeons to use a "no-touch" technique, which may help minimize the introduction of bacteria and foreign material into the surgical pocket.

"The purchase of Keller Medical demonstrates Allergan's ongoing commitment to excellence in breast augmentation and reconstruction surgery," said Louis P. Bucky, MD, Clinical Professor of Surgery, Division of Plastic Surgery at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and Chief of Plastic Surgery at Pennsylvania Hospital. "The Keller Funnel has become an innovative component to deliver the highest level of care for my cosmetic and reconstructive breast implant patients."

About Allergan plc

Allergan plc (NYSE: AGN), headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, is a bold, global pharmaceutical company and a leader in a new industry model  Growth Pharma. Allergan is focused on developing, manufacturing and commercializing branded pharmaceutical, device, biologic, surgical and regenerative medicine products for patients around the world.

Allergan markets a portfolio of leading brands and best-in-class products for the central nervous system, eye care, medical aesthetics and dermatology, gastroenterology, women's health, urology and anti-infective therapeutic categories.

Allergan is an industry leader in Open Science, a model of research and development, which defines our approach to identifying and developing game-changing ideas and innovation for better patient care. With this approach, Allergan has built one of the broadest development pipelines in the pharmaceutical industry with 70+ mid-to-late stage pipeline programs currently in development.

Allergan's success is powered by our more than 18,000 global colleagues' commitment to being Bold for Life. Together, we build bridges, power ideas, act fast and drive results for our customers and patients around the world by always doing what is right.

With commercial operations in approximately 100 countries, Allergan is committed to working with physicians, healthcare providers and patients to deliver innovative and meaningful treatments that help people around the world live longer, healthier lives every day.

For more information, visit Allergan's website at www.Allergan.com.

Forward-Looking Statement

Statements contained in this press release that refer to future events or other non-historical facts are forward-looking statements that reflect Allergan's current perspective on existing trends and information as of the date of this release. Actual results may differ materially from Allergan's current expectations depending upon a number of factors affecting Allergan's business. These factors include, among others, the difficulty of predicting the timing or outcome of FDA approvals or actions, if any; the impact of competitive products and pricing; market acceptance of and continued demand for Allergan's products; difficulties or delays in manufacturing; and other risks and uncertainties detailed in Allergan's periodic public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including but not limited to Allergan's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2016 and Allergan's Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the period ended March 31, 2017. Except as expressly required by law, Allergan disclaims any intent or obligation to update these forward-looking statements.

CONTACTS:

Investors:

Daphne Karydas

(862) 261-8006

Media:

Mark Marmur

(862) 261-7558

SOURCE Allergan plc

Related Links

http://www.allergan.com


RIVERSIDE, Calif., June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Senator Bob Hertzberg (D-Van Nuys) has authored Senate Bill-10, which would eliminate the current bail system in favor of creating a Pretrial program to screen defendants. The new law would create a new bureaucracy, which lawmakers, industry lobbyists, and others have decried, as the proposal would impose high costs on the state and counties.

Bail Reform Faces Opposition

The Alliance of California Judges, a group of more than 500 judges and retired judges from across the state, has expressed strong opposition to the Bail Reform Bill. Their position is that Judges already have the power to adjust bail amounts and release defendants on their own recognizance.

"We recognize that not everyone has the ability to post bail pending trial. But the proposals contained in these bills are simply too drastic, and the effects on public safety and court congestion could be catastrophic," Hon. Steve White, President of the Alliance of CA Judges, wrote in an opposition letter to Legislator Rob Bonta regarding Bail Reform.

Bail amounts are currently set by Judges; the proposed bail reform would create panels who would use a different set of priorities to determine pretrial release. These reforms would pose additional risks to public safety. Judge White continues, "Those arrested for selling drugs, committing identity theft, vandalizing homes and business, stealing huge sums of money, or burglarizing dozens of business would all presumptively be granted pretrial release--without having to appear before a judge, post bail or submit to any conditions upon release."

An identical bill in the CA Assembly, Assembly Bill-42 authored by Rob Bonta (D-Oakland) narrowly failed, 36 in favor and 37 lawmakers opposed, in a late night, 11 PM vote on June 1st.

Media Contact:

Pablo Fonseca

Ph: 951-444-8237

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Alliance of California Judges
HOUSTON, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- As part of the firm's ongoing health and wellness initiative, alliantgroup is proud to celebrate National Running Day. This annual event is held nationwide on the first Wednesday in June and is a designated time for participants to reaffirm their passion for running. Today marks the third year that alliantgroup's Health and Wellness Program has participated in the event.

Three years ago, alliantgroup's Health and Wellness Program also launched its monthly 5K running group, and since then, this team of walkers and runners has grown to over 100 employee participants. Today, the firm would like to recognize the running team's accomplishments.

"alliantgroup's runners and walkers are still going stronger than ever," said Kristin Kabay, alliantgroup Director of Wellness. "Since we first launched the group back in 2014, our team has completed over 28 races and logged over 5,000 total milesthe distance from our headquarters in Houston to Bourges, France."

"One of my core goals has been to create the best work environment possible, one that ensures our employees meet their full potential," said Dhaval Jadav, alliantgroup CEO. "Our company's investment in health and wellness goes hand-in-hand with investing in the future of our employees and our firm will always remain committed to the well-being of our people."

alliantgroup's mission is one of education and awarenesswe exist to help industry organizations, U.S. businesses and the CPA firms that advise them take full advantage of all federal and state tax credits, incentives and deductions available. Our government has legislated these powerful incentive programs to help businesses grow and successfully compete both in the U.S. and abroad. We are proud to have helped over 20,000 businesses claim more than $5 billion in tax incentives. alliantgroup's headquarters is in Houston, Texas, with offices across the country including New York, Boston, Chicago, Orange County, Sacramento, Orlando, Indianapolis and Washington, D.C. For more information find alliantgroup on Facebook and Twitter.

SOURCE alliantgroup
The Butler Did It par Read more [...]
NEW YORK, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- ALTR Created Diamonds, from the RIAM Group, today announced the launch of its first-ever consumer brand, LOVEMONSTER. Made exclusively from ALTR created diamonds, LOVEMONSTER engagement rings and other jewelry feature larger carat, Type IIA diamonds in exquisite settings.

"ALTR's new brand endeavors to capture the imagination of the modern couple," says Amish Shah, President of ALTR Created Diamonds. "LOVEMONSTER is jewelry that amplifies the impact of a superior stone and tells a love story that is located in the now."

The power of love finds its match in the intensity of how the diamonds in LOVEMONSTER jewelry are produced. Grown to specification using a method that recreates the temperature and pressure found in the deep layer of Earth, LOVEMONSTER embodies the intense, amplified and passionate circumstances that define the new cultural truths about relationships and love.

LOVEMONSTER's most elaborate piece, INDRA'S NET, consists of 205 ALTR created diamonds totaling 35.40 karats on an intricate web of 18ct white gold. As one of the first couture jewels made entirely from created diamonds, Indra's Net is possibly the most extravagant design to date.

Led by industry veteran and Third Generation Diamond and Jewelry Manufacturer Amish Shah, ALTR Created Diamonds are manufactured by RIAM Group, leveraging 75 years of experience and expertise in the diamond trade. As the world's only completely vertically integrated company for created diamonds, ALTR uses the highest standards of production from creation to completion. ALTR Created Diamonds carry certifications from Gem Certification and Assurance Lab (GCAL) and International Gem Institute (IGI).

LOVEMONSTER will be available in retail stores across the U.S. beginning September 2017. For more information on the ALTR Created Diamonds, please visit WWW.ALTR.NYC

About ALTR Created Diamonds

ALTR Created Diamonds are branded lab-grown diamonds created exclusively by RIAM Group. ALTR is solely devoted to creating high-quality diamonds and stunning jewelry designed around these diamonds. The ownership of the parent company RIAM Group has 75 years of experience in the mined diamond industry. RIAM Group has the background and knowledge to bring vertical and integrated manufacturing of created diamonds and jewelry made from those diamonds to an international market. RIAM Group is the only fully vertical manufacturer of both mined diamond jewelry and created diamond jewelry. The ALTR division of the group manufactures only created diamond jewelry.

SOURCE ALTR Created Diamonds

Related Links

http://www.altr.nyc


GAITHERSBURG, Md., June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Sodexo, world leader in providing Quality of Life services, and its operations throughout North Carolina have been recognized by American Veterans, Inc. (AMVETS) for its work providing employment opportunities for veterans through the annual AMVETS Veteran Friendly Employer of the Year Award.

The AMVETS Veteran Friendly Employer of the Year Awards program recognizes employers from the private sector and local, state and federal government who have made great strides by providing employment to our veterans. The awards recognize organizations based on their commitment to serving veterans through both their hiring practices and community involvement.

"As a company with a deep commitment and a long term relationship to the armed services, Sodexo is in a position to use our considerable expertise and resources to improve the quality of life for solders from all branches of the military, as they start a career outside of the military upon completion of their service," said Deborah Roberts, CEO government, Sodexo North America. "Sodexo is honored to hire, mentor and train veterans, while offering information sharing and community involvement initiatives that harness the enormous potential and experience of our retired military population."

Sodexo's commitment to North Carolina veterans is evident in the number of veterans it hires and the support provided to veterans. In calendar year 2016, the measurement period for the award, Sodexo hired 68 veterans for new positions in operations throughout North Carolina, which accounts for 62% of all new hires in that state. These new hires included 22 women veterans and 26 disabled veterans.

"As part of our commitment to provide employment opportunities for veterans, Sodexo has developed a great relationship with the NCWorks Career Center and the Onslow County Veterans Unit," said Lori Ready-DiGiovanni, Senior Human Resource, Sodexo. "We have worked hard together to meet each other's needs. When Sodexo has an opening, the Veterans' Unit, staff and partners within the Career Center send the best qualified applicants and we do our utmost to hire as many as possible."

In addition to new hires, Sodexo supports veterans in numerous ways. We assist veterans succeed in its workforce and beyond. Sodexo actively raises funds and awareness for veterans, provides veterans with employment opportunities, and trains veterans to be better prepared for their futures. One of its more recent efforts included a partnership with Volunteers of America, where Sodexo launched a collection of resources specifically designed to support veterans who may be transitioning to the civilian workforce or seeking to enhance their active duty career opportunities.

Training is a vital aspect of veterans having a smooth transition to civilian life, and one way that Sodexo facilitates this is through the "Well Seasoned Culinary Training program." Well Seasoned provides training for senior level enlisted Marines who are getting ready to transition out of the Marine Corps. This three-day training session Sodexo executive chefs, culinary professionals and other subject matter experts work closely with Marine cooks to help them enhance their skills for a food-focused job in a civilian setting.

Sodexo employees who are veterans and join the company's Employee Business Resource Group, HONOR, gain support, guidance and resources for the employees and families connected to the military. HONOR accomplishes this by offering development opportunities, providing a forum to recognize and celebrate contributions made to our country, and establishing partnerships with community groups that support veterans, active duty, National Guard and military reserve.

The statewide AMVETS Employer of the Year Award was presented to Sodexo at the North Carolina AMVETS Convention on Saturday, June 3. As one of three employers throughout North Carolina recognized with this award in 2017, Sodexo is now eligible for the AMVETS national Employer of the Year Awards, which will be presented at the AMVETS National Commander's Banquet during the AMVETS National Convention in August.

With more than 40 years of experience working municipal, state, federal and military clients, Sodexo's Government segment and its nearly 3,000 employees, improve the Quality of Life for the people it serves at 150 military and U.S. Federal Government locations in 26 states. Headquartered in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, Sodexo provides a variety of integrated food and facilities management solutions and is the nation's largest federal foodservice contractor  serving 45.6 million meals annually with a focus on wellness and nutrition.

Sodexo delivers more than 100 services across North America that enhance organizational performance, contribute to local communities and improve quality of life. The Fortune Global 500 company is a leader in delivering sustainable, integrated facilities management and foodservice operations.

Learn more about Sodexo at its corporate blog, Sodexo Insights.

SOURCE Sodexo

Related Links

http://www.sodexoUSA.com


BOWLING GREEN, Ky., June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The Enthusiast Network announces registration and spectator tickets are now available for America's definitive showcase of customized cars, which will be on full display for an action-packed weekend as part of the 2017 Chevrolet Performance CAR CRAFT Summer Nationals, presented by Holley/MSD, July 21-23 at Beech Bend Raceway Park in Bowling Green, Ky. This will be the first year the highly anticipated annual automotive event will be held in Bowling Green. Special advance pricing for registration and tickets will be available for a limited time only.

"Chevrolet Performance CAR CRAFT Summer Nationals continues to be one of the leading, must-attend events for automotive enthusiasts nationwide," says TEN's Vice President of Automotive Events Steve Freeman. "We are excited to bring this engaging event to Bowling Green and look forward to taking it to a new, expanded level."

Chevrolet Performance CAR CRAFT Summer Nationals is the country's premier gathering of street machines and muscle cars that showcases more than 2,500 performance cars and attracts upward of 25,000 enthusiasts from across the country over the course of three days. The 2017 Chevrolet Performance CAR CRAFT Summer Nationals will include, among other highlights, faster open autocross, drift showcase, chances to test torque and horsepower against the best in the Dyno Challenge, as well as the Undiscovered Builders' Invitational and Pro Builders' Shootout. Midnight drags, drag racing challenges, burnout competition, and the professionally judged and awarded Show-'N'-Shine Competition offer many opportunities for participants to get involved in the excitement. The Performance Marketplace and Kids Zone, as well as giveaways and activities on the main stage, provide something for everyone. Enthusiasts will also have the chance to meet CAR CRAFT editors and photographers on site.

"There is no event quite like the Chevrolet Performance CAR CRAFT Summer Nationals and it's an event that my team always looks forward to," said Craig Shantz, Manager, Chevrolet Performance Shows/Events and Specialty Vehicle Builds. "We want Chevrolet Performance to be an experienced brand; this move to Bowling Green allows for true brand integration with all the Chevy presence in town. It's a great venue for the future of CAR CRAFT Summer Nationals. We look forward to continuing our longtime partnership with the event and being a part of yet another fantastic automotive celebration."

Something for everyone at Chevrolet Performance CAR CRAFT Summer Nationals

Enthusiasts and families alike can experience Chevrolet Performance CAR CRAFT Summer Nationals on Friday, July 21, Saturday, July 22 and Sunday, July 23. For the chance to appreciate (and show off) the spirit of American cars, participants may register their vehicles to be a part of Chevrolet Performance CAR CRAFT Summer Nationals. Registration includes entry for one vehicle, driver and copilot, and one goodie bag. Pre-registration (available until July 20, 2017 at 11:59PM CST) is only $60 ($75 after July 20, 2017). Participants will also be able to register on-site during the event. For more information and to register, visit carcraft.com/events.

Spectator tickets are on sale now and available at carcraft.com/events, with special pricing through Saturday, July 20. Pricing is as follows (if attending on Saturday includes Midnight Drags):

One-day ticket admission - $13 in advance, $15 at the gate (valid any one day)

in advance, at the gate (valid any one day) Three-day ticket admission - $30 in advance, $35 at the gate

"The Car Craft Summer Nationals is a historic event with a life of its own and we're excited to see it come to our home town," said Bill Tichenor, Director of Marketing, Holley/MSD. "Car Craft followers use products from our company as much as any car guys on the planet, so it makes perfect sense to sponsor this renowned event. We can't wait for July."

For the latest information, visit carcraft.com/events, Facebook at FB.com/Car Craft Magazine, email [email protected], or call 310-363-4231.

For hotel bookings please go to travelplanners.net, or call 410-349-3000.

SOURCE The Enthusiast Network
WASHINGTON, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Amtrak and the U.S. Department of the Interior are teaming up to help customers enhance their travel experience by connecting them to the natural and cultural attractions offered through the National Park Service.

Amtrak is extending its 75 percent discount to fourth-graders, with the purchase of one regular adult fare. The discount is available now through Aug. 31 for travel through Sept. 3; Blackouts apply on Sept. 1. The discount is part of the Every Kid in a Park initiative. This program invites fourth graders to visit the Every Kid in a Park website and obtain a pass for free entry for them and their families to more than 2,000 federally-managed lands and waters nationwide.

With convenient connections to more than 260 national park lands, monuments and historic sites, America's Railroad is the smarter way for families to see the natural beauty of the U.S. such as Glacier, Grand Canyon and Yosemite. Additional resources to enrich the travel experience is available through the Amtrak and National Park Service Trails and Rails program.

Advance reservations are required a minimum of three days prior to travel and seating is limited. The offer is valid on all Amtrak services throughout its national network except Acela Express and Auto Train. Terms and conditions apply.

Fares are subject to availability. To book travel, visit the Every Kid in a Park website. For more information, visit Amtrak.com or call 800-USA-RAIL.

About Amtrak

Amtrak  America's Railroad  is dedicated to safe and reliable mobility as the nation's intercity passenger rail service provider and its high-speed rail operator. With our state and commuter partners, we move people, the economy and the nation forward, carrying more than 30 million Amtrak passengers for each of the past six years. Formally known as the National Railroad Passenger Corporation, Amtrak is governed by a 10-member board of directors, nine of whom are appointed by the President of the United States plus the Amtrak CEO. Anthony R. Coscia is board chairman and Jeffrey R. Moreland is vice chairman. Amtrak operates more than 300 trains daily  at speeds up to 150 mph (241 kph)  connecting more than 500 destinations in 46 states, the District of Columbia and three Canadian Provinces. Learn more at Amtrak.com or call 800-USA-RAIL for schedules, fares and other information. Check us out at blog.Amtrak.com, Like us on Facebook.com and Follow us on Twitter @Amtrak.

SOURCE Amtrak

Related Links

http://www.amtrak.com


NEW YORK, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Appboy, the global leader in lifecycle engagement technology, today announced Currents, a real-time, high volume data export interface that connects directly with data warehouses, business intelligence tools and data management platforms within the marketing stack. Postmates is leading adoption of Appboy's new offering in order to transform and evolve seamless customer experiences that drive long-term retention and usage.

Currents supercharges data export from Appboy by way of a high volume, real-time stream and is built to easily scale. Currents makes it easy for brands to manage and evolve their marketing strategies and processes by seamlessly linking Appboy to other systems within any technology stack while taking advantage of new technologies that have made real-time data streaming possible. With Currents, all teams within an organization have open access to any Appboy data they need, on any platform, at any time.

"Currents is a major evolution for the Appboy platform; one that really brings home the fact that we exist within a wider ecosystem," said Bill Magnuson, cofounder and CEO of Appboy. "It seamlessly works with a company's existing setup adding speed, ease-of-use and functionality. We wanted to build a tool that would help bridge the gap across teams and dig deeper into the marketing stack and the role it plays in supporting the strong customer and brand relationships that real success is built on."

"The speed and ease of Appboy Currents has completely transformed how our team uses customer engagement data enabling deeper machine learning and analytics drilled down to the customer level  it's a game changer!" said Tanner McGrath, Lead Product Manager at Postmates. "Currents has demonstrated Appboy's continued commitment for open access to a company's own customer data. With this integration, we now have greater visibility into campaign lifecycles on any platform, streamed in real-time, providing us with insights that exponentially multiply marketing efficiencies bringing product and marketing even closer."

Currents is available in limited beta for Amplitude integrations. Additional connectors to Amazon Redshift, mParticle and Segment are in active development. To revolutionize your lifecycle engagement get in touch with Appboy today. https://www.appboy.com/contact/.

About Appboy

Appboy is the leading lifecycle engagement platform for marketing, growth, and engagement teams. We empower brands to humanize connections with customers, resulting in better experiences and increased retention, lifetime value, and ROI.

Appboy's technology helps brands automate sophisticated marketing and growth strategies simply, in real time, on a global scale. With Appboy, brands can seamlessly gather and manage actionable customer data from across systems in comprehensive user profiles, then use that information to reach their audience with highly relevant, personalized cross-channel messaging experiences. By taking advantage of this intuitive, secure solution, brands can easily understand the impact of past marketing efforts and carry out fast, effective iteration supported by Appboy's intelligent optimization tools.

Each month, 15 billion messages associated with more than 750 million active users are processed through the Appboy platform. Enterprise and digital-first brands rely on Appboy and our best-in-class strategic expertise and support to reach, engage, and retain their audiences and keep pace with a rapidly changing landscape. Appboy is a venture-backed company of more than 150 employees, with offices in New York City, San Francisco, and London. Appboy was named a Digiday Signal Award Finalist for Best Marketing Automation Platform, a VentureBeat Omnichannel MMA "Best Bet," and was selected by Forbes as a Cloud100 Rising Star. Learn more at Appboy.com.

About Postmates

Postmates is transforming the way local goods move around a city by enabling anyone to get any product delivered in under an hour. Available for iPhone, Android and on the web, the on-demand logistics service connects customers with local couriers, who purchase and deliver goods from any restaurant or store in a city, 24/7.



Postmates' passionate community of riders and drivers are currently delivering in 40 major metropolitan markets. See the full list at postmates.com. Download the Postmates app today or order online: www.postmates.com.

Contact: Larisa Zdepski, 646-386-7424, [email protected]

SOURCE Appboy

Related Links

http://www.appboy.com


"Having Environmental Leader choose our facility as one of the Top Projects in the country really puts us in impressive company," said Aries CEO Greg Bafalis. "The list of current and former winners reads like a who's who of American industry, and we are very proud our patented technology and design work has been included." Other 2017 winners of Top Project awards include such companies as General Motors, 3M, Lockheed-Martin, and Ingersoll Rand.

The Environmental Leader Product & Project Awards recognize excellence in products and services that provide companies with energy and environmental benefits, or in corporate projects that improved environmental, sustainability or energy management and increased the bottom line. It is a five-point rating system designed to offer companies feedback and recognition. Third-party judges came from national and international companies including: AT&T, Kellogg, LNS Research, Marriott, Panasonic, Safeway, Sears Holdings Corporation, Sierra Nevada Brewing Company, and Tyco Global Products.

Judges considered the clean-tech waste-to-energy plant located in Lebanon, TN, an exemplary project. "This is such a great example of sustainability and could be a wonderful model for the rest of the world," one judge said of the public/private gasification project. "They are using systems thinking to reduce waste, produce renewable energy, capture heat that normally would be wasted, and are also producing biochar which has great agricultural benefits."

Another judge added, "A great example of how to increase government's productivity while also reducing their environmental impact."

Last month, Aries Clean Energy's biomass gasification plant was recognized as the driving force behind the City of Lebanon's receipt of a 2017 Governor's Environmental Stewardship Award, the most prestigious conservation award in Tennessee. Now in its 31st year, the awards annually showcase exceptional voluntary actions that improve or protect the environment.

Aries Clean Energy deployed its patented gasification technology in design and construction of the plant that was commissioned in late 2016. It is the world's largest downdraft gasification facility, and it utilizes a blend of wood waste from local industries, scrap tires from Wilson County and biosolids from the city's wastewater treatment plant to produce green electricty.

About Aries Clean Energy:

Aries Clean Energy, LLC, based in Nashville, Tennessee, designs and builds innovative bio-based downdraft and fluidized bed gasification systems using its eight patents granted to date. Its projects provide for the sustainable disposal of waste, reduction of carbon emissions, and the production of clean thermal and electrical energy. The company's ongoing R&D efforts are focused on cleaning syngas produced from waste for use in internal combustion engines.

Visit our website: www.ariescleanenergy.com

Contact: Nancy Cooper

[email protected]

615-471-9093

About Environmental Leader

Since 2006, Environmental Leader's website and daily email newsletter have provided the definitive and objective voice in reporting on business-related energy, environmental, and sustainability issues, while Energy Manager Today is the leading daily trade publication keeping corporate executives informed about energy management news. For a complete list of 2017 winners, visit www.environmentalleader.com/environmental-leader-product-project-awards-2017/

SOURCE Aries Clean Energy

Related Links

http://www.ariescleanenergy.com


LAKE SUCCESS, N.Y., June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Atlantic Quality Innovation Network (AQIN), the IPRO-led Quality Innovation Network-Quality Improvement Organization (QIN-QIO) for New York, South Carolina and the District of Columbia, is proud to announce that it is featured in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' (CMS') newly released 2016 QIO Program Progress Report. AQIN is one of 14 QIN-QIOs that contributed to the Program's success in improving the quality of care for Medicare beneficiaries throughout the United States.

The annual QIO Program Progress Report highlights how QIN-QIOs nationwide are bringing together local providers, partners and other stakeholders to achieve bold goals in health care quality improvement. It includes findings from the third year of the Program's five-year performance period and features recent success stories from around the country, data-driven results from QIN-QIOs and Beneficiary and Family-Centered Care (BFCC)-QIOs, and top takeaways from the 2016 CMS Quality Conference.

"2016 was an outstanding year for both QIN-QIOs and BFCC-QIOs. QIN-QIOs were especially successful in achieving impactful results in the areas of care coordination, diabetes care and nursing home care," said Dennis Wagner, Director of the Quality Improvement and Innovation Group (QIIG) within CMS' Center for Clinical Standards and Quality. "QIN-QIOs' work contributed to more than 24,300 hospital readmissions avoided, more than 27,800 beneficiaries educated in diabetes self-management, and a 21 percent reduction in inappropriate antipsychotic medication usage at nursing homes throughout the United States. Together, QIN-QIOs and BFCC-QIOs helped improve the effectiveness, efficiency and quality of care provided to our nation's Medicare beneficiaries," he concluded.

The Progress Report highlights AQIN's partnership with the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC), which created a coalition in early 2015 of nearly 40 organizations in the state, including the South Carolina Office of Rural Health, the South Carolina Academy of Family Physicians, the South Carolina Pharmacy Association, and the Medical University of South Carolina. The coalition shares best practices, tools and resources in an effort to increase immunizations, and to encourage providers to document and report immunization rates.

The coalition's efforts yielded dramatic results during the 2015 flu season, and early numbers for the 2016 season are expected to be equally impactful. From August 2014 to March 2015, 29 out of the 40 counties in South Carolina saw an uptick in influenza immunization rates, and from January to December 2015, all counties achieved higher pneumonia immunization rates.

In the fall of 2016, coalition members launched the next phase of their strategy, a partnership with Walgreens to host immunization clinics in rural areas. Through collaboration with Walgreens and other local stakeholders, the coalition has been successfully hosting three community events per quarter, with topics ranging from immunization awareness to assisted living options. They also made preparations for 2017 events, including a State Immunization Resolution passed by the General Assembly in April, and an "Immunize SC" week for August 14-21.

The coalition views culture-specific messaging as critically important moving forward, as it strives to continue the upward trend in immunization rates. "Family is very important in the South, especially among rural populations," said Melinda Postal, Quality Specialist at AQIN-South Carolina. "We're finding that when we're talking to seniors about getting vaccinated, it really hits home to say, 'Do it for yourself, but also do it for your family and grandkids.'"

The QIO Program Progress Report is available online at http://progressreport.qioprogram.org/. A printable PDF version is also available for download from that site.

As a QIN-QIO, AQIN catalyzes change through a data-driven approach to improving healthcare quality. We work with providers and stakeholders at the community level to share knowledge, spread best practices and improve care integration. As part of the national QIO program, we are committed to a patient-centered approach to improving health, improving health care and reducing costs for all Americans.

Please visit the AQIN website at www.atlanticquality.org.

This material was prepared by the Atlantic Quality Innovation Network (AQIN), the Medicare Quality Innovation Network  Quality Improvement Organization for New York State, South Carolina, and the District of Columbia, under contract with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The contents do not necessarily reflect CMS policy. 11SOW-AQIN3-Tsks B-F-17-01

SOURCE IPRO

Related Links

http://www.atlanticquality.org


TUSTIN, Calif., June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- AutoPacific today announced its 21st annual Vehicle Satisfaction Awards (VSAs), identifying the most satisfying vehicles in the market. An industry benchmark for measuring how satisfied an owner is with his/her new vehicle, VSAs are based on survey responses from over 54,000 owners of new 2016 and 2017 cars and light trucks.

"This is the 21st anniversary of AutoPacific identifying the most satisfying vehicles and providing consumers a way to streamline their search for their perfect vehicle," says AutoPacific president George Peterson. AutoPacific's Vehicle Satisfaction Awards objectively measure owner satisfaction with 49 separate attributes ranging from interior comfort and styling to fuel economy and performance. "VSAs look at the big picture, which includes owners' experiences with their vehicle's quality and safety, but also goes deeper into the heart of the ownership experience."

Lincoln is the most satisfying premium brand, regaining leadership from Tesla and nosing out domestic luxury competitor Cadillac. The newcomer Genesis brand from Hyundai ranks third - close behind Lincoln and Cadillac. GMC is the top ranked popular brand, retaking the lead from 2016's top popular brand, Kia.

VSAs Globally Distributed Among Japanese, American, Korean and European Automakers

Eight VSAs are won by Japanese brands. Seven VSAs are won by American brands. Korean brands take home four VSA Awards. European brands also have four VSA Awards.

Overall for 2017, Nissan receives the most wins with 5, followed by Kia with 3. Porsche, Honda and Ford each have 2 wins. Genesis, Volvo, Mini, Jeep, Dodge, Chrysler, GMC, Lexus, and Lincoln each take home 1 win.

In a market where vehicles continue to raise the bar for owner satisfaction, AutoPacific recognizes another President's Award winner this year: the 2017 Genesis G90. This award is given only when the overall score tops the previous high score. The previous President's Award winners were the 2016 Cadillac Escalade, 2015 Kia K900, 2014 Mercedes S-Class and the 2010 Hyundai Sonata.

Seven All-New or Redesigned Vehicles Top Their Segment

Of the twenty-three winning vehicles, seven were redesigned for the 2017 model year, including the Genesis G90, Kia Cadenza, Nissan Titan, Ford F-Series Super Duty, Honda Ridgeline, Kia Sportage and Chrysler Pacifica. "Product planners hold their breath after the release of a new, or redesigned, vehicle, hoping that all their research, designing and planning has successful results," says Peterson who worked as a product planner prior to founding AutoPacific thirty-one years ago. "Six of the seven redesigned vehicles, the Genesis G90, Kia Cadenza, Ford Super Duty, Honda Ridgeline, Kia Sportage and Chrysler Pacifica, greatly exceed the scores of their nearest segment competitors  big wins in such a competitive industry."

2017 VEHICLE SATISFACTION AWARD WINNERS

President's Award (Highest VSA Score to Date): Genesis G90

Most Satisfying Vehicle Overall: Genesis G90

Highest Satisfaction Premium Brand: Lincoln

Highest Satisfaction Popular Brand: GMC

PASSENGER CARS:

Luxury Car Aspirational Luxury Car Luxury Mid-Size Car Large Car Mid-Size Car Premium Compact Car Compact Car Economy Car Sports Car Sporty Car Genesis G90 Volvo S60/V60 Nissan Maxima Kia Cadenza Kia Optima MINI Clubman Honda Civic Nissan Versa Porsche 911 Dodge Challenger

LIGHT TRUCKS:

Light Duty Pickup Heavy Duty Pickup Compact Pickup Luxury SUV Large SUV Mid-Size SUV Premium Luxury Crossover SUV Luxury Crossover SUV Large Crossover SUV Premium Mid-Size Crossover SUV Mid-Size Crossover SUV Compact Crossover SUV Minivan Nissan Titan Ford F-Series Super Duty Honda Ridgeline Lincoln Navigator GMC Yukon XL Jeep Grand Cherokee Porsche Cayenne Lexus RX Ford Flex Nissan Murano Nissan Rogue Kia Sportage Chrysler Pacifica





About AutoPacific

AutoPacific is a future-oriented automotive marketing research and product-consulting firm. Every year AutoPacific publishes a wide variety of syndicated studies on the automotive industry. The firm also conducts extensive proprietary research and consulting for auto manufacturers, distributors, marketers and suppliers worldwide. Company headquarters are in Tustin, California, with an affiliate office in the Detroit area. Additional information about AutoPacific and the Vehicle Satisfaction Awards can be found on AutoPacific's websites: www.autopacific.com and www.vehiclevoice.com.

SOURCE AutoPacific

Related Links

http://www.autopacific.com


On its two-story porch structure design, the 2017 Idea House features AZEK's Premier Railing in white. The top tier railing collection offers both beauty and strength with its rot, peel and blister-resistant material that doesn't require painting or staining to complete its signature Victorian profile. The home also showcases AZEK's Porch Collection in Slate Gray, which boasts all the charm of a traditional porch with the lasting impact of high performance material. AZEK Porch is built to resist stains, scratches and fading and also stands up to harsh weather that a home on an island will face.

"Between the revival of porches and the gray decking trend increasing in popularity, our AZEK Porch in Slate Gray is the perfect addition to the Southern Living Idea House," said Julia Fitzgerald, chief marketing officer of AZEK Building Products. "Homeowners across the country are embracing beautiful outdoor living spaces with AZEK Building Products, and, with our low-maintenance porch backed by our 30-year limited lifetime warranty, they can truly enjoy their porches instead of working on them."

The Moser Design Group created the architectural design, Lindsey Coral Harper Interior Design spearheaded the interior design, and Whitney Blair Custom Homes joined the project as the builder for the 2017 Southern Living Idea House. Design enthusiasts can visit the home for $15, and a portion of each ticket benefits the Old Baldy Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to maintaining North Carolina's oldest lighthouse, built in 1817.

"It's really exciting to me that this year's Idea House has not just the great decorating ideas that you come to expect from us, but those design ideas have a Coastal twist on them since we are on Bald Head Island," said Zoe Gowen, Southern Living senior home editor.

About AZEK Building Products:

AZEK Building Products is a leader in the development of premium, low maintenance exterior building products. Available to a worldwide audience, its product lines span AZEK Trim, Deck, Rail, Moulding, Porch and Pavers as well as capped wood composite Decking and Railing under the TimberTech brand. Both brands, synonymous with quality, style and innovation, are made in America and lead their market areas by continually reinventing product lines and redefining product categories. For more information about AZEK, visit www.azek.com. For more information on TimberTech, visit www.timbertech.com or call 1-877-ASK AZEK.

SOURCE AZEK Building Products

Related Links

http://www.azek.com


MENLO PARK, Calif., June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- BioPharmX Corporation (NYSE MKT: BPMX), a specialty pharmaceutical company focusing on dermatology, today announced that it will release its financial results for the fiscal first quarter ended Apr. 30, 2017 after the close of trading on Tuesday, Jun. 13, 2017. The company's management team will host a corresponding conference call beginning at 1:30 p.m. PT/4:30 p.m. ET to discuss the financial results and recent business developments.

Individuals interested in listening to the conference call may do so by dialing (844) 850-0549 for domestic callers or (412) 317-5206 for international callers, and request to join the BioPharmX Corporation call. To listen to a live webcast, please visit the investor relations section of the BioPharmX website at: www.BioPharmX.com.

A replay of the call will be available beginning Jun. 13 at 3:30 p.m. PT/6:30 p.m. ET through midnight ET on Jul. 13, 2017. To access the replay, dial (877) 344-7529 or (412) 317-0088 and reference Conference ID: 10108734. The webcast will also be available on the BioPharmX website for 90 days following the completion of the call.

About BioPharmX Corporation

BioPharmX Corporation (NYSE MKT: BPMX) is a Silicon Valley-based specialty pharmaceutical company, that seeks to provide products through proprietary platform technologies for prescription, over-the-counter (OTC), and supplement applications in the health and wellness markets, including dermatology and women's health. To learn more about BioPharmX, visit www.BioPharmX.com.

SOURCE BioPharmX Corporation

Related Links

http://www.biopharmx.com


LONDON, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

BookingTek, the leading direct booking software provider to the hospitality industry, today announced it had appointed hospitality industry veteran Jenny Kurdle as its Senior Vice President (SVP), US. Kurdle will assume responsibility for BookingTek's US operations and business development activities, and will be integral in leading the company's growth in the United States.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161116/440070LOGO )



Based in BookingTek's Washington, D.C. Metro Center office, Kurdle joins BookingTek having spent 25 years at MICROS Systems (now Oracle Hospitality) where she was the Executive VP, US & Canada.

At MICROS Systems, a leading provider of enterprise applications for the hospitality and retail industries worldwide, Kurdle oversaw software, sales and service, and was responsible for $500 million of revenue. Leading a 2,000 strong workforce, Kurdle managed a portfolio of global Food & Beverage and Hotel clients and was instrumental in developing the strategy to drive business within multiple verticals including casinos, airports, stadiums and cruise ships.

Jenny Kurdle, newly appointed Senior VP, US at BookingTek, said: "The online booking ecosystem is at a crucial stage, particularly for meetings. As OTAs start to move into the hotel meeting space, I believe BookingTek is very well positioned to help hotels continue to promote their own brands. Their unique real-time integration with Opera is a real game-changer. I know the industry and the US market very well, and I'm confident in being able to help the company grow and achieve its ambitions. I haven't been this excited about a role in a long time. I'm thrilled to join the BookingTek team.

"I met with Matthew (BookingTek's Founder and CEO) in the US earlier this year and was immediately enthused by his passion and energy for what BookingTek has accomplished but more for the strategy of what's to come. I wanted to be part of something exciting with huge growth potential so joining BookingTek was a no brainer."

Matthew Stubbs, CEO of BookingTek, said: "I'm absolutely delighted Jenny is joining the BookingTek team to head our growth in the US. Jenny is a hospitality industry expert, with more than 25 years of experience partnering with hotels and restaurants to help them better invest in and utilize technology. She brings a wealth of experience in engaging and delivering software and services for enterprise customers.

"I know she will do a fantastic job spearheading growth in the US, where a number of hotels are now tooling themselves up to provide high-quality direct booking channels for their meetings and restaurants."

About BookingTek

BookingTek is a hospitality technology provider that powers direct booking platforms for some of the world's largest hotel chains. Headquartered in London and California, its enterprise-grade Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) booking solutions include Meetings Maker and TableRes. BookingTek software is used in more than 20 countries worldwide, and the company provides direct booking solutions to two of the world's top-10 largest hotel chains, as well as the UK's largest hotel chain. For more information visit: https://www.bookingtek.com/

Contact details

Jordan Greenaway

Transmission Organisation

t: +44-7554-380-927

e: [email protected]

SOURCE BookingTek
NEW YORK, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Brandwatch has become the first social intelligence provider to include data from Reddit, the home of conversation online, that is regulated and compliant with the site's user agreement.

Brandwatch will provide users with deeper Reddit insights in both its Analytics and Brandwatch Vizia 2 social intelligence platforms. This includes access to over 130,000 active communities and the ever-growing list of posts and comments on the site, which are an invaluable source of data for brand marketers and agency professionals.

"This agreement is an absolute game changer," said Chris Albert, Data, Research, and Analytics Senior Leader at Ketchum. "It provides access to thematic topics across a multitude of communities allowing you to hone in on the heartbeats of a unique consumer target.

It allows researchers and marketers to reach a new audience, across verticals that other social channels don't penetrate."

With over 270 million users visiting Reddit each month, the site is among the top ten most visited websites in the world.

"Reddit doesn't just contain a huge volume of conversation, it contains high-quality conversations about brands, products, services, and more," said David Jones, Chief Technology Officer at Brandwatch. "The detailed content on the site provides invaluable insights about consumer preferences and even the state of the world that brands simply can't live without."

This is the latest in a long line of data resource advancements from Brandwatch, coming just weeks after the company announced new, enhanced Asia Pacific data along with an expanded strategic partnership with Twitter to offer the most complete access to Twitter data.

Together, these three announcements underline Brandwatch's commitment to offering the best social data on the market.

Reddit joins a long list of online data sources Brandwatch is continuously adding to including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and over 80 million others.

Reddit data is available to all Brandwatch customers at no extra cost as of today.

In our most recent customer survey, 95% of respondents disclosed that they think Brandwatch technology is superior to their last social intelligence platform. Discover how you can do more with your business data.

About Brandwatch

Brandwatch is the world's leading social intelligence company. The company's flagship products, Brandwatch Analytics and the Vizia platform, fuel smarter decision making around the world.

The Brandwatch Analytics platform gathers millions of online conversations every day and provides users with the tools to analyze them, empowering the world's most admired brands and agencies to make insightful, data-driven business decisions. The Vizia platform distributes visually-engaging insights to the physical places where the action happens.

The Brandwatch platform is used by over 1,300 brands and agencies, including Unilever, American Airlines, Whirlpool, ASOS, Walmart, British Airways, and Dell. Brandwatch continues on its impressive business trajectory, recently named a global leader in enterprise social listening platforms by the latest reports from several independent research firms. Increasing its worldwide presence, the company has offices around the world including Brighton, New York, San Francisco, Berlin, Stuttgart, Paris and Singapore.

Brandwatch. Now You Know.

www.brandwatch.com |@Brandwatch |press office |contact

About Reddit

Reddit, dubbed "the front page of the Internet", is the home of conversation online. Communities are built around users submitting, voting and commenting on content, stories and discussions centered around their passions. With over 270 million global users monthly, Reddit is home to the most open and authentic conversations on the Internet. For more information, visit about.reddit.com.

Contact: Dinah Alobeid, 1-917-846-2381 [email protected]

SOURCE Brandwatch

Related Links

http://www.brandwatch.com


WASHINGTON, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation's largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, today pointed to anti-Islam rallies planned nationwide on Saturday, June 10, as further evidence of the growing cooperation between white supremacist, neo-Nazi, anti-government, and Islamophobic hate groups.

CAIR said it is assisting local communities in responding to the hate rallies with peaceful educational events and activities focused on promoting mutual understanding and challenging bigotry. [NOTE: To learn more about local responses to the hate rallies, contact the nearest CAIR chapter by going to: http://www.cair.com/cair-chapters.html ]

SEE: Map of June 10 Anti-Muslim Protests

http://imagine2050.newcomm.org/2017/05/22/anti-muslim-march-against-sharia-planned/

The leading sponsor of the rallies, Brigitte Gabriel's ACT for America, has been designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). The SPLC has named "Brigitte Gabriel" as a member of the nation's "Anti-Muslim Inner Circle."

Gabriel has argued that, "America is at stage two Islamic Cancer." She believes "every practicing Muslim is a radical Muslim," a Muslim "cannot be a loyal citizen of the United States," and that Arabs "have no soul."

CAIR Islamophobia Monitor: ACT for America

http://www.islamophobia.org/islamophobic-orgs/act-for-america.html

SPLC: Anti-Muslim Inner Circle

https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/act-america

"Act for America is a hate group. Period. Its rallies are hate marches. Full stop," said Corey Saylor, director of CAIR's Department to Monitor and Combat Islamophobia. "We encourage all Americans who value religious freedom and reject bigotry to take part in peaceful and lawful local activities challenging these hate rallies."

Video: ACT for America is a Hate Group, Plain and Simple

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2BubWrtKHQ

Saylor noted that ACT for America's official Facebook page promoting the hate rallies is full of racist and violent content targeting Islam and Muslims.

SEE: ACT for America's "March Against Sharia" Official Facebook Page Full of Racist Anti-Muslim Sentiment

https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2017/05/23/act-americas-march-against-sharia-official-facebook-page-full-racist-anti-muslim-sentiment

The hate rally in Arkansas is being organized by longtime neo-Nazi Billy Roper. Roper promoted the event on a neo-Nazi message board founded by a former Ku Klux Klan leader. He claims that representatives of his network will take part in ACT for America rallies in Indiana, New York, California, and Texas.

SEE: Neo-Nazi Billy Roper Organizing ACT for America's "March Against Sharia" in Arkansas

http://tinyurl.com/ArkansasNeoNazi

Joey Gibson, a leader of the group "Patriot Prayer," is helping to organize the ACT for America rally in Seattle. Jeremy Joseph Christian, who allegedly stabbed to death two men who came to the defense of a Muslim woman recently in Portland, Ore., attended one of that group's rallies. Gibson acknowledged that some rallies attracted "legitimate Nazis."

SEE: Portland Uneasy; Suspect Shouts 'You've Got No Safe Place!'

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/portland-mayor-calls-for-cancellation-of-free-speech-rally/2017/05/29/e94965c0-44ce-11e7-8de1-cec59a9bf4b1_story.html

Anti-government and racist groups such as Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, American Civil Defense, Three Percenters, and White Lives Matter are also supporting the ACT for America hate rallies.

SEE: White Supremacists Are Planning a Day of Action Against Muslims

http://www.carbonated.tv/news/white-supremacists-are-planning-a-day-of-action-against-muslims

ACT for America's anti-Muslim bigotry was highlighted recently in a Washington Post expose.

SEE: This group believes Islam threatens America: 'It's a spiritual battle of good and evil.'

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/this-group-believes-islam-threatens-america-its-a-spiritual-battle-of-good-and-evil/2017/02/16/3e5108c2-ed57-11e6-9662-6eedf1627882_story.html

The SPLC has documented the merging of racist, anti-government and other troubling sentiment with ACT's Islamophobia.

The Batesville, Ark., leader of ACT has advocated stoning "rebellious children" and executing prisoners "that cannot be rehabilitated in two years." The head of ACT's 5280 Coalition "left a comment on Counter-Currents, an overtly anti -Semitic website and publishing house run by white nationalist Greg Johnson."

SEE: SPLC's ACT for America Fires Prominent Chapter Leader, But Many Racists Remain

https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2017/03/09/act-america-fires-prominent-chapter-leader-many-racists-remain

ACT FOR America's hate rallies are reminiscent of John Ritzheimer's 2015 "Global Rally for Humanity." Ritzheimer instructed participants to hold events at mosques and urged them to come armed. He subsequently pled guilty to felony charges after taking part in the armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge by anti-government activists.

SEE: CAIR Asks Mosques Nationwide to Take Added Safety Measures Prior to Anti-Islam Rallies October 10

http://www.cair.com/press-center/press-releases/13175-cair-asks-mosques-nationwide-to-take-added-safety-measures-prior-to-anti-islam-rallies-october-10.html

CAIR is America's largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization. Its mission is to enhance the understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding.

La mision de CAIR es mejorar la comprension del Islam, fomentar el dialogo, proteger las libertades civiles, capacitar a los musulmanes estadounidenses, y construir coaliciones que promuevan la justicia y la comprension mutua.

Become a Fan of CAIR on Facebook

http://www.facebook.com/CAIRNational

Subscribe to CAIR's Email List

http://tinyurl.com/cairsubscribe

Subscribe to CAIR's Twitter Feed

http://twitter.com/cairnational

Subscribe to CAIR's YouTube Channel

http://www.youtube.com/cairtv

CONTACT: CAIR Department to Monitor and Combat Islamophobia Director Corey Saylor, 202-384-8857, [email protected]; CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper, 202-744-7726, [email protected]; CAIR Department to Monitor and Combat Islamophobia Coordinator Zainab Arain, 202-742-6410, [email protected]

SOURCE Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)

Related Links

http://www.cair.com


NASHVILLE, Tenn., June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Captain D's, the leading fast casual seafood restaurant, announced today the opening of its newest franchised location in Dallas, Texas. The new restaurant is the brand's 13th location in the state and marks Captain D's continued development in Texas, with two additional locations to open this summer in Houston and Garland. Located at 6216 Retail Road, the Dallas restaurant will celebrate its opening with a ribbon cutting ceremony today at 10 a.m.

Captain D's

The new Captain D's in Dallas is owned by International Restaurant Group, and is the first of three locations the group plans to develop in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area. The restaurant is 2,373 square feet, with a drive-thru, and showcases the brand's most recent beach design. With the opening of this new location, Captain D's has created 40 new jobs in the Dallas community. Additionally, International Restaurant Group signed a multi-unit agreement to bring five restaurants to San Antonio over the next several years, further driving the brand's rapid expansion throughout Texas.

"We're always on the lookout for opportunities to partner with brands we believe in, and Captain D's simply stands out from the rest. The ongoing success the company has experienced year after year is rare in the restaurant industry today, and we are thrilled to partner with a leader that has been in business for nearly 50 years and understands what it takes to cultivate a quality foodservice concept," said Syed Raza Ali, Captain D's franchisee and chief executive officer of International Restaurant Group. "There's tremendous opportunity for Captain D's in Texas, and we're confident that the brand's freshly prepared, affordable seafood will resonate with the state's residents just as it has for consumers nationwide."

The opening of the new restaurant in Dallas furthers the success Captain D's experienced in 2016, as the brand achieved its sixth consecutive year of same store sales increases and fourth successive year of record high system-wide average unit volume (AUV). This ongoing success has propelled Captain D's franchise expansion, with agreements signed to open an additional 25 new restaurants this year in states across the country including Florida, South Carolina, Texas, Georgia, Illinois, Tennessee, Alabama, Arkansas and Virginia.

Coupled with its ongoing menu innovation, Captain D's credits its new restaurant beach design with contributing to the brand's ongoing strong performance. To date, nearly 60 percent of all restaurants have been reimaged to the brand's new vibrant, coastal design, with another 50 locations to be remodeled by the end of this year. With these efforts, Captain D's has remained true to what it does best  serving high-quality seafood with warm hospitality at an affordable price in a welcoming atmosphere.

With 517 restaurants in 21 states, Captain D's is the fast-casual seafood leader and number one seafood franchise in America ranked by average unit volume. The company is currently seeking single- and multi-unit operators to join in the brand's rapid expansion. For more information about franchise opportunities, visit http://www.captaindsfranchising.com or call 800-550-4877.

ABOUT CAPTAIN D'S

Headquartered in Nashville, Tenn., Captain D's has 517 restaurants in 21 states. Captain D's is the nation's leading fast casual seafood restaurant and was named the #1 seafood chain in the QSR 50, ranked by AUV. Founded in 1969, Captain D's has been offering its customers high-quality seafood at reasonable prices in a welcoming atmosphere for more than 47 years. Captain D's serves a wide variety of seafood that includes freshly prepared entrees and the company's signature hand-battered fish, which is cooked to order. The restaurants also offer premium-quality, grilled items such as shrimp, and surf and turf, as well as hushpuppies, desserts and freshly brewed, Southern-style sweet tea, a Captain D's favorite. For more information, please visit www.captainds.com.

Contact:

Caitlin Willard

Fish Consulting

954-893-9150

[email protected]

SOURCE Captain D's

Related Links

http://www.captainds.com


This is Cargill's first initiative in Latin America focused on responsible palm oil production. With Solidaridad and Biocosta, which is Cargill's supplier base for producers and mills, Cargill will promote the adoption of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil's Principles and Criteria. This will enable smallholders to increase productivity, profitability and market access with sustainable practices and eco-label certification.

"This program supports Cargill's commitment to building a 100-percent transparent, traceable and sustainable palm supply chain by 2020," said Robert Horster, global trading director for Cargill's Edible Oils Solutions. "Our goal is to stimulate inclusion of Colombian farmers in the global palm oil market, boosting their livelihoods and establishing best practices in sustainable agriculture."

The producers in northwest Colombia who are involved in the program will receive direct training and support on good agricultural practices and improved farm management techniques covering key areas of health and safety, and environmental and social impact management.

"Solidaridad is pioneering sustainable approaches in the region and, through this engagement with Cargill and Biocosta, will ensure new economic opportunities for smallholders and the implementation of sustainable practices," said Maria Goretti Esquivel, palm oil programme manager of Solidaridad Colombia. "The participation of international buyers, like Cargill, in this kind of initiative is key to fostering sustainability in the palm oil supply chain and advocating for changes in the sector."

Biocosta, a leader in Colombia's palm oil exports, includes about 700 smallholder farmers, accounting for nearly 50 percent of palm oil production in the northern region and driving socio-economic development.

Palm oil is one of the three main crops cultivated in Colombia after coffee and bananas. As the market for palm oil production in the country expands and brings economic growth to the region, best practices in agriculture, occupational health and environmental management are critical. In parallel with the new program, Cargill, Biocosta and Solidaridad will conduct a social and environmental impact study to evaluate high conservation value land and assess deforestation risks to fully integrate palm oil farmers into sustainable supply chains.

About Cargill

Cargill provides food, agriculture, financial and industrial products and services to the world. Together with farmers, customers, governments and communities, we help people thrive by applying our insights and 150 years of experience. We have 150,000 employees in 70 countries who are committed to feeding the world in a responsible way, reducing environmental impact and improving the communities where we live and work. For more information, visit Cargill.com and our News Center.

About Solidaridad

Solidaridad is an international civil society organization with more than 45 years of global experience in facilitating the development of socially responsible, ecologically sound, and profitable supply chains. Solidaridad works across 13 supply chains and operates through 10 regional offices on five continents. Learn more at Solidaridadnetwork.org

About C.I. Biocosta S.A.

Biocosta is an international trading company constituted in 2007 by six production plants located in the departments of Magdalena and Cesar in the Colombian Caribbean Coast, participating with almost 50 percent of the North Zone production of palm oil. Learn more at cibiocosta.com.

SOURCE Cargill

Related Links

http://Solidaridadnetwork.org


"At the core, CloudMine enables healthcare organizations to operate at the nexus of innovation and compliance," said Wray. "Today, healthcare and biopharmaceutical leaders are seeking to advance their mission by assimilating and leveraging innovative technologies. CloudMine's Connected Health Cloud platform is increasingly recognized as a catalyst to achieve this goal. In a relatively short period, the CloudMine platform has demonstrated its value as an agile vehicle to the health cloud for a diverse set of customers. I am excited by the opportunity ahead and grateful to the entire CloudMine team for their many accomplishments to date."

Prior to joining CloudMine, Wray was CEO at MNG Direct, a Bensalem, Pa.-based platform solution provider that enables life sciences companies to engage with healthcare professionals. Previously, Wray served as the President and CEO of the global life sciences practice at Cadient Group, a full-service digital marketing agency located in Malvern, Pa. During his tenure, Wray brokered instrumental business relationships, and expanded the organization from an early-stage operation to a global organization with more than 150 full-time employees. In 2014, Cadient was acquired by Cognizant, a leading provider of information technology, consulting, and business process outsourcing services.

Between 1999 and 2004, Wray was North American President at Ogilvy Healthworld, where he led the consumer, professional and relationship marketing divisions of the agency, helping to foresee the impact that digital would have upon healthcare communications. Wray also spent a decade in leadership positions at Wyeth (now Pfizer), including Vice President, Marketing Communications.

Wray joins a leadership team at CloudMine that has generated significant early success, signing on innovative healthcare organizations such as the American Heart Association, Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals, Biomeme, Mylan Specialty, and Endo Pharmaceuticals. In 2016, Gartner Research named CloudMine's Connected Health Cloud as a "Cool Vendor", cementing the product's credibility and supporting accelerated growth for the company. In 2017, CloudMine added Redox, a leader in cloud-based healthcare integration and API services, and Infor, a leading provider of business applications specialized by industry and built for the cloud, to the company's roster of partners. CloudMine also tapped Medical Web Experts as a development partner capable of introducing medical practices, hospitals, pharmacies, and device manufacturers to the prospective client pipeline.

CloudMine co-founder Brendan McCorkle, who has served as CEO since the company's founding in 2011, will now serve as President and Chief Innovation Officer. "Steve has the right mix of business acumen and creative experience to execute our vision," said McCorkle. "I am going to remain an active player in the company and look forward to collaborating with Steve during this transition period to support CloudMine's sustainable upward trajectory."

"CloudMine is revolutionizing the way the healthcare industry develops applications that engage patients, improve the quality of care and reduce costs," said Mark Mitchell, Managing Director at Safeguard Scientifics and Board Member at CloudMine. "Steve is a seasoned executive with an entrepreneurial spirit who understands how to leverage relationships with healthcare leaders to drive value and opportunities. This is a key inflection point in CloudMine's history and we look forward to great things ahead." Safeguard led CloudMine's Series A financing in February 2015.

About CloudMine

CloudMine is the leading secure, cloud-based platform to power digital health. CloudMine connects to the world of clinical data, enabling organizations to operationalize data through application development, analytics and workflow. The CloudMine Connected Health Cloud empowers healthcare organizations to rapidly build digital experiences by removing the complexity of app development, and allowing them to focus on business needs. CloudMine's Connected Health Cloud is being used by innovative healthcare organizations such as the American Heart Association, Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals, Biomeme, Mylan Specialty, and Endo Pharmaceuticals. CloudMine is financially backed by Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania, DeSimone Group Investments, DreamIt Ventures, MentorTech Ventures, Mid-Atlantic Angel Group, Robin Hood Ventures, and Safeguard Scientifics (NYSE:SFE).

Visit www.cloudmineinc.com, call (855) 662-7722, or follow @CloudMine on Twitter.

SOURCE CloudMine, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.cloudmineinc.com


RESTON, Va., June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- comScore today announced that leaders from the company will be presenting at the Advertising Research Foundation's (ARF) Audience Measurement 2017 conference. The event  "Modern Measurement: Media, Models & Methods" -- runs from Sunday, June 11 through Tuesday, June 13 and will be held at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Jersey City, New Jersey.

Representatives from comScore are participating in the following sessions:

Audience Measurement Best Practices in the Cross-Platform Age

Who: Josh Chasin , CRO of comScore, and Bill Harvey , founder and chairman of Research Measurement Technologies

, CRO of comScore, and , founder and chairman of Research Measurement Technologies What: Josh and Bill will speak about how traditional audience measurement systems and contemporary data science converge to solve the challenge of multi-screen measurement

Josh and Bill will speak about how traditional audience measurement systems and contemporary data science converge to solve the challenge of multi-screen measurement When: Monday, June 12, 2017 from 9 to 9:30 a.m. EST

Embrace Disruption: Home Sweet Digital Home

Who: Mike Rich , vice president of emerging products at comScore

, vice president of emerging products at comScore What: Mike Rich will talk about the comScore Total Home Panel, and how this unique asset enables measurement of connected devices in the home.

will talk about the comScore Total Home Panel, and how this unique asset enables measurement of connected devices in the home. When: Tuesday, June 13 from 11:40 a.m. to 12:10 p.m. EST

Measuring Brand Value across Platforms to Prove Sponsorship Effectiveness

Who: Jeff Boehme , senior vice president of television research at comScore, Ed Gaffney , managing partner of implementation research at GroupM, and Andrea Remoundos , director of business development at comScore

, senior vice president of television research at comScore, , managing partner of implementation research at GroupM, and , director of business development at comScore What: Jeff, Ed and Andrea will present a case study on measuring American Express' brand impact resulting from a season-long sponsorship of NBA games.

Jeff, Ed and Andrea will present a case study on measuring American Express' brand impact resulting from a season-long sponsorship of NBA games. When: Tuesday, June 13 from 12:20 to 12:50 p.m. EST

Omnichannel Optimizing for the Data Generation

Who: Bill Harvey , executive chairman at Standard Media Index, James Fennessy , CEO of Standard Media Index, and Chris Wilson , executive vice president of national television at comScore

, executive chairman at Standard Media Index, , CEO of Standard Media Index, and , executive vice president of national television at comScore What: Bill, James and Chris will speak about optimizing for the same audience across multiple touchpoints, to identify the best ingredients for non-cookie cutter results.

Bill, James and Chris will speak about optimizing for the same audience across multiple touchpoints, to identify the best ingredients for non-cookie cutter results. When: Tuesday, June 13 from 3:30 to 4 p.m. EST

For more information about the event, please visit https://thearf.org/audience-measurement-2017/.

About comScore

comScore is a leading cross-platform measurement company that measures audiences, brands and consumer behavior everywhere. comScore completed its merger with Rentrak Corporation in January 2016, to create the new model for a dynamic, cross-platform world. Built on precision and innovation, comScore's data footprint combines proprietary digital, TV and movie intelligence with vast demographic details to quantify consumers' multiscreen behavior at massive scale. This approach helps media companies monetize their complete audiences and allows marketers to reach these audiences more effectively. With more than 3,200 clients and a global footprint in more than 75 countries, comScore is delivering the future of measurement. Shares of comScore stock are currently traded on the OTC Market (OTC:SCOR). For more information on comScore, please visit comscore.com.

SOURCE comScore

Related Links

http://www.comscore.com


FALLS CHURCH, Va., June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- CSRA Inc. (NYSE: CSRA) announced today that it has secured a five-year, $61 million SeaPort-e task order with Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) to continue the company's support of Program Executive Officer (PEO) Aircraft Carriers. CSRA has supported PEO Aircraft Carriers since 1991.

"For over 25 years, CSRA has been proud to support the Navy's PEO for Aircraft Carriers and we are thrilled to continue this partnership," said Executive Vice President Ken Deutsch, head of CSRA's Defense Group. "By extending our agreement, we are reinforcing CSRA's commitment to providing our NAVSEA customers with innovative, forward-thinking support and expertise."

Under this task order, CSRA will provide a full range of acquisition program support services to PEO Aircraft Carriers and its Program Offices PMS 312, PMS 378, and PMS 379.

PEO Aircraft Carriers is responsible for leading the design, development, construction, modernization, and life-cycle management of the Navy's aircraft carriers. This includes system design, equipment design, integrated product and process development, acquisition, construction, fleet introduction, enterprise knowledge management, maintenance, modernization, overhaul and disposal associated with ships, weapon systems, and equipment.

PEO Aircraft Carriers programs are currently in different stages of the acquisition process. Because of this, the scope of this contract will allow CSRA's support to encompass all phases of the acquisition life cycle and defense acquisition management framework.

About CSRA Inc.

CSRA (NYSE: CSRA) solves our nation's hardest mission problems as a bridge from mission and enterprise IT to Next Gen, from government to technology partners, and from agency to agency. CSRA is tomorrow's thinking, today. For our customers, our partners, and ultimately, all the people our mission touches, CSRA is realizing the promise of technology to change the world through next-generation thinking and meaningful results. CSRA is driving towards achieving sustainable, industry-leading organic growth across federal and state/local markets through customer intimacy, rapid innovation and outcome-based experience. CSRA has over 18,000 employees and is headquartered in Falls Church, Virginia. To learn more about CSRA, visit www.csra.com. Think Next. Now.

Forward-looking Statements

All statements in this press release and in all future press releases that do not directly and exclusively relate to historical facts constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements represent CSRA's intentions, plans, expectations and beliefs, including statements about the total value realized by CSRA under the contract, the actual duration of and services delivered under the contract, the effects of the contract on our business and our ability to enhance mission capabilities of our customers. The forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors, many of which are outside the control of CSRA. These factors could cause actual results to differ materially from forward-looking statements. For a written description of these factors, see the sections titled "Risk Factors" and "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations" in CSRA's most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and any updating information in subsequent SEC filings. CSRA disclaims any intention or obligation to update these forward-looking statements whether as a result of subsequent event or otherwise.

SOURCE CSRA Inc.

Related Links

http://www.csra.com


LA CROSSE, Wis., June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Dairyland Power Cooperative announced plans for a renewable energy enabling 525-550 MW combined cycle natural gas facility at its 76th annual meeting today. This project is in partnership with Minnesota Power, a utility division of ALLETE (NYSE: ALE), based in Duluth.

The Nemadji Trail Energy Center will be co-developed by Dairyland and Minnesota Power. The site is located along the Nemadji River in Superior, Wis., adjacent to the service territories of both partners. Bayfield Electric and other Dairyland member cooperatives have served northwestern Wisconsin for decades.

Barbara Nick, President and CEO, announced this expansion as a significant component of Dairyland's ongoing "Preferred Plan" for resource diversification during her annual meeting address. The Nemadji Trail Energy Center will provide an agile and affordable resource that supports the major wind and solar energy investments Dairyland continues to implement. The partnership announcement aligns with Dairyland's annual meeting theme, United We Shine.

"We've talked for a long time about the need to add natural gas as a renewable-enabling resource," said Nick. "Dairyland's resource diversification strategy enables renewable forms of generation and ensures reliability, sustainability and affordability. Natural gas plants provide critical back-up to intermittent renewable sources of power, like solar and wind. The Nemadji Trail Energy Center will respond on demand, providing the energy required by our membership and Minnesota Power's customers exactly when they need itat the flip of a switch."

Nemadji Trail Energy Center Facts

Agile, flexible and affordable energy source to enable renewable resources such as wind and solar.

Proposed 525 to 550 MW combined cycle natural gas plant. It is scheduled to be in service by 2024, contingent on regulatory approvals.

Proposed at shovel-ready, industrial site controlled by the project partners in northwest Wisconsin . Fuel availability is excellent, with access to natural gas pipelines.

. Fuel availability is excellent, with access to natural gas pipelines. Co-developed by Dairyland Power Cooperative and Minnesota Power. Both organizations have served the region for decades.

Will serve as an economic engine for the region through job and commerce stimulus.

Will support energy-intensive regional industries (manufacturing, forestry, mining).

Additional 76th Annual Meeting Highlights

Approximately 600 electric cooperative leaders and guests attended Dairyland's 76th annual meeting at the La Crosse Center earlier today. Roger Tjarks, Chairman of the Board and director representing Heartland Power Cooperative, presided over the meeting.

Dairyland Chief Financial and Administrative Officer (CFO/CAO) Phil Moilien provided a 2016 Financial Report: "Dairyland focuses on maintaining strong credit ratings and financial strength to maintain access to economical financing. Stable rates for 2017 reflect Dairyland's efficiency improvements and wise management of controllable costs and risk. Ensuring rates and services are competitive is critical to the economic well-being of the region as well as the long-term viability of Dairyland and our cooperative members."

For 2016, net margins were $23.1 million, compared to 2015 margins of $26.7 million. A mild winter and decreased energy use by some commercial customers contributed to slightly lower energy loads.

Total operating revenues for 2016 decreased slightly to $414.8 million, as compared to $418.3 million in 2015, due to a mild winter and low energy market prices. Total operating expenses also decreased slightly, due to lower fuel and purchased power costs.

Dairyland Vice President, External and Member Relations, Brian Rude welcomed legislators and special guests. "Since politics impacts many aspects of the energy industry, bipartisan collaboration between cooperatives and legislators is very important," said Rude.

The meeting also included a video highlighting the history of Dairyland's shut-down nuclear facility, LACBWR, and current decommissioning activities. Longtime Dairyland employees received service awards at the annual meeting. Employees staffed informational booths on sustainability, solar energy projects, energy efficiency and information technology. A variety of electric vehicles were on site for cooperative members and employees to view and test drive.

About Dairyland Power Cooperative: Dairyland, a Touchstone Energy Cooperative, was formed in December 1941. Headquartered in La Crosse, Wis., Dairyland provides the wholesale electrical requirements for 24 distribution cooperatives and 17 municipal utilities. These cooperatives and municipals, in turn, supply the energy needs of more than a half-million people in the four-state service area. Today, the cooperative's generating resources include coal, natural gas, hydro, wind, solar and biogas. Dairyland delivers electricity via 3,195 miles of transmission lines and 292 substations located throughout the system's 44,500 square mile service area. Visit www.DairylandPower.com.

About Minnesota Power: Minnesota Power is a utility company based in Duluth, Minn., and is owned by ALLETE, Inc., a provider of affordable, reliable energy services in the Upper Midwest. Minnesota Power serves about 145,000 residential and commercial customers, 16 municipalities and some of the nation's largest industrial customers in northeastern Minnesota.

SOURCE Dairyland Power Cooperative

Related Links

http://www.dairynet.com


Mr. David Axelrod , Former Senior Advisor to President Barack Obama , @DavidAxelrod

Hon. Karl Rove , Former Deputy Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor to President George W. Bush , @KarlRove

Nancy Farrell , Chair of AFSP Public Policy Council, moderator

WHEN: Monday, June 12, 2017

2:45 - 3:45 P.M. EST

WHERE: To view webcast of the event: www.afsp.org/afspforum17

The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention is dedicated to saving lives and bringing hope to those affected by suicide. AFSP creates a culture that's smart about mental health through education and community programs, develops suicide prevention through research and advocacy, and provides support for those affected by suicide. Led by CEO Robert Gebbia and headquartered in New York, AFSP has local chapters in all 50 states with programs and events nationwide. AFSP celebrates 30 years of service to the suicide prevention movement. Learn more about AFSP in its latest Annual Report, and join the conversation on suicide prevention by following AFSP on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.

SOURCE American Foundation for Suicide Prevention

Related Links

http://www.afsp.org


OMAHA  In addition to certain sunscreens, what you consume could reduce your chance of getting skin cancer. According to Creighton University dermatologist Dr. Christopher Huerter, studies have revealed that drinking around four cups of coffee a day could decrease your risk of getting melanoma by 20 percent. Melanoma is the most dangerous type of skin cancer. Eating carrots also can help fight off the suns damaging rays because they contain a pigment called beta-carotene. According to Huerter, beta-carotene can make people less sensitive to the sun and less likely to burn.

Too much exposure to the sun can damage the skin and could eventually lead to skin cancer. According to the American Cancer Society, skin cancer is the most common type of cancer. But you can reduce your risk by taking steps to protect yourself from the sun. Huerter says sun-protective clothing items like cover-ups and swim shirts can provide protection and are becoming more popular and fashionable, especially among women and children.

Applying sunscreen frequently is essential if youre outdoors, even on cloudy days. Huerter recommends sunscreens of at least SPF 50 that contain titanium dioxide or zinc oxide. Broad spectrum sunscreens are the best choice. Theres FDA-mandated language on sunscreens, and if it says broad spectrum, it means you have ultraviolet A and ultraviolet B protection, Huerter said.

Huerter says there also is a common misconception about sunscreen -- that if it is applied just once, youre safe. People should apply sunscreen every few hours if theyre out in the sun, especially if they get their skin wet, Huerter said. People who think they dont need sunscreen because they have a tan are wrong; they can still get burned.

There also is a misconception about indoor tanning. People who tan indoors shouldnt. Indoor tanning is not safe, and if youre getting any color at all, youre doing damage to your skin, Huerter said.

Sunburn is the most common risk factor of sun exposure and can lead to the deadliest type of skin cancer, melanoma. According to the American Cancer Society, more than 76,000 people are diagnosed with melanoma each year.

The sun may trigger melanoma, but people can also get it in areas of their body that havent had previous sun exposure. If someone has a brown lesion on their skin that is changing or increasing in size, they should get checked by a doctor, Huerter said.

Certain groups of people are more susceptible to developing skin cancer. Transplant patients are more at risk since they take drugs that may block the bodys ability to block skin cancer. People with fair skin also are more at risk.

So, if youre thinking of fun in the sun this summer, dont forget the sunscreen.

About Creighton University: Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, enrolls 4,100 undergraduates and 4,200 graduate and professional students among nine schools and colleges. No other university its size offers students such a comprehensive academic environment with personal attention from faculty-mentors. Jesuit and Catholic, it affords incomparable inter-professional education, bridging eight health professions programs with law, business and the arts and sciences  all on one walkable campus. Creighton has been a top-ranked university in the U.S. News & World Report for 20 years.
CHICAGO, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- DialogTech, the leading provider of actionable marketing analytics for phone calls, today unveiled a new direct integration with Facebook and Instagram, enabling advertisers to use insights from phone call conversions to more effectively measure return on ad spend and target customers who want to connect by calling. Part of the DialogTech solution for social advertising, the integration enables brands and agencies to view attribution and intelligence on callers within Facebook Ads Manager alongside click data. This holistic view of ad performance makes it easy for marketers to optimize for the Facebook and Instagram campaigns and targeting strategies driving the most conversions and customers, both online and over the phone.

The DialogTech announcement comes as phone calls have become critical to the success of Facebook and Instagram advertising campaigns. Thanks to the overwhelmingly mobile nature of both social platforms, with over 80% of users logging in on smartphones, conversions from Facebook and Instagram come increasingly over the phone. According to analyst firm BIA/Kelsey, social media ads will drive over 19 billion calls to US businesses this year, a 240% increase from 2014. Studies also show that inbound phone calls convert to revenue at a rate 10x-15x greater than online conversions, making them a far more valuable lead to businesses.

"Phone calls are not only a natural conversion path for smartphone users, they are an important step in the customer journey for many of social media's biggest advertisers, including businesses in automotive, travel, financial services, retail and tech," said Irv Shapiro, CEO of DialogTech. "DialogTech makes it easy for marketers to take a data-driven approach to driving calls and customers from Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns, increasing their impact on business results."

DialogTech's integration with Facebook and Instagram includes:

Detailed attribution for every call: Whether calls happen directly from a Call Now ad button or after a consumer clicks through to the advertiser's website, that conversion is mapped to the appropriate campaign, ad set and ad that drove it in Facebook Ads Manager. Marketers get a holistic view of how their ads drive online and call conversions, so they can make smarter optimizations.

Whether calls happen directly from a Call Now ad button or after a consumer clicks through to the advertiser's website, that conversion is mapped to the appropriate campaign, ad set and ad that drove it in Facebook Ads Manager. Marketers get a holistic view of how their ads drive online and call conversions, so they can make smarter optimizations. View-through attribution for callers: If a consumer views an advertiser's ad on Facebook or Instagram without acting, but converts later by calling from a different marketing channel, DialogTech still credits the social ad with influencing the call.

If a consumer views an advertiser's ad on Facebook or Instagram without acting, but converts later by calling from a different marketing channel, DialogTech still credits the social ad with influencing the call. Retargeting or exclusion of past callers: Marketers can re-engage past callers with ads and landing pages optimized to drive calls or they can exclude callers that became customers from seeing their ads again.

Marketers can re-engage past callers with ads and landing pages optimized to drive calls or they can exclude callers that became customers from seeing their ads again. Targeting lookalike audiences likely to call: Using DialogTech data, marketers can expand their reach and acquire new customers by targeting lookalike audiences similiar to customers who converted over the phone.

Using DialogTech data, marketers can expand their reach and acquire new customers by targeting lookalike audiences similiar to customers who converted over the phone. More intelligent conversion optimization: Marketers can use call insights from DialogTech with the online data in Ads Manager to optimize for what's really driving the most conversions and customers, whether online or over the phone.

"Thanks to Facebook's powerful targeting options, the callers we generate from our ad campaigns are some of the best converting leads," said Camila De Bierre, Social Media Specialist at Westgate Resorts, one of the largest resort developers in the world. "DialogTech shows us exactly how our Facebook ads drive callers that become customers, so we can optimize performance for what's really working. We've also seen great results using DialogTech data to target past callers and new lookalike audiences with Facebook ads encouraging them to re-engage over the phone."

The integration is part of the DialogTech solution for social advertising, the only end-to-end solution for phone calls from Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter and other social media platforms. DialogTech makes it easy for marketers to measure and optimize calls from social ads, activate call analytics data throughout their marketing stack, capture and analyze phone conversations for insights and personalize each caller's experience to help sales teams convert more calls to customers. For more information, visit dialogtech.com/solutions/social.

About DialogTech

DialogTech provides actionable marketing analytics for businesses that value inbound phone calls. Consistently recognized as the leader and pioneer in call analytics and optimization, DialogTech is the trusted voice management platform for Fortune 500 brands, agencies and fast-growing companies. From call attribution to conversation analytics to caller experience optimization, only DialogTech has everything marketers need to drive the conversations that drive revenue. For more information, visit dialogtech.com.

Media Contact

Blair Symes

DialogTech

[email protected]

312-999-0119

SOURCE DialogTech

Related Links

http://www.dialogtech.com


The global attention EarStudio has attracted via its Kickstarter campaign is a result of the growing demand for hi-fi wireless audio. EarStudio differentiates with its unique patented DCT technology, short for Distinctive Clear Technology. DCT solves fundamental digital audio problems by eliminating the subtle digital noise inherent in all digital sounds. The longer you listen, DCT, a kind of advanced dithering will be done for a natural pattern, and it improves the masking curve associated with audio signals to eliminate quantization errors virtually.

This technology is patented including the U.S., Japan, and it has been applied to millions of top-notch products of major brands such as Audio-Technica, LG and Astell&Kern.

The excess funds Radsone raises through the campaign will be used for manufacturing, marketing and global expansion. Radsone is also planning to exhibit at the MWC America from September 12 to 14 in San Francisco, to introduce EarStudio in the global market.

"Radsone is pleased and overwhelmed with interest for our EarStudio on Kickstarter. We are confident that EarStudio fulfills listeners' desire for high-quality wireless sound even through Bluetooth. EarStudio is a significant result which integrated Radsone's DCT technology. It is a compact hi-fi device designed to deliver superior sound quality in every aspect, including power/clock/external DAC design. It is beyond our expectations, and we are very satisfied using it," said Jay Yoo, CEO of Radsone. Yoo added, "Our goal this year is to successfully demonstrate our technologies in the global market, as well as expanding our DCT business worldwide."

For more detailed information on the EarStudio, please check out www.radsone.com

Contact:

Julia Choi, Sales Manager of Radsone

[email protected]

Jina Lee, PR Manager of Born2Global

[email protected]

SOURCE K-ICT Born2Global Centre
OttLite Technologies Inc. is introducing a new series of desk lighting specifically for the workplace that delivers the closest thing to natural daylight available indoors. Two years in development, the OttLite WorkWell Series uses an exclusive proprietary LED formulation that reduces eyestrain and eye fatigue by 51% compared to today's top-selling desk lamps.

"Our newest line of lighting is truly revolutionary, even for a company like ours that has been focused on bringing the benefit of natural light to consumers for more than 25 years," explained John Sheppard, CEO of OttLite. "We worked with a team of researchers and lighting engineers to create a proprietary light source that is as close to the spectral output of the sun as possible. Eyes work best in balanced, natural light and when eyes are clear, rested and focused you can see better. When you can see better, you can work better with improved mood, energy and alertness."

The science behind the OttLite WorkWell Series is based on the visual spectrum, in which each wavelength of light interacts with the eye in a different way that is critical to vision and overall health. When one part of the spectrum is out of balance  like the blue spike found in most LED lighting  the light creates strain as eyes try to compensate for lack of contrast or color inaccuracy caused by too much or too little of a certain part of the spectrum. In independent testing, the new OttLite LED lighting in the WorkWell line of products performed 51% better on the Eye Fatigue Index (EFI)* than the 20 best-selling LED lamps on Amazon.

Robert Randelman Ph.D, an expert with over 25 years of experience in photonics technology relating to LEDs, fiber optics and light measurement conducted tests on the OttLite WorkWell Series and the leading competitive LED lights. Dr. Randelman explained the additional importance of color rendering for commercial design requirements of office lighting: "The OttLite WorkWell LED lights have a Color Rendering Index of 95.3 compared to the competitor average of 83. This is a significant difference, which shows that OttLite's technology provides more comfortable viewing and more accurate, truer, color rendition. Both are factors that have been recognized by the WELL Building Standard as a contributor to workplace comfort and well-being."

Healthy lights are one piece of the growing trend towards healthier workplaces; a trend that is being driven directly by consumers. In a recent consumer study, 86% of respondents said they consider lighting to be an important part of their overall health and 96% indicated that quality of light is very or extremely important, while only 76% responded that the design and style are very or extremely important in choosing lighting for reading and computer work.**

The OttLite WorkWell Series of lamps provides the benefits of healthy light, as well as stylish, high-end design; high quality diffusers for smooth, clear illumination; flicker-free adaptors; and key functionalities such as powerful USB charging ports, multiple brightness settings, adjustable designs and low energy consuming, long lasting LEDs.

The ground breaking WorkWell lighting series will be on display at NeoCon, the leading commercial design showcase being held at The Mart in Chicago from June 12-14, 2017. OttLite Technologies representatives will be available in booth #7-2118 to demonstrate the healthiest lights available for the best workplace results.

About the OttLite WorkWell Series:

The OttLite WorkWell Series is a line of desk lamps featuring the exclusive OttLite WorkWell LED technology that comes as close to the sun's spectral output as you can get  balanced, smooth and proven healthier for your eyes. No big peaks or valleys, just continuous, healthy illumination. Experience up to 51% eyestrain reduction. And, enjoy a more productive workspace.

https://www.ottliteworkwell.com

About OttLite Technologies Inc.:

OttLite was founded in 1989 by Dr. John Nash Ott to bring the power of natural daylight indoors through his one-of-a-kind natural daylight bulb. A photobiologist and pioneer in natural light research, Dr. Ott discovered through 40 years of scientific research the remarkable effects specific wavelengths of light have on all living things. Known as the father of full-spectrum lighting, his research concluded that a light with the entire visible spectrum of light wavelengths was best for vision and wellbeing. This led to the development of the first sunlight lamp. Today, OttLite Technologies manufactures and distributes a wide range of high quality lighting for offices, homes and travel, and every use imaginable. www.ottlite.com

*The EFI expresses a ratio of the range between 400 to 500 nanometers  which is important for rod response and blue cone response related to seeing details and contrast  and 500 to 600 nanometers  which is associated with cone response and vision. It then compares these results to how they measure up to the sun. The OttLite WorkWell LED was the closest to the sun and was, on average, 51% better.

**Online survey conducted by Russell Research, a New Jersey-based consumer research firm.

SOURCE OttLite Technologies Inc.
SAN CARLOS, Calif., June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Education Elements, a consultancy supporting public school districts to become more student-centered, welcomes David Irwin to its team of Managing Partners where he will be responsible for supporting school district leaders in their efforts to transform their districts.

Upon joining Education Elements, Irwin will continue the next chapter in his mission to transform public education. For the past 14 years, Irwin has worked at Gartner Inc., the world's leading IT research and advisory firm, in several roles including supporting state and local government clients and edtech providers, leading North American consulting operations, and spearheading product development for their events division.

For the last 8 years, Irwin served as a senior managing partner and led Gartner's K-12 education practice, partnering with school boards, superintendents, chief academic officers and chief information officers, and supporting mission critical transformational initiatives. Irwin's past and recent clients include: NYC Department of Education, Houston Independent School District, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Broward County Schools (FL), Louisiana Department of Education, Arlington Public Schools, Dallas Independent School District, Fulton County Schools and Buffalo Public Schools.

"We are thrilled to welcome David to the team," said Anthony Kim, Education Elements' Founder & CEO. "He brings a breadth and depth of experience that will help us support districts through some of their biggest challenges."

Irwin is looking forward to expanding Education Elements' current capabilities beyond personalized learning, competency-based learning, OER adoption and curriculum alignment, by drawing on his career in the public sector. "I am honored to be part of Education Elements where I'll be continuing the work I started over eight years ago. I am confident we will become the premier consultancy helping school systems solve the most challenging problems today and in the future," Irwin said.

In addition to Irwin, Education Elements' managing partners include Anthony Kim, Amy Jenkins, Angela Chubb and Ray Rozycki. For more information about Education Elements and its team, visit www.edelements.com.

About Education Elements

Education Elements works with districts to build and support dynamic school systems that meet the needs of every learner, today and tomorrow. They take the time to understand the unique challenges school leaders face, and then customize the Education Elements approach for each district. Ed Elements has worked with hundreds of districts across the country. They bring deep expertise, design thinking, expert facilitation and the spirit of collaboration, along with their extensive toolkit of resources and technology, to deliver sustainable results. Please visit http://www.edelements.com to learn more.

Company Contact:

Amy Jenkins

(415) 377-8292

[email protected]

Agency Contact:

Alyssa Morrello

(609) 279-0050

[email protected]

SOURCE Education Elements

Related Links

https://www.edelements.com


DOWNERS GROVE, Ill., June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Ensono, a leading Hybrid IT services provider, appointed Marc Capri to president, effective June 1, from his current role as EVP of sales and marketing. As president, Capri is responsible for Ensono's client engagement, sales, marketing, consulting and solution engineering functions on a global level.

Capri has more than 15 years of IT leadership experience, and he has played an integral role in Ensono's success since joining the company in 2015. Ensono will leverage Capri's extensive knowledge of the technology market and leadership experience to heighten its presence worldwide. Capri will continue to strengthen Ensono's global strategy and manage its engagement model to ensure top-notch experience for all clients, regardless of region.

"Since Marc joined Ensono, we have seen steady growth on a global scale," said Jeff VonDeylen, CEO of Ensono. "His veteran experience in the mission-critical solutions space makes him the ideal person to lead Ensono as president. I look forward to watching Marc move into his new role and take Ensono to the next level as a global Hybrid IT services provider."

Prior to joining Ensono, Capri held executive positions at CenturyLink and Savvis. Capri served as senior vice president of global advanced services and vice president of global service management, respectively. In his role at CenturyLink, Capri oversaw global delivery and service for the hosting and cloud division, while at Savvis he was responsible for revenue and customer experience for enterprise and strategic customers.

"For nearly two years, Ensono has trusted me to take the company into new markets and to grow our customer base," said Capri. "As we continue to move into 2017, I'm excited to lead such a talented group of individuals and work with clients to help them execute on their digital transformation strategies."

For more information about Ensono, please visit https://www.ensono.com/.

About Ensono

For business leaders managing lots of complexity or disrupting the status quo, Ensono delivers complete Hybrid IT services and governance, from cloud to mainframe, tailored to each client's journey. Whether you're leveraging the power of the cloud or modernizing legacy technologies, you'll be on track to operate for today and optimize for tomorrow. Some of the world's most successful companies rely on us to help them be great at what they do. We've been named a Top 15 Sourcing Service Provider by ISG, as well as acknowledged by the Uptime Institute for 100% availability. Ensono has over 1,000 associates across North America and Europe and is ranked 21st in The Sunday Times 100 Best Companies to Work For. Our offices are headquartered in greater Chicago. Visit us at www.ensono.com.



Media Contact:

Beth Burghgraef

312-648- 6017

[email protected]

SOURCE Ensono

Related Links

https://www.ensono.com


In its 6th annual edition, the Pan-African Weekend is a multi-day event that highlights and celebrates the best of the pan-African community. The action-packed schedule includes the Pan-African Women Forum, the IAAPA Networking Mixer, and the closing Jazz Brunch.

The highlight of the weekend is the FACE List Awards, the most prestigious celebration of pan-African achievement in the Unites States, where pioneers and trailblazers of African descent are honored for their contributions and impact on society.

"The Pan-African Weekend has given us the unique opportunity to tell a new narrative on people of African descent in this country and around the world. We are proud to have Prudential returning for the second consecutive year as presenting sponsor, and we are thrilled that Toyota will be joining them this year as co-Presenting Sponsor. Both companies have demonstrated their unyielding commitment to empowering and equipping members of our community with the tools and resources that we need to change our story", said CEO of Face2face Africa Isaac. O. Babu-Boateng.

The 2017 Pan-African Weekend kicks off Thursday, July 13th, and concludes on Sunday, July 16th.

Speaking on the partnership with Face2face Africa, Dorinda Walker, Prudential Financial's Vice President of Consumer Strategy and Key initiatives said:

"Prudential's ongoing sponsorship of Face2face Africa's Pan-African Weekend is not just about discussing the type of financial services we provide. We've been able to share educational information with Pan-African community members on how to save, invest and reach their long-term financial goals. The attendees leave the Pan-African Weekend with Prudential top of mind, knowing that we are ready, willing, and able to work with them to achieve prosperity and peace of mind."

This year, Toyota USA has also joined the Pan-African Weekend as the official auto sponsor.

"Toyota is proud to be a sponsor of Pan African Weekend, an event that celebrates the individuals in the Pan African community who are committed to transforming society," said Mia Phillips, National Manager- Brand, Multicultural & Crossline Marketing Strategy.

Other sponsors include Brussels Airlines and Guinness USA.

Contact: Sandra Appiah

[email protected]

646-642-5366

SOURCE Face2face Africa
WOODLAND HILLS, Calif., June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Farmers Insurance Exchange (FIE), the largest of the three primary insurance entities that make up the Farmers Insurance Group of Companies, today was named again to the list of Fortune magazine's 500 largest companies based in the United States, moving up five places to secure No. 222.

In reports supplied to Fortune magazine, FIE reported $12.5 billion in revenue in 2016 and assets of more than $16.1 billion. While this year's submission to Fortune magazine by FIE did not include similar data for Fire Insurance Exchange or Truck Insurance Exchange, the combined figures for the three reciprocal insurers would have shown combined revenue of $15.6 billion and total combined assets of $20.6 billion.

"We are pleased that Farmers Insurance Exchange has once again been recognized by Fortune as one of the nation's largest and most successful organizations," said Jeff Dailey, chief executive officer of Farmers Group, Inc., which serves as the attorney-in-fact for the Farmers Insurance Exchange. "We are proud of this acknowledgment and feel it's a true indication of the continued efforts of our employees and leadership teams that make Farmers one of the nation's leading multiline insurer groups in the United States."

The Farmers Insurance Group of Companies, or Farmers Insurance, is composed of Farmers Insurance Exchange (FIE), Fire Insurance Exchange and Truck Insurance Exchange, which are three reciprocal insurers owned by their policyholders, together with their subsidiaries and affiliates. Under the Farmers, Foremost, 21st Century and Bristol West brands, Farmers Insurance has become a leading U.S. insurer group, insuring automobiles, homes and small businesses. Farmers Insurance also provides a wide range of other insurance and financial services products to customers.

Since its founding in 1928, Farmers Insurance has sold products and services through a network of Farmers agency owners who are independent small business owners based in communities across the nation. Currently, there are more than 13,000 Farmers agency owners nationally who receive training from the University of Farmers, which provides industry-leading learning and development programs to help agents further enhance their skills. Farmers Insurance continues to look for talented leaders and individuals with a record of professional success to support additional growth in its existing markets and its expansion into new states.

About Farmers Insurance Exchange and the Farmers Exchanges

Farmers Insurance Exchange is a California-domiciled reciprocal insurer owned by its policyholders. Together with Fire Insurance Exchange, Truck Insurance Exchange and their subsidiaries (collectively, the "Farmers Exchanges") and affiliates, these companies comprise the Farmers Insurance Group of Companies. The Farmers Exchanges serve more than 10 million households with over 19 million individual policies through the efforts of over 13,000 exclusive agency owners and more than 13,000 employees. "Farmers", "Farmers Insurance", and "Farmers Insurance Group of Companies" are trade names of the Farmers Exchanges. Headquartered in Woodland Hills, California, the Farmers Exchanges have regional facilities throughout the United States, including major centers in Austin, Grand Rapids, Kansas City, Oklahoma City, and Portland, among others. Farmers Insurance Exchange, the largest of the three primary insurance insurers that make up Farmers Insurance, is recognized as one of the largest U.S. companies on the 2017 Fortune 500 list.

For more information about Farmers Insurance, visit Farmers.com, Twitter and Instagram, @WeAreFarmers, or Facebook.com/FarmersInsurance.

SOURCE Farmers Insurance Exchange
(Photo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/520678/Geert_Ensing_Fidor.jpg )

Fidor Solutions is known as an industry disruptor when it comes to its product offering. Its flagship brand Fidor Bank showcases Fidor's expertise in building and launching digital banks to market by being at the forefront of fintech innovation, building on APIs, open banking, middleware solutions, community based-banking, front end mobile app and internet banking solutions delivered in a hosted or cloud environment.

Geert Ensing will be Fidor's CIO. He has extensive experience in IT for retail banking and commercial banking leading complex IT infrastructures and organisational transformations, as well as managing IT-outsourcing.

Prior to joining Fidor, Geert was Executive Vice President of IT ABN AMRO and has held roles as an executive advisor for banks, insurance companies and pension funds, as well as for IT service providers on digitalisation, IT-legacy strategy, IT-transformation (technical and organisational) and governance of IT-sourcing. He has worked with Financial institutions in The Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Middle-East, Finland, Denmark, Italy and U.K.

Ge Drossaert, on behalf of Fidor Group's Board commented, "Having someone with Geert's expertise join Fidor is essential in supporting our international expansion strategy. We are delighted Geert is joining us and look forward to having him on board and contributing to our next phase of growth. Geert's role will not only focus on Fidor Bank's run the bank infrastructure, but also optimising the environment for B2B Services, such as Fidor Payments Avenue and Fidor Bank As A Service."

Geert Ensing, newly appointed CIO at Fidor added: "Innovation is key and Fidor has strong expertise and knowledge in shaping the new digital banking landscape. Joining Fidor at this exciting time of internationalisation is a fantastic opportunity and I am thrilled to be able to share my expertise with Fidor and its business partners to define the best technologies when it comes to implementing fidorOS."

About Fidor:

Fidor has emerged as a leader in creating digital financial solutions and is actively driving innovation as a co-entrepreneur with banks and non-financial organisations to design and build their digital banks as well as their digital payment solutions. More info on http://www.fidor.com

SOURCE Fidor Solutions
DALLAS, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Fish & Richardson today announced that Terry Stalford and Carl Bruce, principals in the firm's Dallas office, have been named "Energy and Environmental Trailblazers" by The National Law Journal (NLJ). According to The NLJ, each of these trailblazers has "shown a deep passion and perseverance in pursuit of their mission, having achieved remarkable successes along the way."

Stalford and Bruce have pioneered many new approaches to patenting and enforcing the cutting-edge technologies their high-profile oil and gas clients develop. For example, Stalford and Bruce have spent the past four years building a patent portfolio for the Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Saudi Aramco), the most valuable company in the world, to protect the company's new technologies that deliver greater levels of operational efficiency, enhanced performance, and environmental benefits. The Stalford/Bruce team contributed significantly to Saudi Aramco obtaining 175 issued patents in 2016.

Stalford's practice emphasizes patent litigation, infringement risk management, patent procurement, and licensing in the communications, mobile, energy, software, and electronics fields. He helps clients in the U.S., Europe, and Asia develop and manage comprehensive IP programs that protect the company's products and markets, and add capital value to the bottom line. Stalford spent 15 years building, licensing, and monetizing a patent portfolio for a small company in the gas industry that was ranked by the Wall Street Journal's Patent Scorecard as one of the strongest in the energy and environmental industry. He received his J.D., magna cum laude, Order of the Coif, from the University of Georgia School of Law in 1993 and his B.S. in engineering from the University of Oklahoma in 1986.

Bruce helps large and small clients throughout the U.S., Europe, and Asia protect their innovations with strong IP programs, patent portfolios, and strategic management of their patent litigation matters. He uses his chemical engineering and polymer composites background, combined with experience in oil & gas, software and the internet, electrical, petrochemical, and opto-electrical technologies, to build legal strategies for clients that take into account technological realities. He received his J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School in 2002, his M.S. in chemical engineering from the University of Washington in 1999, and his B.S. in chemical engineering from Oklahoma State University in 1997.

Fish & Richardson is a global patent prosecution, intellectual property litigation, and commercial litigation law firm with more than 400 attorneys and technology specialists in the U.S. and Europe. Our success is rooted in our creative and inclusive culture, which values the diversity of people, experiences, and perspectives. Fish is the #1 U.S. patent litigation firm, handling nearly three times as many cases as its nearest competitor; a powerhouse patent prosecution firm; a top-tier trademark and copyright firm; and the #1 firm at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, with more cases than any other firm. Since 1878, Fish attorneys have been winning cases worth billions in controversy  often by making new law  for the world's most innovative and influential technology leaders. For more information, visit https://www.fr.com or follow us at @FishRichardson.

Contact: Amy Blumenthal or Kelly Largey

Blumenthal & Associates

Fish & Richardson

617-879-1511

800-818-5070

[email protected]

[email protected]

SOURCE Fish & Richardson

Related Links

https://www.fr.com


WASHINGTON, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Help came too late for Edwin Fuentes, a young veteran who served as an infantryman in Afghanistan. Fuentes had a 90 percent disability rating for PTSD, and sadly lost his life on May 17th in an apparent suicide by cop incident that took place in Tustin, CA. Fuentes left behind a young wife and a one-year old son.

With the recent loss of her husband, Mrs. Fuentes did not have the means to pay for the burial and his body has been sitting in the County morgue for the past three weeks. His friends and family have gallantly been trying to raise the necessary funds, due to the fact that the Veterans Administration does not cover a combat veteran's funeral.

"This situation is simply unacceptable," said Boone Cutler, spokesperson for the Spartan Alliance. "The real disgrace is that the government is willing to spend the estimated $850,000/year to keep a single infantry soldier in Afghanistan, but does not see fit to spend the $10,000 to bury that same soldier when he or she is no longer on active duty and a tragedy like this occurs. This troubles me deeply."

We may not be able to change the Veteran Administration's burial policy, but thanks to the Spartan Alliance and Warfighter Hemp, a recent donor, the Spartan Alliance is able to make sure that this soldier gets a proper burial with the dignity that he deserves after having served his country with honor."

Colorado Cultivars, operator of the largest Industrial Hemp Farm in the United States, recently launched the Warfighter Hemp product line of CBD Oil, specifically targeted to aide the veteran population. Numerous studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of CBD in combating the symptoms of PTSD, acute pain, and reducing an individual's reliance on addictive pain medications and opioids for pain management. Additionally, Colorado Cultivars has committed to donating 50 percent of the profits from the Warfighter Hemp line to veteran charities who they see as being on the front lines of addressing the myriad of issues facing the veteran community.

Infused with high grade CBD Oil, the Warfighter Hemp product line offers a non-psychoactive alternative to commonly prescribed opioids and is rich in anti-oxidants, flavonoids, Omega-3 and Omega-6 acids that can be legally sold in all 50 states. Warfighter Hemp is also the only product of its kind that is both certified as being grown 100 percent organic and Kosher.

"As a veteran myself, I can attest that the benefits of CBD have long been understood and put to use in the veteran community," continued Cutler, who also hosts a syndicated Fox News radio program. "That Colorado Cultivars will donate 50 percent of the profit from their Warfighter Hemp product line to support veteran non-profits is simply mind blowing. I have never heard of a company doing such a radical thing and it goes to show what true patriots they are."

Cutler is known as the creator of The Spartan Pledge. The Spartan Pledge is nothing more complex than a two sentence oath that one veteran gives to another pledging that they will be there for one another as a "Battle Buddy" and that they promise to reach out during a time of crisis before doing any irreparable harm to themselves.

The Spartan Alliance is a consortium of 501(c)(3) non-profits, organized by the nonprofit Independence Corps whose mission is to provide for veterans severely injured, both physically and mentally, with the tools, therapies and guidance needed to live as independently and productively as possible. The Independence Corps has been a recipient of a "Newman's' Own" grant to military charities for the past two years in a row.

The Spartan Alliance is a project of the Independence Corps and is dedicated to lowering the veteran suicide rate to a number below the national average. Colorado Cultivars and the Spartan Alliance are both excited by the possibility that the Warfighter Hemp product line will provide one big step in helping to make that vision become a reality and in doing so helping many more veterans and families like the Fuentes. Edwin Fuentes will be buried this Friday in Santa Ana, California.

1 A 501(c)(3) Nonprofit Dedicated to Assisting U.S. Veterans

SOURCE Warfighter Hemp; The Spartan Alliance

Related Links

https://www.warfighterhemp.com


WASHINGTON, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Medicomp Systems, a physician-driven provider of clinically contextual patient data solutions, announced today that the company has received Frost & Sullivan's 2017 Enabling Technology Leadership Award. Medicomp's Quippe was chosen because of its ability to optimize EHRs for physicians at the point of care. The solution mirrors the way physicians think and work to help them to make sense of all clinical data and enable quicker, more accurate clinical documentation.

Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this prestigious award to a company that has developed a pioneering technology that not only enhances current products, but also the development of new products and applications. The award recognizes the high market acceptance potential of the recipient's technology. Currently, over 100,000 users/day rely on Medicomp's proven domain expertise and clinician-designed technology to improve the quality and efficiency of care delivery and users of the newest generation of Quippe report productivity increases of up to 30% and much greater satisfaction with their systems.

"Medicomp has created a truly innovative application that proves that technology can empower physicians at the point of care, rather than act as a roadblock," said Frost & Sullivan Principal Industry Analyst Victor Camlek. "Quippe's user-friendly, customizable suite of solutions provides clinicians with the right clinical information at the right time, and simplifies the clinical documentation process. We were excited by Quippe because it can transform the physician experience at the point of care, replacing frustration with satisfaction, and helping them to do what matters most  deliver the highest-quality, most efficient patient care."

Quippe leverages Medicomp's powerful MEDCIN Knowledge Engine, which uses millions of mappings between clinical concepts to provide structured data. The purpose-built platform seamlessly integrates into existing clinical workflows and can be added to any EHR or HIS systems to enable elegant, clinical documentation that meets compliance and reporting requirements.

"Our team is proud to be recognized by Frost & Sullivan for designing solutions that support clinicians at the point of care. That's been our focus since our company was founded by Peter Goltra in 1978  and we've remained steadfast and true to that work," said Medicomp CEO David Lareau. "Our goal is to perfect the point-of-care experience for physicians who are tired of sorting through the clinical static in their EHR when they would prefer to focus on patients, and who are burnt out from spending extra hours completing documentation when they'd prefer to go home to their families. This award is yet another confirmation that our solutions are incredibly valuable not only for physicians, but also for the patients that they treat each day."

About Medicomp Systems

In 1978, Medicomp Systems pioneered its patented MEDCIN Knowledge Engine, co-designed with physicians, to transform disorganized, complex arrays of medical information into structured, clinically relevant data at the point-of-care. Leveraging its flagship engine, Medicomp's Quippe suite of solutions uniquely delivers longitudinal patient information within a problem-oriented clinical view, mirroring the way physicians think and work to drive optimal patient outcomes. Quippe also includes wizard-based documentation functionality, which integrates into existing clinical workflows and EHRs, enabling health systems to further enhance EHR usability. With Quippe, healthcare organizations of all sizes can satisfy quality measures and regulatory compliance, increasing physician productivity while effectively positioning themselves for future market demands. Today, leading hospitals and health systems such as Phoenix Children's Hospital and over 100,000 users/day rely on Medicomp's proven domain expertise and clinician-designed technology to improve the quality and efficiency of care delivery. For more information, please visit http://www.medicomp.com/.

Media Contact: Lisa Chernikoff, Amendola Communications for Medicomp, 734-678-5513, [email protected]

SOURCE Medicomp Systems
NEW YORK and PONTOTOC, Miss., June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Gainline Capital Partners LP (Gainline) and upholstered furniture manufacturer, Southern Motion, Inc. (Southern Motion) announces that funds managed by Gainline have entered into an agreement to acquire the company. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Southern Motion's current senior management team, led by President and Chief Executive Officer Roger Bland, who joined the company in 2008, will remain in place and maintain a significant stake in the business.

Mr. Bland said, "This deal allows our shareholders, many who have been investors for more than 20 years, to receive a return on their investment while providing a great resource for the existing management team. Gainline demonstrated consistently throughout the process why they are an excellent partner for entrepreneur-driven companies."

Rick Sullivan, a Managing Director with Gainline, said, "We are very excited to partner with Roger and the Southern Motion management team to help them better execute their vision. This investment was an opportunity to apply the Gainline approach of a thoughtful and conservatively structured equity investment in partnership with a first-rate management team to support long-term growth and continued success."

Mr. Bland added, "We are grateful to our founders Guy Lipscomb and Larry Todd, our original investors and are very proud of our entire Southern Motion team whose dedication and commitment have made this company one of the largest and most successful companies in the furniture industry. We are also thankful to the State of Mississippi and local community leaders for providing their support and are looking forward to continued growth in this region."

About Southern Motion

Southern Motion, founded in 1996, currently employs over 1,500 people in five Mississippi-based facilities spanning over 1.5 million square feet. The Company is a domestic producer of upholstered motion furniture incorporating original styling, quick delivery and high quality standards while providing one of the most comprehensive special order programs in the industry. Motion furniture contains a mechanism that enables the product to change seating positions.

About Gainline Capital Partners LP

Gainline Capital Partners LP is a private equity firm that invests in United States based middle market companies. The firm makes both controlling and minority investments in acquisitions of private companies, corporate divestitures, recapitalizations, management buyouts and growth equity. Gainline offers a growth-oriented model to help businesses develop and execute their vision, maneuver through any adversity that might arise and maximize value over the long term.

Mann, Armistead & Epperson, Ltd., a Richmond, Virginia based investment bank, has served as financial advisor to Southern Motion for the past several years. As such, the firm initiated the transaction with Gainline and served as investment banker to Southern Motion.

Contact

Frank De Maria - Gainline Capital Partners LP

347 647 0284

[email protected]

For more information please visit www.gainlinecapital.com

SOURCE Gainline Capital Partners LP

Related Links

http://www.gainlinecapital.com


"I'm excited to join a strong litigation firm that places priority on serving its clients, without being saddled with the traditional structure and business model of many District firms," Ivey said.

Ivey's political and government experience adds another level of expertise to Price Benowitz's flourishing criminal defense practice. "Glenn will have the opportunity to thrive in a collaborative environment, while providing experience and leadership that will no doubt make all of our people stronger advocates for our clients," Benowitz added.

Ivey will represent individuals and companies involved in business and commercial disputes, internal investigations and legislative matters, criminal defense, regulatory issues, and serious injuries.

Based in Washington, DC, Price Benowitz also has offices in Maryland's Prince George's, Montgomery, Howard, and Baltimore Counties, across Virginia in Fairfax, Prince William, Richmond, and Norfolk Counties, and New York.

A graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School, Ivey began his career more than 30 years ago at a law firm in Baltimore before working on Capitol Hill for Congressman John Conyers, Jr. He later served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington, DC under future Attorney General Eric Holder. In 2002, he was elected State's Attorney for Prince George's County, where he served for eight years, leading an office of 75 attorneys. Ivey chose not to seek a third term and returned to private practice in 2011.

In addition to practicing law, Ivey is a faculty member at Harvard Law School's renowned Trial Advocacy Workshop, and previously was an adjunct professor for 19 years at the University of Maryland School of Law in Baltimore. Glenn and his wife of 29 years, Jolene, a former state delegate, live in Cheverly, Maryland and remain active in their community. The couple has six children.

MEDIA CONTACT:

Ramon V. Korionoff

KorCom Communications

240-988-1254

SOURCE Price Benowitz LLP

Related Links

http://www.pricebenowitz.com


NEW YORK, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Ken Research announced its latest publication on "Global Anticoagulants Market Outlook to 2020  Demand for Patented NOACs with Prevalence of Cardiac Diseases to Drive Global Market" provides a comprehensive analysis of the anticoagulants market. The report includes the cumulative revenue generated by the market players from the sales of anticoagulants, including both generic and patented drugs at manufacturer's price and market share contributed by the sales of heparin, NOACs, Vitamin K Antagonists, and Injectable Direct Inhibitors in the total anticoagulants market. Further, the market in the study is differentiated on the basis of route of administration into oral and injectable.





Read the full report: http://www.reportlinker.com/p04887126/Global-Anticoagulants-Market-Outlook-to-Demand-for-Patented-NOACs-with-Prevalence-of-Cardiac-Diseases-to-Drive-Global-Market.html







The market is also segmented by four geographical regions across the globe  North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Rest of the World. Detailed snapshot on key regions of the Market which includes North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific is included in the report to elucidate facts about the market in detail.



The study also highlights the detailed information about major drug manufacturers in the global anticoagulants market and their respective shares by revenue in 2015. Analysis on patented drugs available in the market, and their approval procedure, timeline, and expected expiries is provided in report to assist new entrants in understanding the market before investing in the market. Various marketing analysis factors such as trends and developments and Porter's five forces analysis are also added in the study for clear understanding about the factors responsible for present scenario of the market. The future analysis of overall global anticoagulants market has also been discussed along with recommendations from analyst view.



Global Anticoagulants Market

Anticoagulants being the major part of the first line treatment of heart diseases including atrial fibrillation, deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolism, and stroke have been used extensively across the globe. Moreover, growing prevalence of coagulation disorders coupled with the aging population has increased the demand for anticoagulant drugs consequently leading to increased revenue generation. Launch of four patented drugs in the market in newly formed anticoagulants drug class, novel oral anticoagulants (NOACs) in between 2008 and 2014 has also resulted in high revenue generation for the total anticoagulants market as patented drugs are expensive in nature. Global anticoagulants market has been valued at USD ~ million in 2013 which increased to USD ~ million in 2015, exhibiting a CAGR of ~% in between 2013 and 2015.



Global Anticoagulants Market Segmentation

On the basis of type, heparin dominated the anticoagulants market with revenue share of ~% in 2015. Application of the heparin in wide therapeutic indications including venous thromboembolism, extracorporeal circuit procedure, and treatment of disseminated intravascular coagulation is the major factor which has led to the domination of heparin in the market. NOACs followed the heparin market in the global anticoagulants market with revenue share of ~% in 2015. The segment is also estimated as the fastest growing segment in the market. Flexibility to consume the drugs orally in comparison to injectables coupled with the presence of patented drugs in the market is the major factor which has driven the market for NOACs globally. Among the four patented drugs available in the NOAC category in the market, Bayer's Xarelto has been observed to generate maximum sales providing company domination over other players.



By route of administration, injectable anticoagulants dominated the anticoagulants market with revenue share of ~% in 2015 owing to the availability of heparins and direct inhibitors in injectable state only. Heparins being oldest type of anticoagulants known are approved in all countries across the globe, which is one of the major factors driving the market for injectable anticoagulants. However, the segment is slowly losing revenue share owing to the increasing demand for oral anticoagulants due to ease of consumption and effective results.



By geographical regions, North America dominated the market with revenue share of ~% in 2015. High prevalence of coagulation disorders including atrial fibrillation, DVT and PE, presence of pharmaceutical giants, high awareness among people and economic stability to undergo expensive treatment options are the major factors which have driven the anticoagulants market in North America. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that approximately ~ to ~ million people in the US had atrial fibrillation in 2015 and with aging population, number is expected to increase. The statistics clearly advocates the high demand for anticoagulants in the region. Asia Pacific is estimated as the most opportunistic region in the market. High population in the country coupled with rising awareness and purchasing power of the people especially in India and China is assisting the region to grow at a rapid pace.



Competitive Scenario

Bayer dominated the global anticoagulants market in 2015 with revenue share of ~% in 2015. The advantage of owning the oldest type of patented NOAC, Xarelto in the market resulting in associated trust factor with the drug is the major factor which has helped the company in gaining high revenue share in the market. Sanofi with its Lovenox or Clexane in LMWH category captures second position in the market with revenue share of ~% in 2015. High popularity of the drug with wide patient pool of almost ~ million patients in more than 100 countries is the major factor which has helped company in generating high revenue in the market.



Key Topics Covered in the Report:

- The market size of Global Anticoagulants Market

- Market segmentation of Global Anticoagulants Market on the basis of Type, Route of Administration, and Geographical Analysis

- Snapshot on North America Anticoagulants Market

- Snapshot on Europe Anticoagulants Market

- Snapshot on Asia Pacific Anticoagulants Market

- Porter's Five Forces Analysis for Global Anticoagulants Market

- Trends and Developments in Global Anticoagulants Market

- NOACs Drug Approval Timeline

- NOACs Patent Expiries

- Competitive Landscape and Detailed Company Profiles of the Major Market Players

- Future Outlook and Projections of Global Anticoagulants Market

- Analyst Recommendations

- Macro-Economic Factors Impacting the Global Anticoagulants Market

Read the full report: http://www.reportlinker.com/p04887126/Global-Anticoagulants-Market-Outlook-to-Demand-for-Patented-NOACs-with-Prevalence-of-Cardiac-Diseases-to-Drive-Global-Market.html



About Reportlinker

ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place.



http://www.reportlinker.com





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SOURCE Reportlinker

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ALBANY, New York, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Transparency Market Research (TMR) observes that the competition in the global flight data monitoring and analysis market is extremely high due to the strong presence of several well-established players in the market. Entry of smaller players in the international market has made the scenario tough for the existing players. To remain relevant, leading companies are focusing on mergers and acquisitions to expand their product portfolio in the coming years. The top three players in the global market are Safran Electronics & Defense, Curtiss-Wright Corporation, and Teledyne Controls LLC. The collective share of these companies is estimated to reach 92% by the end of 2017.

North America to Lead the Global Flight Data Monitoring and Analysis Market

According to the research report, the global flight data monitoring and analysis market is expected to be worth US$ 1,623.16 mn by the end of 2025 from US$677.6 mn in 2016. During the forecast years of 2017 and 2025, the global market for flight data monitoring and analysis market is estimated to progress at a CAGR of 10.4%. The fixed-wing segment is estimated to lead the global market as it is slated to acquire a share of 90.7% in the overall market. Higher safety offered by fixed-winged aircraft is expected to propel the segment. From a geographic point of view, the North America flight data monitoring and analysis market is expected to be the largest one. This regional market is slated to register a CAGR of 8.8% during the forecast period.

The demand for flight data monitoring and analysis (FDMA) has spiked in recent years due to the growing air traffic and mushrooming airline companies. These systems are used for proactive recording of flight data to understand the repetitive nature of operational inefficiencies. Thus, the primary purpose of FDMA to improve flight and maintenance operations and establishing excellent aviation safety standards. Today, application of FDMA extends to improving flight crew performance, air carrier training programs, air traffic control procedures, aircraft operations, and maintenance areas of a fleet operator along with improving flight operations. Thus, the widening application of these programs is expected to bolster the growth of the global market in the coming years.

Get PDF Sample for this Research Report @ http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=25028

Higher Profit Margins Ensure Swift Uptake of FDMA Programs

Adoption of flight data monitoring and analysis programs has resulted has led to a drastic reduction in accidents, allowed fuel economy, increased availability of aircraft, eliminated the need for unnecessary repairs and maintenance, and thereby ensured a higher profit margins for the aviation industry. In light of these reasons, the FDMA market is likely to find lucrative opportunities across the globe. According to the International Aviation Civil Organization (ICAO), it is now mandatory to have FDMA for aircraft that are above a specified maximum certificated take-off mass.

Despite the brilliant market drivers steering the growth of the global market, it faces a few challenges. The key restraint for the global flight data monitoring and analysis market is the concern about data security. Though Flight Operations Quality Assurance (FOQA) maintains a tight lid on the data, making sure it is not misused, several airline operators continue to be hesitant about it. This factor is expected to tug the market in the downward direction in the coming years.

This review is based on Transparency Market Research's report, titled "Flight Data Monitoring and Analysis Market (Aircraft Type - Fixed Wing and Rotary Wing; By End-use Vertical - Civil (Commercial and General)) - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2017 - 2025."

Get more information from Research Report Press Release: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/pressrelease/flight-data-monitoring-analysis-market.htm

The global Flight Data Monitoring and Analysis market is segmented as below:

Global Flight Data Monitoring and Analysis Market, By Aircraft Type

Fixed Wing

Rotary Wing

Global Flight Data Monitoring and Analysis Market, By End-use Vertical

Civil Commercial General

Military

Global Flight Data Monitoring and Analysis Market, By Geography

North America The U.S. Rest of North America

Europe The U.K Rest of Europe

Asia Pacific (APAC) Japan China Rest of APAC

(APAC) Middle East and Africa (MEA) GCC Rest of MEA

and (MEA) South America Brazil Rest of South America



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SOURCE Transparency Market Research
KIEV, Ukraine, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

The International energy sector is entering the era of global transformations driven by technological revolution, environmental and geopolitical challenges. For the second year in a row, the International Forum on Energy Security for the Future: A New Vision, Strategy, Innovation brought together high-profile global leaders, including politicians, opinion makers and business people to discuss providing innovative technology to transform the energy sector worldwide.

The second annual forum was held on June 2, 2017 in Monte Carlo, Monaco, and addressed Europe's energy security issues with a focus on Ukraine's role in the European market.

The event was co-organised by Burisma Group and Adam Smith Conferences with support from the Albert II Prince of Monaco Foundation and the Aleksander Kwasniewski Foundation Amicus Europae.

Nicolai Zlochevskyi, the President of Burisma Group, commented, "Ukraine is part of Europe and we cannot ignore the processes taking place in the EU. Only by partaking in Energy Summits such as this, where leaders from the EU and Ukraine political and public life are present, are we able to exchange ideas and find the instruments for achieving energy independence both within countries and in the European community."

Volodymyr Kistion, Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine, representatives of the Cabinet of Ministers, ministries and departments led the Ukrainian government delegation at the Forum. Nina Yuzhanina, Head of the Committee on Tax and Customs Policy, represented the Verkhovna Rada.

The Forum opened with a speech from His Highness Prince Albert II of Monaco and was followed by a Keynote session on the institutional role in creating a new energy security strategy for Europe, where speakers included Volodymyr Kistion, Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine; Joseph Cofer Black, Director, CIA's Counterterrorist Center (1999-2002) and Ambassador at Large for Counter-Terrorism (2002-2004); Andris Piebalgs, European Commissioner for Energy, 2004 and 2009; John E. Herbst, Director and Dina Patriciu Eurasia Center of the Atlantic Council and US Ambassador to Ukraine (2003-2006).

An Analytical Market Debate, moderated by Siobhan Hall, EU correspondent from Platts, put a special focus on the latest trends and issues that are likely to influence the European energy markets, such as the changing energy landscape, supply and demand dynamics and forecasts, energy price dynamics and factors, energy consumption mapping, competition, reliability and quality, future energy markets' scenarios.

The conference continued with discussions on the regional perspective of European energy security and the development of effective energy infrastructure between Nataliya Boyko, Deputy Minister for European Integration, Ministry of Energy and Coal Industry of Ukraine; Nektaria Karakatsani, Member of the Board, Regulatory Authority for Energy, Greece; Victor Grigosescu, energy expert and Former Minister for Energy, Romania; Bartosz Soroczynski, CEO, PGK Ltd., Poland and Kristian Takac, Senior Researcher, Globsec Policy Institute, Slovakia.

The Forum concluded with a session on creating the right energy mix for a clean and secure future. Isabelle Moretti, President of GERG, gave a presentation on the current situation and challenges of natural gas, bio gas, manufactured H2 and natural H2. Jan-Jaap Aue, Dean of Centre of Expertise Energy, Hanze University of Applied Sciences, talked about an open innovation as EnTranCe to the new energy market. Kostas Andriosopoulos, Executive Director, Research Centre for Energy Management at ESCP Europe Business School, focused on the East Med and its impact in the region. Tim Cayford, Policy Adviser, GERG/Eurogas closed the Forum with a presentation on a New Energy Paradigm for Europe.

Vadym Pozharskyi, the Head of the Forum's Organising Committee and Advisor to the Board of Directors at the International Energy Group Burisma, commented, "For Burisma Group this event is a matter of company strategy and its integration in the global energy community. We are proud of being an international energy group with Ukrainian roots, and Energy Security for the Future - is the largest international platform in Europe to present Ukrainian energy potential in the pan-European energy security system. Every year more European politicians and public figures are joining the movement. Therefore, in the future, The Burisma Group with the support of Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation, will develop this discussion platform."

About the Energy Security Forum in Monaco

Energy Security for the Future is a non-governmental international energy initiative committed to enhancing strategic awareness of energy security and advancing clean and reliable energy sources. The Forum brings together leading policy makers, key market players and recognised experts from all over the world to address key energy challenges and seek efficient solutions. The Forum calls for continued close cooperation between all stakeholders to facilitate a smooth transition to energy and ecological standards, as well as secure clean and sustainable energy future.

About Burisma

Burisma Group is an independent oil and gas company operating in Ukraine. Since its launch in 2002, the Company has rapidly become one of the largest independent gas producers in the country. Burisma has been engaged in oil and gas exploration and production for more than 10 years. The core business is located in Ukraine, where the Group is the largest independent natural gas producer. Burisma is a market leader with annualized natural gas production circa 1,1 BCM and over 30% market share. Burisma is seeking for opportunities to expand its portfolio to other countries. Burisma has a state-of-the-art equipment and many years of experience to provide best services for oil and gas companies around the world.

#EnergySecurityUkraine

For more information, please visit http://burisma.com/en/

SOURCE Burisma
WASHINGTON, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Great Minds, the nonprofit which created Eureka Math and Wit & Wisdom, has named Julie Huston Director of Sales.

Julie Huston brings 15 years of experience serving K-12 educators to guiding curriculum (print and digital) and professional development sales for the rapidly growing nonprofit.

Until recently, she was head of sales for Motion Math, a producer of math games. From 2002 to 2012, she led the sales team at Archipelago Learning (now Edmentum) and was instrumental in rolling out Study Island, Archipelago's core product line, to more than 22,000 schools across the U.S. and Canada.

At Great Minds, Huston will lead a sales team that recently doubled in size to address demand from districts nationwide for Eureka Math and Wit & Wisdom, a new English Language Arts curriculum serving grades K-8.

"Julie's many years serving America's educators, coupled with her experience in guiding other challenger organizations through rapid growth, make her an ideal addition to the Great Minds leadership team," said COO Joe Heider.

"Leading the sales team at Great Minds is unlike any opportunity I've encountered before," Huston said. "The excitement around Eureka Math and Wit & Wisdom is uncommon and inspiring."

About Great Minds

A group of education leaders founded the non-profit Great Minds in 2007 to define and encourage knowledge-rich comprehensive education for all students. Great Minds' Eureka Math curriculum has won accolades at the state and national levels, and was the first comprehensive math curriculum aligned to the Common Core State Standards at every grade. Great Minds' new ELA curriculum, Wit & Wisdom, launched nationally in the fall of 2016. Crafted by teachers collaborating with subject area experts, the curriculum taps the power of literature, history and science to meet the expectations of the new standards. With Eureka Math and Wit & Wisdom, Great Minds is the only organization to have K-8 curricula awarded "Tier-1" status for excellence by the Louisiana Department of Education in both ELA and mathematics.

To learn more, visit GreatMinds.org

SOURCE Great Minds

Related Links

http://GreatMinds.org


WABAN, Mass., June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Temkin Group announces the release of the 2017 Temkin Trust Ratings. Based on a study of 10,000 U.S consumers, the ratings benchmark the level of trust that consumers have with 329 companies across 20 industries. H-E-B and Mercedes-Benz tied for the tops spots, followed closely by USAA (for banking and insurance), and Navy Federal Credit Union.

Temkin Trust Ratings: Benchmarking Consumer Trust With Large Companies Across 20 Industries (TemkinRatings.com)

Three TV/Internet service providers earned the lowest Temkin Trust Ratings: Time Warner Cable, Comcast, and Cox Communications. Eleven of the bottom 12 companies are either TV/Internet service providers or health plans.

"It's disappointing to see how TV/Internet service providers and health plans have let down customers so regularly that they've fostered an environment of deep mistrust," states Bruce Temkin, managing partner of Temkin Group.

Highlights of the 2017 Temkin Trust Ratings include:

The supermarket industry earned the highest average Temkin Trust Ratings (68%), followed by auto dealers (66%), and investment firms (65%).

TV/Internet services (36%) fell far below any other industries. The next lowest industries are health plans (50%), and wireless (53%).

The following companies outperformed their industry averages by 15 points or more: USAA (banks, credit cards, and insurance), Navy Federal Credit Union, Advantage Rent-A-Car, ACE Rent A Car, Mercedes-Benz, and credit unions.

The following companies fell at least 15 points below their industry averages: Airbnb, RadioShack, Days Inn, Commonwealth Edison, Wells Fargo, and Kmart.

All 19 industries that were in both the 2016 and 2017 Temkin Trust Ratings made improvements over last year. The largest improvements were in utilities (+16 points) and auto dealers (+14 points).

Of the 280 companies in the 2016 and 2017 Temkin Trust Ratings, 98% of companies increased in score. Fujitsu, HSBC, Dollar, Advantage Rent-A-Car, Haier, Volkswagen, Subaru, and Dominion Virginia Power all increased by at least 25 points.

Allstate, Taco Bell, Time Warner Cable, Avis, JCPenney, and Wells Fargo are the only companies who did not see an increase in their ratings.

In its seventh year of publication, the 2017 Temkin Trust Ratings examines the likelihood of consumers to forgive companies after they make a mistake. It evaluates 329 companies across 20 industries: Computers & Tablets, Insurance, Investments, Credit Cards, Health Plans, TV/Internet Service, Streaming Media, Wireless, Airlines, Hotels & Rooms, Retailers, Fast Food, Rental Cars & Transport, Supermarkets, Parcel Delivery, TV & Appliances, Auto Dealers, Software Firms, and Utilities.

The 2017 Temkin Trust Ratings along with other ratings can be accessed at the Temkin Ratings website, www.TemkinRatings.com.

Detailed results and datasets for the 2017 Temkin Trust Ratings can be downloaded from the Customer Experience Matters blog, at ExperienceMatters.wordpress.com as well as from the Temkin Group website, www.TemkinGroup.com.

About Temkin Ratings: Temkin Ratings is a product of Temkin Group that amplifies the voice of consumers by making their feedback widely available and comparable across companies and industries. It's a collection of different benchmark metrics that provide key insights into how large organizations treat their customers. Temkin Ratings evaluates organizations based on feedback collected from a large-scale online survey of consumers, with quotas set to closely match the U.S. Census data for age groups, income levels, gender, geographic region, and ethnicity. Temkin Ratings include, Temkin Experience Ratings, Temkin Forgiveness Ratings, Temkin Trust Ratings, Temkin Customer Service Ratings, and Temkin Online Ratings.

About Temkin Group: Temkin Group is widely recognized as a leading customer experience research and consulting firm. Many of the world's largest brands rely on its insights and advice to steer their transformational journeys. Temkin Group combines customer experience thought leadership with a deep understanding of the dynamics of organizations to help accelerate results. Rather than layering on cosmetic changes, Temkin Group helps companies embed practices within their culture by building four critical competencies: Purposeful Leadership, Employee Engagement, Compelling Brand Values, and Customer Connectedness. The firm's ongoing research identifies leading and emerging best practices across a wide range of activities for engaging the hearts and minds of customers, employees, and partners. For more information, contact Bruce Temkin at 617-916-2075 or send an email to [email protected].

Customer Experience Matters is a registered trademark of Temkin Group.

SOURCE Temkin Group

Related Links

http://www.TemkinGroup.com


LONDON, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- High-Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU) is an FDA-approved, minimally invasive therapeutic technology with the potential to transform the treatment of many medical disorders by using ultrasonic energy to target tissue. Till date more than 100,000 patients have been treated with HIFU therapeutic technology; nearly 25,000 patients alone treated in 2015. New regulatory approvals in United States and other part of the world, expansion of research and treatment sites and innovation continues in new companies are some the growth driving factors for HIFU devices.





Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/4918770/









Prostate Cancer is the Leading use of HIFU Technology Globally



Prostate cancer is one of the common types of cancer in the men. Prostate cancer begins when cells in the prostate gland start to grow uncontrollably. It is estimated that nearly 161,360 new cases of prostate cancer will be found in the United States and nearly 26,730 men is expected to die in 2017.





About One Third of the Total HIFU Patients are Treated for Uterine Fibroids Cases in 2015



Uterine fibroids are benign tumors that originate in the uterus. Most of the women did not found any symptoms whereas some women have painful period. The exact cause of uterine fibroids is unclear. Uterine fibroids are the other leading application for HIFU device. About one third of the total HIFU patients are treated for uterine fibroids cases in 2015.





Nearly One Third of the Total HIFU Manufacturers are based in European region



At present 36 companies are manufacturing HIFU device globally. Nearly one third of the total manufacturers are based in European region. France and United States are two most favorable places for HIFU manufacturers in European and North American region.



High Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU) Product Analysis of 20 Manufacturers & Deals is the 2nd edition report on High-Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU) by Renub Research. This 150 page report contains 17 Figures and 14 Tables it provides a detailed analysis of the HIFU products of the companies. This report provides the latest available and emerging High Intensity Focused Ultrasound products being utilized by the HIFU centers. Each company is discussed in depth with a section on its product line, revenue and latest development in HIFU market.





All the High Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU) in the report has been studied from 7 viewpoints



1. HIFU Manufacturers, Research Sites, PreClinical Research Sites, Clinical Research Sites, Technical Research Sites & Commercial Treatment Sites

2. Major Deals (Collaboration Deals, Distribution Agreement Deals, Partnerships Deals)  2012-2017

3. HIFU Products

4. HIFU Patents and Intellectual Property

5. HIFU Clinical & Regulatory Status

6. Companies HIFU Revenue

7. Latest Development in High Intensity Focus Ultrasound (HIFU)





20 High Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU) Manufacturers studied in the report is as follows



1. EDAP TMS

2. Sonacare Medical

3. Haifu

4. Insightec

5. Theraclion

6. Alpinion

7. Shanghai A&S Co., LTD

8. Mianyang Sonic Electronic Ltd

9. Eye Tech Care

10. FUS Instruments

11. Image Guided Therapy

12. Philips Healthcare

13. Profound Medical Corp

14. Promedica Bioelectronics

15. Shenzhen PRO-HIFU Medical Tech. Co., Ltd.

16. Shenzhen Wikkon

17. Sonic Concepts

18. Verasonics

19. Changjiangyuan Technology Development Co., Ltd

20. EpiSonica





This report provides the answer of following questions

 How many HIFU research sites are currently working across various world regions and in globe?

 What are the company's latest developments in the HIFU segments?

 What is the advantage of the each HIFU manufacturer products?

 How many HIFU clinical research sites are currently working across various world regions and in globe?

 What are the company's latest developments in the HIFU segments?

 How many HIFU commercial treatment sites are currently working across various world regions and in globe?

 What are the company's latest developments in the HIFU segments?

 What is the advantage of the each HIFU manufactures products?

 How many HIFU products are available for the particular company?

 What is the HIFU product regulatory status for the particular company?





Data Sources



This report is built using data and information sourced from proprietary databases, primary and secondary research and inhouse analysis by Renub Research team of industry experts.



Primary sources include industry surveys and telephone interviews with industry experts.



Secondary sources information and data has been collected from various printable and nonprintable sources like search engines, News websites, Government Websites, Trade Journals, White papers, Government Agencies, Magazines, Newspapers, Trade associations, Books, Industry Portals, Industry Associations and access to various paid databases like Factiva, OneSource, Thomson & Reuters, Hoovers, Bloomberg, EMIS and many more.

Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/4918770/



About Reportbuyer

Reportbuyer is a leading industry intelligence solution that provides all market research reports from top publishers

http://www.reportbuyer.com



For more information:

Sarah Smith

Research Advisor at Reportbuyer.com

Email: [email protected]

Tel: +44 208 816 85 48

Website: www.reportbuyer.com

SOURCE ReportBuyer

Related Links

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Adam Tan, Chief Executive Officer and Vice Chairman of HNA Group, said, "It is a great honor and privilege to join the Atlantic Council and participate in the Distinguished Leadership Awards Dinner alongside Vice President Mike Pence and other global leaders and friends from the business community. The individuals honored at Monday's event have made important and long-lasting contributions to the international community, and I was delighted to join in celebrating their leadership. I was also pleased to have the opportunity to discuss HNA Group's strategies for U.S. growth with Vice President Pence and other leaders, including our commitment to creating jobs and building further on HNA's 45,000-strong U.S. workforce."

Mr. Tan continued, "HNA Group has long been committed to working alongside organizations across the globe to bring a big world closer together. As a truly global company with roots in China, HNA Group is pleased to have the opportunity to contribute to the Council's mission to address economic and political challenges and create a more secure and prosperous world."

The Atlantic Council promotes constructive leadership and engagement in international political and economic affairs, provides an essential forum for its uniquely influential network of global leaders to shape policy choices and strategies, and works to strengthen transatlantic partnerships.

The Distinguished Leadership Awards Dinner is considered the leading event of its kind, convening an elite audience of approximately eight hundred guests from more than fifty countries, including the highest level of government, business, military, media, and civil society leaders. The Dinner generates financial support for the Atlantic Council's eleven regional centers and functional programs that collaborate to produce innovative research and analysis on critical global issues. The Awards Dinner honored outstanding global influencers, including: Jens Stoltenberg, NATO Secretary General; Her Royal Highness Princess Haya Bint Al Hussein of the United Arab Emirates; William C. Ford, Jr. Executive Chairman of Ford Motor Company; U.S. Navy Admiral Michelle Howard; and Renee Fleming, globally-acclaimed American Soprano.

About HNA Group

HNA Group is a global Fortune 500 company focused on tourism, logistics, and financial services. Since its founding in 1993, HNA Group has evolved from a regional airline based on Hainan Island in southern China into a global company with approximately $145 billion of assets, more than $90 billion in annual revenues, and an international workforce of 410,000 employees, primarily across the Americas, Europe and Asia. HNA's tourism business is a fast-growing, vertically-integrated global player with market-leading positions in aviation, hotels and travel services. HNA operates and invests in nearly 3,200 hotels with over 380,000 rooms across major markets, and has 1,250 aircraft carrying nearly 100 million passengers to 270 cities worldwide. HNA's logistics business is a leader in logistics and supply chain management with capabilities in shipping and equipment manufacturing, maritime transportation, third-party payment platforms and project finance. In financial services, HNA is China's largest non-bank leasing company, and a leading provider of a diverse set of businesses in equipment leasing, insurance, asset management, investment banking and credit services. For more information, visit www.hnagroup.com.

About Atlantic Council

The Atlantic Council is a nonpartisan organization that promotes constructive US leadership and engagement in international affairs based on the central role of the Atlantic community in meeting today's global challenges. For more information, please visit AtlanticCouncil.org and follow us on Twitter @AtlanticCouncil.

SOURCE HNA Group
OMAHA  With summer fast-approaching, it is time to be aware of ticks and the diseases they spread. Of special concern this year is a tick-borne illness known as Powassan.

According to Creighton University biologist Dr. Theodore Burk, an expert in entomology, within the last 10 years, since the virus was discovered in the United States, a total of 75 cases of Powassan have been confirmed in the Northeast and upper Midwest, including Northern Minnesota and Wisconsin.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Dr. Burk concur that because of recent mild winters, tick populations in these areas, including Nebraska, may increase in the future, leading to increases in the diseases they carry.

Dr. Burk believes that the best prevention from contracting the Powassan virus is to not get bitten by a tick. He offers the following precautionary measures when enjoying the outdoors this summer:

 Wear light-colored or white clothing, so any ticks can be more easily seen.

 Tuck pants into your socks to prevent ticks from crawling inside the pant leg and up the leg. Long-sleeved shirts are also advised.

 Use insect repellent that contains the chemical Deet.

 Stay on hiking paths that have been cleared. Avoid heavily-brushed and high-grass areas where ticks reside.

 Always check for ticks after being outdoors and have another person check you as well.

 Since ticks seek out high blood flow areas of the body to feed on and lay their eggs, always check the head and neck for ticks.

 Be cognizant of and take extra precaution when travelling to areas where Powassan or Lyme Disease are known to have occurred.

The Powassan virus differs from the more well-known Lyme Disease, which is actually a bacterial infection. Both diseases are spread by the same ticks, Ixodes (also known as the Deer Tick). Those ticks are not prevalent in Nebraska, where the most commonly encountered tick is the Dog tick (Wood tick). Ixodes is commonly found in the Northeast and Great Lakes regions.

The Ixodes tick is the size of a sesame seed as an adult. In its larvae stage, it is the size of a poppy seed.

It varies from the larger ticks were used to in Nebraska; the Dog tick, where you know when one is on you, because not only do we feel the Dog tick crawling on us, we also can more easily see it because it is so much larger, said Burk.

Burk added that just because the Ixodes tick is not prevalent in Nebraska, that doesnt mean a person cant be bitten by one in the state, or hasnt been bitten by one while visiting one of the more prevalent Powassan areas. A person could have travelled to Northern Minnesota, Wisconsin or the Northeast and have brought the virus back with them, without knowing they have it. In most cases, people dont show any symptoms, noted Burk.

If symptoms do occur, they can be similar to general illnesses such as a severe head cold or flu, which can cause congestion, headache, low grade fever, numbness and dizziness.

The Powassan is a virus first discovered in 1958 in Ontario, after a boy became ill with a condition resembling encephalitis. Scientists didnt know what to call the virus, so they named it after Powassan, the town the boy then resided.

About Creighton University: Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, enrolls 4,100 undergraduates and 4,200 graduate and professional students among nine schools and colleges. No other university its size offers students such a comprehensive academic environment with personal attention from faculty-mentors. Jesuit and Catholic, it affords incomparable inter-professional education, bridging eight health professions programs with law, business and the arts and sciences  all on one walkable campus. Creighton has been a top-ranked university in the U.S. News & World Report for 20 years.
MUSCATINE, Iowa, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- HNI Corporation (NYSE: HNI) announced today the appointment of Jeff Lorenger as President, Office Furniture, HNI Corporation, reporting to Stan Askren, Chairman, President and CEO, HNI Corporation.

"Jeff is a dynamic leader with a proven track record of executing strategic plans and initiatives," said Mr. Askren.

Mr. Lorenger joined HNI Corporation in 1998 and has since held multiple executive level positions, with broad experience in corporate and operating company roles, in all HNI furniture markets and segments. Mr. Lorenger holds Bachelor of Business Administration, MBA, and Juris Doctorate degrees from the University of Iowa.

About HNI Corporation

HNI Corporation is a NYSE traded company (ticker symbol: HNI) providing products and solutions for the home and workplace environments. HNI Corporation is a leading global provider and designer of office furniture and the leading manufacturer and marketer of hearth products. We sell the broadest and deepest selection of quality office furniture solutions available to meet the needs of every customer through an extensive portfolio of well-known and trusted brands. Our hearth products are the strongest, most respected brands in the industry and include a full array of gas, electric, wood and biomass burning fireplaces, inserts, stoves, facings and accessories. More information can be found on the Corporation's website at www.hnicorp.com .

For Information Contact:

Marshall H. Bridges, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer (563) 272-7400

Jack D. Herring, Treasurer, Director of Finance and Investor Relations (563) 506-9783

SOURCE HNI Corporation

Related Links

http://www.hnicorp.com


CHANGSHA, China, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- On May 31, 2017, the "Looking China Youth Film Project", known as "Looking Hunan", officially came to a close. This 15-day event allowed eleven young filmmakers from Eastern Europe to capture the essence of Hunan province in China through a new set of lenses, promoting the region's brand to the world and increasing Hunan's inbound tourism.

Themed "craftsmanship, inheritance and innovation", each young filmmaker created a short film about Hunan's culture, branding China's image and spreading voices of the country through a new perspective. Topics of the films were of Hunan's local cultural handicrafts that included: Miluo Dragon Boats, Liuyang Fireworks, the Art of Mud Book, the Flower Drum Opera, Ancient Books Reparation, Cultural Heritage Protection, Zoomlion and more.

The event was hosted and sponsored by Beijing Normal University and co-sponsored by Hunan Normal University. The Hunan Tourism Development Committee provided support and guidance, while PandaMobo, an advertising agency based in Beijing, administered the online promotion of the event on Hunan's official Facebook fan page. Two social media influencers (key opinion leaders) also attended the event, getting a much deeper knowledge about the project and its goals.

Since the creation of Hunan's official social media pages in January 2017, the total number of fans has reached 263,431 and is still growing at an exponential rate. Fans are mainly from Hunan's targeting inbound countries such as the U.S., Japan, and Korea.

"It wouldn't work if we used the traditional ways of marketing in China", says Guobin Huang, Marketing Director of Hunan's Tourism Development Committee. "If the foreigners have an incline towards Zhangjiajie in comparison to other areas, then we should post more images about Zhangjiajie. We must familiarize them with Hunan through their own personal preference. Also, the key opinion leaders are great resources and we can utilize them as a medium to promote Hunan."

Baolong Pei, the Director of the Tourism Department at PandaMobo also emphasizes that, "Promoting to the overseas market requires more details, more patience, and more time. When it comes to the overseas market, the traditional way of advertising in China is too broad and insubstantial. Our team focuses on perfectionism. Along with eleven films that tell a different perspective of Hunan to the audience's eyes, creative advertising formats such as Facebook Live Videos, Canvas, and 360 videos aid in the support of their promotion. During the offline event alone, Hunan's Facebook fans increased by 58,328!"

On May 14-15th of 2017, the "One Belt, One Road" Summit was held in Beijing, illustrating Hunan's focus on gaining more inbound tourists from overseas as well as marketing towards countries that lie on the "One Belt, One Road", ensuring that the inbound tourism industry continues to flourish. According to a report that was published by the Hunan Tourism Bureau, from January to April in 2017, Hunan has welcomed 546,503 inbound tourists and has increased the revenue in foreign currency. With the development of China's tourism industry, the "13th Five-Year Plan" implementation has initiated and Hunan's inbound tourism will usher in a new round of development opportunities.

SOURCE PandaMobo
HOUSTON, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Hyperdynamics Corporation (OTCQX: HDYN) ("Hyperdynamics" or the "Company"), announced today the closing of a private placement offering (the "Offering") of Units of the Company's securities each consisting of (i) one share of the Company's common stock and (ii) a warrant to purchase three-quarters () of a share of the Company's common stock within two years at an exercise price of $1.825 per whole share. The purchase price was $1.46 per Unit. The warrants will have "weighted average" adjustment anti-dilution protection.

The Company closed on gross proceeds of $6,330,000 (before placement agent fees and expenses of the offering). Hyperdynamics CEO, Ray Leonard, commented, "I would like to thank all investors who participated in the Offering. This was a timely closing as we have signed final closing documents on the Farmout Agreement with our partner SAPETRO. This capital will be used to pay a part of our portion of costs of drilling operations, shared from today 50/50 with SAPETRO."

Katalyst Securities acted as placement agent for the Offering, on a reasonable best efforts basis.

The offer and sale of the foregoing securities were made in a transaction not involving a public offering and have not been registered under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the Securities Act), or applicable state securities laws. The Offering was exempt from registration under Section 4(a)(2) of the Securities Act and Rule 506 of Regulation D thereunder. The Units were sold to "accredited investors," as defined in Regulation D. Accordingly, the securities may not be reoffered or resold in the United States except pursuant to an effective registration statement or an applicable exemption from the registration requirements of the Securities Act and such applicable state securities laws.

This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy these securities, nor shall there be any sale of the securities in any state in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to the registration or qualification under the securities laws of such state.

About Hyperdynamics

Hyperdynamics is an emerging independent oil and gas exploration company that is exploring for oil and gas offshore the Republic of Guinea in West Africa. To find out more, visit our website at www.hyperdynamics.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

Statements in this press release that are not descriptions of historical facts are forward-looking statements that are based on management's current expectations and assumptions and are subject to risks and uncertainties. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terminology including "anticipates," "believes," "can," "continue," "could," "estimates," "expects," "intends," "may," "plans," "potential," "predicts," "should," "will," "would" or the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those currently anticipated, including, without limitation, our ability to raise additional funding as required to execute our exploration and development program, our dependence on a single exploration asset, our lack proved reserves, our lack of operating revenue, dependence on joint development partners, the high operating risks of developing oil and gas resources, weather conditions and natural disasters, political conditions in the regions in which we operate or propose to operate, fluctuations in prices of oil and natural gas, the threat of terrorism, and general economic conditions. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this press release, and the Company assumes no obligation to update the forward-looking statements, or to update the reasons why actual results could differ from those projected in the forward-looking statements, except as required by law. Investors should the carefully review the risk factor disclosure and other information, including the Company's financial statements and the notes thereto, set forth in the reports and other documents the Company files with the SEC available at www.sec.gov .

Contacts:

Ray Leonard

President and Chief Executive Officer

713-353-9445

Jack Lascar

Dennard-Lascar Associates

713-529-6600

SOURCE Hyperdynamics

Related Links

http://www.hyperdynamics.com


ARMONK, N.Y., June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM), America's largest technology employer, today announced it is expanding partnerships with numerous community colleges in the United States to better prepare more Americans for "New Collar" career opportunities. In these well-paying roles, in-demand technology skills are valued more than credentials, and a traditional four-year college degree may not always be required.

In addition to collaborating on curricula design for next generation IT skills, IBM will work with community colleges near its major U.S. facilities to offer more local students the opportunity to participate in internships and apprenticeships within the company, as well as direct hiring for IBM careers. This initiative will grow over the next six months to include more than a dozen schools in or near communities such as Columbia, MO; Rocket Center, WV; Dubuque, IA; Boulder, CO; Poughkeepsie, NY; Raleigh, NC; Austin, TX; Dallas, TX and Houston, TX. With this initiative, IBM is working to expand technology career opportunities in areas that traditionally have been underserved by high-tech employers.

"IBM has had real success tapping into a talent pool that doesn't have traditional degrees. Last year alone, these New Collar professionals accounted for around 15 percent of our U.S. hiring," said Sam Ladah, IBM's vice president of talent. "We're delighted to be providing more community college students with access to emerging technologies at the forefront of our industry, as well as hands-on exposure to New Collar career paths. Our goal is to make the IT industry more inclusive by helping a more diverse set of candidates understand that if they have the right skills, there's an opportunity for them at today's IBM."

Examples of New Collar community college partnerships that IBM recently has expanded include:

IBM is working with Moberly Area Community College (MACC) in Moberly, MO to recruit New Collar positions through a major hiring initiative. The first class of New Collar interns, many of whom attend MACC, started with IBM in the spring of 2017. Also, IBMers from the company's nearby Columbia, MO location will be volunteering in several programs, including MACC's STEAM camp  focusing on STEM skills and the arts  this summer. These IBMers will facilitate training sessions and host panel discussions on robotics, artificial intelligence, internet of things and IBM Cloud platforms to encourage high schoolers to take an active interest in technology. Starting in fall 2017, IBM Columbia's Network for Emerging Women chapter will serve as mentors to MACC students, leading seminars in resume writing, interview skills and business acumen.

in to recruit New Collar positions through a major hiring initiative. The first class of New Collar interns, many of whom attend MACC, started with IBM in the spring of 2017. Also, IBMers from the company's nearby location will be volunteering in several programs, including MACC's STEAM camp  focusing on STEM skills and the arts  this summer. These IBMers will facilitate training sessions and host panel discussions on robotics, artificial intelligence, internet of things and IBM Cloud platforms to encourage high schoolers to take an active interest in technology. Starting in fall 2017, IBM Columbia's Network for Emerging Women chapter will serve as mentors to MACC students, leading seminars in resume writing, interview skills and business acumen. This month, IBM and Northeast Iowa Community College in Dubuque, IA are launching a customized five-week course for incoming IBM New Collar interns from the school, as well as entry-level IBM employees. The course will focus on in-demand skills, such as computer ethics, time management and introductions to operating system platforms, virtualization, coding and IT trouble shooting.

in are launching a customized five-week course for incoming IBM New Collar interns from the school, as well as entry-level IBM employees. The course will focus on in-demand skills, such as computer ethics, time management and introductions to operating system platforms, virtualization, coding and IT trouble shooting. IBM is building on its existing relationship with Allegany College of Maryland, the nearest community college to its Rocket Center, WV Cloud and Client Innovation Center, to enhance high-tech skills training collaboration across state lines. IBM has consulted with the college on technology-based curriculum for its cybersecurity program. As a prominent member of a local college-led consortium, The Western Maryland IT Center of Excellence, IBM works closely with Allegany College of Maryland and other community partners to make training in New Collar skills related to cloud computing and cybersecurity more readily available to the local workforce. IBM's local team also coaches Allegany College of Maryland students through classroom roundtables and mock interviews.

the nearest community college to its Rocket Center, WV Cloud and Client Innovation Center, to enhance high-tech skills training collaboration across state lines. IBM has consulted with the college on technology-based curriculum for its cybersecurity program. As a prominent member of a local college-led consortium, The Western Maryland IT Center of Excellence, IBM works closely with of and other community partners to make training in New Collar skills related to cloud computing and cybersecurity more readily available to the local workforce. IBM's local team also coaches of students through classroom roundtables and mock interviews. IBM is partnering with Wake Technical Community College in Raleigh, NC to develop training focused on IT skills such as cloud, data science, cybersecurity and design.

"Initiatives like this provide a great opportunity to prepare our students and graduates to compete for and land marketable jobs," said Jo Fey, Dean of Career and Technical Education at Missouri's Moberly Area Community College. "This will also position them well for the future as job openings increasingly call for technical skills and work experience that do not come automatically with a degree."

"The nation's community colleges are a pathway to well-paying jobs for many Americans," said Dr. Walter G. Bumphus, president and CEO of the American Association of Community Colleges. "By aligning local economic development needs and the needs of students, community colleges bridge the gap between employers and skilled workers. We will continue to leverage partnerships with the business sector to help to ensure that American workers and businesses remain competitive in the 21st century global labor market."

IBM has long-standing academic training partnerships with more than 70 U.S. universities and community colleges to help address America's growing skills gap. In addition, IBM's groundbreaking P-TECH model, which better prepares U.S. students for success in fast-growing New Collar careers, has expanded to an estimated 60 schools in six U.S. states, with 300 plus industry partners on board.

Follow #NewCollarJobs or visit ibmpolicy.com for more.

Media Contact:

Adam R. Pratt

Ph: (202) 551-9625

[email protected]

SOURCE IBM

Related Links

http://www.ibm.com


ROCKVILLE, Md., June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The Institute for Clinical Immuno-Oncology (ICLIO) has launched two unique initiatives that support community cancer programs in implementing and advancing access to new and emerging immunotherapies for cancer. Through these initiatives, ICLIO faculty engage multidisciplinary care teams in robust discussions on the real-world challenges and complexities of delivering immunotherapy to patients in the community setting. ICLIO is an institute of the Association of Community Cancer Centers (ACCC).

"With the mounting number of approvals and new indications for immuno-oncology, there comes an increased need for education and communication among all members of the care delivery team. Through tailored, intimate learning opportunities, these ICLIO initiatives are meeting a critical need for clinicians working in the community on the frontlines of cancer care delivery," said ICLIO Advisory Committee Chair Lee S. Schwartzberg, MD, FACP. It is estimated that 85% of the nation's cancer patients receive care in the community setting.

ICLIO Visiting Experts

The ICLIO Visiting Experts program brings a multidisciplinary team of oncology professionals experienced in the delivery of immunotherapy for cancer into ACCC member cancer programs for a one-day workshop. The workshops delve into clinical, operational, and programmatic issues specific to these innovative new therapies. The curriculum centers on evolving challenges in this field, including patient selection, management of immune-related side effects, support for patients and caregivers, and effective approaches for educating clinical colleagues in allied specialties on the unique intricacies of immunotherapy for cancer.

A key takeaway for workshop participants: The critical need for ongoing, consistent communication among all providers.

"It was encouraging to see overlap in the workshop with what we see in our clinic," commented ICLIO Visiting Experts workshop participant Kelsey Finch, PharmD, oncology pharmacist, Columbus Regional Health. "Our cancer center has a very interdisciplinary practice and patients tell different parts of their story to different clinicians, particularly about the side effects they are experiencing, so clinicians need to be able to communicate with each other to get the full story."

"Programs like those put together by ACCC's ICLIO are good because they represent everyone's perspective, not just the oncologist. [Presenting] there were a medical oncologist, a pharmacist, an administrator, as well as a nurseall of whom have extensive immuno-oncology experience and each with unique ways that their particular institutions have dealt with some of the challenges of delivering these therapies," said workshop participant Magi Khalil, MD, PhD, Physician Practice Director for Medical Oncology, Riverside Health System.

Case Studies in Immuno-Oncology

Launching in summer 2017, Case Studies in Immuno-Oncology will bring an ICLIO expert to ACCC Cancer Program Members for a 60-minute, case-based tumor board discussion on immunotherapy treatment decision-making and the management of associated immune-related adverse events. All ACCC member programs are invited to apply for this opportunity.

Both the ICLIO Visiting Experts and the Case Studies in Immuno-Oncology initiatives are exceptional opportunities for in-depth bi-directional learning, allowing the ICLIO expert presenters to learn from the experiences of the local multidisciplinary teams successfully providing immunotherapy in the community while discussing difficult, real-world cases and sharing their own best practices and care delivery experiences.

"As an ICLIO Visiting Expert, I learned a lot myself about other aspects of immunotherapy delivery such as pharmacy storage and how to minimize wastage. We can all stand to learn new things in relation to immuno-oncology therapy, whether we are coming from academia or the community," said Jarushka Naidoo, MBBCh, Assistant Professor of Oncology and attending physician at the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins University.

As new approvals and indications for immunotherapies continue to transform approaches to patient treatment in community oncology, cancer programs have an ongoing need to equip themselves with the most up-to-date knowledge and skills to recognize, triage, and manage immune-related adverse events and prepare for leadership roles in educating their colleagues about the benefits and risks of immunotherapy for cancer treatment. Through these initiatives, ICLIO brings needed education and expertise into the community where most of the nation's cancer care is delivered.

About the Institute for Clinical Immuno-Oncology

The Institute for Clinical Immuno-Oncology (ICLIO), an institute of the Association of Community Cancer Centers (ACCC), is the only comprehensive initiative to prepare all members of the multidisciplinary cancer care team for the complex implementation of immuno-oncology in the community setting. Learn more and explore ICLIO resources at accc-iclio.org.

ICLIO is made possible by a charitable donation from Bristol-Myers Squibb and supported by an education grant from Merck & Co., Inc.

About the Association of Community Cancer Centers

The Association of Community Cancer Centers (ACCC) is the leading advocacy and education organization for the multidisciplinary cancer care team. More than 23,000 cancer care professionals from over 2,500 hospitals and practices nationwide are affiliated with ACCC. Providing a national forum for addressing issues that affect community cancer programs, ACCC is recognized as the premier provider of resources for the entire oncology care team. Our members include medical and radiation oncologists, surgeons, cancer program administrators and medical directors, senior hospital executives, practice managers, pharmacists, oncology nurses, radiation therapists, social workers, and cancer program data managers. For more information, visit ACCC's website at accc-cancer.org. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and read our blog, ACCCBuzz.

SOURCE Association of Community Cancer Centers

Related Links

http://www.accc-cancer.org


BORA BORA, French Polynesia, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- InterContinental Bora Bora Resort & Thalasso Spa was awarded "Australasia's Leading Green Hotel 2017" in the World Travel Awards Gala Ceremony which took place on June 4, 2017, at the Grand Kempinski Hotel Shanghai in China.

Established in 1993, World Travel Awards acknowledges, rewards and celebrates excellence across all key sectors of the travel, tourism and hospitality industries and is recognized globally as the ultimate hallmark of industry excellence. Celebrating its 24th anniversary year in 2017, its annual program is renowned as the most prestigious and comprehensive in the global industry. Qualified executives working within travel and tourism and the consumer travel buyer vote online in award categories. The full list of winners is published exclusively online at www.worldtravelawards.com.

"We are thrilled to receive this prestigious award which recognizes our environmental efforts at the resort," said Stephane Massarini, General Manager, InterContinental Bora Bora Resort & Thalasso Spa. "We are truly honored and look forward to providing our guests with an extraordinary stay at our property."

InterContinental Bora Bora Resort & Thalasso Spa was the first resort in the world to implement Sea-Water Air-Conditioning (SWAC) technology, using deep seawater for all the cooling requirements of the resort. SWAC is clean, quiet, maintenance-free, and a fully renewable non-fossil source of environmentally friendly energy that results in electricity savings of more than 90 percent for the resort in comparison to conventional cooling methods. The resort also utilizes InterContinental Hotel Group's (IHG) Green Engage system, an innovative online environmental sustainability system that allows the resort to measure and manage its impact on the environment.

The InterContinental Bora Bora Resort & Thalasso Spa is located on a virgin beach on Motu Piti Aau with breathtaking views of Bora Bora's majestic Mount Otemanu, and offers luxurious overwater villas. This year, the resort will see the addition of four, new two-bedroom overwater villa suites along with the addition of private infinity pools to 10 existing one-bedroom overwater villas. The resort's Deep Ocean Spa by Algotherm is the first spa to utilize the benefits of deep-sea water and minerals extracted from the Pacific Ocean in its signature spa treatments. And, two of the finest culinary experiences in French Polynesia are offered at its restaurants Reef and Le Corail. The resort also features the first overwater wedding chapel in French Polynesia with a glass bottom floor with views into the lagoon below.

The InterContinental Bora Bora Resort & Thalasso has been recognized by notable names in the travel and lifestyle industry including being recently honored as one of the "Top 10 Honeymoon Resorts in the South Pacific" in the 2017 Honeymoon Awards by BRIDES magazine, the "Top Resorts in Australia & the South Pacific" in Conde Nast Traveler's 2016 Readers' Choice Awards, and one of "The Best Resort Hotels in the South Pacific" as voted by readers in Travel + Leisure's World's Best Awards 2016.

For information and rates for the InterContinental Bora Bora Resort & Thalasso Spa, call 1-888 IC HOTELS (1-888-424-6835) or visit InterContinental Bora Bora Resort & Thalasso Spa.

About InterContinental Resorts French Polynesia

Owned and operated by Richard H. Bailey and his company, Pacific Beachcomber S.C., there are four InterContinental Resorts in French Polynesia: InterContinental Bora Bora Resort & Thalasso Spa, InterContinental Bora Bora Le Moana Resort, InterContinental Tahiti Resort & Spa, and InterContinental Moorea Resort & Spa. Each of these award-winning resorts has completed multimillion dollar enhancements over the course of the last five years and is committed towards achieving environmental and social sustainability.

Media Contact:

Vanessa Bloy

InterContinental Resorts French Polynesia

(425) 440-6255

[email protected]

Image link: https://www.flickr.com/photos/icfp/collections

About the World Travel Awards

World Travel Awards was established in 1993 to acknowledge, reward and celebrate excellence across all key sectors of the travel, tourism and hospitality industries. Today, the World Travel Awards brand is recognized globally as the ultimate hallmark of industry excellence. World Travel Awards celebrates its 24th anniversary year in 2017. Its annual program is renowned as the most prestigious and comprehensive in the global industry. Each year World Travel Awards covers the globe with its Grand Tour  a series of regional gala ceremonies to recognise excellence within each continent, culminating in a Grand Final at the end of the year. For more information on the World Travel Awards, please visit: www.worldtravelawards.com.

SOURCE InterContinental Resorts French Polynesia

Related Links

http://www.thalasso.intercontinental.com


(Photo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/520301/Rafael_Brackman.jpg )



Located in the Brandenburg-Berlin Cluster - Europe's largest and most diversified source of new technology and a hotspot for life sciences - the new company is now fully operational and is offering Isansys' real-time and predictive patient data solutions to the German-speaking healthcare markets now preparing for digital reform.

The aim of the facility is to help reshape the future of healthcare across Europe for patients and healthcare professionals.

Keith Errey, CEO of Isansys, said:

"We started our global commercial rollout programme with the establishment of Isansys (India) Pvt Ltd in Bangalore and have delivered PSE systems to Norway, Denmark, Singapore, and the US. We are looking forward to Isansys Europe GmbH providing a model for the continued successful roll-out of our services globally."

Isansys has created the Patient Status Engine (PSE), an automated, wireless, remote patient monitoring platform.

Using smart wearable sensors to collect and analyse vital signs, healthcare professionals can, for the first time, access real-time, continuous and predictive data in hospital, at home, or in a community setting. They can then use this information to act more quickly on critical patient data. This approach improves patient outcomes, reduces costs, shortens hospital stays and facilitates proactive care.

The PSE frees the patient from the tyranny of cables and wires, removes the need for paper charts and manages observations based on clinical need. This new generation technology helps reduce time spent on routine tasks and frees up nursing time to care. Patient deterioration is detected earlier and escalated to the relevant doctor or specialist team, ensuring faster treatment which can save lives.

Isansys Europe GmbH has appointed Michael Heinlein as Managing Director. Previously, Michael was managing director of Go-To-Market in Health Care in Germany and was managing director and cofounder at Mednovo GmbH in Berlin.

Michael said:

"I am delighted to be involved in this exciting new venture. Isansys offers innovative, smart solutions to healthcare challenges. We will be working closely with the Brandenburg Eco-System to help build an innovative approach towards a stronger healthcare infrastructure, in line with the EU Health Strategy."

For further information, please contact:

Isansys Lifecare

Georgina Horton, PR and Marketing Executive

Tel: +44-(0)1235-436229

Mob: +44-(0)7852-181898

Email: [email protected]



SOURCE Isansys Lifecare
WASHINGTON, June 6, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Addressing the AJC Global Forum, Gilad Erdan, Israel's Minister of Public Security and Strategic Affairs, called for an international alliance of Israel, moderate Arab states, the U.S., Europe, "and all likeminded countries" to create "an international alliance to fight terror."

Noting that Israel is in the forefront of the battle against terrorism because its citizens have been its victims for so long, he pointed out that many other countries around the world, now subject to terror attacks as well, "have come to realize that it is not just Israel's problem," and that they could profit from Israel's experience. "Tragedy and heartbreaking incidents have made people realize that terror is terror is terror," said Erdan.

"We are honored that Minister Erdan, on this all-important date in the history of Israel, the 50th anniversary of Israel's war of self-defense, which has come to be known as the Six-Day War, came to Washington to be with AJC," said AJC CEO David Harris. "His insightful perspectives on Israel's strategic challenges, especially the fight against terror, are instructive, and, as he said, many countries around the world are now recognizing as very valuable."

Erdan said that while his grandparents' generation had to fight for Israel's existence, and his parents' generation had to overcome the hostility of Israel's Arab neighbors, the threat to Israelis today is terror, especially of the "lone wolf" variety.

The minister, whose cabinet portfolio gives him the responsibility for responding to terrorism, outlined three challenges that Israel has made some progress in meeting: online incitementwhat he called the "crowd-sourcing" of terror; the need to outlaw extremist organizations; and uncovering and drying up funding for these groups.

"Social media companies must take responsibility. They can no longer ignore the misuse of their platforms by terrorists," said Erdan. Holding up a cell phone, he said, "terror has gone viral." The technology "has become their number one weapon. They spread content online that both inspires and instructs potential terrorists."

But he cautioned that no one country can deal effectively with these problems because they all have an international dimensionsocial media crosses borders, a movement might be banned in one country and not in another, and international sources of funding are notoriously difficult to trace.

Therefore, "the democracies of the world must take action" together, said Erdan, who also indicated that he planned to discuss the idea for an international anti-terror effort at a meeting scheduled with U.S. Homeland Security Kelly. Erdan called on the international community to "recognize once and for all that the world's number one sponsor of terror is Iran." He also said that "when you delegitimize a country or culture, you legitimize violence against it," and thus the denial of Israel's right to exist aids and abets terrorism aimed at the Jewish state.

"The way to counter the campaign of lies is to spread the truth about Israel," said Erdan, who praised AJC for being "a very important part of this effort."

And he called on the U.S. to cut off funding for the Palestinian Authority until it stops paying salaries to terrorists. "When the Palestinian leadership will choose dialogue over delegitimization and peace over hate," he concluded, "they will find us a willing partner ready to make compromises for peace."

This year's AJC Global Forum, taking place June 4-6, in Washington, D.C., is the advocacy organization's signature annual event, bringing together more than 2,500 participants from across the United States and 70 countries around the world. AJC was the first American Jewish organization to establish a full-time office in Israel, nearly 60 years ago.

SOURCE American Jewish Committee

Related Links

http://www.ajc.org


"J.D. Power and Autoniq have a successful track record of delivering data-driven tools and solutions to dealers from coast to coast," said Nicole Archer, vice president of Autoniq. "This latest service extends our comprehensive subscription-based service offerings and will help dealers generate and validate consumer sales leads more quickly and accurately."

In this unique collaboration, J.D. Power Valuation Services provides the vehicle valuation range data for a sales lead through the J.D. Power Value My Car website module hosted on the dealer's website. Once the consumer has submitted their vehicle information for a cash price range on their trade-in, the dealer's sales staff are notified through the Autoniq mobile appraisal app with the customer's sales lead information. From there, sales personnel can follow up with the prospective customer via phone or email.

"The integration of our values on the dealer's website, along with Autoniq's robust mobile appraisal app, will generate a new, larger pool of used vehicle leads with increased conversion and efficiencies for sales teams," said Mike Stanton, vice president and general manager of J.D. Power Valuation Services.

The new service is currently available to US dealers by subscription only. For more information, please visit http://business.nada.com/valuemycar.

About Autoniq

Autoniq is a business unit of KAR Auction Services, (NYSE: KAR) and is a leading source for vehicle pricing and evaluation information. Autoniq provides convenient access to industry leading pricing guides, market reports and seamless integration with vehicle history providers. Scan VINs with a fast and accurate VIN scanner, browse available auction inventory and search for vehicles from a mobile device or desktop. Easy, affordable and no contracts. www.autoniq.com

About J.D. Power

J.D. Power is a global leader in consumer insights, advisory services and data and analytics. These capabilities enable J.D. Power to help its clients drive customer satisfaction, growth and profitability. Established in 1968, J.D. Power is headquartered in Costa Mesa, Calif., and has offices serving North/South America, Asia Pacific and Europe.

J.D. Power recently acquired NADA Used Car Guide (now J.D. Power Valuation Services), which is a leading provider of vehicle valuation products and services to businesses. The team collects and analyzes more than 1 million automotive and truck wholesale and retail transactions per month, and delivers a range of guidebooks, auction data, analysis and data solutions.

Autoniq Media Inquiries

Tobin Richer

(317) 249-4521

[email protected]

J.D. Power Media Contact

Ryan Morris

(202) 826-4029

[email protected]

www.nada.com/b2b

SOURCE J.D. Power

Related Links

http://www.jdpower.com


Diane Wilson hopes area residents will take part in an annual event.

The American Cancer Societys Relay For Life of the Dodge County Area is set for Saturday.

Area residents are invited to attend the event which runs from 4-11 p.m. on the Midland University campus in Fremont. Music, food, games, awards and prizes will be part of the free, family friendly activity. Opening ceremonies start at 6 p.m.

The theme this year is There is No Place Like Hope.

This marks the 19th year for the Relay in which groups of friends, family members and co-workers gather to walk, run and enjoy fellowship. At the same time, they honor the courageous spirit of those battling cancer, said Wilson, corporate sponsor chair of the event.

Its a way to honor people that have survived cancer or to remember those that weve lost, she noted.

Survivors are invited to attend between 4-6 p.m. for their own fun games and complimentary meal. Recognition will take place during the opening ceremonies. Those who would like more information may contact Stephanie Stephenson at 402-398-0774.

Another part of the annual event is the luminaria ceremony in which participants remember those who are fighting and those who have lost to cancer.

Luminaria candles are lighted and line the area as participants walk and remember.

The Relay is taking place in a slightly different area this year. Barring inclement weather, participants will walk around the Midland campus.

We wanted to change it up a little bit, Wilson said. The whole dynamic is changing. The stadium (where it was held previously) just felt a little too big so we thought we would move it to a different venue.

About 20 teams take part in the relay each year. Approximately 250 people participate.

People need not be registered participants to walk. Registered participants are those who have been involved in fundraising efforts or are a cancer survivor.

Attendees have an opportunity to fight back by cheering on teams and survivors at the Relay and enjoy the closing ceremony at 11 p.m.

Wilson encourages area residents to attend.

Its about a community that takes up the fight, she said. Its one way to unite people for a common cause, against cancer. I dont know if Ive ever met anybody who hasnt been affected by it. In this day and age, its just nice to find something that people can get united over.
WASHINGTON, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- AJC, at its Global Forum, presented the Unity Award to three religious leaders -- Rabbi Dov Haiyun, Amir Muhammad Sharif Ode, and Father Yousef Yakoub  for their extraordinary demonstration of brotherhood in response to the devastating forest fires in Haifa, Israel, in November 2016 that left 70,000 people homeless.

Moriah Congregation, Rabbi Haiyun's synagogue, was badly damaged by the flames, and the estimated costs of repair were staggering for the small congregation. But the local Maronite Christian and Ahmadiyya Muslim communities, under the leadership of Father Yousef Yakoub and Amir Muhammad Sharif Ode respectively, stepped in to do the carpentry work and donate needed objects to get the synagogue up and running. In addition, both communities opened their facilities and even private homes to provide beds and food for those who had to be evacuated from their homes, whatever their religious affiliation.

In presenting the award to the three clergymen, Avital Leibovich, Director of AJC Jerusalem, said their response to the fire is "a story of friendship among three residents of one city, who share similar values, values that inspire the communities they leadin times of crisis and in times of calm."

Accepting the Unity Award at the closing plenary of the Global Forum, the three religious leaders called each other brothers. Rabbi Haiyun said he looked forward to the day when such interfaith amity would be the norm in Israel rather than the exception. Imam Ode declared his personal motto to be "love for all, hatred for none." And Father Yakoub declared that he and his two colleagues "refused to allow dark fears to overcome the light and love that beats in the hearts of so many Israeli citizens."

This year's AJC Global Forum, taking place June 4-6, in Washington, D.C., is the advocacy organization's signature annual event, bringing together more than 2,500 participants from across the United States and 70 countries around the world. For well over a century, AJC has attached the highest importance to strengthening interreligious cooperation and is widely viewed in the global arena as a leader in the field.

SOURCE American Jewish Committee

Related Links

http://www.ajc.org


TORONTO, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Jibestream, the premier indoor mapping platform provider, announced today the release of a number of exciting new features and advances that enable developers to quickly and easily embed high-fidelity indoor maps into web and mobile applications to create tailored solutions.

Highlights of this release include a brand new SDK with support for Web, iOS and Android platforms, a new analytics plugin, asset tracking enhancements, and Content Management System (CMS) additions refining its capabilities to deliver a superior user-friendly interface.

"This release focuses on ease of use and simplicity, enhancing the overall user experience while providing end users with real-time visual intelligence into operations," said Chris Wiegand, CEO and co-founder of Jibestream. "Our vision is not only to bring maps to apps, but to unlock an app's full potential. These additions will make it easier for people to get the most out of their solution by adding spatial context to a wide array of their organization's data."

The newly designed SDK architecture simplifies implementations and shortens time to market, reducing overall development costs. Enhanced responsiveness for map interactivity such as panning, rotation and scaling is another cornerstone of this release.

The new Analytics plugin allows users to integrate with any Analytics Engine to track and monitor pertinent usage data. The resulting intelligence offers actionable insights into map usage which can be leveraged to make informed business decisions.

Asset tracking upgrades further streamline the process of integration with Indoor Positioning System providers. The plugin also facilitates real-time plotting, tracking, and wayfinding to moving objects in the context of a map.

The improved Content Management System (CMS) now allows administrators to easily create, manage and configure mapping data for multiple venues through a single system. New features include role-based account access, map layer toggles, sandbox areas within the production environment, and interruption protection protocols for map updates.

Register for Jibestream's upcoming webinar on Wednesday, June 21st, to experience the new features first hand or visit www.jibestream.com.

About Jibestream

Jibestream is an award-winning software company that specializes in merging the location dimension into enterprise solutions for real-time visual intelligence. The company's premier indoor mapping platform gives developers the tools to create tailored map-enabled web and mobile applications while having centralized management of all associated data. For more information, please visit www.jibestream.com.

Contact: Jody Shaffer, 416-502-9455, [email protected]

SOURCE Jibestream

Related Links

http://www.jibestream.com


SAN FRANCISCO, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Jumpshot, a marketing analytics company that helps companies paint a complete picture of online customer behavior, today announced the availability of a suite of products that provides marketers with powerful data on search, browsing and purchase behaviors.

Jumpshot's new products unlock insights into what and how audiences are buying, browsing or searching online. Jumpshot's anonymized data is based on clickstream analysis of its 100-million global consumer panel, 42 percent of which are using mobile devices and with data dating as far back as 2014. By analyzing actual click, browsing and purchase behavior of the largest consumer panel in the country, Jumpshot provides organizations with the most detailed marketing analytics available in the industry.

"There are billions of user actions happening constantly on desktop and mobile that serve as strong intent signals to marketers," said Deren Baker, CEO of Jumpshot. "The shift to digital means that today's marketer is required to uncover and understand trends from these actions. The products we're unveiling today arm marketers with the deepest and richest analytics available, so they can create their best possible marketing strategy."

Newly available products include:

Search Feed : Jumpshot's Search Feed provides an unprecedented view into more than 200-million daily searches and clicks consumers perform on leading search engines. Now, search platforms, programmatic display platforms and digital agencies can identify the organic and paid keywords driving consumers to any website, analyze keyword share-of-voice across the web, investigate search queries that don't result in a click, break down search volumes by end user device or socio-demographic filters, and much more. Jumpshot's Search Feed is ideal for any company who need to ingest large quantities of search data to power their capabilities.





Jumpshot's Search Feed provides an unprecedented view into more than 200-million daily searches and clicks consumers perform on leading search engines. Now, search platforms, programmatic display platforms and digital agencies can identify the organic and paid keywords driving consumers to any website, analyze keyword share-of-voice across the web, investigate search queries that don't result in a click, break down search volumes by end user device or socio-demographic filters, and much more. Jumpshot's Search Feed is ideal for any company who need to ingest large quantities of search data to power their capabilities. Transaction Feed : Jumpshot's Transaction Feed delves deep into large ecommerce sites such as Amazon.com to provide an easy-to-digest composite of online purchase behavior within thousands of product categories. With Jumpshot's Transaction Feed, marketers have an unparalleled view of individual purchase information within a single category, including socio-demographics, device type, product, brand and star rating.





: Jumpshot's Transaction Feed delves deep into large ecommerce sites such as Amazon.com to provide an easy-to-digest composite of online purchase behavior within thousands of product categories. With Jumpshot's Transaction Feed, marketers have an unparalleled view of individual purchase information within a single category, including socio-demographics, device type, product, brand and star rating. Upstream Analytics Feed: Using today's web analytics tools, companies are restricted to only knowing the immediate referring webpage before people visit their site. Jumpshot's Upstream Analytics offers insights into the domains and pages users visited multiple steps prior to reaching a website up to 21 days earlier. By learning whether visitors looked at a complementary category on a competitor's site, watched a certain YouTube channel, or consumed content from particular publishers, businesses can identify opportunities to grow their digital marketing programs or understand the impact of their earned and bought media.

"Jumpshot's products have been an important addition for Moz and our customers," said Rand Fishkin, founder of Moz. "Jumpshot's products offer the highest accuracy and the most expansive coverage we've seen from any data source, and their insights make our tools, our research and our own data vastly more valuable to marketers as a result."

About Jumpshot

Jumpshot is a marketing analytics platform that reveals the entire customer journey - from the key sources of traffic to a site, to browsing and buying behavior on any domain. With a panel of 100-million users, Jumpshot provides marketers with the insight to understand what their customers are doing the 99 percent of the time they're not on their own site - a scope of information never before attainable. Jumpshot was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in San Francisco.

For more information, please visit www.jumpshot.com.

SOURCE Jumpshot

Related Links

https://www.jumpshot.com


MONACO CITY, Monaco, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

- Board of KAO Data Campus standardizes on StruxureWare for Data Centers suite at one of London's largest data centre developments

- Integration of PMS, EMS and BMS, together with Asset Management and operations management deciding factors

Schneider Electric, the global specialist in energy management and automation, has today announced the signing of an agreement with KAO Data Campus for the use of its market leading StruxureWare for Data Centers DCIM suite at one of London's largest data centre developments.

Paul Finch, Chief Operating Officer at KAO said, "The software management platform is a key strategic decision - something we have to get right as we expand to meet customer demand in a phased manner across the entire data centre campus. After a hard look at what was available on the market, as well as taking on board the views of our potential customers, KAO has chosen to standardize on the StruxureWare for Data Centers DCIM suite."

Jan Daan Luycks, KAO Chief Executive said, "Outsourcing data centre infrastructure to KAO enables customers to focus on their core competences. At KAO, we want to achieve leadership in delivering state-of-the-art colocation data centre infrastructure. It makes sense for us to turn to a leader in DCIM technology to enable KAO to be responsive, flexible and agile to the requirements of a wide range of colocation customers."

Schneider Electric's data centre management software capability enables power management software (PMS), energy management software (EMS) and building management software (BMS) to be integrated with a DCIM overlay to provide data centre customers with a range of services from IT asset management to power use monitoring and intelligence down to branch circuits. The company's software integration, together with its global footprint and standing in the market were key decision-making factors for KAO.

Tanuja Randery, Schneider Electric UK & Ireland Country President said, "We are delighted to have reached this agreement with KAO Data Campus and look forward to developing our partnership as they mature and grow in London. The use of StruxureWare for Data Centers throughout KAO will help the company to meet its goals for efficiency and reliability, as well as enhancing their customers' experience."

Matthew Baynes, Colocation and Telco Segment Director at Schneider Electric, said "The uniqueness of Schneider Electric's DCIM software suite brings visible cost efficiencies to KAO. Using StruxureWare for Data Centers, KAO have implemented a solution which eliminates integration costs and time, reduces risk, and simplifies commissioning and operations. Importantly, it this will deliver value to KAO customers in the colocation space.

KAO is currently advanced in the construction phase of its DC1 data centre at Kao Data Campus, targeting practical completion in December 2017. At launch, one technology suite capable of delivering 2.2MW with immediate capacity of 442 racks up to 58U will be available. When complete, the KAO Data Campus will comprise four data centres, each with four technology suites, using indirect evaporative cooling for increased efficiency. The 15 acre site is provisioned with a 43,5MVA power supply, and has dark fibre availability.

About Schneider Electric

Schneider Electric is the global specialist in energy management and automation. With revenues of ~25 billion in FY2016, our 144,000 employees serve customers in over 100 countries, helping them to manage their energy and process in ways that are safe, reliable, efficient and sustainable. From the simplest of switches to complex operational systems, our technology, software and services improve the way our customers manage and automate their operations. Our connected technologies reshape industries, transform cities and enrich lives. At Schneider Electric, we call this Life Is On.

About KAO Data

Situated in the London-Stansted-Cambridge technology corridor, KAO Data Campus is a 200m development comprising four 8.8MW data centres, each split into four 2.2MW halls over three floors, to provide a total of around 150,000 sq.ft white space. The facilities are served by a dedicated and redundant 43,5MVA power supply. The technical capability, hyper-connectivity strategy and secure data resilience of KAO Data Campus makes it ideally placed to support a range of enterprise businesses, including financial services, life sciences, defence and the health sector.

www.schneider-electric.com

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SOURCE Schneider Electric
"Anytime scientists can lower the toxicity for cancer patients and still get the intended results from the treatment, it's exciting news," said Dr. Shields. "For some stage 3 colon cancer patients, six months of chemotherapy will still be the recommendation. However, based on study findings, we estimate that for about 60 percent of patients with low-risk colon cancer, representing approximately 20,000 patients annually in the United States and 400,000 annually worldwide, the same benefits can be achieved with three months of treatment instead of six months, decreasing the side effects and risks, such as nerve damage, that can be attributed to continued chemotherapy."

About the Study

The IDEA collaboration began in 2007 and is, to-date, the largest colon cancer study of its kind. The study enrolled 12,834 stage 3 colon cancer patients in six phase 3 trials concurrently world-wide in North America, Europe and Asia, representing 12 countries in total. Senior study author was Axel Grothey, M.D., oncologist from Mayo Clinic Cancer Center in Rochester, Minn. Co-chairing the North American study with Dr. Shields was Jeffrey Meyerhardt, M.D., MPH, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Mass. A full list of study authors is in the abstract LBA1.

The study followed patients for a median of 39 months after surgery for stage 3 lymph nodepositive colon cancer. Since 2004, the standard (adjuvant) treatment after surgery has been a combination of chemotherapies (FOLFOX or CAPOX), given over a period of six months. In this study, the patients who were on a three month treatment were associated with a less than one percent lower risk of recurrence compared with a six month treatment course as measured by the three-year disease-free survival rate (74.6% verses 75.5%). In a subset of patients categorized as low risk of cancer recurrence (cancer spread to one to three lymph nodes and not completely through the bowel wall), there was almost no disease-free survival difference between a three month versus six month course of therapy (83.1% verses 83.3%).

Next Steps

Dr. Shields and the other scientists involved in the IDEA collaboration are in the process of writing the study results in a paper with the goal of having it peered reviewed and formally published.

"We also plan to have the results incorporated into the pathways recommended by our individual cancer centers and organizations," added Dr. Shields.

"Physicians who treat patients with stage 3 colon cancer can discuss study results with their patients now to see if decreasing the length of chemotherapy to three months, or stopping treatments early depending on the treatment schedule, would be appropriate based on the patient's profile and risk.

"To be able to offer thousands of stage 3 colon cancer patients with less chemotherapy and still get the desired outcome, will be welcome news for many patients and their loved ones."

Karmanos Cancer Institute has more than 300 clinical trials open at any given time. To learn more about cancer treatments or other cancer services, visit www.karmanos.org or call 1-800-KARMANOS (1-800-527-6266.)

About the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute

Located in mid-town Detroit, Michigan, the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, a subsidiary of McLaren Health Care, is one of 48 National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer centers in the United States. Karmanos is among the nation's best cancer centers. Through the commitment of 1,000 staff, including nearly 300 physicians and researchers on faculty at the Wayne State University School of Medicine, and supported by thousands of volunteer and financial donors, Karmanos strives to prevent, detect and eradicate all forms of cancer. Its long-term partnership with the WSU School of Medicine enhances the collaboration of critical research and academics related to cancer care. Gerold Bepler, M.D., Ph.D., is the Institute's president and chief executive officer. For more information call 1-800-KARMANOS or go to www.karmanos.org.

SOURCE Karmanos Cancer Institute

Related Links

http://www.karmanos.org


MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire-HISPANIC PR WIRE/ -- The IPv6 protocol, key to the development and growth of the Internet, has reached considerable levels of deployment and traffic in the region over the past year, as IT leaders concluded at the LACNIC 27 event, which brought together more than 735 participants.

The IPv6 protocol is the key not only to driving development of the Internet of Things (IoT) in the region, but also constitutes a vital tool for connecting with 40% of the Latin Americans who still have no Internet, emphasized LACNIC President, Warder Maia.

LACNIC 27, the most important meeting of Internet professionals from Latin America and the Caribbean, was held in Foz de Iguacu, Brazil, with the support of NIC.br and CGI.br.

Maia emphasized that in 2017, LACNIC is celebrating 15 years of institutional life, and placed special emphasis on the construction of the Regional Internet Register community, which has made possible development of a Web suited to the needs of Latin American and Caribbean users.

This year, Latin America and the Caribbean achieved Internet penetration of 59.6%. As per this last figure, the region's Internet community now stands at 385 million users, incorporating 40 million new ones in the past year. "It's a reason for pride, and at the same time a double challenge, because we have to connect those who are not connected, while keeping on the Web those who are already there," said Maia.

During the event, emerging technological trends were addressed, and their impact on the future development of the Internet in the coming decade in the panel, "The Internet of the future: its evolution in the next 10 years." Moderated by Oscar Robles (CEO of LACNIC), the panel featured the participation of Adiel Akplogan (ICANN), Cristine Hoepers (CERT.br), Flavio Amaral (Netflix) and Matias Quintanilla (Telefonica Argentina).

Furthermore, for the first time at a LACNIC gathering, ICANN CEO Goran Marby made an appearance, and presented "ICANN  after the transition from IANA supervisory functions." He recognized the digital community's work and stressed the growth of IPv6 in relation to Latin America and the Caribbean.

Out of the event's five days, one of them was dedicated to IPv6 Day, with a panel of success stories where good practices and examples from the region were presented (Telefonica Brasil, COPEL, ANTEL de Uruguay and Telecentro Argentina).

Another highlight of LACNIC 27 was a presentation by the region's first anti-abuse group, an initiative to strengthen the fight against online threats.

Meanwhile, LACNIC's inclination towards greater participation by women in IT in Latin America and the Caribbean was reflected in the heavy attendance at the panel on diversity and inclusion. Organized by the discussion list 'IT Woman,' the initiative sought to strengthen regional women's role in the Internet community.

SOURCE LACNIC
NEW HAVEN, Conn., June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- A sexual abuse lawsuit (Federal District of Connecticut, Case 3:17-cv-00906) against the Diocese of Syracuse was filed in a Connecticut Federal Court due to acts of pedophilia committed by a priest who allegedly took the plaintiff, then a minor altar boy, from New York to Connecticut in order to molest him.

The federal lawsuit states that Father Felix Colosimo, then with the Diocese of Syracuse, drove a then 12-year-old Matthew Strzepek to a conference of priests in New York City in late 1987. It is at that New York City meeting, the lawsuit claims, where Father Colosimo sexually abused Strzepek at the hotel and then drove him to nearby Connecticut where Strzepek was again molested by Father Colosimo.

For 13 years, from 1977 to 1990, Strzepek alleges that Father Colosimo molested him hundreds of times and in numerous Northeastern states. On one occasion according to the lawsuit, Colosimo forced Strzepek and another altar boy to have sex with him and with each other, videotaping and photographing the two. The other altar boy could not overcome the trauma associated with the abuse and committed suicide a few years ago.

As is common with many childhood sexual abuse victims, Strzepek repressed the memories for more than two decades. Strzepek's earliest memories, according to the claim, are of Colosimo taking him into his bedroom at Saint Peters Rectory in Utica, New York when he was four or five years old and sexually abusing him.

In December of 2013, after working through the sex abuse memories with a therapist, Strzepek submitted his claims to the Diocese of Syracuse. In July of 2014, the Diocese found the claims "credible" and offered Strzepek six counseling sessions.

"By bringing this civil lawsuit we hope to hold both the perpetrator and the Church responsible for failing to protect our children, including Matt, and put the shame back where it belongswith the people who were supposed to keep Matt safe," said Steve Estey, attorney for Strzepek.

"Had the Diocese of Syracuse made a good faith effort to help me heal after they found my claims credible we would not be here today," said Strzepek.

Strzepek's legal team includes experienced and award winning sexual abuse attorneys with a national reputation for helping childhood molestation victims. The team includes California attorneys Steven Estey (Estey and Bomberger, LLP) along with Robert Allard and Lauren Cerri (Corsiglia, McMahon & Allard) and Indiana attorney Jon Little (Saeed & Little), Connecticut attorney Ryan Miller, and famed New York City private investigator and former FBI agent Joseph O'Brien.

SOURCE Estey and Bomberger, LLP
RESTON, Va., June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Leidos (NYSE: LDOS), a global science and technology company, will participate in the Citi 2017 Industrials Conference in Boston.

Roger Krone, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, will participate in a question and answer 'fireside chat' on Wednesday, June 14th, 2017 at 10:15 am Eastern time.

A live audio webcast of the event will be available on the Leidos Investor Relations website at http://investors.leidos.com. A replay of the webcast will be available following the session at the same link listed above for 30 days afterward.

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.

SOURCE Leidos

Related Links

http://www.leidos.com


ATLANTA and CHICAGO, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- LexisNexis Risk Solutions and the American Medical Association (AMA) have launched the Verify Health Care Portal, the clinician attestation component of VerifyHCP, a robust solution for monitoring physician information that simplifies a successful data strategy for managing a health plan network. The Verify Health Care Portal uses payer directory information and combines it with LexisNexis Health Care's database of healthcare professionals and its linking technology to pre-populate the portal with updated information on health care professionals to enable simpler and efficient attestation. As a result, health plans are able to present patients with more accurate directories of available health care professionals.

VerifyHCP is the only solution to take a payer consortium approach that leverages the power of the LexisNexis HPCC Systems computing platform and proprietary linking algorithms and the AMA's reach and engagement with physicians and practices to centralize and streamline the process of managing network directory accuracy.

Consumers depend on physician directories to access care. Publishing inaccurate information via directories poses a risk that patients may visit a physician who is not in network, potentially incurring thousands of dollars in unnecessary costs. State and federal regulations require health insurance plans to present patients with up-to-date network directories of available health care professionals. Many states have regulations that require regular data verification from clinicians to ensure accurate network directories. At the federal level, Medicare Advantage Plans, Qualified Health Plans and certain dental plans require quarterly outreach to health care professionals. In many states, Medicaid must conduct regular outreach on a monthly, quarterly or annual basis, and federal rules require Medicaid managed care organizations to update directories monthly.

The Verify Health Care Portal component allows clinicians to focus their time on patient care vs. administrative tasks by seamlessly fitting into existing office workflows to enable physicians and their office managers to update practice details for multiple health plans with a single sign-on, reducing the burden of non-clinical tasks. At the same time, it streamlines compliance with network directory accuracy requirements for payers and helps ensure patients know which of their physicians participate in their current health plans.

The power of VerifyHCP lies in its ability to pre-fill, collect, monitor, cleanse and update data in real-time. It also incorporates a multi-channel outreach campaign using email, fax, call and direct mail per the applicable regulatory guidelines. Enhanced flexibility of the solution is another benefit: It supports federal and state legislation requirements; the attestation needs of provider organizational structures and associations; has the ability to attest at the provider network level; and allows for office manager and group attestation.

The Verify Health Care Portal is powered by the physician resources of the AMA and its wholly-owned subsidiary AMA Business Solutions, and LexisNexis Health Care's analytic technology, VerifyHCP and the LexisNexis Provider Data MasterFile. Among the nation's most comprehensive databases of provider information, Provider Data MasterFile draws on more than 2,000 sources to build a powerful view of a clinician and covers more than 8.5 million health care professionals. The application leverages LexisNexis Health Care's proven mastery in managing large volumes of data from thousands of sources and health care expertise to understand how and where this information is needed by consumers and health plans.

In November 2016, LexisNexis Health Care and the AMA agreed to collaborate to offer the Verify Health Care Portal.

We recently sat down with Laurie McGraw, Senior Vice President of Health Solutions, AMA and Lee Rivas, CEO, Public Sector and Health Care, LexisNexis Risk Solutions & President, Elsevier Health to discuss the ramifications of the Verify Health Care Portal.

LexisNexis Health Care  Why are LexisNexis Health Care and the AMA working together on the Verify Health Care Portal?

McGraw: As the largest professional membership organization representing physicians, the AMA is striving to reduce administrative burden so physicians can spend more time doing what they love: helping patients. Physicians have helped us to understand their unique needs and challenges and how the AMA can best meet them. For physicians and their practice staff, being able to verify or update their practice data in an easy and seamless way is a step in the right direction. It was important that the AMA partner with an organization that had a demonstrated commitment to easing the administrative burden placed on physicians and their practice staff. With its robust data assets and technology capabilities, LexisNexis Health Care had a deep foot print in the payer industry as well as the desire and ability to create a single solution to address federal and state directory regulations.

Rivas: Inaccurate provider directory data is at its heart a problem for patients. Solving this problem requires payers and physicians to work together to deliver accurate and timely data. We sought to work with the AMA because we knew that our combined resources positioned us to build a solution that could help meet the need of everyone involved  payers, physicians and patients  better than anyone else in the market.

LexisNexis Health Care  How does this collaborative effort create an end-to-end solution for physicians, payers and patients?

McGraw: Creating accurate directories is truly a collaborative process. Physicians have their information and expect to be represented accurately, while payers are required by key mandates to publish the most up-to-date network directories. The collaborative process is challenged as physicians may be asked to enter redundant data through payer-specific proprietary formats on inconsistent timelines. Since a medical practice have an average of 12 managed care contracts maintaining this information can be a time consuming and onerous task. The Verify Health Care Portal allows physicians to attest once, delivering the updated, accurate data across all participating plans, giving patients the reliable information they need to make informed decisions when selecting the right health plan, or finding an appropriate physician. The AMA's goal is to help physicians succeed in their life's work of caring for patients, which is why we are always striving to offer timely, relevant tools like this one to provide the support they need when they need it.

Rivas: Patients have a right to expect that their health plan's physician and clinician data will be accurate when they consult the directory, and health plans definitely want to be in compliance. But, physician information is always changing. For example, if a physician's information is correct today, we've found through our own research that after 18 months, almost 15 percent of the records would contain errors or omissions. The Verify Health Care Portal streamlines the attestation process for physicians, so they can focus on treating patients instead of the administrative task of keeping directory data current. This data is timely and accurate helping to ensure health plans comply with the law. Most importantly, the patient wins because the physician data is accurate.

LexisNexis Health Care  Why should physicians use the Verify Health Care Portal?

McGraw: The Verify Health Care Portal provides a friendly, intuitive interface where physicians or practice staff update directory data once, for all of their participating health plans.

Rivas: The Verify Health Care Portal virtually eliminates the physician's attestation burden. Once a clinician attests to the directory data, he or she is not required to do anything further. The VerifyHCP solution will update the directory information as changes occur on behalf of the physician.

To download the "The State of Provider Directory Accuracy" infographic, visit http://www.lexisnexis.com/risk/insights/state-of-provider-directory-accuracy-infographic.aspx.

About the American Medical Association

The American Medical Association is the premier national organization providing timely, essential resources to empower physicians, residents and medical students to succeed at every phase of their medical lives. Physicians have entrusted the AMA to advance the art and science of medicine and the betterment of public health on behalf of patients for more than 170 years. For more information, visit ama-assn.org.

About AMA Business Solutions

AMA Business Solutions is committed to addressing the most pressing health care industry needs through innovative data solutions, products, and services. Leveraging industry leading data assets, AMA Business Solutions strives to create or collaborate to deliver products that improve the efficient delivery of health care, reduce administrative burden, and improve the health of the nation.

AMA Business Solutions is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the American Medical Association.

About LexisNexis Risk Solutions

At LexisNexis Risk Solutions, we believe in the power of data and advanced analytics for better risk management. With over 40 years of expertise, we are the trusted data analytics provider for organizations seeking actionable insights to manage risks and improve results while upholding the highest standards for security and privacy. Headquartered in metro Atlanta, LexisNexis Risk Solutions serves customers in more than 100 countries and is part of RELX Group plc, a world-leading provider of information and analytics for professional and business customers across industries. For more information, please visit www.lexisnexis.com/risk.

Our health care solutions combine proprietary analytics, science and technology with the industry's leading sources of provider, member, claims and public records information to improve cost savings, health outcomes, data quality, compliance and exposure to fraud, waste and abuse.

SOURCE LexisNexis Risk Solutions
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- LiquiGlide Inc. today announced the appointment of Tom Britanik as the general manager of the company's consumer packaged goods (CPG) business. A CPG industry veteran who previously served as Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at The Clorox Company and as a Marketing Director at Proctor & Gamble, Britanik has extensive experience in CPG business strategy, new product introductions, market research and branding.

For almost two years, Britanik served as an independent consultant on LiquiGlide's Advisory Board getting detailed experience with the company's slippery coating technology and providing insight into its CPG applications, customer value and addressable market. Britanik joins LiquiGlide in this new role as the company commercializes its first applications in packaging and unveils availability of new coatings that are custom engineered for specific CPG markets, including:

Condiments (mayonnaise, dressings and dips)

(mayonnaise, dressings and dips) Dairy (cream cheese, sour cream and yogurt)

(cream cheese, sour cream and yogurt) Oral care (toothpaste and denture adhesives)

(toothpaste and denture adhesives) Personal care (lotion, moisturizer, sunscreen and hair conditioner)

(lotion, moisturizer, sunscreen and hair conditioner) Adhesives (general purpose glue, wood glue and caulk)

"As someone who oversaw multi-billion-dollar CPG brands, Tom understands how innovations like our slippery coatings can remove design constraints, enhance the consumer product experience and unlock new potential for marketing, sales and overall brand value," said LiquiGlide Co-Founder and CEO, Dave Smith. "We are excited to have him lead our CPG business as we reach an inflection point with the commercial availability of multiple CPG coatings."

LiquiGlide Co-Founder and Chairman of the Board, and MIT Professor, Kripa Varanasi, said: "Packages containing viscous products are ubiquitous, and the waste and consumer frustration associated with traditional packaging formats are universal. As we work with leading CPG companies to bring about a new packaging paradigm, Tom's years of experience and deep understanding of the strategy, marketing and business behind transformative packaging innovation will be invaluable."

In addition to commercial availability of the new CPG coatings, the addition of Britanik and his CPG industry expertise adds to LiquiGlide's recent momentum, including the closing of an additional $16 million in funding, expansion of its intellectual property portfolio with the awarding of three new patents, as well as the launch of its CleanTanX system for industrial and manufacturing applications.

"After decades of studying consumer behavior and the impact of packaging innovations, from small graphic design changes to major new form factors, I recognize the tremendous benefits LiquiGlide's technology can have both for CPG companies and their customers," said Britanik. "I look forward to working with CPG companies to leverage LiquiGlide's innovative technology to create differentiated products that deliver the value and experience today's consumers and investors are demanding."

To learn more about LiquiGlide's technology platform, visit: http://liquiglide.com/tech/.

To see videos of LiquiGlide's technology in action, visit: http://liquiglide.com/videos/.

For additional information about LiquiGlide, please visit: www.liquiglide.com, or contact us online or via email at [email protected] .

About LiquiGlide

The first company to create permanently wet, slippery surfaces, LiquiGlide Inc. revolutionizes the way people and businesses move liquids by eliminating friction between liquids and solids. From reducing waste in manufacturing, to better packaging for consumer goods, to improving oil and gas infrastructure, LiquiGlide delivers slippery coatings that work and are safe across a myriad of consumer and industrial applications.

LiquiGlide was founded in 2012 by Dave Smith and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor Kripa Varanasi to commercialize MIT's patented liquid-impregnated surface technology. The patents are licensed exclusively to LiquiGlide from MIT and include 14 issued patents with more than 160 applications pending around the world. www.liquiglide.com.

Contact:

Meghan Locke

LEWIS

[email protected]

(781) 418-2434

SOURCE LiquiGlide Inc.

Related Links

https://liquiglide.com


Writer Gladys Starkey will present a reading of her work, Pesos to Pennies: A Filipino Immigrants Memoir at 2 p.m. Saturday at Keene Memorial Library. This event is free and open to the public with refreshments to follow.

This author is from the Philippines and has written a memoir about her immigration to the United States. She will read from her book and have copies of her book on hand for anyone interested in reading further into her experiences, both good and bad.
ANNVILLE, Pa., June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Governor Tom Wolf welcomed Lithuanian Defense Minister Raimundas Karoblis Monday at the Pennsylvania Capitol in Harrisburg to discuss Pennsylvania's partnership with Lithuania through the National Guard's State Partnership Program and items related to expanded cooperation between Lithuania's military and ministries.

"Next year the Pennsylvania National Guard and Lithuania will be celebrating 25 years of an extremely successful partnership through the National Guard's State Partnership," said Governor Wolf. "While our military partnership continues to set the bar nationally, it is only logical we look for additional ways to use this relationship to further benefit both Pennsylvania and Lithuania in other arenas."



Karoblis and Wolf discussed additional opportunities for cooperation in economic development, education and energy.



The meeting was preceded by a visit to the Pennsylvania National Guard's headquarters at Fort Indiantown Gap to engage with senior leadership on ongoing efforts related to the Pennsylvania National Guard's nearly 25 year partnership with Lithuania.



"Thank you for fostering this exceptional partnership and for the continued cooperation of the Pennsylvania National Guard in contributing to the education and combat readiness of our personnel," said Karoblis. "With your support, we have become more trained and better prepared for challenges."

Karoblis also emphasized how the current security situation in the Baltics remains tense and requires a comprehensive deterrence posture in the region.



"U.S. troops on the ground is the best deterrence. The Pennsylvania National Guard is an important part of that U.S. presence," Karoblis noted. "Training with the Pennsylvania National Guard on a regular basis helps to build the mutual understanding and interoperability to conduct missions together."

The Pennsylvania National Guard established a relationship with Lithuania in 1993. In the 24 years that have followed, Pennsylvania and Lithuania have conducted more than 500 military and training exchanges on top of numerous joint deployments to Afghanistan as part of joint police operational mentor liaison teams and provincial reconstruction teams.

More information on the Pennsylvania-Lithuania partnership is available at: http://www.png.pa.gov/offices_and_programs/Pages/state_partnership_program.aspx

Photos from the visit can be viewed at:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/panationalguard/albums/72157684710451045



MEDIA CONTACT: Pennsylvania National Guard Public Affairs Office, 717-861-8352

SOURCE Pennsylvania Department of Military and Veterans Affairs

Related Links

http://www.dmva.state.pa.us


STAINES-UPON-THAMES, United Kingdom, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Mallinckrodt plc (NYSE: MNK), a leading global specialty pharmaceutical company, today confirmed enrollment of the first patient in the company's Phase 3 study assessing the efficacy and safety of StrataGraft regenerative skin tissue in the promotion of autologous skin regeneration of complex skin defects due to thermal burns that contain intact dermal elements.

"There have been few advancements in burn surgery in the last two to three decades," said lead investigator James H. Holmes, IV, M.D., Director of the Burn Center at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center and Associate Professor of Surgery, Winston-Salem, NC. "We are very excited to further study StrataGraft to learn how it could meet the needs of patients."

About the Clinical Trial

The Phase 3 clinical study is entitled "A Phase 3 Open-label, Controlled, Randomized, Multicenter Study Evaluating the Efficacy and Safety of StrataGraft Skin Tissue in Promoting Autologous Skin Tissue Regeneration of Complex Skin Defects Due to Thermal Burns That Contain Intact Dermal Elements and for Which Excision and Autografts Are Clinically Indicated." The study will include patients with 3-49% total body surface area complex skin defects due to thermal burns with intact dermal elements for which excision and autografting are clinically indicated. Autograft can be defined as surgically harvesting the patient's own uninjured skin for use as a graft on the injured site.

Outcome measures at 3 months will include 1) the percentage area of the StrataGraft treatment site that requires a subsequent autograft as compared to the control autograft treatment site, and 2) the proportion of subjects that have achieved durable wound closure of the StrataGraft treatment site without autograft placement.

"Mallinckrodt is committed to providing treatment options for patients with unmet medical needs, and nowhere is that need more marked than in the burn unit," said Lynn Allen-Hoffmann, Senior Vice President of Regenerative Medicine at Mallinckrodt. "We are pleased to enroll the first patient in our Phase 3 clinical trial."

Allen-Hoffmann continued, "We are honored to be working with the United States Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) which has been instrumental in the late-stage development of StrataGraft. This Phase 3 clinical trial is part of a larger, five-year contract, and BARDA's support has built on the critical, early-stage backing received from the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense. These organizations have long recognized the critical medical need for innovative products to address severe burns."

BARDA is supporting StrataGraft development as part of its effort to accelerate emergency preparedness in response to mass casualty events involving trauma and thermal burns. The Government Accountability Office estimates that a mass casualty thermal burn event could result in more than 10,000 patients in need of burn care, highlighting the critical need for improved definitive burn treatments. Together, BARDA's Advanced Research and Development Program and Project BioShield have provided more than $77.8 million to advance StrataGraft tissue to Phase 3 studies.

Find more information about the trial here on the ClinicalTrials.gov website. This project has been funded in whole or in part with federal funds from the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, BARDA, under Contracts No. HHSO100201300017c and HHSO100201500027C.

About Serious Thermal Burns Containing Intact Dermal Elements

Deep partial-thickness burns are complex skin injuries where the entire epidermis and more than two thirds of the dermis is destroyed. The treatment for severe complex skin wounds with substantial loss of the dermis such as deep partial-thickness burns is the surgical harvesting of a sheet of healthy skin from an uninjured site on the patient and transplantation of this autologous skin graft to the injury once the wound is ready to receive an autograft. While this process can be effective in providing closure of the original wound, it has significant limitations related to the donor site wounds created during surgical removal of autologous skin tissue for grafting. These donor site wounds are extremely painful, prone to infection and scarring, and can themselves convert to full-thickness wounds that must then be managed to promote healing. In addition, the amount of healthy skin available for harvesting is frequently limited in large burns, necessitating sequential re-harvesting of available donor sites. As a result, there is an urgent need for alternatives to donor site harvesting for treatment of severe burns and other complex skin defects.

About StrataGraft Regenerative Skin Tissue

StrataGraft regenerative skin tissue is a viable, full-thickness product being developed for severe burns and other complex skin defects that is not yet approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. It was designed to mimic natural human skin, with both dermal and fully differentiated epidermal layers. Unlike first generation products, StrataGraft skin tissue can be sutured, stapled or secured with an adhesive and remains intact in the wound bed, providing critical barrier functionality during the wound healing process. StrataGraft skin tissue is produced using NIKS cells grown in accordance with Good Manufacturing Practice. Because the continuous NIKS skin cell line has been thoroughly characterized, StrataGraft tissue is virus-free, non-tumorigenic, and offers batch-to-batch genetic consistency.

ABOUT MALLINCKRODT

Mallinckrodt is a global business that develops, manufactures, markets and distributes specialty pharmaceutical products and therapies. Areas of focus include autoimmune and rare diseases in specialty areas like neurology, rheumatology, nephrology, pulmonology and ophthalmology; immunotherapy and neonatal respiratory critical care therapies; and analgesics and hemostasis products. The company's core strengths include the acquisition and management of highly regulated raw materials and specialized chemistry, formulation and manufacturing capabilities. The company's Specialty Brands segment includes branded medicines and its Specialty Generics segment includes specialty generic drugs, active pharmaceutical ingredients and external manufacturing. To learn more about Mallinckrodt, visit www.mallinckrodt.com .

Mallinckrodt uses its website as a channel of distribution of important company information, such as press releases, investor presentations and other financial information. It also uses its website to expedite public access to time-critical information regarding the company in advance of or in lieu of distributing a press release or a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) disclosing the same information. Therefore, investors should look to the Investor Relations page of the website for important and time-critical information. Visitors to the website can also register to receive automatic e-mail and other notifications alerting them when new information is made available on the Investor Relations page of the website.

CONTACTS

Investor Relations

Coleman N. Lannum, CFA

Senior Vice President, Investor Strategy and IRO

314-654-6649

[email protected]

Daniel J. Speciale, CPA

Director, Investor Relations

314-654-3638

[email protected]

Media

Rhonda Sciarra

Senior Communications Manager

908-238-6765

[email protected]

Meredith Fischer

Chief Public Affairs Officer

314-654-3318

[email protected]

SOURCE Mallinckrodt plc

Related Links

http://www.mallinckrodt.com


RICHMOND, Va., June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Markel Corporation (NYSE  MKL) today announced the creation of a new insurance division which combines Markel's Wholesale (excess and surplus lines) and Global Insurance (complex, risk-managed accounts) divisions. Bryan Sanders, President of Markel Wholesale, will lead the new division, which will be named Markel Assurance. Britt Glisson, President of Markel Global Insurance, will assist in the transition and after a distinguished 40-year insurance career will be retiring in 2018.



Markel Assurance will have underwriting teams located across the US, and in Bermuda, Dublin, and London. Gross written premium of the combined division is approximately $1.8 billion (USD) and products will originate from three (3) product linescasualty, professional liability, and property/marine. The underwriting leads for these product lines will report to Robin Russo, Markel Corporation's Chief Underwriting Officer. Markel's other operating (re)insurance divisions are Markel Specialty, Markel International, and Markel Global Reinsurance.

Markel Assurance will operate through a regional structure in the US with 10 offices in six (6) regions serving all major insurance hubs. Other locations for the new division include Bermuda, Dublin, and London.

"This move combines two talented and successful divisions and aligns our structure more closely with both production partners and customers," commented Richard R. Whitt, Co-Chief Executive Officer of Markel. "We are committed to innovation and to making it easier to do business with Markelestablishing this new division accomplishes both of those objectives."

Bryan Sanders added, "I am excited about our new structure and our improved alignment with both wholesalers and select retailers. We will have more resources, more products, and all of the long-term relationships that have brought us this far. We are bringing together a team that is experienced, connected to the market, and infused with an entrepreneurial sense of urgency. Creating this new division will help Markel maintain its leadership position and increase our market presence in both the wholesale and large account retail market place."

The new division is expected to be up and running by January 1, 2018.

About Markel Corporation

Markel Corporation is a diverse financial holding company serving a variety of niche markets. The Company's principal business markets and underwrites specialty insurance products. In each of the Company's businesses, it seeks to provide quality products and excellent customer service so that it can be a market leader. The financial goals of the Company are to earn consistent underwriting and operating profits and superior investment returns to build shareholder value. Visit Markel Corporation on the web at markelcorp.com.

SOURCE Markel Corporation

Related Links

http://www.markelcorp.com


BOSTON, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The Massachusetts Conference for Women announced today that Academy Award winning actresses Meryl Streep and Viola Davis will be keynote speakers at the Massachusetts Conference for Women on Thursday, December 7, 2017 at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. Adam Grant, top-rated Wharton Professor and best-selling co-author, with Sheryl Sandberg, of Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy will also deliver a keynote address.

Meryl Streep is an award-winning film, theater and television actress with a career spanning almost 40 years. Streep has won three Academy Awards for her roles in Kramer vs. Kramer, Sophie's Choice and The Iron Lady. In 2017, she earned a record-breaking 20th Academy Award nomination for her role in Florence Foster Jenkins. A noted activist, Streep continues to work with philanthropic organizations including Women for Women International, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Donor Direct Action, Women in the World Foundation and Partners in Health. In 2014, President Obama awarded Streep the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Viola Davis won an Academy Award for Supporting Actress for her role in the 2016 film adaptation of August Wilson's play Fences, directed by Denzel Washington. Davis also earned a Golden Globe, a Critics Choice Award, and a SAG Award for her portrayal of Rose Maxson. Earlier, she won a Tony Award for the 2010 revival of Fences on Broadway. Davis currently stars in the hit ABC drama How to Get Away with Murder, for which she became the first African American to win the Emmy for Best Actress in a Drama Series and also earned two Screen Actors Guild Award and an NAACP Image Award.

Adam Grant, the Wharton School's top-rated teacher for five straight years, has been recognized as one of the world's 25 most influential management thinkers, one of the 100 most creative people in business and one of the 40 best business professors under 40. Grant serves on the Lean In board and wrote a New York Times series on women and work with Sheryl Sandberg, including "Speaking while female" and "Madam C.E.O., get me a coffee." He is the New York Times best-selling author of three books, including Give and Take and Originals.

"We are delighted to welcome Meryl Streep, Viola Davis and Adam Grant to the main stage in Boston," said Gloria Larson, board chair of the Massachusetts Conference for Women. "This standout lineup of speakers, icons in the arts and in business, are sure to inspire attendees in ways they will long remember."

The 13th annual Massachusetts Conference for Women will host over 11,000 attendees for a full day of networking, inspiration, professional development and personal growth. In addition to a standout lineup of keynote speakers, the nonpartisan, nonprofit event will feature breakout sessions led by more than 150 experts and industry leaders about topical issues including building networks, branding, work-life balance, managing up, happiness and civility in the workplace and life.

For the third year, the Conference will feature the Workplace Summit on Wednesday, December 6th, the day prior to the Conference. Designed to teach men and women how to promote gender partnerships and advance equity within workplaces, the summit will feature an address by Adam Grant on how to create a culture of originality. That evening, the Conference will also present the third annual Opening Night event from 5 to 8 p.m., featuring an address from Bethenny Frankel, Skinnygirl founder, author, and branding guru, and an inspiring talk and live cooking demo with Barbara Lynch, restaurateur and award-winning chef. Opening Night tickets are available for $25 and can be purchased here.

The Massachusetts Conference for Women is presented by: State Street Corporation. It is generously sponsored by Dell; Merck KGaA; Cisco; Hologic; Johnson & Johnson; Liberty Mutual; Raytheon; Tyco; Bank of America; Bose Corporation; Boston Children's Hospital; Boston Scientific Corporation ; Fresenius Medical Care; Harvard Business School Executive Education; Rapid7; Mastercard; MFS Investment Management; Poo-Pourri; Reebok; Riverbed; ThermoFisher Scientific; Acadian Asset Management; Amtrak; Applied Materials; Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts; Comcast; Kate Spade & Company; Merck; QVC, Inc.; Staples, Inc.; Weber Shandwick; and media sponsors AMP Radio 103.3; Mix 104.1; WBZ 1030 News Radio; The Boston Globe; and WCVB-TV Boston.

"The Massachusetts Conference for Women continues to set itself apart by bringing together change-makers and pioneers at the top of their fields," said Kathy Horgan, EVP, chief human resources and citizenship officer for State Street Corporation. "State Street is proud to sponsor this year's conference, which shares the goals of our company to promote leadership and gender equity within the workplace and beyond."

Registration is now open for the Conference and more exciting speaker announcements are to come. To register or learn more about the Conference, Opening Night and the Workplace Summit, visit www.maconferenceforwomen.org.

To apply for media credentials, please contact Michelle Clark, [email protected].

SOURCE Massachusetts Conference for Women
NEW YORK, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The Mesothelioma Compensation Center says, "We are urging an electric, water, or gas public utility worker who has recently been diagnosed with mesothelioma to call anytime at 800-714-0303 to ensure you are talking directly with some of the nation's most skilled mesothelioma attorneys. We specialize in assisting public utility and power/energy workers who have been diagnosed with mesothelioma. Our top priority is making certain people like this receive the very best possible financial compensation."

Public Utility Worker Asbestos Warning Sign

"The Internet makes the process of getting direct access to the nation's top mesothelioma attorneys extremely confusing. There are law firms or groups that try to make it look like they are somehow the Veterans Administration or a federal financial claims group, or, worst of all, there are Internet ads that suggest 'no lawsuit needed' which is all false advertising."

"If you Google 'best mesothelioma financial compensation public utility district worker,' our group, the Mesothelioma Compensation Center, is number one on an organic search. There is a direct connection between having the nation's most skilled, experienced, and capable full-time mesothelioma attorneys and a person with mesothelioma receiving the best possible financial compensation, as we would like to discuss anytime at 800-714-0303." http://MesotheliomaCompensationCenter.Com

The Mesothelioma Compensation Center specializes in assisting the following types of people with mesothelioma:

Public Utility Worker

Municipal Electric Worker

Municipal Water District Worker

Electric Utility Worker

Local Natural Gas Company

Municipal Light and Power Worker

Natural Gas System Worker

Municipal Water & Sewer District

Regional Electric Worker

Municipal Water and Light Worker

For a list of the largest gas and electric public utility districts in the United States please refer to the following website for an alphabetical listing of each: http://www.utilityconnection.com/page2e.asp.

The Mesothelioma Compensation Center specializes in assisting specific types of people who have been diagnosed with mesothelioma. These people include the US Navy Veterans, oil refinery workers, power plant workers, nuclear power plant workers, public utility workers, hydro-electric workers, chemical plant workers, plumbers, electricians, pipefitters, millwrights, welders, or oil and gas field workers. In most instances these people were exposed to asbestos in the 1950's, 1960's, 1970's, or 1980's. http://MesotheliomaCompensationCenter.Com

According to the CDC, the states indicated with the highest incidence of mesothelioma include Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, Michigan, Illinois, Minnesota, Louisiana, Washington, and Oregon. However, a public utility, water works or gas/electrical worker mesothelioma could live in any state including California, New York, Florida, Texas, Illinois, Ohio, Iowa, Indiana, Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Idaho, or Alaska.

The Mesothelioma Compensation Center says, "If you call us at 800-714-0303, we will see to it that you have instant and direct access to the nation's most experienced, and skilled mesothelioma attorneys who typically obtain the best possible financial compensation settlements for their clients." http://MesotheliomaCompensationCenter.Com

For more information about mesothelioma please refer to the National Institutes of Health's web site related to this rare form of cancer: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/mesothelioma.html

Media Contact:

Michael Thomas

800-714-0303

[email protected]

SOURCE Mesothelioma Compensation Center

Related Links

http://MesotheliomaCompensationCenter.Com


DUBLIN, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Middle East & Africa Enhanced Oil Recovery Market By Onshore Vs. Offshore, By Type (Thermal, Miscible Gas, Chemical & Others), Competition Forecast & Opportunities, 2012-2022" report to their offering.

Middle East & Africa enhanced oil recovery market is projected to grow at a CAGR of over 10%, in value terms, during 2017-2022

Enhanced oil recovery came into focus in the Middle East in 2000 when the production of crude oil in the region began to decline due to ageing oilfields, which have been producing for more than 40 years. Crude oil in the Middle East region has high viscosity and low recovery factor of 30%. Industrial growth, slow economic growth/recession, crude oil prices, etc., are anticipated to drive the market in the coming years.



Other major factors influencing the growth of Middle East & Africa enhanced oil recovery market are maturing oilfields, upcoming/ongoing EOR projects, year on year change in energy consumption pattern and anticipated change in oil demand until 2022. This presents the need for implementation of tertiary methods that can increase the recovery rate to as high as 75%.



Few of the leading players in the Middle East & Africa enhanced oil recovery market include Schlumberger Limited, BP P.L.C., Saudi Aramco, Petroleum Development Oman, China National Offshore Oil Corporation, Linde AG and Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.



Middle East & Africa Enhanced Oil Recovery Market, Competition Forecast & Opportunities, 2012-2022 discusses:



Middle East & Africa enhanced oil recovery market Size, Share & Forecast

& enhanced oil recovery market Size, Share & Forecast Segmental Analysis - By Onshore vs. Offshore, by Type (Thermal, Miscible Gas, Chemical and Others) and By Country

Changing Market Trends and Emerging Opportunities

Competitive Landscape

Market Trends & Developments



Use of Microorganisms for Enhanced Oil Recovery

Utilization of Solar Energy for Steam Flooding in Maturing Fields

Use of Robotics for Enhanced Oil Recovery

Treatment of Low Saline Water to conduct Thermal Enhanced Oil Recovery

Development in Enhanced Oil Recovery Techniques for Unconventional Resources

Higher Viscosity and Larger Slug Size Polymer Flooding for Heavy Oil Recovery

Key Topics Covered:



1. Product Overview



2. Research Methodology



3. Analyst View



4. Enhanced Oil Recovery Economic Model



5. Global Enhanced Oil Recovery Market Outlook



6. Middle East & Africa Enhanced Oil Recovery Market Outlook



7. Market Dynamics



8. Market Trends & Developments



9. Competitive Landscape



Abu Dhabi National Oil Company

BP P.L.C.

China National Offshore Oil Corporation

Linde AG

Petroleum Development Oman

Saudi Aramco

Schlumberger Limited

For more information about this report visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/b3bxcx/middle_east_and

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

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CLEVELAND and BOSTON, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Morgenthaler Private Equity ("MPE") announced today the recapitalization of Voeller Mixers, Inc. ("Voeller" or "the Company"), a leading manufacturer of batch plants and mixing equipment for concrete, glass, and related industries. In addition to equipment sales, Voeller offers aftermarket parts and services for its mixers and batch plants.

MPE partnered in the transaction with the existing shareholders, including President Ted Burbach and Vice President Mike Haggenjos. Going forward, Mr. Burbach and Mr. Haggenjos will continue to serve in senior leadership roles at the Company. In addition, MPE Senior Advisor Butch Sumpter will serve as the Company's Chairman.

Joe Machado, Partner at MPE, said, "We were attracted to Voeller due to the Company's high-quality products and reliable aftermarket parts and services. Furthermore, Voeller fits squarely within MPE's strategy to invest in entrepreneur-owned, high-value manufacturing businesses. We are excited to partner with the existing senior leadership team to help the company achieve its growth objectives."

Charlie Rossetti, Vice President at MPE, said: "Voeller is well-positioned to capitalize on favorable long-term trends for concrete infrastructure spending. We will work with the Company to enhance and broaden its product portfolio. We will also seek acquisitions to accelerate growth and expand the Company's footprint."

Ted Burbach said, "Mike and I have enjoyed growing Voeller into one of the leading companies in our industry over the past 13 years. We are eager to embark on our next phase of growth in collaboration with MPE."

Mintz Levin served as legal advisor to MPE. Duff & Phelps provided transaction advisory services.

About Voeller Mixers, Inc.

Headquartered in Port Washington, Wisconsin, Voeller Mixers, Inc. was founded more than 60 years ago as a machine job shop. Today, the Company designs and manufactures batch plants and mixing equipment for concrete, glass, fiberglass, flyash, and refractory industries. Each batch plant and mixer is custom designed to meet unique specifications. Voeller's products can be found across the United States and international locations.

About Morgenthaler Private Equity

MPE Partners ("MPE" or "Morgenthaler Private Equity") seeks to be the preferred partner for entrepreneur- and family-owned companies. Based in Cleveland, OH, and Boston, MA, MPE invests in profitable, lower middle market companies with EBITDA between $5 - $20 million. MPE has two primary target investment areas: high-value manufacturing and industrial services. For more information, please visit www.mpepartners.com.

SOURCE Morgenthaler Private Equity

Related Links

http://www.mpepartners.com


HOUSTON, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- MRC Global Inc. (NYSE: MRC) announced that it has extended its worldwide master contract with Chevron Corporation for seven more years. The contract allows them to provide pipe, valve and fitting (PVF) products and services to Chevron Corporation's global operations and project work.

"Our relationship with Chevron has grown significantly over time, and we are grateful that they continue to allow us to be part of their long-term, supply chain planning for PVF," President & CEO, Andrew R. Lane, said. "In 1955 we first began supporting Chevron at their Richmond, CA facility. Now, after more than 60 years of working together, MRC Global is proud to provide strategic supply chain solutions to Chevron's global operations in its upstream, midstream, refining and chemical sectors."

"Chevron has been our largest customer since 2010 and we are extremely proud to expand our business with them in scope, geography and product lines," Mr. Lane said. "We are committed to growing with our customers and helping them meet their goals by becoming an extension of their supply chain around the world."

About MRC Global Inc.

Headquartered in Houston, Texas, MRC Global is the largest global distributor, based on sales, of pipe, valves and fittings (PVF) and related products and services to the energy industry and supplies these products and services across each of the upstream, midstream and downstream sectors. More information about MRC Global can be found on our website www.mrcglobal.com .

Contact:

Monica Broughton

Investor Relations

MRC Global Inc.

[email protected]

832-308-2847

SOURCE MRC Global Inc.

Related Links

http://www.mrcglobal.com


WASHINGTON, June 6, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Muslim-Jewish Advisory Council today urged members of Congress to pass the Protecting Religiously Affiliated Institutions Act of 2017.

Introduced in the Senate (S. 994) and the House (H.R. 1730), with bipartisan sponsors, it would amend the Church Arson Prevention Act of 1996, which makes acts against houses of worship resulting in damage a federal crime.

The new bill would expand the federal hate crimes statute to include religiously-affiliated institutions, such as schools and community centers, in addition to houses of worship. It would extend the statute to include threats as well as acts, and expand the punishment for damage to protected property from the current one year (misdemeanor) to five years (felony).

"Burning down a mosque or vandalizing a Jewish cemetery is intolerable. Now is the time to take action against hate crimes in our country," said Council Co-Chair Stanley M. Bergman.

"We support the bill's bipartisan sponsors in the Senate and the House of Representatives, who are taking direct action to increase the prosecution of hate crimes," said Co-Chair Farooq Kathwari.

The Muslim-Jewish Advisory Council brings together 42 civil society, religious, and business leaders from across the United States to advocate for domestic policy issues of common concern to the American Jewish and American Muslim communities. Reversing the recent rise in hate crimes, and promoting the place of religious minorities in American society, are its top priorities.

In February the Council held a series of meetings on Capitol Hill with Democratic and Republican members of the House and Senate to raise awareness about the Council, its members and mission, and to urge lawmakers to work to strengthen the country's response to the increase in hate crimes across the U.S., especially those targeting Muslim and Jewish communities and institutions.

SOURCE American Jewish Committee

Related Links

http://www.ajc.org


HOUSTON, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA's newest astronaut candidates are available for interviews from 8 a.m. to noon CDT Thursday, June 8, by remote satellite link, Skype and phone.

After completing two years of training, the new astronaut candidates could be assigned to missions performing research on the International Space Station, launching from American soil on spacecraft built by commercial companies, and flying on deep space missions on NASA's new Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System rocket.

Media interested in this opportunity should contact Rachel Kraft at [email protected].

The 12 astronaut candidates were selected from more than 18,300 applicants, a record number. NASA's class of 2017 astronaut candidates is:

Kayla Barron, 29, Lt., U.S. Navy, is originally from Richland, Washington. She graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, with a bachelor's degree in systems engineering. A Gates Cambridge Scholar, Barron earned a master's degree in nuclear engineering from the University of Cambridge. As a submarine warfare officer, Barron was a member of the first class of women commissioned into the submarine community. She'll come to NASA from the U.S. Naval Academy, where she has been serving as the flag aide to the superintendent.

Zena Cardman, 29, calls Williamsburg, Virginia, home. She completed a Bachelor of Science in Biology and Master of Science in Marine Sciences at The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Cardman is currently a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow completing her doctorate at The Pennsylvania State University in State College, Pennsylvania. Her research has focused on microorganisms in subsurface environments, ranging from caves to deep sea sediments. Her field experience includes multiple Antarctic expeditions, work aboard research vessels as both scientist and crew, and NASA analog missions in British Columbia, Idaho and Hawaii.

Raja Chari, 39, Lt. Col., U.S. Air Force, hails from Cedar Falls, Iowa. He graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy with bachelor's degrees in astronautical engineering and engineering science. He continued on to earn a master's degree in aeronautics and astronautics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and graduated from the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School. Chari has been serving as the commander of the 461st Flight Test Squadron and the director of the F-35 Integrated Test Force at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

Matthew Dominick, 35, Lt. Cmdr., U.S. Navy, was born and raised in Wheat Ridge, Colorado. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of San Diego and a Master of Science in Systems Engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School. He also graduated from the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School. Dominick was at sea on the USS Ronald Reagan, serving as department head for Strike Fighter Squadron 115, when he got the call saying he'd been selected as an astronaut candidate.

Bob Hines, 42, considers Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, his hometown. He graduated from Boston University with a bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering. From there, he went on to graduate from the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School, and then the University of Alabama, where he earned a master's degree in aerospace engineering. He has served in the U.S. Air Force and Air Force Reserves for 18 years. For the last five years, Hines has served as a NASA research pilot at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Warren "Woody" Hoburg, 31, is originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He earned a bachelor's degree in aeronautics and astronautics from MIT. He continued on to earn a doctorate in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of California, Berkeley. He is a private pilot and has extensive experience with wilderness search and rescue efforts. Hoburg will come to NASA from MIT, where he currently is leading a research group as an assistant professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Dr. Jonny Kim, 33, Lt., U.S. Navy, was born and raised in Los Angeles. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy, then trained and operated as a Navy SEAL, completing more than 100 combat operations and earning a Silver Star and Bronze Star with Valor. Afterward, he went on to complete a degree in mathematics at the University of San Diego and a doctorate of medicine at Harvard Medical School. Kim is completing his residency in emergency medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

Robb Kulin, 33, hails from Anchorage, Alaska. He earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Denver before going on to complete a master's degree in materials science and a doctorate in engineering at the University of California, San Diego. He has previous experience as an ice driller in Antarctica on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and Taylor Glaciers, and as a commercial fisherman in Chignik, Alaska. Since 2011, Kulin has worked for SpaceX in Hawthorne, California, where he leads the Launch Chief Engineering group.

Jasmin Moghbeli, 33, Maj., U.S. Marine Corps, considers Baldwin, New York, her hometown. She earned a bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering with information technology at MIT, followed by a master's degree in aerospace engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School. She also is a distinguished graduate of the U.S. Navy Test Pilot School. Moghbeli currently tests H-1 helicopters and serves as the quality assurance and avionics officer for Marine Operational Test and Evaluation Squadron 1 in Yuma, Arizona.

Loral O'Hara, 34, calls Sugar Land, Texas, home. She earned a bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering at the University of Kansas and a master's degree in aeronautics and astronautics from Purdue University. As a student, she participated in NASA's KC-135 Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities Program, the NASA Academy at the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center, and the internship program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. O'Hara is currently a research engineer at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

Dr. Francisco "Frank" Rubio, 41, Maj., U.S. Army, is originally from Miami. He earned a bachelor's degree in international relations at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and a doctorate of medicine from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. Rubio has accumulated more than 1,100 hours of flight time in helicopters, including 600 hours of combat and imminent danger time. He's currently serving as a surgeon for the 3rd Battalion of the Army's 10th Special Forces Group at Fort Carson, Colorado.

Jessica Watkins, 29, hails from Lafayette, Colorado. She graduated from Stanford University with a bachelor's degree in geological and environmental sciences, then went on to earn a doctorate in geology from the University of California, Los Angeles. Watkins has worked at NASA's Ames Research Center and Jet Propulsion Laboratory and currently is a postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, where she collaborates on the Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity.

With more human spacecraft in development in the United States today than at any other time in history, future astronauts will launch once again from the Space Coast of Florida on American-made commercial spacecraft and carry out exploration missions that will take humans farther into space than ever before.

The astronaut candidates will report to Johnson Space Center in Houston in August to begin their training in spacecraft systems, spacewalking skills, teamwork, Russian language and other necessary skills.

Media participating in the interviews must tune to NTV-3. Satellite tuning information is available at:

http://go.nasa.gov/1pOWUhR

Get more information about astronaut selection, and for information about the candidates, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/2017astronauts

Follow NASA astronauts on Twitter at:

http://www.twitter.com/NASA_Astronauts

SOURCE NASA

Related Links

http://www.nasa.gov


WASHINGTON, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- After receiving a record-breaking number of applications to join an exciting future of space exploration, NASA has selected its largest astronaut class since 2000. Rising to the top of more than 18,300 applicants, NASA chose 12 women and men as the agency's new astronaut candidates.

NASA announced its 2017 Astronaut Candidate Class on June 7, 2017. The 12 candidates, pictured here at NASAs Ellington Field in Houston, are Zena Cardman, U.S. Marine Corps Maj. Jasmin Moghbeli, U.S. Navy Lt. Jonny Kim, U.S. Army Maj. Francisco Frank Rubio, U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Matthew Dominick, Warren Woody Hoburg, Robb Kulin, U.S. Navy Lt. Kayla Barron, Bob Hines, U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Raja Chari, Loral OHara and Jessica Watkins. Credit: NASA/Robert Markowitz

Vice President Mike Pence joined NASA leaders Wednesday as they introduced the members of the 2017 astronaut class during an event at the agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston. While at Johnson, the vice president toured the International Space Station mission control center, and the historic mission control center, which was used during early NASA spaceflights, including the first moon landing mission, Apollo 11. He also was presented with a model of the International Space Station and a framed U.S. flag that was flown to and from the orbiting laboratory this winter.

"These are 12 men and women whose personal excellence and whose personal courage will carry our nation to even greater heights of discovery and who I know will inspire our children and our grandchildren every bit as much as your forebears have done so in this storied American program," said Vice President Pence. "And to this newest class of astronauts, it's my honor to bring the sincere congratulations of the 45th President of the United States of America, President Donald Trump. Your President is proud of you, and so am I."

The astronaut candidates will return to Johnson in August to begin two years of training. Then they could be assigned to any of a variety of missions, including: performing research on the International Space Station, launching from American soil on spacecraft built by commercial companies, and departing for deep space missions on NASA's new Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System rocket.

"We look forward to the energy and talent of these astronauts fueling our exciting future of discovery," acting NASA Administrator Robert Lightfoot said. "Between expanding the crew on board the space station to conduct more research than ever before, and making preparations to send humans farther into space than we've ever been, we are going to keep them busy. These candidates are an important addition to the NASA family and the nation's human spaceflight team."

Applicants included U.S. citizens in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories Puerto Rico, Guam, and American Samoa. The talented women and men selected for the new astronaut class represent the diversity of America and the career paths that can lead to a place in America's astronaut corps.

The 2017 astronaut candidates are:

Kayla Barron, 29, Lt., U.S. Navy, is originally from Richland, Washington. She graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy with a bachelor's degree in systems engineering. A Gates Cambridge Scholar, Barron earned a master's degree in nuclear engineering from the University of Cambridge. As a submarine warfare officer, Barron was a member of the first class of women commissioned into the submarine community. She'll come to NASA from the U.S. Naval Academy, where she has been serving as the flag aide to the superintendent.

Zena Cardman, 29, calls Williamsburg, Virginia, home. She completed a Bachelor of Science in Biology and Master of Science in Marine Sciences at The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Cardman is currently a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow working on her doctorate at The Pennsylvania State University. Her research has focused on microorganisms in subsurface environments, ranging from caves to deep sea sediments. Her field experience includes multiple Antarctic expeditions, work aboard research vessels as both scientist and crew, and NASA analog missions in British Columbia, Idaho and Hawaii.

Raja Chari, 39, Lt. Col., U.S. Air Force, hails from Waterloo, Iowa. He graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy with bachelor's degrees in astronautical engineering and engineering science. He continued on to earn a master's degree in aeronautics and astronautics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and graduated from the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School. Chari has been serving as the commander of the 461st Flight Test Squadron and the director of the F-35 Integrated Test Force at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

Matthew Dominick, 35, Lt. Cmdr., U.S. Navy, was born and raised in Wheat Ridge, Colorado. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of San Diego and a Master of Science in Systems Engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School. He also graduated from the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School. Dominick was at sea on the USS Ronald Reagan, serving as department head for Strike Fighter Squadron 115, when he got the call saying he'd been selected as an astronaut candidate.

Bob Hines, 42, considers Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, his hometown. He graduated from Boston University with a bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering. From there, he went on to graduate from the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School, and then the University of Alabama, where he earned a master's degree in aerospace engineering. He has served in the U.S. Air Force and Air Force Reserves for 18 years. For the last five years, Hines has served as a NASA research pilot at Johnson.

Warren "Woody" Hoburg, 31, is originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He earned a bachelor's degree in aeronautics and astronautics from MIT. He continued on to earn a doctorate in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of California, Berkley. He is a private pilot and has extensive experience with wilderness search and rescue efforts. Hoburg will come to NASA from MIT, where he currently is leading a research group as an assistant professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Dr. Jonny Kim, 33, Lt., U.S. Navy, was born and raised in Los Angeles. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy, then trained and operated as a Navy SEAL, completing more than 100 combat operations and earning a Silver Star and Bronze Star with Combat V. Afterward, he went on to complete a degree in mathematics at the University of San Diego and a doctorate of medicine at Harvard Medical School. Kim is a resident physician in emergency medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Robb Kulin, 33, hails from Anchorage, Alaska. He earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Denver before going on to complete a master's degree in materials science and a doctorate in engineering at the University of California, San Diego. He has previous experience as an ice driller in Antarctica on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and Taylor Glaciers, and as a commercial fisherman in Chignik, Alaska. Since 2011, Kulin has worked for SpaceX in Hawthorne, California, where he leads the Launch Chief Engineering group.

Jasmin Moghbeli, 33, Maj., U.S. Marine Corps, considers Baldwin, New York, her hometown. She earned a bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering with information technology at MIT, followed by a master's degree in aerospace engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School. She also is a distinguished graduate of the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School. Moghbeli currently tests H-1 helicopters and serves as the quality assurance and avionics officer for Marine Operational Test and Evaluation Squadron 1 in Yuma, Arizona.

Loral O'Hara, 34, calls Sugar Land, Texas, home. She earned a bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering at the University of Kansas and a master's degree in aeronautics and astronautics from Purdue University. As a student, she participated in NASA's KC-135 Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities Program, the NASA Academy at the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center, and the internship program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. O'Hara is currently a research engineer at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

Dr. Francisco "Frank" Rubio, 41, Maj., U.S. Army, is originally from Miami. He earned a bachelor's degree in international relations at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and a doctorate of medicine from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. Rubio has accumulated more than 1,100 hours of flight time in helicopters, including 600 hours of combat and imminent danger time. He's currently serving as a surgeon for the 3rd Battalion of the Army's 10th Special Forces Group at Fort Carson, Colorado.

Jessica Watkins, 29, hails from Lafayette, Colorado. She graduated from Stanford University with a bachelor's degree in geological and environmental sciences, then went on to earn a doctorate in geology from the University of California, Los Angeles. Watkins has worked at NASA's Ames Research Center and Jet Propulsion Laboratory and currently is a postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology, where she collaborates on the Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity.

With the addition of these 12 members of the 2017 astronaut candidate class, NASA now has selected 350 astronauts since the original Mercury 7 in 1959.

"These women and men deserve our enthusiastic congratulations," said astronaut and Johnson Space Center Director Ellen Ochoa. "Children all across the United States right now dream of being in their shoes someday. We here at NASA are excited to welcome them to the team and look forward to working with them to inspire the next generation of explorers."

The astronaut candidates will be available to talk to media in person at Johnson and by remote satellite link on June 8. Media interested in this limited opportunity should contact the Johnson newsroom at 281-483-5111.

Find photos and additional information about the new astronaut candidates at:

https://www.nasa.gov/2017astronauts

Follow NASA astronauts on Twitter at:

https://www.twitter.com/NASA_Astronauts

SOURCE NASA

Related Links

http://www.nasa.gov


"Suicide is the result of many contributing factors coming together in a brief moment in time. It is very difficult to identify people at short-term risk and provide effective interventions. Dr. Swann's study takes a comprehensive approach to the problem of assessment and intervention for the suicidal individual," said Jill Harkavy-Friedman, AFSP vice president of research .

This critical study focuses on identifying risk, and factors that reduce suicide risk. In the study, individuals who have made a suicide attempt, and those who have not made a suicide attempt, will be compared with regard to a variety of factors that have been shown to contribute to suicide, including mental health, aggression and impulsivity, trauma history and substance use, among others. Assessment tools related to decision making and brain activity will be used with the goal of identifying factors that can improve a clincian's ability to assess immediate suicide risk. Individuals at most immediate risk in light of their recent medically serious suicide attempt will be provided treatment with lithium, a medicine shown to reduce suicide risk. Lithium will be compared with placebo within each participant. The potential contributors to risk will be reassessed after four weeks of lithium to see if they have changed with treatment. The findings can be used to facilitate efforts in clinical settings, if shown to be effective.

There are two $1 million grants being given this year, one to Dr. Swann, and one to Dr. Charles Conway, M.D., from the Washington University School of Medicine Psychiatry Department in St. Louis, Missouri. Each application was reviewed using a rigorous multi-step process with leading experts in the field. The research grants are funded mainly through individual donors who attend the AFSP Out of the Darkness walks and other public education events. Many of the AFSP grantees go on to receive further funding from the National Institute of Mental Health and other large funding agencies.

Suicide in Texas

Suicide is the second leading cause of death for people ages 15-34 in Texas. On average, one person dies by suicide every three hours in the state. More than twice as many people die by suicide in Texas annual than by homicide; the total deaths to suicide reflect a total of 72,622 years of potential life lost before age 65.

The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention is dedicated to saving lives and bringing hope to those affected by suicide. AFSP creates a culture that's smart about mental health through education and community programs, develops suicide prevention through research and advocacy, and provides support for those affected by suicide. Led by CEO Robert Gebbia and headquartered in New York, AFSP has local chapters in all 50 states with programs and events nationwide. AFSP celebrates 30 years of service to the suicide prevention movement. Learn more about AFSP in its latest Annual Report, and join the conversation on suicide prevention by following AFSP on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.

SOURCE American Foundation for Suicide Prevention

Related Links

http://www.afsp.org


ISELIN, N.J., June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The New Jersey Chamber of Commerce has selected Direct Energy as an Affinity Partner for its 1,000+ members who will now have access to Direct Energy's electricity and natural gas plans, as well as a suite of energy management products that help make businesses better.

The New Jersey Chamber of Commerce is a business advocacy organization that actively supports legislation, regulation, and initiatives that help with economic growth, job creation, and prosperity throughout the state.

"The New Jersey Chamber of Commerce was created in 1911 by a group of New Jersey businessmen including Thomas Edison, to improve the state's business climate and provide its members with opportunities to promote and grow their business," said Lawrence Krompier, Senior Vice President, Member Services for the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce. "We are excited to partner with Direct Energy to offer our members preferred pricing on electricity and natural gas plans."

Direct Energy offers a suite of energy solutions for both small and large businesses to help increase efficiencies and give customers more control over their energy usage. Solutions such as Panoramic Power, a device-level, real-time energy monitoring solution, can help reduce energy waste, and identify inefficient operations and equipment failure, and Demand Response provides customers with more efficiency strategies and invaluable data and analytics.

"Direct Energy has a long-standing reputation in New Jersey for delivering customers innovative energy solutions and flexible choices for their electricity and natural gas supply, " said Brian Butler, Director, Strategic Partnerships, Direct Energy. "Through this important partnership with the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce, we look forward to continuing to serve New Jersey and the flourishing business community in the state."

About Direct Energy

Direct Energy is one of North America's largest energy and energy-related services provider with nearly five million residential and commercial customers. Direct Energy provides customers with choice and support in managing their energy costs through a portfolio of innovative products and services. A subsidiary of Centrica plc (LSE: CNA), one of the world's leading integrated energy companies, Direct Energy operates in 50 U.S. states plus the District of Columbia and 4 provinces in Canada. To learn more about Direct Energy, please visit www.directenergy.com.

SOURCE Direct Energy

Related Links

http://www.directenergy.com


PARSIPPANY, N.J., June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- As immigration and visa policies tighten across the United States, undocumented immigrant families are facing heartbreaking decisions as they prepare for a worst-case scenario of deportation. In New Jersey, it is estimated that nine percent of the state's total child population  approximately 168,000 children  have parents who are undocumented immigrants. If the event undocumented parents are deported, what happens to minor children who are natural born U.S. citizens?

Family law expert, Bari Z. Weinberger, Esq. advises undocumented immigrant parents on protecting their children from deportation fallout

In a feature article published recently in the New Jersey Law Journal, attorney Bari Weinberger, New Jersey family law expert and founder of Weinberger Divorce & Family Law Group, examined legal options and key steps undocumented parents can take to protect and provide for their U.S. citizen children in their absence.

"In case of deportation, most parents want to keep their families intact and return together to the parents' home country. But the tragic reality is that staying together is not always feasiblethere is often political unrest, violence, or economic depression in the home country that makes it difficult for parents to find work and support their families," Weinberger explains.

A child's U.S. citizenship may also present difficulties. "U.S. citizen children may not be eligible for services in their parents' home country, including schooling and health care. In these situations, parents may decide that entrusting their kids to a caregiver in the U.S. is in their best interest," notes Weinberger.

Undocumented immigrants may feel like the law is not on their side. But when it comes to deciding issues that affect their children, parents  documented or not  have rights and options. For undocumented parents who are planning to leave their children in the U.S. should they be deported, Weinberger offers the following action steps for keeping kids safe:

Execute a Power of Attorney. Immigrant parents who want their U.S. citizen children to remain in U.S. can execute a Power of Attorney (POA) that appoints a temporary caregiver for children whose parents are deported or detained. A POA can include directives such as instructions and provisions for how and when children are to travel to reunite with the parent (if planned). In New Jersey, a POA can appoint a temporary caregiver for a maximum of six months. Parents can work with an attorney to establish a POA.

Make Financial Provisions. If parents have the ability to leave funds behind for their children's care, or plan to send funds back to the United States, an easy method of providing a custodian with access to funds for children's expenses is to set up a Union Transfers to Minors Act (UTMA) bank account. International deposits may be made to a UTMA.

Plan for the Long Term. If there is little chance that undocumented parents will be able to re-enter the U.S. following deportation, an attorney can help parents create a third-party custody agreement with the child's custodian caregiver. This is more permanent than a POA. Another option is Kinship Legal Guardianship (KLG) in which most parental rights transfer to a family member caregiver, while parents still retain some critical rights, such as the right to visitation.

Whatever choices undocumented parents ultimately make about their family's future, the key is to act now to make provisions for children.

As Weinberger advises, "In today's tense immigration climate, you don't want to leave anything to chance. Once a deportation order is served, your choices become severely limitedso line up that possible caregiver now. Meet with an attorney to get the POA now. Start the bank account now. Take every opportunity you can to secure your family's future."

Weinberger also encourages undocumented immigrant parents to seek legal advice or take advantage of free resources, such as the POA template available from Rutgers University School of Law's Child Advocacy Clinic. To speak with a family law attorney for free about POA and child-related immigration issues, Weinberger Divorce & Family Law Group offers initial consultations at no cost.

Contact:

Bari Z. Weinberger

+1 888 888 0919

[email protected]

SOURCE Weinberger Divorce & Family Law Group
SAN ANTONIO, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- If you struggle with the rules of the road, you certainly are not alone. In fact, many studies show that more than 50% of people fail their driving test on the very first try. To make matters worse, drivers in Texas rank third in the nation for drunk driving, ninth for speeding, and ninth for fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled, according to CarInsuranceComparison.com.

Road Safety Quiz - Are you a safe driver? Test yourself with Felix Gonzalez's Road Safety Quiz Felix Gonzalez, P.C.

"I've represented many victims whose lives were changed forever at the hands of a careless driver. Poor decisions behind the wheel can lead to lifelong consequences for both parties. Our state certainly has a lot to improve on," stated San Antonio auto accident attorney, Felix Gonzalez.

Recently, the "Lone Star State" made national headlines when the driver of a pickup truck collided with a church minibus in rural Texas, killing 13 people. The driver, Jack Dillon Young, later apologized and acknowledged he had been texting while driving, witnesses stated. Authorities confirm that marijuana and pills were also found in Young's truck. The young man is not only facing criminal charges but also a wrongful death lawsuit.

"This was a horrific accident that didn't have to happen. My heart goes out to the victims and their families," stated Gonzalez. "Texas is one of the few remaining states that still has no statewide ban on texting while driving. In an effort to curb distracted driving before more innocent lives are lost, it may be time to enact one."

To educate drivers on the proper rules of the road as well as the dangers of careless driving, Gonzalez's law firm recently created a road safety quiz. Some of the questions on the quiz include: What's the minimum safe following distance in the city on dry roads? What position should both hands be placed when driving? What percent of a crosswalk should a pedestrian clear before a driver turns near it? Other quiz questions touch on drunk driving, following too closely, speeding, and tire blowouts.

"I hope that the quiz not only makes people better drivers but also safer drivers," stated Gonzalez. "When a person knows better, they often do better. That's why we created this quiz in the first place."

Think you can get every question on the quiz correct? To find out, click here to take the test now. Good luck!

About Felix Gonzalez Law Firm, P.C.: Felix Gonzalez has practiced law for twenty-one years all in the area of personal injury law. Felix first began practicing personal injury law out of law school in 1995 with a well-known and reputable personal injury law firm in San Antonio focusing on catastrophic personal injury litigation. In 1998, Felix joined another well-known and reputable personal injury law firm in San Antonio where he later became partner in 2000. In July 2010 Felix formed the Felix Gonzalez Law Firm, P.C., with a continued focus on catastrophic personal injury litigation. Felix has tried numerous cases to verdict throughout his career. To learn more, click here.

Media contact:

Victoria Reyna

210-298-6666

SOURCE Felix Gonzalez Law Firm, P.C.
This action follows a global campaign led by PATH, an international global health nonprofit organization, to make oxygen more accessible in low- and middle-income countries. This effort is designed to reduce preventable newborn, child, and maternal deaths and accelerate progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals laid out by the United Nations in 2015. Previously, oxygen was listed only for use as an inhalational medicine in general anesthesia in the EML and EMLc. PATH reviewed the national essential medicines lists of 105 countries and found that approximately a third (31 percent) did not include oxygen and roughly half (48 percent) listed oxygen only by anesthetic indication.

PATH and medical experts petitioned the WHO EML secretariat to include an additional listing of oxygen as a medical gas, extending its use for the management of hypoxemia. This change clarifies oxygen's importance as a medical treatment that should be widely available in health facilities everywhere. Oxygen therapy can save lives, especially for those most vulnerable: newborns, children, and pregnant women. Oxygen is needed for the 1.5 to 2.7 million young children worldwide needing care for severe or very severe pneumonia each year.

"Oxygen therapy is an essential component of comprehensive pneumonia treatment for children and now is the time to invest in expanding access to pulse oximetry and oxygen," said Dr. Keith Klugman, director of the pneumonia team at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. "This welcome update to global policy provides an ideal time to reflect on what is needed at national and subnational levels to ensure equitable access to oxygen for all sick children."

Oxygen is an essential part of a complete health care system, and is a required treatment for a range of conditions across disciplines and age groups. However, its availability varies widely by level of health facility and region in low- and middle-income countries, and is often hindered by inadequate provider training and a scarcity of necessary equipment and supplies. In particular, facilities often lack pulse oximeters to diagnose and monitor hypoxemia; oxygen sources such as concentrators and cylinders; and devices to deliver therapy, such as cannulas (or small tubing), ventilators, and continuous positive airway pressure equipment.

"Accessing oxygen therapy for childhood pneumonia and other indications should not be a matter of location or luck," said Carolyn Reynolds, vice president for Policy and Advocacy at PATH. "We applaud WHO's decision to elevate oxygen as an essential commodity for newborn, child, and maternal health. Now is the time for countries around the world to act on this evidence, which can save thousands of children's and women's lives each year."

PATH is implementing a comprehensive approach to increase access to oxygen in low- and middle-income countries, including supporting normative policy change by WHO, helping strengthen markets for oxygen concentrators and pulse oximeters, raising awareness about the importance of oxygen through its HO 2 PE: Oxygen Gives Life campaign, partnering with the United for Oxygen alliance, and developing materials to help advocates and policymakers drive change at the national level.

"The updated EML and EMLc emphasize oxygen's lifesaving role and support UNICEF's ongoing work to ensure access to oxygen and pulse oximetry in countries with a high burden of child mortality, such as Kenya," says Dr. Hayalnesh Tarekegn, child health program officer, UNICEF. "It is imperative for countries to align their policies with the latest WHO guidance and implement broader oxygen access for the thousands of children in health facilities that need oxygen to survive."

About PATH

PATH is the leader in global health innovation. An international nonprofit organization, we save lives and improve health, especially among women and children. We accelerate innovation across five platformsvaccines, drugs, diagnostics, devices, and system and service innovationthat harness our entrepreneurial insight, scientific and public health expertise, and passion for health equity. By mobilizing partners around the world, we take innovation to scale, working alongside countries primarily in Africa and Asia to tackle their greatest health needs. Together, we deliver measureable results that disrupt the cycle of poor health. Learn more at www.path.org.

SOURCE PATH

Related Links

http://www.path.org


EAST HANOVER, N.J., June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Novartis announced findings from an interim analysis of its multi-center Phase II JULIET study (NCT02445248) of CTL019 (tisagenlecleucel) in adult patients with relapsed or refractory (r/r) diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), which will be presented at the International Conference on Malignant Lymphoma (ICML) meeting, Lugano, Switzerland (Abstract #007; Wednesday, June 14, 3:40 PM CEST). The global, pivotal study showed a three-month overall response rate (ORR) of 45% (23 of the 51 patients evaluated), with 37% achieving a complete response (CR) and 8% achieving a partial response (PR), respectively. CR remained stable from three months through data cutoff among the patient group1.

"The overall response rate seen in this early analysis is impressive for these heavily pre-treated patients with relapsed/refractory DLBCL, who have limited treatment options," said JULIET lead investigator, Stephen Schuster, MD, Professor of Hematology/Oncology in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) and Penn's Abramson Cancer Center. "The goal for these patients is achieving durable response. The most promising aspect of these data is that, at the time of this interim analysis, all patients with complete response at three months have remained in complete response."

JULIET is the first multi-center global registration study for CTL019 in adult patients with r/r DLBCL and the second global CAR-T cell therapy trial, following the Novartis ELIANA study (NCT02435849) of CTL019 in pediatric and young adult patients with r/r B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). JULIET was conducted in collaboration with Penn and enrolled patients from 27 sites in 10 countries across the US, Canada, Europe, Australia and Japan. It is the largest study examining a CAR-T cell therapy exclusively in DLBCL patients.

The study met its primary objective at interim analysis. Among 51 patients with three months or more of follow-up or earlier discontinuation, best ORR was 59% (95% CI, 44.2-72.4; p<0.0001), with 43% achieving CR and 16% achieving PR. The full JULIET primary analysis is expected to be available later this year and will serve as the basis for US and EU regulatory submissions1.

In the JULIET study, 57% of all treated patients (85) experienced any grade cytokine release syndrome (CRS), and 26% experienced grade 3/4 CRS (17% grade 3; 9% grade 4) using the Penn Grading Scale, a rigorous scale for grading CRS. CRS is a known complication of the investigational therapy that may occur when the engineered cells become activated in the patient's body. CRS was managed globally using prior site education on implementation of the CRS treatment algorithm1.

There were no deaths attributed to CTL019, CRS or cerebral edema, and no incidents of cerebral edema were reported in the study. Thirteen percent of patients had grade 3/4 neurologic adverse events, which were managed with supportive care. Grade 3/4 cytopenias lasting more than 28 days and grade 3/4 febrile neutropenia occurred in 21% and 14% of patients, respectively. Three patients died from disease progression within 30 days of infusion1.

In the JULIET trial, 43 patients discontinued before infusion and the majority did so due to rapid progression of their disease or deterioration in their clinical status. This reflects the acute and progressive nature of the disease of the patients. Only nine of 141 (6%) enrolled patients could not be infused due to inability to manufacture an adequate dose of CAR-T cells. Over the course of JULIET, with continuous process improvements, manufacturing success rate improved to 97% for the last 30 patients.

"We are pleased the interim results from JULIET highlight the potential for CTL019 to elicit durable responses in patients with relapsed/refractory DLBCL, an area of high unmet need," said Vas Narasimhan, Global Head of Drug Development and Chief Medical Officer, Novartis. "Novartis is committed to progressing our portfolio of CAR-T therapies in hematological and solid tumors to advance the care of cancer patients."

In April 2017, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Breakthrough Therapy designation to CTL019 based on data from the JULIET study.

About the JULIET Trial

JULIET (NCT02445248) is a single-arm, open-label, multi-center global Phase II trial of CTL019 in patients aged 18 years or older with r/r DLBCL. Prior to enrollment, patients were required to have received two or more lines of prior chemotherapy and had disease progression or were ineligible for autologous stem cell transplant (autoSCT). Sixty percent of the patients had three or more lines of chemotherapy and 51% had a prior autoSCT.

The primary endpoint of the study is best ORR (defined as CR plus PR) determined by a central review conducted by an independent review committee. Secondary endpoints from the study include overall survival, duration of response and progression-free survival.

About CTL019 Manufacturing

Novartis cryopreserved leukapheresis process allowed for successful manufacturing and treatment of patients from around the world. Cryopreserved leukapheresis gives physicians the flexibility to schedule apheresis at a time that is in the best interest of their patients. Novartis commercial manufacturing for CTL019 will build on its extensive experience in our Morris Plains facility, which has already manufactured CTL019 for hundreds of patients in global clinical trials. Novartis believes that hands-on experience matters in cell therapy manufacturing, and the experience at Morris Plains will be a foundation for manufacturing for commercial purposes and future CAR-T therapies. Novartis has made and continues to make significant investments in capacity and turnaround time and is committed to meeting the needs of CTL019 patients in the future.

About CAR-T and CTL019

CAR-T is different from typical small molecule or biologic therapies because it is manufactured for each individual patient using their own cells. During the treatment process, T cells are drawn from a patient's blood and reprogrammed in the laboratory to create T cells that are genetically coded to hunt the patient's cancer cells and other B cells expressing a particular antigen.

CTL019 was first developed by the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) and uses the 4-1BB costimulatory domain to enhance cellular responses. In 2012, Novartis and Penn entered into a global collaboration to further research, develop and then commercialize CAR-T cell therapies, including CTL019, for the investigational treatment of cancers. In March 2017, Novartis announced that the FDA accepted the company's Biologics License Application filing and granted priority review for CTL019 in the treatment of r/r pediatric and young adult patients with B-cell ALL.

Because CTL019 is an investigational therapy, the safety and efficacy profile has not yet been established. Access to investigational therapies is available only through carefully controlled and monitored clinical trials. These trials are designed to better understand the potential benefits and risks of the therapy. Because of the uncertainty of clinical trials, there is no guarantee that CTL019 will ever be commercially available anywhere in the world.

About DLBCL

DLBCL is the most common form of lymphoma and accounts for approximately 30% of all non-Hodgkin lymphoma cases2. Ten to 15% of DLBCL patients fail to respond to initial therapy or relapse within three months of treatment, and an additional 20% to 25% relapse after initial response to therapy3.

Disclaimer

The foregoing release contains forward-looking statements that can be identified by words such as "will," "later in 2017," "Breakthrough Therapy designation," "promising," "investigational," "may," "potential," "committed," "priority review," "yet," "expected," "believes," "continues," or similar terms, or by express or implied discussions regarding potential marketing approvals for CTL019, or regarding potential future revenues from CTL019. You should not place undue reliance on these statements. Such forward-looking statements are based on the current beliefs and expectations of management regarding future events, and are subject to significant known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those set forth in the forward-looking statements. There can be no guarantee that CTL019 will be submitted or approved for sale in any market, or at any particular time. Nor can there be any guarantee that CTL019 will receive regulatory approval or be commercially successful in the future. In particular, management's expectations regarding CTL019 could be affected by, among other things, the uncertainties inherent in research and development, including clinical trial results and additional analysis of existing clinical data; regulatory actions or delays or government regulation generally; the company's ability to obtain or maintain proprietary intellectual property protection; general economic and industry conditions; global trends toward health care cost containment, including ongoing pricing and reimbursement pressures; safety, quality or manufacturing issues, and other risks and factors referred to in Novartis AG's current Form 20-F on file with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Novartis is providing the information in this press release as of this date and does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this press release as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

About Novartis

Located in East Hanover, NJ Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation is an affiliate of Novartis which provides innovative healthcare solutions that address the evolving needs of patients and societies. Headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, Novartis offers a diversified portfolio to best meet these needs: innovative medicines, cost-saving generic and biosimilar pharmaceuticals and eye care. Novartis has leading positions globally in each of these areas. In 2016, the Group achieved net sales of USD 48.5 billion, while R&D throughout the Group amounted to approximately USD 9.0 billion. Novartis Group companies employ approximately 118,000 full-time-equivalent associates. Novartis products are sold in approximately 155 countries around the world. For more information, please visit http://www.novartis.com.

Novartis is on Twitter. Sign up to follow @Novartis at http://twitter.com/novartis and @Novartis Cancer at http://twitter.com/novartiscancer.

For Novartis multimedia content, please visit www.novartis.com/news/media-library

For questions about the site or required registration, please contact [email protected]

References

Schuster, Stephen et al. Global Pivotal Phase 2 Trial of the CD19-Targeted Therapy CTL019 in Adult Patients with Relapsed or Refractory (r/r) Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma (DLBCL)  An Interim Analysis. June 14 , 3:40 p.m. CET . The International Conference on Malignant Lymphoma: Abstract 007. American Society of Clinical Oncology. Lymphoma - Non-Hodgkin: Subtypes ( Dec. 2016 revision). http://www.cancer.net/cancer-types/lymphoma-non-hodgkin/subtypes. Accessed May 2017 . Sehn, L. Paramount prognostic factors that guide therapeutic strategies in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. Hematology, December 2012 ; 1; 402-409.

Novartis Media Relations Central media line: +41 61 324 2200 E-mail: [email protected]

Eric Althoff Novartis Global Media Relations +41 61 324 7999 (direct) +41 79 593 4202 (mobile) [email protected] Rosemarie Yancosek Novartis Oncology Communications +1 862-778-9043 (direct) +1 862-505-9021 (mobile) [email protected]

SOURCE Novartis

Related Links

http://www.novartis.com


COLUMBUS, Ohio, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- API Ohio today released a new poll showing that the overwhelming majority of Ohio voters oppose legislation that would allow FirstEnergy to charge its customers with a special fee to increase funding to its nuclear power plants. API Ohio urged members of the Ohio state legislature to reject this misguided legislation, Ohio Senate Bill 128 & House Bill 178.

"Voters across the state spoke loud and clear: 79 percent said they were opposed to a legislative proposal which would provide a bailout to the nuclear energy industry at the expense of Ohioans," said Associate Director Christina Polesovsky. "Picking winners and losers in the energy markets sets a dangerous precedent and would deny Ohio consumers, workers and the environment the benefits of affordable and reliable natural gas. Moving forward, the legislature should follow the will of Ohio voters and reject this misguided legislation that could raise costs for consumers while providing no incremental benefit to the environment."

"This legislation is a bad deal for Ohio consumers," said API Chief Economist Erica Bowman. "It would provide a $300 million annual bailout to FirstEnergy at the expense of Ohio consumers for 16 years at a total potential cost of over $5 billion. We urge members of both legislative chambers to reject this legislation once and for all so that Ohio consumers can fully realize the benefits of our state's abundant supplies of affordable, clean-burning natural gas."

Key poll results:

79 percent of voters agree that Ohio consumers should not have to pay a special fee to bailout FirstEnergy's nuclear power plants.

consumers should not have to pay a special fee to bailout FirstEnergy's nuclear power plants. 79 percent of voters oppose a legislative proposal to allow FirstEnergy to charge its customers a special fee to increase funding to its nuclear plants.

83 percent of voters agree that the electricity market should be based on the marketplace and not by the state government deciding to grant money to particular corporations.

60 percent of voters believe that consumers get lower electricity prices if electricity generators compete rather than the state government choosing what type of generators can provide electricity.

The poll results were released on a press conference call on Wednesday morning. The opening statement and results of the poll are available on API's website.

API Ohio is a division of API, which represents all segments of America's oil and natural gas industry. Its more than 625 members include large integrated companies, as well as exploration and production, refining, marketing, pipeline, and marine businesses, and service and supply firms. They provide most of the nation's energy and are backed by a growing grassroots movement of more than 40 million Americans.

Methodology

The study was conducted on May 26-June 1, 2017, by telephone by Harris Poll on behalf of the American Petroleum Institute among 801 Ohio registered voters, with a sampling error of +/- 3.4 percent. A full methodology is available upon request.

"What America is Thinking on Energy Issues" is a public opinion series provided by API, offering data to inform policy discussions and ensure policymakers and others know Americans' perspectives on key energy issues.

SOURCE American Petroleum Institute

Related Links

http://www.api.org/


SALEM, N.H., June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- On Call International (On Call), a leading travel risk management company, announced that it has appointed Thomas Davidson to lead the business as President. Mr. Davidson's appointment follows the recent retirement of founder and CEO Mike Kelly after more than two decades at the helm.

With over ten years of executive and operational experience in the travel risk management industry, Mr. Davidson provides continuity for clients given his five-year tenure with On Call as Vice President of Sales and Marketing. During this time, he worked across multiple departments in all aspects of On Call's growth strategy and was a leader in the integration process following On Call's acquisition by Tokio Marine HCC in January 2016. In his new role, Mr. Davidson will be tasked with continuing to deliver the highest quality travel risk management and assistance services for organizations and their travelers, as well as further enhancing On Call's global reach and service offerings.

"The work that On Call has done over the last 22 years to safeguard travelers and navigate crises all over the world is a legacy to be proud of," said Mr. Davidson, President of On Call. "I'm honored to be entrusted with the next stage of the company's development. We look forward to helping more organizations develop customized risk management programs that help prepare, protect and aid travelers and their organizations."

Prior to joining On Call, Mr. Davidson served as Manager of Account Management at International SOS, where he oversaw client communications before, during and after crises in India, Haiti, Chile, Egypt, Libya, Japan, and New Zealand. His other past positions include Manager of the Recruitment Advertising Department at Philadelphia Media Holdings and Inside Sales Manager and Regional Operations Manager for EchoStar Satellite L.L.C.

"We are very excited to have Thomas Davidson step into the role of President of On Call International," said Matt Overlan, Chief Executive Officer of Tokio Marine HCC  Specialty Group. "Thomas is a strong leader who has the experience and business vision to take the company to the next level of providing travel risk management and assistance services to its customers."

About On Call International

When traveling, every problem is unique  a medical crisis, a political threat, even a common incident such as a missed flight. But every solution starts with customized care that ensures travelers are safe and protected. That's why for over 20 years, On Call International has provided fully-customized travel risk management services protecting millions of travelers, their families, and their organizations. For more information visit: www.oncallinternational.com; follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn; like us on Facebook and visit the On Call blog.

For more information, contact:

David Heffernan

SHIFT Communications

[email protected]

SOURCE On Call International

Related Links

http://www.oncallinternational.com


WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif., June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

WHEN: On Thursday, June 22, 2017, at 9 a.m. PDT

WHO:

Andy Hoar , Principal Analyst at Forrester Research. Andy is a leading expert on eBusiness and channel strategy who focuses primarily on B2B and B2B2C ecommerce, as well as issues related to enabling channel partner businesses for manufacturers.

Andy is a leading expert on eBusiness and channel strategy who focuses primarily on B2B and B2B2C ecommerce, as well as issues related to enabling channel partner businesses for manufacturers. Yoav Kutner , CEO and co-founder of Oro, Inc. Yoav was the CTO and co-founder of Magento, where he led product and technology development. He co-founded Oro to meet the growing demand for specialized B2B ecommerce.

Yoav was the CTO and co-founder of Magento, where he led product and technology development. He co-founded Oro to meet the growing demand for specialized B2B ecommerce. Roy Rubin , Magento Director and Advisor to Oro, Inc. Roy Rubin is a co-founder and the former CEO of Magento. In August, 2011, Magento was acquired by eBay, Inc., where Roy became a vice president and recently joined its board of directors.

WHY: The program will provide broad insight into effective ecommerce strategies for B2B merchants who are interested in learning how to evaluate, select, and adopt B2B ecommerce platforms to drive maximum business growth.

WHAT: This webinar will feature a roundtable format and offer an insightful conversation on the following:

B2B ecommerce Market Growth and Momentum

It's no secret that the rise of B2B ecommerce is inevitable. With Forrester reporting that 74% of B2B buyers prefer to purchase from a website because it's more convenient than buying from a salesperson, the time to start thinking about B2B ecommerce is now.

What B2B Buyers Expect and Need From Online Merchants

Learn what business buyers want when interacting with an online store. We will discuss how the expectations and requirements of B2B buyers are different from B2C consumers.

The Advantages of Open Source: A Robust, Flexible Ecosystem

An open source philosophy offers advantages to all types of businesses. Learn the benefits of an open-source approach and see if it makes sense for your business.

What Is An Enterprise Solution: What Matters and Why?

We'll discuss the key indicators enterprises should look for when investing in a solution and what it takes to succeed in an enterprise environment.

Top Capabilities and Features for B2B Ecommerce Platforms

Learn which features and capabilities are absolutely critical when implementing a B2B ecommerce platform.

The Roadmap to Successful Execution

Review the steps and milestones for successfully executing a B2B ecommerce project.

WHERE: Register here. Reporters and bloggers are welcome to attend.

About Oro, Inc.

Oro, Inc., is the software company behind the Oro suite of open source commerce applications: OroPlatform, OroCRM and, most recently, OroCommerce. OroPlatform is a business application platform that helps companies accelerate their custom business application development; OroCRM is a CRM solution for multichannel companies; and OroCommerce, which launched in January, is an ecommerce platform purpose-built for B2B companies. Oro's founders were behind Magento's success and have deep experience in the ecommerce industry. They include Yoav Kutner, chief executive officer; Jary Carter, chief revenue officer; Dima Soroka, chief technology officer; and Roy Rubin, Director of Oro's Advisory Board, who is a co-founder and former CEO of Magento.

Contact:

David Wamsley

Rosebud Communications

415.259.9104

[email protected]

www.rosebudpr.io

SOURCE Oro, Inc.
PORTLAND, Ore., June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- PayRange Inc., maker of the world's simplest mobile payment solution for machines, announced it has been issued a United States patent for technology that sends machine events to the mobile device to notify users of the status of the transaction. This is particularly useful to communicate with consumers when an error has occurred during their purchase. Additional frustrations are avoided when they are automatically informed in real-time of a credit being applied.

PayRange Consumer Vending PayRange Refund ScreenShot

"Virtually everyone who has ever used a vending machine has lost money at some point," stated Paresh Patel, founder and CEO of PayRange. "It's kind of expected, but it doesn't have to be. We're reinventing the entire purchase experience and creating new innovations to make paying unattended machines easier." PayRange, backed financially by leaders in payment, has invested significantly in research and development over the past few years. An extensive portfolio of intellectual property, including 30+ issued and pending patents, demonstrates the commitment to lead in this space.

Competitive payment solutions for vending machines are a one-way interaction. The user inserts or presents payment and then the machine attempts to dispense. It was not cyclical until now. While some existing technology can refund transactions when an error occurs, the mobile user is left without any notification. With the newest patent, PayRange uniquely provides a two-way status communication back to the mobile device to inform the user of events related to the transaction. Enhancing the refund experience is just the start of how this innovation will be utilized. The technology can be applied beyond vending to expand experiences with kiosks, self- service checkout terminals, automated retail, and payment for the internet of things.

About PayRange:

PayRange was founded in 2013 by Paresh Patel to provide operators and consumers with the simplest, most accessible mobile payment solution for vending, amusement, laundry and more. Consumers download the free mobile app from either the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store. And with flexible funding options including all major cards, Apple Pay, and Android Pay, consumers are empowered to pay machines with ease. PayRange-enabled machines can be found in over 300 major cities across all 50 United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. Find out more at www.payrange.com.

Media Contact:

Amanda Mailey

855.856.6398 ext. 810

amanda.mailey(at)payrange(dot)com

SOURCE PayRange

Related Links

http://www.payrange.com


KNOXVILLE, Tenn., June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

WHAT: As providers shift their focus to a model that emphasizes preventive care for target patient populations, IT toolsand in particular, mobile technologyare critical to the transition. Co-sponsored by PerfectServe and FierceHealthcare, this free webinar explores how providers and payers are deploying mobile tools and applications to improve care coordination for high-cost, high-touch populations. Hospital and health system IT, health information management, privacy and security, and clinical management leaders are invited.

WHO: Featured webinar speakers are:



Jeremy Rogers, director of eHealth, Indiana University Health, is an accomplished digital leader with broad cross-channel expertise. He has led e-commerce and web product development teams, delivering exceptional results and channel growth as both a commercial stakeholder and technologist for more than 17 years. He joined Indiana University Health in late 2015 as Director of eHealth, responsible for digital user experience.

Darren Olsen, director of consumer innovation, UPMC Health Plan, oversees the health plan's portfolio of digital solutions that support core business processes, such as the member portal, mobile app and the Wellness Engagement Center. Under Olsen's leadership, the Consumer Innovation Department has grown significantly, representing expertise in human-centered design, visual design, product and service design.

Michelle McCleerey, PhD, MA, MEd, MBA, RN, vice president of product development, PerfectServe, provides strategic guidance on the evolving healthcare landscape to inform the development of solutions used by providers. She brings more than a decade of experience augmented by first-hand insights on clinician workflow at hospitals creating innovative and user-centered technologies.

WEBINAR TIME / REGISTRATION:

2:00 to 3:00 p.m. ET; Wednesday, June 14, 2017; click here to register.

Click here for photos of Jeremy Rogers, Darren Olsen and Michelle McCleerey.

PerfectServe Synchrony is healthcare's most comprehensive and secure care team collaboration platform. The platform is unique in its ability to improve communication process accuracy and reliability via its proprietary Dynamic Intelligent Routing capability, which automatically identifies and provides immediate connection to the right care team member for any given clinical situation at every moment in time. More than 100,000 clinicians in forward-looking organizations across the U.S. rely on PerfectServe to help them speed time to treatment, expedite care transitions, enhance the patient experience and reduce HIPAA compliance risk. Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook and subscribe to our blog.

Media Contact: PerfectServe Contact:

Angela Jenkins Heather Dorsett, MBA

Agency Ten22 Director, Content Strategy and Marketing

303.877.0115 855.871.7299

[email protected] [email protected]



SOURCE PerfectServe
Dial-in details for the earnings conference call are as follows:



Phone Number Toll-Free Number United States +1 8456750437 +1 8665194004 Hong Kong +852 30186771 +852 800906601 Mainland China +86 8008190121 +86 4006208038

Other International +65 67135090



Please dial in 10 minutes before the call is scheduled to begin and provide the passcode to join the call. The passcode is 35984787.

A replay of the conference call may be accessed by phone at the following numbers until June 23, 2017. To access the replay, please again reference the conference passcode 35984787.



Phone Number Toll-Free Number United States +1 6462543697 +1 8554525696 Hong Kong +852 30512780 +852 800963117 Mainland China +86 8008700206 +86 4006022065

Other International +61 281990299



Additionally, a live and archived webcast of the conference call will be available on the Investor Relations section of ReneSola's website at http://www.renesola.com.

For more information, please visit www.renesola.com.

About ReneSola

Founded in 2005, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2008, ReneSola (NYSE: SOL) is an international leading brand and technology provider of energy efficient products. Leveraging its global presence and expansive distribution and sales network, ReneSola is well positioned to provide its highest quality green energy products and on-time services for EPC, installers, and green energy projects around the world. For more information, please visit www.renesola.com.

For investor and media inquiries, please contact:

In China:

ReneSola Ltd

Ms. Rebecca Shen

+86 (21) 6280-9180 x106

[email protected]

The Blueshirt Group Asia

Mr. Gary Dvorchak, CFA

+86 (138) 1079-1480

[email protected]

In the United States:

The Blueshirt Group

Mr. Ralph Fong

+1 (415) 489-2195

[email protected]

SOURCE ReneSola Ltd.
LA JOLLA, Calif., June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- From the moment the US withdraws from the Climate Accord Pact America's input will become inconsequential. An online petition appeals to voters at: ResistBest.com.

By signing this petition US citizens will forewarn elected officials that they serve only at the will of the America People - that office holders have committed to represent their constituents - and that their reelection depends wholly upon the peoples' vote.

We petition the members of the U S Congress, both the House and the Senate, to follow their conscience, not their party, to put the well-being of our planet before partisan politics.

We petition all elected officials, whether Democrats, Republicans or Independents, to outspokenly demand that America reverse the Trump Admiration's intent to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord Pact.

We petition every public official to separate irrefutable fact from balance sheet fiction - to study and understand verifiable science - to govern with reason and statesmanship - to speak out - to vote - and to make personal integrity the hallmark of every 2018/20 reelection campaign.

MISSIonLINES has established three easy-to-remember web addresses:

SaveClimateAccord.com is a direct link to Reuters report "World pledges to save 'Mother Earth' despite Trump's snub to climate pact."

EnvironmentalBest.com opens California Governor Jerry Brown's press release "CA Governor Brown, NY Governor Cuomo and WA Governor Inslee Announce Formation of U.S. Climate Alliance -- Brown, Cuomo and Inslee Will Serve as Co-Chairs, Urge Other States to Join Alliance."

Together, with ResistBest.com, these three easy-to-remember mission lines deliver a complete and compelling story to share by Tweet, email, text, social media and the spoken word.

In order to ensure that America will continue to maintain its critical leading role of global climate responsibility the United States must remain at the Paris Conference table. If the US were to leave it would surrender America's authority, America's influence and America's leadership. Only through its voters' voices can America resist best.

Photo(s):

https://www.prlog.org/12644668

Press release distributed by PRLog

SOURCE missionlines.com

Related Links

http://www.ResistBest.com


NEW YORK, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- New polling data released by Deloitte indicates that many companies may be significantly behind in their efforts to implement the Financial Accounting Standards Board's new revenue recognition standard by the Jan. 1, 2018 deadline. Nearly 70 percent of respondents polled during the recent Deloitte-Bloomberg BNA revenue recognition conference said their organizations are still assessing how they will implement the new standard.

Issued in May 2014, the new standard  Accounting Standard Codification (ASC) 606  will change the way many companies book revenue and will affect all entities that have contracts with customers.

"Implementing the new standard is fast becoming a fire drill," said Eric Knachel, senior consultation partner in the professional practice network at Deloitte & Touche LLP. "From establishing a budget to ensuring proper data collection and testing system modifications, the implementation process requires substantial time and resources. Companies should not underestimate what a significant undertaking implementation will be."

Fifty-two percent of poll respondents do not expect the revenue recognition standard to have a material impact on their company's financial statements  a potential oversight that may cause further delays in the implementation process and might ignore the impact that accompanying disclosure requirements may have.

"Companies should recognize that while the standard might not affect balance sheets or income statements in some cases, it can still have a significant impact on related disclosures," warned Knachel. "A significant risk around revenue disclosures is a potential loss of investor confidence and a decrease in shareholder value."

Of the respondents to the poll, 45 percent indicated that their company has not started to assess its disclosure requirements while implementing the recognition and measurement principles, which may prove to be one of the biggest challenges of the implementation process.

Furthermore, 55 percent of the respondents indicated that their company has not started to assess internal controls from a revenue recognition standpoint, and 56 percent say their company has yet to establish a budget for implementation. While most respondents say their company is leveraging existing resources to implement the new standard, 30 percent say they are hiring external resources to help manage the accounting changes.

"As this poll indicates, many companies still have further to go in getting ready for the standard. We at Bloomberg BNA were happy to work with Deloitte to bring some of the important revenue recognition implementation issues to the fore," said Ali Sartipzadeh, managing editor, Bloomberg BNA.

"Revenue issues are the most common problem underlying accounting enforcement actions," says Knachel. "The clock is ticking, and it is critical that disclosures, internal control considerations, and adequate resources be front and center as companies work to adopt the new standard."

The poll was conducted at the Deloitte-Bloomberg BNA revenue recognition conference on May 8 at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. More than 400 responses gauging the expected impact and state of readiness for the new revenue standard were received from CFOs, controllers and senior finance professionals who participated in the poll.

For more information and guidance on applying the new standard, please see Deloitte's "A Roadmap to Applying the New Revenue Recognition Standard."

Deloitte's audit and assurance services can help organizations see further and deeper into their businesses. From enhancing trust in the companies Deloitte audits to assisting organizations in meeting the assurance demands outlined in regulations and standards, the organization helps a multitrillion dollar capital markets system function with greater confidence. An audit is more than an obligation  it's a powerful lens for illuminating the current state of an enterprise, providing insight that can inform future aspirations.

About Deloitte

Deloitte provides industry-leading audit, consulting, tax and advisory services to many of the world's most admired brands, including 80 percent of the Fortune 500 and more than 6,000 private and middle market companies. Our people work across more than 20 industry sectors to deliver measurable and lasting results that help reinforce public trust in our capital markets, inspire clients to make their most challenging business decisions with confidence, and help lead the way toward a stronger economy and a healthy society.

Deloitte refers to one or more of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, a UK private company limited by guarantee ("DTTL"), its network of member firms, and their related entities. DTTL and each of its member firms are legally separate and independent entities. DTTL (also referred to as "Deloitte Global") does not provide services to clients. In the United States, Deloitte refers to one or more of the US member firms of DTTL, their related entities that operate using the "Deloitte" name in the United States and their respective affiliates. Certain services may not be available to attest clients under the rules and regulations of public accounting. Please see www.deloitte.com/about to learn more about our global network of member firms.

SOURCE Deloitte

Related Links

http://www.deloitte.com/us


Led by President Benjamin Buchsbaum , the team at Richard Allen, Inc. excelled at the highest level in once again being honored for quality and results. "I'm exceedingly proud of our team's ability to consistently deliver top quality and results to the client," Buchsbaum said. "This recognition motivates us to continue to meet the high standards we have set."

Richard Allen, Inc. provides results-oriented services, public relations, new customer acquisition, and direct marketing, to clients with a commitment to integrity and profitability. The company focuses on creating long-term, profitable partnerships with corporate clients while connecting those clients with enduring customer relationships on a national scope.

Creating long-term revenue streams while expanding clients into new markets, Richard Allen, Inc. has built a culture that promotes balance, teamwork, and dedication. In 2015 and 2016, the company was listed in the 101 Best and Brightest Companies to Work For in the New York area. Giving back to the community is also important at Richard Allen, Inc., as evidenced by the firm's philanthropic support of Operation Smile, The March of Dimes Foundation, and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Like Richard Allen, Inc. on Facebook.

About Richard Allen, Inc.

Richard Allen, Inc. is a privately owned outsourced sales and marketing firm based in New York that focuses on new client acquisition and client retention in partnership with leading companies. Richard Allen, Inc. provides excellent service to the client as well as unique opportunities for its team members to develop professionally and personally and get involved in philanthropy. For more information, call 914-997-1400 or go to http://www.richardalleninc.com/.

Contact: Benjamin Buchsbaum

914-997-1400

SOURCE Richard Allen, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.richardalleninc.com


NOVI, Mich. and WARSAW, Poland, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Ridecell, Inc., the leading global carsharing and ridesharing platform provider, announces at TU-Automotive Detroit, its mobility platform will power a new carsharing program by SKODA Poland (part of Volkswagen Group Poland - VGP). Skoda Auto Mlada Boleslav (Part of VW AG) in the Czech Republic will drive the program, under the brand name Omni. Pol-Mot Auto, a Skoda dealership in Poland, will operate the service locally.

"With carsharing continuing to gain momentum as a means of convenient and affordable transportation, the Volkswagen Group Poland is looking to meet this demand with innovative mobility as a service offerings," said Piotr Maj, SKODA Digitalization Manager of Volkswagen Group Poland. "With the Omni program, we were able to quickly go to market with a new Skoda-based carsharing service by using the Ridecell new mobility platform."

The Omni service allows consumers to pick up and drop off Skoda vehicles at parking stations throughout the Warsaw metropolitan area. In addition, consumers can easily sign up for the Omni service with a simple app-based registration process that takes just minutes and then use the Omni app to instantly access all available vehicles in the service. Ridecell developed the Omni-branded application and powers the back-end operations of the service.

"We believe the Omni service will offer unmatched convenience for drivers who are looking for short term car usage and avoiding long waits at inconvenient car rental locations," said Piotr Boguszewski of Pol-Mot Auto. "We're excited to leverage our strengths as a car dealership for this new mobility offering, including our deep expertise in fleet management and vehicle maintenance."

The Omni service will take full advantage of the Ridecell platform including end-to-end automation, instant driver verification, payment processing, demand/supply balancing and custom analytics. The Omni-branded app and all operational features are fully localized in Polish.

"At Ridecell, we're excited to help the Volkswagen Group Poland define this new offering and introduce it to the market quickly. We believe the Omni program represents a smart transition from a traditional dealer business to a scalable service model," said Aarjav Trivedi, founder and CEO of Ridecell. "With the Ridecell platform, automakers can leverage their established dealer networks to expand offerings, operate efficiently, grow revenues, and increase their value to today's consumers. This introduction in Poland is a perfect indicator of what lies ahead in the smart automotive industry."

About Ridecell

Headquartered in San Francisco, Ridecell is on a mission to change the way people move from point A to point B. Our intelligent software platform runs new mobility services, such as carsharing, ridesharing, and new innovative transportation offerings such as autonomous vehicle fleets. End-to-end integration and automation accelerate time to market, enabling Ridecell customers to launch mobility services quickly, operate efficiently, and scale revenues as business grows. Founded in 2009, Ridecell has already processed over 20 million rides and has a team of more than 70 professionals in the US, Europe, Asia and Australia. The company now powers 20 mobility offerings including new mobility solutions for AAA Northern California, Nevada & Utah, BMW, SKODA Poland (part of Volkswagen Group Poland - VGP), UC Berkeley, UCSF, 3M, and SouthWest Transit.

2017 Ridecell is a registered trademark of Ridecell, Inc. Other brand names may be trademarks of their respective owner(s). Information is subject to change without notice. All rights reserved.

Media Contact:

Kacey Heller

[email protected]

+1 415.277.4917

SOURCE Ridecell
DALLAS, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Risk Theory, LLC, underwriter of the nation's largest dealer open lot program for independent agents, has expanded its offerings to include garage package coverage for franchised auto, heavy truck, and motorcycle dealers.

The Garage Program, led by industry veteran Bob Tschippert, is tailored to meet the unique insurance coverage needs of franchise dealers. Coverage is written on an admitted and non-admitted basis and provides the following coverages:

Property

Garage Liability and Garagekeepers

Commercial Auto

General Liability

Crime

Inland Marine

Discrimination

Data Compromise

Equipment Breakdown

Umbrella

The DOL program and the Garage Package are underwritten by insurers that are rated A- [Excellent] or better by A.M. Best & Company.

Retail insurance agents desiring access to this program should call 469-310-9142 or email [email protected] for more information.

About Risk Theory, LLC

Founded in 2012, Risk Theory is a privately held specialty lines insurance manager with a dedicated focus on delivering niche property & casualty insurance products to underserved markets. Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, Risk Theory is licensed to place policies in every state through its nationwide network of producers. Our mission is rooted in pairing market experts with essential products to drive the value and service needed to win in today's complex world. For more information, please visit www.risktheory.com.

SOURCE Risk Theory, LLC

Related Links

http://www.risktheory.com


LAKE SUCCESS, N.Y., June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- A new wave of robo-advisors, an increasing number of partnerships between wealth managers and widespread usage of inorganic intelligence will drive significant change and opportunities for the wealth management industry in 2017 and beyond, according to a new report developed by Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. (NYSE: BR) in association with Aite Group.

The report, "The Digital Revolution Reshaping Wealth Management and the Future of Financial Advisors," was released at a Broadridge panel discussion addressing key strategic industry questions and designed to help clients solve for today's business challenges and be ready for tomorrow's. According to the report, client assets on digital advice platforms are projected to more than double from $65 billion in the first half of 2016 to $160 billion by the end of 2017. The sharp rise is expected to come as many wealth managers roll out new offerings to prevent the potential erosion of assets following the implementation of the Department of Labor's Fiduciary Rule later this week. As a result, the robo-advisory market is projected to cross $400 billion in assets by the end of 2018, with the majority of assets managed by online brokerages and full-service wealth management firms.

"Those firms that leverage digital advice to attract the next-generation of clients, segment their existing client base by behavior or profitability, and ultimately, bring a high-end wealth management brand to the mass-affluent marketplace are the ones that will ultimately harness the competitive advantages of these innovative platforms," said Alois Pirker, Research Director of Aite Group's Wealth Management practice.

The report examines the major trends that are reshaping the wealth management industry right now, identifying the technologies and the evolution of business models that firms both need to be aware of and adapt to in order to stay relevant.

As wealth managers continue to grapple with balance sheet pressures, strict regulatory requirements, industry consolidation, financial advisor attrition, and other competitive challenges, inorganic intelligence  including artificial intelligence, machine learning, among other advanced technological capabilities  will continue to emerge as a key differentiator that enables firms to digest various forms of data, analyze investor sentiment and weigh potential behavioral probabilities.

"The future of wealth management is one in which investors will increasingly demand that their financial advisors can quickly and easily access and leverage technologies that will enable them to analyze large data sets and provide actionable insights," said Steve Scruton, President of Broadridge Advisor Solutions. "Predictive analytics will play a key role in helping advisors to learn more about their clients and provide the appropriate products and services at the right time."

Other key findings from the report include:

Wealth managers will seek previously unheard of working relationships with competitors amid the increasing sophistication of the market, regulatory risks, the benefit and opportunity from greater focus and specialization, and the continuing arrival of sector-focused technologies and technology-enabled competition.



Clients will increasingly have a far greater say in the products and services they want, where the products come from, how the products are delivered, and how they are charged.



Successful firms will focus their efforts on finding the sweet spot between high-tech and high-touch services, providing clients with a hybrid advice model that is a diversified business model.

About Broadridge

Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. (NYSE:BR) is a leading provider of investor communications and technology-driven solutions for broker-dealers, banks, mutual funds and other corporations. Broadridge's investor and customer communications, securities processing and managed services solutions help clients reduce their capital investments in operations infrastructure, allowing them to increase their focus on core business activities. With more than 50 years of experience, Broadridge' s infrastructure underpins proxy voting services for over 90% of public companies and mutual funds in North America and processes on average $5 trillion in equity and fixed income trades per day. Broadridge employs approximately 10,000 associates in 16 countries.

For more information about Broadridge, please visit www.broadridge.com.

Contact Information:

Media:

Gregg Rosenberg

Head of Corporate Communications

+1 212-918-6966

[email protected]

Brett Philbin

Edelman

+1 212-704-8263

[email protected]

Investors:

W. Edings Thibault

Head of Investor Relations

+1 516-472-5129

[email protected]

SOURCE Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.broadridge.com


COVENTRY and MANCHESTER, England, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

- Leading seafood company increases productivity, efficiency and accuracy with integrated EDI

TrueCommerce, a global provider of trading partner connectivity and integration solutions, announced today that Seafresh Group, a leading seafood company, has increased productivity, efficiency and accuracy since outsourcing EDI to TrueCommerce.

(Logo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/465186/HJ_TrueCommerce_Logo.jpg )



Keeping tight control over the supply chain plays a crucial role in ensuring that Seafresh Group supply safe, clean and consistently better tasting seafood. As part of its customers trading requirements, Seafresh Group has been trading via EDI for many years. However, when system and service issues with the company's incumbent on-premise EDI solution threatened to affect customer service levels, the decision was made to look for an alternative provider.

As a company that was growing rapidly, the first priority for Seafresh Group was to comply with its customers EDI requirements. Seafresh Group initially migrated across to the TrueCommerce web EDI solution, using the portal to receive and acknowledge orders, create and send ASN's and SSCC pallet labels, and create and send invoices. The solution enabled Seafresh Group to migrate from its existing unstable solution quickly and easily, with no investment required in software or hardware.

"The TrueCommerce portal was great when we didn't have an ERP solution or the time to stop and think about a more joined up approach. However, when I joined the business, I saw an opportunity to build upon the benefits we had seen since we moved to TrueCommerce through automation and integration," said Tim Hunter, Group Head of IT at Seafresh Group. "We wanted to eliminate the risk of human error and eliminate the time and effort that was being wasted in rekeying and cross referencing data, which were required due to the disconnect between our new ERP system and the information being sent from our customers through the TrueCommerce portal."

The decision was subsequently made to integrate the TrueCommerce EDI solution with the company's Oracle ERP system and WMS solution. Since integrating EDI with its back office systems, Seafresh Group has benefitted from significant productivity and efficiency benefits. The company now has a stable and scalable electronic trading solution that maximises efficiency and customer service levels.

"We've seen a reduction in risk by removing manual, error-prone processes, and an opportunity to refocus the team on tasks that can add value to the business as we continue to grow," said Hunter. "The online portal also makes troubleshooting issues and testing very flexible and we get great visibility of messages flowing in and out of the business."

"It's always exciting to help companies on their journey, particularly during times of growth and changing priorities and projects," said Matthew Wilcock, Manager, UK Sales at TrueCommerce Europe. "We have worked closely with Seafresh Group for a number of years now and their move from a browser-based solution in the early days to the fully-integrated solution they have now is testament to the range of businesses we are able to help, and our experience in providing the right solution at the right time. We are looking forward to working with Tim and the team as they continue to grow in the future."

To learn more about the TrueCommerce EDI managed service, visit http://www.truecommerce.com/uk-en/solutions/edi-managed-service

About Seafresh Group

Seafresh Group Limited is the UK holding Company of Seafresh Industry Public Company Limited in Thailand through which the Seafresh Group is expanding its global aquaculture presence. With over 30 years of seafood presence in the global seafood market, a team of seasoned seafood professionals and a workforce in excess of 5,000 people globally, we work with leading global retailers and food service businesses to provide the highest quality, responsibly sourced seafood at the best value to our customers and end-consumers.

For more information, visit http://www.seafresh-group.com

About TrueCommerce Europe

TrueCommerce in Europe is the brand name that brings together three market leading EDI vendors in Europe: Wesupply, Atlas Products and HighJump B2Bi. TrueCommerce Europe delivers the next generation of EDI and e-Invoicing managed service to companies large and small looking to improve efficiency and reduce cost. TrueCommerce Europe is part of the global TrueCommerce and HighJump business serving 15,000 customers with almost 800 staff deployed.

For more information, visit http://www.truecommerce.com/uk-en

Contact: Claire Gibbons ([email protected] / +44(0)2476-855-881)

SOURCE TrueCommerce
NEW YORK, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Purcell Julie & Lefkowitz LLP, a class action law firm dedicated to representing shareholders nationwide, is investigating a potential breach of fiduciary duty claim involving the board of directors of Advanced Drainage Systems, Inc. (NYSE: WMS).

If you are a shareholder of Advanced Drainage Systems, Inc. and are interested in obtaining additional information regarding this investigation, free of charge, please visit us at:

http://pjlfirm.com/advanced-drainage-systems-inc/

You may also contact Robert H. Lefkowitz, Esq. either via email at [email protected] or by telephone at 212-725-1000. One of our attorneys will personally speak with you about the case at no cost or obligation.

Purcell Julie & Lefkowitz LLP is a law firm exclusively committed to representing shareholders nationwide who are victims of securities fraud, breaches of fiduciary duty and other types of corporate misconduct. For more information about the firm and its attorneys, please visit http://pjlfirm.com. Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

SOURCE Purcell Julie & Lefkowitz LLP

Related Links

http://www.pjlfirm.com


Richard Pattison, Manager of News Technology at Sky News, said, "Our live declaration coverage in 2015 won huge plaudits and audience appreciation, a Guinness World Record for Most Concurrent Live Web Streams for an Event and The TVB Europe Best Live Broadcast Award 2015. The technology allowed us to bring results to the nation as they happened and this editorial advantage was made possible by our partnership with LiveU. It simply wouldn't have been achievable using traditional newsgathering methods and now we are expanding our live coverage for 2017 to make the night even more alive for our viewers."

Once again, Sky News will be using an IP set-up in a specially built studio  including a huge video wall for all the incoming feeds  then taking selected live feeds for broadcast via its Network Operations Centre. All live feeds will be available online via YouTube Live.

LiveU Central, the company's unified management platform, will be key to the project. It provides those in the studio with both remote monitoring and control capabilities, providing essential access to units in real-time.

Sky News has recently expanded its permanent fleet of LiveU units, including the recently launched flagship LU600. Sky News has LiveU units across the UK and in Los Angeles, two in Washington D.C. and one each in New York, Delhi, Moscow and Jerusalem.

Pattison added, "Using cellular bonding has fundamentally changed the way we can approach news reporting and has considerably increased our live coverage because their technology allows us to broadcast from places we simply couldn't before. With our foreign coverage, previously we would only have been live from our actual bureau. Now we can be out and about in the field with LiveU units getting us far closer to the story."

Ronen Artman, VP of Marketing with LiveU, said, "We're genuinely delighted to be working with Sky News again on a project of even greater scale than last time. For live events like this TV has real power, with YouTube providing flexibility for viewers and additional reach. We applaud the ambition of Sky News."

About LiveU

LiveU is driving the live video revolution, providing live video streaming for TV, mobile, online and social media. Let your audience become part of your story with high-quality and flawless live video, transmitted from anywhere in the world, through the use of our patented bonding and video transport technology. LiveU creates a consistent bandwidth and a reliable connection so you can acquire, manage and distribute high quality remote live broadcasts over IP. Our broad portfolio of products sets the industry standard for live video production. From backpacks to smartphones, and satellite/cellular hybrid to external antenna solutions, LiveU offers a complete range of devices for live video coverage anytime, anywhere. In addition, LiveU offers extensive cloud-based management and video distribution solutions. With over 2,000 customers in 80+ countries, LiveU's technology is the solution of choice for global broadcasters, online media, news agencies and social media. For more information, visit, or follow us on, Facebook, YouTube, or Instagram.

Contact: Joss Armitage

+44-7979-908-547

[email protected]

SOURCE LiveU

Related Links

http://www.liveu.tv


BRUNI, Texas, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- In November 2016, Raven announced plans to build the South Texas Energy Complex, an oil refinery near Laredo, TX, between the towns of Bruni and Hebbronville, which they estimate will cost $500 million. Since the announcement, Raven has claimed a wide-range of dates for submitting a TCEQ permit application. On February 1, 2017, Raven CEO, Christopher Moore, told the San Antonio Business Journal the company expected to submit a permit application by the end of the first quarter. With the end of Q1 2017 approaching, on March 29, Moore was quoted in Engineering News-Record saying engineering design is "just shy of 80%" complete. "We hope to be finalizing our engineering in the next 30-60 days." After multiple missed deadlines and eight months ignoring a dialogue with the community that will be directly affected, can Raven be trusted to build and operate a refinery? The STAR Coalition calls for public accountability, transparency, and a full release of project details from Raven.

The South Texans Against the Refinery (STAR) Coalition, formed to oppose the proposed Raven Petroleum refinery in Duval County, is calling on Raven to release detailed project plans, to allow for an open community conversation on the environmental and health risks. An approved permit from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) is required before Raven can begin construction, and the company has missed yet another self-imposed deadline to file a permit application. This development continues a pattern by Raven of publically setting timelines and expectations and not adhering to them.

"Raven Petroleum has demonstrated once again that they aren't reliable," said Tricia Cortez, STAR Coalition member and Executive Director of the Rio Grande International Study Center. "Operating a refinery puts the environment, people's health, and our safety at risk. This has been shown in countless refinery accidents and tragedies in Texas and throughout the world. Raven has no track record to show it is up to managing such a public risk."

Without filing a TCEQ permit application by this time, it will be nearly impossible for Raven to begin construction of the proposed refinery in 2017 and operational by the end of 2018, as the company often claims. While Raven has once again blown through a deadline, several government related entities are making policy decisions based on Raven's ever-changing timeline. Without a TCEQ permit application and $500 million from investors, the project cannot move forward. If the proposed refinery is founded on smokescreen promises, the community deserves to know the truth.

About South Texans Against the Refinery: South Texans Against the Refinery (STAR) is a coalition of residents, landowners, and organizations who are concerned that Raven Petroleum's proposed refinery in the tri-county area (Duval, Webb, and Jim Hogg counties) will cause harmful air pollution, threaten local water supplies, and disrupt area wildlife for generations to come.

Media Contact

Tricia Cortez

Phone: (956) 718-1063

[email protected]

SOURCE South Texans Against the Refinery
DALLAS, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Southwest Airlines Co. (NYSE: LUV) (the "Company") today reported its May and year-to-date preliminary traffic statistics.

The Company flew 11.2 billion revenue passenger miles (RPMs) in May 2017, an increase of 3.4 percent from the 10.9 billion RPMs flown in May 2016. Available seat miles (ASMs) increased 4.0 percent to 13.2 billion in May 2017, compared with May 2016 ASMs of 12.6 billion. The May 2017 load factor was 85.4 percent, compared with 85.8 percent in May 2016. Based on these results and current trends, the Company continues to expect its second quarter 2017 operating revenue per ASM (RASM) to increase in the one to two percent range, as compared with second quarter 2016.

This release, as well as past news releases about Southwest Airlines Co., is available online at Southwest.com.

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Specific forward-looking statements include, without limitation, statements related to the Company's financial outlook and projected results of operations. These forward-looking statements are based on the Company's current intent, expectations, and projections and are not guarantees of future performance. These statements involve risks, uncertainties, assumptions, and other factors that are difficult to predict and that could cause actual results to vary materially from those expressed in or indicated by them. Factors include, among others, (i) changes in demand for the Company's services and other changes in consumer behavior; (ii) the impact of economic conditions, fuel prices, actions of competitors, and other factors beyond the Company's control, on the Company's business; (iii) the Company's ability to timely and effectively implement, transition, and maintain the necessary information technology systems and infrastructure to support its operations and initiatives; (iv) the impact of governmental regulations and other governmental actions related to the Company's operations; (v) the Company's dependence on third parties; (vi) the impact of labor matters on the Company's business; and (vii) other factors, as described in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the detailed factors discussed under the heading "Risk Factors" in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2016.

Southwest Airlines Co. Preliminary Comparative Traffic Statistics















MAY

2017

2016

Change Revenue passengers carried 11,269,941

10,880,898

3.6% Enplaned passengers 13,706,047

13,248,940

3.5% Revenue passenger miles (000s) 11,232,347

10,859,110

3.4% Available seat miles (000s) 13,157,810

12,649,853

4.0% Load factor 85.4%

85.8%

(0.4) pts. Average length of haul 997

998

(0.1)% Trips flown 115,703

111,802

3.5%













YEAR-TO-DATE

2017

2016

Change Revenue passengers carried 51,902,833

49,825,259

4.2% Enplaned passengers 62,745,062

60,483,593

3.7% Revenue passenger miles (000s) 51,803,372

49,626,054

4.4% Available seat miles (000s) 63,227,506

60,343,735

4.8% Load factor 81.9%

82.2%

(0.3) pts. Average length of haul 998

996

0.2% Trips flown 552,018

535,558

3.1%

SW-T

SOURCE Southwest Airlines Co.

Related Links

http://www.southwest.com


SUMMIT, N.J., June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Specialty Program Group (SPG), a leading insurance holding company for specialty underwriting facilities, announced today that it has acquired the assets of MarketScout's workers compensation underwriting unit, to be re-branded by SPG as Specialty Comp Insurance Solutions. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Based in Dallas, Texas, MarketScout's workers compensation underwriting unit is a national workers compensation facility specializing in underwriting for hard to place, high hazard risks in various industries including transportation, construction, healthcare, retail, and manufacturing.

"We build programs that deliver unique customer solutions and solid ROE for our underwriting partners. SPG supports this objective so they clearly became the best choice for a transaction on our Workers Comp MGA. SPG will now own a long standing successful Workers Comp MGA under the leadership of Jay Chase and his excellent underwriting team. We will continue to support them via our wholesale Workers Comp division and will use the proceeds from the sale to fund InsureTech and MGA investments," said Richard Kerr, CEO of MarketScout.

"Joining the SPG team will allow us to partner with like-minded program operators and will add new breadth to our offerings and appeal in the rapidly growing program space. SPG will be a great catalyst for our program, people and continued success" said Jay Chase, who will come over from MarketScout as part of the acquisition and serve as President of Specialty Comp Insurance Solutions.

"Richard and Jay built a tremendous business that provides best in class solutions for their customers. We are excited for Jay and his team to join us as we help them take this specialty comp MGA to the next level" said Chris Treanor, President and CEO of SPG.

About Specialty Program Group

Headquartered in Summit, NJ, SPG focuses on expanding program underwriting and specialty businesses. For more information, please visit specialtyprogramgroup.com

About MarketScout

MarketScout is a specialty insurance distribution and underwriting company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. The firm is a Lloyd's Coverholder and MGA for U.S. insurers. MarketScout owns and operates the MarketScout Exchange and is the National Alliance's exclusively endorsed broker for Certified Insurance Counselors (CIC's). MarketScout is founder of the Council for Insuring Private Clients (CIPC) (www.privateclientcouncil.com ) and the Entrepreneurial Insurance Alliance (www.insuranceentrepreneurs.com). MarketScout has offices in Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Washington, DC. For more information visit marketscout.com.

CONTACT:

Media: Yiana Stavrakis

Phone: 908-790-6801

[email protected]

M&A: Chris Treanor

Phone: 908-790-6884

[email protected]

SOURCE Specialty Program Group

Related Links

http://www.specialtyprogramgroup.com


RANCHO CUCAMONGA, Calif., June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The R3 Academy, a new, 12-week, evidence-based Responsible Fatherhood program rolling out across California , is now accepting applications for its inaugural session in the Inland Empire. Presented by the relationship experts at Healthy Relationships California (HRC), the program, which will begin on July 11 at the Rancho Cucamonga Family Resource Center , is one of 15-20 R3 Academies taking place each year at sites throughout the state, including in San Diego, Los Angeles, Sacramento, and the San Francisco Bay area.

The R3 Academy is an innovative program, free to participants, that equips fathers for success in their three most important relationshipswith their child, with their intimate partner and/or co-parent, and at work.

"Dads can make the difference in a child's life for years to come," observes James Flowers, co-director of Healthy Relationships Orange County, who will lead the R3 Academy in the Inland Empire along with his wife, Kathy. "When you're a dad, your child looks up to you like a superhero. This program helps you learn how to be one!"

"Healthy Individuals + Healthy Relationships = Healthy Families & Healthy Communities," Kathy adds. "Let's do the math & solve the problem!"

The R3 Academy was developed by HRC, a nationally recognized Relationship Education organization, as part of a federal grant they won in 2015 to support Healthy Marriage/Responsible Fatherhood programming. Over the past 12 years, HRC has won a succession of multi-million-dollar federal grants, enabling them to serve over 200,000 individuals in evidence-based Relationship Education curricula through local Partnering Organizations throughout California.

Participants in the R3 Academy complete two curricula:

Raising World Class Kids a 16-hour evidence-informed, skills-based Relationship Education curriculum that helps fathers strengthen their relationships with their children and with their partner or co-parent.

a 16-hour evidence-informed, skills-based Relationship Education curriculum that helps fathers strengthen their relationships with their children and with their partner or co-parent. JAM (Jobs and Money) Sessiona 6-hour workshop that teaches financial literacy and offers employment support.

Some participants also are eligible for additional services to help them fully integrate their new skills into their daily lives.

The Rancho Cucamonga R3 Academy will meet for 12 weeks on Tuesdays, from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., starting on July 11.

Interested fathers or father figures aged 18-50 must apply by July 3 , via an on-line Eligibility Survey: https://r3academy.org/register/. Walk-ins are not accepted; participants must pre-apply to be included in the program.

Two Info Nights will be held on June 16 and June 20, from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., to give an overview of the program and participant responsibilities. The Info Nights will take place at the Rancho Cucamonga Family Resource Center, 9791 Arrow Route, Rancho Cucamonga, CA 91730.

For more information, visit the R3 Academy website: https://r3academy.org/san-bernardino/

Funding for this project was provided by the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Grant: #90FK0108. These services are available to all eligible persons, regardless of race, gender, age, disability, or religion.

SOURCE Healthy Relationships California
BLOOMINGTON, Ill., June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Illinois Corn Growers Association President Justin Durdan, a farmer from Utica, issued the following statement regarding President Donald Trump's comments in support of improving our nation's aging waterways transportation system.

"It really was quite something to hear President Trump's remarks today that he delivered along the Ohio River with a barge in the background. He is the first president in quite some time to acknowledge the need to upgrade our inland waterways infrastructure. Those of us in agriculture that rely on our rivers to move goods know that without the necessary improvements to these systems, we'd be at a distinct disadvantage as a nation. Each day that passes with the system in decline represents a loss in our competitive advantage.

"With just one speech, President Trump raised this issue to a position of prominence in our national consciousness as he identified it as a priority for his administration. As he said he would, the president is paying attention to the needs of rural America and has pledged to do what he can to improve the system. Those improvements will help return the U.S. to the top spot of global competitiveness in regard to moving goods on our nation's rivers and inland waterways.

"We look forward to more details coming from the Trump administration and will eagerly participate in all opportunities to provide input to modernize our nation's aging system of locks and dams."

About ICGA

Illinois Corn Growers Association is a state-based organization that represents the interests of corn farmers in Illinois, maintaining a high profile on issues in Washington, DC, and Springfield, IL. They aim to create and maintain opportunities for Illinois corn farmers to capture more value for their product. In order to fulfill this mission, the organization conducts governmental affairs activities at all levels, market development projects, and educational and member service programs. For further information regarding their work and involvement, visit their website www.ilcorn.org.

SOURCE Illinois Corn Growers Association

Related Links

http://www.ilcorn.org


CITY OF INDUSTRY, California, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Sugarmade, Inc. (OTCQB:SGMD), today announces the signing of a supply agreement that consists accumulative of $3 million hydroponic supplies orders, which will be delivered over the coming 12-month period. As a result of these new orders, the new business to business website, www.CaliGrownSupplies.com, which launched last week, and other new product introductions, the Company is fulfilling its commitment to expand its business operations into the very fast growing hydroponic and growing supplies marketplace.

Mr. Jimmy Chan, CEO, commented, "This represents a major milestone for Sugarmade and a huge jumpstart into the new market segment. Our other business divisions are already producing strong results, so these new orders will be additive to our already growing level of success. We are expecting calendar 2017 to be a terrific year as we expand further into the market for hydroponic supplies. We are able to take on this new business as a result of our balance sheet restructuring, which is ongoing, and new working capital that has come into the Company. This has added a significant amount of flexibility to our business and will allow us to further expand our operations."

Under the terms of the twelve-month agreement, Sugarmade will manufacturer and distribute various hydroponic supplies, which will be placed into various retail and online sales venues.

About Sugarmade, Inc. (OTCQB:SGMD)

Sugarmade, Inc. is a product and brand marketing company investing in products and brands with disruptive potential. Sugarmade's brands include CaliGrownSupplies.com, CarryOutSupplies.com, FreeHand ThumbTray, and Sriracha Seasoning Stix, a revolutionary culinary seasoning product under official license from Irwindale, California- based Huy Fong Foods, Inc., the maker of Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce. For more information on the Company's products, please visit www.Sugarmade.com .

For inquiries please contact Jimmy Chan at +1-888-982-1628 or [email protected] .

SOURCE Sugarmade, Inc.
LEXINGTON, Ky., June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Summit Biosciences Inc. announced today that Ted A. Marcuccio has been appointed Chief Business Officer. He will be responsible for cultivating strategic alliances to facilitate the further development and commercialization of Summit's portfolio and pipeline and promoting the company's continued growth in the market for prescription and over-the-counter nasal spray products.

Mr. Marcuccio has over 15 years of executive experience with leading companies in the pharmaceutical industry. He has played an instrumental role in a wide range of corporate transactions as a business development executive and former investment banker. He has a vast network of contacts in the healthcare and life sciences industry and strong relationships in the capital markets.

"Ted Marcuccio brings to Summit a wealth of relevant experience, expertise and relationships that will help the company bring new nasal products to market," said Edwin Cohen, Summit's Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. "Summit has a proven capability to develop and manufacture prescription nasal spray products that patients, doctors, and insurers find increasingly attractive and affordable in delivering medicines for chronic and emergency use," said Mr. Marcuccio. "I am excited for the opportunity to join Summit's leadership team to help drive the next phase of the company's growth in the global pharmaceutical market."

Most recently, Mr. Marcuccio led government and commercial development and alliance management for Meridian Medical Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of Pfizer Inc., which specialized in emergency use pharmaceuticals delivered with its proprietary auto-injector technology. He was Vice President and Head of Licensing and Business Development for Meridian's former parent company, King Pharmaceuticals, Inc., until its acquisition by Pfizer in 2011. Previous to joining King in 2004, he was Vice President of Vaccines Business Development for Baxter International.

About Summit

Summit Biosciences Inc. (www.summitbiosciences.com) is a privately-held specialty pharmaceutical company that develops, manufactures and commercializes prescription and innovative nasal spray products. The company has approved and development-stage products across a range of indications. The company's headquarters and base of operations are in Lexington, KY.

SOURCE Summit Biosciences Inc.

Related Links

http://www.summitbiosciences.com


WASHINGTON, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In the 2016 election, voters across the country demanded that our immigration policies serve the interests of the nation and that our immigration laws be effectively enforced. President Trump promised to secure our borders and protect American workers and taxpayers, but he can't do it alone. Is Congress paying attention the voters, or will it remain missing in action and instead return to business as usual in Washington?

On June 28 and 29, more than 60 talk radio hosts from around the country will be in Washington, D.C., for the 11th annual Hold Their Feet to the Fire radio row event sponsored by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). The aim of the talk hosts and FAIR is to hold a national conversation with voters in all 50 states about what is happening, what isn't happening, and what needs to be done to get things moving.

"The goal of this year's event is to call upon President Trump to honor the promise he made to voters in 2016 and demand that the 115th Congress implements real reforms to our nation's immigration policies," said Bob Dane, executive director of FAIR. "Time is of the essence and the president's legislative priorities on immigration need to start moving forward."

"Unlike past years, Hold Their Feet to the Fire 2017 will not focus on stopping harmful immigration legislation and lawless executive policies that undermine the security and interests of the American people. This year it's different," Dane continued. "Our job now is to make sure that promises made to the American people are fulfilled."

Over 60 talk radio personalities and dozens of members of Congress, administration officials, policy experts, law enforcement professionals, and people whose lives have been forever impacted by our failed immigration policies will discuss a host of issues, including:

Enhancing border security and construction of a secure border fence.

Reversing reckless and unconstitutional Obama-era executive policies.

The need for mandatory E-Verify to discourage illegal immigration and protect American workers.

Ensuring proper vetting of immigrants and refugees from countries known to harbor or support terrorism.

Eliminating sanctuary policies that protect illegal aliens and endanger public safety.

Reforming our legal immigration policy to ensure that the people we admit can succeed and benefit the nation.

Credentialed media are encouraged to attend and have unrestricted access to all hosts and the broad spectrum of guest interviewees on-site. Feet to Fire 2017 will take place at the Phoenix Park Hotel, 520 North Capitol Street from 6 am until 9 pm on June 28 and 29. Pre-registration is not required but media must check-in at the Event Desk and present credentials.

Contact FAIR's press secretary Cassie Williams for further details at [email protected] or 202-328-7004.

ABOUT FAIR

Founded in 1979, FAIR is the country's largest immigration reform group. With more than 1.3 million members and supporters nationwide, FAIR fights for immigration policies that serve national interests, not special interests. FAIR believes that immigration reform must enhance national security, improve the economy, protect jobs, preserve our environment, and establish a rule of law that is recognized and enforced.

SOURCE FAIR

Related Links

http://www.fairus.org


SAN JOSE, Calif., June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Shortly after acquiring the popular privately-owned reporting platform Raven Tools and closing another round of funding, TapClicks, Inc. has launched a significant upgrade to its world-class marketing report platform. These new capabilities provide a supercharged report building experience, superior to any other solution on the market, with features found only in TapClicks.

World-Class Reporting Platform

Babak Hedayati, CEO of TapClicks, said, "Our customers asked us to give them complete control of how they report their data and to make it easy to use. This new upgrade does just that. So far our customers have been extremely impressed by how well it works, how good it looks, and how intuitive the user interface is."

Highlights of the TapClicks upgrade include:

More reporting formats : Now, TapClicks offers even more reporting formats and customization options. The PDF Builder provides complete layout control so customers can send clients white-labeled PDF reports with custom images. Connections to Microsoft tools let users build on-brand Microsoft PowerPoint presentations with custom templates or export data to Microsoft Excel.

: Now, TapClicks offers even more reporting formats and customization options. The PDF Builder provides complete layout control so customers can send clients white-labeled PDF reports with custom images. Connections to Microsoft tools let users build on-brand Microsoft PowerPoint presentations with custom templates or export data to Microsoft Excel. New ways to collaborate and annotate with enhanced visualization: Targeted, precise visualization options support grouping, filtering, and drill downs into multiple data analytics levels that reveal fast-breaking trends through dozens of new plot options.

Targeted, precise visualization options support grouping, filtering, and drill downs into multiple data analytics levels that reveal fast-breaking trends through dozens of new plot options. More flexibility : The redesigned Report Builder lets users make live changes to marketing reporting widgets. Customers can resize, filter, and change almost every aspect of data displays in real time, pivoting between visualizations to find and show trends and insights.

: The redesigned Report Builder lets users make live changes to marketing reporting widgets. Customers can resize, filter, and change almost every aspect of data displays in real time, pivoting between visualizations to find and show trends and insights. Supercharged interface for performance: Along with many engine enhancements to increase speed, the extended visual editor capability makes resizing and reordering Custom Dashboards faster.

Along with many engine enhancements to increase speed, the extended visual editor capability makes resizing and reordering Custom Dashboards faster. More automation, with alerts : In conjunction with the redesigned report builder and new export options, the latest release offers the ability to create custom Performance Alerts. Performance Alerts allow users to create personalized notifications from over 175 data connectors. These can be used to notify customers about key performance indicator (KPI) changes and other business-critical data.

: In conjunction with the redesigned report builder and new export options, the latest release offers the ability to create custom Performance Alerts. Performance Alerts allow users to create personalized notifications from over 175 data connectors. These can be used to notify customers about key performance indicator (KPI) changes and other business-critical data. More support for a wide variety of winning marketing solutions: TapClicks integrates over 150 popular marketing and advertising platforms.

The new capabilities will help marketers and agencies specify the exact data they want to customize and report on. The new, customizable performance alerts will also help them stay on top of marketing campaigns in real-time.

The TapClicks analytics and reporting platform is preferred by large media companies and agencies worldwide. Discover more by visiting tapclicks.com. Stay tuned for more exciting information by following TapClicks on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

About TapClicks

Founded in 2009, TapClicks, Inc. is the leading marketing technology company for agencies, media companies, brands and enterprises, winning #87 in Inc. magazine's top 500 fastest growing companies. The TapClicks integrated Marketing Operations Platform solves the issues marketers have been facing for decades with workflow and order management, analytics, and automated reporting  all within a single intuitive user interface, and available on demand, in the cloud. TapClicks has delivered over 1,000,000 dashboards to over 10,000 brands and over 3,500 media companies and digital agencies worldwide. The TapClicks platform leverages over 150 native integrations with leading marketing and advertising platforms, giving users Instant-On access to reporting data. It rounds out its solution with the Import Wizard, which enables the platform to digest data from virtually any source. TapClicks operates out of offices in Silicon Valley, Boston, Nashville, Canada, Europe and Latin America.

PR Contact

Jon Henshaw

[email protected]

615-358-8481

tapclicks.com

Related Links

TapClicks

Data Connectors

Related Video

https://vimeo.com/215894876

SOURCE TapClicks, Inc.

Related Links

http://tapclicks.com


NEW YORK and MUMBAI, India, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) (BSE: 532540, NSE: TCS), a leading global IT services, consulting and business solutions organization, has been awarded the Pega 2017 Partner Excellence in Driving Customer Success: Advanced Practice Development Award. TCS demonstrated leadership both in the number of certified employees and breadth of certifications completed.

TCS is a Pega Strategic Consulting Partner, the highest level of services partnership. TCS has one of the largest Pega ecosystems, with more than 75% of its Pega focused employees being certified specialists. It also has a global business solution center focused on Pega technologies and established academic partnerships that enable TCS to successfully deliver business outcomes to shared Pega and TCS clients.

"We're happy to acknowledge TCS' high performance with this Excellence in Driving Customer Success Award," said Ken Nicholson, VP, Global Alliances, Pegasystems. "TCS continues to invest in a wide range of Pega product certifications and resources at the highest levels, which play a key role in delivering exceptional performance and driving customer success."

"This prestigious award reflects our continued commitment to position and deploy a full service play of Pega products to our clients, thereby enabling them to automate, transform and grow their businesses with greater efficiency and agility," added PR Krishnan, Executive Vice President, Enterprise Intelligent Application, TCS. "This award demonstrates the quality and depth of TCS' work with Pega."

In addition to this esteemed accolade, TCS Japan received the Best Partner Award from Pega Japan in 2016 and Best Business Transformation in Communication in 2015. TCS has also been consistently ranked highly across various analyst evaluations.

About Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. (TCS)

Tata Consultancy Services is an IT services, consulting and business solutions organization that delivers real results to global business, ensuring a level of certainty no other firm can match. TCS offers a consulting-led, integrated portfolio of IT, BPS, infrastructure, engineering and assurance services. This is delivered through its unique Global Network Delivery Model, recognized as the benchmark of excellence in software development. A part of the Tata group, India's largest industrial conglomerate, TCS has over 387,000 of the world's best-trained consultants in 45 countries. The company generated consolidated revenues of US $17.58 billion for year ended March 31, 2017 and is listed on the BSE Limited and National Stock Exchange of India Limited. For more information, visit us at www.tcs.com.

To stay up-to-date on TCS news in North America, follow @TCS_NA. For TCS global news, follow @TCS_News.

SOURCE Tata Consultancy Services

Related Links

http://www.tcs.com


CAMBRIDGE, Mass., June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- TCR2 Therapeutics Inc. announced today that it will present preclinical data from two of its TRuC engineered T cell programs at the World Preclinical Congress (WPC) being held June 12-16 in Boston.

Oral Presentation Title: TRuC-T Cells: A Novel Kind of Engineered T Cells for Solid Tumors Exploiting the Signaling Power of the Complete T Cell Receptor

Session Title: Advances in Targeting Agonists and the TCR Complex

Date & Time: Tuesday June 13, 2017 from 2:20-2:50pm EDT

Presenter: Robert Hofmeister, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer at TCR2 Therapeutics

The abstract is available on WPC's website at:

http://www.worldpreclinicalcongress.com/Cancer-Immunotherapy-Combinations/

About TCR2 Therapeutics

TCR2 Therapeutics is an immuno-oncology company that has pioneered a novel class of T cell therapies that utilize the full signaling power of complete T cell receptors (TCR). TCR2 has developed a unique proprietary TRuC platform which can reprogram the natural TCR complex to recognize specific antigens found on tumors where they elicit rapid killing of cancer cells. The company has demonstrated superior activity against both hematological and solid tumor targets in preclinical models compared to CAR-T and believes its TRuC-reprogrammed T cells will serve as a backbone for solid tumor therapies. TCR2 was founded in 2015 by Dr. Patrick Baeuerle and backed with a $44.5M Series A financing led by MPM Capital and F2 Ventures. It has since assembled a world-class team of immunotherapy experts and entrepreneurs located in the heart of Kendall Square in Cambridge, MA. For more information, please visit www.tcr2.com.

SOURCE TCR2 Therapeutics

Related Links

http://www.tcr2.com


Among the roughly 1,500 homeowners surveyed nationally for TD Bank's annual Mortgage Service Index, the overwhelming majority (90 percent) of millennial respondents said that now is good time to purchase a home and more than half (51 percent) plan to do so within the next year. Rising rates and the likelihood of additional rate increases motivated 40 percent of millennials to purchase a home recently and another quarter (26 percent) to begin the process of a home purchase.

"Although impending rate increases worry some potential homebuyers, they should keep in mind that rate hikes are a sign of renewed confidence in our economy and job market," said Ryan Bailey, EVP, Retail Lending Director, TD Bank. "Our survey data tells us that millennials are seizing this opportunity and leading the way with a favorable outlook on homebuying this season and beyond."

Following is an overview of additional results from the 2017 Mortgage Service Index:

Millennials are Steadfast yet Strategic Homebuyers

Millennials aren't just buying any home on the market, with half (48 percent) purchasing newly constructed homes and 29 percent leveraging an upfront mortgage for construction

Most millennials (85 percent) purchased their most recent home with a spouse or partner, but only approximately half (54 percent) did so after they were married

Ninety-four percent of millennials believe that the housing market will improve or stay the same over the six months

Limited Inventory Remains a Roadblock

The majority of homeowners (77 percent) had a positive experience with their bank or lender while obtaining a mortgage

Yet buyers still encountered barriers, including low inventory (28 percent, up six percent from 2016) and knowledge and confidence in navigating the process (21 percent)

In fact, forty-two percent of homeowners didn't feel that there were a lot of homes to choose from within their price range

"It's important for homebuyers to meet with their lenders early and often," said Bailey. "Talking to your mortgage loan officer before and during the mortgage process will instill the knowledge and confidence you need to navigate the entire mortgage process with ease. Surprises can be fun, but not when it comes to getting a mortgage for your home."

Human Guidance Promotes Optimism

Almost three-quarters (73 percent) of homeowners said their most recent buying experience was very good or excellent

Homeowners found information on mortgage products and services primarily from a realtor (46 percent), followed by an in-person lender visit (41 percent) and talking to friends, family and colleagues (33 percent)

Eighty-eight percent of homeowners feel they had enough resources available to educate them on the mortgage process, yet over half of respondents (54 percent), and the majority of millennials (65 percent), think banks and lenders could provide more relevant, helpful information online

Only 17% applied for a mortgage on the phone and 19% applied online, while the majority (64 percent) applied in person, signaling that face-to-face guidance is still #1 among homebuyers

Additional highlights from the TD Bank 2017 Mortgage Service Index are available at: https://mediaroom.tdbank.com/surveys

Survey Methodology

The study was conducted by research company Maru/Matchbox. Respondents were composed of a nationally representative sample of 1,543 American homeowners, with a margin of error of +/- 2.5 percent. Interviews were completed from April 24 through May 2, 2017. Data has been weighted by age, gender and region to reflect the population.

About MARU/Matchbox

MARU/Matchbox is a professional services firm dedicated to improving its clients' business outcomes. It delivers its services through teams of sector-specific research consultants specializing in the use of Insight Community and Voice of Market technology.

About TD Bank, America's Most Convenient Bank

TD Bank, America's Most Convenient Bank, is one of the 10 largest banks in the U.S., providing more than 9 million customers with a full range of retail, small business and commercial banking products and services at more than 1,200 convenient locations throughout the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Metro D.C., the Carolinas and Florida. In addition, TD Bank and its subsidiaries offer customized private banking and wealth management services through TD Wealth, and vehicle financing and dealer commercial services through TD Auto Finance. TD Bank is headquartered in Cherry Hill, N.J. To learn more, visit www.tdbank.com. Find TD Bank on Facebook at www.facebook.com/TDBank and on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TDBank_US.

TD Bank, America's Most Convenient Bank, is a member of TD Bank Group and a subsidiary of The Toronto-Dominion Bank of Toronto, Canada, a top 10 financial services company in North America. The Toronto-Dominion Bank trades on the New York and Toronto stock exchanges under the ticker symbol "TD". To learn more, visit www.td.com.

SOURCE TD Bank

Related Links

http://www.TDBank.com


NEW YORK, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation (ADDF), the only public charity solely focused on funding the development of drugs for Alzheimer's, and Science Exchange today announced the launch of ADDF ACCESS, a first-of-its-kind online platform designed to match scientists working on central nervous system (CNS) diseases with a vetted network of contract research organizations (CROs).

ADDF ACCESS meets the unique needs of scientists in both academia and small biotech companies by combining the resources of Science Exchange, the world's leading marketplace for outsourced research and development, with the Alzheimer's drug discovery knowledge of the ADDF.

"Drug discovery requires a wide range of expertise, from medicinal chemistry and pharmacology to project management and regulatory affairs," said Lauren Friedman, Ph.D., ADDF ACCESS program director. "Researchers don't always have the interdisciplinary teams needed to develop a drug. We created the new ACCESS website with Science Exchange to connect researchers with high-quality CROs and provide guidance and resources to help successfully advance their drug programs."

On ADDF ACCESS, scientists will find:

A network of CROs and consultants with CNS drug discovery expertise, vetted by the ADDF and Science Exchange

An expert concierge service to match scientists with the right CROs, solicit multiple competitive quotes, and manage projects

A library of educational resources, including a guide to CNS drug discovery and development

"Early-stage drug research is the engine that drives progress in treating Alzheimer's and CNS diseases," said Dr. Howard Fillit, M.D., executive director and chief science officer of the ADDF. "We are excited to provide a resource specifically designed to facilitate connections that fuel this engine. Every scientific discovery gets us closer to finding a treatment."

"Eliminating the laborious, resource-intensive process of finding and negotiating with CROs and other service providers helps researchers focus on their important work, and that's what Science Exchange is all about," said Elizabeth Iorns, Ph.D., CEO and co-founder of Science Exchange. "We are thrilled to partner with the ADDF on this new ACCESS website that will give scientists specializing in CNS diseases the tools and services they need to bring important, potentially life-saving drugs to market faster."

To learn more, visit https://www.alzdiscovery.org/addf-access

About the Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation (ADDF)

Founded in 1998 by Leonard A. and Ronald S. Lauder, the Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation (ADDF) is dedicated to rapidly accelerating the discovery of drugs to prevent, treat and cure Alzheimer's disease. The ADDF is the only public charity solely focused on funding the development of drugs for Alzheimer's, employing a venture philanthropy model to support research in academia and the biotech industry. Through the generosity of its donors, the ADDF has awarded over $100 million to fund more than 500 Alzheimer's drug discovery programs and clinical trials in 18 countries. To learn more, please visit: http://www.alzdiscovery.org/.

About Science Exchange

Science Exchange is the world's leading marketplace for outsourced research. Science Exchange provides an efficient procure-to-pay platform for ordering services from the world's largest network of scientific service providers. Through Science Exchange, clients gain access to over 2,400 qualified service providers, all with pre-established contracts in place that protect client intellectual property and confidentiality. This increases scientists access to innovation and significantly improves their productivity because they are freed up from the administrative tasks and delays associated with sourcing, establishing and managing service provider contracts. At an organizational level, the Science Exchange enterprise program enables organizations to consolidate the long tail of research outsourcing spend into a single strategic relationship driving significant efficiency and cost savings. To date, Science Exchange has raised over $30 million from Maverick Capital Ventures, Union Square Ventures, Index Ventures, OATV, the YC Continuity Fund, and others. For more information, visit www.scienceexchange.com.

SOURCE Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation

Related Links

http://www.alzdiscovery.org


The collection was shot by accomplished Russian photographer, Victor Boyko. Boyko met Lynch in Moscow in 2009 when he took a portrait of Lynch, published in Vogue magazine. Although Boyko is a sought-after fashion and celebrity photographer in Europe and Asia, there is another side to Boyko that often takes him deep into isolated landscapes. Boyko's 2015 collection, "Soviet Presence", exhibited in London's Eastern Seasons Gallery, found him on far-out dirt roads photographing the remnants of once mighty Soviet military bases.

For the Twin Peaks collection, Boyko settled into the moody and mysterious backdrop of winter in the Washington state area where much of the Twin Peaks series was filmed, allowing him to capture the desolation and absence of people in ways that evoke those latent forces immortalized by Lynch through the Twin Peaks story.

The first limited edition print of each image from the Twin Peaks collection will be offered in a Benefit Auction on Paddle8, an online marketplace for collectors, presenting auctions of extraordinary art and objects. The live pre-bidding preview will begin June 20th, with open auction bidding from June 27  July 11. The entire Twin Peaks limited edition collection is exclusively available at afterwhite.com.

A portion of collection sales will go to benefit the David Lynch Foundation [www.davidlynchfoundation.org]. The DLF works nationally with at-risk communities (through veteran, prison, homeless, victims of violence, and inner-city youth programs) by providing individuals with an opportunity to practice Transcendental Meditation, known to be effective toward sustainable recovery from traumatic and stressful events.

After White offers relevant fine art photography for those who seek evocative, exceptional images. Highest quality, limited edition collections by accomplished, working photographers worldwide who visually capture genuine, empowering images for today's global art buyer. Your space. Your energy. [afterwhite.com]

SOURCE After White Gallery

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ATLANTA, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Health officials and pest experts are warning that an increase in tick populations can be expected this year. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued a concern due to the steady increase in infections from tickborne diseases. Ticks are vectors that can carry infectious agents such as bacteria, viruses and cause human diseases such as Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain spotted fever.

"There's such a rapid growth in population this year because of the mild winter we had in conjunction with our humid climate," said Charlie Jones, Arrow Pest Expert. "Ticks are a year-round threat; however, we want to encourage people to be extra vigilant this time of year when ticks are most active. The tick populations are only going to increase over the next few weeks."

Jones also suggests that since more buildings and structures are being developed this year, there is a displacement of rodents such as rats and mice, which would increase the chance of infested wildlife moving into and around homes. These rodents are renowned carriers of fleas and ticks.

To help homeowners protect their families and homes from a tick infestation this year, Arrow Exterminators recommends the following simple, proactive measures:

Maintain your yard. This includes cutting tall grass, shrubbery, bushes and plants.

Groom your pets such as dogs and cats. Ticks can easily latch onto pets when they are outside.

Ticks are frequently found on rodents, so make sure your home is clean and rodent-free.

When spending time outdoors, wear long-sleeved shirts and pants, and if possible, wear clothing light in color so ticks are easier to detect. Also, use a tick repellant containing DEET or Permethrin.

Check yourself and pets for ticks whenever coming in from the outside. If any are found, quickly remove the tick or flea from your body with fine-tipped tweezers.

Tumble-dry clothes in a dryer on high heat for 10 minutes to kill ticks on dry clothing after you come indoors.

Contact a local Pest Control Professional if you suspect a tick infestation.

INTERVIEW/VISUAL OPPORTUNITIES:

On-camera or phone interview with a local Arrow pest control expert who can offer tips for homeowners to help prevent tick infestations.

Live inspection and flea or tick treatment at a home which is experiencing problems with a flea or tick infestation.

Photos/images of fleas and ticks.

About Arrow Exterminators

Family-owned and operated since 1964, Atlanta-based Arrow Exterminators is the sixth largest pest and termite control company in the United States, ranked by revenue. Arrow boasts a modern fleet of more than 1600 vehicles, 101 service centers and 1,850 team members with revenues exceeding $180 million. With QualityPro Certification by the National Pest Management Association, the company offers innovative and environmentally responsible services to protect homes and businesses of customers in Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas. Visit arrowexterminators.com for more information.

CONTACT:

Lauren Bullington

Arrow Exterminators

770-552-4943 / 229-591-0065

[email protected]

SOURCE Arrow Exterminators

Related Links

http://www.arrowexterminators.com


ATLANTA, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The editors of Autotrader have compiled their expert picks of the top certified pre-owned (CPO) programs available for June. With the summer season heating up fast, Autotrader doesn't want you to miss the chance to take advantage of some of the hottest deals available for like-new vehicles this month.

"If you're shopping on a budget, there are some great deals to be had among the many certified pre-owned offerings this month," said Brian Moody, Autotrader executive editor. "When purchasing a CPO vehicle that has passed a strict inspection by the original manufacturer, you've made a smart decision on a vehicle with many trouble-free miles ahead."

Helping you find the right car for the summer months ahead, the expert editors at Autotrader are excited to announce their list of the best certified pre-owned deals offered for June.

Autotrader Editors' Top Picks for Certified Pre-Owned Deals for June 2017

Acura's certified pre-owned program touts excellent coverage that offers 7 years or 100,000 miles of powertrain protection from the car's original sale date, plus one year of additional comprehensive coverage. In June, qualified shoppers can get a certified pre-owned TLX, ILX or TL sedan with 1.49 percent interest for up to 36 months.

Buick's certified pre-owned program offers a strong incentive in June. Qualified shoppers can get 1.9 percent interest for up to 36 months on any certified pre-owned Buick Enclave, Encore or LaCrosse -- a good deal that typically only applies to new vehicles.

Chevrolet's certified pre-owned is also offering a good incentive to qualified buyers interested in financing a certified pre-owned vehicle: 1.9 percent interest for up to 36 months on any certified pre-owned Cruze, Equinox, Malibu, Silverado or Traverse.

Ford's CPO program touts great coverage, and in June its CPO warranty boasts a budget-friendly special offer: Through the end of the month, qualified shoppers can get 1.9 percent interest for up to 66 months on certified pre-owned versions of the Fusion midsize sedan, Escape compact crossover and Focus compact car. That's a good rate over an unusually long period, especially for a used model.

Infiniti's certified pre-owned program is among the best on the market, as it offers coverage that lasts up to 6 years on many models. Through the end of the month, the automaker is offering 0.99 percent interest for up to 36 months on all certified pre-owned Infiniti models to qualified shoppers. That's one of the best CPO incentives available today.

Kia's certified pre-owned program is among our favorites, as it offers powertrain protection for up to 10 years or 100,000. In June, the automaker is touting 1.9 percent interest for up to 36 months on all certified pre-owned Kia models to qualified buyers. That's a great deal -- and one you'd typically expect to only find on a new car.

Subaru's certified pre-owned program touts two big benefits: no deductible, and full transferability to future owners. In June, there's yet another big benefit to getting a certified pre-owned Subaru: The automaker is offering 1.49 percent interest for up to 36 months on all certified pre-owned models -- a great deal for qualified shoppers.

Toyota's certified pre-owned program is good, touting up to 7 years of powertrain protection from the original sale date, plus an additional year of bumper-to-bumper coverage. In June, qualified buyers interested in a CPO RAV4 can also get a good incentive: Up to 1.9 percent interest for up to 60 months, which is a better deal than most other Toyota models.

For additional details on the CPO programs mentioned, please visit http://www.autotrader.com/car-deals/cpo-deals-june-2017-266390.

Learn more about the advantages of CPO at Autotrader.com's "What are the Benefits of Certified Pre-Owned?"

About Autotrader

Autotrader is the most visited third-party car shopping site, with the most engaged audience of in-market shoppers. As the foremost authority on automotive consumer insights and expert in online and mobile marketing, Autotrader makes the car shopping experience easy and fun for today's empowered consumer looking to find or sell the perfect new, used or certified pre-owned car. Using technology, shopper insights and local market guidance, Autotrader's comprehensive marketing solutions guide dealers to personalized digital marketing strategies that grow brand, drive traffic and connect the online and in-store shopping experience.

Autotrader is a Cox Automotive brand. Cox Automotive is a subsidiary of Cox Enterprises. For more information, please visit http://press.autotrader.com.

About Cox Automotive

Cox Automotive Inc. is transforming the way the world buys, sells and owns cars with industry-leading digital marketing, software, financial, wholesale and e-commerce solutions for consumers, dealers, manufacturers and the overall automotive ecosystem worldwide. Committed to open choice and dedicated to strong partnerships, the Cox Automotive family includes Autotrader, Dealer.com, Dealertrack, Kelley Blue Book, Manheim, NextGear Capital, vAuto, Xtime and a host of other brands. The global company has 33,000 team members in more than 200 locations and is partner to more than 40,000 auto dealers, as well as most major automobile manufacturers, while engaging U.S. consumer car buyers with the most recognized media brands in the industry. Cox Automotive is a subsidiary of Cox Enterprises Inc., an Atlanta-based company with revenues exceeding $20 billion and approximately 60,000 employees. Cox Enterprises' other major operating subsidiaries include Cox Communications and Cox Media Group. For more information about Cox Automotive, visit www.coxautoinc.com.

SOURCE Autotrader

Related Links

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IRVINE, Calif., June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Trace3, a pioneer in business transformation solutions, today announced that its 2017 Outlier Award has been given to Ron Fuschillo, CIO of Renown Health, at Trace3's annual leadership and technology conference, EVOLVE, which took place May 17-19, 2017, in Las Vegas. The Trace3 Outlier Award was created to recognize technology leaders who adopt innovative technologies to transform their businesses and drive market success. Winners are selected by an independent panel of judges.

In the healthcare industry, Renown is leading the way in the areas of TeleHealth and communications. With a largely rural population in Northern Nevada, telehealth is a vital part of healthcare delivery, allowing care providers to visit electronically with patients.

As CIO of Renown Health, Ron leads an organization that continues to transform and modernize remote care delivery and business operations with technology innovation. Under his leadership, Renown has made great strides improving the scope and reach of the hospital's overall communications platforms with significant recent investments in unified communications systems that offer enhanced wireless capabilities and improved call handling.

Specifically, Ron drove significant progress modernizing Renown Healthcare's technology infrastructure, including its data center, to improve overall patient care while supporting the hospital's long term growth plans. Under his leadership, the hospital selected Switch SUPERNap with locations in Reno and Las Vegas to eliminate geographic redundancy and create high performance applications that improve the end-user experience, while aligning IT spend with organizational priorities.

"I am honored to be recognized by Trace3 as this year's Outlier recipient," said Fuschillo. "Trace3's EVOLVE truly celebrates technology innovation, and leaves attendees inspired about the future of technology, and passionate about embracing the latest innovations to transform their business."

"The culture at Renown is very much focused on the patient, and we had to move IT's language and approach to be in alignment," Fuschillo added. "Our goals were always similar, but now we align around the patient experience, which unifies our teams. Working in healthcare requires the ability to live in two worlds, and I'm proud of our team for embracing the nuanced ways that we can improve how IT works with the rest of the organization while managing huge change in the data center."

As the Renown IT team continues to grow, Ron makes mentorship a foundational part of the fabric within IT.

"From the day a person starts in our group, we hook them up with a mentor," said Fuschillo. "Seeing people grow their career is an important part of what we are doing here, and we often see people achieve more than they ever thought they could."

Outlier award judges included Barton Warner, Vice President, Information Technology, Capital Group; Richard Giuli, Vice President, VP Engineering Platform Cloud Services, GE Digital; Bill Schlough, Senior Vice President and CIO, San Francisco Giants; Glenn Trattner, AVP-Technology, AT&T /DIRECTV; Mike Steele, Senior Vice President, PIMCO; and William H. Miller, Senior Vice President and CIO, NetApp.

Trace3's Outlier finalists for 2017 included Michael Josephs, Chief Information Officer and Chief Transformation Officer, American Advisors Group; Charlotte Field, Senior Vice President  Application Platform Operations, Network Operations of Charter Communications; Wes North, Senior Director of Technology, Cornerstone OnDemand; Dr. Marc Chasin, Vice President and Chief Information Officer, St. Luke's Health System; and Steve Phillpott, Chief Information Officer, Western Digital.

Resources:

See Ron Fuschillo's Outlier video on driving technology-enabled transformation at Renown Health

Outlier video on driving technology-enabled transformation at Renown Health For information about the 2017 Trace3 Outlier Awards, plus photos and video statements from the finalists, please click here: http://outlier.trace3.com.

Nominate your CIO or the IT leader in your company for the 2018 Outlier award, visit http://outlier.trace3.com/current-year.php

Evolve 2018 will be at the Mirage, Las Vegas , May 8-10, 2018

About Trace3

As an integrated Transformative IT Authority, Trace3 is the premier provider of IT solutions and consultation services. Through elite engineering and dynamic innovation, we empower executives and organizations to keep pace within the IT/corporate landscape through the transformative power of IT. Please visit our website at www.Trace3.com.

Media contacts:

Lumina Communications

Michael Gallo

212-239-8594

[email protected]

SOURCE Trace3

Related Links

http://www.Trace3.com


BARCELONA, Spain, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- TraceLink Inc., the World's Largest Track and Trace Network for connecting the life sciences supply chain and providing real-time information sharing for better patient outcomes, today unveiled an industry first: an integrated Compliance and Digital Information Platform for pharmacies with EU Falsified Medicines Directive (FMD) requirements. The new mobile and web-based application enables any pharmacy in the EU to easily comply with verification and decommissioning requirements under the FMD while simultaneously delivering a real-time dashboard for business insights on medicine scans, expiry dates, dispensation trends, product inventory and more. The new platform was revealed today at NEXUS 17 in Barcelona during the opening keynote session by TraceLink president and CEO, Shabbir Dahod.

The new Pharmacy Compliance and Digital Information Platform provides a single destination for pharmacies to meet their EU FMD requirements, which take effect in February 2019. Pharmacists who use the application will also benefit from user-friendly dashboard analytics that provide valuable insights from all transaction information that is captured within the application.

Pharmacists can also "opt in" to a service within the app that links them to participating pharmaceutical manufacturers, paving the way for a new digital communication channel designed to enhance the information-sharing between pharmaceutical companies and the healthcare providers who dispense their medications. Once they opt in, pharmacists will be able to receive specific and contextual pharmaceutical product information directly from the manufacturer  including details about indications, usage, best practices for product administration, and potential warnings and precautions - empowering them to deliver a more engaging and informative consultation as they dispense medicines to patients.

"TraceLink has broken new ground with this application, addressing a critical information gap that has existed for decades between pharmaceutical companies, pharmacists and patients," said Dahod. "Our unique approach of connecting the entire pharmaceutical supply chain on an interoperable network makes TraceLink the only company capable of offering this type of solution and facilitating a new era of real-time information sharing that will transform how the industry provides care to patients. This is the first in a series of steps we are taking to augment our effort of eliminating counterfeit drugs from the global marketplace with applications that deliver tangible and meaningful value to an industry that serves hundreds of millions of people who depend on prescription medications to improve their health."

TraceLink's new Pharmacy Compliance and Digital Information Platform merges EU FMD compliance capabilities with real-time insights into pharmaceutical products, offering EU pharmacists the ability to:

Easily submit EU FMD compliance data to their National System  Using the integrated camera on their mobile device of choice, pharmacists can scan the 2D data matrix code on the medicine at point of dispense.

 Using the integrated camera on their mobile device of choice, pharmacists can scan the 2D data matrix code on the medicine at point of dispense. Allow TraceLink to manage all verification and message exchanges with their National System  Once a medicine is scanned, the application sends the data directly to the National System. Upon receiving the query, the National System returns a message to the pharmacist, confirming the verification of the product and decommissioning of the unique serial number. A module on the application will display the scan status of all pharmaceutical products, allowing pharmacists to view all confirmed verifications, failed verifications, dispensed medicines and decommissioned serial numbers.

Once a medicine is scanned, the application sends the data directly to the National System. Upon receiving the query, the National System returns a message to the pharmacist, confirming the verification of the product and decommissioning of the unique serial number. A module on the application will display the scan status of all pharmaceutical products, allowing pharmacists to view all confirmed verifications, failed verifications, dispensed medicines and decommissioned serial numbers. Gain real-time insights into their dispensing operation  Pharmacists will be able to track ongoing trends, including information on pharmaceutical products that are dispensed most frequently versus those dispensed infrequently within their pharmacy. They will also be able to access the current status of product expirations across their pharmacy, leveraging valuable insights to maintain the safety and quality of the pharmaceutical products on their shelves.

Pharmacists will be able to track ongoing trends, including information on pharmaceutical products that are dispensed most frequently versus those dispensed infrequently within their pharmacy. They will also be able to access the current status of product expirations across their pharmacy, leveraging valuable insights to maintain the safety and quality of the pharmaceutical products on their shelves. Opt in to receive information directly from pharmaceutical companies  Pharmacists can agree to engage with pharmaceutical companies by receiving permissioned educational product content through the application. Specific product information, including pharmaceutical product images, indications, product administration directions, and other critical information is provided directly by participating pharmaceutical companies.

 Pharmacists can agree to engage with pharmaceutical companies by receiving permissioned educational product content through the application. Specific product information, including pharmaceutical product images, indications, product administration directions, and other critical information is provided directly by participating pharmaceutical companies. Enhance delivery of care through an improved patient experience  By leveraging the ability to access real-time information about the medicines they are dispensing, pharmacists and clinicians can now provide more engaging consultations that can be personalised to their patients' clinical conditions.

 By leveraging the ability to access real-time information about the medicines they are dispensing, pharmacists and clinicians can now provide more engaging consultations that can be personalised to their patients' clinical conditions. Store data securely  All services within the Pharmacy Compliance and Digital Information Platform will be provided by TraceLink via its secure Life Sciences Cloud where pharmacists can be assured of the confidentiality and anonymous nature of their dispensing information.

The Pharmacy Compliance and Digital Information Platform for EU FMD requirements is expected to be available by the first quarter of 2018. To learn more, please visit http://www.tracelink.com/solutions/eu-fmd-compliance-for-pharmacies.

About TraceLink

TraceLink is the World's Largest Track and Trace Network for connecting the Life Sciences supply chain and eliminating counterfeit prescription drugs from the global marketplace. Leading businesses trust the TraceLink Life Sciences Cloud to deliver complete global connectivity, visibility and traceability of pharmaceuticals from ingredient to patient. A single point and click connection to the Life Sciences Cloud creates a supply chain control tower that delivers the information, insight and collaboration needed to improve performance and reduce risk across global supply, manufacturing and distribution operations. A winner of numerous industry awards including Deloitte's Technology Fast 500 (ranked number 149 in 2016), the Amazon AWS Global Start-Up Challenge Grand Prize, and the Edison Award for Innovation in Health Management, the Life Sciences Cloud is used by businesses across the globe to meet strategic goals in ensuring global compliance, fighting drug counterfeiting, improving on-time and in-full delivery, protecting product quality and reducing operational cost. For more information on TraceLink and our solutions, visit www.tracelink.com or follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

TraceLink is funded by Goldman Sachs, FirstMark Capital, Volition Capital and F-Prime Capital.

SOURCE TraceLink

Related Links

http://www.tracelink.com


WASHINGTON, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The American Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation (ASBMT), American Society of Hematology (ASH), American Society for Gene & Cell Therapy, National Marrow Donor Program/Be The Match, Sickle Cell Disease Association of America, Inc. and Pediatric Hospital Sickle Cell Collaborative  in partnership with The House Research & Development Caucus, the Congressional Caucus to Cure Blood Cancers and Other Blood Disorders and the Congressional Sickle Cell Disease Caucus  today hosted a briefing on Capitol Hill to highlight advancements in sickle cell disease (SCD) research and treatment options such as bone marrow transplantation, the one proven cure for SCD, and genome editing, which shows promise for a future cure.

Congresswoman Doris Matsui (CA-6), Congressman Bill Foster, PhD (IL-11) and Congressman Danny Davis (IL-7) took part in today's event.

"Too often, people with devastating blood disorders like sickle cell disease face significant barriers to treatment. We need to be opening up more options for patients and making the federal investments in research that will accelerate the development of cures. As a co-founder of the Caucus to Cure Blood Cancers and Other Blood Disorders, I will continue to spread awareness about the challenges facing the rare and chronic disease communities so that we can give more families hope for the future," said Congresswoman Matsui.

"As co-chair of the Research & Development Caucus, it was an honor to help bring together these great panelists to help educate members of Congress and policymakers about the most recent developments in sickle cell research. I look forward to continuing to work with researchers and organizations on this important issue. As soon as technology produces a cure, we need to fast track it," said Congressman Foster.

Speakers at today's briefing spoke about the significant medical discoveries and advances that would not be possible without federal investments in the National Institutes of Health (NIH). NIH funded research has led to improved understanding and treatment of SCD, including the efficacy of transplants in curing SCD and stopping any additional damage to a patient's organs. Researchers are also exploring Genome editing as a tool to repair the gene that causes sickle cell disease, offering another potential cure for the disease.

"Our understanding of basic genetic biology is rapidly translating into promising curative strategies for people with SCD and other inherited genetic diseases," said ASH President-Elect Alexis Thompson, MD, MPH, of the Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago. "While genome editing research is still in early stages, it offers immense promise as a potential cure for SCD. Genome editing, transplant, and other advances in research and treatment give us an enormous opportunity to transform the way we care for people with SCD."

Bone marrow or umbilical cord blood transplantation is the only curative therapy for SCD patients. Data show that transplant for SCD can lead to improved quality of life. While an increased number of SCD patients have undergone bone marrow or cord blood transplantation in the last decade, experts estimate that less than one percent of the SCD population in the U.S. has received a transplant.

"Patients living with SCD today have a curative treatment path, which until recently, was not available for patients living in chronic pain and facing myriad health challenges. The availability of transplant for this patient population, and the promise of gene editing, are incredibly encouraging improvements for people living with SCD," said Linda Burns, MD, with the National Marrow Donor Program/Be The Match. "While we currently rely on a small, retrospective group of studies to inform SCD treatment, the body of knowledge and treatment strategies continue to grow. Further, it is important to remove barriers to transplant for patients with SCD, especially those patients who rely upon Medicare coverage."

"I am one of the lucky few SCD patients in the U.S. who has received a bone marrow transplant to cure my SCD. Since my transplant, I am no longer living in constant pain and I am able to live the active, high quality life I always hoped for," said Constance Benson, a transplant recipient and former SCD patient who spoke at today's briefing. "I am honored to share my story with lawmakers in Congress today with the hopes it will help more patients access life-changing transplant for SCD."

"Genome editing approaches hold the promise to cure SCD by rectifying a patient's own blood cells. Although we have long understood SCD as a 'molecular disease', treatment options have remained quite limited and crude. Now we are closer than ever before to developing 'molecular therapies' that tackle the root of the problem," said Daniel Bauer, MD, PhD, of Dana-Farber/Boston Children's Cancer and Blood Disorders Center and Harvard Medical School in Boston.

To encourage individuals to register as bone marrow donors, which is critical to expanding the registry and enabling more patients to receive transplants, Be The Match hosted a registry donor drive in coordination with their briefing on Capitol Hill.

SCD is a genetic blood disorder that is caused by a change in hemoglobin in red blood cells, which helps carry oxygen to all parts of your body. This results in blockages to the blood flow in small vessels, which can cause severe pain in SCD patients. SCD patients are also at high risk for damage to their lungs, brain, kidneys and other organs.

The American Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation (ASBMT) is a professional society of more than 2,200 physicians, investigators and other health care professionals from over 45 countries. The Society is dedicated to advancing the science and clinical care for patients who require blood and marrow transplants for blood cancers and other deadly diseases. Visit www.asbmt.org for more information.

The American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy is the primary professional membership organization for gene and cell therapy. The Society's members are scientists, physicians, patient advocates and other professionals. ASGCT's mission is to advance knowledge, awareness and education leading to the discovery and clinical application of gene and cell therapies to alleviate human disease. For more information, please visit www.asgct.org.

The American Society of Hematology (ASH) (www.hematology.org) is the world's largest professional society of hematologists dedicated to furthering the understanding, diagnosis, treatment and prevention of disorders affecting the blood. For more than 50 years, the Society has led the development of hematology as a discipline by promoting research, patient care, education, training and advocacy in hematology. ASH publishes Blood (www.bloodjournal.org), the most cited peer-reviewed publication in the field, which is available weekly in print and online. In 2016, ASH launched Blood Advances (www.bloodadvances.org), an online, peer-reviewed open-access journal.

Be The Match

For people with life-threatening blood cancerslike leukemia and lymphomaor other diseases, a cure exists. Be The Match connects patients with their donor match for a life-saving marrow or umbilical cord blood transplant. People can contribute to the cure as a member of the Be The Match Registry, a financial contributor or a volunteer. Be The Match provides patients and their families one-on-one support, education and guidance before, during and after the transplant.

Be The Match is operated by the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP), a nonprofit organization that matches patients with donors, educates health care professionals and conducts research through its research program, CIBMTR (Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research), so more lives can be saved. To learn more about the cure, visit BeTheMatch.org or call 1 (800) MARROW-2.

Sickle Cell Disease Association of America, Inc.

The Sickle Cell Disease Association of America, Inc. is a national nonprofit with the mission to advocate for and enhance our membership's ability to improve the quality of health, life and services for individuals, families and communities affected by sickle cell disease and related conditions, while promoting the search for a cure for all people in the world with sickle cell disease. SCDAA serves as the nation's only nonprofit organization working full-time on a national level to resolve issues surrounding sickle cell disease and trait.

SOURCE American Society of Hematology

Related Links

http://www.hematology.org


MADISON, Ala., June 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- TFab Manufacturing, LLC (TFM), a subsidiary of Tyonek Manufacturing Group, Inc. (TMG) and Tyonek Native Corporation was recognized by Sikorsky as Black Hawk Supplier of the Year. The recognition comes in addition to the company achieving Sikorsky Supplier Gold status for the second year in a row. Tyonek is one of only 15 companies worldwide to achieve this status.

"Sikorsky's Supplier Gold program recognizes the top one percent of our suppliers based on quality and delivery metrics," said Dave Gunzenhauser, Chief Procurement Officer, Avionics, Sikorsky. "Tyonek has consistently exceeded our targets earning not only Supplier Gold Status, but also our Black Hawk program Supplier of the Year honor. Our partnership with Tyonek helps us maintain our commitment to our military and commercial customers."

Tyonek builds numerous products including relay panels for Sikorsky's Black Hawk helicopter. Earlier this year, the company marked a significant milestone when the 10,000th relay panel for the Black Hawk was shipped to the customer.

"This is a significant milestone in the history of Tyonek and I am very proud of our team for these accomplishments," said Steve Adlich, President, TMG. "Our products are built to the rigorous quality standards that Sikorsky demands and this is recognition of our continued commitment to producing the best products possible to ensure our military's success. Tyonek has a long standing relationship with Sikorsky and these awards are acknowledgment of our employees' commitment to produce top quality products."

About Tyonek Native Corporation

Tyonek Native Corporation (TNC) is the parent company to a variety of subsidiary businesses in industries including ISO 9000 certified defense manufacturing and engineering, aircraft maintenance, information technology services, land and resource development, and construction. The company owns and manages over 200,000 acres of land, primarily on the West side of Cook Inlet in South Central Alaska.

An Alaska Native Corporation formed under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 (ANCSA), the company is governed by a board of nine directors and a management team who are accountable to a community of more than 900 shareholders.



The corporation's headquarters is in Anchorage, Alaska, with offices in Madison, Alabama, and subsidiary facilities located throughout the continental United States. For more information, visit www.tyonek.com.

SOURCE Tyonek Native Corporation

Related Links

http://www.tyonek.com


THALWIL, Switzerland, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

TOBY-L4 LTE advanced modules provide a secure, fully integrated gateway solution for automotive OEMs enabling data, voice, positioning, eCall and advanced telematics.

u-blox (SIX: UBXN), a global leader in wireless and positioning modules and chips, today announces the TOBY-L4 series of Automotive Grade telematics modules. The series integrates LTE, UMTS and GSM connectivity with a powerful embedded processor, enabling a wide range of applications on a single device.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150826/261282LOGO )



Connectivity is at the heart of the TOBY-L4 LTE Cat 6 modules, providing full gateway capabilities in a single device capable of delivering up to 300Mbit/s data rates with carrier aggregation capability. Its extremely small 248-pin Land Grid Array (LGA) format measuring just 24.8mm by 35.6mm by 2.6mm meets the size/weight/power limitations of in-car applications.

TOBY-L4 supports both voice and data in the form of LTE, UMTS/DC-HSPA+, GSM, SMS and Voice (VoLTE and CSFB). With support for eCall (operating also at +95C for at least 2 minutes) and ERA Glonass, the module meets all the industry and carrier requirements in place today and is future-proofed for all automotive OEM's key regions.

With 19000 DMIPS and hardware virtualization, the processor in TOBY-L4 is powerful enough to safely and flexibly support Linux/Yocto distribution, enabling customer's software applications to run securely alongside a wide range of pre-integrated communications protocols on the same device, enabling full application scalability without fear of hitting processor performance bottlenecks.

"The concept of the connected car is here," commented Stefano Moioli, Director Product Management Cellular at u-blox. "The TOBY-L4 series of LTE Cat 6 modules gives OEMs the ability to add connectivity with fully integrated applications in a secure system, without compromising with safety, performance or functionality."

Security is a critical feature in any connected device and the new series addresses this through the integration of secure boot and update features, supported by a hardware cryptography accelerator and true random number generator. A dedicated trusted execution environment provides further security for system software and OEM applications. Thanks to its embedded processor and comprehensive range of interfaces including R(G)MII and analog audio, TOBY-L4 removes the need for an additional processor and additional components in many applications, saving space, power and cost.

Manufactured in ISO/TS 16949 certified sites, the modules are qualified to ISO 16750 covering systems installed in vehicles, making it ideal for automotive OEMs.

The series of four modules provide extremely comprehensive band configurations, allowing the module to operate in the all markets of the world, throughout North America, EMEA, APAC/Brazil and China.

u-blox TOBY-L4 LTE advanced modules will be featured at the TU-Automotive Detroit Conference and Expo, 7-8 June 2017, booth B77.

For more information about u-blox, please visit http://www.u-blox.com

Stefano Moioli

Phone: +39-040-2603-703

Email: [email protected]



SOURCE u-blox
SALT LAKE CITY, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- USANA True Health Foundation (THF) celebrated its first-ever World Service Week during the week of May 20  27. Throughout the week, USANA Associates, employees and their families, as well as the general public made an impact globally as they volunteered thousands of hours of service.

During World Service Week, THF traveled with nearly 20 USANA Associates to Uganda, where they spent six days serving those living in villages and inner-cities near the Kampala region. While in Uganda, participants painted a local school, volunteered at the Wentz Medical Center as well as donated food and other service and aid to those in need.

"We are thrilled at the response we received from our entire USANA family throughout the globe during our very first World Service Week," said Brian Paul, THF's executive director of communications. "The impact we were able to make in just seven short days of service is truly remarkable. We look forward to continuing this initiative in the future and continue to serve our local communities and those in need all year."

USANA employees throughout the globe were enthusiastic to serve their local communities during World Service Week:

United States : Served dinner to those in need at St. Vincent de Paul Homeless Resource Center; donated more than 100 blankets to local hospitals; cleaned up the grounds at the Children's Justice Center; cleaned living spaces and cared for animals at Utah Animal Adoption Center; made toy cars for children in need at Tiny Tim's Foundation for kids; prepared and served lunch for families residing at the Ronald McDonald Family Room at Primary Children's Hospital; food packs with the Children's Hunger Fund in Dallas , Los Angeles and Chicago

Served dinner to those in need at St. Vincent de Paul Homeless Resource Center; donated more than 100 blankets to local hospitals; cleaned up the grounds at the Children's Justice Center; cleaned living spaces and cared for animals at Utah Animal Adoption Center; made toy cars for children in need at Tiny Tim's Foundation for kids; prepared and served lunch for families residing at the Ronald McDonald Family Room at Primary Children's Hospital; food packs with the Children's Hunger Fund in , and China : Collected and donated clothing, books, computers and USANA products to the School of Migrant Laborers' Children

Collected and donated clothing, books, computers and USANA products to the School of Migrant Laborers' Children Canada : packed more than 5,300 pounds of food for local food banks

packed more than 5,300 pounds of food for local food banks Australia : Participated in a shore cleanup at Meadowbank Wharf; donated over 900 meals to tonFoodbank

Participated in a shore cleanup at Meadowbank Wharf; donated over 900 meals to tonFoodbank Hong Kong : Served the elderly at St. James Settlement; donated blood to the Red Cross

Served the elderly at St. James Settlement; donated blood to the Red Cross Mexico : Provided food and hygiene products to San Judas Tadeo nursing home

Provided food and hygiene products to San Judas Tadeo nursing home Philippines : Collected food packs and coloring books for donation in the Laguna Province; cleaned and renovated Oplan Brigada Eskwela school; fed and served the poor at Duterte's Kitchen Feeding

Collected food packs and coloring books for donation in the Laguna Province; cleaned and renovated Oplan Brigada Eskwela school; fed and served the poor at Duterte's Kitchen Feeding Singapore : Collected food, clothing and toys to donate to local charity centers

Collected food, clothing and toys to donate to local charity centers Taiwan : Cleaned and donated food items and USANA products to Bethany Children's Home

To learn more about the USANA True Health Foundation or to make a donation, please visit: www.usanafoundation.org.

About USANA

Founded in 1992, USANA Health Sciences (NYSE: USNA) is a U.S.-based nutritional company that manufactures high-quality supplements, personal care and healthy food products in its state-of-the-art facility in Salt Lake City. Learn more about USANA by visiting our web site http://www.usana.com or the official USANA blog http://whatsupusana.com.

Media Contact: Ashley Collins

VP Marketing & Public Relations

(801) 954-7629

[email protected]

SOURCE USANA Health Sciences

Related Links

http://www.usana.com


"My previous individual experience with Wounded Warrior Project's mental health workshop changed my life, and I wanted me and my girlfriend, Elizabeth, to experience one as a couple," said U.S. Army and Army Reserve combat veteran Edwin Medina from Jacksonville, Florida. "We have a great relationship, but every relationship can only get better when you understand each other on deeper grounds."

Through the generous support of donors, WWP offers veterans specialized mental health programs and services  tailored to each warrior's specific needs and free of charge. WWP and its supporters believe warriors already paid their dues on the battlefield.

One program is its multi-day mental health workshops that are offered as all-male, all-female, or all-couples. These workshops provide safe, private environments for warriors to express themselves and share their combat experiences. By the end, warriors share lessons learned from the activities that impacted their personal struggles most and set achievable goals for their recoveries.

WWP staff use local activities in a recovery model that allows warriors to be vulnerable to the unknown and identify and work through anxieties together. As warriors brave the different challenges and couples activities, they are actively honoring the oaths they agreed to at the beginning of the workshop, including "communicate," "be patient," and "support each other in hard times."

"Before this workshop, Elizabeth had no idea how to help me cope when I am struggling with something," Edwin said. "Each activity tested our communication, but we were in a safe environment to learn better coping skills to support each other. Now she is able to help me adjust with any issues I'm having with my recovery. It's made us a lot stronger."

To learn and see more about how WWP's mental health workshops connect, serve, and empower wounded warriors, visit http://newsroom.woundedwarriorproject.org/, and click on multimedia.

About Wounded Warrior Project

Wounded Warrior Project (WWP) connects, serves, and empowers wounded warriors. Read more at http://newsroom.woundedwarriorproject.org/about-us.

SOURCE Wounded Warrior Project

Related Links

http://www.woundedwarriorproject.org


MECHANICSBURG, Pa. and HOUSTON, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Vibra Healthcare, LLC ("Vibra"), Memorial Hermann Health System, and Medistar Corporation ("Medistar") announced today their collaboration on the development of VibraLife of Katy, a new VibraLife post-acute and residential care community coming to the Houston area. The new state-of-the-art facility will be located in the Parkwest Business Park off Interstate 10, adjacent to Memorial Hermann Katy Hospital. The facility will occupy 58,000 square feet and provide a total of 104 beds, including a 70-bed transitional care rehabilitation center, an 18-bed assisted living center, and a 16-bed secured memory care unit.

"We are delighted to be jointly pioneering a new post-acute care service model with Memorial Hermann," said Brad Hollinger, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Vibra Healthcare. "Memorial Hermann has an exceptional reputation for the delivery of outstanding, end-to-end patient care experiences. We are committed to delivering the same high quality, affordable care in this new state-of-the-art post-acute facility."

Affiliated with Memorial Hermann, the largest non-profit health system in Southeast Texas, and Medistar, a long-standing Houston-based developer and owner of healthcare real estate, VibraLife of Katy will be expertly equipped to serve the Houston community. The new, innovative facility will deliver a fully integrated post-acute care continuum and provide personalized services and care options that will help address the unmet needs of local healthcare providers and patients.

"This unique model provides a community-based care continuum that is conveniently housed under one roof, and will serve as the perfect bridge between an acute care stay and home for the patients we serve," said Carl Josehart, Senior Vice President and CEO of Post-Acute Care Services for Memorial Hermann. "VibraLife of Katy joins our already robust post-acute care network to help ensure this patient population is able to receive the right care, in the right place, at the right time, every time."

Designed and operated by Vibra, VibraLife of Katy will provide high quality care to patients following an injury or illness and will offer a full range of services  medical, rehabilitative, and social  to both patients and senior residents.

"VibraLife of Katy sets a new standard of excellence in post-acute care  a result of the innovative vision and uncompromising commitment to patient-centered care shared by Vibra and Memorial Hermann. For this important project, Medistar has worked diligently to align the real estate solution to enhance operational, clinical and financial efficiencies with an exceptional experience for patients, providers and guests," says Monzer Hourani, P.E., Chief Executive Officer of Medistar.

A groundbreaking ceremony is scheduled for June 22, and construction is scheduled for completion in Summer 2018.

About Vibra Healthcare

Vibra Healthcare, LLC is a post-acute care provider based in Mechanicsburg, PA that is focused on the development, acquisition, and operation of freestanding specialty acute care hospitals, medical rehabilitation hospitals, and outpatient physical rehabilitation centers. Teams of highly trained specialists lead clinical programs at Vibra's specialty hospitals for treating medically complex patients who suffer from strokes, multiple traumas, major orthopedic, neurologic, cardiac, and respiratory conditions. Vibra and its affiliates currently employ over 10,000 employees and own and operate 92 specialty hospitals, transitional care units/facilities, and hospital-based outpatient physical therapy locations in 20 states. For additional information about Vibra Healthcare's network of specialty hospitals and post-acute care continuum, please visit our website at www.vibrahealthcare.com.

About Memorial Hermann Health System

A fully integrated health system with more than 250 care delivery sites throughout the greater Houston area, including a nationally acclaimed Accountable Care Organization, Memorial Hermann is committed to delivering safe, high-quality, patient-centered care and offers world-class clinical expertise, innovation and cutting-edge technology to all patients, including its Health Plan members. The system, with its exceptional affiliated medical staff and more than 25,000 employees, provides compassionate, superior service while advancing health in Southeast Texas. Learn more about Memorial Hermann Health System.

About Medistar

Medistar Corporation is a full-service medical real estate development company headquartered in Houston, Texas. As it has for 44 years, Medistar primarily specializes in the design, development, financing, acquisition and construction of acute care hospitals, post-acute care hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, senior care facilities, integrated medical plazas, medical office buildings and related facilities for the healthcare industry nationwide. For more information, visit www.MedistarCorp.com.

SOURCE Vibra Healthcare, LLC

Related Links

http://www.vibrahealthcare.com


SAN DIEGO, June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The fifth Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) satellite recently achieved operational status for legacy Ultra High Frequency (UHF) communications. This achievement also marks the 15th year of Vector Planning & Services, Inc.'s (VPSI) engineering and program support services in support of Navy's Military Satellite Communications (MILSATCOM) programs.

Beginning in 2002, VPSI has provided systems engineering for the acquisition and sustainment of UHF Follow-On and MUOS satellites, for the MUOS ground system, and for the support of Navy leased commercial satellite services. VPSI engineers, analysts, and technical subject matter experts have conducted MILSATCOM requirements analyses, reviews, satellite validation and verification, launch support, and testing activities alongside our Government counterparts. MUOS provides ultra-high frequency narrow band communication to the warfighter delivering greater mobility, higher bit rates and improved operational availability.

Guided by VPSI's Satellite Communications Program Manager, Wayne Mandak, VPSI today provides MUOS ground system engineering, technical, operation, and cybersecurity support for the MUOS system. The MUOS satellites are dual payload, with legacy UHF and the technology leading implementation of the Wideband Code Division Multiple Access, a cellular-like system to provide warfighters with expanded capacity, and on-the-move communications.

Tony Nufer, VPSI's Western Region Director, said, "Achievement of this 15-year milestone has only been possible through the dedication of our employees working closely with the Navy program engineering and acquisition teams. VPSI's forward-looking MILSATCOM experts are now focused on the future, offering paths to improved operation, sustainment, and, ultimately, enhancement and replacement of satellites and systems for spaced-based communications."

VPSI salutes all of those who have worked diligently and with enthusiasm to reach this key program milestone. To you we say, Bravo Zulu!

Media Contact:

Tony Nufer

Phone: (619) 718-3248

Email: [email protected]

Related Links

VPSI Recent Events

SOURCE Vector Planning & Services, Inc. (VPSI)

Related Links

http://www.myvpsi.com


"NGFWs are placed at critical choke points in the network, and are being asked to do more than ever. Their stability, reliability, performance, flexibility, and total cost of ownership are all vital factors when making a buying decision," said Vikram Phatak, chief executive officer at NSS Labs. "The WatchGuard M4600 proved to be highly effective in each of those categories."

The NGFW Group Test integrates the Cyber Advanced Warning System (CAWS) for continuous testing with an exhaustive exploit library and hundreds of drive-by exploits being used in active campaigns by threat actors. This year, NSS expanded the testing of evasions, which are techniques that disguise and modify attacks at the point of delivery to avoid detection and blocking by security products.

"At WatchGuard, we pride ourselves on delivering enterprise-grade security that is widely deployable in terms of stability, manageability, reliability and affordability by small to midsize organizations and distributed enterprises," said Prakash Panjwani, CEO at WatchGuard Technologies. "NSS testing and Recommended status are clear evidence of those benefits to our customers."

All WatchGuard Firebox appliances in the UTM and Next Generation Firewall family run the same Fireware operating system and security services as the M4600, and thus benefit from the same efficacy, stability, performance and total cost of ownership. With modular port options for flexibility, and dual-redundant power supplies for highest performance and uptime, the Firebox M4600 is ideal for the central office of a distributed enterprise, or the datacenter of a midsize enterprise. The Firebox family of products is available through WatchGuard's global channel of resellers.

For detailed information, download the full report here: http://www.watchguard.com/nsslabs

About WatchGuard Technologies, Inc.

WatchGuard Technologies, Inc. is a global leader in network security, providing best-in-class Unified Threat Management, Next Generation Firewall, secure Wi-Fi, and network intelligence products and services to more than 75,000 customers worldwide. The company's mission is to make enterprise-grade security accessible to companies of all types and sizes through simplicity, making WatchGuard an ideal solution for Distributed Enterprises and SMBs. WatchGuard is headquartered in Seattle, Washington, with offices throughout North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Latin America. To learn more, visit WatchGuard.com.

For additional information, promotions and updates, follow WatchGuard on Twitter, @WatchGuard on Facebook, or on the LinkedIn Company page. Also, visit our InfoSec blog, Secplicity, for real-time information about the latest threats and how to cope with them at www.secplicity.org.

Media Contacts:

Chris Warfield

WatchGuard Technologies

206.876.8380

[email protected]

Anthony Cogswell

Voxus PR

253.444.5980

[email protected]

SOURCE WatchGuard Technologies, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.watchguard.com


BELLEVUE, Wash., June 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Xevo Inc. today announced the launch of its groundbreaking new Journeyware suite of automotive products  the only data-management software solution to offer a truly personalized consumer driving experience while also providing automobile manufacturers with new business opportunities. Journeyware uses machine learning, artificial intelligence, and powerful data analysis tools to give automakers a better understanding of their customers, making it possible for them to deliver truly customized driving experiences. Employing unique data analysis, the software suite enables advanced safety measures to actively avoid hazards, curtail distracted driving, and proactively improve vehicle maintenance. By leveraging these advanced technologies, Xevo's Journeyware suite makes a major step forward in the connected car market, changing the way people think about and connect to their cars, and how automobile manufacturers analyze and act on consumer and vehicle usage data.

Connected vehicles are rapidly becoming more digitally integrated into people's lives. Drivers want their content and preferences to be as easily accessible inside their cars as it is via their phones and in their homes, and providing this seamless connectivity gives automotive manufacturers a key competitive advantage  as well an opportunity to learn more about their customers. Journeyware's powerful data analysis tools enable automotive manufacturers to analyze consumers' personal preferences, driving history, and habits to provide personally-tailored automobile user experiences that move beyond today's 'infotainment' systems. Xevo's technology safely integrates drivers' cars into their digital lifestyles, delivering a personalized, 'smart' in-car experience.

One of Journeyware's key benefits is its potential to improve driver safety. The software uses a variety of technologies  image processing, artificial intelligence, cloud-based machine learning, and hyperscale data analytics  to monitor vehicle performance, weather and road conditions, and even distracted driving. It then uses this information to provide road hazard warnings or suggest safer alternate routes, so that drivers can avoid potentially hazardous situations. Should the car detect that a driver is distracted, it can issue a reminder to bring their focus back to the road, improving their safety and the safety of those around them. The system also monitors vehicle performance and a person's driving habits  such as someone who "rides the brakes" or accelerates hard  to offer predictive maintenance recommendations. This can save consumers time and money, and keep them safer by preventing unexpected breakdowns.

Xevo and OEMs have a shared goal: utilizing data to create 'smart' driving experiences that increase owner satisfaction while generating new business opportunities  Journeyware makes this possible. The software suite provides data ingestion, analysis, and recommendations. It enables OEMs to offer their customers exciting new personalized features, while also making it possible to uncover all available opportunities to increase lifetime customer value. Journeyware's in-car connectivity gives OEMs a competitive edge, and is the perfect foundation to build upon as they shape the future of the automotive UX.

"Cars are the ultimate mobile devices, and they have become a major focus of innovation. We understand that data is not only a vital part of the future automotive experience, but essential to customer satisfaction and the long-term profitability of car manufacturers. Journeyware fundamentally changes the connected car market by providing consumers with a truly robust and intuitive connected car experience," said Dan Gittleman, CEO of Xevo. "At the same time, we are also giving OEMs the data ingestion and business intelligence they need to deepen brand loyalty while maximizing monetization opportunities. Xevo has evolved from driving automotive UI to driving automotive AI  we are building the next-generation connected car experience."

See Xevo at TU-Automotive Detroit, June 7-8

Xevo CEO Dan Gittleman will be delivering a keynote address, discussing Journeyware and how data is paving the road to a new automobile user experience, at the TU-Automotive conference in Detroit (TU-Automotive Detroit) on June 7, 2017.

Xevo CPO John Cordell will be participating in a panel discussion at the conference about the personalization of the automotive user experience, and the advancements Xevo has made in this area with Journeyware.

TU-Automotive conferences are world-renowned as the place for Tier-1 car manufacturers to learn about the latest advances for the connected car market. As a leading innovator in the industry, Xevo is honored that Gittleman and Cordell have been invited to take prominent roles at TU-Automotive Detroit, and to be recognized for their leadership and impact on the connected car market. Take advantage of these two opportunities to hear how this trailblazing company is changing the face of automotive UX with Journeyware.

Dan Gittleman  Keynote Address

TOPIC: AI, The Cloud, and Data: The Future of the Connected Car

Wednesday, June 7 @ 3:10-3:30pm EST

John Cordell  Panel Discussion

TOPIC: AI: The Missing Link in Personalizing the Auto UX

Thursday, June 8 @ 4:50-5:20pm EST

About Xevo

Xevo Inc. is a trusted Tier-1 automotive software supplier deployed in millions of vehicles worldwide. Xevo solutions for cloud, car, and mobile devices leverage computer vision, machine learning, and data analytics to continuously create, test, and deploy new AI models that improve performance, safety, and driver experiences. Xevo's Journeyware suite of automotive products seamlessly connects drivers and their vehicles to mobile applications, content and services. Xevo technology is licensed in vehicle systems worldwide to several of the world's largest automotive manufacturers. For more information, visit www.xevo.com

Copyright  2017 Xevo Inc. All rights reserved. The marks Xevo and Journeyware are owned by Xevo Inc. and may be registered. All other trade brands, names, logos, and marks are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE Xevo

Related Links

https://www.xevo.com


The Hertz Corporation has signed a three-way and exclusive partnership agreement with Hertz Mexico and Aeromexico. Aeromexico passengers can now book car rental at the best available rates for Hertz and Firefly in Mexico and with Hertz, Dollar, Thrifty and Firefly in any of the airline's rest of world destinations, via the airline's website and call center.

The special rates for Hertz and Firefly in Mexico are also available to customers who present an Aeromexico boarding pass at the brands' car rental desks in airports across the country. In addition, Hertz Mexico will display Aeromexico branding and customer offers on its website and at all of the car rental company's airport locations.

Robert Stuart, Executive Vice President, Global Sales, Hertz, said: "Like us, Aeromexico is constantly innovating to offer its customers enhanced convenience and high quality service. We are honored that Mexico's leading airline selected Hertz as their exclusive, global car rental provider to offer passengers a wide selection of Hertz, Dollar, Thrifty and Firefly vehicles at the best available rates. With Aeromexico.com now featuring a new car rental booking engine, travelers can easily book their flights and car rental in just a few clicks."

Moises Behar, CEO, Hertz Mexico, a franchise partner of The Hertz Corporation, added: "It is an honor to partner with Mexico's flagship carrier to make our Hertz and Firefly fleets and services easily available to both domestic travelers and international visitors who fly with Aeromexico. In addition, as part of our marketing co-operation with Aeromexico we will periodically offer special promotions and exclusive car rental benefits to the airline's passengers."

Anko van der Werff, Chief Revenue Officer of Aeromexico, commented: "Through our exclusive alliance with Hertz, we continue to broaden our offer to customers, providing them with high quality car rental options at the best available rates globally. In terms of customer experience, Aeromexico's focus on the 'total trip' concept has really paid off, with initial car rental bookings through our sales channels exceeding expectations. We have had great feedback from vacation goers to frequent business travelers on the simplicity of adding car rental to their trip via aeromexico.com."

Aeromexico is a major international airline serving more than 20 million customers, flying to 84 destinations in Mexico; North, South, and Central America; the Caribbean, Europe, and Asia.
If you were looking for the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee website and ended up here, try this





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On Saturday, June 3, MSC Cruises christens the biggest ship to be built by a European ship owner. The latest wonder in the MSC Cruises fleet, MSC Meraviglia was christened in a glittering ceremony by international screen legend and godmother of all of MSC Cruises ships, Sophia Loren.

At 171,598 GRT and with guest capacity of 5,714 (4,488 at double occupancy), MSC Meraviglia is the Companys new flagship and the 13th addition to the MSC Cruises fleet as well as the first new MSC Cruises ship due to come into service under the Companys industry-unprecedented investment plan.

Both the ship herself and Saturday's event have been inspired by the wonders of the world, as Meraviglia literally means wonder. The christening ceremony itself was hosted by one of Europes most loved comedians, Gad Elmaleh. The audience was also entertained by internationally renowned artist Patrick Bruel who performed a selection of his most loved songs. UNICEF Goodwill Ambassadors Kids United also performed representing a diverse world, promoting peace and tolerance.

The crowning moment of the evening was the parade of the ships officers, when Sophia Loren cut the ribbon and named MSC Meraviglia to a time-honored crescendo of champagne and fireworks. Mrs. Loren has held a close relationship with MSC Cruises for over a decade, when she first became godmother of MSC Lirica, in 2003. As the MSC Cruises fleet continued to grow, she blessed each and every new ship, reflecting MSC Cruises' belief not only in loyalty, but also in Loren's unique beauty, talent and elegant style  the same elements that distinguish every aspect on board an MSC Cruises ship.

In order to conclude on a note of haute cuisine Helene Darroze, the chef with the 2 Michelin stars created an exceptional menu for the VIP gala dinner as well as an exclusive dish for all guests. The menu takes inspiration from Chef Darrozes passion for combining the flavors of France with those of the UK to create a simple yet elegant gourmet experience for the guests. MSC Cruises and Chef Darroze hope to extend the collaboration beyond the evening of the christening and work is underway to establish a partnership.

MSC Meraviglia is able to call in most of the worlds international cruise ports and is set to become one of the hottest destinations at sea. Some of the unique features that set MSC Cruises newest flagship apart include:
Imphal, June 3 : Three troopers of 11 Assam Rifles were seriously injured while on patrol when militants exploded a powerful bomb near H. Bongyang village, six km from the Manipur-Myanmar border on Saturday afternoon, police said.

The injured security personnel, one junior commissioned officer and two riflemen, were airlifted to the military hospital in Leimakhong near Imphal. All the three are battling for their lives, according to police.

They were on patrol after coming out of their camp at Khudengthabi when the roadside bomb was detonated by a remote control device. The militants are believed to have escaped to their camps across the border before the arrival of reinforcements.

Although other troopers opened fire, it is not known if the militants suffered any casualties. No firearms were snatched, police said.

There have been a series of bomb blasts in Moreh, the town adjoining the India-Myanmar border, in the recent past. A few days back, two troopers of 165 Territorial Army were killed and two wounded in a similar bomb blast at Lokchao. Four policemen also sustained injuries at Kotha when militants attacked them with similar bombs.

A woman eking out a living as a porter was also shot dead in the town. Police have, however, not been able to make any progress in the investigations.

In line with the directive from Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, the state government has set up an inquiry committee headed by Pramod Astana, Additional Director General of Police, to probe these blasts and attacks. It will submit its report within 15 days.

The responsibility for most of these attacks has not been claimed by any outfit.

Chief minister N. Biren Singh, who also holds the Home portfolio, said that the miscreants would be hunted down. The violent incidents and protests from the people have adversely affected the legal border trade at Moreh.
Vijayawada, June 4 : Telugu Desam Party (TDP) activists showed black flags to Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi here on Sunday as he arrived to address a public meeting to demand the Centre fulfill its commitment to give special category status to Andhra Pradesh.

The ruling party leaders and workers waved black flags and raised slogans "Rahul go back" as his convoy of vehicles passed by Kesarapalli on the city's outskirts.

The protestors were holding placards which read "Rahul go back" and "Rahul divided the state". Police had to push back the protestors to prevent any untoward incident.

Gandhi and other Congress leaders was on their way to a hotel from Gannavaram airport.

Gandhi will later leave for Guntur later to address a public meeting along with Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav, Janata Dal-United leader Sharad Yadav, Communist Party of India General Secretary S. Sudhakar Reddy and other leaders.

This is first public meeting by the Congress since the party was routed in the 2014 election, following the bifurcation of united Andhra Pradesh.

TDP leaders said Gandhi had no right to enter the state as his party was responsible for Andhra's bifurcation.
Chennai, June 5 : Actor Rana Daggubati says he will dedicate the teaser of his upcoming Telugu political drama "Nene Raju, Nene Mantri", to be released on Tuesday, to his late grandfather and producer D. Rama Naidu as his birth anniversary gift.

In a statement, Rana said he would like to dedicate the teaser to his grandfather.

Talking about the film, in which he plays a politician, Rana said: "I love the audacity of my character Jogendra in the film. The teaser is packed with gripping moments and it gives a glimpse of Jogendra's attitude."

Directed by Teja, the film also stars Kajal Aggarwal and Catherine Tresa.

"All films Rana had acted in so far have been well received for his courage to carve a distinct screen persona. I wanted "Nene Raju, Nene Mantri" to match not only the actor's stature but also surpass the viewers' expectation," Teja said.

The film's producer Suresh Babu said the film will be "another landmark in Rana's career and will bring diversity to his acting talent".

The film will have a simultaneous release in Tamil, Hindi and Malayalam.
Agartala, June 5 : India will set up a treatment plant in Tripura to treat polluted water flowing into Bangladesh through the Akhaura canal, an official said on Monday.

The plant will be constructed within two years.

"The Union Urban Development Ministry has sanctioned Rs 18.36 crore for the treatment plant in Agartala, for which the Municipal Corporation will soon float a tender," West Tripura District Magistrate Milind Ramteke told IANS.

"The move follows a request from the Bangladesh government.

"We told them that the process is on to set up the plant. We had earlier submitted a detailed project report to the union government," said Ramteke, who attended a District Magistrate-level meeting in Comilla in eastern Bangladesh on May 22, where Dhaka raised the issue.

The Akhaura canal was built by the erstwhile kings of princely Tripura to ferry goods to and from Bangladesh.

"After Partition, though transportation through the canal was stopped, dirty water from state capital Agartala continues to flow into Bangladesh through the channel," area resident Salil Debbarma said.

According to Bangladesh's Akhaura Dakshin (south) Union Board Chairman Mohammad Jallaluddin, over 1,500 hectares of crop land is irrigated by the canal water in his country.

"As the canal water is very dirty, it impacts the health of thousands of Bangladeshis. Hence, the water must be treated before it flows into Bangladesh," Jallaluddin told IANS on phone.

Besides the Akhaura canal, many other canals and rivulets and eight major rivers flow from Tripura to Bangladesh.
New Delhi, June 5 : Asserting that there is no "flip-flop" in dealing with Pakistan, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Monday said the Kashmir issue can never be taken to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and that there can be no third party involvement in finding a solution to it.

Maintaining that talks and terror cannot go together, she also made it clear that no meeting has been fixed between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meeting in Astana later this month.

Addressing a press conference to mark the completion of three years of the Modi government, Swaraj said the Kashmir problem can be solved only through talks directly between India and Pakistan and not through involvement of any third party.

"Three things people should keep in mind when we talk of Pakistan. There are three pillars. We want to sort out all issues with Pakistan through talks bilaterally and not through mediation of any group, country or associations. Talks and terror cannot go together. No flip-flip or one step forward-two steps backward," she said.

Swaraj also said the atmosphere was not conducive for talks with Pakistan as it has been vitiated by Islamabad. Sharif was invited to Modi's swearing in and later the Prime Minister also went to Lahore in December 2015 to meet the Pakistan Prime Minister.

"I went to the Heart of Asia conference in December 2015 and started bilateral talks. Then, Prime Minister Modi went to Lahore on December 25. Then the new year began with Pathankot. Won't you take the changed circumstances into consideration? They described top Hizbul commander Burhan Wani as a freedom fighter and martyr. For talks even on humanitarian grounds, there must be a good environment or humanitarian basis. Do you think there is an atmosphere for talks?," Swaraj asked.

"These are gestures of goodwill, nobody thought the Prime Minister would do it with an out-of-box thinking, but within a week Pathankot happened," she said.

Replying to a question whether taking the Kulbhushan Jadhav case to ICJ by India risked the Kashmir issue being taken there, Swaraj said, "Kashmir issue can never be taken to ICJ because both the countries are bound by the Shimla Agreement and Lahore Declaration to solve it bilaterally. We will solve our issues bilaterally."

Justifying the Jadhav issue being taken to ICJ, she said that India and Pakistan have been fighting various issues like the Indus Water Treaty through arbitration in forums like ICJ and World Bank. She said the Jadhav issue was taken to ICJ because Pakistan violated the Vienna Convention. She expressed confidence that India would win the case finally.

Asked whether Modi and Sharif would meet on the sidelines of the SCO, she said: "No decision on meeting has been taken."

Asked whether India would urge US President Donald Trump to bring pressure to stop Pakistan from sponsoring cross border terrorism, Swaraj told the questioner that it would have been better if he had not taken the US President's name. India, she said, always takes up the issue of terrorism in all available international fora and said the time has come for all the countries to agree on a Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism at the United Nations.
Brasilia, June 6 : Brazilian President Michel Temer has received 84 questions from the federal police, as part of an investigation against him for alleged corruption.

Temer, who received the questions on Monday, has 24 hours to respond to them in writing, Xinhua news agency reported on Tuesday.

According to the G1 news portal, Temer's defence team was surprised to receive the questions, after the Supreme Court authorised the procedure last week.

However, Justice Edson Fachin, who approved the written interrogation, said Temer was not obliged to answer them all.

The questions address the confession made by Joesley Batista, owner of the JBS meat-packing group, to prosecutors, including the presentation of a tape in which Temer can seemingly be heard approving bribes for former House Speaker Eduardo Cunha.

Temer has rejected all accusations against him and refused to step down, despite growing political opposition, including by former allies.

Police sent the questions to Temer a day before the country's top electoral court opens a hearing into supposed irregularities during the 2014 electoral campaign.

Temer, who stood as the running mate of impeached former President Dilma Rousseff, is accused of receiving illegal campaign funding from the Petrobras corruption ring.

If the judges conclude this illegal financing was received, they could invalidate Rousseff and Temer's electoral victory and remove the President from office.
New Delhi, June 6 : The All India Management Association (AIMA) will hold a special session to mark its diamond jubilee on July 7, and President Pranab Mukherjee will attend it, an official statement said.

The event will be held in Rashtrapati Bhavan.

AIMA is the apex body for management in the country. It provides various services in testing, distance education, skill development, training, research, publications and management development programmes.
Kolkata, June 6 : West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday termed "unfortunate" the death of farmers in police firing in Madhya Pradesh and expressed solidarity with the peasant community.

"Incident in MP unfortunate. Sad six farmers lost their lives. My deepest sympathies to the bereaved families. We always stand by our farmers," Banerjee tweeted.

Police opened fire on agitating farmers in Mandsaur district of Madhya Pradesh after the peasants indulged in violence and pelted police with stones.

The farmers were demanding loan waiver and a fair price for their produce.
New Delhi, June 6 : Three automobile thieves who stole a new luxury car at gunpoint in south Delhi have been arrested, Delhi Police said on Tuesday.

Police said accused Azam, 22, Sundar Tanwar, 23, and Veer Singh, 27, were arrested on Monday night from Nuh, Mewat, and Sohna in Haryana.

A Honda Jazz car they drove away with at gunpoint on June 2 has been recovered, Deputy Commissioner of Police Ishwar Singh told IANS.

The accused are residents of Fatehpur Beri in south Delhi and Gurugram in Haryana.

They drove off with the car driven by Shakul after an altercation with the latter's brother Rashid outside Dagar Farm House in Chandanhaulla in Delhi, police said.

Both Shakul and Rashid were transporting six new cars on a trailer truck from Faridabad to Tapukara in Rajasthan. The cars were kept in a warehouse in Delhi.
The International Air Transport Associations 2018 Annual General Meeting (AGM) will take place in Sydney in June 2018. One of the most prestigious events on the aviation calendar, the AGM  and the associated World Air Transport Summit  will attract more than 1,000 delegates and is expected to provide a boost to the NSW economy with attendees often choosing to stay and explore the region following the AGM.

The announcement of Sydney as next years location and Qantas as host airline was made at the conclusion of IATAs 2017 AGM in Cancun.

Qantas Group CEO, Alan Joyce said, Were really looking forward to hosting our airline colleagues in Sydney next year. This is the first annual meeting to be held in the Asia-Pacific since 2012, so itll be good to bring the industry back to what is the worlds fastest-growing region for air travel, and give an Australian perspective on the issues and opportunities facing our industry.

Sydney has been Qantas home since the 1930s and its Australias global aviation gateway today, at a time when were seeing a major tourism boom. That makes it a perfect place to discuss what Im sure will be a big agenda of topics. Its also a warm, welcoming, beautiful, city that were confident every delegate will love.

This will be the third IATA AGM to be held in Sydney, after the 2000 and 1961 meetings.
New Delhi, June 6 : A 21-year-old man was murdered for allegedly opposing a person using drugs in a public toilet here on Tuesday evening, a police officer said.

The deceased, Rahul, 21, is from Mundka village of Nangloi and he along with his mother used to work at a public toilet about 500 metre from Nangloi Metro Station.

"On Tuesday evening, a person came to use the toilet. Rahul's mother found that he was using drugs in the toilet and opposed it," a police officer told IANS.

Meanwhile, Rahul also arrived and opposed the person from using the toilet.

"The guy left the toilet, but he along with two others came back at around 4.30 p.m and stabbed Rahul," the officer said.

At 9.30 p.m on Tuesday, more than 50 people had gathered at the Nangloi Police Station demanding police to arrest the accused.

Rahul's cousin Amit complained: "My little brother has been killed and no one here (police station) is listening to us."
Ankara, June 7 : Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday disapproved the sanctions imposed on Qatar following the diplomatic stand-off between several Arab countries and Qatar.

"I want to clearly say that we disapprove the sanctions on Qatar," Erdogan was quoted by the state-run Anadolu Agency as saying.

"These developments, coming at a time when we need solidarity and cooperation more than ever, are no good for any country in the region," he noted in a fasting breaking iftar dinner organised by the ruling Justice and Development Party in the capital Ankara.

On the same day, the Turkish President continued his efforts in order to ease tensions after decisions by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Egypt, Yemen, Libya and the Maldives to cut diplomatic ties with Qatar over claims of the latter's "terrorism support".

According to presidential sources, Erdogan has held phone calls with several leaders including Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Emmanuel Macron, Jordan's King Abdullah II and Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri.

The Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Monday Ankara hopes that the countries create a solution through dialogue and calm. "The Turkish government is continuing its work at every level," he added.
Washington, June 7 : US President Donald Trump has spoken with the king of Saudi Arabia on the financing of terror organisations and the Gulf region's unity after seven countries broke diplomatic ties with Qatar, the White House said.

Trump spoke to King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud over the phone, Efe news reported.

The "leaders discussed the critical goals of preventing the financing of terrorist organisations and eliminating the promotion of extremism by any nation in the region", the White House statement said.

However, "the President underscored that a united Gulf Cooperation Council is critical to defeating terrorism and promoting regional stability," the statement added.

The Cooperation Council for the Arab states of the Gulf was formed by Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain on Monday announced the rupture of diplomatic ties with Qatar and ordered the closure of the land borders and suspended sea and air transport to the country.

Soon the Maldives and the governments that Saudi Arabia supports in the conflicts in Yemen and Libya also severed diplomatic ties with Qatar.

They accuse the Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani-led Qatari government of supporting terrorist organizations, including the Islamic State, Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Qatar has denied the charges, describing them as "unjustified" and based on slander, and has assured that it "fights against terrorism and extremism".

Trump on Tuesday hinted that the "hard line" with Qatar was partly a result of his tour of the region in May.

"During my recent trip to the Middle East, I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology. Leaders pointed to Qatar - look!," Trump said on his Twitter account.

The US President also said that it was "so good to see" that his trip to Riyadh is "already paying off."

"Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism!" Trump highlighted.

Despite Trump's comments, the White House later called on the countries involved to reduce tensions and resolve the crisis "immediately," while the State Department said that the relationship with Qatar was "solid" and that Washington "continues to cooperate" with that country.
Dublin, June 7 : The Irish police have arrested a second man who had connection with Rachid Redouane, one of the three London attackers who killed seven and injured dozens on the London Bridge on Saturday evening.

The man in his 30s was arrested on Tuesday evening from Wexford city following a search of an apartment there, the police said.

Earlier on Tuesday, another man, originally from Morocco, was arrested in Limerick city, but he was released by afternoon, Xinhua news agency reported.

Both men were still being probed for theft and fraud. They were suspected of using documents and personal, public service numbers that might have links to the London attacker Redouane.

Redouane, 30, is of Moroccan and Libyan descent. He was identified after a documentation check in Britain found he had lived in south Dublin for some time.

An identity card, issued by Irish immigration authorities, was found after he was shot dead. He married a British woman in Ireland in 2011 before moving back to Britain, according to Ireland's national broadcaster RTE.

Under the European Union treaties, Ireland grants working visas to people outside the EU who are in a relationship with an EU citizen, which appears to have been the case in this instance.

The couple returned to Ireland for a short time in 2016 before separating.

Redouane was not previously known to police and had not come to their attention in relation to any crime or security issues, according to the Irish police.

Ireland has condemned the London attacks, describing the assaults as "sheer madness", and said they would continue to work closely with Britain on security matters and prevention of crime as far as possible.

Currently, the threat assessment level in Ireland is moderate, meaning an attack is possible but unlikely.
New Delhi/Moscow, June 7 : The world's first hybrid "aeroboat" capable of travelling on land, water, snow and sand that has been built by an Indo-Russian joint venture was unveiled in Moscow on Tuesday at a start-ups event organised by Russia's state-run Skolkovo Foundation.

The aeroboat is designed to access difficult terrain, such as flooded or marshy areas where the use of regular boats is made impossible because of shallow water, patches of dry land or by marine vegetation.

It has been designed by IIAAT Holding, a joint venture between the International Institute for Advanced Aerospace Technologies and Indian firm Millennium Aerodynamics.

The aeroboat is on demonstration in and around a pond in the two-day Startup Village annual event in Moscow for technology entrepreneurs and investors organised by Russia's biggest innovation fund the Skolkovo Foundation.

IIAAT Holding board member Sukrit Sharan, who is in Moscow, told IANS in an e-mail interview that they have orders for more than 25 aeroboat units from private and government buyers in India of which they have already despatched five for use in disaster management.

These are much faster and more robust than the comparable hovercrafts, he said.

"We have already exported around five units to India, both for transportation and disaster management applications. These delivered products are poised to help save hundreds of lives in India during the monsoon season when the regions experience floods," Sharan said.

"After our success with Indian disaster management authorities, Russia's Ministry of Emergency Situations has shown very strong interest in these vehicles."

While hovercrafts on average move at around 45-50 km per hour on water, aeroboats are capable of going at around 150 km or more, he said.

"The Aeroboat is also more robust than hovercrafts, and with estimated maintenance costs of $400-$600 per year, is cheaper to maintain and fuel," Sharan said.

He pointed out that it runs on a "hybrid" engine, meaning it can run on either petrol or electricity, enabling users to reduce carbon emissions and increase energy efficiency.

"Additionally, we are equipping our aeroboats with IoT (Internet of Things) technology, which allows us to remotely monitor and control and diagnose the equipment, as well as troubleshoot select faults," he said.

According to the makers, with room for 10 passengers and one crew member, the 6.5-metre-long aeroboat can handle steep slopes and embankments, and does not require any marine infrastructure such as jetties, since it is amphibious.

"Hovercrafts work on static air-cushion, whereas aeroboats work on dynamic air-cushion. This feature gives aeroboats a huge advantage in terms of speed and manoeuvrability," he said.

"It's possible to use hovercrafts, but they are very expensive to operate and also have speed limitations. Our amphibious aeroboats can provide high-speed year-round navigation, even when bodies of water are frozen like in Russia," he added.

(Biswajit Choudhury can be reached at biswajit.c@ians.in)
Melbourne, June 7 : A vast majority of women are not achieving a healthy weight during pregnancy, an Australian study released on Wednesday has found.

Researchers from Monash University undertook a comprehensive study of 1.3 million pregnant women worldwide and found that more than half gained too much weight during pregnancy while a quarter did not gain enough weight, reports Xinhua news agency.

Helena Teede, the lead researcher, warned that women who did not gain enough weight faced an increased risk of premature birth while those who put on too much were more likely to require a caesarean birth.

Researchers analysed more than 5,300 international studies of pregnant women and found that at the beginning of pregnancy 38 percent of women were overweight or obese, 55 percent were "normal weight" and 7 percent were underweight.

Teede said women who started at a higher weight were more likely to gain weight quicker as the pregnancy progressed.

"You should not put on any weight in the first trimester, a little in the second trimester and just a little more in the third," Teede told Australian media on Wednesday.

"You should only increase your calorie intake by a small amount. You are not eating for two."

She said the study highlighted the need for strategies to monitor and optimize healthy weight among expected mothers.

"This latest study means - more than ever - that weight needs to be monitored in pregnancy and women provided with support to improve lifestyle," Teede said in a statement.

Health professionals need to be encouraged and trained in having "healthy conversations" introducing relatively simple effective lifestyle interventions to support women before, during and after pregnancy.

"We know what to do and now need to implement the available evidence into action to help women and the next generation be healthier."
New Delhi : It was born in an era of protests. As young people took to the streets across Europe and the United States in the 1960s, challenging the norms set for generations, a little-known genre of music was getting ready to make waves, emphatically.

The sound of music that the likes of Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple made popular in 1968 was to stay for generations. Heavy Metal attracted music lovers by its strong, massive sound, underlined amplified distortions and led by extended guitar solos. The emphasis was on strong beats and high decibels.

But this Rock variant may be on its death bed. The days of classic, old-school Metal bands is probably going to get marked by a most anti-climactic ending of all. Listeners are abandoning the genre at an alarming rate.

"People listen to music differently now. They don't have time to sit down and put the record on and give it 30 minutes... Who will be the next giant Metal band, I don't know," Rob Halford (Judas Priest), one of the godfathers of Metal, was once quoted as saying.

Concert sales have fallen. The Ozzfest in the US is losing its charm, and the enthusiasm for Germany's Wacken Open Air has declined sharply.

Radio, television and the internet are dominated by generic pop artists. Dee Snider of Twisted Sister says that "MTV helped and hurt Metal. They created this whole new visual scenario for bands, but at the same time looks began to matter more than the music".

Even Ronnie James Dio (Black Sabbath & Dio) said in an interview before his death in 2010: MTV "killed" Heavy Metal.

"Their emphasis on creating music videos led to the rise of hair bands like Poison. It mattered far more what you look like with all that make-up, and how many 14-year-old girls you could pick up, and how much you could party than anything else. I'm sorry but that is just not Metal," he said.

So did glam kill Metal?

What makes pop music so attractive is that you don't have to be musically inclined to create music anymore and that basically anyone with a computer can do it. The so-called "Metal" today is not pretty different with many bands going over to the electronic side whilst abandoning their fat, beefy guitar tunes and overall aggressiveness.

Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine said people these days "can't even play the f***ing guitar" and that it is just about "posing". He told Loudwire that "Heavy Metal music is really popular when the world is under a lot of stress".

To make matters worse, many prominent figures of the Metal world such as Chuck Schuldiner (Death), Dimebag Darrel (Pantera) Jeff Hanneman (Slayer), Lemmy Kilmister and Phil Taylor (Motorhead) are gone now and have not really been replaced by a newer generation to carry the torch.

Bands such as Black Sabbath are no longer playing. Many are likely to follow suit. Brent Hinds, guitarist for old school-style Headbangers Mastodon, told Guitar Player last year that he hates playing Heavy Metal, while KISS bassist Gene Simmons proclaimed that "Rock is dead".

In India, one of the first metal bands, Millennium, was formed in 1988. Two bands which could be looked as the voice of Metal are the Bangalore-based thrash Metal band Kryptos and the Mumbai-based extreme Metal band Demonic Resurrection. Others like Nicotine, Inner Sanctum, Scribe, Pin Drop Violence and Bhayanak Maut carry on the Metal torch. But the Metal scene is still evolving.

Metal and Rock music was marked by improvisation on the musician's part in the past, instead of adhering to some kind of established structure. But now there is no inclination to take risks with the fear of upsetting the established pattern, whether in studio or live.

A lot of Metal bands have begun to follow the pop style of verse-chorus-verse pattern whilst abandoning another very important aspect of what defined Metal -- self expression. Take the example of two of the best Heavy Metal guitarists such as Randy Rhoads and Marty Friedman: They displayed a lot of skills in their songs such as "Mr. Crowley" and "Tornado of Souls", respectively, bringing in a level of "feeling" that gave their songs a great deal of depth.

But this act of adding "feelings" to your songs, in Metal and Rock alike, seems now almost like a lost art.

The truth is that when you play simple melodies, and strum a few powerful chords with a degree of experimentation, you can, perhaps, do a lot better than using a thousand exotic scales.

Pristinely polishing your music with constant rehearsals instead of placing value only on what sells, priming it for insertion into the media like a piece of meat is what's contaminating the music industry.

And killing Metal and Rock.

(Anand Venkitachalam is an intern at IANS. He can be reached at jordanmetalhead@gmail.com)
New Delhi, June : Regional connectivity and overall domestic passenger traffic are all set to get a boost as the central government gears up to allot more air routes under the UDAN (Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik) scheme.

"Right now, we are at the stage of finalising the guidelines for awarding the second round of routes under UDAN," Civil Aviation Minister P. Ashok Gajapathi Raju told IANS in an email interview.

"From our experience in the first round, we have proposed certain changes which are under public discussion currently. We should be able to finalise the changes and complete the award of routes under the second round in about three to four months."

In March, Alliance Air, SpiceJet and Turbo Megha Airways, among others, were awarded 128 routes under the scheme, and in April Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the first of Rs 2,500-an-hour flight between Shimla and New Delhi.

"The first round drew tremendous response and we awarded bids for more than 120 new routes, covering 33 currently non-operational airports," Raju elaborated.

"This is very satisfactory considering that in the first 70 years of Independence, we had only about 70 operational airports, but through UDAN, in just one year we have added 33 more to the list."

The ministry plans to host an "interactive meet" next month between state governments and airlines for the second round of bidding for UDAN routes. It has mooted six changes to the scheme to make it simpler and attractive for participation.

In addition, Raju revealed that the ministry has received "interesting feedback" on the draft guideline meant to deal with unruly passenger behaviour as also crew.

"We have received comments suggesting that the responsibility of the airlines needs to be fixed in case their crew is unruly. We are currently examining all the feedback and should be finalising the guidelines shortly," Raju said.

Last month, draft rules for a national 'no-fly list' that bans unruly passengers from domestic air travel were released.

Current rules only allow airlines to refuse boarding or off-loading of a passenger whose behaviour is deemed as unruly or disruptive to the safety of flight operations.

The draft guidelines follow Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad's misbehaviour with an Air India employee in March. Gaikwad was barred from flying by all domestic airlines before the ban was revoked.

(Rohit Vaid can be contacted at rohit.v@ians.in)
San Francisco, June 7 : Technology giant Google announced a new educational programme, designed to teach children about internet safety issues such as phishing, internet harassment and passwords, the company said in a blogpost.

The programme -- called "Be Internet Awesome" -- includes a classroom curriculum and a video game called Interland.

"For kids to really make the most of the web, we need to provide guidance as they learn to make their own smart decisions online," Pavni Diwanji, Vice President of the Engineering for kids and families, said in a Google blogpost on Tuesday.

"With school out and summer break giving kids more time to spend on the Internet, it's a great time to introduce Be Internet Awesome: a new way to encourage digital safety and citizenship," Diwanji added.

The programme includes sections on how to limit sharing personal information with people online, avoid falling for scams or phishing attacks, creating strong passwords, and avoiding negative behaviour online as well as has a "Be Internet Awesome Pledge" that the students can sign.

Interland, the accompanying video game, seems less like a training tool and more like a sweetener that could get students interested in the material. Interland also uses a low-poly aesthetic that will be familiar to Daydream virtual reality (VR) users.

The programme was developed in collaboration with online safety experts like the Family Online Safety Institute, the Internet Keep Safe Coalition and ConnectSafely.

It includes a range of specific resources for kids, educators and parents, so everyone has the tools they need to learn and participate in the conversation.

The programme is compliant with International Society for Technology in Education standards, awarded to programs that promote a range of tech-savvy skills, said theverge.com on Tuesday.

"Be Internet Awesome" is the latest in Google's string of educational programmes, which range from promoting Chromebooks in the classroom to offering virtual reality field trips through Google Cardboard.
Tehran, June 7 : Armed men have opened fire at the Iranian Parliament and the shrine of Ayatollah Khomeini here on Wednesday, the Iranian media reported.

At least one gunman fired shots inside Parliament, wounding a guard, the reports said.

There were also reports of a shooting at the mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the modern state, the BBC reported.
The Raleigh, the boutique hotel known as the Grande Dame of South Beach, appointed Michael MacDonnell as director of food and beverage.

MacDonnell brings more than two decades of experience as one of the industrys top experts in mixology and service to the historic property. He joins Chef Joshua Elliott to complete the culinary leadership team.

As director of food and beverage at The Raleigh, MacDonnell will oversee restaurant, bar and poolside service. His first task will be to refresh the cocktail menu at the historic Martini Bar, a speakeasy-style bar in the lobby, a favorite through the years of stars from the Rat Pack to Robert De Niro.

Throughout his career MacDonnell has opened and operated over 40 concepts across the nation and brings a wealth of knowledge to The Raleigh. Prior to moving to Miami, MacDonnell was highly regarded for his work in Las Vegas with properties including Bellagio, The Light Group and Monte Carlo Resort & Casino where he served as director of beverage.

MacDonnell has received accolades throughout his career including the distinction of Best Bar Menu by Vegas Seven and top five influential food and beverage professionals in Las Vegas. He has also been prominently featured in the media including a full segment on the TODAY Show where he demonstrated the art of classic American cocktails.

The Raleigh is owned by The Raleigh Group and managed by sbe. MacDonnell will split his time between The Raleigh and neighboring sbe property, Townhouse, where he recently launched K Ramen. Burger. Beer. and The Cape.
Tehran, June 7 : One of the attackers who was holed up in the Iranian Parliament building on Wednesday has blown himself up, state news reported.

At least seven people were killed and several injured in a twin attack that struck the Iranian capital on Wednesday, Efe news reported.

Gunmen breached the Parliament building, killing several people and taking others hostage. At the same time other assailants attacked the shrine to Imam Khomeini, the former leader of Iran.
New Delhi, June 7 : The union cabinet on Wednesday accorded approval to a SEBI proposal to enter into an agreement of mutual cooperation with the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA).

"The Cabinet has given its approval to the Sebi for entering into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with ESMA in relation to mutual cooperation," the Finance Ministry later said in a statement.

The MoU was likely to establish cooperation arrangements as a precondition for ESMA to recognise Central Counter Parties (CCPs) established in India and supervised by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) to provide clearing services to members or trading venues established in the European Union.

The MoU would also provide ESMA with adequate tools to monitor the ongoing compliance by the covered CCPs, it said.
Chennai, June 7 : Actor Rana Daggubati on Wednesday said he dedicates everything he accomplishes in life to his late grandfather, legendary southern producer D. Ramanaidu.

Rana was participating in a Twitter chat with his fans when he was asked how he thinks his grandfather would have reacted to the teaser of his upcoming Telugu film "Nene Raju, Nene Mantri".

Rana responded: "Everything I do in life is a dedication to him. And he will shower his blessing on all of what I do."

On Tuesday, the teaser of "Nene Raju, Nene Mantri", in which Rana plays a politician, was unveiled amid high expectations.

The teaser has been received well so far.

Rana is overwhelmed with the reception and love.

"Wake up six hours later to see we are trending at second position on YouTube. Thanks for the love," he tweeted.

Directed by Teja, the film also stars Kajal Aggarwal, Catherine Tresa, Navdeep and Ashutosh Rana.
New Delhi, June 7 : China's military modernisation programme is now focussed on supporting missions beyond its territorial limits and is likely to set up bases in "friendly" countries like Pakistan, says the latest report from the U.S. Department of Defense.

The Annual Report on China's military and security development was submitted to the U.S. Congress on Wednesday.

It also confirmed that a Chinese nuclear submarine was docked in Karachi harbour in May 2016 during a visit of the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) Commander. It was China's first port call in South Asia by a nuclear submarine.

The report said as China's global footprint and international interests had grown, its military modernisation programme had become "more focused on supporting missions beyond China's periphery".

"In February 2016, China began construction of a military base in Djibouti that could be complete within the next year," the report said.

It added that China was likely to establish additional military bases in countries with which it has longstanding, friendly relationships, like Pakistan.

"China will most likely seek to establish additional military bases in countries with which it has a longstanding friendly relationship and similar strategic interests, such as Pakistan, and in which there is a precedent for hosting foreign militaries," the report said.

While stating that China continued to send submarines to the Indian Ocean in 2016, the report said it appeared to be in support of its counter-piracy patrols.

In the South and East China seas, the report said, China was continuing to exercise "low-intensity coercion" to advance its claims.

"China has leveraged its growing power to assert its sovereignty claims over features in the East and South China seas. China has used coercive tactics, such as the use of law enforcement vessels and its maritime militia, to enforce maritime claims and advance its interests in ways that are calculated to fall below the threshold of provoking conflict," the report said.

The report also mentions China's claim on Indian territory in Arunachal Pradesh but does not take any stand on it.

"Tensions remain with India along the shared 4,057-km border over Arunachal Pradesh, which China asserts is part of Tibet and therefore part of China, and over the Aksai Chin region at the western end of the Tibetan Plateau, despite growing China-India political and economic relations".

The report mentioned that in September 2016, an Indian patrol observed that more than 40 Chinese troops had set up a temporary shelter within the Indian territory in Arunachal Pradesh, which China also claims. The issue was later resolved by a flag-officer-level meeting, after which Chinese troops withdrew to mutually acceptable positions.

The report also accused China of stealing military technology from the U.S.

"China's military modernisation is targeting capabilities with the potential to degrade core U.S. military-technological advantages. To support this modernisation, China uses a variety of methods to acquire foreign military and dual-use technologies, including cyber theft, targeted foreign direct investment and exploitation of the access of private Chinese nationals to such technologies," the report said.

It said several cases emerged in 2016 of China using its intelligence services and employing other illicit approaches that violate U.S. laws and export controls to obtain national security and export-restricted technologies, controlled equipment and other materials.

On the country's defence spending, the report said Chinese "officially-disclosed" military budget grew at an average of 8.5 per cent per year betweem 2007 and 2016, and Chinese leaders seem committed to increases in defence spending for the foreseeable future, even as China's economic growth slows.
New Delhi, June 7 : Describing the killing of five agitating farmers in Mandsaur of Madhya Pradesh, allegedly in firing by state police, as cold-blooded murder, the Congress on Wednesday questioned the silence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the issue.

Speaking to the media here, Congress spokesperson and Rajya Sabha member Abhishek Manu Singhvi also trashed as "shameless" the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) allegation that the Congress instigated the Mandsaur violence.

Describing the Mandsaur incident as tragic, Singhvi said that while farmers were demanding fair price for their produce, the BJP shot them.

"They were seeking loan waivers and right price, but BJP killed them by bullets. This is the sad reality of Mandsaur," Singhvi added.

Farmers in Madhya Pradesh are on strike from June 1 to June 10 to demand waiver of their loans and that their produce be bought at a fair price.

"BJP has almost been acting like the curse of death for Indian farmers -- literally, not figuratively. Distressed farmers are looked upon by the heartless BJP virtually as objects for authorities to fire upon," said the Congress spokesperson.

"What was insulting and sad was the complete denial of the Madhya Pradesh government, which intially said there was no firing," he added.

Singhvi also questioned the silence of Prime Minister Modi, ban on the internet and denial of permission to Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi to meet the farmers in Mandsaur.

"Prime Minister Modi speaks of development (Utthan), but has instead in last 24 hours only tweeted about 'Uttana-Mandukasana' (a yoga posture)," Singhvi said.

Singhvi said those who wanted to go and express solidarity with the farmers, including Rahul Gandhi, were denied permission and instead rumours and canards were spread that he wanted to go there to participate in the protest.

"Instead of giving a healing touch to the farmers, the government is preventing communication by banning the internet," Singhvi said.

Hundreds of angry farmers on Wednesday blocked roads and attacked two top officials at Mandsaur as their leaders claimed that eight people had died in the police firing a day earlier.
Thiruvananthapuram, June 07 : Senior leaders of the congress party in Kerala has strongly condemned the alleged manhandling of CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury by activists allegedly belonging to the Bharatiya Hindu Sena at the AKG Bhavan in New Delhi on Wednesday.

Speaking to Manorama News channel, congress working committee member A K Antony termed the attack on Yechury utterly barbaric.

The attack on the office of the CPI(M) is highly condemnable, he told the channel, adding that the sangh parivar is trying create an atmosphere of fear in the country.

He also said that Yechury was targeted by the Hindutva outfit since he was a national leader who was at the forefront of the fight against the sangh parivar.

In a facebook post, senior congress leader and leader of the opposition in the Kerala assembly Ramesh Chennithala wrote that the incident proved that the sangh parivar elements in the country would dare to do anything.

I register my strong protest against threats being levelled against democracy by the RSS and its minions, he writes.

Saying that attacks being unleashed on political leaders by the fascist forces bent on maiming democracy could not be tolerated, Chennithala called for active measures to avert such attacks in the future.

It was those who did not possess the ability to take on opponents ideologically that resorted to physical attacks, he wrote.

Former Congress Kerala unit president V M Sudheeran also took to facebook to protest against the incident.

The manhandling of a prominent leader like Sitaram Yechury was condemnable and reprehensible, he wrote, adding that the incident amounted to an attack on our democratic set up.

The incident was a reflection of the intolerance nurtured by the sangh parivar in the country under the protective shadow of the Narendra Modi government, the facebook post said.

That even a tall leader like Yechury fell prey to a fascist attack like this was illustrative of the dangerous situation the country was facing today, Sudheeran wrote.
Bengaluru, June 7 : Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Wednesday tabled the State Goods and Services Tax (SGST) Bill in the assembly.

The SGST Bill seeks to amend the Karnataka Sales Tax Act, 1957, so as to facilitate the roll-out of the new indirect tax system from July 1.

The Bharatiya Janata Party and Janata Dal-Secular lawmakers urged Speaker B.M. Koliwad to ensure a detailed discussion on the SGST Bill since, they said, many members were unaware of its various provisions.

"We are not in favour of the SGST Bill. We want a detailed discussion on it," said JD-Secular lawmaker Y.S.V. Datta.

Intervening in the debate, Siddaramaiah said the assembly could not change the SGST Bill's provisions through a debate.

"What were the 17 BJP lawmakers from Karnataka doing when the GST Bill was introduced in the Lok Sabha? Wasn't JD-S lawmaker H.D. Deve Gowda present in the Lok Sabha when the GST Bill was passed? Now, I cannot allocate the time for discussion," he said.

After BJP's Basavaraj Bommai appealed to the Speaker to facilitate "training" to assembly members on the Goods and Services Tax issue, the chair announced such a training session at 9.30 a.m. on Thursday.
Srinagar, June 7 : At least three militants were killed as troops foiled an infiltration attempt in Jammu and Kashmir's Kupwara district on Wednesday, a defence official said.

Three militants were killed during an ongoing operation near the Line of Control (LoC) in Machil sector of Kupwara, said defence spokesman, Col. Rajesh Kalia.

Earlier, a police officer here said that the operation ensued after personnel of the counter-insurgency Rashtriya Rifles, searching the Sardari Nad forests near the LoC on information about presence of militants there, came under gunfire.
Kohima/Shillong, June 7 : An Army Major, three militants and a civilian were killed in a gunfight between security forces and terrorists early on Wednesday in Nagaland's Mon district bordering Myanmar.

Three Army Para commandos were injured in the gun battle at Lapa Lempong hilltop in Oting village. One of them was flown to a military hospital in Jorhat in Assam in critical condition.

The Army said an AK-56 assault rifle, two Chinese-made AK rifles, two grenades, three improvised explosive devices and 270 cartridges of AK-series firearms were seized from the spot.

The deceased officer was identified as Major David Manlun of the 164 Brigade of the Territorial Army. The identity of the three militants and the civilian are yet to be known.

Lapa Lempong is about 340 km east of Nagaland capital Kohima and about 25 km from the Myanmar border.

Acting on intelligence inputs, a combined team of Para commandos and Territorial Army ambushed the militants of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Khaplang (NSCN-K) and the United Liberation Front of Asom-Independent (ULFA-I) militants.

"The militants hurled a grenade and fired at the operational team that led to heavy exchange of fire and subsequent deaths," Kohima-based Army spokesman Colonel Chiranjeet Konwer told IANS.

The civilian killed was an autorickshaw driver allegedly ferrying the militants.

When Major Manlun's body was flown to Shillong, barring Army officers and family members, no Meghalaya minister or government official was present at the Gorkha Training Centre helipad to receive it.

"We are sad to hear of the tragedy. I am proud of my son. He has done his duty and given his life for our tomorrow," Manlun's father M. Khamzalam, a retired Army officer, told IANS.

The family said Major Manlun will be laid to rest at the Assam Regiment's cemetery on Thursday morning.
Dhaka, June 7 : At least one person died and dozens others have so far fallen ill due to suspected anthrax contracted from consuming meat of ill domestic animals in Bangladesh, media reported on Wednesday.

"At least 25 residents in Pabna district are suspected to be affected with anthrax after they consumed beef from sick cows recently," Xinhua news agency quoted a doctor as saying.

He said that three patients with anthrax symptom got admitted to a hospital in Pabna on Tuesday, pushing the total number of infected people to 25 in the district since May 27.

A 12-year-old boy, suspected to be affected with anthrax, died on Friday, the report said.

The boy fell sick after consuming meat of a diseased cow.

People who slaughtered the cows and processed their meat were also reportedly infected with anthrax.

"Officials said they had already collected samples of meat of the diseased animals for tests," it said.

The health official said blood samples of the patients were sent to the country's Institute of Epidemiology Disease Control and Research (IEDCR) in capital Dhaka for testing.

"We've to wait a few days to get result of blood samples testing to confirm whether those people are really infected with anthrax or not."

The Bangladeshi government in 2010 announced red-alert across the country, following the spread of cutaneous human anthrax to different districts.

Anthrax is a highly contagious disease, which is usually transmitted through contact with meat, blood or skin of an animal that has been infected.
Captain Cook Cruises Fiji announced the appointment of Ilisoni Vebose as Hospitality Manager onboard MV Reef Endeavour.

Ilisoni brings to the role 17 years of experience working for different resorts and cruising companies and for the past three years has been employed at Shangri-Las Fijian Resort & Spa in the position of Events Manager (MICE).

In his new position as Hospitality Manager, Ilisoni will be responsible for managing all crew departments, including crew training, housekeeping and dining and beverage services to ensure guests holiday expectations are exceeded.

I really enjoy making sure that guests are having a fantastic time on the cruise and that their expectations are delivered to the highest of standards. I see any challenge as an opportunity not only to improve but sustain excellent service. Explains Ilisoni.

Ilisoni, who has been in the role since April, says he loves interacting with guests from different nationalities and hopes to exceed in his given responsibilities.
Mandsaur/Indore, June 7 : Fresh violence erupted in Madhya Pradesh on Wednesday as protesting farmers indulged in arson, a day after the police gunned down up to eight peasants demanding relief from debts and higher crop prices.

Hundreds defied curfew in Mandsaur where police opened fire on Tuesday at a mob of farmers, leaving five dead according to official count and eight according to farmer leaders.

And some 200 km away, a group of farmers marched to a police station in Dewas district and set fire to vehicles parked there.

The government of Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan tried to douse the fires by announcing financial compensation for those killed in the violence and said he was ready for talks with farmers.

"I am a farmer and understand your problems. You can be assured your government will implement all promises," Chouhan tweeted, urging people to maintain calm and not pay heed to rumours.

In New Delhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has promised to double farmers' income by the end of his first term in 2019, met Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari.

The Home Ministry has sent 1,100 anti-riot police to Madhya Pradesh. The extra forces would be deployed in violence-hit Ujjain, Dewas, Mandsaur, Neemuch and Sehore, an official said.

But tension was still high as angry farmers blocked roads and also attacked two senior officials at Mandsaur. Mobile connectivity has been cut and thousands of police in riot gear were deployed.

Mandsaur District Magistrate Swatantra Kumar Singh and Indore Superintendent of Police O.P. Tripathi were roughed up when they reached Barkheda Pant where the farmers were squatting on a road with the body of one of those killed on Tuesday.

The ruling BJP accused the Congress of inciting the violence "The violence is very unfortunate. The Congress is trying to give it a political angle," Union Information and Broadcasting Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu said.

The Congress and the Left said the deaths in Madhya Pradesh proved that the Modi government had no strategy to help debt-ridden farmers in a drought-hit region.

"Farmers were seeking loan waivers and right price, but the BJP killed them. This is the sad reality of Mandsaur," Congress leader Abhishek Singhvi said.

Farmers in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra have been protesting crop prices since June 1, complaining that their incomes have not risen despite steady hike in agricultural production.

The demands for loan waiver gained momentum after the Uttar Pradesh government led by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath waived off nearly Rs 36,400 crore worth of farmers' debt.

The farmers in Madhya Pradesh have threatened to intensify their protests and accused the government of spreading lies about the number killed.

Aam Kisan Union founder Kedar Sirohi said: "By branding us anti-social elements, the government is adding fuel to the fire. On the one hand the government has unleashed repression on us, and on the other it is trying to defame us."

The Congress extended support to a shutdown called by farmers in Madhya Pradesh on Wednesday.
Abu Dhabi, June 7 : The United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Wednesday threatened to jail up to 15 years and also fine people who express sympathy towards Qatar.

UAE Attorney General Hamad Saif al-Shamsi said sympathising with Qatar was a cybercrime punishable by law, Gulf News reported.

"Strict and firm action would be taken against anyone who shows sympathy or any form of bias towards Qatar or against anyone who objects to the position of the UAE whether it be through social media or any type of written, visual or verbal form," Al-Shamsi said.

Anyone who threatens the interests, national unity and stability of the UAE will face a jail term from three to 15 years and a fine not less than $136,000.

Al-Shamsi said these new measures were in response to Qatar's "hostile and irresponsible" policies against the UAE and against the "other Gulf and Arab brotherly states".

According to the UAE, the aim was to "preserve the country's national security, its national priorities and those of its people".

Saudi Arabia is also contemplating applying its own cybercrime legislation against anyone questioning its government or supporting Qatar, according to a statement by lawyer Mushrif al-Khashrami published by Saudi daily Okaz.

In Saudi Arabia, the crime will lead to a five-year sentence and may include a fine of three million riyals ($800,000), Efe news reported.

On Monday, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain announced they were severing diplomatic relations with Qatar and ordered the closure of their land, sea and air borders to all Qatari transport systems.

This was followed by the withdrawal of ambassadors from the Maldives, Mauritania and Saudi-supported factions in the ongoing civil conflicts in Yemen and Libya. Jordan downgraded its diplomatic mission in Doha.
Lyon, June 7 : FC Lyon striker Alexandre Lacazette has asserted that he is interested in a move to the English Premier League (EPL).

Speaking on Facebook Live, the star striker, who has scored 100 goals in 203 matches for Lyon, said he will take a decision on his future following the current round of international matches with France.

"That could be an interesting option, it is a great league with interesting teams," he said during the interview on Tuesday.

"For the moment, those are only rumours. I will wait until the end of the international stint with France before taking my decision."

This development will surely delight EPL clubs like Arsenal, Manchester United and Chelsea, all of whom have been linked with the 26-year-old who scored 37 goals for Lyon this season.

Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger has stepped up efforts to buy the striker as he met the French club's president Jean-Michael Aulas in order to thrash out the details of the transfer.

The transfer will reportedly cost the former EPL champions 50 million pounds ($64.6 million) and Lacazette will earn 200,000 pounds ($258,000) a week while playing for the current FA Cup champions.

The France international's proposed transfer to Atletico Madrid fell through because of a transfer ban imposed upon the Spanish club by the Court of Arbitration for Sport for the current transfer window.

But Lacazette is reportedly keen on a playing for Atletico Madrid and had not ruled out a possible move in the future.
New Delhi, June 7 : A court here has granted bail to four men arrested for allegedly gang-raping a US tourist here last year.

Additional Sessions Judge Anu Grover Baliga granted bail to accused Aniruddha Singh, Vivek Srivastava, Omprakash and Maqsood while putting several conditions on them, including that they would not leave the country without its permission.

The relief was granted to them as the court said they were not required for further investigation and no purpose would be served by keeping them in further custody.

The US national had filed a police complaint with the help of an NGO in early December, saying the accused drugged her and sexually assaulted her for two days and also recorded the incident. The accused, however, denied the charge.

Delhi Police have filed a charge sheet against Aniruddha, Omprakash, Maqsood and Vivek and arrested them in December last year.

Aniruddha is a Nepal-based tourist guide, Omprakash a driver, Maqsood a helper, and Vivek a bell boy at the hotel.

The 30-year-old woman alleged she was gang-raped at the luxury hotel in the first week of April last year.

An FIR was registered on her complaint after External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj intervened.
Islamabad, June 7 : Pakistan on Wednesday strongly condemned the terror attacks in Iran in which 12 persons were killed.

Iranian official media reported that two attacks, claimed by the Islamic State, took place at the Parliament House and Imam Khomeini's mausoleum in Tehran.

"The government of Pakistan has strongly condemned today's terrorist attacks on Iranian Parliament and mausoleum of Imam Khomeini in which, reportedly, precious lives of innocent people were lost," Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

"We stand in solidarity with the people of Iran in their hour of grief," the statement, cited by Xinhua, said.
New Delhi, June 7 : Two youths belonging to a pro-Hindutva outfit manhandled Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury at a press conference here on Wednesday.

Enraged CPI-M members pounced upon the attackers, who are Hindu Sena activists, and thrashed them before handing them over to police.

The CPI-M politburo has strongly condemned the attack and blamed the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) for the incident.

Yechury, who was addressing a press conference on the violence in Madhya Pradesh's Mandsaur where five protesting farmers were killed in alleged police firing on Tuesday, described the attack on him as an attempt by the RSS "to silence the voices of dissent".

"We will not be cowed down by Sangh's goondagardi to silence us. This is a battle for the soul of India, which we will win," he tweeted.

Upendra Kumar and Pawan Kaul -- the attackers -- were taken to Mandir Marg Police Station.

The Hindu Sena activists entered the CPI-M office premises in Gole Market area of central Delhi chanting "Bharat Mata ki Jai" and slogans against Yechury, a police official said.

Hindu Sena President Vishnu Gupta told IANS that their two party workers were detained by police "for staging a peaceful protest against CPI-M for their article against the Indian Army" and had done "nothing" but only demanded the party's apology.

The CPI-M politburo later issued a statement condemning the attack by the two Hindu Sena activists and said: "This is typical of the RSS methodology of seeking to browbeat and intimidate the opposition."

"Masquerading as journalists, these persons tried to enter the hall where the conference was being held and started shouting anti-CPI-M slogans. They were immediately apprehended by CPI-M workers present there and handed over to police posted there.

"Such tactics will not be allowed to succeed," the statement said.
New Delhi, June 7 : Urging political parties not to politicise every investigation carried out by the central agencies, the BJP on Wednesday said illegal practices cannot be covered up with the garb of secularism and freedom of press.

"BJP urges the political parties not to politicise every investigation in the name of secularism, freedom of press or other such arguments. Investigative agencies do their work independently and they should be allowed to do so.

"Illegal practices cannot be covered up with the garb of secularism and press freedom and should be answered properly," Union Power Minister Piyush Goyal told a press conference here.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader's remarks came in the wake of government's criticism by the opposition parties over recent raids on top opposition leaders by central agencies, which they termed as "political vendetta".

The premises of two top opposition leaders, Congress's P. Chidambaram and Rashtriya Janata Dal's (RJD) Lalu Prasad, were on May 16 searched by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Income Tax Department officials.

"Instead of opposing the public welfare measures, particularly the measures to curb black money and corruption, the political parties need to build a consensus in support," Goyal said.

"We would expect from political parties to support the initiatives of Narendra Modi government to put an end to corruption and black money," he added.

He took on the opposition parties for opposing demonetisation, transparency in political funding and action against black money and corruption.

"It seems that some political parties suffered losses and faced difficulty with demonetisation while the whole country supported it. This was evident from the recent election results.

"It is also evident why certain political parties has taken such an anti-government stand when the entire nation has welcomed these moves of the government," he said.

Stating that the BJP maintains the highest standard of probity and accountability in electoral process by submitting its account details to the Election Commission (EC) and the IT Department, Goyal urged all political parties to follow such standards.

"We are surprised that crores of rupees were spent on hiring aircraft or helicopters, crores of rupees were spent on publicity, crores of rupees were spent in purchasing flags and other equipment for the party, but those spends are not accounted in the accounts of these parties.

"In fact, we would urge the all political parties to follow the example set by BJP. All the money is accounted in our accounts and audit reports submitted to the IT Department and the EC," Goyal added.
New Delhi, June 7 : Delhi Police on Wednesday claimed to have busted an international drug cartel here with the arrest of four persons, including a nephew of a Samajwadi Party leader, and seizing party drugs valued at over Rs 40 crore from them.

They were involved in smuggling of the contraband drug consumed at rave parties, police said.

Accused Avdhesh Kumar, 26, Chandan Rai, 31, Amit Aggarwal, 40, and Abu Aslam Qasim Azmi, 43, are resident of Delhi. Azmi is said to be a nephew of senior Samajwadi Party leader and Maharashtra MLA Abu Azmi.

Kumar was arrested on Sunday morning on a tip-off from an office in Mahipalpur Extension here with five kg drugs. At his instance, other accused were arrested on Monday and Tuesday during raids in Chandigarh and Mumbai.

The gang supplied the drug at rave parties held in posh areas in Delhi, Gurugram, Chandigarh, Mumbai, Goa and other parts of India, police said.

"They supplied drugs even to clients abroad, including the United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, the United States, and Middle East countries," a police officer said.

Police said gang kingpin Kailash Rajput is settled in Dubai.

"Abu Aslam looked after the network of this drug cartel in India," Deputy Commissioner of Police Sanjeev Kumar Yadav told IANS.

"Delhi Police received a tip-off that a consignment of premium quality drug 'Ice' will be sent from Mumbai for supply in the US and UK and that drug traffickers will visit their Mahipalpur office fronted by 'Prefer Logistic Pvt. Ltd.' for packaging the contraband," Yadav added.

Police said accused Abu Aslam used to work as a cargo officer with a company in Dubai till 2008.

He came in contact with Rajput during a Mumbai visit through a friend and joined the cartel after he was impressed by Rajput's lifestyle. He stayed in and ran this cartel from a five-star hotel in Mumbai, police said.

A manhunt is on to nab the absconding accomplices, the officer added.
London, June 7 : With hours to go before voting begins in Britain's general election, Prime Minister Theresa May, Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn and other party leaders hit the streets across the nation on Wednesday for a final push for votes.

The Tory leader said she was the only person who could "deliver for Britain" and negotiate the right Brexit deal.

Warning of "five more years of Tory austerity", Labour's leader promised more spending on health and education, BBC reported.

The Lib Dems were focusing on Remain-voting target seats while UK Independence Party (UKIP) said only it can stop Brexit "backsliding".

In Scotland, Scottish National Party (SNP) leader Nicola Sturgeon warned that a vote for Labour risks "handing the keys of No.10" to Theresa May, while leaders in Wales and Northern Ireland were also making their last pitch for votes.

In the wake of Manchester and London Bridge attacks, May promised to change human rights laws if they hamper a crackdown on terror suspects, by potentially seeking opt-outs from the European Convention on Human Rights.

But returning to her central message on Brexit -- the reason she gave for calling June 8 election 50 days ago -- May said that the money which was spent on EU projects till now could deliver "huge benefits" across the UK after its withdrawal, due in 2019.

May's day started in London, where she chatted with butchers at Smithfield meat market in the city. She was accompanied by her husband Philip as she visited the Southampton, Norwich, Nottinghamshire and the West Midlands.

Speaking in Norwich, she said a Labour government would "wreck the economy".

May said negotiations with the EU would begin in less than a fortnight and the question for voters was about who they trusted to deliver the best deal for Britain.

But emphasising Labour's plan to invest billions on public services, Corbyn said the NHS could not afford "five more years of underfunding, understaffing and privatisation".

He said: "The re-election of a Theresa May government will mean five more years of cuts to the NHS, five more years of increases in waiting times, five more years of more and more people waiting for social care and five more years of austerity."

The Labour leader had to reshuffle his top team on the eve of the election after announcing shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott was taking a break because of ill health.

Meanwhile, Lib Dem leader Tim Farron urged Labour supporters to "send a message" to May on issues such as Brexit and social care by supporting his party.

Campaigning in Edinburgh, Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon said re-electing SNP MPs would ensure Scotland retained a "strong voice" in Westminster and deny the Conservatives a "crushing majority".

At their final election rally, the Green Party called on people to "vote with their hearts".

Visiting Great Yarmouth, UKIP leader Paul Nuttall said only his party could keep the pressure on the next government to deliver a "real Brexit" -- with lower immigration, exclusive fishing rights for British trawlers within UK territorial waters and no "divorce bill".

Around 50 million Britons are eligible to vote in the general election on Thursday.
New Delhi, June 7 : Condemning police firing in Mandsaur of Madhya Pradesh, in which five farmers were killed on Tuesday, All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) -- a wing of Communist Party of India (CPI) -- and Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union (JNUSU) held a protest near Madhya Pradesh Bhavan here on Wednesday.

The protest by around 30 people was led by former MP and AIKS General Secretary Hannan Mollah and JNUSU President Mohit Pandey.

They criticised the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led governments in the Centre and states for "anti-farmer policies" and suppressing farmers' protest through "unwarranted ways".

"The Modi government has created a very painful and adverse situation for farmers in its three years of governance. At least seven farmers were killed in Chhattisgarh last year. Now, the BJP-led governments in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh are trying to suppress farmers' protest through unethical and unwarranted ways," Mollah said.

"Pro-BJP and pro-RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) organisations are being used to overpower the ongoing protests. Farmers in Mandsaur were protesting against the government peacefully but it resorted to firing and killed farmers."

The farmers allege that the Madhya Pradesh Police and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel deliberately opened fire at them when they were protesting on Tuesday. Five farmers were killed and seven were injured in the firing. The farmers, however, claim that eight persons lost their lives.

Pandey said people in the country will have to fight the brutal ways being adopted by the governments to control farmers' protests.

"In the name of nation-building, the BJP-led governments have been killing farmers and poor. Earlier, they killed Pahlu Khan, and now they brutally killed farmers in Madhya Pradesh," Pandey said.

Delhi University Professor Apoorvanand, who also joined the protest, said the government had no concerns left for farmers.

"The BJP government is saying the protesting farmers in Maharashtra are fake since they wear shirt and pant. These BJP governments have shown no remorse for their brutal action against farmers so far," he said.

The AIKS handed over a memorandum to officials at the Madhya Pradesh Bhavan, in which they demanded judicial inquiry into the police firing in Mandsaur, action against those responsible for the firing, loan waiver to farmers and Rs one crore compensation to the deceased farmers.
The Rwanda Development Board recently announced an increase in the price of Gorilla Tracking Permits from US$750 to US$1,500 for all visitors, effective immediately.

On hearing the news, leading safari specialist, Acacia Africa was encouraged by comments* from Stephen Asiimwe, CEO of Uganda Tourism Board, after the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) reported that their current tracking charges will be maintained.

Arno Delport, Sales & Marketing Manager at Acacia Africa, comments The recent increases in gorilla tracking permits by the Rwandan government will inevitably have a knock on effect on tourism in Uganda where the cost of a permit is now substantially less and priced at only USD 600pp. Clearly, the percentage of revenue obtained by the use of the gorilla permits contributes to the primates survival, the recent baby boom in Bwindi impenetrable National Park giving hope to conservationists and exciting travelers looking to book this once-in-a-lifetime wildlife experience.

Stephen Asiimwe, CEO of Uganda Tourism Board, comments Once you have looked into the eyes of a mountain gorilla, you understand how important it is to protect these primates. It is important, that not only a wealthy minority can get the chance to experience these animals in their natural environment, but everyone who wants to contribute to their conservation. Besides, we feel obliged to our tourism partners worldwide to keep prices stable.

Acacia Africa is discounting 11 of its gorilla focused camping overland trips by 15% in its current Primate Promo, if bookings are made by 30 June. All of the tours feature gorilla viewing in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park and the prices include transport, camping accommodation, most meals and services of a tour leader/driver. Excludes return flight.

SAVE 210pp (15%) 18 day Mountain Gorillas to the Mara from 1,195pp (no single supplement) + Adventure Pass from 510pp + gorilla & chimp permit from 540pp. Offer valid on the following guaranteed departures: 19 August and 16 September. Starts Nairobi - ends Nairobi. Full tour price 1,405pp.

Link to tour: http://acacia-africa.com/tours/mountain-gorillas-to-the-mara-17MGM18

SAVE 158pp (15%) 14 day Gorilla Encounter from 897pp (no single supplement) + Adventure Pass from 100pp + gorilla & chimp permit from 540pp. Offer valid on the following guaranteed departures: 26 August and 23 September. Starts Nairobi - ends Nairobi. Full tour price 1,055pp.

Link to tour: http://acacia-africa.com/tours/gorilla-encounter-17GEN14

SAVE 90pp (15%) Six day Troop to the Gorillas from 515pp (no single supplement) + gorilla & chimp permit from 540pp. Offer valid on the following guaranteed departures: 04 July, 22 August, 26 September. Starts Kampala - ends Kampala. Full tour price 605pp.

Link to tour: http://acacia-africa.com/tours/troop-to-the-gorillas-17TTG6
Kochi, June 7 : For the second day in succession, the Kerala High Court on Wednesday slammed the way the state government was trying to interpret their earlier directive about opening of liquor vends on highways and directed three top Excise officials to appear before it with all files on June 14.

The high court's order came as it was hearing a petition by a Congress activist claiming that the state government was trying to mislead the court over the terminology of National Highways and the observation made last week.

What made the court upset on Tuesday and Wednesday that 13 liquor vends had been opened and only after the Congress activist's petition explained to the court that its directives are being wrongly interpreted, did the court realise that their orders was not obeyed.

Justice Devan Ramachandran asked three top Excise officials to appear before the court with all the files and explain what they did.

The state government counsel on Wednesday informed the court that while they have no doubt that the Cherthala-Thiruvananthapuram was the national highway, they are not sure about the AKannur-Kuttipuram segment.

The court then directed that the State PWD principal secretary to file an affidavit to this effect and posted the case for June 14.

State Excise Minister T.P.Ramakrishnan meanwhile made it clear that the state government has the highest regards for the judiciary, will, in no way, go forward with an attitude of confrontation but abide by the directives of the court.

Last week, the state Excise Department had asked the high court to consider the demand of bar hotels situated along the Cherthala-Thiruvananthapuram and Kannur-Kuttipuram National Highways to continue operations as these roads were de-notified as highways, prior to the Supreme Court order on liquor outlets along highways.
Bhubaneswar, June 7 : Technocrat Sam Pitroda on Wednesday resigned as technical advisor to the Odisha Government, an official said.

Pitroda tendered his resignation earlier on Wednesday and Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik accepted his resignation, said a functionary of the Chief Minister's Office (CMO).

The resignation came after Pitroda appointed as Chairman of the Congress' Overseas Department.

Pitroda, who was born in Titilagarh in Odisha, was given the post, carrying the rank of a Cabinet Minister, to help provide the essential technological blueprint to write the IT story of Odisha.

Earlier, the BJP had demanded removal of Pitroda from the post, alleging there was a nexus between Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik and Congress President Sonia Gandhi through him.
New Delhi, June 7 : Even as the BJP and the Congress indulged in a war of words over the killing of eight farmers in police firing in Madhya Pradesh, the Congress said its Vice-President Rahul Gandhi will visit Mandsaur on Thursday to meet the bereaved families.

"Will be in Mandsaur tomorrow (Thursday) to meet the families of farmers who lost their lives in the police firing yesterday (Tuesday)," Gandhi said on his official Twitter handle.

Fresh violence erupted in Madhya Pradesh on Wednesday as protesting farmers indulged in arson, a day after the police gunned down eight peasants demanding relief from debts and higher crop prices.

On Wednesday, Information and Broadcasting Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu accusing the Congress of instigating violence in the name of farmers' agitation.

Terming the violence "very unfortunate", Naidu said the government was monitoring the situation.

The Minister accused the Congress of trying to gain political mileage out of the incident.

"The Congress is trying to give it a political twist. I only want to tell them (Congress) not to politicise the issue and fuel and instigate violence in the name of farmers' agitation, because it will boomerang on you," Naidu said.

On the other hand, describing the killings as tragic and cold blooded murder, the Congress questioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi's silence on the issue.

Speaking to the media here, Congress spokesperson and Rajya Sabha member Abhishek Manu Singhvi trashed as "shameless" the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) allegation that the Congress instigated the Mandsaur violence.

Singhvi said while farmers were demanding fair price for their produce, the BJP government shot them dead.

"They were seeking loan waivers and right price, but he BJP (government) killed them with bullets. This is the sad reality of Mandsaur," Singhvi added.

Farmers in Madhya Pradesh are on strike from June 1 to June 10 to demand waiver of their loans and that their produce be bought at a fair price.

"The BJP has almost been acting like the curse of death for Indian farmers -- literally, not figuratively. Distressed farmers are looked upon by the heartless BJP virtually as objects for authorities to fire upon," said the Congress spokesperson.

"What was insulting and sad was the complete denial by the Madhya Pradesh government, which intially said there was no firing," he added.

The Congress leader questioned Modi's silence, ban on Internet and denial of permission to Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi to meet the farmers in Mandsaur.

"Prime Minister Modi speaks of development (utthan), but has instead only tweeted about 'Uttana-Mandukasana' (yoga posture) in last 24 hours," Singhvi said.

The Congress leader said those who wanted to go and express solidarity with the farmers, including Rahul Gandhi, were denied permission and instead rumours and canards were spread that he wanted to go there to participate in the protest.

"Instead of giving a healing touch to the farmers, the government is preventing communication by banning the Internet," Singhvi said.

Hundreds of angry farmers on Wednesday blocked roads and attacked two top officials at Mandsaur as their leaders claimed that eight people had died in the police firing a day earlier.
New Delhi, June 7 : Emphasising the need for an intensive awareness campaign to sensitise people about vector-borne diseases, Delhi Lt. Governor Anil Baijal on Wednesday exhorted all the agencies to ramp up their activities and maintain 24x7 readiness in order to curb dengue and chikungunya.

Chairing a meeting to review the preparedness of the government and other agencies including all the civic bodies, he also directed the Health Department to submit weekly action taken report in this connection.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, Health Minister Satyendar Jain, Chief Secretary M.M. Kutty along with the officials from all the civic bodies were present in the meeting.

Baijal directed that a massive Information, Education and Communication campaign should be launched through handbills in newspapers/hoardings.

He further instructed that local bodies should assign area wise duty to field workers and fix their accountability for their respective areas.

He said that community should be made aware about all the possible breeding sites around their premises.

In the meeting, Kejriwal also stated that in view of upcoming rainy season with possibility of water logging, all the concerned agencies must ensure necessary corrective action.
Alogent today announced that Wepawaug-Flagg Federal Credit Union (WFFCU) has chosen its QwikDeposit ToGo mobile remote deposit capture solution with Mitek MiSnap to bolster its mobile banking platform.

WFFCU (Hamden, CT, 13,000 members, over $115M in assets) decided to upgrade its mobile channel when it converted from a select employee group to a community charter, now serving most of New Haven County. They selected Alogents remote deposit capture (mRDC) as part of a larger mobile channel strategy to serve their growing membership.

Here at WFFCU, our members experience is our priority, said Michael Hinchey, President/CEO of WFFCU. When members have a comfortable, easy and efficient check deposit experience, we know they will keep using it. We also understand how often technology is the key to a prospects decision to join our credit union.

Security concerns played a big part in WFCCUs vendor selection. Hinchey added, Weve been focusing on the mobile channel and how to prevent losses all around. We vetted several vendors before choosing QwikDeposit ToGo, which best meets our security requirements. Its robust, yet agile enough to meet our currentand futuremembers expectations for convenience and usability.

Alogent is pleased to partner with WFFCU to provide better member service and efficiency, said Alissa Fry-Harris, Alogent Director of Marketing. Consumers everywhere are pushing for omni-channel self-services. More capture points and mobile offerings are a great place to begin.

About Wepawaug-Flagg Federal Credit Union

WFFCU (13,000 members, over $115M in assets) was founded in 1936 to serve teachers, and converted to a community charter covering 27 towns in New Haven County, Fl. It continues to grow and currently operates 4 branches, offering a wide range of banking services to members and their families.

About Alogent

Alogent provides proven, end-to-end payment processing, content management and digital account opening solutions to financial institutions, currently including over 1,400 credit unions, community and regional banks, and some of the largest national and international institutions. Our solutions are versatile, scalable, user-friendly, and exceptionally stable. Because of our relentless focus on innovation, our clients consistently exceed their productivity, financial, and customer experience goals. Learn more about the new Alogenta successful merger between the former Bluepoint Solutions and the former Alogent Corporationat http://www.alogent.com.
Unitek College welcomes two accomplished education professionals to their leadership team: Dr. Abdel Yosef as Chief Academic Officer and Dr. Louise Timmer as Associate Dean.

Dr. Abdel Yosef, a distinguished professional with over a decade of proven performance as Vice President and Academic Dean, has been promoted to Chief Academic Officer at Unitek College. As a Nurse Educator, certified by the National League for Nursing, Dr. Yosef was an award-winning instructor based on student evaluations. His years of experience in regional and national accreditation, Higher Education, Board of Registered Nursing Regulations and Vocational Nursing Regulations and CCNE accreditation will enhance the quality of Uniteks education programs and continue our goal of excellence in Clinical Partner Relations.

In other roles, Dr. Yosef has served as President of California Career Institute and Lead Faculty and Course Content Expert at California State University. Yosef earned his BSN from Jordan University of Science and Technology, his Master of Science in Nursing from Georgetown University, and his PhD in Nursing Education from University of San Diego.

Dr. Louise Timmer has been a prominent nursing educator and leader for over thirty years. Most recently she was Campus College Chairperson for the University of Phoenix BSN and MSN nursing programs. Prior to that, she served as Chief Academic Officer at the College of Medical Aesthetics. For over twenty-five years, she was a nursing professor at California State University where she was also Director of the LVN to RN Associate Degree Program. She has also served as President of the American Nurses Association of California for five years.

Dr. Timmer is a dynamic public speaker and has been a presenter at national and international nursing conferences. She earned her nursing diploma at University of Southern California, her MSN at The Catholic University of America, and her EdD in Education and Nursing at University of San Francisco.

Unitek College is one Californias leading healthcare and nursing colleges, offering a wide range of certificate and degree programs. Taught by current experts, Unitek programs teach the best-practice clinical technique and theory used in the field today. Equipped with a mastery of sought-after skills, Unitek College graduates are prepared to excel in many of the fastest-growing careers in healthcare and nursing. Unitek College also offers one of the most respected IT certification programs for computer and network support technicians.
Consumer Goods Technology presented its fourth-annual "CMO of the Year" award to Peter McGuinness, Chief Marketing & Brand Officer of Chobani, during a special ceremony at the 2017 Consumer Goods Sales & Marketing Summit in New York City on June 6.



This one of-a-kind award is presented to the Chief Marketing Officer who has made a demonstrable impact on his/her consumer goods organization through the implementation and successful use of new marketing strategies, technologies and/or processes.

"The business results provide the direct evidence: In 2016, Chobani completed its incredible 9-year rise to the top of the U.S. yogurt category," explains Peter Breen, editor-in-chief of CGT. "But there were other, less-measurable reasons that made Peter McGuinness a clear choice for this year's award."



As Chief Marketing & Brand Officer since 2013, McGuinness has helped build a truly authentic brand that resonates deeply with younger, more socially conscious consumers. A recently launched "Believe in Food" branding campaign promotes the community values that are a core component of Chobani's positioning (at both the brand and corporate levels). Social channels (not to mention social issues) and other non-traditional media were critical to Chobani's early development and are still a key component of the strategy.



Its been a great year for Chobani and this award is a real honor and testament to it. Most importantly, its a recognition that the work and achievements of everyone at our company have been felt by a broader community, and thats very special and something that makes me very proud," says McGuinness.

Initial nominations for "CMO of the Year" were fielded in early 2017 by CGT and submitted by various members of the consumer goods community. The magazine's editors narrowed the nominations down to four deserving individuals who were presented to our esteemed Editorial and Research Advisory Boards for voting. Also recognized as finalists were David Kroll of MillerCoors, Marie Gulin-Merle of L'Oreal USA and Keith Weed of Unilever.

CGT presents several awards throughout the year to members of the consumer goods community. Click here to view the full program list and to make nominations.

About Consumer Goods Technology

Consumer Goods Technology, an integrated media brand, is the leading resource for consumer goods executives using technology to enable business success. Delivering content through print, online and events, CGT reaches an audience of more than 76,000 executives ranging from managers and directors to VPs and C-suite leaders across all major segments of the consumer goods sector, including packaged goods, consumer electronics, home appliances, and fashion. For more information, visit http://www.consumergoods.com.

Contact:

Alarice Rajagopal

Editor, CGT

973-607-1354

arajagopal(at)ensembleiq(dot)com
Part of what makes Lyles story so great is his passion to help as many people as possible protect their important retirement funds,

Lyle Boss of Utah has been selected radio show host of the year by Safe Money Radio. Safe Money Radio helps produce radio for financial advisors across the United States.

Our entire team is proud to announce that Lyle Boss has won this years award for the State of Utah, Bill Broich, CEO of Safe Money Radio said. Its not only an award of recognition for his hard work and dedication, but each winner receives a $1,000 stipend for their incredible work. Of course, Lyle Boss, being the type of guy he is, promptly donated his check to charity.

Part of what makes Lyles story so great is his passion to help as many people as possible protect their important retirement funds, Broich said. He was hesitant to enter the radio arena, but what made him finally host a show and become such an excellent host is he knew he could help more people with planning their retirement because radio has such broad reach. Lyle is driven by a desire to help. We recognize that.

Boss issued a short statement:

Im honored to win this award and Im using it as motivation to make my radio show better and better. It means a lot. I give the credit to the fine people at Safe Money Radio. I couldnt have done it without them. Lyle has genuine potential to become a syndicated national radio host, not just Utah, Broich said.
Tenzing Ecommerce Managed Services Getting on these types of lists and staying there is no easy feat. Accomplishing this for nine years in a row is a testament to our relevance in the marketplace and the talented team we have developed over the years.

Tenzing, a leading provider of ecommerce infrastructure and application services, is pleased to announce that it has yet again ranked on the Branham300 list of the 250 best Information and Communications (ICT) companies operating in Canada. With nine straight years on the list, Tenzing continues to be a leader in delivering IT services that optimize performance, security, and compliance for retailers and manufacturers around the world.

Each year, the Branham Group ranks the established and up-and-coming companies in Canadian technology. They select the best based on revenue growth and performance, ranking the top performing tech companies from an extensive list of applicants. "The companies that comprise the Branham300 have many reasons to be proud, says Wayne Gudbranson, CEO, Branham Group.

According to Tenzing President Raj Atwal, It is pleasing for us to be on the Branham300 once again. There are many well-known and admirable Canadian and multinational companies on this list, and we are proud to be included with such an elite group. We continue to create a brand and a company that is valued for delivering solutions that provide our clients agility and worry-free operation of their ecommerce, other digital, and supply chain IT platforms. We appreciate the recognition of the role we play supporting this large and fast- growing part of the economy.

This year, Tenzing ranked 146th on the Branham300 and believes the investments it has been making in its leadership and new staff hires, combined with innovative new services for merchants leveraging technologies like AWS and public cloud, will position the company well in the future. Atwal continues, Getting on these types of lists and staying there is no easy feat. Accomplishing this for nine years in a row is a testament to our relevance in the marketplace and the talented team we have developed over the years.

About Tenzing

Tenzing deploys, manages and optimizes software and infrastructure for leading omnichannel and commerce platforms from partners such as Oracle Commerce, SAP Hybris, Magento, and others. Tenzing provides solutions that enhance performance, maintain security and simplify compliance for leading retailers and manufacturers. By combining deep technical expertise with exceptional service delivery and support, Tenzing helps clients alleviate risk and maximize revenue from their digital investments. Tenzing has offices and customers in the Americas, EMEA, and APAC, and recognized as a high-growth company and industry leader. For more information, visit http://www.tenzing.com.

About the Branham300

The Branham300, now in its 24th year, is a unique ranking of technology companies in Canada because it tracks both publicly held and privately-owned companies. It is the only comprehensive list to do so. The Branham300 also delivers insight into Canadas start-up community through the Top 25 Up and Comers and measures the contributions made by multinationals operating in Canada. The Branham300 consists of three major listings, ranked by revenue (except where noted): Top 250 Canadian ICT Companies, Top 25 ICT Multinational Companies operating in Canada; and Top 25 Up and Coming ICT Companies (ranked on innovation and long-term promise, not revenue)
Solomoto, the international SaaS platform for small businesses and BlueVine, the online provider of working capital financing for small and medium-sized businesses, today announced an innovative partnership geared to providing credit lines and digital marketing services to small businesses worldwide. With cash flow and marketing serving as two of the most important pillars in small businesses, combining Solomotos digital marketing platform and BlueVines fast and flexible credit services will give small business owners the capital they need, combined with a stronger online presence to bring exponential growth.

Solomoto aims to provide an all encompassing marketing and advertising solution for small business owners. The company offers an intuitive and dynamic digital marketing platform with an all-in-one-place dashboard so business owners do not need to spend hours each day in their marketing efforts or seek out of house agencies.

Founded in 2013, BlueVine offers its clients convenient access to working capital through its business line of credit solution, called Flex Credit. With Flex Credit, businesses get convenient access to up to $100,000 in working capital. BlueVines sophisticated online financing platform features a quick and seamless application and approval process. Solomoto CEO and co-founder Guy Israeli said Solomoto's all encompassing solution to marketing and advertising in collaboration with BlueVine brings us one step closer in our mission of helping small businesses succeed in every capacity. Guy continued, We understand our clients need quick funding at rates they can actually afford. I believe BlueVine is the natural solution for our clients.

BlueVine Chief Revenue Officer Eric Sager said: Digital marketing is important for small businesses in todays world. Were excited to work with Solomoto in addressing this need by offering convenient financing to entrepreneurs.

###

About

BlueVine offers small businesses financing solutions to access the funds they need to purchase inventory, cover expenses or expand operations. BlueVine developed a fully online, cloud-based platform for invoice factoring, enabling rapid advances on outstanding invoices due in 7-90 days and bringing a 4,000-year-old industry into the digital age. BlueVine also offers Flex Credit  an on-demand, revolving line of credit  through the same online platform. With BlueVine, business owners can focus on growing their business instead of worrying about their bank account. BlueVine is funded by Lightspeed Venture Partners, Citi Ventures, 83North, Correlation Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Rakuten Fintech Fund and other private investors.

Visit BlueVine at https://www.bluevine.com/

Solomoto is headquartered in Tel Aviv and was launched in 2014. The company created an easy-to-use dashboard that enables business owners to take greater control of their online presence. Solomoto is active in twenty-four different countries and helps over 150,000 small businesses across the globe.

Visit Solomoto at http://www.solomoto.com
Northpointe Bank welcomes Jerry Walters  Senior Relationship Manager.

As senior relationship manager, Mr. Walters will be responsible for all aspects of client development for Northpointe Banks mortgage purchasing program. This will include client origination, financial review, underwriting, closing, onboarding, client monitoring and performance.

Before joining Northpointe Bank, Mr. Walters was the national director of business development at Quatrro Mortgage. Past positions also include managing member of Ashlin Resources and Director of GSE Mortgage Warehouse Programs. In all, he holds more than 30 years of experience in the banking and mortgage industries.

Mr. Walters earned a bachelors degree in marketing and management from Empire State College at Syracuse University.

Jerry can be reached by email at jerry.walters(at)northpointe.com

Northpointe Bank, headquartered in Grand Rapids, Michigan, is focused on being a different kind of bank - one that offers client-focused products and services and empowers its employees to exceed customer expectations while enriching the community it serves. In February 2016, ICBA Independent Banker ranked Northpointe Bank as a top performing financial institution in the nation among its peers1. To find out more, visit http://www.northpointe.com. Member FDIC. Equal Housing Lender.

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1- Source: Best Performing Community Banks; Independent Community Bankers of America ranked Northpointe Bank number 3 according to return-on-equity during 2016 for banks with assets between $300-$500 million.
Our government has consistently failed to provide security to the Afghan citizens across the country and to add insult to injury, they have lost moral grounds of authority by opening fire at unarmed civilians practicing their civil and human rights.

Afghanistans online civil rights activist and blogger Shuja Rabbani has condemned the Afghan government for ordering their Protective Services guards to open fire on civilian protesters.

The Afghan Presidents Protective Service (PPS) shot and killed seven civilians during a peaceful protest marking anger over the lack of security in the capital city of Kabul.

Following one of the worst bombings in Kabul since the US invasion in 2001 last week, a group of civilian protesters including university lecturers and students staged a demonstration on Friday expressing their anger over the governments lack of competence in bringing security to the war-torn city and holding security officials accountable.

Civil rights activists including human rights organizations such as Amnesty International have expressed their concerns in the governments mishandling of the situation which turned chaotic after protesters claimed the PPS opened gunfire following direct orders from the Afghan President. Unverified video footages on social media have since surfaced of snipers deliberately targeting unarmed civilian protesters. The protesters have since continued their sit-ins into the fourth day and have expressed desire to build more sit-in tents across the city until the government takes genuine measures against ongoing violence against civilians.

In response to the aftermath of the Kabul demonstration, Rabbani stated, Our government has consistently failed to provide security to the Afghan citizens across the country and to add insult to injury, they have lost moral grounds of authority by opening fire at unarmed civilians practicing their civil and human rights to assemble publicly. This is a gross abuse of power at the highest level of our government.

Other activists on social media have been condemning the governments apathy towards the victims and mishandling of the protest. Rabbani asks, The deafening silence from our allies such as the United States makes everyone question why they are not taking the governments violent actions against civilians seriously? Billions of dollars worth of American taxpayers money has been poured in to create the fragile democracy we have today. We cannot afford to lose it because of a government gone rogue. The Kabul Process Conference for peace which is due to take place this week is a sham if the government is inviting the donors while protesters are in their tents outside demanding their democratic rights back.

The explosion last week is reported to have killed at least ninety people and wounded four-hundred as the bomb went off in the diplomatic quarter of Kabul city near the German Embassy and the presidential palace.

Shuja Rabbani is an Afghan blogger who frequently writes about minority and social issues of Afghanistan.
Dee Dee Receiving 20 Year Award Dee Dee is a valuable asset to the Brea team. She continues to make outstanding contributions to guests and team members, showing great enthusiasm at the hotel.

Embassy Suites by Hilton Hotels, a national brand of upscale, all-suite hotels, has honored Dee Dee Stewart, Controller, of the Embassy Suites Brea for her 20 years of service with the hotel. Dee Dee is also a recipient of the Spirit of Embassy Award, the companys most prestigious team member award.

Dee Dee is a valuable asset to the Brea team. She continues to make outstanding contributions to guests and team members, showing great enthusiasm at the hotel. said Jay Badillo, General Manager. We are proud that she is part of our superb team. She is always willing to help all the employees who need help with regarding accounts. She was awarded manager of the year of 2016 due to all of her hard work and efforts she puts in ever since she started working at the hotel.

Dee Dee represents the true spirit of Embassy Suites. She has been employed since April 24, 1997. For her anniversary, Dee Dee will receive $100, a Service Award plaque, recognition from Embassy Suites Hotels and a celebration lunch provided by the hotel team. Dee Dee is honored to receive the reward and thanks Embassy Suites for, your encouragement and support that have made all the difference.

Embassy Suites Brea is located at 900 E Birch Street, Brea, California. Located just outside the Anaheim Resort Area, the hotel is near completion of a multi-million dollar renovation to include guestrooms, lobby, atrium, banquet and restaurant areas.

To view career opportunities with Windsor Capital Group please visit http://www.wcghotels.com. For reservations, visit http://www.embassysuitesbrea.com or call 1-714-990-6000.

ABOUT EMBASSY SUITES BY HILTON

Embassy Suites by Hilton, one of Hiltons 14 market-leading brands, is dedicated to delivering what matters most to travelers. The full service, upscale brand offers two-room suites, free made-to-order breakfast and a nightly two-hour reception with complimentary drinks and snacks. Both leisure and business travelers looking for a relaxed, yet sophisticated experience will feel right at home with brand-standard amenities like inviting atriums and complimentary 24-hour business and fitness centers. Embassy Suites by Hilton has more than 230 hotels with 49 in the pipeline. Hilton Honors members who book directly through preferred Hilton channels have access to instant benefits, including a flexible payment slider that allows members to choose nearly any combination of Points and money to book a stay, an exclusive member discount that cant be found anywhere else, free standard Wi-Fi and digital amenities like digital check-in with room selection and Digital Key (select locations) available exclusively through the industry-leading Hilton Honors app. For more information, visit embassysuites.com or news.embassysuites.com. Connect online with Embassy Suites by Hilton at Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

ABOUT WINDSOR CAPITAL GROUP

Windsor Capital Group, Inc. is a hotel management and development company that owns and operates full- service upscale branded hotels throughout the United States, flying the Embassy Suites and Marriott flags. It also runs Windsor Management Services, a top-performing hotel management company that customizes hotel management services to meet the needs of the properties. With more than 30 years of experience to call on, Windsor Management Services is known for unmatched results for its owners and unparalleled service for its guests delivered with a personal connection. For more information, visit windsormanagementservices.com and wcghotels.com. Social media users may connect via Facebook and Twitter. For additional information, please contact Paul Francisco, Chief Operating Officer at 310-566-1100.
The MIAMI Association of REALTORS Commercial Alliance (RCA MIAMI) analyzed the impact of self-driving cars, the rise of e-commerce, the growth of industrial real estate and the largest proposed mall in the United States at its fifth annual RCA MIAMI Midyear Update held recently in Coral Gables.

The way we did business 30 years ago or 20 years ago or even 5 years ago is changing, said RCA MIAMI panelist Jose I. Juncadella, an office and industrial Miami broker and principal of Fairchild Partners. Its important for all (brokers) to understand that we have to move on because technology is improving.

New Technology Disrupting Real Estate

Real estate is one of three industries ripe for technology disruption, according to RCA MIAMI keynote speaker Geoffrey Kasselman, the executive managing director at the Chicago office of Newmark Grubb Knight Frank. New technology, automation and digitization will also impact banking and healthcare.

Real estate will be impacted by the proliferation of self-driving cars as they would significantly reduce the need for todays parking garages and surface lots. The structures, which often sit in prime real estate locations, could be reimagined in new ways (housing, retail, commercial and healthcare).

Self-driving cars would also allow passengers to travel hands-free and stay connected, increasing personal productivity and the amount of time that commuters are willing to spend in the car. Development in rural or suburban areas could increase as passengers adapt to long commutes.

Growth of E-Commerce

E-commerce comprises just 8.1 percent of U.S. retail sales, but the industry is growing fast. U.S. e-commerce sales in 2016 totaled $394.9 billion, a 15 percent increase from 2015.

Amazon.com is the big leader, posting increased net sales of 27 percent to $136 billion in 2016 with a $2.4 billion net profit compared with a $596 million profit in 2015. The rise of e-commerce has led some to believe it will bring the death of brick and mortar shopping malls. Malls, such as the proposed American Dream Miami mall, argue physical stores continue to be the core of the shopping experience.

American Dream Miami

If approved, American Dream Miami would be the largest theme park and mall in North America. The proposed complex in northwest Miami-Dade County which would house an indoor ski slope, water park, movie complex and more. Officials say it could be completed by 2022.

American Dream Miami would total 6.2 million square feet, including 3.5 million square feet of retail, plus 2,000 hotel rooms. American Dream Miami estimates it would receive 40 million projected visitors and create 14,500 permanent jobs.

Its an opportunity for the commercial world to interact with consumable world directly, said Robert Gorlow, who is managing American Dream Miami for Triple Five Group.

Industrial Real Estate: The Hottest Asset Class

Absorption for industrial real estate hit a new record nationally and locally last year. The growth of Amazon, a globe-spanning retail giant that is the fourth most valuable firm on the U.S. stock market, is a major reason why.

Amazon will soon have 1.4 million square feet of space in the Miami area, Juncadella said. About 20 to 30 percent of all industrial absorption around the world was by Amazon.com, Kasselman said.

Population growth has propped up all real estate sectors but has favored the industrial sector specifically. The booming tourism industry has also helped fill the region's warehouses. Nearly 60 percent of the goods sitting in local warehouses end up in South Florida.

About the MIAMI Association of REALTORS

The MIAMI Association of REALTORS was chartered by the National Association of Realtors in 1920 and is celebrating 97 years of service to Realtors, the buying and selling public, and the communities in South Florida. Comprised of six organizations, the Residential Association, the Realtors Commercial Alliance, the Broward Council, the Jupiter Tequesta Hobe Sound (JTHS-MIAMI) Council, the Young Professionals Network (YPN) Council and the award-winning International Council, it represents 46,000 real estate professionals in all aspects of real estate sales, marketing, and brokerage. It is the largest local Realtor association in the U.S., and has official partnerships with 163 international organizations worldwide. MIAMIs official website is http://www.MiamiRealtors.com

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The library inside Hotel Valencia Riverwalk "Today, Valencia Group has invested an additional $10 million into Hotel Valencia Riverwalk to create a completely new hotel experience and reset the bar for the entire San Antonio hospitality industry," says Roy Kretschmer, Executive VP of Operations.

Hotel Valencia Riverwalk has just completed a dramatic transformation with the first major renovation in the boutique hotels 14-year history. The hotel, long recognized for its distinctive sleek and modern style, has been completely reimagined by internationally acclaimed architect and designer, Lauren Rottet. The renovation was completed in late April 2017.

Rottet, along with her team at Rottet Studio, immediately envisioned an opportunity to fully immerse the property into the charm and heritage of San Antonio and the hotels serene River Walk location. The resulting design concept is an alluring blend of Spanish Colonial and Modern Mediterranean styles. The Spanish Colonial influence represents a nod to San Antonios Spanish Colonial heritage dating back to the time the Missions were built, while the Modern Mediterranean flair reflects the buildings Tuscan-style architecture and the hotels namesake, Valencia, Spain.

On January 19, 2003  almost exactly 14 years ago -- Hotel Valencia opened its doors as the first boutique hotel in San Antonio, thus launching a trend that has transformed the downtown hospitality landscape, said Roy Kretschmer, Executive Vice President of Operations for Valencia Group. Today, Valencia Group has invested an additional $10 million into Hotel Valencia Riverwalk to create a completely new hotel experience and reset the bar for the entire San Antonio hospitality industry.

Top-to-Bottom Transformation

The top-to-bottom renovation incorporates warm, rustic woods, elegant ironwork, hand-crafted tiles and textiles that reflect the design sensibilities of Spanish Colonial style, along with the color palette and elegance of Modern Mediterranean design. The public spaces on the hotels second floor showcase the most dramatic part of the makeover, with a complete reimagining of the former restaurant and bar into the new Dorregos restaurant and bar and the new Naranja breakfast space and bar.

This new incarnation of Hotel Valencia Riverwalk represents the next chapter for this unique and very special property, said General Manager Trent Freeman. Our completely reimagined approach to providing timeless hospitality and modern luxury is enticing visitors and locals alike to come and enjoy a hospitality experience unlike any other in San Antonio.

The Entrance

New lighting on the front columns, flanked by olive trees in large over-scale pots, makes the entrance more dramatic and prominent. Just inside the entrance is a redesigned fountain with a new water feature that is more visible than before. This is an inviting area where people can relax for a moment if they wish before going up to the second floor lobby. The risers on the steps feature hand-stenciled designs reflecting the Spanish Colonial style. On the wall next to the elevators are four black and white mosaic-patterned cow skulls created by Shannon House of Of the Earth Boutique based in Northern California.

The Reception Area

The reception desk, now more visible from the stairs and elevator, is a statement piece  a custom hand-carved desk featuring scalloped detailing. Behind the front desk the Alhambra-style plaster treatment, called Esgrafiado, utilizes a historic technique widely used in Spanish Colonial design. This stamped process creates a three-dimensional relief on the featured wall. Typically, the impression is used on an exterior facade, but here it is utilized on the interior. A laser-cut leather tapestry created by Miami-based Artehide is hung on the wall opposite the front desk. Columns throughout the second floor are cladded in warm walnut woods.

Dorregos

The new restaurant, Dorregos, is named for the famed Plaza Dorrego, a public square located in the historic San Telmo neighborhood in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Plaza Dorrego is filled with cafes, bars and pubs, and is a popular gathering place for locals and visitors alike.

Hotel Valencia Riverwalks Executive Chef, Anthony Mesa, has developed an innovative new menu for Dorregos that draws its inspiration from the rich culinary heritage of Argentina. An extensive wine list, which includes a wide variety of Argentinean wines, is a focal point for diners. The restaurants decor reflects the Spanish Colonial design and architectural heritage of Argentina, with a touch of Parisian bistro panache. It features Argentinean-style tile work and woods with dark metal accents. The new dining space includes a private dining area that showcases a tin tile ceiling, a dramatic chandelier and a glassed-in floor-to-ceiling wine storage display that separates the private room from the main dining area. Dorregos also features a new restaurant bar, and the welcoming space is ideal for gathering and lingering.

Dorregos menu captures the unique blend of Italian and Spanish cultures that is the cornerstone of Argentinas heritage and cuisine, noted Kretschmer. As a result of a major influx of Italian immigrants to Argentina over the years, Argentinas cultural roots lie in both Spain and Italy. Hotel Valencia Riverwalk and Dorregos personify this distinctive fusion in both the hotels design and in the restaurants offerings.

At 10 p.m. nightly, Dorregos amps up the energy, with the focus centered on its expansive bar setting. The dinner menu offerings are supplanted with a late night small bites menu that guests can enjoy along with cocktails, wine and beer.

Dorregos appealing terrace features additional seating topped with comfortable Spanish/Mediterranean-style cushions and hand-crafted mosaic cafe tables. The outdoor space also features a rustic large-scale wooden table with benches. The terrace features numerous planter pots, which blend the space into its tranquil River Walk setting.

Naranja, the New Bar and Cafe

The former VBar has been transformed into Naranja, the new bar and cafe. This re-energized space is now enveloped in Modern Mediterranean flair. Among its features are a hammered metal ceiling, Mediterranean-style textiles and hexagonal porcelain tiles and hardwoods on the floor. In the evenings, the space offers an ideal spot to meet over cocktails and small bites in a laid-back setting. In the mornings, the bar becomes a cafe featuring specialty coffees and a complimentary European-style continental breakfast for hotel guests.

Other public spaces on the second floor

The Library

Rottet Studio has created a new library space where the former registration desk was located. This cozy space is reminiscent of an old-school cigar lounge at a gentlemens club, with wood paneling and wood shutters. Two dramatic paintings of sensuous tango dancers grace the walls. Artist Maksim Koloskov was commissioned to paint a map of historic downtown San Antonio on the spines of the books in the bookcase spanning one wall of the library. On the opposite wall, a grouping of artistic black and white photos showcase the graceful bridges of San Antonios River Walk.

The Living Room

The central area of the lobby, which formerly featured a Candle Wall and cozy seating, now features a dramatic wrought iron chandelier and inviting Spanish Colonial-style furnishings and seating. A welcoming fireplace flanked by wrought iron scones replaces the previous Candle Wall.

Guest rooms showcase Spanish Colonial design

The focal point of the redesigned guest rooms is the curved iron headboards. This rustic style is reminiscent of San Antonios Mission-based Spanish Colonial influence. New bathroom vanities with a custom gray-brown wood stain, integrated mirror and bronze fittings were designed specifically for the hotel.

About Lauren Rottet and Rottet Studio

Lauren Rottet is one of the most celebrated interior architects in the world today. She is the only woman in history to be elevated to Fellow status by both the American Institute of Architects and International Interior Design Association.

After graduating with a Bachelor of Architecture degree from the University of Texas with Highest Honors, the Waco, Texas, native began her career in San Francisco, where she practiced with the accomplished residential design firm Fisher Friedman Associates. She later relocated to Chicago to join Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) and focus on high-rise office design. She later transferred to Texas to work as Senior Designer for SOM on several major high-rise buildings, museums and planning projects. Next, she started an Interiors practice for SOM in Los Angeles. After successfully building that practice, Rottet and several SOM partners joined forces to create the architecture and interiors firm, Keating Mann Jernigan Rottet. The partners later joined Daniel Mann Johnson & Mendenhall (DMJM) to further expand their growing practice. Rottet was Principal-in-Charge of the interiors practice, DMJM Rottet, for 14 years. In 2008, she left DMJM to form the privately held, WBE-certified, Rottet Studio.

Today, Rottet Studio is an international architecture and design firm with an extensive portfolio of corporate and hospitality projects for the worlds leading companies and brands. The firm is consistently ranked among the corporate and hospitality Top 100 Design Giants by Interior Design magazine and was recently recognized as one of the Top 3 Most Admired Design Firms in the World.

About Valencia Group

Houston-based Valencia Group is a fully integrated hospitality company that provides management, development, branding and repositioning services for independent, full-service hotels owned by the company, in addition to third parties. Exceptional service, style and location have become brand trademarks. Earning both national and international recognition for their distinctive designs, amenities and settings, Valencia Group properties are destinations and gathering places within their respective communities, some further benefitting from and enriching their space within the cultural heart of a city. The company continues to forge a niche with hotels that anchor and add value to urban, mixed-use environments, which further support or enhance the guest experience with superior residential, restaurant, retail and office components. The Valencia Group portfolio currently includes the Valencia brands: Hotel Valencia Santana Row in San Jose, CA and Hotel Valencia Riverwalk in San Antonio, TX. The Sorella brand includes Hotel Sorella CITYCENTRE in Houston, TX by developer Midway. The court concept brands include Lone Star Court in Austin, TX and Midway and Valencia Groups Cavalry Court in College Station, TX. New openings in 2017 will include: Midway and Valencia Groups The George in College Station, TX and Midways Hotel Alessandra in Houston, TX. For more information, please visit http://www.valenciagroup.com
"We are excited to make the shift to Drinks Technology and continuing our relationship with Drinks Technology's Andre Preoteasa, who has been intimately involved the beverage alcohol industry for over a decade," said Castle Brands COO John Glover.

Drinks Technology, a new information technology (IT) services company focusing exclusively on the beverage alcohol industry, has launched to meet the technology needs of suppliers, distributors and the other companies operating in the three tiers of the alcohol beverage industry. Castle Brands (NYSEMKT: ROX), developer and international marketer of premium and super-premium beverage alcohol brands like Jefferson's and Goslings Rum, is among Drink Technology's initial partners. Drinks Technology manages all of Castle Brands IT infrastructure for its 65 employees and offices in New York (HQ), Houston and Dublin, Ireland.

"We're happy to be partnering with Drinks Technology for all of our IT needs," said John Glover, COO, Castle Brands. "After many years of managing IT in-house, we are excited to make the shift to Drinks Technology and continuing our relationship with Drinks Technology's founder Andre Preoteasa, who has been intimately involved in our business and the beverage alcohol industry for over a decade."

Drinks Technology provides a full suite of technology services, coupled with personalized attention from technology experts with deep industry knowledge. The company handles such functions as email, file management and sharing, security, network routers and firewalls, servers, backup and disaster recovery, audits and government compliance.

Over the past 10 years, Drinks Technology's founder and CEO Andre Preoteasa has managed the IT environment at Castle Brands and led such major technology implementations as:



Migrating from a traditional in-house server environment to fully cloud-based.

Transitioning to mobile-first to allow cloud services, such as Dropbox, to bring marketing and sales closer when communicating with distributors.

Putting Castle Brands in position to easily allow IT infrastructure to implement EDI communication for Walmart.

"While technology demands are at the cornerstone of almost any industry, the IT services companies that are tasked with implementing and maintaining technology are usually industry-agnostic. IT services companies will work with any company under the premise that all IT needs are the same," said Andre Preoteasa. "A decade in the industry has given me intimate insight into how a successful beverage alcohol company operates. By understanding the specific needs of the industry, Drinks Technology is better able to provide technology-related services that coincide with our clients' bottom lines. We bring the latest innovations from Silicon Valley to help our clients sell cases."

Andre Preoteasa recently spoke about how technology can help beverage companies to beat their competition at one of the industrys premier annual events, the U.S. Beverage Alcohol Forum at WSWA. The entire panel on which he spoke can be viewed here.

About Castle Brands

Castle Brands is a developer and international marketer of premium and super-premium beverage alcohol brands including: Jefferson's, Jefferson's Presidential Select, Jefferson's Reserve and Ocean Aged at Sea Bourbon, Jefferson's Wine Finish Collection and Jefferson's Wood Expiriments, Goslings Rum, Knappogue Castle Whiskey, Clontarf Irish Whiskey, Pallini Limoncello, BoruVodka and Brady's Irish Cream. Additional information concerning the Company is available on the Company's website, http://www.castlebrandsinc.com.

About Drinks Technology

Drinks Technology is the only information technology services company designed specifically to meet the unique technology needs of the beverage alcohol industry. By understanding the unique challenges suppliers and distributors face, Drinks Technology is able to hand-pick hardware and software to ensure sales and marketing teams work seamlessly together and that the rest of the company units are fully connected 24/7 and responsive to the same mission: selling cases. Drinks Technology is based in Newark, NJ. For more information, visit https://drinks.technology.
As one of the pillars of Kdan Mobile, a Taiwan-based software developer specialized in providing solutions to better leverage productivity and creativity, Animation Desk is reshuffling its current interface to give its users a clearer and tidier animation construction structure, and adding other new features including an in-app search engine. Animation Desk is the first mobile application that provides tools to create traditional, hand-drawn animations. The Company has since made Animation Desk available on iOS, Android, and Windows after the app was applauded and downloaded by nearly 20 million users.

Using the previous framework as the foundation, the latest update replaces the previously known Project with Sequence and introduces the Storyboard feature to develop three distinctive layers to the animation construction framework. The first layer consists of the individual sequences. In the second layer, the sequences are grouped by stringing them together to create the final animation storyboard - the third layer. Dividing the animation into sections for clearer structure is a well-established practice in the professional animation and filmmaking industry.

The new feature on Animation Desk enables the users to easily rearrange the order of the sequences, duplicate, export them to a different storyboard, and create numerous sequences within one storyboard.

By bringing this standard animation construction practice to our users, we aim to help them build a good foundation and further develop their animation professionalism, as well as making it easier for our users to edit and organize each animation sequence, explained Kevin Huang, Chief Designer of Animation Desk.

With the aim of making storyboarding and communication more efficient in animation production, we want to offer a reliable and professional platform to fully express their creativity, said Huang.

Kdan Mobile now offers a subscription service called Creativity 365. Creativity 365 grants users extended access to the whole Creative App series, including Animation Desk. Creativity 365 streamlines content creation workflow across different devices, providing complete mobility and flexibility, and offers 1TB Kdan Cloud storage.

Animation Desk is available for free on both the App Store and Google Play. When subscribed to the annual plan of Creativity 365, subscribers will receive a complimentary Adonit Dash 2 stylus until July 31, 2017.

About Kdan Mobile Software Ltd

Since 2009, Kdan Mobile has been a dedicated provider of mobile software applications and online services that allow users to better leverage their productivity and creativity. Kdan's works are backed by more than 100 million downloads worldwide; their solutions empower the world to create, distribute, and conjoin projects via a variety of devices across platforms. Kdan Mobile is headquartered in Taiwan, with operations in Mainland China and the U.S.
Emil Andrusko, Benchworks Sr. Vice President of Pharmaceutical Strategy It is truly an honor to be recognized for being a mentor as this is a passion of mine. I have taken the time to mentor many colleagues during my career and believe it is important to help them attain their professional goals.

PM360, the premier information resource for marketing decision makers in the pharmaceutical and medical device sectors, has named Emil Andrusko, Sr. Vice President of Pharmaceutical Strategy at Benchworks, as one of the 2017 PM360 ELITE 100 in the Mentor category. Now in its third year, the PM360 ELITE (Exceptional  Leaders  Innovators  Transformers  Entrepreneurs) represent the most influential people in the healthcare industry today.

Emil joined Benchworks in 2014. He is primarily responsible for market development within the biopharmaceutical market, as well as strategic planning and direction for a variety of existing clients. Emil has 30 years of sales and marketing experience in the pharmaceutical industry with Wyeth and Pfizer. He has held numerous executive sales and marketing leadership positions in numerous therapeutic categories and has a track record of innovation and driving growth for brands.

Emil commented on the award saying, I am extremely humbled by this recognition. It is truly an honor to be recognized for being a mentor as this is a passion of mine. I have taken the time to mentor many colleagues during my career and believe it is important to help them attain their professional goals.

The PM360 ELITE Awards were established in 2015 to recognize individuals who have made a significant impact to the healthcare industry throughout their careers. More than 500 submissions were received and nominees were evaluated based on their accomplishments; testimonials from their bosses, clients, and colleagues; and supporting evidence that reflects the impact of their efforts. A total of 100 winners were selected across 18 categories, including Creative Directors, Data Miners, Digital Crusaders, Disrupters, Drug Researchers and Developers, Entrepreneurs, Launch Experts, Leaders of the Future, Marketing Teams, Master Educators, Mentors, Patient Advocates, PR Gurus, Sales MVPs, Strategists, Talent Acquisition Leaders, Tech-know Geeks, and Transformational Leaders.

Each of the 2017 PM360 ELITE 100 demonstrated immense talent in their ability to impact our industry, says Anna Stashower, CEO and Publisher of PM360. These people represent the best the industry has to offer, including veterans who have made their mark over and over and up-and-comers who are just getting started.

Emil Andrusko and the rest of the winners will be honored at a celebratory event on July 11th in New York City at the rooftop bar 230 FIFTH. Tickets are available for purchase at http://www.pm360online.com/elitetickets.

About PM360

PM360 is the premier, must-read magazine for marketing decision makers in the pharmaceutical, biotech, and medical device industries. Published monthly, PM360 is the only journal that focuses on delivering the full spectrum of practical information necessary for product managers and pharmaceutical marketing professionals to succeed in the complex and highly regulated healthcare environment.

The journals targeted and insightful editorial focuses on issues that directly impact critical decision making, including: Planning and implementation of cutting edge strategies, trends, the latest technological advances, branding/marketing, advertising/promotion, patient/professional education, sales, market research, PR, and leadership. Additionally, the 360 in the title signifies the span of this critical, how-to info with personal and career insights for an enjoyable and thought-provoking read.

By providing the full circle of enriching content, PM360 is truly an indispensable tool for busy and productive marketing professionals to stay at the top of their game.

About Benchworks

Benchworks, a comprehensive marketing services agency headquartered in Chestertown, Maryland, was founded in 1991. With offices in Philadelphia and Boston, the company specializes in the design, production, and launch of complete marketing and branding services. Clients include a wide variety of companies in the life science, pharmaceutical, beverage, manufacturing and education industries in North America and Europe. For additional information, visit http://www.benchworks.com or call 800-536-4670.
Expert Technology Advisors "Were a homegrown technology company thats been around for more than 35 years. Were thrilled to see that there are more opportunities in tech in Indiana than ever, and we want to make a difference in that movement, said Nathan Stallings, President.

Matrix Integration, LLC (Matrix), expert technology advisors founded in Jasper, Indiana, today announced that the company has officially opened its new Indianapolis regional office. The move is due to the desire to attract talented technology employees to the Indianapolis region, as well as burgeoning opportunities for Matrix, and contribute towards local economic development including the growth of Silicon Prairie. Matrix Integrations Indianapolis regional office located on Technology Drive in Fishers Commerce Park provides further technology enhancements in Fishers growing tech district.

The growing technology demands of the community in the Indianapolis region is what brought us here, said Nathan Stallings, President, Matrix Integration. Were a homegrown technology company thats been around for more than 35 years. Were thrilled to see that there are more opportunities in tech in Indiana than ever, and we want to make a difference in that movement.

Matrixs CEO and Indiana native, Brenda Stallings, started a computer and telecommunications business in 1979, and formed Matrix in 1997 with co-owner, Dan Fritch, to help companies build, maintain, and modernize their computer networks. Today, Matrix is a $50 million-annual revenue private company with nearly 100 employees. The organization helps more than 1,000 clients in over a dozen industries including finance, manufacturing, healthcare, education and utilities, and provides a wide range of services including:



Network Infrastructure

Wireless

Security

Data Center

Professional Services

Thriving Nationally, Making Indiana Home

Over its lifetime, Matrix continues to flourish despite competition from national and global IT consulting firms. Many top employees have spent time in national firms in larger cities or abroad, only to come back to Indiana to continue their success with Matrix.

For most of our clients, the difference is that were local, were real people, and we have the experience and expertise that they need, continued Stallings. We live and work here ourselves. If they need help, our clients are not calling an 800-number. We solve their IT issues by finding the best people and the best solutions, and we stick around through execution and beyond.

The new, Indianapolis office with 3,000 sq. ft. of office space, is near downtown Fishers at 9093 Technology Drive in Commerce Park.

About Matrix Integration

Matrix Integration is a trusted technology consulting and implementation company based in Jasper, Indiana that has been in business for more than 35 years. Strategic partnerships include Hewlett Packard Enterprise, HP Inc., Aruba, Cisco Systems, VMware, Microsoft, Mitel and Juniper. With Clients nationwide and offices in Indiana and Kentucky, Matrix Integration works closely with businesses and organizations to provide personalized technology Solutions such as Professional Services, Data Center, Networking, Computing, Collaboration, and Security. Matrix Integration has been recognized on numerous Industry lists including CRN Solution Provider 500, CRN Women of the Channel, CRN Tech Elite 250, Diversity Business Top Business, Champions of Diversity and Indiana Excellence Award.

Matrix Integration LLC

9093 Technology Drive, Suite 102, Fishers, IN 46038

http://www.matrixintegration.com

Media Contact: Katie Lindler (843) 637-9365, katie(at)vaguspr(dot)com
"We are very excited about establishing a well-known brand based on the strength of our family of companies, and expect Avante to quickly gain visibility in both the domestic and international healthcare markets." -Steve Inacker, President & COO of Avante

Avante Health Solutions will officially be adopted as the global brand name for Jordan Health Products at the AAMI 2017 Annual Conference. In addition to launching the global brand, Avante will also be unveiling a new logo at booth 815 near the exhibit hall entrance. The trade show will be attended by all Avante companies, and will showcase a wide range of quality, cost-effective product and service offerings.

The rebranding of Jordan Health Products as Avante Health Solutions coincides with our growth in the medical equipment and service sector, said Steve Inacker, President & COO of Avante. We are very excited about establishing a well-known brand based on the strength of our family of companies, and expect Avante to quickly gain visibility in both the domestic and international healthcare markets.

Visit Avante Health Solutions at AAMI 2017 in booth 815 for more information on available products and services.

About Avante Health Solutions

Avante is expanding its global leadership in the healthcare market by acquiring, partnering, and growing with healthcare equipment companies that provide smart solutions for a wide variety of medical facilities. Our companies are focused on the complete lifecycle of medical, surgical, diagnostic imaging, cath/angio, and radiation oncology equipment, including sales, installation, service, repair, sourcing and refurbishing. Through organic growth and targeted acquisitions, Avante provides a breadth of service and product offerings to customers located throughout North America and the world. For more information, please visit http://www.avantehs.com.

Avante Family of Companies

Global Medical Imaging

Founded in 2002, GMI sells, services, repairs, and installs new and refurbished medical imaging equipment, specializing in diagnostic ultrasound and nuclear medicine.

DRE Medical Group, Inc.

Since 1984, DRE has worked to be a single supplier for new and professionally refurbished operating room, critical care, and surgical equipment.

Integrated Rental Services, Inc.

Founded in 1997, Integrated Rental specializes in medical equipment rental for hospitals, surgery centers, clinics, research labs, and medical facilities across the United States.

Oncology Services International Inc.

Founded in 1985, OSI is the leading independent provider of service for radiation therapy equipment, including linear accelerators and CT simulators.

Pacific Medical

Founded in 2005, Pacific Medical is a leading source for reliable repair and recertified monitoring equipment. The company carries a large inventory of patient monitors and OEM parts from all major brands.

Transtate Equipment Company

Founded in 1998, Transtate specializes in providing high quality refurbished cath/angio and CT systems. Transtate offers on-site cath/angio repair services anywhere in the U.S. and a large inventory of replacement parts.
Matching a buyer to a property that fits in their portfolio and that isnt available on the open marketthats when a broker creates a solution, not just a sale.

Earlier this month, CW Landmark brokered the sale of Westbrooks Tanger Outlets, a 290,000 square foot retail center with seven vacant surrounding parcels. For a purchase price of $40 million, the property was acquired by Luxembourg-based Hoche Partners Real Estate.

Ralph A Lewis III, sole broker on the deal, connected the buyer and seller. The value is always in off-market opportunities, he commented. Matching a buyer to a property that fits in their portfolio and that isnt available on the open marketthats when a broker creates a solution, not just a sale.

As Connecticut shoppers are scrupulously aware, the Westbrook center features dozens of brands and even a selection of service destinations, including Marquee Cinemas. H & M will soon join the roster of credit-worthy tenants, as the popular clothing company signed a fresh lease earlier this year.

Though CW Landmarks annual transaction total has maintained a two-digit habit since inceptionwith sales of $23 million in 2016 and $26 million in 2015Tanger is a gamechanger only two quarters into the year.

We want investors to know that we are more than a typical commercial brokerage firm. Were a purveyor of deals they havent seen before, Lewis said. With $89 million in sales in two and a half years, buyers and sellers are viewing the physical results of Lewis words.
In Time Out, surgical team members are required to confirm correct side, site and patient. June 14 is National Time Out Day to urge focused participation in this important pause.

The Association of periOperative Registered Nurses (AORN) and The Joint Commission are observing National Time Out Day on June 14 by reminding surgical teams of the importance of taking a surgical time out for every patient, every time. By taking a time out before operative and other invasive procedures, surgical team members confirm the patient, the procedure and the surgery. Despite this requirement, The Joint Commission estimates wrong site surgeries occur up to 40 times each week.

AORN and The Joint Commission encourage every surgical team member to be a SUPER HERO for patient safety. This SUPER HERO acronym stands for nine elements that come into play as part of practicing a time out:



Support a safety culture

Use The Joint Commissions Universal Protocol and AORN Surgical Checklist

Proactively reduce risk in the OR

Effect change in your organization

Reduce harm to patients

Have frank discussions about hazardous situations

Empower others to speak up when a patient is at-risk

Respect others on the surgical team

Openly seek opportunities for improving patient safety

AORNs Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director Linda Groah, MSN, RN, CNOR, NEA-BC, FAAN, said, While the SUPER HERO theme provides a fun focus for National Time Out Day this year, its safety culture components are serious and should resonate with perioperative teams in their shared goal to create the safest surgical experience for their patients.

Joint Commission President and Chief Executive Officer Mark R. Chassin, MD, FACP, MPP, MPH, said, An effective time out is a cornerstone of patient safety and safety culture that needs continual reinforcement. That is why The Joint Commission supports the efforts of the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses in raising awareness of practices that prevent wrong-site, wrong-side, wrong-procedure or wrong-person surgery.

The History of Time Out

In 2004, The Joint Commission, the nations oldest and largest standards-setting and accrediting body in health care, and a catalyst for high-reliability in health care, introduced the Universal Protocol, a simple process for preventing wrong site surgery.

The Universal Protocol calls for the patient and surgeon to confirm the procedure and mark the body part to be operated on. It also calls for every member of the surgical team to participate in a time out before operating to ensure that the correct procedure is about to begin on the correct part of the correct patient.

AORN responded to the Universal Protocol by creating the National Time Out Day to raise awareness. In 2008, AORN also developed a combined surgical safety checklist to enable individual facilities to meet the Joint Commissions Universal Protocol and the World Health Organizations standards while customizing the check list to their surgical specialties.

About AORN

AORN represents the interests of more than 160,000 perioperative nurses by providing evidence-based research, nursing education, standards, and practice resourcesincluding Guidelines for Perioperative Practice and the peer-reviewed, monthly publication AORN Journalto enable optimal outcomes for patients undergoing operative and other invasive procedures. AORNs 40,000 registered nurse members manage, teach, and practice perioperative nursing, are enrolled in nursing education or are engaged in perioperative research. http://www.aorn.org

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Contact:

Gayle Davis, AORN Corporate Communications

gdavis(at)aorn.org

(cell) 303-928-9105
By uniting with UTZ, partnered with SAN, we will combine our strengths to expand our impact on improving the lives of farmers and forest communities, protecting biodiversity and championing companies that are on the path to sustainability. - Nigel Sizer

The Rainforest Alliance and UTZ, two of the worlds leading sustainability certification organizations, have announced their intention to merge later this year.

The new organization, to be named the Rainforest Alliance, will tackle environmental and social issues around the world, including climate change, deforestation, poverty and unsustainable farming. It will create a single global certification standard that will simplify certification for farmers and empower companies to build more responsible supply chains, more efficiently. It will also work to expand advocacy efforts and through new partnerships ensure conservation of entire landscapes in priority regions from India to Indonesia, Guatemala to Ghana.

New organization, new certification standard

The future Rainforest Alliance will help ensure that more products are responsibly sourced, helping farmers and companies meet the growing demand for products with sustainability credentials.

The future sustainability standard, a single certification program known as the Rainforest Alliance standard, will utilize the respective strengths of the current Sustainable Agriculture Network and UTZ standards while creating a single auditing process for certificate holders.

As a result, it will be an easier path for companies to achieve proven sustainability certification, allowing them to drive innovation throughout their supply chains. Streamlining the certification process will also help the 182,000 cocoa, coffee and tea farmers currently certified under both standards and new farmers alike to invest more efficiently in sustainability, avoiding a double administrative load of working with two standards and certification systems.

Stronger together

Adopting the name Rainforest Alliance helps retain well-established engagement with consumers. By combining forces, the two NGOs will provide a leading platform to help increase demand for responsibly sourced products.

Together, the new organization will act as an advocate for change, continuing to protect the natural environment and striving to make sustainable agriculture and forest management the norm by working side by side with communities, businesses and governments. This is an aim that is already at the core of the missions of UTZ and the Rainforest Alliance.

Once the two organizations have merged, Han de Groot, current executive director of UTZ, will be the CEO of the Rainforest Alliance. Nigel Sizer, current president of the Rainforest Alliance, will take on the role of Chief Program Officer, Advocacy, Landscapes and Livelihoods.

The future Rainforest Alliance will continue to be a member of the Sustainable Agriculture Network, working in partnership with other organizations to promote sustainable agriculture.

Quote: Han de Groot, Executive Director, UTZ

The challenges we work on are more urgent than ever: climate change, deforestation, systemic poverty and inequality are increasingly intertwined with the way we manage land and produce food and forest products. The future Rainforest Alliance will have a bigger reach and stronger voice, allowing it to better protect the natural environment and allow farmers, businesses and consumers to be make even more responsible choices, more easily. We have a history of continuous growth and strong partnerships  this new venture will give us more influence to bring us closer to our mission: a world where sustainable farming will be the norm.

Quote: Nigel Sizer, President of the Rainforest Alliance

Our missions are very similar, to work with farmers and communities in an effort to protect the natural environment and help mitigate the effects of climate change on a global scale. By uniting with UTZ, and partnered with SAN, we will combine our strengths to expand our impact on improving the lives of farmers and forest communities, protecting biodiversity and championing companies that are on the path to sustainability.

Quote: Daniel Katz, Founder and Chairman of the Board of the Rainforest Alliance

Now, more than ever, stronger collaborations are needed to ensure we are doing the best we can to create a more sustainable planet. This new alliance moves us forward in that regard as it combines first-rate global conservation efforts with the gold standards of independent third-party certification. We believe that collectively the Rainforest Alliance, UTZ and the Sustainable Agriculture Network, working closer together, will benefit more farmers and more ecosystems worldwide.

Quote: Roberto Velez, CEO Colombian Coffee Growers Federation

Thousands of Colombian coffee farmers who are certified by both UTZ and The Rainforest Alliance will benefit from this development. It should bring great benefits to them, such as being audited against one standard instead of two, thereby making major savings on auditing costs. This should allow coffee growers to invest more efficiently in sustainability and increase their income, hence contributing to their economic sustainability.

The Colombian Coffee Growers Federation(FNC) represents more than half a million families dedicated to growing coffee in Colombia.

Quote: Jason Clay, WWF Senior Vice President, Markets and Food

This shift offers an opportunity to help marginal producers in developing countries realize higher returns for their products through the harmonization and simplification of global certification programs. This should enable the adoption of better farming practices more quickly as well as continuous improvement in the production and sale of key commodities [such as coffee, cocoa, tea, and bananas]. I want to congratulate the leaders of both the Rainforest Alliance and UTZ for coming together in order to find a common good.

Quote: Andre de Freitas, Executive Director of the Sustainable Agriculture Network

The Sustainable Agriculture Network fully endorses the merger between the Rainforest Alliance and UTZ. As a key partner of the Rainforest Alliance for more than two decades, we will participate in the governance of the new organization and look forward to supporting it over the coming years.

Quote: Pascal Baltussen, Vice President, Commercial, at Mars Chocolate

For years Mars has supported certification with both Rainforest Alliance and UTZ as part of our commitment to certify our entire cocoa supply chain as produced in a sustainable manner. To achieve sustainability, even greater impact and assurance is required, therefore we have high expectations that this merger will result in a positive transformation of farmer livelihoods and land use practices on a greater scale, which is urgently needed.

About the Rainforest Alliance

The Rainforest Alliance is a global nonprofit that works with people whose livelihoods depend on the land, helping them transform the way they grow food, harvest wood and host travelers. From large multinational corporations to small, community-based cooperatives, businesses and consumers worldwide are involved in the Rainforest Alliances efforts to bring responsibly produced goods and services to a global marketplace where the demand for sustainability is growing steadily.

About UTZ

UTZ is a program and label for sustainable farming. Sustainable farming helps farmers, workers and their families to fulfill their ambitions and contributes to safeguarding the earths natural resources, now and in the future. The mission of UTZ is to create a world where sustainable farming is the norm; where farmers implement good agricultural practices and manage their farms profitably with respect for people and planet, industry invests in and rewards sustainable production and consumers can enjoy and trust the products they buy.
FogHorn Systems This seemingly simple domain change underscores the greater significance of what we do as a company and innovator in the field of edge intelligence for Industrial IoT.

Who

FogHorn Systems, Inc, of Mountain, View, CA. A leading developer of edge analytics and machine learning software (edge intelligence) for Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) applications.

What

The company is changing is primary Internet domain from foghorn-systems.com to foghorn.io. This affects the company web site as well as all company email addresses.

When

This change is effective immediately. However during the transition and beyond, both foghorn.io and the legacy domain foghorn-systems.com will work interchangeably for previously published web URLs and company email addresses.

Why

This seemingly simple domain change underscores the greater significance of what we do as a company and innovator in the field of edge intelligence for Industrial IoT, said FogHorn CEO David C. King. The shorter domain not only makes it easier for partners and customers to locate and reach out to us, but it also associates our name more closely with our expertise in extremely low footprint fog computing. In addition, the pronunciation of the new .io extension, reinforces our association with IoT industry which is also very important for us.

About FogHorn Systems

FogHorn is a leading developer of edge intelligence software for industrial and commercial IoT application solutions. FogHorns Lightning software platform brings the power of advanced analytics and machine learning to the on-premises edge environment enabling a new class of applications for advanced monitoring and diagnostics, machine performance optimization, proactive maintenance and operational intelligence use cases. FogHorns technology is ideally suited for OEMs, systems integrators and end customers in manufacturing, oil and gas, power and water, transportation, renewable energy, mining and agriculture, as well as Smart Building, Smart City and connected vehicle applications.

For additional information or a product demonstration

Visit the FogHorn web site at http://www.foghorn.io or send an email to info(at)foghorn.io for an individual demonstration.

FogHorn and Lightning are trademarks of FogHorn Systems. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

Media Contact

Caitlin Haskins

foghorn(at)10fold.com

+1 415-800-5369
Serenova, the most globally scalable contact center-as-a-service (CCaaS) provider, is heading to Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass. next week for the 16th Annual NECCF Conference & Expo, the largest gathering of contact center professionals and industry experts in New England. As a Silver sponsor, Serenova will provide a comprehensive demonstration of its leading CCaaS solution, CxEngage, during the event - showcasing the platforms ability to provide businesses with more value from their contact center and how it helps contact center agents better facilitate customer interactions.

Built on Amazon Web Services (AWS), CxEngage is Serenovas always-on, highly secure, true multi-tenant cloud platform that transforms the way businesses and individuals interact and perceive each other. NECCF attendees can experience how Serenovas true cloud solution delivers unparalleled scalability to solve for even the most complex global deployments. Attendees can also see first-hand Skylight for CxEngage, its modern agent interface that supports efficient service to customers and increases overall agent productivity. Those that stop by the Serenova booth for a demo will be entered for a chance to win a YETI cooler.

During the conference, Serenovas Sales Engineer, Chris Adomaitis, will present a session entitled, Studies in Innovation  Keeping On Top of Your Game Using AWS-Hosted Contact Center Services. During the session, Adomaitis will outline how increased flexibility and scalability of CCaaS solutions equip organizations to handle seasonal bursts, enable outsourced contact centers to ramp up faster and better serve and support a global workforce and customer base. Attendees of the session will hear a variety of use cases for solutions in the cloud and dive into common real-world scenarios that can easily be solved via cloud-based contact center solutions. NECCF attendees can join the presentation on Tuesday, June 13 at 11:10 am (ET).

16th Annual NECCF Conference & Expo

The Northeast Contact Center Forum (NECCF) Conference and Expo is the largest Call Center Event in the NorthEast. Scheduled for June 13, 2017 at Gillette Stadium, the day will feature exhibits, industry specific workshops, continental breakfast, a luncheon, behind the scenes tour of Gillette Stadium, tote bags, raffle prizes and multiple giveaways. Follow the conversation from the event on Twitter with the hashtag: #NECCF.

About NECCF

The NECCF was founded in February 2001 by contact center executives and specialists who wanted an unbiased user group to facilitate the exchange of ideas among contact center executives and managers. Since that time, the NECCF has grown and remained committed to addressing the day-to-day management concerns and strategic planning needs of contact center professionals throughout the region including Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont and Maine.

About Serenova

Serenova simplifies every aspect of the customer experience, from front office to back, to make life easier for you, your customers and your employees. The worlds most passionate, customer-focused brands achieve brighter interactions, deeper insights, and more meaningful outcomes with Serenovas always-on, highly secure, true multi-tenant and instantly scalable Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) platform, CxEngage. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, Serenova has operations in California, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia. Learn more at http://www.serenova.com. For live updates, follow @SerenovaShine.
Tenney Vacuum Drying Oven

Thermal Product Solutions, a global manufacturer of thermal-processing equipment, announced the shipment of five (5) Tenney Vacuum Drying Ovens to a medical device manufacturer. The chambers will be used for vacuum drying of suture material.

These vacuum ovens have temperature ratings of +15 C above ambient to +60 C and work chamber dimensions of 24.125 W x 24.5 D x 24.125 H. The pressure range is sire level to 200,000 feet (0.169 mm Hg).

The chambers utilize temperature limited heating cables that are evenly spaced on the exterior of the pressure vessel. These cables are covered with thermal mastic for optimal heat transfer. The heating of these vacuum drying ovens will be controlled via the main controller. There is no cooling on this system.

At TPS, we apply our expertise, experience and resources to create the best products for our customers. These vacuum ovens utilize a combination of fiberglass and polyurethane insulation surrounds the chambers to maximize the insulating characteristics and maximize temperature uniformity.  John Eldred

Unique features of these Tenney vacuum ovens include:



All main power circuits shall have overcurrent protection

Busch DP0080A dry screw style pump

Nitrogen back fill connection with a control solenoid valve

Stainless Steel removable shelves

Allen Bradley remote Flex I/O electrical control system

About Tenney

Tenney and Lunaire boast one of the most comprehensive lines of standard and custom environmental-testing chambers and rooms in the industry. Known for its innovative engineering and design, robust construction, and superior performance, the Tenney and Lunaire line of test chambers is designed to meet all of your temperature, humidity, altitude, vibration, and vacuum-testing requirements. Tenney and Lunaire environmental chambers, rooms, and ovens are backed by TPSs design assistance and global support and are available in a variety of configurations and footprints.

About TPS

Thermal Product Solutions (TPS), is a leading American manufacturer of industrial ovens, furnaces, pharmaceutical sterilizers, laboratory ovens, environmental temperature chambers, and stability test chambers. TPS provides thermal processing and test solutions for a range of industries. TPS brands include Baker Furnace, Blue M, Gruenberg, Tenney, Lindberg, Lunaire, MPH, and Wisconsin Oven. For more information on equipment solutions from TPS visit the website at http://www.thermalproductsolutions.com. #113819
NexusTek, a leading Denver-based IT services and IT consulting firm, announced today that it has acquired CyberTrails from the Republic Financial Corporation. CyberTrails regional footprint and technological expertise will enhance NexusTeks ability to provide both onsite and remote IT Support and Help Desk offerings with Network Operations Centers (NOC) in both Denver and Phoenix.

NexusTek and CyberTrails have already demonstrated the strength of their combined offering by partnering to provide critical services to customers. When our previous MSP suddenly went AWOL, said Kevin Yamane, President and COO of Catalyst Lending, NexusTek and CyberTrails partnered to immediately assess and mitigate any potential issues. In the short time we have been with them, they have been attentive, responsive and very professional. Very impressed so far!

In todays economy, small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) depend increasingly on IT to enable optimal business outcomes. NexusTek and CyberTrails are confident their combined offering will provide the IT support and services SMBs need to effectively address and achieve their business objectives.

This transaction expands NexusTek to more than 100 employees nationally and establishes NexusTek as one of the regions prominent IT firms serving over 1,000 SMB clients. NexusTek, an SSAE 16 SOC II certified provider, will retain CyberTrails office in Phoenix. For more information about NexusTeks acquisition of CyberTrails, please visit our website or call the media team at (303) 773-6464.

About NexusTek

NexusTek, an award-winning Microsoft Gold Partner, provides small and medium-sized businesses a trusted resource to optimize and manage their IT environments, ensuring business continuity and driving productivity. From managed IT services to cloud solutions and customized business software implementations, NexusTek employs top talent, offers personalized attention, and brings nearly 22 years implementing technology best practices for companies across Colorado and the region. For more information: http://www.nexustek.com/

About Republic Financial

Founded in 1971, Republic Financial Corporation is a private investor with a diverse portfolio of operating companies and assets. The company has three core business disciplines: Special Assets, Portfolio Companies and Commercial Aviation. Special Assets invests in distressed commercial debt, and distressed companies and projects. Portfolio Companies include mid-market investments and growth opportunities in a wide range of industries. Commercial Aviation acquires, leases, and manages commercial aircraft assets. Republic is committed to providing the capital, expertise, and resources necessary to close each and every transaction in a timely manner.

MEDIA CONTACT:

Sammer Khalaf, Senior Manager of Product Management and Marketing

303.773.6464

skhalaf(at)nexustek.com
With over $2.2 billion in sales in 2016, Zephyr has retained its prestigious position on the Billionaires Club list. Zephyr also ranked at No. 6 in the nation for REAL Trends highest average sales price for the second year in a row.

Zephyr maintains its position as No. 1 in San Franciscos market share, outdistancing all of the larger brokerages. Zephyr agents are among the top producers in the Bay Area and beyond.

The Gullicksen Group is proud to be a part of Zephyr Real Estate, the largest independent residential brokerage in San Francisco.

Placing highly in the Top 500 across the country is particularly satisfying, said Randall Kostick, Zephyrs president and CEO. We are an independent firm competing with nationwide brokerages, and were doing very well, thanks to our innovative agents, resourceful staff and loyal clients.

REAL Trends, based in Colorado, is a communications and consulting company considered to be the leading source of analysis and information on the residential brokerage and housing industry. With 30 years of continual growth, REAL Trends continues to provide real estate professionals with new and innovative resources on the latest industry trends and strategies into the future.

About the company:

Tim Gullicksen has been a top-producing real estate agent since he first entered into the business and takes great pride in managing every aspect of each transaction. After graduating from high school in the South Bay, Tim earned a bachelors degree in political science and history from the University of California-Berkeley. He went on to earn his teaching credentials from JFK University in Orinda and taught kindergarten in the San Jose Unified School District. He brings an educational approach to real estate developed from that background and sees himself as a facilitator of property transactions. For more information, visit his website at http://www.timgullicksensf.com/.
The SFMTA maintains operational oversight of the Golden Gateway Garage Taking into account the considerable amount of horsepower powering Golden Gateways mechanical ventilation system and the average fan-motor runtime  18 hours a day  the energy savings captured by the NES system is outstanding,

The Nagle Energy Solutions (NES) innovative garage-ventilation control system continues to deliver exceptional operational efficiencies and energy savings; this time limiting the energy consumed by a sizable mechanical ventilation system at the City & County of San Franciscos Golden Gateway Garage to just 7% of its full-load capacity  the equivalent of a 93% reduction in kilowatt-hour (kWh) consumption and peak kilowatt (kW) demand.

In 2015, engineers for the City & County of San Francisco selected the NES digital, demand-control ventilation (DCV) system for commercial garages as the basis of design for upgrading the mechanical ventilation systems of three, City owned properties: Golden Gateway Garage; Sutter-Stockton Garage; and Japan Center Garage. The Golden Gateway mechanical ventilation system retrofit is the first to be completed, and the NES system has been monitoring energy consumption on a real-time basis  a standard capability of NES controllers  since its commissioning in July 2016.

Golden Gateway Garage is a three-level, 345,000 square feet, enclosed parking facility in the heart of downtown San Francisco, subdivided in to East and West garages, each measuring 172,500 square feet. It can accommodate a total of 1,095 vehicles. The upgrade of its mechanical ventilation system included the installation (by third-party vendors) of Huntair Fanwall technology in conjunction with ABB variable frequency drive (VFD) technology. In all, 12 new, fanwall units and four new, stand-alone garage ventilation motors were installed possessing a combined 155.5 horsepower (HP). Tying it all together is the NES system, controlling the primary motor / VFD functions based on carbon monoxide (CO) concentrations in the garage.

Without a doubt, the SFMTA is delighted with the results, said David Dunham, Principal Analyst for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), which maintains operational oversight of all San Francisco municipal garages. Taking into account the considerable amount of horsepower powering Golden Gateways mechanical ventilation system and the average fan-motor runtime  18 hours a day  the energy savings captured by the NES system is outstanding, Mr. Dunham noted.

With no means of ventilation control in place, Golden Gateways new motors would consume more than 719,000 kWh throughout the course of a calendar year  or approximately 60,000 kWh per month  with a correlating, annual peak kW demand of more than 115 kW. The electric utility rate for the garage is $0.182/kWh, so at the calculated rate of kWh consumption, the annual cost to ventilate the garage would amount to more than $131,000  not including or factoring in future utility rate increases.

Post-installation monitoring and data logging shows the NES digital, garage DCV system is limiting energy consumption to about 4,200 kWh a month or 50,000 kWh per year. That corresponds to reoccurring, annual energy savings of approximately 669,000 kWh. Peak kW demand is limited to 8 kW per year with the NES system in place and controlling Golden Gateways garage ventilation system.

The NES system also slashes energy costs by 93%. The cost to ventilate the garage averages $760 a month  versus an approximate $11,000 a month without the NES system. The NES DCV system will provide minimum cash inflow (from the energy savings) in excess of $1.8 million throughout its 15-year lifespan.

The significance of the energy savings is underscored when viewed in context to health and safety factors at Golden Gateway.

The garages payment system requires patrons to pay an attendant in a toll booth before exiting the garage, which results in long traffic lines each weekday between noon and 3 p.m., as a steady stream of drivers simultaneously attempt to exit. As a means to constrain CO concentrations, NES teamed with garage management to  via the NES TR100 controller  increase the baseline motor speed of one of Golden Gateways large exhaust-fanwall systems on a 24/7 basis. Additionally, NES set a daily purge schedule, increasing the ventilation rate in the garage twofold by automatically ramping the speed of all, remaining exhaust and supply fan motors for three (3) hours a day  from noon to 3 p.m.  Monday thru Friday.

Beyond ensuring environmental sustainability, protecting the health and safety of garage employees and patrons were critical considerations during the planning stage(s) for each, municipal garage retrofit, noted Mr. Dunham. The NES system provides a level of assurance that the health and safety of all those in the garage are protected while holding energy consumption in check.

Furthermore, NES technology enables the City & County of San Francisco adhere to stricter energy efficiency and health and safety standards imposed by the State of California for enclosed, commercial garages.

NES commissioned its garage DCV system at the Sutter-Stockton garage in August 2016, and its presently monitoring / data logging energy consumption there. The same holds for the Japan Center Garage, where NES commissioned its system in early March 2017.

About Nagle Energy Solutions: Based in Menlo Park, CA, Nagle Energy Solutions, LLC (http://www.nagle-energy.com) develops, manufactures, distributes and installs an innovative demand-control ventilation (DCV) system for commercial garages that dramatically reduces energy consumption, increases operational efficiencies and ensures adherence to strict health & safety standards  all while the garage-fan motors run continuously.
Exchange Builder, launched by Paylogix in 2016, is changing the way small businesses provide employee benefits. So many Americans work for small businesses, it is important that they have access to good benefits. We are really proud to help make that possible.

Paylogix, the leading technology based provider of admin, enrollment and billing solutions to the insurance industry, announced today a partnership with ID Watchdog, a leader in identity theft protection. ID Watchdog protects consumers and their families against identity theft with monitoring, detection and resolution services. This partnership will expand access to important identity protection services. ID Watchdog will offer their plans through the Paylogix Exchange Builder platform beginning in June.

Interest in id theft protection has peaked in recent years, but most consumers were on their own to seek out and purchase a plan. That is because, until recently, identity theft protection was not offered through most employers. However, the world of employee benefits is evolving to include new, non-traditional benefits, like identity theft protection. Paylogix has a legacy of innovation in the voluntary benefits market. They understand that as benefits evolve, the technology for enrollment, billing and administration has to evolve with it. Paylogix also has a long history of assisting benefit brokers with small to mid-size employee groups. ID Watchdog is now able to leverage the Paylogix Exchange Builder platform to reach these businesses and help them expand benefits to their employees.

Exchange Builder is a cloud-based, employer-specific benefits marketplace platform designed for small to mid-size employer groups. Utilizing this Paylogix solution, brokers can create a customized marketplace for the communication, enrollment, billing and benefit administration of employee benefits. A unique feature of Exchange Builder is the ability to handle both core and voluntary benefits. This is increasingly important as employee benefit packages are becoming more diverse and complicated. Now that they are participating in the Exchange Builder platform, ID Watchdog plans can be seamlessly implemented at zero cost to the employer.

Its important for us to offer the best in benefits and plan options for our clients, and that is why we are pleased to partner with ID Watchdog, says John Warren, practice leader for Paylogix. We welcome new exchanges every day that range from small businesses and associations to large companies. By partnering with premier providers, Paylogix and Exchange Builder are seeking to positively disrupt the industry. Exchange Builder is the end-to-end solution the market has been seeking.

About ID Watchdog: ID Watchdog, founded in 2005 and headquartered in Denver, Colorado, provides three-tiered comprehensive monitoring, detection, and resolution for identity theft. ID Watchdog leverages proprietary technology to detect identity theft problems at their source and provides immediate resolution services to ensure complete peace of mind for individuals. In 2016, Employee Benefits News (EBN) named ID Watchdog the winner of the first ever EBN Dig|Benefits Technology Innovator Award for identity theft protection providers, and Javelin Strategy recognized ID Watchdog as an Identity Protection Leader in three different categories: Prevention, Detection, and Resolution. Additionally, BENEFITFOCUS honored ID Watchdog with a 2017 Outstanding Communication Award, and the company has been recognized by the Consumer Federation of America as one of the most valuable identity theft protection services available. For more information, please visit http://www.idwatchdog.com.

About Paylogix: From promotion to payment, Paylogix is a pioneer in the development of technologies specifically aimed at simplifying the administration of health and welfare benefits. Web based BPO and SaaS solutions offer real-time access to business partners including: the insurer; the broker, the employer and employee. Paylogix currently provides solutions for prominent insurers and group providers throughout North America.

More Information about Exchange Builder can be found by visiting http://www.exchangebuilder.com or by contacting John Warren, 586-935-4017 or by email johnw(at)paylogix.com.

More information about Paylogix can be found by visiting http://www.paylogix.com, calling 800-622-4131 or email: info(at)paylogix.com.

Media Contacts:

Lisa M. Whalen, MBA

Paylogix Director of Marketing & Insuretech Translator

lisaw(at)paylogix.com or 919-356-0309
Summit BHC (Summit), a leading provider of addiction treatment and behavioral health services, today announced the acquisition of Women in New Recovery located in Mesa, Arizona. The 30-bed addiction treatment facility will operate as Canyon Vista Recovery Center (Canyon Vista) and serve both males and females. Canyon Vista will be Summits first facility in Arizona and brings the Companys total number of operating facilities to twelve. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

We are excited to announce the acquisition of our twelfth facility and entrance into the Arizona market, stated Trey Carter, CEO and Founder of Summit. Summit BHC has decades of experience in the behavioral healthcare industry on a national level. Over the last three years, Summit has grown to twelve facilities and we pride ourselves on providing premier accommodations and high quality addiction treatment programs at affordable in-network rates, commented Mr. Carter. Each one of our facilities enjoys a significant presence in their respective communities. As a company we are passionate about quality, innovation to improve outcomes, and caring for the people we serve. We look forward to doing the same at Canyon Vista, stated Mr. Carter.

About Summit BHC - Headquartered in Franklin, Tennessee and founded in June of 2013, Summit was established to develop and operate a network of leading addiction treatment and behavioral health centers throughout the country. The companys sole focus is on the provision and management of specialty chemical dependency and addiction disorder services within a flexible and dynamic continuum of care. The leadership team at Summit is comprised of senior executives with decades of combined experience in the behavioral healthcare industry at the national level. The company currently owns and operates twelve freestanding addiction treatment centers in eight states across the country.

About Canyon Vista  Located in Mesa, Arizona, Canyon Vista Recovery Center offers a multi-disciplinary treatment approach through a continuum of care that includes highly structured residential programming as well as partial hospitalization and intensive outpatient treatment services for adults. The campus like setting allows for gender separation and is designed to make patients feel comfortable and aid in their recovery. Canyon Vista is licensed by the State of Arizona for 30 behavioral health residential beds, as an Outpatient Treatment Center and is accredited by CARF.

For Information: Karen Prince (Summit BHC), 410-336-9905, kprince(at)summitbhc(dot)com
More than ever, education represents a door to greater opportunity in life and work."

Northcentral University(NCU), a global online graduate-focused university, is pleased to announce that John Neal, EdD, has joined NCU as the new Dean of its School of Education.

Neal brings to NCU a vast background in educational leadership. For more than 25 years, he has led in the development of educational content for adult learners through campus-based programs, online delivery, and satellite campuses throughout the U.S., Europe, and the Pacific Rim.

Throughout his career, Dr. Neal has served a number of highly entrepreneurial private colleges in a variety of roles, including Dean at Webster University and President of Ottawa University, Maryville University, and Kaplan University's home campus. Prior to his founding of JenEd Consulting, he served as President of Capital Education, where he assisted colleges and universities in the strategic planning and development of virtual learning environments. In this role, he facilitated program planning, design, market analysis and modeling, the selection of learning platforms, course design, and the integration of effective online pedagogies.

Dr. Neal is the co-author of Measuring Up: The Promises and Pitfalls of Performance Indicators in Higher Education and has published and spoken internationally on issues related to quality assessment and accountability.

Neal earned a Doctor of Education in Higher Education Administration from Vanderbilt University (George Peabody College of Education), a Master of Arts in Music Education from Middle Tennessee State University, and a Bachelor of Science in Church Music and Biblical Studies from Welch College (magna cum laude).

With the ever-changing educational landscape, Neal brings an innovative vision to the NCU School of Education. More than ever, education represents a door to greater opportunity in life and work, says Neal. He views educators as facilitators of this brighter opportunity. Neal has begun developing and preparing to launch new programs within the School of Education slated for late 2017.

About Northcentral University

Founded in 1996, Northcentral University is a regionally accredited, private, online and graduate-focused university serving professionals globally. NCU offers doctoral, masters and bachelors degrees in business and technology management, education, and psychology, as well as doctoral and masters degrees in marriage and family therapy. Without physical residency requirements, courses are taught one-to-one by an NCU professor, all of whom have doctoral degrees. Northcentral University is regionally accredited by WASC Senior College and University Commission (WASC), http://www.wscuc.org. For more information, visit ncu.edu or call 866.776.0331.
George A. Romero confirmed for Famous Monsters Halloween Bash. NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD was truly the first of its kind, and DAWN OF THE DEAD refined and defined the zombie genre. Monsterdom owes as much to Romero as it does to Lon Chaney and Boris Karloff.

The zombie apocalypse  or at least the man who invented it  is invading San Jose this Halloween.

Cosmic-Con, the events division of Famous Monsters, has announced that their Halloween Bash will host George A. Romero, the father of modern zombie movies, for the upcoming 40th anniversary of DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978) and the 50th anniversary of the black and white classic NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968).

Many credit Romero with kickstarting the current perception of zombies as the shambling, moaning, post-mortem creatures that crave human flesh  a take in opposition to earlier associations with cults and voodoo. The modern living dead craze and pop culture obsession with the zombie apocalypse can also be traced back to Romeros classics.

All zombie fanatics, whether their obsession be RESIDENT EVIL, THE WALKING DEAD, or WORLD WAR Z, should give thanks to George Romero, explains FM Editor Holly Interlandi. NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD was truly the first of its kind, and DAWN OF THE DEAD refined and defined the zombie genre. Monsterdom owes as much to Romero as it does to Lon Chaney and Boris Karloff.

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD was made for less than half a million dollars in the rural backwoods of Pennsylvania, and it still awes to this day. DAWN OF THE DEAD was also filmed on a microscopic budget, then wowed audiences with its scares, social commentary, and gory special effects courtesy of makeup maestro Tom Savini.

For DAWN OF THE DEADs 40th anniversary, Romero will appear alongside three of the films main cast members: David Emge, Scott H. Reiniger, and Gaylen Ross.

Previously announced Halloween Bash guests include HELLRAISERs Doug Bradley, RE-ANIMATORs Jeffrey Combs, GREMLINS Zach Galligan, and ASH VS. EVIL DEADs Ray Santiago.

For more information and to buy tickets, visit https://www.famousmonstershalloween.com/.
"It is important to talk to your kids to understand what is going on in their liveshelping them sort out feelings and fostering an environment where they turn to you first for help in solving a problem.

Its that time of year when kids return home from college for their summer break. Living independently brings changes  adult children mature during this phase as they make their own decisions and often manage their own schedules and money  so, expect some fluctuation in how parents relate and interact with kids. At the same time, college students can be more vulnerable to peer pressure and the influence of others. This can sometimes lead to experimenting with drugs and alcohol. Addiction expert Dr. Indra Cidambi suggests being observant to catch signs of substance abuse early.

Adolescents slip into addiction to deal with stress or to be accepted by a cool group, says Dr. Cidambi. So, it is important to talk to your kids to understand what is going on in their liveshelping them sort out feelings and fostering an environment where they turn to you first for help in solving a problem.

Dr. Cidambi wants to alert parents to five common changes brought on by substance abuse:

1. Behavioral/Mood Issues: Substance abuse in young adults can often result in changes in social interactions, mood changes, problems with school or work, increase in risky behavior and mood swings, says Dr. Cidambi. The changes in social interactions are very noticeable. If your extroverted child suddenly now keeps more to himself/herself and avoids eye contact it should be a concern. If he or she is now sullen, irritable or depressed, it could be a warning sign. Reckless driving, car accidents or unexplained dents in the car could also point to a problem. Also, any deterioration of the childs performance in school should be explored.

2. Unkempt Appearance: If you do a double take when you see your child, chances are something is going on, says Dr. Cidambi. If your child has become careless about his or her clothing, has an unkempt appearance and has a perennially runny nose, you should think about having a conversation with your child. While it can be difficult to mentally accept the fact that your child is taking on the appearance of an addict, it is important to address changes in appearance, especially red or glassy eyes, unexplained marks on arms or legs (long sleeves in warm weather to hide marks), and continuous scratching or picking of face and arms.

3. Avoiding Old Friends: If an addiction is consuming your childs life, they may avoid their high school friends when they come back home, as they no longer affirm your childs new lifestyle, says Dr. Cidambi. As children evolve into adults, find new hobbies and spend most of the time in college, they will find new friends. However, its still a good sign if they connect with their high school friends when they are back home. Instead, if they are in search of new friends when back home, it may suggest a problem.

4. Lack of Interest in Hobbies: If you find that your child no longer enjoys his or her usual activities, it may be that he or she has become pre-occupied with obtaining and using drugs or alcohol and it is taking over all aspects of their life, notes Dr. Cidambi. Hobbies they usually enjoyed, or having a hobby at all, seems unimportant now. Instead of receiving mental and emotional stimulation from positive activities, they could be turning to drugs and alcohol to fill the void.

5. Change in Eating Habits: As the hand that feeds, parents tend to notice this effect of substance abuse quickly, says Dr. Cidambi. Depending on the substance, your child can experience an array of new food habits, including binge eating, also known as the munchies, or a decrease in appetite. This swing in eating habits can suggest a problem and calls for a conversation.

For more information on substance abuse dependency, addiction and treatment, please go to http://www.recoveryCNT.com.

About Dr. Indra Cidambi

Indra Cidambi, M.D., Medical Director, Center for Network Therapy, is recognized as a leading expert and pioneer in the field of Addiction Medicine. Under her leadership the Center for Network Therapy started New Jerseys first state licensed Ambulatory (Outpatient) Detoxification program for all substances nearly three years ago. Dr. Cidambi is Board Certified in General Psychiatry and double Board Certified in Addiction Medicine (ABAM, ABPN). Dr. Cidambi is the Vice President of the New Jersey Society of Addiction Medicine. She is fluent in five languages, including Russian.

About Center for Network Therapy

Center for Network Therapy (CNT) was the first facility in New Jersey to be licensed to provide Ambulatory (Outpatient) Detoxification Services for all substances of abuse  alcohol, anesthetics, benzodiazepines, opiates and other substances of abuse. Led by a Board Certified Addiction Psychiatrist, Indra Cidambi, M.D., experienced physicians and nurses closely monitor each patients progress. With CNTs superior client care and high quality treatment, Dr. Cidambi and her clinical team have successfully detoxed over 1200 patients in four years.
If we share resources and provide education on the production and sustainability of food to developing countries, hunger can be wiped off the face of the earth by 2030." --Dr. Anne Matthews

As nearly 40,000 Rotary members convene in Atlanta on June 10, 2017, for the Rotary International Convention, they will put their Service Above Self motto into practice by packaging 150,000 meals with Rise Against Hunger (formerly Stop Hunger Now).

The International Convention will be held June 10-14 at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta. About 2,000 Rotary members are expected to package meals to help eradicate world hunger in support of the United Nations Sustainable Development goal of zero hunger by 2030.

Rise Against Hunger meal packaging events are a volunteer-based program that coordinate the streamlined packaging of highly nutritious, dehydrated meals comprised of rice, soy, vegetables and 23 essential vitamins and minerals. Once packaged, the meals will be shipped from the Rise Against Hunger Atlanta location and are scheduled to be sent to Honduras to be distributed to school feeding centers through partner Salesian Missions.

Rotary members across the globe are committed to ending hunger. Rise Against Hungers meal packaging program is closely aligned with Rotarys six areas of focus, including fighting disease, providing clean water, supporting education, saving mothers and children, and growing local economies. Since 2005, Rotary members and student Interact/Rotaract clubs have packaged over 30 million meals that have been distributed across the globe.

Dr. Anne Matthews, board member of Rise Against Hunger who has held numerous leadership positions with Rotary International and will be attending the conference in Atlanta, stated, If we share resources and provide education on the production and sustainability of food to developing countries, hunger can be wiped off the face of the earth by 2030. Rise Against Hungers mission to end world hunger is a pivotal message in leading this initiative.

Atlanta-Area Organizations Fighting Hunger

The Rise Against Hunger Atlanta location opened in 2010, and has packaged more than 24 million meals at over 1,000 events. Area corporations that have packaged Rise Against Hunger meals include Google, Turner Broadcasting System, FedEx, Royal Cup and UPS. Participating area colleges and universities include Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Agnes Scott, Young Harris and Kennesaw State. Over 40 events with Interact/Rotaract clubs, Rotary groups, Girl and Boy Scouts and fraternities and sororities have resulted in more than 400,000 meals packaged in the area.

Around the world, nearly 792.5 million people do not have enough food to lead a healthy, active life. Rise Against Hunger operates meal packaging locations in 20 cities throughout the U.S. and five international locations in South Africa, Malaysia, the Philippines, Italy and India. Last year, more than 376,000 volunteers from corporations, churches, schools and civic organizations, including Rotary Clubs, packaged Rise Against Hunger meals impacting more than 1 million lives.

The meal packaging event will be held in the Exhibit Hall at the Georgia World Congress Center, 285 Andrew Young International Blvd NW. Times are as follows: Saturday, June 10: 1-3 pm and 4-6 pm; Sunday, June 11: 12:30-3:30 pm; Monday, June 12: 1-3 and 4-6 pm; Tuesday, June 13: 1-3 pm and 4-6 pm.

About Rise Against Hunger:

Rise Against Hunger (formerly Stop Hunger Now), an international hunger relief organization based in Raleigh, N.C., works to implement immediate and long-term solutions to hunger worldwide. With program locations in 20 U.S. cities and five international offices, Rise Against Hunger has engaged volunteers to package more than 325 million nutrient rich meals for distribution to 74 countries around the globe. To find out more about Rise Against Hungers efforts to end hunger worldwide, please visit http://www.riseagainsthunger.org.

About Rotary

Rotary brings together a global network of volunteer leaders dedicated to tackling the worlds most pressing humanitarian challenges. Rotary connects 1.2 million members of more than 35,000 Rotary clubs in over 200 countries and geographical areas. Their work improves lives at both the local and international levels, from helping families in need in their own communities to working toward a polio-free world.
The SelectUSA Investment Summit is the premiere event for firms looking to invest in the U. S. - Kevin Bean, ONeal President and CEO.

ONeal Inc., an integrated design and construction firm, announced they will be presenting and exhibiting at the 2017 SelectUSA Investment Summit June 18-20, at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, MD.

The SelectUSA Investment Summit is the premiere event for firms looking to invest in the U. S., said Kevin Bean, ONeals President and CEO. As a company that has extensive experience designing and building facilities for international firms, ONeal is proud to be a key part of the 2017 SelectUSA Investment Summit.

O'Neal will be exhibiting at the Summit in booth 1002. In addition, ONeal will be a presenter. ONeals David Hardy, AIA, LEED-AP, Preconstruction Facilities Manager, and Brian Gallagher, CPSM, Vice President of Marketing, will be presenting Planning, Designing and Constructing Manufacturing Facilities in the United States on Monday, June 19, 2017 4:00-7:00 p.m. in the Gaylord National Harbor Meeting Room 8. Summit attendees interested in attending should email info(at)onealinc(dot)com, or call Becca Garcia at 864-298-6527.

The SelectUSA Investment Summit is the highest profile event to connect global companies and U.S. EDOs to facilitate business investment in the United States. To date, representatives from 48 U.S. states and territories and 42 international markets have already registered for the Summit.

The previous three Summits attracted thousands of international investors, with the 2016 Summit alone attracting more than 2,600 total attendees, including investors from 70 markets, EDOs from 52 U.S. states and territories, and 22 chiefs of mission. Past Summit participants have announced more than $20.6 billion in new investment projects in the United States.

The United States is currently home to more foreign direct investment than any other country in the world, with a total stock of $3.1 trillion at the end of 2015. FDI supports more than 12 million direct and indirect U.S. jobs, and is responsible for more than one-quarter of all U.S. goods exports ($425 billion).

A full list of speakers and the current agenda for the 2017 SelectUSA Investment Summit is available online at selectusasummit.us/.

About ONeal Inc.:

ONeal Inc. is an integrated design and construction firm that specializes in project delivery. Since 1975, ONeal has been successfully delivering capital projects in the process chemical, food and beverage, advanced facilities, automotive, pharmaceutical/biotech, manufacturing, energy and pulp and paper markets. An employee-owned company, ONeal is headquartered in Greenville, S.C., with an additional office in Atlanta, Ga. In 2016 ONeal was named as one of the Best Places to Work in South Carolina. For information, please visit http://www.onealinc.com.
Customers have more choices than ever before in the way they consume IT services. The merger provides significant opportunities for growth by introducing new capabilities to InterVision and Netelligent customers.

InterVision Systems, LLC, a leading integrator of technology and cloud solutions, and Netelligent Corporation, a leading provider of Hybrid IT solutions, today announced that they have completed a definitive merger agreement under which InterVision will combine with Netelligent.

Customers have more choices than ever before in the way they consume IT services. The combined company brings together engineering expertise across the entire data center stack, best-in-class software and hardware solutions, and an established platform for delivering managed services to serve a wide range of industries. The merger provides significant opportunities for growth by introducing new capabilities to InterVision and Netelligent customers.

The combination of InterVision and Netelligent represents the next phase in our transformation to become a full-service provider of the broadest range of IT solutions, professional services, cloud solutions, and managed services in the industry, said Whitney Tomlin, CEO, InterVision. Netelligent brings significant expertise and capabilities in managed and cloud services that complement InterVisions strengths in the data center. With this transaction, InterVision and Netelligent are positioned to accelerate growth and create a more competitive organization based around the solutions and services that customers need in todays dynamic IT market.

Over the course of a number of years, Netelligent has grown and successfully transformed from a traditional regional value-added reseller to a nationally recognized hybrid and co-sourcing provider primarily based on a unique platform of professional, managed and cloud services.

We believe this transaction brings together the unique strengths of two great companies to deliver a broader range of IT solutions and services that create better business outcomes, said Aaron Stone, President and CEO, Netelligent. InterVision brings significant expertise in data center solutions and services. With the backing of Huron Capital, this transaction will allow us to take our services platform to the next level of growth and success.

About InterVision Systems, LLC

InterVision Systems, LLC is a leading integrator of technology and cloud solutions focused on helping clients optimize their IT infrastructure, better manage risk, and gain a competitive advantage. The company provides IT solutions, infrastructure and services for the cloud ecosystem (private, hybrid and public), allowing customers to achieve the full potential of a software defined data center. InterVisions vendor-certified sales and engineering staff have specialized expertise in all areas critical to IT environments. The company has headquarters in Santa Clara, Calif. and offices in San Francisco, Calif., El Segundo, Calif., and Bellevue, Wash. Learn more at http://www.intervision.com.

About Netelligent Corporation

Netelligent provides companies with the technologies they need to run their business (security, phone system, servers/virtualization, disaster recovery, networking, and video). Our mission is to help elevate business above technology as we take a neutral approach in helping to determine what IT consumption model best benefits each clients organization (on-premises, managed, or cloud services). Founded in 2003, Netelligent, headquartered in Chesterfield, Missouri, additionally operates two data centers located in Denver and St. Louis. Netelligent is a Cisco Gold Partner and is SOC II certified. Additional information about Netelligent may be found at http://www.netelligent.com.
Tropic Ocean Airways CEO Rob Ceravolo During this time of expansion for our company, we hope to learn from the Caribbean Aviation Meetup as well as share our experiences with other industry leaders to improve the overall travel safety and experience in the Caribbean, said Rob Ceravolo, CEO

Rob Ceravolo, CEO of Tropic Ocean Airways, the leading seaplane operator in Eastern United States, confirms he will present at the 2nd Annual Caribbean Aviation Meetup in St. Maarten, being held June 13-15. During the event, a factory-new seaplane will be flown in from Wichita Kansas for demonstrations and splash landings in St. Maarten, Anguilla and Nevis. Mr. Ceravolo will be joined by U.S. aircraft manufacturer Cessna/Textron Aviation, a leader in general aviation and partner of Tropic Ocean. The focus of the 2nd Annual Caribbean Aviation Meetup will be on the exchange of experience and lessons learned between leaders in Caribbean aviation. The result being an overall improvement in Caribbean airlift.

Rob Ceravolo will share his experience of growing the airline company into an industry leader since its inception in 2009. Mr. Ceravolo will highlight how his business practices have been shaped by his experience as a veteran Navy TOP GUN Pilot alongside Tropic Ocean Airways Director of New Business, Mike Ritzi who has many years of aviation experience in the Caribbean. Mr. Ritzi looks forward to the event and the opportunity it creates in bringing aligned businesses together. Mr. Ritzi believes, The meetup will be a platform for improving travel and tourism in the islands of the Caribbean. Reliable airlift is the key to connecting islanders and tourists and serves as a strong contributor to economic growth in the region that we are happy to be a part of.

The largest seaplane operator got its start in 2009 with one Cessna 206 seaplane and has grown to a fleet of 10 factory new Cessna 208 Grand Caravans and counting. The safety measures have awarded the airline an Argus Gold Rating for Safety and has received zero violations or incidents by the FAA. Additionally, Tropic Ocean has serviced ~15,000 guests and grew to over 70 employees, expanded their reach to the out islands of The Bahamas, South Florida, the New York region and Cuba. During this time of expansion for our company, we hope to learn from the Caribbean Aviation Meetup as well as share our experiences with other industry leaders to improve the overall travel safety and experience in the Caribbean, said Tropic Ocean Airways CEO Rob Ceravolo about the event.

About Tropic Ocean Airways:

Tropic Ocean Airways is the Eastern United States leading seaplane travel company that offers private charter, scheduled service and cargo services throughout South Florida, the Florida Keys, Bahamas and beyond. The FAA certified air-carrier was founded by Navy TOPGUN fighter pilot Rob Ceravolo in 2009. Since inception, the safety measures have awarded Tropic, the ARGUS gold rating for safety, a perfect record of zero FAA violations and a 5-star rating on TripAdvisor. The premier company has its own in-house maintenance team and facility, along with pilots who bring over 100+ years of combined flying experience in harsh and tropical weather conditions, who work together to deliver the highest level of first-class customer service during each flight. The factory-new seaplane and wheeled caravan aircraft can perform water-based, or runway landings and departures, making Tropic the ideal choice for travel.

For more information, contact Alina Gavrushenko, Director of Marketing at 800.767.0897, extension 122, or via email at media(at)flytropic(dot)com visit us: http://www.flytropic.com
Home Care Assist For the estimated 20 to 50 million individuals who provide in-home care to loved ones, Home Care Assist will be a game changer.

Home Care Assist, a new online compatibility matching service for in-home care, is revolutionizing the way people connect within the home care industry. It is the first online matching service to connect careseekers with private-duty caregivers based on personal interests in addition to conventional criteria such as location, experience and skill sets. The companys pioneering approach shifts control of communication and relationships to careseekers by providing them with a curated list of screened, compatible caregivers.

For the estimated 20 to 50 million individuals who provide in-home care to loved ones, Home Care Assist will be a game changer, said Brian VanHook, co-founder and CEO of Home Care Assist. We are launching this service to help a community that has long needed a trustworthy, affordable option for in-home care, and were encouraged by the connections caregivers and careseekers are making.

For careseekers, Home Care Assist is a personalized option between traditional in-home care, like home care agencies, and do it yourself online ad listings or word-of-mouth searches. While traditional methods of finding in-home care can be effective, they can also be expensive, time consuming or shift control of care to a third party. Compatibility between those providing and receiving care is frequently overlooked, but Home Care Assists model addresses each of these concerns to establish peace of mind and provide affordable care through a user-friendly online platform. The service allows careseekers to retain control of in-home care while being connected to safe, qualified caregivers with common interests. The service is also a valuable supplement to existing care in instances where family caregivers need respite, and care may be covered by long-term care insurance.

For private-duty caregivers who frequently search for new jobs, the Home Care Assist online platform works for them to fill schedules with rewarding relationships. Instead of constant job hunts and mismatched clients, Home Care Assist gives private-duty caregivers freedom to enjoy their career with well-matched clients that seek them. The direct connection between those giving and receiving care also allows caregivers to earn approximately 25 to 40 percent more while reducing careseeker cost when compared to traditional agency fees.

As a certified nursing assistant, I know firsthand that professional skills matter  and I also understand that interest-based compatibility can make all the difference in a relationship between client and caregiver, said Tammy Stambaugh, co-founder of Home Care Assist. Development of meaningful relationships can benefit both caregivers and those in their care.

To create connections through Home Care Assist, visit homecareassist.com and click on For Caregivers or For Careseekers. Caregivers are prompted to create a free profile and complete registration. Careseekers can give the service a trial run with a free 5-day pass. Other options for careseekers include a 15-day pass for $59, a 30-day subscription for $79, and a 90-day subscription for $159. In addition to standard questions to capture careseeker needs and caregiver skills, both groups can anticipate questions like, Do you like to read?, Are you interested in history? and Do you enjoy playing board games? All caregivers must pass a background screening to be connected to careseekers, and all schedule and payment negotiations take place directly between caregivers and careseekers.

Home Care Assist is actively engaging both caregivers and careseekers throughout North Carolina and Georgia regions with intentions of launching in additional markets throughout the Southeast in 2017.

Editors Note: Home Care Assist CEO Brian VanHook is available for interviews. Please contact Stephanie Llorente at sllorente@prepcomm.com or 919-271-6491 for information.

About Home Care Assist

Home Care Assist is improving the way people connect within the home care industry. As a trusted, affordable compatibility matching service for in-home care, Home Care Assist's user-friendly online platform connects careseekers and private-duty caregivers to offer a personalized alternative to traditional home care agencies. Home Care Assist's network of qualified caregivers provide care for a variety of in-home needs such as elder care, rehab assistance and new parent support. It is the first online service for in-home care to connect caregivers and careseekers based on personality and skill sets for mutual compatibility. Home Care Assist is headquartered in Raleigh, N.C.

Friend and follow Home Care Assist on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Google+ or visit HomeCareAssist.com for additional information.
PowerInbox Logo "Partnering with PowerInbox has created new advertising opportunities for our email channels, allowing us to grow our audience engagement, while increasing revenues," Chuck Lee, Product Owner, Digital First Media.

PowerInbox, the trusted email monetization partner for marketers, agencies and publishers, today introduced InboxChoice, a premium advertising network for approved email publishers and advertisers. InboxChoice launches with many publishers, including ABC, Hearst, The Enthusiast Network, and Bonnier, as well as ads from brands Dermstore, Casper, HomeAdvisor, PCH, ForRent.com, and EBay. It matches sought after inventory from popular email publishers with high value advertising content.

InboxChoice joins select partners in a platform that routes approved native and display ads to opened emails from qualifying publishers in real time. InboxChoice, like PowerInboxs AdServer for Email, uses RevenueStripe technology, already in use by dozens of leading online publishers, including CNN, Tribune and Wiley. RevenueStripe inserts hyper-targeted, live-on-the-open dynamic content into each email, ensuring fresh, relevant advertisements.

Our top publishers and advertisers recognize the importance of maintaining quality and sophistication across content and advertising, said Jeff Kupietzky, CEO of PowerInbox. Publishers that have worked hard to earn their readers trust need to know ad placements will reflect well on their own brand. Similarly, advertisers have shown us they are willing to pay a premium to reach those readers alongside content from these publishers. By narrowing the pool of participants on both sides and maintaining consistent standards for each, we can remove risk of unwanted associations from real time ad selection for premium brands.

"Partnering with PowerInbox has created new advertising opportunities for our email channels, allowing us to grow our audience engagement, while increasing revenues," said Chuck Lee, Product Owner, Digital First Media.

PowerInbox works with all existing email service providers (ESPs), supporting over 6 billion emails a month from leading publishers. Publishers use its RevenueStripe to add a guaranteed revenue stream to their email programs with fresh and relevant content. For advertisers, RevenueStripe provides access to a host of opportunities in opt-in messages, beyond the reach of ad blockers. InboxChoice expands on these benefits to meet expectations of quality in both publishers and ad content.

Availability

InboxChoice is operational today. For further information contact us at http://offers.powerinbox.com/revenuestripe-demo-signup/

About PowerInbox

PowerInbox provides dynamic, real-time and personalized email solutions that increase email engagement and revenue. RevenueStripe is an email based, personalized content recommendation solution that increases reader engagement while providing incremental revenue for email publishers. DynamicMail enables sending real-time, dynamic content optimized on the open including tickers, forms, video, scrolling images, animation and more. Clients enjoy 30% higher engagement rates and 4X ROI. PowerInbox is venture backed and works with all existing email programs, supporting over 6 billion emails a month from leading marketers, publishers and agencies including the NFL, CNN, Hearst, Weight Watchers, Sephora and Honda. For more information about PowerInbox, please visit powerinbox.com.
full integration with Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS cloud platforms enhances the total business continuity features of the DR365 with secure cloud repositories for the ultimate in data protection

StoneFly, Inc. the original pioneer of the iSCSI protocol, Virtual Storage Appliances and hyper-converged storage solutions announces full integration of the StoneFly DR365 with the Microsoft Azure public cloud, Microsoft Azure Government, Amazon S3 and Amazon Glacier cloud platforms for secure off-site backup and replication.

StoneFly DR365 "DR Site in a Box" total backup and disaster recovery solutions already consolidate all servers, storage appliances and backup systems into one robust appliance that could be mirrored across campuses or replicated to remote sites. Now the DR365 has been fully integrated with Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS cloud platforms to easily enhance total business continuity with off-site public cloud storage.

Utilizing Azure Government for a DR365 cloud repository employs world-class security and compliance services critical to the U.S. government for all systems and applications built on its architecture. These services include FedRAMP and DoD compliance certifications, CJIS state-level agreements, the ability to issue HIPAA Business Associate Agreements, and support for IRS 1075. Operated by screened U.S. persons, Azure Government supports multiple hybrid scenarios for building and deploying solutions on-premises or in the cloud. Public Sector entities can also take advantage of the instant scalability and guaranteed uptime of a hyper-scale cloud service.

Amazon AWS Cloud infrastructure currently operates in 42 availability zones within 16 geographic regions around the world. AWS is a secure, durable technology platform with industry-recognized certifications and audits: PCI DSS Level 1, ISO 27001, FISMA Moderate, FedRAMP, HIPAA, and SOC 1. Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) is object storage with a simple web interface to store and retrieve any amount of data from anywhere on the web. Amazon Glacier is a secure, durable, and extremely low-cost cloud storage service for data archiving and long-term backup.

DR365 solutions are hyper-converged disaster recovery appliances featuring the choice of an embedded industry standard VMware ESXi or Hyper-V hypervisor. StoneFlys SCVM Virtual SAN Appliance adds a vast assortment of advanced storage management and data protection services such as campus mirroring, snapshot, deduplication, encryption, asynchronous replication, dual node failover support, thin provisioning and more.

An Enterprise Virtual Backup Engine automatically convert every backup image into a Virtual Machine. In the event that a server or workstation fails, the Virtual Machine copy of that system can be quickly spun up and hosted directly on the DR365 appliance while the failed machine is repaired. Replica virtual machines of running physical or virtual systems can be spun up at any time, from any point in time.

The DR365 supports P2P, P2V, V2P, and V2V operations (Physical-to-Physical, Physical-to-Virtual, Virtual-to-Physical, Virtual-to-Virtual) including restoring physical machines to completely different set of hardware and restoring Virtual Machines to a completely different Hypervisor. Backups and recovery can be highly granular down to the file and folder level, or extremely vigorous to include a full disk image for bare metal recovery of a system including the operating system, configurations, applications, data and more.

The StoneFly DR365 provides a total backup solution for all of an office or datacenters physical and virtual servers and workstations. The appliance support a multitude of environments, including Windows servers and workstations, VMware, Hyper-V, Citrix XenServer, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, Oracle VM, as well as multiple flavors of Linux including Red Hat, Ubuntu, Fedora, SUSE, Debian, CentOS and more.

VMware ESX/ESXi and Hyper-V servers implement agentless backups where the agent is installed only on the embedded Hypervisor and not the actual VMs. Specialized and application aware backup agents for Exchange, SQL, SharePoint and Active Directory provide reliable recovery down to an individual email message or database table.

About StoneFly, Inc.

StoneFly, Inc., headquartered in California, was founded to deliver upon the vision of simple and affordable storage optimization and disaster recovery protection through IP SAN solutions. StoneFly is a business division of Dynamic Network Factory, Inc. (DNF), a leading maker of high-performance network attached storage, storage area networks, RAID and iSCSI systems. For more information on StoneFly, please visit http://www.stonefly.com and http://www.iscsi.com
New VisionGate Medical Director Dr. David Wilbur, prominent pathologist VisionGate's ground-breaking technology can help eradicate not only the worlds deadliest disease  lung cancer -- but other cancers as well.

VisionGate, Inc. today announced the appointment of Dr. David Wilbur as Medical Director of its Phoenix-based CLIA laboratory, VisionGate Biosignatures Laboratory (VBL). A world-renowned pathologist, Dr. Wilbur comes to VisionGate from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), where he has been a practicing pathologist since 2001. He headed the Cytopathology Unit until 2011, when he took over the Pathology Departments efforts in the emerging area of digital pathology and teleconsultation. He is also Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School.

With interests in clinical cytology, digital pathology and computerized cell analysis and automation, Dr. Wilbur has been leading cutting-edge clinical digital pathology implementation at MGH. For several years, he also has been a consultant to VisionGate, providing final review and confirmation of all clinical cases utilizing VisionGates 3D cell imaging platform, the Cell-CT. He has also authored VisionGates recent clinical and scientific publications.

After serving as a pathologist in a clinical setting for most of my career, I am very excited about joining VisionGate to help accelerate the impact of its game-changing, non-invasive LuCED test for lung cancer as well as its chemoprevention drug Iloprost, VisionGate Medical Director Dr. David Wilbur said. Ive had the pleasure of working as a consultant to VisionGate for several years  reviewing hundreds of cases and thousands of cell images that VisionGates Cell-CT generates in 3D. Its truly a ground-breaking technology that can help eradicate not only the worlds deadliest disease  lung cancer -- but other cancers as well.

For students studying cytology, Dr. Wilburs name may be especially familiar. In addition to being the co-editor of the 3rd and 4th editions of Comprehensive Cytopathology, he also authored multiple chapters in the textbook, and over a hundred scientific papers on cytology and cancer-related topics. Dr. Wilbur has practiced pathology at more than 10 hospitals and has taught at the University of Rochester and the University of Connecticut, along with Harvard. Hes served on several editorial boards including Cancer Cytopathology, Archives of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, and CytoJournal. Hes also received the Presidents Honor, Lifetime Achievement and Outstanding Service Awards from the College of American Pathologists. He is a past president of the American Society of Cytopathology.

As VisionGate prepares to enter the marketplace, Dr. Wilbur will provide his extensive expertise and leadership in pathology to the VBL, VisionGate Founder and CEO Alan Nelson, PhD, said. We so appreciate his longstanding technical and clinical guidance, and are thrilled he could join us here in Phoenix to oversee the day-to-day operations of the VBL. Dr. Wilbur will help bring VisionGates LuCED lung cancer test to the global market. With his leadership, we will be able to provide an early, life-saving diagnosis for patients who have lung cancer and preventive treatment to those at risk for lung cancer.

Dr. Wilbur is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University and earned his medical degree at the University of Rochester. He completed his postgraduate training at the University of Rochester and Hartford Hospital.

For more information, visit http://www.visiongate3d.com.

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About VisionGate

VisionGate, Inc. is led by Dr. Alan Nelson, physicist, bioengineer and serial entrepreneur who previously developed the worlds first and only automated screening test to detect cervical cancer, marketed globally today as FocalPoint by Becton Dickinson. VisionGates proprietary LuCED, test is a non-invasive diagnostic test for detection of early-stage lung cancer, demonstrating exquisite sensitivity and specificity in blinded clinical studies. This physician-ordered, take-home sputum test is processed on the worlds first automated 3D cell imaging platform, the Cell-CT, named aptly because it is similar in principle to taking a CT scan of individual cells, but using visible light without harmful radiation. Moreover, with the exclusive patent license from the University of Colorado for the drug called Iloprost, VisionGate will drive the therapeutic market for chemoprevention of lung cancer and, ultimately, the eradication of this pervasive killer. With 166 issued patents in 13 countries, VisionGate expects to play a leading role in the battle against the worlds number one cancer killer.
We are thrilled to be a part of such an amazing event -- not only does it celebrate the diversity of our community, but it allows Renters Warehouse to help homeless youth, David Sommer, EVP of Operations at Renters Warehouse.

On Saturday, June 24th, the Movement Minneapolis will host a unique fundraiser co-title sponsored by Renters Warehouse and Media Bridge Advertising - a deadlift-only competition to raise money and build awareness for the citys homeless youth. Cheekily titled Pull for Pride, this active, inclusive, festive event will kick off Pride Weekend and highlight the power of a communitys strength.

Co-hosted by the Womens Strength Coalition, Pull for Pride will benefit Avenues for Homeless Youth, a nonprofit dedicated to provide housing, basic needs, and supportive services to help homeless youth, so often a segment of our population that feels powerless in the face of trauma and abuse. Avenues is one of the few Home Host programs available for LGBTQ homeless youth.

Avenues has implemented an innovative and truly socially disruptive program that can interrupt the cycle of homelessness, explained Mark Schneider, General Manager, The Movement Minneapolis. I was inspired to support them after reading a quote from one of their youth My Dream? To be the baddest-ass father a young person could ever imagine. Any program that can take a teenage male out of homelessness and inspire him to be a great father is definitely doing something right!

Schneider is also thrilled to have local household names as title sponsors. I'm excited Renters Warehouse and Media Bridge advertising signed on as presenting sponsors, he said. They have not only supported the event financially, but as leaders in their respective fields, have guided us to bring more public awareness to Avenues and their mission.

The event itself, which will take place the morning of Saturday, June 24, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., takes an unconventional friendly competition approach. Up to 45 participants will take turns deadlifting progressively higher weights. The deadlift, for the uninitiated, involves stepping up behind a loaded barbell, grasping the bar, standing up with the weight and setting it back down on the ground. It is a simple lift that is imbued with meaning: coming forward to face a challenge, and succeeding through the simple mechanism of ones own strength.

Pull for Pride participants will face their own unique challenges and demonstrate their own unique strength. Together through this competition  and combined with four concurrent meets happening nationwide  they will gather their strength and join forces to support a community in need. Each participant will be responsible for raising funds leading up the event; community members and attendees will also have the opportunity to make charitable donations on the day of the event.

Renters Warehouse, one of the largest and highest reviewed property management companies in America, is excited to be co-sponsoring this event as well as Pull for Pride events in D.C., San Francisco, and New York. We are thrilled to be a part of such an amazing event -- not only does it celebrate the diversity of our community, but it allows Renters Warehouse to help homeless youth, said David Sommer, EVP of Operations at Renters Warehouse.

In true Pride fashion, this deadlift-only meet is completely inclusive of all people and strength/skill levels. Unlike traditional meets, Pull for Pride is non-gender specific (open to trans and cis, intersex, agender, non-binary, women, men), and prescribes no dress code or weight classes. If you want to lift, you get to lift.

Founder and CEO of Media Bridge Advertising, Tracy Call, who has been buying media for Renters Warehouse since it started in 2007 is proud to be partnering with its client on such an incredible cause. This event epitomizes the spirit of Pride across America, and the responsibility of communities to support each other, said Call. As the agency of record for both Renters Warehouse and Pride itself, we couldnt be happier to be a part of Pull for Pride and all that the event stands for.

For more information on how you can get involved to help make the inaugural Pull for Pride event a success, please reach out to Mark Schneider at mark@movementminneapolis.com. There will also be a limited number of spots available for press and media participants to discover their own strength by taking part in the competition.

Renters Warehouse exists to help homeowners and investors create wealth and financial freedom through Rent Estate. To learn more about Rent Estate, visit http://www.rentestaterevolution.com and order your copy of Rent Estate Revolution, Renters Warehouses cornerstone book for the masses authored by Kevin Ortner and with foreword Dr. Arthur B. Laffer, Phd., Economic Policy Advisor to President Ronald Reagan.

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About Pull for Pride:

Pull for Pride, a deadlift-only meet to raise funds and awareness for Avenues for the Homeless, a nonprofit dedicated to helping homeless youth survive and thrive, while also kicking off Pride Weekend. Learn more at: http://pullforpridempls.com.

Where: The Movement Minneapolis, 2100B Lyndale Avenue, Minneapolis

When: Saturday, June 24, 2017 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Hosts:

Co-host: The Movement Minneapolis

A strength-based gym in Uptown Minneapolis whose foundational philosophy can be summed up with the Arthur Ashe quote, Start where you are. Do what you can. The inclusive gym fosters physical strength as well as mental, emotional, and social strength. Community service is as much a part of the Movement Minneapolis as is lifting heavy weights. For more information, visit http://www.movementminneapolis.com.

Co-host: Womens Strength Coalition

The Womens Strength Coalition summarizes their mission twofold:

1. We seek to encourage more women and nonbinary people to get under the bar and experience the benefits of training for strength.

2. We host inclusive powerlifting and weightlifting events to benefit worthy, yet underserved, organizations that strengthen the community in other ways. For more information, visit http://www.womensstrengthcoalition.com/mission.

Benefitting:

Avenues for Homeless Youth

Avenues provides housing, all basic needs, and the supportive services youth need to achieve their dreams. All of Avenues youth have access to onsite education, career, mental health and nursing supports. Its these supports, and a dedicated, trauma-informed staff that help homeless youth truly move from surviving to thriving. Last year, Avenues supported over 300 youth. For more information, visit http://www.avenuesforyouth.org.

Sponsors:

About Renters Warehouse

Renters Warehouse is one of the fastest growing and highest reviewed residential property management companies in America. Backed by growth equity investor and majority stakeholder Northern Pacific Group, and under the leadership of President and CEO Kevin Ortner, Renters Warehouse now manages more than $3 billion in residential real estate, servicing 13,000+ investors across 19,000+ residential homes over 42 markets and 25 states. NPG Managing Partner Scott Honour, who in 1999 was a founder of YapStone, a leading online rental property payment service provider, serves as Chairman.

Renters Warehouse expertly serves everyday single-property homeowners as well as real estate investors. In 2015, the company officially trademarked the term Rent Estate to redefine the entire SFR (Single Family Rental) industry as more traditional real estate gives way to this new lucrative asset. Through their dedicated Portfolio Services Division led by Chief Investment Officer Anthony Cazazian, the company also brings professional, scalable and efficient single property management solutions to investment portfolios with both centralized services and local market expertise and staff. Not only has Renters Warehouse received the prestigious honor of being included on the Inc. 500 | 5000 list of fastest-growing privately held companies in America seven consecutive years in a row, it was also named one of the Best Places to Work in Minnesota (where they are headquartered) by the Minneapolis St. Paul Business Journal in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2015 and 2016. The company was also honored as a best place to work in Arizona (a centralized corporate services center) by the Phoenix Business Journal in 2013 and 2014, and achieved a spot on the prestigious 2016 Top Companies to Work for in AZ list. Nationwide, Renters Warehouse has been honored as one of America's "Best Places to Work" in 2012, 2014, 2015 and 2016 by Outside Magazine. Recognized as pioneers in real estate, business management and innovation, Renters Warehouse has been awarded 22 Business Stevie Awards both internationally and stateside.

In 2017, Renters Warehouse received an A rating from the Better Business Bureau (BBB) after meeting the BBBs eight Standards of Trust and earning BBB Accreditation. In 2016, Morningstar Credit Ratings, LLC, a nationally recognized statistical rating organization (NRSRO) offering a wide array of services including operational risk assessments, assigned its MOR RV2 residential-vendor ranking to Renters Warehouse as a residential property manager, indicating that the company demonstrates proficiency in managing key areas of operational risk.

In 2017, Renters Warehouse published its first book - Rent Estate Revolution. Authored by CEO Kevin Ortner, the book shares the Renters Warehouse philosophy and business expertise around single-family rentals and the power of Rent Estate to drive long-term wealth creation, retirement security and financial freedom for the everyday person. Sign up for updates now at: http://www.rentestaterevolution.com.

About Media Bridge Advertising

Media Bridge Advertising is a full-service agency that specializes in building strong, smart and creative media connections around big ideas. As an expert media buying agency, the company specializes in media planning and negotiating across various mediums, budgets and objectives. They work with award-winning creative developers and production specialists to provide best-in-class services nationwide. The agencys bread and butter is securing and leveraging strategic local and national celebrity endorsements - the secret sauce to direct response advertising when media-mixed correctly. You name it, Media Bridge Advertising buys it - TV, radio, print, out-of-home, transit, digital, social or even sidewalk chalk art. Learn more about Media Bridge Advertising and view their work by visiting: http://www.mediabridgeadvertising.com.

Media Inquiries / Interviews:

Crystal Richard

Public Relations

crystal(at)renterswarehouse(dot)com
Logo

The Better Business Bureau is warning consumers about a work-from-home employment scam that has claimed victims across North America. An investigation by BBB Serving the Atlantic Provinces reveals that scammers have hi-jacked the names of legitimate companies in Nova Scotia, Canada. However, most of the job-seekers targeted by the scammers have been from the United States.

The scammers advertise work-from-home administrative assistant positions through Indeed.com, a popular online job site. One man reported to BBB that his mother lost $4,500 after following the employers instructions to deposit fraudulent checks and transfer funds to a different account. This is a typical tactic used in employment scams.

BBB Serving Atlantic Provinces was alerted to the fraud when two legitimate construction companies in Nova Scotia  Partners Construction, and Brooks Levy Construction, Ltd.  suddenly began receiving more than 1,000 inquiries on their BBB Business Profiles, suggesting the fake job postings are widespread. The BBB office also received phone calls and emails from across North America inquiring about the legitimacy of the companies and the posted jobs. Neither company is currently looking for new employees. BBB posted an alert on each of the companies Business Profiles explaining that their names are being used maliciously.

BBB Scam Tracker has received more than 1,300 reports of various work-from-home employment scams. It is possible that scammers use the names of legitimate companies to avoid being detected as fraudulent. BBB is encouraging anyone applying for a job via an online posting to use caution, and to be wary of warning signs of an employment scam. BBB tips are available at bbb.org/employmentscam.

Anyone who has applied for a position under fraudulent circumstances (whether or not they have lost money) is urged to report it to BBB Scam Tracker at bbb.org/scamtracker.

ABOUT BBB: For more than 100 years, Better Business Bureau has been helping people find businesses, brands and charities they can trust. In 2016, people turned to BBB more than 167 million times for BBB Business Profiles on more than 5.2 million businesses and Charity Reports on 11,000 charities, all available for free at bbb.org. The Council of Better Business Bureaus is the umbrella organization for the local, independent BBBs in the United States, Canada and Mexico, as well as home to its national and international programs on dispute resolution, advertising review, and industry self-regulation.

MEDIA CONTACTS: For more information, journalists should contact Katherine Hutt (703-247-9345 or khutt(at)council.bbb(dot)org) or Jasmine Turner (703-247-9376 or jturner(at)council.bbb(dot)org).
Morae Global today announced its senior executives will participate in a series of events across the country in June focused on the reinvention of the legal services sector. The events include the EDI Summer Event in New York City, Legalweek West in San Francisco and ACC Corporate Counsel University in New Orleans.

Our aggressive participation in the industrys top events demonstrates our commitment to leading the conversation around the reinvention of legal services, said Varun Mehta, Executive Vice President of Clutch, a Morae Global Company.

The roster of events includes:

EDI Summer Event in New York City on June 7 - Matt Jackson, AVP and Head of US Client Service Delivery at Clutch, will participate in a panel discussion examining TAR, technology assisted research. The event is taking place at the New York offices of Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLC.

Legalweek West in San Francisco, June 12-13 - Clutch will be attending and exhibiting its latest legal solutions, such as AudioIQ and CaptureIQ.

ACC Corporate Counsel University in New Orleans, June 14-16 - Kevin Blodgett, President, Law Department Management Consulting at Morae Global, is participating in a panel discussion, Developing General Counsel Skills, exploring strategies to succeed as in-house counsel.

Todays announcement follows the recent merger between Clutch Group, a leading legal, risk and compliance analytics and managed services firm, and Morae Legal Corporation, a full-service legal consulting and solutions provider. The new combined entity became known as Morae Global Corporation. The merger created the legal industrys most comprehensive suite of products and services to meet the needs of todays general counsel.

About Morae Global Corporation

Morae Global Corporation provides end-to-end legal and compliance solutions to General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officers around the world. Moraes team of experts comprises the most seasoned and knowledgeable professionals in the legal industry. The firms mission is to help law departments and law firms operate in the most effective and efficient manner by providing end-to-end solutions to fulfill all needs  focusing on people and technology, supported by process, guided by strategy and measured by data using analytics. Core service lines include Clutch Information Management, eDiscovery and Managed Review, Law Department Management Consulting and eLEXir On-Demand Legal Services. Morae Global has offices throughout the United States, including in Houston, Chicago, New York and Washington, D.C., and internationally in London, Bangalore, Zurich and Hong Kong.

For more information about Morae Globals legal solutions, visit http://www.moraeglobal.com.
...The new location sits on 19 acres and offers more than adequate parking with the ability to expand in the future. Church leadership will also be able to offer more ministry programs with the larger facility. We were happy to assist the church...

Ziegler, a specialty investment bank, is pleased to announce the successful closing of the $3,455,000 Series 2017 financing for Orlando World Outreach Center, a new client to Ziegler. Orlando World Outreach Center began in 2006 as a church plant of Every Nation Churches, a worldwide family of churches and ministries that was established in 1994.

The church has operated out of leased facilities since it began, and currently leases space for worship services, ministry operations and offices in downtown Orlando. Average weekly attendance has grown to nearly 600, with Senior Pastor Tim Johnson as the organizing and planting pastor. Under Pastor Johnsons leadership, the church continues to grow. Feeling the strain of capacity and parking limitations at its current location, the church began searching to acquire its own space. The church located a property for purchase just outside of downtown, approximately eight miles southeast of the churchs current leased location.



Proceeds from the sale of the 2017 Series Bonds were used to acquire and renovate an approximately 19,800-square foot religious facility located at 4365 Kennedy Avenue, Orlando, Florida. The facility includes a foyer area, a 500-seat sanctuary, a fellowship hall and youth center, offices, classrooms and a kitchen. The renovation project comprises modernizations and improvements to the entire facility, including replacement of the HVAC system, plumbing fixtures, audio, visual and lighting systems, acoustical ceiling, flooring and carpet, along with electrical upgrades throughout, and the addition of restrooms, offices, classrooms, a cafe and a fully equipped commercial kitchen.

Additional renovations include replacement of the roof, painting of the interior and exterior, installation of building signage, and repaving of the driveway and sidewalk. The Kennedy Avenue site includes parking for approximately 300 vehicles. Upon completion of the renovations, the church will move all of its ministry operations to the Kennedy Avenue site and discontinue its current leased space.

Senior Pastor Tim Johnson, commented, It has been an amazing journey to finally have the opportunity to acquire our first property as a church. I cant think of a better institution to have worked with than Ziegler. Dave Schlosser has been outstanding to work with. We are grateful for this partnership, which is more than a business transaction. It has proven to be a Kingdom transaction. Dave Schlosser, Managing Director in Zieglers religion finance practice, added, Orlando World Outreach Center has operated out of rented facilities since the inception of its ministry in 2006. Their most recent location in downtown Orlando provided limited parking and lacked a sense of community. In late 2016, the church was presented with an opportunity to purchase an existing church facility in a residential neighborhood. The new location sits on 19 acres and offers more than adequate parking with the ability to expand in the future. Church leadership will also be able to offer more ministry programs with the larger facility. We were happy to assist the church and are excited about the future of Orlando World Outreach Center.

Since our first financing in 1913, Ziegler has become a recognized leader in providing creative, tailored solutions to religious and educational institutions. Focusing on multidenominational places of worship, charter schools and K-12 private schools, Ziegler offers long-term, fixed-rate financing, tax-exempt financing and short-term, variable rate financing.

For more information about Ziegler, please visit us at http://www.ziegler.com.

About Ziegler:

Ziegler is a privately held investment bank, capital markets, wealth management and proprietary investments firm, celebrating its 115th anniversary this year. Ziegler is ranked No. 1 in the country in healthcare/senior living underwriters by issuance and No. 4 by par amount (Thomson Reuters, 2016), and is ranked in the top 20 municipal underwriters in the country by volume (Bloomberg, 2016). Specializing in the healthcare, senior living, education and religion sectors, as well as general municipal and structured finance enables Ziegler to generate a positive impact on the communities it serves. Headquartered in Chicago with regional and branch offices throughout the United States, Ziegler provides its clients with capital raising, strategic advisory services, equity and fixed income sales & trading, wealth management and research. To learn more, visit http://www.ziegler.com.

Certain comments in this news release represent forward-looking statements made pursuant to the provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. This clients experience may not be representative of the experience of other clients, nor is it indicative of future performance or success. The forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, in particular, the overall financial health of the securities industry, the strength of the healthcare sector of the U.S. economy and the municipal securities marketplace, the ability of the Company to underwrite and distribute securities, the market value of mutual fund portfolios and separate account portfolios advised by the Company, the volume of sales by its retail brokers, the outcome of pending litigation, and the ability to attract and retain qualified employees.

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NORTH LIBERTY  Missing Coralville man Michael Graham has been located by Omaha Police.

Graham was considered a missing person after his wife, Jill Graham, filed a missing persons report with North Liberty Police Monday, June 5.

Graham is currently with Omaha police officers, according a news release from the North Liberty Police Department. Nick Bergus, communications director for the city of North Liberty, said he does not know if Graham was arrested or being questioned by Omaha Police.

Grahams 2016 Volkswagen Jetta was also located at a hotel in Omaha.

Police said previously that Graham sent text messages indicating he had been tied up and forced into the trunk of his vehicle while working at 7 Hawkeye Drive in North Liberty on Monday, according to a news release.

However, police said Tuesday evening that they did not expect foul play in Grahams disappearance
Window Genie announces the grand opening of its newest location in Shreveport on June 12th. Eric Gnann is the owner/operator. Window Genie is a national home service franchise specializing in residential and light commercial window cleaning, window tinting, pressure washing, gutter cleaning and more. Window Genie of Shreveport is the first Window Genie in Louisiana and will service home and small business owners in Shreveport, Bossier City, Keithville, Stonewall, Benton, Haughton and the surrounding areas.

Before purchasing a Window Genie franchise, Gnann worked in digital marketing. Always having the itch to own a business, Gnann spent the last few years researching his options. Its been a long time coming, Gnann said. Id always had the desire to be my own boss, and just never pulled the trigger until now. Honestly the timing just felt right more than anything. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, about one in every 10 Americans is self-employed, equaling about 14.6 million people in the U.S.

Through independent research, Gnann read an article that listed some of the top low-cost franchise opportunities; Window Genie being one of them. I was already focused in on finding a service business, and Window Genie definitely stood out to me on paper. It was low investment and with multiple services, there were multiple revenue streams, Gnann said. What really helped me zero in on Window Genie though was that during my research, I discovered that Window Genie had recently been acquired by the Dwyer Group.

Dwyer Group is the holding company of 18 home service brands including Mr. Rooter, Molly Maid, Mr. Handyman, and since November of 2016, Window Genie. Gnann said, When I worked in digital marketing I had the pleasure of working with a handful of other Dwyer Group brands, so was familiar with the reputation they had for quality of service, as well as the company culture. I felt an immediate confidence in Window Genie as a viable option for me. Theres a real need for cleaning and maintenance, and through my research I saw little competition in the area. In so many ways, for so many reasons, it just made sense to me.

Window Genie of Shreveport officially opens for business on June 12th. All field technicians are fully trained, insured, bonded and have passed a background check. For more information, or for a free estimate, contact owner Eric Gnann at egnann(at)windowgenie.com or by calling 318-626-7667

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About Window Genie:

Founded in 1994 by Richard Nonelle, Cincinnati-based Window Genie is a national home service franchise specializing in residential and light commercial window cleaning, window tinting, pressure washing and gutter cleaning. Additional services in select markets include gutter re-securing, roof washing, solar panel cleaning, holiday light instillation, dryer vent cleaning and more, visit http://www.windowgenie.com. Window Genie currently operates with over 100 locations in 29 states. Window Genie is a subsidiary company of Dwyer Group, a service based franchise organization. Target markets for growth include New York, California and Florida. For more franchising information, visit http://www.windowgeniefranchise.com
Keystone Policy Center logo Our awardees are each an outstanding example of Keystones mission in action  and proof that collaboration can lead to progress when all other efforts have failed. Christine Scanlan, President & CEO, Keystone Policy Center

The Keystone Policy Center honored national leaders at its 24th Annual Leadership Awards event today for their achievements and commitment to finding collaborative solutions. The awardees participated in a roundtable discussion about how they inspire others to reach common higher ground  in-line with Keystones mission and more than four decades of work.

Keystone Policy Center has worked for more than four decades to find collaborative, actionable solutions to public policy challenges. Our awardees are each an outstanding example of Keystones mission in action  and proof that collaboration can lead to progress when all other efforts have failed, said Christine Scanlan, President and CEO of the Keystone Policy Center. Keystone is honored to recognize our awardees  and to host a discussion about how others can learn from their examples.

The Keystone Policy Center, a Colorado-based nonprofit organization founded in 1975, honored the following individuals as examples of its vision for individuals and companies rising above entrenched positions and reaching common higher ground:



U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.

Kees Kruythoff, President, Unilever North America

Anne Pramaggiore, President and CEO, ComEd

Mark Tercek, President and CEO, The Nature Conservancy

Chris Wallace, Anchor, Fox News Sunday

Shelby Coffey III, a member of Keystones Board of Trustees and Vice Chairman of The Newseum, moderated an insightful conversation about collaborative leadership, overcoming gridlock and polarization, and reaching common higher ground while solving complex policy challenges.

The Keystone Policy Center established its Leadership Awards program in 1994 to recognize extraordinary leadership by individuals and companies whose work embraces the nonprofits model, spirit, and mission.

About Keystone Policy Center

The Keystone Policy Center has worked at the forefront of public policy and dispute resolution for more than 40 years. From energy to education and health to sustainability, Keystones work has shaped public policy debates at local, state, and national levels. Keystones exceptional combination of experience and expertise have led to groundbreaking progress and lasting solutions when all other efforts have failed.
Vector Marketing has named Kalamazoo, Michigan resident Beth Shishmanian its U.S. Application Manager. Vector Marketing is a place where young professionals have a chance to learn and grow. Even more so, it is a supportive and encouraging environment where they can push themselves beyond expectation.

Vector Marketing, the sales and marketing arm of Cutco Cutlery, has named Kalamazoo, Michigan resident Beth Shishmanian its U.S. Application Manager. In her new position, she will oversee the Vectors newly created Application Center in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

The Application Center coordinates website responses, interview schedules and interviews for Vectors summer student work program. Each year, Vector Marketing contracts with tens of thousands of college students as sales representatives to sell the worlds finest cutlery. These Vector student sales reps are responsible for millions of dollars of Cutco sales annually.

With the new Application Center, the companys intention is to provide a streamlined application experience to the thousands of college students who apply with Vector, said recruiting operations manager Jacob Coon. Shishmanian will be a key part of those efforts, he said.

Beth is a fully committed and talented manager, bringing 15 years of service to the new position. She has developed numerous top performers, many with proven long-term track records, he said. I personally look forward the energy, enthusiasm and dedication Beth will offer to Vector and Cutcos future.

Shishmanian joined Vector Marketing in 2002, working for the company as a receptionist in Baltimore, Maryland, while pursuing her degree from the Community College of Baltimore County. In her 15 years with Vector Marketing, she has received numerous promotions, working as an office manager, division event coordinator and division recruiting manager.

She says she is excited to use modern technology such as text messaging to make the application process streamlined and easy for students who are looking for work or career opportunities with Vector Marketing.

I never expected the entry-level receptionist position I began in Baltimore as an 18-year-old high school graduate would lead me here today, Shishmanian said. Vector Marketing is a place where young professionals have a chance to learn and grow. Even more so, it is a supportive and encouraging environment where they can push themselves beyond expectation.

About Vector Marketing:

Vector Marketing is the marketing and sales arm of Cutco Cutlery, a 65-year-old company with headquarters and manufacturing facilities in Olean, New York. Vector sells Cutco products through a national team of sales representatives primarily consisting of motivated college students who are trained to do in-home and virtual demonstrations on a pre-set basis. Vector Marketing has over 200 locations nationwide and works with students of all majors with any levels of professional experience.
Robert M. Bernstein, MD, MBA, FAAD, FISHRS, has been recognized by his peers with inclusion in his eighteenth consecutive edition of New York Magazines annual Best Doctors in New York issue. Dr. Bernstein, a Clinical Professor of Dermatology at Columbia University and founder of Bernstein Medical  Center for Hair Restoration, helped re-invent hair transplant surgery by pioneering the Follicular Unit Transplantation (FUT) procedure and by becoming an early proponent of robotic hair transplant surgery (Robotic FUE). He is the only hair restoration surgeon named to the prestigious Best Doctors list for so many consecutive years.

Dr. Bernstein said:

New York has some of the finest doctors in the world, so to be considered among the best by my peers is quite an honor. It is equally satisfying when a patient tells us that we helped change their life.

The Best Doctors of New York issue is an annual edition of New York Magazine that contains a more select version of the Top Doctors: New York Metro Area list published each year by Castle Connolly Medical, Ltd. New York Magazines list of 1,341 doctors represents about the top 2% of doctors in the region. In each list, the areas top physicians are organized by specialty. Dr. Bernstein is listed under dermatology with expertise in robotic hair transplantation, surgical hair restoration, and hair loss treatment. To be included, doctors in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut are nominated by their peers then subjected to a physician-led review of their skill in diagnosis and treating patients, qualifications, and reputation. Castle Connolly Medical also publishes the Americas Top Doctors directory, which has included Dr. Bernstein in all sixteen annual editions.

Dr. Bernstein has earned top accolades from the hair restoration industry, including the International Society of Hair Restoration Surgerys Platinum Follicle Award, for his medical contributions to the field. Renowned for developing FUT hair transplants and introducing follicular unit extraction (FUE) procedures, Dr. Bernstein became one of the first in the world to incorporate the ARTAS Robotic Hair Transplant System into his practice in 2011. He has continued innovating through his collaboration with Restoration Robotics, Inc.; the company that developed the image-guided, physician-assisted robot. Recently, he announced a major upgrade to the robot with the release of ARTAS 9x. This latest version of the robot provides improved accuracy, quicker donor healing, and a faster overall procedure.

Dr. Bernsteins hair restoration facility, Bernstein Medical  Center for Hair Restoration, is dedicated to the treatment of hair loss in men and women using the most advanced treatments and technologies. The state-of-the-art facility is located in midtown Manhattan, New York City and treats patients who visit from 58 countries and all 50 states. The board-certified physicians and highly-trained clinical assistants at Bernstein Medical take pride in providing the highest level of treatment and care for all patients. Visit our website for more information (http://www.bernsteinmedical.com).

About Robert M. Bernstein, M.D.

Dr. Robert M. Bernstein is a Clinical Professor of Dermatology at Columbia University in New York, and is the founder and lead surgeon at Bernstein Medical  Center for Hair Restoration. He was the first to describe Follicular Unit Transplantation and Follicular Unit Extraction in medical literature, and his more than 70 medical publications have fundamentally transformed the field of hair restoration surgery. Dr. Bernstein has appeared as a hair restoration expert on many notable television programs and in many news and lifestyle publications over the years. Examples include: The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Dr. Oz Show, The Today Show, Good Morning America, ABC News, CBS News, GQ Magazine, Mens Health, Vogue, Interview Magazine, Columbia Business, The Columbia Journalist, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times. He is co-author of Hair Loss & Replacement for Dummies. Dr. Bernstein graduated with honors from Tulane University, received the degree of Doctor of Medicine at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of NJ, and did his training in Dermatology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Dr. Bernstein also holds an M.B.A. from Columbia University.
One of Nations Most Distinguished Military Landmarks Receives Benefits from Trenchless CIPP Rehabilitation

US Pipelining, LLC., an emerging leader in Cured-In-Place-Pipelining solutions (CIPP), announced today the completion of a military project which included cured-in-place-pipe rehabilitation at the Fort Lesley J. McNair Army Post in Washington, DC. Fort McNair, a part of the Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall, is the headquarters of the Army's Military District of Washington and home of the National Defense University, as well as the official residence of the US Army's vice chief of staff.

The CIPP rehabilitation involving a large diameter storm culvert running beneath the military facility and draining to the Potomac River was part of a larger infrastructure project directed by the U.S Army Corp of Engineers (USACE) and ACS Construction (formerly Akima Construction Services).

This was a tidal line which means it was sensitive to the tidal flows of the Potomac River states Jeremy Bowman, President, US Pipelining. As such, special planning and logistics were required to isolate the 48 diameter line. Working with the team at ACS, the dewatering and construction phases were successfully completed without issue, said Bowman.

A leader in Cured-In-Place-Pipe (CIPP) technologies for industrial, commercial and municipal applications, US Pipelinings military and government portfolio includes projects for The Smithsonian, Fort Knox, NASA, McGuire AFB, Lakehurst Naval Air Station, National Park Services, and the Naval Air Station Patuxent River.

Cured-In-Place-Pipe lining has become a widely used and accepted technology globally as a low-cost alternative to traditional trench and replace methods, said Bowman. Industry can either close down operations, interrupt traffic flow to dig and replace failing infrastructure or, option a non-invasive rehabilitation process which rehabilitates the failed pipe from the inside out without the need for excavation. Companies and municipalities worldwide are now opting for a faster, more cost-effective means of rehabilitation. That is our cured-in-place (CIPP) technology.

Since entering the pipe rehabilitation industry 25 years ago, US Pipelining has gained recognition for their ability to offer highly specialized rehabilitation solutions to a vast array of clients including global fortune 500 companies, high-rise residential and commercial buildings and government agencies. US Pipelining is one of a handful of companies globally who provide CIPP technology for pipes ranging in diameter from 4 inches to 120 inches, states Bowman. There are very few conditions we have not seen or reconciled.

About Cured-In-Place technology: Cured-In-Place Pipe technology (CIPP) is one of several No-Dig trenchless rehabilitation methods used to non-invasively repair existing pipelines. CIPP is a joint-less, seamless, pipe-within-a-pipe with the capability to structurally rehabilitate pipes ranging in diameter from 4"120". With a design life of 50 years CIPP is one of the most widely used rehabilitation methods and has application in water, sewer, gas, and chemical pipelines.
Heilind Electronics will be exhibiting at the Sensors Expo & Conference in San Jose from 6/27 through 6/29.

Heilind Electronics, a leading global distributor of electronic components, will be an exhibitor at this year's Sensors Expo & Conference -- the industry's largest event dedicated to sensors and sensor-integrated systems. At the Expo, Heilind will have samples and related literature from leading sensor manufacturers like Amphenol Advanced Sensors, Omron, Pressure Sensor Limited, Sensata (including BEI and Kavlico) and TE Sensor Solutions.

Heilind's product portfolio includes a full spectrum of sensors, transducers, MEMS and related devices, including pressure, position, temperature, humidity, force, dust and CO2 sensors.

Along with its extensive sensor offerings, the company provides technical assistance and complete logistics support for its customers' production needs. It also accepts custom orders for many of its solutions.

"Our inventory and expertise have allowed us to expand beyond traditional solutions," said Glen MacGibbon, Vice President of Business Development - Sensors, Heilind Electronics. "We continue to introduce next-generation designs, as well as new suppliers to satisfy market needs. We also fill custom requests for our sensor products, even for smaller production quantities."

Heilind works with customers of all sizes, from startups to large multinational OEMs. The company will have representatives at booth #1416 for the duration of the show, which will be held from June 27 through June 29 at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California.

About Heilind Electronics

Founded in 1974, Heilind Electronics, Inc. (http://www.heilind.com) is one of the world's leading distributors of connectors, relays, sensors, switches, thermal management and circuit protection products, terminal blocks, wire and cable, wiring accessories, and insulation and identification products. Heilind has locations throughout the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Germany, Singapore, Hong Kong, and China. Follow Heilind on Facebook at facebook.com/Heilind and on Twitter at twitter.com/Heilind.
The CCO Checkup provides financial institutions a fast, no-cost method to evaluate an AI-powered solution, while also dramatically lowering BSA risks," explains David McLaughlin, CEO and Founder of QuantaVerse.

QuantaVerse, innovator of data science and artificial intelligence (AI) solutions purpose-built for identifying financial crimes, today announced a complimentary analysis that financial institutions can use to test the effectiveness of their AML programs. The CCO (Chief Compliance Officer) Checkup is a free service whereby QuantaVerses AI solution will analyze transaction data to detect false negatives or anomalous behaviors that may have been missed by an institutions existing transaction monitoring system (TMS).

These risks take the form of fines, penalties and forfeitures for violations of BSA and other regulations. Despite increased investments in AML systems, this risk is increasing year over year. In 2016 alone, $42 billion in fines for AML non-compliance were paid to federal regulators by the largest North American and European financial institutions.

Transaction monitoring technology is essential for the maintenance of an effective AML program. However, transaction monitoring systems are failing to flag many transactions that represent serious risks for financial institutions. Legacy TMS are incomplete because they rely solely on rules-based engines. If a financial crime does not violate a stated rule, the TMS wont flag it. Unlike static rules-based TM engines, AI-enhanced systems are dynamic in that they can detect patterns of behavior and analyze the intent of those patterns to identify suspicious activities.

The QuantaVerse solution also provides financial institutions with a virtuous feedback loop that improves performance of their TMS by recommending new rules for catching new criminal behavior patterns that are uncovered during AI analysis. This provides financial intuitions with documented guidance on TMS rule scenarios and model tuning and drives continuous improvement of their AML efforts over time.

Financial institutions can take full advantage of QuantaVerses CCO Checkup with minimal effort and no long-term commitment. Included in the CCO Checkup, participating financial institutions receive a QuantaVerse Financial Crimes Report (FCR) detailing the five cases scored highest by the AI solution and representing the greatest risk to the institution. The QuantaVerse FCR also includes all the supporting documentation necessary for the case to be efficiently analyzed by an AML investigator and all that is required for a suspicious activity report (SAR) to be created if indicated.

In one CCO Checkup, the analysis of a single months worth of previously unflagged transaction data detected thousands of end-clients who had originated suspicious transactions, representing tens of millions of dollars of likely illicit cash flows. One end client, in particular, generated suspicious transactions totaling millions of dollars that were worthy of closer examination.

Money laundering continues to be a serious problem for banks. Fortunately, advancements in AI and machine learning technologies promise to greatly reduce the risk these transactions represent, explains David McLaughlin, CEO and Founder of QuantaVerse. Our CCO Checkup provides financial institutions a fast, no-cost method to evaluate an AI-powered solution, while also dramatically lowering BSA risks. They will see first-hand how AI can easily improve upon the effectiveness of their existing TMS and AML processes while greatly reducing their exposure to fines and reputational damage.

About QuantaVerse

QuantaVerse is the emerging leader in data science-powered risk reduction solutions, purpose-built for identifying financial crimes. Utilizing proprietary data science algorithms including artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and big data technologies, QuantaVerse integrates and filters institutional data and related external data  including public Internet data, unstructured deep web data, as well as government and commercial datasets  to significantly improve AML, KYC and BSA compliance and prevent money laundering and the crimes it supports. For more information, contact QuantaVerse at (610) 465-7320 or visit http://www.QuantaVerse.net.
Security Centric Inc. Our courses take theory to practice by situational events in real time for a hands-on immersive experience allowing the learners to further their expertise. Students simply need a web browser, internet access, and a desire to learn  Sean Hulbert

Security Centric Inc. (https://www.securitycentric.net), has developed first of its kind wireless/IoT, cloud based, hands-on, cybersecurity virtualized labs and training courses. Their mission is to broaden the pool of prepared security practitioners and cultivate a globally competitive workforce in the ever changing world of cybersecurity.

Security Centric is a courseware development company that provides cybersecurity training courses through an elegant user interface. Courses and Labs are hosted in their datacenter allowing remote student training in a hardened and secure cloud environment. Students experience practical, real world scenarios through interactive In Real Life (IRL) security labs via a patent pending process that gives them access to their own isolated ecosystem. These labs do not use simulators or emulators. Security Centrics proprietary cloud technology keeps each students lab environment secure and protected from that of other students. This hardened secure cloud environment allows students to launch attacks and visualize first hand, how to recognize a hackers signature and to detect and mitigate a potential exploit. Sample lab series within Security Centrics new offerings include; Archimedes Analytics & Forensics, Fortress Wireless Security and Nemesis WIFI Hacking & Viral Labs.

Our courses take theory to practice by situational events in real time for a hands-on immersive experience allowing the learners to further their expertise. Students simply need a web browser, internet access, and a desire to learn.  Sean Hulbert

According to Security Centric, they are the only company offering a realistic (In Real Life) hands-on immersive, condition based lab experience. Students only need an HTML 5 compliant browser to access the labs, making bootcamps a thing of the past. These labs have been designed to run with the utmost efficiency and the IoT/WiFi labs can be seamlessly integrated with existing Amazon Web Services, Skytap and Hatsize environments to name a few. Everything you can do on a physical server or in the workplace may be done at Security Centric through its highly scalable and engaging environment.

Security Centric can assess your current cybersecurity program(s) and guide you in further enhancements or new developments. They can apply their experience to enhance, enrich and contemporize curriculum, to preserve current instructional investments through audit, audit analytics, and consulting services to evaluate your current programs.

Currently, Security Centric is focusing their marketing efforts towards Universities, Enterprise Companies, Federal Government, Publishers, Educational Training Companies as well as the Individual Practitioner. Security Centric Inc. has a slew of new products in the works and an innovative vision for the future of scenario based cybersecurity training.

Elevating Cybersecurity education to the next level with our world class training cloud!

About Security Centric Inc.

Security Centric has over 25 years of practical experience in IT Security. Additionally, their team has experience working with the U.S. Navy, Marine Corp, FBI, local law enforcement agencies and Universities. They have also prepared theoretical hacking scenarios for the U.S. Department of Defense. Through thier expertise, Security Centric has developed a robust/dynamic Cybersecurity SAAS that aspires to strengthen IT Security worldwide. Security Centric Inc. is based in Livermore, California (https://www.securitycentric.net).

Contact:

Security Centric Inc.

info(at)securitycentric(dot)net

925-292-4309

M-F 8:00am-5:00pm
NORTH LIBERTY  Police say they do not suspect foul play in the case of a missing Coralville man last seen near his work in North Liberty on Monday.

Still, North Liberty Police Chief Diane Venenga, in an email Tuesday evening, said her department continues its efforts to locate Michael D. Graham, 37.

At this point we do not suspect foul play but we are continuing to follow tips to locate Mr. Graham, she said.

A missing-person report was filed by Grahams wife Jill on Monday afternoon, according a news release from the North Liberty Police Department.

Police said Graham sent text messages indicating he had been tied up and forced into the trunk of his vehicle while working at 7 Hawkeye Drive in North Liberty, according to the news release. Grahams black, four-door 2016 Volkswagen Jetta has not been located. The Iowa license plate number for the Jetta is ELL 592.

Graham stands 5 feet 7 inches tall and weighs about 165 pounds, with shaved brown hair and brown eyes, according to police.

North Liberty police traced Grahams cellphone at 1 p.m. Monday to the intersection of Keokuk-Washington Road and 265th Street near Keota in Keokuk County, according to the news release. However, police have been unable to locate Graham.

Please, please share this information, Grahams wife Jill Graham wrote in a Facebook post Monday night that had been shared more than 97,000 times as of Tuesday evening. He has four children and a wife who are beyond eager to have him home with us.

Graham declined to comment when reached by The Gazette by phone on Tuesday afternoon. At some point Tuesday afternoon, she updated her Facebook post indicating the family still hasnt heard from Graham.

I understand that some people may be skeptic (sic) of this post being truthful, she wrote. Unfortunately, this nightmare is actually happening.

Anyone with information can call North Liberty police at 319-626-5724, Johnson County Communications Center at 319-356-6800 or their local law enforcement agency.
Russian military intelligence, according to the document, launched an attack on at least one US voting-software supplier and sent so-called spear-phishing emails to at least 100 local election officials shortly before the election.

In addition to being the strongest public indication so far that Russia interfered in the US election, the document also indicates that Russian hackers may have "penetrated further into US voting systems than was previously understood," The Intercept, which first published the document, reported.

A US intelligence official contacted by The Intercept said the document's findings were not necessarily definitive and warned against drawing too many conclusions from the analysis. The Intercept said it was unclear from the document whether the hackers had an effect on the election's outcome.

But others in the national security apparatus expressed alarm.

"This is indeed a big deal," said Bob Deitz, a veteran of the NSA and CIA who worked under presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. "We are lucky that US presidential elections are so localized that it is difficult to do an effective hack."

Claire Finkelstein, a professor and national security expert at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, said of the document, "Wow, this is huge."

The leaked report is "evidence for the public now to see yet another example of quite a coherent operation" by the Russians, said Glenn Carle, a CIA veteran and former spy. "And that is significant."

The clearest indication yet of a cyberattack

The document's findings seem to more clearly indicate an attempted Russian cyberattack on the US electoral system than past findings did, Finkelstein said.

"We tend to associate this kind of stuff with China and North Korea," Finkelstein said. "Technologically advanced societies like ours are often soft targets, and there is every reason to expect Russia to engage in this kind of activity."

The US intelligence community determined in 2016 that there was ample evidence of Russian interference in the election and that Russian President Vladimir Putin was directly involved. The intelligence community also concluded that Putin specifically chose to help candidate Donald Trump at the cost of Hillary Clinton and to cast her in an unfavorable light.

But until the NSA's report, dated May 5, was leaked earlier Monday, Russian influence during the 2016 election was gauged to be a largely covert operation. This latest document suggests that Putin's activities were far more overt.

According to the document, the attack was conducted by the GRU, a Russian military-intelligence outfit. "That's no longer just covert activities like email hacking and dissemination of fake news," Finkelstein said. "This starts to look much more like a cyberattack." Though the definition of a cyberattack has not been universally agreed upon, "it could certainly look like a military attack on US interests," Finkelstein added.

Trump likely to be highly scrutinized

Experts say the next thing to look out for is Trump's reaction to the document. The president has in the past sharply criticized leaks of sensitive or classified information to the press, and he recently ordered the Department of Justice to crack down significantly on people who leak information.

Trump's response to the NSA's document will be critical, Finkelstein said: "If he does not decry this interference or attempted interference with the machinery of democratic processes in the US, that in and of itself will be highly suspect."

During the transition period and numerous times after assuming office, Trump lambasted the intelligence community for what he said was a politically motivated conclusion that Russia meddled in the election to hurt Clinton and help him.

The timing of the document's publication has raised further questions, since it came to light three days before former FBI Director James Comey was set to testify before the Senate about conversations he had with Trump as part of a broader inquiry into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia.

Comey was fired May 9  four days after the NSA document, which Trump as president would have been briefed on, was compiled by the intelligence agency.

The document "could have been a meaningful event that had an impact" on Trump's decision to fire Comey, Carle said. The White House's stated reasons for firing Comey have varied. Initially, the White House said Trump's decision was based entirely on the recommendations of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Later, the president said he had been considering firing Comey for a while and that Rosenstein's memo sealed the deal. Afterward, Trump said he was going to fire Comey regardless of Rosenstein's recommendation.

He told NBC News' Lester Holt that "this Russia thing" had been a factor in his decision, and he reportedly told Russian officials that firing "nut job" Comey had taken "great pressure" off him.

The NSA document adds yet another layer to what Carle called a "growing scandal" involving the president and his associates.

Finkelstein said it was "highly suspicious" that the document was dated four days before Comey was fired. "I suspect that whoever leaked it now was trying to facilitate Comey's conversation with Congress by putting a few more cards on the table," she said.

But a leak of classified information does not declassify it. Comey, who has been tight-lipped in the past when it comes to discussing sensitive or classified information, is unlikely to address it during his testimony, "despite the fact that he was likely tracking the report and many others like it," Finkelstein said.

Comey would have been privy to the information, given the frequent collaboration between the FBI and the NSA, and he may also have been involved in trying to identify further instances of Russian interference and potential collusion with the Trump campaign. "So, the investigation into Trump's ties to Russia may go deeper than we have been assuming up until this point," Finkelstein said.

Another dilemma

These latest revelations may also point to a potential bind that top intelligence officials could find themselves in.

"What do you do if you're serving the president, and this is information he has to know," but it relates to a topic in which Trump's and his associates' ties are being examined as well, Carle asked.

Law enforcement and investigative officials typically do not inform the subjects of investigations of their findings. "But in this instance, that is the chain of command," Carle said.

Trump's fuzzy relationship with Russia also adds another wrinkle to fallout after the release of the NSA document, because it raises questions about whether nations with interests that are antithetical to US interests can be considered enemy nations when the president himself has not clearly outlined them as a threat.

"As commander-in-chief of armed forces, the president identifies who constitutes a threat to the US," Finkelstein said. "If, however, there's a clear attack on the US of a military nature, and that includes a cyberattack like this one conducted by Russian military intelligence," then the president's definition of what constitutes an enemy nation may start to carry less weight, Finkelstein added.

One of the steepest threats arising from the latest revelations about a deeper penetration of US voting systems, Deitz, the NSA and CIA veteran, said, was to democracy itself.
The announcement was made by the Minister of Energy, Boakye Agyarko, at a meeting with the American Chamber of Commerce.

The authority will ensure that Ghanas hopes to produce 10 percent of its energy needs from renewable sources such as wind, solar and biogas becomes a realisation.

That target is expected to be achieved by the year 2030. Currently, renewable energy is estimated to contribute a mere one percent to Ghanas energy needs. Ghana is home to BXC solar plant, the largest solar farm in West Africa.

Energy expects believe that Ghana has enormous potential for renewable energy because of natural advantages such as year round sunshine for solar and wind for wind power.

Ghana has been battling to meet its energy demands for domestic and industrial purposes. The problem, which has become aggravated over the last decade, has led to many industries collapsing leading to massive layoffs.
The boy was arrested over the weekend by the police in the Ashanti region following his alleged involvement in the soldiers death.

But as far as the law is concerned, he cannot be charged with a crime and hence cannot stand trial.

Why is this so? Because he is a minor and hence may be tried under the Juvenile Justice system.

Why Juvenile Justice

There is the belief that children and young adults are very important members of every country, who will constitute the future leaders.

However, children in conflict with the law or juveniles are vulnerable and are considered less privileged members of every society.

Thus even before the arrival of the white man, chiefs and elders administered some form of juvenile justice system based on the countrys traditional values and culture.

Its aim was to to provide a juvenile justice system, to protect the rights of juveniles, ensure an appropriate and individuals response to juvenile offenders, provide for young offenders and for connected purposes.

As a private legal practitioner, Kofi Diaba explained in an interview: It [the Juvenile Act] says that when a juvenile is arrested, he/she has rights that must be protected. For instance, before he can be questioned the police must ensure that either his parents or a lawyer are present. If thats not possible, a remand officer should be present to ensure the childs right is protected.

So what might happen to the 12-year-old boy or any other minor arrested for their involvement in crime?

As far as the law says, he cannot stand trial as he is believed to be a minor who cannot commit a crime or would not have the intentions to commit a crime.

Police may, however, get information from him through interrogation, lawyers have said.

And he may subsequently be sent to a Senior Correctional Centre (SCC) otherwise known as Nkwalaa Bone School, a facility for young males in the country who have fallen foul of one law or the other.

What goes on at the Senior Correctional Centre?

Established in 1947, the centres mission is to reform, rehabilitate and reintegrate the countrys young offenders through a series of moral and vocational training.

It was then known as the Borstal Institute but was rebranded into the SCC following the passing of the Juvenile Justice Act (653) in 2003.

The maximum term for an inmate is three years, following which he would be released to reintegrate into society.

It is the belief that at the end of their sentence, they would have cleaned themselves up against any foul act following the training and guidance they receive at the centre.

The inmates are allowed to learn a trade at the centre - bead-making, carpentry, auto work  which would help them to acquire the necessary employable and entrepreneurial skills while at the training centre.

There is often no corporal punishment, as their supervisors develop strong bonds with them and train them now how to be non-violent when solving issues.

Nevertheless, some of the inmates try to break the rules and regulations of the centre. When this happens, they are locked up in a room called PG to suffer the bite of mosquitoes for days.
In one case, the head of a bald man was cut off and his organs removed in what the police suspect to be a case of rituals. That is because, the killings have happened in a part of the country where albinos have previously been hunted for the body parts for rituals.

According to the spokesperson for the Mozambique police force, Inacio Dina, two people have been arrested in connection to two separate murders.

In recent times, many men have opted to go bald as part of a fashion statement. Ghanaian musician and broadcaster, Trigmatic is one of them.

According to the online health advisory, Health line, male pattern baldness, also called androgenic alopecia, is the most common type of hair loss in men. One cause of male pattern baldness is genetics, or having a family history of baldness.
This is following her release from a Port Harcourt prison after 81 days behind bars due to a defamation charge brought against her by Pastor David Ibiyeomie of the Salvation Ministries.

Olunloyo, who is now back to being her vocal self took to Twitter today, June 6, 2017, to make her thoughts known, keeping it frank and blunt as usual.

She also promised to hold a news conference possibly in a bid to address the circumstances of her imprisonment and recent release.

"Nigerians tagging me as an ex-convict because of 81days in prison are certified illiterates. I have not been convicted of any crime YET-KOO.

"#BREAKING Holding a news conference later today for the entire media pool covering my "criminal defamation" case. Contact Atty Eugene Meabe," Olunloyo wrote yesterday.

The media personality who is often criticized for her 'high handed' hard approach concerning societal matters received support from Bisi Alimi.

The exiled gay rights activist commented on Twitter in May 2017 about her incarceration which he considers unjust based on the comment below.

"While we are still at it, I think it is important for Nigerians to know that Kemi Olunloyo is still in prison for nothing. Just a reminder," says Alimi.
Sandeep Khirwar, a police chief confirmed today that the incident occurred in the suburb of Gurgaon in the vehicle where the suspects laid in wait.

According to reports, the alleged rapists immediately harassed the 21-year-old woman soon as she boarded the tricycle.

Khirwah in a chat with with DPA News said:

The suspects sexually assaulted the woman in the autorickshaw as it moved on deserted roads in the area. It is a very heinous incident.

We have formed a special investigative team and hope to arrest the three accused soon."

The rape subject has been a major concern in India who was rated as the top four country with the high number of sexual assault on women according to statistics compiled by Wonder List.

Most prominent in the country's history is the brutal murder of Jyoti Singh Pandey, who was gang raped by six men and a minor on a moving bus in December 2012.
CHARLES CITY | A Charles City man is facing felony charges after items stolen from the YMCA and a local church were found in his possession, according to police.

Jonathon Goodman, 29, was arrested Tuesday when the police executed three search warrants.

His initial arrest was on a Kentucky warrant for methamphetamine, but he has now also been charged with one felony count of possession of stolen property and two felony counts of third-degree burglary, according to a Facebook post by the Charles City Police Department.

Items stolen from Charles City church, YMCA found CHARLES CITY | Items stolen during recent burglaries at the YMCA and a local church were fou

Goodman also is charged with misdemeanor counts of fourth-degree and fifth-degree criminal mischief.

These charges stem from two Charles burglaries committed within the last couple of weeks, one at the YMCA and the other at Trinity United Methodist Church.

Goodman is being held in the Floyd County Jail.

 Mary Pieper
According to him, if the party was tolerant, it would have taken his criticisms in good faith instead of threatening him.

Speaking on Adom Fms Badwam on Tuesday, June 6, 2017, he said:NPP is not tolerantthey are ignoring me because I spoke against them. Those who are threatening to bring me down, they should feel free; I am waiting.

Kennedy Agyepong admitted that his party is intolerant to divergent views stating instances where some unnamed persons have tried to dissociate themselves from him over comments he made.

He revealed this after claiming some functionaries within the party were senseless, members who met him at gatherings looked at him scornfully as though he had committed an unpardonable crime.

Meanwhile the Assin Central lawmaker threatened to release the nude images of a member of his party planning his downfall.

You can go ahead a plan and say that me Kennedy Agyepong if I dont shut up you will bring me down. I give you all to God but dont forget I have your naked pictures and if you joke with me I will finish you in Ghana, he revealed.
The Chinese Embassy has donated items including desktop computers, printers, UPS and a cheque for 10,000 Ghana cedis, to the office of the Attorney General.

The donation is aimed at supporting the Attorney Generals Office towards organising a stake-holder's consultative workshop, on the Office of the Special Prosecutor Bill, 2017.

Madam Sun Baohang, the Chinese ambassador outlined her countrys readiness to assist the Government of Ghana in fighting corruption.

However, it appears the goodwill from the Asian super power has not gained the appreciation they were perhaps looking for.

Chinese businessmen have been some of the major contributors of cash and equipment to illegal gold mines in Ghana.
A thanksgiving service was held in her honour at the Holy Trinity Cathedral, Accra, on Tuesday, June 6, 2017.

READ ALSO: Government to set up Renewable Energy Authority

The event was attended by clergymen, politicians, lawyers, judges including the new Chief Justice, Sophia Akuffo, Justice Jones Dotse, the Speaker of Parliament, Professor Michael Oquaye, the Minority Leader, Haruna Idrissu, among others.

Georgina Wood will become a member of the Council of State, since the advisory council to the president must also include a former Chief Justice.

Mrs. Wood is replaced by Justice Sophia A.B Akuffo, who was appointed by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

Her name has since been submitted to the Appointments Committee of Parliament for vetting.

Georgina Wood worked with the Ghana Police Service as a deputy superintendent and public prosecutor for three years before joining the Judicial Service as a District Magistrate in 1974.
At least that's the signal being sent by the options market, which is more unhedged on the S&P 500 than at any point this year.

The CBOE Equity Put/Call Ratio fell to 0.51 on Monday, the lowest since December 8, and 20% below the measure's current bull market average. A low reading implies that traders are making a small number of bearish bets, relative to wagers on an increase.

But while this gauge of investor worry is at a six-month low, it wasn't always so subdued. The ratio sat close to 1.0 at a five-month high as recently as mid-April.

So what conditions have recently shaped up to support the bullishness  or perhaps more accurately, lack of bearishness  being seen in the stock market right now?

Here's a breakdown of five themes supporting investor positivity, and suggesting that US stocks have further to run:

The breadth of stock market gains has been wide enough to allay concerns that indexes are being pushed higher by just a smaller number of companies.

While technology stocks  most notably the FANG group of Facebook, Apple, Netflix and Google  have gotten a great deal of attention for pushing stocks higher, the wider market has also been pulling its weight.

In fact, participation in the ongoing equity rally is broadening, as shown by the equal-weight S&P 500 index recently breaking out of a narrow three-month range, says Morgan Stanley, which thinks tech is getting too much credit.

"While performance from this group of stocks has been exceptional, they are not the only outperformers," equity strategists led by Michael J. Wilson wrote in a client note. "Outside this group, there has been ample opportunity for positive returns both across US sectors and globally."

Even the FANG-dominated tech sector itself is seeing more widespread strength. Roughly 45 stocks in the S&P 500 Information Technology index are sitting at 52-week highs, the most since at least 2012, according to data compiled by Strategas Research Partners.

Markets worldwide are being propped up by robust cash holdings that are at their highest in almost three decades.

Underpinning gains in both stocks and bonds is $5 trillion of capital that is sitting on the sidelines and serving as a reservoir for buying on weakness.

"This excess cash acts as a backstop for financial assets, both bonds and equities, because any correction is quickly reversed by investors deploying their excess cash to buy the dip," Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, the managing director of global market strategy at JPMorgan, wrote in a client note.

Consumer sentiment has been elevated for a prolonged period, something that's historically unlocked massive gains for stocks.

We're about halfway into such a high-confidence period, following recent University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index data that kept the trend intact.

Sentiment has been this high for this long on just five other occasions since 1978, according to data compiled by Morgan Stanley. The S&P 500 saw a median return of 21% in the one year following each positive reading and a 42% gain over a two-year period, according to the firm's data.

The S&P 500's 17% rally since June 2016 is roughly in line with that history. And perhaps more important for market speculators, it signals that the index could have 21% to 25% left to climb over the next year.

"This suggests that an environment of elevated and stable consumer sentiment is conducive to a building of animal spirits," a group of Morgan Stanley equity strategists wrote in a client note on Tuesday. "This trend started last year, but still has momentum."

The number of companies revising future profits higher is outpacing those making downward adjustments by the most since 2012.

The measure in question, known as earnings revision breadth, goes one step further than showing increased overall profit optimism by also quantifying how widespread it is throughout the S&P 500.

"The recent surge confirms the sustainability of the earnings recovery that started in early 2016," a group of Morgan Stanley equity strategists led by Michael J. Wilson wrote in a client note. "The momentum of earnings revisions breadth like that seen recently is often synonymous with higher equity prices over a 12-month horizon."

And last but not least, the granddaddy of them all: corporate earnings are growing at the fastest pace in 6 years.

Profit expansion has historically been the biggest contributor to share-price appreciation, and it has returned to the S&P 500 with a fury not seen in almost six years.

Companies in the benchmark are on pace to see 14% earnings growth for the first quarter of 2017, the most since the third quarter of 2011, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. It marks the third straight quarter of earnings growth for the S&P 500.

"It's all about earnings," Citigroup chief US equity strategist Tobias Levkovich worte in a June 2 client note. "The combination of planned tax cuts, light-handed regulation, a repatriation tax holiday on overseas cash and possible infrastructure spending has buoyed hopes for faster economic activity in 2H17 into 2018. However, earnings have been more crucial for stock prices."
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Clapper, who served under President Barack Obama from 2010 to 2017, described what he perceived as Trump's "internal assault on our institutions" in his disparagement of the US intelligence community and firing of James Comey as FBI director.

"The president-elect disparaged the intelligence community's high-confidence assessment of the magnitude and diversity of the Russian interference by characterizing us as Nazis," Clapper said at a National Press Club event in Australia.

Trump tweeted in early January that US intelligence agencies allowed the dossier, compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele and published in full by BuzzFeed, "to 'leak' into the public.'"

"One last shot at me," Trump wrote. "Are we living in Nazi Germany?"

Clapper said Wednesday that he "felt an obligation to defend the men and women of the United States intelligence community" after Trump's outburst. So he called Trump on January 11 and "tried, naively it turned out, to appeal to his higher instincts by pointing out that the intelligence community he was about to inherit is a national treasure," he said.

Trump, however, was interested in only one thing, Clapper said.

"Ever transactional, he simply asked me to publicly refute the infamous dossier, which I could not and would not do," he said.

Clapper released a statement on January 11 saying he had informed the president-elect that the US intelligence community had "not made any judgment that the information in this document is reliable." But Trump described the call differently, tweeting the next morning that Clapper had called him "to denounce the false and fictitious report that was illegally circulated."

Clapper, Comey, former CIA Director John Brennan, and NSA Director Mike Rogers briefed Trump and Obama on the existence of the dossier in early January, CNN reported at the time.

Some of the dossier's claims  many of which appear to align with events during the campaign  have been corroborated by the intelligence community. But many of its more explosive claims remain unverified.

CNN reported earlier in March that the FBI had information to suggest that the Trump campaign "communicated with suspected Russian operatives to possibly coordinate the release of information damaging to Hillary Clinton's campaign."

The congressional intelligence committees and the FBI are investigating as part of their probe into Russia's election interference whether anyone on Trump's campaign team colluded with Moscow during the election to undermine Clinton.
He pitched Republican leaders on June 6 on a proposal to cover the wall with solar panels and use the electricity generated to cover the costs of construction and maintenance.

Trump mentioned the hypothetical solar wall during a rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Wednesday night, saying "this way, Mexico will have to pay much less money," as his supporters applauded.

Thomas Gleason is the managing partner of Gleason Partners LLC, a Las Vegas-based architecture firm that submitted a proposal to the Department of Homeland Security that included solar panels. He told Business Insider earlier this month that he had been batting around the idea of building a solar-paneled wall along the US-Mexico border "for months."

Gleason, being in the construction business, said he knew a few people in contact with Trump, so he directed his firm to come up with a design and "get it in front" of the president after the DHS requested proposals.

The wall would generate enough power to pay for its construction in under 20 years, Gleason claimed. But he cautioned that numerous variables  the Mexican border is far from a straight line and light intensity changes from month-to-month  could complicate his calculations. He said his firm hasn't received the go-ahead from the federal government to conduct a full evaluation.

Gleason said his estimate is predicated on the cost of manufacturing solar panels decreasing over time. The price of installing solar panels has dropped from around $8 per watt in 2009 to $1.50 per watt in 2016, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.

Business leaders within the renewable-energy sector commended Trump's decision to seriously consider going solar.

"

Gleason said he believes that farmers on both sides of the border would appreciate the wall, as the energy output would create a "microgrid" that could provide cheap power to remote areas on the border underserved by energy utilities.

"We'd be our own utility," Gleason added, though he said third-party contractors would need to actively manage the wall, per the DHS's request. He said the cheap, renewable electricity produced by the wall should "mitigate" political resistance over time, and increase property values along the border.

Gleason also said the panels sourced by his firm would be manufactured in the US, whereas a concrete wall would entail shipping "truckloads" of concrete from Mexico, along with the higher maintenance costs.

"

Here are some renderings of what the wall could look like, which Gleason's firm provided to Business Insider:

The panels on the proposed wall would be offset to avoid casting shadows, as solar panels are usually installed on roofs, not walls. The panels on the roof would move to track the sun.

This is the proposed Mexico side of the wall. Solar panels in the US generally face south to maximize sunlight.

Another cross-section of the Mexico side of the wall. The panels would be set on a concrete foundation, with fencing above and below the panels.

The US side of the wall. Gleason says the wall would generate enough electricity to pay for sensors and border patrol stations along its length.
Trump in March asked the director of national intelligence, Dan Coats, for his help to persuade then-FBI Director James Comey to back off of Michael Flynn, The Washington Post reported Tuesday night.

The Post's Adam Entous wrote that Trump and several government officials met for a briefing at the White House on March 22. After the meeting, Trump asked everyone to leave the room except for Coats and Mike Pompeo, who heads the CIA.

"The president then started complaining about the FBI investigation and Comey's handling of it," The Post reported.

Trump's complaints came just days after Comey confirmed in a public hearing before the House Intelligence Committee that the FBI was investigating possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials.

Trump previously asked Comey to drop the investigation into Flynn, according to a memo Comey wrote about the conversation that was cited by The New York Times. Trump fired Comey on May 9 and later signaled in interviews that he had the Russia investigation in mind when he decided to make the move.

Flynn is one of several key players in a broad US investigation of Russia's meddling in the 2016 election. Flynn was forced to resign as Trump's national security adviser in February after misleading top administration officials, including Vice President Mike Pence, about multiple contacts he had with the Russian ambassador during the transition.

Flynn also drew scrutiny for his appearance at a Moscow gala hosted by the state-sponsored media outlet Russia Today in 2015. At the gala, Flynn was seated next to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Flynn was paid about $33,000 for a speech he gave at the event, but he did not disclose that payment on his security-clearance application in 2016.

Trump's senior White House adviser Jared Kushner has also been under the FBI's microscope for his interactions with Russian diplomats and business figures in recent weeks.
CHARLES CITY | Items stolen during recent burglaries at the YMCA and a local church were found Tuesday during a search warrant at two Charles City residences, police say.

Many charges in the case are pending, according to a post on the Charles City Police Department's Facebook page.

During the execution of the search warrants, Jonathon Goodman, 29, Charles City, was arrested on a Kentucky warrant for methamphetamine.

The Charles City police, along with the Floyd County Sheriff's Office, executed two search warrants shortly after 7:30 a.m. Tuesday at a residence in the 800 block of Wisconsin Street.

Another search warrant was executed in the 800 block of Richings Street.

Police say they located items taken during two burglaries reported in late May. One of the burglaries was at Trinity United Methodist Church and the other was at the Charles City YMCA.

 Mary Pieper
Democratic Sen. Mark Warner told the witnesses  National Security Agency Director Adm. Mike Rogers, acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats  that it was "jarring" to hear "recent reports of White House officials, perhaps even the president himself, attempting to influence and enlist our intelligence-community leaders in attempting to undermine an ongoing FBI investigation."

The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that Trump had asked Coats how he could prevent Comey from investigating his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, over his ties to Russia. Trump fired Comey on May 9, amid the FBI's probe into Russian election interference and whether Trump's campaign colluded with Moscow during the election.

"If any of this is true, it would be an appalling and improper use of our intelligence professionals  an act that could erode the public's confidence in our intelligence institutions," Warner said. "The [intelligence community] fiercely prides itself on its apolitical service to the country. Any attempt by the White House or even the president himself to exploit this community as a tool for political purposes is deeply, deeply troubling."

Warner asked Rogers whether he thought it was typical for a president to discuss with top intelligence officials an ongoing FBI investigation that could concern his campaign.

Rogers replied that he could not discuss specifics, but that in his more than three years as the NSA's director, he had never felt "pressured" to intervene in or alter the course of an investigation. He added that he had never been directed to do anything "immoral" or "illegal."

Coats similarly said he did not feel it would be appropriate to address "confidential information" about his conversations with Trump in a public setting. About the Post report, Coats would not mention Trump by name but said he had "never felt pressured" by anyone "to intervene or interfere in any way to shape intelligence" in an ongoing investigation.

Warner replied that if Trump was "even asking," however, "that is very relevant."

"At some point, these facts have to come out," he added.

Sen. Marco Rubio chimed in later, saying he thought that if what was being said in the media was untrue, "then it is unfair to the president," but otherwise, the American people needed to know.

Coats replied that he was willing to come before the committee "to tell you what I know and don't know," but that he was "not prepared to answer your question" in an open hearing. Rubio said he was not asking for classified information, but Coats insisted he would "not go down that road in a public forum."

Rogers echoed Coats' statement. McCabe and Rosenstein said they were not aware of anyone receiving a call from the president or his allies asking how they could intervene in any ongoing investigations.

Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden asked the witnesses whether they had taken notes or recorded any of their conversations with the president that concerned the Russia investigation, as Comey reportedly did. None would comment.

Independent Sen. Angus King aggressively questioned McCabe and Rogers, asking for a legal justification for why they could not discuss whether the president asked Comey to back off the Russia investigation.

Both McCabe and Rogers replied that they did not "feel it would be appropriate" to comment on something that may fall under the purview of the FBI's special counsel, Robert Mueller.

"What you feel isn't relevant, admiral," King told Rogers.

Warner later said that if Mueller had instructed the witnesses not to answer the questions, then the American public deserved to know.

"We have gotten no answer from any of you," Warner said.

Republican Sen. John McCain asked Coats whether he would be willing to discuss in a private session the Post report that said Trump had asked him how he could stop Comey from investigating Flynn. Coats indicated that he would, before saying that "not everything" printed in The Post should be taken "at face value."

Warner still appeared frustrated at the end of the session, telling the panel that he would come out of the hearing "with more questions than when I came in."

He said that while the officials had indicated a commitment to not getting in the way of Mueller's investigation, "we don't seem to have the same commitment from you to finding out whether the president tried to intervene directly with leaders of the intelligence community" to influence the Russia probe.

Warner said that what Trump discussed with the witnesses was "absolutely critical."
A judgment document seen by Business Insider shows that His Honour Judge Gerald sided with Partridge on May 26, meaning that he is entitled to a 33% stake in Unilad. Bentley and Harrington plan to appeal the decision.

Partridge launched the legal fight in March 2016 when he sued for a one-third share of the business, claiming that the current management had breached a partnership agreement signed in 2013. At the time, he was seeking a sale of assets from the company and a share of the proceeds.

The messy break-up of Unilad

Partridge gave two-thirds of Unilad, which developed a reputation for posting misogynistic content, to Harrington and Bentley in May 2013, according to the legal document. Harrington developed t-shirts with funny quotes on them, while Bentley was a web designer.

Less than four months later, Bentley and Harrington excluded Partridge from administrative access to the Unilad Facebook page, which is a key traffic driver to the unilad.co.uk website, the judge wrote. At the same time, Harrington and Bentley wrote to Partridge saying he was excluded from further participation in running the business but guaranteed that he would retain his one third share of income and assets provided there was no further reaction on his part.

Bentley and Harrington excluded Partridge  described as a "Facebook genius" during the court case  largely because he posted three links to HelloU (his new employer's website) on the Unilad Facebook page on evening of September 5, 2013. Harrington and Bentley claimed that the postings breached what had been agreed between the trio on September 2, 2013.

On October 28 2013, Partridge changed the login details to the unilad.com website, which had been dormant since June 2013. That prevented Bentley and Harrington from accessing it. Within 48 hours of discovery on October 31 2013, Bentley and Harrington had created a new website called uniladmag.com. They drove traffic to the site by linking it directly to the Unilad Facebook page.

In parallel, Bentley and Harrington launched a new media brand called Fullist with John Quinlan, who is Harrington's cousin. They aggressively posted Fullist links on the Unilad Facebook page from the middle of September 2013 onwards in preparation of the launch of a new Fullist site on November 1 2013. They wanted Partridge to work on boosting the Fullist Facebook, but he refused. Today, Fullist's Facebook page has just 17,458 followers.

"The defendants tried to setup Fullist using the power of the Unilad page as they wanted to distance themselves from the lad culture image and create a more brand safe offering," an anonymous source told Business Insider.

"Even though Alex had just given them majority shareholding of Unilad naively. They told Alex Fullist would only pay him []200 a month as a contractor to post links on Unilad to build the Fullist audience, but they would not allow him to be shareholders in Fullist.

"Only when they failed to make it on their own in building Fullist, did they focus on carrying on with Unilad. And have since spent the last few years trying to window dress Unilad as a more brand safe opportunity."

The source added: "

On July 8 2014, Partridge met Harrington and Partridge was told that the partnership had been "null and void" since September 2013.

"Overall, I have not found the defendants to be honest or credible witnesses who came to court to tell the truth or give full and frank evidence," wrote Judge Gerald. "Not only did they contradict each other on key aspects of their case, as well as their own contemporaneous documentation, but many of the central aspects of their case were abandoned or not pursued or have changed out all recognition from the case originally pleaded or in its amended form."

Unilads management must come up with the money or sell

Unilad has recently filed its end of year accounts and the company's financials will have to be disclosed to Partridge by July 14, according to his legal representative, Steven Judge, a partner at Stephen Rimmers law firm. "That will give us an idea of what the company is worth," he told Business Insider on Wednesday.

If the current management can't come up with the money that they owe Partridge then Unilad will be forced to go onto open market, Judge said, adding that he would personally handle the sale.

A source told Business Insider that the Unilad story is like a "reverse Mark Zuckerberg story where the Winklevoss twins win and regain ownership of a major company/brand."

When the legal action was brought about by Partridge, the defence told The Guardian: "There is no shared association at all between the original brand and our current business model. For the avoidance of doubt, we consider that the claims made are vexatious, factually incorrect, and defamatory.

"The company has at all times acted in accordance with its obligations and looks forward to continuing the evolution of Unilad.co.uk as a force for change. Our priority is protecting the new Unilad and its new direction. Whilst we have no doubt that the claims made are without merit, all legal matters will be dealt with in accordance with the proper channels, respecting both the confidentiality of the company and the parties involved."

Business Insider understands that at least one party could be interested in buying Unilad for upwards of 20 million. A source who wishes to remain anonymous told us that they were interested in buying the company, adding that they may have to pay up to 40 million for it.

Partridge went on to work as the head of the Facebook team at marketing company Social Chain, but he has recently left.
 Tests show that Honnold's brain puts him into a category of people that seek out extreme experiences, which may make him less prone to experiencing fear.

 Honnold practices the psychological technique of mental rehearsal in addition to his intense physical training.

On June 3, the legendary rock-climber Alex Honnold completed the first free-solo climb of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park in California. The 31-year-old climbed the nearly 3,000-foot wall in three hours and 56 minutes  without ropes or any protective equipment.

Honnold had stunned the world with free-solo climbs of Half Dome in Yosemite and the El Sendero Luminoso limestone cliff in El Potrero Chico, Mexico. But his most recent accomplishment required unparalleled physical skill as well as a singular mental focus.

"Free-soloing El Cap has been the most anticipated climbing feat of our generation, but only because of Alex," Tommy Caldwell, who trained with Honnold, wrote in Outside magazine. He said he hoped people were inspired by Honnold's "dedication to excellence and ability to live without fear," rather than his acceptance of risk.

"There have been very few people potentially capable of accomplishing this, and sadly most of these individuals are no longer with us," Caldwell wrote.

A different class of sensation-seeker

In 2016, Jane Joseph, a neuroscientist and professor at the Medical University of South Carolina, investigated Honnold's brain for Nautilus magazine. Joseph put Honnold in an fMRI scanner to see how his brain responded to fear stimuli. Honnold also filled out a survey that psychologists use to assess so-called high-sensation seekers, people who pursue thrilling or dangerous experiences.

Researchers showed Honnold images that most people would react to with fear, disturbance, or excitement. Such images usually cause the part of the brain that responds to fear to start firing, but Honnold's brain barely did.

"Alex showed very little amygdala activity to stimuli that most of the rest of us would have a reaction to," Joseph said. That lower-than-average reaction could be what drives people like Honnold to seek out more extreme experiences.

However, other aspects of Honnold's behavior didn't fit with traditional sensation-seeking patterns. Many sensation-seekers can end up in dangerous situations and be vulnerable to substance-abuse problems because they are impulsive and lack conscientiousness, the behavior trait that helps people regulate their actions. But Joseph told Business Insider that Honnold seemed to be extremely conscientious, perhaps enabling him to calibrate his meticulous preparations to the extreme risks he takes.

That exceptional combination may partly be what enabled him to do something no other person has.

"With free-soloing, obviously I know that I'm in danger, but feeling fearful while I'm up there is not helping me in any way," Honnold told National Geographic. "Its only hindering my performance, so I just set it aside and leave it be."

Accepting risk

It would be easy to call Honnold a "daredevil" or "crazy" when you look at his ascents. But if you listen to the way the climber  who is frequently called one of the humblest  describes risk, he doesn't sound like a thrill-seeker.

On an episode of the "Tim Ferriss Show" podcast, Ferriss asked Honnold how he handled the mental preparation for a difficult climb.

"When I'm planning on doing something challenging, I spend the time sort of visualizing what the experience will feel like and what the individual sections of it" will feel like, Honnold said.

"I'll think through what it'll feel like to be in certain positions, because some kinds of movements are insecure, and so they're kind of scarier than other types of moves," he said. "So it's important to me think through how that'll feel when I'm up there so that when I'm doing it, I don't suddenly be like, 'Oh my God, this is really scary.' I know that it's supposed to be scary. I know that's going to be the move, I know what it'll feel like, and I just do it."

In psychological terms, this is known as mental rehearsal, a technique used to get ready for something difficult. The logic is that once you've thought through how everything could feel  even if the task went wrong  you'll be prepared if things do go south.

Research has shown this approach can help doctors perform better, and astronauts like Chris Hadfield say it's an essential part of their preparation for spaceflight.

Honnold trained both mentally and physically for more than a year before his remarkable El Capitan ascent. He climbed every section of the route repeatedly, and he even started an attempt, then abandoned it, in November. Eventually, he decided he was ready.
Well, 'prompt' now certainly has a new meaning.

Its been two weeks since that heavily covered hand-over ceremony.

Osinbajo is yet to assent to the 2017 budget.

has been working the phones and speaking to sources in and out of the Villa to find out why there's been a snag.

And no, it has nothing to do with Osinbajo not having the powers to sign documents in Buhari's absence.

Heres why Osinbajo has withheld his assent thus far:

1. Sorry to break this to you rather nicely, but the 2017 budget has been heavily padded again like the ones before it.

You should know what budget padding is by now, yeah?

Ok, lets put you out of your misery because you askedbudget padding refers to the act where extraneous insertions from lawmakers find their way into a countrys annual budget.

Its called 'pork barrel' elsewhere, but in Nigeria, its pork barrel without the pork.

Lawmakers insert all kinds of monies into the financial estimates from the executive to benefit themselves and not their constituencies like they all claim.

Got it?

Good.

2. What is the extent of this padding, biko?

Ok, we got you.

Pulse was told that when the executive received the budget document from the legislature, it was taken aback as to the extent of the insertions.

The budget handed to the acting president now has over 400 insertions and over N140B in extra financial estimates for projects that probably cant be defended by the lawmakers, one Aso Rock source squealed.

The 2017 budget contains provisions totalling N7.3 trillion.

Another source told Pulse that the executive is now wondering where to find the money needed to fund the extra provisions in the budget.

The executive never esperrerit.

3.Pulse was also told that the executive is considering suing the national assembly over an interpretation of the appropriation act in the countrys constitution.

That section appears to grant the national assembly the power to chop and change the budget however it deems fit.

Section 80(2) of the constitution provides that : no monies shall be withdrawn from the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the federation except to meet expenditure that is charged upon the Fund by the constitution or where the issue of those monies has been authorized by an Appropriation Act, Supplementary Appropriation Act or an Act passed in compliance with Section 81 of the constitution.

Section 80(3) reads that: No monies shall be withdrawn from any public fund of the Federation other than the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the Federation unless the issue of these monies has been authorized by an Act of the National Assembly.

4.Pulse was told that the presidency is mulling over the idea of hiring lawyers to explain the above sections in the nations laws.

5. Sources at the Villa say the acting president has been painstakingly going through the budget alongside other members of the economic management team, but they've been left dazed by it all.

However, we were told, Osinbajo and his team have been left in a quandary. The acting president may just withhold his assent until president makes his return home.
It arrived at the Murtala Mohammed Airport ahead of her burial ceremony today at Ikoyi Cemetery. The corpse was received by her family and some of her friends.

Yesterday, Tuesday, June 6, 2017, a memorial service was held in honour of the late actress.

The service took place at Blue Roof, LTV 8, Agindingbi, Ikeja.

Toyin Aimakhu and Fathia Balogun were present. The 'Alakada' actress also spoke at the memorial/artist night. Her daughter also spoke and her brother Femi Olaiya.

Her daughter said this at the memorial service. "Mummy it still feels like a dream to me that you are no more, it still scares me that I'll never see you again. I don't know why this had to happen to you of all people but God knows best. Heaven couldn't wait for a gem like you that's why God took you so early.
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!
PM Express reports that the sacrilegious incident happened inside a Cherubim and Seraphim Church located at Oladipo Banjo Street in Oke-Ira area of Ogba, Lagos, when they ambushed the girl on her way home in the evening and forcefully had carnal knowledge of her.

A police source informed that both the suspects and the victim reside in the same area and attend the same church where the incident happened.

The accused were charged with unlawfully having carnal knowledge of the victim by penetrating her through her vagina.

It was also gathered that the suspects lured the victim to the back of the church in the evening when other worshipers were inside the church auditorium praying and forced her to remove her pant before they took turns to rape her.

It was learned that Oriko was the first to sexually assault her after which Bassey took over and it was in the process that they were caught in the act.

The matter was reported to the police at Area 'G' Command, Ogba, leading to the arrest of the suspects and subsequently charged to court under the Criminal Code.

When the charges were read to the suspects, they both pleaded not guilty and the presiding Magistrate granted them bail in the sum of N1 million each with two sureties in like sum.
This is following the murder of five men in Milange District located in Zambezia Province of the East African country.

A police commander, Afonso Dias, who spoke to the BBC explained that the targeting of bald men is based on a superstition that their heads contain gold.

Findings made by BBC reporter, Jose Tembe, however revealed that the notion is most likely an act of trickery employed by witch doctors to motivate their clients to bring them bald heads.

Speaking at a press conference in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, Dias said, "Their motive comes from superstition and culture - the local community thinks bald individuals are rich."

ALSO READ: Herbalist defrauds driver of N4M looking for favour charm

The AFP News in a related report disclosed that two men around the age of 20 have been arrested in connection to the killings.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the sacred tree is located in a historical site in the heart of the community.

An attempt on Monday by the contractor handling the project to uproot the tree was disrupted by the youths andtraditional religion worshippers who invaded the scene.

NAN reports that some irate youths held up traffic and lit bonfires at Odo-Oja area of the town.

The protesting indigenes claimed that the historical site known locally as Ereja was the source of Ikere Ekiti, and uprooting the tree would result in dire consequences for the community.

They also claimed that the site of the tree was host to the annual Olosunta festival.

Gov. Ayo Fayose, who visited the scene appealed for calm, saying he would ensure that the traditional ruler of the community and Olukere of Ikere, Oba Ganiyu Obasoyin, were sensitised on the need for the road dualisation project.

NAN reports that residents had earlier in the day placed fetish objects made with a goat and pigeon at the site while palm fronds were also tied around the shrine to scare away agents of the contractors.

Some of them also formed a human shield round the shrine in a bid to frustrate any plan to demolish the site and uproot the tree.

Addressing reporters at his palace, Oba Obasoyin who is the custodian of traditional sites in the town, said cutting down the sacred tree and demolishing the Ereja was akin to passing a death sentence on him

Present at the briefing were the Alare of Are-Ikere, Chief Oguntuase Atitebi and the Elejoka of Ikuomoba-Ikere, Chief Benjamin Owolade.

 It is when a king dies that the branches of the tree are cut off and I went to meet the governor that he should not pass a death sentence on me.
The Police Prosecutor, ASP Richard Odigie told the court that the accused committed the offences on May 30 at 5.30 a.m. at Ikota Shopping Complex, Ajah, Lagos.

According to him, the accused entered the shop of his girlfriends mother, Mrs Yetunde Nwokocha and stole items worth N637,000.

Nduka stole the keys to the shop while he was accompanying his girlfriend home from the shop the previous night."

He later went to the shop the following morning and opened the door with the stolen key and stole two phones, two laptops and one iPad valued at N637,000,  he said.

Odigie said the accused also destroyed the Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) and a Plasma TV in the shop valued at N150,000.

The accused was identified through the footage of the CCTV outside the shop which the accused did not know was there.

The offences contravened Sections 285 (5) (a) and 345 of the Criminal Law of Lagos State, 2015 (Revised).The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Section 285 (5) stipulates seven years imprisonment for offenders.

The Magistrate, Mrs F.O. Ikobayo, granted the accused a bail of N1 million with two sureties in like sum.
Anekwe was responding to the statement released by the management of the hospital that his wife's death should not be blamed on them as they had done everything possible to keep her alive but their efforts were frustrated by the husband.

The hospital, after keeping mom over the death of the 28-year-old mother of two who died while giving birth to her third child, had come out with a statement where it gave an account of what happened and exonerating themselves of complicity.

However, Anekwe has also released a statement saying the hospital lied to the public and that they were responsible fo the death of his young wife due to their negligence and gross incompetence.

In a statement signed by the bereaved husband, the hospital's statement was full of lies and half truths and that contrary to reports by the hospital management that his wife refused admission despite doctors orders asking her to stay, she only returned home to get the N60,000 which the hospital demanded before she could be admitted.

He also punctured holes in the claims by the hospital that the deceased refused to take her drugs, stating that he was in the hospital and saw his wife taking her drugs.

He also revealed that the hospital sent him a medical report three days later and never mentioned that his wife was skipping treatment. Anekwe further alleged that the doctors had induced his wife without his permission, even after he had signed a consent form for surgery to commence.

Read the statement released by Valentine Anekwe on the death of his wife:

"I just want to clarify some things regarding the statement from Magodo Specialist Hospital on the unfortunate death of my wife. My wife did not decline admission as they claimed.

She was asked to deposit N60,000 before she would be admitted and she told them she was not with any money with her at that moment but the hospital insisted she had to make that deposit before admission and that was why she came back to the house to get the money.

Less than seven minutes later, (the Medical Director of the hospital) confirmed that my baby was no more. A CS form was given to me to sign, that he wanted to do a CS to get my dead baby out and I signed immediately.

I was told to deposit N300,000 for the CS but before then, I wanted to move my wife to another hospital but Dr. Olamijulo convinced me not to, saying that I will have logistic problems because of the early hour; I am sure he said that just because of the N300,000 he wanted to collect from me.

We took my wife to the theater for the CS and Dr. Olamijulo told me to go to the lab downstairs and donate blood, that my wife will need the blood immediately after the CS but by the time I came back from the lab, my wife was not in the theater.

She was in labour room after Dr. Olamijulo had induced her without any consent from me. I then rushed to his office and asked him why didn't he do the CS? He said to me that he realized that the CS will cost me more money and that he's not like other doctors who are only after money.

And this was after I was told to deposit N300,000 and I didn't argue with them that the money was an issue with me. He said that even if my wife was flown to England, the treatment she was getting at the hospital would be the same she would get in England.

He was able to convince me that my wife would be fine, that I should stop disturbing myself. He never stopped telling my wife about his experience in England and that was why she trusted him so much.

I was In the hospital on the night when drugs were given to my wife and she took the drugs while the nurse was there and Dr. Olamijulo issued a medical report after three days and how come he didn't mention that my wife didn't take her drugs? They are just telling a lot of lies.

My life has not been the same since my wife passed. Chisom was not just my wife, she was also my best friend. I have not been able to come to terms with her death and I have not been able to function properly since she died."
This was revealed to Vanguard by the President General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Chief Nnia Nwodo on Wednesday, June 7, 2017.

A group known as the Coalition of Northern Youths (CNY) had earlier given people from the South-East 90 days to leave the region.

The ultimatum has been condemned by notable Nigerians, including a former Vice-President, Atiku Abubakar.

Also, the minister of information and culture, Lai Mohammed said security operatives are handling the matter.

Reports say the South-East Governors were planning to send buses to bring back Igbos living in the North.

According to the Ohanaeze Ndigbo chieftain, the Governors did not go ahead with their plan, because of Governor Nasir El-Rufais order for the arrest of those who issued the ultimatum.
Mr Sani Datti, Head of Media and Public Relations, National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) made this known in a statement on Wednesday in Abuja.

Datti said that the special relief intervention include 30,905.8 metric tonnes of cereals including Maize flour, Sorghum, millet among others.

He said that the exercise was expected to be inaugurated by the Acting President, Prof. Yemi Osibanjo on Thursday in Maiduguri, Borno.

Mr Mustapha Maihaja, Director-General of NEMA was quoted as saying that adequate measures have been put in place to ensure that the distribution was done in a transparent manner.

He highlighted the strategies that would be adopted for distribution of relief materials approved by the Federal Government for displaced persons in the North East.

According to him, this will in accordance with the humanitarian principles ensure optimal accomplishment of task and operational objectives.

ALSO READ: NSCDC recovers 2 food supply trucks from suspected terrorists

This strategy will serve as a litmus test for full cycle of intervention adapting world best practices while considering our own local peculiarities.

The strategies will exhibit the best of transparency, accountability and in full consideration of the protection and integrity of the affected persons.

Each household beneficiary would be issued with a voucher, which will be redeemed at the receipt of the household allocation of the food basket.

It also involves taking the materials to the doorsteps of the affected persons.

The distribution is based on dry ration calculations of six persons per household and food ration per individual for 30 days at 280grams x30/1000k which is equal to 8.4 kg times individual requirement per household is 50.4 kg, he said.
Mr Ibrahim Abdullahi, the states Commandant of the corps, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Maiduguri that the trucks were intercepted by men of the command on patrol following a tip-off.

He said that on arrival, our men noticed some strange-looking people with two trucks and a motorcycle suspected to be for Boko Haram.

On seeing our men, the suspects quickly took to their heels into the bush, but two trucks were recovered from them.

Further investigations revealed that the insurgents usually transport food items, charcoal and other consignment into Sambisa Forest through some villages around Mainok.

Our investigation further revealed that the insurgents normally paint their trucks in black to enable them to escape being detected by air surveillance.

ALSO READ: Court discharges terrorist suspect after 4 years in custody

The command and other agencies had continued to mount pressure to cut the food supply chain of the terrorists group.
HURIWA also called on the international community to hold President Buhari responsible if anything happens to the easterners.

According to Daily Post, the group also said that the youths who issued the ultimatum are members of the youth wing of Arewa Consultative Assembly.

HURIWA also revealed that it has written to embassies of foreign countries alerting them of the plot by some Northerners to attacks Igbos.

A statement issued by its National coordinator Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko and the National media Affairs Director Miss Zainab Yusuf reads: For the past two years, we have waged relentless advocacy campaigns urging the Buhanris government to direct top commanders of the Armed forces to stop his kinsmen the armed Fulani paternalists to stop killing farmers all over the country but the military under the direct command and control of the president has rather gone after cattle rustlers allowing armed Fulani renegades to freely roam all over the country maiming, killing farmers and destroying communities.

Now that these Arewa Youth have unleashed a wave of hate filled threats against the Igbo race, it is shocking that 24 hours after, not one of those boys have been picked up by the military and the police. Are the security forces waiting until they have inflicted pains and destroyed legally earned assets of the peaceful Igbo people living in the North before they act belated?

May we use this medium to once more ask that president Buhari respects the constitutional principle of Federal character and appoint a Military officer of South East extraction as one of the service chiefs to guarantee the over 70 million Igbo people of their safety and security.

The situation where all the key Defence chiefs and the National Security Adviser to the President, all heads of security affiliated agencies and paramilitary including department of state services (DSS), Nigeria police force are predominantly from the North, does not augur well for national tranquillity and fairness, it said.

ALSO READ:MASSOB asks Igbos to leave the North

HURIWA also blamed the various security challenges in the nation on the one-sided appointments in the nations military.

It also called on the security agencies to arrest the youths who issued the ultimatum to prevent a breakdown of law and order.
The notice was issued by the Coalition of Northern Youths (CNY), advising Igbos living in the northern region of the country to leave before drastic actions will be taken to remove them starting from October 1, 2017.

The declaration had also advised Northerners in the eastern region to vacate those regions and move back to the north.

In a press conference presided over by Gov. Elrufai's spokesman, Samuel Aruwan, he disclosed that the governor had asked the state's attorney general to file charges against anyone involved in the 'war'declaration.

The statement read, "The Kaduna state government took exception to the fact that the northern youths did their irresponsible press conference in Kaduna.

"This government has been consistent in taking action to punish hate speech and incitement. People who may feel unhappy about irresponsible comments or actions that have taken place in other states must know that two wrongs cannot make a right and they cannot use our state to do or say things that threaten the peace.

"Kaduna state government has therefore ordered the arrest, investigation and prosecution of the signatories to the statement.

"The Kaduna state government condemns in the strongest terms the press statement by some self-appointed northern youths that threatened the safety and property of our citizens of Igbo extraction.

"Government assures every resident of our state that their constitutional and human rights to live peacefully and own property wherever they choose is sacrosanct.

"Even people who may feel unhappy about irresponsible comments or actions that have taken place in other states must know that two wrongs cannot make a right.

"The Kaduna state government believes in and will uphold the right of every Nigerian to live safely and develop his/her full potentials within its territory.

"Reckless disregard for the rights of other citizens drips through the press statement by these 'northern youths' who have chosen to use the discourse around restructuring to promote their own agenda of hate, division and incitement.

"This sort of opportunists cannot be allowed to distort debate, or turn it into a pretext for a barely-disguised agenda of displacement and dispossession of some citizens.

"We will not tolerate such irresponsible statements and conduct in our state. The statement issued by the 'northern youths' violates the laws of Kaduna state.

"Therefore, the Kaduna state government has directed that its ministry of justice to prepare charges and prosecute the signatories and anyone complicit in arranging this egregious assault on the rights of fellow citizens.

"Preparatory to prosecution, the police have been directed to immediately arrest, interrogate the signatories to the statement and investigate all the circumstances and persons that may be implicated in the matter.

"The Kaduna State Government urges all residents to ignore the threats from the 'northern youths'. We are in contact with the leadership of the Igbo community in Kaduna, and we are delighted to say that this community, like all our other communities, believes in the strength of the constitutional order to protect all citizens.

"Kaduna state government wishes to encourage all our people to celebrate the diversity with which the Almighty has blessed us, to continue to shun agents of division, and to stand firm in upholding a common humanity. Everyone has a right to live in peace and harmony."

The coalition of 16 different groups which includes Arewa Citizens Action for Change, Arewa Youth Consultative Forum, Arewa Youth Development Foundation, Arewa Students Forum and Northern Emancipation Network, promised to execute measures to carry out their declaration.

In the declaration, the group expressed its displeasure with the Igbos' constant agitation for its own independent nation, citing it as one of the key reasons for the declaration.

"From today, June 6, 2017, when this proclamation is signed, the North, a critical player in the Nigerian project, hereby declares that it will no longer be disposed to coexisting with the Igbos and shall take definite steps to end the partnership by pulling out of the current federal arrangement.

This conclusion is necessitated by the realization that it since ceased to be comfortable or safe to continue sharing the same country with the ungrateful, uncultured Igbos who have exhibited reckless disrespect for the other federating units and stained the integrity of the entire nation with their insatiable criminal obsessions."

ALSO READ: Biafra group asks Igbos to leave the North

In response, the Movement for the Actualization of Sovereign States of Biafra (MASSOB) begged Igbos to start vacating the region, saying it wasn't surprised by the aggressive act.

MASSOB leader Comrade Uchenna Madu said the group agrees with the coalition's decision, saying Igbos should reinvest in Biafra.

"MASSOB is aware that such rascality will happen. As a matter of fact, this is the only rascality exhibited by sponsored Arewa youths to forcefully exit the people of Biafra residing in Arewa land that MASSOB will 100 per cent support. Their Boko Haram tactics didnt work as planned. We pledge our total support towards this divinely approved quit notice.

"MASSOB urge our people to start returning home now. Don't wait till the three months for quit notice to expire.
According to Daily Post, the members of the group held a closed door meeting to know the next line of action following the Governors order.

The spokesman of the group, Abdulaziz Suleiman, who spoke to newsmen, said that it is disappointing the Kaduna Governor is trying to stop them from carrying out their action.

He also said We are currently meeting to decide on how best to react.

Personally, I am disappointed with some of our leaders. These types of threats were issued against the Fulani recently and no governor from the South came out to condemn it.

ALSO READ: Northern group declares war on Igbos
The governor, who gave the warning at a press conference in Ado Ekiti , said any masquerader caught beating people or attacking those in worship houses would henceforth be publicly unveiled and arrested.

Fayose condemned the recent attack on a worship house in Ikun Ekiti, describing the incident as unfortunate and barbaric.

He said the masquerade festival being held in the community was meant to be a fiesta through which residents, especially children, would be entertained and not one to unleash violence on residents.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) recalls that there was violence in Ikun Ekiti on May 30 as masqueraders attacked the worship house.

ALSO READ: Fayose says Obasanjo should be jailed for corruption

No fewer than five of the worshippers were said to have sustained varying degrees of injury.

Fayose, however, enjoined all residents of the state to continue to live together in peace, especially now that the 2018 governorship election was drawing nearer.
Fowler said the allegations that the FIRS awarded huge contracts to Active Solution Integrated Synergy without procurement are mere fantasies and a figment of the imagination of the peddlers.

Fowler told the Ad-Hoc committee on Procurement that the FIRS vote for the company was on account of the national revenue emergency, which demands that agency thinks outside the box to generate enough revenue for the nation.

In his words: The proposal from Active Solution Integrated Synergy Ltd, came at the nick of time when FIRS tax revenue collection was nose-diving as a result of the recession in the economy and the perpetual fall in crude oil prices which exerted more pressure on non-oil revenue. Government set high revenue targets which FIRS was expected to meet.

FIRS was determined to pass the litmus test set by the high revenue target and is poised to provide succor to government funding challenges. This FIRS did by declaring state of emergency in tax revenue collection. The strategy adopted by FIRS to boost tax revenue collection was to deploy more automation in the tax revenue collection machinery to deepen the already existing automated platform and catch transactions which may have escaped the tax view before now.

This trend prompted FIRS to adopt automations that facilitate handshake with some specific sectors of the economy. As we are all aware, telecoms sector is an area that the transactions are not very open to many and there has been no lucid knowledge about revenue presentations in-spite of the much accountants have been able to report. This is attributable to the total automation of their operations. The only way to crack into such systems was to allow for operators who understand the terrain to lend a helping hand with a view to achieving more tax revenue," he said.

In continuation of this drive for automation, Fowler said FIRS launched the following solutions recently e-Registration); e-Stamp Duty); online payment: e-tax pay, Remita); e-Receipt); e-filing) and online Tax Clearance Certificates (TCC).

The FIRS Chairman, however explained yesterday that it acted in national interest on a contract that will give Nigeria more revenue, yet was at no cost to the nation. In other words, if Active Intelligence generates no revenue from its VAT recovery efforts, it is not paid a dime.

He explained too that it was for a company that had the sole expertise on the technology and telecoms calls audit that had never been done in Nigeria. The company also had a track record in UK and about 10 countries in Africa, including Ghana.

ALSO READ: Tunde Fowler says agency generates N3.30trn revenue

The contract was at no cost to the nation, as it had no financial commitment or upfront payment to the consultant. Rather, Fowler told the committee, companies given contracts on recovery of VAT on International calls on telecoms were to be paid only 1 % of the value of the money they generate.

This, he noted was better than the old practice, where consultants were paid for such jobs either they pull in money or not.

Continuing, he said: What we did was that we sought out companies with history and demonstrated expertise in ICT sector for which there are no demonstrable expertise available locally.

The proposed solution is an intellectual property of Active Intelligence Ltd and the company has exclusive rights over the solution. FIRS engaged the company given its expertise and experience to deliver and also given experience of the Directors and Technical Partners of the company

The company went through a process six months before agreed that it has value and experience to add value to our job. The company showed us what it had done in Ghana. It was novel and it had not been done in Nigeria. The UK company is called Active Intelligence Limited. It has established itself as a leading ICT company in Africa and has a presence in Ghana and 10 other African.

Fowler told the committee that the Nigerian arm of the company was registered on 2nd December, 2016 and was awarded contract on 23rdJanuary, 2017 to deploy IT solution to deduct VAT on Telecom companies.

In agreeing that the company should handle the VAT audit of telephone calls, we also considered other benefits like technology transfer and development of local knowledge. We then insisted that the company must be registered in Nigeria. It did with.

We took them through the Procurement process. It was a technology exclusive to them. And Section 42 (1) a & b of the Public Procurement Act allows us to do that," Fowler said.

The Ad-Hoc Committee Chairman, Hon Olusola Oke, noted FIRS bid to generate more money for the treasury so the nation could spend its way out of recession. However, he advised FIRS to always liaise with the Bureau for Public Procurement, so that it will not violate the Procurement Act.

Before Fowler spoke to the committee, committee members had engaged the Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun for about two and half hours over the ministrys compliance with the Pre-shipment Inspection of Oil and gas regulations.

While the committee complained about the ministrys compliance with requisite rules on appointment of pre-shipment consultants, the minister noted that it is the responsibility of the parliament to enact relevant laws to address such gaps.
Omaji, aside the national leadership position, has been the ASUSS Chairman in Benue for the past 10 years.

The union members, in a protest letter signed by 106 teachers and made available to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Tuesday in Makurdi, alleged that Omaji had never kicked against the deductions.

We have always complained to the union, and specifically to the National President, but he has always looked the other way, leaving us to our fate, the letter stated.

NAN reports that the Benue Teaching Service Board (TSB) had, over the years, been accused of series of deductions from teachers salaries.

The members accused the state and national leadership of the union of failing to protect the interest and welfare of teachers, and also wondered why retired members were allowed to hold executive council positions.

They also accused the Benue leadership of the union of failing to hold a general meeting in the past 10 years, and promised to seek legal redress if their grievances were not addressed within 14 days.

Omaji, who reacted to the accusations, however, said that the issues raised had already been addressed.
Dankwambo, represented by his deputy, Mr Charles Iliya, threw the challenge in Gombe while flagging off the commencement of awareness campaign to end violence against children in the state.

He assured that the state government would not shake in its responsibility of ensuring the implementation of programmes aimed at ending violence against children.

In her speech, Mrs. Rabi Daniel, State Commissioner for Women Affairs and Social Welfare, said her ministry, in collaboration with the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF), would put a robust mechanism in place to check acts of violence against children.

Also speaking, UNICEF Country Representative, Mr. Mohamed Fall, said violence against children should be the concern of everybody.

Represented by Dr Abdulai Kaikai, Chief of Bauchi Field Office, UNICEF Nigeria, Fall said in September 2015, Nigeria made commitment to end violence against children when President Muhammadu Buhari launched an action plan on the issue.

He said that while commitment at the national level was paramount, same should also be extracted at the state and ward levels.

He commended Gombe state government for taking a bold step, being the fifth after Lagos, Cross River, Benue and Plateau, to launch a campaign targeted at eradicating violence against children.

In their separate remarks, clerics representing the two major religions stressed the need to ensure the protection of children.

Rev. Chris Gwadabe, Vice chairman, Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Gombe state, said children were gift from God, as such should be protected by all means.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) recalls that the police in Zaria had on April 18 charged the accused persons for conspiracy, unlawful assembly and belonging to a gang of unlawful society.

The offences contravened sections 97, 100 and 197(a) of Criminal Procedure Code (CPC).

At the proceeding, the prosecutor, Sgt. Mannir Nasir, told the court that at the last sitting, the accused persons (numbers 2, 3, 6, 7, 9, 13, 14, 20, 21, 26 and 54) were in court.

Nasir then applied for a bench warrant and a separate trial of accused person number 2, 3, 9, 12, 14, 20, 21, 26 and 54 under Section 259 of the criminal procedure code.

Lead counsel to the accused persons, Mr Kimi Appah from TS, a Kaduna-based NGO, argued against the bench warrant.

He, however, did not object to the second application for a separate trial.

The court ruled that counsel to the accused neither gave any point of law nor cogent reason in view of the application by the prosecutor.

ALSO READ:53 persons arrested at a gay marriage in Kaduna

The court hereby granted and summoned the surety to come to the court and show cause why accused persons were not in court.

The court therefore granted the application by the prosecutor for a separate trial under Section 259 of the CPC, the court said.

After the cross-examining Sgt. Abdul-Aziz Mohammed, one of the witnesses, Appah filed an oral application for a definite hearing to facilitate accelerated hearing.

The prosecutor, however, objected to the application, saying most of the witnesses were policemen and may be officially engaged elsewhere.

He then applied for continuation of hearing and asked for another date.
Chairman of the commission, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, disclosed this at the opening of the commissions meeting with Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs) on Wednesday in Kaduna.

He said that the cost comprised daily expenditure of N1, 379, 689,000, variable cost of N4, 323,409, 080 and one-off-cost of N131, 763,990,000.

He explained that 629, 858 personnel needed to be deployed at the polling units for the daily registration, adding that for security, on the basis of two officers per unit, 239,946 security personnel would be required.

Yakubu explained that the ad hoc staff to be engaged for the job would be paid N2, 000 per day, at N1, 000 as honoraria, N500 for transportation and N500 for feeding, adding that N1.2 billion would be required for the daily allowance.

The total provision for CVR in the 2017 Budget, including all the rerun and tenure elections, bye-elections and general elections, is N1.2 billion.

So, all the money available in the budget is barely enough to pay for the cost of personnel for one day, assuming we deployed at PUs level, and that does not include security, Yakubu said.

The variable cost, he added, were papers, inks, process of documentation and others needed for the exercise.

He also listed the one-off-cost to include new Direct Data Capture (DDC) Machines that would be procured.

Remember the life span of DDC machine as we have been told is four years.

The last time the commission acquired DDC machine we are currently using was in 2010 and 2011; that was six years to seven years ago.

That is why we have the challenge; they are epileptic and slow.

Each complete unit will cost one million naira; that is the machine, the printer, the fingerprint scanner, the webcam and the accessories.

So, for the procurement of the DDC machine alone, we need N129 billion if we are to deploy at PU level.

We have to buy at least one power generating set per Registration Area (RA), because some of the locations have no power at all. That will cost the commission N2.6 billion.

The total cost for deployment for just take-off at polling unit level is N137.4 billion. Clearly, the commission doesnt have the resources to deploy at that level," he added.

Yakubu said that to conduct the registration at the 8,809 RAs or ward levels would cost about N21 billion for take-off.

He said We will require 46,247 staff, 17, 000 security personnel. If we are to pay the ad hoc staff N2, 000 per day it will cost the commission N92.4 million everyday for the exercise.

We required 4,064 staff at zero cost, because we have our staff deployed at the local government areas.

We dont necessarily pay anything because they are our staff; they enjoy monthly salary.
On Tuesday, June 6, 2017, the northern group, through a statement by its spokesman, Alhaji AbdulAziz Suleiman, cautioned all South-Easterners living in the North to leave the region in 90 days or risk eviction.

MASSOB has asked Ndigbo to comply with the notice, saying it is not surprised by the action.

MASSOB leader Comrade Uchenna Madu said the group agrees with the coalition's decision, saying Igbos should reinvest in Biafra.

"MASSOB is aware that such rascality will happen. As a matter of fact, this is the only rascality exhibited by sponsored Arewa youths to forcefully exit the people of Biafra residing in Arewa land that MASSOB will 100 per cent support. Their Boko Haram tactics didnt work as planned. We pledge our total support towards this divinely approved quit notice.

"MASSOB congratulates the Arewa political, religious, traditional and opinion leaders who sponsored their youths wing by using Arewa House in Kaduna for this greatest meeting of a coalition of Islamic fundamentalist.

"As there is no other alternative to stop Biafra freedom, the northern leaders have resorted to using their youths wing to start terrorising the people of Biafra living in the northern region.

"What they saw during the sit-at-home exercise to mark the 50th anniversary celebration of Biafra declaration by General Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu marvelled them irrespective of the promises made to them by their stooges in Biafra land."

"MASSOB urge our people to start returning home now. Don't wait till the three months for quit notice to expire.

"MASSOB is begging our people to reinvest their investments back to Biafra land."

In the notice served by the northern group, it expressed its displeasure with the Igbos' constant agitation for its own independent nation, citing it as one of the key reasons for the declaration.

"From today, June 6, 2017, when this proclamation is signed, the North, a critical player in the Nigerian project, hereby declares that it will no longer be disposed to coexisting with the Igbos and shall take definite steps to end the partnership by pulling out of the current federal arrangement.

This conclusion is necessitated by the realization that it since ceased to be comfortable or safe to continue sharing the same country with the ungrateful, uncultured Igbos who have exhibited reckless disrespect for the other federating units and stained the integrity of the entire nation with their insatiable criminal obsessions.

Rather than certain sections holding the whole country to ransom at every stage, each should be allowed to go its own way as we categorically proclaim today that the North is fed up with being the same country with this pack of acrimonious Igbo partners.

The persistence for the actualization of Biafra by the unruly Igbo of South-Eastern Nigeria has lately assumed another alarming twist which involved the forceful lockdown of activities and denial of other peoples right to free movement in the South-East by the rebel Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and its overt and covert sponsors.

This latest action and similar confrontational conducts which amount to a brutal encroachment on the rights of those termed as non-indigenous people residing and doing lawful businesses in those areas illegally demarcated and defined as Biafra by the Igbo, are downright unacceptable and shall no longer be tolerated."

The statement also urged Northerners living in the South-East to return to the North.
The NSCDC Spokesperson, Emmanuel Okeh disclosed this in a statement on Tuesday in Abuja.

He said that the Commandant-General of the Corps, Mr Abdullahi Muhammadu said this at the basic Training Programme for Forensic Desk Officers entitled Fundamentals of Forensics in Evidence Collection, Analysis and Litigation support held at the Corps Academy in Sauka, Abuja.

The establishment of the forensic unit is one of our responses to the challenges we sometimes face within the Criminal Justice System.

This facility will continue to provide litigation support for the Corps and the Country at large. Muhammadu said.

Represented by the Acting Deputy Commandant-General in charge of Operations, Hillary Made, he stressed that the training was crucial, especially in the area of analysing evidence for prosecution of those working against the progress and development of the country.

The NSCDC boss also thanked the Nigerian Military for training some of its personnel in different areas and sought for further cooperation in other areas of need.

Earlier, the Guest Speaker, the Army Provost Marshal, Brig.- Gen. Ayuba Hamman commended the NSCDC for floating the forensic facility.

He said that all law enforcement agencies require training in forensics as a pre-requisite for the proper discharge of their responsibilities.
The alleged wheelbarrow scheme of Governor Samuel Ortom elicited a lot of criticism across social media, which later transcended to print media, with various commentaries across the country.

Irked by Itodo's commentaries, Ede took to the social media with derogatory post against the journalist with an attachment of his photograph.

Addressing journalists in Abuja, Itodo said his team of lawyers has taken step to institute a law suit against Ede who "has shut his ears against every peace deal offered to him.

His words: "When he was making those derogatory posts, in the name of advising me, I asked him to remove my picture from the post, but he refused.

"The following day, I made it open that my image and personality had already been bastardized by his act, that he should take down my picture but he declined. He rather got some boys who kept sharing my picture on the Internet to further expose me to danger.

"Barely 48 hours after the incident, a friend of mine, , who expressed his dissatisfaction over the wheelbarrow scheme was beaten to stupor in Gboko, by boys alleged to be members of APC and supporters of the Governor. He was accused of making comments on the wheelbarrow saga.

"It was then dawn on me that I was next on line, since my picture had gone into circulation, both on the Internet and offline, by the deputy Governor's aide and his foot soldiers, he added.

According to a copy of the letter made available to , Itodo is demanding a retraction of the post and an apology from the deputy governors aide.
A condolence message issued on Tuesday in Ile-Ife by Mr Moses Olafare, the Director of Media and Public Affairs in the Oonis palace, described Osotimehin as one of the greatest assets of Africa.

It recalled that the deceased played host to the Ooni and his delegation on June 13, 2016, at his United Nation Population office in New York.

Osotimehin had expressly accepted the kings request of his support and that of the United Nations to put an end to infant mortality.

His death is also painful because the palace and his office were already packaging some women empowerment programmes.

 This is in addition to what he had started with the Ooni to put an end to childbirth mortality cases not only in Yorubaland but the entire Africa.

He had served the world, he had served our continent, he had served our country and he had served our race too remarkably and indelibly to be forgotten.

May his gentle soul rest in the perfect peace of the almighty Olodumare, it quoted the Ooni as saying.
The NJC, on June 2 recalled Justices Sylvester Ngwuta of the Supreme Court, Adeniyi Ademola of the Federal High Court and Rita Ofili-Ajumogobia of the Federal High Court.

Others are Justices John Inyang Okoro of the Supreme Court, Uwani Abba Aji of the Court of Appeal and Hydiazira Nganjiwa of the Federal High Court.

The judges were among those arrested after a sting operation by the Department of State Services (DSS).

The DSS on Oct. 7 and Oct. 8, 2016, raided of the houses of the judges and allegedly found some hard currencies said to be proceeds of corruption.

Ezenwa told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Wednesday in Abuja that their recall would amount to moral burden on the judiciary.

He said that in spite of the recall, the judges had cases to answer since the judiciary remained the last hope of the common man.

The legal practitioner said that if there were corruption allegations against any judge, he or she should be tried in the court of law.

He advised the NJC to toe the path of honour and wait until the allegations against them were cleared by the courts.
To celebrate her birthday today June 7, 2017, Pulse Movies is sharing five reasons why we love her.

1. She is brilliant. She is beautiful. And her social media posts and interviews are enough evidence.

2. On June 7, 2017, Olayode kicked off her birthday in a sweet way; she reached out to students on their way to school with magazines from Mine Teenage Ministry.

3. We were not the only ones who enjoyed watching her as Toyosi on "Jenifa's Diary."

We just loved watching her correct, advise and support Jenifa (Funke Akindele). Don't even get us started on their friendship - that was some real on-screen BFF goals.

4. She has her beauty and fashion game all sorted out.
We asked Pulse Readers to choose their favourite movies. See what movies our readers think are the best of 2017, so far.

Check out their top five.

1. "Omugwo"

15.1% of Pulse Nigeria readers chose Kunle Afolayan's "Omugwo" as their favourite movie of 2017, so far.

In the comedy movie, Omotunde, a young civil engineer married to Raymond an OAP(Online Radio Personality), has just given birth.

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.

2. "Slow Country"

12.4% of our readers enjoyed watching the Eric Aghimien movie.

In "Slow Country," a homeless teenage mother, who gets herself trapped in prostitution and drug trafficking for seven years in order to secure a good life for her son, decides to quit.

However, her boss, a ruthless human and drug trafficker is not ready to let go of his most trusted cash cow.

3. "King Invisible"

10.8% of our readers had fun watching the Femi Adisa epic movie.

"King Invincible" tells the story of a handsome warlord, who is fast transitioning into a wolf due to the curse of the dogs that has been placed on him.

4. "Ojukokoro"

9.2% of our readers had fun watching the Dare Olaitan comedy/heist thriller, "Ojukokoro."

The movie tells the story of what happens when a cash strapped manager in a money laundering petrol station, decides to rob the petrol station that employs him, but along this journey, finds out that there are different kinds of criminals that are also interested in the same cash.

5. "Mr and Mrs 2"

8.1% of Pulse Nigeria readers obviously enjoyed watchingthe sequel to the 2012 "Mr and Mrs."

The movie 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.
You can insert a 'rolling-on-the-floor-laughing' smiley here if you want.

Just come with us.

Melaye who represents Kogi West in the senate, has been in the news for all the wrong reasons lately.

He's become a very bad boy.

He's been accused of not graduating from university, allegations that he bribed a judge to swing an election tribunal case his way have persisted and audio tapes have been made public; featuring the senator promising to frame an innocent person with respect to an alleged assassination attempt.

Melaye has also blessed the nation with a dance video--Ajekun Iya has become a national staple.

All of this, much to the embarrassment of Melaye's constituents who sent him to Abuja to give them a decent representation.

"Let it be known that all of the Local Government Areas comprising Kogi West Senatorial Zone are united in their resolve to recall Senator Dino Melaye and remove the disgrace he has become to all of us", read a statement signed by spokespersons from Yagba West, Yagba East, Mopamuro, Ijumu, Kabba/Bunu, Koton-Karfe and Lokoja.

Some of Melaye's sins as listed by his constituents include: "not having a constituency office, instituting no projects in the constituency after two years as a senator, insulting leaders, elders and personalities, irresponsible utterances and thuggery", among a host of other misdemeanours.

Melaye has laughed off the recall move, of course. "I am not scared", he said, "I am not perturbed".

He's got no reason to be.

"They (the petitioners) are sponsored by and my Governor ( and I want to tell you that those who came to ask for the recall are not even my constituents. And it is unfortunate that they do not even know what to do. INEC told them to go back", Melaye all but chuckled under his breath.

The senator is right. Recalling a lawmaker in Nigeria is akin to squeezing water out of a piece of rock. You are better off expecting manna to drop from the skies.

The framers of the 1999 constitution (as amended) made it impossible to recall any lawmaker; no matter how embarrassing that lawmaker turns out.

Section 69 of the 1999 constitution spells out the procedures for recalling a senator.

To get Melaye back home, the good people of Kogi West would have to scale the following hurdles:

1. More than half of the registered voters in Melaye's senatorial district will write, sign and send a petition to the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), explaining how badly they've lost confidence in Melaye.

How do you get more than half of the registered voters in a constituency in Nigeria to sign a petition?

Like, where you gonna find them, bruh?

2. That petition must be signed and arranged according to polling units, wards, Local Government Areas, and constituency.

Yeah, you read that right.

But it gets even more difficult.

3. INEC will thereafter notify Melaye that his people want him recalled.

4. INEC will then issue a public notice or announcement stating the date, time and location where it intends to verify the signatures on the recall petition.

Hold on a minute, you can't even beat the next procedure...

5. To verify the signatures on the petition, INEC must ensure that the signatories are individuals who appear on the voters register.

Meaning that if you never voted during the election for some reason, you have no right to ask a lawmaker out even if he's become a complete rascal or a nutcase.

Plus, just how do you ensure that you get signatories of the required number of people who voted in an election, months ago?

A chunk of voters could have changed addresses or passed on...or both.

Many constituents would have since moved on with their lives to care about a senator who wears an academic gown to plenary.

6. INEC will thereafter conduct a referendum where more than one half (50% + 1) of the signatories will need to be verified.

C'mon guys, algebra was also thrown into the mix.

7. If the number of persons verified by INEC is less than one half of the registered voters in that constituency, the entire petition will be dismissed.

Meaning it has failed.

8. INEC will conduct a referendum within 90 days of receipt of the petition if the minimum requirements for a referendum have been met.

The referendum will be a simple 'yes' or 'no' vote on whether the senator should be recalled.

A simple majority will decide which way it goes from here.

9. If majority of the voters in the constituency vote yes, the INEC chairman will send a Certificate of Recall to Senate President Bukola Saraki, demanding that Melaye returns to Kogi as an ex senator, his tail between his legs.

So, let's just break this news nicely to the people of Kogi West: you can't recall Melaye, much as you want that to happen so badly.

You are stuck with him until 2019 at the latest. He's your cross to carry.

If what you just read above sounds like rocket science, that's because it is.

Little wonder Melaye is laughing at y'all.

He knows he's untouchable at the moment

And, if like the people of Kogi West, you've been dreaming of recalling your 'despicable' representative from the national assembly, fat chance bruh.

You've lost the battle before it had even begun.

Dun cry, dun beg.

Just ensure you vote wisely next time around, okay?

That's all the help we can offer you for now.
The upper chamber also directed the commission to reverse the unpopular, much-talked-about forced-feeding policy since it negated the principle of freedom of choice for pilgrims.

It equally mandated its Committee on Foreign Affairs to investigate the circumstances surrounding the present feeding regime and exorbitant airfare as fixed by NAHCON with a view to exposing any sharp practice therein.

This was sequel to a motion on Extortion of Pilgrims by the National Hajj Commission of Nigeria sponsored by Sen. Ibrahim Danbaba (APC-Sokoto) at Wednesdays plenary.

In the motion, he said that the commission was responsible for regulation of matters concerning welfare of pilgrims, including but not limited to approval of annual Hajj fare payable by intending pilgrims.

Danbaba disclosed that on May 29, NAHCON released the approved 2017 fares for 23 states, including Sokoto, Kano, Kaduna, Ogun, Osun and Anambra.

The approved fare packages for the 23 states average about N1, 550,000 per pilgrim, he said.

He noted that approved Tour of Operators in Nigeria, which were profit-making businesses were offering cheaper Hajj packages to intending pilgrims.

For instance, Hasha Travel and Tours is offering a package of N1, 250,000 inclusive of 500 dollars pocket money per pilgrim. This is about N300, 000 lower than the average package approved by the Hajj Commission.

The lawmaker further said that the cost of feeding the pilgrims which was built into the fare packages constituted a burden on the pilgrims whose rights were limited.

He said that the 2017 packages approved by the commission lacked competitiveness when compared with the package offered by private tour operators.

Seconding the motion, Sen. Isa Misau (APC-Bauchi) said we are not talking about appropriation but exploitation, because this N1.5 million the commission is charging is high because they can do with a fare N800, 000.

Some people are taking the advantage under this government that is fighting corruption to enrich themselves."

Hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam which if you have the privilege, you can go."

A lot of people have the means to go, but we are talking of the exploitation from the Hajj Commission."

We must check the situation because people are using this avenue to enrich themselves. This is not fair. This should be reviewed to N800, 000.

On his part, Sen. Umaru Kurfi (APC-Katsina) noted that the exorbitant Hajj fare was as a result of the increase in the exchange rate of Naira, adding however, that the fare should be reduced to make it affordable to all intending pilgrims.
This is probably due to what they have become known for, which is the 'die by fire' tag line.

Pulse Nigeria has done a little digging to see what else we can discover about one of the most popular churches in this country.

Here are seven interesting things I learnt from MFM's website.

1. MFM started with a prayer meeting: In 1989, Dr. Daniel Kolawole Olukoya (DKO) held a prayer meeting in his home. Reportedly, only 24 people showed up. However, this number grew and grew until a bigger place was needed. After a while, the meetings moved from Olukoya's living room to 60 Old Yaba Road, Yaba, Lagos. Eventually, an abandoned place at 13 Olasimbo Street, Onike, Yaba was bought and turned into what we now know as the International Headquarters of the Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries. Side note: Cherubim and Seraphim (C & S) also started with a prayer group.

2. The church's name was given to the overseer: The church's website states that the name, "Mountain of Fire & Miracles Ministries", was revealed to the overseer, DKO. He received while praying. On April 24, 1994, the church held its first service as MFM.

3. Praying is definitely their thing: Most churches have their thing. Some are known for jaw dropping miracles (did someone say SCOAN?), others are known for prosperity sermons (you guys know yourselves), but MFM is definitely about praying. Not just any kind of prayer, but the 'aggressive' kind, as the church's website puts it. Anyone who visits the website will see that "prayer goes on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, non-stop" in this church.

4. MFM is proudly an 'end-time' church: Most think of bizarre miracles when the word, endtime, comes up. However, MFM has a different take on it. According to the church's website, "MFM is an end-time church where we build an aggressive end-time army for the Lord." Thus, the vision is to "to build an aggressive end-time army for the Lord."

5. This church has no interest in the world: On the site, it states that "it is not a worldly Church." This makes sense when you consider what the church is about. No wonder it is constantly attacking indecent dressing in the church.

ALSO READ: MFM founder warns congregation to beware of false prophets

6. MFM cares a lot about deliverance: Apart from praying, another thing the church is concerned with deliverance. The church cares about this so much that it states that "If you do not believe in deliverance, you are not supposed to be in MFM." Okay, good to know.

7. This church is a do-it-yourself ministry: Unlike other churches, where members are made to depend on their pastors, MFM apparently believes in giving their people all the tools they need. As the church's website puts it, it is a place "where your hands are trained to wage war and your fingers to do battle."
"Multiple armed Turkish security officials beat, kicked, and choked unarmed demonstrators" in Washington, the resolution stated, using extraordinarily sharp language against representatives of a NATO ally.

"Any Turkish security officials who directed, oversaw, or participated in efforts by Turkish security forces to illegally suppress peaceful protests... should be charged and prosecuted under United States law."

The incident, in which US officials and Washington police have blamed Erdogan's bodyguards for attacking a small group of pro-Kurdish protesters gathered outside the Turkish ambassador's residence, ignited a storm of controversy.

The US State Department called the violence "deeply disturbing." Several US lawmakers said it only highlighted the autocratic nature of Erdogan's rule and his dismissal of human rights and civil rights protections.

Turkey blamed the unrest on supporters of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) who picked on pro-Erdogan US-based Turks.

"The blame for this assault lies with the Turkish government alone," House Speaker Paul Ryan said in a statement.

"I urge Istanbul to finally accept responsibility for this egregious incident and apologize to those who were harmed."

The measure urges the State Department to request that Turkey waive the diplomatic immunity for those involved.

"The United States will not tolerate violence against peaceful protesters on our shores, and those responsible must face justice," number two House Democrat Steny Hoyer, one of the resolution's sponsors.

"The conduct must change. It is unacceptable."

Close-up footage shared on social media immediately after the clash showed Turkish officials dressed in suits beating and punching people in the crowd and, in at least one case, kicking out at a woman splayed on the ground.

Eleven people were injured, and two were arrested, according to DC police.

The incident was the third episode of violence by Turkish security personnel on US soil, lawmakers noted.

"Same head of state, same thugs attacking peaceful protesters," boomed Washington's representative in Congress, Eleanor Holmes Norton.
"Insulting a religion or a religious community in the Netherlands, as opposed to Austria, is not punishable by law," the public prosecutor's office said, adding that incendiary words would have to target a specific group within that religion.

"Dutch prosecutors therefore turned down Austria's request," the prosecutors said.

The prosecution service conceded that "some individuals may have been insulted by the statements. But that's a separate issue, and not something that can be prosecuted."

Wilders is said to have told an audience that "Islam is an ideology of war and hatred" and "Islam calls on people to become terrorists -- the Koran leaves no doubt about it", according to Dutch media reports.

The speech spurred an Austrian-based Muslim organisation to file a complaint of incitement against Wilders.

Wilders responded Wednesday in a tweet, saying: "Good. The only correct decision. The truth must be able to be told, specifically about the Islam!"

A local Dutch court convicted him of discrimination in December, but acquitted him on a charge of hate speech over comments he made about Moroccans living in the Netherlands during a 2014 campaign rally.

He has previously compared the Koran to Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf", which he wants banned, and his Freedom Party (PVV) has vowed to close all mosques and Islamic schools in the Netherlands.
"But connectivity with Qatar must be restored as quickly as possible," he told AFP, speaking on the sidelines of the group's annual meeting in Cancun, Mexico.

Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Egypt and the Maldives broke off diplomatic and trade relations with Qatar on Monday, accusing it of supporting terrorism.

The measures included closing their land and sea borders to Qatar and banning Qatari planes from their airspace.

Airline executives at the IATA meeting said it was still unclear how the measures would affect air travel.

Qatar Airways chief executive Akbar Al Baker hastily left the meeting Monday.

"We hope the crisis will disappear and aviation is coming back to normal," said Abdul Wahab Teffaha, the head of the Arab Air Carriers Organization which groups 33 airlines.

"We have to monitor the situation in the next couple of days. The Doha-Dubai sector is particularly busy and we are currently analyzing the situation," said Christoph Mueller, chief digital and information officer at Emirates airline.
In return, Mexico has agreed to reduce the amount of refined sugar it sends to the United States, he said.

Last year Mexico exported 1.1 million tonnes of sugar to the United States, some 40 percent of which was refined.

US sugar producers have protested the amount of cheap sugar pouring across the border, accusing Mexico of subsidizing its sugar industry then dumping the excess product.

Washington had threatened to slap tariffs of up to 80 percent on Mexican sugar unless a deal was reached.

The original deadline was Monday, but the two sides extended it to Tuesday to iron out what US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross called "a few technical details."

Ross and Guajardo are expected to announce a deal in Washington later Tuesday.

"We are quite optimistic that our two nations are on the precipice of an agreement we can all support," Ross said Monday.

The dispute comes as the two neighbors, along with Canada, are set to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Mexican sugar has entered the US market tariff-free since 2008. In exchange, the Mexican market was opened to US corn-based fructose, used mainly to sweeten soft drinks.

After protests from US sugar companies and farmers, both governments agreed to Mexican sugar export quotas in 2014.
"Last month, the murders of two bald people led to the arrest of two suspects," national police spokesman Inacio Dina told a news conference in the capital Maputo.

"Their motivations come from superstition and culture: the local community thinks bald individuals are rich," he said.

The killings took place in Milange, in the centre of the southern African country, a few kilometres from the border with Malawi.

The local police told AFP that the two victims were aged over 40.

"One of them was found with his head cut off and his organs removed," said Miguel Caetano, spokesman for the security forces in the central province of Zambezia.

The suspects arrested are two Mozambicans around 20 years old.

According to their statements, the organs were to be used by healers in rituals to promote the fortunes of clients in Tanzania and Malawi, he said.

It was the first time that bald people have been victims of such attacks in the region, Caetano said.

In Maputo, the national police spokesman likened the attacks to those on albinos, whose body parts are used in witchcraft rituals.
While many of the some 1,500 people had come from around the world to see the church's famed stained glass and gargoyles, they instead found themselves instructed to keep their hands up while authorities searched for weapons.

"A voice asked us to be quiet in French, English and Spanish," said 42-year-old American tourist Nick, on a five-day visit to Paris with his wife.

She leaned against him, still shaken, as they walked out of the church once it was all over, saying "I'm scared, I'm scared".

Notre Dame, which is situated on the banks of the Seine river in the heart of Paris, draws 13 million visitors a year.

At around 4:20 pm (1420 GMT) the American couple had been waiting in line to enter when the attack kicked off. There was a commotion, then people began to run and then came two or three gunshots.

'Very scary'

"We heard that it was a man with a hammer. We hope he's a fool, not a terrorist," said Nick, who didn't provide his full name.

From his office on the second floor of presbytery, Notre Dame communications manager Andre Finot realised something was wrong when he heard the policeman's first shot.

"I saw three officers surrounding a man. A second shot rang out and the man fell to the ground," Finot said.

The officer was lightly wounded and the attacker was rushed to hospital after being struck by police gunfire.

Tuesday's incident comes three days after extremists used a van and knives to crush to death and kill seven people enjoying a night out in London. One of the victims was French.

France is still under the state of emergency imposed after the November 2015 attacks in Paris, when Islamic State jihadists killed 130 people in a night of carnage at venues across the city.

In the chaos of the moment on Tuesday it was not immediately clear what was happening and how serious the threat was.

"Suddenly they closed the doors. I was scared, I thought it was a bomb," said Juan, a Mexican in his 50s. "But thank God we were quickly told it wasn't and we were fine."

Once the doors were opened and the tourists were allowed to leave, many wasted no time in leaving the area. Some still had tears in their eyes as they walked out of the church's ornately carved stone entrance.

For some the security scare was enough of a shock to make them reconsider their plans in the French capital.

Alberto Loor, a 34-year-old Ecuadorian and Maria-Jose Di Mora, 28, were wrapping up their honeymoon in Europe. After the attack they decided to shorten their stay in Paris, without even a visit to the Eiffel Tower.
"Let me say at the outset that we do not think the sanctions against Qatar are good," Erdogan said in a speech in Ankara.

"Turkey will continue and will develop our ties with Qatar, as with all our friends who have supported us in the most difficult moments," he added in reference to last year's failed coup.

Turkey has close ties with Qatar but also has good relations with the other Gulf states, especially Saudi Arabia.

Erdogan was careful not to criticise Riyadh, calling on the member nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council to "resolve their differences through dialogue."

"Efforts to isolate Qatar... will not solve any problem," said Erdogan, praising Doha's "cool-headedness" and "constructive approach".

Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates severed diplomatic ties and transport links with Qatar on Monday, accusing it of supporting extremism.
The agreement does not contain any specific number of troops to be stationed in the base, or when.

Turkish ambassador to Qatar Ahmet Demirok told AFP last year the base would eventually be home to up to 3,000 troops or possibly more "depending on the needs".

Turkey has close ties with Qatar including in the energy sector, but also maintains good relations with other Gulf countries.
The opposition and a press rights group say security forces have run over, attacked and robbed protesters and journalists.

Videos published on social media on Monday appeared to show security forces robbing people of their belongings.

"I do not want to see any more guards committing atrocities in the street," Padrino said in a public address.

"Whoever departs from state policy, which gives preeminence to respect for human rights, and who acts unprofessionally, will have to answer for it."

Prosecutors say 65 people have been killed in the unrest since April 1.

Maduro's opponents are protesting to demand early elections to remove him from power.

They blame him for a desperate economic crisis and accuse him of clinging to power and repressing demonstrators.

He says the crisis is a US-backed conspiracy.

Opposition leaders called on their supporters to head for the offices of the electoral authority on Wednesday in the latest protest.
The global organisation condemned the Cybercrimes and Cybersecurity Bill which will affect the independence of journalists and operations of a free press.

The statements by the WAN-IFRA were made public today, June 7, 2017 in a press release. These comments comes ahead of the 69th World News Media Congress happening in Durban, South Africa.

The WAN-IFRA board describes this CyberCrime bill as an assault on the right to digital privacy.

WAN-IFRA has expressed its deep concern that the government is considering a range of measures that will intimidate the press, promote self-censorship and silence criticism, it said in the release.

The Cybercrimes and Cybersecurity Bill was first proposed in August, 2015 with the intention to curb cybercrime and create a safe online environment for South Africans. However, this bill wont affect only the press, itll affect everyone (individuals and organisations) with a computer and Internet access.

This is not the only bill the press body has issues with. Theres also the Film & Publication Board Amendment Bill which gives the state power to censor content; the Prevention and Combating of Hate Crimes and Hate Speech Bill which criminalizes mocking or making jest of authority figures.

The World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers known for defending press freedom as called the South African government to find better ways to work with the press.
DAVENPORT  A man is facing drug charges after allegedly trying to convince a teen to hide methamphetamine during a traffic stop.

Shawn Michael Davis, 37, of Davenport, is accused of possession with intent to deliver, using a juvenile to commit an indictable offense and an Iowa drug tax stamp violation, according Scott Count court records and the Scott County Jail website. Mr. Davis was in custody Tuesday on a $100,000 bond.

The traffic stop happened Sunday evening at the intersection of Pershing Avenue and 4th Street, according to court records. It was part of a narcotics investigation.

As the vehicle was being pulled over, Mr. Davis, a passenger, allegedly gave a plastic bag containing about 26 grams of methamphetamine to the teen, who was in the back seat. The teen at first attempted to hide it but later gave it to police.

The substance inside tested positive for methamphetamine, the court records state.

Mr. Davis also allegedly tried to hide a digital scale in the vehicle, court records state.

His next court date was scheduled for Wednesday.
The collision happened around 7:12 p.m. Monday in the 2300 block of East Locust Street when an eastbound white 2013 Lexus RX450h crossed the center line and collided with a black 2004 Dodge Durango traveling the other direction, according to Davenport police. The driver of the Lexus was alone; there were two juveniles in the Durango.
CHICAGO (AP)  A Chicago suburb that prevented a Muslim group from converting a vacant building into a mosque will pay the group $580,000 and be required to train city employees on religious land use law, the U.S. Justice Department announced on Tuesday.

In a news release, the department said Des Plaines settled a lawsuit the department brought and another one filed by The Society of American Bosnians and Herzegovinians. The settlements come days after the Justice Department announced that the New Jersey community of Bernards Township had agreed to settle for $3.25 million a similar lawsuit filed by another Islamic group.

"Religious freedom is a fundamental right, and we will not tolerate the unlawful use of zoning or land use restrictions to infringe on that right," Joel R. Levin, Acting United States Attorney of the Northern District of Illinois, said in a statement.

The settlements stem from a 2013 vote by the Des Plaines' City Council to deny the group's rezoning request, and the group sued.

The Justice Department said in the release that its complaint alleged that Des Plaines had treated "non-Muslim religious groups better" than it treated the Bosnian Muslim congregation and did not follow the same land use and zoning procedures it follows for the other groups, including a school and a cultural center.

City Manager Michael G. Bartholomew did not immediately return a call for comment. But at the time the group's lawsuit was filed, aldermen said they denied the rezoning because allowing a house of worship in an industrial park would endanger people walking in the area and cause traffic problems as well as hurt nearby manufacturers.

"I don't care if they're Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, whatever. It's not zoned for that particular area," Alderman Mark Walsten told the Chicago Tribune when the lawsuit was filed in 2013. Whenever there are children involved in an industrial area, I will not have that on my conscience."

Besides the training of city employees in the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000, the agreement with the U.S. Attorney's office requires Des Plaines to institute a process to address complaints that the city may have violated that law.

Imam Senad Agic, whose group filed the 2013 lawsuit, said the settlements are a satisfying end to what has been a very trying time, and vindication for a congregation that believed Des Plaines had discriminated against them.

"They broke our hearts when they denied us because these are Bosnian refugees who lost everything," he said. He said that the group found a church in nearby Franklin Park that it has already turned into a mosque. But, he said, the money will "help us do renovations, construction that we need to turn the sanctuary there into a prayer hall."

The legal fight in Des Plaines was one of a number of legal challenges stemming from similar disputes. Last month, not only was there a settlement of a lawsuit in New Jersey, but the U.S. attorney's office in New Jersey confirmed that it is investigating Bayonne, New Jersey, where officials prevented a Muslim group from building a mosque there.
Celebrating Our Service Members

Friday, November 11 is Veterans Day, when we honor and show gratitude to all members of our Armed Forces  those currently serving, those who...

Transit Equity Starts With QueensLink

For decades Queens has seen a disinvestment in the necessary transit infrastructure the borough needs to promote equity and sustainability. Most of the time, transformative...
Stainless Steel Set of 2 Faux Suede Bracelets with Crystal Accent is rated 3.9 out of 5 by 30 .

Rated 5 out of 5 by vlull2001 from Beautiful! I ordered the black and red and they are beautiful! I got them at such a great price, just can't go wrong! They are not too dressy to where you cannot wear them with your casual day to day outfits~I just love all the sparkle! I have worn them separate and together, with black being my favorite. Very lightweight, lots of compliments!

Rated 5 out of 5 by sheilangreg14 from Cute I have never owned a bracelet that wasn't metal all the way around. I thought I would try these for something different since they were sooo inexpensive. They are really nice. I don't think thay are dressy at all but they are very sparkly for sure!!! They will be perfect for those casual outfits that you want a little WOW and great for layering. I purchased the black.

Rated 3 out of 5 by Nicolejyc from Cute Bracelets I really like these bracelets, but they are very difficult to put on by yourself. I usually buy my bracelets between 7.5" - 8" and these fit a little closer than I would like. The crystal accented one is really pretty. However, they are not built for long term wear and I will probably give mine to my 14 year old daughter.

Rated 1 out of 5 by indianstardust from Hard to get on. I loved the black one. The red one...eh! They are hard to get on, If I wear them on the right wrist, I can manage the clasp, the left wrist, I cannot get it on. The clasp is difficult! The price is too high for the difficulty to get on.

Rated 5 out of 5 by nbsloan1 from gift to my daughter/she loved it This is the first piece of jewelry I have given my daughter that she called and said how much she loved it. She is thin and it really looked perfect on her small wrist.

Rated 1 out of 5 by nailsandnine from Waste of money After wearing these a few times, the suede disintegrated and there is no way the bracelet can be repaired. Not worth the money.

Rated 4 out of 5 by Lion4u from Great bracelets were much nicer than the picture online. Love them.
The dc traction 1.72MW mixed-traffic locomotives will operate primarily on the Lahore - Karachi line but will also be used on services to Peshawar and Quetta.

The 140km/h locomotives will weigh 107 tonnes, making them suitable for operation on branch lines with restricted axleloads.

The single-cab units will be equipped with air conditioning and are designed to operate in temperatures of up to 55oC.

Production will take place at GEs plant in Erie, Pennsylvania, and deliveries will be completed by the end of 2018.

GE is currently building a fleet of 55 ES43 ACi Evolution Series diesel locomotives for PR, 32 of which have been delivered to Pakistan.

For detailed data on locomotive orders around the globe, subscribe to IRJ Pro.
Siemens this week said it completed the 100th locomotive at its Sacramento, Calif. rail manufacturing hub.

The Charger SCB-40 unit, for Floridas privately funded passenger rail operator Brightline, is 100% Buy America-compliant utilizing components from more than 40 U.S. suppliers in 20 states.

The loco is part of BrightRed, the fifth and last passenger trainset to be delivered by Siemens.

The third and fourth trainsets to join the rosterBrightGreen and BrightOrangearrived at Brightlines Workshop b in West Palm Beach, Fla., in May.

Trainsets BrightBlue and BrightPink were previously delivered to Brightlines Florida operations facility.

Siemens at Sacramento also has built the SC-44 to be deployed on Amtraks Cascades service, among others. Illinois is the lead agency in a multi-state procurement for the Chargers with Wisconsin, Michigan, Missouri, California and Washington. The Midwest states will receive and own 33 of the 4,400-horsepower locomotives, which were purchased through $216.5 million in federal funding and are being assembled by Siemens in Sacramento.

Delivery of all 33 locomotives is expected to be completed by the end of 2017.
RATP Dev North America, the North American subsidiary of global transportation provider RATP Dev, has appointment Josee Danis as Vice President of Business Development in Canada. She will be leading the firms Canadian offices, based in Montreal, Quebec.

Danis will be responsible for increasing RATP Devs presence in Canada and represent the company in Canadas numerous consortiums and transit organizations. Shewill be directing the full range of business development activities for RATP Dev North Americas Canadian expansion, including participation in market sounding activities; meeting with local transit, city and provincial government officials; representing RATP Dev at industry conferences; meeting with potential private and public partners; and managing transit operation and maintenance bids and proposals. RATP Dev is currently the lead operator on two light rail P3 proposals, Hurontario and Hamilton, submitted with Cintra, Acciona, Ferrovial and Colas Rail.

Danis comes to RATP Dev with nearly 20 years of experience in finance and the rail industry. Beginning her career at CN, Danis held various positions in finance, accounting and rail operations. Prior to CN, she served as Vice President of Corporate and Business Development for Genesee & Wyoming Canada, Inc., leading commercial agreement negotiations.

Josee has an exceptional track record within the transportation industry, said RATP Dev North America CEO Catherine Chardon. She has proven to be a successful leader with a strong financial background and reputation for building relationships with partners, and managing and securing contracts. RATP Dev recognizes Canadian officials and authorities as world leaders in building and operating new transit infrastructure, and we know that Josees vast experience and expertise will prove to be an invaluable asset in helping the company succeed in this competitive market.

I am honored to help expand RATP Devs world-class service to my home country of Canada, and build on the great groundwork that has already been laid here, said Danis. I look forward to building teaming relationships and serving transit authorities across the country. RATP Dev recognizes that Canada is on the cutting-edge of transit growth.

RATP Dev, founded in 2002, operates in 15 countries on four continents (United Kingdom, France, Italy, Switzerland, Algeria, Morocco, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, India, China, South Korea, the Philippines and the U.S). The company employs more than 16,000, transports more than 1.5 billion passengers annually, and operates a wide range of services including intercity rail, regional express rail, light rail, streetcars, tour bus, buses and sightseeing shuttles.
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Ex-museum director pleads not guilty to non-return of ancient icons to Russia

MOSCOW, June 7 (RAPSI, Lyudmila Klenko)  Ex-director of private non-profit Museum of Russian Icons Elena Knyazeva has pleaded not guilty to failure to return 16 orthodox icons of XVI-XVIII centuries to Russia, a spokesperson of Moscows Presnensky District Court told RAPSI on Wednesday.

Knyazeva stands charged with non-return of cultural values to Russia committed by an organized group, the courts representative Anastasia Pylina added.

According to investigators, Knyazeva has entered into a criminal conspiracy with members of a gang organized by a foreign citizen. On September 30, 2010, she filed a declaration for temporary export of 16 orthodox icons of XVI-XVIII centuries to hold the exhibition From Russia With Love in the U. S. In November 2015, the term of temporary export expired but icons have never been submitted to the Moscow Customs.

Knyazeva has been put under travel restrictions.
Deputy governor of Kursk Region detained in bribery case

MOSCOW, June 7 (RAPSI, Oleg Sivozhelezov)  The Basmanny District Court of Moscow has detained deputy governor of the Kursk Region Vasily Zubkov charged with taking a bribe until August 4, RAPSI reports from the courtroom on Wednesday.

During the hearings on Wednesday, Zubkov announced that he admits guilt and told the court that he has chronic illnesses requiring treatment. The court dismissed motions by a prosecutor and defendants lawyers to put Zubkov under house arrest.

As noted by investigators and lawyers, the defendant pleaded guilty only in part. He admitted that he had registered real estate in favor of his daughter and that he had talked about acceleration of the paperwork regarding a living house with an alleged bribe-giver. However, it is noted that requested cooperation was not related to violations during construction of a house.

Alleged co-conspirators of Zubkov, head of a construction firm Alexander Filimonov and an employee of a government entity Andrey Zanin as well as Natalya Kretova were also charged with briberelated crimes.

Investigators believe that in 2015 Zubkov received a bribe in the form of real estate evaluated at as high as one million rubles (about $17,600) for helping a construction company to receive an order required to proceed with a house constructed with violations.
State Duma passes bill on blacklists of passengers

MOSCOW, June 7 (RAPSI)  The State Duma has passed a bill allowing Russian airlines to create blacklists of passengers exhibiting aggressive behavior during the flights, in the second reading.

According to the bill, a provision allowing the airline or its representative to deny sale of tickets to a blacklisted person will be included into the Aviation Codex of Russia. The document reads that an aircraft pilot must write down a report containing information on incidents of disturbing behavior on board of a plane and present it to an airlines head. An additional copy of the report is to be given to a passenger.

An airline must include an aggressive passenger into the blacklist within 30 days after this person is found guilty of violating administrative or criminal laws by a court. Inclusion in the list may be appealed with a court as well. Blacklisted passengers must be removed from the list a year after a courts ruling.

It is noted that there are exceptional rules for certain situations. An airline must transfer blacklisted passengers to Russia from a place reachable only by a plane or if he is being deported from Russia to such place. Such passengers must also receive a right to buy tickets from an airline if they are travelling to a place of healthcare, or if they are accompanying disabled persons to the places of healthcare, or if they are travelling to a funeral. These reasons must be confirmed by presenting appropriate documents.
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HOME > The Amazing Race > The Amazing Race 29 Exclusive: Scott Flanary talks 'The Amazing Race': We ran a flawless final leg and being a super fan helped

By Elizabeth Kwiatkowski, 06/07/2017



Scott Flanary and Brooke Camhi were crowned the winners of 's 29th season during the finale broadcast on CBS.



ADVERTISEMENT Scott, a 34-year-old recruiting manager from West Hollywood, CA, and Brooke, a 36-year-old criminal attorney from New York, NY, arrived at the final Pit Stop in Chicago, IL, in first place, therefore winning the $1 million grand prize.



"You started this race as strangers, and now, after nine countries, 17 cities and more than 36,000 miles racing around the world together, I am pleased to tell you that you have won $1 million and you are the official winners of !" host



Tara Carr, a 38-year-old U.S. Army officer from Alexandria, VA, and Joey Covino, a 46-year-old police sergeant from Saugus, MA, completed in second place. London Kaye, a 27-year-old artist from Brooklyn, NY, and Logan Bauer, a 27-year-old surgical consultant from Columbus, GA, made it to the finish line in third place.



During an exclusive interview with Reality TV World via email following the show's finale, Scott dished about his experience and victory. Below is the first half of what he had to say.



Reality TV World: When you were racing to the finish line, how confident were you that you had won ? When you were in a taxi going to the finish line, it didn't seem like you thought a team could catch up to you.



Scott Flanary: Once we left Wrigley Field we knew we were in first place. We were the only team to have our placements on the score board and we were en route with the final clue in hand. Our driver knew exactly where he was going so we were confident we were going to fulfill a dream of a lifetime.



Reality TV World: Do you think the fact you left your backpacks at the airport and didn't have to lug them around the entire last leg in Chicago played a role in your victory? If so, how significant of a factor do you think it was?



Scott Flanary: As a super fan, I knew successful teams usually found a way to race the final leg without bags. We didn't know there would be so much running in the final leg (somewhere around 6.5 miles with no mistakes), but I think running without bags was certainly an advantage. The only things you need at check-in are your passport and clues, and those easily fit in your fanny pack.



Reality TV World: When did you make the decision to check your bags, and are you surprised neither of the other two teams followed your lead? Or maybe you guys were deliberately sneaky about the move?



Scott Flanary: The six of us talked about checking bags when we were at the ticket counter, but I discouraged all of us from doing so because we didn't know if we would get them back or if we might need something during the leg.



That was all a rouse, though, because Brooke and I planned to gate check the bag after Mom and Dad [Tara and Joey] and Lolo [London and Logan] boarded, which is exactly what we did. (Gate check means we checked the bags at boarding with the gate agent, and the bags go to baggage claim upon arrival.)



Reality TV World: Do you think winning the Race basically came down to the fact you were the first ones out of the airport? It didn't seem like teams had much of an opportunity to pass one another unless someone got terribly lost or something. The last leg seemed to lack really competitive tasks other than the scoreboard one at the end. For instance, you can't really screw up handing out hotdogs.

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Scott Flanary: I think the taxis played into the order, yes. However, Lolo left before Mom and Dad, and Mom and Dad arrived at the speedway second. The postcard scavenger hunt was ripe for mixing team placements: if you missed one landmark or you didn't get accurate point-to-point directions, there was plenty of opportunity for teams to change placement.



We happened to have planned a route that took us in the appropriate order the quickest way possible. The speedway was another opportunity for teams to change placement. The wheel changing portion ran simultaneously, evidenced by Mom and Dad's ability to catch up to us.



Reality TV World: You seemed to run a very smooth final leg in Chicago. Did you hit any bumps to the finish line that the editing glossed over? Did you encounter any issues viewers didn't really see?



Scott Flanary: This was the first time all Race we ran a flawless leg. Even our one argument (the order we should receive postcards) was insignificant.



I knew the Race went to Chicago in a previous finale (Season 6 even though, I mistakenly say Season 9 in the broadcast), so en route to Chicago I wrote down all the locations they visited along with major landmarks and got those addresses on the plane.



It just so happened the Buckingham Fountain, the Water Tower, and Wrigley Field were included in our leg. I think that is one of the reasons we were able to stay ahead.



Reality TV World: How long did the final scoreboard task take you to complete at Wrigley Field? And how prepared were you for a task like that, what type of notes had you been taking up to that last leg?



Scott Flanary: I think it took us about 15 -- 30 minutes. Brooke and I used the flight from Seoul to study.



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We were ready for any memory task and were very happy it was something we memorized.



Reality TV World: Brooke was shown saying at one point that you never thought you guys could win . When did you two discuss that and was there a reason why you assumed that other than the obvious one -- that you guys bickered a lot? Maybe you felt threatened by other teams or figured you couldn't pull it off since you hadn't won a leg?



Scott Flanary: She was commenting on a statement I made in Leg 2 when I was frustrated to learn she wasn't a runner. I insinuated if it ever came to a foot race we might not be successful.



Interestingly, in a leg full of running, we ended up coming out on top. I definitely ate my words. I never thought we couldn't win, per se, I just learned we needed to implement a mental and social strategy to compensate for other teams' more physical dominance.



Check back with Reality TV World soon for the concluding portion of Scott's interview. And to begin reading our exclusive interview with Brooke,





About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski

Elizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade.

FOLLOW REALITY TV WORLD ON GOOGLE NEWS Scott Flanary and Brooke Camhi were crowned the winners of 's 29th season during the finale broadcast on CBS.Scott, a 34-year-old recruiting manager from West Hollywood, CA, and Brooke, a 36-year-old criminal attorney from New York, NY, arrived at the final Pit Stop in Chicago, IL, in first place, therefore winning the $1 million grand prize."You started this race as strangers, and now, after nine countries, 17 cities and more than 36,000 miles racing around the world together, I am pleased to tell you that you have won $1 million and you are the official winners of !" host Phil Keoghan told the pair as they hugged each other at the finish line.Tara Carr, a 38-year-old U.S. Army officer from Alexandria, VA, and Joey Covino, a 46-year-old police sergeant from Saugus, MA, completed in second place. London Kaye, a 27-year-old artist from Brooklyn, NY, and Logan Bauer, a 27-year-old surgical consultant from Columbus, GA, made it to the finish line in third place.During an exclusive interview with Reality TV World via email following the show's finale, Scott dished about his experience and victory. Below is the first half of what he had to say.Once we left Wrigley Field we knew we were in first place. We were the only team to have our placements on the score board and we were en route with the final clue in hand. Our driver knew exactly where he was going so we were confident we were going to fulfill a dream of a lifetime.As a super fan, I knew successful teams usually found a way to race the final leg without bags. We didn't know there would be so much running in the final leg (somewhere around 6.5 miles with no mistakes), but I think running without bags was certainly an advantage. The only things you need at check-in are your passport and clues, and those easily fit in your fanny pack.The six of us talked about checking bags when we were at the ticket counter, but I discouraged all of us from doing so because we didn't know if we would get them back or if we might need something during the leg.That was all a rouse, though, because Brooke and I planned to gate check the bag after Mom and Dad [Tara and Joey] and Lolo [London and Logan] boarded, which is exactly what we did. (Gate check means we checked the bags at boarding with the gate agent, and the bags go to baggage claim upon arrival.)I think the taxis played into the order, yes. However, Lolo left before Mom and Dad, and Mom and Dad arrived at the speedway second. The postcard scavenger hunt was ripe for mixing team placements: if you missed one landmark or you didn't get accurate point-to-point directions, there was plenty of opportunity for teams to change placement.We happened to have planned a route that took us in the appropriate order the quickest way possible. The speedway was another opportunity for teams to change placement. The wheel changing portion ran simultaneously, evidenced by Mom and Dad's ability to catch up to us.This was the first time all Race we ran a flawless leg. Even our one argument (the order we should receive postcards) was insignificant.I knew the Race went to Chicago in a previous finale (Season 6 even though, I mistakenly say Season 9 in the broadcast), so en route to Chicago I wrote down all the locations they visited along with major landmarks and got those addresses on the plane.It just so happened the Buckingham Fountain, the Water Tower, and Wrigley Field were included in our leg. I think that is one of the reasons we were able to stay ahead.I think it took us about 15 -- 30 minutes. Brooke and I used the flight from Seoul to study.We memorized everything: flags, currency, greeter faces and attire, local languages, the order of eliminated teams, the placement of every team on every leg, everyone who completed each Roadblock, the details of all Detours, our first impression of all 20 other cast mates, our favorite and least favorite leg/Roadblock/Detour, and who we would have picked at the start line challenge if not for each other.We were ready for any memory task and were very happy it was something we memorized.She was commenting on a statement I made in Leg 2 when I was frustrated to learn she wasn't a runner. I insinuated if it ever came to a foot race we might not be successful.Interestingly, in a leg full of running, we ended up coming out on top. I definitely ate my words. I never thought we couldn't win, per se, I just learned we needed to implement a mental and social strategy to compensate for other teams' more physical dominance.Check back with Reality TV World soon for the concluding portion of Scott's interview. And to begin reading our exclusive interview with Brooke, click here THE AMAZING RACE 29 MORE THE AMAZING RACE 29 NEWS << PRIOR STORY

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'We are in touch independently with leading players, and they are denying it as well.'

'The Indian digital footprint is rising, creating new opportunities.'

IMAGE: Prime Minister Narendra Modi with students. Photograph: Adrien Helou/Reuters

"We have opened centres for electronics at IIT-Kanpur and Mumbai," IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad tells Kiran Rathee.

"Seven NIT centres are running special courses only for electronics manufacturing. In view of the rising profile of India's digital economy, most IITs are going to come up with new courses," the minister says.

Ahead of the 2019 general election, how are you going to leverage the Digital India movement?

Digital India is already showing results on the ground.

In a population of 1.25 billion, we have 1.08 billion mobile phones, about 400 million smartphones, 500 million Internet connections and best of all, 1.14 billion Aadhaar enrolments, all safe and secure and backed by law.

The result of JAM (Jan-Dhan, Aadhaar, Mobile) is there for everyone to see.

We have opened 280 million bank accounts linked with Aadhaar, with subsidy going directly to the bank accounts of the poor.

The difference between the Narendra Modi government and the Rajiv Gandhi government is: He himself said out of Rs 100, only Rs 15 used to reach the people.

But the Modi government has ensured that the entire Rs 100 go into people's account.

The poor are getting empowered and that is the success of Digital India.

The government has announced several sops for electronic manufacturing. But what is happening is mostly assembling. Are you contemplating more measures to boost manufacturing?

You are wrong.

Seventy two mobile phone factories have come up in the last three years.

India is emerging as a big hub of electronics manufacturing, from mobile phones to medical electronics, to consumer electronics and automobile electronics.

Therefore, the whole ecosystem of electronic manufacturing has picked up.

And because of the Chinese situation and a lot of uncertainty, several companies want to come here.

So many lay-offs are happening in the IT sector.

New technologies are coming up, but there are not enough educational institutions to teach young people about these technologies.

You must first take into account the vast footprint of India's digital economy.

By 2022, it will be a $1 trillion digital economy.

Nasscom has said 2.5 to 3 million jobs are going to be added in the next five to seven years. I have to believe them.

Now come to jobs, specifically. Let me explain.

At present, Indian IT companies give jobs to 4 million people directly and 14 million indirectly.

34 per cent of them are women.

They have added 600,000 jobs in the last three years, and the media reporting massive lay-offs is wrong. I completely deny it.

We are in touch independently with leading players, and they are denying it as well.

The Indian digital footprint is rising, creating new opportunities.

We have opened centres for electronics at IIT-Kanpur and Mumbai.

Seven NIT centres are running special courses only for electronics manufacturing.

In view of the rising profile of India's digital economy, most IITs are going to come up with new courses.

With the passage of time and India's emerging digital economy, the great technological institutions in India will also tailor their courses further to meet emerging requirements.

There is an ongoing tussle between the government and the judiciary on the appointment of judges.

The Modi government accords the highest respect to the judiciary.

Yes, we have brought in steps to streamline judicial appointments.

Despite having 100 per cent approval of Parliament and more than 50 per cent of the state legislatures, the Supreme Court chose to strike it down.

Despite our reservations, we have accepted the judgment.

Last year, we appointed 126 high court judges, the highest ever in the last 30 years.

Besides this, we are giving a lot of infrastructural support; we are digitising the court process.

We have also set up a committee headed by Justice B N Srikrishna to give a focused report on how to make India a hub of international arbitration.

I am waiting for the report and the prime minister is also keen on this.

We have repealed more than 1,200 laws, others are in process.

Things are going digital and uncertainty is going out.

We have also promoted self-certification.

Therefore, we have done a lot of things and are open to doing more because access to justice is a window to good governance.

What are your policies regarding cyber security? Recently we saw the attack of the WannaCry ransomware.

How secure are Indian establishments in the wake of such attacks?

First of all, we are very conscious of the need to have a good cyber-security architecture.

The PM has himself said that cyber war is like a bloodless war.

So, let me tell what we have done.

About this WannaCry ransomware attack, in March itself we issued an advisory to install Microsoft patches because we were apprehending an attack.

India was the least affected by the WannaCry attack because of warning. About 200 isolated computers were attacked.

But we have to reinforce security.

A cyber coordination centre is going to come up by June.

We have a separate Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-IN) for finance, energy distribution and generation, and we are open to having any further segmented CERT-INs for the system.

We are reinforcing Standardisation Testing and Quality Certification testing centres at six places in the country and we give constant advisories to banks and other bodies to reinforce their systems.

We have upgraded around 111 cyber auditors for this purpose.

We do regular cyber-security drills.

We have started a BOTNET (a network of computers that are infected with viruses and which are remotely controlled by cyber criminals, without the actual owner's knowledge.

Cyber criminals can use the compromised computers to send spam mails, etc) clearance centre where malware is cleared automatically.

We have done all this, but we need to speak publicly about cyber security more and more to reassure people, reminding them about the need for it.

There have been issues regarding the privacy of citizens, with instances of personal data being published online.

There have been issues regarding digital leakage of Aadhaar data also.

What are the safeguards?

First, I must tell you Aadhaar is totally secure.

There is a proper parliamentary Act in which Sections 29, 30, 31, 32 and 33 safeguard data completely with due regard to privacy as a precondition.

Aadhaar has minimal data: name, gender, date of birth, address.

If someone publishes the details, they can be punished.

Let me put like this. If I release my iris and fingerprint details for unauthorised use, I, as an IT minister, can also suffer consequences -- even with my own consent.

Section 29 is very specific. It can be disclosed only in case of national security and not automatically.

A committee headed by the Cabinet secretary, IT secretary and law secretary need to confirm the report of the joint secretary that for the following national security requirement the details are important and that, too, for a limited period of two months.
Because of weak availability, buffalo meat exports have also declined over the last few weeks

Buffalo meat prices have surged by over 14 per cent in the last one week due to lower availability of animals for slaughtering amid government's order to ban on their sale.

Around the national capital, buffalo meat is sold at Rs 150-160 a kg now, a rise of Rs 15-20 in the last one week.

This means, buffalo meat was available normally between Rs 135-140 a kg before the government notification banning sale of animals for slaughtering issued on May 24.

The ban on animals' sale for slaughtering was intended to control mushrooming of unregistered slaughtering houses in the country, in addition to prevent their cross-border sale.

However, the local meat and leather industries, with an accumulative exports of $10 billion, are likely to get impacted badly. Apart from that, millions of skilled and unskilled workers across the two industries are going to be jobless with just one regulation.

"Buffalo meat prices are quoted today at Rs around Rs 160 a kg here which indicates a rise of Rs 20 about a week ago. Buffalo supply to mandis as people create problems in transportation.

Supply, however, continues in fewer numbers. Because of weak availability, buffalo meat exports have also declined over the last few weeks," said Bushran Zakariya, Director, Zakariya Agro Pvt. Ltd, another buffalo meat retailer and exporter based out of New Delhi.

Along with buffalo meat, prices of chicken and goat / sheep meat have also jumped by Rs 20-30 a kg in the domestic markets due to a sharp increase in their demand following shifting of consumers from buffalo meat to chicken and goat / sheep meat. To compensate lower supply, Indian exporters are seeking $50-75 a tonne higher from overseas buyers for spot booking.

According to Mohammad Zubair Nagani, Director of M U N Agro Industries Pvt Ltd, a Vashi-based Apeda (Agricultural & Processed Food Products Export Development Authority) - registered meat producer, prices of all meat products have jumped by upto 20 per cent since talks over ban on animal slaughter started.

With the supply of animals getting badly disrupted for slaughtering due to beating of buyers by the politically-connect people, buffalo meat and live animals prices in the international markets have also risen. Live cattle futures for neat month delivery has jumped by 5.2 per cent since May 24 to trade currently at US cents 126.2 / lb. The future has witnessed 8.7 per cent jump in calendar 2017.

"Around 90 per cent of meat supply is procured from the market place. While leather industry has not put any precise figure of its procurement of raw material from the market place, we presume a major chunk of the leather consumption is dependent on markets for supply of raw materials.

Hence, the impact of ban on animal slaughtering would be felt in the months to come. We have written to the government raising concerns of the industry which, we are sure, of the government's positive view on the same especially when job creation continues to be a priority," said Ajay Sahai, Director General, Federation of Indian Export Organisation (FIEO).

Meanwhile, data compiled by Apeda showed India's overall meat exports declined by over 11 per cent to 85,119 tonnes in volume term and 10.45 per cent in value terms to $257 million in April 2017. Buffalo meat contributes nearly 25 per cent of India's overall agri exports from India.

"We have developed the industry to this level in the last several years. The industry is working on with the government to take out buffalo out of this legislation which, we believe, the government would do.

Since, the implementation time is given for three months for the ban on sale of animals, a majority of abattoirs and animal mandis are currently working as usual," said Qaiser Hussain Qureshi, proprietor of Marhaba Frozen Foods, a New Delhi-based dealer of frozen foods and buffalo meat exporter.

Photograph: Amit Dave/Reuters
'I am not a friend of anyone who wants to defend, justify and glorify any businessman, power drunk person or religious fanatics, fake activists, apologists of terrorists, appeasers of some, oppressors of others, pretending to be political leaders,' says Amit Mehra.

Illustration: Dominic Xavier/Rediff.com

It has been six months since I have slept peacefully for 7-8 hours a night.

Some nights I wake up at 2 am, some nights at 4. Having nothing else to do, I often log in to social media to catch up on news, current affairs and generally what my real life or social media friends are saying, doing.

That is when it dawns on me why I am not sleeping well.

My countrymen, fellow citizens, world citizens are suffering at the hands of some pretenders and the memory of their suffering is affecting me deeply, but what is keeping me awake is that I am doing nothing about it.

So what can I do?

Many things. But first I can find the courage to speak my mind.

So that is what I am doing here, finding courage and speaking my mind. Let's see what happens next

All those on my friends list on social media and real life, who defend, justify, glorify those that had ordered the beating up of our children at India Gate a few years back and those who ordered the shooting of our farmers in Madhya Pradesh on Tuesday, kindly unfriend me.

I am not a friend of anyone who wants to defend, justify and glorify any businessman, power drunk person or religious fanatics, fake activists, apologists of terrorists, appeasers of some, oppressors of others, pretending to be political leaders.

Kindly unfriend me. I am not your friend.

All those who are using political, religious and ideological cover to unleash their personal hate and ignorance, kindly unfriend me. I am not your friend.

All those who defend, justify and glorify those who are elected by us, live off our taxes but tell us what to eat, what to wear, who to love, who to hate, who to worship, how to pray, how to follow our faith, how to live, kindly unfriend me. I am not your friend.

BUT if you are a fellow citizen (belonging to any ideology, race, nationality, political dispensation, socio-economic class, any culture) and are willing to hold everyone in power accountable towards citizens, then please stay on. You are my friend and I am yours.

Our job as a citizen is not to defend, justify and glorify the politicians we elect.

Our job is to hold them accountable and responsible. Be it Obama, Trump, Gandhi, Kejriwal or Modi.

They are powerful people who have the entire system at their disposal. They don't need you to defend, justify and glorify them.

Your fellow citizens need you to hold them accountable and protect them against misuse of power by these politicians and their powerful friends.

There are millions of us who cannot express themselves like you or I can. Who is going to speak for them? Should we forget about them?

When a private company falters on the delivery of a product or service you have paid for, do you justify, defend and glorify them? Or do you fight for what is rightfully yours?

Every time they fail or cheat us, should they be allowed to tell us that why don't we make those products and services ourselves? Can we not hold them responsible for what they are committed to deliver as customers, citizens?

Why should every voice that asks for accountability be told to join politics?

Do citizens not have the right to question people we elect and give these enormous powers to?

Are we lab rats that are called upon to vote them to power every few years and then expected to be experimented on with their flawed ideologies?

Who are these people who are giving questioning citizens labels of urban Naxals, anti nationals, anti Gandhi, anti Modi, anti Congress, anti AAP, anti Mamta Banerjee, anti BJP, anti everything that they are cheerleaders for?

Who gave them the right to tarnish us all in the name of a few bad apples?

Those who support and are cheerleaders of one party want us to think the worst of others who are just like them.

Does this make sense to you? We know now how these people who were cheerleaders of politicians in the past have personally benefitted at the cost of the State and citizens.

And now these people who are cheerleaders of present politicians wants us to believe that they are somehow just cheerleading politicians because their favorite politician is better than the former cheerleaders' bosses?

So we should allow them to create this acrimony in our society?

Are we going to let them do this to us by turns?

Who are these media people who are subverting our justice system and creating havoc on television passing judgements on large groups of citizens? Giving sermons?

What qualifications do media people have to dictate the narrative of a nation? They are only supposed to report and analyse facts.

What are the facts? Did India not progress one bit during the 60 odd years of Congress like they would have us believe? NO. India progressed hugely, but there were huge corruption cases as well.

Are all BJP ministers only giving hateful statements? NO. Many of them are fine ministers doing the best they can like the railways, electricity and external affairs ministers to name a few.

At the same time, many BJP ministers or politicians are also misusing their power to create divisiveness for vote bank appeasement.

But how do we acknowledge all these nuances of our system when our media and political narrative is so polarised and we have allowed them to be so.

Why does a news anchor who screams the loudest become the most popular?

How do we get to the facts if every pillar of our democracy is veiled with propaganda?

These guys take the evil being committed by criminals like terrorists, religious fanatics, Naxals, underworld dons, petty criminals and create a prototype that can be then applied to anyone who does not agree with their ideologies and vote bank politics.

Suddenly anyone who does not agree with them or vote for them is a Congress follower or a Modi bhakt or Kejriwal fan depending on their convenience.

If you question the misuse of power or a flawed policy, you are anti-national.

All of us know what Modi said to the Congress and what Sonia said to the BJP and all the rubbish around that.

How many of us know what is going on with our banking systems and increasing NPAs?

Aadhar security breaches?

Who is keeping a check on criminals, goondas and some corrupt cops using schemes like gau rakshaks, anti-Romeo brigade (which were launched to protect us and cows) to exact their personal revenge and money from poor hapless victims?

Who amongst us is following up on the disaster that demonetisation was for our economy, especially the unorganised sector?

Who kept a check when for so many years previous governments hollowed our institutions and exposed our financial systems to such large NPAs?

Who allowed the public servants, politicians living off our taxes to become our daddy and mommy?

Kindly wake up from your slumber and hold people in offices and your elected representatives accountable.

You are not their cheerleaders. You are their boss.

You vote them in. You hold them accountable.

Take off your rose or whatever colour tinted glasses and stop this nonsensical idolisation of people who are clearly only looking out for themselves and their groovy friends.

We are not their validation service providers.

Do you know all the political parties come together in a jiffy to increase their own pay scales, but cannot agree on what is a fair price for our farmers?

They come together to allow their parties foreign funding, but question private businesses on acquiring the same.

I don't have children, but many of you do. Do you want them to grow up to be cheerleaders of businessmen and religious fanatics pretending to be politicians, godmen and social religious cultural leaders?

Or do you want them to be upright responsible citizens who have the courage to question and hold politicians, governments, everyone in office, in power, accountable?

We need politicians to work, not give us lectures. The children are watching us now.

The choice is yours, but now you know who I am a friend of and who are not my friends.

Jai Hind.
The Chinese Communist Party's all important 19th Party Congress is just months away, and President Xi Jinping finds himself confronting unlikely challenges to his pre-eminent position, says former RA&W officer and China watcher Jayadeva Ranade.

IMAGE: Chinese President Xi Jinping with former Chinese president Jiang Zemin at a military parade in Beijing, September 3, 2015. Photograph: Wang Zhao/Reuters

Forces opposed to Xi have gathered around Jiang, who despite being 90 is still apparently involved in party politics.

With just five months before 2,300 delegates representing 88 million members of China's Communist Party converge on Beijing for the 19th Party Congress, China's political situation is becoming tense.

Since last October there have been indications of political infighting at the highest echelons of the Chinese Communist Party.

These come amidst reports suggesting that Chinese President Xi Jinping is likely to ignore the informal retirement rules for senior cadres -- in force since the 17th Party Congress -- to retain 68-year old Wang Qishan, Chairman of the Central Discipline Inspection Commission, in the Politburo Standing Committee.

Between last August and March, the Hongkong-based pro-Beijing Sing Pao newspaper published accusations against Hongkong Chief Executive C Y Leung, the Liaison Office and Politburo Standing Committee member and Chairman of China's National People's Congress Zhang Dejiang.

IMAGE: Zhang Dejiang at the Chongqing municipality's Communist Party Congress. Photograph: Reuters

Zhang, an orthodox cadre who has been aligned with former Chinese president Jiang Zemin, oversees the Hongkong-Macau Affairs Office.

Hinting at high level backing to Sing Pao and in a convenient coincidence, the powerful anti-corruption watchdog body headed by Wang Qishan released a report in November of the findings of its Central Inspection Team on the Hongkong-Macau Affairs Office and its subsidiary units.

Personnel of the Hongkong-Macau Affairs Office were subsequently changed.

Zhang, though, continues to oversee Hongkong affairs and has successfully installed Ms Carrie Lam, a person of his choice, as Chief Executive of Hongkong.

IMAGE: Wang Qishan attends a plenary meeting of the National People's Congress, at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Photograph: Jason Lee/Reuters

More recently since March, Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui, suspected of having close links to China's intelligence apparatus and currently living in New York, began airing accusations of corruption and infighting at the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party on his Voice of America programme.

In his latest video on May 29, he launched a direct attack on Wang Qishan.

Guo described Wang as the 'real power now' and as 'incredibly corrupt' from his many years of involvement in China's financial sector.

He also claimed that Xi Jinping doesn't actually trust Wang Qishan and that Xi's confidant, Vice Minister of Security Fu Zhenghua, was investigating Wang and the head of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission -- the country's security apparatus, Politburo member Meng Jianzhu.

Guo's Youtube interviews are, interestingly, getting a lot of comments from the Chinese.

Separately, Ling Wancheng, the California-based brother of the now disgraced former director of the powerful Chinese Comunist Party Central Committee General Office Ling Jihua had promised to release his own 'explosive' expose on May 29.

Reports in 2013 claimed that Ling Jihua had stored a huge number of very sensitive documents with his brother as insurance.

IMAGE: China's current Politburo Standing Committee, the most poweful body in the country: (1st row from left to right) Zhang Dejiang, Premier Li Keqiang, Yu Zhengsheng, (2nd row) Xi Jinping, (3rd row from left to right) Zhang Gaoli, Wang Qishan, Liu Yunshan. Photograph: Carlos Barria/Reuters

The unprecedented sustained anti-corruption campaign in the Chinese Communist Party, government and People's Liberation Army has undoubtedly upset and impacted large numbers of people.

By late last year, 176 cadres of the rank of vice minister and above were among the million party members officially reported to have been punished for corruption.

By March 2017, 4,883 PLA officers had been punished.

For cadres affiliated or identified with Jiang Zemin, the 19th Party Congress represents the last opportunity to benefit from 90-year old Jiang's influence.

Many of them would be opposed to Wang Qishan and certainly opposed to his getting a second term.

These persons constitute an influential bloc opposing Xi Jinping.

IMAGE: Xi Jinping, his wife Peng Liyuan with US President Donald Trump at the dinner during their summit at Trumps Mar-a-Lago estate in West Palm Beach, Florida. Photograph: Carlos Barria/Reuters

Meanwhile, with an eye on the forthcoming 19th Party Congress in November, Xi has strengthened his position to emerge as the pre-eminent member of the Politburo Standing Committee!

He has used international events to project his leadership credentials. In January, he became the first Chinese president to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos and championed the importance of economic globalisation.

At the summit with US President Donald Trump in April, he was able to stabilise China's most important bilateral relationship.

At the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing on May 14-15, Xi advocated China-led economic globalisation to rival the US.

He will similarly use the opportunities offered by the G-20 Summit in Germany and the BRICS Summit this September in Xiamen.

IMAGE: Xi Jinping raises a toast during the welcoming banquet for the Belt and Road Forum at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, May 14, 2017. Photograph: Damir Sagolj/Reuters

More importantly, to impress the domestic audience and re-emphasise the theme of 'rejuvenation' of the 'great Chinese nation', Xi will visit the Hongkong Special Administrative Region in July on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of its return to Chinese sovereignty.

Equally important is the 90th anniversary of the founding of the PLA on August 1.

PLA Lieutenant General Rong Guiqing, deputy commander and chief of staff of the western theatre command, disclosed on March 15, that there would be massive celebrations for PLA Day.

'It will be an event, not merely a military parade,' General Rong said, and comparable to the troop inspection carried out by Deng Xiaoping in 1981!

Xi Jinping will inspect the troops and could be expected to announce some important appointments or decisions.

Among the more important instances of Xi's confidence and authority are the appointment of Cai Qi, a long-time protege, as Party Secretary of Beijing.

Another pointer is Guangdong Party Secretary Hu Chunhua's high-profile declaration of political loyalty before the Provincial Party Congress on May 22.

He mentioned Xi Jinping 26 times in his nearly 100-minute speech, referring to him seven times as the 'party's core'!

Despite the efforts to deny Xi Jinping free sway in appointing cadres to the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee, it appears likely that Xi will succeed in appointing a number of his loyalists.

Crucial, however, will be whether he succeeds in elevating his loyalists to the Politburo and the Politburo Standing Committee which presently appears likely.

Jayadeva Ranade, former Additional Secretary in the Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India, is presently President of the Centre for China Analysis and Strategy.
Twenty workers were charred to death and 10 others were injured, two of them critically, in a fire at a cracker factory in Kheri village in Madhya Pradesh's Balaghat district on Wednesday, an official said.

The blaze started around 3 pm in the factory located around 10 kms from the district headquarters in the Kotwali police station limits, Additional Director General of Police (Balaghat range) G Janardhan said.

"Twenty workers were killed in the fire and 10 others sustained injuries. Of the injured, eight have been rushed to Nagpur (in Maharashtra) for treatment, while two are being treated at a hospital in the district," he added.

The condition of two of the eight injured, referred to Nagpur, is critical, the official said.

Meanwhile, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan announced a compensation of Rs 2 lakh each to the next kin of the deceased. The state government would also bear the medical expenses of the injured.

According to Balaghat district collector Bharat Yadav, the cracker factory was owned by one Waris Ahmed and was being run legally.

He added that the victims were workers of the factory and the incident took place when the production was on.

According to Yadav, the blaze has been completely doused and the rescue operation has also got over.

"Exactly what triggered the fire is yet be known. It is possible that someone might have thrown a burning beedi," he said.

Yadav said the factory was located away from the human settlement.

IMAGE: People gather near the site of a blast that took place in fire crackers factory at Balaghat, Madhya Pradesh on Wednesday. Photograph: PTI Photo
A Hizbul Mujahideen terrorist, who was seen in a video taken during the funeral of outfit commander Sabzar Bhat last week, has surrendered before authorities in Kashmir, the police said on Wednesday.

Investigations revealed that he was Danish Ahmed, a resident of Handwara in north Kashmir studying at the Doon P G College of Agriculture Science and Technology, Dehradun.

"A few days back, video clips of an unidentified terrorist wearing a battle pouch with a grenade were in circulation on social media.

"These video clips were clicked in Tral area by local media-persons during the funeral of self-styled terrorist commander Sabzar Bhat," a police spokesperson said.

Danish was also found to have been involved in stone-pelting incidents in Handwara during the 2016 turmoil. "He was picked up by the police but was let off after counselling in view of his career," the spokesperson said.

After Danish's involvement in terrorism was established, security forces got in touch with his parents and impressed upon them the need to counsel their son to surrender.

"His parents were convinced that if he surrenders, he would be dealt with fairly under law. Efforts made by security forces yielded results and Danish surrendered before police and 21 Rashtriya Rifles of army in Handwara," he said.

During questioning, Danish revealed that he had been in touch with terrorists in south Kashmir on social media and was persuaded to join them.

"He was tasked by Hizbul Mujahideen to activate some local youth in north Kashmir and make the region as terrorism-infested as the southern part of Kashmir.

"However, after spending a few days with the terrorists in south Kashmir, he realised the futility of their militant ranks," the spokesperson said.

A case under relevant sections of law has been registered against Danish, he said. His case is also being considered under the J&K Surrendered Militants Rehabilitation Policy.

Image: Danish Ahmed. Photograph: Umar Ganie for Rediff.com.
Other members of the group are former prime minister Manmohan Singh, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and Communist Party of India-Marxist chief Sitaram Yechury.

The Opposition has formed a subgroup of leaders to take forward discussions on fielding a common candidate for the presidential and vice presidential polls.

Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar is likely to be the coordinator of this subgroup, and by virtue of this could emerge as the leader of a united Opposition in the run-up to the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

According to sources, other members of the group are former prime minister Manmohan Singh, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and Communist Party of India-Marxist chief Sitaram Yechury.

As both Banerjee and Yechury are its members, the subgroup is unlikely to have a common meeting.

Yechury's party and Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress are rivals in West Bengal and the two leaders do not want to be seen sharing a common platform.

However, both leaders had attended the lunch for Opposition parties that Congress president Sonia Gandhi had hosted on 26 May.

As the coordinator of the subgroup, Pawar has been entrusted with holding individual consultations with other members to build a consensus on the issue. In turn, members of the group will reach out to leaders of regional parties.

At the Congress Working Committee meeting on Tuesday, the Congress president said that former prime minister Singh, Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi, other colleagues and she have met the leaders of like-minded parties to find commonly acceptable candidates for the posts of India's President and vice president. A subgroup of representatives has been constituted to take this forward, she said.

"In a few weeks we will be electing the President and vice president of our republic. In times such as these, it is even more essential that those who occupy this august office protect the Constitution," Sonia Gandhi said, addressing the Congress Working Committee meeting.

President Pranab Mukherjee completes his five-year term on July 24, while Vice President Hamid Ansari's second term ends on August 10.

The Opposition said no consensus has emerged on a joint candidate, but names that have been discussed are former West Bengal governor and Mahatma Gandhi's grandson Gopalkrishna Gandhi, Janata Dal-United leader Sharad Yadav and Congress leader Meira Kumar.

Pawar has said that he isn't keen to be the candidate.

The Opposition, however, is likely to wait for the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance to announce its presidential candidate before opening its cards.
Gunmen and suicide bombers on Wednesday launched twin assaults on Iran's parliament and the tomb of the country's revolutionary founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Tehran, leaving at least 12 people dead and scores of others injured.

IMAGE: People are seen running out of the parliament. Photograph: TIMA via Reuters

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for these attacks, marking the first time the Sunni extremists have taken responsibility for an assault in Shiite-majority Iran.

Assailants armed with Kalashnikov rifles stormed the parliament building. One of the attackers later blew himself up inside, where a session had been in progress, according to a statement carried by Iran's state TV.

IMAGE: Smoke is seen during the attack on the Iranian Parliament in central Tehran. Photograph: Omid Vahabzadeh/TIMA via

Deputy Interior Minister Mohammad Hossein Zolfaghari told Iran's state TV the apparently male attackers wore women's attire.

Later, a news agency reported that the siege had ended with four of the attackers killed.

Soon after the parliament attack, a suicide bomber and other assailants targeted the shrine of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini located just outside the capital, Tehran, according to Iran's official state broadcaster. It said a security guard was killed and that one of the attackers was killed by security guards. A woman was also arrested.

IMAGE: Iranian lawmakers inside the parliament during the attack. Photograph: TIMA via Reuters

Khomeini, who died in 1989, is a towering figure in Iran. He led the 1979 Islamic revolution that toppled the Western- backed shah and became Iran's first supreme leader.

Mizan Online, an Iranian state-run news website, quoting the head of Iran's emergency department, said 12 people were killed and 42 wounded in the two attacks.

IMAGE: A boy is evacuated during the attack on the parliament. Photograph: Omid Vahabzadeh/TIMA via

The IS group's Aamaq news agency released a 24-second video purportedly shot inside the parliament building during the siege. The video, circulated online, shows a gunman and a bloody, lifeless body of a man lying on the ground next to a desk.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj spoke to Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and condemned the terrorist attacks on institutions of democracy and spirituality in Tehran.

External affairs ministry said that in a pre-scheduled telephone conversation, the minister offered sincere condolences on loss of innocent lives and expressed solidarity with the people and the government of Iran.
Polls to elect the 15th President of India will be held on July 17 for which the nomination process will begin from June 14 with the issuance of a notification, the Election Commission announced on Wednesday.

The counting of votes will take place on July 20 in New Delhi where all the ballot boxes will be brought.

Both the ruling National Democratic Alliance and the opposition are yet open their cards on the presidential candidate. While the ruling alliance is likely to announce its nominee in the next few days, the opposition is seeking to unite all non-NDA parties under a common platform to put up a consensus candidate for the presidential election.

As per the schedule, June 28 is the last day for nominations, while a candidate can withdraw from the electoral battle till July 1. If there is no consensus between the NDA and the opposition, the number of serious candidates in the fray will be clear by July 1 evening.

Various opposition parties have already held deliberations and have decided to set up a sub group that is likely to meet within a week to build consensus on a joint candidate.

The electorate, comprising elected Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha members and members of state assemblies, is tilted in favour of the NDA, but the opposition is trying to woo some regional parties to support their candidate.

The tenure of the present incumbent, Pranab Mukherjee, comes to an end on July 24.

The electoral college which elects the President through the system of proportional representation, comprises MPs and members of state legislative assemblies. A total of 4896 voters --- 4120 MLAs and 776 elected MPs -- are eligible to cast their ballot. MLCs of states with legislative councils are not part of the electoral college.

While the Lok Sabha Speaker, an elected member, can vote, the two nominated members in the Lower House from the Anglo-Indian community cannot. 12 nominated members in Rajya Sabha are also ineligible.

Since the election is through a secret ballot, the parties cannot issue a whip to their members to vote for a particular candidate, Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi told a press conference in New Delhi.

Responding to a question, he said the election to 10 Rajya Sabha seats, postponed earlier due to presidential polls and EVM challenge held last week, would now be held after the Presidential election.

He said the 10 members would be retiring after the presidential elections and are entitled to vote in the July 17 poll.

When asked whether the 20 AAP MLAs, against whom the EC is hearing a petition seeking their disqualification for allegedly holding office of profit, can vote in the polls, he said "as on today" they can vote. Originally, the case was against 21 MLAs, but one had resigned.

A total of 13 vacancies in Lok Sabha and state assemblies will be filled up after the presidential elections, he said.

Incidentally, Zaidi is retiring on July 7 and will not be in office when the results are notified by the commission.

In 2012, the election to the President's office was announced on June 12 and held on July 19. The term of Mukherjee as the President commenced on July 25.

This time, the Lok Sabha secretary general will be the returning officer. Last time, it was the secretary general of Rajya Sabha.
The coming together of SP and BSP leaders on one platform is being seen as the emergence of a new phase of politics in the state after a dismal show of all anti-BJP parties in the 2014 Lok Sabha and 2017 assembly polls.

Arch rivals in Uttar Pradesh, the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party will share a common platform at a rally organised by Lalu Prasads Rashtriya Janata Dal in Patna, heralding a new phase of politics in the country's cow belt.

SP chief Akhilesh Yadav and BSP president Mayawati have confirmed their participation in the Patna rally on August 27 for which the RJD supremo made a personal call to both of them recently, RJD state unit President Ashok Singh told PTI.

There are also efforts to get Samajwadi Party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav to attend the rally, Singh said.

The coming together of SP and BSP leaders on one platform is being seen in the political circles as emergence of a new phase of politics in the state after a dismal show of all anti-BJP parties in the 2014 Lok Sabha and 2017 assembly polls.

The RJD president has also invited leaders like Mamata Banerjee (Trinmool Congress), Naveen Patnaik (Biju Janata Dal) and Sharad Pawar (Nationalist Congress Party), and many of them are likely to attend, Singh said.

The Congress is likely to be represented by its president Sonia Gandhi, Singh said, adding that M K Stalin (of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam) has already confirmed his participation.

The effort is to repeat a Bihar-like experiment at the national level with all parties opposed to the BJP coming together, Singh said.

The coming together of sworn enemies SP and BSP in the politically crucial state of Uttar Pradesh could have a far-reaching effect to check the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party, say political pundits.

The SP and the BSP together make a formidable alliance with consolidation of Dalit and backward votes, which could effectively checkmate BJP.

The BSP won only 19 seats in the 2017 election to the 403-member assembly, down from 80 in 2012. This is its lowest tally since 1991, when the party won 12 seats. The SP won 47, its lowest tally since the partys inception in 1992.

The SP's lowest score so far was 97 seats in 2007.

While the SPs vote share was 21.8 per cent, the BSPs vote share was 22.2 per cent. BSP contested all the seats while SP left 105 seats for its ally, the Congress.

As the BJPs unprecedented tally dwarfed the opposition, which has together been reduced to less than 75 seats, the call for an alliance between the SP and BSP started growing louder.

The BJP cornered 40 per cent of the votes polled, an increase of 25 per cent since last time, grabbing along with its National Democratic Alliance partners a whopping 325 seats.

Akhilesh Yadav has already confirmed his participation in the Patna rally.

"I will be present at Lalu Prasads Bihar rally on August 27. If there is any announcement (regarding a future alliance), it will me made there," he has said.

Though the BSP is yet to confirm Mayawati's participation in the event, its likelihood gained momentum when she attended a recent lunch hosted by Sonia Gandhi along with leaders of 16 other parties who have been traditionally hostile to each other.

Before the start of hostility between SP and BSP, the two parties had contested the 1993 UP Assembly elections in an alliance, with the BSP contesting 164 seats and winning 67, while the SP had contested 256 seats winning 109 in the then House of 425 (before the creation of Uttarakhand).

The government was formed with Mulayam Singh as the chief minister.

The relationship, however, turned sour and BSP withdrew support.

Mayawati went on to form a government with the help of the BJP in 1995.

Faced with the worst political scenario with even Mayawati not in a position to get re-elected to the Rajya Sabha when her present term expires in April next year, the

RJD president has already announced that he was ready to send her to the Upper House of Parliament to secure her political future.
The United Kingdom votes on June 8.

A quick guide to the post terror election.

IMAGE: Puppets of Conservative Party leader Theresa May and Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. Photograph: Neil Hall/Reuters

Why we should follow the British election

Well, because of Brexit! That is, Britain's historic exit from the European Union last June.

Regardless of who wins the election, the United Kingdom's divorce from the EU is now down in the history books as an unstoppable event.

The outcome of the election will not change that since both the Labour and Conservative parties have promised to see the will of the British people implemented.

But each party will go about Brexit with different game plans.

How the UK and EU will take Brexit forward will affect immigration, currency, finance, security and trade, not just in Europe, but throughout the world, even our corner of the planet.

India does a lot of business with Britain. We can see that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will continue to have an amiable equation with incumbent Prime Minister Theresa May.

Will he jive with Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn? Hmmmm, we are not sure about that...

IMAGE: After the London and Manchester attacks, terrorism is now the leading issue in Britain's general election.

Jeremy Corbyn, left, and Theresa May, seen here at a public engagement. Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters

Who the lead characters in this race are

Prime Minister Theresa May called a snap general election -- the first time such an election was called since 1974 when Edward Heath, another Conservative leader, did so.

Ted Heath lost that election. But May could win her gamble even though her party's once huge lead in the polls has shrunk since she called the election.

An election was not due till 2020. The unexpected June 24, 2016 result of the Brexit referendum led to several consequences.

David Cameron, the prime minister who announced the Brexit vote to vanquish the challenge the UK Independence Party posed to the Conservatives, resigned.

The ensuing leadership election was seen as a likely win for Boris Johnson, Cameron's flamboyant rival.

But Boris -- who as London's mayor hosted the successful 2012 Olympics -- was shocked into abruptly pulling out of the race when Michael Gove, his ally, betrayed him and announced his own candidature.

Gove was thumped in the Conservative leadership election by Theresa May, then Britain's home secretary, who quickly went on to become prime minister.

May's decision to call a snap poll was based on her growing popularity as prime minister and her almost Thatcherite determination to win a mandate for herself (the 2016 mandate was for David Cameron's very different brand of Conservative politics) and have her way on navigating the direction of Britain's Brexit politics.

A snap poll, by the way, is what we like to call a mid-term election.

Each of Britain's 650 parliamentary constituencies -- each with a population roughly between 56,000 people (Wales) and 72,000 (England) -- will vote on Thursday.

May's rival is Jeremy Corbyn, the crusty long-serving MP who won leadership of the Labour party against all odds when Ed Miliband stepped down after Labour lost the 2016 election.

The third party in the reckoning is the Scottish National Party, helmed by Nicola Sturgeon, which wants independence for Scotland.

Great Britain consists of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

May's advantages:

She represents strong, straightforward, leadership. She is not Maggie T yet, but clearly she is in that no nonsense, toughie mould.

The Tories probably have a better handle on Brexit, the economy, trade and foreign policy.

May seems to have a clear vision, offers stability and much-needed security for Britain, and has most of her party behind her (unlike poor Corbyn who has battled party rebels throughout his tenure).

Her middle-class background and vicar's daughter lineage -- by the way, she was introduced to her husband Philip by Benazir Bhutto when the three of them were at Oxford; she is also a big fan of cricket and adores Geoff Boycott -- suggests that she can get through to sections of the British people usually allergic to the Tories.

Corbyn's advantages:

After the three terrorist attacks, May's role in cutting back on the police force when she was home secretary has put her in an awkward spot. Also, that the attacks occurred on her watch will clearly be an issue.

Corbyn's immigration policies are kinder than May's hard-nose approach.

Labour will do better with voters for its charter on boosting the National Health Service, housing, social care and education.

The NHS and social care are important issues for a graying population.

The 8 billion May has promised in the Tory manifesto for the NHS is said to be woefully short of what it needs.

The NHS and social care are important issues for a graying population. The 8 billion May has promised in the Tory manifesto for the NHS is said to be woefully short of what it needs. Corbyn may not raise taxes the way the Tories will. And his progressive tax policies are admired.

Britons seem to have warmed to his grumpy persona in recent months, and his rise in the opinion polls indicates that Thursday night's result won't be the expected cakewalk for May and the Tories.

IMAGE: A woman wearing Jeremy Corbyn tights at a Birmingham election rally is a good indicator on how far the initially much mocked Labour leader has traveled in the affections of the British people. Photograph: Darren Staples/Reuters

Will the three almost back-to-back terror attacks -- London, Manchester and again London -- in the last three months have an effect on the election?

Terror attacks could play either way in an election.

While older voters may like May and the Conservatives' stand on national security and cautious immigration, youngers voters could find fault with the prime minister for eliminating 20,000 police officers' jobs when she was home secretary.

What works in May's favour is Corbyn's rather muddled plan (that is, if he has one) to quell terrorism.

Unlike Tony Blair, who ended Labour's long stay in political Siberia by winning the 1997 general election, the current Labour leader is no hardliner on national security.

Clearly, terrorism and the challenge posed by young Islamists embedded in Britain's social framework will be a deep concern for anyone who wants to lead Britain in the next five years or more.

And the fact that May as home secretary has prior experience of dealing with such problems may finally tilt the vote on terror her way.

IMAGE: Theresa May visits a bakery on the campaign trail, June 6, Fleetwood, Lancashire. Photograph: Ben Stansall/Reuters

What if May loses?

In the unlikely event that May and the Tories lose, it certainly does not mean that Brexit will not happen or that Britain will be continue to stay in the European Union.

Brexit reversal would require a fresh national referendum, which is unlikely given the present security situation.

Is a Conservative loss possible?

Till a week or so ago, pundits predicted a big win for May and her party.

But a week -- as Harold Wilson, one of May's predecessors as prime minister, once said -- is a long time in politics.

Especially when three terrorists came trampling through that week, inflicting murderous mayhem and transforming the election campaign.

In that time Labour has closed in, and the gap between the two parties is not as large as it was three months ago.

Predictions for a hung House of Commons are swirling about.

If that happens, May would have to step down -- since she called the snap election -- and Boris Johnson may get his big chance to achieve his dream of being prime minister.

And if May wins?

The new Iron Lady from Oxfordshire won't have much time to celebrate.

Brexit negotiations will be on hardly 11 days later.

No champagne parties either as Britain mourns its dead.

And national security will dominate her time more than anything else in the weeks and months to come.
United States President Donald Trump on Wednesday said he plans to nominate former assistant attorney general Christopher Wray as the new Federal Bureau of Investigation Director, a day before a crucial testimony by the intelligence agency chief he abruptly fired.

"I will be nominating Christopher A Wray, a man of impeccable credentials, to be the new Director of the FBI. Details to follow," Trump tweeted.

The announcement comes ahead of former Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey's testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on the circumstances that he was fired by Trump amid the ongoing probe into alleged Russian meddling into the US election last November.

Wray would replace Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, who took over when Comey was fired in May.

FBI directors are generally appointed to 10-year terms so they can avoid political interference.

Wray's appointment would still have to be confirmed by the Senate.

Wray, 50, is a litigation attorney with law firm King & Spalding in Washington and Atlanta.

He previously served as the Assistant Attorney General in charge of Criminal Division of the Justice Department from 2003 to 2005.

During his time at Justice Department, Wray became known for overseeing the Enron prosecution task force and playing a major role in the department's post-9/11 response.

"Mr. Wray is a safe, mainstream pick from a president who at one point was considering politicians for a job that has historically been kept outside of politics," the New York Times said.

Wray, a former assistant attorney general overseeing the criminal division under President George W. Bush, is likely to allay the fears of FBI agents who worried that Mr. Trump would try to weaken or politicise the FBI," the paper commented.

The timing could also be aimed at blunting the impact of Comey's testimony before the Senate intelligence committee on Thursday. Comey is expected to refute Trump's claim that he told the President directly he was not under investigation and is also set to describe interactions with Trump that made him uneasy, CNN reported.

"Wray as FBI head would be stepping into a maelstrom, with the ongoing Russia investigations swirling overhead, as the bureau also attempts to continue anti-terror operations and finding the sources of persistent government leaks, Fox News noted.

Photograph: Molly Riley/Reuters
Reediana

The Lucky Ones

By Julianne Pachico 08 (Spiegel & Grau, 2017)

Reviewed by Megan Labrise 04

Julianne Pachicos The Lucky Ones is an incandescent exploration of Colombias legacy of violence. The critically acclaimed literary fiction debut spans two decades in the lives of a group of girls who attend a prestigious international private school in Cali, Colombia, and grows to encompass the narratives of attendant personnel: their parents, their teachers, their maids, their pets.

In 1993, the girls are elementary schoolers catching colorful candies that rain down at an especially wealthy classmates country party. These bright girls are in many ways insulated from the war waging between the government and guerrillas (FARC, ELN), paramilitaries, and crime syndicates. Yet theyre old enough to retain some brutal facts.

Later, filling her tray with french fries, Mariela says that she doesnt care that Katrinas father was killed by the Americans, Pachico writes in Siberian Tiger Park. No, she isnt sorry one bit. Men like him deserve it. Wait, you didnt know about him? Oh, everybody knew. Are you saying you didnt know? He got gunned down by the CIA, just like Escobar, running for his life on the rooftop.

Pachico was raised in Cali by agricultural social scientist parents working in international developmentone British, one American. This rarefied upbringing became the basis for The Lucky Ones, a book with a dual identity: In the United States, its being marketed as a novel (Spiegel & Grau). In the United Kingdom, its sold as a short story collection (Faber & Faber).

Regardless of your side of the divide, each of the books 11 chapters ably functions as a stand-alone storyas did Honey Bunny, the fiction pick in the November 9, 2015, issue of The New Yorker.

By 2008, Pachicos girls are college ageincluding the one they called La Flaca, who left Cali for the U.S. in third grade on account of rich relations. In Honey Bunny, she is a far-removed fashion student with a cocaine addiction, mistaken for a gringo girl from Columbia (University) in social settings. She seeks the salve of validation from her drug dealer:

Paco is Guatemalan, Pachico writes, so every once in a while when speaking to him shell slyly throw in the odd Spanish word or two, a curse word or even a dicho, just to show that, yeah, okay, shes lived in New York for what, fifteen years now, but she still knows how to conjugate verbs, knows which nouns are feminine versus masculine.

She may know nouns, but she doesnt know what happened to her classmates, she doesnt remember their names; nor does she remember the name of the street she used to live on. She searches for answers in artifacts from her former life (an orange suitcase, a geography puzzle, stuffed animals) and on the internet.

The statistic for forced disappearances is estimated at over fifty thousandno, sixty thousandsome articles say over seventy thousand, Pachico writes. It makes her think of fables the maids used to tell her: the paisa farmer who went to heaven, la patasola and la llorona. Ghosts who would come knocking on your door, ringing on your bell, long dead souls with scarred faces, wandering the country with no name and no past.

While menace and mystery refract through its characters parallel lives, The Lucky Ones ultimately proves hopefulin addition to haunting.
May 24 was a noteworthy day in Iowa history. It was on May 24, 2017, that Terry Branstad concluded his record-setting tenure as governor and Kim Reynolds succeeded him, becoming the first woman to hold the office.

Someday, someone might top Branstad's national record of more than 22 years (1983-99 and 2011-17) as a governor. However, barring George Clinton coming back from his 19th century grave to win election in New York, Branstad will retain his record for many years to come.

Branstad never lost an election. He won for the Iowa House twice, lieutenant governor once and governor six times. But that is not to say it was always smooth sailing. He constantly faced political opposition and criticism, occasionally from this editorial space. However, though they disagreed with him politically, few critics could fail to credit him for his work ethic, his public accessibility and his deep love for and commitment to Iowa.

We congratulate Branstad and wish him well as he embarks on what might well be the 70-year-old's last stint of public service: U.S. ambassador to China.

When Reynolds ascended to the governorship  or, as the attorney general explained, had the duties of governor devolve onto her  it marked the day Iowa first had a woman governor. (Illinois and Wisconsin have yet to have that occurrence.)

She is prepared for the job. When Branstad picked her as his 2010 running mate, he committed to making her a full partner of his administration. That was a contrast from many states and many administrations (even in Iowa), where the lieutenant governor's role seemed to be staying out of the governor's way and certainly out of the limelight. (There were periods when those two officeholders came from opposing political parties, so lack of involvement was a given).

Now, after six years as Branstad's understudy, the job is hers. In 2018, Iowa voters will decide whether the first woman to serve as Iowa governor will be the first woman elected governor. She is expected to seek election to the office in her own right.

Even with the Legislature adjourned until January, Reynolds' "honeymoon" period will be brief. Ongoing and complicated challenges still face the state. From sagging state revenues to Iowa's sad state of water quality to failures in state oversight of child welfare, there is much on her plate.

It's a historic accomplishment to be the first woman to serve as governor of Iowa. Now Gov. Kim Reynolds must chart her own course and strive to be the first woman to lead Iowa.

This editorial appeared in the June 1 edition of the Dubuque Telegraph Herald.
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.
Critical gaps in Lebanon and Jordan spell looming destitution and despair for Syrian refugee families

Publisher UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Publication Date 6 June 2017 Cite as UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Critical gaps in Lebanon and Jordan spell looming destitution and despair for Syrian refugee families, 6 June 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5937b01e4.html [accessed 10 November 2022]

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, warns that without urgent additional funding, some 60,000 Syrian refugee families will be cut from monthly cash assistance programmes in Lebanon and Jordan as early as July.

Vital parts of UNHCR's response to the needs of Syrian refugees are critically underfunded. Additional contributions are urgently required to avoid dramatic and deep cuts to both basic and life-saving services to Syrian refugees in the second half of the year.

Despite generous pledges, humanitarian programmes in support of Syrian refugee and communities hosting them are quickly running out of resources. The situation is most dramatic in Lebanon and Jordan where a number of direct cash assistance activities could dry up in less than four weeks.

Syrian refugees in Lebanon - 70 per cent of whom are living under the national poverty line - say that without this lifeline, they don't know how they will manage to survive. For many, cash assistance is the only means of buying medicine for sick family members and paying off their bills and fast-accumulating debts. Refugees tell UNHCR that every month they struggle to pay their rent and face the threat of eviction.

Those who fled to Jordan face equally stark challenges. Refugees tell our staff that UNHCR monthly cash support means a meal a day, a better roof, their dignity. Now they fear losing everything. Many say would prefer to go back to Syria to die if they stop receiving this assistance. For every third family in the cash assistance programme in Jordan this is their sole source of income, making them particularly vulnerable to any cuts.

UNHCR scaled up and pioneered new approaches in delivery of cash assistance programmes in 2011 to assist massive number of Syrian refugees in the neighbouring middle-income countries. Well-established infrastructure and services meant that UNHCR could work with banks to deliver cash to refugees, reducing overheads and fraud, and giving a choice to refugees to buy what they needed, avoiding the stigma of distribution queues. They allow vulnerable families to cope with hardships of displacement and help them to restore their dignity. They have been key in helping refugee families to avoid destitution, exploitation or abuse and to evade resorting to child labour, early marriages, survival sex or other negative coping practices.

In Lebanon, where UNHCR urgently needs USD 116 million, direct cash assistance programmes for refugees will be affected first. These include a lifeline multi-purpose cash for 30,000 Syrian refugee families, a winter cash assistance for two months for another 174,000 families and protection cash assistance for 1,500 refugee households to help them overcome periods of hardship. The funding gap also jeopardises 65,000 life-saving secondary health care interventions and support to UNHCR's and the Lebanese Authorities' capacity to issue and renew documentation for refugees, following a recent decision to waive the residency renewal fees which most refugees could not afford.

Meanwhile in Jordan, we urgently require USD 71 million to provide monthly cash assistance for 30,000 Syrian refugee families, support to the estimated 60,000 Syrians stranded at the Syria-Jordan border, secure 115,000 primary health consultations and 12,000 referrals to secondary health care services for refugees in camps and urban areas as well as to ensure timely support this winter for 35,000 Syrians.

More than five million Syrians live as refugees in neighbouring countries. This makes Syrians the largest refugee group in the world. Another 6.3 million are displaced inside Syria.

Mid-way through this year, the 2017 inter-agency appeal (USD 4.6 billion) to meet the immediate humanitarian needs of Syrian refugees across the Middle East and North Africa is only 18 per cent funded. Given the challenges of responding to humanitarian needs at such a scale and across the entire region, early and adequate contributions are vital to ensure timely and planned delivery of refugee protection and aid programmes.
#FreeMathias Support committee for French photographer held in Turkey

Publisher Reporters Without Borders Publication Date 2 June 2017 Cite as Reporters Without Borders, #FreeMathias Support committee for French photographer held in Turkey, 2 June 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5937b5234.html [accessed 10 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.

Colleagues and friends of Mathias Depardon, a French freelance photojournalist detained in Turkey since 8 May, announce the creation of a support committee coordinated by Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

The committee, in which France's Syndicat National des Journalistes (National Union of Journalists) is participating, was launched at meeting held at RSF headquarter in Paris on 29 May to decide the first steps to be taken.

The campaign on behalf of Depardon already bore initial fruit when French President Emmanuel Macron raised the issue of Depardon's detention during a meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on 25 May.

The committee's goal is to mobilize the public and get political leaders to take whatever action is necessary to ensure that the Turkish authorities release Depardon, who should not have been arrested in the first place.

"The creation of this support committee will allow us to step up the campaign if that becomes necessary, that is to say, if the Turkish authorities do not release Mathias Depardon in the next few hours," RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said.

"With the goodwill and commitment of Mathias's colleagues and friends, we will soon take some initiatives, including displaying banners on public buildings and launching a petition and an online campaign."

Liberation managing editor Laurent Joffrin, the support committee's spokesman, said: "Mathias Depardon will soon have been held in Turkey for a month. Despite the announcement of his deportation and the involvement of the highest government levels, nothing has happened. His ordeal has lasted too long. We must pursue and step up our campaign in order to force the Turkish authorities to end this Kafkaesque situation at once."

Based in Turkey for the past five years, Depardon was arrested on 8 May while reporting in the southeast of the country for National Geographic magazine. Although an order for his deportation was issued on 11 May, he is still being held at a detention centre in Gaziantep, a city near the Syrian border.

RSF, two other media freedom organizations and 19 media outlets sent a joint letter to Turkish interior minister Suleyman Soylu on 19 May calling for Depardon's immediate release.

Turkey is ranked 155th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2017 World Press Freedom Index.
China: still world's biggest prison for journalists and citizen-journalists

Publisher Reporters Without Borders Publication Date 2 June 2017 Cite as Reporters Without Borders, China: still world's biggest prison for journalists and citizen-journalists, 2 June 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5937b5594.html [accessed 10 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.

Twenty-eight years after the ruthless crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square on 4 June 1989, China's prisons currently hold more than 100 journalists, citizen-journalists and bloggers, including a Nobel peace laureate and three winners of the Reporters Without Borders (RSF)-TV5 Monde Press Freedom Prize.

Although the famous video of the Tank Man, an icon of the "Chinese Spring," is now 28 years old, it has yet to be broadcast on Chinese TV. Nearly three decades after a crackdown that almost certainly left more than 1,000 dead, the Chinese regime continues to keep a tight lid on free speech and the freedom to inform.

Nobel peace laureate Liu Xiaobo and RSF-TV5 Monde laureates Huang Qi, Lu Yuyu and Li Tingyu are among those currently in prison in China, which is ranked 176th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2017 World Press Freedom Index, surpassed only by Turkmenistan, Eritrea and North Korea in authoritarianism.

Nobel laureate behind bars

A writer and human rights activist, Liu Xiaobo was one of the leaders of the Tiananmen demonstrations, during which he went on hunger strike. He is now the world's only Nobel peace laureate to be in prison. To the international community's apparent indifference, he has been serving an 11-year jail term since 2009 for voicing a desire for democracy in an online manifesto called "Charter 08."

Liu previously spent more than 18 months in detention and another three years doing forced labour. His wife, Liu Xia, has been under house arrest since October 2010 and is constantly harassed by the authorities although she has not been convicted by any court.

"The constitution of the People's Republic of China clearly states that its citizens enjoy freedom of speech and freedom of the press, that every citizen has the right to criticize Party officials and to expose their misdeeds, and that no one has the right to suppress this kind of information," said Cedric Alviani, the director of RSF's newly opened East Asia bureau in Taipei. "Reporters Without Borders calls for the immediate release of all imprisoned journalists, citizen-journalists and bloggers, and calls on the international community to maintain the pressure on Beijing."

Website founders behind bars

Huang Qi created 64tianwang, the first Chinese website to document human right violations in China. The figure 64 refers to the 4 June, the date of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Huang, who was awarded RSF's Press Freedom Prize in the "Cyber-Dissident" category in 2004, has been in prison since last autumn. He was previously detained from 2000 to 2005 and from 2009 to 2012 because of what he published about the Tiananmen Square crackdown.

Huang was arrested by the police in October 2016, at the same time as Liu Feiyue, the founder of the Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch website.

A few weeks before their arrests, police abducted five women citizen-journalists working for 64tianwang during the G20 summit. And in April of last year, Wang Jing, a woman freelance journalist who did reporting for 64tianwang, was sentenced to four years and ten months in prison on a charge of "picking quarrels and causing trouble."

Denied treatment abroad

Gao Yu, 73, a well-known journalist who was Deutsche Welle's correspondent, is still under house arrest. Awarded the Plume d'Or de la Liberte in 1995 and UNESCO's Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize in 1997, she was arrested in April 2014 for sending supposedly confidential documents to a foreign media outlet. She reappeared two weeks later on state-owned China Central Television (CCTV) in the process of "confessing her crimes" to a police officer, a practice that harks back to Mao Zedong's China.

At her trial in November 2014, at which she received at five-year jail term, Gao revealed that the police had threatened reprisals against her son if she did not confess. Because of serious health problems, she has been allowed to serve her sentence at home but not to seek medical attention abroad. The authorities continue to subject her and her family to constant harassment.

Bloggers increasingly targeted

China has seen a marked decline in respect for freedoms since Xi Jinping took over as president in late 2012, with the result that Xi has been added to RSF's lists of "press freedom predators" and

"enemies of the Internet" Professional journalists are now formally required to "guide public opinion" following the "official party line." This has increased the importance of online citizen-journalists and bloggers, and the resulting level of harassment to which they are subjected.

Hu Jia, a blogger who was jailed from 2007 to 2011 and was awarded the Sakharov Prize in 2008, has been one of the victims of the increased persecution. Although subject to constant police surveillance, he was badly beaten by unidentified men as he returned home on 16 July 2014.

He said at the time he thought the attack was prompted by an online campaign to mark the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. His health, already badly affected by his years in prison, is now much worse because he suffering from liver cirrhosis and is currently in a critical condition in Beijing hospital.

Gagging "citizen-journalism"

In another example of the increased persecution, citizen-journalists Lu Yuyu and Li Tingyu were abducted by the police in June 2016 while documenting worker protests. The latest case is that of Wu Bin, a blogger known for his comments on Twitter who was finally arrested in the southern city of Shenzhen after years of harassment by the authorities.

Things are unlikely to improve any time soon. A new regulation that took effect on 1 June threatens the very existence of citizen-journalism by imposing prior registration as a requirement for anyone posting content online. The new rule, which could in theory apply to any online comment or video, is designed to intimidate China's online citizen-journalists and will probably persuade them to censor themselves even more.
Somaliland reporter held for asking a question

Publisher Reporters Without Borders Publication Date 6 June 2017 Cite as Reporters Without Borders, Somaliland reporter held for asking a question, 6 June 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5937b7974.html [accessed 10 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.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns the continuing detention of a journalist who was arrested on 24 May after asking a question at a press conference in Hargeisa, the capital of the self-proclaimed Republic of Somaliland, and urges the Somaliland authorities to free him at once and to respect the freedom to inform.

Mohamed Adan Dirir, a reporter for the Horseed Media news website, was arrested after putting an embarrassing question to health minister Saleban Isee during a press conference. He has been arbitrarily held ever since at the Criminal Investigation Department in Hargeisa.

According to article 27 of the constitution of Somaliland, which occupies the northwestern part of Somalia, the authorities cannot hold anyone for more than 48 hours without taking them before a judge.

Somalia is ranked 167th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2017 World Press Freedom Index..
Pakistani government targets country's oldest newspaper

Publisher Reporters Without Borders Publication Date 6 June 2017 Cite as Reporters Without Borders, Pakistani government targets country's oldest newspaper, 6 June 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5937b8934.html [accessed 10 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.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is opposed to any sanctions by the Pakistani authorities against the Dawn newspaper and two of its journalists, and is disturbed by government plans for a "code of conduct" for the print media.

In a 10 May statement, the government confirmed that disciplinary measures could be taken against Dawn editor Zaffar Abbas and reporter Cyril Almeida over the so- called "Dawn Leaks" affair, an explosive story published in October 2016 based on leaks from within the government.





The prime minister's office said in a statement that the story "had no relevance to actual discussion and facts." But the army insisted on the creation of a commission of enquiry with the aim of punishing those who had leaked classified information. Several government officials were removed as a result.





Dawn is Pakistan's oldest newspaper and enjoys a great deal of credibility with the country's journalist community, readers and civil society.





In an editor's note defending the story, Abbas wrote: "First, this newspaper considers it a sacred oath to its readers to pursue its reporting fairly, independently and, above all, accurately. The story that has been rejected by prime minister's office as a fabrication was verified, cross-checked and fact-checked."





In a bid to exploit the case and make an example out of Dawn, the government has also now announced that it also wants to establish a "code of conduct" for the entire print media.





"This attempt by the civilian authorities and the military to punish journalists is very disturbing," RSF editor-in- chief Virginie Dangles said. "The authorities must abandon the disciplinary measures and the creation of a 'code of conduct' for the print media, which would set a dangerous precedent and make the environment for journalists in Pakistan even more hostile."





Four bloggers were recently released by the authorities after going missing in January. Pakistan is ranked 139th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2017 World Press Freedom Index.


Received on behalf of Radio Erena by Fathi Osman, the special award has been given annually since 1988 to independent journalists covering politics, social issues or local culture in their own country, usually developing countries like Eritrea.





"It is great to have the award," Osman said. "I feel really great because honouring Radio Erena is an honour for the voiceless and the journalists behind bars in Eritrea. It is a special day for Eritrean media."





In Paris, Radio Erena journalist Amanuel Ghirmai said: "On this occasion, I felt Radio Erena's voice won over 'the fear,' which is the Eritrean government's preferred instrument for silencing its citizens. I am so proud of Radio Erena's team for their fight to expose the realities in Eritrea and at the same time remain independent. I hope, one day Radio Erena will be able to broadcast from Asmara."









Sole independent exile radio





There is no independent media outlet within Eritrea that covers what life is like for Eritreans and the political and social conditions in their country. Radio Erena is a unique entity that links Eritrean exiles and Eritrea, covering not only diaspora issues but also Eritrea's history, what is happening there now and international developments.





Both Eritreans in Eritrea and the Eritrean diaspora worldwide can listen to hear Radio Erena's impartial and professional news coverage. Broadcasting from Paris in Tigrinya and Arabic  the country's two national languages  it is recognized by its people as the most reliable Eritrean radio station.





Its creation realized the dream of Biniam Simon, a well-known journalist with Eritrea's state-owned national broadcaster Eri TV who fled Eritrea and arrived in France in 2007. He wanted to be able to exercise his profession freely and provide fellow Eritreans with independently reported news. Thanks to his perseverance and RSF's support, he was finally able to launch Radio Erena (which means "Our Eritrea" in Tigrinya) in Paris in 2009.





Radio Erena's reporting is produced by a team of four professional journalists based in Paris and a dozen correspondents throughout the world. Far from being an opposition mouthpiece, like other Eritrean exile radio stations, Radio Erena is committed to balanced news coverage.





But this has not stopped the regime from turning Radio Erena into a target of its propaganda and disinformation campaigns. The attacks on the radio station in 2012 (when its website was hacked and its satellite signal was jammed by a pirate transmission from within Eritrea) and the frequent attempts from within Eritrea to jam its shortwave signal, are all evidence of Radio Erena's importance.





According to RSF's tally, at least 15 journalists are currently detained in Eritrea, which means that President Isaias Afewerki's dictatorship is Africa's biggest prison for media personnel. Those held include Dawit Isaak, who was aw rded UNESCO's World Press Freedom Prize in March.





As a result of the terrible repression that began in 2001, thousands of Eritreans including dozens of journalists have had no choice but to flee their country. RSF tries to follow the cases of as many of the exile journalists as possible. Its support for Radio Erena is designed to combat the outside's world tendency to forget this country and his population, of whom little account is taken by international institutions.





Eritrean is ranked second from last (179th out of 180 countries) in RSF's 2017 World Press Freedom Index.
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Received on behalf of Radio Erena by Fathi Osman, the special award has been given annually since 1988 to independent journalists covering politics, social issues or local culture in their own country, usually developing countries like Eritrea.





"It is great to have the award," Osman said. "I feel really great because honouring Radio Erena is an honour for the voiceless and the journalists behind bars in Eritrea. It is a special day for Eritrean media."





In Paris, Radio Erena journalist Amanuel Ghirmai said: "On this occasion, I felt Radio Erena's voice won over 'the fear,' which is the Eritrean government's preferred instrument for silencing its citizens. I am so proud of Radio Erena's team for their fight to expose the realities in Eritrea and at the same time remain independent. I hope, one day Radio Erena will be able to broadcast from Asmara."









Sole independent exile radio





There is no independent media outlet within Eritrea that covers what life is like for Eritreans and the political and social conditions in their country. Radio Erena is a unique entity that links Eritrean exiles and Eritrea, covering not only diaspora issues but also Eritrea's history, what is happening there now and international developments.





Both Eritreans in Eritrea and the Eritrean diaspora worldwide can listen to hear Radio Erena's impartial and professional news coverage. Broadcasting from Paris in Tigrinya and Arabic  the country's two national languages  it is recognized by its people as the most reliable Eritrean radio station.





Its creation realized the dream of Biniam Simon, a well-known journalist with Eritrea's state-owned national broadcaster Eri TV who fled Eritrea and arrived in France in 2007. He wanted to be able to exercise his profession freely and provide fellow Eritreans with independently reported news. Thanks to his perseverance and RSF's support, he was finally able to launch Radio Erena (which means "Our Eritrea" in Tigrinya) in Paris in 2009.





Radio Erena's reporting is produced by a team of four professional journalists based in Paris and a dozen correspondents throughout the world. Far from being an opposition mouthpiece, like other Eritrean exile radio stations, Radio Erena is committed to balanced news coverage.





But this has not stopped the regime from turning Radio Erena into a target of its propaganda and disinformation campaigns. The attacks on the radio station in 2012 (when its website was hacked and its satellite signal was jammed by a pirate transmission from within Eritrea) and the frequent attempts from within Eritrea to jam its shortwave signal, are all evidence of Radio Erena's importance.





According to RSF's tally, at least 15 journalists are currently detained in Eritrea, which means that President Isaias Afewerki's dictatorship is Africa's biggest prison for media personnel. Those held include Dawit Isaak, who was aw rded UNESCO's World Press Freedom Prize in March.





As a result of the terrible repression that began in 2001, thousands of Eritreans including dozens of journalists have had no choice but to flee their country. RSF tries to follow the cases of as many of the exile journalists as possible. Its support for Radio Erena is designed to combat the outside's world tendency to forget this country and his population, of whom little account is taken by international institutions.





Eritrean is ranked second from last (179th out of 180 countries) in RSF's 2017 World Press Freedom Index.

Copyright notice:  Copyright Amnesty International
States must ban Israeli settlement products to help end half a century of violations

Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 7 June 2017 Cite as Amnesty International, States must ban Israeli settlement products to help end half a century of violations, 7 June 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5937bab54.html [accessed 10 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

The international community must ban the import of all goods produced in illegal Israeli settlements and put an end to the multimillion dollar profits that have fuelled mass human rights violations against Palestinians, said Amnesty International today.

To mark the 50th anniversary of Israel's occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, the organization is launching a new campaign calling on states across the world to prohibit settlement goods from their markets and to prevent their companies from operating in settlements or trading in settlement goods.

"For decades, the world has stood by as Israel has destroyed Palestinians' homes and plundered their land and natural resources for profit. While the Palestinian economy has been stunted by 50 years of abusive policies, a thriving multimillion dollar settlement enterprise has been built out of the systematic oppression of the Palestinian population," said Salil Shetty, Secretary General of Amnesty International.

"Fifty years on, merely condemning Israel's settlement expansion is not enough. It's time for states to take concrete international action to stop the financing of settlements which themselves flagrantly violate international law and constitute war crimes."

Hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of goods produced in Israeli settlements built on occupied Palestinian land are exported internationally each year, despite the fact that the vast majority of states have officially condemned the settlements as illegal under international law. Over the years, Israeli and international businesses have also enabled and facilitated settlement construction and expansion.

Israel's policy of settling Israeli civilians on occupied Palestinian land has led to a myriad of human rights violations. Tens of thousands of Palestinian homes and properties have been demolished by Israel and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been forcibly displaced; many families were pushed out of their homes or land to clear areas for settlement construction. At least 100,000 hectares of Palestinian land have been appropriated for exclusive settlement use.

Israel has also unlawfully seized control of Palestinian natural resources, such as water, fertile land, stone quarries and minerals, and diverted these to benefit settlement industries to produce agricultural products, construction materials and manufactured goods that are often exported abroad. At the same time, Israel has imposed arbitrary restrictions depriving Palestinians of access to and use of their own water, land and other resources, restricting their economic development and violating their economic and social rights.

Across the West Bank, settlement infrastructure, including "settler-only" roads, have divided Palestinian towns and villages and have severely limited the ability of Palestinians to move around freely. Israel has also maintained an illegal air, sea and land blockade of the Gaza Strip for nearly 10 years, locking two million people into an area just under half the size of New York City.

"One of the tragedies of 50 years of ceaseless occupation-related violations is that the world has become accustomed to the shocking level of oppression and humiliation that Palestinians face in their daily lives in the occupied territories," said Salil Shetty.

"But how can states continue to allow financial backing to an inherently cruel, discriminatory and criminal settlement policy that enables Israeli settlers to live on stolen land in homes with irrigated lawns and swimming pools, while Palestinian communities on their doorstep are deprived of access to enough clean water or electricity to cover their basic needs?"

All states have a clear obligation to ensure respect for international humanitarian law. They must also not recognize or assist in any manner the illegal situation that Israel's settlement policy has created and, in fact, they should use their influence to stop such violations.

"States that continue to help settlements flourish economically are blatantly undermining their international obligations and the very policies they have pledged to uphold. It is a state's duty under international law to ensure that their actions and those of their nationals do not recognize or aid illegal situations or acts," said Salil Shetty.

"By banning settlement goods and putting in place laws and regulations that stop companies from operating in Israeli settlements, governments worldwide have an opportunity to make a real difference to the lives of millions of Palestinians who have endured decades of injustice, indignity and discrimination."

Over decades, multiple UN resolutions have confirmed that Israeli settlements violate international law. Most recently, a UN Security Council resolution was passed in December 2016 calling on Israel to cease all settlement activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The resolution also called on all states to distinguish in all their dealings between the state of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967.

Despite this, Israel has accelerated its expansion and support of settlements in recent months, announcing plans for thousands of new homes in existing settlements, as well as plans to build thousands more homes in two new settlements in the occupied West Bank.

"Israel has made it abundantly clear that maintaining and expanding settlements takes priority over respect for international law. It's time for the world to send a clear message that it will no longer tolerate the Israeli authorities' blatant disregard for international law," said Salil Shetty.

Since the occupation first began in 1967, Israel has consolidated its repressive military rule of the Occupied Palestinian Territories through thousands of military orders. Many of them criminalize peaceful activities and place excessive restrictions on Palestinians, disrupting their daily lives.

Military orders have also been used to provide cover for widespread violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, including the extensive appropriation of property and natural resources, the demolition of homes and businesses, arbitrary arrest and unlawful detention of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, and the collective punishment of millions of Palestinians. There have also been scores of unlawful killings of Palestinians at the hands of Israeli forces over the years.

"It is utterly shocking that, since the occupation began 50 years ago, there has been virtually total impunity for the decades of war crimes, crimes against humanity and human right violations committed in the Occupied Palestinian Territories," said Salil Shetty.

"The world has seen the terrible toll of 50 years of ignoring gross violations and the relentless spread of illegal settlements. That's why it's crucial for states to take effective steps to end and redress these violations.

"They should start by imposing an international ban on settlement products, a comprehensive arms embargo on Israel and Palestinian armed groups and bring an end to impunity for decades of crimes, including through genuine investigations by the International Criminal Court. Palestinians must not be condemned to endure a further half century of oppression and injustice."

Copyright notice:  Copyright Amnesty International
Chair of Amnesty International Turkey swept up in post-coup purge

Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 6 June 2017 Cite as Amnesty International, Chair of Amnesty International Turkey swept up in post-coup purge, 6 June 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5937bb2b4.html [accessed 10 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 news that Taner Kilic, the Chair of Amnesty International Turkey, was today detained by police along with 22 other lawyers in Izmir on suspicion of having links with the Fethullah Gulen movement, Salil Shetty, Amnesty International's Secretary General, said:

"The fact that Turkey's post-coup purge has now dragged the Chair of Amnesty International Turkey into its web is further proof of just how far it has gone and just how arbitrary it has become. Taner Kilic has a long and distinguished record of defending exactly the kind of freedoms that the Turkish authorities are now intent on trampling.

"In the absence of credible and admissible evidence of their involvement in internationally recognized crimes, we are calling on the Turkish authorities to immediately release Taner Kilic along with the other 22 lawyers, and drop all charges against them."

Background

Taner Kilic has served on the board of Amnesty International Turkey for various periods since 2002 and has been Chair since 2014. During his decades of work for human rights organizations in Turkey he has consistently demonstrated an unswerving commitment to human rights.

Taner Kilic was detained from his house in Izmir at 6.30 this morning before being taken to his office. Both properties were searched. He is currently in police custody in Yesilyurt district of Izmir.

At present, Taner Kilic's detention does not seem to be connected to any of Amnesty International's work, nor to be specifically targeting the organization. The detention order refers to an investigation into suspected members of the "Fethullah Gulen Terrorist Organization". It is currently unclear why Taner Kilic is suspected of having these links.

Copyright notice:  Copyright Amnesty International
Dominican Republic: Horrifying killing of transgender woman highlights need for protection against discrimination

Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 6 June 2017 Cite as Amnesty International, Dominican Republic: Horrifying killing of transgender woman highlights need for protection against discrimination, 6 June 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5937bb904.html [accessed 10 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 horrifying killing of a transgender woman in the Dominican Republic - the second such killing this year and 38th since 2006 - highlights the extreme violence faced by many transgender women in the country and the need for strengthened legal protection for discriminated groups, said Amnesty International.

"The grotesque killing of Jessica Rubi Mori is a tragic reminder that the Dominican authorities need to take bolder steps to eradicate discrimination, including that based on gender identity and sexual orientation," said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas Director for Amnesty International.

The body of Jessica Rubi Mori (whose legal name was Elvis Guerrero) a transgender sex worker and activist with community organization Este Amor (This Love), was found on 3 June 2017 in the eastern Dominican municipality of Higuey. Her body was found dismembered in a wasteland. According to news reports one suspect has been placed under arrest.

According to Cristian King, Executive Director of TRANSSA - Trans Siempre Amigas (Trans Always Friends), only four people have so far been convicted for the 38 cases of killings of transgender women that the organization has documented since 2006. King told Amnesty International his organization has been working closely with the Human Rights Unit of the Office of the Attorney General on recent cases.

Several weeks ago, a 20-year-long sentence was given for the killing of another transgender woman, Kimberly Sody, in 2014.

Dominican LGBTI-led organizations have long called for a Gender Identity Law to protect the rights of transgender people. A proposal for an Anti-Discrimination Law was drafted last year seeking to address entrenched and historical discrimination affecting many groups in the country, in particular based on gender identity, sexual orientation, ethnicity, amongst other categories. The proposal is yet to be tabled in Parliament.

"The Dominican authorities must continue to work with civil society groups to bring effect to these proposals. This crime must be investigated independently and impartially. Authorities must take all steps to unmask any potentially discriminatory motive in the crime."

According to a study by the Caribbean Vulnerable Communities Coalition (CVC), published in 2012, in the Dominican Republic less than 35 percent of transgender women sex workers have completed secondary school. As they are pushed away from education, many become involved in transactional sex as early as 16. This early social exclusion leads to poverty and more violence. Transgender people are often pushed into criminalized work, such as sex work, which further exposes them to police abuse and arbitrary detentions.

The same study found that 80 percent of transgender sex workers felt they were more discriminated against for being trans than for being a sex worker. More than 35 percent of transgender sex workers had experienced physical violence walking on the street, more than 40 percent had suffered physical violence by clients, and more than 20 percent, physical violence by a partner. Eighty percent had been arrested or detained at least once, and 36 percent had exchanged sex with police officers to avoid being arrested.

Copyright notice:  Copyright Amnesty International
Saudi Arabia: 14 protesters facing execution after unfair trials

Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 6 June 2017 Cite as Amnesty International, Saudi Arabia: 14 protesters facing execution after unfair trials, 6 June 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5937bbc74.html [accessed 10 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.

Saudi Arabia should immediately quash the death sentences of 14 members of the Shia community for protest-related crimes, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said today. The Court of Appeal of the notorious Specialized Criminal Court upheld the sentences in May, after they were handed down a year ago on June 1, 2016 following a grossly unfair trial of 24 Saudi Shia citizens. The Specialized Criminal Court is Saudi Arabia's counter-terrorism tribunal.

"The rise in death sentences against Saudi Arabian Shia is alarming and suggests that the authorities are using the death penalty to settle scores and crush dissent under the guise of combating 'terrorism' and maintaining national security," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.

On May 25, the families of three of the defendants learned in a phone call that the Court of Appeal of the Specialized Criminal Court had upheld the death sentences against their relatives. The family members of another two defendants subsequently called the court, on May 28, and were informed that the sentences for their relatives and for the whole group of 14 had been upheld on appeal. The exact date of the appeal court's decision is unknown.

Court documents show that all defendants, including the 14 sentenced to death, were held in pre-trial detention for more than two years before their trial began. During that time most were in solitary confinement and Saudi Arabian authorities denied them access to their families and lawyers while they interrogated them.

Since 2013, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have recorded a worrying increase in death sentences against political dissidents in Saudi Arabia, including the Shia Muslim minority. The organizations are aware of at least 38 members of Saudi Arabia's Shia community - who make up 10 to 15 percent of the population -- currently sentenced to death. Saudi Arabian authorities accused these individuals of activities deemed a risk to national security and sentenced them to death after deeply flawed legal proceedings at the Specialized Criminal Court.

"The sham court proceedings that led to death sentences for 38 Shia men and boys brazenly flout international fair trial standards," said Lynn Maalouf, Director of Research at Amnesty International in the Middle East. "The sentences should immediately be quashed."

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch obtained the text of and analyzed 10 court judgments - involving 38 individuals - handed down by the Specialized Criminal Court between 2013 and 2016. Most were against men and children accused of protest-related crimes following mass demonstrations in 2011 and 2012 in Eastern Province towns where Shia Muslims form the majority.

In nearly all of the trial judgments analyzed, defendants retracted their "confessions," saying they were coerced in circumstances that in some cases amounted to torture, including beatings and prolonged solitary confinement. The court rejected all torture allegations without investigating the claims. Some defendants asked the judges to request video footage from the prison that they said would show them being tortured. Others asked the court to summon interrogators as witnesses to describe how the "confessions" were obtained. In all cases judges ignored these requests.

The judges admitted the "confessions" as evidence, and then convicted the detainees almost solely based on these "confessions".

"Death sentences based on coerced "confessions" violate international human rights law and are a repugnant yet all-too-common outcome in security-related cases in Saudi Arabia," Lynn Maalouf said. "These death penalty trials fail to meet even the most basic requirements for due process."

On January 2, 2016, Saudi Arabia carried out a mass execution of 47 men for "terrorism offenses." Among those executed were Ali Sa'eed al-Ribh, whose trial judgment indicates that he was under 18 at the time of some of the crimes for which he was sentenced to death. As a state party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Saudi Arabia is legally obliged to ensure that no one under 18 at the time of a crime is sentenced to death or to life in prison without the possibility of release.

Those currently on death row include four Saudi Arabian nationals who were found guilty of offenses committed when they were teenagers -- Ali al-Nimr, Dawoud al-Marhoun, Abdullah al-Zaher, and Abdulkareem Al-Hawaj.

The January 2, 2016 executions also included a prominent Shia Muslim cleric, Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr, the uncle of Ali al-Nimr. Sheikh al-Nimr was a vocal critic of the government, and was convicted following a grossly unfair trial.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch oppose the death penalty in all cases without exception. The death penalty is the ultimate cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment and unique in its finality. It is inevitably and universally plagued with arbitrariness, prejudice, and error.

Pending full abolition of the death penalty, the Saudi Arabian authorities should immediately establish an official moratorium on executions, and remove any death penalty provisions that are in breach of international human rights law, such as provisions for its use against juvenile offenders and those suffering from mental disabilities, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said.

Saudi Arabia is one of the world's most prolific executioners and has put to death more than 400 people since the beginning of 2014, most for murder, drug-related crimes, and terrorism.

In addition to conducting unfair trials, Saudi Arabia has executed alleged child offenders andnon-violent offenders, including for drug-related crimes and "crimes" such as sorcery, in violation of international law which restricts the use of the death penalty to the "most serious crimes" - generally defined to include only intentional killing. Since the beginning of 2014, Saudi Arabia has executed at least 147 people for non-violent drug crimes.

Copyright notice:  Copyright Amnesty International
Saudi Arabia detains rights activist who defied women's driving ban

Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 5 June 2017 Cite as Amnesty International, Saudi Arabia detains rights activist who defied women's driving ban, 5 June 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5937bd524.html [accessed 10 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Responding to news about the re-arrest of Saudi Arabian women's rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul at King Fahad International Airport in Dammamin Saudi Arabia on 4 June, Samah Hadid Director of Campaigns for Amnesty International in the Middle-East said:

"The Saudi Arabian authorities' continuous harassment of Loujain al-Hathloul is absurd and unjustifiable. It appears she is being targeted once again because of her peaceful work as a human rights defender speaking out for women's rights, which are consistently trammeled in the kingdom. If so she must be immediately and unconditionally released.

"Instead of upholding its promise of a more tolerant Saudi Arabia, the government has again shattered any notion that it is genuinely committed to upholding equality and human rights."

Amnesty International learned that Loujain al-Hathloul is due to travel from Dammam to Riyadh at 17:30 local time to be interrogated by the Bureau of Investigation and Prosecution. She has no access to a lawyer and has not been allowed to contact her family.The exact reason for her arrest remains unknown, however Amnesty International believes it is in relation to her human rights activism.

Loujain al-Hathloul is a prominent Saudi Arabian human rights defender who was detained for 73 days after she defied the kingdom's de facto driving ban for women by attempting to drive into Saudi Arabia from the United Arab Emirates on 30 November 2014.Loujain al-Hathloul went on to stand for election in Saudi Arabia in November 2015 - the first time women were allowed to both vote and stand in elections in the state. However, despite finally being recognized as a candidate, her name was never added to the ballot.

Copyright notice:  Copyright Amnesty International
Russia: Conviction of librarian for holding 'extremist books' demonstrates utter contempt for rule of law

Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 5 June 2017 Cite as Amnesty International, Russia: Conviction of librarian for holding 'extremist books' demonstrates utter contempt for rule of law, 5 June 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5937bd8e4.html [accessed 10 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 conviction of Natalya Sharina, former Director of the state-run Library of Ukrainian Literature in Moscow, for holding 'extremist books' demonstrates utter contempt for the rule of law and highlights flaws in the independence of Russia's judiciary, said Amnesty International today.

Natalya Sharina was found guilty of 'inciting hatred' and 'embezzlement' and handed a four years suspended sentence by the Meshchansky District Court of Moscow. She was arrested in October 2015 after works by Ukrainian nationalist Dmytro Korchynsky were found in an unindexed pile of books in the library she headed. Korchynsky's works are officially banned in Russia and the books were defined as 'extremist' and 'anti-Russian propaganda' by the prosecutor.

"This highly politicized case runs totally counter to justice, and highlights serious flaws in the independence of Russia's judiciary. Natalya Sharina should not have been prosecuted, still less convicted," said Denis Krivosheev, Deputy Director for Europe and Central Asia at Amnesty International.

"The prosecution has exploited the highly charged anti-Ukrainian atmosphere that is prevalent in Russia at the moment, while the court simply dismissed key evidence for the defence, including testimonies that police officers were seen planting the banned books at the library."

During her trial, the state prosecutor accused Natalya Sharina of promoting Ukrainian nationalism, saying it 'goes hand-in-hand with German fascism'.

Amnesty International regards both charges to be unfounded and politically motivated, and considers that Natalya Sharina is a victim of a travesty of justice.

Background

Natalya Sharina was detained on 28 October 2015 and spent a year and seven months under house arrest before being brought to trial.

The embezzlement charge was added in April 2016 when she was accused of the misappropriation of library funds to pay for a lawyer to defend her during a previous unfounded attempt to prosecute in 2011 - 2013.

Copyright notice:  Copyright Amnesty International
Morocco: Rif protesters punished with wave of mass arrests

Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 2 June 2017 Cite as Amnesty International, Morocco: Rif protesters punished with wave of mass arrests, 2 June 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5937bead4.html [accessed 10 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 Moroccan authorities have carried out a chilling wave of arrests rounding up scores of protesters, activists and bloggers in the Rif, northern Morocco, over the past week following months of protests demanding an end to marginalization of communities and better access to services in the region, said Amnesty International.

Some of those detained have been denied prompt access to their lawyers in police custody. In some cases lawyers who were able to see their clients in court in Al Hoceima said they bore visible injuries and reported being beaten upon arrest. There are also fears that peaceful protesters and bloggers covering the protests on social media could be among those facing trial and potential state security-related charges.

"We fear this wave of arrests may be a deliberate attempt to punish protesters in the Rif for months of peaceful dissent. It is essential that the Moroccan authorities respect the right to freedom of expression and assembly. Those charged with a legally recognized offence, must not be denied the right to a fair trial. The authorities should also ensure that peaceful activists are not convicted on trumped-up charges as punishment for participating in protests in the Rif," said Heba Morayef, North Africa Research Director for Amnesty International.

The recent wave of protests was triggered when protest leader Nasser Zefzafi publicly criticized a cleric leading the midday prayer in a mosque in Al Hoceima on 26 May, for statements allegedly opposing popular protests in the Rif. A video of the incident was later shared on social media and he was arrested days later.

Between 26 and 31 May 2017, security forces arrested at least 71 people following protests in Al Hoceima and the neighbouring towns of Imzouren and Beni Bouayach. Some protests escalated into stone-throwing at security forces who on occasion deployed water cannons and teargas in response. Injuries were reported on both sides. However, many activists, including peaceful protesters and bloggers who had documented the events on social media, were arrested after the protests had ended.

At least 33 people are now on trial after being charged by the Crown Prosecutor in Al Hoceima. The charges against them include assaulting and insulting public officers, stone-throwing, rebellion and unauthorized gathering. A request to release 26 of them from pre-trial detention was refused and the case was adjourned until 6 June. They remain in detention at Al Hoceima Local Prison.

Lawyers told Amnesty International that they had seen visible injuries on the faces and bodies of several defendants who appeared before the Crown Prosecutor in Al Hoceima. They said that the defendants described how police officers had beaten, kicked, hit and slapped them upon arrest and during their transfer to police stations. Many reported being insulted or threatened by the officers who arrested them, including being threatened with rape. Others said they signed interrogation reports only to realize that extra pages had been added without their consent. The Crown Prosecutor has ordered medical examinations in several cases.

Lawyers also told Amnesty International that they had been unable to visit any of their clients while they were in police custody in Al Hoceima. Judicial police in Al Hoceima failed to notify detainees' relatives of their whereabouts preventing them from instructing lawyers on their behalf and meaning that lawyers were unable to secure authorization from the Crown Prosecutor to visit clients in police custody before the 24 hour limit following arrest expired, as is required by Moroccan law.

Thirty-one of the 71 arrested between 26 and 31 May have been transferred to Casablanca for police interrogation by Morocco's National Brigade for the Judicial Police (BNPJ), a national police body which tackles serious crimes, including state security and terrorism offences. Although the detainees have yet to be formally charged, this raises fears that authorities may accuse them of state security offences.

"It is deeply alarming that the authorities may be considering state security charges to punish activists participating in protests," Heba Morayef said.

Lawyers were only able to visit a group of 22 of the 31 detained in Casablanca on 1 June. Most told their lawyers that police officers had insulted, threatened, and in some instances beaten and kicked them, either upon arrest, during transfer to the police station or at the police station in Al Hoceima. They reported adequate conditions of detention while in BNPJ custody, however. They will shortly be transferred back to Al Hoceima for a hearing before the General Crown Prosecutor at the Al Hoceima Court of Appeals.

Lawyers have not yet been able to see a group of seven other detainees, including protest leader Nasser Zefzafi, whose access to lawyers was delayed by judicial authorities. They are expected to receive a visit from their lawyers on 5 June. Two people arrested on 31 May have yet to receive a visit from lawyers.

Morocco's Code of Criminal Procedure allows detainees to be held without charge in police custody for up to three days for ordinary offences, and longer periods of up to eight days for state-security offences, and 12 days for terrorism-related offences. The law also allow judicial authorities to delay access to lawyers, if required for the investigation.

"Detainees are most vulnerable to human rights violations in the first hours following arrest, especially if they are cut off from the outside world - so the notification of families, and prompt access to lawyers are imperative," Heba Morayef added.

Amnesty International has called on the authorities to include the right to have a lawyer during police interrogation for all suspects in its ongoing criminal procedure reform.

Shortly after the incident at the Al Hoceima mosque that triggered the wave of protests, security forces raided the home of the protest leader Nasser Zefzafi in his absence, damaging property and confiscating books belonging to his elderly parents with whom he lives. Days later on 29 May, he was arrested after an elaborate manhunt commandeering neighbouring homes, and transferred by helicopter to the BNPJ headquarters in Casablanca.

Amnesty International fears that the manner in which he was arrested, and official statements detailing offences he is suspected of before he is formally charged, may have breached his presumption of innocence and that of activists arrested with him. Leaked pictures and videos of his arrests showing him hooded and forced to hold his head down, also raise concerns that he may have been treated in a degrading manner.

Copyright notice:  Copyright Amnesty International
Venezuela: Authorities' militarization of crisis escalates violence and promotes fear

Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 2 June 2017 Cite as Amnesty International, Venezuela: Authorities' militarization of crisis escalates violence and promotes fear, 2 June 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5937befa4.html [accessed 10 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 increased deployment of military forces to repress protests, the rise in excessive use of force against protesters and others, and the use of military courts to try to silence dissenting voices illustrates a terrifying shift of the Venezuelan authorities' approach to the human rights crisis wreaking havoc across the country, Amnesty International said after at least 60 people were killed in protests in the past 60 days.

"By deploying military force and military courts to confront an increasingly tense social and political situation, the Maduro administration is only escalating the crisis, like trying to put out a fire with gasoline," said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas Director at Amnesty International

"The level of human rights violations and the ruthless actions by the Venezuelan authorities are reminiscent of the worst times for human rights in the Americas."

"By dismissing protesters as 'terrorists' and charging civilians with crimes only applicable to soldiers, the Maduro administration is turning this political crisis into a violent conflict. Instead, it should be listening to people's legitimate concerns and working to find solutions."

Over recent weeks, security forces have used undue force to prevent peaceful demonstrations from taking place. Individuals living in residential areas, and not taking part in demonstrations, have also reported being victims of indiscriminate tear gas attacks.

The community in La Isabelica, Carabobo, is a striking example of the extent of the indiscriminate use of violence against people not involved in the recent wave of protests.

Amnesty International has received direct reports of random shootings against civilians, tear gas being shot straight into homes, and a sense of generalized fear to report these incident to the authorities.

The situation has been particularly acute in the states of Carabobo, Lara, Barinas and the border state of Tachira where more than 600 soldiers have been deployed to respond to peaceful demonstrations.

"Deploying military forces to contain demonstrations and prosecuting protesters in military courts are surefire and illegal ways of escalating this crisis even further. Instead, authorities must urgently withdraw military personnel from demonstrations, investigate the array of human rights violations reported over recent weeks and ensure people can protest without fear of being injured or killed."

Groups of armed civilians - some of them allegedly supported by the government - are also reported to have abused demonstrators and anyone protesting against the Maduro administration. These reports are particularly concerning, considering the government's activation of the "Plan Zamora", a government program which apparently mobilizes the joint use of military and civilian forces to confront the crisis taking over the country.

Authorities have not published the full details of the plan, but the reference to mobilizing civilians alongside State security forces is extremely concerning in the current context of escalating tension and violence.

Since 4 April, there have been at least 60 people reported dead and 1,000 injured in the context of the political crisis, according to official figures.

According to local NGOs, hundreds of people have been unfairly imprisoned in the context of massive anti-government demonstrations that have been taking place across Venezuela.

More than 300 people are believed to have been taken to military courts, accused of crimes such as "rebellion", "terrorism" and "treason", and effectively treated like soldiers in an armed conflict.

Venezuela's Attorney General has recently called for access to the detainees.

In a report published in April, Amnesty International highlighted the catalogue of illegal actions on the part of the Venezuelan authorities to repress freedom of expression and arbitrarily detain dissenters across the country.

Copyright notice:  Copyright Amnesty International
Deployment of future-proof fiber network provides students access to educational services via high speed broadband connection

London, UK - Nokia and technology integrator FWD-IP along with their chosen distributor Temple have deployed Nokia's first Passive Optical LAN solution in the UK at a major school campus in Cambridge. Based on optical fiber infrastructure and proven Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) technology, Nokia's Passive Optical LAN solution provides a secure, flexible, scalable and future-proof network that allows the school to significantly improve the high-speed internet and educational services they provide students.

As demand grows for gigabit services, the school chose Passive Optical LAN over a traditional copper-based Ethernet LAN network upgrade because of its future-proof capabilities and ability to outperform more traditional solutions in every key area: speed, cost and ease of use. With optical fiber cabling having virtually unlimited capacity, the solution can be easily and cost-efficiently upgraded to 10G or 40G speeds, using the same infrastructure. It can provide 200 times longer coverage from a single central location than copper based LAN, eliminating the need for equipment closets on each floor or at every 100 meters. Delivering virtually unlimited data capacity, the solution is also capable of supporting all video, voice and data requirements over a single fibre optic cable.

These benefits were key for the Cambridge-based school, where Nokia along with FWD-IP and their chosen distributor Temple, deployed Passive Optical LAN to better manage the campus' evolving communication demands. This propels the school to the very forefront of network communications. Students benefit from faultless Wi-Fi, allowing video streaming, file sharing and greater flexibility across the entire campus. The network has also proven to be very effective in delivering a more eco-friendly solution that would remove the need for additional network cabinets and IT switches.Passive Optical LAN is rapidly gaining traction amongst many organizations (education, hospitality, healthcare, enterprise and other sectors).

Stuart Grainger, Managing Director at FWD-IP, said: "Our client, a Cambridge-based school, is dedicated to providing its students with the best combination of traditional and modern learning approaches to ensure they achieve excellence in every possible way. Technology is at the very heart of their curriculum, and ensuring the students can access educational services via high-speed Internet access is essential. Nokia's solution provides that, and was an ideal fit for our client's programme. With fiber, this school now has virtually unlimited capacity which ensures that each student can access the applications and services they need for success."

Federico Guillen, Head of Fixed Networks at Nokia, said: "Interest in Passive Optical LANs continues to increase as enterprises, educational institutions, the hospitality sector, healthcare and other segments look at this alternative LAN architecture to help lower capital and operating costs. Nokia's Passive Optical LAN solution is ideal for school campuses that are often seeking a viable, simple and cost effective networking solution that can effectively accommodate the evolving connectivity needs of their students today and in the future."

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Egypt: New Law Will Crush Civil Society

Publisher Human Rights Watch Publication Date 2 June 2017 Citation / Document Symbol Cite as Human Rights Watch, Egypt: New Law Will Crush Civil Society, 2 June 2017, , available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5937f0eb4.html [accessed 10 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 following statement was issued by eight nongovernmental organizations, including Human Rights Watch, on June 2, 2017, concerning Egypt's repressive new law to regulate nongovernmental groups:

We the undersigned civil society organizations strongly condemn the ratification of a new law regulating nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Egypt, issued by President Abdel-Fattah El Sisi on Monday, May 24. The law ushers in unprecedented levels of repression and will criminalize the work of many NGOs, making it impossible for them to function independently.

Implications of the law include the absence of valuable human development and charity initiatives, and a media opacity and lack of accountability around government abuses. These functions of Egyptian NGOs are particularly essential amid the current security and socioeconomic crises. Vulnerable Egyptians and refugees on Egyptian territory are in ever-growing need of the support and essential services provided by the NGOs targeted by this law - such as social services, education, and poverty alleviation, as well as legal, medical, or psychological support to survivors of torture, abuse, and gender-based violence.

"This new law represents a huge step backward for freedom of association in Egypt," said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. "The Egyptian authorities have squeezed shut whatever limited space remained for nongovernmental groups in Egypt and driven the human rights community underground."

Restricting civil society to this degree eliminates a path for Egyptian citizens to peacefully express dissent, hold the government accountable for human rights violations, and access human development initiatives at a time of economic hardship. By constraining civil society, the government has made it more difficult for NGOs to respond to social needs that at times can lead to unrest, such as recent increases in the price of bread. Increased state control of Egyptian NGOs results in opacity surrounding security threats and terror attacks and gives perpetrators the opportunity to shape the narrative of the struggle between the state and violent extremists.

The law is virtually the same as earlier legislation approved by the Egyptian parliament on November 29, 2016, but shelved after widespread international criticism.

Under Law 70 of 2017 for Regulating the Work of Associations and Other Institutions Working in the Field of Civil Work, all NGOs are prohibited from conducting activities that "harm national security, public order, public morality, or public health," vague terms that can be abused to constrain legitimate activity. The bill creates a National Authority for the Regulation of Foreign Non-governmental Organizations that includes representatives of Egypt's top national security bodies - the General Intelligence Directorate and the Defense and Interior Ministries - as well as representatives from the Foreign Affairs Ministry and the Central Bank of Egypt. The authority will oversee the work of NGOs, including any funding or cooperation between Egyptian associations and any foreign entity. The law prohibits any Egyptian government body from making agreements with NGOs without the authority's approval.

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The law strictly controls the funding of NGOs. It states that associations must obtain permission from the authority 30 days in advance to receive donations from Egyptian entities or individuals inside Egypt and must inform the Social Solidarity Ministry upon the receipt of such funds. The law further states that associations may receive funding or grants from foreign entities inside Egypt or Egyptian or foreign entities outside Egypt as long as the authority is notified within 30 days of receipt. The authority then has the right to reject the funding within a 60-day period following its notification. Associations may not use these funds within the 60-day review period.

Additionally, the law gives the government the authority to monitor and challenge NGOs' day-to-day activities, from choices for their leadership to the schedule for internal meetings. Even an administrative move such as relocating headquarters to another building without informing the authorities is punishable under the law. The law creates a blanket and ambiguous provision authorizing the Egyptian government to cancel a foreign NGO's license at any time if the NGO's work is deemed to be harming national security or public safety or disturbing public order, or per the principle of reciprocity - if a foreign government shuts down an Egyptian NGO, for example.

The government agencies assembled in this new authority - including security bodies - are given the power to interfere in every aspect of NGOs' existence, administration and activities. Parliamentarians claimed the law will make this sector more "secure" by ensuring robust oversight, but it is doubtful that this authority will have the capacity to effectively oversee a thriving and active NGO sector. Rather, full implementation of the law will induce paralysis and eventual closure of much of the nonprofit sector, as many NGO requests for licensing or approval of funding will likely go unanswered and be considered denied by default. Yet Egyptians are in severe and growing need of the services and support NGOs provide. The country needs the non-profit sector to grow, not to wither away.

The law punishes a host of violations with sentences of one to five years in prison and a fine of 50,000 to 1,000,000 Egyptian pounds (US$2,760 to US$55,349). Among the prohibited activities that could result in a prison sentence are:

Establishing an NGO that is deemed to have breached national unity, national security, public order or public morals;

Assisting or working with a foreign NGO that is conducting work in Egypt without a license;

Establishing or managing any entity that does NGO work without following the provisions of this law; and

Sending or receiving foreign funds as a president or member of an NGO in violation of the law's provisions.

Anyone who issues a license to an NGO whose work violates the law, obstructs the government from inspecting an NGO's paperwork, or conducts public opinion surveys or fieldwork or moves an NGO office without approval faces a prison sentence of up to one year or a possible fine of 20,000 to 500,000 Egyptian pounds (US$1,104 to US$27,624).

This law contravenes Egypt's commitment to international human rights law, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which states that no restrictions may be placed on the right to free association other than those "which are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security or public safety, public order, the protection of public health or morals or the protection of the rights and freedoms of others." No restriction should undermine the essence of the right to freedom of association itself.

We call upon the Egyptian government to drop all existing criminal investigations into NGOs and to repeal this law in accordance with its domestic and international obligations to protect freedom of association.

Additionally, we call on Egypt's international partners providing foreign assistance and economic aid, such as the United States and the European Union, to use their influence to urge the Egyptian government to allow NGOs to fulfill their function within civil society. Moreover, international bodies such as the United Nations and United Nations Human Rights Council, and their member states, should use their positions as mediators within the international community to hold Egypt accountable for legislation that muzzles civil society to such a severe degree.

It should not be a crime to advocate for human rights and development in Egypt, but this law does just that, crippling civil society for years to come.

Signatories:

The Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy (TIMEP)

Human Rights Watch

Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS)

CIVICUS

World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), within the framework of the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders

FIDH, within the framework of the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders

Associazione Ricreativa Culturale Italiana (ARCI)

Un Ponte Per

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Indonesia: Police Raids Foster Anti-Gay Hysteria

Publisher Human Rights Watch Publication Date 2 June 2017 Cite as Human Rights Watch, Indonesia: Police Raids Foster Anti-Gay Hysteria, 2 June 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5937f1da4.html [accessed 10 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.

Indonesia's national police force should immediately investigate recent raids by local law enforcement on gatherings of gay men, Human Rights Watch said today in a letter to national police chief Gen. Tito Karnavian. Indonesia's police leadership should commit to ending the targeting of sexual minorities and uphold their obligation to protect everyone's basic rights without discrimination.

"Indonesia's police raids against LGBT people are part of a disturbing pattern of rights abuses that strike fear into already-marginalized communities," said Brad Adams, Asia director. "The national police need to stop these raids to restore public confidence that the police will do their duty to protect all Indonesians."

On April 30, 2017, police raided a private gathering of gay and bisexual men in the city of Surabaya, arrested and detained 14 men, and subjected them to HIV tests without their consent. On May 21, police raided the Atlantis Spa in Jakarta, arrested 141 people, and charged 10 for holding an alleged sex party. Officers allegedly paraded the suspects naked in front of media and interrogated them still unclothed, a claim the police deny. And on May 24, the West Java police chief, Gen. Anton Charliyan, announced plans to create a special unit within the police force to detect and punish lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people.

Indonesia's national police force oversees all regional and municipal police forces in the country and is ultimately responsible for their actions. National police chief Karnavian reports directly to President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo.

August 10, 2016 Report

Indonesia's LGBT Community Under Threat

Anti-LGBT incidents across Indonesia have significantly increased since January 2016 and included police raids - sometimes in collusion with militant Islamists - on suspected gatherings of gay men, closure of public transgender events, attacks on LGBT activists, and vitriolic anti-LGBT rhetoric from officials and politicians. In October, Jokowi broke his long silence on escalating anti-LGBT rhetoric by defending the rights of the country's LGBT community. He declared that "the police must act" against actions by bigoted groups or individuals to harm LGBT people or deny them their rights, and that "there should be no discrimination against anyone."

Police carried out the recent raids in Surabaya and Jakarta under Indonesia's 2008 anti-pornography law, which is discriminatory in content as it specifically includes "lesbian sex" and "male homosexual sex" as "deviant sexual acts," alongside sex with corpses and sex with animals. The law contravenes international human rights law applicable to Indonesia, as it expressly discriminates against gay men and lesbians. It is also contrary to the views of the World Health Organization and mental health bodies globally, which regard same-sex orientation as a normal variant of human sexuality.

"The police's use of a discriminatory so-called anti-pornography law as a pretext to raid private gatherings exposes the crude bigotry of their actions," Adams said. "President Jokowi put the police on notice about protecting LGBT people. Now he needs to make sure they act on it."

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Liberia: UK Arrest for Civil War Crimes a Step for Justice

Publisher Human Rights Watch Publication Date 3 June 2017 Cite as Human Rights Watch, Liberia: UK Arrest for Civil War Crimes a Step for Justice, 3 June 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5937f3174.html [accessed 10 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 Kingdom authorities' arrest of Agnes Reeves Taylor in London for her alleged role in torture committed during Liberia's first civil war is a meaningful step for justice, Human Rights Watch said today. Reeves Taylor, the former wife of imprisoned former Liberian president Charles Tayler, was arrested by the Metropolitan Police's War Crimes unit on June 1, 2017, and subsequently charged with torture.

Reeves Taylor, who has been living in the UK, is expected to appear before Westminster Magistrates' Court on June 3, said a statement issued by British authorities. She was alleged to have committed the crimes while working with the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), led by her former husband during his bid to unseat then-president Samuel K. Doe.

"The actions taken by the United Kingdom to address crimes committed during Liberia's brutal civil war will no doubt be welcomed by victims in Liberia," said Elise Keppler, associate director of the international justice program at Human Rights Watch. "The NPFL committed horrific abuses against civilians but no one has ever been held to account for the crimes. The Liberian authorities should themselves take steps to ensure that those responsible for civil-war-era crimes are brought to justice."

Liberia has made no effort to hold to account those responsible for crimes that violate international law during the conflict in the country, from 1989 to 1996, which left tens of thousands dead. But this is the third arrest by European authorities of a suspect associated with atrocities in Liberia. The first case involved the NPFL Commander Martina Johnson, who was arrested in Belgium in September 2014, and the second was Alieu Kosiah, a commander from the opposing United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy who was arrested in Switzerland in November 2014.

Reeves Taylor is the first person to be arrested under UK universal jurisdiction laws for crimes committed in Africa. The UK has previously adjudicated three other cases under such laws. The first was the case of Anthony Sawoniuk, convicted for Nazi-related crimes under the War Crimes Act of 1991, which is specific to crimes committed during World War II. The second was the conviction of Faryadi Zardad, an Afghan warlord charged with torture. The third case was the charges of torture against Colonel Kumar Lama from Nepal, who was recently acquitted.

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Thailand: Investigate Death in Immigration Lockup

Publisher Human Rights Watch Publication Date 7 June 2017 Cite as Human Rights Watch, Thailand: Investigate Death in Immigration Lockup, 7 June 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5937f3734.html [accessed 10 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 government of Thailand should immediately investigate the death of a Pakistani man in immigration detention, Human Rights Watch said today. The case points to the need for Thailand to urgently end the indefinite detention of refugees and asylum seekers.

On May 27, 2017, Ijaz Masih, a 36-year-old Christian Pakistani, had a heart attack at the Immigration Detention Center in Bangkok, where he had been detained for more than a year on an illegal entry charge. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) had rejected his refugee claim the day before. He died shortly after he was transferred to the Police General Hospital.

"Thai authorities are putting people who seek refugee protection at grave risk by keeping them in awful conditions in immigration detention centers," said Brad Adams, Asia director. "Ijaz Masih's death should be a wake-up call to end this abusive policy of incarcerating asylum seekers awaiting application results and refugees."

Ijaz Masih was one of hundreds of Pakistani Christian asylum seekers who claim to have been persecuted in Pakistan and ended up in squalid immigration detention centers in Thailand, where authorities treat them as illegal immigrants without rights - including asylum seekers, as well as those recognized as refugees by the UNHCR. In Pakistan, members of religious minorities face discrimination, criminal charges of blasphemy, and other forms of persecution - including violent attacks.

Under Thai law, all migrants with irregular immigration status - including children, asylum seekers, and recognized refugees - can be arrested and detained for illegal entry. Many immigration detention centers in Thailand are severely overcrowded, provide inadequate food, have poor ventilation, and lack access to medical service and other basic necessities. Detainees are restricted to small cells resembling cages, where they barely have room to sit, much less sleep. Children are frequently incarcerated with adults.

Thailand's immigration detention facilities have long been reported to fall far short of international standards, but the Thai government has not acted to address the serious problems. Human Rights Watch documented these shortcomings in a comprehensive report on immigration detention of children in 2014, and a report on the treatment of refugees - including the detention of urban refugees - in 2012.

Thailand is not a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention and has never enacted a law to recognize refugee status and set out procedures to assess asylum claims. Given its own lack of asylum procedures, the Thai government should respect UNHCR-issued persons-of-concern documents and refrain from detaining people who have pending claims for international protection. Besides ending the detention of asylum seekers, Thailand should also adopt alternatives to detention that are being used effectively in other countries - such as open reception centers and conditional release programs.

"The Thai government should recognize that its punitive detention policy towards asylum seekers is both inhumane and counterproductive," Adams said. "Punishing people who are fleeing ghastly conditions at home will not keep them away but just add to their misery."

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Kurdistan Region of Iraq: New Detentions of Fleeing Men, Boys

Publisher Human Rights Watch Publication Date 3 June 2017 Cite as Human Rights Watch, Kurdistan Region of Iraq: New Detentions of Fleeing Men, Boys, 3 June 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5937f4174.html [accessed 10 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.

New cases have emerged of Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) authorities detaining men and boys fleeing Mosul on suspicion of affiliation with the Islamic State (also known as ISIS), Human Rights Watch said today.

Family members reported that after Kurdish authorities took their relatives into custody, the families had no contact with the detainees for as long as four months, that authorities would not tell the families where their relatives were, and that the families had no means to challenge their relatives' detention.

"The security risks the KRG faces from ISIS are significant, but completely cutting off detained Mosul men and boys from their families does nothing to enhance security," said Priyanka Motaparthy, senior emergencies researcher at Human Rights Watch. "At a minimum, the KRG should inform families of where their relatives are being held and allow them to communicate."

Human Rights Watch interviewed the relatives of three men and two boys, from four families, taken into custody at the Khazir and Nargizlia displacement camps between January and April 2017. Each detainee passed through multiple screening points between Mosul and KRG-held territory, their relatives said. While two were detained when entering camps for displaced people, three were detained after they had passed Kurdish security agencies' clearance process to enter the camps. They had been in the camps for a week or more, raising questions about why authorities chose to detain them at that point.

One of those detained is a 16-year-old boy whose family fled Mosul fearing for his safety after ISIS detained the boy twice for selling cigarettes.

None of the families had any contact with their relatives after they were taken, despite repeated requests for information in most cases, nor would the authorities provide reliable information about their location. The failure to provide families with information about the status and whereabouts of their relatives may make these detentions enforced disappearances, which violate international human rights law and can be international crimes, Human Rights Watch said.

Between 2014, when people fleeing ISIS began arriving, and late January 2017, KRG forces detained over 900 displaced men and boys from five camps and from Erbil, based on reports from people working in the camps, local communities, and camp residents. Human Rights Watch was unable to verify how many are still being detained, whether any were allowed to communicate with their family members, and whether any of their families were informed of their whereabouts.

Human Rights Watch has previously documented 85 other cases in which relatives of terrorism suspects said they were in the dark about the fate and whereabouts of relatives detained by KRG or Iraqi forces from camps and local communities. Detainees had been held for as long as four months, at the time their families were interviewed, without any communication with or updates for family members.

Human Rights Watch also previously documented KRG authorities' abuse of detainees, including 17 children who said KRG forces tortured or otherwise abused them in detention, denied them contact with their families, and denied them access to legal counsel. Detainees' lack of contact with relatives, as well as past incidents of ill treatment, heightens the risk of abuse.

Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), as well as the Popular Mobilization Forces (known as the PMF or Hashd al-Sha'abi), have also detained men and boys fleeing Mosul on suspicion of ISIS affiliation, in some cases beating or torturing them. On June 1, the Iraqi Ministry of Interior announced that future detentions could only be conducted in line with the Iraqi Criminal Procedure Code, which requires an arrest warrant based on allegations of a specific crime of an individual. The warrant should include more detailed information than simply their first and last name, signed and stamped by a court, before authorities may proceed with detention. This is an important administrative check which could help curb arbitrary arrests by central government authorities. Those detained by Iraqi forces may also be eligible for amnesty under an August 2016 law offering amnesty to anyone who can demonstrate they joined ISIS or another extremist group against their will, and did not commit any serious offense while a member.

By contrast, KRG authorities have neither introduced such checks on investigative detention, nor passed a similar amnesty provision, as far as Human Rights Watch is aware. In October 2016, Human Rights Watch contacted Dr. Dindar Zebari, chairman of the KRG's High Committee to Evaluate International Organizations' Reports, raising the issue of the detention of men and boys from camps, as well as the failure to inform families about their whereabouts. Zebari responded that people coming from ISIS-held territory are subjected to additional screening "based on the intelligence agencies, national security agencies, and the local security agencies in the area." He said that those who "prove to be a security risk" are detained for 24 hours, then transferred to "special courts that determine whether or not [they] prove to be a risk to the Kurdistan region."

None of the families interviewed had been informed of legal proceedings against their relatives. Without this information, or the ability to communicate with their family members, they had no opportunity to arrange legal counsel or to know whether their relative had an opportunity to challenge their detention, as required under international law. Zebari said that while KRG authorities are committed to informing families about the process and status of a relative's detention, "lack of personnel and financial resources" make it difficult. However, the families' experiences did not indicate such a commitment. One woman said that when she asked officers from the Asayish, the KRG security forces, at the gates of Khazir camps about her son 18 days after security forces detained him at the camp, an officer told her: "If he's done nothing, he'll come back. If he has something [indicating he is a security risk], he won't."

Other families said they received similar responses, or were only told that their relatives were under investigation and were given no information about how to pursue their inquiry. In one case, a woman said an Asayish officer told her that her husband was being held at the Zarqa detention facility, on the outskirts of Dohuk, but she could not verify the information because Asayish refused her request to visit, and provided no means to communicate with him.

KRG authorities should make efforts to inform family members, either directly or indirectly via local police or camp management, about detainees' locations and procedures to communicate with and visit them. The authorities should make public the number of fighters and civilians detained, including at checkpoints, screening sites, and camps during the conflict with ISIS, and the legal basis for their detention, including the charges against them. Human Rights Watch has previously documented the unclear, or in some cases invalid, legal basis for terrorism related detentions in the KRG region.

The authorities should release all children who have not yet been formally charged, as international law allows authorities to detain children before trial only as a last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time, and only if they have formally charged the child with committing a crime. Authorities should ensure that children detained solely for suspected ISIS affiliation are rehabilitated and reintegrated. KRG authorities should ensure prompt independent judicial review of detention and allow detainees to have access to lawyers and medical care and to communicate with their families.

"The dismissive responses families received do nothing to fulfill the KRG's obligation to provide them with information about their loved ones," Motaparthy said. "When authorities are keeping men and boys in detention for months, they need to provide at least the basic details to families who are desperate for any news."

New Detention Cases

In one case, a man from the Nabi Younes neighborhood of east Mosul told Human Rights Watch that Asayish officials detained his 16-year-old son five days after the family arrived in Khazir camp, in early January 2017, and had held him for four months. ISIS had detained his son twice in Nabi Younes, after catching him selling cigarettes to support the family, the father said. After his second detention, the family fled the neighborhood.

When Iraqi Security Forces reached the village of Gogjali, two kilometers east of Mosul's eastern border, the family escaped ISIS-controlled territory and fled toward the Iraqi forces. The Iraqi Rapid Response Force checked their IDs, then directed them to al-Hamdaniya district, southeast of Mosul, where Iraqi authorities checked their IDs again.

When they arrived at Khazir camp, in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, they left their IDs at the entrance gate, as the camp authorities require. Five days later, the man said, an Asayish officer came to their sector of the camp, asked for the boy by name, and took him into custody. He said he has received no news of his son since, despite repeated inquiries to the Asayish forces guarding the camp, and after reporting the case to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

In a second case, a man in his 20s from al-Tanak neighborhood of west Mosul said Asayish officers detained his adult brother, "Ahmed" (a pseudonym), when the family arrived at Khazir camp in late March. Their mother, whom Human Rights Watch also interviewed, said that in Mosul she had held the ID cards for each member of her family and distributed them on the morning the family fled, but that Ahmed had stepped out to pray and she forgot to pass his ID on to him. The mother said that the family was separated while fleeing, and ISIS fighters had temporarily stopped her from leaving, but that Ahmed and two of his brothers managed to escape.

Outside Mosul, Popular Mobilization Forces (known as the PMF or Hashd al-Sha'abi), Shia armed forces allied with the Iraqi government, stopped Ahmed and his brothers to check their IDs but allowed them to pass. When Ahmed told them he did not have his ID card, they said, "Don't worry, we won't send you back to ISIS," his brother said. He said that all three of them passed through security screening at Hammam al-Alil camp, where Iraqi authorities brought displaced people from west Mosul before sending them to other camps. But when they arrived at the KRG-controlled Khazir camp, and Ahmed informed the Asayish he did not have his ID card, they told him to wait by the outer fence. His brother said they saw him wait for 15 minutes there, then officers put him in a car and took him away.

The brother said he made repeated inquiries about Ahmed, but received no information from Asayish officers guarding the camp. When their mother arrived 18 days later, she brought Ahmed's ID card and asked the officers about his whereabouts, she said. But the authorities provided no information other than to confirm he was in custody. "They said, 'Just go, he's being held. If he's done nothing, he'll come back. If he has something [indicating he is a security risk], he won't,'" she said.

In a third case, in mid-April, a woman said that her husband, a Kurdish man in his 30s, was detained at the gate of Nargizlia camp, near the village of Sheikhan in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, after arriving at the camp in his car with his wife and children. When they arrived, an Asayish officer asked him, "You are a Kurd, so why did you stay in Mosul until now?" his wife said. The officer directed her and her children to take buses into the camp, and said her husband would follow by car. When he did not arrive, the wife said she returned to the gate to ask the Asayish officers about his whereabouts and that they informed her they were investigating him.

When she returned a few days later, she said, an officer told her, "You all stayed in a prison for three years. So why don't you let him stay in prison one year with us?" He informed her that her husband was being held at a detention facility in Zarqa, but despite her requests, she said camp authorities denied her permission to visit, since he remained under investigation. She had not been able to speak with her husband since his detention, and could not confirm his whereabouts through any official means. The family also tried to reach him, or secure his release, through their contacts in the Peshmerga, which is the KRG's military force, and Asayish, but the contacts could only confirm that he remained under investigation, she said.

In the fourth case, two brothers, one 24 and the other a 17-year-old boy, were arrested in the Khazir camp one to two weeks after their arrival. Their older brother, who traveled with them, said that he, his brothers, and his wife and children escaped west Mosul with a group of 150 to 200 families. His wife and children were separated from the group, and ISIS fighters prevented them from leaving, he said.

He and his brothers reached Kwar, where the PMF checked their IDs and allowed them to continue. A masked informant, who was apparently there to identify ISIS supporters from the area, also cleared them to pass, he said. They then went to Hammam al-Alil, where Iraqi security officers screened them once more, checking their names in a computer database, the brother said. Again, masked informants screened them here.

They went to a relative's house in east Mosul, under Iraqi Security Force control, to rest for a few days, then took a taxi to Khazir camp. The camp security allowed the brothers to enter, but about a week later, Asayish officers came and took "Hassan," the 24-year-old brother, from their tent. "They came and asked, 'which one is [Hassan],' and took him," the oldest brother said. "They said nothing will happen to him, and they didn't hit or handcuff him." About eight days later, he said a single Asayish officer returned and took the 17-year-old brother. The family had not asked camp authorities about the brothers' whereabouts, because they heard from other families that they would not receive any information, the oldest brother said.

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Saudi Arabia: 14 Protesters Facing Execution After Unfair Trials

Publisher Human Rights Watch Publication Date 6 June 2017 Cite as Human Rights Watch, Saudi Arabia: 14 Protesters Facing Execution After Unfair Trials, 6 June 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5937f48f4.html [accessed 10 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.

Saudi Arabia should immediately quash the death sentences of 14 members of the Shia community for protest-related crimes, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said today. The Court of Appeal of the notorious Specialized Criminal Court upheld the sentences in May 2017, after they were handed down a year ago on June 1, 2016, following a grossly unfair trial of 24 Saudi Shia citizens. The Specialized Criminal Court is Saudi Arabia's counterterrorism tribunal.

"The rise in death sentences against Saudi Arabian Shia is alarming and suggests that the authorities are using the death penalty to settle scores and crush dissent under the guise of combating 'terrorism' and maintaining national security," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.

On May 25, 2017, the families of three of the defendants learned in a phone call that the Court of Appeal of the Specialized Criminal Court had upheld the death sentences against their relatives. The family members of another two defendants subsequently called the court, on May 28, and were informed that the sentences for their relatives and for the whole group of 14 had been upheld on appeal. The exact date of the appeal court's decision is unknown.

Court documents show that all defendants, including the 14 sentenced to death, were held in pretrial detention for more than two years before their trial began. During that time, most were in solitary confinement, and Saudi Arabian authorities denied them access to their families and lawyers while they interrogated them.

Since 2013, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have recorded a worrying increase in death sentences against political dissidents in Saudi Arabia, including the Shia Muslim minority. The organizations are aware of at least 38 members of Saudi Arabia's Shia community - who make up 10 to 15 percent of the population - currently sentenced to death. Saudi Arabian authorities accused these individuals of activities deemed a risk to national security and sentenced them to death after deeply flawed legal proceedings at the Specialized Criminal Court.

"The sham court proceedings that led to death sentences for 38 Shia men and boys brazenly flout international fair trial standards," said Lynn Maalouf, director of research at Amnesty International in the Middle East. "The sentences should immediately be quashed."

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch obtained the text of and analyzed 10 court judgments - involving 38 individuals - handed down by the Specialized Criminal Court between 2013 and 2016. Most were against men and children accused of protest-related crimes following mass demonstrations in 2011 and 2012, in Eastern Province towns where Shia Muslims form the majority.

In nearly all the trial judgments analyzed, defendants retracted their "confessions," saying they were coerced in circumstances that in some cases amounted to torture, including beatings and prolonged solitary confinement. The court rejected all torture allegations without investigating the claims. Some defendants asked the judges to request video footage from the prison that they said would show them being tortured. Others asked the court to summon interrogators as witnesses to describe how the "confessions" were obtained. In all cases judges ignored these requests.

The judges admitted the "confessions" as evidence, and then convicted the detainees almost solely based on these "confessions."

"Death sentences based on coerced 'confessions' violate international human rights law and are a repugnant yet all-too-common outcome in security-related cases in Saudi Arabia," Maalouf said. "These death penalty trials fail to meet even the most basic requirements for due process."

On January 2, 2016, Saudi Arabia carried out a mass execution of 47 men for "terrorism offenses." Among those executed were Ali Sa'eed al-Ribh, whose trial judgment indicates that he was under 18 at the time of some of the crimes for which he was sentenced to death. As a state party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Saudi Arabia is legally obliged to ensure that no one under 18 at the time of a crime is sentenced to death or to life in prison without the possibility of release.

Those currently on death row include four Saudi Arabian nationals who were found guilty of offenses committed when they were teenagers - Ali al-Nimr, Dawoud al-Marhoun, Abdullah al-Zaher, and Abdulkareem Al-Hawaj.

The January 2, 2016 executions also included a prominent Shia Muslim cleric, Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr, the uncle of Ali al-Nimr. Sheikh al-Nimr was a vocal critic of the government, and was convicted following a grossly unfair trial.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch oppose the death penalty in all cases without exception. The death penalty is the ultimate cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment and unique in its finality. It is inevitably and universally plagued with arbitrariness, prejudice, and error.

Pending full abolition of the death penalty, the Saudi Arabian authorities should immediately establish an official moratorium on executions, and remove any death penalty provisions that are in breach of international human rights law, such as provisions for its use against juvenile offenders and those suffering from mental disabilities, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said.

Saudi Arabia is one of the world's most prolific executioners and has put to death more than 400 people since the beginning of 2014, most for murder, drug-related crimes, and terrorism.

In addition to conducting unfair trials, Saudi Arabia has executed alleged child offenders and nonviolent offenders, including for drug-related crimes and "crimes" such as sorcery, in violation of international law which restricts the use of the death penalty to the "most serious crimes" - generally defined to include only intentional killing. Since the beginning of 2014, Saudi Arabia has executed at least 147 people for nonviolent drug crimes.



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Thailand: Drop Defamation Charges Against Burmese Workers

Publisher Human Rights Watch Publication Date 6 June 2017 Cite as Human Rights Watch, Thailand: Drop Defamation Charges Against Burmese Workers, 6 June 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5937f50f4.html [accessed 10 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.

Thai authorities should drop criminal defamation charges against 14 Burmese migrant workers who alleged that their employer violated their labor rights, Human Rights Watch said today. Proceedings in the case will begin in Don Muang Magistrates Court in Bangkok on June 7, 2017.

"The Thai government should not allow an employer to criminalize these migrant workers for reporting what they describe as horrendous and unlawful labor conditions," said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "The charges against these 14 workers should be dropped, and Thailand's criminal defamation law should be abolished."

The 14 workers submitted a complaint to the National Human Rights Commission of Thailand (NHRC) in July 2016, accusing Thammakaset Farm - a chicken farm in Lopburi province - of subjecting them to grueling work conditions that included up to 20 hours of work per day, forced overtime, and being compelled to sleep in chicken rearing areas overnight.

Human Rights Watch's research has found that the human rights and labor rights of migrant workers from Burma, Cambodia, and Laos working in Thailand have been regularly abused with impunity over the years. Migrant workers frequently receive little or no protection from Thai labor laws despite government assertions that all legally registered migrant workers will be protected under those laws. Migrant workers who raise complaints against Thai employers commonly face retaliation. Migrant workers are also prevented from organizing and legally establishing a labor union, or becoming an elected leader of a labor union, because of discriminatory provisions in the Labor Relations Act that only provide those rights to Thai nationals.

Thailand's criminal defamation law provides employers with an easy way to retaliate against migrant and Thai workers alike who report alleged human rights abuses. These lawsuits accuse critics of making false statements with the intent of damaging the company's reputation, Human Rights Watch said.

On May 31, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha emphasized the importance of companies respecting human rights in their operations and upholding the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Specifically, he said: "The government is determined to push business operations in Thailand to be fully in line with the three pillars of the UN Guiding Principles regarding protection [of human rights], respect [for human rights], and reparation [for damage from abuse]  The government has undertaken actions, including enforcing a labor protection legislation that ensures fair treatment of workers and protect them from abuse and mistreatment."

However, the use of criminal defamation laws is inconsistent with these commitments. Human Rights Watch, along with an increasing number of governments and international agencies, believes that criminal defamation laws should be abolished because they are an inherently disproportionate response to the need to protect reputations. Civil defamation laws are perfectly adequate for that task. In addition, criminal defamation laws in Thailand and many other countries are easily abused as a way to retaliate against people who speak out against abuses.

"The government is helping to chill the atmosphere for investigations of company supply chains, and is undermining corporate accountability, if it does not protect these 14 migrant workers from retaliation," Adams said.

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Iraq: Civilian Casualties Mount in West Mosul

Publisher Human Rights Watch Publication Date 6 June 2017 Cite as Human Rights Watch, Iraq: Civilian Casualties Mount in West Mosul, 6 June 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5937f5a44.html [accessed 10 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 civilian death toll from a series of apparent Iraqi Security Force or United States-led coalition attacks between February and April 2017 suggests that the forces took inadequate precautions to avoid civilian casualties and that further investigation is needed, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch documented seven attacks that resulted in at least 44 civilian deaths in five populated neighborhoods of west Mosul controlled by the Islamic State (also known as ISIS).

Human Rights Watch analysis of satellite imagery of western Mosul identified over 380 distinct impact sites in the Tanak neighborhood, where three of the seven attacks occurred, consistent with the detonation of large, air-dropped munitions between March 8 and April 26, when Iraqi forces declared they had regained control of the area. Munitions of this size can pose an excessive risk to civilians when used in populated areas, given their large blast and fragmentation radius. All warring parties should cease using explosive weapons with wide area effects in densely populated west Mosul.

"Residents and displaced people have sheltered for months in crowded houses, with ISIS sometimes using them as human shields, so any strikes - including the choice of weapons - should take these conditions into account," said Priyanka Motaparthy, senior emergencies researcher at Human Rights Watch. "As Iraqi and coalition forces press forward with the west Mosul offensive, they should make sure that civilian casualties are kept to a minimum."

A US airstrike in Mosul on March 17 that killed up to 200 people, previously documented by Human Rights Watch, used a 500-pound bomb to target two ISIS fighters on a roof, according to a military investigation of the incident.

Anti-ISIS forces should take all feasible precautions in the choice of means and methods of warfare to minimize incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, and damage to civilian objects, including in their choice of weaponry in heavily populated areas, Human Rights Watch said.

Human Rights Watch also documented six incidents in which ISIS fighters shot at and killed or wounded civilians fleeing ISIS-held areas or in which the people fleeing detonated improvised landmines laid by ISIS.

In mid-February, Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) supported by the US-led coalition, known as the Combined Joint Task Force - Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR), began the offensive to retake west Mosul, a densely populated set of urban neighborhoods still home to around 200,000 civilians. At least 614,524 people have fled the area since February 19, 2017, according to Iraqi authorities, but thousands more remain trapped under deadly conditions, risking ISIS sniper fire and improvised landmines when they attempt to flee.

Human Rights Watch could not independently confirm whether the seven Iraqi forces or coalition attacks it documented were air or ground-launched, or identify the munitions. The locations were under ISIS control. ISIS fighters were present in or next to the homes destroyed right before or at the same time in three of the attacks, within 50 meters in two incidents, and were not in close proximity in two others, survivors and witnesses said.

At least two incidents with no clear military target in the vicinity that killed at least 13 civilians may have been unlawful. The remaining attacks may have caused disproportionate civilian harm in comparison to the military advantage gained, in violation of international humanitarian law.

Civilians living in each of the homes hit by the seven attacks said they had tried to leave the neighborhood, sometimes repeatedly, as fighting grew close to the area, but that ISIS fighters threatened to kill them or attacked them when they tried to leave.

All parties to the conflict are prohibited under the laws of war from conducting deliberate, indiscriminate, or disproportionate attacks against civilians or civilian objects. Indiscriminate attacks strike military objectives and civilians or civilian objects without distinction. An attack is disproportionate if it may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life or damage to civilian objects that would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated from the attack.

Human Rights Watch contacted CJTF-OIR regarding the seven attacks. The coalition confirmed its forces most likely carried out one of the attacks, on the Mosul Railway Station neighborhood, killing 10 civilians, but did not respond definitively on the remaining incidents.

Human Rights Watch has previously raised concerns about individual coalition members' targeting procedures. As a result of procedural changes made in December 2016, media reported the US, which leads the coalition, removed the requirement that the "strike cell" in Baghdad approve certain strikes. The rule change means that the US is now carrying out some strikes without the benefit of the strike cell's information and targeting recommendations. The US should reinstate these procedures, or equivalent ones.

Human Rights Watch also remains concerned that the coalition reporting mechanism has failed to adequately reflect the extent of civilian casualties caused by members. On June 2, 2017, CJTF-OIR published its monthly civilian casualty report. The report found that, "To date, based on information available, CJTF-OIR assesses that, it is more likely than not, at least 484 civilians have been unintentionally killed by coalition strikes since the start of Operation Inherent Resolve." During the same period, Airwars, a United Kingdom-based nongovernmental organization that monitors airstrikes, estimated that the minimum number of civilian casualties from US-led coalition strikes was over 3,800, approximately eight times the number reported by the coalition. US military officials have said that non-US coalition members are responsible for at least 80 of the 484 fatalities, but none of the coalition members have publicly admitted responsibility.

In addition to coalition reporting, each member country has an individual responsibility under international law to conduct thorough, prompt, and impartial investigations of alleged serious violations of international humanitarian law for strikes in which it has been involved. Coalition members vary in their documentation and investigation of civilian casualties.

Although the coalition now jointly conducts preliminary assessments of alleged civilian casualties, coalition members should not rely on other coalition members, or broader coalition reporting, to collect information or to assess whether a strike they have conducted complies with the law.

The coalition, member countries operating in the area, and Iraqi authorities should investigate their role in attacks reported to cause serious violations of international humanitarian law, including by interviewing survivors, and not just rely on self-reporting and/or battle damage assessments, Human Rights Watch said. Should there be evidence of war crimes - including serious violations of the laws of war committed with criminal intent - any perpetrator of the crime should be prosecuted, including any commander responsible under the principle of command responsibility.

The apparent lack of compensation to victims of coalition operations also remains a critical concern. A coalition spokesperson told Human Rights Watch that the coalition has only received two compensation requests, and has made two condolence payments since the beginning of Operation Inherent Resolve. Members of the coalition involved in military operations should take appropriate steps to verify civilian casualties, identify the victims, and deliver appropriate compensation in the case of violations of international law. Human Rights Watch also recommends appropriate "condolence" or ex gratia payments - those made without legal obligation - for civilian harm.

"Individual countries shouldn't hide behind the coalition and wash their hands of responsibility," Motaparthy said. "Coalition members should take responsibility for the strikes they carry out by investigating those that may have been serious violations, particularly given how inadequate coalition investigations have been."

The Satellite Imagery

Human Rights Watch analyzed satellite imagery of the Tanak neighborhood, where three of the attacks documented took place, and identified over 380 distinct impact sites consistent with the detonation of large, air-dropped munitions between March 8 and April 26, 2017. A review of damaged locations showed that a majority of these airstrikes most likely targeted mixed residential and commercial buildings, with a substantial minority targeting main streets and intersections. Human Rights Watch has no information as to whether there were any military targets in or near the sites.

Although this apparently accurate targeting pattern of the street network is consistent with the use of guided munitions, Human Rights Watch found that the majority of impact craters in Tanak measured 10 or more meters in diameter, consistent with the use of conventional air-dropped bombs weighing between 500 and 1,000 pounds.

The use of explosive weapons with wide-area effects such as air-dropped bombs of this size on probable military targets in densely populated civilian areas of western Mosul may be resulting in civilian casualties and damage to civilian objects that is excessive considering the anticipated military objectives of the strikes. Such disproportionate military attacks are prohibited under international humanitarian law. In all cases, commanders and targeting officers should select weapons and specific munitions to minimize civilian casualties to the maximum extent possible.

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Ship Finance International Limited ("Ship Finance") (NYSE: SFL) today announced its intention to host a fixed income investor call. Ship Finance has engaged a group of Nordic banks to organize this call on Wednesday, 7 June at 9:00 EST / 15:00 CET.

In order to participate, you may dial in at one of the following options:

U.S. toll free: +1 866 869 2321

International: +44 (0) 203 009 5710

United Kingdom: 0800 953 1289

Norway: 2156 3162

Denmark: 3272 7518

Finland: 094 245 1472

Sweden: 020 088 3022

Conference ID#: 36596080

The presentation to be held can be found in the link below.

Ship Finance has a NOK denominated bond loan maturing in October 2017 and may, subject to market conditions, initiate a fixed income transaction following the investor call.

June 7, 2017

The Board of Directors

Ship Finance International Limited

Hamilton, Bermuda

Questions can be directed to Ship Finance Management AS:

Investor and Analyst Contacts:

Harald Gurvin, Chief Financial Officer, Ship Finance Management AS

+47 23 11 40 09

Andre Reppen, Senior Vice President, Ship Finance Management AS

+47 23 11 40 55



Media Contact:

Ole B. Hjertaker, Chief Executive Officer, Ship Finance Management AS

+47 23 11 40 11

The fixed income securities mentioned herein have not been and will not be registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the 'Securities Act'), and may not be offered or sold in the United States or to, or for the account or benefit of, U.S. persons absent registration or an applicable exemption from registration requirements of the Securities Act. Ship Finance does not intend to register all or any portion of the proposed offering in the United States and no public offering will be made in the United States.

About Ship Finance

Ship Finance International Limited (NYSE: SFL) has an unprecedented track record in the maritime industry, being consistently profitable and paying dividends every quarter since 2004. The Company's fleet of more than 70 vessels is split between tankers, bulkers, container vessels and offshore assets, and Ship Finance's long term distribution capacity is supported by a portfolio of long term charters and significant growth in the asset base over time. More information can be found on the Company's website: www.shipfinance.bm

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward Looking Statements

This press release may contain forward looking statements. These statements are based upon various assumptions, many of which are based, in turn, upon further assumptions, including Ship Finance management's examination of historical operating trends. Although Ship Finance believes that these assumptions were reasonable when made, because assumptions are inherently subject to significant uncertainties and contingencies which are difficult or impossible to predict and are beyond its control, Ship Finance cannot give assurance that it will achieve or accomplish these expectations, beliefs or intentions. Important factors that, in the Company's view, could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed in this presentation include the strength of world economies and currencies, general market conditions including fluctuations in charter hire rates and vessel values, changes in demand in the tanker market as a result of changes in OPEC's petroleum production levels and worldwide oil consumption and storage, changes in the Company's operating expenses including bunker prices, dry-docking and insurance costs, changes in governmental rules and regulations or actions taken by regulatory authorities, potential liability from pending or future litigation, general domestic and international political conditions, potential disruption of shipping routes due to accidents or political events, and other important factors described from time to time in the reports filed by the Company with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.
Russia: Rights Activist Facing Charges

Publisher Human Rights Watch Publication Date 5 June 2017 Cite as Human Rights Watch, Russia: Rights Activist Facing Charges, 5 June 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5937f7234.html [accessed 10 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.

UPDATE: On June 2, 2017, Valentina Cherevatenko was formally charged with "malicious evasion" of legal requirements set out in Russia's law on "foreign agents." In a statement published on the same day, the European Union External Action Service acknowledged Cherevatenko's "outstanding work on human rights education, peace building, and humanitarian issues" and flagged that "[Russia's] practice of declaring NGOs as "foreign agents" restricts civil society and impedes the exercise of fundamental freedoms." The trial date is pending.

(Moscow) - A Russian human rights activist is facing criminal charges for allegedly failing to comply with the "foreign agents" law, Human Rights Watch said today. On June 27, 2016, Russian authorities notified Valentina Cherevatenko, a prominent rights activist in the South of Russia, that they were bringing criminal proceedings against her for "malicious evasion" of legal requirements set out in the "foreign agents" law. Investigators alleged that as chair of the Women of the Don Foundation for Civil Society Development, Cherevatenko had violated article 330.1 - "malicious evasion of the duty to file the documents required for inclusion in the register of nonprofit organizations performing the functions of a foreign agent."

"The case against Valentina Cherevatenko is the first time a criminal proceeding for noncompliance with the 'foreign agents' law has been brought against a human rights defender," said Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "Russian authorities should immediately dismiss the case against Cherevatenko and repeal the law that threatens the work of human rights groups in Russia."

The investigation committee for the Rostov region determined that Cherevatenko, as chair of the coordination board of "Women of the Don Union," knew about the requirement to register a nongovernmental organization that receives foreign funding for political activity in the Russian Federation as a "foreign agent." The investigation committee asserted that Cherevatenko created but did not register "out of malice" an organization with a similar name, "Women of the Don Foundation for Civil Society Development," which received foreign funding to support public initiatives and leaders in the Northern Caucasus.

If found guilty, Cherevatenko faces up to two years in prison.

On June 24, Novocherkassk officials searched the office of Women of the Don Union in connection with the criminal case, confiscating documents allegedly related to the Northern Caucasus project.

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Iraq: Dozens Found Handcuffed, Executed in, around Mosul

Publisher Human Rights Watch Publication Date 4 June 2017 Cite as Human Rights Watch, Iraq: Dozens Found Handcuffed, Executed in, around Mosul, 4 June 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5937f78b4.html [accessed 10 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.

At least 26 bodies of blindfolded and handcuffed men have been found in government held areas in and around Mosul since the operation to retake the city began in October 2016, Human Rights Watch said today.

In 15 of the cases, local armed forces told a foreign journalist that the men were extrajudicially killed by government security forces who had them in custody under suspicion of Islamic State (also known as ISIS) affiliation. In the remaining cases, reported by local and international sources, the sites of the apparent executions - all in government held territory - raise concerns about government responsibility for the killings. A foreign journalist also said that a government official told them that a Sunni Popular Mobilization Forces (known as the PMF or Hashd al-Sha'abi) unit, which is part of the government forces working to retake Mosul, was responsible for the extrajudicial killing of 25 men in their custody and dumping the bodies in the Tigris River.

"The bodies of bound and blindfolded men are being found one after the other in and around Mosul and in the Tigris River, raising serious concerns about extrajudicial killings by government forces," said Lama Fakih, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. "The lack of any apparent government action to investigate these deaths undermines the government's statements on protecting detainee rights."

Extrajudicial executions during an armed conflict are war crimes and if widespread or systematic, carried out as part of policy, would constitute crimes against humanity.

Iraqi forces, including the Popular Mobilization Forces, are screening and detaining men fleeing Mosul, in some cases in unidentified and informal detention centers where they are cut off from contact with the outside world. The authorities have not released any information on the number of people detained, or being investigated or charged. Given past abuse of people detained by the PMF and other government military and security forces, Human Rights Watch has flagged concerns about detainees' treatment, including possible executions.

On May 13 and 15, 2017, two groups of aid workers and a foreign journalist said that they saw groups of corpses, 15 bodies in all, by the side of a road between the village of Athba and town of Hammam al-Alil, about 15 kilometers south of west Mosul. The area is entirely under the control of Iraqi government forces. One group said they had driven past the area a day earlier and the bodies had not been there, suggesting they were killed on May 12 or 13.

Local armed forces at the nearest checkpoint told the journalist that they saw Iraqi "security forces" bring the men to the area and shoot them. The journalist observed many bullet casings in the area on May 15. The journalist found an identity card on one of the bodies and confirmed with a contact within the National Security Service, a security body under the ultimate control of the prime minister, that the name was on their government database of about 90,000 people wanted for ISIS-affiliation.

Related Content

Human Rights Watch obtained seven photos of the bodies at the site, which show the corpses in various lying and kneeling positions, all blindfolded with their hands bound with plastic handcuffs or fabric.

Human Rights Watch shared these photos with Stefan Schmitt of the International Forensic Program at Physicians for Human Rights, who said that there were no indications that the bodies were dragged or placed in the locations, such as drag marks or shifting of clothing. The positioning of at least two of the bodies was consistent with kneeling prior to execution and then falling forward, he said, and he concluded that it was likely the victims were executed in the place they were found.

On April 20, 2017, Reuters reported that over the course of the last several months, residents of Qayyarah, a town 60 kilometers south of Mosul and firmly under Iraqi government control since August 2016, had seen at least six bodies floating down the Tigris River blindfolded with their hands bound. On May 21, a local fighter told Human Rights Watch he saw another bound body floating in the river by the bridge near Qayyarah. The Tigris River flows south, which suggests that the bodies were placed in the river north of Qayyarah, but could not have come from ISIS-controlled territory because of several dams in the river south of Mosul.

An officer of the PMF 90th Brigade told Human Rights Watch over the phone that his forces were holding detainees in bathrooms of abandoned homes in Safina, a village 20 kilometers north of Qayyarah, along the Tigris River, and said they had "business with the men" they were holding. He said no visitors were allowed at the detention sites. On May 21, a foreign journalist told Human Rights Watch that a government official informed them that the 90th Brigade was holding alleged ISIS affiliates in the same village. According to the journalist, the official said the 90th Brigade had been holding detainees there for at least four months, and he personally knew of at least 25 detainees held there whom the 90th Brigade had executed and dumped into the river.

In several other cases, bound and blindfolded corpses of men whose bodies bore signs of being executed were found in government held parts in and around Mosul, aid workers and journalists told Human Rights Watch.

At the end of April 2017, an aid worker visited the morgue at Qayyarah hospital that had reopened about two months earlier. Human Rights Watch reviewed a photo the aid worker took inside the morgue of a large pile of bodies. On the top of the pile was a man who had been shot. He was lying chest down, with a blindfold and with his hands bound with plastic handcuffs. Human Rights Watch visited the hospital in mid-May and two head doctors told researchers that they had received orders from the health and defense ministers that they were not to respond to any information requests on the morgue, or allow any visitors. They did not provide a reason, but said it was a "red line."

In late January, another foreign journalist showed Human Rights Watch pictures of the bodies of two bound men in a residential neighborhood of east Mosul fully under the control of Iraqi forces that he had taken two days earlier. Residents said they knew nothing about the identities of the men or circumstances of their death. Also in late January, Human Rights Watch interviewed a resident of the outskirts of Gogjali, a suburb of east Mosul, who pointed out a spot where he had found the body of a blindfolded man in the mud next to a trench. He and neighbors had buried the body. He said he knew nothing about the man's death or identity.

Media reports also have captured chilling incidents of executions during the operation.

"If Iraqi authorities want civilians who spent over two years living under ISIS to feel safe and protected, they need to ensure that anyone responsible for murdering prisoners is brought to justice," Fakih said.

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UAE: Domestic Workers' Rights Bill A Step Forward

Publisher Human Rights Watch Publication Date 7 June 2017 Cite as Human Rights Watch, UAE: Domestic Workers' Rights Bill A Step Forward, 7 June 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5937f8c44.html [accessed 10 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 Arab Emirates' moves to adopt a new law that will guarantee domestic workers a weekly rest day and paid leave is long overdue, Human Rights Watch said today. After the bill becomes law, the Human Resources and Emiratization Ministry should develop implementing regulations that will bring the country into line with the International Labour Organization's (ILO) Domestic Workers Convention by ensuring that migrant domestic workers enjoy the same labor protections as other workers in the UAE. On May 31, 2017, the Federal National Council adopted a revised version of a 2012 draft law on domestic workers, approved by the cabinet in March. This bill covers 19 categories of workers, including domestic workers, regulates recruitment, and addresses terms and conditions of employment. It will be sent to the President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan for ratification before it can become law. "Once this bill is ratified, the rights of hundreds of thousands of domestic workers will finally be protected by law in the UAE," said Rothna Begum, Middle East women's rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. "This is an important advance, but without strong enforcement mechanisms to accompany the law, it will be largely ineffective." At least 146,000 female migrant domestic workers are in the Emirates - primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal - cleaning, cooking, and caring for families. Domestic workers are excluded from the protections offered under the country's national labor law. A 2014 Human Rights Watch report documented a range of abuses against domestic workers including unpaid wages, confinement to the house, workdays of up to 21 hours with no rest and no days off, and in some cases, physical or sexual assault by employers. Domestic workers face legal and practical obstacles to redress, and many return home without justice. The Federal National Council referred to provisions of the bill, but as the full text of the bill is not publicly available, Human Rights Watch cannot fully verify whether the extent of protections in the new law is in line with international human rights law and standards. The bill requires that employers treat the worker "in a good manner that preserves their dignity and the integrity of their body." It also requires employers to provide domestic workers with accommodation and food, but is vague on minimum standards. It provides 30 days of annual paid leave and daily rest of at least 12 hours - including at least eight consecutive hours of rest. It will also guarantee 15 days of paid sick leave, 15 days of unpaid sick leave, and compensation for work-related injuries or illnesses. The bill sets out a weekly rest day but permits the employer to make the domestic worker forgo the rest day if paid. The bill does not lay out stipulations that workers should be free to leave the workplace during their non-working hours. These provisions are weaker than the UAE labor law, which stipulates an 8-hour workday or 48-hour workweek, and 15 days of paid sick leave, 15 days at half pay, and unpaid sick leave thereafter. The ILO Domestic Workers Convention - the global treaty on domestic workers' rights - maintains that domestic workers should have protections equivalent to those of other workers. The UAE and other Gulf countries should ratify that convention and align their national laws to the treaty, Human Rights Watch said. "Guarantees for daily and weekly rest periods as well as paid leave are critical for ensuring decent working conditions and preventing workplace abuse," Begum said. "After ratifying this bill, the UAE government should pass regulations to close existing loopholes that employers can easily exploit to avoid providing weekly rest days." The bill imposes new obligations on recruitment agencies to respect domestic workers' rights and to refrain from discrimination. These include prohibitions on sexual harassment, forced labor, and discrimination based on race, color, sex, religion, political opinion, national origin, or social origin. However, recruitment agencies often advertise workers' salaries that vary widely based on national origin, in part because the UAE sets no minimum wage for domestic workers, and it is not clear if the non-discrimination provision alone will change this practice. The bill also provides for recruitment agencies to employ workers under "temporary employment," allowing for employers to hire domestic workers on a temporary basis. Regulations to govern this relationship are still pending. This is a significant development as employers usually pay upfront recruitment costs to hire live-in domestic workers. Some cleaning companies have, in recent years, provided such a service but with no regulations governing this form of service. The UAE also announced in March that it will replace recruitment agencies by the end of 2017 with what they are calling "tadbeer centers" (procurement centers) that are publicly regulated but privately operated. Effective oversight over these centers will be crucial. Past Human Rights Watch research has found instances in which cleaning companies - which act as employers for live-in domestic workers whom individuals can hire on a temporary basis -paid workers less than the agreed salaries in their contracts or repeatedly sent workers to employers with histories of abuse. The Federal National Council's adoption of the domestic workers' bill does not mention whether the bill includes requirements for inspections of agency offices and workplaces, or penalties against employers and agents for breaches of the law. For example, the bill protects workers' rights to retain their own identity documents, but does not appear to set any penalties for employers who confiscate workers' passports, a widespread abuse in the UAE and other Gulf countries. The bill also reinforces the kafala (visa-sponsorship) system, which ties domestic workers to their employers, and prevents them from leaving or changing employers without their employer's consent. Those who leave can be punished for "absconding" and fined, imprisoned, and deported. The bill requires employers to report workers who are absent from their jobs without a legitimate reason within five days to the Human Resources and Emiratization Ministry. The bill does not establish the right to form a union. Several other Gulf countries are also slowly improving labor protections for migrant domestic workers. Kuwait passed a law on domestic workers' rights in 2015 that grants domestic workers the right to a weekly day off, 30 days of annual paid leave, a 12-hour working day with rest, and an end-of-service benefit of one month's wages for each year worked. Saudi Arabia adopted a regulation in 2013 that grants domestic workers nine hours of rest in every 24-hour period, with one day off a week, and one month of paid vacation after two years. But domestic workers can be required to work up to 15 hours a day, whereas Saudi labor law limits other workers to eight hours of work daily. Bahrain's 2012 labor law entitles domestic workers to annual vacations as well as access to mediation in labor disputes - but it fails to provide other basic protections, such as weekly rest days, a minimum wage, and limits on working hours. Qatar and Oman, however, still exclude domestic workers from their labor laws, although Qatar's cabinet adopted a draft domestic workers law in February 2017 that has not yet been made public. "Strong regulation, inspections, and enforcement of penalties are critical to ensure that recruitment agencies and employers are held accountable and made to follow the law," Begum said. "The UAE has taken an important step in creating this bill, and now it should adopt accompanying reforms to the kafala system."

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Bulgaria: Authorities must protect lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex activists from threats of attacks against the Sofia Pride march

Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 7 June 2017 Reference EUR 15/6437/2017 Cite as Amnesty International, Bulgaria: Authorities must protect lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex activists from threats of attacks against the Sofia Pride march , 7 June 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5937fa614.html [accessed 10 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 10 June, the 10th Sofia Pride march is taking place amid concerns that a counterdemonstration, organized at the same location and around the same time, could mar the event with violence.

Amnesty International is concerned by reports that a far-right group calling itself National Resistance (Nacionalna Suprotiva) has planned on 10 June a counter-demonstration to stop the Sofia Pride march from happening. From the social media pages of the event, it clearly emerges that the group has hostile intentions towards the Sofia Pride, as they state that the purpose of their demonstration is to stop the Pride march from taking place by cleaning up the trash and sick individuals" organising the "tenth sodomy parade". The counter-demonstration will have the same starting point as the Sofia Pride march, the Monument of the Soviet Army, and will start around the same time as the gathering for the march will begin.

In light of the apparent hostile and threatening attitude of the National Resistance's counter-demonstration, Sofia Pride organizers have been advised by the Sofia municipality to change the starting point and route of the march. Organizers are reluctant to do so as they fear that this can have an impact on the attendance of the march, and have rather requested support from municipality to ensure that they can carry out the Pride march according to their plans. Despite their requests, the Sofia municipality has confirmed that both the march and the counter-demonstration will go ahead at the same location. Amnesty International has written to the Mayor of Sofia to urge her to support the right to peaceful assembly of the Pride organizers publicly and to prevent any hostility towards the event.

Despite reassurances by the police that they will guarantee their safety, the Sofia Pride organizers are still very concerned. In the past years, Bulgarian NGOs have reported cases of attacks immediately after the march by anti-LGBTI groups which were not prevented by the police.

Amnesty International is calling on Bulgarian authorities to publicly support the Sofia Pride, and make all necessary arrangements to ensure the safety of organizers and participants of the Sofia Pride march on 10 June, and of other events organized during the Pride.

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UNHCR: Irish commitment to refugees shows way forward for those forced to flee

Publisher UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Publication Date 6 June 2017 Cite as UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), UNHCR: Irish commitment to refugees shows way forward for those forced to flee, 6 June 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5937fec94.html [accessed 10 November 2022]

Ireland's comprehensive response to refugees shows a level of commitment that is urgently needed from all countries, said Volker Turk, UNHCR's Assistant High Commissioner for Protection, in Dublin today (Tuesday June 6).

Speaking at the Institute of International and European Affairs, Mr Turk said that Ireland's willingness to engage internationally on refugee issues, co-leading the process that led to the New York declaration, conducting search and rescue activities in the Mediterranean, and increasing commitments to resettlement should serve as an example to other countries grappling with how to respond to the growing numbers of people forced to flee their homes because of war and persecution.

"Refugees are an international responsibility, and all countries need to share this equitably" said Mr Turk. "The Irish people have a long history of advocating strongly for the fundamental rights of all human beings, and they carry into the present and future a firm belief in the power of moral force to move mountains."

As co-chair of the UN Refugee and Migrant process last year, Ireland was an instrumental force in the adoption of the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants by 193 countries. It has also been a powerful voice for the implementation of the 2013 Sustainable Development Agenda, which calls for leaving no one, including refugees, behind.

In the afternoon, Mr Turk met Tanaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality Frances Fitzgerald, and Minister Stanton, where they discussed recent progress on reforms of the protection system in Ireland as well as UNHCR priorities for forthcoming discussions at EU level on reform of the Common European Asylum System.

Mr. Turk stated, "Ireland's international engagement shows the power of all countries, no matter their size, to affect real change. In practical terms, Ireland has not been found wanting - it is supporting those developing and middle income countries hosting the majority of the world's refugees. It is also providing opportunities for some of the most vulnerable refugees to be resettled out of precarious situations so they build a future for themselves and their families. Ireland is now resettling 520 refugees a year, a figure we strongly encourage the authorities to maintain into the future."

Mr Turk said that much progress has been made in Ireland since the visit of the former High Commissioner for Refugees, and current Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres in 2012. Recognition rates of refugees had returned to European Union averages, while crucial reforms of asylum legislation and decreases in average processing times showed that change is possible with the right levels of political commitment.

He added, however, that in light of recent limitations introduced on family reunification, it will be important for Ireland to consider new pathways for refugees to find safety, including through private sponsorship schemes.

"There are those who argue that the conditions of refugees living far away are not our concern, or our duty. However Ireland's history of flight and migration put it in a unique position to remind the world that refugees are an international responsibility, and all countries need to share this equitably. "
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OTTAWA, June 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- When it comes to sun safety, the Canadian Dermatology Association (CDA) is asking Canadians to think about more than just their skin. They want people to take precautions to protect their eyes from the suns harmful rays too.



Thats why the CDA has partnered with the Canadian Ophthalmological Society (COS) to launch The Sunglasses Project, an awareness effort that will coincide with this years Sun Awareness Program, which takes place June 5-11, 2017.

The focus of the sunglasses campaign is to promote awareness about the benefits of UVR eye protection and to get people to practice sun safety that includes the eyes.

Our hope is that every Canadian will become aware of the associated eye health risk of UVR exposure and take steps to protect themselves, their families and their loved ones, says Dr. Jennifer Beecker, National Chair, Sun Awareness Working Group.

That means wearing a wide-brimmed hat, staying out of the sun during peak UVR hours (11 am to 3 pm) and wearing the appropriate type of sunglasses.

How UV rays harm eyes

Unprotected UVR exposure can cause short-term pain and discomfort, but permanent damage to the eyes can result from prolonged exposure to the sun without adequate protection.

Children and adolescents are especially vulnerable to the suns rays because their ocular lenses arent yet mature and cant filter UV light as effectively as adults, causing damage to the retina. In addition, their pupils tend to be larger by nature, allowing more light rays into the eye, says Guillermo Rocha, MD, FRCSC, FACS, President of the COS.

Short-term, excessive exposure to UV lightespecially from light reflected from sand, snow or pavementwithout adequate eye protection can produce a burn on the eyes surface. Its like sunburn but the damage occurs in the eyes.

Long-term, cumulative UV exposure can also damage parts inside the eye, such as the lens and retina, increasing the risk of chronic eye diseases and various cancers. Years of repeated exposure can lead to more permanent damage that may contribute to vision loss and eye diseases, including cataracts (clouding of the lens) and macular degeneration (breakdown of the macula), and pterygium (a growth that invades the corner of the eyes). In addition, it increases the risk of melanoma of the eye.

Skin cancer is also a risk, since the area around the eyes is thin, delicate, and you cant easily apply sunscreen to protect it. Non-melanoma skin cancers, namely basal cell carcinoma (BCC) and squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), are common in the eye area.

Choosing the right eye protection

Eyewear with UV protection can help guard against these eye-related health conditions. That means that wearing sunglasses shouldnt be just about looking good or blocking out bright light, but about disease prevention.

Just as one would look at the SPF value on a sunscreen before buying it, people should be looking for assurance of adequate UV protection when choosing eyeglasses.

Check out the label. Look for glasses that filter out 99-100 per cent of UV light (both UV-A and UV-B).



Look for glasses that filter out 99-100 per cent of UV light (both UV-A and UV-B). Choose the right design. If you spend a lot of time in the sun, it is recommended that you buy wrap-around glasses to prevent the sun from entering your eyes from the sides.



If you spend a lot of time in the sun, it is recommended that you buy wrap-around glasses to prevent the sun from entering your eyes from the sides. Consider more than colour and cost. Dont judge a pair by color or price. Dark lenses dont necessarily mean good protection nor do expensive glasses.

Overall, protecting your eyes means wearing UV-protective sunglasses and wearing a wide-rimmed hat to offer further coverage.

Through the Sunglasses Project, the CDA and COS aim to open peoples eyes to the importance of sun safety for the eyes, as well as for the skin.

For more information about skin and eye health, please visit: www.dermatology.ca and www.cos-sco.ca

Sun Awareness Week

The Canadian Dermatology Association has organized the nation-wide early summer Sun Awareness Week since 1989. The aim is to educate Canadians about the dangers of too much sun and to help stop the rising incidence of skin cancer in Canada. This years Sun Awareness Week is Monday, June 5 to Sunday, June 11, and involves a number of events and activities across Canada.

About the CDA

The Canadian Dermatology Association, founded in 1925, represents Canadian dermatologists. The association provides easy access to the largest, most reliable source of medical knowledge on dermatology. CDA exists to advance the science and art of medicine and surgery related to the care of the skin, hair and nails; provide continuing professional development for its members; support and advance patient care; provide public education on sun protection and other aspects of skin health; and promote a lifetime of healthier skin, hair and nails. By doing so, CDA informs and empowers both medical professionals and the Canadian public. To learn more about what the work CDA does visit http://www.dermatology.ca or join the conversation on http://www.Twitter.com/CdnDermatology or www.Facebook.com/CdnDermatology.

About the COS

The Canadian Ophthalmological Society (COS) is the national, recognized authority on eye and vision care in Canada. As eye physicians and surgeons, we are committed to assuring the provision of optimal medical and surgical eye care for all Canadians by promoting excellence in ophthalmology and by providing services to support our members in practice. Our membership includes over 900 ophthalmologists and 200 ophthalmology residents. We work collaboratively with government, other national and international specialty societies, our academic communities (ACUPO), our provincial partners and affiliates and other eye care professionals and patient groups to advocate for health policy in Canada in the area of eye and vision health. COS is an accredited, award-winning provider of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) through the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada (RCPSC) and is an affiliate of the Canadian Medical Association (CMA).
Government of Tanzania brings together 'whole of society' to implement landmark refugee reforms

Publisher UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Author Charlie Yaxley Publication Date 5 June 2017 Cite as UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Government of Tanzania brings together 'whole of society' to implement landmark refugee reforms, 5 June 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5937ff174.html [accessed 10 November 2022]

The Government of Tanzania has announced the launch of the Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework (CRRF) in Tanzania that will seek to implement a radical shift in refugee protection towards a more systematic and sustainable response.

At a launch ceremony on Friday 02 June, at the Julius Nyerere International Convention Centre, the Government and a broad range of stakeholders including UN agencies, international financial institutions, humanitarian and development actors, members of civil society and academia committed to work together to strengthen the protection and rights of refugees, support the greater inclusion of refugees within society and recognise and foster development opportunities for refugees and host communities.

"For decades, Tanzania has been proud to provide safety and protection to people fleeing war, violence and persecution," said Deputy Minister for Home Affairs Hon. Engineer Hamadi Massauni (MP), who officiated the event. "Tanzania recognises the unity of people, and we look forward to working alongside partners, both old and new, towards ensuring refugees and host communities in Tanzania are given the best opportunities to live alongside one another prosperously and peacefully."

The acting Director of Regional Administration, Ibrahimu Minja added that the prosperity of refugees and host communities are symbiotically linked. "Host communities in north-western Tanzania continue to welcome thousands of new arrivals each month," he said. "It is critical that in the spirit of collective action and responsibility-sharing, they are supported by the international community to ensure refugees continue to be hosted in safety and dignity."

Tanzania has volunteered to be a pilot country for the development of the CRRF, a game-changing commitment from 193 states agreed at last year's UN Summit on Refugees and Migrants to develop a holistic and sustainable refugee response that reinforces legal protection of refugees while bolstering support for host communities. UN member states are set to adopt a Global Compact on Refugees in 2018, based on the lessons learned from applying the CRRF in Tanzania as well as other pilot countries.

"We need to close the gap between humanitarian and development assistance," said Danish Ambassador to Tanzania Einar Jensen, speaking on behalf of development partners. "We need smart and good solutions that allow refugees to look after themselves and be productive. We are ready to put all our efforts behind the CRRF, and strongly support Tanzania as a pilot country."

After fleeing violence in Burundi, Jacqueline found safety and shelter - and a place to give birth to young Dani - in Tanzania's Nduta refugee camp.  UNHCR/Sebastian Rich

As part of the New York Declaration, Tanzania made five pledges towards strengthening the protection of refugees and asylum-seekers. At the launch, Government reconfirmed its pledges to:

1. Continue to receive people fleeing war, political instability and persecution;

2. Review the 1998 Refugees Act and the 2003 National Refugee Policy to ensure refugee protection is in line with international law and current realities:

3. Provide durable solutions to the remaining 1972 Burundian refugees who applied for Tanzanian citizenship but have not been naturalized;

4. Strengthen refugee protection by enhancing their access to education and employment; and

5. Support the global compact on refugees, once adopted.



"The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) stands ready to support Tanzania and the CRRF Secretariat in its efforts to enhance support for refugees and host communities," said UNHCR Representative to Tanzania, Ms. Chansa Kapaya. "There is an urgent need for understanding that the dramatic growth in the suffering of people who have fallen victim to war and persecution requires an equally dramatic growth in financial support, and for innovative, new ways of working to meet their basic needs. By adopting a 'whole of society' approach, we are excited to welcome new allies to join us, hand in hand, in a comprehensive, sustainable response to refugees."

"We have an opportunity to show that when refugees are given the right opportunities and support, they can support themselves and their families, and become important contributors to the communities hosting them," said Country Director of Tanganyika Christian Refugee Services, Emmanuel Shangweli, speaking on behalf of NGOs. "Tanzania is a country to showcase, and we are ready to work with other actors to produce tangible results and complement each other's work."

Tanzania is the largest host of Burundian refugees in the region with over 312,000 refugees and asylum-seekers (figures as at end of April) including over 250,000 Burundian refugees received since the outbreak of violence in Bujumbura in 2015. Significant numbers of new arrivals continue to flee to Tanzania each month, where they are provided with critical aid in the three refugee camps in the north-west. However, the humanitarian response continues to face significant challenges in providing life-saving aid and key basic services. To date, just four per cent of the US$ 406 million needed for the humanitarian response to Burundian refugees in Tanzania has been received.
Over 40 migrants die of thirst in the Sahara, signalling 'broadening death trap,' warns UN agency

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 2 June 2017 Cite as UN News Service, Over 40 migrants die of thirst in the Sahara, signalling 'broadening death trap,' warns UN agency, 2 June 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/593804c84.html [accessed 10 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 that smugglers may now be "broadening" a death trap for migrants and refugees that could stretch from the Mediterranean to the vast Sahara Desert, the United Nations refugee agency has reiterated its call for safe pathways so that those in desperate need of international protection do not lose their lives.

The alarm has been raised by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) as some 44 migrants and refugees - including women and children - are reported to have succumbed to extreme dehydration when the truck they were travelling in (to Libya) broke down in the desert in northern Niger, exposing them to extreme heat and lack of drinking water.

Only six could be saved.

"It is quite clear that human smugglers will go to any extent to exploit desperate refugees and migrants," said the UN agency in a news release today.

"These shocking deaths are part of the bigger picture of exploitation as smugglers broaden the death trap from the Mediterranean to the Sahara Desert."

Further, according to the UN International Organization for Migration (IOM), the Niger to Libya route is the one most sub-Saharan African migrants take when trying to reach Europe via the Mediterranean Sea.

Each week, thousands of desperate migrants are crammed into pick-up trucks for the days-long ride, often with only enough room for a few litres of water attempting to "The migrants are often lied to and cheated on their way [and] smugglers usually run away with their money, [leaving them] in the middle of nowhere, in a country they don't know, trying to gain enough money to either continue the route or go back home," said Guiseppe Loprete, the head of IOM operations in Niger.

Both IOM and UNHCR have been working to support refugees and migrants in the region, as well as warning them of the perils of the desert and sea journeys but operations remain constrained in the want of additional resources.

The UN refugee agency is currently in need of $75.5 million to meet the increased humanitarian and protection needs of people in Libya - including those internally displaced, host communities, as well as refugees and asylum seekers.

The appeal includes protection monitoring and interventions, as well as advocacy on issues related to respect for human rights, access to basic services, asylum procedures and freedom of movement.

Additional resources are also required in Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali and Chad to help prevent and respond to risks associated with such deadly journeys.

According to estimates, so far this year, the perilous Mediterranean crossing has claimed more than 1,700 lives.

"This latest tragedy was a grim reminder that probably more migrants die in the Sahara desert than in the Mediterranean, but due to the inhospitable nature of the region, it was virtually impossible to know the exact number," said Mr. Loprete.
Thousands of Nigeria's returning refugees need humanitarian assistance  UN refugee agency

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 2 June 2017 Cite as UN News Service, Thousands of Nigeria's returning refugees need humanitarian assistance  UN refugee agency, 2 June 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5938054a4.html [accessed 10 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

As thousands of refugees return from Cameroon to north-eastern Nigeria, straining the few existing services and creating a new emergency, the United Nations refugee agency is stepping up its response to improve conditions.

More than 12,000 refugees returned in May alone, with 1,800 entering in just one day early last week. They are arriving to difficult conditions in the town of Banki, some 100 kilometres southeast of Maiduguri and just inside Nigeria.

Though returns have dropped significantly since last week  with only 24 coming back on Monday  we are nonetheless concerned, as Banki is already hosting a large population of nearly 45,000 internally displaced people, and is far from ready to receive such large numbers, said Babar Baloch, spokesperson for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

The decisions to return are being taken by refugees themselves  people variously cite difficult conditions at Cameroon's Minawao camp or the need to be back for the farming season. The refugees also organize their own transport.

In Banki, and also at nearby towns where people are hoping to head, humanitarian access is very limited and largely dependent on the availability of military escorts. As most returnees are still unable to travel onwards to their home villages where security remains uncertain, there is a pressing need for additional land for more shelter and other facilities at the [internally displaced persons] site, continued UNHCR.

According to the UN agency, people are sleeping alongside their few possessions in the open. In the absence of cooking fuel many are burning plastic. Sanitation is a major worry too, as what is available cannot serve the number of people in the site. There is little separation between areas for washing clothes and ablutions. With little or no drainage system at water collection points, and the incoming rainy season, the risk of waterborne disease is great.

UNHCR and the Nigerian Government have alerted the refugees in Cameroon that the rate of returns is a strain on the few existing services and create a new emergency for which the response capacity is very limited.

UNHCR and our partners in Banki are doing what we can, given difficult circumstances, to improve conditions both there and in other areas that returnees are seeking to reach such as Gwoza which lies further south of Banki, explained Mr. Balloch.

Plastic sheeting is being provided and some 1500 emergency shelters are under way along with non-food aid kits. Currently food aid is an urgent need and we are appealing to other humanitarian partners to come forward with additional expertise and help, he elaborated.

On 3 March, UNHCR, Cameroon and Nigeria, signed a Tripartite Agreement aimed at facilitating voluntary returns. The objective and purpose of the tripartite agreement is to ensure that returns comply with international standards.

The situation is part of a wider crisis in the Lake Chad Basin that has displaced over 2.7 million people, including some 210,000 Nigerian refugees into neighbouring countries. As of mid-May, 96,000 of these were registered as being in Cameroon.

UNHCR is monitoring the situation on both sides of Nigeria's border with its neighbours and we continue to urge all countries in the region to allow safe haven and asylum procedures to all those in need. Taking into account the security constraints, UNHCR has started strengthening presence in border entry points for better monitoring and reporting.
Iraq: UN refugee agency sounds alarm for more support as fighting continues in Mosul

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 2 June 2017 Cite as UN News Service, Iraq: UN refugee agency sounds alarm for more support as fighting continues in Mosul, 2 June 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/593805914.html [accessed 10 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

As heavy fighting continues to drive large numbers of people from Mosul, the United Nations refugee agency today appealed for urgent support to meet the critical needs of vulnerable children, women and men displaced from and returning to the city.

According to Iraqi authorities, more than 750,000 have been forced to flee since military operations to retake the city from Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Da'esh) fighters.

A shortage of funds threatens to undermine our humanitarian response at this critical time, Andrej Mahecic a spokesperson for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees told the press at a regular media briefing in Geneva.

The UN agency is in need of about $126 million to sustain its operations. Nearly half of this amount  $60 million  is needed for the more than 100,000 newly displaced families to provide them emergency shelter in the camps, legal assistance to replace lost and missing documents, child protection, prevent sexual and gender based violence, as well as for blankets, mattresses and other core relief items.

A further $24 million is needed to assist and support Iraqi families returning to their homes.

Estimates indicate that 125,000 internally displaced people have returned to their homes, many in east Mosul and on the outskirts of the city but most are living in damaged buildings and need shelter assistance as well as financial support. Their situation also needs monitoring for protection concerns.

So far, the UN agency has also established 12 camps in support of the overall efforts by the Iraqi authorities to provide shelter to currently 316,000 internally displaced Iraqis in relative proximity to Mosul.

Overall UNHCR's protection and assistance programmes in Iraq amount to $578 million in 2017. However, these are currently 21 per cent funded  a major cause for concern given that the year is already into its sixth month.
Urgent aid needed for over 9,000 children fleeing violence in DR Congo to Angola  UNICEF

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 2 June 2017 Cite as UN News Service, Urgent aid needed for over 9,000 children fleeing violence in DR Congo to Angola  UNICEF, 2 June 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/593805ef4.html [accessed 10 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.

More than 9,000 children who have arrived at two temporary reception centres in a northern Angolan city from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) need urgent support, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said today.

The protection of children, nutrition, access to safe drinking water and sanitation, as well as prevention of disease, have been UNICEF's immediate concerns  and actions  since the arrival of refugees in Lunda Norte, said Abubacar Sultan, the UNICEF Representative in Angola.

UNICEF, provincial authorities and other partners are providing assistance  life-saving interventions in health, water and adequate sanitation services  to children and their families who arrive at the camps in the city of Dundo, after days, often weeks, of travelling on foot. To date, more than 25,000 people have arrived in Angola, having fled violence in the DRC's Kasai province.

UNICEF is also taking action to protect 200 children who have arrived at the camps without their families.

The agency has trained social welfare workers on how to register these children because registration is critical to ensure the safety of children and protect them from trafficking, abuse and exploitation. By registering children, there is also a greater chance that they can be reunited with their families.

UNICEF and partners have identified temporary placement of the unaccompanied children in a friendly and protective environment while efforts are made to trace their biological families, Mr. Sultan said.
UN Security Council adds individuals and groups to DPR Korea sanctions list

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 2 June 2017 Cite as UN News Service, UN Security Council adds individuals and groups to DPR Korea sanctions list, 2 June 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/593820a64.html [accessed 10 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Strongly condemning the nuclear weapons and ballistic missile development activities of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), the United Nations Security Council today decided to apply existing sanctions to 14 individuals and four entities.

Unanimously adopting a resolution, the 15-member body also reaffirmed its decisions that the north-east Asian country should abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programmes in a complete, verifiable and irreversible manner, and immediately cease all related activities.

In the text, the Council condemned in the strongest terms the country's nuclear weapons and ballistic missile development activities, including a series of ballistic missile launches, dating back to 9 September 2016, which were conducted in violation and flagrant disregard of the relevant Council resolutions.

So far this year, the DPRK has conducted nine ballistic missile tests, including one on Monday. In response, Council members have issued seven press statements, most recent one on 22 May, condemning the country's actions and expressing its readiness to take further significant measures, including sanctions.

Today's resolution contains one annex with the list of the 14 individuals who are now subject to travel ban and asset freeze and a second annex with the list of the four entities subject to asset freeze.

Those sanction measures are specified in resolution 1718, which was adopted in 2006.
In final Security Council briefing, UN envoy hails Ivoirians for turning page on conflict to a peaceful future

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 2 June 2017 Cite as UN News Service, In final Security Council briefing, UN envoy hails Ivoirians for turning page on conflict to a peaceful future, 2 June 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/593821654.html [accessed 10 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.

Briefing the Security Council for the final time as the United Nations mission in Cote d'Ivoire draws down, the UN envoy for the country thanked the Government for its support and said that though more needs to be done, but the West African nation has shown its resolve for a peaceful, stable and prosperous future.

"Since the post-elections crisis that roiled Cote d'Ivoire only six years ago, demonstrable progress has been made on all fronts," highlighted Aichatou Mindaoudou, the

Special Representative of the Secretary-General for the country and the head of the UN Operations in Cote d'Ivoire, known by its French acronym, UNOCI.

The mission, set up in April 2004, will close at the end of June. Its complement of uniformed personnel had already left the country in February and the phased reduction of its civilian personnel was completed in April.

Noting the lessons learned by the mission during the course of its deployment, Ms. Mindaoudou highlighted the strong political mandate accorded to the mission as well as the confidence placed by the Security Council.

In particular, she hailed the quick reaction force established within UNOCI - with a mandate to respond in Liberia in support of mandate of the UN mission in that country (UNMIL) - as "among the most forward-leaning intermission cooperation initiatives in the history of UN peacekeeping."

She also said that the support of the coalition of international partners, all working in pursuit of same goal had been vital.

Lastly, noting that no peacekeeping operation can substitute for national political will or national efforts to overcome the issues that led to conflict, the head of UNOCI noted that though more needed to be done in order to address the remaining fragilities, but Cote d'Ivoire has demonstrated its determination to do the work required for the country to regain its former place as a pillar of peace, stability and economic prosperity in West Africa.

In conclusion, Special Representative Mindaoudou expressed her appreciation to all partners for their collaboration and cooperation and voiced admiration for the people and Government of Cote d'Ivoire - at the local, regional and national levels.

"They, themselves, were the decisive factor in turning the page on crisis and conflict and, I have no doubt, whose continued determined efforts will ensure that the hard-won peace will be sustained."

Earlier today, Cote d'Ivoire was elected a non-permanent member of the Security Council for a period of two years. It will assume its seat on 1 January 2018.
UN will work with Colombian Government and FARC-EP on extended weapons hand-in deadline

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 2 June 2017 Cite as UN News Service, UN will work with Colombian Government and FARC-EP on extended weapons hand-in deadline, 2 June 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/593822454.html [accessed 10 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

The United Nations Mission in Colombia has said that it will comply with new deadlines agreed between the Government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC-EP) for a weapon hand-in, now set for June 20.

After signing a hard-won peace deal, both parties embarked on a path to peace 180 days ago, and have been working together successfully enabling the FARC-EP to lay down their individual weapons, for which the initial date was set for May 30. Due to delays in the different phases of implementation of the agreement the term has now been extended.

In a statement released yesterday, the UN Mission indicated that it has been working intensely in the logistic deployment of 44 containers in 26 identified war zones. In these containers, it will receive and hold over 7,000 FARC-EP identified weapons, for which the Mission has deployed 450 international observers and 72 civilian officers. These weapons include munition, mines and explosives.

The containers, including the weapons handed over by the FARC-EP, will then be transported to eight reception and storage centres. Based on the newly agreed timetable, the extraction of weapons from war zones will be achieved by 1 September.

On a recent visit to Colombia, a delegation from the UN Security Council witnessed first-hand the implementation of the peace agreement, observed the progress as well as the challenges to the agreement that ended the 50-year old conflict. The delegation met with President Juan Manuel Santos and toured the Amazon region of Colombia where one of the monitoring mechanism facilities is set up under a historic peace agreement.
UN rights chief calls for probe into protestor deaths in Bahrain

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 2 June 2017 Cite as UN News Service, UN rights chief calls for probe into protestor deaths in Bahrain, 2 June 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/593822954.html [accessed 10 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 concern at the violence and arrests that occurred as part of a wider crackdown on dissent in Bahrain, the top United Nations human rights official today called on the Government to promptly launch an independent, effective investigation into the deaths of protestors on 23 May.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein issued his call after what his Office (OHCHR) described as the deadliest security operation in the Al-Diraz area since March 2011 and the third one since December 2016.

According to OHCHR, supporters of Sheikh Isa Qassem, the highest Shia authority in Bahrain, had been holding a sit-in since June 2016. At least five protesters were killed and some 286 individuals were arrested. Official accounts suggest that 19 security personnel were injured during the recent security operation by Bahraini security.

The operation came two days after a Bahraini Court had handed down a one-year-suspended sentence to Sheikh Isa Qassem on charges related to illegal funding and money laundering.

I urge the Government to investigate the events of 23 May, in particular the loss of lives, to ensure that the findings are made public and that those responsible are held accountable, High Commissioner Zeid said, also calling on all sides to refrain from violence.

Reports that those who died were buried without the consent of their families were also disturbing, he said, adding that loved ones must be allowed to perform funerals in line with their customs and traditions.

Last Wednesday, one of the country's last remaining opposition groups, the National Democratic Action Society, also known as Waad, was dissolved by a court in Manama. Sources suggest that a number of activists and human rights defenders have also been summoned for interrogations in recent days, with allegations of ill treatment during the questioning.

Human rights defenders working in Bahrain reportedly continue to face restrictions, intimidation, interrogations, detention and travel bans, Mr. Zeid said. I urge Bahrain to choose a different path  one of engagement and dialogue, as well as accountability for violence, regardless of the perpetrator. My Office stands ready to offer technical assistance and advice on the promotion and protection of human rights in Bahrain.
Afghanistan: UN Mission urges restraint amid ongoing violent protests in Kabul

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 2 June 2017 Cite as UN News Service, Afghanistan: UN Mission urges restraint amid ongoing violent protests in Kabul, 2 June 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/593822de4.html [accessed 10 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 envoy for Afghanistan today called on protesters on the street of the nation's capital to use restraint and avoid violence, while expressing his understanding of their frustration over a string of terrorist attacks that have killed hundreds of civilians in recent months.

The genuine anger expressed by the protesters, many of whom suffered the loss of family and friends, is fully understandable, said Tadamichi Yamamoto, the Secretary-General's Special Representative for Afghanistan. But this tragic week has already added too much civilian suffering to Afghanistan, and further violence will not solve any problems.

According to media reports, protesters took to the street of Kabul, following Wednesday's terrorist attack in the diplomatic quarter of the city that killed and injured many civilians. The protesters blaming the Afghan Government for not having been able to stop a string of attacks in the capital clashed with riot police on Friday.

Mr. Yamamoto, who is also the head of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), recognized the constitutional right of those with grievances to express them peacefully in public demonstrations, but reminded those protesting, and also those in a position to protect the protestors, that all have an obligation to avoid violence.

During the emotional period following the horrific attack that took place this week in Kabul, it is imperative to seek ways to listen to and voice grievances peacefully, said Mr. Yamamoto, welcoming the Government's willingness to meet with those who have protested today.

He said that UNAMA is encouraged that the Government of Afghanistan has stressed today that its security forces must ensure the principles of tolerance, professionalism and law-based behavior, welcoming the Government's commitment to prosecute and bring to justice the perpetrators of crimes against the people.

UNAMA assists the process of peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan.
FORM 8.3

PUBLIC OPENING POSITION DISCLOSURE/DEALING DISCLOSURE BY

A PERSON WITH INTERESTS IN RELEVANT SECURITIES REPRESENTING 1% OR MORE

Rule 8.3 of the Takeover Code (the "Code")

1. KEY INFORMATION

(a) Full name of discloser: Majedie Asset Management Limited (b) Owner or controller of interests and short positions disclosed, if different from 1(a):



The naming of nominee or vehicle companies is insufficient. For a trust, the trustee(s), settlor and beneficiaries must be named. (c) Name of offeror/offeree in relation to whose relevant securities this form relates:



Use a separate form for each offeror/offeree



AMEC FOSTER WHEELER PLC (d) If an exempt fund manager connected with an offeror/offeree, state this and specify identity of offeror/offeree: (e) Date position held/dealing undertaken:



For an opening position disclosure, state the latest practicable date prior to the disclosure 06 June 2017 (f) In addition to the company in 1(c) above, is the discloser making disclosures in respect of any other party to the offer?



If it is a cash offer or possible cash offer, state "N/A" No





2. POSITIONS OF THE PERSON MAKING THE DISCLOSURE

If there are positions or rights to subscribe to disclose in more than one class of relevant securities of the offeror or offeree named in 1(c), copy table 2(a) or (b) (as appropriate) for each additional class of relevant security.

(a) Interests and short positions in the relevant securities of the offeror or offeree to which the disclosure relates following the dealing (if any)

Class of relevant security:



ORD 50P



Interests Short positions Number % Number % (1) Relevant securities owned and/or controlled: 8,375,207 2.15 (2) Cash-settled derivatives:



(3) Stock-settled derivatives (including options) and agreements to purchase/sell:



TOTAL:



8,375,207



2.15

All interests and all short positions should be disclosed.

Details of any open stock-settled derivative positions (including traded options), or agreements to purchase or sell relevant securities, should be given on a Supplemental Form 8 (Open Positions).

(b) Rights to subscribe for new securities (including directors' and other employee options)

Class of relevant security in relation to which subscription right exists: Details, including nature of the rights concerned and relevant percentages:

3. DEALINGS (IF ANY) BY THE PERSON MAKING THE DISCLOSURE

Where there have been dealings in more than one class of relevant securities of the offeror or offeree named in 1(c), copy table 3(a), (b), (c) or (d) (as appropriate) for each additional class of relevant security dealt in.

The currency of all prices and other monetary amounts should be stated.

(a) Purchases and sales

Class of relevant security Purchase/sale



Number of securities Price per unit ORD 50P Purchase 43,620 508.0757 ORD 50P Sale 5,027 508.0758 ORD 50P ORD 50P

(b) Cash-settled derivative transactions

Class of relevant security Product description



e.g. CFD Nature of dealing



e.g. opening/closing a long/short position, increasing/reducing a long/short position Number of reference securities Price per unit





(c) Stock-settled derivative transactions (including options)

(i) Writing, selling, purchasing or varying

Class of relevant security Product description e.g. call option Writing, purchasing, selling, varying etc. Number of securities to which option relates Exercise price per unit Type



e.g. American, European etc. Expiry date Option money paid/ received per unit

(ii) Exercise

Class of relevant security Product description



e.g. call option Exercising/ exercised against Number of securities Exercise price per unit





(d) Other dealings (including subscribing for new securities)

Class of relevant security Nature of dealing



e.g. subscription, conversion Details Price per unit (if applicable)





4. OTHER INFORMATION

(a) Indemnity and other dealing arrangements

Details of any indemnity or option arrangement, or any agreement or understanding, formal or informal, relating to relevant securities which may be an inducement to deal or refrain from dealing entered into by the person making the disclosure and any party to the offer or any person acting in concert with a party to the offer:



Irrevocable commitments and letters of intent should not be included. If there are no such agreements, arrangements or understandings, state "none"



None





(b) Agreements, arrangements or understandings relating to options or derivatives

Details of any agreement, arrangement or understanding, formal or informal, between the person making the disclosure and any other person relating to:



(i) the voting rights of any relevant securities under any option; or



(ii) the voting rights or future acquisition or disposal of any relevant securities to which any derivative is referenced:



If there are no such agreements, arrangements or understandings, state "none"



None





(c) Attachments

Is a Supplemental Form 8 (Open Positions) attached? NO

Date of disclosure: 07 June 2017 Contact name: Matthew Hambly Telephone number: 0207 618 3900

Public disclosures under Rule 8 of the Code must be made to a Regulatory Information Service.

The Panel's Market Surveillance Unit is available for consultation in relation to the Code's disclosure requirements on +44 (0)20 7638 0129.

The Code can be viewed on the Panel's website at www.thetakeoverpanel.org.uk.




UN chief Guterres meets with Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot leaders

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 5 June 2017 Cite as UN News Service, UN chief Guterres meets with Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot leaders, 5 June 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/593823ae4.html [accessed 10 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 a meeting with the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot leaders, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres announced that they had agreed on the need to reconvene the Conference on Cyprus in June, in line with the 12 January statement of the conference.

All agreed that the chapter on security and guarantees is of vital importance to the two communities, Secretary-General Guterres said at a press stakeout at the UN Headquarters, in New York, alongside the Greek Cypriot leader, Mr. Nicos Anastasiades and the Turkish Cypriot leader, Mr. Mustafa Aknc, late last evening.

Progress in this chapter is an essential element in reaching an overall agreement and in building trust between the two communities in relation to their future security, he added.

The leaders also agreed to continue in parallel the bi-communal negotiations in Geneva on all other outstanding issues, starting with territory, property and governance and power-sharing.

The UN chief and the leaders also agreed that all issues will be negotiated interdependently, as per the joint declaration of 11 February 2014.

Further in his remarks, Mr. Guterres said that his Special Adviser, Espen Barth Eide, would engage with all participants in the preparation of a common document to guide the discussions on security and guarantees, based on the outcome of the meetings of the conference on Cyprus in Geneva and Mont Pelerin.

In the follow-up to this meeting, the Secretary-General will reach out to the other participants of the conference: Greece, Turkey and the United Kingdom and the European Union as an observer.

Separately, speaking to the media today at the UN Headquarters in New York, Mr. Eide highlighted that the meeting between the two leaders was "frank and honest" and that while issues remained, both sides have a "shared vision of a united Cyprus".

On the upcoming talks, he said that they would be "in principle open ended" and that there would not be an end date "because the end date is when we have solved the problem or, of course, concluded that it's unsolvable."

"We believe it will take some time, maybe [] up to two weeks."
After 50 years of Israeli occupation, 'now is the time' to create Palestinian state  UN chief

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 5 June 2017 Cite as UN News Service, After 50 years of Israeli occupation, 'now is the time' to create Palestinian state  UN chief, 5 June 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/593823fd4.html [accessed 10 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.

Marking 50 years since the start of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, which resulted in Israel's occupation of the Palestinian Territory, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres today reiterated a call for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.

Now is the time to end the conflict by establishing an independent Palestinian state, living side by side in peace and security with the State of Israel, Mr. Guterres said in his statement on the 50 year occupation.

The occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza and the Syrian Golan, which displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and Syrians, has imposed a heavy humanitarian and development burden on the Palestinian people, he said.

Among them are generation after generation of Palestinians who have been compelled to grow-up and live in ever more crowded refugee camps, many in abject poverty, and with little or no prospect of a better life for their children, he added.

Ending the occupation that began in 1967 and achieving a negotiated two-state outcome is the only way to lay the foundations for enduring peace that meets Israeli security needs and Palestinian aspirations for statehood and sovereignty, he stressed.

Now is not the time to give up on this goal but is the time to return to direct negotiations to resolve all final status issues on the basis of relevant UN resolutions, agreements and international law, Mr. Guterres said.

He warned that continued settlement construction and expansion, violence and incitement and the illicit arms build-up and militant activity in Gaza risk creating a one-state reality that is incompatible with realizing the legitimate national and historic aspirations of both peoples.

He recalled that in 1947, the world recognized the two-state solution and called for the emergence of independent Arab and Jewish states on the basis of UN General Assembly resolution 181.

On 14 May 1948, the State of Israel was born, but almost seven decades later, the world still awaits the birth of an independent Palestinian state, he said, offering once again to work with all relevant stakeholders to support a genuine peace process.
Syria: As airstrikes hit Raqqa, UN sounds alarm over plight of civilians

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 6 June 2017 Cite as UN News Service, Syria: As airstrikes hit Raqqa, UN sounds alarm over plight of civilians, 6 June 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/593824544.html [accessed 10 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 humanitarian wing today said it is deeply concerned for the safety and protection of more than 400,000 civilians who continue to be exposed to daily fighting and airstrikes in Syria's war-torn Raqqa Governorate.

The humanitarian situation in Al-Raqqa governorate remains dire, with the majority of the population reportedly facing critical problems in meeting their immediate needs, Alessandra Vellucci, Director of the UN Nations Information Service in Geneva on behalf of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) told reporters at today's regular press briefing.

She also reiterated the UN's call for unconditional, unimpeded and sustained access to those affected by the fighting in Raqqa, and more broadly to the 4.5 million who are still in hard-to-reach areas across the war-torn country.

Turning to the internally displaced (IDPs), she pointed out that more than 160,000 people have been displaced since 1 May with the situation on the ground remaining fluid. There are some 87,200 in the Ar-Raqqa governorate; nearly 37,000 in Aleppo; over 33,400 in Idlib; and smaller numbers in Hama, Deir-ez-Zor and Homs.

On 3 June, three internally displaced people, including a pregnant woman, had been reportedly killed by a landmine. On 4 June, airstrikes on the al-Mashlab neighbourhood in Raqqa city had reportedly resulted in the destruction of two schools while mortar shelling in the vicinity of another school injured several people, she said.

Ms. Vellucci stated that since March, UN agencies continued to provide multi-sectoral humanitarian assistance through their local partners  such as food, medical treatment and vaccinations throughout Raqqa, including IDPs in camps.

Some 60,000 Syrian refugees in Lebanon in Jordan could lose assistance

For its part, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) sounded the alarm that humanitarian programmes supporting Syrian refugees and their host communities are quickly running out of resources.

Citing critical gaps in Lebanon and Jordan, UNHCR spokesperson Andrej Mahecic told journalists in Geneva that vital parts of its response to Syrian refugees were critically underfunded.

Despite generous pledges, humanitarian programmes in support of Syrian refugee and communities hosting them are quickly running out of resources. The situation is most dramatic in Lebanon and Jordan where a number of direct cash assistance activities could dry up in less than four weeks, he said.

Those who fled to Jordan face stark challenges.

Refugees tell our staff that UNHCR monthly cash support means a meal a day, a better roof, their dignity. Now they fear losing everything. Many say would prefer to go back to Syria to die if they stop receiving this assistance, continued Mr. Mahecic.

In Lebanon, where UNHCR urgently needs $116 million, direct cash assistance programmes for refugees will be affected first.

These include a lifeline of multi-purpose cash for 30,000 Syrian refugee families, a winter cash assistance for two months for another 174,000 families and protection cash assistance for 1,500 refugee households to help them overcome periods of hardship, he continued.

The funding gap also jeopardises 65,000 life-saving secondary health care interventions and support to UNHCR's and the Lebanese Authorities' capacity to issue and renew documentation for refugees, following a recent decision to waive the residency renewal fees which most refugees could not afford, Mr. Mahecic added.

Mid-way through this year, the $4.6 billion inter-agency appeal to meet the immediate humanitarian needs of Syrian refugees across the Middle East and North Africa is only 18 per cent funded.
Iraq: Lives of 100,000 children 'on the line' as fighting continues in west Mosul

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 5 June 2017 Cite as UN News Service, Iraq: Lives of 100,000 children 'on the line' as fighting continues in west Mosul, 5 June 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/593825384.html [accessed 10 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.

Some 100,000 children remain in extremely dangerous conditions in western sections of Iraq's Mosul city as fighting between Government and terrorist forces continues, the United Nations children's agency today reported, warning that "children's lives are on the line."

"We are receiving alarming reports of civilians including several children being killed in west Mosul," said Peter Hawkins, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) Representative in Iraq, in a statement, noting that boys and girls are being killed, injured and used as human shields as the fighting intensifies by the hour.

An estimated 100,000 girls and boys remain in extremely dangerous conditions in the Old City and other areas of west Mosul, he said, calling on all parties in west Mosul to keep children out of harm's way at all times.

"Attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure including hospitals, clinics, schools, homes and water systems should stop immediately," Mr. Hawkins said.
Afghanistan: After attack on funeral in Kabul, UN envoy calls for urgent measures to halt cycle of violence

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 3 June 2017 Cite as UN News Service, Afghanistan: After attack on funeral in Kabul, UN envoy calls for urgent measures to halt cycle of violence, 3 June 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/593825974.html [accessed 10 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.

Denouncing today's deadly attack on a peaceful funeral procession in Kabul as morally reprehensible and bereft of humanity, the top United Nations official in Afghanistan said that after a week of violence across the long-troubled country, now is the time to seek unity and solidarity.

I urge everyone not to respond to violence with more violence, said Tadamichi Yamamoto, the UN Secretary-General's Special Representative for Afghanistan, expressing heartfelt condolences to family and friends of the victims, all civilians, who once again suffered indescribable loss today.

He noted that today's attack, which reportedly killed at least seven people and wounded dozens of others attending a funeral in the Afghan capital, was conducted by those opportunistically seeking to use these very fragile moments to destabilize Afghanistan.

Mr. Yamamoto underscored that the incident follows so much violence this week across the country, in Khost, in Kabul and in other provinces, referring to a truck explosion on Wednesday that reportedly killed nearly 100 people and wounded hundreds of others near the presidential palace and foreign embassies. Just yesterday, he urged restraint amid ongoing protests that broke out in the capital in the wake of that attack.

In the context of so much suffering, now is the time to seek unity and solidarity, underscored Mr. Yamamoto, who is also the head of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA). He added that he has spoken with a broad spectrum of the country's political leaders, highlighting the importance of unity. They agreed that working together is essential to stop the cycle of violence, he said.

Calm is now called for. Ensuring security in Kabul is an urgent priority, as this city continues to experience the highest number of civilian casualties, he continued, reiterating that the ultimate objective in Afghanistan must be a negotiated peace.

Meaningful steps must take place now to obtain an immediate, nationwide halt to violence. I encourage all parties to enter discussions toward that end. The United Nations stands ready to help, said the envoy.

He also urged all members of the international community to help put an end the cycle of violence and support the foundations of a lasting peace. The upcoming Kabul meeting on regional peace and security provides an immediate opportunity in that regard.

I am in constant contact with members of the diplomatic community to work together to ensure coherent support, Mr. Yamamoto concluded.
The Annual General Meeting of Awilco Drilling PLC (Ticker: AWDR) was held Wednesday 7 June 2017 at 12:00 p.m. (UK time), at the Company's offices, 2 Kingshill Park, Venture Drive, Arnhall Business Park, Westhill, Aberdeen AB32 6FL, UK.



Each of the resolutions set out in the Meeting Notice were duly passed. The signed minutes of meeting are attached hereto.



The Meeting Notice and Appendices are available on our website www.awilcodrilling.com, under 'Investor Relations/General Meetings'.



Aberdeen, 7 June 2017





For further information please contact:

Jon Oliver Bryce, CEO

Phone: +44 1224 737900



Cathrine Haavind, IR Manager

Phone: +47 93 42 84 64



This information is subject of the disclosure requirements pursuant to section 5-12 of the Norwegian Securities Trading Act.
HOUSTON, June 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Indoor Harvest Corp. (OTCQB:INQD), a developer of personalized cannabis medicines and a provider of advanced cultivation methods and processes, announced today that it has retained Hayden IR, a national investor relations consulting firm, to implement a strategic investor relations program grounded in best practices. Hayden IR will work to raise Indoor Harvests visibility within the investment community by strengthening its relationships and increasing awareness with the goal of ultimately enhancing shareholder value.



Now that we have agreed in principal to amend and move forward with our strategy of acquiring Alamo CBD and retain our vertical farming assets in our soon-to-be-formed equipment division, we believe we are well positioned to take advantage of opportunities in the emerging cannabis industry, said Chad Sykes, Indoor Harvests Founder and Chief Innovation Officer. As we ramp our efforts in Texas and Colorado and with our joint venture partner, Vyripharm Biopharmaceuticals, the board and management believed it was an appropriate time to retain a more proactive strategic investor relations firm to help us reach new potential investors and effectively communicate our investment thesis. We are confident that throughout their national footprint, Hayden IR will help us more effectively communicate our accelerated growth strategy, business objectives and corporate milestones to a wider audience of sophisticated investors."

Hayden IR is a highly regarded investor relations consulting firm known for its ability to connect underfollowed and undervalued emerging growth companies with sophisticated institutional investors, buy-side and sell-side analysts, retail brokerage firms and accredited individual investors. Leveraging decades of cumulative experience, Hayden IR develops strategies to help clients effectively communicate with the investment community and works to increase their exposure through targeted outreach and transparent positioning. Hayden IR helps public companies deliver the right message to the right audience. Over time, Hayden IR helps its clients navigate up the Wall Street value chain and to help them secure a reasonable valuation by broadening their audience, expanding institutional ownership and ensuring clear, consistent communication with the public.

About Indoor Harvest, Corp.

Indoor Harvest, Corp. (OTCQB:INQD) is a developer of personalized cannabis medicines and a provider of advanced cultivation methods and processes. Its brand name Indoor Harvest, is a full service, state of the art design-build engineering firm for the indoor farming industry. Providing production platforms and complete custom designed build outs for both greenhouse and building integrated agriculture (BIA) grows, tailored to the specific needs of virtually any cultivar. Our patent pending aeroponic fixtures are based upon a modular concept in which primary components are interchangeable. Visit our website at http://www.indoorharvest.com for more information about our Company.

Forward-Looking Statements

This release contains certain forward-looking statements relating to the business of Indoor Harvest and its subsidiary companies, which can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as estimates, believes, anticipates, intends, expects and similar expressions. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to be materially different from those described herein as anticipated, believed, estimated or expected. Certain of these risks and uncertainties are or will be described in greater detail in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These forward-looking statements are based on Indoor Harvests current expectations and beliefs concerning future developments and their potential effects on Indoor Harvest. There can be no assurance that future developments affecting Indoor Harvest will be those anticipated by Indoor Harvest. These forward-looking statements involve a number of risks, uncertainties (some of which are beyond the control of the Company) or other assumptions that may cause actual results or performance to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Indoor Harvest undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as may be required under applicable securities laws.
From 2-7 to sectional champs, Monrovia has one question: 'Why not us?'
Chinese workers operate a production line at a shoe factory owned by the Huajian Group, which makes Ivanka Trump-branded shoes among other brands, in Dongguan, southern China's Guangdong province, Sept. 14, 2016.

China's state-controlled media on Wednesday accused three labor investigators of industrial espionage after they carried out an undercover probe of conditions at factories supplying the Ivanka Trump brand with shoes.

Hua Haifeng, Li Zhao and Su Heng were detained last week on suspicion of "illegal use of monitoring equipment" and are currently being held in the Ganzhou Detention Center in Jiangxi's Ganzhou city.

But they have now also been accused of "supplying relevant overseas organizations with industrial secrets" relating to production processes, hiring practices and pay and conditions, The Paper, which is back by the Shanghai municipal government, reported.

"Police found the three were carrying special eavesdropping equipment, including watches ... so they placed the three under coercive measures," the report said.

"They provided information on labor practices, wage standards and other internal information related to the running of the factory to overseas institutions, with the purpose of obtaining funding from these institutions," it said.

It said the three are currently being held under criminal detention for illegal use of eavesdropping equipment pending further investigation.

The report comes after Wen Yu, a lawyer hired by Hua's family was denied access to his client by detention center officials, said he had met with an accident in his cell.

However, Wen Yu was reluctant to comment when approached by RFA on Tuesday.

"I have already received a notification, and it isn't convenient for me to give an interview," Wen said. "But I can tell you that they are all three in the detention center."

He said Su Heng's family had also engaged a lawyer, who was able to meet with his client on Tuesday.

Labor law violations

The New York-based group China Labor Watch said Hua and Li had worked covertly at a shoe factory owned by the Huajian Group in the city of Dongguan, while Su had worked at a factory in Ganzhou. Both factories make Ivanka Trump-branded shoes, it said.

Rights activist Li Qiang, who heads the group, said the three investigators had amassed considerable evidence of widespread violations of labor laws by the factory.

"I think that the real reason that the authorities have placed them under criminal detention is that they want to prevent the material they gathered from being made public," he said.

Asked if he believes the detentions are linked to the factory's status as a supplier to the Ivanka Trump brand, he replied: "I think this whole affair is extremely embarrassing [for the government]."

Li said his organization works to undercover labor abuses in the Chinese supply chains of U.S. companies.

"We wanted to investigate U.S. companies over the abuse of Chinese workers' rights, and now people have wound up getting detained; and I think this has a lot to do with the Chinese government's mindset," he said.

Li said the three activists had uncovered ample evidence of abuses of workers by the factory on behalf of his group.

"We discovered that the longest shifts there would last from 7.10 a.m. through to 1.30 a.m. the following morning," Li told RFA.

"We also saw managers in the factory being verbally abusive to workers and humiliating them, using very offensive language, including language that insulted women," he said.

"They also used corporal punishment on workers," he said.

Li said the factory had also falsified its payroll information, and accused the local government of a cover-up.

He said Hua is being held in a cell alongside more than 20 other prisoners, all of whom have been ordered not to speak to him.

No official notification

Meanwhile, the family of Li Zhao has yet to receive any official notification of detention, he said.

Deng Guilian, Hua's wife, told Reuters she was not aware of the specifics of the case, though said her husband had told her he was not being mistreated.

Wen Yu told RFA that Deng had been allowed to transfer money to Hua's account, so he could buy daily necessities and extra food to supplement meager rations.

China on Tuesday rejected a call from the U.S. State Department for the release of the activists, saying they are being investigated on suspicion of interfering with a company's "normal operation and production activities" and the illegal use of "professional surveillance equipment."

"The case will be handled according to law," foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a regular news briefing in Beijing on Tuesday. "No country has the right to interfere in the judicial process."

The Ivanka Trump brand, the White House, and Ivanka Trump's lawyer Jamie Gorelick have not responded to requests for comment on the case, Reuters reported on Wednesday.



Reported by Lin Ping for RFA's Mandarin Service, and by the Cantonese Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
LAS VEGAS, June 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- International Spirit and Beverage Group Inc., (a Nevada Corporation) (OTCPK:ISBG) is pleased to announce that the company has received re-orders for its flagship Besado Platinum Tequila. Orders received and paid for will be recorded on the corporate financials as revenue. Orders received and shipped but on terms with the customer will be recorded as deferred sales until paid in full. The company feels this distinction is necessary so shareholders and investors can read and understand our financials.



ISBG is also excited to announce that a special secondary launch has begun in south Florida and this sector expansion is expected to drive significant revenue in the Sunshine State. The sales team in southern Florida will be responsible for brand awareness at on-premise locations such as restaurants, bars and nightclubs. A similar marketing effort will take place as well statewide in Texas with a focus on San Antonio and Houston. Further information about specific events and venues will be forthcoming.

We believe that these on-premise ambassadors will help to properly brand our Besado Platinum Tequila and the subsequent extensions of this line and increase its recognition across our southern Florida and Texas footprints, said CEO Terry Williams. Restaurants will be featuring our Besado brand in menus with signature drink recipes along with pairings. With the following that the company has created through key media and marketing relationships, we look forward to these efforts generating sales and creating more re-orders.

About ISBG: ISBG is a Nevada-based alcoholic beverage company specializing in the development, marketing and global sales of innovative wine and spirits brands. The Company's expertise lies in the strategic development and aggressive early growth of its brands and establishing these brands as viable and profitable. ISBG intends to build its own brands while seeking out individual acquisition candidates to continue to develop its pipeline of new brands into the ISBG portfolio. For more information visit: www.isbg.global

Forward Looking Statements: This press release may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. These statements relate to future events or our future financial performance. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terminology including "could", "may", "will", "should", "expect", "plan", "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", "predict", "potential" and the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology. While these forward-looking statements, and any assumptions upon which they are based, are made in good faith and reflect our current judgment regarding the direction of our business, actual results will almost always vary, sometimes materially, from any estimates, predictions, projections, assumptions or other future performance suggested in this report. Except as required by applicable law, we do not intend to update any of the forward-looking statements so as to conform these statements to actual results. Investors should refer to the risks disclosed in the Company's reports filed from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission and available at www.sec.gov.

For Additional Investor Information: International Spirit & Beverage Group, Inc. info@isbg.global
North Korean authorities have arrested a man on spying charges for having contact with Christians while visiting relatives in China, sources inside the isolated country said.

Kim Seung-mo, a 61-year-old resident of the Wiyon area of Hyesan city in Yanggang province, was arrested on June 3 after he returned from visiting relatives in China, they said.

It happened on the third day following his return from visiting relatives in China, a source from the province told RFAs Korean Service.

I witnessed him being dragged by state security officials in front of Wiyon train station, he said. There were about 3,000 people getting ready for the military march to Mount Paektu, who were about to depart for Samjiyon county in celebration of the 80th anniversary of the victorious Battle of Pochonbo.

Mount Paektu, an extinct volcano on the border between North Korea and China, is sacred to North and South Koreans alike. It is the legendary birthplace of Dangun Wanggeom, who is believed to be the founder of the first Korean kingdom around 2333 BC.

The Battle of Pochonbo on June 4, 1937, was a North Korean uprising against Japanese occupiers that was part of a larger armed struggle against the Japanese. It holds an important place in North Koreas history.

Kim was shackled and tied with rope as he was dragged out from a town behind Wiyon brewery, said the source who spoke on condition of anonymity.

There were obvious signs of violent assault because the man had split lips and black eyes, and he appeared to have sustained an injury to one of his legs, the source said.

Someone informed agents

A second source who lives in Yanggang province told RFA on Tuesday that Kim used to work at the Wiyon substation where electricity is converted into distributable voltage.

Kim retired in March, he said.

Since he retired, he hasnt been doing anything, though he recently visited relatives in China to lend a hand to his wife who sells used clothes on the black market, said the source who requested anonymity.

The mans relatives are said to be residing in Antu, Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, in northeastern Chinas Jilin province, the source said.

After he came back from China, he openly told his neighbors that his relatives attended a Christian church, and the churchs pastor collected many used clothes from parishioners for him, he said.

It seems like someone informed state security agents about him, he added.

The Ministry of State Security, which reports directly to leader Kim Jong Un, is the regimes secret police force. It is known for its brutality and human rights abuses, experts say.

All North Korean travelers returning from China are required to report their whereabouts and details about their activities, the source said.

In Kims case, he was arrested on charges of spying because he did not report the fact that his relatives are churchgoers and that the church pastor helped him, he said.

Though Christian missionaries were active on the Korean peninsula during the time of the Japanese occupation before World War II, communist and atheist North Korea views Christianity as a contemptable Western religion.

The regime treats Christians hostilely because it wants nothing to supersede citizens loyalty to the state.

North Koreas small community of Christians must conceal their faith to the fullest extent possible to avoid arrest and being sent to labor camps.

Reported by Sung-hui Moon for RFAs Korea Service. Translated by Leejin Jun. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
Two unidentified men vandalized a Catholic church Wednesday in Vietnams Nghe An province that has been targeted several times after members of its congregation criticized the governments handling of a devastating toxic waste spill off the countrys coast last year, sources said.



According to a resident of Son Hai commune, in Nghe Ans Quynh Luu district, and video footage obtained by RFAs Vietnamese Service, the two men approached the gate outside of Van Thai church before dawn on Wednesday and began hurling stones at the building.



One of the men then proceeded to urinate on the gate and entryway to the church, which belongs to the Van Thai sub-parish of Song Ngoc parish, whose priests have led protests against Hanois settlement with the Taiwan-owned Formosa steel plant over its toxic waste spill in April 2016.



Everyone was sleeping at the time, but a camera had been set up to monitor the area, the resident told RFA, speaking on condition of anonymity.



In the morning, parishioners checked the camera and saw what had happened, so they posted it on Facebook.



An accompanying video of the church in daylight on Wednesday shows rocks scattered throughout the churchs courtyard, as well as broken panes of glass above the buildings front doors.



The resident said that some parishioners had told him their houses were pelted with stones on the evening prior to when the church was vandalized, but they didnt dare go out to see, for fear of being hit.



Other sources said that on Tuesday night a group of young men wearing T-shirts and carrying banners depicting the flag of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam drove motorcycles to Van Thai church, where they began screaming and creating public disorder.



Father Nguyen Dinh Thuc told RFA that a group of nuns told him about the pre-dawn vandalism when he visited Van Thai church to pray on Wednesday afternoon.



The nuns told me that they heard people throwing stones at the church and said they could see them through the camera system, but were too scared to go out, he said.



Thuc said that after previous incidents at the churchincluding one last week, in which hundreds of people carrying bricks and pipes threatened the priest and his congregation, before bombarding them with projectilespolice had been ordered to patrol the area every night to guard people against riots.



The authorities knew about these incidents, he said, questioning why the police failed to take action against the vandals on Wednesday night.



They even talked to the bishops and priests and promised that they wouldnt happen again.



The chairman and police chief of Son Hai commune refused to comment about Wednesdays incident when contacted by RFA, as did a former police officer who had previously overseen Quynh Luu district.



Toxic spill



In June last year, the Formosa Plastics Group acknowledged it was responsible for the release of toxic chemicals from its massive steel plant located at the deep-water port in neighboring Ha Tinh provinces Ky Anh district.



The spill killed an estimated 115 tons of fish and left fishermen and tourism industry workers jobless in four central provinces. Vietnam's government said in a report to the National Assembly in July that the disaster had harmed the livelihoods of more than 200,000 people, including 41,000 fishermen, and the labor ministry said this week that 18,000 idled fisherman have had to seek work abroad.



The company pledged U.S. $500 million to clean up and compensate people affected by the spill, but the government has faced protests over the amount and terms of the settlement, as well as the slow pace of payouts.



Van Thai sub-parishioners, and other members of the coastal Song Ngoc parish, claim they were directly impacted by the Formosa spill and have complained that the government failed to include them in the compensation package.



Vietnams one-party communist state closely controls and monitors the Catholic community, the second largest religious group in the country after Buddhists. Vietnamese Catholics have also been at the forefront of Formosa protests.



In August, more than 200 policemen blocked and assaulted some 4,000 Catholic parishioners who tried to march to Ky Anh townships administrative offices to protest government inaction over their loss of livelihood following the massive pollution-linked fish kill.



Before that, the marchers tried several times to demand relief from provincial authorities, but the police always stopped them, according to protesters.



Formosa Plastics U.S. $10.6 billion steel complex in Ha Tinh includes a steel plant, a power plant and a deep sea port, and is one of the largest foreign investments in Vietnam.



Last week, an explosion occurred at the steel mill, one day after the facility came online for the first time since causing the catastrophic toxic waste spill in 2016.



Reported by RFAs Vietnamese Service. Translated by Emily Peyman. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.
BOISE, Idaho, June 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- U.S. Geothermal Inc. (the Company) (NYSE MKT:HTM), a leading and profitable renewable energy company focused on the development, production, and sale of electricity from geothermal energy, today announced that Jonathan Zurkoff, Executive VP, Finance and Treasurer, is scheduled to present at the 2017 Marcum Microcap Conference in New York, NY on Thursday, June 15, 2017 at 10:00 a.m. (ET).



The 2017 Marcum Microcap Conference is scheduled to take place at the Grand Hyatt New York Hotel on June 15-16, 2017.

About U.S. Geothermal Inc.:

U.S. Geothermal Inc. is a leading and profitable renewable energy company focused on the development, production and sale of electricity from geothermal energy. The Company is currently operating geothermal power projects at Neal Hot Springs, Oregon, San Emidio, Nevada and Raft River, Idaho for a total power generation of approximately 45 MWs. The Company is also developing an additional estimated 115 MWs of projects at: the Geysers, California; a second phase project at San Emidio, Nevada; at Crescent Valley, Nevada; and the El Ceibillo project located near Guatemala City, Guatemala. U.S. Geothermals growth goal is to reach over 200 MWs of generation by 2021 through a combination of internal development and strategic acquisitions.

Please visit our Website at: http://www.usgeothermal.com

About Marcum:

Marcum LLP is one of the largest independent public accounting and advisory services firms in the nation, with offices in major business markets throughout the U.S., as well as Grand Cayman, China and Ireland. Headquartered in New York City, Marcum provides a full spectrum of traditional tax, accounting and assurance services; advisory, valuation and litigation support; and an extensive range of specialty and niche industry practices. The Firm serves both privately held and publicly traded companies, as well as high net worth individuals, private equity funds and hedge funds, with a focus on middle-market companies and closely held family businesses. Marcum is a member of the Marcum Group, an organization providing a comprehensive array of professional services. For more information, visit www.marcumllp.com.

The information provided in this news release may contain forward-looking statements within the definition of the Safe Harbor provisions of the US Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Readers are cautioned to review the risk factors identified by the company in its filings with United States Securities and Exchange Commission. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included herein, without limitation, statements relating to the future operating or financial performance, development schedules or estimated resources of U.S. Geothermal, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are frequently, but not always, identified by words such as "expects", "anticipates", "believes", "intends", "estimates", "potential", "possible", and similar expressions, or statements that events, conditions, or results "will", "may", "could", or "should" occur or be achieved. These forward-looking statements may include statements regarding perceived merit of properties; interpretation of the results of well tests; project development; resource megawatt capacity; capital expenditures; timelines; strategic plans; or other statements that are not statements of fact. Forward-looking statements involve various risks and uncertainties. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from U.S. Geothermal's expectations include the uncertainties involving the availability of financing in the debt and capital markets; uncertainties involved in the interpretation of results of well tests; the need for cooperation of government agencies in the development and operation of properties; the need to obtain permits and governmental approvals; risks of construction; unexpected cost increases, which could include significant increases in estimated capital and operating costs; and other risks and uncertainties disclosed in U.S. Geothermal's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2016 filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and Canadian securities regulatory authorities and in other U.S. Geothermal reports and documents filed with applicable securities regulatory authorities from time to time. Forward-looking statements are based on managements expectations, beliefs and opinions on the date the statements are made. U.S. Geothermal Inc. assumes no obligation to update forward-looking statements if managements expectations, beliefs, or opinions, or other factors, should change.

The NYSE MKT does not accept responsibility for the adequacy of this release.

FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:

Scott Anderson  Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications

U.S. Geothermal Inc.

Tel: 208-424-1027

Fax: 208-424-1030

sanderson@usgeothermal.com
When I reached him by phone, Courtnay Midkiff was sitting in the canoe he found on Craigslist, paddling down the Mississippi River  Missouri to his right, Illinois to his left  about 150 miles north of St. Louis.

Im pretty sure it was my first canoe-related interview. But then, if you want to reach Midkiff nowadays, chances are good thats where he will be.

Yeah, Midkiff said with a laugh. Im pretty much in the canoe from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Makes sense. You cant paddle the length of the 2,300-mile river while lollygagging on shore. He set off on April 12 from Lake Itasca, Minn., the source of the Mississippi, and hopes to reach New Orleans by late July.

This would be an unusual adventure for almost anyone other than Midkiff, whom I last spoke with in September 2013 after he completed a six-month solo walk across America that year.

A graduate of Richmonds Open High, Midkiff made the long walk to raise money and awareness for the National Fabry Disease Foundation.

Midkiff, along with his mother and brother, have Fabry Disease, a rare genetic, progressive disorder that results in symptoms from burning sensation in fingers and toes, which Midkiff has experienced for years, to life-threatening consequences such as kidney failure, heart attacks and strokes.

Now 27, Midkiff has never gotten the wanderlust out of his system, which brings us to the Mississippi.

Ever since I finished the walk, everybodys been, Whats next? he said. Ive just been working a normal job and paying my bills and going about a normal life. Then one of my buddies said I should check out a story about these guys that went down the Mississippi River. I was like, man, that would be kind of fun. I already went east to west, so maybe I should go north to south.

Just kind of snowballed from there  and now Im out here paddling, he said with a laugh. I dont like to half-step. I like to go all the way.

This time, hes not raising money, but he does hope to raise more awareness about Fabry for those who know nothing of the disease and for those who have it and might derive inspiration from someone with the disease undertaking such a journey.

His social media handle on Twitter, Instagram, Tumbler and Facebook, where he posts updates of his trip, is FabrysWalkabout.

We spoke at lunchtime on Tuesday, a few hours before he would paddle past Hannibal, Mo., the boyhood home of Mark Twain, which seems kind of appropriate.

It seems a little bit harder than the walk, Midkiff said. On the walk, I was a little more settled into it and a little more comfortable just hanging out. I passed through a lot of small towns and talked to people and stopped at stores to get ice-cold drinks.

On this trip, theres less social interaction, so it seems more draining mentally, but when I look at the map, I feel like Im doing pretty well and making good progress.

Hes paddled more than 40 miles some days. He goes ashore each evening and pitches a tent, which was easier in Minnesota, where the river was narrower and less-traveled by larger vessels, such as tugs and barges, which farther down the river can kick up an unwelcome wake if youre in a canoe.

More than 600 miles of the river meanders through Minnesota, Midkiff said, and Every day is like a scene out of National Geographic.

But in April, Minnesota also can be a little chilly. The wind-chill dropped below 20 at times, and snow fell. He warmed himself by a campfire each night, but the constant freezing and thawing wreaked havoc on his already problematic toes, so much so it hurt to wear shoes and even socks. Paddling while barefoot was OK  until he developed a bad sunburn. That cycle of unpleasantness is over now, and he said hes good again.

He generally dines on peanut butter, tuna, cans of Chef Boyardee, assorted snacks and a whole lot of water. Most of his shopping is conducted in one-aisle grocery stores, and he was on his way to a gas station in Louisiana, Mo., when I phoned him Wednesday morning to ask him a couple of follow-up questions.

Ive got to grab some groceries, he said as he walked. Hoping they have a breakfast sandwich or something.

Since his cross-country walk, Midkiff has spent considerable time in Atlanta, where he works as a valet for a couple of restaurants  nothing fancy, but the moneys good, he said  though most of his family and friends remain in the Richmond area.

They are following his journey on social media, and they will be glad to know Midkiff has taken no inadvertent swims yet, despite coming close on a couple of occasions.

Midkiff achieved the rank of Eagle in Boy Scout Troop 400 at Richmonds St. Pauls Episcopal Church, so he knows his way around the outdoors, and hes traveled across the country and the world with a couple of bands, so he knows his way around.

Even with that sort of experience and even with modern maps and smartphones, you never quite know whats around the next bend in the river, which keeps it interesting and exciting and is part of the allure of this sort of expedition.

Of course, when youre paddling against the wind, who has time to reflect on the beauty of self-reliance or the glory of a personal quest along one of the worlds great rivers? Hes just trying to keep moving forward.

On shore in the evening, though, thats another matter:

Its definitely hard work, he said, but at the end of the day when Im eating my dinner and relaxing and have a camp all set up, I can sit there and think about how peaceful it is and how cool it is to be where I am at that moment.
A local nonprofit hopes to help adults learn how to recognize mental illnesses in youth and how to help them.

The Virginia Home for Boys and Girls will host three free Youth Mental Health First Aid training sessions later this year.

With mental health, theres a stigma, said Claiborne Mason, president of Virginia Home for Boys and Girls. Sometimes if someone appears to be demonstrating some sign of mental illness, people tend to back away as opposed to stepping in.

The mental health first aid training helps adults understand how to recognize the symptoms of a mental health crisis, how to approach someone experiencing them, and how to interact and support them, she said.

The training will run from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. on the following Fridays: July 21, Aug. 11 and Sept. 15. It will take place on the campus of the Virginia Home for Boys and Girls, 8716 W. Broad St. in Henrico County. Register at www.vhbg.org.

One in five children has a diagnosable mental illness, Mason said.

Virginia falls far short of other states in terms of treating youth with mental illness, according to a study released last year by Mental Health America.

Only one out of four Virginia youth suffering from major depression is treated for the disease  a rate that falls below all but two other states, according to Mental Health Americas annual rankings of mental health systems across the country.

The National Alliance on Mental Illness reports the average delay between the onset of symptoms of mental illness and treatment is eight to 10 years.

We know that the sooner that you can intervene with therapeutic support, the better, Mason said.

The Virginia Home for Boys and Girls serves about 200 children each year. Some live full-time in homes on the campus, some commute in to attend a K-12 school for children with emotional and behavioral issues, and some receive counseling in their families homes.
Police are investigating a fatal shooting that happened late Tuesday night in Petersburg.

At approximately 11:37 p.m., Petersburg police responded to the report of a shooting in the 10 block Sandalwood Court, in the eastern part of the city near Petersburg National Battlefield Park.

Police found Lewis E. Garris II, 36, with multiple gunshot wounds. Garris died at the scene.
A man who police said was fatally shot last week in Petersburg after several rounds were fired at him from a vehicle has been identified as Nahshon A. Edmunds, 32, of Petersburg.

The shooting occurred about 11 p.m. May 30 in the 900 block of Rome Street in Petersburg. Police said Edmunds, 32, was struck once in the chest and taken to Southside Regional Medical Center, where he died hours later.

Police said 10 shell casings were recovered at the scene.
Gulf Breeze, Florida, June 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Leading cloud cybersecurity and productivity provider AppRiver, today released a complimentary whitepaper to help businesses combat the growing tide of ransomware.

The whitepaper, Business Guide to Ransomware: Understand, Analyze & Protect, offers guidance for businesses to make better informed decisions on keeping devices and networks clear of ransomware and malware.

Ransomware attacks continue to dominate the news, with organizations of every type - from healthcare providers to police departments  making extortion payments to regain access to their data. The FBI estimates ransomwares profits have soared making it a $1 billion industry. AppRivers guide will help businesses learn how ransomware works, how to identify key entry points, tips for preventing attacks and how to eliminate malware in emergent situations.

It would be difficult to overestimate the business risks of ransomware attacks. Businesses of all sizes need to learn how these malicious attacks can infiltrate networks, how to reduce exposure and how to implement best practices for eliminating the malware, said Troy Gill, Senior Security Analyst. Weve assembled key learnings on this topic to help businesses make informed decisions and reduce liabilities. The guide provides practical, actionable steps to increase security and protect your critical business assets.

AppRivers SecureTide keeps spam and malware out of email and SecureSurf actively shields networks from external and internal threats. Both services help stem the risks of ransomware.

About AppRiver

AppRiver offers cloud-based cybersecurity and productivity services to 53,000 companies worldwide, with more than 10 million mailboxes under its protection. Launched in 2002 as a spam and virus filtering company, AppRiver has since added Web malware protection, email encryption, secure archiving and email continuity to its suite of security services. The company is also among the worlds top providers of Office 365 and Secure Hosted Exchange. All services are offered on a pay-as-you-use basis with a free, fully supported 30-day trial and 24/7 US-based Phenomenal Care customer service. Easy, effective and affordable solutions  backed by white-glove customer care  have enabled the company to maintain an annual 93-percent customer retention rate. AppRiver is headquartered in Florida and maintains offices in Georgia, Texas, New York, Switzerland and Spain. To learn more, visit AppRiver online, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Attachments:

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/80c362d0-1219-4e25-9d80-297a68e68163
The top-secret NSA document leaked to The Intercept should raise public concern over Russian interference in U.S. elections to DEFCON 2. It indicates that Russian operatives not only hacked the Democratic National Committee but also managed to penetrate the systems of a voting-software company and tried to do the same to more than 100 local voting officials. Its not clear whether the operatives managed to trick those officials into disclosing sensitive information  or whether they managed to go even further, reaching into systems that record or count votes.

Cybersecurity experts will have to figure that out  that is, if they havent already. Its also important for election officials and security experts to harden voting systems. While voting machines usually are not connected to the Internet, storage devices that transfer information from them could be. Keeping a paper ballot trail to check in the event that electronic votes are compromised also seems wise.

In addition, the United States needs to act on the diplomatic front. For starters, the Trump administration must immediately and publicly drop its veiled campaign to roll back sanctions against the Putin regime. It also should cancel plans to return Russian diplomatic compounds in New York and Maryland, which the Obama administration seized in December over allegations of Russian meddling in the election.

But the administration should go further, by expelling Russian diplomats, imposing further economic sanctions and targeting Russian cyber operations. Russian military doctrine stipulates that the country will use information warfare . . . to achieve political objectives without the utilization of military force. Whether those objectives involved changing the outcome of the presidential election, or simply sowing doubts about the legitimacy of American democracy, is immaterial. Both are equally belligerent and intolerable.
ATHENS, Greece, June 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Diana Shipping Inc. (NYSE:DSX) (the Company), a global shipping company specializing in the ownership of dry bulk vessels, today announced that, through a separate wholly-owned subsidiary, it has agreed to extend and increase the time charter rate of the present time charter contract with Rio Tinto Shipping (Asia) Pte., Ltd., Singapore, for one of its Capesize dry bulk vessels, the m/v Sideris GS, for a period of minimum thirteen (13) months to maximum seventeen (17) months. The new gross charter rate is US$13,000 per day, minus a 5% commission paid to third parties. The new charter period is expected to commence on June 20, 2017. The m/v Sideris GS is currently chartered, as previously announced, at a gross charter rate of US$6,500 per day, minus a 5% commission paid to third parties.



The Sideris GS is a 174,186 dwt Capesize dry bulk vessel built in 2006.

The employment extension of Sideris GS is anticipated to generate approximately US$5.07 million of gross revenue for the minimum scheduled period of the time charter.

Diana Shipping Inc.s fleet currently consists of 51 dry bulk vessels (4 Newcastlemax, 14 Capesize, 5 Post-Panamax, 5 Kamsarmax and 23 Panamax). As of today, the combined carrying capacity of the Companys fleet is approximately 5.9 million dwt with a weighted average age of 7.85 years. A table describing the current Diana Shipping Inc. fleet can be found on the Companys website, www.dianashippinginc.com. Information contained on the Companys website does not constitute a part of this press release.

About the Company

Diana Shipping Inc. is a global provider of shipping transportation services through its ownership of dry bulk vessels. The Companys vessels are employed primarily on medium to long-term time charters and transport a range of dry bulk cargoes, including such commodities as iron ore, coal, grain and other materials along worldwide shipping routes.

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

Matters discussed in this press release may constitute forward-looking statements. The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 provides safe harbor protections for forward-looking statements in order to encourage companies to provide prospective information about their business. Forward-looking statements include statements concerning plans, objectives, goals, strategies, future events or performance, and underlying assumptions and other statements, which are other than statements of historical facts.

The Company desires to take advantage of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and is including this cautionary statement in connection with this safe harbor legislation. The words believe, anticipate, intends, estimate, forecast, project, plan, potential, may, should, expect, pending and similar expressions identify forward-looking statements.

The forward-looking statements in this press release are based upon various assumptions, many of which are based, in turn, upon further assumptions, including without limitation, our managements examination of historical operating trends, data contained in our records and other data available from third parties. Although we believe that these assumptions were reasonable when made, because these assumptions are inherently subject to significant uncertainties and contingencies which are difficult or impossible to predict and are beyond our control, we cannot assure you that we will achieve or accomplish these expectations, beliefs or projections.

In addition to these important factors, other important factors that, in our view, could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statements include the strength of world economies and currencies, general market conditions, including fluctuations in charter rates and vessel values, changes in demand for dry bulk shipping capacity, changes in our operating expenses, including bunker prices, drydocking and insurance costs, the market for our vessels, availability of financing and refinancing, changes in governmental rules and regulations or actions taken by regulatory authorities, potential liability from pending or future litigation, general domestic and international political conditions, potential disruption of shipping routes due to accidents or political events, vessel breakdowns and instances of off-hires and other factors. Please see our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a more complete discussion of these and other risks and uncertainties.
A Place for All Conservatives to Speak Their Mind.
FORM 8.3

PUBLIC OPENING POSITION DISCLOSURE/DEALING DISCLOSURE BY

A PERSON WITH INTERESTS IN RELEVANT SECURITIES REPRESENTING 1% OR MORE

Rule 8.3 of the Takeover Code (the "Code")

1. KEY INFORMATION

(a) Full name of discloser: MMCAP International Inc. SPC (b) Owner or controller of interests and short positions disclosed, if different from 1(a):

The naming of nominee or vehicle companies is insufficient. For a trust, the trustee(s), settlor and beneficiaries must be named. (c) Name of offeror/offeree in relation to whose relevant securities this form relates:

Use a separate form for each offeror/offeree Sandstorm Gold Ltd (d) If an exempt fund manager connected with an offeror/offeree, state this and specify identity of offeror/offeree: (e) Date position held/dealing undertaken:

For an opening position disclosure, state the latest practicable date prior to the disclosure 06 June 2017 (f) In addition to the company in 1(c) above, is the discloser making disclosures in respect of any other party to the offer?

If it is a cash offer or possible cash offer, state "N/A" Mariana Resources Ltd





2. POSITIONS OF THE PERSON MAKING THE DISCLOSURE

If there are positions or rights to subscribe to disclose in more than one class of relevant securities of the offeror or offeree named in 1(c), copy table 2(a) or (b) (as appropriate) for each additional class of relevant security.

(a) Interests and short positions in the relevant securities of the offeror or offeree to which the disclosure relates following the dealing (if any)

Class of relevant security:



Common Shares NPV



Interests Short positions Number % Number % (1) Relevant securities owned and/or controlled:







(5,097,398) (3.35) (2) Cash-settled derivatives:



(3) Stock-settled derivatives (including options) and agreements to purchase/sell: (2,555,200) (1.68)



TOTAL:











(7,652,598)



(5.03)







Class of relevant security:



Warrants 3.50 USD Expire 27 Oct 2020



Interests Short positions Number % Number % (1) Relevant securities owned and/or controlled:



6,500,000



4.10 (2) Cash-settled derivatives:



(3) Stock-settled derivatives (including options) and agreements to purchase/sell:







TOTAL:



6,500,000



4.10





Class of relevant security:



Warrants 4.00 CAD Expire 03 Nov 2020



Interests Short positions Number % Number % (1) Relevant securities owned and/or controlled:



856,722



0.56 (2) Cash-settled derivatives:



(3) Stock-settled derivatives (including options) and agreements to purchase/sell:











TOTAL:



856,722



0.56





All interests and all short positions should be disclosed.

Details of any open stock-settled derivative positions (including traded options), or agreements to purchase or sell relevant securities, should be given on a Supplemental Form 8 (Open Positions).

(b) Rights to subscribe for new securities (including directors' and other employee options)

Class of relevant security in relation to which subscription right exists: Details, including nature of the rights concerned and relevant percentages:





3. DEALINGS (IF ANY) BY THE PERSON MAKING THE DISCLOSURE

Where there have been dealings in more than one class of relevant securities of the offeror or offeree named in 1(c), copy table 3(a), (b), (c) or (d) (as appropriate) for each additional class of relevant security dealt in.

The currency of all prices and other monetary amounts should be stated.

(a) Purchases and sales

Class of relevant security Purchase/sale



Number of securities Price per unit



Common Shares NPV



Purchase



126,370



3.6400 USD



Common Shares NPV



Sold Short



19,930



5.0247 CAD



Common Shares NPV



Sold Short



45,645



4.9529 CAD

(b) Cash-settled derivative transactions

Class of relevant security Product description

e.g. CFD Nature of dealing

e.g. opening/closing a long/short position, increasing/reducing a long/short position Number of reference securities Price per unit





(c) Stock-settled derivative transactions (including options)

(i) Writing, selling, purchasing or varying

Class of relevant security Product description e.g. call option Writing, purchasing, selling, varying etc. Number of securities to which option relates Exercise price per unit Type

e.g. American, European etc. Expiry date Option money paid/ received per unit

(ii) Exercise

Class of relevant security Product description

e.g. call option Exercising/ exercised against Number of securities Exercise price per unit





(d) Other dealings (including subscribing for new securities)

Class of relevant security Nature of dealing

e.g. subscription, conversion Details Price per unit (if applicable)





4. OTHER INFORMATION

(a) Indemnity and other dealing arrangements

Details of any indemnity or option arrangement, or any agreement or understanding, formal or informal, relating to relevant securities which may be an inducement to deal or refrain from dealing entered into by the person making the disclosure and any party to the offer or any person acting in concert with a party to the offer:

Irrevocable commitments and letters of intent should not be included. If there are no such agreements, arrangements or understandings, state "none"



NONE





(b) Agreements, arrangements or understandings relating to options or derivatives

Details of any agreement, arrangement or understanding, formal or informal, between the person making the disclosure and any other person relating to:

(i) the voting rights of any relevant securities under any option; or

(ii) the voting rights or future acquisition or disposal of any relevant securities to which any derivative is referenced:

If there are no such agreements, arrangements or understandings, state "none"



NONE





(c) Attachments

Is a Supplemental Form 8 (Open Positions) attached? YES





Date of disclosure: 07 JUNE 2017 Contact name: HUGH MACLEAN Telephone number: 001 416 408 2008

Public disclosures under Rule 8 of the Code must be made to a Regulatory Information Service and must also be emailed to the Takeover Panel at monitoring@disclosure.org.uk. The Panel's Market Surveillance Unit is available for consultation in relation to the Code's disclosure requirements on +44 (0)20 7638 0129.

The Code can be viewed on the Panel's website at www.thetakeoverpanel.org.uk.





SUPPLEMENTAL FORM 8 (OPEN POSITIONS)

DETAILS OF OPEN STOCK-SETTLED DERIVATIVE (INCLUDING OPTION) POSITIONS, AGREEMENTS TO PURCHASE OR SELL ETC.

Note 5(i) on Rule 8 of the Takeover Code (the "Code")

1. KEY INFORMATION

Full name of person making disclosure: MMCAP International Inc. SPC Name of offeror/offeree in relation to whose relevant securities the disclosure relates: Sandstorm Gold Ltd

2. STOCK-SETTLED DERIVATIVES (INCLUDING OPTIONS)

Class of relevant security Product description e.g. call option Written or purchased Number of securities to which option or derivative relates Exercise price per unit Type

e.g. American, European etc. Expiry date Common Shares NPV Call Option Written 50,000 3.00 USD American 19 Jan 2018 Common Shares NPV Call Option Written 1,414,100 4.00 USD American 19 Jan 2018 Common Shares NPV Call Option Written 48,000 5.00 USD American 19 Jan 2018 Common Shares NPV Call Option Written 47,200 7.00 USD American 19 Jan 2018 Common Shares NPV Call Option Written 25,000 4.00 USD American 18 Jan 2019 Common Shares NPV Call Option Written 869,900 5.00 USD American 18 Jan 2019 Common Shares NPV Call Option Written 50,000 4.00 USD American 16 Jun 2017 Common Shares NPV Call Option Written 1,000 5.00 USD American 16 Jun 2017 Common Shares NPV Put Option Written 50,000 3.00 USD American 15 Dec 2017

3. AGREEMENTS TO PURCHASE OR SELL ETC.

Full details should be given so that the nature of the interest or position can be fully understood:





It is not necessary to provide details on a Supplemental Form (Open Positions) with regard to cash-settled derivatives.

The currency of all prices and other monetary amounts should be stated.

The Panel's Market Surveillance Unit is available for consultation in relation to the Code's disclosure requirements on +44 (0)20 7638 0129.

The Code can be viewed on the Panel's website at www.thetakeoverpanel.org.uk.
The biography page for Virginias state inspector general is blank, save for two words: Under construction.

The page has been that way for months, ever since the General Assembly opted in early February to fire State Inspector General June Jennings over her offices handling of an investigation into the death of Jamycheal Mitchell, a mentally ill man who died behind bars in Portsmouth.

Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who was angry at the General Assembly for blocking Jennings reappointment, promoted Michael Westfall, then a deputy inspector general, to serve as acting inspector general.

When asked recently about the status of the inspector general appointment, McAuliffe seemed to be caught off guard.

Have we not made it official yet? McAuliffe asked an aide standing nearby.

I dont think so, no, the aide replied. I will double check.

I would assume the interim would become the permanent [inspector general], but will you check that? McAuliffe said.

McAuliffes spokesman, Brian Coy, said Monday that there is nothing new to announce about the position.

Westfall has been acting state inspector general on a full-time basis, said Kathleen Shaw, communications director for the Virginia Office of the State Inspector General.

He has all the authority and responsibility of the inspector general, just not the title at this point, she said.
CLEARWATER, Fla., June 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- On Saturday, June 17th, pianist Andreas Kazmierzack will perform in honor of Fathers Day, at the Scientology Information Center in downtown Clearwater. Reception begins at 6:30pm and the concert starts 7pm. Mr. Kazmierzack will perform a selection of works from Chopin, Mozart and Franz Liszt with narration. All are welcome. The event is complimentary.



A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/7c5d9283-5460-4af2-8a39-f2b47c002c7c

Kazmierzacks tribute will honor fathers of all generations and those men with a fatherly role in life reflecting the precept Honor and Help Your Parents from the book, The Way to Happiness.

In The Way to Happiness, philosopher L. Ron Hubbard, wrote, In spite of all, one must remember that they are the only parents one has. And as such, no matter what, one should honor them and help them.

Mr. Kazmierzack is originally from Poland, a proud father of two, a computer programmer, Master of Civil Engineering and has ten years of classical piano training. He studied under Tibor Yusti Von Arth from Austria, a well-known musician and teacher. Mr. Kazmierzack stopped performing at the age of 21 due to extreme stage fright at a piano competition. He credits his ability to now perform in front of audiences with the spiritual counselling he received in Scientology and has since given two special performances for charitable causes.

I love playing the piano and sharing this with my children. Each and every note played is important and is very exact. I look forward to sharing this music and its history in honor of Fathers Day, said Andreas.



To attend this concert or to learn more about the Scientology Information Center, please contact Amber at 727-467-6966 or amber@cos.flag.org.

The Church of Scientology:

The Scientology religion was founded by humanitarian and philosopher, L. Ron Hubbard. The first Church of Scientology was formed in the United States in 1954 and has expanded to more than 11,000 churches, missions and affiliated groups in 167 nations. Clearwater is the home of the spiritual headquarters for the Church of Scientology. Its Information Center is open to all and provides answers to questions about Scientology through its audio visual displays, exhibits and publications.

For more information please visit scientology-fso.org.
As a 70-year-old mother, grandmother, and graduate of Hollins University, I volunteered every day all day as an intern for Bryce Reeves at the 2017 session of the General Assembly. I witnessed first hand Bryces leadership, persistence, and accumulated wisdom as my districts state senator.

Bryce already knows the ropes. As a small business owner, former undercover narcotics agent, Army officer and infantry ranger, Bryce has the precise skill set and experience that Virginia needs to attract business, protect our youth from the burgeoning opiate epidemic, and protect the Commonwealth from terrorists.

Bryce has received the endorsement for lieutenant governor of Attorney General Ed Meese, the conservative gold standard of the Reagan administration, as well as of every Republican woman serving in the General Assembly excepting one who at this time has chosen to stay neutral and of course, candidate Jill Vogel. That speaks reams about Bryces ability to work with his peers, including women.

Last, whether reviewing the 2900+ bills under consideration, shepherding his anti-terrorism bill to become law, chairing the Rehabilitation and Social Services Committee and serving on four others, addressing the Senate, or greeting and listening to the views of the multitudes that streamed through his office, Bryce exhibited a gift to negotiate to a result where all parties felt like theyd won. And he did so with boundless energy and enthusiasm. There is no harder worker or happier warrior on behalf of the Commonwealth of Virginia and his constituents.

As a practicing UVa lawyer myself, I believe we dont need another lawyer in government to shift and shout, shuffle words and paper, and bicker over who won or lost. For us all to win we need someone who gets things done.

Bryce Reeves is that man. I urge you to join me in voting for Bryce Reeves as lieutenant governor in the Republican primary on Tuesday, June 13.

VIRGINIA DERBY JORDAN

Former Chairman

Orange County Republican Committee

ORANGE
TORONTO, June 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- AGF Management Limited (TSX:AGF.B) will release its financial results for Q2 2017 on Wednesday, June 28, 2017 at approximately 8:00 a.m. ET. AGF will hold a conference call and webcast to discuss these results at 11:00 a.m. ET.



The discussion will feature remarks by Blake C. Goldring, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Kevin McCreadie, President and Chief Investment Officer, and Adrian Basaraba, Senior Vice-President and Chief Financial Officer. A question and answer period with investment analysts will follow. The live audio webcast with supporting materials will be available in the Investor Relations section of AGFs website at www.agf.com or at http://edge.media-server.com/m/p/etao7r83. Alternatively, the call can be accessed toll-free in North America by dialing 1 (800) 708-4540 (Passcode #: 45088906).

A complete archive of this discussion along with supporting materials will be available at the same webcast address within 24 hours of the end of the conference call.

About AGF Management Limited

Founded in 1957, AGF Management Limited (AGF) is a diversified global asset management firm with retail, institutional, alternative and high-net-worth businesses. As an independent firm, AGF strives to help investors succeed by delivering excellence in investment management and providing an exceptional client experience. AGF's suite of diverse investment solutions extends globally to a wide range of clients, from financial advisors and individual investors to institutional investors including pension plans, corporate plans, sovereign wealth funds and endowments and foundations.

AGF has investment operations and client servicing teams on the ground in North America, Europe and Asia. With over $36 billion in total assets under management, AGF serves more than one million investors. AGF trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol AGF.B.
Talking about your own mortality seems like an incongruous topic on a pretty summer day when every hillside and creek bank shouts with life. But thats where we were last weekend  pondering management of our own funerals.

The conversation was motivated by a recent talk with Isabel Berney, who is the volunteer administrator of the Funeral Consumers Alliance of the Virginia Blue Ridge (FCAVBR). Within the past few months, Berney and I crossed paths at several health-related events. She was tending the alliances booth and spreading the gospel on ways that anyone can better prepare for end-of-life decisions.

Americans know more about buying a refrigerator than they do about their own funeral, Berney shared during a follow-up conversation.

I was curious about the role of the FCAVBR, how they operated and, especially, why and how they maintained a membership, which is currently at about 300 people. The organization was established in 2001 and is a local affiliate of a national network, the Funeral Consumers Alliance.

Members are mainly supporters of the idea that data and planning make for funeral arrangements that are dignified, meaningful and affordable, as noted on the FCAVBR website. Some have used the groups services or information. Others simply promote the mission.

We dont sell anything, we just provide information, Berney explained. And by providing information we can save families thousands of dollars, if they want to make those choices.

Many people select burial options during a time of grief or when they might be emotionally compromised. And that condition can produce poor results, especially when the average funeral in America costs between $7,000 and $10,000, according various sources.

FCAVBR looks to ensure the buyers are aware (or beware), conducting regular surveys and preparing a detailed price list of offerings from providers across the region. The comparisons ensure an exact match, which can be buried (pun aside) in a providers quote. So, for example, you can see how much embalming runs at Hurst-Scott in Tazewell  $550  compared to Oakleys in Vinton  $1,055. The side-by-side comparison, a price list of more than 90 funeral homes from Lynchburg to far western Virginia, gives consumers easy-to-digest information, not to mention speaking volumes about the capitalist premise of what the market will bear.

No one is suggesting that businesses would take advantage of a grieving family. Berney stressed that funeral home providers, by and large, are a compassionate crew: I mean, people dont choose that profession unless they are caring people. But their bottom line is a profit. And the markups are huge.

To this point, many businesses will grumble about sharing prices. But, Berney added that all funeral homes are required, according to Federal Trade Commission regulations, to divulge details.

The FCAVBR serves as industry watchdog, filing complaints when federal regulations are dismissed. Berney noted these actions have been minimal over the past 17 years  several against funeral homes, a couple of cemeteries.

We should never forget that (accurate!) information is power. And given our general distaste for the topic, preparing in advance is, well, generally not common. Many connect with the Funeral Consumers Alliance through programming at churches or information sessions.

I got involved with FCAVBR due to a class on writing your own obituary that was at the Blacksburg rec center, Board President Sandy Schlaudecker wrote when Berney asked her leaders to share their thoughts for my column. I felt it was a great organization that helped people in their time of need.

Every family facing this challenge could benefit from clear instructions in writing, an assertion of the individuals wishes. Living wills can help address the question of extreme medical measures. But treatment after time of death is, for many, an equally important factor.

Dianne Rencsok, another board member, shared the story of family overruling her fathers wishes for no feeding tube  a preference he had shared with his daughter during one of many visits she made as he grew older. While the intervention kept him alive for three weeks, Rencsok still wishes he had been spared the indignities of the experience. She wrote: This increased my feeling of the importance of making and communicating end-of-life decisions.

Rencsok wants to be buried on her property in Montgomery County, a process completely allowable and, obviously, free of any funeral home expenses. She shared that immediate family might not be that keen on the idea and acknowledged some flexibility is in order: My sister has written that she wants to be cremated, but since this does not align with her in-laws feelings, she has told her husband that if it will cause too much distress, he can ignore her wishes.

Home burials are trending up, along with green burials. In fact, burying a body with a simple shroud is the absolute greenest as cremation releases pollutants into the air.

The alliance can help with tips on necessary steps and paperwork, and even the logistical details. Berney explained oft-overlooked guidelines like being at least 150 feet from a water source, along with one point that defies conventional wisdom: And, its good to bury a body at 3 feet down. Six feet down is not as good as 3 feet down because 6 feet down is where the anaerobic bacteria live and 3 feet down is where the aerobic bacteria live. And if you are wanting to return to dust or have the body decompose as naturally as possible, then 3  feet does the trick.

Some cemeteries wont accept green burials, which are designed for minimal environmental impact and cost. Concrete grave liners, another expense in the more traditional process, are typically required at graveyards, preventing settling ground, which can hamper maintenance crews. But some enterprises are embracing the less costly and impactful trend by adding green-friendly sections or even graveyards exclusively for this practice.

Green burial advocates will mention the toxicity found in embalming fluid, which can be between 5 and 50 percent formaldehyde, a known carcinogen. Embalmers have the highest cancer rate, Berney informed me. Studies going back to 1984 cite the increased incidence in brain, colon, prostate and blood cancers in this profession. And while the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has recommended measures to reverse these trends  from less toxic mixes to proper ventilation systems  most continue to use this method.

But sometimes choices are less environmental and more philosophical. For various reasons, a backyard burial was the ideal solution for Trev Smiths mother, Dawn, who died in 2008 after 15 years with Alzheimers. While this condition set in before a full discussion on her preferences, husband Dale felt the 60-acre farm on Happy Hollow Road, home to Trev Smith and wife Jenny Schwanke, would suit his practical and outdoors-loving spouse perfectly. Dale likely had designs of his own when he picked the spot amidst hemlocks and pines within eyeshot of the younger Smiths house (Dale had been Dawns primary caretaker, so keeping her in his sights had become habit). At the request of Berney, Trev Smith, a local woodworker, had built a simple birch plywood coffin years before and the FCAVBR featured it as a model for families interested in a basic home burial.

When hospice informed the family that Dawn was near the end of her life, Smith contacted a friend with a backhoe and the grave was prepared. She was buried in an unassuming gathering using the sample coffin. Immediate family took turns with a shovel to cover the box. All of this happened within five hours of her last breath.

I asked if he and Schwanke wanted to be buried here as well.

Thats not necessarily the plan, Smith said smiling. In fact, theres really no plan. Were not very good alliance members, I guess.

Sitting near the site, the woods around us emitting a stream of glorious sounds and scents, it seemed like a more peaceful resting spot would be difficult to find. The humming vitality of the place reminded me that the world goes on after us. The survivors will decide the how and why. Which is where we all generally landed when we discussed the topic over dinner last weekend, trusting that our loved ones will know this: we will want to finish as we lived. Knowing how to best complete that cycle can come from advocates like the FCAVBR.

Learn about the Funeral Consumers Alliance of the Virginia Blue Ridge at www.fcavbr.org.

Or discover the how and why of green burial at the Green Burial Council, greenburialcouncil.org.
Raleigh, June 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- RegEd, the leading provider of compliance technology to banks, broker-dealers and insurance companies, is pleased to announce its participation in the American Bankers Association Regulatory Compliance Conference 2017. The event will be held June 11-14 in Orlando, FL. RegEd will feature solutions that address critical compliance challenges for the banking industry, including key areas of regulator focus.

Banks must navigate economic headwinds, regulatory uncertainty and an increasingly unforgiving enforcement environment placing them under pressure to drive operational efficiency and install effective compliance oversight, commented Debra Freitag, RegEd Chief Strategy Officer. RegEd has partnered with leading banks to meet critical compliance challenges with highly customized solutions that drive efficiency and support a culture of compliance.

During the conference, RegEd representatives will highlight these and other solutions for the banking industry:

Advertising Review Management: Streamlines the end-to-end process for advertising and customer communication submission, review, collaboration and approval, speeding time to market for review items.

Branch Audit Management: Enables banks to fully plan, schedule, conduct, resolve and report on bank branch audits. The solution is fully configurable to reflect the banks specific organizational hierarchy and business processes.

Employee Conflicts of Interest Management: Including Gifts and Gratuities, Outside Business Activities, Personal Securities Accounts, and Political Contributions. Capture full audit trails of requests, approvals, exceptions, attestations and documentation.

Policies and Procedures Management: Enables administration and oversight of the banks policies and procedures, including approval, distribution, attestation management and testing program management.

Regulatory Exam Management: Streamline and automate the management of regulatory exams from the receipt of the first day letter, across all preparatory activities, through to the final response submitted to the regulator, significantly reducing the time and resource commitment required to support regulatory examinations.

RegEd is exhibiting at the conference and can be located at Booth 332 in the main exhibit hall of the Walt Disney World Dolphin Hotel. For more information about RegEd and its enterprise compliance solutions, please visit www.reged.com.

About RegEd

RegEd is a leading provider of compliance technology solutions with relationships with more than 400 enterprise clients across the financial services industry. Established in 1994 by former regulators, the company is a recognized industry authority and has created the standard of excellence for rule-based and content-driven compliance automation for banks, insurance companies, investment advisors and broker-dealers. RegEd solutions drive new levels of operational efficiency and enable firms to cost-effectively comply with regulations and mitigate risk. For more information, visit www.reged.com.
Portland, Oregon, June 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Ruby Receptionists, a leading provider of remote receptionist services dedicated to helping small businesses grow, has been named one of Inc. Magazines Best Workplaces for 2017, the publications second annual ranking in the fast-growing private company sector.

Featured on Inc.com, the list is the result of a wide-ranging and comprehensive measurement of private American companies who have created exceptional workplaces through vibrant cultures, deep employee engagement, and stellar benefits. Out of thousands of applicants, Inc. singled out just over 200 winning companies and Ruby is one of only four Oregon companies to make the list.

Built in partnership with employee engagement and work culture experts Quantum Workplace of Omaha, Nebraska, Inc.s Best Workplaces list is a magnifying glass on how innovative companies can truly raise the bar in hiring and retaining the best talent.

What does it take to become a company that workers want to be part of? Inc. magazine says its more than good pay and good perks  its also about having a clear purpose, a sense of humor, and leadership that makes the two work together.

We are thrilled to be recognized for the hard work our team puts forth every day to provide not only the best service to our customers but a commitment to maintaining a people-powered company culture that inspires all to learn, grow and connect with others, said Jill Nelson, Founder and CEO of Ruby.

Founded in 2003, Ruby employs more than 425 people, two-thirds of which are receptionists. In 2015, Ruby was one of the first Oregon companies to adopt a $15 an hour minimum wage, providing the Portland, Oregon community hundreds of entry-level, living wage positions. More than 80 percent of the management positions at Ruby are held by former receptionists.



The 2017 Inc. Best Workplaces Awards assessed applicants on the basis of benefits offered and employee responses to a unique, 30-question survey fielded by each of the applying companies. Responses were evaluated by the research team at Quantum Workplace. For its results to qualify, each company had to achieve a statistically significant response rate based on employee count. Survey scores account for employer size to level the playing field between small and large businesses. All companies had to have a minimum of 10 employees and to be U.S.-based, privately held, and independent  that is, not subsidiaries or divisions of other companies.

While researching the entries, Inc. and Quantum saw distinct themes develop:

Strong company cultures breed stunning individual and team performance.

Workers at the best companies arent mesmerized by whatever giveaways seem to be the latest fadbe it gourmet lunches or beer fridges.

When employees feel valued by their organization, they are far more likely to be engaged. This single factor proved to be one of the largest drivers of employee engagement.

By introducing an employee survey into this years Best Workplaces selection process, weve really raised the bar. Companies that dont score at the very top of their peer group dont make the cut. So, our hats are off to the winners. They all excelled at engaging their workers, making them feel appreciated, and aligning them behind a mission. And remember, thats not just our opinion: The employees told us that themselves, says Eric Schurenberg, Inc.s President and Editor in Chief.

About Ruby Receptionists

Hearkening back to an era when every call at an office was answered by a friendly receptionist, Ruby Receptionists provides personalized live, remote receptionist services to thousands of small businesses across North America. Located in Portland, Ore., Rubys ability to scale quickly and deliver legendary service is fueled by smart proprietary mobile technology and a unique mission to create world-class customer experiences. Founded in 2003 by CEO Jill Nelson, Ruby Receptionists has gained national recognition for its success being named a FORTUNE magazine Best Small Company to Work for in the U.S., a 100 Best Companies to Work for in Oregon, and one of Oregons fastest-growing companies for the past nine years. To learn more, please visit www.callruby.com

About Inc. Media

Founded in 1979 and acquired in 2005 by Mansueto Ventures, Inc. is the only major brand dedicated exclusively to owners and managers of growing private companies, with the aim to deliver real solutions for today's innovative company builders. Winner of Advertising Ages The A-List in January 2015, and the National Magazine Award for General Excellence in both 2014 and 2012. Total monthly audience reach for the brand has grown significantly from 2,000,000 in 2010 to over 40,000,000 today. For more information, visit http://www.inc.com.

About Quantum Workplace

Quantum Workplace is an HR technology company that serves organizations through employee engagement surveys, action-planning tools, exit surveys, peer-to-peer recognition, performance evaluations, goal tracking, and leadership assessment. For more information, visit www.quantumworkplace.com.

Attachments:

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/91d7eee0-1cea-4242-8898-eb2009f78696
MAPLE GROVE, Minn., June 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Local member-owned cooperative financial institution TopLine Federal Credit Union has partnered with the North Hennepin Area Chamber of Commerce and other local businesses to create the Reality Store, an interactive event for teens. This spring, more than 80 students from Park Center High School and Osseo Senior High School completed the exercise, with representatives from TopLine staffing the banking table.



A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/2ef201e5-e663-4587-a4b4-287e4dc12a52

Without firsthand knowledge of grocery bills, student loan repayments, daycare fees, and mortgages, it can be hard for high school students to get a clear picture of adult financial life. The Reality Store helps students absorb information that can often seem abstract. The exercise asks high school students to make choices when faced with various personal, educational, and professional paths  then demonstrates the financial consequences of the decisions. The engaging event is designed to let teens roleplay their way through different scenarios. They begin their journey armed with an envelope full of currencyand soon find many reasons for emptying it.

At TopLine, we are deeply committed to the financial health of our community, and nurturing financial literacy in our youth is key, says Vicki Roscoe Erickson, Vice President of Marketing and Communications at TopLine Federal Credit Union. Working with high school students is a great way for us to give encouragement at a stage where it can really make a difference. By exposing students to financial realities adults face, we can make concepts like budgeting and managing finances more comprehendible. We hope students will see the value in making proactive financial decisions  especially when theyre learning directly from our financial experts.

The North Hennepin Area Chamber of Commerce leads, advocates and partners with more than 350 members of local business, civic and education communities to build a stronger and more vibrant future. As the leading resource for its members, the Chamber provides programs and services to maximize their potential, while utilizing their local relevance as a driving force to build stronger communities.

TopLine Federal Credit Union, a Twin Cities-based credit union, is Minnesotas 13th largest, with assets of more than $400 million. Established in 1935, the not-for-profit cooperative offers a complete line of financial services, as well as auto and home insurance, from its five branch locations  in Bloomington, Brooklyn Park, Maple Grove, Plymouth and in St. Pauls Como Park  as well as by phone, mobile app and online at www.TopLinecu.com. Membership is available to anyone who lives, works, worships, attends school or volunteers in Anoka, Carver, Dakota, Hennepin, Ramsey, Scott or Washington Counties and their immediate family members.
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The Rotherham Pensioners Action Group hosted an election hustings at My Place recently, where election candidates from all parties were invited to a question and answer session with it's members. 170940-1

A CHAIR allocated to the Tories was left empty after the party failed to send anyone to an election hustings.

Rotherham Pensioners Action Group (RPAG) hosted the event at the myplace youth centre at St Anns on Tuesday (4).

Labour, UKIP, the Lib Dems, the Yorkshire Party and the Greens were represented by candidates and party members.

RPAG chairman Keith Billington said: We were rather disappointed that the Conservatives didnt show up. It seems to be a national trend from what I can gather, especially where its groups involving the elderly.

We sent two letters and they didnt even reply, which is very discourteous. This was our third hustings event and they have attended the previous ones.

We had also hoped for a better attendance from the public, but all we can do is invite people.

There was a good selection of questions, quite a few on immigration, some on social care and the importance of having a national care service joined to the NHS, as well as the number of languages teachers have to deal with in the classroom.

The Green partys Ann Roche talked about the importance of moving away from fossil fuels and Yorkshire Party candidate Mick Bower spoke of the imbalance of power and money held by London.
Polished diamond trading was sluggish in May, with dealers waiting for this weeks Las Vegas shows to get better deals and assess the pulse of the market, according to Rapaport's monthly report. Suppliers held prices firm for new polished production they hoped to sell in Las Vegas, but were willing to reduce prices on leftover old stock. Buyers avoided making large inventory purchases before the show.

The RapNet Diamond Index (RAPI) for 1-carat, GIA-graded diamonds declined 0.3% in May and was down 1.7% since the beginning of the year.

The report notes that rough diamond prices firmed 1% to 2% during the month, with De Beers and Alrosa limiting supply, and manufacturers raising polished production. Rough prices increased an estimated 4% since the beginning of the year.

Chinese demand has been supporting the market as consumer spending in mainland China improves, while US demand has been restrained ahead of the Las Vegas shows. US jewelers are also adapting to a changing consumer environment, which is impacting their inventory requirements.

Disappointing first-quarter sales at Signet Jewelers and Tiffany & Co. highlighted shifts in the retail environment and a slowdown in jewelry demand. The major jewelers noted a highly promotional environment as department stores tried to win back customers and independent jewelers were liquidating at deeper discounts. Consumers are increasingly looking for better deals online and avoiding crowded shopping malls.

There is opportunity for savvy independent jewelers to gain market share. Jewelers that are investing in social-media marketing and innovation and adapting to changing consumer needs are doing well. Those stuck in the old way of doing business are struggling.

Diamond companies that can demonstrate an ability to add value to such jewelers in this changing marketplace will have a successful show, setting themselves up for the end-of-year holiday season.




Dominion Diamond Corporation has signed an agreement with Archon Minerals Limited to consolidate ownership of the Ekati Diamond Mine's Buffer Zone Joint Venture.

Dominion will pay a 2.3% royalty of all future gross revenue from diamonds produced from the Buffer Zone to Archon for 34,7% of the former's shares in the project. This will bring the diamond company's ownership of the zone to 100%.

"We are delighted to have reached this mutually beneficial agreement with Archon. For both parties, the transaction provides ownership and funding certainty for the large scale Jay project, which is currently in the final stages of permitting. It also provides significantly more exposure for Dominion's shareholders to further discoveries on this highly prospective land package,"  said Jim Gowans, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Dominion.

The Buffer Zone contains 106 mining leases covering 89,184 hectares. Of the 150 kimberlite pipes discovered to date at the Ekati Diamond Mine, 38 are in the Buffer Zone.




US comedian Kathy Griffin will no longer host CNN's New Year show as she was fired over a photo shoot in which she appeared holding a bloody, decapitated fake head of President Donald Trump.

It was photographed by celebrity photographer Tyler Shields, and was published on the Twitter accounts of both Griffin and Shields Tuesday.

Trump reacted to the photo in a tweet saying Kathy Griffin should be ashamed of herself. "My children, especially my 11 year old son, Barron, are having a hard time with this. Sick!"

Faced with vehement online criticism and sweeping bi-partisan disapproval for the gruesome image, Griffin offered apology and removed it.

But it was not enough to save her job at CNN, and a few other contracts. "CNN has terminated our agreement with Kathy Griffin to appear on our New Year's Eve program," the network said in a statement Wednesday.

The Utah-based makers of Squatty Potty, a line of footstools for toilets, announced that they are canceling a new ad campaign starring Griffin because of the "deeply inappropriate" image.

Route 66 Casino Hotel in New Mexico said it had canceled a performance by the 56-year-old Emmy award-winning actress, which is scheduled for July.

Unicorn Gold bathroom products also suspended an ad campaign starring Griffin, who is a staunch critic of the President.

Griffin had been co-hosting the popular CNN New Year's Eve show with Anderson Cooper since 2007.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Political News
Tickets for Ariana Grande's charity concert in memory of the victims of the deadly terrorist attack in Manchester have sold out within 20 minutes of going on general sale, and touts have appeared online for resale as real survivors fear they have missed out.

An array of pop stars, including Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Miley Cyrus, Pharrell Williams and the British rock band Coldplay will join Grande in Manchester this Sunday for a show of solidarity with the victims of the Islamic State attack. The targetted attack has killed 22 people.

Some tickets for the benefit concert have appeared on eBay, but Ticketmaster confirmed it is canceling any booked seats shown to have been touted.

The organizers had offered fans who survived the Manchester attack free tickets, but many of them fear they had missed out on tickets. Ticketmaster admitted it had been unable to verify all applications despite staff working through the night.

They left a message on their website Thursday that registrations for free tickets to the One Love Manchester are closed. And at the same time, a statement said "We want to give all fans who were at the show, regardless of where they bought their tickets, every opportunity to register for One Love Manchester."

Organizers expect to raise at least 2 million pounds ($2.58 million) from the event, and its proceeds will go to the "We Love Manchester Emergency Fund" set up by Manchester City Council in partnership with the British Red Cross.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
The Australian dollar strengthened against the other major currencies in the Asian session on Wednesday, after data showed that Australia's gross domestic product expanded on quarter in the first three months of 2017.

Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed that Australia's gross domestic product expanded a seasonally adjusted 0.3 percent on quarter in the first three months of 2017. That was in line with expectations following the 1.1 percent expansion in the previous three months.

On a yearly basis, GDP gained 1.7 percent, beating forecasts for 1.6 percent after climbing 2.4 percent in the three months prior.

Data from the Australian Industry Group showed that the construction sector in Australia continued to expand in May, and at a faster rate, with a Performance of Construction Index score of 56.7. That's up sharply from 51.9 in April. It also marks the fastest rate of expansion in more than two and a half years.

Meanwhile, investors remain cautious ahead of key political and economic events on Thursday. These include the U.K. elections, the ECB policy meeting and former FBI Director James Comey's congressional testimony.

Tuesday, the Australian dollar showed mixed trading against the other major currencies. While the aussie rose against the U.S. dollar, the euro, the loonie and the kiwi, it fell against the yen.

In the Asian trading, the Australian dollar rose to an 8-day high of 1.4934 against the euro, from yesterday's closing value of 1.5021. The aussie may test resistance around the 1.47 region.

Against the U.S., the New Zealand and the Canadian dollars, the aussie advanced to a 5-week high of 0.7544, a 6-day high of 1.0506 and nearly a 3-week high of 1.0146 from yesterday's closing quotes of 0.7507, 1.0446 and 1.0098, respectively. If the aussie extends its uptrend, it is likely to find resistance around 0.76 against the greenback, 1.07 against the kiwi and 1.02 against the loonie.



The aussie edged up to 82.62 against the yen, from yesterday's closing value of 82.12. On the upside, 83.00 is seen as the next resistance level for the aussie.

Looking ahead, the German factory orders for April is due to be released in the pre-European session at 2:00 am ET.

U.K. Halifax house price index for May is slated for release later in the day.

In the New York session, Canada building permits for April, U.S. crude oil inventories data and U.S. consumer credit for April are set to be published.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
LAS VEGAS, June 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- In mid-May Nevada lawmakers passed bill AB135 and Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval signed, creating a new law that will change the standard for DUI testing for marijuana impairment thanks to the dedication and hard work of two medical students.



Graham Lambert and Charles Cullison, Touro University Nevada medical students, provided integral research and information to lawmakers to change from urine testing to blood testing as the primary assessment for those thought to be driving under the influence of marijuana. Lambert, a former Petty Officer and Avionics Specialist in the United States Navy and Cullison, a native Nevadan, recently completed their second year of medical school and will soon begin clinical rotations as third-year students. Both are pursuing their medical education as part of the militarys Health Professions Scholarship Program and will be commissioned as active duty officers at the end of their medical training.

During a medical jurisprudence class, the two students seized the opportunity to perform research and enter the annual American College of Legal Medicine (ACLM) poster competition. Lambert and Cullison worked diligently to research the laboratory testing methodology evaluating cognitive impairment while operating a motor vehicle under the influence of marijuana. Their research and recommendation that Nevada adopt a blood test for marijuana impairment while driving a motor vehicle earned the first place award for best poster at ACLMs national competition.

Lambert explains, Our research focused on the testing methods used to presume cognitive impairment from marijuana use, as it pertains to Nevada Revised Statute 484C.110. We found urinalysis testing for the presence of THC-COOH to be entirely inappropriate; these tests should be replaced with a blood test only, for delta-9-THC and 11-OH-THC. This project was a meta-analysis of multiple peer-reviewed research articles, medical toxicology texts, and lectures, as well as interviewing the toxicology labs of the Henderson Police Department, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and Washoe Countys Sheriffs Office.

The research led to the conclusion that Nevada Revised Statutes, NRS 484C.110, governing marijuana and marijuana metabolite urine testing was inconsistent with sound, accepted science. Nevada Assemblyman Steve Yeager learned of the students research and it prompted his introduction of AB135 in the 2017 Nevada Legislative session. Both students testified in Carson City and in Las Vegas to the Legislative Judiciary Committees. The bill won the support of many interested parties, including the Nevada District Attorneys Association and the Nevada Public Defenders Association.

Testifying before both the Nevada Assembly and Senate Judiciary Committees was an exciting experience for both of us, said Cullison. We will never forget the experience of working with Assemblyman Steve Yeager. He understood our message from day one and made sure we were included in every step of the process, from bill drafting to the bill signing.

AB135 passed both Houses of the Legislature and was signed into law by Governor Sandoval who hosted the two students at the signing ceremony in the Governors Office in Carson City. The bill passage came just weeks before recreational marijuana becomes available for sale in Nevada. Barring any delays, up to one ounce of marijuana can be legally sold for recreational use in Nevada for the first time beginning on July 1 to those 21 and older as a result of Question 2 passing in the fall of 2016. Even though possession of marijuana became legal Jan. 1, businesses did not have approval to sell recreational marijuana.

We are very proud of what Graham and Charles have accomplished with their research, said Dr. John Dougherty, Dean of Touros College of Osteopathic Medicine. Touro University Nevada encourages students to address health policy issues and dedicate themselves to making a positive impact. It is an important opportunity for them to learn that evidence based medicine can influence legislation such as this and has the potential to create positive change not only in Nevada but nationwide.

About Touro University Nevada

Touro University Nevada (TUN) is a private, non-profit, Jewish-sponsored institution established to help address critical needs in health care and education and as a resource for community service in the state of Nevada. TUN opened its doors in 2004 and is now home to nearly 1,400 students, in a wide variety of degree programs including osteopathic medicine, physician assistant studies, education, nursing, occupational therapy and physical therapy. The universitys Henderson campus includes a multi-specialty health center and a multi-disciplinary Center for Autism and Developmental Disabilities. For more information on TUN, please visit www.tun.touro.edu or call 702- 777-8687.
Cabinet office is slated to release Japan's preliminary leading economic indicator data for April at 1:00 am ET Wednesday. The preliminary reading for leading index was 105.5 in March.

Ahead of the data, the yen showed mixed trading against its major rivals. While the yen fell against the U.S. dollar, it held steady against the euro, the pound and the Swiss franc.

As of 12:55 am ET, the yen was trading at 123.45 against the euro, 141.35 against the pound, 113.76 against the Swiss franc and 109.59 against the U.S. dollar.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Forex News
Banco Santander SA (BNC.L,BSBR,SAN) reported the acquisition of 100% of the share capital of Banco Popular Espanol, S.A. as a result of a competitive sale process organised in the framework of a resolution scheme adopted by the Single Resolution Board and executed by the FROB. All the shares of Banco Popular outstanding at the closing of market on June 6 and all the shares resulting from the conversion of the regulatory capital instruments Additional Tier 1 issued by Banco Popular have been totally cancelled and all the regulatory capital instruments Tier 2 issued by Banco Popular have been converted into newly issued shares of Banco Popular, all of which have been acquired for a price of one euro.

As part of the transaction, Banco Santander has the intention to carry out a share capital increase of approximately 7.00 billion euros, which will cover the capital and the provisions required to reinforce the balance sheet of Banco Popular. The current shareholders of Banco Santander will have preferential subscription rights in the share capital increase.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
A day before former FBI Director James Comey's highly anticipated testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, President Donald Trump has revealed the man he intends to nominate to replace him.

Trump announced on Twitter on Wednesday he will be nominating former Justice Department official Christopher Wray, who he described as "a man of impeccable credentials."

"I will be nominating Christopher A. Wray, a man of impeccable credentials, to be the new Director of the FBI. Details to follow," Trump tweeted.

Wray is currently a litigation partner at the King & Spalding law firm, where he chairs the firm's Special Matters and Government Investigations Practice Group.

King & Spalding says the group represents companies, audit and special committees, and individuals in a variety of white-collar criminal and regulatory enforcement matters, parallel civil litigation, and internal corporate investigations.

Wray was New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's personal lawyer during the so-called "Bridgegate" investigation into lane closures on the George Washington Bridge.

From 2003 to 2005, Wray served as the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Justice Department's Criminal Division under former President George W. Bush.

Wray previously served as an Associate Deputy Attorney General and in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Georgia.

A Justice Department official told CNN that Wray was interviewed by Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein two weeks ago.

Trump's announcement of his nomination of Wray comes just a day before the highly anticipated testimony by Comey, who was fired by the president last month.

Comey is likely to be questioned about his private conversation with Trump following reports the president urged him to drop an investigation of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Political News
The Watergate scandal that forced President Richard Nixon to resign pales in comparison to the scandals involving Donald Trump and his campaign's Russia connection, according to James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence.

Addressing a news conference at the National Press Club in Canberra Wednesday, Clapper said Trump's reported decision to share highly-sensitive information with Russian diplomats reflects "either ignorance or disrespect", which is "very problematic."

Clapper, who has been part of intelligence under every US administration since John F Kennedy to Barack Obama, said he is very concerned about US institutions being targeted by "both an external source -- Russia -- and an internal source, the president himself."

It was "inexplicable" that Trump's team has maintained a relatively warm stance towards the Russian government despite evidence that they attempted to interfere in the US presidential election last year, Clapper told reporters in the Australian capital.

"It is absolutely crucial for the United States, and for that matter for the world, for this presidency, for the Republicans, for the Democrats and for our nation at large, that we get to the bottom of this", the former top US intelligence official said referring to the investigations being conducted by the Congressional intelligence committees and under the direction of Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller.

Former FBI Director James Comey is set to testify Thursday at a key hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee in Washington.

Comey was fired as FBI chief last month, just days after he reportedly requested additional resources from the Department Of Justice for the agency's investigation into Russia's interference in the presidential election. DOJ denied the report later.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
Former FBI Director James Comey's prepared statement before the Senate Intelligence Committee appears to confirm some recent reports about his interactions with President Donald Trump, including the president's request for loyalty.

Comey's prepared remarks were released by the committee on Wednesday, a day before his highly-anticipated testimony.

In the statement, Comey notes that Trump told him, "I need loyalty, I expect loyalty" during a dinner at the White House in January.

"I replied, 'You will always get honesty from me.' [Trump] paused and then said, 'That's what I want, honest loyalty.' I paused, and then said, 'You will get that from me,'" Comey says in the statement.

He adds, "As I wrote in the memo I created immediately after the dinner, it is possible we understood the phrase 'honest loyalty' differently, but I decided it wouldn't be productive to push it further."

The statement from Comey also seems to confirm reports that Trump wanted him to drop an investigation of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn's contact with Russian officials.

"I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go," Trump said, according to Comey.

Comey says the request came during a one-on-one conversation with Trump in the Oval Office in February and suggested it was inappropriate for the discussion to occur without the presence of Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

After the meeting, Comey says he took the opportunity to implore Sessions to prevent any future direct communication between himself and the president.

Comey notes in his statement that he told Trump he was not under investigation and said the president repeatedly urged him to make the fact public.

"I did not tell the President that the FBI and the Department of Justice had been reluctant to make public statements that we did not have an open case on President Trump for a number of reasons, most importantly because it would create a duty to correct, should that change," Comey says.

The former FBI Director also details a phone call with Trump in March during which the president asked what could be done to "lift the cloud" of the Russia investigation.

"He finished by stressing 'the cloud' that was interfering with his ability to make deals for the country and said he hoped I could find a way to get out that he wasn't being investigated," Comey says.

He adds, "I told him I would see what we could do, and that we would do our investigative work well and as quickly as we could."

Comey was fired last month, adding to the controversy over alleged collusion between Russia and Trump's presidential campaign.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Political News
Japan will on Thursday see final Q1 data for gross domestic product, highlighting a busy day for Asia-Pacific economic activity.

GDP is expected to see an upward revision to growth of 0.6 percent on quarter and 24 percent on year, up from the May 15 preliminary reading that called for a gain of 0.5 percent on quarter and 2.2 percent on year.

In the previous three months, GDP expanded 0.3 percent on quarter and 1.4 percent on year.

Japan also will see April figures for current account and May numbers for bank lending and the eco watchers survey.

The current account is expected to show a surplus of 1.688 trillion yen, down from 2.907 trillion yen in March. Bank lending is expected to hold steady at 3.0 percent.

The eco watchers survey for current conditions is expected to show a score of 48.5, up from 48.1 in April, while the outlook is pegged at 49.3 - up from 48.8.

Australia will release April figures for imports, exports and trade balance. In March, imports were worth A$30.24 billion and exports were at A$33.34 billion for a trade surplus of A$3.11 billion.

China will provide May data for imports, exports and trade balance. Imports are expected to add 9.0 percent on year after climbing 11.9 percent in April. Exports are called higher by 7.3 percent, down from 8.0 percent in the previous month. The trade surplus is called at $48.20 billion, up from $38.03 billion a month earlier.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Economic News

What parts of the world are seeing the best (and worst) economic performances lately? Click here to check out our Econ Scorecard and find out! See up-to-the-moment rankings for the best and worst performers in GDP, unemployment rate, inflation and much more.
Proton returns to flight successfully with EchoStar-21

After a nearly year-long hiatus, Russia's workhorse Proton-M rocket lifted off on June 8, 2017, carrying the EchoStar-21 communications satellite. It was the first of as many as seven Proton launches planned for 2017.

Previous Proton mission: Intelsat-31

EchoStar-21 mission at a glance:

Spacecraft designation(s) EchoStar-21 Launch vehicle Proton-M/Briz-M Payload fairing PLF-BR-15255 Launch date and time 2017 June 8, 06:45:47.008 Moscow Time (03:45:47 GMT) Launch site Baikonur, Site 81 , Pad 24

From the publisher: Pace of our development depends primarily on the level of support from our readers!

Ground track of the EchoStar-21 mission. Credit: ILS

- Event Scheduled elapsed time - Liftoff 0 1 Stage I separation 00:02:00 2 Stage II separation 00:05:26 3 Payload fairing separation 00:05:45 4 Stage III separation 00:09:41 5 Briz-M firing 1 starts (Duration: 04:17) 00:11:15 6 Briz-M firing 1 ends 00:15:32 7 Briz-M firing 2 starts (Duration: 17:56) 01:07:24 8 Briz-M firing 2 ends 01:25:20 9 Briz-M firing 3 starts (Duration: 09:37) 03:27:59 10 Briz-M firing 3 ends 03:37:36 11 Briz-M jettisons its external tank 03:38:26 12 Briz-M firing 4 starts (Duration: 07:52) 03:40:01 13 Briz-M firing 4 ends 03:47:53 14 Briz-M firing 5 starts (Duration: 04:26) 08:52:58 15 Briz-M firing 5 ends 08:57:24 16 Spacecraft separation 09:13:00

The liftoff of the 705-ton Proton-M/Briz-M launch vehicle with the 6.9-ton EchoStar-21 satellite took place as scheduled on June 8, 2017, at 06:45:47.008 Moscow Time (11:45 p.m. ET on June 7).

The ignition sequence was initiated at T-00:00:02.5 seconds before the physical separation of the 58.2-meter rocket from Pad 24 at Site 81 in Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan.

At T-00:00:01.75 seconds, the six main engines of the first stage developed 40 percent of their required thrust, followed by 100 percent at T-00:00:00.9 seconds. As the rocket accelerated through the dense atmosphere, it experienced maximum dynamic pressure one minute and two seconds into the flight.

To deliver EchoStar-21, Proton followed a launch profile typical for most commercial missions. The first, second and third stages of the launch vehicle flew a standard ascent trajectory matching the orbital inclination of 51.5 degrees toward the Equator, placing the payload section including the Briz-M upper stage and the EchoStar-21 satellite into a sub-orbital trajectory.

In the following nine hours, Briz-M performed a total of five engine firings to boost the orbital unit first to a circular parking orbit, then to an intermediate orbit, followed by a transfer orbit, and, finally, to a geostationary transfer orbit.

Separation of the EchoStar21 satellite from the upper stage took place as scheduled 9 hours 13 minutes after liftoff into a highly elliptical orbit. The satellite is then expected to use its own propulsion system to enter the geostationary orbit 36,000 kilometers above the Equator.

Torturous road to the launch pad

Payload section with the EchoStar-21 satellite is being prepared for integration with its Proton rocket in June 2017.

On May 13, 2013, the International Launch Services, ILS, which markets Proton to commercial customers outside Russia, announced an agreement to launch an EchoStar satellite. The mission was originally planned at the end of 2015 or beginning of 2016.

During 2016, the planned launch of EchoStar-21 was postponed to early June, then to June 25 and by the end of May, it was expected at the end of August 2016. However on July 28, 2016, Roskosmos announced another delay of the launch until Oct. 10, 2016, apparently to provide more time for the investigation into the problem with the operation of the Proton's second stage during the launch of the Intelsat-31 satellite in June 2016.

By Sept. 1, 2016, the launch of EchoStar-21 was postponed until November 23 of the same year. By October, the mission was pushed back to December, as GKNPTs Khrunichev needed more time to implement all the corrective actions to resolve the issue during launch of Intelsat-31. By mid-November, the company had finally set the path for the return to flight, targeting the launch of EchoStar-21 on December 22, 2016, at 19:26:34 Moscow Time. The spacecraft was delivered to Baikonur on November 22, however, the launch was then postponed until December 28, 2016, at 19:26:34 Moscow Time.

Participants of the EchoStar-21 launch campaign sign the fairing of the Proton rocket on Dec. 21, 2016.

By December 23, the satellite had already been integrated with the launch vehicle, when a newly discovered problem with the first stage of the rocket, discovered around a week before the planned liftoff, forced the postponement of the mission until January 2017, at the earliest. According to ILS officials, a failed component would be replaced at the launch site. As of December 27, the Proton was not expected to return to flight until the end of the third week of January 2017.

However during the first quarter of 2017, Roskosmos had to deal with a recall of multiple RD-0210 and RD-0212 engines used on the second and third stages of the Proton rocket.

In March, managers at Roskosmos and GKNPTs Khrunichev reviewed the provisional flight manifest for the Proton, should the repair work on the rocket's second- and third-stage engines be successful. In the meantime, officials from the International Launch Services, ILS, which markets Proton to commercial customers, briefed representatives of EchoStar on the details of the engine recall and the corrective measures.

Contingent on the success of the corrective actions, Russian officials hoped to return Proton to flight with the Echostar-21 satellite in May. According to the Russian press, this launch was previously expected as early as April 29.

By the end of April, Khrunichev officials reserved a range dates in Baikonur for the return-to-flight mission with the EchoStar-21 communications satellite from May 29 to May 31. A Baikonur-bound train carrying stages of the Proton rocket for the EchoStar-21 mission left the assembly factory in Moscow during the night from April 27 to April 28. The rocket arrived at Baikonur around May 8, however, due to May Day holidays and other delays, the mission had to be postponed once again until June 8, 2017.

On May 14, Briz-M was moved to the fueling area to load its high-pressure tanks, before the space tug could be integrated with its cargo.

Joint operations of the launch vehicle and its payload began inside processing building 92-A50 on May 30, 2017. On May 31, EchoStar-21 was integrated with its Briz-M upper stage and then lowered into horizontal position for encapsulation inside its payload fairing. The resulting payload section was then integrated with its Proton rocket.

The assembly of the Proton rocket was completed by June 3, 2017, and the launch vehicle was rolled out from the processing building to the Briz-M fueling site. On June 4, the State Commission overseeing the launch approved the rollout of the vehicle to the launch pad. The rocket arrived to the launch pad on the morning of June 5, 2017.

EchoStar-21 satellite

An official photo of the EchoStar-21 satellite shown during acustic testing.

Built by Space Systems Loral, SSL, for EchoStar Corporation of Englewood, Colorado, the nearly 6.9-ton EchoStar-21 satellite (previously known as TerreStar-2 or T2) was designed to provide communications in S-band for next-generation Mobile Satellite Services, MSS. It was reported to be the heaviest satellite launched by the Proton rocket to date. The satellite was to be deployed in the geostationary orbit over the Equator at 10.25 degrees East longitude, where it expected to function for 15 years.

The spacecraft is based on SSLs standard platform known as SSL-1300. As its main communications payload, EchoStar-21 features a large deployable reflector that will deploy like an umbrella once the satellite is in orbit. EchoStar's subsidiary EchoStar Mobile Limited will utilize a portion of EchoStar-21s capacity to provide mobile satellite services, MSS, capacity throughout the European Union. EchoStar Mobile is an EU-wide licensee for an integrated mobile satellite service network with a complementary ground component.

Known specifications of the EchoStar-21 satellite:

Spacecraft manufacturer Space Systems Loral, SSL Spacecraft platform SSL-1300 Spacecraft mass at separation from launch vehicle 6,871 kilograms Projected life span 15 years Spacecraft orbital position 10.25 degrees East longitude

Read (and see) much more on the history of the Russian space program in a richly illustrated, large-format glossy edition:
SAN CARLOS, Calif., June 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- To address the memory markets shortage of high-speed CMOS DDR3 and low-voltage DDR3L SDRAMs, Alliance Memory today announced a new die revision (B die) for its 2Gb and 4Gb devices in the 96-ball FBGA package.



Market demand for DDR3 and DDR3L SDRAMs is extremely high due to their increased functionality and speed, but their availability is becoming more and more limited as demand exceeds supply and suppliers move capacity to Flash and other products, said TJ Mueller, Vice President of Marketing at Alliance Memory. With the introduction of a new B die version, we now have two sources for our 2Gb and 4Gb parts silicon. This means our customers can be more confident than ever in our ability to deliver these devices despite shortages and price increases in the memory market.

The DDR architecture of Alliance Memorys 2Gb and 4Gb DDR3 and DDR3L SDRAMs allows them to achieve extremely fast transfer rates of 1600Mbps and clock rates of 800MHz. With minimal die shrinks, the devices provide reliable drop-in, pin-for-pin-compatible replacements for a number of similar solutions used in newer-generation microprocessors for networking, industrial, medical, telecom, and consumer applications  eliminating the need for costly redesigns and part requalification.

The 2Gb AS4C128M16D3B-12BCN and 4Gb AS4C256M16D3B-12BCN DDR3 SDRAMs operate from a single +1.5V (0.075V) power supply, while the 4Gb AS4C256M16D3LB-12BCN DDR3L SDRAM operates from a single +1.35V power supply. The devices offer a data mask for write control and are available with a commercial temperature range of 0C to +95C. The 4Gb DDR3L SDRAM is also available in an industrial temperature range of -40C to +95C.

The 2Gb DDR3 SDRAMs are internally configured as eight banks of 16M word x 16 bits, while the 4Gb DDR3 and DDR3L SDRAMs are configured as eight banks of 32M word x 16 bits. All devices support sequential and interleave burst types with read or write burst lengths of 4 or 8. An auto pre-charge function provides a self-timed row pre-charge initiated at the end of the burst sequence. Easy-to-use refresh functions include auto- or self-refresh. RoHS-compliant, the devices are lead (Pb)- and halogen-free.

Device Specification Table:

Part number Density Configuration Power

supply Temp. range Package AS4C128M16D3B-12BCN 2Gb 128M x 16 bit +1.5V 0C to +95C 96-ball FBGA AS4C128M16D3LB-12BCN 2Gb 128M x 16 bit +1.35V 0C to +95C 96-ball FBGA AS4C256M16D3B-12BCN 4Gb 256M x 16 bit +1.5V 0C to +95C 96-ball FBGA AS4C256M16D3LB-12BCN 4Gb 256M x 16 bit +1.35V 0C to +95C 96-ball FBGA AS4C256M16D3LB-12BIN 4Gb 256M x 16 bit +1.35V -40C to +95C 96-ball FBGA

B die DDR3 and DDR3L SDRAMs are available now, with lead times of four to eight weeks for production quantities.

About Alliance Memory Inc.

Alliance Memory is a worldwide provider of critical and hard-to-find DRAM and SRAM memory ICs for the communications, computing, consumer electronics, medical, automotive, and industrial markets. The companys product range includes DRAMs and SRAMs with commercial, industrial, and automotive operating temperature ranges and densities from 64Kb to 8Gb. Privately held, Alliance Memory maintains headquarters in San Carlos, California, and regional offices in Europe, Asia, and South America. More information about Alliance Memory is available online at www.alliancememory.com.

Editor resources:

Link to product image:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/alliancememory/albums/72157684480472166

Link to detailed product info:

http://www.alliancememory.com/datasheets/AS4C128M16D3LB.asp

(AS4C128M16D3LB-12BCN)

http://www.alliancememory.com/datasheets/AS4C128M16D3A.asp

(AS4C128M16D3B-12BCN)

http://www.alliancememory.com/datasheets/AS4C256M16D3LB.asp

(AS4C256M16D3LB-12BCN)

http://www.alliancememory.com/datasheets/AS4C256M16D3LB.asp

(AS4C256M16D3LB-12BIN)

http://www.alliancememory.com/datasheets/AS4C256M16D3B.asp

(AS4C256M16D3B-12BCN)
Dublin, June 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Global IoT in Process Manufacturing Market - Drivers, Opportunities, Trends, and Forecasts: 2016-2022" report to their offering.



According to this research, the IoT in process manufacturing market will witness a CAGR of 46.3% during the forecast period 2016-2022.



Globally, the increasing pressure to improve production activities and performance has led the process manufacturing industry players to adopt IoT in their business units. IoT in process manufacturing allows the companies to gather more data from the production operations by connecting smart devices to their networks.



Understanding the various aspects of IoT in process manufacturing helps the manufacturers to address security issues, improves operation efficiency, reduces the operation costs, improves business operations & intelligent decision making, and helps to offer better customer service. It will enhance the smart features such as smart monitoring, production integration, remote diagnosis, and predictive maintenance. Globally, IoT players are coming up with new innovations to increase the IoT adoption rate in process manufacturing industries.



The market is segmented by types, applications, technology, verticals, and regions. The increasing demand for real-time monitoring applications and customized IoT solutions are the major drivers for the market growth. In addition, rising implementation of machine learning, big data, analytics, sensor technology, and cloud technology are supporting the IoT in process manufacturing market.



Technologies play a key role in implementing IoT in process manufacturing industry. The major technologies covered in this report are Wi-Fi, 3G, 4G, Bluetooth & BLE, and Ethernet. These technologies assist the manufacturers in machine-to-machine communications (M2M), asset tracking & inventory management, logistics maintenance, and other processes in manufacturing plant. Wi-Fi is the major technology that is being implemented by process manufacturing players and has huge market share, growing at a CAGR of 47.7% during the forecast period 2016-2022.



Services & Applications Analysis:



The services covered in the report are professional services, managed services, system integrations, and others. Professional services is dominating in the service segment and its market revenue is expected to reach $4,752.8 million by 2022.



The professional service helps to adapt to changes in business process, provides operational effectiveness by combining CRM and ERP in the production process, provides real-time visibility into the operations, and also increases the profit of the companies.



Some of the key players are PTC Inc., Cisco Systems Inc., IBM Corporation, GE, SAP SE, Intel Corp., Microsoft Corp., and others. At present, big players are acquiring small and start-up players to increase their market share. Also, they are focusing on offering customized IoT solutions to the manufacturers at competitive price to improve the operation performance and flexibility in the production process.



Key Topics Covered:



1 Industry Outlook



2 Report Outline



3 Market Snapshot

3.1 Total Addressable Market (TAM)

3.2 Segmented Addressable Market (SAM)

3.3 Related Markets

3.3.1 IoT in Consumer Electronics

3.3.2 Smart Home Market



4 Market Outlook

4.1 Overview

4.2 Market Definition

4.3 Market Trends

4.4 Market Segmentation

4.5 Porter 5 (Five) Forces



5 Market Characteristics

5.1 Ecosystem

5.2 Market Dynamics

5.2.1 Drivers

5.2.1.1 Low operational costs

5.2.1.2 Improved optimization and control of operations

5.2.1.3 Better customer service and support

5.2.2 Restraints

5.2.2.1 Lack of standards and regulations

5.2.2.2 Supply chain concerns

5.2.2.3 Lack of unified data models

5.2.3 Opportunities

5.2.3.1 New business models

5.2.3.2 Diversification of revenue stream

5.2.3.3 Sustainable growth in IoT space

5.2.3.4 Rising demand for the automation solutions

5.2.4 DRO - Impact Analysis

5.2.5 Key Stakeholders



6 Types: Market Size and Analysis

6.1 Overview

6.1.1 Market Size and Analysis

6.2 Software

6.3 Services: Market Size and Analysis

6.3.1 Overview

6.3.2 Managed Services

6.3.3 Professional Services

6.3.4 System Integration

6.3.5 Others



7 Technologies: Market Size and Analysis

7.1 Overview

7.2 Wi-Fi

7.3 3G

7.4 4G

7.5 Bluetooth & Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)

7.6 Ethernet



8 Applications: Market Size and Analysis

8.1 Overview

8.1.1 Market Size and Analysis

8.2 Predictive Maintenance

8.3 Asset Tracking and Inventory Management

8.4 Supply Chain Management & Logistics

8.5 Remote Monitoring and Control

8.6 Process Optimization

8.7 Others



9 Regions: Market Size and Analysis



10 Verticals: Market Size and Analysis

10.1 Overview

10.2 FMCG

10.3 Chemical Industry

10.4 Pharmaceuticals

10.5 Oil & Gas

10.6 Life Sciences

10.7 Others



11 Vendor Profiles

11.1 PTC Inc.

11.2 Cisco Systems, Inc.

11.3 Siemens AG

11.4 ABB Ltd.

11.5 Rockwell Automation, Inc.

11.6 General Electric (GE)



12 Global Generalist

12.1 IBM Corporation

12.2 SAP SE

12.3 Microsoft Corp.

12.4 Intel Corporation



13 Expert's Views



For more information about this report visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/5h6ksz/global_iot_in




Highlights include 12 m at 3.4 gpt and 9.6 m at 3.8 gpt

Recent drill results suggests potential for a 3 km prospective corridor

OTTAWA, June 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Orezone Gold Corporation (Orezone or the Company) (TSXV:ORE) is pleased to announce further positive results from an ongoing drill program at its Bombore Gold Project in Burkina Faso. The program is currently focused on expanding the P17S sulphide zone situated 2 km south of the Bombore mining permit, and exploring for similar granodiorite-hosted gold mineralization on the property.

Drilling to date has now intersected the P17S mineralized granodiorite from surface to a vertical depth of 150 m with a down-plunge continuity exceeding 425 m. Highlights include:

Hole TYD0073, which returned 4.80 m of 2.29 g/t Au and 6.30 m of 4.47 g/t Au;

Hole TYD0074, which returned 8.50 m of 3.95 g/t Au;

Hole TYD0075, which returned 9.60 m of 3.80 g/t Au;

Hole TYD0076, which returned 12.00 m of 3.40 g/t Au;

Hole TYD0077, which returned 14.00 m of 1.65 g/t Au;

Hole TYD0078, which returned 5.00 m of 4.94 g/t Au;

Hole TYD0079, which returned 5.90 m of 2.44 g/t Au;

Hole TYD0080, which returned 5.00 m of 3.17 g/t Au;

Hole TYD0081, which returned 8.80 m of 2.70 g/t Au;

Hole TYD0082, which returned 13.30 m of 2.06 g/t Au;

Hole TYD0083, which returned 9.70 m of 3.38 g/t Au;

Hole TYD0084, which returned 2.00 m of 14.10 g/t Au; and

Hole TYD0087, which returned 6.90 m of 4.85 g/t Au.

Significantly mineralized granodiorite has now been intercepted to the northeast of P17S in a series of scout drilling holes that were targeting the gap between the P17S and P17 deposits where the prospective sequence has now been confirmed over an additional strike length of more than 400 m. Highlights include:

Hole BBD0978, which returned 9.00 m of 1.49 g/t Au;

Hole BBD0980, which returned 10.00 m of 3.20 g/t Au;

Hole BBD0981, which returned 8.20 m of 1.89 g/t Au and 7.80 m of 1.54 g/t Au;

Hole BBD0982, which returned 9.80 m of 1.55 g/t Au; and

Hole TYD0077, which returned 14.00 m of 1.65 g/t Au.

Furthermore, at Zone 172, less than one kilometer to the southwest of P17S, scout RC drilling of auger drilled gold anomalies and limited core drilling intersected mineralized granodiorite within a meta-gabbro sequence. All three zones, (172, P17S and P17) span a corridor of more than 2.5 kilometers in length and about 400 m in width that is now interpreted to be very prospective for the higher-grade granodiorite-hosted gold mineralization. See Figures 1 and 2 below.

Commenting on the results, Patrick Downey, President and CEO, stated, These new drill results along the P17 corridor continue to demonstrate the potential to both expand higher grade shallow resources at Bombore and open up previously untested zones. The drilling continues both to intercept mineralization containing both good grade and widths and is open along strike and down dip. The Company plans to continue drilling in this prospective corridor and to evaluate and drill other prospective areas on this largely underexplored property.

The Company has completed more than 13,000 m of auger, reverse circulation and core drilling to date in 2017 and is planning additional drilling before the 2017 rainy season.

All assays were performed using a 1kg bottle roll technique (identical to the other Bombore samples); leach residue assays are pending for 3 core holes. A complete list of historical drill results on P17S and analytical procedures can be found on the Companys website at the following link (P17S Drill Results). Please note true widths to be determined.

About Orezone Gold Corporation

Orezone is a Canadian company with a successful gold discovery track record and recent mine development experience in Burkina Faso, West Africa. The Company owns a 90% interest in Bombore, a fully permitted, undeveloped oxide gold deposit in West Africa, which is situated 85 km east of the capital city, adjacent to an international highway. The Company is continuing with exploration and various technical studies in order to be in a position to release highlights of an updated feasibility study in Q4 2017.

For further information please contact Orezone at +1 (613) 2413699 or visit the Companys website at www.orezone.com.

Tim Miller, SME and COO, Pascal Marquis, Geo and SVP and Patrick Downey, PEng and CEO of Orezone, are Qualified Persons under National Instrument 43-101 and have approved the information in this release. Readers should refer to the annual information form of Orezone for the year ended December 31, 2016 and other continuous disclosure documents filed by Orezone since January 1, 2017 available at www.sedar.com, for this detailed information, which is subject to the qualifications and notes set forth therein.

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS AND FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION: This news release contains certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities laws. Forward-looking statements and forward-looking information are frequently characterized by words such as plan, expect, project, intend, believe, anticipate, estimate, potential, possible and other similar words, or statements that certain events or conditions may, will, could, or should occur. Forward-looking statements in this release include statements regarding, among others; the drill results from the recently completed drill program P17S have the potential to both expand higher grade shallow resources at Bombore and open up previously untested zones, recent drill results suggests potential for a 3 km prospective corridor, and releasing highlights of an updated feasibility study at Bombore in Q4 2017.

Although the forward-looking statements contained in this news release are based upon what management of the Company believes are reasonable assumptions, the Company cannot assure investors that actual results will be consistent with these forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this news release and are expressly qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement. Subject to applicable securities laws, the Company does not assume any obligation to update or revise the forward-looking statements contained herein to reflect events or circumstances occurring after the date of this news release.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Photos accompanying this release are available at

http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/147dc6d4-a3f8-4344-9a97-1d7f7f98c259

http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/2483d050-5f41-49a4-872d-28039810bff8
At interim analysis, three-month overall response rate (ORR) was 45%, with 37% complete response (CR); all patients in CR at three months remained in CR at data cutoff





Best ORR was 59%, with 43% achieving CR; full results expected to be available later in 2017 and will serve as basis for US and EU regulatory submissions





Global, multi-center Phase II JULIET study conducted in collaboration with University of Pennsylvania is basis for FDA Breakthrough Therapy designation in April 2017





CTL019 is manufactured using cryopreserved leukapheresis which, in the JULIET trial, enabled the treatment of patients in 27 sites across four continents

Basel, June 7, 2017 - Novartis announced findings from an interim analysis of its multi-center Phase II JULIET study (NCT02445248) of CTL019 (tisagenlecleucel) in adult patients with relapsed or refractory (r/r) diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), which will be presented at the International Conference on Malignant Lymphoma (ICML) meeting, Lugano, Switzerland (Abstract #007; Wednesday, June 14, 3:40 PM CEST). The global, pivotal study showed a three-month overall response rate (ORR) of 45% (23 of the 51 patients evaluated), with 37% achieving a complete response (CR) and 8% achieving a partial response (PR), respectively. CR remained stable from three months through data cutoff among the patient group[1] .

"The overall response rate seen in this early analysis is impressive for these heavily pre-treated patients with relapsed/refractory DLBCL, who have limited treatment options," said JULIET lead investigator, Stephen Schuster, MD, Professor of Hematology/Oncology in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) and Penn's Abramson Cancer Center. "The goal for these patients is achieving durable response. The most promising aspect of these data is that, at the time of this interim analysis, all patients with complete response at three months have remained in complete response."

JULIET is the first multi-center global registration study for CTL019 in adult patients with r/r DLBCL and the second global CAR-T cell therapy trial, following the Novartis ELIANA study (NCT02435849) of CTL019 in pediatric and young adult patients with r/r B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). JULIET was conducted in collaboration with Penn and enrolled patients from 27 sites in 10 countries across the US, Canada, Europe, Australia and Japan. It is the largest study examining a CAR-T cell therapy exclusively in DLBCL patients.

The study met its primary objective at interim analysis. Among 51 patients with three months or more of follow-up or earlier discontinuation, best ORR was 59% (95% CI, 44.2-72.4; p<0.0001), with 43% achieving CR and 16% achieving PR. The full JULIET primary analysis is expected to be available later this year and will serve as the basis for US and EU regulatory submissions[1].

In the JULIET study, 57% of all treated patients (85) experienced any grade cytokine release syndrome (CRS), and 26% experienced grade 3/4 CRS (17% grade 3; 9% grade 4) using the Penn Grading Scale, a rigorous scale for grading CRS. CRS is a known complication of the investigational therapy that may occur when the engineered cells become activated in the patient's body. CRS was managed globally using prior site education on implementation of the CRS treatment algorithm[1].

There were no deaths attributed to CTL019, CRS or cerebral edema, and no incidents of cerebral edema were reported in the study. Thirteen percent of patients had grade 3/4 neurologic adverse events, which were managed with supportive care. Grade 3/4 cytopenias lasting more than 28 days and grade 3/4 febrile neutropenia occurred in 21% and 14% of patients, respectively. Three patients died from disease progression within 30 days of infusion[1].

In the JULIET trial, 43 patients discontinued before infusion and the majority did so due to rapid progression of their disease or deterioration in their clinical status. This reflects the acute and progressive nature of the disease of the patients. Only nine of 141 (6%) enrolled patients could not be infused due to inability to manufacture an adequate dose of CAR-T cells. Over the course of JULIET, with continuous process improvements, manufacturing success rate improved to 97% for the last 30 patients.

"We are pleased the interim results from JULIET highlight the potential for CTL019 to elicit durable responses in patients with relapsed/refractory DLBCL, an area of high unmet need," said Vas Narasimhan, Global Head of Drug Development and Chief Medical Officer, Novartis. "Novartis is committed to progressing our portfolio of CAR-T therapies in hematological and solid tumors to advance the care of cancer patients."

In April 2017, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Breakthrough Therapy designation to CTL019 based on data from the JULIET study.

About the JULIET Trial

JULIET (NCT02445248) is a single-arm, open-label, multi-center global Phase II trial of CTL019 in patients aged 18 years or older with r/r DLBCL. Prior to enrollment, patients were required to have received two or more lines of prior chemotherapy and had disease progression or were ineligible for autologous stem cell transplant (autoSCT). Sixty percent of the patients had three or more lines of chemotherapy and 51% had a prior autoSCT.

The primary endpoint of the study is best ORR (defined as CR plus PR) determined by a central review conducted by an independent review committee. Secondary endpoints from the study include overall survival, duration of response and progression-free survival.

About CTL019 Manufacturing

Novartis cryopreserved leukapheresis process allowed for successful manufacturing and treatment of patients from around the world. Cryopreserved leukapheresis gives physicians the flexibility to schedule apheresis at a time that is in the best interest of their patients. Novartis commercial manufacturing for CTL019 will build on its extensive experience in our Morris Plains facility, which has already manufactured CTL019 for hundreds of patients in global clinical trials. Novartis believes that hands-on experience matters in cell therapy manufacturing, and the experience at Morris Plains will be a foundation for manufacturing for commercial purposes and future CAR-T therapies. Novartis has made and continues to make significant investments in capacity and turnaround time and is committed to meeting the needs of CTL019 patients in the future.

About CAR-T and CTL019

CAR-T is different from typical small molecule or biologic therapies because it is manufactured for each individual patient using their own cells. During the treatment process, T cells are drawn from a patient's blood and reprogrammed in the laboratory to create T cells that are genetically coded to hunt the patient's cancer cells and other B cells expressing a particular antigen.

CTL019 was first developed by the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) and uses the 4-1BB costimulatory domain to enhance cellular responses. In 2012, Novartis and Penn entered into a global collaboration to further research, develop and then commercialize CAR-T cell therapies, including CTL019, for the investigational treatment of cancers. In March 2017, Novartis announced that the FDA accepted the company's Biologics License Application filing and granted priority review for CTL019 in the treatment of r/r pediatric and young adult patients with B-cell ALL.

Because CTL019 is an investigational therapy, the safety and efficacy profile has not yet been established. Access to investigational therapies is available only through carefully controlled and monitored clinical trials. These trials are designed to better understand the potential benefits and risks of the therapy. Because of the uncertainty of clinical trials, there is no guarantee that CTL019 will ever be commercially available anywhere in the world.

About DLBCL

DLBCL is the most common form of lymphoma and accounts for approximately 30% of all non-Hodgkin lymphoma cases[2]. Ten to 15% of DLBCL patients fail to respond to initial therapy or relapse within three months of treatment, and an additional 20% to 25% relapse after initial response to therapy[3].

Disclaimer

The foregoing release contains forward-looking statements that can be identified by words such as "will," "later in 2017," "Breakthrough Therapy designation," "promising," "investigational," "may," "potential," "committed," "priority review," "yet," "expected," or similar terms, or by express or implied discussions regarding potential marketing approvals for CTL019, or regarding potential future revenues from CTL019. You should not place undue reliance on these statements. Such forward-looking statements are based on the current beliefs and expectations of management regarding future events, and are subject to significant known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those set forth in the forward-looking statements. There can be no guarantee that CTL019 will be submitted or approved for sale in any market, or at any particular time. Nor can there be any guarantee that CTL019 will receive regulatory approval or be commercially successful in the future. In particular, management's expectations regarding CTL019 could be affected by, among other things, the uncertainties inherent in research and development, including clinical trial results and additional analysis of existing clinical data; regulatory actions or delays or government regulation generally; the company's ability to obtain or maintain proprietary intellectual property protection; general economic and industry conditions; global trends toward health care cost containment, including ongoing pricing and reimbursement pressures; safety, quality or manufacturing issues, and other risks and factors referred to in Novartis AG's current Form 20-F on file with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Novartis is providing the information in this press release as of this date and does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this press release as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

About Novartis

Novartis provides innovative healthcare solutions that address the evolving needs of patients and societies. Headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, Novartis offers a diversified portfolio to best meet these needs: innovative medicines, cost-saving generic and biosimilar pharmaceuticals and eye care. Novartis has leading positions globally in each of these areas. In 2016, the Group achieved net sales of USD 48.5 billion, while R&D throughout the Group amounted to approximately USD 9.0 billion. Novartis Group companies employ approximately 118,000 full-time-equivalent associates. Novartis products are sold in approximately 155 countries around the world. For more information, please visit http://www.novartis.com.

Novartis is on Twitter. Sign up to follow @Novartis at http://twitter.com/novartis and @Novartis Cancer at http://twitter.com/novartiscancer

For Novartis multimedia content, please visit www.novartis.com/news/media-library

For questions about the site or required registration, please contact media.relations@novartis.com

References

[1] Schuster, Stephen et al. Global Pivotal Phase 2 Trial of the CD19-Targeted Therapy CTL019 in Adult Patients with Relapsed or Refractory (r/r) Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma (DLBCL) - An Interim Analysis. June 14, 3:40 p.m. CET. The International Conference on Malignant Lymphoma: Abstract 007.

[2] American Society of Clinical Oncology. Lymphoma - Non-Hodgkin: Subtypes (Dec. 2016 revision). http://www.cancer.net/cancer-types/lymphoma-non-hodgkin/subtypes. Accessed May 2017.

[3] Sehn, L. Paramount prognostic factors that guide therapeutic strategies in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. Hematology, December 2012; 1; 402-409.

# # #

Novartis Media Relations

Central media line: +41 61 324 2200

E-mail: media.relations@novartis.com

Eric Althoff



Novartis Global Media Relations



+41 61 324 7999 (direct)



+41 79 593 4202 (mobile)



eric.althoff@novartis.com Rosemarie Yancosek



Novartis Oncology Communications



+1 862-778-9043 (direct)



+1 862-505-9021 (mobile)



rosemarie.yancosek@novartis.com

Novartis Investor Relations

Central investor relations line: +41 61 324 7944

E-mail: investor.relations@novartis.com
State Board recommends Kansas districts retire native mascots, imagery

The Kansas State Board of Education voted to make a "strong recommendation" that school districts in Kansas retire the use of American Indian mascots.
Re: Enough is enough

Drinking and driving is a huge problem in Samoa that will not end until the country takes a zero tolerance policy on this issue. This means the PM, cabinet ministers, everyone is treated to the full extent of the law if they are apprehended while driving under the influence.

There are taxis on every corner in Samoa.

There is no reason to excuse anyone who drinks and then gets behind a wheel of a car. All the police need to do is sit outside in a parking lot of a restaurant or a bar and start checking everyone who gets in their car after they leave these establishments. Easy.

The message will soon get out there that it is no longer ok to drink and drive.

Wendy Wonder
Toronto, Ontario, June 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ABC Life Literacy Canada (ABC) is proud to announce the second year of ABC Health Matters, a health literacy program developed to help Canadians increase their confidence when talking about and making decisions regarding health issues with family, friends, and health care professionals. With the support of AbbVie Corporation and McKesson Canada, and through delivery partner University Health Network (UHN), ABC Health Matters will reach patient groups with this health care provider-led program. The ambition of ABC Health Matters is to create a healthier and more confident Canada by increasing the health literacy of all Canadians.

ABC is pleased to launch the second year of ABC Health Matters to help Canadians build their confidence and knowledge to navigate the health care system, said Mack Rogers, Executive Director, ABC Life Literacy Canada. With the support of AbbVie, McKesson, and delivery partner UHN, we are helping learners to be more comfortable talking about their health and to become advocates for themselves and their family to make informed decisions about their health care for an improved quality of life.

An alarming 60 percent of adults and 88 percent of seniors have low health literacy (Public Health Agency of Canada). Our ability to thriveas individuals, families, communities, and as a countryrelies on good health, yet those with low health literacy are more likely to be sick, ill, or injured and have difficulty understanding and following a treatment plan. ABC Health Matters targets adults who struggle to manage their health and arms them with the knowledge to better access health care to live a more healthy life.

The program was piloted across Ontario last year to adult literacy programs with very positive results. Learners reported an increase in confidence to manage their own health and the health of those they care for and an increase in knowledge of their rights and responsibilities as a patient. Ninety-three percent of participants indicated they intended to be more proactive about their health and intend to ask more questions of their health care professionals going forward.

We are very excited to continue our partnership with ABC and evolve our workshops to be leveraged in hospitals. We strongly believe that improving health literacy is vital to a healthier Canada. It is through supporting such initiatives as ABC Health Matters that we are taking a step forward in making a positive impact in healthcare sustainability, said Stephane Lassignardie, General Manager, AbbVie.

ABC Health Matters program includes two workbooks, which are delivered in two, two-hour workshops. The workbooks can also be downloaded for free from our website for use at home by learners. The first workbook includes information such as how to talk about your health with your family and with your health care provider and includes practice activities and helpful sample scripts. The second workbook includes information specific to the Ontario health care system and UHN network with details about services from your local pharmacist and doctor, Telehealth, and how to create a medical history card.

Increasing the health literacy of patients makes them full partners in their care. ABC Health Matters is an innovative example that demonstrates how pharmacists can be a key resource in health literacy and how active participation can increase positive outcomes and improve adherence for individuals, families and communities. McKesson Canada is proud to continue to partner with ABC Health Matters to support this important initiative, said Paula Keays, President, McKesson Canada.

ABC Health Matters will be delivered at three UHN locations across Toronto in workshops held during May and June. Led by McKesson pharmacist volunteers and the UHN health care team, the program will reach 150 patient-learners as well as learners across Canada accessing the program through self-led delivery. To register for a workshop or download the program workbooks for free, visit ABCHealthMatters.ca.





About ABC Life Literacy Canada

ABC Life Literacy Canada is a non-profit organization that inspires Canadians to increase their literacy and essential skills. We mobilize business, government and communities to support lifelong learning and achieve our goals through leadership in programs, communications and partnerships. We envision a Canada where everyone has the skills they need to live a fully engaged life. For the latest news and information on adult literacy please visit www.abclifeliteracy.ca. Follow us on Twitter (@abclifeliteracy). For more information about ABC Health Matters visit ABCHealthMatters.ca.

About AbbVie Corporation

AbbVie is a global, research-based biopharmaceutical company formed in 2013 following separation from Abbott Laboratories. The company's mission is to use its expertise, dedicated people and unique approach to innovation to develop and market advanced therapies that address some of the world's most complex and serious diseases. Together with its wholly-owned subsidiary, Pharmacyclics, AbbVie employs more than 29,000 people worldwide and markets medicines in more than 170 countries. For more information: www.abbvie.ca on Twitter at @abbviecanada.

About McKesson Canada

Founded more than 100 years ago, McKesson Canada is dedicated to delivering vital medicines, supplies and information technologies that enable the healthcare industry to provide patients better, safer care. Our solutions empower pharmacies, manufacturers, hospitals and other healthcare institutions by enabling them to get closer to the millions of patients they serve every single day, while contributing to the quality and safety of care in Canada. For more information, visit www.mckesson.ca.

Attachments:

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/54ae805e-959d-446c-aec2-a6ce1fbd10a6

Attachments:

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/96490051-c1d1-41fe-99a8-d1a5b042118a
Dear Editor;

Re: President Trump, climate change and Tuilaepa

Though Ive notice a little tone down of your anti Trump rhetoric, still I cant help but sense your sources as still the NY Times and CNN etc...

Firstly, the American media establishment is not to be trusted at this point in time and please Observer, throw away your naive media ID card and look at the origin of the matter to have a good feel of the reasons behind why things appear as they are.

Being reported by the NY Times or CNN etc does not mean it real. Legal perhaps but not real. Those conglomerate news outlets have their own agenda lines and will twist facts to victimize or advertise their own perceived realities. In other words its never about reporting the news, but advertising their point of view, controlling to simply put. Is that so hard to believe?

First to understand is that the Paris Accord is none binding. Its not a treaty where a country like China who is the worst polluter by far will stand isolation for non-compliance. To simply put, the Paris Accord is rather an initiative or a pledge by industrial nations to cut their emission by so much percentage by such a time frame.

Example, America under Obama pledge a 20% carbon emission reduction by the year 2020. Its a very good number but its just talk. No one will hold you accountable if you dont make it.

This Accord is just a dress down from the failed Kyoto Protocol mainly from the point of monitoring ie from countries that are unreliable in data keeping from the monitoring perspective, ie China and India, SE Asia to name few.

To simply put, the Paris Accord was an attempt to re invent something that wasnt achieve in Kyoto. All BS.

What Donald Trump is arguing is that America is held at ransom by a pledge Obama knew will never happen at the price of American jobs and economy.

The carbon emission reduction should be a fair across the board reduction for all industrial nations not just America sacrificing its economy reduction on something thats just really child talk.

China, France, Russia, Britain, India etc... should be sacrificing the same pledge as well. Its just fair, any one of your readers would concur with that argument, dont you think?

They couldnt reach that Accord or Agreement in Kyoto so now its being transform from a strategy to a pledge, and thats all it is in Paris 2015. Politician trying to invent oxygen from a septic tank; not gonna happen.

The question is why was it done in the first place? Why did America signed up for it in the first place? No reason but an act of being relevant. How many times you hear politicians pledge to build new schools in the villages when they are elected and nothing happens 5 yrs later? Its just politics grandstanding at the international level.

Obama knew he was leaving the White House and an American non compliance will look bad on the next guy and him (Obama) the hero of the world. He was only looking after his own interest, not America. Self promotion.

He didnt know that Trump would be President when he signed up for the Paris Accord so it was mainly targeted at Hillary Clinton been the obvious choice for the top job, because they were enemies at the time. The dirty of politics, everybody stabbing the other in the back.

Yes, the effects of it is still damaging to the environment. Yes we, the little people are still the victims of globalization. Yes the little guy is still and always the slave of the big guys.

People in Paris, or WTO dont give a rats as- about Samoa and global warming. We are just wasted space in the ledger of agendas where the big boys do their thing and we the little people will just have to fan our face when they fart with their carbon emissions.

The Paris Accord in reality has nothing to do with the environment or global warming but everything to do with De-culturalization of the human thinking into a globalized abstract of fear. Example, if we all have a common fear, ie global warming, then we will all agree on a common strategy to control it. Its mind reprogramming at a global level. They are getting us to get use to the idea of a One World Order.

All these petty organizations like P.I.C.A.N/ S.P.R.E.P etc..are just control baits to make us feel important and the appearance of equal rights as humans. Theyre all the same.

Im not at all surprised that your point reference rep. from PICAN was not aware that 2015 Paris thing was just talk by politicians as they always do. Thats why its called an Accord.

Now a much smarter President can see right through it and calls it toilet paper and what lah, the sewage promoters called CNN, NY times MSNBC and the like are turning their fans right up.

I strongly suggest that you the editor take a few days off to do research into globalization and the agenda of the deep state One World Government and how its aligned with the end time prophesies of scripture, the Rothchilds banking establishment models of central banking, the propagation agendas of the established media to deceive humanity in manipulation and controlled thinking, etc.., then you may at least get the line on where our thinking stands. Otherwise, your just another tool of the manipulated liberal media without your conscience knowledge, which is sad to us all.

Steve

PS: I like to acknowledge your position as an independent media of government which at least gives us a forum of self expression in its raw truth. Thank you.
The Associate Minister of the Ministry of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Peseta Vaifou Tevaga, has sued the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, Laaulialemalietoa Leuatea Polataivao and his business associates Apulu Lance Polu and Martin Jonathan Schwalger for more than $3million.

The hearing of the civil lawsuit is underway before Supreme Court Justice Tafaoimalo Leilani Tuala-Warren.

The plaintiff is represented by Leuluaialii Olinda Woodroffe and Lealiifano Dr. Iopu Tanielu. The defendants are represented by Semi Leung Wai.

Last year, Laauli and other shareholders of the Local Partners and Associates lodged a complaint against Peseta accusing him of fraud and forgery.

The Supreme Court found Peseta not guilty of the charges.

Now, Peseta is suing his former business partners.

Lawyer Leuluaialii told the Samoa Observer the preliminary calculation has the lawsuit at $3million tala however it may increase, as the Court deems.

In Court, Leuluaialii said the defendants acted illegally and breached their legal duties under the Companys Act 2001.

Peseta claims that the defendants misappropriated funds belonging to Local Partners and Associates (LPA).

He also accuses them of breaching their fiduciary duties and their duties to act in good faith. He claims they were engaged in transactions, which are in conflict and breached their duties by misappropriating funds from the use of the companys trucks.

He also accuses them of changing company records, using deception and illegal methodology to convert company assets.

BACKGROUND

LPA was incorporated in 2012 following discussions between Peseta and Laauli for the purpose of selling and exploring nonu juice. A loan was obtained of $1.8million from the National Provident Fund with monthly repayments of $24,000.

LPA was unable to provide security for the loan and so Aldan Civil Engineering Construction Company Limited provided security.

In 2013 LPA using the loaned funds purchased bulk of nonu juice and assets such as vehicles at price of $1.5million with the intention of selling and exporting the nonu juice from the receivers of three related companies, Reef Investments, Pure Pacifika Samoa Limited and Pure Pacifika Limited of New Zealand.

Leuluaialii indicated that in 2013 the shareholders and directors for LPA resolved that shareholding was to change to 50% Peseta, 50% Schwalger/Polu shared jointly.

The companies registrar however remained incorrect in that it records Schwalger and Polu holding a 50% share jointly instead of Schwalger holding a 50% share as resolved.

Further Leuluaialii notes that Laauli, Polu and Schwalger had been selling nonu juice belonging to LPA under a purported trading name Samoa Nonu Delight.

The said trading name was falsely added to LPAs business license in 2013.

It was not until 2016, that the trading name Samoa Nonu delight appeared formally as the trading name for LPA on the Companys Business License.

Leuluaialii added that between 2013 and 2015 the defendants have been selling nonu juice belonging to LPA and directing payment of cheques written for cash or Samoa Nonu Delights yet there was no reference of LPA.

There is even a letterhead which Polu signs as managing director, of Samoa Nonu Delights despite that company not being registered company.

The hearing continues.
Supreme Court Justice Leiataualesa Darryl Clarke has ordered a mental health assessment for a woman who attacked a relative with a machete.

Lama Lavea Christopher, also known as Lama Kobayash, has pleaded guilty to attempted murder.

The victim suffered laceration on his neck, which required 16 stitches, and other injuries to his face.

Earlier this month, the woman appeared before Chief Justice Patu Tiavaasue Sapolu for her initial appearance during the criminal mention.

The charges include attempted murder; assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm and possession of a dangerous weapon, namely a machete.

The woman pleaded guilty to attempted murder and assault but pleaded not guilty to the possession of a dangerous weapon.

During her sentencing hearing, which was presided over by Leiataualesa, it was revealed that the defendant is first cousins with the victim.

Lama, in her 40s, lives on the same land with the victim but in separate houses.

The Police Summary of facts said the defendant was upset when the victim instructed her to wash the dishes.

It is alleged the victim was sleeping with his family with the lights off when the defendant entered their house and struck him with a machete.

The defendant afterwards turned herself in to the Afega police outpost.

The police report says the victim was admitted to the hospital for one week due to the severity of the injuries.

The case had since been scheduled for status hearing on 19 June 2017 to await the mental health assessment and a medical report.

Justice Leaiataualesa ordered the defendant to remain in Police custody.
A mechanic has told the Commission of Inquiry investigating the conduct of suspended Assistant Police Commissioner, Samoa Mulinuu, that he was unlawfully arrested and kept in a jail cell for two hours.

Siiloto Natano Peneueta, 53, made the claim before a Cabinet appointed Commission of Inquiry chaired by retired Supreme Court Justice Lesatele Rapi Vaai with members including Tavui Annie Laumea, Namulauulu Sami Leota and Apostle Viliamu Mafoe.

The Inquiry has been tasked by Cabinet to hear evidence on allegations against Samoa in his handling of the criminal matter against Siiloto. He is also accused of tampering with witnesses in the District Court case of Police v Mauga Precious Chang.

In his evidence before the Inquiry, Siiloto said a man named Letoa Amosa came to him looking for a car. The car that was available was for $5,000 however Amosa only had $3,000.

After two weeks, Amosa returned with $3,000 and was told that unless the $5,000 is paid, the vehicle will not be released to him.

Within a month another $500 was dropped off to my house.

The Commission heard that Siiloto left for New Zealand and upon his return, Amosa demanded his money back.

I told him that I had used the money for my trip, Siiloto said. A week later police officers came and took me into the police station.

The mechanic said he did not want to make a written statement and had asked for a lawyer.

In the middle of the interrogations, Samoa wanted to see me at his office. I went to Samoas office and we spoke about the incident. I tried to plead with him about what had happened, however Samoa threatened to arrest me, if I didnt pay him the money right then and there.

Siiloto said Samoa accused him of fraud.

Despite efforts trying to explain my case, it was unsuccessful as Samoa kept on saying that I will be arrested if I dont pay the money.

Siiloto said he was arrested and taken to a cell where he was held for close to two hours. A Court Registrar arrived and released him later.

During cross examination, Samoas lawyer, Afa Lesa, noted that Samoas testimony was that he did not threaten to arrest Peneueta.

LUATIMU SAMAU

Aside from Samoa, Corporal Hillary Eteuati and former Inspector Luatimu Samau were also subject of the Commission of Inquiry.

The case against Eteuati has been removed from the Commissions work since he is facing the same charges in the Supreme Court.

The heading of allegations against Inspector Luatimu Samau was scheduled for 23 June 2017.

However, lawyer Sefo Ainuu informed the Commission that witnesses being summoned in the case against Samau were available and they could give evidence.

Samau is accused of tampering with witnesses in the District Court case of Police v Mauga Precious Chang. His conduct and performance in discharging his duties as a police Inspector is also under scrutiny.

Superintendent Tuaena Lomano Paulo took the stand and informed the Commission that Samau attempted to interfere in the case against Precious Chang.

In a written statement sent to the Commissioner of Police, Tuaena explained he did not in any way or manner ask Samau to render assistance in the case given there were other investigating officers assigned to the case.

He came into my office uninvited and asked me about the file on Precious Chang. I told him, the case file is before the Commissioner.

Tuaena also recalled an encounter with the former Police Minister Sala Fata Pinati.

I was instructed by the Minister to heed the advise by Samau but I told him no, I did not instruct Samau to investigate the case against Precious Chang, Tuaena said.

The Minister told me to tell the truth and whatever issue that I have with Samau, we need to sort it out."

I told the Minister my report is clear and will remain the same and that Samau was not instructed to investigate the traffic case."

Yet the Minister tried to persuade me to change my mind.

The hearing continues.
Samoa joined the world to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Marist Brothers yesterday.

The occasion kicked off with a thanksgiving mass at the Mulivai Cathedral.

St. Marcellin Champagnat started the Marist Brothers on January 2, 1817, 200 years ago and five months ago.

He founded the religious order of the Marist Brothers in France and died on June 6th 1840, now his feast day.

In Samoa, hundreds of members of the Marist family congregated at Mulivai for the occasion.

The Head of State, His Highness Tui Atua Tupua Tamasese Efi and the Masiofo, Her Highness Filifilia Tamasese were among the guests.

In his keynote address titled St. Marcellin Champagnat  A heart that knew no bounds, he said the occasion is a day of remembrance.

We remember with joy and and gratitude the life and vision of St. Marcellin Champagnat, the father and the founder of the Little Brothers of Mary 200 years ago, His Highness said.

We remember with love and gratitude the service and commitment of the Marist Brothers to the formation and education of young people in so mamny countries of the world including Samoa. (Read His Highness Tui Atuas address in full in the Sunday Samoan)

Before the mass, a skit on the life of Mt. Marcellin was performed.

Brother Humphrey OConnor spoke on behalf of the Marist Brothers to thank everyone in attendance.

This was followed by the blessing of the anniversary cake.

In a message from the Superior General, Br, Emili Turu, he said the feast of St Marcellin Champagnat shows gratitude to many thousands of lay men and women who are committed to the Marist mission and who desire to present Marian face to the church.

Their contributions have been extremely important for the development for the Marist charism, especially over the last 60 years or so.

Gratitude for so many generations of men and women who have been influenced in a positive way by a Marist education, and who have integrated and promoted its values as they tried to live as good believers and good citizens."

Her Highness, Filifilia Tamasese, Br. Humphrey Oconnor and Br. Siaosi Ioane jointly cut the cake.
Help continues to roll in for a man whose plight featured in the Village Voice recently.

After he received some money and food assistance last week, Teo and his wife Toomata from Australia visited the family with more help yesterday.

They offered to help pay for Simatis children school fees.

We just got here last Wednesday for a family saofai, Toomata said.

To be honest I didnt know any issues about Simati and his family, it was my daughter in Australia who sent me the details and begged me to make time to come visit while we are here.

And here we are, with this amazing family, especially the thoughtful father who had the courage to ask for help.

Toomata said they would pay for the children to attend Vaitele Primary school.

We wanted to come see for ourselves and believe with our own two eyes what the article has written about this family.

My daughter living in Auckland New Zealand, Maiava Susan Smith is the one who sent the money for the uniforms and everything else. We will settle everything before going back.

Its good we know the way here to the house and we will be visiting often until we go back.

Toomata said visiting Simatis family was an eye opener.

Its very sad to know that this is exactly what you call poverty, she said.

I grew up here, I know life here and how people are trying their best to survive but its a different situation with Simatis family.

We struggle but we were still able to go school unlike the struggle this poor father goes through every day.

I know these kinds of people. It could be me, it could be you, it could be any of the people in this world forced into this situation through familys crisis, minimum wages, and many more.

Simatis story is not unusual.

Everything looks perfect here in Samoa but its not. Almost every family is in the same situation with Simati.

Simati found it hard to find words to express his gratitude.

I dont know how to thank you enough for all your help, he said.

Thank you so very much. You are indeed a good Samaritans.
Young people should know the importance of their involvement in every part of the community.

This was the main purpose of the Maryanne Prom Night for the Apia Vikaliatu Youth Programme held last week.

The four parishes within the Vikaliatu region include, Matautu and Leone, St Anthony, Taufusi, Togafuafua, Saleufi and Vaimoso.

Father Losi Numia told the Samoa Observer that its not just a night to dress well but to remind them that they are future leaders of Samoa.

They came up with this idea so instead of roaming on the streets during this time, they are here together under one roof focusing on something else with friends and families,Father Losi said.

To us (leaders of the church) we encourage youth involvement in developing and implementing activities.

What we are trying to tell them is that they are future leaders of the church and if they work together as one, fellowship with one heart then together they can make something beautiful.
Taking advantage of his trip to New Zeeland while following the Lions tour, Connor Nolan, of Ireland seized the opportunity to visit beautiful Samoa.

I was in New Zealand already and decided to come and see Samoa, said the 22-year-old.

Visiting the island is often a once in a life time opportunity, with the price of flights ever increasing.

Connor was enthusiastic about his short stay and eager to experience as much of the culture as possible.

While enjoying the traditional religious celebrations at the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Mulivai, he took the time to tell us about his experiences so far.

Having flown all the way from Ireland, Connor said he had brought pre-conceptions about the cost of living, and was under the impression that Samoan life may be quite expensive, particularly for a tourist.

I had heard that its beautiful, but sadly a very expensive place to stay, and this is why people choose to visit the other islands, he said.

Upon his arrival and visits to the local markets, he was shocked at the low prices.

He said he would definitely recommend Samoa to his friends back at home, dispelling rumours that the island is only for the wealthy.

Samoa is perfect for relaxation and fine weather, he said, adding that it is a place with an abundance of friendly people and fantastic food.

All great qualities that will ensure his return to Samoa in the future.

Standing outside the beautiful architecture of the Church, Connor was fascinated with the local culture and all it has to offer.

Battling with the heat, he set off in search of one of Samoas local markets, to try the vast array of fruit grown here on the island.

This destination, he assured, is already a winner.
The New Zealand government is doing the best it can to help Pacific communities become the best they can be in New Zealand.

The promise was made by New Zealand Prime Minister, Leuluaialiiotumua Bill English in Samoa last week when he visited for three days.

Speaking during a reception at Letava to mark 55 years of the Treaty of Friendship between Samoa and New Zealand, Leuluaialiiotumua reiterated his government is working with the Pacific Communities to ensure they have the ability to participate in the same way all other New Zealanders.

We are getting some real success and the number of Pacific kids who are passing their NCA level 2 is essentially their Six Form level has gone up by about 25 percent in the last five years, he said.

Thousands more each year are getting to that line for further qualification and positive entry into the work force and just in the last few budgets weve been able to do a lot more for families on low incomes.

And that will certainly be the case in the next nine months.

It recognizes that these are hardworking families driven by family and faith, driven by the education, the desire for success, the need for secure jobs and secure incomes. We are doing special work in helping in health and education which I believe were going to bring about generational change in New Zealand and we are very committed to that.

Reflecting on Samoas independence day, Leuluaialiiotumua said he was impressed,

I very much enjoyed Independence Day in Samoa, he said. Our National day in New Zealand has always been a place of some controversy but we saw yesterday (Thursday) just pure celebration of Independence Day of Samoa and it was fantastic to experience that.

And then we visited the health services today and talked to RSE workers and visited the Cocoa Samoa after the title conferred in Faleula.

Deputy Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mataafa acknowledged Leuluaialioiotumuas presence and thanked him for his work.

It has been our honor and pleasure to welcome you and the daughter of Samoa you have married Dr. Mary English, members of your delegation and of course members of you families both from your side and of Dr. Englishs side, she said.

So we celebrate 55 years of Treaty of Friendship but I think for Prime Minister English were not just friends, were now families.

This week also in New Zealand you are marking Samoan Language week and as I reflect on what might be useful for you as a new matai and thinking of family.

We have the expression in Samoa between two families and in this case yourself to Dr. Englishs family you are now the Paolo to the family in Faleula.

And paolo in its general meaning means shade

And this speaks to one particular aspects of the Samoan culture when we become family we become that shade for each other.

Leuluaialiiotumua you are the paolo and you are the paolo also and its about relationship in your leadership capacity you are also that shade for your country especially as its leaders.

And we pray for Gods blessings upon you Prime Minister.

You are not a new politician you are a veteran politician, you have played a big part in the development of your country but now you have stepped up to the leadership.

Rest assured of the friendship of Samoa but most also the familiar connection that we now have and the affections that Samoans will hold for you.
Talofa Airways yesterday announced the start of its direct flights to Tonga starting on 1 July 2017.

Four schedule flights per week - two from Samoa on Tuesday and Saturday and two from American Samoa on Monday and Friday (Sunday and Thursday Pago days) - are now available for sale for return or one-way fares.

Flights from Tonga to Samoa will be on Monday and Friday and to American Samoa these will be on Tuesday and Saturday (Monday and Friday Pago days).

Chief Executive Officer Toleafoa Jeffrey Hunter said this beginning of a service they hope to develop in the coming years.

Finally, and in less than one year since commencement of its airline operation, Talofa Airways is now ready to provide the much needed direct air services between Tonga and the two Samoas, he said.

It is my hope to expand this service to Niue, Wallis & Futuna and other neighbouring island.

The flights to Tonga will not affect Talofa Airways daily flights between Samoa and American Samoa.
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina, June 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- YPF SA (NYSE:YPF) announced that it has filed its annual report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2016, with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, including audited financial statements.



The document is available on the YPF website at www.ypf.com in the Investor Relations section, and can also be downloaded from the SEC website at www.sec.gov.

About YPF

YPF is the leading energy company of Argentina, producing 43% of the total oil and gas in the country and supplying 56% of the fuel markets through a network of 1500 gas stations and other assets. YPF is leader in the production of unconventional resources. It is an integrated energy company that generates a large offering consisting of natural gas, electricity, fuels, petrochemicals, lubricants and products for agriculture, among others.
In conjunction with its 70th Anniversary this year, the Pacific Community (S.P.C) would like to pay tribute to the important role of Pacific women towards the improvement of Pacific Island lives.

The organization is inviting the public from across the region to participate in a campaign to celebrate the legacy of Pacific women.

S.P.C is calling for submissions to help identify 70 women or groups of women who have made a significant contribution to the social, economic, cultural and political development in Pacific Island countries and territories.

The 70 successful submissions will be shared via S.P.Cs corporate media platforms in the build-up to the 13th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women, to be held in Suva, Fiji in October this year.

S.P.C works in partnership with diverse actors of the civil society, government institutions, and regional and international organizations to advance gender equality in Pacific Island countries and territories.

S.P.Cs work involves providing technical support to the countries to enable them to achieve their commitments to gender equality and the human rights of women and girls.

This campaign will contribute to efforts on profiling the significant contribution that women continue to make towards development in the Pacific region, S.P.Cs Social Development Programme Director, Leituala Kuiniselani Toelupe Tago-Elisara said.

As a build up to the 13th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women, this campaign is about acknowledging the work of women before us and utilising this information to help us shape the strategic direction for progressing gender equality in the region.

Submissions close on 15 July 2017. Brigitte Leduc SPC Gender Equality Advisor, [email protected]
God answers when you least expect it.

For Malaga Kovati, it began when her familys struggles featured in the Village Voice in May.

Malaga pleaded for a job.

I desperately need a job because as the mother of the family, I feel how painful it is to work for your family, alone, she said.

Every day, our responsibility is making sure our children are well fed and that they are in school.

Our Womens Committee had a camp and what we discussed was what we need in our lives and in my mind, I said to God, Give me a job, she said.

As a woman, when you see your husband trying his best to make a better life for your family, you want to help him out with that as well and thats why Ive been praying for work to come my way someday.

I have 12 children and one of them is a baby. I feel that whenever we can afford milk for him every day, its a miracle considering the fact we barely have money.

We also have to pay $100 a month for the land we are currently staying on because it belongs to the Samoa Land Corporation.

We are also struggling with the no electricity and no water situation.

We already paid for our electricity on the 4th of February but whenever we call the Electric Power Corporation about this, they say they are not up to our area yet.

For water, we get water from our next-door neighbors.

Weve been staying here for a year now and not much has changed.

I dont just want a job, I need a job. I need it to help my husband, my children and especially my baby.

Fast-forward to now, Malaga has been blessed with an opportunity to work for the Central Bank of Samoa.

But thats not all. When the Village Voice visited Malagas family yesterday, she was at work while her husband Lesoa Kovati, was working on cementing the floor of their house.

Mr. Kovati spoke on his wifes behalf.

My family and I are thankful to God for answering our prayers; that is for my wife to get a job.

You know, after the day you interviewed my wife for your Village Voice, right on the very next day, my wife got four phone calls from people that wanted her to work for them; including Central Bank.

Central Bank was the last call and they contacted my wife around 2 oclock on that same day, to come in to the office to talk and discuss her situation.

When she came back, she came back with great news because she got the job. 

Now its almost a month since shes been working as a cleaner and its been a blessing.

My wife goes in the morning and she gets dropped off by the ministrys vehicle after work.

So as you can see, we are already working on some of the things that we needed to change and develop in our home; like cementing our floor and we have finally gained access to electricity.

These were some of the things my wife and I have been dreaming of doing but we couldnt afford it.

We are truly thankful to the Governor of Central Bank and their management team for giving my wife an opportunity to work because it is from this job that we are able to start with these small developments for our family.

I would also like to acknowledge your Editor in Chief and your management team because without your work, no one would know of our situation.

It was through your programme that she pleaded for a job and it is through your newspaper that good people and ministries like Central Bank got to see how much my wife needed a job.

So I thank God for his love and I thank you all for your work and kindness into helping my family.
It wasnt that long ago. A story titled Fisherman worries about future featured in the Village Voice section of your newspaper generated an interesting discussion about the health of our oceans and the future.

The story in question highlighted the life of fisherman, Lata Asuelu, from the village of Luatuanuu.

When the Village Voice team caught up with him, he expressed frustrations about the dwindling number of fish in the lagoon. According to the 59-year-old, he had noticed a marked difference in his catches over the years.

The sea is not the same anymore, he lamented. For us who use fishing nets, now and then we come and go with almost nothing.

Theres barely any fish on this side and I think its because of a lot of factors.

He is not a scientist but he suspected that overfishing is one of the problems.

The problem with this kind of fishing at night time is that they always dig up corals and everything that are home to all kind of species under the sea.

So they benefit from it because they get more fish than they should have but what would that situation leave for us with fishing nets? Nothing.

Latas concerns are shared by thousands of other people around Samoa who are like him. Keep in mind that in this country, the ocean and fishing are peoples bread and butter.

It is their livelihoods.

And when developments such as the one Lata is concerned about emerge, it should worry us all.

I dont like this and Ive always wanted to express a concern on this issue, he said. We all know there are Samoans or most of Samoan families depend on the land and the sea for food and everything else that we need.

Maybe just an advice to other fishermen, try to fish without destroying the homes of ocean species because without homes or any corals for these species to stay in, the further they will go away from here and we dont want that to happen.

Well that is excellent piece of advice indeed. All local fishermen should pay attention.

Mind you, Lata could easily be telling the same thing to a global audience and biggest users of our fisheries and ocean resources who are robbing us of these precious resources. This week, global leaders are meeting in New York for the United Nations Oceans conference.

Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi is among the Pacific leaders fighting for a better deal in terms of protecting this very important resource for our people.

On the front page of the newspaper you are reading, Tuilaepa is calling the attention of global leaders in New York to address the consequences of overfishing at a global scale. He is asking them to deal with climate change and over exploitation of resources.

Tuilaepa is not alone. On the pages of the newspaper you are reading today, we are dedicating a lot of it to the Pacifics fight to preserve our oceans.

Why is this important?

Well stories like that of Lata  and many other people - make this issue all the more relevant to us. The ocean represents food, money and livelihoods. We are connected to the ocean in every way. It is why we need to do everything in our power to protect this resource.

The statistics are certainly alarming. The acidity level of the ocean for example has changed by about 30 per cent since before the Industrial era. According to S.P.R.E.P, the rate of change is faster than anything we have seen in the past 300 million years.

This process affects a wide variety of marine animals including some of the seafood we eat. For communities who rely directly on ocean resources for the majority of their livelihoods, these changes are crucial. Lata and the people of Luatuanuu are among them.

Which brings us to the point that perhaps we should consider ocean acidification as one of the key challenges of climate change. While the U.S. President Donald Trump might deny the existence of climate change, its not just the weather we are talking about. It also affects the ocean, our forests and our entire surrounding.

For us in this part of the world, it really is a matter of life and death. When our weather patterns are turned upside down, when our food resources are dried up, we will have nothing left for ourselves. This is not the future we want.

It is why the noises being made in New York this week are relevant to us, to people like Lata, the village of Luatuanuu and every Samoan born and yet to be born.

What we need is for the rest of the world to pay attention and help us. We need them to listen.

Stay tuned!
Acting Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mataafa congratulated Matson Inc, a leading U.S. carrier in the Pacific, last night.

The occasion was the official launch of increasing the frequency of its popular South Pacific Express (S.P.X) service to Samoa and American Samoa from a 28-day shipping schedule to arrivals every 14 days.

Key to this service is the MV Samoana, replacing the MV Islander which had been servicing the previous 28 day service.

At the Matautu Wharf yesterday evening, the company celebrated MV Samoanas maiden Voyage.

Speaking during the launch, Senior Vice President of Matson in the Pacific, Tuilaepa Vic Angoco said the service would provide the fastest transit time from Hawai'i and the U.S. West Coast to the two Samoas.

Customers have asked for more and thats why we want to do more business and provide more services, Tuilaepa said.

So that is why we are here today, celebrating the fact that we are increasing services in the two Samoas and sitting in front of you is Samoana.

It will be fitting to call this vessel Samoana.

Acting Prime Minister Fiame congratulated Matson and everyone involved in the venture.

Matson provides a vital lifeline to the economies of Hawai'i, Alaska, Guam, Micronesia and select South Pacific islands, and operates a premium, expedited service from China to Southern California.

The Company's fleet of 22 owned vessels includes containerships, combination container and roll-on/roll-off ships and custom-designed barges.

Matson Logistics, established in 1987, extends the geographic reach of Matson's transportation network throughout the continental U.S. Its integrated, asset-light logistics services include rail intermodal, highway brokerage, warehousing, and less-than-container load freight consolidation and forwarding to Alaska
The Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, Laaulialemalietoa Leuatea Schmidt, has strongly rejected allegations against him in the Supreme Court.

This is my life, this is my reputation, he said.

And if I fail again with this [Nonu Juice project] no one would trust me, no one would believe me and no one would respect me.

Laauli was giving evidence in the hearing of a civil lawsuit filed by the Associate Minister of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Peseta Vaifou Tevaga.

Minister Laauli and his business associates, Apulu Lance Polu and Martin Jonathan Schwalger, are being sued for more than $3million by Peseta over a business deal gone sour.

Yesterday, Laauli denied he acted illegally and that he breached his legal duties under the Companys Act 2001. He also rejected a claim that he misappropriated funds belonging to Local Partners and Associates.

The Minister refuted claims that he changed the companys records using deception and illegal methodology and converted the company assets.

Supreme Court Justice Tafaoimalo Leilani Tuala-Warren is presiding.

The plaintiff is represented by Leuluaialii Olinda Woodroffe and Lealiifano Dr. Iopu Tanielu. The defendants are represented by Semi Leung Wai.

During his testimony, it was revealed that Laauli was approached by a prominent Samoan, Laauli Michael Jones, about running a Nonu Juice Factory in Sasina.

The Minister explained that Laauli Michael brought on board Phillip McNicholl who oversees Reef Investments and a Chinese investor from China.

Laauli said there was a site visit to New Zealand and to China to see about the investors, where he saw first hand on-going projects of the nonu juice off island.

After the site visit in China, thats where he met up with Peseta who showed interest in the Nonu Juice Project.

Not long after, a local company called Pure Pacifika Samoa was established.

A nursery as well as a factory was underway in Sasina with the promise of US$100,000 annually for the village and 200 workers to be hired from Sasina.

However there was problem between the Chinese and Laauli Michael and the deal did not go through.

The Minister expressed his devastation given that chiefly titles for these two men have already been bestowed and promises were made to the village.

But things got worse. At the time, a New Zealand bank wanted to forfeit the Pure Pacifika Samoa.

I spoke with Apulu [Lance Polu] and we tried to salvage the Pure Pacifika for the nonu juice, he said.

All along the Nonu Juice project I had worked along side with Apulu.

Thats when they moved to bid in taking over Pure Pacifika and due to the time constraints, he asked Peseta if they can use their current business license that was under LP Construction, to solidify their bid to purchase Pure Pacifika Samoa.

Peseta and Laauli had a business called LP Construction, which was mainly for construction projects. According to Laauli in the process, they moved to amend the name of the business to Local Partnership Associates or Laauli, Peseta and Apulu.

Back then it took a while to get a business license, he said. Due to the time constraints, I asked Peseta if we can use our construction business license [LP Construction] to try and salvage the Nonu Project.

Laauli denied that the LP was established for the purpose of selling and exploring nonu juice.

It had nothing to do with the Nonu Juice Project, it was a construction company.

Given his Parliamentary tie as Speaker, he was unable to be a shareholder, and so he had a representative, Martin Schwalger, while Peseta had his son, Danny, as his representative shareholder.

So the LP construction it was 50/50 as it was just me and him and I had Martin Schwalger as my representative, while Peseta had his son Danny as his representative shareholder.

However when we moved over to LPA then the shareholder was 32.5% for Schwalger , my representative, 32.5% for Apulu who is the managing director and 35% for Danny Schwenke (Pesetas son).

A loan was obtained of $1.8million from the National Provident Fund with monthly repayments of $24,000 and it was Aldan Civil Engineering Construction Company Limited provided security.

The hearing continues.
The man who lodged a complaint with the Police, which led to the alleged wrongful arrest of a mechanic, is a relative of the suspended Assistant Police Commissioner, Samoa Mulinuu.

This was revealed before the Commission of Inquiry ordered by Cabinet to investigate the suspended Police officers conduct.

The man is Letogo Amosa. He had approached mechanic Siiloto Natano Peneueta about buying a vehicle and had given him $3500 for the $5000 vehicle.

Later when he demanded his money back, Siiloto said he couldnt provide it as he had spent during a trip to New Zealand.

At the beginning of the week, Siiloto appeared before the Commission and informed them he was unlawfully arrested on orders by Samoa.

The Cabinet-appointed Commission of Inquiry is chaired by retired Supreme Court Justice Lesatele Rapi Vaai with members including Tavui Annie Laumea, Namulauulu Sami Leota and Apostle Viliamu Mafoe.

They are to hear evidence on allegations against Samoa in the handling of the criminal matter against Siiloto. He is also accused of tampering with witnesses in the District Court case of Police v Mauga Precious Chang.

The Counsels assisting the Commission are Sefo Ainuu and Alesana Tumua of the Office of the Attorney General. Samoa is represented by Arthur Lesa and Samau is standing in pro-se.

Yesterday, Mr. Amosa read out his criminal complaint lodged with the police against Siiloto.

He was looking for a vehicle and approached Siiloto who said there is a vehicle for sale at $5,000.

I told him I cannot afford $5,000 but I will look for another car. However the same weekend, Siiloto called me back to come look at the car and I did.

The next day $3,000 was dropped off and Siiloto said the price of the vehicle remains at $5,000. Another $500 was dropped off within a week.

Mr. Amosa told the Commission that Siiloto then left Samoa.

When he returned I told him I cannot afford to pay the rest and I wanted a full refund of $3,500.

The Commission also heard, the vehicle in question did not belong to Siiloto. According to Mr. Amosa, Siiloto told him that $2,000 will be refunded but the rest he will keep.

I felt this was unfair, and I left.

Mr. Amosa said the following week, he went back to Siiloto for his money.

However Siiloto was upset and referred him to the owner of the vehicle.

In his complaint to the Police, Mr. Amosa said Siiloto is his uncle. This however did not stop him from filing a complaint, as what occurred was fraud.

The Commission heard from Mr. Amosa that the first time he found out the vehicle did not belong to Siiloto was when he asked for a refund.

I filed a complaint with the Police and I did not inquire directly with Samoa.

During my second visit, I went to the investigating officer, but on my way out I met with Samoa.

Upon questioning, Mr. Amosa responded that he informed Samoa that if Siiloto can pay back the money, he will withdraw his complaint.

That was the last time he met Samoa.

The hearing continues.
Despite the assurance from the Ministry of Agriculture that the nation has nothing to worry about in terms of a new unknown virus found in taro in some parts of Upolu, American Samoa is not convinced.

And to show it, the American Samoa Department of Agriculture has suspended importing of all taro and taro shoots from Samoa effective immediately.

The Director of Agriculture, Filifaatali Mike Fuiava, said in a notice to the media in American Samoa yesterday that he received information of an unknown virus breakout in Samoa affecting taro crops in the islands of Upolu and Savaii.

Reports from Samoa say that the disease is such that the taro shoot looks mature but when uprooted, the taro tuber itself has rotted away.

Radio New Zealand quoted the director as saying he had to take every precautionary measure to make sure this unknown virus would not enter American Samoa.

He said he did not want to experience another epidemic like the taro leaf blight of 1993-1994.

The D.O.A director said lifting the suspension would depend on test results of taro samples affected by the disease, which were being sent to Germany.

At the beginning of the week, the Ministry of Agriculture assured the country that theres nothing to worry about.

Plant Pathology Research Officer, Taualai Mauga, said that the Ministry is waiting on the results of the tests on the virus that had been sent to Germany.

We have two viruses that are already in the country; the mosaic virus and badna virus, Taualai said.

But we are trying to look up the name of this virus...I mean this kind of virus comes and goes because of changes in the weather.

So as we wait for the results of samples that have been sent off to Germany, the Ministry is now working closely with villages affected at Safata and Salani, Falealili.

The fact is, we dont just wait for the results but consultation and working together with affected areas in Samoa, is very important at this time.

He believes early prevention is better than cure.

We have put a ban on taro shoots (tiapula) between Upolu and Savaii at this time while we are still trying to find ways to get rid of the virus.

The ban is not only between the two islands, but also in nearby villages at the affected areas like Salani and Safata.

All we can do at this time is work together for better results not only for Upolu but for Savaii as well.

As of today, we are still waiting on the test results that were sent to Germany and there are other samples that we just sent a few days ago.

Hopefully well get the results early next month then well let everyone knows especially those in the affected areas.

I mean, as Ive mentioned before, preventative measures and awareness is very important.
It was in the 1970s when the congregation of Christ Lutheran Church began to shrink  and it wasnt because of a lack of faith.

Rent prices were driving out the churchs oldest members who lived on fixed incomes. So, church leadership decided to build an apartment building for seniors that would have low rent and stay that way for decades.

Nearly 40 years since it was constructed, Luther View apartments still have extraordinarily low rent for its occupants that are 62 years old and up, $550 a month for most. The average rent in Pacific Beach is $1,702 a month, said real estate tracker CoStar.

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The apartment complex went on sale this week for $9.5 million  substantially less than what 48 apartments should go for  because the church wants to get out of the real estate business, but wants to make sure the apartments stay affordable.

We thought, How do we sell it but also keep the core mission of it going? said David Nagler, pastor of the church. We wanted to make sure we honored the commitment of the congregation, to serve the people that are under served in the beach community.

The church worked with a lawyer to craft the deal so the new owner must keep the rents low-income by linking all new rentals to U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development affordable standards. Such a rule is usually reserved for a property paid with taxpayer money from HUD, not places like Luther View that was built and maintained by church funds.

There is already a three-year waiting list to get into the apartments and it will be up to the new owner how people go about applying.

The churchs broker, Robert Vallera of Voit Real Estate Services, said the property is still a good deal even with the restrictions. He said a buyer should think of it as a bond  modest but reliable income without the ups and downs of the real estate market.

Its a slower growth path, but probably more steady, he said.

Under the terms of a sale, Luther View can raise rent no more than 5 percent in the first five years, and 5 percent maximum yearly after that for existing residents. New residents would have increases tied to the area median income as defined by HUD. The intention is the deed will restrict the property as low-income senior housing for the next 30 years.

Vallera reasons the apartment complex could go for up to $15 million without restrictions.

Pastor David Nagler walks near the apartments which are currently owned by Christ Lutheran Church. (K.C. Alfred / San Diego Union-Tribune)

Residents of Luther View say the apartments have give them a refuge in the high-priced market.

Jeanne Thomas, 83, was thrilled when she was accepted into Luther View 14 years ago after waiting for three years. She had worked for Macys for 35 years but still struggled with rent in various places she lived throughout the county.

I thought, Im going to work until Im 100, she recalled Monday at her apartment.

Thomas, now retired, lives in a one-bedroom, one-bathroom 490-square-foot unit (like the other apartments in the complex) that is the subject of admiration of her neighbors because of her extensive collection of well-maintained succulents and flowers.

She and her friend and neighbor Hyacinthe Baron, 81, admit the idea of a sale makes them nervous, even if the church is working to keep rent low after the purchase.

Where would everyone go? Baron said Monday in Thomas apartment. Baron is an accomplished artist who has work on display at The Studio Door in North Park.

Both say Luther View has given them a sense of community, building friendships and having fun with frequent activities. They joke that Barons 3-year-old Pomeranian, Roxy, is the guard dog for the complex.

Theres nothing like this, Baron said of Luther View. It was built out of love.

If the sale price stays the same, a buyer will be paying $197,917 per unit for Luther View. A recent subsidized housing project in downtown called Atmosphere, also tied to HUDs area median income, was built at a cost of $386,000 a unit.

The average selling price for an apartment in Pacific Beach was $349,558 in the last year, real estate tracker CoStar said. Luther View, at 4810 Cass St. and just three blocks from the beach, could likely fetch a substantial amount because of its proximity to the ocean.

A nonprofit or charitable organization would be the best fit for the property, largely because financing a sale for such low rent could be difficult, said Alan Nevin, apartment industry analyst at Xpera Group.

With the rents, there is no way you could afford to pay a mortgage, he said.

However, an investment like this could provide tax incentives for a private builder, said Mark Goldman, a loan officer and real-estate lecturer at San Diego State University. He said even with low rent, tying it to HUD area median income in San Diego  which has a strong economy  could still pencil out for the right buyer.

San Diego is a great market for investors who specialize in moderate and low income housing, he said.

Nagler says the idea of providing housing for poor seniors can be traced to the Bibles Book of Matthew in which Jesus talks of his return: The King will reply, Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.

The creation of Luther View was led by founding Pastor Quentin Garmen, a major presence in Pacific Beach and the namesake of a scholarship at California Lutheran University, as well as a real estate developer who attended the church, Robert Schroeder.

Original residents had to be at least 62 years old (like it is today) and earn less than $15,000 a year. A few years into its existence, the church was reminded by officials that Fair Housing laws prevented it from giving priority to church members. So church leadership instead focused on the positive aspect of having affordable housing for all seniors.

Nagler said the church had been discussing selling the property for several years because its congregation is much younger these days  a reflection of the people who decide to live in Pacific Beach  and the church body anticipates managing the property will take too much of its time in the future.

He said selling the property and using that money for other charitable purposes is not what is best for Pacific Beach, where housing is a major need.

To walk away from what seems to be the No.1 need in the community would not have integrity, he said.

Other churches in the the county have addressed the need for senior housing in the past. Members of the Community Congregational Church in Chula Vista formed a corporation in 1973 to build the Congregational Tower Apartments, a 186-unit building for seniors 55 and older. Primary control of the building was sold to a nonprofit in 2013, and it remains a low-income building for individuals with Section 8 housing vouchers.

David Hand, president of the Community Congregational Development Corp., said it decided to sell a slight majority in the towers because it did not have the expertise to handle all the upgrades needed. Similar to Luther View, it wanted to make sure the building remained low income so it sought out Long Beach-based Retirement Housing Foundation, a faith-based organization that operates facilities in 29 states, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Hyacinthe Baron has lived in the 48-unit Luther View Senior Apartments in Pacific Beach for three years. (K.C. Alfred / San Diego Union-Tribune)

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phillip.molnar@sduniontribune.com (619) 293-1891 Twitter: @phillipmolnar

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The vanishing San Diego single-family home
Not long after 22-year-old Harley Noel got out of the Army in 1957, he lost his life savings when an old friend stole all the money in his brokerage account.

A year later on Thanksgiving day, Noel decided to drive to the prison in Chino to visit his old friend, who hed forgiven for the crime. The trip changed the course of his life.

I wasnt sure why I went. Maybe it was curiosity or fascination. Maybe I just wanted to see what it was like, said Noel, an Encinitas resident. But when I was there I ran into a lot of guys and I saw the sad situation they were in.

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That was the beginning of Noels lifelong devotion to visiting men in prison and helping them find their footing when theyre released.

Now 83, Noel is the executive director of Hawkes Home, a six-bedroom sober-living house in Vista for men transitioning out of prison. Since he and his wife, Joyce, purchased the house and opened it five years ago, theyve helped dozens of ex-cons make a fresh and sober start in life.

Harley Noel, 83, executive director of Hawkes Home in Vista, says we always have our hand out," looking for donations for the transitional living house. (Bill Wechter / San Diego Union-Tribune)

One of them is Obediah Breer, a 39-year-old who grew up in Oceanside, where his first arrest was at age 12. Breer was in such trouble with drugs and crime after that, the longest he ever went without being incarcerated was three months.

In 2012, when Breer was released from a six-year, eight-month prison sentence for drug sales, he was offered a bed at Hawkes Home.

Before that, it was a revolving door. At Hawkes Home, I felt like I had a secure place to learn how to live life in regular society, said Breer, whos sober, a union construction worker and now shares a home in Escondido with his wife.

Joyce and Harley are like a mom and dad to me, he said. If you needed a shirt, they would take the shirt off their back and give it to you, and they have 20 friends who would do the same thing. Theyre always trying to help the next man up.

Resident Geoff Andreozzi, 35, said Hawkes Home is helping him make a successful transition back into society from prison. (Bill Wechter / San Diego Union-Tribune)

The Noels dont live at Hawkes Home, but theyre a regular presence there. Joyce, 77, decorated the property and visits often. Harley attends resident meetings every Saturday.

On Wednesdays, he visits prison inmates and also drives regularly to L.A., where hes co-founder and CEO of McIntyre House, a long-term drug treatment center for male ex-cons. He opened the center 20 years ago with Monsignor Jeremiah Murphy in L.A.s Catholic diocese.

Joyce said she and her husband were blessed with good fortune in their careers and running the transitional homes is their way of giving back.

Weve seen some miracles here, she said, during a recent visit to Hawkes Home. Once you get to know the guys and you see them making progress, its a wonderful feeling.

During the 1960s, Noel spent many of his weekends visiting prisoners around his native L.A. At first, he went alone to do a little Bible-thumping. Then he went as a member of the Lay-Mission Helpers Association.

In 1960, on a flight to San Francisco, he met Monsignor Ben Hawkes, a leader in the L.A. diocese. Hawkes became a friend and mentor and asked Noel to put his faith and business skills to work helping others.

At the time, however, Noels main energy was focused on his career. He ran labs for oil companies, then worked in bedding and houseware sales. In 1970, he moved to San Diego to open new stores, but when the bank loan fell through, he started over as a traveling garment salesman.

That was how he met Joyce, who worked for one of his buyers. They married in 1980. Over the next nine years, they built a large clothing importing and manufacturing company, then sold it and retired.

Finally able to fulfill his promise of service to Hawkes, who died in 1985, Noel and his wife embarked on a mission to northern Kenya, where he ran a hospital for the poor from 1993 to 1995.

It was a very strategic time in both of our lives, she said. We realized how much need there was in the world and we got to know ourselves a lot better.

Two years after they returned, they helped open McIntyre House, which has been a noted success. Eighty percent of residents who finish its nine- to 12-month treatment program remain sober after one year, Noel said.

Hawkes Home in Vista  which has a framed portrait of Msgr. Hawkes over the living room fireplace  doesnt offer drug treatment or counseling. Instead, residents are subject to regular drug testing, strict house rules and a curfew. If they test positive just once, theyre out because others are waiting to get in.

Home manager Bruce Dishneau, 32, talks with founder Joyce Noel, 77, at Hawkes Home in Vista. (Bill Wechter / San Diego Union-Tribune)

Residents are hand-picked by house manager Bruce Dishneau, 32, who said he seeks men coming out of prison who are committed to sobriety and ready to change their lives.

Dishneau, who grew up in Big Bear, spent 10 years in the cycle of drugs, crime, prison and rehab before finally escaping his old habits and friends and moving to Oceanside several years ago.

When I got out of prison at age 20, I didnt have a normal family dynamic. There was nothing to go back to in Big Bear (and) I didnt have anywhere else to go, he said. If it wasnt for places like this, I wouldve ended up back in prison. Its important to do this for somebody.

Parolees arrive at Hawkes Home with little more than the clothes on their back and $200 in spending money from the state. Dishneau said most of the men  who range in age from 31 to 67  have been in prison so long they have no independent living skills.

He and his assistants help them get a bus pass and a phone, look for work, set up a bank account, make medical appointments, enroll in college or vocational classes, learn to cook for themselves and deal with court paperwork.

The men can stay free for a couple of months until they find work. Then theyre expected to pay a monthly fee of $250 to $435 for housing and support services. Some stay for a few weeks, others for several months, and some like Breer have stayed for a couple of years.

The fees dont cover all the costs of operating Hawkes Home, so the Noels are always looking for donors to help support their mission.

Harley Noel, executive director of Hawkes Home in Vista, right, talks with resident Joseph Silverira, who says I love it here. Its excellent. The best place Ive been to. (Bill Wechter / San Diego Union-Tribune)

In 2012, the Society of St. Vincent de Paul became a sustaining donor. The charity bought the homes appliances and it pays the annual sewer, water and homeowners insurance bills. Society member Patrick Conger said Hawkes Home fills an unmet need, because there are so few resources for men coming out of prison.

Both Harley and his wife are very spirit-filled, Conger said. They know God has called them to do this and theyre following through in the best way they can. They dont want to see it fail.

The Noels biggest challenge now is seeing their work carry on after theyre gone. A wake-up call came three months ago when Murphy passed away. Now theyre racing the clock to find local people who share their spirit to keep Hawkes Home alive. They want to form a board of directors and find an attorney and accountant willing to donate their services.

To introduce the community to Hawkes Home and its residents, theyre hosting an open house from noon to 3 p.m. July 16. There will be free tacos, live classical guitar music and tours of the home at 1020 Marbo Terrace, Vista. For details, call Dishneau at (760) 447-4907 or email b.dishneau1@gmail.com.

Harleys favorite experience at Hawkes Home took place at a past open house when he saw a resident proudly showing his bunk to his young son during a tour.

The little boy started jumping up and down on the mattress and said, Gee, Dad, they must treat you really well here,  Noel said. Hearing that, it made my day.

pam.kragen@sduniontribune.com
The San Diego Greek Festival is one of the highlights of June in San Diego, with its three days of delicious food, Greek music and folk dancing.

St. Spyridon Greek Orthodox Church, 3655 Park Blvd., will host the festival this Friday through Sunday, June 9-11. Church members have spent weeks preparing all kinds of Greek food and pastries, including this Greek chicken recipe. The churchs Greek cookbook, Lemons, Loaves & Honey, will be sold at the festival.

Festival hours are 5 to 10 p.m. Friday; 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday, and 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday. Theres a $3 admission charge, but admission is free on Friday and from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.

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For more information about the festival, visit www.sdgreekfestival.com.

Festival Chicken

Makes 4 servings

1 cup vegetable oil

2 tablespoons dried oregano

1 teaspoon garlic powder

Salt and fresh ground pepper pepper to taste

Juice of 2 or 3 lemons

4 bone-in chicken breast halves (or whole chicken legs, or a combination)

Pour oil into a bowl and stir in oregano, garlic powder, salt and pepper. Slowly add in lemon juice, stirring well. After adding juice of 2 lemons, taste and add more juice if you prefer the flavor to be more lemony.

Divide the marinade in half; use half to marinade chicken and reserve the rest for grilling.

Put chicken with half the marinade in a covered bowl or zip-top bag and place in refrigerator, preferably overnight.

To grill chicken, use mesquite charcoal if possible. When fire is very hot, lay chicken pieces on grill, discarding the marinade. Grill chicken, turning once, (8-10 minutes per side, depending on thickness of the meat) until internal temperature of chicken reaches 165 degrees on meat thermometer. While chicken is grilling, warm up remaining marinade (you can do this in a pot on the grill if theres space). Remove chicken from grill and dunk each piece once into warmed, reserved marinade. Serve right away.

Recipe from Lemons, Loaves & Honey cookbook.

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chris.ross@sduniontribune.com
HAMILTON, BERMUDA, June 7, 2017 - DHT Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:DHT) ("DHT") today announced that the High Court of the Marshall Islands (the "Court") has denied Frontline Ltd.'s request for a preliminary injunction relating to transactions contemplated by the previously announced Vessel Acquisition Agreement between DHT and BW Group Limited.

On June 7, 2017, the Court rejected Frontline's arguments and issued an order denying Frontline's motion for a preliminary injunction. The Court cited Frontline's failure to demonstrate a probability of success on the merits of its claims. In particular, the Court noted that the acquisition of BW's fleet fell within the sound discretion of the DHT board of directors' business judgment, and that Frontline "has no likelihood of success" on any challenge to the rights plan implemented by the DHT Board, as the rights plan was a reasonable response to Frontline's actions.

Both the High Court of the Marshall Islands and the Supreme Court of the State of New York have now rejected Frontline's attempt to interfere with DHT's acquisition of BW's fleet.

Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP is serving as legal counsel to DHT.

About DHT Holdings, Inc.

DHT is an independent crude oil tanker company operating a fleet of crude oil tankers in the VLCC and Aframax segments. We operate through our wholly owned management companies in Oslo, Norway and Singapore. For further information: www.dhtankers.com.

Forward Looking Statements

This press release may contain assumptions, expectations, projections, intentions and beliefs about future events. When used in this document, words such as "believe," "intend," "anticipate," "estimate," "project," "forecast," "plan," "potential," "will," "may," "should" and "expect" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements but are not the exclusive means of identifying such statements. These statements reflect DHT's current views with respect to future events and are based on assumptions and subject to risks and uncertainties. Given these uncertainties, you should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements represent DHT's estimates and assumptions only as of the date of this press release and are not intended to give any assurance as to future results. Investing in DHT's securities involves risk, and investors should be able to bear the loss of their investment. For a detailed discussion of the risk factors that might cause future results to differ, please refer to DHT's Annual Report on Form 20-F, filed with the SEC on March 23, 2017.

DHT undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements contained in this press release, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law. In light of these risks, uncertainties and assumptions, the forward-looking events discussed in this press release might not occur, and DHT's actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements.

Media Contacts

Svein Moxnes Harfjeld, Co-CEO: +47 23115080

Trygve P. Munthe, Co-CEO: +47 23115080
The Navys next-generation aircraft carrier, USS Gerald R. Ford, is a monument to the Navys and defense industrys ability to justify spending billions on unproven technologies that often deliver worse performance at a higher cost.

The Ford program also provides yet another example of the dangers of the Navy and industry end-running the rigorous combat testing that is essential to ensuring we go to war with equipment that works.

The Navy had expected to have the ship delivered in 2014 at a cost of $10.5 billion.

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Instead, because the Navy tried to develop more than a dozen new and risky technologies at the same time it was building the ship, the schedule has slipped by more than three years.

GUEST VOICES: Authoritative views on the military and veterans issues

And, the cost has increased to $12.9 billion -- nearly 25 percent over budget.

For all this time and money, a 2015 Defense Department operational testing report concluded that poor or unknown reliability of the newly designed catapults, arresting gear, weapons elevators and radar could affect the Fords ability to generate sorties, make the ship more vulnerable to attack, or create limitations during routine operations.

Failure to Launch

The problems with the ships systems, including the catapult, are well-known.

But President Donald Trump still caught virtually every Pentagon watcher off guard when he told Time magazine in May that he had directed the Navy to abandon the new digital aircraft catapult on future Ford-class carriers.

Instead he wants the Navy to revert to the proven steam catapults, which have been in use for decades.

The president is correct when he says there are significant problems with the Fords digital catapult, but abandoning it in future ships will pose significant problems.

The decision to pursue immature catapult technology has been a boon to contractors, particularly San Diego-based General Atomics.

The Fords digital catapult is, in fact, the Electromagnetic Launch System, or EMALS.

In the long run, it is intended to be lighter, more reliable, and less expensive than the steam system. Unfortunately, EMALS is immature technology. So far, the program has not lived up to the promises made.

Steam-powered catapults, though said to be maintenance-intensive, are proven technology. They have been in service with continuous upgrades and satisfactory reliability for more than half a century.

The new EMALS stores an enormous electrical charge -- enough to power 12,000 homes for three seconds -- and then quickly releases the current into massive electromagnets that push the shuttle down the track.

Testing has already revealed that the Navy underestimated the workload and the number of people necessary to operate the system. As a result, the Navy has to redesign some berthing areas to accommodate more people.

It was also supposed to increase the lifespan of aircraft by putting less stress on their airframes. Unfortunately, recent tests of land-based prototypes showed that the system actually overstressed F-18 airframes during launch.

Perhaps even more serious is that the design makes it impossible for the crew to repair a catapult while the ship is launching planes with other catapults. This is done as a matter of routine on current carriers as each catapult operates independently of the other.

The Navy has found there is no way to electrically isolate each EMALS catapult from the others during flight operations.

This means that repairing the failed catapult must wait until all flight operations have been completed, or, in the event that multiple launchers fail, all flights may have to be suspended to allow repairs.

This problem is particularly acute because the EMALS has a poor reliability track record. The system thus far fails about once every 400 launches.

Thats 10 times worse than the 4,166 launches between failures the system is supposed to achieve by contract.

At least four days of rapid-fire combat flights are to be expected at the beginning of any major conflict. At the current failure rate, there is only a 7 percent chance that the USS Ford could complete a four-day flight surge without a launch failure.

The decision to pursue immature EMALS technology has been a boon to contractors, particularly San Diego-based General Atomics.

With only a nuclear fusion magnetics background and no previous experience in carrier catapults, the company won the EMALS System development and demonstration contract in 2004. At the time, the contract was valued at $145 million.

This figure has predictably ballooned over the years as risky, not-yet-realized technology programs tend to do. The most recent figures show that the Navy will have spent approximately $958.9 million simply to develop this one component -- and more may be required to correct deficiencies.

The cost to build and install is another thing entirely. In January, the Navy awarded General Atomics another $532 million contract to install the system on the third-in-class Ford-class carrier, the USS Enterprise.

And although EMALS is problem-ridden and enormously expensive, replacing it with the proven steam catapult substitute would likely be more.

It would require a complete redesign of the nuclear reactor plants steam generating system. Because the Navy planned the Ford to be an electric ship, the reactor was not designed to produce service steam for major ship systems.

Furthermore, installing four new steam-powered catapult tracks would require a complete redesign of the supporting deck structure. The cost of both would be staggering and the delay may be upwards of two to three years.

Arresting System

Of course, launching a fighter jet over the bow of the carrier is only one part of the equation. The jets also need to land, which is another very large challenge on a moving ship.

Instead of rolling out to a conventional stop, a plane landing on an aircraft carrier has to catch a cable on the flight deck with a hook attached to the plane to bring it to a halt on the relatively short deck.

As it did with the catapult, the Navy decided to use unproven technology for the Fords electrical arresting system and it has proven to be more of a challenge than the Navy expected.

Navies around the world have been using arresting systems for more than a century to land aircraft on ships

The U.S. Navy currently uses a hydraulically braked arresting system called the MK 7. When the hook on the landing aircraft catches one of the cables on the deck, the cables are braked by an engine inside the ship.

In order to get increased funding for the Ford program, the Navy chose to an entirely new and untested electrical system, called the Advanced Arresting Gear, or AAG.

The original 2005 estimate for development alone was $172 million. It was revised upwards in 2009 to $364 million and has now ballooned to well over $1.3 billion.

The new arresting gear is also built by General Atomics, and, as with the EMALS, the company doesnt have any prior arresting gear experience.

The AAG is based on a water twister, a paddlewheel inside a cylinder of water.

When spun by the pull of the deck cable, the paddlewheel uses the resistance of the water to absorb 70 percent of the energy of the landing plane and bring it to a stopwith additional braking forces provided by a very large electric motor.

At least that is how it is supposed to work.

The Defense Department inspector general concluded that the entire program has been mismanaged.

Ten years after the program entered the engineering and manufacturing development phase, the Navy has not been able to prove the capability or safety of the system to a level that would permit actual testing of the system on an aircraft carrier, a July 2016 report said.

Test personnel found damage due to insufficient strength of several subcomponents inside the water twister following developmental tests in 2012.

The water twister required two years of significant redesign. The first land-based aircraft tests occurred in 2016.

Separately, earlier failed tests revealed damage to the AAGs cable shock absorber, which was also reportedly corrected.

Nevertheless, the latest reliability results show only 25 landings between operational mission failures of the AAG. Thats 660 times fewer than the Navys requirement of 16,500.

This makes it utterly impossible for the Ford to meet its surge sortie rate requirements. And, in an astonishing design oversight exactly like that of the EMALS, General Atomics engineers made it impossible to repair AAG failures without shutting down flight operations.

Even after spending an estimated $1.3 billion, the ability to correct the AAGs dangerous unreliability remains so uncertain that the Navy cannot yet commit to a schedule for at-sea testing of it.

Problems with the AAG are so bad that the Department of Defense asked the Navy to study shelving the idea completely for the follow-on ships in favor of an enhanced version of the proven MK-7 system currently in service.

However, recommending to drop the AAG after spending $1.3 billion would have been a major admission of failure. Unsurprisingly, the Navy decided to stick with the AAG and push forward with plans to install it aboard the second Ford-class ship, the USS John F. Kennedy.

That decision may be overturned now that the Navy has had to report the AAG programs costs exceed its 2009 estimate by at least 50 percent, triggering an automatic review.

Of course it is extremely rare for any program to actually be cancelled by such means.

As acknowledged in Fitzgeralds First Law of defense acquisition: There are only two phases of a program. The first is Its too early to tell. The second: Its too late to stop.

Electrical Problems

To feed massive electrical demands, as well as the ships expanded electronics, the Fords four generators were designed to provide three times the electrical power provided by the eight generators on Nimitz-class carriers.

These new ultra-high voltages pose substantial risks, such as increased electrical arcing and failure rates, particularly in humid salt atmospheres.

They are also much more fragile than legacy systems, which can make the ship far easier to cripple in battle. The possibility that these risks could require substantial ship modification or render the Ford unsuitable for combat cannot be assessed until the completion of operational testing in 2020.

The Ford-class ships will be equipped with two newly developed Bechtel A1B nuclear reactors that together will generate approximately 25 percent more total thermal power and 300 percent more electrical power than the Nimitzs A4B reactors.

In the hopes of reducing the reactor operating manpower by two-thirds, the new reactors will halve the control valves, pumps, and piping and will be far more dependent on control automation than legacy reactors.

The relatively inflexible automation and grossly reduced manning may significantly reduce the Fords ability to operate and survive in the face of battle damage.

Underscoring this risk, the Ford suffered a small electrical explosion on one generator in June 2016. This was followed in July by another similar event in a second generator.

Fixing the damage is expected to cost approximately $37 million. As a temporary fix to prevent yet more delays to commissioning and in order to resume testing, the rotors inside both generators were replaced.

But, according to the Navy, generator No. 2 will have to complete additional full repairs after it is commissioned. These full repairs may be quite extensive.

This means that the USS Ford will be commissioned and put into active service with only a temporarily repaired electrical system.

Shock trials

All of these systems have yet to be pitted against perhaps the biggest testing challenge any new Navy ship must face: full ship shock trials.

These critical tests discover whether each new ship class is suitable for combat. Explosives are detonated underwater to learn if the ships systems are sufficiently hardened to carry out missions in the rigors of combat conditions, and if the crew would be able to rapidly fix any problems.

Navy rules used to require the first-in-class ship to go through shock trials. Despite the obvious importance of verifying shock-hardening, the Navy changed its rules in 2013.

In June 2012, the Navy attempted to abandon its plans to conduct full ship shock trials on the Ford, claiming that EMALS and AAG were shock hardened by design.

The Navy announced its intention to conduct the shock trials on the second-in-class ship, the USS John F. Kennedy.

There was resistance Pentagons director of testing and senior members of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

In the end, Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work, under pressure from Senate, overruled the Navy and ordered the USS Ford to undergo shock trials.

The decision to test the Ford as originally required was a clearthough unfortunately reversiblevictory for long-time advocates of realistic combat and live-fire testing.

Actual utility of aircraft carriers

Plenty of frank commentators have questioned in recent years whether the day of the supercarrier has passed.

The wisdom of investing such a large amount of capital into a single weapon system deserves scrutiny. There is the basic matter of battlespace economics.

The USS Ford costs nearly $13 billion so far. In a few years, she will likely carry at least 50 F-35C fighters. Conservatively, each aircraft will have a real cost of $185 million.

Thats a total of $9.25 billion worth of strike aircraft concentrated on one ship. That means this one ship when underway will be worth at least $22.25 billion, to say nothing of the 4,297 sailors on board.

That is putting a great deal of proverbial eggs in a single basket.

Today the Navys carriers are almost constantly in the news as presidents use them as a symbol of strength anytime there is a potential hotspot around the world. They have become, in effect, a very expensive version of gunboat diplomacy.

Potential adversaries have been developing weapons to keep U.S. aircraft carriers from getting close enough to bomb their territory.

Most potential adversaries have large fleets of diesel-electric subs: North Korea has approximately 70; China has approximately 50; Russia has 18 (plus 22 nuclear attack submarines); and even Iran has 20.

Clearly, they decided years ago that subs would be their best bet for neutralizing or sinking American carriers. Thirty years of Navy fleet exercise results bear them out.

An Australian Collins-class submarine penetrated a U.S. carrier battlegroup and was in a position to sink an aircraft carrier during exercises off Hawaii in May 2000, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

There have been many such exercise sinkings since then, including aircraft carriers Reagan and Lincoln.

A possibly greater carrier threat is the sea-skimming anti-ship missile. Essentially every potential U.S. adversary has substantial quantities of these in versions launched from patrol boats, warships, jet fighters, truck launchers, subs and even merchant ships.

No matter what kind of missile is being used, it makes much more economic sense to defend against an aircraft carrier than to build one.

Since missiles and torpedoes cost significantly less than the carrier and its planes, a determined foe would likely do everything in its power to launch a saturation attack.

Sinking $22.25 billion with $1 millionor even with $20 millionis a good return on investment.

Conclusion

The Ford-class carrier program is in much deeper trouble than the Navy and the Defense Department are willing to admit.

As further testing reveals further serious deficiencies, cost overruns will balloon and promised combat capabilities will shrink.

There is the very real possibility that, as currently configured, the Ford will prove to be unsuitable for combat.

Dan Grazier is a fellow at the Project on Government Oversight and Pierre Sprey is a contributor. A longer version of this column is available at the POGO website.

Guest Voices is always open to new points of view. If you have an opinion to put forth in a column, email us at jen.steele@sduniontribune.com
The U.S. military is poised to remove the final roadblock to service based on gender or sexual orientation  a moment that supporters call a victory for civil rights and critics call political correctness run amok in a dangerous way.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis faces a July 1 deadline to open the door to transgender recruits and new officers.

Policy set during the Obama administration established that deadline for the services to get ready to accept transgender newcomers. During then-Defense Secretary Ash Carters tenure, the Pentagon in June 2016 lifted the ban on transgender troops who were already serving.

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But there are signs the militarys social-change momentum that started during the presidency of Barack Obama could be hitting resistance under a new president.

The Army and Marine Corps have reportedly asked the Pentagon to delay the decision on transgender recruits for up to two years, according to anonymous sources quoted by USA Today on Thursday.

Those two services apparently believe they dont have enough data to make a decision on admitting more transgender troops and have expressed concern about the inability to deploy troops who are undergoing gender-transition treatment.

Conservative activists are calling for Mattis to reverse course altogether on allowing transgender people to serve. They are calling it the most problematic policy among politically correct social agendas left over from the previous White House administration.

A public memo from the Conservative Action Project last month asked Mattis to suspend and, upon further careful study, rescind Defense Department and military service directives permitting transgender individuals to serve. It was signed by 85 prominent conservatives, including more than two dozen retired admirals and generals.

Meanwhile, LGBT advocates said Mattis is on the record saying that he isnt out to change policy that was already determined.

I think theres concern in the community, said Aaron Belkin, a San Francisco State political science professor who is director of the Palm Center, a public policy think tank that studies lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues.

But I also think its pretty clear that social conservatives are trying to game the media with a sense that theres a decision that needs to be made, and that policy hasnt been established. And that theres a problem, where there actually is no problem. Transgender troops have been serving loyally for a year, he added, after the news that the Army and Marine Corps might seek delays. If the Pentagon requires transgender applicants to lie to get into the military, this will be Dont Ask, Dont Tell 2.0.

The Palm Center issued its own letter on Wednesday from three former Army generals arguing that military readiness hasnt been affected during the past year.

The research leaves no rationale besides personal bias or politics for delaying or reversing full transgender inclusion, said the letter signed by the three retired generals  Claudia J. Kennedy, Gale S. Pollock and Clara Adams-Ender.

Between 6,000 and 14,000 transgender people are currently serving in uniform, out of a total of 1.3 million active-duty troops. Estimates are sparse on how many are waiting to join the armed forces, but it could be hundreds per year, one expert said.

Two transgender cadets  one at the Air Force Academy and one at West Point  were reportedly allowed to graduate in May but have been denied an officers commission due to the Pentagons policy being unresolved.

Nineteen other nations allow open service of transgender troops, including the United Kingdom, Israel, Australia and Canada.

A Mattis deputy, Robert Work, issued a memo directing the branches to provide their assessments by May 31. A Pentagon spokesman last week wouldnt say when the Defense Department will issue a decision.

Mattis has directed the services to assess their readiness to access transgender applicants into the military, Lt. Col. Myles Caggins said in an email to The San Diego Union-Tribune.

The assessment is narrowly focused on readiness to access transgender applicants, not on gender transition by currently serving service members, he said.

President Donald Trump is seen as something of a wild card on this issue.

During the presidential campaign, Trump voiced support for the LGBT community and, 11 days after taking office, issued a statement that he is determined to protect the rights of all Americans, including the LGBTQ community.

However, news reports said the White House began removing LGBT information from its website. And, in February, the Trump administration revoked federal guidelines that gave transgender students the right to use public school restrooms matching their gender identity, an Obama-era policy.

Trump also has not issued a Pride Month proclamation for June, unlike his predecessor.

To Elaine Donnelly, thats a good sign. She and some other conservatives have called on the Pentagon to stop celebrating LGBT Pride month, saying it is political at heart.

Donnelly is president of the Center For Military Readiness, a group that fought the end of the dont ask, dont tell policy toward gays in uniform in 2011 and warned against opening direct combat positions to women in 2015.

Her argument, like that of other critics of those policies, is that the military is no place for social experimentation if it takes away from military readiness.

On Tuesday, she sent out an email asking if it was a firing offense for a Pentagon undersecretary who issued a June 2 memo announcing and endorsing Pride month activities around the Defense Department.

Do holdover officials in positions such as this have authority to implement or celebrate the previous administrations policies, even if President Trump has not authorized them? Donnelly asked in the email. If this is not a firing offense, are President Obama and Ashton Carter still making policy at the Pentagon?

Donnelly told the Union-Tribune that she is optimistic about change under Trump and Mattis.

I still have hope that the secretary of defense will do the right thing, Donnelly said. The first thing he needs to do is insist on candid information with no penalties, no retaliation for people being frank.

Since October, the U.S. military has issued training handbooks about how to address any issues surrounding transgender troops.

Military hospitals were advised that they should provide all medically necessary care related to gender transition.

As for new recruits, Obama-era policy anticipated accepting transgender applicants who meet the same physical and mental fitness standards as everyone else.

Those prospects would be required to have finished any medical treatment their doctor deemed necessary in connection with their gender transition.

Also, they must be stable in their preferred gender for 18 months, as certified by their doctor.

jen.steele@sduniontribune.com

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A report from a service members advocacy group has found that black troops are more likely than whites to become defendants in the military justice system.

Protect Our Defenders -- a Bay Area-based group that became prominent as an advocate for sexual-assault victims  used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain military records from four U.S. branches.

It found that black service members were at least 1.29 times and as much as 2.61 times more likely than white service members to have an action taken against them in an average year, according to a report released today.

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Welcome to The Intel, a blog examining the hot military news of the day

The organization called for Congress to investigate these findings.

Top brass has also vigorously opposed any suggestion that the commander-controlled justice system is hindered by conflicts of interest or bias and has gone to great lengths to tout the fairness of the system, the groups president, retired Air Force Col. Don Christensen, said in a released statement.

However, the militarys own data raises serious challenges to the idea that the system in its current form is capable of delivering impartial justice.

Protect Our Defenders has been making a similar call for changes to the military justice structure in response to complaints from sexual-assault victims.

The Pentagon is reportedly looking at the new analysis.

A spokesman told USA Today: It is longstanding Department of Defense policy that service members must be afforded the opportunity to serve in an environment free from unlawful racial discrimination. The department will review any new information concerning implementation of and compliance with this policy.

In a breakdown by service, blacks were

In the Air Force, on average 71 percent more likely to face court-martial or administrative punishment than whites.

In the Marine Corps, 32 percent more likely to be found guilty at a court-martial or administrative punishment proceeding, with the size of the disparity becoming larger with more serious crimes.

In the Navy, 40 percent more likely to be referred to special or general court-martial.

In the Army, 61 percent more likely to face a special or general court-martial.

The report acknowledges that racial discrepancies also exist in the civilian justice system.

However, it notes that, among active-duty troops, the races are on a more level playing field than in the civilian population because everyone is screened for criminal history and illegal drug use before being accepted.

Also, members of the military are, by definition, employed with a steady income.

jen.steele@sduniontribune.com

Facebook: U-T Military

Twitter: @jensteeley

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A lawsuit over the right to protest at the site where an El Cajon police officer fatally shot Alfred Olango will move forward but in a limited capacity, a San Diego federal judge ruled Tuesday.

U.S. District Judge Janis Sammartino threw out several portions of the lawsuit in her ruling but found the 11 plaintiffs had some credible claims to pursue, including whether El Cajon police violated their rights by declaring their gathering an unlawful assembly and arresting them.

Olango, a black Ugandan refugee, was acting erratically when he was confronted by two officers in the parking lot of the Broadway Village Shopping Center on Sept. 27. Police said he quickly pulled a barrel-like vaping device from his pocket and pointed it at an officer before being shot.

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The parking lot became a gathering spot for days and weeks after the shooting as people mourned his death and protested the use of force.

One such gathering was Oct. 1. Police, with the help of sheriffs deputies, declared a late-night vigil an unlawful assembly and ordered the crowd to disperse. Most did but some stayed behind to try to reason with law enforcement.

After warnings, 12 people were arrested for refusing to leave. (One of those people is not involved in the lawsuit.)

Police said the next day they had a valid reason to disperse the crowd, citing a fight between a few protesters and a comment about someone leaving to get a gun.

But the judge pointed to the demonstrators claims that the protest was peaceful.

Taking Plaintiffs allegations as true  as the Court must on a motion to dismiss  these facts set forth a plausible claim that the officers lacked probable cause to arrest pursuant to the unlawful assembly declarations, Sammartino wrote.

The judge is also allowing the demonstrators to sue police on claims that their First Amendment right to free speech was violated during the Oct. 1 gathering, mostly because the demonstrators said they had gotten permission from Los Panchos taco shop to hold the vigil.

The judge dismissed all other free-speech claims, citing case law that says the general public has no such absolute right at a shopping center like this one.

The judge also dismissed a few parties from the lawsuit. She ruled the plaintiffs failed to state a sufficient claim against the San Diego County Sheriffs Department and Sheriff Bill Gore as defendants.

And she found the San Diego branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People didnt have standing as a plaintiff because the group failed to show direct harm.

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kristina.davis@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @kristinadavis

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A 22-year-old driver involved in a hit-and-run crash in April that killed a pedestrian in Lincoln Park was sentenced Wednesday to two years in prison.

Darius Jordan Runnells pleaded guilty to felony hit and run, causing death in connection with the April 5 crash that fatally injured 57-year-old Ruben Meza.

During the sentencing hearing, San Diego Superior Court Judge Timothy Walsh acknowledged that Runnells was not driving recklessly or under the influence of alcohol or drugs at the time of the crash, based on information from San Diego police.

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The judge also noted that the victim was not in a crosswalk when he was struck.

The key issue in this case was that Runnells hit the victim and kept driving. He also attempted to conceal the crime by placing a car cover over his damaged vehicle.

The message needs to be clear to those who are involved in a collision that they absolutely have to stop, the judge said.

According to police, Meza was crossing a street to his apartment after parking his truck when he was hit on South 47th Street near Logan Avenue about 8:15 p.m.

Runnells was identified as the suspect the next day, after police got calls from his mother, who had seen news reports of the crash. She told police her son had borrowed her car to run an errand for her but did not return home.

A Valencia Park resident called police after she noticed a badly damaged Toyota Corolla in front of her home on Lorenz Avenue near Division Street.

Runnells turned himself in to police about a week later.

On Wednesday, his attorney read a letter written by Runnells, in which he apologized to the victims family. He said he didnt know right away that he had hit someone but panicked when he realized what had happened.

If I could turn back the hands of time, I would have stopped that night, he wrote.

Runnells, who has no previous record, was sentenced to the lowest prison term prescribed by law.

The prosecutor argued during the sentencing hearing that the two-year term was appropriate.

dana.littlefield@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @danalittlefield

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Greater parental involvement, increased access to quality programs and narrowing the achievement gap are among the goals in the San Diego Unified School District for the new school year..

Its not about a single test score, district Superintendent Cindy Marten said at the start of the districts annual goal-setting workshop Tuesday morning. Its about knowing the whole childs social emotional needs and academic needs. The best teaching comes from knowing that child.

Like all school districts in the state, San Diego Unified is setting goals as part of its Local Control Accountability Plan, more commonly known as the L-CAP.

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The state requires the plan as a way for districts to get public input and to show how their budgets align with state priorities that focus on proper teacher assignments, academic content, parental involvement and pupil achievement, engagement and outcome.

The five goals discussed Tuesday focused on closing the achievement gap, access to challenging curriculum, family and community engagement, positive school environments and quality leadership, teaching and learning.

Were going to have a student-centered approach, Marten said. Were a district that believes in student voice and empowerment.

The public can view the review and leave comments online at https://www.sandiegounified.org/what-lcap.

Marten said more than 1,000 comments were left at last years L-CAP, and 400 already have been left so far this year.

The plan is scheduled to go before the board for adoption June 27, the same day trustees will vote on the budget.

Marty Stultz, director of special projects for the district, was among the staff members explaining the goals at the workshop.

Stultz said an overall goal will focus on integrating services throughout the district to better serve students while also being efficient.

The district already has made progress in its goal of closing the achievement gap. A report released in April showed the graduation rate for Latino students was 87.6 percent, a 2.7 percentage point increase from the previous year, and the graduation rate for African American students was 87.4 percent, up 2 percentage points.

Continuing its effort to close the achievement gap, Stultz said the district will focus on early grades to keep students from falling behind, with a goal of all third graders reading proficiently by 2020.

As an example to follow, school board members heard a presentation about Chesterton Elementary School, where 62 percent of English learners had met or exceed the state standard. The achievement far outpaced the district average of 21 percent for English learner.

In its goal to increase access to broad and challenging curriculum, the board heard presentations about how other schools could replicate San Diego Highs academic rigor, which includes an International Baccalaureate program. The board also heard presentations on the districts plan to have equal access to arts education for all students and technology-rich maker spaces at middle schools.

A discussion about the goal of increased parent and community engagement included a presentation about Rosa Parks Elementary, which has dedicated parent and childcare rooms, and the new Family and Community Engagement Department.

Another goal is to create positive school environments. Steps toward the goal discussed Tuesday included professional development for teachers, restorative practices campaigns, collaboration between counselors and staff members, student equity ambassadors, support for LGBT students and anti-bullying programs, among other efforts.

The final goal discussed at the workshop focused on quality leadership, teaching and learning.

As part of the discussion, board members heard a presentation about Thurgood Marshall Middle School, which has had success with collaborative programs among teachers and administrators, academic intervention support, examinations of grading practices and student panels to strengthen student voices.

gary.warth@sduniontribune.com

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Border Patrol agents arrested two men and seized more than $200,000 worth of methamphetamine in two separate drug busts on Interstate 8 near Pine Valley over the weekend, officials said

One of the suspects, a 21-year-old Mexican national, was driving with a flat tire westbound about 2 p.m. Saturday when an agent pulled him over. During the traffic stop, a Border Patrol dog reacted to the mans 2003 Toyota Corolla, and agents searched the sedan.

In the back seat upholstery, agents found nine bundles of meth, which weighed 41 pounds and have an estimated street value of $139,000, officials said.

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On Sunday, agents pulled over driver in a 2015 Dodge Challenger about 8 a.m. near Kitchen Creek Road. As agents questioned the 29-year-old man, a U.S. citizen, a Border Patrol dog reacted the car. A search of the Challenger ensued.

Agents found seven packages of crystal meth stashed in the front and rear seats. The bundles weighed 40 pounds and have an estimated street value of $130,000, officials said.

In both instances, the men were arrested on suspicion of smuggling drugs and turned over to the Drug Enforcement Administration, along with the drugs.

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A convicted felon suspected in a fatal shooting in Tijuana was turned over to Mexican authorities at the San Ysidro Port of Entry Friday.

Daniel Soto-Hernandez, 35, is accused of fatally shooting a man during an argument over payment for a motorcycle in the Jardin Dorado neighborhood of Tijuana in November 2015, according to Mexican authorities.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security databases show Soto-Hernandez came into the U.S. at the San Ysidro Port of Entry in January 2016 on a visitor visa that allowed him to stay in the U.S. for a month. The next day, he was arrested in Carson County, Texas, for possession of methamphetamine.

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In August 2016, he was convicted of felony possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine and subsequently sentenced to 18 months in federal prison.

Following his release from prison, Soto-Hernandez was transferred to the Otay Mesa Detention Facility to await deportation. On May 9, Mexican authorities notified Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers about an outstanding arrest warrant for Soto-Hernandez in connection with the Tijuana homicide.

On Friday, immigration officers executed a removal order and turned over Soto-Hernandez to Mexican authorities.

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Oxford BioMedica plc ("Oxford BioMedica" or "the Group") (LSE:OXB), a leading gene and cell therapy group, notes that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has scheduled an Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee meeting on 12 July 2017 to review the CTL019 (tisagenlecleucel-T) Biologics License Application (BLA) filing in relapsed and refractory (r/r) paediatric and young adult patients with B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL).



Novartis announced in March 2017 that the FDA accepted CTL019 for review and granted priority review status.

Oxford BioMedica is the sole manufacturer of the lentiviral vector expressing CTL019 for Novartis. As announced in October 2014, Oxford BioMedica will also receive undisclosed royalties on potential future sales of Novartis CAR-T products.



For further information, please contact:

Oxford BioMedica plc:

John Dawson, Chief Executive Officer

Tim Watts, Chief Financial Officer Tel: +44 (0)1865 783 000

Consilium Strategic Communications

Mary-Jane Elliott/Matthew Neal/Chris Welsh/Laura Thornton Tel: +44 (0)20 3709 5700





Notes for editors

About Oxford BioMedica

Oxford BioMedica (LSE:OXB) is a leading gene and cell therapy group focused on developing life changing treatments for serious diseases. Oxford BioMedica and its subsidiaries (the "Group") have built a sector leading lentiviral vector delivery platform (LentiVector), which the Group leverages to develop in vivo and ex vivo products both in-house and with partners. The Group has created a valuable proprietary portfolio of gene and cell therapy product candidates in the areas of oncology, ophthalmology and CNS disorders. The Group has also entered into a number of partnerships, including with Novartis, Sanofi, GSK, Orchard Therapeutics and Immune Design, through which it has long-term economic interests in other potential gene and cell therapy products. Oxford BioMedica is based across several locations in Oxfordshire, UK and employs more than 250 people. Further information is available at www.oxfordbiomedica.co.uk.

About FDA Advisory Committee meetings

FDA Advisory Committees consist of a panel of independent, external experts. The FDA convenes Advisory Committees to provide advice on scientific, technical and policy matters related to human and veterinary drugs, vaccines and other biological products, medical devices, and food. The FDA is not obligated to follow the advice of the committee.
The Rev. John Dolan, a San Diego native known for his pastoral work and sense of humor, will be ordained Thursday as the auxiliary bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego.

Dolan will be installed during a 2 p.m. Mass at St. Therese of Carmel Parish, 4355 Del Mar Trails, San Diego.

The ceremonies will begin with a procession into the church by more than 150 priests, bishops, cardinals and Papal Nuncio Christophe Pierre, Pope Francis ambassador to the United States. It is a ticketed event, and all of the tickets have been distributed. It will be live streamed on sdcatholic.org.

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Dolan was born 55 years ago Thursday at Mercy Hospital in Hillcrest. Raised in Clairemont, he attended a series of Catholic schools in San Diego: School of the Madeleine (elementary), University High School, the University Of San Diego and St. Francis Seminary.

Later, he left the area to earn masters degrees in divinity and theology at St. Patricks Seminary in Menlo Park.

Ordained as a priest in 1989, he served as pastor of St. Mary Star of the Sea in Oceanside; St. Michael in Paradise Hills; St. Rose of Lima in Chula Vista; and St. Michaels in Poway. Since 2016, hes been vicar for clergy  the dioceses human resources director  and pastor of two parishes, St. John the Evangelist in Hillcrest and St. Vincent de Paul in Mission Hills.

Dolans appointment, McElroy said, reflects Pope Francis desire for prelates who understand parishioners day-to-day challenges and joys.

Fundamentally, McElroy said, he wants bishops who have enmeshed themselves in the life of the parishes. Less abstraction and more knowledge of the nitty-gritty of life.

In his new post, Dolan will assist McElroy in shepherding the 1.3 million Catholics in the diocese, which includes San Diego and Imperial counties. He may also be a leading candidate for promotion  of San Diegos four previous auxiliary bishops, three were elevated to bishop.

When his appointment was announced in April, Dolan thanked his parents, Gerald and Catherine Dolan, and Pope Francis.

He doesnt know me, Dolan said of the pontiff. Maybe if I do my job well enough, he still wont know me.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article said the event was open to the public. Tickets were distributed to attend, and they have all been handed out.

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Vatican appoints Rev. John Dolan auxiliary bishop for San Diegos Catholic diocese

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UPDATES:

9:50 p.m.: This article was updated with a correction. The event is not open to the public.

This article was originally published at 2:25 p.m.
NASA on Wednesday chose a diverse group of people with experience in the business, research and military worlds to become members of the space agencys next class of astronauts. The new group includes three engineers and pilots who were educated at universities in San Diego.

The agency selected a total of 12 people from across the country to enter the famously difficult ascan  or astronaut candidate program.

Some of these professionals are serving, or have served, in the armed forces. Some have studied or are working at top-flight academic institutions. Some have credentials in the business world, including with companies such as Boeing, Partners HealthCare, Stone Aerospace and Rocketplane Limited.

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The new astronaut candidates with ties to San Diego are:

Robb Kulin, who earned a masters degree in materials science and a doctorate in engineering from UC San Diego before joining SpaceX as an engineer.

Jonny Kim, who received a bachelors degree in mathematics at the University of San Diego before becoming a Navy SEAL.

Matthew Dominick, who got a bachelors degree in electrical engineering at the University of San Diego. He has been serving as a Navy fighter pilot on the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan.

Congratulations to alumnus Robb Kulin ... UC San Diego is a great institution for space careers. Two other alumni have already made their mark in space: Kate Rubins spent 115 days at the International Space Station and Megan McArthur played a key role in repairing the Hubble telescope, the universitys chancellor, Pradeep Khosla, said Wednesday.

UC San Diego also became the home institution of physicist Sally Ride after she became the first American woman to fly in space in 1983.

James T. Harris III, the president of USD, said his school is a campus of Changemakers who aspire to reach their full potential in and out of the classroom.  We are so proud to acknowledge the recent accomplishments of USD alumni Dr. Jonny Kim and Matthew Dominick, who have been selected by NASA to join the 2017 Astronaut Candidate Class.

Wednesdays selections also drew praise from Francis French, a space historian and director of education at the San Diego Air & Space Museum.

It is no wonder that San Diego produces so many astronauts, from the first Latina in space to the first person to fly to the moon, French said. Were a hub of engineering innovation and aviation experience. What is different about this current group of selectees is the amount of experience they have in Southern Californias private space industry, such as SpaceX.

Were seeing a new generation of people who have worked on space projects outside of NASA blend the partnerships between government and private industry in new directions.

ICYMI

Spacecraft camera built in San Diego survives meteoroid strike near the moon

San Diegos Rose Canyon fault may be more dangerous than previously thought

Science Playlist  On Now In a first, scientists rid human embryos of a potentially fatal gene mutation by editing their DNA On Now Space station flyovers visible from San Diego this week 0:55 On Now UCSD's 'ghost drivers' begin testing people's reaction seemingly empty cars 1:29 On Now 10 interesting facts about Mars On Now Kids can add years to your life On Now LA 90: SpaceX launches recycled rocket On Now Big passions, big giving: Malin Burnham 2:30 On Now Big passions, big giving: Darlene Shiley 2:40 On Now Big passions, big giving: Joan and Irwin Jacobs 2:45 On Now Ocean temperatures warming at rapid rate, study finds

Twitter: @grobbins

gary.robbins@sduniontribune.com
Regarding Six killed in London Bridge terror attacks before three suspects shot dead by police (June 3): It is obvious to me, as it should be to everyone, that as long as we (the U.S. and Europe) continue to tolerate the immigrant enclaves that refuse to assimilate into our democratic, law-abiding society, we will continue to suffer these atrocities.

That is where the radical ideology fostered.

When will we learn to fight back with all the strength we can muster?

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Robert V. Tate

Carlsbad

Letters and commentary policy

The U-T welcomes and encourages community dialogue on important public matters. Please visit this page for more details on our letters and commentaries policy. You can email letters@sduniontribune.com or leave a comment below.

Obama administration had its own scandals

In response to Laura Lusk (Hard to criticize things that didnt happen, June 4): Apparently she forgot about the Fast and Furious scandal, Internal Revenue Service targeting conservative groups, etc.

It should also be noted that Barack Obama had a rubber stamp for his first two years in office, then from about 2011 to 2015, every bill from the Republican House never made it past Harry Reids desk.

Victor Chabala

Vista

Trumps business dealings coming back to haunt him

At this point in time, the Trump/Russia story may just be the flip-side of the Hillary Clinton e-mail story, i.e. a violation of a technical point of law driving a maelstrom of political retribution.

What Im surprised has not yet gone viral is the well researched investigative article by Adam Davidson, Donald Trumps Worst Deal, as appeared in The New Yorker magazine. Mr. Davidson details the blatant official corruption behind construction of the still unfinished Trump branded ultra-luxury hotel in the Azerbaijani capital Baku.

While President Trump himself is well insulated by levels of corporate structuring, the conclusion is inescapable in my opinion that in wheeling and dealing with some of the worlds most corrupt oligarchs in one of the worlds most corrupt nations there is no way this projects managers did not run afoul of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

I think this is the reason Mr. Comey was fired immediately after he indicated he intended to expand the FBIs investigation.

Joseph S. Carmellino

San Diego

Want to see more letters that appear only online? Follow @UTLetters on Twitter and UTOpinion on Facebook.
Ousted FBI Director James Comey is set to speak publicly before Congress on Thursday for the first time since President Donald Trump fired him last month.

The nation will be watching  will you?

The highly anticipated hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee is expected to be televised and streamed online, and for those who plan on tuning in, here are a few things to know.

RELATED: Comey accuses President Trump administration of defamation: "Lies, plain and simple"

Date and time of the hearing:

Comeys hearing is set to begin at 10 a.m. (Eastern Time) / 7 a.m. (Pacific Time) on Thursday, June 8. The hearing will be held before the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence at the Capitol in Washington, D.C.

How to watch on television:

The hearing will be broadcast live on regular channels like ABC, CBS and NBC. Cable viewers can also tune in to news channels like CNN, Fox News and C-SPAN.

How to watch online:

No television? No problem. You can live stream the entire hearing for free on any of these sites:

San Diego Union-Tribune: Facebook LIVE

C-SPAN

PBS NewsHour on YouTube

That 30-second ad about Comey:

Efforts to discredit Comey and his testimony have already begun as one political group announced Tuesday that it would air a 30-second commercial calling him a political showboat on Thursday.

Great America Alliance, which advocates for the Trump administration, says the White House had no role in creating the television commercial, the group told the Associated Press.

Brief timeline on the fallout and questions to consider:

On May 9, President Trump fired Comey who at the time was leading an inquiry into Russias interference in the 2016 presidential election and whether there was any collaboration with officials in the Trump campaign.

Related: Trump fired FBI Director Comey and these Republicans are troubled by it

The White House cited a list of concerns from the Department of Justice over Comeys handling of a previous investigation related to former Democratic candidate Hillary Clintons emails.

But in an interview with NBC News on May 12, Trump said he was going to fire Comey regardless but also cited this Russia thing as the reason to fire him.

On May 12, Trump tweeted that James Comey better hope that there are no tapes of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press! The tweet drew calls from lawmakers to release any tapes that may contain conversations that took place prior to the firing.

Several days later on May 16, The New York Times reported that before Trump fired Comey, the president said I hope you can let this go to the then-FBI director in reference to an inquiry into one-time national security adviser Michael Flynn .

Related: Comey memo about Trump, Flynn probe draws talk of Nixon

Calls for the assignment of an independent investigator to lead the Russia investigations grew and on May 17, former FBI Director Robert Mueller was named as special counsel to oversee the FBIs investigation. Calls for Comey to testify before Congress also grew.

Related: Five questions Congress wants to ask Comey about Trump memos

Days later on May 19, the Senate Intelligence Committee announced its intent to have Comey testify before lawmakers. Questions that will surface in Thursdays hearing will likely focus on Comeys conversations with the president.

Is Trump under investigation by the FBI?

Two days before Comeys hearing, CNN reported that the former FBI director was likely to dispute Trumps assertion that Comey told the president he was not under FBI investigation.

While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the bureau, Trump wrote in his letter firing Comey.

Sources close to Comey reportedly told CNN that Comey is expected to tell lawmakers that he never informed or assured the president that he was not under investigation. Such assurances would be improper, CNN quoted its sources as saying Comey would testify.

Have some thoughts to share?

Join me in a conversation: Shoot me a private email with your thoughts or ideas on a different approach to this story. As always, you can also send us a tweet.

Email: luis.gomez@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @RunGomez

Read The Conversation on Flipboard.

ALSO

Five questions Congress wants to ask Comey about Trump memos

Comey memo about Trump, Flynn probe draws talk of Nixon

3 reasons Robert Mueller is a welcome pick by both sides to oversee Russia probe
A San Francisco Bay area school board will use broad lessons against bias to replace a curriculum against bullying gay people that had become a national centerpiece in the opposition to same-sex marriage.

The vote by the Alameda Board of Education on Tuesday did little to ease tensions in the island city near Oakland. A lawsuit and threats of recalling school board members accompanied debate over the so-called Lesson 9 curriculum adopted in May to prevent anti-gay bullying.

Gay parents in the community wanted their children protected from bullying, while other parents argued that elementary school is too early to talk to students about gay people.

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The new anti-bullying lessons approved by the board, at the recommendation of School Superintendent Kirsten Vital, will be supplemented by childrens books that explicitly address six specific forms of bias, including against gays.

This has torn apart our community, said school trustee Trish Herrera Spencer, the board member most opposed to the gay curriculum and who opposed adding the supplemental books. She said the boards latest action did not take into consideration the strong beliefs of all in the community.

The 45-minute Lesson 9, which was to be taught once a year in each grade starting with kindergarten, sparked a lawsuit, accusations that religious families were being discriminated against and threats of a recall election against the three board members who approved it.

Vital said her recommendation was meant to counter complaints from parents opposed to the original lesson because it highlighted only one type of bullying.

There is not an off-the-shelf, perfect curriculum that is going to work for our community, Vital said, explaining that she wants to solicit book recommendations, bring them back to the school board for approval in a few months and then work with teachers to develop accompanying lesson plans in time for the 2010-11 academic year.

Several parents said they did not trust a teachers committee to pick books that would both satisfy gay and lesbian parents and parents with religious views that do not condone homosexuality.

Freedom of religion is protected from harassment and discrimination from anyone. It may be of no consequence to some, but it is a very integral part of many traditional families and should be honored, said Kellie Wood, who has three children in Alameda schools and is part of a group circulating recall election petitions. If were all honest, the friction between two protected classes, in particular, will not go away.

Kathy Passmore, a lesbian mother of two, said she hears students using anti-gay language in her job as a sixth grade teacher in Alameda. She urged the school board to retain the spirit of Lesson 9.

The children of gay families exist and are attending ASUD schools every single day, she said. They are here.

Alameda, an island city that foots Oakland and is home to a Coast Guard installation and a former Naval base that is being eyed for housing, is the latest community to be divided by its school districts desire to curb anti-gay bullying and the concerns of parents who do not want their children to hear about gay and lesbian issues in school.

During last years campaign to pass a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages in California, the measures sponsors ran commercials featuring a Massachusetts couple who unsuccessfully sued their local district for the right to pull their child out of anti-bullying lessons that included references to gay households.

A year later, the same public relations firm that developed that ad developed a new one for the campaign to outlaw gay marriage in Maine focusing on a second-grade picture book that was part of Alamedas Lesson 9. The book, Whos In A Family, contains pictures of families headed by grandparents, single parents and gay parents, among others.

A dozen Alameda families sued the school district earlier this year over its contention that parents did not have to be notified in advance when teachers planned to give the lessons so they could keep their children from receiving them. Last week, an Alameda Superior Court judge sided with the school district, ruling that a state law allowing parents to have their opt-out of discussions about human sexuality did not apply to Lesson 9.

Kevin Snider, a lawyer with the conservative Pacific Justice Institute who represented the Alameda families, said before the school boards vote that his clients would not appeal the judges ruling if the school board eliminated Lesson 9. He did not immediately return a call Wednesday for clarification on whether the boards action satisfied that condition.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, June 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Avrupa Minerals Ltd. (TSXV:AVU) is pleased to provide an update on project activities to date in 2017. The Company has progressed two of its projects in an effort to make them more ready for joint venture possibilities and has begun the exploration program at the Alvito iron oxide copper-gold (IOCG) project in Portugal.



Alvito IOCG Exploration Underway, Portugal

The Companys partner for the Alvito Project, OZ Minerals Limited (OZ Minerals), has provided funding for the first phase exploration program which is designed to identify and refine IOCG drill targets. IOCG deposits are characterized by large volumes of iron oxide-dominated alteration and associated copper and gold mineralization. Examples of IOCG deposits include the Olympic Dam Mine in Australia owned by BHP Billiton Ltd. and the Candelaria Mine in Chile operated by Lundin Mining Corporation. OZ Minerals owns two IOCG projects in South Australia: the Prominent Hill Mine, currently in production, and the Carrapateena project, currently in feasibility study.

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/4b60558d-6555-4bee-9839-e4fc28a259b0

The Alvito project is located approximately two hours from the Portuguese capital of Lisbon (Figure 1). Exploration is focused on an area containing a large copper-in-soil anomaly with a strike extent of 24 kilometers. The first phase of the program will consist of geological mapping and prospecting, and large, license-wide, gravity and magnetic geophysical surveys. The detailed geological and geophysical data will be integrated with results from historical work, and used to identify and rank drill targets for the second phase of the exploration program.

The exploration program will be managed by Avrupas Portuguese geological team based in Grandola, Portugal, and led by Mr. Josh Coder, MSc. Geo, formerly with Polish copper producer KGHM.

Marateca VMS Project exploration program results, Portugal

Also in southern Portugal, Avrupa drilled two holes to test stratigraphy and for possible mineralization in the late fall of 2016. The results from these two stratigraphic holes at the Pego do Altar gossan target on the Marateca project indicated anomalous base metal geochemistry over 38.25 meters (from 23.35 to 61.6 meters) in PDA01, and over 18.1 meters (from 22.50 to 40.60 meters) in PDA02, and then again for 5.4 meters at the bottom of this hole (from 71.45 to 76.85 meters--TD).

Most importantly, the blind intersection of stockwork sulfide and quartz mineralization, up to 100 meters downdip from the outcropping gossan, indicates continuity of the sulfidic zone. The stockwork zone at Pego do Altar is located in the target stratigraphy of the upper levels of the Volcano-Sedimentary (VS) Formation, host to massive sulfide mineralization throughout the Iberian Pyrite Belt, including at Avrupas discovery at Sesmarias in the Alvalade Project, some 40 kilometers south of Pego do Altar. There are at least eight other un-drilled target areas identified to date on the Marateca license where upper VS stratigraphy subcrops or outcrops while hosting anomalous zinc and copper soil geochemistry.

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/dded98d7-1389-4beb-be75-788f499cb1b0

The data from the Marateca exploration programs is currently being assembled for review by potential partners on the project.

Metovit Pb-Zn-Ag-Au License soil sampling, Kosovo

In Kosovo, results from widespread soil sampling on the Metovit license, located less than 15 kilometers NE of the Slivovo Gold Project, indicate several new target areas for further groundwork. The strongest and most widespread gold-in-soil anomalism occurs in the area of Grbes village near where Avrupa drilled a shallow test hole in 2011. That hole intercepted de-calcified shales, but no geochemical anomalism. The second area of widespread soils anomalism occurs in the northern and northeastern portions of the license where geologists discovered an outcropping gossan zone carrying elevated Au, Ag, As, Pb, Zn, Ni, and Cr values. A third area of interest covers a widespread molybdenum-in-soil anomaly around the Metovic village area, also drilled by Avrupa in 2011. This hole bottomed for technical reasons in stockwork sulfide veining and strong argillic alteration, but has not yet been followed-up.

Avrupa plans to conduct follow-up work at Metovit later in 2017.

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/cdec5f70-f06b-430a-9675-90090baf7d69

Avrupa Minerals Ltd. is a growth-oriented junior exploration and development company focused on discovery, using a prospect generator model, of valuable mineral deposits in politically stable and prospective regions of Europe, including Portugal, Kosovo, and Germany.

The Company currently holds nine exploration licenses in three European countries, including six in Portugal covering 3,268 km2, two in Kosovo covering 47 km2, and one in Germany covering 307 km2. Avrupa has three joint ventures, two in Portugal and one in Kosovo, including:

The Oz Alvito Option Agreement with Oz Minerals Ltd. covering one license in the Ossa Morena Zone in southern Portugal, for IOCG deposits;

The Alvalade JV, with Colt Resources, covering one license in the Iberian Pyrite Belt of southern Portugal, for Zn/Cu-rich massive sulfide deposits. The partner is currently in default according to the terms of the JV agreement, and Avrupa is working on a route to consolidation of the program;

The Covas JV, with Blackheath Resources, covering one license in northern Portugal, for intrusion-related W deposits; and

Avrupas partner at the Slivovo Gold Project in Kosovo is fully funding the program, allowing Avrupa to dilute its ownership in the JV operating company Peshter Mining JSC. If AVU ownership goes below 10%, the interest in the project converts to a 2% NSR.

Avrupa is currently upgrading precious and base metal targets to JV-ready status in a variety of districts on their other licenses, with the idea of attracting potential partners to project-specific and/or regional exploration programs.

For additional information, contact Avrupa Minerals Ltd. at 1-604-687-3520 or visit our website at www.avrupaminerals.com.

On behalf of the Board,

Paul W. Kuhn



Paul W. Kuhn, President & Director

This news release was prepared by Company management, who take full responsibility for its content. Paul W. Kuhn, President and CEO of Avrupa Minerals, a Licensed Professional Geologist and a Registered Member of the Society of Mining Engineers, is a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101 of the Canadian Securities Administrators. He has reviewed the technical disclosure in this release. Mr. Kuhn, the QP, has not only reviewed, but prepared and supervised the preparation or approval of the scientific and technical content in the news release.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
VANCOUVER, B.C., June 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Aben Resources Ltd. (TSX-V:ABN) (OTCBB:ABNAF) (Frankfurt:E2L2) (the Company) and Tahltan Central Government are pleased to announce that they have signed a Communications Agreement. The Communications Agreement provides guidance to the Parties for ongoing discussions and engagement regarding Abens project in Tahltan traditional territory. The Communications Agreement provides a framework for the sharing of information and for joint participation of the Parties in communications with Tahltan membership and communities regarding Abens activities in the territory.



In other news, Aben is pleased to announce the Company has raised an additional $503,500 through the recent exercise of warrants at $0.10.

About Aben Resources:

Aben Resources is a Canadian gold exploration company developing projects in British Columbias Golden Triangle, the Yukon and Saskatchewan.

For further information on Aben Resources Ltd. (TSX-V:ABN), visit our Companys web site at www.abenresources.com.

Aben Resources has approx. 34.7 million shares issued and outstanding.

ABEN RESOURCES LTD.

Jim Pettit

____________________________

JAMES G. PETTIT

President & CEO

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

This release includes certain statements that may be deemed to be "forward-looking statements". All statements in this release, other than statements of historical facts, that address events or developments that management of the Company expects, are forward-looking statements. Although management believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance, and actual results or developments may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. The Company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements if management's beliefs, estimates or opinions, or other factors, should change. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements, include market prices, exploration and development successes, continued availability of capital and financing, and general economic, market or business conditions. Please see the public filings of the Company at www.sedar.com for further information.
Washington, DC, June 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Roland S. Martin, host and managing editor of TV Ones News One Now, has created the fundraising initiative, #HBCUGivingDay, a national call to action in support of raising funds for historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). For the past week, Martin has represented a different historically black college and university by wearing a lapel pin and then posting the photo on social media using the hashtag, #HBCUGivingDay.

On May 25, Martin interviewed Lt. Col. Gregory L. Clark, president of the Florida A&M University National Alumni Association (FAMUNAA), about the importance of donating money to support scholarships and research at institutions geared toward the education of minorities and first generation students. Around 70 percent of all HBCU students rely on federal grants and work study programs to finance their education.

We have an obligation to give. HBCUs take us in, give us an education and send us out into the world, said Clark, who reported that the association is working to increase FAMUs 5 percent alumni giving rate. The giving rates have got to be upthats going to help us drive in those corporate dollars and its going to show the corporations that we do care about our institutions.

The next day, Martin declared on Twitter, Im not interested any longer in saying why we dont give to HBCUs. Just do it, and started using the hashtag #HBCUGivingDay.

Since that day, Martin has worn lapel pins while hosting News One Now to highlight giving in support of Harris-Stowe State University in St. Louis, Missouri, Grambling State University in Grambling, Louisiana, Virginia State University in Petersburg, Virginia, and Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. According to the Pew Research Center, there are more than 100 historically black colleges and universities in the United States. In 2016, it was reported that several HBCUs saw an uptick in freshman class enrollment, including Dillard University, Tuskegee University, and Shaw University, which nearly doubled.

During a recent interview with The Breakfast Club, Martin challenged everyone to adopt an HBCU, whether they attended one or not. He explained that too often people get overwhelmed by the size of the gift and forget that multiple small gifts can be just as impactful.

We cant rely on public dollars to save our institutions. When the foundation says, Whats the giving of your graduates? and they say Only 3 percent of our graduates give. A foundation goes, Youre asking me to give you $10 million but only 3 percent of your graduates are giving? That means 97 percent [of graduates] are not even sending a dollar back, said Martin. For me, we have to be about saving our institutions, building our institutions, and strengthening our institutions, whether its our civil rights groups, whether its our HBCUs, or whether its our economic groups.

Watch News One Now and follow Roland Martin on Twitter at @RolandSMartin to see this weeks college lapel pins and tweets about #HBCUGivingDay.

Attachments:

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/77a11be8-0b31-4567-9758-99ad8212e6c2
Kentwood, MI, June 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Innovative Client Connections works hand in hand with some of the biggest retailers in the world to offer customers a unique shopping experience. These campaigns take place in-store and can dramatically increase production for their clients products and services.



The Best and Brightest Companies to Work For competition identifies and honors companies that deliver exceptional human resource practices and an impressive commitment to their employees. Organizations are assessed based on categories such as communication, work-life balance, employee education, diversity, recognition, retention, and more. Winning firms are recognized at regional events, providing additional opportunities for networking with like-minded companies within the community.

Along with the other winning companies, Innovative Client Connections was assessed by an independent research firm which reviewed a number of key measures, including Employee Enrichment, Engagement and Retention; Employee Education and Development; Recruitment, Selection and Orientation; Employee Achievement and Recognition; Communication and Shared Vision; Diversity and Inclusion; Work-Life Balance, and Community Initiatives. Calvin Fant, Executive Branch Manager, states, We are excited to be recognized by The Best and Brightest Companies to Work For. Helping people realize and exceed their potential is what establishes us as one of the top employers in the area.

About Innovative Client Connections:

Owned and operated by Calvin Fant, Innovative Client Connections is a marketing firm specializing in customer acquisition and retention programs that bring their clients new customers, increased revenue and brand awareness.

For more information, call (616) 433-5585, or go to www.innovativeclientconnections.com.




These Post covers of graduates start more than a hundred years ago, but the cap and gown still look the same.

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As you can see from these covers dating back to 1900, America has always celebrated educational milestones with great pride. Weve always known that our grads would go on to do amazing things!

This cover of President Cleveland and two college graduates was Frank X. Leyendeckers first cover for the Saturday Evening Post.

The most important work of the early Post period was made up of the elegant paintings of Harrison Fisher. He frequently painted covers that simply presented a lovely woman. Occasionally a prop, like the diploma in this 1902 cover, implied a narrative, but the essential subject remained the woman herself.

This later Harrison Fisher cover shows a couple reading together. Couples doing something romantic was another common theme in Fishers covers. Since painting women was his specialty, the woman graduate still remains the focus of this cover.

This Rockwell cover shows a young student trying to remember his graduation speech. By the look on his face, he doesnt hear the helpful hints or laughter coming from behind him.

This J.C. Leyendecker cover shows a college graduate ready to take on the world. Strong male figures were a trademark of many of Leyendeckers Post covers.

This is one of more than 30 covers E.M. Jackson created in the 1920s. While Jackson was mostly known for his paintings of romantic women, he occasionally created a cover focused on a man, like this graduate dressed as a Roman, giving his commencement speech.

This is Edmund Davenports third and final cover for the Saturday Evening Post. The clouds behind this graduate make this cover unique and complex compared to Davenports other two covers, which have more simple backgrounds.

In this Rockwell cover a professor hands a young boy his diploma and praises his hard work. Its assumed that hes the first in his class based on the large stack of diplomas behind him and the medals on his jacket.

This cover was done by one of the Posts most prolific female artists, Ellen Pyle. Her early Post covers were simple portraits of women. Later on, her work became more detailed and many of her covers have the subject in front of a large, colored circle in the background, just like these graduates on her 1927 cover.

This McClelland Barclay cover of a military school graduate and his girl is similar to nearly every other Barclay Post cover. Barclay became well known for his ability to paint strikingly beautiful women in a rather simple setting using bold colors. Barclay painted a total of five Saturday Evening Post covers, and all but one depicts a vibrant couple with an empty background.

Steve Dohanos two sons, Peter and Paul, were in an Eastern boys school when he took the family car up to help them move home. A passenger car, he learned, is no proper vehicle for such a job. The artist made his sketches on the Yale campus, but rearranged things to suit his purposes. The boy is George Ritter, of Westport, Connecticut, no Yale man. The artist didnt use a Yale man, on the remarkable theory that none would like to cut class.

Once, years ago, a young scholar arose at commencement time to deliver an oration on the Panama Canal, found he had forgotten his entire speech, and started ad-libbing out of the general mass of data he had acquired in the classroom. Everybody vowed it was a grand speech, except his elocution teacher, who nearly had a stroke trying to locate him on her prompting manuscript.

Now that this young man is going forth from the halls of learning, maybe he is lying there thinking about how his generation soon will he the guardians of civilization, and of what a glorious challenge this is to the youth of today. Or maybe he is asleep. For as Dick Sargent muses with his brush: any guy who manages to finish commencement certainly has forty thousand winks coming.

Symbolic of a host of graduating Americans, they have an air of quiet confidence, suggesting that as they help mold the future of this cantankerous old world they may be able to make it behave a little better than in the past. Artist George Hughes worked on this cover at Williams College, where everybody did everything possible to make his stay agreeablewell, short of giving him a degree.

Artist Norman Rockwell sketched a couple of undaunted graduates (see below); but then, reflecting on the awfulness of todays newspaper headlines, he created the bewildered chap on the cover. This one is musing. Boy. arent things really screwed up? What to do, I wouldnt know. But one thing you can bet on: Ill give it the old college try. Rockwell says, I like his feet. They look as if hes standing on eggs.

Artist Thornton Utzs scene is Smith College, in Northampton, Massachusetts, where in 1960, Congressman Chester Bowles delivered the commencement address. The congressmans daughter Sarah was among the 500 young ladies receiving bachelor degrees.
Are you ready to attend that same-sex, cash-only, no-iPhone wedding? Learn the rules of etiquette for modern nuptials. (Hint: they're not too different from the old ones.)

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Emily Post literally wrote the book on etiquette in 1922, and her guide, Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics, and at Home, details the makings of an ideal wedding. A 1937 Post profile of the New York author (Dear Mrs. Post) described the various etiquette inquiries she received in the mail: My intended has a lovely voice, wrote one, Would it be alright for him to sing at our wedding, and if so, when and what?'

Eighty years later, the intended might be more inclined to stage an elaborate song-and-dance proposal that will go viral on YouTube. The modern wedding is quite an affair.

The Knots Ivy Jacobson had some advice for adapting to new wedding norms, from social media manners to gift-giving.

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Enjoy the Engagement Party

The gathering to announce an engagement is an old custom that has evolved from ancient Greece to Victorian England to modern times. You can likely expect cocktails and barbecue moreso than a discussion of the grooms dowry these days. Jacobson said gifts are welcome  but not necessary  for this occasion.

Bring Cash

Wedding registries arent going anywhere, said Jacobson, However, a lot of couples now live together before they are married, and they dont necessarily need a new blender or a set of china. Many are now creating cash registries that designate a honeymoon, down payment, or other such expense that monetary gifts will pay for. Giving cold, hard cash is totally acceptable  and more practical than a seventh salad spinner.

Stow the Phone

No one wants professional wedding photographs of a sea of smartphones  and certainly not tablets. The unplugged ceremony is the answer to this conundrum, and its getting more popular, according to Jacobson. At an unplugged wedding, guests will be asked to leave their phones in their purses or pockets for the duration of the ceremony. Shock and bewilderment can occur with the most diehard phone addicts, but the goal is for everyone to enjoy the special day without screens.

This rule is usually out the window for the reception, however, where guests are typically encouraged to engage on social media using a contrived pun of a hashtag designated by the wedding party. This makes it so the wedded pair can view the posts and pictures of their special day in one place.

R.S.V.P. on Time for a Destination Wedding

If the stress of a lifelong commitment isnt enough, why shouldnt the betrothed combine it with international travel? A destination wedding offers the appeal of a ceremony in paradise as well as a vacation with your in-laws. Clearly, there is much to be considered before deciding to get hitched in Hawaii, but who wouldnt want to say I do on an island? Jacobson said save the date announcements will be sent out about eight months in advance for a destination wedding or sooner if the location is out of the country. While your R.S.V.P. should always be timely, it is paramount to give prompt notice for a destination wedding.

Same-Sex Weddings Call for  the Exact Same Etiquette

Since the Supreme Courts 2015 ruling, same-sex couples have enjoyed legal marriage all over the country. Of course, attending a gay or lesbian wedding might require extra mindfulness from guests who are unaccustomed, but Jacobson said, the couple has invited you because they know you love and support them. Besides a few twists, the ceremony will be indistinguishable from any other wedding. If its a wedding between two men, you might even get to wear that white dress you love.

Tip Your Bartender

One unwavering rule of wedding receptions seems to be the presence of an open bar. Even in 1922 a fashionable wedding without plenty of [Champagne] was unheard of, according to Emily Posts book. We always stress the importance of an open bar, Jacobson said. The tip isnt always built into the cost, though. If you see a tip jar, make sure to fill it up while youre slinging back free Merlot. It might even help your vodka to cranberry ratio.

Adults-Only Means Adults-Only

It may seem cold to ask guests to leave their little ones at home, but an adult-only wedding can be practical. A child could cost as much as an adult in a wedding head count. If most of the couples friends and family have children it could virtually double the guest list. Jacobson said, Its totally acceptable etiquette to have an adult-only wedding as long as people know ahead of time. The couple is likely facing some backlash for their decision, so you should respect their wishes and enjoy an evening without the kids.
[NEW DELHI] Plans by the Indian government to release genetically modified (GM) food crops into this predominantly agricultural country have been plagued by opposition from scientists, activists and politicians  including those owing allegiance to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).



On May 18, a week after the governments regulator, the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC), approved the commercial release of a herbicide-tolerant GM mustard (Brassica juncea), Anil Dave, 60, the man on whom the final decision rested as central environment minister, died of a heart attack.



Dave had been under enormous pressure  from lobbyists pushing the technology to increase yields on the one hand, and civil society groups opposing GM crops as harmful to environment and food security on the other.



Tarun Vijay, a former member of parliament for the ruling BJP, claimed in a blog that Dave would have banned GM mustard if he had not passed away. Vijays blog revealed serious opposition within the BJP circles to the idea of using GM technology on mustard, a traditional food item in India.

The man behind the development of GM mustard, Deepak Pental, director of the Centre for Genetic Manipulation of Crop Plants (CGMCP), University of Delhi, says it has the potential to increase yields and build disease resistance. CGMCP has submitted to GEAC a positive self-assessment for biosafety while applying for the release of GM mustard.

If GEAC-approved technology is not cleared, it will be a setback for Indian agri-biotech research. Deepak Pental, Centre for Genetic Manipulation of Crop Plants

Pental explains to SciDev.Net that the DMH 11 variety  created by inserting barnase-barstar genes into a hybrid created from Indian and East European mustard strains  could increase mustard oil yields by 30 to 35 per cent. Barnase-barstar genes, derived from the soil bacterium Bacillus amyloliquefaciens, allow control of sterility and fertility in hybrid crops.



However, Ashwani Mahajan, co-convenor of the Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM), an influential affiliate of the BJP, has written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi complaining that since patents for the barnase-barstar genes are partly held by Bayer, the German multinational, the claim that DMH11 GM mustard is indigenous is fraudulent.



Mahajan also warned that GM mustard has been engineered for use with the Bayer herbicide Basta!, which contains glufosinate, a known neurotoxin.



We have indicated to the prime minister that GM mustard is not indigenous; it is not good for health, environment and biodiversity, Mahajan tells SciDev.Net. SJM has appealed to the prime minister to intervene and ensure that GM mustard is not released commercially.



There are also other hurdles to the commercial release of GM mustard.



Its release is under challenge in Indias Supreme Court by environmentalists and food security activists. Aruna Rodrigues, lead petitioner in the case, sees advantage in the fact that the government has admitted in court that it has no proof that GM mustard can produce better yields than non-GM hybrids.



While the court has ordered publication of the full test data of GM mustard, its promoters have pleaded that the issue involves "commercial confidence trade secrets or intellectual property, the disclosure of which would harm the competitive position of the third party".

Put simply, there are no agronomic benefits to releasing GM mustard while it can irreversibly jeopardise Indias farming, food, human health and its rich biodiversity. P. Pardha-Saradhi, University of Delhi



According to Vandana Shiva, a petitioner in the case, the main resistance against GM is coming from the provinces that make up the Indian federation.



Major states where mustard is grown and consumed like Bihar, Rajasthan and West Bengal, have declared that they would not allow GM crops to be grown within their territories. This echoes the state-led opposition seven years ago that thwarted an attempt to introduce genetically modified aubergine into India despite clearance from the GEAC.

Criticism of the CGMCP self-assessment also comes from P. Pardha-Saradhi, professor of biotechnology and transgenics at University of Delhi.



The oil extracted from the DMH 11 variety is inferior, going by the compositional data presented. Rigorous testing by an independent agency is needed before any conclusion can be made, Pardha-Saradhi tells SciDev.Net. Put simply, there are no agronomic benefits to releasing GM mustard while it can irreversibly jeopardise Indias farming, food, human health and its rich biodiversity.

Meanwhile, the all-party parliamentary standing committee on science and technology , environment and forests has called for freezing the clearance of GM mustard until it has had an opportunity to study it. We are examining concerns expressed by various stakeholders regarding the health and environmental safety of GM mustard, says Renuka Chowdhury, an opposition politician who heads the committee.Pental says GM mustard, now 14 years in the making, has suffered only because political propaganda has interfered with rational decision-making. If GEAC-approved technology is not cleared, it will be a setback for Indian agri-biotech research.
JOHNSONVILLE, S.C.  Mayor Steve Dukes announced at Tuesdays council meeting that James Smith has been hired as the citys new administrator. Smith, who is set to begin the job in late July, will replace David Hanks, who resigned in March.

Smith will come out of retirement to work for Johnsonville.

Mr. Smiths experience comes from 32-plus years of executive service in municipal government positions as CEO/general manager for utility companies in the northeast, Kentucky, as well interim city manager for City of College park, College Park, Ga., according to a media advisory.

In other business, the council approved on first reading the citys budget for fiscal year 2017-18.

Councilman M. Doolittle Stone said the budget amounts to about $2,623,000. He said there is a millage rate increase of 1.26 against property taxes.

We are proposing and have indicated a three percent water and sewer increase, Stone said. Reason being is we were told by engineers and such that we need to pocket some money for our water tower uptown thats going to have to have some repairs.

Stone said the city has to plan for that but it will probably be a five-year period or more.

We also have some issues with the Kingsburg water tower. And we budgeted for some repairs on that, Stone said. It needs painting and a few other things.

After adjusting all of the citys expenses and revenues, there is a balanced budget, Stone said.

Councilwoman Mona Dukes said she and Councilman Patrick Nettles have meet with several people about having a senior center in Johnsonville.

Right now, we are serving 40 seniors, but we feel like if we had a dedicated facility that was open five days a week instead of three, that we could maybe double that or at least increase it, Dukes said.

Dukes said they are going to try to develop a proposal to share with county, state and maybe federal officials to see what can be done to build or renovate a building in Johnsonville to be used as a senior center and possibly house city offices, include a historical or museum-like feature and be a multipurpose building.
GREENVILLE, S.C.  Through the Duke Energy Foundation, more than $900,000 in grants will go to initiatives across the state that emphasize science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), increasing childhood reading proficiency and workforce development.

Supporting effective education programs that improve childhood literacy and focus on fields related to science and technology are a critical focus for our company, said Kodwo Ghartey-Tagoe, Duke Energys South Carolina president. Along with high-impact workforce development initiatives, these programs can help create the next generation workforce South Carolina businesses and industries need to be successful.

Duke Energy provided 18 education and workforce development grants this year. The recipients include:

>> Florence-Darlington Technical College: To provide under-served students an education that is highly valued by the medical community, one of the biggest employers in the Pee Dee region.

>> Francis Marion University: To help provide a pipeline of teaching professionals in critical areas for the Pee Dee region of the state.

>> S.C. Governors School for Science and Mathematics: To expand the successful virtual engineering program across the state and the summer camps that focus on STEM topics that prepare students for the program.
CALGARY, Alberta, June 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- West Mountain Environmental Corp. (the Company) (TSXV:WMT) has received notice from M-I L.L.C. (M-I Swaco) that the Company is in breach of its obligations under the Thermal Phase Separation License Agreement (TPS License) for failure to pay associated royalty fees. M-I Swaco is the owner of the TPS technology. The Company has until July 6th, 2017 to satisfy the outstanding royalty payments due to M-I Swaco failing which the TPS License will be considered terminated effective July 6th, 2017.



The Companys business is principally based on the sale of services associated with the TPS License. As previously reported, the Companys ability to pay the debt is contingent on the completion of the proposed financing with Walker McNeil Group of Companies (WMGOC).

The Company is currently working with WMGOC to complete the proposed financing as quickly as possible. There is no certainty that the proposed financing will be completed.

About West Mountain

West Mountain is an established Canadian environmental solutions company specializing in the thermal treatment of a variety of hazardous and non-hazardous waste streams. Through its subsidiaries it employs a unique indirectly heated, closed loop technology that allows it to extract even the most hazardous contaminants from soil and industrial sludge converting much of it into reusable oil and synthetic natural gas that it uses to sustain the process. This methodology offers significant opportunity for greenhouse gas reduction over traditional hazardous waste destruction technologies. The Companys management team maintains expertise in hazardous waste management and contaminated site remediation with experience spanning North America and 15 countries internationally.

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements contained herein constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws. In particular, this new release provides forward-looking statements in relation to the termination of the TPS License, the proposed financing and its completion. The Company believes the expectations reflected in those forward-looking statements are reasonable but no assurance can be given that these expectations will prove to be correct and such forward-looking statements included herein should not be unduly relied upon. Since forward-looking statements and information address future events and conditions, by their very nature they involve inherent risks and uncertainties. There is no certainty that the proposed financing will be completed on the disclosed terms or at all. Actual results could differ materially from those currently anticipated due to a number of factors and risks. The forward-looking statements and information contained in this news release are made as of the date hereof and West Mountain undertakes no obligation to update publicly or revise any forward-looking statements or information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, unless so required by applicable securities laws.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts the responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
SPRINGDALE, Ark., June 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Tyson Foods, Inc. (NYSE:TSN) has successfully completed the acquisition of AdvancePierre Foods Holdings, Inc., a move aligned with Tyson Foods strategic intent to sustainably feed the world with the fastest growing portfolio of protein packed brands.



The company completed a tender offer to buy all the outstanding shares of common stock of AdvancePierre for $40.25 per share in cash, without interest. The offer expired at 12:00 midnight at the end of June 6, 2017, and was followed by a merger of a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tyson Foods into AdvancePierre. The total value of the transaction was approximately $4.2 billion.

AdvancePierre is a leading national producer of ready-to-eat lunch and dinner sandwiches, sandwich components and snacks. Its customers include foodservice, retail and convenience store providers. AdvancePierre, which employs approximately 4,500 people, generated revenues of $1.6 billion in 2016.

AdvancePierre is a natural, strategic fit that will extend our capabilities in new and growing food categories, said Tyson Foods President and CEO Tom Hayes. We expect the acquisition to immediately contribute to earnings and are also confident it will result in cost synergy benefits of $200 million within three years.

Hayes added that integration teams have been formed and that the company will remain focused on maintaining high quality customer service during the transition.

AdvancePierre is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Tyson Foods and its shares will cease to be traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

About Tyson Foods

Tyson Foods, Inc. (NYSE:TSN), with headquarters in Springdale, Arkansas, is one of the worlds largest food companies with leading brands such as Tyson, Jimmy Dean, Hillshire Farm, Sara Lee, Ball Park, Wright, Aidells and State Fair. Its a recognized market leader in chicken, beef and pork as well as prepared foods, including bacon, breakfast sausage, turkey, lunchmeat, hot dogs, pizza crusts and toppings, tortillas and desserts. The company supplies retail and foodservice customers throughout the United States and approximately 115 countries. Tyson Foods was founded in 1935 by John W. Tyson, whose family has continued to lead the business with his son, Don Tyson, guiding the company for many years and grandson, John H. Tyson, serving as the current chairman of the board of directors. The company currently has approximately 114,000 Team Members employed at more than 400 facilities and offices in the United States and around the world. Through its Core Values, Code of Conduct and Team Member Bill of Rights, Tyson Foods strives to operate with integrity and trust and is committed to creating value for its shareholders, customers and Team Members. The company also strives to be faith-friendly, provide a safe work environment and serve as stewards of the animals, land and environment entrusted to it.

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain information contained in the press release may constitute forward-looking statements, such as statements relating to expected benefits from the acquisition of AdvancePierre Foods Holdings, Inc., including synergies and accretive earnings. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of factors and uncertainties which could cause our actual results and experiences to differ materially from the anticipated results and expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements. We wish to caution readers not to place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date made. Among the factors that may cause actual results and experiences to differ from anticipated results and expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are those factors listed under Item 1A. Risk Factors included in our Annual Report filed on Form 10-K for the period ended October 1, 2016 and subsequently filed Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and Current Reports on Form 8-K.
Raleigh, June 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/b715c6a4-e652-404b-94d8-5e6141efe097http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/b715c6a4-e652-404b-94d8-5e6141efe097Camp Corral, a leading nonprofit advocate for military families, has received a grant from the Bob Woodruff Foundation (BWF) that will allow the nonprofit to send an additional 250 military children to a free week of camp this summer.



Camp Corral provides the children of wounded, injured, ill or fallen military service members, ages eight to 15, with a free week at camp where they are able to just be kids, away from the stresses and unique challenges of military life. Campers are given the opportunity to build supportive relationships with others in similar circumstances, be challenged by new adventures, grow in their independence, and build resilience, all while enjoying the week of a lifetime.



BWF works to ensure impacted post-9/11 service members, veterans and their families thrive once they return home. The organization funds innovative programs in communities where post-9/11 veterans, their families and caregivers live and work. Some of these programs include the Farmer Veteran Coalition, Student Veterans of America, and Warrior Canine Connection. As a grant recipient, Camp Corral joins the foundations network of investment in the next chapter of life for veterans and their families.

Camp Corral is extremely grateful for the Bob Woodruff Foundations investment in our mission to transform the lives of military youth, said Mary Beth Hernandez, CEO of Camp Corral. Every summer, thousands of families are wait-listed due to limited resources and with this grant, were able to serve more military families than last year.

About Camp Corral

Camp Corral, a 501 (c) (3) tax-exempt, nonprofit corporation, provides free, one-of-a-kind summer camp experiences for children of wounded, injured, ill or fallen service members. Since its founding in 2011 by Golden Corral, Camp Corral has grown to 22 camps in 19 states and has served 17,000 children. Although any child ages 8 to 15 from a military family is eligible, registration priority is given to children of wounded, injured, ill or fallen military service members. For more information, visit www.campcorral.org.

About the Bob Woodruff Foundation

The Bob Woodruff Foundation (BWF) was founded in 2006 after reporter Bob Woodruff was hit by a roadside bomb while covering the war in Iraq. Since then, the Bob Woodruff Foundation has led an enduring call to action for people to stand up for heroes and meet the emerging and long-term needs of todays veterans. To date, BWF has invested more than $42 million to Find, Fund and Shape programs that have empowered more than 2.5 million impacted veterans, service members and their families. For more information, please visit bobwoodrufffoundation.org or follow us on Twitter at @Stand4Heroes.

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'There is only one sentence to sum up my job: it has been a fantastic journey,' Hovland told Seatrade Cruise News.

Port of Bergen is by far Norway's leading cruise port expecting over half a million passengers this year.

'Bergen really started the cruise adventure in Norway, which is now well-established throughout the country,' Hovland remarked.

The city is surrounded by the Norwegian Fjords, which are included on UNESCOs World Heritage list and that gateway has always been a mainstay of Hovland's marketing message to the cruise community.

Hovland was been involved since the very beginning in the establishment of both Cruise Europe and Cruise Norway and 'seeing the two marketing organizations become a huge success, and cruise calls to Norway grow, has been a great pleasure,' she remarked.

Hovland has also travelled extensively representing Bergen at trade fairs, conferences and meetings.

A regular attendee at Seatrade Cruise Global in Miami (and recently at Fort Lauderdale) Hovland has been a familiar face on the Cruise Europe 'Street' and on the Cruise Norway pavilion, providing information on a city with a proud history and many interesting cultural monuments which boasts a mixture of old and new architecture.

'I really have enjoyed and loved meeting and speaking with cruise line itinerary planners and shorex executives and all the members of the cruise family,' she said.

'I have seen cruise port/city tourism develop from a focus on targetting more cruise ships and passengers to today's focus on sustainability, environmental issues and quality for both cruise passengers and the local inhabitants.'

But after nearly three decades of flting the flag for her local port, 'I am now ready to step aside and just watch the cruise ships arriving in Bergen from my balcony,' Hovland concluded.

From September 1, Sandra Diane Bratland, currently director of Cruise Norway, will take on the role of cruise marketing manager at Port of Bergen.
The 88-passenger SS Legacy transforms into an adventure-equipped ship to offer kayaking, paddle boarding, skiff excursions, hikes on remote trails, whitewater rafting down the Deschutes River and other active adventures. New in 2018, the ship heads to Alaska from April through mid-August, then sails on the Columbia and Snake rivers from August through November.

'The Columbia and Snake river system is an outdoor enthusiasts mecca, and extending our style of adventure there is a natural fit,' said Capt. Dan Blanchard, ceo. 'In order to make it an UnCruise, we need to slow down, take time to kayak, sightsee by skiff and go hiking. We purposely build flexibility into our itineraries to make each day the best day possible.'

The new Columbia and Snake rivers itinerary sails between Portland, Oregon, and Lewiston, Idaho. Eight departures are offered from mid-August to October. An included charter flight to/from Lewiston makes the program round-trip Portland.

From October through mid-December, seven departures of a 'Rivers of Wine' itinerary sail round-trip Portland. A guest wine expert and sommelier will be on board for a week of winery tours and tastings.

With the addition of the SS Legacy in Alaska, seven UnCruise ships will sail 10 adventure itineraries on 160 departures lasting one or two weeks from April through September. Homeports are Seattle, Ketchikan, Juneau, Petersburg and Sitka. Five of the itineraries are new in 2018 and seven include a visit of one, two or three days in Glacier Bay National Park. Haines, Alaska, is a new port of call.

Safari Endeavour and SS Legacy sail two alternating itineraries between Juneau and Sitka providing more two-week adventure opportunities. Safari Quests new itinerary is designed for traveler returning to Alaska with explorations of rarely visited wilderness areas.

In Central America, the 62-passenger Safari Voyager sails 28 departures one-way between Costa Rica and Panama from January through April, June, August and again from October through December. An eight-night 'Unveiled Wonders' itinerary includes a pre-cruise hotel night and a full Panama Canal transit.

In May, June, August and September, Safari Voyager sails 12 'Pure Panama' adventure cruises roundtrip Panama City. The off-the-beaten-path adventure visits the Guna Yala (formerly San Blas) Islands, Chagres River, Pearl Islands and Darien Jungle. Highlights include a full Panama Canal transit, meeting locals in an Embera village and a visit to the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Fort San Lorenzo. A pre-cruise hotel night is included in Panama City.

Many Costa Rica and Panama itineraries can be combined for a 15-night 'Ultimate Costa Rica and Panama' adventure cruise.

From January through March and December, Safari Endeavour sails 14 departures on a weeklong 'Bajas Bounty' Sea of Cortez itinerary round-trip San Jose del Cabo with an included land tour to the ship in La Paz. A week of exploring remote islands and waters in the UNESCO World Heritage Site includes a burro ride into the arroyo in Bahia Agua Verde, snorkeling with sea lions at Los Islotes, desert hikes and marine life searches.

In the Galapagos Islands, La Pinta sails five departures on an eight-night 'Darwins Islands and Colonial Quito' exploration with six nights on board the ship and two at Casa Gangotena Hotel in Quito.

In Hawaii, Safari Explorer sails 22 departures one-way between Molokai and The Big Island of Hawaii (or reverse) from January through March and November through December. The island-hopping cruise visits Maui, Lanai, Molokai and Hawaii. An overnight and full day on Molokai explores traditional Hawaiian culture with locals in Halawa Valley, as well as a Paina feast in the evening.

Coastal Washington and British Columbia are featured in the spring and fall with 10 departures of a weeklong 'Explore! Olympic Wilderness and San Juan Islands' adventure round-trip Seattle.
The Papua New Guinea-flagged, 1999-built, 4,322 gt vessel Kiunga Chief has been banned from entering Australian ports for three months.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) said the vessel was banned after being detained for the third time in 18 months. It said the Kiunga Chief had been issued a total of 79 deficiencies by AMSA between 14 August 2015 and 29 May 2017.

The ship has now gone to an anchorage within the port to undergo an inspection by its class society, before it continues its voyage. The three-month ban will take effect once the vessel leaves the port, AMSA said on Monday.

Despite numerous opportunities for improvement, the operator of Kiunga Chief has consistently failed to provide a safe workplace for crew or meet minimum applicable standards, and as such, this ship is unwelcome in Australian waters, said Stephen Curry, AMSAs acting general manager of operations.

Let this be a reminder that sub-standard ships will not be tolerated in Australia.

The Australian authorities have taken a strong stance against sub-standard shipping banning a number of vessels that have consistently failed to meet the standards set out in international conventions.
Courage Marine has a primary listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKSE) and a secondary listing on the Singapore Exchange (SGX).

The board proposes to implement the proposed share subsidivision by subdividing every one existing share with par value of $0.18 each in the share capital of the company into three subdivided shares with par value of $0.06 each, Courage Marine stated.

There will be no change to the existing board lot size for trading in the shares upon the proposed share subdivision becoming effective, the company said.

Courage Marine noted that on average the daily volume of existing shares traded on the HKSE was less than 900,000 existing shares, or less than 0.6% of total issued share capital.

Upon the proposed share subdivision becoming effective, the par value of each existing share will decrease and the total number of shares in issue will increase. The proposed share subdivision is therefore expected to result in a downward adjustment to the trading price of the shares, it said.

The board, however, believes that this exercise will improve the liquidity in trading of the shares, and thereby attract more investors and widen the companys shareholder base.

The proposed effective date for the share subdivision on both HKSE and SGX is on 6 July 2017.

The dry bulk shipowner has been challenged by a difficult dry bulk shipping market, prompting the company to gradually dispose of its ships until the fleet has shrunk to just two 57,000-dwt ships  Zorina and Heroic.

Courage Marine had wanted to let go of Zorina at a price of $7.35m under a memorandum of agreement signed with a buyer Universal Ship Investment Corp. The agreement, however, has lapsed on Monday.

Earlier this month, Courage Marine mentioned that the sale of Zorina may jeopardise the companys listing and shares trading on the HKSE as the exchange had informed that the company may not have assets of sufficient value to warrant a continued listing.
The new system, to be built in Dumai, Riau, will help Indonesia improve its efforts in guiding ships through the busy straits.

Indonesia's first VTS in Batam, also in Riau province, was completed in June last year, after construction began in October 2010.

The VTS is an integrated navigation and communication system to guide vessels crossing the Straits of Singapore and Malacca. Indonesia officially started operation of the service, run by state-owned port operator Pelindo I, in April this year.

This device will help Indonesia provide better service in the straits, Indonesian Transportation Minister Budi Karya Sumadi said.
In particular Veniamis took issue with Schaubles comment that Greek Prime minister Alexis Tsipras has failed to keep a promise to impose heavier taxes on shipowners. Schauble last week told a financial forum in Berlin, that Greece was making insufficient economic progress and was reported as saying "He [Tsipras] came to power promising to tax the shipowners. Nothing has happened."

In a statement Veniamis said: "The recent and unwarranted attack on our country by the German Finance minister, Schauble, and in particular against Greek shipowners has raised questions. It seems Schauble has chosen to ignore the particularly favourable regime enjoyed by German shipping, while attacking the regime of Greek shipping, which, also, amounts to 50% of EU shipping, an achievement that seems to cause annoyance.

"At a time when the European Union is called upon to underpin and enhance the competitiveness of its shipping industry against fierce international competition, Schaubles criticisms are especially inopportune and unfounded. The question that also arises is whether, despite favourable arrangements at all levels  shipownership, ship management, natural persons  the inability of the German maritime policy to successfully support its shipping is the motivation behind the ministers statement.

"If the aim of his statement is to undermine the close ties of Greek shipping with its homeland, then it demonstrates that he does not want to see Greece on a path of growth at last. For Schaubles information, the Greek shipping community in its entirety responded to the need to enhance the national revenues with its decision four years ago to voluntarily double its annual tonnage tax liability per vessel, even though it historically enjoys constitutional guarantees regarding the level of taxation. This is an initiative that proves the unity and solidarity of the Greek shipping community with its homeland."

Greek owners have long argued they are more heavily taxed than many of their European counterparts, a view backed by a number of studies by international accountancy groups and consultants. They have found Greek levels of tonnage tax are higher than in many other EU countries. Personal tax is another issue.
One of the very best movies about New York City will be heading to Broadway: There's a musical adaption of Working Girl, the 1988 film starring Melanie Griffith as a plucky Staten Islander trying to get ahead in the cut-throat Manhattan business world in the worksand Cyndi Lauper is working on the music, according to the NY Times.

Native New Yorker Lauper, who won a Tony for the score to the Broadway hit Kinky Boots, told the Times, "I love the film, and its story about a womans very unconventional road to success in the 80s is something I know a lot about. Women are still fighting for fundamental rights and equal pay!"

Griffith played Tess McGill, who is trying to get out of the secretarial pool and into mergers and acquisitions, and decides to lean in a little when an opportunity presents itself. The movie, directed by Mike Nichols, has an all-star castSigourney Weaver as her boss; Harrison Ford as a business colleague; Alec Baldwin as her boyfriend; Kevin Spacey as, well, a Kevin Spacey type; and an amazing Joan Cusack as Tess's best friend.

One can only hope that the musical will include the Staten Island Ferry as well as some really great 80s fashion and a chandelier that goes up and down (move over, Phantom of the Opera!). The Times says it's unclear if Carly Simon will be involved in the musical; Simon's song from the movie, "Let the River Run" won an Oscar:
Nominate your favorite new lab product of 2022 for a Scientists Choice Award

Nominations for the 2023 Scientists Choice Awards  are now open. These awards celebrate the best new products of 2022 that have had the biggest impact on your research and laboratory work.
Press Release

June 7, 2017 On suspension of OFW deployment to Qatar

NANCY URGES DFA, DOLE TO COME UP WITH UNIFIED STAND Senator Nancy Binay today urged the departments of Foreign Affairs (DFA), and Labor and Employment (DOLE) to speak with one voice in making policy decisions that would affect over 200,000 overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in Qatar. "Let us take a calm and sober approach in addressing the needs of our workers in Qatar. The move to abruptly suspend the deployment of Filipino workers to Qatar may have been premature considering that we have heard no complaints so far from the OFWs who are based there," Binay said. The senator noted that the decision to suspend deployment came only from the labor department, without prior coordination and consultations with the DFA. "I would like to know whether the DFA concurs with the suspension order because this is a diplomatic row involving several countries all of whom are long time allies and friends of the Philippines," Senator Binay said. The lady senator also assured the families of Qatar-based OFWs that the government is ready to help their loved ones. "The government is ready to extend help. Right now, the government of Qatar has given its assurances that it is capable of looking after the needs of its citizens and foreign guests including migrant workers. Let us await the DFA's assessment of the situation before making any further moves that may offend any of our allies," she said. Binay said that the ongoing diplomatic row between Qatar and Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Egypt, Yemen, and Maldives may be over soon in light of Qatar's reported openness to hold a dialogue through the intervention of Kuwait. "Let's pray that this diplomatic crisis will be over soon. Meanwhile, our embassy should maintain an open line of communications with our workers and their employers," she stressed. "Maging yung mga kapamilya po, sana ay makipag-ugnayan din sa DFA, DOLE o Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) para malaman ng ating gobyerno ang tunay na kalagayan ng mga kamag-anak nila sa Qatar," Binay said. The lady senator said she hopes DOLE Secretary Silvestre Bello III and DFA Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano can work together in mapping out a unified plan to help OFWs in Qatar especially when the current situation escalates into a full-blown crisis. "This is an internal problem among the Gulf states and we should be patient and understanding as their leaders try to resolve their problems in a diplomatic manner. It is in our strategic interest to remain in everyone's good graces," Binay added.
Press Release

June 7, 2017 Gatchalian Seeks Transparency in Gov't Economic Policies Senator Win Gatchalian is pushing for the passage of legislation which would promote greater transparency in the government's monetary and fiscal policy direction through strict congressional oversight and mandatory disclosure of information to the public. Senate Bill No. 1483, otherwise known as the Fiscal and Monetary Report Act of 2017, mandates the Secretaries of the Department of Finance (DOF), the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA), and the Department of Budget Management (DBM), as well as the Governor of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), to present economic situationer reports before a joint session of Congress twice per year. The reports shall cover the status and directions of the fiscal and monetary policies of the government, economic developments and prospects for the future, taking into account past and prospective developments in employment, unemployment, production, investment, real income, productivity, exchange rates, international trade and payments, and prices. The joint session will be attended by the Committees on Appropriations, Ways and Means, Economic Affairs, and Banks and Financial Intermediaries of the House of Representatives. The Senate, on the other hand, will be represented by the Committees on Finance, Ways and Means, Economic Affairs, and Banks, Financial Institutions and Currencies. "This would ensure that Congress is kept abreast on the current position and direction of the government's fiscal and monetary policies, especially with regard to the accumulation of foreign debt that could impact the country's economic stability," said Gatchalian, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Economic Affairs, during his sponsorship speech for the measure last week. The senator added that the biannual reports would also serve as a stronger fiscal accountability measure compared to the present system, where the reports of DOF and BSP to Congress during the annual budget season are limited to inputs required for budget analysis. Meanwhile, in line with "the declared policy of the State...to submit full public disclosure of all its transactions involving public interest as provided under the Constitution," the reporting departments will also be mandated to make available copies of the reports submitted to Congress on their official websites within seven (7) working days following the submission of their respective reports. Senate Bill No. 1483 is the product of public hearings held by the Senate Committee on Economic Affairs to discuss legislation principally authored by Senate President Pro-Tempore Ralph Recto.
Press Release

June 7, 2017 Koko: Mindanao infra, economic development most effective weapons vs terrorism The development of Mindanao's economy and infrastructure could prove to be the government's most effective weapons against terrorism and extremism, as bringing jobs and economic opportunities to Mindanao can aid efforts to thwart attempts to radicalize youth in the region. This according to Senate President Aquilino "Koko" Pimentel III, who on Wednesday said that "aside from neutralizing the current threat in Marawi, government must also look at what has to be done in the long term to prevent the radicalization of young Mindanaoans." The senator from Mindanao said that studies reveal that violent extremists around the world "often exploit the conditions brought about by poverty to recruit men who have very limited economic and employment prospects." "The discovery of over 50 million pesos in cash in a Marawi home suggests that the financial rewards of joining terrorist groups like the Maute or ASG play a role in attracting recruits to their cause," explained Pimentel. The Cagayan De Oro native added that he was hopeful that the resolution of the Marawi crisis and the massive infrastructure development planned in Mindanao would help attract investors to the region and, consequently, boost the economic fortunes of its people. "Traditionally underserviced regions like Mindanao are susceptible to extremist propaganda because the perceived apathy of the state can be used by terrorists to advance their agenda," lamented Pimentel. "But President Duterte is a game-changer in this regard, because as the first Chief Executive from Mindanao, he is committed to marshaling the resources of our government, not just to end the threats posed by terrorism, but to rapidly develop the region's economic potential." Pimentel enumerated some of the various big-ticket projects in Mindanao that would be undertaken by the Duterte Administration as part of "Dutertenomics" and what the government calls "the Golden Age of Infrastructure." Among these are the 32 billion-peso 2,000-km Mindanao Rail line which will connect Tagum with Davao and Digos, the 4.9 billion-peso Pangil Bay Bridge that will connect the City of Tangub in Misamis Occidental and Municipality of Tubod in Lanao del Norte, and the 80.4 billion-peso Mindanao Logistics Infrastructure Network (MLIN) that will improve the logistics infrastructure network in Northern Mindanao, Davao, SOCSKSARGEN and CARAGA. The MLIN will enhance agribusiness competitiveness in Mindanao by developing an intermodal logistics system that will address the constraints caused by the high cost of transport and inadequate logistics infrastructure in the area.
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WASHINGTON - Fired FBI Director James Comey said President Donald Trump told him at the White House "I need loyalty, I expect loyalty" in their private White House dinner conversation in January, according to written remarks from Comey offering a vivid preview of his testimony Thursday before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

In seven remarkable pages of prepared testimony, Comey describes a president obsessed with loyalty and publicly clearing his name amid an FBI investigation of his associates, and the FBI director's growing unease with the nature of the demands being made of him in their private conversations.

Since firing Comey last month, the president has denied reports that he sought a pledge of loyalty from the FBI director amid a Justice Department probe into possible coordination between Trump associates and Russian operatives. Comey's written remarks do support another Trump claim - that the FBI director repeatedly assured the president that he was not personally under investigation.

But overall, Comey's testimony portrays Trump as a domineering chief executive who made his FBI director deeply uncomfortable over the course of nine separate private conversations, beginning with their first meeting in early January before Trump was sworn into office. In that conversation, Comey warned the president-elect of a dossier that was circulating with unsubstantiated allegations against him and his advisers.

The details as described by Comey are likely to further fuel the debate over whether the president may have attempted to obstruct justice by pressuring the FBI director about a sensitive investigation.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., who is leading the Senate probe of possible Russian coordination with Trump associates, said he was not alarmed by Comey's account.

"I don't think it's wrong to ask for loyalty of anyone inside an administration," Burr said. "I don't think of what I've read there's anything of wrongdoing."

Comey writes with almost novelistic detail about his interactions with the president, describing a call on Jan. 27 around lunchtime inviting him to dinner.

"It was unclear from the conversation who else was going to be at the dinner, although I assumed there would be others," Comey wrote. "It turned out to be just the two of us, seated at a small oval table in the center of the Green Room. Two Navy stewards waited on us, only entering the room to serve food and drinks."

The president began the conversation, Comey wrote, by asking him whether he wanted to stay on as FBI director, "which I found strange because he had already told me twice in earlier conversations that he hoped I would stay, and I had assured him that I intended to."

The president replied, according to Comey, that lots of people wanted his job and "he would understand if I wanted to walk away."

Comey's instincts, he wrote, were that both the setting and the conversation "meant the dinner was, at least in part, an effort to have me ask for my job and create some sort of patronage relationship. That concerned me greatly, given the FBI's traditionally independent status in the executive branch."

The president then made his demand for loyalty.

"I didn't move, speak, or change my facial expression in any way during the awkward silence that followed," Comey wrote. "We simply looked at each other in silence. The conversation then moved on, but he returned to the subject near the end of our dinner."

When prompted again on the subject of loyalty, Comey said he replied, "You will always get honesty from me."

Comey said that once before Trump's inauguration, and again at the January dinner, he assured the president that he was not personally under investigation. He also told the president later on that he had shared that information with congressional leaders.

In his letter firing Comey, Trump wrote that three times Comey had assured him he was not under investigation. After the firing, Comey's defenders publicly challenged the accuracy of that statement.

Overall, Comey's written testimony describes a strained, awkward relationship between the two powerful men, punctuated by exchanges in which the president expressed his displeasure about the Russia probe in ways that alarmed the FBI director. Even the number of contacts between the two were alarming to Comey, who noted that he only spoke twice privately with President Barack Obama.

The written testimony also recounts a face-to-face conversation the two men had on Feb. 14 in the Oval Office, where many senior officials had gathered for a counterterrorism briefing.

After the meeting, the president asked everyone to leave. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and senior adviser Jared Kushner lingered in the room, but the president told them to leave, too, according to Comey.

When the door by the grandfather clock closed, Comey wrote, the president said, "I want to talk about Mike Flynn'' - the former national security adviser who was forced out after disclosures about his conversations with the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak. Flynn had resigned a day earlier.

"I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go," the president said, according to Comey. The FBI director replied only that "he is a good guy.''

In that conversation, the president repeatedly complained to the FBI director about leaks, and Comey said he agreed with him about the harm caused by leaks of classified information.

Comey said he understood the president to be asking for him to "drop any investigation of Flynn in connection with false statements about his conversations with the Russian ambassador in December. I did not understand the president to be talking about the broader investigation into Russia or possible links to his campaign.''

The former FBI director wrote that he found the conversation "very concerning, given the FBI's role as an independent investigative agency.''

Later, Comey complained to Sessions that he should not have been left alone with the president, and Sessions did not reply, according to the written testimony. Sessions declined to comment.

Then, in late March, Trump called Comey at the FBI. In that conversation, the president called the Russia probe "a cloud'' hanging over his ability to lead the country.

He also expressed continued frustration that unsubstantiated allegations in a private dossier about him had become public, including lurid claims of sexual activity while in Russia.

"He said he had nothing to do with Russia, had not been involved with hookers in Russia, and had always assumed he had been recorded when in Russia,'' Comey wrote.

"He asked what we could do to 'lift the cloud.' I responded that we were investigating the matter as quickly as we could, and that there would be great benefit, if we didn't find anything, to our having done the work well. He agreed, but then re-emphasized the problems this was causing him," Comey wrote.

After that phone call with the president, Comey said he called acting deputy attorney general Dana Boente to tell him what was discussed and to "await his guidance." Comey said he never heard back from Boente. A spokesman for Boente did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Then, on April 11, Comey wrote, the president called him and asked him what he had done about getting out word that he was not personally under investigation. The president told him "the cloud" of the probe was interfering with his ability to do his job.

"I have been very loyal to you, very loyal; we had that thing you know," Trump told Comey, according to the written testimony. "I did not reply or ask him what he meant by 'that thing.' "

He added: "That was the last time I spoke with President Trump."

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The Washington Post's Sari Horwitz and Karoun Demirjian contributed to this report.

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Thousands of Chipotle workers in New Jersey are being illegally denied overtime pay though they consistently work in excess of 40 hours per week, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday in New Jersey Supreme Court. The lawsuit challenges the company's interpretation of a Texas judge's ruling, which blocked implementation of 2016 Obama Administration overtime rules announced last spring.

The lead plaintiff on the case is Fairfield resident Carmen Alvarez, a 55-year-old mother and grandmother, who has worked as a manager-in-training at multiple Chipotle restaurants since 2013, often in excess of 40 hours per week. Last November, the suit alleges, she and other apprentices were converted from salary to wage workers and began making overtimeapparently in response to new federal guidelines. But when the Texas ruling came down, the suit alleges, Alvarez and her coworkers lost their overtime.

The lawsuit cites a December email from Chipotle stating that the workers would revert to their previous salaries and would not earn overtime "because of" of the Texas decision. Since then, Chipotle has not kept track of workers' hours, which consistently creep past 40. Meanwhile, managerial apprentices continue to do many of the same tasks as their hourly counterparts, including filling orders and preparing sides like salsa, guacamole and chopped vegetables on the assembly line.

"I was crushed when Chipotle went back on its promise to pay me and other co-workers the overtime that we worked so hard for," Alvarez stated Wednesday.

The suit requests class action status for Alvarez and thousands of other current and former New Jersey Chipotle workers.

The U.S. Department of Labor last May announced plans to raise the ceiling for mandatory overtime for salaried workersfrom $23,660 to $47,476 per year. Under the rule, qualifying salaried workers would be required to earn time-and-a-half for every hour worked in excess of 40 in a given week. But Texas Judge Amos L. Mazzant III blocked the rule days before it was supposed to go into effect last November, to the relief of business interests. The Obama administration had argued that doubling the wage limit for mandatory overtime stood to benefit 4 million salaried workers.

Attorneys for the workers are alleging that the judge's preliminary injunction did not "stay the effective date of the rule or otherwise prevent the rule from going into effect," according to court documents. The lawsuit also alleges that the Texas ruling, even if it were to stand today, would apply to state government employees, not workers employed by private companies.

"The federal overtime law allows law firms like ours to help ensure that workers are fairly paid for the roles they play in boosting corporate profits," said Justin Swartz, a lawyer representing the Chipotle employees.

Some labor lawyers who advocate for workers agree with Swartz, the Washington Post reports. Catherine Ruckelshaus, general counsel for the National Employment Law Project, told the paper that because the Labor Department finalized its rules early last year, Judge Mazzant's November injunction can't permanently block it. Ruckelshaus predicted that a positive ruling in this case could have a "broad impact" nationwide.

A spokesman for Chipotle denied that the company is flouting the law.

"As a matter of policy, we don't comment on details surrounding pending legal actions," said Chipotle spokesman Chris Arnold. "Though I'd note that all of our employment practices are compliant with applicable laws. I would also note that a lawsuit is nothing more than allegation, and is proof of absolutely nothing."

The Labor Department appealed the Texas ruling in December. Now, under President Trump, the Department has asked for more time to consider the case. Trump could also undo the Obama-era overtime rules independent of the courts.
A 41-year-old man and his dog were struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver while they were out on a walk in Bay Point Tuesday night, officials said.

The incident occurred about 10:50 p.m. at the intersection of Port Chicago Highway and Lakeview Drive and California Highway Patrol officers were still searching for the driver Wednesday morning.
Connor Radnovich/The Chronicle

A law designed to promote dense housing at prices affordable for middle-class families won unanimous approval from the Board of Supervisors Tuesday. It was a hard-fought win for advocates who pushed the legislation for two years.

The Home-SF law will allow developers to build taller structures in exchange for making 30 percent of the units affordable. Supervisor Katy Tang first proposed the idea in 2015, but her initial version foundered under opposition from progressives, who said it pandered to developers, and west-side homeowners who feared an onslaught of new real estate in their neighborhoods.
In a city where so much information is tweeted, emailed, Skyped or texted, thousands of people are getting left behind.

There are kids who trudge to the library to find an Internet connection so they can do their homework. Mothers who have to choose each month between buying a Muni pass and paying the Wi-Fi bill. Seniors still using sputtery dial-up service.

Their stories are helping propel Mark Farrell, San Francisco supervisor and rumored 2019 mayoral candidate, as the primary backer and evangelist for a citywide broadband network that would treat the Internet as if it were a public roadway: The city would lay fiber-optic cable underground and contract with private companies to deliver fast, inexpensive service to all residents and businesses.

If Farrell pulls it off, San Francisco would become the largest city in the country to have such a system.

The sad reality is that San Francisco is the innovation capital of the world, and more than 100,000 San Francisco residents still do not have Internet access at home, Farrell said, citing statistics from a budget and legislative analysts report he ordered last year.

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An additional 50,000 residents have rickety dial-up connections, he said. And thats criminal, in my opinion.

Confronting this disparity, the supervisor and his supporters have started characterizing the Internet as a utility, just like water or electricity service. They see publicly owned broadband as the next battlefront for a city that recently took on Pacific Gas and Electric by creating its own clean energy system.

The idea isnt new. Chattanooga, Tenn., has a publicly owned fiber network thats run by the citys electric utility. Officials in Kansas City, Kan., and Kansas City, Mo., brokered an agreement with Google Fiber to run a network through the cities in 2011. Stockholm began laying cable in 1994 and now has a vast subterranean system that it leases to service providers, the model San Francisco will most likely adopt.

City politicians have long talked about creating a universal Internet system that would put San Franciscos technical abilities in line with its social credos, but past attempts have belly-flopped.

In 2003, then-Supervisors Tom Ammiano and Chris Daly got the city to fund a $300,000 study on city-controlled Internet, arguing it would be what Ammiano termed a great (social) equalizer. But they failed to put together a concrete plan.

Mayor Gavin Newsom picked up the effort the following year, proposing free Wi-Fi throughout the city and negotiating a contract under which EarthLink would build and install the network, with Google providing the service. The deal fell apart after EarthLink backed out in 2007.

Noah Berger/Special to The Chronicle

In the intervening years, San Francisco inched toward its politicians goals of Internet equity. In 2010, Newsom began spreading free Wi-Fi to all of the citys public housing projects. Three years later, Farrell staked his political future on municipal Internet when he helped secure a $600,000 gift from Google that allowed the city to buy and install Wi-Fi equipment in 32 parks. New statistics from the Department of Technology show that more than half a million devices connect to the citys wireless network each month.

Farrell began laying the foundation for a far more ambitious plan  laying fiber throughout the city, including areas like Visitacion Valley and the Bayview, where the cost of digging up the street far exceeds the immediate profit for any carrier.

The supervisor built momentum for the idea by forming a coalition of neighborhood groups and a panel of academics to publish reports on the importance of a municipal fiber network. Farrell and Mayor Ed Lee also secured $600,000 in city funding for a consultant, CTC Technology and Energy, to calculate cost estimates.

Depending on what infrastructure model they settle on, they may have to pitch a bond measure to voters.

There could be risks  or alternatively, a big payoff  for Farrell, who is devoting his political capital to the project.

The nice thing about Wi-Fi is that it costs less up front, and you can install it before the next election, said Christopher Mitchell, a community broadband expert at the Institute for Local Self Reliance, an advocacy group in Minneapolis.

But he noted that Farrell could face intense opposition from big telecom companies like Comcast and AT&T, which provide most of the Internet service and infrastructure in San Francisco.

There will be a scare campaign involving print mailers, telephone calls and radio messages, saying that community broadband will threaten city finances, Mitchell said.

Farrell is a political moderate with strong Silicon Valley ties  before entering politics he worked as a lawyer for tech companies and as an investment banker  but he has reached out to progressive former Supervisor Eric Mar, who has helped lead the neighborhood coalition and conduct surveys that illustrate how uneven the Internet service is in a city known as a tech capital.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Updated to include drought zones while tracking water shortage status of your area, plus reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

I helped pull in a lot of seniors and nonprofits, and I helped persuade them to be more trustful that a big-tent approach could succeed, even though we werent successful a decade ago, Mar said.

Over the past few months, Farrell has also backed legislation to nudge the city closer to a municipally controlled system.

In December, the Board of Supervisors passed his bill requiring landlords to allow their tenants to use any state-licensed carrier. His law mandating that all new developments include fiber conduits passed in February. He is also pushing a bill that would allow Internet carriers to install fiber-optic cables in sidewalks, a low-cost form of infrastructure that would help small companies compete with AT&T and Comcast.

In a recent interview, Farrell downplayed the rumors about a 2019 mayoral bid, saying hell decide when the time is right.

Whether he can turn citywide broadband into a viable campaign platform is an open question. Its a move that could position Farrell as an effective challenger to Mark Leno, said Jason McDaniel, a professor of political science at San Francisco State University.

The idea of bridging a digital divide, of fixing race and class inequality  thats a message designed to be attractive to a more progressive, left-leaning audience, he said.

But some analysts view broadband as one of those important but boring issues that doesnt have the same urgency as homelessness or protecting immigrants from deportation.

Broadband isnt a topic of overriding concern in San Francisco, said political strategist Maggie Muir. She said voters face other more compelling issues every day when they walk out the door.

Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rswan@sfchronicle.com

Twitter: @rachelswan
Marilyn Nieves/Getty Image

A Pleasanton man was sentenced on Tuesday to 18 months in prison and ordered to pay just under half a million dollars in restitution after he used a hospice company to commit tax fraud.

The man, 69-year-old Muzaffar Hussain, is a resident of Pleasanton and Houston, and is the former Chief Financial Officer of Crossroads Home Health Care, Inc., according to the U.S. Attorneys Office.
Inevitably, there are odds and ends and nagging questions that need to be attended to at every wedding. Wondering about the nuances of wedding etiquette? Join Style reporters Carolyne Zinko and Tony Bravo as they discuss online invites, dress codes and more on Facebook Live at 1 p.m. Wednesday, June 7, on The Chronicles Facebook page (www.facebook.com/sfchronicle). For all your other odds and ends, from shopping to socks, theres this weeks Radar.

Avante garde Vietnam native and Paris transplant Mimi Tran, who studied electrical engineering and worked at Cisco, has channeled her creativity into womens fashion with daring dress silhouettes in laser-cut chiffon lace, leather, silk jersey and other materials, with Swarovski crystals. Her new boutique at Santana Row, scheduled to open in mid-July, will carry a 2018 bridal collection for women who are more disruptive than demure: gowns with opaque mini-dress underlays topped by sheer sleeves and long skirts; strapless, swingy short A-lines topped by a sheer, crystal-encrusted turtleneck and long sheer sleeves; and a sleeveless, plunging, full-skirted gown of 3-D hand-cut French lace on tulle. From $2,550 and up, at 377 Santana Row, Suite 1105, San Jose, (408) 394-2208, and www.mimitrandesign.com.
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In the hours after a fire raged through the Ghost Ship warehouse in Oakland during an underground music show, Max Harris was cast as one of the lucky survivors.

The artist and musician described in interviews how, as the events doorman, he had tried in vain to save some of the 36 people who died, attacking the flames with a fire extinguisher before being quickly driven back.

Later, Harris went online to say he was struggling emotionally, and asked friends to donate money to his personal rebuilding.

But now the irreverent 27-year-old is facing criminal charges  along with his demons  after authorities accused him of luring guests into an unsanctioned party in a dangerous building that was licensed neither as a home nor business. Its power flowed through a maze of electrical cords snaking through wood furniture and makeshift enclosures.

On Tuesday, Harris was in a Los Angeles jail awaiting his return to Alameda County, where he is charged with 36 felony counts of involuntary manslaughter in connection with the Dec. 2 inferno.

While the role of the Ghost Ships master tenant, Derick Almena  who faces the same charges  has been heavily scrutinized since the fire, little attention has been paid to his right-hand man, Harris, also known as Max Ohr and the Warlord of the Satya Yuga, the artist collective that occupied the warehouse.

But a more complete picture of the former art student from the East Coast has begun to emerge since his arrest. The vagabond artists brash photography, sculpture and jewelry, and his stick-and-poke tattoo business, made Harris comfortably at home in the anything-goes art space, and he promoted his work online as vigorously as the many events he organized on the warehouses second floor.

On his website, he posted flyers for earlier events at the Ghost Ship, including one that advertised Real-live barely-legal internet music and charged $5 at the door.

The night of the fire, Harris was collecting money from the nearly 100 people attending an upstairs electronic music show that he allegedly put together without proper permits. From his downstairs vantage point, he was one of the first to spot the flames growing on the first floor.

I saw an orange glow coming from the back of the warehouse, Harris told NBCs Today shortly after the fire. I immediately grabbed a fire extinguisher and I ran back. I got one squirt out of it, and I realized it wasnt going to do anything. The roof had already caught and the flames were coming toward the door at an alarming rate.

He was not asked about whether he shared culpability in the blaze  the deadliest fire in California since the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. But investigators later focused on his alleged central role in bringing in guests.

Harris prepared the warehouse for the event that day, Christina Harbison, an inspector with the Alameda County district attorneys office, wrote in court papers. In the course of his preparation, Harris blocked off an area of the second floor that included a second stairwell, which effectively reduced the upstairs guests to a single point of escape.

Harris moved into the space at 1305 31st Ave. in the citys Fruitvale neighborhood in 2014 and grew into one of the visionaries behind the collective.

Before tragedy struck, he operated a tattoo parlor in the warehouse, where he manually poked his subjects with colorful designs like lotus blossoms. Harris own skin, including his face, became a favorite canvas.

His ever-growing personal ink work is documented on his website, which he uses to promote his craft alongside his photography, videos, music, sculptures and jewelry.

Harris grew up on the East Coast and studied at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston. Reached by phone Tuesday, Harris mother said she would not comment.

While living at the Ghost Ship, Harris came under the tutelage of the artist Almena, 47, and his responsibilities grew. He was eventually tasked with collecting rent from the roughly 20 people living in the warehouse, and acted as the go-between for the tenants and Almena.

Almena, who was arrested Monday in Lake County, was accused with Harris of deceiving police and the Oakland Fire Department about the warehouse, where they conducted unpermitted and uninspected construction, including electrical work, Harbison wrote.

In interviews with reporters after the fire, Harris admitted there were no sprinklers in the building, and said the electrical system was an ongoing struggle between the residents and the buildings owner, Chor Ng, who was not charged criminally.

Max was always saying I was making a big deal about making the place safe, former Ghost Ship resident Shelley Mack said Tuesday. If you are continually working against improving a place and setting up a place for calamity and you are kicking people out, how can you not expect something like this?

Mack said voicing her frustrations about the buildings conditions prompted her ouster in February 2015.

The district attorneys office said investigators may never know the cause of the fire, though the electrical system has been described as an area of focus. Electricity was piped into the building from a neighboring auto shop and then shared through a network of extension cords that weaved among the buildings makeshift living quarters.

Everyone in there knew the problem with fire was because we had an illegal hookup to PG&E, Mack said. They all know the system was overloaded.

Families of the 36 victims have filed lawsuits against a slew of defendants, including Harris, Almena and Pacific Gas and Electric Co.

Before his arrest, Harris had been couch-surfing with friends and updating his website and social media pages. On Dec. 28, nearly a month after the fire, he reached out to friends on Facebook, asking for donations for personal rebuilding.

As much as I desire stability and the comforting environment of a work-bench, he said, I am also still deeply at a loss emotionally and suffering mentally and feel as though my soul needs a continued searching and the wind to my back and dust on my feet.

Evan Sernoffsky is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @EvanSernoffsky
A Southern California man pleaded not guilty Tuesday to an involuntary manslaughter charge stemming from the beating death of an Australian tourist last week outside a hotel in the Polk Gulch neighborhood of San Francisco.

David Murillo, a 34-year-old resident of Hesperia (San Bernardino County), was arraigned at the Hall of Justice and was being held at the San Francisco County Jail on $100,000 bail.

Matthew Bate  an analytical chemist from a suburb of Darwin, Australia  died from injuries he suffered in the fight that erupted in the early hours of Friday on the steps of the Da Vinci Villa hotel on Van Ness Avenue near Filbert Street, police said.

Police found the 33-year-old victim suffering from severe head trauma and he was transported to San Francisco General Hospital, where he died, according to police.

It is our belief that the victim was punched in the head when he didnt see the punch coming, said Alex Bastian, a spokesman for the district attorneys office.

Bates family will be in San Francisco at some point and will be working closely with the victim services division of the district attorneys office, Bastian said.

During the fight, which broke out just after 2 a.m., Bate was punched once and fell to the ground, possibly hitting his head on the concrete steps of the hotel, prosecutors said.

Murillo arrived in San Francisco on May 30 for a work trip, according to Mark Jacobs of the San Francisco public defenders office. Jacobs said Murillo  the father of two daughters, ages 4 and 7  was unaware that Bate was gravely injured until police knocked on his door at the Da Vinci Villa and detained him for questioning.

He was crying, he was in shock, Jacobs said of Murillos response to the charges. Hes a gentle, hardworking man with two little girls.

Jacobs said the altercation occurred when Murillo and two other men he was with exchanged heated words with Bate and two of his friends. He said he could not say who instigated the conflict because he has not yet been given access to the police report.

Murillo could be seen softly shaking in disbelief in court Tuesday when the prosecutor described the incident as an unprovoked attack.

Mr. Murillo was punched himself and ended up on the ground, Jacobs said.

There is no indication of felonious behavior in any of his 34 years of life, he added. This is not your run-of-the-mill guy running around ... wreaking havoc.

Prior to the fight, Murillo had never been arrested, Jacobs said.

Bate was traveling around California with friends from Australia, according to Australian media reports.

He had such a warm and kind soul and was a wonderful son, brother, uncle and friend, his family said in a statement.

Murillos next court date is scheduled for Friday.

Filipa Ioannou is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: fioannou@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @obioannoukenobi
A woman who was pepper-sprayed when a protest against right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos turned violent at UC Berkeley in early February has filed a $23 million lawsuit against the university and other entities and individuals, including Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco.

Attorneys for Kiara Robles of Oakland, who is in her 20s, filed suit Monday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California against 18 individuals and entities she alleges violated her First Amendment rights.

Asked in an email what she hopes to get out of the lawsuit, Robles, a Trump supporter, said, I honestly dont know. She portrayed herself as an economics nerd and sometimes-writer thrust into the spotlight as a martyr for the deplorables, a reference to a description Hillary Clinton used during the presidential campaign for Donald Trump supporters.

But I do think order is the right way to respond to chaos, and a lawsuit is the civil way to respond to injustice, she said.

One Feb. 1, as a KGO-TV news reporter interviewed Robles outside Cals Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union, where Yiannopoulos was supposed to speak, a masked assailant pepper-sprayed her.

The university canceled the event when protests grew violent, and Yiannopoulos was evacuated.

In the incident, caught on video, Robles is wearing a red Make Bitcoin Great Again hat that is otherwise identical to the Trump campaigns Make America Great Again hats.

Robles attorney, Larry Klayman of the conservative activist organization Freedom Watch, said his client was assaulted for supporting Trump on the liberal Berkeley campus.

We want justice for Kiara, Klayman said. She was assaulted. The California university system, and in part, Berkeley, is out of control, and theyre facilitating, if not inciting, violence, and the campus police sit around twiddling their thumbs.

The wide-ranging lawsuit names the UC Berkeley Police Department, the city of Berkeleys Police Department, UC Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks and Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin.

In a statement, UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof said UCs flagship university would contest in court this collection of false claims.

Mogulof said the campus is committed to free speech, adding that administrators and the campus police department spent countless hours and substantial university resources planning security measures.

We are confident that UCPDs actions will be vindicated against the plaintiffs uninformed allegations, he said.

The suit also names a number of other individuals and groups, including Pelosi and liberal billionaire George Soros, among several others.

A spokesman for the Berkeley Police Department declined to comment, as did a spokesman for the Berkeley mayor, citing the ongoing litigation.

A spokeswoman for Pelosi did not immediately return a request for comment, and Soros could not be reached.

After a peaceful demonstration that drew more than 1,000 to Cals Sproul Plaza to protest the appearance of Yiannopoulos  who was brought to the school by the Berkeley College Republicans  masked anarchists joined the fray, hurling smoke bombs, shooting off fireworks and tearing down metal barriers.

As police retreated inside the student center, the scene turned decidedly violent as the dissidents smashed windows and brought down a light pole that was set on fire. There were $100,000 in damages to the campus and one arrest.

Robles could not identify her masked assailant, but the suit claims she was targeted as a woman and as a lesbian.

Michael Bodley is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mbodley@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @michael_bodley
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Town hall: Hosted by Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Palo Alto, from 9 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. at Foothill Community Colleges Smithwick Theatre, 12345 El Monte Road in Los Altos. For information: http://eshoo.house.gov.

Syria documentary: The Syrian American Council, the International Rescue Committee and National Geographic premiere Hell on Earth: The Fall of Syria and the Rise of ISIS at 3 p.m. at the AMC Metreon 16, 135 Fourth St. in San Francisco. The film will be followed by a discussion with the director. RSVP by Friday: http://bit.ly/2snzF2q.

Candidate fundraiser: The Sister District Project holds a fundraiser with drinks and music to support Cheryl Turpin, Democratic candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates in the 85th District (Virginia Beach). The Sister District Project consists of volunteers who support Democratic state and congressional campaigns in historically red states. The event is from 6 to 9 p.m. at Spats Berkeley, 1974 Shattuck Ave. in Berkeley. For information: http://bit.ly/2ssaHOC.

Health care film: A showing of the 30-minute film Now Is the Time: Healthcare for Everybody, with speaker Sue Bergman, a nurse and supporter of the Healthy California Act, the proposal before the Legislature to create a single-payer health care system. The free event is at 7 p.m. at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, 6250 Village Parkway in Dublin. For information: (925) 462-3459 or flickknight@gmail.com.

Sunday

Sierra Club recruitment: The Sierra Club is seeking volunteers to recruit new members and educate people on environmental issues at Sunday Streets, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., in Golden Gate Park. The Sierra Club booth will be located in Golden Gate Park on John F. Kennedy Drive, near Spreckels Lake (36th Avenue). For information, contact Katherine Howard at sfoceanedge@earthlink.net.

Equality march: Marchers to mobilize and call for the protection of rights for those targeted due to immigration status, ethnicity, religion, skin color, gender and disability. The event begins at 11 a.m. at San Jose City Hall, 200 E. Santa Clara St. A rally will begin at 1 p.m. at the Plaza de Cesar Chavez Park, 1 Paseo De San Antonio in San Jose. For information:http://equalitymarchsj.domoreproject.org.

June 17

Nuclear weapons march: Womens March to Ban the Bomb, in support of U.N. negotiations on a treaty to ban nuclear weapons. Demonstrators will meet at 11:30 a.m. at the corner of El Camino Real and Embarcadero Road in Palo Alto. For information: wilpf.peninsula.paloalto@gmail.com. In San Francisco, marchers are planning to meet at noon at UN Plaza. For information: bln.sf.ca@gmail.com.

Nuclear weapons film: A screening and discussion of The Nuclear Requiem, on the challenges of controlling nuclear weapons. The free, two-hour event starts at 3:30 p.m. at the Los Altos Public Librarys Orchard Room, 13 South San Antonio Road. For information: wilpf.peninsula.paloalto@gmail.com.

June 21

Electoral system presentation: Californians for Electoral Reform and FairVote California will present an overview of local election systems and discuss possible reforms. The event is free and from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Richmond Progressive Alliance, 2540 Macdonald Ave. in Richmond. For information: (510) 412-2260.

June 22

Coal film: A free screening of From the Ashes, a National Geographic documentary about coal, followed by a discussion on the environment and climate. The film begins at 7 p.m. at La Pena Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave. in Berkeley. For information: www.nocoalinoakland.info.
Companies commonly under fire for abusing the H-1B program received significantly fewer of the coveted work visas in fiscal 2016 compared to a year earlier, according to a new report. Experts attribute the drop to the cloud and artificial intelligence.

The H-1B visa, which allows highly-skilled foreigners to live and work in the U.S. at a sponsoring company, has been a constant point of contention between Silicon Valley and Washington. While tech companies rely on the visas to staff engineering positions, others say they are used by companies to squeeze out American jobs.

Critics often point to the high number of visas going to Indian outsourcing firms such as Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services and Wipro  as a reason to curb the H-1B visa program. While these Indian companies still received the most H-1B visas for initial employment in 2016, a report released Monday by the National Foundation for American Policy found that those numbers are sharply declining.

Stuart Anderson, author of the report and executive director of the nonpartisan think tank, said the conclusions weaken the Trump administrations argument for wanting to limit the number of H-1B visas issued.

According to the report, seven Indian outsourcing companies collectively received 37 percent fewer H-1B visas in fiscal 2016 than in 2015. Anderson attributes the drop to a global trend of corporate clients demanding digital services that require fewer workers and more advanced, cloud-based technology.

The study was based on an analysis of government data provided by the Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Only 85,000 H-1B visas are available to for-profit companies every year, and the number of applications has far exceeded that number in recent years. Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at the Economic Policy Institute, noted that companies are increasingly using other types of work visas  such as the L-1 to bring in foreign talent.

The report notes that the drop in the number of approved H-1B applications occurred before the election of Donald Trump. A few months after he took office, both Infosys and Tata announced job-creation measures for U.S. workers.

In an April call with Wall Street analysts to discuss fourth-quarter earnings, Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka said the company will expand its local hiring to mitigate any potential risks from visa regulations in the U.S.

Meanwhile, Bay Area tech companies including Intel, Google and Apple received significantly more H-1Bs over the past year, according to the study. H-1Bs are commonly used by tech firms to attract talent from around the world. The sector has long lobbied for more visas, saying that the demand for skilled labor far outweighs the supply.

A Chronicle analysis found that large American tech companies tend to pay certain employees holding H-1B visas significantly more than the minimum salary required, in contrast to some Indian outsourcing companies.

The differing distribution of H-1Bs among companies is not the only change the visa program has recently experienced. In addition, the number of applications for the visa program has dropped for fiscal 2018. Its the first dip in applications the U.S. has experienced in years. Experts said the drop partly shows that Trumps Americas First rhetoric is working  as well as a change in the tactics of the Indian outsourcing companies.

Trisha Thadani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: tthadani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @TrishaThadani
Lawrence Dodd lives in one of Britains most fiercely contested voting districts, and he has been peppered almost daily with ads from the countrys major political parties on Facebook. About a month ago, he tried to find out why.

Dodd, a maker of musical instruments in northern England, joined an experiment. He and about 10,000 others volunteered their data, allowing researchers to monitor which political ads were showing up in their Facebook feeds as Britains election approached.

Their goal: to shed more light on how political campaigns are using Facebook and other digital services that are reshaping the democratic process, but that often offer few details about their outsize roles in elections worldwide.

These political ads arent regulated; nobody knows what is being said on Facebook, said Dodd, 26, who plans to vote for the Labour Party in Thursdays elections, but who continued to be bombarded with online messages from the Conservatives. Wherever politics is concerned, there needs to more transparency.

Facebook provides little information on how political parties use ads to reach undecided voters. And concern has been growing since the U.S. presidential election about the social networks role in campaigns, including about how politically charged fake news is spread online.

Now, as voters head to the polls across Europe, groups in Britain, Germany and elsewhere are fighting back, creating ways to track and monitor digital political ads and misinformation on Facebook, Twitter and Google.

The political ads shown to Dodd are being tallied by WhoTargetsMe, a nonpolitical group that designed a digital tool to monitor Facebooks role before the British election.

Costing less than $1,000 to build, the browser plug-in keeps users personal information anonymous. It was created because the social network does not share information on political ads shown to its more than 36 million users in Britain, roughly half the population of a nation where campaigns are highly regulated and political financing is tightly capped.

Outside groups were accused of spending lavishly on Facebook during a heated campaign before a referendum on the countrys membership in the European Union. In response, Britains privacy watchdog has started an investigation into whether such political advertising breached its strict data protection rules.

Political advertising is fundamentally different. Theres a lot of concern about whats being seen on Facebook, said Sam Jeffers, co-founder of WhoTargetsMe and a former digital media strategist. The people deserve some sense of whats going on.

Its a fundamental conversation to have about how we regulate this, said Nick Anstead, a media and communications expert at the London School of Economics. Facebook has a responsibility to tell its users who is buying (political) advertising.

The company says that its roughly 2 billion users worldwide have complete control over which ads they are shown, and that it is the responsibility of individual political parties to comply with their countries electoral laws. Facebook adds that its commercial agreements and protection of individuals privacy restrict it from sharing more data on how information is distributed.

Facebooks goal is to make it easier for people to get the information they need to vote, said Andy Stone, a company spokesman.

Facebook and other technology companies have tried to improve what is shared and circulated online, creating partnerships with news outlets to debunk digital falsehoods and cracking down on how fake news websites make money through advertising on social media. The social networking giant also sponsored get-out-the-vote campaigns, and encouraged political groups to create Facebook pages to promote their messages.

Yet during the recent French presidential election, which pitted centrist candidate and eventual winner Emmanuel Macron against the far-right hopeful Marine Le Pen, several media organizations including Le Monde said they had found it difficult  and overly cumbersome  to report potential fake news items about the candidates to Facebook.

Academics and others scrutinizing the vote also said the companys failure to provide data on what Facebook users in France shared among themselves made it virtually impossible to determine whether false reports affected the overall result.

Mark Scott is a New York Times writer.
Minneapolis

Heather Axtman was a senior in college in 2006 when she landed an internship at Thomson Reuters. By the time she graduated from the University of Minnesota, the company had offered her a full-time job. She's since been promoted several times. Now 33, she manages a team in the marketing department.

"I've worked my butt off to prove myself, but my timing was pure luck," she said.

Things were different for Kendall Bird, who graduated from the University of Northwestern-St. Paul in 2010.

"I was naive about how hard it was going to be coming out of the gate," said Bird, now 29. "The landscape was so crowded and competitive."

Despite sending out countless resumes, combing job boards and networking to build contacts, she ended up taking an internship instead of a job, being a nanny (for minimum wage) and moving home. It took her more than two years to get a job in her field.

While they're only a few years apart, the experiences of these two millennials couldn't be more different. What changed between Axtman's graduation and Bird's? The Great Recession.

Although the economy has largely recovered, the younger cohort of millennials may not have. New research indicates that the recession has acted as a great divide for this group of 72 million, born between 1980 and 1995.

Bridgeworks, a Wayzata, Minn., consulting company that advises businesses on generational dynamics, commissioned a study of millennials and found distinct differences between younger and older millennials.

"Millennials are a complex generation, and we're seeing that their -experiences are very different from oldest to youngest," said Hannah Ubl, research director at Bridgeworks.

The early millennials, born from 1980 to 1987, remember dial-up internet, using AOL screen names for instant messaging, watching movies on VHS tapes and attending Y2K parties.

"They were raised to be optimistic and were told they could be whatever they wanted to be," Ubl said. "They graduated into a strong economy and got a good foothold into adulthood."

But almost overnight, that upbeat outlook turned gloomy for their younger brothers and sisters, whom some call the recessionists.

Born between 1988 and 1995, they used technology at an earlier age, with Wi-Fi-enabled devices and the iPhone arriving in their adolescence. They downloaded music, watched movies on DVDs that arrived in the mail from Netflix and rode to school on their Razor scooters.

Those younger millennials, however, were in the unenviable position of trying to launch careers after the housing market crash, when unemployment jumped and hiring stalled.

In the worst economic downturn in 80 years, the recessionists had to compete with laid-off adults for service jobs. They worried that the college loans they'd taken as a bet on a post-graduation middle-class life would prove to be poor investments.

"I say that finding a job during the recession was like working out with training weights," said Jeff Lane, 29, who graduated from college in 2009 and worked in a coffee shop instead of starting a business career.

"When I couldn't even get an interview, it docked my confidence," he said.

Like the early millennials, the recessionists had been raised to follow their dreams, but the advice they had been given all their lives began to ring hollow.

"All of a sudden, the message changed. It was, 'Expect rejection, expect to struggle, even the best among you,'?" Ubl said. "They were back in their parents' basements and back on their parents' health insurance. They felt lied to."

Today, an economic recovery is on track and, in Minnesota, a low employment rate has many businesses and nonprofits struggling to find enough qualified workers to fill their jobs.

But employers and hiring managers who want to recruit  and retain  a millennial workforce should appreciate the different attitudes and expectations of the two groups.

"Early millennials care more about autonomy. They're more likely to want freedom in choosing where and how they work, who they work with and what their schedule is," Ubl said.

Meanwhile, the recessionists tend to be motivated by money.

"Paychecks are always important, but for the later millennials, workplace satisfaction is much more tied to their ability to earn a salary and pay their bills, so they will have enough to live where they want to live," Ubl said. "The early millennials believe everything will work out. The recessionists are less trusting about that."

And those younger millennials may have good reason to be mindful about their paychecks.

History would suggest that the fallout of the economic downturn will continue to haunt the recessionists, who began working when entry-level salaries were suppressed.

"We've seen that those who happened to be unlucky enough to have entered the labor market in a recession may never really recover from it," said Wendy Rahn, a political science professor at the University of Minnesota.

Economists at the Federal Reserve have found that lifetime earnings tend to hinge on an individual's first decade in the workforce, with those who earn less as they begin their careers never catching up.

The Economic Policy Institute tracked lifetime pay for employees who started work in previous recessions and found that as a group, they experienced lower wages and fewer opportunities.

And real estate company Zillow's research concludes that graduating into the recession has an "immediate and lasting effect on young adults' homeownership rate."

Stalled attempts to fire up their careers may also create ongoing financial worry in the younger cohort. Ubl suggested that their early difficulties could turn them into modern-day versions of their grandparents, the generation that survived the Great Depression and took thriftiness to extremes, always pinching pennies and saving plastic bags.

"Their brains were still developing during this time. I think this will color and shape their impressions for a lifetime," Ubl said.

"It marked them in a profound way, and it will always be part of them."
(Editor note: There are other, earlier variations on the Smart Straw concept including one previously developed by the company DrinkSavvy, however, other versions of the straw have not yet gone into production.)

Three teenagers are being praised for a straw they invented to detect the presence of date rape drugs in drinks.

Susana Cappello, Carolina Baigorri and Victoria Roca of Florida took first place in a business plan competition (on the high school level) held by the Miami Herald, after presenting a straw they said could detect two common drugs used in assaults  GHB and Ketamine. These drugs often do not have a smell or taste to them, making them difficult to detect when slipped into a drink.

ICYMI: Odd campaign uses 'naked mole rat' to combat online sexual exploitation of teen boys

The straws developed by the teens contain two test strips that turn blue when dipped into a drink that contains a date rape drug. The teens are hoping their straws will be able to detect other drugs in the future.

"Being young women, I feel like this is a problem that we hear about a lot, especially when we came to high school," Baigorri said in an interview with Inside Edition. "It's such a common problem. Statistics say it's one in every five women [that experiences rape], which is so many people."

The three students said they plan to market their product  for now dubbed "Smart Straw"  to the college-age crowd, and are looking to make an inexpensive product that bars, college organizations, and students can easily carry or distribute.

"My older sister is at university where there were reports of date rape drugs being used," Capello told news site A Plus.

"My friends and I knew we needed to come up with a simple solution to test for drugs. I remember my dad always says 'the best ideas are the ideas that help people,' so we just thought of a simple, easy, inexpensive solution  Smart Straws."

Cappello, Baigorri and Roca currently have a patent pending for the design and are looking to start crowdfunding to help launch their product.
Steven G. de Polo / Getty Image

A 23-year-old woman was hospitalized with life-threatening injuries after a man attacked her with a hammer Wednesday morning just outside a hotel on Market Street in San Francisco, police said.

The incident occurred about 3:40 a.m. outside the Travelodge San Francisco Central hotel on Market Street at Valencia Street, police said.
The woman who allegedly abandoned her 5-year-old daughter near the San Francisco Zoo Monday was arrested Wednesday, police said.

Police identified the woman as 22-year-old Samantha Patton of San Francisco. Her daughter was not harmed, said Officer Giselle Talkoff, a spokeswoman for the San Francisco Police Department.

Patton was booked into San Francisco County Jail on suspicion of felony and misdemeanor child endangerment, Talkoff said. She was held on $75,000 bail, jail records show.

Witnesses had seen Patton push her daughter out of a car Monday night, then drive away with another child still in the vehicle, police said. The other child turned out to be her 1-year-old son.

A man who was seen leaving the area on a skateboard turned out to be the father of the boy, police said. Talkoff said he was not arrested.

Police contacted the man, who led them to the 1-year-old, who was being watched by a babysitter in Oakland.

Patton is the mother of both children and surrendered to police Tuesday night. She was questioned and then booked Wednesday, Talkoff said.

She said both of Pattons children are in the custody of Child Protective Services.

Two San Francisco Fire Department medics said they witnessed the incident and called police, who notified Child Protective Services.

Lt. Jonathan Baxter, a spokesman for the Fire Department, said the Medic 67 ambulance was posted in the area when the two medics saw what happened. He declined to comment further, referring questions to police.

The weather in the area where the child was deserted is often more chilly and damp than in other parts of San Francisco, because its so close to the ocean. The temperature reached a low of 53 degrees Monday night, according to the National Weather Service.

Filipa Ioannou and Michael Bodley are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: fioannou@sfchronicle.com, mbodley@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @obioannoukenobi, @michael_bodley
In another sign that FDR's old car is about to go on a state-by-state barnstorming journey, Andrew Cuomo appeared at a rally with Nancy Pelosi last night and vowed to flip a number of Republican-held House seats in the 2018 election.

Speaking at a rally to kick off the New York Fights Back campaign at the Jacob Javits Center, Cuomo told the attendees that he was charging "Congressmen Faso and Collins with violating their office to represent the people of the State of New York," and said that "we promise you, if you violate your office, you defraud the voters, you hurt the people of this state, we will remove you from office," according to Politico.

"New York will be on the front lines of our fight to restore sanity to Washington," Pelosi told the crowd according to amNewYork.

Both John Faso and Chris Collins voted in favor of Trump's American Health Care Act when it came up for a vote, though Collins later took heat for appearing on CNN and admitting that he didn't read the full text of the bill before he voted for it. Collins and Faso were also instrumental in getting the state's Republican House delegation to vote for the bill by negotiating language into it that would allow counties in New York State to pass their Medicaid payments back to the state, a tactic that was derisively referred to as "The Buffalo Bribe."

Beyond Faso and Collins, New York Fights Back also plans to raise money for candidates running against Representatives Lee Zeldin, Elise Stefanik, Claudia Tenney, and Tom Reed. The News pointed out that Staten Island Representative Dan Donovan, who voted against the AHCA, won't be targeted by the group.

Cuomo's well-publicized vow to assist national Democrats with taking back a number of House seats in the state is somewhat out of character for a governor who's been lukewarm at best at the prospect of winning Democratic control of every branch of government on the state level. Cuomo's efforts to flip the State Senate in 2014 were described as "underwhelming," and his late-in-the-game endorsements in the 2016 State Senate races were also criticized by Democratic activists. Recently, Cuomo suggested it would be "optimal" if Democrats controlled the State Senate, weeks after saying that it "wasn't successful" the last time Democrats controlled the Assembly, State Senate and governor's mansion.
Getty Images

A 28-year-old man was in a hospital fighting for his life after getting shot early Wednesday in the Mission District of San Francisco, police said.

The shooting occurred about 2:45 a.m. on the 800 block of Capp Street, about two blocks from the 24th Street Mission BART station, police said.
A 36-year-old woman accused of popping methamphetamine into the mouth of a 2-year-old she came across at a Berkeley playground was arrested, police said Tuesday.

The woman, Sayyadina Thomas, was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder Monday afternoon following the incident, according to the Berkeley Police Department.
Just one third of Americans approve of the job President Trump is doing, his lowest-yet approval rating with signs of an eroding Trump "base," according to a national Quinnipiac University Poll released on Wednesday.

The survey, taken May 31 to June 6, found 34 percent of those surveyed giving Trump a thumbs-up while 57 percent disapprove of the job being done by America's 45th president.

"There is zero good news for President Trump in this survey, just a continued slide into the chasm of doubt about his policies and his very fitness to serve," said Tim Malloy, assistant director of polling at Quinnipiac.

The president's announcement last week, withdrawing the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement, did not go down well with the American people.

The Quinnipiac poll found that 62 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump's Paris pullout: Only 32 percent approve.

In a wider finding, Quinnipiac reported that three quarters of Americans are "very concerned" or "somewhat concerned" with human-caused climate change. More than two-thirds of those surveyed felt that the United States should be doing more -- not less -- to address the problem.

The poll revealed deep suspicions about alleged Trump connections to Russia: 31 percent feel he did something illegal in his relationship with Russia, while 29 percent believe Trump behaved unethically but not illegally. Just 32 percent feel he did nothing wrong.

A majority of Americans, 54 percent, believe that Trump is too friendly toward the Russian government, the poll found.

Nor is the president reassuring. Overall, 68 percent of those surveyed -- including 32 percent of Republicans -- agreed that Trump is "not level-headed." Only 29 percent believe he is level-headed.

"With a third of the members of his own party questioning his level headedness, this is clearly the moment the president needs to stead the ship," said Malloy.

The distrust extends to other features of Trump's leadership. By a 59-36 percent margin, those surveyed do not feel Trump is honest. Fifty-eight percent of those surveyed do not feel the 45th president has good leadership skills: 39 percent believe that he has.

The Quinnipiac survey included 1,361 voters and has a margin of error of plus/minus 3.2 percent.
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"The music capital of the world, starting Friday, will be the Monterey County Fairgrounds, not Nashville, not Tin Pan Alley and neither London nor Hollywood," wrote Ralph J. Gleason in The San Francisco Chronicle on June 11, 1967, days before music history would be made.

"The first annual Monterey International Pop Festival," he continued, "is bringing to the Fairgrounds Arena the greatest aggregation of popular song stars ever assembled in any one place for a weekend event."

Gleason was hardly hyperbolizing.

Monterey Pop, held June 16 to 18, 1967, is the rock festival that started it all, beckoning hippies to the seaside town of Monterey while the tune of "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)" wafted softly through the air.

As Ben Sisario writes in the New York Times, Monterey Pop "served as the blueprint for the explosion of rock festivals that culminated in Woodstock, and with its crowds of face-painted hippies and slogan of 'music, love and flowers,' Monterey defined the look, spirit and sound of the Summer of Love."

Scroll through the above gallery to glimpse some of the sights at the 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival.

Although pivotal in the history of rock n' roll, the festival was actually puny by modern festival standards.

"Everybody assumes it was like Woodstock, but there were probably 10,000 people, total," D.A. Pennebaker, who filmed the festival, told The Chronicle in March. For comparison, over 400,000 flocked to Woodstock two years later. An estimated 70,000 attended just the first day of Outside Lands in Golden Gate Park last year.

Monterey Pop delivered on big pop names with now-historic performances from Jimi Hendrix, The Who, and Simon and Garfunkel. Smaller names, too, had their moments in the spotlight; tunes of San Francisco's Jefferson Airplane and Grateful Dead were launched out of local fandom and into the sound systems of rock n' roll fans globally.

Famous or obscure, acts were asked to perform for free; organizers Lou Adler and John Phillips (of the Mamas and the Papas) deemed the festival a charity event.

Five decades later, on the exact same calendar dates, the Monterey International Pop Festival will celebrate its 50th anniversary with 24 performers on a single stage.

See also: Monterey Pop 50th anniversary concert lineup announced

Acts like Father John Misty, Norah Jones, and Jack Johnson will play on the same grounds as the 60s rock legends, although for much higher prices. Tickets for the original show cost $3 to $6.50 a day, compared to $105 for a one-day general admission pass at this year's festival.

The price is but fine print for many. As Jim James, who performs on the Saturday of the festival, explained to the Times, "There's so much at stake in the world and so much trouble in the world. We need as many reasons as possible to get together in the name of peace and love."

Read Michelle Robertsons latest stories and send her news tips at mrobertson@sfchronicle.com.
1 Portland stabbing: A grand jury has indicted Jeremy Christian, the man accused of killing two passengers and wounding a third on a Portland, Ore., train last month. The indictment returned Tuesday charges Christian with aggravated murder, attempted murder, assault, menacing, intimidation and unlawful use of a weapon. The 35-year-old will be arraigned on the indictment Wednesday. Prosecutors say Christian boarded the train May 26 and yelled hateful comments at two black teenage girls, one of whom was wearing an Islamic head covering called a hijab. Prosecutors say he then turned his attention to three men, stabbing each of them in the neck.

2 Mosque suit settled: A Chicago suburb that prevented a Muslim group from converting a vacant building into a mosque will pay the group $580,000 and be required to train city employees on religious land-use law, the U.S. Justice Department said Tuesday. The department said Des Plaines, Ill., settled a lawsuit the department brought and another one filed by the Society of American Bosnians and Herzegovinians. Settlements stem from a 2013 vote by the Des Plaines City Council to deny the groups rezoning request. The Justice Department said its complaint alleged that Des Plaines had treated non-Muslim religious groups better than it treated the Bosnian Muslim congregation.
CINCINNATI  President Trump promised Wednesday to create a first-class system of roads, bridges and waterways by using $200 billion in public funds to generate $1 trillion in investment to pay for construction projects that most public officials agree are badly needed and long overdue.

America must have the best, fastest and most reliable infrastructure anywhere in the world, Trump said, pushing his infrastructure plan in middle America as Washington geared up for Thursdays appearance before Congress by fired FBI Director James Comey.

We will fix it, said Trump, standing along the Ohio River. We will create the first-class infrastructure our country and our people deserve.

In the speech, the president also pressed the Senate to send him a health care bill, criticized congressional Democrats as obstructionists and revisited his controversial decision to pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement.

Trump said that as he campaigned across the country last year, people often asked him why the U.S. was spending money to rebuild other countries when the roads and bridges they travel on needed rebuilding, too.

Trump declared the days of spending on other nations are over: Its time to rebuild our country and to put America first, he said.

While infrastructure initially was seen as an area where Republican and Democrats could work together, Democrats have balked at Trumps plan for financing improvements, arguing it would result in taxpayer-funded profits for corporations with the cost offloaded on consumers.

Before the speech, Trump met aboard Air Force One with a pair of families the White House said are victims of the Obama-era health care law that the president and congressional Republicans want to repeal and replace.

Now its time for the Senate to act and save Americans from this catastrophic event because Obamacare is dead, Trump said. Obamacare was one of the biggest broken promises in the history of politics. Remember you can keep your doctor, you can keep your plan? Didnt work out that way.

Trump also raised his announcement last week that he was pulling the U.S. out of what he dismissively referred to as the so-called Paris climate accord. Trump has said the pact that nearly 200 nations agreed to in 2015 was unfair to the United States.

Jill Colvin is an Associated Press writer.
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HOUSTON  A leaked intelligence document outlining alleged attempts by Russian military intelligence to hack into U.S. election systems is the latest evidence suggesting a broad and sophisticated foreign attack on the integrity of the nations elections.

And it underscores the contention of security experts and computer scientists that the highly decentralized, often ramshackle U.S. election system remains profoundly vulnerable to trickery or sabotage.

The document, purportedly produced by the National Security Agency, does not indicate whether actual vote-tampering occurred. But it adds significant new detail to previous U.S. intelligence assessments that alleged Russia-backed hackers had compromised elements of Americas electoral machinery. It also suggests that attackers may also have been laying groundwork for future subversive activity.

The operation described in the document could have given attackers a foothold into the IT systems of elections offices around the country that they could use to infect machines and launch a vote-stealing attack, said J. Alex Halderman, a University of Michigan computer scientist. We dont have evidence that that happened, he said, but thats a very real possibility.

Computer scientists have proven in the lab that once sophisticated attackers are inside an election network, they could manipulate pre-election programming of its systems and alter results without leaving a trace.

Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Tuesday that hacking into state voting systems ahead of the Nov. 8 vote was more widespread than has been disclosed.

Attempts by Russia to break into a number of our state voting processes was broad-based, he said, without offering details. In Moscow, a Kremlin spokesman categorically denied Tuesday that Moscow had tried to hack the U.S. elections.

Warner did not directly address the classified intelligence report published Monday by the Intercept, an online news outlet. The Associated Press has not independently verified the authenticity of the report, although its apparent leaker, NSA contract worker Reality Leigh Winner, was arrested last weekend in Georgia.

The NSA document says Russian military intelligence first targeted employees of a Florida voting systems supplier in August. Apparently exploiting technical data obtained in that operation, the cyberspies later sent phishing emails to more than 100 local U.S. election officials just days ahead of the Nov. 8 vote, intent on stealing their log-in credentials and breaking into the their systems, the document says.

Frank Bajak and Raphael Satter are Associated Press writers.
Haifa is on the "front line" in any action in the north but this blog looks at life in the shadow of danger to all of Israel
A tweet from the City of Hayward promoting a city council meeting about Hayward's sanctuary city status received criticism on Tuesday f0r its inclusion of a meme.

The tweet was posted at 10:45 a.m. Tuesday and featured a drawing of a taco with the phrase, "Let's Taco Bout It."
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The sight of a humpback whale fluke set against the New York City skyline is an anomaly no longer.

For the first time in 100 years, sizable numbers of humpback whales are being spotted in the waters off NYC, and it's thanks to years of environmental clean-up efforts, Popular Science reports.

"Because of the improvement of the water quality, algae and zooplankton have multiplied, giving good food for the menhaden [a small fish eaten by whales], which have returned in numbers that the fishermen say they have not seen in their lifetimes," Gotham Whales founder Paul L. Sieswerda told Pop Sci.

Until the enactment of the Clean Water Act in 1977, New York City's waters were a dumping ground for everything from medical waste to factory run-off. Some of those chemicals were cancer-causing, the EPA said.

New Yorkers have seen a significant rise in whale sightings over the past few years, and the trend is only accelerating in 2017. The whales are thought to be ducking into New York for a bit of sightseeing and feeding on their migration routes up and down the coast. Back in November, a whale was seen near the Statue of Liberty, prompting the Coast Guard to send out warnings to nearby boaters.

The whale sightings are so frequent, there are multiple ferry companies offering whale-watching tours.

On a recent American Princess Cruises excursion, lucky whale-watchers saw four humpbacks in a single trip. In 2016, the Telegraph reported that 20 whales were seen all year.

A similar trend, also credited to conservation efforts, has been seen with the shark population in California. The Clean Water Act and the Marine Life Protection Act have boosted the numbers of great white sharks  and marine mammals in general  according to scientists.
The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency is beginning to more strictly enforce rules against lakeside property owners who are potentially endangering swimmers with unauthorized fence construction.

In at least three cases, property owners failed to get a permit from a bi-state regulatory agency before they started construction to build a fence that runs "lakeward," or towards the lake, on their land. That led to fences that extended too far down towards the water (to below the lake's high water mark at 6,229 feet), and as a result, became partially immersed in the water after it rose following the drought. Now, the fences and fencing material can pose an injury risk to people swimming in the lake.
SANTA CRUZ, Calif.  The family of Jack O'Neill, O'Neill Wetsuits, and O'Neill Surf Shop invites everyone to join in a paddleout and day-long celebration of O'Neill's life and adventures at his favorite beach, Pleasure Point in Santa Cruz, on Sunday July 9, 2017, starting at 11 a.m.

O'Neill, a legend in the surfing world, died June 2 at age 94 of natural causes.
SETUP AND DESIGN

The unit looks great itself and comes with a DLP chip with 1080p resolution. The color wheel spins at 4x speed at 60Hz and 6x at 50Hz, making this a very dynamic model with 2200 lumens for image brightness. The device weighs under eight pounds and is 14.98L x 4.79H x 10.91W inches, making it fairly portable. It even ships with an awesome carry bag that fits the unit and accessories, along with room for movies and video games. The HT2150ST has a sleek, glossy white finish with a matte silver front end with the BenQ name on both the front and top of the unit. The lens is spherical in nature with a red painted ring around it.

On top of the projector, there is a sliding door with the Zoom and Focus elements, which is 1.2:1. Also on top of the unit is the power button, a menu and source button, as well as a back button, along with a curser and OK/Enter button, making it easy to navigate menus if you don't use the remote control. The back of the HT2150ST comes with two HDMI inputs, one with MHL support if needed. A VGA input and a RS-232 port are included as well. There is also a USB port and mini USB port on the back of the panel in case you want to hook up a flash drive or mobile device. Lastly, there are two 3.5mm audio jacks, including an input and output for easy to hookup external speakers. If you have a full setup with a receiver, surround sound, and video game systems or Blu-ray players, a simple HDMI cable will do the job here. There is an internal 10-watt stereo speaker system as well. Finally, there are vents on all sides of the HT2150ST, making the fan noise almost non-existent, which is very nice.

The remote itself is quite nice and feels sturdy and has a bit of weight to it without that cheap plastic feel. The remote control is white and gray and is simple to use. There is a Light button on the remote that when pressed, lights up buttons in a bright red glow, making it very easy to see in the dark. It doesn't turn off until you click the Light button again. There are menu navigation controls, a 3D button, PiP, Menu, Source, and back buttons, all clearly labeled. Volume, mute, play, pause, rewind, and fast forward buttons are there as well. Perhaps the best thing with this remote are the nine buttons used to calibrate your color and sharpness options, along with gamma, contrast, and color temperature. Two AAA batteries are also included.

Setup of the HT2150ST is super easy. Once plugged in, the menu screen will appear in a great purple and black color scheme with a side bar of options visible. Once highlighted, a bigger menu bar will appear with even more options, including video, audio, 3D, Fast Mode, System Settings, and more. There are options to calibrate the Lamp Power from Normal to Eco to SmartEco, as well as a two-point grayscale and gamma and color. In addition to that, you can change the image brightness from Game to Vivid or Cinema. There are ISF Day and Night options too, along with all of the contrast, sharpness, and brightness levels to make adjustments. The Fast Mode option will allow you to adjust the input lag, which is excellent here because it's super-fast for gaming. You'll also be able to adjust the screen size, wall and screen color compensations for your best image, HDMI range control, and 3D options. I left the 3D option on auto. The HT2150ST does not come with 3D glasses, but you can purchase separate 3D glasses online for a reasonable price. Needless to say, the setup and settings menu is extremely easy to use and read.
Longtime conservation and access advocate and former fish and wildlife commissioner Ron Moody died over the weekend at his home in Lewistown.

A native of Tennessee, Moody moved to Montana in the 1990s and became deeply involved with a number of sportsmen groups and citizen advisory committees. His affiliations included the Public Lands and Waters Access Association, Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, Montana Wildlife Federation, BLM Resource Advisory Council for central Montana, Boone & Crockett Club, Pheasants Forever, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, local sportsmen groups and many others.

Often in leadership roles, he placed himself at the forefront of contentious issues, with those who knew him describing a receptive approach respected by even those who disagreed with him.

A lot of people move here to Montana for outdoor recreation, but most move here to partake and very few give back, said Chris Marchion with Anaconda Sportsmans Club. Ron was a guy that partook but recognized and wanted to contribute back to management and efforts that make Montana the great place it is.

His son Ben Moody recalled his father as a pillar of their family and influence on him and his grandchildren. As Ben overcame difficulties in his life, he saw his dads pride, saying you just couldnt spread him too thin, there was always enough of him to go around.

During early deer hunts in Mississippi, his father told stories of his childhood and yearly trips to Yellowstone or other western destinations.

It fascinated him out here, the beauty and the animals, Ben said.

While working in California for FedEx, Ron Moody jumped at the opportunity to take a demotion that moved him to Montana. An intelligent and a voracious reader, he never said no to a cause he believed in, Ben said.

Once he was here, you couldnt move him out, he said. And once he retired it became his mission to make his life about this great state that he experienced when he was that child and leaving it better for his grandchildren and your grandchildren.

Moody served on the then Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission from 2009 to 2013  a time when the commission took up several controversial issues such as setting some of the first wolf hunting seasons, bison buffer zones and hunting near Yellowstone National Park, and land acquisitions.

He did an outstanding job as a commissioner, was always well prepared and understood the material and was heavily engaged on access, said Shane Colton, who chaired the commission during Moodys term, and was recently appointed again. Ron never backed away from any controversy and he didnt make statements for the purposes of appeasement. You didnt know exactly where he would fall, but it became very clear when he did take a position he wouldnt apologize and wouldnt waver from it.

Commission chairman Dan Vermillion also served with Moody and echoed his stalwart nature when it came to managing fish and wildlife with science rather than politics.

He was as selfless a conservationist as Ive ever worked with, Vermillion said. He cared deeply about public ownership of wildlife and expanding access to opportunities for people to enjoy them. He really lived the creed with his dedication to those sorts of issues.

Politics was not always absent from Moodys work, as he ran unsuccessfully for the Legislature in 2014 based largely on his conservation background. He also worked on former Gov. Brian Schweitzers campaign and formerly chaired the Fergus County Democratic Central Committee, according to his election website.

He also worked as a newspaper editor, reporter and photographer, independent business owner, stock broker and corporate communications specialist. More recently, his blog The Bull Moose Gazette contained his writings and aggregated Montana wildlife and conservation news.

Access became a consistent theme in his advocacy with stream access and public land access front and center. In the last couple of years Moody became one of the primary opposition voices as BLM considered trading Durfee Hills near Lewistown to the Wilks brothers, a trade the agency declined to pursue amid public pressure.

Ron was a wonderful communicator, he had a heart and a soul for conservation, heart and soul was always at ground level, said JW Westman with Montana Sportsmen Alliance. Ron was somewhat of a cheerleader for the ordinary conservationist including hunters anglers and whoever enjoyed our outdoor Montana traditions. The halls of Montana conservation will be a lot emptier with Ron's passing.

Ben Moody echoed his fathers passion as an advocate for the average hunter and angler. Many Montanans do not realize how different hunting is in other parts of country. Simply finding a place to hunt often means a hunt club membership costing thousands of dollars, he said.

He came here and recognized what Montana had in its public lands, he said. He fought for the guy with the $20 bill in his pocket to put gas in his truck and get to where he could hunt and shoot a deer with a gun he saved up two years to buy. Thats the guy he fought for.

Moodys memorial service will be held Wednesday in Lewistown. His family asked that donations be made to BHA, PLWA or other conservation organizations in lieu of flowers.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, talks with The Washington Post columnist David Ignatius about the status of that committees investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and potential ties to the Trump team. Schiff's committee will subpoena former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and has called for a review of White House senior advisor Jared Kushners security clearance in light of reports about meetings with Russian officials.

Follow LIVE as Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, discusses the committee's investigation into Russian interference with the 2016 election and the potential involvement of the White House.

Schiff will be in discussion with Washington Post columnist David Ignatius starting at 3:30 p.m. PDT. You can watch the video above.

The interview comes amid increased interest in the Capitol Hill intelligence probes. Former FBI director James Comey will testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday morning, in an event that's quickly becoming must-see TV. Bars in San Francisco and around the country will open early to broadcast Comey's testimony.

Here's the latest from Washington Post writers Devlin Barrett and Ellen Nakashima on the Comey appearance:

When James Comey sits down before a microphone Thursday in his first public appearance since he was fired as director of the FBI, a key question he is likely to face is whether he believes President Donald Trump tried to obstruct an ongoing federal probe of his associates.

Even before Comey has uttered a word, some predict the hearing will be historic - a moment in which a former senior official has a nationally televised platform to repudiate a president who has lashed out at the federal government he leads.

"Comey has made a career of providing bombshell testimony to Congress,'' said Tracy Schmaler, a former Senate Judiciary Committee staffer who attended a 2007 hearing in which Comey captivated the capital with an account of apparent White House interference with Justice Department decision-making. "In that respect, Thursday will be what everyone's expecting - the most anticipated hearing so far in the Trump administration."

The president may also be watching. Though he has scheduled a midday public appearance, Trump may live-tweet his reactions if he feels prompted to respond to Comey's testimony, according to two White House officials who were not authorized to speak publicly.

White House staffers have signaled they will try to portray Comey as an unreliable witness. "The last time he testified under oath, the FBI had to scurry to correct the testimony,'' adviser Kellyanne Conway said earlier this week. That was a reference to Comey's May 3 congressional testimony, in which the then-FBI director, as he was describing the bureau's probe of Hillary Clinton's emails, misstated the number and type of emails forwarded by a Clinton aide.

After the president abruptly fired Comey last month, associates of the former FBI director revealed the president had repeatedly pressed him about the investigation of possible contacts between his associates and Russian operatives. They said Comey felt the conversations with the president often veered into improper areas, and the FBI director took pains to prepare for the talks with Trump and to make detailed written records after each one.

In a January dinner meeting, the president asked Comey to pledge loyalty to him but the director demurred, according to these associates, former colleagues of Comey. The next month, Trump asked Comey to drop the investigation of Trump's former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, and again the director demurred, according to associates.

In Thursday's testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Comey is expected to describe those conversations in detail, although he will be careful not to discuss classified information, which is likely to prevent him from providing new details about the Russia probe, associates said.

Comey also will try to steer clear of saying anything that could compromise or constrain the work of special counsel Robert Mueller, now heading up the investigation, such as offering legal or prosecutorial judgments, these people said.

One Comey associate said lawmakers should expect a vivid picture of his private interactions with the president.

In 2007, Comey offered riveting testimony to a Senate panel about a confrontation he had at a hospital with senior White House aides over a classified surveillance program. His dramatic telling of that story helped lead to the resignation of President George W. Bush's attorney general, Alberto Gonzales.

The showdown did much to cement his reputation as a law enforcement official willing to stand up to his political bosses when he thought they were wrong. Comey's testimony then was "riveting," Schmaler said - a rare moment when lawmakers essentially stopped talking and just let a witness speak for 20 minutes straight. As important as that hearing was, the stakes - and the buildup - to Thursday's appearance are even bigger.

"Now we're actually going to know what Comey's views, thoughts and reactions were when the president asked him those questions," Schmaler said. "I will be curious to see whether and how he tries to lay a foundation for possible obstruction of justice."

Analysts who have studied Comey's career expect he will tell the tale in a way that draws clear moral lines through what might otherwise be murky legal matters. "James Comey has the quiet confidence and a track record of knowing how to dominate, how to direct the story," said Karen Greenberg, the director of the Center on National Security at Fordham University.

"He trusts his conscience, and he's not afraid to stand up to people who he thinks are wrong," she said. "It's where he sees morality intersect with the law."

In this case, she said, his answers could help the public understand that attempts to interfere with the justice system are wrong.

"This is a moment in history to say that the attack on the justice system stops here," she said.

Senior senators, meanwhile, have begun to preview their lines of questioning for Thursday's hearing.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, told CBS that her questions would focus on Trump's assertion that Comey had assured him three times that he was not under investigation. "That phrase raises a lot of questions in my mind," she said. "Does Mr. Comey agree that that was what was said?"

Democrats are expected to press Comey about conversations not just with the president but also with other senior administration officials, such as Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the committee's top Democrat, has said that some of his questions will focus on Jared Kushner, Trump's influential son-in-law and a senior White House adviser, and his contacts before and after the election with Russian officials.

A day before Comey's testimony, Rosenstein will face his own grilling, in his first public testimony since he penned a controversial memo that laid out a public case for firing Comey.

Democrats on Wednesday also will seek to have Rosenstein lay out publicly what he has told senators in private - that he knew Trump was going to fire Comey before he wrote his memo, essentially an admission that he knew his memo was going to be used in the effort.

Also scheduled to appear Wednesday are National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers and Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats. The Washington Post reported that Trump asked both men, in separate conversations, to publicly state that there was no evidence of collusion between Trump associates and Russian officials. Both men considered the request inappropriate and declined to do so.

Committee Democrats will also want to press Rogers and Coats on that report, Senate aides said.
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Yes, a 825-square-foot cottage for sale in Mountain View is charming, sweet and light-filled, but is it really worth $1.9 million?

Even in the Silicon Valley, where real estate prices are notoriously crazy, the price seems shocking.

The average price per square foot in Mountain View is $990, according to Trulia, and if sold for its listing price, this house would go for $2,288 per square foot.

But here's the deal with this two-bedroom, one-bath property at 2006 Carol Ave.: It's not about the structure. It's all about the lot offering the potential for that big dream home, and the location.

"The value is in the land, the lot, because of its characteristics  size, regular shape, buildability  and location," wrote listing agent Daniel Berman of Pacific Century Realty in an email. "This is a location that's hard to beat, tucked away in a quiet corner at the end of a small street. You've got all the conveniences of urban living, nestled in a secluded country-like enclave."

That enclave is in the heart of Mountain View's Martens-Carmelita neighborhood. It's close to shops, restaurants, the El Camino YMCA and leafy Cuesta Park that has a children's playground and a summer outdoor concert series.

Homes don't come up for sale in Martens-Carmelita often. In the last year, there were four sales, according to Redfin, including one home similar to the Carol Ave. listing. The 1,000-square foot bungalow, far less adorable than the one pictured above, sits on a 10,799-square-foot lot and sold for $1.983 million in March. In that case, the price on 2006 Carol Ave. seems about right.

"Real estate is all about 'comps,' recent sales of roughly comparable properties in the immediate area. Comps are the main basis for assessing value," Berman said. "In this case, a recent comp sold for $2 million. So it's a no-brainer: that is the approximate current market value of this property."
LONDON  Questions about whether the British government could have done more to prevent the terrorist attack in London over the weekend mounted on Tuesday, two days before a national election, as new details emerged about the three men who carried out the deadly assault.

The authorities identified two assailants  Khuram Shazad Butt, 27, and Rachid Redouane, 30  on Monday, and the British police on Tuesday confirmed the identity of the third as Youssef Zaghba, 22, an Italian of Moroccan descent.
LONDON  The Italian mother of one of the London Bridge attackers said Wednesday that her 22-year-old son became radicalized in Britain, falling under the spell of Islamic extremism and confiding to her that he had dreams of moving to Syria.

Valeria Khadija Collina said her son Youssef Zaghba, an Italian national of Moroccan descent, told her he wanted to go to Syria to start a family in a religious Islamic climate  not to fight. He changed, she said, when he went to Britain about a year ago and was seduced by radical views propagated on the Internet.

Last year ... when I went to England, he was a bit more rigid, Collina, a convert to Islam, told reporters in a series of interviews Wednesday. From his face, from his look, I could see there was a radicalization, as you say, and this happened in England, absolutely.

Police have named Zaghba as one of the three attackers who drove a rented van into pedestrians on London Bridge before fleeing into a busy market place and stabbing those who crossed their path. Eight people were killed and dozens were injured. All three of the attackers were shot dead by police.

The other two attackers were identified as Khurum Butt, a 27-year-old whose extremist views had been reported to police, and 30-year-old Rachid Redouane, also known as Rachid Elkhdar, a Moroccan pastry chef. It was not immediately clear how the three knew each other, but Collina said she recognized both Butt and Elkhdar as friends of her son.

At least two of the attackers were known to British intelligence and law-enforcement officials, raising questions about whether anything could have been done to prevent the assault.

French President Emmanuel Macron, meanwhile, said Wednesday that a third French victim has been identified among those killed. He did not identify the victim, but British police said the next of kin of 45-year-old Xavier Thomas were informed.

The Spanish government and the siblings of Ignacio Echeverria, a 39-year-old banker, also received confirmation Wednesday that he was one of the eight people killed. Echeverria was last seen lying on the ground near London Bridge after he confronted the assailants with a skateboard.

Paisley Dodds and Nicole Winfield are Associated Press writers.
YANGON, Myanmar  Searchers found bodies and debris Thursday from the wreckage of a military transport plane that disappeared with 122 people on board shortly after taking off Wednesday afternoon from an air base in the southern part of Myanmar, military officials said.

The plane was carrying relatives of Myanmar soldiers, including children, as well as 14 crew members, and there was no word yet on whether there were any survivors.

The navy and air force mobilized ships and planes to search for the aircraft in the area near Myeik air base, about 350 miles south of the countrys commercial capital, Yangon, the office of the commander in chief, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, said in a statement. The plane, a Chinese-made Y-8, was en route to Yangon.

The flight path would have taken the aircraft over the Andaman Sea. The weather in the area was bad, residents said, with pounding rain typical of the monsoon season that is now enveloping Myanmar.

Myanmars military plays an important political role in the country even as a civilian government, with Aung San Suu Kyi as its nominal head, has been in power since 2016. The army holds 25 percent of the seats in parliament and controls three crucial ministries, including home affairs.

The missing plane had logged 809 flying hours, a statement on the militarys Facebook page said. The Y-8 is commonly used for transport, reconnaissance, and search and rescue. It has four propellers and is modeled on a Russian prototype, according to a description in the Chinese state news media.

Local news media quoted Myanmars Defense Ministry as saying that in 2015, the air force had bought 29 airplanes and seven helicopters in the preceding four years,,

Jane Perlez and Wai Moe are New York Times writers.
Kim Jun-beom/Associated Press

TOKYO  South Koreas newly elected president, Moon Jae-in, has suspended the deployment of a U.S. missile defense system, an apparent concession to China and a significant break with the United States on policy toward North Korea.

In comments to reporters, a senior official from the presidential Blue House in Seoul said Wednesday that the two launchers of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system that had been installed could remain but that four launchers that had yet to be deployed would not be set up until the administration completed an environmental assessment.
Aaron Cantu, a staff writer at the Santa Fe Reporter, has been indicted by a federal grand jury on charges that he participated in a riot while working as a journalist during protests in Washington, DC on Inauguration Day.

Cantu faces eight felony countsincluding inciting a riot, rioting, conspiracy to riot and five counts of destruction of property. The grand jury handed up the indictment last week.

On January 20, a collection of DC police and federal law enforcement officers arrested more than 200 people in connection with a rally that began as a protest, but turned destructive as several people broke the windows of businesses, damaged vehicles and allegedly caused a police officer to break his wrist.

Cantu was not named specifically by prosecutors as the cause of any of the destruction, as some defendants were. Instead, the indictment named him as being present while the damage happened. The arrests have been criticized by the American Civil Liberties Union, other civil rights groups and newspapers as overly broad and lacking hard evidence.

Video from the conservative media group The Rebel shows glimpses of Cantu off to the side of the protests with other journalists, washing what appears to be pepper spray from his eyes. Hes standing next to a conservative journalist as she narrates the scene.

Aaron Cantu's press credential photo. (Anson Stevens-Bollen)

Julie Ann Grimm, editor and publisher of SFR, said the indictment will not affect Cantus status at the newspaper, where hes worked since April.

Aaron is an experienced journalist who disclosed this pending case during the hiring process. We stand behind him and look forward to his continued good work in his new home in Santa Fe.

Neither Cantu nor his attorneys at the DC firm of Gibson and Dunn would comment on the indictment. Cantu will be arraigned in Washington, DC on Friday, June 9. He has previously said he will plead not guilty.

Anyone out there who was not involved in rioting shouldnt be prosecuted, Gregg Leslie, legal defense director for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, tells SFR. Thats the amazing thing about the DC protests, is that they know that a handful of people threw bricks through windows and one person threw something at an officer. And they arrested over 200 people. They know that everyone they arrested was not participating in a crime.

Leslie noted that the US Attorneys office has not said why it dropped charges against some journalists while pursuing charges against Cantu and a photographer who was livestreaming the event. Bill Miller, a spokesman for the US Attorney in Washington DC told SFR in an email, "We typically do not comment on pending cases and have no further comment on the felony rioting matters."

In addition to covering the protests as part of his role as senior editor for the online magazine The New Inquiry, Cantu initially offered to write a firsthand account of his experience for VICE before deciding against it in light of possible charges. Cantu has written for VICE, The Intercept, The Nation and other publications.

Cantu is the last person to face indictment out of more than 200 people being prosecuted by the US Attorney for the District of Columbia. He is one of two journalists whose charges have not been dropped by acting US Attorney Channing Phillips, an Obama appointee still awaiting US Senate confirmation.

Video from The Rebel (Cantu at lower right of screen at 8:19):

Santa Fe Reporter
I visited Ventana Fine Arts retrospective for Paul-Henri Bourguignon (1906-1988) last Thursday morning, a few hours before President Donald Trumps announcement that the United States was leaving the Paris Agreement. News of the decision had already spilled from his sieve-like administration, but I was still nervously checking my phone for updates as I entered the gallery. Trumps rage-filled, disturbingly kinetic populismslowed for a time by incompetence and scandalwas churning again, and our nation would soon take another dangerous lurch towards isolationism.

There was perhaps no better place to be than an art show by an American immigrant who'd witnessed great human suffering, and emerged as a champion of compassion. Bourguignon's quintessentially modernist brushstrokes capture the essence of a bolder, more generous American spirit.

Bourguignon was born in Belgium in 1906, and studied painting at the Brussels Academie Royale des Beaux-Arts. One of his teachers, the post-impressionist painter Alfred Bastien, had fought in the Belgian Army during World War I and worked as a war artist. For Bourguignon, Bastien's swirling, dusky depictions of soldiers on the battlefield would find their echo in the devastation of World War II.

In the years before the conflict, Bourguignon had mounted successful shows, completed a second degree in art history and traveled the world. When Germany occupied Belgium in 1940, he found himself trapped in a war zone. He would take a job at an agency that provided ration stamps to foreign travelers, and burned the midnight oil writing a play.

From the rubble of WWII rose a generation of modernist artists who were keenly aware of humanity's dark side, but also harbored a resilient optimism. Bourguignon became an art critic for the Belgian publications Le Phare and Le Phare Dimanche. In 1947, he eagerly accepted an assignment to report on Haiti's burgeoning art movement. During his 15-month stay, he took up photography and told stories of Haiti's vibrant culture and devastating struggles with poverty.

Bourguignon met his wife, the anthropologist Erika Eichhorn, while he was in Haiti. After an adventure through Peru, he moved to Columbus, Ohio, where Eichhorn had taken a teaching position at Ohio State University.

This is technically the start of the Ventana exhibition's timeline. Only one piece in the show is from before 1950, when Bourguignon moved to the United States, but all of the works bear marks of the artist's remarkable path to get there. In acrylic, gouache and pastel, Bourguignon conjured visions of the places he'd been and the people he befriended. Numerous landscapes and cityscapes are on view, showing France, Spain, Belgium and Haiti in a loose, energetic style. The real standouts, however, are the portraits, which Bourguignon painted from memory, often abstracting features to emphasize heightened emotional states.

Above Ventana's wooden fireplace, an acrylic painting called "The Glance" shows a mournful face with enormous, dark eyes embedded in a field of grey. In "Dark Hair," a woman glares from her frame with potent restlessness. The artist employs choppy brushstrokes for a group portrait titled "Five Haitian Men," which shows its subjects laughing and telling stories.

Bourguignon's profound empathy for his subjects shone through in each portrait, imbuing the work with a magnetism that held me in its power for long, poignant moments. Even paintings that communicated pain and sorrow possessed a serenity that came with the power of human connection. This is what is gained by opening up to the wider world, and seeking understanding instead of fearing the unknown.

When I left Ventana, I realized with surprise that I hadn't checked the news once in my time there. As the realities of the world came rushing back in, Bourguignon stayed with me.



A Retrospective - 50 years a modernist: Paul-Henri Bourguignon

Reception for ARTsmart's Edible Art Tour: 5 pm Saturday June 10. $35.

Ventana Fine Art,

400 Canyon Road,

746-8815.



Editors note: Jordan Eddy is leaving SFR for full-time gallery work. Well miss his keen eye and accomplished writing, and we wish him well.

Santa Fe Reporter
A lot of us are probably looking around Santa Fe right now thinking, Damn, Im just one personhow can I possibly know all of the things going down? I get it, so heres a big old massive edition of First Tracks, wherein I shall relate to you some pretty cool information about local upcoming stuffs.

The new Second Street Brewery location (2920 Rufina St.) just picked up a $100,000 Local Economic Development Act grant from the city to sweeten their already-pretty-sweet new space. This means they'll have to create five new production jobs in the next few years, but also that our local beer situation is safe. We visited the space in April and it was cooler than we ever thought possibleplus, since we apparently can't go very long without mentioning her, Eliza Lutz of Matron Records is heading up their promotional efforts and aims to keep things a little more cutting-edge.

It appears Skylight (139 W San Franscisco St., 982-0775) may just be on the mend, but before we bust out the Champagne, let's all agree to be cautiously optimistic. Owner Joe Ray Sandoval came by to say (this may be a tad paraphrased), "Hey, Alexyou're a cool guy and I like you a lot!" at the Wavves show on May 30 and let us know to expect the club to continue special events for the foreseeable future. By the way, if you missed Wavves, you do music wrong. Even my dumb friend Jasper who loves blink-182 bought their new album You're Welcome and was like, "Dude, it's totally good!" And then I was all like, "Tell me something I don't know, jabroni."

I've mentioned this, but it bears repeating: Don't miss Los Angeles' El Ten Eleven in the Railyard (Market and Alcaldesa Streets) on Saturday June 10 at 7 pm. It's free, it's part of the Currents New Media Festival (which means a crazy visual component) and, as far as experimental rock duos go, these guys are about the best around. Fairly warned be ye, says I. Future Scars opens.

Speaking of Skylight, word on the street is that legendary emcee and Blackalicious member Gift of Gab will rock the mic on Wednesday June 21 (9 pm. $10). That's pretty big, and local support comes from none other than the Outstanding Citizens Collective, a group of local champs like Wolfman Jack and Benzo dedicated to hip-hop like you wouldn't believe.

And while I'm on the topic of things I might have mentioned before but are so totally worth it that I just don't want you to forget, Ukrainian folk quartet Dakhabrakha performs alongside freak Americana act Cloacas in the Railyard on June 24 at 7 pm for zero dollars. Word.

The New Mexico Museum of Art (107 W Palace Ave., 476-5072) is hosting Friday night music events for the summer, and I find this to be equal parts charming and probably relaxing. If you haven't been to NMMA, that's weird, and if you have, you know it's way nice all up in there. It's a rotating list of guest performers, so you'll just have to pop on by and figure out who is playing on any given Friday at 5 pm.

Mark your calendars for Friday September 15, as synthpop act Future Islands is coming to Meow Wolf (1352 Rufina Circle, 395-6369) all the way from Baltimore (that's where John Waters is from, so). My dumb friend Jasper is also excited about this show, so take that however you will.

Also (partly) from the folks at Meow Wolf is beloved indie-folk-esque act Fleet Foxes and indie-rock duo Beach House joining forces for a big fat night of partying at the beautiful Santa Fe Opera (7:30 pm Monday Sept. 25. 301 Opera Drive, 986-5900).

Now, you might be wondering why we're telling you so early, but it has a lot to do with how this thing is bound to play out. Yes, SFO is gigantic and beautiful and has, like, so many seats, but one must also remember that Fleet Foxes were a pretty big effing deal even before that Father John Misty guy broke out on his own and started blowing minds. Thus far, we've found some crazy-expensive prices online, but the $34-$60 tix (which include the service charge and which we stumbled upon via meowwolf.com) are the most affordable, and a portion of proceeds go to the Pro-Choice Safety Network Fund. Will this show sell out? Totally. So get on it.

Oh, and it's not news, but pop on YouTube and look up the First Aid Kit cover of Fleet Foxes' "Tiger Mountain Peasant Song." You're welcome.



Santa Fe Reporter
The government's principal means of evaluating the success of Callaghan Innovation, the agency tasked with accelerating the commercialisation of innovation, is how much businesses are spending on research and development, Science and Innovation Minister Paul Goldsmith told Parliament's education and science select committee. So far, it's falling short of its target.

This year's budget included a $373 million increase in spending for science and innovation in a bid to help diversify the economy support more jobs and higher wages, including a $74.6 million boost for Callaghan Innovation R&D grants.

In response to questions from Labour's research and innovation spokeswoman Megan Woods about the lack of specific success measures for Callaghan, Goldsmith said: "One of the simpler measures of progress is the overall spending by businesses on R&D and we are seeing that go decisively upwards."

He noted that investments in R&D often take years to come to fruition and it can be difficult to pin down exactly what the payback is. Still, the government has a suite of measures regarding outcomes and objectives, Goldsmith said.

The government's aim has been to find a way to encourage companies to invest, he said adding there has been a 29 percent increase over the past two years in business investment in R&D. Among businesses supported by Callaghan, there has been a 46 percent increase.

The overall spend, however, remains light. New Zealand still lags behind its peers with recent government data showing total R&D investment as a proportion of gross domestic product increased to 1.3 percent in 2016 from 1.2 percent in 2014. The OECD average is 2.4 percent. Business investment in R&D was 0.6 percent of GDP in 2016, well short of the government's goal to lift it to 1 percent.

"We are seeing a significant uptick. It's not as fast as we would like but we are on the way," said Goldsmith.

He also noted that while the government is en route to raising its spending on R&D to 0.8 percent of GDP, there is no timeframe to hit that target.

"We are making progress towards that  it is difficult when you have a GDP galloping forward to the extent that we have in this country," he said in response to questions. "We will meet the target when circumstances allow."

(BusinessDesk receives assistance from Callaghan Innovation to cover the commercialisation of innovation)

(BusinessDesk)

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The government is looking for ways to finance local councils who can't access its designated $1 billion housing infrastructure fund as they've already reached their debt limits.

The contestable fund, announced last July for use mainly by Auckland Council, was for interest-free loans for councils in high-growth areas. It uncovered a lack of ready-to-build projects and an unwillingness by the Auckland body to take on substantial new debt because it is already close to limits that could affect the city's AA credit rating.

At the social services select committee this afternoon, Minister for Building and Housing Nick Smith said the government is looking into special purpose vehicles  separate debt entities - as an alternative approach for councils facing up to their debt limits.

"You may have an urban development authority that could work like a special purpose vehicle  ie, the urban development authority legislation is intended to create new entities that are a mix of central and local government, there would be a mix of funding and a key part of what those authorities do is provide infrastructure. That is a work in progress."

The special purpose vehicle would be separate from the $1 billion fund, Smith said, though he denied the fund is useless for Auckland.

"There's a bit of debate going on about how we can make the fund useful, but the advice I've had to date is there are likely to be compliant bids that can work from Auckland," Smith said. "Not for all of their projects, but for some."

At a Local Government New Zealand briefing earlier this week, the lobby group for local authorities raised the prospect of similar vehicles being used to help replace ageing water infrastructure, estimated to cost more than $100 billion.

The housing infrastructure fund is oversubscribed, with about $1.5 billion in funding bids from councils such as Auckland, Hamilton, Tauranga and Queenstown currently being considered. The panel will make recommendations to the ministers in July with decisions due by the end of the year.

Smith said he didn't know how much of the fund's spending would be announced before the election in September, with Treasury having predicted money won't be spent until 2018/2019.

"Those sort of infrastructure projects have substantive delivery times. If you're looking at major roading, mains or sewerage, major water-type projects, it's likely the delivery of those will take two to three years, and that is why that's set out over a number of years," Smith said. "They may have very good quality bids we can advance very quickly, they may have some concerns about some bids."

The housing minister butted heads with Labour's housing spokesman Phil Twyford over the size of the housing shortfall in New Zealand's biggest city. Twyford said reliable sources, such as the Reserve Bank and advice sent to Smith by his own officials, estimated the size of the problem at around 30,000 to 40,000, and this was worsening by at least 4,000 every year.

Smith said he thought the best measure of the housing market was price, and it has been universally accepted by cost commentators that since last year, Auckland's house prices "have not moved an iota".

"That's a powerful signal that the supply curve and strong growth is getting supply and demand into balance," Smith said, though he later added he would need a longer period of flat house prices to be confident.

The minister said he wouldn't give an estimate for the shortfall in Auckland housing, but said he would rest easier when 13,000 houses are being built per year, as the Auckland Unitary Plan said would be needed every year on top of the 40,000 shortfall it estimated.

(BusinessDesk)

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Frucor Beverage's long-running battle with the Inland Revenue Department over the use of convertible notes more than a decade ago is set to hit the courtroom in 2018.

The Suntory Holdings-owned drinks maker whose brands include V, Just Juice and Fresh-up, has held out against claims by the tax department that its use of the notes constituted tax avoidance by letting companies juggle debt and equity components in their New Zealand divisions providing a tax advantage for their parent and a loss to the New Zealand revenue base.

Frucor has consistently rejected the assessment since 2009 when the IRD first lodged its notice, whereas other companies that used similar funding structures cut their losses and settled with the tax department after High Court and Court of Appeal rulings went against them in a test case. IRD filed court proceedings against Frucor in January 2012.

"The High Court has not allocated a hearing date for the income tax proceedings. However, it is presently expected that a hearing date will be allocated at some point after June 2018," Frucor said in financial statements lodged with the Companies Office. "The company remains of the view that the income tax adjustments proposed by Inland Revenue are incorrect, and the parties are continuing in formal dispute proceedings."

The tax department disputes deductions on the optional convertible notes between 2006 and 2009 that generated an income tax effect of $12.4 million, plus interest which has mounted to $7.9 million as at the Dec. 31, 2016 balance date. IRD is also looking to impose penalties of $3.7 million.

In March of this year, IRD dropped a 2012 assessment that would have increased Frucor's non-resident withholding tax liability amounting to $8.3 million, plus interest of $6.3 million and shortfall penalties of $4.2 million. The second assessment, made in March 2012, was essentially a back-up to the convertible note dispute as the tax department accepted it couldn't win both.

The accounts show Frucor's annual profit rose to $25.1 million in calendar 2016 from $15.3 million as it fattened gross margins in the face of falling revenue and paid a smaller royalty fee to its parent company, more than offsetting a bigger advertising and promotion spend. That generated a tax expense of $9.7 million in 2016, up from $6 million a year earlier, however the company's cashflow statement showed income tax in the year fell to $3.3 million from $9.4 million.

Frucor also declared a smaller dividend to its parent of $10.7 million in 2016, down from $15.6 million a year earlier.

(BusinessDesk)

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Communications Minister Simon Bridges has reappointed incumbent Telecommunications Commissioner Stephen Gale to the role for another three years, saying he provides stability and continuity at a time where the sector is undergoing significant change.

Gale was first appointed the commissioner in 2012, having worked as an associate commissioner at the Commerce Commission before that. During his first term in the role, the regulator made a final decision on copper pricing which allowed Chorus to charge customers more to access its ageing telecommunications network, and last year the Commission moved away from a draft view that it should deregulate Spark New Zealand's wholesale voice services which it sells to retail service providers.

Earlier this month, the government announced the final details of its reform package for the Telecommunications Act, aiming to deregulate the copper network where it competes with fibre from 2020, by which time it is expected to cover three-quarters of the population.

Under the new system, UFB providers will have to disclose information about their revenues and costs publicly, Telecommunications network operator Chorus will also be subject to a revenue cap from 2020 and local fibre companies will face competition from copper and cable, but can be regulated if problems arise. A bill is expected to be introduced to parliament in the second half of the year.

"The reappointment of Dr Gale recognises his valuable knowledge and expertise in competition and pricing issues, and the significant contribution he has made to the work of the Commission over a number of years," Bridges said. "The telecommunications sector is going through a significant transition with the review of the Telecommunications Act. The role of the Commissioner continues to be of vital importance as unique issues may emerge that require specialist understanding of the sector."

(BusinessDesk)

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Wellington businessman Ken Harris has sold NZL Group 10 years after leading a management buy-out of the transport and logistics firm and plans to recycle the funds into container depot operator ContainerCo (NZL), which is taking up more of his time.

New Plymouth-based Transport Investments Ltd completed its acquisition of NZL yesterday, filings to the Companies Office show. Former NZL owner Ken Harris confirmed the sale of what he described the best transport business in New Zealand. He declined to say what the sale price was, although he said those funds would help capitalise container depot operator ContainerCo for the next few years as it steps up investment in new technology and automation sweeping the transport sector.

"There's no question there's a huge opportunity available to ContainerCo," Harris told BusinessDesk. "I'm happy with the price  it was a fair price for both parties, I didn't try taking the last dollar out of the business."

Harris led the NZL buy-out in 2006 from P&O with his business partner Murray Leacock and Mike Pohio, one-time chief executive of Tainui Group Holdings. At the time, the stevedoring and logistics group generated annual revenue of about $56 million and after the management buy-out it was turning over more than $100 million by 2009.

That level of revenue puts NZL in the same ball-park as NZX-listed logistics firm Fliway, which projects annual revenue of about $82 million, and is currently attracting a market value of about $47 million.

Harris's new focus, ContainerCo, was formed through the 2013 merger of NZL Group's $5.1 million container depot business with United Containers and the $787,000 purchase of CentrePort's Transport Systems 2000 hire and sales business.

ContainerCo, which Harris co-owns with the New Zealand arm of COSCO, a subsidiary of shipping giant China Ocean Shipping (Group) Co, employs 150 staff at operations in Tauranga, Auckland, Napier and Christchurch, and generated $43 million in annual revenue in the 2016 financial year.

The container company last year hired investment bank Cameron Partners to examine funding options to expand the business's level of automation, and Harris today said the NZL sale will provide enough capital for the next few years for increased automation and new logistics technology.

As ContainerCo seeks to expand overseas, we'll be encouraging additional capital down the track, he said.

Transport Investments Ltd began life as the Hooker Brothers transport company and came under the control of the current management headed by managing director Jim Ramsay in 1989.

The NZL acquisition follows TIL's recent purchase of Christchurch-based Move Logistics in May.

(BusinessDesk)

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Mercury Energy, the electricity generator-retailer formerly known as MightyRiverPower, raised its 2017 earnings guidance for a third time based on increased hydro generation in the Waikato catchment.

Auckland-based Mercury expects earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, amortisation and fair value adjustments to be $520 million in the 12 months ending June 30, up from $493 million a year earlier. That's a $10 million increase from its revised guidance in April.

The upgrade is due to a 200 GWh increase in full-year forecast hydro generation resulting from persistently strong inflows across the Waikato catchment, the company said. "Hydro generation is now forecast to be 4,700 GWh for the financial year, or 700 GWh above annual average hydro generation."

Mercury said other 2017 guidance remains unchanged.

Mercury had 390,000 electricity customers at the end of March, up from 377,000 a year earlier. Its annualised churn rate of 17.6 percent was the lowest among the major retailers and below the market average of 20.5 percent.

The shares last traded at $3.31 and have gained 12 percent so far this year.

Meanwhile, wholesale electricity prices have been rising because inflows to the larger South Island hydro catchments are running well below average.

(BusinessDesk)

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WASHINGTON  The Senate is poised to approve legislation to make firing employees easier for the beleaguered Department of Veterans Affairs, part of an accountability effort urged by President Donald Trump.

The Senate bill comes more than three years after a 2014 scandal at the Phoenix VA medical center, in which some veterans died while waiting months for appointments. VA employees had created secret lists to cover up delays.

The measure would lower the burden of proof for VA employees to be fired  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, is opposing the bill. But the bipartisan measure is considered less harsh than a version passed by the House in March, mostly along party lines. The Senate bill preserves a longer appeal process than the House's version  180 days vs. 45 days. VA executives also would be held to a tougher standard than rank-and-file employees.

Senators were scheduled to vote on the bill later Tuesday.

Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., chairman of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee, and Sen. Jon Tester of Montana, the panel's top Democrat, praised the measure as a practical, compromise bill that will "give the VA what it needs to hold people accountable." There are more than 30 senators co-sponsoring the bill, and VA Secretary David Shulkin backs the additional firing authority.

"This is the strongest accountability measure for the VA that can be signed into law," Isakson said.

During the presidential campaign, Trump pledged to bring greater accountability to the VA. In April, he signed an executive order to create a VA accountability office.

Critics have complained that few employees are fired for VA malfeasance.

The Associated Press reported last week that federal authorities were investigating dozens of new cases of possible opioid and other drug theft by employees at VA hospitals, even after the VA announced "zero tolerance" in February. Since 2009, in only about 3 percent of the reported cases of drug loss or theft have doctors, nurses or pharmacy employees been disciplined.

"The regular stories of misconduct, negligence and abuse at the Department of Veterans Affairs will not end until Secretary Shulkin is empowered to quickly terminate bad employees," said Dan Caldwell, policy director of the conservative Concerned Veterans for America.
WASHINGTON -- Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn turned over about 600 pages of documents Tuesday to the Senate intelligence committee as part of its investigation into Russia's meddling in the 2016 presidential election, according to a congressional aide.

The aide said the committee's investigators immediately began reviewing the information to determine the extent of what Flynn provided. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the committee's sensitive work.

Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, confirmed the panel had received documents from Flynn, but declined to characterize the material or say how many pages had been received.

"We can't make any judgment on whether he's fully complied because we've got to review the documents," Warner said.

The documents came as Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly indicated that President Donald Trump's son-in-law and top adviser Jared Kushner and his communications with Russia are part of a wide-ranging probe by the Justice Department's special counsel. Meanwhile, a Democratic lawmaker called on a top Justice Department official to clarify the scope of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.

Flynn had previously invoked his Fifth Amendment protection from self-incrimination in rebuffing an earlier subpoena from the committee. After the panel narrowed the scope of that subpoena and issued additional ones for records from two of his businesses, Flynn agreed to turn over some documents.

On Tuesday, committee chairman Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., said the panel sought Flynn's business records -- including travel, expense and phone records -- to determine whether those records "would give us insight as to where he was when he was, what reimbursements he received, what expenses he might have had."

Burr said it was still possible Flynn may turn over more records. He noted the committee is still working with Flynn to see if he will agree to be interviewed as part of the panel's probe.

In addition to the Senate panel, Flynn is under investigation by other congressional committees as well the special counsel over his contacts with Russia. Among those contacts under scrutiny is a December meeting between Flynn, Kushner and Sergey Kislyak, Russia's ambassador to the U.S.

On Tuesday, Kelly defended Kushner at a Senate hearing amid reports that he attempted to establish "back-channel" communication between Russia and Trump's presidential transition team.

Kelly said back-channel talks have been common in U.S. diplomacy.

"We have to make the assumption -- and I will -- that Jared Kushner is a great American," he said.

Pressed by Montana Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat, on whether he believes lawmakers should "ensure that assumption is correct," Kelly described the questions as part of Mueller's scope of inquiry.

"I think there are numerous investigations that are looking into this," Kelly said. "I think it's part of the Bob Mueller investigation, and I think there's a number of congressional committees looking into it."

The full scope of Mueller's investigation into possible ties between Trump's campaign and Russia remains unclear. But it has incorporated a separate criminal investigation -- which predated the election -- of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, The Associated Press reported last week .

Also Tuesday, a senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee wrote Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to clarify the scope and authority of Mueller's role and asked Rosenstein to ensure the probe is free of political interference.

"It is of paramount importance that Mr. Mueller's investigation proceed, unimpeded by any officials who may have a conflict of interest or other ethical bar, or by political interference of any kind," wrote Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y.

Rosenstein acknowledged Friday there's a chance his role in the firing of FBI Director James Comey could become part of the special counsel's investigation. If that happens, he said, he will recuse himself from being Mueller's point of contact on the probe.

"If there's a need from me to recuse, I will," Rosenstein told The AP.

He also said the scope of Mueller's probe is broad and could encompass any number of actions.

Late Tuesday, after meeting in closed session, the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, said the committee intends to reach out to former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to ask him to testify in open and closed session. Schiff said the committee is interested in interactions the Obama administration had with secretaries of state and local election officials about the dangers the Russian hacking posed to election systems.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- A former employee at the Office of the Richmond County District Attorney (RCDA) was arrested and charged Tuesday with the theft of more than $50,000 in credit card charges from the office, according to a media release.

A six month investigation by the Department of Investigation (DOI) initiated at the request of District Attorney Michael E. McMahon revealed that William (Bill) Nelson, former Procurement Director for the RCDA, used the funds over a ten year period to make personal purchases, according to the release.

These purchases included collector's knives, personal travel expenses, PayPal payments to himself, sporting events, memorabilia, comics, collectibles, video games, jewelry, clothing, survival and camping gear, and electronics equipment.

"The crimes alleged today against Bill Nelson signify a deep betrayal of the public trust over an extended 11-year time-frame," McMahon said in a statement. "These are funds that were meant to make Staten Island safer; to fight the opioid crisis, the surge in domestic violence, and the use of illegal guns, to name just a few."

Nelson, 43, of Great Kills, joined the RCDA in 2005, during the tenure of current Rep. Daniel Donovan, and was responsible for overseeing all purchases of services and goods for the agency, according to the release.

Donovan said in a statement that he had been in contact with DOI, and is cooperating with the investigation.

He said he would not comment further on the ongoing matter, but added he has "great faith in the DOI's ability to gather all of the facts and lead a thorough investigation."

Nelson served in that position until May 2016 when he was removed during the transition to the new administration, and placed in the position of procurement analyst, a position he held until his resignation in December 2016.

Until his arrest he has remained on terminal leave since his resignation, according to the release.

Following his departure previously undetected and unauthorized spending was uncovered, and immediately reported to the DOI, McMahon said.

"It must be said that these actions do not reflect on the integrity and work ethic of the honest employees in this office who work hard every day to make Staten Island safer and stronger," he said.

Nelson's prosecution will go forward as a joint operation between DOI and a different prosecutorial authority because of inherent conflicts, McMahon said.

During his employment Nelson reported to the Chief of Administration, a position held by three different individuals, but his credit card purchases were also meant to be reviewed by the Chief Financial Officer for the RCDA, the release said.

That position was held by one person from 2006 to 2016, who also simultaneously held the position of Chief of Administration throughout 2016.

McMahon's office did not identify the individual, but said the employee had been suspended pending review.
Nixon Protest 1973

Protesters gather in front of the White House in Washington calling for the impeachment of President Nixon, Oct. 22, 1973. (AP Photo/Henry Griffin, File)

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper made headlines when he said the Watergate scandal "pales" in comparison to the controversy over Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible collusion with the Trump campaign. Critics scoffed, saying there is still no hard evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. But others insist it's damning that the president fired FBI Director James Comey to halt the investigation. What's worse: Kremlingate or Watergate?

PERSPECTIVES

The break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Hotel in Washington in 1972, and subsequent attempts by the White House to cover up its abuse of power, brought down Richard Nixon in 1974.

People like Clapper argue the scope and stakes of Trump-Russia are exponentially larger than the "third-rate burglary" that was Watergate -- because this time, the alleged crime is colluding with a hostile foreign power to rig an American election.

READ MORE: 5 reasons the Comey affair is worse than Watergate

But there are still so many "ifs" and no hard evidence. The smoking gun that Trump's campaign colluded with Russian officials has never appeared.

Evidence of Trump collusion with the Russians: NONE. Another day with no evidence. MSM/Obama fake narrative @cnn @msnbc  nick-at-nite (@nitepost) June 7, 2017

The White House asserts there is no evidence of wrongdoing, and argues the scandal has been manufactured by the Democrats.

But even even the Nixon presidential library pointed out, Nixon never fired the head of the FBI.

I just fired the head of the FBI... I faced great pressure because of Russia. Thats taken off. https://t.co/r5kqRdylHL @POTUS to Russia  C. J. Newton (@cjtripnewton) May 21, 2017

Eric Trump fired back yesterday, calling the Kremlingate allegations "the greatest hoax of all time."

Trump sons dismiss Russia investigation as a "witch hunt" in @GMA interview https://t.co/z2n2q4MtPs pic.twitter.com/6BrIwdtRsv  ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) June 6, 2017

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U.S. Congressman-elect Greg Gianforte agreed to a civil settlement Wednesday to head off a potential lawsuit by the reporter he attacked last month, issuing a written apology in which he backtracks his original account of events and promises to make a $50,000 donation to a nonprofit that works to protect journalists from violence worldwide.

The agreement was reached between the Montana politician and their reporter Ben Jacobs, the Guardian first reported. The Britain-based newspaper has a large presence and online following in the United States.

I have taken full responsibility for my actions and both publicly and personally apologized to Mr. Ben Jacobs," Gianforte said in a statement issued Wednesday by spokesman Shane Scanlon. "Ben has accepted my apology and we are both ready to move on."

In the letter, Gianforte wrote: My physical response to your legitimate question was unprofessional, unacceptable, and unlawful. As both a candidate for office and a public official, I should be held to a high standard in my interactions with the press and the public. My treatment of you did not meet that standard.

The donation will go to the Committee to Protect Journalists, a nonprofit based in New York formed in 1981 to promote press freedom and defend the rights of journalists.

Gianforte also said in the letter that Jacobs "did not initiate any physical contact with me." That contradicts a statement issued by his campaign spokesman in the hours after the May 24 attack on the night before Election Day. He did not take direct ownership of the false statement or explain why his campaign issued the lie, instead referencing it vaguely in the letter as "anyone's statements to the contrary."

Jacobs said in an emailed statement that he hopes the settlement agreement allows everyone, including the nation, to move forward.

I have accepted Mr. Gianforte's apology and his willingness to take responsibility for his actions and statements," he wrote. "I hope the constructive resolution of this incident reinforces for all the importance of respecting the freedom of the press and the First Amendment and encourages more civil and thoughtful discourse in our country."

Jacobs will not receive any money as part of the agreement.

Scanlon acknowledged a request to talk and asked for questions by email, but did not answer them Wednesday evening. Gianforte did not return a call for comment.

Gianforte also faces a criminal misdemeanor assault citation for the attack.

Earlier Wednesday, a Bozeman judge granted an extension requested by attorneys for Gianforte to appear in court.

The judge did not set a date for Gianforte's appearance, meaning the Republican congressman could appear in court any Monday, Wednesday or Friday between now and June 20. Those are the days Justice Court is in session.

Gallatin County Justice Court Judge Rick West signed the order Tuesday, the same day attorneys for Gianforte filed the motion for an extension.

The motion also said "the parties are currently exploring a settlement'' of the case and that the extension was not opposed by the state. County Attorney Marty Lambert clarified Wednesday that means Gianforte and the state are negotiating a plea agreement related to the criminal citation.

The civil agreement with Jacobs included a requirement that the journalist email Lambert about the criminal case. In that message to the county attorney, Jacobs said he does not object to Gianforte entering a "no contest" plea in the pending civil case rather than a guilty plea, according to a copy provided by Scanlon.

Gianforte, who became wealthy starting a customer-service platform in Bozeman that he eventually sold to Oracle for $1.8 billion, was cited for misdemeanor assault, punishable by up to six months in jail and a $500 fine, for an attack on Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs at a campaign event on May 24, about 24 hours before Gianforte was elected to the U.S. House.

An audio recording from the altercation details Jacobs trying to ask Gianforte a question about a health care bill, then a scuffle, followed by Jacobs saying Gianforte body-slammed him and broke his glasses. Gianforte can be heard yelling Get the hell out.

Jacobs description of what happened was confirmed by accounts of others in the room, including a reporter for Fox News who saw the altercation.

But just after it happened, the Gianforte campaign sent out a press release saying Jacobs grabbed Gianfortes wrist and pushed both men to the ground, and made a point of calling Jacobs a liberal journalist with aggressive behavior.

Gianforte refused repeatedly in an interview with MTN Friday to say why his campaign released what appears to be a false statement about the altercation. His letter to Jacobs Wednesday likewise does not address the issue.

He did say in his letter that he was sorry for the "unwanted notoriety" his assault created for Jacobs and acknowledged that the U.S. Constitution protects freedom of the press. He said journalists play "a critical role" in society and said those rights are "fundamental to who we are as a nation and the way government is accountable to the people."

"I also know that civility in our public discourse is central to a productive dialogue on issues. I had no right to respond the way I did to your legitimate question about health care policy. You were doing your job," he wrote to Jacobs.

Gianforte defeated Democrat Rob Quist last month in the race to fill Montanas lone U.S. House seat, vacated when Ryan Zinke became Secretary of the Interior.

Gianforte's attorneys are William Mercer, with Holland and Hart law firm in Billings, and Todd Whipple, with Whipple Law Offices in Bozeman. Mercer was the U.S. Attorney for Montana from 2001-2009 and also served briefly as acting associate attorney general.

Gianforte's attorneys last week received a set of documents containing confidential criminal justice information that Lambert said cannot be made public.

That set of documents includes the citation, a 17-page case summary report, 16 pages of reports from three detectives, three pages of medical records, a sketch of the place where the altercation occurred, the arrest report, copies of media coverage, 14 more pages of handwritten notes from various sources, three pages of names and addresses of witnesses, the violent crime victim notice of rights forms, five pages of teletype history records and a release form and 40 pages of records from Bozeman Deaconess Hospital.

Gianforte also on Friday filed to run for re-election in 2018, according to Federal Election Commission records.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Robert N. Bertrand, the head of Soupman Inc., the Staten Island-based company which licenses the names and recipes of Al Yeganeh, the real-life "Soup Nazi" character from the classic "Seinfeld" TV series, has been suspended from his job, according to a the Daily News.

It is unclear if Bertrand, the chief financial officer who was indicted on alleged tax evasion last month, was still getting a salary, the article said.

During proceedings in Brooklyn federal court Tuesday, Bertrand's attorney said he is unable to afford a defense lawyer and the judge said the defendant did not qualify for a court-appointed attorney, according to the report.

Bertrand, 62, a Connecticut resident, short-changed the government of nearly $600,000 in tax revenue, authorities said.

He was charged under a 20-count indictment with failure to pay Medicare, Social Security and federal income taxes, said Bridget M. Rohde, acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, and James D. Robnett, special agent in charge, Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Division, New York Field Office.

Between 2010 and 2014, Bertrand paid Soupman workers on the side in unreported cash amounts and compensated certain employees with large, unreported stock awards, officials said.

Bertrand never reported that employee compensation to the IRS and didn't pay Medicare, Social Security and federal income taxes on the cash payments or the stock awards, said authorities.

Bertrand failed to do so despite an external auditor warning him in 2012 that those payments should be reported to the IRS, officials said.

Soupman's unreported cash and stock compensation totaled more than $2.8 million, resulting in a loss of about $594,000 in tax revenue, said authorities.

"As alleged, the United States was fleeced out of more than half a million dollars through the defendant's corporate misdeeds," said Rohde in a statement. "Tax crimes like those alleged in the indictment hurt every American citizen."

Bertrand faces up to five years behind bars if ultimately convicted.

Authorities did not specify where in the borough Soupman,Inc. was based. There previously was a Soupman franchise on Richmond Avenue in New Springville.
Yellowstone County District Judge Russell Fagg is stepping down this fall and will consider a future political career.

Fagg will resign Oct. 13. He will start his own law firm, but the former Republican state legislator is also considering a return to politics.

His replacement will be appointed by the governor in the next few months, but will have to face election in November 2018.

Fagg, 56, said he will return to private practice and focus on mediation, a key cog of U.S. justice focused on resolving cases before they go to trial.

"I may also consider politics, as I am very concerned about the direction our country is going. One thing at a time though. I want to finish this job well, and thus the four month lead time," Fagg said in a press release Tuesday. "I will handle the 1,100 cases in front of me and leave this office in good shape for the new judge.

Fagg told The Billings Gazette he is alarmed by the federal government's failure to cut spending. He worries the nation's future will suffer as a result.

"To me, the biggest issue is the budget deficit that we continually run," Fagg said. "The way I look at it, 50 of the last 55 budgets have run deficits, accumulating to total debt of $20 trillion.

A district judge for 22 years and a former Republican legislator, Fagg said last December he was interested in replacing former U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke as Montana's only representative.

Fagg describes himself as center-right politically and eventually chose not to run. The timing wasn't a good fit. Zinke was appointed secretary of the Interior on March 1 and an 85-day special election cycle immediately followed, with Republican Greg Gianforte winning the seat May 25.

Montana has two federal seats on the 2018 ballot. U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat, is seeking a third term. A few Republicans have expressed interest in running against Tester, but the presumed GOP frontrunner, Attorney General Tim Fox, announced last week that he wont challenge Tester.

Montanas U.S. House seat is the other federal office up in 2018. Gianforte has registered as a candidate, but is also considered vulnerable to a challenge because of his alleged election-eve assault on a reporter for The Guardian.

Fagg had also been rumored to be a potential U.S. attorney for Montana. The position has been open since President Donald Trump took office. Fagg said he isnt interested in the job.

The judge said Tuesday this was a good time in his personal life for something new.

This is a good time to consider a career change. My awesome wife Karen is supportive. And our amazing children, Harrison and Barclay, are off in college," Fagg said in a Tuesday press release.
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Most of the ACT mental health funding in this year's budget will again go to the "ambulance at the bottom of the cliff", rather than helping prevent people falling off the precipice.

While the government has put up about $1 million for a new Black Dog Institute-run suicide prevention program, most of the $23 million mental health package will be delivered to acute care services rather than community programs.

ACT Greens leader and Mental Health Minister Shane Rattenbury has touted investment in mental health, despite concerns it is directed to crisis services instead of prevention. Credit:Rohan Thomson

Some $2.3 million will go to the new Office of Mental Health; $13.8 million to the Dhulwa mental health unit; $2.6 million for child and youth mental health programs, and $500,000 to upgrade the Brian Hennessy rehabilitation centre.

Mental Health Community Coalition ACT executive officer Simon Viereck backed a number of investments but said not enough funding was directed to community programs to address and help prevent acute mental health issues.
Qantas' share price, which has risen meteorically this year, will continue to "look after itself" as long as the airline sticks to its cost-cutting targets and delivers consistent earnings, chief executive Alan Joyce says.

Mr Joyce said constant reinvention was needed to remain competitive and profitable in the tight-margin industry, even as Qantas finishes a three-year cost-cutting drive to save $2 billion and grows more popular with investors. The airline is now trying to save $400 million a year in further cost cutting.

"Three years ago we said we would deliver on $2 billion in transformation, and we've now given ourselves our targets for the next three years and management's focused on delivering on that," Mr Joyce said from the sidelines of the International Air Transportation Association's annual general meeting in Cancun, Mexico.

"When we deliver on that, the share price will certainly look after itself."
Qatari nationals won't be allowed to board Qantas flights to Dubai because the United Arab Emirates has banned them from passing through its airports after Arab powers cut ties with Qatar.

Qantas International Chief Executive Gareth Evans was speaking to reporters on the sidelines of an airline industry meeting in Mexico.

"UAE have banned Qatari nationals from transiting through UAE, so we're looking to see if that affects any passengers," he said.
Well, it's not as though we couldn't see this one coming. After all, Donald Trump was promising to pull the US out of the Paris Accord on climate change long before he took office.

In fact, the only thing more predictable  or significant  than the announcement was the reaction. A few fossil fuel-funded Republicans aside, Trump managed to galvanise the world in support of strong action on climate change.

Last Friday was a procession of nations reiterating their support for the Paris agreement. Nine US states and 187 cities also broke ranks with their President, declaring that they'd meet their share of US greenhouse gas reduction targets.
A survey of 1600 people who work in advertising agencies found they are young  half are under 34 years old  and spend more hours at work than the average Australian. This leads them to underestimate the lifestyles of "normal people" and how much time they spend watching television or playing with family.

People working for advertising agencies are out of touch, childless, share-housing, farmers' market-loving, workaholic gym junkies who overestimate the impact of social media and the internet on normal Australians, according to a new report by a television industry-backed research group.

"Even as someone who operates in media circles I was surprised at the level of disconnect between the media group and the reality of normal Australians," Karen Nelson-Field said of her research, AdNation, carried out on behalf of ThinkTV.

Advertising industry workers are heavy users of gyms, according to the AdNation report. Credit:kupicoo

The research is designed to encourage people working in ad agencies to reassess effective advertising.

ThinkTV is funded by the Nine, Seven, and Ten networks and Foxtel's marketing arm Multi Channel Network.

It aims to get more advertising dollars back onto television. It takes cues from ThinkBox, a UK industry group that conducted similar research about the ad industry in the UK.
The group is widely speculated to be the first landlord for Amazon when it arrives in Australia. It has been said the most likely destination, for the first Amazon fulfilment centre, will be the Brickworks and Goodman Oakdale Industrial Estate at Eastern Creek in western Sydney.

Other areas said to be of interest to Amazon include Dandenong and Truganina in Melbourne, which, like Eastern Creek, have the space to accommodate an 80,000 square metre warehouse.

Mr Goodman said the need to cater for the "last 10 miles" delivery  where online retailers promise the items will be at the door within one to two hours, will be a boost to warehouses in South Sydney and the M4/M5 in Sydney.

To that end, Goodman's development work was maintained at $3.5 billion across 75 projects with forecast yield on cost of 7.7 per cent and pre-commitments on completions of 86 per cent.

The group's urban renewal business is on track to settle more than $1 billion of sales in the second half of the 2017 financial year.
Australia's food and grocery prices have to come down further because they are "crazy" compared to the rest of the world, Coles managing director John Durkan says.

"It's already an overpriced grocery market in my view and I've been saying that for nine years," Mr Durkan told analysts during Wesfarmers' strategy day meeting on Wednesday.

"I still look at products here that are made overseas and they are crazy prices."

He said the cost of those products meant there was room for Coles' private labelled products to grow.
Islamic State has urged its supporters, in a message titled "Where are the lions of war?" posted on YouTube, to conduct an all-out war against infidels in the West during Ramadan, which runs from May 26 to June 24 this year. It encourages those who can't reach the caliphate to "attack them in their homes, their markets, their roads and their forums".

The latest call may account for the attack in Britain that killed two young Australians. Deaths from the June 3 van and knife attack in London stand at 10, including the three attackers: a Pakistani and two Moroccans. Before that, there were two other deadly terrorist attacks in Britain in 2017. The van and knife attack on March 22 at Westminster by British Muslim convert Khalid Masood led to six deaths, including his own. It was followed by the May 22 Manchester Arena bombing causing 23 deaths, including the ethnic Libyan suicide bomber.

The scale of Britain's problem is immense compared with Australia's.

We know that only a very small percentage of Muslims in the West support Islamic States, al-Qaeda or other Islamist extremist groups, but it takes only a few disaffected Muslims to create communal disharmony and the risk of a violent right-wing backlash.
Australians overwhelmingly want governments to favour renewable energy over fossil fuels even if it costs more, and concerns about climate change are strengthening, a new Lowy Institute poll finds.

The survey of 1202 adults during the first three weeks of March found 81 per cent of respondents wanted policymakers to focus on clean energy sources such as wind and solar, even if it costs more to ensure grid reliability.

Fossil fuels deserve less government support than renewables, a Lowy poll finds. Credit:AP

Just 17 per cent backed a focus on "traditional energy sources such as coal and gas even if this means the environment may suffer to some extent".

The finding was one of Lowy's highest results for a two-option answer and "somewhat surprising" since the poll was conducted soon after blackouts in wind-power dominated South Australia and the heatwave that stretched power supplies in coal-dependent NSW, said Alex Oliver, Lowy's polling director.
When Labor senator Jenny McAllister finished university in 1997 she went into the world of work with wide-eyed enthusiasm.

She knew the gender pay gap - then at 17 per cent - existed.

Labor senator Jenny McAllister has recommended the Turnbull government adopt a national strategy to reduce the gender pay gap. Credit:Dallas Kilponen

But she thought it would change.

"Today, incredibly, the gender pay gap is stuck at 16 per cent, only 1 per cent lower than it was 20 years ago," Senator McAllister says.
The infamous Watergate scandal "pales" in comparison to the allegations about the Trump administration's links to Russia, former United States intelligence chief James Clapper has said in an explosive set of remarks in Canberra.

Mr Clapper, who served as Director of National Intelligence under Barack Obama and in senior roles with Republican leaders as well, also said he would "understand" if US allies such as Australia withheld intelligence from American counterparts because of Mr Trump's demonstrated lack of discretion with such sensitive secrets.

The 50-year veteran of the military and the intelligence community painted a picture of disconcerting dysfunction in Washington with "assaults on American institutions coming from both external and internal sources" and most strikingly said the Trump-Russia links were much worse than the notorious scandal that toppled former US president Richard Nixon in the 1970s.

"I lived through Watergate. I was on active duty then in the Air Force as a young officer," Mr Clapper said following a speech to the National Press Club in Canberra. "It was a scary time . . . I have to say, though, that I think you compare the two that Watergate pales really in my view compared to what we're confronting now."
"Imagine if a man said that to a woman?!"

It's the off-the-shelf response used by many men whenever a woman passes comment on a man's appearance or otherwise expresses sexual desire about a man. There are the familiar bleats about double standards, reverse sexism and women objectifying men. It's a nice theory, but I'm not buying it.

Danny Jones, aka 'Tree Man', broke the internet recently. Credit:Instagram

The problem with claims about reverse sexism and objectification of men by women is that they have very different social and cultural meanings. More importantly, they have very different effects.

Take the objectification of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The sexy pictures and gushing over Trudeau's physical attractiveness enhances his power rather than diminishes it. Even his objectification presents him as strong and powerful. Exhibit one: the swooning over the display of his enviable core strength. There is no hint that he's an airhead, slutty or used his beauty to "sleep his way to power".
The Chinese owner of the Port of Darwin lease is using the port as security to seek a loan of up to $500 million from the Chinese government's trade bank.

Landbridge Industry Australia, a privately owned Chinese company, is seeking the loan from the Chinese government's Export-Import Bank (Exim) to prop up the firm's struggling Australian operations. The company is paying an $880,000 yearly consulting fee to former trade minister Andrew Robb.

Ye Cheng, of Landbridge, and then trade minister Andrew Robb in 2015. Credit:Glenn Campbell

The revelation of the firm's dealings with Exim raises fresh questions about Landbridge's Chinese Communist Party ties and what happens in the event of a loan default.

The Northern Territory government told Fairfax Media that it had been briefed by Landbridge on its efforts to secure funding from Exim. A government spokeswoman said the NT had the power to retain control of the port in the event of a loan default and that the Foreign Investment Review Board could also step in.
Mystery surrounds the origins of $50,000 in cash that Ipswich mayor Paul Pisasale was carrying when the Australian Federal Police pulled him up at Melbourne airport on May 15.

Mr Pisasale has told associates that he was merely acting as a courier as a favour for his good friend, Brisbane barrister Sam Di Carlo.

Paul Pisasale (centre) in the now-famous photo with then-NSW premier Barry O'Farrell and Nick di Girolamo.

Mr Pisasale's account to friends is that he was in Melbourne visiting a developer when the colourful barrister, a former police officer, asked him to collect a cash payment from a Victorian client as it was needed to urgently settle a law case being run by Mr Di Carlo in Brisbane.

Just why the AFP had Mr Pisasale under surveillance that day is not clear, but on Monday they executed search warrants on the mayor's Queensland home and office.
A father trying to help his teenage son during a wild brawl in northern NSW has been stabbed to death on his birthday.

A 22-year-old man, who police have confirmed was on parole, is facing murder charges over the attack on Tuesday afternoon.

Charlie Larter, 46, was reportedly trying to save his son Zack, 18, after the melee broke out at Knox Park in Murwillumbah.

Police on Wednesday refused to confirm the circumstances of Mr Larter's death, saying their investigation remained at a preliminary stage.
Xiao Teng was supporting her partner who was undergoing chemotherapy when cleaning company Grouped Property Services Pty Ltd stopped paying her.

Her colleague Freddy Herrera, an engineering student from Colombia, worked for GPS for five hours a day, seven days a week and "was grossly underpaid throughout his employment", according to Federal Court judge Anna Katzmann.

The proportion of routine manual jobs (such as labourers and machinery operators) in total employment has fallen from 40 per cent to 30 per cent over the past 30 years. Credit:Louie Douvis

Mariana de Queiroz, meanwhile, was "struggling with bills and paying rent" and said that GPS' failure to pay her a month's wages and accrued annual leave imposed "a big financial and emotional burden" on her and her family.

These are three of the 51 employees of the company, formerly operated by Rosario Pucci and now owned by his brother Enrico, who will be paid a total of $223,000 in back pay after the Federal Court found GPS treated vulnerable employees as "slaves".
The Sydney silk who helped put Eddie Obeid behind bars has denied the former MP was the victim of a miscarriage of justice and said his defence lawyers acted strategically by keeping material from the jury that would have "come very close to guaranteeing his conviction".

Eddie Obeid was jailed for a maximum of five years. Credit:Daniel Munoz

Obeid, 73, was jailed in December for a maximum of five years after a Supreme Court jury found him guilty of misconduct in public office over his family's secret business dealings at Circular Quay.

The former NSW Labor minister is appealing against his conviction and sentence in the Court of Criminal Appeal, which concluded a three-day hearing on Wednesday.
Corrimal High School physical education teacher Kurt Majoor has pleaded guilty in court to having sex with two of his students on separate occasions four months apart.

Majoor, 26, was charged with a single count of sexual intercourse with a person under care in February this year after she claimed she had sex with him in sand dunes near Corrimal Beach before school on the morning of February 13 this year.

Kurt Majoor has pleaded guilty. Credit:Facebook

Police said Majoor groomed the girl by sending her sexually explicit messages and images of his penis via Facebook and Snapchat in a series of exchanges that took place in the two days before the sexual encounter.

The matter was reported to police 24 hours later and Majoor was arrested the following day at the East Corrimal home he shares with his parents.
"It's an honour to recognise Eddie Mabo for his work campaigning for Indigenous land rights, which is particularly significant on the 25th anniversary of the landmark Mabo High Court decision," she said. "Eddie Mabo has become an important icon for reconciliation and his legacy continues to be relevant for all Queenslanders to this day." Ms Palaszczuk also recognised the LGAQ's efforts in the wake of Tropical Cyclone Debbie. "LGAQ was at the forefront of our disaster recovery efforts following Cyclone Debbie," she said. "It is fitting that LGAQ is being recognised for its tireless contribution to our state, including coordinating and supporting local councils following our recent natural disaster."

Queensland Greats are honoured with commemorative plaques displayed proudly at Roma Street Parkland, Brisbane. The citations for all the 2017 Queensland Greats are published below. The 2017 Queensland Greats citations Professor Perry Bartlett FAA Professor Perry Bartlett. Credit:Richard Briggs

Professor Perry Bartlett is the inaugural Director of the Queensland Brain Institute and holds the Foundation Chair in Molecular Neuroscience at The University of Queensland. His extraordinary scientific contribution has revolutionised many aspects of modern neuroscience and his visionary leadership has established QBI as one of the world's leading neuroscience Institutes. Professor Bartlett's pioneering discoveries include his detection and subsequent characterisation of neural stem cells that reside in the adult brain that have the capacity to produce new neurons throughout life. This discovery has transformed neuroscience research, and its importance continues to grow as Professor Bartlett and others show that brain functions, like learning and memory, are in part regulated by the production of new neurons. Drawing on these exciting discoveries, recent results have indicated that stimulation of stem cells in order to produce new neurons may overcome the cognitive loss that may lead to dementia during ageing. Clive Berghofer AM Clive Berghofer. Credit:Glenn Hunt Mr Clive Berghofer is one of Australia's greatest philanthropists. He has donated $80 million to date and has publicly pledged to "give away a lot more before I'm finished". Mr Berghofer currently donates an estimated $90,000 each week to charities, community and sporting groups, and emergency services. His generosity, particularly in the fields of health and emergency services, regularly saves lives, not just in Queensland, but worldwide. Mr Berghofer's support of crucial health and community services, including drug rehabilitation services and a hospice for the terminally ill has improved the lives of some of Queensland's most vulnerable citizens. Despite leaving school at the age of 13 and struggling with dyslexia for his whole life, Mr Berghofer became a highly successful property developer and through a lifetime of hard work went on to become one of Australia's wealthiest individuals. Mr Berghofer is committed to bettering his state and his beloved local community of Toowoomba. Professor Peter Coaldrake AO

Professor Peter Coaldrake. Credit:Glenn Hunt Professor Peter Coaldrake AO is Vice-Chancellor of Queensland University of Technology and a prominent international and national university leader. He spent his early childhood in a remote Aboriginal settlement and is well aware of the opportunities that come with education. Professor Coaldrake has been a driving force in extending those opportunities to all areas across Queensland, and particularly to those from disadvantaged backgrounds. He was Chair of the Board of the university sector's peak group, Universities Australia, and continues to play a leading role in national and state policy development on higher education and research that also extends into the international arena. Under Professor Coaldrake's leadership, QUT now features prominently in global university rankings. He continues to build extensive local and international networks across government, industry professionals and the wider community and is recognised for his ability to unite and lead people to bring about change. Phil Dickie Phil Dickie, pictured in Fortitude Valley in 1987. Credit:Peter O'Halloran Mr Phil Dickie was born in the bayside area of Brisbane in 1955. He began his career in journalism with the student newspaper at the Australian National University in Canberra while earning a degree in forestry, politics, economics, sociology and linguistics. Soon after returning to Queensland, Mr Dickie commenced work at The Courier-Mail returned to Queensland and in 1986 began an inquiry into Brisbane brothel ownership. This mushroomed into a series of articles that identified police, up to assistant commissioner level, with involvement in corruption and organised crime. Together with an ABC Four Corners program, these articles forced the government to call an inquiry that ran for two years and heard revelations of both police and political corruption. The inquiry changed the policing and political landscape in Queensland and across Australia. For the work leading to the Fitzgerald inquiry, Mr Dickie received Australian journalism's highest award, a Gold Walkley, and wrote the bestselling book The Road to Fitzgerald, long a staple of investigative journalism courses around Australia and since digitalised as part of the State historical record by the Queensland State Library. Mr Dickie contributed to the postFitzgerald reforms as Special Advisor to the Chair of the Criminal Justice Commission before returning to investigative journalism in 1994.

Professor Cindy Shannon FQA Professor Cindy Shannon. Credit:Glenn Hunt Professor Cindy Shannon is a descendent of the Ngugi people from Moreton Bay. As a passionate advocate for Indigenous health and education, Professor Shannon has played a key role in the development and implementation of Indigenous health policy both in Queensland and nationally. She is currently the Pro-Vice-Chancellor Indigenous Engagement at The University of Queensland, and guided the development and implementation of Australia's first degree-level program that specifically targeted Aboriginal health workers. She has advised government and non-government groups on health and education issues, and serves on a number of advisory boards, including as Chair of the Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Foundation, and the Queensland Ministerial Advisory Committee on Sexual health. She has also been a key player in creating a focus on urban Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations and contributed to the establishment of the Institute for Urban Indigenous Health. Her true passion lies in enabling people from all backgrounds to achieve their potential. She is known for her extraordinary commitment to mentoring students, employees, and colleagues, and continues her tireless work to enhance conditions for all. Eddie Koiki Mabo Eddie Mabo. Credit:Jim McEwan

The late Eddie Koiki Mabo was born on Mer (Murray) Island in 1936. Mr Mabo was exiled from the Island when he was 16-years-old and worked across Northern Queensland and the Torres Strait before settling in Townsville with his young family in 1962. Following his settlement in Townsville, Mr Mabo was elected president of Yumba Meta and established Australia's first Black Community School. In 1982, Mr Mabo and four other Islanders initiated legal action claiming customary ownership of their land on Murray Island, but their claim to land was rejected. Rather than appeal, Mr Mabo decided to proceed with the hearings before a full bench of the High Court. Before the Court's decision to overturn the doctrine of terra nullius (land belonging to no-one) was delivered in 1992, Mr Mabo had fallen ill and passed away. On the night of his burial, islanders performed the sacred Malo dance in his honour. Queensland Symphony Orchestra Queensland Symphony Orchestra is Queensland's largest performing arts company and the state's only professional symphony orchestra. In 2017, QSO celebrated its 70th anniversary as the centre of music-making in Queensland, presenting more than 180 live performances each year to more than 1.6million people. The Orchestra operates from its base in South Bank, Brisbane and employs more than 100 administration staff and musicians, in addition to many guest soloists and artists. QSO's ability to consistently perform at the highest level has earned it the reputation as one of the country's leading performing arts companies. QSO regularly supports many of the state's performing arts companies including Opera Queensland, Queensland Ballet, Brisbane Festival and Queensland Music Festival. As a champion of music education, each year the Orchestra tours regional Queensland and presents a range of specialised programs including master classes, workshops, and professional development for teachers, connecting with more than 30 000 people, from pre-school to university level. Local Government Association of Queensland The Local Government Association of Queensland is the peak body for local government in Queensland and a not-for-profit association setup solely to serve the state's 77 councils and their individual needs. In recent times LGAQ were at the forefront of disaster recovery as a result of Tropical Cyclone Debbie. The LGAQ coordinated and supported local councils as they prepared for, were impacted by, and are now recovering from Debbie. LGAQ has been advising, supporting and representing local councils since 1896, allowing them to improve their operations and strengthen relationships with their communities. LGAQ are being recognised as an honorary recipient of the 2017 Queensland Greats Awards for their tireless contribution to Queensland.

Previous years' Queensland Greats included: 2001 Dr Robert (Uncle Bob) Anderson

Professor Joe Baker

Diane Cilento

Sister Angela Mary Doyle

Ted Smout 2002 Wayne Bennett

Clem Jones

Olga Miller

Professor Lawrie Powell

Professor David Tudehope

2003 Professor Peter Doherty

David Malouf

Angelo Puglisi

Dr Evelyn Scott

Reginald Murray (RM) Williams 2004 Professor Julie H Campbell

Hugh Cornish

Dr Richard Lewandowski

William Robinson

Nick Xynias 2005

Bill Brown

Tony Gould

Terry Jackman

Dr Aila Keto

Rod Laver 2006 Professor Ian Frazer

Jim Kennedy

Greg Norman

Margaret Olley

Geoffrey Rush

Mater Misericordiae Health Services 2007 Ashley Cooper

Leneen Forde

Doug Hall

Emeritus Professor John Hay

Sir Leo Hielscher

Surf Life Saving Queensland

2008 Ian Brusasco

Pearl Duncan

Matthew Hayden

Professor Ross Homel

Dr Thancoupie Gloria Fletcher James

Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia (Queensland section) 2009 Philip Bacon

Bill Bristow

Kev Carmodu

Dr Robyn Rodwell

Anthony Ryan

Blue Care 2010

Mike Ahern

Sir Llew Edwards

Professor Michael Good

Ruth Hegarty

Eddie Liu

The University of Queensland 2011 Betty Byrne Henderson

George Chapman

Graham Jackson

Wally Lewis

Kerry O'Brien

Queensland State Emergency Service 2012 Emeritus Professor Ken Donald

Deborah Mailman

Daphne Pirie

Sir Sydney Schubert

Terry White

Queensland Meals on Wheels

2013 Stefan Ackerie

Dr Dimity Dornan

Tim Fairfax

Professor GQ Max Lu

Herb Wharton

Australian Red Cross Society 2014 Sallyanne Atkinson

Fred Conway

Patrick Corrigan

Professor Adele Green

Win Schubert

Endeavour Foundation 2015
However their spending has declined 3.1 per cent, from $72 a night to $70 a night. West End's Brisbane Backpackers Resort manager Davina Johnstone said they had noticed a slight decline in backpackers, but not in their overall occupancy. "We do cater for all types of groups here, not just backpackers," she said. "With backpackers there has been a little bit of a decline, but with backpackers you do get quiet periods." With backpackers there has been a little bit of a decline, but with backpackers you do get quiet periods. Davina Johnstone, Brisbane Backpackers Resort

Ms Johnstone said their guests came from Britain, Europe  Spain and Sweden in particular  and Canada. Swedish backpacker Sara Winberg worked in New Zealand for four months before travelling to the east coast of Australia, where she visited Sydney, Surfers Paradise and Byron Bay before arriving in Brisbane. She now has two weeks in Queensland and wants to see Fraser Island, Hervey Bay, Agnes Water, Cairns and Mission Beach. "I am starting to get worried that I don't have enough time," she told Fairfax Media at Nomads Hostel in Brisbane's Ann Street. Ms Winberg said she did not think Queensland was losing its backpacker lure.

"I don't think so. I think the east coast of Australia is relatively easy to get around and has a real party feel to it." Emma O'Toole, an Irish backpacker, has a 12-month work visa and arrived in Queensland a week ago, flying into the Gold Coast to save money on her flight. She has seen Byron Bay and Surfers Paradise and plans to spend the next six months working and seeing Fraser Island, the Whitsundays, the Great Barrier Reef and the Daintree. "It seems like a pretty chilled sort of place," she said. "I've been down on the coast, so I've met lots of surfers."

Ms O'Toole and Ms Winberg both felt Queensland's winter sun was still the magnet for international tourists over other states. Both agreed that Victoria had little to offer aside from Melbourne. "It was nice, but you couldn't drive to Sydney and I didn't go to Tasmania," Ms O'Toole said. "I just felt it was 'out of the way' in terms of the time it took and the cost of getting around." Queensland overall showed a 7 per cent increase in the number of tourists up to 2,583,000 in the 12 months to March 2017.

Is was the third most-visited state behind NSW (10 per cent increase, 3.9 million) and Victoria (8 per cent increase, 2.7 million). International tourists spent $5.183 billion in Queensland over 12 months. Tourism and Events Queensland group executive Megan Saunders said the organisation could not explain why the spending by backpackers appeared to be stalling. "TEQ, through its UK team, is currently undertaking a targeted campaign in the UK in partnership with STA Travel aimed at promoting Queensland as a must-do destination for UK youth and working holidaymakers," Ms Saunders said. "The campaign focuses on key Queensland experiences including the Great Barrier Reef, islands and beaches, natural encounters, the Outback and the Queensland lifestyle."
A composite reconstruction of the earliest known Homo sapiens fossils from Jebel Irhoud, based on microcomputed tomographic scans of multiple original fossils. Credit:Max Planck Institute "The Sahara was a grassland with lakes and waterways. Connections through the continent were easier," Professor Hublin said at a press briefing in London on Tuesday. Professor Bert Roberts, director of the Centre for Archaeological Science at the University of Wollongong, said: "These results could upset a few people." The first, almost complete adult mandible discovered at the site of Jebel Irhoud. Credit:Max Planck Institute He said it looked very much like the specimens were of early Homo sapiens.

"What these findings do is open up a longer timeframe for mixing Homo sapiens with other hominin species," he said. Dr Jean-Jacques Hublin with a new find at Jebel Irhoud - a crushed human skull. Credit:Max Planck Institute "It also expands considerably the timeframe for humans to depart Africa," said Professor Roberts, who was an independent peer-reviewer of one Nature paper. There were 22 bone fossils analysed from the site at Jebel Irhoud in Morocco, some from the 1960s. These included a partial face, an adult mandible, including teeth. He said these remains were likely from three adults, an adolescent and a child about eight years old. Comparison of early Neanderthal and late Neanderthal skulls (A and B); and Irhoud human and late human skulls (C and D) showing that evolution of the cranium can occur within a species. Credit:Nature

It was assumed at the time that these specimens were from some type of African Neanderthal species. However, new analyses of the fossils and related artefacts using state-of-the-art technology by scientists in Australia have shaken up our previous understanding. A virtual reconstruction of the Irhoud mandible showing human dental construction in the jaw. Credit:Max Planck Institute Professor Hublin said that these early humans had similar-sized cranial cavities to modern humans, but the "brainbox" was of a different shape  flatter and longer than a modern skull, which he described as more "globular". He said the brow looked to have been slightly more prominent, and said that if these early humans "were wearing a hat, they would be indistinguishable from modern people".

Some of the stone tools from Jebel Irhoud. Credit:Max Planck Institute "In our lineage, it seems the face evolved first and the brain is a longer story of natural selection over time," he said. As well as changing shape, Professor Hublin said it suggested a change in the size and structure of the cerebellum over time. Co-author of the paper dating the fossils Dr Shannon McPherron, also from Max Planck Institute, said: "The overall picture we have [from this dig] is of a hunting encampment in a cave on a hill, with early humans taking shelter as they move across the landscape." He said the site had strong evidence of fires and a mix of animal remains  gazelle, zebra and even lions  that these humans consumed. There were also stone tools  cutting implements and spear heads  they had presumably used to hunt and consume those animals.

The fossil specimens and tool artefacts were in part dated in Australia by a team including Professor Rainer Grun from Griffith University and Dr Renaud Joannes-Boyau from Southern Cross University. Professor Grun and other geochronologists, led by Associate Professor Daniel Richter from the Max Planck Institute, used two methods to determine the age of the specimens. One used a technique that measured the build-up of uranium and thorium isotopes in the tooth enamel. This put the age of the human tooth at 286,000 years, plus or minus 32,000 years. The other technique looked at the build up of electrons in quartz in flint artefacts that had previously been heated. Dr Kira Westaway, a geochronologist from Macquarie University not connected with the study, said: "In this application they've used flint artefacts that have been deliberately or accidentally heated."

She said during extreme heating electrons are expelled from "traps" in the quartz and rebuild during non-heating periods. "We can work out the date of the last major heating event by measuring how many electrons have been trapped ... The build-up is proportional to the amount of time since heating." This method placed the artefacts at 315,000 years old, plus or minus 34,000 years. These two dates corroborate the site in Morocco had early human occupation about 300,000 years ago.
During this week's WWDC keynote, Apple announced updates to its entire Mac line-up. In all, seven new Macs were announced, even the lowly Macbook Air received a modest bump. Shortly after the keynote I was loaned a review unit of the updated 27-inch iMac.

The first thing you'll notice on this iMac is the screen. The display is just incredible. I use the previous generation 27-inch 5K iMac at work, the late 2015 model, and it's a gorgeous machine, probably the best computer I've ever owned. Certainly the best monitor. I do a lot of video and photo editing on that iMac, staring at the screen for hours every day, and I know its display well.

So I was surprised at how much better the screen is on this new iMac. It's brighter for sure, 43 per cent brighter in fact, but it's the colour reproduction that is so impressive. The late 2015 iMac was the first Apple computer to use wide gamut P3 colour, vastly superior to the sRGB found in most monitors. That expanded colour gamut produced a pretty astounding 24 million colours, setting the benchmark for these types of displays.

This new 27-inch iMac features "10 bit dithering" which, if I understand it correctly, changes the individual shading within each pixel  and between pixels  to expand the perceived colours on display. To be honest, 10 bit dithering was explained to me by three different engineers these last few days, and I'm still not entirely sure how it works. But I can say the monitor now supports over a billion colours, and it looks bloody amazing.
During the Operation Neath investigation of the planned terrorist attack, Khayre was asked what he understood by the term "jihad". The Somali-born refugee, who returned to his homeland in 2009 to train with terrorist organisation al-Shabaab, responded: "To die in the path of God". A source familiar with Khayre said there was "absolutely no doubt" he was a jihadist in the making, but claimed he was not beyond redemption. "Jihad was like a jacket he wore, but it wasn't really him ... things could have been turned around." A legal source, who had also met Khayre on several occasions, expressed concern he was not considered for a deradicalisation program upon his release from prison.

"It was an opportunity missed. He had plenty of problems, mostly the drugs, but he seemed like a young guy who was easily led. And he could have been led in another direction," the source said. In Parliament this week, Corrections Minister Gayle Tierney said there were up to 22 current and former prisoners taking part in an anti-radicalisation program. Victoria Police would not comment on the specifics of the program but confirmed 22 people were currently participating, none of whom are on parole. "Yacqub Khayre was the only participant on the program who was a parolee. However, given the incident in which he was involved is now subject to coronial investigation, we are not able to comment further," a spokeswoman said. The Community Integration Support Program (CISP) has been operating in prison for the past seven years in a bid to moderate the extremist views of violent criminals convicted of terror-related offences.

It was set up in the wake of Operation Pendennis, established to investigate a terror plot led by Abdul Nacer Benbrika, and Operation Neath, established to investigate the plot targeting the Holsworthy Barracks in Sydney for which Khayre was acquitted. Run by Victoria Police and the Islamic Council of Victoria, there are about two dozen criminals going through CISP. The Andrews government this year allocated almost $6.4 million over the next four years to the program, although the Islamic Council of Victoria announced on Wednesday it was scaling back its involvement. "We've been involved to this point, but we've decided not to go into the next phase of CISP because it is expanding," said vice president Adel Salman, adding that ICV runs a separate chaplaincy program for Muslim prisoners. "Tackling extremism of any form  absolutely we support that, but we feel now is the right time to refocus our efforts." It is understood the refocused CISP will also target people suspected of holding extremist views who have not been in prison.

Deakin University counter terrorism expert Greg Barton said authorities needed to consider how to engage with young people who were held on remand and had not been convicted of crimes. "Since CISP was set up we've seen a change in the landscape," Professor Barton said. "We're seeing lots of young people, including many teenagers, in remand when they're charged with terrorism offences. "One of the issues in this area is, what happens on remand? Because, particularly when it comes to younger people you especially hope there is some intervention at that early stage, but there is various reasons why that's hard. "It's not a great environment ... it would be a good place to have some intervention." Professor Barton said there also needed to be better information sharing between state police, ASIO and the AFP, especially when there has been a history of extremism.
A man found stabbed to death in a Caroline Springs laneway on Sunday night has been identified by police as 36-year-old father Patryk Bondar.

A passer-by found Mr Bondar's body lying at the end of a trail of blood, leading to nearby parkland on Caravel Lane about 10pm.

Patryk Bondar, 36, was found dead in Caroline Springs on Sunday night. Credit:Twitter/@9NewsMelb

"The man has apparently suffered from a stab wound to his upper body and was dead when they found him," homicide squad Detective Senior Sergeant Stephen McIntyre told reporters on Monday.

Mr Bondar's son paid tribute to his father on social media the day after his death.
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.

It was the formidable force of a father's love that spurred Anthony Foster to become a high-profile advocate for child sex abuse victims.

The Foster family: Chrissie, Katie, Aimee, Emma and Anthony.

Mr Foster and his wife Chrissie dedicated two decades to seeking justice for sexual abuse victims within the Catholic Church.

Hundreds of people packed into the Melbourne Recital Centre to farewell Mr Foster at a state funeral on Wednesday.
Single people could soon have the same rights to adopt children as married couples, under the most dramatic shake-up to Victoria's adoption laws in more than 30 years.

Decades after the state's Adoption Act was introduced, the Andrews Government is preparing to revamp the legislation after conceding it no longer reflects "the modern family".

Changes to Victoria's adoption laws could give single people the same rights as married couples.

The proposed re-write is based on a Law Reform Commission report tabled in Parliament on Wednesday, which recommends widening eligibility requirements, giving children more access to information and support, and improving the way a person's identity is reflected in their birth certificate.

"At the time of its introduction, the Adoption Act represented a significant change in Victorian adoption policy, as it brought in open adoption," says the report, which was commissioned by the government in 2015.
A Perth teenager who chased a burglar through suburban backyards and performed a citizen's arrest has been hailed as a hero and a "true role model" by family members.

Teal Smith, 18, had returned to her Spearwood home with her parents at about 6.30pm on Saturday evening when she heard strange noises coming from her backyard.

Upon investigating the noise, Ms Smith spotted a man "dressed in all black, wearing a balaclava" peering at her through a gap in the doorway.

"She didn't think twice about running after him, and chased him through the backyard," Nine News Perth reported.
Beijing: Long before he courted controversy for his Australian political donations, high profile Chinese Australian businessman Huang Xiangmo had a track record of making multi-million dollar donations in his home city of Jieyang, in southern China.

Two days ago, the former mayor of Jieyang, Chen Hongping, received a suspended death sentence for corruption and accepting 140 million yuan ($27 million) in bribes. He faces life in prison, with all of his property confiscated.

The Jieyang city gate that got Chen Hongping in hot water.

Mr Huang told Fairfax Media on Wednesday: "While I have no comment on the outcome, I would strongly reject any inference that I have been implicated in this case."

Chen stepped down as mayor in 2011, shortly before a corruption investigation into his eccentric projects, including a vast tomb built on feng shui principals, and a city tower, began. Mr Huang moved to Australia the same year.
A woman looks at a floral tribute near London Bridge, where eight people died and dozens were seriously injured. Credit:AP Sara was due to meet her family in Paris on June 30 to spend five days together, and spoke about her excitement in their last conversation the day before she died. She couldn't wait to eat baguettes, cheese and croissants in the city of lights on her first visit there. Instead, Mrs Wallace set off three weeks ahead of schedule to find her missing daughter in London. She was at an airport stopover when she was told her daughter had died. "My beautiful daughter Sara Zelenak has been confirmed dead," she wrote on Facebook, alongside photos of Sara smiling at the airport before her flight in March.

"Sara was so excited about her European & UK adventure." After meeting up with her family, Sara was due to go on a Contiki trip around Europe, before coming home on August 8. "Unfortunately [this was] cut short by a senseless act of terrorism," Mrs Wallace said. "It makes no sense." Hundreds of people have contributed to a crowdfunding page initially set up to fund the search for Sara, which will now cover the expenses of bringing her home. Tributes have flowed on social media, with friends, family and former schoolmates remembering her love for R&B music and KFC, her quirky sense of humour and her love for travel.

One of Sara's close friends Elle Bishop said they became "instant friends" when they met, describing Sara as "such a character, with the funniest sudden bursts of laughter", who always had time to cheer up her friends with ridiculous stories. "[She had] a great love for adventure and travel, seeing the world and living her life to the fullest, as all young people should be able to," Ms Bishop wrote on Facebook. "Always encouraged by those around her in moments of self doubt to chase the opportunities given to her, and oh boy she did, which is now how she will forever be remembered. "I am, we are, so blessed to have you in our lives. I could think of no better Angel to watch over us all. "Our forever loved, forever beautiful, forever young, Sara. You will be forever missed." Another friend, Sam Hetherington, said Sara "brought so much joy into our lives".

"I can't believe we don't get to grow old together," she said. "Just Thursday I messaged you and you told me everything will always work out. You would be so overwhelmed by the love from everyone and probably be very salty from the dorky pictures we have together that are all over the world hahaha. "Rest easy wherever you are, I hope there is lots of KFC and hot boys with you. Forever love." Sharley Yak, a friend from Brisbane, wrote: "I'm not one to usually write these type of messages but when you lose someone as special as Sara Zelenak in your life, you need to find another way to express the pain inside." He said he would "deeply cherish" the time he got to spend with Sara over several years. Sara's former school, Moreton Bay College in Brisbane, wrote in an announcement that their "hearts are broken by the loss of Sara".

"Sara was a positive, popular student who always had a smile on her face. She embodied the values of Moreton Bay College and was adored by her peers and staff. This is how she will be forever remembered," they said. The school will hold a memorial in their former student's memory, and said they will set up a tribute to her in the quadrangle. Speaking in Sydney on Wednesday, Prince Harry paid tribute to Ms Zelenak and Kirsty Boland, a South Australian nurse who was killed running to help victims of the attack. "I would like to start by sending my thoughts to those affected by Saturday's attack in London Bridge," Harry said. Loading
When the traditional Hawaiian canoe Hokule'a set sail four years ago, the wayfinders on board - men and women navigating the open sea by a map of stars - vowed to seek a renewed sense of self and share with the world a treasured message: Malama Honua.

In Hawaiian, it means to care for Island Earth, a mission especially important to Pacific Islanders, whose home and economy is under constant threat from the rising seas and coral bleaching caused by a warming planet.

This week, the wayfinders will return to a Hawaii that on Tuesday took a defiant stand, becoming the first state to legally implement portions of the landmark Paris climate agreement that President Donald Trump chose to abandon.

"Climate change is real, regardless of what others may say," Hawaii Governor David Ige said at a bill signing ceremony on Tuesday in Honolulu. "Hawaii is seeing the impacts first hand. Tides are getting higher, biodiversity is shrinking, coral is bleaching, coastlines are eroding, weather is becoming more extreme. We must acknowledge these realities at home."
Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte has ordered troops to "crush" Islamic extremists who have occupied parts of a southern city for more than two weeks, despite they are holding dozens of civilian hostages and hundreds of residents remain trapped.

"When I say crush them, you have to destroy everything including lives. Rebellion is no joking matter," the firebrand president told reporters.

"I cannot stop my soldiers nowlet's finish this war that you (Islamic State) have started."

Since hundreds of militants seized Marawi, a city of 200,000 people on May 23, the military has used precision assaults, backed by aerial and artillery bombardment, to attack the militants.
British Prime Minister Theresa May smiles as the Conservative election campaign resumes on June 5. Credit:Getty Images Many voters will be faced with a classic "heart vs head" decision in their booths on Thursday. According to the pollsters Populous, the Conservatives (as of late May) were far ahead of Labour on measures of being willing to take tough long-term decisions, having a team of good leaders, and on competence and capability. People wait in the rain as Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn delivers a speech at a rally in Gateshead. Credit:Getty Images But Labour were seen by more Britons as the party that shared their values, that represented the whole country.

Labour's heart was in the right place, and they were "on the side of people like me", those surveyed said. Political parties continue to campaign across the UK ahead of the general election on Thursday. Credit:Getty Images There are similar sentiments about the party leader, who has long trailed his rival in preferred prime minister polls - suggesting the electorate like what Corbyn promises, but don't trust him to deliver it. When she called the election May said it would be "all about leadership", contrasting her "strong and stable" values versus a "weak and unstable coalition" of Labour and the Scottish National Party. Theresa May steps off the bus to visit the Cheltenham Science Festival on June 6. Credit:Getty Images

Even on the most favourable polls, Labour would only win power as a minority government with the backing of the SNP and the Liberal Democrats  a scenario May and colleagues have taken to calling a "coalition of chaos". May said she was the only leader who could be trusted to get the best Brexit deal for Britain. Early in the campaign, Labour and the Conservatives were talking past each other. May focused on Brexit and leadership, while Labour pushed a traditional line of social care, hospitals and taxing the rich and corporations. There were early signs that Labour's ideas had chimed with the electorate, weary of austerity arguments. And the Conservative manifesto came with a massive own goal, a change to social support for the elderly that was dubbed a "dementia tax".

May eventually moved to fix the problem, promising a cap on costs, but in the process undermined her 'strong and stable' pose  which was already contested by people who pointed out she had been against Brexit, and had ruled out an early election. Meanwhile, Mr Corbyn struck a sprightly, relaxed figure on the campaign stump  a side of his personality rarely seen since his original shock run at the Labour leadership. Then tragedy struck, changing the focus and tone of the election. The Manchester and London Bridge terror attacks brought both parties onto the same contested territory: security. It was comfortable ground for neither. Corbyn has a long history of pushing a conciliatory line, easily painted as appeasement, with groups such as the IRA and Hamas. He was booed at a Manchester vigil the night after the bombing.

And May has zeroed in on Corbyn's previous opposition to laws aimed at giving security forces new powers to combat terrorism  laws that May introduced as home secretary. But May had her own problem: as home secretary, in order to help balance the post-GFC budget, she presided over a huge cut to police numbers. There are still 20,000 fewer frontline police than there were in 2010, and fewer armed officers. Labour can, and did, point to repeated warnings of the effect this would have  including the legitimate fear that slashing community policing would dry up a vital source of early warnings about extremism. As more evidence emerges that the London and Manchester attackers had slipped through the counter-terror net, fingers have been pointed at May as bearing ultimate responsibility. In the last days of the campaign, she sought to turn the issue back in her favour, vowing to tear up human rights laws if it was necessary to crack down on suspected terrorists.

Only the final vote will reveal where this incredibly volatile electorate will finally land. According to political insiders from both parties, Labour is preparing for defeat and the Conservatives for victory. Despite the close polls, Labour's local politicians who have been knocking on doors believe they have no chance of holding more than 30 seats which will fall to the Conservatives. Labour is in trouble in the Midlands and the north, areas that voted strongly for Brexit, and where many lifelong Labour voters will hold their noses and vote Tory because they trust May most to get the UK out of the European Union. If voters shrug off their recent doubts and give May a thumping majority, it would likely be the end of Labour's experiment with Corbynism. But if she wins by a smaller margin, the result for Labour is uncertain. Many in the Labour party had set Ed Miliband's 30.4 per cent vote share as the mark Corbyn would have to pass if he wanted any chance of retaining his leadership. Privately many are now rueing this ultimatum, looking at the polls which put Corbyn well above the figure, but still a loser.

And if May delivers a thin majority for her party, she will also face reprisals. "Recriminations have already begun," says Mike Rann, former SA premier and high commissioner to the UK, now a consultant based in London. "Senior Tories in politics and business say the over the top demonisation of the hapless Corbyn is a copycat of the failed campaign run against moderate Sadiq Khan in the London Mayoral election last year. Then the mild mannered Khan was depicted as a dangerous friend of Islamic terrorists and this backfired terribly. It just didn't fit the man or gel with the public perception of Khan. Loading "Tory insiders say that rather than learning from last year's defeat the campaign team, supported by the same group of rabid newspapers, was 'simply doing a Sadiq' on Corbyn, winning him sympathy he doesn't deserve.
US President Donald Trump. Credit:AP  Had Comey, as claimed by Trump, informed the President no less than three times that Trump, personally, was not under investigation? But here's the thing - Comey has been tic-tacking with Robert Mueller on what he can and can't say and, reportedly, they have arrived at a game plan. Mueller was dramatically appointed as special counsel to investigate what Trump dismisses as "this Russia thing", on the heels of Comey's dramatic sacking. The most powerful man without a job in Washington, Comey is a hive of contradictions: a Democrat turned Republican; a Catholic turned Evangelical turned Methodist; he's been described as one who postures as apolitical, but who also enjoys the limelight.

He's described variously as quixotic; as supremely confident and fiercely independent, by admirers; as equipped with "media savvy arrogance", by detractors; the possessor of "stubbornness, ego, and some self-righteousness at work". Trump and Republicans cheered Comey on and Democrats railed against him for the damage they saw inflicted on Hillary Clinton's campaign by Comey's handling of the investigation into her email server in the last days of the 2016 election campaign. But now, Democrats are rallying to Comey, as the President denounces him as "a nut job", and Trump supporters are running TV advertisements to discredit him. After Trump's request that he pull back on the Russia investigation, Comey was so worried he confronted Attorney-General and Trump loyalist Jeff Sessions, demanding that he not be left alone again with Trump, The New York Times reported on Tuesday. Earlier reports said that, before making his controversial request, Trump had ordered all other officials to leave the Oval Office.

Comey stopped Americans in their tracks in March, when he revealed for the first time that the FBI had been investigating possible collusion between Moscow and the Trump campaign since July 2016. "I have been authorised by the Department of Justice to confirm that the FBI, as part of our counterintelligence mission, is investigating the Russian government's efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election," he told a hearing of the House Intelligence Committee. "That includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government, and whether there was any co-ordination between the campaign and Russian efforts." The hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee is fraught with risk for Trump, who has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. Comey is on the witness stand. But depending on what he says, Trump, some of his closest aides - think son-in-law Jared Kushner and sacked National Security Adviser Michael Flynn; and a slew of campaign associates could land in the dock.

"Clearly, it would be very, very troubling if the President of the United States is interfering in investigations that affect potentially the President and his closest associates," Virginia Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, said on Sunday. "We've known since Watergate rules of the road that [a] president shouldn't intervene in an ongoing investigation. It would be unthinkable if the President actually did what was reported." Warner conceded that, while the committee's investigation had turned up "a lot of smoke", there still was "no smoking gun". The "smoke" alluded to by Warner is a swirl of news reports, many based on intelligence leaks, on numerous meetings between Trump aides and Russian officials; evidence of efforts to conceal those meetings; and, as reported by Yahoo last week, of moves in the first days of the administration to make a priority of lifting sanctions on Russia - which was beaten back by the State Department. Trump has done nothing to endear himself to Comey. Quite the reverse - the White House has denounced him as unfit to run the FBI. And apart from that "nut job" line, which Trump used in explaining to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that sacking Comey had eased the pressure on him, the President has also rubbished Comey as a "showboat".
Harbour View:--- Governor Eugene B. Holiday paid a two-day official visit to the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago on June 1st and June 2nd, 2017.

The purpose of the visit was to strengthen ties between Sint Maarten and the Republic Trinidad and Tobago and promote partnership and cooperation in the Caribbean region.

During the visit, Governor Holiday was received by the President of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, Anthony Carmona, at his presidential palace. At a gathering ) the President and the Governor, recognizing that the youth are the executives of tomorrow, talked to schoolchildren about the importance of education, international relations and collaboration between countries for the development of ones country.

Governor Holiday also met with the Minister of Foreign Affairs and CARICOM Affairs, Dennis Moses. They discussed issues of mutual interest including the potential for cooperation and Sint Maartens participation in the region. In his meeting with the Minister of Education, Anthony Garcia, he discussed the possibilities of cooperation between Sint Maarten and Trinidad & Tobago in the field of education and exchanged views about nation building through education. The Governor also held discussions about the organization of the judiciary with the Chief Justice of Trinidad & Tobago, Ivor Archie, and Justices of the Caribbean Court of Justice.

His program furthermore included discussions with representatives of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the UNDP about the activities and potential benefits for Sint Maarten. The Governor continued the trip by meeting with the Director of CARICOM Implementing Agency for Crime and Security (IMPACTS) and discussed regional security cooperation.

Governor Holiday  in addition to the governmental meetings  met with the Dean and management of the engineering faculty of UWI and paid a visit to UWIs Institute for International Relations. At the Institute, the management of the Diplomatic Academy gave the Governor a tour of the facilities during which he was informed about the work and courses of the Academy. Governor Holiday also visited the Cocoa Research Institute of UWI. There he was briefed about the reintroduction of agriculture on Trinidad. In a meeting organized by representatives of a financial institution and the Governor, they expressed their interest to and shared their ideas about investing and doing business in the region in general and in Sint Maarten in particular.

On June 1st, during the first evening of his visit, Governor Holiday was the guest of honor at a reception, hosted by the Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Jules Bijl, where he met with the Trinidadian public and private sector, the Diplomatic Corps as well as with members of the Dutch Community in Trinidad and Tobago. In addressing the audience at the reception he highlighted the long-standing friendship that exists between the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, Sint Maarten and the Kingdom of the Netherlands. He further stated that Since becoming a country within the Kingdom in 2010, Sint Maarten as part of its strategy to achieve the socio-economic goals of our people has found it important to strengthen ties with our Caribbean neighbors and to participate in regional organizations. Emphasizing our common historical, cultural and geographic characteristics and shared challenges he went on to state: I believe that through partnership and cooperation, we stand a better chance to address our collective challenges and hence improve and secure the wellbeing of our people.
Cole Bay:---- Saint Martin Cars celebrates summer with the Nissan Summers On Us Auto Show with on the spot financing by the RBC Royal Bank, on Saturday, June 10 at Welfare Road 16 in Cole Bay. The free, all-day event starts at 10:30 a.m. and with the purchase of a new Nissan vehicle, buyers have the option of, three monthly payments on Saint Martin Cars, one-year free insurance, inspection and number plates or four free services.

Auto show attendees are invited to interact with Nissan sales representatives to learn more about the upgraded features of the Nissan model lineup. At the show, Saint Martin Cars also encourages consumers to get behind the wheel to experience the thrill of driving its latest models including Qashqai, X-Trail, NP300 Frontier, Sentra, Versa and the all-new Nissan Kicks.

Up to 100% financing will be available to those who qualify. The required documents are two forms of valid ID, proof of address, job letter and last two months salary pay slips.

At Saint Martin Cars, we understand that buying a car is one of the most important financial decisions an individual can make, which is why it is imperative to provide access to on the spot financing, said Angelique Vialenc, Saint Martin Cars Sales Manager.

Through interaction with product experts and sign and drive opportunities, Nissan fans, customers, and potential customers can experience the full Nissan lineup in one day. For more information on the Nissan Summers On Us Auto Show and the complete lineup of innovative Nissan cars, trucks, SUVs and crossovers, please visit www.saintmartincars.sx or call +1 (721) 544-3049.
Miami, Florida:--- Caribbean Aviation Attorney, Bryan P. Winters, will present a lecture entitled, Why and how airlines, resort, and tourism boards should cooperate for a common goal during the 2nd Annual Caribbean Aviation Meetup in St. Maarten, June 13 - 15.

Bryan will be sharing lessons he has learned from his 17-year career as an aviation and tourism attorney and consultant practicing throughout the Caribbean and the tourist-rich market of the United States. He is a Shareholder attorney with the Aero Attorney Group, an international aviation law firm, and President/Founder of the Aero Advantage Group, a transportation consulting company. Bryan holds a Bachelors of Science Degree in Economics from the Warrington College of Business at the University of Florida, a Juris Doctorate Degree from the University of Miami where he emphasized Caribbean commercial law through his exchange program coursework at the University of the West Indies  Cave Hill Campus in Barbados, West Indies and a Legal Education Certificate conferred by the Caribbean Council of Legal Education following the completion of his second law degree at the Eugene Dupuch Law School in Nassau, The Bahamas.

The 2nd Annual Caribbean Aviation Meetup conference differs from most other events, because it puts the emphasis on experience exchange, interaction and participation, rather than on listening to speakers' or companys achievements. It is the perfect opportunity for face-to-face business discussions and comprehensive group opinion exchanges on sector-specific topics. The result is a proactive platform upon which successful networking can be built. It will provide impulses for new business developments and industry investments. It will accommodate a new attitude towards positive development and impact of airlift. Twenty-seven speakers from as far away as New Zealand are contributing to the program that will be followed by participants from twenty-nine countries and territories. The conference will be held June 13 - 15 on St. Maarten and is hosted by Princess Juliana International Airport. (www.caribavia.com).
PHILIPSBURG:---The Inspectorate VSA of Sint Maarten and the Inspectorate of Health of Aruba signed a collaboration agreement on the 3rd of June at the Health Care Conference Aruba in the presence of Ministers Emile Lee from Sint Maarten and Dr. Alex Schwengle from Aruba.The Inspectorate VSA was established in 2010 and the Inspectorate of Health Aruba in January 2017. Discussions on collaboration had started in May 2015 during the first Health Care Conference in Aruba.

Exchange of expertise and information including manpower in special cases are the primary focus of the collaboration. Furthermore, special collaboration projects will take places such as the development of inspection tools and norms, registration of pharmaceuticals and joint training. In the near future, the collaboration will be expanded with food safety and drinking water.

Both Inspectorates also have a collaboration agreement in place with the Inspectorate of the Netherlands.

IVSA Press Release.
PHILIPSBURG:--- On the 1st of June, the foundation Environmental Protection in the Caribbean (EPIC) and the Sint Maarten Hospitality and Trade Association (SHTA) celebrated the Green Key Award for the achievements of Holland House Beach Hotel and Princess Heights Luxury Boutique Condo Hotel.

The event, hosted at Holland House, was a celebration of sustainability on St. Maarten, the importance of preserving our tourism product, and profiting from it in a sustainable way. The Green Key is an internationally recognized eco-label awarded to tourism and leisure establishments which meet high environmental standards.

The Green Key program is not just a set of guidelines to follow, it is a comprehensive program that ensures a reduction of waste and energy, which not only benefits the environment but it is beneficial to the cost of our business as well. It educates our staff, it educates our management and it drives a spirit into your organization. Going green for us its a rewarded investment and that we attempt to keep up said Paul Boetekees, General Manager of Holland House.

Princess Heights is the ground-breaking establishment which became the islands first Green Key Hotel. Mr. Arnaldo Phelipa, General Manager of Princess Heights, congratulated Holland House for their achievements and urged other businesses to move towards a greener and more sustainable business attitude for the benefits of the community, the environment and the business itself.

In light of recent events regarding the Paris Climate Accord, it is ever more important to recognize those corporations and citizens leading the way toward improving and protecting our environment. Our island nation is solely dependent on the environment for its livelihood and all efforts must be made to reduce waste, improve environmental education and increase sustainability.

The event was well attended by many trade and tourism businesses as well as EPIC representatives Laura Bijnsdorp, Elisa Oldani and Kippy Gilders and SHTA Board Members Lorraine Talmi, Ricardo Perez and Paul Henriquez.
Developers and investors can connect globally

GridShare LLC announced today the launch of its independent crowdfunding platform to help renewable energy projects and cleantech companies raise capital.

By creating an online platform where investors can independently engage with project owners seeking funding, GridShare is a game-changer for the alternative energy industry.

GridShare is a unique online platform where renewable energy project developers and cleantech companies from around the world post their funding needs. Potential investors can peruse investment opportunities in a variety of renewable energy sectors. GridShare also intends to host funding opportunities for energy efficiency initiatives and early-stage clean technology ventures.

"Raising money has been a huge impediment to the growth of the capital-intensive renewable energy industry," said Jack Jacobs, CEO and Co-Founder of GridShare. "Now, with GridShare's help, a project developer or cleantech venture can tap into a new funding channel and ultimately spend less time fundraising and more time focusing on its core business."

GridShare LLC is funding portal authorized by the SEC and FINRA to conduct securities offerings under SEC Regulation Crowdfunding.

Initial offerings on GridShare.com include a $250,000 secured debt offering for a community solar project, a $350,000 equity offering for a floating solar project, and a $100,000 secured debt offering for a community wind project.

Posting a project on GridShare is free and easy. Once the GridShare team approves the project, it will be published online. Investors will then have the opportunity to review the project details, and invest online. With respect to US offerings, GridShare earns a commission from the offeror only if its funding goal is fully achieved. GridShare also offers optional services, such as assistance in preparing listing materials, filing forms, facilitating investor webinars, and managing the security offerings.

"For too long, large financial institutions and accredited investors have controlled the financing for renewable energy. Finally, project developers like Pristine Sun can rely on GridShare to facilitate innovative solar investments available to all investors," said Troy Helming, President of Pristine Sun, a major developer of solar projects in the US, and the sponsor of two listings currently hosted on GridShare.com. "Pristine Sun can now get support from the crowd to complete its solar projects, and the crowd can now own part of our projects and participate in the growing market for clean energy in the United States."

GridShare also announced today that they will be exhibiting at the Intersolar North America Conference (Booth 8814) in San Francisco, July 11-13, 2017. For more information, please visit http://www.intersolar.us/

About GridShare LLC: GridShare LLC, an online crowdfunding platform for renewable energy and cleantech projects registered with the SEC and FINRA, enables everyday people to invest in renewable energy projects and cleantech companies based in the US. By significantly expanding the funding options available to business owners and project developers, GridShare opens up the renewable energy industry to a much wider audience of investors. The platform is (clean) technology agnostic, posting investment opportunities from all types of renewable energy projects and cleantech companies. GridShare allows renewable energy projects and cleantech companies to raise debt or equity from investors. By diversifying the available investment opportunities, GridShare offers a more inclusive environment for non-accredited and accredited investors alike. GridShare International, LLC, which is not registered with the SEC, assists issuers in countries other than the United States in listing securities offerings in such countries.

For more information about GridShare LLC or GridShare International, LLC, please visit: http://www.gridshare.com; you can also email us at [email protected] Follow GridShare on Twitter @GridShareLLC: http://www.twitter.com/GridShareLLC.
TUV Rheinland Becomes One of the First Organizations to Test Against Automobile Information Security Standards

LITTLETON, MA  (Marketwired)  06/07/17  TUV Rheinland, a global leader and independent testing services provider, today announced that it now offers information security testing for the automotive industry. Based on the Trusted Information Security Assessment Exchange (TISAX), the company can now verify that manufacturers and service provides within the automotive supply chain meet the VDA ISA information security standard.

With this announcement, TUV Rheinland becomes one of the first organizations authorized to perform information security testing in accordance with the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA ISA, Information Security Assessment) standards. The assessment criteria used for security testing is based on the requirements of the VDA, which contains essential features of the Information Security Management Systems (ISMS) in accordance with the international ISO/IEC 27001 standard.

Information security is a critical success factor in the automotive industry. It affects not only the exchange of construction data in the processes of development, but also the functional safety of manufacturing processes, automated data exchange of networked production systems, and the availability and reliability of production. With the rise of the connected car, service providers and part suppliers must prove to their customers, at regular intervals, that they are adhering to automobile information security standards.

We are delighted to support the TISAX initiative. Thanks to our 140+ years of experience in industrial security, we are uniquely positioned to assist our clients in making the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) more secure, said Frank Luzsicza, Executive Vice President, Information and Communication Technology, TUV Rheinland Group. Many of our manufacturing clients and suppliers have already been conducting information security assessments on their own. With TISAX, they now have an established assessment with an industry-wide recognition.

To learn more about information security assessments of automotive service providers and suppliers, and how TUV Rheinland can assess their offerings, please visit

TUV Rheinland is a global leader in independent inspection services, founded 145 years ago. The group maintains a worldwide presence with 19,700 employees; annual turnover is more than EUR 1.9 billion. The independent experts stand for quality and safety for people, technology and the environment in nearly all aspects of life. TUV Rheinland inspects technical equipment, products and services, oversees projects, and helps to shape processes and information security for companies. Its experts train people in a wide range of careers and industries. To this end, TUV Rheinland employs a global network of approved labs, testing and education centres. Since 2006, TUV Rheinland has been a member of the United Nations Global Compact to promote sustainability and combat corruption. Website:

Frank Dudley

Director Communications

TUV Rheinland of North America, Inc.

(978) 266-9500

Carissa Ryan

Scratch Marketing + Media
Catalogic Software Brings Message of Copy and Dev-Test Automation to Pure//Accelerate

WOODCLIFF LAKE, NJ  (Marketwired)  06/07/17  , the leading provider of software-defined copy data management (CDM), today announced that its technical director, Prashant Jagannathan, will be speaking at Pure Storages conference, to be held June 12-14th in San Francisco. Catalogic is a Petabyte-level sponsor of the event.

Catalogic Software is presenting a session to be held on Wednesday, June 14th at 11:15 am: Oracle and SQL Server Aware Snapshot and Replication Copy Automation for Pure Storage where Prashant will be joined by Pure Storages Alex Infanzon to discuss how Catalogic provides simple snapshot, clone and replication management for complex database environments running on Pure Storage, including Oracle RAC and ASM. A live demo is included at this session where use cases to be discussed include automated protection and rapid database recovery, distribution of zero-footprint Dev-Test copies, user self-service portal, and DevOps tool integration (Chef, Puppet, Jenkins, etc.).

Catalogic will have many technical gurus on hand and multiple solution demos in Booth #2. Visitors will learn how its ECX copy data management software platform can help ingrate critical applications with Pure Storage FlashRecover snapshots and replication, all without scripting. Catalogic recently announced the newest release of its ECX that now adds application-aware support for InterSystems Cache and Epic EHR, SAP HANA, and extends Microsoft SQL Server support to physical hosts and Windows failover clusters.

Catalogic is also sponsoring the Pure Storage Executive Networking Reception on June 11th. Partners will be able to discuss go-to-market strategies with Catalogic sales and channel executives.

Pure//Accelerate 2017 is Pure Storages second annual technology conference. The show floor will include four pavilions, each complete with mini theaters that will feature two rapid-fire breakout sessions per hour. Attendees are invited to explore the future of cloud-era infrastructure, advanced analytics and cutting-edge application development through a series of thought-provoking keynotes and panel discussions delivered by marquee thought leaders and industry experts, including Catalogic Software.

Catalogic Software is the markets leading provider of In-Place Copy Data management solutions. Founded in 1996 and with thousands of customers worldwide, Catalogic helps the IT organization modernize its infrastructure, delivering significant reductions to CAPEX and OPEX while providing superior services to the business. For enterprise IT teams, Catalogic delivers a centralized software-only data management platform that leverages heterogeneous storage and delivers significant improvements to mission critical IT functions  such as automated disaster recovery, test/dev, and data protection  while enabling newer use cases like Hybrid Cloud and DevOps. Catalogic has a state-of-the-art Partner Program, and its products are sold exclusively through its global network of distributors and value-added resellers. Visit Catalogic at to learn more.

Joanne Hogue

Smart Connections PR

410.658.8246
New Searchmetrics Study provides Financial Brands with industry-specific insights on how to be successful on Google

Research highlights the Google ranking factors for financial services websites

SAN MATEO, Calif. (June 7, 2017)  New research highlights the key industry-specific factors that are commonly found in bank, insurance and other financial services websites that rank higher in Google searches. Among the main findings:

 having highly relevant content is even more important in financial services than in other sectors

 top ranking financial websites use the searched keyword on their site far less than other websites that rank high

 plus their pages tend to be more streamlined, loading a second faster than other high-ranking pages and may even use fewer images and videos

The study also reveals that financial services web pages that rank high on Google are 70% more likely to be shared or engaged with on LinkedIn (than other content that ranks highly). But financial content is less popular on Facebook.

The insights come from Searchmetrics, a specialist in search and content optimization, which analyzed the top 20 Google search results for over 6,000 finance-related keywords (including terms such as mortgage rates, Insurance and foreign exchange) to identify the most commonly occurring elements, important Ranking Factors as well as features where finance stands out. The findings were compared with a broader Searchmetrics benchmark study that analyzed the results of 10,000 general search queries applicable across all industries. The research is summarized in the whitepaper: Finance Ranking Factors  Data Insights for Performing on Google.

If you are a financial services organization, its essential to rank well within search engines. Thats where most customers start their research for everything from mortgages and loans to investing in stocks, explains Marcus Tober, founder and CTO at Searchmetrics. But financial brands can no longer rely solely on general, widely applicable search and content optimization strategies to help their content rank higher. Our study shows they now need to do a variety of industry-specific things that are important for ranking well in finance searches.

According to Tober, this is because Google is getting smarter. With the help of machine learning and other technologies, the search engine now has a greater understanding of the intention behind the words people enter in to the search bar, allowing it to deliver more relevant, industry-specific results. For example, Google can identify if queries relate to finance, travel or other vertical sectors and displays results that use elements that most effectively address the needs of searchers within those individual categories.

Below are five key learnings from the Searchmetrics study that can help finance brands rank higher on Google.

1. Content relevance is even more important in financial services

Pages that rank in the top ten Google results for financial services searches have a higher content relevance than the top ten results for general search queries (that Searchmetrics analyzed in its benchmark study).

The company measures content relevance[1] using Big Data computing to compare the semantic relation of the words people enter into the search bar with both related topics and the text that appears in the pages listed in search results.

In fact, the study found that Googles top ten results for financial services queries have a content relevance score for the central part of the page that is 50% higher on average than the most relevant content found in the general benchmark study.

2. Frequently mentioning keywords is not necessary

High-ranking financial services content uses the searched keyword three times less frequently in the body text than high ranking content in the benchmark study. Across the first 20 positions, the keyword only appears on the page 2.1 times, whereas for general search queries the overall average is 7.4: more than three times as many.

Repeating the same words can come across as unnatural to website visitors and its likely that in financial services searches Google is putting even greater emphasis on rewarding sites that provide content that is easy to understand and uses natural language to answer searchers questions.

3. Hold off on menus, buttons and other interactive elements on the page

Of all the industries analyzed by Searchmetrics, financial services pages ranking on Googles first page have the fewest interactive elements such as buttons and menus: 29% below the benchmark average. This strongly suggests that the focus for pages ranking for finance-related topics is on helping visitors to absorb the content on the page, and not on navigational elements such as buttons or menus than can lead visitors to other parts of the site. This makes good sense as complex finance-related content often requires visitors to focus.

4. Keep file sizes small  for example by using fewer images and videos

The file sizes of top 10 results in financial services searches are around 30% smaller than the overall average. One explanation is that pages that provide information related to finance tend to make less use of images and/or videos that can produce bigger pages. This also ties in with why financial services results tend to load a second quicker on average.

Interestingly, while video is a great way to capture website visitors attention, some studies suggest that when people are making important, complex decisions such as choosing a mortgage or insurance product, text works better.

5. Top financial content drives more LinkedIn interactions than other topics

The top 20 results in finance searches attract just a fifth as many Facebook likes and shares as the benchmark average. However, they have 70% more social signals from the professional network LinkedIn. While there is no proof of a causal link between greater LinkedIn or Facebook engagement and higher rankings, the study does suggest that sites ranking higher for finance-related queries are also very popular among LinkedIn users. So LinkedIn as a professional social network seems to be a relevant social channel for finance topics.

To download Finance Ranking Factors  Data Insights for Performing on Google visit: www.searchmetrics.com/knowledge-base/ranking-factors-finance/.

This is one of a series of Searchmetrics industry-specific ranking factors studies focusing on individual verticals. You can download its analysis of eCommerce ranking factors here and expect to see further studies on the travel, media and health verticals in the coming months.

[1]Content Relevance is based on measurement methods which use linguistic corpora and the conceptualization of semantic relationships between words as distances in the form of vectors. For the semantic evaluation of a text, this makes it possible to analyze the keyword and the content separately from one another. Searchmetrics can calculate a content relevance score for a complete text on a certain keyword or topic. The higher the relevance score, the more relevant the content of the analyzed landing page for the given search query. To make Content Relevance more meaningful, its calculation actually excludes instances of simple keyword matches between search queries and search results.

About the study

Searchmetrics analyzed the top 20 desktop search results on Google.com for over 6,000 industry-specific keywords that are relevant to the financial services sector. It identified the common factors that are present in these results and how strongly they correlate with search ranking positions. The findings were then compared with Searchmetrics separate study of Google ranking factors which analyzed the results for a general set of 10,000 keywords applicable across all verticals.
Cytek Biosciences Debuts New Advanced Flow Cytometry System

Posted by Publisher Software

FREMONT, CA  (Marketwired)  06/07/17  More colors, greater flexibility, higher sensitivity, better affordability. today announced the launch of its new Aurora advanced flow cytometry system, which features a unique combination of patent-pending, innovative technologies that take flow cytometry to the next level of performance and flexibility.

Aurora offers capabilities that go beyond flow cytometry systems that come with a much higher price tag, making it the embodiment of Cyteks mission to make massively multiparametric flow cytometry accessible to a larger number of researchers.

Cytek has been on the frontlines of the industry for decades, providing services and customization to keep cytometry systems tuned and running at high performance levels. The introduction of Aurora combines the companys vast pool of technical expertise with its profound market understanding to mark its full circle evolution from a service provider to a solution provider. Cytek has evolved to address an unmet need, noted Dr. Wenbin Jiang, CEO of Cytek Biosciences. Years of experience have revealed to us that the cytometry community has lacked a user-friendly and truly affordable hyper-parametric flow cytometer. Our technology allows us to provide an instrument that offers outstanding performance and unparalleled reagent flexibility when it comes to dye selection and multicolor panel design. With Aurora, more labs will have the ability to obtain deeper biological insights from a single sample. This will have a significant impact on research and clinical application fields such as immunology, oncology and systems biology.

Aurora enables a 20+ color capability, using three excitation lasers and 50 channels. An innovative system design, which includes excitation optics and compact semiconductor detector modules with high quantum efficiency, allows for the implementation of more detection channels per laser than conventional flow cytometry systems. Depending on the laser excitation wavelength, this permits detection of any fluorescence emission in the 400-900nm range without having to change optical filters. Auroras optical design and unmixing algorithm combine to enable the use of a wide array of dyes, including those with highly overlapping spectra  a feat not possible using conventional cytometry.

Aurora will be demonstrated at the industrys premier flow cytometry conference, CYTO 2017, in Boston from June 10-14 at booth #86. Aurora joins Cyteks existing lineup of flow cytometry solutions, all of which are backed by Cyteks comprehensive service plan offerings. Please visit for more information.

Cytek is a leading flow cytometry solution provider and provides compact, affordable instruments with high multiplexing capability and a wide range of services to support researchers and clinicians. Cytek Biosciences Inc. is the outcome of a merger between Cytek Development Inc., a leading pioneer in flow cytometry, and Cytoville Inc., a venture-capital-backed business focusing on advanced bio-medical instrument technology development. The companys headquarters are in Fremont, California with branch offices and distribution channels across the globe.

Image Available:

Justine Houston-Brown

Lages & Associates

(949) 453-8080
HELSINGBORG, Sweden  Green Heinz ketchup? Fat-free Pringles? Colgate frozen lasagna? You don't need to be an expert to know these products weren't successful.

Which is why these creations, with dozens of others, feature in the new Museum of Failure , a wacky parade of rejected products from years gone by set up in the Swedish town of Helsingborg.

It's the brainchild of 43-year-old curator and clinical psychologist Samuel West. The idea came to him while on holiday and he quickly purchased the internet domain name. West later realized he'd accidentally misspelled "museum"  a sure sign the project would succeed.

"We know that 80 to 90 percent of innovation projects, they fail and you never read about them, you don't see them, people don't talk about them," West says. "And if there's anything we can do from these failures, is learn from them."

Many items in the museum show companies' attempts to diversify their brand. There's Coca-Cola's BlaK coffee beverage and Pepsi's Crystal clear soda.

Iconic motorcycle manufacturer Harley-Davidson makes an appearance with a men's eau-du-toilette, launched in the mid-1990s.

"The fans hated it," West says. "They had Christmas ornaments, Barbie dolls, all kinds of other stuff with the Harley-Davidson logo and it sort of trivializes the brand."

Even one of the world's best-known businessmen, President Donald Trump, makes an appearance.

The "I'm Back And You're Fired" board game from 2004 looks like Monopoly, but players use "T'' branded pieces and the paper notes are adorned with Trump's image.

"It's a boring version of Monopoly. It's simplified so stupid people can play it, but it's also horribly boring," West says.

The Museum of Failure is also home to some high-tech devices, including Google's Glass headset with augmented reality display and in-built camera.

"The problem was Google released it too early, it was still a prototype, so it was full of bugs," West says.

Segway's two-wheeled electric mobility device is also featured.

"The Segway was supposed to revolutionize the way we transport people," West says. "And we all know that the Segway today is used by tourists before they go get drunk."

Experts say innovation is tough and failure is often part of the process.

"You're working on the edge of tomorrow," says Nicolai de Gier, a professor at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. "It's like the other part of trying is failing, so it's just a very natural thing and very important thing."

West says many brands featured in his museum want nothing to do with it. But he says other companies have booked large group visits, perhaps to learn from past mistakes.

"It's liberating for us, when we try out a new skill or learn something, it's OK to fail," he says.

The museum does offer some hope. On display is an Apple Newton personal digital assistant from 1993. The bulky black device paved the way for the iPhones and iPads that millions use today.

The Museum of Failure opens June 7 and will stay in its gallery space until at least early September. Entry is 100 Swedish kroner, or approximately $11.
What does a 'Strengthen Our Schools' win mean for Penn-Harris-Madison?

One of three candidates backed by a conservative-leaning group has flipped a seat on the Penn-Harris-Madison school board. Here's what we know.
DECATUR  Former Illinois State Representative and Mount Zion Mayor Bob Flider said when he was diagnosed with prostate and colon cancer in 2015, there was one thing his doctors didnt tell him.

I learned it qualified you for a free chicken dinner every year, Flider told a crowd of 1,200 at the 30th annual National Cancer Survivors Day Celebration at the Decatur Hotel and Conference Center as they finished off their meals.

Those in attendance ranged from recently diagnosed to having survived for more than 60 years.

One thing Ive learned as a cancer survivor, every day is a beautiful day, said Flider, who served as the events keynote speaker along with fellow Decatur cancer survivor Anna Keyes.

There were hundreds of cancer survivors in attendance, all with unique stories. Here are just a few of them.

An honor

Keyes, a 22-year-old St. Teresa graduate, was in college at the University of Illinois, and even had friends her age who had been diagnosed with cancer. But it didnt prepare her for the call she got in 2015 a month after having a mole on her face removed.

I got a call from my nurse and she told me she had some bad news, Keyes said. The nurse told her the mole tested positive for melanoma. I gasped. I told her I didnt understand any of the words she was saying except for cancer.

It turned out the skin on Keyes cheek still had cancer, and she had to go in for two more surgeries, the last one leaving her with 75 stitches. She had four more procedures after that to help reconstruct the skin on her face.

Everyones main concern, for whatever reason, was how my face was going to look, Keyes said.

Keyes said since the diagnosis, shes become paranoid shell get cancer again.

Im continuously looking at every mole on my body, avoiding the sun and having doctors check my lungs, my blood  anything, Keyes said.

Keyes has also had survivors guilt. Shortly after her cancer, her uncle Jeff Tokarz was diagnosed with stage 4 melanoma in a mole on is back and died seven months later.

That really started me on this platform, said Keyes, who is planning on getting her Masters degree in nursing at Millikin and becoming an oncology nurse. I became an activist. I actually had sorority sisters who questioned why I was making such a big deal out of my cancer.

I feel like being a cancer survivor is an honor. We all have different battle scars, radiation burns and stories. But we should all share our stories. If we keep telling it, it could connect with the right person and make the difference in saving their life.

Lets preach it

Flider became emotional when talking about everyone in his life cancer has taken  his father, grandfather, uncle and sister-in-law. His mom is a 30-year cancer survivor.

Flider was even at the groundbreaking for the Cancer Care Center of Decatur when it opened in 2009.

Still, Flider put off getting tested and had to have a significant portion of his colon out.

Little did I know I was be benefitting from the Cancer Care Center so soon, Flider said. My life changed the day I was first told I had cancer. So did the lives of my family.

Flider is now cancer-free and, like Keyes, feels like he can help people by sharing his story.

Thats the silver lining, Flider said. We can encourage others to get checked. We speak from personal experience, so lets preach it.

I got the message

Phil Jacobs, a former Decatur Herald & Review photographer, has experienced several cancer episodes. He had several cancerous lesions removed from his skin through the years, but five years ago was diagnosed with two kinds of cancer in his prostate.

One was fast-growing and one was slow-growing, said Jacobs, 80, or Decatur. I had to go through 42 doses of radiation, pills and shots, for two years. But now they cant find it, so I did pretty well.

Jacobs said radiation was painless, but it did make him tired.

Im still a little tired, Jacobs said. But I wasnt eligible for surgery, so Im glad it worked.

Jacobs was treated at the HSHS St. Marys Hospital Cancer Care Center.

You go through things like this and you dont know if theyre life-threatening or not  you dont know how things are going to turn out, Jacobs said. The doctors scare you just enough so you know to take it seriously. I got the message.

Long year

Cindy Fuller, 58, of Decatur, was a couple of months late for her routine mammogram in May of 2016 and had the feeling she should make an appointment.

Fuller didnt have a history of cancer in her family, but a lump was found in her breast that had cancer. She had three surgeries  two lumpectomies and an axillary lymph node dissection  followed by three weeks of chemotherapy and 33 radiation treatments. Following treatment she developed lymphedema on her arm that she has to have physical therapy for.

Its been a long year, Fuller said.

But Fullers year got better two weeks ago when she was told she was cancer-free.

I just continued to work and I had amazing support, Fuller said. I consider myself lucky in the first place because the mammogram picked it up despite it being deep way in the side.

I got this

Susan Hunk, 47, of Mount Zion, was one of the most recent cancer survivors in the room. She was diagnosed with breast cancer on April 13 and just recently began treatment.

I found a lump and I had it investigated, Hunk said. I was shocked when they told me it was breast cancer.

Hunk had to temporarily leave her job as a teacher at Futures Unlimited in Decatur. Shes married with two daughters  one a senior in college and the other a senior in high school.

I have to do 18 weeks of chemo before surgery, then radiation, then continue with chemo, Hunk said. Im on my second chemo treatment. Its overwhelming, but Ive had a lot of support.

Hunk is optimistic about her future.

I was talking to Dr. (James) Wade this morning and I said, I feel like Im going to survive this. Do you?  Hunk said. He said, Absolutely. I keep telling people, I got this. 
How best to strike up conversations with intelligent aliens? Mathematics might be the common lingo.

Communication between Earthlings and intelligent aliens should be based on mathematics  exo-arithmetic greetings that form a shared lingo, some researchers say.

The idea is that mathematics is as much a part of our humanity as music and art. And it is mathematics that might be understandable  even familiar  to extraterrestrial civilizations, allowing us to strike up star-speak repartee.

Carl DeVito, an emeritus faculty in the mathematics department at the University of Arizona in Tucson, has proposed a language based on plausibly universal scientific concepts. He recently detailed his work at the Astrobiology Science Conference 2017, held from April 24 to April 28 in Mesa, Arizona. [13 Ways to Hunt Intelligent Alien Life]

Complex problem

"Science, SETI, and Mathematics," a 2014 book by Carl DeVito, investigates the best ways to communicate with alien civilizations. (Image credit: Berghahn Books)

Designing a signal that attracts attention and, on examination, is "clearly" the work of intelligence, is a complex problem, DeVito told Space.com. To explore the possibilities, he authored "Science, SETI, and Mathematics" (Berghahn Books, 2014).

DeVito spotlights the famous German mathematician Karl Gauss, who suggested in 1820 the planting of large swaths of Siberian forest in a graphical demonstration of the Pythagorean Theorem.

Some 20 years later, Austrian astronomer Joseph von Littrow was keen on touching off kerosene-filled trenches in the Sahara Desert that took on the form of various geometric shapes.

Both scientists thought that such large displays on Earth would surely grab the attention of faraway intelligent life. Doing so, they reasoned, would be communicating our planet's intellectual prowess. (Neither idea was carried out.)

Mutual interest

"The concept of first attracting attention and then displaying meaning is, perhaps, the best way to solve the problem," DeVito said. "Maybe extraterrestrial intelligence will have similar ideas and thereby make themselves known to us."

DeVito suggests that, for two societies to be able to exchange precise, scientific information of mutual interest, they must first learn each other's units of measurement.

Together with linguist R. T. Oehrle, DeVito has developed a language for exactly that purpose, potentially enabling civilizations from different star systems to report to each other the masses of their planets, the chemical composition of their atmospheres or the energy output of their stars.

"It is, of course, based on some assumptions," DeVito said. These assumptions include:

Both societies can count and do arithmetic.

Both societies recognize the chemical elements and the periodic table.

Both have made a quantitative study of the states of matter.

Both know enough chemistry to carry out chemical calculations.

Regarding these suppositions  all known to humans by the 19th century  DeVito said we can communicate the gram, the calorie, the degree (Kelvin) and our units of pressure.

Potential difficulties

Still, there are several potential difficulties that must be recognized.

For one, an alien race might start with a different geometry and derive its laws of motion in that geometry, DeVito said. Therefore, the results might be very different from the formulation of the laws that are familiar to us, he said.

"The mathematics of motion is differential calculus. Can we assume that an alien race shares this with us? Differential and integral calculus are so fundamental in so many areas of science that it is hard to imagine a science without them," DeVito said. "But this is, perhaps, a human bias."

DeVito said he wonders whether an alien society would have the equivalent of Euclidean geometry.

"We, of course, can't know, but we must be aware that the physics of an alien race, even in a fundamental area like mechanics, might differ in subtle but important ways from our own," he said.

Similarly, would an alien civilization, in its scientific development, come to model its solar system as humanity has, in the Copernican system?

We Earthlings certainly want to present ourselves as a highly intelligent race and put our best face forward when it comes to E.T. contact. (Image credit: NASA)

Best face forward

Given that aliens understand physical reality, DeVito said we can begin constructing a language and communicate with E.T. whatever amount of mathematics is thought necessary.

"The problem  and it is a difficult one  is how to go from a discussion of mathematics to a discussion of other aspects of human civilization." It's very important, he said, that the cross-cultural researcher must play a key role in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

DeVito acknowledges that we Earthlings certainly want to present ourselves as a highly intelligent race. In putting our best face forward, we want to be seen as a life-form that has achieved much and learned much, he said, "but is wise enough to realize that it has much more to learn."

Leonard David is author of "Mars: Our Future on the Red Planet," published by National Geographic. The book is a companion to the National Geographic Channel series "Mars." A longtime writer for Space.com, David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. This version of this story was posted on Space.com.
Surprising Facts

NASA

Being an astronaut is a tremendous commitment. Astronaut candidates  who tend to be selected in their 30s and 40s  usually leave prestigious careers for a chance at being an astronaut, starting again at the bottom of the rung. Training means long days at work and lots of travel. There's also no guarantee they'll make it into space.



Yet, more than 18,000 Americans competed in this round of NASA's astronaut selection. The new candidates will be announced Wednesday (June 7), and will report for basic training in August. Here's what it takes to be a NASA astronaut and what happens after the selection.

Astronaut requirements

NASA

NASA has strict requirements for being an astronaut. The job not only needs you in top physical shape, but it also demands the technical skills to take on difficult jobs in a spacecraft or on a space station far from home.



The agency's basic requirements are a bachelor's degree in engineering, biological science, physical science, computer science or mathematics, followed by three years of professional experience (or 1,000 hours of pilot-in-command time in jet aircraft). Candidates also must pass NASA's astronaut physical examination. However, there are many other skills that can be an asset to selection, such as scuba diving, wilderness experience, leadership experience and facility with other languages (especially Russian, which all astronauts are required to learn today.)



In this photo: These are the basic requirements for being a NASA astronaut, but selected candidates usually have much more experience.

What an astronaut "class" looks like

NASA

NASA has selected 22 "classes" of astronauts since the first group of seven astronauts in 1959 who were chosen for the Mercury program. The space program has grown and changed significantly since that time. The first few classes of astronauts were drawn largely from the military, especially test pilots  a group deemed ready to deal with the extreme dangers of space. But as NASA's program evolved, more diverse skill sets were needed.



For example, the fourth class of astronauts (in 1969) was known as "The Scientists," and included Harrison J. Schmitt, who was the only geologist to walk on the moon (during Apollo 17). Other notable classes include the eighth class in 1978 (including female, African-American and Asian-American selections), the 16th class in 1996 (the largest class, with 44 members selected for frequent space shuttle flights to build out the International Space Station) and the 21st class in 2013 (the first class with a 50/50 gender split. [Building the International Space Station (Photos)]



In this photo: The most recent group of NASA astronauts, shown above, was selected in 2013. It was the first class to be evenly split between male and female candidates.

The vehicles they will use

NASA

The new astronaut class has a large variety of vehicles to look forward to. Astronauts today use the Russian Soyuz spacecraft to reach the International Space Station, the main destination to test out long-duration spaceflight. In the coming years, however, NASA hopes to again move beyond low-Earth orbit for missions to the moon and Mars. If this comes to pass, the new class of astronauts will use the Orion spacecraft for deep-space exploration.



The new astronauts can also look forward to launching from American soil, once the new class of commercial vehicles is ready. Both SpaceX and Boeing are creating spacecraft for NASA's commercial crew program, which is expected to get going in earnest by the end of the decade. It will be the first time Americans launch from the United States since the space shuttle program, which completed in 2011. [Orion Explained: NASA's Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (Infographic)]



In this photo: The International Space Station

Where the new astronauts will go

NASA

The new astronauts may begin their careers traveling to the International Space Station, or they may find themselves flying farther. It all depends on where United States space policy goes in the coming years, and what programs NASA finds itself involved in. The space station is scheduled to last until 2024, but could be extended until 2028 or even longer.



Other plans are more nebulous, but NASA has several ideas in mind. The agency is testing its Orion spacecraft, which is expected to make an uncrewed flight past the moon in 2019. (The agency considered putting astronauts on board, but decided not to due to the additional technical burden.) Orion would then carry humans to deep-space destinations in the 2020s and beyond.



Where next? NASA hopes to bring astronauts to Mars in the 2030s, if its current plan has support for that long. As a part of that, the agency recently announced a "deep-space gateway" space station near the moon that could help the astronauts train for deep-space missions, or prepare for a voyage to Mars.



In this photo: An artist's conception of the "deep-space gateway" space station that could be used near the moon in the coming years.

What astronauts do (most of the time)

NASA

While the public mostly pays attention to astronauts while they're in space, in reality the astronauts will spend only a fraction of their careers up high. Most of their time will be spent training and supporting other missions.



First, the astronaut candidates will have about two years of basic training, where they will learn survival training, language, technical skills and other things they need to be an astronaut. Upon graduating, new astronauts can be assigned to a space mission, or assigned to technical roles in the Astronaut Office at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. These roles can include supporting current missions or advising NASA engineers on how to develop future spacecraft.



In this photo: 2013 astronaut class member Anne McClain serves as CapCom (capsule communicator) with the International Space Station. This role has an astronaut on the ground communicating directly with the astronauts on the space station, relaying instructions from the rest of Mission Control.

What basic training looks like

NASA

Astronaut candidates undergo an intense process before the newly selected class is certified as astronauts ready for flight. Among their many tasks will be learning how to spacewalk, how to do robotics, how to fly airplanes and how to operate on the International Space Station.



The astronaut candidates will fly NASA's fleet of T-38s to gain piloting skills; practice for spacewalks at the Johnson Space Center's 60-foot-deep swimming pool (called the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory); catch simulated spacecraft using a practice version of the station's robotic arm, Canadarm2; learn Russian; and get basic training on space-station operations. Astronauts also deepen their leadership and following skills through geology and survival training. [Space History Photo: Space Station Mock-up in Neutral Buoyancy Simulator]



In this photo: Members of the 2013 astronaut class engage in land-survival training.

Forging partnerships

NASA

While the astronaut candidates selected by NASA will be principally working with that agency, they also will find themselves embedded in a network of international partnerships. Along with commercial partners in the United States developing spaceflight hardware and the various NASA centers that work in human spaceflight, there are 16 nations participating in the International Space Station  each with its own realm of expertise.



For example, Roscosmos (the Russian Federal Space Agency) operates several modules in the station and ferries astronauts to space using their Soyuz rocket. The Canadian Space Agency heavily participates in robotic operations, such as capturing cargo ships with the Canadarm2. Other major international partners include the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). Each of these agencies has its own astronauts working on the space station and in the Astronaut Office.



In this photo: Expedition 20 on the International Space Station had all major partner nations represented for the first time. From left to right: Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) cosmonaut Roman Romanenko; Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata; European astronaut Frank De Winne; NASA astronaut Michael Barratt; Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut Bob Thirsk; NASA astronaut Tim Kopra; and Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka.

Passing the selection process

NASA

This round, a record 18,353 applications came in for just a handful of NASA spots. At first, human resources personnel reviewed each application to see if it met basic qualifications. Every application that qualified was then reviewed by a panel  the Astronaut Rating Panel. The rating panel is comprised of about 50 people, mostly current astronauts. The panel decided on a few hundred of the most highly qualified candidates, and then did reference checks on each candidate.



That step narrowed down the candidates to just 120 people. A smaller group, the Astronaut Selection Board, then called in these candidates for interviews and medical screening. After that, the top 50 candidates underwent a second round of interviews and more medical screenings. The final astronaut candidates will be selected from this group of 50 people.



In this photo: The Astronaut Application Review Team, including members from NASA's human resources departments, reviews applications from astronaut hopefuls.

NASA

The lucky candidates who make the cut receive a phone call from the head of the Flight Operations Directorate at NASA's Johnson Space Center, as well as the chief of the Astronaut Office. NASA asks the candidates to share the news only with their immediate family until NASA can make an official announcement.



NASA then typically holds a news conference to announce the new candidates, and invites journalists and those with social media accounts to ask questions of the new astronaut class. Then, the candidates are quickly plunged into training, giving them little time to talk with the outside world for several months at the least.



In this photo: A flight into space is the ultimate dream for an astronaut candidate.

Reporting for duty

NASA

The new astronaut class will start work at the Johnson Space Center in August 2017 and be sworn into civil service. There will be a few weeks between when the astronauts are selected and when they move to Houston. In that time, they will end their current jobs and arrange to move with their families to Houston.



While being an astronaut is a prestigious job, candidates often leave flourishing careers to make the trip into space. However, in some cases they can use their time as astronauts to "level up" in other careers. For example, military astronauts can often have a joint assignment at NASA, allowing them to keep gaining in rank while performing missions and other astronaut duties. Or those in the sciences can try to choose missions and duties related to their past careers, letting them continue to publish scientific journal papers and take on other duties that lead to advancement in academia.



In this photo: Christina Hammock (left) and Jessica Meir, two members of the 2013 class of astronaut candidates, swear in NASA employees at the Johnson Space Center in August 2013.
After a record-shattering number of people applied for the job, the newest members of NASA's astronaut corps will be revealed today (June 7). You can watch the big announcement live here starting at 2 p.m. EDT (1900 GMT).

The live event, which will take place at NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, the new astronaut candidates will be welcomed by acting NASA administrator Robert Lightfoot, JSC director Ellen Ochoa, and Flight Operations director Brian Kelly.

Vice President Mike Pence will also be there to welcome the new astronaut class, according to a statement from NASA. However, the statement did not specify whether the Vice President plans to make any remarks on-stage during the event. [What It's Like to Become a NASA Astronaut: 10 Surprising Facts]

While becoming an astronaut has never been an easy feat, this year's class of astronauts had to defy even greater odds than their predecessors. NASA received more than 18,000 applications this time around, crushing the previous record of about 8,000 in 1978.

The last group of NASA astronaut candidates was announced in June 2013 after nearly 6,400 people applied for the job. Formally known as Group 21, that group of rookie astronauts nicknamed themselves the "8-balls."

Fun team names have been a long-standing tradition for astronauts at NASA as well as the European Space Agency. Other groups have been the "Chumps," "Shenanigans" and "Flying Escargot," for example. As of now, the astronauts of Group 22 haven't announced their nickname.

After two years of astronaut training, the new astronaut candidates will spend two years in training before they become eligible to fly in space, joining the 44 other active members of NASA's astronaut corps.

Once they're ready to go to space, these astronauts will likely end up doing research on the International Space Station, "launching from American soil on spacecraft built by commercial companies," NASA officials said, adding that they may also launch on deep-space missions on the new Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System rocket, slated to launch as soon as 2019.

Email Hanneke Weitering at hweitering@space.com or follow her @hannekescience. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
Kevin Sloan is director of the University Rover Challenge for The Mars Society, a nonprofit organization that advocates for the human exploration and settlement of the Red Planet. He contributed this article to Space.com's Expert Voices.

After three days of intense competition under the hot desert sun, the Mars Rover Design Team (MRDT) from the Missouri University of Science and Technology became the first team from the United States to win the University Rover Challenge (URC) since 2010. Thirty-five rovers and more than 500 students from seven countries descended upon the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) in southern Utah from June 1 to June 3 for this annual competition, which asks college students to design and build the worlds best Mars rover.

Poland was represented on the podium for the fifth consecutive year, as the PCz Rover Team from the Czestochowa University of Technology won second place. Brigham Young University from the United States earned the third position, marking the sixth time BYU has won a place on the podium. [Mars Explored: Landers and Rovers Since 1971 (Infographic)]

The international robotics competition for college students, which is part of the Mars Societys Rover Challenge Series, featured an elite field of teams vying to build the worlds best student-designed Mars rover. A record 82 teams from 13 countries took part in URC2017. Following a rigorous two-stage down-selection process, 36 teams were invited to the field competition at MDRS. Thirty-five teams from seven countries arrived with their rovers, ready for the exciting challenges in the Utah desert.

For its 11th year, URC introduced two new tasks: the Extreme Retrieval and Delivery Task, designed to support astronauts by delivering a variety of items across aggressive terrain; and the Autonomous Traversal Task. This was the first time that a fully autonomous capability has been required at URC. MRDT, in a display of exceptional engineering and execution, earned perfect scores in each event.

During the Autonomous Traversal Task, the MRDT rover, named Gryphon by its builders, demonstrated a remarkable set of subsystems that enabled it to autonomously navigate between a series of defined gates. While Gryphons navigation system enabled it to reach the vicinity of each gate, a visual tracking system located the gate markers, allowing it to stop inside the required 3-meter (10 feet) radius.

Between gates, while operating autonomously, Gryphons suspension systems and innovative carbon-fiber-based wheels displayed tremendous agility as they overcame dangerous and rocky terrain that threatened to flip most other competitors. Gryphons suspension, named Mantis, is a variation on the classical rocker-bogie suspension seen on typical NASA Mars rovers. The Mantis suspension was specifically designed for the rigors of URC, which include large obstacles and high-speed impacts as rovers race to complete tasks in a harsh environment.

Judges watching Gryphon complete the Autonomous Traversal Task were amazed at the ease with which MRDT tackled a task believed to be unbeatable in its first year at URC. Only two other teams were able to successfully reach the fifth gate, leaving the two most difficult gates for MRDT alone.

More than 500 students from seven countries descended upon the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) in southern Utah from June 1 through June 3 for the 2017 University Rover Challenge. (Image credit: The Mars Society)

Other tasks included an Equipment Servicing Task, in which teams were required to perform maintenance on notional field equipment that involved fine motor skills; and a Science Cache Task, in which teams were required to search for signs of life using a method that is applicable to Mars exploration. The latter event is particularly unique, in that teams of engineers work with their scientist counterparts to understand the requirements of field science.

"The students hard work and enthusiasm are well-shown throughout the competition," remarked Dr. Heather Smith, lead science judge. "The high level of collaboration between science, engineering and business students leads to well-designed, scientifically capable rovers."

More than 1,000 students were involved in URC projects at their local universities during the 2016-2017 academic year. The rovers they built reflected the dedication, passion and ingenuity of the student teams  a point that was not lost on the judges and industry representatives attending the event.

The scores for all teams can be found at http://urc.marssociety.org/home/about-urc/urc2017-scores.

For more information, visit URC online at: http://urc.marssociety.org, on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/universityroverchallenge), and on Twitter (https://twitter.com/URConMars).

Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates  and become part of the discussion  on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on Space.com.
Windhoek (Namibia), 07 June 2017 (SPS) - The Saharawi Republic, represented by the Saharawi Ambassador, the extraordinary Commissioner in Angola and Namibia, took part at the Fifth African Conference of Solidarity with Cuba.

Saharawi Ambassador expressed the happiness of representing the Sahrawi Republic in such an event in the free and independent capital of Windhoek to celebrates the Solidarity with the Cuban Revolution, which fought alongside the liberation armies of the region with the courage and determination to eradicate colonialism.

The Sahrawi ambassador pointed out that the seminar is being held at a time when the President of the Sahrawi delegation is visiting Cuba, at the invitation of his brother Comrade Raul Castro, President and Commander of the Cuban Revolution.

A visit that adds the Sahrawi diplomat not only to promote bilateral relations and renew solidarity between the two peoples and the two countries but also as an occasion that enabled the Saharawi president to convey the gratitude of Africans, especially the liberation movements that fought against colonialism, to Cuba and Africa's recognition of the decisive role played by Cuba and its revolution in liberating a large part of African continent of colonialism and the great contribution to the generous support and social and economic development of many African countries. SPS

125/090/TRA
The father/son partnership will be revealing the story behind the successes that won them the Royal Association of British Dairy Farmers / National Milk Records Gold Cup accolade last year, especially looking at their detailed approach to cost management and the way they have restructured the business to allow investment and a viable succession plan that works for the wider family.





As well as covering these areas in various talks and a farm walk, sessions on optimising milking management, succession and long term business planning will be delivered by The Dairy Group and Evolution ABS, with further slots being filled by World Wide Sires and Kite Consulting. These will cover the use of multi-cut grass silage systems and the innovative processes and thinking required for future breeding.

Foot trimming demonstrations will be carried out by Steve Paul throughout the day and visitors will also have the opportunity to see the new calf unit that has been developed, utilising old buildings, to focus management of calves at Waterhouse Farm. Here calves are reared in hutches then housed in small groups on straw yards before being moved to cubicles at seven to eight months of age.

Host farmer Simon Bugler says hes delighted to be able to showcase the farm, dairy herd and calf unit at the open day, and hopes to learn as much off visitors as they learn from the visit.

He says:

We hope the event will attract people from far and wide who are looking to find out more about some key topics currently relevant within the industry
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Several condominium units have been snapped up out of the gate for the redevelopment of a onetime industrial property in Darien, with two more big projects on the drawing table in a town dominated by pricey houses.

Developer Nick Barile has sold the first five of 16 condominiums at Pemberton 16, with the project restricted to residents age 62 or older. Multiple units were priced at $195,000, well below market rates to obtain the 8-30g designation from the state of Connecticut intended to promote affordable housing in towns by superseding local zoning boards.

After that, the price goes up  as of Thursday the remaining unsold units were listed between $825,000 and $895,000 by Jill Barile, Nicks spouse who is a Coldwell Banker agent in the agencys office in Greenwich, where the couple lives.

Amenities include covered parking, security cameras, elevators, walk-in closets and kitchens equipped with upscale appliances. Contracts signed by July 15 have their building common charges covered for two years and get a membership for the same period at Darien Equinox or the YMCA of Darien.

Barile runs York Construction & Development, getting into the business after an earlier career with an electrical contracting company. His first project was a spec house in Greenwich  he has built several more there since over the years  with York Construction & Development undertaking its first multiunit development in Stamford.

It is Bariles first project in Darien; next up are a pair of small condo developments in Greenwich, and a larger apartment complex in Brookfield with 100 units planned, marking the first time York Construction & Development has undertaken a project in northern Fairfield County.

The Pemberton 16 property was once a storage facility for utility poles and other equipment for Connecticut Light & Power, the predecessor company of Eversource Energy. Barile acquired the Pemberton 16 land and plans for $2.3 million from former owners Christopher and Peggy Stefanoni, who have drawn wide attention for their crusade to increase Dariens stock of affordable housing through multiple projects, including on Nearwater Lane heading out on affluent Noroton Neck (in March, the Stefanonis spent $2.2 million for a residential property at the base of Five Mile River Road, among Connecticuts wealthier neighborhoods).

With the Darien Planning and Zoning Commission having denied their application to built at 77 Leroy Ave., in 2012 a Connecticut state judge ruled in favor of the couple, citing the states 8-30g law that streamlines the zoning approval process for projects that include affordably priced units for towns with less than 10 percent of the total housing stock within the parameters of affordable pricing. As of 2015, just 3.4 percent of Dariens housing stock was defined as affordable under the states parameters.

We bought it from them with the approvals in place and weve taken it from there, Barile said. Town Hall has just been terrific  I would be very happy to work with them again.

Barile says Pemberton 16 fills an important void in downtown Darien, with the condominiums just steps from the Metro-North commuter rail station on West Avenue and nearby stores and restaurants. A pair of major redevelopments are on the books by separate developers for a pair of prominent shopping centers: the Commons at Noroton Heights and Noroton Heights Center, with the latter envisioned as replacing the Palmers Market center with a village mix of ground-level stores and upper-level dwellings. The Commons at Noroton Heights is a redevelopment by Maryland-based Federal Realty Investment Trust of a Stop & Shop building and adjacent parcels, with Norwalk-based Beinfield Architecture leading the design.

Alex.Soule@scni.com; 203-354-1047; www.twitter.com/casoulman
Among more mundane matters, MPs debated a controversial bill designed to privatize several state-owned facilities at todays special session of Armenias National Assembly convened by the government.

Among the items on the agenda, apart from the creation of Corruption Prevention Commission, and changes/amendments in the laws on Public Services Regulatory Authority, administrative division of Armenia, local government, there was a bill on State Property Privatization Program for 2017-2020.

The bill has recently become the subject of heated discussions on social networks. The bill has been drafted by the government-affiliated State Property Management Department. There was no public participation in the planning or discussion of this bill, as the government didnt find it necessary.

As stated in the bill, it is planned to privatize a number of state companies and enterprises with state shares to increase their efficiency through investments by commercial organizations, to preserve jobs, to foster the increase of state and municipal budgets.

According to the list, some medical centers are also subject to privatization, in particular, the Fanarjyan National Center of Oncology Center, the Scientific Center of Traumatology and Orthopedics, the Scientific Center for Radiation Medicine and Burns, the Scientific-Medical Center of Dermatology and STD, the Oshakan Pediatric Rehabilitation Center, Dilijan Children's TB Sanatorium, the Clinic of Neurosis, and the Polyclinic of Yerevan Railway and Republican Speleotherapeutic Center.

There was an active discussion on Facebook yesterday about privatizing the Oshakan Pediatric Rehabilitation Center.

Zara Batoyan, a member of Yerevans Municipal Council, wrote on her Facebook page: "The Ministry of Health decided to close Oshakan Children's Rehabilitation Center, which annually serves 130 children, providing them with rehabilitation services. They justify it by saying they cannot renovate the center, and are redirecting children with disabilities to the Kosh Center. Instead of opening new centers, the government closes the few existing ones. And, most importantly, this issue was not discussed with anyone. Moreover, they do not take into account the opinion of the parents who applied to me today. "
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STAMFORD  When Juan Lopez realized he had to do more to help his father and brother pay the household bills, he dropped out of high school to work in landscaping.

It didnt take long for the Guatemalan national to learn the decision would bring negative consequences. At times, he said, he had trouble communicating with his boss.

I didnt understand him very well, Lopez, a native Spanish speaker, recalled in an interview this week.

Years later, he encountered similar problems relating to his first born.

My son was trying to make conversation, but he would correct me, No Daddy, thats not the right way, Lopez said.

After some reluctance, the Stamford resident enrolled in the citys Adult and Continuing Education Program at age 27 and attended evening classes for the next three years.

On Wednesday, he was one of nearly 50 students  ranging in age from 18 to 65  to receive a high school diploma through the program. He also comes out of the program an award winner. The Connecticut Association for Adult and Continuing Education has named him a Learner of the Year, an award presented to five outstanding students across the state.

I feel so happy that I made this decision, Lopez said in an interview before the ceremony at Cloonan Middle School.

Now a partner in his familys landscaping business, Lopez communicates well with his clients, but he also creates business proposals, invoices and other written documents.

More Information Adult and Continuing Education Program June 7 Number of graduates: 49 ESL honorees: 22 Keynote Speaker: Violet Karacsony, 2004 ESL graduate See More Collapse

The program, run by Stamford Public Schools, also offers the National External Diploma Program, which awards a high school degree through a combination of online and in-person classes; GED; English as a Second Language and other programs. On Wednesday, 22 students were recognized as ESL honorees.

Lopez, the fourth of seven children, was 13 when he moved to Stamford. He graduated from Scofield Magnet Middle School, then dropped out of Stamford High School his sophomore year, as other siblings arrived from Guatemala and expenses mounted.

It was a hard life when we came here, said Lopez, who married at age 22 and had his first child two years later.

Once he went to work, he quickly became a partner in his fathers landscaping business, but both had difficulty communicating with their clients.

So he overcame his reluctance to return to school in his late 20s and was relieved to find company that first day back in a classroom.

There were people in their 70s, 60s around me, Lopez said.

What also surprised him was the level of accommodation and understanding he received from his teachers. There were many days he arrived late to class.

Landscaping is very hard, he said. We dont get out at 4 oclock. We get out when we finish the job.

Lopez, who is now contemplating enrollment in college to study business administration, said his teachers deserve credit for helping him complete the program.

Theyre part of my life story now, he said.
A new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine has found marijuana helped reduced seizures in patients with a rare form of epilepsy.

The study, published in May by the journal, involved children with a form of epilepsy called Dravet Syndrome. The disease features seizures that have proven resilient to most drug treatments and a high mortality rate for those diagnosed with the condition.

The 14-week trial reported on in the study involved 120 randomly selected children and young adults who have been diagnosed with Dravet Syndrome. Half the group received an oral dose of cannabidiol (CBD), a non-psychotropic chemical found in the marijuana plant.

They received 20 milligrams of CBD per kilogram of weight. The other half in the group received a placebo.

Related: Science and FDA Say Cannabis Is Medicine but DEA Insists It Isn't

Clear test results.

Those given CBD saw seizures drop from 12.4 to 5.9 per month. Also, 43 percent of those who received CBD saw at least a 50 percent reduction in the number of seizures per month. Those who received the placebo saw the number of seizures drop from 14.9 to 14.1 per month.

Five percent of patients who took CBD who were seizure-free for the entire month, while no patient who took the placebo were seizure-free.

New York University neurologist Dr. Orrin Devinsky, the lead author on the study, said that the test results offer solid, rigorous scientific evidence that in this specific syndrome, cannabidiol is effective at reducing seizures, according to STAT News.

But he added that cannabis is not a panacea.

More study is expected to be done on how CBD might affect adult epilepsy patients, those with other forms of epilepsy and how it night react with other epileptic medications.

Uncomfortable but not dangerous side effects.

While the reduction in seizure numbers were impressive, some patients also experienced side effects. These included diarrhea, vomiting and fatigue.

GW Pharmaceuticals sponsored the study. The Great Britain-based biopharmaceutical company has been a leader in developing cannabis-based products, including Sativex, the first cannabis-based medicine to get approval in any country.

Related: Governor's Veto Stalls Vermont Legislation to Legalize Marijuana

Sativex is used for treatment of symptoms for those with multiple sclerosis, including neuropathic pain and overactive bladder.

Australian Dr. Samuel Berkovic, in an editorial that accompanied the trial results in the journal, noted that there has been a dearth of studies done on the potential benefits of marijuana. He said the Dravet Syndrome study was the beginning of solid evidence on the use of CBD for epilepsy patients. But he called for further studies to back up the findings.

To stay up to date on the latest marijuana related news make sure to like dispensaries.com on Facebook

Related:

New Study Finds Cannabis Reduces Seizures In Epilepsy Patients

Science and FDA Say Cannabis Is Medicine but DEA Insists It Isn't

Governor's Veto Stalls Vermont Legislation to Legalize Marijuana



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Last month in Washington, D.C., I had the opportunity to take part in the commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the China and Israeli states, jointly hosted by both countries ambassadors to the United States.

The event included the screening of a documentary that told the tragic and inspiring story of the 25,000 European Jewish refugees who were able to escape Nazi occupation and found refuge in Shanghai, China, during World War II. The evening was an important reminder of the power of diplomacy, but also the profound impact of acceptance, compassion, and a sense of human dignity.

While the purpose of the gathering was to celebrate Chinese and Israeli relations, it also underscored the unique and unbreakable bond between the United States and Israel. Our commitment to shared values and interests, to the tenets of democracy, including rule of law, the protection of human rights, freedom of speech, and the freedom from persecution because of religious beliefs. In both nations, through good times and bad, these things are held to be self-evident.

For Israel, staying true to these values has meant constantly balance its quest for ideals against the requirements of national survival. These challenges remain acute: Hezbollah, Hamas, Iran, even the Islamic State, all pose threats to Israels security. As an immigrant, I spent the first seven years of my life living in Taiwan. I know first-hand what it means to live in the constant shadow of a more powerful enemy. Unlike any other democratic nation in the world, Israel has withstood an unprecedented number of terrorist acts within its borders and launched by her neighbors. The United States must ensure that Israel has the ability to maintain its own self-defense and to protect her citizens from such vile attacks.

Israels leaders and the Jewish diaspora must have full faith and confidence that U.S. support is resolute and unshakeable. With a change in administrations can come uncertainty. We must ensure there is no ambiguity in the United States support of Israel. A renewed effort by the United States to revive the moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace process would be an unmistakable demonstration of that commitment.

By reaffirming our commitment to a just Israeli-Palestinian peace, we reaffirm our commitment to Israels survival as a homeland for the Jewish people. We also assure our allies in the region and elsewhere that we stand with Israel. Peace in the Middle East is possible if both sides are willing to engage in direct negotiations and be willing to make concessions. The United States should use its diplomatic skills to work with the countries in the region to encourage the Palestinian Authority and Israel to return to the negotiating table.

Americas commitment to Israel today is more than a strategic interest and it even extends beyond our shared values. It also reflects the resolve of U.S. leaders since World War II to atone for the fact that the wartime ports of the United States  unlike Shanghai and many other cities around the world  were closed to Jews fleeing Hitlers Germany. Since then, the Americas moral duty to ensure the survival of a Jewish homeland has been clear. No single step the United States could take would be more important to accomplishing that goal than reviving peace talks.

State Sen. Tony Hwang, R-Fairfield, is an assistant Senate Republican leader.
The following article appeared in the June 7 edition of the OCCRP website.

Two men convicted of serious crimesone of attempted murder, the other of soliciting a murderare free because the Czech Republic and Armenia cant agree to swap the criminals in the interests of justice.

It is unclear whether a simple bureaucratic tangle is to blame or if the two countries are thwarting each other on purpose, but the end result is that justice is not being served.

Organized crime and political skullduggery are part of both stories  along with an astonishingly inept assassin-for-hire who twice missed his mark, seriously injuring one innocent victim and killing a second while his actual target remained unscathed.

The two mens alleged crimes are unrelated and occurred a decade ago in different countries. The accusedAndranik Soghoyan and Robert Yeritsyanare both Armenian citizens but have little else in common. Yet, by a twist of fate, one may owe his liberty to the other.

Vor v zakone not a great judge of talent

The more spectacular of the two crimes involves the violent underworld of the Russian mob. Soghoyans nickname is Zap or Zaporozhets  allegedly due to his resemblance to the legendarily sturdy Russian car. According to various testimonies in Prague court cases, he was crowned vor v zakone- a thief in law, or the boss of a post-Soviet organized crime group - in Moscow in 1994.

By the end of October 2007, Soghoyan was running a gang in Prague - and he was unhappy. One of his mobsters had violated the thieves code, refusing to pay $500,000 into the obsak, a kitty to which members of a criminal group more-or-less voluntarily contribute. The code requires 50 percent of all criminal proceeds to be donated, with the collected sums used for such things as supporting members families when they are jailed or killed.

Refusing to contribute was simply not acceptable. Soghoyan and four of his henchmen plotted first to extort and, later, to kill the rebellious mobster.

Two weeks later, on Nov. 13 in Pragues busy Wenceslas Square, two armed men approached a luxury Mercedes S-320, while a third stayed behind in a more modest SEAT Leon hatchback. According to court testimony, their aim was to warn the rebelling thug to respect the instructions of [Soghoyans right-hand man] Gilani Alijev and do not beat his people, otherwise Gilani Alijev [would] take different measures next time.

But the man driving the Mercedes did not react as expected. He seemed not to know what was going on. To bolster the show of force, the third assailant got out of the Leon and joined his comrades. They pulled the Mercedes driver out and stabbed him in the belly. Witnesses described a grisly scene, with the man shouting in a foreign language as blood spurted and tiny down feathers spun crazily from his winter coat.

He was the wrong man. The intended target had lent his Mercedes to a friend.

The victim survived the stabbing and later testified in court. But the message had been delivered, and the rebellious mobster contributed his missing half-million.

That wasnt enough to save him, however.

Soghoyan resolved to try again and opted to use the same Ukrainian assassin, Timur Tretyakov, who had already stabbed the wrong Armenian in Wenceslas Square. Two weeks after that mistake, he was given a CZ 75 Luger handgun, 100,000 Czech crowns (about US$ 5,500) and told to kill a man driving a black Bentley Continental on U Kanalky Street in Pragues quiet residential quarter, Vinohrady.

And again he hit the wrong victim.

This time he fatally shot an innocent bystander -- the driver of former lottery king Ales Husak  who had the bad luck to be driving a similar Bentley at the wrong time and place.

To verify the hit, Tretyakov approached the body, removed the ID from his pocket and found out he had killed the wrong man. He dropped the gun and fled. Later in court, he maintained his innocence, describing himself as just Gods slave. He received a life sentence, later reduced to 22 years.

For his role in soliciting the murder, Soghoyan was sentenced to 22 years, but the court later ruled the testimony wasnt credible. Though the prosecutor appealed, Soghoyan fled to Armenia, where he was captured in October 2014. Although the Armenian Ministry of Justice sought to keep him in custody, he was released three months later, on Jan. 23, 2015. It is unclear why.

Armenian law prohibits the extradition of Armenian citizens to other countries, but Armenian courts could have upheld the Czech courts sentence by imprisoning Soghoyan in Armenia. It is possible that this refusal influenced a later Czech decision regarding the second man in the equation: Yeritsyan.

Yeritsyan & Sons  An Empire Crumbles

A decade ago, the Yeritsyan family was one of the most influential in Armenia. Albert Yeritsyan had established a supermarket chain called Yeritsyan & Sons and operated a large butchers business, Atenk. In 2008 he was elected mayor of Arabkir, a commercial and industrial district in Yerevan with a population of about 117,000.

After his entry into politics, things quickly headed downhill - mostly thanks to his son Robert, who was alleged to have stabbed a supporter of Hovhannes Shahinyan, the incumbent mayor his father ran against, in a fight. But when police came to Alberts campaign office to arrest Robert, he was nowhere to be found. Albert Yeritsyan denied that his son was involved, and it is unclear if a case was ever filed.

The following year, in the spring of 2009, Robert Yeritsyan found himself in far more serious trouble. He was charged with attempted murder.

Andranik Soghoyan, in black shirt, wears sunglasses and handcuffs during his Prague trial. (Czech Press Agency photo)

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Prosecutors plan to throw away an apparent admission by one of the chief suspects in the brutal killing of Stamfords Joseph Comunale, according to the Daily News.

James Rackover reportedly told an undercover officer at a Manhattan police station two days after the Nov. 13 murder that he was f---ed, the Daily News reported, citing newly unsealed court papers.

The undercover cop told the accused killer that he would be all right, but Rackover said, No bail for murder, according to the report.

But the Manhattan district attorneys office will not present the dialogue to a jury, the Daily News has learned, likely because it would not be admissible in court.

Rackover, 26, and Lawrence Dilione, 28, were charged with second-degree murder last month, in addition to the lesser charges they already faced in the slaying of the 26-year-old Westhill High School grad in New York City.

Authorities believe Comunale was killed after an apparent fight over cigarettes following a drug-fueled party inside Rackovers luxury apartment on the upper east side of Manhattan, court documents show.

Its still unclear what happened that day, but a court motion filed earlier this year states Dilione punched the victim during a fight, but the defendant claims it was Rackover who kicked the man unconscious and stabbed him to death. Comunales body was found buried in Oceanport, N.J., police said.

A third defendant  29-year-old Max Gemma, who is Diliones roommate in Jersey City, N.J.  has been charged with hindering prosecution and tampering with evidence.

The suspects are expected back in court on June 28.
A straZeneca today dulled its pains by selling the rights to a migraine treatment for more than $300 million (232 million).

The landmark deal will see Germanys Grunenthal, best known for developing Thalidomide as a morning-sickness treatment, get the global rights to Zomig in all markets outside Japan.

Grunenthal will pay AstraZeneca $200 million and the Anglo-Swedish company will receive up to $102 million in milestone payments.

AstraZeneca will concentrate in future on three main treatment areas: oncology, respiratory illness and cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. It has sold or licensed out a number of its older drugs recently.

It is betting heavily that its cancer drugs will revive its fortunes after fighting off a 70 billion takeover attempt by Pfizer in 2014.

Astra is developing a new class of cancer treatments and hopes its Lynparza drug, which has already been approved for use in a form of late-stage ovarian cancer, will be approved for use in breast cancer.

It has revealed the results of its Lynparza trials, saying patients taking the drug typically went for seven months before their cancer became worse.
S tuart Chambers is one of those lucky generals. While he was chairing ARM, Japans SoftBank came out of the blue and paid 24 billion to buy it  a 43% premium to its previous share price.

He then elegantly reversed out of a job offer at tech company VE Interactive months before it nearly went belly up.

Now hes landed a primo City job, running Anglo Americans board just as it emerges from its years of torment and horror as a stable business in a relatively benign market.

For the tough-nut outgoing chairman Sir John Parker, its been a long journey getting here. In his eight-year reign, he had to fend off a bid from Xstrata, bought De Beers from the Oppenheim family, mended relations with shareholders over the bad investments of CEO Cynthia Carroll, and replaced her with Mark Cutifani. Then he had to provide cover for Cutifani when he did a total U-turn on his stated aim of selling dozens of mines little more than a year later.

That last bit  failing to deliver on a mass disposal plan  would have gone down like a tonne of lead had it not been for the commodity price rises. Perhaps Parker has his fair share of luck too.

Now 75, the man who started out at Harland & Wolff shipyards in Belfast deserves a break. Theres still work for Chambers to do, though. For starters, he has to address the impression that Anglo merely bobs up and down on the back of the commodities cycle. Now Cutifani has ripped up chunks of his restructuring plan, can management prove this behemoth is capable of change?

Cutifani has been there four years now, so Chambers cant wait too long before looking for successors. Senior non-exec Sir Philip Hampton, whod usually be his wingman for that task, wont stick around for ever either. He has already served nearly eight years and has his hands full as chairman of GlaxoSmithKline.

Then theres Anglos over-exposure to politically unstable South Africa. Ancestral home of the venerable old company it may be, but its perhaps not where youd be buying assets now if you had a blank sheet of paper.

Connected to that is another teaser: how will Chambers handle billionaire Anil Agarwal? The Vedanta boss bought an 11% stake in Anglo in March, sparking inevitable rumours hes sniffing for a deal. So far, he has remained sphinx-like but theres plenty of speculation that he wants to buy a slice of Anglos South African pie.

Chambers might like the sound of that. He earned a reputation for flogging businesses long before the ARM sale, when he sold Pilkington a decade ago and Rexam in 2015.

Will he try his luck again at Anglo? The rise in the share price today says investors hope so.
I nvestors in Royal Bank of Scotland breathed a sigh of relief today with the lawsuit seemingly behind the bailed-out bank.

The group representing thousands of RBS shareholders claiming over the disastrous rights issue in 2008 indicated yesterday it would settle the remaining claims for around 200 million.

Including legal costs of over 100 million, the final bill is now around 1 billion.

The deal may have ended hopes of getting disgraced former chief executive Fred Goodwin on the stand, but Investecs banking analyst Ian Gordon says its good news for beleaguered shareholders.

He upgraded his rating on RBS from Sell to Hold, arguing while RBS is still not cheap after a minor share sell-off in recent weeks, the settlement has disposed of a major distraction.

RBS led the risers on the FTSE 100, climbing 5p, or 2%, to 256.7p. Polls showing a narrowing lead in recent days for the financial services-friendly Tories had weighed on banking and insurance stocks, but Barclays rose 3.4p to 212.9p and insurers Legal & General and RSA were up 3.6p to 254.6p and 7.64p to 615.64p. The sectors rise lifted the FTSE 100 17.41 points to 7542.36.

Traders saw a return to buying after yesterdays sell-off for consumer stocks. One market-maker said he expects a rally from the bombed-out retail sector if Prime Minister Theresa May wins a big majority.

Panther Securities, the property firm run by Ukip donor Andrew Perloff, was unmoved at 325p after exchanging contracts to sell a site that housed the Girl Guides in Birmingham for 11 million amid planning delays.

I suspect many of the Girl Guides who used the property when our original talks began will now be grandmother Guides, he said.

On the alternative market, Shoe Zone plunged 9.51p, or 5%, to 177.99p after a weak first half from the cheap shoes retailer cast doubts as to whether it would meet its full-year targets.

Among the punters favourites, virtual-reality gigs firm EVR Holdings edged down 0.38p to 8p after a 5 million share placing at 8p a pop, while Irish oiler Providence Resources surged 1.25p, or 8%, to 16.25p after tie-ups with French major Total.
P oundland shoppers may soon be digging a little deeper into their pockets as the budget retailers new owner said it would focus on adding a multi-price point range.

South Africas Steinhoff, which bought the discount chain in a near-600 million deal last year, said Poundland was trading ahead of expectations and same-store sales growth was positive.

It wants to introduce a range of products costing more than 1, bring in more clothing, improve its supply chain and optimise its store network.The chain closed 57 loss-making stores in the six months to March 31, which Steinhoff said would lift profitability, and put a further 21 concessions of Pep & Co, Steinhoffs value fashion brand, in branches.

British shoppers have been flocking to low-cost retailers in recent weeks as the rising cost of living squeezes household budgets. B&M, Aldi and Lidl have all seen buoyant sales.

Steinhoff, which also owns UK furniture chains Bensons for Beds and Harveys, said it remains excited about the Poundland acquisition.

Group revenue rose 48% to 10.2 billion (8.9 billion) while operating profit was 13% higher at 903 million.
C lothing has become a less important part of the household budget, according to Sir Philip Greens fashion empire, which has posted a sales slump in the UK, new accounts have revealed.

The retail tycoons holding company Taveta Investments, the ultimate owner of Arcadias brands including Topshop and Burton, saw UK turnover fall to 1.7 billion in the year to August 27, from 2.2 billion.

Pre-tax profits plunged to 165.9 million from 208.3 million.

The decrease was partly owing to the previous year including some BHS trading before Green sold the struggling chain in March 2015 to serial bankrupt Dominic Chappell. It collapsed 13 months later with a 571 million pension deficit.

The strategic report also laid bare the pressures facing Britains High Streets and said customers are becoming ever more selective and value conscious.

It added: This is set against an economic environment of a continued slow recovery from a deep recession and the uncertainty caused by Brexit.

Taveta also said currency fluctuations and competition from new entrants had made conditions challenging.

Last summer, a probe by MPs concluded Green had chosen to rush a sale of BHS to a buyer who was manifestly unsuitable.

In February he made a voluntary contribution of up to 363 million to rescue the BHS pension scheme.

The latest Taveta accounts also show the group incurred one-off costs of 129.2 million in the year to August, including 26.4 million relating to the fallout from the BHS collapse. Part of that was used for legal and advisory fees.
L ondon risks losing its vibrancy and entrepreneurial spirit after Brexit, the head of small businesses landlord Workspace warned today.

Chief executive Jamie Hopkins company hosts some 4000 tenants in 68 bases in the capital, including personalised cards firm Moonpig.

He said: We can only talk about what we are seeing today, which is a very healthy environment.

But my main concern is much longer term if London loses its vibrancy and entrepreneurial spirit and people decide they dont want to be here. I hope that doesnt happen, but that is the main longer-term risk.

Shares in the group rose 15.5p, or 2%, to 856p as the City welcomed decent 7% growth in rental income to 79.2 million in the year to March 31, despite the uncertainty surrounding the referendum and its aftermath.

Although pre-tax profits slumped 77% to 88.8 million, due to much smaller growth in the value of its portfolio than a year earlier, Workspace is also jacking up the dividend by 40%.

Hopkins added: Im presenting another year of good results but Im presenting them in a cautious tone.
G eneral elections are about power not protest. Britain entrusts its citizens with the question: who should govern us? As voters in a democracy we have a responsibility to provide an answer; and newspapers owe their readers a clear recommendation. The Evening Standard thinks people should vote Conservative tomorrow. While this campaign has exposed the shortcomings of the Tory leadership, they clearly offer Britain the better party, better policies and better personnel than the alternative.

Heres why.

We start with the state of the parties. Many voters feel disenfranchised in this election because no party adequately represents them. The centre ground, for so long fiercely contested, feels deserted. But the election is upon us and none of the above is not on the ballot paper. Voters have to make a choice.

The current Conservative leadership is moving further away from the social and economic liberalism that has made our country and its capital a global success story. That is the wrong direction. Their legitimate attempt to address the concerns of those who feel left behind by globalisation has ended with them stigmatising the value that immigration brings to Britain, and it has produced a misguided programme of intervention in business.

The Conservative Manifesto: Key policies

It has left the large numbers of people who celebrate both the diversity of modern Britain and the dynamism of British enterprise feeling uncomfortable. Thankfully, many of the impressive candidates the Conservatives are fielding know this is a mistake. We have seen in this campaign faces of the future like Amber Rudd and Ruth Davidson, interviewed in this paper today. They have maintained a disciplined silence about their reservations concerning the direction of the party before the polls; we suspect they will make their voices more forcibly heard after the election.

The honeymoon enjoyed by Theresa May and her inner circle has been decisively ended by this election campaign, whatever the result. That gives us much hope that the Conservatives in government will return to that winning combination of fiscal conservatism and social liberalism that Britain thrives on.

Conservative mistakes should have been exploited by their political opponents. Indeed, the Tories would be facing near-certain defeat tomorrow if they had faced an effective force from the centre. But no such force exists. The Liberal Democrats have performed miserably under their unimpressive leader. We suspect Tim Farron will be one of the casualties of the post-mortem they will have to hold  and rightly so.

Labour chaos

The Labour Party is in an even worse state. The social-democratic movement that has provided Britain with numerous post-war governments, from Clement Attlees to Tony Blairs, has been captured by a hard-Left cabal. The likes of Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell and Diane Abbott exhibit a bitter dislike of private effort, progress and patriotism. In alliance with just one, deeply unpleasant union leader, Unites Len McCluskey, these neo-Marxists have seized control of the commanding heights of their party apparatus, making it very difficult for moderates to seize back control.

This paper feels the pain of the many moderate, Left-leaning voters in the capital and beyond who are in despair at what has happened to the Labour movement. But they must face this uncomfortable truth. It is only if Jeremy Corbyn and his crew are decisively rejected at this election that Labour has a chance of changing its leader, rebuilding itself as a credible party of the centre-Left, forming an effective opposition in the coming parliament and forming a future government. Our message to moderate Labour sympathisers is this: you cannot leave it to other voters to do the tough work; you need to reject Corbyn yourself.

Jeremy Corbyn: the Labour leader speaking at a campaign rally in Glasgow / PA

We will see in the coming months whether the Labour movement returns to sanity. What is clear at this general election is that todays Labour Party is positively dangerous for the country and must not be let near power.

That brings us to policy. This election was an opportunity for all parties to spell out how they would face up to the enormous challenge of Brexit. None of them has done that. Indeed, the campaign has only served to expose finally the unrealistic claims made about what Britain might be able to achieve outside the European Union. The promised 350 million a week for the NHS has not materialised, nor is Britain becoming a new low-tax, low-regulation Singapore in the North Sea.

The Brexit questions

This newspaper asked a series of straightforward questions about Brexit a month ago. How is migration supposed to be cut to the tens of thousands when no one can identify the businesses whose labour supply we will restrict, the universities whose foreign students we will turn away, or the families whose rights to reunion we will restrict still further? How is Brexit going to lead to a net increase in free trade, when leaving the Single Market is the biggest act of protectionism in British history and there is no realistic prospect of new trade deals with other countries anytime soon? Indeed, during this campaign, the Trump administration made it clear that a trade pact with the EU was its first priority and the UK was, to coin a phrase, at the back of the queue.

Are we really going to maintain the same levels of farming subsidies that the much-criticised EU Common Agricultural Policy provides, and do we expect Londons taxpayers to go on writing cheques to the richest landowners in the country? How are we going to maintain Britains pre-eminence in science when we withdraw from the EUs network of scientific collaboration? How are European landing rights going to be secured for our airlines, or European approval arranged for our pharmaceutical products, or market access secured for our massive financial services industry? Not one of these questions has been even addressed, let alone answered, by the main political parties in this election. As a result, it provides no mandate for the details of Brexit.

The Conservative manifesto made welcome ongoing commitments to low tax, welfare reform and a Britain committed to the hard power of defence and the soft power of international development. There was not enough attention given to the budget deficit or the levels of government debt which, with rising pressures on public spending, remains a huge challenge for our country; and next to nothing about the enormous technological changes that are transforming our world for the better but are also threatening traditional patterns of work.

The manifesto had little new of substance apart from a series of anti-business measures and a politically near-fatal package on social care. That is what happens when policy-making is restricted to a tiny group in the party. However, its social care foray rapidly became a spectacular U-turn, and we are sure sensible voices in the Cabinet will disarm the anti-business measures. That is why we are confident that the economic approach pursued by the Tories since 2010, which created record numbers of jobs, remains intact.

The Labour manifesto, by contrast, was loaded with substance  from re-nationalisaton and restoring militant union power, to punitive measures against enterprise and wholesale interventions in the free market.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies states again today that Jeremy Corbyns published plans would give Britain the highest level of taxation in its peacetime history. This would drive away investment, destroy business and put people out of work. It would not create a fairer society but a more unequal one. The country would be poorer, and that would mean fewer resources for the NHS and the other public services that the Labour leadership professes to care about. All this will hang like an albatross around the partys neck for years. They must not be allowed to drag down the country too.

As for personalities, in our democracy we dont vote directly for the Prime Minister; but we cant pretend that we only vote for our local MP. We know that our MP will either support Theresa May or Jeremy Corbyn in Downing Street. Mr Corbyn is the most unsuitable candidate for the premiership ever put forward by a major political party in this country. He has only outperformed expectations in this campaign because those expectations were so low. He presents himself as a kind of Compo figure, from The Last of the Summer Wine. In truth he has the wrong ideas, the wrong values and makes the wrong decisions.

The motley crew he has assembled around him represent the ugly side of hard-Left thuggery. The disappearance on the eve of poll of Diane Abbott, the person he wanted to be the countrys Home Secretary this Friday, reflects his appalling judgment. He could only occupy Downing Street with the support of Scottish Nationalists whose stated aim is the destruction of the nation he would seek to lead. The rest of the world already thinks Britain has marginalised itself with Brexit; the sight of Mr Corbyn representing us abroad would see us entirely written off.

It is true that after her performance on the stump, those who wrote up Mrs May as the new political messiah find themselves embarrassed; but no one doubts her intelligence, diligence or integrity. She is a patriot who works hard to achieve the best for Britain. She did not vote for Brexit, but is right to say that we should try to make the best of it rather than re-fighting last years referendum.

Faced with the terror threat that has, tragically, overshadowed this election campaign, she has shown strength and stability. There is no team May today. But if she learns from this campaign to look beyond her tight inner circle, she will find a Conservative movement full of talent from which she can construct a real team.

That is what Britain needs as we make these fundamental decisions about what kind of country we want to be: open or closed; future-facing or backward looking. A vote for Labour  or the minor parties  is a vote for Jeremy Corbyn, and that man can not be allowed to become our Prime Minister. Theresa May is the only person in this election with the policies, party and people capable of leading this country.
H eres a question for you: what links Virgin, Microsoft, Burger King, Disney and IBM? Sadly, theyre not all companies I own shares in, otherwise Id have retired to the beach by now. The answer is that theyre all businesses started during recessions  showing it truly is possible to turn a crisis into an opportunity.

Thats a classic entrepreneur mindset  but to be fair, great politicians think like that too. Just look at Robert Kennedys famous speech to students in apartheid-era South Africa: Like it or not we live in interesting times. They are times of danger and uncertainty; but theyre also more open to creative energy than any other time in history.

Whichever way you look at it, were certainly living through an interesting period today. And I dont just mean Jeremy Corbyns unlikely emergence as a hero of the grime music scene.

This is one of those moments when the world is in flux, and traditional assumptions are being turned on their head  creating uncertainty, but also opportunities.

Take the way technology is destroying old jobs, and creating new ones. If youre an accountant, administrator or paralegal, the sad news is that Oxford University researchers think theres more than an 80 per cent chance that jobs like yours will be replaced by software. In total, according to the Bank of England, 15 million jobs in the UK will be lost to technology in the coming years.

If thats not scary enough, think about globalisation, which has already contributed to the decline of manufacturing in the UK  and will continue to have an impact as economies like China and India become ever more advanced.

No wonder Pulitzer Prize-winning author Thomas L Friedman calls this the Age of Accelerations, because technology change and globalisation are not only happening right now, but the pace of change is actually speeding up.

Incredibly, were almost at the end of the election campaign, and its as if none of this is happening. Theres been no discussion of these structural changes reshaping the world  and no vision about how Britain might flourish in this new age, with everyone given the best chance to benefit from these shifts, rather than lose out.

Thats a shame, because amid all the turbulence, there are also vast possibilities. New technologies may cause disruption, but can also be harnessed to transform our health system, generate economic growth and improve lives. Its the same with global competition  we can either see it as a threat, or rise to the challenge.

There are so many ways we might make the most of this potential. To take just one, we could be fixing our outdated system of adult training, in which workers whose jobs are replaced by software and machines are expected to borrow money and go into debt to learn new skills. In Scandinavia, the state not only pays for your training, but pays you a decent salary while youre learning. Thats what a welfare system in the digital age should look like.

Watching the main political parties stumble through this campaign, Im reminded of what Clayton Williams said when asked why hed made such a mess of his attempt to be elected governor of Texas. I shot myself in the foot, he admitted. Then I reloaded and really blew the sucker off.

Our political leaders will be guilty of doing the same if Britain misses out on the many opportunities ahead, and we find ourselves in a crisis instead. Lets hope that wont happen  or else the next few years are going to be even more painful than this election campaign has been.

Choose Love to show our true spirit

Its always an exciting moment at my company Second Home when a new team moves into our space just off Brick Lane, and this week was no exception. The newcomers are Help Refugees  a charity started by Dani Lawrence, Lliana Bird, Josie Naughton and other socially minded Londoners.

It all began when Dani and co launched a Twitter campaign to raise 1,000 to buy supplies for refugees, and things snowballed from there.

With help from high-profile supporters like the musician Paloma Faith, Help Refugees quickly became the top provider of assistance to camps in Calais and Dunkirk.

Today its funding projects across Europe and gets support to refugees more quickly and cheaply than big aid agencies.

Suitably enough, the charitys motto is Choose Love. In the aftermath of the tragic events in London Bridge, I cant think of two words that better sum up the spirit of our city.
 Ive always thought Sunday nights are marvellous, says Jeremy Lee, the impeccably dressed chef/proprietor of London institution Quo Vadis. They should be celebrated as the marvellous end to a great week, and a wonderful beginning of a new one. Then on Monday morning, why not kick it off with a hangover? Its horrible enough anyway.

In that spirit this weekend he will be hosting a supper club with his friend Jackson Boxer at historic Brunswick House in Vauxhall, a ramshackle antiques dealership, where the latters restaurant is based. Its such a privilege to work in this incredible building, and its incredible that its still open to the public, says Boxer. My small contribution is that were an excuse to come through the doors.

Boxer grew up around the corner, when the Georgian building on the edge of the notorious gyratory system was a squat. Vauxhall has always been a marvellously discordant neighbourhood, says Boxer. When I was growing up here it was very industrial, now its sky-rises, and yet Brunswick House endures on a four-lane roundabout. Now, thanks to restorers LASSCO, its all opulent furnishings, chandeliers and gilded mirrors.

Theres a lot of history here. My parents used to take me to eat Jeremys food when he was cooking at The Blueprint Cafe. Since the age of 12 Jeremys cooking has been seminal for me, says Boxer.

Food is a family affair: his second cousins, Eddie, Sam and James Hart are also in business with Lee. I have to regularly drag my team out of of Quo Vadis in the middle of the night after theyve gone for drinks after work. Its hard to leave once you get there.

So whats cooking? Best of British, of course. On Sunday theyll be creating great 20-person dining tables and serving aged Cornish beef sirloin sides from the butcher Warrens; gin-based aperitifs to welcome guests, mixed with Lees beautifully aged elderflower cordials; smoked eel sandwiches from Quo Vadis and duck liver with redcurrant gougeres from Brunswick House. And thats just for starters.

Londons food scene, they say, is booming, and all of our restaurants wouldnt be here without the incredible community of restaurant goers we have in London, says Boxer. So this is for them.

Will there be any topics of conversation banned at the dinner table? Brexit, booms Lee.

I think everythings on the table, says Boxer.

Actually, the one thing that brings everyone together is a table, agrees Lee. If theyre standing and drinking, I guarantee a punch-up. If theyre sitting and eating and drinking, its convivial.

Both say the most fun is behind the scenes, in the kitchen. Theres shouting, but no more than would go on in a solicitors office or a hospital, says Lee.

As an industry weve never had more restaurants, but weve never had fewer good cooks, says Boxer, so if you have someone whos enthusiastic and talented you nurture them and hold on to them because you cant replace them. Our staff are our greatest asset.

Their greatest challenge is keeping up with the customers. Now, folk are much more educated and understand much more what food is. Expectations are incredibly high, says Lee. The produce has never been better. Our suppliers have never been better. And this extraordinary interest in food is an incredibly seductive thing that just sort of fuels itself.

Brunswickquo.eventbrite.co.uk
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) joined 22 international rights organizations in calling on Georgia's Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili to ensure that the case of Afgan Mukhtarli, an Azerbaijani journalist living in exile in Tbilisi who is now in custody in the country's capital, Baku, is fully investigated. CPJ documented last month how Mukhtarli was abducted by unidentified assailants on May 29 and taken across the border to his home country of Azerbaijan.

The letter, citing Elchin Sadygov, a lawyer who has visited the journalist in custody, says Mukhtarli's body bears the signs of a heavy beating and that 10,000 ($11,200) was planted on him. A Baku court ordered Mukhtarli, who is seeking political asylum in Georgia, to be held in pre-trial detention for three months on charges of smuggling cash, crossing the border illegally, and violence against the police.

Mukhtarli's case "sets a worrying precedent, threatening the security of dozens of other Azerbaijanis living in exile in Georgia," the joint letter said. It calls on the prime minister to investigate Mukhtarli's case, including whether any Georgian officials played a role in his abduction.

Read the letter to Kvirikashvili here.

By Nina Ognianova / CPJ Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator
A guerrilla Tube advert prompting commuters to click to choose the fate of the NHS has appeared on a Tube carriage in the London Underground, in the run up to the general election.

The fake ad, which appeared on the District line last night, depicts an error notification box similar to those that appear on Windows computers.

The message box asks: Do you want to delete the NHS? and prompts the user to choose from two options - Yes, Im voting Tory, and No, Im voting Labour.

Instagrammer Carmo Braga da Costa spotted the tongue-in-cheek sign on her evening commute, sharing the image with her followers.

I was on the District line on my way home from work, she told The Evening Standard. The photograph was taken as the train pulled into Earls Court station.

It's a poster that's been placed into the ad space, you can see it if you look closely.

The political poster comes as party leaders make a final push to secure votes ahead of Thursdays poll.

Carmo Braga da Costa

The latest poll from YouGov shows a Tory lead of just four points over Labour, while ICM has it standing at 11 points.

Theresa May has come under fire over her policies on the NHS after she dodged difficult questions about spending in an interview with Andrew Neil.

Funny General Election Campaign Pictures 2017 1 /48 Funny General Election Campaign Pictures 2017 When the chips are down? Prime Minister Theresa May eats chips as she meets with residents in Mevagissey PA You looking at me? Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn is startled by Cody the Dachshund during a campaign event outside the James Paget Hospital Dan Kitwood/Getty Images Falling down 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 Not complete pants First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is presented with a pair of stained-glass pants, which Ms Sturgeon designed for the Prostate Cancer UK charity Jane Barlow/PA Sign him up! Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn saves a penalty kick from a child during a visit to Hackney Marshes Football Pitches, to highlight Labour's manifesto commitment to ensure 5% of the Premier League's television rights income is diverted to the grassroots game PA Cutting edge Ed Miliband mows a lawn whilst canvassing in his Doncasater North constituentcy Jane Nightingale Play time with Corbyn Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn meets staff and children at Marsham Street Community Nursery in Westminster, London Stefan Rousseau/PA Leap of faith Liberal Democrats leader Tim Farron leaps off the stage after taking part in the BBC Election Debate Stefan Rousseau/PA Tongue-tied Ukip leader Paul Nuttall speaking at a policy launch event in Gt George Street Victoria Jones/PA Crazy like a fox Former Labour deputy prime minister John Prescott gives a stump speech during General Election campaigning outside The Junction in Goole, Yorkshire Chris Radburn/PA Back to school Prime Minister Theresa May meets the Nishkam Trust leadership team and pupils of Nishkam Primary School in Birmingham Dan Kitwood/Getty Images Raising the bar First Minister Nicola Sturgeon during a visit to the Inveralmond Brewery in Perth David Cheskin/PA Running for election Conservative party leader Theresa May and Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson during the Scottish Conservatives manifesto launch at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre PA The wheels on the bus Alex Shimmin takes control of the Lib Dem battlebus, after Liberal Democrats leader Tim Farron launched the party's Welsh campaign in Cardiff Bay, Wales Gareth Fuller/PA Photo bomb Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has a selfie taken with supporters after he launched Labour's education plans during a visit to Leeds City College Danny Lawson/PA Top Gear First Minister and SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon sits in the driving seat of a Midge car during a visit to Moffat on the General Election campaign trail PA Into the light Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn after speaking in Morley, Leeds Danny Lawson/PA Rolling with it SNP Leader Nicola Sturgeon holds a rolling pin as she and the party's local candidate John Nicolson (left) make haggis pies with Table 13 Express co-owner Iain Murphy on a campaign visit to the cafe in Kirkintilloch, East Dunbartonshire Andrew Milligan/PA It's a dog's life ... A dog wears a placard as Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of Labour Party campaigns outside Leamington Spa Town Hall Darren Staples/Reuters My goal! Liberal Democrats leader Tim Farron plays a game on table football during a visit to charity Gloustershire Action for Refugess and Asylum Seekers in Gloucester. Gareth Fuller/PA Jamming with it Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn with Busker Dan Hettfield during his general election campaign stop in Aston Under Lyme Peter Byrne/PA Bake off SNP Leader Nicola Sturgeon savours the aroma of a haggis pie featuring the party's logo that she helped to make on a campaign visit to Table 13 Express in Kirkintilloch, East Dunbartonshire Andrew Milligan/PA Got a lotta bottle tops Liberal Democrats leader Tim Farron, Leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats Willie Rennie (second left) and party candidate Jo Swinson examine bottle tops during a tour of the Guala Closures factory, at Guala Closures UK Ltd in Kirkintilloch, Scotland Yui Mok/PA Stamble and fall Tim Farron takes a stumble on his battle bus during a Sky News broadcast Sky News Just like that Theresa May visits the Dhamecha Lohana Centre in Harrow North London Jeremy Selwyn Top dog? Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron meets a dog in St Albans Philip Toscano/PA Down with the kid's Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn reads with children as he visits Brentry Children Centre in Bristol, during Labour's election campaign Steve Parsons/PA There's no smoke without fire Pensioner Malcolm Baker confronts Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron while he was the election campaign trail in Kidlington, near Oxford Sam Lister/PA Look who's talking 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 Flower power Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn (R) smells a red rose alongside Mohammed Yasin (L) the Labour Party general election candidate for Bedford and Kempston while on the campaign trail in Bedford, north of London, Britain Andy Rain/EPA This Bud's for you Britain's opposition Labour party Leader Jeremy Corbyn (C) walks past a bus shelter with Alan Whitehead, Labour MP for Southampton, and local councillor Satvir Kaur (R), before meeting local residents Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty Images Wenger Out!? Students hold up a Wenger Out banner behind Labour leader and Arsenal fan Jeremy Corbyn as he speaks to supporters outside the Town Hall in Leamington Spa Arj Singh/PA Swing vote Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of Labour Party, watches local candidate Anneliese Dodds' children play on the swings in a playground during a campaign stop in Oxford Darren Staples /Reuters Watch the birdie A demonstrator, speaks to police officers outside a British Conservative Party campaign event in London Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA Grape expectation 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 Bad hair day Prime Minister Theresa May makes her statement to the nation and calls General Election Getty Images

The Prime Minister made a U-turn on her controversial shakeup of social care that has been branded a dementia tax, and pledged an additional 8bn for the healthcare system over the next five years.

Meanwhile, Jeremy Corbyn is warning that voters have 24 hours to save the NHS, highlighting that his party plans to provide 37 billion in additional funding for the healthcare system over the course of the next parliament.
F or most graduates the idea of travelling around the world is just a fantasy. But for one lucky final year student, his dreams of trekking the globe have become a reality.

Joe Thompson, a 22 year-old digital photography student at Ravensbourne University was announced as the winner of Compare the Market's competition on June 2.

He has been named 'the ultimate graduate travel advisor', where he will be required to capture video content, photographs and blog about his experiences.

After the polls opened up for two weeks, he gained 3,901 votes to secure his place as the champion. His award-winning video captured the most incredible landscapes and wildlife. His cute pooches made an appearance on screen too.

30 places to visit before you turn 30 1 /41 30 places to visit before you turn 30 Click through our gallery to discover the places you should visit before you turn 30... Shutterstock 1. Bali Highland panoramas, scenic waterfalls, open blue skies, golden sunsets and awesome sunrises across the coastline. Theres a reason why people say that Bali stirs the soul.



Why go here before you turn 30?



Explore temples and palaces, go river rafting, sign up to a surf school, volunteer at an orangutan sanctuary, take a yoga class in the mountains and party all night. Best of all, its cheap - so youll be able to live like a king on a fortnights trip here. Stephan Stansfield/Flickr 2. Island hopping in Greece If youve never made it to Greece, then schedule in some time to discover its lesser-known islands by boat. Go to big-hitters Santorini, Crete and Rhodes and and discover little-known gems Astypalea and Tinos.



Why go here before you turn 30?



Because you can explore whitewashed cubic houses, lie on white hot sands, take a dip in the bath water-warm Aegean. Shutterstock / Mikhail Gnatkovsk 3. Myanmar Until fairly recently, Myanmar was off limits to wanderlust Westerners. But after five decades of military rule, Asias formerly Junta-controlled diamond in the rough has finally opened its crystal shores to nirvana-seekers.



Why go here before you turn 30?



Unsullied beaches, ancient Pagan temples and incredibly cheap prices make Burma the perfect holiday spot for cash-strapped travellers in their 20s. Joe Connor 4. Ibiza No surprises here - the Island that never sleeps has long been one of the hottest places to play for people in their 20s. This hedonistic paradise is a lure for British clubbers drawn in by sun, sand and world-class DJs.



Why go here before you turn 30?



Because nowhere does sunset chilling quite like Ibiza. Shutterstock / FP media 5. Croatia Ancient walled towns, dreamy deep-blue seascapes, an unrivaled festival scene and guaranteed good weather. Whats not to love about Croatia?



Why go here before you turn 30?



Visit festival and wellness island Obonjan, go fun-seeking at Sonus, take a Game of Thrones tour, go white-water rafting, stroll around the museums in Zagreb or simply spend your days enjoying cocktail after cocktail on the beach. Angus Webster 6.Toronto, Canada Forget Williamsburg, hipsters looking for a cultural injection should make a beeline for Canadas largest city for art, food and dive bars by the dozen.



Why go here before you turn 30?



Ethnic enclaves, a bustling food scene and cool designer stays - there are plenty of reasons to discover Toronto. Shutterstock / njene 7. Pammukale, Turkey Pamukkale is actually Turkish for cotton castle, which accurately sums up this amazing display of natural hot water pools in Denizli Province. The city is famous for its travertines - terraces of dazzling white carbonate minerals left by the flowing water that tourists can bathe in.



Why go here before you turn 30?



It'll make for one stunning Instagram. Shutterstock / Copycat37 8. Backpack through Southeast Asia Southeast Asia is one of the most accessible regions for the novice traveller - thanks to its mix of volcanoes, rainforests, rice fields, beaches and coral reefs. Some popular stops include Chiang Mai in Thailand, Angkor Wat in Cambodia and Laos, Hanoi in Vietnam.



Why go here before you turn 30?



Explore thousand-year-old Hindu ruins, rave on the beach, attend a Buddhist ceremony at dawn and hike through the jungle looking for wildlife. The possibilities are endless. Shutterstock / Lena Serditova 9. Costa Rica Theres plenty of time for gentle package holidays in your later years. This tiny Central American oasis is a twenty-somethings playground of wild beaches, rocky points, volcanoes, reefs, rare wildlife and spectacular rainforests.



Why go here before you turn 30?



Because you can learn how to surf on the Nicoya peninsula, try truly amazing Costa Rican coffee, learn to speak Spanish, get lost on a hike in a rainforest, go white water rafting at Turrialba and see real life sloths, monkeys, crocodiles, ocelots and toucans. Autentico Adventures Costa Rica/Flickr 10. Tiger's Nest Monastery, Bhutan William and Kate put this remote kingdom on the map earlier this year, and a trip here isnt complete without paying a visit the the Tigers Nest Monastery. Believed to be the birthplace of Bhuddism, the Monastery has been a place of pilgrimage since it was built in 1692.



Why go here before you turn 30?



The temple complex clings to a cliff, a dizzying 3120 meters above the sea level on the side of the upper Paro valley. If you want to take in the stunning views of blue pines and rhododendrons youll need fearless stamina to hike to the top. Paula Bronstein/Getty Images 11. Songkran Festival, Thailand Songkran festival, or the Thai New Year, is three days of nonstop revelry. Its celebrated across the country, with locals and tourists gathering in the streets with super soakers, water balloons and buckets of water one almighty water fight.



Why go here before you turn 30?



Because who doesnt love a water fight? AFP/Getty Images 12. Banff, Canada This resort town is one of Canada's most popular tourist destinations, known for its mountainous surroundings and hot springs. A visit here offers the chance to experience the spectacular Canadian Rocky Mountains and glacier-fed lakes, bull elk and brown bear sightings, and small-town charm like no other.



Why go here before you turn 30?



Because its some of the finest mountain scenery youll find on the planet. Shutterstock / Songquan Deng 13. Norway Picturesque fjords, magical mountains, quaint coastal towns and the possibility of spotting the Northern Lights makes Norway a tempting trip for those on the hunt for natural beauty.



Why go here before you turn 30?



Visit trendy Oslo, discover magical lesser-known towns, stand on a gravity-defying boulder, sail around the fjords, stay in a fishermans cottage you may even spot a polar bear. Shutterstock / Carsten Pasternac 14. Half Dome in Yosemite National Park, California Rising nearly 5,000 feet above Yosemite Valley and 8,800 feet above sea level, Half Dome is one of the greatest hiking challenges a traveller can undertake. This granite dome sits at the eastern end of one of Americas most spectacular national parks.



Why go here before you turn 30?



The terrain is dramatic, the scenery is amazing, and its probably the single most iconic thing you can do in California. Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images 15. Iceland This Nordic island nation isnt far from the UK, but packs in astonishing natural phenomena and take-your-breath-away landscapes.



Why go here before you turn 30?



Contemporary cuisine, Lord of the Rings-esque lands, stargazing, endless hours of daylight and geothermal springs. Its hard to narrow it down. Shutterstock / pranodhm 16. The Inca Trail, Peru The Inca Trail is by far the most famous trek in South America. In just 26 miles it manages to combine beautiful mountain scenery, lush cloud-forest, subtropical jungle and, of course, a stunning mix of Inca paving stones, ruins and tunnels.



Why go here before you turn 30?



Because the final destination of the trail just cannot be beaten: Machu Picchu, the mysterious "Lost City of the Incas". Brent Stirton/Getty Images 17. Manchester, UK The capital of The North might not strike as the most exotic of travel destination, but its giving London a run for its money thanks to a wealth of music and art history, smart fine dining restaurants, hipster neighbourhoods and a swathe of cool new boutique hotels.



Why go here before you turn 30?



Because it's only 2 hours away by train from the capital. Shutterstock / Tupungato 18. India The food alone is enough of a draw to India, but throw in palm-fringed beaches, one of the seven wonders of the world, forts, mosques, monuments and ancient ruins, and you have a holiday on that ticks all the boxes on your hands.



Why go here before you turn 30?



Because youll want leave enough room to come back again and again over your lifetime. Shutterstock / LukaKikina 19. Berlin Edgy, cool and creative, Berlin is one of the worlds best cities for boutique shopping, brilliantly offbeat nights out and hipster hangouts.



Why go here before you turn 30?



Because its one of Europes most exciting cities. Shutterstock / Claudio Divizia 20. Melbourne, Australia Whether youre looking to party, simply kick-back on a beach or sample some of the best brunch in the world, Melbourne offers it all to young travellers and backpackers.



Why go here before you turn 30?



Australias coolest capital holds all kinds of attractions for people in their 20s, from bars and boutiques to clubs and cafes. Shutterstock / GagliardiImages 21. New Zealand Undoubtedly one of the most spectacular places on earth, New Zealand is home to some incredibly unspoilt scenery. Make sure to take a decent camera, because stunning national parks and reserves make up a third of its land.



Why go here before you turn 30?



When else can you spend a whole month hiking its natural peaks and troughs? Gareth Richman 22. Carnival, Rio de Janeiro Forget Notting Hill carnival: once a year, several million travellers descend on Rio to enjoy four days of parades and partying at the beginning of Lent.



Why go here before you turn 30?



Who wouldnt want to be part of the biggest street party on the planet? Raphael Dias/Getty Images 23. The Great Wall of China As the famous Chinese saying goes, 'he who does not reach the Great Wall is not a true man'. This great engineering marvel winds up and down across deserts, grasslands, mountains and plateaus, stretching across over 13,000 miles.



Why go here before you turn 30?



Because your 20s arent just for partying and frolicking... AFP/Getty Images 24. Burning Man Festival, Nevada Every year, tens of thousands of people gather in Nevadas Black Rock Desert to create Black Rock City, a temporary festival of art, hedonism and self-expression.



Why go here before you turn 30?



Because its the most outrageous festival of all: alongside meditation and yoga theres spanking classes, orgies, and naked foam parties. Chances are, youll only want to get involved when youre young enough not to regret it. Duncan Rawlinson/Flickr 25. Antelope Canyon, Arizona Located just outside of Page, in the heart of Navajo Country, Antelope may just be the most photographed slot canyon in the world - thanks to its awe-inspiring, sandstone formations.



Why go here before you turn 30?



The celestial light beams in the canyon make this place completely unforgettable and unmissable. AFP/Getty Images 26. Pacific Coast Highway, California The PCH is a road trip-lovers dream, with its winding ribbon roads that meander alongside the crashing Cali coast from Carmel to Morro Bay. The 123-mile route takes in Big Sur and the much photographed Bixby Bridge, as well as five hours of cliff-hugging open road.



Why go here before you turn 30?



The all-American road has been voted one of the top motorcycle rides in the U.S - its basically the drive of a lifetime, but youll enjoy the freedom most on two wheels. Howard Ignatius/Flickr 27. Bosnia & Herzegovina Turquoise rivers, medieval castles and tumbling waterfalls. It sounds like something out of a fairytale, but the craggily beautiful lands of Bosnia and Herzegovina are real - and theyre one of Europes best kept secrets.



Why go here before you turn 30?



Because there are few places in the world where you can enjoy hiking, beautiful countryside, rafting and swimming, inner-city bridge jumping and skiing all within one country. Shutterstock 28. Tokyo, Japan Japans busy capital shouldnt be overlooked - as well as providing endless Instagram opportunities, it manages to pack in both the ultramodern and the traditional - from neon-lit skyscrapers to historic temples.



Why go here before you turn 30?



Because you can sleep in a capsule, walk across the beautiful Tokyo bay, spend hours in an multi-storey arcade, slurp down some heavenly ramen and spend hours strolling through the brightly-lit streets. Shutterstock 29. Osea Island, Essex On Osea Island, they know how to throw a party. Located in the middle of Essexs Blackwater Estuary, the private island  which is only accessible by boat, helicopter or car at low tide  boasts four and a half miles of its own beaches and coastline perfect for social gatherings.



Why go here before you turn 30?



Because you can throw the most incredible weekend parties here. Alamy Stock Photo 30. Las Vegas, Nevada Live like a celebrity for amongst the glitz and glitter of one of the worlds most famous strips.



Why go here before you turn 30?



Win big at a casino, take in a cirque production, party all night, go four-wheeling in the surrounding national parks just make sure you dont accidentally get hitched. Shutterstock / Don Mammoser

The prize totalling to 15,000 includes 5,000 for his Student Union at Ravensbourne and an 'adventure tour' worth 10,000 covering accommodation, tickets, excursions, adventure activities and travel insurance.

Read more 9 of the best travel backpacks

His dreams of becoming a landscape and travel photographer after his degree will be easier to achieve, as he builds on his portfolio.

Thompson said: "I would love to go to South America, specifically Patigonia. I would also like to visit Iceland and Norway, as well as some of Asia".
A teenage girl used text messages to encourage her besotted boyfriend to kill himself so she would get sympathy and attention as the grieving girlfriend, a court heard.

In dozens of texts and phone calls, Michelle Carter, then 17, repeatedly goaded 18-year-old Conrad Roy to commit suicide. She used Conrad as a pawn in her sick game of life and death, prosecutor Maryclare Flynn said as Carter went on trial in Taunton, Massachusetts, accused of manslaughter.

She said Carter was on the phone to Mr Roy as he sat in his pickup truck in a car park in July 2014 as it filled with deadly carbon monoxide.

At one point he got out of the truck and Carter told him to get back in and never called for help as he died, Ms Flynn added.

Conrad Roy was found dead in his car from carbon monoxide poisoning

Carter, who appeared in court in a salmon pink jacket, is alleged to have carried out a dry run two days before her boyfriends death to test reaction from friends.

Ms Flynn said she texted several girls to say Conrad had gone missing while simultaneously telling Mr Roy to get a gas machine.

Carter was said to have sent 40 texts to him urging him to kill himself.

One read: The time is right and youre ready, you just need to do it! In other messages, Carter appeared irritated at his hesitation and texted: You always say you are gonna do it but you dont.

The grieving family of Conrad Roy in court / AP

In another text, Mr Roy told her he was gonna do it today and she replied: You promise?

Ms Flynn claimed Carter, now 20, wanted sympathy for being a grieving girlfriend.

But defence lawyer Joseph Cataldo said she had urged Mr Roy to get help because he was depressed after his parents divorce, was physically and verbally abused by family members and had researched suicide methods online.

The couple met in Florida in 2012 but had only seen each other a handful of times.

He said Carter had mental health problems and had been taking medication. He added: This was a sad and tragic suicide, but not a homicide.

The case is being tried in a juvenile court because Carter was a teenager when Mr Roy killed himself. She faces up to 20 years in jail if convicted.

Anyone affected by issues in this report can call Samaritans on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org.
H olloway Road has been closed off in both directions after reports of a man was stabbed in broad daylight.

The busy north London road has been cordoned off by police, who confirmed to the Standard that a teenager has been arrested in connection with the incident.

Pictures of the scene show a police van and several officers guarding the cordon and eyewitnesses reported seeing one man who was stabbed twice in the side and the back before being rushed to hospital.

A Met police spokeswoman said a man, aged in his 20s, had been taken to hospital with injuries that are not believed to be life-threatening.

Holloway: The road has been closed off in both directions

A 19-year-old has been arrested on suspicion of GBH with intent.

Police remain at the scene and the road has been closed since shortly before 5pm.

The Met spokeswoman said: Police were called on Wednesday June 7 June at 4.16pm to a report of a stabbing in Holloway Road, N7.

"Officers attended and found a man, believed be in his 20s suffering from a stab injury

"The man was taken to a north London hospital. His injuries are not being treated as life threatening

"A 19-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of GBH with intent and is currently in custody at a north London police station.

"Officers remain on scene and enquiries are ongoing."
A murder probe has been launched after a man was stabbed to death on a housing estate in Londons second fatal stabbing over the last 24 hours.

Police were called to the Cambridge Road estate in Kingston at 6pm on Tuesday after reports of a fight.

Neighbours said the Air Ambulance also landed at the nearby ground of AFC Wimbledon as paramedics raced to the scene.

They found a man, believed to be in his 30s, suffering from stab injuries.

Despite the efforts of medics, he was pronounced dead a short while later.

Police said they have arrested two men and a woman in connection with the incident.

All three were in custody at separate police stations on Wednesday morning.

The latest incident came just a day after a 17-year-old boy was knifed to death in Tottenham.

A spokesman for Scotland Yard said: Police were called at around 6pm on Tuesday, June 6, following reports of a disturbance on the Cambridge Estate, Kingston.

Officers attended and found a male, believed to be aged in his 30s, suffering from stab injuries.

He died at the scene a short while later. Officers are in the process of informing next of kin.

A post-mortem examination will be held in due course.

Detectives from the Homicide and Major Crime Command are investigating and have appealed for witnesses to come forward.

Anyone with information should contact police on 101, via Twitter @MetCC, call Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111, or visit crimestoppers-uk.org.
I rish police have arrested a second man in connection with the London Bridge terror outrage.

A man aged in his thirties was detained in Wexford, in the south east, at around 5pm on Tuesday as part of ongoing investigations into Irish links to the atrocity.

The suspect is being questioned about documentation connected to Rachid Redouane, one of the three killers behind the weekend attack.

Redouane, alongside Youssef Zaghba and Khuram Butt used a van to mow down pedestrians on the bridge and then launched a stabbing rampage in Borough Market, killing seven and injuring dozens more.

London Bridge terrorists: What we know so far

Redouane married British woman Charisse Ann O'Leary in Ireland in November 2012 and gave an address in Rathmines, Dublin.

He left the country at some point and is believed to have lived in Ireland again in 2015.

Gardai confirmed a suspect was being held at Wexford Garda station in connection with documentation linked to Redouane under the Theft and Fraud Offences Act.

Aftermath of London Bridge and Borough Market terrorist attack 1 /73 Aftermath of London Bridge and Borough Market terrorist attack New Security barriers along Westminster Bridge Alex Lentati Onlookers react near the scene of an attack close to London Bridge Reuters Floral tributes are laid near Borough Market in London following Saturday's terrorist attack PA Security barriers along Waterloo Bridge Alex Lentati Police on patrol London Bridge and Southwark Street Jeremy Selwyn The scene where the terrorists van stopped at the southern end of London Bridge and Southwark Street Jeremy Selwyn A woman places flowers on a floral tribute in the London Bridge area AP Police activity on Ripple Road in east London, where officers have conducted raids after Saturday's deadly terror attack PA New security barriers have been put up along Westminster Bridge Alex Lentati People look at flowers at a pedestrian crossing on the south side of London Bridge AFP/Getty Images Police at London Bridge and Southwark Street Jeremy Selwyn Police on patrol London Bridge and Southwark Street Jeremy Selwyn Flowers at London Bridge and Southwark Street Jeremy Selwyn Flowers at London Bridge and Southwark Street Jeremy Selwyn Police on patrol London Bridge Jeremy Selwyn Police on patrol London Bridge and Southwark Street Jeremy Selwyn Police activity on Ripple Road in east London PA New security barriers have been put up along Westminster Bridge Evening Standard Jeremy Selwyn View of London Bridge following the terror attack Jeremy Selwyn Armed police Jeremy Selwyn A person (right) is detained by police at Elizabeth Fry flats in Barking, east London, which officer raided following the terror attack on London Bridge Furqan Nabi/PA A female police officer carries flowers from a member of the public to the scene of last night's terrorist attack at London Bridge Getty Images The van used by three attackers which was driven onto London Bridge, striking pedestrian, before they went on a stabbing rampage in nearby Borough Market PA A person is detained by police in Barking, east London following the terror attack on London Bridge Splash News Forensic officers work on London Bridge after last night's a terrorist attack Getty Images Police officers outside a property in East Ham which has been raided by police Getty Images Police activity on Barking Road in East Ham, east London @JrKamrulJr/PA A crowd gathers behind a police cordon on Barking Road in East Ham, east London, where there was a heavy police presence following last night's terrorist incident at London Bridge PA Armed police descend an escalator at the foot of the Shard outside London Bridge station PA Police officers and emergency response vehicles are seen on the street outside Borough Market on the morning after a terror attack on London Bridge and the Borough area AFP/Getty Images A forensic officer walks over London Bridge after last night's terrorist attack Getty Images View of London Bridge following the terror attack Jeremy Selwyn A police officer escorts members of the public, wrapped in foil blankets, towards The Shard in London AFP/Getty Images A bouquet of flowers stands by the police cordon next to London Bridge in London AFP/Getty Images A police officer creates a cordon on Kings Road in Barking, as police continue their investigations following the June 3 terror attacks AFP/Getty Images Police raid flats in Barking Armed officers: Police raid flats in Barking 'over London Bridge terror attack' @ofrenium/Twitter Members of the public watch as police work on Kings Road in Barking AFP/Getty Images Police raid flats in Barking The Union flag is flown at half mast in Downing Street, London PA Prime Minister Theresa May makes a statement in Downing Street after chairing a meeting of the Government's emergency Cobra committee following last night's terrorist incident in London PA A sign at Walthamstow tube station in east London following last night's terrorist incident at London Bridge PA Police outside a raided property in East Ham Getty Images Police officers stand outside a property which was raided by officers in Barking Road, east London Reuters Armed police Jeremy Selwyn Armed police Jeremy Selwyn Police officers patrol the River Thames by boat, close to London Bridge AFP/Getty Images Counter terrorism officers march near the scene of last night's London Bridge terrorist attack Getty Images Armed police Jeremy Selwyn Armed police and emergency services outside Borough Market, London, following last night's terrorist incidents PA Police forensic officers work on London Bridge in London, as police continue their investigations following the terror attack AFP/Getty Images Police on Southwark Bridge Road, London, near the scene of last night's terrorist incidents in London Bridge and Borough Market PA Police forensic officers on London Bridge following last night's terrorist incident PA The Union flag flies at half mast in Whitehall PA

He can be questioned for up to 24 hours

A case file is being prepared on another man who was arrested and later released without charge over the discovery in Limerick of identity documents in Redouane's name.

The Director of Public Prosecutions will be asked to assess if he should be charged in relation to offences under theft and fraud laws.

Redouane is known to have lived in Ireland at different times over the last number of years.

He married Ms O'Leary at the office of the Civil Registration Service at Sir Patrick Dun's Hospital in Dublin.

Who are the victims of the London Bridge attacks?

It is not clear when he came to the Republic or how long he stayed but it is believed he used Irish jurisdiction to get a European Union permit which allowed him to be in the UK.

He is also thought to have travelled to Morocco after leaving Ireland before settling in the UK.

Redouane returned to Ireland in 2015, again for an unknown length of time, but Taoiseach Enda Kenny said he was not one of a small number of radicals under surveillance in Ireland.

Vigil for London Bridge terror attack 1 /16 Vigil for London Bridge terror attack Hundreds gather during a vigil in Potters Fields for the victims of the June 3rd terror attacks Getty Images People attend a vigil for victims of Saturday's attack in London Bridge, at Potter's Field Park AP Hundreds gather during a vigil in Potters Fields for the victims of the June 3rd terror attacks Getty Images Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan and Home Secretary Amber Rudd take part in a vigil for the victims of the London Bridge terror attacks Getty Images Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, Home Secretary Amber Rudd and Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott with members of the public observing a minute's silence PA People gather in Potters Field Park during an event for the victims of the terror attack REUTERS People at a vigil in Potters Fields Park, central London in honour of the London Bridge terror attack victims PA People take part in a vigil for victims of the London Bridge terror attacks by the City Hall EPA Floral tributes were set down during a vigil outside City Hall EPA ople attend a vigil to remember the victims of the attack on London Bridge and Borough Market REUTERS Pupils from Eden Girls' School in Waltham Forest take part in a vigil in memory of those killed in the recent terror attacks in London Getty Images People lay flowers after a vigil for victims of Saturday's attack in London Bridge, AP

An Irish security source described the killer as having "extensive immigration history related to the UK".
O ne of the London Bridge terrorists launched a verbal and physical attack on a prominent Muslim academic during Eid last year, it has been claimed.

Khuram Butt was one of three men who left seven people dead in a horrific attack at the weekend.

Butt, alongside Youssef Zaghba and Rachid Redouane, used a van to mow down pedestrians on the bridge and then launched a stabbing rampage through Borough Market.

On Tuesday, the head of Islamic Studies at the Quilliam Foundation, Dr Usama Hasan, claimed he was assaulted by the extremist at an event celebrating Eid last year.

Dr Hasan said he reported Butt to police.

Butt attended the event with his wife and young son and approached Dr Hasan, who was with his family, and accused him of being an apostate who took "government money to spy on Muslims".

He also attacked him for supporting gay marriage and the idea that "we come from apes".

Dr Hasan wrote in a Facebook post: Khuram Butt, the London Bridge terrorist, verbally and physically assaulted me last year on Eid al-Fitr at the One-Eid Muslim family funfair in Goodmayes Park.

Terror suspect: Khuram Butt / Channel 4

I was with my elderly parents and 9-year-old son at the time, and naturally we were all distressed. I reported him to the police and counter-terrorism police at the time: he was already known to the latter.

I'm so sorry for the London Bridge victims and their families that we as a society didn't stop this person who was clearly part of the Al Muhajirun network.

Aftermath of London Bridge and Borough Market terrorist attack 1 /73 Aftermath of London Bridge and Borough Market terrorist attack New Security barriers along Westminster Bridge Alex Lentati Onlookers react near the scene of an attack close to London Bridge Reuters Floral tributes are laid near Borough Market in London following Saturday's terrorist attack PA Security barriers along Waterloo Bridge Alex Lentati Police on patrol London Bridge and Southwark Street Jeremy Selwyn The scene where the terrorists van stopped at the southern end of London Bridge and Southwark Street Jeremy Selwyn A woman places flowers on a floral tribute in the London Bridge area AP Police activity on Ripple Road in east London, where officers have conducted raids after Saturday's deadly terror attack PA New security barriers have been put up along Westminster Bridge Alex Lentati People look at flowers at a pedestrian crossing on the south side of London Bridge AFP/Getty Images Police at London Bridge and Southwark Street Jeremy Selwyn Police on patrol London Bridge and Southwark Street Jeremy Selwyn Flowers at London Bridge and Southwark Street Jeremy Selwyn Flowers at London Bridge and Southwark Street Jeremy Selwyn Police on patrol London Bridge Jeremy Selwyn Police on patrol London Bridge and Southwark Street Jeremy Selwyn Police activity on Ripple Road in east London PA New security barriers have been put up along Westminster Bridge Evening Standard Jeremy Selwyn View of London Bridge following the terror attack Jeremy Selwyn Armed police Jeremy Selwyn A person (right) is detained by police at Elizabeth Fry flats in Barking, east London, which officer raided following the terror attack on London Bridge Furqan Nabi/PA A female police officer carries flowers from a member of the public to the scene of last night's terrorist attack at London Bridge Getty Images The van used by three attackers which was driven onto London Bridge, striking pedestrian, before they went on a stabbing rampage in nearby Borough Market PA A person is detained by police in Barking, east London following the terror attack on London Bridge Splash News Forensic officers work on London Bridge after last night's a terrorist attack Getty Images Police officers outside a property in East Ham which has been raided by police Getty Images Police activity on Barking Road in East Ham, east London @JrKamrulJr/PA A crowd gathers behind a police cordon on Barking Road in East Ham, east London, where there was a heavy police presence following last night's terrorist incident at London Bridge PA Armed police descend an escalator at the foot of the Shard outside London Bridge station PA Police officers and emergency response vehicles are seen on the street outside Borough Market on the morning after a terror attack on London Bridge and the Borough area AFP/Getty Images A forensic officer walks over London Bridge after last night's terrorist attack Getty Images View of London Bridge following the terror attack Jeremy Selwyn A police officer escorts members of the public, wrapped in foil blankets, towards The Shard in London AFP/Getty Images A bouquet of flowers stands by the police cordon next to London Bridge in London AFP/Getty Images A police officer creates a cordon on Kings Road in Barking, as police continue their investigations following the June 3 terror attacks AFP/Getty Images Police raid flats in Barking Armed officers: Police raid flats in Barking 'over London Bridge terror attack' @ofrenium/Twitter Members of the public watch as police work on Kings Road in Barking AFP/Getty Images Police raid flats in Barking The Union flag is flown at half mast in Downing Street, London PA Prime Minister Theresa May makes a statement in Downing Street after chairing a meeting of the Government's emergency Cobra committee following last night's terrorist incident in London PA A sign at Walthamstow tube station in east London following last night's terrorist incident at London Bridge PA Police outside a raided property in East Ham Getty Images Police officers stand outside a property which was raided by officers in Barking Road, east London Reuters Armed police Jeremy Selwyn Armed police Jeremy Selwyn Police officers patrol the River Thames by boat, close to London Bridge AFP/Getty Images Counter terrorism officers march near the scene of last night's London Bridge terrorist attack Getty Images Armed police Jeremy Selwyn Armed police and emergency services outside Borough Market, London, following last night's terrorist incidents PA Police forensic officers work on London Bridge in London, as police continue their investigations following the terror attack AFP/Getty Images Police on Southwark Bridge Road, London, near the scene of last night's terrorist incidents in London Bridge and Borough Market PA Police forensic officers on London Bridge following last night's terrorist incident PA The Union flag flies at half mast in Whitehall PA

According to Dr Hasan, Butt accused him of being an apostate who took "government money to spy on Muslims".

He also attacked him for supporting gay marriage and the idea that "we come from apes".

When other people tried to intervene, a scuffle broke out, the organisation said, but when staff reported Butt they were told he "was already known to intelligence".

Quilliam chief executive Haras Rafiq said its report should have been taken more seriously as it came from a counter-terrorism group rather than a member of the public.

He added: "Although the police and security services have done a great job of protecting us, in this instance it is clear that there are questions to be answered.

"We renew our call for the next elected government to make the urgent appointment of a counter-extremism coordinator serving under the prime minister to co-ordinate the government's counter-extremism policy across all departments."
P olice arrested a 30-year-old man in connection with the London Bridge terror attack during an early morning raid.

Counter-terror officers searched a property in Ilford at 1.30am on Wednesday as they continued to investigate Saturday nights atrocity.

A Scotland Yard spokesman said a man had been arrested on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of terrorist acts.

He was being quizzed at a south London police station on Wednesday morning as a search of the home continued.

A minute's silence in tribute to the victims of the London attack 1 /29 A minute's silence in tribute to the victims of the London attack A woman cries at the tributes left at London Bridge Jeremy Selwyn Tributes left at London Bridge Jeremy Selwyn Paramedics at the gates of Downing Street, central London, observing a minute's silence in honour of the London Bridge terror attack victim PA People shelter from the rain beneath an umbrella as they observe a minute's silence near the Elizabeth Tower, commonly referred to as Big Ben, at the Houses of Parliament in London AFP/Getty Images A woman stands in Canary Wharf during the minute's silence Reuters Police officers line up to observe the minute's silence Getty Images People observing a minute's silence in St Ann's Square, Manchester, in solidarity with London PA Players and crowd observe a minutes silence in memory of the recent London terrorist attacks during the ICC Champions Trophy match between England v New Zealand at SWALEC Stadium Getty Images Railway staff observe a minute's silence Reuters A schoolboy lays flowers at London Bridge Alex Lentati Workers observe a minute's silence at London Bridge station Reuters Police officers and rail workers all took time out to pay their respects Police officers at the gates of Downing Street, central London fell silent PA Mayor of London Sadiq Khan joins London Ambulance workers PA England players observe a minutes silence during their match on Tuesday Action Images via Reuters Police officers line up to pay their respects Reuters Workers at London's hospitals also took part in the minute's silence England and New Zealand players observe a minutes silence Reuters Armed police in St Ann's Square, Manchester, gathering to honour of the London Bridge terror attack victims PA European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, left, stands with members of the European Commission during a moment of silence at EU headquarters in Brussels AP A woman cries at the scene Jeremy Selwyn A minute's silence at London Bridge today Alex Lentati

The arrest comes as security services face growing questions over their monitoring of the three attackers in the lead up to the attack.

Seven people died and another 48 were left injured when Youssef Zaghba, Khuram Shazad Butt and Rachid Redouane carried out their attack at the weekend.

The three fanatics mowed down pedestrians on the bridge in a van before stabbing people at random in Borough Market.

A cordon on Borough High Street was lifted on Wednesday morning, but the market was still cordoned off as the investigation continued.

On Tuesday, detectives arrested a 27-year-old man in Barking under the Terrorism Act. A separate address in Ilford was also raided.

Twelve other people arrested in connection with the investigation have since been released without charge.
T he owner of a van which sparked security fears after it was left by a US Embassy building in south London said he was "surprised" to find it had been damaged by a controlled explosion.

Specialist officers carried out a controlled explosion on two unattended vehicles close to the New US Embassy building and MI6 headquarters in Battersea.

Met officers, fire and ambulance crews descended on Ponton Road, just after 5.30pm on Wednesday.

Dramatic footage posted on social media showed a large police cordon outside a Waitrose store on the road.

Shoppers were evacuated amid a security scare following a terror attack at London Bridge on Saturday which left eight people dead.

Equipment used to carry out explosions could be seen emerging from the back of a police van.

One of the vehicles belonged to Taus Larsen, 40, who said he was "surprised" when he returned to his Ford van to find the front passenger side window had been smashed and the back door was crow-barred.

Mr Larsen, who parked on the street on Monday, said: "In hindsight maybe it wasn't ideal to have left it here for so long. But there wasn't any lines.

"I only live around the corner. I just came back to check up on it. I came here on my bike and thought someone had robbed it.

"I thought the commotions had been because there had been a break-in. It turned out the police had broken in or crow-barred the window, or tried to crowbar the back door open.

A spokeswoman for the Met Police said: "Police were called at 4.38 pm to Ponton Road, Wandsworth, to a report of two unattended vehicles.

LAS and the London Fire Brigade are also in attendance.

A controlled explosion was carried out at around 5.37pm."

The Met later said the incident was a false alarm and officers left the scene around 6.40pm.
D onald Trump Jr has joined his father in attacking Sadiq Khan, saying the Mayor of London is pretending there isnt a problem with terrorism in the capital.

The US Presidents son waded in on the row, which has led Mr Khan to suggest that Donald Trumps planned state visit to Britain should be cancelled, during a television interview on Tuesday.

Mr Trump had previously branded Mr Khan pathetic as he criticised him for saying there was no reason to be alarmed by the additional police presence on the capitals streets following the London Bridge terror attack.

And Donald Trump Jr added in an interview with ABCs Good Morning America: Rather than the Mayor of London attacking maybe he should do something about it.

Sadiq Khan says Trump's state visit should be scrapped

Maybe he should do something to fix the problem rather than just sit there and pretend there isnt one.

I think thats an important message.

He also defended his father, saying: Every time he puts something out there he gets criticised by the media all day every day by everyone else and guess what? Two weeks later hes proven to be right.

It happened again and we keep appeasing it and keep saying, okay, its going to be great. Were going to hold fast and were going to keep calm and carry on.'

Donald Trump 100 Days as President - In pictures 1 /88 Donald Trump 100 Days as President - In pictures 20 January 2017 Donald Trump (L) is sworn in as the 45th US president by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts in front of the Capitol in Washington AFP/Getty Images 20 January 2017 First Lady Melania Trump, President Donald Trump,former President Barack Obama, Michelle Obama at the US Capitol after inauguration ceremonies at the in Washington, DC AFP/Getty Images 20 January 2017 US President Donald Trump takes the oath of allegiance during his swearing-in ceremony on January 20, 2017 at the US Capitol in Washington, DC AFP/Getty Images 20 January 2017 US President elect Donald Trump (C) arrives for the swearing-in ceremony on in front of the Capitol in Washington AFP/Getty Images 20 January 2017 US President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania walk the inaugural parade route with son Barron on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC AFP/Getty Images 20 January 2017 US President Donald Trump and the first lady Melania Trump dance at the Liberty Ball at the Washington DC Convention Center following Donald Trump's inauguration as the 45th President of the United States, in Washington, DC, on 20 January 2017 AFP/Getty Images 20 January 2017 US President Donald Trump and the first lady Melania Trump dance at the Armed Services ball at the National Building museum following Donald Trump's inauguration as the 45th President of the United States, in Washington, DC, on 20 January 20, 2017 AFP/Getty Images 20 January 2017 US President Donald Trump speaks to the press as he waits at his desk before signing conformations for General James Mattis as US Secretary of Defense and General John Kelly as US Secretary of Homeland Security, as Vice President Mike Pence and White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus look on in the Oval Office of the White House on 20 January 2017 AFP/Getty Images 20 January 2017 Police pepper spray at anti-Trump protesters during clashes in Washington, DC AFP/Getty Images 20 January 2017 US President Donald Trump (C) gestures as the first lady Melania Trump (center L), Vice Presidant Mike Pence (L), his wife Karen (2L) and family look on at the Liberty Ball at the Washington DC Convention Center following Donald Trump's inauguration as the 45th President of the United States, in Washington, DC AFP/Getty Images 20 January 2017 Vanessa and Donald Trump Jr, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner salute the crowd after dancing on stage during the Freedom ball at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center on 20 January 2017 in Washington, DC AFP/Getty Images 21 January 2017 Demonstrators gather at Civic Center Park in Denver, Colorado, during the Women's March on 21 January 2017 AFP/Getty Images 21 January 2017 Demonstrators protest near the White House in Washington, DC, for the Women's March on 21 January 2017 AFP/Getty Images 23 January 2017 US President Donald Trump holds up an executive order withdrawing the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership after signing it in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC on 23 January 2017 AFP/Getty Images 25 January 2017 US President Donald Trump signs an executive order to start the Mexico border wall project at the Department of Homeland Security facility in Washington, DC, on 25 January 2017 AFP/Getty Images 25 January 2017 Greenpeace protesters unfold a banner reading "Resist" from atop a construction crane behind the White House AFP/Getty Images 26 January 2017 US President Donald Trump salutes as he steps off Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland upon his return from Philadelphia AFP/Getty Images 26 January 2017 Demonstrators protest President Donald Trump's plan to build a border wall along the United States and Mexico border in Chicago, Illinois AFP/Getty Images 27 January 2017 US President Donald Trump and British Prime Minister Theresa May speak during a press conference at the White House AFP/Getty Images 27 January 2017 US President Donald Trump speaks after signing executive orders alongside US Defense Secretary James Mattis (R) and US Vice President Mike Pence on 27 January 2017, at the Pentagon in Washington, DC AFP/Getty Images 27 January 2017 US President Donald Trump speaks following the ceremonial swearing-in of James Mattis as secretary of defense on January 27, 2017, at the Pentagon in Washington, DC AFP/Getty Images 28 January 2017 US President Donald Trump speaks on the phone with Russia's President Vladimir Putin from the Oval Office of the White House on January 28, 2017, in Washington, DC. AFP/Getty Images 31 January 2017 Senior Advisor Jared Kushner (L) and Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly (R) listen while US President Donald Trump puts his papers away at the beginning of a meeting on cyber security in the Roosevelt Room of the White House January 31, 2017 in Washington, DC AFP/Getty Images 28 January 2017 US President Donald Trump holds an executive memorandum on defeating the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria after signing it in the Oval Office of the White House AFP/Getty Images 31 January 2017 Judge Neil Gorsuch speaks, after US President Donald Trump nominated him for the Supreme Court, at the White House in Washington, DC AFP/Getty Images 31 January 2017 Demonstrators gather outside of The United States Supreme Court after President Donald Trump announced Neil Gorsuch as his nominee to fill the seat of former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Antonin Scalia in Washington, DC, on 31 January 2017 AFP/Getty Images 1 February 2017 US President Donald Trump (2L) congratulates Rex Tillerson (seated) after he was sworn in as Secretary of State as his wife Renda St. Clair (R), and Vice President Mike Pence (L) look on in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC AFP/Getty Images 1 February 2017 US President Donald Trump and his daughter Ivanka walk to board Marine One at the White House in Washington, DC AFP/Getty Images 3 February 2017 US President Donald Trump chats with reporters on board Air Force One before departing from Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, bound for Palm Beach, Florida AFP/Getty Images 4 February 2017 Zeina, who did not want to give her last name, takes part in a protest against US President Donald Trump outside the White House AFP/Getty Images 4 February 2017 Demonstrators holding placards take part in a protest against US President Donald Trump outside the US Embassy in London AFP/Getty Images 6 February 2017 US President Donald Trump sits down for lunch with troops during a visit to the US Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida AFP/Getty Images 7 February 2017 US President Donald Trump holds up a gift given to him by county sheriffs following a meeting as they pose for photos in the Oval Office of the White House AFP/Getty Images 13 February 2017 National Security Advisor Michael Flynn (centre) attends a joint press conference by US President Donald Trump and Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the East Room of the White House on 13 February 2017 in Washington AFP/Getty Images 15 February 2017 US President Donald Trump (R) and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu walk into the White House in Washington, DC AFP/Getty Images 15 February 2017 Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner arrive for a joint press conference by US President Donald Trump and Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the East Room of the White House AFP/Getty Images 15 February 2017 US President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump welcome Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, as they arrive at the White House in Washington, DC AFP/Getty Images 16 February 2017 US President Donald Trump speaks during a press conference at the White House AFP/Getty Images 26 February 2017 An activist paints the wall between the United States and Mexico during a demonstration against US President Donald Trump on the border of Ciudad Juarez with Nuevo Mexico, Chihuahua State, Mexico AFP/Getty Images 26 February 2017 View of the paintings made by activists in the wall between Mexico and United States during a demontration against US President Donald Trump on the border of Ciudad Juarez with Nuevo Mexico, Chihuahua State, Mexico AFP/Getty Images 27 February 2017 Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway (L) checks her phone after taking a photo as US President Donald Trump and leaders of historically black universities and colleges pose for a group photo in the Oval Office of the White House before a meeting with US Vice President Mike Pence in Washington AFP/Getty Images 28 February 2017 US Vice President Mike Pence (L), US President Donald Trump (C) and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) clap during a joint session of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC AFP/Getty Images 2 March 2017 US President Donald Trump salutes as he arrives onboard the pre-commissioned USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier in Newport News, Virginia AFP/Getty Images 2 March 2017 US President Donald Trump salutes as he walks to Air Force One prior to departing from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia AFP/Getty Images 3 March 2017 Sandy Adams holds up a placard during a protest outside St. Anthony Catholic school in Orlando, Florida during a visit by US President Donald Trump AFP/Getty Images 3 March 2017 US President Donald Trump walks off Air Force One after arriving in Orlando, Florida AFP/Getty Images 7 March 2017 US President Donald Trump gestures as he surprises visitors during the official reopening of public tours at the White House in Washington, DC AFP/Getty Images 10 March 2017 People rally during the Native Nations Rise protest in Washington, DC AFP/Getty Images 15 March 2017 US President Donald Trump speaks during a rally in Nashville, Tennessee AFP/Getty Images 17 March 2017 US President Donald Trump and Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel shake hands after a press conference in the East Room of the White House AFP/Getty Images 20 March 2017 US President Donald Trump arrives for a 'Make America Great Again' rally at the Kentucky Exposition Center in Louisville, Kentucky AFP/Getty Images 21 March 2017 S President Donald Trump reacts after signing a bill increasing funding for NASA in the Oval Office at the White House AFP/Getty Images 23 March 2017 Protesters dressed as medical staff march towards the Federal Building during a "Save the Affordable Care Act" rally in Los Angeles, California AFP/Getty Images 23 March 2017 US President Donald Trump sits in the drivers seat of a semi-truck as he welcomes truckers and CEOs to the White House in Washington, DC AFP/Getty Images 23 March 2017 Health care activists hold placards during a rally at Freedom Plaza during a protest in Washington, DC AFP/Getty Images 28 March 2017 US President Donald Trump (C) speaks before signing the Energy Independence Executive Order at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Headquarters in Washington, DC AFP/Getty Images 28 March 2017 Surrounded by miners from Rosebud Mining, US President Donald Trump (C) signs he Energy Independence Executive Order at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Headquarters in Washington, DC AFP/Getty Images 29 March 2017 US President Donald Trump addresses the Womens Empowerment Panel in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC AFP/Getty Images 1 April 2017 People wearing masks of US President Donald Trump take part in the 32nd Annual April Fools Day Parade in New York AFP/Getty Images 3 April 2017 Translators watch as Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi (L) and US President Donald Trump shake hands in the Oval Office before a meeting at the White House AFP/Getty Images 6 April 2017 US President Donald Trump (L) sits with Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) during a bilateral meeting at the Mar-a-Lago estate in West Palm Beach, Florida AFP/Getty Images 6 April 2017 Donald Trump is in a meeting with his National Security team and being briefed by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford via secure video teleconference after a missile strike on Syria while inside the Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility at his Mar-a-Lago resort in West Palm Beach, Florida, U.S. on April 6, 2017 The White House via Reuters 15 April 2017 A man gets sprayed with a chemical irritant as multiple fights break out between Trump supporters and anti-Trump protesters in Berkeley, California AFP/Getty Images 15 April 2017 Protestors take part in the "Tax March" to call on US President Donald Trump to release his tax records in Los Angeles, California AFP/Getty Images 17 April 2017 US First Lady Melania Trump walks to the Easter Egg Roll on the South Lawn of the White House AFP/Getty Images 17 April 2017 Donald Trump, First Lady Melania Trump and son Barron Trump attend the annual Easter Egg Roll on the South Lawn of the White House EPA

Maybe we have to keep calm and actually do something. And I think thats what hes trying to say because hes been proven right every time.

Trump Jr also slammed Sadiq Khan after the terror attack in Westminster over comments the Mayor made in an interview last year about terrorism.

The Presidents son quoted an interview Mr Khan did with the Evening Standard last September, following an explosion in the Chelsea district of New York that left 29 people injured.

The Mayor said in the interview that terror attacks were part and parcel of life in the big city.

Trump Jr linked to a report of the interview in a tweet, saying You have to be kidding me?!
When a friend who works for Hoards Dairyman called and asked me if Id be willing to be one of their farmer bloggers, I physically had to cover my mouth so I didnt excitedly scream YES!!! into the phone. As a full-time dairy farmer, I often choose what I must do over what I like to do, and I like to write. When I learned that I would be starting in JUNE I was like, Pinch me! June, hopefully you know, is dairy month! And honestly, for most of my life I didnt really care.

Three years ago, after having started a Facebook page for our farm to help advocate about what we do, I felt a pit in my stomach. How could so much of our population not only not understand what we do but genuinely hate us for doing it? And what was I doing to help? I wanted to make a difference . . . no, I NEEDED to make a difference.

So, last year, I took it a step further. I sent emails to my local radio station and newspaper, asking them to help me celebrate dairy month by introducing the public to local dairy farmers. I wasnt sure if anything would come of it until two weeks later when I found myself writing a story for the paper and setting a time to go on the radio to talk about what we do.

My point is that its not nearly as hard as youd think to actually celebrate dairy month. Call your local radio station, talk to your newspaper, ask if you can put up a "Happy Dairy Month" sign at your local ice cream shop and add a photo of your cows for fun. Even better, schedule a farm tour for your kids school class or take the time to go to their school, read a farm book, and share a dairy snack. The time to trust others to promote our lifestyle is over; dairy promotion isnt just for dairy princesses anymore. Who could promote dairy better than dairy farmers?





So start something new this year, show the world around you why youre a dairy farmer. We know how passionate we are about our way of life and its time that the world knew, too.

The author dairies in partnership with her parents and brother at Spruce Row Farm in Pennsylvania. Jessica is a graduate of Pennsylvania State University, and since 2015, she has been active in promoting dairy in her local community. You can find her and her 250 Jersey cows on Facebook at Spruce Row Dairy or on Instagram at @seejessfarm
E mily Thornberry and Greg Hands traded angry blows over security after he said Jeremy Corbyn would put Londoners in danger.

The pair were at the Evening Standard's election hustings in Westminster, where they were joined by Liberal Democrat Sir Vince Cable and Sian Berry from the Greens.

Ms Thornberry, the Labour candidate for Islington South, accused Tory Mr Hands, who is running in Chelsea and Fulham, of lying as he claimed it would be dangerous for the capital if voters elected someone with the extremist views of Corbyn in Thursdays election.

In a heated debate over the need for more anti-terror resources across London, Mr Hands questioned whether Mr Corbyn would back the police if he was elected.

Heated: Emily Thornberry (NIGEL HOWARD) / NIGEL HOWARD 

Speaking at Westminster Church House, at the event hosted by Evening Standard editor George Osborne, Mr Hands said: What would be dangerous for this city and for this country would be a Prime Minister with the extremist views of Jeremy Corbyn.

Somebody who refused to apologise for the IRA, somebody who calls Hezbollah his friends.

The question is, would Jeremy Corbyn, as Prime Minister, back the police? That is an important question in this election.

Greg Hands: He said Jeremy Corbyn would put Londoners in danger. (NIGEL HOWARD) / NIGEL HOWARD 

Ms Thornberry furiously interjected: Thats a lie, youre lying, thats a lie.

Green party candidate for Holborn and St Pancras, Sian Berry, likened the comments to a smear campaign against Sadiq Khan in the 2016 Mayoral Election.

She added: That is not a very respectful way to treat your opponents. Nobody is going to believe that he is going to be supporting violent terrorists. I hope London is going to show it the door, the way it did last year when the Tories tried to do the same to Sadiq Khan.

Hustings: Greg Hands, Emily Thornberry, Sian Berry and Vince Cable

Tensions rose as the trio, along with Sir Vince, were grilled by chair Robert Peston on the capitals need for more police officers as it emerged two terrorists involved in the London Bridge terror attack had been known to intelligence services.

Ms Berry called for more police officers in local communities to act as the eyes and ears of the Met as Sir Vince agreed Scotland Yard lacked the resources to have the intelligence gathering, the low level gossip, that is needed.

A round of applause broke out among the audience as Ms Berry announced Green Party plans to build 100,000 homes a year in a bid to tackle the capitals housing crisis.

Green: Sian Berry likened the comments to a smear campaign / NIGEL HOWARD

She claimed newly built affordable housing would pay for itself as it would lower the amount of people claiming housing benefits.

Sir Vince branded Londons housing issues insane and called for more public sector contribution in a bid to tackle the affordability crisis.

Ms Thornberry sparred with Mr Hands over claims the Tories had built more houses in the last seven years than the Labour Party had over 13 years.

Housing crisis: Sir Vince Cable branded London's housing issues as 'insane' (NIGEL HOWARD ) / NIGEL HOWARD 

She hit back at the suggestion and said: We didnt build enough homes, the Tories havent built enough homes. We must build affordable homes and we have to be serious about it. Half of it ought to be affordable homes for local people. Rich or poor, our children cannot afford to live in London.

In a heated discussion on university tuition fees, in which Sir Vince admitted the Lib Dems had failed to lower debts for students, Ms Berry called for payments to be scrapped in favour of low-grade maintenance loans for poorer students.

Ms Thornberry, who appeared at the debate as a last minute stand-in for shadow home secretary Diane Abbott later admitted she had been running around like a blue-arsed fly and had been unable to properly read other parties' manifestos.

Ms Abbott pulled out of the event on Tuesday morning citing illness.

She stepped down from the event just hours after missing an appearance on Womens Hour following a disastrous interview on Mondays Sky News.

Ms Abbott was left floundering after being grilled over details of a report on Londons preparedness for a terror attack.

Her vague answers during the interview sparked criticism on social media over whether she had read the report by Labour peer Lord Harris.

During the exchange with presenter Dermot Murnaghan she said the report was about preparedness but could not say what it entailed or any of his recommendations.
T he Standard today urged readers to support a Saturday Night for London charity campaign to help those affected by last weekends terror attacks.

The appeal is being backed by major firms including Deliveroo, pub chains and restaurants.

People will be asked to take a Ride for London, eat a Dish for London and say Cheers for London to help raise money for the victims of the atrocity and their families.

The British Red Cross, which has raised nearly 400,000 in the last 48 hours, is working with big firms including Uber, Greene King Pubs and Eat, as well as smaller local outlets.

First pictures inside Borough Market after London terror attack 1 /8 First pictures inside Borough Market after London terror attack First pictures inside Borough Market Jeremy Selwyn First pictures inside Borough Market Jeremy Selwyn First pictures inside Borough Market Jeremy Selwyn First pictures inside Borough Market Jeremy Selwyn First pictures inside Borough Market Jeremy Selwyn First pictures inside Borough Market Jeremy Selwyn

Restaurants - including those in the area of the attacks - will be donating cash from a chosen dish; cafes, pubs and bars will ask patrons to donate the cost of their drink; and Uber is giving a pound for every journey on Saturday night.

Donald Hyslop, chairman of trustees at Borough Market, said: The cooking and sharing of food has the power to unite people like nothing else, so for Londoners to be able to show their support for the victims and their families by meeting up to enjoy a meal and a drink will offer a forceful reminder to those who sought to divide us.

A minute's silence in tribute to the victims of the London attack 1 /29 A minute's silence in tribute to the victims of the London attack A woman cries at the tributes left at London Bridge Jeremy Selwyn Tributes left at London Bridge Jeremy Selwyn Paramedics at the gates of Downing Street, central London, observing a minute's silence in honour of the London Bridge terror attack victim PA People shelter from the rain beneath an umbrella as they observe a minute's silence near the Elizabeth Tower, commonly referred to as Big Ben, at the Houses of Parliament in London AFP/Getty Images A woman stands in Canary Wharf during the minute's silence Reuters Police officers line up to observe the minute's silence Getty Images People observing a minute's silence in St Ann's Square, Manchester, in solidarity with London PA Players and crowd observe a minutes silence in memory of the recent London terrorist attacks during the ICC Champions Trophy match between England v New Zealand at SWALEC Stadium Getty Images Railway staff observe a minute's silence Reuters A schoolboy lays flowers at London Bridge Alex Lentati Workers observe a minute's silence at London Bridge station Reuters Police officers and rail workers all took time out to pay their respects Police officers at the gates of Downing Street, central London fell silent PA Mayor of London Sadiq Khan joins London Ambulance workers PA England players observe a minutes silence during their match on Tuesday Action Images via Reuters Police officers line up to pay their respects Reuters Workers at London's hospitals also took part in the minute's silence England and New Zealand players observe a minutes silence Reuters Armed police in St Ann's Square, Manchester, gathering to honour of the London Bridge terror attack victims PA European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, left, stands with members of the European Commission during a moment of silence at EU headquarters in Brussels AP A woman cries at the scene Jeremy Selwyn A minute's silence at London Bridge today Alex Lentati

Amy Lame, Londons Night Czar, said the drive would be a demonstration of the citys unity and resilience.

All proceeds will go to the British Red Cross UK Solidarity Fund, launched in response to the attacks in both London and Manchester.

Deliveroo will give 1 for every order placed in the capital on Saturday night so Londoners spending the evening at home can show their support.

Uber is pledging 1 for every trip between 8pm and midnight this Saturday night. A pop-up app message will encourage donations.

About 120 Greene King pubs will be holding collections for the fund, encouraging customers to say Cheers to London with a donation. They include George in Borough High Street and The Anchor on the Thames nearby.

Vigil for London Bridge terror attack 1 /16 Vigil for London Bridge terror attack Hundreds gather during a vigil in Potters Fields for the victims of the June 3rd terror attacks Getty Images People attend a vigil for victims of Saturday's attack in London Bridge, at Potter's Field Park AP Hundreds gather during a vigil in Potters Fields for the victims of the June 3rd terror attacks Getty Images Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan and Home Secretary Amber Rudd take part in a vigil for the victims of the London Bridge terror attacks Getty Images Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, Home Secretary Amber Rudd and Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott with members of the public observing a minute's silence PA People gather in Potters Field Park during an event for the victims of the terror attack REUTERS People at a vigil in Potters Fields Park, central London in honour of the London Bridge terror attack victims PA People take part in a vigil for victims of the London Bridge terror attacks by the City Hall EPA Floral tributes were set down during a vigil outside City Hall EPA ople attend a vigil to remember the victims of the attack on London Bridge and Borough Market REUTERS Pupils from Eden Girls' School in Waltham Forest take part in a vigil in memory of those killed in the recent terror attacks in London Getty Images People lay flowers after a vigil for victims of Saturday's attack in London Bridge, AP

Eat will donate the price of a menu item, displaying posters encouraging people to choose its Dish for London. It has an outlet in Tooley Street.

Collections will also be held at the production of Don Juan, starring David Tennant, at Wyndhams Theatre.

Mike Adamson, chief executive of the British Red Cross said: The attack in London Bridge and people enjoying a Saturday night out with friends was an attack on the spirit of London.

We want to encourage people to come together and unite at this difficult time. The new UK Solidarity Fund will support victims of the attacks and their families.

More supporters of the appeal will be announced in the coming days. It has already been backed by Virgin Atlantic, Westfield, software group Sage, Tesco, Aviva, Kingfisher and John Lewis.

To donate go to redcross.org.uk/unity, call 0300 023 0820 or text UNITY to 70607 to donate 10.
T he ex-wife of London Bridge terrorist Rachid Redouane has condemned her former partners horrific actions which left eight people dead.

Charisse OLeary said she had shed many tears for those involved in Saturday nights atrocity.

The former partner of 30-year-old Redouane, a Moroccan-Libyan pastry chef who carried an Irish ID, described how she must now tell their beautiful 17-month-old daughter why her father did what he did.

Rachid along with Khuram Shazad Butt and Youssef Zaghba were shot dead by police after mowing down pedestrians on London Bridge before launching a rampage with 12-inch knives through Borough Market.

Ms OLeary, who separated from the killer six months before the attack, said in a statement: I am deeply shocked, saddened and numbed by the actions of my ex-partner who has killed and injured so many innocent people.

Terrorists: Khuram Shazad Butt, Rachid Redouane, Youssef Zaghba

Since discovering that it was Rachid that was responsible I have shed many tears for the people caught up in this horrific incident.

We have a beautiful young daughter, that for the last six months has been our only bond and reason for contact.

First pictures inside Borough Market after London terror attack 1 /8 First pictures inside Borough Market after London terror attack First pictures inside Borough Market Jeremy Selwyn First pictures inside Borough Market Jeremy Selwyn First pictures inside Borough Market Jeremy Selwyn First pictures inside Borough Market Jeremy Selwyn First pictures inside Borough Market Jeremy Selwyn First pictures inside Borough Market Jeremy Selwyn

My thoughts and efforts now are with trying to bring up my daughter with the knowledge that someday I will have to try and explain to her why her father did what he did.

The former couple married in November 2012 but, according to the Telegraph, the pair split up after arguing over how to raise their child.

Redouane reportedly objected to her watching television or taking dance lessons.

His ex-wife had never taken his faith.

She added: I wish to make it absolutely clear, so there can be no doubt, I condemn his actions and do not support the beliefs he held that led to him committing this atrocity."

Two men have been arrested in Ireland over connections with Redouane.
T hese are the first images showing the aftermath in Borough Market after police shot dead terrorists Khuram Butt, Rachid Redouane and Youseff Zaghba.

Glasses lay scattered, chairs and tables overturned and peoples belongings strewn across the floor along Stoney Street, where the trio went on a murderous rampage before being gunned down near the Wheatsheaf pub.

The image was taken from onboard a number 21 bus passing the scene on Wednesday as passengers gasped at the sight.

Roads around London Bridge this morning reopened, but the historic market remains cordoned off.

Abandoned: Debris strewn at Borough Market / Jeremy Selwyn

Eight people were killed and at least 48 injured on Saturday night when a white Renault van rammed into pedestrians on London Bridge before three men leapt from the vehicle and stabbed passersby.

Timeline of the terror attacks on London Bridge

Witnesses have described how the ruthless trio "coldly" slashed diners and drinkers in the area's restaurants and pubs, which were full of weekend revellers.

Pictures taken from the number 21 bus showed the scene / Jeremy Selwyn

The pictures come after chilling footage showed how the knifemen stalked the grounds where traders normally sell their wares at the popular foodie hotspot, seconds before being shot dead by police.

Shot on a mobile phone, the video captures the moment the trio entered near the Market Porter pub as drinkers took refuge inside.

One of the men can be seen in a blue Arsenal away shirt, another in a dark hoodie, and the third in a striped jumper.

Borough Market, ordinarily a busy lunch and dinner spot, is thought to be as many as a thousand years old.

References to the "great market town called Southwark" appearing as early as 1014.
M uslim leaders pledged to root out the menace of extremism as they gathered on London Bridge to pay tribute to those who lost their lives in Saturday nights terror attack.

Around 100 Imams condemned recent atrocities in both London and Manchester as they launched an action plan to tackle radicalisation within their communities.

They labelled terrorists "criminals" and "not martyrs", warning them that they were not "following the path to paradise" through their actions.

Many senior Muslim figures held aloft pieces of paper with the slogans "We stand with London" and "Not in our name" and carried single red roses.

Vigil:British imams pledged to root out extremism as they gathered to remember the victims of the terror attack / PA

Accompanied by leaders from other faiths, the Imams paused to reflect at a makeshift memorial near to the scene of the atrocity.

Vigil: Holding aloft signs reading "Turn to Love", they reflected on the lives lost on Saturday night / PA

A large crowd gathered opposite The Barrowboy And Banker pub, close to where the van carrying the terrorist trio Youssef Zaghba, Khuram Shazad Butt and Rachid Redouane crashed.

Reflection: British imams and other religious leaders held a vigil near to the scene of Saturday's terrorist attack / PA

They murdered eight people and injured 48 others in their rampage around London Bridge and Borough Market.

"Today we make it clear that terrorists and extremists are not following the path to paradise, Muslim scholar Aneesa Hussain said to the crowd.

London Bridge: The Imam's join with other religious leaders in a multi-faith service to condemn the terror attack / EPA

"We clarify that the funeral prayer of such barbaric individuals is not to be performed, nor they be buried among the Muslims.

"We stand here also to reiterate our commitment to peace, bridge-building and British values, and to continue to play our role in rooting out this menace from our communities and the wider society."

Vigil: Imams and members of the Muslim community arrive to lay flowers near the scene / Getty Images

Echoing the words of Prime Minister Theresa May, she said: "Enough is indeed enough" as a four-point plan to combat extremist ideology was announced.

The plan states that Muslims in Britain can be confident in their identity and that their religion is compatible with the values held dear within the UK.

Theresa May condemns 'perverted' ideology behind London Bridge terror attack

It emphasises that the notion Muslims should support a so-called Islamic State and that it is a betrayal to help British authorities are "wrong.

Leaders have also vowed to improve cross-community engagement by showing there are no no-go areas when it comes to places of worship.

Emotional: A man reacts during a gathering of representatives of the Muslim community south of London Bridge / AFP/Getty Images

Part of the plan echoes further the words of Mrs May in the wake of recent attacks, that the internet should not give "safe spaces" to extremists, and said it remains a challenge to prevent online grooming of young people.

Imam Qari Asim told the Press Association ahead of the demonstration: "My message to any wannabe extremist is that by taking part in terror you are not committing a martyrdom, you are following a suicidal cause, and you're bringing disrepute to your family members and the whole of the community."

Who are the victims of the London Bridge attacks?

The spokesman for the British Muslim Forum and imam of the Leeds Makkah mosque added: "And more importantly you are not a martyr, you are a criminal and it's as simple as that."
F raudsters have set up fake fundraising pages in a twisted bid to raise money for victims of the London Bridge terror attack.

Donations website JustGiving confirmed it had deleted three appeals after establishing they were not genuine.

It has placed all 43 fundraising pages linked to Saturday's horror in "quarantine", meaning pages' founders cannot withdraw donations until they have been vetted.

One of the fake appeals pulled down by JustGiving claimed to have been set up by the Evening Standard, while another falsely stated it had been launched by the BBC.

The fundraising website has implemented a strict scrutiny system, also employed following the Manchester Arena and Westminster terror attacks earlier this year, which requires page founders to prove they have connections to victims' families.

A spokesman said: "JustGiving has robust checks to ensure that the generosity of donors reaches the intended recipients.

"In situations such as the incident at London Bridge on Saturday, or the bombing in Manchester, JustGiving puts extra precautions in place to ensure that no funds can be withdrawn until we have worked with page owners to establish the best way to get the funds to the families and victims.

A minute's silence in tribute to the victims of the London attack 1 /29 A minute's silence in tribute to the victims of the London attack A woman cries at the tributes left at London Bridge Jeremy Selwyn Tributes left at London Bridge Jeremy Selwyn Paramedics at the gates of Downing Street, central London, observing a minute's silence in honour of the London Bridge terror attack victim PA People shelter from the rain beneath an umbrella as they observe a minute's silence near the Elizabeth Tower, commonly referred to as Big Ben, at the Houses of Parliament in London AFP/Getty Images A woman stands in Canary Wharf during the minute's silence Reuters Police officers line up to observe the minute's silence Getty Images People observing a minute's silence in St Ann's Square, Manchester, in solidarity with London PA Players and crowd observe a minutes silence in memory of the recent London terrorist attacks during the ICC Champions Trophy match between England v New Zealand at SWALEC Stadium Getty Images Railway staff observe a minute's silence Reuters A schoolboy lays flowers at London Bridge Alex Lentati Workers observe a minute's silence at London Bridge station Reuters Police officers and rail workers all took time out to pay their respects Police officers at the gates of Downing Street, central London fell silent PA Mayor of London Sadiq Khan joins London Ambulance workers PA England players observe a minutes silence during their match on Tuesday Action Images via Reuters Police officers line up to pay their respects Reuters Workers at London's hospitals also took part in the minute's silence England and New Zealand players observe a minutes silence Reuters Armed police in St Ann's Square, Manchester, gathering to honour of the London Bridge terror attack victims PA European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, left, stands with members of the European Commission during a moment of silence at EU headquarters in Brussels AP A woman cries at the scene Jeremy Selwyn A minute's silence at London Bridge today Alex Lentati

After the Manchester Arena bombing that killed 22 people, the Charity Commission took the unusual step of directing well-wishers towards a specific appeal - the We Love Manchester Fund - to ensure their money did not end up in the hands of fraudsters.

David Holdsworth, the commissions chief operating officer, said: The British public are incredibly generous, especially in response to supporting those at times of suffering and need.

Sadly, during such periods of especially generous giving, there are a small minority of those who seek to exploit that goodwill for fraudulent, selfish purposes.

The fake page set up using the Standard's name had received 50 in two donations before it was removed on Sunday. The money will be refunded to donors, JustGiving said.

The genuine emergency appeal launched by the British Red Cross and backed by the Standard has raised more than 107,000 through its JustGiving page in two days.

The UK Solidarity Fund will help people who have been injured, bereaved or traumatised to avoid short-term financial difficulties.

Donations can also be made by phone, post or text.

Mike Adamson, chief executive of the British Red Cross, said: The events in these two great British cities in the last two weeks are shocking and horrifying.

"Our thoughts are with all of those affected at this terribly difficult time. The new UK Solidarity Fund will support victims of the attacks and their families, and provide a way for people to donate to help those affected in their time of need."

The 43 JustGiving pages set up for victims of the London Bridge attacks had raised more than 187,600 in total by Wednesday morning.

Donations to the British Red Cross UK Solitary Fund can be made online, by phone on 0300 023 0820, or by texting UNITY to 70607 to donate 10.
A cabinet minister today admitted people would be rightly concerned about how one of the London Bridge attackers was allowed into Britain despite allegedly telling Italian authorities that he wanted to be a terrorist.

Work and Pensions Secretary Damian Greens comments followed Boris Johnson saying that MI5 and the police would have to explain how another of the terrorists, Khuram Butt, 27, was not stopped despite him appearing in a TV documentary about Islamist extremists.

The focus shifted to Britains Border Force today amid claims that Youssef Zaghba, an Italian national of Moroccan origin, got into the UK last year, possibly through Stansted airport, after reportedly being flagged up as a possible extremist.

Zaghba, 22, was said to have been put on a terror watchlist and his name on a database that was shared with the UK.

A minute's silence in tribute to the victims of the London attack 1 /29 A minute's silence in tribute to the victims of the London attack A woman cries at the tributes left at London Bridge Jeremy Selwyn Tributes left at London Bridge Jeremy Selwyn Paramedics at the gates of Downing Street, central London, observing a minute's silence in honour of the London Bridge terror attack victim PA People shelter from the rain beneath an umbrella as they observe a minute's silence near the Elizabeth Tower, commonly referred to as Big Ben, at the Houses of Parliament in London AFP/Getty Images A woman stands in Canary Wharf during the minute's silence Reuters Police officers line up to observe the minute's silence Getty Images People observing a minute's silence in St Ann's Square, Manchester, in solidarity with London PA Players and crowd observe a minutes silence in memory of the recent London terrorist attacks during the ICC Champions Trophy match between England v New Zealand at SWALEC Stadium Getty Images Railway staff observe a minute's silence Reuters A schoolboy lays flowers at London Bridge Alex Lentati Workers observe a minute's silence at London Bridge station Reuters Police officers and rail workers all took time out to pay their respects Police officers at the gates of Downing Street, central London fell silent PA Mayor of London Sadiq Khan joins London Ambulance workers PA England players observe a minutes silence during their match on Tuesday Action Images via Reuters Police officers line up to pay their respects Reuters Workers at London's hospitals also took part in the minute's silence England and New Zealand players observe a minutes silence Reuters Armed police in St Ann's Square, Manchester, gathering to honour of the London Bridge terror attack victims PA European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, left, stands with members of the European Commission during a moment of silence at EU headquarters in Brussels AP A woman cries at the scene Jeremy Selwyn A minute's silence at London Bridge today Alex Lentati

MI5 and MI6 were also allegedly told of Italian concerns about him after he was reportedly stopped at Bologna airport, with a one-way ticket to Turkey, from where he was believed to have been seeking to cross to Syria to join Islamic State.

Pressed on BBC TV about how Zaghba got into Britain if the authorities were armed with these details, Mr Green said: Obviously, people will be rightly concerned.

But he stressed that it would be wrong to comment more given that the details of the allegations had not yet been confirmed and there was a live police investigation.

Terrorists: Khuram Shazad Butt, Rachid Redouane, Youssef Zaghba

Scotland Yard said yesterday that Zaghba, who lived in east London, was not a subject of interest to police and MI5, which raised doubts over what the UK authorities knew about him.

When he was stopped in Italy, security officials reportedly found IS-related material on his mobile phone.

As more details about Zaghba emerged, Theresa May unveiled proposals to bolster Britains defences against terrorism  less than 48 hours before voters go to the polls.

The Prime Minister signalled that she would be willing to weaken human rights protections to make it easier to deport or curb the movements of suspected militants where there was not enough evidence to prosecute.

Following three terror attacks in just over 10 weeks  Westminster, Manchester and London Bridge  Mrs May said: People recognise, as the threat has evolved, that things need to change in our response.

Security experts are warning that anti-terror measures must be more focused on DIY-style terrorists who can turn from radicalism to murder within days, rather than more elaborate plots which can be easier to detect.

Mr Green stated that Mrs May was not proposing pulling out of the European Convention on Human Rights but derogating from parts of it if they were judged to be hampering Britains battle against terrorists.

Former director of public prosecutions and shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said that the problem is people just coming onto the radar, then the question of how they are risk-assessed and what resources were putting in to deal with them.
A n Australian nanny missing since the London Bridge terror attack was killed in the atrocity, her mother has said.

Sara Zelenak's mother, Julie Wallace, who had flown to London to find a daughter, shared a post on Facebook on Wednesday confirming the news.

She wrote: "Sara Zelenak is confirmed dead, they found her body and has DNA tests confirmed.

"Thank you for all the overwhelming love and support from everyone".

The 21-year-old was one of eight people murdered when three men drove a van into pedestrians on London Bridge before stabbing people in Borough Market.

Vigil for London Bridge terror attack 1 /16 Vigil for London Bridge terror attack Hundreds gather during a vigil in Potters Fields for the victims of the June 3rd terror attacks Getty Images People attend a vigil for victims of Saturday's attack in London Bridge, at Potter's Field Park AP Hundreds gather during a vigil in Potters Fields for the victims of the June 3rd terror attacks Getty Images Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan and Home Secretary Amber Rudd take part in a vigil for the victims of the London Bridge terror attacks Getty Images Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, Home Secretary Amber Rudd and Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott with members of the public observing a minute's silence PA People gather in Potters Field Park during an event for the victims of the terror attack REUTERS People at a vigil in Potters Fields Park, central London in honour of the London Bridge terror attack victims PA People take part in a vigil for victims of the London Bridge terror attacks by the City Hall EPA Floral tributes were set down during a vigil outside City Hall EPA ople attend a vigil to remember the victims of the attack on London Bridge and Borough Market REUTERS Pupils from Eden Girls' School in Waltham Forest take part in a vigil in memory of those killed in the recent terror attacks in London Getty Images People lay flowers after a vigil for victims of Saturday's attack in London Bridge, AP

Ms Zelenak, from Brisbane, is believed to have become separated from her friends as they left the London Grind bar near the bridge when the attack happened.

Her aunt, Tara, told how Ms Zelenaks mother broke down when she learned of her daughters death while travelling to Britain.

She told ABC Brisbane: My sister (Julie Wallace) found out during her flight to the UK. She held her husbands hand dearly and broke down.

"It is so very surreal, even though we were in limbo for days, we still had hope... We are all so distraught that we have lost our little Sara.

Timeline of the terror attacks on London Bridge

"She is the most beautiful, funny, happy, positive young lady with so much to live for and she was away way too early.

"You can lose faith in humanity at these dark times but myself and the family have been so grateful to those around us and complete strangers offering any help and assistance. Julie just wants to bring her home.

Ms Zelenak had called her mother daily, but her family had not heard from her since she became separated from her friend on Saturday night.

Who are the victims of the London Bridge attacks?

Her family and friends have paid tribute online.

Friend Sam Hetherington wrote on Facebook: Our beautiful Sara Zelenak. I can't believe we don't get to grow together. Just Thursday I messaged you and you told me everything will always work out.

You would be so overwhelmed by the love from everyone and probably be very salty from the dorky pictures we have together that are all over the world.

Rest easy wherever you are, I hope there is lots of KFC and hot boys with you. Forever love.

Flags at half mast for London Bridge & Borough Market terrorist attack 1 /12 Flags at half mast for London Bridge & Borough Market terrorist attack Whitehall: The Union Jack flag flies at half mast in Whitehall. PA Respect: The flag over Westminster. Reuters Nearby: A man lowers the two flags at the Shangri-La Hotel at the Shard. Reuters London Bridge: Union Jack and EU flags fly at half mast outside the Shangri-La Hotel at The Shard. Getty Images Germany: The British flag flies half mast at the British embassy in Berlin. AFP/Getty Images Downing Street: The flag was lowered on Sunday. PA Abroad: The Union flag flies outside Eden Hall, the British High Commissioner's official residence in Singapore. PA Scotland: Flags fly at half mast outside the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh. PA Number 10: Half mast on the roof of Downing Street. Reuters

Her father, Mark Wallace, shared a video of his daughter and wrote: I really miss that funny little laugh.

Friend Elle Bishop added: " I find solace in the fact that the hate that saw you taken from us, you have never felt inside, making you a remarkable young woman and seeing your incredible soul now float above us to the most amazing of places.

I am, we are, so blessed to have you in our lives. I could think of no better Angel to watch over us all."

Two Australians have now been confirmed after the attack, after nurse Kirsty Boden, who ran towards danger to help others, was named as a victim on Tuesday.

Two French nationals, waiter Alexandre Pigeard and chef Sebastien Belanger have also been named as victims, along with Hackney man James McMullan and Canadian volunteer worker Christine Archibald.

And French tourist Xavier Thomas, who was thrown into the River Thames after being hit by the terrorists speeding van, was today named as the eighth victim of the London Bridge attack.

He was found last night in the water by the Metropolitan Polices specialist marine unit.
A Spaniard who fought off terrorists using a skateboard has been named as the final victim of the London Bridge terror attack.

The family of 39-year-old analyst Ignacio Echeverria confirmed on Wednesday that he was one of eight people killed in Saturdays atrocity.

The HSBC worker, who lived in Poplar, was on his way home from a skate park when he was caught up in the attack which saw three terrorists mow down pedestrians on London Bridge before launching a knife rampage at Borough Market.

He was last seen lying on a pavement after stopping to confront one of the men as they attacked a woman.

Confirmed dead:Ignacio Echverria

In an emotional statement posted on Facebook, his sister wrote: Our heart is with our uncles and aunts and cousins, Guillermo Gonzalez Arnau, Javi and guille and all the friends and family who have lost my brother."

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy also tweeted his condolences to Mr Echverrias family, describing him as someone we will always remember for his heroic and exemplary behaviour.

A statement released by the countrys government condemned the cruel attacks and hailed Mr Echverrias bravery.

A minute's silence in tribute to the victims of the London attack 1 /29 A minute's silence in tribute to the victims of the London attack A woman cries at the tributes left at London Bridge Jeremy Selwyn Tributes left at London Bridge Jeremy Selwyn Paramedics at the gates of Downing Street, central London, observing a minute's silence in honour of the London Bridge terror attack victim PA People shelter from the rain beneath an umbrella as they observe a minute's silence near the Elizabeth Tower, commonly referred to as Big Ben, at the Houses of Parliament in London AFP/Getty Images A woman stands in Canary Wharf during the minute's silence Reuters Police officers line up to observe the minute's silence Getty Images People observing a minute's silence in St Ann's Square, Manchester, in solidarity with London PA Players and crowd observe a minutes silence in memory of the recent London terrorist attacks during the ICC Champions Trophy match between England v New Zealand at SWALEC Stadium Getty Images Railway staff observe a minute's silence Reuters A schoolboy lays flowers at London Bridge Alex Lentati Workers observe a minute's silence at London Bridge station Reuters Police officers and rail workers all took time out to pay their respects Police officers at the gates of Downing Street, central London fell silent PA Mayor of London Sadiq Khan joins London Ambulance workers PA England players observe a minutes silence during their match on Tuesday Action Images via Reuters Police officers line up to pay their respects Reuters Workers at London's hospitals also took part in the minute's silence England and New Zealand players observe a minutes silence Reuters Armed police in St Ann's Square, Manchester, gathering to honour of the London Bridge terror attack victims PA European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, left, stands with members of the European Commission during a moment of silence at EU headquarters in Brussels AP A woman cries at the scene Jeremy Selwyn A minute's silence at London Bridge today Alex Lentati

It read: The exemplary attitude shown by Ignacio Echeverria during the attacks is a demonstration of solidarity for all to see.

His bravery in defending a helpless person serves as a reminder of the need to remain united before the scourge of terrorism, facing up to those whose only language is one of violence and terror.

Christine Delcros pictured with her partner Xavier Thomas, who was killed in the attack / Facebook

The government believes strongly that unity among democrats can overcome many challenges, including terrorist madness."

Earlier on Wednesday, it was confirmed that the body of French tourist Xavier Thomas, 45, was found in the Thames on Monday evening.

Victim: Sara Zelenak

He had been launched into the river after being struck by the terrorists speeding van while walking across the bridge with girlfriend Christine Delcros.

Australian nanny Sara Zelenak, 21, was also confirmed to have died in the attack along.

She was the second Australian to be killed. Kirsty Boden, 28, a nurse at Guys and St Thomas hospital, was stabbed to death as she dashed on to the bridge to help the wounded.

The other confirmed fatalities are Christine Archibald, 30, a Canadian charity worker; James McMullan, 32, a British entrepreneur, French chef Sebastien Balanger, 36 and Alexandre Pigeard, 27, a French waiter.
D iane Abbott is to be replaced as Shadow Home Secretary by Labours Lyn Brown while she is ill, Jeremy Corbyn has announced.

The Labour leader has replaced Ms Abbott, who has been repeatedly criticised for a string of car crash media interviews, with Lyn Brown, the Parliamentary candidate for West Ham.

Ms Abbott pulled out of two major election events on Tuesday, including the Evening Standard's own election hustings, due to illness.

It comes amid criticism from the Tories with opponents saying she is a weak link in Labours shadow team.

On Wednesday, the Labour leader told BBC Breakfast that Ms Abbott had not been well for a couple of days and was taking a break from the campaign.

Mr Corbyn said: Of course Diane is somebody that works extremely hard and represents her community very well and I have to say has received totally unfair levels of attack and abuse not just recently - over many years.

Lyn Brown, who is standing to be re-elected as MP in West Ham.

He did not say how long she would be taking a break. The Labour leader said he will be talking to Ms Abbott later on today.

Diane Abbott takes part in another cringeworthy interview

Ms Abbott had been due to take part in a debate on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour and a hustings organised by the Standard, but was replaced by shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry.

A Labour spokeswoman said Ms Abbott's absence from the Woman's Hour debate was because she had fallen ill but the last-minute decision meant Ms Thornberry had to cycle to the studio to fill in.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn with former shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott at the party's manifesto launch. / AFP/Getty Images

Criticism began mounting against Ms Abbott on the campaign trail when the Hackney Central MP floundered live on LBC radio when asked the details of Labour's plan to introduce an extra 10,000 police onto the country's streets.

Lyn Brown, 57, was first appointed to Labour's shadow home affairs team when Mr Corbyn named his first frontbench team in 2015.

She resigned a year later after a vote of no confidence in his leadership. She later joined the front bench as shadow minister for policing.

Her appointment to replace Diane Abbott comes as policing and security was thrust into the spotlight following the recent terror attacks in London and Manchester.
J eremy Corbyn has called on voters to honour the victims of terror attacks in London and Manchester by taking to polling stations tomorrow.

As the Labour leader rounded up his snap General Election campaign just days after eight people died in an attack at London Bridge he said taking to the ballot would show democracy will never be cowed by fear.

At his homecoming rally in Islington, north London, Corbyn told hundreds of supporters: Tomorrow you have the power to say our country can be better than this. It can be run in the interests of the majority; not the political and corporate elites.

"People fought and died for our right to vote. In the course of this campaign people have lost their lives in Manchester and here in London - citizens of a free and democratic country.

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

"We can honour the victims of these atrocities tomorrow by voting. By showing democracy that will never be cowed by terror and that hope can triumph over fear.

He added: "Labour's campaign has already changed the face of British politics. As we prepare for government, we have already changed the debate and given people hope. Hope that it doesn't have to be like this; that inequality can be tackled; that austerity can be ended; that you can stand up to the elites and the cynics.

"This is the new centre ground. The place where most people actually are.

Vigil for London Bridge terror attack 1 /16 Vigil for London Bridge terror attack Hundreds gather during a vigil in Potters Fields for the victims of the June 3rd terror attacks Getty Images People attend a vigil for victims of Saturday's attack in London Bridge, at Potter's Field Park AP Hundreds gather during a vigil in Potters Fields for the victims of the June 3rd terror attacks Getty Images Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan and Home Secretary Amber Rudd take part in a vigil for the victims of the London Bridge terror attacks Getty Images Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, Home Secretary Amber Rudd and Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott with members of the public observing a minute's silence PA People gather in Potters Field Park during an event for the victims of the terror attack REUTERS People at a vigil in Potters Fields Park, central London in honour of the London Bridge terror attack victims PA People take part in a vigil for victims of the London Bridge terror attacks by the City Hall EPA Floral tributes were set down during a vigil outside City Hall EPA ople attend a vigil to remember the victims of the attack on London Bridge and Borough Market REUTERS Pupils from Eden Girls' School in Waltham Forest take part in a vigil in memory of those killed in the recent terror attacks in London Getty Images People lay flowers after a vigil for victims of Saturday's attack in London Bridge, AP

The policies the majority actually want, not what the establishment and its media mouthpieces insist they should want. This is the new mainstream, and we have staked it out and made it our own - together."

The statement came as the final victims of the London Bridge atrocity were named as French tourist Xavier Thomas, 45, and Ignacio Echeverria, 35.

The other confirmed fatalities are Australians nanny Sara Zelenak, 21, nurse Kirsty Boden, 28, Christine Archibald, 30, a Canadian charity worker; James McMullan, 32, a British entrepreneur, French chef Sebastien Balanger, 36 and Alexandre Pigeard, 27, a French waiter.

In Manchester 22 people were killed when suicide bomber Salman Abedi blew himself up at an Ariana Grande concert in the citys arena on May 22.
T heresa May has confirmed she will stay on as Prime Minister with the support of the Democratic Unionist Party.

Her gamble on a snap election spectacularly backfired with her party falling short of an overall majority, leaving the country with a hung Parliament.

However she vowed on Friday lunchtime to govern Britain for the next five years in an ambitious bid to secure a Brexit deal.

Here's all the action from a dramatic day as it happened.
T heresa May has insisted Brexit is the basis of everything" in the UK in a last-ditch attempt to win over voters with promises of a stronger economy.

In the final hours of the election campaign, the Prime minister dismissed accusations that she has been vague about policies, including how many pensioners will be hit by cuts to the winter fuel allowance.

During a visit to Nottingham, Mrs May also claimed her approach to tackling terrorism showed how different she was from Labour opponent Jeremy Corbyn  despite facing recent criticism over policing.

She told BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg: "There are challenges ahead. The Brexit negotiations, we need to get those right. Brexit is the basis of everything.

Visit: The PM and her husband spent the final say of the campaign in Nottingham where they spoke with staff at a Dunelm department store / AFP/Getty Images

"We need to secure our economy for the future, we need to ensure we are getting more jobs, better paid jobs, more opportunities for young people in this country.

"We can do that. We can do that if we get the Brexit negotiations right."

Mrs May has refused to set out how many pensioners will be hit by plans to axe winter fuel payments for wealthier pensioners or say if she plans to impose increases to national insurance.

Campaign: Theresa May greets supporters as the prepares to speak at a campaign event / EPA

But she dismissed suggestions she had not been clear with voters.

"No, she said. We have set out in our manifesto the challenges we face as a country and how we as government would deliver on those challenges, how we would ensure that we were addressing those challenges.

"We've been very open about the challenges the country faces and, of course, we have been clear with people about the fact that the terror threat is evolving.

"We do need to adapt as that threat evolves.

"Yes, I think there are areas that we need to take action in. I think we need to do more to take on the ideology that unites and motivates the perpetrators of these attacks.

PM: Theresa May promised voters a stronger economy and more jobs / PA

"We need to stamp out extremism in communities here in Britain. We need to get those international agreements to regulate cyberspace so the terrorists can't plot online.

"And, yes, we do need to look as the threat evolves to see whether our police and security and intelligence agencies need more powers and I've also been clear about the sort of powers I'm talking about.

About being better able to deport foreign terror suspects, about longer sentences for people prosecuted for terror offences and about doing more to restrict the freedoms and movements of terror suspects who we have enough evidence to know pose a threat but not enough evidence to prosecute fully in court."

Theresa May On Her Final Election Visit In Birmingham

Asked how different she is from the Labour leader, Mrs May said: "You just have to look at the approaches we take on a whole range of things to know how different we are.

"Let me just give you one example. On the whole question of how our police should deal with terrorists on our streets, on Saturday night you saw an appalling attack in London.

"Within eight minutes our police had taken out those terrorists. I support the police shooting to kill terrorists. Jeremy Corbyn does not."
M ajor employers would be driven out of London under Jeremy Corbyns plans to target taxpayers and businesses, experts warned today.

New taxes on property owners, high-earners, corporations and even the dead will hit London and the South-East disproportionately hard, economists and business leaders said.

As well as increasing the cost of living for Londoners themselves, tax experts said his proposals would deter overseas companies, such as New York investment banks, from locating or remaining in the Square Mile, meaning fewer jobs and a loss of tax revenues.

The warnings come days after Labours leader in Scotland, Kezia Dugdale, openly boasted that the party was planning to tax wealth in London in order to subsidise other regions of the country. Labours headline tax dangers for London, according to experts, include tax hikes for higher-earners, with a 45 per cent rate for people on 80,000, rising to 50 per cent for those on 123,000 or more. That would mean bigger bills for 1.3 million people  including 316,000 Londoners  but would also significantly push up the payroll costs for overseas firms who move staff to London.

A cut in the inheritance tax threshold, from a tax-free allowance of 850,000 on a couples estate to 650,000, would also expose a million homes to death duties, the experts say.

Stephen Herring, head of taxation at the Institute of Directors, said international companies were sensitive to corporation tax levels when deciding where to locate. But he also said that Labours plans for raising tax on high incomes would put off firms such as investment banks.

When companies move staff overseas, they have to compensate staff for the tax rates they will pay, which means these higher taxes fall on to the companys bills, he said. This would be a significant extra cost for a bank considering locating in London. Julian Jessop, chief economist at the Institute for Economic Affairs, said: The burden of any increases in taxes  whether based on income or wealth  will fall more heavily on people living in London and the South-East than the rest of the country.

Londoners already contribute around a quarter of all revenues from income tax and 80 per cent more per person than the UK average.

Four million Londoners pay income tax, including 800,000 on 40% and 120,000 on 45%.

Colin Stanbridge, chief executive of the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said the capital  must continue to attract the brightest and the best, businesses big and small.
L ifelong Labour supporters Jack Richardson, 81, and his wife Kathy, 73, say they will vote Conservative for the first time tomorrow.

On the doorstep of their Old Malden home, Mr Richardson, a retired printer, tells Kingston and Surbiton Tory candidate James Berry there is no other choice.

Labour have never had a chance here, but Ive still always voted for them. But this time its too important for a protest vote, he says.

The couple have just returned from Kingston Hospital, where Mrs Richardson has had a minor eye procedure, and NHS services are a factor in their decision. She says: If you look at the parties and their leaders, the Conservatives seem like the only ones who can do what they say.

Mr Berry ended the 18-year tenure of Liberal Democrat Sir Ed Davey in this seat in 2015. There were 2,834 votes in it and both predict it will be even closer this time. The affluent constituency voted 61 per cent to remain in the referendum and if the Lib Dems are to see a Brexit bounce this is where it has to happen.

Mr Berry, 33, a Remainer, claims the Lib Dems have changed tactics after realising Brexit is not a cast-iron vote-winner here. He believes protecting NHS services, school places, policing and lobbying for Crossrail 2 are more important. He says: Kingston has been the safest borough in London for two years running. It has the highest density of good or outstanding schools in the country and the best GCSE results on mainland Britain.

But healthcare practitioner Yee-Liu Williams, 50, says she will vote Lib Dem against a hard Brexit: The Tories got us into this mess. Ed and the Lib Dems are the only ones who will stand up to them.

Traditional Labour voter Patricia McAllister-Aimes tells Mr Davey, the former energy and climate change secretary, she is considering voting for him. They discuss the redevelopment of the Malden Centre, which could bring 520 homes but threatens the leisure centre. Sir Ed, 51, tells her it is an example of Tory-led Kingston council putting profits first.

Kingston Hospital the last two or three years has been under huge pressure because it has been underfunded, he adds. Its anger at what the Conservatives are doing to this country that made me decide to stand again.
W hen Zac Goldsmith left the Tory party over Heathrow expansion last autumn he paid a high price. The politics of runways, noise and air pollution were swept away in a spectacular by-election backlash against the Brexit referendum, allowing political ingenue Sarah Olney to seize his seat for the Lib Dems.

It was an extraordinary humiliation  following his failed bid to beat Sadiq Khan to the London mayoralty  but the gilded prodigal son has been forgiven by his local party. The blue boards and posters proclaim: Zacs Back.

But will the rest of the voters of Richmond Park and North Kingston be so accommodating? If he quit on a point of principle, what has changed to make him return? Certainly not the Governments position on the third runway.

In Barnes  right under the flightpath  Mr Goldsmith says: I understand why you ask that question, but its not a real issue, its a press release issue put out by the Liberal Democrats. There is an overwhelming majority for Heathrow in Parliament. One of the things I need to do is to work to overcome that.

If Im not successful then I need to support the legal campaign against the runway, which looks pretty bulletproof to me. If people are against Heathrow they are going to vote for me.

There is also the knotty issue of his position on Brexit. After all the multi-millionaire Tory is an arch-Leaver seeking to be elected to a seat where 72 per cent of voters wanted to Remain last June. He admits: It is going to the wire. This feels very, very different to any election I have ever taken part in. In 2010 I put myself forward as a good local MP and in 2015 I ran on my record on local issues. But this time it is very national. It would actually suit me if this election was about me being a good local MP  it is not a record I need to prove, even my opponents admit that. But the question is, Who do you want to lead the Brexit process? The answer is only one person, Theresa May.

On the doorsteps, Brexit makes for some awkward encounters. James Badenoch tells Mr Goldsmith that the vote to leave the EU was a catastrophe and criticises Mrs Mays tough negotiating stance. Im a QC and Ive spent most of the past 50 years negotiating very difficult situations, he says. If you present yourself as a bloody difficult person that is a disastrous position to put yourself in.

Li Dem incumbent: Sarah Olney / Chris Gorman

Mr Goldsmith sighs, agrees to disagree and moves on. As he admits: If Ive had 100 negative conversations, 98 were about Brexit.

For the optimistic Ms Olney, a former accountant, local issues do still matter. For me the focus is on public services, particularly school funding  that is an issue that people are really, really concerned about. Heathrow is not as much of an issue as you might expect, at least not a political issue. The Lib Dems have always been against it but everyone is quite confused about why Zac Goldsmith is standing as a Conservative this time if hes going to continue to oppose Heathrow expansion. It is a view that comes up on doorsteps darkened by the shadows of planes 2,000ft above. The flights start at 4.30am and continue through the day  roughly once every 55 seconds. Gay Laryea, 72, says: Id love to ask him whats changed since he stepped down because the Conservatives supported Heathrow. I wouldnt vote for him if he was the last person standing, hes a turncoat.

The Greens are not contesting the seat, a decision that could help Ms Olney, although Mr Goldsmith  a former editor of The Ecologist magazine  has strong environmental credentials. Labour was almost wiped out in Decembers by-election, winning 1,515 votes  famously fewer than there are party members in the constituency. Its candidate, lawyer Cate Tuitt, insists she can improve on this woeful showing but seems to be going through the motions when she says a Lib-Dem vote is a wasted one because of the partys small Commons representation.

Mr Goldsmith insists he did not stand a chance as an independent in the by-election because of the total, total invasion of Liberal Democrat activists. This time the invasion has been on the other side, with the Prime Minister and senior Cabinet ministers all paying visits. The stakes are high. Since being formed in the early Eighties the Richmond seat has been won for the Tories every time a Conservative Prime Minister has been returned to No 10. Failure for Mr Goldsmith would be a grave setback for which there may, this time, be no forgiveness.
T heresa May was jeered this morning on a visit to Smithfield market on the eve of Thursday's general election.

The trip could have kicked off the last day of Mrs Mays campaign by highlighting her common touch  but as she visited one stall, butchers at another stand shouted vote Labour.

In the early morning trip, Mrs May walked through the market in Farringdon together with her husband Philip.

Footage shows Mrs May amid mixed charcuterie, continuing to make conversation with workers at one food stall as boos are heard from another.

Final push: Theresa May visited the City of London's Smithfield meat market first thing on Wednesday / PA

The hecklers repeat vote Labour as Mrs May walks from the cameras, retreating further into the shop.

Mrs May was pictured during the trip at meat counters as she smiled and laughed alongside butchers in bloodied overalls.

The Prime Minister's Twitter feed cast the visit in a positive light, saying Mrs May would "keep our economy strong to help small businesses".

Mrs May and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn hit the campaign trail on Wednesday, criss-crossing the country in eleventh-hour bids for votes.

Mr Corbyn, who has warned voters they have "24 hours to save the NHS", is set to sweep the length of the country from Scotland to London.

Poll surge: Jeremy Corbyn / EPA

Meanwhile polls showed that Labour has slashed the Tory lead ahead of election day, suggesting Britain could be headed a hung parliament.

A Survation poll found the Tories on 41.5 per cent and Labour on 40.4 per cent, with the Liberal Democrats on six per cent and Ukip on three per cent.
T heresa May has declared that she will tear up some human rights laws as she ramped up her rhetoric in the fight against terrorism.

The Prime Minister said she was looking at how to do make it easier to deport foreign terrorist suspects back to their own countries, adding that is if she is re-elected on Thursday we will change laws so we can do it.

She made the comments, which came after seven people were killed and dozens injured in a horrific terrorist attack in London Bridge, in one of her last speeches before the General Election campaign draws to a close,

Mrs Mays stance was criticised by her rivals, who said the issue was one of resources and once again pointed to cuts to police numbers during Mrs Mays time as Home Secretary from 2010 to 2016.

Theresa May: London attack was 'on the free world'

Speaking to supporters in Tory target seat Slough on Tuesday evening, Mrs May said: "As we see the threat changing, evolving becoming a more complex threat, we need to make sure that our police and security and intelligence agencies have the powers they need.

"I mean longer prison sentences for people convicted of terrorist offences. I mean making it easier for the authorities to deport foreign terrorist suspects back to their own countries.

"And I mean doing more to restrict the freedom and the movements of terrorist suspects when we have enough evidence to know they are a threat, but not enough evidence to prosecute them in full in court.

"And if our human rights laws stop us from doing it, we will change the laws so we can do it.

"If I am elected as Prime Minister on Thursday, that work begins on Friday."

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 Conservative manifesto says the party will not repeal the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) while Brexit is under way but will "consider our human rights legal framework when the process of leaving the EU concludes".

Mrs May added that she expects police and security services to launch a review after Saturday's terrorist attack.

Security services have come under pressure after it emerged one of the attackers, Khuram Butt, 27, had been reported to the anti-terror hotline in 2015.

She told Sky News: "MI5 and the police have already said they would be reviewing how they dealt with Manchester and I would expect them to do exactly the same in relation to London Bridge.

"What Government needs to do is, and what the Government that comes in after Thursday's election needs to be willing to do, is to give more powers to the police and security service when they need them, needs to deal with this issue of terrorism and extremism online and also needs to be able to call out extremism here in the United Kingdom."

Jeremy Corbyn calls for Theresa May to resign

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the party "don't believe would-be terrorists and suicide bombers will be deterred by longer sentences or restricting our rights at home."

He added that right response to the recent attacks was to "halt the Conservative cuts and invest in our police and security services and protect our democratic values, including the Human Rights Act."

Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron accused the Prime Minister of launching a "nuclear arms race" in terror laws which would reduce freedom, not terrorism.

He said: "Theresa May is simply posturing about being tough on terror as she panics that her abysmal record is coming under scrutiny.

"In her years as home secretary she was willing to offer up the police for cut after cut.

"We have been here before - a kind of nuclear arms race in terror laws.

"It might give the appearance of action, but what the security services lack is not more power, but more resources.
B ritain will go to the polls on Thursday after a rollercoaster General Election campaign.

After seven weeks on the campaign trail, Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn have just hours to win over swing voters as they bid to lead the country for the next five years.

Initially termed the Brexit election, this years race also forced the candidates to face questions on terrorism, security and policing following the deadly attacks in London and Manchester.

By Friday morning we will know who has done enough to win Britain's backing.

Here is all you need to know about how to vote and follow the election.

When is the General Election?

The election is being held on Thursday, June 8.

Election day: Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn have just 24 hours to persuade voters for their backing.

Polling stations across the country will open between 7am and 10pm.

During this time, anyone who registered to vote will be able to cast their ballot to elect their next MP.

Where is my nearest polling station?

After registering to vote, you should have received a polling card through your door.

This will have information on where to find your nearest polling station.

If not, visit www.yourvotematters.co.uk and enter your post code.

You do not need to take your polling card with you to cast your ballot, but you do need to have registered to vote.

How can I follow the results?

Once the polls close at 10pm on Thursday, election coverage will officially begin.

Although the results will not come in until a while later, a prediction from the exit poll will be announced just after the polls close.

General Election round-up: June 6

The Standard will be running a live blog all night as the results come in across London and the country.

Election night shows will also be held on BBC, ITV and Sky News. Channel 4 is hosting an alternative election night show with comedian David Mitchell and Jeremy Paxman.

Is the exit poll accurate?

Pollster Ipsos MORI will publish its exit poll at 10pm.

Although the accuracy of exit polls has varied wildly since being introduced more than four decades ago, in recent years exit pollsters have honed their predictions.

For the last four elections, they have predicted the result accurately.

'Strong and stable': The PM in a bakery in Fleetwood, Lancashire / AFP/Getty Images

The exit poll was spot on with the number of Conservative seats in 2010 and out by just three seats with Labour.

In 2005, exit polls also correctly predicted the number of seats won by Labour, but was off by 11 for the Tories.

2015 was less accurate, with the Conservatives winning 14 more seats than predicted in the exit poll.

When will the actual result be announced?

The closer the result is, the longer it will take for the UK to have a firm answer as to who the next PM will be.

Commentators always call the election before the winner is officially declared, often in the early hours of the morning when it is clear one party is on course to win.

In 2015, the result was known at just after 1.30am.

Jeremy Corbyn on the campaign trail. / REUTERS

But it all depends on the night. The first constituency to declare for the past five elections has been safe Labour seat Houghton and Sunderland South, with a result being announced at just 10.48pm in 2015.

The first marginal seat of Nuneaton is expected to declare at around 1am, followed by the North Wales swing seat Vale of Clwyd at 1.30am.

Declarations begin to come in from across the country at around 2am.

General Election polls and projections June 5

Jeremy Corbyns safe London constituency - Islington North  will declare at 2.30am, followed by the City of Chesters result, which has Labours smallest majority of just 93 votes.

A flood of results will come in at around 3am, followed by Theresa Mays constituency of Maidenhead which is expected at around 4.30am.

How many seats are needed for a majority?

The General Election sees 650 MPs individually elected in constituencies across the UK.

For a party to be able to form a Government, it needs to win more than half the seats in the Commons  so 326.

If no political parties win 326 constituency seats, the election results in a hung parliament.

Who is expected to win?

At the start of the campaign, many in Westminster predicted a big victory for PM Theresa May.

The day after calling the snap election, the Tories had a poll lead averaging 17 points.

But now, seven weeks on and just 24 hours before election day, the Tory lead is averaging seven points.

An average poll lead of seven points would mean a Tory win, albeit by a very small majority.

If the Conservatives finish around three points ahead of Labour, that could be enough for the Tories to lose their majority and will be forced to try and form a coalition.

For Labour to win an overall majority, Corbyns party will need to finish at least 12 points ahead of the Tories.
A Womens Equality Party candidate said she feels shaken after receiving a death threat filled with racist abuse that was signed Jo Cox.

Police were called to the partys London offices after staff claimed they were being inundated with abusive and threatening calls ahead of Thursdays vote.

Nimco Ali, a prominent campaigner against female genital mutilation, received the threat that reportedly referenced the horrifying murder of Labour MP Jo Cox.

The note was delivered to the Hornsey and Wood Green candidate at the partys headquarters in Southwark this week.

She had already been receiving online abuse for weeks before the letter arrived on her offices doorstep, according to the Guardian.

They are targeting me because I am young, black and loud, I guess  but I am standing for good things. I want the world to be a better place. We have to show there is more love in the world than hate, she told the newspaper.

The letter allegedly arrived after a direct mail-out to voters containing the partys address and telephone number was sent, which lead to dozens of abusive phone calls.

After colleagues notified her of the letter, the party candidate wrote on Twitter: Just got a call from my team that a letter full of racist abuse & threats signed "Jo Cox" was delivered to our office for me. I am shaken.

I have spent the last 10 years risking my life to Ends #FGM and I have lost so much to ensure this world is free of abuse and hate.

WEPs co-founder Catherine Mayer told the Telegraph: Yesterday, the office got endless numbers of calls from angry men, but one in particular kept calling back.

"When there were just two female staff left in the office in the evening, a male caller told them that he was only 10 minutes away and that he was coming over.

He told them they should be scared before reading out the party offices address over the phone, she added.

A Metropolitan Police spokesman said: "A call was made to police on Tuesday, shortly before 1:40pm. An appointment has been scheduled to take a report from the complainant."

It comes after a Twitter troll who called for an MP to be Jo Cox because she celebrated Zac Goldsmiths by-election defeat was spared jail.

Neo-Nazi white supremacist Thomas Mair brutally murdered Jo Cox outside her constituency surgery in Birstall, West Yorkshire, in June last year.
When it comes to studying for the GRE test , you have four basic options: books, classes, a tutor, or online prep. While were obviously a little biased, there are definite pros and cons to each option. Lets take a look at each of these options: GRE Books If youre a self-starter with lots of energy and motivation, working with GRE books can be a good option. Theyre inexpensive, and you can follow them at your own pace. On the other hand, without having taken the test or studied it, it can be hard to determine which books will actually equip you for test day (Chris shares some thoughts on this over it the Best GRE Books post). Also, just following a book straight through may not be the best option for you if you have particular weaknesses you need to address, as almost everyone does, and need special guidance. With all of that said, Magoosh has an eBook you can get for free here , and an affordable paperback GRE Prep book that you can buy on Am
A former CIA and NSA chief has described Donald Trumps criticism of Mayor of London Sadiq Khan following terror attacks on the capital as indefensible.

Michael Hayden said he understands the swell of anger from the great body of British people after the US Presidents string of Tweets about the mayor.

The former security chiefs comments came after Mr Trump sparked fury when he slammed Mr Khans response to the terror attack on London Bridge on Saturday night.

The row erupted after Mr Khan said there was no reason to be alarmed by the additional police presence on the capitals streets following the atrocity.

Michael Hayden: Former CIA director said Trump's comments on Sadiq Khan are 'indefensible' / Getty Images

Mr Khan said the UK government should withdraw plans for the US leaders visit to the country following his remarks.

In an interview with the Guardian, Mr Hayden did not comment on whether the UK should rescind the invitation.

But he reportedly acknowledged there were likely to be huge protests if the Mr Trump does fly over from the US to visit.

How could anyone with a sound view of terrorism, the effects of terrorism, the Anglo-American relationship, the special intelligence relationship  how could anyone with any of that in their background believe that what was tweeted was a good idea, he told the newspaper.

He added: It was stunning for all of us in America, and indefensible.

Sparking the row between the two leaders, Mr Trump wrote: At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is "no reason to be alarmed!"

On Twitter he later added: Pathetic excuse by London Mayor Sadiq Khan who had to think fast on his "no reason to be alarmed" statement. MSM is working hard to sell it!

Mr Hayden, an outspoken critic of Mr Trump during the election campaign last year, spoke out on the dispute on a visit to the capital and Oxford.
W ith just one day to go until the polling stations opens, everyone seems keen to voice their opinion about who should be the next Prime Minister.

The world of celebrity is no different, with many stars using their platforms to express their political views and urge their fans to actually get out and vote.

Lily Allen, Russell Brand and Stephen Hawking are among the big names getting political, while US stars including Lena Dunham and Mark Ruffalo have even waded in.

Here is how the celebrities are voting in the General Election:

Labour

A host stars have been vocal in their support of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in the week leading up to election day.

Comedian Brand, who famously interviewed Labour candidate Ed Milliband back in 2015, wrote a blog for Huffington Post endorsing Corbyn.

Jeremy Corbyn wont be perfect, he is a human being. We have a chance to elect a politician who is committed to serving the people of Britain. To supporting the NHS, public services and educating the young people to whom the future belongs, he wrote.

Gervais tweeted: OK. I'm not telling you how to vote, but this is a fact. The only vote that will keep Theresa May out is a vote for @jeremycorbyn. Cheers."

Vocal: Lily Allen has backed Labour / PA

Hawking told Cambridge Evening News: I'm voting Labour because another five years of Conservative government would be a disaster for the NHS, the police and other public services.

Alexa Chung, Lily Allen, Steve Coogan, Liam Gallagher, Danny Devito, Eddie Izzard, Ross Kemp, Robert Webb and Stormzy have also backed Labour.

Conservatives

There is a less starry roll call of celebrities voting for Tory leader Theresa May, although previous Conservative supporters including Simon Cowell and Gary Barlow have yet to voice their opinions.

Alan Sugar has been vocal in his support for May, writing on Twitter: If you admire or trust me.A east end boy done good by honest graft.For the good of the UK I sincerely advise NOT to vote for Corbyn #TRUSTME.

Katie Hopkins has also urged her followers not to vote for Corbyn, saying that she hopes May crushed the Remoaners.

Rugby player Andy Good, Jim Davidson and John McCririck have also backed the Conservatives.

Liberal Democrats

Richard Dawkins has backed Tim Farron and the Lib Dems, telling his Twitter followers: 1000 new members within 1st hour of election announcement. Join @LibDems, the only (English) party brave enough to represent the 48%.

Rachel Johnson is also campaigning for the Liberal Democrats.


N icole Kidman paid tribute to London in the wake of the recent terror attack as she collected a prize at the Glamour Awards.

The Australian actress honoured the capital for its strength following the attacks at London Bridge on Saturday night, saying that she was standing with Londoners.

I'm so happy I'm here, in person, to give love back to London because London has given me so much, she said. It is great to be standing here with you strong.

The Oscar-winning actress, who was a fixture at the Cannes Film Festival last month, went on to say that she was embracing the fact that she was about to turn 50.

Party people: Angela ,Scanlon Fearne Cotton and Laura Jackson at the Patron bar

I'm about to turn 50 in two weeks. And I never thought this would be one of the best years of my life, she said as she picked up the Best Film Actress trophy at the event on Tuesday.

I thought at 40 that I'd be retired by 50, but I want to tell everyone it begins and 40 and begins at 50.

Glamour Awards 2017 - the dresses 1 /41 Glamour Awards 2017 - the dresses Glamour Awards 2017 Holly Willoughby Rex Features Glamour Awards 2017 Nicole Kidman PA Glamour Awards 2017 Holly Willoughby Getty Images Glamour Awards 2017 Jourdan Dunn Getty Images Glamour Awards 2017 Mollie King PA Glamour Awards 2017 Gabriella Wilde Dave Benett Glamour Awards 2017 Jennifer Hudson PA Glamour Awards 2017 Winnie Harlow Getty Images Glamour Awards 2017 Fearne Cotton PA Glamour Awards 2017 Anna Kendrick PA Glamour Awards 2017 Lily James Getty Images Glamour Awards 2017 Lilah Parsons PA Glamour Awards 2017 Felicity Jones Getty Images Glamour Awards 2017 Alice Temperley PA Glamour Awards 2017 Sophie Ellis Bextor PA Glamour Awards 2017 Billie Piper PA Glamour Awards 2017 Dawn French Dave Benett Glamour Awards 2017 Rochelle Humes PA Glamour Awards 2017 Myleene Klass PA Glamour Awards 2017 Louise Redknapp PA Glamour Awards 2017 Lisa Snowdon PA Glamour Awards 2017 Alice Liveing PA Glamour Awards 2017 Clara Amfo Dave Benett Glamour Awards 2017 Frankie Bridge PA Glamour Awards 2017 Giovanna Fletcher PA Glamour Awards 2017 Diana Saldana PA Glamour Awards 2017 Ella Eyre PA Glamour Awards 2017 Caroline Flack PA Glamour Awards 2017 Christine Bleakley PA Glamour Awards 2017 Gabby Logan PA Glamour Awards 2017 Ashley James PA

Kidman went on to dedicate the award to Sofia Coppola, who directed her in the forthcoming The Beguiled and became the second woman to ever win the Palme DOr at Cannes.

I'm changing my name to Nicole Kid-woman, she joked. Kidman is just wrong here.

Other winners at the glossy magazines annual award ceremony, sponsored by drink brand Patron, included The Crowns Vanessa Kirby who was named Best TV Actress and Billie Piper who won Best Theatre Actress.

Sharon Horgan was named Best Comedy Actress, while Emma Willis won TV Personality and Dua Lipa won the Breakthrough Award.
J ennifer Saunders and Dawn French have taken a swipe at Donald Trump, branding him a great porky steamer.

The comedy duo both took aim at the US president as they spoke on stage during Tuesdays Glamour Awards.

Saunders co-hosted this years ceremony, telling the nominees: Keep it beautiful and succinct... I think there's a word for the moment you run out words and go a bit gaga.

"It might be the only good thing to have been given to us by that great porky steamer from across the Atlantic.

Acceptance speeches from the winners at the Glamour Women Awards 2017

"It is of course the word a 'covfefe'," she said, referring to the term that President Trump used which left many people baffled.

Actress French followed suit when she presented a gong for best columnist at the glitzy London ceremony.

Glamour Awards 2017 - the dresses 1 /41 Glamour Awards 2017 - the dresses Glamour Awards 2017 Holly Willoughby Rex Features Glamour Awards 2017 Nicole Kidman PA Glamour Awards 2017 Holly Willoughby Getty Images Glamour Awards 2017 Jourdan Dunn Getty Images Glamour Awards 2017 Mollie King PA Glamour Awards 2017 Gabriella Wilde Dave Benett Glamour Awards 2017 Jennifer Hudson PA Glamour Awards 2017 Winnie Harlow Getty Images Glamour Awards 2017 Fearne Cotton PA Glamour Awards 2017 Anna Kendrick PA Glamour Awards 2017 Lily James Getty Images Glamour Awards 2017 Lilah Parsons PA Glamour Awards 2017 Felicity Jones Getty Images Glamour Awards 2017 Alice Temperley PA Glamour Awards 2017 Sophie Ellis Bextor PA Glamour Awards 2017 Billie Piper PA Glamour Awards 2017 Dawn French Dave Benett Glamour Awards 2017 Rochelle Humes PA Glamour Awards 2017 Myleene Klass PA Glamour Awards 2017 Louise Redknapp PA Glamour Awards 2017 Lisa Snowdon PA Glamour Awards 2017 Alice Liveing PA Glamour Awards 2017 Clara Amfo Dave Benett Glamour Awards 2017 Frankie Bridge PA Glamour Awards 2017 Giovanna Fletcher PA Glamour Awards 2017 Diana Saldana PA Glamour Awards 2017 Ella Eyre PA Glamour Awards 2017 Caroline Flack PA Glamour Awards 2017 Christine Bleakley PA Glamour Awards 2017 Gabby Logan PA Glamour Awards 2017 Ashley James PA

"You say covfefe, I say weird tangerine c***head of a president.... let's call the whole thing off," she said.

US comedian Amy Poehler also made a quip about Trump as she picked up her award, saying: In the US this year... is all about undeserved wins, so I'm the most glamorous, the most beautiful.

Referencing Trumps criticism of London Mayer Sadiq Khan, she added that there was "no reason to be alarmed" over armed officers on the streets: "Your mayor says no reason to be alarmed. You should be alarmed - this room's on fire."

She added: "Really all of the UK has had a difficult couple of weeks but everyone is fine, London is fine."

Other winners on the night included Nicole Kidman, Billie Piper and Vanessa Kirby.


S am Clafin photobombed his co-stars Rachel Weisz and Holliday Grainger on the red carpet at the My Cousin Rachel premiere.

The British actor was clearly enjoying himself at the event as he snuck up behind the two actresses and grinned and waved his hands as they had their photo taken together.

While the pair posed for photographers, Clafin stole their thunder by mugging for the camera in the background.

Clafin, who plays orphan Philip in the new film, was looking sharp in a navy suit as he attended the premiere with his wife, and Guardians of the Galaxy actress, Laura Haddock.

Stylish co-stars: Rachel Weisz and Sam Clafin pose on the red carpet / PA

Meanwhile, Rachel Weisz, who stars as the titular Rachel, a beguiling character who Philip initially believes killed his parents, braved the windy weather in a strappy black gown with sparkling silver embellishment.

My Cousin Rachel is based on Daphne du Mauriers novel of the same name and sees Clafins character fall under his cousins spell with unexpected consequences.

Earlier on Wednesday Clafin appeared on Lorraine alongside Weisz to promote his new film and the actor explained that he loved the film's ambiguity.

TODO: define component type brightcove

He said: 'The ambiguity of the script is what I loved. My character [Philip] is a naive young man. The beautiful thing is that you usually see a boy turning into a man.

Cinderella actress Grainger plays Louise Kendall, the daughter of Philips godfather, who is played by Game of Thrones star Iain Glen.

My Cousin Rachel is released in cinemas on June 9.
L ast nights Love Island saw controversial couple Jessica Shears and Dom Lever head out on a date, leaving Montana, (Doms ex-partner) feeling lonely.

In tonights episode, romance between the pair appears to be blossoming, with Dom telling Jess hes had more fun with her than he did with Montana - quite the blow for the 21-year-old student.

But Dom heads to the Beach Hut to confess hes still confused about his feelings, saying he felt like a bit of a tool for the way things had played out.

Meanwhile Montana presses him for information asking Do you have feelings for Jess?, causing Mancunion Dom to admit Shes a nice girl, Ive started to like her.

Fearing for her future on the island Montana begins to strategise with fellow islander Chloe Crowhurst about potentially partnering up with ex Blazin Squad member (who knew?!) Marcel Somerville.

Thats until she receives a text announcing the arrival of the new boys Chris Hughes and Jonny Mitchell, causing all previous plotting to go out the window.

Unsurprisingly the girls are thrilled at the news that fresh talent will soon be touching down in the villa, chanting girls on top. The boys: less so.

Elsewhere Kem Cetinay continues his very unsubtle attempt to win over Amber Davies affections, after she was put off by partner Harley Judges touchy feely attention.

Love Island 2017 couples - in pictures 1 /9 Love Island 2017 couples - in pictures Olivia and Marcel ITV Chloe and Kem ITV Harley chooses Amber ITV Camilla and Sam ITV Montana and Dom ITV Jess arrives in the villa ITV Jess and Dom ITV

But could Kem have made the same mistake as Harley and come on too strong?

As the

Essex lad attempts to steal a snog, the object of his affections rebuffs him saying: Ill tell you when we can kiss. Youre not putting it on me. Awkward.

Many would argue the cocky hairdresser could do with a bit of an ego check after Tuesdays episode saw him slated on Twitter for judging Amber when he found out shed slept with two guys in the same night.

Love Island airs tonight at 9pm on ITV2.
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More than a dozen people have set up camp just across the South Dakota border from Whiteclay, hoping to have a voice in discussions about the questions now facing the unincorporated community.

Camp Whiteclay Justice is not a protest, said head organizer Joe Pulliam, 48.

Its a pro-action camp, he said.

The goal, he said, is to encourage communication between the Nebraska officials deciding the fate of Whiteclay and the Native American community, including those who live on the adjacent Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

Camp leaders said they have invited Nebraska State Sens. Tom Brewer and Patty Pansing Brooks to the campsite to discuss what will happen to Whiteclay.

On Tuesday afternoon, the camp consisted of 15 to 20 people who set up teepees and tents in a field near Highway 87. The chosen site, Pulliam said, holds particular resonance: In 1999, two men, Wilson Black Elk Jr. and Ronald Hard Heart, were found dead there, triggering protests to end beer sales in Whiteclay.

Pulliam said organizers are expecting to draw more people after the weekend. Next week, he said, organizers will decide whether to stay.
Up to half of all teen moms drop out before they finish high school.

Its a worrisome statistic given that the lack of a high school diploma can hurt a teens future earning potential and can contribute to multiple generations of poverty.

And its a fact that helped lead to a new state law requiring school districts to adopt policies spelling out how theyll accommodate teen parents.

Schools must outline how theyll address a number of challenges faced by teen parents.

Can they continue breast-feeding when they return to school? How will school absences be covered? Where can they find reputable child care?

Officials at schools across Nebraska say they already strive to assist teen parents, from offering on-site child care to providing tutoring or parenting classes.

Legislative Bill 427 was approved last month on a 31-7 vote, despite objections from some rural senators who said smaller school districts dont need another legislative mandate.

Many public schools already have policies assuring pregnant students that they can stay in school  a reversal from the past, when teen mothers may have been shamed or forced out. The federal gender and education law, Title IX, and a state law prohibit schools from discriminating on the basis of sex and pregnancy.

But State Sen. Tony Vargas, a former Omaha Public Schools board member, said he sponsored LB 427 because Nebraska schools are doing an inconsistent job of supporting pregnant and parenting students.

Teen parents can face big challenges when it comes to finishing high school.

Susie Gonzalez, 19, experienced that firsthand when she became pregnant while attending Omaha South High School. She missed class when morning sickness left her weak and unable to keep food down. Her junior year, she gave birth to her son, Xavier, and found that sometimes she could only finish homework at 2 a.m., between feedings.

She was able to breast-feed and store milk in the nurses office at South, but decided she needed a quicker path to a diploma. She enrolled in an accelerated program through OPS, but she ultimately dropped out.

She wishes the school had a more flexible absence policy to account for doctors appointments. But there were external pressures, too. Without reliable child care, she struggled to get to class and felt pressure to earn a paycheck.

Back then, I thought I have to get working, because he needs diapers,  Gonzalez said. If I had stayed in school Id probably be working a better job now with a diploma.

Organizations such as the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that only 40 to 50 percent of teen moms earn a high school diploma by age 22.

Vargas acknowledged that teens may face outside factors, such as a lack of family support or motivation to finish school. But schools should help dismantle any educational barriers that keep students from graduating, he said.

The law is split into two parts. The first applies to all schools  public, private and parochial  and requires schools to accommodate teen moms who breast-feed and provide a private space where they can pump and store milk.

The second requires public school boards to develop policies that address student absences, provide alternate coursework such as tutoring or online classes, make accommodations for breast-feeding students, and identify quality child care options. Or they can borrow a model policy to be created by the Nebraska Department of Education.

But educators at some smaller, rural school districts said more policies and paperwork arent the answer. School officials say they want every student to graduate and already work with pregnant or parenting students to catch up on credits or apply to college.

I think having the extra policies is kind of a waste of time, Red Cloud Community Schools Superintendent Brian Hof said. Theyre just creating busywork.

Daniel Fehringer is the superintendent of Winnebago Public Schools in Thurston County, which has one of the highest teen birthrates in Nebraska. This years senior class of 30 students had one teen mom. Other years, Fehringer said, there have been six or seven teen parents, including fathers.

The high school already provides a place for students and staff to pump breast milk, has held parenting classes over lunch and works individually with student parents, he said.

Vargas said his bill was spurred by an American Civil Liberties Union of Nebraska records request that revealed wide inconsistencies in how schools work with teen parents.

Only 17 percent had formal policies that addressed the breast-feeding needs of students, although many say they work with students on a case-by-case basis.

Case-by-case isnt good enough, Vargas said.

Some students reported that they didnt have a private or sanitary place to breast-feed or pump. They struggled to coordinate how to make up missed assignments.

Its not that we dont do a good job as the State of Nebraska to support pregnant and parenting students, its that we do an inconsistent job, Vargas said.

Nationally and statewide, teen birthrates have been dropping for years. In Nebraska, 1,411 teen births were recorded in 2014, about 5 percent of the total births that year.

Several districts are already making plans to revamp their policies. Bellevue Public Schools officials said they plan to change absence policies to comply with the new law, most of which will go into effect in the 2018-19 school year.

A spokeswoman for the Elkhorn Public Schools said that the districts two high schools already have private spaces for nursing mothers and that Elkhorns absence policy provides for an appeals process for pregnant students.

OPS spokeswoman Monique Farmer said the districts high schools already offer rooms where students and staff can pump breast milk, but OPS doesnt offer on-site child care.

Bellevue West guidance counselor Melissa Minahan said school staff members work with teen parents to come up with individual plans so they can stay in school. Students might switch to a half-day schedule, or teachers can send work home while students recuperate after labor.

Our goal is for those students to earn a diploma and continue on with school, she said.

Bellevue West also has an on-site Sarpy County Cooperative Head Start program that students can use for child care. Students can check in on their child or breast-feed during lunch breaks or study hall, Minahan said.

Katharina Clapper, 19, found out she was pregnant at age 15, when she was a sophomore at Bennington Junior/Senior High School. Her daughter, Bryleigh, is now a toddler.

Clapper dropped out, took classes online and eventually earned her GED. She is a certified nursing assistant and is considering going back to school to study special education.

She left high school because she couldnt imagine leaving her daughter, who exclusively breast-fed, at home as Clapper went to school. Having child care at the school would have helped, she said, but for many schools, thats not feasible.

I felt, like, if I was in high school Id rely on other people to raise my daughter, and I didnt want that, Clapper said. I wanted to be at home with her.

After stints working in fast food and health care, Gonzalez, the young Omaha mom, is enrolled in a federal Job Corps program in Denison, Iowa, where she can work on earning her high school diploma and receive job training and on-site child care. Her son is a blessing, she said, but she advises teens to wait to become parents.

School is very important, and now its even more clear to me. Here I am struggling because I didnt finish school.
Youll often hear me say that the vision for my administration is to grow Nebraska. While private sector job creators are the economic engine of Nebraska, state government helps provide the framework and infrastructure that can either support or hinder growth. Over the past two years, my team has worked to make state government more effective, more efficient, and more customer-focused to help grow Nebraska. Whether its launching our first-in-the-nation reemployment program or putting more services online, our team is making state government work for the taxpayers of Nebraska.

Our first-in-the-nation reemployment program has been producing real results in the year and a half since its been launched. Not only are job seekers getting back to work more quickly, but Nebraskas job creators are seeing relief from unemployment taxes. Because our reemployment system paid out $14 million less in unemployment claims last year, we were able to reduce Nebraskas unemployment insurance tax by 25 percent for this year, an over $17 million tax cut. The reemployment program has even been winning national awards, including the 2016 Full Employment Best Practices Award and the J. Eldred Hill Award for excellence in the public policy arena. Thank you to Commissioner John Albin and the Department of Labor for all their great work to help our jobseekers find new opportunities.

My administration has also put a focus on delivering more state services online. For example, the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality (NDEQ) has put the application process for their storm water construction permits online. Since November 2015, the agency has delivered over 1,000 permits online, helping both the private and public sector deliver projects quickly. The new online process has prevented the need for NDEQ staff to re-input information submitted by the applicant, and reduces lag time of paperwork being sent back and forth between the applicant and state agencies. Thank you to Director Jim Macy and his team for all their work to make our permitting processes more efficient.

To help drive this mindset of delivering better customer service throughout state government, my administration has created the Center for Operational Excellence. At the beginning of this year, we announced that over 12,000 team members in my agencies had received basic fundamentals of process improvement to create a culture of operational excellence in state government. Understanding process improvement is fundamental to making state government more effective and more efficient because it helps team members understand how to deliver a higher level of service at the same or lower cost.

Take the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services (NDCS) for example. They are using process improvement to avoid costly spending on required inmate healthcare. Over the years, the agency has been required to transport inmates outside of prisons to receive specialized medical care. Recently, NDCS developed a review process to minimize such travel orders. With this process in place, the agency has successfully avoided over 1,900 hours of overtime and hundreds of thousands of dollars of expenses associated with travel orders. With these changes, NDCS has been able to maintain healthcare quality, utilize resources more efficiently, and protect our Corrections Officers and the public.

We are not only improving processes and services in specific programs, but I have also worked with the Legislature to merge state agencies to deliver a higher level of customer service. This session, Senator John Murante and I worked together to consolidate state services for veterans into a single agency. This creates a one stop shop for our 143,000 veterans. After successfully working with Senator Curt Friesen and the Legislature, we are merging the Departments of Roads and Aeronautics to create a Department of Transportation. This move will allow us to focus more resources on roads and runways to create the infrastructure to grow Nebraska.

These are just a few of the areas that your team at the State of Nebraska are working on to support the private sector in growing Nebraska. These initiatives are not only improving services for each agencys customers, but they are also helping to transform the culture and mindset of state government. If you have any suggestions on how we can better serve Nebraska taxpayers, I hope youll contact my office by emailing pete.ricketts@nebraska.gov or by calling 402-471-2244. We look forward to hearing from you!
This page is archived. Data published after 5 April 2022 can be found on the renewed website. Go to the new statistics page

Published: 7 June 2017

Finnish residents' trips to the Canary Islands and Central Europe increased in January to April 2017

According to Statistics Finland's preliminary data, Finnish residents travelled in Finland slightly more in the first four months of 2017 than in last year's spring. Of Finnish destinations, Lapland and Pirkanmaa grew in popularity. Leisure trips abroad also increased when compared to the corresponding period last year. Increasingly more of the Finns who travelled abroad in the first four months of the year made trips to conventional travel destinations, like the Canary Islands in Spain or Central Europe.

Finns' leisure trips by type of trip in January to April 2012 to 2017* (excl. domestic trips with free accommodation)

In the first four months of 2017, Finnish residents aged 15 to 84 made 11.2 million trips when all domestic and foreign leisure trips, as well as business and professional trips are included. In addition to trips with overnight stay, the number also includes same-day trips abroad.

Altogether, seven million domestic leisure trips with overnight stay were made in the January to April period. Of these, good five million were trips with free accommodation. Trips with overnight stay at paid accommodation numbered nearly two million and their most popular destinations were located in Uusimaa, Lapland, Pirkanmaa and North Ostrobothnia. The numbers of trips to Uusimaa, Lapland and Pirkanmaa increased from the corresponding period of the previous year.

April was the most popular month for travelling in Finland in the early part of the year, as then, 0.5 million domestic trips with paid accommodation and 1.6 million trips with free accommodation were made. Of these trips made in April, 23 per cent were made either to North Ostrobothnia or Lapland.

Inclusive of trips with overnight stay in the destination country, cruises and same-day trips, leisure trips abroad numbered 2.5 million in the January to April period. A total of 1.9 million leisure trips abroad included overnight stay in the destination country. In January to April, 0.4 million cruises with overnight stay on board only were made. In the early part of the year, 0.3 million same-day leisure trips were made. Of these, one-half were same-day cruises to Estonia.

During the first four months of the year, leisure trips to our neighbouring countries numbered 640,000 to Estonia and 470,000 to Sweden. Trips to Sweden with overnight stay in the destination country and overnight cruises decreased slightly from one year ago. By contrast, same-day trips to Sweden increased.

Estonia is the number one favourite for Finns all the year round. In early 2017, trips to Estonia with overnight stay in the destination country increased and overnight and same-day cruises remained almost on level with the corresponding period last year.

In the early part of the year, 330,000 trips were headed to Spain, of which 63 per cent to the Canary Islands. The number of trips to the Canary Islands went up by 18 per cent. During the first four months of the year, 120,000 trips were made to Continental Spain and the Balearic Islands, which was fewer than in January to April 2016. March was the most popular of the four months to travel to the Canary Islands and April to Continental Spain.

When examining only trips with overnight stay in the destination country, ten per cent more of such trips were made than in last year's January to April period. April was the most popular month for these trips in the early part of the year, as then the number of trips abroad with overnight stay in the destination country was 630,000. One-fifth of the trips with overnight stay in the destination country were headed to Estonia, 12 per cent to the northern coast of the Mediterranean, and 11 per cent to the Canary Islands.

In addition to leisure trips, 1.4 million domestic business or professional trips were made. Business or professional trips abroad (inclusive of trips with overnight stay in the destination country, cruises and same-day trips) numbered 0.6 million. Domestic business trips went up from the corresponding period of last year. By contrast, fewer business trips abroad were made than one year earlier.

These data derive from Statistics Finland's Finnish Travel survey for which altogether 4,836 persons aged 15 to 84 were interviewed in February, March, April and May. Until 2011, data were collected from those aged 15 to 74.

Source: Finnish Travel, Statistics Finland

Inquiries: Taru Tamminen 029 551 2243, Teemu Okkonen 029 551 2634, liikenne.matkailu@stat.fi

Director in charge: Reetta Moilanen

Publication in pdf-format (294.9 kB)

Updated 7.6.2017

Referencing instructions: Official Statistics of Finland (OSF): Finnish Travel [e-publication].

ISSN=1798-9027. Spring (1.1.-30.4) 2017. Helsinki: Statistics Finland [referred: 10.11.2022].

Access method: http://www.stat.fi/til/smat/2017/13/smat_2017_13_2017-06-07_tie_001_en.html
A white University of Kentucky student accused of physically assaulting a Black student worker while repeatedly using racial slurs says she will withdraw from the school. The decision announced Tuesday by a lawyer for 22-year-old Sophia Rosing came after hundreds of students rallied on campus the night before. News outlets report the students called for unity and for the university to quickly address the situation. Officials say Rosing has been charged with assault, public intoxication and disorderly conduct. She pleaded not guilty during an arraignment Monday afternoon. The altercation at Boyd Hall was captured on video and posted to multiple social media platforms.
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Discurs extrem de important al presedintelui Klaus Iohannis in Statele Unite ale Americii inaintea intalnirii cu cel mai puternic om din lume, Donald Trump. Seful statului a vorbit la Heritage Foundation despre parteneriatul strategic dintre Romania si SUA sau despre pozitia tarii noastre in Europa.

Citeste si: A folosit SASE surori drept SCLAVE SEXUALE: Fetele i-au fost date chiar de catre PARINTII lor

"Intalnirea noastra va fi importanta politic, dar va avea si un impact major asupra Romaniei, asupra comunitatii de afaceri a ambelor tari. Sunt fericit ca voi discuta cu Donald Trump. In anul 2018 tara noastra va sarbatori centenarul marii Uniri care nu ar fi fost posibil daca presedintele american nu ne sustinea. Parteneriatul strategic este un succes remarcabil si se datoreaza simpatiei sincere si prieteniei dintre cele doua tari.

Vezi si: Afirmatii incendiare ale lui Vanghelie: 'Dosarul lui Victor Ponta a fost cautat de Cazanciuc'

Tara mea este cea mai pro americana din Uniunea Europeana. Aceste sentimente pozitive ale romanilor sunt datorita sustinerii puternice a SUA pentru Romania dupa caderea Cortinei de Fier.

Am facut progrese concrete pentru a oferi subsanta parteneriatului strategic. Romania e un partener activ si de incredere al SUA in aceasta regiune. facem fata unor provocari geopolitice umar la umar, soldatii nostri se antreneaza si se lupta cot la cot.

Citeste si: Marian Vanghelie sparge CUTIA PANDOREI: 'Coldea a fost pe Athos cu Toba, ea e amanta lui Oprea'

In calitate de aliati de incredere, Romania face ce trebuie. Anul acesta, ne-am asumat obiectivul NATO de a asuma 2% din PIB pentru Aparare. Suntem primul dintre aliatii care am reusit acest lucru. Aceasta a fost una dintre prioritatile mele. Scopul nostru este sa mentinem acesti 2% pentru macar un deceniu. Putem extinde potentialul pe termen lung. Tara mea este mandra sa gazduiasca sistemul de aparare EGIS pe teritoriul tarii ei. E unul dintre cele mai importante proiecte militare ale parteneriatului nostru strategic. Este foarte important sa continuam si sa finalizam aceste lucruri.

Cooperarea noastra se extinde si asupra unor domenii ca securitatea cyber sau apararea. Suntem foarte recunoscatori aliatilor nostri americani pentru sustinerea lor politica, dar si pentru prezenta in Marea neagra. prezenta trupelor americane in Romania e cel mai puternic semnal de sustinere si solidaritate. Avem in fata amenintari din toate partile. Totul trebuie sa il facem intr-o miscare coordonata. Sa mentinem unitatea in UE, dar si cu Statele Unite. Romania lucreaza ca sa tina regiunea in siguranta", a spus Iohannis.

Presedintele Romaniei, Klaus Iohannis, a sustinut miercuri, 7 iunie a.c., la Washington, D.C., o alocutiune in cadrul dezbaterii cu tema 20 Years After  The Relevance of the Romanian - U.S. Strategic Partnership in the Current International and Security Context, organizate de Heritage Foundation.

Va prezentam in continuare textul alocutiunii:

Thank you so much, President Feulner,

Ladies and gentlemen,

Dear fellows and friends of the Heritage Foundation,

Dear friends of Romania,

I am delighted to be here in Washington, to share with you my thoughts around this milestone moment for our bilateral relationship: 2017 marks the 20 years anniversary of the United States-Romanian Strategic Partnership.

One thing is very clear to us and we are proud to say it! The Strategic Partnership between Romania and the United States has been a key factor in shaping my countrys strategic profile as a NATO ally and EU member.

And I am happy to share our success story with President Trump on Friday, when we will hold talks at the White House. Our meeting will be important not only on a political level, but it will have a major positive impact on the Romanian public back home, on the vibrant Romanian community in the US, on the business communities in both our countries and on all those who have put longstanding efforts making our relationship more solid.

To further underscore our enduring friendship, I will mention that this 20 years anniversary comes in our 137th year of diplomatic relations, established in 1880. In addition to this, in 2018, my country is celebrating the centenary of its Great Union, an event which would not have been possible without the President Woodrow Wilsons principled commitment to democracy and national self-determination.

Dear participants,

This Strategic Partnership with the US is and will always be a core pillar of Romanias foreign and security policy.

Its remarkable success is due not only to our two countries shared vision and political commitment, but, most importantly, to the genuine sympathy and friendship between our two nations. My country is the most pro-American country in the European Union. Over 70% of Romanians, this is what polls show, have positive feelings towards the US, and this is translated into concrete action.

These positive feelings also originate from the consistent support provided by the USA after the fall of the Iron Curtain. This support was enhanced after the Strategic Partnership was launched in 1997. It was a real catalyst for progress and modernization efforts and for Romania's deep democratic, economic and social changes, which resulted in Romania's joining NATO and the European Union.

We have achieved, throughout these 20 years, tangible results and concrete progress to give substance to our Strategic Partnership. Romania stands now as one of Americas most reliable NATO ally in Europe, an active and committed partner in the efforts to ensure stability, security and prosperity in the region and beyond.

We face todays geopolitical challenges shoulder to shoulder, we stand together in the battle against terrorism and our soldiers train and fight side by side. We have successfully worked together in areas such as security, defense, law enforcement and the rule of law.

Dear friends,

Security and defense represent a key component of the US-Romanian Strategic Partnership and has brought substantial results. I would like to once again underline the unity of vision between the United States and Romania on virtually all major international security issues.

As a dependable ally, Romania is doing its share. This year we have fulfilled our objective, as you mentioned, Mr. President, assumed under NATO auspices, of allocating 2% of GDP for defense expenditures.

This makes us the first Ally to reach this target in the current US Administrations mandate and the 6th NATO member to do it. I am happy to mention that this was one of the top priorities on my agenda, when I assumed office.

And it was adopted with virtually unanimous political support. We aim to maintain the 2% as a minimum level for at least a decade. It will enable Romania to continue major acquisition programs, expanding the potential of long-term cooperation also with the US defense industry.

At the same time, we are aware that fighting international terrorism is crucial. That is why Romania firmly supports the US in combating this worldwide plague. Romania is engaged in the anti-ISIS coalition. Our country has pledged military trainers and other resources in Iraq, including stabilization and communication support.

We stand together in Afghanistan, where the Romanian troop contingent is the 4th largest among NATO Allies, with almost 700 troops on ground.

My country is also proud to host the first Aegis Ashore missile defense site on its territory - capable of countering ballistic missile threats from outside the Euro-Atlantic area. This is one of the most important political-military projects of our Strategic Partnership.

The site in Deveselu - this is how the place is called - hosting around 200 Navy troops, has become operational last year and was integrated with the NATO Missile Defense System. It is highly important to continue and finalize the European Phased Adaptive Approach and, based on it, the NATO Missile Defense System, since Iran continues its ballistic missile program.

We conduct intensive joint training of US and Romanian forces in some of the best equipped forward facilities on Romanian soil, such as the Mihail Kogalniceanu base, very important for the pre-deployment of US troops and military equipment.

In addition, the recent acquisition of U.S. F-16 fighter jets has increased Romanias capabilities to contribute to the security of our regional allies and it has laid the ground for potential long term cooperation with the U.S. defense industry. Our cooperation extends in critical fields such as cyber-security, intelligence and energy security.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Romania shares the U.S. commitment to transatlantic security, and fully supports endeavors to improve the effectiveness of NATO and strengthen its capabilities to address all current challenges. This can only be done by reinforcing the core pillar of the Alliance, which is collective defense, backed by a robust and credible deterrence.

Thus, we are particularly grateful to our U.S. ally for its strong political support and substantial concrete contribution to projects such as the multinational brigade hosted by Romania, the enhanced maritime presence in the Black Sea or the Combined Joint Enhanced Training Program.

The presence of US troops in Romania, complementary to the NATOs Forward Presence, is, for us, the strongest signal of support and solidarity. That is why we welcome the Trump administration decision to consistently increase funding for the U.S. European Reassurance Initiative. It is a very advantageous investment in our collective defense.

It has enabled Allies, such as Romania, to upgrade and expand their own infrastructure and capabilities, increasing the scope and size of cooperation with our US partners. However, NATO is not just about capabilities  its foundations lie in allied unity, political commitment and strategic vision. The current security situation in Europe is the most challenging in two decades and clearly underscores the need for transatlantic solidarity.

We face threats and challenges on both the Alliances East and South. They must be addressed in a coordinated and cohesive manner and this is a challenge in itself.

In the East, Russia attempts to carve out its own sphere of influence by force, through the invasion of Georgia, illegal annexation of Crimea and its heavy militarization, aggression in East Ukraine, military posturing on NATOs borders and malign influence from the Balkans to Western Europe.

Against this background, we believe we need dialogue with Russia, but based on a strong deterrence.

Our own approach must be strategic, coherent and coordinated. We need to keep our unity, inside the European Union, but also within the US  EU relations.

The Black Sea area has an important pivotal role for the transatlantic security. NATOs Eastern flank must be treated, in this logic, in a unitary coherent manner and adequately reinforced, from its North to its South, on all main components  land, sea and air.

Romania is acting within NATO, but also together with its strategic partners Poland and Turkey, to keep the region safer. That is why Romania has developed, together with these two countries, a Trilateral format on security issues. Romania is also, together with Poland, the initiator of the Bucharest Format, including all the 9 Allies on the Eastern Flank. This format is relevant for the U.S. interests in NATO, and for the security of the Eastern neighborhood.

NATO must also continue to support its partners, such as Ukraine, Georgia and the Republic of Moldova.

This is essential for ensuring security and stability in the Eastern Neighborhood.

Romania has strongly supported, at the same time, a close NATO-EU cooperation, on the basis of complementarity. There is simply no alternative to the most powerful and successful alliance in history. The EU can bring a significant contribution to capacity building, supporting research and development, to areas such as cyber or energy security. But a more substantial commitment to common defense by European allies must not result in weakening the transatlantic security link.

Romania remains a faithful Atlanticist EU member  a position that may prove even more important now, as the UK has decided to leave the Union. We will continue to work for the further development of the transatlantic relation, which is, in our view the central pillar for the stability of the overall international system. Romania is, thus, ready and able to strengthen its role to this end, as we are dedicated to both the European project and the Strategic Partnership with the United States.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Besides security, our nations need shared prosperity. Let me thus return to our bilateral relations and focus on our economic engine. Trade and investment are crucial dimensions of our Strategic Partnership, with a high potential for development, providing benefits not only for Romania and the US, but for the region as a whole.

Romania will soon rank the 6th EUs largest country after UK will leave the EU, in terms of population. We are strategically positioned at the crossroad of all major commercial and energy routes in the region, a potential gateway to the EUs common economic space, regional hub for Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the Greater Middle East, the Caucasus and Central Asia.

Romania has experienced a constant upward economic trend over the last seven years, with positive perspectives ahead. Last year we had the highest economic growth in the European Union.

This growth pattern is anchored in a number of highly competitive economic sectors. Romania is one of the largest vehicle manufacturing bases in Central and Eastern Europe. This includes, of course, the Ford plant in Craiova, a partnership that saw its first iteration in 1935. The IT sector is one of the largest and most dynamic in the EU.

Romania is also the least dependent country in the region on gas imports and can become an energy supplier with our resources in the Black Sea.

Dear friends,

As the final and most important enabler of US-Romanian partnership, one must mention the people-to-people connections. Romanian-American friendship has endured and, indeed, flourished, even during some of the most challenging moments of the 20th Century.

Our almost 1 million strong Romanian-American community inside the United States, be they students, professors or entrepreneurs, are proud of this close relationship and work every day to make it stronger.

On the governmental side, working together on Romanias inclusion in the Visa Waiver Program will further strengthen this bond and help us advance on the path to shared prosperity.

Ladies and gentlemen,

I want to end my intervention by underlining, once again, that Romania is able to act as a hub for advancing our joint transatlantic agenda in the region. We are at a strategic crossroad, at the Black Sea, and we very well understand to act as a security provider in Europe and beyond.

At the same time, the region is counting on the continued US commitment for its security. For us, the US support means security, prosperity, freedom, democracy and, last but not least, the guarantee that Romania will not go back to some Eastern sphere of influence.

Thank you very much and I look forward to your questions!
Deputies' Chamber Speaker Liviu Dragnea, the Social Democratic Party (PSD - major party, at rule, ed.n.) leader, stated on Tuesday, at private TV broadcaster Antena 3, that he hoped President Klaus Iohannis's visit to the United States would be a good one, arguing that in such circumstances, the conflicts between Romanian political leaders must cease.

"I wish it be a rewarding visit, I am telling you in earnest. You know all too well that I have had big conflicts with Klaus Iohannis, including these discussions about the Government, and for this reason, they need to cease. He is the head of the state called Romania, he is on an important visit to the United States. He will probably have an important meeting with Donald Trump, the President of the United States. For us, as a nation, it is a good thing. He might have met with Angela Merkel, and that would have been important as well. I do not want the President of Romania to be there and to be asked: Sir, is something going on in Romania? You are here, but do you still have a government there? And this is one of the reasons why these discussions need to end. It's not about sweeping anything under the carpet, but it is important. My receptiveness to the United States is complete in all respects, that is what I said when I was in Washington in January, and I keep saying it. It is an extremely important strategic partner for us," Dragnea said.

The PSD leader said the United States is an important strategic partner in both military and economic terms.

"In addition to the military component, we must have a strong economic component. That is what we asked for when we were in Washington, what we have called for in the meetings that we have had in the months following the visit, and I am sure that the President has discussed about and will continue to do so. There are dozens of American companies that have already begun to invest, and we are talking about major projects that represent a very serious engine for growth. Therefore, I want this visit to be a good one, because any fruitful visit of any Romanian political leader helps this country. I have never tolerated and will never suffer or agree with all the Romanian officials, higher or lower in rank, who go to other countries and make fools of themselves, or they lie about Romania, or denigrate this country or talk only about themselves," stated Dragnea.

He also explained that any good visit of any Romanian official helps Romania, no matter what party he/she belongs to.

"Any Romanian official, whether from a party that is our adversary, no matter who he/she is, the head of state, even if we were in conflict, whether he has a rewarding visit to the United States or anywhere in the world, we gain something. We have a huge goal, the house called Romania. Anyone who can put a good brick, God helps us all, " affirmed the Deputies' Chamber Speaker.

agerpres.
Romania's Prime Minister Sorin Grindeanu on Wednesday arrived in Paris to attend a ceremony welcoming Romania to the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Grindeanu and his delegation flew economy class. He is scheduled in the evening to attend the accession ceremony of Romania to the NEA of the OECD, that will be carried out in the presence of OECD Secretary General Angel Gurria and NEA Director General William D. Magwood. Accompanying him at the ceremony will be Finance Minister Viorel Stefan.

Romania is joining a group of 31 NEA member states that have the most advanced nuclear programmes in the world. The Romanian Government says the country's accession is recognition of the country possessing a developed national nuclear energy infrastructure and industry while using safe nuclear technologies, committed to adhere to the best practices in the field.

Also on Wednesday evening, Grindeanu will meet OECD Secretary General Angel Gurria and take part in a special dinner extended by the Danish Presidency on the side-lines of an OECD ministerial meeting. On Thursday morning, Grindeanu is scheduled to meet his French counterpart Edouard Philippe.

Agerpres...
A lawsuit filed against Chipotle on Wednesday claims that a federal rule expanding overtime pay to millions of workers is in effect, despite an injunction late last year that banned the Labor Department from enforcing the regulation.

The proposed class action lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court in New Jersey, alleges that Chipotle should be paying time and a half to employees who work more than 40 hours a week and earn less than $47,476 a year  as would be required by the rule.

Attorneys representing Chipotle employees in New Jersey argue that the rule still took effect as scheduled on Dec. 1 because the court that ordered the injunction has not issued a final decision or repealed the regulation. The suit also claims that the injunction applied narrowly to the Labor Department and does not block other parties, such as workers, from enforcing the rule in court.

"There's been no finding that the rule is unlawful," said Joseph Sellers, a partner at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, the law firm representing the lead plaintiff. "We think the rule went into effect and that companies should be paying people overtime."

At issue is a Labor Department rule finalized under the Obama administration that would more than double the income threshold  from $23,660 a year to $47,476 a year  under which workers must be eligible for over time pay. Depending on the outcome of the case, the suit could potentially lead to significant scheduling changes and back pay for Chipotle employees. It could also have implications for millions of other workers who would become eligible for overtime pay under the rule.

Chipotle and the Labor Department did not respond to requests for comment in time for publication.

The Chipotle suit is questioning the scope of an injunction filed by a federal judge in November that barred the Labor Department from "implementing and enforcing" the rule roughly a week before it was scheduled to take effect. The order was meant to give the court more time to reach a final decision on the regulation, which was challenged by 21 states and a coalition of business groups, including the Chamber of Commerce. The result was a limbo where the rule was put on hold but not permanently eliminated, according to legal experts not associated with the case.

However, the lawsuit claims that while the injunction blocked the Labor Department from enforcing the rule, it did not technically preventthe rule from going into effect. The lawyers argue that that the Labor Department does not have to take any further steps to implement the rule because it was already finalized and officially published by the time the injunction was filed.

Catherine Ruckelshaus, general counsel for the National Employment Law Project, a worker advocacy group, also believes the injunction was not enough to keep the rule from going into effect since it had already been finalized. Depending on the outcome of the case, she expects the suit could make more workers eligible for overtime pay. "It potentially has a very broad impact," she said.

Other legal experts say, however, that the injunction was sufficient to keep the rule from going into effect. "Employers are at that point where they don't have to do anything now because it didn't take effect when it was supposed to," said Lori Adelson, director of the Florida employment practice for Kaufman Dolowich & Voluck, a law firm for focusing on employment law.

The Labor Department appealed the injunction last December while it was still under the Obama administration. But in February, the Trump administration asked for more time to "consider the issues" and decide how to treat the case. It has until June 30 to file a brief with the court.

During his confirmation hearing in March, Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta said it was "unfortunate" that the rule had not been updated in more than a decade, but he also said the threshold proposed by the previous administration may "create a stress on the system."

In anticipation of the rule, some employers raised workers salaried, adjusted employees' schedules and made other changes to comply with the regulation. Some companies decided to stick with their new policies but others are waiting to learn the final outcome of the case.

Some Chipotle employees in New Jersey started receiving overtime pay in mid-November for hours worked over 40 hours a week, according to the lawsuit. Carmen Alvarez, the lead plaintiff in the suit, said she regularly worked about 50 hours a week as an assistant manager at a Chipotle in East Hanover, New Jersey. During that time, she said it was helpful to have the additional pay. Her hours also became more predictable after the change because her bosses became less likely to ask her to come in early or stay late.

But by mid-December, a few weeks after the injunction, Alvarez was switched back to a flat salary and told she would no longer receive overtime pay. "I was disappointed when they changed it back because I thought I would spend more time with my family or at least get rewarded for the time that we work," said Alvarez, who says she was fired by the company in March because of a dispute over her schedule.

The attorneys representing Chipotle workers have also handled other high profile cases against employers, such as an ongoing private class-action arbitration case accusing Sterling Jewelers of gender discrimination in pay and promotion practices.
MAPLEWOOD  Three days after a pair of armed carjackings Sunday in Maplewood, police say they are tracking leads but have made no arrests in either case.

Detectives say they don't think the same gunman is responsible for both crimes.

"This is a very odd crime for Maplewood," said Detective David Brown. "It's a coincidence that these two incidents happened on the same day in that timeframe."

The series of crimes involved three carjacking attempts and two carjackings. The men in both crimes showed a gun but no one was hurt. The victims included a woman and her two young children.

It began at about 4:30 p.m. Sunday, in the 2800 block of Sutton Boulevard. A woman waiting for a ride from a co-worker was approached by a gunman who demanded her car keys. She told him she didn't have a car.

The man wandered to a yoga studio parking lot nearby, where a woman was sitting in a car. He asked to use her phone, and she said he could use the phone in the studio. When the woman got out of her car, the man pulled a gun and demanded her car keys. He followed her into the yoga studio, where she handed over the keys. He tried to start her car but couldn't. He then demanded keys from another woman. She complied, but he wasn't able to find her car on the lot.

The man jumped a fence and ran to a home on Hazel Avenue. A man who lives there had just come inside from taking out the trash. The suspect forced the door open and demanded his car keys. He stole the man's van. The vehicle has since been recovered in St. Louis.

Those crimes happened over a 10-minute period.

About an hour later, about 5:30 p.m. Sunday, another carjacking was reported about a half-mile to the north, in the 7800 block of Gayola Place. A woman was getting out of her vehicle with her two young children. She saw a man hop out of a blue sedan, possibly a Cavalier, that had been driving on the block. He approached the woman, pulled a handgun and demanded her car keys. She gave him the keys, and he drove away in her 2009 blue Honda Pilot. That car had not been recovered by Wednesday afternoon.

Anyone with information is asked to call Maplewood police at 314-646-3658 or 314-645-3000.
ST. LOUIS  Traffic barricades have gone up to cordon off the Confederate Memorial in Forest Park, and cranes could be on the site within days, as city engineers assess how to take down the massive granite monument.

Mayor Lyda Krewsons office confirmed Wednesday that the activity around the controversial monument was the first planning step in disassembling the statue, though the actual removal might still be weeks away.

We are establishing a work zone. Its the first step for the engineers to figure what its going to take to take it down, said Krewson spokesman Koran Addo. This is just a very preliminary step the engineers wanted to take.

The 38-foot monument, which weighs more than 40 tons, was erected 103 years ago in honor of the vanquished Confederacy. It has become freshly controversial this year in light of the national movement to remove Confederate statuary in other cities.

Krewson has said the city doesnt plan to destroy the monument, but as a practical matter will have to disassemble it and might end up storing it in pieces indefinitely. Earlier attempts to find a museum or other setting deemed more appropriate than the park have so far failed.

Krewson has set a self-imposed, mid-June deadline  next week  to specify how the statue will be taken down and what will be done with it. It has been at the center of protests and counterprotests in recent weeks by some activists who say it honors white supremacy and others who say it just acknowledges a part of American history.

The mayor recently noted that, in addition to the political issues surrounding the memorial, there are logistical and engineering issues, including the question of how to get so much weight over Forest Park roads and bridges without causing damage.

Another issue is who will foot the bill for the removal. Although there have been private fundraising initiatives  including one by city Treasurer Tishaura Jones, who also wants the statue taken down and moved  Krewson said last week that she expects some public money to be necessary. No price tag for the project has been announced.

The monument, on the north side of the park, is adorned with a bronze scene of a Confederate youth being sent off to war. It was erected in 1914 by the Ladies Confederate Monument Association at a cost of $23,000.

Krewsons predecessor, former Mayor Francis Slay, wanted the statue moved several years ago but was unable to overcome the logistical, political and funding problems Krewson is now navigating.

Critics of Confederate statues in New Orleans and other Southern cities have argued that such monuments shouldnt be displayed in public places of honor because of their connection to slavery and white supremacy. Opponents of their removal argue the movement amounts to a purge of a major aspect of American history.

In other cities, the compromise sometimes settled upon has been to put such pieces in history museums, treating them as historical artifacts rather than venerated monuments. A proposal to do that here, sending the Confederate Memorial to the Missouri Civil War Museum at Jefferson Barracks, fell apart after the museum took the position that the city would have to provide all the moving expenses and then give up any future control over the monument once it was part of the museums collection.
WASHINGTON  Sen. Claire McCaskill has removed eight investment transactions that collectively added up to between $400,008 and $1.05 million from two years of her annual personal financial disclosure reports, saying they should have instead been listed as transactions of a family foundation she formed with her husband, Joseph Shepard.

One series of transactions removed was the purchase in 2014 and the sale in 2015 of between $15,001 and $50,000 in stock of Allergan, an opioid manufacturer that was one of five companies sued last week by the state of Ohio for contributing to an opioid crisis by failing to accurately describe the risks.

McCaskill had reported that her husband had received between $5,001 and $15,000 in capital gains on the stock. Those transactions also were reported in the foundations 2014 and 2015 filings with the Internal Revenue Service.

Because the transactions did not involve McCaskills personal holdings, they never should have been listed on her disclosure form, her spokesman and attorney said.

McCaskill, D-Mo., along with several other members of Congress, has made the opioid crisis a major focus. In March, she announced she was launching an investigation of five opioid manufacturers: Purdue Pharma, Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc., Insys, Depomed and Mylan. She demanded internal documents on the companies marketing practices and suggested she could expand her probe to other companies.

Last October, her lawyer wrote the secretary of the Senate that McCaskill wanted to remove eight transactions from her personal financial disclosure form.

The disclosures are annual requirements of members of Congress, and they have shown McCaskill to be one of the wealthiest members. On them, members of Congress are required to disclose holdings and financial transactions across a broad range.

Besides the Allergan transactions, McCaskills lawyer, Kate Sawyer Keane, wrote that McCaskill wanted to remove four sales of stock in Clayton-based Enterprise Financial Services Corp., which collectively amounted to between $350,004 and $850,000. Also removed: the purchase and sale of pharmaceutical company Amgen stock, ranging between $15,001 and $50,000.

These transactions were originally reported in error and were discovered in the process of reviewing the Senators annual public financial disclosure reports, Keane wrote. We are filing separate amendments to remove these transactions from the Senators public financial disclosure reports for calendar years 2014 and 2015.

McCaskills spokesman, John LaBombard, provided links to Internal Revenue Service reports made by the foundation that showed the transactions in question. He said what was listed as gifts to the foundation from Joseph Shepards daughter, Marilyn  specifically the pharmaceutical stocks  and Shepard himself were mistakenly listed as personal holdings and transactions of McCaskill and her husband on her annual reports.

As the documentation shows, this was a correction to a clerical error, plain and simple, LaBombard told the Post-Dispatch. These transactions were mistakenly included as personal transactions, and that was subsequently corrected.

The erroneous filings were noticed in a review of McCaskills financial disclosure forms after she changed preparers, LaBombard said.

On Tuesday, after the Post-Dispatch asked about the amended personal disclosure reports, LaBombard said that McCaskills office also discovered that she had failed to report that she was on the board of her familys foundation.

Keane was in the process of making that amendment to the Senate secretary late Tuesday, LaBombard said.

He said the Shepard family foundation was formed in 2013 as a way for family members to collectively donate. It has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to St. Louis-area and national charities, LaBombard said, including the St. Louis City NAACP, the University City Childrens Center and the Southside Early Childhood Center.
JEFFERSON CITY  Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens wants lawmakers to make good on his promise that crazy liberals wont be allowed to create abortion sanctuary cities so long as hes in office.

In an announcement Wednesday, the first-year Republican governor ordered the House and Senate to return to the Capitol for the second special session this year to take action on an ordinance approved by St. Louis aldermen in February banning employers and landlords from discriminating against women who have had an abortion, use contraceptives or are pregnant.

He also is calling for stricter laws on abortion clinics, including annual inspections and additional planning for handling patients with complications.

And were proposing a fix that will stop abortion clinics from interfering with emergency responders, he said in a video released on Facebook. If a woman needs help, abortion clinics shouldnt be able to tell an ambulance to come slowly  to not use their lights and sirens  or to go around to the back gate, just because they are worried that an ambulance arriving might make their abortion clinic look bad.

The session is scheduled to begin Monday, but not before Greitens holds at least three campaign-style rallies in support of his initiative. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee will join the governor in Springfield, Mo., and Joplin, Mo., for events on Friday. A third rally that day is expected to be held in St. Charles.

The push comes on the heels of a special session called by Greitens to approve a plan aimed at securing lower electric rates for an aluminum smelter and a steel mill looking to open in the Bootheel region.

The GOP-led Legislature, which adjourned its regular session on May 12, failed to approve a proposal during the spring that would have in effect nullified the city ordinance on the grounds that it inhibits the First Amendment rights of alternatives to abortion agencies, or clinics that counsel women against abortions.

Even though St. Louis officials exempted religious organizations under the ordinance, alternatives to abortion agencies and religious groups argue the updated ordinance could force them to hire employees who support abortion, or face fines.

In late May, the Archdiocese of St. Louis and other organizations filed suit against the city, seeking to overturn the ordinance.

Plaintiffs in the federal suit are seeking an immediate injunction against enforcement of the ordinance and its eventual invalidation as unconstitutional. Archbishop Robert Carlson vowed that the archdiocese wouldnt adhere to the law even if that effort failed.

Greitens also wants the Legislature to address issues arising out of a separate federal case that invalidated requirements for the states abortion clinics to meet certain standards.

U.S. District Judge Howard Sachs said abortion rights of Missouri women were guaranteed by the U.S. Supreme Court in last years landmark decision in Whole Womans Health v. Hellerstedt, which struck down similar restrictions in Texas.

The state laws are at the center of an ongoing legal challenge brought by Planned Parenthood affiliates in Missouri.

For Greitens, the special session offers the political newcomer a chance to sharpen support from conservatives after an expensive four-way GOP primary last year that saw him beat more well-established anti-abortion candidates.

Greitens was the only Republican in the race not to be endorsed by Right to Life in the election. In March, at a rally at the Capitol, he vowed to overturn the St. Louis ordinance, calling supporters of the law crazy liberals.

In a statement issued Wednesday, Greitens said, Im proud to support life  the lives of mothers, their children and the innocent unborn.

Sen. Bob Onder, R-Lake Saint Louis, praised the governors order.

I know the governor weighs very carefully the decision to call the General Assembly back for a special session. But I believe that no greater issue fits the category of extraordinary than the safety of Missourians and the protection of life and the protection of our fundamental rights as Americans, Onder said.

Abortion rights groups said the special session would waste taxpayer dollars during tight budget times.

Missouri families want our leaders to focus on creating jobs and improving education, not wasting time and money on an ideological fight over abortion, said Alison Dreith, executive director of NARAL Pro Choice Missouri.

In a statement, St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson said, The city of St. Louis doesnt support discrimination of any kind. We dont discriminate based on whether someone is pregnant or uses birth control.

Despite some clashes this year on ethics reform and other issues, Greitens is likely to have support for his effort from the Legislature, which has a long history of backing stringent abortion restrictions.

Earlier this year, House Speaker Todd Richardson and Senate President Pro Tem Ron Richard, both Republicans, vowed to Right to Life advocates that there would be no abortion sanctuary cities in Missouri, a term coined by conservatives to describe cities with discrimination ordinances similar to St. Louis.

But during the first special session convened by Greitens, some senators warned against calling another, arguing that some bills simply dont make it through the regular session but arent urgent enough to justify a second look at taxpayers expense.

The most recent special session cost an estimated $67,000 in daily expense money for lawmakers, mileage and additional staff.

The special session marks the latest attempt by Republicans who control Jefferson City to target initiatives in the Democratic stronghold of St. Louis. In one of their final acts before adjourning in May, the House and Senate voted to overturn the citys minimum wage increase.
Despite what they say, Republican actions in the Legislature prove that they are not the party of law and order. And Republicans most certainly do not Back the Blue.
In the Anthropocene, humanity needs to deal with increasing turbulence, in both social and environmental settings. Resilience has been identified as a strategy that could help advance development across multiple, sectors, scales, and regions. As a forum to convene on these topics, the Colloquium on Resilience for Development: Assessment Methods and Transformative Practices was created.

From 8-10 May 2017, Stockholm Resilience Centres GRAID programme, the Centre for Complex Systems in Transition at Stellenbosch University, South African Council for Science and Industrial Research (CSIR), and the South African Program on Ecosystem Change and Society (SAPECS) jointly hosted the colloquium in Johannesburg, South Africa. The event aims to convene on how resilience can contribute to doing development differently, from both research and practical perspectives.

The colloquium was designed to maximize opportunities for dialogue and critical discussions and building collaborations between researchers and practitioners. Much of the colloquium was centred on dialogue and mini-workshop sessions, interspersed with talks to maximize communication between participants, says Oonsie Biggs, the Colloquiums Chair organizer.

The colloquium was completely booked, and attracted over 150 researchers, practioners, and student from Africa, Europe, Oceania, and North America. It was designed around seven central themes, aimed at maximizing opportunities for discussion:

Resilience assessment, monitoring and evaluation

2. Creating transformative spaces

3. Urban resilience and infrastructure

4. Indigenous and local knowledge for stewardship and resilience

5. Science-society partnerships for building resilience and transformation

6. Addressing inequality and human wellbeing through ecosystem services

7. Human rights in the Anthropocene

8. Achieving the SDGs in Africa

An eventful 60 hours

The two-and-a-half-day colloquium hosted a number of sessions of short and long talks, ranging on topics from complexity and resilience thinking; social-ecological regime shifts; and human rights and food systems; and also, what resilience thinking and social-ecological systems can say about doing development differently.

During the event, three plenary sessions occurred, and was captured via livestream, with a number of keynote speakers: centre researchers Oonsie Biggs, Belinda Reyers, and Michele-Lee Moore, as well as Busiso Moyo (Sonke Gender Justice), Lorenzo Fioramonti (Centre for the Study of Governance Innovation, University of Pretoria) and Nathanial Matthews (Global Resilience Partnership). Each plenary concluded with a discussion, including a final panel hosted by GRAIDs ReThink Assistant Editor, Marika Haeggman.

The colloquium also highlighted art-science collaborations, such as the collaboration between ecological artistic Hannelie Coetzee and researcher Sally Archibald, who together create ecological images while studying controlled fire management. A photo exhibition by Gwen Meyer, Picturing Resilience in Northern Ethiopian Foodways, visualized how food acts as a source of resilience in Ethiopian communities.
Veeno founders Nino Caruso and Andrea Zecchino. (Submitted photos)

AN Italian wine cafe has been confirmed as the latest tenant in Stratford-upon-Avons new 30million Bell Court development.

Veeno, which operates 11 stores across the UK, will open on the ground floor of the new Everyman Cinema, adjacent to new restaurants Byron Burger and Miller and Carter Steakhouse.

It will be the first Veeno to open in the West Midlands and will reflect Italys after-work culture of drinking, nibbling and relaxing.

The cafe will specialise in family- produced Sicilian wine alongside authentic Spuntini including platters of meats, cheese and other appetisers imported from selected Italian producers.

The unit was due to be handed over to Veeno this week with a view to the cafe opening later in the summer.

Andrea Zecchino, co-founder of Veeno, said: Were looking forward to expanding Veeno into the West Midlands and bringing a taste of Italian culture to Stratford-upon-Avon. Bell Court is the perfect market for us and represents a great opportunity to build our brand alongside national bar and restaurant operators.

John Stacey, Asset Management Director at UK and European Investments, said: The Veeno brand is a perfect complementary addition to Bell Court as we strive to create an exciting retail and leisure mix and a balance of national and independent brands.

"The relaxed offering will add to the line-up that we have secured and ensure the scheme is an appealing leisure destination throughout the day and into the night. Stratford-upon-Avons wine connoisseurs are certainly in for a treat.

Already confirmed in Bell Court are the Everyman Cinema, with restaurants Byron Burger, Miller and Carter Steakhouse, Nandos and All Bar One set to follow throughout the summer.

COMPETITION: To win a private screening for you and up to 20 friends with food and drink at the Everyman Cinema pick up a copy of this week's Herald , on sale on Thursday, 8th June.
Gov. Scott Walker said Wednesday that hed consider highway tolls in Wisconsin if theyre collected from motorists entering the state, particularly from Illinois.

Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald said separately that a highway tolling plan could be a key part of a broader deal for the states next transportation budget  a key area of disagreement among Republican Senate and Assembly lawmakers as they craft a 2017-19 state budget.

That disagreement, combined with divisions on how to address taxes and education spending, has put the two houses at loggerheads and stalled budget talks.

With just weeks before a July 1 deadline to pass the new two-year spending plan, lawmakers canceled both of this weeks planned meetings of the Joint Finance Committee. State spending will continue at current levels if lawmakers fail to pass a new budget on time.

Walker and Fitzgeralds Wednesday remarks show the seriousness with which Republican leaders are considering implementing highway tolls in Wisconsin, which would be a first for the state. They also show the extent to which the tolling discussion is tied to talks about the states next two-year budget, even though tolls would not provide revenue to the state within that time frame.

Tolls are not something Im pushing, Walker told reporters Wednesday. But he reiterated that under the right circumstances, hes open to the concept.

Presumably it could be at the state line, Walker said. Most of that revenue wouldnt be coming from people who live in Wisconsin.

Walkers comments add a second condition under which he says he would consider tolling. He previously said it must be accompanied by a reduction in the gas tax.

He added Wednesday that the reduction would have to be a meaningful change, but wouldnt have to be a dollar-for-dollar swap. He added the reduction could also come in the vehicle registration fee, which unlike the gas tax is only paid by Wisconsin residents.

Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, in an interview with the Wisconsin State Journal, called tolling a separate question from the debate over the next transportation budget. At the same time, Fitzgerald said tolling could kind of bring this whole thing together at the end if enough members think its viable.

Some lawmakers and advocacy groups see tolling as a potential revenue source that could reduce the states long-term funding shortfall for highway projects. Assembly Republicans, in particular, have said the next transportation budget must help shore up the transportation budget for the long haul.

Tolling of U.S. interstates would require federal approval  the granting of which is not certain  and if approved, it would not happen for several years. Assembly Republicans, as part of a transportation-funding proposal offered last month, proposed seeking federal permission for tolling.

Separate budgets?

Fitzgerald warned earlier this week that if the Legislatures finance committee didnt agree to meet at all this week, Senate Republicans could begin work on their own budget plan outside of the finance committee process.

On Wednesday, after the latest planned meeting was canceled over lack of agreement on education funding, Fitzgerald lamented the delay in budget work but said he didnt know whether the unusual route would be taken.

This pushes the full budget back at least a week, he said.

Finance committee co-chairwoman Sen. Alberta Darling said shes hopeful the committee would resume its work soon.

What we need to do is to meet with our caucus, to keep talking to the Assembly, to try to find a way out of this with a good result for everybody, said Darling, R-River Hills. The question is can we get it together by Tuesday, the likely next meeting date for the finance committee.

The latest tensions among Republicans surround education. Assembly Republicans this week unveiled their K-12 spending plan and spent Wednesday campaigning for it  despite Fitzgerald rejecting it before it was unveiled and Walker panning it.

Senators on the finance committee met on Wednesday afternoon and the full Senate GOP caucus will meet Thursday, Fitzgerald said.

Walker told reporters Wednesday there isnt a night and day difference between the Assembly and Senate.

One of the interesting things to remember is were debating about how much more to put into schools, were debating how much lower to lower property taxes, were debating about how far we can go to have more in the transportation system and whether or not it requires additional revenues, Walker said. Its a question of really where were at on the spectrum in those areas, but there is common agreement.

So far, Senate Republicans have been more in line with Walkers budget proposals and approach toward spending than Assembly Republicans.

Earlier this week, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, invited Fitzgerald and Walker to negotiate budget terms any time, anywhere.

But Vos missed an opportunity Wednesday, when Walker and Fitzgerald met in Madison with Assembly Majority Leader Jim Steineke, R-Kaukauna, instead.

Vos had a pre-planned trip to Washington D.C. for a couple days but Steineke told reporters Vos would fly back to Wisconsin immediately if he was needed for negotiations.

Promoting Assembly education plan

Co-chairman Rep. John Nygren, R-Marinette, who helped write the Assembly education plan, was a guest on a number of talk radio shows across Wisconsin and held press conferences in schools Wednesday promoting the plan  saying it was more equitable and sustainable than the plan Walker has proposed.

The Assembly plan calls for giving districts that spend less per student than the state average more authority to raise property taxes for education. It also adds money to the states general funding mechanism for schools, makes it easier for teachers to be licensed, lowers property taxes, increases the number of students who can enroll in private voucher schools while offering school districts about $70 million less in new funding than Walkers plan.

Senate Republicans have said changing the $649 million Walker would add to per-pupil funding would be difficult given Walkers aggressive campaign and its support among public school officials.

Fitzgerald also said its possible lawmakers could find enough money to send to low-spending districts to avoid raising property taxes.

Theres a way if you need to address that later on. It doesnt have to be part of the property tax bill, Fitzgerald said.

You can (approve Walkers proposed spending for schools) and then revisit the low-spending districts and possibly use some cash in this biennium to just fund that, Fitzgerald said. I dont know what that number is, but its not so significant that its an impossibility, thats for sure.
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) spokesperson Shafqat Mahmood said Wednesday the ruling party is exerting pressure on Joint Investigation Team (JIT) for Panama case as well as the Supreme Court of Pakistan.

He added PTI fears PML-N will boycott the JIT interrogation. While talking to media, the representative of the opposition party told that no one was held accountable in the era of former President Pervez Musharraf.

He mentioned the statements of both PML-N leaders Rana Sanaullah and Khawaja Saad Rafique while defending his argument.

Also, he talked about the remarks of Talal Chaudhry and Daniyal Aziz who criticised the JIT, recalling the attack on the apex court backed by PML-N in past.

Shafqat Mahmood stated his party will always raise voice against unconstitutional acts. PTI demanded resignation of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif so that the JIT interrogation can be completed without any hindrance.
Coromandel Watchdog of Hauraki is calling on the Department of Conservation to protect public access and endangered species on conservation land, after drilling has resumed in the Parakiwai Valley area.

Oceana Gold, the Canadian/Australian mining company which last year took over Newmont Gold Corporations New Zealand interests, are about to undertake a drilling programme in the area.

The Department of Conservation has publicly notified closures of some of the conservation land around the renowned Wharekirauponga Track on grounds of protecting public safety, making it an offence for an unauthorised person to enter this part of the Wharekirauponga area.

Coromandel Watchdog questions public conservation land being monopolised for private gain  with the apparent blessing of the Department of Conservation  and the group believes that allowing this activity on conservation land is contrary to the primary functions of the department.

We are very lucky, here in Aotearoa New Zealand, to have such outstanding areas  particularly in public ownership. Surely the Departments role is to do their utmost to protect and conserve these areas for us all? says Coromandel Watchdog spokesperson Augusta Macassey-Pickard.

The conservation estate, and particularly areas of high natural value such as the Wharekirauponga/Parakiwai area, are for all New Zealanders, and the department must place this right, and the conservation of these areas, above those of a multinational company.

She says Coromandel Watchdog feels the department should not have allowed access to a mining company to drill for gold in the area, which is known habitat of threatened and endangered species.

This is an area of high natural value and is not suited to industrial activities  especially not ones that are by their very nature so destructive. For example, it is one of only three places where the endangered Archeys frog are found and this company is drilling there?

Despite DOCs failure to protect the core values of conservation, Coromandel Watchdog will continue to peacefully defend the sites like the one near Parakiwai on behalf of everyone who values the environment."
Trip Report SABER RIDGE - obscure gem? or new classic in the California alpine

by

by Yinzer Wednesday June 7, 2017 9:56am Saber Ridge (FA: Scott Thelen & Justin Dille '08 / Brandon Thau & Chris LaBounty '09), for whatever reason- became both a rallying cry as well as a distant goal- for myself and my friend Gil, somewhere along the road of the sweet summer of 2016. It was more of a faint hope to help get us through the complete lack of rock we would be seeing in CA's snowy months, after some of our most active yet in our personal climbing journeys. Both Gil and I managed to get after it a few times in winter, reaching mountaineering objectives here in CA, but made plans for SABRE as we yearned for the dry, velcro-like granite of the CA high country.



In all likelihood, Saber leapt into our thoughts after climbing Charlotte Dome in a smooth & fast send that had us psyched for more. We wondered what else out there might have a LONGER approach than Charlotte (10mi + some gain) that would require actual pitches of climbing... and figured whatever that might be would result in a grand adventure in our home range.



'The Saber' became an idea and an obsession probably also equally as much because we came across this article & writeup from Sierra Mountain Guides (



' This ridge is the premiere attraction in the area at this point. That it was apparently not climbed before 2008 might be one of the eternal mysteries of the High Sierra. Nevertheless, it does live up to its beauty and reputation. It is a ridge traverse as much as a climb, in the style of Matthes Crest in Tuolumne, only better. The rock is of equal quality to Matthes, but the Sabre Ridge is longer, more dramatic, more committing, and with better climbing. In any case this climb is by anyones measure certain to be a 5-star classic.'



We are also both of course bigtime fans of Peter Croft, and hearing his positive stoke on the route and the area was also another factor influencing our decision to make visiting the area our Memorial day weekend priority for 2017.



The FA was also supposedly relatively recent, and this AAJ article from Neal Harder about the Saber contained the names of more legends, and more positive hype (



the route's mountainproject page had some majorly helpful photos, and Gil had been through the High Sierra Trail years before. We figured the climbing and the approach wouldn't be too much of an issue for us, but having the opportunity (family, work, life) to spend two nights out would be. For this reason, it was set.. Memorial Day, opening weekend of permit season- would be our window.



As this beast of a winter settled in on the Sierra, Gil and I started realizing that it was highly unlikely that the area would be snow-free by the time our trip arrived. We always knew we could push it back, do it in summer... or move it by a few weeks. But we had seen reports from trips as soon as early-April that looked semi-dry.. and figured late-may with some snow on a big year would be fun, if not simply much more of an 'alpine' experience, in the best way possible.



I only had the heart, or managed the strength really- to tell my wife about the trip about 72 hours before we left.. and let's just say that there was substantial strain on the relationship for those few days before and after, and I'm sure many other ST patrons have felt in their personal climbing and travel histories. The raw beauty of the alpine, the rare chance to achieve something substantial with a very capable partner, and the lure of an early-season visit to the Saber were all factors at play, and It did mean a weekend at home alone for my loving wife.



The mileage was severe, the scenery and the views were pristine, and the mettle of each of our core-being was tested on the 3-day, 2-night trip. We didn't realize how legitimate the recommendations were to use pack-mules if you were pitching it out (as opposed to soloing it!) and so we knew it'd be a bit rough being our own human pack-mules. We chalked it up to early-season training. Gil even brought two cameras (a DSLR and a film camera) against my repeated requests for him not too for weight-wise. We also carried a tagline that was going to be our emergency stream-crossing / tyrolean line if needed, which we of course ended up leaving at camp on the day of the send.



I'll keep the photos section of the TR as condensed as I can, but please enjoy the plethora of images, and the video (sorry its long, skip to minute 4 if you just want to see the ridge : ) and enjoy an armchair trip along the HST's early miles, to a blessing of a ridge that gifted us with lasting memories.



Saber Ridge - 5/27 - 5/29



Colin Video:

Gil Video:



Credit: Yinzer



Credit: Yinzer 'people have been getting turned back at mehrten for weeks'.. We were ready to ford a massive stream or attempt to rig a tyrolean up in the woods above the falls... It turned out to be a mild hop over a tounge of water... and yeah, well in my experience rangers like to hype stuff up a bit.. but they are cautionary for good reasons. We've all seen how wild the stream-crossings got in the high country as the melt began.



Credit: Yinzer



Credit: Yinzer



Credit: Yinzer



Credit: Yinzer Saber Ridge ... the bright and pale tounge of granite sitting above the snowfield in this shot.



Credit: Yinzer



Credit: Yinzer



Credit: Yinzer



Credit: Yinzer



Credit: Yinzer 'coastal california'



Credit: Yinzer



Credit: Yinzer



Credit: Yinzer



Credit: Yinzer



After settling in to our camp for the evening, we found it extremely easy to zonk out after hauling our heavy gear (even though we try to swear by the UL approach.. we just often fail to achieve it) for the 13+ miles to our little bivy near the river. If we had gone 300 yards further we would have found softer and more protected ground with some established-ish sites under massive trees.. but we liked the view and were content just starting off from there in the morning. To be fair we kindof dropped everything to be sure we could shoot some through sunset : )



The day of the send was a calm, focused, and very happy outing. We kept quiet, saved our energy, inhaled deeply the dry yet snow-moistened and still sierra air. Good choices were made pretty much the entire way. We made the very n00b like error of not bringing enough water, (even though we drank as much as we thought we could during the approach and re-filled from a falls right before the send) and of course the send took much longer than the sandbag-ish quote of 5.5-6hours camp-to-camp as mentioned by the Sierra Mountain Guides crew : ). with lighter packs and a camp at tamarack I could see 6-7 hours being easily achievable though, as mere mortals & off-the-couch'ers.. if you can get there.



Still, the winds were calm, and none of the precip that was slated as possible for saturday and sunday afternoon seemed to be present. We were starting to believe.. know now really- that it would go off without a hitch.



Credit: Yinzer



Credit: Yinzer



Credit: Yinzer



Credit: Yinzer



Credit: Yinzer

At this point, we were feeling a little bit of the work that we put in to finish the last 2ish miles to the base, (heavy, having both crampons and axes in our bags, just in case... ) and knew there was already more sunlight on the route than we wanted... we had hoped to be roped up at 6:30 am, but with the longer approach, ledgy and waterfally terrain that had us climbing fourth-class moss lumps and bushes.. then into snowfields again- we were a tad delayed.



Credit: Yinzer



What really took time though, was the '3rd class approach slabs', which felt like they had more than a few moves in the low-fifth range to us, and were a bit heady to navigate with mountaineering boots on. Gil had switched to climbing shoes at this point.. I was hoping to get higher before doing an equipment & backpack changeover, so ended up keeping mine on, regrettably.



Credit: Yinzer



Credit: Yinzer

It was Gil who ended up wanting a hip-belay for a cruxy slab move on the approach, me above him, having passed it in my boots. It was a left-to-right crawl of sorts around a bulge, with serious exposure below. From there we followed a tounge / right facing blob up to where the ridge emerges from the mass of granite slabs.

Credit: Yinzer

Credit: Yinzer



Luckily I also had some riccola cough drops and energy gummies that held off thirst for bits at a time.. I love having eyedrops, lip balm, and lozenges for the dry sierra air. Washing your face in the snowmelt streams having a similar and more low-tech affect. But we were high up riding the ridge at this point.. about to get some of our first simul-climbing experience in.



Credit: Yinzer



After riding the ridge for a few pitches, and gaining the ridge-proper (the 'flat' part) via the dark 5.7 corner, we found loads of 3rd class, and occasional fifth. What had really spooked me was the slab crux past the first headwall, far above my gear and with a heavier-than-usual backpack due to the snow.



We didn't shoot so much from the ridge, of the actual climbing moves or changeover stations, but everything was very straightforward, and really a gift of a line from God above. The importance of protecting for the second through downclimbs became more critically clear after passing the first steep and blocky downclimbing of the ridge. Beyond that there were a few 'knife edge' moments and boulder-problem style lowers that require alot of commitment, but still exist in the V0 / 5.7-range moves-wise..



There many ways and styles to get around cruxes and moments of exposure, and the variety of choices made it a pleasant and stress-free endeavor from a leading perspective.



Credit: Yinzer



At this point, I was taking more calculated compositions with my 35mm camera, and the iphone became secondary. We also just started needing to move, realizing how long the ridge really was, and even worrying for a few pitches wether we would be benighted. The thought of the sun setting on us was emotional motivation more than anything, but our topout did occur quite close to sundown.



Credit: Yinzer



Credit: Yinzer



Credit: Yinzer



Credit: Yinzer



Credit: Yinzer



Credit: Yinzer



From the Summit to the descent, the blocky 4th and occasional fifth was hemmed in by snow and exposure, which added a little bit of spice. We remained roped up / simul-ing until we reached the snowfield that is the descent. It was really pleasant on the knees to be walking down soft spring snow instead of sandy slab and scree. It gave the whole route more of a winter & alpine feel, even though it was quite hot out in the sun. (forecast said high of 48 for the summit. felt hotter)



Credit: Yinzer



Credit: Yinzer



Credit: Yinzer



- -



the walk back was a few miles in the dark, some routefinding through manzanita, and the occasional doubling-back when getting cliffed out near Lone Pine Creek. We were absolutely exhausted by the time we made it back to camp. Gil's Crampons got eaten / removed from his pack by a bush .. (this after I already hammered him on the virtue of clipping any critical gear, when his ice-axe dislodged from its holder and tumbled a good thousand feet down off the saber... making 7 or 8 hops of a 40 or 50 feet in the air, the loud clang echoing around the granite walls. We felt bad for our failure to 'leave no trace' but seeing an axe fall that far was intense, memorable, and admittedly entertaining to the 10-year old inside us.



I fought slumber for a few minutes in bed, watching the night sky open up above us. Holding out for a shooting star, I saw three. All with their own character, angle... speed.. within about 10 minutes. The sky seemed to quiet. We fell deep into slumber, our aching joints anticipating tomorrow's big day.



-



Monday was Memorial Day. God bless the Veterans. We stomped out through the heat, more stream crossings, butterflies, deer, and the likes. We tried to push the pace and it was still slow-going, especially as we got closer to the westside. Exiting Sequoia from Crescent Meadow was a wild experience, with long lines of visitors near the shuttle pickup, and lotsss of cars coming into the park.



It was already in the 90s down near Lake Kaweah. We had a meal in Three Rivers, hot and exhausted, and made the long drive home in Gil's trustworthy vintage benz. (no AC) We would unpack our gear that night, feeling the buzz of sun energy on our UV-laden skin, and new experiences in the back of our now more veteran minds. It would take us longer to unpack the meaning of the trip, which taught us a few things, including:



believe what they say about pack mules

pack lighter

climb with more water

climb steeper pitches

climb harder closer to the trailhead

don't pump out / take breaks (trail)

there are always logs to cross things, especially after drought then avalanches.



There are many inspirational figures who push us to do more than we might without their leadership, and stewardship. Our trips in the Sierra wouldn't happen without the likes of many. Thanks to our heros...



Norman Clyde, Galen Rowell, Peter Croft, Chris McNamara, Vitaliy Musiyenko, John Dittli, Dr. Dirtbag, Fat Dad, and everyone else out there sending, exploring, sharing, and loving the High Sierra!



- -



When the rolls of film are developed, I'll add them to this post <3



I wrote this in part for the enjoyment and pleasure of all the ST'ers out there, so thank you for your time, I hope we didn't keep you too long.



-Colin

















(FA: Scott Thelen & Justin Dille '08 / Brandon Thau & Chris LaBounty '09), for whatever reason- became both a rallying cry as well as a distant goal- for myself and my friend Gil, somewhere along the road of the sweet summer of 2016. It was more of a faint hope to help get us through the complete lack of rock we would be seeing in CA's snowy months, after some of our most active yet in our personal climbing journeys. Both Gil and I managed to get after it a few times in winter, reaching mountaineering objectives here in CA, but made plans for SABRE as we yearned for the dry, velcro-like granite of the CA high country.In all likelihood, Saber leapt into our thoughts after climbing Charlotte Dome in a smooth & fast send that had us psyched for more. We wondered what else out there might have a LONGER approach than Charlotte (10mi + some gain) that would require actual pitches of climbing... and figured whatever that might be would result in a grand adventure in our home range.'The Saber' became an idea and an obsession probably also equally as much because we came across this article & writeup from Sierra Mountain Guides ( http://www.sierramtnguides.com/new-routes-in-sequoia-national-park/ ) that described the route and the area, and had us blown away.We are also both of course bigtime fans of Peter Croft, and hearing his positive stoke on the route and the area was also another factor influencing our decision to make visiting the area our Memorial day weekend priority for 2017.The FA was also supposedly relatively recent, and this AAJ article from Neal Harder about the Saber contained the names of more legends, and more positive hype ( http://publications.americanalpineclub.org/articles/12201109300/Tamarack-Lake-Area-New-Routes the route's mountainproject page had some majorly helpful photos, and Gil had been through the High Sierra Trail years before. We figured the climbing and the approach wouldn't bemuch of an issue for us, but having the opportunity (family, work, life) to spend two nights out would be. For this reason, it was set.. Memorial Day, opening weekend of permit season- would be our window.As this beast of a winter settled in on the Sierra, Gil and I started realizing that it was highly unlikely that the area would be snow-free by the time our trip arrived. We always knew we could push it back, do it in summer... or move it by a few weeks. But we had seen reports from trips as soon as early-April that looked semi-dry.. and figured late-may with some snow on a big year would be fun, if not simply much more of an 'alpine' experience, in the best way possible.I only had the heart, or managed the strength really- to tell my wife about the trip about 72 hours before we left.. and let's just say that there was substantial strain on the relationship for those few days before and after, and I'm sure many other ST patrons have felt in their personal climbing and travel histories. The raw beauty of the alpine, the rare chance to achieve something substantial with a very capable partner, and the lure of an early-season visit to thewere all factors at play, and It did mean a weekend at home alone for my loving wife.The mileage was severe, the scenery and the views were pristine, and the mettle of each of our core-being was tested on the 3-day, 2-night trip. We didn't realize how legitimate the recommendations were to use pack-mules if you were pitching it out (as opposed to soloing it!) and so we knew it'd be a bit rough being our own human pack-mules. We chalked it up to early-season training. Gil even brought two cameras (a DSLR and a film camera) against my repeated requests for him not too for weight-wise. We also carried a tagline that was going to be our emergency stream-crossing / tyrolean line if needed, which we of course ended up leaving at camp on the day of the send.I'll keep thesection of the TR as condensed as I can, but please enjoy the plethora of images, and the videoand enjoy an armchair trip along the HST's early miles, to a blessing of a ridge that gifted us with lasting memories.Saber Ridge - 5/27 - 5/29Colin Video: https://vimeo.com/219595499 Gil Video: https://vimeo.com/219950099 Thanks Dad for the awesome hand-me-down backpack. Oh yeah and half my trad rack : )The falls at our first moment-of-truth point on the HST. Mehrten creek. The rangers told us.. We were ready to ford a massive stream or attempt to rig a tyrolean up in the woods above the falls... It turned out to be a mild hop over a tounge of water... and yeah, well in my experience rangers like to hype stuff up a bit.. but they are cautionary for good reasons. We've all seen how wild the stream-crossings got in the high country as the melt began.Gil contemplating Mehrten creek. Castle Rock Spires (I believe) in the distancefirst peeks of the still-snowy Great Western Divide coming into viewLove me some Panos. Don't have my info totally down but I know you can see Angel's Wings there.. and I think the higher peaks/features are (from left) Mount Stewart, Lion Rock, Black Kaweah, Red/main Kaweah?, (anyone fill in the comments at will.. cant figure out what the peak between lion rock and black kaweah is.. maybe 'picket gaurd?')first glimpse of the actual... the bright and pale tounge of granite sitting above the snowfield in this shot.We're so thankful for the blessing of all this precipitation. thin streaming waterfalls were everywhere, and the heavy flows were creating the ever-present roaring soundscape that eminated off the valley walls and rose into the sky above.Gil crossing a snowfield around mile 13. the HST makes its way up to Hamilton lakes in the ampitheater to the left.Heavy flows on Lone Pine Creek coming out of Tamarack Lake. The water was insanely cold when we were filling our bottles, and getting near the edge instinctively felt quite dangerous. Aside from the freezing temps, a swim would mean being whisked away underneath snowbridges pretty quickly. Saber looms above, giving us confidence in the send- seeing it dry, and having so much light so late in the day.Views from camp, near Lone Pine Creek & Elizabeth Pass. Chilly, beautiful, with the land showing signs of a rough winter.. avy debris littered most of the trail from well before bearpaw meadow.Beautiful Sierra-Westside colors that just singGod's landJust a couple of mountain-loving dweebs with a penchant for mileage, a love of film... and some semi-serious facial hair. My ski-touring beard has been a staple since the Penguins 2016 cup run (I'm from Pittsburgh) and Gil's sending 'stache has been around since... well, when I first met him.you cant make this stuff up. end of day rays, the last of the violet scraping the low-hanging clouds above an impermanent waterfall.look deeper, and tell me what you really see.After settling in to our camp for the evening, we found it extremely easy to zonk out after hauling our heavy gear (even though we try to swear by the UL approach.. we just often fail to achieve it) for the 13+ miles to our little bivy near the river. If we had gone 300 yards further we would have found softer and more protected ground with some established-ish sites under massive trees.. but we liked the view and were content just starting off from there in the morning. To be fair we kindof dropped everything to be sure we could shoot some through sunset : )The day of the send was a calm, focused, and very happy outing. We kept quiet, saved our energy, inhaled deeply the dry yet snow-moistened and still sierra air. Good choices were made pretty much the entire way. We made the very n00b like error of not bringing enough water, (even though we drank as much as we thought we could during the approach and re-filled from a falls right before the send) and of course the send took much longer than the sandbag-ish quote of 5.5-6hours camp-to-camp as mentioned by the Sierra Mountain Guides crew : ). with lighter packs and a camp at tamarack I could see 6-7 hours being easily achievable though, as mere mortals & off-the-couch'ers.. if you can get there.Still, the winds were calm, and none of the precip that was slated as possible for saturday and sunday afternoon seemed to be present. We were starting to believe.. know now really- that it would go off without a hitch.heading off into the morning, avy debris refreshing the local ecosystem.pristine Sierra alpine scenery as we walk towards Tamarack. Prism and Saber on the left, Stewart on the right. Suncups that seem to speak to sacred-G starting to form ...I composed this as a beta photo... First real good view of the line. You reach that left-facing dark corner near the start of the actual ridge. the slab 'crux' (5.6 unprotectable nobs) is somewhere near the mid-left of the sunny-spot.approach slabs, wetslides, big mountains, and a scenic ridge climb awaiting us.At this point, we were feeling a little bit of the work that we put in to finish the last 2ish miles to the base, (heavy, having both crampons and axes in our bags, just in case... ) and knew there was already more sunlight on the route than we wanted... we had hoped to be roped up at 6:30 am, but with the longer approach, ledgy and waterfally terrain that had us climbing fourth-class moss lumps and bushes.. then into snowfields again- we were a tad delayed.What really took time though, was the '3rd class approach slabs', which felt like they had more than a few moves in the low-fifth range to us, and were a bit heady to navigate with mountaineering boots on. Gil had switched to climbing shoes at this point.. I was hoping to get higher before doing an equipment & backpack changeover, so ended up keeping mine on, regrettably.Peter Croft 3rdIt was Gil who ended up wanting a hip-belay for a cruxy slab move on the approach, me above him, having passed it in my boots. It was a left-to-right crawl of sorts around a bulge, with serious exposure below. From there we followed a tounge / right facing blob up to where the ridge emerges from the mass of granite slabs.Moments of success, happiness, and fear happen as we finally gain the ridgeline. You can see the faint falls on the approach slabs where we got our first water. I had a 1 Liter bottle, (already small, usually i'm 2 1L's) and Gil's container was less than one-liter. We had stayed beyond-hydrated on the way in, but the air was dryer than I thought, and the ridgeline more physical. Usually I keep a second 12 or 16oz 'emergency' extra water in my climbing day-pack, or a custom vitamin & juice mixture.. and this reaffirmed that idea to me.Luckily I also had some riccola cough drops and energy gummies that held off thirst for bits at a time.. I love having eyedrops, lip balm, and lozenges for the dry sierra air. Washing your face in the snowmelt streams having a similar and more low-tech affect. But we were high up riding the ridge at this point.. about to get some of our first simul-climbing experience in.Can you find Gil?After riding the ridge for a few pitches, and gaining the ridge-proper (the 'flat' part) via the dark 5.7 corner, we found loads of 3rd class, and occasional fifth. What had really spooked me was the slab crux past the first headwall, far above my gear and with a heavier-than-usual backpack due to the snow.We didn't shoot so much from the ridge, of the actual climbing moves or changeover stations, but everything was very straightforward, and really a gift of a line from God above. The importance of protecting for the second through downclimbs became more critically clear after passing the first steep and blocky downclimbing of the ridge. Beyond that there were a few 'knife edge' moments and boulder-problem style lowers that require alot of commitment, but still exist in the V0 / 5.7-range moves-wise..There many ways and styles to get around cruxes and moments of exposure, and the variety of choices made it a pleasant and stress-free endeavor from a leading perspective.I told him to waveAt this point, I was taking more calculated compositions with my 35mm camera, and the iphone became secondary. We also just started needing to move, realizing how long the ridge really was, and even worrying for a few pitches wether we would be benighted. The thought of the sun setting on us was emotional motivation more than anything, but our topout did occur quite close to sundown.on lead for one of the knife-edge portions.Gil after the 'knife edge'. His body is obscuring it but it's in the video. The smile says it all thoughThe wonderful summit views from the Saber Ridge. I won't claim to know the peaks exactly but I think its Black Kaweah, Stewart, and an endless line of peaks heading south... Off to the right you can see the range gradually dip down to the west, the air showing a bit more coastal humidity than it does on the eastside. You can also see the back of Angels Wings (I think) in this one. The shadow of Saber runs along the left of frame, clearly outlining the shape of the route.you try to avoid it, but Here is Gil, on the verge of thinking about the walk back tomorrow morning.. really just that moment after one's time on a summit where your thoughts shift to the reality that, well, everything from here is a return trip. A mixture of sadness, and something like the feeling of ones ego leaving for a last fleeting moment of purity. Yet, it's also its own form pleasure, different from the anticipation of a trip, the approach to a climb.. the early pitches. It's a feeling of deep content and fulfillment that the 'objective' you visualized and hoped about for months is now a part of your experience not imagination.wild wind-ripples off of the backside of the Saber summit. Deadman's Canyon I believe. Gil was also overjoyed to recognize the steep summit spire of 'Milestone' mountain, a place he hadn't been yet but wanted to visit.feeling like a bird. the countless swallows along the route were a good sign and pleasant companions for us during the pitches. Also memorable were the beautiful deer along nine-mile creek, the marmots at bearpaw, and the chipmunks and birds near Tamarack and along the Saber Ridge itself.From the Summit to the descent, the blocky 4th and occasional fifth was hemmed in by snow and exposure, which added a little bit of spice. We remained roped up / simul-ing until we reached the snowfield that is the descent. It was really pleasant on the knees to be walking down soft spring snow instead of sandy slab and scree. It gave the whole route more of a winter & alpine feel, even though it was quite hot out in the sun. (forecast said high of 48 for the summit. felt hotter)Brilliant Sunset hues of pink and orange reflecting off the bright snowfields.Saber on the left and Prism in the middle. The light had left us, but the pale illumination eminating from the snowfields was enough to guide us down during our walkoff. I always hold out on the lamp until it's truly needed, to enjoy the relaxing dimness as the twilight fades. We experienced beautiful subtleties of light long after the sun had dipped beyond the pacific ocean. Crystalline and rainbow-lattice electric energy seemed to dance in front of you. It spilling into our eyes in ripples with the purity of its deep blues, and bright magenta-pinks.Gil gets upset when I don't wait for him : )- -the walk back was a few miles in the dark, some routefinding through manzanita, and the occasional doubling-back when getting cliffed out near Lone Pine Creek. We were absolutely exhausted by the time we made it back to camp. Gil's Crampons got eaten / removed from his pack by a bush .. (this after I already hammered him on the virtue of clipping any critical gear, when his ice-axe dislodged from its holder and tumbled a good thousand feet down off the saber..., the loud clang echoing around the granite walls. We felt bad for our failure to 'leave no trace' but seeing an axe fall that far was intense, memorable, and admittedly entertaining to the 10-year old inside us.I fought slumber for a few minutes in bed, watching the night sky open up above us. Holding out for a shooting star, I saw three. All with their own character, angle... speed.. within about 10 minutes. The sky seemed to quiet. We fell deep into slumber, our aching joints anticipating tomorrow's big day.Monday was Memorial Day. God bless the Veterans. We stomped out through the heat, more stream crossings, butterflies, deer, and the likes. We tried to push the pace and it was still slow-going, especially as we got closer to the westside. Exiting Sequoia from Crescent Meadow was a wild experience, with long lines of visitors near the shuttle pickup, and lotsss of cars coming into the park.It was already in the 90s down near Lake Kaweah. We had a meal in Three Rivers, hot and exhausted, and made the long drive home in Gil's trustworthy vintage benz. (no AC) We would unpack our gear that night, feeling the buzz of sun energy on our UV-laden skin, and new experiences in the back of our now more veteran minds. It would take us longer to unpack the meaning of the trip, which taught us a few things, including:believe what they say about pack mulespack lighterclimb with more waterclimb steeper pitchesclimb harder closer to the trailheaddon't pump out / take breaks (trail)there are always logs to cross things, especially after drought then avalanches.There are many inspirational figures who push us to do more than we might without their leadership, and stewardship. Our trips in the Sierra wouldn't happen without the likes of many. Thanks to our heros...Norman Clyde, Galen Rowell, Peter Croft, Chris McNamara, Vitaliy Musiyenko, John Dittli, Dr. Dirtbag, Fat Dad, and everyone else out there sending, exploring, sharing, and loving the High Sierra!- -When the rolls of film are developed, I'll add them to this post <3I wrote this in part for the enjoyment and pleasure of all the ST'ers out there, so thank you for your time, I hope we didn't keep you too long.-Colin

Trip Report Views: 6,327 Yinzer About the Author

Yinzer is a trad climber from Los Angeles, CA.

Comments ydpl8s



Trad climber Santa Monica, California Jun 7, 2017 - 11:02am PT Nice! I love the pic of the "wind ripples".



It kind of reminds of the pattern of the dead, blown down trees after Mt. St. Helens erupted. Nick Danger



Ice climber Arvada, CO Jun 7, 2017 - 10:42am PT Nice TR, wonderful pics (especially the sunset photos), and a great adventure shared with a good friend. Outstanding way to spend your Memorial day weekend.

cheers guyman



Social climber Moorpark, CA. Jun 7, 2017 - 10:57am PT Way to Go.



Thanks for the share skcreidc



Social climber SD, CA Jun 7, 2017 - 11:02am PT Nice job you two! And a great read. Thanks for posting up! limpingcrab



Gym climber Minkler, CA Jun 7, 2017 - 11:31am PT Sweeet! The reputation must be true because it seems everyone loves saber. Bonus points for being one of the few willing to walk far to climb rocks, the best kind of trip!





There she is on Friday, the day before your walk in I believe. I was thinking it would be cool to climb it surrounded by snow, awesome to read about you doing just that the next day!



thanks for sharing Gunkie



Trad climber Valles Marineris Jun 7, 2017 - 11:43am PT Awesome! dirt claud



Social climber san diego,ca Jun 7, 2017 - 11:49am PT Great TR, what an adventure, thanks for sharing. Mungeclimber



Trad climber Nothing creative to say Jun 7, 2017 - 11:58am PT Cool stuff. Makes me want to find another ridge hidden in the folds of the Sierra.

micronut



Trad climber Fresno/Clovis, ca Jun 7, 2017 - 10:59pm PT Splendid. Nice work for a couple hipster looking, mustache wearing "film" using wannabes! Did you guys take some vinyls and a turn table back there. Your soundtrack would sound waaay better on vinyl dude.



All kidding aside...way to get out there and get it done. Proud adventure!



really just that moment after one's time on a summit where your thoughts shift to, well, everything from here is a return trip. It's a bit sad, yet its own form pleasure, different from the anticipation of a trip, the approach to a climb.. the early pitches. It's a feeling of deep content and fulfillment that the 'objective' you visualized and hoped about for many months is now a part of your experience not imagination.

I really liked that little bit of writing right there. Thanks for sharing.



Scott



P.s. Looking forward to seeing how the film turned out. Clint Cummins



Trad climber SF Bay area, CA Jun 7, 2017 - 01:57pm PT Cool.



Related TRs:



by Vitaliy:

http://www.supertopo.com/tr/Valhalla-Diary-pt-1-FA-Attempt-on-the-Angel-Wings-and-Saber-Ridge/t12805n.html



by Paul Souza:

http://www.supertopo.com/tr/Valhalla-Redux-The-Spectacular-Saber-Ridge/t12681n.html



by Ney Grant:

http://www.supertopo.com/tr/Saber-Ridge-Angel-Wings-with-Peter-Croft-New-Routes/t12491n.html



Video by Chris LaBounty (RIP):

http://www.supertopo.com/tr/Matthes-Crest-Actually-I-prefer-Saber-Ridge/t11205n.html

splitclimber



climber Sonoma County Jun 7, 2017 - 03:05pm PT righteous!!! Vitaliy M.



Mountain climber San Francisco Jun 7, 2017 - 07:11pm PT Wow what a great bunch of photos and the report. Must of wanted it real bad if you got out there so early in the season!! Well done. 10+/10 jaredm



Trad climber Oakland Jun 7, 2017 - 08:23pm PT Great TR and photos Colin. This upped my excitement for getting into the backcountry again this year.



When are we finally getting up BCS? crankster



Trad climber No. Tahoe Jun 7, 2017 - 08:28pm PT Nice. FYI, your post has the date as June 27-29. Ney Grant



Trad climber Pollock Pines Jun 8, 2017 - 05:56am PT Fantastic TR and photos. Getting it done this early on a big snow year adds even more adventure! NutAgain!



Trad climber https://nutagain.org Jun 8, 2017 - 08:20am PT Glorious!

fear



Ice climber hartford, ct Jun 8, 2017 - 10:57am PT Bonus points for rocking the 'stache.... Yinzer



Trad climber Los Angeles, CA Author's Reply Jun 8, 2017 - 11:38pm PT Thank you fellow ST ers for all the support and positive feedback. Some of you guys are our favorites, DMT, micronut, Guyman. The opportunities for these adventures are in part gifted to us by the generation that preceded us, and we thank you. Clint thank you for making the related TR's a part of this thread, and honoring those friends. Vitaliy it brought a big smile to my face to get 10/10 from you <3 Hope to link this summer.



The film photos will be juicy. Honestly I have some issues with the ST 8mb limit per still too. Usually it only takes up to about 5mb anyway before it rejects... even iphone photos go over 5-6mb sometimes now. I'll inquire.



send!



Ezra Ellis



Trad climber North wet, and Da souf Jun 11, 2017 - 05:29am PT Awesome TR! neebee



Social climber calif/texas Jun 11, 2017 - 10:04pm PT hey there, say, yinzer... wow!!! really neat and special share, thank you so much!!!



Beatrix Kiddo



Mountain climber Durango ColoRADo Jun 12, 2017 - 08:01am PT That's my kind of outing. I like your style! Grippa



Trad climber Salt Lake City, UT Jun 12, 2017 - 10:00am PT This is what it's all about. Well done gents! grubs



climber Jun 28, 2017 - 11:19am PT Nice, I think you got the first winter ascent. Oh wait, was this two weeks shy of summer?



On that really knife edge section you're supposed to hand traverse the right side, not the left side :) Let your balls hang out over the void. You guys clearly had balls though, going for it in those conditions!

howie doin'



climber Bishop, CA Jun 29, 2017 - 03:27pm PT So psyched for you guys and that our post helped to inspire your adventure. Well done in alpine conditions!

Howie Schwartz

Sierra Mountain Guides Larry Nelson



Social climber Jul 3, 2017 - 01:30pm PT I sure enjoyed that. TFPU Ericbwalden



Trad climber Oakhurst Jul 9, 2017 - 05:09pm PT Nice write up. I believe it should read: (Brandon Thau/Chris LaBounty '09) on that FA?
In an attempt to bring the glamour of Amalfi without all the fuss, Porto Mirabello recently opened its berthing to superyachts visiting the area, without compromising its pastoral character and successfully injecting just the right amount of continental-cool.

On the technical side, berths up to 130m make Porto Mirabello the only luxury port in Italy able to house yachts this size, whilst world-class facilities at the harbour are just the beginnings in a long list of reasons why this ever-evolving project is likely to become a famed superyachting center.

Expanding from six 65m-plus slips to eleven just this year, the quay has opened its new waters just in time for the Mediterranean season complete with 24-hour staffing, 2 high-capacity fuelling stations and even a re-fit yard, to name just a few bonuses.

But technicalities aside, what is so charming about Porto Mirabello is how seamlessly the project slots into the distinctive coastline of the Italian Rivera. Ideally poised in one of five vibrantly-washed and flower-filled finishing villages, the ports outdoor spaces are nothing if not al fresco terraces from which to enjoy that view across the breath-taking Liguria: a sight for even those with well-indulged eyes.

So visit Porto Mirabello if youre wondering where to head in the Med. Revel in the surrounding lands rich portfolio of outdoor activities before returning to the marina village where health and wellness, local gastronomy and spacious privacy are at the heart of this perfect Italian marina.
The most basic and principal method of giving up smoking is to really want to do so. Knowing the damage that a tobacco addiction does to the body is a major incentive to stop, and so is being aware of how much money can be saved by giving up a habit which results in 10,000 deaths each year in Andalucia, 2,000 of which are in Malaga province. Never starting to smoke or, at least, beating a dependence on tobacco in time, is definitely best for the health.

Determination

You must really want to give up: people often relapse

Determination is essential for someone who wants to give up smoking. About 70 per cent of smokers want to stop and have tried numerous times to do so, says Salvador Ona, a specialist in preventive medicine and the head of the smoking addiction unit of the Spanish Association Against Cancer (AECC).

The problem is that nearly 70 per cent of smokers who try to give up by themselves find it too hard and end up lighting a cigarette within 72 hours, because of the withdrawal symptoms. These normally last for about four weeks and this is the hardest period of all.

The passage of time helps those who give up smoking. As the days go by and they resist the temptation to light up, their ability to overcome their addiction becomes stronger. It has been shown that the degree of success in those who decide to stop smoking, focusing on one day at a time, is equal to that of those who consider the situation calmly and decide on a particular date to give up tobacco, says Dr de Ona.

Professional help

Doctors and pharmacists give advice to smokers

For those who find it too hard to give up on their own, health centres have a programme which can help. GPs provide advice to encourage people to continue and not give in to the urge to smoke. The programme includes information about the damage which smoking does to the body, and has helpful information about how to stop.

In the first four months of this year, doctors in Malaga province have given advice to 408,000 people who wanted to give up smoking. Pharmacists, in chemists shops, can also give advice about tobacco addiction and how to overcome it. The Junta de Andalucia also has a helpline (900 850 300) for smokers who want to give up the habit.

Treatments

There are specific medications for withdrawal symptoms and anxiety

The third method to overcome tobacco addiction is through medication. Dr de Ona says this has to be individually prescribed. Two types have shown particularly good results: in Spain they are called vareniclina y bupropion. The first is a non-nicotine product which basically reduces the effect of the nicotine on the brain and reduces the anxiety caused by the withdrawal symptoms. Bupropion has psychostimulant and anti-depressant properties and helps to overcome the addiction. These drugs have to be paid for, because they are not funded by the health service.

Effective

Combined medical-psychological therapy

This system is very effective and has a high success rate. It is available on the national health as well as privately. It is an advanced treatment to help smokers give up tobacco, and can be provided individually or on a group basis. It is a combination of cognitive-behavioural psychologies and pharmaceutical treatment. In the first four months of this year, 18,827 people received this treatment in health centres in Malaga province. This programme requires the smoker to attend the sessions in person.

Something new with good results

Combine e-cigarettes with chewing gum or nicotine tablets

This is a new tool to fight tobacco addiction. Smokers who want to give up combine the use of electronic cigarettes with nicotine chewing gum or tablets, explains Salvador de Ona.

With regard to hypnosis as a way of overcoming addiction, De Ona says this is no more beneficial than the products with a so-called placebo effect, and points out that the unit he runs did a study which showed that there was no significant difference between those products and hypnosis. He says every smoker needs to find the method which suits them best, and should always bear in mind that giving up tobacco will considerably improve their quality of life.
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A nurse who worked at a Reigate care home has been suspended from the profession after causing a resident "unnecessary and avoidable pain".

Tamas Mocsari, from Hungary, worked at Rutland Nursing Home, in West Street, for three and a half months in 2015, and has been issued a suspension order for 12 months.

A Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) hearing on May 12 found that Mocsari, who worked as a registered nurse, removed a catheter without having experience to do so and failed to offer a resident pain relief when she complained of pain.

It also found that he does not have the necessary knowledge of English to practise "safely and effectively", among other other charges.

According to background information provided in a report available on the council's website, on November 24 2015, Mr Mocsari worked a day shift alongside a healthcare assistant known in the report at "Colleague C".

The report said Colleague C checked on a resident at the home - known as "Resident A" - at around 7.30pm and found her agitated and saying she needed to go to the toilet but was unable to do so.

She was shaking and sweating so Colleague C called Mr Mocsari for assistance. The report said Mr Mocsari went to check on Resident A and prior to handover he informed Colleague C that he had removed the resident's catheter.

Another worker, known in the report as "Colleague A", entered the home to start his night shift and Mr Mocsari told him something was "not right" and that he would provide a handover. At around 8.10pm, at the end of handover, Mr Mocsari informed Colleague A that Resident A was unwell and that he had removed Resident A's catheter.

The NMC report said: "Mr Mocsari was unable to provide a rationale for removing the catheter and did not record a rationale in the resident's records. Resident A had been left alone, with no staff attending to her, during handover. Mr Mocsari had not telephoned emergency services for an ambulance for Resident A or asked any other members of staff for advice."

The NMC's panel found that Mocsari failed to offer the resident pain relief when she complained of pain, failed to ensure a member of staff stayed with her, failed to prioritise handing over to Colleague A that the resident was experiencing abdominal pain and/or swelling, and did not hand over to Colleague A reasons for removing the resident's catheter.

It adds: "Mr Mocsari through his actions in relation to removing the catheter and by failing to give the required painkillers, caused unnecessary and avoidable pain to Resident A. In addition, Mr Mocsari failed to treat the residents as individuals and respect their dignity and he failed to practise in line with the best available evidence."

The panel found his actions "fell significantly short of what would be proper in the circumstances".

The report also said: "The panel has concluded that his lack of ability to communicate clearly and effectively in English is such that he has in the past put patients at unwarranted risk of harm. Moreover, it would have been liable to bring the profession into disrepute. The panel notes that Mr Mocsari carried an iPad with him to use for translation purposes, which is obviously unsatisfactory."

The panel also found that in relation to another resident, Mocsari failed to record details of a fall they had sustained and did not complete the required forms.

In mitigation, the panel considered that Mocsari had indicated to his employers that he had no experience in catheterisation and had not been provided with the appropriate training, that the working environment was "highly pressurised", that his actions were not wilful and that he made early admissions to most of the charges.

At the end of the suspension order, another panel will consider whether it needs to remain in place further.

A spokesman for Rutland Nursing Home said: "Rutland Nursing Home referred Mr Mocsari to the NMC as he did not meet their nursing standards. Mr Mocsari no longer works at the home."


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Google earlier this week unveiled Google Attribution, a tool that uses machine learning to measure the effectiveness of online marketing campaigns across a variety of devices and channels.

Part of a series of new measurement tools introduced at Google Marketing Next, Google Attribution aims to help marketers determine what is driving consumers to make their online purchasing decisions.

Google is at an inflection point, noted Sridhar Ramaswamy, senior vice president of ads and commerce, when it comes to the use of technology to measure online marketing effectiveness.

Whats exciting is that things that were really hard were going to be able to make easy, because technology is doing the heavy lifting, he told conference attendees.

Seconds Matter

Page-loading time is an important factor in terms of how long advertisers have to hook a consumer online, Ramaswamy said.

As load time increased from one to seven seconds, the probability of a consumer bouncing more than doubled, found a recent study that analyzed 900,000 mobile landing pages in more than 100 countries. That translates to conversions falling by up to 20 percent for every one second delay in page-load time.

Most existing attribution measurement tools have three main shortcomings, according to Ramaswamy. First, they lose track of the customer journey when they move between tools; second, they are hard to set up; and third, they are not integrated with ad tools.

Because of those shortcomings, marketers typically are stuck with using last-click attribution, which misses the impact of most marketing touchpoints.

The new Google Attribution tool incorporates data from AdWords, Google Analytics and DoubleClick Search, which provides a more comprehensive picture of data from all marketing channels, according to Google.

Google Attribution also makes it easy to switch over to data-driven attribution, which uses ads, keywords and campaigns that have the greatest impact on a companys goals, Google said. Using the data-driven attribution model typically requires a minimum set of data, which is 15,000 clicks, and at least 600 conversions within a 30-day period.

Google will offer an enterprise version, Google Attribution 360, to meet the needs of larger advertisers, noted Bill Kee, group product manager at the company.

Google Attribution currently is in beta and will roll out to additional customers over the next few months.

Not Quite Ready

Google Attribution is an aspirational sell for advertisers, particularly for small and medium-sized businesses, suggested Paul Teich, principal analyst at Tirias Research.

Google intends to make it free, so it will see a lot of uptake, but many users will have zero comparative experience to judge how much better they are doing with Attribution, he told the E-Commerce Times.

The major benefit will be providing more-accessible feedback for designing online user experiences, Teich said, noting that its not clear how artificial intelligence can make a contribution  at least until Attribution has been able to analyze millions of Web pages.

Google is ahead of the curve compared to other Internet companies, which are only average at measuring the efficacy of online marketing, observed Michael Jude, a program manager at Stratecast/Frost & Sullivan.

Machine learning does give it an edge in making sense of the relationship between key clicks and online purchases, he told the E-Commerce Times.

While simple algorithms can provide some insight, especially as applied to last click models, machine learning can understand such things as click back, where the last key click is not the purchase, but rather an artifact of comparison shopping, Jude explained.

Data Points

Google made several other announcements related to providing additional marketing data.

It launched a new AdWords beta to let advertisers use fast-loading AMP pages as landing pages for search ads and to speed up ads across the Google Display Network. This follows Googles introduction about 18 months ago of the Accelerated Mobile Pages project to speed up the Web with faster browsing.

Google also announced a new tool to bring in-market audiences to Search, in order to help advertisers reach users who are ready to buy their products. Using machine learning, the tool analyzes trillions of search queries and millions of websites to determine when searchers are close to making a buying decision on a product.

The company unveiled plans to roll out store-sales measurement at the device and campaign levels, which will allow advertisers to measure in-store revenue and store visits delivered by search and shopping ads.

If advertisers collect email information at the point of sale through loyalty programs, Google said, store transactions can be imported directly into Adwords by the advertiser or through a third-party data partner.
Steve Sansweet is a Star Wars fan so devoted to the George Lucas' universe that he started a nonprofit Star Wars museum called Rancho Obi-Wan in Petaluma, California. Steve describes the purpose of his non-profit in the mission statement on his website:

"Rancho Obi-Wan, Inc. is a California Nonprofit Public Benefit Corporation whose specific purpose is to serve the public through the collection, conservation, exhibition and interpretation of Star Wars memorabilia and artifacts, using the collection to provide meaningful educational, aesthetic, intellectual and cultural experiences for a wide array of audiences and to carry out other charitable and educational activities associated with this goal."

It is quite clear that Steve is someone passionate about sharing his knowledge and acquisitions of Star Wars themed items with the public. So it is disheartening to hear that his museum was victim to the theft of over 100 items totaling around $200,000 in value. The theft occurred over the course of several months. According to Mr. Sansweet, most of the pieces were vintage action figures that he had collected over the years.

Steve discovered the items missing after he had heard from a friend and fellow collector that he too had lost a rare Boba Fett action figure in a theft. His friend, Philip Wise had posted on one of his Star Wars websites that someone had stolen his rocket-shooting Boba Fett prototype toy. Shortly after that, Wise was contacted by a collectibles dealer in Southern California who said that he believed he had purchased the hot item along with some other action figures from a man named Carl Edward Cunningham. Carl, "a well-known Star Wars collector and R2-D2 builder," was known to both Wise and Sansweet.

The dealer, Zach Tann sent Wise an itemized list of other suspicious items he had bought from the man. Looking over the list Philip was able to conclude that the pieces were most likely from Steve's collection. Tann, in cooperation with Wise, Sansweet, and local police returned as many of the stolen items as he had. He also provided police with enough information for them to get an arrest warrant for Cunningham. The sticky-fingered Star Wars theft surrendered himself to Sonoma County authorities in late March and was charged with felony grand theft. He is currently out on bail awaiting trial.

It was a sobering experience for Steve since he knew and trusted Cunningham and considered him a friend. While Sansweet was able to recover several items, there are still many that are missing. He urges anyone who thinks that they may have purchased any of his items to contact him through a special "tips" email he has set up at his Rancho Obi-Wan domain.
The Federal Communications Commission, as you likely know, is actively working to overturn landmark net neutrality rules passed in 2015 under the Obama administration. While some have already dismissed the pushback as a lost cause, many technology giants aren't prepared to go quietly into the night.

Companies such as Amazon, Kickstarter, Mozilla, Vimeo and Etsy are joining forces with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and hundreds of other organizations including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Center for Media Justice, American Library Association, Organizing For Action, Demand Progress, Greenpeace, MoveOn and others for a "day of action" to defend the open Internet.

Current FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has vowed to dismantle net neutrality protections and in April, President Donald Trump signed into law a bill to repeal rules that former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler fought to put in place for years.

Corynne McSherry, legal director for the EFF, referenced earlier online protests like the 24-hour blackout to protest SOPA in 2012 and the Internet Slowdown Day in 2014 as evidence that the Internet can rise up and force regulators to listen.

McSherry noted that details of the July 12 event are pending but said the goal is to send a strong message to the FCC and Congress: "Don't Mess with the Internet."

More companies and organizations are expected to join the effort in the coming days and weeks.

Image via Kevin Lamarque, Reuters
Yes, you read that title right. As reported by Ars Technica, the Russian hack group Turla has found a unique way to keep the URL of their command and control server secret: by posting it on Britney Spears's Instagram. The command and control server is what malware typically communicates with to receive instructions and where it offloads stolen data from the victim. On the surface, creating a C&C server seems simple but it's actually a difficult problem for malware makers to solve.

The malware needs to know what server to communicate with but simply coding that in doesn't make for very good malware. Security analysts can simply go through the source code, find the URL, and issue a patch that blocks traffic to that server. This is similar to what helped bring down the WannaCry ransomware attack.

To ensure the malware knows who to talk to without anyone else knowing, Turla implemented a simple yet brilliant approach to locating the control server. The group deliberately placed comments on certain Instagram posts that could be referenced by the malware. The software would then scan and hash each comment until it found one that returned a certain value (183 in this case). Then by simply running an mathematical expression on the characters of the comment, the C&C URL was able to be obtained.

Since the server is never directly referenced in the comment or the source code, the malware was very hard to detect. The actual comment in question was "#2hot make loveid to her, uupss #Hot #X" and contained several non-printable Unicode characters to help create the URL.
Back in February, former Uber engineer Susan Fowler wrote a scathing blog post detailing her time at the ride-hailing firm. Now, it's been revealed that the investigation into her allegations of sexual harassment has led to 20 employees, including some senior executives, being fired.

News of the terminations came from law firm Perkins Coie LLP (via Bloomberg), which Uber hired to lead the investigation. Former US Attorney General Eric Holder is heading up a separate investigation, the results of which are expected to be made public next week.

The employees who were fired have not been named. Their dismissals came after the law firm's review of 215 "inappropriate workplace instances." These were broken down into 54 for discrimination, 47 for sexual harassment, 45 for unprofessional behavior, 33 for bullying, 13 for retaliation, 19 for "other" harassment, three for physical security, and one for wrongful termination.

2/ And here's a further breakdown of the 215 claims: pic.twitter.com/yLhFGvgmlJ --- Uber Comms (@Uber_Comms) June 6, 2017

57 of the claims are still under review, 100 resulted in no action being taken, and seven have led to final written warnings. 31 of the employees named in the complaints are now in counseling or undergoing training.

The investigation's findings follow a series of moves by Uber to improve its image. CEO Travis Kalanick asked for his senior vice president of engineering, Amit Singhal, to resign in February after the company learned of sexual harassment allegations against him while he was at Google. Singhal denies the claims.

Uber has also hired two women in senior executive roles: Harvard Business School Professor Frances Frei and Bozoma Saint John, Apple's former head of global and consumer marketing for iTunes and Apple Music. John made headlines last year for her presentation at WWDC, where she got the audience to rap along to The Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight."
If you've got a TV with high dynamic range (HDR), you'll know that HDR content offered by the likes of Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube, etc. can look incredible. The display technology, which offers a wider range of vibrant colors, higher contrast, brighter whites, and blacker blacks is making its way to the PC with displays like Acer's Predator X27 - but are these monitors as good as companies claim?

Back at CES in January, Nvidia showed off a side-by-side comparison of two monitors; one with HDR and one without the tech. The HDR display looked much better, thanks to its sharper, more vibrant colors. Yesterday, YouTube channel HardwareCanucks repeated the test and came to the same conclusions: the HDR image looked vastly superior.

However, HardwareCanucks was granted access to the same monitor settings Nvidia used, and it turns out these had a lot to do with the SDR display's inferior image. Nvidia had turned down the brightness, contrast, and even altered the gamma on the standard panel to make it look much worse, thereby ensuring the HDR monitor had the best picture.

The YouTubers proceeded to do a factory reset on the non-HDR display and run the comparison again. This time, the results were far from clear-cut. Using Mass Effect: Andromeda, which has a native HDR profile, there are still some areas that look better using high dynamic range - such as the color definition in the sky. However, in many cases, the SDR panel arguably offers the superior image, with the HDR panel often looking muted or overexposed.

While it's worth remembering some games with native HDR profiles could bring more of an obvious improvement over SDR than Adromeda, the fact Nvidia felt the need to rig the demo shows other display technologies, like higher resolutions and faster refresh rates, could be the better options for gamers right now.
While the Galaxy S8/S8+ are still wowing people with their high-end features and beautiful designs, attention is now turning to Samsung's next offering: the Galaxy Note 8. Earlier reports say the device will come with elements new to the Korean company's handsets, and the latest leak lends credence to those rumors.

Consistent leaker Poyoco Tech has posted a series of renders showing the Note 8 looking similar to the S8 - slim bezels, infinity display - but with a few important differences. Specifically, the back of the phone has a vertical dual camera setup and lacks a fingerprint sensor.

The design matches the 3D-printed Note 8 unit that YouTube channel Concept Creator made last month. Rumors that the sequel to the explosive Note 7 will be the first Samsung handset to feature a dual camera module have been around for a while, and it now looks increasingly likely.

Samsung fans will no doubt cheer at the repositioning of the fingerprint sensor - its location is one of the few complaints people have about the S8. With no physical button on the front, it appears the reader will be integrated into the Note 8's display. This had been the plan for the S8, but a last-minute problem prevented its implementation.

In November last year, Samsung spent $8 billion acquiring electronics giant Harman. It appears that deal could result in some impressive acoustics for the Note 8. The logo of AKG, which is owned by Harman, appears on the back of the phone, suggesting its speakers will be tuned by the audio firm.

Another Note 8 leak has shown up on Twitter, this time from "Ice universe." It shows a more subtle improvement over the S8, but one that users will no doubt appreciate. The Infinity Display in this image comes with a smaller corner radius, meaning even more pixels could be squeezed onto the screen.

About Samsung Galaxy Note 8, smaller angle, which is 100% sure the message. pic.twitter.com/OJDXcLUPkg --- Ice universe (@UniverseIce) June 6, 2017

The Note 8 is expected to be unveiled sometime in late August/September, possibly at Berlin's IFA event.
Donald Trump may have turned his back on the Paris Climate Agreement, but a huge number of tech firms, including Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon, have signed an open letter pledging their support for climate action that meets the targets set out by the accord.

The coalition, called "We are still in," consists of over 1200 companies, educational institutions, mayors, governors, states, and investors. Most of the big Silicon Valley names have signed up, though Oracle and IBM are conspicuously absent [update: IBM has now signed up]. Unlike Elon Musk, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty decided to remain on Trump's business advisory council following the US withdrawal.

The group says its members will remain actively involved with the international community as it looks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and stop the planet from warming more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels. It also wants to accelerate the transition to clean, renewable energy.

"In the U.S., it is local and state governments, along with businesses, that are primarily responsible for the dramatic decrease in greenhouse gas emissions in recent years." the letter reads. "Actions by each group will multiply and accelerate in the years ahead, no matter what policies Washington may adopt," they wrote.

The US is the only country ever to have left the Paris Agreement - Nicaragua and Syria never signed up in the first place.

The statement was coordinated by a number of organizations, including the World Wildlife Fund, the Center for American Progress, and Michael Bloomberg's Bloomberg Philanthropies, which has also promised up to $15 million to help support the Agreement following the US' exit.
With the release of the Galaxy S8 now in the rear mirror, Samsung is switching focus to its more affordable J series. The company had already released the Galaxy J3 last month in the US, and now it has officially unveiled the new Galaxy J5 and Galaxy J7. The phones sport a metal design, fingerprint sensor, VoLTE support and will ship with Android 7.0 Nougat out of the box.

The J5 and J7 both come with HD super AMOLED displays (5.2-inch and 5.5-inch, respectively), 16GB of internal storage which can be further expanded up to an extra 256GB via a microSD card slot, Exynos 7870 based eight-core A53 1.6GHz processor with Mali T830 GPU. The 5.2-inch Galaxy J5 comes with 2GB RAM and a 3,000mAh battery, while the 5.5-inch J7 has 3GB RAM and a 3,600mAh battery.

All models are available in dual- or single-SIM options, have an FM radio receiver and feature 13-megapixel cameras on the front and back with f/1.7 and f/1.9 apertures, respectively. Other features include Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.1, Micro USB port, and a 3.5mm headphone jack.

The Galaxy J5 will be available in Europe this month for around 279 ($314, 243) followed by a July launch for the Galaxy J7 at 339 ($381, 295). The Galaxy J3 will be available in August for 219 ($246, 191) --- Samsung launched the entry-level J3 with AT&T last month in the US for $179.

All three models in the J-series will be available in black or gold.

Samsung's affordable J-series may not have the same high-end features as the premium Galaxy S8 or Note series, but they do well in emerging markets and is key to its market share leadership.
The Trump Organization is planning to launch a new mid-market hotel chain called "American Idea," aiming to offer quality accommodation at affordable prices.

President Donald Trump's sons, Eric and Donald Jr., said on Monday, June 5, that they got the idea for this new hotel chain while traveling across the United States with their father's campaign.

American Idea

The three-star hotel chain will have a patriotic theme, mirroring Trump's campaign motto: America First. American Idea hotels will reportedly sport American culture items such as vintage Coca-Cola machines in the lobby.

The first three American Idea hotels will launch in Mississippi, a state where Trump won by 18 percentage points in the presidential race against Hillary Clinton. Nevertheless, Eric Danziger, the CEO of the company's hotels division, said the hotel chain will not have any political color.

According to Danziger, "many hundreds" of hotels could launch in both blue and red counties and states. In fact, the first American Idea hotels will launch in counties that favored Clinton. Danziger noted that the company had been planning a hotel expansion for roughly two years, before the 2016 presidential race. When Trump's sons came up with this idea, he found it brilliant. The Trump Organization filed for a trademark back in April 2016 to secure the American Idea name.

Conflict Of Interest?

Trump has ceded business operations to his sons and other executives while he's in office, but some still argue that this hotel chain creates a conflict of interest for the Trump administration.

Ethics experts expressed concern that developers might back the new hotel chain only to seek favors with the president, with their investments being similar to campaign contributions without the limitations on spending, or any requirements for disclosure.

The American Idea hotel chain is also an interesting twist, straying from Trump's luxurious properties to be more budget-friendly. Danziger added that American Idea hotels will not have any overt link to the president, as Trump's name will not appear anywhere on the properties. He is confident that Trump Hotels can steer clear of ethical issues, as any deals are thoroughly reviewed.

Business Partners

Not too long ago, Danziger also announced plans to launch a new four-star hotel brand called Scion. The Trumps will license the new hotels to business partners in exchange for royalties and additional fees. They intend to manage Scion hotel operations, but leave partners in charge of American Idea operations.

The company's partner in Mississippi will be an Indian-American family that owns 17 hotels through its company, Chawla Hotels. According to Danziger, those hotels currently sport the brand of popular chains, but at least three of them will convert to the American Idea chain.

Bobby Burchfield, the outside ethics adviser of the Trump Organization, questioned the potential financing sources, the New York Times learned from a source familiar with the matter. Nevertheless, Burchfield gave the Trumps a green light to team up with Chawla Hotels.

The first American Idea hotels will launch in the Mississippi Delta. The chain will gradually expand and should open hotels all across the United States.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Europe hasn't been kind to tech companies over the last few years, with nearly every major company getting slapped with antitrust suits. Microsoft, who is no stranger to this, just got hit with yet another antitrust.

Market Monopolization

Kaspersky Lab, a Russian cybersecurity firm, has filed an antitrust suit against Microsoft with the European Commission and German Federal Cartel Office. Eugene Kaspersky, one of the founders of the firm, claims that Microsoft has abused its position in the market to push users toward its own Windows Defender at the cost of third-party software.

"We want Microsoft to stop misleading and misinforming our  and not only our  users," Kaspersky said in a blog post about the suit.

"We want to see all security solutions being able to work on the Windows platform on a level playing field. And we want to see users being able to decide for themselves what they want and consider important to them."

This isn't the first time that Kaspersky has gone after Microsoft over security software. This whole situation started last year, when Kaspersky Lab filed complaints with Russia's Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS), with similar claims to the more recent complaints. The original complaints did result in Microsoft making some changes to Windows Defender, though it clearly wasn't enough for Kaspersky Lab.

Learning Hard Lessons?

As mentioned, this is just another antitrust complaint filed against a major tech company in the last several years. A perfect example is the antitrust case the European Commission has pursued against Alphabet since 2010. It is believed that the case may finally be settled in a few months, but that's not a guarantee. Another notable decision recently was the massive fine the EU hit Facebook with over the WhatsApp acquisition. Facebook had to pay $122 million as punishment for offering misleading information about the 2014 purchase.

Microsoft is no stranger to these complaints as well. Back in 2004, the EU filed antitrust complaints over similar claims to the Kaspersky case, though this was over Windows Media Player. This forced Microsoft to remove the video player from European versions of Windows to maintain fair competition in that space.

Given all these, it begs the question whether or not these companies learn its lesson. The EU, in nearly every case, has employed a watchdog attitude toward the tech market to ensure the big companies don't gobble up smaller companies and start-ups. Yet even after these rulings, a new case seems to emerge that highlights some of the questionable, self-centered tactics these companies go about maintaining a hold on the market.

It will be interesting to see if Microsoft, or any other company for that matter, begins to learn its lesson from these complaints.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Sony has now officially announced a new global PlayStation promotion called "Days of Play." Part of the promotion includes the launch of a gold-colored PS4 Slim for $250 and DualShock 4 controllers for only $40 apiece.

PlayStation 4 Slim Gold Edition

The PS4 gold edition even comes with a matching gold controller and 1 TB of storage, so there'll be plenty of room for one's games.

The gold-colored PS4 isn't exactly a surprise, however  it's been leaked earlier this month by virtue of a Target listing. Sony said the gold edition PS4 will only be available for a limited time, although it didn't specify an end date.

Gold is a pretty interesting color choice for a console, especially since gaming machines traditionally come in black, white, or gray. If you're feeling a bit adventurous with colors, and if gold won't ruin your living room's decor, then you should definitely consider getting the gold PS4 Slim.

PlayStation 4 Slim Silver Edition

Sony will also release a silver edition PS4 but only for those living in Europe. The PS4 Slim gold variant will come with 500 GB of storage and will become available starting June 28, Sony confirmed via the European PlayStation blog. A silver option will also be available, although it only comes with 500 GB of storage, similar to the gold variant. Both editions will come with matching DualShock 4 controllers.

Why Sony won't release the silver PS4 Slim stateside is a bit unclear, although if it helps, Sony did tell Polygon that it's "focusing on the Gold PS4 in North America as part of our Days of Play promotion." Yeah, that clears it up, all right.

PlayStation Days Of Play Promotion

Days of Play will also include other awesome promotions including several retailers selling Nioh, Horizon Zero Dawn, and MLB The Show 17 for just $40 apiece, while "catalog titles" will also get discounted during the week. For audiophiles out there, the Sony Gold wireless stereo headset will be on sale for $80.

By June 9, Sony will announce even more deals as part of the promotion, including ones for digital games on the PlayStation Store. What's more, PlayStation Plus memberships will also get discounts on that day. Expect due coverage as Sony announces more information.

For those who haven't bought a PS4 yet but have been planning to for so long, this is probably the best time to finally buy one, and while you're at it, you should probably pick up Horizon Zero Dawn, Nioh, or MLB The Show 17 as well.

"This campaign is a thank you from us to the passionate PlayStation Community for your unwavering support  it's all of you that makes PlayStation the Best Place to Play, and led to the huge success of games like Horizon Zero Dawn," Sony said in a blog post.

Sony's Days of Play promotion begins June 9 and runs through June 17 in the United States and Canada.

Thoughts about Days of Play? Will you pick up the gold PS4? Feel free to sound off in the comments section below!

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
In an interview with Bloomberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook revealed that the company has helped United Kingdom officials in their investigations on the series of terrorist attacks launched within the country.

Apple has reportedly released metadata to UK officials to assist with the investigations. Is this different from breaking encryption, which the company refused to do so for the FBI last year?

Apple Hands Over Metadata To UK Officials

In the interview, held after the first day of Apple's WWDC 2017, Cook was asked on Apple's stance regarding the issues of privacy and security amid the terror attacks happening around the world.

"We have been cooperating with the U.K. government not only in law enforcement kind of matters but on some of the attacks," Cook answered.

Cook added that while he could not give further details, Apple provided the information promptly once the lawful process is followed.

The issue is once again in the spotlight due to a third terror attack in the UK in less than three months. A group of terrorists on the evening of June 3 swerved a van into people on London Bridge, then went on a stabbing spree using knives. Last month, a suicide bomber killed more than 20 people in Manchester after an Ariana Grande concert. In March, a lone attacker rammed into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge before stabbing a police officer outside Parliament.

Cook did not specify which attacks required Apple's assistance. There has been little detail on how the terrorists communicated with one another to plan the attacks, but Cook said that he believes Apple provided valuable information to the investigations.

Metadata vs. Encryption

Last year, Apple clashed with the FBI regarding the issue of encryption, particularly regarding the iPhone of one of the shooters in the San Bernardino tragedy of December 2015. The FBI wanted Apple to break the encryption of the iPhone through a special version of the iOS to look into the shooter's communications. However, Apple refused to do so, claiming that there is no way to guarantee control over such software that can bypass the iPhone's encryption.

Cook, however, clarified that providing metadata is different from breaking encryption.

"Encryption doesn't mean there's no information," Cook said, noting that metadata, which still exists despite encryption, can help authorities put together a profile for an attacker. Metadata reveals details regarding sent and received messages, including the time, location, and contacts involved, but not the content of these messages.

Metadata, therefore, already provides extremely helpful information to investigators without Apple defying its promise of protecting user data through encryption.

Cook Dismayed Over US Withdrawal From Paris Agreement

In the same interview, Cook expressed dismay over President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris agreement on climate change.

"He decided wrong," Cook said, adding that the move was not in the best interest of the country. Cook is said to have talked with Trump before the president's decision, urging him to keep the United States in the climate accord, which covers initiatives that look to reduce pollution and lessen the effects of climate change.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
As rumors continue to roll out for the Samsung Galaxy Note 8, a new leaker provided a few interesting tidbits regarding the upcoming flagship smartphone.

The credibility of the source is not yet established, so the new rumors should be taken with a grain of salt. However, if the information is true, the new features will add to the growing list of things that fans can look forward to for the Galaxy Note 8.

Galaxy Note 8 Leaks From PoyocoTech

PoyocoTech is a new Twitter account that claims to have information on the "latest leaks and renders of upcoming tech gadgets," though there is no way to confirm for now if it is legitimate with real sources.

The account tweeted several pieces of information that have already been previously leaked, including that the Galaxy Note 8 will feature a design similar to the Galaxy S8 and that it will have dual rear cameras. The account also uploaded a render of the Galaxy Note 8 with no fingerprint scanner at the back, following earlier reports that Samsung finally figured out how to place the component underneath the smartphone's display.

The render, meanwhile, also places the Galaxy Note 8 with the Galaxy Note 3, as the upcoming smartphone's dual-camera set-up is claimed to have a vertical arrangement. This is similar to the camera design of the Galaxy Note 3, which arranged the lens and LED flash vertically.

PoyocoTech also claimed that Samsung will be looking to perfect its design through uniformly aligned ports for the Galaxy Note 8. The smartphone is also said to have stereo speakers that will be tuned by Austrian sound company AKG, and a 3.5mm headphone jack will be located at the bottom of the device.

The new leaker also claimed that Samsung will add texture to the dedicated Bixby button, which calls the company's personal digital assistant. PoyocoTech also claimed that the new S Pen for the Galaxy Note 8 will feature a built-in vibrator, and can be located through the Find My Mobile app for Galaxy smartphones in case users misplaced the stylus.

As with previous leaks and rumors, these claims of PoyocoTech have not been confirmed by Samsung. The company may unveil the Galaxy Note 8 at the IFA show in Berlin on Sept. 1, so fans will have to wait at least two months before they find out what the upcoming flagship smartphone has to offer.

Other Galaxy Note 8 Rumors

A recently published roundup of rumors and leaks on the Galaxy Note 8 painted a good picture of the highly anticipated device, assuming all of the information is true.

In addition to what was previously mentioned, the Galaxy Note 8 will feature the Infinity Display of the Galaxy S8 and will run on Android 7.1.1 Nougat. The smartphone is also expected to become Samsung's biggest-ever flagship smartphone.

Samsung is expected to launch the Galaxy Note 8 by the second half of the year, and the company is hoping that it will erase all the bad memories regarding its predecessor, the explosive Galaxy Note 7.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Apple has finally released its first original series, Planet of the Apps, with the first episode available to watch for free.

The company screened the show on the second day of WWDC 2017, where Apple has made a variety of important announcements that include the Siri-powered HomePod, the 10.5-inch iPad Pro, and the iMac Pro, before premiering Planet of the Apps later that night.

What Is 'Planet Of The Apps' About?

Planet of the Apps is a reality show that gives developers 60 seconds to make a pitch to a panel of advisers on their idea for an app. If more than one adviser support the idea, they then do whatever it takes to have the developer choose to work with them for the app.

Developers stand to gain funding of up to $10 million, with their app to be prominently featured on Apple's App Store. To get there, they will work with their chosen mentor to prepare them to ask for support from venture capital company Lightspeed Venture Partners, which is the first investor in Snapchat.

If the concept of the show sounds familiar, it is because it is essentially a version of Shark Tank focused on app development. The panel of advisers include actresses Gwyneth Paltrow and Jessica Alba, entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk, and musician will.i.am.

Will.i.am and producer Ben Silverman shopped the program to traditional TV channels before approaching Apple, which agreed to host the show on Apple Music. Filming for the show started near the end of 2016 and finished in February.

"The question when you have ideas is how to take those to fruition," said Apple's senior VP on internet software and services Eddy Cue. Planet of the Apps shows how developers can take their ideas all the way to the App Store.

How Can You Watch 'Planet Of The Apps'?

The first season of Planet of the Apps lasts 10 episodes and is Apple's first attempt at adding exclusive content to Apple Music to attract subscribers.

The first episode is now also available online through iTunes and the official website of the show. The succeeding episodes of Planet of the Apps will be rolled out every Tuesday, but they will only be accessible to Apple Music subscribers.

Apple Music offers a three-month trial period, with individual plans coming with a price tag of $9.99 each after the trial ends.

The first two episodes feature developers who showcase ideas on apps focused on online shopping, campus safety, and a school backpack. One of the teams scrambles to adapt after Google rolls out a feature similar to its project, while a developer is overwhelmed by the long list of ideas thrown out by will.i.am.

Apple is planning to heavily promote Planet of the Apps, with Cue stating that all Apple customers will likely be exposed to the original program.

Apple Music will also soon host an adaptation of James Corden's Carpool Karaoke, which is set to start in August. In June, Apple Music will launch a documentary about Sean "Diddy" Combs, which will be followed in a few months by another documentary on music executive Clive Davis.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
It's safe to say that Tesla has emerged as one of the next powerhouses in the car market. Combining luxury design with a functioning, high-quality electric car, Elon Musk's company has been on an upward trajectory for some time.

That looks like it's going to continue thanks to one of the booming markets that desire the Tesla-style electric car, China.

A Thriving Market

2017 has provided Tesla with no end of good news surrounding the Chinese market. In March, the company revealed that it had made over $1 billion in revenue from its 2016 sales in China. This was the magic bullet that made Tesla a Fortune 500 ranked company for the first time in the company's history. Since then, the company has been on track to double sales in 2017 based on the first three months of imports; showrooms are being crowded by some of China's wealthiest; and Chinese buyers are putting down $1,200 to preorder the Tesla Model 3 in numbers second only to the United States.

This is a massive turnaround for a company that many market analysts believed couldn't be cracked. High tariffs and taxes caused a jump in prices, making the Model S and Model X 50 percent more expensive than any other market. The reason for these tariffs was to prevent importers from getting an edge, trying to push consumers toward electric cars that are manufactured internally.

The Right Connections

Another reason Tesla hasn't broken through in China for a time was a lack of connections in the country. Despite its growth as a major world market, a big reason any foreign companies are able to have any success is through partnerships with major Chinese companies and the government itself. That looks to be changing as well, which could provide Tesla an edge in the market.

Earlier this year, Musk made a surprise visit to China and met with Vice Premier Wang Yang, one of China's top economic officials. What made this unique was Yang's meeting with Musk was a one-on-one instead of the usual group meetings the Vice Premier is known for.

And Yang isn't the only government official who has expressed interest in Tesla. While no names have been given, many higher-ups believe Tesla is the model for other Chinese manufacturers to copy from. Chinese electric cars are not known for providing the best driving experience and battery life, so having a standard like Tesla could help encourage the domestic market and drive up competition.

There have also been reports of Musk meeting with potential partners that could help Tesla start producing cars locally, bypassing the import taxes. Musk believes that China could be the biggest market for Tesla, stating back in 2014 that he wanted Tesla to start building cars in China by 2017 or 2018.

If all this lines up in Tesla's favor, this will make it one of the biggest influencers in the motor industry worldwide.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
President-elect Lula da Silva and Sonia Gujajara are expected to meet at the 2022 UN Climate Change next week. | Read More
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U.S. Sen. John N. Kennedy has returned from an overseas trip with a bipartisan group of members of the U.S. House and Senate.

Kennedy, R-Madisonville, traveled to Belgium, Lithuania, Estonia, Finland and France on a trip that focused on NATO and defense spending.

According to a news release, Kennedy also took the opportunity to promote Louisiana economic development opportunities.

Louisiana is blessed with an abundance of natural resources. In addition to being a leader in oil and natural gas production, our state produces high-quality agriculture and manufactured products. As such, during this trip I focused specifically on selling Louisiana and our products to the countries that we visited, Kennedy said in the release.

Kennedy met with Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite, Lithuanian Minister of Defense Raimundas Karoblis, Speaker of the Seimas Viktoras Pranckietis, Estonian Minister of Defense Margus Tsahkna, Republic of Finland President Sauli Niinisto, Finnish Minister of Defense Jussi Niinisto and Finnish Speaker of Parliament Maria Lohela as well as NATO officials during the seven-day trip.

Kennedy, a Madisonville Republican who joined the Senate in January, traveled to Asia earlier this year in a trip that highlighted North Korea's nuclear threats.

Others on the trip to the Baltic States included Sen. Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican who chairs the Senate Health Education, Labor and Pension Committee; Senate Appropriations Chair Thad Cochran, R-Mississippi; Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Missouri; and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Maryland; and House Veterans Affairs Committee Chair Phil Roe, R-Tennessee.

The fight against terrorism is a collective fight," Kennedy said. This was a productive trip as we were able to have serious conversations with presidents and defense ministers about the need to enhance defense spending.
This is the time of year when we see Creole tomatoes everywhere. Theyre tumbling from market bins, chalked up on restaurant specials lists, and this weekend , theyre back in the spotlight for the annual Creole Tomato Festival at the French Market.

Still, one place I didnt expect to find a Creole tomato was tattooed across someones skin. But there it was on a friend of mine, Sonny Averett, a local kayak tour guide. If you meet him, buy him a beer and ask about the tattoo. Its inked up in red bulbs and fuzzy green vines, starting around the ankle and climbing toward his knee. I knew it was a Creole tomato because Sonny told me it was, and this New Orleans native told me that with pride.

And that's when it struck me. The Creole tomato is no mere vegetable. It has become another emblem of southeast Louisiana. Its a symbol, like the fleur de lis, but more specific, a wink from one insider to another.

After all, to those who don't know better, its just a tomato. But it isnt. The Creole tomato has a special taste, acidic but not too sharp. Its prized for its texture, its heavy juice and its sense of place.

The term Creole tomato is open to a few different definitions, but all of them point to a tomato grown here in southeast Louisiana. Some people will consider a tomato Creole only if its harvested from alluvial soils adjacent to the Mississippi River, and some zero in closer still to individual parishes.

Any way you cut it though, it has to be local. That means these tomatoes can ripen on the vine longer because they dont have far to travel and arent likely to endure refrigeration, the enemy of fresh tomato flavor.

Gorgeous tomatoes are beloved wherever people grow them, so we dont have any monopoly on our tomato lust here. But in New Orleans, we don't just love them, we need them. We need a region-specific treat like this to call our own to come along this time of year.

We only get them in the summer, after all, a season we have more reasons to wish away. If you know what it means to love a Creole tomato, then you know what it means to love Louisiana, not just during the mild winter or the wild Carnival season, but now, in the thick of the heat, when on some days, it can really feel like this place does not want to be loved.

But thats when a sense of place gets hardcore. Around here, when the going gets tough, the tough still take some comfort from a big red Creole tomato.
Walking through the front door of Kate Fenning's Canberra home is like stepping straight into a living, breathing, 3D Instagram feed.

From the stunning monochrome palette - with touches of grey, dusty pink and marble - to textured floor and wall coverings, Fenning's signature style is everywhere. And it's a signature that's inspiring more than 100,000 people across the world.

Fenning's business is named after sons Yorke and Morissey Lee. Credit:Karleen Minney

Mum-of-two Fenning is the visionary behind Yorke Lee Prints, a successful wall art business she started from the lounge room of her Dunlop home in 2014. A graphic designer by trade and "with just this huge passion for styling", she has built a massive client base for Yorke Lee Prints almost exclusively through the use of Instagram.

Her followers are dotted across the globe and adore her simple, authentic and sometimes "quirky" posts. But it's been a long and hard journey, according to Fenning.
Clients will start attending the controversial Ngunnawal Bush Healing Farm in August but it could be a while before residential services are run from the Tidbinbilla site, health minister Meegan Fitzharris revealed on Wednesday.

The minister apologised in the ACT Legislative Assembly for the miscommunication which led Aboriginal health provider Winnunga Nimmityjah to walk away from the $12 million project.

Health minister Meegan Fitzharris. Credit:Rohan Thomson

Winnunga chief executive Julie Tongs last month accused the government of spending millions of dollars on a "camp site" after it was revealed medical treatments would not be offered at the farm near Tharwa, in part because the zoning of the site prohibited it.

Health officials later admitted they were not "clear enough" with Ms Tongs about the inability to run clinical services at the farm.
Prosecutors say the two men accused of torching a Weston cafe revealed their guilt when they lied in the months following the fire.

Leo Nicholas Eliadis, 47, and Nick Parlov, 24, are on trial in the ACT Supreme Court accused of planning and carrying out the attack, which was captured on dramatic surveillance footage.

In his closing statement to the jury on Wednesday, prosecutor Trent Hickey said both accused had lied and denied knowing each other, although officers had been intercepting their conversations.

Mr Hickey said Mr Eliadis lied when he told police his car had been damaged in January, in what the Crown says was an attempt to distinguish his Honda CRV from the car captured on surveillance video leaving the scene just after midnight on March 13, 2014.
The spectre of a supermarket price discounting war is a customer's dream and a shareholder's nightmare. And it's what is responsible for the savaging in the shares in Coles supermarket's owner Wesfarmers on Wednesday morning.

Wesfarmers boss, Richard Goyder revealed that the $65 million investment in lowering prices over the six months to December last year could as much as triple in the current six months to June.

The supermarket operator has clearly decided to take on Woolworths, which has lowered its prices by hundreds of millions over the past year, and Aldi, which has proportionately dropped prices by around the same amount.
Nice to see Andrew Mowat promoting the campaign to ban plastic in Beecroft (C8, Tuesday) says Ross Walker of Beecroft. "Personally I prefer the punchier 'Bag Free Beecroft' slogan adopted. The campaign had its genesis a few months ago and the recent ABC War on Plastics program is a bonus. Local shopkeepers support it, they are struggling at the moment and welcome the added publicity." [C8: some large supermarkets should take note].

Berry residents are also fired up on the 'War on Waste'. "After many months of sewing, Boomerang Bags have just been launched. Instead of a one-use plastic bag, we can borrow a Boomerang Bag and return it when next in town. A positive, happy plan in a sad week." Thanks Nina Poulos, Berry.

"The reason that your Jahlsberg Cheese Slices wander all round the world before you buy them, Pam North (C8, Wednesday), is that it costs almost nothing per item to ship small items around the world so manufacturers move them to the cheapest place each stage in their production can be completed. I have seen razor blades made in the US and packed in Israel before arriving in Australia." Ted Richards, Batemans Bay.

"Shopping for my dinner in a Cherrybrook supermarket, my eye was caught by the colourfully-packaged frozen-fish offerings, reports freezerside Bill Leigh of, West Pennant Hills. "A close examination of the fine print revealed, "Pacific Cod  Caught in the USA, packed in China". By the time it reached consumers in Australia it must have been tuckered out?"

A question for James Saunders (C8, betting tips from dearly departed). "How did he know Ken Searle's tip was for Belmont? Or, to put it another way, how much did he lose on Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane?" John Christie, Oatley.
Despite some expressions of political alarm there is nothing radical in the Uluru proposals for a national Indigenous voice, for an obligation to consult, and for a body to encourage treaty making.

There is nothing in the proposals that disturbs our existing constitutional order. Indeed in only one respect are the proposals new or novel. Rather, they appear to be a response to conservative demands that the constitutional order be kept as it is.

When Aboriginal people constructively and thoughtfully consider their position in the context of wider community concerns they deserve better than knee-jerk responses to the word treaty and confusion about a national Aboriginal voice being another chamber of Parliament.

In 1980 there was a national Aboriginal voice. It was called the National Aboriginal Conference, the NAC. It was made up of Aboriginal and Islander people elected from single-member electorates across Australia.
Big ideas don't generate lukewarm support and opposition. On the contrary, public debate on issues that matter is often red hot. Think terrorism, the national disability insurance scheme, school funding, the bank tax, asylum seekers and same-sex marriage, to name just a few.

Major constitutional reform is no different. That is certainly the case with Indigenous recognition now and was the case with the republic referendum in 1999. That is the context for Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's response to the Uluru declaration by Indigenous leaders. He was speaking at a function to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the successful 1967 referendum.

He developed themes he had addressed before, falling back on his experience as the leader of the defeated republican movement in 1999. In fact, he sees himself as an expert on the difficulties of constitutional reform.

His message was: "No political deal, no cross-party compromise, no leader's handshake can deliver constitutional change. To do that, a constitutionally conservative nation must be persuaded that the proposed amendments respect the fundamental values of the constitution and will deliver precise changes that are clearly understood to be to the benefit of all Australians."
In 2009, I did an internship at a think tank in central London. Every day I walked with the streams of commuters and tourists across London Bridge to an office near Tower Bridge. At lunchtime, I would often wander up to Borough Market to ogle the produce stalls, feel poor and buy a sandwich.

There are of course many iconic parts of London. But this grey, bustling patch, next to the Thames - with St Paul's and the Tower on the skyline  felt as London-y as you can can get. One day, I even saw then-mayor of London Boris Johnson tootling by on his bike.

A man holds his beer while people flee terror attacks in London on Saturday. Credit:AP

Apart from a modest stipend for food and travel, the internship wasn't paid. But I loved having an almost grown-up excuse to be in London. And I was doing work that impressed my parents.

I was one of several research monkeys helping with a two-year study into the difference between violent terrorists and non-violent radicals. In the shadow of the 2005 London bombings and 9/11, we trawled through profiles of Canadian and European "home grown" terrorists, looking for patterns. The research, published by Demos in 2010, found violent extremists were less likely to have a university education than non-violent radicals. Few of them had a devout Islamic upbringing and they often refused to engage in the mainstream political process.
"Over the last year, Rayya Elias and I have been through some really difficult days together  but not today. Today was precious and perfect," Gilbert wrote."Our ceremony was nothing legally binding (no need to alert the authorities, folks!) ... just a quiet and private celebration of what we have long known to be true: We belong to each other."More difficult days are to come. It doesn't get easier from here. Her illness is grave. But our love is strong. We will walk together as far as we can go together. After that, it all gets turned over to God."Create beauty with every day you are given."

The bestselling author, 47, took to Instagram on Tuesday to share a picture of the pair kissing shortly after their "simple and spontaneous ceremony of love, surrounded by a small handful of friends and family".

Two months after announcing her split from Brazilian Australian importer husband Jose Nunes (familiar to readers of Eat, Pray, Love as Brazilian gem trader Felipe), Gilbert explained in a lengthy Facebook post that Elias had terminal pancreatic and liver cancer.

Following the diagnosis, it made Gilbert reassess her feelings for her best friend.

"In the moment I first learned of Rayya's diagnosis, a trap door opened at the bottom of my heart (a trap door I didn't even know was there) and my entire existence fell straight through that door," she wrote.

"Death  or the prospect of death  has a way of clearing away everything that is not real, and in that space of stark and utter realness, I was faced with this truth: I do not merely love Rayya; I am in love with Rayya. And I have no more time for denying that truth.

"The thought of someday sitting in a hospital room with her, holding her hand and watching her slide away, without ever having let her (or myself!) know the extent of my true feelings for her...well, that thought was unthinkable."
Airservices Australia faces a massive class action in the Federal Court following the slashing of more than 500 jobs in a controversial redundancy program.

The government entity could be stung as much as $12 million in payouts and penalties for the "systemic" use of allegedly unlawful contracts, said the Canberra law firm launching the claim.

Former staff of Airservices Australia are launching a class action against the government entity. Credit:James Morgan

Rory Markham, the employment litigation director for Chamberlains, said the alleged contract breaches could have affected as many as 150 former employees.

"There was a large redundancy in 2016  the largest on Airservice's record  where 150 people alone in the Canberra market at that level were let go," Mr Markham said.
As Katherine Ackling-Bryen walked her young daughters to school, they noticed she had tears in her eyes.

One of the girls was still dressed in her pyjamas, and school staff gave her a uniform to wear.

Katherine Ackling-Bryen has been described as a devoted mother, wife and daughter.

That morning the 37-year-old mother left a bag of new clothes for her children in the lounge room of her St Marys house, and prepared a slow-cooked meal. Then she disappeared.

A precious quilt handmade by her mother and a black rucksack were the only items missing from her western Sydney home.
It has turned into a cash cow for its wealthy owners who include billionaires Jack Cowin and Brett Blundy, delivering almost $20 million in payouts to them in a little over a year.

But the two-decade grip that BridgeClimb, the business founded by entrepreneur Paul Cave, has had on leading tens of thousands of people over the southern arches of Sydney Harbour Bridge every year  at up to $378 a pop  is about to be tested.

Roads and Maritime Services, the government authority that oversees the Australian landmark, has put out to tender the "Sydney Harbour Bridge tourist climb business", which includes a museum within the south eastern pylon.

"Roads and Maritime are encouraging innovative new tourism experiences whilst seeking to achieve the best value for the people of NSW," it said in its request for expressions of interest from the private sector.
The $50,000 in cash found on former Ipswich mayor Paul Pisasale at a Melbourne airport has been claimed by a Brisbane barrister, who says the council identity was carrying it for him "as a friend" and it was part of a court settlement for a Chinese client.

Barrister Sam Di Carlo came forward with the sensational twist one day after Mr Pisasale's dramatic resignation and the news that the Ipswich City Council stalwart had been stopped by an Australian Federal Police sniffer dog at Tullamarine Airport on May 13 and found with the cash in his carry-on luggage.

Pisasale

On Thursday, Mr Di Carlo told Fairfax Media that Mr Pisasale  one of the country's most popular politicians  had done "absolutely nothing wrong".
Melbourne's first ever designated busway may run down the middle of Hoddle Street with bumper-sized bendy buses running every three minutes between East Doncaster and Southern Cross Station.

Global transport giant Transdev has pitched to the Andrews government a proposal to build and operate the "Doncaster bus rapid transit" system for 30 years and reinvent public transport in Melbourne's eastern suburbs.

The French-based company, which has a contract to operate a third of Melbourne's bus network, wants to build and run the premium bus service as a public-private partnership.

The rapid transit busway would be a first for Melbourne, but would mirror international examples Transdev operates in cities such as Nantes in France and Bogota in Colombia.
A career criminal will finally be deported after Australian authorities failed to send him home four years ago.

But it's too late for the woman he violently raped and taunted in her own home.

Carl Justin Stafford, 42, was high on ice when he broke into the sleeping woman's St Kilda West unit and repeatedly raped her.

At one point he told her: "Do you know your neighbours? Because they are going to see you having sex in your room."

Among other taunts he told the woman he knew she lived alone and "I have been watching you".
Clinton Pryor's gait is light, almost buoyant as he walks.

Trucks and cars roar past his slight figure on the shoulder of the highway. A treasured walking stick  decorated with the Aboriginal colours of people, sun and earth  taps the ground at each step.

Clinton Pryor is walking from Perth to Canberra. Credit:Joe Armao

Over the past nine months Pryor's feet have carried him almost 4800 kilometres as he traverses this vast continent.

From Perth, through Western Australia, the Northern Territory and South Australia, to Wurundjeri land, and Melbourne, on Tuesday.
A notorious professional eating machine from New South Wales has flown to Perth on a whirlwind trip to take out a hotdog eating challenge, eating four dogs at the sickening speed of one minute and 39 seconds.

Twenty-one-year-old commerce student Isaac H-D signed up to the Wassup Dog Gourmet Hotdogs eating challenge where he stuffed four hot dogs in his face, averaging at 25 seconds per dog to take out the $2000 cash prize.

Isaac H-D smashing the four hotdogs. Credit:Wassup Dog Gourmet Hotdogs

"Lucky it was a standing challenge...the food goes down a lot more easy if you're standing," he said.

"I was trying to get the head bops going as I was eating the hot dogs, trying to push the food down so I could keep eating."
Beirut: Forces backed by the United States said on Tuesday that they had begun a long-anticipated offensive against Islamic State militants in the northern Syrian city of Raqqa, the group's self-proclaimed capital.

The forces, collectively called the Syrian Democratic Forces and made up of Syrian Kurdish fighters and Arab militias, have over the past month surrounded Raqqa from the east, north and west. On Tuesday, they began an assault on the city limits, aided by airstrikes from the US-led coalition and by artillery.

Raqqa shops were closed and people were staying inside, residents said. Electricity and water were out. Bakeries were still working but were expected to shut down soon for lack of flour. One resident said coalition warplanes and drones had attacked ferries transporting vegetables across the Euphrates River into the city, causing the deliveries to halt.

Civilian casualties and damage to infrastructure from airstrikes by the coalition sharply increased as the fighting approached, according to residents.
Washington: Fired FBI Director James Comey said President Donald Trump asked him in February to put an end into an investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, requesting that he see his "way clear to letting this go."

Mr Trump went on to say that Mr Flynn, who was ousted from his post for a misleading account of his contacts with the Russian ambassador, is "a good guy." Mr Comey said he responded only that "he is a good guy" but never told Mr Trump he would cut off the inquiry, according to testimony prepared for his highly anticipated appearance on Thursday before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Mr Comey also said Mr Trump told him "I need loyalty" when the two dined alone in the White House on January 27 and said he thought the encounter was designed to "create some sort of patronage relationship." The testimony was posted on the committee's website on Wednesday.

"The President said, 'I need loyalty, I expect loyalty,"' Mr Comey said. "I didn't move, speak, or change my facial expression in any way during the awkward silence that followed. We simply looked at each other in silence."
The rival would-be prime ministers returned to their core messages on the frantic final day of campaigning. Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn at an open air rally in Birmingham. Credit:Getty Images "No-one can say there wasn't a choice," Labour's Jeremy Corbyn said, warning that a Conservative victory would mean five more years of Tory cuts, longer waiting lists and underfunded schools, compared with "hope under Labour". At his 90th and final campaign rally in his home constituency of Islington he said Labour had "changed the debate and given people hope" and presented "the policies that people actually want". "Inequality can and will be tackled," he said. "Austerity can be ended, we can stand up to the elites and the cynics."

"This is the new mainstream." Brexit matters, Brexit is the basis of everything else. Theresa May Meanwhile, Theresa May toured marginal Labour seats that her Conservative Party hopes to pick up by promising the best Brexit deal for Britain. The Tories have aggressively courted former Labour voters who left for the UK Independence Party, and even the Labour faithful who voted for Leave in the 2016 Brexit referendum. "Brexit matters, Brexit is the basis of everything else," Mrs May said on Wednesday, repeating her campaign mantra of "strong and stable leadership".

"Give me your backing and I will deliver for Britain," she said. Polls this week have ranged from predicting a minority Labour government, through to a big majority for the Conservatives. In the final polls, the Conservatives' lead ranged from just one point (Survation), through seven points (Opinium), 10 points (ComRes) up to 12 points (ICM). YouGov, which last week projected a Labour minority government, found a last-minute Tory surge in its final poll and gave them a seven-point lead and an increased majority. Even if Labour gets a lower vote share than the Conservatives, if it picks up enough seats it might still form a government with the backing of the Scottish National Party and the Liberal Democrats.

But Labour insiders are privately predicting a net loss of seats, and devoted the last days of the campaign to shoring up Labour-held seats rather than pushing into Conservative territory. Mr Corbyn has drawn huge crowds to rallies around the country, in an energetic last push for votes  while May has settled for smaller, more contained events in front of core supporters and TV cameras. Writer Robert Harris recalled covering the 1983 election when Margaret Thatcher ran "a new kind of election, an American-style copied from Reagan where you didn't do the monster rally, you just got good pictures for the evening news". Meanwhile, Michael Foot fronted huge rallies around the country  and lost. The nation's leading tabloids have come out strongly in favour of May  as expected  with the Daily Mail devoting the first 13 pages of its Wednesday paper to attacking Mr Corbyn and his colleagues who they called "apologists for terror". The Sun led with 'Jezza's jihadi comrades", referring to a 2002 speech he gave at Trafalgar Square that was attended by followers of hate preachers linked to the London Bridge attackers.

On Thursday The Sun's front page pleaded "Don't chuck Britain in the Cor-bin", describing Corbyn as "terrorists' friends, useless on Brexit, destroyer of jobs  Marxist extremist". Corbyn supporters responded to the barrage on Wednesday with a humorous series of tweets on the topic of "last minute Corbyn smears", warning that the Labour leader would give dogs a vote, and had used steroids to grow an enormous marrow on his allotment. The Financial Times said a Tory vote was a "safer bet" and the Times said the campaign had exposed May's flaws but a cabinet led by Mr Corbyn would be "a catastrophe". Of the daily newspapers only three came out for Mr Corbyn. The Mirror said Labour would deliver a "fairer, decent, prosperous, better land" and The Guardian that Mr Corbyn's party "might be the start of something big rather than the last gasp of something small". The avowedly communist Morning Star said approvingly that Mr Corbyn "has put socialism back on the political agenda".

Late in the campaign attention turned to Scotland, where the Conservatives are a good chance to pick up a handful of seats from the Scottish National Party (SNP) which won almost the entire country in 2015. SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon said Mrs May would be regretting calling this "unnecessary election", and had thought she could cruise to victory just by repeating "strong and stable". Ms Sturgeon used the final day of campaigning to issue a plea for Labour and Liberal Democrat supporters to lend the SNP their votes. A vote for Labour or the Lib Dems risked "allowing the Tories in the back door", she said. Britain has a first-past-the-post voting system.

She said they might disagree over SNP policies  such as their push for another Scottish independence referendum  but "if you do not want to wake up tomorrow morning with a Tory government with a bigger majority, vote SNP". The last week of the campaign has been overshadowed by security issues, following the attack in London Bridge  and Manchester before that. But Brexit has been the most popular policy issue in Britain's general election on Twitter, eclipsing even the NHS, according to new research from the University of Edinburgh's Professor Laura Cram. Wednesday saw a lighter moment on the election trail, as Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson asked a gypsy fortune teller in Plymouth in the south-west for her election prediction, and she refused. Loading